Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Her own desire of art had been inseparably linked to her desire to please men. Three days ago she had looked down from the organ loft to see if there were any men among the congregation, knowing she would not sing so well if she were only singing to women.

  “But how am I to fill the days?” she thought as she rose from her chair, “without lovers, without an occupation. Three parts of my life are gone; nothing remains but religion.”

  Hitherto her life had been lived according to rule, and she had enjoyed her life most when the rule that her art had imposed upon her had been severe. Her happiest hours had been those she had spent in Madame Savelli’s class-rooms. Then her days had been divided out, and there had been few infractions of the rule. The little interruptions Owen had pleaded for were not frequent, nor did they last long. His interest in her voice had always been so dominant an interest that he had subordinated his pleasures to her voice. It was she who had wished to play truant and had said, —

  “But you go away to your shooting and your hunting, to your London friends. I am always a prisoner, and Olive is a strict warder.”

  During the five years in which she had practised her art, she had never escaped from the discipline of art; her life had been a routine.

  “Religion always seems to fling me into a waste of idleness,” she said aloud, and she remembered that her first qualms of conscience had led her to the part of Fidelio; she did not think she would have learnt the part of Isolde if she had not met Ulick. Her love of him was her last artistic inspiration; the thought amused her for a moment, and she walked across the room thinking of the weariness of freedom. As she took down a book, she paused to remember how her first notes were held in view almost from early morning. How, after mid-day, every hour was a preparation for the essential hours. How on her singing days she avoided all that might distract her thoughts from her part. She opened no letters, and spoke very little; and after having dined lightly she read her music.

  On the days she was not singing her accompanist came at ten o’clock, and she was with him for at least three hours; and after we have done three hours’ work the rest of the day passes almost without our perceiving that it is passing. We have no need to think how we shall spend it; it just spends itself. It sheds itself like seed.

  On her off days Owen was ready with some project, a visit to a picture-gallery, a ride in the country; and if Owen were not with her, Olive was waiting to take her shopping. The choice of her clothes, and the making of them, used to take a great deal of her time; henceforth it would take very little of it. She thought of Olive, of Olive with whom she had lived for six years, and who was no more than an appetite for facile amusement. Owen’s materialism was deep, but not so deep as Olive’s; in her there was no relaxation, no sighing of the flesh after the spirit when the flesh is weary; she was the same through and through like a ball of lard. Evelyn remembered that she would have to write and tell her that she had retired from the stage. Olive would not take her dismissal easily, and feeling she could not argue with her, Evelyn turned in her chair and sat looking into the fire. Suddenly it occurred to her that it was Owen who should break the news to Olive, and she wrote asking him to explain that she had left the stage. It was not necessary to say any more; she thought perhaps it would be as well to add that he must try to dissuade Olive from sending any information to the papers.

  The only one of her former friends whose acquaintance she cared to continue was Louise. Louise’s lovers did not trouble her; Louise must look after her own soul. But what would they talk about? Hitherto their art had always been a source of intimate interest to them.... She had given up singing, so what would they talk about? She might go through Louise’s parts with her. But she knew she would not care to do that, nor could they talk about singing. She did not want to hear of music, especially of the music with which she had been associated. So all her friends must go — composers and conductors, tenors and basses, all her fellow artistes at whose rooms she liked to make appointments. All the adventure of rehearsals would henceforth be unknown to her, and all those whom she used to meet at rehearsals, various dilettante Bohemians and critics, all would disappear from her life.

  She sometimes thought of sending away her piano, for there is something sad in the sight of a person or even of a thing that has absorbed much of our lives, and the sight of her piano and the music scores — the scores which she knew so well, and which she would never open again — caused her to sigh, to yearn, to look back, and this revelation of her life had been brought about by an idea. If Owen were to come to her with proof that there was no future state it would be just the same! She paused like one in front of a great discovery. We have only to change our ideas to change our friends. Our friends are only a more or less imperfect embodiment of our ideas.

  And as she stood by the window watching the decaying foliage in the Park, she realised that the problem of her life was the discovery of an occupation. She had just come from a lunch at Owen Asher’s. She had met him a few evenings ago as she came out of a concert-room, whither she had been driven by terror of her lonely drawing-room, rather than by a desire of the music. Owen had spoken to her in the vestibule and she could see that he would always love her, whether she were well or ill, glad or sad, failing or successful. She had perceived this as the crowd jostled past her, and she was touched by it, and had promised to lunch with him. But fearing she would not lunch with him alone, he had mentioned a number of names. She would sooner have lunched with him alone, but she did not dare to say so, and he had invited the usual people, women whom she had once considered her intimate friends, and men with whom she had flirted. She remembered that she had once thought them all clever, and now they seemed to her like the toys the showman winds and allows to run a little way along the pavement before he picks them up. The vivid unreality of these people she attributed to the fact that they lived in the mere surface of life; in the animal sensation rather than in the moral idea; and she reflected that she had not only not been happy, but had never seemed to get even into touch with existence until she had decided that there was a right and a wrong way.

  But these women had asked her to dine with them; they had promised to write, and she would have to invent pretexts, and she had no aptitude for the composition of such letters. If she accepted their invitations she would have to talk to them on subjects which did not interest her. If she were to tell them her ideas — she shrugged her shoulders and walked away from the window. This lunch seemed to have flung her back again. Owen had asked if he might come to see her. He had told her he was going abroad in order that he might forget her, and had asked if he might come again to say good-bye. She hated scenes of parting, but others did not think as she did, and she had given her consent to a last visit. It would have been difficult and disagreeable for her to have refused, but she would have refused if she had not felt singularly sure of herself. Her sex seemed to have fallen from her. For many days she did not seem to know that she was a woman, and feeling sure this visit would prove wearisome she tried to look upon it in the light of a mortification. But from such moods there is always a reaction, and the visit had been an agreeable one. He won her affection in spite of herself. Never had he seemed less hard, less material, and at the end of the week he had won his way into most of his old intimacy.

  They had been for a walk in the Park and had been to see some pictures, and during the first week of this renewal of their intimacy he neither said nor did anything to which she could raise any objection until one day, after saying he was waiting for a telegram from the yacht, he kissed her on the forehead. He might never see her again, he said, and she thought that it did not matter much as he was leaving. But no telegram came from Marseilles, and his stay in London was indefinitely prolonged. Soon after he produced a text in support of his contention that sin did not begin in a kiss, and he pleaded to be allowed to kiss her on the forehead and on the cheek. She begged him not to, but it is impossible to resist always, and he assured her that such kisses wo
uld not trouble her conscience. The opinion of the Fathers on the danger of kisses was debated; he struggled with her and got the better of her in the struggle and the argument. But his success did not prevail. For on the following day he saw, when he came into the room, that there would be but little pleasure in this visit, and regretted his indiscretions.

  “You don’t mean to say that you are so absurd as to have scruples of conscience about that kiss?”

  “Yes, I think I have. You see, it is all true to me, and things can’t be at once absurd and true.”

  “It is terrible that you should be like this. But let us change the subject. What about that song of mine?” She looked in the direction of the clock before beginning to sing, and he guessed something liturgical — Benediction? and his hand dropped on her shoulder.

  “Are you offended?”

  “Not exactly, but I have often told you I do not approve of kisses unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you are going to make love to me, and as that can never be again—”

  “You don’t see that an affectionate regard may be—”

  “I must send you away now.”

  “When may I see you again?”

  “I’ll write.”

  He had kissed her, and she knew how kisses ended, at least in her case, and she was determined to dally with temptation no longer. She had been walking about nearly all last night, and she had convinced herself that as she was determined not to go back to her old life, the only thing to do was to do as Monsignor had told her, and to refrain from seeing either Owen or Ulick again. To do this she must put her old life completely aside. She must sell her house in Park Lane and get another which would be more in keeping with her ideas. Above all, she must get some work to do; she could not live without occupation. On all these points no one was so competent to advise her as Monsignor.

  “You see, Monsignor, one cannot think of one’s soul all day. There is Mass in the morning, and Benediction in the afternoon, and nothing else — neither work nor pleasure.”

  He deliberated, and she waited, eager to hear what advice he would give.

  “When I advised you to leave the stage, I did not mean you were to abandon art,” and he spoke of Handel and Bach, as she expected he would.

  “Well, Monsignor, perhaps you won’t understand me at all, and will think me very wilful; but if I am not to sing the music I made a success in, I don’t want to sing at all. I can’t do things by halves. I am either on the stage or —— —”

  “In a convent,” he added, smiling, and Evelyn could not help smiling, for she recognised herself in the antithesis; and it was not until she had got up to go that she remembered she had forgotten to ask him to recommend her a solicitor who would negotiate the sale of her house for her, and invest her capital at reasonable interest.

  “This is a matter on which I cannot speak offhand, and I must send you away now. But I will write to you on the subject, probably to-morrow. Come to see me on Friday.”

  To see Monsignor, to hear him, even to think of him, was a help to her, and in the course of the interview she decided she would write that night to Owen, telling him he must not come to see her again. She composed her letter as she went along the street, and wrote it the moment she got home. She expected he would send his valet in the course of the morning with a letter, but the only letter that came was one from Monsignor, recommending a solicitor to her, and for three or four days she was busy making arrangements for the sale of her furniture and her pictures, and looking out for a small flat which she could furnish in a simple way.

  “You are very lucky,” Monsignor said. “If Mr. Enderwick says you will have four hundred a year you can rely on it, and you will be able to live comfortably and do not a little good. I have been thinking of what you said to me about the need of occupation. I quite agree with you that you cannot live in idleness.” Returning to the question of concert singing, he begged her to consider the money she could earn, and the good use she could put it to. There were so many deserving cases, really sad cases, which he could bring to her notice; and once we are brought into touch with the poor it is extraordinary the sympathy they discover in our hearts.

  “I’m afraid, Monsignor, you are mistaken in me. I do not think I could be of much use in philanthropic work.”

  “But, my dear child, you have not tried.”

  “You will think me very wicked, Monsignor, but I fear I do not even wish to try — that is not the direction in which my sympathy takes me.”

  CHAP. III.

  HER PICTURES, FURNITURE and china were on view at Christie’s at the end of November, and all Owen’s friends met each other in the rooms and on the staircase.

  Lady Ascott sailed in one afternoon, sweeping the floor with a flowing tea-gown, which she held up in front. She wore white satin shoes, and it was debated in distant corners whether she did so from choice or because she had worn them at a party the night before. She was escorted by men of culture of different ages. Her art critic walked on her right hand. He was tall and dark and solemn, and a few years ago he had been good-looking, but lately he had seriously fattened out in the cheeks and in the waist. He strove to ignore the testimony of time by keeping his coat, which was an old one, buttoned, and he still wore the same sized gloves, seven and three-quarters, and his hands looked like little dumplings in them. His eyes were small and malign, and he looked into the corners of the face of the person he was talking to, as he would into the corners of a picture. A lock of coarse black hair trailed across a sallow brow, and he affected an air of aloofness when listening, and there were occasions when he stood apart in carefully-considered attitudes. He was a dealer by nature and a critic by accident. He had taken notes of all cracks and restorations; and he had lately returned from Italy where he had been collecting information for his book — Bellini, His Life and Works.

  Lady Ascott’s musical critic walked on her left. He was a tall, thin, angular man, with a small, meagre, dean-shaven face, and pale eyes, in which a nervous despair floated for a moment, and then vanished, for his manner was high-spirited and cheerful. He spoke in a thin voice which suggested the ecclesiastic, and his eyes seemed to reflect back ritual, and his dry, rigid manner suggested one to whom doctrine was a necessity — one to whom rule was essential. He had written on Wagner, Palestrina and the plain chant. He had read all the books; he had been librarian in a ducal library, and curator in a museum.

  At parties a sudden lassitude often invaded his mind, and he strayed from the conversation to the piano; and when he returned to his lodgings after the party he looked round the room frightened, and hurried to bed hoping to escape from thoughts in sleep.

  Lady Ascott’s literary critic followed a few yards in the rear, and occasionally in her rapid excursion down the rooms Lady Ascott called to him, addressing a remark to him, which he answered timidly. He had been lately discovered in the depths of a museum, and had not yet caught the manner of Society. He was feeling his way. He was a man of sixty, gaunt, and wrinkled like a pelican about the throat. He meditated, as he walked, on Harding’s objections to his article on style. Harding had said he did not believe in the possibility of writing ineptitudes in good style. Harding had said that he had known Hugo, Banville and Tourguéneff and that they had never spoken of style. He had said that the gods do not talk theology: “they leave theology to the inferior saints and the clergy,” and the critic was distressed in his chocolate-coloured overcoat.

  This artistic party was met at the end of the room by a fashionably-dressed young stockbroker in whom Lady Ascott was developing a taste for Aubusson carpets, eighteenth-century prints and Waterford glass. On its way round the room it was met by a fox-hunter, who wore his hair long and looked like a tragic actor, by a politician who played Bach, by a noble earl who shot five thousand head of game every year, and painted three hundred water-colours. In the adjoining room this party increased in numbers. Lady Southwick, whose infidelities to her husband were often prompt
ed by her desire to succour her poor people, joined it, and Evelyn’s conversion was discussed by all these fashionable people.

  Everyone was anxious to express an opinion; but there was a general disposition to hear Lady Southwick’s opinion, and smiles hovered round the corners of mouths when she spoke of the money Evelyn might have contributed to hospitals and other charities if she remained on the stage. These smiles vanished when she said she could not see anything for Evelyn but a contemplative order. This seemed reasonable, but Lady Ascott said she could not see Evelyn a good little nun to the end of her days, and her art critic enforced this opinion with a suggestion of suicide. A suicide in a convent had never been heard of; and the idea was considered distinctly amusing. There were fish-ponds in the convent gardens, and the nuns might find her floating in the morning — a convent Ophelia! The literary critic, who, till now, had said little, seized this chance to join in the conversation, and strove to redeem his silence by the suggestion that she might leave the convent and proceed to the East in quest of the ultimate learning. He saw the last of her on board a steamer in the Suez Canal. In the fulness of his idea the critic unbuttoned his chocolate overcoat, but just as his audience were beginning to apprehend his idea, Lady Ascott spied Sir Owen at the other end of the room.