Evelyn Innes 1901 — Chapter 7

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 32-36, 2,992 words

VII

She abandoned herself to memories of the afternoon. She had been with Owen to the Carmelite Church in Kensington to hear the music of a new and very realistic Belgian composer; and, walking down the High Street after Mass, she and Owen had argued the Belgian’s intentions. At the end of the High Street he had proposed that they should walk in the Gardens. The broad walk was full of the colour of spring and its perfume, the thick grass was like a carpet beneath their feet. The Albert Hall curved over the tops of the trees, and sheep strayed through the deep May grass in Arcadian peacefulness; but the most vivid impression was when they had come upon a lawn stretching gently to the water’s edge. Owen had feared the day was too cold for sitting out, but at that moment the sun contradicted him with a broad, warm gleam. He had fetched two chairs from a pile stacked under a tree, and sitting on that lawn, swept by the shadow of softly moving trees, they had talked an hour or more. The scene came back to her as she sat looking into the fire. She saw the spring, easily victorious amid the low bushes, capturing the rough branches of the elms one by one, and the distant slopes of the Park, grey like a piece of faded tapestry. And, as in a tapestry, the ducks came through the mist in long, pulsing flight, and when the day cleared the pea-fowl were seen across the water, sunning themselves on the high branches. While watching the spectacle of the spring, Owen had talked to her a long while about herself, telling her that he wanted her life to be a great success, and that he wished to bring about her success and to watch over it. He would not admit that there was any doubt her voice was one of the most beautiful, and as for her acting, there could be no doubt about that either.

"I have never acted, but I know I can act. I daresay others have said the same who cannot act at all, but they do not feel it moving in them as it moves in me sometimes.”

And he had spoken of himself as of one who has discovered a priceless jewel, and the pleasure it would give him to make it known to the world, and she had given him a tender look when he said —

"I should like to be the humble case in which the jewel lies when others are not admiring it — for the greatest jewel in the world may lie in the humblest case.”

And when she had told him of her loneliness at home, and the long hours she spent waiting for her father, and how she had lost all her pupils that winter, and of her yearnings for the world beyond her village, and of the instinct in her which led her sometimes to walk as far as Westminster Bridge, he had spoken of the instinct which takes birds at certain moments and carries them to lands over seas that they had never seen before.

"They rise up in the misty autumn air," he had said, "divining the sunset that awaits them.”

They had talked on and on, and she could not help wondering at her dread lest he should ask her to marry him. She had thought it would come to that, for he had said it was necessary for her to go to Paris to study, and she had been obliged to answer that she had not the money to go there. "The concerts will never pay, at least not sufficiently to send me to Paris; even if they did, I could not go and live in Paris for one or two, perhaps three years, by myself, and how could I get sufficient money to pay for anyone to go with me?”

And he had offered to lend the money! She had thanked him and declined it, and then he had begun to argue that we serve others best when we consider our own interests. He had drawn a picture of what her life would be if she were to sacrifice it to her father’s by remaining at Dulwich playing the viola da gamba and looking after domestic duties. At thirty-five she would look back upon her wasted life. She had answered him, mechanically, that "no one looks back upon their life as wasted who has done their duty." And he had answered, that if she did not regret her praiseworthy self-denial, her father would; that it was only by leaving him and by serving her own interests that she could save him from self-reproach.... They had spoken of the peacocks. The birds were sunning themselves on the other side of the Long Water, and they wondered that a bird with so unwieldy a tail could fly — one of the birds had just flown across the water. But when he had told her that last night he had been thinking of her, and had spent hours trying to arrive at a conclusion, she was certain he was going to ask her to marry him, but instead he had asked her to go away and live with him, giving as his reason that she would not be able to go on the stage as Lady Asher! Musing over his words, she thought she could repeat them correctly: "As my wife you would have to live at Riversdale and Berkeley Square, and entertain the best people. You would have no time to cultivate your voice — and, Evelyn dear, without your voice you would not be yourself — you would not be yourself without your stage career ”; and she felt this to be true.

And that he did not wish to marry her was a great weight off her mind. She was drawn towards him, but she knew that she could not marry him. She could see her life with him in Paris — she could see her life on the stage; but she was unable to think of herself as his wife. She knew it would be a great sin to go away and live with him without being married to him, for she believed in her religion, and yet she was drawn irresistibly to do what her religion forbade her to do. She was aware that if she looked at the matter from a worldly side, she was putting aside an extraordinary good fortune, for he would marry her if she wished it, and she was asking herself what could she do better than to marry Owen Asher? But there was no answer to this question. She only knew that she did not desire Riversdale, or Berkeley Square, or the diamonds, or the title. Was it then her artistic instincts that impelled her to discard all worldly advantages and her religion? She wanted to sing, she wanted to be a great artist. She wanted these things much more than she wanted to be Lady Asher, and yet it did not seem to be her desire of art that made her feel she could never marry the man whom she already foresaw she would go away with — for how long? She could not say for how long, but she felt it would not be for always.

She seemed to know everything, — things came unnaturally clear to her as she sat over the fire and sipped her coffee; and when she put the cup aside, and looked into the fire, her fate seemed close by her, and she felt like one who is being propelled forward.

She was waked from her dream of self by the opening of the door, and before she could turn round she heard the servant say, "Sir Owen Asher, miss.”

And when the servant had closed the door, he took her hand. He was trembling and could hardly speak.

"I came," he said hurriedly, “because I have something very important to say to you — the truth is, I did not know I loved you so much. As I walked home I felt I must see you again. This matter must be decided between us.”

Now it was she who was cold; she looked at him strangely, and he was taken with a little dread lest he had offended her irrevocably by telling her that he could not marry her. But she was not in the least annoyed at that. She was thinking that perhaps he had come to ask her to marry him, and had become suddenly mysteriously afraid of him.

"Are you angry with me?" he said.

"No, I am not angry with you; why should you think that?”

"I don’t know; you looked angry, you seemed angry, perhaps not; and then, I am in love with you.”

"Is that really true?" she said, and her eyes lit up, turning from blue to mauve.

"I thought you were angry because I had said I thought it better not to marry you yet awhile, that it would spoil your artistic career.”

"Oh no, I was not angry at that: I suppose I should have been.”

She said that the vicar had wanted to marry her, and there was a young man in the village who went up to the City every day who had proposed to her, but she had never thought of either.

It was difficult to know what to say next, and he said if she had married the young man who went up to the City she would have had three children in as many years; he spoke of wealth and riches and fame, but in a way she did not like at all. She did not care to hear theories of life which did not seem like him, and she could not believe he was speaking his own thoughts when he said that if she were to marry anyone it must be a duke — that life is a battle, and that Society gets the better of us unless we get the better of Society. "Everyone must realise that — every young man and every young woman. We must conquer or be conquered." He had seemed to her much nicer just now when he had come in, and told her tremblingly that he had come all the way from London to tell her something he had forgotten to tell her in Kensington Gardens.

Society, he argued, did not require a chaperon from her; Society would, indeed, resent a chaperon if she were to appear with one. Society not only granted her freedom, but demanded that she should exercise it. As a freelance she would be taken notice of; as a respectable, marriageable girl she would be passed over. The cradle and the masterpiece were irreconcilable ideals; and he drew an amusing picture of the prima donna’s husband, the fellow who waits with a scarf ready to wind it round the throat of his musical instrument; the fellow who is always on the watch lest someone should walk off with his means of subsistence. She knew that he was trying to influence her with argument, and his presence continued to influence her, though his arguments were repellent to her.

She told him her father was dining with the Jesuits — they would have the whole day to themselves, would he like to spend it with her? She asked him if he would like to walk with her in the lanes, and they turned into a lane which looked almost like country. There were hedges and fields, and the sunlight dozed amid the cows, and over the high elms Spring was already shaking a soft green dust. There were nests in the bare boughs, whether last year’s or this year’s she was not certain. Farther on there was a stile, and she thought she would like to lean upon it and look straight through the dim fields, gathering the meaning which they seemed to express.

The sunlight seemed more beautiful than it had ever seemed before, and she wondered if he noticed the little round white spots of light on the roadway.

"This is the Picture Gallery," Evelyn said, pointing to a low brick building almost hidden in the back of a well-kept garden. The doorway was covered with a massive creeper just beginning to waken from its winter rest. "Do you care to go in?”

“You know the pictures so well, I am afraid they will bore you.”

“No, I should like to see them with you.”

There was an official who took her parasol and his cane, and they were impressed by the fact of having to write their names side by side in the book — Sir Owen Asher, Evelyn Innes.

On pushing through the swing-door, they found themselves in a small room hung with the Dutch School. There were other rooms, some four or five, opening one into the other, and lighted so that the light fell sideways on to the pictures. Owen praised the architecture. It was, he said, the most perfectly constructed little gallery he had ever seen, and he ought to know, for he had seen every gallery in Europe. But he had not been here for many years, and had quite forgotten it. “A veritable radiation of masterpieces," he said, stepping aside to see one. But the girl was the greater attraction, and, only half satisfied, he returned to her, and when the attraction of the pictures grew irresistible, he tried to engage her attention in their beauties, so that he might be allowed to enjoy them. To his surprise and pleasure, the remarks he had hazarded provoked an extraordinary interest in her, and she begged of him to tell her more about the paintings. He was not without a suspicion that the pictures were a secondary interest; but as it was clear that to hear him talk excited her admiration, he favoured her with all he knew regarding the Dutch School. She followed attentive as a pea-hen, he spreading a gorgeous tail of accumulated information. He asked if the dark background in Cuyp’s picture, "The White Horse and the Riding School," was not admirable. And that old woman peeling onions in her little kitchen, painted by a modern would be realistic and vulgar; but the Dutchman knew that by light and shade the meanest subject could be made as romantic as a fairy tale. As dreamers and thinkers they did not compare with the Italians, but as painters they were equal to any. They were the first to introduce the trivialities of daily life into Art — the toil of the field, the gross pleasures of the tavern. "Look at these boors drinking; they are by Ostade. Are they not admirably drawn and painted? ‘Brick-making in a Landscape, by Teniers the younger.’ Won’t you look at this? How beautiful! How interesting is its grey sky! Here are a set of pictures by Wouvermans — pictures of hawking. Here is a Brouwer, a very rare Dutch master, a very fine example too. And here is a Gerard Douw. Miss Innes, will you look at this composition? Is it not admirable? That rich curtain hung across the room, how beautifully painted, how sonorous in colour!”

"Ah! she’s playing a virginal!" said Evelyn suddenly. "She is like me. You can see she is not thinking of the music. She is thinking... she is thinking of the world outside.”

This pleased him, and he said, “Yes, I suppose it is like your life; it is full of the same romance and mystery.”

"What romance, what mystery? Tell me.”

They sat down on the bench in the Third Room, opposite the Colonnade by Watteau, and, while telling her how, when cruising among the Greek Islands, he had often seen her, sometimes sitting in the music-room playing the virginal, sometimes walking in the ornamental park under a wet grey sky, a somewhat desolate figure hurrying through shadows of storm.

"How strange you should think all that! It is quite true. I often walked in that hateful park.”

“You will never be able to stand another winter in Dulwich.”

She raised her eyes, and he noticed with an inward glee their little frightened look.

"I thought of you in that ornamental park watching London from the crest of the hill; and I thought of London — great, unconscious London — waiting for you.”

“You must not say such things to me. How you do know how to praise!”

“I thought less and less of that horrid, red-haired woman; your face, dim at first, grew clearer and clearer. All my thoughts, all things converged to you and were absorbed in you, until, one day on the deck, I felt that you were unhappy; the knowledge came, how and whence I know not; I only know that the impulse to return was irresistible. I called to the skipper, and told him to put her head about.”

"Then you did think of me whilst you were away?”

And she looked at him with her soft female eyes, and meeting his keen bright male eyes, she drew away from him with a little dread. Immediately after, this sensation of dread gave way to a delicious joy — an irresponsible joy deep down in her heart, a joy so intimate that she was thankful to know that none could know it but herself.

Her woman’s instinct told her that many women had loved him. She suspected that the little lilt in his voice, and the glance that accompanied it, were the relics of an old love affair.

"It must be nearly five o’clock. It is time for you to come to talk to father about the Greek hymn.”

“Let’s look at this picture first — ‘The Fête beneath the Colonnade’ — it is one of the most beautiful things in the world.”