FALLEN
§ 1
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 Council
Schools 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 the
chapel 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.
§ 2
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 her
hands 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 accustoming
herself 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 table
in 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. _I_ was like this when I was _her_ age. 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 anybody _too_ often, 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.... Any
jobs 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....