Sister Teresa. George Moore
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one reads whatever psychology one likes into them. Perhaps that is why they never grow old."
The door opened … Harding's servant brought in a parcel of proofs.
"My dear Asher, the proof of an article has just come, and the editor tells me he'll be much obliged if I look through it at once."
"Shall I wait?"
"Well, I'd sooner you didn't. Correcting a proof with me means a rewriting, and—"
"You can't concentrate your thoughts while I am roving about the room. I understand. Are you dining anywhere?"
"I'm not engaged."
The thought crossed Harding's mind when Owen left the room that it would be better perhaps to write saying that the proofs detained him, for to spend the evening with Owen would prove wearisome. "No matter what the subject of conversation may be his mind will go back to her very soon. … But to leave him alone all the evening would be selfish, and if I don't dine with him I shall have to dine alone. … " Harding turned to his writing-table, worked on his proof for a couple of hours, and then went to meet Owen, whom he found waiting for him at his club.
"My dear friend, I quite agree with you," he said, sitting down to the table; "what you want is change."
"Do you think, Harding, I shall find any interest again in anything?"
"Of course you will, my dear friend, of course you will." And he spoke to his friend of ruined palaces and bas-reliefs; Owen listened vaguely, begging of him at last to come with him.
"It will give you ideas, Harding; you will write better."
Harding shook his head, for it did not seem to him to be his destiny to relieve the tedium of a yachting excursion in the Mediterranean.
V
"One cannot yacht in the Baltic or in the Gulf of Mexico," Owen said, and he went to the Mediterranean again to sail about the Ægean Islands, wondering if he should land, changing his mind, deciding suddenly that the celebrated site he was going to see would not interest him. He would stand watching the rocky height dying down, his eyes fixed on the blue horizon, thinking of some Emperor's palace amid the Illyrian hills, till, acting on a sudden impulse, he would call an order to the skipper, an order which he would countermand next day. A few days after the yacht would sail towards the Acropolis as though Owen had intended to drop anchor in the Piræeus. But he was too immersed in his grief, he thought, to be able to give his attention to ruins, whether Roman or Greek. All the same, he would have to decide if he would return to the islands. He did not know them all; he had never been to Samos, famous for its wine and its women. … The wine cloyed the palate and no woman charmed him in the dance; and he sailed away wondering how he might relieve the tedium of life, until one day, after long voyaging, sufficiently recovered from his grief and himself, he leaned over the taffrail, this time lost in admiration of the rocks and summits above Syracuse, the Sicilian coasts carrying his thoughts out of the present into the past, to those valleys where Theocritus watched his "visionary flocks."
"'His visionary flocks,'" he repeated, wondering if the beautiful phrase had floated accidentally into his mind, hoping that it was his own, and then abandoning hope, for he had nearly succeeded in tracing the author of the phrase; but there was a vision in it more intense than Tennyson's. "Visionary flocks!" For while the shepherds watched Theocritus dreamed the immortal sheep and goats which tempt us for an instant to become shepherds; but Owen knew that the real flocks would seem unreal to him who knew the visionary ones, so he turned away from the coasts without a desire in his heart to trouble the shepherds in the valley with an offer of his services, and walked up and down the deck thinking how he might obtain a translation of the idyls.
"Sicily, Sicily!"
It was unendurable that his skipper should come at such a moment to ask him if he would like to land at Palermo; for why should he land in Sicily unless to meet the goatherd who in order to beguile Thyrsis to sing the song of Daphnis told him that "his song was sweeter than the music of yonder water that is poured from the high face of the rock"? It was in Sicily that rugged Polyphemus, peering over some cliffs, sought to discern Galatea in the foam; but before Owen had time to recall the myth an indenture in the coast line, revealing a field, reminded him how Proserpine, while gathering flowers on the plains of Enna with her maidens, had been raped into the shadows by the dark god. And looking on these waves, he remembered that it was over them that Jupiter in the form of a bull, a garlanded bull with crested horns, had sped, bearing Europa away for his pleasure. Venus had been washed up by these waves! Poseidon! Sirens and Tritons had disported themselves in this sea, the bluest and the beautifullest, the one sea that mattered, more important than all the oceans; the oceans might dry up to-morrow for all he cared so long as this sea remained; and with the story of Theseus and "lonely Ariadne on the wharf at Naxos" ringing in his ears he looked to the north-east, whither lay the Cyclades and Propontis. Medea, too, had been deserted—"Medea deadlier than the sea." Helen! All the stories of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" had been lived about these seas, from the coasts of Sicily to those of Asia Minor, whence Æneas had made his way to Carthage. Dido, she, too, had been deserted. All the great love stories of the world had been lived about these shores and islands; his own story! And he mused for a long time on the accident—if it were an accident—which had led him back to this sea. Or had he returned to these shores and islands merely because there was no other sea in which one could yacht? Hardly, and he remembered with pleasure that his story differed from the ancient stories only in this, that Evelyn had fled from him, not be from her. And for such a woeful reason! That she might repent her sins in a convent on the edge of Wimbledon Common, whereas Dido was deserted for—
Again his infernal skipper hanging about. This time he had come with news that the Medusa was running short of provisions. Would Sir Owen prefer that they should put in at Palermo or Tunis?
"Tunis, Tunis."
The steerman put down the helm, and the fore and aft sails went over.
Three days later the Medusa dropped her anchor in the Bay of Tunis, and his skipper was again asking Owen for orders.
"Just take her round to Alexandria and wait for me there," he answered, feeling he would not be free from England till she was gone. It was his wish to get away from civilisation for a while, to hear Arabic, to learn it if he could, to wear a bournous, to ride Arab horses, live in a tent, to disappear in the desert, yes, and to be remembered as the last lover of the Mediterranean—that would be une belle fin de vie, après tout.
Then he laughed at his dreams, but they amused him; he liked to look upon his story as one of the love stories of the world. Rome had robbed Dido of her lover and him of his mistress. So far as he could see, the better story was the last, and his thoughts turned willingly to the Virgil who would arise centuries hence to tell it. One thing, however, puzzled him. Would the subject-matter he was creating for the future poet be spoilt if he were to fall in love with an Arab maiden, some little statuette carved in yellow ivory? Or would it be enhanced? Would the future Virgil regard her as an assuagement, a balm? Owen laughed at himself and his dream. But his mood drifted into sadness; and he asked if Evelyn should be punished. If so, what punishment would the poet devise for her? In Theocritus somebody had been punished: a cruel one, who had refused to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while he stood heart-set watching the bathers in the beautiful bathing-places.
But Owen could not bring himself to wish for Evelyn's death by the falling of a statue of Our Lady or St. Joseph; such a death would be a contemptible one, and he could not wish that anything contemptible should happen to her, however cruelly she had made him suffer. No, he did not wish that any punishment should befall her; the fault was not hers. And he returned in thought to the end which he had devised for himself—a passing into the desert, leaving no trace