It was exciting to go to London with him, to bid him
good-bye at Victoria—she to her lessons,
he to his—to meet him in the evenings,
and in conjunction to arrange the programme of their
next concert. These interests and ambitions had
sufficed to fill her life, and to keep the greater
ambition out of sight; and since her mother’s
death she had lived happily with her father, helping
him in his work. But lately things had changed.
Some of her pupils had gone abroad, others had married,
and interest in the concerts declined. For a little
while the old music had seemed as if it were going
to attract sufficient attention, but already their
friends had heard enough, and Mr. Innes had been compelled
to postpone the next, which had been announced for
the beginning of February. There would be no
concert now till March, perhaps not even then; so
there was nothing for her to look forward to, and the
wet windy weather which swept the suburb contributed
to her disheartenment. The only event of the
day seemed to be her father’s departure in the
morning. Immediately after breakfast he tied up
his music in a brown paper parcel and put his violin
into its case; he spoke of missing his train, and,
from the windows of the music-room, she saw him hastening
down the road. She had asked him if there were
any MSS. he wished copied in the British Museum; absent-mindedly
he had answered “No;” and, drumming on
the glass with her fingers, she wondered how the day
would pass. There was nothing to do; there was
nothing even to think about. She was tired of
thinking that a pupil might come back—that
a new pupil might at any moment knock at the door.
She was tired of wondering if her father’s concerts
would ever pay—if the firm of music publishers
with whom he was now in treaty would come to terms
and enable him to give a concert in their hall, or
if they would break off negotiations, as many had
done before. And, more than of everything else,
she was tired of thinking if her father would ever
have money to send her abroad, or if she would remain
in Dulwich always.
One morning, as she was returning from Dulwich, where
she had gone to pay the weekly bills, she discovered
that she was no longer happy. She stopped, and,
with an empty heart, saw the low-lying fields with
poultry pens, and the hobbled horse grazing by the
broken hedge. The old village was her prison,
and she longed as a bird longs. She had trundled
her hoop there; she ought to love it, but she didn’t,
and, looking on its too familiar aspect, her aching
heart asked if it would never pass from her.
It seemed to her that she had not strength nor will
to return home. A little further on she met the
vicar. He bowed, and she wondered how he could
have thought that she could care for him. Oh,
to live in that Rectory with him! She pitied
the young man who wore brown clothes, and whose employment
in a bank prevented him from going abroad for his
health. These people were well enough, but they
were not for her. She seemed to see beyond London,
beyond the seas, whither she could not say, and she
could not quell the yearning which rose to her lips
like a wave, and over them.