CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

He walked up Park Lane, staring now and then at the quaint balconies from a mere habit of admiration. But all were indifferent to him, even the one supported by the four Empire figures. It did not seem that anything in the world could interest him again, and he wondered how he would get through the years that remained to him to live. He was tired of hunting and shooting; he had seen everything there was to be seen; he had been round the world twice; it did not seem to him that he would ever care for another woman, and he reflected with pride that he had been faithful to Evelyn for six years. "But I shall never see her again," his heart wailed; "in three months she'll be a different woman; she won't want to see me, she'll find some excuse. That infernal priest will refuse his absolution if—" Owen stopped suddenly. Far away a little pink cloud dissolved mysteriously. "In another second," he thought, "it will be no more." In the Green Park the trees rocked in the soft autumn air, and he noticed that now and then a leaf broke from its twig, fluttered across the path, and fell by the iron railings.

"Well, Asher, how is it that you are in town at this time of year?"

It was a club acquaintance, one of the ordinary conventional men that Owen met by the dozen in every one of his clubs, a man whose next question would surely be, "How are your two-year-olds?"

"I should like to hear that they had all broken their legs," Owen answered through his teeth, and the colour mounted in his cheeks.

"Asher always was mad ... now he seems madder than ever. What did he mean by saying he wished his two-year-olds had all broken their legs?"

Owen lingered on the kerb, inveighing against the stupidity of his set. He had thought of dining at the Turf Club, but after this irritating incident he felt that he dared not risk it; if anyone were to speak to him again of his two-year-olds, he felt he would not be able to control himself. Suddenly he thought of a friend. He must speak to someone.... He need mention no names. He put up his stick and stopped a hansom. A few minutes took him to Harding's rooms.

The unexpectedness of the visit, and the manner in which Owen strode about the room, trying to talk of the things that he generally talked about, while clearly thinking of something quite different, struck Harding as unusual, and a suspicion of the truth had just begun to dawn upon him, when, breaking off suddenly, Owen said—

"Swear you'll never speak of what I am going to say—and don't ask for names."

"I'll tell no one," said Harding, "and the name does not interest me."

"It's this: a woman whom I have known many years—a friendship that I thought would go on to the end of the chapter—told me to-day that it was all finished, that she never wanted to see me again."

"A friendship! Were you her lover?"

"What does it matter? Suffice it to say that she was my dearest friend, and now I have lost her. She has been taken from me," he said, throwing his arms into the air. It was a superb gesture of despair, and Harding could not help smiling.

"So Evelyn has left him. I wonder for whom?" Then, with as much sympathy as he could call into his voice, he asked if the lady had given any reason for this sudden dismissal.

"Only that she thinks it wrong; we've been discussing it all the afternoon. It has made me quite ill;" and he dropped into a chair.

Harding knew perfectly well of whom they were speaking, and Owen knew that he knew, but it seemed more decorous to refrain from mentioning names, and Evelyn's soul was discussed as if it were an abstract quantity, and all indication of the individual incarnation was avoided. Owen admitted that, notwithstanding many seeming contradictory appearances, Evelyn had always thought it wrong to live with him, and yet, notwithstanding her being very fond of him, she had never shown any eagerness to be married. "Of course it is very wrong," she would say in her own enchanting way, "but a lover is very exciting, and a husband always seems dull. I don't think you'd be half as nice as a husband as you are as a lover." The recital of the Florence episode interested Harding, but it was the opposition of the priest and the musician that made the story from his point of view one of the most fascinating he had ever heard in his life.

They dined together in an old-fashioned club, in a room lighted by wax candles in silver candlesticks. Tall mirrors in gold frames reflected the black mahogany furniture. In answer to Owen, who lamented that Evelyn was sacrificing everything for an idea, Harding spoke, and with his usual conscious exaltation, of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish Inquisition, and then Robespierre seemed to him the most striking example of what men will do for an idea. He mentioned a portrait by Greuze in which Robespierre appears as a beautiful young man. "Such a face," he said, "as we might imagine for a lover or a poet, a sort of Lucien de Rubempré, but in his brain there was a cell containing the pedantic idea, and for this idea he cut off a thousand heads, and would have cut off a million. The world must conform to his idea, or it was a lost world."

Towards the end of dinner, the head waiter interrupted their conversation. He lingered about the table, anxious to hear something of Lord Ascott's two-year-olds; but, in the smoking-room over their coffee, they returned to the more vital question—the sentimental affections. They were agreed that the pleasure of love is in loving, not in being loved, and their reasons were incontrovertible.

"It is the letters," said Harding, "that we write at three in the morning to tell her how enchanting she was; it is the flowers we send, the words of love that we speak in her ear, that are our undoing. So long as we are indifferent, they love us."

"Quite true. At first I did not care for her as much as she did for me, and I noticed that as soon as I began to fall in love—"

"To aspire, to suffer. Maybe there is no deep pleasure in contentment. In casting you out she has given you a more intense life."

Owen did not seem to understand. His eye wandered, then returning to Harding, he said—

"We cannot worship and be worshipped; is that what you mean? If so, I agree with you. But I'd sooner lose her as I have done than not have told her that I loved her.... There never was anyone like her. Sympathy, understanding, appreciation and enthusiasm! it was like living in a dream. Good God! to think that that priest should have got her; that, after all my teaching, she should think it wrong to have a lover! I don't know if you know of whom we are speaking. If you suspect, I can't help it, but don't ask me. I shouldn't speak of her at all; it is wrong to speak of her, even though I don't mention her name, but it is impossible to help it. If you are proud of a woman you must speak of her—and I was so proud of her. It is very easy to be discreet when you are ashamed of them," he added, with a laugh. "When I had nothing to do, I used to sit down and think of her, and I used to say to myself that if I were the king of the whole world I could not get anything better. But it is all over now."

"Well, you've had six years, the very prime of her life."

"That's true; you're very sympathetic, Harding. Have another cigarette. I was faithful to her for six years—you can't understand that, but it is quite true, and I had plenty of chances, but, when I came to think of it, it always seemed that I liked her the best."

At the same moment Evelyn stood on her balcony, watching the evening. The park was breathless, and the sky rose high and pale, and calm as marble. But the houses seemed to speak unutterable things, and she closed the window and stood looking across the room. Then walking towards the sofa as if she were going to sit down, she flung herself upon it and buried her face among the cushions. She lay there weeping, and when she raised her face she dashed the tears from her streaming cheeks, but this pause was only the prelude to another passionate outbreak, and she wept again, finding in tears fatigue, and in fatigue relief. She sobbed until she could sob no more, and so tired was she that she no longer cared what happened; very tired, and her head heavy, she went upstairs, eager for sleep. And closing her eyes she felt a delicious numbing of sense, a dissolution of her being into darkness....

But in her waking there was a consciousness, a foreboding of a nameless dread, of a heavy weight upon her, and when the foreboding in her ears grew louder, she seemed to know that an irreparable calamity had happened, and trying to fathom it, she saw the wall-paper, and it told her she was in her own room. She seemed to be trying to read something on it, but what she was trying to read and understand seemed to move away, and her brain laboured in anxious pursuit. Her eyes opened, and she remembered her interview with Owen. She had sent him away, she understood it all now, she had sent Owen away! She had told him that Ulick was her lover, so even if he were to come back it never could be the same as it was. Why had she told him about Ulick? It was bad enough to send him away, but she had degraded his memory of her, and the thought that she had not deceived him, but had told him what he otherwise might never have known, did not console her just then. She lay quite still, face to face with, seeing as it were into the eyes of the Irreparable. Never again would a man hold her in his arms, saying, "Darling, I am very fond of you!" Take love out of her life, and what barrenness, what weariness! After all, she was only seven-and-twenty, and the thought came upon her that she might have waited until she was a little older. The word "never" rang in her ears, and she realised as she had not done before all that a lover meant to her—romance, adventure, the brilliancy and sparkle of life. What was life without the delightful excitement of the chase, the delicious doubts regarding the hidden significance of every look and word, then the rapture of the final abandonment? She tried to think that the life she proposed to relinquish had not brought her happiness, but she could not put back memory of the enchanting days she had spent with her lovers. Oh, the intense hours of anticipation! and the wonderful recollections! rich and red as the heart of a flower! Such rapture seemed to her to be worth the remorse that came after, and the peace of mind that a chaste life would secure, a poor recompense for dreary days and months. She realised the length and the colour of the time—grey week after grey week, blank month after blank month, void year after void year! And she always getting a little older, getting older in a drab, lifeless time, in a lifeless life, a weary life filled with intolerable craving! She had endured it once, a feeling as if she wanted to go mad.... She picked up her letters.

Among the letters she received that morning was one from Ulick. He was still in Paris, and would not be back for another week or ten days. He had been lonely, he had missed her, and looked forward to their meeting. He told her about the opera, the people he had met, and what they had said about his music. But the tender affection of his letter was not to her mind. Why did he not say that he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her on the lips? Knitting her brows, she tried to think that if he had written more passionately she would have taken the train and gone to him. She had sent Owen away on account of scruples of conscience, and a life of chastity extended indefinitely before her. But who was this woman to whom Ulick had shown his music, and who had said that if anything happened to prevent Evelyn Innes from singing the part, she hoped that Ulick would give it to her? Why should she have thought that something would happen to prevent Evelyn Innes from creating Grania? Had Ulick suggested it to her? But how could Ulick know? She tried to think if she had ever told him she was tired of the stage. Perhaps he had consulted the stars and had divined her future. This woman seemed to know that something might happen, and something was happening, there could be no doubt about that.

There was no doubt that she was tired of the stage, but perhaps that was on account of hard work, perhaps she required a rest; in two or three months she might return eagerly to the study of Grania; for the sake of Ulick, she might remain on the stage till she had established the success of his opera. This might be if she and Ulick were not lovers. She had promised Owen that she would not keep him for her lover, but that did not mean that she would not sing his opera. If she didn't, another woman would, some wretched singer who did not understand the music, and it would be a failure. Ulick would hate her; he would believe that her refusal to sing his opera was a vile plan to do him an injury. He did not know what conscience meant—he only understood the legends and the Gods! She laughed, and a moment afterwards was submerged in difficulties. Her conduct would seem more incomprehensible to him than it did to Owen; she did not wish him to hate her, but he would hate her, and to avoid seeing her he would not go to Dowlands, and so she would rob her father of his friend—the friend who had kept him company when she deserted him. There was another alternative. If she liked him well enough to be his mistress, she should like him well enough to be his wife. But knowing that she would not marry him, she took up her other letters and began reading them.

Lady Duckle liked Homburg; everyone was there, and she hoped Evelyn would not be detained in London much longer. The Duke of Berwick had proposed to Miss Beale, and Lady Mersey was always about with young Mr. So-and-So. Evelyn didn't read it all. She lay back thinking, for this letter, about things that interested her no longer, had led her thoughts back to self, and she inquired why in the midst of all her enjoyments she had felt that her real life was elsewhere, why she had always known that sooner or later the hour would come when she would leave the things which she enjoyed so intensely. The idea of departure had never quite died down in her, and she had always known that she would be one day quite a different woman. She had often had glimpses of her future self and of her future life, but the moment she tried to distinguish what was there, the vision faded. Even now she knew that she would not marry Ulick, and this not because she would refuse her father anything, but merely because it was not to be. Her eyes went to the piano, but on the way there she stopped to ask herself a question. Why was she in London at this time of year? She knew why she did not care to go to Homburg—because she was tired of society. But why did she not go to some quiet seaside place where she could enjoy the summer weather? She would like to sit on the beach and hear the sea. Her soul threatened to give back a direct answer, and she dismissed the question.

She paced the empty alley facing the Bayswater Road. No one was there except a nursemaid and a small child, and she and they shared the solitude. She could see the omnibuses passing, and hear the clank of the heavy harness, and seated on one of the seats she drew diagrams on the gravel with her parasol. Owen said there was no meaning in life, that it was no more than an unfortunate accident between two eternal sleeps. But she had never been able to believe that this was so; and if she had sought to disbelieve in God, it was as Monsignor had said, because she wished to lead a sinful life. And if she could not believe in annihilation, there could be no annihilation for her, that was Ulick's theory. The name of her lover brought up the faded Bloomsbury Square, the litter of manuscript and the books on magic! She had tried to believe in readings of the stars. But such vague beliefs had not helped her. In spite of all her efforts, the world was slipping behind her; Owen and Ulick and her stage career seemed very little compared with the certainty within her that she was leading a sinful life, and she was only really certain of that. The omnibuses in the road outside, the railways beyond the town, the ships upon the sea, what were these things to her—or yet the singing of operas? The only thing that really mattered was her conscience.

Then, almost without thinking at all, in a sort of stupor, she walked over the hill and descended the slope, and leaning over the balustrade she looked at the fountains. But the splashing water explained nothing, and she turned to resume her walk; and she reflected that to send away her lovers would avail her nothing, unless she subsequently confessed her sins and obtained the priest's absolution. Monsignor would tell her that to send away her lovers was not sufficient, and he would refuse his absolution unless she promised him not to see them any more. That promise she could not give, for she had promised Ulick that she would sing Grania, and she had promised Owen to see him in three months. It seemed to her both weak and shameful to break either of these promises. The spire of Kensington Church showed sharp as a needle on a calm sky, and it was in a sudden anguish of mind that she determined that her repentance must be postponed. She had considered the question from every point of view, and could not at once reverse her life; the change must come gradually. She had sent Owen away; that was enough for the present.

The numerous pea-fowls had gathered in a bare roosting tree on an opposite hillside, and the immense tails of the cock-birds swept the evening sky. Owen would have certainly compared it to a picture by Honderhoker. The ducks clambered out of the water, keeping their cunning black eyes fixed on the loitering children whom the nursemaid was urging to return home. In Kensington Gardens, the glades were green and gold, and for some little while Evelyn watched the delicate spectacle of the fading light, and insensibly she began to feel that a life of spiritual endeavour was the only life possible to her, and that, however much it might cost her, she must make the effort to attain it. Even to feel that she was capable of desiring this ideal life was a delicious happiness, and her thoughts flowed on for a long while, unmindful of practical difficulties. Suddenly it came upon her like a sudden illumination, that sooner or later she would have to make all the sacrifices that this ideal demanded, that she would not have any peace of mind until she had made them. But even at the same moment the insuperable difficulties of the task before her appeared, and she despaired. The last obstacle was money. As she crossed the road dividing Kensington Gardens from Hyde Park, she understood that the simple fact of owing a few thousand pounds rendered her immediate retirement from the stage impossible. She had insisted that the money she required to live in Paris and study with Madame Savelli should be considered as a debt, which she would repay out of her first earnings. But Owen had laughed at her. He had refused to accept it, and he would never tell her the rent of the house in the Rue Balzac; he had urged that as he had made use of the house he could not allow her to pay for it. In the rough, she supposed that a thousand pounds would settle her debt for the year they had spent in Paris.

Since then she had, however, insisted on keeping herself, but now that she came to think it out, it did not seem that she had done much more than pay her dressmaker's bills. She grew alarmed at the amount of her debt, which seemed in her excited imagination so large that all her savings, amounting to about six or seven thousand pounds, would not suffice to pay it off. Most of her jewellery had been given to her by Owen; there was the furniture, the pictures and the china in Park Lane! She would have to return all these, and the horses, too, if she wished to pay everything, and the net result would be that she would mortally offend the man who had done everything for her. She knew he would not forgive her if she sent back the presents he had made her, nor could she blame him, and she decided that such complete restitution was impossible. But, for all she knew, Monsignor might insist upon it. If he did? She felt that she would go mad if she did not put aside these scruples, which she knew to be in a measure fictitious, but which she was nevertheless unable to shake off. And she could not help thinking, though she knew that such thoughts were both foolish and unjust, that Owen had purposely contrived this thraldom. Then there was only one thing for her to do, to go to Paris after Ulick.... A moment after there came a sinking feeling. She knew that she could not. But what was she to do? All this uncertainty was loosening her brain.... She might go to Monsignor and lay the whole matter before him and take his advice. But she knew if she went to him she must confess. Better that, she thought, than that the intolerable present should endure.

Mental depression and sleepless nights had produced nervous pains in her neck and arms. She could hardly drag herself along for very weariness. The very substance of her being seemed to waste away; that amount of unconsciousness without which life is an agony had been abstracted, leaving nothing but a fierce mentality.

She slept a little after dinner, and awakening about eleven, she foresaw another night of insomnia. The chatter of her conscience continued, tireless as a cricket, and she had lost hope of being able to silence it. The hysterical tears of last night had brought her four hours of sleep, but there was no chance of any repetition of them. It would be useless to go upstairs. She sang through the greater part of "Lohengrin," and then took up the "Meistersinger," and read it till it fell from her hands. ... It was three o'clock; and feeling very tired, she thought that she might be able to sleep. But all night long she saw her life from end to end. Her miserable passage through this life, the weakness of her character and the vileness of her sins were shown to her in a hideous magnification. She was exhibited to herself like an insect in a crystal, and she perceived the remotest antennae of her being.