Let Me Alone

  In his absence, she found it difficult to recall what it was about Kavan that was so distasteful to her. It was hard to bring back to mind that feeling she had had of vainly shouting at him through deadening wads of incomprehension: the feeling of his unreality, his strangely inhuman side. It was chiefly his shadowy insentience which had repelled her. And now she could not quite believe in it. It seemed that she must have exaggerated it, to herself.

  He had not written to her, but she had received one parcel, a neat little packet not much larger than an ordinary envelope. She knew at once that it was from Matthew. Only he would have folded the stiff paper with such precision, creasing the ends so neatly to a point, knotting the string so exactly in the centre. It brought back something of his own closed neatness to her. She shivered a little as she opened it. Inside was a sachet, or a pin-cushion, or something like that, stuffed with rose-leaves and embroidered in silk with a bunch of pansies. On one side was some writing – also embroidered in mauve silk: ‘There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts.’ No letter of any description.

  Anna put the sachet into a drawer. Sometimes she took it out and looked at it. How his face came back to her then; his neat, small-featured, complacent-seeming face, with its row of sharp white teeth. And the stiff set of his shoulders, like a clock. She wondered if he had done the embroidery himself.

  Lauretta would not abandon her schemes.

  ‘I’ve invited Matthew Kavan for next week-end,’ she announced shortly, in her clear, fluty voice, looking hard at Anna.

  This time her meaning was quite evident. She didn’t trouble, even for decency’s sake, to cover up the threat.

  ‘I hope you’ve thought better of your stupid prejudice against him,’ she said, with a cruel twang in her voice, that made Anna feel humiliated and exposed.

  The result of Lauretta’s taunt was to set her against Matthew, quite definitely, on this occasion. She would not be bullied into marrying him by her aunt’s flickering vindictiveness. She would not; she would not. Her obstinate, independent spirit was aroused.

  Nevertheless, as Friday drew near, she felt her emotions accumulating. She would see him again; find out what he really was like, this time. Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps she would find that it was possible to contemplate him as a husband, after all. She felt her nervous excitement growing.

  And when he finally appeared, rather late in the evening, she was favourably impressed. There was no doubt that she did like him, in a way. There was something odd and naive about him, which pleased her. He was not in the least affected. In his strange fashion he was sincere and humble. And that innocence in him – that strange, strange unawareness; as though his right hand really did not know what his left was doing. Only with him it was his whole self that was somehow unaware. It baffled her, and repelled her a little; but she was not sure that, in a queer way, it was not rather attractive too.

  So much in his favour. But as she watched him, at dinner, sitting stiffly on the other side of the table, and smiling at her with just the same look of a private understanding between them, her heart palpitated with irritation and dread. It was repulsive to her, his assumption of understanding, sympathetic intimacy: when she knew only too well the seas of flat incomprehension that flowed between them. And to make matters worse, there was now just a suggestion of reproach in the staring blue eyes, reproach overlaid with forgiveness. A Christ-like ‘to understand all is to forgive all’ expression: intensely irritating. She shuddered and looked away.

  She felt her heart like a jelly, or a lump of butter, that is alternately hardened on ice and thawed out in front of the fire. At one moment she warmed towards Matthew; the next, she was frozen stiff in repugnance. She couldn’t make up her mind. And yet she knew that it was absolutely essential for her to decide, one way or another, for him or against.

  After dinner, Lauretta planned to leave the two young people alone. When Anna saw her fluttering out of the room with an air of feathery archness, a wave of anger swept up in her. It was unbearable to be left alone like that, deliberately, to the tender mercies of that queer fish of a Kavan. She had to look away, to hide the anger on her face. She turned back to the room. And there, across the furniture, she saw his foolish round head awaiting her, expectant. Without a word, she sped out of the door and upstairs. She did not come down for a long time.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ asked Lauretta, meeting her in the hall. ‘I left you to talk to Matthew.’

  ‘Oh, really, you know, you’re in too much of a hurry,’ cried Anna brightly. There was a metallic ring in her voice that surprised her. She felt not very far from tears. ‘You can’t rush things like this. Why, it’s positively indecent!’

  And away she dashed again, away from her aunt’s shocked indignation.

  But the situation was becoming acute. She had to make some decision.

  ‘I’ll think it out in bed,’ she said to herself. But as if some perverse demon had overheard and determined to frustrate her design, no sooner was her head on the pillow than she was sound asleep. All night she slept profoundly, drowned in a heaviness that was somewhat unnatural, and only woke when the housemaid came to call her in the morning.

  She almost groaned when she found that daylight had come again and caught her without a decision. She felt half distracted – in a nervous trough of hysteria. But she could not decide.

  In a torment of restlessness, she went out to cut flowers for the house. With the large, flat baskets, she went round the garden beds gathering the brilliant, rather gaudy flowers of late summer, geraniums, salpiglossis, antirrhinums, and the tall, frilly phloxes on their tough stems.

  It was a pale, sunless morning. The light was quite strong, each tree stood in an impalpable circle of gauzy shade, without definite boundary. Above in the branches, the wood-pigeons were cooing. Anna piled her flowers in the baskets, great heaps of orange and vermilion and purple and flamy white. Like strong, hot, steady fires the heaped baskets burned, kaleidoscopic, vibrating gorgeously in the grey day. The morning was all very grey and still.

  Anna avoided the border where the violas grew. But finally she had to go there. There was simply nothing else that could be mixed with the yellow roses in Lauretta’s room. The other flowers were all too violent, too hotly splendid. She wanted to keep the effect very soft and light. She picked violas hastily.

  Suddenly there was a faint moving blur of shadow on the grass. It was Matthew, of course. He came forward smiling and looking down at her intimately. How pleased he seemed! Naturally, he would have to appear just at that moment, with the everlasting violas! She badly wanted to laugh.

  ‘What beautiful flowers,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Yes, aren’t they,’ she murmured.

  He remained standing silently beside her, staring down at her. Anna picked on hurriedly, without looking up.

  She could see his feet, in their neat brown shoes, planted firmly on the grass. They looked smallish and rather aggressive. The shoes, very carefully polished, had wide toes, which gave them a stolid, opinionated, slightly bull-doggish appearance. To escape them, she glanced up at him. The silence made her uneasy.

  ‘“There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts,”’ she said, smiling, and speaking at random, and holding out a flower to him.

  To her astonishment, he took her hand and drew her to her feet. He was evidently much moved. A strange, rapt look came over his face. His hands were unsteady.

  When she was standing beside him he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. Anna was too amazed to speak.

  ‘I knew it would be all right,’ he said. ‘I knew you would come to me in the end. But what a sweet way of telling me.’ He looked down at the foolishly staring viola, and put it carefully in his pocket. ‘Dear little flower. I shall always cherish it. Your first love message.’

  ‘But it wasn’t – I didn’t mean that,’ Anna said, sliding away, half laughing, half angry.

  She was still almost stupefied with astonishment, only v
aguely realizing some enormous misconception.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ he said, pressing nearer, and trying to put his arm round her again. ‘You mustn’t be shy with me.’

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ she protested, fending him off. ‘I’m not sure – I haven’t decided –’

  And feeling in an absurd position, she broke off, and began to laugh, rather hysterically. He edged up again and took hold of her arm, just above the elbow, and beamed down upon her with a slight smirk.

  ‘Why should you decide anything?’ he said, smiling. ‘Except that you are going to marry me.’ He beamed down on her.

  ‘But I’m not!’ she said, looking full into his eyes.

  ‘Oh yes, you are,’ he replied, quite unmoved. His smile became indulgent. He stood eyeing her with affectionate complacency, his eyes serenely opaque.

  His complacency made her feel helpless. Picking up the basket she watched him dimly over the pile of showy, flowers. Her mind had gone dim and vague. He didn’t understand anything – anything: but then, no more did she. His obtuseness, his insensitiveness, had affected her in some way, stupefying her. She felt as if she had taken a drug.

  ‘Come along,’ he said, giving her hand the tiniest squeeze on the handle of the basket. ‘We must tell your aunt the good news.’ His voice was coy and arch-sounding.

  She went with him vaguely. But her brain was swimming in bewilderment. How had it happened?

  She kept on wondering how it had happened, and whether she had made a fool of herself. But anyhow she had made a decision – or had it thrust upon her. Which was something.

  CHAPTER 7

  SO they were engaged, and Matthew bought her a ring, a cluster of small diamonds, good but unimpressive. He was not well off. Anna did not care much for the ring. The small, bright stones had a way of arranging themselves into an impudent little face that winked up at her questioningly: rather reminiscent of the viola faces. Fortunately, the violas themselves had stopped flowering for that year. However, she wore the ring, and soon got accustomed to seeing it winking there on the third finger of her hand. It was as if she had always worn it. It meant nothing particular to her.

  Matthew was not an exacting lover. He was away most of the time, appearing at Blue Hills for week-ends. It was understood that he devoted himself a great deal to his mother. When he was with Anna, he was not exigent. He made no demands upon her. Curious the way he asked for nothing from her. He seemed quite content just to follow her about, and to see her wearing his ring on her finger. He made no physical advances. She often wondered what she would do if he showed signs of becoming passionate. But nothing of the kind occurred, beyond an occasional rather inept embrace; and even that seemed curiously vague, almost abstract. And he would go on so calmly afterwards, so exactly as if nothing had happened, that Anna sometimes felt uncertain as to whether she had been kissed at all.

  It was very reassuring to her, this apparent indifference of Kavan’s to the physical side of the question. If he had shown any signs of wanting to make violent love to her, she would have fled away in repulsion. It really horrified her, the thought of physical advances from him. He was such a very queer fish. So far from warm-blooded human attractiveness, with his odd, round, meaningless head, and his neat, sharp-toothed smile, and his dissociation from himself. As if he were only half a human being. She shuddered at the thought of physical intimacies with him, as at something shocking and unnatural. At first, she was constantly on the alert, watching for any advance, ready to fly off at the slightest sign.

  But no, he didn’t seem to want that any more than she did. She even felt that he would actively dislike any demonstration of warmth from her, would shy away from it as from an indelicacy. And this reassured her. Gradually she went off her guard. She seemed to relax. The taut apprehension of her nerves gave place to a sort of drowsiness and acquiescence. The acute nightmare of insecurity removed, she was left inactive, energyless, and submissive.

  She drifted along vaguely, indecisive. A heaviness seemed to have fallen upon her. She didn’t want to think, to make any effort. She wanted to be left alone.

  Lauretta looked on all the time, brightly approving, but watching with a sharp, merciless eye for any backsliding. Like a keen little hawk, she was always on the look out for the first sign of defection on Anna’s part. She was not going to let her escape. She didn’t intend her well-laid schemes to go awry.

  ‘You must start thinking about your trousseau,’ she said brightly. She had reverted, these days, to her earlier manner of patronizing, artificial gaiety. She was playful and a little arch towards her niece, deliberately ignoring Anna’s unresponsiveness. Only, from the middle of the smiling, roguish, ageing face, the relentless hawk eyes peered out sharply, destroying the illusion of innocuousness.

  This mention of the trousseau shook Anna out of her lethargy. Just for that moment she saw with lucidity, saw that she could not possibly marry this strange man. He appeared quite impossible, incongruous, repulsive in every way. She couldn’t imagine how she had drifted into this situation with him. A kind of panic took possession of her. She must, must escape.

  But then, most deadeningly, her old heaviness came back. She simply hadn’t the energy to fight. She looked at her aunt’s smiling, implacable face with its faint network of lines and its faintly sagging, thin mouth, and her spirit quivered and died. It was so easy to let the engagement drift on; so hard, so desperately hard to open battle with Lauretta. And there was still plenty of time. Later on, she could make a stand.

  But just one effort that lucid moment was able to prompt in her. She went off by herself and wrote a long letter to Sidney, telling her all that had happened. When she had finished it and dropped it herself into the letterbox, she gave a sigh, half reckless, half relieved. For she felt that in some obscure fashion she had shifted the responsibility of her fate, transfered it in some occult way to Sidney. Sidney should decide now. Sidney could save her from Matthew, if she wished: and if not – then, let be. She shrugged her shoulders with unconscious fatalism.

  The reply came in due course, and proved disappointing. Sidney seemed distant – not unfriendly, but immensely remote. Over this letter Anna suffered bitterly. After their old precious intimacy, their complete understanding of one another, it sounded harsh and unsympathetic. Sidney seemed entirely out of touch with her, incredibly far away. All she did was to urge Anna to come and see her. No sympathy, no understanding at all. Just a few abrupt sentences, ending up ‘For God’s sake don’t marry this man without seeing me first.’ A hard, heartless creature Sidney seemed to have become, forgetting so soon the wonderful romantic affection that had united them so closely and so long. Of course it was quite impossible for Anna to visit her. She tore up the letter.

  But it had served its purpose. It had sufficed, somehow, to absolve Anna from the responsibility of herself. She had given Sidney the opportunity of holding her back from Matthew, and Sidney had not held her. Hence the fatalistic attitude on Anna’s part; mingled with a faint, unexplained, childish feeling of resentment. She was disappointed in Sidney. Disappointed and hurt. Sidney’s apparent coldness, and her remoteness, and the absence of sympathetic phrasing in her letter, made Anna feel injured. She was almost inclined to throw herself upon Matthew immediately-just to spite Sidney.

  And it was such a relief to escape the perpetual goading pricks of Lauretta’s enmity, the horrible pricking irritation of her malicious displeasure. It was a blissful relief to have established even a temporary truce; like the end of a long illness. Later on, Anna could fight it out, if necessary.

  There was plenty of time. She would let things slide for a bit.

  But after all, there wasn’t so very much time. Kavan only had four months in England. About the middle of November he had to sail for Rangoon. They were to marry before he sailed. At first, the marriage was planned for the very last moment, a day, or perhaps two days, before the boat left. But then Lauretta began to urge an earlier date. In her frivolous, ch
arming, girlish manner was concealed an inflexible purpose. She made no direct suggestion. But half a dozen times a day, by subtle insinuation of voice and gesture, she would hint at the inadvisability of delay. To tell the truth, she was a little doubtful of her hold over Anna, should the girl prove recalcitrant.

  Finally Lauretta took a definite line. She announced that she would be leaving for the Riviera earlier than usual. Her husband’s health was made the excuse. He was to be got away to the south as early as possible. By the beginning of November the house would be shut up.

  Anna knew that pressure was being put upon her. She felt herself being borne down; by the hidden, cold determination of Lauretta, and the strangely soft, stupifying obstinacy of Matthew Kavan. And she was allowing herself to be borne down. She even almost welcomed the pressure. With half her mind she wanted to be persuaded. She seemed to cling to the security of the world’s approval, to the things which represented familiar security to her. She wanted to marry Matthew because that was the safe thing, the normal thing, the thing that was expected of her and which promised security and approbation. She was frightened of the other side, the unknown streak in her. It was the old craving for normality coming out again.

  She found herself in a bustle of shopping, dresses to be tried and chosen, presents coming, letters to answer: Lauretta always close, terribly close, watchful and important, and Matthew rather distant and unreal, but also watchful, also important in his strange fashion. Sidney had faded to nothingness. There was no longer any world outside Blue Hills. Only this close world of Lauretta and Matthew, and the half-intriguing, half wearisome business of choosing and buying.

  October came, and the arrangements for the wedding were almost complete. It was to be a quiet affair, just a few friends, and lunch afterwards at Blue Hills; but all very nice, very correct. Lauretta was not sparing expense. Everything seemed to be running smoothly. She was not quite sure of Anna, but nearly. The girl was quiet and rather blank in her manner, her face palely absent, like a sleep-walker. It was as if her face went about independently, doing duty for her spirit while it was away somewhere, upon its own affairs. Always the pale blankness in her face. Lauretta was rather nervous of what might happen if the spirit suddenly returned and found out what had been going on.