Evelyn Innes | Page 7

represented to her the completely unknown, she seemed to
have known him always in her heart; she seemed to have been waiting
for knowledge of this unknown, and the rumour of the future grew loud
in her ears.
He raised his eyes and saw a tall, fair girl dressed in pale green. Mr.
Innes introduced them.
"My daughter--Sir Owen Asher."
In the little while which he took to decide whether he would take tea or
coffee, he thought that something could be said for her figure, and he
liked her hair, but, on the whole, he did not think he cared for her. She
seemed to him an unimportant variety of what he had met before. He

said he would take tea, and then he changed his mind and said he
would have coffee, but Evelyn came back with a cup of tea, and
perceiving her mistake, she laughed abstractedly.
"You are going to sing two songs, Miss Innes. I'm glad; I hear your
voice is wonderful."
The sound of his voice conveyed a penetrating sense of his presence. It
was the same happiness which the very sight of him had awakened in
her, and she felt herself yielding to it as to a current. She was borne far
away into mists of dream, where she seemed to live a long while. Time
seemed to have ceased and the outside world to have fallen behind her.
The sensation was the most delicious she had ever experienced. She
hardly heard the answers that she made to his questions, and when her
father called her, it was like returning after a long absence.
She sang much more beautifully than he had expected, and during the
preludes and fugues and the sonatas by Bach, which finished the
programme, he thought of her voice, occasionally questioning himself
regarding his taste for her. Even in this short while he had come to like
her better. She had beautiful teeth and hair, and he liked her figure,
notwithstanding the fact that her shoulders sloped a little--perhaps
because they did slope a little. He noticed, whether her eyes wandered
or remained fixed, that they returned to him, and that their glance was
one of interrogation, as if all depended upon him. When the concert
was over he was anxious to speak to her, so that he grew impatient with
the people who stopped his way. The back room was filled with
musical instruments--there were two harpsichords, a clavichord and an
organ, and Mr. Innes insisted on explaining these instruments to him.
He seemed to Owen to pay too slight a heed to his daughter's voice.
That she played the viola da gamba very well was true enough, but
what sense was there in a girl like that playing an instrument? Her
voice was her instrument.
When he was able to get a few words with her, he told her about
Madame Savelli. There was no one else, he said, who could teach
singing. She must go to France at once, and he seemed to take it for
granted that she might start at the end of the week, if she only made up

her mind. She did not know what answer to make, and was painfully
conscious how silly she must look standing before him unable to say a
word. It was no longer the same; some of the dream had been swept
aside, and reality had begun to look through it. Her intense
consciousness of this tall, aristocratic man frightened her. She saw the
embroidered waistcoat, the slight hips, the gold moustache, and the
sparkling grey eyes asked her questions to which her whole nature
violently responded, and, though her feelings were inexplicable to
herself, she was overcome with physical shame. Father Railston was
looking at her, and the thought crossed her mind that he would not
approve of Sir Owen Asher. Feeling very uncomfortable, she seized an
opportunity of saying good-bye to a friend, and escaped from Sir Owen,
leaving him, as she knew, under the impression that she was a little fool
not worth taking further trouble about. But his ideas were different
from all that she had been taught, and it would be better if she never
saw him again. She did not doubt, however, that she would see him
again, and when, two days after, the servant announced him and he
walked into the music room, she was less surprised than her father.
The review, he said, could not go to press without an article on the
concert, but to do this article he must consult Mr. Innes, for in the first
piece, "La my," the viols had seemed to him out of tune. Of course this
was not so--perhaps one of the players had played a wrong note; that
might be the explanation.