Let Me Alone (18 page)

‘Go away,’ said she, continuing to stare derisively and brightly ahead.

‘Let me in!’ he shouted, beside himself with rage. ‘Open, I tell you!’

He lurched against the door, not knowing what he was doing, kicked it with his feet, battered it with his shoulder, swung back, and battered it, using his shoulder as though it had been a battering-ram against the panels. In a blind frenzy of anger he struggled with the door.

‘Let me in!’ he shouted again and again. ‘Let me in!’ He fought with the locked door.

Anna drew back instinctively before the violence of his attack, her eyes like vicious stones in her face. She was silent.

‘Open! open!’ he went on, loudly distracted, like a clumsy, stupid animal in his incontinent wrath. ‘I have my rights. I won’t be fooled like this!’

‘Go away,’ said Anna coldly. ‘People will be coming to see what is the matter if you make such a noise.’

This seemed to bring him to himself. Suddenly, abruptly, he abandoned his struggles and was still. He made no more noise. But he remained outside the door; he had no notion of going away.

There was a very long silence. Anna imagined him standing, narrow and stiff, outside the door, waiting: his rather long arms hanging limp, with the brown hands dangling – curiously simian in suggestion. She listened to his breathing, hoarse and smothered at first, but growing slowly quieter, more normal. She wondered about him; what was he thinking? Would he stand there all night?

‘Won’t you let me in?’ he asked at last, in a small, wistful voice, rather distressing. ‘Let me come in just for a moment – to say good night.’

‘No,’ she answered coldly. Her inflexibility never wavered.

He waited a minute or two longer. She heard him fumble once more – but half-heartedly this time – with
the door-knob. Then he sighed heavily, rather ludicrously, and went away. Presently she heard him fumbling about in the sitting-room, picking up his pyjamas and slippers and dressing-gown which she had thrown on the floor. And shortly afterwards a door closed.

It was all over. Anna went and sat on the bed, cross-legged on the crimson eiderdown, her face tilted back, a queer flower at the end of her backward-curving neck. Her mind was a kind of blank, and half consciously she wondered why she had no more feeling. She was quite cold, cold as a stone, as though she would never feel anything any more. And yet, in a way, she was absolutely flabbergasted by the scene she had just been through. She had no idea that people behaved like that, so violent and uncontrolled. It staggered her, as an exhibition of sheer unrestraint. But she was not really affected. She felt herself aloof.

She seemed not to be there at all, really. She, Anna-Marie, was absent, and some malicious hobgoblin had taken her place. There she sat in the locked room, cross-legged on the ugly red eiderdown, looking out with shallow, distant eyes, and the hard, bright glaze over her face, a bit devilish in the midnight solitude.

Queer, the change that had come over her. The tall, dignified slenderness, the rather slow graciousness of movement, the attractive, grave repose, all vanished: and in their place a hard, cold, jeering brightness, rather disgusting, and a certain febrile quickness, even her movements changed from lingering, deliberate grace to a restless, flame-like flicking, a strange destructive rhythm of darts and jerks. She seemed to have become smaller, and quicker, and brighter, and harder. Less ethereal, though more unearthly: more like some little malignant im
p. The bright, arch, reckless, indifferent look upon her face! The goblin-Anna didn’t care.

Next morning she was her old self again – almost. But about her face still hovered a queer expression, like a dim reflection from far off, and her mouth had a little twist, half smile, half grimace, that did not rightly belong there.

It was late when she woke up, and ten o’clock before she was dressed. As she put on her clothes, she wondered rather uneasily what Matthew’s attitude would be after last night’s affair. How would he behave? She simply couldn’t conceive. She felt quite interested, impersonally, to see what he would do. Nothing would surprise her now. Nothing. But she was not quite comfortable about him.

He was waiting for her in the sitting-room, very neat and compact-looking in his navy-blue suit with the white stripe in it. He held his shoulders more rigid than ever. She wondered if there was a bruise where he had crashed against the door. He looked rather down in the mouth; but calm, she was glad to see.

As she came in, he took a step towards her, standing straight up to attention, and looking like a soldier who has been called up to receive a formal reprimand. Which made her amused and uncomfortable.

‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘I apologize. I can’t think what came over me. Can you forgive me?’

He stared at her rather wanly out of his absurd stiffness.

Anna looked at his strange round head, shuddered inwardly, and moved towards the door.

‘It’s over now,’ she said. ‘Don’t let’s talk of it any more.’

He got in front of her, blocking the way.

‘But you do forgive me, don’t you? Say you forgive me?’ he cried.

He looked at her humbly. But she could see the complacent, bullying pasha behind the appealing ingenuousness. And yet his humility was quite sincere. Quite a real part of him. Perhaps it was the real Matthew, the man himself, who was naive and humble and rather charming. And something outside, some devil, that possessed him from time to time and perpetrated his atrocities. Or perhaps the bully was his own real self. Who could tell?

Matthew, standing in front of her, bent forward unexpectedly and took her hand, pressing it against his face.

‘Forgive me! You do forgive me, don’t you?’ he said, plaintive and subdued as he held her hand to his mouth and kissed it. The words came out muffled with his warm breath against the palm of her hand. ‘Everything is all right again now, isn’t it?’

She knew that things were very far from all right. But what was the use of saying so? He understood nothing. And she wanted her breakfast. She nodded, acquiescent, feeling a little ashamed for him, her hand growing hot against his mouth.

He was beginning to regain his aplomb. He was still humble. But his self-satisfaction was coming back, she could see his head perking up again.

‘You’ll forget all about last night?’ he said, still in the same humble manner.

‘Yes,’ she replied. She wanted to have breakfast.

He pulled her to him, and kissed her rather clumsily on the edge of her mouth, one of his strangely unconvincing kisses that meant nothing at all to her. She submitted in cool distaste, extricating herself as soon as possible.

‘There,’ he said, quite in his ordinary voice, ‘we’re friends again now.’

The re-establishment of his complacency irritated her. She managed to get past him into the corridor.

That afternoon a friend of Matthew’s, a man named Webber, came to offer his congratulations. He held an important government post of some kind in the East. Mr. Webber, who was pale, and who had a sort of gallantry about him, had tea with them in the plushy sitting-room.

His gallantry, though persistent, was far from flattering. He persisted in paying childishly laborious compliments to Anna. It was no compliment at all to think that she might swallow such stuff. And all the time he contrived, by his expressions and by his clumsy deference, to surround her with the aura of his gallantry while simultaneously making her feel that she was of no serious account. He flattered her, and posed in front of her, rolled his eye at her and smiled with playful archness. He assumed an elaborately artificial manner for her benefit: but it was the sort of manner one might put on for a child. He was playing down to her all the time.

Anna was disgusted but also amused. She wanted to burst out laughing at the preposterous fellow who thought himself too high and mighty to take her seriously: who condescended to her out of his glorious masculine conceit. She was not worthy to be treated as his equal! Here was a blow for her! But Matthew apparently was enjoying the situation. He sat back on the sofa, drinking in Webber’s flattery, taking the whole credit to himself. He loved to feel that his friend was envious, that Webber envied him his young wife. He seemed to swell with complacency as he sat. His habitual neat stiffness of pose
relaxed somewhat; he almost lolled against the over-stuffed upholstery.

Mr. Webber sat on, staying for a dreary hour after tea. Anna thought he would never go. He talked at her all the time in a gallant, or an inane fashion. He didn’t notice that she gave him no encouragement. He drivelled on.

Hearing the clock strike six, he started theatrically, looked at his watch with an exaggerated, falsely incredulous expression, and finally rose. He took an elaborate farewell of Anna; to which she responded without undue politeness. At last he moved off.

But he was not quite done yet. At the door he stopped and put his hand on Matthew’s hard shoulder.

‘Well, old man,’ he said in a confidential tone, ‘I congratulate you. Wonderful wife you’ve got. Wonderful girl. Wonderfully fine girl.’

And he leered with a horrible archness, running his eye over Anna as though she had been a valuable animal. She gasped. She gasped with outraged surprise. The impudence of it, the beastly, insulting impudence! And Matthew was still smiling, neatly, contentedly, as if he had been paid a well-deserved compliment.

When he had gone away she refused to speak of him, that horrible friend of Matthew’s. And she was so cold, so distant, that Matthew was bewildered. He couldn’t make out what was wrong. Anna would not try to explain. She knew it was quite useless. But the resentment which she felt for him was almost as strong as her dislike of Mr. Webber. Not content with allowing her to be insulted, Matthew had to take the insult to her as a compliment to himself. She looked at him with sardonic, stony eyes.

The days of what was called the honeymoon followed
one another slowly. It is unnecessary to say that Anna did not enjoy them. One might almost expect her to have been miserable. But she was not—merely bored. She liked the independent feeling of freedom from Lauretta and the Blue Hill tyranny – that was something.

She was her own mistress, more or less. She could go out when and where she liked, spend her money how she liked, and in general gratify the trivial wishes of the moment. Matthew did not interfere with her comings and goings. He did not even talk to her very much. But he wanted to be with her all the time. He seemed to have a craving to be near her, a craving for her physical presence. It did not matter if she never spoke to him, if she ignored him entirely; just so long as he could keep her in sight. It would have been pathetic if it had not been so irritating. He would have liked to accompany her everywhere.

As soon as she appeared in her hat and coat, he stood up and prepared to follow her out of doors.

‘Don’t bother to come with me,’ she said to him. ‘I’ve got a dress to try on. It will take me a long time.’

But Matthew, with the obstinate little smile on his face, did not seem to have heard. He insisted on coming, all the same.

‘Don’t wait for me,’ she said, when they were near to the shop.

But smilingly, softly, without speaking, he seemed to disregard her. He escorted her right up to the door.

She went inside hurriedly and left him standing on the pavement. Up to the fitting-room she went, and shut herself in the little mirrored box with the gay, flimsy dresses and the pleasant, slightly airless smell of materials and artificial lights. It was a relief to be shut away there in the bright, close, lighted box, away from Matthew and his
endless, patient, obstinate pursuing. His insentient, dumb persistency was beginning again to give her a feeling of suffocation, as if she were being stifled in feathers. It was good to escape him. She stayed in the shop as long as possible. But when she came out, he was still there, staring at the brilliant windows.

‘Why didn’t you go on?’ she asked him, irritably.

‘I don’t mind waiting for you,’ he answered.

He carried her parcels for her, and walked stiffly along, keeping scrupulously to the outside of the pavement, protecting her. He pranced a little, as he walked. And when they crossed the street he took her arm firmly and steered her officiously across, like a zealous but somewhat inefficient sheep-dog: though she was much quicker and more expert at avoiding the traffic than he. She wished that his bowler hat did not come down so low on his head, making it seem more than ever like a smooth black ball: and that he wouldn’t stick quite so close to her, like a conscientious but unwanted dog. But most of all she resented his prancing, the way he cavaliered her about the streets – so annoying when she got on much better alone.

So much for the days. Anna spent a lot of time in the shops. She walked with Matthew in the streets and in the parks. She went with him to a theatre or to a cinematograph, or she sat with him in the ponderous, stuffy lounge of the hotel, or at meals in the dark dining-room, always alone with him. And he was attentive to her, very agreeable and obliging, though with a permanent look of reproach in his blue eyes. He contrived to make it clear that he considered himself very badly used. And at night, as bed-time drew near, the look of hurt reproachfulness deepened; he would stare and stare at her with an
expression hovering between accusation and magnanimity. He was quiet and well-behaved. He made no more scenes. But each time that she went alone into her ugly bedroom she was conscious of his melancholy stare burning her retreating back. Silent and reproachful he was; he said nothing to her. But he never forgot, not for a single minute, his grievance against her. Nor did he allow her to forget.

Outwardly, officially, all was forgiven. He was very much the little Sir Galahad in his behaviour. The aggravating beam of Christian charity was in his eye again. And he was firmly seated on his chivalrous mount. He never followed her into the bedroom. Nevertheless, Anna felt herself threatened. She wondered when the bully would oust the knight-errant, and become active again. But it was not really the bully in him that disquieted her. There was something, ultimately, much more alarming: his complacency. She shuddered sometimes when she saw him smile, because he was so certain, so sure of everything. He could afford to let magnanimousness triumph over reproach, because he was so confident. It had never occurred to him, really, that he might not conquer her. In the end he was bound to get what he wanted. He simply waited. His waiting was so patient, so mindless, like a force of nature, unconscious. Would she be able to resist it for ever? She shuddered, and was afraid.