Evelyn Innes Part 25

"Is she?"

Her pale blue eyes seemed to open a little wider, and she looked at him searchingly. He could not keep back the words that rose to his tongue.

"You mean that your dead life now lives in Elizabeth."

"Yes, I suppose that that is it."

They asked each other whether any part of one's nature is ever really dead.

A few moments after the pilgrims were heard singing, and Evelyn would have to go on the stage. She pressed her hands against her forehead, ridding herself by an effort of will of her present individuality. The strenuous chant of the pilgrims grew louder, the procession approached, and as it pa.s.sed across the stage Elizabeth sought for Tannhauser, but he was not among them. So her last earthly hope has perished, and she throws herself on her knees at the foot of the wayside cross. And it was the anguish of her soul that called forth that high note, a G repeated three times; and it seemed to Ulick that she seemed to throw herself upon that note, that reiterated note, as if she would reach G.o.d's ears with it and force him to listen to her. In the religious, almost Gregorian, strain her voice was pure as a little child, but when she spoke of her renunciation and the music grew more chromatic, her voice filled with colour--her s.e.x appeared in it; and when the music returned to the peace of the religious strain, her voice grew blanched and faded like a nun's voice. Henceforth her life will be lived beyond this world, and as she walked up the stage, the flutes and clarionets seemed to lead her straight to G.o.d; they seemed to depict a narrow, shining path, shining and ascending till it disappeared amid the light of the stars.

"Well," she said, "did I sing it to your satisfaction?"

"You're an astonishing artiste."

"No, that's just what I am not. I go on the stage and act; I couldn't tell you how I do it; I am conscious of no rule."

"And the music?"

"The music the same. I have often been told that I might act Shakespeare, but without music I could not express myself. Words without music would seem barren; I never try to sing, I try to express myself.

But you'll see, my father won't think much of my singing. He'll compare me to mother, and always to my disadvantage. I cannot phrase like her."

"But you can; your phrasing is perfection. It is the very emotion--"

"Father won't think so; if he only thought well of my singing he would forgive me."

"How unaffected you are; in hearing you speak one hears your very soul."

"Do you? But tell me, is he very incensed? Shall I meet a face of stone?"

"He is incensed, no doubt, but he must forgive you. But every day's delay will make it more difficult."

"I know, I know."

"You cannot go to-morrow?"

"Why not?"

"To-morrow you sing this opera. Go on Sat.u.r.day; you'll be sure to find him on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. He has a rehearsal in the morning and will be at home about four in the afternoon."

As they walked through the scenery she said, "You'll come to see me,"

and she reminded him of his promise to go through the Isolde music with her.

"Mind, you have promised," she said as she got into her carriage.

"You'll not forget Sat.u.r.day afternoon," he said as he shook hands.

She nodded and put up her umbrella, for it was beginning to rain.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Evelyn found Owen waiting for her. As soon as she came into the room he said, "Well, have you seen your father?"

She was not expecting him, and it was disagreeable to admit that she had not been to Dulwich. So she said that she had thought to find her father at St. Joseph's.

"But how did you know he was not at home if you did not go to Dulwich?"

"My gracious, Owen, how you do question me! Now, perhaps you would like to know which of the priests told me."

She walked to the window and stood with her left hand in the pocket of her jacket, and he feared that the irritation he had involuntarily caused her would interfere with his projects for the afternoon. There pa.s.sed in his eyes that look of absorption in an object which marks the end of a long love affair--a look charged with remembrance, and wistful as an autumn day.

The earth has grown weary of the sun and turns herself into the shadow, eager for rest. The sun has been too ardent a lover. But the gaze of the sun upon the receding earth is fonder than his look when she raised herself to his bright face. So in Owen's autumn-haunted eyes there was dread of the chances which he knew were acc.u.mulating against him--enemies, he divined, were gathering in the background; and how he might guard her, keep her for himself, became a daily inquisition.

Nothing had happened to lead him to think that his possession was endangered, his fear proceeded from an instinct, which he could not subdue, that she was gliding from him; he wrestled with the intangible, and, striving to subordinate instinct to reason, he often refrained from kissing her; he imitated the indifference which in other times he could not dissimulate when the women who had really loved him besought him with tears. But there was no long gain-saying of the delight of telling her that he loved her, and when his aching heart forced him to question her regarding the truth of her feelings towards him, she merely told him that she loved him as much as ever, and the answer, instead of being a relief, was additional fuel upon the torturing flame of his uncertainty.

Ever since their rupture and reconciliation in Florence, their relations had been so uncertain that Owen often wondered if he were her lover.

Whether the reason for these periods of restraint was virtue or indifference he could never be quite sure. He believed that she always retained her conscience, but he could not forget that her love had once been sufficient compensation for what she suffered from it. "The stage has not altered her," he thought, "time has but nourished her idiosyncrasies." He had been hoping for one of her sudden and violent returnings to her former self, but such thing would not happen to-day, and hardly knowing what reply to make, he asked if she were free to come to look at some furniture. She mentioned several engagements, adding that he had made her too many presents already.

She spoke of the rehearsal at considerable length, omitting, somehow, to speak of Ulick, and after lunch she seemed restless and proposed to go out at once.

As they drove off to see the Sheraton sideboard, he asked her if she had seen Ulick Dean. To her great annoyance she said she had not, and this falsehood spoilt her afternoon for her. She could not discover why she had told this lie. The memory rankled in her and continued to take her unaware. She was tempted to confess the truth to Owen; the very words she thought she should use rose up in her mind several times. "I told you a lie. I don't know why I did, for there was absolutely no reason why I should have said that I had not seen Ulick Dean." On Sat.u.r.day the annoyance which this lie had caused in her was as keen as ever: and it was not until she had got into her carriage and was driving to Dulwich that her consciousness of it died in the importance of her interview with her father.

In comparing her present att.i.tude of mind with that of last Thursday, she was glad to notice that to-day she could not think that her father would not forgive her. Her talk on the subject with Ulick had rea.s.sured her. He would not have been so insistent if he had not been sure that her father would forgive her in the end. But there would be recriminations, and at the very thought of them she felt her courage sink, and she asked herself why he should make her miserable if he was going to forgive her in the end. Her plans were to talk to him about his choir, and, if that did not succeed, to throw herself on her knees. She remembered how she had thrown herself on her knees on the morning of the afternoon she had gone away. And since then she had thrown herself at his feet many times--every time she sang in the "Valkyrie." The scene in which Wotan confides all his troubles and forebodings to Brunnhilde had never been different from the long talks she and her father used to drop into in the dim evenings in Dulwich. She had cheered him when he came home depressed after a talk with the impossible Father Gordon, as she had since cheered Wotan in his deep brooding over the doom of the G.o.ds predicted by Wala, when the dusky foe of love should beget a son in hate. Wotan had always been her father; Palestrina, Walhalla, and the stupid Jesuits, what were they? She had often tried to work out the allegory. It never came out quite right, but she always felt sure in setting down Father Gordon as Alberich. The scene in the third act, when she throws herself at Wotan's feet and begs his forgiveness (the music and the words together surged upon her brain), was the scene that now awaited her. She had at last come to this long-antic.i.p.ated scene; and the fict.i.tious scene she had acted as she was now going to act the real scene. True that Wotan forgave Brunnhilde after putting her to sleep on the fire-surrounded rock, where she should remain till a pure hero should come to release her. A nervous smile curled her lip for a moment; she trembled in her very entrails, and as they pa.s.sed down the long, mean streets of Camberwell her thoughts frittered out in all sorts of trivial observation and reflection. She wondered if the mother who called down the narrow alley had ever been in love, if she had ever deceived her husband, if her father had reproved her about the young man she kept company with. The milkman presented to her strained mind some sort of problem, and the sight of the railway embankment told her she was nearing Dulwich. Then she saw the cedar at the top of the hill, whither she had once walked to meet Owen. ... Now it was London nearly all the way to Dulwich.

But when they entered the familiar village street she was surprised at her dislike of it; even the chestnut trees, beautiful with white bloom, were distasteful to her, and life seemed contemptible beneath them. In Dulwich there was no surprise--life there was a sheeted phantom, it evoked a hundred dead Evelyns, and she felt she would rather live in any ghostly graveyard than in Dulwich. Her very knowledge of the place was an irritation to her, and she was pleased when she saw a house which had been built since she had been away. But every one of the fields she knew well, and the sight of every tree recalled a dead day, a dead event.

That road to the right led to the picture gallery, and at the cross road she had been nearly run over by a waggon while trundling a hoop. But eyesight hardly helped her in Dulwich; she had only to think, to see it.

The slates of a certain house told her that another minute would bring her to her father's door, and before the carriage turned the corner she foresaw the patch of black garden. But if her father were at home he might refuse to see her, and she was not certain if she should force her way past the servant or return home quietly. The entire dialogue of the scene between her and Margaret pa.s.sed through her mind, and the very intonation of their voices. But it was not Margaret who opened the door to her.

"This way, miss, please."

"No, I'll wait in the music-room."

"Mr. Innes won't have no one wait there in his absence. Will you come into the parlour?"

"No, I think I'll wait in the music-room. I'm Miss Innes; Mr. Innes is my father."

"What, miss, are you the great singer?"

"I suppose I am."

"Do you know, miss, something told me that you was. The moment I saw the carriage, I said, "Here she is; this is her for certain." Will you come this way, miss? I'll run and get the key."

"And who was it," Evelyn said, "that told you I was a singer?"

"Lor'! miss, didn't half Dulwich go to hear you sing at the opera?"