I see! I suppose you think it wrong to have two lovers at the same time.
Grace has come to you through sin. You are going to get rid of both of us."
Evelyn sat quite still as if hypnotised. She was very sorry for him, but for no single moment did she think she would yield.
Suddenly he asked her why he should be the one to be sent away, and he pleaded the rights of old friendship, going even so far as to suggest that even if she liked Ulick better she should not refuse to see him sometimes.
"I have no right to seem shocked at anything you may say. I told you Ulick was my lover, but I did not say he was going to remain my lover."
"Then what are you going to do? Will that priest get hold of you? I know him--I was at Eton with him. He always was--" and Owen muttered something under his breath. "Surely, Evelyn, you are not thinking of going to confession. After all my teaching has it come to this? My G.o.d!"
he said, as he walked up the room, "I"d sooner Ulick got you than that d.a.m.ned hypocritical fool. You are much too good for G.o.d," he said, turning suddenly and looking at her, remarking at that moment the pretty oval of her face, the arched eyebrows, the clear, nervous eyes. "You"ll be wasted on religion."
"From your point of view, I suppose I shall be."
They talked on and on, saying what they had said many times before.
Sometimes Evelyn seemed to follow his arguments, and thinking that he was convincing her, he would break off suddenly. "Well, will you come for a cruise with me in the _Medusa_? I"ll ask all your friends--we"ll have such a pleasant time."
"No, Owen, no, it"s impossible, you don"t understand. I don"t blame you--you never will understand."
And they looked at each other like wanderers standing on the straits dividing two worlds. The hands of the clock pointed to five o"clock. The servants had taken the tea-service away. Owen had urged Evelyn not to abandon the stage; he had urged the cause of Art; he had urged that her voice was her natural vocation; he had spoken of their love, and of the happiness they had found in each other--the conversation had drifted from an argument concerning the authenticity of the Gospels to a lake where they had spent a season five years ago. She saw again the reedy reaches and the steep mountain sh.o.r.es. They had been there in the month of September, and the leaves of the vine were drooping, and the grapes ready for gathering. They had been sweethearts only a little while, and the drives about the lake was one of his happiest memories.
"Evelyn, you cannot mean that you will never see me again?"
His eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head aside so that she might not see them.
"Life is very difficult, Owen; try not to make it more difficult."
"Evelyn, I had hoped that our friendship would have continued to the end. I never cared for any other woman, and when you are my age and look back, you will find that there is one, I don"t say I shall be the one, who--" His voice trembled, and he pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes.
"It"s very sad, Owen, and life is very difficult.... There is this consolation for you, that I am not sending you away on account of anyone else. Ulick must go too."
"That does not make it any better for me. By G.o.d, I"d sooner that he got you than that infernal religion. Evelyn, Evelyn, it is impossible that an idea, a mere idea, should take you from me. It is inhuman, unnatural, I can"t realise it!"
"Owen, you must go now."
"Evelyn, I don"t understand. It is just as if you told me you were tallow, and would melt if there was a fire lighted. But never mind, I"ll accept your ideas--I"ll accept anything. Let us be married to-morrow."
She was frightened in the depths of her feelings, and seemed to lose all control of her will.
"Owen, I cannot marry you. Why do you ask me? You know it is now more than ever impossible."
His face changed expression, but he was urged forward by an irresistible force that seemed to rise up from the bottom of his being and blind his eyes.
"You don"t love him, it was only a caprice; we"ll think no more about it."
She sought the truth in her soul, but it seemed to elude her. She was like a blind person in a vague, unknown s.p.a.ce, and not being able to discover the reason why she refused him, she insisted that Ulick was the reason.
"Are you going to marry him?"
"No, I don"t think so."
"Don"t you wish to? He is your father"s friend."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Destiny, I suppose."
The question was too profound for discussion, and they sat silent for a long while. A chance remark turned their talk upon Balzac, and Owen spoke about _Le Lys dans la Vallee_, and she asked him if he remembered the day he had first spoken to her about Balzac.
"It was the day you took me to the races, our first week in Paris."
"And a few days afterwards I took you to Madame Savelli"s. She told you that you had the most beautiful voice she had ever heard. You could not speak; you were so excited that I was obliged to send you off for a drive in the Bois. Do you remember?"
"Yes, I remember.... You were always very good to me."
They talked on and on, conscious of the hands of the clock moving on towards their divided lives. When it struck seven, she said he must go, but he begged to be allowed to stay till a quarter past, and in this last period he urged that their separation should not be final. He pleaded that a time should be set on his alienation, and ended by extracting from her a sort of half promise that she would allow him to come and see her in three months. But he and she knew that they would never meet again, and the sad thought floated up into their eyes as they said good-bye. She went to the window, wondering if he would stay a moment to look back. He stood on the edge of the pavement, and she watched him unmoved. She was thinking of Monsignor, and of how he would approve of her conduct. He would tell her that what she liked and disliked was no longer the question. Owen still stood on the kerb, but she did not even see him. Her eyes looked into the sunset, and she was thrilled with a mysterious joy, a joy that came from the heart, not from pa.s.sions, and it was exquisitely subtle as the light that faded in the remote west.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He walked up Park Lane, staring now and then at the quaint balconies from a mere habit of admiration. But all were indifferent to him, even the one supported by the four Empire figures. It did not seem that anything in the world could interest him again, and he wondered how he would get through the years that remained to him to live. He was tired of hunting and shooting; he had seen everything there was to be seen; he had been round the world twice; it did not seem to him that he would ever care for another woman, and he reflected with pride that he had been faithful to Evelyn for six years. "But I shall never see her again," his heart wailed; "in three months she"ll be a different woman; she won"t want to see me, she"ll find some excuse. That infernal priest will refuse his absolution if--" Owen stopped suddenly. Far away a little pink cloud dissolved mysteriously. "In another second," he thought, "it will be no more." In the Green Park the trees rocked in the soft autumn air, and he noticed that now and then a leaf broke from its twig, fluttered across the path, and fell by the iron railings.
"Well, Asher, how is it that you are in town at this time of year?"
It was a club acquaintance, one of the ordinary conventional men that Owen met by the dozen in every one of his clubs, a man whose next question would surely be, "How are your two-year-olds?"
"I should like to hear that they had all broken their legs," Owen answered through his teeth, and the colour mounted in his cheeks.
"Asher always was mad ... now he seems madder than ever. What did he mean by saying he wished his two-year-olds had all broken their legs?"
Owen lingered on the kerb, inveighing against the stupidity of his set.
He had thought of dining at the Turf Club, but after this irritating incident he felt that he dared not risk it; if anyone were to speak to him again of his two-year-olds, he felt he would not be able to control himself. Suddenly he thought of a friend. He must speak to someone....
He need mention no names. He put up his stick and stopped a hansom. A few minutes took him to Harding"s rooms.
The unexpectedness of the visit, and the manner in which Owen strode about the room, trying to talk of the things that he generally talked about, while clearly thinking of something quite different, struck Harding as unusual, and a suspicion of the truth had just begun to dawn upon him, when, breaking off suddenly, Owen said--
"Swear you"ll never speak of what I am going to say--and don"t ask for names."
"I"ll tell no one," said Harding, "and the name does not interest me."
"It"s this: a woman whom I have known many years--a friendship that I thought would go on to the end of the chapter--told me to-day that it was all finished, that she never wanted to see me again."
"A friendship! Were you her lover?"
"What does it matter? Suffice it to say that she was my dearest friend, and now I have lost her. She has been taken from me," he said, throwing his arms into the air. It was a superb gesture of despair, and Harding could not help smiling.
"So Evelyn has left him. I wonder for whom?" Then, with as much sympathy as he could call into his voice, he asked if the lady had given any reason for this sudden dismissal.