CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Owen had telegraphed to her and she had come at once. But how callous and unsympathetic she was. If people knew what she was, no one would speak to her. If Owen knew that she had desired his mother's death ... But had she? She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died before she, Evelyn, arrived at Riversdale. As the carriage drove through the woods she noticed that they were empty and silent, save for the screech of one incessant bird, and she thought of the dead woman's face, and contrasted it with the summer time.

The house stood on the side of some rising ground in the midst of the green park. Cattle were grazing dreamily in the grass, which grew rich and long about a string of ponds, and she could see Owen walking under the colonnade. As the carriage came round the gravel space, his eyes sought her in the brougham, and she knew the wild and perplexed look on his face.

"No, don't let's go into the house unless you're tired," he said, and they walked down the drive under the branches, making, they knew not why, for the open park. "This is terrible, isn't it? And this beautiful summer's day too, not a cloud in the sky, not a wind in all the air. How peaceful the cattle are in the meadow, and the swans in the pond. But we are unhappy. Why is this? You say that it is the will of God. That is no answer. But you think it is?"

Fearing to irritate him, she did not speak, but he would not be put off, and she said—

"Do not let us argue, Owen, dear. Tell me about it. It was quite unexpected?"

"She had been in ill-health, as you know, for some time. Let us go this way."

He led her through the shrubbery and through the wicket into the meadows which lay under the terrace, and, thinking of the dead woman, she wondered at the strange, somnolent life of the cattle in the meadows and the swans on the pond. The willows, as if exhausted by the heat, seemed to bend under the stream, and their eyes followed the lines of the woods and looked into the burning blue of the sky, striving to read the secret there. A rim of moist earth under their feet, and above their heads the infinite blue! The stillness of the summer was in every blade of grass, in every leaf, and the pond reflected the sky and willows in hard, immovable reflections. An occasional ripple of the water-fowl in the reeds impressed upon them the mystery of Nature's indifference to human suffering.

"In that house behind that colonnade she lies dead. Good God! isn't it awful! We shall never see her. But you think we shall?"

"Owen, dear, let as avoid all discussion. She was a good woman. She was very good to me."

"I haven't told you that it was by her wish that I sent for you. She wanted to ask you to promise to marry me.... I told her that I had asked you, and that in a way we were engaged. I could not say more. You seemed unsettled, you seemed to wish to get out of your promise—is not that so?"

Evelyn thought of the scene by Lady Asher's bedside that an accident had saved her from. Marriage was more than ever impossible. What should she have said if Lady Asher had not died before she arrived? The dying woman's eyes, the dying woman's voice! Good heavens! what would she have said? But she had considered nothing. After glancing at the telegram, she had told Merat to pack a few clothes, and had rushed away. She pondered the various excuses she might have sent. She might have said she was not in when the telegram came, she had only just caught the train as it was; if she had not got the telegram before eleven o'clock she would have been safe. But all that was past now, Lady Asher had died before she arrived. It were better that she had died—anything were better rather than that scene should have taken place; for she could not have promised to marry Owen. What would she have done? Refused while looking into her dying eyes, or run out of the room?

"You don't answer me, Evelyn."

"Owen, don't press me. Enough has been said on that subject. This is no time to discuss such questions."

"But it is Evelyn—it was her dearest wish.... Is it then impossible? Have you entirely ceased to care?"

"No, Owen, I'm very fond of you. But you don't really want to marry me, it is because your mother wished it."

His face changed expression, and she knew that he was not certain on the point himself.

"Yes, Evelyn, I do, indeed I do;" and convinced for the moment that what he said was true, he took her hands, and looking at her he added, "It was her wish, and if what you believe be true, she is listening now from behind that blue sky."

Both were trembling, and while the swans floated by, they considered the depth of blue contained in the sky. He was taken with a little dread, and was surprised to find in himself a vague, haunting belief in the possibility of an after life. Suddenly his self-consciousness fell from him, was merged in his instinct of the woman.

"Evelyn, if I don't marry you I shall lose you. I cannot lose you, that would be to lose everything. I don't ask any questions, whether you like Ulick Dean, nor even what your relations are. I only want to know if you will marry me."

He read in her eyes that the tale of their love was ended, and heard his future life ring hollow. It seemed strange that at such a moment the serene swans should float about them, that the water-fowl should move in and out of the reeds, and that the green park and the cloudless sky were like painted paper.

"Then everything is over, everything I had to live for, all is a blank. But when you sent me away before, you had to take me back; you're not a woman who can live without a lover."

"It is difficult, I know."

"What has come between us, tell me? This fellow Ulick Dean or religious scruples?"

"I have no right to talk about religious scruples."

"Then it is this man. You love him, you've ceased to care for me, and you ask me to barter my right to kiss you, to take you in my arms, so that I may remain your friend." "Why, Evelyn, have you got tired of me?"

"But I have not got tired of you, Owen. I am very fond of you."

"Yes, but you don't care any more for me to make love to you."

"Of course it is not the same as it was in the beginning, but there is affection."

"When passion is dead, all is dead, the rest is nothing."

It seemed so shameful that he should suffer like this, and she strove to rouse herself out of her stony determination. She was like one upon a rampart; she could see the surrounding country, but could not escape to it; this rampart was the instinct, in which Nature had shut her soul. But she could not bear to see him cry.

"Oh, Evelyn, this cannot be."

Then, feeling that the reality was too brutal, she yielded to the temptation to disguise the truth.

"I don't know what I shall do, Owen; there would be no use making promises."

"Then you do love me a little, Evelyn?"

"Yes, Owen, you must never doubt that. I shall always be fond of you; remember that, whatever happens."

"Yes, I know, as a friend. Look round! the earth and the sky are quiet, and one day we shall be quiet too, only that is sure."

As they walked towards the house, their self-consciousness rose to so high a pitch that the park and house seemed to them like a thin illusion, a sort of painted paper reality, which might fall to pieces at any moment. He thought how little were the hours between the present moment and the moment when she would be taken from him. Whereas she was thinking that these hours would never pass. She realised the long hours before the sunlight waned. She thought of their lonely dinner and their evening after it. All that while she would witness his grief for the love that had gone from her, a love which she could no more give than she could once withhold. The great green park lay before their eyes, they strayed through the woods talking of her Isolde. He had not seen the performance. He had been called away the day she played it, but his pockets were full of the articles that had been written about her. The leaves of the beech trees shimmered in the steady sunlight, and they could see the green park through the drooping branches. She often detected a sob in his voice, and once, while sitting under a cedar tree at the edge of the terrace, he had to turn aside to hide his tears, and the sadness of everything made her sick and ill.

They had tea in the west hall. Owen had ceased to complain, and she had begun to think that she could not give him up entirely.

The day had passed somehow; dinner was over. Around the green park the last light of the sunset grew narrower, and the cattle faded mysteriously into the gathering gloom. Owen held converse with himself, but with recognition of the fact that he was listened to by the second subject of his discourse, and that they themselves were his ideas, the figuration of his teaching, endowed his philosophy with a dramatic intensity.

"How you used to hang round my neck and listen with eager nervous eyes. You always had the genius of exaltation. You were wonderful; I watched you, I understood you, I appreciated you; you were a marvellous jewel I had found, and of which I was excessively proud. I hardly lived at all for myself. You were my life; my life lived in you. Every time I went to see you, every appointment was a thrill, a wonder, a mystery. But it was not until you took me back after that separation at Florence that I sank into the depths of love. Then I became like a diver in the deep sea. What I had known before were but the shallows of passion. What I felt after Florence was the translucid calm of the ocean's depth. I lived in the light of an inner consciousness, seeing you always, your face always before me, and my whole being held in a rapt devotion, a self-sufficiency, an exaltation beyond the reach of words. Oh, Evelyn, I have been extraordinarily in love. But all this is nothing to you; it even bores you."

"No, Owen, no, but you don't understand."

The desire to tell him the truth came up in her throat, but the moment she sought to express it in words it became untruth, and it was to save herself from falsehood that she remained silent.

"I knew my mistake, but the temptation was irresistible. I wanted so to tell you that I loved you. I could not deny myself, effusion, tears, aspiration. I gained two very wonderful years, and so I lost you. I wonder if any lover would have the courage to forswear these joys so that he might retain his mistress? Would any mistress be worthy of the sacrifice? 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'"

"Owen, dear, you're very cruel. Why do you speak like that? I shall never cease to love you. Owen, dear, you don't hate me?" she said, turning towards him.

The silence was intense. It seemed to enter her ears and eyes like water or fire, and with dim sight and a dissolution of personal control of her body, she was moved towards him, and without any sort of thrill of desire she was drawn, almost thrown at his feet.

She accepted his kisses wearily. There was a strange look in her eyes which he could not interpret, and she could not confide her secret, and there was an inexpressible sadness in these last kisses, and Owen's heart seemed to stand still when he said,—

"Her last wish was our marriage; she would be glad if she could see us."

Evelyn hid her face on his shoulders several times. He thought she was weeping, but her eyes remained dry. He came to her room that evening, and now that they were lovers again, it seemed to him impossible that she could refuse to marry him. But she stood looking at him, absorbed, in the presence of her future life, her eyes full of a strange farewell. He could extort no words from her, and her eyes retained their strange melancholy till her departure; his last memory of her visit was their melancholy.