Let Me Alone

CHAPTER 6

IT was full summer when Matthew Kavan came to Blue Hills. Anna was not very interested. She was too entangled in her dismal preoccupations to give anticipatory thought to the visitor. In the interminable, rather vapid social round she was becoming numbed and indifferent; not really indifferent, but superficially so. She was always socially occupied: there was always a party of some sort which she must attend, although, socially, she was not a success.

Kavan arrived in the afternoon and was given tea on the lawn. He turned out to be quite presentable. He was thin and neat and youngish, with a brown, dry, regular face that looked curiously buttoned-up. His general impression was one of brown, closed neatness, something like a carefully-made parcel. Strangely neat and compact he was; one felt that he ought to be wearing a uniform. Not a dashing, spectacular, martial uniform, but something quiet and tidy and inconspicuous, in brown or drab. His eyes were clear, but rather prominent and bluish and opaque. A singular person.

He spoke in a slightly deprecatory way to his host and hostess: almost deferential. It was clear that he was anxious to keep on the right side of them — particularly on the right side of Lauretta, in whom he had immediately divined the centre of importance. Yet he was quite sure of himself. Really self-satisfied: even domineering, when you got to the bottom of him. But just now — with his peculiar shrewdness which in some odd way seemed to be a purely external attribute, nothing at all to do with his intelligence — just now, he had decided that it was expedient to behave deferentially. So deferentially he behaved. It was as if some devilkin, some little familiar sprite, perched all the time quite near, but quite outside him, directing his behaviour with consistent cunning and an unwavering eye to the main chance. For although Matthew Kavan talked to Lauretta with a certain empressement, the sychophantic trend of which was clearly visible to Anna, still he, the man himself, seemed quite innocent of it all, almost as if unaware. He really didn’t seem to know what was going on, what line of conduct the familiar spirit was dictating to him, behind his back. Anna was rather amazed at this unawareness in him. It was really most odd, the way he had of seeming to dissociate himself — but quite, quite unconsciously — from his own behaviour.

Another odd thing was that he seemed immediately to be drawn towards Anna. Although he did not pay much attention to her. In conversation he practically ignored her, concentrating his energies upon the older people. But every now and then he gave her a look, or a little neat smile; and then there would be such a curious moment. A sort of meaning, complacent goodwill seemed to ooze out of him, towards her; the strangest silent, invisible exudation of something benevolent and yet vaguely threatening. As if the wrappings of the parcel had been loosened a little, and this mysterious something came oozing out. But the next second, the brown paper would be folded up tight again, hiding it all away inside the packet once more.

Anna looked at her surprise packet. Matthew was smiling and well-mannered and dark-haired. He had a set of rather small, rather sharp-looking teeth, rather pointed, which showed when he smiled. But there was something rather nice about him. She felt that she might like him; if once she could get inside the wrappings.

There was a strange, unobtrusive determination about him, too.

‘Won’t you show me the garden?’ he said to her, smiling neatly over his sharp white teeth.

‘I’m afraid there isn’t time now,’ she answered, standing back from him.

He repelled her a little with his extraordinary division from himself. Was it the man speaking now, or the little devil behind his back? The smile seemed human and rather winsome. But she couldn’t be quite sure.

‘Do just walk round once with me,’ he was saying. ‘It will only take a few minutes.’

He stood beaming at her with his strange blue eyes, fixed in patient, timeless persistency, humble and yet overbearing, bearing down her resistance.

Anna felt somewhat bewildered. His gentle, obstinate, unconscious way was something quite new to her. He seemed hardly to understand what was said to him. Or, at any rate, he took no notice of it. The words simply rolled off his attention like drops of water on a greasy spoon. It made Anna a little dazed.

She moved off, to walk round the garden with him.

Matthew strolled beside her, smiling still, but quiet. He didn’t have much to say. Occasionally he asked the name of a flower. The calceolarias in particular appeared to interest him. He stood quite still opposite the bed of angry-looking, pouch-shaped flowers, inclining his head, and smiling at the fierce mottlings. Anna was not very comfortable. He seemed so complacent. So pleased with the calceolarias, and with her, and with himself. So sure of everything. And yet, with it all, he was not in the least a real person. Inside his wrappings, as in a comfortable parcel, he moved complacently along: but who or what was walking beside her, a man, or an imp, or a void, centreless, ambulatory packet, Anna hadn’t the least idea.

As they went into the house he said to her:

‘I can see you are very fond of flowers. I must show you my photographs.’

‘Photographs?’ she repeated, rather vague. For she saw Lauretta coming downstairs, and wondered if she would be accused of monopolizing the guest.

‘Photographs of flowers that I took in the East. I’ve made rather a hobby of it,’ said Matthew, with a certain complacency, speaking to Lauretta as she came up.

‘How interesting!’ said Lauretta, taking no notice of Anna, and steering him off.

Anna escaped to her own room, away from the bewildering influence of Matthew. He made her feel all at sea, as though she were living in a queer dream. She couldn’t understand him, she couldn’t make him understand her. It was like trying to communicate with a bag of feathers. You might mouth and smile for ever and ever, but all that happened was that the feathers flew up in an uncomprehending, incomprehensible cloud, and stifled you. She was afraid of being stifled. But still there might be something nice about him; underneath the wrappings.

The following days she saw a good deal of Kavan. Wherever she went about the house, he seemed always to be in the room with her, with his neat, round, dark head and his neat flannel suit, looking at her with an odd, friendly, complacent look. She got used to the sight of his head, a curiously inexpressive head, very round and smooth, almost ball-like, with the short, dark, stiff, rather dead-looking hair clinging so close, like a dark felt covering. It got in her eye, somehow, his head: so that wherever she looked she seemed to see it, the smooth, round, meaningless ball. It made her feel a trifle hysterical.

They played tennis together, and she was agreeably surprised. He really was a very good player, dashing about, somewhat lithe and monkeyish in spite of the stiff set of his shoulders. His long, brown, thin arms seemed to possess an enormous, monkeyish strength, as they swung up and down, and in his blue eyes an infallible judgment lurked, also somewhat simian. He wore his shirt decorously a little open, showing his neck brown right down to the chest; not with a sudden, hard, high-water mark of white, like the other men.

And he kept his attention fixed upon Anna during the game, so that — although he did not speak — she could feel the peculiar, indescribable exudation of his regard. Moreover, he picked up the balls for her when she was serving, and as he handed them to her, he looked, not at the balls on his outstretched racquet, but right into her eyes, with a very faint smile, as it were intimate, on his face. Anna did not know what to make of this. The man seemed to think that some private understanding had been established between them. She felt irritated, and also a little nervous. As though she would never be able to escape him.

Right enough, as she walked towards the house after the game, there was Matthew coming after her across the grass, quick march, with brisk, military steps, like a conscientious escort. She let him overtake her.

‘You played awfully well,’ he said, smiling, and looking self-satisfied, as though he took the credit for her proficiency.

Anna wanted to say something rude. But what, after all, was she to say? He smiled so innocently, as though he really did not know how irritating he was. And there was something rather winning about him; about his very unawareness.

They strolled on, through the pinkish tunnel of the rose-pergola, and out into the sun again. Anna looked at his brown, sinewy arms swinging in the sunshine, very smooth and hairless, but tough-looking, like leather, with a strange movement of muscles and tendons creeping and sliding inside the tough skin.

‘What strong arms you have!’ she exclaimed, almost involuntarily, looking down at them.

‘Yes. Look here!’

He laughed with self-satisfaction, clenching his fist and swinging up his forearm with a sharp jerk. The muscles swelled and knotted, creeping strips and bundles of contorted energy under the brown, leathery hide. He was childishly proud.

‘I can crack a hazel-nut in there — easily,’ he said, fingering the bulging curve where the upper arm pressed the forearm.

He laughed again, and came a little nearer to Anna, walking with a slight swagger.

‘Hadn’t you better pull your sleeves down?’ she asked, irritated and malicious.

‘Yes, I suppose I had.’

The rebuff slipped off him completely. He was quite unaware, rolling down his sleeves and walking prancingly along. Again she felt that faint, nervous sinking of the heart. He was so, so inhuman, somehow. It was quite impossible to reach him. And glancing at the smooth brown skin, so oddly hairless, blemishless, so like a strong, neat paper wrapping, she shuddered inwardly. But what was inside the parcel, and was there any way of getting in? That was her problem for the moment.

When they got to the bed of calceolarias, he stopped again.

‘But really, they are extraordinary, aren’t they?’ he said, allowing his arm to rest against her for the tiniest fraction of time. The flowers seemed to fascinate him in some way.

‘They say that witches used them in the practice of lycanthropy,’ she remarked, rather distant and superior.

He gave her a sharp, sideways look.

‘Lycanthropy? What is that?’ he asked.

‘You’ve heard of were-wolves?’

Her voice was supercilious and mocking. Rather to her surprise she felt a distinct desire to deride him, to make him feel small.

‘Were-wolves — yes, I’ve heard of them,’ he admitted slowly.

He gazed down at the evil-looking flowers that crowded the bed. Like lips they looked in the sunshine, angry, swollen, distorted lips mouthing at them in malevolent fashion.

‘You must be very clever. You know such a lot,’ he said, oddly humble and sincere.

He was not in the least offended by her sneering tone. Perhaps he had not noticed.

‘Oh, not so very,’ said Anna airily.

She laughed, feeling a little compunction, and walked on to the house beside him.

He was beginning to occupy her mind considerably. But what she felt about him was principally a dazed bewilderment, with the faint, creeping nervousness behind.

‘Who was talking to you out on the grass?’ Lauretta asked her, when she got indoors.

‘Matthew Kavan,’ Anna replied.

‘Oh,’ said Lauretta, eyeing her, and standing quite motionless. Then, suddenly, on a new note: ‘What do you think of him?’

‘He seems all right.’

Anna’s tone was non-committal. She was rather astonished at her aunt’s interest and amiability. It was long since there had been any friendly talk between them in private.

‘You seem to get on well with him,’ said Lauretta, watching her with her very quick eyes.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Anna.

‘But you do, don’t you?’ insisted Lauretta. She stared at the girl, as if considering.

‘Yes,’ agreed Anna, to finish the conversation. The subject made her feel uneasy.

‘Well, I think he is a very pleasant young man,’ pronounced Lauretta.

Kavan continued to stop at Blue Hills. He had originally been invited for a week, but the invitation was extended. He clearly did not want to go away. But then he did not seem to have any special desire to remain, either. At any rate, he didn’t seem to have any object in view. A slightly unnatural situation was created by his continued presence. Heyward Bland had had enough of him. Anna was perplexed but apparently unconcerned. The young man himself continued amiable and obliging in his somewhat unreal fashion. It was now Lauretta who rather pressed him to stay.

Meanwhile, Matthew hung about the house. He was always ready to do anything or go anywhere, but Anna felt that he was always just behind her. She could not shake him off. With his peculiar soft determination he seemed to follow her about, from room to room. Upstairs or downstairs, indoors or out, his round, dark, dry-looking head would come gently bouncing along into her line of vision; and his thin, neat body, narrow like a grandfather clock with its rather stiff shoulders, would be everlastingly looming up at her; or moving along beside her with its slight, aggravating, self-satisfied prance. As the time went on, it began to get on her nerves.

Suddenly one evening he came into the drawing-room with a bunch of pale mauve violas in his hand. It was rather late, and the rest of the household was preparing for dinner. The complacent but rather winning smile brightened his face when he saw that Anna was alone — a neat, winsome, significant sort of smile.

‘I’ve just picked these flowers in the garden,’ he said at once, looking at her with the strange opaqueness in his blue eyes, as if he really did not see her at all. He was holding out the flowers for her to take.

‘But what are they for?’ asked Anna. ‘What do you want me to do with them?’

‘I want you to wear them,’ he said, coming nearer, and forcing the bunch upon her. ‘Pin them in your dress to-night.’

Feeling irritated, she took the flowers, very unwillingly. The incongruity of his behaviour made her uncomfortable.

‘I never wear flowers. And anyway, they’re the wrong colour,’ she protested.

‘Do you know there’s something about pansies that makes me think of you,’ he said, entirely ignoring her remark, and smiling at her, his neat, pleased, expectant smile. ‘Pansies — pensées — that means thoughts, doesn’t it?’ He was very pleased at having made the connection with the French word.

‘But they’re not pansies. They’re violas,’ snapped Anna, nervous and exasperated. She held the flowers in her hand, not knowing what to do with them.

Again Matthew ignored her. It was as if she had not spoken. Perhaps he really did possess some faculty for not hearing what was said to him: unless he wanted to hear.

‘You will wear them, won’t you? To please me. I have a special reason for asking.’

He gazed with his strange, smiling gaze at Anna, rather glassy. She could see that he was coming out with a direct attack upon her, at last. Subconsciously, she must, have known all along what was going to happen.

With his blue, prominent, queer eyes, he continued to stare at Anna, who faced him somewhat haggardly in her dismay. The rather glassy smile stayed on his lips. It was as though he watched her without seeing her at all as she really was. He looked in her direction: but what he saw was some phantom Anna of his own imagination. Quite useless for the real Anna to try and attract his attention.

‘I want to ask you something — something important. I want you to marry me,’ he was saying.

There! It was out now. Anna almost cried aloud her astonishment.

‘What!’ she cried, really astonished.

He seemed rather taken aback.

‘Will you marry me?’ he said, still with the set, queer smile. There was a pause. Matthew, rather embarrassed, waited behind his smile for her to speak.

‘But it’s absurd! Quite, quite absurd!’ exclaimed Anna, siaring indignantly at him.

She felt both astounded and indignant, as though he had in some unexpected way made her ridiculous. She had never even thought of marriage. She didn’t in the least want to marry anybody. She wanted to go through life alone, in her own independent, detached fashion. The idea of being bound up with another person in such a relationship as marriage was hateful to her. And then, to marry a person like Matthew Kavan! Her very heart shuddered.

‘Why is it absurd?’ asked Matthew, smiling patiently down at her, with his odd, genuine humility.

‘Oh,’ cried Anna in confusion. ‘I don’t want to marry at all. Besides, I hardly know you.’

‘You will soon know me better,’ he persisted, swinging his thin, stiff shoulders towards her, shadowily obstinate.

His soft, shadowy insistence made her feel that she would die of exasperation, and a kind of alarm. It seemed so useless to oppose him, to talk to him; the words simply slipped off his smooth, brown, papery skin. His very blankness as he stood up there, so stiff and erect and compact, like a long, neat parcel, was a kind of threat. She began to laugh nervously.

‘No, I can’t. It’s kind of you to ask me, but please don’t think of it any more. It’s really not to be thought of,’ she said.

‘Very well,’ said Matthew. ‘We won’t say any more about it now.’

Anna began to feel rather afraid. His shadowy, overbearing insentience was more than she could cope with. He simply did not seem to hear her refusal. She felt she had not made any progress against his determination. Her words conveyed nothing to him. How on earth was she to make him understand? She moved, saying that it was time to dress.

Matthew moved also, walking across the room with his complacent tread. His complacency was strangely discomforting to her. At the door he said:

‘You haven’t told me whether you are going to wear my flowers to-night.’

‘I’ll wear them,’ said Anna.

He opened the door and she went out quickly, up to her own room.

Lauretta continually made opportunities for airing her good opinion of the young man.

‘Well,’ she would say decidedly, and even challengingly, to her niece: ‘I like him very much. Very much indeed.’ And she would look at Anna intently, with a falsely-smiling persuasion in her eyes, and behind it a sort of a threat.

Anna told her that Kavan had proposed. She did not want to speak of it: but something, bravado perhaps, made her confide in Lauretta. She was not going to acknowledge her nervousness, even to herself.

‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said Lauretta, eyeing her intently. ‘I’ve seen all along that he was very much attracted.’

Her little bird’s eye cocked up coldy speculative at Anna, as she said:

‘I’m sure he’d make an excellent husband.’

‘I’m sure he would,’ agreed Anna, with a sneer.

Lauretta became offended at once. She couldn’t put up with that hard, mocking attitude of Anna’s. She stiffened in chilly, offended resentment, turning away.

‘I should think it over carefully, if I were you,’ she advised stiffly. ‘It’s an opportunity for you, you know.’ And once more the threat peeped out, uglily, in her voice.

Lauretta, of course, was all in favour of the match. It was such a splendid chance of getting Anna permanently off her hands. She didn’t want the expense of sending the girl to Oxford; neither did she want her uncomfortable presence hanging about Blue Hills. Kavan’s offer was simply providential, from her point of view.

All of which was naturally quite obvious to Anna. But whether Lauretta’s anxiety to be rid of her fortified her against Matthew or impelled her in his direction, she really didn’t know.

Kavan remained in abeyance for a few days. But he had not abandoned the attack, Anna was sure. Oh, no; not by any manner of means. His brown, closed face was so satisfied; almost smug. And he kept looking at her all through the day with an apparently intimate smile and a protective, proprietary expression — a sort of ‘I understand everything’ sympathetic look, faintly patronizing, although humble. And he continued to bombard her with the mauve violas. Anna began to hate the sight of the pale, blank, rather anæmic, rather perky little flower-faces staring up at her every time she went to her room. They seemed to wear a bright, insipid, foolishly questioning look. A sugar-and-watery, Mary Pickfordish air of aggravating brightness.

One afternoon at the races, Anna found that she and Kavan were separated from the rest of the party. Sure enough, in the midst of the noisy, crowding, vulgar people, he proposed to her again.

Anna felt as if she were going mad. It really was maddening the way he kept on quietly along his own road, as if she simply didn’t exist. He was the most obtuse and insentient creature. And quite, quite unreal. She wanted desperately to make some impression on him, to make him understand her, to make him understand that it was quite hopeless for him to have his eye on her. But how was she to do it? Words had no effect whatever. There seemed to be no way of communicating with him. He simply wasn’t human.

It made her feel helpless and slightly hysterical, the impossibility of communicating with him. She wanted to hurt him, to get her own back on him. But at the same time she wanted to laugh. It was so ridiculous. Such an absurd situation! She felt her throat and chest begin to heave with deep tremors of submerged laughter. The extraordinary creature, thinking that he might get hold of her! Actually, seriously, he thought that she might marry him!

‘No, no, no,’ she laughed, rather wildly. ‘Never. Never. I don’t want to marry you, and nothing will ever induce me to marry you. I never will: not if you ask me a hundred times. So you may as well get the idea out of your head. There! Is that plain?’

And she hurried off breathlessly into the crowd to look for the others.

After this, Matthew was a bit subdued. But she had not choked him off, she could see. He went about quietly, a little bit blenched, and evidently contemplating something. Heaven only knew what was in his mind. Anna could not bear to look at him. She began to detest the look of his head, as it bobbed up in front of her. Such a senseless, inhuman ball of a head — how had she ever endured it? It had a foolish, hard roundness. Yet she still believed there might be something nice about the man.

But his continued presence was becoming nightmarish. It almost seemed that he would wear her down by sheer staying power. She knew that she had not even started to convince him yet; not au fond, that is. She began to lie awake at night devising schemes for finishing him off entirely.

Then suddenly he went away. Anna nearly fell backwards with astonishment. She couldn’t believe, at first, that he had really gone. But he had. Lauretta was very much displeased.

‘I think you’ve made a great mistake,’ she said pettishly, frowning at Anna.

The girl knew that she was referring to Matthew.

‘But I didn’t like him,’ she replied.

‘I’m sure he seemed very nice,’ said Lauretta, irritated.

‘I didn’t like him,’ Anna repeated, falling into her sullen manner.

‘Of course, nobody ever would be good enough for you!’ sneered Lauretta bitingly.

She fluttered out of the room, leaving Anna with a nasty taste in her mouth.

A fastidious look of disgust came upon Anna’s face, partly because of Matthew, partly because of Lauretta, and partly because of her own position. It was not at all pleasant for her at Blue Hills in an atmosphere of Lauretta’s permanent displeasure. Things seemed to get worse and worse. Between her and her uncle and aunt there was now a decided coldness. They did not try to keep up even a superficial friendliness with her — or she with them. She went about in silence.

It was really very disagreeable. As August came on, Anna’s heart failed her. She began to feel nervous and distracted. For day after day passed, and nothing was said about Oxford. She had not advanced a step in that direction. In fact, it seemed highly improbable that Lauretta in her present mood would allow her to go. And then, what sort of a life remained to her? To live on at Blue Hills, hurrying out to parties, playing games and attending dances, trailing after Lauretta who would grow older and sharper and more exacting as time went on.

Anna began to think seriously about Matthew Kavan. Perhaps she really had made a mistake in not marrying him. At any rate it would have been an adventure, a way out. An escape from the horrible empty rush of the Blue Hills social existence, and the horrible, vicious, fluttering persecution of Lauretta. And surely with him she would have had some sort of an independence.

In his absence, she found it difficult to recall what it was about Kavan that was so distasteful to her. It was hard to bring back to mind that feeling she had had of vainly shouting at him through deadening wads of incomprehension: the feeling of his unreality, his strangely inhuman side. It was chiefly his shadowy insentience which had repelled her. And now she could not quite believe in it. It seemed that she must have exaggerated it, to herself.

He had not written to her, but she had received one parcel, a neat little packet not much larger than an ordinary envelope. She knew at once that it was from Matthew. Only he would have folded the stiff paper with such precision, creasing the ends so neatly to a point, knotting the string so exactly in the centre. It brought back something of his own closed neatness to her. She shivered a little as she opened it. Inside was a sachet, or a pin-cushion, or something like that, stuffed with rose-leaves and embroidered in silk with a bunch of pansies. On one side was some writing — also embroidered in mauve silk: ‘There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts.’ No letter of any description.

Anna put the sachet into a drawer. Sometimes she took it out and looked at it. How his face came back to her then; his neat, small-featured, complacent-seeming face, with its row of sharp white teeth. And the stiff set of his shoulders, like a clock. She wondered if he had done the embroidery himself.

Lauretta would not abandon her schemes.

‘I’ve invited Matthew Kavan for next week-end,’ she announced shortly, in her clear, fluty voice, looking hard at Anna.

This time her meaning was quite evident. She didn’t trouble, even for decency’s sake, to cover up the threat.

‘I hope you’ve thought better of your stupid prejudice against him,’ she said, with a cruel twang in her voice, that made Anna feel humiliated and exposed.

The result of Lauretta’s taunt was to set her against Matthew, quite definitely, on this occasion. She would not be bullied into marrying him by her aunt’s flickering vindictiveness. She would not; she would not. Her obstinate, independent spirit was aroused.

Nevertheless, as Friday drew near, she felt her emotions accumulating. She would see him again; find out what he really was like, this time. Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps she would find that it was possible to contemplate him as a husband, after all. She felt her nervous excitement growing.

And when he finally appeared, rather late in the evening, she was favourably impressed. There was no doubt that she did like him, in a way. There was something odd and naive about him, which pleased her. He was not in the least affected. In his strange fashion he was sincere and humble. And that innocence in him — that strange, strange unawareness; as though his right hand really did not know what his left was doing. Only with him it was his whole self that was somehow unaware. It baffled her, and repelled her a little; but she was not sure that, in a queer way, it was not rather attractive too.

So much in his favour. But as she watched him, at dinner, sitting stiffly on the other side of the table, and smiling at her with just the same look of a private understanding between them, her heart palpitated with irritation and dread. It was repulsive to her, his assumption of understanding, sympathetic intimacy: when she knew only too well the seas of flat incomprehension that flowed between them. And to make matters worse, there was now just a suggestion of reproach in the staring blue eyes, reproach overlaid with forgiveness. A Christ-like ‘to understand all is to forgive all’ expression: intensely irritating. She shuddered and looked away.

She felt her heart like a jelly, or a lump of butter, that is alternately hardened on ice and thawed out in front of the fire. At one moment she warmed towards Matthew; the next, she was frozen stiff in repugnance. She couldn’t make up her mind. And yet she knew that it was absolutely essential for her to decide, one way or another, for him or against.

After dinner, Lauretta planned to leave the two young people alone. When Anna saw her fluttering out of the room with an air of feathery archness, a wave of anger swept up in her. It was unbearable to be left alone like that, deliberately, to the tender mercies of that queer fish of a Kavan. She had to look away, to hide the anger on her face. She turned back to the room. And there, across the furniture, she saw his foolish round head awaiting her, expectant. Without a word, she sped out of the door and upstairs. She did not come down for a long time.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ asked Lauretta, meeting her in the hall. ‘I left you to talk to Matthew.’

‘Oh, really, you know, you’re in too much of a hurry,’ cried Anna brightly. There was a metallic ring in her voice that surprised her. She felt not very far from tears. ‘You can’t rush things like this. Why, it’s positively indecent!’

And away she dashed again, away from her aunt’s shocked indignation.

But the situation was becoming acute. She had to make some decision.

‘I’ll think it out in bed,’ she said to herself. But as if some perverse demon had overheard and determined to frustrate her design, no sooner was her head on the pillow than she was sound asleep. All night she slept profoundly, drowned in a heaviness that was somewhat unnatural, and only woke when the housemaid came to call her in the morning.

She almost groaned when she found that daylight had come again and caught her without a decision. She felt half distracted — in a nervous trough of hysteria. But she could not decide.

In a torment of restlessness, she went out to cut flowers for the house. With the large, flat baskets, she went round the garden beds gathering the brilliant, rather gaudy flowers of late summer, geraniums, salpiglossis, antirrhinums, and the tall, frilly phloxes on their tough stems.

It was a pale, sunless morning. The light was quite strong, each tree stood in an impalpable circle of gauzy shade, without definite boundary. Above in the branches, the wood-pigeons were cooing. Anna piled her flowers in the baskets, great heaps of orange and vermilion and purple and flamy white. Like strong, hot, steady fires the heaped baskets burned, kaleidoscopic, vibrating gorgeously in the grey day. The morning was all very grey and still.

Anna avoided the border where the violas grew. But finally she had to go there. There was simply nothing else that could be mixed with the yellow roses in Lauretta’s room. The other flowers were all too violent, too hotly splendid. She wanted to keep the effect very soft and light. She picked violas hastily.

Suddenly there was a faint moving blur of shadow on the grass. It was Matthew, of course. He came forward smiling and looking down at her intimately. How pleased he seemed! Naturally, he would have to appear just at that moment, with the everlasting violas! She badly wanted to laugh.

‘What beautiful flowers,’ he said, smiling.

‘Yes, aren’t they,’ she murmured.

He remained standing silently beside her, staring down at her. Anna picked on hurriedly, without looking up.

She could see his feet, in their neat brown shoes, planted firmly on the grass. They looked smallish and rather aggressive. The shoes, very carefully polished, had wide toes, which gave them a stolid, opinionated, slightly bull-doggish appearance. To escape them, she glanced up at him. The silence made her uneasy.

‘“There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts,”’ she said, smiling, and speaking at random, and holding out a flower to him.

To her astonishment, he took her hand and drew her to her feet. He was evidently much moved. A strange, rapt look came over his face. His hands were unsteady.

When she was standing beside him he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. Anna was too amazed to speak.

‘I knew it would be all right,’ he said. ‘I knew you would come to me in the end. But what a sweet way of telling me.’ He looked down at the foolishly staring viola, and put it carefully in his pocket. ‘Dear little flower. I shall always cherish it. Your first love message.’

‘But it wasn’t — I didn’t mean that,’ Anna said, sliding away, half laughing, half angry.

She was still almost stupefied with astonishment, only vaguely realizing some enormous misconception.

‘Don’t be shy,’ he said, pressing nearer, and trying to put his arm round her again. ‘You mustn’t be shy with me.’

‘But you don’t understand,’ she protested, fending him off. ‘I’m not sure — I haven’t decided —’

And feeling in an absurd position, she broke off, and began to laugh, rather hysterically. He edged up again and took hold of her arm, just above the elbow, and beamed down upon her with a slight smirk.

‘Why should you decide anything?’ he said, smiling. ‘Except that you are going to marry me.’ He beamed down on her.

‘But I’m not!’ she said, looking full into his eyes.

‘Oh yes, you are,’ he replied, quite unmoved. His smile became indulgent. He stood eyeing her with affectionate complacency, his eyes serenely opaque.

His complacency made her feel helpless. Picking up the basket she watched him dimly over the pile of showy, flowers. Her mind had gone dim and vague. He didn’t understand anything — anything: but then, no more did she. His obtuseness, his insensitiveness, had affected her in some way, stupefying her. She felt as if she had taken a drug.

‘Come along,’ he said, giving her hand the tiniest squeeze on the handle of the basket. ‘We must tell your aunt the good news.’ His voice was coy and arch-sounding.

She went with him vaguely. But her brain was swimming in bewilderment. How had it happened?

She kept on wondering how it had happened, and whether she had made a fool of herself. But anyhow she had made a decision — or had it thrust upon her. Which was something.