Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “I’m not going to marry Sir Owen, but I must not let you kiss me.”

  “But you must, Evelyn, you must.”

  “Why must I?”

  “Do you not feel that it is to be?”

  “What is to be?”

  “I do not know what, but I have been drawn towards you so long a while — long before I saw you, ever since I heard your name, the moment I saw that old photograph in the music-room, I knew.”

  “What did you know?”

  “When I heard your name it called up an image in my mind, and that image has never wholly left me — it comes back often like a ghost.”

  “When you were thinking of something different?”

  “I am your destiny, or one of your destinies.”

  Her eyes were fixed eagerly upon him; his darkness and the mysteries he represented attracted her, and she even felt she could follow. At the same moment his eyes seemed the most beautiful in the world, and she desired him to make love to her. While enticing, she resisted him, now more feebly, and when he let go her hands she sat looking at him, wondering how she was to get through the evening without kissing him.... She spoke to him about his opera. He asked her if she were going to sing it, and she looked at him with vague, uncertain eyes. He said he knew she never would. She asked him why he thought so, and again a great longing bent him towards her. She withdrew her hands and face from his lips, and they had begun to talk of other things when he perceived her face close to his. Unable to resist he kissed her cheek, fearing that she would order him from the room. But at the instant of the touching of his lips, she threw her arm about his neck, and drew him down as a mermaiden draws her mortal lover into the depths, and in a wondering world of miraculous happiness he surrendered himself.

  “Dearest, dearest,” he said, raising himself to look at her.

  “Ulick, Ulick,” she said, “let me kiss you, I’ve longed such a while.”

  He thought he had never seen so radiant a face. What disguise had fallen? And looking at her, he strove to discover the woman who had denied him so often. This new woman seemed made all of light and love and transport, the woman of all his divinations, the being the old photograph in the old music-room had warned him of, the being that the voice of his destiny had told him he was to meet. And as they stood by the fireplace looking into each other’s eyes, he gradually became aware of his happiness. It broke in his heart with a thrill and shiver like an exquisite dawn, opal and rose; the brilliancy of her eyes, the rapture of her face, the magnetic stirring of the little gold curls along her forehead were so wonderful that he feared her as an enchanter fears the spirit he has raised. Like one who has suddenly chanced on the hilltop, he gazed on the prospect, believing it all to be his. They stood gazing into each other’s eyes too eager to speak, and when she called his name he remembered the legended forest, and replied with the song of the bird that leads Siegfried to Brunnhilde. She laughed, and sang the next two bars, and then seemed to forget everything.

  “Dearest, of what are you thinking?”

  “Only if I ever shall kiss you again, Ulick.”

  “You will always kiss me!”

  She did not answer, and, frightened by her irresponsive eyes, he said —

  “But, Evelyn, you must love me, me — only me; you will never see him again?”

  She did not answer, and when he spoke, his voice trembled.

  “But it is impossible you can ever marry him now.”

  “I am not going to marry Owen.”

  “You told him so the other night?”

  “Yes, I told him, or very nearly, that I could not marry him.”

  “You cannot marry him, you love me.... But why don’t you answer. What are you thinking of?”

  “Only of you, dear.... Let me kiss you again,” and in the embrace he forgot for the moment the inquietude her answer had caused him.

  “That is my call,” she said. “How am I to sing the Liebestod after all this? How does it begin?”

  Ulick sang the opening phrase, and she continued the music for some bars.

  “I hope I shall get through it all right. Then,” she said, “we shall go home together in the brougham.”

  At that moment a knock was heard, and Merat entered. “Mademoiselle, you have no time to lose.”

  The call boy’s voice was heard on the stairs, and Evelyn hastened away. Ulick followed, and the first thing he heard when he got on the stage was Tristan’s death motive. He listened, not so much to the music itself as to its occult significance regarding Evelyn and himself. And as Isolde’s grief changed from wild lament for sensual delight to a resigned and noble prayer, the figure of ecstasy broke with a sound as of wings shaking, and Ulick seemed to witness a soul’s transfiguration. He watched it rising in several ascensions, like a lark’s flight. For an instant it seemed to float in some divine consummation, then, like the bird, to suddenly quench in the radiance of the sky. The harps wept farewell over the bodies of the lovers, then all was done, and he stood at the wings listening to the applause. She came to him at once, as soon as the curtain was down.

  “How did I sing it?”

  “As well as ever.”

  “But you seem sad; what is it?”

  “It seemed to mean something — something, I cannot tell what, something to do with us.”

  “No,” she said, looking at him. “I was only thinking of the music. Wait for me, dear, I shall not keep you long.”

  He walked up and down the stage, and in his hand was a wreath that some admirer had kept for the last. For excitement he could hardly bid the singers good-night as they passed him. Now it was Tristan, now Brangäne, now one of the chorus. The question raged within him. Was it fated that she should marry him? So far as he understood the omens she would not; but the readings were obscure, and his will threw itself out in opposition to the influence of Sir Owen. But he was not certain that that was the direction whence the danger was coming. He could only exert, however, his will in that direction. At last he saw her coming down the steep stairs, wrapped in a white opera cloak. They walked in silence — she all rapture, but his happiness already clouded. The brougham was so full of flowers that they, could hardly find place for themselves. She drew him closer, and said —

  “What is the matter, dear? Am I not nice to you?”

  “Yes, Evelyn, you’re an enchantment. Only—”

  “Only what, dear?”

  “I fear our future. I fear I shall lose you. All has come true so far, the end must happen.”

  She drew his arm about her waist, and laid his face on her bare shoulder.

  “Let there be no foreboding. Live in the present.”

  “The future is too near us. Say you’ll marry me, or else I shall lose you altogether. It is the one influence on our side.”

  She was born, he said, under two great influences, but each could be modified; one might be widened, the other lessened, and both modifications might finally resolve into her destiny. So far as he could read her future, it centred in him or another. That other, he was sure, was not Sir Owen, nor was it himself, he thought; for when she and he had met in the theatre, she had experienced no dread, but he had dreaded her, recognising her as his destiny. He had even recognised her as Evelyn Innes before she had been pointed out to him.

  “But you had seen my photograph?”

  “But it was not by your photograph that I knew you.”

  “And you knew that I should care for you?”

  “I knew that something had to happen. But you did not feel that I was your destiny. You said you experienced no dread, but when you met Sir Owen did you experience none?”

  “I suppose I did. I was afraid of him. At first I think I hated him.”

  “Ah, Evelyn, we shall not marry — it is not our fate. You see that you cannot say you will marry me. Another fate is beckoning you.”

  “Who is it who beckons me? Have I already met him?”

  He fell to dreaming again, and Evelyn asked him vainly to describe t
his other man.

  “Why are you singing that melancholy Mark motive?”

  “I did not know I was singing it.” He returned to his dream again, but starting from it, he seized her hands.

  “Evelyn,” he said, “we must marry; a reason obliges us. Have you not thought of it?” And then, as if he had not noticed that she had not answered his question, he said, “On your father’s account, if he should ever know. Think what my position is. I have betrayed my friend. That is why the Marie motive has been singing in my head. Evelyn, you must say you will marry me. We must marry at once, for your father’s sake. I have betrayed him, my best friend.... I have acted worse than that other man.”

  “Ulick, dear, open the window; the scent of these flowers is overpowering.... That is better. Throw some of those bouquets into the street. We might give them to those poor men, they might be able to sell them.... Tell the coachman to stop.”

  The chime of destiny sounded clearer than ever in their ears; it seemed as if they could almost catch the tune, and with a convulsive movement Evelyn drew her lover towards her.

  “Every hour threatens us,” he said. “Can you not hear? Do not go to Park Lane — Park Lane threatens; your friend Lady Duckle threatens. I see nothing but threats and menaces; all are leagued against us.”

  “Dearest, we cannot spend the night driving about London.”

  He sighed on his mistress’s shoulder. She threw his black hair from his forehead.

  “There is no hope. We shall be separated, scattered to different winds.”

  “Why do you think that? How do you know these things, Ulick?”

  “Evelyn, in losing you I lose the principle of my life, but you will lose nothing in losing me. So it is written. But you are not listening; I am wearying you; you’re clinging to the present, knowing that you will soon lose it.”

  She threw herself upon him, and kissed him as if she would annihilate destiny on his lips, and until they reached Park Lane there was no future, only a delirious present for both of them.

  “I won’t ask you in; I am tired. Good-bye, dearest, good-bye. I’ll write.”

  “Remember that my time is short,” and there was a strange accent in his voice which she did not hear till long after. She had locked herself into the sensual present, and, lulled in happy sensations of gratified sense, she allowed Merat to undress her. She thought of the soft luxury of her bed, and lay down, her brain full of floating impressions of flowers, music and of love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  AND WHEN MERAT called her in the morning, she was dreaming of love. She turned over, and, closing her eyes, strove to continue her dream, but it fled like moonshine from her memory, and was soon so far distant that she could not even perceive the subject of it. And she awoke in spite of herself, and sat up in bed sipping her chocolate; and then lay back upon the pillow with Ulick for the inner circle of her thought. It seemed that she could think of him for hours; the romance of his personality carried her on and on. At one moment she dwelt on the gold glow in his dark eyes, the paint-like blackness of his hair, and his long thin hands. At another her fancy liked to evoke his superstitions. For him the past, present and future were not twain, but one thing. And every time she saw him, she was more and more interested. Every time she discovered something new in him — he did not exist on the surface of things, but deep in himself; and she wondered if she would ever know him.

  Her thoughts paused a moment, and then she remembered something he had said. It had struck her at the time, but now it appeared to her more than ever interesting. Catholicism, he had said, had not fallen from him — he had merely learnt that it was only part of the truth; he had gone further, he had raised himself to a higher spirituality. It was not that he wanted less, but more than Catholicism could give him. In religion, as in art, there were higher and lower states. We began by admiring “Faust,” and went on to Wagner, hence to Beethoven and Palestrina. Catholicism was the spiritual fare of the multitude; there was a closer communion with the divine essence. She had forgotten what came next.... He held that we are always warned of our destiny and it had been proved that in the hypnotic sleep, when the pulse of life was weakest, almost at pause, there was a heightening of the powers of vision and hearing. A patient whose eyes had been covered with layers of cotton wool had been able to read the newspaper. Another patient had been able to tell what was passing in another mind, and at a distance of a mile. The only explanation that Charcot could give of this second experiment was that the knowledge had been conveyed through the rustling of the blood in the veins, which the hypnotic sleep had enabled the patient to hear. And Ulick submitted that this scientific explanation was more incredible than any spiritual one. There was much else. There was all Ulick’s wonderful talk about the creation of things by thought, and his references to the mysterious Kabbala had strangely interested her. But suddenly she remembered that perchance his spiritualism was allied to the black art of the necromancers; and her Catholic conscience was mysteriously affrighted, and she experienced the attraction of terror. Was it possible that he believed that all the accidents, or what we suppose are accidents, have been earned in a preceding life? Did he really believe that lovers may tempt each other life after life, that a group of people may come together again?

  “Mademoiselle, it is half-past ten.”

  “Very well, Merat, I will get up. I will ring for you when I have had my bath.”

  “Lady Duckle has gone out, and will not be home for lunch.”

  There was not even a letter, and the day stretched out before her. Ulick might call, but she did not think he would. She thought of a visit to her father, but something held her back, and Dulwich was a long way. After breakfast she went to the piano and sang some of Ulick’s music; stopping suddenly in the middle of a bar, she thought she would send him a note asking him to come to lunch. But what should she do till two o’clock? it was now only eleven. Suddenly it struck her that she might take a hansom and go and see him. She had never seen his rooms, and to visit him there would be more amusing than for him to come to Park Lane; and she imagined his surprise and delight at seeing her. Her thoughts went to the frock she would wear — a new one had come home yesterday — this would be an excellent opportunity to wear it. She would take him to lunch with her at some restaurant! She was in excellent humour. Her thoughts amused her, and she reflected that she had done well to choose the pale shot silk with green shades in it. It was trimmed with black lace, and she selected a large black hat with black ostrich feathers to wear with it.

  And seeing the people in the streets as she drove past, she wondered if they were as happy as she was. She speculated on their errands, and wondered if many of the women were going, like her, to their lovers. She wondered what their lovers were like, and she laughed at her thoughts. Seeing that she was passing through a very mean street, she hoped that Ulick’s rooms were not too Bohemian, and felt relieved when she found that the street she dreaded led into a square. A square, she reflected, always means a certain measure of respectability. And the faded, old-fashioned neighbourhood pleased her. Some of the houses seemed as if they had known more fashionable days; and the square exhaled a tender melancholy; it suggested a vision of dreamy lives — lives lived in ideas, lives of students who lived in books unaware of the externality of things.

  But the cabman could not find the number, and Evelyn impatiently inquired it from the vagrant children. There were groups of them on the wide doorstep, and Evelyn imagined the interior of the house, wide passages, gently-sloping staircase, its heavy banisters. It surprised and amused her to find that she had imagined it quite correctly; and when she reached the landing to which she had been directed, she stopped, hearing his voice. He was only talking to himself; she pushed the door and called to him.

  “Oh, it is you?” he said; “you have come sooner than I expected.”

  “Then you expected me, Ulick?”

  “Yes, I expected you.”

  “Expected me ...to-day! But,
Ulick, what were you saying when I came in?”

  “Only some Kabbalistic formula,” he replied, quite naturally.

  “But you don’t really believe in such superstitions, and it surely is very wrong.”

  He looked at her incredulously, as he might at some beautiful apparition likely at any moment to vanish from his sight, then reverentially drew her towards him and kissed her. Her hand was laid on his shoulder, and in a delicious apprehension she stood looking at him.

  “Where shall we sit?”

  He threw some books and papers from a long cane chair, and she lay down in it. He sat on the arm, and then tried to talk.

  “Let me take your hat.”

  She unpinned it, and he placed it on the piano.

  His room was lighted by two square windows looking on the open space in front of the square, where the vagrant children gathered in noisy groups round a dripping iron fountain. The floor was covered with grey-green drugget, and near the fireplace, drawn in front of the window, was a large oak table covered with papers of various kinds. Against the end wall there was a bookcase, and there were shelves filled with books. There were two arm-chairs, a piano, and some prints of Blake’s illustrations to Dante on the wall. The writing table, covered with manuscript music, roused Evelyn’s curiosity. She glanced down a page of orchestration, and then picked up the first pages of an article, and having read them she said —

  “How severe you are in your articles. You are gentler in your music, more like yourself; but I see your servant does not waste her time dusting your books ...and that is your bedroom, may I see it?”

  He looked at her abashed. “I am afraid my room will seem to you very unluxurious. I have read of prima donnas’ bed-rooms.”

  But the bare simplicity of the room did not displease her; it seemed to her more natural to sleep in a low, narrow bed like his, than in fine linen and eiderdown quilts, and she liked the scant, bleak furniture, the two chairs, the iron wash-hand stand, and the window curtained with a bit of Indian muslin. They stood talking, hardly knowing what they were saying. Her eyes embarrassed him, and she stopped in the middle of a sentence.