The day grew too fine, as he said, for false notes, so the music lesson
was abandoned, and they went to sit in the garden behind the picture
gallery, a green sward with high walls covered with creeper, and at one
end a great cedar with a seat built about the trunk; a quiet place rife
with songs of birds, and unfrequented save by them. They had taken with
them Omar's verses, and Evelyn hoped that he would talk to her about
them, for the garden of the Persian poet she felt to be separated only
by a wicket from theirs. But Owen did not respond to her humour. He was
prepense to argue about the difficulties of her life, and of the urgent
necessity of vanquishing these.
He had noticed, he said, as they sat in the park, that she had a weak
face. Her thoughts were far away; he had caught her face, as it were,
napping, and had seen through it to the root of her being. The
conclusion at which he had arrived was that she was not capable of
leading an independent life.
"Am I not right? Isn't it so?"
"You think that because I don't leave father and go abroad."
"You might go abroad and lead a dependent life; you might stay at home
and lead an independent life."
He asked her what offers of marriage she had had.
One was from the Vicar, a widower, a man of fifty, the other from a
young man in a solicitor's office. She did not care for either, and had
not entertained their proposals for a second.
"If you marry anyone, it must be a duke. Life is a battle; society will
get the better of us unless we get the better of society. Everyone must
realise that--every young man, every young woman. We must conquer or be
conquered."
Society, he argued, did not require a chaperon from her; society would,
indeed, resent a chaperon if she were to appear with one. Society not
only granted her freedom, but demanded that she should exercise it. As a
freelance she would be taken notice of, as a respectable, marriageable
girl she would be passed over. The cradle and the masterpiece were
irreconcilable ideals. He drew an amusing picture of the prima donna's
husband, the fellow who waits with a scarf ready to wind it round the
throat of his musical instrument; the fellow who is always on the watch
lest someone should walk off with his means of subsistence. Evelyn
listened because she liked to hear him talk; she knew that he was trying
to influence her with argument, but it was he himself who was
influencing her, she dreaded his presence, not his argument.
She got up and walked across the sward; and as they returned through the
flowery village street, the faint May breeze shed the white chestnut
bloom about their feet. It seemed to him better to say nothing; there
are times when silence is more potent than speech. They were walking
under the trees of the old Dulwich street, and so charming were the
hedge-hidden gardens, and the eighteenth-century houses with white
porticoes, that Owen could not but think Dulwich at that moment seemed
the natural nativity of the young girl's career. A few moments after
they were at Dowlands. She was trembling, and had no strength of will to
refuse to ask him in. She would have had the strength if she had not
been obliged to give him her hand. She had tried to bid him good-bye
without giving her hand, and had not succeeded, and while he held her
hand her lips said the words without her knowing it. She spoke
unconsciously, and did not know what she had said till she had said it.
And while they waited for tea, Evelyn lay back in a wicker chair
thinking. He had said that life without love was a desert, and many
times the conversation trembled on the edge of a personal avowal, and
now he was playing love music out of "Tristan" on the harpsichord. The
gnawing, creeping sensuality of the phrase brought little shudders into
her flesh; all life seemed dissolved into a dim tremor and rustling of
blood; vague colour floated into her eyes, and there were moments when
she could hardly restrain herself from jumping to her feet and begging
of him to stop.... The servant brought in the tea, and she thought she
would feel better when the music ceased. But neither did the silence nor
the tea help her. He sat opposite her, his eyes fixed upon her, that
half-kindly, half-cynical face of his showing through the gold of his
moustache. He seemed to know that she could not follow the conversation,
and seemed determined to drive the malady that was devouring her to a
head. He continued to speak of the motive of the love call, how it is
interwoven with the hunting fanfare; when the fanfare dies in the
twilight, how it is then heard in the dark loneliness of the garden. She
heard him speak of the handkerchief motive, of thirty violins playing
three notes in ever precipitated rhythm, until we feel that the world
reels behind the woman, that only one thing exists for her--Tristan. A
giddiness gathered in Evelyn's brain, and she fell back in her chair,
slightly to the left side, and letting her hand slip towards him, said,
with a beseeching look--
"I cannot go on talking, I am too tired."
It seemed as if she were going to faint, and this made it easy and
natural for him to take her hand, to put his arm about her, and then to
whisper--
"Evelyn, dear, what is the matter?"
She opened her eyes; their look was sufficient answer.
"Dearest Evelyn," he said; and bending over, he kissed her on the cheek.
"This is very foolish of me," she said, and throwing her arm about his
neck, she kissed him on the mouth. "But you are fond of me?" she said
impulsively, laying her hand on his shoulder. It was a movement full of
affectionate intimacy.
"Yes," he said, moving her face again towards him. "I love you, I've
always loved you."
"No," she said, "you didn't, not always; I know when you began to care
for me."
"When?"
"When you returned from Greece, at the moment when you said you wanted
me to like you. Is it not true?"
Owen dared not tell her that it was at the moment of kissing her that he
had really begun to love her. In that moment he had entered into her
atmosphere; it was fragrant as a flower, and it had decided him to use
every effort to become her lover.
"No," she said, "you must not kiss me again."
She got up from the low wicker chair; he followed her, and they sat
close together on two low seats. He put his arm round her and said--
"I love to kiss you.... Why do you turn away your head?"
"Because it is wrong; I shall be miserable to-night."
"You don't think it wrong to kiss me?"
"Yes, I do."
Then turning her face to his, she kissed him.
"Who taught you to kiss like that?"
"No one, I never kissed anyone before--father, of course. You know what
I mean."
"She'll be an adorable mistress," he thought, "and in four years the
greatest singer in England. I shall get very fond of her. I like her
very much as it is, and when she gets over her religious scruples--when
I've reformed her--she'll be enchanting. It is lucky she met me; without
me she'd have come to nothing."
She asked him what he was thinking about, and he answered of the
happiness he had begun to feel was in store for them.
"What happiness?" she asked; and he answered--
"The happiness of seeing each other constantly--the happiness of lovers.
Now we must see each other more often."
"How often? Every day?"
He wondered what was the exact colour of her eyes, and he pressed her to
answer. At last she said--
"You cannot come here oftener than you do at present. I'm deceiving
father about these lessons. What will you do if he asks you to play to
him? What excuse will you give? You daren't attempt the simplest
exercise, you haven't got over the difference of the bowing; you'd play
false notes all the time."
"Yes," he said; "I've not made much progress, have I?"
"No, you haven't; but that isn't my fault."
"But the days I don't see you seem so long!"
"Do you think they do not seem long to me? I've nothing to think about
but you."
"Then, on your weariest days, come and see me. We can always see each
other in Berkeley Square. Send me a wire saying you are coming."
"I could not come to see you," she said, still looking at him fixedly;
"you know that I could not.... Then why do you ask me?"
"Because I want you."
"You know that I'd like to come."
"Then, if you do, you'll come. I don't believe in temptations that we
don't yield to."
"I suppose that the temptation that we yield to is the temptation?"
"Of course. But, Evelyn, you are not going to waste your life in
Dulwich. Come and see me to-morrow and, if you like, we'll decide."
"On what?"
"You know what I mean, dearest."
"Yes, I think I do," she said, smiling at once sadly and ardently; "but
I'm afraid it wouldn't succeed. I'm not the kind of woman to play the
part to advantage."
"I'm very fond of you, and I think you're very fond of me."
"You don't think about it--you know I am."
"Then why did you say you would not come and see me?"
"I did not say so. But something tells me that if I did go away with you
it would not succeed."
"Why do you think that?"
"I don't know. Something whispers that it wouldn't succeed. All my
people were good people--my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. I never
had a relative against whom anything could be said, so I don't know why
I am what I am. For I'm only half good. It is you who make me bad, Owen;
it isn't nice of you." She flung her arms about him, and then recoiled
from him in a sudden revulsion of feeling.
"When you go away I shall be miserable; I shall repent of all this ...
I'm horrid." She covered her face in her hands. "I didn't know I was
like this."