by George Moore
A moment after madame entered.
She was of medium height, thin and somewhat flat-chested. Her hair was iron-grey, and the face was marked with patches of vivid colouring. The mouth was a long, determined line, and the lines of the hips asserted themselves beneath the black silk dress. She glanced quickly at Evelyn as she went towards Sir Owen.
“This is the young lady of whom you spoke to me?”
“Yes, madame, it is she. Let me introduce you. Madame Savelli — Miss Evelyn Innes.”
“Does mademoiselle wish to sing as a professional or as an amateur?”
The question was addressed at once to Evelyn and to Owen, and, while Evelyn hesitated with the French words, Owen answered —
“Mademoiselle will be guided by your advice.”
“They all say that; however, we shall see. Will mademoiselle sing to me? Does mademoiselle speak French?”
“Yes, a little,” Evelyn replied, timidly.
“Oh, very good. Has mademoiselle studied music?”
“Yes; my father is a musician, but he only cares for the very early music, and I have hardly ever touched a piano, but I play the harpsichord.... My instrument is the viola da gamba.”
“The harpsichord and the viola da gamba! That is very interesting, but” — and Madame Savelli laughed good-naturedly— “unfortunately we have no harpsichord here, nor yet a spinet only the humble piano.”
“Miss Innes will be quite satisfied with your piano, Madame Savelli.”
“Now, Sir Owen, I will not have you get cross with me. I must always have my little pleasantry. Does he get cross with you like that, Miss Innes?”
“I didn’t get cross with you, Madame Savelli.”
“You wanted to, but I would not let you — and because I regretted I had not a harpsichord, only a humble piano! Mademoiselle knows, I suppose, all the church songs. I only know operas.... You see, Sir Owen, you cannot silence me; I will have my little pleasantry. I only know opera, and have nothing but the humble piano. But, joking apart, mademoiselle wants to study serious opera.”
“Yes; mademoiselle intends to study for the stage, not for the church.”
“Then I will teach her.”
“You have three classes here. Mademoiselle would like to go into the opera class.”
“In the opera class I How you do go on, Sir Owen! If mademoiselle can go into the opera class next year, I shall be more than satisfied, astonished.”
“Perhaps you’ll be able to say better if mademoiselle will be able to go into the opera class when you have heard her sing.”
“But I know, my dear Sir Owen, that is impossible. You don’t believe me. Well, I am prepared to be surprised. It matters not to me. Mademoiselle can go into the opera class in three months if she is sufficiently advanced. Will mademoiselle sing to me? Are these her songs?” Madame Savelli took the music out of Sir Owen’s hands. “I can see that this music would sound better on the harpsichord or the spinet.... Now, Sir Owen, I see you are getting angry again.”
“I’m not angry, Madame Savelli — no one could be angry with you — only mademoiselle is rather nervous.”
“Then perhaps my pleasantry was inexpedient. Let me see — this is it, isn’t it?” she said, running her fingers through the first bars.... “But perhaps you would like to accompany mademoiselle?”
“Which would you like, Evelyn?”
“You, dear; I should be too nervous with Madame Savelli.”
Owen explained, and madame gave him her place at the piano with alacrity, and took a seat far away by the fireplace. Evelyn sang Purcell’s beautiful wedding song, full of roulades, grave pauses and long-sustained notes, and when she had finished Owen signed to madame not to speak. “Now, the song from the ‘Indian Queen.’ You sang capitally,” he whispered to Evelyn.
And, thus encouraged, she poured all her soul and all the pure melody of her voice into this music, at once religious and voluptuous, seemingly the rapture of a nun that remembrance has overtaken and for the moment overpowered. When she had done, Madame Savelli jumped from her chair, and seizing her by both hands said, —
“If you’ll stop with me for a year, I’ll make something wonderful of you.”
Then without another word she ran out of the room, leaving the door open behind her, and a few moments after they heard her calling on the stairs to her husband.
“Come down at once; come down, I’ve found a star.”
“Then she thinks I’ve a good voice?”
“I should think so indeed. She won’t get over the start you’ve given her for the next six months.”
“Are you sure, Owen? Are you sure she’s not laughing at us?”
“Laughing at us? She’s calling for her husband to come down. She’s shouting to him that she’s found a star.”
Then the joy that rose up in Evelyn’s heart blinded her eyes so that she could not see, and she seemed to lose sense of what was happening. It was as if she were going to swoon.
“I have told her,” Madame Savelli said to her husband, who followed her into the room, “that, if she will remain a year with me, I’ll make something wonderful of her. And you will stay with me, my dear....”
Owen thought that this was the moment to mention the fact that Evelyn was the daughter of the famous Madame Innes.
Monsieur Savelli raised his bushy eyebrows.
“I knew your mother, mademoiselle. If you have a voice like hers—”
“In a year, if she will remain with me, she will have twice the voice her mother had. Mademoiselle must go into the opera class at once.”
“I thought you said that such a thing could not be; that no pupil of yours had ever gone straight into the opera class?”
Madame Savelli’s grey eyes laughed.
“Ah! I was mistaken.... I had forgotten that all the other classes are full. There is no room for Miss Innes in the other classes. It is against all precedence; it will create much jealousy, but it can’t be helped. She must go straight into the opera class. When will mademoiselle begin? The sooner the better.”
“Next Monday. Will that be soon enough?”
“On Monday I’ll begin to teach her the rôle of Marguerite. Such a thing was never heard of; but then mademoiselle’s voice is one such as one never hears.”
Turning to her husband, she said —
“You see my husband is looking at me. Yes, you are looking at me. You think I have gone mad, but he’ll not think I’ve gone mad when he hears mademoiselle sing. Will mademoiselle be so kind?”
Evelyn felt she could not sing again, and, turning suddenly away, she walked to the window and watched the cabs going by. She heard Owen ask Madame and Monsieur Savelli to excuse her. He said that madame’s praise had proved too much for her; that her nerves had given way. Then he came over and spoke to her gently. She looked at him through her tears; but she could not trust herself to speak, nor yet to walk across the room and bid Monsieur and Madame Savelli good-bye. She felt she must die of shame or happiness, and plucked at Owen’s sleeve. She was glad to get out of that room; and the moments seemed like years. They could not speak in the glaring of the street. But fortunately their way was through the park, and when they passed under the shade of some overhanging boughs, she looked at him.
“Well, little girl, what do you think? Everything is all right now. It happened even better than I expected.”
She wiped away her tears.
“How foolish I am to cry like this. But I could not bear it; my nerves gave way. It was so sudden. I’m afraid those people will think me a little fool. But you don’t know, Owen, what I have suffered these last few days. I don’t want to worry you, but there were times when I thought I couldn’t stand it any longer. I thought that God might punish me by taking my voice from me. Just fancy if I had not been able to sing at all! It would have made you look a fool. You would have hated me for that; but now, even if I should lose my voice between this and next Monday.... Did I sing well, Owen? Did I sing as well as ever you he
ard me sing?”
“I’ve heard you sing better, but you sang well enough to convince Savelli that you’ll have the finest voice in Europe by this time next year. That’s good enough for you, isn’t it? You don’t want any more, do you?”
“No, no, half that would do, half that; I only want to know that it is all true.” Tears again rose to her eyes. “I mean,” she said, laughing, “that I want to know that I am sitting by you in the carriage; that Madame Savelli has heard me sing; that she said that I should be a great singer. Did she say that?”
“Yes, she said you would be a great singer.”
“Then why does it not seem true? But nothing seems true, not even Paris. It all seems like a dazzling, scattered dream, like spots of light, and every moment I fear that it will pass away, and that I shall wake up and find myself in Dulwich; that I shall see my viola da gamba standing in the corner; that a rap at the front door will tell me that a pupil has come for a lesson.”
“Do you remember the lessons that you gave me on the viola da gamba?”
She looked at him beseechingly.
“Then it is true. I suppose it is true, but I wish I could feel this life to be true.”
She looked up and saw the clouds moving across the sky; she looked down and saw the people passing along the streets.
“In a few days, in a few weeks, this life will seem quite real. But, if you cannot bear the present, how will you bear the success that is to come?”
“When I was a tiny girl, the other girls used to say, ‘Evey, dear, do make that funny noise in your throat,’ and that was my trill. But since mother’s death everything went wrong; it seemed that I would never get out of Dulwich. I never should have if it had not been for you. I had ceased to believe that I had a voice.”
“In that throat there are thousands of pounds.”
Evelyn put her hand to her throat to assure herself that it was still on her shoulders.
“I wonder, I wonder. To think that in a year — in a year and a half — I shall be singing on the stage! They will throw me bouquets, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, you need have no fear about that; this park would not suffice to grow all the flowers that will be thrown at your feet.”
“It seems impossible that I — poor, miserable I — should be moving towards such splendour. I wonder if I shall ever get there, and, if I do get there, if I shall be able to live through it. I cannot yet see myself the great singer you describe. Yet I suppose it is all quite certain.”
“Quite certain.”
“Then why can’t I imagine it?”
“We cannot imagine ourselves in other than our present circumstances; the most commonplace future is as unimaginable as the most extravagant.”
“I suppose that is so.”
The carriage stopped at the Continental, and he asked her what she would like to do. It was just five.
“Come and have a cup of tea in the Rue Cambon.”
She consented, and, after tea, he said, standing with one foot on the carriage step —
“If you’ll allow me to advise you, you will go for a drive in the Bois by yourself. I want to see some pictures.”
“May I not come?”
“Certainly, if you like, but I don’t think you could give your attention to pictures; you’re thinking of yourself, and you want to be alone with yourself — nothing else would interest you.”
A pretty flush of shame came into her cheeks. He had seen to the bottom of her heart, and discovered that of which she herself was not aware. But, now that he had told her, she knew that she did want to be alone — not alone in a room, but alone among a great number of people. A drive in the Bois would be a truly delicious indulgence of her egotism. The Champs Elysées floated about her happiness, the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne seemed to stretch out and to lead to the theatre of her glory; and, looking at the lake, its groups of pines, its gondola-like boats, she recalled, and with little thrills of pleasure, the exact words that madame had used —
“If you will stay a year with me, I’ll make something wonderful of you.” “Was there ever such happiness? Can it be true? Then I am wonderful — perhaps the most wonderful person here. Those women, however haughty they may look, what are they to me? I am wonderful. With not one would I change places, for I am going to be something wonderful.” And the word sang sweeter in her ears than the violins in “Lohengrin.” ... “Owen loves me. I have the nicest lover in the world. All this good fortune has happened to me. Oh, to me! If father could only know. But Owen thinks that will be all right. Father will forgive me when I come back the wonderful singer that I am — that I shall be.... If anyone could hear me, they would think I was mad. I can’t help it.... She’ll make something wonderful of me, and father will forgive me everything. We always loved each other. We’ve always been pals, dear dad. Oh, how I wish he had heard Madame Savelli say, ‘If you will stop with me a year, I’ll make something wonderful of you!’ I will write to him ... it will cheer him up.”
Then, seeing the poplars that lined the avenue, beautiful and tall in the evening, she thought of Owen. He had said they were the trees of the evening. She had not understood, and he had explained that we only see poplars in the sunset; they appear with the bats and the first stars.
“How clever he is, and he is my lover! It is dreadfully wicked, but I wonder what Madame Savelli said to her husband about my voice. She meant all she said; there can be no doubt about that.”
Catching sight of some passing faces, Evelyn thought how, in two little years, at this very hour, the same people would be returning from the Bois to hear her sing — what? Elsa? Elizabeth? Margaret? She imagined herself in these parts, and sang fragments of the music as it floated into her mind. She was impelled to extravagance. She would have liked to stand up in her carriage and sing aloud, nothing seemed to matter, until she remembered that she must not make a fool of herself before Lady Duckle. And that she might walk the fever out of her blood, she called to the coachman to stop, and she walked down the Champs Elysées rapidly, not pausing to take breath till she reached the Place de la Concorde; and she almost ran the rest of the way, so that she might not be late for dinner. When she entered the hotel, she came suddenly upon Owen on the verandah. He was sitting there engaged in conversation with an elderly woman — a woman of about fifty, who, catching sight of her, whispered something to him.
“Evelyn.... This is Lady Duckle.”
“Sir Owen has been telling me, Miss Innes, what Madame Savelli said about your voice. I do not know how to congratulate you. I suppose such a thing has not happened before.” And her small, grey eyes gazed in envious wonderment, as if seeking to understand how such extraordinary good fortune should have befallen the tall, fair girl who stood blushing and embarrassed in her happiness. Owen drew a chair forward.
“Sit down, Evelyn, you look tired.”
“No, I’m not tired ... but I walked from the Arc de Triomphe.”
“Walked! Why did you walk?”
Evelyn did not answer, and Lady Duckle said —
“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 th
emselves 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.