Let Me Alone Page 18

  ‘How attractive you are!’ said Catherine, with a sudden seriousness, standing in front of Anna. ‘You make me think of Byron as a young man. My clothes are not severe enough for you.’ She turned over the dresses abstractedly, considering.

  Anna felt rather strange in the presence of this brilliant girl, bewildered, as if she were in the wrong element. She was not used to this unconventional behaviour. But she was flattered.

  ‘This is the one,’ said Catherine, looking at Anna as if she were a child. ‘This is the one you must wear.’

  She presented her with a garment of supple black, cut in a simple, slender fashion, with a touch of white, like the jabot of an eighteenth-century beau.

  ‘It will make you look like a young poet. A little bit precious and a little bit decadent in spite of that unearthly freshness of yours. That’s how I want you to look.’

  Anna was in a state of bewilderment. She was very flattered – oh, extremely flattered by Catherine’s attentions. She liked being treated with this sort of eccentric intimacy, being flattered and favoured and a little bit patronized by the other girl’s affection and interest. She felt excited, a bit bewildered, and not quite sure of her own feelings. She was a trifle nervous as Catherine smiled at her out of her bright face, so large-eyed and beautiful with a strange, by-gone beauty, mysterious. Anna had an impulse to run away from the unknown mysteriousness. But a stronger impulse urged her to stay and explore the secret, to sink herself in the mystery till it was mystery no longer, but part of the tissue of her own experience. She felt a kind of intrinsic sympathy with the mystery, whatever it was; a leaning towards it. Nevertheless, Catherine’s personality seemed dubious and unsettling, coming into her quite different mental atmosphere. She was not sure that she liked it, altogether.

  Certainly Catherine was distinctly dubious, in the Kavan sense of the word. Anna could imagine Matthew’s verdict of her: ‘Fast, shady-looking, rakish’ – and the rest.

  There really was something disturbing about the tall, handsome girl, wrapped in the dark cloak, and flashing her red smile like a sword. Queer, how sinister she managed to look, in spite of her young beauty. She had the beauty of clandestine things, things hidden behind everyday life, inauspicious.

  Anna was attracted by her brilliant, Venetian look. Yet she was convinced that behind it lay something sinister. Catherine was the first person in whom she had ever encountered this peculiar suggestion of fundamental dangerousness. She watched her warily, somewhat repelled, yet with a strange, inevitable fascination, attracted by her. Attracted by what – to what?

  That night the guests at the party had the entertainment of a new combination: Catherine, in her clinging, gold dress, with her great dark eyes, so bold and yet so secret-looking, her odd look of heaviness that had nothing to do with her slim body, the dangerous heavy look, brilliant and proud; and Anna, straight and severely-dressed, with a sort of half-nervous reticence about her, and an indifference that was miles away from Catherine’s haughty nonchalance. There was a great difference between the two girls; and yet, strangest thing of all, a sort of resemblance. It was difficult to say what they had in common. But some similarity there was. Perhaps it was the coldness in both of them, and then the hardness, and the suggestion of something unknown that set them, each in her different way, apart. Anyhow, there it was. The same brush had touched them both.

  Anna enjoyed the party. Coming with Catherine, she was an important guest. She received a good deal of attention and was treated with respect, as a friend of Catherine’s, and, in her own right, as an effective type. She was happy in the unconventional, casually intellectual atmosphere. She liked it. Usually, in collections of people, she was lost. She was too much an individualist to shine in a crowd or take kindly to social gatherings. People overshadowed her: made her ineffectual: cancelled her out. Even people she knew well had the power to make her feel unimportant, almost obliterated. She could not hold her own with them.

  But this night was otherwise. She was out of herself. As she moved, the dark stuff of her dress – it was a very soft silk, flexible – ran over her limbs like a black fluid concealing her. She liked the feel of the silk flowing so softly dark about her body. She felt herself disguised. This night was not in her life. It was a moment isolated and unmarked. While she talked, she did not feel any self-consciousness, only excitement.

  The reaction came in the morning. Then the realization of her own loneliness came over her, she knew herself among strangers. What strangers they were to her, Catherine and the rest! She was so far away from them, with their bold, showy, shallow intellectualism, that seemed simply an affectation. She had not learnt the patter. She did not know how to work the trick. So she felt at a disadvantage. She had committed unpardonable offences of stupidity, bad taste and Philistinism, according to their code. She was married to a nonentity: she was about to go and live in an uncivilized land. She was outside the pale. Even with Catherine, who admired her and treated her as a person of importance, she felt inferior, almost ashamed. She had disgraced herself by Catherine’s standards. So she was in a hurry to get away.

  She was up early, and ready to depart. It was a cold, grey morning, threatening rain. Anna went to say goodbye to Catherine, who was sitting over some books near the fire. There was a feeling of anti-climax.

  Catherine did not move from her chair. She was paler and quieter, much less dangerous, in her morning clothes, than she seemed in the evening. She looked up at Anna, smiling slightly.

  ‘Are you going now?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Anna fingered a book abstractedly. Catherine watched her gravely absent face. What distant, spiritual aloofness there was in Anna. She opened the book and looked at it unseeingly, then turned it between her hands, and finally laid it down on the table.

  ‘Back to Matthew?’ Catherine asked.

  Anna stirred, fidgeting with her hands, and smoothing the fingers of her gloves. She felt awkward and unhappy. Her sense of inferiority made her resentful.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I shall,’ she said, looking down at the book again. ‘It seems the only thing to do.’

  Catherine’s lips curled in a faint ironic smile.

  ‘The prospect doesn’t enthral you?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna, coldly admitting the cold fact.

  ‘But it’s not such a bad prospect,’ said Catherine, who was watching with her great eyes that were like two black holes in her face. Catherine had her private thoughts, and was following them up. ‘It will be amusing for you to travel – to go to a new continent. I rather envy you, in a way.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Anna, looking at her. ‘Well, I wish I wasn’t going. It’s too much like dying for my fancy: cutting myself off from everything.’

  ‘Yes. I wish you weren’t going so far away.’

  Catherine took Anna’s hand, and suddenly smiled at her, intimately, with her slightly crooked mouth. There was a sudden emotional stress. Anna felt herself flushing.

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ she said, uncertain.

  Catherine continued to hold her hand.

  ‘It’s true,’ she insisted, strangely emphatic, gazing with a relentless, fixed intensity, significant.

  Anna lingered uncomfortably. She glanced at Catherine, but found nothing to say.

  ‘You must write to me,’ Catherine said. She sat looking at Anna with fixed, dark eyes.

  Anna’s discomfort increased under this heavy regard, which made her somewhat abashed. She drew her hand away.

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed, her voice rather constrained, a half-bashful smile on her mouth.

  ‘You don’t ask me to write,’ said Catherine, half playful, half heavy, holding her with portentous eyes.

  Anna made an impatient movement.

  ‘Of course I shall be glad if you will. I shall like to get letters.’

  The words meant nothing particular to her. She now wished to be gone, embarrassed by the fixed look, which was also starting to irritate her. She retreated into her d
istant reserve.

  ‘Shall we ever meet again, do you think?’ asked Catherine.

  ‘Come out East and pay me a visit,’ Anna answered, with a mocking smile of faint irritation.

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ said Catherine. She smiled a very different, slow smile of latent purpose.

  Anna was surprised.

  ‘Do you mean that?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not? New worlds to conquer –’ a slow, hidden significance was in Catherine’s tone. She smiled at Anna slightly, her eyes darkly dilated with some unknown intention, watching her steadily, her face seeming secretly to smile.

  ‘I shall invite you,’ said Anna, going to the door.

  ‘I shall come. Good-bye!’ said Catherine, and without moving her eyes, she sat motionless, till Anna was outside and the door closed behind her.

  Anna walked quickly through the cold streets. She wanted to get away as soon as possible. She did not belong here. The interlude had been stimulating, but now it was finished. Ordinary life was beginning again – it must not catch her loitering. She was rather glad to be leaving Catherine. She knew that Catherine was pulling her in some way, establishing some sort of claim upon her which she was not prepared to admit. Catherine’s intimacy was dangerous, and Anna was glad to escape.

  She walked towards the station, and all at once saw a vaguely familiar figure approaching. It was Drummond, the publisher, with a book under his arm. She hurriedly glanced round to see if there was any chance of avoiding him. There was not. Drummond was a well-built, energetic young fellow. He had seen her already, and came striding up, a smile on his face and the book under his arm. He looked carefully at Anna. Her grey eyes, unsmiling and faintly troubled, watched his approach. For some reason the encounter was distasteful to her. He was smiling a trifle uncertainly, recognizing her, but not quite sure. She looked different in her winter clothes.

  ‘Miss Forrester?’ he said, smiling and halting before her. He seemed to search her face with his eyes. She wondered what it was that made his eyes appear so bright, so unusually bright. He waited, and she forced herself to speak.

  ‘My name is Kavan now,’ she said, forcing, with difficulty, a slight smile. The words sounded foolish as they came out of her mouth.

  ‘You are married, then?’ he said, not taking his eyes off her. ‘Congratulations!’ His smile suddenly and unexpectedly became vivid.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, looking away at the grey buildings and the sky.

  She watched the people going past. It was chill and colourless, with the grey houses and the blank, blanched sky, and neutral looking figures moving about. He stared at her pale, quiet face. He seemed to block up the pavement; she felt she would never get past him.

  ‘So I was right,’ he said to her.

  She turned her eyes slowly to look at him. She felt absent, not exactly preoccupied, but far off. She could not quite make him out. It was as if he spoke in a foreign language.

  ‘How – right?’ she asked him, vaguely.

  ‘I said you would not need to write for your living. You see, it was not necessary.’

  She noticed the same precise way of speaking, the same apparently affected intonation that had irritated her on the previous occasion. She winced as the young man’s careful, supercilious tones assailed her, making her feel foolish and confused.

  ‘Was I not right?’ he insisted, his bright eyes shining.

  She felt out of her depth for the moment.

  ‘Yes,’ she assented mechanically.

  She wanted to go her way. But Drummond’s firm, purposeful bulk was still in front of her, as it might be a barrier. He was moving his hands. She did not look at him. She stood looking aside, and feeling embarrassed and shamed.

  At length, out of nothing, he said to her surprisingly:

  ‘I should like to give you a present.’

  ‘Why should you?’ she asked.

  She was startled. Without understanding, she felt foolish before him. He seemed to condescend towards her. But his manner was warm enough. She did not want to take anything from him.

  ‘Is it necessary to find pretexts for giving a present?’ he asked, smiling.

  No, she supposed not. But she did not want his gift. Yet she did not seem able to refuse. It was something that had to be thrust upon her, whether she would or no.

  ‘What shall I give you?’ he persisted.

  His voice sounded so superior, it sent a sharp irritation through her. Yet she could not altogether refuse him.

  ‘Give me that book, if you must give me something,’ she cried irritably, indicating the book he carried.

  He glanced at it sharply, as if astonished.

  ‘This? But it’s only an old thing – of no value – of no special interest –’ He seemed rather disconcerted.

  ‘I won’t take anything else,’ said Anna firmly. She felt that she had got the upper hand all at once.

  He held out the book reluctantly to her. Without examining it, she tucked it away with her bag under her arm. She seemed to have won. He did not know what to do.

  ‘A very inadequate wedding present,’ he said finally, darting his bright eyes.

  ‘I don’t like wedding presents,’ she said. ‘Why must you give me anything?’

  He looked at her, and heard her cold tones, which sounded rather rude. And he knew that she had got the better of him in some way.

  ‘Have I annoyed you?’ he asked, in a falsely-humble voice.

  ‘No,’ she said, in the same cold, hostile tone. ‘But I must go now. Good-bye.’

  He was angry. Her rudeness twitched at his pride.

  ‘Good-bye,’ he said, looking her in the face, opposing her departure.

  But she was already on the move. He stood stock still, barring her way. She made a little detour to avoid him, and passed on. With her bag and the book under her arm, she began to recede from him. He watched her walk down the street.

  She did not look at the book till she was in the train. It was a life of Luther, not very interesting. She intended to leave it in the carriage. But when, from the midst of the printed page, there suddenly sprang out at her these words: ‘Here I stand; I can no other,’ a great enlightenment came to her, a sudden illumination. In a moment, everything was made plain to her. She felt instantly that she understood the meaning of life – as far as it concerned her. Amazing to see clearly for the first time. Now everything was explained. How simple it was for her to realize that she herself was the centre of her own universe. How easy and simple to face life from the single basis of her own undeniable individuality. She was what she was: herself. No need for compromise or apology or modification or defence.

  Again she went to the Kensington hotel. But this time she sent a telegram to Matthew. She no longer dreaded the meeting with him. She sat down quietly to await his arrival. She felt strengthened, securely in charge of her own fate. The momentary illumination would fade, of course; but she would never be quite the same again. She had achieved some new emancipation.

  She waited calmly for Matthew. She was curious to see how he would behave. Some days still remained before they were due to sail. How would he propose to occupy them? One thing she knew, without very much feeling, and that was, she would never go back to River House.

  At about four o’clock Matthew arrived. Anna was in her bedroom, sewing a button on a glove. She called to him to come in. She looked at him curiously. He was like an effigy. He stood with the curious blank stiffness which always astonished her. As if he were waiting to be set in motion. He wore his navy-blue suit. She could not bring herself to see him as a man. He was an effigy, an automaton, a cunning imitation of a human being.

  He saw her sitting across the room, a pale girl with her hands pale on her lap, and between them the limp leather glove and the needle flashing in and out. He was very nervous. He waited for her to give him a lead.

  She smiled at him, with an expressionless face, as she pulled the needle up at the end of the thread.

  ‘
Why did you go away?’ he asked her, simply, as if it were a commonplace question.

  She thrust the needle into the soft leather glove and laid it aside. She was glad he was quiet.

  ‘I didn’t like being at River House,’ she said, and her clear, indifferent, introspective eyes rested on him for a moment with faint interest, and then fell away, inattentive.

  His heart went hot with grief and humiliation. A shameful bitterness rose up in him at her neglect. He could not even make her notice him.

  ‘You might have told me – you might have let me know where you were. I’ve been worried to death.’ His voice was hot and querulous.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. But he could tell she didn’t care in the least. She didn’t attempt to make the words sound sincere.

  He heard her indifferent voice. And his pride was painfully, coldly debased. Yet he could do nothing. He could not gain her attention. He could not even break out in one of his black, raging explosions against her. Even the incontinent spirit of his anger was cowed, for the moment, by her indifference. Only for the moment, of course. Temporarily, she had shamed him. But within he was hot and violent against her. His violence was suppressed, it could not come up to the surface: it was no match for her coldness as yet. Outwardly he was neat and obliterated. He was like a dumb person, a mute, who could not answer or argue or plead or threaten. But his ultimate will never wavered. His will was set fast to possess her.

  Anna remained at the hotel alone. When she told Matthew that she did not intend to return to River House, he seemed submissive. He did not oppose her in any way, or try to force his wishes upon her. He went about stiffly, making his arrangements, as if nothing had happened. He seemed wooden and dazed, as though she had stunned him.

  He left her in London, and went back to River House alone, to make his arrangements there. He would not be long away, however. His unsatisfied will was all the time yearning to her. He could not bear to leave her alone.

  Meanwhile, Anna stayed quietly at her hotel. She had no desire to see anybody, or to go anywhere in particular. It was as if she had used up all her energy. In herself she was content. She seemed to have found the key to her own personality. But she had no energy left.