Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “I have not told you, Monsignor,” she said at last, “that I am leaving the stage.”

  She knew that he must ask her what had induced her to think of taking so important a step, and then she would have an opportunity of asking his opinion of the stage. Of course neither Ulick’s nor Owen’s name would be mentioned.

  “As at present constituted, the stage is a dangerous influence. Some women no doubt are capable of resisting evil even when surrounded by evil. Even so they set a bad example, for the very knowledge of their virtue tempts others less sure of themselves to engage in the same life, and these weak ones fall. The virtuous actress is like a false light, which instead of warning vessels from the rocks entices them to their ruin.”

  He did not indite the Oberammergau Passion Play, but he could not accept “Parsifal.” He had heard Catholics aver, while approving of the performance of “Parsifal,” that they would not wish to see the piece performed out of Bayreuth. But he failed to understand this point of view altogether. It seemed to assume that a parody of the Mass was unobjectionable at Bayreuth, though not elsewhere. If there was no parody of the Mass, why should they say that they would not like to see the piece performed elsewhere? He had read the book and knew the music, and could not understand how a great work of art could contain scenes from real life. Whether these be religious ceremonies or social functions, the artistic sin is the same. He asked Evelyn why she was smiling, and she told him that it was because the only two whom she had heard disapprove of “Parsifal” were Monsignor Mostyn and Ulick Dean. It seemed strange that two such extremes should agree regarding the profligacy of “Parsifal.” Monsignor was interested for a moment in Ulick Dean’s views, and then he said —

  “But was it with the intention of consulting me, Miss Innes, that you introduced the subject? I hear that you are going to play the principal part next year — Kundry.”

  “Nothing is settled. As I told you just now, Monsignor, I am thinking of leaving the stage, and your opinions concerning it do not encourage me to remain an actress.”

  “My dear child, you have had the good fortune to be brought up in holy Church. You have, I hope, constant recourse to the sacraments. You have confided the difficulties of your stage life to your confessor. How does he advise you?”

  Raising her eyes, Evelyn said in a sinking voice —

  “Even if one has doubts about the whole doctrine of the Church, it is still possible to wish to lead a good life. Don’t you think so, Monsignor?”

  “There are many Protestants who lead excellent lives. But I have always noticed that when a Catholic begins to question the doctrine of the Church, his or her doubts were preceded by a desire to lead an irregular life.”

  And in the silence Evelyn became aware of the afternoon sun shining through the window above their heads, enlivening the dark parlour. It seemed strange to sit discussing such subjects in the sunshine. The ray that fell through the window lighted up the priest’s thin face till it seemed like one of the wood carvings she had seen in Germany. When he resumed the conversation it was to lead her to speak of herself and the reasons which had suggested an abandonment of her stage career. The tender, impersonal kindness of the priest drew her out of herself, and she told him how she had begun to perceive that the stage had ceased to interest her as it had once done; she spoke of vulgarity and parade, yet that was not quite what she meant; it had come to seem to her like so much waste, as if she were wasting her time in doing things that did not matter, like grown people would feel if they were asked to pass the afternoon playing with dolls. Shrugging her shoulders hysterically, she said she could not explain.

  “But have you an idea of what life you wish to lead?”

  “No, I don’t think I have; I only know that I am not happy in my present life.”

  “I believe you see a good deal of Sir Owen Asher. He helped you, did he not, in your musical education?”

  “Yes,” she answered under her breath. “He is an intimate friend.” In a moment of unexpected courage, she said, “Do you know him, Monsignor?”

  “I have heard a good deal about him, and nothing, I regret to say, to his credit. He is, I believe, an avowed atheist, and does not hesitate to declare his unbelief in every society, and to make open boast of an immoral life. He has read and tried to understand a little more than the people with whom he associates. I suppose the doubts you entertain regarding the doctrine of the Church are the result of his teaching?”

  With a little pathetic air, Evelyn admitted that Owen had used every possible argument to destroy her faith. She had read Huxley, Darwin, and a little Herbert Spencer.

  “Herbert Spencer! Miserable collections of trivial facts, bearing upon nothing. Of what value, I ask, can it be to suffering humanity to know that such and such a fact has been observed and described? Then the general law! rubbish, ridiculous rubbish!”

  “The scientists fail to see that what we feel matters much more than what we know.”

  “True, quite true,” he said, turning sharply and looking at her with admiration. Then, recollecting himself, he said, “But God does not exist because we feel He exists. He exists not through us, but through Himself, from all time and through all eternity. To feel is better than to observe, to pray is better than to inquire, but indiscriminate abandonment to our feelings would lead us to give credence to every superstition. You have, I perceive, escaped from the rank materialism of Sir Owen’s teaching, but whither are you drifting, my dear child? You must return to the Church; without the Church, we are as vessels without a rudder or compass.”

  He walked up and down the room as though debating with himself. Evelyn held her breath, wondering what new turn the conversation would take. Suddenly she lost her courage, and overcome with fear got up to go, and Monsignor, considering that enough had been said, did not attempt to detain her. But as he bade her good-bye at the door, his keen eye fixed upon her, he added, “Remember, I do not admit your difficulties to be intellectual ones. When you come to realise that for yourself, I shall be glad to do all in my power to help you. God bless you, my child!”

  If only she could put the whole thing aside — refuse to bother her head any more, or else believe blindly what she was told. She hated wobbling, yet she did nothing else. Suddenly she felt that if she were to believe at all, it must be like Monsignor. The magnetism of his faith thrilled her, and, in a moment, it had all became real to her. But it was too late. She could never do all her religion asked. Her whole life would have to come to pieces; nothing of it would remain, and she entirely lost heart when she considered in detail the sacrifices she would have to make. She saw herself at Dulwich with her father, giving singing lessons, attending the services, and living about St. Joseph’s. She saw herself singing operas in every capital, and always a new lover at her heels. Both lives were equally impossible to her. As she lay back in her carriage driving through the lazy summer streets, she almost wished she had no conscience at all. What was the use of it? She had just enough to spoil her happiness in wrong-doing, yet not enough to prevent her doing what deep down in her heart she knew to be wrong.

  That evening she wrote a number of letters, and begged a subscription of every friend — Owen was out of the question and she hesitated whether she should make use of Ulick. She would have liked to have left him out of this concert altogether, and it was only because she had no one else whom she could depend upon that she consented to let him go off in search of the necessary tenor. But to take him to the concert did not seem right.

  She dipped her pen in the ink, and then laid it down, overcome by a sudden and intolerable melancholy. She could have cried, so great was her weariness with the world, so worthless did her life seem. She had begged her father’s forgiveness; he had forgiven her, but she had not sent away her lover.... She had told Monsignor that, in consequence of certain scruples of conscience, she intended to give up the stage, but she had not told him that she had taken another lover and brought him to live with her under her father’s roo
f. Whether there was a God and a hereafter, or merely oblivion, such conduct as hers was surely wrong. She walked to and fro, and came to a resolution regarding her relations with Ulick, at all events in her father’s house.

  Then life seemed perfectly hopeless, and she wished Monsignor had not come to see her. What could she do to shake off this clammy and unhealthy depression which hung about her? She might go for a walk, but where? The perspective of the street recalled the days when she used to stand at the window wondering if nothing would ever happen to her. She remembered the moment with singular distinctness when she heard the voice crying within her? “Will nothing ever happen? Will this go on for ever?” She remembered the very tree and the very angle of the house! Dulwich was too familiar; it was like living in a room where there was nothing but mirrors. Dulwich was one vast mirror of her past life. In Dulwich she was never living in the present. She could not see Dulwich, she could only remember it. One walk more in that ornamental park! She knew it too well! And the picture gallery meant Owen — she would only see him and hear his remarks. Her thoughts reverted to his proposal of marriage and her acceptance. Not for the whole world! Why, she did not know. He had been very good to her. Her ingratitude shocked her. She shrugged her shoulders hysterically; she could not help it — that was how she felt.

  But Ulick? Should she marry him and accept the Gods? That would settle everything.

  But a sense of humour solves nothing, and at that moment the servant brought her a small brown paper parcel. It looked like a book. It was a book. She opened it. Monsignor had sent her a book. As she turned the leaves she remembered the parcels of books from Owen which she used to open in the same room, sitting in the same chair. Sin and its Consequences! She began reading it. On one point she was sure, that sin did exist.... If we felt certain things to be wrong, they were wrong; at least they were wrong for those who thought them wrong, and she had never been able to feel that it was right to live with a man to whom she was not married. Everyone had a moral code. Owen would not cheat at cards, and he thought it mean to tell lies — a very poor code it was, but still he acted up to it. She did not know how Ulick felt on such matters; his beliefs, though numerous and picturesque, supplied no moral code, and she could not live on symbols, though perhaps they were better than Owen’s theories. Her mistake from the beginning was in trying to acquire a code of morals which did not coincide with her feelings. But the teaching in this book did coincide with her feelings. Could she follow it? That was the point. Could she live without a lover? Owen thought not. She laughed and then walked about the room, unable to shake off a dead weight of melancholy. Though the Church was all wrong, and there was no God, she was still leading a life which she felt to be wrong; and if the Church were right, and there was a resurrection, her soul was lost. She took up the book and read till her fears became so intense that she could read no more, and she walked up and down the room, her nerves partially unstrung. In the evening she talked a great deal and rapidly, apparently not quite aware of what she was saying, or else her face wore a brooding look; sometimes it awakened a little, and then her eyes were fixed on Ulick.

  The next day was Friday, and as the train service seemed complex and inconvenient, and as she had not at Dulwich a suitable dress to wear at the concert, she decided to sleep at Park Lane and drive to Wimbledon in the afternoon. She left her father, promising to return to him soon, and she had told Ulick that she thought it better he should return by train. She saw that he had noticed the book in her hand, and she knew that he understood her plea that she did not wish to be seen driving with him to mean that she was going to call on Monsignor on her way home. She had thought of calling at St. Joseph’s, but, unable to think of a sufficient excuse for the visit, had abandoned the idea. She knew the time was not opportune. Monsignor would be hearing confessions. But as the carriage turned out of Camberwell, she remembered that it would be polite to thank him for the book, and leaning forward she told the coachman to drive to St. Joseph’s.... So after all she was going there.... Ulick was right.

  The attendant told her that Monsignor was hearing confessions, and would not be free for another half-hour. She drew a breath of relief, for this second visit had frightened her. The attendant asked her if she would wait. She thought she would like to wait in church. She desired its collectedness, its peace. But the thought of Monsignor’s confessional frightened her, and she thanked the attendant hurriedly, and went slowly to her carriage.

  When Ulick came in that evening she was seated on the corner of the sofa near the window. The moon was shining on the breathless park, and a moth whirled between the still flames of the candles which burned on the piano. He noticed that her mood was subdued and reflective. She liked him to sit by her, to take her hand and tell her he loved her. She liked to listen to him, but not to music; nor would she sing that evening, and his questions as to the cause remained unanswered. Her voice was calm and even, and seemed to come from far away. There was a tremor in his, and between whiles they watched and wondered at the flight of the moth. It seemed attracted equally by darkness and light. It emerged from the darkness, fluttered round the perilous lights and returned again to its natural gloom. But the temptation could not be resisted, and it fell singed on the piano.

  “We ought to have quenched those candles,” Evelyn said.

  “It would have found others,” Ulick answered, and he took the maimed moth on to the balcony and trod it out of its misery. They sat there under the little green verandah, and in the colour of the clear night their talk turned on the stars and the Zodiacal signs. Ulick was born under the sign of Aquarius, and all the important events of his life began when Aquarius was rising. Pointing to a certain group of stars, he said —

  “The story of Grania is no more than our story, your story, my story, and the story of Sir Owen Asher, and I had written my poem before I saw you.” Then, as a comment on this fact, he added, “We should be careful what we write, for what we write will happen. Grania is the beautiful fortune which we will strive for, which chooses one man to-day and another to-morrow.”

  The idea interested her for a moment, but she was thinking of her project to find out if, like Owen, he thought that the virtue of chastity was non-essential in women, or if the other virtues were dependent upon it. But how to lead the conversation back to this question she did not for the moment know. At last she said— “You ask me to love you — but to be my lover you would have to surrender all your spiritual life, that which is most to you, that which makes your genius. Do you think it worth it?”

  He hesitated, then answered her with some vague reference to destiny, but she guessed the truth. As free as Owen himself from ethical scruples, he still felt that we should overcome our sexual nature. She asked herself why: and she wondered just as Owen wondered when confronted by her religious conscience. They looked at each other long and gravely, and he told her of the great seer who had collected in her own person all the cryptic revelation, all the esoteric lore of the East. He admitted that she had allowed carnal intercourse to some of her disciples while forbidding it to others.

  “Evidently judging chastity to be in some cases essential to the other virtues.”

  She heard him say that a sect of mystics to which he belonged, or perhaps it was whose society he frequented, advised the married state but with this important reservation, that instead of corporal possession they should endeavour to aid each other to rise to a higher spiritual plane, anticipating in this life a little the perfect communion of spirit which awaited them in the next. But such theories did not appeal to Evelyn. She could only understand the renunciation of the married state for the sake of closer intimacy with the spiritual life; and she was more interested when he told her of the cruelties, the macerations and the abstinences which the Indian seers resorted to, so that the opacity of the fleshly envelope might be diminished and let the soul through. In modern, as in the most ancient ages, with the scientist as with the seer, marvels and prodigies are reached through the sub
jugation of the flesh; as life dwindles like a flame that a breath will quench, the spirit attains its maximum, and the abiding and unchanging life that lies beyond death waxes till it becomes the real life.

  “Is this life, then, not real?”

  “If reality means what we understand, could anything be more unreal?”

  “Then you do believe in a future state?”

  “Yes, I certainly believe in a future state.... So much so that it seems impossible to believe that life ends utterly with death.”

  But to Evelyn’s surprise, he seemed to doubt the immortality of this future state, and fell back on the Irish doctrine which holds that after death you pass to the great plain or land under the sea, or the land over the sea, or the land of the children of the goddess Dana.

  “Even now my destiny is accomplishing.”

  The true Celt is still a pagan — Christianity has been superimposed. It is little more than veneer, and in the crises of life the Celt turns to the ancient belief of his race. But did Ulick really believe in Angus and Lir and the Great Mother Dana? Perhaps he merely believed that as a man of genius it was his business to enroll himself in the original instincts and traditions of his race.

  They were as unquiet as cattle before an approaching storm, and when they returned to the drawing-room it seemed to him like a scene in a theatre about to be withdrawn to make way for another part of the story. Even while looking at it, it seemed to have receded a little.

  At last it was time for Ulick to go. As they said good-night he asked her if he should come to lunch. She looked at him, uncertain if she ought to take him to the concert at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MONSIGNOR, WHO WAS waiting for her at the steps of the hall which had been hired for the concert, introduced her to Father Daly, the convent chaplain. She shook hands with him, and caught sight of him as she did so. It was but a passing glance of a small, blonde man with white eyelashes, seemingly too shy to raise his eyes; and she was too stringently occupied with other thoughts to notice him further.