Let Me Alone (15 page)

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, charming, 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.

The wedding preparations ran into their final stages. Everyone was busy and excited. But there was a peculiar lack of enthusiasm evident, even the excitement seemed artificial; there was an undercurrent of cold-bloodedness in it all that was rather disheartening.

Only Matthew seemed perfectly happy, in his queer complacency, sitting about, rather silent, and watching Anna. Socially, he was not very adept. In a crowd he was rather ineffectual, rather insignificant. But perfectly self-possessed, peering from one face to another with his blank blue eyes, smiling the neat little smile above his small teeth, and occasionally putting a word in – generally the wrong word, be it said. And yet, he was not noticeably inadequate. He was just sufficiently personable to carry off his conversational deficiencies. He was always quite nicely dressed, even rather smart, in the satisfactorily conventional way. And he sat about, looking agreeable and ready for anything, with the winsome little smile
covering his silence. So he got away with it. People eyed him approvingly in the main.

The marriage was to take place on a Thursday. Matthew was staying Wednesday night at an hotel in the district, not at Blue Hills. There was, apparently, some rule of etiquette that debarred him from spending that particular night under the same roof as his prospective bride. But he came to the house for dinner and to spend the evening.

Anna watched him attentively when he appeared. She wanted to see what it was she was letting herself in for so calmly.

The man was presentable enough in his dinner-jacket and his impeccably white shirt front. He looked quite a gentleman. Yet the way he moved, keeping his shoulders stiff, and the way he listened and smiled attentively, even rather assiduously, to the person to whom he was talking, was all a little uncomfortable and odd. She wished that his head were not quite so round, not quite so much like a smooth, dark ball bobbing up and down. It had – she could not help thinking it – a foolish and somehow unnerving look. The covering of hair appeared so very dry and dead and insentient. So much more like a stiff covering than a living, growing part of a human body.

And when he came over to speak to her, she was conscious of a slight shrinking. He was such a very peculiar creature. Such a surprise packet still, after all. And she was going to marry him. She was going to spend the rest of her life with that strange round head, those blue, glass-bright eyes. It seemed ridiculous. She wanted to laugh at the idea.

‘What a lovely frock,’ Matthew said to her.

She was wearing a new dress of heavy silk stuff with a small, intricate pattern running across. The rich, darkish
material made her face, and her bare arms and shoulders, appear somewhat fragile and immature. The contrast between the sophisticated, opulent stuff and the straight, slight, virginal body had the effect of emphasizing a certain defencelessness, a vulnerability in the pale girl. She looked younger than her nineteen years: almost like a little girl dressed up in somebody else’s evening clothes. But Matthew watched her, smiling complacently. It seemed as if he did not think of her at all. He did not even seem to think about her in relation to himself. It was hard to believe that he realized her in any way. So that she almost ceased to realize herself. And yet he stared at her with his bright blue eyes; as if he would stare her out of existence altogether.

Anna scarcely heard what he was saying to her. She sat with her hands in her lap, feeling far away. What had she to do with this man, with this situation? She knew that all the people in the room were thinking about her, and looking at her: that she was the centre of interest for the moment. This made her feel rather important. But nothing more – nothing in the world. Matthew sat on, and inclined his shoulders towards her, and beamed upon her. Why? – what was it all about?

She wondered when it would be time to go to bed. Her head felt empty and light. Without a thought in her head, she sat and waited for the time to pass. At last the clock struck eleven, and Matthew went away, off to his hotel.

Lauretta came to Anna’s room for a last-night talk. Her slightly theatrical sense of the appropriate demanded an intimate little midnight conversation. She wanted to play the part of the wise, understanding, experienced woman of the world enlightening and encouraging the timid neophyte. She wanted Anna to be in a state of hesitant
trepidation: then she would talk to her, so tactfully, so beautifully. The sentences formed themselves in her mind as she came along. She went into Anna’s room, and found the girl in one of her queer, hard moods.

‘Our last night together, dear,’ said Lauretta, with somewhat over-emphasized affection, smiling her charming smile.

The tone in which she spoke revealed vast implications of sentimental posturing, a whole liturgy of artificial emotionalism. Anna lifted her cool grey eyes, undeceived, half-derisive, towards her aunt, half clouded with heavy indifference.

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling coolly. ‘My last night at Blue Hills. What a relief for you.’

Lauretta started and frowned, shaken rudely out of her histrionic glow. But she clung to the skirts of her role.

‘Whatever makes you say that?’ she asked, falsely smooth. ‘Surely you can’t imagine that we want to get rid of you, you foolish child!’ She kept smiling; but her smoothness was costing her an effort.

‘Of course you want to get rid of me,’ said Anna bluntly.

Lauretta made a quick, irritable movement of her hands, clenching them. The rings flashed in the light, spinning swift webs of brilliance.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said, on an edge of sharpness, looking away.

Anna laughed rudely.

‘You know perfectly well you’ve forced me into this marriage,’ she retorted.

Lauretta was shocked and offended. In a way, she was even a little alarmed. She was always rather defeated by that insolent hardness that came out occasionally in the
girl and was so uncomfortably reminiscent of James Forrester. It put her out of action for the moment.

‘How can you say such a thing?’ she exclaimed, clasping her hands in agitation.

‘But you know it’s true,’ said Anna, staring at her in a way that was highly disconcerting. There was neither anger nor resentment in her eyes, nor heat of any kind. Nothing but a cold, insulting perspicacity, like an affront.

Lauretta was deeply offended. But she dared not reveal her feelings, just then. She quailed too much before Anna’s disquieting inheritance from James Forrester. Nothing is so upsetting as a resurrection.

‘Of course you mustn’t marry Matthew against your will,’ said poor Lauretta. ‘It’s not too late even now.’ She glanced round at the packed luggage, all in readiness for the following day.

‘Oh yes, it is. Much too late. You’re quite safe now,’ said Anna, smiling coldly. She looked callously, even brutally, at her aunt. ‘You’ve got me nicely landed.’

Lauretta’s rings span distracted little rainbows in the air. She was really horrified by Anna’s remarks – not merely offended, but horrified. There seemed to be something so heartless and repulsive about the girl just now; unnatural. And it really was rather shocking the way she spoke, so coldly and tauntingly, with the insolent perspicacious look on her young face, inhumanly direct, as though some mitigating skin of illusion were missing. And Anna intended to be shocking and brutal and repulsive. The more repulsive the better. It was the dark, alien strain in her blood urging her to a curious perverseness. Lauretta couldn’t stand any more of it.

‘You’re tired and overwrought,’ she said, as soothingly as she could manage. ‘You’ll feel quite different in the
morning after a good sleep.’ And she went away, her charming part of womanly adviser and confidante unacted.

Anna got into bed and lay staring at the wall. She was glad that she had behaved brutally to Lauretta. A little demon of perverseness made her smile even now. But the hard mood was not quite genuine, all the same. There was more indifference than hardness in her heart. She wanted to escape, to break loose from Matthew and from everyone, to run away and be by herself somewhere. She wanted to want these things. But she couldn’t. No, she really couldn’t want her freedom or anything else. Not actively. A horrid dead-weight of indifference crushed her down.

The next day was blustery, with great clouds lurching across the sky, and occasional vicious onslaughts of cold, grey rain. Next, the sun swinging out into a torn fragment of pale-washed blue, and the wet paths drying quickly in the high wind, puddles gleaming like grey, dropped mirrors. Then the clouds closing up again over the pallid blue, and the fierce, chilly rattle of the rain once more.

Anna went up to her room when it was time to dress, feeling cold and unnatural. It seemed strange to be changing one’s clothes in the middle of the morning. The dress in which she was to be married was a plain affair, straight and parchment-coloured; not really a wedding-dress at all. It would do later on for afternoons. She was soon ready. The sky darkened, and rain came hissing down, hissing like steam against the window-panes. Her light dress seemed out of place in the rainy twilight. She sighed. For the pale dress was so incongruous: it made her feel more and more unnatural, like a victim. Surely, in some way, she was being victimized. And yet, really, in
her heart, she felt nothing at all. There was a blank indifference in her heart.