ONCE AGAIN
§ 1
ON the Monday morning exactly a week before the August Bank Holiday,
Catherine unpacked the morning’s music with a quiet satisfaction
that knew no bounds. She was by this time a changed woman. No longer
impetuous and hasty, no longer fiery and passionate, no longer a
creature of mood and fancy: she was quiet, restrained, dignified
almost to the point of arrogance, immensely reliable, and becoming
a little shrewd. She had earned the reputation of being an expert
saleswoman. There was scarcely a piece of music, or a song, or an
orchestral setting which she did not know of: she was a mine of
recondite information about violin obligatos and harp accompaniments
and so forth. Even Mr. Hobbs, who had hitherto passed as a paragon,
acknowledged in her a superior. His mind was merely a memorized and
remarkably accurate music catalogue: hers was full of scraps of another
world, scraps that raised her above her fellows. Never, even in her
greatest days, had her superiority seemed so incontestable as now.
Never had she been so quietly proud, so serenely confident that the
deference accorded her was no more than her due.
As she untied the string round a bulky parcel of new ballad songs she
reflected upon her own unconquerable supremacy. Over in the gramophone
department was Amelia, sorting a new consignment of records. Amelia
looked as usual, sullen and morose. And it gave Catherine a curious
satisfaction to see Amelia looking sullen and morose. Partly, no doubt,
because it threw into vivid relief her own superb serenity. But there
was another reason. Amelia’s moroseness had a good deal to do with
Catherine’s relations with Mr. Hobbs. There had been a time when Mr.
Hobbs had seemed to be showing Amelia a significant quantity of his
attention. Not so now. To Catherine he gave all the attention he had
previously bestowed upon Amelia, coupled with a deference which he
had never offered to Amelia at all. Amelia felt herself deposed from
a somewhat promising position. But it was not Catherine’s fault....
Catherine never encouraged Mr. Hobbs. She gave him piquant rebuffs and
subtle discouragements, and frequent reminders that she was superior to
him. She was always distant and unresponsive, and sometimes a little
contemptuous. But the more did he return to the assault. Her superb
aloofness enchanted him. Her pride, her royal way of taking homage
as no more than her due, her splendid self-aplomb convinced him that
this was the woman to be Mrs. Hobbs.... So Catherine did not encourage
him. It would have been rather silly to do so. And as she saw Amelia
looking so sullen and morose, she thought: “Foolish creature! Fancy her
thinking that I’m cutting her out! Why, who could help preferring me to
her? And I have never encouraged him, I’m quite sure of that ... I’m
not a bit to blame....”
On the desk beside her was a single sheet of writing-paper inscribed
with the handwriting of Mr. Hobbs. It was his day for visiting
publishers, and it was evident to Catherine that he must have gone
considerably out of his way to come to the shop and leave this note
for her. And to induce Mr. Hobbs to go out of his way was to create a
revolution in his entire scheme of existence. Well did Catherine know
this, and as she read she smiled triumphantly.
DEAR MISS WESTON,
Don’t forget to repeat the order if those songs from Breitkopf and
Härtel don’t arrive. I shall be back about three this afternoon.
Yrs. sincerely,
J. A. HOBBS.
and--
P.S.--Are you free next Saturday afternoon? If so, we could go to Box
Hill and Reigate.
Catherine, therefore, smiled triumphantly.
There was absolutely no need whatever for him to remind her to repeat
the order. That was part of the ordinary routine of her business. He
knew she would do that: his reminder had been merely an excuse for
something upon which to hang a P.S. Silly man!--Did he imagine such a
transparent subterfuge could deceive her?
She did not particularly like him. He was not more to her than any
other man. But she liked him to like her. She liked the sensation of
entering the settled calm and ordered routine of his existence and
exploding there like a stick of dynamite. He had faults. He was too
careful with his money, too prone to give money a higher place than it
deserved. And his mind, when he strove to divert it into philosophical
channels, was woefully sterile. But he so obviously reverenced her.
With a quiet dignity he demanded to be treated as an inferior. There
was no resisting such an appeal. Whether she liked him or not she
could not help liking the immense compliment he paid her by his whole
attitude.... It was not that he had not a high opinion of himself. He
had, and that enhanced the significance of the fact that his opinion of
her was higher still....
Next Saturday afternoon? ... Yes, no doubt she would be free next
Saturday afternoon....
§ 2
As the morning progressed she transacted her business steadily and
methodically. About three in the afternoon Mr. Hobbs returned. She was
careful to show no eagerness to see him, careful that she should not
betray by her countenance or manner her reply to his invitation. He, on
his part, was quite ready to fall in with her pretence. He attended to
various matters in the gramophone department and left her very much to
herself. When he spoke to her it was strictly on business, and with a
frigid professional politeness.
At a few minutes past four he called her to the telephone. A gentleman
wanted a piece of music, and he did not know what exactly it was or
where it could be obtained. Perhaps Miss Weston would oblige....
Catherine went to the instrument.
It tickled her vanity to be appealed to as a last resource. She tossed
her head a little proudly as she put her ear to the receiver.
A strange thing happened....
Someone was speaking down the instrument, and at the sound of his voice
Catherine flushed a deep red. A wave of recognition and recollection
and remembrance swept over and engulfed her. She did not hear what he
said.
“Again, please,” she muttered huskily, in a tone not in the least like
her usual, “I didn’t quite catch....”
The voice boomed in rather irritated repetition,
“Bach double-piano concerto,” it said, “in C minor.... Bach ... for two
pianos ... do you understand?”
She tried to grasp it while her mind was busied with a million other
things.
“It goes like this ...” the voice went on, and commenced a
weird nasal rumble like a tube-train emerging from a tunnel....
“Da-da-da-da-da-daddaddadd-addadd-addah.”
She smiled! Once again fate had flung to her a moment of triumph.
Long ago, when the man at the other end of the telephone had been her
friend, she had learnt specially for him a work of Bach which was
little known and not likely to be much cared about. Her gift had never
been offered.... And now, after all this interval, he was enquiring
about the very piece she had learned for him!
She put the telephone apparatus on the top of the piano on which she
tried things over. Then sitting down she played over the first few bars
of the concerto.... Keeping the receiver to her ear she heard:
“That’s it!--That’s the one!--Do you know it?--Curious--well, well, get
it for me, will you.... Good!--I’ve tried all over town for it....”
“What address?” she enquired mechanically.
The voice replied: “Professor Verreker ... Seahill ... Barhanger,
Essex.”
As she walked back to the counter Mr. Hobbs said: “Did you know what
the gentleman wanted?”
“Yes,” she replied fiercely, triumphantly, contemptuously. He stared at
her. He did not know that a change had passed swiftly over her. He did
not know that the sound of a man’s voice spoken over fifty miles had
swept her out of the calm seas into the wind and rain and storm. He did
not know that once again she was in deep and troubled waters, fighting
for life and a sure footing. He thought his invitation had offended
her. He made haste to apologize.
“I hope,” he began, “you didn’t mind me asking you to Box----”
“I’m afraid,” she replied impatiently, “I can’t come ... I’ve ... I’ve
another engagement....”
And he went away into the gramophone department....
§ 3
The knowledge that Verreker was in England, within approachable
distance of her, gave her a strange, complicated mixture of pleasure
and annoyance. Deep down in her heart she knew that to see him again
would be as a breath of life after ages of dim existence. Yet she
was annoyed, because she had grown to be satisfied with the dull,
drab routine of her days: she had built up a new, and on the whole
satisfactory scheme of existence on the supposition that she should
never see him again. She did not want to see him again. She did not
want to have anything to do with him. And yet she knew that some day
either circumstances or her own initiative would bring her face to face
with him once more.... She knew that his place in her life had not
achieved finality, that there was more to say and to hear, and great
decisions to be made.
Secretly she knew that some day, when the impulse seized her, she would
go to visit him at Barhanger. But with amazing credulity she told
herself: Of course I shall never go to see him. If he cares to ask me
I will come. But he must take the initiative, not I.... But she began
to picture their meeting. She began to conjure up images of Seahill
and the Essex countryside and he and she walking and talking amidst
a background of her own imagining. Just as in the old days she had
invented an “ideal” conversation to be pursued at any surprise meeting
with her father, so now she concocted a special dialogue between
herself and Verreker, which, if he should only play the part allotted
to him, would reveal her in an attractive and mysterious light. Of
course he would not do so: of that she was quite certain, yet the
manufacture of ideal rôles for him and herself gave her a good deal
of restricted pleasure. She must at this time have decided definitely
to go and see him, otherwise there could have been no inducement for
her to dream dreams. But she still told herself that she would not see
him till he had seen her.... One evening she visited the reference
department of the Bockley Carnegie library and consulted a map of
Essex. Barhanger was almost on the sea-coast; five miles from the
nearest railway station, overlooking one of the great tidal estuaries
of the Essex rivers. And Barhanger Creek reached right up to the
village of Barhanger.... She had not thought it was so near the sea.
She had pictured an inland village with a village green and thatched
cottages and perhaps a single-line railway station. Now she had to
dream her dreams over again in a different setting, and into this new
setting came the creek and the broad estuary and the shining sea, all
magnificently idealized, all transfigured by the presence of herself
and Verreker....
It was curious how the thought of him awoke in her old dreams and
aspirations. She began once more to revile her own soul for its
selfishness and avarice: she began to wish for her old pianoforte
prowess and such education as she had once managed to cram into that
head of hers. Yet against her will was all this change and flurry: she
was always protesting, I am better as I am. I want to be quiet and
respectable. I don’t want to see him or to know him, because he has
unlimited power to make me unhappy....
Her superb serenity left her. She became once more a foolish,
unreliable creature of fierce trivialities. She no longer took any
interest in the affairs of Amelia and her mother and Mr. Hobbs. She
began to think rather acutely of Helen, though. How would Helen come
into the matter? Would Helen be jealous of her interference? ... And
did he love Helen? Or was it only a marriage of convenience? All those
things she would never find out unless she visited him. Though, of
course, she would not visit him without an invitation. That was quite
decided.
On the Saturday morning before the August Bank Holiday Mr. Hobbs left
a note for her on her desk. She slipped it in her hand-bag without
opening it.... She was concerned with other things. And when she got
home on Saturday afternoon she discovered on her table a card left by
the Rev. Elkin Broodbank, of St. Luke’s Vicarage, Bockley. This also
she dropped unceremoniously into her hand-bag.... She was concerned
with other things.... She next took up an A.B.C. railway guide, and
searched it carefully for some minutes. Then she shut it with a bang
and went to her bedroom to decorate herself. She was not so charming
as she once had been, and so the process of decoration became a longer
one. Her hair--the thing of her she most prized--had begun to be dull
and lack-lustre: the eyes, too, had lost vivacity. She was no longer
a young woman.... Oh, the horror of growing old, when youth has taken
charm away! ... But she was concerned with other things. She scribbled
a note to Mrs. Lazenby and left it on the kitchen table. Then she
walked discreetly down the steps into Cubitt Lane, and by way of
Makepeace Common to Bockley Station....