Evelyn Innes 1901 — Chapter 9

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 37-41, 2,975 words

IX

The agonising question continued at every moment to present itself. Whatever she was doing or saying, she was always conscious of it. It beat in her brain, and though she laughed and talked a great deal, her father noticed that her animation was strained and nervous, and he noticed, too, that in no part of their conversation was she ever entirely with him, and he wondered what were the sights and scenes he faintly discerned in her changing eyes.

There were times when the temptation seemed to have left her, when she smiled at her own weakness and folly; and, having reproved herself sufficiently, she thought of other things. It seemed to her extraordinary that she should argue and trouble about a thing which she really had no intention of doing.

It was quite clear that it was wrong for her to go, and it seemed settled that she was not going; but at the bottom of her heart something over which she had no kind of control told her that in the end nothing could prevent her from going to meet him. She stopped, amazed and terrified, asking herself why she was going to do a thing which she seemed no longer even to desire.

In the afternoon some girl friends came to see her. She played and sang and talked to them, but they, too, noticed that she was never really with them, and her friends could see that she saw and heard things invisible and inaudible to them, and when the conversation flagged she was often taken with an extraordinary inward trembling.

In the middle of some trifling chatter — whether one colour or another was likely to be fashionable in the coming season — she had to put her hand in her pocket for her handkerchief, and happened to meet the key of the square, and it brought back to her in a moment the entire drama of her destiny. Was she going to take the three o’clock train to London, or to remain in Dulwich with her father? She thought that she would not mind whatever happened, if she only knew what would happen. Either lot seemed better to her than the uncertainty, and in the midst of these thoughts her tongue rattled on, talking with fictitious gaiety about the colour of bonnets and a party at which Julia had sung, not even hearing what she was saying.

Wednesday evening passed with an inward vision so intense that all the outer world had receded from her, and she ate without tasting, saw without seeing what she looked at, spoke without knowing what she was saying, heard without hearing what was said to her, and moved without knowing where she was going.

On Thursday morning the obsession of her destiny took all colour from her cheek, and her eyes wandered.

"What is it, my girl?" her father said, taking her hand, and the music he was tying up dropped on the floor. "Tell me, Evelyn; something, I can see, is the matter.”

"I am very unhappy. I wish I were dead.”

He strove to raise her from her knees, but the attitude expressed her feelings, and she remained, leaning her face against him. At last she said, raising her tearful eyes —

"If I were to leave you, father, you would never forgive me? But you would forgive me; whatever happened, we should always love one another. But if I loved someone? I don’t mean as I love you. I could never love anyone so tenderly; I mean quite differently. Don’t make me say more. I am so ashamed of myself.”

"You are in love with him?”

"Yes, and he has asked me to go away with him." And, as she answered, she wondered at the quickness with which her father had guessed that it was Owen. He was such a clever man; the moment his thoughts were diverted from his music, he understood things as well as the most worldly, and she felt that he would understand her, that she must open her heart to him.

"If I don’t go away with him I shall die, or kill myself, or go mad. It is terrible to have to tell you these things, father, I know, but I must tell you; I cannot go away without telling you.... I daresay I could get him to marry me if I wanted to, but that’s just it, I don’t want to marry him.”

"Yet you want to go away and live with him?”

"Yes, father, I do. I don’t understand why this should be. I have asked myself. I only know that it is so.”

"And you a religious girl; a few months ago you told me you wanted to be a nun.”

“Yes, that was quite true, too, when I said it. I don’t know myself, father. It seems like an enchantment!”

“You lost your mother very early, and I have neglected you.”

"No, it is nothing to do with you, father. It is all far away — I mean that it comes from far away. There, mother is looking at us. It is more to do with mother than with anyone, and I’m not sure it has much to do with her. But she was a great singer, and I want to be a great singer.”

"Is that why you’re going away?”

“Yes, I think so.”

"But it is not the real reason?”

"It is as real as any reason I know of; it is the nearest to me. Owen said that he would be doing me a great wrong by marrying me. As his wife I could not go on the stage. He said that you would understand that.”

"And that is why you won’t marry him?”

"I feel that I must learn to sing.”

"If you had only patience, Evelyn — ah! you have heard what I am going to say so often, but I don’t blame your incredulity. That was why I did not tell you before.”

"What has happened?" she asked eagerly; for she, too, wished for a lull in this stress of emotion.

“Well," he said, “Monsignore Mostyn, the great Roman prelate, who has just arrived from Rome, and is staying with the Jesuits, shares all my views regarding the necessity of a musical reformation. He believes that a revival of Palestrina and Vittoria would be of great use to the Catholic cause in England. He says that he can secure the special intervention of the Pope, and, what is much more important, he will subscribe largely, and has no doubt that sufficient money can be collected.”

A feeling of shame came upon her that at such a time they should be engaged in speaking of such singularly irrelevant topics, and she could see that the same thought had come upon him; and she noticed his trim, square figure, and the old blue jacket which she had known so many years, as he walked up and down the room. He was getting very grey lately, and when she returned he might be quite white.

"Oh, father, father," she exclaimed, covering her face with her hands, “how unhappy I am!”

“I shall send a telegram to Monsignore saying I can’t see him this morning.”

“Ah! you have to see him this morning.”

She did not know whether she was glad or sorry. Perhaps she was more frightened than either, for the appointment left her quite free to go to London by the three o’clock train.

"I can’t leave you alone.”

“If I had wanted to deceive you, I should have told you; and, however you were to watch me, I could always get away if I chose." They stood looking at each other, and she was compelled to speak.

“I used to be religious," she said, “but I am religious no longer. I can hardly say my prayers now. I said them last night, but this morning I couldn’t.”

Passing his hand across his eyes, he said —

"It seems all like a bad dream.”

And he felt he ought to stay with her, and at the same time he felt that she was right; that his intervention would be unavailing, for the struggle was in herself. But if she should learn from Sir Owen to forget him; if he were to lose her altogether; if she should never return? The thought of such a calamity was the hardest blow of all, and the possibility of her going away for a time, shocking as it was, seemed almost light beside it. But he could not keep her by force. He could not lock her up. He could not beat her. What was he to do? He could do nothing. His daughter was drawn away from him by some impulse which she could neither explain nor resist. And he, too, was moved to acquiesce, for he too experienced a sense of the folly of resisting what has to be.

He stood looking at her, twisting his beard into a point, and while she wondered whether he would go or stay, she admired the delicacy of his hand.

“No, Evelyn, I shan’t go; I will stay here, I will stay by you.”

"But I don’t know that I am going away with Sir Owen.”

"You said just now that you were.”

“Did I say so? Father, you must keep your appointment with Monsignore, and you must say nothing to Owen if you should meet him; you promise me that? It rests with me, father — it is all in the heart.”

She threw herself into his arms, begging him to forgive her. She wanted to stay with him. She loved him better than her voice, better than anything in the world. He did not answer, and when she raised her eyes she caught a slight look of doubt upon his face, and wondered what it could mean. At the very moment she had determined to stay with him, and forfeit her love and her art for his sake, a keen sense of his responsibility towards her was borne in upon him, and the feeling within him crushed like a stone that he could never do anything for her, or anything else except, perchance, achieve that reformation of Church music upon which his heart was set. He understood in that instant that she was sacrificing all her life to his, and he feared the sacrifice she was making, and anticipated in some measure the remorse he would suffer. But he dared not think that she had better go and achieve her destiny in the only way that was open to her, and he urged himself to believe that she was acting rightly by remaining with him; it was impossible for him to hold any other opinion; and the thoughts that came upon him he strove to think were merely nervous accidents, and he forced himself to accept the responsibility of the sacrifice.

He wished not to be selfish, but, however he acted, he always seemed to be acting in his own interest. Since she had promised him not to go away with Sir Owen, he was quite free to keep his appointment with Monsignore, and he gathered up his music, and then he let it fall again, fearing that she would interpret his action to mean that he was glad to get away.

But she besought him to go; she said she was tired and wanted to lie . down, and all the while he spoke she was tortured with an uncertainty as to whether she was speaking the truth or not; and he had not been gone many minutes when she remembered that she had not told him that Owen had asked her to meet him that very afternoon in Berkeley Square, and that the key of the square lay in her pocket.

To increase her difficulties, she remembered that she had betrayed Owen’s confidence. She could not quite admit to herself that she had a right to tell her father that it was he. But he had guessed it.... It seemed impossible to do right. Perhaps there was no right and no wrong. Owen said there was none; and a wish rose from the bottom of her heart that it might be so, and then she feared she had been guilty of blasphemy. Perhaps she should warn Owen of her indiscretion, and she thought of herself going to London for this purpose, and smiled as she detected the deception which she was trying to practise on herself.

There was nothing for her to do in the house, and when she had walked an hour in the ornamental park, she strayed into the Picture Gallery, and she was soon drawn to the Watteau, where a rich evening hushes about a beautiful carven colonnade, under which the Court is seated; where gallants wear deep crimson and azure cloaks, and the ladies striped gowns of dainty refinement; where all the rows are full of amorous intrigue, and vows are being pleaded, and mandolines are playing; where a fountain sings in the garden and dancers perform their pavane or minuet, the lady holding out her striped skirt, and the gentleman bowing to her with a deference that seems a little mocking. She went to this hour of pensive attitudes and whispered confidences, where every face wonders if there be truth in love.

And the life in this picture would be hers if she took the three o’clock train and went to Berkeley Square!

When she got home she did not take off her hat; and her thoughts were loud as the clock which ticked out the last minutes she was to remain at home, and though she would have given anything to stop thinking, she could not, and it was almost a relief when the clock pointed to the time when she would have to go to the station; and as she went down the street she tried to think that she was going to Owen to tell him she had told her father that she was resolved to give him up.

In the railway carriage the passengers noticed her pallor, and they wondered what her trouble was, and at Victoria the omnibus conductor just saved her from being run over. The omnibus jogged on, stopping now and then for people to get in and out, and Evelyn wondered at the extraordinary mechanism of life, and she took note of everyone’s peculiarities, wondering what were their business and desires, and wondering also at the conductor’s voice shouting out the different parts of the town the omnibus would pass through.

"This is Berkeley Street, miss, if you are getting out here.”

She waited a few minutes at the corner, and then wandered down the street, asking herself if it was yet too late to turn back.

The sun glanced through the foliage, and glittered on the cockades of the coachmen and on the shining hides of the horses. It was the height of the season, and the young beauties of the year, and the fashionable beauties of the last decade, lay back, sunning themselves under the shade of their parasols. The carriages came round the square close to the curb, under the waving branches, and, waiting for an opportunity to cross, Evelyn’s eyes followed an unusually beautiful carriage, drawn by a pair of chestnut horses. She did not see the lady’s face, but she wore a yellow dress, and the irises in her bonnet nodded over the hood of the carriage. This lady, graceful and idle, seemed to mean something, but what? Evelyn thought of the picture of the Colonnade in the Gallery.

The men to whom the stately servants opened the doors wore long frock-coats pinched at the waist, and they swung their canes and carried their thick, yellow gloves in their hands. They were all like Owen. They all lived as he lived, for pleasure; they were all here for the season, for balls and dinner-parties, for love-making and the opera.

She was at the gate, and the square looked green and cool. The gate swung to and closed with a snap; and she was glad of this, and she walked aimlessly about the grass plots. There was no one in the square, so if he were watching for her he could not fail to see her. He might not see her. She might have to go back to Dulwich! But she exulted, seeing Owen coming through the trees; and as he approached, her exultation seemed to rise out of the ends of her being.

"I am glad you have come," he said. "You are coming in to tea?”

She did not answer, and thinking it safer to take things for granted, he walked towards the gate. He could not get the gate open, and while he wrenched at the lock he dreaded the delay might give her time to change her mind.

"The brougham will be round in half an hour. There is a train at six to Dover. It gets there at nine. So we shall have time to dine at the Lord Warden, and get on board the boat before the mail arrives.”

"But I have no clothes.”

"The night is fine; we shall have a lovely crossing; you will only want a shawl and a rug. This is the happiest moment of my life. I have spent two terrible days wondering if you would come.”

"Did you, dear? Did you think of me? Are you fond of me?”

Her grave eyes delighted him, and as she stood by him, her hand laid on his shoulder, he wondered how it was that she had come to him. His luck seemed incredible, and this adventure did not seem like her.