Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “‘We’re in the trades, Sir Owen!’ the man at the helm shouted to me. ‘We’re making twelve or fourteen knots an hour; a splendid wind!’

  “The sails were set and the vessel leaned to starboard, and then the rattle of ropes began again and the crashing of the blocks as she leaned over to port. Such surges, you have no idea, Evelyn, threatening the brig, but slipping under the keel, lifting her to the crest of the wave. Caught by the wind for a moment she seemed to be driven into the depths, her starboard grazing the sea or very nearly. The spectacle was terrific; the lone stars and the great cloud of canvas, the whole seeming such a little thing beneath it, and no one on deck but the helmsman bound to the helm, and well for him — a slip would have cost him his life, he would have been carried into the sea. An excellent sailor, yet even he was alarmed at the canvas we carried, so he confided to me; but my skipper knew his business, a first-rate man that skipper, the best sailor I have ever met. There are few like him left, for the art of sailing is nearly a lost art, and the difficulty of getting men who can handle square sails is extraordinary. But this one, the last of an old line, came up, crying out quite cheerfully, “Sir Owen, we’re in luck indeed to have caught the trades so soon.”

  “Day after day, night after night, we flew like a seagull. ‘Record sailing,’ my skipper often cried to me, telling me the number of knots we had made in the last four-and-twenty hours.”

  “And the albatrosses, I hope you didn’t catch one?”

  “One day the skipper suggested that we should, the breast feathers being very beautiful; and, the wind having slackened a little, a hook was baited with a piece of salt pork, which the hungry bird seized. As soon as he was drawn on board he flapped about more helpless than anything I have ever seen, falling into everything he could fall into, biting several of the crew. You know the sonnet in which Baudelaire compares the bird on the wing to the poet with the Muse beside him, and the albatross on deck to the poet in the drawing-room. You remember the sonnet, how the sailors teased the bird with their short black pipes.”

  “But the breast feathers?”

  “We didn’t kill the bird; I wouldn’t allow him to be killed. We threw him overboard, and down into the sea he went like a log.”

  Evelyn asked if he were drowned.

  “Albatrosses don’t drown. He swam for a time and fluttered, and at last succeeded in getting on the wing. I was very glad to see him float away, and was still more glad a few minutes afterwards, for before the bird was out of sight a sign appeared in the heavens, and I began to think of the story of ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ You know—”

  “Yes, I know the story, how all his misfortunes arose from the killing of an albatross. But what was the sign?”

  “A dull yellow like a rainbow, only more pointed, and my skipper said to me, ‘Sir Owen, that is one of them hurricanes; if I knew which way she was going I’d try to get out of the way as fast as I could, for we shall be torn to pieces in a very few minutes.’ I assure you it was an anxious moment watching that red, yellow light in the sky; it grew fainter, and eventually disappeared, and the skipper said, ‘We have just missed it.’ A few days afterwards we came into the Mauritius, and the first thing we saw was a great vessel in the ports, her iron masts twisted and torn just like hairpins, Evelyn. She had been caught in the tornado, a great three-masted vessel…. We should have gone down like an open boat.”

  “And after you left the Mauritius your destination was—”

  “Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay Archipelago.”

  “But what were you seeking in the Malay Archipelago?”

  “What does one ever seek? One seeks, no matter what; and, not being able to see you, Evelyn, I thought I would try to see everything in the world.”

  “But there is nothing to see in Borneo?”

  “Well, you will laugh when I tell you, but it seemed to me that I’d like to see the orang-outang in his native forests. I had been to Greece, and I knew the Italian Renaissance—”

  “And after so much art to see an orang-outang in a tree would be a new experience, Owen.”

  “Soon there will be no more higher apes, if medical science continues to progress; no more gorillas or chimpanzees.”

  “In a world without gorillas life will not be worth living. I quite understand.”

  Owen laughed.

  “I should be sorry for anything to disappear. The poor mother is speared, for she will fight for her little one; ugly as he may be in our eyes he is beautiful in hers.”

  “But you didn’t do this, Owen?”

  “No; after two or three days in a forest one wearies of it; and after all it wasn’t very likely that I should have got a snapshot. The camera is my weapon.”

  “And after the orang-outang which you failed to meet?”

  “I spent some time in Japan.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then, I went to Manchuria, to the Amur, a country almost forgotten.” And he told her how the eagles drove the wild sheep over the precipices, and of a wolf hunt with eagles.”

  “You have seen now everything the world has to show?”

  “Very nearly, and after seeing it all I come back to the one thing that interests me.”

  Tears rose to Evelyn’s eyes; such an avowal of love a woman hardly ever hears.

  The voices of the children playing in the garden reached their ears, and Evelyn said:

  “They should have been in bed long ago, but, Owen, your being here makes everything so exceptional.”

  “Really? I’m glad of that,” he answered shyly, fearing to say anything which would carry her thoughts back among unpleasant memories. But it was quite safe to speak of her love of the poor, and of poor children. “What inspired you to start this home, Evelyn?”

  “Well, you see, I had to have something to work for, some interest; and not having any children of my own… They really must go to bed.”

  “But, Evelyn, why will you interrupt our talk? Let us go on talking; tell me about the convent. Your adventures are so much more wonderful than mine. You haven’t half told me what there is to tell — the Prioress and the sub-Prioress, you never liked her?”

  A smile gathered about her lips, and he asked her what she was smiling at; and it was with some difficulty he persuaded her to tell him about Sister Winifred and Father Daly.”

  “Counterparts! counterparts!” he said. “And Cecilia giving the whole show away because her counterpart was a dwarf! How could you live among such babies?”

  “After all, Owen, are they any more babies than we are? Our interests are just as unreal.”

  “Your interest here is not as unreal; their hope is to build a wall of prayer between a sinful world and the wrath of God. Such silliness passes out of perception.”

  “Your perception? We come into the world with different perceptions; but do not let us drift into argument, not this evening, Owen.”

  “Quite so, let us not drift into argument…. I am sorry you charged me with being disappointed that you didn’t remain in the convent; you see I didn’t know of the wonderful work you were doing here. Your kindness is more than a nun’s kindness.” But he feared his casual words might provoke her, and hastened to ask her about Sister Winifred, at length persuading her into the admission that Sister Winifred used to whip the children.

  “I’m sure she liked whipping them. Women who shut themselves out from life develop cruelty. I can quite understand how she would like to hear them cry.”

  “Tell me more about the nuns.”

  “No, Owen, I wouldn’t speak ill of the nuns. Don’t press me to speak ill of them. You don’t know, Owen, what might have become of me had it not been for the convent. I don’t know what might have become of me. I might have drifted away and nothing have ever been heard of me again.” A dark look gathered in her face, “vanishing like the shadow of a black wing over a sunny surface,” Owen said to himself, “Now what has frightened her? Not her love of me, for that love she always looked on as legitimate.”
He remembered how she used to cling to that view, while admitting it to be contrary to the teaching of the Church. Did she still cling to this belief? “Probably, for we do hot change our instinctive beliefs,” he said, and longed to question her; but not daring, and, thinking a lighter topic of conversation desirable, he told her he would like to teach Eliza how to make coffee.

  “There is only one way of making coffee” he said, and he had learned the secret from a friend, who had always the best coffee. He had known him as a bachelor, he had known him as a married man, and afterwards as a divorced man, but in these different circumstances the coffee remained the same. So he said, “My good friend how is it that your cooks make equally good coffee?” And the friend answered that it was himself who had taught every cook how to make coffee; it was only a question of boiling water. And, still talking of the making of coffee, they wandered into the garden and stood watching the little boys all arow, their heads tucked in for Eliza’s son to jump over them, and they were laughing, enjoying their play, inspired, no doubt, by the dusk and the mystery of yon great moon rising out of the end of the grey valley.

  “I’m afraid Jack will hurt the others, or tire them; they really must go to bed. You’ll excuse me, Owen, I shall be back with you in about half an hour?”

  He strolled through the wicket about the piece of waste ground, thinking of the change that had come over her when he spoke of her return from Rome. Possibly she had met Ulick in Rome and had fled from him, or some other man. But he was not in the least curious to inquire out her secret, sufficient it was for him to know that her mood had passed. How suddenly it had passed! And how fortunate his mention of the yacht! Her attention had suddenly been distracted, now she was as charming as before… gone to look after those little boys, to see that their beds were comfortable, and that their night-shirts had buttons on them. Every day in London their living was earned in tiresome lessons to pupils who had no gift for singing, but had to be encouraged for the sake of their money, which was spent on this hillside.

  “Such is the mysterious way of life. Our rewards are never those we anticipate, but we are rewarded.”

  The money he had spent on her had brought her to this hillside to attend on six cripples, destitute little boys. After all what better reward could he have hoped for? But a great part of his love of her had been lost. Never again would he take her hand or kiss her again. So his heart filled with a natural sadness and a great tenderness, and he stood watching the smoke rising from the cottagers’ chimneys straight into the evening air. She had told him that one of her little boys had come from that village, and to hear how the child had been adopted he must scramble down this rough path. The moment was propitious for a chat with the cottagers, whom he would find sitting at their doors, the men smoking their pipes, the women knitting or gossiping, “the characteristic end of every day since the beginning of the world,” he said, “and it will be pleasant to read her portrait in these humble minds.”

  “A fine evening, my man?”

  “Fine enough, sir; the wheat rick will be up before the Goodwood races, the first time for the last thirty years.” And the talk turned on the price of corn and on the coming harvest, and then on Miss Innes, who sometimes came down to see them and sang songs for the children.

  “So she sings for the children? She used to do that in Italy.”

  “Has she been in Italy, sir?”

  To interest them he told how Evelyn had sung in all the opera houses of Europe; and then, fearing his confessions were indiscreet, he asked the woman nearest him if she was the mother of the little boy Evelyn had taken to live with her.

  “No, sir, ’e is Mrs. Watney’s son in the next cottage.” And Owen moved away to interrogate Mrs. Watney, who told him that her son was not a cripple.

  “‘Is limbs be sound enough, only the poor little chap ‘ad the small-pox badly when he was four, and ‘as been blind ever since. A extraordinary ‘appy child; and Miss Innes has promised to ‘ave him taught the pianna.”

  “A piano-tuner must have a good ear, and Miss Innes says his ear is perfect. He’ll whistle anything he hears.”

  Owen bade the cottagers good-night and climbed up the hillside again. The lights were burning in the boy’s dormitory, so Evelyn must still be there, and finding a large stone among the rough ground where he could sit he waited for her, interested in the round moon, looking like the engraved dial of some great clock, and in the grey valley and the sullen sky passing overhead into a dim blueness, in which he could detect a star here and there. The evening hummed a little still, and the sounds of voices, the last sounds to die out of a landscape, became rare and faint. One by one the gossiping folk under the hill crept within doors, and Owen was so absorbed by the silence that he did not hear Evelyn approaching; and when she spoke he hardly answered her, and she, as if participating already in his emotion, stood by him, not asking for words from him, looking with him into the solitude of the valley, seeking to see beyond the veils of blue mist gathering and blotting out all detail, creeping up intimately tender. What could he say to her worth saying at such a moment? he began to ask himself; and just then a song came from a hawthorn growing by the edge of the hill, a solitary song, mysterious and strange, a passionate strain which freed their souls, till, walking about this dusky hillside, the lovers seemed to lose their bodies and to become all spirit; and they walked on in silence, speech seeming a sacrilege.

  “So now you are going to settle down at Riversdale; your travels are over?”

  “Yes, they are over. I shall travel no more. I didn’t find what I sought.”

  “And what was that?”

  And her words as she spoke them sounded to Owen passionate, tender, and melancholy as the nightingale; and his words, too, seemed to partake of the same passionate melancholy.

  “Forgetfulness of you.”

  “So you wished to forget me? I am sorry.”

  “Sorry that I haven’t forgotten you? That, Evelyn, is impossible for me to believe; it isn’t human to wish ourselves forgotten.”

  “No, Owen, I don’t wish you to forget me, I am glad you have not; but I am sorry there was any need for you to seek forgetfulness.”

  “And is there any need?”

  “Yes, for the Evelyn you loved died years ago.”

  “Oh, Evelyn, don’t say that; she is not dead?”

  “Perhaps not altogether, a trace here and there, a slight flavour, but not a woman who could bring you happiness as you understand happiness, Owen.”

  “All the happiness I ever had I owe to you. How can I thank you for those ten years?”

  “But you paid for them with a great deal of sorrow.”

  “Had it not been for you, Evelyn, I shouldn’t have lived at all. How often have I told you that? I have seen all the world, and yet I have only seen one thing in the world — you.”

  “Owen, you mustn’t speak to me like that.”

  “While that bird is singing you are afraid to listen to me! How passionately it sings, but how little it feels compared with what I am feeling. Why did you say that the Evelyn of old is dead?”

  “Well, Owen, don’t you know that we are always dying, always changing. You are in love, not with me, but with your memory of me.”

  “A great deal of my love is memory, of course, still—”

  Words again seemed vain, foolish, even sacrilegious, so little could he convey to her of what he believed to be the truth, and they walked in silence through the fragrance of the soft night, thinking of the colour of the sky, in which the sunset was not yet quite dead. His memory of his love of this woman long ago in Dulwich, in Paris, and in all the cities and scenes they had visited together, raised him above himself; and he felt that her soul mingled with his in an ecstatic sadness beyond words, but which the nightingale sang clearly; the stars, too, sang it clearly; and they stood mute in the midst of the immortal symphony about them. “Evelyn, I love you. How wonderful our lives have been!” But what use to break the music, audible and ina
udible, with such weak words? The villagers under the hill could speak as well; the bird in the bush and the stars above it were speaking for him; and he was content to listen.

  The silence of the night grew more intense, there were millions of stars, small and great, and the moon now shone amidst them alone, “of different birth,” divided from them for ever as he was divided from this woman, whose arm touched his as they walked through the darkness, divided for ever, unable to communicate his soul to hers. Did she understand what he was feeling — the mystery of their lives written in the stars, sung by the nightingale and breathed by the flowers? Did she understand? Had the convent rule left her sufficient sensibility to understand such simple human truths?

  “How sweetly the tobacco plant smells!” she said.

  “Yes, doesn’t it? But what is the meaning of our story? My finding you at Dulwich — Evelyn, have you ever thought enough about it? How extraordinary that event was, extraordinary as the stars above us; my going down that evening and hearing you sing? Do you remember the look with which you greeted me — do you remember that cup of tea?”

  “It was coffee.”