§ 3
It was a large room facing the west. The sun shone drowsily on a table littered with papers and opened books. There was the piano which she had so often played in the music-room at “Claremont.” There were the same bookcases, with glass doors swung open, and the aperture between the tops of the books and the shelf above filled with letters and papers. That had always been one of his untidy habits. And scattered over all the available wallspace were disconnected fragments of shelving, sagging in the middle if the span were wide, and piled high with longitudinal and horizontal groups of books. The old brown leather armchairs and the club-fender occupied positions in front of the fireplace. The carpet was thick, and littered here and there with the grey smudge of tobacco-ash and scraps of torn paper that had escaped the meshes of the basket. The scene was curiously similar to that on which she had first seen him at “Claremont.” He was sitting in one of his armchairs with an adjustable reading bracket in front of him. She could see nothing of him, but a coil of rising smoke that straggled upwards from the back of the chair told her that he existed. She had knocked on the door before entering, and his voice had drawled its usual “Come in.” He had heard the door open and close again, but he did not look round. She knew this habit of his. Doubtless he would wait to finish the sentence or maybe the paragraph he was reading. She came across the intervening space and entered the limits within which his eye could not avoid seeing her. The sun caught her hair and flung it into radiance; she was glad of this, for it made her seem youthful again.
She saw him for a fraction of a second before he caught sight of her. And a strange feeling of doubt, of perplexity—might it be even of disappointment?—touched upon her. He was the same, quite the same. And yet—there was a sense in which he was not as she expected. But she had not expected him to be very much changed. It was only a passing phase that swept across her—hardly to be understood, much less explained. But she felt it, and it surprised her.
When he saw her he opened his eyes very wide and stared. Then he pushed back the book-rest and rose from his chair. All the time she was watching him narrowly. There was a queer phase during which neither of them moved or attempted to move. And then, the tension becoming too great to be borne, she gave her head a little toss and said: “Well?”
She had an absurd feeling of curiosity about his first words to her. In her ideal dialogue with him he struck an attitude of surprise and bewilderment and ejaculated, after the manner of the hero in a melodrama: “What?—You!—You! Is it really you?”
Of course he did nothing like that. She might have expected her fancied conversation to go all wrong from the start. He slowly and cautiously held out his right hand, and smiled a careful, quizzical smile.
And his first words were: “How are you?”
“Very well,” she replied mechanically.
There was a pause, after which he said: “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you,” she replied, and occupied the other armchair. He still remained standing and smoking.
“I suppose,” he said reflectively, “you got the address from the Directory?”
“No,” she replied nonchalantly, “it was quite by accident. I am one of the assistants in the music department of Ryder and Sons, and you yourself gave me your address over the telephone last Monday.”
“What a startling coincidence!” he muttered, as if by way of comment to himself.
Pause....
“So,” he went on meditatively, “you were the young lady who knew the Bach double-piano concerto from memory! Curious! ... I thought it was remarkable, and the next time I was in town I intended coming up to Ryder’s to see who you were.... Perhaps it is well I didn’t.... We might have startled each other.”
“We might,” she said quietly.
Long pause....
“I don’t remember your ever playing the concerto when I knew you,” he resumed, still in the rôle of a somewhat curious spectator. “I never taught it you, did I?”
“No,” she answered. “I learnt it myself.” And there was just a momentary gleam of fire within at that remark. As much as to say: “Don’t think I am not capable of doing some things myself.”
“Do you know all of it?” he asked.
“I did—but I don’t know if I remember it all now.” He tapped his pipe on the mantelpiece.
“I wish you’d play it for me,” he said, slowly and still meditatively, “I should like very much to hear it ... and besides ... it would ... give me time to think....”
“To think what?” she put in sharply.
He sat down, filled his pipe afresh and lit it, saying as he did so: “Well—to think—one of the things, at any rate—why you have come.”
There was something in the tone of that last remark of his which stung her to the retort:
“So you think it is possible for me to go to the piano and play a Bach concerto while you sit coolly down to wonder why I have come?”
“Well,” he said, suddenly and with emphasis, “why have you come?”
“You said if I was ever over in the States I was to come and see you. I naturally expected that the invitation would extend to when you returned to England.”
“Did it not occur to you,” he remarked slowly, “that when I returned from the States I should have sent you my address if I had desired to see you?”
“Of course,” she interposed neatly, “as it happens, I know that you never went to America at all.”
He did not seem greatly ruffled by this.
“Then,” he continued, “you know that I told you a lie. And you may have the satisfaction—if it is a satisfaction—of knowing also that you are the only person in the whole world who has ever made me do that. That honour,” he added bitterly, “you share with no one: it is yours entirely.”
She felt: Now we are getting to it.
“I don’t know why it should have been so necessary for you to tell me a lie,” she said.
“The fact is,” he announced brutally, “I wanted to get rid of you, and that seemed the only way.”
She winced a little at his words, but interposed sharply:
“Why did you want to get rid of me?”
He grunted something incoherent, and began to walk towards the door.
“Look here,” he said, “we’ll go for a walk. I’m not going to have you quarrelling in here.”
“But surely we aren’t going to quarrel?”
“On the contrary, we are going to quarrel. We’re going to quarrel most damnably.... Come on!”
He led her back down the steps into the kitchen. Helen was there preparing a meal. As he passed he addressed her.
“Miss Weston and I are going out for a stroll along the sea-wall, Helen.... We shan’t be long. Miss Weston has to get back to town to-night, so she hasn’t got much time to spare.”
“You’ve missed the last train already,” replied Helen.
“I shall take her in the car to the junction in time for the night train,” he answered.
“All right.... I shall see you again, shan’t I, Cathie?”
“We shall be back in half an hour,” he said curtly.
When they were out of Helen’s hearing Catherine said:
“Who told you I had to be back in town to-night?”
“I told myself,” he replied. “I insist upon your going back to-night.”
“And supposing I don’t?”
“I can only ask you,” he replied, somewhat subdued, “to avoid making things unnecessarily unpleasant.”
“Things need not be at all unpleasant,” she cried passionately, “if only you weren’t such a brute.”
She had not meant to say this.
He smiled a trifle cynically.
“Do you really think I’m a brute?” he asked. “There are lots of others who would agree with you,” he added encouragingly.
“I certainly think you are,” she replied, determined to uphold her statement. “Wasn’t it brutal to say you wanted to get rid of me?”
“But it was true.”
“Was it?”
“Quite!”
“Really?”
“If you only knew—Look here: there are moments when, if I could have had you painlessly extracted, I would have done it. I would have strangled you with my own fingers if I had not kept control of them!”
“And so, as I couldn’t be painlessly extracted, you extracted yourself, eh?”
“Yes.”
She laughed a trifle hysterically.
“Was it painless?” she enquired archly.
He swore under his breath.
“It was not,” he replied curtly.
Pause.... They were walking on the narrow ridge of the sea-wall, he in front and she a few paces behind. Neither could see the face of the other. The tide was coming in.... If they had not been busy with other matters they might have noticed the loveliness of the scene....
“The fact is,” he said gruffly, “I was in love with you against my will.”
She had known that for a long while, but she liked to hear him say it. And she was infected with a childish daring. She laughed boisterously.
“What?” she cried. “You in love with me?—Surely not? Never—I don’t believe it, Mr. Verreker.”
He answered, slowly and methodically: “It was so.... I will tell you about it if you wish to know. When I first heard you play before Razounov at my house I knew that you were no genius, but a person of slightly above average ability who might be trained or coerced into doing something worth while. But there were lots of people like that whom I refused to teach. I was going to refuse you, though I didn’t want to. A friend of yours—your fiancé, I supposed at that time—was offering to pay for your lessons. It seemed a capital excuse for accepting you as a pupil. To my everlasting regret I grabbed hold of it eagerly. You came to me once a week and I pumped music into you at the rate of three guineas a lesson.... Even then I believe I was in love with you....”
“I must have been,” he continued, “because you were such a little fool that normally I should have chucked you up. You had a horrible set of musical bad manners, and not an idea of how to play. I had to give you huge quantities of myself. I thought then I might create out of you something it would be worth my while to love. I tried. I admit you had remarkable receptiveness. You gulped down everything I offered you.... In fact, I made you. You hadn’t an idea in your head till I put some there. You couldn’t have played a note at a public concert unless I had shown you how to. You were absolutely dependent on me.... When I left your life you went smash. You found you couldn’t play without me. I was your sole source of inspiration, and you could no more play without me than a performing monkey will do its tricks without its keeper.”
“That’s not true,” she protested weakly, but he went on.
“Of course it didn’t really matter in the least my being in love with you. I had other things to think about. But when you began to be in love with me, things began to be dangerous. You see it was quite impossible for me to marry you.”
“Why?” she said sharply.
“Do you really wish to know?” he asked.
“I do.”
“It will offend you, possibly.”
“Never mind.... Tell me....”
He paused before answering.
“Well,” he said, “this is the politest way I can put it. I could not marry you because you weren’t up to standard—my standard, that is.”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“You will be offended if I reply.”
“Tell me, please.”
“If you wish,” he said nonchalantly. “To begin with, you are the most selfish person I have ever met. You are vain, conceited and a prig. Selfishness runs in all your veins. All your desires are selfish—all your aims are selfish—nay, nearly all your actions have been selfish. The only unselfish part of you was the part I compelled you to assimilate, and that was counterfeit.... God help any man you marry if he loves you. You will ruin him if you can. If you love him too, so much the worse for him.... Do you want me to go on?”
She bore all this with amazing calmness. True, she had been in some manner prepared for it, but she had not expected the denunciation to be so severe. What surprised her was that it did not hurt her as much as she had anticipated.
She did not answer his question.
“So you loved me against your will?” she said reflectively.
He nodded.
“Every woman likes to be loved like that,” she remarked daringly.
This speech of hers seemed to infuriate him. He stopped his walking and turned round to face her.
“If you can extract any satisfaction from the knowledge that I loved you against my will, have it!” he cried bitterly. “Nay, I’ll even say this: I love you passionately at this very moment. Take my love!—do what you like with it!—it is no concern of mine when it has once been given to you! ... I tried once to give you intellectual and spiritual sympathy—you showed me that was no use to you! You wanted my love! Well, now you have it, so be satisfied if you can! You have it, and also my profound dislike and contempt!”
She thought: If I were to cry now would it have any effect on him? She tried to cry but could not.
“Turn back now,” he commanded. They commenced the homeward journey.
“Why did you marry Helen?” she asked.
“Because I liked her and respected her.”
“And because if you married her you felt safe from me, eh?”
“If that were a true statement I would never admit it.”
“But you do not love her?”
“No.”
“Does she know?”
“She does not know. Do you want her to know?”
“I don’t care whether she knows or not.”
“Well, then, she shall not know....”
They were silent after this for a long while.
The tide was creeping in now through the maze of mud-banks: when they stopped talking they could hear the water oozing and splashing amongst the reeds. The thin streak of river had widened into a broad lake, and over it the sea-gulls were flapping their wings and crying weirdly. And far in the west where the estuary vanished into the grey hills the sun was sinking in proud splendour. In the near distance lay the village, with its line of cottages facing the sea-wall. Here and there the sun had picked out a window and turned it into a glittering ruby.
Oh, it was all inexpressibly beautiful, this evening picture, with the village and the green meadows and the sun and the rising tide! But Catherine scarcely noticed it. She walked on through the long, stiff grasses, and was thinking only of herself....