‘Good-bye,’ whispered Anna, smiling a little. But she was quite hopeless.
Numb and mesmerized she felt: there was no strength in her. What refuge was left when Sidney repudiated her! Sidney had been her last hope, her ultimate tower of strength. Sidney had abandoned her. Where could she go? What should she do? She was as if destitute. And for her destitution there could be no relief. Hopeless! She did not know where to turn, how to behave. She was quite numb, quite without any will, resigned to her fate. She knew her fate was sealed. Only she felt lost, like a small, helpless animal, astray in the world. There was no strength in her.
CHAPTER 11
ANNA wept as she walked away from Sidney, through the deserted village, past the inn with the wrought-iron sign. How dismal the place had become! She was cold and tired. The sun was almost gone. The hills crouched like animals, dark and unfriendly, the sky had a bleak, forbidding emptiness, the very houses looked desolate. She wished she could cease to exist.
And in a way, her existence had come to an end. She felt so numb, so aimless. What was she to do? The world seemed vast and dreary. And there was no place for her in it. Of what avail to go hastening from point to point across the surface of the world, when everywhere was the same dreariness, the same vacancy! She thought of Matthew, and it seemed like the thought of some strange nonentity, not of a man at all. She thought of Blue Hills, and of River House, and a distant shudder went through her blood, under the chilly numbness.
She could not bear to think of the world in which she must live. She could not bear to think of going back to Matthew, or to Lauretta, or even to London. She could not believe that she would be obliged to do one of these things.
Nevertheless, it was necessary to make a move in some direction.
A train arrived, after a long wait, and carried her away — whither was quite unimportant. With the surface of her mind she knew the train’s destination, knew that she would have to change at such and such a station. But the knowledge was quite externaclass="underline" she did not appreciate it.
She sat quite motionless in the cold, empty carriage, her hands clasped together on her lap. On her face was a grave, thoughtful look. But she continued to be at a loss. She continued to feel dazed, as though she could not appreciate her circumstances. The cold numbness was upon her, like a prolonged hypnosis. And through this deadening heaviness she perceived vaguely the moving countryside, the coming and going of stations, the figures of men like trees walking.
Then suddenly she woke up. With one gesture she threw off the numbness, some sort of feeling came back to her. She realized that she had been in the train a long time. She wanted to get out of the train. She wanted to come back to life.
A station was approaching. She looked out of the window and saw that it was Oxford.
In a flourish of renewed vitality she collected her things and descended to the cold, noisy, lighted platform. Darkness had quite fallen. Possibly it was late. The lights appeared flaring and unsteady.
All was now simple and straightforward to Anna. It was night, a brightly-lighted Oxford, and stars frostily shining, and people going about the streets. She took a taxi and drove through the frequented streets in the lamplight, and was deposited at Catherine’s abode.
And the first person to open the door was Catherine, with a dark cloak over her evening dress. She was just going out somewhere, and had a brilliant, by-gone look. Like a beauty of some by-gone century she looked, in her long, dark velvet cloak with a gold gleam beneath. Her large, heavy eyes were dilated, staring at Anna. Her mouth made a scarlet, crooked line on her face. Her skin was cleverly painted, and she was really brilliant, in a dashing, slightly disreputable, masquerading style. Some of the artificiality and the decorative recklessness of old Venice about her; and also the modern defiant hardness. She greeted Anna effusively and put her arm round her, there in the cold street, speaking in a clear, penetrating voice that made people look round. A young man who seemed to be with her watched without surprise.
‘I’ve just been thinking about you; and now you appear on my doorstep. Anna-Marie, you amazing person! What are you doing here? You must come to the party with me!’ cried Catherine, and her eyes flashed in the darkness.
‘I’ve no clothes with me.’
‘You shall wear one of my dresses, Annik.’
‘Are you sure you want me? Do you want me to come?’
‘Yes, Annik, you must come. I want you.’
‘Do you really — really?’ said Anna. But she was already inside, she followed Catherine up the stairs into her room.
‘Choose your dress. Choose!’ cried Catherine, throwing dresses on to the bed. Anna looked on in bewilderment till she became still again. Then the two girls laughed.
‘How attractive you are!’ said Catherine, with a sudden seriousness, standing in front of Anna. ‘You make me think of Byron as a young man. My clothes are not severe enough for you.’ She turned over the dresses abstractedly, considering.
Anna felt rather strange in the presence of this brilliant girl, bewildered, as if she were in the wrong element. She was not used to this unconventional behaviour. But she was flattered.
‘This is the one,’ said Catherine, looking at Anna as if she were a child. ‘This is the one you must wear.’
She presented her with a garment of supple black, cut in a simple, slender fashion, with a touch of white, like the jabot of an eighteenth-century beau.
‘It will make you look like a young poet. A little bit precious and a little bit decadent in spite of that unearthly freshness of yours. That’s how I want you to look.’
Anna was in a state of bewilderment. She was very flattered — oh, extremely flattered by Catherine’s attentions. She liked being treated with this sort of eccentric intimacy, being flattered and favoured and a little bit patronized by the other girl’s affection and interest. She felt excited, a bit bewildered, and not quite sure of her own feelings. She was a trifle nervous as Catherine smiled at her out of her bright face, so large-eyed and beautiful with a strange, by-gone beauty, mysterious. Anna had an impulse to run away from the unknown mysteriousness. But a stronger impulse urged her to stay and explore the secret, to sink herself in the mystery till it was mystery no longer, but part of the tissue of her own experience. She felt a kind of intrinsic sympathy with the mystery, whatever it was; a leaning towards it. Nevertheless, Catherine’s personality seemed dubious and unsettling, coming into her quite different mental atmosphere. She was not sure that she liked it, altogether.
Certainly Catherine was distinctly dubious, in the Kavan sense of the word. Anna could imagine Matthew’s verdict of her: ‘Fast, shady-looking, rakish’ — and the rest.
There really was something disturbing about the tall, handsome girl, wrapped in the dark cloak, and flashing her red smile like a sword. Queer, how sinister she managed to look, in spite of her young beauty. She had the beauty of clandestine things, things hidden behind everyday life, inauspicious.
Anna was attracted by her brilliant, Venetian look. Yet she was convinced that behind it lay something sinister. Catherine was the first person in whom she had ever encountered this peculiar suggestion of fundamental dangerousness. She watched her warily, somewhat repelled, yet with a strange, inevitable fascination, attracted by her. Attracted by what — to what?
That night the guests at the party had the entertainment of a new combination: Catherine, in her clinging, gold dress, with her great dark eyes, so bold and yet so secret-looking, her odd look of heaviness that had nothing to do with her slim body, the dangerous heavy look, brilliant and proud; and Anna, straight and severely-dressed, with a sort of half-nervous reticence about her, and an indifference that was miles away from Catherine’s haughty nonchalance. There was a great difference between the two girls; and yet, strangest thing of all, a sort of resemblance. It was difficult to say what they had in common. But some similarity there was. Perhaps it was the coldness in both of them, and then the hardness, and the suggestion of something unknown that set them, each in her different way, apart. Anyhow, there it was. The same brush had touched them both.