Let Me Alone Page 10

  They played tennis together, and she was agreeably surprised. He really was a very good player, dashing about, somewhat lithe and monkeyish in spite of the stiff set of his shoulders. His long, brown, thin arms seemed to possess an enormous, monkeyish strength, as they swung up and down, and in his blue eyes an infallible judgment lurked, also somewhat simian. He wore his shirt decorously a little open, showing his neck brown right down to the chest; not with a sudden, hard, high-water mark of white, like the other men.

  And he kept his attention fixed upon Anna during the game, so that – although he did not speak – she could feel the peculiar, indescribable exudation of his regard. Moreover, he picked up the balls for her when she was serving, and as he handed them to her, he looked, not at the balls on his outstretched racquet, but right into her eyes, with a very faint smile, as it were intimate, on his face. Anna did not know what to make of this. The man seemed to think that some private understanding had been established between them. She felt irritated, and also a little nervous. As though she would never be able to escape him.

  Right enough, as she walked towards the house after the game, there was Matthew coming after her across the grass, quick march, with brisk, military steps, like a conscientious escort. She let him overtake her.

  ‘You played awfully well,’ he said, smiling, and looking self-satisfied, as though he took the credit for her proficiency.

  Anna wanted to say something rude. But what, after all, was she to say? He smiled so innocently, as though he really did not know how irritating he was. And there was something rather winning about him; about his very unawareness.

  They strolled on, through the pinkish tunnel of the rose-pergola, and out into the sun again. Anna looked at his brown, sinewy arms swinging in the sunshine, very smooth and hairless, but tough-looking, like leather, with a strange movement of muscles and tendons creeping and sliding inside the tough skin.

  ‘What strong arms you have!’ she exclaimed, almost involuntarily, looking down at them.

  ‘Yes. Look here!’

  He laughed with self-satisfaction, clenching his fist and swinging up his forearm with a sharp jerk. The muscles swelled and knotted, creeping strips and bundles of contorted energy under the brown, leathery hide. He was childishly proud.

  ‘I can crack a hazel-nut in there – easily,’ he said, fingering the bulging curve where the upper arm pressed the forearm.

  He laughed again, and came a little nearer to Anna, walking with a slight swagger.

  ‘Hadn’t you better pull your sleeves down?’ she asked, irritated and malicious.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I had.’

  The rebuff slipped off him completely. He was quite unaware, rolling down his sleeves and walking prancingly along. Again she felt that faint, nervous sinking of the heart. He was so, so inhuman, somehow. It was quite impossible to reach him. And glancing at the smooth brown skin, so oddly hairless, blemishless, so like a strong, neat paper wrapping, she shuddered inwardly. But what was inside the parcel, and was there any way of getting in? That was her problem for the moment.

  When they got to the bed of calceolarias, he stopped again.

  ‘But really, they are extraordinary, aren’t they?’ he said, allowing his arm to rest against her for the tiniest fraction of time. The flowers seemed to fascinate him in some way.

  ‘They say that witches used them in the practice of lycanthropy,’ she remarked, rather distant and superior.

  He gave her a sharp, sideways look.

  ‘Lycanthropy? What is that?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve heard of were-wolves?’

  Her voice was supercilious and mocking. Rather to her surprise she felt a distinct desire to deride him, to make him feel small.

  ‘Were-wolves – yes, I’ve heard of them,’ he admitted slowly.

  He gazed down at the evil-looking flowers that crowded the bed. Like lips they looked in the sunshine, angry, swollen, distorted lips mouthing at them in malevolent fashion.

  ‘You must be very clever. You know such a lot,’ he said, oddly humble and sincere.

  He was not in the least offended by her sneering tone. Perhaps he had not noticed.

  ‘Oh, not so very,’ said Anna airily.

  She laughed, feeling a little compunction, and walked on to the house beside him.

  He was beginning to occupy her mind considerably. But what she felt about him was principally a dazed bewilderment, with the faint, creeping nervousness behind.

  ‘Who was talking to you out on the grass?’ Lauretta asked her, when she got indoors.

  ‘Matthew Kavan,’ Anna replied.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lauretta, eyeing her, and standing quite motionless. Then, suddenly, on a new note: ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘He seems all right.’

  Anna’s tone was non-committal. She was rather astonished at her aunt’s interest and amiability. It was long since there had been any friendly talk between them in private.

  ‘You seem to get on well with him,’ said Lauretta, watching her with her very quick eyes.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Anna.

  ‘But you do, don’t you?’ insisted Lauretta. She stared at the girl, as if considering.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Anna, to finish the conversation. The subject made her feel uneasy.

  ‘Well, I think he is a very pleasant young man,’ pronounced Lauretta.

  Kavan continued to stop at Blue Hills. He had originally been invited for a week, but the invitation was extended. He clearly did not want to go away. But then he did not seem to have any special desire to remain, either. At any rate, he didn’t seem to have any object in view. A slightly unnatural situation was created by his continued presence. Heyward Bland had had enough of him. Anna was perplexed but apparently unconcerned. The young man himself continued amiable and obliging in his somewhat unreal fashion. It was now Lauretta who rather pressed him to stay.

  Meanwhile, Matthew hung about the house. He was always ready to do anything or go anywhere, but Anna felt that he was always just behind her. She could not shake him off. With his peculiar soft determination he seemed to follow her about, from room to room. Upstairs or downstairs, indoors or out, his round, dark, dry-looking head would come gently bouncing along into her line of vision; and his thin, neat body, narrow like a grandfather clock with its rather stiff shoulders, would be everlastingly looming up at her; or moving along beside her with its slight, aggravating, self-satisfied prance. As the time went on, it began to get on her nerves.

  Suddenly one evening he came into the drawing-room with a bunch of pale mauve violas in his hand. It was rather late, and the rest of the household was preparing for dinner. The complacent but rather winning smile brightened his face when he saw that Anna was alone – a neat, winsome, significant sort of smile.

  ‘I’ve just picked these flowers in the garden,’ he said at once, looking at her with the strange opaqueness in his blue eyes, as if he really did not see her at all. He was holding out the flowers for her to take.

  ‘But what are they for?’ asked Anna. ‘What do you want me to do with them?’

  ‘I want you to wear them,’ he said, coming nearer, and forcing the bunch upon her. ‘Pin them in your dress to-night.’

  Feeling irritated, she took the flowers, very unwillingly. The incongruity of his behaviour made her uncomfortable.

  ‘I never wear flowers. And anyway, they’re the wrong colour,’ she protested.

  ‘Do you know there’s something about pansies that makes me think of you,’ he said, entirely ignoring her remark, and smiling at her, his neat, pleased, expectant smile. ‘Pansies – pensées – that means thoughts, doesn’t it?’ He was very pleased at having made the connection with the French word.

  ‘But they’re not pansies. They’re violas,’ snapped Anna, nervous and exasperated. She held the flowers in her hand, not knowing what to do with them.

  Again Matthew ignored her. It was as if she had not spoken. Perhaps he really did possess som
e faculty for not hearing what was said to him: unless he wanted to hear.

  ‘You will wear them, won’t you? To please me. I have a special reason for asking.’

  He gazed with his strange, smiling gaze at Anna, rather glassy. She could see that he was coming out with a direct attack upon her, at last. Subconsciously, she must, have known all along what was going to happen.

  With his blue, prominent, queer eyes, he continued to stare at Anna, who faced him somewhat haggardly in her dismay. The rather glassy smile stayed on his lips. It was as though he watched her without seeing her at all as she really was. He looked in her direction: but what he saw was some phantom Anna of his own imagination. Quite useless for the real Anna to try and attract his attention.

  ‘I want to ask you something – something important. I want you to marry me,’ he was saying.

  There! It was out now. Anna almost cried aloud her astonishment.

  ‘What!’ she cried, really astonished.

  He seemed rather taken aback.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ he said, still with the set, queer smile. There was a pause. Matthew, rather embarrassed, waited behind his smile for her to speak.

  ‘But it’s absurd! Quite, quite absurd!’ exclaimed Anna, siaring indignantly at him.

  She felt both astounded and indignant, as though he had in some unexpected way made her ridiculous. She had never even thought of marriage. She didn’t in the least want to marry anybody. She wanted to go through life alone, in her own independent, detached fashion. The idea of being bound up with another person in such a relationship as marriage was hateful to her. And then, to marry a person like Matthew Kavan! Her very heart shuddered.

  ‘Why is it absurd?’ asked Matthew, smiling patiently down at her, with his odd, genuine humility.

  ‘Oh,’ cried Anna in confusion. ‘I don’t want to marry at all. Besides, I hardly know you.’

  ‘You will soon know me better,’ he persisted, swinging his thin, stiff shoulders towards her, shadowily obstinate.

  His soft, shadowy insistence made her feel that she would die of exasperation, and a kind of alarm. It seemed so useless to oppose him, to talk to him; the words simply slipped off his smooth, brown, papery skin. His very blankness as he stood up there, so stiff and erect and compact, like a long, neat parcel, was a kind of threat. She began to laugh nervously.

  ‘No, I can’t. It’s kind of you to ask me, but please don’t think of it any more. It’s really not to be thought of,’ she said.

  ‘Very well,’ said Matthew. ‘We won’t say any more about it now.’

  Anna began to feel rather afraid. His shadowy, overbearing insentience was more than she could cope with. He simply did not seem to hear her refusal. She felt she had not made any progress against his determination. Her words conveyed nothing to him. How on earth was she to make him understand? She moved, saying that it was time to dress.

  Matthew moved also, walking across the room with his complacent tread. His complacency was strangely discomforting to her. At the door he said:

  ‘You haven’t told me whether you are going to wear my flowers to-night.’

  ‘I’ll wear them,’ said Anna.

  He opened the door and she went out quickly, up to her own room.

  Lauretta continually made opportunities for airing her good opinion of the young man.

  ‘Well,’ she would say decidedly, and even challengingly, to her niece: ‘I like him very much. Very much indeed.’ And she would look at Anna intently, with a falsely-smiling persuasion in her eyes, and behind it a sort of a threat.

  Anna told her that Kavan had proposed. She did not want to speak of it: but something, bravado perhaps, made her confide in Lauretta. She was not going to acknowledge her nervousness, even to herself.

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said Lauretta, eyeing her intently. ‘I’ve seen all along that he was very much attracted.’

  Her little bird’s eye cocked up coldy speculative at Anna, as she said:

  ‘I’m sure he’d make an excellent husband.’

  ‘I’m sure he would,’ agreed Anna, with a sneer.

  Lauretta became offended at once. She couldn’t put up with that hard, mocking attitude of Anna’s. She stiffened in chilly, offended resentment, turning away.

  ‘I should think it over carefully, if I were you,’ she advised stiffly. ‘It’s an opportunity for you, you know.’ And once more the threat peeped out, uglily, in her voice.

  Lauretta, of course, was all in favour of the match. It was such a splendid chance of getting Anna permanently off her hands. She didn’t want the expense of sending the girl to Oxford; neither did she want her uncomfortable presence hanging about Blue Hills. Kavan’s offer was simply providential, from her point of view.

  All of which was naturally quite obvious to Anna. But whether Lauretta’s anxiety to be rid of her fortified her against Matthew or impelled her in his direction, she really didn’t know.

  Kavan remained in abeyance for a few days. But he had not abandoned the attack, Anna was sure. Oh, no; not by any manner of means. His brown, closed face was so satisfied; almost smug. And he kept looking at her all through the day with an apparently intimate smile and a protective, proprietary expression – a sort of ‘I understand everything’ sympathetic look, faintly patronizing, although humble. And he continued to bombard her with the mauve violas. Anna began to hate the sight of the pale, blank, rather anæmic, rather perky little flower-faces staring up at her every time she went to her room. They seemed to wear a bright, insipid, foolishly questioning look. A sugar-and-watery, Mary Pickfordish air of aggravating brightness.

  One afternoon at the races, Anna found that she and Kavan were separated from the rest of the party. Sure enough, in the midst of the noisy, crowding, vulgar people, he proposed to her again.

  Anna felt as if she were going mad. It really was maddening the way he kept on quietly along his own road, as if she simply didn’t exist. He was the most obtuse and insentient creature. And quite, quite unreal. She wanted desperately to make some impression on him, to make him understand her, to make him understand that it was quite hopeless for him to have his eye on her. But how was she to do it? Words had no effect whatever. There seemed to be no way of communicating with him. He simply wasn’t human.

  It made her feel helpless and slightly hysterical, the impossibility of communicating with him. She wanted to hurt him, to get her own back on him. But at the same time she wanted to laugh. It was so ridiculous. Such an absurd situation! She felt her throat and chest begin to heave with deep tremors of submerged laughter. The extraordinary creature, thinking that he might get hold of her! Actually, seriously, he thought that she might marry him!

  ‘No, no, no,’ she laughed, rather wildly. ‘Never. Never. I don’t want to marry you, and nothing will ever induce me to marry you. I never will: not if you ask me a hundred times. So you may as well get the idea out of your head. There! Is that plain?’

  And she hurried off breathlessly into the crowd to look for the others.

  After this, Matthew was a bit subdued. But she had not choked him off, she could see. He went about quietly, a little bit blenched, and evidently contemplating something. Heaven only knew what was in his mind. Anna could not bear to look at him. She began to detest the look of his head, as it bobbed up in front of her. Such a senseless, inhuman ball of a head – how had she ever endured it? It had a foolish, hard roundness. Yet she still believed there might be something nice about the man.

  But his continued presence was becoming nightmarish. It almost seemed that he would wear her down by sheer staying power. She knew that she had not even started to convince him yet; not au fond, that is. She began to lie awake at night devising schemes for finishing him off entirely.

  Then suddenly he went away. Anna nearly fell backwards with astonishment. She couldn’t believe, at first, that he had really gone. But he had. Lauretta was very much displeased.

  ‘I think you’ve made a great mistake,’ she s
aid pettishly, frowning at Anna.

  The girl knew that she was referring to Matthew.

  ‘But I didn’t like him,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m sure he seemed very nice,’ said Lauretta, irritated.

  ‘I didn’t like him,’ Anna repeated, falling into her sullen manner.

  ‘Of course, nobody ever would be good enough for you!’ sneered Lauretta bitingly.

  She fluttered out of the room, leaving Anna with a nasty taste in her mouth.

  A fastidious look of disgust came upon Anna’s face, partly because of Matthew, partly because of Lauretta, and partly because of her own position. It was not at all pleasant for her at Blue Hills in an atmosphere of Lauretta’s permanent displeasure. Things seemed to get worse and worse. Between her and her uncle and aunt there was now a decided coldness. They did not try to keep up even a superficial friendliness with her – or she with them. She went about in silence.

  It was really very disagreeable. As August came on, Anna’s heart failed her. She began to feel nervous and distracted. For day after day passed, and nothing was said about Oxford. She had not advanced a step in that direction. In fact, it seemed highly improbable that Lauretta in her present mood would allow her to go. And then, what sort of a life remained to her? To live on at Blue Hills, hurrying out to parties, playing games and attending dances, trailing after Lauretta who would grow older and sharper and more exacting as time went on.

  Anna began to think seriously about Matthew Kavan. Perhaps she really had made a mistake in not marrying him. At any rate it would have been an adventure, a way out. An escape from the horrible empty rush of the Blue Hills social existence, and the horrible, vicious, fluttering persecution of Lauretta. And surely with him she would have had some sort of an independence.