A four-seater car stood in the courtyard.
“Get in the back seat,” he said gruffly.
§ 5
As the car drew them through the sweet-scented country lanes Catherine lolled amongst the heavy cushions and pondered. Once again she had the feeling that had comforted her when she first realized that her musical career was at an end. It was the feeling that she was not going to be very disappointed. Once again, too, she was subtly disappointed at not being disappointed.... Helen had said that he was stupid. That remark set in motion a whole avalanche of unspoken ideas that had been gathering patiently about her for some time. She had not noticed them then, but now as they came tumbling about her ears she perceived them in bulk as a sudden new revelation. They shifted Verreker to a less hallowed perspective. The halo left him and he became a man. And a stupid man at that. She began to sum him up dispassionately, and was amazed at the results she came to....
Even his eccentricities—which she had hitherto admired—lost their glamour and became either vices or the mere foibles of a crank. His manners were atrocious. He did not raise his hat to her in the street. When entering and leaving a railway compartment he did not allow her to take the first place. It was things like those that went to make up a gentleman. And, frankly, he was not a gentleman. His rudeness, his brusquerie, his awful bluntness of speech, were vices which his cleverness might explain but could not excuse. And even his cleverness—might it not be possible to exaggerate that? He was not well known: his books were dry and uninteresting—abstruse, maybe, but extremely tiresome. And even in music, how was it that he had never made a name at concert playing? One remark of his which had especially annoyed her had been his blunt asseveration that her musical success had been derived solely from his instruction. She could not deny this even to herself, but she found partial, if illogical, comfort in the thought: If he can make me into a successful concert pianist, why hasn’t he ever thought it worth while to make himself one?
And he had treated her abominably. It gave her a curious pleasure to discover that. The magnitude of his ill-treatment of her seemed by a subtle process of ethical cancelling out to wipe away all record of her own previous misdeeds.
Once again her soul was white, immaculate, redeemed by his cruelty and her consequent martyrdom. The very thought that his debt to her was incapable now of being ever repaid put her on the plane of loftiest altruism. She was still proud, triumphant, superbly conscious of her own supremacy.
When her ideals had tottered one by one, and at last she had realized the futility of her musical ambitions, she had thought: Here goes my last ideal! Henceforth I am without them.... But now she saw that there had been a survivor that had remained with her even to the last. And that was her ideal of him—a man, superbly good, superbly great, fit object of her respect and worship.... Now this ideal had tottered and fallen also. He was a mere irritable crank, pedantically clever, perhaps, but rather brutal and, as Helen said, curiously stupid.
The car went racing up the low hills from the estuary inland.... Was it a case of “sour grapes”? she wondered for a fleeting moment, but she answered “No” with sufficient emphasis to convince herself.
Of course he had assumed that she loved him. But was that true? Did she? ... Anyway, there were many reasons for getting married, and love was only one of them, and perhaps neither the best nor the most frequent. There was companionship, for instance, and a desire for home and children and money. One might marry in order to secure at a cheaper rate the services of a skilled shorthand-typist.... One might even marry to secure part ownership of a motor-car.