Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Owen noticed that Evelyn seemed preoccupied, and did not respond very eagerly to Lady Duckle’s advances. He wondered if she suspected him of having been Lady Duckle’s lover.... Evelyn was thinking entirely of Lady Duckle herself, trying to divine the real woman that was behind all this talk of great men and social notabilities. One phrase let drop seemed to let in some light on the mystery. Talking of her, Lady Duckle said that it was only necessary to know what road we wanted to walk in to succeed, and instantly Lady Duckle appeared to her as one who had never selected a road. She seemed to have walked a little way on all roads, and her face expressed a life of many wanderings, straying from place to place. There was nothing as she said, worth doing that she had not done, but she had clearly accomplished nothing. As she watched her she feared, though she could not say what she feared. At bottom it was a suspicion of the deteriorating influence that Lady Duckle would exercise, must exercise, upon her — for were they not going to live together for years? And this companionship would be necessarily based on subterfuge and deceit. She would have to talk to her of her friendship for Owen. She could never speak of Owen to Lady Duckle as her lover. But as Evelyn listened to this pleasant, garrulous woman talking, and talking very well, about music and literature, she could not but feel that she liked her, and that her easy humour and want of principle would make life comfortable and careless. She was not a saint; she could not expect a saint to chaperon her; nor did she want a saint. At that moment her spirits rose. She wanted Owen, and she loved him the more for the tact he had shown in finding Lady Duckle for her. She accepted the good lady’s faults with reckless enthusiasm, and when they got back to the hotel she took the first occasion to whisper that she liked Lady Duckle and was sure they’d get on very well together.

  “Owen, dear, I’m so happy, I don’t know what to do with myself. I did enjoy my drive to the Bois. I never was so happy and I don’t seem to be enjoying myself enough; I should like to sit up all night to think of it.”

  “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”

  “Only I should feel tired in the morning.... Are you coming to my room?”

  “Unless you want me not to. Do you want me to come?”

  “Do I look as if I didn’t?”

  “Your eyes are shining like stars. It is worth while taking trouble to make you happy. You do enjoy it so.... We’ll go upstairs now. We can’t talk here, Lady Duckle is coming back. Leave your door ajar.”

  “You don’t think she suspects?”

  “It doesn’t matter what people suspect, the essential is that they shouldn’t know. I’ve lots to tell you. I’ve arranged everything with Lady Duckle.”

  “I was just telling Miss Innes that in three years she’ll probably be singing at the Opera House. In a year or a year and a half she’ll have learnt all that Savelli can teach her. Isn’t that so?”

  The question was discussed for a while, and then Lady Duckle mentioned that it was getting late. It was an embarrassing moment when Owen stopped the lift and they bade her good-night. She was on the third, they were on the second floor. As Evelyn went down the passage, Owen stood to watch her sloping shoulders; they seemed to him like those of an old miniature. When she turned the corner a blankness came over him; things seemed to recede and he was strangely alone with himself as he strolled into his room. But standing before the glass, his heart was swollen with a great pride. He remarked in his eyes the strange, enigmatic look which he admired in Titian and Vandyke, and he thought of himself as a principle — as a force; he wondered if he were an evil influence, and lost himself in moody meditations concerning the mystery of the attractions he presented to women. But suddenly he remembered that in a few minutes she would be in his arms, and he closed his eyes as if to delight more deeply in the joy that she presented to his imagination. So intense was his desire that he could not believe that he was her lover, that he was going to her room, and that nothing could deprive him of this delight. Why should such rare delight happen to him? He did not know. What matter, since it was happening? She was his. It was like holding the rarest jewel in the world in the hollow of his hand.

  That she was at that moment preparing to receive him brought a little dizziness into his eyes, and compelled him to tear off his necktie. Then, vaguely, like one in a dream, he began to undress, very slowly, for she had told him to wait a quarter of an hour before coming to her room. He examined his thin waist as he tied himself in blue silk pyjamas, and he paused to admire his long, straight feet before slipping them into a pair of black velvet slippers. He turned to glance at his watch, and to kill the last five minutes of the prescribed time he thought of Evelyn’s scruples. She would have to read certain books — Darwin and Huxley he relied upon, and he reposed considerable faith in Herbert Spencer. But there were books of a lighter kind, and their influence he believed to be not less insidious. He took one out of his portmanteau — the book which he said, had influenced him more than any other. It opened at his favourite passage —

  ‘I am a man of the Homeric time; the world in which I live is not mine, and I know nothing of the society which surrounds me. I am as pagan as Alcibiades or as Phidias.... I never gathered on Golgotha the flowers of the Passion, and the deep stream which flowed from from the side of the Crucified and made a red girdle round the world never bathed me in its tide. I believe earth to be as beautiful as heaven, and I think that precision of form is virtue. Spirituality is not my strong point; I love a statue better than a phantom.’ ... He could remember no further; he glanced at the text and was about to lay the book down, when, on second thoughts, he decided to take it with him.

  Her door was ajar; he pushed it open and then stopped for moment, surprised at his good fortune. And he never forgot that instant’s impression of her body’s beauty. But before he could snatch the long gauze wrapper from her, she had slipped her arm through the sleeves, and, joyous as a sunlit morning hour, she came forward and threw herself into his arms. Even then he could not believe that some evil accident would not rob him of her. He said some words to that effect, and often tried to recall her answer to them; he was only sure that it was exquisitely characteristic of her, as were all her answers — as her answer was that very evening when he told her that he would have to go to London at the end of the week.

  “But only for some days. You don’t think that I shall be changed? You’re not afraid that I shall love you less?”

  “No; I was not thinking of you, dear. I know that you’ll not be changed; I was thinking that I might be.”

  He withdrew the arm that was round her, and, raising himself upon his elbow, he looked at her.

  “You’ve told me more about yourself in that single phrase than if you had been talking an hour.”

  “Dearest Owen, let me kiss you.”

  It seemed to them wonderful that they should be permitted to kiss each other so eagerly, and it sometimes was a still more intense rapture to lie in each other’s arms and talk to each other.

  The dawn surprised them still talking, and it seemed to them as if nothing had been said. He was explaining his plans for her life. They were, he thought, going to live abroad for five, six, or seven years. Then Evelyn would go to London, to sing, preceded by an extraordinary reputation. But the first thing to do was to get a house in Paris.

  “We cannot stop at this hotel; we must have a house. I have heard of a charming hotel in the Rue Balzac.”

  “In the Rue Balzac! Is there a street called after him? Is it on account of the name you want me to live there?”

  “No; I don’t think so, but perhaps the name had something to do with it — one never knows. But I always liked the street.”

  “Which of his books is it like?”

  “Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan”

  They laughed and kissed each other.

  “At the bottom of the street is the Avenue de Friedland; the tram passes there, and it will take you straight to Madame Savelli’s.”

  The sparrows had begun to shrill
in the courtyard, and their eyes ached with sleep.

  “Five or six years — you’ll be at the height of your fame. They will pass only too quickly,” he added.

  He was thinking what his age would be then. “And when they have passed, it will seem like a dream.”

  “Like a dream,” she repeated, and she laid her face on the pillow where his had lain.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  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 forgiv
ing 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.”