§ 4
The summer sun shone down upon the scorched London streets, and the lives of those who worked in the music department of Ryder and Sons were monotonously uneventful. Every morning Catherine and Amelia caught the 8.12 from Bockley and arrived in Liverpool Street at 8.37. Every morning Mr. Hobbs said “Good morning,” with exquisite politeness, to all the female assistants. Every lunch-time Mr. Hobbs went to the same A.B.C. tea-shop, sat at the same marble-topped table, was served by the same waitress, to whom he addressed the mystic formula “usual please,” which resulted in the appearance some minutes later of a glass of hot milk and a roll and butter. During the meal he scanned the headlines of the morning paper, but after the last mouthful had been carefully masticated he gave himself up to a fierce scrutiny of the stock markets. Was his ambition to be a financier? ...
If Amelia was sullen on a Sunday afternoon, there were occasions when she was sullen on week-days also. A sulky discontent was ingrained in her nature, and Catherine was often treated to exhibitions of it. Then suddenly Catherine discovered the reason. Amelia was jealous of her. Amelia regarded her own relationship with Mr. Hobbs as promising enough to merit high hopes: these high hopes had been blurred, it seemed, by the swift dazzlement of Catherine.
Catherine was amused. Chronically jealous as she herself had been in her time, she had no sympathy whatever with others afflicted with the same disease. And Amelia’s jealousy seemed absurd and incredible. Catherine was beginning to take a malicious dislike to Amelia. Mr. Hobbs was so scrupulously correct in his treatment of them both that Amelia’s jealousy became ludicrously trivial. In her youthful days Catherine would have tried to flirt extravagantly with him for the mere pleasure of torturing Amelia, but now her malice had become a thing of quieter if of deadlier potency. She would wait. She did not like him at all, but she did not blame him in the least for preferring herself to Amelia. It was inconceivable that any man should desire Amelia. She would wait: she would be as friendly with Mr. Hobbs as she chose (which did not imply a very deep intimacy), and Amelia and her jealousy, if she still persisted in it, could go to the devil.
Even to Mr. Hobbs her attitude was curiously compounded of pity and condescension. As much as to say: I don’t enjoy your company particularly, but I am taking pity on you: I know how awful it must be for a man to have anything to do with that horrid Miss Lazenby. But don’t presume upon my kindness.
He did indeed begin to talk to her rather more than the strict business of the shop required. And in doing so he displayed the poverty of his intellect. He had a mind well stocked with facts—a sort of abridged encyclopædia—and that was all.
He brought her a piece of newly published music to try over. She played it through and remarked that it was very pretty, not because she thought it was, but because the habit of saying things like that had grown upon her.
“Very pretty,” he agreed. “There’s a—a something—in it—a peculiar sort of melody—oriental, you know, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “There is, quite.”
“It’s strange,” he went on, “how some pieces of music are quite different from others. And yet the same. You know what I mean. When you’ve heard them you say, ‘I’ve heard that before!’ And yet you haven’t. I suppose it must be something in them.”
“I suppose so.”
“It’s in a minor, isn’t it?—Ah, there’s something in minors. Something. I don’t know quite how to describe it. A sort of mournfulness, you know. I like minors, don’t you?”
“Very much.”
They talked thus for several minutes, and then he asked her to come out with him the following Saturday afternoon. Chiefly out of curiosity she accepted....