Matthew had made all the arrangements in his rather fussy, rather officious way for them to stay at a queer little hotel in Jermyn Street that he knew. Outside, it looked undistinguished, and even somewhat shady, with its dingy paint, and its closely covered windows that were like so many eyes closing in a sly and possibly disreputable wink. But once inside, treading the thick, hot, patterned carpets, surrounded by the ugly, monumental furniture, immensely solid mahogany islands set in immense oceans of florid woolliness, you knew instinctively that you were in the very stronghold of respectability.
The place was a pure survival from the past, leading straight back to the pride of the Victorian era with its vast solidity, and its stuffiness, and its cumbersome gilt mirrors, and its strangely hot-seeming, heavy, plushy, everlasting materials. Reminiscent of old volumes of Punch. And the thickly-carpeted, elephantine staircase, winding up like the moss-grown coils of some comatose, terrific serpent, up to the unimaginable, fusty recesses of roof and attics.
A porter showed Anna and Matthew to their room, set down their hand-luggage, and departed. Silence descended. A peculiar stuffy, hot, discreet silence, intensified rather than lessened by the distant growl of traffic.
Anna looked round the room, examining the furniture, the immense wardrobe, rising sheer like the hull of a battleship, and the suggestive double-bed, not quite so large. The room was far too small for the furniture. Between the bed and the wardrobe there was scarcely any floor space. The door could only be opened with difficulty. Anna was a little dismayed. And she was like a person waking uneasily from a deep sleep. In the car she had been drowsy and vague. Now she awoke slowly to this hideous apartment, and Matthew smiling and smirking at her, a bit constrained, but thoroughly pleased with himself as usual. She was a little dismayed.
‘What a small room!’ she exclaimed, glancing up and down.
The smirk was intensified on Matthew’s face.
‘Plenty of room for us. We’ll be nice and cosy here,’ he said, smirking at her, and taking her hand.
Anna was repelled, and very much surprised. This coy attitude, this almost lewd expression, was the last thing she had expected. All her alarms, which Matthew’s apparent coldness had dispersed, came hastening back to her. Up to now he had simply not existed, physically. What if he were to become physically importunate? The thought of his smooth, lean body made her shudder.
‘No. We must get another room,’ said Anna sharply. She moved as if to go to the door, but Matthew held her fast. There she was, tethered to him by her reluctant hand. She felt angry and humiliated. ‘Let me go!’ came her voice, petulant.
He took no notice.
‘We shall do very well here, in this room. I want you close to me.’
Anna looked up at him. He stood obstinate, with his neat row of teeth, his eyes smiling but opaque.
Then she looked at the bed.
‘I shall get another room,’ she said coldly. But a slow red covered her face. It angered her like a betrayal, coming when her heart was cold with resentment. She was afraid she would cry.
‘Oh no, you won’t,’ said Matthew in his soft, stupid, gentle voice, so uncomprehending; but gentle as if she were a child. ‘You’ll stay here with me.’
She stiffened at his obtuseness. And as she stiffened, he put one arm round her, possessively, and kissed her. She felt the monkeyish, sinewy strength of his long, thin arm holding her with a certain conscious mastery, a certain deliberate disregard of her, as though she belonged to him. And he kissed her on the mouth, with relish, ignoring her resistance; also as if he owned her. He made her feel his predominance; the brainless, brute predominance of the husband. The triumph of pure brawn. He infuriated her. He lighted a flame of sheerest anger in her heart. She suffered shamefully at that moment. But in her heart, the black flame kindled, indestructible.
When he realeased her and moved away, his face was closed and smiling, but innocent, as though nothing had happened. Utterly unaware he seemed; it might really have been someone else who had embraced her. Distracting, the way the man had of stepping outside himself, of cutting clear away from his own behaviour. The naïve, rather winning look that came back to him between his enormities; some humility, some wistfulness in it. She could have forgiven him, if only he had not lighted the anger in her heart that burned up all clemency.
There was silence for some moments. He thought she had given in to him. He bent down and began to unfasten the luggage.
‘Won’t you unpack your things?’ he asked, glancing up at her.
She shook her head coldly.
‘Not yet. I’m tired. I shall rest a little.’ And she sat down by the wall.
Presently he went out of the room for a minute. This was her opportunity. Off she hurried, down the lethargic staircase, down to the stuffy little manager’s office, and demanded another room.
The manager, a pallid, saturnine elderly man, was in immediate opposition to Anna. No, there was nothing else available. Every room in the place was booked. There seemed to be a look of triumph in his eyes as he thus frustrated her. As though in some way he had joined forces with Matthew, against her. The inevitable male conspiracy against the female.
But Anna was quite determined. She would have another room. She would take no denial. The heat of anger kept her inflexible. She would not go away.
The manager suddenly capitulated: he had an empty suite on the second floor. He told her vindictively that it was very expensive. She asked the price and agreed to pay it. If it had been fifty pounds a night she would not have hesitated. She went upstairs with two servants to collect the luggage: she had everything taken to the new suite: she spread things over the rooms: and here she meant to stick. When Matthew appeared, she had already hastily unpacked her dressing-case. The room was littered with garments.
She felt reckless and excited. Her emotions were almost pleasurable. Matthew looked on, very annoyed, from the doorway.
‘I have changed the rooms,’ she cried, challenging.
‘So I see,’ said Matthew.
Matthew prided himself on his arrangements. He was an inveterate organizer, always planning ahead, most conscientious, albeit somewhat inefficient. He hated to have his plans disarranged.
‘Don’t you like this better?’ asked Anna.
He stared disapprovingly without answering. She wondered if he was going to make a scene.
‘It must be very expensive,’ he said.
Anna told him the price.
‘Ridiculous! We can’t possibly afford it,’ he said, bad-tempered and rather shrewish, as he often was about money matters.
‘I’ll pay the bill myself,’ said Anna, brightly contemptuous.
Matthew stared with bright, blue, disapproving eyes at the flushed, excited, determined face of the girl. He had a censorious look, which Anna did not recognize, rather mean and distrustful. Then it vanished, and the neat smile took its place. Once more she felt the exudation of his peculiar attention — so extraordinary, somehow, but with real warm-heartedness underneath.
‘We mustn’t quarrel on our wedding-day,’ he said, coming near and smiling into her face.
She knew he thought he was behaving generously.
Their first dinner together passed off fairly well. Anna was preoccupied with the other diners — they were so totally different from any collection of people she had ever seen. They were all very respectable — yes, overwhelmingly respectable; and aristocratic-looking most of them. But not attractively aristocratic. Most of the women were oldish and badly dressed. And then most of them had those haughty, heavy-jowled faces which have no humanity at all. In that museum-like show-case of ancient gentility and obsolete deportment, it was the heavy, cold, aged, repressive faces which dominated, while the scattered youthful faces looked dismal and negative, overshadowed. It was strangely inappropriate for Anna, so young and vivid and direct, to find herself sitting in the dry, airless, stagnant atmosphere of the ugly past, where no honesty could possibly draw breath.