Let Me Alone (2 page)

Here was Anna’s home, her earliest consciousness, this rough, dark, lonely house; this great wild background of mountains pale or brilliant in the sun, or blackly threatening in the stormy weather, the noisy water and the yellow vineyards, the theatrical splendour of the shadow-pale, far-off snows.

And this was the home of James Forrester, the man whose wealth and extravagance had almost become a legend, the man who had lived like a prince in every European capital, who had bought and tired of half-a-dozen great houses.

Sometimes, as he stood on the rocky, bush-grown slope, and looked at Mascarat lying like an insignificant patch on the huge tapestry of mountain and forest, he smiled to himself, a thin, inward smile of extreme ironic bitterness mingled with a semi-masochistic satisfaction. He had tried the life of the world, the life of luxury and wealth, and he had had no pleasure in it. Now he was trying the hermit’s life to see what that had to offer. But sometimes his face wore an expression that was neither good nor pleasant to see.

The small Anna lived entirely under the ægis of the admirable Miss Wilson. For several years her life, waking, sleeping, playing, in the big, bare, dark rooms, or out in the wide stretches of brilliant sun, was governed and bounded by the pale, watchful, anxious face and the quick, nervous voice of Miss Wilson. Outside, on the fringes of her
existence moved – huge, spectral and unreal in their comings and goings – three other figures: her father, tall, silent and grey-faced, rather frightening in his stern remoteness; then Seguela, the old peasant-woman, black, untidy, going about with flopping, ungainly speed, like an old crow; and her son Paul, a queer, staring, animal sort of fellow who did not usually appear indoors until the evening. But between Anna and these people, the small, flat, colourless figure of Miss Wilson was always swooping forward, swooping down with a strange incongruous fire of maternal, protective anxiety in her pale eyes, her humble spirit roused to pugnacity on behalf of her charge.

Against all her instincts, Miss Wilson had become a warrior in those days. She sometimes wondered fearfully at the change which had overtaken her gentle, abject, old-maid’s heart. She had only one loyalty: her love for Anna. Only one determination: to do battle against the powers which she obscurely felt to be ranged against Anna. Only one fear: that she might be sent away from Anna.

Suddenly, one mild spring day, an incident occurred. It was one of the first of Anna’s definite recollections; and it served to bring her father out of the shadows into a position of importance in her childish scheme of life.

It was early March and the rains had been heavy for several days. Now the sun shone vividly, bringing out the pristine colours of the world. The distance stood sharp on the clean, rain-washed air, distinct, clear-cut but fragile-looking as egg-shell, very far away. And the great crumpled sea of mountains, like a pile of crumpled drapery, fold behind fold, stretching away to the ultimate distance, to the unsubstantial dim-white snows.

Anna was playing beside Miss Wilson on the bright green grass of the upper valley where it narrowed to the neck of
the gorge. Some goats, soiled-white and russet-brown and black, were feeding near. The high walls of the gorge towered savagely, silent and rather sinister in the bright glare of the sun. The slowly-passing, sunny morning was very silent; almost ghostly in stillness and silence.

Then a sound came; a strange tearing, roaring sound, far off in the sky it seemed, growing swiftly to a crashing thunder. In amazement they looked up at the cloudless, blank blue sky. There was nothing there. But on the crest of the cliff, on the ragged summit of the mountainous wall of the gorge where the great rocks stood up in sombre heaps with the dark bulks of greenery between, Anna saw a strange ball rolling. Like a weird, irregular ball it came bounding, bouncing down the sheer stony slope, leaping like a mad thing down the cliff. It was funny to see it. Anna would have laughed. But before her lips had time to stretch to a smile, the bounding ball had become a lion, an elephant, a house, an immense primeval mass of solid rock bearing down with terrifying speed straight upon them.

Miss Wilson’s timorous heart seemed to turn over in her breast. God knew she had done her best, had striven – with heroism when the limitations of her temperament are considered – against the difficulties and alarms of the past few years. But now, when actual physical danger threatened, danger so horrifyingly imminent that her elderly mind had barely time to conceive it, she did not know what to do. So she stood still, doing nothing at all, simply clasping Anna against her body in the immobility of utter unthinking panic.

And at the very last moment, when the great cruel mass seemed almost upon them, ready in a blind rush of destruction to blot out for ever the obscure old life of the maiden lady and the other life that had hardly begun, a strong hand
dragged them away. The huge boulder crashed past with a noise like thunder, down into the green hollow below, where it seemed suddenly to fall in pieces, raising clouds of yellowish dust.

The goats had moved on a little way, such a little way, only a few steps it seemed, out of the course of the falling peril, and were quietly feeding. The small, sharp tearing noises as they cropped the grass sounded clearly in the empty silence.

‘Lucky for you that I happened to be near,’ said the calm, cold, somewhat sardonic voice of James Forrester.

Nothing more; but in those few words, Miss Wilson, cringing abjectly in an inward agony of self-recrimination, seemed to hear the merciless trial of her case, the implacable judgment given against her. She was appalled at what seemed to her to be her own despicable cowardice.

‘He will send me away,’ she thought, almost weeping. She knew that in that one moment of supreme failure she had forfeited all the years of self-sacrifice and laborious service.

But in the secret mind of the child a new thought was stirring. Anna saw that her father possessed something that was lacking in the familiar, oldish woman. Her imagination was touched, something like admiration began to awaken. Her father had become real to her.

When Anna was six years old a visitor came to Mascarat. This was Lauretta, the sister of the dead Lise. Lauretta, unlike her unfortunate sister, had done pretty well for herself in the world. She had married Heyward Bland, a retired military man, oldish, didactic, very British, very
comme-il-faut
, who had recently inherited a good deal of money. Their winters were spent on the Riviera. Now, suddenly, before she returned to England, an impulse of
duty, or perhaps of curiosity, prompted her to visit the niece whom she had not seen for so long. She was fond of motoring, and the mountain district was picturesque. She would drive to Mascarat and see for herself that poor Lise’s child was being properly cared for.

Miss Wilson was thrown into an enormous flutter of excitement at the prospect of the visit. At the back of her mind a vague scheme was forming: possibly Lauretta could be persuaded to take the child away with her. Since the day of the falling boulder, Miss Wilson had felt that her own fate was sealed. She would not be allowed to stay much longer with her charge. Hence this scheming activity in her sly old brain, this desperate anxiety for Anna’s future.

But things did not work out well from the schemer’s point of view. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, with the mountains seeming further away, and a soft hyacinth-blue curtain over the harsh rocks. The landscape seemed softer and more mysterious, there was a smell of flowers in the air. The water ran clear as crystal in the ravine, making a merry noise. The almonds and the cherry trees were in blossom, dotting the foreground with puffs of delicate pink and white, like a Japanese picture.

Lauretta, who was inclined to sentimentalize over nature, found everything delightful. It seemed to her that one could wish no better fate than to live in that lovely valley, under the calm guardianship of the blue-grey mountains upon whose tops the little streaks of white, impalpable snow wandered like misty ribbons.

Lauretta Bland was such a charming little thing. In her light, beautiful dress, with a gay silk scarf fluttering from her shoulders, she was like a butterfly floating in the sunshine. It seemed that nothing ugly or crude could ever
touch her. She was talkative and lively, with a pretty, bubbling laugh that came easily to her lips.

Anna stared at her in amazement, intrigued, fascinated, but somewhat suspicious. She had never seen anyone in the least like her, and with childish distrustfulness she rather fought shy of that fluttering vivacity. So she kept still, reserving judgment, while they sat at tea under the cherry trees, and a cool breeze from the melting snows blew the white petals like a flock of tiny birds, circling and dipping about Lauretta’s pretty head.

They made a queer little trio in that enormous setting: Lauretta, elegant, charming, beautifully-dressed and scented, a woman of the world for all her affectation of girlish gaiety; Miss Wilson, prim, uncompromising, nervous and faded beside her in her ancient, unbecoming clothes; and the child, a small, grave creature in a rather ill-fitting home-made dress, with bare legs and coloured espadrilles. James was not present.

Lauretta was not very well impressed by her niece. Anna was a serious, quiet, unobtrusive, independent child. She was rather tall for her age, and thin, with a creamy-brown skin, straight brown hair, and the steady blue-grey eyes of her father. She was critical and self-possessed and kept her head well up. She would not show off, or prattle childishly, or respond to her aunt’s charming advances. Lauretta thought her curiously unchildlike and somewhat disconcerting.

Miss Wilson realized distressfully that her charge was not making a good impression. Rather desperately, she tried to put things right, to show Anna off to her best advantage.

‘She really has a wonderful imagination,’ said Miss Wilson. And added with a little nod of nervous
encouragement to Anna: ‘Tell your auntie one of the stories you have been telling me.’

Anna remained awhile in uneasy silence. She was neither shy nor sulky, but something restrained her from speaking freely in the presence of this attractive stranger. Her private imaginings were precious to her.

‘Go along, dear,’ urged Miss Wilson, feverishly amiable.

‘Well,’ said Anna at last, her clear eyes seeming to stare out with a certain challenge, ‘there was once a boy who lived in the middle of a chestnut tree.’

It was not at all the way in which her stories usually began. Miss Wilson looked on nervously, fidgeting with her thin fingers. Lauretta waited with a patient smile on her face. But nothing more was forthcoming. Anna shuffled with her feet, and stared up with challenging grey eyes. She simply could not bring herself to say another word to this visitor who had alighted like a strange brilliant bird under the familiar cherry trees, this charming, birdlike creature with her fluttering scarf and her scent and her pretty, smiling face, who seemed somehow to be an enemy. Anna did not know what she thought – whether she felt any admiration for Lauretta, or only just a childish, closed, reserved sort of suspicion. But she could not tell the story to her.

James Forrester, in his old grey suit that was as neat as on the day it had been finished, came strolling slowly under the white blossom, watching the feminine group with cold, inscrutable eyes. Slowly, with a heavy, cold assertiveness, he seemed to lay his dark shadow upon them, swamping them all in some way, laying a blight upon Lauretta’s elegant, butterfly gaiety. It was strange how his coming seemed to crush her into insignificance, into a rather pathetic sort of flippancy.

‘Refusing to do your parlour-tricks?’ he said to Anna. And though his voice was hard she felt he was on her side.

Lauretta left early, tripping on ridiculous high heels down the stony path to her motor car. She was quite satisfied with her visit to Mascarat. James was more impossible than ever. But the child was all right; a queer little fish, not very attractive. She seemed healthy, though, and well-cared-for. That poor, plain Miss Wilson was evidently a sensible woman. Of course, the place was terribly rough; but children didn’t mind things like that. Lauretta gave a sigh of relief. She had salved her conscience and done her duty by poor Lise’s child: now she was free to forget her.

A week later a parcel arrived at Mascarat. They stood round, Anna and Seguela, and Paul who had carried it all the way up from Paralba, while Miss Wilson very carefully, almost too carefully, almost tenderly, lifted the tissue-paper and brought out the dresses that Lauretta had sent as a final conscientious sop to her niece. There were pink and white and blue and patterned frocks, of organdie, of linen and of silk. None of them, except perhaps Miss Wilson, had ever dreamed of such frocks. There they stood, a rather forlorn little gathering, staring at the flower-gay dresses.

But they were standing round the table of the big, dark, cave-like kitchen, and into this cavernous darkness came the darker figure of James Forrester, a tall, black, imperturbable man, with danger in his coldly penetrating eyes.

‘What have you got there?’ he asked in a hard, subdued voice, not very loud.

While Miss Wilson was explaining in a voice gone rather squeaky with nervousness and a sort of wrennish defiance,
he stood up close to the table in his peculiar heavy resistance, looking at the bright heap of flimsy stuffs.

When she had said all that she had to say, and her voice had trailed off pathetically into silence, he gathered up the dresses like an armful of crushed flowers and tossed them into the red-hot, angry maw of the fire. It was not in the least an act of violence. The whole rhythm of the gesture was deliberate, cold and heavy. The flames licked up the fragile garments in a trice; a blaze, a flicker, a puff of smoke, and they were gone as if a handful of hay had been thrown on the fire.

Anna had a little puzzled frown of pain on her face. She would have liked to wear the pretty clothes. But when her father said to her: ‘Do you want to be dressed up like a performing monkey?’ she felt that he was right in spite of her disappointment, and she bore him no grudge.