Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Her mother had lost her voice in the middle of her career, and her daughter had abandoned the stage at the moment of her greatest triumph! Looking at her jewels scattered all over the bed, Evelyn wondered what was going to happen to her. Was she really going to leave the stage? She — Evelyn Innes? When she thought of it, it seemed impossible. If religion were only a craze. If she were to go back to Owen, or to other lovers? How strange it was; it seemed strange to be herself, and yet it was quite true. Remembering that on Sunday she would partake of the Body and Blood which her Saviour had given for the salvation of sinners, her soul suddenly hushed, and catching sight of the jewels which symbolised the sacrifice she was making, it seemed to her that she could afford much greater sacrifices for what she was going to receive....

  She saw lights dying down in the distance, and the world which had once seemed so desirable seemed to her strangely trivial and easily denied. Already she could look back at the poor struggling ones, struggling for what to-morrow will be abandoned, forgotten, passing illusions; and she wondered how it was that she had not always thought as she thought to-day. Her thoughts passed into reveries, and she awoke, remembering that Monsignor had told her that he did not like her living alone in Park Lane. But in Dulwich she would be with her father, whom she had long neglected, and she would be near St. Joseph’s and her confessor. At the same moment she remembered that she could not write to her lovers from Park Lane. She put her jewels back in the safe, and told Merat to pack sufficient things for a month, and to follow her with them to Dulwich. Merat asked for more precise instruction, but Evelyn said she must use her good sense; she was going away at once, and Merat must follow by a later train.

  “Then Mademoiselle does not want the carriage?”

  “No, I shall go by train.”

  She found her father in the workroom, and the sight of him in his cap and apron mending an old musical instrument caused many home scenes to flash across her mind, and she did not know whether it was from curiosity or a desire to please him that she asked the name of the strange little instrument he was repairing. It looked like an overgrown concertina, and he explained that it was a tiny virginal, and pointed out the date; it was made in 1631, in Roman notation.

  “Father,” she said, “I have come back to you; we shall never be separated any more — if you’ll have me back.”

  “Have you back, dear! What has happened now?”

  He stood with a chisel in his hand, and she noticed that he dug the point nervously into the soft deal plank. She sat down on a small wooden stool, and kicking the shavings with her feet, she said —

  “Father, a great deal has happened. I have sent Owen away ... I shall never see him again; I’m sorry to have to speak about him to you; you mustn’t be angry; he was very good to me, and he asked me to marry him; he did everything — I’m afraid I’ve broken his heart.”

  “You’re very strange, Evelyn, and I don’t know what answer to make to you.... Why did you send him away, and why did you refuse to marry him?”

  “I sent him away because I thought it wrong to live with him, and I refused to marry him — well, I don’t know, father, I don’t know why I refused to marry him. It seemed to me that if he had wished to marry me he ought to have done so long ago.”

  “Is that the only reason you can give?”

  “It is the only reason I know. You seem sorry for him, father, are you? I hope you are. He has been very good to me. I’ve often wished to tell you; it has often been in my heart to tell you that you should not hate him. He was very good to me, no one could have been kinder; he was very fond of me, you must not bear him any ill will.”

  “I never said that I bore him ill will. He made you a great singer, and you say he was very kind to you and wanted to marry you.”

  “Yes, and he was most anxious to see you, and he went with me to St. Joseph’s the Sunday you gave the great Mass of Pope Marcellus. He was distressed that he could not see you to tell you about the choir.”

  “They sang better that Sunday than the Sunday you heard the ‘Missa Brevis.’ I have got two new trebles. One has an exquisite voice. I wish I could get a few good altos. It was the altos that were wrong when you heard the ‘Missa Brevis.’ But you didn’t hear they were out of tune. That piano has falsified your ear, but it will come back to you.”

  “Dear father, how funny you are! If nothing were more wrong than my ear ...”

  They glanced at each other hastily, and to change the subject he mentioned that he had had a letter that morning from Ulick. He had finished scoring the second act of Grania, and thinking that he was on safe ground, Mr. Innes told her that Ulick hoped to finish his score in the autumn. The third act would not take him long; he had a very complete sketch of the music, etc. “I shall enjoy going through his opera with him.”

  “Father, I don’t know how to tell you. Will you ever forgive me or him. Ulick must not come back here — at least not while I am here. Perhaps I had better go.”

  The chisel dropped from his hand, and he stood looking at his daughter. His look was pitiful, and she could not bear to see him shake his head slowly from side to side.

  “Poor father is wondering why I am like this;” and to interrupt his reflections she said —

  “I don’t know why I am like this; that’s what you’re thinking, father, but henceforth I’ll be like mother and my aunts. They were all good women ... I have often wondered why I am like this.” Their eyes met, and seized with a sudden dread lest he should think (if such were really the case) that he was the original cause — she seemed to read something like that in his eyes — she said, “You must forgive me, whatever I am; you know that we’ve always loved each other, and we always shall. Nothing can come between us; you must be sorry for me, and kiss me, and love me more than ever, for I’ve been very unhappy. I haven’t told you all I have given up so that I might be a good woman; it is not easy to make the sacrifices I have made, but I am happier now that I have made them. Ulick — Ulick must not come here while I’m here, but you’ll want to see him — I had better go. Father, dear, it is hard to say all these things. I’ve done nothing but bring you trouble. Now I’ve robbed you of your friend. For I’ve promised not to see Ulick again. If I stay here, father, he must not come — I’m ashamed to ask you this, but what am I to do? I bring trouble. Later on, perhaps, but for a long while he and I must not meet.”

  Mr. Innes stood looking at his daughter, and a peculiar puzzled expression had begun in his eyes, and had spread over his face. He suddenly shrugged his shoulders; the movement was like Evelyn’s shrug, it expressed the same nervous hopelessness.

  “I promised Monsignor that I would not see either.”

  “You went to confession — to him?”

  Evelyn nodded.

  “But how about Grania?”

  “I’m not going to sing Grania. I’ve left the stage for good.”

  “Left the stage?”

  “Yes, father, I’ve left the stage, and I could not go back even if Monsignor were to permit me. But you must not argue with me; I argued with myself until I nearly went mad. Night after night went by sleepless; I was mad one night, and should have poisoned myself if I had not found my scapular. But you mustn’t question me. Some day when it is all far away I’ll tell you the whole story. I cannot speak of it at present, it is all too near. Suffice it to say that I have repented, and have come to ask you if you’ll have me back to live with you?”

  “You’re my daughter, and you must do as you like. You were always different from anyone else, I cannot cope with you. So you have left the stage, left the stage! What will people think?”

  “I could not be a good woman and remain on the stage, that’s what it comes to.” In spite of the gravity of the scene, a smile trickled round Evelyn’s lips, for she could not help seeing her father like a hen that has hatched out a duckling. He stood looking at her sadly. She had come back — but what new pond would she plunge into? “I am a very unsatisfactory person, I know that.
I can’t make people happy; but there it is, it can’t be otherwise. If I don’t sing on the stage, I can sing at your concerts. Come downstairs and let’s have some music. We’ve talked enough.

  “What shall we play — a Bach sonata? Ah, I remember this,” she said, catching sight of the harpsichord part of a suite by J.P. Rameau, for the harpsichord and viola da gamba. “Where is the viola da gamba part?”

  “In the bottom of that bookcase, I think; don’t you remember it?”

  “Well, it is some time since I’ve played it,” she said, smiling, “but I’ll try.”

  It seemed to her that she remembered it all wonderfully well, and she was surprised how every phrase came up correctly under her bow. But she stopped suddenly.

  “I don’t remember what comes next.”

  Mr. Innes played the phrase, she played it after him, but she broke down a little further on, and it took some time to find the music. “No, not in that shelf,” cried Mr. Innes, “the next one; not that volume, the next.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember the volume, about the middle?” When she found the place she said, “Oh, yes, of course,” and he answered —

  “Ah, it seems simple enough now,” and they went on together to the end.

  “I’ve not lost much of my playing, have I?”

  “A little stiffness, perhaps, and you’ve lost your sense of the old forms. Now let’s play this rondeau of Marais.”

  When they had finished, it was dinner-time, and after dinner they had more music. Before going upstairs, Evelyn asked Agnes if there was any ink in her room. She had to ask her father for some writing paper, she would have avoided doing so if she could have helped it. She feared he would guess that she was writing to her lovers. She smiled — so odd did her scruples seem to her — she was writing to send them away. Her father’s house was surely the right place. If it were to make appointments, that would be different. It was long past midnight when she read over her letter to Owen.

  “Dear Owen, — A great deal has happened since we last met, and I am convinced that it would be unwise for me to see you in three months as I promised. My confessor is of the same opinion; he thinks three months too soon, and I must obey him. I have taken the step which I hope you will take some day, for you too are a Catholic. In going to confession and resolving not to see you again, I had a long struggle with my feelings; but God gave me grace to overcome them. You know me well enough by this time, and can have no doubt that I could not live with you again as your mistress, and as I do not feel that I could marry you, no course is open to me but to beg of you not to write to me, or to try to see me. Owen, I feel that all this is horrid, that I am horrid looked at from your side. I cannot seem anything else. I hate it all, but it has to be done. Perhaps one of these days you will see things as I do.

  “I owe you — I do not know how much, but I owe you a great deal of money. I remember saying that Savelli’s lessons were to be considered as a debt, also the expenses of the house in the Rue Balzac. You never would tell me what the rent of that house was, but as well as I can calculate, I owe you a thousand pounds for that year in Paris.” (Evelyn paused. “It must be,” she thought, “much more, but it would be difficult for me to pay more.”)

  “You have,” she continued, “paid for a hundred other things besides Savelli’s lessons and the house in the Rue Balzac, but it would be impossible to make out a correct account, I feel, too, that you gave me the greatest part of my jewellery thinking that one day I would be your wife; you would not have given me so much if you had not thought so. Therefore I feel it is only just to offer you the whole of it back. I will only ask you to allow me to keep a few trifles — the earrings you bought for me the day we arrived in Paris, the mummy’s ring, etc., not more than half-a-dozen things in all. I should like to keep these in memory of a time which I ought to forget, but which I am afraid I shall never have the courage even to try to forget. Dear Owen, I cannot tell you why I cannot marry you, I only know that I cannot. I am obeying an instinct far stronger than I, and I cannot struggle against it any longer.

  “One day perhaps we may meet — but it may not be for years, until we are both quite different.

  “Sincerely yours,

  “EVELYN INNES.”

  The moment she had written the address, she threw the pen aside, and she sat striving against an uncontrollable sense of misery. At last her pent-up tears ran over her eyelids. She flung herself on her bed, and lay weeping, shaken by short, choking sobs. All her courage of the morning had forsaken her; she could not face her new life, she could not send away Owen. Her inmost life rose in revolt. Why was this new sacrifice demanded of her? Why was her life to be made so hard, so impossible for her to endure? She felt she could not live in the life which she foresaw awaited her. Then she felt that she was being tried beyond the endurance of any woman. But the storm did not last, her sobs died away. She sat up, mopping her eyes with a soaking pocket handkerchief, and utterly exhausted by the violence of her emotions, she began to undress. She felt the impossibility of saying her prayers, her one longing was for sleep, oblivion; she wished herself dead, and was too worn out to put the thought from her, though she knew it was wrong.

  In the morning the first thing she saw was the letter to Owen. There it was! And every word and letter sank into her brain. “Sir Owen Asher, Bart., Riversdale, Northamptonshire.” She would have to post it, and never again would she see him. She questioned the right of the priest in obtaining from her a promise not to see him, so long as she did not sin. But Owen was an approximate cause of mortal sin....

  Ashamed of her instability, and feeling herself unworthy and no longer pure as absolution had made her, she went that afternoon to St. Joseph’s, and in confession laid the matter before Monsignor Mostyn. Regarding the money question, he approved of what she had written to Sir Owen, and he was far more indulgent regarding her breakdown than she had dared to hope. He had expected some such mental crisis. It was extraordinary the strength it gave her even to see his stern, grave face; she was thrilled by his certainty on all points, and it no longer seemed difficult to send the letter she had written, or to write a similar letter to Ulick, which he advised her to send by the same post. She began it the moment she got home, and she wrote in perfect confidence and courage, the words coming easily to her, so easily that there were times when she seemed to hear Monsignor speaking over her shoulder.

  “Dear Ulick, — A very great event has happened in my life since I saw you. The greatest event that can happen in any life — Grace has been vouchsafed to me. Now I understand how sinful my life has been, as much from a human as a religious point of view. I deserted my dear father, I left him alone to live as best he could. I was not even faithful to my lover. From a worldly point of view I owed him everything, yet for the sake of my passion for you I encouraged myself for a while to dwell on his faults, to see nothing in him but the small and the mean. I strove to degrade him in my eyes so that I might find some excuse for loving you. You were nice, Ulick, you were kind, you were good to me, and I was enthusiastic about your genius. One of my greatest troubles now is that I shall not be able to sing your opera. For a long while this very thing prevented my repentance. I said to myself, ‘It is impossible, I cannot, I have promised, I must do what I said I would do. He will think me hateful if I do not create the part.’ But these hesitations between what is certainly right and what is certainly wrong existed in me because I did not then perceive how very little the things of this world are, compared with eternal things, and that nothing matters compared with the necessity of saving our souls. All this is now quite clear to me, and it would therefore be madness for me to remain on the stage, recognising as I do that it is a source of grave temptation to me. You will try to understand, dear Ulick, you will try to look at things from my point of view. You will see that it is impossible for me to act otherwise.

  “I am living now with my father, and must not see you when you return to London. I have promised my confessor not to see you. One of t
hese days, in years to come, when you and I are different beings, we may meet, but we must not see each other at present. I must beg of you not to write or to try to see me. My resolve is unalterable, and any attempt on your part to induce me to return to my old life will be useless. It as already far away and inconceivable to me. I know that by asking you not to come to Dulwich I am robbing my father of his friend. I have never brought happiness to anyone, not to father, not to Sir Owen, not to you, not to myself. If other proof were wanting, would not this fact be enough to convince me that my life has been all wrong? What it will be in the future I don’t know, I have confidence in the goodness of God and in the wisdom of my spiritual adviser. — Sincerely yours,

  “EVELYN INNES.”

  “P.S. — In course of conversation with my father, I mentioned inadvertently that you were my lover; I begged him not to be angry with you, but I know that I should not have mentioned your name. I must ask you to forgive me this too.”

  The next day and the day following were lived within herself, sometimes viewing God far away, as if at one end of a great plain, and herself kneeling penitent at the other. She was filled with thoughts of his infinite goodness and mercy, and of the miraculous intercession of the Virgin at the moment when she was about to commit a crime that would have lost her her soul for ever. She went to Mass daily, and took peculiar delight in reciting the hymn which Monsignor had given her for a penance. She regretted it was not more. It seemed to her such a trivial penance, and she reflected on the blackness of her sins, and the penances which the saints had imposed upon themselves. But her chief desire was to keep herself pure in thought, and she read pious books when she was alone, and encouraged her mind to dwell on the profound mystery in which she was going to participate, and to believe in the marvellous change it would produce in her.