XI

"A Curious accident our meeting at Innes's."

"A lucky one for me. Far more pleasant living in this house than in

that horrible hotel."

Owen was lying back in an armchair, indulging in sentimental

and fatalistic dreams, and did not like this materialistic

interpretation of his invitation to Ulick to come to stay with him

at Berkeley Square. He wished to see the hand of Providence in

everything that concerned himself and Evelyn, and the meeting with

this young man seemed to point to something more than the young man's

comfort.

"Looked at from another side, our meeting was unlucky. If you hadn't

come in, Innes would have told me more about Evelyn. She must have

an address in London, and he must know it."

"That doesn't seem so sure. She may intend to live in Dulwich when

she returns from America."

"I can't see her living with her father; even the nuns seem more

probable. I wonder how it was that all this time you and she never

ran across each other. Did you never write to her?"

"No; I was abroad a great deal. And, besides, I knew she didn't want

to see me, so what was the good in forcing myself upon her?"

It was difficult for Owen to reprove Ulick for having left Evelyn to

her own devices. Had he not done so himself? Still, he felt that if

he had remained in England, he would not have been so indifferent;

and he followed his guest across the great tessellated hall towards

the dining-room in front of a splendid servitude.

The footmen drew back their chairs so that they might sit down with

the least inconvenience possible; and dinner at Berkeley Square

reminded Ulick of some mysterious religious ceremony; he ate,

overawed by the great butler--there was something colossal,

Egyptian, hierarchic about him, and Ulick could not understand how

it was that Sir Owen was not more impressed.

"Habit," he said to himself.

At one end of the room there was a great gold screen, and "in a dim,

religious light" the impression deepened; passing from ancient

Thebes to modern France, Ulick thought of a great cathedral. The

celebrant, the deacon and the subdeacon were represented by first

and second footmen, the third footman, who never left the sideboard,

he compared to the acolyte, the voice of the great butler proposing

different wines had a ritualistic ring in it; and, amused by his

conception of dinner in Berkeley Square, Ulick admired Owen's dress.

He wore a black velvet coat, trousers, and slippers. His white

frilled shirt and his pearl studs reminded Ulick of his own plain

shirt with only one stud, and he suspected vulgarity in a single

stud, for it was convenient, and would therefore appeal to waiters

and the middle classes. He must do something on the morrow to redeem

his appearance, and he noticed Owen's cuffs and sleeve-links, which

were superior to his own; and Owen's hands, they, too, were

superior--well-shaped, bony hands, with reddish hair growing about

the knuckles. Owen's nails were beautifully trimmed, and Ulick

determined to go to a manicurist on the morrow. A delicious perfume

emerged when Owen drew his handkerchief from his coat pocket; and all

this personal care reminded Ulick of that time long ago when Owen was

Evelyn's lover and travelled with her from capital to capital,

hearing her sing everywhere. "Now he will never see her again," he

thought, as he followed Owen back to his study, hoping to persuade

him into telling the story of how he had gone down to Dulwich to

write a criticism of Innes's concert, and how he had at once

recognised that Evelyn had a beautiful voice, and would certainly win

a high position on the lyric stage if she studied for it.

It was a solace to Owen's burdened heart to find somebody who would

listen to him, and he talked on and on, telling of the day he and

Evelyn had gone to Madame Savelli, and how he had had to leave Paris

soon after, for his presence distracted Evelyn's attention from her

singing-lessons. "In a year," Madame Savelli had said, "I will make

something wonderful of her, Sir Owen, if you will only go away, and

not come back for six months."

"He lives in recollection of that time," Ulick said to himself, "that

is his life; the ten years he spent with her are his life, the rest

counts for nothing." A moment after Owen was comparing himself to a

man wandering in the twilight who suddenly finds a lamp: "A lamp

that will never burn out," Ulick said to himself. "He will take that

lamp into the tomb with him."

"But I must read you the notices." And going to an escritoire covered

with ormolu--one of those pieces of French furniture which cost

hundreds of pounds--he took out a bundle of Evelyn's notices. "The

most interesting," he said, "were the first notices--before the

critics had made up their mind about her."

He stopped in his untying of the parcel to tell Ulick about his

journey to Brussels to hear her sing.

"You see, I had broken my leg out hunting, and there was a question

whether I should be able to get there in time. Imagine my annoyance

on being told I must not speak to her."

"Who told you that?"

"Madame Savelli."

"Oh, I understand I You arrived the very day of her first

appearance?"

Owen threw up his head and began reading the notices.

"They are all the same," he said, after reading half a dozen, and

Ulick felt relieved. "But stay, this one is different," and the long

slip dismayed Ulick, who could not feel much interest in the

impression that Evelyn had created as Elsa--he did not know how many

years ago.

"'Miss Innes is a tall, graceful woman, who crosses the stage with

slow, harmonious movements--any slight quickening of her step

awakening a sense of foreboding in the spectator. Her eyes, too, are

of great avail, and the moment she comes on the stage one is

attracted by their strangeness--grave, mysterious, earnest eyes,

which smile rarely; but when they do smile happiness seems to mount

up from within, illuminating her life from end to end. She will never

be unhappy again, one thinks. It is with her smile she recompenses

her champion knight when he lays low Telramund, and it is with her

smile she wins his love--and ours. We regret, for her sake, there

are so few smiles in Wagner: very few indeed--not one in 'Senta' nor

in 'Elizabeth.'" The newspaper cutting slipped from Owen's hand, and

he talked for a long time about her walk and her smile, and then

about her "Iphigenia," which he declared to be one of the most

beautiful performances ever seen, her personality lending itself to

the incarnation of this Greek idea of fate and self-sacrifice. But

Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time

it was written--containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat

stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression

of Beethoven's. "One man used to write about her very well, and

seemed to understand her better than any other. And writing about

this performance he says--Now, if I could find you his article." The

search proved a long one, but as it was about to be abandoned Owen

turned up the cutting he was in search of.

"'Her nature intended her for the representation of ideal heroines

whose love is pure, and it does not allow her to depict the violence

of physical passion and the delirium of the senses. She is an artist

of the peaks, whose feet may not descend into the plain and follow

its ignominious route,' And then here: 'He who has seen her as the

spotless spouse of the son of Parsifal, standing by the window, has

assisted at the mystery of the chaste soul awaiting the coming of

her predestined lover,' And 'He who has seen her as Elizabeth,

ascending the hillside, has felt the nostalgia of the skies awaken

in his heart,' Then he goes on to say that her special genius and

her antecedents led her to 'Fidelio,' and designed her as the

perfect embodiment of Leonore's soul--that pure, beautiful soul made

wholly of sacrifice and love,' But you never saw her as Leonore so

you can form no idea of what she really was,"

"I will read you what she wrote when she was studying 'Fidelio':

'Beethoven's music has nothing in common with the passion of the

flesh; it lives in the realms of noble affections, pity, tenderness,

love, spiritual yearnings for the life beyond the world, and its joy

in the external world is as innocent as a happy child's. It is in

this sense classical--it lives and loves and breathes in spheres of

feeling and thought removed from the ordinary life of men. Wagner's

later work, if we except some scenes from "The Ring"--notably the

scenes between Wotan and Brunnhilde--is nearer to the life of the

senses; its humanity is fresh in us, deep as Brunnhilde's; but

essential man lives in the spirit. The desire of the flesh is more

necessary to the life of the world than the aspirations of the soul,

yet the aspirations of the soul are more human. The root is more

necessary to the plant than its flower, but it is by the flower and

not by the root that we know it."

"Is it not amazing that a woman who could think like that should be

capable of flinging up her art--the art which I gave her--on account

of the preaching of that wooden-headed Mostyn?" Sitting down

suddenly he opened a drawer, and, taking out her photograph, he

said: "Here she is as Leonore, but you should have seen her in the

part. The photograph gives no idea whatever; you haven't seen her

picture. Come, let me show you her picture: one of the most beautiful

pictures that ---- ever painted; the most beautiful in the room, and

there are many beautiful things in this room. Isn't it extraordinary

that a woman so beautiful, so gifted, so enchanting, so intended by

life for life should be taken with the religious idea suddenly? She

has gone mad without doubt. A woman who could do the things that she

could do to pass over to religion, to scapulars, rosaries,

indulgencies! My God! my God!" and he fell back in his armchair, and

did not speak again for a long time. Getting up suddenly, he said,

"If you want to smoke any more there are cigars on the table; I am

going to bed."

"Well, it is hard upon him," Ulick said as he took a cigar; and

lighting his candle, he wandered up the great green staircase by

himself, seeking the room he had been given at the end of one of the

long corridors.