§ 8
A cold May day, so chilly that a fire seemed the most welcome thing on earth. Seven in the evening, and it was the last lesson of the quarter. When she reached “Claremont,” Verreker was not there. He had been up to the City, and a slight accident outside Liverpool Street Station had delayed the trains. The maid showed her into the music-room and left her alone. She sat in one of the big chairs by the fire and felt astonishingly miserable. The room had regained its normal condition; the surplus furniture, the books, papers, writing-desk, etc., had been taken away: but a grandfather clock that had not originally been there now occupied a permanent position in the corner. The embers were burning low, and shadows were darkening all around: the black and white vista of piano keys straggled obscurely in the background; the clock was ticking sleepily away. Far into the dim distance of the ceiling loomed the polished splendour of the raised sound-board....
Why did she feel miserable?
It was something in her soul.
She got up and sat down at the piano.
With no discoverable motive she commenced to play the piece that she now knew was Chopin’s Black Note Etude (in G flat). It was the one she had heard years ago when she stood in the scented dusk of the Ridgeway in front of the house with the corner bay-window. Since then she had learned it thoroughly and played it many times on concert platforms. But as she played it now it sounded new, or rather, it sounded as if she had heard it only once before, and that was many years ago in the summer twilight. All between was a gap, a void which only the Chopin Etude could bridge....
(In her strange mood she was playing it most abominably, by the way.)
She paused in the middle. Her eyes were like dark gems amidst the red glory of her hair.
“I’m not in love with any person,” she told herself with incredible calmness. “I’m not in love with anybody in the world. But I’m in love with Something. Some Thing! Very deeply, very passionately, I am. And I don’t know what it is.... I keep finding it and losing it again. But it’s in this”—she started the first few bars of the Chopin piece—“it’s all everywhere in that. I knew it was there when I stood and listened to it years ago. Oh, it’s there. And I’ve heard and seen it in other places, too. But as yet it’s been only a thing.... But some day, maybe, I’ll tack it on to somebody living, and then ... God help me! ...”
Her fingers flew over the keys, and the great octaves began to sing out in the left hand.
“I’ll have to be careful,” she went on in thought—“careful, or else some day I’ll go mad.... But it’s there, whatever it is.... Something that’s in that and that’s in me as well, and they’re nearly tearing me to shreds to get closer to one another. That’s how it feels.... And I told him I wasn’t in love with anybody ... But if I should catch a glimpse of this something in any living being! Nothing should ever keep us apart! Nothing could! Neither life nor death—nor miles—nor anything.”
She let her hands fall down the keyboard in a great culminating Niagara of octaves. Two chords like the blare of trumpets, and ...
The door opened and Verreker entered.
She paused with her hands poised on the keys.
“Well,” he began cheerily, “it’s the last lesson of the quarter, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
He was warming his hands in front of the fire.
“Confoundedly cold for May,” he remarked parenthetically. “You’ve been taking lessons of me for a year now, haven’t you?”
“Just over a year.”
He stood with his back to the fire.
“Well,” he continued, “you’ve not done badly. In fact, you’ve—you’ve improved—er—quite—er—beyond my expectations. I admit that.”
It was the biggest compliment he had ever paid her. Pleasure surged in her blood. She flushed.
“And,” he went on, “I don’t want to go on taking your money when you’re no longer likely to benefit much. As a matter of fact, you’ve come to a point at which my lessons are no longer worth three guineas each to you. You can teach yourself as well as I can teach you. I’ve led you out to the open sea, and now the time’s come for—for dropping the pilot. See?”
She nodded.
“So I don’t recommend you to have another quarter with me. I think it would be money wasted.”
She nodded.
“Of course I shall be glad to help you in any way I can if you need it.”
She nodded.
“And if you ever wish me to give you advice on any point of theory or technique I shall be pleased to do so.”
She nodded.
Pause.
“... I’ve just been up to town to get some new music in manuscript from a new author. It’s quite good stuff and very modern. I’ll run it over if you’d care to hear it.”
“Thanks,” she said, and vacated the stool....
When he had finished it was almost too dark to see the music. She was standing at the side of the piano with her face in the shadows.
“Play ‘Jeux d’Eaux,’” she said softly.
He began....