CHAPTER IIITHE FIRST TRANT EPISODE
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.
“Sothat’sit, is it?” she remarked, as they crossed the tramway junction.
“That’swhat?” 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.”
“Hedoesn’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 likeyou. 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 dothat,” thought Catherine, virtuously. “Thatissilly, 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.
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. Eveningservice 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 yourwonderful 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.
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 yourwonderful 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 overhim! ... 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 withmylife. 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....”
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 stationapproach. 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 gateand 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 sheturned 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 notbegun 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,dogive 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.