"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 ba.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d 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 fict.i.tious 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 pa.s.sing 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 fict.i.tious 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d!'"

"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.