CHAPTER XXIFALLEN
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 CouncilSchools 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 thechapel 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.
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 herhands 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 accustomingherself 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 tablein 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.Iwas like this when I washerage. 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 anybodytoooften, 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.... Anyjobs 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....