She could see he was troubled, and that she grieved him, and at one
moment it was uncertain whether she would not renounce her visit and
send Ulick a telegram. But she remembered that he had probably seen her
father, and would be able to tell her more of what her father thought of
her Elizabeth. It was that feeble excuse that sufficed to decide her
conduct, and she bade him good-bye.
Standing on the threshold of her drawing-room, Evelyn admired its
symmetry and beauty. The wall paper, a delicate harmony in pale brown
and pink roses, soothed the eye; the design was a lattice, through which
the flowers grew. An oval mirror hung lengthwise above the white marble
chimney piece, and the Louis XV. clock was a charming composition of two
figures. A Muse in a simple attitude leaned a little to the left in
order to strike the lyre placed above the dial; on the other side, a
Cupid listened attentive for the sound of the hour, presumably his hour.
There was a little lyrical inevitableness in the lines of this clock,
and Owen could not come into the room without admiring it. On the
chimney piece there were two bowls filled with violets, and the flowers
partly hid the beautiful Worcester blue and the golden pheasants. And on
either side of the clock were two Chelsea groups, factitious bowers made
out of dark green shell-like leaves, in which were seated a lady in a
flowered silk and a beribboned shepherd playing a flute.
They had spent long mornings seeking a real Sheraton sofa, with six or
eight chairs to match. For a long time they were unfortunate, but they
had happened upon two sofas, certainly of the period, probably made by
Sheraton himself. A hundred and twenty years had given a beautiful
lustre to the satinwood and to the painted garlands of flowers, and the
woven cane had attained a rich brown and gold; and the chairs that went
with the sofa were works of art, so happy were the proportions of their
thin legs and backs, and in the middle of the backs the circle of
harmonious cane was in exquisite proportion.
For a long while the question for immediate decision had become what
carpet should be there. Evelyn had happened upon an old Aubusson carpet,
a little threadbare, but the dealer had assured her that it could be
made as good as new, and she had telegraphed to Owen to go to see its
pale roses and purple architecture. He had written to her that its
harmony was as florid, and yet as classical as an aria by Mozart. He was
still more pleased when he saw it down, and he had spent hours thinking
of what pictures would suit it, would carry on its colour and design.
The Boucher drawing which he had bought at Christie's had seemed to him
the very thing. He had brought it home in a cab.
She was proud of her room, but she was doubtful if it would please
Ulick, and was curious to hear what he would think of it. She remembered
that Owen had said that such exquisite exteriorities were only possible
in a pagan century, when man is content to look no farther than this
strip of existence for the reason of his existence and his birthright.
And while waiting for Ulick she wondered what his rooms were like, and
if she would ever go there. She expected him about five, and she sat
waiting for him by her tea-table amid the eighteenth century furniture,
a little to the right of the Boucher.
She watched him as he came towards her, expecting and hoping to see him
cast a quick glance at the picture. He shook hands with her vaguely, and
sat down on a Sheraton chair and fixed his eyes on the Aubusson carpet.
She thought for some time that he was examining it, but at last the
truth dawned; he did not see it at all, he was maybe a thousand years
away, lost in some legendary past. Had she not seen him before pass from
such remote mood and become suddenly animated and gay, she would have
despaired of any pleasure in his visit. Above everything else she was
minded to ask him if he had seen her father, and if her father had
spoken to him about her Elizabeth. But shyness prevented her, and she
spoke to him about ordinary things, and he answered her questions
perfunctorily, and without any apparent reason he got up and walked
about the room; but not looking at any object, he walked about, with
hanging head, absorbed in thought. "If he won't look at me he might look
at my room, I'm sure that is pretty enough," and she sat watching him
with smiling eyes. When she asked him what he thought of the Boucher, he
said that no doubt it was very graceful, but that the only art he took
interest in, except Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci and some German
Primitives, was Blake. Then he seemed to forget all about her, and she
had begun to think his manner more than usually unconventional, and,
having made all the ordinary remarks she could think of, she asked him
suddenly if he had seen her father, and if he had said anything to him
about her Elizabeth.
"I went to Dulwich on purpose to hear."
She blushed, and was very happy. It was delicious to hear that he was
sufficiently interested in her to go to Dulwich on purpose to inquire
her father's opinion of her Elizabeth.
"I wonder if he will like my Isolde as well."
He did not answer, and his silence filled her with inquietude.
"I have been thinking over what you said regarding your conception of
the part."
She waited for him to tell her what conclusion he had come to, but he
said nothing. At last he got up, and she followed him to the piano. When
she came to the passage where Isolde tells Brangäne that she intended to
kill Tristan, he stopped.
"But she is violent; hear these chords, how aggressive they are. The
music is against you. Listen to these chords."
"I know those chords well enough. You don't suppose I am listening to
them for the first time. I admit that there are a few places where she
is distinctly violent. The curse must be given violently, but I think it
is possible to make it felt that her violence is a sexual violence, a
sort of wish to go mad. I can't explain. Can't you understand?"
"Yes, I think I do; you want to sing the first part of the act
languidly. There is more in the music which supports your reading than I
thought. In the passage where Isolde says to Brangäne, but really to
herself, 'To die without having been loved by that man!' the love motive
appears here for the first time, but more drawn out, broader than
elsewhere."
She declared that Wagner had emphasised his meaning in this passage as
if he had anticipated all the misreadings of this first act, and was
striving to guard himself against them. She grew excited in the
discussion. She had merely followed her instinct, but she was glad that
Ulick had challenged her reading, for as they examined the music clause
by clause, they found still further warrant for her conception.
"Ah, the old man knew what he was doing," she said; "he had marked this
passage to be sung gloomily, and by gloomily he meant infinite
lassitude." But this intention had not been grasped, and the singers had
either sung it without any particular expression, or with a stupid stage
expression which meant if possible something less than nothing. "Then,
you see, if I sing the first half of the first act as wearily as the
music allows me, I shall get a contrast--an Isolde who has not drunk the
love potion. The love potion is of course only a symbol of her surrender
to her desire."
Ulick would have liked to have gone through the whole of the music of
the act with her. It was only in this way that he could get an idea of
how her reading would work out. But in that moment each read in the
other's eyes an avowal of which they were immediately ashamed, and which
they tried to dissimulate.
"I am tired. We won't have any more music this evening."
His thoughts seemed to pass suddenly from her, and then, without her
being aware how it began, she found herself listening intently to him.
He was talking in that strange, rhythmical chant of his about the primal
melancholy of man, and his remote past always insurgent in him. Although
she did not quite understand, perhaps because she did not quite
understand, she was carried away far out of all reason, and it seemed to
her that she could listen for ever. Nor could she clearly see out of her
eyes, and she felt all power of resistance dissolve within her. He might
have taken her in his arms and kissed her then; but though sitting by
her, he seemed a thousand miles away; his remoteness chastened her, and
she asked him of what he was thinking.
"When your father used to speak of you, I used to see you; sometimes I
used to fancy I heard you. I did hear you once sing in a dream."
"What was I singing? Wagner?"
"No; something quite different. I forgot it all as I awoke except the
last notes. I seemed to have returned from the future--you seemed in the
end to lose your voice.... I cannot tell you--I forget."
"It is very sad; how sad such feelings are."
"But I never doubted that I should meet you, that our destinies were
knit together--for a time at least."
She wanted to ask him by what signs do we recognise the moment that we
are destined to meet the one that is more important to us than all the
world. But she could find no way of asking this question that would not
betray her. She could not put it so that Ulick would fail to read some
application of the question to herself, and to himself. So it seemed
strange indeed that he should, as if in answer to her unexpressed
thought, say that the instinct of man is to consult the stars. She
remembered the evenings when she used to go into the patch of black
garden and gaze at the stars till her brain reeled. She used even to
gather the daffodils and place them on the wall in homage to the star
which she felt to be hers. She could not refrain from this idolatrous
act; but in her bed at night, thinking of the flowers and the star, she
had believed herself mad or very wicked; for nothing in the world would
she have had anyone know her folly, and she remembered the agony it had
been to her to confess it. But now she heard that she had been acting
according to the sense of the wisdom of generations. As he had said,
"according to the immortal atavism of man."
With her ordinary work-a-day intelligence, she felt that the stars could
not possibly be concerned in our miserable existence. But deep down in
her being someone who was not herself, but who seemed inseparable from
her, and over whom she had no slightest control, seemed to breathe
throughout her entire being an affirmation of her celestial dependency.
She could catch no words, merely a vague, immaterial destiny like
distant music; and her ears filled with a wailing certitude of an
inseverable affinity with the stars, and she longed to put off this
shameful garb of flesh and rise to her spiritual destiny of which the
stars are our watchful guardians. It was like deep music; words could
not contain it, it was a deep and indistinct yearning for the stars--for
spiritual existence. She was conscious of the narrowness of the
prison-house into which Owen had shut her, and looking at Ulick, she
felt the thrill of liberation; it was like a ray of light dividing the
dark. Looking at Ulick, she was startled by the conviction of his
indispensability in her life, and the knowledge that she must repel him
was an acute affliction, a desolate despair. It seemed cruel and
disastrous that she might not love him, for it was only through love
that she could get to understand him, and life without knowledge of him
seemed failure.
"I'm very fond of you, Ulick, but I mustn't let you kiss me. Can't we
be friends?"
He sat leaning a little forward, his head bent and his eyes on the
carpet. He represented to her an abysmal sorrow--an extraordinary
despair. She longed to share this sorrow, to throw her arms about him
and make him glad. Their love seemed so good and natural, she was
surprised that she might not.
"Ulick."
"Yes, Evelyn."
He looked round the room, saw it was getting late, and that it was time
for him to go.
"Yes, it is getting late. I suppose you must go. But you'll come to see
me again. We shall be friends, promise me that ... that whatever happens
we shall be friends."
"I think that we shall always be friends, I feel that."
His answer seemed to her insufficient, and they stood looking at each
other. When the door closed after him, Evelyn turned away, thinking that
if he had stayed another moment she must have thrown herself into his
arms.