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Sister Teresa by George Moore

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"How do you do, Mr. Innes?" Ulick said, glancing at Owen; and a
suspicion crossed his mind that the tall man with small, inquisitive
eyes who stood watching him must be Owen Asher, hoping that it was
not so, and, at the same time, curious to make his predecessor's
acquaintance; he admitted his curiosity as soon as Innes introduced
him.

"The moment I saw you, Sir Owen, I guessed that it must be you. I had
heard so much about you, you see, and your appearance is so
distinctive."

These last words dissipated the gloom upon Owen's face--it is always
pleasing to think that one is distinctive. And turning from Sir Owen
to Innes, Ulick told him how, finding himself in London, he had
availed himself of the opportunity to run down to see him. Owen sat
criticising, watching him rather cynically, interested in his youth
and in his thick, rebellious hair, flowing upwards from a white
forehead. The full-fleshed face, lit with nervous, grey eyes,
reminded Owen of a Roman bust. "A young Roman emperor," he said to
himself, and he seemed to understand Evelyn's love of Ulick. Would
that she had continued to love this young pagan! Far better than to
have been duped by that grey, skinny Christian. And he listened to
Ulick, admiring his independent thought, his flashes of wit.

Ulick was telling stories of an opera company to which it was likely
he would be appointed secretary. A very unlikely thing indeed to
happen, Owen thought, if the company were assembled outside the
windows, within hearing of the stories which Ulick was telling about
them. Very amusing were the young man's anecdotes and comments, but
it seemed to Owen as if he would never cease talking; and Innes,
though seeming to enjoy the young man's wit, seemed to feel with Owen
that something must be done to bring it to an end.

"We shall be here all the afternoon listening to you, Ulick. I don't
know if Sir Owen has anything else to do, but I have some parts to
copy; there is a rehearsal to-night."

Ulick's manner at once grew so serious and formal that Innes feared
he had offended him, and then Owen suddenly realised that they were
both being sent away. In the street they must part, that was Owen's
intention, but before he could utter it Ulick begged of him to wait
a second, for he had forgotten his gloves. Without waiting for an
answer he ran back to the house, leaving Uwen standing on the
pavement, asking himself if he should wait for this impertinent
young man, who took it for granted that he would.

"You have got your gloves," he said, looking disapprovingly at the
tight kid gloves which Ulick was forcing over his fingers. "Do you
remember the way? As well as I remember, one turns to the right."

"Yes, to the right." And talking of the old music, of harpsichords
and viols, they walked on together till they heard the whistle of
the train.

"We have just missed our train."

There was no use running, and there was no other train for half an
hour.

"The waiting here will be intolerable," Owen said. "If you would care
for a walk, we might go as far as Peckham. To walk to London would
be too far, though, indeed, it would do both of us good."

"Yes, the evening is fine--why not walk to London? We can inquire out
the way as we go."



XI

"A Curious accident our meeting at Innes's."

"A lucky one for me. Far more pleasant living in this house than in
that horrible hotel."

Owen was lying back in an armchair, indulging in sentimental
and fatalistic dreams, and did not like this materialistic
interpretation of his invitation to Ulick to come to stay with him
at Berkeley Square. He wished to see the hand of Providence in
everything that concerned himself and Evelyn, and the meeting with
this young man seemed to point to something more than the young man's
comfort.

"Looked at from another side, our meeting was unlucky. If you hadn't
come in, Innes would have told me more about Evelyn. She must have
an address in London, and he must know it."

"That doesn't seem so sure. She may intend to live in Dulwich when
she returns from America."

"I can't see her living with her father; even the nuns seem more
probable. I wonder how it was that all this time you and she never
ran across each other. Did you never write to her?"

"No; I was abroad a great deal. And, besides, I knew she didn't want
to see me, so what was the good in forcing myself upon her?"

It was difficult for Owen to reprove Ulick for having left Evelyn to
her own devices. Had he not done so himself? Still, he felt that if
he had remained in England, he would not have been so indifferent;
and he followed his guest across the great tessellated hall towards
the dining-room in front of a splendid servitude.

The footmen drew back their chairs so that they might sit down with
the least inconvenience possible; and dinner at Berkeley Square
reminded Ulick of some mysterious religious ceremony; he ate,
overawed by the great butler--there was something colossal,
Egyptian, hierarchic about him, and Ulick could not understand how
it was that Sir Owen was not more impressed.

"Habit," he said to himself.

At one end of the room there was a great gold screen, and "in a dim,
religious light" the impression deepened; passing from ancient
Thebes to modern France, Ulick thought of a great cathedral. The
celebrant, the deacon and the subdeacon were represented by first
and second footmen, the third footman, who never left the sideboard,
he compared to the acolyte, the voice of the great butler proposing
different wines had a ritualistic ring in it; and, amused by his
conception of dinner in Berkeley Square, Ulick admired Owen's dress.
He wore a black velvet coat, trousers, and slippers. His white
frilled shirt and his pearl studs reminded Ulick of his own plain
shirt with only one stud, and he suspected vulgarity in a single
stud, for it was convenient, and would therefore appeal to waiters
and the middle classes. He must do something on the morrow to redeem
his appearance, and he noticed Owen's cuffs and sleeve-links, which
were superior to his own; and Owen's hands, they, too, were
superior--well-shaped, bony hands, with reddish hair growing about
the knuckles. Owen's nails were beautifully trimmed, and Ulick
determined to go to a manicurist on the morrow. A delicious perfume
emerged when Owen drew his handkerchief from his coat pocket; and all
this personal care reminded Ulick of that time long ago when Owen was
Evelyn's lover and travelled with her from capital to capital,
hearing her sing everywhere. "Now he will never see her again," he
thought, as he followed Owen back to his study, hoping to persuade
him into telling the story of how he had gone down to Dulwich to
write a criticism of Innes's concert, and how he had at once
recognised that Evelyn had a beautiful voice, and would certainly win
a high position on the lyric stage if she studied for it.

It was a solace to Owen's burdened heart to find somebody who would
listen to him, and he talked on and on, telling of the day he and
Evelyn had gone to Madame Savelli, and how he had had to leave Paris
soon after, for his presence distracted Evelyn's attention from her
singing-lessons. "In a year," Madame Savelli had said, "I will make
something wonderful of her, Sir Owen, if you will only go away, and
not come back for six months."

"He lives in recollection of that time," Ulick said to himself, "that
is his life; the ten years he spent with her are his life, the rest
counts for nothing." A moment after Owen was comparing himself to a
man wandering in the twilight who suddenly finds a lamp: "A lamp
that will never burn out," Ulick said to himself. "He will take that
lamp into the tomb with him."

"But I must read you the notices." And going to an escritoire covered
with ormolu--one of those pieces of French furniture which cost
hundreds of pounds--he took out a bundle of Evelyn's notices. "The
most interesting," he said, "were the first notices--before the
critics had made up their mind about her."

He stopped in his untying of the parcel to tell Ulick about his
journey to Brussels to hear her sing.

"You see, I had broken my leg out hunting, and there was a question
whether I should be able to get there in time. Imagine my annoyance
on being told I must not speak to her."

"Who told you that?"

"Madame Savelli."

"Oh, I understand I You arrived the very day of her first
appearance?"

Owen threw up his head and began reading the notices.

"They are all the same," he said, after reading half a dozen, and
Ulick felt relieved. "But stay, this one is different," and the long
slip dismayed Ulick, who could not feel much interest in the
impression that Evelyn had created as Elsa--he did not know how many
years ago.

"'Miss Innes is a tall, graceful woman, who crosses the stage with
slow, harmonious movements--any slight quickening of her step
awakening a sense of foreboding in the spectator. Her eyes, too, are
of great avail, and the moment she comes on the stage one is
attracted by their strangeness--grave, mysterious, earnest eyes,
which smile rarely; but when they do smile happiness seems to mount
up from within, illuminating her life from end to end. She will never
be unhappy again, one thinks. It is with her smile she recompenses
her champion knight when he lays low Telramund, and it is with her
smile she wins his love--and ours. We regret, for her sake, there
are so few smiles in Wagner: very few indeed--not one in 'Senta' nor
in 'Elizabeth.'" The newspaper cutting slipped from Owen's hand, and
he talked for a long time about her walk and her smile, and then
about her "Iphigenia," which he declared to be one of the most
beautiful performances ever seen, her personality lending itself to
the incarnation of this Greek idea of fate and self-sacrifice. But
Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time
it was written--containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat
stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression
of Beethoven's. "One man used to write about her very well, and
seemed to understand her better than any other. And writing about
this performance he says--Now, if I could find you his article." The
search proved a long one, but as it was about to be abandoned Owen
turned up the cutting he was in search of.

"'Her nature intended her for the representation of ideal heroines
whose love is pure, and it does not allow her to depict the violence
of physical passion and the delirium of the senses. She is an artist
of the peaks, whose feet may not descend into the plain and follow
its ignominious route,' And then here: 'He who has seen her as the
spotless spouse of the son of Parsifal, standing by the window, has
assisted at the mystery of the chaste soul awaiting the coming of
her predestined lover,' And 'He who has seen her as Elizabeth,
ascending the hillside, has felt the nostalgia of the skies awaken
in his heart,' Then he goes on to say that her special genius and
her antecedents led her to 'Fidelio,' and designed her as the
perfect embodiment of Leonore's soul--that pure, beautiful soul made
wholly of sacrifice and love,' But you never saw her as Leonore so
you can form no idea of what she really was,"

"I will read you what she wrote when she was studying 'Fidelio':
'Beethoven's music has nothing in common with the passion of the
flesh; it lives in the realms of noble affections, pity, tenderness,
love, spiritual yearnings for the life beyond the world, and its joy
in the external world is as innocent as a happy child's. It is in
this sense classical--it lives and loves and breathes in spheres of
feeling and thought removed from the ordinary life of men. Wagner's
later work, if we except some scenes from "The Ring"--notably the
scenes between Wotan and Brunnhilde--is nearer to the life of the
senses; its humanity is fresh in us, deep as Brunnhilde's; but
essential man lives in the spirit. The desire of the flesh is more
necessary to the life of the world than the aspirations of the soul,
yet the aspirations of the soul are more human. The root is more
necessary to the plant than its flower, but it is by the flower and
not by the root that we know it."

"Is it not amazing that a woman who could think like that should be
capable of flinging up her art--the art which I gave her--on account
of the preaching of that wooden-headed Mostyn?" Sitting down
suddenly he opened a drawer, and, taking out her photograph, he
said: "Here she is as Leonore, but you should have seen her in the
part. The photograph gives no idea whatever; you haven't seen her
picture. Come, let me show you her picture: one of the most beautiful
pictures that ---- ever painted; the most beautiful in the room, and
there are many beautiful things in this room. Isn't it extraordinary
that a woman so beautiful, so gifted, so enchanting, so intended by
life for life should be taken with the religious idea suddenly? She
has gone mad without doubt. A woman who could do the things that she
could do to pass over to religion, to scapulars, rosaries,
indulgencies! My God! my God!" and he fell back in his armchair, and
did not speak again for a long time. Getting up suddenly, he said,
"If you want to smoke any more there are cigars on the table; I am
going to bed."

"Well, it is hard upon him," Ulick said as he took a cigar; and
lighting his candle, he wandered up the great green staircase by
himself, seeking the room he had been given at the end of one of the
long corridors.



XII

"Did it ever occur to you," Owen said one evening, as the men sat
smoking after dinner, after the servant had brought in the whisky
and seltzer, between eleven and twelve, in that happy hour when the
spirit descends and men and women sitting together are taken with a
desire to communicate the incommunicable part of themselves--"did it
ever occur to you," Owen said, blowing the smoke and sipping his
whisky and seltzer from time to time, "that man is the most
ridiculous animal on the face of this earth?"

"You include women?" Ulick asked.

"No, certainly not; women are not nearly so ridiculous, because they
are more instinctive, more like the animals which we call the lower
animals in our absurd self-conceit. As I have often said, women have
never invented a religion; they are untainted with that madness, and
they are not moralists. They accept the religions men invent, and
sometimes they become saints, and they accept our moralities--what
can they do, poor darlings, but accept? But they are not interested
in moralities, or in religions. How can they be? They are the
substance out of which life comes, whereas we are but the spirit, the
crazy spirit--the lunatic crying for the moon. Spirit and substance
being dependent one on the other, concessions have to be made; the
substance in want of the spirit acquiesces, says, 'Very well, I will
be religious and moral too.' Then the spirit and the substance are
married. The substance has been infected--"

"What makes you say all this, Asher?"

"Well, because I have just been thinking that perhaps my misfortunes
can be traced back to myself. Perhaps it was I who infected Evelyn."

"You?"

"Yes, I may have brought about a natural reaction. For years I was
speaking against religion to her, trying to persuade her; whereas if
I had let the matter alone it would have died of inanition, for she
was not really a religious woman."

"I see, I see," Ulick answered thoughtfully.

"Had she met you in the beginning," Owen continued, "she might have
remained herself to the end; for you would have let her alone.
Religion provokes me... I blaspheme; but you are indifferent, you
are not interested. You are splendid, Ulick."

A smile crossed Ulick's lips, and Owen wondered what the cause of the
smile might be, and would have asked, only he was too interested in
his own thoughts; and the words, "I wonder you trouble about
people's beliefs" turned him back upon himself, and he continued:

"I have often wondered. Perhaps something happens to one early in
life, and the mind takes a bias. My animosity to religion may have
worn away some edge off her mind, don't you see? The moral idea that
one lover is all right, whereas any transgression means ruin to a
woman, was never invented by her. It came from me; it is impossible
she could have developed that moral idea from within--she was
infected with it."

"You think so?" Ulick replied thoughtfully, and took another cigar.

"Yes, if she had met you," Owen continued, returning to his idea.

"But if she had met me in the beginning you wouldn't have known her;
and you wouldn't consent to that so that she might be saved from
Monsignor?"

"I'd make many sacrifices to save her from that nightmare of a man;
but the surrender of one's past is unthinkable. The future? Yes. But
there is nothing to be done. We don't know where she is. Her father
said she would be in London at the end of the week; therefore she is
in London now." "If she didn't change her mind." "No, she never
changes her mind about such things; any change of plans always
annoyed her. So she is in London, and we do not know her address.
Isn't it strange? And yet we are more interested in her than in any
other human being."

"It would be easy to get her address; I suppose Innes would tell us.
I shouldn't mind going down to Dulwich if I were not so busy with
this opera company. The number of people I have to see,
five-and-twenty, thirty letters every day to be written--really I
haven't a minute. But you, Asher, don't you think you might run down
to Dulwich and interview the old gentleman? After all, you are the
proper person. I am nobody in her life, only a friend of a few
months, whereas she owes everything to you. It was you who
discovered her--you who taught her, you whom she loved."

"Yes, there is a great deal in what you say, Ulick, a great deal in
what you say. I hadn't thought of it in that light before. I suppose
the lot does fall to me by right to go to the old gentleman and ask
him. Before you came we were getting on very well, and he quite
understood my position."

Several days passed and no step was taken to find Evelyn's address in
London.

"If I were you, Asher, I would go down to-morrow, for I have been
thinking over this matter, and the company of which I am the
secretary of course cannot pay her what she used to get ten years
ago, but I think my directors would be prepared to make her a very
fair offer, and, after all, the great point would be to get her back
to the stage."

"I quite agree, Ulick, I quite agree." "Very well, if you think so go
to Dulwich." "Yes, yes, I'll go." And Owen came back that evening,
not with Evelyn's address, but with the news that she was in London,
living in a flat in Bayswater. "Think of that," Owen said, "a flat
in Bayswater after the house I gave her in Park Lane. Think of that!
Devoted to poor people, arranging school treats, and making
clothes."

"So he wouldn't give you her address?"

"When I asked him, he said, and not unreasonably, 'If she wanted to
see you she would write.' What could I answer? And to leave a letter
with him for her would serve no purpose; my letter would not
interest her; it might remain unanswered. No, no, mine is the past;
there is no future for me in her life. If anybody could do anything
it is you. She likes you."

"But, my good friend, I don't know where she is, and you won't find
out."

"Haven't I been to see her father?"

"Oh, her father! A detective agency would give us her address within
the next twenty-four hours, and the engagement must be filled up
within a few weeks."

"I can't go to a detective agency and pay a man to track her out--no,
not for anything."

"Not even to save her from Monsignor?"

"Not even that. There are certain things that cannot be done. Let us
say no more."

A fortnight later Owen was reading in the corner by the window about
five o'clock, waiting for Ulick to come home--he generally came in
for a cup of tea--and hearing a latchkey in the door, he put down
his book.

"Is Sir Owen in?"

"Sir Owen is in the study, sir."

And Ulick came in somewhat hurriedly. There was a light in his eyes
which told Owen that something had happened, something that would
interest him, and nothing could interest him unless news of Evelyn.

"Have you seen her?" and Owen took off his spectacles.

"Yes," Ulick answered, "I have seen her."

"You met her?"

"Yes."

"By accident?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about it."

Ulick was too excited to sit down; he walked about the hearthrug in
order to give more emphasis to his story.

"My hansom turned suddenly out of a large thoroughfare into some mean
streets, and the neighbourhood seemed so sordid that I was just
going to tell the driver to avoid such short cuts for the future
when I caught sight of a tall figure in brown holland. To meet
Evelyn in such a neighbourhood seemed very unlikely, but as the cab
drew nearer I could not doubt that it was she. I put up my stick, but
at that moment Evelyn turned into a doorway."

"You knocked?"

Ulick nodded.

"What sort of place was it?"

"All noise and dirt; a lot of boys."

"A school?"

"It seemed more like a factory. Evelyn came forward and said, 'I will
see you in half an hour, if you will wait for me at my flat,' 'But I
don't know the address,' I said. She gave me the address, Ayrdale
Mansions, and I went away in the cab; and after a good deal of
driving we discovered Ayrdale Mansions, a huge block, all red brick
and iron, a sort of model dwelling-houses, rather better."

"Good Lord!"

"I went up a stone staircase."

"No carpet?"

"No. Merat opened the door to me. I told her I had met Miss Innes in
a slum; she followed me into the drawing-room, saying, 'One of these
days Mademoiselle will bring back some horrid things with her.'"

"Good Lord! Tell me what her rooms were like?"

"The flat is better than you would expect to find in such a building.
It is the staircase that makes the place look like a model
dwelling-house. There is a drawing-room and a dining-room."

"What kind of furniture has she in the drawing-room?"

"An oak settle in the middle of the room and--"

"That doesn't sound very luxurious."

"But there are photographs of pictures on the walls, Italian saints,
the Renaissance, you know, Botticelli and Luini; her writing-table
is near the window, and covered with papers; she evidently writes a
great deal. Merat tells me she spends her evenings writing there
quite contented."

"That will do about the room; now tell me about herself."

"She came in looking very like herself."

"Glad to see you?"

"I think she was. She didn't seem to have any scruples about seeing
me. Our meeting was pure accident, so she was not responsible."

"Tell me, what did she look like?"

"Well, you know her appearance? She hasn't grown stouter her hair
hasn't turned grey."

"Yet she has changed?"

"Yes, she has changed; but--I don't know exactly how to word it--an
extraordinary goodness seems to have come into her face. It always
seemed to me that a great deal of her charm was in the kindness
which seemed to float about her and to look out of her eyes, and
that look which you know, or which you don't know--"

"I know it very well."

"Well, that look is more apparent than ever. I noticed it especially
as she leaned over the table looking at me."

"I know, those quiet, kindly eyes, steady as marble. A woman's eyes
are more beautiful than a man's because they are steadier. Yes, it
is impossible to look into her eyes and not to love her; her thick
hair drawn back loosely over the ears. There never was anybody so
winsome as she. You know what I mean?"

"How he loves her!" Ulick said to himself; "how he loves her! All his
life is reflected in his love of her."

"Are you going to see her again?" Owen asked suddenly.

"Well, yes."

"Did she raise no difficulties?"

"No."

"You didn't speak to her about your plans to induce her to accept the
engagement?"

"Not yet."

"Shall you?"

"I suppose so, but I cannot somehow imagine that she will ever go
back to the stage. She said, having made money enough for the nuns,
she had finished with the stage for ever, and was glad of it."

"Once an idea gets into our minds we become the slaves of it, and her
mind was always more like a man's than a woman's mind."

This point was discussed, Ulick pretending not to understand Owen's
meaning in order to draw him into confidences.

"She has asked you to go to see her, so I suppose she likes you. I
wish you well. _Anything_ rather than Monsignor should get her. You
have my best wishes."

"What does he mean by saying I have his best wishes? Does he mean
that he would prefer me to be her lover, if that would save her from
religion? Would he use me as the cat uses the monkey to pull the
chestnuts out of the fire, and then take them from me." But he did
not question Owen as to his meaning, and showed no surprise when a
few days afterwards Owen came into the drawing-room, interrupting
him in his work, saying:

"Have you forgotten?"

"Forgotten what?"

"Why, that you have an appointment with Evelyn."

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