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.
CHAPTER 7
SO they were engaged, and Matthew bought her a ring, a cluster of small diamonds, good but unimpressive. He was not well off. Anna did not care much for the ring. The small, bright stones had a way of arranging themselves into an impudent little face that winked up at her questioningly: rather reminiscent of the viola faces. Fortunately, the violas themselves had stopped flowering for that year. However, she wore the ring, and soon got accustomed to seeing it winking there on the third finger of her hand. It was as if she had always worn it. It meant nothing particular to her.
Matthew was not an exacting lover. He was away most of the time, appearing at Blue Hills for week-ends. It was understood that he devoted himself a great deal to his mother. When he was with Anna, he was not exigent. He made no demands upon her. Curious the way he asked for nothing from her. He seemed quite content just to follow her about, and to see her wearing his ring on her finger. He made no physical advances. She often wondered what she would do if he showed signs of becoming passionate. But nothing of the kind occurred, beyond an occasional rather inept embrace; and even that seemed curiously vague, almost abstract. And he would go on so calmly afterwards, so exactly as if nothing had happened, that Anna sometimes felt uncertain as to whether she had been kissed at all.
It was very reassuring to her, this apparent indifference of Kavan’s to the physical side of the question. If he had shown any signs of wanting to make violent love to her, she would have fled away in repulsion. It really horrified her, the thought of physical advances from him. He was such a very queer fish. So far from warm-blooded human attractiveness, with his odd, round, meaningless head, and his neat, sharp-toothed smile, and his dissociation from himself. As if he were only half a human being. She shuddered at the thought of physical intimacies with him, as at something shocking and unnatural. At first, she was constantly on the alert, watching for any advance, ready to fly off at the slightest sign.
But no, he didn’t seem to want that any more than she did. She even felt that he would actively dislike any demonstration of warmth from her, would shy away from it as from an indelicacy. And this reassured her. Gradually she went off her guard. She seemed to relax. The taut apprehension of her nerves gave place to a sort of drowsiness and acquiescence. The acute nightmare of insecurity removed, she was left inactive, energyless, and submissive.
She drifted along vaguely, indecisive. A heaviness seemed to have fallen upon her. She didn’t want to think, to make any effort. She wanted to be left alone.
Lauretta looked on all the time, brightly approving, but watching with a sharp, merciless eye for any backsliding. Like a keen little hawk, she was always on the look out for the first sign of defection on Anna’s part. She was not going to let her escape. She didn’t intend her well-laid schemes to go awry.
‘You must start thinking about your trousseau,’ she said brightly. She had reverted, these days, to her earlier manner of patronizing, artificial gaiety. She was playful and a little arch towards her niece, deliberately ignoring Anna’s unresponsiveness. Only, from the middle of the smiling, roguish, ageing face, the relentless hawk eyes peered out sharply, destroying the illusion of innocuousness.
This mention of the trousseau shook Anna out of her lethargy. Just for that moment she saw with lucidity, saw that she could not possibly marry this strange man. He appeared quite impossible, incongruous, repulsive in every way. She couldn’t imagine how she had drifted into this situation with him. A kind of panic took possession of her. She must, must escape.
But then, most deadeningly, her old heaviness came back. She simply hadn’t the energy to fight. She looked at her aunt’s smiling, implacable face with its faint network of lines and its faintly sagging, thin mouth, and her spirit quivered and died. It was so easy to let the engagement drift on; so hard, so desperately hard to open battle with Lauretta. And there was still plenty of time. Later on, she could make a stand.
But just one effort that lucid moment was able to prompt in her. She went off by herself and wrote a long letter to Sidney, telling her all that had happened. When she had finished it and dropped it herself into the letterbox, she gave a sigh, half reckless, half relieved. For she felt that in some obscure fashion she had shifted the responsibility of her fate, transfered it in some occult way to Sidney. Sidney should decide now. Sidney could save her from Matthew, if she wished: and if not — then, let be. She shrugged her shoulders with unconscious fatalism.