The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 35

Anne put on her hat and went out. She must think, and to think she must keep moving. When she sat still her thoughts were all confused. It was a clear, sunny afternoon. There was a blue sky deepening a little into mist, greying a little. There was no cloud, no cloud at all. The houses stood up tall and stiff. She wasn’t thinking about what she had come out to think of. It was no good trying to think of things you had forgotten-thoughts just drifted… just drifted. It wasn’t any use trying to remember. She knew that-she did know it really. Some day it would come again, the whole thing-who she was-what had happened to her-how she had come to the house with a dead girl in it. The curtain would lift quite suddenly and she would know it all. It wouldn’t come with trying. It was no use to try-no use at all.

She walked on, not knowing where she was going. The air was pleasant, soft, and mild. It reminded her of something, she didn’t know what-something very far back. And then suddenly she remembered. Only it wasn’t autumn, it was spring-a spring day with the birds singing, and the sort of uprush of living that the spring gives you-or used to give you in the days when you were yourself and you knew who you were.

The spring-everything fresh and green. Aunt Letty always said the spring was the time for children and all the young things in the world. She remembered her quoting a piece out of the Bible about it… something about the singing of birds… and she said-she said-No, it was gone. She couldn’t remember what Aunt Letty had said about spring.

Aunt Letty-who was Aunt Letty? She didn’t know any more. She had been a child for a moment. Aunt Letty had been someone whom the child knew-knew very well. But it was gone again. She wasn’t a child any more. It had all gone. Aunt-Aunt-she couldn’t remember the name any more, it was all quite gone. Like something that had happened in another world, another life.

But it was her life, her very own life. She had nothing to put in the place of it, nothing at all, until she came to what was for her the dreadful beginning of her present experience-the dark stair-herself sitting crouched upon it, knowing that below her in the black dark a dead girl lay.

She stood still, shuddering violently, and stamped her foot. Had she no sense at all? Couldn’t she control her thoughts better than this? The answer was that she hadn’t been trying to control them. She had just been letting them drift, and that she mustn’t do. Not ever.

For the first time she looked about her. She had been walking on, letting her thoughts run, not noticing where she was going. When there had been a crossing she had taken it mechanically. The thoughts that occupied her mind had given way and then closed in again. She had not noticed which way she went, only come out of her thoughts sufficiently to cross, to turn, to follow some road, some pattern that lay deep in her mind, too deep for conscious thought. Now, quite suddenly, she looked about her and saw a quiet decorous street and close beside her an entrance. She stood and looked at it.

Thoughts came up in her mind. She felt an extraordinary impulse to go in at the door. She even had a picture in her mind of the hall beyond. For the moment she could see it. The place was an hotel. There was a counter, and a girl who took your name down. She had a prompting to go in, to go up the stairs. And suddenly, quick on that, a flood of opposite thoughts, so strong that there was no escaping them. They turned her, set her feet going, so that she was walking hard, walking away with a most dreadful feeling of fear. She didn’t know where it came from. She only knew that it took all her firmness, all her self-control, just to keep walking steadily as if she knew where she was going. There was no clue as to why she should feel as she did. It was just fear made manifest, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know that she had just missed a meeting with Maxton, who had called at the Hood to enquire whether Miss Anne Forest had returned to the hotel. If she had gone up the steps and entered the hall of the Hood she would have met him face to face.

She walked on. She didn’t know what an escape had been hers, but she felt a sense of relief, of release. She began to notice the faint sunshine, the light breeze. Her thoughts quieted. She began to think of Jim. He hadn’t just rushed off and been glad to be rid of her. He really cared what happened to her-he really did care.

She walked quite a long way and thought about Jim.