And Now Good-bye (15 page)

He did not answer, but said, instead: “What I’m rather
puzzling over is why you didn’t tell all this to your parents before
you left. It seems such a pity to have needlessly quarrelled with
them.”

“But there was no quarrel—not on my side, at any rate. I told
them I was going to live abroad, and I was quite ready and willing to give
them the fullest details about it, but they wouldn’t listen. I believe
I did tell them a few things, but they obviously didn’t believe me.
When I saw it was no use talking to them any more, I just went to bed, packed
up my things during the night, and caught the first train in the
morning.”

“Wasn’t that rather precipitate?”

“What else could I have done? They wouldn’t believe me or even
listen. They never understood how I could be so keen on music, and I
don’t think they ever believed that when I went to Manchester so often
in the evenings it was only for fiddle lessons. Recently, too, I’ve
been doing most of my practising in Manchester, in a room belonging to a
music-shop, because they didn’t like the noise of it at home. Of course
it is rather an awful noise sometimes, I admit.”

“It seems a pity, though, that you couldn’t have convinced
them that it was all quite genuine.”

“I often tried, I assure you. But in the end I just had to give up
bothering. After all, if people
want
to think things of that
sort…” She shrugged her shoulders and added: “I’m afraid
you must think me very cool and ruthless about it. I dare-say you’d
understand better if you knew my parents.”

He said, more gently: “I do know them, a little. I can understand
they were not very—sympathetic…Now tell me, what’s given you
this idea of going to Vienna?”

“I want to join a school there. Isaac says it’s the best
school in Europe, except one in Berlin, which I couldn’t afford. Ail
sorts of people attend the classes—men and women of all ages and from
all countries. I have to pass a kind of entrance examination first of all,
but Isaac says I’ll do that quite easily.”

“Has this Mr. Isaacstein—is that it?—has he been
encouraging you in all these ideas?”

“No. He says, as you say, that it’s a fearfully hard
profession, and that I’m taking a big risk in giving up home and a job.
But he likes my playing, all the same, and thinks there’s about a
hundred to one chance that I’ll turn out pretty good.”

“A hundred to one in your favour?”

’No, against me, of course.”

“That doesn’t sound very optimistic.”

“He isn’t optimistic, he just means everything he
says.”

“And, assuming he’s correct, are you satisfied with such a
chance?”

“I’ve got to be, haven’t I? It’s either that or no
chance at all.”

“What exactly will you do in this school?”

“Play the fiddle every day for hours and hours. Have
lessons—perhaps from somebody of importance if I’m lucky.
Eventually, if the hundred to one chance comes off, I’ll begin giving
recitals.”

“Even that doesn’t necessarily mean success. There are scores
of recitalists one never hears of.”

“Oh, I know. And you know, too, apparently. We both know.” She
laughed.

“I suppose you’ve carefully looked into the financial side of
it all?”

“So carefully and so often that I know it by heart. I can live in
Vienna—not luxuriously, of course, but then I wouldn’t want
to—on a hundred and fifty or so a year. Living’s a little cheaper
than it is in England. At the end of six months, if I show promise, the
school may grant me a scholarship, and I might also be able to get a few
outside pupils. I’ve saved up exactly a hundred and eighty-seven pounds
during the past six years, so I can afford at least twelve months at the
school, even as an experiment.”

“What if the experiment doesn’t succeed?”

“Then I’ll at least know that I’ve had the chance and
failed.”

“You may find yourself back in England penniless and without a
job.”

“Possibly. But I’ll manage somehow—I can typewrite and
do shorthand, card-indexing, and all that sort of thing. I shan’t need
to go back to Browdley.”

“It’s taking a big plunge.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not afraid of doing it?”

“I’m more afraid of not doing it. I’d be afraid of
looking back when I’m older and wishing I’d had the nerve when I
was young.”

Howat rose abruptly from his chair, picking up the bill that the waitress
had placed on the table. “Shall we go?” he said, smiling.
“By the way, where are you staying in London?”

“With friends in South Kensington. Till to-morrow. I’m off in
the morning.”

“To Vienna?”

“Yes. It’s the middle of term, but I think they’ll
probably let me begin. If not, I’ll just wait there till next
term.”

He paid the bill downstairs and walked with her into the street. The
crowds and traffic had not noticeably subsided in the interval. He reached
the kerbside with her; they had neither of them spoken since leaving the
shop; and he thought, as he stood there: Shall I say good-bye and wish her
luck, or shall I continue an argument that hasn’t the slightest chance
of making her alter a single one of her intentions? Finally he adopted
neither course, but said, altogether on impulse: “It just occurs to me
that I’m feeling hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat since my
lunch on the train this morning. What about your own plans? Are you doing
anything particular this evening?”

“There was a violin concert I wanted to go to.”

“The one at the Cavendish?”

“That’s it. How did you know?”

“I saw it advertised and rather thought of going myself.”

“Then let’s go together after we’ve had some food
somewhere.”

“That sounds a very happy suggestion.”

“I know a place in Soho, quite good and not expensive.”

“Splendid. We’ll go there.”

“It’s near Regent Street. If you’re hungry we’d
better take a bus and go there now.”

They crossed the road and waited for a Regent Street bus, but it was full
inside and they had to climb to the roof, which was open to the sky and the
cold wind. Yet something in that arctic elevation gave all Howat’s
perceptions a renewal of acuteness; once again he was caught up in swirls and
eddies of enchantment, and as he felt her small tense body at his side, he
knew that finding out the real truth about her had set a dizzying crown upon
his happiness. She was pure and good; that was everything; and her purity
merged with the new hopefulness of his own future into a single celestial
harmony. He could not be quite sure how it all fitted in, but he felt, during
that short tingling journey: There is nothing wrong with me, in the way I
feared, and there is nothing wrong with her, in the way I feared. We are both
all right, and the whole world is all right…and the more he thought about
it, the more marvellous that simple discovery seemed to him. In the
ever-changing pattern of lamplight he observed her profile, the delicate
little chin cushioned serenely in the fur collar, the bold slope of the
forehead under the close fitting hat—it was a pure profile, he thought,
matching her in other ways, too—it looked so eager, intent, and not to
be deflected. There was something in the way she stared ahead that put him in
mind of a rather lovely figurehead of a ship.

But he still felt it somehow his duty to persuade her to return to
Browdley, even though he knew the futility of the attempt. The Vienna idea
seemed to him quite hopelessly impractical; even her friend Isaac had not
been encouraging. Howat felt that he ought, at least, to stress the
uncertainty of it, the risks of ultimate disappointment and failure. On the
other hand, he reflected, she knew all the risks quite as well as he did; she
was walking into them with her eyes open; and then, glancing towards her
momentarily, he saw her as the living symbol of an attitude—that
attitude of knowing and taking risks with eyes wide open. And it was an
attitude which suddenly, by sheer loveliness of appeal, broke down his last
misgiving, so that he said, there on that bus-top, just the opposite of what
he felt he ought to say and just the essence of what he felt; he said,
stooping a little to her: “My dear girl, I’m going to give you
some advice which may rather surprise you. You go. Go to Vienna. Take your
chance. Work hard, and may God be with you and reward your
courage!”

She turned to him with a look of eager, startled friendliness, clutching
his arm meanwhile like an excited child. “Thank you—thank you
very much,” she said simply, and he responded—“Oh, no,
no—” and held her gloved fingers for a fraction of a moment in
his cold hand. Her instant response to his benediction had filled him with
overmastering ease of mind; he had done right, he was certain now, and he
could even feel a touch of that priestly serenity he had so often imagined
and envied. “But I
do
thank you,” she insisted, and he
could only repeat-“-Oh no, not at all…” His head was full of a divine
singing, and all he could think of again was the astonishing rightness of
himself, herself; and of all the world.

She had said the Soho restaurant was not expensive; but it
was, in fact, like most Soho restaurants, cheap if you picked out the very
cheapest things, but fairly expensive to the person who asked for just what
he wanted. Howat, sitting down at the small table and studying the bill of
fare, did not feel in any mood to make intricate mathematical calculations.
He was never very competent with money; if he had been alone he would
doubtless have had eggs on toast in a Lyons shop for cheapness’ sake;
but, on the other hand, if Lyons had grossly overcharged him he would never
have noticed it. So that, though he stared hard at the items on
Barroli’s comprehensive list, they conveyed little to his
understanding—three and six for
poulet en casserole
seemed to
him neither more nor less outrageous than a hundred pounds for a heating
apparatus. Nor, apart from the prices, did he peruse very intelligently; he
knew French, but to know French is not always to know the identities of
dishes in a Soho restaurant owned by an Italian. Two things, however,
supervened immensely above all his perceptions; he was hungry, and the world
still retained its extraordinary attributes of perfection. As he gazed about
he could not have conceived any restaurant pleasanter than the one whose
interior surrounded him; he liked its touch of old-fashionedness, its red
plush benches and baroque decorations; he liked the red-shaded table-lamp
near his elbow, and the French and Italian newspapers on wooden frames that
lay about; he liked the quick-moving and slightly shabby waiters, the
smallness and easygoingness of the place, and the fact that at two tables
nearest his own two different gentlemen were dining, the one, in full evening
dress, with a lady, and the other, alone, in a very exuberant plus-fours.

In truth, it was just an average sort of place, better than some and not
so good as others; its chief title to distinction, among a limited circle
being an attractive kind of egg-nog made with sherry.

He said, across the table: “Remember now, this is a little farewell
dinner in celebration of your Vienna adventure.”

She smiled, and looking at her as she did so, he wondered how it had been
possible for her to come to him for those lessons week after week without his
noticing her more particularly. In the glow of the table-lamp he saw a rather
pale oval face with a slender nose, longer than average, and a decidedly
small mouth—like an Italian picture, he thought suddenly, and then,
remembering the Raphael Saint Catherine, he said: “Oh, by the way,
thanks for the picture you sent me. I liked it very much.”

“I hoped you would. I felt I had to send you something, however
trivial, in return for your kindness to me.”

“
My
kindness to you?” As always, he was bewildered by
the notion that he had ever been particularly kind to anybody.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered, spiritedly. “You worked
hard with my German, and you were always so patient. I did appreciate it,
though I had an impression you didn’t appreciate me. I rather came to
the conclusion that I bored you.”

“I’m sure you didn’t do that.”

“You always would keep so strictly to the subject—I so often
wanted to have a real talk with you about other things, but you froze me
up.” She laughed. “How absurd it is to be telling you all this
now!”

He laughed also. “It’s rather odd as well as amusing,
considering my daughter’s opinion of me as a teacher. Sometimes, you
know, I visit the school and take her class for a chance hour or so. She says
I wander about from one subject to another in a most distracting way, that I
never teach the children anything, and that I undermine her discipline by
making them laugh too much.”

“That sounds utterly delightful.”

“Not from her point of view, though. She has to prepare them for
examinations.”

“Well, anyhow, I can’t join her in complaining about you. You
certainly taught me German all right and I don’t think you made me
laugh at all—not even once.”

“Probably because I was being paid for the job. A sort of
fundamental honesty urging me to give the utmost value for money.”

They both laughed again, but in the background he was searching his memory
for some clue to that earlier attitude; how was it, once again, that he had
never noticed her particularly during those German lessons? He remembered
how, when she had first approached him about giving them, he had wondered who
she was, for the moment, and would have made some excuse for declining had
she not revealed herself as his chapel secretary’s daughter. Even after
accepting, he had felt a little doubtful; he hadn’t cared for the idea
of giving private lessons to young girls…But the waiter’s approach
cut short such tangled recollections; it was more important now to decide
what to eat.