by George Moore
But Ulick could not be persuaded after the third dinner to accept another. Owen strove to shake himself free of his habitual thought and to get nearer to Ulick’s. But he had to speak of his shooting, and his mistresses and the parties he went to, and Ulick, when he walked home the third evening from Berkeley Square, understood the aversion which had awakened in Evelyn for the life of things — even the monastery seemed to him to be a welcome refuge from the futility of Berkeley Square.
CHAP. IX.
ONE DAY OWEN’S cabman took a short cut through a slum. Owen hated the way, and as he was about to say so he saw a tall figure in brown holland whom he believed to be Evelyn. He called to her and put up his stick; but before the driver could stop his horse she had passed through a bare door — a grim-looking place, a sort of workshop or factory! But where Evelyn had gone he must follow. The door was opened at once, and he discovered her among a swarm of children. Children swarmed on the staircase — he thought he must be in a school. Raising his voice above the din, he expressed surprise at finding her in such a place; and no sooner had he spoken than he regretted his words, fearing he had displeased her. But she gave him her address, and told him if he would go there she would be with him in about half an hour.
And in the full enjoyment of the accident which had unexpectedly befallen him, he wondered what the flat was like, he thought how she would come into the room, and how their long talk would begin. He was driving along the Bayswater Road, and the world seemed throbbing like his heart; a soft wind carried the foliage to and fro, and the deep blue sky seemed brimmed with love like his heart. The cabman stopped before a new cut stone doorway, and in the lift his excitement increased — first floor, second floor, third, fourth. The lift man pointed out the door. The common brass knocker seemed trivial and unworthy of her. Was Merat still with her? She was, and he would learn from Merat all about Evelyn — if she were as religious as ever — if there were any hope of her going back to the stage; he was anxious to know whom she saw and how she spent her time. But first of all he had to tell where he had met her.
Merat knew that Evelyn had gone to Kelsey Row to arrange about a day in the country for some school children; but she was unable to imagine the accident which had brought Sir Owen to such a slum, and he listened to Merat’s tale of her mistress’s foolhardiness in going to such places.
Fleas had come back with her, and nastier things, and she feared lest Mademoiselle should one day catch a dangerous disease.
“Such a woman as she is, Merat. Her voice and her talent! I don’t say I don’t admire goodness, but there are others who could do that kind of work better than she.”
He sat with his long legs crossed and his hands clasped, hearing that she went to Mass every morning and that there were few afternoons she did not go to Benediction. All her old friends had dropped away, there was only one she cared to see now — Mademoiselle Helbrun, and Mademoiselle Helbrun was seldom in London.
“But where does she dine?”
“Here, Sir Owen.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, Sir Owen.”
“And she spends all her evenings here, alone?”
“Yes, here, Sir Owen, reading in that chair or writing at that little table. She spends hours and hours quite contented, writing.”
“Does she not see Mr. Ulick Dean?”
“Mr. Dean comes occasionally to see Mademoiselle, but—”
“But what, Merat?”
“Mademoiselle is very much changed, Sir Owen, and Mr. Dean knows it, and be says nothing that clashes with her opinions. You understand, Sir Owen; I am sure Mademoiselle would like me to speak straightforwardly to you. What I mean is that the opera singer is quite dead in Mademoiselle.”
“You think she will never go back to the stage?”
“I don’t think so, Sir Owen; it would not be natural after all she has been through.”
“Do you think she will marry?”
“I could not say, Sir Owen.”
“Not Mr. Dean?”
Merat shook her head.
“Then what do you think will be the end — there must be an end — the convent?”
“Mademoiselle goes every week to the convent, and spends from Saturday to Monday there.”
“Good heavens!”
He got out of his armchair and walked into the small hall, and, looking round, he wondered how she could live in such discomfort; and he asked Merat if he might see the dining-room.
“This is not what we are used to, is it, Merat? Not quite up to the level of Park Lane.”
They continued to deplore the change that had come over Evelyn. They exaggerated their disapproval in the hopes of convincing themselves that they were right and she was wrong, that she was a poor misguided person, worthy of their pity, but they only succeeded in convincing themselves superficially. Even while he insisted on her folly, Owen was aware of something great and noble, and the image which did not define itself in his mind, but passed at the back of it, was of a tall tree which had grown above the original scrub.
Suddenly they heard her latch-key in the door, and when she came into the room he sat looking at her, trying to puzzle out the enigma of the change which, in spite of himself, he could not but admire. She was not cleverer than before, nor more beautiful, but she had gained in character, and he could not hide from himself that her present self was superior to her former self, that she was nearer to the truths of life than when she used to act on the stage.
“I don’t think you would ever have understood my love of my poor people if you had not met me in that slum; seeing me there explained more than any amount of conversation.”
He swallowed a dryness out of his throat and said it was more than a year since he had seen her; he spoke of their parting at Thornton Grange, one morning among ruined flowers and blown leaves. That sudden change was more difficult to understand than this gradual change which had come over her between midnight and noon. They had stood talking together the night before, an amorous mood had grown up in her, and he had expected her to allow him to go to her room. And he had never understood why she had not come — why she was so different the next morning.
He waited for her to answer, and to avoid answering, she asked him where he had been. She had heard he had been round the world, and he told her of the silent Arabs passing from one side of the street to the other seeking the shade, and he found it interesting to tell her of his cry when he got to Egypt, “Give me a drink of clean water.”
She asked him where he had gone when he left Egypt, and he entered into an account of his travels in Mesopotamia, but he had hardly reached the brick mounds of Babylon when he broke down — he could not talk to her of Mesopotamia, nor of Japan nor America. These places were but shadows, hardly more rememberable than shadows. She was his consciousness of life, he said, and he took her hand; and withdrawing her hand, she told him her present plan was to enter the convent as a postulant so that she might sing every day at Benediction. She hoped to attract attention to the convent, and when its necessities became known, some pious Catholic would come forward and pay the mortgages. Her concert tour had not been a success; she might lose money in a second tour; then the nuns would be dispersed, the house and the chapel would be pulled down, and the trees would be cut, and rows of stiff stucco villas would overlook the Common.
“Yes, I should like to be a nun,” she said, and her face became suddenly absorbed; “but I am afraid I have not a vocation.”
“And when your postulancy is over you will be a novice — and when your noviceship is over you will pass out of my sight for ever. I shall never see you again; it will be the same as if you were dead.”
She stood looking at him, and he was conscious of the mystery of her character; it seemed to float round her as she sat on the sofa looking at him. He grew frightened — and in the nervous silence he studied the outline of the freckled face.
He had always recognised himself a little in the long straight nose and in the blonde skin,
and one of her attractions for him was a curious sense of some mystic kinship of blood which he could not explain, and from which he could not disentangle himself. It was only in those intense, almost nervous eyes that he did not discover himself. He traced some fancied similarity in the deflecting line of her chin and in her thin hands. And they were alike in their feverish desire of life. She had grasped the elusive shadow with the same obstinate eagerness; and in their hearts was the same passionate melancholy. They lived for the sake of the memory of life rather than for life itself.
“I see,” he said, “that all this while the convent has been drawing you nearer — absorbing you. You think I don’t understand, but I understand all that concerns you. Every time you go there the spell upon you is a little stronger; is not that so?”
“Yes, I think it is. I have been drawn into love of the convent, and I am conscious of its influence and yield to it; the aspect of the nuns — their quiet eyes and their tranquil life — their minds always fixed on one thing — attract me, and, as you say, I am drawn nearer each time.”
“But you once liked the strong, the self-willed — now you seem to like the weak who surrender, not daring to continue the struggle.”
“Yes, I think that is so. It is now the weak who attract me. I have changed in everything. The things that interested me once interest me no longer. Everything is different, that is what you do not seem to understand. You have changed in nothing.”
“Yes, I do understand, but I can’t believe that our lives are divided. Think, Evelyn, of the years and years we have been together. Never to see you again — to know you live, yet never to see you!”
“You have not seen me for a year, and you would have lived on just the same if we had not happened to meet in that slum.”
“I went away determined to forget you, Evelyn, but absence has only made you dearer to me. You see Ulick, and Ulick was your lover and you have not sent him away.”
“Ulick is not my lover now.”
“That is no consolation,” he exclaimed passionately; “better Ulick a thousand times than the convent.”
It was the convent he dreaded and hated, and when the strain of argument became intense, when she answered, “It is impossible to live with those who hold different ideas; there is neither happiness nor comfort in such relations,” he looked at her despairingly, not able to utter a word, and in pity for him she turned the conversation from herself, and he talked mechanically of indifferent things, hardly aware of what he said; words were as a veil behind which calamity hid itself for a while.
“But, Evelyn, you cannot become a nun; nature forbids it,” he said, starting from his chair.
“How is that?”
“Have you no thought for your father?”
“You mean that I should go to live with him.”
“Of course.”
He told how he had found her father sitting at his lonely dinner.
“I lived with my father all this winter; and I heard of nothing but music all the time I was there.”
“And has music no longer any interest for you? Do none of your old friends interest you? Lady Ascott?”
“I hope I remember them kindly; they were kind to me, as they understood kindness, and they liked me.”
“As they understand liking,” he said, starting to his feet.
“I am sorry, Owen.”
“Your clear duty is by your father’s side; any priest will tell you that. There is no use having a religion and not acting up to it. What are you laughing at?”
“Only that it seems odd to hear you telling me my duty is towards my father.”
He sat and argued this point with her for a long while, reminding her and forcing her to admit that she had avoided marriage from the first.
He said the same things over again — things he had said a hundred times before, and when he had said them he felt it would have been better if he had said nothing.
“I must send you away, Owen.”
“Well,” he said at the door, “I may never see you again, Evelyn. But remember truth is truth from whomsoever it comes. Monsignor will tell you that you cannot leave your father in his old age.”
CHAP. X.
THE TRUTH HAD come to her from a strange side, but it does not matter from what side the truth comes so long as it is the truth. She had neglected her father during the last year, and now she was planning to leave him for three, four, or six months. But he did not seem to care whether she came or stayed away. His ideas seemed to fill his life completely — there seemed no place for her in it. When she went to see him, he was glad to see her, but he never seemed to want her; and Wimbledon was but a few miles from Dulwich; if he wanted her he would be able to go to see her, and she intended to get him a good servant who would look after him and see that he had his meals regularly. But now Owen had awakened a scruple in her, and she could not deny to herself that her place was by her father’s side. Yet, to abandon the poor nuns seemed cruel, and she thought she might lay the matter before her father — he alone could say whether he wanted her, and if he did not want her she would be wasted. But he would say he did not want her; he would let her go to the convent because he would not thwart her wishes. Owen had challenged her to lay the matter before Monsignor, and Owen was right; and she smiled as she sat writing to the priest. That Owen and Monsignor should agree on one subject amused her not a little. Next day she went to Monsignor.
She told him that the Prioress had said she would not be able to endure the strain of staying with them as a visitor; and as she would not say that she intended to become a nun, the Prioress had hesitated whether she could accept her under such conditions. To make the Prioress’s way a little easier, she had said that her constant visits to the Wimbledon convent had left no doubt in her mind that true spiritual elevation can only be attained through the cloister. She had admitted that she would like to become a nun if she could realise the ideal which some three or four in the convent seemed to her to have realised — the Prioress, Sister Mary John, and Mother Hilda. She knew the nuns very well by this time, and these were the only ones who had reached a high degree of spiritual perfection. The larger number were pious women who had accepted the cloister from commonplace motives. Some had accepted it in order to escape from freedom — to many, freedom is irksome and a rule of life a necessity; some few, no doubt, had entered the convent from disappointment.
It seemed strange to Monsignor that the Prioress should accept her as a postulant, knowing that she did not intend to stay in the convent; and Evelyn had to admit that she had said she hoped that six months in the convent would discover a vocation in her.
“And if you find you have a vocation you will leave your father for ever?”
Monsignor spoke of the duty of children towards their parents, and of the age of Mr. Innes, and he pointed out that his interest in artistic things rendered him incapable of dealing with the practical affairs of life. He laid stress on the fact that if she were to leave her father and anything were to happen to him she would never be able to forgive herself, nor did he think she would find in the convent any nobler mission than she would find waiting for her in Dulwich. He said that if the Prioress had consented to relax the rule, as she had been advised, and had built a laundry, these monetary difficulties would not have arisen, and Evelyn, whose sympathies were all with the contemplative orders, gathered up her courage and spoke of Martha and Mary; Mary had been content to worship at the feet of Christ; but Martha had fussed about external things, and these, though intended to give him honour, were not so valuable to him as the mere loving worship of Mary. Christ himself had said that Mary had chosen the better part, and was not this a vindication of the contemplative orders? Monsignor answered that Christ had mixed with the publicans and Pharisees.
She had put her case in his hands, and was going to abide by his decision. She would go to her father, live with him, attend upon him, do all that a daughter should do. She had not realised that her postulancy could not have been
more than an experiment. Monsignor had made this clear to her; and, as if to reward her for her obedience to him, she found a letter from her father on her table, asking her to go to the British Museum to copy some music. She had had nothing to do for a long time, and it was a pleasure to spend the morning in the museum; and she went to Dulwich in the afternoon, delighted with her transcriptions.
And while he praised her copying she waited for an opportunity to tell him she was giving up her flat and coming to live with him.
He played the bar twice over, and asked if she had copied it correctly. Yes, she was sure she had copied it correctly.
“I was beginning to fear that your artistic life was dead, but it will come back to you. I remember the time when a piece of music like this would have interested you. Did it bore you to copy it?”
“I liked to copy it because I was copying it for you. I can see that it reflects a time when men’s lives must have been very beautiful.”
Her father was sixty years of age, and he might live until he was eighty. So for twenty years she would play the old music and sing Elizabethan songs; and this was going to be her life, however unlike herself it might seem.
The absurd dish of hard mutton which her father could not eat and forgot to complain about, helped her to understand that the simple duty of seeing he had wholesome food was her duty before all other duties — her supposed duties towards art, and her duty towards the nuns, the duty she had lately invented for herself. Ulick came in after dinner, and she wondered how he could drink the thick mixture which the servant put on the table, calling it coffee. They did not waste much time over it. Ulick had brought part of his second act with him, and she was asked to sing it. “Manuscript music at sight,” she said, and though it was Ulick’s music she could feel no interest in it. Her thoughts were often carried back to the nuns and she forgot her cue. Her inattention annoyed her father, and she wondered what he and Ulick were arguing about so hotly — about a dramatic situation she thought, and all the while she sat thinking what Ulick would say when she told him that she had been intending to enter a convent for six months. She remembered how sympathetic he had been when he returned from Ireland; she could not think of him otherwise than as sympathetic; but the monastic ideal conflicted as much with his ideas as it did with Owen’s tastes.
