‘Let me in,’ said Matthew, trying the door.
‘No,’ said Anna.
‘Open the door,’ he said angrily. A nasty tone was coming into his voice.
She did not answer, but watched the door. He had got his shoulder against it and was pushing. She could hear the faint roar of his angry breath.
Suddenly he remembered the other door, and dashed round there. In a moment he was rattling the handle on that side.
Anna looked round with hard, bright, unnatural eyes. She did not seem to be herself at all, but some heartless creature, inflexible and malicious and rather diabolical. So cold; so sprightly. There was a devilish little cold sparkle on her face as she gathered up his belongings, darting about the room with rapid, flicking motions; collecting his things and bundling them out into the sitting-room; then turning the key again. Quick as thought, the room was clear of all trace of him.
‘Your things are outside the door,’ she called. ‘You must sleep in the little room.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ came his voice, somewhat dangerously. ‘You have no right to keep me out. Open the door at once.’
Anna detested him.
‘You must sleep in the other room,’ she said.
‘No! I’m not going to put up with such treatment. You shall let me in! Come now. Open the door. I love you far too much to be shut out on my wedding night. Let me in!’ His anger was really roused now. He was losing control. He began to shake the door again, more violently this time.
Anna was surprised. She had no idea that her surprise packet included this quota of bullying, unbalanced fury. She smiled to herself as she listened to his onslaughts on the door. She was excited. But certainly she was not nervous; or the least bit compassionate. The new goblin in her was contemptuously amused at this display of black rage. And she hated him. She was glad that she was able to insult his male conceit. She tilted her head, and stared mockingly at the shaking door.
‘Don’t try to make a fool of me,’ came his dangerous, muffled voice, through the wood. Such a hot, stupid, animal sound in the angry voice.
‘Go away,’ said she, continuing to stare derisively and brightly ahead.
‘Let me in!’ he shouted, beside himself with rage. ‘Open, I tell you!’
He lurched against the door, not knowing what he was doing, kicked it with his feet, battered it with his shoulder, swung back, and battered it, using his shoulder as though it had been a battering-ram against the panels. In a blind frenzy of anger he struggled with the door.
‘Let me in!’ he shouted again and again. ‘Let me in!’ He fought with the locked door.
Anna drew back instinctively before the violence of his attack, her eyes like vicious stones in her face. She was silent.
‘Open! open!’ he went on, loudly distracted, like a clumsy, stupid animal in his incontinent wrath. ‘I have my rights. I won’t be fooled like this!’
‘Go away,’ said Anna coldly. ‘People will be coming to see what is the matter if you make such a noise.’
This seemed to bring him to himself. Suddenly, abruptly, he abandoned his struggles and was still. He made no more noise. But he remained outside the door; he had no notion of going away.
There was a very long silence. Anna imagined him standing, narrow and stiff, outside the door, waiting: his rather long arms hanging limp, with the brown hands dangling — curiously simian in suggestion. She listened to his breathing, hoarse and smothered at first, but growing slowly quieter, more normal. She wondered about him; what was he thinking? Would he stand there all night?
‘Won’t you let me in?’ he asked at last, in a small, wistful voice, rather distressing. ‘Let me come in just for a moment — to say good night.’
‘No,’ she answered coldly. Her inflexibility never wavered.
He waited a minute or two longer. She heard him fumble once more — but half-heartedly this time — with the door-knob. Then he sighed heavily, rather ludicrously, and went away. Presently she heard him fumbling about in the sitting-room, picking up his pyjamas and slippers and dressing-gown which she had thrown on the floor. And shortly afterwards a door closed.
It was all over. Anna went and sat on the bed, cross-legged on the crimson eiderdown, her face tilted back, a queer flower at the end of her backward-curving neck. Her mind was a kind of blank, and half consciously she wondered why she had no more feeling. She was quite cold, cold as a stone, as though she would never feel anything any more. And yet, in a way, she was absolutely flabbergasted by the scene she had just been through. She had no idea that people behaved like that, so violent and uncontrolled. It staggered her, as an exhibition of sheer unrestraint. But she was not really affected. She felt herself aloof.
She seemed not to be there at all, really. She, Anna-Marie, was absent, and some malicious hobgoblin had taken her place. There she sat in the locked room, cross-legged on the ugly red eiderdown, looking out with shallow, distant eyes, and the hard, bright glaze over her face, a bit devilish in the midnight solitude.
Queer, the change that had come over her. The tall, dignified slenderness, the rather slow graciousness of movement, the attractive, grave repose, all vanished: and in their place a hard, cold, jeering brightness, rather disgusting, and a certain febrile quickness, even her movements changed from lingering, deliberate grace to a restless, flame-like flicking, a strange destructive rhythm of darts and jerks. She seemed to have become smaller, and quicker, and brighter, and harder. Less ethereal, though more unearthly: more like some little malignant imp. The bright, arch, reckless, indifferent look upon her face! The goblin-Anna didn’t care.
Next morning she was her old self again — almost. But about her face still hovered a queer expression, like a dim reflection from far off, and her mouth had a little twist, half smile, half grimace, that did not rightly belong there.
It was late when she woke up, and ten o’clock before she was dressed. As she put on her clothes, she wondered rather uneasily what Matthew’s attitude would be after last night’s affair. How would he behave? She simply couldn’t conceive. She felt quite interested, impersonally, to see what he would do. Nothing would surprise her now. Nothing. But she was not quite comfortable about him.
He was waiting for her in the sitting-room, very neat and compact-looking in his navy-blue suit with the white stripe in it. He held his shoulders more rigid than ever. She wondered if there was a bruise where he had crashed against the door. He looked rather down in the mouth; but calm, she was glad to see.
As she came in, he took a step towards her, standing straight up to attention, and looking like a soldier who has been called up to receive a formal reprimand. Which made her amused and uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘I apologize. I can’t think what came over me. Can you forgive me?’