NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
§ 1
“CLAREMONT,” the Ridgeway, was a corner detached house well set back
from the road. A high evergreen hedge impeded the view from the
footpath, and a curving carriage drive overhung with rhododendron
bushes hid all suggestion of a house until the last possible moment.
Then all that you saw was a tiny porch and a panorama of low-hanging
eaves, diamond window-panes and russet-brown roofs of immense
steepness. A telephone bracket affixed to one of the rafters and
an electric bell in the porch convinced you that all this parade
of antiquarianism was really the most aggressive modernity. A
motor-garage, suitably disguised, stood at one side of the house.
Behind was a vista of tennis-courts, conservatories, and an Italian
pergola.
Beneath the tiny porch in the middle of a hot Sunday afternoon
Catherine paused and pressed the button of the bell. She was excited.
Her visit savoured of the miraculous. This was the house of the famous
Emil Razounov The famous Emil Razounov had arranged this appointment to
meet her. She was actually ringing the bell of Emil Razounov’s house.
In another minute she and Emil Razounov would be face to face.
A maid opened the door. “What name, please?” she asked pertly, and
Catherine replied.
Catherine passed into a wide hall, furnished with all sorts of queer
furniture that she contrasted mentally with the bamboo hall-stand and
the circular barometer that had graced the hall of No. 24, Kitchener
Road. At one side a door was half open, and through this Catherine was
ushered into what was apparently the front room of the house.
It was a long, low-roofed apartment, with dark panelling along the
walls and rafters across the ceiling. The furniture was sparse, but
bore signs of opulence: there were several huge leather armchairs and a
couple of settees. Apart from these there was nothing in the room save
a small table littered with music in manuscript, and a full-size grand
piano. At first Catherine thought the room was unoccupied, but two
winding coils of smoke rising upwards from two of the armchairs--the
backs of which were towards her--seemed to proclaim the presence of men.
“Miss Weston,” announced the maid, and closed the door behind her.
One of the coils of smoke gyrated from the perpendicular. This
was the preliminary to a slow creaking of one of the armchairs. A
figure rose from the depths, and its back view was the first that
Catherine saw of it. It was tall, attired in a light tweed jacket,
grey flannel trousers, and carpet slippers of a self-congratulatory
hue. Altogether, it was most disreputable for a Sabbath afternoon.
It was difficult to recognize in this the spruce, well-groomed man
of the world who had pushed his way into the Forest Hotel on the
previous night. Yet Catherine did recognize him, and was rather
astonished at her own perception in so doing. He faced her with the
graceless langour of one who has just got out of bed at an early
hour. Yet in his extreme ungainliness perhaps there was a certain
charm. And as for his face--Catherine decided that it was not only
lacking in positive good looks, but was also well endowed with
extremely negative characteristics. To begin with, the lie of his
features was not symmetrical. His hair was black and wiry, lustreless
and devoid of interest. The whole plan and elevation of his face
was so unconventional that he would probably have passed for being
intellectual....
He bowed to her slightly. There was no doubt of his ability to bow.
Whether he were ungainly or not, his bowing was so elegant as to savour
of the professional. It was consciously a performance of exquisite
artistry, as if he were thinking: “I know I’m ugly, but I’ve mastered
the art of bowing, anyway. Put me in evening clothes, and I’ll pass for
an ambassador or a head-waiter.”
He did not offer his hand.
“Ah,” he said, “M’sieur Razounov will be ready in a moment. Please take
a seat.”
Catherine sat down in one of the easy chairs. From this position she
could see that another chair contained the recumbent form of Emil
Razounov. He was reading a Sunday paper and taking occasional puffs
at a large cigar. Catherine had heard much gossip about Razounov’s
eccentricities, yet compared with his companion he seemed to her to
be disappointingly ordinary. For several moments the two men sat in
silence, while Catherine made ruthless mental criticisms. She was
piqued at the lack of enthusiasm accorded her.
Suddenly Emil Razounov spoke. The voice came from the depths of the
chair like a female voice out of a gramophone horn. It was almost
uncanny.
“I say, Verreker, hass not the young lady come?”
The man addressed as Verreker replied somewhat curtly: “Oh yes, she’s
here.”
“Zhen perhaps she weel go to the piano and play.”
Catherine left her chair and went to the instrument. Before sitting
down she took off her hat--which was a species of tam-o’-shanter--and
placed it on the table beside the piano. She did this from two reasons:
first, she did not feel comfortable with it on; and second, she was
proud of her hair, and conscious that it was the most impressive thing
about her.
“What shall I play?” she asked nonchalantly. She could not help
betraying her annoyance at her unceremonious reception.
There was a pause. It seemed almost as if both men were struck
dumb with astonishment at her amazing question. Then Verreker said
carelessly, as if it were a matter of no consequence at all: “Oh,
whatever you like.” She took several moments to adjust the music-stool
to her final satisfaction and prepare for playing. The time was
useful to decide what she should play. Strange that she should not
have decided before! She had decided before, as a matter of fact: she
had decided to play some Debussy. But since entering the room she had
changed her mind. She would play Chopin.
She played “Poland is Lost.” She played it well, because she was
feeling defiant. She played with the same complete disrespect for her
audience as had won her the first prize at the musical eisteddfod.
Where she wanted to bang, she banged. She did not care that she was
in a low-roofed dining-room and not a concert hall. She did not care
if she pleased or displeased them. They were contemptuous of her: she
would be contemptuous of them. The result was that she was not in the
least nervous. Yet when she had struck the last note she could not help
remarking to herself: “I _did_ play that well. They _must_
have been rather impressed.”
An awkward pause ensued. Then Verreker said very weakly: “Thank you.”
His “thank you” was almost ruder than if he had said nothing at all.
“Well?” said Razounov.
Catherine thought he was speaking to her. She was meditating something
in reply when Verreker spoke, showing that the word had been addressed
to him. A feeling of exquisite relief that she had not spoken came over
her.
“She oughtn’t to play Chopin,” remarked Verreker.
“No,” agreed Razounov.
Catherine’s face reddened. It was the subtle innuendo of their remarks
that hurt her. Also, by all the standards she had learnt at the
Bockley High School for Girls there was something impolite in their
criticizing her coolly in the third person as if she were not present.
She resented it. She was not a stickler for etiquette, but she would
not be insulted. “I don’t care who they are,” she thought rebelliously,
“they’ve no right to treat me like that. I’m as good as they are, every
bit!”
A long pause seemed to intensify the sinister significance of their
previous remarks.
“Look here,” cried Catherine, breaking in raucously upon the silence,
“why don’t you tell me straight out I can’t play?”
After she had said it she regretted her hastiness. She perceived it was
a foolish thing to say. She blushed fiercely.
Verreker raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Razounov beamed
beatifically.
“My dear lady,” he began caressingly, “I will be perfectly fhrank with
you. Eet is best to be fhrank, is eet not? ... You will neffer be a
first-class player. Perrhaps a second, ohr a third, pairhaps you may
eahrn plenhty of money at eet, but you will never be a--you know what
I mean--a ghreat--a suphreme pianiste.” (He meant obviously: “You will
never be what I am.”) ... “Why? ... Ah, I cannot tell. Why is zhe
ghreat gift given to sohm and not to othairs? ... Eet is that you haf
not it in you, that zohmsing, that spark that is cault ghenius ... you
understand?”
Catherine understood. But she could not disguise her humiliation, her
mortification, her disappointment.
“Do you agree with me, Verreker?” asked Razounov, as if desiring
confirmation of his verdict.
Verreker said curtly: “I don’t profess to prophesy these things. Still,
in this case, I believe you’re right.”
That was worse! There was something contemptuous in those words, “in
this case.” Catherine hated him.
“Still,” purred Razounov, “you would improve with a course of
instruction. You will make a good player if you are careful. I cannot
give you lessons myself, as I am engaged all my time, but I will
supervise. And Mr. Verreker will gif you a lesson once a week. Efery
month I will supervise. Is zhat plain?”
Catherine could not answer. She was struggling with tears. The second
time that day that tears had troubled her. Yet what a different variety
of tears! These were tears of rage and disappointment, of blinding
disillusionment, of sullen mortification. She dare not trust herself
to reply. If she had attempted a word she would have been caught in a
maelstrom of burning indignation.
“I will drop you a card when I can give you a first lesson,” said
Verreker, quietly.... “Well ... er ... thank you for coming ...”
Catherine took the hint and put on her hat. She did not say a word as
she left the room. But her eyes were furiously blazing: there was in
them that danger glint of which Verreker, if he had seen it, would have
done well to beware.
Out in the Ridgeway, Catherine decided one thing. She would never take
lessons off Verreker; she would never go near that house again....
§ 2
The fierceness of her indignation brought Catherine face to face with
one other thing that she had never hitherto realized. And that was
the absurd grandiloquence of her ambition. There was nothing that
Razounov has said of which she could legitimately complain. He had
even complimented her to the extent of saying that she would make a
good player if she were careful, and that she might earn plenty of
money as a pianist. Surely that was encouraging! ... No, it was not.
For he had also told her that she was not a genius, and would never be
supreme in her art. Well, what of that? Had she ever had the conceited
effrontery to think she _was_ a genius? Catherine decided no, not
exactly that, but ... The fact was, Catherine, without knowing it, had
inclined to give herself the benefit of the doubt. At any rate, she had
always been serenely confident of the doubt. Quite unconsciously she
had developed an opinion of herself to which there were no adequate
frontiers. She was a supreme egoist, and her life had come to be
worth living only on false understandings. Every book she read, every
speech or sermon she listened to, occasioned in her the feeling:
“How does that fit in with me?” At a school prize-giving once the
speaker--a local vicar--had given an address to the scholars in which
he mentioned the three things which a human being might legitimately
desire--fine physique, genius, and strength of character. When he came
to the consideration of the second, he said: “Of course, we’re none
of us geniuses, but----” Catherine (she was only fourteen then) had
been rather contemptuous of this modesty, “Of course, I suppose he
_has_ to say that, and yet how does he know whether ...” she had
thought. To her his sweeping declaration savoured of the rash. It had
been the same on many occasions. Somewhere at the back of Catherine’s
mind had always been the supposition, so patent as to be almost
axiomatic, that she was different from other people. That difference
was, on the whole, the difference of superiority. She had done things
that no other girl of her age and acquaintance had done. She had left
home with five and sevenpence half-penny, obtained lodgings on her own,
and kept herself by work. She had played at concerts (one concert to
be precise). A young man who, whatever his drawbacks, was undeniably
clever, had fallen desperately in love with her. Her own father, pining
of remorse, had cut his throat to prove to her his undying affection.
And the invitation to meet Razounov had at first seemed merely a
further rung on the ladder of fame. There was no doubt about it: she
was marvellous, extraordinary, a constant surprise both to herself and
to other people. Her very faults became demi-virtues. Passionate she
felt herself to be. After reading _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ her
instinctive thought had been: “Am I like Tess?” And she had frequently
asked herself the question: “Am I a genius?” and had shirked a plain
answer. The crudity of the question, the awful conceit of replying in
the affirmative, drove her to subterfuge. “Not exactly that, perhaps,”
she told herself. “At least, how can I tell? I shall have to wait and
see. I can’t give a direct answer.” Yet if she had been forced to give
a direct answer, there is no doubt what it would have been.
And now, disillusioned, humiliated, self-scornful, the preposterous
nature of her ambitions forced itself upon her. For the space of half
an hour she was perfectly frank with herself. She did not spare that
pitiable self-conceit of hers. She was ruthless. It was as if she
thought that if she could wound that self-conceit so that it died of
its injuries, so much the better. She employed first of all the cold
steel of logic. The facts were these. She had been told frankly that
she was not a genius. She was hurt and humiliated. Ergo, she must have
been cherishing the notion that she was a genius. Absurd creature!
Preposterous egoist! Conceited upstart! And all because she had played
at a third-rate concert!
She wound up with a bitter piece of advice. You aren’t a genius, she
insisted, you’re just an ordinary girl with as much extraordinariness
in her as falls to the lot of most people. And the sooner you finish
with your absurd dreams and ambitions and wake up to the facts the
better.
It was good advice. She tried conscientiously to take it. She did take
it--for about five and twenty minutes.
But those five and twenty minutes were among the most difficult and
miserable she had ever spent.
She flung herself down on the bed in the attic at No. 14, Gifford Road,
and was so wretched that she could not cry. Besides, she was convinced
that there was nothing she had a right to cry about. Yet it was the
utter horror, the unbelievable loneliness of existence that appalled
her. She was quite alone in her struggle with the world, parentless,
almost friendless. She knew now why it was that she had not mourned
the loss of her parents, why it was that her solitary struggle had
been up to then so exhilarating, so pleasant. It was that absurd faith
in herself, that fearful egoism, that terrible conceit, that had
enabled her to fight on alone. And now her succour, her comfort, her
support had suddenly cracked and given way, and she was left clinging
to wreckage. The future was simply blank, a dull, drab hereafter of
self-effacement. Life was not worth living. For the first time in all
her life she felt alone--alone with the wreckage of dead dreams and
shattered hopes....
“O God!” she cried, “if I’m only ordinary after all! ...”
Horror upon horror! To think of Gifford Road, of the Victoria Theatre,
without the conviction that these were but a means to something
infinitely higher! Her ultimate triumph provided the only terms on
which life amongst these things was worth living! To think of herself
as a mere unit in the society that lived in Kitchener Road, Bockley,
in Gifford Road, Upton Rising! To deny herself the privilege of
thinking what a good joke it was that she should have been born in
Kitchener Road! To realize suddenly that it was no joke at all, but an
ordinary, not inappropriate circumstance in which she had no right to
discover any irony at all. To regard herself as she knew Mrs. Carbass
regarded her, viz. as “the little girl wot plys the pienner at the
theayter.”
That was where her ruthless self-mutilation overreached itself. She
knew she was not as Mrs. Carbass regarded her. Even if she were
ordinary, she was not as ordinary as that. With feverish joy she
clutched at this undeniable admission.... Slowly her spirits rose
out of utter dejection. Cautiously at first, then with extravagant
recklessness, she flung together the wreckage that had fallen. At
the end of five minutes a phantom thought flashed by her--a swift,
entrancing, wayward, delicious, undisciplined, seductive idea. It
was like a breath of heaven upon her darkened soul. It whispered:
“Supposing Razounov is wrong? ... After all, why the dickens should he
be right? ...”
§ 3
One effect the sudden (but only temporary) shattering of her ambitions
had upon her. It redoubled afterwards her efforts to achieve them. She
increased the number of hours devoted to practice. She even made some
attempt to get through an elementary book on harmony and counterpoint.
And strangely enough, of all the composers whose works she attempted
none nerved her to such a fever of determination as Chopin. For she had
been told she oughtn’t to play Chopin....
On the Wednesday following a card reached her, addressed to the
Victoria Theatre. It simply said:
Come at two o’clock on Saturday.
R. VERREKER.
The writing was sharply angular, rivalling the phrasing in curtness.
Nevertheless, Catherine had expected curtness. Of course she was not
going to go. She had long ago decided that. As if to symbolize her
contempt, she tore up the card and threw it into the gutter as she left
the theatre. After all, what was the use of keeping it, since she was
not going to go?
All through the remainder of the week she kept fortifying her
determination not to go. And yet dimly, in some strange intuitive
fashion, at the back of her mind she felt that it was quite possible
she _would_ go. I won’t go, she told herself one moment. Bet you
you _do_ go, after all.... She was surprised, almost fascinated
by this charming waywardness of hers. Anyway, she decided, it’s quite
a simple matter to settle: I won’t go. I wonder, she said to herself,
smiling.
As a matter of fact she did _not_ go. But it was from an absurdly
accidental reason. She was strolling along the Ridgeway soon after
lunch on Saturday when she suddenly reflected that she did not know
what time he wished to see her. Was it two o’clock or three? She failed
to remember, and of course the postcard had been thrown away. At two
o’clock she felt she would not run the risk of being an hour too early.
Something in her suggested half-past two as a compromise; but when the
half-hour chimed she decided that since that would be wrong in any
case she had better wait till three. And at three she felt sure that
his card had said two, so she went back to Gifford Road. In a way she
was pleased with herself. She had kept her word. She had not gone. The
narrowness of her victory seemed to emphasize its magnitude.
At the theatre that evening an introductory film was shown. It dealt
with the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Something in Catherine impelled
her to play “Poland is Lost.” ...
§ 4
On Monday a letter arrived at the theatre for her. The angular script
on the envelope told her who had written it. It ran:
I presume you forgot on Saturday. If so, come on Wednesday at seven
p.m.
R. VERREKER.
Catherine was conscious that the struggle was not yet over. On the
contrary, it was beginning again. The issue was not, Did she want to go
or not? It was, Should she keep the vow she had made to herself? She
made a great fuss over weighing both sides of this crucial problem, yet
she knew it was a foregone conclusion what the result would be. Then
she decided she was giving the matter a place out of all proportion to
its importance. After all, it was of little consequence whether she
went or not. She would wait till Wednesday, and do just what she felt
like at the time.
Then she pondered over the precise significance of his phrase “if
so.” Did he suspect that her absence on Saturday was not due to
forgetfulness?
§ 5
At the inquest on Mr. Weston the usual verdict was brought in: “Suicide
during temporary insanity.”
Catherine found herself in possession of a houseful of cheap furniture
and a sum of twenty odd pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank. She
retained a small quantity of clothing and a few kitchen utensils; the
rest of the stuff at 24, Kitchener Road was sold by auction. It fetched
fifty-five pounds when all expenses had been deducted. She had a horror
of hoarding vast quantities of lumber in the form of keepsakes and
mementoes, so she destroyed everything that had no intrinsic value
except the diaries Those she transported to Gifford Road and kept.
After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by a sum
of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the sixty in
a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit by her
father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it might as well
be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some pretty dresses.
For the first time in her life she could afford to put the question,
“Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She experienced the
keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than from the strictly
utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in “mourning”: her
first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair, and white to throw
her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair that had to be
considered....
When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her pretty,
but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness....