But at that moment the new choir-loft caught Evelyn's eye, and she imagined the melodious choirs answering each other from opposite sides. No doubt her father had insisted on the addition, so that such antiphonal music as the Reproaches might be given. Some rich carpets had been laid down, some painting and cleaning had been done, and the fashionable names on the front seats reminded her of the Grand Circle at Covent Garden. Evidently the frequentation of St. Joseph's was much the same as the theatres. The congregation was attracted by the choirs, and, when these were silenced, the worship shrank into the mumbled prayers of a few Irish and Italians. Evelyn wondered if the poor lady could distinguish between her father's music and Father Gordon's. The only music she heard was the ceaseless music of her devout soul.

Was it not strange that the paper she had sent her father containing an account of her success in the part of Margaret contained also an account of his choir? They had both succeeded. The old music had made St. Joseph's a fashionable church. So far she knew, and despite her strange terror of their first meeting, she longed to hear him tell her how he had overcome the opposition of Father Gordon.

The Gospel ended, the little congregation sat down, and Evelyn reflected how much more difficult belief was to her than to the slightly-deformed woman in front of her. The doctrine that a merciful God has prepared a place of eternal torment for his erring creatures is hard enough to credit. She didn't think she could ever believe that again; or that God had sent his Son on earth to expiate on the cross the sins which he and his Father in conjunction with the Holy Ghost had fated them to commit; or that bread and wine becomes, at the bidding of the priest, the creator of all the stars we see at midnight. True that she believed these doctrines no longer, but, unfortunately, this advancement brought her no nearer to the solution of the question directly affecting her life. Owen encouraged her to persevere in her agnosticism. "Old instincts," he said, "are not conquered at once. You must be patient. The Scotch were converted about three or four hundred years after Christ. Christianity is therefore fourteen hundred years old, whereas the seed of agnosticism has been sown but a few years; give it time to catch root." She had laughed, his wit amused her, but our feelings are—well, they are ours, and we cannot separate ourselves from them. They are certain, though everything else is uncertain, and when she looked into her mind (she tried to avoid doing so as much as possible, but she could not always help herself) something told her that the present was but a passing stage. Often it seemed to her that she was like one out on a picnic—she was amused—she would be sorry when it ended; but she could not feel that it was to last. Other women were at home in their lives; she was not in hers. We all have a life that is more natural for us to live than any other; we all have a mission of some sort to accomplish, and the happiest are those whose lives correspond to their convictions. Even Owen's love did not quite compensate her for the lack of agreement between her outer and inner life.

All this they had argued a hundred times, but their points of view were so different. Once, however, she thought she had made him understand. She had said, "If you don't understand religion, you understand art. Well, then, imagine a man who wants to paint pictures; give him a palace to live in; place every pleasure at his call, imposing only one condition—that he is not to paint. His appetites may detain him in the palace for a while, but sooner or later he will cry out, 'All these pleasures are nothing to me; what I want is to paint pictures.'" She could see that the parable had convinced him, or nearly. He had said he was afraid she was hopeless. But a moment after, drawing her toward him with quiet, masterful arm, and speaking with that hard voice that could become so soft, it had seemed as if heaven suddenly melted away, and his kisses were worth every sacrifice.

That was the worst of it. She was neither one thing nor the other. She desired two lives diametrically opposed to each other, consequently she would never be happy. But she was happy. She had everything; she could think of nothing that she wanted that she had not got: it was really too ridiculous for her to pretend to herself that she was not happy. So long as she had believed in religion she had not been happy, but now she believed no longer—she was happy. It was strange, however, that a church always brought the old feeling back again, and her thoughts paused, and in a silent awe of soul she asked herself if, at the bottom of her soul, she still disbelieved in God. But it was so silly to believe the story of the Virgin—think of it.... As Owen said, in no mythology was there anything more ridiculous. Nevertheless, she did not convince herself that the dim, vague, unquiet sensation which rankled in her was not a still unextirpated germ of the original faith. She tried to think it was not a religious feeling but the result of the terrible interview still hanging over her, the dread that her father might not forgive her. She tried to look into her mind to discover the impulse which had compelled her to turn from her intention and come to this church. She remembered the uncontrollable desire to say a prayer: that she could have resisted, but the moment after she had remembered that perhaps it was too late to find her father at home. But had she really hoped to find him at St. Joseph's, or had she used the pretext to deceive herself? She could not tell. But if religion was not true, if she did not believe, how was it that she had always thought it wrong to live with a man to whom she was not married? There was no use pretending, she never had quite got a haunting scruple on that point out of her mind.

There could be but two reasons, he had insisted, for the maintenance of the matrimonial idea—the preservation of the race, and the belief that cohabitation without matrimony is an offence against God. But the race is antecedent to matrimony, and if there be no resurrection, there can be no religion.... If there be no personal God who manages our affairs and summons to everlasting bliss or torment, the matter is not worth thinking about—at least not to a Catholic. Pious agnosticism is a bauble unworthy to tempt anyone who has been brought up a Catholic. A Catholic remains a Catholic, or else becomes a frank agnostic. Only weak-minded Protestants run to that slender shelter—morality without God. "But why are you like this?" he had said, fixing his eyes.... "I think I see. Your father comes of a long line of Scotch Protestants; he became a Catholic so that he might marry your mother. Your scruples must be a Protestant heredity. I wonder if it is so? In no other way can I account for the fact that although you no longer believe in a resurrection, you cling fast to the doctrine which declares it wrong for two people, both free, to live together, unless they register their cohabitation in the parish books. Our reason is our own. Our feelings we inherit. You are enslaved to your Scotch ancestors; you are a slave to the superstitions of your grandmother and your grand-aunts; you obey them."

"But do we not inherit our reason just as much as we inherit our feelings?"

They had argued that point. She could not remember what his argument was, but she remembered that she had held her ground, that he had complimented her, not forgetting, however, to take the credit of the improvement in her intellectual equipment to himself, which was indeed no more than just. She would have been nothing without him. How he had altered her! She had come to think and feel like him. She often caught herself saying exactly what he would say in certain circumstances, and having heard him say how odours affected him, she had tried to acquire a like sensibility. Unconsciously she had assimilated a great deal. That little trick of his, using his eyes a certain way, that knowing little glance of his had become habitual to her. She had met men who were more profound, never anyone whose mind was more alert, more amusing and sufficient for every occasion. She sentimentalised a moment, and then remembered further similarities. They now ate the same dishes, and no longer had need to consult each other before ordering dinner. In their first week in Paris she had learnt to look forward to chocolate in the morning before she got up, and this taste was endeared to her, for it reminded her of him. In the picture galleries she had always tried to pick out the pictures he would like. If they could not decide how a passage should be sung, or were in doubt regarding the attitude and gesture best fitted to carry on a dramatic action, she had noticed that, if they separated so that they might arrive at individual conclusions, they almost always happened upon the same. To each other they now affected not to know from whom a certain quaint notion had come—clearly it had been inspired by him, but which had first expressed it was not sure—that the three great type operas were "Tristan and Isolde," the "Barber of Seville," and "La Belle Helene." Nor were they sure which had first suggested that in the last week of her stage career she should appear in all three parts. Evelyn Innes, as La Belle Helene, would set musical London by the ears.

She had often wondered whether, by having absorbed so much of Owen's character, she had proved herself deficient in character. Owen maintained, on the contrary, that the sign of genius is the power of recognising and assimilating that which is necessary to the development of oneself. He mentioned Goethe's life, which he said was but the tale of a long assimilation of ideas. The narrow, barren soul is narrow and barren because it cannot acquire. We come into the world with nothing in our own right except the capacity for the acquisition of ideas. We cannot invent ideas; we can only gather some of those in circulation since the beginning of the world. We endow them with the colour and form of our time, and, if that colour and form be of supreme quality, the work is preserved as representative of a period in the history of civilisation; a name may or may not be attached to each specimen. Genius is merely the power of assimilation; only the fool imagines he invents. Owen would go still further. He maintained that if the circumstances of a man's life admitted the acquisition of only one set of ideas, his work was thin; but if, on the contrary, circumstances threw him in the way of a new set of ideas, a set of ideas different from the first set, yet sufficiently near for the same brain to assimilate, then the work produced by that brain would be endowed with richer colour; or, in severer form, the idea was, he said, to a work of art what salt is to meat—it preserved works of art against the corrupting action of time.

How they had talked! how they had discussed things! They had talked about everything, and she remembered all he said, as she recalled the arguments he had used. The scene of this last conversation passed and repassed in vanishing gleams—Bopart on the Rhine. They had stopped there on their way to Bayreuth, where she was going to sing Elsa. The maidens and their gold, the fire-surrounding Brunnhilde, the death of the hero, the end of the legends: these she knew, but of "Parsifal" she knew nothing—the story or the music. The time was propitious for him to tell it. The flame of the candle burnt in the still midnight, and she had listened with bated breath. She could see Owen leaning forward, telling the story, and she could even see her own listening face as he related how the poor fool rises through sanctification of faith and repudiation of doubt, how he heals the sick king with the sacred spear and becomes himself the high priest of the Grail. It had seemed to Evelyn that she had been carried beyond the limits of earthly things. The thrill and shiver of the dead man's genius haunted the liquid ripple of the river; the moment was ecstatic; the deep, windless night was full of the haunting ripple of the Rhine. And she remembered how she had clasped her hands ... her very words came back to her....

"It is wonderful ... and we are listening to the Rhine; we shall never forget this midnight."

At that moment the Sanctus bell rang, and she remembered why she had stayed in church. She wished to discover what remnant, tatter or shred of her early faith still clung about her. She wished to put her agnosticism to the test. She wondered if at the moment of consecration she would be compelled to bow her head. The bell rang again.... She grew tremulous with expectation. She strove to refrain, but her head bowed a little, and her thoughts expanded into prayer; she was not sure that she actually prayed, for her thoughts did not divide into explicit words or phrases. There certainly followed a beautiful softening of her whole being, the bitterness of life extinguished; divine eyes seemed bent upon her, and she was in the midst of mercy, peace and love; and daring no longer to think she did not believe, she sat rapt till Mass was ended.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Still under the sweet influence of the church and the ceremony she got into her carriage. But the mystery engendered in her soul seemed to fade and die in the sunshine; she could almost perceive it going out like a gentle, evanescent mist on the surface of a pool; she remembered that she would very likely meet Ulick at rehearsal, and could find out from him how her father would be likely to receive her visit. Ulick seemed the solution of the difficulty—only he might tell her that her father did not wish to see her. She did not think he would say that, and the swing of her carriage and her thoughts went to the same rhythm until the carriage stopped before the stage door of Covent Garden Theatre.

As she ascended the stairs the swing door was pushed open. The pilgrims' song drifted through it, and she knew that they had begun the overture. She crossed a stage in indescribable disorder. Scene-shifters were calling to each other, and there was an incessant hammering in the flies. "We might as well rehearse in a barn with the threshing-machine going all the while," Evelyn thought. She had to pass down a long passage to get to the stalls, and, finding herself in inky darkness, she grew nervous, though she knew well enough whither it led. At last she perceived a little light, and, following it for a while, she happened to stumble into one of the boxes, and there she sat and indulged in angry comments on the negligence of English operatic management.

Through the grey twilight of the auditorium she could see heads and hands, and shapes of musical instruments. The conductor's grey hair was combed back over his high forehead. He swung a lean body to the right and left. Suddenly he sprang up in his seat, and, looking in the direction of certain instruments, he brought down his stick determinedly, and, having obtained the effect he desired, his beat swung leisurely for a while.... "'Cellos, crescendo," he cried. "Ah, mon Dieu! Ta-ra-la-la-la! Now, gentlemen, number twenty-five, please."

For a few bars the stick swung automatically, striking the harmonium as it descended. "'Cellos, a sudden piano on the accent, and then no accent whatever. Ta-ra-ta-ta-ta!"

At the back of the stalls the poor Italian chorus had gathered like a herd, not daring to sit in seats, the hire of which for a few hours equalled their weekly wages. But the English girls, whose musical tastes had compelled them from their suburban homes, had no such scruples. Confident of the cleanliness of their skirts and hats, they sat in the best stalls, their scores on their knees. One happened to look up as Evelyn entered. She whispered to her neighbours, and immediately after the row was discussing Bayreuth and Evelyn Innes.

Meanwhile, the pilgrims' song grew more strenuous, until at last the trombones proclaimed, in unconquerable tones, Tannhaeuser's abjuration of sensual life, and at that moment the tall, spare figure of Mr. Hermann Goetze, the manager, appeared in the doorway leading to the stalls. He was with his apparitor and satellite, Mr. Wheeler, a foppish little man, who seemed pleased at being in confidential conversation with his great chief. Catching sight of Evelyn in the box just above his eyes, he smiled and bowed obsequiously. A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and Evelyn said to herself, "He's coming to talk with me about the Brangaene. I hope he has done what I told him, and engaged Helbrun for the part."

At the same moment it flashed across her mind that Mademoiselle Helbrun's unsuccessful appearance in "Carmen" might cause Mr. Harmann Goetze to propose someone else. She hoped that this was not so, for she could not consent to sing Isolde to anyone but Helbrun's Brangaene, and it was in this resolute, almost aggressive, frame of mind that she received the manager.

"How do you do, Mr. Hermann Goetze? Well, I hope you succeeded in inducing Mademoiselle Helbrun to play Brangaene?"

"I have not had a moment, Miss Innes. I have not seen Mademoiselle Helbrun since last night. You will be sorry to hear that her Carmen was not considered a success.... Do you think—"

"There is no finer artist than Mademoiselle Helbrun. If you do not engage her—"

Mr. Hermann Goetze took his handkerchief from his pocket, and, upon inquiry, she learnt that he was suffering from toothache. Mr. Wheeler advised different remedies, but Mr. Hermann Goetze did not believe in remedies. There was nothing for it but to have it out. Evelyn suggested her dentist, and Mr. Hermann Goetze apologised for this interruption in the conversation. He begged of her not to think of him, and they entered into the difficult question of salary. He told her that Mademoiselle Helbrun would ask eighty pounds a performance, and such heavy salary added to the four hundred pounds a performance he was paying for the Tristan and Isolde would—But so intense was the pain from his tooth at this moment that he could not finish the sentence. A little alarmed, Evelyn waited until the spasm had ended, and when the manager's composure was somewhat restored, she spoke of the change and stress of emotion, often expressed in isolated notes and vehement declamation, and she reminded the poor man of Brangaene's long song in which she endeavours to appease Isolde. Mr. Hermann Goetze looked at her out of pain-stricken eyes, and said he was listening. She assured him that the melodious effect would be lost if Brangaene could not sing the long-drawn phrases in a single breath. But she stopped suddenly, perceiving that an aesthetic discussion was impossible with a man who was in violent pain. Mr. Wheeler proposed to go to the chemist for a remedy. Mr. Hermann Goetze shook his head; he had tried all remedies in vain; the dentist was the only resort, and he promised to go to Evelyn's when the rehearsal was over, and he retired from the box, holding his handkerchief to his face. When he got on to the stage, Evelyn was glad to see that he was a little better, and was able to give some directions regarding the stage management. She was genuinely sorry for him, for she had had toothache herself. Nevertheless, it was unfortunate that they had not been able to settle about Mademoiselle Helbrun's engagement. She pondered how this might be effected; perhaps, after rehearsal, Mr. Hermann Goetze might be feeling better, or she might ask him to dinner. As she considered the question, her eyes wandered over the auditorium in quest of Ulick Dean.

She spied him sitting in the far corner, and wondered when he would look in her direction, and then remembering what he had said about the transmission of thought between sympathetic affinities, she sought to reach him with hers. She closed her eyes so that she might concentrate her will sufficiently for it to penetrate his brain. She sat tense with her desire, her hands clenched for more than a minute, but he did not answer to her will, and its tension relaxed in spite of herself. "He sits there listening to the music as if he had never heard a note of it before. Why does he not come to me?" As if in answer, Ulick got out of his stall and walked toward the entrance, seemingly in the intention of leaving the theatre. Evelyn felt that she must speak to him, and she was about to call to one of the chorus and ask him to tell Mr. Dean that she wanted to speak to him, but a vague inquietude seemed to awaken in him, and he seemed uncertain whether to go or stay, and he looked round the theatre as if seeking someone. He looked several times in the direction of Evelyn's box without seeing her, and she was at last obliged to wave her hand. Then the dream upon his face vanished, and his eyes lit up, and his nod was the nod of one whose soul is full of interesting story.

He had one of those long Irish faces, all in a straight line, with flat, slightly hollow cheeks, and a long chin. It was clean shaven, and a heavy lock of black hair was always falling over his eyes. It was his eyes that gave its sombre ecstatic character to his face. They were large, dark, deeply set, singularly shaped, and they seemed to smoulder like fires in caves, leaping and sinking out of the darkness. He was a tall, thin young man, and he wore a black jacket and a large, blue necktie, tied with the ends hanging loose over his coat. Evelyn received him effusively, stretching both hands to him and telling him she was so glad he had come. She said she was delighted with his melodies, and would sing them as soon as she got an occasion. But he did not seem as pleased as he should have done; and sitting, his eyes fixed on the floor—now and then he muttered a word of thanks. His silence embarrassed her, and she felt suddenly that the talk which she had been looking forward to would be a failure, and she almost wished him out of her box. Neither had spoken for some time, and, to break an awkward silence, she said that she had been that morning at St. Joseph's. He looked up; their eyes met unexpectedly, and she seemed to read an impertinence in his eyes; they seemed to say, "I wonder how you dared go there!" But his words contradicted the idea which she thought she had read in his eyes. He asked her at once eagerly and sympathetically, if she had seen her father. No, he was not there, and, growing suddenly shy, she sought to change the conversation.

"You are not a Roman Catholic, I think.... I know you were born a Catholic, but from something you said the other day I was led to think that you did not believe."

"I cannot think what I could have said to give you such an idea. Most people reproach me for believing too much."

"The other day you spoke of the ancient gods Angus and Lir, and the great mother Dana, as of real gods."

"Of course I spoke of them as real gods; I am a Celt, and they are real gods to me."

Now his face had lighted up, and in clear, harmonious voice he was arguing that the gods of a nation cannot die to that nation until it be incorporated and lost in another nation.

"I don't see how you reconcile Angus and Lir with Christianity, that is all."

"But I don't try to reconcile them; they do not need reconciliation; all the gods are part of one faith."

"But what do you believe ... seriously?"

"Everything except Atheism, and unthinking contentment. I believe in Christianity, but I am not so foolish as to limit myself to Christianity; I look upon Christianity as part of the truth, but not the whole truth. There is a continuous revelation: before Christ Buddha, before Buddha Krishna, who was crucified in mid-heaven, and the Gods of my race live too."

She longed to ask Ulick so many questions that she could not frame one, so far had the idea of a continuous revelation carried her beyond the limits of her habitual thoughts; and while she was trying to think out his meaning in one direction, she lost a great deal of what he said subsequently, and her face wore an eager, puzzled and disappointed look. That she should have been the subject of this young man's thoughts, that she should have suggested his opera of Grania, and that he should have at last succeeded, by means of an old photograph, in imagining some sort of image of her, flattered her inmost vanity, and with still brightening eyes she hoped that he was not disappointed in her.

"When did you begin to write opera? You must come to see me. You will tell me about your opera, and we will go through the music."

"Will you let me play my music to you?"

"Yes, I shall be delighted."

At that moment she remarked that Ulick's teeth were almost the most beautiful she had ever seen, and that they shone like snow in his dark face.

"Some afternoon at the end of the week. We're friends—I feel that we are. You are father's friend; you were his friend when I was away. Tell me if he missed me very much. Tell me about him. I have been longing to ask you all the time. What is he doing? I have heard about his choir. He has got some wonderful treble voices."

"He is very busy now rehearsing the 'Missa Brevis.' It will be given next Sunday. It will be splendidly done ... You ought to come to hear it."

"I should like to, of course, but I am not certain that I shall not be able to go to St. Joseph's next Sunday. How did you and father become acquainted?"

"Through an article I wrote about the music of St. Joseph's. Mr. Innes said that it was written by a musician, and he wrote to the paper."

"Asking you to come to see him?"

"Yes. Your father was the first friend I made in London."

"And that was some years ago?"

"About four years ago. I had come over from Ireland with a few pounds in my pocket, and a portmanteau full of music, which I soon found no one wanted."

"You had written music before you had met father?"

"Yes, I was organist at St. Patrick's in Dublin for nearly three years. There's no one like your father, Miss Innes."

"No one, is there?" she replied enthusiastically. "There's no one like him. I'm so glad you are friends. You see him nearly every day, and you show him all your music." Then after a pause, she said, "Tell me, did he miss me very much?"

"Yes, he missed you, of course. But he felt that you were not wholly to blame."

"And you took my place. I can see it all. It was father and son, instead of father and daughter. How well you must have got on together. What talks you must have had."

The silence was confidential, and though they both were thinking of Mr. Innes, they seemed to become intimately aware of each other.

"But may I venture to advise you?"

"Yes. What?"

"I'm sure you ought to go and see him, or at least write to him saying you'd like to see him."

"I know—I know—I must go. He'll forgive me; he must forgive me. But I wish it were over. I'm afraid you think me very cowardly. You will not say you have seen me. You promise me to say nothing."

Ulick gave her the required promise, and she asked him again to come to see her.

"I want you," she said, "to go through Isolde's music with me."

"Do you think I can tell you anything about the music you don't know already?"

"Yes, I think you can. You tell me things about myself that I did not know. I hardly knew that I acted as you describe in Margaret. I hope I did, for I seemed very good in your article. I read it over again this morning in bed. But tell me, did father come?"

"You must not press me to answer that question. My advice to you is to go and see your father. He will tell you what he thought of your singing if he came here.... The act is over," he said suddenly, and he seemed glad of the interruption. "I wonder what your Elizabeth will be like?"

"What do you think?"

"You're a clever woman; you will no doubt arrive at a very logical and clear conception of the part, but—"

"But we cannot act what is not in us. Is that what you were going to say?"

"Something like that."

"You think I shall arrive at a logical and clear conception. Is that the way you think I arrived at my Margaret? Did it look like that? I may play the part of Elizabeth badly, but I sha'n't play it as you think I shall. This frock is against me. I've a mind to send you away."



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Instead of rushing wildly from side to side according to custom, she advanced timidly, absorbed in deep memory; at every glance her face expressed a recollection; she seemed to alternate between a vague dread and an unconquerable delight; she seemed like a dim sky filled with an inner radiance, but for a time it seemed uncertain which would prevail—sunlight or shadow. But, like the sunlight, joy burst forth, scattering uncertainty and alarm, illuminating life from end to end; and her emotion vented itself in cries of April melody, and all the barren stage seemed in flower about her; she stood like a bird on a branch singing the spring time. And she sang every note with the same ease, each was equally round and clear, but what delighted Ulick was the perfect dramatic expression of her singing. It seemed to him that he was really listening to a very young girl who had just heard of the return of a man whom she had loved or might have loved. A bud last night slept close curled in virginal strictness, with the morning light it awoke a rose. But the core of the rose is still hidden from the light, only the outer leaves know it, and so Elizabeth is pure in her first aspiration; she rejoices as the lark rejoices in the sky, without desiring to possess the sky. Ulick could not explain to himself the obsession of this singing; he was thrall to the sensation of a staid German princess of the tenth century, and the wearing of a large hat with ostrich feathers, and tied with a blue veil, hindered no whit of it. And the tailor-made dress and six years of liaison with Owen Asher was no let to the mediaeval virgin formulated in antique custom. In the duet with Tannhaeuser she was benign and forgiving, the divine penitent who, having no sins of her own to do penance for, does penance for the sins of others.

It was then that Ulick began to understand the secret of Evelyn's acting; in Elizabeth she had gone back to the Dulwich days before she knew Asher, and was acting what she then felt and thought. She believed she was living again with her father, and so intense was her conviction that it evoked the externals. Even her age vanished; she was but eighteen, a virgin whose sole reality has been her father and her chatelaine, and whose vision of the world was, till now, a mere decoration—sentinels on the drawbridge, hunters assembling on the hillside, pictures hardly more real to her than those she weaves on her tapestry loom.

Ulick leaned out of the box and applauded; he dared even to cry encore, and, following suit, the musicians laid aside their instruments and, standing up in the orchestra, applauded with him. The conductor tapped approval with his stick on the little harmonium, the chorus at the back cried encore. It was a curious scene; these folk, whose one idea at rehearsal is to get it over as soon as possible, conniving at their own retention in the theatre.

The applause of her fellow artistes delighted her; she bowed to the orchestra, and, turning to the chorus, said that she would be pleased to sing the duet again if they did not mind the delay; and coming down the stage and standing in front of the box, she said to Ulick—

"Well, are you satisfied?... Is that your idea of Elizabeth?"

"So far as we have gone, yes, but I shall not know if your Elizabeth is my Elizabeth until I have heard the end of the act."

Turning to Mr. Hermann Goetze, she said—

"Mr. Dean has very distinct ideas how this part should be played."

"Mr. Dean," answered the manager, laughing, "would not go to Bayreuth three years ago because they played 'Tannhaeuser.' But one evening he took the score down to read the new music, and to his surprise he found that it was the old that interested him. Mr. Dean is always making discoveries; he discovers all my singers after he has heard them."

"And Mr. Hermann Goetze discovers his singers before he has heard them," cried Ulick.

Mr. Hermann Goetze looked for a moment as if he were going to get angry, but remembering that Dean was critic to an important weekly, he laughed and put his handkerchief to his jaw, and Evelyn went up the stage to meet the Landgrave—her father—and she sang a duet with him. As soon as it was concluded, the introduction to the march brought the first courtiers and pages on the stage, and with the first strains of the march the assembly, which had been invited to witness the competitions, was seated in the circular benches ranged round the throne of the Landgrave and his daughter.

Having consulted with his stage manager and superintended some alterations in the stage arrangements, Mr. Hermann Goetze, whose toothache seemed a little better again, left the stage, and coming into the box where Ulick was sitting, he sat beside him and affected some interest in his opinion regarding the grouping, for it had occurred to him that if Evelyn should take a fancy to this young man nothing was more likely than that she should ask to have his opera produced. With the plot and some of the music he was already vaguely acquainted; and he had gathered, in a general way, that Ulick Dean was considered to be a man of talent. The British public might demand a new opera, and there had been some talk of Celtic genius in the newspapers lately. Dean's "Grania" might make an admirable diversion in the Wagnerian repertoire—only it must not be too anti-Wagnerian. Mr. Goetze prided himself on being in the movement. Now, if Evelyn Innes would sing the title role, "Grania" was the very thing he wanted. And in such a frame of mind, he listened to Ulick Dean. He was glad that "Grania" was based on a legend; Wagner had shown that an opera could not be written except on a legendary basis. The Irish legends were just the thing the public was prepared to take an interest in. But there was one thing he feared—that there were no motives.

"Tell me more about the music? It is not like the opera you showed me a year or two ago in which instead of motives certain instruments introduce the characters? There is nothing Gregorian about this new work, is there?"

"Nothing," Ulick answered, smiling contemptuously—nothing recognisable to uneducated ears."

"Plenty of chromatic writing?"

"Yes, I think I can assure you that there is plenty of modulation, some unresolved dissonances. I suppose that that is what you want. Alas, there are not many motives."

"Ah!"

Ulick waited to be asked if he could not introduce some. But at that moment Tannhaeuser's avowal of the joys he had experienced with Venus in Mount Horsel had shocked the Landgrave's pious court. The dames and the wives of the burgesses had hastened away, leaving their husbands to avenge the affront offered to their modesty. The knights drew their swords; it was the moment when Elizabeth runs down the steps of the throne and demands mercy from her father for the man she loves. The idea of this scene was very dear to Ulick, and his whole attention was fixed on Evelyn.

He was only attracted by essential ideas, and the mysterious expectancy of the virgin awaiting the approach of the man she loves was surely the essential spirit of life—the ultimate meaning of things. The comedy of existence, the habit of life worn in different ages of the world had no interest for him; it was the essential that he sought and wished to put upon the stage—the striving and yearning, and then the inevitable acceptation of the burden of life; in other words, the entrance into the life of resignation. That was what he sought in his own operas, and from this ideal he had never wavered; all other art but this essential art was indifferent to him. It was no longer the beautiful writing of Wagner's later works that attracted him; he deemed this one to be, perhaps, the finest, being the sincerest, and "Parsifal" the worst, being the most hypocritical. Elizabeth was the essential penitent, she who does penance not for herself, she has committed no sin, but the sublime penitent who does penance for the sins of others. Not for a moment could he admit the penitence of Kundry. In her there was merely the external aspect. "Parsifal" was to Ulick a revolting hypocrisy, and Kundry the blot on Wagner's life. In the first act she is a sort of wild witch, not very explicit to any intelligence that probes below the surface. In the second, she is a courtesan with black diamonds. In the third, she wears the coarse habit of a penitent, and her waist is tied with a cord; but her repentance goes no further than these exterior signs. She says no word, and Ulick could not accept the descriptive music as sufficient explanation of her repentance, even if it were sincere, which it was not, and he spoke derisively of the amorous cries to be heard at every moment in the orchestra, while she is dragging herself to Parsifal's feet. Elizabeth's prayer was to him a perfect expression of a penitent soul. Kundry, he pointed out, had no such prayer, and he derisively sang the cries of amorous desire. The character of Parsifal he could admit even less than the character of Kundry. As he would say in discussion, "If I am to discuss an artistic question, I must go to the very heart of it. Now, if we ask ourselves what Siegfried did, the answer is, that he forged the sword, killed the dragon and released Brunnhilde. But if, in like manner, we ask ourselves what Parsifal did, is not the answer, that he killed a swan and refused a kiss and with many morbid, suggestive and disagreeable remarks? These are the facts," he would say; "confute them who may, explain them who can!" And if it were urged, as it often was, that in Parsifal Wagner desired the very opposite to what he had in Siegfried, the Parsifal is opposed to Siegfried as Hamlet is opposed to Othello, Ulick eagerly accepted the challenge, and like one sure of his adversary's life, began the attack.

Wagner had been all his life dreaming of an opera with a subjective hero. Christ first and then Buddha had suggested themselves as likely subjects. He had gone so far as to make sketches for both heroes, but both subjects had been rejected as unpractical, and he had fallen back on a pretty mediaeval myth, and had shot into a pretty mediaeval myth all the material he had accumulated for the other dramas, whose heroes were veritable heroes, men who had accomplished great things, men who had preached great doctrines and whose lives were symbols of their doctrines. The result of pouring this old wine into the new bottle was to burst the bottle.

In neither Christ nor Buddha did the question of sex arise, and that was the reason that Wagner eventually rejected both. He was as full of sex—mysterious, sub-conscious sex—as Rossetti himself. In Christ's life there is the Magdalen, but how naturally harmonious, how implicit in the idea, are their relations, how concentric; but how excentric (using the word in its grammatical sense) are the relations of Parsifal to Kundry.... A redeemer is chaste, but he does not speak of his chastity nor does he think of it; he passes the question by. The figure of Christ is so noble, that whether God or man or both, it seems to us in harmony that the Magdalen should bathe his feet and wipe them with her hair, but the introduction of the same incident into "Parsifal" revolts. As Parsifal merely killed a swan and refused to be kissed—the other preached a doctrine in which beauty and wisdom touch the highest point, and his life was an exemplification of his doctrine of non-resistance—"Take ye and eat, for this is my body, and this is my blood."

In "Parsifal" there was only the second act which he could admire without enormous reservations. The writing in the chorus of the "Flower Maidens" was, of course, irresistible—little cries, meaningless by themselves, but, when brought together, they created an enchanted garden, marvellous and seductive. But it was the duet that followed that compelled his admiration. Music hardly ever more than a recitative, hardly ever breaking into an air, and yet so beautiful! There the notes merely served to lift the words, to impregnate them with more terrible and subtle meaning; and the subdued harmonies enfolded them in an atmosphere, a sensual mood; and in this music we sink into depths of soul and float upon sullen and mysterious tides of life—those which roll beneath the phase of life which we call existence. But the vulgarly vaunted Good Friday music did not deceive him; at the second or third time of hearing he had perceived its insincerity. It was very beautiful music, but in such a situation sincerity was essential. The airs of this mock redeemer were truly unbearable, and the abjection of Kundry before this stuffed Christ revolted him. But the obtusely religious could not fail to be moved; the appeal of the chaste kiss, with little sexual cries all the while in the orchestra, could not but stir the vulgar heart to infinite delight, and the art was so dexterously beautiful that the intelligent were deceived. The artiste and the vulgarian held each other's hands for the first time; they gasped a mutual wonder at their own perception and their unsuspected nobility of soul. "Parsifal," he declared, with true Celtic love of exaggeration, "to be the oiliest flattery ever poured down the open throat of a liquorish humanity."

As he spoke such sentences his face would light up with malicious humour, and he was so interested in the subject he discussed that his listener was forced to follow him. It was only in such moments of artistic discussion that his real soul floated up to the surface, and he, as it were, achieved himself. He knew, too, how to play with his listener, to wheedle and beguile him, for after a particularly aggressive phrase he would drop into a minor key, and his criticism would suddenly become serious and illuminative. To him "Parsifal" was a fresco, a decoration painted by a man whose true genius it was to reveal the most intimate secrets of the soul, to tell the enigmatic soul of longing as Leonardo da Vinci had done. But he had been led from the true path of his genius into the false one of a rivalry with Veronese. Only where Wagner is confiding a soul's secret is he interesting, and in "Tannhaeuser," in this first flower of his dramatic and musical genius, he had perhaps told the story of his own soul more truly, more sincerely than elsewhere. To do that was the highest art. Sooner or later the sublimest imaginations pale before the simple telling of a personal truth, for the most personal truth is likewise the most universal. "Tannhaeuser" is the story of humanity, for what is the human story if it isn't the pursuit of an ideal?

And this essential and primal truth Evelyn revealed to him and the very spirit and sense of maidenhood, the centre and receptacle of life, the mysterious secret of things, the awful moment when the whisper of the will to live is heard in matter, the will which there is no denying, the surrender of matter, the awaking of consciousness in things. And united to the eternal idea of generation, he perceived the congenital idea which in remotest time seems to have sprung from it—that life is sin and must be atoned for by prayer. Evelyn's interpretation revealed his deepest ideas to himself, and at last he seemed to stand at the heart of life.

Suddenly his rapture was broken through; the singer had stopped the orchestra.

"You have cut some of the music, I see," she said, addressing the conductor.

"Only the usual cut, Miss Innes."

"About twenty pages, I should think."

The conductor counted them.

"Eighteen."

"Miss Innes, that cut has been accepted everywhere—Munich, Berlin, Wiesbaden—everywhere except Bayreuth."

"But, Mr. Hermann Goetze, my agreement with you is that the operas I sing in are to be performed in their entirety."

"In their entirety; that is to say, well—taken literally, I suppose—that the phrase 'In their entirety' could be held to mean without cuts; but surely, regarding this particular cut—I may say that I spoke to Sir Owen about it, and he agreed with me that it was impossible to get people into the theatre in London before half-past seven."

"But, Mr. Hermann Goetze, your agreement is with me, not with Sir Owen Asher."

"Quite so, Miss Innes, but—"

"If people don't care sufficiently for art to dine half-an-hour earlier, they had better stay away."

"But you see, Miss Innes, you're not in the first act; there are the other artistes to consider. The 'Venusberg' will be sung to empty benches if you insist."

It seemed for a moment as if Mr. Hermann Goetze was going to have his way; and Ulick, while praying that she might remain firm, recognised how adroitly Hermann Goetze had contrived to place her in a false position regarding her fellow artistes.

"I am quite willing to throw up the part; I can only sing the opera as it is written."

The conductor suggested a less decisive cut to Evelyn, and Mr. Hermann Goetze walked up and down the stage, overtaken by toothache. His agony was so complete that Evelyn's harshness yielded. She went to him, and, her hand laid commiseratingly on his arm, she begged him to go at once to the dentist.

Then some of the musicians said that they could hardly read the music, so effectually had they scratched it out.

"If the musicians cannot play the music, we had better go home," said Evelyn.

"But the opera is announced for to-morrow night," Mr. Hermann Goetze replied dolefully.

Mr. Wheeler suggested that they might go on with the rehearsal; the cut could be discussed afterwards. Groups formed, everyone had a different opinion. At last the conductor took up his stick and cried, "Number 105, please."

"They are going back," thought Ulick; "she held her ground capitally. She has more strength of character than I thought. But Hermann Goetze has upset her; she won't be able to sing."

And it was as he expected; she could not recapture her lost inspiration; mood, Ulick could see, was the foundation and the keystone of her art.

"No," she said, "I sang it horribly, I am all out of sorts, I don't feel what I am singing, and when the mood is not upon me, I am atrocious. What annoyed me was his attributing such selfishness to me, and such vulgar selfishness, too—"

"However, you had your way about the cut."

"Yes, they'll have to sing the whole of the finale. But I am sorry about his tooth; I know that it is dreadful pain."

Ulick told an amusing story how he had once called on Hermann Goetze to ask if he had read the book of his opera.

"He'd just gone into an adjoining room to fetch a clothes-brush—he had taken off his coat to brush it—but the moment he saw me, he whipped out his handkerchief and said that he must go to the dentist."

"And when I asked him to engage Helbrun to sing Brangaene, and give her eighty pounds a week if she wouldn't sing it for less, he whipped out his handkerchief as you say, and asked me if I knew a dentist."

"The idea of Wagner without cuts always brings on a violent attack," and Ulick imitated so well the expression of agony that had come into the manager's face that Evelyn exploded with laughter. She begged Ulick to desist.

"I shan't be able to sing at all. But I have not told you of my make up. I don't look at all pretty; the ugly curls I wear come from an old German print, and the staid, modest gown. But it is very provoking; I was singing well till that fiend began to argue. Don't make me laugh again."

He became very grave.

"I can only think of the joy you gave me."

His praise brightened her face, and she listened.

"I cannot tell you now what I feel; perhaps I shall never find words to express what I feel about your Elizabeth. I shall be writing about it next week, and shall have to try."

"Do tell me now. You liked it better than my Margaret?"

Ulick shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and they looked in each other's eyes, and could hardly speak, so extraordinary was their recognition of each other; it was so intense that they could hardly help laughing, so strange it seemed that they should never have met before, or should have been separated for such a long time. It really seemed to them as if they had known each other from all eternity.

"How can you act Elizabeth, she is so different from what you are?"

"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 passed across the stage Elizabeth sought for Tannhaeuser, 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 God'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 sex 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 God; 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 Saturday; you'll be sure to find him on Saturday 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 Saturday 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 passed 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 accumulating 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 Saturday 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 attitude 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 reassured 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 gods 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-anticipated scene; and the fictitious 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 passed 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 passed 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?"

"Did you?"

"No, I didn't go, Miss, but I heard Mr. Dean and your father talking of you. I've read about you in the papers; only this morning there was a long piece."

"If father talks of me he'll forgive me," thought Evelyn. The girl's wonderment made her smile, and she said—

"But you've not told me your name."

"My name is Agnes, miss."

"Have you been long with my father? When I left, Margaret—"

"Ah! she's dead, miss. I came to your father the day after the funeral."

Evelyn walked up the room, overcome by the eternal absence of something which had hitherto been part of her life. For Margaret took her back to the time her mother was alive; farther back still—to the very beginning of her life. She had always reckoned on Margaret.... So Margaret was dead. Margaret would never know of this meeting. Margaret might have helped her. Poor Margaret! At that moment she caught sight of her mother's eyes. They seemed to watch her; she seemed to know all about Owen, and afraid of the haunting, reproving look, Evelyn studied the long oval face and the small brown eyes so unlike hers. One thing only she had inherited from her mother—her voice. She had certainly not inherited her conduct from her mother; her mother was one of the few great artistes against whom nothing could be said. Her mother was a good woman.... What did she think of her daughter? And seeing her cold, narrow face, she feared her mother would regard her conduct even more severely than her father.... "But if she had lived I should have had no occasion to go away with Owen." She wondered. At the bottom of her heart she knew that Owen was as much as anything else a necessity in her life.... She moved about the room and wished the hands of the clock could be advanced a couple of hours, for then the terrible scene with her father would be over. If he could only forgive her at once, and not make her miserable with reproaches, they could have such a pleasant evening.

In this room her past life was blown about her like spray about a rock. She remembered the days when she went to London with her father to give lessons; the miserable winter when she lost her pupils.... How she had waited in this room for her father to come back to dinner; the faintness of those hungry hours; worse still, that yearning for love. She must have died if she had not gone away. If it had to happen all over again she must act as she had acted. How well she remembered the moment when she felt that her life in Dulwich had become impossible. She was coming from the village where she had been paying some bills, and looking up she had suddenly seen the angle of a house and a bare tree, and she could still hear the voice which had spoken out of her very soul. "Shall I never get away from this place?" it had cried. "Shall I go on doing these daily tasks for ever?" The strange, vehement agony of the voice had frightened her.... At that moment her eyes were attracted by a sort of harpsichord. "One of father's experiments," she said, running her fingers over the keys. "A sort of cross between a harpsichord and a virginal; up here the intonation is that of a virginal."

"I forgot to ask you miss"—Evelyn turned from the window, startled; it was Agnes who had come back—"if you was going to stop for dinner, for there's very little in the house, only a bit of cold beef. I should be ashamed to put it on the table, miss; I'm sure you couldn't eat it. Master don't think what he eats; he's always thinking of his music. I hope you aren't like that, miss?"

"So he doesn't eat much. How is my father looking, Agnes?"

"Middling, miss. He varies about a good bit; he's gone rather thin lately."

"Is he lonely, do you think ... in the evenings?"

"No, miss; I don't hear him say nothing about being lonely. For the last couple of years he never did more than come home to sleep and his meals, and he'd spend the evenings copying out the music."

"And off again early in the morning?"

"That's it, miss, with his music tied up in a brown paper parcel. Sometimes Mr. Dean comes and helps him to write the music."

"Ah!... but I'm sorry he doesn't eat better."

"He eats better when Mr. Dean's here. They has a nice little dinner together. Now he's taken up with that 'ere instrument, the harpy chord, they's making. He's comin' home to-night to finish it; he says he can't get it finished nohow—that they's always something more to do to it."

"I wonder if we could get a nice dinner for him this evening?"

"Well, miss, you see there's no shops to speak of about here. You know that as well as I do."

"I wonder what your cooking is like?"

"I don't know, miss; p'r'aps it wouldn't suit you, but I've been always praised for my cooking."

"I could send for some things; my coachman could fetch them from town."

"Then there's to-morrow to be thought about if you're stopping here. I tell you we don't keep much in the house."

"Is my father coming home to dinner?"

"I can't say for certain, miss, only that he said 'e'd be 'ome early to finish the harpy chord. 'E might have 'is dinner out and come 'ome directly after, but I shouldn't think that was likely."

"You can cook a chicken, Agnes?"

"Lor'! yes, miss."

"And a sole?"

"Yes, miss; but in ordering, miss, you must think of to-morrow. You won't like to have a nice dinner to-night and a bit of hashed mutton to-morrow."

"I'll order sufficient. You've got no wine, I suppose?"

"No, we've no wine, miss, only draught beer."

"I'll tell my coachman to go and fetch the things at once."

When she returned to the music-room, Agnes asked her if she was going to stop the night.

"Because I should have to get your rooms ready, miss."

"That I can't tell, Agnes.... I don't think so.... You won't tell my father I'm here when you let him in?... I want it to be a surprise."

"I won't say nothing, miss. I'll leave him to find it out."

Evelyn felt that the girl must have guessed her story, must have perceived in her the repentant daughter—the erring daughter returned home. Everything pointed to that fact. Well, it couldn't be helped if she had.

"If my father will only forgive me; if that first dreadful scene were only over, we could have an enchanting evening together."

She was too nervous to seek out a volume of Bach and let her fingers run over the keys; she played anything that came into her head, sometimes she stopped to listen. At last there came a knock, and her heart told her it was his. In another moment he would be in the room. But seeing her he stopped, and, without a word, he went to a table and began untying a parcel of music.

"Father, I've come to see you.... You don't answer. Father, are you not going to speak to me? I've been longing to see you, and now—"

"If you had wanted to see me, you'd have come a month ago."

"I was not in London a month ago."

"Well, three weeks ago."

"I ought to have done so, but I had no courage. I could only see you looking at me as you are looking now. Forgive me, father.... I'm your only daughter; she's full of failings, but she has never ceased to love you."

He sat at the table fumbling with the string that had tied the parcel he had brought in, and she stood looking at him, unable to speak. She seemed to have said all there was to say, and wished she could throw herself at his feet; but she could not, something held her back. She prayed for tears, but her eyes remained dry; her mouth was dry, and a flame seemed to burn behind her eyes. She could only think that this might be the last time she would see him. The silence seemed a great while. She repeated her words, "I had not the courage to come before." At the sound of her voice she remembered that she must speak to him at once of his choir, and so take their thoughts from painful reminiscence.

"I went to St. Joseph's on Thursday, but you weren't there. You gave Vittoria's mass last Sunday. I started to go, but I had to turn back."

She had not gone to hear her father's choir, because she could not resist Lady Ascott's invitation, and no more than the invitation could she resist the lie; she had striven against it, but in spite of herself it had forced itself through her lips, and now her father seemed to have some inkling of the truth, for he said—

"If you had cared to hear my choir you'd have gone. You needn't have seen me, whereas I was obliged—"

Evelyn guessed that he had been to the opera. "How good of him to have gone to hear me," she thought. She hated herself for having accepted Lady Ascott's invitation, and the desire to ask him what he thought of her voice seemed to her an intolerable selfishness.

"What were you going to say, father?"

"Nothing.... I'm glad you didn't come."

"Wasn't it well sung?" and she was seized with nervousness, and instead of speaking to him about his basses as she had intended, she asked him about the trebles.

"They are the worst part of the choir. That contrapuntal music can only be sung by those who can sing at sight. The piano has destroyed the modern ear. I daresay it has spoilt your ear."

"My ear is all right, I think."

"I hope it is better than your heart."

Evelyn's face grew quite still, as if it were frozen, and seeing the pain he had caused her he was moved to take her in his arms and forgive her straight away. He might have done so, but she turned, and passing her hand across her eyes she went to the harpsichord. She played one of the little Elizabethan songs, "John, come kiss me now." Then an old French song tempted her voice by its very appropriateness to the situation—"Que vous me coutez cher, mon coeur, pour vos plaisirs." But there was a knot in her throat, she could not sing, she could hardly speak. She endeavoured to lead her father into conversation, hoping he might forget her conduct until it was too late for him to withdraw into resentment. She could see that the instrument she was playing on he had made himself. In some special intention it was filled with levers and stops, the use of which was not quite apparent to her; and she could see by the expression on his face that he was annoyed by her want of knowledge of the technicalities of the instrument.

So she purposely exaggerated her ignorance.

He fell into the trap and going to her he said, "You are not making use of the levers."

"Oh, am I not?" she said innocently. "What is this instrument—a virginal or a harpsichord?"

"It is a harpsichord, but the intonation is that of a virginal. I made it this winter. The volume of sound from the old harpsichord is not sufficient in a large theatre, that is why the harpsichord music in 'Don Juan' has to be played on the fiddles."

He stopped speaking and she pressed him in vain to explain the instrument. She went on playing.

"The levers," he said at last, "are above your knees. Raise your knees."

She pretended not to understand.

"Let me show you." He seated himself at the instrument. "You see the volume of sound I obtain, and all the while I do not alter the treble."

"Yes, yes, and the sonority of the instrument is double that of the old harpsichord. It would be heard all over Covent Garden."

She could see that the remark pleased him. "I'll sing 'Zerline' if you'll play it."

"You couldn't sing 'Zerline,' it isn't in your voice."

"You don't know what my voice is like."

"Evelyn, I wonder how you can expect me to forgive you; I wonder how I can speak to you. Have you forgotten how you went away leaving me to bear the shame, the disgrace?"

"I have come to beg forgiveness, not to excuse myself. But I wrote to you from Paris that I was going to live with Lady Duckle, and that you were to say that I had gone abroad to study singing."

"I'm astonished, Evelyn, that you can speak so lightly."

"I do not think lightly of my conduct, if you knew the miserable days it has cost me. Reproach me as you will about my neglect toward you, but as far as the world is concerned there has been no disgrace."

"You would have gone all the same; you only thought of yourself. Brought up as you have been, a Catholic—"

"My sins, father, lie between God and myself. What I come for is to beg forgiveness for the wrong I did you."

He did not answer, but he seemed to acquiesce, and it was a relief to her to feel that it was not the moral question that divided them; convention had forced him to lay some stress upon it, but clearly what rankled in his heart, and prevented him from taking her in his arms, was a jealous, purely human feud. This she felt she could throw herself against and overpower.

"Father, you must forgive me, we are all in all to each other; nothing can change that. Ever since mother's death—you remember when the nurse told us all was over—ever since I've felt that we were in some strange way dependent on each other. Our love for each other is the one unalterable thing. My music you taught me; the first songs I sang were at your concerts, and now that we have both succeeded—you with Palestrina, and I with Wagner—we must needs be aliens. Father, can't you see that that can never be? if you don't you do not love me as I do you. You're still thinking that I left you. Of course, it was very wrong, but has that changed anything? Father, tell me, tell me, unless you want to kill me, that you do not believe that I love you less."

The wonder of the scene she was acting—she never admitted she acted; she lived through scenes, whether fictitious or real—quickened in her; it was the long-expected scene, the scene in the third act of the "Valkyrie" which she had always played while divining the true scene which she would be called upon to play one day. It seemed to her that she stood on the verge of all her future—the mystery of the abyss gathered behind her eyes; she threw herself at her father's feet, and the celebrated phrase, so plaintive, so full of intercession, broke from her lips, "Was the rebel act so full of shame that her rebellion is so shamefully scourged? Was my offence so deep in disgrace that thou dost plan so deep a disgrace for me? Was this my crime so dark with dishonour that it henceforth robs me of all honour? Oh tell me, father; look in mine eyes." She heard the swelling harmony, every chord, the note that gave her the note she was to sing. She was carried down like a drowning one into a dim world of sub-conscious being; and in this half life all that was most true in her seemed to rise like a star and shine forth, while all that was circumstantial and ephemeral seemed to fall away. She was conscious of the purification of self; she seemed to see herself white and bowed and penitent. She experienced a great happiness in becoming humble and simple again.... But she did not know if the transformation which was taking place in her was an abiding or a passing thing. She knew she was expressing all that was most deep in her nature, and yet she had acted all that she now believed to be reality on the stage many times. It seemed as true then as it did now—more true; for she was less self-conscious in the fictitious than in the real scene.

She knelt at her father's or at Wotan's feet—she could not distinguish; all limitations had been razed. She was the daughter at the father's feet. She knelt like the Magdalen. The position had always been natural to her, and habit had made it inveterate; there she bemoaned the difficulties of life, the passion which had cast her down and which seemed to forbid her an ideal. She caught her father's hand and pressed it against her cheek. She knew she was doing these things, yet she could not do otherwise; tears fell upon his hand, and the grief she expressed was so intense that he could not restrain his tears. But if she raised her face and saw his tears, his position as a stern father was compromised! She could only think of her own grief; the grief and regret of many years absorbed her; she was so lost in it that she expected him to answer her in Wotan's own music; she even smiled in her grief at her expectation, and continued the music of her intercession. And it was not until he asked her why she was singing Wagner that she raised her face. That he should not know, jarred and spoilt the harmony of the scene as she had conceived it, and it was not till he repeated his question that she told him.

"Because I've never sung it without thinking of you, father. That is why I sang it so well. I knew it all before. It tore at my heart strings. I knew that one day it would come to this."

"So every time before was but a rehearsal."

She rose to her feet.

"Why are you so cruel? It is you who are acting, not I. I mean what I say—you don't. Why make me miserable? You know that you must forgive me. You can't put me out of doors, so what is the use in arguing about my faults? I am like that ... you must take me as I am, and perhaps you would not have cared for me half as much if I had been different."

"Evelyn, how can you speak like that? You shock me very much."

She regretted her indiscretion, and feared she had raised the moral question; but the taunt that it was he and not she that was acting had sunk into his heart, and the truth of it overcame him. It was he who had been acting. He had pretended an anger which he did not feel, and it was quite true that, whatever she did, he could not really feel anger against her. She was shrined in his heart, the dream of his whole life. He could feel anger against himself, but not against her. She was right. He must forgive her, for how could he live without her? Into what dissimulation he had been foolishly ensnared! In these convictions which broke like rockets in his heart and brain, spreading a strange illumination in much darkness, he saw her beauty and sex idealised, and in the vision were the eyes and pallor of the dead wife, and all the yearning and aspiration of his own life seemed reflected back in this fair, oval face, lit with luminous, eager eyes, and in the tangle of gold hair fallen about her ears, and thrown back hastily with long fingers; and the wonder of her sex in the world seemed to shed a light on distant horizons, and he understood the strangeness of the common event of father and daughter standing face to face, divided, or seemingly divided, by the mystery of the passion of which all things are made. His own sins were remembered. They fell like soft fire breaking in a dark sky, and his last sensation in the whirl of complex, diffused and passing sensations was the thrill of terror at the little while remaining to him wherein he might love her. A few years at most! His eyes told her what was happening in his heart, and with that beautiful movement of rapture so natural to her, she threw herself into his arms.

"I knew, father, dear, that you'd forgive me in the end. It was impossible to think of two like us living and dying in alienation. I should have killed myself, and you, dear, you would have died of grief. But I dreaded this first meeting. I had thought of it too much, and, as I told you, I had acted it so often."

"Have I been so severe with you, Evelyn, that you should dread me?"

"No, darling, but, of course, I've behaved—there's no use talking about it any more. But you could never have been really in doubt that a lover could ever change my love for you. Owen—I mustn't speak about him, only I wish you to understand that I've never ceased to think of you. I've never been really happy, and I'm sure you've been miserable about me often enough; but now we may be happy. 'Winter storms wane in the winsome May.' You know the Lied in the first act of the 'Valkyrie'? And now that we're friends, I suppose you'll come and hear me. Tell me about your choir." She paused a moment, and then said, "My first thought was for you on landing in England. There was a train waiting at Victoria, but we'd had a bad crossing, and I felt so ill that I couldn't go. Next day I was nervous. I had not the courage, and he proposed that I should wait till I had sung Margaret. So much depended on the success of my first appearance. He was afraid that if I had had a scene with you I might break down."

"Wotan, you say, forgives Brunnhilde, but doesn't he put her to sleep on a fire-surrounded rock?"

"He puts her to sleep on the rock, but it is she who asks for flames to protect her from the unworthy. Wotan grants her request, and Brunnhilde throws herself enraptured into his arms. 'Let the coward shun Brunnhilde's rock—for but one shall win—the bride who is freer than I, the god!'"

"Oh, that's it, is it? Then with what flames shall I surround you?"

"I don't know, I've often wondered; the flame of a promise—a promise never to leave you again, father. I can promise no more."

"I want no other promise."

The eyes of the portrait were fixed on them, and they wondered what would be the words of the dead woman if she could speak.

Agnes announced that the coachman had returned.

"Father, I've lots of things to see to. I'm going to stop to dinner if you'll let me."

"I'm afraid, Evelyn—Agnes—"

"You need not trouble about the dinner—Agnes and I will see to that. We have made all necessary arrangements."

"Is that your carriage?... You've got a fine pair of horses. Well, one can't be Evelyn Innes for nothing. But if you're stopping to dinner, you'd better stop the night. I'm giving the 'Missa Brevis' to-morrow. I'm giving it in honour of Monsignor Mostyn. It was he who helped me to overcome Father Gordon."

"You shall tell me all about Monsignor after dinner."

He walked about the room, unwittingly singing the Lied, "Winter storms wane in the winsome May," and he stopped before the harpsichord, thinking he saw her still there. And his thoughts sailed on, vagrant as clouds in a Spring breeze. She had come back, his most wonderful daughter had come back.

He turned from his wife's portrait, fearing the thought that her joy on their daughter's return might be sparer than his. But unpleasant thoughts fell from him, and happiness sang in his brain like spring-awakened water-courses, and the scent in his nostrils was of young leaves and flowers, and his very flesh was happy as the warm, loosening earth in spring. "'Winter storms,'" he sang, "'wane in the winsome May; with tender radiance sparkles the spring.' I must hear her sing that; I must hear her intercede at Wotan's feet!" His eyes filled with happy tears, and he put questions aside. She was coming to-morrow to hear his choir. And what would she think of it? A shadow passed across his face. If he had known she was coming, he'd have taken more trouble with those altos; he'd have kept them another hour.... Then, taken with a sudden craving to see her, he went to the door and called to her.

"Evelyn."

"Yes, father."

"You are stopping to-night?"

"Yes, but I can't stop to speak with you now—I'm busy with Agnes."

She was deep in discussion with Agnes regarding the sole. Agnes thought she knew how to prepare it with bread crumbs, but both were equally uncertain how the melted butter was to be made. There was no cookery-book in the house, and it seemed as if the fish would have to be eaten with plain butter until it occurred to Agnes that she might borrow a cookery-book next door. It seemed to Evelyn that she had never seen a finer sole, so fat and firm; it really would be a pity if they did not succeed in making the melted butter. When Agnes came back with the book, Evelyn read out the directions, and was surprised how hard it was to understand. In the end it was Agnes who explained it to her. The chicken presented some difficulties. It was of an odd size, and Agnes was not sure whether it would take half-an-hour or three-quarters to cook. Evelyn studied the white bird, felt the cold, clammy flesh, and inclined to forty minutes. Agnes thought that would be enough if she could get her oven hot enough. She began by raking out the flues, and Evelyn had to stand back to avoid the soot. She stood, her eyes fixed on the fire, interested in the draught and the dissolution of every piece of coal in the flame. It seemed to Evelyn that the fire was drawing beautifully, and she appealed to Agnes, who only seemed fairly satisfied. It was doing pretty well, but she had never liked that oven; one was never sure of it. Margaret used to put a piece of paper over the chicken to prevent it burning, but Agnes said there was no danger of it burning; the oven never could get hot enough for that. But the oven, as Agnes had said, was a tricky one, and when she took the chicken out to baste it, it seemed a little scorched. So Evelyn insisted on a piece of paper. Agnes said that it would delay the cooking of the chicken, and attributed the scorching to the quantity of coal which Miss Innes would keep adding. If she put any more on she would not be answerable that the chimney would not catch fire. Every seven or eight minutes the chicken was taken out to be basted. The bluey-whitey look of the flesh which Evelyn had disliked had disappeared; the chicken was acquiring a rich brown colour which she much admired, and if it had not been for Agnes, who told her the dinner would be delayed till eight o'clock, she would have had the chicken out every five minutes, so much did she enjoy pouring the rich, bubbling juice over the plump back.

"Father! Father, dinner is ready! I've got a sole and a chicken. The sole is a beauty; Agnes says she never saw a fresher one."

"And where did all these things come from?"

"I sent my coachman for them. Now sit down and let me help you. I cooked the dinner myself." Feeling that Agnes's eye was upon her, she added, "Agnes and I—I helped Agnes. We made the melted butter from the recipe in the cookery-book next door. I do hope it is a success."

"I see you've got champagne, too."

"But I don't know how you're to get the bottle open, miss; we've no champagne nippers."

After some conjecturing the wires were twisted off with a kitchen fork. Evelyn kept her eyes on her father's plate, and begged to be allowed to help him again, and she delighted in filling up his glass with wine; and though she longed to ask him if he had been to hear her sing, she did not allude to herself, but induced him to talk of his victories over Father Gordon. This story of clerical jealousy and ignorance was intensely interesting to the old man, and she humoured him to the top of his bent.

"But it would all have come to nothing if it had not been for Monsignor Mostyn."

She fetched him his pipe and tobacco. "And who is Monsignor Mostyn?" she asked, dreading a long tale in which she could feel on interest at all. She watched him filling his pipe, working the tobacco down with his little finger nail. She thought she could see he was thinking of something different, and to her great joy he said—

"Well, your Margaret is very good; better than I expected—I am speaking of the singing; of course, as acting it was superb."

"Oh, father! do tell me? So you went after all? I sent you a box and a stall, but you were in neither. In what part of the theatre were you?"

"In the upper boxes; I did not want to dress." She leaned across the table with brightening eyes. "For a dramatic soprano you sing that light music with extraordinary ease and fluency."

"Did I sing it as well as mother?"

"Oh, my dear, it was quite different. Your mother's art was in her phrasing and in the ideal appearance she presented."

"And didn't I present an ideal appearance?"

"It's like this, Evelyn. The Margaret of Gounod and his librettist is not a real person, but a sort of keepsake beauty who sings keepsake music. I assume that you don't think much of the music; brought up as you have been on the Old Masters, you couldn't. Well, the question is whether parts designed in such an intention should be played in the like intention, or if they should be made living creations of flesh and blood, worked up by the power of the actress into something as near to the Wagner ideal as possible. I admire your Margaret; it was a wonderful performance, but—"

"But what, father?"

"It made me wish to see you in Elizabeth and Brunnhilde. I was very sorry I couldn't get to London last night."

"You'd like my Elizabeth better. Margaret is the only part of the old lot that I now sing. I daresay you're right. I'll limit myself for the future to the Wagner repertoire."

"I think you'd do well. Your genius is essentially in dramatic expression. 'Carmen,' for instance, is better as Galli Marie used to play it than as you would play it. 'Carmen' is a conventional type—all art is convention of one kind or another, and each demands its own interpretation. But I hope you don't sing that horrid music."

"You don't like 'Carmen'?"

Mr. Innes shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"'Faust' is better than that. Gounod follows—at a distance, of course—but he follows the tradition of Haydn and Mozart. 'Carmen' is merely Gounod and Wagner. I hope you've not forgotten my teaching; as I've always said, music ended with Beethoven and began again with Wagner."

"Did you see Ulick Dean's article?"

"Yes, he wrote to me last night about your Elizabeth. He says there never was anything heard like it on the stage."

"Did he say that? Show me the letter. What else did he say?"

"It was only a note. I destroyed it. He just said what I told you. But he's a bit mad about that opera. He's been talking to me about it all the winter, saying that the character had never been acted; apparently it has been now. Though for my part I think Brunnhilde or Isolde would suit you better."

The mention of Isolde caused them to avoid looking at each other, and Evelyn asked her father to tell her about Ulick—how they became acquainted and how much they saw of each other. But to tell her when he made Ulick's acquaintance would be to allude to the time when Evelyn left home. So his account of their friendship was cursory and perfunctory, and he asked Evelyn suddenly if Ulick had shown her his opera.

"Grania?"

"No, not 'Grania.' He has not finished 'Grania,' but 'Connla and the Fairy Maiden.' Written," he added, "entirely on the old lines. Come into the music-room and you shall see."

He took up the lamp; Evelyn called Agnes to get another. The lamps were placed upon the harpsichord; she lighted some candles, and, just as in old times, they lost themselves in dreams and visions. This time it was in a faint Celtic haze; a vision of silver mist and distant mountain and mere. It was on the heights of Uisnech that Connla heard the fairy calling him to the Plain of Pleasure, Moy Mell, where Boadag is king. And King Cond, seeing his son about to be taken from him, summoned Coran the priest and bade him chant his spells toward the spot whence the fairy's voice was heard. The fairy could not resist the spell of the priest, but she threw Connla an apple and for a whole month he ate nothing but that. But as he ate, it grew again, and always kept whole. And all the while there grew within him a mighty yearning and longing after the maiden he had seen. And when the last day of the month of waiting came, Connla stood by the side of the king, his father, on the Plain of Aromin, and again he saw the maiden come towards him, and again she spoke to him—