Sipping her coffee, her feet on the fender, she abandoned herself to
memories of the afternoon. She had been to the Carmelite Church in
Kensington, to hear the music of a new and very realistic Belgian
composer; and, walking down the High Street after Mass, she and Owen had
argued his artistic intentions. At the end of the High Street, he had
proposed that they should walk in the Gardens. The broad walk was full
of the colour of Spring and its perfume, the thick grass was like a
carpet beneath their feet; they had lingered by a pond, and she had
watched the little yachts, carrying each a portent of her own success or
failure. The Albert Hall curved over the tops of the trees, and sheep
strayed through the deep May grass in Arcadian peacefulness; but the
most vivid impression was when they had come upon a lawn stretching
gently to the water's edge. Owen had feared the day was too cold for
sitting out, but at that moment the sun contradicted him with a broad,
warm gleam. He had fetched two chairs from a pile stacked under a tree,
and sitting on that lawn, swept by the shadow of softly moving trees,
they had talked an hour or more. The scene came back to her as she sat
looking into the fire. She saw the Spring, easily victorious amid the
low bushes, capturing the rough branches of the elms one by one, and the
distant slopes of the park, grey like a piece of faded tapestry. And as
in a tapestry, the ducks came through the mist in long, pulsing flight,
and when the day cleared the pea fowl were seen across the water,
sunning themselves on the high branches. While watching the spectacle of
the Spring, Owen had talked to Evelyn about herself, and now their
entire conversation floated back, transposed into a higher key.
"I want your life to be a great success."
"Do you think anyone's life can be that?"
"That is a long discussion; if we seek the bottom of things, none is
less futile than another. But what passes for success, wealth and
renown, are easily within your reach.... If it be too much trouble to
raise your hand, let me shake the branches, and they'll fall into your
lap."
"I wonder if they would seem as precious to me when I had got them as
they do now. Once I did not know what it was to despond, but I lost my
pupils last winter, and everything seemed hopeless. I am not vain or
egotistic; I do not pine for applause and wealth, but I should like to
sing.... I've heard so much about my voice that I'm curious to know what
people will think of it."
"Once I was afraid that you were without ambition, and were content to
live unknown, a little suburban legend, a suburban might-have-been."
"That was long ago.... I've been thinking about myself a great deal
lately. Something seems always crying within me, 'You're wasting your
life; you must become a great singer and shine like a star in the
world.'"
"That is the voice of vocation speaking within you, a voice that may not
be disobeyed. It is what the swallows feel when the time for departure
has come."
"Ah, yes, what the swallows feel."
"A yearning for that which one has never known, for distant places, for
the sunshine which instinct tells us we must breathe."
"Oh, yes, that is it. I used to feel all that in the afternoons in that
ornamental park. I used to stop in my walk, for I seemed to see far
away, to perceive dimly as in a dream, another country."
"And since I came back have you wished to go away?"
"No ... for you come to see me, and when I go out with you I'm amused."
"I'm afraid I do little to amuse you."
"You do a great deal--you lend me books. I never cared to read, now I'm
very fond of reading--and I think more."
"Of what do you think?"
"You see, I never met anyone like you before. You've travelled; you've
seen everything; you know everything and everyone. When you come I seem
to see in you all the grand world of fashion."
"Which you used to see far away as in a dream?"
"No, the world of fashion I did not think of till I saw you. Since you
came back I have thought of it a little. You seem to express it somehow
in your look and dress; and the men who nodded to you in Piccadilly, and
the women who bowed to you, all wore the same look, and when they spoke
they seemed to know all about you--where you were last summer, and where
you are going to spend this autumn. Their friends are your friends;
you're all like one family."
"You're very observant. I never noticed the things you speak of, but no
doubt it is so. But society is ready to receive you; society, believe
me, is most anxious for you."