§ 2
The “Grand Evening Concert” was a tame, spiritless affair. Catherine’s pianoforte solo was introduced at the commencement to tide over that difficult period during which the local élite (feeling it somewhat beneath their status to appear punctually at the advertised time) were shuffling and fussing into the reserved front seats. Her appearance on the platform was greeted with a few desultory claps. The piano (grand only architecturally) was placed wrongly; the sound-board was not raised, and it appeared to be nobody’s business to raise it for her. She played amidst a jangle of discordant noises: the rustle of paper bags and silk dresses, the clatter of an overturned chair, the sibilant murmur of several score incandescent gas lamps. All through there was the buzz of conversation, and if she looked up from the keyboard she could see the gangways full of late-comers streaming to their seats, standing up to take off their cloaks, making frantic signals to others for whom they had kept seats vacant, passing round bags of sweets, bending down to put their hats under the seat, diving acrobatically into obscure pockets to find coppers for the programme girls, doing anything, in fact, except listen to her playing. Somehow this careless, good-humoured indifference gave her vast confidence. She felt not the least trace of nervousness, and she played perhaps better than she had ever done before. She had even time to think of subsidiary matters. A naked incandescent light lit up the keyboard from the side nearest the rear of the platform, and she deliberately tossed her head at such an angle that the red cloud of her hair should lie in the direct line of vision between a large part of the audience and the incandescent light. She knew the effect of that. At intervals, too, she bent her head low to the keyboard for intricate treble eccentricities. She crossed her hands whenever possible, and flung them about with wild abandon. It would be absurd to say she forgot her audience; on the contrary, she was remembering her audience the whole time that she was playing. And during the six or seven minutes that Liszt’s Concert Study in A flat lasted, her mind was registering vague regrets. She regretted that nobody had thought to raise the sound-board for her. She regretted the omission of all those little stylish affectations which in the first thrill of appearing on the platform she had forgotten all about. She had not polished her hands with her handkerchief before starting. She had not adjusted the music-stool. She had not pushed back the music-rest as far as it would go. She had not played the chord and arpeggio inversions of A flat major and paused dramatically before beginning the composition of Liszt. All these things she had forgotten. People would think she was an inexperienced player. Anyhow, she made up as well as she could for her initial deficiencies during the progress of the piece. She “swanked,” according to the popular expression. She was very conscious of the effect her hair was or ought to be producing....
As a matter of fact, nobody was either looking at her or listening to her with any particular interest or eagerness.
She was awakened from her egoistic dreams by the half-hearted applause of those people who by divine instinct know when a piece is coming to an end several bars ahead, and start their applause at the last bar but one.... She bowed graciously in front of the piano, and tripped lightly behind the scenes. The applause did not justify an encore.... She had made up her mind as she played the concluding chords of the Concert Study: If I am given an encore, I will do all those things I omitted to do before: I will polish my hands, adjust the stool, push back the music-rest, have the sound-board lifted, run up with arpeggios on the tonic....
But she was not given an encore.
In the artists’ room behind the scenes nobody took much notice of her. Fred Hitchcock, a local tenor with baritone leanings, was giving final frenzied directions to his accompanist, a large-featured female with an excessively low and powdered neck.
“Go slow over that twiddly bit,” he whispered, catching hold of her to lead her on to the platform. “And don’t forget to give me the leading note in the adagio.” His hoarse voice merged into the buzz of sound that came down the corridor leading to the platform.
She overheard a conversation.
“What was that thing that girl played?”
“What girl?”
“The girl with the red hair.”
“Oh, I don’t know—some Liszt thing, I think.”
“Classical?”
“S’pose so ... of course, nobody listens to pianoforte solos nowadays....”
“They’re too common, that’s what it is. Everybody strums on the piano, more or less.”
“I suppose you went to hear Razounov?”
“No, I couldn’t get a seat. The Hippodrome was full of people who went to see him do something eccentric.”
“Did he?”
“No, as it happened. A friend told me he just came on the platform, played like an angel for two hours, and went off again. Of course everybody was greatly disappointed.”
“Naturally....”
“Bockley isn’t a musical suburb. It doesn’t even think it is. Whereas Upton Rising thinks it is and isn’t.... I wish that pianoforte player of ours wouldn’t show so much of her red hair and try to look like a female Beethoven....”
“Oh, shut up—she’s probably somewhere about, she’ll hear you....”
Catherine put on her hat and cloak and went out by the side door. She was not angry, but she was suffering from one of those periodical fits of disillusionment which were the aftermath of her dreaming. She walked out into the Ridgeway, where the gas lamps glowed amongst the sprouting trees. Far away she could hear the clang of trams along the High Road. She passed the corner house where, it seemed now an age ago, she had discovered her soul in the murmur of a grand piano. Swiftly she walked along the tarred asphalt, thinking to reach Gifford Road and have supper. She felt disappointed. The evening had been lacking in that species of adventure it had seemed to promise. She had not seen George Trant. That, she told herself, had nothing to do with it.
Down the Ridgeway a newsboy came running bearing a placard-sheet in front of him.
“Suicide of a Bockley Schoolmaster,” it said. An awful excitement seized her. Eagerly she bought a paper and searched the front page.
It took some moments to discover the announcement. It was only a small paragraph on an inside page: the placard had evidently been printed to stimulate local circulation.
“Mr. Weston,” she read, “of 24, Kitchener Road, Bockley, an elementary school teacher at the Downsland Road Council School ... throat cut....”
She leaned up against the iron railing round a tree. Then, discovering that she was attracting the attention of passers-by, she walked on more swiftly than before. In her excitement she took the opposite direction, towards the Bockley High Street....