Let Me Alone (24 page)

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.

Time passed in a sort of dream. She lived from moment to moment, the life of trivial things, quiet, vague, uneventful, with no thought of what was to come.

She would not think of Sidney at all. She had closed a shutter in her mind, closing out all that incident, shutting Sidney into the dead past. She would not remember her,
or grieve for her. The thing she remembered most clearly, for some reason, was Drummond’s dark, rather impertinent muzzle. She often caught herself thinking of Drummond at first. She wondered whether he thought about her at all. Then, abruptly, she forgot all about him.

Her luggage was sent on from River House with a stiff little note from Mrs. Kavan hoping that she would find everything packed correctly. Anna smiled as she read the stilted phrases, imagining the disapproval that lay behind. She saw in her mind Mrs. Kavan’s blue, piercing stare of suspicion and inquisitiveness. Well, that too was all over and done with.

Anna wanted to go abroad immediately. And that was what Matthew, too, wanted now. He wanted to get away quickly with Anna, to get her safely out of the country before she had time to repudiate him entirely. He was very afraid of losing her; and at the same time perfectly determined that he would
not
lose her. He wanted to have her alone with him.

They decided to go to Marseilles and pick up the boat there. They would have about a week to wait. In the early morning they were at Victoria, ready to depart, in all the fuss and bustle of the continental train. Mrs. Kavan was there, having insisted on seeing them off. She had spent the previous night in town so as to be on the spot in time. She straggled up the platform beside them. Matthew had taken first-class tickets. They had ten minutes to wait. Anna sat down in her reserved seat, not in the pullman, but in an ordinary first-class carriage. Matthew was busy, rather flustered under his wooden appearance, ordering people about. He hurried up and down the platform, talking to the stolidly indifferent porters – his voice sounded foolish and loud – while his mother strayed
anxiously behind. Anna sat in her corner, looking out, rather unhappy and disapproving. If only it were not Matthew with whom she was travelling! Or if only he would behave differently. She hated the sound of his fussy, stupid voice, as it came to her through the din of the station. She turned aside so that she might not see his meaningless, stiff, ineffectual movements.

Finally, Mrs. Kavan came into the carriage to say goodbye. She pecked at Anna’s cheek and put a magazine in her lap. Now that she was leaving, Anna was to be treated with a sort of angelic forbearance. But the mother was almost entirely occupied with her son, talking to him, without listening to his replies, while he beamed at her with his strange, fixed smile, rather strained-looking, enjoying her distress in his pasha way, and yet genuinely upset himself.

At last it was time to start. Mrs. Kavan peered at Anna through the window, and murmured something that sounded like:

‘No ill-feeling – you modern girls –’ Anna did not catch any more.

Then Mrs. Kavan embraced Matthew. He leaned out of the window and kissed her, while she clutched him with strange eagerness. Strange, this intensity of feeling between the two strange creatures. The train began to move. Mrs. Kavan walked beside the door for a few steps, holding Matthew’s hand, and staring with profound meaning into his face, while he smiled at her fixedly, somewhat inane.

The speed of the train increased. Mrs. Kavan still scurried alongside, holding Matthew’s hand. Other people got in the way, and she had to fall back, waving and calling out half-audible messages. Matthew stood at the window, nodding and smiling, and waving his large, brown,
hairless paw till she was out of sight. Anna sat watching him, curiously, as though he had been some partially humanized animal. It was raining, everything was grey and glistening with wet. The signals gesticulated stiffly through the rain.

So they were off on their travels. And so, with an interim of wintry sea, the wearisome journey continued across France. Matthew was quite lost in the foreign train. His aplomb seemed to desert him. He felt insignificant and lonely. For him there were two worlds: the East, where he had his place as a cog in the machine of government, even a certain importance and power as a member of the ruling race; and England – home – which meant to him River House and the attentions of his womenfolk. Now, among all these foreigners, and the foreign advertisements, and the incomprehensible language, he felt in a sort of half-world, a purgatory, suspended between the two worlds which he knew, and which were intelligible to him. He felt angry with Anna for bringing him to this nameless, unfamiliar world where he was of no account.

And also, he was jealous of Anna. On Anna’s face was an excited look, and in her eyes there seemed to be a light of gaiety and subtle rejoicing. Indeed, for her, this was almost a home-coming. With a bright look of pleasure Anna watched the foreign countryside. She was triumphant, and it seemed to Matthew that in her pride and contentment she triumphed over him.

He sat in his corner, or stood stiffly in the corridor, as if he suffered some insult. His brown, neat, small-featured face wore an angry, humiliated look. But he held his head high in a kind of strutting defiance. He would not let the foreigners see that he was at all subdued.

At Marseilles he would have liked to go to one of the
big hotels where the English people stayed. He was willing, for once, to pay exorbitantly for the reassuring presence of his fellow-countrymen. But Anna would not have it. And now it was
she
who made the arrangements. Matthew, a stranger in this strange world, had to stand in the background, looking on. He didn’t like it at all. He didn’t like to hear Anna chattering in the strange language while he understood nothing.

He stood in the background feeling sulky and stiff, while Anna asked questions and talked. People scrutinized him, with contempt it seemed; but nobody paid him any attention. He was simply Anna’s appendage. At last they were settled in a queer, rambling old hotel not far from the quays. There was a glimpse of prussian-blue sea from the top windows, and a great rattling and screeching of trams.

They went to eat at a tiny restuarant with lobsters painted on the walls, and a barrow of shell-fish – mussels and sea-urchins – at the door. Anna was very happy. She was almost oblivious of Matthew. He had no power to trouble her. She felt that she had returned home. After a long experience of the smallness, the neatness, the cultivated soullessness of England, where everything seems tame and vulgar and devitalized, she rejoiced to feel the world bigger, and untidier, more natural and live, around her. More of a living world, and less of an industrial machine. The horrible, mechanical middle-classness of England! The small grey uglinesses, and the meanness and the coldness – as though machine-oil ran in its veins instead of the good red blood of humanity. You have to make your escape sometimes to the nobler places – or lose your soul altogether. Anna was happy, feeling the power and bigness of the unseen mountains not far away. The potency of the mountains made itself felt.

They walked in the crowded streets, looking at the shops which were so like English shops and yet so unmistakably different. They sat in cafés, and were jostled by the noisy, cheerful crowd. Anna was very happy. It was like an intoxication to her, the feeling of freedom and escape. She was quite quiet, perfectly self-contained, with the bright light of excitement in her eyes, like a personal flame. Perfectly free she felt, centred in herself beyond all troubling, and triumphantly alive. She was unaware of Matthew. And he followed her about with a sullen expression, rather forlorn, which might have touched her if she had noticed it. He looked curiously like Winifred now and then.

They took a car and drove out into the country. It was a beautiful day, springlike, with a gold sun pouring out of the sky. Up they climbed, up a great curving ascent to a desolate roof of earth and rock and patches of stunted trees. It was all rockily bare and mountainous. Anna thought of the Old Testament. It was like Mount Sinai. It was barren and grim, but the sun was bright, hot even, and she loved it. She loved being in the high, bare, lonely place.

The car began to rattle down towards Cassis. And now there were vineyards – everywhere the striped, yellowish vineyards, and terracing of vines on the mountain slopes, right down from the dazzling white stone crags, down to the edges of the road. And houses were appearing. White houses with brownish roofs and olive trees growing about. The brownish-silver olives, dusty looking, and the tall poplars still shaking their yellow leaves: a blur of dark pine-woods on the spurs of the mountains, and always the white road looping between the vineyards and the high rocks.

‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ cried Anna, in strange, calling tones. She seemed to be in a little ecstasy.

Suddenly, swirling round a curve of the descent, a great blueness confronted them, the sea was vivid blue like a bolt of blue electric fire, vibrating with flamy waves of brilliance, upon the eastern boundaries of the world, a blinding, crystalline blaze of blue water.

‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ Anna cried. And she leaned forward in the keen rush of air, ecstatic.

But Matthew would not acknowledge it. To him, beauty was the soft, safe beauty of the English spring, all dim and delicate and confined, and deep, lush greenery in the tranquil valleys, and birds singing. Not this dazzling glitter of hard limpidity, this vast, unfriendly glare of burning light. He felt himself exposed, there between the in-closing mountains and the vibrant, flashing water.