But they--they were bound in the close-meshed strait-waistcoat of
endless toil, petty anxiety. The days and hours heaped in front of them
obliterated all possible view of the future.
In the beginning they had been as excited as he was over the thought of
the concert. He must wear a rosette--no, a flower in his button-hole;
and white kid gloves; as he moved forward upon the platform, he must
bow right and left, and draw them off as he bowed.
This was Jenny's idea. It was Jenny who made him practise his bows, and
it was Jenny who borrowed a dress-suit from a waiter-friend; while it
was his mother who "got up" the borrowed shirt to go with it, stiff and
shining; who polished his best boots until they looked "near as near
like patent."
All this had been done close upon a fortnight before. Jenny was a good
girl, but if she was not there to see to things, Jenny might fail with
a bubble on the shirt-front. No amount of meaning well was of any use
in getting up a stiff shirt as it ought to be got up.
"Better 'ave it all ready, 'a-case o' anything happening." That was
what Mrs. Cohen said to herself, with a dull dread at the back of her
mind: a feeling as though every next day were a Friday.
Her face had been oddly flushed of late, with a rather fixed and glassy
look about the eyes. Jenny thought of this, on her way to the concert;
alone, for by some ill fate, his nearer vision blurred in that golden
maze of the future, Ben had fixed his concert for a Friday.
This Friday! Always a bad day, bad in itself, bad for every one, like
an east wind; worst of all for a laundress: not so depressing as a
Monday, but so hurried, so overcrowded, with all the ironing and
folding, the packing of the lots, all small, into their separate
newspaper parcels; the accumulated fatigue of a whole week. Some demon
seemed to possess her clients that week: they had come in with a collar
here, a shirt there, an odd pillow-slip, tablecloth, right over
Thursday. She was working until after twelve o'clock that night--so was
Jenny--up before dawn next morning, though no one save herself knew of
this.
"Whatever they do, they shan't not keep me from my Ben's concert!" That
was what she said, with a vision of motors blocking the road in front
of the little hall. But she had been a laundress best part of a
lifetime--before she discovered herself as the mother of a genius--and
it had bit into her bone: she could not get finished, and she could not
leave the work undone.
"Some one's got to earn a living!"--that was what she said, embittered
by fatigue, the sweat pouring down her face, beaten to every
sensibility, apart from her swollen feet, by the time that Jenny called
in for her, soon after six. She had longed to go, had never even
thought of not going; but by now, apart from her physical pain and
weariness, she was alive to but one point, her whole being drawn out to
a sort of cone with an eye at the end of it; and far, far away at the
back of her brain, struggling with impenetrable mists, but one
thought--if she scorched anything, she would have to replace it.
When Jenny found that it was impossible to move her, she made her own
way up to Clapton alone. For Ben had to be at the hall early; there
were certain matters to arrange, and he would try over the piano.
Her efforts with Mrs. Cohen had delayed her; she was driven desperate
by that cruel malice of inanimate things: every 'bus and tram was
against her, whisking out of sight just as she wanted them, or blocked
by slow crawling carts and lorries. There was a tight, hard pain in her
heart, like toothache, round which her whole body gathered, pressing,
impaled upon it; a sense of desperation, and yet at the heart of this,
like a nerve, the wonder if anything really mattered.
Ben had promised to reserve seats for his mother and herself; but had
he?--Had he? Would she find the place blocked by swells with their hard
stare, duchesses and such-like, glistening in diamonds? In her mind's
eye she saw billows of silk, slabs of black cloth and shining white
shirt-fronts--hundreds and hundreds of them. And Ben bowing, bowing to
them as she had taught him to do.
For some time past he had been so far away, so detached that she was
haunted by the fear that if she put out a finger to touch him it might
go through him, as though he were a ghost. At times she had caught him,
held him to her in a passion of love and longing. But even then, with
his head against her heart, his lips, or some pulse or nerve, had moved
in a wordless tune, the beat of time.
If only he had still seemed to need her, nothing, nothing would have
mattered. But he didn't: he needed no one--no one. He seemed so frail,
she had made sure that he wanted looking after; but he didn't. A
drunkard might have fallen down in the street, needed fetching,
supporting, exhorting; a bully come home with a broken head. But it
seemed as though Ben were, in reality, for all his air of appeal,
sufficient to himself, moving like a steady light through the darkness;
unstirred by so much as a breath of wind.
Overcome by anxiety, she got out of the tram too soon. It had begun to
rain, a dull, dark night, and there was a blur of misty light flooding
the pavement a little way ahead. That must be the hall. She was afraid
of over-shooting the mark. Those trams had such a way of getting going
just as one wanted to be out of them!
But the light was nothing more than a cinema, and she she had a good
quarter of a mile to walk in the wet. The cruel wet!--just like it to
be wet on this night of all nights! Even her optimism was gone. She
kept on thinking of Mrs. Cohen, her flushed face and oddly-glazed eyes;
the queer stiff way in which she moved, held her head. For once she was
angry with Ben.
"'Im and his crowds,' 'Im an' 'is fine lydies! 'Im an' 'is
_motor-cars_!"
After all, she did overshoot her mark; on inquiry for the hall, she was
told that she had passed it, and was obliged to retrace her steps.
No wonder she had passed it; with all she had expected at the back of
her mind! The strip of pavement outside was dark, with not so much as a
single taxi in sight; the door half-shut, the dreary vestibule
badly-lighted, empty, smelling of damp. The sodden-looking sketch of a
man in the pay-box seemed half asleep; stretched, yawned when she
spoke, pushing a strip of pink paper towards her as she gave her name.
"For two." He poked out a long neck and peered round the edge of the
box, like a tortoise from its shell.
"The other lydy wasn't not able ter come ter-night," answered Jenny
with dignity, and the beast grinned, displaying a wreckage of broken
teeth.
"Ain't not what you might call a crowd, anyway," he remarked.
She could have killed him for that! She realised the white face of a
clock, but she would not look at it. She was early, that was it. Look
how she had hurried. No wonder that she was early. And great ladies
were always late: she had learnt that from the _Daily Mail_ stories.
"Two an' two make four--them too late an' me too early!" she said to
herself, with a gallant effort after her own brisk way of taking
things, a surer tap of heels on the stone floor as she turned towards a
swing-door to her left; pushed it open, and was hit in the face by what
seemed like a thick black curtain.
A dim white-gloved hand was thrust through it and took her ticket.
"Mind you don't fall--no good wasting the lights until they come--if
ever they does come," exhorted and explained a voice out of the
darkness; for, after all, it was not a curtain, but just darkness.
At first Jenny could see nothing. Then, little by little, it seemed as
though different objects crept forward, one by one, like wild animals
from their lair.
Those white patches, the hands of two white-gloved men, holding sheaves
of programmes--she realised one between her own fingers--whispering
together.
There was the platform, the great piano sprawling over it; and in front
of this, rows and rows and rows--and rows upon rows--of empty seats.
She looked behind her--they had argued long over the question of places
for herself and his mother. "The very best," that's what Ben had said;
but they fought against this, fought and conquered, for the best seats
meant money. "What's a seat more or less, I'd like to know?"
"Money, all money." Old Mrs. Cohen had been firm upon this point.
Still, there were a great many seats yet further back--and all empty: a
little raised, seeming to push themselves forward with the staring
vacuity of an idiot: more seats overhead in a curving balcony, rising
above each other as though proud of their emptiness. It would have been
impossible to believe that mere vacant places could wear so sinister,
as well as foolish, an aspect. An idiot, but a cruel idiot, too: the
whole thing one cruel idiot, of the sort that likes to pull legs from
flies.
There was a clock there, also. For a long while Jenny would not allow
herself to look at it. But something drew her, until it became an
unbearable effort to keep her eyes away from it, to look anywhere else;
and at last she turned her head, stared, sharply, defiantly, as though
daring it.
It was five-and-twenty minutes to nine. Five-and-twenty minutes to
nine, and the concert was to have begun at eight!--Five-and-twenty
minutes to nine, and there was no one there--no one whatever!
The clock hands dragged themselves on for another five-minutes; then
one of the men disappeared behind the scene; came back, speaking
excitedly, gesticulating with white hands:
"We're to turn on the light. 'E swears as 'e won't give it up--'e's
goin' ter play."
"Goin' ter play? Well, I'll be blowed!--Goin' ter play! An' with
nothing 'ere but _That_"
Jenny saw how he jerked his head in her direction. So she was
"That"--she, Jenny Bligh!--and so far gone that she did not even care.
As the lights went up the hall seemed to swim in a sort of mist: the
terra-cotta walls, the heavy curtains at either side of the platform,
those awful empty seats!
Jenny spread her skirt wide, catching at the chair to either side of
her, stretching out her arms along the backs of them. She had a wild
feeling as though it were up to her to spread herself sufficiently to
cover them all. She half rose. Perhaps she could hide more of that
emptiness if she moved nearer to the front: that was her thought.
But no; she mustn't do that: this was the place Ben had chosen for her;
she must stay where she was. He might look there, miss her, and imagine
that there was nobody, nobody at all; that even she had failed him.
If only she could spread herself--spread herself indefinitely--multiply
herself: anything, anything to cover those beastly chairs: sticking out
there, grinning, shaming her man!
Then she had a sudden idea of running into the street, entreating the
people to come in; was upon her feet for the second time, when Ben
walked on to the platform.
For once he was not ducking or moving sideways; he came straight
forward, bowed to the front of him, right and left; drew off his gloves
and bowed again. Mingling with her agony of pity, a thrill, ran through
Jenny Bligh at this. He remembered her teaching; he was
hers--hers--hers--after all, hers--more than ever hers!
The borrowed coat, far too big for him, rose in a sort of hood at the
back of his neck; as he bowed something happened to the centre stud of
his shirt, and it disappeared into an aperture shaped like a dark gourd
in the whiteness.
But, for all that, Jenny felt herself overawed by his dignity, as any
one would have been: there was something in the man so much greater
than his clothes, greater than his conscious, half-childish self.
Jenny's hands were raised to clap; but they dropped into her lap, lay
there, as, with a face set like marble, Ben turned and seated himself
at the piano. There was a moment's pause, while he stared straight in
front of him--such a pause that a feeling of goose-flesh ran down the
back of her arms--then he began to play.
Jenny had not even glanced at her programme; she would have understood
nothing of it if she had; but it gave the Sonata, Op. III, as the
opening piece.
Ben, however, took no notice of this; but, for some reason he could not
have explained, flung himself straight-way into the third item, the
tremendous "Hammerclavier."
The sounds flooded the hall; swept through it as if it were not there,
obliterating time and space. It was as though the Heavenly Host had
descended upon the earth, sweet, wonderful, and yet terrible, with a
sweep of pinions, deep-drawn breath--Tubal Cain and his kind, deified
and yet human in their immense masculinity and strength.
Jenny Bligh was neither imaginative nor susceptible to sound, but it
drew her out of herself. It was like bathing in a sea whose waves
overpower one so that, try as one may to cling to the earth, it slips
off from beneath one's feet--shamed, beaten. She had a feeling that if
it did not stop soon she would die; and would yet die when it did stop.
Her heart beat thickly and heavily, her eyes were dim; she was
bewildered, lost, and yet exhilarated. It was worse than an air raid,
she thought--more exciting, more wonderful.
The end left her almost as much exhausted as Ben himself. The sweat was
running down his face as he got up from his seat, came forward to the
front of the platform, and bowed right and left. Jenny had not
clapped--she would as soon have thought of clapping God with His last
trump--but Ben bowed as though a whole multitude had applauded him.
By some chance, the only direction in which he did not turn his eyes
was the gallery: even then, he might not have seen a single figure
seated a little to one side--a man with a dark overcoat buttoned up to
his chin, who clapped his two thumbs noiselessly together, drawing in
his breath with a sort of whistle.
"That's the stuff!" he said. "That's the stuff to give 'em!"
After a moment's pause, Ben turned again to the piano. This time he
played the Sonata Pathétique in C Minor, Op. XIII; then the Sonata
Walstein in C Major. Between each, he got up, moved forward to the edge
of the platform, and bowed.
At the end of the Sonata, Op. III--by rights the first on the
programme--during the short interval which followed it he straightened
his shoulders with a sort of swagger, utterly unlike himself, swung
round to the piano again, and slammed out "God Save the King."
He played it through to the very end, then rose, bowed from where he
stood, stared round at the empty hall--a dreadful, strained, defiant
smile stiffening upon his face--and sinking back upon his stool, laid
his arms across the keyboard with a crash of notes, burying his head
upon them.
In a moment Jenny was out of her seat. There were chairs in her way,
and she kicked them aside; raked one forward with her foot, and
scrambled on to the platform; then, catching a sideways glimpse of the
empty seats, bent forward and shook her fist at them.
"Beasts! Pigs! A-a-a-ah!--You!"
The attendants had disappeared, the stranger was lost in shadows. There
was nobody there but themselves: it would not have mattered if there
had been: all the lords and ladies, all the swells in the world, would
not have mattered. The great empty hall, suddenly friendly, closed,
curving, around them.
Jenny dropped upon her knees at Ben's side, and flung her arms about
him, with little moans of love and pity; slid one hand beneath his
cheek, with a muffled roll of notes, raised his head and pressed it
against her heart.
"There, my dear! There, my love--there--there--there!"
She laid her lips to his thick dark hair, in a passion of adoration,
loving every lock of it; and then, woman-like, picked a white thread
from off his black coat; clasped him afresh, with joy and sorrow like
runnels of living water pouring through and through her.
"There, there, there, there!"
He was too much of a child to fight against her: all his pride was
gone. "Oh, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny!" he cried; then, in an extremity of
innocent anguish, amazement--
"They didn't come! They don't care--they don't want it! Jenny, they
don't want it!"
"Don't you worry about them there blighters, my darling. Selfish pigs!
they ain't not worth a thought. Don't you worry about them."
"But--Beethoven...."
"Don't you worry about Beethoven, neifer--ain't no better nor he
oughter be, taeke my word fur it. Lettin' you in like this 'ere!
There--there--there, my dear!"
They clung together, weeping, rocking to and fro. "Well," said the man
in the gallery, "I'm jiggered!" and crept out very softly, stumbling a
little because of the damp air which seemed to have got into his eyes
and made them smart.
As the lovers came out into the little vestibule, clinging to each
other, they did not so much as see the stranger, who stood talking to
the man in the box-office, but went straight on out into the rain, with
their umbrellas unopened in their hands.
"A good thing as the 'all people insists upon payment in advance,"
remarked the man in the box-office.
The other gave him a curious, half-contemptuous glance. "I'd like to
hear you say that in a year's time."
"Why?"
"Because that chap will be able to buy and sell a place like this a
hundred times over by then--Queen's Hall--Albert Hall--I know. It's my
business to know. There's something about his playing. That _something
different_ they're all out for."
It took a long time to get back to Canning Town. Even Jenny had lost
her certainty: her grasp of the ways of 'buses and such things. She
felt oddly clear and empty: like a room swept and garnished, with the
sense of a ghost in some dim corner of it; physically sapped out.
Ben clung to her. He said very little, but he clung to her, with an
odd, lost air: the look of a child who has been slapped in the face,
and cannot understand why.
She was so much smaller than he, like a diminutive, sturdy steam-tug;
and yet if she could have carried him, she would have done so.
As it was, she threw her whole heart and soul into guiding, comforting;
thinking of a hundred things at once, her soft mouth folded tight with
anxiety.--How to prevent him from feeling shamed before his mother: how
to keep the trouble away from her: though at the back of her own mind
was a feeling--and she had an idea that it would be at the back of old
Mrs. Cohen's also--of immense relief, of some load gone: almost as
though her child had been through a bad attack of scarlet-fever, or
something which one does not take twice.
With all this, there was the thought of what she would step out and buy
for their supper, if the fried-fish shop were still open; all she would
do and say to cheer them.
As for Ben, the "Hammerclavier" was surging through his brain, carrying
the empty hall with it, those rows upon rows of empty seats--swinging
them to and fro so that he felt physically sick, as though he were at
sea.
Quite suddenly, as they got out of the last tram, the rain ceased. At
the worst it had been a mild night of velvety darkness and soft airs,
the reflection from the lamps swimming in a haze of gold across the wet
pavement; but now, just as they reached the end of his own street, the
black sky opened upon a wide sea of pinkish-amber and a full moon
sailed into sight. At the same moment, Ben's sense of anguished
bewilderment cleared away, leaving in its place a feeling of
incalculable weariness.
To be back in his own home again--that was all he asked. "You'll stay
the night at our place, Jenny?" "Yes; I promised your mother." Her brow
knitted, and then cleared again. Ah, well; that was all over: Ben would
go back to his regular job again; they would get married; then there
would be her money, too: no need for old Mrs. Cohen to do another
hand's turn. Plenty of time for her to rest now: all her life for
resting in.
"Your mother." As she spoke Ben remembered, for the first time,
actively remembered, for of course it was his mother that he meant when
he thought of home.
"She wasn't there, Jenny! She wasn't there!"
"She was very busy, 'adn't not finished 'er work." Something beyond
Jenny's will stiffened within her. So he had only just realised it! She
tried not to remember, but she could not help it--the flushed face, the
glassy eyes: the whole look of a woman beaten, with her back against a
wall; condemning Ben by her very silence, desperate courage.
"Work?"
"Yes, work." Jenny snapped it: hating herself for it, drawing him
closer, and yet unable to help it. "Why----" began Ben, and then
stopped--horrified. At last he realised it: perhaps it ran to him
through Jenny's arm; perhaps it was just that he was down on earth
again, humble, ductile, seeing other people's lives as they were, not
as he meant to make them.
"Ter-night--workin'"
"All night; one the saeme as another."
"But why----" he began again; stopped dead, loosed his own arm and
caught hers. "All this while workin' like that! She works too hard.
Jenny, look here: she works too hard. And I--this damned music! Look
here, Jenny, it's got to stop! I'll never play a note again; she shall
never do a hard stroke of work again; never, never--not so long as I'm
here to work for her. All my life--ever since I can remember--washing
and ironing, like--like--the very devil!"
He pulled the girl along with him. "That was what I was thinking all
the time: to make a fortune so that you'd both have everything you
wanted, a big house, servants, motors, silk dresses----And all the time
letting you both work yourselves to death! But this is the end; no more
of that. To be happy--that's all that matters--sort of everyday
happiness.
"No more of that beastly washing, ironing--it's the end of that,
anyhow. When I'm back at the timber-yard----"
He was like a child again, planning; they almost ran down the street.
"No more o' that damned washin' and ironin'--no more work----"
True! How true! The street door opened straight into the little
kitchen. She was not in bed, for the light was still burning; they
could see it at either side of the blind, shrunk crooked with steam.
There was one step down into the kitchen; but for all that, the door
would not open when they raised the latch and pushed it, stuck against
something.
"Some of those beastly old clothes!" Ben shoved it, hailing his mother.
"Mother! Mother, you've got something stuck against the door." Odd that
she did not come to his help, quick as she always was.
After all, it gave way too suddenly for him to altogether realise the
oddness; and he stumbled forward right across the kitchen, seeing
nothing until he turned and faced Jenny still standing upon the step,
staring downward, with an ashy-white face, wide eyes fixed upon old
Mrs. Cohen, who lay there at her feet, resting--incomprehensibly
resting.
They need not have been so emphatic about it all--"No more beastly
washing, no more work"--for the whole thing was out of their hands once
and for all.
She had fallen across the doorway, a flat-iron still in her hand--the
weapon with which she had fought the world, kept the wolf from that
same door--all the strain gone out of her face, a little twisted to the
left side, and oddly smiling. One child's pinafore was still unironed;
the rest were folded, finished.
They raised her between them, laid her upon her bed. It was Jenny who
washed her, wrapped her in clean linen--no one else should touch her;
Ben who sat by her, with hardly a break, until the day that she was
buried, wiped out with self-reproach, grief; desolate as any child,
sodden with tears.
He collected all his music into a pile, the day before the funeral,
gave it to Jenny to put under the copper--a burnt-offering.
"If it hadn't been for that, she might be here now. I don't want ever
to see it again--ever to hear a note of it!" That was what he said.
Jenny went back to the house with him after the funeral: she was going
to give him his tea, and then return to her own room. In a week they
were to be married, and she would be with him for good, looking after
him. That evening, before she left, she would set his breakfast, cut
his lunch ready for the morrow. By Saturday week they would be settled
down to their regular life together. She would not think about his
music; pushed it away at the back of her mind--over and done
with--would not even allow herself the disloyalty of being glad. And
yet was glad, deeply glad, relieved, despite her pride in it, in him:
as though it were something unknown, alien, dangerous, like things
forbidden.
Two men were waiting at the door of the narrow slip of a house: the
tall, thin one with his overcoat still buttoned up to his chin, and
another fat and shining, with a top-hat, black frock-coat, and white
spats.
"About that concert----" said the first man.
"We were thinking that if we could persuade you to play----" put in the
other.
"There was no one there," interrupted Ben roughly. His shoulders were
bent, his head dropped forward on his chest, poking sideways, his eyes
sullen as a child's.
"I was there," put in the first man, "and I must say, impressed----"
"Very deeply impressed," added the other; but once again Ben brushed
him aside.
"You were there--at my concert!" Jenny, standing a little back--for
they were all three crowded upon the tiny door-step--saw him glance up
at the speaker with something luminous shining through the darkness of
his face. "At my concert----! And you liked it? You liked it?"
"'Like' is scarcely the word."
"We feel that if you could be persuaded to give another concert," put
in the stout man, blandly, "and would allow----"
"I shall never play again--never--never!" cried Ben, harshly; but this
time the other went on imperturbably: "--allow us to make all
arrangements, take all responsibility: boom you; see to the advertising
and all that--we thought if we were to let practically all the seats
for the first concert go in complimentary tickets; get a few good names
on the committee--perhaps a princess or something of that sort as a
patroness--a strong claque"
"Of course, playing Beethoven--playing him as you played him the other
night. Grand-magnificent!" put in the first man realising the
weariness, the drop to blank indifference in the musician's face. "The
'Hammerclavier' for instance----"
It was magical.--"Oh, yes, yes--that--that!" Ben's eyes widened, his
face glowed. He hummed a bar or so. "Was there ever anything like it?
My God! was there ever anything like it!"
Jenny, who had the key, squeezed past them at this, and ran through the
kitchen to the scullery, where she filled the kettle and put it upon
the gas-ring to boil; looked round her for a moment, with quick,
darting eyes--like a small wild animal at bay in a strange place--then
drew a bucketful of water, turned up her sleeves, the skirt of her new
black frock, tied on an old hessian apron of Mrs. Cohen's, with a
savage jerk of the strings, and dropping upon her knees, started to
scrub the floor, the rough stone floor.
"Men!--trapsin' in an' out, muckin' up a place!"
She could hear the murmur of men's voices in the kitchen, and through
it that "trapsin'" of other men struggling with a long coffin on the
steep narrow stairs.
On and on it went--the agonised remembrance of all that banging,
trampling; the swish of her own scrubbing-brush; the voices round the
table where old Mrs. Cohen had stood ironing for hours and hours upon
end.
Then the door into the scullery was opened. For a moment or so she kept
her head obstinately lowered, determined that she _would_ not look up.
Then, feeling her own unkindness, she raised it and smiled upon Ben,
who stood there, flushed, glowing, and yet too shame-faced to
speak--smiled involuntarily, as one must smile at a child.
"Well?"
"That--that--music stuff--I suppose it's burnt?" he began, fidgeting
from one foot to another, his head bent, ducking sideways, his shoulder
to his ear.
Her glance enwrapped him--smiling, loving, bitter-sweet. Things were
not going to be as she had thought; none of that going out regularly to
work, coming home to tea like other men; none of that safe sameness of
life. At the back of her calm was a fierce battle; then she rose to her
feet, wiped her hands upon her apron, stooped to the lowest shelf of
the cupboard, and drew out a pile of music.
"There you are, my dear. I didn't not burn it, a'cause Well, I suppose
as I sorter knowed all the time as you'd be wantin' it."
Children! Well, one knew where one was with children--real children.
But men, that was a different pair of shoes altogether--something you
could never be sure of--unless you remembered, always remembered, to
treat them as though they were grown-up, think of them as children.
"Now you taeke that an' get along back to yer friends an' yer playin',
and let me get on with my work. It'll be dark an' tea-time on us afore
ever I've time ter so much as turn round."
"That woman," said the fat, shining man, as they moved away down the
street, greasy with river-mist.--"Hang it all! where in the world are
we to get a taxi?--Common-place little thing; a bit of a drag on him, I
should think."
"Don't you believe it, my friend--that's the sort to give 'em--some'un
who will sort of dry-nurse 'em--feed em--mind 'em. That's the wife for
a genius. The only sort of wife--mark my word for it."