XV

"She will fall asleep again, and to-morrow will be quite well. But what a near escape!" And he lingered with Mérat, feeling it were better she should know everything, yet loth to tell her that he had known all the while that Ulick was trying to persuade Evelyn to go away with him. But Mérat must know that Ulick had been staying at Berkeley Square.

"I suppose Monsignor comes here to see her?"

"He has been here, Sir Owen."

Owen would have liked to question her, but it did not seem honourable to do so, and after a little talk about the danger of yielding to religious impulses, he noticed that Mérat was drifting from him, evidently thinking such discussions useless.

On the landing he told her that Ulick had gone away with the opera company, and that it was not likely that he and mademoiselle would see each other again.

"But when Mr. Dean comes back to London?" Mérat answered.

"Well, hardly even then; after a crisis like this she will not be anxious to see him. You know, Mérat, he was staying with me at Berkeley Square; and I knew of his visits here, only it seemed to me the only way to save her from religion was by getting her to go back to the stage."

Owen took breath; he had told his story, or as much as was necessary, omitting the fact that he was an accomplice in the love-making which had led to attempted suicide.

"You don't think I was right?"

"Well, Sir Owen, you see, I don't think mademoiselle will ever go back to the stage."

"You think that, Mérat? Well, then, the only thing to save her from religion is marriage. I don't mind telling you, nor is there any need to tell you—you must know—that I have always wanted her to be my wife, only she would not marry me, and for some reason impossible to get at."

"Mademoiselle is like nobody else; elle avait toujours son idée."

"Parfaitement, comme disent les paysannes de chez vous, d'une bête qui ne ressemble pas au troupeau et qui allait toujours."

"Oui, mademoiselle a eu toujours son idée. So Sir Owen thinks it was fear of going back to the stage that persuaded mademoiselle to—"

"Something like that, Mérat. She liked Mr. Dean."

"But you are first in her thoughts, Sir Owen."

"That isn't astonishing. We have known each other so long. Now, after what has happened, perhaps she will think differently about marriage, do you understand, Mérat. She may think differently to-morrow, for instance, and it would be better for all of us—for you, for myself, for her. Don't you agree?"

"Well, Sir Owen, there is nothing I should like more than to see mademoiselle married, only—"

"Only you don't think she'll marry me?"

"Comme monsieur a dit, elle a eu toujours son idée."

"But after the great shock surely she will see that marriage is the only way." Owen continued to talk of marriage a little while longer, and all the way home his thoughts ran on his chance of persuading Evelyn to marry him. It did not seem possible that she could refuse after the shock. The chances were all with him: he would catch her in a moment when her faith in religion would be weakened, for she must see that it had not saved her from attempted suicide; all the chances were in his favour, and he hardly doubted at all he would be able to persuade her to marry him. Once she agreed she would carry it out; nothing she hated as much as any alteration of plan.

His mind wandered back into the past years, and he recalled little facts significant of her character. However loud the storm she would cross the Channel, though there was no reason for it—merely, as she said, because it had been arranged to cross that day. He could remember the dress she wore on that occasion, and the expression of her face. Other instances equally trivial floated into his mind, every one strangely vivid, delighting him because they were characteristic of her. If he could only get her to say she would marry him. It would be unnecessary to explain why he had sent Ulick to her. Or he might explain. It didn't matter. Ulick would pass out of their lives, and all this miserable business would be forgotten.

The quickest way of being married was in a registry office, but would Evelyn look upon a civil marriage as sufficient? Once the civil marriage was an accomplished fact, she could be married afterwards in Church, even in a Catholic church; he would go there if it pleased her to go. Besides, Evelyn really looked upon marriage more as a civil than as a religious obligation. His thoughts continued to chatter, keeping him up late, till long after midnight, and awaking him early. And the sun seemed to him to have dawned on his wedding day. But even if they were to be married in a registry office a best man would be required. So his thoughts went to Harding, whom he knew to be in London. But Harding would be busy with his writing until the afternoon, and Owen strode about Bond Street, visiting the shops of various picture dealers, welcoming any acquaintance whom he happened to meet, walking to the end of the street with him, and spending the last hour—from three to four—in the National Gallery, whither he had gone to see some new acquisitions. But the new pictures did not interest him. "My thoughts are elsewhere."

And turning from the new Titian, it seemed to him that he might drive to Victoria Street; Harding's work must be over for the day.

"My dear Harding, you don't mind my interrupting you?" And he envied his friend's interest in his manuscripts when the writer put them away.

"You are not disturbing me; my secretary didn't come to-day, and everything is habit. I can no longer write except by dictation."

"If I had known that I would have called in the morning."

"Again some drama in which Evelyn Innes is concerned," Harding said to himself.

"Harding, I have come to ask your advice; you'll give me the very best. But you will have to hear the whole story."

"Well, I am a story-teller, and like to hear stories."

Owen told him how he had met Ulick Dean at Innes', and had invited him to stop at Berkeley Square, and how gradually the idea that he could make use of Ulick in order to tempt Evelyn back to the stage had come into his mind. Anything to save her from religion, from Monsignor.

Owen caught Harding looking at him from under his shaggy eyebrows, and anger had begun to colour his cheeks when Harding said:

"Don't you remember, Asher, coming here a couple of years ago, and—"

"Yes, I know. You predicted that Ulick Dean and I would become friends, and you are right; we did."

"And you preferred that Evelyn should be his mistress rather than that she shall go over to Monsignor?"

"I am not ashamed to confess I did; anything seemed better—but there is no use arguing the point. What I have come to tell you is that rather than go away with him she tried to kill herself." And he told Harding the story.

"What an extraordinary story! But nothing is extraordinary in human nature. What we consider the normal never happens. Nature's course is always zigzag, and no one can predict a human action."

"Well, then, my good friend, when you have done philosophising—I don't mean to be rude, but you see my nerves have been at strain for the last four-and-twenty hours; you will excuse me. My notion now is that everything has happened for the best." And he confided to Harding his hopes of being able to persuade Evelyn to marry him. "Only by marriage can she be saved, and I think I can persuade her." And he babbled about her appearance last night after her long sleep, comparing her with the portrait in his room. The painter had omitted nothing of her character; all that had happened he read into the picture—the restless spiritual eyes, and the large voluptuous mouth, and the small high temples which Leonardo would like to draw. The painting of this picture was as illusive as Evelyn herself, the treatment of the reddish hair and the grey background.

And Harding listened, saying, "So this is the end."

"You think she will marry me?"

"Everything in nature is unexpected, that is all I can tell you. Art is logic, Nature incoherency."

"Well, let us hope that Nature will be a little more coherent to-morrow than she was last night, and that Evelyn will do the right thing. Women generally marry when it is pressed upon them sufficiently, don't you think so, Harding?"

"I hope it will be so, since you desire it."

"And you will be my best man, won't you?"

"I shall be only too pleased. Now, if you wait for me while I change my boots we'll go out together." And the two men crossed the Green Park talking of the great moral laxity of the time they lived in; whereas in the eighteenth century men were even accused of boasting of their successes, now the conditions were reversed, men never admitting themselves to be anything else but virtuous; women, on the contrary, publishing their liaisons, and taking little pleasure in them until they were known to everybody.

"Liaisons have become as official as marriages. Who doesn't know—" And Harding mentioned a number of celebrated 'affairs' which had been going on for ten, some twenty years. "The real love affair of her ladyship now is probably some little tenor or drawing-master, and Cecil's a little milliner; but her ladyship and Cecil are forced to keep up appearances, for if they didn't who would talk about them any more?"

"You should write that as a short story," Owen suggested. And the two friends began to argue as to the number of lovers which fell to the lot of fashionable women, from the age of twenty-three to fifty. Two or three ladies were mentioned whose liaisons reached a couple of hundred, and there was another about whom they were not agreed, for some of her liaisons had lasted so long that Owen did not believe she had had more than fifty lovers.

"It is impossible to imagine any time for a young man more propitious than the present, or any society more agreeable than London. Morals, as the newspapers would say, are in abeyance, conscience is looked upon as pedantic, especially in women, and unbecoming." As the two walked up St. James' Street together, Harding noticed that Owen, notwithstanding his chatter about morals, was thinking of Evelyn, and took very little interest in the display of the season—in the slim nobility of England, fresh from Oxford, all in frock coats for the first time, delighting in canes, and deerskin gloves, in collars and ties, the newest fashion, going down the street in pairs, turning into their clubs, lifting their hats to the women who drove past in victorias and electric broughams.

"Never were women more charming than they are now," Owen said, in order not to appear too much immersed in his own thoughts, and he picked a woman out, pretending to be interested in her. "That one leaning a little to the left, her white dog sitting beside her."

"Like a rose in Maytime."

"Rather an orchid in a crystal glass."

Harding accepted the correction.

"Do you know who she is, Harding?"

The question was a thoughtless one, for no one knows the whole of the peerage, not even Harding, and it was painful for him to admit that he did not know the lady, who happened to be an earl's daughter— somebody he really should have known. Not having been born a peer himself, he had, as a friend once said, resolved to make amends for the mistake in his birth by never knowing anybody who hadn't a title. But this criticism was not a just one; Harding was not a snob. It has already been explained that love of order and tradition were part of his nature; the reader remembers, no doubt, Harding's idiosyncrasies, and how little interested he was in writers, and painters, avoiding always the society of such people. But his face brightened presently, for a very distinguished woman bowed to him, and he was glad to tell Owen he was going to stay with her in the autumn. The Duchess had just returned from Palestine, and it was beginning to be whispered she had gone there with a young man. The talk turned again on the morality of London, and exciting stories were told of a fracas which had occurred between two well-known men. So their desks had been broken open, and packets of love letters abstracted. New scandals were about to break to blossom, other scandals had been nipped in the bud.

Harding said nothing wittier had been said for many generations than the mot credited to a young girl, who had described a ball given that season by the women of forty as "The Hags' Hop." Somebody else had called it "The Roaring Forties." Which was the better description of the two? "The Roaring Forties" seemed a little pretentious, and preference was given to the more natural epigram, "The Hags' Hop."

"We were all virtuous in the fifties, now licence has reached its prime, and we shall fall back soon into decadence."

Harding, who was something of an historian, was able to illustrate this prophecy by reference to antiquity. When the life of the senses and understanding reached its height, as it did in the last stages of the Roman Empire, a reaction came. St. Francis of Assisi was succeeded by Alexander VI.; Luther soon followed after. "And in twenty years hence we shall all become moral again. Good heavens! the first sign of it has appeared—Evelyn."

Piccadilly flowed past, the stream of the season, men typical of England in their age as in their youth, typical of their castles, their swards, and lofty woods, of their sports and traditions, hunting, shooting, racing, polo playing; the women, too, typical of English houses and English parks, but not so typical; only recognisable by a certain reflected light; an Englishman makes woman according to his own image and likeness, taking clay often from America. The narrow pavements of Bond Street were thronged, women getting out of their carriages, intent on their shopping, bowing to the men as they ran into the shops, making amends for the sombre black of the men's coats by a delirium of feathers, skirts, and pink ankles. And nodding to their friends, bowing to the ladies in the carriages, Harding and Owen edged their way through the crowd.

"The street at this hour is like a ballroom, isn't it?" Owen said. "I want to get some cigars." And they turned into a celebrated store, where half a dozen assistants were busily engaged in tying up parcels of five hundred or a thousand cigars, or displaying neatly-made paper boxes containing a hundred cigarettes.

"When will men give up smoking pipes, I should like to know?"

"I thought you were a pipe smoker?"

"So I was, but I can t bear the smell any longer."

"Yet you smoke cigars?"

"Cigars are different."

"How was it the change came?"

"I don't know." Owen ordered a thousand cigars to be sent to Berkeley
Square.

It was late for tea, and still too early for dinner.

"I am sorry to ask you to dine at such an early hour, but I daresay we shan't have dinner till half-past seven."

But Harding remembered his tailor: some trousers. And he led Owen towards Hanover Square, wondering if Owen would approve of his choice?

"It was like you to choose that grey."

Now what was there to find fault with in the grey he had chosen? They turned over the tailor's pattern sheet. Daring, in the art of dressing, is the prescriptive right of the professional just as it is in writing. Owen was a professional dresser, whereas he, Harding, was but an amateur; and that was why he had chosen a timid, insignificant grey. At once Owen discovered a much more effective cloth; and he chose a coat for Harding, who wanted one—the same rough material which Harding had often admired on Owen's shoulders. But would such a dashing coat suit him as well as it did its originator, and dare he wear the fancy waistcoats Owen was pressing upon him?

"They suit you, Asher, but you still go in at the waist, and brown trousers look well on legs as straight as billiard cues."

"Is there nothing we can do for you, Sir Owen?"

Owen spoke about sending back a coat which he was not altogether satisfied with.

"Every suit of clothes I have, Harding, costs me fifty pounds."

Harding raised his thick eyebrows, and Owen explained that only one suit in six was worth wearing.

"There is more truth in what you say than appears. I once wore a suit of clothes for six years! And they were as good as new when—"

But Owen refused to be interested in Harding's old clothes. "If I'm not married to-morrow I shall never marry. You don't believe me, Harding? Now, of what are you thinking? Of that suit of clothes which you have had for six years or of my marriage—which?"

At the moment that Owen interrupted him Harding was thinking that perhaps a woman who had attempted suicide to escape from another man would not drift as easily into marriage as Owen thought; but, of course, he did not dare to confess such an opinion.

"You don't mind dining at half-past seven?"

"Not in the least, my good friend, not in the least." Going towards Berkeley Square they continued to speak about Evelyn…. She would have to refuse Owen to-night or accept him: so he would know his fate to-night.

"Just fancy," he said, "to-morrow I am either going to be married or—" And he stared into the depths of a picture about which he thought he would like to have Harding's opinion, but it did not matter what anybody thought of pictures until he knew what Evelyn was going to do. None had any interest for him; but they could not talk of Evelyn during dinner, the room being full of servants, and he was forced to listen to Harding, who was rather tiresome on the subject of how a collection of pictures had better be formed, and the proposal to go to France to seek for an Ingres did not appeal to him.

"I hope you don't mind my smoking a pipe," Harding said as they rose from table.

"No," he said, "smoke what you like, I don't care; smoke in my study, only raise the window. But you'll excuse me, Harding. My appointment is for eight."

As he was about to leave the room a footman came in, saying that Miss Innes' maid would like to see him, and, guessing that something had happened, Owen said:

"It is to tell me I'm not to go to see her; something disagreeable always—" And he left the room abruptly.

"I have shown the maid into the morning-room, Sir Owen."

"Now, what is the matter, Mérat?"

"Perhaps you had better read the letter first, Sir Owen, and then we can talk."

"I can't read without my glasses; do you read it, Mérat." Without waiting for her to answer he returned to the dining-room. "I have forgotten my glasses, Harding, that is all; you will wait for me." His hand trembled as he tried to fix the glasses on his nose.

"MY DEAR OWEN,—I am afraid you will be disappointed, and I am disappointed too, for I should like to see you; but I think it would be better, and Monsignor, who was here to-day, thinks it would be better, that we should not see each other… for the present. I have recovered a good deal, but am still far from well; my nerves are shattered. You know I have been through a great deal; and though I am sure you would have refrained from all allusions to unpleasant topics, still your presence would remind me too much of what I don't want to think about. It is impossible for me to explain better. This letter will seem unkind to you, who do not like unkind letters; but you will try to understand, and to see things from my point of view, and not to rave when I tell you that I am going to a convent—not to be a nun; that, of course, is out of the question; but for rest, and only among those good women can I find the necessary rest.

"My first thought was to go to Dulwich to my father, but—well, here is a piece of news that will interest you—he has been appointed capelmeister to the Papal choir, the ambition of his life is fulfilled, and he started at once for Rome. It is possible that three or four months hence, when he is settled, he will write to ask me to go out to join him there, and Monsignor would like me to do this, for, of course, my duty is by my father, who is no longer as young as he used to be. I don't like to leave him, but the matter has been carefully considered; he has been here with Monsignor, and the conclusion arrived at is, that it is better for me to go to the convent for a long rest. Afterwards … one never knows; there is no use making plans. "EVELYN."

"No use making plans; I should think not, indeed," Owen cried. "Never will she come out of that convent, Mérat, never! They have got her, they have got her! You remember the first day we met, you and I, in the Rue Balzac, and you have been with her ever since; you were with us in Brussels when she sang 'Elizabeth,' and in Germany—do you remember the night she sang 'Isolde'? So it has come to this, so it has come to this; and in spite of all we could do. Do you remember Italy, Mérat? Good God! Good God!" And he fell into a chair and did not speak again for some time. "It would have been better if Ulick Dean had persuaded her to go away with him. It was I who told him to go to see her and kept him in my house because I knew that this damned priest would get her in the end."

"But, Sir Owen, for mademoiselle to be a nun is out of the question… if you knew what convents were."

"Oh, Mérat, don't talk to me, don't talk to me; they have got her!"

Then a sudden idea seized him.

"Come into the dining-room," he said. "You know Mr. Harding? He is there." He passed out of the room, leaving the door open for Mérat to follow through. "Harding, read this letter." He stood watching Harding while he read; but before Harding was half-way down the page he said: "You see, she is going into a convent. They have got her, they have got her! But they shan't get her as long as I have a shoulder with which to force in a door. The doors of those mansions where she has gone to live are not very strong, are they, Mérat? She shall see me; she shall not go to that convent. That blasted priest shall not get her. Those ghouls of nuns!" And he was about to break from the room when Mérat threw herself in front of him.

"Remember, Sir Owen, she has been very ill; remember what has happened, and if you prevent her from going to the convent—"

"So, Mérat, you're against me too? You want to drive her into a convent, do you?"

"Sir Owen, you hardly know what you are saying. I am thinking of what might happen if you went to Ayrdale Mansions and forced in the door. Sir Owen, I beg of you."

"Then if you oppose me you are responsible. They will get her, I tell you; those blasted ghouls, haunters of graveyards, diggers of graves, faint creatures who steal out of the light, mumblers of prayers! You know, Harding, what I say is true. God!" He raised his fist in the air and fell back into an armchair, screaming oaths and blasphemies without sense. It was on Harding's lips to say, "Asher, you are making a show of yourself." "Vous vous donnez en spectacle" were the words that crossed Mérat's mind. But there was something noble in this crisis, and Harding admired Owen—here was one who was not afraid to shriek out and to rage. And what nobler cause for a man's rage?

"The woman he loves is about to be taken out of the sunlight into the grey shadow of the cloister. Why shouldn't he rage?"

"To sing of death, not of life, and where the intelligence wilts and bleaches!" he shrieked. "What an awful end! don't you understand? Devils! devils!" and he slipped from his chair suddenly on to the hearthrug, and lay there tearing at it with his fingers. The elegant fribble of St. James' Street had passed back to the primeval savage robbed of his mate.

"You give way to your feelings, Asher."

At these words Asher sprang to his feet, yelling:

"Why shouldn't I give way to my feelings? You haven't lost the most precious thing on God's earth. You never cared for a woman as I do; perhaps you never cared for one at all. You don't look as if you did." Owen's face wrinkled; he jibbered at one moment like a demented baboon, at the next he was transfigured, and looked like some Titan as he strode about the room, swearing that they should not get her.

"But it all depends upon herself, Owen; you can do nothing," Harding said, fearing a tragedy. But Owen did not seem to hear him, he could only hear his own anger thundering in his heart. At last the storm seemed to abate a little, and he said that he knew Harding would forgive him for having spoken discourteously; he was afraid he had done so just now.

"But, you know, Harding, I have suspected this abomination; the taint was in her blood. You know those Papists, Harding, how they cringe, how shamefaced they are, how low in intelligence. I have heard you say yourself they have not written a book for the last four hundred years. Now, why do you defend them?"

"Defend them, Asher? I am not defending them."

"Paralysed brains, arrested intelligences." He stopped, choked, unable to articulate for his haste. "That brute, Monsignor Mostyn— at all events I can see him, and kick the vile brute." And taken in another gust of passion, Owen went towards the door. "Yes, I can have it out with him."

"But, Asher, he is an old man; to lay hands upon him would be ruin."

"What do I care about ruin? I am ruined. They have got her, and her mind will be poisoned. She will get the abominable ascetic mind. The pleasure of the flesh transferred! What is legitimate and beautiful in the body put into the mind, the mind sullied by passions that do not belong to the mind. That is what papistry is! They will poison that pure, beautiful woman's mind. That priest has put them up to it, and he shall pay for it if I can get at him to-night!" Owen broke away suddenly, leaving Harding and Merat in the dining-room, Harding regretting that he had accepted Owen's invitation to dinner… If Asher and Monsignor were to meet that night? Good Lord! … Owen would strike him for sure, and a blow would kill the old man.

"Merat, this is very unfortunate…. Not to be able to control one's temper. You have known him a long time…. I hope nothing will happen. Perhaps you had better wait."

"No, Mr. Harding, I can't wait; I must go back to mademoiselle." And the two went out together, Harding turning to the right, jumping into a cab as soon as he could hail one, and Merat getting into another in order to be in time to save her mistress from her madman lover.