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Other documents randomly have
different content
 A long pause seemed to intensify the sinister significance of their
previous remarks.
“Look here,” cried Catherine, breaking in raucously upon the
silence, “why don’t you tell me straight out I can’t play?”
After she had said it she regretted her hastiness. She perceived it
was a foolish thing to say. She blushed fiercely.
Verreker raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Razounov beamed
beatifically.
“My dear lady,” he began caressingly, “I will be perfectly fhrank
with you. Eet is best to be fhrank, is eet not? ... You will neffer be a
first-class player. Perrhaps a second, ohr a third, pairhaps you may
eahrn plenhty of money at eet, but you will never be a—you know
what I mean—a ghreat—a suphreme pianiste.” (He meant obviously:
“You will never be what I am.”) ... “Why? ... Ah, I cannot tell. Why is
zhe ghreat gift given to sohm and not to othairs? ... Eet is that you
haf not it in you, that zohmsing, that spark that is cault ghenius ...
you understand?”
Catherine understood. But she could not disguise her humiliation,
her mortification, her disappointment.
“Do you agree with me, Verreker?” asked Razounov, as if
desiring confirmation of his verdict.
Verreker said curtly: “I don’t profess to prophesy these things.
Still, in this case, I believe you’re right.”
That was worse! There was something contemptuous in those
words, “in this case.” Catherine hated him.
“Still,” purred Razounov, “you would improve with a course of
instruction. You will make a good player if you are careful. I cannot
give you lessons myself, as I am engaged all my time, but I will
supervise. And Mr. Verreker will gif you a lesson once a week. Efery
month I will supervise. Is zhat plain?”
Catherine could not answer. She was struggling with tears. The
second time that day that tears had troubled her. Yet what a different
variety of tears! These were tears of rage and disappointment, of
blinding disillusionment, of sullen mortification. She dare not trust
herself to reply. If she had attempted a word she would have been
caught in a maelstrom of burning indignation.
“I will drop you a card when I can give you a first lesson,” said
Verreker, quietly.... “Well ... er ... thank you for coming ...”
Catherine took the hint and put on her hat. She did not say a
word as she left the room. But her eyes were furiously blazing: there
was in them that danger glint of which Verreker, if he had seen it,
would have done well to beware.
Out in the Ridgeway, Catherine decided one thing. She would
never take lessons off Verreker; she would never go near that house
again....

§2
The fierceness of her indignation brought Catherine face to face
with one other thing that she had never hitherto realized. And that
was the absurd grandiloquence of her ambition. There was nothing
that Razounov has said of which she could legitimately complain. He
had even complimented her to the extent of saying that she would
make a good player if she were careful, and that she might earn
plenty of money as a pianist. Surely that was encouraging! ... No, it
was not. For he had also told her that she was not a genius, and
would never be supreme in her art. Well, what of that? Had she ever
had the conceited effrontery to think she was a genius? Catherine
decided no, not exactly that, but ... The fact was, Catherine, without
knowing it, had inclined to give herself the benefit of the doubt. At
any rate, she had always been serenely confident of the doubt. Quite
unconsciously she had developed an opinion of herself to which
there were no adequate frontiers. She was a supreme egoist, and
her life had come to be worth living only on false understandings.
Every book she read, every speech or sermon she listened to,
occasioned in her the feeling: “How does that fit in with me?” At a
school prize-giving once the speaker—a local vicar—had given an
address to the scholars in which he mentioned the three things
which a human being might legitimately desire—fine physique,
genius, and strength of character. When he came to the
consideration of the second, he said: “Of course, we’re none of us
geniuses, but——” Catherine (she was only fourteen then) had been
rather contemptuous of this modesty, “Of course, I suppose he has
to say that, and yet how does he know whether ...” she had thought.
To her his sweeping declaration savoured of the rash. It had been
the same on many occasions. Somewhere at the back of Catherine’s
mind had always been the supposition, so patent as to be almost
axiomatic, that she was different from other people. That difference
was, on the whole, the difference of superiority. She had done things
that no other girl of her age and acquaintance had done. She had left
home with five and sevenpence half-penny, obtained lodgings on her
own, and kept herself by work. She had played at concerts (one
concert to be precise). A young man who, whatever his drawbacks,
was undeniably clever, had fallen desperately in love with her. Her
own father, pining of remorse, had cut his throat to prove to her his
undying affection. And the invitation to meet Razounov had at first
seemed merely a further rung on the ladder of fame. There was no
doubt about it: she was marvellous, extraordinary, a constant
surprise both to herself and to other people. Her very faults became
demi-virtues. Passionate she felt herself to be. After reading Tess of
the d’Urbervilles her instinctive thought had been: “Am I like Tess?”
And she had frequently asked herself the question: “Am I a genius?”
and had shirked a plain answer. The crudity of the question, the
awful conceit of replying in the affirmative, drove her to subterfuge.
“Not exactly that, perhaps,” she told herself. “At least, how can I tell?
I shall have to wait and see. I can’t give a direct answer.” Yet if she
had been forced to give a direct answer, there is no doubt what it
would have been.
And now, disillusioned, humiliated, self-scornful, the preposterous
nature of her ambitions forced itself upon her. For the space of half
an hour she was perfectly frank with herself. She did not spare that
pitiable self-conceit of hers. She was ruthless. It was as if she
thought that if she could wound that self-conceit so that it died of its
injuries, so much the better. She employed first of all the cold steel of
logic. The facts were these. She had been told frankly that she was
not a genius. She was hurt and humiliated. Ergo, she must have
been cherishing the notion that she was a genius. Absurd creature!
Preposterous egoist! Conceited upstart! And all because she had
played at a third-rate concert!
She wound up with a bitter piece of advice. You aren’t a genius,
she insisted, you’re just an ordinary girl with as much
extraordinariness in her as falls to the lot of most people. And the
sooner you finish with your absurd dreams and ambitions and wake
up to the facts the better.
It was good advice. She tried conscientiously to take it. She did
take it—for about five and twenty minutes.
But those five and twenty minutes were among the most difficult
and miserable she had ever spent.
She flung herself down on the bed in the attic at No. 14, Gifford
Road, and was so wretched that she could not cry. Besides, she was
convinced that there was nothing she had a right to cry about. Yet it
was the utter horror, the unbelievable loneliness of existence that
appalled her. She was quite alone in her struggle with the world,
parentless, almost friendless. She knew now why it was that she had
not mourned the loss of her parents, why it was that her solitary
struggle had been up to then so exhilarating, so pleasant. It was that
absurd faith in herself, that fearful egoism, that terrible conceit, that
had enabled her to fight on alone. And now her succour, her comfort,
her support had suddenly cracked and given way, and she was left
clinging to wreckage. The future was simply blank, a dull, drab
hereafter of self-effacement. Life was not worth living. For the first
time in all her life she felt alone—alone with the wreckage of dead
dreams and shattered hopes....
“O God!” she cried, “if I’m only ordinary after all! ...”
Horror upon horror! To think of Gifford Road, of the Victoria
Theatre, without the conviction that these were but a means to
something infinitely higher! Her ultimate triumph provided the only
terms on which life amongst these things was worth living! To think of
herself as a mere unit in the society that lived in Kitchener Road,
Bockley, in Gifford Road, Upton Rising! To deny herself the privilege
of thinking what a good joke it was that she should have been born
in Kitchener Road! To realize suddenly that it was no joke at all, but
an ordinary, not inappropriate circumstance in which she had no right
to discover any irony at all. To regard herself as she knew Mrs.
Carbass regarded her, viz. as “the little girl wot plys the pienner at
the theayter.”
That was where her ruthless self-mutilation overreached itself.
She knew she was not as Mrs. Carbass regarded her. Even if she
were ordinary, she was not as ordinary as that. With feverish joy she
clutched at this undeniable admission.... Slowly her spirits rose out of
utter dejection. Cautiously at first, then with extravagant
recklessness, she flung together the wreckage that had fallen. At the
end of five minutes a phantom thought flashed by her—a swift,
entrancing, wayward, delicious, undisciplined, seductive idea. It was
like a breath of heaven upon her darkened soul. It whispered:
“Supposing Razounov is wrong? ... After all, why the dickens should
he be right? ...”

§3
One effect the sudden (but only temporary) shattering of her
ambitions had upon her. It redoubled afterwards her efforts to
achieve them. She increased the number of hours devoted to
practice. She even made some attempt to get through an elementary
book on harmony and counterpoint.
And strangely enough, of all the composers whose works she
attempted none nerved her to such a fever of determination as
Chopin. For she had been told she oughtn’t to play Chopin....
On the Wednesday following a card reached her, addressed to
the Victoria Theatre. It simply said:
Come at two o’clock on Saturday.
r. verreker.
 The writing was sharply angular, rivalling the phrasing in
curtness. Nevertheless, Catherine had expected curtness. Of course
she was not going to go. She had long ago decided that. As if to
symbolize her contempt, she tore up the card and threw it into the
gutter as she left the theatre. After all, what was the use of keeping
it, since she was not going to go?
All through the remainder of the week she kept fortifying her
determination not to go. And yet dimly, in some strange intuitive
fashion, at the back of her mind she felt that it was quite possible she
would go. I won’t go, she told herself one moment. Bet you you do
go, after all.... She was surprised, almost fascinated by this charming
waywardness of hers. Anyway, she decided, it’s quite a simple
matter to settle: I won’t go. I wonder, she said to herself, smiling.
As a matter of fact she did not go. But it was from an absurdly
accidental reason. She was strolling along the Ridgeway soon after
lunch on Saturday when she suddenly reflected that she did not
know what time he wished to see her. Was it two o’clock or three?
She failed to remember, and of course the postcard had been thrown
away. At two o’clock she felt she would not run the risk of being an
hour too early. Something in her suggested half-past two as a
compromise; but when the half-hour chimed she decided that since
that would be wrong in any case she had better wait till three. And at
three she felt sure that his card had said two, so she went back to
Gifford Road. In a way she was pleased with herself. She had kept
her word. She had not gone. The narrowness of her victory seemed
to emphasize its magnitude.
At the theatre that evening an introductory film was shown. It
dealt with the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Something in
Catherine impelled her to play “Poland is Lost.” ...

§4
On Monday a letter arrived at the theatre for her. The angular
script on the envelope told her who had written it. It ran:
 I presume you forgot on Saturday. If so, come on Wednesday at
seven p.m.
r. verreker.
Catherine was conscious that the struggle was not yet over. On
the contrary, it was beginning again. The issue was not, Did she
want to go or not? It was, Should she keep the vow she had made to
herself? She made a great fuss over weighing both sides of this
crucial problem, yet she knew it was a foregone conclusion what the
result would be. Then she decided she was giving the matter a place
out of all proportion to its importance. After all, it was of little
consequence whether she went or not. She would wait till
Wednesday, and do just what she felt like at the time.
Then she pondered over the precise significance of his phrase “if
so.” Did he suspect that her absence on Saturday was not due to
forgetfulness?

§5
At the inquest on Mr. Weston the usual verdict was brought in:
“Suicide during temporary insanity.”
Catherine found herself in possession of a houseful of cheap
furniture and a sum of twenty odd pounds in the Post Office Savings
Bank. She retained a small quantity of clothing and a few kitchen
utensils; the rest of the stuff at 24, Kitchener Road was sold by
auction. It fetched fifty-five pounds when all expenses had been
deducted. She had a horror of hoarding vast quantities of lumber in
the form of keepsakes and mementoes, so she destroyed everything
that had no intrinsic value except the diaries Those she transported
to Gifford Road and kept.
After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by
a sum of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the
sixty in a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit
by her father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it
might as well be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some
pretty dresses. For the first time in her life she could afford to put the
question, “Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She
experienced the keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than
from the strictly utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in
“mourning”: her first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair,
and white to throw her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair
that had to be considered....
When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her
pretty, but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness....
 CHAPTER X
ACCELERANDO
§1
SHE waited fully ten minutes in the drawing-room at “Claremont.”
“Mr. Verreker will be here directly,” the maid had said, and Catherine
had time to look about her. It was a lovely May evening: the windows
were wide open at the bottom, and from the garden came the rich
cloying scent of wallflowers. Somebody was working a lawn-mower.
He came in two minutes after the sound of the lawn-mower had
ceased. There were scraps of grass about the fringes of his trousers.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced briskly.
“Don’t mention it,” she murmured, with perhaps a trace of
sarcasm.
“I oughtn’t to, really, ought I?” he then said, “since you kept me
waiting an hour last Saturday.”
She said nothing, but the atmosphere was definitely hostile.
He asked her what pieces she played. She told him. He took a
sheet of paper, and scribbled them down as she recited them. He
made no comment till she had said, “and a few others.”
“Ambitious!” he muttered, pondering over the list.
“Oh yes, I am, very.” She thought she would seize this
opportunity of letting him know.
“Well, play the Debussy,” he said.
She did so.
“H’m!” he said, when she had finished.
 §2
After he had told her her faults (which took some time) and given
her something definite to practise, the hour was nearly up, and he
gave sundry indications that the lesson was finished.
“By the way,” he said, as she was on the way to the door, “did
you forget last Saturday?”
She might easily have said yes. Or she might have told the strict
truth, viz. that she had forgotten the hour he had fixed. But she did
neither.
“No,” she said, “I just didn’t come.”
He looked at her very much as Miss Forsdyke had looked at her
when she had been impudent.
“Oh!” he replied, with a gesture that might have meant anything.
“Well, the next time you intend to ’cut’ one of my lessons, drop me a
card beforehand, then I shan’t be kept waiting for you. My time’s
valuable.”
Curt!
And as she passed the table in the hall he suddenly gathered up
a heap of some dozen letters, and said: “By the way, you might
shove these in the pillar-box down the road as you go by.”
Before she realized the situation the letters were in her hands.
“Thanks!” he replied, opening the front door. “Good evening!”
If she had had the presence of mind she would have flung them
all back at him. “I’m not your office-boy,” she might have said.
But presence of mind did not come to her till she was half-way
down the Ridgeway.
She occupied her time as far as the pillar-box by reading the
addresses on all the envelopes....

§3
 Slowly the perspectives of her life were changing. The old
childish ideas and prejudices ceased to apply. In the matter of
George Trant, for instance....
It is curious, but the more she realized that she was not in love
with him, the more she realized also his essential good nature. At
one time he had been a villain of undepictable blackness, and now,
in the reaction from this melodramatic ideal, he appeared perhaps
more favourably than he deserved. At any rate, he was to all intents
a perfectly honest, well-intentioned young fellow, slightly clever and
of prepossessing manner. Whether he had changed, or whether she
herself had changed, Catherine could not with certainty decide. But
their attitude was fundamentally different from what it had been when
Catherine had met him at Bockley Station after her domestic squall.
Then he had appeared to her malignant, cruel, desirous of
entrapping all innocent girls that came his way. He had been the real
villain of the piece. Now it seemed incredible that she could ever
have taken him so seriously. For he was a very ordinary young man.
The glamour had fallen away from him—that glamour which might
have made him a hero, but which, by irony of circumstances, had
made him a villain instead. Catherine perceived that it was only her
crude idealism that had invested him with Satanic characteristics.
She had not a shred of evidence to convict him of ill-treatment of her.
The famous note which he had sent her from Manchester, and which
she had read on the top of a crowded tram-car, had unfortunately
been sacrificed to the dramatic requirements of the situation, but
Catherine, only half remembering its contents, had a feeling that if
she were to read them in the perspective of several years they would
seem wholly inadequate to justify the profound significance she had
given them.
It was apparent now to her that George was hopeless as a villain.
He said cynical things occasionally, but that was only an affectation.
In reality he was a typical example of the rather superior season-
ticket holder. His utmost criminality would not transcend the riding of
a bicycle without a rear light....
Of course his position was immensely complicated by the fact
that he had fallen in love with her....
 §4
One day (they had met upon the platform at Upton Rising
Station) she tackled him directly.
“Look here,” she said, “you remember that letter you wrote me
from Manchester? You enclosed it in Helen’s letter. Do you
remember it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What did you mean by it?”
He seemed puzzled.
“Well, it’s a long time ago, and I scarcely remember what it was
like.... I dare say it was rather fatuously clever: I used to think myself
a dab hand at letter-writing in those days.”
That was as reasonable an explanation as she could have
expected. She switched on to another line of questioning.
“You remember that time we were on the balcony at the Forest
Hotel—just before the others came up?”
“Yes.”
“You—I believe—you were trying to apologize to me—for
something. Now, what was it?”
He seemed embarrassed as well as puzzled.
“Well,” he began hesitatingly, “of course I may have been wrong
—probably I was—but I always understood—I mean I had gathered
that—that there had been a sort of—er, misunderstanding between
us.”
“Why should you apologize for that?”
“Well, if there had been one it might have been my own fault. So I
thought I’d apologize——”
“From whom did you gather there had been a
misunderstanding?”
 “I believe it was Helen who——”
“Oh, I see.”
He emboldened himself to start a cross-examination of her.
“May I ask if there ever was a misunderstanding?” he said.
Catherine lied, splendidly, regally, with magnificent disdain. It was
clearly an opportunity to demonstrate (to herself chiefly) how
completely the tables had been turned.
“I’m sure I don’t know what the misunderstanding you’ve been
talking about is or was supposed to be. But so far as I am aware
there never was such a thing.”
He tried to grasp all the significations of this. Then he resumed
the enquiry.
“Why have you been asking me about these things?”
“Merely curiosity,” she replied, with an undercurrent of implication
which said: “Do you suppose for one moment that my reasons could
have been any other than those of mere curiosity?”
Yet he wilfully ignored the implication. All day in the stuffy
accountant’s office in Leadenhall Street he kept pausing in his work
and treating himself to the riotous luxury of the thought: “I don’t
believe it was curiosity. Why should she have asked about that
letter? And besides, Helen sticks to it she was in love with me in
those days! After all, it’s extremely unlikely it was only curiosity.... Of
course, she had to say it was. She couldn’t easily have said anything
else. At least ...”
So that the position was really complicated instead of being
cleared up. And Catherine’s lie was perhaps excusable. That people
should fall in love with her was natural enough, but that she should
display a similar weakness was extremely undignified, to say the
least. And besides, she was not even sure she had been in love with
George Trant. Was not there in her an instinct which had said (in
effect, if not in so many words): “This is mere sentimental flapdoodle.
Wallow as much as you like in its painful ecstasy, but don’t imagine
for a moment that it’s the real stuff ...?”
 §5
George Trant was a member of the Upton Arts Club.
In the room over Burlington’s Music Emporium the Upton Arts
Club met on Sunday evenings at 8.30.
One Sunday during the discussion following a paper on
“Cézanne and the Modernists,” George drawled sleepily from his
arm-chair by the fire:
“Of course, as a staunch Conservative in politics, I——” A
startled hush fell upon the assembly. “Disraelian, I need hardly say,”
he added, and the amazement was more profound....

§6
George Trant was also a member of the Upton Rising
Conservative and Unionist Association.
The Upton Rising Conservative and Unionist Association existed
from 8 a.m. till 12 midnight every day for the purpose of playing
billiards, drinking whisky, and reading sporting newspapers.
Occasionally its members would talk politics. It was on one of these
comparatively rare occasions (the topic was Mr. Lloyd George’s
Land Tax) that George announced quietly from behind his evening
paper:
“Of course, as a convinced Socialist in the matter of landed
property, I——” The elderly white-whiskered gentlemen were thrilled.
“Not Marxian, I need scarcely add,” resumed George placidly, and
the conviction grew that George Trant was a very strange young
man.
The Disraelian Conservative and un-Marxian Socialist acquired
the reputation of being somewhat bewilderingly clever.... The
Bockley Advertiser reported in full his secondings of votes of thanks.
The Arts Club were proud to hear his exposition of “Ibsen: the Man
and the Prophet.” It was in the days when to read Ibsen was to be
modern. And the Conservative Club were never more conscious of
their brazen Philistinism than when he talked to them easily of
Scriabin and Ravel and César Franck.
“And of course one must not forget the Spanish School. There is
a great tendency to ignore the Spanish School nowadays. But it’s
wholly unfair. Such men as ... for instance.”
Even in politics he could be mystifyingly erudite. A reference to
Jeremy Bentham or Ricardo or Huskisson would floor them
absolutely...
“Queer chap,” was their verdict. “Must read a lot, I suppose....”
And, content with that explanation, they resumed their billiards or
their whisky or their Pink ’Un....

§7
It happened that upon a certain bright morning in August a smart
motor-cycle with side-car attachment went teuf-teufing along the high
road in the direction of the Forest. The side-car was occupied by a
girl with violently red hair, and the whole installation was manœuvred
by an individual in mackintosh overalls, who was (although you might
never have guessed it by looking at him) a Disraelian Conservative
and an un-Marxian Socialist....
Catherine, incidentally, was riding in a side-car for the first time in
her life.
George, incidentally, was driving a motor-cycle, if not for the first
time, at any rate for the third or fourth time in his life. The machine
was brand-new. One or two lessons on a friend’s motor-bike (to
which there was no side-car) had convinced George that he was
capable of taking a young lady for a hundred miles’ spin in the
country without undue risks. Accordingly, he had purchased a
machine out of the accumulated savings of several years, and had
written to Catherine the following note:
dear cathie,
 I have just bought a motor-bike and side-car. I shall run it round a
bit next Saturday, if fine, and should be pleased to take you if you
care to come.
And when he had met her (by arrangement) at the corner of the
Ridgeway, he had said, offhand:
“You see, there must be somebody in the side-car or else you
don’t give the thing a fair chance.”
And the implication was: “You are nothing but ballast, my dear
girl; a sack of potatoes would have done just as well, only you are
more easily procurable.”
Somehow the beautiful shining enamelled creature bristling with
taps and levers and handles made him talk with a cultivated
brusqueness. It was as if the machine occupied the first place in his
attentions and she came next. At the moment this may very likely
have been true. She seated herself snugly in the torpedo-shaped
car, and watched him manipulate levers and buttons. He looked very
strong and masculine in his overalls. For several minutes he tried in
vain to induce a liveliness in the engine. The policeman on point duty
at the corner (who knew Catherine) smiled; some street urchins
shouted facetious remarks. After five minutes of intense examination
he pounced upon an apparently vulnerable part of the mechanism
and performed a subtle and invisible operation. Then he pushed off,
and the engine woke into clamorous applause. They began to move.
The street urchins cheered ironically.
“I thought that would do it,” he shouted to her triumphantly above
the din, with the air of one who had performed a masterpiece of
mechanical surgery.
Yet to himself he blushed. For he had forgotten to admit the
petrol from the tank!

§8
When they reached Epping, George told himself: “It’s absurdly
easy to drive a motor-bike and side-car. Absolutely nothing in it. I’ll
put the pace on a bit between here and Stortford.” The thirteen miles
to Bishop’s Stortford were done in twenty-eight minutes. At Stortford
they had early lunch.
Afternoon saw them jostling in and out amongst the crowded
streets of Cambridge. They garaged the machine, and went to a café
for tea.

§9
He was full of a kind of boisterous arrogance.
“Stiff little bit from Stortford.... But, of course, we took it awfully
slow.... Road’s not so bad.... Ever been on the road from
Aberystwyth to Dolgelly?”
Catherine had not. (Nor had George for that matter.)
“Awful bit of road, that....” (It occurred to him as being a strip of
road that might conceivably be awful.)
She could see that he was showing off to her. He was proud of
his machine, proud of the white dust on his shoes, of his sun-tanned
face, of his goggles, his gauntlet gloves, and his earflaps. He was
superbly proud of having piloted himself and her from the corner of
Bockley High Street and the Ridgeway to the streets of Cambridge
without hitch or mishap. Six hours ago they were in Bockley. Now
they were in a self-sufficing and exceedingly provincial University
town, the very antithesis of suburbia. And the miracle was his! His
hands, his nerve, his eye had wrought it! He was excusably pleased
with himself.
But she was conscious of a curious sense of disappointment. It
was now three months since that evening when he had taken her to
Gifford Road in a taxi. It was three months since she had divined
intuitively that he was in love with her. And during those three
months he had been marvellously reticent, exasperatingly discreet.
She had almost begun to doubt the reliability of her instinct. And
though she knew she did not in the least reciprocate his feelings, she
was fascinated by the idea that she was something incalculable and
vital to him. Perhaps it was sheer pride of conquest, perhaps it was
merely her love of compliments and her extreme gratification at this,
the supreme compliment of all. Or perhaps it was just her own
inexplicable perversity.
He was anxious to get back before lighting-up time, and she, for
no very definite reason, was inclined to prefer a quick run under the
cool moonlight. She deliberately delayed him by showing
fastidiousness in the selection of a café. Then she got him talking
about the Arts Club.
“I hear you’re going to speak next Sunday.”
“Oh yes—just read a paper, that’s all. On Ibsen’s Wild Duck.... Of
course, you’ve read it?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t read any Ibsen.”
“Really? ... Oh, you must read him. Awfully good, you know.
Stimulating; modern; very modern. Doll’s House, you know.
Rosmersholm and Little Eyolf.... And, of course, Ghosts. Absolute
biological nightmare—Ghosts ... but terrifically clever.... I’ll lend you
the whole lot if you’ll promise to read them.”
“Right,” she said. And she thought: “Doesn’t he like to show he
knows more than I know? But if he is in love with me it won’t matter
about that.” (And she could not properly have explained that thought
either.)
But she kept him talking because she saw it was getting late.

§ 10
On the return journey they stopped to light the lamps at a lonely
spot called Stump Cross, some ten miles out of Cambridge. She
watched him as he stood in front of the machine with the acetylene
glare lighting up his face and his goggles and his earflaps and his
gauntlet gloves and his overalls, and, above all, his expression of
stern delight. They were two solitary figures with hills rolling up and
down on either side of them, and nothing in view save dim distant
ridges and a gaunt sign-post which said: “To London, by Stortford,
45½ miles.”
“We’ll put on a spurt,” he said, clambering into the saddle....
As they entered the outskirts of Bishop’s Stortford at a speed of
just over thirty miles an hour the full moon swept from behind a bank
of clouds and lay in pools over the landscape....

§ 11
It was in the narrow and congested portion of the main street that
something happened. (As a matter of fact they need not have gone
through the town at all: there is a loop road, but George was
unwilling to tackle a road he had not encountered by daylight.) There
is no doubt that George was feeling very conscious of himself as he
honk-honked his way through the crowded roadway. It was a
Saturday night, and the streets were full. As they swerved round the
corner of the George Hotel the huge acetylene beams lit up a sea of
faces. Men and women passed them on the kerb as in a dream: girls
with bright eyes and laughing faces, and men with the unmistakable
Saturday night expression flitted past them shadow-like. It was
ecstasy to be swirling past them all at a pace which, though not fast,
had just a spice of danger in it. George, in his overalls and headgear,
looked like a Viking steering his galley through heavy seas. What
was more, he knew he was looking like that, and was trying
desperately to look more like that than ever.
And then, at the point where the main highway narrows and
begins an S turn, with numerous side-streets complicating the
problem, George espied a vehicle proceeding slowly in the same
direction as he. It was a market-booth on four wheels, shuttered up
at the sides, returning to its stabling after the night’s market. On the
side in painted crimson lettering ran the inscription: “H. Bullock.
Temperance Liquors and Fruit Beverages.” The whole was drawn by
a tired, meditative horse. The existence of this equipage in the
middle of the road created a problem. George was rapidly overtaking
it, and of course he should have passed by on the right or off-side.
But that would have meant checking pace and honk-honking
vigorously to clear people out of the way. Whereas he was driving
close to the kerb and could see a space between it and the vehicle
which seemed ample for passage. Besides, it was rather stylish to
“nip in” between vehicles and the kerb. People would stare back at
him and mutter, “Reckless fellow!” and by the time they had resumed
their walk he would be on the outskirts of the town. Accordingly,
summoning his features for an intensely Viking expression, he
decided to “nip in.” The road was narrowing, and he knew he would
have to put on a spurt. The accelerator moved, and they went
forward with a bound. Blurred mists of passing faces swept by along
the kerb.... There was a sudden jar. The side-car wheel had mounted
the pavement, which was here only an inch or so above the
roadway. Nevertheless, no harm had yet been done. And then the
appalling vision of a lamp-post seized hold of George and wrought
havoc with his presence of mind. That lamp-post obsessed him,
possessed him, threw him into inarticulate terror. That lamp-post
would slice off the wheel of the side-car as a scythe cuts grass. It
was therefore necessary at all costs to avoid that lamp-post. With a
mighty sense of the tremendous issues that hung upon the merest
fractional movement of his hands, George swerved to the right. Even
as he did so he could almost feel the sickening impact of the lamp-
post. He waited for what seemed a long minute—waited for the
sudden jar and shiver and crumple. Strange to say it did not come....
Then with a feeling of overwhelming relief he perceived that the
obstacle had been passed. The lamp-post was already behind him,
an unsuccessful syren baulked of its prey. Exquisite moment!
Colossal thrill! Magnificent piece of steering! And then ...
A sudden grind of the front wheel, a sort of convulsive jerk which
threw him sideways on top of the side-car, and a medley of snapping
and shivering and crumpling sounds. Then (it seemed an age before
he mastered the situation) he shouted to Catherine, whose ear was
not so very far from his mouth: “By Jove, we must have cannoned
into that cart!”
His voice was as the voice of one who is immensely interested in
a subtle and curious phenomenon....