CHAPTER EIGHT

There was no other place except the picture gallery where they could see each other alone. But the dignity of Velasquez and the opulence of Rubens distracted their thoughts, and they were ill at ease on a backless seat in front of a masterpiece. Owen regretted the Hobbema; it was less aggressive than the colonnade. A sun-lit clearing in a wood and a water mill raised no moral question. He turned his eyes from the dancers, but however he resisted them, their frivolous life found its way into the conversation. They were the wise ones, he said. They lived for art and love, and what else was there in life? A few sonatas, a few operas, a few pictures, a few books, and a love story; we had always to come back to that in the end. He spoke with conviction, his only insincerity being the alteration of a plural into a singular. But no, he did not think he had lied; he had spoken what seemed to him the truth at the present moment. Had he used the singular instead of the plural a fortnight ago, he would have lied, but within the last week his feelings for Evelyn had changed. If she had broken with him a week ago, he would have found easy consolation in the list, but now it was not women, but a woman that he desired. A mere sexual curiosity, and the artistic desire to save a beautiful voice from being wasted, had given way to a more personal emotion in which affection was beginning. Looking at him, thinking over what he had just said, unable to stifle the hope that those women in the picture were the wise ones, she heard life calling her. The art call and the love call, subtly interwoven, were modulated now on the violins now on the flutes of an invisible orchestra. At the same moment his immeshed senses, like greedy fish, swam hither and thither, perplexed and terrified, finding no way of escape, and he dreaded lest he had lost his balance and fallen into the net he had cast so often. He had begun to see that she was afraid of the sin, and not at all of him. She had never asked him if he would always love her—that she seemed to take for granted—and he had, or fancied he had, begun to feel that he would never cease to love her. He looked into the future far enough to see that it would be she who would tire of him, and that another would appear two or three years hence who would appeal to her sensual imagination just as he did to-day. She would strive to resist it, she would argue with herself, but the enticing illusion would draw her as in a silken net. He was now engaged in the destruction of her moral scruples—in other words, making the way easy for his successor.

They were in the gallery alone, and, taking her hand, he considered in detail the trouble this liaison would bring in its train. He no longer doubted that she would go abroad with him sooner or later. He hoped it would be sooner, for he had begun to perceive the absurdity of his visits to Dulwich. The question was whether she was worth an exile in a foreign country. He would have to devote himself to her and to her interests. She would have a chaperon. There would be no use in their openly living together—that he could not stand. But at that moment the exquisite happiness of seeing her every day, coming into the room where she was reading or singing, and kissing her as he leaned over her chair affectionately, as a matter of course, deriving his enjoyment from the prescriptive right to do so, and then talking to her about ordinary affairs of life, came upon him suddenly like a vision; and this imagined life was so intense that for one moment it was equivalent to the reality. He saw himself taking her home from the theatre at night in the brougham. In the next instant they were in the train going to Bayreuth. In the next he saw her as Kundry rush on to the stage. He felt that, whatever it cost him, that was the life he must obtain. He felt that he could not live if he did not acquire it, and so intense was the vision that, unable to endure its torment, he got up and proposed they should go into the garden and sit under the cedar.

They were alone in the garden as they were in the gallery, but lovers are averse to open spaces, and Owen felt that their appearance coincided too closely with that of lovers in many popular engravings. He hoped he was not observed, and regretted he had often spoken of the picture gallery to his friends. An unlucky chance might bring one of them down.

It was in this garden, amid the scent and colour of May, that the most beautiful part of their love story was woven. It was in this garden that they talked about love and happiness, and the mystery of the attraction of one person to another, and whilst listening to him, a poignant memory of the afternoon when he had first kissed her often crossed her mind. Little faintnesses took her in the eyes and heart. Their voices broke, and it seemed that they could not continue to talk any longer of life and art. It was in this garden that they forgot each other. Their thoughts wandered far away, and then, when one called the other's attention, he or she relinquished scenes and sensations and came back appearing suddenly like someone out of a mist. Each asked the other what he or she had been dreaming. Once he told her his dream. It was of a villa in the middle of a large garden surrounded by chestnut trees and planted with rhododendrons. In this villa there dwelt a great singer whose name was a glory in the world, and to this villa there came very often a tall, thin, ugly man, and, seeing the beautiful singer walking with him, the folk wondered how she could love him.

It was a sort of delicious death, a swooning ecstasy, an absorption of her individuality in his. Just as the spring gradually displaced the winter by a new branch of blossom, and in that corner of the garden by the winsome mauve of a lilac bush, without her knowing it his ideas caught root in her. New thoughts and perceptions were in growth within her, and every day she discovered the new where she had been accustomed to meet the familiar idea. She seemed to be slipping out of herself as out of a soft, white garment, unconsciously, without any effort on her part.

Very often they discussed whether sacrifice of self is not the first of the sins against life. "That is the sin," he said, "that cries loudest to Nature for vengeance. To discover our best gift from Nature, and to cultivate that gift, is the first law of life." If she could not accept this theory of life as valid and justifiable, she had at least begun to consider it. Another of Owen's ideas that interested her was his theory of beauty. He said that he could not accept the ordinary statement that a woman was beautiful and stupid. Beauty and stupidity could not exist in the same face, stupidity being the ugliest thing on earth; and he contended that two-thirds of human beauty were the illumination of matter by the intelligence, and but one-third proportion and delicacy of line. After some hesitation, he admitted that at first he had been disappointed in her, but now everything about her was an enchantment, and when she was not present, he lived in memories of her. He spoke without emphasis, almost as if he were speaking to himself, and she could not answer for delight.

Her father was vaguely conscious of some change in his daughter, and when one day he heard her singing "Faust," he was perplexed; and when she argued that it was a beautiful and human aspiration, he looked at her as if he had never seen her before. He asked her how she had come to think such a thing, and was perplexed by her embarrassments. She was sorry for her liking for Gounod's melodies. It seemed to alienate them; they seemed to have drifted apart. She saw a silently widening distance, as if two ships were moving away. One day he asked her if she were going to communion next Sunday. She answered that she did not think so, and sat thinking a long while, for she had become suddenly aware that she was not as pious as she used to be. She did not think that Owen's arguments had touched her faith, but she no longer felt the same interest in religion; and in thinking over this change, which seemed so independent of her own will, she grew pensive and perplexed. Her melancholy was a sort of voluptuous meditation. She was conscious all the while of Owen's presence. It was as if he were standing by her, and she felt that he must be thinking of her.

He had often spoken of going away with her; she had smiled plaintively, never regarding an elopement as possible. But one evening her father had gone to dine with a certain Roman prelate who believed in the advantage to the Catholic Church of a musical reformation. And she had gone to meet Owen, who had driven from London. They had walked two hours in the lanes, and when she got home she ran to her room and undressed hurriedly, thinking how delightful it would be to lie awake in the dark and remember it all. And feeling the cool sheets about her she folded her arms and abandoned herself to every recollection. Her imagination, heightened as by a drug, enabled her to see the white, dusty road and the sickly, yellow moon rising through the branches. Again she was standing by him, her arms were on his neck; again they stood looking into the vague distance, seeing the broken paling in the moonlight. There were his eyes and hands and lips to think about, and when she had exhausted these memories, others sprang upon her. It was in the very centre of her being that she was thinking of the moment when she had spied his horse's head over the hill top. She had recognised his silhouette against the sky. He had whipped up the horse, he had thrown the reins to the groom, he had sprung from the step. The evening was then lighted by the sunset, and as the sky darkened, their love had seemed to grow brighter. In comparison with this last meeting, all past meetings seemed shadowy and unreal. She had never loved him before, and if her smile had dwindled when he asked her to come away with him, she had liked to hear him say the dogcart was waiting at the inn. But when they stood by the stile where cattle were breathing softly, and the moon shone over the sheepfold like a shepherd's lantern, her love had grown wilful, and she had liked to say that she would go away with him. She knew not whether she could fulfil her promise, but it had been a joy to give it. They had walked slowly towards Dulwich, the groom had brought round the dog-cart; Owen had asked her once more to get in. Oh, to drive away with him through the night! "Owen, it is impossible," she said; "I cannot, at least not now. But I will one day very soon, sooner perhaps than you think."

He had driven away, and, standing on the moon-whitened road, she had watched the white dust whirl about the wheels.

One of the difficulties in the indulgence of these voluptuous meditations was that they necessitated the omission of her evening prayers. She could not kneel by her bedside and pray to God to deliver her from evil, all the while nourishing in her heart the intention of abandoning herself to the thought of Owen the moment she got into bed. Nor did the omission of her evening prayers quite solve the difficulty, for when she could think no more of Owen, the fear of God returned. She dared not go to sleep, and lay terrified, dreading the devil in every corner of the room. Lest she might die in her sleep and be summoned before the judgment seat, she lay awake as long as she could.

When she fell asleep she dreamed of the stage when the world was won, and when it seemed she had only to stretch her hands to the sky to take the stars. But in the midst of her triumph she perceived that she could no longer sing the music the world required; a new music was drumming in her ears, drowning the old music, a music written in a melancholy mode, and played on invisible harps. Owen told her it was madness to listen, and she strove to close her ears against it. In great trouble of mind she awoke; it was only a dream, and she had not lost her voice. She lay back upon the pillow and tried to recall the music which she had heard on the invisible harps, but already it was forgotten; it faded from her brain like mist from the surface of a mere. But the humour that the dream had created endured after the dream was dead. She felt no longer as she had felt over night, and lay in a sort of obtuse sensibility of conscience. She got up and dressed, her mind still clouded and sullen, and her prayers were said in a sort of middle state between fervour and indifference. Her father attributed her mood to the old cause; several times he was on the point of speaking, and she held him for the moment by the lappet of his coat and looked affectionately into his face. But something told her that if she were to confide her trouble to anyone, she would lose the power she had acquired over herself. Something told her that all the strength on her side was reposed in the secrecy of the combat. If it were known, she could imagine herself saying—

"Well, nothing matters now; let us go away, Owen."

He was coming to see her between eleven and twelve—at the very time he knew her father would be away from home, and this very fact stimulated her ethical perception. Her manner was in accordance with her mood, and the moment he entered he saw that something had happened, that she was no longer the same Evelyn from whom he had parted a couple of nights before.

"Well, I can see you have changed your mind; so we are not going away together. Evelyn, dear, is it not so? Tell me."

He was a little ashamed of his hypocrisy, for, as he had driven home in the dogcart, the adventure he was engaged in had appeared to him under every disagreeable aspect. He could not but think that the truth of the story would leak out, and he could hear all the women he knew speaking of Evelyn as a girl he had picked up in the suburbs—an organist's daughter. He had thought again of the responsibility that going away with this girl imposed upon him, and he had come to the conclusion that it would be wiser to drop the whole thing and get out of it while there was time. That night, as he lay in bed, he saw himself telling people how many operas she knew; and the tales of her successes in Vienna and Naples.... But he need not always be with her, she would have a chaperon; and he had fallen asleep thinking which among his friends would undertake the task for him. In the morning he had awakened in the same nervous indecision, and had gone to Dulwich disheartened, provoked at his own folly. It therefore happened that her refusal to go away with him coincided exactly with his humour. So all that was necessary was a mere polite attempt to persuade her that she was sacrificing her career, but without too much insistence on the point; a promise to call again soon; then a letter saying he was unwell, or was going to Paris or to Riversdale. A month after they could meet at a concert, but he must be careful not to be alone with her, and very soon the incident—after all, he had only kissed her—would be forgotten. But as he sat face to face with her, all his carefully considered plans seemed to drop behind him in ruins, and he doubted if he would be able to deny himself the pleasure of taking her away. That is to say, if he could induce her to go, which no longer seemed very sure. She might be one of those women in whom the sense of sin was so obdurate that they could not but remain virtuous.

But of what was she thinking? he asked himself; and he scanned the yielding face, reading the struggle in a sudden suppressed look or nervous twitching of the lips.

"Dearest Evelyn, I love you. Life would be nothing without you."

"Owen, I am very fond of you, but there would be no use in my going away with you. I should be miserable. I know I am not the kind of woman who would play the part."

Her words roused new doubts. It would be useless to go away with her if she were to be miserable all the while. He did not want to make anyone miserable; he wanted to make people happy. He indulged in a moment of complacent self-admiration, and then reflected that this adventure would cost a great deal of time and money, and if he were really to get nothing out of it but tears and repentance, he had better take her at her word, bid her good-bye, and write to-morrow saying he was called away to Riversdale on business.

"But you are not cross with me? You will come to see me all the same?"

He wondered if she were tortured with as many different and opposing desires as he was. Perhaps not, and he watched her tender, truthful eyes. In her truthful nature, filled full of passion and conscience, there was no place for any slightest calculation. But he was mistrustful, and asked himself if all this resistance was a blind to induce him to marry her. If he thought that, he would drop her at once. This suspicion was lost sight of in a sudden lighting of her hair, caused by a slight turning of her head. Beyond doubt she was a fresh and delicious thing, and if he did not take her, someone else would, and then he would curse his indecision; and if she had a great voice, he would for ever regret he had not taken her when he could get her. If he did not take her now, the chance was gone for ever. She was the adventure he had dreamed all his life. At last it had come to him, perhaps through the sheer force of his desire, and now, should he refrain from the dream, or should he dream it? He saw the exquisite sensual life that awaited him and her in Paris. He saw her, pale and pathetic, and thought of her eager eyes and lips.

Evelyn sat crestfallen and repentant, but her melancholy was a pretty, smiling melancholy, and her voice had not quite lost the sparkle and savour of wit. She regretted her sin, admitted her culpability, and he was forced to admit that sorrow and virtue sat becomingly upon her. Her mood was in a measure contagious, and he talked gently and gaily about herself, and the day when the world would listen to her with delight and approbation. But while he talked, he was like a man on the rack. He was dragged from different sides, and the questioner was at his ear.

Hitherto he had never compromised himself in his relations with women. As he had often said of himself, he had inspired no great passion, but a multitude of caprices. But now he had begun to feel that it is one love and not twenty that makes a life memorable, he wished to redeem his life from intrigues, and here was the very chance he was waiting for. But habit had rendered him cowardly, and this seduction frightened him almost as much as marriage had done. To go away with her, he felt, was equivalent to marrying her. His life would never be the same again. The list would be lost to him for ever, no more lists for him; he would be known as the man who lived with—lived with whom? A girl picked up in the suburbs, and sang rather prettily. If she were a great singer he would not mind, but he could not stand a mediocre singer about whom he would have to talk continual nonsense: conspiracies that were in continual progress against her at Covent Garden, etc. He had heard all that sort of thing before.... What should he do? He must make up his mind. It might be as well if he were to ask her to come to his house; then in some three or four months he would be able to see if she were worth the great sacrifice he was going to make for her.

Her hand lay on her knees. He knew that he should not take it, but it lay on her knees so plaintively, that in spite of all his resistance he took it and examined it. It did not strike him as a particularly beautiful hand. It was long and white, and exceedingly flexible. It was large, and the finger-tips were pointed. The palms curved voluptuously, but the slender fingers closed and opened with a virile movement which suggested active and spontaneous impulses. In taking her hand and caressing it, he knew he was prejudicing his chances of escape, and fearing the hand he held in his might never let him go again, he said—

"If your destiny should be to play the viola da gamba in Dulwich, and mine to set forth again on my trip round the world."

In an instant, in a rapid succession of scenes, the horrible winter she had spent in Dulwich passed before her eyes. She saw herself stopping at the corner of a street, and looking at a certain tree and the slope of a certain house, and asking herself if her life would go on for ever, if there would be no change. She saw herself star-gazing, with daffodils for offerings in her hands; and the memory of the hungry hours when she waited for her father to come home to dinner was so vivid, that she thought she felt the same wearying pain and the exhausting yearning behind her eyes, and that feeling as if she wanted to go mad. No; she could not endure it again, and she cried plaintively, falling slightly forward—

"Owen, don't make things more difficult than they are. Why is it wrong for me to go away with you? I don't do any harm to anyone. God is merciful after all."

"If I were to marry you, you could not go on the stage; you would have to live at Riversdale and look after your children."

"But I don't want children. I want to sing."

"And I want you to sing. No one but husbands have children, exception the stage and in novels."

"It would be much more exciting to run away together, than to be married by the Vicar. It is very wicked to say these things. It is you who make me wicked."

A mist blinded her eyes, and a sickness seemed instilled in her very blood, and in a dubious faintness she was conscious of his lips. He hardly heard the words he uttered, so loud was the clatter of his thoughts, and he seemed to see the trail of his destiny unwinding itself from the distaff in the hands of Fate. He was frightened, and an impulse strove to force him to his feet, and hence, with a rapid good-bye, to the door. But instead, he leaned forth his hands, he sought her, but she shrank away, and turning her face from him, she said—

"Owen, you must not kiss me."

Again he might choose between sailing the Medusa in search of adventure, or crossing the Channel in the mail packet in search of art.

"Will you come away with me?" he said. His heart sank, and he thought of the Rubicon.

"You don't mean this very instant? I could not go away without seeing father."

"Why not? You don't intend to tell him you are going away with me?"

"No; it is not the sort of thing one generally tells one's father, but—I cannot go away with you now—"

"When will you come?"

"Owen, don't press me for an answer. I don't know."

"The way of escape is still open to me," he thought; but he could not resist the temptation that this girl's face and voice presented to his imagination.