Part 21 (2/2)
”Again some drama in which Evelyn Innes is concerned,” Harding said to himself.
”Harding, I have come to ask your advice; you'll give me the very best. But you will have to hear the whole story.”
”Well, I am a story-teller, and like to hear stories.”
Owen told him how he had met Ulick Dean at Innes', and had invited him to stop at Berkeley Square, and how gradually the idea that he could make use of Ulick in order to tempt Evelyn back to the stage had come into his mind. Anything to save her from religion, from Monsignor.
Owen caught Harding looking at him from under his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, and anger had begun to colour his cheeks when Harding said:
”Don't you remember, Asher, coming here a couple of years ago, and--”
”Yes, I know. You predicted that Ulick Dean and I would become friends, and you are right; we did.”
”And you preferred that Evelyn should be his mistress rather than that she shall go over to Monsignor?”
”I am not ashamed to confess I did; anything seemed better--but there is no use arguing the point. What I have come to tell you is that rather than go away with him she tried to kill herself.” And he told Harding the story.
”What an extraordinary story! But nothing is extraordinary in human nature. What we consider the normal never happens. Nature's course is always zigzag, and no one can predict a human action.”
”Well, then, my good friend, when you have done philosophising--I don't mean to be rude, but you see my nerves have been at strain for the last four-and-twenty hours; you will excuse me. My notion now is that everything has happened for the best.” And he confided to Harding his hopes of being able to persuade Evelyn to marry him.
”Only by marriage can she be saved, and I think I can persuade her.”
And he babbled about her appearance last night after her long sleep, comparing her with the portrait in his room. The painter had omitted nothing of her character; all that had happened he read into the picture--the restless spiritual eyes, and the large voluptuous mouth, and the small high temples which Leonardo would like to draw.
The painting of this picture was as illusive as Evelyn herself, the treatment of the reddish hair and the grey background.
And Harding listened, saying, ”So this is the end.”
”You think she will marry me?”
”Everything in nature is unexpected, that is all I can tell you. Art is logic, Nature incoherency.”
”Well, let us hope that Nature will be a little more coherent to-morrow than she was last night, and that Evelyn will do the right thing. Women generally marry when it is pressed upon them sufficiently, don't you think so, Harding?”
”I hope it will be so, since you desire it.”
”And you will be my best man, won't you?”
”I shall be only too pleased. Now, if you wait for me while I change my boots we'll go out together.” And the two men crossed the Green Park talking of the great moral laxity of the time they lived in; whereas in the eighteenth century men were even accused of boasting of their successes, now the conditions were reversed, men never admitting themselves to be anything else but virtuous; women, on the contrary, publis.h.i.+ng their _liaisons_, and taking little pleasure in them until they were known to everybody.
”_Liaisons_ have become as official as marriages. Who doesn't know--”
And Harding mentioned a number of celebrated 'affairs' which had been going on for ten, some twenty years. ”The real love affair of her ladys.h.i.+p now is probably some little tenor or drawing-master, and Cecil's a little milliner; but her ladys.h.i.+p and Cecil are forced to keep up appearances, for if they didn't who would talk about them any more?”
”You should write that as a short story,” Owen suggested. And the two friends began to argue as to the number of lovers which fell to the lot of fas.h.i.+onable women, from the age of twenty-three to fifty. Two or three ladies were mentioned whose _liaisons_ reached a couple of hundred, and there was another about whom they were not agreed, for some of her _liaisons_ had lasted so long that Owen did not believe she had had more than fifty lovers.
”It is impossible to imagine any time for a young man more propitious than the present, or any society more agreeable than London. Morals, as the newspapers would say, are in abeyance, conscience is looked upon as pedantic, especially in women, and unbecoming.” As the two walked up St. James' Street together, Harding noticed that Owen, notwithstanding his chatter about morals, was thinking of Evelyn, and took very little interest in the display of the season--in the slim n.o.bility of England, fresh from Oxford, all in frock coats for the first time, delighting in canes, and deerskin gloves, in collars and ties, the newest fas.h.i.+on, going down the street in pairs, turning into their clubs, lifting their hats to the women who drove past in victorias and electric broughams.
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