Catherine herself

§ 1

THE next morning she awoke with a bad headache. Her hands and wrists were very hot, and when she tried to get out of bed her feet were curiously vagrant and unstable. So she got back to bed and summoned Florrie, her maid. Florrie was a country girl, large and buxom and pleasure-loving. Catherine had got her by advertising in an Essex local paper, a method which had been recommended to her as one by which excellent servants are frequently picked up. So Florrie had left the little village near Chelmsford and had taken up her abode in “Elm Cottage.” The joys of the town fascinated her. In less than three weeks she was “walking out” with a tram conductor. When Catherine was out at evening concerts she used frequently to allow Florrie the evenings off, and gradually Florrie came to regard these not as a privilege, but as a right. She had a huge appetite and a habit of reading sixpenny novelettes. There was no personal affection between mistress and servant, though that was not altogether the fault of the latter.

Florrie’s appearance at nine o’clock in the morning was aggressive. It was not her business to get her mistress out of bed and dress her: she was a housemaid. She regarded distrustfully Catherine’s announcement that she was not feeling very well, that she would not get up just yet, and that Florrie could bring the breakfast upstairs to her. She obeyed truculently. The tray of breakfast pots was placed on a chair by the side of her bed.

“There’s not enough milk, I think,” said Catherine, looking into the cream jug; “you’d better fetch a drop more.”

Florrie sniffed. “There ain’t no more meulk in the ’ouse, mum,” she replied steadfastly.

“Why not?”

“’Cos there ain’t, mum.”

Catherine raised herself sideways on her elbow, the better to pursue the argument.

“Did the milkman leave a pint as usual?”

“Yes, mum.”

“And this is all that’s left of it?”

“Yes, mum.”

“Then you must have used far too much with your porridge.... Well, since there isn’t enough, you’d better go to a shop and get another pint.”

Florrie fidgeted uneasily with her feet. She was not used to her mistress in such a firm mood.

“It’s a long way, mum.... There’s no plice nearer than Brigson’s, daown the ’Igh Road. All daown the ’ill an’ up agin, mum.”

“Never mind. Go to Brigson’s.”

“Naow, mum?”

“Yes, this minute.”

“The milkman’ll be here again in ’alf an hour, mum.”

Catherine flushed with anger.

“Are you going to go to Brigson’s or not?”

Florrie raised her eyebrows self-questioningly.

“S’powsing I waster say not, mum?” she said impudently.

The retort stung Catherine to feverish decision.

“You can either go to Brigson’s or take a week’s notice,” she cried shrilly, and let go the elbow that supported her head. Her red hair straggled across the pillow, half hiding her face and effectively preventing Florrie from seeing that she was weeping. Florrie was not hard-hearted, and if she had seen her mistress’s tears she would probably have apologized. But she did not see them: she saw only the red flush on her cheeks and the angry glint in her eyes. She saw that it was a direct contest of wills, and also, which perhaps was the deciding factor, she did not wish to leave Upton Rising and her tram conductor. So she left the room sullenly, put on her hat in front of the dining-room overmantel downstairs, and took the path through the snow towards the High Road.

And meanwhile Catherine lay weeping upstairs.... Florrie’s open defiance seemed one more link in the chain of evidence that proved her to be unworthy of respect, devotion or love. Even Florrie despised her: Florrie, with her mule-like doggedness and inferior intellect, judged herself competent to query her mistress’s orders, and treat her with what was very thinly veiled contempt....

The morning paper was on the breakfast tray, and she raised herself again and glanced at the headlines. Then she turned to the inside page where the musical criticisms and announcements, if any, were inserted. Under the heading, “New Year’s Concert,” she read:

The article was signed by one of London’s chief musical critics....

Catherine dropped the newspaper on to the floor with the remainder of the criticism unread. She did not even know if that was the worst that was printed about her. The writer was a man for whom she had a great respect: he had never been among the enthusiasts who prophesied for her a world-wide reputation, yet till now his criticisms had always been mildly encouraging, particularly when it was borne in mind that his newspaper, a journal of independent views, permitted him to be mercilessly sarcastic at the expense of all musical aspirants whom he thought to be aiming too high. And now he had turned against her. It was all the harder to bear because he had not employed sarcasm: there was throughout his criticism a kind of sorrowful kindness, as if he sincerely pitied her.

When she thought that Verreker might read the article (would, in fact, in all probability) she felt ashamed, disgraced. Then, as she realized that a few more criticisms of that kind from the leading critics would damn her reputation, lose her her engagements and fling her back into the common rut, she was overwhelmed with the horror that the future might hold for her. She tossed and fretted in an agony of shame and mortification, cursing blindly at the ill-luck that was falling upon her on all sides. At last, unable to bear the torture of her thoughts any longer, she sprang out of bed with the zest of a tiger and put on a dressing-gown. She did not notice the difficulty she was having to stand upright: she had tapped hidden sources of energy within her which, though not extensive, were sufficient to sustain her for the present. She opened the door and went on to the landing. It was terribly cold there: the open fanlight window let in an icy draught from the north. Her feet were bare, but she did not appear to notice it on the thick stair-carpet. She began to descend, holding on to the stair-rail tightly. At the foot she stood still for a minute, as if waiting for supplies of energy, and then walked into the drawing-room. The fire, lit apparently with damp wood picked up from the Forest, had gone out and the room was very chilly. She walked unerringly to the music-cabinet and, kneeling on the floor, began to search in feverish haste. At last, seemingly, she discovered the object of her quest, a single thin piece of music in a yellow paper cover. With a strangely difficult movement she rose to her feet again and half walked, half staggered the short intervening distance to the piano-stool. It took her quite a minute to open out the music at the first page and place it in front of her on the rest. Instinctively she placed her bare feet on the cold brass of the pedals, and drew them away as quickly as if the metal had been white-hot. The shock restored to her a part of her lost energy. She began to move her fingers desultorily over the keys. At first the music was simple and she managed pretty well. But on the third page it developed octave arpeggio eccentricities in the left hand, and against these the fury of her determination burst in vain. She was handicapped, too, by not having the use of the pedals. For several moments her fingers moved, struggling vainly against chords and runs which her eyes could scarcely read and her memory but vaguely suggest. A terrible battle it was—a truly Homeric contest: her own tigerish determination against all the difficulties that a master-technician could invent.... But you would never have guessed that it was Liszt’s Sposalizio....

On the fourth page her spirit broke, and she fell forward sobbing, with her head and hair on the keys. And there some moments later, Florrie, entering with a jug of milk in her hand, found her, still sobbing uncontrollably....

§ 2

Florrie, now thoroughly alarmed, and sincerely anxious to make amends for her previous truculence, got her back to bed somehow and sent for a doctor. Dr. McPherson motored from Bockley to see her, and found her temperature somewhat dangerously high. From Florrie he learned how Catherine had come in the day before, after half-wading through the snow and slush from the tram terminus. She had caught a chill. Knowing that she was something of a celebrity and in receipt of a considerable salary, he did not tell her how her own foolishness had been the cause of it. He announced his intention of sending a nurse to look after her, left detailed instructions with Florrie as to how to act until the nurse came, and said that he would himself come again later in the evening. Downstairs Florrie told him how she had found her mistress in the drawing-room, sobbing in front of the piano.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered impatiently, “of course—that is all what one might expect.... You should not have left her....”

And he drove off in his car down the winding gravel lane that led to the High Road. Florrie was offended. After all, it was through obeying her mistress that she had been compelled to leave her. She was aware that she was being treated unjustly, and it gave her an air of conscious martyrdom....

She went back to Catherine’s bedroom. The breakfast things, untouched and forgotten, had to be cleared away. The coffee was nearly cold, but she warmed it up on the gas ring in the kitchen and drank it herself. Some of the cold and leathery buttered toast she ate herself; the rest she threw into the snow-covered garden for the birds.... Every time she passed the bed she glanced pityingly at the huddled figure and the mass of flame-coloured hair that straggled over the pillow. Her expression said plainly enough: I have been ill-treated and misunderstood, but I bear no malice. You shall see what an unselfish creature I am.... And another of her reflections was expressed some time later when she was talking to Minnie Walker, one of the barmaids at the High Wood Hotel. “She ’as got nice ’air,” she told Minnie. “Pity ’er fice ain’t so nice ... but I wish I got ’er ‘air, I do, reely....”

Morning passed into afternoon, and nothing altered in the view from the bedroom window of “Elm Cottage.” The sky was still uniformly grey, the trees like black and white etchings, the lawn in the front garden a patch of dazzling white, broken only by the double track of a bird’s footmarks. A fire was burning in the fireplace, and as the heat rose to the roof the snow above began to thaw and slide down off the gutters like a thunderous avalanche. In time the lawn was littered with the falling spray of these successive cataclysms, and the steady drip, drip of the gutters showed that what had not fallen was thawing fast.... The flames on the top of the red coal fluttered idly like blue wings when the wind swept down the chimney: something reminded Catherine of those distant childhood days of hers in Kitchener Road, when she had watched the flames on long winter evenings and listened to them as they said: Lappappappap.... They were saying it now in odd moments and their voices linked her to the scenes and incidents of her childhood.... Florrie was rocking herself in a chair by the fire and reading a paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice. There was another paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice on the floor beside her. She had a great red face and large eyes. Occasionally as she read her mouth would open and remain so for moments at a time. She skipped a good deal of the descriptive matter. Every few minutes she yawned noisily and drew herself a little closer to the fire. The clock downstairs struck three.... Far away Catherine could hear the purr of trams along the High Road. The room began to darken. At first she thought it was getting night-time, but she realized that it was scarcely the hour for that. Then she looked at the window. The window was dirty: she could scarcely see the trees of the Forest at all. She stared hard at the window.... No: it was not dirt. She could see what it was now: it had started snowing again. The dark outline of the Forest was only vaguely grey behind the slanting flakes, and as she listened she could hear it swishing—softly—all around and about her—on the roof, on the window-sill, on the lawn beneath, over all the miles of trees and grassland, swishing like a soft brush, yet loudly enough to deaden the sound of the trams on the High Road. And he had said: “I expect there will be some more skating to-night if it doesn’t snow.” But it was snowing now. There would be no skating. It did seem a pity. So many people would be disappointed....

Then a film passed over her eyes, and when it lifted the blind was drawn in front of the window and one of the electric lights by the fireplace was glowing.... There was a different person in the room with her: a thin, red-lipped, white-faced woman in nurse’s uniform: she also was rocking herself in front of the fire, and reading a paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice. Catherine watched her for a long while, and she did not move save to turn over the pages. She had brown hair and a mole on her right cheek. She was wearing Catherine’s bedroom slippers. That curiously trivial thing annoyed Catherine intensely.

All at once Catherine reached out a hand from beneath the clothes and pressed the electric light switch that dangled above the pillow. Three clusters of light in various parts of the room burst into yellow brilliance. The nurse started violently, put down her book and approached the bedside.

“Good evening ...” she began softly, and pressed back the switch so that the lights disappeared.

Catherine felt herself burning with suppressed fury. What right had this strange woman to turn out the lights if she wished them to be lit? What right had she? Who was mistress in her own house? With trembling fingers she reached again for the switch and pressed it. The lights reappeared. She kept her fingers tightly clasped round the switch. But a cold hand laid itself on the top of hers and she had to leave go. Then she saw the nurse take the switch and hang it over the top of a picture far out of anybody’s reach, unless a chair were used to stand on....

She lay there on the bed, panting with indignation. She had been insulted, deliberately, calculatingly, and in her own house.... And the nurse went back to the fireplace and resumed the paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice....

§ 3

Dr. McPherson was standing beneath the single electric globe that was in use. Beside him, on a level with his shoulder, stood the nurse. In his hand he held a portion of newspaper, crumpled and partially torn.

He said: “H’m, yes. Very possibly.... Are you certain she read it?”

The nurse said: “I think she must have done. It was lying on the floor as if she had thrown it down....”

And the doctor’s voice boomed back: “H’m, yes. Very pathetic.... But of course her illness accounts for her bad performance. She ought to have realized that....”

Catherine’s heart gave a sudden leap. Of course! That was it! Why had she not thought of that before? She was ill. That accounted for her bad playing, the nurse, the doctor, everything.... When she recovered she would be able to play again all right! Of course! What a fool she had been! This was only illness ... illness. She began to cry for joy at this new hope that had sprung up in her heart....

§ 4

Somebody (it looked like her father) was saying: “—if you want friends, let them be girl friends.... Surely you can find plenty of your own sex without——”

“—I can’t think what you want playing about with boys.... Girls should stick to girls....”

And he pulled off his boots and flung them loudly under the sofa.... Hr-rooch—flop ... Hr-rooch—flop ... and then his collar—plock, plock....

“A girl of your age,” he went on, “ought not to bother her head with fellers ... this sort of free-and-easy-carrying-on won’t do, Catherine....”

And—“I can’t see what you need ever to be out later than nine for ... you’ve got all the daytime. I can’t think what you want the night as well for ... it’s not as if you weren’t allowed to do what you like on Saturday afternoons....”

And her mother, shrill and cacophonous:

“When I was young——”

Chorus of father and mother: “When I was young——”

§ 5

It must be a dream.

If she ever had children of her own, would she say to them: “When I was young——”

She pondered....