A Little Treachery

13

On the next day, lifting her eyes to the window, she noticed with a great feeling of apprehension, the soft, pallid light bathing the under-surfaces of the window-frame. It had been snowing slightly since early morning, and the snow was now settling.

A deep orange-black hue gradually gathered in the sky and at last the snow fell in a powdery blizzard which blew over the valley ceaselessly for many silent hours. Days passed, the lake turned black, its surface froze, and in freezing was curled by the wind, and the snow lodged in the concentric crusts. The little black forms of birds could be descried running diligently over the wide bottom of the valley, over the locked earth; these small, agitated figures, in shuttling motion wherever the eye rested, betrayed the desperate cruelty in the scene of silent whiteness. Towards sunset on the third day a faint, crimson light struck the snow surfaces. She came in, frozen and bitter from a journey and, going to draw the curtains when it was almost dark, saw a queer sight. In the staring garden, a young cat kept by a neighbour was frolicking – a crazy, furry silhouette which boxed, rolled, tumbled and sent the dry snow flying – and, watching this macabre ballet, which seemed to express delight in the cruel, death-dealing scene, she felt as if witnessing a creature’s transmogrification into a toothed and clawed devilkin.

Then she sat down and wrote – but not as she had last written. With much uncertainty, she made up an advertisement offering accommodation to ‘a middle-aged woman, preferably one with artistic tastes’, meaning to have it inserted in various papers and journals which seemed likely, in her ignorant reckoning, to come to the eyes of people of the type she had in mind; a type she admitted to herself only with a gloss of irony, for it was positively raffish by any standards of the past.

That world of respectability in which she had lived all her life, that anaemic, sober, conventional existence which had suited Clem perfectly but in which she herself was all wrong, bored, apart, melancholy, having nothing to say for herself, silent, unfriendly and thus disliked and therefore judged – in this curious fashion she had at last repudiated it. Coarse food was all she could hope for now by this belated move towards a freer, more vigorous society, yet it might be food of the right kind.

Much to her concern – for of course she had at once been seized by misgivings – with an unlooked-for and highly unwelcome promptness the single advertisement she had ventured produced an answer. A large, decorative writing, at the same time strong and careless, informed her that her correspondent was a professional artist who required accommodation for some months in the country, and otherwise gave her no idea of what she must expect. Catherine pondered long and dubiously over the powerful scrawl; she had no gift to read its character, but she was not blind to the fact that, unwittingly or deliberately, her correspondent was curiously reticent. Some elderly eccentric of the arty kind? Certainly someone who was no brilliant success in her profession, since she sought such modest quarters. The address was a London one, but Catherine did not know the character of the area, only had some idea that it was one of those doubtful districts pullulating with Jews, like Bayswater where it verges on Paddington. The woman had come down in life, one might imagine, and perhaps had fallen to – But here imagination failed. Catherine was ignorant of the resources open to the minor artist.

Fearing (and hoping) that her correspondent was in search of country peace, she hastened to reply, giving full details of the house and its situation on the main road, and inviting an inspection before any arrangement should be made. A slapdash card clinched the bargain unconditionally.

Catherine was now alarmed at what she had done. Certainly this fellow-creature, who already seemed to be drawing near her door, would prove to be hopelessly antipathetic, would perhaps turn out to be the bane of her life, a terrible encumbrance; for she might well find it fairly impossible to rid herself of such a waif if she chose to hang on, one who was probably without home and without friends, without alternative shelter.

Then she grew calmer. She had not hoped for much, after all. She had realized that fate might send her something very odd indeed by way of a companion, and that by addressing herself to such a wayward class she had doubled the risk. Most probably some tiresome eccentric would be foisted upon her, that was all; anything downright noxious did not seem likely. And who could do her any harm? She had nothing to lose; no money and no peace of mind. Those who have nothing to lose at least can hope to gain the delights of hell.