§ 2
As she entered the side door of No. 14, Gifford Road at the improper hour of three a.m., the thin voice of Mrs. Carbass called down the stairs: “That you, Miss Weston?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a telegraph for you on the table....”
“Righto!” How jaunty! How delightfully nonchalant! As if one were used to receiving telegrams! As if one were even used to arriving home at three a.m.!
Catherine turned the tap of the gas, which had been left burning at a pin-point in the basement sitting-room. Her hand must have been unsteady, for she turned it out. That necessitated fumbling for matches....
The telegram was addressed to the Upton Rising Cinema, and had been handed in at Bockley Post Office some twelve hours before. It ran:
Father had accident. Come at once.—MAY.
Now who was May?
After much cogitation Catherine remembered an Aunt May, her mother’s sister, who lived at Muswell Hill. Catherine had seen her but once, and that was on the occasion of her mother’s funeral. She had a vague recollection of a prim little woman about fifty, with a high-necked blouse and hair done up in a knob at the back.
Catherine decided to go as soon as possible the following day. She went quietly to bed, but found it impossible to sleep. She was strangely exhilarated. She felt like a public-school boy on the eve of the breaking-up morning. New emotions were in store for her, and she, the epicure, delighted in new and subtle emotions. Yet even with her exhilaration there was a feeling of doubt, of misgiving, of uneasiness as to the nature of her own soul. Was she really heartless? How was it she had never grieved at her mother’s death? Try as she would, she could not detect in her feelings for her father anything much more than excitement, curiosity, amazement, even in a kind of way admiration, at what he had done. She felt he had done something infinitely bigger than himself. For the first time in her life she felt towards him impersonally, as she might have done towards any stranger: “I should like to have known that man.”
The exact significance of her attitude towards George Trant came upon her. She was playing with him. She knew that. It was not so much in revenge for what had happened long before; it was from sheer uncontrollable ecstasy at wielding a new and incomprehensible power. She would have played ruthlessly with any man who had been so weak and misguided as to fall in love with her. She knew that perfectly well. Therefore it was a good thing the man was George Trant, for at least in his case she might conceivably justify herself. And yet she knew that justifying herself had really nothing at all to do with the matter; she knew that there was in her some mysterious impulse that prompted her to do and to say things quite apart from any considerations of justice or justification. Cruel? Yes, possibly.
She pondered.
No. She was not cruel. If she heard a cat mewing in the street she would scarcely ever pass it by. A child crying filled her with vague depression. She was not cruel. But she was immensely, voraciously curious, a frantic explorer of her own and other people’s emotions, a ruthless exploiter of dramatic possibilities. She had not developed these traits by reading novels or seeing plays or any such exterior means. They were inherent in herself.
Suddenly she remembered the note that had been given her that evening. By the light of a candle she sat up in bed and tore open the thin, purple-lined envelope.
She read:
DEAR MADAM,
Will you come and see me to-morrow (Sunday) at three p.m., “Claremont,” the Ridgeway, Upton Rising?—Yrs., etc.,
EMIL RAZOUNOV.
Razounov!
She actually laughed, a little silver ripple which she immediately stifled on reflecting that Mrs. Carbass slept in the room below.
Razounov!
Truly she was developing into a very marvellous and remarkable personage! ...