And Now Good-bye (17 page)

He told this story now and she was highly amused, and they went on talking
gaily, yet with certain intervals of seriousness, throughout the rest of the
meal, until the black coffee, accompanied with cigarettes, provided just that
epilogue of reflectiveness that prepared them for the next stage of the
evening’s progress. The concert was timed to begin at eight, and at
seven thirty he called for the bill and paid a sum which, if he had ever
thought about it (but he did not), would have seemed entirely fantastic.

On the pavement outside the restaurant someone said “Taxi,
sir?” and he answered “Yes” in the same mood of
impulsiveness that had made him ask for Pilsener.

In the taxi he began to wonder what was really happening,
and after musing for a time a word occurred to him, a rather astonishing
word, he thought, but so definitely the right one that he did not seek for
any other. It was all a ‘lark’. It was quite the most gigantic
lark he had ever had; but then, in fact, his life up to the present had been
somewhat deficient in larks of any kind. And it was good for him, he felt, or
at any rate, not bad for him, to indulge in such an occasional escapade.
Dinner, talk, music—what could be more harmless? After all, he
reflected, he had something to celebrate as well as she.

Besides, like all the best larks—perhaps it was what made them the
best—it was all to be such a transient thing. To-morrow she would be
abroad, to-morrow he would be in Browdley, and possibly, indeed probably,
they would never see each other again. She would have those hours and hours
of fiddle practice that she longed for, and he would be back in his little
world of guild meetings and chapel services, good works and bad cooking. He
saw, with a certain grim relish, the years stretching ahead of him; viewed in
mind from the dark recesses of a taxi after a good dinner they seemed to
reflect, mirror-like, something of that queer quality in the present-which
could only be indicated by that same word—a. ‘lark’. After
all, the spirit of fun, of adventure, of enterprise, was surely not to be
confined to a single place or occasion. Why should there not be adventure in
Browdley? He felt, with conviction, that he would be all the better for this
London ‘night-out’ when he got home; it had been a revelation of
something he had so far rather missed—the joy of life, that
unreasonable and illogical human joy that made a man buy what he could not
afford and drink (for once) against his convictions and progress to sudden
enchanting intimacy with someone whose very charm, perhaps, lay partly in the
unlikelihood of any further meeting.

He looked out of the cab-window and glimpsed again the throbbing and
incredibly lovely world—the omnibuses and taxis and private cars
passing by with people in them he would never know, each with a life-history,
ambitions, and a soul to be saved; the whole pageant of life, no more real of
course than was to be seen in Browdley, yet somehow swifter, more picturesque
in its setting of electric sky-signs and opera-cloaks. He felt like an
explorer, almost, in a strange land; all this goes on, he thought, night
after night, just as night after night in Browdley the factory-sirens scream
at half- past five and the crowds come tumbling into the streets—the
curious, animated routine of two worlds, each ignorant of the other, and
meeting, when they did, only in the gaze of some bewildered intermediary like
himself. He thought of how such a contrast would strike Councillor Higgs, how
it would all seem to him no more than a demonstrated theorem from the
economics text-book; which might be very sound and scientific, but now Howat
was perceiving another aspect—there was this question of joy, of
‘having a lark’, in which, despite Councillor Higgs, the poor
were altogether in agreement with the rich. Both understood perfectly the
technique of ‘the good time’, and both were looked at askance by
the intermediate class. That made him think of the girl’s description
of his Browdley congregation—’respectable middle-class
people’, she had called them, and it was accurate enough; he tried in
vain to call to mind a single ‘chapel’ family that did not come
easily within the category. Some were hard up, he knew, but all were of the
class that could sniff superiorly in both directions. Why was it that none of
the really poorest and commonest people ever came to his chapel? He had seen
them often enough outside the Catholic church. Was it possible, he thought,
with an uprush of indignation, that he had been doing nothing for a dozen
years but preach to the already converted? Suppose for the future he were to
concentrate on the rest? But what had he to offer them? Respectability? The
right hand of fellowship as dispensed by a narrow-minded and tight-fisted
shopkeeper? A Letitia Monks Vestry complete with sham-Gothic gargoyles?
Sermons about the Christian life by one who had passed the age of forty
without knowing much about any kind of life?

She interrupted his stormy self-questionings to ask what it was that had
kept him silent for half the length of Regent Street.

“Rather an odd thought,” he answered. “It just occurred
to me that if ever there’s armed revolution in this country I daresay I
shall escape, if I wear my collar, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those
fellows in opera-hats over there escape too, but the gutters will probably be
running with the blood of respectable middle-class people who go to
chapel.”

“That sounds rather fierce.”

“Yes, perhaps I don’t mean it very seriously. But I feel
fierce enough when I call to mind all the lies that were told me about
you.

“Oh, don’t bother about them. Why do you care any more than I
do what people say?”

“You really don’t care, do you?”

“Not a bit.”

Accidentally in the darkness of the cab his hand touched hers, and the
contact, together with her answer, gave him a suddenly warming affection for
her, and through her, for all struggling and adventurous humanity—for
the street urchin fighting his first fight, for the speculator staking a
fortune on some hairline of probability, for the artist never quite
succeeding, and for all kinds of obvious heroes and heroines as well; he saw
her spirit in them all, and that such a spirit should be maligned by the
secure and the unadventurous swept him again into passionate indignation.

But they had reached the concert-hall and the uniformed commissionaire was
holding open the taxi-door.

As soon as he was settled comfortably in his seat he wanted to laugh. He
felt so happy, and he had been anticipating this moment of settlement for so
long, and the people all around him looked so very solemn, and the girl at
his side stared ahead with such radiant eagerness at the sleek grand piano on
the platform. The Cavendish was one of the older concert halls, and gazing
round at its chocolate and gold decorations he said: “This is nearly as
ugly as my chapel, isn’t it?”—“Rather uglier, if
anything, I think,” she replied, and the retort pleased him obscurely
and made him want to laugh more than ever.

But soon they found something definitely merrymaking, for the printed
programme contained a series of verbal descriptions and interpretations of
the music, such as—“Now all the noontide rapture and pulsating
vitality of the preceding movement have given place to a calm twilight
atmosphere in which the soul begins to glimmer like a star”; and they
made the sudden mutual discovery that this was the sort of thing that amused
them both intensely. For the next few minutes it seemed a pity to do anything
but rummage through their programmes with occasional remarks of “Oh,
do
read this—it’s better still!”—until they
became so uproarious that people near them began to look round reprovingly.
“Really,” he exclaimed at last, after laughing a great deal,
“is this a proper mood for approaching great music?”—and
she answered: “Yes, I think it is—much better, anyhow, than the
mood of the person who wrote that programme stuff.” He responded:
“Yes, yes—oh, yes,” with almost worshipful eagerness; he
knew what she meant, and it was somehow deep with all kinds of meanings that
were his also.

“It would be much more intelligent to call music just a nice noise,
as a child might,” she said.

“I agree. These attempts to describe tunes in words are ridiculous.
You can’t ever be sure what a composer means.”

“Why should he mean anything at all? Isn’t the nice noise that
he invents reason enough?”

“Reason enough for us, but is it
his
reason? Why does he
compose?”

“Because he feels like it, or because it’s his job. Or, most
often perhaps, because he can’t help it.”

“The person who wrote these programme notes would think your reasons
very unromantic.”

“I think they’re tremendous reasons. Especially to do
something because you can’t help doing it.”

“Yes, I think I’ve had that feeling myself at odd
times.”

“When you first became a minister, I suppose?”

He seemed puzzled for a moment. “No doubt,” he replied at
length. “But that wasn’t really in my mind. I was thinking of
once or twice when
I’ve
tackled music composition.”

“You’ve composed?” she queried, her eyes showing more
surprise than her words.

“Only a little. When I was younger I was very keen.”

“What did you compose?”

“Songs, hymn-tunes, all sorts of things. I once won ten pounds for a
string quartet. That was my biggest hit.”

“Where was that?”

“At a musical festival in East London. I had the pleasure of hearing
my quartet played once, very badly, at a special festival concert; that was
twenty odd years ago, and I’m fairly certain it’s never been
heard anywhere since.”

“It must have been pretty good.”

“It wasn’t bad, I admit. But it wasn’t very good,
either. I won the prize because the others were worse.”

“I’d like to know more about it. I never guessed you’d
done that sort of thing.”

“Well, I never guessed you were interested in music at
all.”

“I know. It was a pity.”

And while he was pondering on what exactly she meant or could mean by
that, the pianist and violinist appeared on the platform and the audience
broke into applause. The first item was the Kreutzer Sonata, and from the
very opening notes Howat had the impression of never having heard it, or even
any music, before. He was amazed and a little awed by the feeling; it was
terrifying, this acuteness of perception that had come over
him—something beyond his mastery, threatening to engulf him in a flood
of turbulent sensation, and though he could not identify it with anything
known or imagined, yet during the Andante movement it rose in him to such a
curious ache that but for the girl at his side and the thought of making a
disturbance he might have left the hall. He gripped with his hands tightly on
the arm-rests and commanded himself not to be so foolish, so overcome; it was
absurd that even music should create such emotional tumult; but it was not
the music alone, he explained to himself, but the strange sequence of events
that had been happening all day. To-morrow, anyhow, he reflected, would see
him reduced to his normal temperature; to-morrow, walking down the slope at
Browdley Station, he would step into his old accustomed groove. But the final
presto movement swept him out of all such reassurance into a world in which
even thought could not be resolved into words, or even feeling into thought.
Only the applause at the finish wakened him to reality. He felt dazed, then,
and exhausted, as if he had been fighting some secret battle all alone.

The girl, fresh and confidant, turned to him immediately. They discussed
the Kreutzer performance for a time, and then she wanted to know more, in
detail, about composing work. He told her, as well as he could, and she
listened with grave attention. “Why don’t you do any of it
now?” she asked, afterwards.

“I do, occasionally. I put in an hour or two only this last
week—trying a song for the school Christmas concert.”

“But you’ve given up your big ambitions?”

“Oh, entirely.”

“Is it because you don’t think any more that you
could
do anything big? Don’t you think it’s in you to do it?”

He pondered and replied slowly: “Honestly, I don’t know for
certain, but I should say probably not. I was far too ambitious years ago,
that’s obvious. Of course I have a certain amount of talent—it
could perhaps be developed if I had the time. But I haven’t the time,
and never will have, so really it’s not much use thinking about it, is
it?”

“I believe,” she said, thoughtfully, “that these things
usually work themselves out in the right way. I mean, if there is great stuff
in anyone, it
does
come out—it
has
to—nothing else
can happen. One would just give up everything for it. The same old
reason—doing something because you can’t help doing
it.”

He smiled. “Very well, when you hear that I’ve given up my
pastorate in Browdley to go and compose string quartets in some garret in
Chelsea, or wherever they do compose them, you can assume that I’ve
done it because I couldn’t help doing it.”

The programme then continued. The pianist played a Schumann group; next
followed the Brahms A Major Piano and Violin Sonata.

Howat had hoped all along that they would play this, and its name on the
programme had set a further seal upon the perfection of the evening. Now, as
it began, he fell into a second storm of emotion, but he did not, as during
the Kreutzer, attempt resistance; he let himself be carried along the crest
of the flood-tide and, at the end, found himself tranquil, though in a
strange harbour. He could not collect his thoughts for a time, but it was the
end of the concert and people were already chattering and shuffling out of
their seats. He rose with his companion and joined the crowd streaming to the
exits; “I like that Brahms,” he said, soberly; and she answered:
“So do I.” There came a point in experience, he reflected (and he
felt that she realised it also), when understatement was the less absurd of
alternatives. When they were halfway to the doors renewed applause brought on
the performers again; they played a short encore piece—some little
modern thing which Howat did not know and did not particularly care for
either. Nor did she; and he thought: How I like that way she has of being so
effortlessly cool and downright—the way she says ‘I like
this’ or ’I don’t care .for that’—with her eyes
clear as crystal and her nose in the air like some high-spirited
thoroughbred. But there was something warm and excited behind the crystal
coolness, and in the lobby outside the hall she suddenly took his arm and
exclaimed: “I don’t want to go in yet—it’s quite
early. Are you tired? Do you want to go back to your hotel?”