CATHERINE

                                HERSELF




                            _By_ JAMES HILTON




                          T. FISHER UNWIN LTD

                        LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

                       _First published in 1920_

                        (_All rights reserved_)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                 PAGE

I.      PRELUDE                           11

II.     JEUNESSE                          26

III.    THE FIRST TRANT EPISODE           41

IV.     NOCTURNE                          51

V.      DISILLUSIONMENTS                  64

VI.     CRESCENDO                         77

VII.    TRAGEDY                           91

VIII.   POST-MORTEM                      101

IX.     NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH            113

X.      ACCELERANDO                      125

XI.     THE SECOND TRANT EPISODE         141

XII.    DISCONTENT                       159

XIII.   LONELINESS                       174

XIV.    HOPE ENTERS                      179

XV.     SUCCESS                          192

XVI.    ALLEGRO CON FUOCO                202

XVII.   THE CRISIS                       236

XVIII.  DÉBÂCLE                          244

XIX.    AFTERWARDS                       253

XX.     STILL FALLING                    270

XXI.    FALLEN                           276

XXII.   MR. HOBBS                        284

XXIII.  ONCE AGAIN                       295

XXIV.   THE LAST PHASE                   302




CATHERINE HERSELF




CHAPTER I


PRELUDE

§ 1


CATHERINE thought: Day is white, Night is black, but sometimes it is
half-white and half-black.... There were five knobs on the brass rail
of the bed: one of them would come off.... The baker came to the door
every night and said: “And how is Cathie?” ...

It was cold, and blue flames flickered on top of the coals in the
fire-grate. They said: “Lappappappap....” The Man tore off his collar
from the stud--“plock”--then he screwed off his boots--“Hr-rooch--flop
... Hr-rooch--flop.” ... The mother said: “Cathie’s asleep: don’t make
such a noise.” ...

Then her mother carried her past the brown banisters up to bed....
It was nearly black. The pumping-engine at the water-works went:
“Chug-chug ... chug-chug ... chug-chug-chug....”

There were five knobs on the brass rail of the bed....




§ 2


The Man was Father.

Every morning mother called upstairs: “John: come on! Past eight”...
and father said: “Just about to.” The sun fell in a slant over the
table and climbed up the wall. Father ate porridge and milk: he went
“Ooflip-oorooflip.”

The sunlight slid off the table on to the floor. There was nothing to
do except listen to the clock. It went “tick-tock—tick-tock”--then it
went “ticky-ticky.” ... The milkman said: “Mornin’, m’m. Lavly mornin’.
Thenk you, m’m. Mornin’, m’m.” ...

The sunlight ran away....

The face of the man next door had a big bulge. Mother said it was
called a goitre. You had them in Derbyshire. The man’s name was
Jopson. All the street-children used to follow him singing “Old father
Jopson”--like this:

[Illustration]

There were other fathers besides old father Jopson. There was one whom
Catherine had never seen. He was called “Ch-artinevin,” but he was not
like old father Jopson....

Every night her mother sang:

    Now the day is over,
    Nighties drawing nigh.

and made her talk to our father, Ch-artinevin. Only Ch-artinevin never
said anything in reply.

There were two places where little girls went to. One was heaven, the
other was hell. Hell was hot, heaven was cold. Heaven was full of white
tiles and marble-slabs, like a fish-shop. But hell would be far too
hot for you even if you were feeling cold. It would be a pity to go to
hell, especially in the warm weather. Sometimes her father said: “O
Hell!” ...




§ 3


Father was an elementary school teacher at the Downlands Road Council
School. In winter and on wet nights in summer he sat indoors and put
great sprawling ticks and crosses on exercise-books. Sometimes he
frowned while he was working: Catherine used to watch him.

He was a little man and he wore cycling stockings under his trousers.
Every fine night he put on an old Norfolk tweed jacket and went out
into the garden with the two ends of the waistband dangling behind
him. He would bend down and make minute examinations of plants. He
would twine sweet-pea tendrils round their sticks. Sometimes he would
pounce upon a weed and remove it with cruel precision.... On Saturday
afternoons he took a bucket and went into the roads to collect
horse-manure. To Catherine Saturday afternoon was always signalized by
the hard scraping of the kitchen shovel on the gritty surface of the
roadway.

Mother was big and billowy. She kept her hair in papers during the
mornings and wore stays whose ribbed outline showed through the back of
her blouse. She talked more than father. At the Duke Street Methodist
Chapel she appeared in the front row of the choir, whilst father took
round the collection-plate. She was vaguely religious and vaguely
patriotic and vaguely sentimental. When she said “John!” very slowly,
father knew he had better be careful.

Catherine sat in the front pew on a Sunday morning, and wondered what
it was all about. Why had mother got her hat on? ... Why did everybody
come here once a week? What was the man in the round box talking
about? Her mother had said, “About God, Cathie.” But he didn’t say
God; he said Gahd. Sometimes Ch-artinevin was mentioned and Catherine
caught the words with enthusiasm. It was plain that Ch-artinevin was a
well-known personage.

The little boy next to her had curly hair. He was eating peppermints.
During the prayer he kept taking them out of his mouth to see if they
got smaller. Once he gave her one. It was very nice, but she cracked it
during the benediction, and it was a loud crack.

Father stood at the door shaking hands with people. He said: “Good
evening, Mrs. Lawson”--“Good evening, Ethel”--“Good evening, Miss
Picksley, shall we be seeing you at the Band of Hope on Tuesday?”

And to Catherine he said:

“Go and wait in the back pew; there’s a Kermunion.”

A Kermunion, at any rate, was interesting....




§ 4


Father, being an elementary schoolteacher, did not send Catherine to
an elementary school. She went to Albany House (principal, Miss Leary,
L.R.C.P.). Miss Leary wore her hair in a knob and said to Catherine:
“Darling, if you do that again I shall have to smack you hard.”

Catherine learnt: Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived; Gibraltar
belongs to England; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
Henry the First never smiled again; three barleycorns one inch; the
messenger rushed up to Wolfe saying, “They run, they run!”--“Who run,
who run?” cried Wolfe....

On wet winter days the fireguard was hung with steaming clothes.
The row of benches was a mere misty vista of wet noses and
pocket-handkerchiefs. Everywhere was the stench of damp mackintoshes.
Catherine sat by the window and looked through the streaming panes.
She could see Polly, who brought them cups of cocoa in the middle of
the morning, washing up the breakfast things in the kitchen. Every
now and then the water gurgled out of the slopstone into the sink and
made Jack, the black retriever dog, cautiously open one eye in his
kennel. Catherine liked Jack. He was very staid and solemn, his sole
dissipation being the crunching of snails. Miss Leary said: “Catherine,
I do declare you are looking out of that window again! How often have I
told you ...” etc., etc.

Every Friday afternoon as a special treat they had reading out of
a reading-book. It was not like “Pat sat on the mat: is that Pat’s
mat?” and the sentences about the cat and rat; it was a real book of
adventures, the adventures of a boy and his uncle at the seaside. The
avuncular relationship seemed to consist entirely in a readiness to
return prompt and plausible answers to all sorts of questions. Uncle
Tom and his nephew carried between them a complete outfit of odds and
ends, marbles, pieces of string, oranges, scissors, card-board, cubes
and prisms, even jars and glass-funnels, and it was their custom to
perform experiments with these upon all suitable occasions, wherever
they might chance to be. The observations of passers-by, including
park-keepers and bath-chairmen, were not recorded. Local byelaws seemed
never to impede them from digging up roots and defacing flower-beds.




§ 5


Day followed on day and Catherine grew. As she walked by the sides of
brick walls her eye ran along the lines of mortar tapering into the
distance. Even she noticed how she kept rising brick by brick until the
mortar-line that her eye followed was somewhere between four and five
feet high. She left off her very childish habits, such as walking on
the cracks of the pavements.... She ceased to ask absurd unanswerable
questions about trams and buses; she stopped lamenting if she failed to
secure a window-seat in the train. But she was still a child. She still
sang out after old father Jopson.

She discovered that the second line of the hymn was not “Nighties
drawing nigh,” as she had naturally supposed, but “Night is drawing
nigh.” The discovery was a disappointment.

She began to read. She read _Alice in Wonderland_ and _The
Walrus and the Carpenter_. She even began to write. At Albany House
she wrote in large copybook style: “Honesty is the best policy.” Once
also she wrote on the back of a birthday card: “Dear Auntie Ethel, Many
Happy Returns of the Day, from Your Affectionate Niece, Catherine.”
... And on the wooden fence at the end of the road she wrote in chalk:
“Freddy McKellar is a Soppy Fool.”

She began to do naughty things. She played in the game of “last
across”; she hung on to the backs of passing motor-lorries. She danced
in the streets to the tune of itinerant barrel-organs. Something may
here be said of her appearance. She had hair of a rich and fiery red,
and eyes of a fierce compound of brown and green. In the summer-time
her face was freckles all over. She was not good-looking, and few
people would have called her even pretty. But she was known everywhere
in the vicinity of Kitchener Road as “Cathie Weston, that red-haired
girl.”




§ 6


In the Co-operative Stores the shopman kept her waiting out of her
turn. He had seen her sticking “transfers” on his shop-window and he
did not like her. The Bockley and Upton Rising Friendly Co-operative
and Industrial Society was an imposing institution with patent
bacon-slicers and profuse calendar-distributing habits. Behind the
polished mahogany counter the shopman fluttered about, all sleek and
dapper, and in front stood Catherine, tired and impatient. There was
a large co-operative almanac on the wall, and this she used to peruse
diligently, supplementing therefrom the meagre knowledge of English
history given her at Albany House. The almanac introduced a sort of
miscellaneous historical calendar--for example: September 22nd. Battle
of Zutphen, 1586. September 23rd. Massacres in Paris, 1789. Then in
great staring red letters: September 24th. Opening of the Head Office
of the Bockley and Upton Rising Friendly Co-operative and Industrial
Society by Lord Fitzroy, 1903. With absolutely no sense of historical
perspective at all, Catherine was quite prepared to believe that the
last of these was the most prominent because it was also the most
important.

When Kitchener Road was first built, in the full-flood of the Soudanese
war-fever, it was for a time drowsily suburban. Then a too enterprising
religious organization built a tin-mission at one end of it. The
mission had a corrugated iron roof. Until then Kitchener Road had not
quite decided whether it would tend in the social sense to rise or to
fall. The corrugated iron roof forced a decision. Kitchener Road fell,
and fell rapidly. From drowsiness it degenerated into frowsiness.
A sleek off-licence appeared, with yellow-glazed tiles and an
ungrammatical notice board: “No beer to be drank on the premises nor
on the public highway.” Passing the tarred fence at the upper end the
pedestrian ran the whole gamut of flippancy and indecency. And on the
gate of the corner house could be seen--a final tribute to disappointed
hopes--that sultry hall-mark of respectability: “No Hawkers, No
Circulars, No Canvassers.” When the headmaster of the Downsland Road
Council School heard that an intending pupil lived in Kitchener
Road, he generally said: “I am very sorry, but we have no more room.
If I were you I should try at Cubitt Lane.” ... The headmaster of
the Downsland Road Council School did not like the headmaster of
the Cubitt Lane Council School.... And on all the tram-standards in
Bockley a handbill declared that “On July 11th, at the Upton Rising
Petty Sessions, Gabriel Handcote, 21, and Richard Moulton, 19, both of
Kitchener Road, Bockley, were fined 40s. and costs for travelling on a
tramway-car with intent to avoid payment of fare.”




§ 7


Bockley was a sprawling urban district on the edge of the metropolitan
area. Itself and Upton Rising had spread till they touched like
adjacent blobs of ink on blotting-paper. But Upton Rising was
aristocratic, plutocratic.... Its inhabitants had first-class
season-tickets, wore spats, and read _The Times_ on the 9.27 “Up.”
They became district councillors, bazaar-openers, hospital-subscribers
and such like. They wrote letters to the _Bockley and Upton Rising
Advertiser_ complaining of municipal apathy in the matter of
water-carts. They said “Bockley must have a park to keep it out of
mischief,” and lo! Bockley had one, with “keep-off-the-grass” notices
and geometrical flower-beds, and a code of byelaws half a yard long,
and a constant clientele of old-age pensioners and children flying
paper windmills....

And in the meantime Bockley became conscious of its destiny. It bore
all the unmistakable signs of a township that expects to be great some
day--insurance agencies out of all proportion to the population, a
Carnegie library, and a melancholy statue outside the Town Hall....

The origin of Bockley is simple and unconfusing.

Somewhere early on in the latter half of the nineteenth century the
Great Eastern Railway Company, seeking parliamentary sanction to extend
its suburban lines to Bockley, was compelled by law to carry workmen
to and from Bockley and the City for twopence.... It was that twopence
which made Bockley....




§ 8


In the front room of No. 24, Kitchener Road there was a Collard and
Collard piano. It had jaundiced keys and a bosom of yellow silk
interlaced with fretwork. Most of the lower notes said “Hanng-g-g,” and
the five bottom ones all said the same “hang-g-g.” ... The piano-tuner
came. He was of the “ping-ping-wrench” and the “see-what-can-be-done”
variety. He said:

“It’s bin a good interment in its time.... Pity the dampness got in it.”

Catherine watched him as he tightened the wires and prodded the notes.
At the end he played Thalberg’s “Home, Sweet Home,” with variations.

That night Mrs. Weston said: “Now that the pianer’s bin tuned you might
start havin’ lessons.... I’ll see Mr. Monkhouse about it to-morrer.”

And Catherine bought a shilling instruction book and learned: E G B D
F--Every Good Boy Deserves Favour....

Mr. Monkhouse was a versatile man. In the _Bockley Advertiser_ he
announced: “Mr. Reginald Monkhouse has still a few dates vacant during
April and May for engagements as entertainer, expert conjurer, pianist,
accompanist or children’s lecturer Write Box 77.” At Masonic dinners
Mr. Monkhouse sang “Where did you get that hat?” and other relics of
the Victorian music-hall stage. Every evening from 8 till 11 he played
the piano and conducted the orchestra at the Victoria Hall, Bockley,
vamping with his left hand and beating time with the first finger of
his right. And on Saturdays and at odd times whenever possible he
gave pianoforte tuition at the rate of sixpence a lesson.... He was
always shabbily-dressed, always good-humoured, patient and not too
conscientious. The little front parlour where he lodged in Cubitt Lane
was full of playbills and concert programmes and signed menu-cards....

He gave Catherine a piece called “White Wings,” and initiated her into
a few elementary five-finger exercises. She was not particularly apt in
picking them up, but at the end of forty-five minutes he said:

“Good-night, my dear. You’ll be a female Paderewski before long....”

Those were the days when a pianist had achieved the signal distinction
of becoming known to the man-in-the-street. Paderewski was as well
known as Krüger.




§ 9


Freddie McKellar and Catherine Weston were seated side by side in the
back bench of the Duke Street Schoolroom. The occasion was a Band of
Hope entertainment. Mr. Weston was on the platform, surrounded by weird
articles of glass and metal.

“I want you all to notice carefully,” he said. “Here I have a jar
of clean pure water. The little fellow who is gambolling about so
playfully inside it is a stickleback. He is having a fine time because
the water is so pure and fresh.... Now watch ... here I have a flask of
whisky.... I pour it into the water ... so.... I want you to watch very
carefully....”

Freddie McKellar, aged fifteen, bent his head slightly to the left in
order to see round the corner of Mrs. Mole’s hat. In doing so he felt
the soft spray-like touch of Catherine’s hair against his ear.... It
was not unpleasant.

Catherine was dreamily conscious that something tense was going to
happen.

“It doesn’t always work,” she whispered, vaguely, “some sticklebacks
like it.” ... She bent her head slightly to the right to circumvent the
obstruction of Mr. Mole’s shiny hairless head. To Freddie McKellar it
seemed that this time, instead of his ear touching her hair, her hair
had performed the more positive act of brushing against his ear. The
difference, though subtle, was not to be ignored.

“Now,” cried Mr. Weston, brandishing aloft his jar with the stickleback
inside it either dead or drunk or in some way incapacitated for further
movement, “if the effect of this foul spirit upon this tiny animal is
...”

“There’s refreshments afterwards, ain’t there?” said Freddie, _sotto
voce_.

“Yes,” she whispered, hoarsely. The tragedy of the dying stickleback,
“butchered to make a Roman holiday,” had made her unwontedly solemn.

... “Now,” proceeded Mr. Weston, “if somebody will kindly lower the
lights, I will show you on the screen some of the effects of strong
drink.... First of all, perhaps you would care to have a look at a drop
of whisky as it is seen through the lens of a microscope....”

The lights went out in successive “pops.”

Freddie McKellar’s left hand slowly closed over Catherine’s right one.

“Ugh,” said Catherine, presumably at the horrible picture on the
screen. Then the thought came to her (she had had no experience of such
matters)--“He must be flirting with me.”

Simultaneously there came to Freddie McKellar (who, for his age, had
had considerable experience of such matters) the thought: “She must be
flirting with me.”

And at the same time Gladys Stockwell nudged Bessie Millar and
whispered: “Just look at Cathie Weston and Freddie McKellar ... at
their age, too....” (Gladys was twenty-three and unbeautiful.)

In the refreshment room afterwards Catherine and Freddie sat together
on a bench munching ham-sandwiches. You were only expected to take one
ham-sandwich, but Catherine had already taken three and Freddie five.
The caretaker was stoking up the fire at the other side of the room.

“Ain’t you two goin’ ter join in the Musical Chairs?” he remarked,
contemplatively, “they’ve started ’em in the other room.”

Freddie took another ham-sandwich.

“I don’t feel extra like Musical Chairs,” he replied.

The caretaker grinned and shuffled out with the empty coke-scuttle. It
was precisely at that moment that Catherine began to dislike the scent
of Freddie’s lavishly spread hair-oil....

Catherine thought: “I don’t think I like him at all. I wonder if he
knows it was me who chalked up on the fence, ‘Freddie McKellar is a
soppy fool.’ ... ’Cos he is one, really....”

And then suddenly Freddie had an unfortunate inspiration.

He put his arm round her neck and touched her cheek. In an instant she
was up and flaring and standing before him.

“What on earth did you do that for?” she cried, passionately; “I don’t
want your smelly fingers on me!” (“Smelly fingers” was an attribute she
bestowed on everybody she disliked.)

He was astonished at her vehemence, but tried to carry it off
laughingly.

“Come back,” he called, advancing to her, “and don’t be silly ... silly
... don’t be ... silly....” He was rather nervous. His nervousness made
him desperate.

There occurred a somewhat unseemly fracas. He stood before the door and
slowly got her trapped into a corner. She aimed a tea-cup at him but
missed. Maddened by this he rushed full tilt at her. She struggled,
snatched, tore, kicked, pinched. She was stronger than he, but he got
hold of her hair, and so held her at his mercy. He just managed to
kiss her. She spat in his face. Then he let her go. She marched out
of the room, seizing another tea-cup as she went. When she was at the
door she took a careful aim and flung it at him with all her might. It
struck his head. There was that tense pause just after children are
hurt, and just before they begin to cry. Then he broke into a wail....
Most dramatically the piano in the next room stopped, and there was the
scuffle of finding chairs.... She paused at the door and tossed her
last words at him in uttermost scorn.

“Oh, you great big softie ...” she said, and passed out into the cool
night air.

She never enquired whether he were seriously hurt (he might have been);
she never stopped to think of the broken crockery on the floor or her
own red hair streaming in disarray; at that moment she would not have
cared if she had killed him.

And she never spoke to him again....

Afterwards she was doubly angry with him because he had made her lose
her temper....




§ 10


Mrs. Weston said: “Jus’ look at your hair! You’ve bin larking abeaout,
I darebebound.”

Catherine did not contradict her. “Larking about” was a punishable
misdemeanour.

“Everybody was larking about,” she put in, irrelevantly.

“You’re a disgrace,” continued Mrs. Weston, equally irrelevantly. Then
as an afterthought: “Larking about with the boys, I daresay....”

Catherine did not reply.

“Well, you’re going to have a sound thrashing, that’s all, so you may
as well know.... I’m about sick of your hooligan ways....”

Catherine went white. She was not afraid of a sound thrashing (they
were not very fearsome things when you got used to them); it was the
atmosphere of strained expectancy that was almost intolerable. She went
whiter when her mother said:

“Have your supper first.... There’s some cold rice pudding....”

She ate in silence. Her mother was rushing in and out of the scullery
preparing her father’s supper. In the middle of all this her father
entered. He was tired and hoarse after the evening’s effort. He
noticed the strained atmosphere. He said to Catherine:

“What’s the matter, Cathie?”

Mrs. Weston began to talk very fast and very harshly. Her voice was
like the sudden rending of a strip of calico.

“She’s bin behaving herself badly again, that’s what’s amiss with
her.... Larking about all this evening, she was. A regular disgrace. I
tell you, I’m not going to put up with it. She’s going to get a sound
thrashing to teach her to remember....”

Simultaneously Mrs. Weston planked down a plate of greens and
vegetables in front of her husband. He attacked them nervously.

“It’s not good enough,” he said, after a pause, with the air of being
vaguely reproachful against nobody in particular, “I tell you it’s not
good enough.... I don’t know why these things should happen. It’s not
as if she was a little girl....”

That was all he said.

The sound thrashing began soon afterwards. It was an extremely
unscientific battery of slaps, in which Catherine dodged as best she
could amongst the crowded furniture of the kitchen. Once she lurched
against the table and knocked over the vinegar-bottle.

“I wish you wouldn’t ...” began Mr. Weston, and then stopped and
continued eating.

After some moments of this gymnastic display both parties were hot and
flushed with exertion, and the finale began when Mrs. Weston opened the
door of the lobby and manœuvred Catherine out of the kitchen.

“Off you go,” she said. “Straight to bed ... str-h-aight to b-bed....”

The chase proceeded upstairs. Mrs. Weston’s stertorous breathing
and heavy footfalls were the most conspicuous sounds.... A few
seconds afterwards a loud banging of an upstairs door announced that
hostilities were over.

In her tiny back bedroom Catherine sat down on a chair for breath. She
was not physically hurt; in her “larking about” with boys and girls of
her own age she had often paused for breath like this, and at such
times there had been joy in her heart even when there had been pain in
her body. But now she was conscious only of profound indignity. Her
father’s vague protest echoed in her memory: “It’s not as if she were a
little girl....”

She undressed and got into bed. It was quite dark, and she felt
acutely miserable. Far away the pumping engine at the water-works
whispered, as it always did at night-time, “Chug-chug ... chug-chug ...
chug-chug-chug....” Ten, twelve years had passed since she had counted
the five knobs on the brass rail of the bed. She was growing up, out of
a child into a girl. She was not growing up without faults: she knew
that. The worst trait in her was temper ... she would have to conquer
that. She must learn self-control....

From below came the old familiar sound of her father taking off his
boots and dumping them under the sofa. “H-rooch-flop ... h’rooch-flop.”
... That sound was bound up with all her memories of childhood.

Ten minutes later there came a cautious tap at her door, and her father
entered in an intermediate stage of attire. He lit a candle clumsily
and shone it down upon her. She did not move. He prodded her with his
thumb in a vague, experimental way. She made no reply, though her eyes
were wide open and staring into his.

“I say, Cathie,” he began, vaguely and nervously, “you’ve bin
misbehaving, I’m told.... It’s too bad, you know.... Come now ... be a
good girl and go to sleep.”

Pause.

Then: “Kiss me.”

It was the first time for many years that he had asked for such a
thing. With no apparent reason at all the tears welled up into her
eyes, tears that she had hidden since her tenth birthday.

She was just about to raise her head to meet his when a drop of liquid
candle grease fell on her bare arm. The sharp, unexpected pain made her
a prey to a sudden gust of tempestuous emotion....

“Oh, go away,” she muttered angrily, “don’t come bothering me ... I’m
tired....” She crouched down beneath the bedclothes with her face
turned away from him.

Mr. Weston retired a little sheepishly.

“Oh, well,” he said, “if you’re going to be sulky ... I suppose....”

When he had gone she cried as she had never cried before, and all
because she had spurned his proffered reconciliation. From the other
side of the thin partition that separated the two rooms, she could hear
the sharp “plock” as her father wrenched his collar off the stud, and
the steady nasal monotone of her mother’s voice. She could not discern
any words, but from the vicious way in which her father kept stumbling
up against things she guessed that they were quarrelling....




CHAPTER II


JEUNESSE

§ 1


CATHERINE won an open scholarship to the Upton Rising High School for
Girls. She did not win it because of any particular brilliance or
erudition in her examination papers; she won it, as a matter of fact,
because Mr. McGill, one of the Governors, happened to remark to Miss
Forsdyke, the headmistress: “I hear Weston’s got his daughter in for a
scholarship.”

Miss Forsdyke said, “Weston?--Weston?--Let me see--I believe I’ve heard
the name somewhere ... Er ... who is he?”

“One of the men at the Downsland Road School.... Not a bad sort.... I
bet old Clotters’ll be mad if Weston’s girl gets anything. Clotters’
boy missed last year....”

Now Clotters was the headmaster of the Downsland Road Council School.
Mr. Weston did not like Mr. Clotters.... Mr. McGill did not like Mr.
Clotters.... And even Miss Forsdyke did not like Mr. Clotters....

Thus it happened that Catherine obtained a scholarship to the Upton
Rising High School for Girls.

In her English paper she was asked to analyse: “There is a tide in the
affairs of men....” She began:

“There”--subject; “is” predicate; “a tide” object--according to a
well-established form of procedure which sometimes enabled her to get
her analysis right without in the least understanding what she was
about.

And in her Scripture paper she was asked: What is a phylactery? She
answered: a kind of musical instrument.

Catherine was rather surprised to get a scholarship.




§ 2


Long lingering September evenings with the sun splashing over the roofs
of Upton Rising; the soft scented dusk creeping through gravelled
roads; tier upon tier of houses astride the hill, with every window
like a crimson star.... In the high road the newsboys were calling, the
trams swirled citywards like golden meteors flying through space.... In
the quiet residential roads was always the chatter of the lawn-mower,
the drowsy murmur of hedge-clipping.... In these delectable hours of
twilight Catherine passed from Upton Rising into Bockley.... Every
night she passed, with swollen satchel under her arm--Luke’s Grove,
over Makepiece Common, then along the Ridegway into the Bockley
High Street.... And from the High Street into Kitchener Road there
was a bewildering choice of routes, differing only in degrees of
frowsiness....

Men passed her by like dim shadows heralded by the glowing tips of
their cigarettes....

The policeman on point-duty in the Bockley High Street knew her.
He said, “’d evenin’, miss,” and Catherine and the other girls who
accompanied her on her way home used to giggle hysterically, for he was
tall and handsome and presumably young.

Catherine went home with Madge Saunders and Helen Trant. Madge was fat,
good-natured, but lymphatic and uninteresting. Her father was on the
council and kept a big drapery stores in the High Street. He called
his daughter “Maggers,” and was excessively jovial and contented. When
Catherine went to tea at the Saunders’, he called her “Carrots.” His
humour was exhausted in the invention of nicknames....

Helen Trant was almost the antithesis of Catherine and equally of
Madge. She was quiet, undemonstrative, but her quietness was not the
quietness of laziness. She worked hard, was moderately clever, almost
excessively conscientious, and in a quiet, unobtrusive way immensely
powerful and self-reliant. She was a scholarship girl, and her father
was in a good position in a London Insurance Office. Neither Madge nor
Helen was good-looking, but Helen had a quiet dignity that made a fair
substitute for beauty.... They were a rather distinctive trio as they
sauntered home together.

As they passed the policeman on point-duty Catherine made provocative
eyes at him. Madge rolled into heavy, undisciplined laughter. And Helen
sometimes smiled, but when she did it was the smile as of one who knew
all about policemen, their lives, wages, conditions of existence, their
baulked aspirations, confident hopes and undying ambitions.... She
looked to have the sympathy of one who knows everything without being
told anything....

Miss Forsdyke, in a spiteful mood, said:

“I wish, Helen, you would be more particular in your choice of
companions....”

Yet Catherine and Helen became close friends, and Madge was merely an
adjunct to their evening journeys home....




§ 3


Time was passing; Catherine was creeping through her teens, and every
night in the drawing-room at 24, Kitchener Road the piano strummed for
exactly one hour, and then stopped. By and by the music-lover might
have begun to detect certain tunes that were familiar to him. A few of
Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words,” Tchaikovsky’s “Valse Triste,” the
adagio part of Beethoven’s “Pathetic Sonata.” ...

Once, too, a prelude of Chopin’s, chosen for its unChopin-like
qualities....

There came a day when Catherine’s playing began to be very slightly
superior to the instrument at her disposal. Nor did the latter improve
as time passed. All the lower notes responded with a nasal twang
reminiscent of a Jew’s-harp. The upper ones were so physically inert
that when pushed down they refused to come up again without assistance,
and so unanimous as to pitch that the striking of the wrong note was no
more inharmonious than the striking of the right one....

Yet it was on this instrument that Catherine practised a certain
Fantasia in D Minor of Mozart’s that won her a first prize at the
Upton Rising Annual Eisteddfod.... The examiner was a wizened old man
with blue spectacles. From the first he annoyed Catherine. Her music
persisted in curling up.

“You should use a flat case,” he said, “not one of these roll ones.”

Then she discovered that the middle page of the music was not there.
Presumably she had left it in the waiting-room.

“You can’t go and fetch it,” he said. “I think you’re very careless....”

“Do you?” she answered impudently. “Then I’ll play from memory.”

“You ought not to play from memory ... at your age ...” he protested.

Nevertheless she did so, and played better than she had ever played at
her practices. It was partly the ecstasy of manipulating a splendid
instrument, partly a reckless desire to defy and confute this old man.

“H’m ...” he said, when she had finished. He bore her no malice for her
carelessness or impudence, he simply judged her fairly, totted up her
marks, and discovered them to be higher than the rest.... Accordingly
he adjudged her the winner. He looked neither pleased nor sorry.

Catherine decided that he was utterly soulless....




§ 4


On a certain Monday morning Catherine and Helen took a day off from
school, and went picnicking in Epping Forest. Helen’s brother George
was with them, and also a friend of the latter’s, one Bert, who took
over the financial management of the outing with marked efficiency,
but was otherwise vague and indeterminate. George was a moderately
good-looking fellow of nineteen, clever in a restricted kind of way,
and very entertaining when the mood was upon him. He worked for a City
firm of accountants, and was taking his annual fortnight’s holiday.

It was very pleasant to be strolling up the hill leading to High Beech
at ten o’clock on a fresh April morning. The party inevitably split
up into couples. Bert was walking on in front with Helen; George and
Catherine formed up the rear. There was a wonderful atmosphere of
serenity over everything: not a soul was about save themselves; the
hotels and refreshment châteaux seemed scarcely to have wakened out of
their winter’s sleep. And overhead the sky was pure blue.... Up the
steep, gritty road they trudged, and in the hearts of each of them
something seemed to be singing: “We are going to have a glorious day.”

Bert was saying to Helen: “Yes, of course they’re very nice and
comfortable and all that, I know, but they fairly eat up the petrol....
Can’t possibly run them on less than ...”

“Indeed?” said Helen, sympathetically.

And a hundred yards behind them George was saying to Catherine: “I
suppose woman is a few inches nearer to mother earth than man.... She
is more ... primal ... no, not exactly that.... I mean elemental ...
that’s the word, I think....”

“She’s got more common sense, if that’s what you mean....”

“No, I don’t mean exactly that.... Besides, is common sense such a
virtue? ... The great things of the world have been done as a rule by
people with uncommon sense.... No, I mean this: woman seems to know by
instinct what man only learns by patient study and not always then....
Isn’t that your experience?”

“I don’t think I’ve had any experience.”

“H’m! ... the others are waiting for us at the top. I suppose they want
to know what we’re going to do....”

They quickened their steps to the summit.




§ 5


They chose for lunch a quiet spot hemmed in by ferns and bushes.
Catherine’s spirits soared higher and higher as the hours flew.... The
sun was splashing over the hills as they came upon the red roofs of
Chingford. The quantity of feeble, flippant conversation that passed
amongst them was colossal. But they had had a glorious day....

“I’ll see you home,” said George, as they entered the straggling
outskirts of Bockley.

“Please don’t,” replied Catherine. “It’s quite out of your way.”

“I assure you ...” he began.

“Please ...” she reiterated. The truth was she did not wish her mother
to see her in the company of a young man.

Amidst the winedark fragrance of an April evening they passed until
they reached the corner of the road where the Trants lived. They
stopped talking here for three-quarters of an hour, and then said
good-bye. At the last minute George said:

“By the way, I’ve got to call in at a shop in the High Street to see
about something, so I may as well walk back part of the way with you.”

Catherine blushed, but the darkness shielded her.

“The shops’ll be shut by this time,” said Helen, quietly.

“Er ... not ... er ... the shop _I_ mean,” replied George.

He walked back with Catherine as far as the corner of High Street and
the Ridgeway. Their talk was rather vaguely, indefinitely sentimental.
Twice he quoted from Swinburne and once from Omar Khayyám.

As they descended the hill Catherine took off her tam-o’-shanter hat
and stuffed it in her pocket. The soft night breeze blew her hair like
a dim cloud behind her....

They shook hands in the dark interval between two brilliantly lighted
shop-windows.

“My God,” he whispered softly, “your hair!”

He brushed it lightly with his hand.

“What about it?” she said, and her voice was nearly as soft as his.

“Passionate,” he cried; “like flame ... flame ... good-night....”

He fled into the dark vista of a side-street.




§ 6


The clock on the Carnegie library said, Ten minutes past ten. Catherine
thought, Now for a big row at home....

She had been forbidden to come in later than nine o’clock.

“When _I_ was young ...” her mother had said.

And her father had argued: “I can’t see..what you need ever to be out
later than nine for.... You’ve got all the daytime, surely you don’t
need the night as well.... I can’t understand.... It’s not as if we
didn’t let you do what you like on Saturday afternoons....”

She put her hat on as she turned into Kitchener Road. She sauntered
slowly to No. 24. A minute or two won’t make much difference, she
reasoned, on top of an hour and a quarter. The crowded memories of the
day just past, coupled with anticipation of a domestic fracas when she
got home, combined to make her somewhat excited. The day had been so
full of incident that she would have enjoyed walking the cool streets
till midnight, reckoning things out and sizing them according to their
relative importance.

Then she recollected it was Monday night. Her father would be at
night-school; he did not usually arrive home till half-past ten.

The street-lamp in front of No. 24 revealed the interesting fact that
the blinds in the front parlour were drawn. There was no light behind
them, but the tiny gas-jet in the hall was burning; she could see its
beam through the fanlight. Her heart leaped within her. She felt like
a prisoner granted a reprieve.... There were visitors. That seemed
certain. Somebody had come to spend the evening, and her mother had
“put a light in the front room,” the highest mark of respect known. Now
probably they were all having supper in the kitchen. The hall-light,
too, pointed to that conclusion, for ever since Mr. Tuppinger took
the wrong hat from the hall-stand, and failed to discover his mistake
afterwards, Mrs. Weston had made it a rule that the hall should be
illuminated when visitors came Catherine knocked at the door.... This
was really lucky. With good fortune the lateness of the hour might not
be noticed: at any rate the fracas would be postponed. Also there would
be a good supper awaiting her.... Cold beetroot; perhaps even stewed
prunes and custard....

A strange woman came to the door. Catherine did not know her name, but
she recognized her as someone who lived “up the road,” and who used to
push in front of her when she was a little girl at the co-operative
stores.

“Is it Cathie?” said the strange woman.

“Yes,” replied Catherine.

“Come inside,” answered the strange woman, with peculiar solemnity.
Then she went on, like the intoning of a chant:

“Your mother is not well ... in fact ... she’s had an accident ... in
the street ... in fact ... _do_ come inside ... in fact....”

In fact, Mrs. Weston was dead.




§ 7


Mrs. Weston had been out shopping during the evening. In the crowded
part of the High Street she had been knocked down by a bicycle. She
had fallen upon her face, but had not apparently received much hurt,
for after having a cut attended to at the chemist’s, she went home
unattended. But at the very door of her house in Kitchener Road,
something went “snap” inside her head; she collapsed and fell all in
a heap on the doorstep. She was putting the key in the lock when this
happened, and the key was found in the lock when neighbours came to her
assistance. They carried her in the front room (where the Collard and
Collard piano was) and laid her down on the sofa. She uttered vague
scraps of conversation for some moments: then she died....

When Catherine went in to look at her she could not help thinking how
death had made her look ridiculous. She was lying under the window,
and the lamp in the middle of the ceiling threw her features into
heavy shadow. There was a piece of sticking-plaster over the cut on
her forehead, and her chin was bruised as well. The most prominent of
her front teeth had broken off half-way, and as, seemingly, she had
died gasping for breath, her mouth was wide open. The massive, almost
masculine jaws hung unsymmetrically: there was no beauty or calm in
her last attitude. She looked as if she had died fighting. An aperture
in the drawn Venetian blinds allowed a slit of pale light from the
street lamp outside to cross her face diagonally, making it appear
more grotesque than ever. Catherine could scarcely believe it was her
mother. She had the old workaday blouse on, because she had gone out
shopping in a mackintosh and had thought it would not show underneath.
Catherine could not help thinking how ashamed her mother would have
been at the thought of being seen in this blouse by all the neighbours,
and especially to have had the neighbours crowding in her own
drawing-room with all the cheap bamboo furniture and the faded carpet,
and the “Present from Margate” on the mantel-piece, and the certificate
on the wall certifying that John Weston, aged twelve, had achieved
merit in writing an essay on “Alcohol and its Effects on the Human
Body.” (This latter would have been removed long since, had it not
successfully covered up a hole in the wallpaper.) ... Catherine felt
sure that if her mother had known she was going to die, she would have
dressed up for the occasion. But it had come upon her unexpectedly.
There she was, with her shabby blouse and her ghastly face, and her
mackintosh and string-bag on the chair beside her. There was some tea
in the bag, and her fall had burst the paper wrapper, for the latter
was half-full, and there were tea grains about the floor....

Mr. Weston had been sent for. He came in tired after a tiresome day,
plus the usual Monday feeling of discontent. He was in a bad temper.

“Hell!” he muttered, as he bashed his shins against the piano in the
gloom. “These blinds ...” he began, and checked himself.

He seemed annoyed that she had done such a dramatic, unexpected thing.
He was annoyed that there was no supper ready for him. “You might
have got me a cup of tea ready,” he said to Catherine. Then he tried
to be conventional. “She was a good woman,” he said, as if it had just
occurred to him.

When the strange woman had departed, and Catherine and he were sitting
down in the kitchen to a frugal supper, he began the conversation again.

“By the way,” he said, “apparently you didn’t go to school to-day.
Mrs. Jopson thought you’d be staying to the evening-class, and sent a
message to the school to fetch you. Miss Forsdyke said you hadn’t been
present at all to-day.... Is that so?”

“I didn’t go to-day,” admitted Catherine.

“Where did you go?”

“We ... took a day off ... picnicking in the Forest ... it seemed such
a fine day....”

“Who’s we?”

“Helen and ... and ... me.”

“Are you in the habit of taking days off like that?”

“Oh no.... It’s the first time we’ve ever done it.”

There was a pause.

“You know,” he went on protestingly, “this sort of thing’s not good
enough, Catherine.... You ought to see that this sort of thing can’t go
on ... it’s too bad of you ... running off to play truant ... and on
the very day that ... that your mother ...”

“How on earth could I----” she began hastily, and then stopped, for she
saw that big tears were rolling down both his cheeks.

“Not good enough,” he kept muttering, vaguely reproachful.

Then later on he reopened the question.

“I suppose--er--you and Helen were the only people at the picnic?”

“No--there were two others.”

“Girls, I suppose?”

“No.”

“Not young men, I hope?”

“Yes, one of them was Helen’s brother. The other was a friend of
his....”

For a few moments he was very thoughtful. Then he continued:

“I don’t think you ought to have gone with them, Catherine ... at your
age, you know.... Besides, you’ve plenty of girl friends--I can’t
think what you want with young men and boys.... Girls should stick to
girls....”

“But surely, Father----”

“If you want friends, let them be girl friends ... surely you can find
plenty of your own sex without----”

Catherine could think of no adequate answer to this argument, so she
bade him good-night and went upstairs to bed....




§ 8


In the little back bedroom she sat down on the bed and tried to gather
her wits. She was overwhelmed by a feeling of physical weariness: that
was not surprising, for she had walked perhaps fifteen miles that day.
In the candle-light she saw her face in the mirror: she was surprised
to find herself almost ashen pale. Her red hair floated cloud-like
around her head: in the little hand-mirror there was not room to see
all of it at once. But it was still flying as if in the wind, and it
was gorgeously wild and untamed....

“My God,” George Trant had said, “your hair!” ...

... Catherine was surprised, almost shocked that she had as yet shed
no tears for her mother. It seemed such a brutally callous piece
of negligence, and Catherine was sure she was neither brutal nor
callous.... Yet tears would not come.

She undressed and got into bed....

The pumping-engine at the water-works went on at its patient
chug-chugging, and forthwith a myriad memories of childhood came back
to her.... She could feel the tears welling up into her eyes, and then
she realized that it was sentiment and not grief that was affecting
her. She would not weep for sentiment, like the heroines in the
six-penny novels that Madge Saunders read.

Ever and anon the whisper came echoing through her mind: “My God ...
your hair!” ...

From the very insistence of her thoughts she could not fall asleep
until morning was well advanced, but when she did, her sleep was calm
and dreamless....




§ 9


Of course there was a splendid funeral. It was infinitely more gorgeous
than anything that had taken place in Mrs. Weston’s lifetime. Relatives
were summoned to attend the obsequies, relatives that Catherine had
never seen and had not known existed, relatives with black ties and
rubicund faces and Cockney accents, and that deplorable foreign flavour
that comes of dwelling in another London suburb. They all gathered
together in the drab little front room amongst the bamboo furniture,
and gazed curiously at Catherine. Evidently she did not quite realize
their ideal of a bereaved daughter. They were all a trifle nervous of
the undertaker. Finally, they were all squashed into four black coaches
and driven slowly to the cemetery behind a glass hearse. In front of
the horses walked two men, each bearing what appeared to be a mace.

The day was chilly and sprinkled with April showers; the mourners in
the first coach (in which was Catherine) insisted on having all the
windows closed, until the rain-washed panes were dim with the reek of
their breaths. They carried their pocket-handkerchiefs in their hands,
and spoke in tremulous murmurs.... The cavalcade swept on, through
the dreariest and frowsiest streets in all Bockley, out on to the
murky highways where the mud splashes from passing motor-buses reached
the tops of the window-panes. Then past the Town Hall, magnificently
impeding traffic as they crossed the tram-lines at the Ridgeway
corner, on to the outer fringes of the town, where public-houses and
tin-missions indulged in melancholy stares at one another across
cat-haunted waste land. A slow progress past an avenue of cars at
the tram terminus, and at last to the gates of a pretentious but
infinitely dismal burial-ground. The latter was owned and run on
business lines by a limited liability company, and for many years it
had paid twelve per cent, on its ordinary shares. That dying was a
profitable industry could be seen from the great gates, opening far
back from the road, with their ornate metal-work representing winged
angels.

As they left the coaches a shower began. They walked about a quarter
of a mile amongst a welter of acrobatic angels, broken columns and
miscellaneous statuary; then they reached the grave. The rain plashed
dismally on the pile of brown earth by the side, and everybody stood
on the brink with a precarious footing on the sodden soil. There
was a diminutive Methodist parson with a bad cold, who coughed at
every comma in the burial-service and sneezed into the grave at the
end of each verse. All around them was the litter of gravediggers’
tools, faded flowers and wreath-skeletons. Catherine thought it by
far the most depressing business she had ever come across. Her father
scattered a handful of cold, clammy mud on top of the coffin, and
everybody (especially the bald-headed men with their hats off) seemed
eager to get back to the fetid warmth of the coaches.... So back
went the procession, down the long cemetery avenue, with nothing in
sight save untidy vistas of unsymmetrical gravestones, back into the
steaming coaches, home again through the mud and rain to Kitchener
Road. The carriages reeked with the smell of wet kid gloves and damp
mackintoshes. In the Bockley High Street they passed a crowd round a
street accident. A motor-bus had skidded into a tram-way standard,
and there were mud-splashed, white-painted ambulances in attendance.
Mr. Weston rubbed the vapour off the window with his hand. “Some poor
devil,” he muttered, and there was a whole world of humanity in his
voice. And Catherine felt that nothing in death itself was half so
terrible as the dismal fuss that people make over it.

When the carriages arrived back at No. 24, Kitchener Road, and
everybody went into the house, they found that the fire in the front
room had gone out. Half an hour was spent in trying to relight it
with damp coal and damp firewood and damp newspaper. Mr. Weston held
up the _Bockley and District Advertiser_ to make a draught. The
newspaper caught alight and fell back on to the carpet, whereupon
Mr. Weston danced a sort of dervish cake-walk to stamp it out. This
acrobatic performance exercised a stimulating effect upon the visitors,
who became conversational. In a moment of riotous abandon Mr. Weston
directed Catherine to run over to the co-operative stores and purchase
two small tins of lobster and one large tin of pineapple chunks....

About ten minutes to midnight, when all the mourners had departed, and
Catherine was pulling down the blinds in the back bedroom, her father
came up and sat down on the end of the bed Unlacing his boots.

“You know, Cathie,” he began, nervously, as if there were something
he wished to get off his mind, “this business is so ... so ... so
sudden.... That’s what’s the matter with it. It don’t give a chap time
to gather his wits.... Last week _she_ was here. Fussing about and
rushing round and seemingly in the best of health. And this week--dead
an’ buried.... Bit of a shock, isn’t it?”

She did not answer. He continued in a spurt:

“You know there’s a sort of way in which you miss anybody you’ve been
used to seeing about the place for years an’ years. Without any ...
er ... what people call love, you know, or anything of that sort....
Well, I miss your mother in that way. Quite apart from any other way,
I mean.... If she was here now she’d nag at me for not taking my dirty
boots off downstairs. It’s funny, but I shall miss all that nagging.
I got used to it. I didn’t particularly like it, but things’ll seem
pretty dull for a time without it....”

Pause.

“For twenty years I’ve chucked my dirty boots under the sofa
downstairs, and wouldn’t have dreamt of bringing them up here.... And
now the first night she’s laid to rest I come up here with ’em on
without thinkin’ about it....”

He kept on making vague remarks.

“Life’s passing, Cathie ... one thing an’ then another.... Time waits
for no man--or woman.... We’re like those clocks at the railway
stations.... We seem not to be moving and then we fall forward with a
jerk at the end of the minute.... It’s easy to notice the jerks ... but
time goes steadily on whether we notice it or not....”

Then he changed the subject.

“It’s lucky for you it wasn’t an ordinary night last Monday, or you’d
have got in a fine row, I can tell you. Playing truant and going out
with young fellers.... A girl of your age ought not to bother her head
with fellers.... I never knew your mother till she was twenty-two....
This sort of free-and-easy-carrying-on won’t do, Catherine. For one
thing it’s not respectable. And for another thing it’s not right....
Find some girl friends to go out with, and leave the fellers alone....”

“Fellers,” he called them. The word jarred on her.




CHAPTER III


THE FIRST TRANT EPISODE

§ 1


JUNE sunlight was scorching the tarred asphalt of the Ridgeway, and
Catherine and Helen were sauntering homewards beneath the heavy trees.
Their conversation savoured of “shop.”

“Two hours the last map took me,” said Catherine, indignantly, “and
we’ve got another in less than a fortnight.... Rivers and mountains as
well.... And it isn’t as if North America was easy, either ... there’s
all those lakes....”

“I shan’t put in those islands at the top, anyway,” observed Helen.

“I shall leave mine till to-morrow morning,” continued Catherine. “That
is, if I do it at all.... And I shall do it on typewriting paper so I
can trace it.”

“She won’t take it if you do.”

“She’ll have to....”

At the corner of the Post Office the conversation took a personal turn.

“We’re having a social at the Baptist Church next Saturday. Will
you come?” asked Helen (Helen attended a rather prosperous Baptist
establishment in Upton Rising).

Catherine walked on for some moments before answering. She seemed to be
weighing things up.

“I might,” she answered. Then, as an after-thought, she added: “I
suppose you’ll all be there?”

“Oh yes. There’ll be me and father and mother and Millie, perhaps the
Lester girls as well....”

“George?” Catherine’s voice rather overdid itself in the effort to
appear casual. Helen looked at her keenly.

“Possibly,” she replied, in a voice that might have meant anything.
There came a rather curious pause. They had reached the corner of the
High Street before Helen spoke again.

“So _that’s_ it, is it?” she remarked, as they crossed the tramway
junction.

“That’s _what_?” said Catherine gruffly.

“That’s what’s been making you so ... so different--lately.... I’d been
wondering what it was. I never guessed it was George.”

“How did you find out?”

“I didn’t find out. You just told me.”

Catherine turned down Hanson Street, the road immediately opposite the
Ridgeway.

“Let’s go down here,” she suggested. “It’s quieter. I can see you’ve a
lot to say to me.”

Helen took her arm.

“No, I haven’t.... I don’t know that I can say anything, really....
Only I think you’re silly.”

“Why?” The word rang out like a pistol-shot.

The reply did not come immediately. When it did it sounded limp and
uncertain.

“Because ... because you’ll be disappointed in him.”

“What’s the matter with him, then?”

“Nothing much. He’s all right ... only ... he’ll disappoint you, one
way or another. He’s not as clever as he seems. Besides----”

“Yes?”

“He doesn’t like you.”

“He _doesn’t_? Has he told you so?”

“Not in so many words. But I know. He may like you to flirt with, but
he doesn’t like _you_. My advice is, if you’re getting serious,
give up the flirting. With him, at any rate.... After all, you can
always find plenty of chaps to flirt about with....”

(Her father had said “fellers.” She said “chaps”!)

“But I don’t want them, maybe.”

“Well, go without them, then.” (They were at the corner of Kitchener
Road.) ... “I never thought much of flirting about as a pastime.”

It was a curiously elliptical conversation throughout, and at the gate
of No. 24 they both seemed eager not to prolong it by standing. They
said good-bye immediately, and both were conscious of electricity in
the atmosphere.

That evening Catherine found herself unable to concentrate on homework.
Mr. Weston was out at night-school, and she was thus left alone in the
house. The nine o’clock rule was now virtually inoperative, since her
father did not return till half-past ten on three nights out of the
week. At about ten past nine Catherine put aside her books and went out
for a walk. She had finished all her work excepting the map.

Cubitt Lane at this time on a glorious June evening was full of
courting couples. They lurched along in a peculiarly graceless fashion,
each leaning against the other.

“I wouldn’t do _that_,” thought Catherine, virtuously. “That
_is_ silly, if you like.”

At the bridge over the railway she heard a brisk “good evening”
addressed to herself. She turned and saw it was George Trant....

“Where’re you off to?” he asked good-humouredly.

“Taking a walk.”

“So’m I.... Let’s go up the road....”

“All right.” ... They climbed the hill past the King’s Arms, and
entered the Forest.




§ 2


The first leaves of autumn were beginning to fall when Catherine
returned to Bockley after a fortnight at Hastings. Day after day of
glorious September weather had covered her cheeks and arms and hands
with freckles: her hair, too, was fluffed and shining with continual
sea-bathing: her general appearance was rather wild and undomesticated
for such a place as Bockley. She returned on Saturday night, and Sunday
found her waiting outside the Baptist Church at Upton Rising. Evening
service was over at eight o’clock, and she judged that Helen would be
there.

Helen greeted her at the church door.

“Only you?” said Catherine.

Helen nodded. “The others went for a walk.... It’s a fine night--let’s
take a tram to the Forest.”

The trams of the London County Council ran along the end of the road.
They boarded one; it was full, and they had to stand on the top.

“You look well,” remarked Helen.

“Oh, I’m all right,” replied Catherine, and the conversation languished.

What ensued after that would always in Catherine’s mind be inextricably
bound up with the sway and purr of trams along the high road.

“George has gone away,” remarked Helen, à propos of nothing.

“Oh?”

“His firm’s given him a job in Manchester. A good opening, it seems....
I got a letter from him yesterday. He enclosed a note for you: I
suppose he didn’t know your address.... I believe I’ve got it on me....”

She fished in her hand-bag and extracted an envelope, from which she
took a folded half-sheet of paper and handed the latter to Catherine.

It was rapidly getting dusk, but the lights in the tram were not yet
lit. On every alternate tramway standard hung an arc lamp, and these
were now fizzing and spluttering into pale brilliance. Catherine read
the note (it was roughly written in copying pencil) in quick spasms as
the car swirled along.

 MY DEAR CATHIE,

 As you will perceive, I have got shifted to Manchester, where I shall
 no longer have the pleasure of your delightful society, which, as you
 will not doubt, is a great loss to me personally. However, I am likely
 to enjoy my stay here: there are some splendid girls working in the
 same office with me, though none of them has your own Inimitable red
 hair. If there is one thing I regret it is that the before-mentioned
 red hair has occasionally led me to say things I did not mean and
 to do things I did not mean to do. I am sure that you, with your
 wonderful capacity for understanding, will grasp what I am trying to
 sketch out. We have had some interesting discussions together during
 the last few months, and for these at least (not to mention the
 spiritual inspiration given me by the passionate flame of your hair) I
 am deeply grateful.

 I hope you will always believe me to be what I am, viz., your sincere
 admirer,

                                                 GEORGE TRANT.

 P.S.--My lodgings are not permanent, so there would be little point in
 enclosing my address.

Catherine was slow to grasp the full meaning of the note. As it dawned
upon her her lips tightened, and she gripped fiercely the rail against
which she was leaning. The tram lurched to a standstill, and there was
the usual scramble to get down the stairs. “High Wood,” the conductor
called out.

“Come on,” said Helen, and they descended.

In the Forest glades the night air was cool and sweet. For some
distance they walked on in silence. Catherine was the first to speak.
They had reached a clearing, and under the open sky the daylight still
lingered.

“I daresay you’d like to read it,” said Catherine. She held out the
note at arm’s length.

Helen gave a queer ejaculatory laugh.

“I’ve already done so,” she said.

“What?”

“Oh, I know it’s not quite the thing to read other people’s letters....
But I wanted to know what ... what he would say to you, and I thought
perhaps you wouldn’t show me.”

Catherine crumpled up the note and put it in her pocket.

“Well, you know, anyway,” she said gloomily.

They passed again into the cool Forest glades.

“I was right,” said Helen, quietly. “I knew he’d write you something
like that. He’s good at that kind of letter-writing ... sort of cheap
cleverness he excels at I’d half a mind not to let you see it.”

There came a long pause. They had reached the high road to Chingford
before it was broken.

Catherine suddenly took the crumpled letter from her pocket, and began
tearing it up into minute fragments.

“See,” she cried passionately, “you can tell him this is what I did
with his letter I You can tell him there’s better fellows in the world
than he is, and Cathie Weston isn’t going to break her heart over
_him_! ... Tell him I’m not a soppy little schoolgirl.”

She flung the pieces on the ground, and began stamping on them.

“You’re being silly,” said Helen, quietly.

“And tell him,” went on Catherine, “that if he thinks he’s under an
obligation to me, he’s made a mistake. I’m grateful to him--for letting
me see what he really is.”

Her words rattled like the passage of a lorry over granite setts.

“Come on,” said Helen, “we’ll get to Chingford, and take the train
back.”

“You’ll tell him?”

“I don’t promise. I think you’d better forget all about him ... after
all, you can’t do anything....”

“I don’t want to! I merely want him to know that I don’t mind.”

“Well, that’s all right, then. He’ll know that if he hears nothing from
you.”

“He won’t. He’ll think he’s left a broken-hearted girl to cry over him.”

“I don’t think he will.”

“... because I don’t believe in being broken-hearted. I don’t think
it’s possible to die of a broken heart. I’m certain I shan’t, anyway. I
won’t let any man mess about with _my_ life. It’ll take a pretty
big misfortune to make life not worth living to me. If he’s tired of me
I’m just as tired of him. Tell him that!”

“This way ...” said Helen, guiding her into the Station Road. “We’ll
just be able to catch the 9.45....”




§ 3


Helen left the train at Upton Rising, but Catherine went on to Bockley.
The Town Hall struck the hour of ten as she was walking up the station
approach. At this time the crowds along the High Street were beginning
to disperse; the trams and buses were full of returning excursionists.
Neglectful of the time and with no very definite aim in view, Catherine
turned into the Ridgeway. It was directly opposite to the quickest way
home, but its shady avenues and flower-scented front gardens suited
her mood better than the stark frowsiness of Hanson Street. Her mind
was in flux. She did not know whether what had happened was going to
be an important stage in her life or not. She did not know how much of
her feeling was disappointment, and how much was mere wounded dignity.
She could not estimate the depth of the feeling she had had for George
Trant. It seemed inconceivable that she had ever been in love with
him....

She started to administer to herself wholesome correctives. “It’s no
good,” she told herself brutally, “your imagining yourself the heroine
of a tragedy, suffering more poignantly than ninety-nine people out of
every hundred, because it’s not the truth. What you are feeling now is
felt sometime or other by the majority of all people: there’s nothing
a bit singular or exceptional in your case. It’s a mistake to pride
yourself on suffering more exquisitely than other people.”

Then she poured cold logic over herself.

“He’s only one man among millions, and in no sense is he markedly
superior to the average. A certain spurious cleverness, a talent for
mockery, a deft finesse in expressing cruel things in soft words ...
absurd that he should become so much to you or to any girl ... there’s
nothing admirable in him, therefore you are lucky to get rid of him.”

It sounded convincing enough.

She walked on, scarce heeding whither she was going, and all the time
her mood alternated between stormy resentment and cold self-reproach.
There were moments too of grey hopelessness, and it was only her
constantly recurring indignation that swept her out of these. Every
inch of the roads she traversed was associated with him: every gate
and tree seemed to call out in mocking melancholy--“This was where ...
this was where....” Not a street corner but was inextricably bound
up in her mind with some remark of his and the exact phase of their
relationship when he had uttered it....

Under heavy trees that split the moonlight into a thousand fragments
she suddenly heard the rich hum of a grand piano. She stopped. She
stood in the shadow of the hedge and listened in rapture. The house
was a large one, with a corner bay-window wide open, and it was from
that room evidently that the music was proceeding. It was some rapid
piece full of rippling streams of notes with very few chords, octaves
in the base clef that thundered like the oncoming tide, swirling
waves of treble triplets that were light as air, yet beneath all the
laughter and freedom, a sense of dim, unuttered passion, half hopeful,
half melancholy. Long afterwards she knew it was Chopin’s Black Note
Study in G flat. But then it had no name to her. It might have been
the latest ragtime craze for all she knew: all she cared was that
it expressed all the feelings in her own heart that she had thought
inexpressible, things that she had often and in vain tried to wring out
of the Collard and Collard at home. At that moment it is probable that
she would have given everything she had in the world for that piano.
It stood to her as the one way to salvation. She would have bartered
her soul for it. As it was, she stood there in the spattered moonlight
and cried for it. At any rate, she cried.... The piece finished up in
a tremendous cascade of double octaves, and she waited nearly half an
hour after that, hoping the playing might begin again. Then she walked
back to Kitchener Road almost in a state of trance. The Bockley High
Street was very white and deserted, and far into the dim distance
stretched the tram-rails, blue and infinite. It was long past eleven.
But Catherine was dreaming--dreaming of one thing only (though that
one thing was strangely complicated by other things)--dreaming of a
grand piano, dreaming of the ecstasy of playing it as she had heard
it played that night. The vision of her ambition came to her as she
turned into Kitchener Road. She would become a great pianoforte player.
Already discerning critics--adjudicators at musical festivals and such
like--had prophesied a career for her if she would work hard. Hitherto
it had not seemed worth while to work hard. Now it became suddenly
and tremendously worth all the soul and energy she could give to it.
Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could ever matter. Whatever stuff
her soul was made of, music was part of it, and music would answer
everything her soul asked.

At home her father was waiting up, vaguely remonstrative as usual.

“Worse and worse it gets, Cathie ...” he began ... “the first night
you’re home after your holiday you land in at twenty to twelve! ...
it’s not good enough ... you’ve had all the morning and afternoon. I
can’t think what makes you want to go walking the streets this time....”

“I’m not having any supper,” she said brusquely. “Good-night....”

“But----”

“Oh, don’t worry ... I’ve had some,” she lied. As she fled upstairs
she heard him murmuring something. A great change had come over him
since his wife died. He had been getting ever slower and feebler. It
was becoming more and more evident that it had been only his wife’s
incessant nagging that had spurred him to the minimum of activity.
Now he pottered aimlessly about the garden. His attendances at the
Duke Street Chapel became more and more infrequent, and finally ceased
altogether. People said (often facetiously) that he was pining away
of grief at his wife’s death. It is doubtful if this were a complete
diagnosis....

Up in the little back bedroom Catherine did a thing which she had not
done for a long time. She prayed. Ch-artinevin was no longer a choleric
old gentleman with white side-whiskers and a devouring passion for
adulatory worship. He had long ago ceased to be that, and he had not
begun to be anything else. Catherine, though she never altogether
recognized her position, had no very definite belief in either Him
or the rest of the accepted doctrines of Christianity. She prayed,
not out of religious fervour, but from a variety of complex motives,
one of which was certainly a desire to straighten out her own ideas
by reducing them to more or less coherent form. Among other things,
she prayed for a grand piano. “Lord, give me a grand piano,” was her
unorthodox variant upon the more usual bedtime supplications. “Lord,
_do_ give me a grand piano,” she pleaded. It is curious, but she
did not in the least expect the Lord to take any notice. She was even
doubtful whether the Lord were listening. Yet she kept on repeating the
demand for a grand piano. Also she decided how she would catalogue the
whole George Trant episode. It was nothing. It was to be regarded as
nothing. Tears broke in upon her decision to regard it as nothing. The
grand piano and all that it meant to her kept looming on the horizon.
Then she felt a little ashamed of crying. “I never used to cry,” she
thought. “Not even after a sound thrashing.” She tried to calm herself.
“I’m getting soppy,” she reflected. “Crying like a little kid. All
because of that piano. That’s what done it....” It was long past
midnight when she fell into troubled sleep.




CHAPTER IV


NOCTURNE

§ 1


ON a certain bitterly cold night in November, Catherine stood on the
doorstep of No. 24, Kitchener Road, with her overcoat and hat in her
hands. Despite the chilliness of the atmosphere her cheeks were hot
and flushed, and her sensations took no notice of the blustering wind
that raged along the road. For several moments she stood still on the
doorstep, with heaving breast and head flung back defiantly. Then,
still carrying her hat and overcoat, she went out into the street,
omitted to shut the gate behind her, and walked at a terrific pace in
the direction of the Bockley High Street.

It was eleven p.m. Her steps rang loudly along the deserted pavements;
occasionally she lurched forward as if desiring to increase her pace,
and this disturbed the rhythmic beat of her steps. She passed nobody,
except at the junction of Hanson Street, where a couple of belated
revellers slunk past with the furtive attitude of those who know they
ought to have been home long since. They were too intent upon their
destination to notice her. Only where there were large front gardens
did her passing excite attention, and here congregations of cats,
gathered for midnight revelry, dispersed with mournful sound as her
footsteps approached.

At the corner of the High Street she stopped. It seemed to occur to
her for the first time that to carry one’s hat and overcoat upon such
a night was in some degree unusual. With careful deliberation she put
them on. Then she laughed softly, and her laugh was a strange mingling
of rapture and defiance. That which she had thought impossible had come
to pass. After years of undeviating placidity fate had at last done
something dramatic with her.

She had been turned out of the house at No. 24, Kitchener Road.

Her father had done what he had never before been known to do: he had
lost his temper, and lost it thoroughly.

He had said: “My God, Cathie, I won’t stand that! ... Out you go!” He
had pushed her into the lobby, and while she was reaching for her hat
and coat he had struck her on the face with the back of his hand.

“Out you go!” he repeated, and Catherine saw that his temper had not
yet reached its height. “I’m done with you! ... Are you going?” He
actually picked up an umbrella and began brandishing it with his hand
grasping the ferrule.

Catherine had opened the front door in vague terror of what he was
going to do. The door was banged after her with a vicious kick from
within. Then her cheek where he had struck her began to hurt....




§ 2


The cause of the altercation had been Catherine’s determination to
accept a situation which he did not wish her to accept. She had
answered the advertisement, interviewed her prospective employer, and
received word that she had been appointed before even mentioning the
matter to him. Then at teatime on a Friday afternoon she casually
remarked:

“By the way, I’ve decided to get some work.”

He looked up at her as if the word were unfamiliar to him. “Work?” he
said, astounded. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve applied for a job and been offered it.”

He seemed to have difficulty in comprehending what she said.

“A job? What job?”

“They want a pianist at a cinema. Good salary. Only work in the
evenings....”

“But, my dear girl----”

“Well?”

“Don’t cut me short like that.... I was about to say....”

“Oh, I know what you’re about to say. You’re hopelessly against it,
aren’t you?”

“Well, if I am, you----”

“Why are you?”

“I do wish you’d give me time to speak, Catherine. You spring this
on me so suddenly.... I had no idea you were ever thinking of such
a thing, to begin with. Even now it seems incredible to me. I can’t
understand it.”

“Can’t understand what?”

“Why you want to do it ... it’s ... it’s unnecessary. Haven’t you
enough money?”

“Oh, it’s not a question of money. I want to have some work to do,
something to get interested in.”

“But you have the work of the house to carry on with. Surely that’s
enough.”

“Oh, _that’s_ enough. In fact, that’s a great deal too much. I’m
sick and tired of housework. Some girls may like it, but I don’t. I’d
sooner pay some girl who likes it to do it for me. Besides, I want to
be independent.”

He gave a start of surprise. “What’s that you said?” he asked,
incredulously.

“I said, independent.”

There was a tense pause.

“Somebody’s been putting some silly modern ideas into your head. All
that bosh about independence, I mean. A girl’s place is in the home,
when she’s got one. Until you make a home of your own your place is
here.”

“I suppose you think I ought to get married.”

“Married? ... Heavens, no! ... You’re only nineteen! Why, I never even
_met_ your mother until I was twenty-four! Don’t you worry your
head about marriage. Let it alone until the right feller comes along. I
expect you’ve been reading too many trashy novels lately, that’s what
it is.”

An angry light leapt into her eyes.

“Well, if you think I’m going to scrub floors and wash dishes until the
right feller comes along, as you call it, you’re jolly well mistaken.
I wouldn’t do it even if I was sure the right feller _would_ come
along. I’m not made that way. I want a bit of liberty. I want to live.”

“My dear Catherine, you have everything you need. I can’t see what
you’re making all this fuss about. Really I can’t.... You’re a good
deal better off than some girls, I can tell you. What about poor Nellie
Selborne and----”

“Oh, what on _earth_ have they got to do with it?”

“Well, if you won’t listen to me, I suppose ...” He waved his hand
deprecatingly. “Suppose we stop arguing. Let’s hold the matter over.
I’m certain that with a few days’ thought you’ll----”

“But I can’t hold the matter over.”

“Why not?”

“Because the situation’s been offered me. I’ve either got to accept it
or reject it on the spot.”

“Well, Catherine, I’m sorry to go against you, but it will have to
be so, in this case. Understand, I mean it. I mean to have my own
way in this matter. I won’t have you strumming away every night in a
third-rate picture house. I’m going to put my foot down firmly in this
matter. You must reject the offer.”

He made a gallant but not entirely successful attempt to appear
dignified by resuming the perusal of his newspaper. Catherine bit her
lip and went a little pale.

“That’s a pity,” she said quietly.

“Why is it a pity?”

“Because I’ve decided to accept it.” Her lips were tight, and there was
the suggestion of restrained emotion in her voice.

Something happened to his eyes. They opened terrifically wide and gazed
at her expressionlessly for several seconds.

“What’s that?” he said.

His eyes unnerved her somewhat. But she steeled herself to repeat her
ultimatum.

“Because--I’ve--decided to--to accept.”

Pause. “That’s all,” she added, irrelevantly, as if by way of clinching
the matter.

Another pause. The clock tactfully struck in with the announcement of
six o’clock. That seemed to break the spell. He rose and made for his
hat.

“H’m,” he ejaculated, sharply. “I see. That’s what it amounts to, is
it.... Well, you’ll have time to think it over. I’m off to school now.”

He took a sheaf of night-school exercises from his desk and stuffed
them in his pocket. Not another word came from him. Catherine was
almost hypnotized by his quick, startling movements, so unlike his
usual apathy. He strode firmly down the lobby and shut the door after
him more noisily than usual. She could hear his footsteps along the
street, and he was walking at a pace that was for him unprecedentedly
rapid. When he was quite out of hearing she sank down into the chair
he had just vacated. The tension of the argument had given her a sense
of physical exhaustion. Yet spiritually she was thrilled by a strange
feeling of exhilaration: it seemed to her that after an interval of
drudgery she was once again being drawn into the vortex of momentous
happenings. She was absolutely certain of one thing: she would not give
way. If he chose to make her disobedience a “test-case” of the father’s
right to inflict his will upon the daughter she would await whatever
steps he took with calmness and determination. But she would never give
way. She was nineteen, and to her nineteen seemed old age. Things he
had said in the course of the argument had annoyed her inexpressibly.
They were little things, mostly. Bringing in the case of Nellie
Selborne, for instance, was silly and entirely irrelevant. Nellie had
paralysis down one side, and existed apparently for the purpose of
proving to all other girls how lucky they were. Then again, Catherine
disliked intensely his massive declaration that “a girl’s place is in
the home.” He had talked about “waiting for the right feller to come
along,” and this passive method of getting through life roused all
the scorn and contempt in her nature. Also he had talked about her
“strumming in a third-rate picture house.” It was typical of him to
assume that it was third-rate before he had heard even the name of it.
He had been ridiculously unfair....

She went over to the writing-desk where he marked his school exercise
books. Something within her said: You are angry and excited now, but
you will soon cool down and then probably you will give in to him....
To this she replied passionately: I _won’t_ give in to him....
But, continued the part of her which always told the truth, you
_will_ give in to him if you wait till your temper has cooled
down.... Better write now accepting the situation, and post it before
he comes back from night-school. Then the matter will be really
settled. Then you can say to him when he comes in: “It’s no use arguing
about it any more. I’ve written to accept the job. The thing’s done now
and can’t be undone.”

She wrote the letter as quickly as she could, for the feeling
of supreme depression, the feeling that she was doing something
regrettable and irretrievably silly, was becoming heavier upon her
every second. She was just addressing the envelope after fastening it
when she heard the key fumbling at the front door. For the moment a
kind of panic fear seized her. He was coming back. He must have turned
back before reaching the school. His footsteps down the lobby sounded
brutal and unnecessarily noisy. She swung round in her chair and sat
awaiting his entrance with the penholder stuck between her teeth. The
half-addressed envelope lay on the desk invisible behind her back....
He flung down his hat and coat on the table.

The moment was so tense that Catherine spoke merely to interrupt the
horrible silence of it.

“Was there no school to-night?” she asked, with an effort to appear
perfectly casual.

“I’m not going,” he snapped curtly, and took down the red-ink bottle
from the corner of the mantelpiece. That meant he was going to spend
the evening marking exercise books.

She was thoroughly frightened. Her mother’s tempers and tirades had
never frightened her, because she was used to them and knew them
intimately, as a doctor knows the illness of a familiar patient. But
her father was normally so quiet and placid and mild-mannered: she had
never seen him in a temper, although when she was a little girl, boys
who were in his class at school had told her that on rare occasions he
got “ratty.” But she had never known him in such a condition. In this
phase he was a complete stranger to her. And she was apprehensive, as
she would have been if a stranger had entered the house when she was
alone.

He came to the desk to get his exercise books. She thought at first he
was going to strike her. But he merely leaned over her and lifted the
lid. As he did so he must have seen the half-addressed envelope lying
on the top. But he did not say a word. His silence was unnerving.

Always he used the desk for marking exercise books. But this time he
arranged the pile of books and the pen and ink on the dining-table.

“You can use the desk,” he said curiously, “if you’re wanting to.”
His politeness, his unusual solicitude for her comfort, was horrible!
Normally, if she had been at his desk, he would have said: “Now look
here, Cathie, it’s too bad of you to want to use my desk when I want
it. After all, it’s _my_ desk. You’ve got all the day to use it
when I’m out. Can’t you use the table?”

She would have understood a speech like that. But for him to say so
thoughtfully, so obsequiously, “You can use the desk if you’re wanting
to,” was charged with all the nameless horror of the unprecedented.

It was half-past six. The clock struck. He was assiduously and
seemingly quite normally putting red-ink ticks and crosses on algebra
sums. Yet she knew that the atmosphere was very far from being normal.
She took a book from the shelf and sat down in the chair by the fire,
but it was difficult to read. She could hear the ticking of the clock
and the steady scratching of his pen, and flipping of pages. He went
on for hours. When he had finished one pile of books he went to his
desk and fetched out another. Then again, if he had not done so the
first time, he must have seen the envelope with its incomplete address.
But he went on with his work at the table. Supper time came, but he
made no sign of clearing away his books. And then his surliness and
sulkiness, whichever it was, ceased to frighten her, but began to annoy
her acutely.... The last post went at eleven-thirty. Come what might
she would post that letter. At five minutes past eleven she went over
to the desk with the intention of finishing the address. She had got
as far as the “p” in “Upton” when she saw that he was regarding her
intently. As soon as he saw that she had noticed his glance he put down
his pen and swung back on his chair.

“Now then, Cathie,” he began brusquely, “this matter’s got to be
settled.... You understand. No nonsense. What’re you going to do?”

She bit the end of the penholder.

“I’m going to accept the thing,” she said firmly, though she had
difficulty in restraining her apprehension and excitement.

“You’re not!” he cried, advancing menacingly. “Understand, I forbid
it! I’m going to be firm in this business. You’re not to accept that
situation. D’you hear?”

He picked up the envelope she had been engaged upon. She knew that he
had seen it before. But he pretended not to have done. She despised him
for that little perfidy.

“What’s this?” he cried, snatching it up vehemently. Then he pretended
to realize. “You’ve been writing to accept it?”

“Yes.”

For a moment she thought he was going to do her physical violence. Then
he tore the envelope across and flung the two pieces into the fire.

“Oh, _that_ doesn’t matter,” she said contemptuously, “that’s
merely childish. I can easily write another.” (In her anger she did not
remember an occasion when she had been smitten with the same kind of
childishness).

It was then that he cried: “My God, Cathie, I won’t stand that! ... Out
you go!”




§ 3


At the corner of the Bockley High Street her only feeling was one of
nervous jubilation. The clock chimed the quarter. She remembered with a
little thrill of ecstasy how on all other occasions at night when she
had heard the clock chime a quarter past eleven she had been anxiously
wondering what sort of a row there would be when she reached home. Now
she was free. She was not returning home. She was leaving. She was free
to go where she liked and do what she liked....

If it were summer time, she thought, I would walk to the Forest and
sleep out under the stars....

But it was November.... She decided to travel up to the City and spend
the night in one of the waiting-rooms at the big terminals. The next
day she would look out for lodgings.... Money was a difficulty. In her
pocket was a purse containing the residue of the week’s house-keeping
money. It amounted to five and sevenpence half-penny. There were also a
couple of penny stamps....

The ideal time for this enterprise would have been a Monday evening in
June or July.

Still, she would have to make the best of it. With light step she
passed along the wide expanse of the High Street in the direction of
Bockley Station. As she went on little groups of returning revellers
passed her by. Most of them had just come in by train from the City
after an evening at the theatre. Some of them stared at her curiously
as she hurried by. So did the policeman at the corner of the Station
Road.

Outside the booking-office she met, of all people in the world, Helen
Trant.... Since the episode between herself and George, Catherine had
not seen much of Helen.

Catherine nodded casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the
world for her to be catching the 11.37 p.m. to the City.

“Where’re you off to?” said Helen.

“City,” replied Catherine, curtly.

“Whatever for at this time of night?”

“Oh ... business ... that’s all. ... Excuse me, I shall miss my
train....”

“No, you won’t. You’ve eleven minutes to wait. Come here.”

There was a queer undefinable something in Helen’s voice that commanded
and usually obtained implicit obedience. Catherine came.

“Well? ... What do you want?”

Helen put her arm in Catherine’s.

“It’s not my business,” she said, “but I should like you to tell me
what’s been happening to you.”

“Happening? What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean ... Cathie!”

“Yes?”

“Something’s happened. I can see it in your eyes. Tell me.”

Catherine clicked her heels nonchalantly.

“Well, if you’re so keen, I don’t suppose there’s much harm in letting
you know. I’ve run away from home.... That’s all....”

“Run away?”

“Yes, run away. Oh, for God’s sake, don’t look so surprised. I suppose
it isn’t respectable to run away, is it?”

“Don’t be silly.... What were you going to the City for?”

“To get a shake-down in a railway waiting-room.”

“I see.... Well, you needn’t do that. You can come home with me for
to-night.”

“Really, Helen, I can’t. It’s awfully good of you, but----”

“You _must_.”

“But your mother----”

“Mother and father are away for the week-end.”

“Really, I’d much rather not.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’ve got to. You can easily sleep with me.
We’ll talk the whole question over to-night before going to sleep. You
can’t do a big thing like this all on your own.”

“That’s just what I can. I’m going to, anyway....”

“Well, you’re coming home with me to-night, anyway....”

“If you insist----”

“I do.”

A man came striding up the stairs three at a time from the platform. It
was George Trant.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “The luggage-office was shut, and I had to
waken somebody up....” Then he saw Catherine. “... Er ... I say ... I
didn’t see you, Miss Weston! Or shall I call you Catherine, as I used?
And how are you? I haven’t heard of you for ages.”

He held out his hand, but Catherine made no movement.

“I’m quite well,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I can’t stop here
talking; I’ve a train to catch. Good-night!”

“Cathie!” cried Helen, but Catherine was too far down the steps to be
recalled. Helen followed her on to the platform and overtook her near
to the further end.

“You’re coming back, Cathie. Don’t be silly.... You must ...”

Catherine held herself passionately erect. The signal lights winked
from red to green.

“It’s no good your trying to persuade me, Helen.... I’m not coming. I
wouldn’t enter the same house with that man.... No, no, no, no, I’m not
coming.”

The train came in to the platform.

“Cathie!”

“No, no! ... I’m not coming, I tell you....” She opened the door of a
third-class compartment and entered.

“You’ll wish you hadn’t done this, Cathie.”

“Never.”

The train slid away into the night and Helen was left standing on the
platform. She had a swift impulse to jump into the tail-end of the
now quickly-moving train and go with Cathie to the next station. But
the train was moving too rapidly for her to attempt this manœuvre
in safety. And behind her stood George a little bewildered (he had
followed her slowly down the steps).

“What’s all the fuss about?” he queried suspiciously.

“Nothing,” replied Helen. Then, as they walked together along the
platform, “You’ll have to tell the man we gave up our tickets before.”

As they hurried along the Bockley High Street the clock on the Carnegie
library chimed the three-quarters....

At Liverpool Street, Catherine discovered that the waiting-room did
not keep open throughout the night for the benefit of girls who have
run away from home. There was a man at the door inspecting tickets.
Catherine was struck by a brilliant notion. There is an all-night
hourly service of trains from Liverpool Street to Bockley, the same
train proceeding backwards and forwards. She went to the booking-office
and purchased a return ticket to Bockley (sixpence). She had a good
sixpennyworth, for the next five hours she spent in the corner seat of
a third-class compartment. About two a.m. she fell asleep, and when
she awoke the train was jerking to a standstill at Upton Rising. The
clock said twenty minutes past six. Evidently the train had undergone
a change while she had slept. All those dark hours it had paraded the
inner suburbs, but now it had become a thing of greater consequence:
it was the first early morning train to Chingford. At the tiny Forest
town Catherine left it, paying excess fare on the journey from Bockley.
Dawn came as she was tramping the muddy paths of Epping Forest. She had
no idea where she was going. The main thing was to get the time over.
About eight o’clock she returned to Chingford, purchased some notepaper
and envelopes, and went into the post-office. On the desk provided
for composing telegrams she wrote a letter accepting the situation of
pianist at the Royal Cinema, Upton Rising. That done, and the letter
stamped and posted, she felt calmer than she had been for some time.
Then came hunger. She had a glass of milk (threepence) at a dairy and
two of yesterday’s buns (a penny each) from a confectioner’s. Out of
five and sevenpence half-penny and two penny stamps she had now left
four shillings and a half-penny and one penny stamp, plus a third-class
return half from Bockley to Liverpool Street.

She persisted in being joyous. This was to be an adventure, and she
was to enter into the spirit of it. She took her buns to the top of
Yardley Hill in order that she might imagine herself picnicking. She
lay down on the damp grass eating, and told herself she was enjoying
herself immensely. She admired the loveliness of the view with all the
consciousness of a well-trained tourist. She refused to be melancholy.
She discovered hundreds of excuses for feeling happy which would
never have occurred to her if she had been feeling happy. As she was
descending the hill after her meal it commenced to rain. She tried to
see beauty in the rain. The grey sky and the sodden leaves, the squelch
of her heels in the mud, the bare trees swathed in slanting rain,
these, she decided, were infinitely preferable to Kitchener Road....
Nevertheless she would have to find lodgings.

She decided to seek them in Upton Rising.




CHAPTER V


DISILLUSIONMENTS

§ 1


GIFFORD ROAD, Upton Rising, seemed to be composed of various
architectural remnants which had been left over from other streets.
No. 14 was a dour, gloomy-looking edifice built of a stone-work that
showed up in lurid prominence the particular form of eczema from which
it suffered. The front garden was large, with evidences of decayed
respectability, including a broken-down five-barred gate and the
remains of a lawn. The wooden erection at the side of the house may
once have been a coach-shed.... A flight of stone steps, much chipped
and scarred, led up to a massive front door, but the usual entrance
was clearly the small door underneath the steps, which generally stood
ajar.... In the basement window appeared the “apartments” card and
the ubiquitously respectable aspidistra plant. Cats of all sizes and
colours haunted the long, lank grass of the front garden, and at the
back there was a noisy, unkempt chicken-run.

Inside the tiny basement sitting-room Catherine tried to feel at
home. The dried grasses and bric-à-brac on the mantelpiece did remind
her somewhat of the front room at Kitchener Road, but the old faded
photographs of the landlady’s relatives, most of them mercifully
obscure, made her feel strange and foreign. A stuffed canary under a
glass shroud surmounted the sideboard, and Catherine decided mentally
that after she had been here awhile she would remove it to a less
conspicuous position. A dull piety brooded over the room: there were
floridly decorated texts on the walls, “I am the Bread of Life” over
the doorway, and “Trust in the Lord” by the fireplace. The small
bookshelf contained bound volumes of _The Quiver_ and various
missionary society reports, as well as several antiquated volumes, of
which _Jessica’s First Prayer_ was one, presented to the landlady,
as the flyleaf showed, by a certain Sunday school in South London. A
couple of pictures above the mantelpiece represented the Resurrection
and the Ascension, and in these there was a prolific display of
white-winged angels and stone slabs and halos like dinner-plates. On a
November afternoon the effect of all this was distinctly chilly.

And under the cushions of the sofa there were many, many copies of
Sunday newspapers, both ancient and modern.

Mrs. Carbass was a woman of cheerful respectability. She accepted
Catherine as a lodger without any payment in advance. At first she
was doubtful, but the production of the letter offering Catherine the
situation at the Upton Rising Royal Cinema overruled her misgivings.
She was apparently an occasional patron of this place of amusement.

“Sometimes I goes,” she remarked. “Of a Sat’d’y night, gener’ly.... In
the ninepennies,” she added, as if excusing herself.

Catherine lived very quietly and economically during her first few
weeks at Gifford Road. She had to. Her earnings did not allow her much
margin after she had paid Mrs. Carbass. Out of this margin she had
to buy all kinds of things she had not counted on--chiefly changes
of clothing, and ranging down to small but by no means negligible
articles such as wool for darning and a toothbrush. She decided to have
no communication whatever with her father, though at first she had
considered whether she would not write to him to ask him to send her
all the property that was her own. Finally she decided against this,
thinking that she would not care to let him imagine she was in need of
anything. Sometimes the fear came to her that he would find her out:
he could easily discover her address by enquiring at the Cinema. At
times the fear became a definite expectation, and on rare occasions
the expectation developed into what was perilously near to a hope.
Often in the streets she met people who knew her, and to these she
never mentioned either her father or her attitude towards him. Most
people in Kitchener Road knew or guessed what had happened: it did
not cause much of a sensation, for worse things were common enough in
Kitchener Road.... Kitchener Road was quite _blasé_ of domestic
estrangements. Whenever Catherine was asked how she was getting on she
replied, “Oh, quite nicely, thanks,” and would not pursue the subject.

At the Cinema she found work easy but not particularly interesting.
She was annoyed to find herself agreeing with her father that the
Upton Rising Royal Cinema was “third-rate.” It was a tawdry building
with an exterior of white stucco (now peeling off in great scabs),
and an interior into which the light of day never penetrated. A huge
commissionaire with tremendously large feet, attired in the sort of
uniform Rupert of Hentzau wears on the stage, paced up and down in
front of the entrance, calling unmelodiously: “Nah showin’ gran’ star
progrem two, four, six, nine an’ a shillin’ this way children a penny
the side daw ...” all in a single breath. For this trying performance
he was paid the sum of sixteen shillings a week. Inside the building
a couple of heavily powdered, heavily rouged, heavily scented girls
fluttered about with electric torches. There was no orchestra, save on
Saturday nights, when a violinist appeared in a shabby dress suit and
played the Barcarolle from “Tales of Hoffman,” and similar selections.
The rest of the time Catherine was free to play what she pleased, with
but a general reservation that the music should be appropriate to the
pictures shown.

On Saturday mornings there was a children’s matinée, and that
was nothing but pandemonium let loose. Screams, hooting, cheers,
whistlings, yells and cries of all kinds.... On Saturday evenings the
audience was select, save in the front seats near the piano. In the
pale glare of the film all faces were white and tense. The flutter of
the cinematograph went on, hour after hour. The piano tinkled feebly
through the haze of cigarette smoke. Here and there the beam of an
electric torch pierced the gloom like a searchlight. The sudden
lighting of a match was like a pause of semi-consciousness in the
middle of a dream....

And at eleven, when bedroom lights were blinking in all the residential
roads of Upton Rising, Catherine passed out into the cool night air.
Her fingers were tired; sometimes her head was aching.

To pass along the Ridgeway now did not always mean thinking of things
that had happened there....




§ 2


For three months she played the piano at the Upton Rising Royal Cinema;
then she applied for and was appointed to a similar position at the
Victoria Theatre, Bockley. The salary was better and the hours were
not so arduous.... And yet she was becoming strangely restless and
dissatisfied. All through her life she had had a craving for incident,
for excitements, for things to happen to her. The feeling that she was
doing something almost epically magnificent in living on her own whilst
not yet out of her teens gave her an enthusiasm which made bearable the
dull monotony of life in Gifford Road. It was this enthusiasm which
enabled her joyously to do domestic things such as making her bed every
morning, darning stockings, cleaning boots, etc., things that normally
she loathed. For the first few months of her independence everything
was transfigured by the drama of her position. The thought would occur
to her constantly in trams and omnibuses when she noticed someone
looking at her: “How little you know of me by looking at me! You cannot
see into my mind and know how firm and inflexible I am. You don’t know
what a big thing I am doing.”

Reaction came.

It interested Catherine to picture various meetings with her father
and to invent conversations between them in which she should be
unquestionably the winner. The ideal dialogue, she had decided after
much reflection, would be:

 HER FATHER (_stopping her in the street_). Catherine!

 SHE (_haughtily_). I beg your pardon!

 HER FATHER (_tearfully_). Oh, don’t be so cruel,
 Cathie--why don’t you come back?

 SHE. I am not aware that I am being cruel.

 HER FATHER. You are being horribly cruel
 (_passionately_). Oh, Cathie, Cathie, come back! I give in about
 your going out to work, I give in about anything you like, only do
 come back, do, do come!

 SHE (_coldly_). Please don’t make a scene.... I am
 perfectly comfortable where I am and have no desire to make any
 alteration in my arrangements.

 HER FATHER. Oh, Cathie, Cathie, you’re breaking my heart!
 I’ve been lonely, oh, so lonely ever since----

 SHE (_kindly but firmly_). I’m sorry, but I cannot
 stay to carry on a conversation like this. You turned me out of your
 house when you chose: it is for me to come back when I choose, if I
 choose.... I bear you no ill-will.... I must be going. Please leave go
 of my arm....

That would be magnificent. She was sure she was not in the least
callous or hard-hearted, yet it pleased her to think that her father
was lonely without her. One of her dreams was to be passionately loved
by a great man, and to have to explain to him “kindly but firmly” that
she desired only friendship....

One day she did meet her father.

She walked into a third-class compartment at Bockley Station and
there he was, sitting in the far corner! Worse still, the compartment
was full, saving the seat immediately opposite to him. There is
a tunnel soon after leaving the station and the trains are not
lighted. In the sheltering darkness Catherine felt herself growing
hot and uncomfortable. What was she to do? She thought of her ideal
conversation, and remembered that in it he was supposed to lead off.
But if he did not lead off? She wished she had devised a dialogue in
which she had given herself the lead. Yet it would be absurd to sit
there opposite to him without a word. She decided she would pretend not
to see him. She was carrying a music-case, and as the train was nearing
the end of the tunnel she fished out a piece of music and placed it
in front of her face like a newspaper. When the train emerged into
daylight she discovered that it was a volume of scales and arpeggios,
and that she was holding it the wrong way up. The situation was
absurd. Yet she decided to keep up the semblance of being engrossed in
harmonic and melodic minors. After a while she stole a glance over the
top of her music. It was risky, but her curiosity was too strong for
her.

She saw nothing but the back page of the _Daily Telegraph_. It
was strange, because he never read in trains. It was one of his fads.
He believed it injurious to the eyes. (Many and many a time he had
lectured her on the subject.)

Obviously then he was trying to avoid seeing her, just as she was
trying to avoid seeing him. The situation was almost farcical.... There
seemed to be little opening for that ideal dialogue of hers. She wished
he would lean forward and tap her knee and say: “Catherine!”

Then she could drop her music, look startled, and follow up with: “I
beg your pardon!”

Unfortunately he appeared to have no artistic sense of what was
required of him.

It was by the merest chance that at a certain moment when she looked
over the top of the scales and arpeggios he also looked up from his
_Daily Telegraph_. Their eyes met. Catherine blushed, but it was
not visible behind her music. He just stared. If they had both been
quick enough they might have looked away and let the crisis pass.
Unfortunately each second as it passed made them regard each other more
unflinchingly. The train ground round the curve into Bethnal Green
Station. Catherine was waiting for him to say something. At last the
pause was becoming so tense that she had to break it. She said the very
first thing that entered her head. It was: “Hullo!”

Then ensued the following conversation.

“Good-morning, Catherine ... going up to the City, I suppose?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes. I’m going to see some friends at Ealing. Bus from Liverpool
Street.”

“Oh, I go by tube to Oxford Circus. I’m seeing if they’ve got some
music I ordered.”

“Don’t suppose they’ll have it ... very slack, these big London
firms....”

Pause.

“Getting on all right?”

“Oh, fine, thanks.”

“I heard you’d got a place at the Royal Cinema.”

“Oh, I soon left that ... I’m on at the Victoria Theatre now. Much
better job.”

“Good ... like the work, I suppose?”

“Rather!”

Pause.

“Nasty weather we’re having.”

“Yes--for April.”

Pause again. At Liverpool Street they were the first to leave the
compartment.

“You’ll excuse my rushing off,” she said, “but I must be quick. The
shop closes at one on a Saturday.”

“Certainly,” he murmured. Then he offered his hand. She took it and
said “Good-bye” charmingly. A minute later and she was leaning up
against the wall of the tube subway in a state bordering upon physical
exhaustion. The interview had been so unlike anything she had in her
wildest dreams anticipated. Its casualness, its sheer uneventfulness
almost took away her breath. She had pictured him pleading,
expostulating, remonstrating, blustering, perhaps making a scene. She
had been prepared for agonized entreaties, tearful supplications.
Instead of which he had said: “Nasty weather we’re having.”

And she had replied: “Yes--for April.”

As for the ideal dialogue----




§ 3


There was another surprise in store for Catherine.

In the front row of the stalls at the Bockley Victoria Theatre she saw
George Trant. She was only a few feet away from him in the orchestra,
and it was inevitable that he should notice her.

Now if Catherine had been asked if she would ever have anything to do
with George Trant again, she would have said “No” very decisively. She
had made up her mind about that long ago. If he ever spoke to her she
had decided to snub him unmercifully.

But George Trant stood up and waved to her.

“I say, Cathie!” he said.

And Catherine looked up and said, quite naturally, “Hullo, George.”

It was a revelation to her. What had she said it for? What was the
matter with her? A fit of self-disgust made her decide that at any rate
she would not continue a conversation with him. But curiously enough
George did not address her again that evening. She wished he would. She
wanted to snub him. She wanted to let him see how firm and inflexible
she was. She wanted to let herself see it also.




§ 4


At Gifford Road, in the little bedroom, Catherine’s dissatisfaction
reached culminating point. Life was monotonous. The humdrum passage
of day after day mocked her in a way she could not exactly define.
She wanted to be swept into the maelstrom of big events. Nothing had
yet come her way that was big enough to satisfy her soul’s craving.
Things that might have developed dramatically insisted on being merely
common-place. Even the fire of her musical ambition was beginning to
burn low. Things in her life which had at first seemed tremendous were
even now in the short perspective of a few months beginning to lose
glamour. She thought of those dark days, not a year back, when the
idea of saying “hullo” to George Trant would have seemed blasphemy.
She thought of those June evenings when she had paced up and down
the Ridgeway in the spattered moonlight, revelling in the morbid
ecstasy of calling to mind what had happened there. All along she had
been an epicure in emotions. She loved to picture herself placed in
circumstances of intense drama. She almost enjoyed the disappointment
and passion that George Trant had roused in her, because such feelings
were at the time new to her. Yet even in her deepest gloom something
within herself whispered: “This is nothing. You are not really in love
with George Trant. You are just vaguely sentimental, that’s all. You’re
just testing and collecting emotions as a philatelist collects stamps.
It’s a sort of scientific curiosity. Wait till the real thing comes and
you’ll lose the nerve for experimenting....” Yet the episode of George
Trant had stirred just sufficient feeling in Catherine to make her
apprehensive of similar situations in the future....

Now, as she undressed in the attic-bedroom in Gifford Road, life seemed
colourless. The idea of refusing to speak to George Trant because of
what had happened less than a year ago struck her as childish. She was
glad she had spoken to him. It would have been silly to dignify their
absurd encounter by attempting magnificence. Catherine decided that
she had acted very sensibly. Yet she was dissatisfied. She had built
up ideals--the ideals of the melodrama--and now they were crumbling at
the first touch of cold sense. She had imagined herself being pitifully
knocked about by fate and destiny and other things she believed in,
and now she was beginning to realize with some disappointment that
she had scarcely been knocked about at all. It was a very vague
dissatisfaction, but a very intense one for all that.

“Oh, Lord, I want something, and I’m hanged if I know what it is....
Only I’m tired of living in a groove. I want to try the big risks. I’m
not a stick-in-the-mud....”

She herself could not have said whether this ran through her mind
in the guise of a prayer or an exclamation. But perhaps it did not
especially matter. “I guess when you want a thing,” she had once
enunciated, “you pray for it without intending to. In fact you can’t
want anything without praying for it every minute of the time you feel
you’re wanting it.... As for putting it into words and kneeling down at
bedtime, I should say that makes no difference....”

But she did not know what she wanted, except that it was to be exciting
and full of interest....

She fell asleep gazing vacantly at a framed lithograph on the opposite
wall which a shaft of moonlight capriciously illumined. It was a
picture of Tennyson reading his _In Memoriam_ to Queen Victoria,
the poet, long-haired and impassioned, in an appropriately humble
position before his sovereign....




§ 5


The following morning a typewritten letter waited her arrival in the
basement sitting-room. It bore on the flap the seal of a business firm
in London, and Catherine opened it without in the least guessing its
contents.

It began:

 MY DEAR CATHIE,

 You will excuse my writing to you, but this is really nothing but
 a business letter. I found your address by enquiry at the theatre
 box-office: the method is somewhat irregular, but I hope you will
 forgive me.

 What I want to say is this----

Catherine glanced down the typewritten script and saw the signature at
the bottom. It was George Trant. Her face a little flushed, she read on:

 The Upton Rising Conservative Club, of which I am a member, is giving
 a concert on May 2nd, in aid of the local hospitals. A friend of mine
 (and a fellow-member) was so impressed by your playing this evening
 that he suggested I should ask you to play a pianoforte solo at our
 projected concert. I cordially agree with his idea, and hope you will
 be able to accept. I enclose a draft of the musical programme so that
 you may realize that we are having some really “star” artists down.
 Bernard Hollins, for instance, has sung at the Queen’s Hall. Please
 write back immediately in acceptance and let me know the name of the
 piece you propose to play, so that the programmes can go to press
 immediately. Excuse haste, as I must catch the 11.30 post.

 Yours sincerely,

                                                 GEORGE TRANT.

Catherine re-read the letter twice before she commenced to criticize
it keenly. Her keen criticism resulted in the following deductions. To
begin with:

This was some subtle cunning of his to entrap her. He was clever
enough to devise it.... What had she played last evening at the Bockley
Victoria Theatre that could have “impressed” anybody so much? The show
had been a third-rate revue, the music of which was both mediocre and
childishly simple. The piano was bad. She had played, if anything, not
so well as usual. The piano was, for the most part, drowned in the
orchestra. Moreover, there were scores of pianoforte players in the
district who would have been eager to appear on such a distinguished
programme as the one he had sent. It was absurd to pick her out. She
had no musical degree, had never played at a big concert in her life.
The other artists might even object to her inclusion if they knew who
she was. In any case, no astute concert-organizer would risk putting
her in. She was well-known, and scores of people would say, as soon
as they saw her on the platform: “Why, that’s the red-haired girl who
plays the piano at the theatre.”

Catherine came to the definite conclusion that the letter was
thoroughly “fishy.”

Yet she wrote back saying:

 DEAR GEORGE,

 Thanks for letter and invitation, which I am pleased to accept. My
 piece will be Liszt’s Concert Study in A flat, unless you think it too
 classical, in which case I can play a Polischinelle by Rachmaninov.

 Yours sincerely,

                                             CATHERINE WESTON.

Catherine thought: If I can make use of George Trant to further my
ambitions, why shouldn’t I? If this leads to anything in the way of
bettering my earnings or getting engagements to play at concerts, it
will be no more than what George Trant owes me. And if this is merely
a trap laid for me, we’ll see who’s the more astute this time. In any
case it should lead to some interesting situations, and it will at
least vary the monotony of life....

It suddenly struck her that perhaps her father would come and hear
her play. The possibility opened up wild speculations. Her dramatic
interest pictured him rising from his seat in the middle of the
Concert Study in A flat, and crying with arm uplifted--“God!--My
daughter!”

Or perhaps he would sob loudly and bury his head in his hands.

Yet, remembering their meeting in the railway carriage, she knew he
would do nothing of the sort....

... The audience would sit spell-bound as the Concert Study rang out
its concluding chords. As the last whispered echo died on the air the
whole building would ring with shouts of tumultuous applause. Those
nearest the front would swarm on to the platform, seizing her hand
in congratulation. A buzz of conversation would go round, startled,
awe-stricken conversation: “Who is that red-haired girl?--Who is
she?--Plays at the theatre?--Oh, surely not. Impossible!”

They would demand an encore. She would play Chopin’s Study, “Poland is
Lost.”

And the _Bockley and District Advertiser_ would foam at the
headline with: “Musical Discovery at Upton Rising. Masterful playing by
local pianiste....”

No, no, all that was absurd....

The audience would listen in bored silence punctuated only by the
“scrooping” of chairs. She would probably tie her hands up in some
of the arpeggios. There would be desultory, unenthusiastic clapping
of hands at the finish. She would be asked for no encore. Somebody
might say: “I fancy I’ve seen that girl at the theatre. She leads
the orchestra.” And the _Bockley and District Advertiser_ would
say with frigid politeness: “Miss Catherine Weston gave a tasteful
rendering of Liszt’s Concert Study in A flat....” Or, if they had
used the word “tasteful” previously, they would say “excellent” or
“spirited” or “vivid.”

“I suppose I’m getting cynical,” she thought, as she mercilessly tore
to pieces her ideal imaginations.

Yet she was very joyous that morning.

Life was going to begin for her. If events didn’t carry her with
them she was just going to stand in their way and make them. If not
followed, she would pursue. Life, life, her soul cried, and life was
mightily interesting. There came a silver April shower, and in her
ecstasy she took off her hat and braved both the slanting rain and the
conventional respectability of Upton Rising. Then came the sun, warm
and drying, and her hair shone like a halo of pure flame.... She made
herself rather foolishly conspicuous....




CHAPTER VI


CRESCENDO

§ 1


LONG hours she practised on the Chappell grand in the room over
Burlington’s Music Emporium. The Concert Study in A flat began to take
shape and cohesion. April swept out of its teens into its twenties,
and posters appeared on the hoardings outside the Upton Rising Public
Hall announcing a “Grand Evening Concert.” Her name was in small blue
type immediately above the ticket prices. The rest of the programme
was not quite the same as the rough draft that George had sent her. It
was curious, but the best-known people had been cut out.... Bernard
Hollins, for instance, who had sung at the Queen’s Hall. Those who
remained to fill the caste were all people of merely local repute,
and Catherine ceased to have misgivings that her performance would be
mediocre compared with theirs.

One unfortunate coincidence seemed likely to disturb the success of the
evening. In the very afternoon of the same day Razounov, the famous
Russian pianist, was playing at the Hippodrome. Razounov did not often
come to Bockley, and when he did he drew a large audience. It seemed
probable that many who went to hear him in the afternoon would not care
for a Grand Evening Concert on top of it....

Already the bills outside the Hippodrome were advertising Razounov in
letters two feet high.




§ 2


The “Grand Evening Concert” was a tame, spiritless affair. Catherine’s
pianoforte solo was introduced at the commencement to tide over that
difficult period during which the local élite (feeling it somewhat
beneath their status to appear punctually at the advertised time) were
shuffling and fussing into the reserved front seats. Her appearance on
the platform was greeted with a few desultory claps. The piano (grand
only architecturally) was placed wrongly; the sound-board was not
raised, and it appeared to be nobody’s business to raise it for her.
She played amidst a jangle of discordant noises: the rustle of paper
bags and silk dresses, the clatter of an overturned chair, the sibilant
murmur of several score incandescent gas lamps. All through there was
the buzz of conversation, and if she looked up from the keyboard she
could see the gangways full of late-comers streaming to their seats,
standing up to take off their cloaks, making frantic signals to others
for whom they had kept seats vacant, passing round bags of sweets,
bending down to put their hats under the seat, diving acrobatically
into obscure pockets to find coppers for the programme girls, doing
anything, in fact, except listen to her playing. Somehow this careless,
good-humoured indifference gave her vast confidence. She felt not the
least trace of nervousness, and she played perhaps better than she had
ever done before. She had even time to think of subsidiary matters. A
naked incandescent light lit up the keyboard from the side nearest the
rear of the platform, and she deliberately tossed her head at such an
angle that the red cloud of her hair should lie in the direct line of
vision between a large part of the audience and the incandescent light.
She knew the effect of that. At intervals, too, she bent her head low
to the keyboard for intricate treble eccentricities. She crossed her
hands whenever possible, and flung them about with wild abandon. It
would be absurd to say she forgot her audience; on the contrary, she
was remembering her audience the whole time that she was playing. And
during the six or seven minutes that Liszt’s Concert Study in A flat
lasted, her mind was registering vague regrets. She regretted that
nobody had thought to raise the sound-board for her. She regretted
the omission of all those little stylish affectations which in the
first thrill of appearing on the platform she had forgotten all about.
She had not polished her hands with her handkerchief before starting.
She had not adjusted the music-stool. She had not pushed back the
music-rest as far as it would go. She had not played the chord and
arpeggio inversions of A flat major and paused dramatically before
beginning the composition of Liszt. All these things she had forgotten.
People would think she was an inexperienced player. Anyhow, she made up
as well as she could for her initial deficiencies during the progress
of the piece. She “swanked,” according to the popular expression.
She was very conscious of the effect her hair was or ought to be
producing....

As a matter of fact, nobody was either looking at her or listening to
her with any particular interest or eagerness.

She was awakened from her egoistic dreams by the half-hearted applause
of those people who by divine instinct know when a piece is coming to
an end several bars ahead, and start their applause at the last bar but
one.... She bowed graciously in front of the piano, and tripped lightly
behind the scenes. The applause did not justify an encore.... She had
made up her mind as she played the concluding chords of the Concert
Study: If I am given an encore, I will do all those things I omitted
to do before: I will polish my hands, adjust the stool, push back the
music-rest, have the sound-board lifted, run up with arpeggios on the
tonic....

But she was not given an encore.

In the artists’ room behind the scenes nobody took much notice of her.
Fred Hitchcock, a local tenor with baritone leanings, was giving final
frenzied directions to his accompanist, a large-featured female with an
excessively low and powdered neck.

“Go slow over that twiddly bit,” he whispered, catching hold of her to
lead her on to the platform. “And don’t forget to give me the leading
note in the adagio.” His hoarse voice merged into the buzz of sound
that came down the corridor leading to the platform.

She overheard a conversation.

“What was that thing that girl played?”

“What girl?”

“The girl with the red hair.”

“Oh, I don’t know--some Liszt thing, I think.”

“Classical?”

“S’pose so ... of course, nobody listens to pianoforte solos
nowadays....”

“They’re too common, that’s what it is. Everybody strums on the piano,
more or less.”

“I suppose you went to hear Razounov?”

“No, I couldn’t get a seat. The Hippodrome was full of people who went
to see him do something eccentric.”

“Did he?”

“No, as it happened. A friend told me he just came on the platform,
played like an angel for two hours, and went off again. Of course
everybody was greatly disappointed.”

“Naturally....”

“Bockley isn’t a musical suburb. It doesn’t even think it is. Whereas
Upton Rising thinks it is and isn’t.... I wish that pianoforte player
of ours wouldn’t show so much of her red hair and try to look like a
female Beethoven....”

“Oh, shut up--she’s probably somewhere about, she’ll hear you....”

Catherine put on her hat and cloak and went out by the side door. She
was not angry, but she was suffering from one of those periodical fits
of disillusionment which were the aftermath of her dreaming. She walked
out into the Ridgeway, where the gas lamps glowed amongst the sprouting
trees. Far away she could hear the clang of trams along the High Road.
She passed the corner house where, it seemed now an age ago, she had
discovered her soul in the murmur of a grand piano. Swiftly she walked
along the tarred asphalt, thinking to reach Gifford Road and have
supper. She felt disappointed. The evening had been lacking in that
species of adventure it had seemed to promise. She had not seen George
Trant. That, she told herself, had nothing to do with it.

Down the Ridgeway a newsboy came running bearing a placard-sheet in
front of him.

“Suicide of a Bockley Schoolmaster,” it said. An awful excitement
seized her. Eagerly she bought a paper and searched the front page.

It took some moments to discover the announcement. It was only a small
paragraph on an inside page: the placard had evidently been printed to
stimulate local circulation.

“Mr. Weston,” she read, “of 24, Kitchener Road, Bockley, an elementary
school teacher at the Downsland Road Council School ... throat cut....”

She leaned up against the iron railing round a tree. Then, discovering
that she was attracting the attention of passers-by, she walked on more
swiftly than before. In her excitement she took the opposite direction,
towards the Bockley High Street....




§ 3


Half-way down the Ridgeway she met George Trant. They were both walking
excessively fast and in opposite directions: they almost cannoned into
each other.

“Just looking for you,” he said, stopping her. He wore evening dress
beneath an overcoat. It was peculiar that her eyes should glue
themselves upon an ivory solitaire that he wore. She was half dazed.

“Looking for me?” she echoed, vaguely.

“Yes. Thought you’d gone back to your digs. I was coming to fetch you.
What I want to say is----” (That was one of his mannerisms of speech.
In his letters he had constantly written, “What I want to say is----”)
“we’re having a little supper at the Forest Hotel after the concert’s
over. Just ourselves--the performers, I mean. Of course you’ll join
us.... I didn’t think you’d be running off so early, or I should have
mentioned it before....”

She was still staring monotonously at that ivory solitaire of his.

“Well--er--you see ... er....”

“Of course if you’re engaged for somewhere else----”

“No, I’m not engaged for anywhere else.” She paused, as if weighing
things in the balance. Then a change came over her. It was as if she
were suddenly electrified. Her eyes lifted and were found shining with
peculiar brilliance. Her body, too, which had been tiredly swaying,
jerked all at once into challenging rigidity. “All right,” she said,
and even in her voice there was a new note, “I’ll come.”

“Good.” He looked a little queerly at this transformation of her. “Then
we’ll go now.”

“But it’s not half-past nine yet. The concert won’t be over till after
ten.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go to the hotel to fix up
arrangements. You’d better come with me.”

“Right.” The promptitude of her reply had something in it of riotous
abandon.

“We’ll go by bus to High Wood and walk the rest. It’s sooner....”

Again she acquiesced, this time by a nod that seemed to indicate an
eagerness too great to be put into words.

At the corner of the Bockley High Street they took a bus. They occupied
the front seat on the top. The night was moonless, but stars were
shining over the whole sky. In front and behind stretched the high road
with arc lights gleaming like a chain of pearls. She thought of that
other evening when she had ridden with Helen along this very road on
the top of a crowded tram-car. She remembered how in the passing glare
of the arc-lamps she had read the note which George Trant had enclosed
for her. She remembered it all as clearly as if it had happened
yesterday, though in point of time it seemed to belong to another age.
She remembered the purr of the quickly-moving car, the hiss of the
trolley-wheel along the overhead wires, the buzz of talk all round her,
and the sharp, sickly sensation of reading a few words in spasms and
fitting them into their context when the pale light merged into the
darkness.

But even while she thought of these things she became greatly joyous.
She took off her hat and stuffed it into her pocket (it was of the kind
that yields to such treatment). Her hair blew in soft spray about her
head and shoulders, and her eyes were wet with the tears that the cool
wind brought. She remembered that once he had said “My God! ... your
hair! ...” He might not say it again, but perhaps he would think it.

“I liked your playing,” he said.

“You did?”

“Rather.... I’m not much of a judge, but I can always tell a real
musician from a false one. The real musician throws his whole soul into
his music....”

“Did I?”

“Yes. I know you did. You played almost unconsciously. I believe you
forgot all about your audience. You were just playing for the sheer
love of playing....”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Well, you’re wrong, anyway,” She laughed defiantly. “I didn’t
forget about my audience a bit: I kept on remembering them the whole
time. I kept on thinking: !Did they notice that little bit? ... I
polished off that arpeggio rather nicely; I wonder if anybody noticed
it....’ And as for throwing my whole soul into my music, I’m not so
sure--whether--even--whether----”

“Yes?”

She tossed back her head so that her hair danced like flame. The bus
jerked to a standstill.

“Whether I’ve got a soul,” she said very quickly. “Come on, we’re at
High Wood.”

They clambered down the steps.

“I’m sure you have,” he said, as he helped her off the conductor’s
platform.

“Oh, _you_ don’t know anything about me,” she snapped, as they
entered the footpath through the Forest.

“I believe I know a very great deal about you,” he said quietly.

“Of course you believe so. Well, I don’t mind you telling me.”

He stroked his chin reflectively.

“Well, to begin with,” he said, “you’re passionate.”

She burst into sudden, uncontrollable, crackling laughter. In the empty
spaces of the Forest it sounded like musketry.

“I knew you’d say that.... I knew you would. And for the life of me I
don’t know whether you’re right or wrong. Every woman likes to think
she’s passionate. And nobody knows whether she’s any more passionate
than anybody else.... Pass on to the next point. You may be right or
you may be wrong about the last.”

“You’re impulsive--but good-natured.”

“Oh, rather. A kind heart beneath a rough exterior, eh?”

“I’m quite serious.”

“Are you? I’m not.”

She frisked along in front of him, revelling in the rustle of last
autumn’s leaves.

“Do you know what I should do if I were serious?” she asked suddenly,
when he had caught up to her.

“No.”

She walked a little way in silence, kicking up the dried leaves with
her toes.

“What would you do?” he said.

Her voice became fierce. “I should----” she began, and stopped. She
walked a few steps as if pondering, then she laughed airily and tossed
her head. “I really don’t know what I should do. Only I’m certain of
one thing: I shouldn’t be with you here.”

She could almost feel the extent to which her conversation was
mystifying him.

Then she became quiet and submissive, nestling like a stray kitten at
his side. She took his arm.

“I’m going to lean on you,” she said; “I nearly fell over a tree root
just there.”

He looked gratified. For three or four minutes they walked on in
silence. He had plenty he wished to say, but as a matter of fact
he thought this particular silence, coming when it did, rather
impressive, and he was unwilling to curtail it by a remark unworthy of
its profundity. He was engaged in thinking of that remark, a remark
that should not so much break the silence as guide it into still more
profound depths. He had almost decided on what he should say when
quickly and without any warning she snatched her arm from his and
scampered a few paces ahead.

“Oh, George,” she cried, with an extraordinary mingling of passion and
irritation, “do say something! For God’s sake keep up the conversation!
We’ve been a quarter of an hour without a word. Say something, anything
you like--only I can’t stand this mooning about under the trees saying
nothing!”

“You’re in a very extraordinary mood to-night,” he said deliberately.
He was genuinely disappointed.

“I am, or I shouldn’t have come with you,” she replied bluntly.

“Do you dislike me, then?” he asked, with a kind of injured dignity.

“Oh no--oh, don’t let’s talk seriously. I tell you I don’t feel serious
to-night.”

“Well, you won’t need to be. We’re going to have a very jolly evening.”

“I hope so. That’s why I came. I feel like having a jolly evening.”

The Forest Hotel occupied a fine position on the crest of a
thickly-wooded hill overlooking one of the prettiest spots in Epping
Forest. A large balcony opened on to the dining-room, which was on the
first floor, and Chinese lanterns swung loosely from the ornamental
pilasters. As Catherine caught sight of the table, a vista of white and
silver and gleaming glass, she clapped her hands ecstatically. She was
as a little child in her enthusiasm.

“Oh, fine--fine!” she cried, clutching George once more by the arm.

The table was on the balcony, and inside the dining-room the floor had
been cleared, presumably for dancing. A sleek grand piano sprawled
across one corner. Catherine rushed up to it and immediately plunged
into some rapid, noisy piece. It was a splendid instrument, and the
dim light (only the swaying lanterns on the balcony were lit) threw
her into rapture. George came to her side, watching in admiration.
Watching rather than listening, because, as he had himself admitted, he
was no judge of music. And also because the red glow from the swinging
lanterns kindled her hair like a puff of wind on smouldering charcoal.

“There!” she cried, triumphant, as she executed something difficult
with her left hand. She swung into a dirge-like melody, tired of it
seemingly, and broke into energetic ragtime. George felt it was in some
way inappropriate to play ragtime at such a moment.

“Let’s come out on to the balcony,” he suggested, “we’ve only got a
quarter of an hour or so before the others come.”

“Well, we’ve nothing particular to do, have we?”

“It’s cooler.... Come on....”

They walked through the French windows and sat on the parapet
overlooking the gravel courtyard and the blurred panorama of the Forest.

“It ought to be moonlight,” he exclaimed rapturously.

“No, it oughtn’t,” she contradicted. “I’m glad it isn’t. Starlight is
much better.”

It was not an encouraging beginning for him.

“Do you mind if I talk to you seriously?” he asked.

She laughed a little unsympathetically.

“Not at all, only I don’t suppose I shall talk to you seriously.”

“Then it’s not much good, is it?” he remarked, crest-fallen.

“No. Much better to talk nonsense. Let’s talk nonsense. Does one eat
oysters with a spoon or a fork?”

“I can’t----”

“But I want to know. I noticed we begin with oysters, and I’m not sure
what tools to use. Surely you don’t want me to make a fool of myself.
Come, tell me, how does one masticate oysters?”

“A fork is customary, I believe.”

“Thank you. That is what I wanted to know.”

There was a pause, during which the distant sound of voices reached
them from the dim Forest background.

“They’re just coming,” she said. “They must have come by bus, like we
did.”

He ground his heel into the carpet-matting.

“What I want to say----” he started suddenly. “It’s like this. I
believe there was a--a sort of--er--misunderstanding between us at
one time. Now I’m not prepared to say that I was altogether right. In
fact----”

“I don’t remember any misunderstanding. I think I at any rate
understood you perfectly. I really don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“Well, to put it bluntly, what happened was----”

“Excuse me. I _must_ let them hear the piano as they come out
of the Forest. Sorry to cut short our argument, but I don’t feel
metaphysical.... What shall I play? Something appropriate.... Suggest
something!”

He sat rather gracelessly on the parapet watching her as she skipped
over to the piano. The expression on his face was one of bafflement.

“I really don’t----” he called ineffectually.

For answer she began the pianoforte accompaniment of Landon Ronald’s
“Down in the Forest.”

A moment later over the fringe of Forest still untraversed came the
voice of the soprano singer, clear and tremulous, but not particularly
musical. “Down in the Forest something stirred,” she sang, and
Catherine laughed as she caught the sound....




§ 4


About twenty minutes to midnight the tenor singer (with baritone
leanings) whispered to George Trant: “I say, ol’ chap. You’d better
l’kafter tha’ l’l gaerl of yours.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Wha’ I say. She’s had too much.”

“But really, I don’t think----”

“Two glasses sherry, one hock, three champagne, two port ... I’ve took
notice.”

“She’s a bit noisy, I’ll admit.... But she was quite lively enough as
we came along. It’s her mood, I think, mostly.”

The party had left the table and split up into groups of twos and
threes. Some lingered sentimentally on the balcony; the violinist, who
was just a shade fuddled, lay sprawled across a couch with his eyes
closed. Catherine was at the piano, making the most extraordinary din
imaginable. Surrounding her were a group of young men in evening dress,
singers and comedians and monologuists and what not. George Trant
and the tenor singer stood at the French windows, smoking cigars and
listening to the sounds that proceeded from the piano.

“We shall have the manager up,” said George, nervously.

“He’ll say we’re damaging the instrument.... I wish she’d quieten down
a bit. The whole place must be being kept awake....”

Catherine’s voice, shrill and challenging, pierced the din.

“Impressions of Bockley High Street--nine p.m. Saturday night,” she
yelled, and pandemonium raged over the keyboard. It was really quite
a creditable piece of musical post-impressionism. But the noise was
terrific. Glissandos in the treble, octave chromatics in the bass,
terrible futurist chords and bewildering rhythms, all combined to
make the performance somewhat painful. Her select audience applauded
enthusiastically.

George Trant moved rather nervously towards the piano.

“I shouldn’t make quite so much noise,” he began, but nobody heard
him. Catherine was crying out “Marbl’arch, Benk, L’pol Street,” in
the approved jargon of the omnibus conductor, and was simultaneously
making motor-bus noises on the piano. Everybody was laughing, because
the mimicry of her voice was really excellent. George felt himself
unable to raise his voice above the din. He paused a moment immediately
behind her back and then touched her lightly on the shoulder. She did
not heed. He touched her again somewhat more violently than before. She
stopped abruptly both her instrumental and vocal effects, and swung
round suddenly on the revolving music-stool so as to face him. Her eyes
were preternaturally bright.

“Excuse me,” he began, and something in her eyes as she looked up at
him made him doubly nervous, “but perhaps it would be better if you
didn’t make quite such a noise.... You see, the other people ...” he
added vaguely.

There was absolute silence now. The last echo of the piano had died
away, and the select audience waited rather breathlessly for what might
happen.

Catherine rose. There was that greenish-brown glint in her eyes that
made fierce harmony with her hair. For a moment she looked at him
unflinchingly. There was certainly defiance, perhaps contempt in her
eyes.

“Who are _you_?” she said, with quiet insolence.

Somebody tittered.

George Trant looked and felt uncomfortable. For answer he turned slowly
on his heel and walked away. It seemed on the whole the most dignified
thing to do. Catherine flushed fiercely. Like a tigress she bounded to
his side and made him stop.

“For God’s sake, don’t sulk!” she cried wildly. “Wake up and say
something! Don’t stand there like a stone sphinx! Wake up!”

With a quick leap she sprang upwards and ran her two hands backwards
and forwards through his hair. His hair was long and lank and well
plastered. After she had finished with it it stood bolt upright on his
head like a donkey fringe. Everyone roared with laughter.

During the progress of this operation the interior door had been opened
and a man had entered. In the noise and excitement of the mêlée he was
not noticed. He was tall, severe-looking and in evening dress. When the
excitement subsided they found him standing a little awkwardly on the
edge of the scuffle.

Catherine thought he was at least an underwaiter, come to complain of
the noise they were making.

He bowed very slightly, and immediately everybody felt sure he was a
waiter. Only a professional could have bowed so chillingly.

Catherine, with flushed face and dishevelled hair, leaned against a
chair, panting from her exertion.

“I do not wish to interrupt,” began the stranger, and there
_might_ have been sarcasm in his voice, “but I have been
commissioned to deliver a message to Miss Weston. Which is Miss Weston?”

“I am Miss Weston,” gasped Catherine. Then, to everyone’s amazement,
she proceeded furiously: “I know it--I know it. You needn’t tell me! I
saw it in the papers ... I suppose they’ll say it’s all my fault....
Do they want me? ... if so, I’ll come. I’ll come with you now if you
like....”

The stranger raised his eyebrows slightly.

“I have no desire for you to come anywhere with me.... I don’t know
what you are talking about, either. My message is contained in this
note, and there is no immediate necessity to reply to it.”

Somebody said, rather in the spirit of a heckler at a political
meeting: “Who sent it?” The stranger turned and said: “I should think
Miss Weston and not I should be asked that.” The questioner subsided
ignominiously.

Catherine took the envelope that the stranger offered her. She put it
unread into her pocket. The stranger bowed and walked out. Silence....
Then a chatter of conversation.

“Admirer of yours,” said the violinist, thickly, from his couch.
Everybody thought he had been asleep.

“Didn’t exactly get you at a good moment,” remarked the tenor singer,
flicking away his cigar-ash.

“Looked like an undertaker,” said the soprano.

“Or the ‘salary-doubled-in-a-fortnight’ man in the efficiency
advertisements,” put in the monologuist.

Catherine started to arrange her hair.

“I’m going,” she said, and walked towards the balcony (there was
no exit that way). Near the French windows she staggered and fell,
fortunately upon the cushions of a couch. They all crowded round her.
She did not attempt to rise.

“She’s drunk,” muttered the violinist.

“Possibly ...” said George Trant, bending down to her. “Fetch some
water. I think she’s fainted....”




CHAPTER VII


TRAGEDY

§ 1


ON the first of May the weather was very sultry. Downsland Road,
running past the front of the Council School, was both blazingly hot
and distressingly conscious that it was Friday afternoon. The road was
bursting out in little gouts of soft tar: costermongers were arranging
their wares for the evening’s marketing, spitting contemplatively
on the apples and polishing them afterwards on their coat-sleeves.
Children with clanking iron hoops converged from all directions
upon the four entrance gates of the Downsland Road Council School,
respectively those of the boys’, girls’, infants’ and junior mixed
departments. There they either carried or dragged them surreptitiously
along, for the trundling of hoops was forbidden in the schoolyard.

At five minutes to two, threading his way past the groups of boys and
girls that littered the pavements and roadways, came the short, stumpy
form of Mr. Weston. He was shabbily dressed as usual, yet it might
have been said that he carried his umbrella somewhat more jauntily
than was his wont. In fact, people had lately been saying that he was
beginning to get over the loss of his wife.... At any rate he passed
the costermongers and their stalls in a slouch that was not quite so
much a slouch as usual, smiled pleasantly as he caught sight of the
announcement of a Conservative Club soirée, and had just reached the
edifice known as the Duke Street Methodist Chapel when his attention
was arrested by an awful spectacle.

The Duke Street Methodist Chapel, it may here be remarked, was a
structure of appalling ugliness situate in the very midst of some of
the worst slums in Bockley. Its architecture was that of a continental
railway station, and its offertories between a pound and thirty
shillings a Sunday. Inside the hideous building, with her back to
the blue-distempered wall of the choir, the late Mrs. Weston had for
many years yelled the hymns at the top of her voice.... And along the
brown matting of the left-hand aisle Mr. Weston, suave and supple,
collection-plate in hand, had in his time paced many miles.... Once,
when the church steward was ill, his voice had been heard aloft in the
reading of the notices. And at the left-hand door, while the organist
played the “War March of the Priests,” he had stood with outstretched
hand, saying:

“Good evening, Mrs. Lawson.... Good evening, Ethel.... ’Night, Miss
Picksley ... see you at the Band of Hope on Tuesday, I suppose? ...”

He did not do that sort of thing now. In the chapel he was little seen,
and the Temperance Society knew him not. Only the Guild and Mutual
Improvement Society still counted him as a member, and that was solely
because they had not worried him into resigning.... At the Guild and
Mutual Improvement Society Mr. Weston’s carefully read papers, once
a session, on “Milton,” “John Wycliff, Scholar and Saint,” “The Lake
Poets,” etc., had been a well-known, but unfortunately not always
well-attended feature.

For over a year the fixture-card had lacked the name of Mr. Weston.

And then, a fortnight ago--to be precise, on April 14th--Mr. Weston had
been stopped in the street by Miss Picksley, the secretary of the Guild
and Mutual Improvement Society. She had said:

“Oh, Mr. Weston, _do_ give us one of your literary evenings, will
you?”

Perhaps it was the subtle compliment contained in the phrase “literary
evenings” that caused Mr. Weston not to say “I am sorry, but, etc.,
etc....” as quickly as he had intended.

Miss Picksley exploited the delay brilliantly.

“Good!” she cried, whipping out a pencil and notebook, “I’ll get your
name down for May 1st.... What’ll be your subject?”

“But, er ... I don’t ... er----”

“Something about literature, eh? ... Oh, do, please!” purred Miss
Picksley, making eyes at him. (She was really anxious for him to
accept, because she had canvassed in vain seven other speakers.) “Tell
me your subject, then it can go down on the fixture-cards.”

Mr. Weston, to his astonishment, lost his head and struck blindly at
the first literary name that came into his disordered mind.

“Shakespeare,” he gasped.

Miss Picksley departed, calling blessing upon his head.




§ 2


Now, as Mr. Weston passed the scene of so many of his former labours,
he felt not altogether sorry that to-night, in the schoolroom adjoining
the chapel, he would address a small but certainly select gathering on
the subject of “Shakespeare.” ... He would have liked to have expanded
the title of his paper into “Shakespeare, Man or Superman?” after
the fashion of a certain Methodist preacher who occasionally visited
Bockley. However....

Mr. Weston, it may be remarked, was feeling in quite a tolerably good
humour. He was beaming genially at the world in general when a horrible
sight met his eyes. Then his brow darkened into a frown. The smile left
his face; his lips tightened ominously. He stopped, swung down his
umbrella from its jaunty attitude, and stared. His eyes flamed. The
slope of his nose became full of menace.

For there, before his eyes, chalked up in scrawly writing on the
foundation-stone of the Duke Street Methodist Chapel, was an
inscription that excited his horrified attention. “This stone was laid
... to the glory of God ... the Rev. Samuel Smalljohn ...” he read,
and “Let your light so shine....” And underneath that, in a space that
made it most conspicuous, the brutal legend: “Daddy Weston is a Soppy
Fool....”

Entering the Downsland Road Council School in a white heat of
indignation, Mr. Weston was just able to hear the sound of suppressed
laughter and scurrying feet as he entered the classroom. The conviction
forced itself upon him that somebody had been watching at the
keyhole....




§ 3


Mr. Weston was not normally a hot-tempered man. He was by nature
placid, servile, lymphatic. It was solely as a measure of
self-protection that he had trained himself to lose his temper on
appropriate occasions. It was part of his disciplinary outfit.

He stood glowering fiercely behind his desk.

“I want all boys who were concerned in the chalking up of those
offensive remarks outside the school to stand up.”

Pause. No result.

“I may say that I have already a very fair idea of who they are, and I
shall be most severe with those who do not acknowledge themselves.”

(A lie, but Mr. Weston’s disciplinary system condoned it.)

“I may also say that for every half-minute I am kept waiting I shall
keep the class in half an hour after school hours. I have already
decided to keep the class in till five for keeping me waiting so long.”

Here Mr. Weston pulled out his watch and placed it prominently on the
desk before him. (This was mere theatricalism, as the watch did not go.)

Pause. Then a warning shuffle and seven small boys raised themselves.

Mr. Weston dived into his desk and produced seven coloured dusters for
cleaning blackboards.

“Come here,” he said to the seven.

The seven came.

“You will each take one of these dusters and go out into the street and
obliterate every one of the marks you have made. Then you will return.”

It was Mr. Weston’s own invention, this disciplinary method.




§ 4


Slowly, ever so slowly, the afternoon crept by, and Mr. Weston was
just beginning to congratulate himself upon having proved equal to the
occasion, when an awkward but all-important fact occurred to him. If
you keep your class in you have to stay in with it. Mr. Weston, of all
people, ought to have learnt this lesson, yet somehow amidst the heat
and sultriness of the afternoon it had escaped him. For he was tired,
dead tired. And also hot. The sweat was rolling down his forehead. Oh,
how he wished he had said half-past four, and not five! Confound it,
why had he said five? Half-past four would really have done just as
well. Only, having said five, he was bound (by that disciplinary code
of his) to keep his word.

He took a sheaf of notes from his inside pockets and perused them
diffidently. “William Shakespeare.” It was to last about half an hour,
and as yet Mr. Weston had thought about William Shakespeare only
sufficiently for it to last twenty or twenty-five minutes. It would
have to be padded out. Something about the “immortal bard of Avon....”
On such a fine evening, thought Mr. Weston, the audience would be
small. Possibly about fifteen or twenty. There would be Miss Picksley,
the secretary, to receive subscriptions for the coming session. Mrs.
Hollockshaw would be there to play the hymn on the American harmonium,
and Mr. Sly would open with a word of prayer. The Gunter girls would
sit on the back row and flirt with the Merridge boys. Possibly old Mrs.
Cowburn would turn up. (Or was she dead by this time?) ... After he had
read his paper there would be a few minutes for discussion. That would
merely mean votes of thanks, because he would take care not to say
anything controversial. Nothing about the Shakespeare-Bacon business.
Then the benediction given out by Mr. Sly. With luck the whole business
would be over by nine, and there would be time for a stroll through the
Forest at dusk. Or perhaps, though, it would be quite dark. Heavens I
Only twenty-five to five. Old Clotters was locking up in his room....

A ray of tawdry sunlight penetrated the dust and murkiness of the
atmosphere, bringing into prominence the rather obvious fact that
Mr. Weston was combining reverie with the observation of his class
through the interstices of his fingers. (This was an integral part of
Mr. Weston’s disciplinary system.) Ever and anon his eyes would focus
themselves upon a particular boy in the hope that if he were watched
long enough he would do something amiss. This happy consummation
was not long in coming. There was that boy Jones! Jones was doing
something. Surely, surely! ... Well, well, perhaps he would do it
again. There, he had done it.... His jaws had moved perpendicularly
twice within ten seconds. There could be no further doubt about it.
Jones was eating!

“Jones.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you eating?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I will report you to Mr. Clotters on Monday morning. I will not
have this sort of thing going on in my class. Your manners are those of
the lower animals. Come up here and put what you are eating into the
waste-paper basket!”




§ 5


Punctually at five Mr. Weston locked his desk and prepared to observe
the solemn ritual of dismissal. It was in three movements.

“Attention!” called Mr. Weston, and the class looked at him eagerly.

“Stand!” called Mr. Weston, and the class stood. But there must have
been some flaw in the standing, for Mr. Weston immediately said, “Sit
down again!” They sat down again.

“Now stand!” cried Mr. Weston, after a suitable pause, and this time
the manœuvre met with his approval.

“Three!” continued Mr. Weston, and at this mysterious direction the
class took a side-step into its respective gangways.

“First row--forward!”

“Second.”

“Third.”

When the last row had dissolved into the disintegrating chaos of the
corridor, Mr. Weston took up his hat and umbrella and walked through
the masters’ gateway into the frowsiness of Downsland Road....




§ 6


In the hot kitchen of No. 24, Kitchener Road, Mr. Weston made himself
some tea and cut some bread and butter. He had not much time to spare.
He must add a few pages to his paper. Then he must wash and shave and
make himself respectable. During his meal he thought once or twice of
those old days when Laura, his wife, had been there to get his tea
ready for him, to fuss round the books and papers he brought home, and
to say: “Going out to-night, are you? Because if not, there’s your
slippers. And let’s ’ave your dirty boots....” He thought, too, of
Catherine: a little child, asking him absurd questions, messing about
with his exercise books, begging him for half-used sheets to scribble
on. But there was nothing regretful in his thoughts of those past days.
On the contrary, he rather inclined to moralize: “I don’t know whether
I’m not actually better off than I was then. At any rate I’m free, and
I can do what I like. It’s not so bad, really.”

He wrote down a few sentences about Shakespeare.

“That’ll have to do,” he thought. “It doesn’t really matter it being a
bit short.”

He poured himself out a cupful of hot water for shaving. It was one of
the advantages of living alone that he could shave in the kitchen if he
liked.

Curiously enough he paused after pouring out the water.

“Shall I or shall I not?” he pondered. He examined his chin in the
mirror. “I suppose I’ll do,” he decided, “it won’t be noticed in the
gas-light.”

Then he saw the water he had poured out.

“Oh, well,” he thought, “perhaps I will, after all....”

He took out his razor, one of the old-fashioned kind, stropped it
carefully and lathered himself.

While he was shaving he thought: “I wish I hadn’t told that boy Jones
I’d send him to Clotters on Monday morning. Clotters won’t like it
much....”

Suddenly, and seemingly without any premeditation, he thrust the soapy
razor into his throat, just above the windpipe....




§ 7


At the Duke Street Methodist Schoolroom a select audience of eleven
waited until half-past eight for Mr. Weston to deliver his paper on
“Shakespeare.”

“Perhaps he’s ill,” suggested Miss Picksley.

“No, he’s not, because he was at school this afternoon. My brother’s in
his class,” said one of the Gunter girls.

“Where does he live?”

“Kitchener Road ... 24 or 25 ... I forget which.”

“Well, it’s not far away. Somebody might go round and see. He may have
forgotten all about it.”

“I’ll go,” said Mr. Sly, the treasurer.

“I’ll come too,” said Miss Picksley, who had designs on Mr. Sly.

“We’ll all come,” chorused the Gunter girls.

“No, don’t,” said Miss Picksley. “We don’t want a crowd. It doesn’t
look nice.”

Through the refuse of a Friday evening’s marketing Mr. Sly and Miss
Picksley walked to Kitchener Road. They did not mind the walk They did
not even go the quickest way.

At No. 26 old father Jopson was standing at the front gate with his
monstrous goitre hanging down.

“It must be 24,” said Mr. Sly, “because this is 26.”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Picksley. She walked up to the porch of No. 24 and
knocked.

“Does Mr. Weston live here?” enquired Mr. Sly.

Jopson nodded profoundly.

“He must be out,” said Miss Picksley.

“Do you know if he’s out?” enquired Mr. Sly.

Jopson raised his eyes sagaciously.

“’E’s in, ’cos I seed ’im come in couple ’v ars ago, an’ I bin ’ere or
in the fron’-rum ever since.”

“Perhaps he’s in the garden.”

“’E don’t go in the gawden nardays.”

“Lives by himself, doesn’t he?”

“Yus, lives by ’imself.”

“I’m sure he must be out,” said Miss Picksley. As unostentatiously as
possible she peeped through the letter-box. (She was not quite certain
whether this was really a ladylike proceeding.)

“’E ain’t aout, ’relse I should ’a seen ’im go aout.”

“His hat and coat are on the hall-stand, too.... Perhaps he’s ill.”

“Try again. Maybe he was in the garden and didn’t hear the first
knocks.”

They tried again, but to no purpose. Eventually they went away in the
direction of Cubitt Lane.

“Nine o’clock,” said Miss Picksley. “Surely nobody’ll be waiting in the
schoolroom. I don’t think it’s much good going back.”

“Nor do I,” said Mr. Sly. “In fact, we might go for a walk....”

Miss Picksley did not object, so they strolled past the King’s Arms
into the Forest and forgot all about Mr. Weston and his promised paper
on William Shakespeare....




§ 8


On Saturday morning at half-past nine the rent-man came to No. 24,
Kitchener Road to collect his weekly seven-and-sixpence. His customary
treble knock begat no reply. Simultaneously he noticed the milk-can on
the step. It was full, and the conclusion was that Mr. Weston was still
in bed.

Never as long as the rent-man could remember (and that was a very long
time) had the household at No. 24 been asleep at 9.30 on a Saturday
morning.

He went his rounds and returned to No. 24 on his way home about ten
past one. The milk-can was still there on the step. Its solitude was
now shared by a loaf of bread which the baker had left. Receiving no
answer to his knocks, the rent-man went to No. 26. There the garrulous
Mrs. Jopson recounted the visit of the two callers on the previous
evening.

“They knocked an’ knocked an’ _knocked_, but couldn’t git no anser ... an’
my ’usband swears ’e ’adn’t seen ’im go aout.”

Eventually it was decided that the rent-man should climb over the fence
in Jopson’s back garden and effect an entrance into No. 24 by the back
way. Jopson, morbidly curious, was to go with him.

You picture this strange couple standing in the tiny back scullery of
No. 24, Jopson with his huge face-monstrosity all mottled and pink and
shining with sweat, and the rent-man sleek and dapper, fountain-pen
behind his ear, receipt-book stuffed in his side pocket.

“Gow on strite through,” said Jopson thickly, “it leads inter the
kitchin.”

Slowly and almost apprehensively the rent-man turned the handle....




CHAPTER VIII


POST-MORTEM

§ 1


IT seemed to Catherine the most curious thing in the world that she
should be sitting with George Trant inside a taxi. There was no light
inside, and only the distant glimmer of London came in through the
window. All was dim and dark and shadowy. Yet somewhere amongst these
shadows sat George Trant. Perhaps he was thinking that somewhere
amongst those shadows sat she, Catherine Weston.

A voice said out of the shadows: “We shan’t be long now.”

Catherine said: “How far are we going?”

“You’re going home ... to your lodgings, that is.... You fainted, I
suppose you know....”

“Did I?” And she thought: “He killed himself out of loneliness. He
couldn’t live without me. I am the cause, I am the reason.”

“Feeling all right now?”

“Oh yes ... must have been the excitement.”

“Probably.” His voice was cold, unsympathetic. She felt that he was
deliberately looking away from where he thought she was.

“You needn’t take me all the way, you know. I can walk from the
Ridgeway corner.”

“I shall take you all the way,” he said crisply.

With strange instinct she sensed his antagonism.

“I believe you’re angry with me,” she said. Yet all the while she was
thinking: “I suppose there’ll be an inquest and a big fuss and all
that. And the furniture and stuff will have to be sold.”

No answer.

“You are,” she repeated, and was surprised by her own persistence.
After all, she didn’t care twopence whether he was angry with her or
not. Only she would have been gratified if he _were_ angry with
her. It was something to come into a man’s life enough to make him
angry. And it was rather an amusing pastime, this flirting with George
Trant.

“Perhaps I am,” he said coldly.

“Why?” It would interest her to know why. At any rate she might as well
know why.

“You’ve disappointed me.”

That was all. It satisfied her. He had evidently been building ideals
around her. He had dreamed dreams in which she had been epic and
splendid and magnificent. He had thought of her sufficiently for her
to have the power of disappointing him. She was gratified. After all,
she did not like him, so there was no reason why she should mind
disappointing him. And he had paid her the subtle compliment of being
disappointed with her.

She did not particularly want to know how she had disappointed him. Yet
the conversation seemed incomplete without the question: “In what way?”

She could feel him turning round to face her.

“Various ways,” he said vaguely, but his tone seemed to invite her to
pursue the subject. For that very reason she kept silent. It was not a
matter of sufficient importance for her to ask the same question twice
over. And if he _did_ want her to repeat her question, that was
all the more reason for her not doing so.

After a moment’s silence he said: “You’ve changed a good deal since I
last knew you.”

“Yes, haven’t I?” There was an almost triumphant jauntiness in her
voice.

“And you haven’t changed for the better, either,” he went on.

“That’s what _you_ say.”

“Precisely. That’s what _I_ say.” He was trying to be sarcastic,
yet she knew that he was feeling acutely miserable. There was
something in his voice that told her he was feeling acutely miserable.
And she had no pity. She was even exhilarated. He was miserable
about her. In some way she was invested with the power of making him
miserable.

“Oh, I can’t tell you----” he began bitterly, and stopped.

A queer thrill went down her spine. For the first time in her life she
was conscious of the presence of passion in another person. It was
quite a novel experience, yet it called to mind that scene in the Duke
Street Methodist Schoolroom when she and Freddie McKellar had come to
blows.... A flash of realization swept over her. He was in love with
her. He was _really_ in love with her. She had so often wondered
and thought and speculated, and now she knew. His voice had become
transfigured, so to speak, out of passion for her. What a pity he could
not see her hair! She did not care for him one little bit. She knew
that now. She had not been quite certain before, but now, in the very
moment of realizing his love of her, she thought: “How funny, I believe
I really dislike him.... I don’t even want to flirt with him again.”

Yet she was immensely gratified that he had paid her the terrific
compliment of falling in love with her.

A sort of instinct warned her that she should deflect the conversation
into other channels. She was immensely interested in this curious
phenomenon, yet she feared anti-climax. He might try to kiss her and
grope round in the dark searching for her. That would be anti-climax.
And also (this came as a sudden shaft of realization) she did not want
him to kiss her. Many a time of late she had thought: “What shall I
do if he kisses me?” She had resigned herself to the possibility that
one day he might kiss her. She had been annoyed at his dalliance. “I
wish to goodness he’d do it, if he’s going to,” had been her frequent
thought, and she had provoked him subtly, cunningly, deliberately....
Now it came to her as an unwelcome possibility. She did not in the
least desire him to kiss her. She knew she would actively dislike it if
he did.

“Getting chilly,” she remarked nonchalantly, and she knew how such
an observation would grate upon him. She was fascinated by this new
miraculous power of hers to help or to hurt or to torture. Every word
she said was full of meaning to him: talking to him was infinitely more
subtle than ordinary conversation. It was this subtlety that partly
fascinated her. For instance, when she said, “Getting chilly,” she
meant, “We’ll change the subject. I know what you’re driving at, and I
don’t like it. It doesn’t please me a bit.” And what was more, she knew
that he would interpret it like that, and that he would feel all those
feelings which the expansion of her remark would have aroused.

“I’ll shut the window,” he said, and did so.

It was so subtle, this business, that his remarks, too, could be
interpreted. For instance, his words, “I’ll shut the window,” meant
really, “Is that so? Well, I guessed as much. You’re utterly heartless.
I shall have to resign myself to it, anyway. So, as you suggest, we’ll
change the subject.”

The taxi turned into the Bockley High Street.

Catherine was like a child with a new toy. And this toy was the most
intricate, complicated, and absorbingly interesting toy that had ever
brought ecstasy to its possessor. How strange that he should be in love
with her! How marvellous that there should be something strange and
indefinable in her that had attracted something strange and indefinable
in him!

And she thought, in spasms amidst her exhilaration: “Probably Ransomes
will sell the furniture for me.... He killed himself for me. I’m the
reason....”

It tickled her egoism that he should have done so. He must have done
so. It could only have been that.

Here was George Trant, head over heels in love with her. And here was
her father, stupid, narrow-minded, uncompromising bigot, yet committing
suicide because she had run away from home. She preferred to regard
herself as a runaway rather than as a castaway.

Truly she was developing into a very marvellous and remarkable
personage!...




§ 2


As she entered the side door of No. 14, Gifford Road at the improper
hour of three a.m., the thin voice of Mrs. Carbass called down the
stairs: “That you, Miss Weston?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a telegraph for you on the table....”

“Righto!” How jaunty! How delightfully nonchalant! As if one were used
to receiving telegrams! As if one were even used to arriving home at
three a.m.!

Catherine turned the tap of the gas, which had been left burning at
a pin-point in the basement sitting-room. Her hand must have been
unsteady, for she turned it out. That necessitated fumbling for
matches....

The telegram was addressed to the Upton Rising Cinema, and had been
handed in at Bockley Post Office some twelve hours before. It ran:

 Father had accident. Come at once.--MAY.

Now who was May?

After much cogitation Catherine remembered an Aunt May, her mother’s
sister, who lived at Muswell Hill. Catherine had seen her but once,
and that was on the occasion of her mother’s funeral. She had a vague
recollection of a prim little woman about fifty, with a high-necked
blouse and hair done up in a knob at the back.

Catherine decided to go as soon as possible the following day. She went
quietly to bed, but found it impossible to sleep. She was strangely
exhilarated. She felt like a public-school boy on the eve of the
breaking-up morning. New emotions were in store for her, and she,
the epicure, delighted in new and subtle emotions. Yet even with her
exhilaration there was a feeling of doubt, of misgiving, of uneasiness
as to the nature of her own soul. Was she really heartless? How was
it she had never grieved at her mother’s death? Try as she would, she
could not detect in her feelings for her father anything much more than
excitement, curiosity, amazement, even in a kind of way admiration, at
what he had done. She felt he had done something infinitely bigger
than himself. For the first time in her life she felt towards him
impersonally, as she might have done towards any stranger: “I should
like to have known that man.”

The exact significance of her attitude towards George Trant came
upon her. She was playing with him. She knew that. It was not so
much in revenge for what had happened long before; it was from sheer
uncontrollable ecstasy at wielding a new and incomprehensible power.
She would have played ruthlessly with any man who had been so weak and
misguided as to fall in love with her. She knew that perfectly well.
Therefore it was a good thing the man was George Trant, for at least in
his case she might conceivably justify herself. And yet she knew that
justifying herself had really nothing at all to do with the matter; she
knew that there was in her some mysterious impulse that prompted her to
do and to say things quite apart from any considerations of justice or
justification. Cruel? Yes, possibly.

She pondered.

No. She was _not_ cruel. If she heard a cat mewing in the street
she would scarcely ever pass it by. A child crying filled her with
vague depression. She was _not_ cruel. But she was immensely,
voraciously curious, a frantic explorer of her own and other people’s
emotions, a ruthless exploiter of dramatic possibilities. She had not
developed these traits by reading novels or seeing plays or any such
exterior means. They were inherent in herself.

Suddenly she remembered the note that had been given her that evening.
By the light of a candle she sat up in bed and tore open the thin,
purple-lined envelope.

She read:

 DEAR MADAM,

 Will you come and see me to-morrow (Sunday) at three p.m.,
 “Claremont,” the Ridgeway, Upton Rising?--Yrs., etc.,

                                                EMIL RAZOUNOV.

Razounov!

She actually laughed, a little silver ripple which she immediately
stifled on reflecting that Mrs. Carbass slept in the room below.

Razounov!

Truly she was developing into a very marvellous and remarkable
personage! ...




§ 3


The door of No. 24, Kitchener Road was opened by Mrs. Jopson.

“Do come in,” she began effusively. “I’ve jest bin clearin’ up a
bit....” Then she added mysteriously: “Of course, they’ve took ’im
away....”

Nothing had seemingly changed in the interior aspect of the house. Her
father’s overcoat and bowler hat hung sedately as ever upon the bamboo
hall-stand. The Collard and Collard piano presented its usual yellow
grin as she looked in through the parlour door. Catherine could not
explain this yellow grin: there had been something in the instrument’s
fretwork front with the faded yellow silk behind that had always
suggested to her a demoniac leer. Now it seemed to be leering worse
than ever.... The morning sunlight struck in through the drawn Venetian
blinds and threw oblique shadows over the grin. Every article in that
room Catherine knew almost personally. Even the unhorticultural flowers
on the carpet were something more to her than a mere pattern: they
were geographical, they held memories, they marked the topography of
her earliest days. And the mantelpiece was full of memories of seaside
holidays. A present from Southend, from Margate, from Felixstowe, a
photograph of Blackpool Tower framed in red plush, an ash-tray with the
Folkestone coat-of-arms upon it....

Mrs. Jopson related the story of the tragedy in careful detail. She
revelled in it as a boy may revel in a blood-and-thunder story. She
emphasized the mystery that surrounded the motives of the tragedy. He
had been getting livelier again. Everybody was noticing that. He had
been seen smoking his pipe in the Forest on a Sunday morning with the
complacency of one to whom life is an everlasting richness. He had
started taking out library books from the Carnegie library. He had even
had friends in his house--presumably colleagues from the Downsland Road
Council School. And he had bought a gramophone. That was the strangest
thing of all, perhaps. What on earth did he want with a gramophone?
At one time the gramophone had been his pet aversion. All music bored
him, but the sound of a gramophone used to call forth diatribes against
the degeneracy of the modern world.... And yet it was there, in the
tiny front parlour, with its absurdly painted tin horn sticking up in
the air and a record lying flat on the circular platform. The record
was one of a recent and not particularly brilliant ragtime. Catherine,
accustomed professionally to such things, knew it well. And Mrs.
Jopson said they had heard that ragtime night after night since he had
bought the gramophone. Sometimes it was played over and over again.
Really, Mr. Jopson had thought of complaining, only he did not wish to
interfere with Mr. Weston’s efforts to liven himself up....

When Mrs. Jopson departed and left Catherine alone in the familiar
house, the atmosphere changed. The very furniture seemed charged
with secrets--secrets concerning the manner in which Mr. Weston had
spent his evenings. Whether he had gone out much, or read books or
merely moped about. Only the gramophone seemed anxious to betray its
information, and the tin horn, cocked up at an absurdly self-confident
angle, had the appearance of declaring: “Judge from me what sort of a
man he was. I was nearly the last thing he troubled about. I am the
answer to one at least of his cravings.” From the gramophone Catherine
turned to the writing-desk. That at any rate guarded what it knew with
some show of modesty. It was full of papers belonging to Mr. Weston,
but they all seemed to emphasize the perfect normality of his life.
Algebra papers marked and unmarked, catalogues of educational book
publishers, odd cuttings from newspapers, notes from parents asking
that children should be allowed to go home early, printed lists of
scholarship candidates, and so forth. Everything to show that Mr.
Weston had gone on living pretty much as he had been accustomed.
Everything to make it more mysterious than ever why he should suddenly
cut his throat while shaving. Catherine was puzzled. She had been
constructing a grand tragedy round this pitifully insignificant man;
under the stimulating influence of her own imagination she had already
begun to sympathize; doubtless if her imagination had discovered
anything substantial to feed on she might have ended by passionate
affection for her own dead father. Several times recently she had
been on the verge of tears, not for him personally, but out of vague
sympathy with the victim of a poignant tragedy. For to her it did
indeed seem a poignant tragedy that a man so weak, so fatuous as he
was should be left entirely alone at a time when he most needed the
companionship of someone stronger. She did not in the least regret
leaving him. That was inevitable. He wanted to boss the show. He was so
pitifully weak, so conscious of weakness that he manufactured a crisis
rather than yield on what he regarded as a crucial point. Afterwards,
no doubt, he had regretted his hastiness. Yet that strange interview on
the train to Liverpool Street seemed incapable of being fitted in....
Catherine had often thought of him sorrowing, regretting, mourning. She
had regarded his suicide as a tragic confirmation of his misery. And
now the interior of his writing-desk seemed to say: “Oh, he was much
the same--you’d scarcely have noticed any difference in him.” And the
gramophone chuckled and declared: “As a matter of fact the old chap was
beginning to have rather a good time....”

In a drawer beneath the desk she discovered his pocket diaries. Every
night before retiring it had been his custom to fill a space an inch
deep and two inches across with a closely written pencilled commentary
on the day’s events. For ten, twelve, fifteen--perhaps twenty years
he had done this. Catherine turned over the pages of one of them at
random. They contained such items as: “Sweet peas coming up well. Shall
buy some more wire-netting for them.... Clotters away at a funeral. Did
his registers for him.... Gave paper on ‘Tennyson’ to Mutual Impr.
Soc. Have been asked to speak at Annual Temperance Social....” Nearly
all the entries were domestic, or connected with Mr. Weston’s labours
in the school, the chapel or the garden. Catherine searched anxiously
for any mention of herself. There were not many. Sometimes a chance
remark such as: “C. came with me to chapel ...” or “C. out to tea.” And
once the strange entry: “C. been misbehaving. But I think L. knows the
right way to manage her.” (L. was, of course, Laura, his wife.) ...

Catherine looked up the entry for November 17th, the day on which she
had left Kitchener Road. It ran: “Clotters away again this morning. Had
to take IVA in mensuration. Feel very tired. Cold wind. Did
not go to night-school.”

That was all! No mention of her!

And on the day he met her in the train to Liverpool Street he wrote:
“Warm spring sort of day. Went to Ealing to see Rogers. Rogers
got a job under the L.C.C. Two boys and a girl. Mrs. R. rather
theatrical....” And in the corner, all cramped up, as if he had stuck
it in as a doubtful after-thought: “Met C. in train to L’pool St. Seems
well enough.”

Grudging, diffident, self-reproachful, sardonic, that remark--“Seems
well enough.” With the emphasis no doubt on the “seems.”

Lately the entries had been getting more sprightly.

“Met Miss Picksley to-day. Promised her a paper on W. Shakespeare for
the Mut. Impr. Soc....” “Walked to High Wood after chapel. Beautiful
moonlight. Saw motor-bus collision in B. High St. coming back....”
“Bought gramophone sec. hand off Clayton. £2 10. Like a bit of music.
No piano now, of course....”

“Of course.”

Catherine was immensely puzzled by that entry. She realized its pathos,
its tragic reticence, its wealth of innuendo, yet she could not
conceive his feelings when setting it down. For he had never taken any
pleasure in her “strumming,” as he called it. He had accused her of
interrupting his work. He had said: “Not quite so much noise, please.
Shut both doors....” And sometimes he had hinted darkly: “I don’t know
whether it’s you or the piano, but----” And yet he had missed those
piano noises. Vaguely, perhaps almost unconsciously, yet sufficiently
to make him conquer a carefully nurtured hatred of the gramophone.
The gramophone, viewed in the light of this new discovery, was the
tangible, incontrovertible evidence of his sense of loss. He had missed
her. He had been lonely. He had wanted her to come back. And because of
that he had bought a gramophone.

Catherine felt the presence of tragedy. Yet the ingredients
were all wrong. Gramophone buying, even in the most extravagant
circumstances, does not lend itself to sophistication. And yet, that
gramophone--absurd, insignificant, farcical though its presence
was--was the evidence of tragedy. Once more Catherine’s melodramatic
ideals crumbled. Her artistic sense was hurt by the deep significance
of that gramophone. She felt a gramophone had no right to be the only
clue she had to the tragedy of her own father. She felt humiliated.
And then for a swift moment a passion swept over her. The false ideals
collapsed into ruins, the sham sentiment, no less a sham because it
was not the sham sentiment of other people, the morbid seeking after
emotional effect, the glittering pursuit of dramatic situations,
tumbled into dust and were no longer worth while. Nothing was left in
her save a sympathy that was different from anything she had previously
called sympathy, something that overwhelmed her like a flood. It was
a pleasurable sensation, this sympathy, and afterwards she tried to
analyse the sweet agony it had wrought in her. But at the time she
did not realize either its pleasure or its pain, and that is the
truest testimony that it was something more real and sincere than she
had felt before. Tears welled up in her eyes--tears that she did not
strive either to summon or to repress, tears that were the natural,
spontaneous outpouring of something in her that she knew nothing
about. She did not think in her egoistical, self-analysing way: “What
a strange emotion I am experiencing!” She thought kaleidoscopically of
her childhood and girlhood, and of one particular evening when her
father had crept into her room at night and asked her to kiss him.
It was terrible to remember that she had replied: “Oh, go away! ...”
Terrible! All her life it seemed to her that her attitude towards him
had been--“Oh, go away! ...” And now he had gone away out of her reach
for ever. She sat down in front of the writing-desk with the diary
in front of her and cried. She cried passionately, as a child who is
crying because by his own irrevocable act something has been denied
him. She bowed her head in her hands and gave herself up to an orgy of
remorse. She was truly heartbroken.

For a little while.

The transience of her brokenheartedness may be gauged by the fact that
on her way home she was strangely elated by a single thought. That
thought--occurring to her some half-way down the Ridgeway--was begotten
of her old ruthless habit of self-analysis. “I’m not heartless,” she
told herself. “I can’t be. Nobody could have acted as I did who hadn’t
got a heart. I believe I’ve got as much heart as anybody, really....”

She was rather proud of the tears she had shed.... Delicious to have
such proof that she was a human being! Reassuring to find in herself
the essential humanities she had at times doubted. Comforting to think
that tragedy could move her to sympathy that was more than merely
æsthetic.... Splendid to know that deep down in her somewhere there was
a fount of feeling which she could not turn off and on at will like a
water-main....




CHAPTER IX


NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

§ 1


“CLAREMONT,” the Ridgeway, was a corner detached house well set back
from the road. A high evergreen hedge impeded the view from the
footpath, and a curving carriage drive overhung with rhododendron
bushes hid all suggestion of a house until the last possible moment.
Then all that you saw was a tiny porch and a panorama of low-hanging
eaves, diamond window-panes and russet-brown roofs of immense
steepness. A telephone bracket affixed to one of the rafters and
an electric bell in the porch convinced you that all this parade
of antiquarianism was really the most aggressive modernity. A
motor-garage, suitably disguised, stood at one side of the house.
Behind was a vista of tennis-courts, conservatories, and an Italian
pergola.

Beneath the tiny porch in the middle of a hot Sunday afternoon
Catherine paused and pressed the button of the bell. She was excited.
Her visit savoured of the miraculous. This was the house of the famous
Emil Razounov The famous Emil Razounov had arranged this appointment to
meet her. She was actually ringing the bell of Emil Razounov’s house.
In another minute she and Emil Razounov would be face to face.

A maid opened the door. “What name, please?” she asked pertly, and
Catherine replied.

Catherine passed into a wide hall, furnished with all sorts of queer
furniture that she contrasted mentally with the bamboo hall-stand and
the circular barometer that had graced the hall of No. 24, Kitchener
Road. At one side a door was half open, and through this Catherine was
ushered into what was apparently the front room of the house.

It was a long, low-roofed apartment, with dark panelling along the
walls and rafters across the ceiling. The furniture was sparse, but
bore signs of opulence: there were several huge leather armchairs and a
couple of settees. Apart from these there was nothing in the room save
a small table littered with music in manuscript, and a full-size grand
piano. At first Catherine thought the room was unoccupied, but two
winding coils of smoke rising upwards from two of the armchairs--the
backs of which were towards her--seemed to proclaim the presence of men.

“Miss Weston,” announced the maid, and closed the door behind her.

One of the coils of smoke gyrated from the perpendicular. This
was the preliminary to a slow creaking of one of the armchairs. A
figure rose from the depths, and its back view was the first that
Catherine saw of it. It was tall, attired in a light tweed jacket,
grey flannel trousers, and carpet slippers of a self-congratulatory
hue. Altogether, it was most disreputable for a Sabbath afternoon.
It was difficult to recognize in this the spruce, well-groomed man
of the world who had pushed his way into the Forest Hotel on the
previous night. Yet Catherine did recognize him, and was rather
astonished at her own perception in so doing. He faced her with the
graceless langour of one who has just got out of bed at an early
hour. Yet in his extreme ungainliness perhaps there was a certain
charm. And as for his face--Catherine decided that it was not only
lacking in positive good looks, but was also well endowed with
extremely negative characteristics. To begin with, the lie of his
features was not symmetrical. His hair was black and wiry, lustreless
and devoid of interest. The whole plan and elevation of his face
was so unconventional that he would probably have passed for being
intellectual....

He bowed to her slightly. There was no doubt of his ability to bow.
Whether he were ungainly or not, his bowing was so elegant as to savour
of the professional. It was consciously a performance of exquisite
artistry, as if he were thinking: “I know I’m ugly, but I’ve mastered
the art of bowing, anyway. Put me in evening clothes, and I’ll pass for
an ambassador or a head-waiter.”

He did not offer his hand.

“Ah,” he said, “M’sieur Razounov will be ready in a moment. Please take
a seat.”

Catherine sat down in one of the easy chairs. From this position she
could see that another chair contained the recumbent form of Emil
Razounov. He was reading a Sunday paper and taking occasional puffs
at a large cigar. Catherine had heard much gossip about Razounov’s
eccentricities, yet compared with his companion he seemed to her to
be disappointingly ordinary. For several moments the two men sat in
silence, while Catherine made ruthless mental criticisms. She was
piqued at the lack of enthusiasm accorded her.

Suddenly Emil Razounov spoke. The voice came from the depths of the
chair like a female voice out of a gramophone horn. It was almost
uncanny.

“I say, Verreker, hass not the young lady come?”

The man addressed as Verreker replied somewhat curtly: “Oh yes, she’s
here.”

“Zhen perhaps she weel go to the piano and play.”

Catherine left her chair and went to the instrument. Before sitting
down she took off her hat--which was a species of tam-o’-shanter--and
placed it on the table beside the piano. She did this from two reasons:
first, she did not feel comfortable with it on; and second, she was
proud of her hair, and conscious that it was the most impressive thing
about her.

“What shall I play?” she asked nonchalantly. She could not help
betraying her annoyance at her unceremonious reception.

There was a pause. It seemed almost as if both men were struck
dumb with astonishment at her amazing question. Then Verreker said
carelessly, as if it were a matter of no consequence at all: “Oh,
whatever you like.” She took several moments to adjust the music-stool
to her final satisfaction and prepare for playing. The time was
useful to decide what she should play. Strange that she should not
have decided before! She had decided before, as a matter of fact: she
had decided to play some Debussy. But since entering the room she had
changed her mind. She would play Chopin.

She played “Poland is Lost.” She played it well, because she was
feeling defiant. She played with the same complete disrespect for her
audience as had won her the first prize at the musical eisteddfod.
Where she wanted to bang, she banged. She did not care that she was
in a low-roofed dining-room and not a concert hall. She did not care
if she pleased or displeased them. They were contemptuous of her: she
would be contemptuous of them. The result was that she was not in the
least nervous. Yet when she had struck the last note she could not help
remarking to herself: “I _did_ play that well. They _must_
have been rather impressed.”

An awkward pause ensued. Then Verreker said very weakly: “Thank you.”
His “thank you” was almost ruder than if he had said nothing at all.

“Well?” said Razounov.

Catherine thought he was speaking to her. She was meditating something
in reply when Verreker spoke, showing that the word had been addressed
to him. A feeling of exquisite relief that she had not spoken came over
her.

“She oughtn’t to play Chopin,” remarked Verreker.

“No,” agreed Razounov.

Catherine’s face reddened. It was the subtle innuendo of their remarks
that hurt her. Also, by all the standards she had learnt at the
Bockley High School for Girls there was something impolite in their
criticizing her coolly in the third person as if she were not present.
She resented it. She was not a stickler for etiquette, but she would
not be insulted. “I don’t care who they are,” she thought rebelliously,
“they’ve no right to treat me like that. I’m as good as they are, every
bit!”

A long pause seemed to intensify the sinister significance of their
previous remarks.

“Look here,” cried Catherine, breaking in raucously upon the silence,
“why don’t you tell me straight out I can’t play?”

After she had said it she regretted her hastiness. She perceived it was
a foolish thing to say. She blushed fiercely.

Verreker raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Razounov beamed
beatifically.

“My dear lady,” he began caressingly, “I will be perfectly fhrank with
you. Eet is best to be fhrank, is eet not? ... You will neffer be a
first-class player. Perrhaps a second, ohr a third, pairhaps you may
eahrn plenhty of money at eet, but you will never be a--you know what
I mean--a ghreat--a suphreme pianiste.” (He meant obviously: “You will
never be what I am.”) ... “Why? ... Ah, I cannot tell. Why is zhe
ghreat gift given to sohm and not to othairs? ... Eet is that you haf
not it in you, that zohmsing, that spark that is cault ghenius ... you
understand?”

Catherine understood. But she could not disguise her humiliation, her
mortification, her disappointment.

“Do you agree with me, Verreker?” asked Razounov, as if desiring
confirmation of his verdict.

Verreker said curtly: “I don’t profess to prophesy these things. Still,
in this case, I believe you’re right.”

That was worse! There was something contemptuous in those words, “in
this case.” Catherine hated him.

“Still,” purred Razounov, “you would improve with a course of
instruction. You will make a good player if you are careful. I cannot
give you lessons myself, as I am engaged all my time, but I will
supervise. And Mr. Verreker will gif you a lesson once a week. Efery
month I will supervise. Is zhat plain?”

Catherine could not answer. She was struggling with tears. The second
time that day that tears had troubled her. Yet what a different variety
of tears! These were tears of rage and disappointment, of blinding
disillusionment, of sullen mortification. She dare not trust herself
to reply. If she had attempted a word she would have been caught in a
maelstrom of burning indignation.

“I will drop you a card when I can give you a first lesson,” said
Verreker, quietly.... “Well ... er ... thank you for coming ...”

Catherine took the hint and put on her hat. She did not say a word as
she left the room. But her eyes were furiously blazing: there was in
them that danger glint of which Verreker, if he had seen it, would have
done well to beware.

Out in the Ridgeway, Catherine decided one thing. She would never take
lessons off Verreker; she would never go near that house again....




§ 2


The fierceness of her indignation brought Catherine face to face with
one other thing that she had never hitherto realized. And that was
the absurd grandiloquence of her ambition. There was nothing that
Razounov has said of which she could legitimately complain. He had
even complimented her to the extent of saying that she would make a
good player if she were careful, and that she might earn plenty of
money as a pianist. Surely that was encouraging! ... No, it was not.
For he had also told her that she was not a genius, and would never be
supreme in her art. Well, what of that? Had she ever had the conceited
effrontery to think she _was_ a genius? Catherine decided no, not
exactly that, but ... The fact was, Catherine, without knowing it, had
inclined to give herself the benefit of the doubt. At any rate, she had
always been serenely confident of the doubt. Quite unconsciously she
had developed an opinion of herself to which there were no adequate
frontiers. She was a supreme egoist, and her life had come to be
worth living only on false understandings. Every book she read, every
speech or sermon she listened to, occasioned in her the feeling:
“How does that fit in with me?” At a school prize-giving once the
speaker--a local vicar--had given an address to the scholars in which
he mentioned the three things which a human being might legitimately
desire--fine physique, genius, and strength of character. When he came
to the consideration of the second, he said: “Of course, we’re none
of us geniuses, but----” Catherine (she was only fourteen then) had
been rather contemptuous of this modesty, “Of course, I suppose he
_has_ to say that, and yet how does he know whether ...” she had
thought. To her his sweeping declaration savoured of the rash. It had
been the same on many occasions. Somewhere at the back of Catherine’s
mind had always been the supposition, so patent as to be almost
axiomatic, that she was different from other people. That difference
was, on the whole, the difference of superiority. She had done things
that no other girl of her age and acquaintance had done. She had left
home with five and sevenpence half-penny, obtained lodgings on her own,
and kept herself by work. She had played at concerts (one concert to
be precise). A young man who, whatever his drawbacks, was undeniably
clever, had fallen desperately in love with her. Her own father, pining
of remorse, had cut his throat to prove to her his undying affection.
And the invitation to meet Razounov had at first seemed merely a
further rung on the ladder of fame. There was no doubt about it: she
was marvellous, extraordinary, a constant surprise both to herself and
to other people. Her very faults became demi-virtues. Passionate she
felt herself to be. After reading _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ her
instinctive thought had been: “Am I like Tess?” And she had frequently
asked herself the question: “Am I a genius?” and had shirked a plain
answer. The crudity of the question, the awful conceit of replying in
the affirmative, drove her to subterfuge. “Not exactly that, perhaps,”
she told herself. “At least, how can I tell? I shall have to wait and
see. I can’t give a direct answer.” Yet if she had been forced to give
a direct answer, there is no doubt what it would have been.

And now, disillusioned, humiliated, self-scornful, the preposterous
nature of her ambitions forced itself upon her. For the space of half
an hour she was perfectly frank with herself. She did not spare that
pitiable self-conceit of hers. She was ruthless. It was as if she
thought that if she could wound that self-conceit so that it died of
its injuries, so much the better. She employed first of all the cold
steel of logic. The facts were these. She had been told frankly that
she was not a genius. She was hurt and humiliated. Ergo, she must have
been cherishing the notion that she was a genius. Absurd creature!
Preposterous egoist! Conceited upstart! And all because she had played
at a third-rate concert!

She wound up with a bitter piece of advice. You aren’t a genius, she
insisted, you’re just an ordinary girl with as much extraordinariness
in her as falls to the lot of most people. And the sooner you finish
with your absurd dreams and ambitions and wake up to the facts the
better.

It was good advice. She tried conscientiously to take it. She did take
it--for about five and twenty minutes.

But those five and twenty minutes were among the most difficult and
miserable she had ever spent.

She flung herself down on the bed in the attic at No. 14, Gifford Road,
and was so wretched that she could not cry. Besides, she was convinced
that there was nothing she had a right to cry about. Yet it was the
utter horror, the unbelievable loneliness of existence that appalled
her. She was quite alone in her struggle with the world, parentless,
almost friendless. She knew now why it was that she had not mourned
the loss of her parents, why it was that her solitary struggle had
been up to then so exhilarating, so pleasant. It was that absurd faith
in herself, that fearful egoism, that terrible conceit, that had
enabled her to fight on alone. And now her succour, her comfort, her
support had suddenly cracked and given way, and she was left clinging
to wreckage. The future was simply blank, a dull, drab hereafter of
self-effacement. Life was not worth living. For the first time in all
her life she felt alone--alone with the wreckage of dead dreams and
shattered hopes....

“O God!” she cried, “if I’m only ordinary after all! ...”

Horror upon horror! To think of Gifford Road, of the Victoria Theatre,
without the conviction that these were but a means to something
infinitely higher! Her ultimate triumph provided the only terms on
which life amongst these things was worth living! To think of herself
as a mere unit in the society that lived in Kitchener Road, Bockley,
in Gifford Road, Upton Rising! To deny herself the privilege of
thinking what a good joke it was that she should have been born in
Kitchener Road! To realize suddenly that it was no joke at all, but an
ordinary, not inappropriate circumstance in which she had no right to
discover any irony at all. To regard herself as she knew Mrs. Carbass
regarded her, viz. as “the little girl wot plys the pienner at the
theayter.”

That was where her ruthless self-mutilation overreached itself. She
knew she was not as Mrs. Carbass regarded her. Even if she were
ordinary, she was not as ordinary as that. With feverish joy she
clutched at this undeniable admission.... Slowly her spirits rose
out of utter dejection. Cautiously at first, then with extravagant
recklessness, she flung together the wreckage that had fallen. At
the end of five minutes a phantom thought flashed by her--a swift,
entrancing, wayward, delicious, undisciplined, seductive idea. It
was like a breath of heaven upon her darkened soul. It whispered:
“Supposing Razounov is wrong? ... After all, why the dickens should he
be right? ...”




§ 3


One effect the sudden (but only temporary) shattering of her ambitions
had upon her. It redoubled afterwards her efforts to achieve them. She
increased the number of hours devoted to practice. She even made some
attempt to get through an elementary book on harmony and counterpoint.

And strangely enough, of all the composers whose works she attempted
none nerved her to such a fever of determination as Chopin. For she had
been told she oughtn’t to play Chopin....

On the Wednesday following a card reached her, addressed to the
Victoria Theatre. It simply said:

 Come at two o’clock on Saturday.

                                                  R. VERREKER.

The writing was sharply angular, rivalling the phrasing in curtness.
Nevertheless, Catherine had expected curtness. Of course she was not
going to go. She had long ago decided that. As if to symbolize her
contempt, she tore up the card and threw it into the gutter as she left
the theatre. After all, what was the use of keeping it, since she was
not going to go?

All through the remainder of the week she kept fortifying her
determination not to go. And yet dimly, in some strange intuitive
fashion, at the back of her mind she felt that it was quite possible
she _would_ go. I won’t go, she told herself one moment. Bet you
you _do_ go, after all.... She was surprised, almost fascinated
by this charming waywardness of hers. Anyway, she decided, it’s quite
a simple matter to settle: I won’t go. I wonder, she said to herself,
smiling.

As a matter of fact she did _not_ go. But it was from an absurdly
accidental reason. She was strolling along the Ridgeway soon after
lunch on Saturday when she suddenly reflected that she did not know
what time he wished to see her. Was it two o’clock or three? She failed
to remember, and of course the postcard had been thrown away. At two
o’clock she felt she would not run the risk of being an hour too early.
Something in her suggested half-past two as a compromise; but when the
half-hour chimed she decided that since that would be wrong in any
case she had better wait till three. And at three she felt sure that
his card had said two, so she went back to Gifford Road. In a way she
was pleased with herself. She had kept her word. She had not gone. The
narrowness of her victory seemed to emphasize its magnitude.

At the theatre that evening an introductory film was shown. It dealt
with the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Something in Catherine impelled
her to play “Poland is Lost.” ...




§ 4


On Monday a letter arrived at the theatre for her. The angular script
on the envelope told her who had written it. It ran:

 I presume you forgot on Saturday. If so, come on Wednesday at seven
 p.m.

                                                  R. VERREKER.

Catherine was conscious that the struggle was not yet over. On the
contrary, it was beginning again. The issue was not, Did she want to go
or not? It was, Should she keep the vow she had made to herself? She
made a great fuss over weighing both sides of this crucial problem, yet
she knew it was a foregone conclusion what the result would be. Then
she decided she was giving the matter a place out of all proportion to
its importance. After all, it was of little consequence whether she
went or not. She would wait till Wednesday, and do just what she felt
like at the time.

Then she pondered over the precise significance of his phrase “if
so.” Did he suspect that her absence on Saturday was not due to
forgetfulness?




§ 5


At the inquest on Mr. Weston the usual verdict was brought in: “Suicide
during temporary insanity.”

Catherine found herself in possession of a houseful of cheap furniture
and a sum of twenty odd pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank. She
retained a small quantity of clothing and a few kitchen utensils; the
rest of the stuff at 24, Kitchener Road was sold by auction. It fetched
fifty-five pounds when all expenses had been deducted. She had a horror
of hoarding vast quantities of lumber in the form of keepsakes and
mementoes, so she destroyed everything that had no intrinsic value
except the diaries Those she transported to Gifford Road and kept.

After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by a sum
of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the sixty in
a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit by her
father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it might as well
be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some pretty dresses.
For the first time in her life she could afford to put the question,
“Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She experienced the
keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than from the strictly
utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in “mourning”: her
first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair, and white to throw
her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair that had to be
considered....

When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her pretty,
but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness....




CHAPTER X


ACCELERANDO

§ 1


SHE waited fully ten minutes in the drawing-room at “Claremont.” “Mr.
Verreker will be here directly,” the maid had said, and Catherine had
time to look about her. It was a lovely May evening: the windows were
wide open at the bottom, and from the garden came the rich cloying
scent of wallflowers. Somebody was working a lawn-mower.

He came in two minutes after the sound of the lawn-mower had ceased.
There were scraps of grass about the fringes of his trousers.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced briskly.

“Don’t mention it,” she murmured, with perhaps a trace of sarcasm.

“I oughtn’t to, really, ought I?” he then said, “since you kept me
waiting an hour last Saturday.”

She said nothing, but the atmosphere was definitely hostile.

He asked her what pieces she played. She told him. He took a sheet of
paper, and scribbled them down as she recited them. He made no comment
till she had said, “and a few others.”

“Ambitious!” he muttered, pondering over the list.

“Oh yes, I am, very.” She thought she would seize this opportunity of
letting him know.

“Well, play the Debussy,” he said.

She did so.

“H’m!” he said, when she had finished.




§ 2


After he had told her her faults (which took some time) and given her
something definite to practise, the hour was nearly up, and he gave
sundry indications that the lesson was finished.

“By the way,” he said, as she was on the way to the door, “_did_
you forget last Saturday?”

She might easily have said yes. Or she might have told the strict
truth, viz. that she had forgotten the hour he had fixed. But she did
neither.

“No,” she said, “I just didn’t come.”

He looked at her very much as Miss Forsdyke had looked at her when she
had been impudent.

“Oh!” he replied, with a gesture that might have meant anything. “Well,
the next time you intend to ’cut’ one of my lessons, drop me a card
beforehand, then I shan’t be kept waiting for you. My time’s valuable.”

Curt!

And as she passed the table in the hall he suddenly gathered up a heap
of some dozen letters, and said: “By the way, you might shove these in
the pillar-box down the road as you go by.”

Before she realized the situation the letters were in her hands.

“Thanks!” he replied, opening the front door. “Good evening!”

If she had had the presence of mind she would have flung them all back
at him. “I’m not your office-boy,” she might have said.

But presence of mind did not come to her till she was half-way down the
Ridgeway.

She occupied her time as far as the pillar-box by reading the addresses
on all the envelopes....




§ 3


Slowly the perspectives of her life were changing. The old childish
ideas and prejudices ceased to apply. In the matter of George Trant,
for instance....

It is curious, but the more she realized that she was not in love
with him, the more she realized also his essential good nature. At
one time he had been a villain of undepictable blackness, and now,
in the reaction from this melodramatic ideal, he appeared perhaps
more favourably than he deserved. At any rate, he was to all intents
a perfectly honest, well-intentioned young fellow, slightly clever
and of prepossessing manner. Whether he had changed, or whether she
herself had changed, Catherine could not with certainty decide. But
their attitude was fundamentally different from what it had been when
Catherine had met him at Bockley Station after her domestic squall.
Then he had appeared to her malignant, cruel, desirous of entrapping
all innocent girls that came his way. He had been the real villain of
the piece. Now it seemed incredible that she could ever have taken
him so seriously. For he was a very ordinary young man. The glamour
had fallen away from him--that glamour which might have made him a
hero, but which, by irony of circumstances, had made him a villain
instead. Catherine perceived that it was only her crude idealism that
had invested him with Satanic characteristics. She had not a shred of
evidence to convict him of ill-treatment of her. The famous note which
he had sent her from Manchester, and which she had read on the top of
a crowded tram-car, had unfortunately been sacrificed to the dramatic
requirements of the situation, but Catherine, only half remembering
its contents, had a feeling that if she were to read them in the
perspective of several years they would seem wholly inadequate to
justify the profound significance she had given them.

It was apparent now to her that George was hopeless as a villain. He
said cynical things occasionally, but that was only an affectation. In
reality he was a typical example of the rather superior season-ticket
holder. His utmost criminality would not transcend the riding of a
bicycle without a rear light....

Of course his position was immensely complicated by the fact that he
had fallen in love with her....




§ 4


One day (they had met upon the platform at Upton Rising Station) she
tackled him directly.

“Look here,” she said, “you remember that letter you wrote me from
Manchester? You enclosed it in Helen’s letter. _Do_ you remember
it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What did you mean by it?”

He seemed puzzled.

“Well, it’s a long time ago, and I scarcely remember what it was
like.... I dare say it was rather fatuously clever: I used to think
myself a dab hand at letter-writing in those days.”

That was as reasonable an explanation as she could have expected. She
switched on to another line of questioning.

“You remember that time we were on the balcony at the Forest
Hotel--just before the others came up?”

“Yes.”

“You--I believe--you were trying to apologize to me--for something.
Now, what was it?”

He seemed embarrassed as well as puzzled.

“Well,” he began hesitatingly, “of course I may have been
wrong--probably I was--but I always understood--I mean I had gathered
that--that there had been a sort of--er, misunderstanding between us.”

“Why should you apologize for that?”

“Well, if there had been one it might have been my own fault. So I
thought I’d apologize----”

“From whom did you gather there had been a misunderstanding?”

“I believe it was Helen who----”

“Oh, I see.”

He emboldened himself to start a cross-examination of her.

“May I ask if there ever was a misunderstanding?” he said.

Catherine lied, splendidly, regally, with magnificent disdain. It
was clearly an opportunity to demonstrate (to herself chiefly) how
completely the tables had been turned.

“I’m sure I don’t know what the misunderstanding you’ve been talking
about is or was supposed to be. But so far as I am aware there never
was such a thing.”

He tried to grasp all the significations of this. Then he resumed the
enquiry.

“Why have you been asking me about these things?”

“Merely curiosity,” she replied, with an undercurrent of implication
which said: “Do you suppose for one moment that my reasons could have
been any other than those of mere curiosity?”

Yet he wilfully ignored the implication. All day in the stuffy
accountant’s office in Leadenhall Street he kept pausing in his work
and treating himself to the riotous luxury of the thought: “I don’t
believe it _was_ curiosity. Why should she have asked about
that letter? And besides, Helen sticks to it she was in love with
me in those days! After all, it’s extremely unlikely it was only
curiosity.... Of course, she had to say it was. She couldn’t easily
have said anything else. At least ...”

So that the position was really complicated instead of being cleared
up. And Catherine’s lie was perhaps excusable. That people should
fall in love with her was natural enough, but that she should display
a similar weakness was extremely undignified, to say the least. And
besides, she was not even sure she _had_ been in love with George
Trant. Was not there in her an instinct which had said (in effect, if
not in so many words): “This is mere sentimental flapdoodle. Wallow as
much as you like in its painful ecstasy, but don’t imagine for a moment
that it’s the real stuff ...?”




§ 5


George Trant was a member of the Upton Arts Club.

In the room over Burlington’s Music Emporium the Upton Arts Club met on
Sunday evenings at 8.30.

One Sunday during the discussion following a paper on “Cézanne and the
Modernists,” George drawled sleepily from his arm-chair by the fire:

“Of course, as a staunch Conservative in politics, I----” A startled
hush fell upon the assembly. “Disraelian, I need hardly say,” he added,
and the amazement was more profound....




§ 6


George Trant was also a member of the Upton Rising Conservative and
Unionist Association.

The Upton Rising Conservative and Unionist Association existed from 8
a.m. till 12 midnight every day for the purpose of playing billiards,
drinking whisky, and reading sporting newspapers. Occasionally its
members would talk politics. It was on one of these comparatively rare
occasions (the topic was Mr. Lloyd George’s Land Tax) that George
announced quietly from behind his evening paper:

“Of course, as a convinced Socialist in the matter of landed property,
I----” The elderly white-whiskered gentlemen were thrilled. “Not
Marxian, I need scarcely add,” resumed George placidly, and the
conviction grew that George Trant was a very strange young man.

The Disraelian Conservative and un-Marxian Socialist acquired the
reputation of being somewhat bewilderingly clever.... The _Bockley
Advertiser_ reported in full his secondings of votes of thanks. The
Arts Club were proud to hear his exposition of “Ibsen: the Man and
the Prophet.” It was in the days when to read Ibsen was to be modern.
And the Conservative Club were never more conscious of their brazen
Philistinism than when he talked to them easily of Scriabin and Ravel
and César Franck.

“And of course one must not forget the Spanish School. There is a great
tendency to ignore the Spanish School nowadays. But it’s wholly unfair.
Such men as ... for instance.”

Even in politics he could be mystifyingly erudite. A reference to
Jeremy Bentham or Ricardo or Huskisson would floor them absolutely...

“Queer chap,” was their verdict. “Must read a lot, I suppose....” And,
content with that explanation, they resumed their billiards or their
whisky or their _Pink ’Un_....




§ 7


It happened that upon a certain bright morning in August a smart
motor-cycle with side-car attachment went teuf-teufing along the high
road in the direction of the Forest. The side-car was occupied by a
girl with violently red hair, and the whole installation was manœuvred
by an individual in mackintosh overalls, who was (although you might
never have guessed it by looking at him) a Disraelian Conservative and
an un-Marxian Socialist....

Catherine, incidentally, was riding in a side-car for the first time in
her life.

George, incidentally, was driving a motor-cycle, if not for the first
time, at any rate for the third or fourth time in his life. The machine
was brand-new. One or two lessons on a friend’s motor-bike (to which
there was no side-car) had convinced George that he was capable of
taking a young lady for a hundred miles’ spin in the country without
undue risks. Accordingly, he had purchased a machine out of the
accumulated savings of several years, and had written to Catherine the
following note:

 DEAR CATHIE,

 I have just bought a motor-bike and side-car. I shall run it round a
 bit next Saturday, if fine, and should be pleased to take you if you
 care to come.

And when he had met her (by arrangement) at the corner of the Ridgeway,
he had said, offhand:

“You see, there must be somebody in the side-car or else you don’t give
the thing a fair chance.”

And the implication was: “You are nothing but ballast, my dear girl; a
sack of potatoes would have done just as well, only you are more easily
procurable.”

Somehow the beautiful shining enamelled creature bristling with taps
and levers and handles made him talk with a cultivated brusqueness.
It was as if the machine occupied the first place in his attentions
and she came next. At the moment this may very likely have been true.
She seated herself snugly in the torpedo-shaped car, and watched him
manipulate levers and buttons. He looked very strong and masculine
in his overalls. For several minutes he tried in vain to induce a
liveliness in the engine. The policeman on point duty at the corner
(who knew Catherine) smiled; some street urchins shouted facetious
remarks. After five minutes of intense examination he pounced upon an
apparently vulnerable part of the mechanism and performed a subtle
and invisible operation. Then he pushed off, and the engine woke into
clamorous applause. They began to move. The street urchins cheered
ironically.

“I thought that would do it,” he shouted to her triumphantly above the
din, with the air of one who had performed a masterpiece of mechanical
surgery.

Yet to himself he blushed. For he had forgotten to admit the petrol
from the tank!




§ 8


When they reached Epping, George told himself: “It’s absurdly easy to
drive a motor-bike and side-car. Absolutely nothing in it. I’ll put
the pace on a bit between here and Stortford.” The thirteen miles to
Bishop’s Stortford were done in twenty-eight minutes. At Stortford they
had early lunch.

Afternoon saw them jostling in and out amongst the crowded streets of
Cambridge. They garaged the machine, and went to a café for tea.




§ 9


He was full of a kind of boisterous arrogance.

“Stiff little bit from Stortford.... But, of course, we took it awfully
slow.... Road’s not so bad.... Ever been on the road from Aberystwyth
to Dolgelly?”

Catherine had not. (Nor had George for that matter.)

“Awful bit of road, that....” (It occurred to him as being a strip of
road that might conceivably be awful.)

She could see that he was showing off to her. He was proud of his
machine, proud of the white dust on his shoes, of his sun-tanned face,
of his goggles, his gauntlet gloves, and his earflaps. He was superbly
proud of having piloted himself and her from the corner of Bockley
High Street and the Ridgeway to the streets of Cambridge without hitch
or mishap. Six hours ago they were in Bockley. Now they were in a
self-sufficing and exceedingly provincial University town, the very
antithesis of suburbia. And the miracle was his! His hands, his nerve,
his eye had wrought it! He was excusably pleased with himself.

But she was conscious of a curious sense of disappointment. It was now
three months since that evening when he had taken her to Gifford Road
in a taxi. It was three months since she had divined intuitively that
he was in love with her. And during those three months he had been
marvellously reticent, exasperatingly discreet. She had almost begun to
doubt the reliability of her instinct. And though she knew she did not
in the least reciprocate his feelings, she was fascinated by the idea
that she was something incalculable and vital to him. Perhaps it was
sheer pride of conquest, perhaps it was merely her love of compliments
and her extreme gratification at this, the supreme compliment of all.
Or perhaps it was just her own inexplicable perversity.

He was anxious to get back before lighting-up time, and she, for no
very definite reason, was inclined to prefer a quick run under the cool
moonlight. She deliberately delayed him by showing fastidiousness in
the selection of a café. Then she got him talking about the Arts Club.

“I hear you’re going to speak next Sunday.”

“Oh yes--just read a paper, that’s all. On Ibsen’s _Wild Duck_....
Of course, you’ve read it?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t read any Ibsen.”

“Really? ... Oh, you must read him. Awfully good, you know.
Stimulating; modern; very modern. _Doll’s House_, you know.
_Rosmersholm_ and _Little Eyolf_.... And, of course,
_Ghosts_. Absolute biological nightmare--_Ghosts_ ... but
terrifically clever.... I’ll lend you the whole lot if you’ll promise
to read them.”

“Right,” she said. And she thought: “Doesn’t he like to show he knows
more than I know? But if he _is_ in love with me it won’t matter
about that.” (And she could not properly have explained that thought
either.)

But she kept him talking because she saw it was getting late.




§ 10


On the return journey they stopped to light the lamps at a lonely spot
called Stump Cross, some ten miles out of Cambridge. She watched him
as he stood in front of the machine with the acetylene glare lighting
up his face and his goggles and his earflaps and his gauntlet gloves
and his overalls, and, above all, his expression of stern delight. They
were two solitary figures with hills rolling up and down on either
side of them, and nothing in view save dim distant ridges and a gaunt
sign-post which said: “To London, by Stortford, 45½ miles.”

“We’ll put on a spurt,” he said, clambering into the saddle....

As they entered the outskirts of Bishop’s Stortford at a speed of just
over thirty miles an hour the full moon swept from behind a bank of
clouds and lay in pools over the landscape....




§ 11


It was in the narrow and congested portion of the main street that
something happened. (As a matter of fact they need not have gone
through the town at all: there is a loop road, but George was unwilling
to tackle a road he had not encountered by daylight.) There is no doubt
that George was feeling very conscious of himself as he honk-honked
his way through the crowded roadway. It was a Saturday night, and the
streets were full. As they swerved round the corner of the George Hotel
the huge acetylene beams lit up a sea of faces. Men and women passed
them on the kerb as in a dream: girls with bright eyes and laughing
faces, and men with the unmistakable Saturday night expression flitted
past them shadow-like. It was ecstasy to be swirling past them all at a
pace which, though not fast, had just a spice of danger in it. George,
in his overalls and headgear, looked like a Viking steering his galley
through heavy seas. What was more, he knew he was looking like that,
and was trying desperately to look more like that than ever.

And then, at the point where the main highway narrows and begins an
S turn, with numerous side-streets complicating the problem, George
espied a vehicle proceeding slowly in the same direction as he. It was
a market-booth on four wheels, shuttered up at the sides, returning to
its stabling after the night’s market. On the side in painted crimson
lettering ran the inscription: “H. Bullock. Temperance Liquors and
Fruit Beverages.” The whole was drawn by a tired, meditative horse. The
existence of this equipage in the middle of the road created a problem.
George was rapidly overtaking it, and of course he should have passed
by on the right or off-side. But that would have meant checking pace
and honk-honking vigorously to clear people out of the way. Whereas he
was driving close to the kerb and could see a space between it and the
vehicle which seemed ample for passage. Besides, it was rather stylish
to “nip in” between vehicles and the kerb. People would stare back at
him and mutter, “Reckless fellow!” and by the time they had resumed
their walk he would be on the outskirts of the town. Accordingly,
summoning his features for an intensely Viking expression, he decided
to “nip in.” The road was narrowing, and he knew he would have to put
on a spurt. The accelerator moved, and they went forward with a bound.
Blurred mists of passing faces swept by along the kerb.... There was
a sudden jar. The side-car wheel had mounted the pavement, which was
here only an inch or so above the roadway. Nevertheless, no harm had
yet been done. And then the appalling vision of a lamp-post seized hold
of George and wrought havoc with his presence of mind. That lamp-post
obsessed him, possessed him, threw him into inarticulate terror. That
lamp-post would slice off the wheel of the side-car as a scythe cuts
grass. It was therefore necessary at all costs to avoid that lamp-post.
With a mighty sense of the tremendous issues that hung upon the merest
fractional movement of his hands, George swerved to the right. Even as
he did so he could almost feel the sickening impact of the lamp-post.
He waited for what seemed a long minute--waited for the sudden jar
and shiver and crumple. Strange to say it did not come.... Then with a
feeling of overwhelming relief he perceived that the obstacle had been
passed. The lamp-post was already behind him, an unsuccessful syren
baulked of its prey. Exquisite moment! Colossal thrill! Magnificent
piece of steering! And then ...

A sudden grind of the front wheel, a sort of convulsive jerk which
threw him sideways on top of the side-car, and a medley of snapping
and shivering and crumpling sounds. Then (it seemed an age before he
mastered the situation) he shouted to Catherine, whose ear was not so
very far from his mouth: “By Jove, we must have cannoned into that
cart!”

His voice was as the voice of one who is immensely interested in a
subtle and curious phenomenon....




§ 12


George was distressed.

He and Catherine were slowly walking to Bishop’s Stortford railway
station. The Viking expression had left his features; the motor-cap and
goggles and overalls and gloves were tied up in a brown-paper parcel
which he carried under his arm. Also, his face was very dirty.

Terrible things had happened to him.

A couple of policemen had taken his full name and address, and made
copious entries in notebooks.

Mr. H. Bullock had sworn vividly. In trying to estimate the extent of
damage to his front wheel George had tactlessly turned the full glare
of the acetylene lamp upon the horse’s eye. The horse had hitherto been
uncertain whether the situation justified panic flight or not; now he
decided swiftly in the affirmative. He rushed forward precipitately,
and in less than a dozen yards had smashed off the wheel of the cart
against a pillar-box. The cart sagged despairingly, and streams of
bilious lemonade poured through the flooring. Mr. Bullock’s language
became terrific.

And then one of the policemen had said: “By the way, got your licence?”

George had blushed (though the fact that he was already a deep red
disguised the phenomenon).

“I’m afraid--I--I must have left it at home,” he stammered weakly,
diving into his inside pocket and fishing amongst letters and papers.

Yet both Catherine and the policeman knew in that moment that he had
not got a licence at all. Something in his voice told them.

And what is more, George knew that both the policeman and Catherine
were aware that he had not got a licence at all. Something in their
eyes told him.

And then George had wilted under the vivid abuse of Mr. H. Bullock.
Spectators called out monotonously: “You were on the wrong side of
’im.” “You was goin’ too fast.” “You didn’t orter ’ave come nippin’
in like thet.” “On the kerb ’e was, a minute before--don’t know ’ow
to drive, ’e don’t.” “Didn’t orter be trusted, them soit of cheps.”
“Swervin’ abart like anythink: shouldn’ be surprised if he’s drunk.”

And a fierce clergyman in a three-inch collar floored George with the
remark: “You ought to be in jail, my man. You are a pest to society.”

And then George had to push the battered machine into a garage (which
was fortunately at hand), and pay exorbitantly for leaving it there.
The garage proprietor was subtly sarcastic to George.

Then George came back to parley with the policemen. The crowd became
hostile. George rather unwisely began to divest himself of his motoring
garments. Facetiousness prevailed. Catherine was the subject of much
speculation.

“I wouldn’t trust myself to ’im no more,” remarked a bystander. And
another wanted to know if her mother knew she was out. (It was in the
days of that popular song.)

“’E’s a-tryin’ to murder you, that’s wot ’e is,” said a sour-faced
spectator. “’E’s found another gal, an’ wants ter git rid of you.”

And an elderly man with a bizarre sense of humour said: “You look out
for yerself, my gal; ’e won’t ’ave no money ter marry you on w’en ’e’s
pide ’is fines.”

George caught the sally, and the whole phantasmagoria of the
police-court flashed across his mind. Also the fact that this trip to
Cambridge was likely to leave him with very little, if any money at
all....




§ 13


And now, on the slope leading up to the railway station, George was
distressed. He was physically and mentally unmanned. He could not speak
without a tremor. He seemed so physically enfeebled that she took
his arm and asked him to lean on her. All at once she realized the
extraordinary fact that of the two she was infinitely the stronger.
With all his self-confidence and arrogance and aplomb, he was nothing
but a pathetic weakling.

The hostility of the crowd had made her vaguely sympathetic with him.
She had watched him being browbeaten by policemen and by the owner
of the cart, and a strange protective instinct surged up in her. She
wanted to stick up for him, to plant herself definitely on his side.
She felt she was bound to champion him in adversity. She thought: “I’m
with him, and I must look after him. He’s my man, and I’ve got to
protect him.”

All the long walk to the station was saturated in this atmosphere of
tense sympathy and anxious protection.

“We shall catch the 10.20,” he said. “There’s heaps of time. We shall
have over an hour to wait.”

“That’ll be all right,” she said comprehensively.

On the station platform they paced up and down many times in absolute
silence. The moon was gorgeously radiant, flinging the goods yard
opposite into blotches of light and shadow. The red lamps of the
signals quavered ineffectually.

“You know it’s awfully lucky you weren’t hurt,” he said at last.

She nodded. Pause.

Then he broke out: “You know, really, I’m most awfully sorry----”

“Oh, don’t bother about that,” she said lightly. “It wasn’t your fault.
You couldn’t help it.”

(Yet she knew it was his fault, and that he could have helped it. She
also knew that he had no licence.)

And then a strange thing happened.

They were in the shadow of a doorway. He suddenly put his two arms
on her shoulders and kissed her passionately on the lips. Her hair
was blowing behind her like a trail of flame. He kissed her again
with deepening intensity. And then her face, upturned to his, dropped
convulsively forward. Her eyes were closed with a great mist, and her
hair fell over his hands and hid them from view. There was something
terrible in the fierceness with which he bent down and, because he
could not kiss her face, kissed her fire-burnished hair. And as he did
so again and again she began to cry very softly. His hands could feel
the sobs which shook her frame. And he was thrilled, electrified....

“My God!” he whispered....

... Then with a quick movement she drew back. The tears in her eyes
were shining like pearls, and her face was white--quite white. Passion
was in every limb of her.

“That’s enough,” she said almost curtly, but it was all that she could
trust herself to say. For she was overwhelmed, swept out of her depth
by this sudden tide.

And all the way to Liverpool Street, with George sitting in the corner
opposite to her, her mind and soul were running mad riot....

“Good-bye,” he said later, at the gate of No. 14, Gifford Road, and
from the inflexion of his voice she perceived that their relations had
undergone a subtle change....

She watched him as he disappeared round the corner. On a sudden impulse
she raced after him and caught him up.

“George!” she said.

“Yes?”

“Will you be summoned, d’you think?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Well--I thought I’d tell you ... if you’re short of money through it
... I’ve got some.... I can lend it to you ... if you’re short, that
is....”

“It’s awfully good of you,” he replied. Yet she knew he was thinking
of something else.... Her running back to him had reopened the problem
of farewell. He was debating: “Shall I kiss her again?” And she was
wondering if he would. In a way she hoped not. There would be something
cold-blooded in it if he did it too frequently. It would lack the
fire, the spontaneity, the glorious impulse of that moment at Bishop’s
Stortford railway station. It would assuredly be banal after what had
happened. She was slightly afraid. She wished she had not run back to
him. Nervousness assailed her.

“Good-night!” she cried, and fled back along Gifford Road. Behind her
she heard his voice echoing her farewell and the sound of his footsteps
beginning along the deserted highway. It was nearly two a.m....

Undressing in the tiny attic bedroom she discovered a dark bruise on
her right shoulder. It must have been where he lurched sideways against
her just after the collision. She had not felt it. She had not known
anything about it....




CHAPTER XI


THE SECOND TRANT EPISODE

§ 1


IT was November.

They had been engaged three months. Three months it was since a certain
winedark evening when, in the shadows of the heavy trees on the
Ridgeway, he had suddenly said:

“I suppose we _are_ engaged?”

“Are we?”

“Well, I think it’ll be all right.... I told my father, and he didn’t
object.... Will you come to tea on Sunday?”

She perceived that their relations had entered on a new phase.

“If you like,” she said.

And he had kissed her good-bye that evening.

The Sunday had been nerve-racking. She felt she was on show. Many
years it was since she had entered the Trants’ house. In those early
days she had come in as Helen’s school friend, and nobody had taken
much notice of her. Mr. Trant had chattered amiable trivialities and
chaffed her about her red hair. Now all was immensely different. She
was George’s _fiancée_. She had to be treated with deference. Mr.
Trant discussed the weather and gardening and (to the utmost extent of
his capabilities) music. Mrs. Trant was effusively embarrassed. Helen
was rather frigid. After tea they went into the drawing-room. Catherine
and Mrs. Trant sat for some time together on the couch turning over
the pages of a photograph album with careful enthusiasm. In it were
portrayed the Trant family in various stages of development--the
Trant family when it had anybody distinguished to stay with it for
the week-end; the Trant family at the door of its house, on Llandudno
Pier, at Chamounix, on the promenade deck of a P. and O. liner, and
in other less idyllic positions; the Trant family taking tea on the
lawn, picnicking in Epping Forest, about to set out for a motor spin,
skating on the Connaught Waters at Chingford, playing tennis (_a_)
on its own grass court, (_b_) on its own rubble court; the Trant
family in fancy dress, evening dress, riding dress, Alpine dress,
and every other kind of dress--in short, the Trant family in every
conceivable phase of its existence. Also the Trant family individually,
collectively, and in permutations and combinations. With studious
politeness Catherine enquired from time to time as to the identity of
the various strangers who obtruded themselves upon the Trant arena.
Here were Sir Miles Coppull (the American camphor king, holding
a tennis-racket jauntily); the Rev. R. P. Cole (President of the
Baptist Association); the Rev. St. Eves Bruce, M.A., D.D. (headmaster
of George’s old public school), beaming on Helen, by the way; not
to mention groups of fierce old gentlemen whom Mrs. Trant lumped
collectively as “some of Dad’s directors.” ...

Catherine thought: “Some day I shall be amongst all that lot...”

George suggested she should play a piano solo, and she tried a
Beethoven symphony movement. But she was unaccountably nervous, and a
valuable but rather gimcrack china and ivory model of the Taj Mahal at
Agra which was placed on top of the closed sound-board _would_
rattle whenever she played the chord of E flat or its inversions.

When she stopped playing Mr. Trant said: “Let me see, is that
Beethoven?” (He pronounced the first syllable to rhyme with “see” and
the second with “grove.”)

“Yes.”

“Charming little thing,” he said vaguely....

Catherine was glad when the advent of chapel time brought the business
to a conclusion. For it _was_ business. She could see that. She
was being sized up. When she had gone they would discuss her. They
were reckoning her up. They were not surprised at her nervousness.
They expected it. They were speculating upon her possibilities as a
daughter-in-law....

There was only one thing perhaps which did not occur to them, or which,
if it did, received less attention than it deserved.

Catherine was reckoning _them_ up. She was keenly critical of
everything they said and did. And when Mr. Trant, shaking hands with
her at the door, said: “You must come again for a musical evening some
time, and give us some more Beethoven,” Catherine replied:

“Oh yes, I should be delighted. I’m awfully fond of Beethoven, aren’t
you?”

But she pronounced it “Bait-hoaffen.”

There was just the merest possible suggestion of rebuke, of
self-assurance, of superiority in that....




§ 2


And now all these things were stale by three months.

By this time she had got used to having tea on Sundays at the Trants’
house. She was so much at home there that she could say: “Oh, _do_
you mind if I shift this Taj Mahal thing while I play? It rattles
so.” After a little while they learned her fancies, and had it always
removed when she came.

And she was used to George. Everything of him she now knew. His hopes,
his dreams, his peculiarities, his vices and virtues, the colours of
all his neckties--all had been exhaustively explored during the course
of many a hundred hours together. He kissed her now every time they
met--he expended much ingenuity in arranging times and places suitable
for the ritual. Sometimes, after he had seen her home from the theatre,
his kisses were hurried, stereotyped, perfunctory, as purely a matter
of routine as putting two pennies into the machine and drawing out a
tube ticket. On other occasions, as for instance when they strolled
through country lanes at dusk, she could sense the imminence of his
kisses long before they came. When they turned down Cubitt Lane towards
the Forest at twilight it was tacitly comprehended between them: “We
are going in here to be sentimental....” When they returned the mutual
understanding was: “We have been sentimental. That ought to last us for
some time....”

People deliberately left them alone together. They looked at the two
of them as if they were or ought to be bliss personified. They seemed
to assume that an engaged couple desires every available moment for
love-making. At meal times, for example, it was always contrived that
George should be next to Catherine. Once when Mr. and Mrs. Trant had
made the excuse that they would stroll round the garden, Catherine,
noticing that Helen was about to follow unobtrusively, said sharply:

“Please don’t go, Helen. I want you to try over a few songs.”

Catherine wondered if Helen understood.

The fact was, being engaged was deadly monotonous. It had no
excitement, no novelty. Everything was known, expected, unravelled.
When she met George at a concert she did not think: “I wonder if he has
come here on _my_ account.” She knew beyond all question that he
had. When at some social function she saw him chatting amongst his male
friends she did not think: “Will he come up and speak to me or not?”
She knew that his very presence there was probably on her account,
and that he would leave his male friends at the first available
opportunity. And when they had ices at a tiny table in some retiring
alcove it was not possible to think: “How funny we should both have
met like this! How curious that we should be alone here!” For she knew
that the whole thing had been premeditated, that the alcove itself had
probably been left attractively vacant for their especial benefit.
There was no point, no thrill, no expectancy in asking the question:
“Is it really _me_ he comes to all these places for?”

He had declared his passion in unequivocal terms that left nothing to
be desired. That was just it: there was nothing left to be desired.
She would rather he had been ambiguous about it. And occasionally the
awful thought came to her: “If this is being engaged, what must it be
like to be married? ...”

Life was so placid, so wearyingly similar day after day, evening after
evening. Every night he met her at the stage-door of the theatre
and escorted her home. Every night he raised his hat and said “Good
evening!” Every night he took her music-case off her, and they walked
arm-in-arm down the High Street. Their conversation was always either
woefully sterile or spuriously brilliant. On the rare occasions when
they had anything particular to talk about they lingered at the corner
of Gifford Road. But she could not confide in him. To tell him of her
dreams and ambitions would be like asking for a pomegranate and being
given a gaudily decorated cabbage. Their conversations were therefore
excessively trivial: she retailed theatrical and musical gossip, or,
if the hour were very late and she were tired, as frequently happened,
she replied in weary monosyllables to his enquiries. She found her mind
becoming obsessed with hundreds of insignificant facts which by dint
of constant repetition he had impressed upon her. She knew the names,
histories, characters, and family particulars of all the men who worked
with him in the stuffy little basement of the accountant’s office in
Leadenhall Street. She knew the complicated tangle of rivalries and
jealousies that went on there--how Mr. Smallwood did this and Mr. Teake
did that, and how Mr. Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering) frequently
lost his temper. She knew all the minutiae of George’s daily work and
existence, the restaurant he frequented for lunch, the train he caught
on the way home, the men he met day after day in the restaurant and on
the trains. Nothing of him was there which she did not know....

Yet it was all so terribly, so tragically dull. Even his brilliance
palled. His brilliance was simply an extensive repertoire of smart
sayings culled from the works of Ibsen, Shaw, Chesterton, etc. In three
months she had heard them all. Moreover, he had begun to repeat some of
them.

Out of a forlorn craving for incident she quarrelled with him from time
to time. His genuine sorrow at the estrangement and his passionate
reconciliation afterwards thrilled her once or twice, but after a few
repetitions became stale like the rest. Undoubtedly he was in love with
her.

And she?




§ 3


Doubtless one of the reasons why George’s engagement to Catherine was
not opposed very vigorously by the Trants was Catherine’s startlingly
rapid musical development, which seemed to prophesy a future in
which anything might be expected. Ever since that Conservative Club
concert Catherine had been playing regularly in public and acquiring
a considerable local reputation. Occasional guineas and two guineas
came her way, and at the opening of the winter season she found herself
with as many engagements as she could manage. And at a local musical
festival she had come out on top in the professional pianoforte
entries. A gold medal and a good deal of newspaper prominence were the
visible and immediate results of this. Afterwards came the welcome
discovery that she was in demand. A concert organizer offered her five
pounds for a couple of solos. An enterprising and newly established
photographer photographed her gratis and exhibited a much embellished
side view (with a rather fine hair exhibition) in his window. And she
ceased to play at church socials....

Every Saturday afternoon she went to Verreker for lessons. Though she
disliked him personally, she was compelled to admit the excellence of
his teaching. He spared her no criticism, however severe, and when
he commended her work, which was rare, she knew he meant it. If a
good teacher, he was also an irritating one. He selected her pieces,
insisted on her learning those and no others, expected from her a good
deal more than it seemed possible for her to give, and treated her
generally as a rebellious child. He was always asking her when she was
going to resign her position at the theatre. She would never be even a
moderate pianist as long as she was there, he said.

The time came when it was of financial benefit to her to resign. She
did so, and expected him to be very pleased with her. But he merely
said:

“H’m! I suppose you waited till it paid you to.”

This was so true that she had no reply ready.

He never disguised from her the fact that, however seemingly she might
be advancing on the road to fame and success, she would never become
more than a second-rate virtuoso.

“The front rank of the second-raters is as high as you’ll ever get,” he
said. But that did not hurt her now.

What did hurt her was once when he said: “You have one abominable
habit. You pose with your hair. I should recommend you to have it cut
off, then you won’t have it to think about so much.”

“Oh, _should_ you?” she replied angrily. “I _should_ be
sensible to cut it off, shouldn’t I, seeing it’s the only good-looking
part of me!”

She hadn’t meant to say that. It slipped out.

“Is it?” he said, and for a single fatuous second she had a wild idea
that he was going to pay her a magnificent compliment. But he added: “I
mean--it never struck me as particularly good-looking. But then I’m no
judge of hair--only of music.”

She could discern in every inflection of his voice latent hostility.
There was no doubt he disliked her intensely. Latterly, too, she
had become increasingly conscious of a mysteriously antagonistic
atmosphere when he was with her. It reacted on her playing, causing
her at times to give deplorable exhibitions. It was not nervousness.
It was something in him that was always mutely hostile to something
in her. The sensation, at first interesting, became extraordinarily
irksome after a while. Once, when a poor performance of one of Chopin’s
Ballades had evoked sarcasm and abuse almost beyond endurance, she
suddenly left the music-stool and stood facing him with her back to the
instrument.

“It’s no good,” she cried vehemently. “It’s not _my_ fault. I’ve
never played as bad as that in my life. It’s _you_. I can’t play
when you’re present. Don’t know--can’t explain it, but it is so.”

He looked surprised.

“Very strange,” he said reflectively--“and unfortunate.”

She had expected him to be witheringly sarcastic. But he took it with
urbane philosophy.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose if you feel like that it can’t be helped.
We shall simply have to make the best of it.”

Which was irritatingly logical....




§ 4


In the Trant household the musical evening was an institution. Rarely
a month passed by unhonoured by one of these functions. Commencing
at seven or thereabouts on a Saturday evening, they lasted till past
midnight. They possessed a regular clientele of attenders, as well
as a floating population of outsiders who had never been before and
who (from more reasons, perhaps, than one) might never come again.
The drawing-room at “Highfield” was large, but it never comfortably
held the miscellaneous crowd that assembled in it on the occasion
of these musical evenings. In winter you were either unbearably hot
(near the fire) or unbearably cold (near the window), and in summer,
without exception, you were always unbearably hot. Moreover, you were
so close to your neighbour on the overcrowded settee that you could
see the perspiration draining into her eyebrows. From a dim vista
obscured by cigarette smoke there came the sound of something or other,
indescribably vague and futile, a drawing-room ballad sung by a squeaky
contralto, a violin solo by Dvořák, or a pompous Beethovian hum on the
piano. However beautiful and forceful might be the music, it was always
vague and futile to you, because you were watching your neighbour’s
eyebrows act as a sponge to the down-trickling perspiration.... Always
in these musical evenings there was banality. Always beauty was
obscured by bathos. And could you ever forget the gymnastic evolutions
of a settleful of musical enthusiasts balancing cups of steaming hot
coffee on their knees? ...

The day before Christmas Day was a Saturday. For Christmas Eve a
musical evening had been arranged--a musical evening that, out of
deference to the season, was to surpass all previous undertakings of
the kind. Catherine was invited, and would, of course, be one of the
principal performers. In virtue of her intimate relation to George she
had come early in the afternoon and stayed to tea. Her usual weekly
lesson from Verreker was cancelled for this particular week, probably
owing to Christmas. So she would be able to spend the entire evening at
“Highfield.” She was in buoyant spirits, chiefly owing to her rapidly
advancing fame as a pianist. She had the feeling that her presence at
the Trants’ musical evening was an act almost of condescension on her
part, and it pleased her that the Trants treated her as if this were
so. She would undoubtedly be, in music-hall parlance, the star turn of
the evening. People, unknown aspirants after musical fame, would point
her out as one who had already arrived at the sacred portals. She knew
also that Mrs. Trant had been sending round messages to friends that
ran more or less after this style: “You simply _must_ come to our
musical evening on Christmas Eve! It is going to be an awfully big
affair, and we have got Cathie Weston coming down to play--you know,
the girl who----”

The whole business tickled Catherine’s vanity.

In the interval between tea and seven o’clock she superintended the
arrangement of the piano in the drawing-room, taking care that the
light from an electric hand-lamp close by should shine advantageously
on her hair while she was playing. She decided that she would play one
of the Chopin Etudes....




§ 5


At a quarter past seven the room was full. According to custom visitors
introduced themselves to one another, the crowd being altogether too
large for ceremonious introductions. Late-comers came in quietly and
unostentatiously, sitting down where they could and nodding casually
to people they knew. The lighting was æsthetically dim, being afforded
by a few heavily-shaded electric hand-lamps scattered promiscuously on
tables and book-cases. Every available corner was occupied by extra
chairs brought in from other parts of the house, and the central
arena in front of the fireplace was a dumping-ground for music-cases,
’cellos, violins, etc. Catherine occupied a roomy arm-chair next to
the fire, and was conscious that she was being looked at attentively.
A red-shaded lamp on the end of the mantel-piece threw her hair into
soft radiance, but its effect on her eyes was so dazzling as to throw
all around her into an impenetrable dimness in which she could discern
nothing but the vague suggestion of persons and things. George sat
next to her, and from time to time passed remarks to which she replied
vivaciously, conscious that every movement of her head brought into
prominence the splendour of her hair. (Of late she had been paying
considerable attention to her hair: a visit to a West End coiffurist
had produced startling results.)

The evening crawled monotonously on. Log after log of crackling pine
was placed on the open fire-grate; song followed song, violin, ’cello,
mandoline each had its turn; a girl recited “The Dandy Fifth” in a way
that was neither better nor worse than what Catherine felt she could
have done herself, and Mr. Trant’s deep voice could be heard constantly
above the periodic applause: “Charming little thing that.” “Is that one
of Bach’s?” (pronounced “Back’s”). “Very pretty, isn’t it? Rather nice
words, don’t you think?”

The order of performance was not definite. Catherine did not know when
she might be asked. Of course, she had not a trace of nervousness.
She had lost that completely now after constant appearances on public
concert platforms. And this was only a drawing-room affair: there
were no musical critics frowning in the front row, there was probably
nobody in the room who would know if she played a false note. Besides,
she would _not_ play a false note, She smiled contemptuously as
she heard the applause evoked by a timid rendering of a drawing-room
ballad. She had an unmitigated contempt for these drawing-room ballads.
Her theatrical experience had given her an intense hatred of cheap
sentimental music of the kind sold in music shops at one-and-sixpence
a copy. The particular song that had just been sung was of this class:
its title was monosyllabic, and its music composed with an eye to
vamping the accompaniment....

“That’s a nice little thing,” said Mr. Trant. “I don’t believe I’ve
heard it before, either.... Reminds me of something, though ... I
can’t think what....” Then in the blurred distance she could discern
Mrs. Trant’s white frocked form travelling swiftly across the room and
engaging in conversation with somebody unseen.

“Oh, please,” she heard, “please do! Everybody would be so glad. Helen,
do persuade him. Really----”

The rest was drowned in the tuning of a violin.

Then Mrs. Trant, returning to her seat, whispering to her husband,
getting up, standing with her back to the corner of the piano, and
announcing:

“We are now to have a pianoforte solo”--impressive pause; Catherine
guessed what was coming--“by Mr. Ray Verreker!”

Catherine had guessed wrong....




§ 6


But it was his presence there which startled her. Why was he at such
a gathering? She knew his stormy contempt for the kind of musical
suburbinanity that flourished in Upton Rising: it was his boast that he
never attended a local concert and never would. “Suburbinanity”--that
was his own word for it. She knew his fierce hatred of the kind of
things that had been going on for over an hour--that particular violin
piece by Dvořák, for instance, was anathema to him. She knew also his
passionate intolerance of mediocrity of any kind. She could imagine
his sensations when listening to that girl’s rendering of “The Dandy
Fifth.” The puzzle was, why had he come? He knew the kind of thing it
would be. He must have known the inevitable ingredients of a suburban
musical evening. And yet he had come. He had conquered his detestation
for social gatherings of this kind so far as to come. It was rather
extraordinary, completely uncharacteristic of him.

To Catherine, always the egoist, came the thought: “Has he come here
because he knew I should be here?” Yet even a second thought dismissed
that idea as unwarrantly absurd. That would be rather an additional
reason for his staying away. For every Saturday that she visited him
convinced her more and more that he despised her and her ways.

And she also thought: “Will the effect of his being present make me
play badly?” She did not know in the least whether it would or not, for
the circumstances were so completely different from what they were at
“Claremont.” Here she might possibly be able to forget he was in the
same room with her. Certainly he would not be at her elbow, turning
over the music pages with gestures that conveyed to her perfectly the
sensations of disgust that he was experiencing....

But he was playing. Her surprised speculations were immediately cut
short by the sound of the piano. She could see his fingers travelling
magically over the keys and his strange, grotesque face looking
vacantly over the top of the instrument. He looked different from
usual. It was probably the unaccustomed angle from which she was
watching him, for his features, perfectly unsymmetrical, presented an
astonishing variety of aspects.... She suddenly forgot to look at him.
Something that he played had thrilled her. A swift chord, passing into
a strange, uncouth melody set all her nerves tingling. What was this
piece? ... He went on through swirling cascades of arpeggios in the
right hand, falling octaves, crashing chords, and then, once again,
this strange uncouth melody, the same, but subtly altered. Tremendous,
passionately barbaric, was this thing that he was playing. It seized
hold of her as if it had suddenly given the answer to all her wants
and desires: it stretched out clear and limitless over the furthest
horizon she had ever glimpsed; it held all the magic of the stars.
And far ahead, further than she had ever dared to look before, lay the
long reaches of boundless, illimitable passion ... passion ... passion ...
that was what it was.... Her hands twitched convulsively on the
sides of the chair. She was caught in a great tide; it was sweeping her
further and further outward and onward; she wanted to cry out but could
not. Tears were in her eyes, but they would not fall. And for the first
time that evening she forgot the pose of her head and hair....

Applause was to her the waking from a dream. They were applauding. A
fierce storm of contempt for them overtook her, because she knew they
had not heard and seen and felt what she had heard and seen and felt.
Their applause was banal, atrociously common-place. Even in mere volume
it did not exceed that which had been accorded to the song with the
monosyllabic title or to “The Dandy Fifth.” And Catherine, vaguely
annoyed that there was any applause at all, was also vaguely angry that
it had been so indiscriminating. She did not applaud herself, but she
heard George clapping almost in her left ear, and she shot a curious
glance at him. She was thinking: “How much of it has meant anything at
_all_ to you?”

And then she heard Mr. Trant’s deep, suave voice: “What did you say
that was? Peculiar piece, but awfully pretty.”

Verreker mentioned a title she could not hear. George had apparently
caught something. He whispered to her in spasms:

“Jeux--something or other, I think he said. French, I suppose. Modern
French. Debussy school, you know. Oh, it’s ‘Jeux d’Eaux.’ I heard him
say it again. ‘Jeux d’Eaux,’ that’s what it is.... One of Ravel’s
things, you know.” ...




§ 7


Verreker returned to his seat. There followed a baritone song of the
rollicking variety, a ’cello solo, and then Mrs. Trant called for a
“pianoforte solo by Miss Catherine Weston.”

Catherine rose languidly, and picked her way amongst the violins and
music-stands to the piano. She screwed the stool an inch or so higher
(it being a point of honour with her always to make some alteration,
however slight, in the seating accommodation provided for her), then
she lowered the music-rest and slid it back as far as it would go. Her
first piece was to be the “Butterfly” Study in G flat (Chopin), so she
gently ran her hands arpeggio-wise along the tonic and inversions of G
flat. Having done this she paused, chafed her fingers delicately, and
tossed her head. The lamp at her side shone on her magnificent hair,
throwing her face and bust into severe profile. It was then that she
noticed a slight commotion in the far corner of the room. A man was
disengaging himself from the closely-wedged throng and proceeding to
the doorway. As he passed the fireplace the flames flickered brightly
round a log of wood just placed on the fire. Catherine in a swift
glance saw that it was Verreker.... Carefully he wound his way to the
door and passed out.

Catherine flushed Her hands commenced to play, but her whole being was
tingling with anger. She was conscious that everybody in the room had
noticed his ostentatious withdrawal and was drawing conclusions from
it. Everybody knew she took lessons from him. His going out of the
room at that moment was nothing less than a deliberate insult offered
to her in front of everybody. In the half-shadows round the piano she
could see the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Trant, both rather bewildered....
Her fingers were moving automatically; before she properly realized she
was playing a solo they had stopped. Cloudily she grasped the fact that
the “Butterfly” Study had come to an end. Applause floated in, and she
found herself walking back to her seat. Applause thinned and subsided;
Mrs. Trant said something, and there began the tuning of a couple of
violins with much unnecessary prodding of notes on the piano. George
was saying something to her, but she was not listening. The door opened
and Verreker re-entered. He sat down unostentatiously in a chair close
by and his face was hidden by shadows. The piano tinkled into the
opening of a Haydn Concerto.... And Catherine thought: “That was really
a _horrid_ thing to do. I believe it is the nastiest trick I ever
saw. I expected rudeness, but somehow not _that_--at any rate, not
in public.” She was primarily angry, but in her anger there was more
than a tinge of disappointment....

She hated him. The fact that it was his teaching that had brought her
success was swamped utterly in this petty insult he had seen fit to
offer her in public. Once the idea did strike her: perhaps it was just
coincidence that he went out while I was playing. But instinct told
her that his withdrawal was deliberate, part of a planned scheme to
humiliate her. And she kept piercing the shadows where he sat with a
venomous greenish glint in her eyes, until she reflected that even
if she could not see him, he could very likely see her. At this she
flushed hotly and turned away. The evening crept towards midnight.
Coffee was handed round. There was a momentary respite from music after
the conclusion of the Hadyn Concerto, and conversation swelled into a
murmurous hum all over the room. She lit a cigarette and puffed out
smoke languidly. George went to the music cabinet and brought out some
Ravel music. She scanned it perfunctorily; as a matter of fact she had
but a vague idea of what it was like by looking at it. “Pavane pour un
Enfant Défunt,” it was called; the first few pages looked charmingly
simple. George could not find “Jeux d’Eaux.” Possibly he had not got
a copy. But all this modern music was frightfully interesting. Had
she heard César Franck’s Violin Sonata--the famous one? Or Scriabin’s
Eleven Preludes? Or Debussy’s “L’Après-midi d’une Faune”? Of course,
futurist music was merely the development of what other composers had
led the way to. Some of Chopin’s Ballades and Preludes, for instance,
gave one the impression that if he had lived a century later he might
have been furiously modern. And of course Tchaikovsky. In fact----

Catherine listened patiently, putting in an occasional “Yes” and “Of
course” and “I daresay.” Her one thought was: “I have been publicly
insulted.” And George did not pass even the frontiers of her mind save
when she reflected casually: “Considering what a lot George knows, it’s
rather queer he should be so remarkably uninteresting at times....”




§ 8


It was nearly one on Christmas morning when the party broke up.
Catherine was waiting in the hall for George. He had gone to help
somebody to find his or her music-case. Most of the company had gone;
some were going, with much loud chattering on the doorstep and wishing
of a “Merry Christmas”; a few were still in the drawing-room sorting
out musical property.

Catherine felt a heavy hand on her shoulder. She turned ... Verreker! ...

In the half-light he looked almost demoniacally ugly. A great fur
overcoat hung ponderously to within a few inches of the ground, and
his hands were encased in huge fur gloves. Under his arm he carried a
rather incongruous cloth cap.

“Excuse me,” he began gruffly, “I’ve got a word to say to you.”

She pursed her lips scornfully.

“Be quick, then,” she said. “I haven’t much time to spare.” She was
being deliberately rude.

“I suppose you noticed I went out while you were playing?” he went on.

“Did you?” As much as to say: “How should I know? Do you imagine I keep
careful watch upon all your movements?”

“The fact is, I went out because I remember your saying that you never
played well if I were present....”

“Did I say that?” (She was in a deliberately, irritatingly
obstructionist mood.)

“... So I thought I’d oblige.... Afterwards it occurred to me it would
be misunderstood.... That’s all.... It wasn’t anything else. Of course
you’re not obliged to believe me.”

“Why shouldn’t I believe you?” she said, with no discoverable motive.

“I know of no reason at all,” he replied coldly.

Pause.

“And, as it happened, you did play rather well. Distinctly better than
usual.”

“Did I? ... How do you know?”

“I listened behind the door.”

“Did you?”

She tapped her foot petulantly on the floor.... Pause.... Then ...

“All the same, I really don’t see quite what you mean.” She was merely
trying to annoy him. He had come to her humbly, and he was going to
be spurned. Yet from the look in his eyes she knew that this last
remark had been a mistake. He was not the kind of man who waits to be
spurned....

“Oh, well,” he said brusquely, “I’m glad I don’t need to apologize....
Good-night!”

She called “Good-night!” so faintly that she was sure he never heard it.

He was gone....




§ 9


Along the Bockley High Street she remarked thoughtfully to George: “I
didn’t know Verreker patronized your musical evenings.”

George replied: “Oh, it wasn’t _that_ he came for. It was Helen.
She persuaded him to play.”

Catherine was surprised.

“Helen? Does Helen know him?”

“Oh, rather. She translates his books into French.” Again Catherine was
surprised. “Books? I didn’t know he wrote books! On music, I suppose?”

“No, not on music.”

“On what, then?”

“Economic history.”

Once again Catherine was surprised....

“He’s a curious chap,” George went on. “Economist and musician
combined. Queer compound. Helen likes him. She says his music’s all
the better for having the brains of an economist put into it, also
his economics don’t lose anything from being infused with a dash of
temperament. Can’t say I understand it myself, anyway.”




§ 10


And at the corner of Gifford Road he suddenly said: “I suppose our
engagement needn’t be a particularly long one, need it?”

She said: “Why? Do you want to break it off?”

He laughed, not altogether uproariously.

“No, no.... I mean--you know what I mean. Look here, why shouldn’t we
get married in the New Year?”

“Married?” she echoed vaguely. She looked at him as if the very last
thing an engaged girl thinks of is of getting married.

“Why not?” he said, point blank.

“I know of no reason at all,” she replied coldly, and was conscious
that she was echoing something she had heard before. The stateliness of
the phrase fascinated her.

“Then----” he began, and kissed her passionately. But the passion did
not thrill her. It was weak and watery compared with the stuff in “Jeau
d’Eaux.” Besides, she had grown blasé of his kisses. Every night, week
after week....

He kissed her again. He fondled her hair. He got hold of heaps of it
and crushed it voluptuously in his hand. This was a new experience, and
not devoid of interest to her. But even this became stale in a very
short time. He kissed her once more.

“Please!” she said, after some minutes of this sort of thing. “I
_must_ go.... Really I must.”

So, with a long, lingering, sentimental caress he left her. And as she
climbed the stairs to the attic bedroom that night her one thought was:
“Fancy me marrying George Trant! _Me_!”

The idea at firsy seemed fantastic.

But after a while she accepted it as a more or less logical sequence.
And he was undoubtedly in love with her. And she with him? Oh yes. At
least.... “Why not?” she asked herself, and echo within her answered
solemnly, “I know of no reason at all....”




CHAPTER XII


DISCONTENT

§ 1


HER first periodic “supervision” by Razounov took place early in the
New Year, and once again coincided with an engagement of Razounov to
play Chopin at the Bockley Hippodrome.

He puffed serenely at a cigarette while she played the Kreutzer Sonata.
At the end he said:

“Nicely, oh yais, quite nicely.... And thees ees--let me see--thees ees
Mees--Mees--”

“Weston,” put in Verreker.

“Ah, yais, ... plays quite nicely, eh? ... A leetle more technique,
and--more--more--what ees the word?--characterization, eh?”

Verreker nodded.

But Catherine was disappointed. For it was perfectly evident not only
that Razounov had failed to recognize her, but that her name when told
him had recalled nothing in his mind.




§ 2


At her next lesson with Verreker she said: “Razounov didn’t remember
me, apparently----”

Verreker replied quite casually: “Oh no, why should he?”

She coloured slightly.

“Well,” she said, with some acerbity, “considering he took the trouble
to send for me after hearing me play at that club concert, I think he
might at least----”

Verreker faced her suddenly.

“What’s that?” he said.

“What’s _what_?”

“What you’ve just been talking about. I don’t understand in the
least.... You say he heard you at a concert?”

“Well, I presume so, anyway. What remarkably short memories you musical
people have! Razounov apparently heard me at the concert, and sent me a
message to come and see him the next day. You ought to remember that:
it was you yourself who brought it. You tracked me down to the Forest
Hotel.”

“Yes, yes. I remember that.... But the concert?”

She was becoming more and more sarcastic as his mystification increased.

“Oh yes, the concert. I played Liszt’s Concert Etude in A flat (the one
you don’t like). As I remarked before, presumably Razounov heard me, or
else why should he send for me to----”

“I am afraid you have presumed falsely,” he interrupted. (She shivered
at the stateliness of the phrasing: it reminded her of “I know of no
reason at all.”) “Razounov could not possibly have heard you play. He
never attends local concerts. Besides, he must have been on at the
Hippo----”

“Then why did he send for me?” she cried shrilly.

He scratched his chin reflectively. She hated him for that gesture.

“I believe--I think he _did_ tell me once.... I fancy it was
something rather unusual. Somebody--I can’t tell you who, because I
believe I’m pledged to secrecy--wrote to Razounov offering to pay for a
course of lessons for you. His name was to be kept out of it. I mean,
the name of the person.”

He frowned irritably at the slip of his tongue, and still more at the
rash correction which had given prominence to it.

“A man?” she ejaculated.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“I know it was. Because you said ‘his.’”

“Then why did you ask me?”

She swung round on the stool and clasped her hands below her knees. Her
eyes were fiercely bright.

“What are Razounov’s fees?” she said quietly.

“Three guineas a lesson.”

“And yours?”

“For purposes of musical instruction I am Razounov. He only supervises.
It is a fortunate arrangement, because I am a much better teacher than
he.”

She looked at him a little amazed. For the first time she caught
herself admiring him. She admired the calm, straightforward,
unqualified way he had said that he was a much better teacher than
Razounov. It was not conceit. She was glad he knew how to appraise
himself. She admired him for not being afraid to do so. In her eyes
was the message: “So you too have found out that overmodesty is not a
virtue? So have I.”

But it was impossible to remark upon it. She plunged into the financial
side of the question.

“So somebody has been paying three guineas a week for me?” (And she
thought: “Whoever is it?”)

“Certainly. You don’t imagine Razounov would give lessons for nothing,
do you?”

“That is to say, _you_ wouldn’t give lessons for nothing, isn’t
it?”

“Certainly. I am not a philanthropist. I have other interests besides
music. Music is only my way of getting a living. I never even reduce my
fees except--except--well----”

“Yes?--except when?”

He turned away his head as he replied: “Except in cases where the pupil
has no money yet supreme musical genius.”

She flared up passionately.

“Look here,” she said, “why d’you keep on rubbing it in? How do you
know I shan’t be a great pianist? I say, how do you know? I tell you,
I don’t believe you. You wait; you’ll see me at the top before long.
And then you’ll have to eat your words. You’re got a good opinion of
yourself, haven’t you? Well, so have I. See? ... And I tell you I
_will_ get to the top! I’ll show you you’re wrong! See?”

“I hope you will,” he said quietly. And added: “I’m glad my criticism
doesn’t discourage you. It isn’t meant to.”

To which she was on the point of replying: “But it _has_
discouraged me. There have been times when----” She did not say that.
There came a pause. Then she reverted to the financial side of the
business.

“So somebody’s already paid nearly a hundred pounds for me.”

“Sixty, I believe. The last quarter has not been paid yet.”

(And then the idea came to her immediately--George Trant!)

“Aren’t your fees payable in advance?” she asked sharply.

“As a general rule, yes.”

“Then why did you make an exception in my case?”

“Because I know the person fairly well, and am confident of being paid
soon. That’s all.”

“Is it?”

“Certainly,” he replied brusquely. “If your anonymous benefactor
doesn’t pay up within the next couple of months the arrangement between
you and me will terminate on the first of March. As I said before, I am
not a philanthropist.”

“Obviously not.”

“I hope it is obvious. I have often been mistaken for one.”

“Curious! I can scarcely believe it.... Have you the address of my
anonymous benefactor?”

“I dare say I have it somewhere about. Why?”

“Because I want you to write and tell him something.”

“Indeed? And what am I to tell him?”

“Tell him he needn’t trouble to pay the last quarter’s fees. I will pay
them myself.”

“I hope you can easily spare the money----”

“Of course I can. I shouldn’t offer to pay if I couldn’t. I’m not a
philanthropist.”

“Very well, then. I will write and tell him what you say.”

Pause. He was beginning to look rather annoyed.

“And there’s just one other thing,” she said, putting on her hat ready
for departure.

“What’s that?”

“Our arrangement will not terminate on the first of March. I shall
continue and pay myself.”

“As you wish....” He shrugged his shoulders.

And she thought as she went out: “That was a neat stroke for me. But
it’s going to be confoundedly expensive....”




§ 3


Henceforward Catherine assumed that George was her anonymous
benefactor. His inability to pay the last quarter’s fees synchronized
with his encounter with the Bishop’s Stortford magistrates, resulting
in a bill, including costs and all expenses, of nearly twenty-five
pounds. Undoubtedly it was George who was financing her. And the
question arose: Why? And the only possible answer was that this
quixotic and expensive undertaking was done out of love for her.
Catherine did not particularly like it. She was not even vaguely
grateful. She almost thought: He had no right to do it without asking
me. And if he had asked me I shouldn’t have let him. Anyway, it was
done behind my back. Treating me like a little child that doesn’t know
what is best for itself....

At times she became violently angry with him for his absolute silence.
Does he intend to carry the secret with him to the grave? she asked
herself. The absurd ease with which he parried any attempts to entangle
him in a confession intensely annoyed her. “I don’t believe he intends
ever to tell me,” she thought. “And if I’m ever a well-known pianist
he’ll congratulate himself in secret by thinking: ‘_I_ started
her. _I_ gave her her first chance. She’d have been nothing but
for me. _And she doesn’t know it_!’” The thought of George’s
romantic self-satisfaction at such a juncture oppressed her strangely.

There was also the subtle disappointment of discovering that Razounov
had not “found” her as great pianists are supposed to “find” promising
talent. But she was becoming accustomed to the shattering of her
idealist creations. Besides, she was at this time deriving a good deal
of hard satisfaction from her rapid and steady advancement, and no
amount of retrospective disillusionment could cast a shadow across the
future. Only she was annoyed at the quixotism of George Trant.

One evening she asked him point-blank:

“Did you pay for my first quarter’s lessons with Razounov?”

She expected the blow by its very suddenness would tell. He started
very slightly.

“Me?” he said, in a tone of bewilderment which, if not genuine, was at
least consummate acting. “Me?--I don’t understand. What do you----”

“Well, somebody did,” she replied curtly, annoyed that her blow had
been parried. “And I thought it might be you.”

“Good heavens, no!” he said, and at that moment she did not know
whether to believe him or not.




§ 4


He had been clever up to then. Afterwards he became too clever. One of
those periodic spasms of brilliance overwhelmed him.

The next morning she received a letter, typewritten, plain paper and
envelope, with the non-committal postmark: London, W. It ran:

 The person who has undertaken the expenses of Miss Weston’s musical
 training wishes it to be understood that he desires to remain
 anonymous. Should he be questioned on the point by anyone he will
 feel himself justified in adopting any attitude, even one involving
 departures from the truth, which seems to him best calculated to
 preserve the anonymity he so earnestly desires. Hence it is obvious
 that enquiry, however persistent, can elicit no reliable information.

When Catherine read this she laughed outright. The absurdity, the
sublime ridiculousness of the thing tickled her. She knew now beyond
all doubt that it was George Trant. For this note had “George Trant”
written all over it. Only he could have devised something so inanely
clever and at the same time so incredibly stupid.

The fact of its being posted only three hours after their interview
of the evening before was enough to convince her. He must have gone
home direct, written it (he had a typewriter at home, she knew), and
gone up to London, W., immediately to catch the eleven o’clock post.
She pondered on his choice of London, W. Probably he thought a London
postmark would be least likely to give a clue. E.C., the most common,
would suggest Leadenhall Street, so he chose W. That, probably, was his
line of argument.

It was not a bad joke, she agreed. Yet if he acted upon it she could
conceive herself getting angry....




§ 5


Her opinion of George went up somewhat after the receipt of this
letter. She was immensely struck by its absurdity, yet she had to
admit that in addition to being a joke it was quite a clever joke. For
several weeks she did not mention the affair, and he too avoided all
reference to it. Then she began again to be annoyed at his silence.
Besides, she was immensely curious to know what his attitude would be.
The full flavour of the joke had yet to be tasted.

An incident--trivial in itself--lowered her opinion of him incalculably.

She had gone for her usual weekly lesson from Verreker. It was
springtime, and “Claremont” was being painted, both inside and out. The
music-room in which she took her lessons was crowded with furniture
from other rooms, and for the first time she saw the evidences of
Verreker’s labours apart from the world of music. Large book-cases had
been dumped anyhow against the walls, and tables littered with papers
filled up the usually spacious centre of the room. The piano had been
pulled into a corner. She had several minutes to wait, and spent the
time perusing the titles on his bookshelves. There was a fairly large
collection of modern novels, including most of the works of Wells,
Bennett, Conrad, Hardy, Chesterton and others; complete sets of the
works of Shaw and Ibsen, most of the plays of Galsworthy, Granville
Barker and Henry Arthur Jones; and some hundreds of miscellaneous
French novels. A complete bookcase was occupied by works on economics
and economic history--she read the names of Cunningham, Ashley,
Maitland, Vinogradoff, Seebohm and Money. Then there was a shelf
entirely devoted to Government Blue-Book publications, Reports of
Commissions, quarterly and monthly reviews, loose-leaf binders full to
bursting with documents, and such like. It was a very impressive array.
She was conscious of her own extreme ignorance. Scarcely anything that
was here had she read. She was not particularly fond of reading....

On the table near his desk she saw a yellow-backed copy of Ibsen’s
_Ghosts_....

One result of their frequent bickering was that their conversation had
acquired a good deal of familiarity....

“Rather a muddle,” he commented, as she was preparing to go after the
lesson. He waved a hand comprehensively round the room.

“You’ve a lot of books,” she said.

“Yes; and I read them.” (As much as to say: “If you had a lot of books
you wouldn’t read them.” In other words, a purely gratuitous insult.
But she ignored it.)

“Reading _Ghosts_?” she remarked, taking up the yellow-backed book
from the table.

“Re-reading it,” he corrected.

Something erratic and perfectly incomprehensible prompted her next
utterance.

“Absolute biological nightmare,” she said casually. (It was something
she had once heard George say.)

He looked at her queerly.

“Have you read it?”

“No,” she said, and blushed. She knew his next question would be, “Then
how do you know?” so she added: “I once heard somebody say that about
it.” She plunged further in sheer desperation. “Don’t _you_ think
it’s rather a biological nightmare?” she persisted, with passionate
eagerness, as much as to say: “Please don’t make a fool of me. Please
let the matter pass this once.”

“I confess,” he replied coldly, “it never appeared to me in that,
light.... But, of course ...”

(Truly he was a master of stately phrasing!)

Naturally she regarded it as George’s fault primarily. It was clear she
had overestimated George’s critical faculties....




§ 6


She was so annoyed with George on the way home that she arrived at the
astonishing decision: I will not marry him....

That evening, under the trees of the Bockley High Road, she produced
the typewritten anonymous letter and asked him point-blank: “Did you
write this?”

“No,” he said immediately.

“Did you type it, then?” (It showed her mean opinion of him that she
judged him capable of such a quibble.)

“No.”

“Do you know its contents?”

“How should I?”

“Then please read it.” She handed it to him.

“If you like,” he said, and read it. “Well?” he remarked, after doing
so.

“How am I to know if you are telling the truth?”

“You have only my word.”

“But, according to the letter, you may be telling me a lie.”

“That is presuming that I wrote it.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No.”

Pause. Then suddenly she stopped and faced him defiantly.

“I don’t believe you!” she snapped.

“Well----”

“Look here. You _did_ write this thing. Tell the truth. Own up
to it. It’s very clever and all that, but it shouldn’t be kept up
seriously like this. I’m certain you wrote that letter.”

“You don’t take my word for it?”

“Not in this case.”

“In other words, I’m a liar. Eh?”

“I suppose it comes to that.”

“Well, you’re very polite, I must say. Perhaps you’ve a few more things
you’d like to say about me?”

“Don’t try to be sarcastic. But there is one thing if you really want
to know.”

“What’s that?”

She paused, and then hurled it at him with terrible effect.

“I don’t love you a bit.... Not a tiny bit....”

She saw him whiten. It was thrilling to see how he kept his emotion
under control. She almost admired him in that moment.

“Is that so?” he said heavily.

“Yes.”

He bit his lip fiercely.

“Then our engagement, I presume, is--is dissolved?”

“Presumably.... Here’s your ring.”

Here occurred a touch of bathos. She tried to get the ring off her
finger, but it would not pass the first joint.

“Let me try,” he said humbly, and the episode became almost farcical.
It came off after a little coaxing. But the dramatic possibilities of
the incident had been ruined.

“Well,” he said stiffly, “I suppose that’s all. It’s your doing, not
mine. You’re breaking up our prospects without the least shadow of
reason.”

It did seem to her an incredibly wanton thing that she was doing.
And at this particular moment, if he had uttered her name slowly and
passionately she would have burst into tears and been reconciled to
him. But he missed the opportunity.

“I shall return your letters,” he continued coldly. (There were not
many of them, she reflected.)

“Good-bye,” she said.

They shook hands. And she thought: “Fancy having been kissed every
night for months and months and suddenly turning to a handshake!” That,
more than anything, perhaps, indicated to her the full significance of
what had happened. That and the peculiar sensation of chilliness round
her finger where the ring had been.

As she turned into Gifford Road she asked herself seriously the
question: “What has come over me? Am I mad? ...”




§ 7


More than once during the next few weeks she wished for a
reconciliation with George. It was not so much a desire for him as a
sense of despair at being once more wholly alone and adrift. Now she
was back again where she was when she first came to Gifford Road. With
redoubled energy she laboured at her music, and soon the idea of a
recital in a London concert hall began to dance attractively in her
vision. She extended her reputation by playing in other suburbs; she
thought even of setting up as a private teacher of the pianoforte. With
the surplus earnings of a few months she bought an upright piano of
decent tone and installed it in the basement sitting-room at Gifford
Road.

George wrote to her once, a long letter of mingled pleading and
expostulation. He mentioned that he had not yet told his parents what
had happened, so that if she desired to change her mind it would be
easy to do so. He laid stress on the difficulty he should find in
giving Helen and his father and mother an adequate explanation of their
separation.

After the receipt of this letter Catherine ceased her vague misgivings.
She replied immediately in a letter, short by comparison with his,
whose every sentence was the result of careful excogitation:

 It is no good thinking of our ever becoming engaged again, because
 if we did we should soon quarrel. We simply aren’t made for one
 another, and however kind and sympathetic we try to be there’ll always
 be something lacking that sooner or later we shan’t be able to do
 without....

 I am bound to confess that the idea of marriage with you always struck
 me as fantastic and improbable. I never, I believe, considered it
 seriously. I knew something would happen to put an end to our plans....

 ... Of course I am in the wrong. You have been very kind to me and
 from the ordinary point of view you would doubtless have made a very
 good husband. You are quite entitled to consider yourself shabbily
 treated. I am wholly in the wrong. But I am not going to make myself
 everlastingly unhappy just to put myself in the right. And whether
 you would have made me a good husband or not, I should certainly have
 made you a bad wife. I am a peculiar person, and I would never marry
 a man just because he would make a good husband.... Surely you don’t
 imagine I am going to marry you just to let you out of the difficulty
 of explaining things at home? ... A thing like that proves at once the
 complete misunderstanding that exists between us two.... You must tell
 your parents and Helen exactly what has happened, viz. that I have
 jilted you. If you were a woman you could claim a few hundred pounds
 damages for breach of promise.... Tell them I have jilted you because
 I could not bear the thought of marrying you. Blame me entirely: I
 am heartless and a flirt, cruel, treacherous and anything else you
 like. Only I am not such a fool as to marry somebody I don’t want to
 marry....

 Don’t imagine I am in love with somebody else. At present I am not
 in love with anybody. At one time I thought I was in love with you,
 but I am doubtful if it ever was so really. I think it was just that
 you hypnotized me by being in love with me yourself. I mean, I was so
 interested in your experience....

 I don’t ask you to forgive me. Because forgiving won’t make any
 difference. I may have done right or I may have done wrong, but I have
 done what I would do over again if I had to. There is no repentance
 in me. It is idle to pretend I am sorry. I am extraordinarily glad to
 have got out of a difficult position....

 This letter, by the way, is the first sincere letter I have ever
 written to you. I do not mean that the others were all insincere: I
 mean that, compared with this one for truth and sincerity, the others
 were simply--nothing....

 As to my present attitude towards you I will be offensively
 straightforward. I do not like you. That ought to convince you finally
 of the uselessness of answering this letter....




§ 8


A cold May day, so chilly that a fire seemed the most welcome thing on
earth. Seven in the evening, and it was the last lesson of the quarter.
When she reached “Claremont,” Verreker was not there. He had been up
to the City, and a slight accident outside Liverpool Street Station
had delayed the trains. The maid showed her into the music-room and
left her alone. She sat in one of the big chairs by the fire and felt
astonishingly miserable. The room had regained its normal condition;
the surplus furniture, the books, papers, writing-desk, etc., had
been taken away: but a grandfather clock that had not originally been
there now occupied a permanent position in the corner. The embers were
burning low, and shadows were darkening all around: the black and white
vista of piano keys straggled obscurely in the background; the clock
was ticking sleepily away. Far into the dim distance of the ceiling
loomed the polished splendour of the raised sound-board....

Why did she feel miserable?

It was something in her soul.

She got up and sat down at the piano.

With no discoverable motive she commenced to play the piece that she
now knew was Chopin’s Black Note Etude (in G flat). It was the one she
had heard years ago when she stood in the scented dusk of the Ridgeway
in front of the house with the corner bay-window. Since then she had
learned it thoroughly and played it many times on concert platforms.
But as she played it now it sounded new, or rather, it sounded as if
she had heard it only once before, and that was many years ago in the
summer twilight. All between was a gap, a void which only the Chopin
Etude could bridge....

(In her strange mood she was playing it most abominably, by the way.)

She paused in the middle. Her eyes were like dark gems amidst the red
glory of her hair.

“I’m not in love with _any person_,” she told herself with
incredible calmness. “I’m not in love with anybody in the world. But
I’m in love with _Something_. Some Thing! Very deeply, very
passionately, I am. And I don’t know what it is.... I keep finding
it and losing it again. But it’s in this”--she started the first few
bars of the Chopin piece--“it’s all everywhere in that. I knew it was
there when I stood and listened to it years ago. Oh, it’s there. And
I’ve heard and seen it in other places, too. But as yet it’s been only
a _thing_.... But some day, maybe, I’ll tack it on to somebody
living, and then ... God help me! ...”

Her fingers flew over the keys, and the great octaves began to sing out
in the left hand.

“I’ll have to be careful,” she went on in thought--“careful, or else
some day I’ll go mad.... But it’s there, whatever it is.... Something
that’s in that and that’s in me as well, and they’re nearly tearing me
to shreds to get closer to one another. That’s how it feels.... And
I told him I wasn’t in love with _anybody_ ... But _if_ I
should catch a glimpse of this something in any living being! Nothing
should ever keep us apart! Nothing could! Neither life nor death--nor
miles--nor anything.”

She let her hands fall down the keyboard in a great culminating Niagara
of octaves. Two chords like the blare of trumpets, and ...

The door opened and Verreker entered.

She paused with her hands poised on the keys.

“Well,” he began cheerily, “it’s the last lesson of the quarter, isn’t
it?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

He was warming his hands in front of the fire.

“Confoundedly cold for May,” he remarked parenthetically. “You’ve been
taking lessons of me for a year now, haven’t you?”

“Just over a year.”

He stood with his back to the fire.

“Well,” he continued, “you’ve not done badly. In fact, you’ve--you’ve
improved--er--quite--er--beyond my expectations. I admit that.”

It was the biggest compliment he had ever paid her. Pleasure surged in
her blood. She flushed.

“And,” he went on, “I don’t want to go on taking your money when you’re
no longer likely to benefit much. As a matter of fact, you’ve come to
a point at which my lessons are no longer worth three guineas each to
you. You can teach yourself as well as I can teach you. I’ve led you
out to the open sea, and now the time’s come for--for dropping the
pilot. See?”

She nodded.

“So I don’t recommend you to have another quarter with me. I think it
would be money wasted.”

She nodded.

“Of course I shall be glad to help you in any way I can if you need it.”

She nodded.

“And if you ever wish me to give you advice on any point of theory or
technique I shall be pleased to do so.”

She nodded.

Pause.

“... I’ve just been up to town to get some new music in manuscript from
a new author. It’s quite good stuff and very modern. I’ll run it over
if you’d care to hear it.”

“Thanks,” she said, and vacated the stool....

When he had finished it was almost too dark to see the music. She was
standing at the side of the piano with her face in the shadows.

“Play ‘Jeux d’Eaux,’” she said softly.

He began....




CHAPTER XIII


LONELINESS

§ 1


SHE began to be very lonely. She had no friends.

She began to long for companionship. Since her estrangement from
George, the Trants’ household had of course been barred to her. This
meant the loss of Helen’s benign, sweetening companionship. There
was something in Helen.... Catherine missed those Sunday teas at
“Highfield.” She missed Mrs. Trant’s anxious affability, Mr. Trant’s
bluff hooliganism (which she detested), and Helen’s smile, aloof yet
full of serene understanding. She missed even those lingering homeward
strolls with George, the comfortable feel of his arm linked in hers,
and the faint tobacco aroma of his clothes. Undoubtedly she missed his
companionship and his passing flashes of brilliance. Once she composed
a letter to him....

 We can’t be lovers, but why shouldn’t we be friends? Surely we’re
 capable of it. I for one am desperately lonely.... But understand,
 there is not the slightest prospect of anything further than
 friendship developing.... But friendship I should be glad to have....

She tore it up as soon as she had read it over. It was no good. He
would not understand....

Often in the midst of applause at her concerts she would think the
awful thought: I am the loneliest person of you all. You who are
envying me have friends and companions. I have none. I am utterly to be
pitied.

And sometimes as she strolled along the tree-hung suburban roads the
idea of suicide would come before her calmly and without effort. It
was one solution of the difficulty. It was one she did not propose to
take. For one thing, life was very precious. And for another, she had
not the courage.... But suicide always took the position in her mind of
a possible and perfectly feasible proposition. She was not hopelessly
prejudiced against it....

She would undoubtedly have killed herself but for music. Music gave her
courage. She felt that fame as a pianist would compensate for utter
unhappiness and loneliness. She had always the feeling: If I am subject
to some great trial, if I am miserable and unhappy, I can put my misery
and unhappiness into my playing. If my heart is ever on the point of
breaking, I shall play Chopin’s Nocturnes the better for it. My misery
I shall not have to bear alone: the whole world (or a large part of it)
will bear it with me. The miseries of other folk are no less intense
than mine, but they are suffered in silence and forgotten. Mine will
be bequeathed to the world. Even my loneliness will not be so tragic
when all the world is sharing it with me. _I_ shall suffer, but
thousands will throb, not with sympathy, but with an infinitely greater
thing--my own agony made real in their hearts. I shall be immortal even
if the only thing of me that lasts is what I have suffered....

The craving for immortality in her did not wear a religious aspect.
All she desired was to leave behind some ineffaceable indisfigurable
thing that she had felt, or that had been a part of her. I am not
worth preserving, she told herself. No angel business for me.
But my feelings, my sensations, my strange moods and aspects,
these are exquisite, different from everything else that has ever
existed--divine, imperishable, everlasting. When people have forgotten
who I was I shall not mind if they will only remember some solitary
fragment of what I have felt....

This was her aim in playing. She projected her personality into the
music. Chopin was passionately Chopin when she played him: he was also
passionately herself.

But she was tragically lonely.

Her loneliness made her do strange things. One Saturday afternoon in
Epping Forest she found a boy fishing with a jam jar in a small pond.
He was busy with tadpoles. He had glorious golden hair and blue eyes,
and might have been about twelve or thirteen years old.

“Hullo!” she called. “Caught anything yet?”

He had waded ten or fifteen yards from the bank. He held up a jar.

“Do let me see!” she cried enthusiastically.

He waded back, and they sat down on a grassy bank and examined the
contents of the jar. For over half an hour she tried to comprehend
his enigmatic Cockney. She hated insects of all kinds, and tadpoles
produced in her the same kind of revulsion as did insects. But for half
an hour she conquered that revulsion. She held tadpoles in her hand,
though her flesh shrank in horror. She was so utterly lonely that this
was not too great a price to pay for chatter and companionship.

He was an ordinary gutter-urchin, the kind that runs after the
wagonettes touting for halfpennies. His clothes were tattered and not
too clean, but she did not mind. She wished she could have talked in
his language. She wished he would tell her his secrets. As it was,
their conversation was confined to tadpoles, of which subject she was
lamentably ignorant.

In a dim, formless way she wished he might sprain his ankle or be taken
ill so that she could wait on him and mother him. She wanted some
excuse for touching his soft hair and his eyes and his beautiful bare
feet.

But when his mates appeared suddenly round the corner of a bush he took
up his jar and left her without a word.... Still, she was happy and
smiling, though her flesh still crept at the thought of tadpoles.

Children were very nice ... especially boys.

But the maternal instinct was not very strong in her. It was only her
loneliness that had intensified what of it that there was.

The thirteenth mazurka of Chopin filled her with strange ecstasy. It
was so lonely....




§ 2


She became increasingly conscious of the defects of her education.
Literature at the Bockley High School for Girls had meant a painful
annual struggle through a play of Shakespeare and a novel of Sir Walter
Scott. Catherine did not like either of these authors. The former
she regarded secretly as an uninspired country gentleman who had
industriously put into blank verse thoughts so obvious that nobody had
ever previously deemed them worthy of mention. Such remarks as “Evil
and good are mingled in our natures.” ... Her acquaintance with the
immortal bard had been confined to that small residue left of his plays
when the censoring hand of Miss Forsdyke had excluded (_a_) those
plays which are too poor to be worth reading, and (_b_) those
which are unsuitable for critical analysis in the Bockley High School
for Girls. Of Scott, Catherine’s opinion was no higher. She found him
woefully dull. And invariably she had to learn his glossaries at the
end of the book.

The net result was that Catherine’s literary equipment comprised a
few score obsolete words and idioms culled in an entirely stupid
fashion from _As You Like It_, _The Merchant of Venice_,
and _The Talisman_. Of Lamb, Hazlitt, Landor, Rossetti, the
Brontës, De Quincey, Fitzgerald and the modernists she knew nothing.
She had been brought up with a vague prejudice that reading anything
less than a hundred years old was wasting time. It seemed to her on
the face of it quite inconceivable that people should ever equal
Scott and Shakespeare. Though she liked neither of them, she was
overwhelmed by the mighty consensus of opinion labelling them as the
greatest masters (for school use) of the English language. Only rarely
did she rebel, and then she thought vaguely: “Supposing all this
Scott-and-Shakespeare-worship is a great organized conspiracy!” ...

Of French literature she knew nothing. Her study of the French language
had not progressed beyond an ability to demand writing implements.
(“Bring me pens, ink, writing-paper, a blotter and a stamp. What time
does the next post go? Say: At what hour departs the next post?”)
That the French language possessed a literature she was but dimly
aware. Her ideas of France and the French were derived from various
stage Frenchmen she had seen upon the boards of the Bockley Victoria
Theatre. France was a nation of dapper little gesticulating men with
Imperial beards, and heavily rouged girls who wore skirts a few inches
shorter than on this side of the Channel, and said “Cheri?” She was a
land of boulevards and open-air cafés, and absinthe and irreligion. Her
national industry was adultery.

Partly to occupy her time when she was not practising the piano
Catherine joined the Bockley Free Library. She read most of the
Victorian poets, and was oppressed by the heavy sentimentality
of Tennyson. But she was not really fond of reading; it was only
loneliness that drove her to it. Only one of Dickens’ novels fascinated
her, and that was _Great Expectations_. But for _Jane Eyre_
and _Wuthering Heights_ she had a passionate admiration.

Once she discovered a book by Verreker. It was called _Growth of the
Village Community_. Obeying a swift impulse, she took it out and
went home with it. That evening she wrestled with the first chapter....

Her amazement that anybody could write such a thing was only equalled
by her amazement that anybody could read it. It was to Scott in point
of heaviness as a hydraulic press is to a pound weight.

It did not precisely raise her opinion of Verreker in the way that
might have been expected. It amazed her, but it also made her think:
“What’s the good of all this useless learning? It makes no difference
to him. Nobody would know how clever he is to look at him. And yet he
must have been studying these weird problems for years.” ...

She had no sympathy with the remorseless pursuit of knowledge. Her
forte was the pursuit of experience.




CHAPTER XIV


HOPE ENTERS

§ 1


ARRIVED at Gifford Road one summer’s evening after a dusty journey on
top of a crowded motor-bus, Catherine took pen and paper immediately
(without taking off her hat) and wrote:

 DEAR MR. VERREKER,

 I am thinking of giving a pianoforte recital in one of the London
 concert halls. I should be very grateful for your advice and
 assistance in the matter. Will you do this for me?

 Yours sincerely,

                                             CATHERINE WESTON.

When Catherine had set out some hours before she had had no thoughts
of a pianoforte recital. To be sure, the idea was always revolving
more or less nebulously in her line of vision, but till this moment
it had lacked definition. A pianoforte recital involved a good deal
of risk. It meant hours and hours of preparatory practice, much
worry and anxiety, and the possible loss of a good deal of money. It
meant running the gauntlet of all the blasé and supercilious musical
critics. It meant learning some good solid “background” piece of work
to placate the British public--something heavy and hackneyed and
academic--a Brahms sonata or some Beethoven pomposity. And to consult
Verreker on the matter was merely to invite showers of disappointment
and disillusionment. He would assuredly recommend her not to attempt a
recital. He would tell her candidly that her abilities were not equal
to it. And if she insisted, he would tell her to go somewhere else
for advice: he would not risk his reputation by backing her. He would
be violently rude and outspoken. He would repeat his dictum that she
could never advance beyond the front rank of the second-raters....

She knew all these things. She had thought of them, weighed them up,
and counted them nothing. She was impulsive, but she knew whither her
impulse led and what it involved. She knew that Verreker would insult
her.... And yet she wrote to him.

As she ran joyously down Gifford Road to post the letter she thought:
“What will he think of my note? What will he think of the wording of
it? How will the concluding sentence affect him?--‘Will you do this for
me?’--So charming, so delightfully personal, so intimate, with a dash
of roguish coquetry! But will he see all that?--or will he think it
merely impudent?”

Anyway, she decided, I should get an answer by Wednesday morning....




§ 2


She worked it out mathematically. He would receive the note by the
first post on Tuesday morning. If he wrote immediately it was just
possible that a reply might reach her by the seven o’clock post on
Tuesday evening. However, such promptness was unlikely and not to be
expected; it was much more probable that he would write later on in
the day, so that she should receive his answer by breakfast time on
Wednesday. She pinned her hopes to breakfast time on Wednesday. Yet she
could not help a feeling of tense anticipation when the postman knocked
at the door on Tuesday evening. He has been prompt, she told herself
triumphantly, and she sat down at the piano and started to turn over
the pages of a Bach Concerto. She would not betray her excitement by
rushing down into the kitchen to fetch the letter. She would let Mrs.
Carbass bring it up to her. After all, it was absurd to be so concerned
about a letter. And a few minutes made no difference in any case.

But Mrs. Carbass did not come. And the awful strangling thought came
to Catherine: “Perhaps there wasn’t a letter for me!” At least, it
was awful and strangling at first, until she told herself somewhat
irritably: “Well, you didn’t expect one, did you? Give the man time!”
And of course there was Bank Holiday traffic: possibly that accounted
for some delay. Curious that she should have neglected that superbly
facile explanation--of course, it must be Bank Holiday traffic....

Or perhaps Mrs. Carbass had forgotten to bring it up. Catherine
discovered a sudden desire to borrow Mrs. Carbass’s scissors. She went
down the short flight of steps into the dark kitchen.

“Can I have your scissors a moment, Mrs. Carbass?”

“Certainly, miss.... Leave ’em up there w’en you’ve finished with ’em
an’ I’ll take ’em w’en I brings the supper....” She took the scissors
off the hook and handed them to Catherine.

“By the way,” said Catherine at the door, “post been yet?”

“Yes, miss. Nothink for you. Only a Hodson’s dripery circular--they’re
always sendin’ ’em round.”

“Thanks!” replied Catherine nonchalantly, and went back to her
sitting-room.

“Of course,” she told herself, regarding the scissors vacantly,
“it’s almost impossible for him to have replied in time to reach me
this evening. What with the Bank Holiday traffic and one thing and
another....”

She pinned her hopes to Wednesday morning....




§ 3


On Wednesday morning she came downstairs early. The post came usually
at seven-fifteen, and letters were as a rule by her plate when she came
to breakfast at eight. Never before had the prospect of reading letters
enticed her from bed before seven-forty-five. But this morning was
beautiful and sunny, and she thought (as she lay in bed about a quarter
past seven): “It is shameful to lie in bed on such a morning as this!
I’ve a good mind to get up and have a stroll up the High Road before
breakfast.”

She dressed and came downstairs to the basement sitting-room. As she
turned the handle of the door her heart beat fast and she thought:
“Another five seconds and I shall know! Another five seconds and----”

There was something by her plate! Only it was rather too bulky to be a
private letter. But there was probably a letter hidden underneath it.
She approached quickly and snatched it up.... Nothing!

The bulky package was a copy of a book of words for a forthcoming
concert at which she was to play.

As she went out into Gifford Road the early pilgrims to the City were
already converging into the stream that flowed along the High Road
towards Upton Rising Station. It was, as she had before noticed, a
beautiful morning. Passing the pillar-box, she was struck by the
appalling possibilities of a letter being lost in the post. It had
to be taken from the pillar-box into a bag, carried to the central
post-office, sorted, put into another bag, and finally inserted in the
letter-box of just one out of the ten thousand houses of Upton Rising!
At a dozen crises in its chequered course it might stray, get lost, or
be waylaid. The arrival of it was a miracle! That a few words scribbled
on an envelope should guide a slip of paper through all the maze and
tangle of civilization, finally selecting one out of a possible million
spots for its delivery, was nothing less than a stupendous miracle! ...
Strange that it had never occurred to her before. On the pillar-box
plate she read: “Letters containing coin etc. should not be posted in
this box, but should be registered.” That, of course, was a safeguard
against theft. There were always letter thieves about. It was a
lucrative business. They opened letters at random hoping to find postal
orders inside. No doubt letters were often lost in this way....

But, of course, he had scarcely had time to reply yet. Perhaps he
was consulting Razounov. Perhaps he was not in Upton Rising, and his
letters had to be forwarded on to him. Or perhaps he had written and
delayed to post the letter. Or perhaps the Bank Holiday traffic....

She pinned her faith to the midday delivery....




§ 4


Wednesday passed, and no letter came. And then Thursday. Catherine had
never before been so eager about a letter. She took to going out for a
stroll about post-time so that if the letter should arrive it would be
there waiting for her when she returned. This manœuvre seemed somehow
to lessen the tension of waiting.... Friday came and went, and still no
reply from Verreker. Sometimes Catherine felt passionately and proudly
annoyed, sometimes she would be on the point of writing again to him.
Sometimes she thought: “It is my fault: the letter has irritated him;
he has disliked that concluding sentence, ‘Will you do this for me?’”
And sometimes she felt: I have written him a polite note, and it is his
place to reply. If he doesn’t, I shan’t write again.

And then she had intervals of amazing lucidity, when she upbraided
herself without stint. You are being as trivial and as paltry over
this letter as anybody might be, she accused herself--your behaviour
is absolutely absurd. There are a hundred reasons why he may not have
replied, and one of them is that he has completely forgotten. After
all, you do not occupy such an important place in his mind as to make
it impossible for him to forget you....

And then on Saturday morning (she deliberately stayed in bed till eight
in order to convince herself that she had ceased to be absurd) the
familiar handwriting lay uppermost beside her plate. With carefully
restrained eagerness she cut open the envelope with the bread-knife.

 DEAR MISS WESTON (_she read_),

 I am sorry I have delayed in replying to your note, but I have been
 extremely busy and that must be my excuse. With regard to your
 project, it is almost impossible to discuss it in correspondence, so
 will you come to tea here on Sunday (4 p.m.)?

 Yours sincerely,

                                               R. E. VERREKER.

“H’m!” she thought. “So he was busy. That was what kept him from
writing.” She had never thought of that. And he wanted her to come to
tea on Sunday. Sunday was to-morrow....

Her first feeling was one of unutterable relief that the terrible
melancholy of Sunday afternoon would be staved off for one week....
Then she began to speculate what she should wear on the occasion....
And afterwards as she strolled along the clean white asphalt of the
High Road she yielded herself wholly to vague rapture....




§ 5


Sunday was very hot. It was the kind of day which normally would have
made her acutely depressed. The air was windless and sultry, the
streets dusty and paper-littered, the sky blazingly and mercilessly
blue. As Catherine walked briskly down Gifford Road she passed the
whelk-seller pushing his briny-flavoured handcart along the gutter.
Further down the road the Sabbath carnival of the suburbs had already
begun: a downstairs window was wide open at the bottom, and from within
came the throaty gargling strains of a gramophone. At another house a
piano was vamping to an antiquated music-hall ditty. The tar in the
roadway was sweating in great oozing blots, and the wheels of the whelk
cart had left conspicuous ruts in the soft tar-macadam near the kerb.

In the High Road (running north and south) there was no shade save from
occasional trees that overhung the sidewalks. Trams and motor-buses
fluttered by bearing crowds of white-frocked girls and men in sedate
browns and greys Forestwards. Now and then a wagonette rumbled over the
wooden blocks of the roadway, tastelessly beflagged and beribboned,
crammed to overflowing with miscellaneous juvenility, all shouting and
singing and waving paper streamers. Sometimes a middle-aged or elderly
group passed in similar vehicles, and the noise and clamour of these
was of the maudlin type. As each party drew up to the King’s Arms there
was a frenzy of horn-blowing and a quick descent for refreshment.

Catherine passed along the hot pavements with light step and light
heart. She passed through the crowded, gesticulating throng outside
the King’s Arms, where the marble ledges were crowded with empty,
froth-smeared beer glasses, and the diminutive shrubs in green-painted
barrels were yellow and parched for lack of water. Normally these
things would have struck her as tawdry and dismal, but to-day she
took no notice of them. She was not even conscious of the terribly
melancholy aspect of whole rows of shuttered shops with doors
blistering in the heat.

But in the Ridgeway all was strong light and deep shadow. The asphalt
roadway gleamed dazzlingly white under the sun, and the sidewalks,
overhung with heavy lime-trees, were avenues of green twilight. Along
them men’s sunburnt faces seemed strangely brown and handsome, and
the sweat that disfigured the noses and foreheads of girls no longer
glistened. Even a hawker bearing with an easy hand a monstrous cloud of
multicoloured balloons for sale on the High Road seemed rather to lend
a grotesque charm than a positive disfigurement. And the houses, well
set back from the road, displayed their gilded domes and sham minarets
and pseudo-Elizabethan gables with quiet, unostentatious pride.
Nicknamed “The Lovers’ Parade,” the Ridgeway was justifying the title.
But in the soft gloom there was only enchantment in the passing of
couples: their facial blemishes were toned down, their gestures took on
a strange and subtle grace, their wandering was shadowlike amongst the
shadows. Only when they stepped off the kerb into the garish sunlight
was the spell shattered, the dream brought to an awakening.

Catherine passed airily along. Just as she had not been conscious of
the brutal garishness of the High Road, so now the soft charm of the
Ridgeway did not affect her. Her heart was abundantly glad and joyous,
but her senses were quiescent. Had she been in her usual mood of lonely
introspection she would have thrilled at the beauty of all around
her--faces would have attracted and repelled her with fierce intensity,
she would have laughed at the cloud of colour towed by the balloon man,
she would have drunk in the cloying scent of geraniums like nectar. As
it was, she was vaguely but tremendously rapturous. And the rapture
came from within her, not from without.




§ 6


She found him in the garden seated in a deck-chair (adjusted to the
bottom notch) reading the _Observer_. He wore grey flannel
trousers and a sort of Donegal tweed sporting jacket. He was utterly
divorced from the prevailing atmosphere of Upton Rising in that his
attire betrayed no indication of the fact that it was Sunday. Catherine
thought: “How delightfully Bohemian!” and (an after-thought), “He
certainly hasn’t dressed up for me, anyway.”

“Hullo!” he cried, as she obtruded herself into the alcove of
shrubbery which ringed him round almost completely. And he rose (a
matter of obvious difficulty) and shook hands with her. He dropped
the _Observer_ on the lawn. Also he smiled at her: it was not a
beautiful smile, because he could not smile beautifully, but it was a
smile of welcome.

“Come along, and well find another chair,” he said. They strolled over
the lawn and towards the house.

“I’m taking a day off,” he said briskly, “and I think I deserve it. The
first day off I’ve had for months.”

“Except last Monday,” she put in.

“Why--what happened then?”

“You were at High Beech. I saw you.”

“Oh, Bank Holiday, you mean? Oh, that wasn’t pleasure exactly.
Miss Trant and I had gone to Hertfordshire to collect some data in
connection with a new book I’m on with. Coming back we thought we’d go
past High Beech--that was all.”

“Another book?”

“Only a treatise on economics--not at all interesting to most people, I
assure you. You’d probably find it extremely tiresome.”

“How do you know?” she asked aggressively. She disliked his readiness
to lump her among the “most people.” Also she was annoyed to think
that what he said was probably true, that she would find it extremely
tiresome. She had tackled his _Village Community_ (the first
chapter) and been unable to make head or tail of it.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I only think ... Mrs. Tebbutt!”

The summons was presumably to someone in the house. A female voice
called “Yes!”

“Bring some tea outside, will you?” he sang out, and the voice within
responded with a resigned, “Very well, sir.” ... Into an outhouse he
plunged, and emerged with a deck-chair and cushions.

“Come on,” he said, and handed her the cushions to carry. “It’s pretty
cool round by those shrubs.”

They strolled back over the lawn, and took up positions facing one
another.

“Mind if I smoke?” he remarked, and before she could murmur a “Oh, not
at all,” he had lit a cigarette and was puffing at it.

“Smoke yourself?” he then said.

“Thanks,” she replied, and took one out of a box of Egyptian cigarettes
that lay on the ground beside him.

“Now,” he began, “about that recital....”

“Yes?”

“Let me talk to you a bit.... Do you know anything about recitals? No,
of course you don’t. Well, listen to me.... A recital ...”




§ 7


What he told her might be summarized thus:

“A recital is an expensive business. It means taking a risk. If it
is a failure it is a big failure. If it is a success it opens up a
vista of bigger successes. It is the barrier which every first-class
_virtuoso_ has to approach and surmount. There is no reason why
you should not attempt to surmount it. Provided you are willing to
undertake the financial risk. After all, though you will never be a
first-class pianist, you may quite easily be a second, and a good many
second-class people pass the barrier successfully.”

As a sort of running undercurrent to his remarks there was the
implication:

“There is no knowing what the British public may do. I prophesy neither
success nor failure. Even if you aren’t tip-top the public may insist
on treating you as if you were, in which case you will no doubt have a
difficulty in believing anybody who tells you you aren’t. If the fickle
public makes an idol of you, I can’t help it. I can only assure you you
don’t merit it. In fact, I wash my hands of all responsibility for your
future.”

Practically what he said was:

“I will help you as far as I can. I will arrange your recital, get
you a hall, have tickets, programmes and announcements printed, and
secure you a tolerable press. All this I will do without in the least
guaranteeing that your enterprise will be anything but a howling
fiasco.”

She had expected so little that she was grateful even for this. She
had prepared herself to receive merciless rebuffs. What she had not
prepared herself to do was to express gratitude. Consequently she found
a difficulty in doing so. But no annoyance was discernible in him. He
did not appear to want her thanks or even to notice the absence of
them. And this in some inexplicable sense piqued her. She would have
liked him to say: “Aren’t you grateful?” (Though, of course, it was
just the last thing he would ever say.) But at least he might have
waited enquiringly for her to voice her gratitude. And if he had, she
would probably not have done so. But because he ran on talking of all
kinds of irrelevant things she was both quaintly annoyed and intensely
desirous of thanking him.

Suddenly she realized he was paying her the stupendous compliment of
talking to her about himself.

“Of course I love music,” he was saying, “but I do not let it occupy my
whole life. There are bigger things. Infinitely bigger things....”

She was pleased he had used the word “love” so straightforwardly, so
naturally, so unhysterically. She was glad he had not said “am fond
of,” or “am awfully keen on,” or “like very much.” Most men were afraid
of the word; she was glad he was not. And immediately she thought: “If
I had said it, it would have sounded schoolgirlish. What is it that
gives dignity to what he says?”

“What are they?” she asked.

“The biggest and most important thing in the world,” he replied, “is
life. Life is worth living, there’s not a doubt about that. But it’s
more worth living for some people than for others. And the things that
make or tend to make those differences are among those infinitely
bigger things of which I spoke.”

She did not properly understand what he meant, but she was striving
magnificently to seem as if she did. And the more she strove the more
she felt: There are parts of this man that I shall never understand.
And I am defenceless, I am at a terrible disadvantage, because there
are no parts of me that he could not understand if he would.... And
all the time during the conversation she had been noticing little
insignificant things which gave her a peculiar, almost a poignant
pleasure. His appearance was anything but effeminate, yet the whole
pose of him as he poured out tea was instinct with an almost womanly
grace. All his movements (excepting those that involved the rising
out of his deck-chair) were so free, so unfettered, so effortless,
even when they were uncouth. This does not mean that his table manners
were perfect. They were not. Some of them were extremely original.
He ate small triangular ham sandwiches at two mouthfuls. He dropped
cigarette ash into his saucer. His cake dissection was ungeometrical.
And yet he was all the while doing two things at once with such a
superb and easy-going facility--talking and having tea. She admired
him. She passionately admired him. She passionately admired him
because everything she admired him for was done so unconsciously,
so effortlessly, so unthinkingly. She watched the movements of his
face as he spoke, and admired the splendid lack of symmetry that was
there. She was fascinated by the appalling ugliness of some of his
facial expressions. And she was fascinated by his supreme neglect of
whether they were ugly or not. She shrank back at some of his facial
eccentricities; she wanted to cry out: “Don’t do that again--ever! It
looks terrible! It spoils you. You don’t show yourself to advantage a
bit!” And the next minute she was admiring the nonchalance that made
him so splendidly indifferent to the impressions he gave. The very
hideousness of him at times was the measure of his individuality and
of her admiration.




§ 8


It was eight o’clock when she left “Claremont.” In the Ridgeway the
long green avenue seemed scarcely darker than before, though twilight
was falling and the rising moon flooded the roadway in pale radiance.
Everything reminded her of those old evening walks from the Bockley
High School back home to No. 24, Kitchener Road. Groups of girls swept
past her like fleecy clouds, with here and there the swift sparkle
of an eye or the sudden flash of an ornament caught in the jets of
moonlight that fell through the lacery of leaves. She was very happy.
All the poetry in the world was greeting her. And the Ridgeway, so
sleek, so dapper, so overwhelmingly suburbanized, seemed to her full of
wonderful romance. Nothing was there in that soft light that did not
seem passionately beautiful. Someone was clipping a hedge close by, and
the gentle flip-flip of the shears was golden music to her. The rich
scent of the cut evergreen was like nectar. From an open window came
the chatter of children’s voices and the muffled hum of a gramophone,
and she suddenly awoke to the realization of how wonderful a thing a
gramophone can be. The long vistas of concrete pavement with their
alternating cracks making two lines of tapering perspective were to
her among the most beautiful visions she had ever seen. And out in the
High Road--the common, condemned, despised High Road--all was poetry
and romance. Trams passed like golden meteors flying through space; the
last rays of the evening sun had picked out a certain upstairs window
in the King’s Head and turned it into a crimson star. The King’s Head
was no longer a public-house; it was a lighthouse, a beacon flashing
hope and welcome on the long pale road whither the blue tram-lines sped
to infinity. And over the roofs the moon was splashing in streams of
silver foam. Bockley, that great, straggling, drab, modern metropolitan
suburb was no longer itself, but a city gleaming with strange magic.

She did not go straight home, but wandered amongst the stream of
strollers along the High Road towards the Forest. She was amazed at
the astonishing loveliness of this place, where she had been born and
had lived and worked and dreamed. She was thrilled at the passionate
beauty that was exuding from every house and building like some rare
essence. She had always taken it for granted: Bockley is an ugly place.
And now it seemed that Bockley was transfigured into a thing of wild,
tumultuous beauty, as if the flesh had fallen away and revealed a
soul of serene wonderment. Bockley! The very word became subtle and
mysterious, like a password or the sacred formula that frees the powers
of magic!

She was in a mood of childish impressionableness. When she reached High
Wood she found the great green arena round the tram terminus dotted
with couples.... She was not in the mood to call anything vulgar. She
was amazed at the things she had missed. She remembered countless
evenings at the Victoria Theatre when she had heard comedians make
cheap witticisms about love and the twilight.... And now, sauntering
about the fringe of the Forest, she glanced hastily at each couple as
she passed them and asked herself: “Is this love?”

Even in the noisy procession of youths and maidens arm-in-arm and
singing music-hall ditties, she could not discern vulgarity. And the
scampering of brown-legged and bare-footed urchins over the dark turf
was nothing but pure poetry. Life--life, she echoed in her mind, and
did not quite know why she did so.... And a single glance down the long
High Road, where the swirling trams glittered like a chain of gems,
made her wish to cry with the very ecstasy of being alive....




CHAPTER XV


SUCCESS

§ 1


A STRANGE thing had happened. Something unbelievable, something
half-expected yet absolutely incredible when it happened. She had
scored a brilliant success....

In the small room behind the concert hall the applause was still
echoing in her ears. She looked proudly in the mirror and she saw
herself flushed and triumphant. She knew instinctively that she
had been hugely successful. She knew that she had exceeded her own
expectations. Something had gripped her and carried her magnificently
forward. And even the critics had smiled dourly upon her.

A press association man had requested an interview.... A photographer’s
agency had asked for permission to photograph her.... And her vanity
suggested: The next visitor ought to be from a gramophone company
asking to record my playing.... But this proved premature....

She stood in front of the mirror and told herself in mad ecstasy: It’s
done! You’ve done it! You’ve passed the barrier! Henceforward no more
worries--no more fits of disappointment--no more dashed hopes--no
more thwarted ambitions! This breaks up all pessimism. Whatever fit
of despondency you fall into the remembrance of to-day will lift you
out of it. You have in this an unfailing antidote for depression....
Taste this moment to the full--it will never grow stale, but it will
not always be so fragrant as now. Drink in the ecstasy of success! ...
The tears welled up in her eyes as she yielded to the enchantment of
realization.

She looked at her hands. Strange, weirdly fascinating things--that
could achieve what they had achieved! Wonderful fingers that could lift
her so magically on to the pinnacles of fame!

Verreker entered. During the performance he had occupied an
inconspicuous seat about the middle of the hall. He was dressed
professionally--that is, in a dark lounge suit which threw into
prominence his barbaric cast of countenance.

“Well,” he began, “I suppose I ought to congratulate you----”

She gave him an extraordinary glance of mingled triumph and defiance.

“You _ought_,” she said, “but you’re not going to, are you?”

He smiled grimly. “On the contrary,” he replied, “I will compliment you
so far as to say that your playing was extraordinarily good.”

Like an impulsive child she seized hold of his coat sleeve.

“Say it again!” she cried ecstatically. “Oh, _do_ say it again!
That’s the biggest compliment you’ve ever paid me, and I do love being
praised! Say it again!” She was looking up into his face with delirium
in her eyes. Also she was trembling, and her hot fingers tightened over
his wrist.

“Don’t get excited,” he replied reprovingly. “And don’t imagine you’re
famous all at once. You didn’t play the Mozart very brilliantly.”

She laughed hysterically.

“I don’t care what you say about that! You’re trying to unsay that
compliment and you can’t! I don’t care whether you say it again or
not--you’ve said it once. And I shall remember!”

“You shouldn’t live for compliments.”

“I don’t. But I should die without them.”

“You’re much too excited. Calm down.”

“I can’t.... Oh, I can’t.... I feel I shall never be calm again.”

“Well, get home as quietly as you can, anyway. I’m not going back to
Upton Rising to-night or I’d take you.... Don’t think too much of
yourself ... Good-bye!”

He went abruptly from the room.

She gazed after him and then again at herself in the mirror. A man
appeared at the door and asked if she wanted a cab.

“Oh yes--a taxi,” she said, and was thrilled at the polygon
significance of what had happened. Now she was suddenly translated to
that social sphere in which taxis are habitually employed....




§ 2


She realized something of her indebtedness to Verreker when the
following day she received a sheaf of interesting literature from a
press-cutting agency. Nearly all the press notices were distinctly
favourable, and some were well on the way to being fulsome. She
experienced the rich delight of reading pleasant things about herself.
And she felt: This is Fame!

When she went out into the streets she experienced all the subtle joys
of a prince travelling incognito. She felt: If people knew who I was
I should be stared at. She was conscious of the disadvantage of being
always stared at, yet she was proud to think of herself as something
more than what she seemed. She was conscious of the subtle democracy
of her travelling on a London County Council tram-car. She thought:
I, sitting amongst you all, so ordinary, so commonplace, so seemingly
like yourselves, am really stupendously, immeasurably different I You
might talk with me, walk with me, know me for years and years and never
discover that difference. But put me in front of a grand piano and I
will show you that difference in thirty seconds! ...

She began to regard her physical attractions dispassionately. She knew
she was not good looking, nor even pretty, but hitherto she had shirked
the recognition of the fact. Now she became almost impulsively eager
to admit the width of the barrier that separated the peculiarities of
her features from the ideal of feminine beauty. She had often regarded
herself critically in the mirror and asked herself the question: What
do I look like? She tried to think of her reflection as of a casual
stranger seen in the street: on this basis she attempted to assess
its qualities, good and bad. But concerning the whole, as opposed to
the component parts, she had hitherto shirked a decision. She would
not commit herself so far as to say whether it was good or bad,
attractive or otherwise. But now she cheerfully agreed: I am not at
all pretty and my red hair is only nice to those who like red hair.
But I am distinctive. If you looked at me once you would probably
look at me again. My face is not one you would easily forget. These
remarks are ambiguous, I know, but they are none the less true for
that. And a subconscious implication was: It adds to the extraordinary
interestingness of myself that I am not conventionally good looking.
Call me grotesque or what you will, but remember that my looks are no
more astonishing than myself.... Viewing herself thus, she was rather
proud of her facial eccentricities. And she was conscious that, good
looking or not, there was a subtle attractiveness about her. She
decided, quite without any evidence in support of the theory: The
attractiveness of a person who is not good looking (if it exists) is
an immensely richer, rarer, and more precious commodity than that
possessed by one who is merely conventionally beautiful....

While being frankly and (she thought) rather charmingly conceited,
she was stringently careful to avoid the taint of snobbishness. The
thought occurred to her more than once that the very insistence of
her efforts to eschew snobbishness might be even in itself a subtle
manifestation of the dreaded evil. She was urgently careful to show
Mrs. Carbass that her rise to success had made no difference at all in
her relations with her. She enjoyed emphasizing the contrast between
their two stations, and she enjoyed equally emphasizing the paradox
of her behaving as if they were on equal terms together. She was glad
for her to see her casually in expensive evening gowns, she enjoyed
the thrill of having taxis waiting for her in the street; she liked
Mrs. Carbass to bring her in a handful of letters and say: “All fer
you, miss. You gits all the letters nardays.” These things indicated
the gulf that was widening between their respective social positions.
And she also liked to clean her own boots on a Sunday morning (when
Mrs. Carbass stayed late in bed), and she enjoyed the mediocre thrills
of travelling third-class. For these things indicated the amazing
paradox that though she had achieved fame, fame had not changed her.
Whereas fame _had_ changed her: it had made her more arrogant,
more self-confident, more conceited. As she cleaned her boots on the
Sabbath she felt a delicious thrill at the thought: These fingers of
mine, so deft, so delicate, fingers in a million, are now employed in
the most ordinary, unromantic and menial of tasks. For the moment I
am no better than a maid-of-all-work. But what amazing secrets these
fingers of mine possess! And what a grand paradox it is! That these
fingers, such incomparable exponents of Chopin and Liszt and Beethoven,
should be prostituting themselves for the purpose of producing a black
gloss on a pair of shoes!

And somewhere at the back of her mind was the thought: It adds to the
extraordinariness of myself that I do these things....




§ 3


Once in company with Verreker she went to see Razounov at a flat in
Piccadilly. Razounov’s memory played him more than usually false.
Verreker sent up his card, but it was plain to any beholder that
Razounov had not the slightest recollection either of the name or, when
he saw him, of the man.

“Ah, Mister Verrekair,” he stammered vacantly, and looked at Catherine.
“And Mrs. Verrekair, eh?” he continued, leering at her babyishly.

“No,” said Catherine, and expected herself to blush, and was surprised
when she didn’t.

“Zen zhe future Mrs. Verrekair, eh?” insisted Razounov, with dreamy
cunning.

“No,” said Verreker, with what Catherine thought was unnecessary
enthusiasm. “This is my former pupil Miss Weston--I expect you have
heard of her.”

“I haf rhead of her,” corrected Razounov. “I deed not know that she
wass a pupil of yours. I am very pleased to make her acquaintenance.”
He bowed ceremoniously, quite unconscious that he had met her twice
before.

The conversation languished. Razounov forgot so many things that it was
impossible to rely upon reminiscence for small talk. And Catherine,
who had hitherto been decidedly sceptical about the genuineness of
his eccentricities, came to the definite conclusion that they were
involuntary, and not manufactured to captivate music-hall audiences.
He was at once a genius and a baby. It was absurd to stay there long,
so after ten minutes or so of artificially sustained conversation they
took their leave, and descended into the electric radiance of the
streets. Verreker seemed rather amused than annoyed at the reception
Razounov had given them.

“You see now,” he said, “why it is impossible for Razounov to give
pianoforte lessons in person. For one thing, he wouldn’t remember who
his pupils were....”

It was while they were passing the shuttered frontage of Swan and
Edgar’s that an amazing conversation sprang up.

“Razounov made some queer mistakes about me, didn’t he?” she said
provocatively.

“Yes,” he replied laconically.

It was plain that the topic would languish if she did not pursue it
further. So she resumed, with an audacity which startled no one more
than herself.

“Would you mind if he had been right?”

The daring of the question nearly took her breath away when she had
spoken it. But at the moment her mind was infected with daring. She
looked at him boldly as much as to say: You heard right, I _did_
say that. I’ll say it again if you didn’t hear. And there was in the
poise of her head an enigmatic coquetry which declared: I may be
serious or I may not. I shan’t tell you which....

He looked at her almost contemptuously. Or perhaps It was the changing
lights of the shop windows that flung his face into unaccustomed
silhouette.

“I’m not very particular,” he said nonchalantly.

She suddenly took up the air of one who has been contemptuously
affronted. (Whether it was real or just an absurd make-believe she
herself could not have told.)

“Well,” she replied sharply, “I’m sure I shan’t marry anybody who
doesn’t want me to.”

“I should think not,” he said heavily, and once more the conversation
seemed likely to die a natural death. She was so startled at the utter
audacity of what she had said that she could not think of anything
to revivify it. Strangely enough, it was he this time who gave it an
exciting, if not a long lease of new life.

“Of course,” he remarked speculatively, as if it were just occurring
to him while he said it, “that remark of yours was really quite
irrelevant. Logically, I mean. It had nothing to do with what I said.”

“What did you say, then?”

“I merely said that I was not very particular.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means--itself. That’s all....” He paused and added: “And supposing
I were to marry you, it would prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“That I am not particular.”

Here the amazing conversation ceased, partly maybe because it had
achieved a certain degree of finality, certainly in part because this
crisis in it synchronized with their entrance into the tightly packed
tube lift at Piccadilly Circus Station. The journey home to Upton
Rising did not favour its resumption. Catherine was amazed at her own
intrepidity, astonished and angry in almost equal proportions at her
absurd daring. And she was also trying to grasp the significance of
what he had said. In the end she decided: It was a rather silly joke,
and his replies were about as silly as my questions.

The first-class compartment from Liverpool Street was empty save
for the two of them. But the train stopped at all stations, and any
intimate conversation was liable to sudden interruption. Catherine
also was too chaotically minded to attempt to ruffle the finality with
which the previous conversation had closed. She was content to chatter
occasionally on trivial subjects and indulge in long intervals of
uneloquent silence.

It was nearly ten o’clock in an evening late in September, and the
train passing from the urban to the suburban districts seemed to
gather with it the rich cloying scent of autumn. It was quite warm,
though the breeze that blew in occasionally from the open window was
of a delightfully perfumed coolness. Far back whence they had come
the myriad lights of London reflected a warm glow in the sky, and
ahead over the broad belt of heath and woodland the sky was pale with
a million stars. Station after station slunk into view and passed
unostentatiously away; great sprawling vistas of suburb unfolded
themselves with all the soft witchery of lamp-strewn residential
roads; here and there the train swung over bridges and past terraces
of winedark back gardens; the great suburban highways were swollen
rivers of light. Suburb after suburb slipped by, like episodes in a
crowded dream, suburbs that Catherine had never visited, or had only
vaguely heard of, places as foreign and unrecognizable as Paris or
Yokohama. And each one seemed weighed heavy with romance as the night
sank upon it; each one seemed strangely, passionately beautiful. Ever
and anon the train would glide effortlessly to a standstill at some
half-deserted station with lamps that creaked in the breeze like the
tuning of a hundred violins. And then off again into the scented
twilight until Catherine, enchanted by the beauty of night, was too
spell-bound to read the names on the stations, and so lost count of
where she was.

And then the suburbs lost coherence and straggled vaguely into the
countryside; clusters of light shone out from houses wreathed in trees;
a chain of golden trams marked the course of a distant high road. And
after a short respite of woods and meadows Bockley came cleanly into
view--beautiful, poetic Bockley, with the High Road wreathed in a
halo of soft, reddish light. The train rose high till it seemed to be
passing on the very roofs of the town: window lights went winking by
and with sweeping dignity the station curved into view. A breath-taking
pause and the train was off again, and the panorama rose till it was
nothing but a cliff of glowing windows; trees and turf embankments
loomed hugyly in the foreground; the speed was gathering, the hum of
wheels was swelling to a roar. Like a clap of thunder a tunnel engulfed
everything. And Catherine leaned back amongst the cushions as one in
whom tension has suddenly been snapped.

At one portion of the tunnel men were working on the line, and as the
train shot by the lurid yellow light of naphtha-flares flooded the
compartment like a swift tide. And at that moment Catherine glanced at
Verreker. His face was strong and stern in the flame silhouette; his
eyes were closed. His profile was ruggedly, barbarically masculine.
There were no soft curves, only angles of terrifying strength. And
as she looked at him in that fraction of a second, when the yellow
brilliance from the naphtha-flares was at its height, she felt a sudden
impulse surge up within her. A strange emotion, entirely new in her
experience, seized her and overwhelmed her. In one swift moment of
vision she saw herself in shadowless panorama. Mists swam before her
eyes, but they were mists in which she could view herself in cruel
clearness. The light of the naphtha-flares seemed to penetrate her soul
and illumine its darkest difficulties. And then, as quickly as her mind
took to flash the vision to her brain, she knew. The revelation stood
before her In horrible, terror-striking apparency....

She loved this man. The realization came upon her with a thrill
of swift, palpitating horror. She knew now the explanation of a
thousand tiny mysteries that had been lately puzzling her. She saw
the awful consistency of what had till then seemed to her erratic and
incomprehensible. She loved him. She loved everything of him and about
him: she loved him with all the hungry passion that was in her. He had
come upon her in a dream, and she had awakened to find him striding
colossally above her life. She had not fallen in love; love had fallen
upon her like a rushing avalanche. Her life had magically opened and
broadened, as a river swells into the stormy sea. All the poetry in the
world was about him. All the romance of days and nights was nothing but
him. He had gilded everything in her life with new magic. He had poured
new vision into her eyes, new thoughts into her brain, new music into
her ears. Nothing of her was there which had not taken richer colour
since his coming. He had infused poetry into all the world about her:
he had breathed romance into every trivial thing of her life. He was
in every sunrise and sunset, in every twilight, in every note of music
that thrilled her. He was herself much more than she had ever been....
And she lay back amongst the cushions and could realize all this in a
single blinding flash. She saw everything revealed in this new light
that had flamed up within her. And she was afraid, afraid, terribly
afraid....

The train swept out of the tunnel and bore swiftly down upon Upton
Rising station like an eagle pouncing on its prey. The vision that
had come to her had changed every metaphor. No longer was the train
a placid, exquisitely dreaming creature wandering to and fro amongst
the spreading suburbs: it had become terrible and impetuous, a rushing
virago of flame and passion. And in the deepest cleft in which the
station lay it hissed and screamed in strained malevolence. The
platform shrieked in echo: the green lamps of the signal flashed
mournfully as swathes of steam waved limply through them and beyond.
The night was suddenly black and fearful. She stood on the platform and
shivered, not from the cold, but from the terror that was in her soul.

“Come along,” he said, walking to the steps that climbed to the station
exit, and his words seemed to break the spell of horror. She became
self-contemptuous and inclined to dose herself with cold logic. This is
absurd, she told herself as she climbed the steps. An impossible state
of things altogether, she decided, as she delivered up her ticket at
the barrier. And as she stepped with him into the cool spaciousness of
the High Road, she was energetically sermonizing herself. Conversation
passed between them like a vague, irrelevant dream. At the corner of
Gifford Road he shook hands and left her. And she knew with poignant
emotion that she had displeased him. She knew with absolute certainty
that her position was hopeless. The unutterable, unvanquishable horror
came back to her: she saw a grim future of battle and defeat. And when
she viewed herself in the mirror in her bedroom she noticed that her
cheeks were pale and her eyes wide with fear....




CHAPTER XVI


ALLEGRO CON FUOCO

§ 1


REACTION visited her. Walking along the sun-white pavements the next
morning the self-revelation of the night before seemed incredibly
absurd. It had rained during the night, and the cool scent of the
gravel roadways seemed somehow to radiate the suggestion that life was
cool and clear and fresh, to be taken light-heartedly and never to be
feared. As she walked with springing step along the High Road, there
seemed such an infinitude of interests in her life that she could
afford to say: If I never saw him again it would not matter much.
Every shop-window seemed bulging with reasons why, if she were never
to see him again, it would not matter much. And when she stood by the
counter in Burlington’s music emporium and leisurely scanned through
piles of pianoforte music, she decided sincerely and clinchingly: It is
impossible that I am in love with him.

In the few novels she had read, being in love had been symptomized by
dreamy abstraction, random melancholy, a tendency to neglect worldly
duties, a replacement of clear-cut ambitions by a nebulous ideal.
This was not true of her. Three hours of Chopin practising awaited
her when she returned, and she was looking forward to it eagerly,
enthusiastically. Never were her ambitions so clear and business-like,
never had she less time and inclination for dreamy abstraction and
random melancholy.

The air was clean and clear as after a storm. She saw nothing but
sheer absurdity in herself. She went back to Gifford Road and threw
her whole soul into Chopin. That she was able to do so seemed to be
convincing proof of what she desired to prove. She wrote half a dozen
letters, and as she methodically stamped the envelopes one after
another she thought: This is life! Not emotional fireworks, but the
sheer methodical doing of one thing after another. And I am not in
love.... From the businesslike stamping of her envelopes she extracted
that subtle consolation. Somehow there existed in her the weird idea
that being in love would militate against the successful stamping of
envelopes. She was immensely, incalculably pleased at the decision
she had come to. Thereafter, every action of hers confirmed it. When
she went for a motor drive into the Forest and enjoyed it thoroughly,
she thought: This shows that I cannot be in love. And when she played
Chopin she felt vaguely: A person in love would not play Chopin like
this.... She discovered that platonic friendship meant the friendship
of men and women devoid of ulterior motives.... Henceforth she was a
passionate disciple of platonism, ignorant of the fact that a disciple
of platonism must never be passionate. She applied platonism thus: I
can be friendly with him without being in love with him. I can be and
shall be. He is capable of platonic friendship: so am I....




§ 2


A time came when she told herself: I am changing.... She was becoming
more serious, less impressionable. Or so, at any rate, it seemed.
Conversations with him had given her intellect a stimulus. She read
Shaw and Ibsen, not so much to give herself ideas (though that result
was inevitable) as to provide fascinating topics of discussion with
him. For in those days Shaw was a rising and Ibsen a waning star in
the intellectual firmament. Platonism was ever in her mind. She and
Verreker met with moderate frequency, for his position as her concert
organizer involved much business intercourse. They talked music and
politics and economics and literature, and always she was afraid of
two things, lest the conversation might flag, and lest she might make
some absurd remark which would betray the poverty of her knowledge.
And yet when she managed to discuss with him intelligently she never
imagined that she was deceiving him. She knew that he knew that all her
knowledge was recently acquired, that her brain was only slightly above
average, that she only imperfectly comprehended most of the topics
she ventured remarks upon. An occasional remark of rank stupidity was
almost inevitable under such conditions, and she knew it would not
surprise him. He had no illusions about her which she could break. And
yet the fear always hung over her when she was with him that some day
she might say something irrevocably, catastrophically absurd. It was
almost a relief to her when their meetings were over. The sensation
was of having piloted a ship through a channel infested with rocks and
succeeded somehow or other. Yet there was pleasure in the exercise. And
she treasured up certain things he said, not for their intrinsic value,
but because she had made him say them....

She was quite sincere and enthusiastic about the platonic basis of
their friendship. She almost sentimentalized about it. She deified
it till it shone with a flame infinitely more dazzling than that
of love. She despised love. Love was elemental. Basically, it was
animal: she watched the couples strolling at twilight beneath the
trees of the Ridgeway, and saw nothing in them but the primitive
male seeking the primitive female. The poetry, the idyllic quality
fell from the amorousness of men and women and revealed it to her as
something of sheer brute passion. (A cold douche from one of Shaw’s
plays had assisted this transformation.) She felt herself consciously
superior to these couples. She speculated on their thoughts, their
conversations, their sympathies, and she almost despised them because
their thoughts were not high, nor their conversations intellectual,
nor their sympathies complex. She felt: the further and higher mankind
develops the less prominence will be given to the merely brutish and
physical aspect of passion. Until there shall at last be evolved the
Higher Love, which is the union of twin affinities, indissolubly one by
community of thought and sympathy and ideal. (This, by the way, she had
read somewhere, and her mind seized hold of it greedily.) She could
not conceive of Verreker and herself as man and wife. But as twin-souls
their future seemed promising; and the strictly platonic nature of
their association was consecrated by the application of the twin-soul
theory. She diligently read abstruse, religious-cum-psychological
works on the subject. She became possessed with a fierce enthusiasm
for masculine camaraderie. Men, she thought, are easily able to enjoy
delightful and perfectly platonic friendships with both men and women.
Men have a greater capacity for friendship than women. They are less
intensely sexual. They have a glorious sense of camaraderie which is
as the breath of a gale over uplands. Whereas women are narrower, more
passionate, maybe, in what attachments they do make, but incapable of
realizing the male ideal of comradeship. She admired men for their
wider and more spacious outlook on life. She became fond of the novels
of Michael Fairless and Jack London. And, as a sort of reaction,
she was profoundly affected by reading _The Hill_, Vachell’s
Harrow school story of a great friendship. Then she got hold of
Wells’ _Passionate Friends_, and it thrilled her by its seeming
applicability to her own life. She felt, with some superiority: Most
people would not understand this book. They would condemn it as unreal,
exotic, untrue to life. But I understand it and know that it is very
real and very true.... There were sentences in _Wuthering Heights_
which she treasured as enshrining her ideal in words of passionate
epigram. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,”
was one of them. “I am Heathcliff!” she could scarcely read without
poignant emotion. The enigma of Emily Brontë’s life made her construct
many theories to account for the peculiar passion of _Wuthering
Heights_....

Sometimes she would think proudly: This is an amazing friendship.
We are people in a million. We are immeasurably higher in the human
scale than those to whom such a relation as exists between us would be
incomprehensible and incredible. It is not love that binds us--that
reckless fuser of incompatibilities--it is an affinity of soul, rare,
intense, exquisitely subtle....

And also there were moments of terrible lucidity, when the subtleties
and complexities resolved themselves into a single pattern of tragic
simplicity. She loved him and he did not love her. The relation between
them was compounded of nothing but that. Everything else was artificial
and a sham....




§ 3


Yet platonism was her acknowledged ideal. She was curiously anxious in
discussions with him to emphasize it, even to rhapsodize upon it, to
pour scorn on the sentimentality that finds it unworkable. She strove
to re-create herself on the lines of what she strangely imagined would
be his ideal of womanhood. And somehow this re-creation of herself
was inextricably bound up with the paramount necessity that their
relations must be strictly platonic. She would show him (and herself)
that she was capable of maintaining such a relationship. She found a
savage pride in the restraints she was called upon to exercise. She
took fierce delight in saying things which were not only not true,
but which were like knife-thrusts directed against her own heart. Her
life became interwoven with intrigue against herself. As time passed,
the complexity of what she was attempting began to demand ruthless
self-suppression and a constant cumulative duplicity. Some of the
traits of her newly manufactured character she identified so thoroughly
with herself that she almost forgot whether they were real or not. Some
of the lies that she told and acted became as real to her as the truth.
Moments came when her brain as well as her soul went reeling under the
burden of the tangle she had herself created.

One of the cruellest moments of her life was when she realized for the
first time that she was capable of jealousy. Hitherto she had extracted
a kind of pleasure from the thought: However passionate I may be, I am
not jealous. I am above that.... This supposed quality in her seemed
to raise her emotions and her desires above the common level, and she
was always grateful for any excuse to lift herself out of the world of
ordinary passions and ordinary emotions. Her emotions lacerated her so
much that she could not endure to think that she was one of millions
suffering likewise. The communion of sorrow was no good to her. She
wanted to be alone, to be unique, to be suffering more intensely than,
or at any rate differently from the rest of the world. There was a
subtle consolation in being a pioneer in experience.... And till now
she had been able to think: My feelings cannot be quite the same as
those of other people, because I am not jealous....

It came upon her with terrible lucidity that the only reason why she
had not been jealous was that there had been nobody to be jealous
of.... She was playing Chopin in a small West-end concert hall.
Verreker and Helen Trant were seated in the front row. (Helen was
now his stenographer, shorthand-typist and general amanuensis.) Just
before she started to play she glanced down at the audience. She
noticed Verreker and Helen, they were both bending their heads close
together as if sharing some confidence; also, they were both smiling.
And Catherine speculated: Has anything that I have ever said made him
smile like that? ... She wanted to know what was the cause of their
amusement. If she were with them she could ask. But here she was,
condemned to play Chopin for an hour and a half, and by the end of the
recital she knew that they would have probably forgotten the incident,
even if she were to remind them of it. It was, no doubt, something
ludicrously trivial and unimportant. Yet, whatever it was, it was being
shared between Verreker and Helen. _She_ did not come into it.
And for a single blinding moment she felt angrily, contemptuously,
vehemently jealous of Helen....

Then she was scornfully angry with herself. And bitterly humiliated
besides. For the fact of her jealousy placed her immediately on a
level with all the thousands of girls she passed every day in the
streets--girls who did not give Chopin recitals at West-end concert
halls.... She played Chopin automatically. All the while she was
bitterly reproaching herself.

Is it possible, she speculated, to get jealous over a strictly platonic
friendship? ...




§ 4


Before long she had thoroughly convinced herself that Verreker, whether
consciously or not, preferred Helen’s companionship to her own. A
fiendish pleasure in lacerating herself made her ever observant for
trivialities that seemed to confirm her conviction. A word, a look, a
quick movement of his became overcharged with significance.... And so
ashamed was she of this miserable jealousy, so angry with herself for
harbouring it, that she deliberately encouraged his friendship with
Helen. She told him of Helen’s splendidly sympathetic disposition, of
her wonderful capacity for understanding, and of the staunchness of
her friendship. She thrust Helen to the front whenever the three of
them were together. She would say: “I’m sorry I’m engaged on Saturday
afternoon, so I can’t come to the opera.... But you and Helen go. Don’t
stay behind on my account.” Sometimes Verreker would show evident
reluctance at her withdrawal from the triangle of friendship. And this
reluctance, rare and slight though it was, was worth all the pain she
had inflicted on herself. This reluctance was the thing in her life
that she treasured most.

She was becoming distinctly morbid.

From thrusting Helen forward at every opportunity, her morbidity
developed into the deeper folly of avoiding him herself. If she met
him in company she would treat him curtly. Her one aim was that he
should notice the change in her demeanour. He did so after a week or
so of this treatment, and his manner to her became curiously tender
and sympathetic. And although she knew the terrible morbidity of her
manœuvring, she drank in his tenderness and sympathy until he had
seemingly no more to give. She knew the situation could not last, but
she had not the courage to put an end to it. Something impelled her to
accentuate the curtness that had produced such bitter-sweetness for
her. She did so, and overreached herself. His sympathy vanished if she
avoided him, he avoided her as much if not more. And all the time
friendship with Helen was growing apace: Catherine’s withdrawal left
the two of them more than ever together.... Secretly, Catherine was
conscious that she was ruining whatever relationship existed between
Verreker and herself. She had only herself to blame.

Casually, unostentatiously, she slipped back into the triangle. But her
position was subtly different from before. The difference was indicated
by his manner of inviting her to concerts, theatres, etc. Formerly he
said: “I am going to the opera to-night: would you and Helen care to
come?”

But now he said: “Helen and I are going to the opera to-night: would
you care to come with us?”

It betokened a change, subtle, but of immense significance. And to
endure it was all the harder, because Catherine knew that she was
entirely responsible for it herself.




§ 5


His character began to unfold itself to her in spasms of intimate
revelation. But with each passing glimpse of something new she caught
sight also of dim vistas of his soul, which she knew she could never
explore. The more she learned the more she felt she could never learn.

He was tremendously ambitious.

Once he said to her: “If you knew my ambitions, if you knew what I hope
to do some day, you’d be amazed, absolutely amazed!”

“Should I?” she replied. “I don’t know.... I’m very ambitious myself.”
She was pleased that she was incidentally speaking the truth.

He looked at her sceptically.

“My ambition is to be a great pianist,” she continued quietly.

“That,” he replied, “is a thoroughly selfish ambition. It is not as bad
as some selfish ambitions, but it is selfish, for all that. Unless you
have some other ambition in life besides that, your life will never be
really worth while.... Now my ambition has nothing to do with my own
greatness or fame. There is no fame--except of a secluded kind--to be
got from economics and sociology.... But nevertheless my ambitions are
bound up with those things. Quite impersonally.... I mean ...” he was
searching for some method of explanation. “In fact,” he added with a
trace of bitterness, “I mean something you can’t understand and never
could.”

It was true: she knew it, but she said with real passion: “How do
you know? I _could_, but you never give me a trial! I believe I
_could_ understand, anyway!”

He smiled, sceptically, but not contemptuously. “Then what do you
imagine to be my ambitions?” he asked quietly.

And she was floored. In her deepest soul she told herself: I haven’t an
idea. The man is an enigma to me. How do I know his ambitions?

“I suppose,” she faltered, “you want to benefit humanity and--and----”

“And all that sort of thing, eh?” he interrupted sardonically. “You
certainly ought to finish up that way.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.... Am I right?”

“Of course you are right,” he replied whimsically, and left much to be
implied.

“Then I knew what you didn’t think I knew?”

“Oh no, not at all.... My doubts were not of your knowledge.... It is a
question of understanding....”

“And I am not capable of that, eh? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it is....”

There came a pause. An overmastering impulse made her say something
which, if she had been wiser, she would have been content to think.

“But I read!” she cried passionately, “I ought to be able to understand
I ... I sympathize with all those--things ... I read heaps of
books--Shaw and Wells and--and----”

It was absurd. She knew that what she was saying was quite absurd. But
she was not quite prepared for his reply.

He stroked his chin reflectively.

“And what the devil,” he said deliberately, “has that got to do with
it?”

She bit her lip heroically. She was on the point of bursting into
uncontrollable tears. Her eyes flashed wet and lustrous. And as she
realized the pivotal significance of his reply, a great fragment of her
universe tumbled to ruin....

They were strolling at a leisurely pace along the High Road. It was a
late October afternoon, and Catherine was playing at a London concert
in the evening. She was now well known: a poster depicting her red hair
and a post-impressionist keyboard was a familiar sight in the district
between Upper Regent Street and the Marble Arch. Also her name in
spidery capitals was a common feature of that wonderful front page of
the Saturday _Telegraph_. Undoubtedly she was “making a name for
herself.” Also money. She was thinking of buying a car and learning to
drive. And she began to regard it as inevitable that some day she would
have to leave Mrs. Carbass. A tiny cottage near High Wood appealed to
her. There was a large garden, and the Forest surrounded it almost
completely. It would be idyllic to live there....

It piqued her that her rapid rise to fame made no difference at all
to her relations with Verreker. He treated her exactly as he had
always treated her--that is to say, rudely, disrespectfully, sometimes
contemptuously, always as a master dealing with a pupil. She admired
him for his absolute lack of sycophancy, yet there were times when she
almost wished for an excuse for despising him. Especially since the
very things that hurt her were among those that drew her admiration.

Now she was stormily resentful because she had not succeeded in
imposing on him. She had desired to appear capable of sympathy and
understanding: she had striven to guide their relations into the paths
of “soul-affinity.” He had dealt a death-blow to that particular sphere
of enterprise.

For several hundred yards they walked on in silence. Then he began to
talk, as if recording impressions just as they crossed his vision.

“You know,” he started, “when you consider the thousands of millions
that inhabit the world you must realize that the chance of anybody
meeting the one person most ideally suited to him is so mathematically
small as to be not worth considering.... We all have to put up with
either nothing at all or the thousandth or the millionth best....
Somewhere in the world there is, no doubt, somebody who would fit in
with me so exquisitely that every phase of my life and endeavour would
be the better for the fusing of two into one.... Same with you.... But
what earthly chance is there of either of us ever discovering that
person? Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack! It’s worse than
that: you do know the needle when you have found it, but if a man were
to meet his ideal partner, the chances are he wouldn’t recognize her!
... I tell you, the quest of an ideal mate is hopeless from the start.
If you’re extraordinarily lucky, you may get somebody not many thousand
places down on the list that is headed by that theoretical ideality who
lives in the next street or the next continent....”

“And what if you’re not extraordinarily lucky?” she put in.

“Providence, or whatever you choose to call it,” he replied, “has
realized that the vast majority of people cannot in the nature of
things be extraordinarily lucky. But providence has wisely contrived
that if a man is unable to get the woman he wants, there is at least
one method by which he can be made to want the woman he gets.”

“And what is the method?”

“Very simple.... Falling in love with her.”

“I suppose you don’t agree with falling in love?”

He laughed.

“You might as well ask me if I agreed with eating and drinking.
Certainly a good deal of time and labour would be saved if we didn’t
have to perform these functions.... What I object to in falling in love
(and it’s a purely personal objection: I mean it applies to me and not
necessarily to anybody else) is simply that it’s such a monopolizer of
energy.... I’m one of those people who’re used to doing many things
at once. There are heaps of important things in my life that love has
never had anything to do with and never could have ... and yet love,
if it were violent enough, and if I were weak enough, might completely
paralyse them for a time” ... He began searching for a simile--“like,”
he added, “like a perfectly loyal and orderly body of workpeople
compelled to take a rest because of a strike hundreds of miles away
that has really no connection with them at all....”

She nodded.

“There is, or ought to be, in every man and woman some divine sense
of purposefulness, some subtle foretaste of greater things that would
make life worth living if everything else were taken away. And it ought
to be completely independent of and separate from every other living
creature in the world. Call it personality, or ‘ego,’ or anything
you like. It is above jealousy and envy. It gives every man a sunken
indestructible pride in being himself and no one else. That’s where
novelists, sentimental folk and such like make their mistake. They
give love far too prominent a place in the scheme of things.... Love
is only one phase of life. At critical moments no doubt it does take
precedence of everything else, but think of the heaps of other things
that go to make up life! Ambition, for instance. And ideals.... A man
may have ideals so utterly removed from all connection with love that
if they were blurred by any act of his, love would be a worthless
recompense.... Oh yes, falling in love may be a passably pleasant means
of frittering away a dull seaside holiday, but for a busy ambitious
spirit it spells--usually--ruination--unless--unless--”

“Unless what?”

“Unless,” he resumed, “the fates were so miraculously thoughtful as to
provide such a man with somebody whose dreams and hopes and ambitions
were in mystic harmony with his own.... And that, of course, is a
miracle not to be expected once in a hundred years....”

Pause.

“And it is such a confoundedly casual business too,” he went on.
“Falling in love, I mean. It’s about as sudden and spontaneous and
unreasonable and unthought-out as walking down a railway platform
beside a train of empty carriages and selecting one compartment in
preference to all the others.... And think of the horror of falling in
love, not merely with somebody you don’t like, but with somebody you
actively dislike. Oh, I assure you, it’s quite possible. Some wretched
creature with whom fate had capriciously made you infatuated! Someone
who would monopolize selfishly everything in you that was free and
open to all; someone who would divert everything high and noble in you
to swell that tragic outflow of wasted ambitions, warped enthusiasms,
cramped souls and stunted ideals! And someone, moreover, who would make
it hard for you to value the people you liked but did not love! Think
of it--all your life thrown out of perspective by something as casual
and involuntary as a hundred unremembered things one does every day of
one’s life!”

They had entered the station-yard. It was beginning to rain in big,
cold drops.

“I suppose you think intellectual attachments are all right?” she
remarked.

He grunted.

“If you want to know my candid opinion,” he replied gruffly,
“intellectual attachments, so called, are all bosh. If you like a
clever woman (or a clever man, for that matter), the feeling is not,
properly speaking, intellectual. And if you merely feel æsthetic
admiration for somebody’s nimble intellect, then I should say there was
no real attachment.”

“But I presume you prefer a woman should not be too intensely sexual?”

“If you mean do I prefer a woman who is half a man as well as not
quite half a woman, I certainly do not. The best women, let me tell
you”--(he began fishing out money from his pocket and advanced to the
ticket office. Their conversation went spasmodically)--“are all sex.”
(He took the tickets and rejoined her slowly, counting his change as
he did so.) “Let me see, what was I saying? Oh yes, I remember....
Well, the best women, as I say, are all sex--but--but”--(interruption
while the man punched their tickets at the top of the steps)--“but not
always.... All sex, but not always.... That’s how it appears to me....
There’s the train just coming in. Hurry along, or we shall have to get
in anywhere....”




§ 6


They were in time to select an empty first-class compartment. There the
conversation was resumed, though not precisely where it had been broken
off.

“You see,” he went on, “there is a part of me that in the ordinary
sense neither is nor could be in love with anybody. And that’s this
...” he touched his head. “My head is always capable of stepping in at
the most awkward moments to tell me what a damn fool I am.... And I am
so queerly constituted that I care more for what my head tells me than
for any other advice in the world. I could not ignore its directions
and still keep my own self-respect.... I said just now that providence
had contrived that when a man can’t get what he wants he can be
induced to want what he gets by the mere incidental process of falling
in love.... That’s true enough generally, but it isn’t in my case.
All my life I’ve been wanting what I can’t get. Dreams bigger than
the world, ambitions beyond my own capabilities, visions higher than
the stars--every idealist knows what that is. But I’m not merely an
idealist. I like Debussy’s stuff, but I like Bach’s more, because Bach
always knows what he’s talking about. As an economist, I dislike froth
and sentiment, which always obscures truth, and that’s why I can’t
stand a lot of the music that would send the average idealist into the
seventh heaven. Contrariwise, as you might say, my idealism creeps into
my economic work and makes me see behind all the figures and documents
the lives of men and women. And that’s what a lot of economists can’t
see.”

Pause.

“You see it’s not in my power to want what I can get. I shall always be
reaching for the impossible.”

“Then you will never be satisfied,” she said.

“No, never,” he replied, “not even if I got what I wanted.... But you
can’t understand that, can you?”

She reflected.

“I don’t know,” she answered, hesitating, “whether I understand it or
not.”

And she thought passionately as she listened to him: Why can’t I
understand? Why am I not like him? Why is he on a plane different from
mine? Why has providence brought us together when we are so far apart?




§ 7


On a dull December afternoon, Catherine stood in a tiny room at the
back of the Guildhall at Cambridge. She was to play at a combined
violin and pianoforte recital, arranged by the University Musical
Society. She was tired, for the journey down had been tedious. Verreker
was at York: he had discovered a pianoforte genius of twelve years old
amongst the northern moors, and was very much engrossed in her. “Superb
child,” he had said of her to Catherine, and Catherine, knowing the
rarity of his praise, had felt angrily jealous of her. Yet she knew
that his enthusiasm was strictly professional: the girl was nothing to
him: it was only her genius that counted.

Through the half open door that led to the platform Catherine could
see the audience filtering in. Loosely dressed undergraduates and
senile professors formed the bulk. From the drab walls the portraits of
gaily caparisoned mayors and aldermen looked down in vacuous reproach.
Queen Victoria presented her angular profile chillingly at one side
of the platform: the only cheerful thing in the entire building was
a large open fire, in front of which a crowd of undergraduates were
standing.... Slowly the clock at the back of the hall climbed up to
three. Catherine sighed. It was not often she felt uninterested in her
work. But this afternoon the huge bulk of the Kreutzer Sonata loomed in
front of her as burdensome as a cartload of stones to be shifted. She
knew that her hands would perform their duty, just as a tired walker
knows that his legs will assuredly carry him the last long mile.
But at the thought of the Sonata, with all its varying movements and
repetitions of theme, the greatest violinist in England scraping away
beside her, and a front row composed of doctors and bachelors of music,
she shivered. She was annoyed at the ominous fact that she was not
the least interested in music that afternoon. She was annoyed at the
spiritless architecture of the Guildhall. She was annoyed because she
knew she would have to start punctually at three.

Just as the minute hand of the clock was almost on the point of twelve,
the door at the back of the room opened suddenly, and she caught a
swift glimpse of a man in a huge fur overcoat and gloves. She was about
to ask him his business when he turned his face to her. She started. A
rush of overmastering joy swept over her. It was Verreker. The moment
was delectable. To see him there when she had not expected him, when
she did not know why he had come! Never in all her life was she so
happy as in that moment. She was too joyful to speak to him. She just
looked up into his face smilingly and took the hand he offered.

“Surprised to see me?” he began, and from his tone she knew he was in
an unusually good humour.

“Yes. I thought you were at York.”

“So I was till this morning. The child-genius is a fake.... I came
down here to give a lecture on Economics ... five o’clock in the Arts
School....”

“So you’ll stay to hear me, then?”

“As long as I can stand it.... I’ve heard the Kreutzer till I’m sick of
it. Still, it suits a Cambridge audience.... What’ll you play if they
ask for an encore?”

“I don’t know ... Debussy, maybe.”

“Not after the Kreutzer. Give them something sweet and sugary. The
adagio out of the Sonata Pathétique, for instance.”

The conversation developed on technical lines.

Then the clock showed three. Catherine had to appear on the platform.
Verreker disappeared by the back door and reappeared shortly in the
stalls as a member of the audience. The greatest violinist in England
commenced to tune up. The secretary of the University Musical Society
placed Catherine’s music on the music rest, and prepared himself for
the task of turning over the pages. Then the Kreutzer commenced. For
over half an hour the performers worked hard, and then tumultuous
applause indicated that Cambridge appreciated the sacrifice offered up
at the altar of the academic muse. Beethoven had finally routed Debussy.

Catherine’s solo was the _Rondo Capriccioso_. It was encored, and
she played a simple minuet of Beethoven. Afterwards a Haydn Concerto
was laboriously worked through, and by the conclusion of that the
concert was over and the time a quarter to five.

Verreker saw her at the back entrance. He was in a hurry and had only
time to say: “See me at the ’Varsity Arms Hotel at seven to-night.”
Then he snatched up a bundle of lecture notes and departed down Bene’t
Street.




§ 8


In Downing Street that afternoon she met Buckland, one of the leading
professors of Economics. They had met several times before at
Verreker’s house at Upton Rising. After a few insignificant remarks
Catherine said:

“So you have asked Verreker to come up and lecture, I notice?”

Buckland smiled.

“Well, we didn’t exactly ask him. He asked himself. Of course, we are
very glad to get him. As a matter of fact, he wrote to me saying he
should be in Cambridge to-day and suggesting that I should fix up a
lecture appointment for him. Only I’m afraid it won’t be well attended:
there has been such short notice.”

The rest of Buckland’s remarks were comparatively of no significance at
all. All that mattered to Catherine was this sudden amazing revelation
of something that Verreker had done. He had come to Cambridge, not
primarily to deliver a lecture on Economics, but for something else.
He had intended to come to Cambridge on this particular date, even if a
lecture could not be arranged for. What, then, could be the real, the
primary, the basic object of his visit? Obviously it was her concert
that attracted him, and how could it be her concert? He had scores of
opportunities of visiting her concerts in London. He was not (he had
frequently asserted) an admirer of her playing. He knew she was going
to play the Kreutzer Sonata, and he hated the Kreutzer Sonata. The
Guildhall he had declared unequivocally to be the ugliest building in
England. It could not be the concert that brought him to Cambridge.
Then what could it be?

All the way from the café in Sidney Street to the University Arms
Hotel, Catherine debated that question.

Could it be herself, for instance?

That was a very daring thought for her to think. For all the past was
strewn with the memories of occasions on which he had insulted her,
avoided her, ignored her, shown her as much consideration as if she
were no more than the dust he trod on. And yet (it was strange that
this had never entirely occurred to her before) this was no worse than
the treatment he accorded to everybody. She had never known him to be
polite. Even when he was trying to be so it was for him so consciously
an effort that he appeared sarcastically urbane and nothing more. She
had suffered his vagaries of temper no more than others who knew him.
And their arguments! Was it not a subtle mark of his appreciation of
her that he condescended to spend irritating hours explaining to her
what a fool she was? Was not the very pain she had suffered something
she might have treasured as indicating his deep and abiding interest in
her?

He was standing at the entrance of the hotel when she came in sight.
Not often since that night at the Forest Hotel had she seen him in
evening dress, and now she was reminded poignantly of that far-off
occasion with all its strangely distorted memories. He descended
the steps to meet her. His handshake was cordial. The whole of his
attitude towards her seemed different from anything she had previously
experienced.

“Come into the lounge,” he said, and took her arm. “I’ve been waiting
for you.”

She was ten minutes late, and was glad to think he had noticed it
and had been kept waiting. And besides that, she was amazed at his
cordiality, at the sudden phase of courtliness which prompted him to
take her arm as they strolled down the hotel lobby. She felt that her
arm touching his was trembling, and she summoned every effort, mental
and physical, to curb this manifestation of her excitement. They
entered the lounge and occupied adjacent positions on a chesterfield.
The room was comfortably full of fashionably dressed men and women.
Catherine felt that many eyes of recognition were upon her. But that
caused her no thrill of pleasurable triumph. Her mind and soul were
centred on this unique phenomenon that was unfolding itself to her
by degrees--Verreker, the curt, the abrupt, the brutally direct,
transformed into a veritable grandee of courtliness.

In the dining-hall they had a table to themselves that overlooked
the dark spaciousness of Parker’s Piece. Once again she was quaintly
fascinated by the peculiarities of his table manners. In this respect,
at any rate, he was still himself, and she marvelled at the intense
personality that crowded into every movement, however bizarre and
unconventional, of his knife and fork. Evening dress gave his weird
facial expressions a touch of sublimity. She looked round at the other
tables and compared him with men there. There was scarcely one that
was not more handsome than he, certainly none whose table manners
were not infinitely smoother and more refined. There were men whose
cheeks and chin were smooth as a shave ten minutes ago could make
them. A glance at Verreker showed that a razor had not touched him for
at least twenty-four hours. Other men had hair carefully brushed and
pomaded, artistically parted in the middle or at the side, compelled
into spray-like festoons above the ears. But Verreker’s hair was black
and thick, coarse, horsey hair, innocent of pomade and parting, hair
that he occasionally ran his fingers through without in any real sense
disturbing. Other men in the room were smiling with rows of white
symmetrical teeth, speaking in cultured university accents, gazing with
animated eyes at their fellow-diners. And yet she knew that compared
with him they were all as nothing. The whole secret of him flashed out
upon her. He was a man. His personality invaded everything he did and
everything that belonged to him: it overflowed like a bursting torrent
into his most trivial actions. With all his facial ugliness, his abrupt
manners, his disposition, which people called “difficult,” he was
the towering superior of any man she knew. And not all the oiled and
manicured youths in the world could give her what he could give. She
looked triumphantly round the room as if to say: This man here, whom
you all think is so ugly and ill-mannered, is, if only you knew it, the
personal superior of every one of you! ... She was proud to be with
him, proud of every bizarrerie in him of which others might be ashamed.

After dinner he led her into the lobby and said: “I want you to come up
into my room for a little while. I have engaged a room with a piano in
it.”

Thrilled and excited, she went with him. The room was heavily and
tastelessly furnished, the piano upright and metallic.

He did not seem particularly conversational.

After a silence he said:

“Oh, what was that little piece you played as an encore this afternoon?”

“One of Beethoven’s Minuets.”

“Oh?--I don’t remember ever having heard it. Play it now, will you?”

His courtliness had vanished, for he let her carry a chair to the piano
unassisted.

Towards the conclusion of the piece he rose and stood at her elbow,
leaning on the top of the piano. She could see him frowning. When she
had finished, she was expecting some ruthless technical criticism of
her playing.

But he stood for a long while in silence. Then he said gruffly:

“Damned sentimental. I thought as much.”

“What do you mean?” she asked quietly.

He paused and commenced to walk about the room with his hands in his
pockets.

“Look here,” he began irritably, “when I heard that piece this
afternoon I liked it very much. Then I asked myself why I liked it,
and found it difficult to say. A sensible man should, of course, be
prepared to give reasons for his likes and dislikes. ‘Is it possible,’
I asked myself, ‘that you like the thing because it is sentimental?’ I
shuffled basely by telling myself: ‘I don’t know: I don’t even remember
if the thing _was_ sentimental.’ ... Well, now I’ve heard it a
second time and I know for certain. It is sentimental--damned oozy,
slimy, slithery sentiment from beginning to end. And the question is:
What the devil’s the matter with me that I should have liked it this
afternoon?”

She turned round to face him and laughed.

“How should I know?” she replied. “Perhaps _you’re_ getting
sentimental.”

“Heaven preserve me from such a fate,” he muttered gruffly. “Play me a
Bach’s fugue to take that beastly sugary taste away.”

She did so, but if ever an attempt was made to infuse sentiment into
a Bach’s fugue, it was on that occasion. All the while her soul was
revelling in a strange airiness.

“Bach would turn in his grave if he could hear,” was his sole comment
when she had finished. “Get up and I’ll show you how to do it.”

Once again the relationship of master and pupil had ousted every other.

He played the same fugue over again, and she was lost in admiration of
his supreme technical facility. Obviously this was Bach as he should be
played, Bach as he was meant to be played, every note mathematically
in place and in time; every arpeggio like a row of stones in one
triumphant mosaic. She was not fond of Bach, and in her deepest self
she knew that she disliked him for precisely the reason that Verreker
liked him: he was so totally devoid of sentimentality. Yet she could
not but admire the stern purposefulness of his style: the lofty grace
of his structures, that serene beauty of which, because it is purely
æsthetic, one never tires.

When he had finished she said: “I want you to play some Debussy.”

At first he seemed disinclined to accede to her request, but after a
few seconds’ pause he started a slow sarabande movement. She listened
enraptured till the end.

“Isn’t that sentiment?” she asked.

“No,” he replied curtly.

“Then what is it?”

He ground his teeth savagely.

“Passion,” he snapped.

“And what,” she asked softly--her voice was trembling--“is the
difference between sentiment and passion?”

He looked at her searchingly.

“Don’t you know?”

“I may do--I’m not certain.”

“Well, if you do know, you don’t need me to tell you, and if you
_don’t_ know, I can’t tell you.”

At a quarter past nine they went downstairs. Catherine was leaving by
the 9.30 train to Liverpool Street. They left by taxi to the station.
Fortunately the train was late, or they would have missed it. In the
alcove formed by two adjacent open carriage doors Catherine and he
stood and talked till the guard whistled for the departure of the train.

Their farewell was curious. She was leaning out of the window so that
her head was above his. He sprang on to the foot-board as the train
was moving and seized her hand. She wondered what he was going to do.
She thought perhaps he might be going to kiss her. She waited for
what seemed hours and then he suddenly vanished into the gloom of the
station platform. Almost simultaneously she heard a porter’s raucous
voice crying out: “Clear away there! What d’yer think yer doin’----”
The rest trailed into inarticulate sound. Obviously he had been pulled
down.

The whole incident was somewhat undignified.

Yet all the way to Liverpool Street she was speculating on what he had
been about to do when the porter pulled him away.

And she was happier than she had ever been in her life.




§ 9


In the bedroom of her cottage at High Wood, Catherine stood in front
of the cheval glass and eyed herself critically. It seemed to her in
that moment that a miracle had happened, a door unlocked to her that
she thought would be for ever closed, a dream which she had scarcely
dared to glimpse, even from afar, brought suddenly and magically
within her grasp. A miracle indeed, and yet the very ease with which
she acclimatized herself to new conditions gave almost the impression
that the miracle had been to some extent anticipated, that she had so
prepared and organized her soul that she could slip into the new scheme
of things with a minimum of perturbation.

Standing before the mirror, she was surprised at her own calmness.
And the more she pondered, the more stupendous seemed the miracle,
and consequently the more amazing her own attitude. Already it seemed
that she was beginning to take for granted what a day before had been
a dream so far from fulfilment that she had scarcely dared to admit it
into coherent form. A day ago the idea that her affection for Verreker
was reciprocated seemed the wildest phantasy: she had not dared even
to think of such a thing hypothetically, for fear it should grow into
her life as something confidently expected: yet dim and formless it
had lurked behind all her thoughts and ideas; shadowy and infinitely
remote, it had guided and inspired her with greater subtlety than she
knew. But now it need no longer be dim and formless: it entered boldly
into the strong light of day, into the definition of word and sentence:
she could ask herself plainly the question, “Does he love me?” because
deep down in her heart she knew that he did. Her instinct told her
that he did, but she was quite prepared to doubt her own instinct. She
did not know that her feminine instinct in such a matter was nearly
infallible. But she was no longer afraid of treating herself to the
random luxury of thinking and dreaming.

All at once she was seized with a terrible sense of absurdity and
incongruity. Was it possible, was it even remotely conceivable that
he should love her? She did not know that she was on the brink of the
perennial mystery that has surprised millions of men and women: she
felt that her question was singularly acute and penetrating. What was
there in her that could attract him? Not her intellect, for he knew
full well the measure of that. Not her musical genius, for he was not
an admirer of it. Not her sympathies and ideals common to his, for she
was incapable of understanding the major part of him. Nor even her
beauty, for she was not beautiful. What, then, could it be? And the
answer was that love, the force he despised, the elemental thing to
which he conceived himself superior, had linked him to her by bonds
that he had not the power to sever. The strong man had toppled. He
suddenly ceased to be a god in the clouds and became a human being on
her earth. Would his ideals crumble to dust at the touch of this mighty
enslaving force? Would he shatter the dreams of a lifetime, those
mighty dreams of his that had nothing to do with love, would he shatter
them and lay the ruins at her feet? How would he reconcile the iron
rigidity of his theories with the impulse of his passion?

There had been a time when she thought: All I want is his friendship,
his sympathy, his understanding, the consciousness that our souls are
affinite. Intellectual and spiritual sympathy with him, she had argued,
is the summit of my ambition. To talk with him on terms of candid
intimacy, to be the sharer of his deepest confidences, to realize in
their relationship something of the glorious male ideal of camaraderie,
that had been her grand aim. She had deceived herself. That was not so.
In the moment that he stood on the foot-board of the departing train at
Cambridge every vestige of the platonic camouflage was torn from her.
There was one thought that was infinitely more rapturous, infinitely
more seductive and alluring, than even the thought that he and she
were on terms of deep intellectual and spiritual intimacy. And that
was the thought that whilst he was standing there on the foot-board
he was wondering whether to kiss her. If now her platonic dreams were
to be fulfilled, she would be strangely and subtly disappointed. Deep
communion with a god-like personality was fine. But she preferred the
impulse that changed the deity into a man, that dragged him from the
stars into the streets, that caused all his dreams and ideals to be
obscured by that single momentous triviality, the desire to kiss her.

She was cruel, merciless in her hour of seeming triumph. She loved him
more passionately than ever now that he was a being dethroned from
heaven. She had thought formerly: I cannot understand him: we are on a
different plane. But now she thought: He has come down to my plane. One
thing at least I can understand: I can understand why he wanted to kiss
me. And that crude fragment of understanding was more precious to her
than all the subtleties and spiritual nuances which had made his soul a
hitherto uncharted sea.

If she could break his ideals, if she could shatter everything in
him that had nothing to do with her, she would be glad. Already,
not content with the footing she had gained on what had seemed an
unscalable cliff, she wanted to dominate the heights and destroy
everything that was independent of her. Never had the essential
selfishness of her nature so revealed itself. She grudged him every
acre of his soul that was not sown with seeds of her own planting. She
wanted him, all of him, passionately, selfishly: his soul and intellect
would be for ever beyond her, so she was jealous of their freedom. That
he should fall from the lofty heights of his idealism was epic, a thing
of high tragedy, yet thrilling with passion: that she should be the
means of it was something that convulsed her with rapture. Her passion
was terrible and destructive. She wanted it to scorch his soul until he
desired nothing save what she could give. She wanted entire possession
of him: she grudged him everything that was beyond her comprehension.




§ 10


All this was somewhat premature.

As yet he had not spoken a word save what was easily compatible with
disinterested friendship. He had treated her many times with such
curtness and incivility that it seemed absurd on the face of it to
imagine that he could love her. And yet there was in her that strange
instinct which told her that he did.

After her return from Cambridge she began to wonder when she should
see him again. Since she had left Mrs. Carbass and had taken the
cottage at High Wood, he had been a moderately frequent visitor. He
liked the situation of “Elm Cottage,” he liked to sit in a deck-chair
on the lawn and watch the sun dipping down over the roofs of Upton
Rising. The æsthetic pleasure made him talkative and companionable.
In the summer time she would open the windows and play Debussy on the
baby grand piano she had bought. She had furnished the interior in
masculine taste. There were great brown leather armchairs of the kind
common enough in clubs, and innumerable facilities for smoking (she was
not a great smoker herself), and a general atmosphere of freedom and
geniality. She had bought an expensive club-fender with leather seats
at either end and a leather rail, because she had noticed that at his
own house he liked to sit with his back to the flames. The front room
was really very comfortable and cosy, though she was lost when she sat
in either of the two great armchairs.

There was no particular business reason why he should see her, yet for
several nights after his return to Upton Rising she expected him to
come. She laid in a stock of his favourite cigarettes: she diligently
learned a little known and mathematical work of Bach because she knew
he would appreciate it. But he did not come. Then she had a spell of
concerts which kept her in town until nearly midnight: he did not come
to see her after the performance, as he sometimes did, so that she did
not know if he had been among the audience or not. She knew that he
had returned from Cambridge, and she knew that an abstruse work on
sociology was occupying a good deal of his time and attention. Yet it
seemed strange that he did not visit her. Their farewell on Cambridge
platform was already past history, and she sometimes found it hard to
believe it had taken place at all. She wanted further proof that it was
no delusion. She felt that every day made that incident more isolated,
more inconsistent, more meaningless. And in another sense every day was
adding to its tremendous significance.

A fortnight passed and still he did not come. She did not want to go
and see him. She wanted him to come and see her. She made a vow: I am
not going to see him; I am going to wait till he comes to see me: if he
doesn’t want to, he needn’t. And she was glad when a concert or other
engagement kept her busy in the evenings, for the temptation to break
her vow was strong if she were alone at “Elm Cottage.”

On Christmas Day the temptation was overmastering. An offer from a
Scotch concert agency had come by post that morning, and she found it
easy to persuade herself that she had to visit him to talk it over.

Snow was falling through the skeleton trees on the Ridgeway as she
approached “Claremont.” Through the window of the front room she
could catch the glow of leaping flames. That indicated that he was
at home. He had no relatives and no friends of the kind that would
share Christmas Day with him. Besides, he was quite impervious to the
Christmas type of sentimentality. Yet possibly he would be pleased to
see her.

She found him sitting on the club-fender with the fire behind him.
He was reading long proof-slips. As she entered he merely glanced up
casually.

“Come in,” he drawled, and went on correcting until he had finished the
slip.

There are no words to convey how deeply that annoyed her.

“Well,” he began, when the last marginal correction had been inserted,
“and how are you getting on?”

“All right,” she asserted, with some pique. Then, in a spitefully
troubled tone: “What have you been doing with yourself since you came
back from Cambridge?”

He pointed to the litter of proof-slips on the floor.

“Working,” he replied.

“I half expected you’d come and see me,” she remarked tentatively.

“So did I,” he replied quietly, “but I didn’t after all....”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean I half thought I might visit you. I really didn’t know....”

“I suppose you didn’t want to.”

“On the contrary, I wanted to very much. That was just why I didn’t.”

“I don’t quite----”

“Listen. Did I ever tell you that I detest worms?”

“No, but what----?”

“Well, I do. I can’t stand them at any price.”

“Nor can I, but how----”

“Listen. When I was a tiny boy it used to send me almost into hysterics
if I touched one, even by accident. Well, when I grew older, I used to
despise myself for being so weak-minded. I used to gather all the worms
I could find, fat juicy ones, you know, with red bellies, put them all
into one single writhing heap and run my fingers through the lot! My
flesh crept with the loathsomeness of it: I was often sick and gasping
with horror after I had done it. But it gave me confidence, because it
taught me I wasn’t at the mercy of arbitrary feelings. It showed me
that I had myself under iron control....”

“Well?”

“Since I returned from Cambridge I have wanted to see you so often and
so intensely that it seemed to me a capital opportunity for finding out
if that iron control had at all relaxed.... I am pleased to say that it
has not done so.”

“But you wanted to see me?”

“I did.”

“Then what on earth was there to keep you from coming to visit me?”

“Nothing at all except this--my own desire to be complete master of
myself--greater even than my desire to see you.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“I could think of no sensible reason for desiring to see you, and that
was why I decided not to.”

“Are you glad I have come now?”

“No. I am sorry. You have interrupted my work.”

“Have I? Thanks for telling me. Then I’ll go----”

“Your going would not alter the fact that my work has been interrupted.
I shall do no more work to-day, whether you go or not. I--I”--his voice
became thick with anger, or scorn, or some complex combination of the
two--“I have--been--spiritually interrupted!”

She took off her thick furs and muff.

“I’m going to stay,” she said quietly, “and we’re going to have tea and
then go for a walk. I think you and your arguments are very silly.”

It was immensely significant, that final sentence of hers. Before, she
would never have dared to say such a thing to him. But now she felt he
was in some strange way delivered into her power: she was not afraid
of treating him like a baby. The truth was, he was no longer a god to
her. And her task was, if possible, to strip from him the last remnants
of his divinity. His strange conversation she had but half understood:
but it immensely reassured her as to this subtle and mysterious power
she possessed over him. But she divined that her task was difficult:
she feared an explosion that would be catastrophic. The atmosphere was
too tense for either comfort or safety: she would have to lower the
temperature. And all the time her own heart was a raging furnace within
her.

“Mrs. Tebbutt is out,” he said gruffly. “I’m hanged if I know where
anything is. I was going to go out to tea at Mason’s.” (Mason’s was the
café in the Bockley High Street.)

“How like a man not to know where anything is!” she commented lightly,
removing her hat. “Never mind, I’ll soon find out. And you’ll be saved
the trouble of going to Mason’s.”

She discovered it was absurdly easy to treat him like a baby.

She found crockery and food without much difficulty, and while she was
making tea he followed her about from room to room, chatting quite
genially. His surliness seemed to vanish entirely: he became charmingly
urbane. Evidently her method of treatment bad been completely
successful. The tension of the atmosphere had been very much lowered,
and he seemed quite schoolboyish in his amateur assistance at what he
called “indoor picnicking.” As she emerged from cupboards carrying cups
and plates and fancy cakes he looked at her very much as if she were a
species of conjurer.

They behaved just like a couple of jolly companions as they sat round
the fire and had tea.




§ 11


Afterwards he became less conversational.

“Leave the things,” he commanded. “Mrs. Tebbutt will see to them when
she gets back.”

“All right,” she agreed. “Now we’re going for a walk, eh?”

“I’ve got heaps of work----” he began.

“Not on Christmas Day,” she urged.

“Oh, that makes no difference.”

“Besides, you said you weren’t going to do any more work, in any case.”

“No--but--I thought of dropping in at the Trants.”

Impossible to describe the fierce stab of jealousy that passed through
her. It changed her mood completely.

“Mr. Verreker,” she said, with emotion, “after a fortnight of not
seeing me, can’t you spare me one evening?”

“Of course if you’ve anything particular to say to me--any help you
want--of course--I----”

“Not that! That’s not the point. Mayn’t I never come to you except when
I’ve something definite I want to ask you for? Aren’t we friends?”

“Certainly.”

“Then why can’t you come out with me when I ask you to?”

“Oh yes, I will, but----”

“You’re the only friend I have. Don’t you know that?”

“I’m sorry to hear it. I am bound to say it is to some extent your own
fault that you have not more.”

They were standing in front of the fire. At this last remark she moved
till her face was a few inches from his. Her eyes were flashing with
anger, yet dim with tears like a mirror breathed upon: her hands were
clenched and quivering as if she were thinking to strike him. All her
body, every limb and muscle of her, was vibrant with passion.

“Mr. Verreker,” she cried, “why do you keep saying things that hurt
me? Am I nothing to you at all? Don’t you care one tiny scrap for
what I feel? Oh, I know I’m very imperfect--I daresay I’m all wrong,
to your way of thinking, but have you ever lifted a finger to make me
different? Have you ever cared whether I was different or not?”

“I have helped you always as much as I have been able,” he replied,
with dignity.

“Then why do you treat me as you do? Why do you despise me? You
_do_ despise me! I know you do. Why do you feel that you ought to
control yourself just because you have a desire to come and see me?”

“Not because I despise you. I despise nobody. Who am I to----”

“There you are again! Do you think I’m not clever enough to see the
sly way you wriggle off the point? I’m not as clever as you, maybe,
but I am clever enough to be hurt by what you say! The only way you
can truthfully say you don’t despise me is by saying you don’t despise
anybody! Do you really think I am dull enough not to see that? Oh, Mr.
Verreker, what have I done? What _have_ I done?”

“You are being foolish, Miss Weston.... You have----”

“Miss Weston now, eh? Something else. Do you think I don’t notice
these things? Do you know the last time you ever called me Cathie? I
don’t suppose you remember, but I do: it was on May 19th last. Over six
months ago.”

“This is childish,” he muttered scornfully, and his lips curled in
contempt. He turned away from her and began walking about the room.

“Childish, is it?--Is it childish to be hurt at little things that show
you’re going down--in the--estimation of people you--you--whom you
like?”

“I have given you no valid indication that you have gone down in my
estimation.”

“Do you deny that I have?”

“It is a matter I do not care to discuss.... At any rate you have
grossly exaggerated the whole affair....”

“What I want to know is, why are you disappointed with me? Why have you
left me alone this last fortnight?”

“I have already told you that I wanted to see you very intensely.”

“Why?”

“I can think of no satisfactory reason.”

“What do you mean by ‘satisfactory’?”

“I mean what I say. I can think of no reason satisfactory to me--that
satisfies me.”

“And aren’t there any reasons at all why a normal person might wish to
see me’?”

“Arguing is quite useless if you accept as a hypothesis that I am a
normal person.”

“Aren’t there any reasons at all, then, why you might want to come and
see me?”

“Possibly there are.”

“Couldn’t you think of any?”

“No, I could not.”

She became fiercely passionate again.

“Mr. Verreker,” she said, “I’ll tell you one thing for your own good,
and for the good of everybody you meet who gets to know you well. You
ought to be more kind. You ought to consider other people’s feelings.
You ought not to say things that hurt. You ought to put yourself on
the level of people who feel. Do you know you have hurt me more than
ever I have been hurt before?”

She was crying now. She leaned on the back of a chair and bent her head
on her hands. There was something very wildly tragic in her attitude.

And he was profoundly stirred. He had not believed her capable of such
passionate outburst. For a moment he stood perfectly still, viewing her
from that part of the room to which his pacings up and down had chanced
to lead him at the moment. Then he slowly approached her cowering form.
She was sobbing violently. He put his hand lightly on her shoulder and
drew it away immediately. The spectacle of her grief made him curiously
embarrassed. He seemed afraid to touch her.

“Cathie,” he spoke gruffly.

She made no sign of answer. But the sobbing stopped, and in a moment
she raised her head. She stood upright, with her head flung backwards
and her face turned to his. She was not beautiful, but passion had
given her face a spiritual sublimity. Tears were still in her eyes and
down her cheeks; her eyes, dim and blurred, were shining like the sun
through the edges of April clouds. And all about her head and face and
shoulders her hair was flung in gorgeous disarray. Red as flame it was,
and passionate as the whole look and poise of her.

He bent to her very simply and kissed her on the forehead. There was
no hungry eagerness about his movement, yet the very simplicity of it
seemed to indicate terrific restraint. She stood perfectly still, as if
hypnotized.

“Now,” he said quietly, “you and I are friends again, aren’t we?”

She nodded. There was the grating of a key in the lock of the front
door. They both waited in silence. Then there were footsteps in the
hall.

“Mrs. Tebbutt!” he called. He was tremendously, inexpressibly relieved
at her arrival.

Mrs. Tebbutt, discreet as always, opened the door and entered.

“You might come and clear these things away, will you?” he said, in a
perfectly ordinary tone.

“Very good, sir.”

The spell was broken.

Catherine did not stay long after that. Conversation between them was
difficult because it was carefully commonplace. Mrs. Tebbutt kept
coming in and out. And when Catherine left, his handshake at the gate
was just normally cordial, neither more nor less so than usual....




CHAPTER XVII


THE CRISIS

§ 1


WALKING amongst the trampled snow of the Ridgeway, it was difficult
for her to decide the significance of what had happened. It was not
easy to determine how far her passionate outburst had been a thing
of art and how far she had been unable to restrain it. Not that her
passion was in any sense unreal or artificial; but her aim had been to
excite his sympathies and she had succeeded so well that it was hardly
possible to regard her actions as entirely unpremeditated. There had
been such consummate artistry on her part that it seemed impossible
that for a single moment could she have entirely abandoned herself to
her feelings. Yet her tears had been thoroughly genuine, and she was
speaking the truth when she said that he had hurt her more than she had
ever been hurt before.

His attitude to her, too, was puzzling. She wanted to break down that
iron control which he held over himself. And she seemed as far away as
ever from doing it. His kiss had been a thing of careful precision.
She could feel the restraint he was imposing on himself and she could
discern also that he was capable of much greater restraints than
that. His kiss was not like the kiss she might have received had not
the porter pulled him down from the foot-board. Even now she was
instinctively conscious that that moment as the train was leaving
the platform at Cambridge represented the high-water mark of his
relationship with her. With all her efforts she had not induced in him
a repetition of that singularly rare mood of his. And now, moreover, he
was on his guard. The struggle would be epic.

She was gratified that he loved her. Though she knew how desperately
he would fight against submission to her, though she knew the great
intellectual and spiritual gulf between them which made him desire
above all things that he should retain his complete freedom and
independence, yet the mere fact that he loved her was capable of giving
her intense satisfaction. And once again she was terrifically jealous
of his wider interests and sympathies. She was utterly, inhumanly
selfish. She knew it, and it hurt her infinitely to know it, and to
know that he knew it. Some demon had entered her soul at birth and
dominated her ever selfishly, and try as she would she could not shake
it off. She could not repress her own miserable jealousies, her own
contemptible conceit, her own despicable selfishness. In her own heart
she knew that Verreker despised her, and that he had a right to do
so. All the joy of finding her love reciprocated was tinged with the
melancholy of realizing the rottenness of her own soul. There were
moments when she felt she was spiritually damned, that a canker was
eating at her soul which would leave her unworthy to live. And yet,
with more than a touch of hysteria, she consoled herself with the
thought that he loved her: she was abundantly, rapturously happy about
that, using it to mask the horror of her own soul, as one who dances
heartlessly on the very brink of destruction....




§ 2


It was New Year’s Day when she saw him next. He was walking down the
slope to Bockley Station, and she was coming up from one of the trains.

A dim presentiment of coming tragedy overswept her as she saw him
coming, so that, without knowing exactly why, she would not have
stopped of her own accord. But he insisted on stopping and shaking
hands, and wishing her a happy new year (a touch of sentimentality
which she was surprised to hear from him).

Even then a dim foreshadowing of something monstrously like destruction
impelled her to try to get away. She was surprised, awed at her own
instinctive impulse. She could not think what she had to be afraid of.
And yet she was afraid--terribly afraid. A black cloud was descending
upon her. She must get away from him at all costs.

But he insisted on detaining her.

“There was some fine skating on the High Wood pond last night,” he
said; and she said: “Was there?”

“Did you go up?” he asked; and she said: “No: I didn’t know there would
be any.”

“Can you skate?” he asked; and she said: “Not on the ice--only on
rollers.”

And he laughed and said: “You ought to learn--it is a fine exercise. I
expect there will be some more to-night if it doesn’t snow.”

And deep and dim within her was the awful premonition of doom. All
this small talk about skating and ice and snow brought the black cloud
almost to the level of her eyes.

Then he said: “By the way, I’ve a bit of news for you.”

She did not remember whether she enquired, “What is it?” or just
remained silent.

“Miss Trant and I are engaged to be married.”

“Is that all?” she said lightly. “I thought--oh, I thought--oh, well,
congratulations!”

“I have accepted a post at Harvard University in the States, and Miss
Trant and I are to be married very soon and take up our position there.”

“Still as your amanuensis?--she, I mean?”

“Yes--to a certain extent. Of course, I may have to employ a typist to
do the heavy work.”

“Of course.”

“I have never been to the States.”

“Nor have I.... I suppose they are ... very different.”

“Possibly.... I can recommend you to a good organizer, if you would
rather not manage for yourself.... Though I would recommend the latter.”

“Concerts, you mean?”

“Yes. Most organizers will want a big commission.... Why not do it
yourself? ... I believe in being independent....”

“So do I ... perhaps I will....”

“You ought to have a successful run in Scotland.... Of course, if you
should ever come to the States ... we should be pleased to see you....”

“Oh yes, I would certainly visit you. Let me see, did you say Harvard?
That’s Massachusetts, isn’t it?”

“Yes.... I’ll let you know the exact address when I know it ... my
train is signalled ... I am going up to town to arrange for a sailing
next month ... or the end of this....”

“Yes? ... is Helen quite well?”

“Very well ... she does not see much of you now ... but of course both
she and you are busy....”

“She will like the voyage ... she is a good sailor....”

“Oh?”

“Yes ... we once went to Yarmouth ... it was very rough ... but she was
all right....”

“That’s good ... my train ... well, I’ll write you the address.... I
wish you all success ... good-bye ...”

“Good-bye.”

Their hands met, clasped and unclasped, silently, meaninglessly.

The cloud broke and fell....

She climbed the slope on to the white highway....

Out in the High Road she boarded a passing tram, caring not whither
it was going. She climbed to the top deck, which was uncovered, and
sat on a seat that was filmed over with lately fallen snow. There was
nobody else on the top deck, and the conductor, when she tendered him
a penny without speaking, eyed her curiously. The car purred slowly
along the High Road, stopping at all the old familiar halting-places,
stopping sometimes because of men who were shovelling snow and slush
into the gutters. Every time it stopped she could hear the driver on
his platform beating his gloved hands together and swinging his arms
noisily across his chest. It was very cold, and the wind swept down
the wide High Road like a demon unchained. Overhead the trolley-wheel
screamed shrilly along the wires, and every time it passed the
supporting wire between the opposite tramway standards it gave a
sharp, excruciating sound--like a little kiss. At the Ridgeway Corner
there was a long wait, and the driver and conductor disappeared into a
coffee-house by the roadside. Far ahead the High Road stretched grey
and melancholy, with the snow and slush piled high along the gutters.
The tram-rails were running rivulets, and each passing car sprayed the
brown water over the roadway....

At High Wood the conductor climbed the steps and began turning the
handle to alter the destination board of the car. Then he swung down
the rope from the trolley-pole and said: “Don’t go beyond ’ere,
miss.... Git a bus if yer want ter go any further....” Catherine
clambered down. After all, she did not want to go any further. This was
High Wood; she was quite near home....

The path through the Forest to “Elm Cottage” was ankle deep in mud
and slush.... As she passed the clearing that was about half-way, she
saw that the sky was grey with falling flakes. He had said: “I expect
there will be some more skating to-night if it doesn’t snow.” But it
was snowing now. There would be no skating. It did seem a pity. So
many people would be disappointed.... She could see the smoke rising
sluggishly from the chimney-pots of “Elm Cottage.” The footpath to the
porch was white with untrodden snow....

In the drawing-room the first things she saw were the boxes of
cigarettes which she had bought because she knew they were his
favourite brand, and the Bach’s Fugue which she had learned because she
knew he would like to hear it.

She sat down on the fender rail in front of the fire without removing
any of her wraps. The fatness of a tear-off calendar on her bureau
annoyed her by its unaccustomedness. It was the first day of a new
year. The mantelshelf was stacked with Christmas and New Year cards,
chiefly from people she did not know....

Oh, well, she told herself, if I was wrong, then I was wrong.... If
he’s in love with Helen, then he’s in love with her. That’s all there
is to it.... Anyway, it’s the sort of thing that might happen to
anybody ... what’s happened to me, I mean....

She flung off her furs and muff on to the floor. Her feet were wet,
despite goloshes. She removed her shoes and put on slippers. Then, as
if impelled by a sense of duty, she picked up the furs and muff and
carried them to the piano, laying them on the closed sound-board....

She was just tired, physically, mentally and spiritually....

Even _she_ had realized the awful selfishness of her soul. It was
that which was hurting her far more than she knew. She could not quite
analyse her feelings. But Verreker’s attitude had made her terribly
conscious of her own inferiority. It hurt her to think that he despised
her. Her soul was rotten, there was no health in her.... There was
a sense in which Verreker’s engagement to Helen gave her a ray of
spiritual hope, even if it subjected her to fierce pangs of jealousy.
If he were in love with Helen and not with herself, that would
sufficiently explain his casualness towards her. And he could not,
presumably, help being in love with Helen.... Being in love with Helen
did not necessarily indicate that he despised _her_. She suddenly
realized that if she were convinced that he despised her all the hope
would vanish out of her life. His conviction of her unworthiness would
prove to her finally that her life was not, in the truest sense, worth
living. That he was not in love with her was a deep disappointment, a
bitter blow, beyond all doubt, but it was at most an accident. But that
he deliberately and calculatingly pierced the selfishness and baseness
of her, and despised her utterly from the depths of his being, she
could not bear to think of....

Fiercely she turned upon her inmost nature and examined it ruthlessly.
The spectacle was appalling. Her soul was eaten up with selfishness and
jealousy and conceit. Everything in her past life had been inspired
by one or other of these three leading motives. One or other of them
was the clue to nearly everything she had ever done, to nearly every
attitude she had ever adopted, to nearly every relationship that had
ever entered her life. Her escape from home, her episodes of friendship
with George Trant, all were evidences of her love of self. Her past
was strewn with the wreckage of things that could not live in the
atmosphere of her own spiritual avarice. And now her friendship with
Verreker had broken under the strain placed upon it. If he were in
love with Helen really and truly she could bear it. But if she thought
that he saw in her own soul all the rottenness that she could see,
the impulse to kill herself would be overmastering. Her father had
committed suicide....

All afternoon the snow fell steadily, and she stayed indoors and
debated how she might best re-create her soul. How she might drive
out from her being the demon of self. How she might open her heart to
pure, noble and unselfish motives. How she might rid herself of insane
jealousies. How she might become less conceited, less the egoist. How
she might build up in herself a real personality, strong, simple and
generous, something which would make life worth the living, even if all
other things were taken away. And how (God forgive her for thinking
this!)--how she might make herself more acceptable to Verreker, more
worthy in his eyes, more valued in his esteem. It meant tearing herself
to pieces. She declared that he had hurt her more than she had ever
been hurt before. It was so. She was hurting all over from his words
to her. But the surgical operation on her own soul would cost her more
still. The pain of it would be all the harder to bear because it would
be self-inflicted. She must stamp out ruthlessly what was ninetenths of
her.... And then beyond all the pain, in the sweet aftercalm, her soul
would be clean and passionately free....

That night she was playing at a concert in town. She played badly,
and as she left the platform she realized the fight that was in store
for her. Among the few things left which she dared to treasure was
her ambition as a pianist. It might be selfish and conceited, but she
felt that it was at any rate one of the most worthy parts of her.
And she saw that, come what might, she must not lower her standard
in that direction. Her fight to be a great pianist must be linked up
with her spiritual struggle for the cleansing of her soul. She went
home resolved that she would practise harder and more rigorously than
ever....




CHAPTER XVIII


DÉBÂCLE

§ 1


THE next morning she awoke with a bad headache. Her hands and wrists
were very hot, and when she tried to get out of bed her feet were
curiously vagrant and unstable. So she got back to bed and summoned
Florrie, her maid. Florrie was a country girl, large and buxom and
pleasure-loving. Catherine had got her by advertising in an Essex
local paper, a method which had been recommended to her as one by
which excellent servants are frequently picked up. So Florrie had left
the little village near Chelmsford and had taken up her abode in “Elm
Cottage.” The joys of the town fascinated her. In less than three weeks
she was “walking out” with a tram conductor. When Catherine was out
at evening concerts she used frequently to allow Florrie the evenings
off, and gradually Florrie came to regard these not as a privilege, but
as a right. She had a huge appetite and a habit of reading sixpenny
novelettes. There was no personal affection between mistress and
servant, though that was not altogether the fault of the latter.

Florrie’s appearance at nine o’clock in the morning was aggressive. It
was not her business to get her mistress out of bed and dress her: she
was a housemaid. She regarded distrustfully Catherine’s announcement
that she was not feeling very well, that she would not get up just yet,
and that Florrie could bring the breakfast upstairs to her. She obeyed
truculently. The tray of breakfast pots was placed on a chair by the
side of her bed.

“There’s not enough milk, I think,” said Catherine, looking into the
cream jug; “you’d better fetch a drop more.”

Florrie sniffed. “There ain’t no more meulk in the ’ouse, mum,” she
replied steadfastly.

“Why not?”

“’Cos there ain’t, mum.”

Catherine raised herself sideways on her elbow, the better to pursue
the argument.

“Did the milkman leave a pint as usual?”

“Yes, mum.”

“And this is all that’s left of it?”

“Yes, mum.”

“Then you must have used far too much with your porridge.... Well,
since there isn’t enough, you’d better go to a shop and get another
pint.”

Florrie fidgeted uneasily with her feet. She was not used to her
mistress in such a firm mood.

“It’s a long way, mum.... There’s no plice nearer than Brigson’s, daown
the ’Igh Road. All daown the ’ill an’ up agin, mum.”

“Never mind. Go to Brigson’s.”

“Naow, mum?”

“Yes, this minute.”

“The milkman’ll be here again in ’alf an hour, mum.”

Catherine flushed with anger.

“Are you going to go to Brigson’s or not?”

Florrie raised her eyebrows self-questioningly.

“S’powsing I waster say not, mum?” she said impudently.

The retort stung Catherine to feverish decision.

“You can either go to Brigson’s or take a week’s notice,” she cried
shrilly, and let go the elbow that supported her head. Her red hair
straggled across the pillow, half hiding her face and effectively
preventing Florrie from seeing that she was weeping. Florrie was not
hard-hearted, and if she had seen her mistress’s tears she would
probably have apologized. But she did not see them: she saw only the
red flush on her cheeks and the angry glint in her eyes. She saw that
it was a direct contest of wills, and also, which perhaps was the
deciding factor, she did not wish to leave Upton Rising and her tram
conductor. So she left the room sullenly, put on her hat in front of
the dining-room overmantel downstairs, and took the path through the
snow towards the High Road.

And meanwhile Catherine lay weeping upstairs.... Florrie’s open
defiance seemed one more link in the chain of evidence that proved her
to be unworthy of respect, devotion or love. Even Florrie despised her:
Florrie, with her mule-like doggedness and inferior intellect, judged
herself competent to query her mistress’s orders, and treat her with
what was very thinly veiled contempt....

The morning paper was on the breakfast tray, and she raised herself
again and glanced at the headlines. Then she turned to the inside page
where the musical criticisms and announcements, if any, were inserted.
Under the heading, “New Year’s Concert,” she read:

 Miss Weston’s performance was curiously disappointing. I was confirmed
 in the opinion I have held ever since I first heard Miss Weston, that
 she is a skilful player of considerable talent who will, however,
 never reach the front rank of her profession. Some cardinal defects in
 her technique and interpretation showed themselves with disconcerting
 frankness last evening. On the whole, had I not known that Miss Weston
 at her best is quite skilful in her playing of Chopin and Liszt, I
 should have wondered last evening what had led the organizers of the
 concert to include her in a programme which included such names as
 Signor----, the tenor, and Mme.----, the prima donna. She played a
 Chopin polonaise as if it were a cake-walk, and her Liszt’s Sposalizio
 was not even note-perfect. Perhaps Miss Weston was feeling unwell, in
 which case it would be unfair to criticize her too severely, but the
 truth is, in twenty years’ musical experience I have never heard such
 poor playing at a concert purporting to be first-rate....

The article was signed by one of London’s chief musical critics....

Catherine dropped the newspaper on to the floor with the remainder of
the criticism unread. She did not even know if that was the worst that
was printed about her. The writer was a man for whom she had a great
respect: he had never been among the enthusiasts who prophesied for
her a world-wide reputation, yet till now his criticisms had always
been mildly encouraging, particularly when it was borne in mind that
his newspaper, a journal of independent views, permitted him to be
mercilessly sarcastic at the expense of all musical aspirants whom he
thought to be aiming too high. And now he had turned against her. It
was all the harder to bear because he had not employed sarcasm: there
was throughout his criticism a kind of sorrowful kindness, as if he
sincerely pitied her.

When she thought that Verreker might read the article (would, in fact,
in all probability) she felt ashamed, disgraced. Then, as she realized
that a few more criticisms of that kind from the leading critics would
damn her reputation, lose her her engagements and fling her back into
the common rut, she was overwhelmed with the horror that the future
might hold for her. She tossed and fretted in an agony of shame and
mortification, cursing blindly at the ill-luck that was falling upon
her on all sides. At last, unable to bear the torture of her thoughts
any longer, she sprang out of bed with the zest of a tiger and put
on a dressing-gown. She did not notice the difficulty she was having
to stand upright: she had tapped hidden sources of energy within
her which, though not extensive, were sufficient to sustain her for
the present. She opened the door and went on to the landing. It was
terribly cold there: the open fanlight window let in an icy draught
from the north. Her feet were bare, but she did not appear to notice
it on the thick stair-carpet. She began to descend, holding on to the
stair-rail tightly. At the foot she stood still for a minute, as if
waiting for supplies of energy, and then walked into the drawing-room.
The fire, lit apparently with damp wood picked up from the Forest, had
gone out and the room was very chilly. She walked unerringly to the
music-cabinet and, kneeling on the floor, began to search in feverish
haste. At last, seemingly, she discovered the object of her quest, a
single thin piece of music in a yellow paper cover. With a strangely
difficult movement she rose to her feet again and half walked, half
staggered the short intervening distance to the piano-stool. It took
her quite a minute to open out the music at the first page and place
it in front of her on the rest. Instinctively she placed her bare
feet on the cold brass of the pedals, and drew them away as quickly as
if the metal had been white-hot. The shock restored to her a part of
her lost energy. She began to move her fingers desultorily over the
keys. At first the music was simple and she managed pretty well. But
on the third page it developed octave arpeggio eccentricities in the
left hand, and against these the fury of her determination burst in
vain. She was handicapped, too, by not having the use of the pedals.
For several moments her fingers moved, struggling vainly against
chords and runs which her eyes could scarcely read and her memory but
vaguely suggest. A terrible battle it was--a truly Homeric contest:
her own tigerish determination against all the difficulties that a
master-technician could invent.... But you would never have guessed
that it was Liszt’s Sposalizio....

On the fourth page her spirit broke, and she fell forward sobbing, with
her head and hair on the keys. And there some moments later, Florrie,
entering with a jug of milk in her hand, found her, still sobbing
uncontrollably....




§ 2


Florrie, now thoroughly alarmed, and sincerely anxious to make amends
for her previous truculence, got her back to bed somehow and sent for
a doctor. Dr. McPherson motored from Bockley to see her, and found her
temperature somewhat dangerously high. From Florrie he learned how
Catherine had come in the day before, after half-wading through the
snow and slush from the tram terminus. She had caught a chill. Knowing
that she was something of a celebrity and in receipt of a considerable
salary, he did not tell her how her own foolishness had been the cause
of it. He announced his intention of sending a nurse to look after
her, left detailed instructions with Florrie as to how to act until
the nurse came, and said that he would himself come again later in the
evening. Downstairs Florrie told him how she had found her mistress in
the drawing-room, sobbing in front of the piano.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered impatiently, “of course--that is all what one
might expect.... You should not have left her....”

And he drove off in his car down the winding gravel lane that led
to the High Road. Florrie was offended. After all, it was through
obeying her mistress that she had been compelled to leave her. She was
aware that she was being treated unjustly, and it gave her an air of
conscious martyrdom....

She went back to Catherine’s bedroom. The breakfast things, untouched
and forgotten, had to be cleared away. The coffee was nearly cold, but
she warmed it up on the gas ring in the kitchen and drank it herself.
Some of the cold and leathery buttered toast she ate herself; the rest
she threw into the snow-covered garden for the birds.... Every time she
passed the bed she glanced pityingly at the huddled figure and the mass
of flame-coloured hair that straggled over the pillow. Her expression
said plainly enough: I have been ill-treated and misunderstood, but I
bear no malice. You shall see what an unselfish creature I am.... And
another of her reflections was expressed some time later when she was
talking to Minnie Walker, one of the barmaids at the High Wood Hotel.
“She ’as got nice ’air,” she told Minnie. “Pity ’er fice ain’t so nice
... but I wish I got ’er ‘air, I do, reely....”

Morning passed into afternoon, and nothing altered in the view from
the bedroom window of “Elm Cottage.” The sky was still uniformly
grey, the trees like black and white etchings, the lawn in the front
garden a patch of dazzling white, broken only by the double track of
a bird’s footmarks. A fire was burning in the fireplace, and as the
heat rose to the roof the snow above began to thaw and slide down off
the gutters like a thunderous avalanche. In time the lawn was littered
with the falling spray of these successive cataclysms, and the steady
drip, drip of the gutters showed that what had not fallen was thawing
fast.... The flames on the top of the red coal fluttered idly like
blue wings when the wind swept down the chimney: something reminded
Catherine of those distant childhood days of hers in Kitchener Road,
when she had watched the flames on long winter evenings and listened
to them as they said: Lappappappap.... They were saying it now in odd
moments and their voices linked her to the scenes and incidents of her
childhood.... Florrie was rocking herself in a chair by the fire and
reading a paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice. There was another
paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice on the floor beside her. She had
a great red face and large eyes. Occasionally as she read her mouth
would open and remain so for moments at a time. She skipped a good
deal of the descriptive matter. Every few minutes she yawned noisily
and drew herself a little closer to the fire. The clock downstairs
struck three.... Far away Catherine could hear the purr of trams along
the High Road. The room began to darken. At first she thought it was
getting night-time, but she realized that it was scarcely the hour
for that. Then she looked at the window. The window was dirty: she
could scarcely see the trees of the Forest at all. She stared hard at
the window.... No: it was not dirt. She could see what it was now: it
had started snowing again. The dark outline of the Forest was only
vaguely grey behind the slanting flakes, and as she listened she could
hear it swishing--softly--all around and about her--on the roof, on
the window-sill, on the lawn beneath, over all the miles of trees and
grassland, swishing like a soft brush, yet loudly enough to deaden the
sound of the trams on the High Road. And he had said: “I expect there
will be some more skating to-night if it doesn’t snow.” But it was
snowing now. There would be no skating. It _did_ seem a pity. So
many people would be disappointed....

Then a film passed over her eyes, and when it lifted the blind was
drawn in front of the window and one of the electric lights by the
fireplace was glowing.... There was a different person in the room with
her: a thin, red-lipped, white-faced woman in nurse’s uniform: she also
was rocking herself in front of the fire, and reading a paper-backed
novel by Charles Garvice. Catherine watched her for a long while, and
she did not move save to turn over the pages. She had brown hair and a
mole on her right cheek. She was wearing Catherine’s bedroom slippers.
That curiously trivial thing annoyed Catherine intensely.

All at once Catherine reached out a hand from beneath the clothes
and pressed the electric light switch that dangled above the pillow.
Three clusters of light in various parts of the room burst into
yellow brilliance. The nurse started violently, put down her book and
approached the bedside.

“Good evening ...” she began softly, and pressed back the switch so
that the lights disappeared.

Catherine felt herself burning with suppressed fury. What right had
this strange woman to turn out the lights if _she_ wished them to
be lit? What right had she? Who was mistress in her own house? With
trembling fingers she reached again for the switch and pressed it.
The lights reappeared. She kept her fingers tightly clasped round the
switch. But a cold hand laid itself on the top of hers and she had to
leave go. Then she saw the nurse take the switch and hang it over the
top of a picture far out of anybody’s reach, unless a chair were used
to stand on....

She lay there on the bed, panting with indignation. She had been
insulted, deliberately, calculatingly, and in her own house.... And the
nurse went back to the fireplace and resumed the paper-backed novel by
Charles Garvice....




§ 3


Dr. McPherson was standing beneath the single electric globe that was
in use. Beside him, on a level with his shoulder, stood the nurse. In
his hand he held a portion of newspaper, crumpled and partially torn.

He said: “H’m, yes. Very possibly.... Are you certain she read it?”

The nurse said: “I think she must have done. It was lying on the floor
as if she had thrown it down....”

And the doctor’s voice boomed back: “H’m, yes. Very pathetic.... But of
course her illness accounts for her bad performance. She ought to have
realized that....”

Catherine’s heart gave a sudden leap. Of course! That was it! Why had
she not thought of that before? She was _ill_. That accounted
for her bad playing, the nurse, the doctor, everything.... When she
recovered she would be able to play again all right! Of course! What a
fool she had been! This was only illness ... illness. She began to cry
for joy at this new hope that had sprung up in her heart....




§ 4


Somebody (it looked like her father) was saying: “--if you want
friends, let them be girl friends.... Surely you can find plenty of
your own sex without----”

“--I can’t think what you want playing about with boys.... Girls should
stick to girls....”

And he pulled off his boots and flung them loudly under the sofa....
Hr-rooch--flop ... Hr-rooch--flop ... and then his collar--plock,
plock....

“A girl of your age,” he went on, “ought not to bother her head
with fellers ... this sort of free-and-easy-carrying-on won’t do,
Catherine....”

And--“I can’t see what you need ever to be out later than nine for ...
you’ve got all the daytime. I can’t think what you want the night as
well for ... it’s not as if you weren’t allowed to do what you like on
Saturday afternoons....”

And her mother, shrill and cacophonous:

“When _I_ was young----”

Chorus of father and mother: “When _I_ was young----”




§ 5


It must be a dream.

If she ever had children of her own, would she say to them: “When
_I_ was young----”

She pondered....




CHAPTER XIX


AFTERWARDS

§ 1


UNFORTUNATELY her illness, whilst not serious in itself, left her
with neuritis in her right arm. Until she should be rid of this, any
restarting of concert work was out of the question. To play even a hymn
tune with her right hand fatigued her, and all scale and arpeggio work
was physically impossible. When she was quite recovered from all save
the neuritis, she spent most of her time either reading or practising
the left-hand parts of various concert pieces. This latter exercise,
whilst not very entertaining to her in the musical sense, consoled her
with the thought that her time was not being entirely wasted, and that
when her right hand should come into use again her playing would be all
the better for this intensive development of her left. Every day she
visited a masseuse in the West-end and received an electric treatment
for her arm which Dr. McPherson recommended.

Money began to be somewhat of a difficulty with her. Thinking always
that her future was rosy with prospects and that her salary would be
sure to keep constantly increasing, she had never troubled to save
much, and had, indeed, been living slightly above her income ever
since she came to “Elm Cottage.” She paid twenty-five shillings a
week rent, seven and sixpence a week to Florrie, besides a weekly
half-crown to a visiting gardener and a charwoman. She had heaps of
incidental expenses--periodic tuning of the piano--her season ticket
to town--heavy bills for music, dresses and furniture (which she
was constantly buying)--her quarterly payment to the press-cutting
agency--books, magazines, expensive laundrying, a fastidious taste
in food and restaurants, all added to make her expenditure a few
shillings--sometimes a few pounds--per month in excess of her income.
During her illness, her income had been nil and her expenses enormous.
The nurse wanted two guineas a week, Dr. McPherson’s bills were
notoriously high, and in the case of a person like Catherine he would
probably charge more than usual. Five shillings a visit was his fee,
and for a fortnight he had come twice a day, and for the last three
weeks once. The West-end masseuse was even more exorbitant: her fees
were half a guinea for each electric treatment lasting about half an
hour. Household expenses were becoming terrific. The nurse seemed to
think that Catherine was a person of infinite financial resources: she
ordered from the grocer, the butcher, the poulterer and the fruiterer
whatever she had a fancy to, in or out of season, regardless of
expense. She and Catherine took their meals together, and Catherine’s
appetite was never more than half that of the nurse. So the weeks
passed and the bills of the tradesmen went piling up and Catherine’s
cheque account at the bank came tumbling down.

One morning the bill from Parker’s, provision merchant, High Street,
Bockley, arrived by post. Catherine had expected a heavy sum to pay,
but the account presented to her was absolutely staggering. It was
for nineteen pounds five and fourpence. As Catherine looked at it she
went quite white with panic. She dared not examine carefully every
item--she was afraid to see her own extravagance written down. But
as her eye swept curiously down the bill it caught sight of such
things as: Port wane, half dozen, forty-two shillings; pair of cooked
chickens, eight and six; two pounds of black grapes (out of season),
fifteen shillings.... The bill took away all Catherine’s appetite for
breakfast. From the writing-bureau she took out her bank pass-book:
it showed that she had fifty-three pounds four and nine on her cheque
account, and nothing on her deposit side. The situation became ominous.
Out of that fifty-three pounds would have to be paid the grocer’s
bill of nineteen pounds odd, the bills not yet forthcoming of the
fruiterer, fishmonger, poulterer, butcher, confectioner, and dairyman
(cream had been a heavy item in her diet). Plus this, small bills from
the bookseller, newsagent, tobacconist and laundryman. Plus this,
whatever Dr. McPherson had in store for her. Plus this, Madame Varegny,
masseuse--_her_ bill of costs. In March, too, would come the bill
from the press-cutting agency, the piano-tuner, and the renewal of her
season ticket.... All out of fifty-three pounds! Was it possible? ...
And, of course, rent and wages to Florrie.... Things were evidently
fast approaching a financial crisis.

One thing was absolutely clear: she must economize drastically and
immediately. And one of the first steps in that direction was to get
rid of the nurse and the doctor. Except for the neuritis in her arm she
was really quite well now, and both nurse and doctor were completely
unnecessary. But it required a tremendous effort to tell them their
services were no longer required. Her illness seemed to have sapped her
will power. The truth was (though she would never have admitted it) she
was afraid of both the doctor and the nurse. Only her greater fear of
the avalanche of the bills that was threatening her gave her a sort of
nervous determination.

When Dr. McPherson came in his car at ten o’clock that morning her
heart was beating wildly. She wondered even then if her courage would
be equal to the task.

“Good morning,” he announced genially, walking briskly into the
breakfast-room, “and how are we this morning? Getting along famously,
eh?”

“About the same,” she replied dully.

“Like the massage?”

“Fairly. I can’t feel it doing me any good, though.”

“Oh, you haven’t been having it long enough yet. We’ll soon set you up
again, you wait.... After all, you’re young. You’ve the best part of
life before you. An old lady of seventy I visited yesterday said if she
were only----”

“Doctor!” Her voice was trying to be firm.

“Yes?”

“I want you to stop visiting me.” (The thing was done!)

“But--my dear young lady--why ever----?”

“Because I am getting very short of money, and I shall have to
economize. I really can’t afford to keep having you visiting me every
day.”

“Well--of course--h’m--if you wish--I suppose. But you aren’t well yet.
I shall, at any rate, with your permission call occasionally not as a
doctor, but as a visitor. I am very deeply interested in your recovery.”

“It is very kind of you.... And one other thing: I want you to tell the
nurse to go also. I really don’t need her any longer. Perhaps, since
you brought her here, you wouldn’t mind----”

“Certainly, if you desire it. I’ll tell her when she comes to the
surgery for the medicine this afternoon.”

“Thank you ever so much.”

“You’ll continue with massage treatment?”

“Yes--for the present, at any rate.”

“Good ... you’ll begin to feel the effects of it in a day or two....
The weather is enough to keep anybody with neuritis. Simply rain, rain,
rain from morning till night. Shocking for colds and influenza. I have
over thirty cases of influenza. Twenty of them are round about High
Wood. It must be the Forest, I think, everything so damp and sodden....”




§ 2


The nurse went the following morning. Before going by one of the early
trains from Upton Rising she cooked herself a sumptuous breakfast
of ham and eggs, fish and coffee. She was going to her home in
Newcastle, and she took with her for refreshments on the journey
several hardboiled eggs, a bottle of invalid’s wine, and two packages
of chicken sandwiches. Coming up to Catherine’s bedroom just before
departure she shook hands very stiffly and wished her a swift recovery.
But her attitude was contemptuous.

After she had gone, Catherine called Florrie up to her and delivered a
sort of informal speech.

“You know, Florrie, that lately, while I’ve been ill, expenses have
been very high. And of course I haven’t had any money coming in at all.
Well, I haven’t got enough money to keep us spending at the rate I have
been, so I’ve had to cut down expenses drastically. The nurse has gone
for good and the doctor isn’t going to call so often.... You must be
careful not to waste anything. Don’t order from the grocer’s anything
that isn’t necessary. You’d better let me see the order before you give
it.... No fruits out of season ... we needn’t have meat every day, you
know ... and tell the gardener he needn’t come again until further
notice. There’s not much gardening to be done this time of the year....”




§ 3


A few days later came more bills.

Brigson’s, dairyman, High Road, Bockley, £4 0s. 3d.

Mattocks’, poulterer, The Causeway, Upton Rising, £8 9s. 0d.

Ratcliffe and Jones, confectioners. High Street, Bockley, £3 12s. 5d.

Thomas and Son, fruiterers, The Ridgeway, Upton Rising, £7 4s. 3d.

Hackworth, newsagents, High Wood, £2 0s. 8d.

Dr. McPherson, St. Luke’s Grove, Bockley, for services ... £15 12s.0d.

Total, £40 18s. 6d.!

Plus Parker’s bill, £60 3s. 10d.!

And she had £53 4s. 9d. to pay it with!

And there were yet a few more bills to come in!

And expenditure was still continuing, and no sign of being able to
start earning again!

Madame Varegny was costing money at the rate of three guineas a week.
There was not even fifty-three pounds four and nine in the bank,
for Catherine had drawn out ten pounds for pocket money and half of
that had gone on small expenses. She was faced with a problem. There
was bound to be a big deficit on her balance-sheet.... When the
first shock of the situation passed away she became quite cool and
calculating.

She wrote cheques in payment of Parker’s, Mattocks’, Ratcliffe and
Jones’, Thomas and Sons’, and Brigson’s bills. For they were shops at
which she was forced to continue dealing, and which would have refused
her credit if she had not settled promptly.

McPherson, she decided, could wait awhile....

On the bill of Hackworth, newsagents, she noticed items for books which
she had never ordered. She enquired at the shop one day and was shown
the detailed list. It included some, score paper-backed volumes by
Charles Garvice.

“But I never ordered these!” Catherine protested.

Mr. Hackworth shrugged his shoulders.

“You’ve ’ad ’em, anyway, miss. The nurse uster come in of a morning and
say: Mr. Hackworth, I want the _Moosical Times_ for this month----”

“Yes, I know about that: I _did_ order that----”

“Well, an’ then the nurse’d say afterwards: I want them books on this
list, an’ she giv’ me a bit o’ piper with ’em written down on.... Put
’em all down on the sime acahnt? I uster arst, an’ she uster sy: Yes,
you’d better....”

Catherine was more angry over this than over anything else.

At home in the kitchen she discovered Florrie reading one of these
paper-backed novels.

“Where did this come from?” she enquired sternly.

“Out of the bottom cupboard,” replied Florrie, conscious of innocence;
“there’s piles of ’em there. The nurse left ’em.”

Sure enough the bottom cupboard was littered with them. Their titles
ran the entire gamut both of chromatic biliousness and female
nomenclature. Catherine stirred them with her foot as if they had been
carrion.

“Look here, Florrie,” she said authoritatively. “Get. rid of all this
trash.... There’s a stall in Duke Street on a Friday night where they
buy this sort of thing second-hand. Take them down there next Friday
and sell them.”

Florrie nodded submissively.

“Yes, mum, I will ... only ... I’ve read ’em neely all, only there’s
jest a few I ain’t read yet; p’raps if I sowld the others I might keep
’em by till I’d finished reading of ’em ... wouldn’t take me long, mum!”

Catherine half smiled.

“I can’t think why you like reading them at all.”

Florrie looked critically at the volume in her hand.

“Well, mum, they ain’t _bad_.”

“And do you really enjoy them?”

“Not all of ’em, mum ... but some of ’em: well, mum, they ain’t at all
_bad_....”




§ 4


Fourteen of the paper-backed novels on the following Friday night
fetched one and six at the stall in Duke Street. Florrie’s tram fare
both ways, fourpence. Net receipts, one and twopence....

An unexpected bill came in, £1 10s. 0d. for coal.

When Catherine went to the bank to draw five pounds (by means of a
cheque made payable to herself) the clerk said: “By the way, miss,
your cheque account is getting low.... Excuse me mentioning it, but
we prefer you not to let it get too low.... Say fifty pounds ... of
course, for a while ... but as soon as you can conveniently ... you’ll
excuse me mentioning it....”

Catherine replied: “Of course, I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll put
some more in shortly. Thanks for letting me know.”

But it sent her into a fever of anxiety.

How was she to get any money to put in?

One afternoon she was strolling about the garden when, approaching the
kitchen window, she heard voices. It was Florrie talking to Minnie
Walker, the barmaid at the High Wood Hotel. Catherine did not like
Minnie Walker coming to see Florrie so often, particularly when they
drank beer in the kitchen together. She listened to see whether Minnie
had come to deliver any particular message or merely to have a drink
and a chat and to waste Florrie’s time. If the latter, Catherine meant
to interfere and tell Minnie to go.

The conversation she overheard was as follows:

 MINNIE. I s’pouse the food ain’t so good now the nurse ’as
 gone. She wasn’t arf a beauty, eh?

 FLORRIE. She knew ’ow ter set a tible, anyway. Chicken every
 night, I uster git. She had the breast, an’ uster leave me the legs.
 But the old girl don’t do that now. Can’t afford to. Fact is, the
 nurse run up some pretty big bills for ’er. She can’t py ’em all, I
 don’t think.

 MINNIE. Then she is owing a good deal, eh?

 FLORRIE. I dessay. Corsts ’er ten and six a time fer this
 messidge treatment wot she ’as evry dy. I know that ’cos the nurse
 said so.

 MINNIE. Yer wanter look out she pys you prompt. ’Case she
 goes bankrupt.

 FLORRIE. You bet I tike care o’ myself. Wait till she don’t
 giv me my money of a Friday and I’ll tell her strite.

Catherine turned away burning with rage.

That night when Florrie came up to lay the tea, Catherine said: “By the
way, Florrie, I give you a week’s notice from to-night.”

“Why, mum?”

“Because I don’t wish to have anybody in the house who discusses my
private business with outsiders.”

“But, mum, I never----”

“Don’t argue. I overheard your conversation. I don’t want any
explanations.”

“Well, mum, they do say that listeners never ’ear no good of
themselves, so If you will go key-’olin’ round----”

“Please leave the room. I don’t wish to talk to you.”

“Very well, mum. It it suits you, it suits me, ’m sure. It won’t be no
’ard job for me ter git another plice----”

“I have told you to go.”

“I’m goin’. By the way, there’s two letters wot come at dinner-time.”

“Bring them up, then.”

“Yes, mum.”

A moment later she returned carrying on a tray two unsealed envelopes
with half-penny stamps. From the half-malignant, half-triumphant look
in her eyes, Catherine was almost sure she had examined their contents.

After Florrie had gone, Catherine opened them.

More bills!

Peach and Lathergrew, butchers, High Road, Bockley, £6 16s. 2d.

Batty, fish merchant, The Causeway, Upton Rising, £5 5s. 10d.

The crisis was coming nearer!




§ 5


The persistent piling up of disaster upon disaster inflicted on her a
kind of spiritual numbness, which made her for the most part insensible
to panic. The first bill (the one from the grocer’s) had had a much
more disturbing effect on her than any subsequent one or even than the
cumulative effect of all of them when she thought about her worries
_en masse_.

There came a time when by constant pondering the idea of being
hopelessly in debt struck her as a very inadequate reason for
unhappiness. But at odd moments, as blow after blow fell, and as she
slipped insensibly into a new stratum of society, there would come
moments of supreme depression, when there seemed nothing in the world
to continue to live for, and when the whole of her past life and future
prospects seemed nothing but heaped-up agony. Her dreams mocked her
with the romance of her subconsciousness. She would dream that she was
the greatest pianist in the world, that the mightiest men and women of
a hundred realms had gathered in one huge building to taste the magic
of her fingers, that they cheered and applauded whilst she played
things of appalling technical difficulty until she had perforce to
stop because her instrument could no longer be heard above the frenzy
of their shouting; that in the end she finished her repertoire of
difficult concert pieces, and in response to repeated demands for an
encore started to play a simple minuet of Beethoven, and that at the
simple beauty of the opening chords the great assembly hushed its voice
and remained tense and in perfect silence whilst she played. And,
moreover, that her quick eye had noticed in a far and humble corner of
the building Ray Verreker, straining to catch the music of the woman
whose fingers he had guided to fame. He was in rags and tatters, and
it was plain that fortune had played despicably with him. But, amidst
the thunderous applause that shook the building when her fingers had
come to rest, her eye caught his and she beckoned to him to approach.
He came, and she held out both her magic hands to raise him to the
platform. “This is my master,” she cried, in a voice that lifted the
furthest echoes, “this is my teacher, the one whose creature I am,
breath of my body, fire of my spirit! The honour you heap upon me I
share with him!”

Beautifully unreal were those dreams of hers. Always was she the
heroine and Verreker the hero. Always were their present positions
reversed, she, famous and wealthy and adored, and he, alone, uncared
for, helpless and in poverty, unknown and loving her passionately.
Always her action was the opposite of what his was in reality: she was
his kind angel, stooping to his fallen fortunes, and lifting them and
him by her own bounty....

Beautiful, unreal dreams! During the day she had no time for these
wandering fictions: work and worry kept her mind constantly in the
realm of stern reality; but at night-time, when her determination held
no longer sway, she sketched her future according to her heart’s desire
and filled it in with touches of passionate romance. To wake from these
scenes of her own imagining into the drab reality of her morning’s work
was fraught with horror unutterable....

Worst, perhaps, of all, her arm did not improve. It seemed as if the
three guineas’ worth per week of electric massage treatment were having
simply no effect at all, save to bring nearer the day of financial
cataclysm. And even if her neuritis were now to leave her, the long
period during which she had had no practice would have left unfortunate
results. Even granted complete and immediate recovery, it would be
fully a month, spent in laborious and intensive practising, before
she dare play again in public. Then, too, it would be necessary for
her to play brilliantly to retrieve the reputation tarnished by her
performance at the New Year’s concert. Moreover, she had no organizer
now, and she did not know quite what the work entailed by that position
was. And she felt nervous of playing again, lest she might further
damage her reputation.

But as long as she could not use her right arm these difficulties were
still hidden in the future.

Bills began to pour in by every post. Possibly Minnie Walker had used
her unrivalled position for disseminating gossip to spread rumours of
Catherine’s financial difficulties. At any rate, from the saloon-bar
of the High Wood Hotel the tale blew Bockleywards with marvellous
rapidity, and caused every tradesman with whom Catherine had an account
to send in his bill for immediate payment. There were bills from shops
that Catherine had forgotten all about. Photographers, picture-framers,
dyers and cleaners, leather-goods fanciers, all contributed their quota
to the gathering avalanche of ruin. When every conceivable bill had
arrived and had been added to the rest, the deficit on the whole was
over a hundred and twenty pounds. This included a bill of over thirty
pounds from a West-end dressmaker’s. Catherine had got past the point
when this appalling situation could have power to frighten her. She
just gathered all the unpaid bills into one small drawer of her bureau,
rigidly economized in all housekeeping expenses, and looked around the
house for things she did not want and could sell for a good figure.

There was the large cheval glass in her bedroom. It was curious that
she should think first of this. It was one of a large quantity of
toilet furniture that she had bought when she first came to “Elm
Cottage.” It was a beautiful thing, exquisitely bevelled and lacquered,
and framed in carved ebony, She had liked it because she could stand in
front of it in evening dress and criticise the whole poise and pose of
herself. She had been accustomed to let down her hair in front of it at
night and admire the red lustre reflected in the glass. Hours she must
have spent posing in front of it. And yet now, when she contemplated
selling, this was the first thing she thought of.... Curious! ... The
fact was, she was getting old. Or so she felt and thought. Her hair
was becoming dull and opaque; there were hard lines about her eyes
and forehead. Never beautiful, she was now losing even that strange
magnetic attractiveness which before had sufficed for beauty. So the
cheval glass which reminded her of it could go....

She called at Trussall’s, the second-hand dealers in the Bockley High
Road, and told them about it. They offered to send up a man to inspect
it and make an offer. Catherine, too, thought this would be the best
plan. When she arrived back at “Elm Cottage” she diligently polished
the ebony frame and rubbed the mirror till it seemed the loveliest
thing in the room. She even rearranged the other furniture so that the
cheval glass should occupy the position of honour.

The man came--a gaunt little snap-voiced man in a trilby hat. Did he
fail to notice how the lawn was growing lank and weedy, the flower-beds
covered with long grass, the trellis work on the pergola rotting and
fallen?

He tapped the mirror in a business-like fashion with his nail and
examined cursorily the carving.

“H’m,” he said meditatively. “We’ll offer you five pounds for it.”

Catherine flushed with shame.

“Why,” she cried shrilly, “I paid forty guineas for it, and it was
priced at more than that!”

He coughed deprecatingly.

“I’m afraid we couldn’t go beyond five, ma’am.” If he had not been
slightly impressed by the vehemence of her protest he would have added:
“Take it or leave it!”

“Come downstairs,” she commanded, “I want you to value a few things for
me.”

The fact was that she was prepared to be ironically entertained by the
niggardly sums he offered. She brought him to the piano.

“Here,” she said, “a Steinway baby grand, splendid tone, good as new,
fine rosewood frame; what’ll you offer for that?”

He thumped the chord of A major.

“Sixty,” he replied.

“Sixty what?”

“Pounds ... might go to guineas.”

“Look here, do you know I paid a hundred and twenty guineas less than
twelve months ago for it?”

“All I know, ma’am, is it ain’t worth more than sixty to me.”

“But it’s practically new!”

“That don’t alter the fact that it’s really second-hand. There’s no
market for this sort of thing. Second-hand uprights, maybe, but not
these things. Besides, it ain’t a partic’lar good tone.”

“I tell you it’s a lovely tone. Wants tuning a bit, that’s all. D’you
think you know more about pianos than I do?”

“Can’t say, ma’am, whether I do or I don’t.”

“Do you ever go to London concerts?”

“No time for it, ma’am.”

“Have you ever heard of Catherine Weston?”

“The name ain’t familiar to me. What about ’er?”

Catherine paused as if to recover from a blow, and continued more
calmly: “She said this piano had a lovely tone. She played at the
Albert Hall.”

The man ground his heel into the carpet.

“Well, ma’am,” he replied, “if Miss Catherine Weston thinks this piano
is worth more than sixty pounds you’d better ask her to buy it off of
you. All I’m saying is this, it ain’t worth no more to me than what I
offered. Sixty pounds, I said: I dunno even if I’d go to sixty guineas.
Take it or leave it for sixty pounds. That’s my rule in this business.
Make an offer and never go back on it, an’ never go no further on
it. That’s what I calls fair business. If you think that you can get
more’n sixty anywhere else you can try. I ain’t arskin’ you to let
me ’ave it. Reely, I dunno that I want it. I might ’ave it takin’ up
ware’ouse room for months on end.... But of course if you was to come
back to me after trying other places I couldn’t offer you no more’n
fifty-five--guineas, maybe. Wouldn’t be fair to myself, in a kind of
manner.... Sixty--look ’ere. I’ll be generous and say guineas--sixty
guineas if you’ll sell it now--cash down, mind! If not----”

She laughed.

“I’ve really no intention of selling at all,” she broke in, half
hysterically, “I only wanted a valuation.”

“Oh! I see,” he replied, taken aback. “Then wot about the glarss
upstairs, eh? Five pounds is wot I said.”

“Make it guineas,” she said firmly.

“Pounds, ma’am.”

“Five guineas,” she cried shrilly, “or I shan’t sell it.” The bargain
demon had seized hold of her.

“It ain’t worth more’n pounds to me.”

“Then I’ll keep it.... Good afternoon.”

She turned to the door. He shuffled and sat down on the piano-stool.

“Well, ma’am, I’ll say guineas, then, as a favour to you. Only you’re
drivin’ a hard bargain with me.... Do you agree to guineas?”

“Yes ... I’ll take five guineas for it ... cash down.”

“The man’ll pay you when he comes to fetch it, ma’am.”

“I thought you said cash down.”

“Well, and ain’t that cash down enough for you? Wot do you expect? ...
I’ll send the man down in a couple of hours.”

“All right, then ... good afternoon.”

At the door he said:

“By the way, ma’am, I’ll keep that offer of sixty guineas for the piano
open for a few days ... so that if ...”

She replied hastily: “Oh, I’m not going to sell _that_.”

“Very well, ma’am ... only I’ll give sixty for it if you should want to
get rid of it.”

Then she came back to the piano and looked at it, and did not know
whether to laugh or to cry.




§ 6


That evening the man came to fetch the cheval glass. He gave her
five sovereigns and two half-crowns. Though she knew that the glass
was worth double and treble what she was receiving for it, she was
immensely pleased by that five shillings which she had extracted solely
by her own bargaining.... The rent-man called that night and nearly
all the five guineas vanished in the month’s rent.... And by the late
evening post came a demand note from Jackson’s, the photographers,
printed on legal-looking blue paper, and informing her that if the
bill of seven pounds ten and six were not paid within three days,
legal proceedings would be instituted.... And it was Jackson’s in
the old days where she had always met with such unfailing courtesy
and consideration, Jackson’s where her photograph as an Eisteddfod
prize-winner had been taken and exhibited in the front window free of
charge....

She called at Trussall’s the next morning.

“About that piano,” she began.

The man was immediately all attention.

“You wish to sell it, ma’am? ... Well, my offer’s still open.”

“Yes, but I want a smaller piano as part exchange. I can’t do without
a piano of some sort.... I want an upright, not such a good one as the
other, of course.”

“Come into the showrooms,” he said, beckoning her to follow.

They wandered up and down long lanes of upright pianos.

“This,” he said, striking the chord of A major (always the chord of A
major) on one of them--“Beautiful little instrument ... rich tone ...
upright grand ... good German make--Strohmenger, Dresden ... worth
forty pounds if it’s worth a penny, sell it to you for thirty-five
guineas....”

“Can’t afford that,” she said. “Show me something for about twenty.”

“There’s this one,” he said, rather contemptuously. “Good English
make ... eighteen guineas ... cheapest we have in the shop. But, of
course, you wouldn’t want one like that.”

She struck a few chords.

“I’ll take that ... and you can send it up and take the other away as
soon as you like.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

When she returned she had a sudden fit of sentimentality as she looked
at the Steinway grand. It was a beautiful instrument, black and
glossy and wonderfully sleek, like a well-groomed horse. Its raised
sound-board reflected her face like a mirror. She sat down on the stool
in front of it and tried to play. But her right hand was woefully
disorganized. She started a simple minuet of Beethoven, one that she
had played as an encore to a Cambridge audience, but the pain in her
right hand and arm was so great that she did not go further than the
first few bars. Then she tried trick playing with her left hand alone,
and when that became uninteresting there was nothing for her to do but
to cry. So she cried....

When the furniture van had arrived and a couple of men had carried the
beautiful piano into a dark cavity of straw and sackcloth, leaving
behind them in exchange a mocking little upstart in streaky imitation
fumed oak, not even the presence in her bureau drawer of sixty pounds
in notes and gold could compensate her adequately. The new piano looked
so cheap and tawdry amongst the surrounding furniture, and the space
where the old one had been was drearily vacant and ever remindful of
her loss.

The same day she wrote cheques to half a dozen tradesmen, and as she
went out to post them, put fifty pounds into her cheque account at the
bank. She felt that slowly, at any rate, she was winning in her contest
with fortune.




§ 7


Unfortunately the avalanche of bills had not yet quite spent itself,
and Madame Varegny suggested an interim payment of her account,
amounting to thirty-two treatments at half a guinea each: total sixteen
pounds sixteen.

And then one night as Catherine was lying awake in bed, the whole
fabric of the future seemed revealed to her. After all, her first steps
were inevitable: she would have to leave “Elm Cottage,” take a smaller
house or go into lodgings, and sell what furniture she had no room
for. It would be better to do that now than to wait until the expensive
upkeep of “Elm Cottage” had squandered half her assets. She was so
accustomed now to her gradual descent in the social scale that even
this prospect, daring and drastic as it was, did not perturb her much.
The next day she went round the house, noting the things that she could
not possibly take with her if she went into a smaller house or into
lodgings. Lodgings she had in mind, because her arm prevented her from
doing any but a minimum of housework, and if in lodgings she could pay
for any services she required.

She did not go to Trussall’s this time to arrange for a valuation of
what she desired to sell. For some days before she had been walking
along the High Road past Trussall’s window, and had had the experience
of seeing her own ebony-framed cheval glass occupying a position of
honour in the midst of a miscellany of bedroom bric-à-brac. On a card
hung on to the carving at the top was the inscription:

 Antique model. Splendid Bargain, £19 19s. 6d.




CHAPTER XX


STILL FALLING

§ 1


IT was in the first week of April that Catherine began to look about
for suitable lodgings. By this time the cottage at High Wood was
half-naked of floor coverings: patches on the wallpaper showed where
pictures had been wont to hang, and only essential furniture remained.
The place was very dreary and inhospitable, and Catherine had many
fits of depression during the last two weeks of March, which were
bitterly cold and rainy. She was looking forward eagerly to the coming
of the warm weather, and with the first of April, which was warm and
spring-like, her spirits rose. Rose, that is, merely by comparison with
her previous state: ever since her illness a melancholy had settled
on her soul which, though it occasionally darkened into deep despair,
never broke into even passing radiance.

The sale of her household effects had given her a credit balance of
a hundred and ten pounds, and there was still a few pounds’ worth of
furniture which she was keeping right until the last. Of late her arm
had begun to improve somewhat, which made her unwilling to discontinue
the massage treatment, though Madame Varegny was very costly. That and
the incidental expenses of living would soon eat into her hundred and
ten pounds.

Yet on the morning of the first of April she was quite cheerful,
relatively. It was as if a tiny ray of sunshine were shyly showing up
behind the piles of clouds that had settled shiftless on her soul.
The forest trees were just bursting into green leafage; the air warm
and comforting; of all seasons this was the most hopeful and the most
inspiring. She took a penny tram down to the Ridgeway Corner, and
enjoyed the wind blowing in her face as she sat on the top deck. At
the Ridgeway she turned down Hatchet Grove and into the haunts of her
earliest days.

The painful memories of her life were associated much more with “Elm
Cottage” than with Kitchener Road. Kitchener Road, teeming with
memories though it was, could bring her no pain and but mild regrets:
the magnitude of more recent happenings took away from it whatever
bitterness its memories possessed. She was walking down its concrete
sidewalks before she realized where she was, and a certain vague
familiarity with the landscape brought her to a standstill in front
of the Co-operative Society branch depot. Everything was very little
altered. A recent tree-planting crusade had given the road a double
row of small and withered-looking copper beeches, each supported by a
pole and encased in wire-netting. The Co-operative Society had extended
its premises to include what had formerly been a disused workshop, but
which now, renovated and changed almost beyond recognition, proclaimed
itself to be a “licensed abattoir.” Catherine did not know what an
abattoir was, but the name sounded curiously inhospitable. She passed
by No. 24, and was interested to see that the present occupier,
according to a tablet affixed to the side of the porch, was

 H. Thicknesse, Plumber and Glazier. Repairs promptly attended to.

The front garden was ambitiously planted with laurels, and the entire
exterior of the house showed Mr. Thicknesse to be a man of enterprise.

In the sunshine of an April day Kitchener Road seemed not so tawdry as
she had expected, and then she suddenly realized that during the years
that she had been away a subtle but incalculably real change had been
taking place. Kitchener Road had been slowly and imperceptibly becoming
respectable. There was a distinct cæsura where the respectability
began: you could tell by the curtains in the windows, the condition
of the front gardens, and the occasional tablet on the front gate:
“No Hawkers; No Circulars; No Canvassers.” What precisely determined
the position of the cæsura was not clear: maybe it was the licensed
abattoir, or most probably the cæsura was constantly and uniformly
shifting in a given direction. At any rate, the road was immeasurably
loftier in the social scale than it had been when she and her parents
had occupied No. 24.

Turning into Duke Street, she discovered the Methodist Chapel under
process of renovation: scaffolding was up round the walls and the
railings in front were already a violent crimson. A notice declared
that:

 During the redecorating of the Chapel, services, both morning and
 evening, will be held in the schoolroom.

It was the schoolroom in which her father had given Band of Hope
demonstrations and evenings with the poets; it was the schoolroom
in which she had flung a tea-cup at the head of Freddie McKellar.
Curiously vivid was the recollection of that early incident. If she
had gone inside she could have identified the exact spot on the floor
on which she stood to aim the missile.... One thing was plain: if
Kitchener Road had risen in the social scale its rise had been more
than compensated for by a downward movement on the part of Duke Street.
Duke Street was, if such were possible, frowsier than ever. Many of
the houses had converted their bay-window parlours into shops, and on
the window-frame of one of these Catherine noticed the “Apartments”
card. She wondered if she would ever have to live in a place like that.
It was a greengrocer’s shop, and the gutter in front was clogged with
cabbage leaves and the outer peelings of onions. The open front door
showed a lobby devoid of floor covering, and walls scratched into great
fissures of plaster. As she passed by a woman emerged from the shop,
with a man’s cap adjusted with hat pins, and a dirty grey apron. In her
hand she held a gaudily decorated jug, and Catherine saw her cross the
road and enter the off-license belonging to the “Duke of Wellington.”




§ 2


The summit of disaster was reached when Catherine received one morning
in April a bill of eighty-five pounds from a London furniture company!
At first she thought it must be a mistake, until she read the list of
the specified articles sold to her and identified them as things that
had been included amongst a lot that the second-hand dealers had bought
from her for twenty-five guineas. It showed the chaotic state of her
finances, as well as her complete carelessness in money matters, that
she had not the slightest recollection of having incurred the bill.
Nor did she recollect having paid for the articles: she had merely
overlooked the transaction entirely. And now she must pay eighty-five
pounds for a bedroom suite she no longer possessed! The way she had
swindled herself irritated her beyond measure. And this time she became
seriously alarmed for the future. Twenty-five pounds does not last
for long, particularly with electric massage treatment costing three
guineas a week. Her excursion to Duke Street had impressed her with
the horror of what she might have to come to some day, and now this
furniture bill had cut away the few intervening steps that had yet to
be descended. She must fall with a bump. It was quite inevitable.

But at first she could not reconcile herself to the new conditions
that must be hers for the future. Her dreams of fame as a pianist were
still undiminished, and they helped her considerably by suggesting:
This débâcle is but a swift excursion: it cannot last for more than
a few weeks at the most. Before long I shall be back again, maybe at
“Elm Cottage.” This adventure is really quite romantic. It should be
interesting while it lasts. Nay, it even enhances the strangeness of me
that such adventures should come my way.... Egoism for once helped her
to submit to what, viewed in a sane light, would have been intolerable.
Yet in her darker moments the thought would come over her: perhaps I
shall never come back. Perhaps I shall never regain the heights I have
surrendered. Perhaps this is the end of me....

Only once at this time did she give way to uttermost despair. And
that was when a second-hand bookseller bought all her library for
five pounds. There were shelves stocked with Wells and Shaw and Ibsen
and Galsworthy and Bennett and Hardy and Granville Barker. The whole
was worth at least twice what she received for it. But it was not
that that made her unhappy. It was the realization that this was her
tacit withdrawal from the long struggle to lift herself on to a higher
plane. She had tried to educate herself, to stock her mind with wisdom
beyond her comprehension, to reconstitute herself in a mould that
nature had never intended for her. And there had been times when the
struggle, vain and fruitless though it ever was, was a thing of joy
to her, of joy even when she was most conscious of failure. But now
these books held all her dead dreams, and she cared for them with an
aching tenderness. All the things she had tried hard to understand
and had never more than half understood were doubly precious now that
she was beginning to forget them all.... One book alone she kept, and
justified her action in so doing on the ground that the dealer would
only give her sixpence for it. It was Ray Verreker’s _Growth of
the Village Community_. It had a good binding, she argued, and it
would be a shame to let it go for sixpence. But after all, it was a
mere piece of sentimentality that she should keep it. It was no use
to her at all. Even in the old days, when a strange enthusiasm had
prompted her to seek to make herself mistress of its contents, it had
been woefully beyond her understanding. And now, when she tried to
re-read its opening chapter, every word seemed cruel. All the technical
jargon about virgates and demesnelands and manorial courts inflicted
on her a sense of despair deeper than she had ever felt before.
Finally, when she came to a quotation from a mediæval trade charter
in Latin, she cried, for no very distinct reason save that she could
not help it. After all the issue was plain, and in a certain sense
comforting. However low she might descend in the social scale, she was
not sacrificing intellectual distinction, for that had never been more
than a dream and a mirage. If ever anyone by taking thought could have
added one cubit to her intellectual stature that person must have been
she. Time and effort and her heart’s blood had gone into the struggle.
And nought had availed....

But she put _Growth of the Village Community_ amongst the little
pile of personal articles that she intended to take with her when she
moved into lodgings....




CHAPTER XXI


FALLEN

§ 1


ON the afternoon of the fifteenth of April, Catherine sat with her
hat and coat as yet unremoved in the front sitting-room of No. 5,
Cubitt Lane. She had taken a drastic step, and had only just begun to
realize its full significance. Her lips, tense in a manner suggestive
of troubled perplexity, began to droop slowly into an attitude of
poignant depression. Accustomed as she was to lofty and spacious rooms,
this front sitting-room seemed ridiculously small and box-like. The
wallpaper was a heavy chocolate brown with a periodic design which from
a distance of a few feet looked like a succession of fat caterpillars.
A heavy carved overmantel over the fireplace and a sideboard with a
mirror on the opposite wall multiplied the room indefinitely into one
long vista of caterpillars. Catherine sat disconsolately at a small
wicker table by the window. The outlook was disappointing. On the
opposite side of the road, children were converging from all directions
into the entrance to the Infants’ Department of the Cubitt Lane Council
School. It was that season of the year devoted to the trundling of iron
hoops, and the concrete pavements on both sides of the road rang with
them.

Catherine had chosen No. 5, Cubitt Lane because it combined the
cheapness of some of the lower-class districts with the respectability
of a class several degrees higher than that to which it belonged.
Cubitt Lane was a very long road leading from the slums of Bockley
to the edge of the Forest, and that portion of it nearest the Forest
was in the parish of Upton Rising, and comparatively plutocratic.
Only near its junction with Duke Street and round about the Council
Schools was it anything but an eminently high-class residential
road. It was curious that, now that fame and affluence had left her,
Catherine clung to “respectability” as something that she could not
bear to part with. In the old days she had scorned it, regarded it as
fit only for dull, prosaic and middle-aged people: now she saw it as
the only social superiority she could afford. The days of her youth
and irresponsibility were gone. She was a woman--no, more than that,
she was a “lady.” And she must insist upon recognition of that quality
in her with constant reiteration. She must live in a “respectable
neighbourhood” in “respectable lodgings.” And, until such time as her
arm allowed her to regain her fame and reputation as a pianist, she
must find some kind of “respectable work.”

No. 5, Cubitt Lane was undoubtedly respectable. Yet Catherine, even
as she recognized this, was profoundly stirred at the realization of
what this red-letter event meant to her. From the wreckage of her
dreams and ideals only one remained intact, and that was her ambition
as a pianist. That was her one link with the past, and also, she
hoped, her one link with the future. She looked at the trumpery little
eighteen-guinea piano she had brought with her and saw in it the
embodiment of her one cherished ambition. Now that all the others were
gone, this solitary survivor was more precious than ever before. Her
hand was slowly improving, and soon she would start the long struggle
again. Her determination was quieter, more dogged, more tenacious than
ever, but the old fiery enthusiasm was gone. It was something that
had belonged to her youth, and now that her youth had vanished it had
vanished also.

Mrs. Lazenby was a woman of unimpeachable respectability. Widowed
and with one daughter, she led a life of pious struggling to keep
her precarious footing on the edge of the lower middle classes.
Every Sunday she attended the Duke Street Methodist Chapel and sang
in a curious shrivelled voice every word of the hymns, chants and
anthems. Her crown of glory was to be appointed superintendent of
the fancy-work stall at the annual bazaar. She had not attended the
chapel long enough to have known either Catherine’s father or mother,
and nobody apparently had ever acquainted her with the one exciting
event in the annals of the Literary and Debating Society. But she was
“known by sight” and “well-respected” of all the leading Methodist
luminaries, and once, when she was ill with lumbago, the Rev. Samuel
Sparrow prayed for “our dear sister in severe pain and affliction.”
Her daughter Amelia, a lank, unlovely creature of nineteen, was on
week-days a shopgirl at one of the large West-end multiple stores, and
on the Sabbath a somewhat jaded and uninspired teacher at the Methodist
Sunday Schools. For the latter post she was in all respects singularly
unfitted, but her mother’s pressure and her own inability to drift out
of it as effortlessly as she had seemed to drift in kept her there. She
was not a bad girl, but she was weak and fond of pleasure: this latter
desire she had to gratify by stealth, and she was in a perpetual state
of smothered revolt against the tyranny of home.

Into the ways and habits of this curious household, Catherine slipped
with an ease that surprised herself. Mrs. Lazenby treated her with
careful respect, for the few personal possessions that Catherine had
brought with her were of a style and quality that afforded ample proof
of her social eligibility. Then, also, her conversation passed with
honours the standard of refinement imposed mentally by Mrs. Lazenby
on every stranger she met. Amelia, too, was impressed by Catherine’s
solitariness and independence, by her secretiveness on all matters
touching her past life and future ambitions. All she knew was that
Catherine had been a successful professional pianist and had been
forced into reduced circumstances by an attack of neuritis. Amelia
thought that some day Catherine might become an ally against the pious
tyranny of her mother. She cultivated an intimacy with Catherine, told
her of many personal matters, and related with much glee scores of her
clandestine adventures with “boys.” She developed a habit of coming
into Catherine’s bedroom at night to talk. Catherine was apathetic.
At times Amelia’s conversation was a welcome relief from dullness:
at other times it was an unmitigated nuisance. But on the whole
Catherine’s attitude towards Amelia was one of contemptuous tolerance.




§ 2


It was on a sleepy Sunday afternoon in June, whilst Amelia was teaching
at the Sunday School and Mrs. Lazenby out visiting a spinster lady of
her acquaintance, that Catherine had the sudden impulse to commence
the long struggle uphill again whence she had come. The last of Madame
Varegny’s electric massage treatments had been given and paid for:
her arm was practically well again: in every other respect than the
financial one the outlook was distinctly hopeful. Outside in Cubitt
Lane the ice-cream seller and whelk vendor were going their rounds;
a few gramophones and pianos had begun their Sabbath inanities. But
as yet the atmosphere was somnolent: you could almost hear (in your
imagination, at any rate) the snorings and breathings of all the
hundreds of tired folks in Cubitt Lane and Duke Street, in placid
contentment sleeping off the effects of a massive Sunday dinner....

Catherine sat down in front of the eighteen-guinea English masterpiece.
Mrs. Lazenby had put a covering of red plush on the top of the
instrument and crowned that with a number of shells with black spikes,
and a lithograph of New Brighton Tower and Promenade in a plush frame
of an aggressively green hue. Catherine removed these impedimenta and
opened the lid. She decided to practise for exactly one hour. Later
on she might have to do two, three, four, five or even more hours per
day, but for a start one hour would be ample. She would learn now the
extent to which her technique had suffered during her long period of
enforced idleness. She would be able to compute the time it would
take to recover her lost skill, and could put new hope into her soul
by thinking that at last--at last--the tide of her destiny was on the
turn....

Rather nervously she began to play....

She started an easy Chopin Ballade.... Her memory served her fairly
well, and since the music contained no severe test of technique her
hands did not disgrace her. Yet within thirty seconds she stopped
playing: she clasped her hands in front of her knees and gazed over
the top of the instrument at the caterpillary design on the wallpaper.
And in that moment the truth flashed upon her incontrovertibly: it
came not altogether as a surprise, for with strange divination she had
guessed it long before. And it was simply this: she would never again
earn a penny by playing a piano in public: more than that, her failure
was complete, obvious and devastatingly convincing: she would never
again be able to delude herself with false hopes and distant ambitions.
Something in the manner of her playing of the first few bars made her
think with astonishing calmness: I cannot play any more.... She wanted
to laugh: it seemed such a ridiculous confession.... She looked down
at her hands and thought: How do I know that after long practice these
may not be of use again? She could not answer.... And yet she knew that
she had lost something, something she could not properly describe, but
something vital and impossible to replace. Technique, undoubtedly,
and memory, and the miraculous flexibility of her ten fingers. And
also some subtle and secret capability that in former days had helped
her along, something which in a strangely intuitive way she felt to
be compounded largely of courage ... courage.... Oh, it was all as
incomprehensible as a dream: she felt that she might wake any minute
and find herself once again supreme mistress of her hands.... And then,
more sanely, she told herself: I cannot play any more ... Finally, as
if in querulous petulance at her own reluctance to accept the truth:
I really can’t play now, can I? ... Then she began to remember things
that Verreker had said of her playing. She remembered a scrap from a
review criticism: “the opinion I have held ever since I first heard
Miss Weston, that she is a skilful player of considerable talent who
will, however, never reach the front rank of her profession.”

Now that she knew the truth as the truth, she knew also that this was
what she had been fearing and expecting for weeks and months, that
she had been during that time slowly and imperceptibly accustoming
herself to the idea now confronting her, and that for a long time the
maintenance of her old dreams and ambitions had been a stupendous
self-deception. And she knew also, by a subtle and curious instinct,
something which to herself she admitted was amazing and mysterious.
She was not going to be very disappointed. Or, if she were, her
disappointment, like her former hopes, would be counterfeit....
She was angry with herself for accepting the situation so coolly,
angry at the callousness of her soul. But nevertheless, the truth
stood unassailable: she was not going to be very disappointed. Not
disappointed? she argued, in terrific revolt against herself--not
disappointed when the last ideal she possessed had joined its fellows
on the scrap-heap, not disappointed when nothing remained to shield her
from the gutter whence she sprang? Not disappointed to hear the news
of her own spiritual extinction? ... And something within her replied,
very quietly: No; what I said was perfectly true. I am not going to be
very disappointed.

I was dreading all those hours and hours of practice, she admitted,
a little ashamed. And the thought occurred to her: I don’t believe I
should have the pluck to face an audience. I had once--but not now. Or
perhaps it was never pluck that I had--perhaps it was something else
that I have lost.... Well, the game’s played out. It would have meant a
terrible lot of work to make myself a pianist again. I shan’t need to
do all that now. Oh, I have lost ... courage and ... enthusiasm ... for
all big things.... I am getting old ... and tired ... and that’s why I
am not going to be very disappointed....

Amelia and Mrs. Lazenby might be returning any moment. The crowd of
noisy children pouring out of the Council school across the road (it
was used by a religious organization on Sunday) proclaimed the hour to
be four o’clock.... Catherine began to replace the red plush cloth and
the shells with black spikes and the lithograph of New Brighton Tower
and Promenade....

At ten minutes past the hour Amelia came in, cross and sullen.
Catherine heard her slam the hymn book and Bible on the wicker table
in the hall. Evidently her spirit was more than usually in revolt this
afternoon....

“Amy!” Catherine called, opening the door and looking down the passage.

A rather sulky voice replied: “What is it?”

“Will you come and have tea with me this afternoon?” Catherine called
back cheerfully. The fact was, she wanted somebody to talk to,
particularly somebody who was discontented, so that by this she could
measure her own rapidly growing contentment.

“Righto,” called Amelia, rather less sulkily.

As soon as Amelia entered Catherine’s room she started upon a recital
of her various woes, chief of which appeared to be the possession of an
unfeeling and narrow-minded parent. Catherine listened apathetically,
and all the time with conscious superiority she was thinking: This is
youth. _I_ was like this when I was _her_ age. Funny how we
grow out of our grievances....

... “It’s too bad,” Amelia was saying. “Only last week Mr. Hobbs asked
me to go out to the pictures, and I had to refuse because it wasn’t a
Saturday.”

“Who is Mr. Hobbs?”

“The salesman in our department ... and he don’t offer to spend his
money on anybody _too_ often, either.”

“Careful with his money, eh?”

“Careful?--stingy, I should call it.... Takes you in the sixpenny parts
at the pictures and if you wants any chocolates he goes up to the girl
at the counter and says: ‘I’ll have a quarter of mixed----’”

Amelia laughed scornfully. “Only it’s too bad,” she went on, resuming
her original theme, “to be compelled to say no when he does ask you out
with him!”

Catherine smiled. She was not of this world. She did not go out to
“pictures” with salesmen from West-end departmental stores.... Yet with
a sudden impulse she said:

“You know, I shall have to be looking about for a job very soon. My
arm, you see: I’m doubtful of it being really well for quite a long
time. And, of course, I can’t afford to--to go on like this.... Any
jobs going at your place?”

Amelia pondered.

“I heard they wanted a girl in the song department.... That’s next to
where I am--I’m in the gramophone line.... You know lots about music,
don’t you?”

“Oh--fair amount.”

“Well, you might get it. I’ll see what Mr. Hobbs says. Better come up
with me on Tuesday morning.”

“Right, I will.... I’m pretty sure the job will suit me....”

“I daresay it will ... and you’ll learn what a lot I have to put up
with. There’s heaps of pictures and theatres and things I’d like to
go to up that part of the town, only I can’t because of mother. She
says----”

And as Catherine listened to Amelia’s woes and began the preparations
for tea, she actually started to experience in a tired, restricted kind
of way a certain species of happiness! After all, the struggle was
over. And the struggle had wearied her, wearied her more than she had
herself realized until this very moment.... No, she reflected, as she
spooned the tea out of the caddy into the teapot--no: I am not going
to be very disappointed.... But she was just faintly, remotely, almost
imperceptibly disappointed at not being disappointed....




CHAPTER XXII


MR. HOBBS

§ 1


A WEDNESDAY morning in June. Catherine had been in the song department
for just over a month. Her work was easy and not too monotonous. It
consisted in selling ballad songs, and trying them over to customers on
the piano. Every day new music came from the publishers, and she had to
familiarize herself with it. She was very successful at this kind of
work, and was altogether happy in her position.

The stores opened at nine, but business was always slack until
half-past ten or thereabouts. Mr. Hobbs, everlastingly attired in a
morning coat and butterfly collar, with his hair beautifully oiled and
his moustache beautifully curled, and his lips beautifully carven into
an attitude of aristocratic politeness, arrived always on the stroke of
nine. His first duty was to open the packages from the publishers, but
before doing this he would wash his hands carefully lest the journey
from South Bockley should have contaminated them. Should also the
alignment of his hair-parting have been disturbed in transit he would
remedy the defect with scrupulous exactitude. Then, and only then,
would he exhibit himself for the delectation of the general public....

On this particular morning Mr. Hobbs did not arrive upon the stroke of
nine. Such an event had never been known to happen before. Catherine
and Amelia and the other girls of the music department were thrilled
with the romance of Mr. Hobbs’ non-arrival. In soft whispers they
discussed what might possibly have happened to him. The previous
evening he had left upon the stroke of six, seemingly in a state of
complete normality, physical and mental. Had some dire fate overwhelmed
him? Or--prosaic thought--had he overslept himself? ...

And then at a quarter past ten Mr. Hobbs entered the portals of the
music department. His morning coat was marked by a chalky smudge,
his tie was unsymmetrical, his moustache uncurled and his top hat
considerably and conspicuously battered.

Was he drunk? The girls waited breathless for an explanation.

“There was an accident to the 8.42 at Liverpool Street,” he announced
calmly. “It ran into the end of the platform.”

“Were you hurt?” Amelia asked him.

“I received no personal hurts,” he replied, “but my hat, as you see, is
badly damaged.” And he pointed solemnly to the hat he held in his hand.

“Well, it’s quarter past ten now,” said one of the girls. “What did you
do all that time?”

“I just went round to the company offices to lodge a complaint,” he
answered quietly.

“What for?” said Catherine. “You weren’t hurt.”

“But my hat was,” he replied. “And I can’t afford to buy a new hat
every time the company runs their train into the end of the platform.”

Catherine was amazed at the man’s utter coolness.

“Well,” she said laughingly, “I’m sure if I’d been in a railway
accident I should have been so glad to get out without hurting myself
that I should never have thought about complaining for a hat.”

He smiled--a touch of male superiority made itself apparent in his
eyes. Then he delivered judgment.

“One should always,” he said massively, “know what one should do in any
contingency, however unforeseen. And everyone should be acquainted with
the first principles of English law ... there’s those parcels down from
Augeners’, Miss Weston....”




§ 2


All the rest of the day he was serene in his little groove.

At lunch-time he went out to buy a new top hat.

But the next day he unbent a little. About closing time he approached
Catherine and placed a little green book on the counter before her.
It was one of those sixpenny volumes called the “People’s Books.” Its
title was _Everyday Law_, by J. J. Adams.

“Perhaps this would interest you,” he said. “It is very short and
simple to understand, and it tells you a good many things that every
modern man and woman should know.”

“Thank you,” she stammered, slightly overwhelmed.

“I have underlined the pages relating to railway accidents,” he went on.

And she thought: “He has actually spent sixpence on me!”

But he continued: “You need not be in a hurry to return it to me.... In
fact”--in a burst of generosity--“keep it until you are quite sure you
have finished with it.”

“Thank you,” she said again, and was surprised to feel herself blushing
scarlet....




§ 3


Catherine bought her daily paper in the evening and read it in the
train while Amelia occupied herself with a novel. That evening she read
the account of the railway accident that had taken place at Liverpool
Street Station the day before. Several persons were taken to hospital
“suffering from cuts and contusions,” but “were allowed to return home
later in the day.” And amongst those who “complained of shock” she read
the name:

 Mr. James Hobbs ... 272A, Myrtle Road, South Bockley.

Incidentally that told her where he lived....




§ 4


The summer sun shone down upon the scorched London streets, and the
lives of those who worked in the music department of Ryder and Sons
were monotonously uneventful. Every morning Catherine and Amelia caught
the 8.12 from Bockley and arrived in Liverpool Street at 8.37. Every
morning Mr. Hobbs said “Good morning,” with exquisite politeness, to
all the female assistants. Every lunch-time Mr. Hobbs went to the same
A.B.C. tea-shop, sat at the same marble-topped table, was served by the
same waitress, to whom he addressed the mystic formula “usual please,”
which resulted in the appearance some minutes later of a glass of hot
milk and a roll and butter. During the meal he scanned the headlines
of the morning paper, but after the last mouthful had been carefully
masticated he gave himself up to a fierce scrutiny of the stock
markets. Was his ambition to be a financier? ...

If Amelia was sullen on a Sunday afternoon, there were occasions when
she was sullen on week-days also. A sulky discontent was ingrained in
her nature, and Catherine was often treated to exhibitions of it. Then
suddenly Catherine discovered the reason. Amelia was jealous of her.
Amelia regarded her own relationship with Mr. Hobbs as promising enough
to merit high hopes: these high hopes had been blurred, it seemed, by
the swift dazzlement of Catherine.

Catherine was amused. Chronically jealous as she herself had been in
her time, she had no sympathy whatever with others afflicted with the
same disease. And Amelia’s jealousy seemed absurd and incredible.
Catherine was beginning to take a malicious dislike to Amelia. Mr.
Hobbs was so scrupulously correct in his treatment of them both that
Amelia’s jealousy became ludicrously trivial. In her youthful days
Catherine would have tried to flirt extravagantly with him for the mere
pleasure of torturing Amelia, but now her malice had become a thing of
quieter if of deadlier potency. She would wait. She did not like him at
all, but she did not blame him in the least for preferring herself to
Amelia. It was inconceivable that any man should desire Amelia. She
would wait: she would be as friendly with Mr. Hobbs as she chose (which
did not imply a very deep intimacy), and Amelia and her jealousy, if
she still persisted in it, could go to the devil.

Even to Mr. Hobbs her attitude was curiously compounded of pity
and condescension. As much as to say: I don’t enjoy your company
particularly, but I am taking pity on you: I know how awful it must be
for a man to have anything to do with that horrid Miss Lazenby. But
don’t presume upon my kindness.

He did indeed begin to talk to her rather more than the strict business
of the shop required. And in doing so he displayed the poverty of his
intellect. He had a mind well stocked with facts--a sort of abridged
encyclopædia--and that was all.

He brought her a piece of newly published music to try over. She played
it through and remarked that it was very pretty, not because she
thought it was, but because the habit of saying things like that had
grown upon her.

“Very pretty,” he agreed. “There’s a--a something--in it--a peculiar
sort of melody--oriental, you know, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “There is, quite.”

“It’s strange,” he went on, “how some pieces of music are quite
different from others. And yet the same. You know what I mean. When
you’ve heard them you say, ‘I’ve heard that before!’ And yet you
haven’t. I suppose it must be something in them.”

“I suppose so.”

“It’s in a minor, isn’t it?--Ah, there’s something in minors.
Something. I don’t know quite how to describe it. A sort of
mournfulness, you know. I like minors, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

They talked thus for several minutes, and then he asked her to come out
with him the following Saturday afternoon. Chiefly out of curiosity she
accepted....




§ 5


“That’s just where you’re wrong, Amy,” she replied, as they walked
along the High Road from Bockley Station, “I don’t like him a bit. I
think he’s one of the dullest and most empty-headed men I’ve ever met.
So there!”

“You thought he was clever enough after that train accident when he
went to claim damages, anyway.”

“Oh, that?--That’s only a sort of cheap smartness. A kind of
pounciness. Like a pawnbroker’s assistant. I tell you he’s got no real
brains worth calling any.”

“Then if you don’t like him why are you going out with him on Saturday?”

“’Cos I am. Why shouldn’t I? It’ll be your turn maybe the week after.
Hasn’t the poor man a right to ask out any girl besides you?”

“I believe you _do_ like him....”

“What?--Like _him_?--_Him_?--If I couldn’t find a better man
than that I’d go without all my life, I would. Take him, my dear Amy,
take him and God bless both of you! Don’t think _I_ shall mind!”

“Oh, you needn’t talk like that. And you needn’t despise them that
hasn’t got brains. I suppose you wanter marry a genius, eh?”

Catherine laughed.

“Not particularly,” she replied carefully, as if she were pondering
over the subject, “but I know this much: I wouldn’t marry a man unless
he’d got brains.”

“Ho--wouldn’t you?”

“No, I wouldn’t....”




§ 6


They spent Saturday afternoon at the Zoo.

“A very interesting place,” he said, as they were strolling through
Regent’s Park, with a July sun blazing down upon them. “And
instructive,” he added complimentarily.

The snake-house was very hot, and in front of a languid Indian python
he remarked: “Poor things--to be stuffed up like that in a glass
case....” He seemed to be searching for a humane plane on which to
steer their conversation.

And in the lion house, as they stopped in front of a huge lioness, he
remarked facetiously: “How should you like to be shut up alone with
that creature, eh?”

“Not at all,” she replied, with absurd seriousness.

They had tea in the open air near the elephant’s parade-ground. During
the meal he said slowly and thrillingly: “I had a stroke of luck
yesterday.”

Politeness required her to be interested and reply: “Oh, did you? What
was it?”

He coughed before answering. He made a little bending gesture with his
head, as if to indicate that he was about to take her somewhat into his
confidence.

“Last year,” he began, “I bought a certain number of shares for five
hundred pounds. The day before yesterday these shares were worth
five hundred and ninety-five pounds. Yesterday their value increased
to six hundred and forty pounds. To-day they may be worth a still
higher figure.... So, you see, yesterday I earned, in a kind of
way, forty-five pounds. And without any effort on my part, besides.
Forty-five pounds in one day isn’t bad, is it?”

“Quite good,” she murmured vaguely. She wondered if she would startle
him by saying that she had earned much more than forty-five pounds in a
couple of hours. She decided not to try.

“Curious how money makes money, isn’t it?” he went on. “Wonderful
thing--modern finance.... Of course I am saving up. After all, a man
wants a home some day, doesn’t he? As soon as I come across the right
girl I shall get married....”

He paused for effect.

“If she’ll let you,” put in Catherine, from no apparent motive.

He appeared ruffled.

“Oh, of course,” he said, “if she’ll let me. Of course. How could I
otherwise? ... Look at that elephant: those boys have given him a bath
bun.”

He seemed to think he had been sufficiently confidential.

“It’s nice to feel you’ve got a bit of capital behind you,” he said
smugly, and Catherine replied: “Yes, very nice.”

Then he developed a spurious boisterousness.

After tea they walked round all the open-air portions of the
establishment. One of the elephants picked up coins off the ground and
put them in his keeper’s pocket. Mr. Hobbs threw down a penny.

“Clever animal,” he remarked, after the trick had been successfully
performed, “but I expect the man keeps the money.”

“I daresay he does,” said Catherine.

Outside the monkey enclosure he said: “I suppose we were all like this
at one time.... Swinging from trees by our tails. That’s what Darwin
said, didn’t he?”

Afterwards, in Regent’s Park, he became himself again. At Portland Road
Underground Station he bought an evening paper and consulted its inside
page minutely.

“My shares,” he announced, _sotto voce_, as they sat together in
the train, “are now worth six hundred and sixty pounds. Another rise,
you see.... Nothing like money for making money, is there?”

“No,” she replied distantly....

When Catherine got back to Cubitt Lane, Amelia said:

“Well--had a good time?”

There was something so spiteful in Amelia’s tone that Catherine felt
compelled to say: “Oh yes, rather! Had a lovely time! And Mr. Hobbs was
awf’ly nice!”




§ 7


She was in a groove now. The rebuilding of her soul no longer
troubled her. She was content to be as she was. Her egoism, her
insane self-conceit fell from the lofty plane which had been their
sole excuse, and worked in narrower and more selfish channels. In
Cubitt Lane she was considered proud and “stuck-up.” She did not
associate with the “young fellers up the road,” nor did she frequent
the saloon-bar of the King’s Head. In all things she was quiet, aloof
and unimpeachably respectable. She was always dressed neatly and well,
and she did not possess any dress which, by its showiness and general
lack of utility, bore the label “Sundays only.” Now that she was in
a district where fine talk was unusual, she began to be vain of her
language and accent. To Amelia she was always scornful and consciously
aloof: even to Mr. Hobbs she was not loth to betray an attitude of
innate superiority. And Mr. Hobbs did not mind it. The more arrogant
her mien, the more scornful her tone, the more he singled her out for
his preferences and favours.

The Duke Street Methodist Chapel, despite its frowsy surroundings, had
always been famous as the last refuge of unimpeachable respectability.
Its external architecture was as the respectability of its patrons,
severe and uncompromising. And the Reverend Samuel Swallow, excellent
man though he was, did not fulfil the ideal of a spiritual guide. His
sermons were upright, and as often happens, stiff-necked as well. There
was too much noise and bombast about him. Too much chumminess in his
dealings with the Almighty. Catherine went to one Sunday evening’s
service, and those were her mental criticisms. She sat in one of the
front pews, and exhibited her superiority by dropping a sixpence gently
on to a pile of coppers when the plate came round. The building had
recently been re-decorated, and stank abominably of paint. In the
choir, where years ago her mother had stood and yelled, a new galaxy
of beauty sang down menacingly over the shoulders of the Rev. Samuel
Swallow.... And before the sermon the latter announced: “Whan of our
brethren has presented us with a timepiece, which, as you may perhaps
have noticed, is now fixed immediately beneath the rails of the
gallery.” (General craning of necks and shuffling of collars to look at
it.) ... “I trust--indeed, I am sure--that none of you will show your
impatience towards the conclusion of my sermon by looking round too
frequently at this recent addition to the amenities of our church....”
A soft rustling titter, instinct with unimpeachable respectability....

Catherine decided that she could not join a “place” like that. She
had decided to join a “place” of some sort, because joining a “place”
was an indispensable item of respectability. But she wanted her
respectability to be superior to other people’s respectability,
superior to Amelia’s, superior to Mrs. Lazenby’s, superior to the Rev.
Samuel Swallow’s. Her conceit now wanted to make her more respectable
than any other person she knew.

She asked Mr. Hobbs if he belonged to a church.

He replied: “I am afraid, my time and avocations do not permit me to
attend regularly at any place of worship.... But I often go to the City
Temple.... I consider religion an excellent thing....”

She determined to be more respectable than Mr. Hobbs.

“Of course,” she said freezingly, “I am Church of England....”




§ 8


The Bockley Parish Church was large, ancient and possessed an expensive
clientele. Into this clientele Catherine entered. Her entrance was not
at first noticed. She rented a seat, carried her hymn and prayer-books
piously to and from the service, and purchased a second-hand hassock
at a valuation off the previous occupant. The Rev. Archibald Pettigrew
shook hands with her occasionally, and raised his hat if he passed her
in the street. At a church concert she volunteered as accompanist for
some songs, but her professional efficiency did not attract attention.

One of the curates, fresh from Cambridge, saw her and took notice.
He was very youthful and very enthusiastic; secretly ritualist, he
dabbled in music, and indulged in unseemly bickerings with the organist
and choirmaster. He wanted the choir to sing like the choir at King’s
College, Cambridge. He would have liked to deliver a Latin grace at the
annual boys’ outing to Hainault Forest. In most of these things the
Rev. Archibald Pettigrew exerted a restraining influence upon him. But
in Catherine the young enthusiast thought he saw a kindred spirit. This
young woman, so quiet, so demure, so earnest and pious in her religious
observances, was she not destined to be his helper and confidante?

He lent her tracts and showed her some candlesticks he had purchased
in Paternoster Row. And frequently he came to Cubitt Lane and produced
an overwhelming impression on Mrs. Lazenby by giving her a visiting
card inscribed with:

 The Rev. Elkin Broodbank, St. Luke’s Vicarage, Bockley.

And Catherine was unspeakably charmed and flattered by his attentions.
But she was not impressed by his personality. He had none....




CHAPTER XXIII


ONCE AGAIN

§ 1


ON the Monday morning exactly a week before the August Bank Holiday,
Catherine unpacked the morning’s music with a quiet satisfaction
that knew no bounds. She was by this time a changed woman. No longer
impetuous and hasty, no longer fiery and passionate, no longer a
creature of mood and fancy: she was quiet, restrained, dignified
almost to the point of arrogance, immensely reliable, and becoming
a little shrewd. She had earned the reputation of being an expert
saleswoman. There was scarcely a piece of music, or a song, or an
orchestral setting which she did not know of: she was a mine of
recondite information about violin obligatos and harp accompaniments
and so forth. Even Mr. Hobbs, who had hitherto passed as a paragon,
acknowledged in her a superior. His mind was merely a memorized and
remarkably accurate music catalogue: hers was full of scraps of another
world, scraps that raised her above her fellows. Never, even in her
greatest days, had her superiority seemed so incontestable as now.
Never had she been so quietly proud, so serenely confident that the
deference accorded her was no more than her due.

As she untied the string round a bulky parcel of new ballad songs she
reflected upon her own unconquerable supremacy. Over in the gramophone
department was Amelia, sorting a new consignment of records. Amelia
looked as usual, sullen and morose. And it gave Catherine a curious
satisfaction to see Amelia looking sullen and morose. Partly, no doubt,
because it threw into vivid relief her own superb serenity. But there
was another reason. Amelia’s moroseness had a good deal to do with
Catherine’s relations with Mr. Hobbs. There had been a time when Mr.
Hobbs had seemed to be showing Amelia a significant quantity of his
attention. Not so now. To Catherine he gave all the attention he had
previously bestowed upon Amelia, coupled with a deference which he
had never offered to Amelia at all. Amelia felt herself deposed from
a somewhat promising position. But it was not Catherine’s fault....
Catherine never encouraged Mr. Hobbs. She gave him piquant rebuffs and
subtle discouragements, and frequent reminders that she was superior to
him. She was always distant and unresponsive, and sometimes a little
contemptuous. But the more did he return to the assault. Her superb
aloofness enchanted him. Her pride, her royal way of taking homage
as no more than her due, her splendid self-aplomb convinced him that
this was the woman to be Mrs. Hobbs.... So Catherine did not encourage
him. It would have been rather silly to do so. And as she saw Amelia
looking so sullen and morose, she thought: “Foolish creature! Fancy her
thinking that I’m cutting her out! Why, who could help preferring me to
her? And I have never encouraged him, I’m quite sure of that ... I’m
not a bit to blame....”

On the desk beside her was a single sheet of writing-paper inscribed
with the handwriting of Mr. Hobbs. It was his day for visiting
publishers, and it was evident to Catherine that he must have gone
considerably out of his way to come to the shop and leave this note
for her. And to induce Mr. Hobbs to go out of his way was to create a
revolution in his entire scheme of existence. Well did Catherine know
this, and as she read she smiled triumphantly.

 DEAR MISS WESTON,

 Don’t forget to repeat the order if those songs from Breitkopf and
 Härtel don’t arrive. I shall be back about three this afternoon.

 Yrs. sincerely,

                                                  J. A. HOBBS.

and--

 P.S.--Are you free next Saturday afternoon? If so, we could go to Box
 Hill and Reigate.

Catherine, therefore, smiled triumphantly.

There was absolutely no need whatever for him to remind her to repeat
the order. That was part of the ordinary routine of her business. He
knew she would do that: his reminder had been merely an excuse for
something upon which to hang a P.S. Silly man!--Did he imagine such a
transparent subterfuge could deceive her?

She did not particularly like him. He was not more to her than any
other man. But she liked him to like her. She liked the sensation of
entering the settled calm and ordered routine of his existence and
exploding there like a stick of dynamite. He had faults. He was too
careful with his money, too prone to give money a higher place than it
deserved. And his mind, when he strove to divert it into philosophical
channels, was woefully sterile. But he so obviously reverenced her.
With a quiet dignity he demanded to be treated as an inferior. There
was no resisting such an appeal. Whether she liked him or not she
could not help liking the immense compliment he paid her by his whole
attitude.... It was not that he had not a high opinion of himself. He
had, and that enhanced the significance of the fact that his opinion of
her was higher still....

Next Saturday afternoon? ... Yes, no doubt she would be free next
Saturday afternoon....




§ 2


As the morning progressed she transacted her business steadily and
methodically. About three in the afternoon Mr. Hobbs returned. She was
careful to show no eagerness to see him, careful that she should not
betray by her countenance or manner her reply to his invitation. He, on
his part, was quite ready to fall in with her pretence. He attended to
various matters in the gramophone department and left her very much to
herself. When he spoke to her it was strictly on business, and with a
frigid professional politeness.

At a few minutes past four he called her to the telephone. A gentleman
wanted a piece of music, and he did not know what exactly it was or
where it could be obtained. Perhaps Miss Weston would oblige....

Catherine went to the instrument.

It tickled her vanity to be appealed to as a last resource. She tossed
her head a little proudly as she put her ear to the receiver.

A strange thing happened....

Someone was speaking down the instrument, and at the sound of his voice
Catherine flushed a deep red. A wave of recognition and recollection
and remembrance swept over and engulfed her. She did not hear what he
said.

“Again, please,” she muttered huskily, in a tone not in the least like
her usual, “I didn’t quite catch....”

The voice boomed in rather irritated repetition,

“Bach double-piano concerto,” it said, “in C minor.... Bach ... for two
pianos ... do you understand?”

She tried to grasp it while her mind was busied with a million other
things.

“It goes like this ...” the voice went on, and commenced a
weird nasal rumble like a tube-train emerging from a tunnel....
“Da-da-da-da-da-daddaddadd-addadd-addah.”

She smiled! Once again fate had flung to her a moment of triumph.
Long ago, when the man at the other end of the telephone had been her
friend, she had learnt specially for him a work of Bach which was
little known and not likely to be much cared about. Her gift had never
been offered.... And now, after all this interval, he was enquiring
about the very piece she had learned for him!

She put the telephone apparatus on the top of the piano on which she
tried things over. Then sitting down she played over the first few bars
of the concerto.... Keeping the receiver to her ear she heard:

“That’s it!--That’s the one!--Do you know it?--Curious--well, well, get
it for me, will you.... Good!--I’ve tried all over town for it....”

“What address?” she enquired mechanically.

The voice replied: “Professor Verreker ... Seahill ... Barhanger,
Essex.”

As she walked back to the counter Mr. Hobbs said: “Did you know what
the gentleman wanted?”

“Yes,” she replied fiercely, triumphantly, contemptuously. He stared at
her. He did not know that a change had passed swiftly over her. He did
not know that the sound of a man’s voice spoken over fifty miles had
swept her out of the calm seas into the wind and rain and storm. He did
not know that once again she was in deep and troubled waters, fighting
for life and a sure footing. He thought his invitation had offended
her. He made haste to apologize.

“I hope,” he began, “you didn’t mind me asking you to Box----”

“I’m afraid,” she replied impatiently, “I can’t come ... I’ve ... I’ve
another engagement....”

And he went away into the gramophone department....




§ 3


The knowledge that Verreker was in England, within approachable
distance of her, gave her a strange, complicated mixture of pleasure
and annoyance. Deep down in her heart she knew that to see him again
would be as a breath of life after ages of dim existence. Yet she
was annoyed, because she had grown to be satisfied with the dull,
drab routine of her days: she had built up a new, and on the whole
satisfactory scheme of existence on the supposition that she should
never see him again. She did not want to see him again. She did not
want to have anything to do with him. And yet she knew that some day
either circumstances or her own initiative would bring her face to face
with him once more.... She knew that his place in her life had not
achieved finality, that there was more to say and to hear, and great
decisions to be made.

Secretly she knew that some day, when the impulse seized her, she would
go to visit him at Barhanger. But with amazing credulity she told
herself: Of course I shall never go to see him. If he cares to ask me
I will come. But he must take the initiative, not I.... But she began
to picture their meeting. She began to conjure up images of Seahill
and the Essex countryside and he and she walking and talking amidst
a background of her own imagining. Just as in the old days she had
invented an “ideal” conversation to be pursued at any surprise meeting
with her father, so now she concocted a special dialogue between
herself and Verreker, which, if he should only play the part allotted
to him, would reveal her in an attractive and mysterious light. Of
course he would not do so: of that she was quite certain, yet the
manufacture of ideal rôles for him and herself gave her a good deal
of restricted pleasure. She must at this time have decided definitely
to go and see him, otherwise there could have been no inducement for
her to dream dreams. But she still told herself that she would not see
him till he had seen her.... One evening she visited the reference
department of the Bockley Carnegie library and consulted a map of
Essex. Barhanger was almost on the sea-coast; five miles from the
nearest railway station, overlooking one of the great tidal estuaries
of the Essex rivers. And Barhanger Creek reached right up to the
village of Barhanger.... She had not thought it was so near the sea.
She had pictured an inland village with a village green and thatched
cottages and perhaps a single-line railway station. Now she had to
dream her dreams over again in a different setting, and into this new
setting came the creek and the broad estuary and the shining sea, all
magnificently idealized, all transfigured by the presence of herself
and Verreker....

It was curious how the thought of him awoke in her old dreams and
aspirations. She began once more to revile her own soul for its
selfishness and avarice: she began to wish for her old pianoforte
prowess and such education as she had once managed to cram into that
head of hers. Yet against her will was all this change and flurry: she
was always protesting, I am better as I am. I want to be quiet and
respectable. I don’t want to see him or to know him, because he has
unlimited power to make me unhappy....

Her superb serenity left her. She became once more a foolish,
unreliable creature of fierce trivialities. She no longer took any
interest in the affairs of Amelia and her mother and Mr. Hobbs. She
began to think rather acutely of Helen, though. How would Helen come
into the matter? Would Helen be jealous of her interference? ... And
did he love Helen? Or was it only a marriage of convenience? All those
things she would never find out unless she visited him. Though, of
course, she would not visit him without an invitation. That was quite
decided.

On the Saturday morning before the August Bank Holiday Mr. Hobbs left
a note for her on her desk. She slipped it in her hand-bag without
opening it.... She was concerned with other things. And when she got
home on Saturday afternoon she discovered on her table a card left by
the Rev. Elkin Broodbank, of St. Luke’s Vicarage, Bockley. This also
she dropped unceremoniously into her hand-bag.... She was concerned
with other things.... She next took up an A.B.C. railway guide, and
searched it carefully for some minutes. Then she shut it with a bang
and went to her bedroom to decorate herself. She was not so charming
as she once had been, and so the process of decoration became a longer
one. Her hair--the thing of her she most prized--had begun to be dull
and lack-lustre: the eyes, too, had lost vivacity. She was no longer
a young woman.... Oh, the horror of growing old, when youth has taken
charm away! ... But she was concerned with other things. She scribbled
a note to Mrs. Lazenby and left it on the kitchen table. Then she
walked discreetly down the steps into Cubitt Lane, and by way of
Makepeace Common to Bockley Station....




CHAPTER XXIV


THE LAST PHASE

§ 1


ON the Colchester and Ipswich train it was still possible for her to
think. I am not necessarily going to Barhanger. I have a ticket to
Holleshont, and there are many places one can get to from Holleshont
besides Barhanger. Besides, even if I do get to Barhanger, Barhanger
is no doubt an ideal place in which to spend a Bank Holiday week-end.
There is no earthly reason why I shouldn’t go to Barhanger. It is close
to the sea, and I need a holiday....

And secretly she rejoiced at the ecstasy of the thought: I am going to
see him. Whatever he says or does, whatever the issue may be, whatever
I suffer then or afterwards, I shall see him.... As the train rolled
over the drab eastern suburbs she revelled in the sensation that every
throb and pulsation of the wheels narrowed the distance between herself
and him.... And withal came another part of her answering her coldly,
reprovingly: You are silly to go on this fool’s errand. You are losing
the satisfaction and contentment it took you so long to acquire. Where
now is your ambition to lead a quiet, sedate and respectable life,
without the storm and stress of emotional escapades? Where now in your
mind’s perspective are Mr. Hobbs and the Rev. Elkin Broodbank? Oh, you
fool! you will suffer, and it will be your own fault. You will have the
old slow fight over again, you will have to build up your contentment
right from the bottom.... Oh, you fool! ... And still her heart
answered: I don’t care. I am going to _see_ him.... I am going to
see _him_....

Between Romford and Chelmsford she remembered the unopened letter that
she had in her hand-bag from Mr. Hobbs. She tore it open and read it.
It was a strange mixture of hopeless adoration and ruffled dignity.

 MY DEAR MISS WESTON,

 I am very sorry indeed if my invitation for Saturday offended you. I
 am glad to think your reason for declining it is that you had another
 engagement to fulfil. In the circumstances, is it too impertinent of
 me if I invite you to spend the Bank Holiday on the Surrey Hills? I
 know the district pretty well, and am sure you will enjoy the fine
 scenery as well as the invigorating air. There is a motor omnibus
 service as far as Reigate, and we could get from there to a number of
 interesting spots. Hoping you will be able to come with me.

 Believe me,

 Yours sincerely,

                                                  J. A. HOBBS.

She smiled wanly upon the drearily angular handwriting. In rummaging in
her hand-bag she had come across the Rev. Elkin Broodbank’s visiting
card, left by him that morning, and she caught sight of some writing on
the back which she had previously overlooked. “I find you not in,” the
Rev. Elkin had written, in his finicky handwriting and pseudo-Carlylean
prose style, “so I leave this. Will you have tea with me on Sunday? I
have old MSS. church rubric to show you: also good booklet on Oxford
movement.--Yrs., E. B.”

Also upon this she smiled wanly....

Chelmsford....

Oh, what have I done with my life? she cried to herself in a moment
of sudden horror. What have I to show for all these years of toil and
stress? Is there anything of all that I have ever had which has lasted?
I am twenty-four years old, and my youth is over. I have had dreams,
I have had ambitions, I have had golden opportunities and been near
success. But what have I to show? Have I any hold on life which death
would not loose? Am I deep set in the heart of any friend, man or
woman, in the world? Whatever happens to me, does it matter to anyone
save myself? No, no, and therefore I am going to Barhanger. I would go
to Barhanger if it cost me pain for the rest of my life....

At the junction station midway between Chelmsford and Colchester she
got out. On the opposite platform the train for Holleshont was waiting.
Small and feeble it looked beside the great express, but there was an
air of sturdy independence about it, and especially about its single
track curving away over the hills into the dim distance. Catherine
breathed the country air with avidity: she entered a compartment and
leaned out of the window as the express rolled slowly out of the other
platform. As it vanished into the north-east the station became full
of broken silences and staccato sounds. Glorious! she murmured, as the
sun warmed her cheeks and the wind wafted to her the scent of pansies
growing on the embankment near by. And then suddenly, as if it had a
fit of divine inspiration, the train moved off....

Over the dim hills, stopping at tiny halts, with waiting-rooms and
booking halls fashioned out of wheelless railway carriages, up steep
slopes where the grass grew long between the rails, curving into
occasional loops, and pausing sometimes like a hard-worked animal
taking breath. And then, from the top of a hill, the miles drooped
gently into the bosom of the estuary: the tide was out and the mud
shone golden in the sun. Yachts were lying stranded off the fair-way,
and threading the broad belt of mud the river ran like a curve of
molten gold. There were clusters of houses here and there on either
bank, and a church with a candle-snuffer tower, and stretches of brown
shingle.... And the train went gathering speed as it broke over the
summit....

At Holleshont the estuary was no longer in view, but the sea-smell
was fresh in the air. “Barhanger?” she said to a man with a pony and
trap who was waiting outside the station. He nodded, and helped her
to a seat beside him. He was buxom and red-faced and jolly. If he had
been younger, it would have been rather romantic to go driving with
him thus along the lonely country lanes. But he was taciturn, and
stopped once to pluck from the side of the hedge a long grass to suck.
At times he broke into humming, but it was a tune Catherine did not
recognize. After half an hour’s riding they came upon a dishevelled
country lane, which on turning a corner became immediately the main
street of a village. They passed a church and a public-house, a
post-office, a pump, and then another public-house. At this last the
driver pulled his horse to a standstill and indicated to Catherine that
she should descend. “Barhanger,” he muttered explanatorily. Seeing her
uncertainty, he questioned her. “Lookin’ f’ranywhere partic’ler, miss?”

She replied with a momentary impulse: “Seahill.”

He pointed in a southerly direction.

And now she was walking straight to “Seahill.” ...

The road narrowed into an ill-defined pathway and climbed abruptly on
to the top of the sea-wall. A long arm of the great shining estuary lay
stretched at her feet, and dotted about it were scores of mud-banks
overgrown with reeds and sea-lavender. The grasses rose high as her
knees, and she pushed through them and against the wind till her
cheeks were flushed with exertion. At the mouth of the creek the
estuary rolled infinitely in either direction, and miles and miles of
brown-black mud were hissing in the sunlight. “Glorious!” she cried,
and flung back her head proudly to meet the wind that swept the corner
of the creek. She turned to the right and walked on swiftly. Behind
her, looking quite near, but really a good distance away, the village
of Barhanger slept drowsily in the afternoon heat: ahead the sea-wall
swelled and rolled into great meaningless curves. Not a human being
besides herself occupied the landscape. The mud hissed and cracked, and
the grasshoppers chattered and the wind shook the long grasses into
waving tumult. And over on the mudbanks the sea-gulls gathered and rose
and called shrilly, and swooped down again to rest....

At one point the land rose slightly inland from the sea-wall, and
perched on the crest of the low hill there stood an old-fashioned
red-bricked house with a litter of sheds and stabling around it.
Something told her that this was “Seahill.” A pathway wound upwards
through the long meadow-grass: the pale green streak over the darker
green told her that this was a method of approach used sometimes, but
not frequently. And there were ditches to cross--ditches banked with
mud, which at high tide must have been brimming with salt water....




§ 2


She found her way into a sort of courtyard formed by the back of the
house and surrounding outbuildings. And there, throwing food to some
chickens, was Helen!

“Cathie!” Helen’s voice was full of glad welcome. Helen had grown a
fine woman, somewhat stout perhaps, but upright and fine-looking. She
kissed Catherine affectionately, and in her quiet way made a great fuss
over her.

“How did you know we were here?” she asked, as she led Catherine into
the house by way of the kitchen.

“Quite by chance,” replied Catherine. “I just happened to hear somebody
mention it--somebody in the musical line.”

“Ah--my husband knows so many people, doesn’t he? And how about your
arm? Of course we heard all about that, you know----”

“Oh, that’s getting better again slowly. When did you come back from
America?”

“America?” Helen’s face showed a blank. “We never went to America. Who
told you that?”

Catherine flushed a little. “I don’t remember,” she replied
nonchalantly. “It must have been a wrong idea I picked up from
somebody.”

They chatted on for some time and then Helen said:

“Well, perhaps you would like to go and see my husband. He’s in his
study--straight up the steps and second on the left. He’ll be working,
but he’ll be glad to see you, I daresay. He used to be very interested
in you, didn’t he?”

“I’ll go up and see him,” replied Catherine quietly.

She ascended the steps and found her way to the door of his study. With
some trepidation she knocked....




§ 3


It was a large room facing the west. The sun shone drowsily on a table
littered with papers and opened books. There was the piano which she
had so often played in the music-room at “Claremont.” There were the
same bookcases, with glass doors swung open, and the aperture between
the tops of the books and the shelf above filled with letters and
papers. That had always been one of his untidy habits. And scattered
over all the available wallspace were disconnected fragments of
shelving, sagging in the middle if the span were wide, and piled high
with longitudinal and horizontal groups of books. The old brown leather
armchairs and the club-fender occupied positions in front of the
fireplace. The carpet was thick, and littered here and there with the
grey smudge of tobacco-ash and scraps of torn paper that had escaped
the meshes of the basket. The scene was curiously similar to that on
which she had first seen him at “Claremont.” He was sitting in one of
his armchairs with an adjustable reading bracket in front of him. She
could see nothing of him, but a coil of rising smoke that straggled
upwards from the back of the chair told her that he existed. She had
knocked on the door before entering, and his voice had drawled its
usual “Come in.” He had heard the door open and close again, but he
did not look round. She knew this habit of his. Doubtless he would
wait to finish the sentence or maybe the paragraph he was reading. She
came across the intervening space and entered the limits within which
his eye could not avoid seeing her. The sun caught her hair and flung
it into radiance; she was glad of this, for it made her seem youthful
again.

She saw him for a fraction of a second before he caught sight of her.
And a strange feeling of doubt, of perplexity--might it be even of
disappointment?--touched upon her. He was the same, quite the same. And
yet--there was a sense in which he was not as she expected. But she had
not expected him to be very much changed. It was only a passing phase
that swept across her--hardly to be understood, much less explained.
But she felt it, and it surprised her.

When he saw her he opened his eyes very wide and stared. Then he pushed
back the book-rest and rose from his chair. All the time she was
watching him narrowly. There was a queer phase during which neither
of them moved or attempted to move. And then, the tension becoming too
great to be borne, she gave her head a little toss and said: “Well?”

She had an absurd feeling of curiosity about his first words to her.
In her ideal dialogue with him he struck an attitude of surprise
and bewilderment and ejaculated, after the manner of the hero in a
melodrama: “What?--_You_!--_You_! Is it really _you_?”

Of course he did nothing like that. She might have expected her fancied
conversation to go all wrong from the start. He slowly and cautiously
held out his right hand, and smiled a careful, quizzical smile.

And his first words were: “How are you?”

“Very well,” she replied mechanically.

There was a pause, after which he said: “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you,” she replied, and occupied the other armchair. He still
remained standing and smoking.

“I suppose,” he said reflectively, “you got the address from the
Directory?”

“No,” she replied nonchalantly, “it was quite by accident. I am one
of the assistants in the music department of Ryder and Sons, and you
yourself gave me your address over the telephone last Monday.”

“What a startling coincidence!” he muttered, as if by way of comment to
himself.

Pause....

“So,” he went on meditatively, “you were the young lady who knew the
Bach double-piano concerto from memory! Curious! ... I thought it was
remarkable, and the next time I was in town I intended coming up to
Ryder’s to see who you were.... Perhaps it is well I didn’t.... We
might have startled each other.”

“We might,” she said quietly.

Long pause....

“I don’t remember your ever playing the concerto when I knew you,” he
resumed, still in the rôle of a somewhat curious spectator. “I never
taught it you, did I?”

“No,” she answered. “I learnt it myself.” And there was just a
momentary gleam of fire within at that remark. As much as to say:
“Don’t think I am not capable of doing _some_ things myself.”

“Do you know all of it?” he asked.

“I did--but I don’t know if I remember it all now.” He tapped his pipe
on the mantelpiece.

“I wish you’d play it for me,” he said, slowly and still meditatively,
“I should like very much to hear it ... and besides ... it would ...
give me time to think....”

“To think what?” she put in sharply.

He sat down, filled his pipe afresh and lit it, saying as he did so:
“Well--to think--one of the things, at any rate--why you have come.”

There was something in the tone of that last remark of his which stung
her to the retort:

“So you think it is possible for me to go to the piano and play a Bach
concerto while you sit coolly down to wonder why I have come?”

“Well,” he said, suddenly and with emphasis, “why _have_ you come?”

“You said if I was ever over in the States I was to come and see you.
I naturally expected that the invitation would extend to when you
returned to England.”

“Did it not occur to you,” he remarked slowly, “that when I returned
from the States I should have sent you my address if I had desired to
see you?”

“Of course,” she interposed neatly, “as it happens, I know that you
never went to America at all.”

He did not seem greatly ruffled by this.

“Then,” he continued, “you know that I told you a lie. And you may have
the satisfaction--if it is a satisfaction--of knowing also that you
are the only person in the whole world who has ever made me do that.
That honour,” he added bitterly, “you share with no one: it is yours
entirely.”

She felt: Now we are getting to it.

“I don’t know why it should have been so necessary for you to tell me a
lie,” she said.

“The fact is,” he announced brutally, “I wanted to get rid of you, and
that seemed the only way.”

She winced a little at his words, but interposed sharply:

“Why did you want to get rid of me?”

He grunted something incoherent, and began to walk towards the door.

“Look here,” he said, “we’ll go for a walk. I’m not going to have you
quarrelling in here.”

“But surely we aren’t going to quarrel?”

“On the contrary, we _are_ going to quarrel. We’re going to
quarrel most damnably.... Come on!”

He led her back down the steps into the kitchen. Helen was there
preparing a meal. As he passed he addressed her.

“Miss Weston and I are going out for a stroll along the sea-wall,
Helen.... We shan’t be long. Miss Weston has to get back to town
to-night, so she hasn’t got much time to spare.”

“You’ve missed the last train already,” replied Helen.

“I shall take her in the car to the junction in time for the night
train,” he answered.

“All right.... I shall see you again, shan’t I, Cathie?”

“We shall be back in half an hour,” he said curtly.

When they were out of Helen’s hearing Catherine said:

“Who told you I had to be back in town to-night?”

“I told myself,” he replied. “I insist upon your going back to-night.”

“And supposing I don’t?”

“I can only ask you,” he replied, somewhat subdued, “to avoid making
things unnecessarily unpleasant.”

“Things need not be at all unpleasant,” she cried passionately, “if
only you weren’t such a brute.”

She had not meant to say this.

He smiled a trifle cynically.

“Do you really think I’m a brute?” he asked. “There are lots of others
who would agree with you,” he added encouragingly.

“I certainly think you are,” she replied, determined to uphold her
statement. “Wasn’t it brutal to say you wanted to get rid of me?”

“But it was true.”

“Was it?”

“Quite!”

“Really?”

“If you only knew--Look here: there are moments when, if I could have
had you painlessly extracted, I would have done it. I would have
strangled you with my own fingers if I had not kept control of them!”

“And so, as I couldn’t be painlessly extracted, you extracted yourself,
eh?”

“Yes.”

She laughed a trifle hysterically.

“Was it painless?” she enquired archly.

He swore under his breath.

“It was not,” he replied curtly.

Pause.... They were walking on the narrow ridge of the sea-wall, he in
front and she a few paces behind. Neither could see the face of the
other. The tide was coming in.... If they had not been busy with other
matters they might have noticed the loveliness of the scene....

“The fact is,” he said gruffly, “I was in love with you against my
will.”

She had known that for a long while, but she liked to hear him say it.
And she was infected with a childish daring. She laughed boisterously.

“What?” she cried. “You in love with me?--Surely not? Never--I don’t
believe it, Mr. Verreker.”

He answered, slowly and methodically: “It was so.... I will tell you
about it if you wish to know. When I first heard you play before
Razounov at my house I knew that you were no genius, but a person of
slightly above average ability who might be trained or coerced into
doing something worth while. But there were lots of people like that
whom I refused to teach. I was going to refuse you, though I didn’t
want to. A friend of yours--your fiancé, I supposed at that time--was
offering to pay for your lessons. It seemed a capital excuse for
accepting you as a pupil. To my everlasting regret I grabbed hold of it
eagerly. You came to me once a week and I pumped music into you at the
rate of three guineas a lesson.... Even then I believe I was in love
with you....”

“I must have been,” he continued, “because you were such a little fool
that normally I should have chucked you up. You had a horrible set of
musical bad manners, and not an idea of how to play. I had to give you
huge quantities of myself. I thought then I might create out of you
something it would be worth my while to love. I tried. I admit you had
remarkable receptiveness. You gulped down everything I offered you....
In fact, I made you. You hadn’t an idea in your head till I put some
there. You couldn’t have played a note at a public concert unless I had
shown you how to. You were absolutely dependent on me.... When I left
your life you went smash. You found you couldn’t play without me. I was
your sole source of inspiration, and you could no more play without me
than a performing monkey will do its tricks without its keeper.”

“That’s not true,” she protested weakly, but he went on.

“Of course it didn’t really matter in the least my being in love with
you. I had other things to think about. But when you began to be in
love with me, things began to be dangerous. You see it was quite
impossible for me to marry you.”

“Why?” she said sharply.

“Do you really wish to know?” he asked.

“I do.”

“It will offend you, possibly.”

“Never mind.... Tell me....”

He paused before answering.

“Well,” he said, “this is the politest way I can put it. I could not
marry you because you weren’t up to standard--my standard, that is.”

“What’s the matter with me?”

“You will be offended if I reply.”

“Tell me, please.”

“If you wish,” he said nonchalantly. “To begin with, you are the most
selfish person I have ever met. You are vain, conceited and a prig.
Selfishness runs in all your veins. All your desires are selfish--all
your aims are selfish--nay, nearly all your actions have been selfish.
The only unselfish part of you was the part I compelled you to
assimilate, and that was counterfeit.... God help any man you marry if
he loves you. You will ruin him if you can. If you love him too, so
much the worse for him.... Do you want me to go on?”

She bore all this with amazing calmness. True, she had been in some
manner prepared for it, but she had not expected the denunciation to be
so severe. What surprised her was that it did not hurt her as much as
she had anticipated.

She did not answer his question.

“So you loved me against your will?” she said reflectively.

He nodded.

“Every woman likes to be loved like that,” she remarked daringly.

This speech of hers seemed to infuriate him. He stopped his walking and
turned round to face her.

“If you can extract any satisfaction from the knowledge that I loved
you against my will, have it!” he cried bitterly. “Nay, I’ll even say
this: I love you passionately at this very moment. Take my love!--do
what you like with it!--it is no concern of mine when it has once been
given to you! ... I tried once to give you intellectual and spiritual
sympathy--you showed me that was no use to you! You wanted my love!
Well, now you have it, so be satisfied if you can! You have it, and
also my profound dislike and contempt!”

She thought: If I were to cry now would it have any effect on him? She
tried to cry but could not.

“Turn back now,” he commanded. They commenced the homeward journey.

“Why did you marry Helen?” she asked.

“Because I liked her and respected her.”

“And because if you married her you felt safe from me, eh?”

“If that were a true statement I would never admit it.”

“But you do not love her?”

“No.”

“Does she know?”

“She does not know. Do you want her to know?”

“I don’t care whether she knows or not.”

“Well, then, she shall not know....”

They were silent after this for a long while.

The tide was creeping in now through the maze of mud-banks: when they
stopped talking they could hear the water oozing and splashing amongst
the reeds. The thin streak of river had widened into a broad lake, and
over it the sea-gulls were flapping their wings and crying weirdly. And
far in the west where the estuary vanished into the grey hills the sun
was sinking in proud splendour. In the near distance lay the village,
with its line of cottages facing the sea-wall. Here and there the sun
had picked out a window and turned it into a glittering ruby.

Oh, it was all inexpressibly beautiful, this evening picture, with the
village and the green meadows and the sun and the rising tide! But
Catherine scarcely noticed it. She walked on through the long, stiff
grasses, and was thinking only of herself....




§ 4


To begin with, she felt very tired and weary. Of course she had done a
good deal that day. She had every reason to be physically tired. But it
was not altogether physical tiredness. She felt like a child who has
been looking forward to something for a long time, and is disappointed
because its expectations are not realized. And again she felt relieved,
as one who has been harbouring a vague dread and finds that the worst
is not half so bad as was thought. And again she felt sorry, as if
both her disappointment and her relief were things to be regretted and
to feel ashamed of. And somewhere--vaguely--subconsciously--what was
the thought that came to her? A revolutionary thought, a thought that
marked an epoch in her life and development. Nothing less than the
thought that the things he and she had been discussing, the questions
that at one time had seemed the most momentous in her life, were now
become by the sad process of time stale, unmeaning, and out of date.
Of historic and achæological interest, maybe, but not living things as
she had expected them to be living. She had expected to be immensely
moved, immensely stirred by this conversation with him. She had
expected it so confidently that she had been stirred at the thought of
being stirred. She had tuned herself in readiness for a great conflict.
And now the conflict had begun, had lasted and was over. She had not
been stirred. Not that the blows had been light. It was something in
her that gave her a new invulnerability, a strange imperviousness to
blows. Her expectations, her dreads, her excitement, her preparations
for conflict, all had been for nothing. And now that she realized that
they had been for nothing she felt the effect of them--they made her
tired, weary, worn out. The tension snapped. Vaguely she felt sorry
that she was not suffering more acutely: vaguely she felt that her
invulnerability was purchased at a great price. But try as she would
she could not help but feel that her conversation with him had been a
futile disinterment of dead bones.... She was not hurt. But she was
tired--weary--as after a successful and dangerous operation.

They both felt that they had said all that need be said. On the way
home scarcely a remark passed between them, except once or twice when
he called her attention to the scenery.

He said: “The tide is coming in fast now. It comes in by inches as you
watch it.”

She replied: “Yes,” but she did not think what she was saying.

When they got back to “Seahill,” he disappeared into the garage to
prepare the car for use. She was left for a few moments with Helen.

Their conversation (lasting for two minutes) was full of amazing things.

Helen began it.

“Well,” she said, “what do you think of him?”

“He’s very clever.”

“Yes,” agreed Helen, surprisingly, “and like all clever men he is
rather stupid. He’s so stupid that he thinks I don’t understand him.”

Pause. Catherine was too much astonished to reply.

“Of course he doesn’t love me,” she went on. “I know that, though he
thinks I don’t.... I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he loves you.”

Pause.

“Though of course you and he would never get on at all well together.
You’re not suited.... Now we (he and I) get on splendidly. I help
him with his literary work. The other day he said to me (I had just
finished typing at his dictation): ‘Helen, it’s just splendid to think
that you do all this stuff because you take a living interest in it and
not on my account!’ I was frightfully pleased: I think it was the best
compliment he’s ever paid me.”

Pause.

“Though of course,” a little wistfully, “it wasn’t at all true. I don’t
take a living interest in it at all: I only do it to please him. And I
can only please him by making him think I’m not doing it to please him.
That’s why I say he’s stupid.”

Pause.

“I suppose I shall see you again sometime?”

“Possibly. I don’t know.... I don’t think I shall come again.”

“I hope you will.... I suppose you like him? Well, so do I. That ought
to be something in common between us.”

Pause.

“Oughtn’t it?”

Catherine did not answer. But Helen kissed her very affectionately. And
at that moment Verreker entered in motor-cap and goggles.

“We’ll catch the 9.40 at the junction,” he said. “Come along!”

A four-seater car stood in the courtyard.

“Get in the back seat,” he said gruffly.




§ 5


As the car drew them through the sweet-scented country lanes Catherine
lolled amongst the heavy cushions and pondered. Once again she had
the feeling that had comforted her when she first realized that her
musical career was at an end. It was the feeling that she was not going
to be very disappointed. Once again, too, she was subtly disappointed
at not being disappointed.... Helen had said that he was stupid. That
remark set in motion a whole avalanche of unspoken ideas that had been
gathering patiently about her for some time. She had not noticed them
then, but now as they came tumbling about her ears she perceived them
in bulk as a sudden new revelation. They shifted Verreker to a less
hallowed perspective. The halo left him and he became a man. And a
stupid man at that. She began to sum him up dispassionately, and was
amazed at the results she came to....

Even his eccentricities--which she had hitherto admired--lost their
glamour and became either vices or the mere foibles of a crank.
His manners were atrocious. He did not raise his hat to her in the
street. When entering and leaving a railway compartment he did not
allow her to take the first place. It was things like those that went
to make up a gentleman. And, frankly, he was not a gentleman. His
rudeness, his brusquerie, his awful bluntness of speech, were vices
which his cleverness might explain but could not excuse. And even his
cleverness--might it not be possible to exaggerate that? He was not
well known: his books were dry and uninteresting--abstruse, maybe, but
extremely tiresome. And even in music, how was it that he had never
made a name at concert playing? One remark of his which had especially
annoyed her had been his blunt asseveration that her musical success
had been derived solely from his instruction. She could not deny this
even to herself, but she found partial, if illogical, comfort in the
thought: If he can make me into a successful concert pianist, why
hasn’t he ever thought it worth while to make himself one?

And he had treated her abominably. It gave her a curious pleasure to
discover that. The magnitude of his ill-treatment of her seemed by a
subtle process of ethical cancelling out to wipe away all record of her
own previous misdeeds.

Once again her soul was white, immaculate, redeemed by his cruelty and
her consequent martyrdom. The very thought that his debt to her was
incapable now of being ever repaid put her on the plane of loftiest
altruism. She was still proud, triumphant, superbly conscious of her
own supremacy.

When her ideals had tottered one by one, and at last she had realized
the futility of her musical ambitions, she had thought: Here goes my
last ideal! Henceforth I am without them.... But now she saw that
there had been a survivor that had remained with her even to the last.
And that was her ideal of him--a man, superbly good, superbly great,
fit object of her respect and worship.... Now this ideal had tottered
and fallen also. He was a mere irritable crank, pedantically clever,
perhaps, but rather brutal and, as Helen said, curiously stupid.

The car went racing up the low hills from the estuary inland.... Was it
a case of “sour grapes”? she wondered for a fleeting moment, but she
answered “No” with sufficient emphasis to convince herself.

Of course he had assumed that she loved him. But was that true? Did
she? ... Anyway, there were many reasons for getting married, and
love was only one of them, and perhaps neither the best nor the most
frequent. There was companionship, for instance, and a desire for home
and children and money. One might marry in order to secure at a cheaper
rate the services of a skilled shorthand-typist.... One might even
marry to secure part ownership of a motor-car.




§ 6


At the junction he saw her on the platform, shook hands with her very
quietly and, she had to admit, for him, very politely, and then left
her. She heard him drive off out of the station courtyard, and saw the
headlights of his car flashing over the hill beyond the town....

An episode in her life was closed.

It was half-past nine. The bookstall had just opened for a few moments
before the arrival of the night train to town. She spent some time
examining the cheap novels it displayed for sale, and finally with
perfect _sang-froid_ she purchased a sevenpenny detective story,
with a paper wrapper depicting a woman in evening dress sprawled face
downwards across some stairs with a revolver by her side....

The train came in, and she found a comfortable seat next to the window.
“Chelmsford and London only!” the porters called out, and she smiled
quietly. Her fellow travellers were mainly half asleep.

After the train had started she fished in her hand-bag for a sheet of
paper and pencil.... Then, using her book as a desk, she wrote the
following note:

 DEAR MR. HOBBS,

 How absurd of you to think your invitation had offended me! I am only
 too grateful to you, and sorry that I could not have come with you
 to-day. But I shall be pleased to accept your invitation for Monday
 if you will still have me. I shall like to go into Surrey very much:
 I have heard such a lot about it but have never been there. It will
 be rather difficult for us to fix up arrangements about meeting each
 other, won’t it, so perhaps I had better call at your house to-morrow
 afternoon. (I know your address, I think.) I shan’t be able to stay
 long, though, as I am going to tea with the St. Luke’s curate, Mr.
 Broodbank--do you know him?--a charming and interesting man. Thanks
 again for your invitation.--Yrs., etc.,

                                             CATHERINE WESTON.

Reading it over afterwards she smiled again to herself. Then she put it
in an envelope, addressed the latter, and began to read the detective
story. First she scanned the first paragraph of the first chapter, then
the last paragraph of the last chapter, and then a paragraph selected
haphazard from the middle, this being her established formula for
commencing any book.... After that she began to read consecutively from
the beginning.

After all, she reflected here and there, where the printed matter
failed to keep its grip on her attention, the long troublesome episode
in her life was over. Henceforth she would be quiet and sedate and
respectable, a lady of perfect manners and breeding. Passion was a
tiresome thing. It was, to use a favourite adjective of Mrs. Lazenby’s,
very “wearing.” ... To-morrow she would have tea with the Rev. Elkin
Broodbank, M.A. (Cantab.), and discuss church missals and cassocks and
Puseyism. On Monday she would go with Mr. Hobbs on the top of a bus to
Reigate. He would be frantically polite and meekly adoring. He was, at
any rate, a gentleman....

The detective story began to be interesting, so she ceased her
nursings, and meanwhile the train went speeding Londonwards....




                                THE END




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