by George Moore
“Dearest, I’m very fond of you, you know that. It is not my fault if I prefer to be your lover rather than your husband.” He kissed her on her shoulders, laying his cheek on her bosom. “Don’t you believe that I am fond of you, Evelyn?”
“Yes, Owen, I think you are.”
“Not a very enthusiastic reply. It used to be you who delighted to throw your arms about my neck. But all that is over and done with.”
“One is not always in such humours, Owen.”
Watching each other’s eyes they were conscious of their souls; every moment it seemed as if their souls must float up and be discovered; and, while fearing discovery, there came a yearning to stand out of all shadow in the full light. But they could not tell their souls; words fell back abortive; and they recognised the mortal lot of alienation; and rebelling against it, he held her face, he sought her lips, but she turned her face aside, leaving him her cheek.
“Why do you turn your lips away? It is a long time since I’ve kissed you ... you’re cold and indifferent lately, Evelyn.”
A memory of Ulick shot through her mind, and he would have divined her thought if his perception had not been blinded by the passion which swayed him.
“No, Owen, no. We’re an engaged couple; we’re no longer lovers.”
“And you think that we should begin by respecting the marriage ceremony?”
She seemed to lose sight of him, she perceived only the general idea, that outline of her life which he represented, and which she could in a way trace in the furniture of the room. It was in this room she had said she would be his mistress. It was from this room she had started for Paris. Her eyes lighted on the harpsichord. He had bought it in some vague intention of presenting it to her father, some day when they were reconciled; the viola da gamba he had bought for her sake; it was the poor little excuse he had devised for coming to see her at Dulwich.
She saw the Gainsborough: how strange and remote it seemed! She looked at the Corot, its sentimentality was an irritation. In the Chippendale bookcases there were many books she had given him; and the white chimney piece was covered with her photographs. There he was, a tall, thin man, elegant and attractive notwithstanding the forty-five years, dressed in a silk shirt and a black smoking suit. Their eyes met again, she could see that he was thinking it over; but it was all settled now, neither could draw back, and the moments were tense and silent; and as if confronted by some imminent peril, she wondered.
“You arranged that I should leave the stage when I married, and you say that we are to be married next week. You don’t want me to throw up my engagement at Covent Garden? I should like to play Isolde.”
“Of course you must play Isolde; I must hear you sing Isolde.”
She felt that she must get up and thank him, she felt that she must be nice to him; and laying her hand on his shoulder, she said —
“I hope I don’t seem ungrateful; you have always been very good to me, Owen. I hope I shall make a good wife.”
“I think I am less changed than you; I don’t think you care for me as you used to.”
“Yes, I do, Owen, but I am not always the same. I can’t help myself.”
He watched her face; she had forgotten him, she was again thinking of herself. She had tried to be sincere, but again had been mastered by her mood. No, she did not dislike him, but she wished for an interval, a temporary separation. It seemed to her that she didn’t want to see him for some weeks, some months, perhaps. If he would consent to such an alienation, she felt that she would come back fonder of him than ever. All this did not seem very sane, but she could not think otherwise, and the desire of departure was violent in her as a nostalgia.
“We have been very fond of each other. I wonder if we shall be as happy in married life? Do you think we shall?”
“I hope so, Owen, but somehow I don’t see myself as Lady Asher.”
“You know everyone — Lady Ascott, Lady. Somersdean, they are all your friends, it will be just the same.”
“Yes, it’ll be just the same.”
He did not catch the significance of the repetition. He was thinking of the credit she would do him as Lady Asher. He heard his friends discussing his marriage at the clubs. She was going to Lady Ascott’s ball, and would announce her engagement there. To-morrow everyone would be talking about it. He would like his engagement known, but not while she was on the stage. But when he mentioned this, she said she did not see why their engagement should be kept a secret. It did not matter much; he was quite ready to give way, but he could not understand why the remark should have angered her. And her obstinacy frightened him not a little. If he were to find a different woman in his wife from the woman he had loved in the opera singer!
“Evelyn, you have lived with me in spite of your scruples for the last six years; why should we not go on for one more year? When you have sung Kundry, we can be married.”
“Owen, do you think you want to marry me? Is not your offer mere chivalry? Noblesse oblige?”
That he was still master of the situation caused a delicious pride to mount to his head. For a moment he could not answer, then he asked if she were sure that she had not come to care for someone else, and feeling this to be ineffective, he added —
“I’ve always noticed that when women change their affections, they become a prey to scruples of conscience.”
“If I cared for anyone else, should I come to you to-night and offer to marry you?”
“You’re a strange woman; it would not surprise me if the reason why you wish to be married is because you’re afraid of a second lover. That would be very like you.”
His words startled her in the very bottom of her soul; she had not thought of such a thing, but now he mentioned it, she was not sure that he had not guessed rightly.
How well he understood one side of her nature; how he failed to understand the other! It was this want in him that made marriage between them impossible. She smiled mysteriously, for she was thinking how far and how near he had always been.
“Tell me, Evelyn, tell me truly, is it on account of religious scruples, or is it because you are afraid of falling in love with Ulick Dean, that you came here to-night and asked me to marry you?”
“Owen, we can live in contradiction to our theories, but not in contradiction to our feelings, and you know that my life has always seemed to me fundamentally wrong.”
For a moment he seemed to understand, but his egotism intervened, and a moment after he understood nothing, except that for some stupid morality she was about to break her artistic career sharp off.
He strove to think what was passing behind that forehead. He tried to read her soul in the rounded temples, the bright, nervous eyes. His and her understanding of life and the mystery of life were as wide apart as the earth and the moon, and he could but stare wondering. No inkling of the truth reached him. As he strove to understand her mind he grew irritated, and turned against that shadow religion which had always separated them. Without knowing why — almost in spite of himself — he began to argue with her. He reminded her of her inconsistencies. She had always said that a lover was much more exciting than a husband. If it had not been for her religion, he did not believe they would have thought of marriage, they would have gone on to the end as they had begun. The sound of his voice entered her ears, but the meaning of the words did not reach her brain, and when she had said that she had come to him not on account of Ulick, but on account of her conscience, she sat perplexed, trying to discover if she had told the truth.
“You’re not listening, Evelyn.”
“Yes, I am, Owen. You said that I had always said that a lover was much more exciting than a husband.”
“If so, why then—”
They stared blankly at each other. Everything had been said. They were engaged to be married. What was the use of further argument? She mentioned that it was getting late, and that Lady Duckle was waiting for her.
“She will tell her first,” he thought, “and she’ll t
ell Lady Ascott. They’ll all be talking of it at supper. ‘So Owen has gone off at last,’ they’ll say. I’ll hear of it at the club to-morrow.”
“I wonder what Lady Ascott will think?” he said, as he put her into the carriage.
“I don’t know.... I shall not go to the ball. Tell him to take me home.”
She lay back in the blue shadows of the brougham, striving to come to terms with herself, to arrive at some plain conclusion. It seemed to her that she had been animated by an honest and noble purpose. She had gone to Owen in the intention of marrying him if he wished to marry her, because it had seemed to her that it was her duty to marry him. But everything had turned out the very opposite of what she had intended, and looking back upon the hour she had spent with him, it seemed to her that she had certainly deceived him. She certainly had deceived herself.
She could not believe that she was going to marry Owen. She felt that it was not to be, and before the presentiment her her soul paused. She asked herself why she felt that it was not to be. There was no reason; but she felt quite clear on the point, and could not combat the clear conviction. She began thinking the obvious drama — Owen discovering her with Ulick, declining ever to see her again, her suicide or his, etc. But she could not believe that Owen would decline ever to see her again even if — but she was not going to go wrong with Ulick, there was no use supposing such things, And again her thoughts paused, and like things frightened by the dark, withdrew silently, not daring to look further.
She met Ulick every night at the theatre, and she had him to sit with her in her dressing-room during the entr’actes.... She remembered the pleasure she had taken in these conversations, and the strange, whirling impulse which drew them all the while closer, until they dreaded the touching of their knees. She had taken him back in the carriage and he had kissed her; she had allowed him to kiss her the other night, and she knew that if she were alone with him again that she would not be able to resist the temptation. Her thoughts turned a little, and she considered what her life would be if she were to yield to Ulick. Her life would become a series of subterfuges, and in a flash of thought she saw how, after spending the afternoon with Ulick, she would come home to find Owen waiting for her: he would take her in his arms, she would have to free herself, and, feeling his breath upon her cheek, save herself somehow from his kiss. He would suspect and question her. He would say, “Give me your word of honour that Ulick Dean is not your lover;” and she heard herself pledge her word in a lie, and the lie would have to be repeated again and again.
Until she had met Ulick, she had not seen a man for years whose thoughts ranged above the gross pleasure of the moment, the pleasure of eating, of drinking, of love-making ... and she was growing like those people. The other night at dinner at the Savoy she had looked round the table at the men’s faces, some seven or eight, varying in age from twenty-four to forty-eight, and she had said to herself, “Not one of these men has done anything worth doing, not one has even tried.” Looking at the men of twenty-four, she had said to herself, “He will do all the man of forty-eight has done, — the same dinners, the same women, the same racecourses, the same shooting, the same tireless search after amusement, the same life unlit by any ideal.” She was no better, Owen was no better. There was no hope for either of them? He had surrounded her with his friends, and she thought of the invitations ahead of her. Her profession of an opera singer chained her to this life.... She felt that a miracle would have to happen to extricate her from the social mire into which she was sinking, sinking.
To give up Ulick would only make matters worse. He was the plank she clung to in the shipwreck of all her convictions. She could not tell how or why, but the conviction was overpowering that she could not give him up. Happen what might happen, she must see him. If Owen were to go for a sea voyage.... In three or four months she would have acquired that something which he could give her and which was necessary to complete her soul. She seemed to be quite certain on this point, and she lay back in the brougham lost in vague wonderment. Her thoughts sank still deeper, and thoughts came to her that had never come before, that she had never dared to think before. Even if she were not done with Ulick when Owen returned, it seemed to her that she could make them and herself very happy; they both seemed necessary to her happiness, to her fulfilment; and in her dream, for she was not responsible for her thoughts, the enjoyment of this double love seemed to her natural and beautiful....
But she awoke from her dream frightened, and feeling like one who has lost the clue which was to lead her out of the labyrinth.
Instead of sending the footman to tell Lady Duckle that the carriage was waiting, Evelyn got out and went up to the drawing-room.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Olive, but I can’t go with you. Tell Lady Ascott I am very sorry. Good-night, I’m going to my room.”
“Oh, my dear Evelyn, not going ... and now that you’re dressed.”
Evelyn allowed herself to be persuaded. If she went to bed now she would not sleep. She went to the ball with Lady Duckle, and as she went round in the lancers, giving her hand first to one and then to the other, she heard a voice crying within her, “Why are you doing these things? They don’t interest you at all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“ETERNAL NIGHT, OH, lovely night, oh, holy night of love.” Rapture succeeded rapture, and the souls of the lovers rose, nearer to the surface of life. In a shudder of silver chords he saw them float away like little clouds towards the low rim of the universe.
But at that moment of escape reality broke in upon the dream. Melot had betrayed them, and Ulick heard King Mark’s noble and grave reproaches like a prophecy, “Thou wert my friend and didst deceive me,” he sang, and his melancholy motive seemed to echo like a cry along the shore of Ulick’s own life. Amid calm and mysteriously exalted melodies, expressive of the terror and pathos of fate fulfilled, Tristan’s resolve took shape, and as he fell mortally wounded, the melancholy Mark motive was heard again, and again Ulick asked what meaning it might have for him. He heard the applause, loud in the stalls, growing faint as it rose tier above tier. Baskets of flowers, wreaths and bouquets were thrown from the boxes or handed up from the orchestra, the curtain was rung up again, and her name was called from different parts of the theatre. And when the curtain was down for the last time, he saw her in the middle of the stage talking to Tristan and Brangäne. The garden scene was being carried away, and to escape from it Evelyn took Tristan’s hand and ran to the spot where Ulick was standing. She loosed the hand of her stage lover, and dropping a bouquet, held out two small hands to Ulick covered with violet powder. The hallucination of the great love scene was still in her eyes; it still, he could see, surged in her blood. She had nearly thrown herself into his arms, seemed regardless of those around; she seemed to have only eyes for him; he heard her say under her breath,” That music maddens me,” then with sudden composure, but looking at him intently, she asked him to come upstairs with her.
For the last few days he had been engaged in prediction, and last night he had been visited by dreams, the significance of which he could not doubt. But his reading of her horoscope had been incomplete, or else he had failed to understand the answers. That he was a momentous event in her life seemed clear, yet all the signs were set against their marriage; but what was happening had been revealed — that he should stand with her in a room where the carpet was blue, and they were there; that the furniture should be of last century, and he examined the cabinets in the corners, which were satinwood inlaid with delicate traceries, and on the walls were many mirrors and gold and mahogany frames.
“Merat!” The maid came from the dressing-room. “You have some friends in front. You can go and sit with them. I sha’n’t want you till the end.” When the door closed, their eyes met, and they trembled and were in dread. “Come and sit by me.” She indicated his place by her side on the sofa. “We are all alone. Talk to me. How did I sing to-night?”
“Never did the mu
sic ever mean so much as it did to-night,” he said, sitting down.
“What did it mean?”
“Everything. All the beauty and the woe of existence were in the music to-night.”
Their thoughts wandered from the music, and an effort was required to return to it.
“Do you remember,” she said, with a little gasp in her voice, “how the music sinks into the slumber motive, ‘Hark, beloved;’ then he answers, ‘Let me die’?”
“Yes, and with the last note the undulating tune of the harps begins in the orchestra. Brangäne is heard warning them.”
They sat looking at each other. In sheer desperation she said —
“And that last phrase of all, when the souls of the lovers seemed to float away.”
“Over the low rim of the universe — like little clouds.”
“And then?”
He tried to speak of his ideas, but he could not collect his thoughts, and after a few sentences he said, “I cannot talk of these things.”
The room seemed to sway and cloud, and her arms to reach out instinctively to him, and she would have fallen into his arms if he had not suddenly asked her what had been decided at Sir Owen Asher’s.
“Let me kiss you, Evelyn,” he said, “or I shall go mad.”
“No, Ulick, this is not nice of you. I shall not be able to ask you to my room again.”
He let go her hand, and she said —