CHAPTER VDISILLUSIONMENTS
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 smallbookshelf contained bound volumes ofThe Quiverand various missionary society reports, as well as several antiquated volumes, of whichJessica’s First Prayerwas 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 quiteblaséof 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 suddenlighting 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....
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(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....
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 inharmonic 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 theDaily 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 hisDaily 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——
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. Shehad 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.
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 somethingwithin 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 oppositewall which a shaft of moonlight capriciously illumined. It was a picture of Tennyson reading hisIn Memoriamto Queen Victoria, the poet, long-haired and impassioned, in an appropriately humble position before his sovereign....
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——
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.
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 cleverenough 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.
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 theConcert 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 theBockley and District Advertiserwould 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 theBockley and District Advertiserwould 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 wasmightily 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....