THE FIRST TRANT EPISODE
§ 1
JUNE sunlight was scorching the tarred asphalt of the Ridgeway, and
Catherine and Helen were sauntering homewards beneath the heavy trees.
Their conversation savoured of “shop.”
“Two hours the last map took me,” said Catherine, indignantly, “and
we’ve got another in less than a fortnight.... Rivers and mountains as
well.... And it isn’t as if North America was easy, either ... there’s
all those lakes....”
“I shan’t put in those islands at the top, anyway,” observed Helen.
“I shall leave mine till to-morrow morning,” continued Catherine. “That
is, if I do it at all.... And I shall do it on typewriting paper so I
can trace it.”
“She won’t take it if you do.”
“She’ll have to....”
At the corner of the Post Office the conversation took a personal turn.
“We’re having a social at the Baptist Church next Saturday. Will
you come?” asked Helen (Helen attended a rather prosperous Baptist
establishment in Upton Rising).
Catherine walked on for some moments before answering. She seemed to be
weighing things up.
“I might,” she answered. Then, as an after-thought, she added: “I
suppose you’ll all be there?”
“Oh yes. There’ll be me and father and mother and Millie, perhaps the
Lester girls as well....”
“George?” Catherine’s voice rather overdid itself in the effort to
appear casual. Helen looked at her keenly.
“Possibly,” she replied, in a voice that might have meant anything.
There came a rather curious pause. They had reached the corner of the
High Street before Helen spoke again.
“So _that’s_ it, is it?” she remarked, as they crossed the tramway
junction.
“That’s _what_?” said Catherine gruffly.
“That’s what’s been making you so ... so different--lately.... I’d been
wondering what it was. I never guessed it was George.”
“How did you find out?”
“I didn’t find out. You just told me.”
Catherine turned down Hanson Street, the road immediately opposite the
Ridgeway.
“Let’s go down here,” she suggested. “It’s quieter. I can see you’ve a
lot to say to me.”
Helen took her arm.
“No, I haven’t.... I don’t know that I can say anything, really....
Only I think you’re silly.”
“Why?” The word rang out like a pistol-shot.
The reply did not come immediately. When it did it sounded limp and
uncertain.
“Because ... because you’ll be disappointed in him.”
“What’s the matter with him, then?”
“Nothing much. He’s all right ... only ... he’ll disappoint you, one
way or another. He’s not as clever as he seems. Besides----”
“Yes?”
“He doesn’t like you.”
“He _doesn’t_? Has he told you so?”
“Not in so many words. But I know. He may like you to flirt with, but
he doesn’t like _you_. My advice is, if you’re getting serious,
give up the flirting. With him, at any rate.... After all, you can
always find plenty of chaps to flirt about with....”
(Her father had said “fellers.” She said “chaps”!)
“But I don’t want them, maybe.”
“Well, go without them, then.” (They were at the corner of Kitchener
Road.) ... “I never thought much of flirting about as a pastime.”
It was a curiously elliptical conversation throughout, and at the gate
of No. 24 they both seemed eager not to prolong it by standing. They
said good-bye immediately, and both were conscious of electricity in
the atmosphere.
That evening Catherine found herself unable to concentrate on homework.
Mr. Weston was out at night-school, and she was thus left alone in the
house. The nine o’clock rule was now virtually inoperative, since her
father did not return till half-past ten on three nights out of the
week. At about ten past nine Catherine put aside her books and went out
for a walk. She had finished all her work excepting the map.
Cubitt Lane at this time on a glorious June evening was full of
courting couples. They lurched along in a peculiarly graceless fashion,
each leaning against the other.
“I wouldn’t do _that_,” thought Catherine, virtuously. “That
_is_ silly, if you like.”
At the bridge over the railway she heard a brisk “good evening”
addressed to herself. She turned and saw it was George Trant....
“Where’re you off to?” he asked good-humouredly.
“Taking a walk.”
“So’m I.... Let’s go up the road....”
“All right.” ... They climbed the hill past the King’s Arms, and
entered the Forest.
§ 2
The first leaves of autumn were beginning to fall when Catherine
returned to Bockley after a fortnight at Hastings. Day after day of
glorious September weather had covered her cheeks and arms and hands
with freckles: her hair, too, was fluffed and shining with continual
sea-bathing: her general appearance was rather wild and undomesticated
for such a place as Bockley. She returned on Saturday night, and Sunday
found her waiting outside the Baptist Church at Upton Rising. Evening
service was over at eight o’clock, and she judged that Helen would be
there.
Helen greeted her at the church door.
“Only you?” said Catherine.
Helen nodded. “The others went for a walk.... It’s a fine night--let’s
take a tram to the Forest.”
The trams of the London County Council ran along the end of the road.
They boarded one; it was full, and they had to stand on the top.
“You look well,” remarked Helen.
“Oh, I’m all right,” replied Catherine, and the conversation languished.
What ensued after that would always in Catherine’s mind be inextricably
bound up with the sway and purr of trams along the high road.
“George has gone away,” remarked Helen, à propos of nothing.
“Oh?”
“His firm’s given him a job in Manchester. A good opening, it seems....
I got a letter from him yesterday. He enclosed a note for you: I
suppose he didn’t know your address.... I believe I’ve got it on me....”
She fished in her hand-bag and extracted an envelope, from which she
took a folded half-sheet of paper and handed the latter to Catherine.
It was rapidly getting dusk, but the lights in the tram were not yet
lit. On every alternate tramway standard hung an arc lamp, and these
were now fizzing and spluttering into pale brilliance. Catherine read
the note (it was roughly written in copying pencil) in quick spasms as
the car swirled along.
MY DEAR CATHIE,
As you will perceive, I have got shifted to Manchester, where I shall
no longer have the pleasure of your delightful society, which, as you
will not doubt, is a great loss to me personally. However, I am likely
to enjoy my stay here: there are some splendid girls working in the
same office with me, though none of them has your own Inimitable red
hair. If there is one thing I regret it is that the before-mentioned
red hair has occasionally led me to say things I did not mean and
to do things I did not mean to do. I am sure that you, with your
wonderful capacity for understanding, will grasp what I am trying to
sketch out. We have had some interesting discussions together during
the last few months, and for these at least (not to mention the
spiritual inspiration given me by the passionate flame of your hair) I
am deeply grateful.
I hope you will always believe me to be what I am, viz., your sincere
admirer,
GEORGE TRANT.
P.S.--My lodgings are not permanent, so there would be little point in
enclosing my address.
Catherine was slow to grasp the full meaning of the note. As it dawned
upon her her lips tightened, and she gripped fiercely the rail against
which she was leaning. The tram lurched to a standstill, and there was
the usual scramble to get down the stairs. “High Wood,” the conductor
called out.
“Come on,” said Helen, and they descended.
In the Forest glades the night air was cool and sweet. For some
distance they walked on in silence. Catherine was the first to speak.
They had reached a clearing, and under the open sky the daylight still
lingered.
“I daresay you’d like to read it,” said Catherine. She held out the
note at arm’s length.
Helen gave a queer ejaculatory laugh.
“I’ve already done so,” she said.
“What?”
“Oh, I know it’s not quite the thing to read other people’s letters....
But I wanted to know what ... what he would say to you, and I thought
perhaps you wouldn’t show me.”
Catherine crumpled up the note and put it in her pocket.
“Well, you know, anyway,” she said gloomily.
They passed again into the cool Forest glades.
“I was right,” said Helen, quietly. “I knew he’d write you something
like that. He’s good at that kind of letter-writing ... sort of cheap
cleverness he excels at I’d half a mind not to let you see it.”
There came a long pause. They had reached the high road to Chingford
before it was broken.
Catherine suddenly took the crumpled letter from her pocket, and began
tearing it up into minute fragments.
“See,” she cried passionately, “you can tell him this is what I did
with his letter I You can tell him there’s better fellows in the world
than he is, and Cathie Weston isn’t going to break her heart over
_him_! ... Tell him I’m not a soppy little schoolgirl.”
She flung the pieces on the ground, and began stamping on them.
“You’re being silly,” said Helen, quietly.
“And tell him,” went on Catherine, “that if he thinks he’s under an
obligation to me, he’s made a mistake. I’m grateful to him--for letting
me see what he really is.”
Her words rattled like the passage of a lorry over granite setts.
“Come on,” said Helen, “we’ll get to Chingford, and take the train
back.”
“You’ll tell him?”
“I don’t promise. I think you’d better forget all about him ... after
all, you can’t do anything....”
“I don’t want to! I merely want him to know that I don’t mind.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. He’ll know that if he hears nothing from
you.”
“He won’t. He’ll think he’s left a broken-hearted girl to cry over him.”
“I don’t think he will.”
“... because I don’t believe in being broken-hearted. I don’t think
it’s possible to die of a broken heart. I’m certain I shan’t, anyway. I
won’t let any man mess about with _my_ life. It’ll take a pretty
big misfortune to make life not worth living to me. If he’s tired of me
I’m just as tired of him. Tell him that!”
“This way ...” said Helen, guiding her into the Station Road. “We’ll
just be able to catch the 9.45....”
§ 3
Helen left the train at Upton Rising, but Catherine went on to Bockley.
The Town Hall struck the hour of ten as she was walking up the station
approach. At this time the crowds along the High Street were beginning
to disperse; the trams and buses were full of returning excursionists.
Neglectful of the time and with no very definite aim in view, Catherine
turned into the Ridgeway. It was directly opposite to the quickest way
home, but its shady avenues and flower-scented front gardens suited
her mood better than the stark frowsiness of Hanson Street. Her mind
was in flux. She did not know whether what had happened was going to
be an important stage in her life or not. She did not know how much of
her feeling was disappointment, and how much was mere wounded dignity.
She could not estimate the depth of the feeling she had had for George
Trant. It seemed inconceivable that she had ever been in love with
him....
She started to administer to herself wholesome correctives. “It’s no
good,” she told herself brutally, “your imagining yourself the heroine
of a tragedy, suffering more poignantly than ninety-nine people out of
every hundred, because it’s not the truth. What you are feeling now is
felt sometime or other by the majority of all people: there’s nothing
a bit singular or exceptional in your case. It’s a mistake to pride
yourself on suffering more exquisitely than other people.”
Then she poured cold logic over herself.
“He’s only one man among millions, and in no sense is he markedly
superior to the average. A certain spurious cleverness, a talent for
mockery, a deft finesse in expressing cruel things in soft words ...
absurd that he should become so much to you or to any girl ... there’s
nothing admirable in him, therefore you are lucky to get rid of him.”
It sounded convincing enough.
She walked on, scarce heeding whither she was going, and all the time
her mood alternated between stormy resentment and cold self-reproach.
There were moments too of grey hopelessness, and it was only her
constantly recurring indignation that swept her out of these. Every
inch of the roads she traversed was associated with him: every gate
and tree seemed to call out in mocking melancholy--“This was where ...
this was where....” Not a street corner but was inextricably bound
up in her mind with some remark of his and the exact phase of their
relationship when he had uttered it....
Under heavy trees that split the moonlight into a thousand fragments
she suddenly heard the rich hum of a grand piano. She stopped. She
stood in the shadow of the hedge and listened in rapture. The house
was a large one, with a corner bay-window wide open, and it was from
that room evidently that the music was proceeding. It was some rapid
piece full of rippling streams of notes with very few chords, octaves
in the base clef that thundered like the oncoming tide, swirling
waves of treble triplets that were light as air, yet beneath all the
laughter and freedom, a sense of dim, unuttered passion, half hopeful,
half melancholy. Long afterwards she knew it was Chopin’s Black Note
Study in G flat. But then it had no name to her. It might have been
the latest ragtime craze for all she knew: all she cared was that
it expressed all the feelings in her own heart that she had thought
inexpressible, things that she had often and in vain tried to wring out
of the Collard and Collard at home. At that moment it is probable that
she would have given everything she had in the world for that piano.
It stood to her as the one way to salvation. She would have bartered
her soul for it. As it was, she stood there in the spattered moonlight
and cried for it. At any rate, she cried.... The piece finished up in
a tremendous cascade of double octaves, and she waited nearly half an
hour after that, hoping the playing might begin again. Then she walked
back to Kitchener Road almost in a state of trance. The Bockley High
Street was very white and deserted, and far into the dim distance
stretched the tram-rails, blue and infinite. It was long past eleven.
But Catherine was dreaming--dreaming of one thing only (though that
one thing was strangely complicated by other things)--dreaming of a
grand piano, dreaming of the ecstasy of playing it as she had heard
it played that night. The vision of her ambition came to her as she
turned into Kitchener Road. She would become a great pianoforte player.
Already discerning critics--adjudicators at musical festivals and such
like--had prophesied a career for her if she would work hard. Hitherto
it had not seemed worth while to work hard. Now it became suddenly
and tremendously worth all the soul and energy she could give to it.
Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could ever matter. Whatever stuff
her soul was made of, music was part of it, and music would answer
everything her soul asked.
At home her father was waiting up, vaguely remonstrative as usual.
“Worse and worse it gets, Cathie ...” he began ... “the first night
you’re home after your holiday you land in at twenty to twelve! ...
it’s not good enough ... you’ve had all the morning and afternoon. I
can’t think what makes you want to go walking the streets this time....”
“I’m not having any supper,” she said brusquely. “Good-night....”
“But----”
“Oh, don’t worry ... I’ve had some,” she lied. As she fled upstairs
she heard him murmuring something. A great change had come over him
since his wife died. He had been getting ever slower and feebler. It
was becoming more and more evident that it had been only his wife’s
incessant nagging that had spurred him to the minimum of activity.
Now he pottered aimlessly about the garden. His attendances at the
Duke Street Chapel became more and more infrequent, and finally ceased
altogether. People said (often facetiously) that he was pining away
of grief at his wife’s death. It is doubtful if this were a complete
diagnosis....
Up in the little back bedroom Catherine did a thing which she had not
done for a long time. She prayed. Ch-artinevin was no longer a choleric
old gentleman with white side-whiskers and a devouring passion for
adulatory worship. He had long ago ceased to be that, and he had not
begun to be anything else. Catherine, though she never altogether
recognized her position, had no very definite belief in either Him
or the rest of the accepted doctrines of Christianity. She prayed,
not out of religious fervour, but from a variety of complex motives,
one of which was certainly a desire to straighten out her own ideas
by reducing them to more or less coherent form. Among other things,
she prayed for a grand piano. “Lord, give me a grand piano,” was her
unorthodox variant upon the more usual bedtime supplications. “Lord,
_do_ give me a grand piano,” she pleaded. It is curious, but she
did not in the least expect the Lord to take any notice. She was even
doubtful whether the Lord were listening. Yet she kept on repeating the
demand for a grand piano. Also she decided how she would catalogue the
whole George Trant episode. It was nothing. It was to be regarded as
nothing. Tears broke in upon her decision to regard it as nothing. The
grand piano and all that it meant to her kept looming on the horizon.
Then she felt a little ashamed of crying. “I never used to cry,” she
thought. “Not even after a sound thrashing.” She tried to calm herself.
“I’m getting soppy,” she reflected. “Crying like a little kid. All
because of that piano. That’s what done it....” It was long past
midnight when she fell into troubled sleep.