§ 7
Verreker returned to his seat. There followed a baritone song of the rollicking variety, a ’cello solo, and then Mrs. Trant called for a “pianoforte solo by Miss Catherine Weston.”
Catherine rose languidly, and picked her way amongst the violins and music-stands to the piano. She screwed the stool an inch or so higher (it being a point of honour with her always to make some alteration, however slight, in the seating accommodation provided for her), then she lowered the music-rest and slid it back as far as it would go. Her first piece was to be the “Butterfly” Study in G flat (Chopin), so she gently ran her hands arpeggio-wise along the tonic and inversions of G flat. Having done this she paused, chafed her fingers delicately, and tossed her head. The lamp at her side shone on her magnificent hair, throwing her face and bust into severe profile. It was then that she noticed a slight commotion in the far corner of the room. A man was disengaging himself from the closely-wedged throng and proceeding to the doorway. As he passed the fireplace the flames flickered brightly round a log of wood just placed on the fire. Catherine in a swift glance saw that it was Verreker.... Carefully he wound his way to the door and passed out.
Catherine flushed Her hands commenced to play, but her whole being was tingling with anger. She was conscious that everybody in the room had noticed his ostentatious withdrawal and was drawing conclusions from it. Everybody knew she took lessons from him. His going out of the room at that moment was nothing less than a deliberate insult offered to her in front of everybody. In the half-shadows round the piano she could see the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Trant, both rather bewildered.... Her fingers were moving automatically; before she properly realized she was playing a solo they had stopped. Cloudily she grasped the fact that the “Butterfly” Study had come to an end. Applause floated in, and she found herself walking back to her seat. Applause thinned and subsided; Mrs. Trant said something, and there began the tuning of a couple of violins with much unnecessary prodding of notes on the piano. George was saying something to her, but she was not listening. The door opened and Verreker re-entered. He sat down unostentatiously in a chair close by and his face was hidden by shadows. The piano tinkled into the opening of a Haydn Concerto.... And Catherine thought: “That was really a horrid thing to do. I believe it is the nastiest trick I ever saw. I expected rudeness, but somehow not that—at any rate, not in public.” She was primarily angry, but in her anger there was more than a tinge of disappointment....
She hated him. The fact that it was his teaching that had brought her success was swamped utterly in this petty insult he had seen fit to offer her in public. Once the idea did strike her: perhaps it was just coincidence that he went out while I was playing. But instinct told her that his withdrawal was deliberate, part of a planned scheme to humiliate her. And she kept piercing the shadows where he sat with a venomous greenish glint in her eyes, until she reflected that even if she could not see him, he could very likely see her. At this she flushed hotly and turned away. The evening crept towards midnight. Coffee was handed round. There was a momentary respite from music after the conclusion of the Hadyn Concerto, and conversation swelled into a murmurous hum all over the room. She lit a cigarette and puffed out smoke languidly. George went to the music cabinet and brought out some Ravel music. She scanned it perfunctorily; as a matter of fact she had but a vague idea of what it was like by looking at it. “Pavane pour un Enfant Défunt,” it was called; the first few pages looked charmingly simple. George could not find “Jeux d’Eaux.” Possibly he had not got a copy. But all this modern music was frightfully interesting. Had she heard César Franck’s Violin Sonata—the famous one? Or Scriabin’s Eleven Preludes? Or Debussy’s “L’Après-midi d’une Faune”? Of course, futurist music was merely the development of what other composers had led the way to. Some of Chopin’s Ballades and Preludes, for instance, gave one the impression that if he had lived a century later he might have been furiously modern. And of course Tchaikovsky. In fact——
Catherine listened patiently, putting in an occasional “Yes” and “Of course” and “I daresay.” Her one thought was: “I have been publicly insulted.” And George did not pass even the frontiers of her mind save when she reflected casually: “Considering what a lot George knows, it’s rather queer he should be so remarkably uninteresting at times....”