Chapter 19

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER NINETEEN

The music-room had seemed haunted with Owen's voice, and yesterday she had asked Ulick to walk with her in the lanes so that she might escape from it. But to-day half-pleased, half-perplexed by her own perversity, she could not resist taking him to the picture gallery--she wanted to show him "The Colonnade."

The picture was merged in shadow, and no longer the picture she remembered; but when the sun shone, all the rows quickened with amorous intrigue, and the little lady held out her striped skirt (she had lost none of her bland delight), and the gentleman who advanced to meet her bowed with the mock humility of yore, and the beautiful perspectives of the colonnade floated into the hush of the trees, and the fountain warbled.

For a reason which eluded her, she was anxious to know how this picture would strike Ulick, and she tried to draw from him his ideas concerning it.

"Their thoughts," he said, "are not in their evening parade; something quite different is happening in their hearts...." And while waiting for her parasol and his stick, he said--

"I can see that you always liked that picture; you've seen it often before."

She had been longing to speak of Owen. He seemed always about them, and in phantasmal presence he seemed to sunder them, to stand jailor-like. It was only by speaking of Owen that his interdiction could be removed, and she said that she had often been to the gallery with him. Having said so much, it was easy to tell Ulick of the story of the three days of hesitation which had preceded her elopement.

"The Colonnade," and "The Lady playing the Virginal," had seemed to her symbols of the different lives which that day had been pressed upon her choice. Ulick explained that Fate and free will are not as irreconcilable as they seem. For before birth it is given to us to decide whether we shall accept or reject the gift of life. So we are at once the creatures and the arbiters of destiny. These metaphysics excited and then eluded her perceptions, and she hastened to tell him how she had stood at the corner of Berkeley Square, seeing the season passing under the green foliage, thinking how her life was summarised in a single moment. She remembered even the lady who wore the bright irises in her bonnet; but she neglected to mention her lest Ulick should think that it was memory of this woman's horses that had decided her to the choice of her pair of chestnuts. She told him about the journey to France, the buying of the trousseau, and the day that Madame Savelli had said, "If you'll stay with me a year, I'll make something wonderful of you." She told him how Owen had sent her to the Bois by herself, and the madness that had risen to her brain: and how near she had been to standing up in the carriage and asking the people to listen to her. She told the tale of all this mental excitement fluently, volubly, carried away by the narrative. Suddenly she ceased speaking, and sat absorbed by the mystery.

She sat looking into that corner of the garden where the gardener on a high ladder worked his shears without pausing. The light branches fell, and she thought of how she had grown up in this obscure suburb amid old instruments and old music. She remembered her yearning for fame and love; now she had both, love and fame. But within herself nothing was changed; the same little soul was now as it had been long ago, she could hear it talking, living its intense life within her unknown to everyone, an uncommunicable thing, unchanged among much change. She remembered how Owen, like Siegfried, had come to release her, and all the exhausting passion of that time. She had sat with him under this very tree. She was sitting there now with Ulick. Everything was changed, yet everything was the same.... She was going to fall in love with another man, that was all.

She awoke with a start, frightened as by a dream; and before she had time to inquire of herself if the dream might come true, she remembered the girl with whom Ulick used to play Mozart in a drawing-room hung with faded tapestries. She feared that he would divulge nothing, and to her surprise he told her that it had happened two years ago at Dieppe, where he had gone for a month's holiday. At that time when he was writing "Connla and the Fairy Maiden." He had composed a great deal of the music by the sea-shore and in sequestered woods; and to assist himself in the composition of the melodies, he used to take his violin with him. One day, while wandering along the dusty high road on the look out for a secluded, shady place, he had come upon what seemed to be a private park. It was guarded by a high wall, and looking through an iron gate that had been left ajar, he was tempted by the stillness of the glades. "A music-haunted spot if ever there was one," he said to himself; and encouraged by the persuasion of a certain melody which he felt he could work out there, and nowhere but there, he pushed the gate open, and entered the park. A perfect place it seemed to him, no one but the birds to hear him, and the sun's rays did not pierce the thick foliage of the sycamore grove. Never did place correspond more intimately with the mood of the moment, and he played his melody over and over again, every now and then stopping to write. Her step was so light, and he was so deep to his music, that he did not hear it.... She had been listening doubtless for some time before he had seen her. He spoke very little French, and she very little English, but he easily understood that she wished him to go on playing. A little later her father and mother had come through the trees; she had held up her hand, bidding them be silent. Ulick could see by the way they listened that they were musicians. So he was invited to the villa which stood in the centre of the park, and till the end of his holiday he went there every day. The girl--Eliane was her beautiful name--was an exquisite musician. They had played Mozart in the room hung with faded tapestries, or, beguiled by the sunshine, they had walked in the park. When Evelyn asked him what they said, he answered simply, "We said that we loved each other." But when he returned to Dieppe three months later, all was changed. When he spoke of their marriage she laughed the question away, and he perceived that his visits were not desired; on returning to England, all his letters were returned to him.... Soon after she married a Protestant clergyman, and last year she had had a baby.

He sat absorbed in the memory of this passion, and Evelyn and the garden were perceived in glimpses between scenes of youthful exaltations and romantic indiscretions. He remembered how he had threatened to throw himself from her window for no other reason except the desire of romantic action; and while he sat absorbed in the past, Evelyn watched him, nervous and irritated, striving to read in his face how much of the burden had fallen from him, and how free his heart might be to accept another love story.

As he sat in the garden under the calm cedar tree he dreamed of a reconciliation with Eliane. He even speculated on the effect that the score of his opera would have upon her if he were to send it--all that music composed in her honour. But which opera? Not "Connla and the Fairy Maiden," for a great deal of it was crude, thin, absurd. No; he could not send it. But he might send "Grania." Yes, he would send "Grania" when he had finished it. To arrive suddenly from England, to cast himself at her feet--that might move her. Then, with a sigh, "These are things we dream of," he thought, "but never do. Only in dreams do men set forth in quest of the ideal."

He looked up, Evelyn's eyes were fixed on him, and he felt like Bran returning home after his voyage to the wondrous isles.

They saw the footman coming across the green sward. He had come to tell her that Mr. Innes was waiting for her. She was taking him to St. Joseph's. But there was not room in the victoria for three, and Ulick would have to go back to London by train.

"But you will come and see me soon? You promised to go through the 'Isolde' music with me. Will you come to-morrow?"

Her clear, delightful eyes were fixed upon him; he felt for the first time the thrill of her personality; their light caused him to hesitate, and then to accept her invitation eagerly. He heard her remind her father that he had promised to come to-night to hear her sing Elizabeth. He would be there too. He would see her to-night as well, and he stood watching the beautiful horses bearing father and daughter swiftly away. The shady Dulwich street dozed under a bright sky, and the bloom of the flowering trees was shedding its fine dust. He thought of Palestrina and Wagner, and a delicious little breeze sent a shower of bloom about his feet, as if to remind him of the pathos of the passing illusion of which we are a part. He stood watching the carriage, and the happiness and the sorrow of things choked him when he turned away.

She was happy with her father, and she felt that he loved her better than any lover. The unique experience of taking him to St. Joseph's in her carriage, and the event of singing to him that night at Covent Garden, absorbed her, and she dozed in her happiness like a beautiful rose. Never had she been so happy. She was happier than she merited. The thought passed like a little shadow, and a moment after all was brightness again. Her father was the real love of her life; the rest was mere excitement, and she wondered why she sought it; it only made her unhappy. Monsignor was right.... But she did not wish to think of him.

On the steps of St. Joseph's, she bade her father good-bye, and remained looking back till she could see him no more. Then she settled herself comfortably under her parasol, intent on the enjoyment of their reconciliation. The two days she had spent with him looked back upon her like a dream from which she had only just awakened. As in a dream, there were blurred outlines and places where the line seemed to have so faded that she could no longer trace it. The most distinct picture was when she stood, her hand affectionately laid on his shoulder, singing Ulick's music. She had forgotten the music and Ulick himself, but her father, how near she was to him in all her sympathies and instincts! Another moment, equally distinct, was when she had looked up and seen him in the choir loft conducting with calm skill.

He was coming to-night to hear her sing Elizabeth; that was the great event, for without his approval all the newspapers in the world were as nothing, at least to her. She hummed a little to herself to see if she were in voice. To convince him that she sang as well as mother was out of the question, but she might be able to convince him that she could do something that mother could not have done. It was strange that she always thought of mother in connection with her voice; the other singers did not seem to matter; they might sing better or worse, but the sense of rivalry was not so intimate. The carriage crossed Westminster Bridge, and as she looked down the swirling muddy current, her mother's face seemed to appear to her. In some strange way her mother had always seemed more real than her father. Her father lived on the surface of things, in this life, whereas her mother seemed independent of time and circumstance, a sort of principle, an eternal essence, a spirit which she could often hear speaking to her far down in her heart. Since she had seen her mother's portrait, this sensation had come closer; and Evelyn drew back as if she felt the breath of the dead on her face, as if a dead hand had been laid upon hers. The face she saw was grey, shadowy, unreal, like a ghost; the eyes were especially distinct, her mother seemed aware of her; but though Evelyn sought for it, she could not detect any sign of disapproval in her face. She looked always like a grey shadow; she moved like a shadow. Evelyn was often tempted to ask her mother to speak. Her prayer had always been a doubting, hesitating prayer, perhaps that was why it had not been granted. But now, sitting in her carriage in a busy thoroughfare, she seemed to see over the brink of life, she seemed to see her mother in a grey land lit with stars. She recalled Ulick's tales of evocation, and wondered if it were possible to communicate with her mother. But even if she could speak with her, she thought that she would shrink from doing so. She thought of what Ulick had said regarding the gain and loss of soul, how we can allow our soul to dwindle, and how we can increase it until communion with the invisible world is possible. She felt that it were a presumption to limit life to what we see, and Owen's argument that ignorance was the cause of belief in ghosts and spirits seemed to her poor indeed. Man would not have entertained such beliefs for thousands of years if they had been wholly false.

Ulick was coming to-morrow. But he was going to read through Isolde's music with her, and she could hardly fail to learn something, to pick up a hint which she might turn to account.... Her conduct had been indiscreet; she had encouraged him to make love to her. But in this case it did not matter; he was a man who did not care about women, and she recalled all he had said to convince herself on this point. However this might be, the idea of her falling in love with him was out of the question. A second lover stripped a woman of every atom of self-esteem, and she glanced into her soul, convinced that she was sincere with herself, sure or almost sure that what she had said expressed her feelings truthfully. But in spite of her efforts to be sincere, there was a corner of her soul into which she dared not look, and her thoughts drew back as if they feared a lurking beast.

Immediately after, she remembered that she had vowed in church that she would ask Owen to marry her. Owen would say yes at once, he would want to marry her at the end of the week; and once she was married, she would have to leave the stage. She would not be able to play Isolde.... But she knew the part! it would seem silly to give up the stage on the eve of her appearance in the part. It would be such a disappointment to so many people. All London was looking forward to seeing her sing Isolde. Mr. Hermann Goetze, what would he say? He would be entitled to compensation. A nice sum Owen would have to pay for the pleasure of marrying her. If she were to pay the indemnity--could she? It would absorb all her savings. More than all. She did not think she could have saved more than six or seven thousand pounds. The manager might claim twenty. Her thoughts merged into vague calculations regarding the value of her jewellery.... Even Owen would not care to pay twenty thousand pounds so that he might marry her this season instead of next. Next year she was going to sing Kundry! Her face tightened in expression, and a painful languor seemed to weaken and ruin all her tissues. He might ask her why she had so suddenly determined to accept what she had often avoided, put aside, postponed. She would have to give some reason. If she didn't, he would suspect--what would he suspect? That she was in love with Ulick?

She might tell Owen that she wished to be married on account of scruples of conscience. But she had better not speak of Monsignor. Any mention of a priest was annoying to him. In that respect he was even more arbitrary, more violent than ever. But a sudden desire to see him arose in her, and she told the coachman to drive to Berkeley Square.

The trees wore their first verdure, and there was a melody among the boughs, and she took pleasure in the graceful female figure pouring water from the long-necked ewer. She lay back in her carriage, imitating the lady she had seen six years ago, regretting that she would not know her if she were to meet her; she might be one of her present friends.

Owen's house had been freshly painted that spring, its balcony was full of flowers chosen by herself, and arranged according to her taste ... and a pleasant look of recognition lit up in the eyes of the footmen in the hall, and the butler, whom Evelyn remembered since the first day she came to Berkeley Square, was sorry indeed that Sir Owen was out. But he was sure that Sir Owen would not be long. Would she wait in Sir Owen's room, or would she like lunch to be served at once? She said she would wait in Sir Owen's room, and she walked across the hall, smiling at the human nature of the servants' admiration. If their master had a mistress, they were glad that he had one they could boast about. And picking up two songs by Schubert, and hoping she was in good voice, she sat down at the piano and sang them. Then, half aware that she was singing unusually well, she sang another. The third song she sang so beautifully that Owen stood on the threshold loth to interrupt her, and when she got up from the piano he said--

"Why on earth don't you sing like that on the stage?"

"Ah, if one only could," she said, laughing, and taking him by the hand, she led him to the sofa and sat beside him as if for a long talk.

"Yes," she said, "I've seen him. It's all right."

"I'm so glad. I hope you said something in my favour. I don't want him to think me a brute, a villainous seducer, the man who ruined his daughter?"

"No, there was nothing of that kind."

She began at first very gravely, but her natural humour overcame her, and she made him laugh, with her account of her wooing of her father, and the part the new harpsichord had played in their reconciliation delighted him. He was full of pleasant comments, gay and sympathetic; he was interested in her account of Ulick, and said he would like to know him. This pleased her, and looking into Owen's eyes, she wondered if she should ask him to marry her. They talked of their friends, of the performance that night at the opera, and Evelyn thought that perhaps Owen ought not to go there lest he should meet her father, and she remembered that she had only to ask him to marry her in order to make it quite easy for him to meet her father. Every moment she thought she was going to ask him; she determined to introduce the subject in the first pause in the conversation, but when the pause came she didn't or couldn't; her tongue did not seem to obey her. She talked instead things that did not interest either her or him--the general principles of Wagner's music, or some technicality, whether she should insist on the shepherd's song being played on the English horn. At last she felt that she could not continue, so fictitious and strained did the conversation seem to her.

"Are you going already? I've not seen you for four days. We are dining to-morrow at Lady Merrington's."

Owen hoped that she would sing there the three songs which she had just sung so well, but she answered instantly that she did not think she would, that she wanted to sing Ulick's songs. She knew that this second mention of Ulick's name would rouse suspicion; she tried to keep it back, but it escaped her lips. She was sorry, for she did not think that she wished to annoy. She would not stop to lunch, though she could not urge any better reason than that Lady Duckle was waiting for her, and when he wished to kiss her, she turned her head aside; a moody look collected in her eyes, an ugly black resentment gathered in her heart; she was ashamed of herself, for there was nothing to warrant her being so disagreeable, and to pass the matter off, she described herself as being aggressively virtuous that morning.

On her singing nights she dined at half-past five, and the interval after dinner she spent in looking through her part, humming bits of it to herself, but to-day Lady Duckle was quick to remark the score of "Tannhaeuser" in her hand. She sat with it on her knees, looking at it only occasionally, for she was thinking how the music would appeal to her father, and how her mother would have sung it. But she had to abandon these vain speculations. She must play the part as she felt it, to tamper with her conception would be to court failure. To please herself was her only chance of pleasing her father; if he did not like her reading of the part, if her singing did not please him, it was very unfortunate, but could not be helped. And when the carriage came to take her to the theatre, she was not sure that she would not be glad to receive a telegram saying that he was prevented from coming. She was very nervous while dressing, and on coming downstairs she stood watching the stage-box where he was sitting. She could distinguish his handsome, grave face through the shadows, and the orchestra was playing that rather rhetorical address to the halls which neither she nor Ulick cared much about. She waited, forgetful of her entrance, and she had to hurry round to the back of the stage.

But the moment the curtain went up, she became the mediaeval German princess; her other life fell behind her, and her father was but a little shadow on her brain. Yet he was the inspiration of her acting, and that night the whole theatre consisted for Evelyn of one stage-box. Her eyes never wandered there, but she knew that there sat her ultimate judge, one whom no excess or trick could deceive. He would not judge her by the mere superficial appearance she presented on the stage, by the superficial qualities of her voice or her acting; he would see to the origin of the idea, whence it had sprung, and how it had been developed. He did not know this particular opera, but he knew all music, and would judge it and her not according to the capricious taste of the moment, but in its relation and her relation to the immutable canons of art, from the plain chant to Palestrina, from Palestrina to Bach and Beethoven. Her singing of every phrase would be passed as it were through the long tradition of the centuries; it would not be accepted as an isolated fact, it would be judged good, indifferent or bad, by learned technical comparison. That she was his daughter would weigh not a hair's weight in the scale, and the knowledge of this terrible justice raised her out of herself, detached her more completely from the superficial and the vulgar. She sang and acted as in a dream, hypnotised by her audience, her exaltation steeped in somnambulism and steeped in ecstasy.

The curtain was raised several times, but that night the only applause or censure she was minded to hear awaited her in her dressing-room. She sent her maid out of the room, and waited for some sound of footsteps in the corridor, and at the first sound she rushed to the door and flung it open. It was her father, Merat was bringing him along the corridor, and they stood looking at each other; her clear, nervous eyes were trembling with emotion. His face seemed to tell her that he was pleased; she read upon it the calm exaltation of art, yet she could not however summon sufficient courage to ask him, and they sat down side by side. At last she said--

"Why don't you speak? Aren't you satisfied? Was I so bad?"

"You are a great artist, Evelyn. I wish your mother were here to hear you."

"Is that really true? Say it again, father. You are satisfied with me. Then I have succeeded."

He told her why she had sung well, and he knew so well. It was like walking with a man with a lantern; when he raised the light, she could see a little farther into the darkness. But she had still the prayer to sing to him. She wanted to know what he would think of her singing of the prayer. The voice of the call-boy interrupted them. She sang the prayer more purely than ever, and the flutes and clarionettes led her up a shining road, and when she walked up the stage she seemed to disappear amid the palpitation of the stars.

Her father was waiting for her, and on their way to the station she could see that he was absorbed in her art of singing. His remarks were occasional and disparate, but she guessed his train of thought, supplying easily the missing links. His praise was all inferential, and this made it more delicate and delicious. On bidding him good-night he asked her to come to choir practice. She would have liked to, but her accompanist was coming at half-past ten.

There were few days when she was not singing at night that she dispensed with her morning's work. She considered herself like a gymnast, bound to go through her feats in private, so as to assure herself of her power of being able to go through them in public. Even when she knew a part, she did not like to sing it many times without studying it afresh. She believed that once a week was as often as it was possible to give a Wagner opera, and even then an occasional rehearsal was indispensable if the first high level of excellence was to be maintained.

With her morning's work she allowed no one to interfere. Owen was often sent away, or retained for such a time as his criticism might be of use. But to-day she was expecting Ulick; he had promised to go through the music with her; so when Merat came to tell her that the pianist had arrived, she hesitated, uncertain whether she should send him away. But after a moment's reflection she decided not to forego her serious study of the part. She only wished to talk to Ulick about the music, to sing bits of it here and there, to question him regarding certain readings, to get at his ideas concerning it. All that was very interesting and very valuable in a way, but it was not hard work, and she felt, moreover, that hard work was just what she wanted before the rehearsals of "Tristan" began; there were certain passages where she was not sure of herself. She thought of the cry Isolde utters in the third act when Tristan falls dead. The orchestra comes in then in a way very perplexing for the singer, and she had not yet succeeded in satisfying herself with those few bars.

"Tell the young man that I shall be with him in half an hour."

And when she had had her bath and her hair was dressed, she tied a few petticoats round her waist and slipped on a morning wrapper; that was enough, she paid no heed to her accompanist, treating him as if he were her hairdresser. She sang sitting close to his elbow, her arm familiarly laid upon the back of his chair, a little grey woollen shawl round her shoulders. In the passages requiring the whole of her voice, she got up and sang them right through, as if she were on the stage, listened to by five thousand people. Owen, accustomed as he was to her voice, sometimes couldn't help wondering at the power of it; the volume of sound issuing from her throat drowned the piano, threatening to break its strings. Her ear was so fine that it detected any slightest tampering with the text. "You have given me a false chord," she would say; and sure enough, the pianist's fingers had accidentally softened some harshness. Sometimes he ventured a slight criticism. "You should hold the note a little longer." Then she would sing the passage again.

After singing for about two hours she had lunch. That day she was lunching with Lady Ascott, and did not get away until after three o'clock. Owen came to fetch her, and they went away to see pictures. But more present than the pictures were Ulick's dark eyes, and Owen noticed the shadow passing constantly behind her eyes. Twice she asked him what the time was, and she told him she would have to go soon.

At last she said, "Now I must say good-bye."

She could see he was troubled, and that she grieved him, and at one moment it was uncertain whether she would not renounce her visit and send Ulick a telegram. But she remembered that he had probably seen her father, and would be able to tell her more of what her father thought of her Elizabeth. It was that feeble excuse that sufficed to decide her conduct, and she bade him good-bye.

Standing on the threshold of her drawing-room, Evelyn admired its symmetry and beauty. The wall paper, a delicate harmony in pale brown and pink roses, soothed the eye; the design was a lattice, through which the flowers grew. An oval mirror hung lengthwise above the white marble chimney piece, and the Louis XV. clock was a charming composition of two figures. A Muse in a simple attitude leaned a little to the left in order to strike the lyre placed above the dial; on the other side, a Cupid listened attentive for the sound of the hour, presumably his hour. There was a little lyrical inevitableness in the lines of this clock, and Owen could not come into the room without admiring it. On the chimney piece there were two bowls filled with violets, and the flowers partly hid the beautiful Worcester blue and the golden pheasants. And on either side of the clock were two Chelsea groups, factitious bowers made out of dark green shell-like leaves, in which were seated a lady in a flowered silk and a beribboned shepherd playing a flute.

They had spent long mornings seeking a real Sheraton sofa, with six or eight chairs to match. For a long time they were unfortunate, but they had happened upon two sofas, certainly of the period, probably made by Sheraton himself. A hundred and twenty years had given a beautiful lustre to the satinwood and to the painted garlands of flowers, and the woven cane had attained a rich brown and gold; and the chairs that went with the sofa were works of art, so happy were the proportions of their thin legs and backs, and in the middle of the backs the circle of harmonious cane was in exquisite proportion.

For a long while the question for immediate decision had become what carpet should be there. Evelyn had happened upon an old Aubusson carpet, a little threadbare, but the dealer had assured her that it could be made as good as new, and she had telegraphed to Owen to go to see its pale roses and purple architecture. He had written to her that its harmony was as florid, and yet as classical as an aria by Mozart. He was still more pleased when he saw it down, and he had spent hours thinking of what pictures would suit it, would carry on its colour and design. The Boucher drawing which he had bought at Christie's had seemed to him the very thing. He had brought it home in a cab.

She was proud of her room, but she was doubtful if it would please Ulick, and was curious to hear what he would think of it. She remembered that Owen had said that such exquisite exteriorities were only possible in a pagan century, when man is content to look no farther than this strip of existence for the reason of his existence and his birthright. And while waiting for Ulick she wondered what his rooms were like, and if she would ever go there. She expected him about five, and she sat waiting for him by her tea-table amid the eighteenth century furniture, a little to the right of the Boucher.

She watched him as he came towards her, expecting and hoping to see him cast a quick glance at the picture. He shook hands with her vaguely, and sat down on a Sheraton chair and fixed his eyes on the Aubusson carpet. She thought for some time that he was examining it, but at last the truth dawned; he did not see it at all, he was maybe a thousand years away, lost in some legendary past. Had she not seen him before pass from such remote mood and become suddenly animated and gay, she would have despaired of any pleasure in his visit. Above everything else she was minded to ask him if he had seen her father, and if her father had spoken to him about her Elizabeth. But shyness prevented her, and she spoke to him about ordinary things, and he answered her questions perfunctorily, and without any apparent reason he got up and walked about the room; but not looking at any object, he walked about, with hanging head, absorbed in thought. "If he won't look at me he might look at my room, I'm sure that is pretty enough," and she sat watching him with smiling eyes. When she asked him what he thought of the Boucher, he said that no doubt it was very graceful, but that the only art he took interest in, except Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci and some German Primitives, was Blake. Then he seemed to forget all about her, and she had begun to think his manner more than usually unconventional, and, having made all the ordinary remarks she could think of, she asked him suddenly if he had seen her father, and if he had said anything to him about her Elizabeth.

"I went to Dulwich on purpose to hear."

She blushed, and was very happy. It was delicious to hear that he was sufficiently interested in her to go to Dulwich on purpose to inquire her father's opinion of her Elizabeth.

"I wonder if he will like my Isolde as well."

He did not answer, and his silence filled her with inquietude.

"I have been thinking over what you said regarding your conception of the part."

She waited for him to tell her what conclusion he had come to, but he said nothing. At last he got up, and she followed him to the piano. When she came to the passage where Isolde tells Brangaene that she intended to kill Tristan, he stopped.

"But she is violent; hear these chords, how aggressive they are. The music is against you. Listen to these chords."

"I know those chords well enough. You don't suppose I am listening to them for the first time. I admit that there are a few places where she is distinctly violent. The curse must be given violently, but I think it is possible to make it felt that her violence is a sexual violence, a sort of wish to go mad. I can't explain. Can't you understand?"

"Yes, I think I do; you want to sing the first part of the act languidly. There is more in the music which supports your reading than I thought. In the passage where Isolde says to Brangaene, but really to herself, 'To die without having been loved by that man!' the love motive appears here for the first time, but more drawn out, broader than elsewhere."

She declared that Wagner had emphasised his meaning in this passage as if he had anticipated all the misreadings of this first act, and was striving to guard himself against them. She grew excited in the discussion. She had merely followed her instinct, but she was glad that Ulick had challenged her reading, for as they examined the music clause by clause, they found still further warrant for her conception.

"Ah, the old man knew what he was doing," she said; "he had marked this passage to be sung gloomily, and by gloomily he meant infinite lassitude." But this intention had not been grasped, and the singers had either sung it without any particular expression, or with a stupid stage expression which meant if possible something less than nothing. "Then, you see, if I sing the first half of the first act as wearily as the music allows me, I shall get a contrast--an Isolde who has not drunk the love potion. The love potion is of course only a symbol of her surrender to her desire."

Ulick would have liked to have gone through the whole of the music of the act with her. It was only in this way that he could get an idea of how her reading would work out. But in that moment each read in the other's eyes an avowal of which they were immediately ashamed, and which they tried to dissimulate.

"I am tired. We won't have any more music this evening."

His thoughts seemed to pass suddenly from her, and then, without her being aware how it began, she found herself listening intently to him. He was talking in that strange, rhythmical chant of his about the primal melancholy of man, and his remote past always insurgent in him. Although she did not quite understand, perhaps because she did not quite understand, she was carried away far out of all reason, and it seemed to her that she could listen for ever. Nor could she clearly see out of her eyes, and she felt all power of resistance dissolve within her. He might have taken her in his arms and kissed her then; but though sitting by her, he seemed a thousand miles away; his remoteness chastened her, and she asked him of what he was thinking.

"When your father used to speak of you, I used to see you; sometimes I used to fancy I heard you. I did hear you once sing in a dream."

"What was I singing? Wagner?"

"No; something quite different. I forgot it all as I awoke except the last notes. I seemed to have returned from the future--you seemed in the end to lose your voice.... I cannot tell you--I forget."

"It is very sad; how sad such feelings are."

"But I never doubted that I should meet you, that our destinies were knit together--for a time at least."

She wanted to ask him by what signs do we recognise the moment that we are destined to meet the one that is more important to us than all the world. But she could find no way of asking this question that would not betray her. She could not put it so that Ulick would fail to read some application of the question to herself, and to himself. So it seemed strange indeed that he should, as if in answer to her unexpressed thought, say that the instinct of man is to consult the stars. She remembered the evenings when she used to go into the patch of black garden and gaze at the stars till her brain reeled. She used even to gather the daffodils and place them on the wall in homage to the star which she felt to be hers. She could not refrain from this idolatrous act; but in her bed at night, thinking of the flowers and the star, she had believed herself mad or very wicked; for nothing in the world would she have had anyone know her folly, and she remembered the agony it had been to her to confess it. But now she heard that she had been acting according to the sense of the wisdom of generations. As he had said, "according to the immortal atavism of man."

With her ordinary work-a-day intelligence, she felt that the stars could not possibly be concerned in our miserable existence. But deep down in her being someone who was not herself, but who seemed inseparable from her, and over whom she had no slightest control, seemed to breathe throughout her entire being an affirmation of her celestial dependency. She could catch no words, merely a vague, immaterial destiny like distant music; and her ears filled with a wailing certitude of an inseverable affinity with the stars, and she longed to put off this shameful garb of flesh and rise to her spiritual destiny of which the stars are our watchful guardians. It was like deep music; words could not contain it, it was a deep and indistinct yearning for the stars--for spiritual existence. She was conscious of the narrowness of the prison-house into which Owen had shut her, and looking at Ulick, she felt the thrill of liberation; it was like a ray of light dividing the dark. Looking at Ulick, she was startled by the conviction of his indispensability in her life, and the knowledge that she must repel him was an acute affliction, a desolate despair. It seemed cruel and disastrous that she might not love him, for it was only through love that she could get to understand him, and life without knowledge of him seemed failure.

"I'm very fond of you, Ulick, but I mustn't let you kiss me. Can't we be friends?"

He sat leaning a little forward, his head bent and his eyes on the carpet. He represented to her an abysmal sorrow--an extraordinary despair. She longed to share this sorrow, to throw her arms about him and make him glad. Their love seemed so good and natural, she was surprised that she might not.

"Ulick."

"Yes, Evelyn."

He looked round the room, saw it was getting late, and that it was time for him to go.

"Yes, it is getting late. I suppose you must go. But you'll come to see me again. We shall be friends, promise me that ... that whatever happens we shall be friends."

"I think that we shall always be friends, I feel that."

His answer seemed to her insufficient, and they stood looking at each other. When the door closed after him, Evelyn turned away, thinking that if he had stayed another moment she must have thrown herself into his arms. _

Read next: Chapter 20

Read previous: Chapter 18

Table of content of Evelyn Innes


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book