"Sir Owen tells me that you'll surely succeed in singing Wagner--that I
shall be converted."
"Lady Duckle is a heretic."
"No, my dear Owen, I'm not a heretic, for I recognise the greatness of
the music, and I could hear it with pleasure if it were confined to the
orchestra, but I can find no pleasure in listening to a voice trying to
accompany a hundred instruments. I heard 'Lohengrin' last season. I was
in Mrs. Ayre's box--a charming woman--her husband is an American, but he
never comes to London. I presented her at the last Drawing-Room. She had
a supper party afterwards, and when she asked me what I'd have to eat, I
said, 'Nothing with wings' ... Oh, that swan!"
Her grey hair was drawn up and elaborately arranged, and Evelyn noticed
three diamond rings and an emerald ring on her fat, white fingers. There
had been moments she said, when she had thought the people on the stage
were making fun of them--"such booing!"--they had all shouted themselves
hoarse--such wandering from key to key.
"Hoping, I suppose, that in the end they'd hit off the right ones. And
that trick of going up in fifths. And then they go up in fifths on the
half notes. I said if they do that again, I'll leave the theatre."
Evelyn could see that Owen liked Lady Duckle, and her conversation,
which at first might have seemed extravagant and a little foolish, was
illuminated with knowledge and a vague sense of humour which was
captivating. Her story of how she had met Rossini in her early youth,
and the praise he had bestowed on her voice, and his intention of
writing an opera for her, seemed fanciful enough, but every now and then
some slight detail inspired the suspicion that there was perhaps more
truth in what she was saying than appeared at first hearing.
"Why did he not write the opera, Olive?"
"It was just as he was ill, when he lived in Rue Monsieur. And he said
he was afraid he was not equal to writing down so many notes. Poor old
man! I can still see him sitting in his arm-chair."
She seemed to have been on terms of friendship with the most celebrated
men of the time. Her little book entitled _Souvenirs of Some Great
Composers_ was alluded to, and Owen mentioned that at that time she was
the great Parisian beauty.
"But instead of going on the stage, I married Lord Duckle."
And this early mistake she seemed to consider as sufficient explanation
for all subsequent misfortunes. Evelyn wondered what these might be, and
Owen said--
"The most celebrated singers are glad to sing at Lady Duckle's
afternoons; no reputation is considered complete till it has received
her sanction."
"That is going too far, Owen; but it is true that nearly all the great
singers have been heard at my house."
Owen begged Evelyn to get ready for dinner, and as she stood waiting for
the lift, she saw him resume confidential conversation with Lady Duckle.
They were, she knew, making preparations for her future life, and this
was the woman she was going to live with for the next few years! The
thought gave her pause. She dried her hands and hastened downstairs.
They were still talking in the verandah just as she had left them. Owen
signed to the coachman and told him to drive to Durand's. They were
dining in a private room, and during dinner the conversation constantly
harked back to the success that Evelyn had achieved that afternoon. Owen
told the story in well-turned sentences. His eyes were generally fixed
on Lady Duckle, and Evelyn sat listening and feeling, as Owen intended
she should feel, like the heroine of a fairy tale. She laughed nervously
when, imitating Madame Savelli's accent, he described how she had said,
"If you'll stop with me for a year, I'll make something wonderful of
you." Lady Duckle leaned across the table, glancing from time to time at
Evelyn, as if to assure herself that she was still in the presence of
this extraordinary person, and murmured something about having the
honour of assisting at what she was sure would be a great career.
Owen noticed that Evelyn seemed preoccupied, and did not respond very
eagerly to Lady Duckle's advances. He wondered if she suspected him of
having been Lady Duckle's lover.... Evelyn was thinking entirely of Lady
Duckle herself, trying to divine the real woman that was behind all this
talk of great men and social notabilities. One phrase let drop seemed to
let in some light on the mystery. Talking of her, Lady Duckle said that
it was only necessary to know what road we wanted to walk in to succeed,
and instantly Lady Duckle appeared to her as one who had never selected
a road. She seemed to have walked a little way on all roads, and her
face expressed a life of many wanderings, straying from place to place.
There was nothing as she said, worth doing that she had not done, but
she had clearly accomplished nothing. As she watched her she feared,
though she could not say what she feared. At bottom it was a suspicion
of the deteriorating influence that Lady Duckle would exercise, must
exercise, upon her--for were they not going to live together for years?
And this companionship would be necessarily based on subterfuge and
deceit. She would have to talk to her of her friendship for Owen. She
could never speak of Owen to Lady Duckle as her lover. But as Evelyn
listened to this pleasant, garrulous woman talking, and talking very
well, about music and literature, she could not but feel that she liked
her, and that her easy humour and want of principle would make life
comfortable and careless. She was not a saint; she could not expect a
saint to chaperon her; nor did she want a saint. At that moment her
spirits rose. She wanted Owen, and she loved him the more for the tact
he had shown in finding Lady Duckle for her. She accepted the good
lady's faults with reckless enthusiasm, and when they got back to the
hotel she took the first occasion to whisper that she liked Lady Duckle
and was sure they'd get on very well together.
"Owen, dear, I'm so happy, I don't know what to do with myself. I did
enjoy my drive to the Bois. I never was so happy and I don't seem to be
enjoying myself enough; I should like to sit up all night to think of
it."
"There's no reason why you shouldn't."
"Only I should feel tired in the morning.... Are you coming to my room?"
"Unless you want me not to. Do you want me to come?"
"Do I look as if I didn't?"
"Your eyes are shining like stars. It is worth while taking trouble to
make you happy. You do enjoy it so.... We'll go upstairs now. We can't
talk here, Lady Duckle is coming back. Leave your door ajar."
"You don't think she suspects?"
"It doesn't matter what people suspect, the essential is that they
shouldn't know. I've lots to tell you. I've arranged everything with
Lady Duckle."
"I was just telling Miss Innes that in three years she'll probably be
singing at the Opera House. In a year or a year and a half she'll have
learnt all that Savelli can teach her. Isn't that so?"
The question was discussed for a while, and then Lady Duckle mentioned
that it was getting late. It was an embarrassing moment when Owen
stopped the lift and they bade her good-night. She was on the third,
they were on the second floor. As Evelyn went down the passage, Owen
stood to watch her sloping shoulders; they seemed to him like those of
an old miniature. When she turned the corner a blankness came over him;
things seemed to recede and he was strangely alone with himself as he
strolled into his room. But standing before the glass, his heart was
swollen with a great pride. He remarked in his eyes the strange,
enigmatic look which he admired in Titian and Vandyke, and he thought
of himself as a principle--as a force; he wondered if he were an evil
influence, and lost himself in moody meditations concerning the mystery
of the attractions he presented to women. But suddenly he remembered
that in a few minutes she would be in his arms, and he closed his eyes
as if to delight more deeply in the joy that she presented to his
imagination. So intense was his desire that he could not believe that he
was her lover, that he was going to her room, and that nothing could
deprive him of this delight. Why should such rare delight happen to him?
He did not know. What matter, since it was happening? She was his. It
was like holding the rarest jewel in the world in the hollow of his
hand.
That she was at that moment preparing to receive him brought a little
dizziness into his eyes, and compelled him to tear off his necktie.
Then, vaguely, like one in a dream, he began to undress, very slowly,
for she had told him to wait a quarter of an hour before coming to her
room. He examined his thin waist as he tied himself in blue silk
pyjamas, and he paused to admire his long, straight feet before slipping
them into a pair of black velvet slippers. He turned to glance at his
watch, and to kill the last five minutes of the prescribed time he
thought of Evelyn's scruples. She would have to read certain
books--Darwin and Huxley he relied upon, and he reposed considerable
faith in Herbert Spencer. But there were books of a lighter kind, and
their influence he believed to be not less insidious. He took one out of
his portmanteau--the book which he said, had influenced him more than
any other. It opened at his favourite passage--
'I am a man of the Homeric time; the world in which I live is not mine,
and I know nothing of the society which surrounds me. I am as pagan as
Alcibiades or as Phidias.... I never gathered on Golgotha the flowers of
the Passion, and the deep stream which flowed from from the side of the
Crucified and made a red girdle round the world never bathed me in its
tide. I believe earth to be as beautiful as heaven, and I think that
precision of form is virtue. Spirituality is not my strong point; I love
a statue better than a phantom.' ... He could remember no further; he
glanced at the text and was about to lay the book down, when, on second
thoughts, he decided to take it with him.
Her door was ajar; he pushed it open and then stopped for moment,
surprised at his good fortune. And he never forgot that instant's
impression of her body's beauty. But before he could snatch the long
gauze wrapper from her, she had slipped her arm through the sleeves,
and, joyous as a sunlit morning hour, she came forward and threw herself
into his arms. Even then he could not believe that some evil accident
would not rob him of her. He said some words to that effect, and often
tried to recall her answer to them; he was only sure that it was
exquisitely characteristic of her, as were all her answers--as her
answer was that very evening when he told her that he would have to go
to London at the end of the week.
"But only for some days. You don't think that I shall be changed? You're
not afraid that I shall love you less?"
"No; I was not thinking of you, dear. I know that you'll not be changed;
I was thinking that I might be."
He withdrew the arm that was round her, and, raising himself upon his
elbow, he looked at her.
"You've told me more about yourself in that single phrase than if you
had been talking an hour."
"Dearest Owen, let me kiss you."
It seemed to them wonderful that they should be permitted to kiss each
other so eagerly, and it sometimes was a still more intense rapture to
lie in each other's arms and talk to each other.
The dawn surprised them still talking, and it seemed to them as if
nothing had been said. He was explaining his plans for her life. They
were, he thought, going to live abroad for five, six, or seven years.
Then Evelyn would go to London, to sing, preceded by an extraordinary
reputation. But the first thing to do was to get a house in Paris.
"We cannot stop at this hotel; we must have a house. I have heard of a
charming hotel in the Rue Balzac."
"In the Rue Balzac! Is there a street called after him? Is it on account
of the name you want me to live there?"
"No; I don't think so, but perhaps the name had something to do with
it--one never knows. But I always liked the street."
"Which of his books is it like?"
"_Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan_"
They laughed and kissed each other.
"At the bottom of the street is the Avenue de Friedland; the tram passes
there, and it will take you straight to Madame Savelli's."
The sparrows had begun to shrill in the courtyard, and their eyes ached
with sleep.
"Five or six years--you'll be at the height of your fame. They will pass
only too quickly," he added.
He was thinking what his age would be then. "And when they have passed,
it will seem like a dream."
"Like a dream," she repeated, and she laid her face on the pillow where
his had lain.