As she lay between sleeping and waking, she strove to grasp the
haunting, fugitive idea, but shadows of sleep fell, and in her dream
there appeared two Tristans, a fair and a dark. When the shadows were
lifted and she thought with an awakening brain, she smiled at the
absurdity, and, striving to get close to her idea, to grip it about its
very loins, she asked herself how much of her own life she could express
in the part, for she always acted one side of her character. Her pious
girlhood found expression in the Elizabeth, and what she termed the
other side of her character she was going to put on the stage in the
character of Isolde. Again sleep thickened, and she found it impossible
to follow her idea. It eluded her; she could not grasp it. It turned to
a dream, a dream which she could not understand even while she dreamed
it. But as she awaked, she uttered a cry. It happened to be the note she
had to sing when the curtain goes up and Isolde lies on the couch
yearning for Tristan, for assuagement of the fever which consumes her.
All other actresses had striven to portray an Irish princess, or what
they believed an Irish princess might be. But she cared nothing for the
Irish princess, and a great deal for the physical and mental distress of
a woman sick with love.
Her power of recalling her sensations was so intense, that in her warm
bed she lived again the long, aching evenings of the long winter in
Dulwich, before she went away with Owen. She saw again the Spring
twilight in the scrap of black garden, where she used to stand watching
the stars. She remembered the dread craving to worship them, the anguish
of remorse and fear on her bed, her visions of distant countries and the
gleam of eyes which looked at her through the dead of night. How
miserable she had been in that time--in those months. She had wanted to
sing, and she could not, and she had wanted--she had not known what was
the matter with her. That feeling (how well she remembered it!) as if
she wanted to go mad! And all those lightnesses of the brain she could
introduce in the opening scene--the very opening cry was one of them.
And with these two themes she thought she could create an Isolde more
intense than the Isolde of the fat women whom she had seen walking about
the stage, lifting their arms and trying to look like sculpture.
No one whom she had seen had attempted to differentiate between Isolde
before she drinks and after she has drunk the love potion, and, to avoid
this mistake, she felt that she would only have to be true to herself.
After the love potion had been drunk, the moment of her life to put on
the stage was its moment of highest sexual exaltation. Which was that?
There were so many, she smiled in her doze. Perhaps the most wonderful
day of her life was the day Madame Savelli had said, "If you'll stay
with me for a year, I'll make something wonderful of you." She recalled
the drive in the Bois, and she saw again the greensward, the poplars,
and the stream of carriages. She had hardly been able so resist
springing up in the carriage and singing to the people; she had wanted
to tell them what Madame Savelli had said. She had wished to cry to
them, "In two years all you people will be going to the opera to hear
me." What had stopped her was the dread that it might not happen. But it
had happened! That was the evening she had met Olive. She could see the
exact spot. Although Olive had only just arrived, she had been up to her
room and put on a pair of slippers. They had dined at a café, and all
through dinner she had longed to be alone with Owen, and after dinner
the time had seemed so long. Before going up in the lift he had asked
her if he might come to her room. In a quarter of an hour, she had said,
but he had come sooner than she expected, and she remembered slipping
her arm into a gauze wrapper. How she had flung herself into his arms!
That was the moment of her life to put upon the stage when she and
Tristan look at each other after drinking the love potion.
In the second act Tristan lives through her. She is the will to live;
and if she ultimately consents to follow him into the shadowy land, it
is for love of him. But of his desire for death she understands nothing;
all through the duet it is she who desires to quench this desire with
kisses. That was her conception of women's mission, and that was her own
life with Owen; it was her love that compelled him to live down his
despondencies. So her Isolde would have an intense and a personal life
that no Isolde had had before. And in holding up her own soul to view,
she would hold up the universal soul, and people would be afraid to turn
their heads lest they should catch each other's eyes. But was not a
portrayal of sexual passion such as she intended very sinful? It could
not fail to suggest sinful thoughts.... She could not help what folk
thought--that was their affair. She had turned her back upon all such
scruples, and this last one she contemptuously picked up and tossed
aside like a briar.
Her eyes opened and she gazed sleepily into the twilight of mauve
curtains, and dreaded her maid's knock. "It must be nearly eight," she
thought, and she strove to pick up the thread of her lost thoughts. But
a sharp rap at her door awakened her, and a tall, spare figure crossed
the room. As the maid was about to draw the curtains, Evelyn cried to
her--
"Oh, wait a moment, Herat.... I'm so tired. I didn't get to bed till
two o'clock."
"Mademoiselle forgets that she told me to awaken her very early.
Mademoiselle said she wanted to go for a long drive to the other end of
London before she went to rehearsal."
Merat's logic seemed a little severe for eight o'clock in the morning,
and Evelyn believed that her conception of Isolde had suffered from the
interruption.
"Then I am not to draw the curtains? Mademoiselle will sleep a little
longer. I will return when it is time for mademoiselle to go to
rehearsal."
"Did you say it was half-past eight, Merat?"
"Yes, mademoiselle. The coachman is not quite sure of the way, and will
have to ask it. This will delay him."
"Oh, yes, I know.... But I must sleep a little longer."
"Then mademoiselle will not get up. I will take mademoiselle's chocolate
away."
"No, I'll have my chocolate," Evelyn said, rousing herself. "Merat, you
are very insistent."
"What is one to do? Mademoiselle specially ordered me to wake her....
Mademoiselle said that--"
"I know what I said. I'll see how I feel when I have had my chocolate.
The coachman had better get a map and look out the way upon it."
She lay back on the pillow and regretted she had come to England. There
was no reason why she should not have thrown over this engagement. It
wouldn't have been the first. Owen had always told her that money ought
never to tempt her to do anything she didn't like. He had persuaded her
to accept this engagement, though he knew that she did not want to sing
in London. How often before had she not refused, and with his
approbation? But then his pleasure was involved in the refusal or the
acceptance of the engagement. He did not mind her throwing over a
valuable offer to sing if he wanted her to go yachting with him. Men
were so selfish. She smiled, for she knew she was acting a little comedy
with herself. "But, quite seriously, I am annoyed with Owen. The London
engagement--no, of course, I could not go on refusing to sing in
London." She was annoyed with him because he had dissuaded her from
doing what her instinct had told her was the right thing to do. She had
wished to go to her father the moment she set foot in England, and beg
his forgiveness. When they had arrived at Victoria, she had said that
she would like to take the train to Dulwich. There happened to be one
waiting. But they had had a rough crossing; she was very tired, and he
had suggested she should postpone her visit to the next day. But next
day her humour was different. She knew quite well that the sooner she
went the easier it would be for her to press her father to forgive her,
to entrap him into reconciliation. She had imagined that she could
entrap her father into forgiving her by throwing herself into his arms,
or with the mere phrase, "Father, I've come to ask you how I sing." But
she had not been able to overcome her aversion to going to Dulwich, and
every time the question presented itself a look of distress came into
her face. "If I only knew what he would say when he sees me. If the
first word were over--the 'entrance,'" she added, with a smile.
It was hopeless to argue with her, so Owen said that if she did not go
before the end of the week it would be better to postpone her visit
until after her first appearance.
"But supposing I fail. I never cared for my Margaret. Besides, it was
mother's great part. He'll think me as bad an artist as I have been a
bad daughter. Owen, dear, have patience with me, I know I'm very weak,
but I dread a face of stone."
Neither spoke for a long while. Then she said, "If I had only gone to
him last year. You remember he had written me a nice letter, but instead
I went away yachting; you wanted to go to Greece."
"Evelyn, don't lay the blame on me; you wanted to go too.... I hope that
when you do see your father you will say that it was not all my fault."
"That what was not your fault, dear?"
"Well--I mean that it was not all my fault that we went away together.
You know that I always liked your father. I was interested in his ideas;
I do not want him to think too badly of me. You will say something in my
favour. After all, I haven't treated you badly. If I didn't marry you,
it was because--"
"Dearest Owen, you've been very good to me."
He felt that to ask her again to go to see her father would only
distress her. He said instead--
"I hear a great deal about your father's choir. It appears to be quite
the fashion to hear high mass at St. Joseph's."
"Father always said that Palestrina would draw all London, if properly
given. Last Sunday he gave a mass by Vittoria; I longed to go. He'll
never forgive me for not going to hear his choir. It is strange that we
both should have succeeded--he with Palestrina, I with Wagner."
"Yes, it is strange.... But you promise me that you'll go and see him as
soon as you've sung Margaret--the following day."
"Yes, dear, I promise you I'll do that."
"You'll send him a box for the first night?"
"He wouldn't sit in a box. If he went at all, it would be in some
obscure place where he would not be seen."
"You had better send him a box, a stall and a dress circle, then he can
take his choice.... But perhaps you had better not send. His presence
among the audience would only make you nervous."
"No, on the contrary, his presence would make me sing."
For whatever reason she had certainly sung and acted with exceptional
force and genius, and Margaret was at once lifted out of the obscurity
into which it was slipping and took rank with her Elizabeth and her
Elsa. As they drove home together in the brougham after the performance,
Owen assured her that she had infused a life and meaning into the part,
and that henceforth her reading would have to be "adopted."
"I wonder if father was there? He was not in the box. Did you look in
the stalls?"
"Yes, but he was not there. You'll go and see him to-morrow."
"No, not to-morrow, dear."
"Why not to-morrow?"
"Because I want him to see the papers. He may not have been in the
theatre; on Thursday night is Lady Ascott's ball; then on Friday--I'll
go and see father on Friday. I'll try to summon courage. But there is a
rehearsal of 'Tannhäuser' on Friday."
And so that she might not be too tired on Friday morning, Owen insisted
on her leaving the ball-room at two o'clock, and their last words, as he
left her on her doorstep, were that she would go to Dulwich before she
went to rehearsal. But in the warmth of her bed, not occupied long
enough to restore to the body the strength of which a ball-room had
robbed it, her resolution waned, and her brain, weak from insufficient
sleep, shrank from the prospect of a long drive and a face of stone at
the end of it. She sat moodily sipping her chocolate and _brioche_.
"You were at the opera last night, Merat. Was Mademoiselle Helbrun a
success?"
"No, mademoiselle, I'm afraid not."
"Ah!" Evelyn put down her cup and looked at her maid. "I'm sorry, but I
thought she wouldn't succeed in London. She was coldly received, was
she?"
"Yes, mademoiselle."
"I'm sorry, for she's a true artist."
"She has not the passion of mademoiselle."
A little look of pleasure lit up Evelyn's face.
"She is a charming singer. I can't think how she could have failed. Did
you hear any reason given?"
"Yes, mademoiselle, I met Mr. Ulick Dean."
"What did he say? He'd know."
"He said that Mademoiselle Helbrun's was the true reading of the part.
But 'Carmen' had lately been turned into a _femme de la balle_, and, of
course, since the public had tasted realism it wanted more. I thought
Mademoiselle Helbrun rather cold. But then I'm one of the public.
Mademoiselle has not yet told me what I am to tell the coachman."
"You do not listen to me, Merat," Evelyn answered in a sudden access of
ill humour. "Instead of accepting the answer I choose to give, you stop
there in the intention of obtaining the answer which seems to you the
most suitable. I told you to tell the coachman that he was to get a map
and acquaint himself with the way to Dulwich."
And to bring the interview to a close, she told Merat to take away the
chocolate tray, and took up one of the scores which lay on a small table
by the bedside--"Tannhäuser" and "Tristan and Isolde." It would bore her
to look at Elizabeth again; she knew it all. She chose Tristan instead,
and began reading the second act at the place where Isolde, ignoring
Brangäne's advice, signals to Tristan with the handkerchief. She glanced
down the lines, hearing the motive on the 'cellos, then, in precipitated
rhythm, taken up by the violins. When the emotion has reached breaking
point, Tristan rushes into Isolde's arms, and the frantic happiness of
the lovers is depicted in short, hurried phrases. The score slipped from
her hands and her thoughts ran in reminiscence of a similar scene which
she had endured in Venice nearly four years ago. She had not seen Owen
for two months, and was expecting him every hour. The old walls of the
palace, the black and watchful pictures, the watery odours and echoes
from the canal had frightened and exhausted her. The persecution of
passion in her brain and the fever of passion afloat in her blood waxed,
and the minutes became each a separate torture. There was only one lamp.
She had watched it, fearing every moment lest it should go out.... She
had cast a frightened glance round the room, and it was the spectre of
life that her exalted imagination saw, and her natural eyes a strange
ascension of the moon. The moon rose out of a sullen sky, and its
reflection trailed down the lagoon. Hardly any stars were visible, and
everything was extraordinarily still. The houses leaned heavily forward
and Evelyn feared she might go mad, and it was through this phantom
world of lagoon and autumn mist that a gondola glided. This time her
heart told her with a loud cry that he had come, and she had stood in
the shadowy room waiting for him, her brain on fire. The emotion of that
night came to her at will, and lying in her warm bed she considered the
meeting of Tristan and Isolde in the garden, and the duet on the bank of
sultry flowers. Like Tristan and Isolde, she and Owen had struggled to
find expression for their emotion, but, not having music, it had lain
cramped up in their hearts, and their kisses were vain to express it.
She found it in these swift irregularities of rhythm, replying to every
change of motion, and every change of key cried back some pang of the
heart.
This scene in the second act was certainly one of the most
difficult--at least to her--and the one in which she most despaired of
excelling. It suddenly occurred to her that she might study it with
Ulick Dean. She had met him at rehearsal, and had been much interested
in him. He had sent her six melodies--strange, old-world rhythms,
recalling in a way the Gregorian she used to read in childhood in the
missals, yet modulated as unintermittently as Wagner; the same chromatic
scale and yet a haunting of the antique rhythm in the melody. Ulick knew
her father; he had said, "Mr. Innes is my greatest friend." He loved her
father, she could see that, but she had not dared to question him.
Talking to Owen was like the sunshine--the earth and only the earth was
visible--whereas talking to Ulick was like the twilight through which
the stars were shining. Dreams were to him the true realities; externals
he accepted as other people accepted dreams--with diffidence. Evelyn
laughed, much amused by herself and Ulick, and she laughed as she
thought of his fixed and averted look as he related the tales of bards
and warriors. Every now and then his dark eyes would light up with
gleams of sunny humour; he probably believed that the legends contained
certain eternal truths, and these he was shaping into operas. He was the
most interesting young man she had met this long while.
He had been about to tell her why he had recanted his Wagnerian faith
when they had been interrupted by Owen.... She could conceive nothing
more interesting than the recantation by a man of genius of the ideas
that had first inspired him. His opera had been accepted, and would be
produced if she undertook the principal part. Why should she not? They
could both help each other. Truly, he was the person with whom she could
study Isolde, and she imagined the flood of new light he would throw
upon it. Her head drowsed on the pillow, and she dreamed the wonderful
things he would tell her. But as she drowsed she thought of the article
he had written about her Margaret, and it was the desire to read it
again that awoke her. Stretching out her hand, she took it from the
table at her bedside and began reading. He liked the dull green dress
she wore in the first act; and the long braids of golden hair which he
admired were her own. He had mentioned them and the dark velvet cape,
which he could not remember whether she wore or carried. As a matter of
fact, she carried it on her arm. His forgetfulness on this point seemed
to her charming, and she smiled with pleasure. He said that she made
good use of the cape in the next act, and she was glad that he had
perceived that.
Like every other Margaret, her prayer-book was in her hand when she
first met Faust; but she dropped it as she saw him, and while she shyly
and sweetly sang that she was neither a lady nor a beauty, she stooped
and with some embarrassment picked up the book. She passed on, and did
not stop to utter a mechanical cry when she saw Mephistopheles, and then
run away. She hesitated a moment; Mephistopheles was not in sight, but
Faust was just behind her, and over the face of Margaret flashed the
thought, "What a charming--what a lovely young man! I think I'll stop a
little longer, and possibly he'll say something more. But no--after
all--perhaps I'd better not," and, with a little sigh of regret, she
turned and went, at first quietly and then more quickly, as though
fearful of being tempted to change her mind.
In the garden scene, she sang the first bars of the music
absent-mindedly, dusting and folding her little cape, stopping when it
was only half folded to stand forgetful a moment, her eyes far off,
gazing back into the preceding act. Awaking with a little start, she
went to her spinning-wheel, and, with her back to the audience, arranged
the spindle and the flax. Then stopping in her work and standing in
thought, she half hummed, half sang the song "Le Roi de Thulé." Not till
she had nearly finished did she sit down and spin, and then only for a
moment, as though too restless and disturbed for work that afternoon.
Evelyn was glad that Ulick had remarked that the jewels were not "the
ropes of pearls we are accustomed to, but strange, mediæval jewels,
long, heavy earrings and girdles and broad bracelets." Owen had given
her these. She remembered how she had put them on, just as Ulick said,
with the joy of a child and the musical glee of a bird. "She laughed out
the jewel song," he said, "with real laughter, returning lightly across
the stage;" and he said that they had "wondered what was this lovely
music which they had never heard before!" And when she placed the jewels
back, she did so lingeringly, regretfully, slowly, one by one, even
forgetting the earrings, perhaps purposely, till just before she entered
the house.
"In the duet with Faust," he said, "we were drawn by that lovely voice
as in a silken net, and life had for us but one meaning--the rapture of
love."
"Has it got any other meaning?" Evelyn paused a moment to think. She was
afraid that it had long ceased to have any other meaning for her. But
love did not seem to play a large part in Ulick's life. Yet that last
sentence--to write like that he must feel like that. She wondered, and
then continued reading his article.
She was glad that he had noticed that when she fainted at the sight of
Mephistopheles, she slowly revived as the curtain was falling and
pointed to the place where he had been, seeing him again in her
over-wrought brain. This she did think was a good idea, and, as he said,
"seemed to accomplish something."
He thought her idea for her entrance in the following act exceedingly
well imagined, for, instead of coming on neatly dressed and smiling like
the other Margarets, she came down the steps of the church with her
dress and hair disordered, in the arms of two women, walking with
difficulty, only half recovered from her fainting fit. "It is by ideas
like this," he said, "that the singer carried forward the story, and
made it seem like a real scene that was happening before our eyes. And
after her brother had cursed Margaret, when he falls back dead, Miss
Innes retreats, getting away from the body, half mad, half afraid. She
did not rush immediately to him, as has been the operatic custom, kneel
down, and, with one arm leaning heavily on Valentine's stomach, look up
in the flies. Miss Innes, after backing far away from him, slowly
returned, as if impelled to do so against her will, and, standing over
the body, looked at it with curiosity, repulsion, terror; and then she
burst into a whispered laugh, which communicated a feeling of real
horror to the audience.
"In the last act, madness was tangled in her hair, and in her wide-open
eyes were read the workings of her insane brain, and her every movement
expressed the pathos of madness; her lovely voice told its sad tale
without losing any of its sweetness and beauty. The pathos of the little
souvenir phrases was almost unbearable, and the tragic power of the
finish was extraordinary in a voice of such rare distinction and fluid
utterance. Her singing and acting went hand in hand, twin sisters, equal
and indivisible, and when the great moment in the trio came, she stepped
forward and with an inspired intensity lifted her quivering hands above
her head in a sort of mad ecstasy, and sang out the note clear and true,
yet throbbing with emotion."
The paper slid from Evelyn's hand. She could see from Ulick's
description of her acting that she had acted very well; if she had not,
he could not have written like that. But her acting only seemed
extraordinary when she read about it. It was all so natural to her. She
simply went on the stage, and once she was on the stage she could not do
otherwise. She could not tell why she did things. Her acting was so much
a part of herself that she could not think of it as an art at all; it
was merely a medium through which she was able to re-live past phases of
her life, or to exhibit her present life in a more intense and
concentrated form. The dropping of the book was quite true; she had
dropped a piece of music when she first saw Owen, and the omission of
the scream was natural to her. She felt sure that she would not have
seen Mephistopheles just then; she would have been too busy thinking of
the young man. But she thought that she might take a little credit for
her entrance in the third act. Somehow her predecessors had not seen
that it was absurd to come smiling and tripping out of church, where she
had seen Mephistopheles. She read the lines describing her power to
depict madness. But even in the mad scenes she was not conscious of
having invented anything. She had had sensations of madness--she
supposed everyone had--and she threw herself into those sensations,
intensifying them, giving them more prominence on the stage than they
had had in her own personal life.
Many had thought her a greater actress than a singer; and she had been
advised to dispense with her voice and challenge a verdict on her
speaking voice in one of Shakespeare's plays. Owen would have liked her
to risk the adventure, but she dared not. It would seem a wanton insult
to her voice. She had imagined that it might leave her as an offended
spirit might leave its local habitation. Her Margaret had been accepted
in Italy, so she must sing it as well as she acted it. But when she had
asked the Marquis d'Albazzi if she sang it as well as her mother, he had
said, "Mademoiselle, the singers of my day were as exquisite flutes, and
the singers of your day give emotions that no flute could give me," and
when she had told him that she was going to be so bold as to attempt
Norma, he had raised his eyebrows a little and said, "Mademoiselle will
sing it according to the fashion of to-day; we cannot compare the
present with the past." Ah! _Ce vieux marquis était très fin_. And her
father would think the same; never would he admit that she could sing
like her mother. But Ulick had said--and no doubt he had already read
Ulick's article--that she had rescued the opera from the grave into
which it was gliding. None of them liked it for itself. Her father spoke
indulgently about it because her mother had sung it. Ulick praised it
because he was tired of hearing Wagner praised, and she liked it because
her first success had been made in it.
These morning hours, how delicious they were! to roll over in one's silk
nightgown, to feel it tighten round one's limbs and to think how easily
success had come. Madame Savelli had taught her eight operas in ten
months, and she had sung Margaret in Brussels--a very thin performance,
no doubt, but she had always been a success. Ulick would not have
thought much of her first Margaret. Almost all the points he admired she
had since added. She had learnt the art of being herself on the stage.
That was all she had learnt, and she very much doubted if there was
anything else to learn. If Nature gives one a personality worth
exhibiting, the art of acting is to get as much of one's personality
into the part as possible. That was the A B C and the X Y Z of the art
of acting. She had always found that when she was acting herself, she
was acting something that had not been acted before. She did not compare
her Margaret with her Elizabeth. With Margaret she was back in the
schoolroom. Still she thought that Ulick was right; she had got a new
thrill out of it. Her Margaret was unpublished, but her Elizabeth was
three times as real. There was no comparison; not even in Isolde could
she be more true to herself. Her Elizabeth was a side of her life that
now only existed on the stage. Brunnhilde was her best part, for into it
she poured all her joy of life, all her love of the blue sky with great
white clouds floating, all her enthusiasm for life and for the hero who
came to awaken her to life and to love. In Brunnhilde and Elizabeth all
the humanity she represented--and she thought she was a fairly human
person--was on the stage. But Elsa? That was the one part she was
dissatisfied with. There were people who liked her Elsa. Oh, her Elsa
had been greatly praised. Perhaps she was mistaken, but at the bottom of
her heart she could not but feel that her Elsa was a failure. The truth
was that she had never understood the story. It began beautifully, the
beginning was wonderful--the maiden whom everyone was persecuting, who
would be put to death if some knight did not come to her aid. She could
sing the dream--that she understood. Then the silver-clad knight who
comes from afar, down the winding river, past thorpe and town, to
release her from those who were plotting against her. But afterwards?
This knight who wanted to marry her, and who would not tell his name.
What did it mean? And the celebrated duet in the nuptial chamber--what
did it mean? It was beautiful music--but what did it mean? Could anyone
tell her? She had often asked, but no one had ever been able to tell
her.
She knew very well the meaning of the duet, when Siegfried adventures
through the fire-surrounded mountain and wakes Brunnhilde with a kiss.
That duet meant the joy of life, the rapture of awakening to the
adventure of life, the delight of the swirling current of ephemeral
things. And the duet that she was going to sing; she knew what that
meant too. It meant the desire to possess. Desire finding a barrier to
complete possession in the flesh would break off the fleshly lease, and
enter the great darkness where alone was union and rest.
But she could not discover the idea in the "Lohengrin" duet? Senta she
understood, and she thought she understood Kundry. She had not yet begun
to study the part. But Elsa? Suddenly the thought that, if she was going
to Dulwich, she must get up, struck her like a spur, and she sprang out
of bed, and laying her finger on the electric bell she kept the button
pressed till Merat arrived breathless.
"Merat, I shall get up at once; prepare my bath, and tell the coachman I
shall be ready to start in twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes? Mademoiselle is joking."
"No, I am not ... in twenty minutes--half-an-hour at the most."
"It would be impossible for me to dress you in less than three-quarters
of an hour."
"I shall be dressed in half-an-hour. Go and tell the coachman at once; I
shall have had my bath when you return."
Her dressing was accomplished amid curt phrases. "It doesn't matter,
that will do.... I can't afford to waste time.... Come, Merat, try to
get on with my hair."
And while Merat buttoned her boots, she buttoned her gloves. She wore a
grey, tailor-made dress and a blue veil tied round a black hat with
ostrich feathers. Escaping from her maid's hands, she ran downstairs.
But the dining-room door opened, and Lady Duckle intervened.
"My dear girl, you really cannot go out before you have had something to
eat."
"I cannot stay; I'll get something at the theatre."
"Do eat a cutlet, it will not take a moment ... a mouthful of omelette.
Think of your voice."
There were engravings after Morland on the walls, and the silver on the
breakfast-table was Queen Anne--the little round tea urn Owen and Evelyn
had picked up the other day in a suburban shop; the horses, whose
glittering red hides could be seen through the window, had been bought
last Saturday at Tattersall's. Evelyn went to the window to admire them,
and Lady Duckle's thoughts turned to the coachman.
"He sent in just now to ask for a map of London. It appears he doesn't
know the way, yet, when I took up his references, I was assured that he
knew London perfectly."
"Dulwich is very little known; it is at least five miles from here."
"Oh, Dulwich!... you're going there?"
"Yes, I ought to have gone the day after we arrived in London. ... I
wanted to; I've been thinking of it all the time, and the longer I put
it off the more difficult it will become."
"That is true."
"I thought I would drive there to-day before I went to rehearsal."
"Why choose a day on which you have a rehearsal?"
"Only because I've put it off so often. Something always happens to
prevent me. I must see my father."
"Have you written to him?"
"No, but I sent him a paper containing an account of the first night. I
thought he might have written to me about it, or he might have come to
see me. He must know that I am dying to see him."
"I think it would be better for you to go to see him in the first
instance."
Lady Duckle meant Evelyn to understand that it would not be well to risk
anything that might bring about a meeting between Sir Owen and Mr.
Innes. But she did not dare to be more explicit. Owen had forbidden any
discussion of his relations with Evelyn.
"Of course it would be nice for you to see your father. But you should,
I think, go to him; surely that is the proper course."
"We've written to each other from time to time, but not lately--not
since we went to Greece.... I've neglected my correspondence."
Tears rose to Evelyn's eyes, and Lady Duckle was sorely tempted to lead
her into confidences. But Owen's counsels prevailed; she dissembled,
saying that she knew how Evelyn loved her father, and how nice it would
be for her to see him again after such a long absence.
"I dare say he'll forgive me, but there'll be reproaches. I don't think
there's anyone who hates a scene more than I do."
"I haven't lived with you five years without having found out that. But
in avoiding a disagreeable scene we are often preparing one more
disagreeable."
"That is true.... I think I'll go to Dulwich."
"Shall you have time?... You're not in the first act."
"Dulwich is not six miles from here. We can drive there easily in
three-quarters of an hour. And three-quarters of an hour to get back.
They won't begin to rehearse the second act before one. It is a little
after ten now."
"Then good-bye."
Lady Duckle followed her to the front door and stood for a moment to
admire the beauty of the morning. The chestnut horses pawed the ground
restlessly, excited by the scent of the lilac which a wilful little
breeze carried up from Hamilton Place. Every passing hansom was full of
flowered silks, and the pale laburnum gold hung in loose tassels out of
quaint garden inlets. The verandahed balconies seemed to hang lower than
ever, and they were all hung and burdened with flowers. And of all these
eighteenth century houses, Evelyn's was the cosiest, and the elder of
the two men, who, from the opposite pavement, stood watching the prima
donna stroking the quivering nostrils of her almost thoroughbred
chestnuts with her white-gloved hand, could easily imagine her in her
pretty drawing-room standing beside a cabinet filled with Worcester and
old Battersea china, for he knew Owen's taste and was certain the Louis
XVI. marble clock would be well chosen, and he would have bet
five-and-twenty-pounds that there were some Watteau and Gainsborough
drawings on the walls.
"Owen is doing the thing well. Those horses must have cost four hundred.
I know how much the Boucher drawing cost."
"How do you know there is a Boucher drawing?"
"Because we bid against each other for it at Christie's. A woman lying
on her stomach, drawn very freely, very simply--quite a large
drawing--just the thing for such a room as hers is, amid chintz and
eighteenth century inlaid or painted tables."
"I wonder where she is going. Perhaps to see him."
"At ten o'clock in the morning! More likely that she will call at her
dressmaker's on her way to rehearsal. She is to sing Elizabeth to-morrow
night." And while discussing her singing, the elder man asked himself if
he had ever had a mistress that would compare with her. "She isn't by
any means a beautiful woman," he said, "but she's the sort of woman that
if one did catch on to it would be for a long while."
The young man pitied Evelyn's misfortune of so elderly an admirer as
Owen. It seemed to him impossible that she could like a man who must be
over forty, and the thought saddened him that he might never possess so
desirable a mistress.
"I wonder of she's faithful to him?"
"Faithful to him, after six years of _liaison!_"
"But, my dear Frank, we know you don't believe that any woman is
straight. How do you know that he is her lover? Very often--"
"My dear Cyril, because you meet her at a ball at Lady Ascott's, and
because she has lived with that Lady Duckle--an old thing who used to
present the daughters of ironmongers at Court for a consideration--above
all, because you want her yourself, you are ready to believe anything. I
never did meet anyone who could deceive himself with the same ease.
Besides, I know all about her. It's quite an extraordinary story."
"How did he pick her up?"
"I'll tell you presently. She's got into her carriage; we shall be able
to see if she rouges as she passes."
Evelyn had noticed the men as she stood trying to explain as much of the
way as she could to her somewhat obtuse coachman. Her bow was gracious
as the chestnuts swept the light carriage by them; the young man pleased
her fancy for the moment, and she tried to recall the few words they had
exchanged as she left the ball. The elder man was a friend of Owen's.
But his face was suddenly blotted from her mind. For if her father were
to refuse to see her, if he were to cast her off for good and all, what
would she do? Her life would be unendurable; she would go mad, mad as
Margaret. But the picture did not frighten her, she knew it was
fictitious; and looking into her soul for the truth, she saw the trees
in the Green Park and the chimney pots of Walsingham House, and she
realised that the nearest future is enveloped in obscurity. She had
always dreaded the journey to London; she had been warned against
London, and ever since she had consented to come she had been ill at
ease and nervous--of what she did not know--of someone behind her, of
someone lurking round her. She argued that she would not have had those
feelings if there was not a reason. When she had them, something always
happened to her, and nothing could convince her that London was not the
turning-point in her fortune. The carriage seemed to be going very fast;
they were already in Victoria Street; she cried to the coachman not to
drive so fast, he answered that he must drive at that pace if he was to
get there by eleven.... Surely her father would not refuse to see her.
He could not, he would not take her by the shoulders and turn her out
of the house--the house she had known all her life. Oh, good heavens! if
he did, what would happen afterwards? She could not go back to Owen and
sing operas at Covent Garden, and her soul wailed like a child and a
deadly terror of her father came upon her. It might be her destiny never
to speak to him again! That fate had been the fate of other women. Why
should it not be hers? He might not send for her when he was dying, and
if she were dying he might not come to her; and after death, would she
see him? Would they then be reconciled? If she did not see her father in
this world, she would never see him, for she had promised Owen to
believe in oblivion, and she thought she did believe in nothing; but she
felt now that she must say her prayers, she must pray that her father
might forgive her. It might be absurd, but she felt that a prayer would
ease her mind. It was dreadfully hypocritical to pray to a God one
didn't believe in. There was no sense in it, nor was there much sense in
much else one did.... She had promised Owen not to pray, and it was a
sort of blasphemy to say prayers and lead a life of sin. She did not
like to break her promise to Owen. She must make up her mind.... Her
father might be at St. Joseph's! and it was with a sense of refreshing
delight that she called the coachman and gave the order. The chestnuts
were prancing like greyhounds amid heavy drays and clumsy, bear-like
horses; the coachman was trying to hold them in and to understand the
policeman, who shouted the way to him from the edge of the pavement.