CHAPTER XITHE SECOND TRANT EPISODE
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 weareengaged?”
“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’sfiancée. 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—theTrant 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-boardwouldrattle 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 itwasbusiness. She could see that. Shewas 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 reckoningthemup. 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....
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,doyou 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 hiskisses 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 onmyaccount.” 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 reallymehe 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 theawful 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?
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 amoderate 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,shouldyou?” she replied angrily. “Ishouldbe 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 notmyfault. I’ve never played as bad as that in my life. It’syou. 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....
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 hotcoffee 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 simplymustcome 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....
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 casuallyto 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 wouldnotplay a false note, She smiled contemptuously as she heard the applause evoked by a timid rendering of a drawing-roomballad. 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....
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 suburbanmusical 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 atallto 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.” ...
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 theopening of a Haydn Concerto.... And Catherine thought: “That was really ahorridthing to do. I believe it is the nastiest trick I ever saw. I expected rudeness, but somehow notthat—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 savewhen she reflected casually: “Considering what a lot George knows, it’s rather queer he should be so remarkably uninteresting at times....”
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....
Along the Bockley High Street she remarked thoughtfully to George: “I didn’t know Verreker patronized your musical evenings.”
George replied: “Oh, it wasn’tthathe 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, alsohis economics don’t lose anything from being infused with a dash of temperament. Can’t say I understand it myself, anyway.”
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. “Imustgo.... 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....”