DISCONTENT
§ 1
HER first periodic “supervision” by Razounov took place early in the
New Year, and once again coincided with an engagement of Razounov to
play Chopin at the Bockley Hippodrome.
He puffed serenely at a cigarette while she played the Kreutzer Sonata.
At the end he said:
“Nicely, oh yais, quite nicely.... And thees ees--let me see--thees ees
Mees--Mees--”
“Weston,” put in Verreker.
“Ah, yais, ... plays quite nicely, eh? ... A leetle more technique,
and--more--more--what ees the word?--characterization, eh?”
Verreker nodded.
But Catherine was disappointed. For it was perfectly evident not only
that Razounov had failed to recognize her, but that her name when told
him had recalled nothing in his mind.
§ 2
At her next lesson with Verreker she said: “Razounov didn’t remember
me, apparently----”
Verreker replied quite casually: “Oh no, why should he?”
She coloured slightly.
“Well,” she said, with some acerbity, “considering he took the trouble
to send for me after hearing me play at that club concert, I think he
might at least----”
Verreker faced her suddenly.
“What’s that?” he said.
“What’s _what_?”
“What you’ve just been talking about. I don’t understand in the
least.... You say he heard you at a concert?”
“Well, I presume so, anyway. What remarkably short memories you musical
people have! Razounov apparently heard me at the concert, and sent me a
message to come and see him the next day. You ought to remember that:
it was you yourself who brought it. You tracked me down to the Forest
Hotel.”
“Yes, yes. I remember that.... But the concert?”
She was becoming more and more sarcastic as his mystification increased.
“Oh yes, the concert. I played Liszt’s Concert Etude in A flat (the one
you don’t like). As I remarked before, presumably Razounov heard me, or
else why should he send for me to----”
“I am afraid you have presumed falsely,” he interrupted. (She shivered
at the stateliness of the phrasing: it reminded her of “I know of no
reason at all.”) “Razounov could not possibly have heard you play. He
never attends local concerts. Besides, he must have been on at the
Hippo----”
“Then why did he send for me?” she cried shrilly.
He scratched his chin reflectively. She hated him for that gesture.
“I believe--I think he _did_ tell me once.... I fancy it was
something rather unusual. Somebody--I can’t tell you who, because I
believe I’m pledged to secrecy--wrote to Razounov offering to pay for a
course of lessons for you. His name was to be kept out of it. I mean,
the name of the person.”
He frowned irritably at the slip of his tongue, and still more at the
rash correction which had given prominence to it.
“A man?” she ejaculated.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I know it was. Because you said ‘his.’”
“Then why did you ask me?”
She swung round on the stool and clasped her hands below her knees. Her
eyes were fiercely bright.
“What are Razounov’s fees?” she said quietly.
“Three guineas a lesson.”
“And yours?”
“For purposes of musical instruction I am Razounov. He only supervises.
It is a fortunate arrangement, because I am a much better teacher than
he.”
She looked at him a little amazed. For the first time she caught
herself admiring him. She admired the calm, straightforward,
unqualified way he had said that he was a much better teacher than
Razounov. It was not conceit. She was glad he knew how to appraise
himself. She admired him for not being afraid to do so. In her eyes
was the message: “So you too have found out that overmodesty is not a
virtue? So have I.”
But it was impossible to remark upon it. She plunged into the financial
side of the question.
“So somebody has been paying three guineas a week for me?” (And she
thought: “Whoever is it?”)
“Certainly. You don’t imagine Razounov would give lessons for nothing,
do you?”
“That is to say, _you_ wouldn’t give lessons for nothing, isn’t
it?”
“Certainly. I am not a philanthropist. I have other interests besides
music. Music is only my way of getting a living. I never even reduce my
fees except--except--well----”
“Yes?--except when?”
He turned away his head as he replied: “Except in cases where the pupil
has no money yet supreme musical genius.”
She flared up passionately.
“Look here,” she said, “why d’you keep on rubbing it in? How do you
know I shan’t be a great pianist? I say, how do you know? I tell you,
I don’t believe you. You wait; you’ll see me at the top before long.
And then you’ll have to eat your words. You’re got a good opinion of
yourself, haven’t you? Well, so have I. See? ... And I tell you I
_will_ get to the top! I’ll show you you’re wrong! See?”
“I hope you will,” he said quietly. And added: “I’m glad my criticism
doesn’t discourage you. It isn’t meant to.”
To which she was on the point of replying: “But it _has_
discouraged me. There have been times when----” She did not say that.
There came a pause. Then she reverted to the financial side of the
business.
“So somebody’s already paid nearly a hundred pounds for me.”
“Sixty, I believe. The last quarter has not been paid yet.”
(And then the idea came to her immediately--George Trant!)
“Aren’t your fees payable in advance?” she asked sharply.
“As a general rule, yes.”
“Then why did you make an exception in my case?”
“Because I know the person fairly well, and am confident of being paid
soon. That’s all.”
“Is it?”
“Certainly,” he replied brusquely. “If your anonymous benefactor
doesn’t pay up within the next couple of months the arrangement between
you and me will terminate on the first of March. As I said before, I am
not a philanthropist.”
“Obviously not.”
“I hope it is obvious. I have often been mistaken for one.”
“Curious! I can scarcely believe it.... Have you the address of my
anonymous benefactor?”
“I dare say I have it somewhere about. Why?”
“Because I want you to write and tell him something.”
“Indeed? And what am I to tell him?”
“Tell him he needn’t trouble to pay the last quarter’s fees. I will pay
them myself.”
“I hope you can easily spare the money----”
“Of course I can. I shouldn’t offer to pay if I couldn’t. I’m not a
philanthropist.”
“Very well, then. I will write and tell him what you say.”
Pause. He was beginning to look rather annoyed.
“And there’s just one other thing,” she said, putting on her hat ready
for departure.
“What’s that?”
“Our arrangement will not terminate on the first of March. I shall
continue and pay myself.”
“As you wish....” He shrugged his shoulders.
And she thought as she went out: “That was a neat stroke for me. But
it’s going to be confoundedly expensive....”
§ 3
Henceforward Catherine assumed that George was her anonymous
benefactor. His inability to pay the last quarter’s fees synchronized
with his encounter with the Bishop’s Stortford magistrates, resulting
in a bill, including costs and all expenses, of nearly twenty-five
pounds. Undoubtedly it was George who was financing her. And the
question arose: Why? And the only possible answer was that this
quixotic and expensive undertaking was done out of love for her.
Catherine did not particularly like it. She was not even vaguely
grateful. She almost thought: He had no right to do it without asking
me. And if he had asked me I shouldn’t have let him. Anyway, it was
done behind my back. Treating me like a little child that doesn’t know
what is best for itself....
At times she became violently angry with him for his absolute silence.
Does he intend to carry the secret with him to the grave? she asked
herself. The absurd ease with which he parried any attempts to entangle
him in a confession intensely annoyed her. “I don’t believe he intends
ever to tell me,” she thought. “And if I’m ever a well-known pianist
he’ll congratulate himself in secret by thinking: ‘_I_ started
her. _I_ gave her her first chance. She’d have been nothing but
for me. _And she doesn’t know it_!’” The thought of George’s
romantic self-satisfaction at such a juncture oppressed her strangely.
There was also the subtle disappointment of discovering that Razounov
had not “found” her as great pianists are supposed to “find” promising
talent. But she was becoming accustomed to the shattering of her
idealist creations. Besides, she was at this time deriving a good deal
of hard satisfaction from her rapid and steady advancement, and no
amount of retrospective disillusionment could cast a shadow across the
future. Only she was annoyed at the quixotism of George Trant.
One evening she asked him point-blank:
“Did you pay for my first quarter’s lessons with Razounov?”
She expected the blow by its very suddenness would tell. He started
very slightly.
“Me?” he said, in a tone of bewilderment which, if not genuine, was at
least consummate acting. “Me?--I don’t understand. What do you----”
“Well, somebody did,” she replied curtly, annoyed that her blow had
been parried. “And I thought it might be you.”
“Good heavens, no!” he said, and at that moment she did not know
whether to believe him or not.
§ 4
He had been clever up to then. Afterwards he became too clever. One of
those periodic spasms of brilliance overwhelmed him.
The next morning she received a letter, typewritten, plain paper and
envelope, with the non-committal postmark: London, W. It ran:
The person who has undertaken the expenses of Miss Weston’s musical
training wishes it to be understood that he desires to remain
anonymous. Should he be questioned on the point by anyone he will
feel himself justified in adopting any attitude, even one involving
departures from the truth, which seems to him best calculated to
preserve the anonymity he so earnestly desires. Hence it is obvious
that enquiry, however persistent, can elicit no reliable information.
When Catherine read this she laughed outright. The absurdity, the
sublime ridiculousness of the thing tickled her. She knew now beyond
all doubt that it was George Trant. For this note had “George Trant”
written all over it. Only he could have devised something so inanely
clever and at the same time so incredibly stupid.
The fact of its being posted only three hours after their interview
of the evening before was enough to convince her. He must have gone
home direct, written it (he had a typewriter at home, she knew), and
gone up to London, W., immediately to catch the eleven o’clock post.
She pondered on his choice of London, W. Probably he thought a London
postmark would be least likely to give a clue. E.C., the most common,
would suggest Leadenhall Street, so he chose W. That, probably, was his
line of argument.
It was not a bad joke, she agreed. Yet if he acted upon it she could
conceive herself getting angry....
§ 5
Her opinion of George went up somewhat after the receipt of this
letter. She was immensely struck by its absurdity, yet she had to
admit that in addition to being a joke it was quite a clever joke. For
several weeks she did not mention the affair, and he too avoided all
reference to it. Then she began again to be annoyed at his silence.
Besides, she was immensely curious to know what his attitude would be.
The full flavour of the joke had yet to be tasted.
An incident--trivial in itself--lowered her opinion of him incalculably.
She had gone for her usual weekly lesson from Verreker. It was
springtime, and “Claremont” was being painted, both inside and out. The
music-room in which she took her lessons was crowded with furniture
from other rooms, and for the first time she saw the evidences of
Verreker’s labours apart from the world of music. Large book-cases had
been dumped anyhow against the walls, and tables littered with papers
filled up the usually spacious centre of the room. The piano had been
pulled into a corner. She had several minutes to wait, and spent the
time perusing the titles on his bookshelves. There was a fairly large
collection of modern novels, including most of the works of Wells,
Bennett, Conrad, Hardy, Chesterton and others; complete sets of the
works of Shaw and Ibsen, most of the plays of Galsworthy, Granville
Barker and Henry Arthur Jones; and some hundreds of miscellaneous
French novels. A complete bookcase was occupied by works on economics
and economic history--she read the names of Cunningham, Ashley,
Maitland, Vinogradoff, Seebohm and Money. Then there was a shelf
entirely devoted to Government Blue-Book publications, Reports of
Commissions, quarterly and monthly reviews, loose-leaf binders full to
bursting with documents, and such like. It was a very impressive array.
She was conscious of her own extreme ignorance. Scarcely anything that
was here had she read. She was not particularly fond of reading....
On the table near his desk she saw a yellow-backed copy of Ibsen’s
_Ghosts_....
One result of their frequent bickering was that their conversation had
acquired a good deal of familiarity....
“Rather a muddle,” he commented, as she was preparing to go after the
lesson. He waved a hand comprehensively round the room.
“You’ve a lot of books,” she said.
“Yes; and I read them.” (As much as to say: “If you had a lot of books
you wouldn’t read them.” In other words, a purely gratuitous insult.
But she ignored it.)
“Reading _Ghosts_?” she remarked, taking up the yellow-backed book
from the table.
“Re-reading it,” he corrected.
Something erratic and perfectly incomprehensible prompted her next
utterance.
“Absolute biological nightmare,” she said casually. (It was something
she had once heard George say.)
He looked at her queerly.
“Have you read it?”
“No,” she said, and blushed. She knew his next question would be, “Then
how do you know?” so she added: “I once heard somebody say that about
it.” She plunged further in sheer desperation. “Don’t _you_ think
it’s rather a biological nightmare?” she persisted, with passionate
eagerness, as much as to say: “Please don’t make a fool of me. Please
let the matter pass this once.”
“I confess,” he replied coldly, “it never appeared to me in that,
light.... But, of course ...”
(Truly he was a master of stately phrasing!)
Naturally she regarded it as George’s fault primarily. It was clear she
had overestimated George’s critical faculties....
§ 6
She was so annoyed with George on the way home that she arrived at the
astonishing decision: I will not marry him....
That evening, under the trees of the Bockley High Road, she produced
the typewritten anonymous letter and asked him point-blank: “Did you
write this?”
“No,” he said immediately.
“Did you type it, then?” (It showed her mean opinion of him that she
judged him capable of such a quibble.)
“No.”
“Do you know its contents?”
“How should I?”
“Then please read it.” She handed it to him.
“If you like,” he said, and read it. “Well?” he remarked, after doing
so.
“How am I to know if you are telling the truth?”
“You have only my word.”
“But, according to the letter, you may be telling me a lie.”
“That is presuming that I wrote it.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No.”
Pause. Then suddenly she stopped and faced him defiantly.
“I don’t believe you!” she snapped.
“Well----”
“Look here. You _did_ write this thing. Tell the truth. Own up
to it. It’s very clever and all that, but it shouldn’t be kept up
seriously like this. I’m certain you wrote that letter.”
“You don’t take my word for it?”
“Not in this case.”
“In other words, I’m a liar. Eh?”
“I suppose it comes to that.”
“Well, you’re very polite, I must say. Perhaps you’ve a few more things
you’d like to say about me?”
“Don’t try to be sarcastic. But there is one thing if you really want
to know.”
“What’s that?”
She paused, and then hurled it at him with terrible effect.
“I don’t love you a bit.... Not a tiny bit....”
She saw him whiten. It was thrilling to see how he kept his emotion
under control. She almost admired him in that moment.
“Is that so?” he said heavily.
“Yes.”
He bit his lip fiercely.
“Then our engagement, I presume, is--is dissolved?”
“Presumably.... Here’s your ring.”
Here occurred a touch of bathos. She tried to get the ring off her
finger, but it would not pass the first joint.
“Let me try,” he said humbly, and the episode became almost farcical.
It came off after a little coaxing. But the dramatic possibilities of
the incident had been ruined.
“Well,” he said stiffly, “I suppose that’s all. It’s your doing, not
mine. You’re breaking up our prospects without the least shadow of
reason.”
It did seem to her an incredibly wanton thing that she was doing.
And at this particular moment, if he had uttered her name slowly and
passionately she would have burst into tears and been reconciled to
him. But he missed the opportunity.
“I shall return your letters,” he continued coldly. (There were not
many of them, she reflected.)
“Good-bye,” she said.
They shook hands. And she thought: “Fancy having been kissed every
night for months and months and suddenly turning to a handshake!” That,
more than anything, perhaps, indicated to her the full significance of
what had happened. That and the peculiar sensation of chilliness round
her finger where the ring had been.
As she turned into Gifford Road she asked herself seriously the
question: “What has come over me? Am I mad? ...”
§ 7
More than once during the next few weeks she wished for a
reconciliation with George. It was not so much a desire for him as a
sense of despair at being once more wholly alone and adrift. Now she
was back again where she was when she first came to Gifford Road. With
redoubled energy she laboured at her music, and soon the idea of a
recital in a London concert hall began to dance attractively in her
vision. She extended her reputation by playing in other suburbs; she
thought even of setting up as a private teacher of the pianoforte. With
the surplus earnings of a few months she bought an upright piano of
decent tone and installed it in the basement sitting-room at Gifford
Road.
George wrote to her once, a long letter of mingled pleading and
expostulation. He mentioned that he had not yet told his parents what
had happened, so that if she desired to change her mind it would be
easy to do so. He laid stress on the difficulty he should find in
giving Helen and his father and mother an adequate explanation of their
separation.
After the receipt of this letter Catherine ceased her vague misgivings.
She replied immediately in a letter, short by comparison with his,
whose every sentence was the result of careful excogitation:
It is no good thinking of our ever becoming engaged again, because
if we did we should soon quarrel. We simply aren’t made for one
another, and however kind and sympathetic we try to be there’ll always
be something lacking that sooner or later we shan’t be able to do
without....
I am bound to confess that the idea of marriage with you always struck
me as fantastic and improbable. I never, I believe, considered it
seriously. I knew something would happen to put an end to our plans....
... Of course I am in the wrong. You have been very kind to me and
from the ordinary point of view you would doubtless have made a very
good husband. You are quite entitled to consider yourself shabbily
treated. I am wholly in the wrong. But I am not going to make myself
everlastingly unhappy just to put myself in the right. And whether
you would have made me a good husband or not, I should certainly have
made you a bad wife. I am a peculiar person, and I would never marry
a man just because he would make a good husband.... Surely you don’t
imagine I am going to marry you just to let you out of the difficulty
of explaining things at home? ... A thing like that proves at once the
complete misunderstanding that exists between us two.... You must tell
your parents and Helen exactly what has happened, viz. that I have
jilted you. If you were a woman you could claim a few hundred pounds
damages for breach of promise.... Tell them I have jilted you because
I could not bear the thought of marrying you. Blame me entirely: I
am heartless and a flirt, cruel, treacherous and anything else you
like. Only I am not such a fool as to marry somebody I don’t want to
marry....
Don’t imagine I am in love with somebody else. At present I am not
in love with anybody. At one time I thought I was in love with you,
but I am doubtful if it ever was so really. I think it was just that
you hypnotized me by being in love with me yourself. I mean, I was so
interested in your experience....
I don’t ask you to forgive me. Because forgiving won’t make any
difference. I may have done right or I may have done wrong, but I have
done what I would do over again if I had to. There is no repentance
in me. It is idle to pretend I am sorry. I am extraordinarily glad to
have got out of a difficult position....
This letter, by the way, is the first sincere letter I have ever
written to you. I do not mean that the others were all insincere: I
mean that, compared with this one for truth and sincerity, the others
were simply--nothing....
As to my present attitude towards you I will be offensively
straightforward. I do not like you. That ought to convince you finally
of the uselessness of answering this letter....
§ 8
A cold May day, so chilly that a fire seemed the most welcome thing on
earth. Seven in the evening, and it was the last lesson of the quarter.
When she reached “Claremont,” Verreker was not there. He had been up
to the City, and a slight accident outside Liverpool Street Station
had delayed the trains. The maid showed her into the music-room and
left her alone. She sat in one of the big chairs by the fire and felt
astonishingly miserable. The room had regained its normal condition;
the surplus furniture, the books, papers, writing-desk, etc., had
been taken away: but a grandfather clock that had not originally been
there now occupied a permanent position in the corner. The embers were
burning low, and shadows were darkening all around: the black and white
vista of piano keys straggled obscurely in the background; the clock
was ticking sleepily away. Far into the dim distance of the ceiling
loomed the polished splendour of the raised sound-board....
Why did she feel miserable?
It was something in her soul.
She got up and sat down at the piano.
With no discoverable motive she commenced to play the piece that she
now knew was Chopin’s Black Note Etude (in G flat). It was the one she
had heard years ago when she stood in the scented dusk of the Ridgeway
in front of the house with the corner bay-window. Since then she had
learned it thoroughly and played it many times on concert platforms.
But as she played it now it sounded new, or rather, it sounded as if
she had heard it only once before, and that was many years ago in the
summer twilight. All between was a gap, a void which only the Chopin
Etude could bridge....
(In her strange mood she was playing it most abominably, by the way.)
She paused in the middle. Her eyes were like dark gems amidst the red
glory of her hair.
“I’m not in love with _any person_,” she told herself with
incredible calmness. “I’m not in love with anybody in the world. But
I’m in love with _Something_. Some Thing! Very deeply, very
passionately, I am. And I don’t know what it is.... I keep finding
it and losing it again. But it’s in this”--she started the first few
bars of the Chopin piece--“it’s all everywhere in that. I knew it was
there when I stood and listened to it years ago. Oh, it’s there. And
I’ve heard and seen it in other places, too. But as yet it’s been only
a _thing_.... But some day, maybe, I’ll tack it on to somebody
living, and then ... God help me! ...”
Her fingers flew over the keys, and the great octaves began to sing out
in the left hand.
“I’ll have to be careful,” she went on in thought--“careful, or else
some day I’ll go mad.... But it’s there, whatever it is.... Something
that’s in that and that’s in me as well, and they’re nearly tearing me
to shreds to get closer to one another. That’s how it feels.... And
I told him I wasn’t in love with _anybody_ ... But _if_ I
should catch a glimpse of this something in any living being! Nothing
should ever keep us apart! Nothing could! Neither life nor death--nor
miles--nor anything.”
She let her hands fall down the keyboard in a great culminating Niagara
of octaves. Two chords like the blare of trumpets, and ...
The door opened and Verreker entered.
She paused with her hands poised on the keys.
“Well,” he began cheerily, “it’s the last lesson of the quarter, isn’t
it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
He was warming his hands in front of the fire.
“Confoundedly cold for May,” he remarked parenthetically. “You’ve been
taking lessons of me for a year now, haven’t you?”
“Just over a year.”
He stood with his back to the fire.
“Well,” he continued, “you’ve not done badly. In fact, you’ve--you’ve
improved--er--quite--er--beyond my expectations. I admit that.”
It was the biggest compliment he had ever paid her. Pleasure surged in
her blood. She flushed.
“And,” he went on, “I don’t want to go on taking your money when you’re
no longer likely to benefit much. As a matter of fact, you’ve come to
a point at which my lessons are no longer worth three guineas each to
you. You can teach yourself as well as I can teach you. I’ve led you
out to the open sea, and now the time’s come for--for dropping the
pilot. See?”
She nodded.
“So I don’t recommend you to have another quarter with me. I think it
would be money wasted.”
She nodded.
“Of course I shall be glad to help you in any way I can if you need it.”
She nodded.
“And if you ever wish me to give you advice on any point of theory or
technique I shall be pleased to do so.”
She nodded.
Pause.
“... I’ve just been up to town to get some new music in manuscript from
a new author. It’s quite good stuff and very modern. I’ll run it over
if you’d care to hear it.”
“Thanks,” she said, and vacated the stool....
When he had finished it was almost too dark to see the music. She was
standing at the side of the piano with her face in the shadows.
“Play ‘Jeux d’Eaux,’” she said softly.
He began....