The music-room had seemed haunted with Owen's voice, and yesterday she
had asked Ulick to walk with her in the lanes so that she might escape
from it. But to-day half-pleased, half-perplexed by her own perversity,
she could not resist taking him to the picture gallery--she wanted to
show him "The Colonnade."
The picture was merged in shadow, and no longer the picture she
remembered; but when the sun shone, all the rows quickened with amorous
intrigue, and the little lady held out her striped skirt (she had lost
none of her bland delight), and the gentleman who advanced to meet her
bowed with the mock humility of yore, and the beautiful perspectives of
the colonnade floated into the hush of the trees, and the fountain
warbled.
For a reason which eluded her, she was anxious to know how this picture
would strike Ulick, and she tried to draw from him his ideas concerning
it.
"Their thoughts," he said, "are not in their evening parade; something
quite different is happening in their hearts...." And while waiting for
her parasol and his stick, he said--
"I can see that you always liked that picture; you've seen it often
before."
She had been longing to speak of Owen. He seemed always about them, and
in phantasmal presence he seemed to sunder them, to stand jailor-like.
It was only by speaking of Owen that his interdiction could be removed,
and she said that she had often been to the gallery with him. Having
said so much, it was easy to tell Ulick of the story of the three days
of hesitation which had preceded her elopement.
"The Colonnade," and "The Lady playing the Virginal," had seemed to her
symbols of the different lives which that day had been pressed upon her
choice. Ulick explained that Fate and free will are not as
irreconcilable as they seem. For before birth it is given to us to
decide whether we shall accept or reject the gift of life. So we are at
once the creatures and the arbiters of destiny. These metaphysics
excited and then eluded her perceptions, and she hastened to tell him
how she had stood at the corner of Berkeley Square, seeing the season
passing under the green foliage, thinking how her life was summarised in
a single moment. She remembered even the lady who wore the bright
irises in her bonnet; but she neglected to mention her lest Ulick should
think that it was memory of this woman's horses that had decided her to
the choice of her pair of chestnuts. She told him about the journey to
France, the buying of the trousseau, and the day that Madame Savelli had
said, "If you'll stay with me a year, I'll make something wonderful of
you." She told him how Owen had sent her to the Bois by herself, and the
madness that had risen to her brain: and how near she had been to
standing up in the carriage and asking the people to listen to her. She
told the tale of all this mental excitement fluently, volubly, carried
away by the narrative. Suddenly she ceased speaking, and sat absorbed by
the mystery.
She sat looking into that corner of the garden where the gardener on a
high ladder worked his shears without pausing. The light branches fell,
and she thought of how she had grown up in this obscure suburb amid old
instruments and old music. She remembered her yearning for fame and
love; now she had both, love and fame. But within herself nothing was
changed; the same little soul was now as it had been long ago, she could
hear it talking, living its intense life within her unknown to everyone,
an uncommunicable thing, unchanged among much change. She remembered how
Owen, like Siegfried, had come to release her, and all the exhausting
passion of that time. She had sat with him under this very tree. She was
sitting there now with Ulick. Everything was changed, yet everything was
the same.... She was going to fall in love with another man, that was
all.
She awoke with a start, frightened as by a dream; and before she had
time to inquire of herself if the dream might come true, she remembered
the girl with whom Ulick used to play Mozart in a drawing-room hung with
faded tapestries. She feared that he would divulge nothing, and to her
surprise he told her that it had happened two years ago at Dieppe, where
he had gone for a month's holiday. At that time when he was writing
"Connla and the Fairy Maiden." He had composed a great deal of the music
by the sea-shore and in sequestered woods; and to assist himself in the
composition of the melodies, he used to take his violin with him. One
day, while wandering along the dusty high road on the look out for a
secluded, shady place, he had come upon what seemed to be a private
park. It was guarded by a high wall, and looking through an iron gate
that had been left ajar, he was tempted by the stillness of the glades.
"A music-haunted spot if ever there was one," he said to himself; and
encouraged by the persuasion of a certain melody which he felt he could
work out there, and nowhere but there, he pushed the gate open, and
entered the park. A perfect place it seemed to him, no one but the birds
to hear him, and the sun's rays did not pierce the thick foliage of the
sycamore grove. Never did place correspond more intimately with the mood
of the moment, and he played his melody over and over again, every now
and then stopping to write. Her step was so light, and he was so deep to
his music, that he did not hear it.... She had been listening doubtless
for some time before he had seen her. He spoke very little French, and
she very little English, but he easily understood that she wished him to
go on playing. A little later her father and mother had come through the
trees; she had held up her hand, bidding them be silent. Ulick could see
by the way they listened that they were musicians. So he was invited to
the villa which stood in the centre of the park, and till the end of his
holiday he went there every day. The girl--Eliane was her beautiful
name--was an exquisite musician. They had played Mozart in the room hung
with faded tapestries, or, beguiled by the sunshine, they had walked in
the park. When Evelyn asked him what they said, he answered simply, "We
said that we loved each other." But when he returned to Dieppe three
months later, all was changed. When he spoke of their marriage she
laughed the question away, and he perceived that his visits were not
desired; on returning to England, all his letters were returned to
him.... Soon after she married a Protestant clergyman, and last year she
had had a baby.
He sat absorbed in the memory of this passion, and Evelyn and the garden
were perceived in glimpses between scenes of youthful exaltations and
romantic indiscretions. He remembered how he had threatened to throw
himself from her window for no other reason except the desire of
romantic action; and while he sat absorbed in the past, Evelyn watched
him, nervous and irritated, striving to read in his face how much of the
burden had fallen from him, and how free his heart might be to accept
another love story.
As he sat in the garden under the calm cedar tree he dreamed of a
reconciliation with Eliane. He even speculated on the effect that the
score of his opera would have upon her if he were to send it--all that
music composed in her honour. But which opera? Not "Connla and the Fairy
Maiden," for a great deal of it was crude, thin, absurd. No; he could
not send it. But he might send "Grania." Yes, he would send "Grania"
when he had finished it. To arrive suddenly from England, to cast
himself at her feet--that might move her. Then, with a sigh, "These are
things we dream of," he thought, "but never do. Only in dreams do men
set forth in quest of the ideal."
He looked up, Evelyn's eyes were fixed on him, and he felt like Bran
returning home after his voyage to the wondrous isles.
They saw the footman coming across the green sward. He had come to tell
her that Mr. Innes was waiting for her. She was taking him to St.
Joseph's. But there was not room in the victoria for three, and Ulick
would have to go back to London by train.
"But you will come and see me soon? You promised to go through the
'Isolde' music with me. Will you come to-morrow?"
Her clear, delightful eyes were fixed upon him; he felt for the first
time the thrill of her personality; their light caused him to hesitate,
and then to accept her invitation eagerly. He heard her remind her
father that he had promised to come to-night to hear her sing Elizabeth.
He would be there too. He would see her to-night as well, and he stood
watching the beautiful horses bearing father and daughter swiftly away.
The shady Dulwich street dozed under a bright sky, and the bloom of the
flowering trees was shedding its fine dust. He thought of Palestrina and
Wagner, and a delicious little breeze sent a shower of bloom about his
feet, as if to remind him of the pathos of the passing illusion of which
we are a part. He stood watching the carriage, and the happiness and the
sorrow of things choked him when he turned away.
She was happy with her father, and she felt that he loved her better
than any lover. The unique experience of taking him to St. Joseph's in
her carriage, and the event of singing to him that night at Covent
Garden, absorbed her, and she dozed in her happiness like a beautiful
rose. Never had she been so happy. She was happier than she merited. The
thought passed like a little shadow, and a moment after all was
brightness again. Her father was the real love of her life; the rest was
mere excitement, and she wondered why she sought it; it only made her
unhappy. Monsignor was right.... But she did not wish to think of him.
On the steps of St. Joseph's, she bade her father good-bye, and remained
looking back till she could see him no more. Then she settled herself
comfortably under her parasol, intent on the enjoyment of their
reconciliation. The two days she had spent with him looked back upon her
like a dream from which she had only just awakened. As in a dream, there
were blurred outlines and places where the line seemed to have so faded
that she could no longer trace it. The most distinct picture was when
she stood, her hand affectionately laid on his shoulder, singing Ulick's
music. She had forgotten the music and Ulick himself, but her father,
how near she was to him in all her sympathies and instincts! Another
moment, equally distinct, was when she had looked up and seen him in the
choir loft conducting with calm skill.
He was coming to-night to hear her sing Elizabeth; that was the great
event, for without his approval all the newspapers in the world were as
nothing, at least to her. She hummed a little to herself to see if she
were in voice. To convince him that she sang as well as mother was out
of the question, but she might be able to convince him that she could do
something that mother could not have done. It was strange that she
always thought of mother in connection with her voice; the other singers
did not seem to matter; they might sing better or worse, but the sense
of rivalry was not so intimate. The carriage crossed Westminster Bridge,
and as she looked down the swirling muddy current, her mother's face
seemed to appear to her. In some strange way her mother had always
seemed more real than her father. Her father lived on the surface of
things, in this life, whereas her mother seemed independent of time and
circumstance, a sort of principle, an eternal essence, a spirit which
she could often hear speaking to her far down in her heart. Since she
had seen her mother's portrait, this sensation had come closer; and
Evelyn drew back as if she felt the breath of the dead on her face, as
if a dead hand had been laid upon hers. The face she saw was grey,
shadowy, unreal, like a ghost; the eyes were especially distinct, her
mother seemed aware of her; but though Evelyn sought for it, she could
not detect any sign of disapproval in her face. She looked always like a
grey shadow; she moved like a shadow. Evelyn was often tempted to ask
her mother to speak. Her prayer had always been a doubting, hesitating
prayer, perhaps that was why it had not been granted. But now, sitting
in her carriage in a busy thoroughfare, she seemed to see over the brink
of life, she seemed to see her mother in a grey land lit with stars. She
recalled Ulick's tales of evocation, and wondered if it were possible to
communicate with her mother. But even if she could speak with her, she
thought that she would shrink from doing so. She thought of what Ulick
had said regarding the gain and loss of soul, how we can allow our soul
to dwindle, and how we can increase it until communion with the
invisible world is possible. She felt that it were a presumption to
limit life to what we see, and Owen's argument that ignorance was the
cause of belief in ghosts and spirits seemed to her poor indeed. Man
would not have entertained such beliefs for thousands of years if they
had been wholly false.
Ulick was coming to-morrow. But he was going to read through Isolde's
music with her, and she could hardly fail to learn something, to pick up
a hint which she might turn to account.... Her conduct had been
indiscreet; she had encouraged him to make love to her. But in this case
it did not matter; he was a man who did not care about women, and she
recalled all he had said to convince herself on this point. However this
might be, the idea of her falling in love with him was out of the
question. A second lover stripped a woman of every atom of self-esteem,
and she glanced into her soul, convinced that she was sincere with
herself, sure or almost sure that what she had said expressed her
feelings truthfully. But in spite of her efforts to be sincere, there
was a corner of her soul into which she dared not look, and her thoughts
drew back as if they feared a lurking beast.
Immediately after, she remembered that she had vowed in church that she
would ask Owen to marry her. Owen would say yes at once, he would want
to marry her at the end of the week; and once she was married, she would
have to leave the stage. She would not be able to play Isolde.... But
she knew the part! it would seem silly to give up the stage on the eve
of her appearance in the part. It would be such a disappointment to so
many people. All London was looking forward to seeing her sing Isolde.
Mr. Hermann Goetze, what would he say? He would be entitled to
compensation. A nice sum Owen would have to pay for the pleasure of
marrying her. If she were to pay the indemnity--could she? It would
absorb all her savings. More than all. She did not think she could have
saved more than six or seven thousand pounds. The manager might claim
twenty. Her thoughts merged into vague calculations regarding the value
of her jewellery.... Even Owen would not care to pay twenty thousand
pounds so that he might marry her this season instead of next. Next year
she was going to sing Kundry! Her face tightened in expression, and a
painful languor seemed to weaken and ruin all her tissues. He might ask
her why she had so suddenly determined to accept what she had often
avoided, put aside, postponed. She would have to give some reason. If
she didn't, he would suspect--what would he suspect? That she was in
love with Ulick?
She might tell Owen that she wished to be married on account of scruples
of conscience. But she had better not speak of Monsignor. Any mention of
a priest was annoying to him. In that respect he was even more
arbitrary, more violent than ever. But a sudden desire to see him arose
in her, and she told the coachman to drive to Berkeley Square.
The trees wore their first verdure, and there was a melody among the
boughs, and she took pleasure in the graceful female figure pouring
water from the long-necked ewer. She lay back in her carriage, imitating
the lady she had seen six years ago, regretting that she would not know
her if she were to meet her; she might be one of her present friends.
Owen's house had been freshly painted that spring, its balcony was full
of flowers chosen by herself, and arranged according to her taste ...
and a pleasant look of recognition lit up in the eyes of the footmen in
the hall, and the butler, whom Evelyn remembered since the first day she
came to Berkeley Square, was sorry indeed that Sir Owen was out. But he
was sure that Sir Owen would not be long. Would she wait in Sir Owen's
room, or would she like lunch to be served at once? She said she would
wait in Sir Owen's room, and she walked across the hall, smiling at the
human nature of the servants' admiration. If their master had a
mistress, they were glad that he had one they could boast about. And
picking up two songs by Schubert, and hoping she was in good voice, she
sat down at the piano and sang them. Then, half aware that she was
singing unusually well, she sang another. The third song she sang so
beautifully that Owen stood on the threshold loth to interrupt her, and
when she got up from the piano he said--
"Why on earth don't you sing like that on the stage?"
"Ah, if one only could," she said, laughing, and taking him by the hand,
she led him to the sofa and sat beside him as if for a long talk.
"Yes," she said, "I've seen him. It's all right."
"I'm so glad. I hope you said something in my favour. I don't want him
to think me a brute, a villainous seducer, the man who ruined his
daughter?"
"No, there was nothing of that kind."
She began at first very gravely, but her natural humour overcame her,
and she made him laugh, with her account of her wooing of her father,
and the part the new harpsichord had played in their reconciliation
delighted him. He was full of pleasant comments, gay and sympathetic; he
was interested in her account of Ulick, and said he would like to know
him. This pleased her, and looking into Owen's eyes, she wondered if she
should ask him to marry her. They talked of their friends, of the
performance that night at the opera, and Evelyn thought that perhaps
Owen ought not to go there lest he should meet her father, and she
remembered that she had only to ask him to marry her in order to make it
quite easy for him to meet her father. Every moment she thought she was
going to ask him; she determined to introduce the subject in the first
pause in the conversation, but when the pause came she didn't or
couldn't; her tongue did not seem to obey her. She talked instead things
that did not interest either her or him--the general principles of
Wagner's music, or some technicality, whether she should insist on the
shepherd's song being played on the English horn. At last she felt that
she could not continue, so fictitious and strained did the conversation
seem to her.
"Are you going already? I've not seen you for four days. We are dining
to-morrow at Lady Merrington's."
Owen hoped that she would sing there the three songs which she had just
sung so well, but she answered instantly that she did not think she
would, that she wanted to sing Ulick's songs. She knew that this second
mention of Ulick's name would rouse suspicion; she tried to keep it
back, but it escaped her lips. She was sorry, for she did not think that
she wished to annoy. She would not stop to lunch, though she could not
urge any better reason than that Lady Duckle was waiting for her, and
when he wished to kiss her, she turned her head aside; a moody look
collected in her eyes, an ugly black resentment gathered in her heart;
she was ashamed of herself, for there was nothing to warrant her being
so disagreeable, and to pass the matter off, she described herself as
being aggressively virtuous that morning.
On her singing nights she dined at half-past five, and the interval
after dinner she spent in looking through her part, humming bits of it
to herself, but to-day Lady Duckle was quick to remark the score of
"Tannhäuser" in her hand. She sat with it on her knees, looking at it
only occasionally, for she was thinking how the music would appeal to
her father, and how her mother would have sung it. But she had to
abandon these vain speculations. She must play the part as she felt it,
to tamper with her conception would be to court failure. To please
herself was her only chance of pleasing her father; if he did not like
her reading of the part, if her singing did not please him, it was very
unfortunate, but could not be helped. And when the carriage came to take
her to the theatre, she was not sure that she would not be glad to
receive a telegram saying that he was prevented from coming. She was
very nervous while dressing, and on coming downstairs she stood watching
the stage-box where he was sitting. She could distinguish his handsome,
grave face through the shadows, and the orchestra was playing that
rather rhetorical address to the halls which neither she nor Ulick cared
much about. She waited, forgetful of her entrance, and she had to hurry
round to the back of the stage.
But the moment the curtain went up, she became the mediæval German
princess; her other life fell behind her, and her father was but a
little shadow on her brain. Yet he was the inspiration of her acting,
and that night the whole theatre consisted for Evelyn of one stage-box.
Her eyes never wandered there, but she knew that there sat her ultimate
judge, one whom no excess or trick could deceive. He would not judge her
by the mere superficial appearance she presented on the stage, by the
superficial qualities of her voice or her acting; he would see to the
origin of the idea, whence it had sprung, and how it had been developed.
He did not know this particular opera, but he knew all music, and would
judge it and her not according to the capricious taste of the moment,
but in its relation and her relation to the immutable canons of art,
from the plain chant to Palestrina, from Palestrina to Bach and
Beethoven. Her singing of every phrase would be passed as it were
through the long tradition of the centuries; it would not be accepted as
an isolated fact, it would be judged good, indifferent or bad, by
learned technical comparison. That she was his daughter would weigh not
a hair's weight in the scale, and the knowledge of this terrible justice
raised her out of herself, detached her more completely from the
superficial and the vulgar. She sang and acted as in a dream,
hypnotised by her audience, her exaltation steeped in somnambulism and
steeped in ecstasy.
The curtain was raised several times, but that night the only applause
or censure she was minded to hear awaited her in her dressing-room. She
sent her maid out of the room, and waited for some sound of footsteps in
the corridor, and at the first sound she rushed to the door and flung it
open. It was her father, Merat was bringing him along the corridor, and
they stood looking at each other; her clear, nervous eyes were trembling
with emotion. His face seemed to tell her that he was pleased; she read
upon it the calm exaltation of art, yet she could not however summon
sufficient courage to ask him, and they sat down side by side. At last
she said--
"Why don't you speak? Aren't you satisfied? Was I so bad?"
"You are a great artist, Evelyn. I wish your mother were here to hear
you."
"Is that really true? Say it again, father. You are satisfied with me.
Then I have succeeded."
He told her why she had sung well, and he knew so well. It was like
walking with a man with a lantern; when he raised the light, she could
see a little farther into the darkness. But she had still the prayer to
sing to him. She wanted to know what he would think of her singing of
the prayer. The voice of the call-boy interrupted them. She sang the
prayer more purely than ever, and the flutes and clarionettes led her up
a shining road, and when she walked up the stage she seemed to disappear
amid the palpitation of the stars.
Her father was waiting for her, and on their way to the station she
could see that he was absorbed in her art of singing. His remarks were
occasional and disparate, but she guessed his train of thought,
supplying easily the missing links. His praise was all inferential, and
this made it more delicate and delicious. On bidding him good-night he
asked her to come to choir practice. She would have liked to, but her
accompanist was coming at half-past ten.
There were few days when she was not singing at night that she dispensed
with her morning's work. She considered herself like a gymnast, bound to
go through her feats in private, so as to assure herself of her power of
being able to go through them in public. Even when she knew a part, she
did not like to sing it many times without studying it afresh. She
believed that once a week was as often as it was possible to give a
Wagner opera, and even then an occasional rehearsal was indispensable if
the first high level of excellence was to be maintained.
With her morning's work she allowed no one to interfere. Owen was often
sent away, or retained for such a time as his criticism might be of use.
But to-day she was expecting Ulick; he had promised to go through the
music with her; so when Merat came to tell her that the pianist had
arrived, she hesitated, uncertain whether she should send him away. But
after a moment's reflection she decided not to forego her serious study
of the part. She only wished to talk to Ulick about the music, to sing
bits of it here and there, to question him regarding certain readings,
to get at his ideas concerning it. All that was very interesting and
very valuable in a way, but it was not hard work, and she felt,
moreover, that hard work was just what she wanted before the rehearsals
of "Tristan" began; there were certain passages where she was not sure
of herself. She thought of the cry Isolde utters in the third act when
Tristan falls dead. The orchestra comes in then in a way very perplexing
for the singer, and she had not yet succeeded in satisfying herself with
those few bars.
"Tell the young man that I shall be with him in half an hour."
And when she had had her bath and her hair was dressed, she tied a few
petticoats round her waist and slipped on a morning wrapper; that was
enough, she paid no heed to her accompanist, treating him as if he were
her hairdresser. She sang sitting close to his elbow, her arm familiarly
laid upon the back of his chair, a little grey woollen shawl round her
shoulders. In the passages requiring the whole of her voice, she got up
and sang them right through, as if she were on the stage, listened to by
five thousand people. Owen, accustomed as he was to her voice, sometimes
couldn't help wondering at the power of it; the volume of sound issuing
from her throat drowned the piano, threatening to break its strings. Her
ear was so fine that it detected any slightest tampering with the text.
"You have given me a false chord," she would say; and sure enough, the
pianist's fingers had accidentally softened some harshness. Sometimes he
ventured a slight criticism. "You should hold the note a little longer."
Then she would sing the passage again.
After singing for about two hours she had lunch. That day she was
lunching with Lady Ascott, and did not get away until after three
o'clock. Owen came to fetch her, and they went away to see pictures. But
more present than the pictures were Ulick's dark eyes, and Owen noticed
the shadow passing constantly behind her eyes. Twice she asked him what
the time was, and she told him she would have to go soon.