The King of the Castle

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Even as the branch-line train came into the station halt I was saying to myself: “It’s not too late. You could go straight back even now.”

During the journey I had crossed the Channel the night before and had been travelling all day I had been mustering my courage, assuring myself that I was no foolish girl but a sensible woman who had decided to take a certain action and was going to carry it through. What happened to me when I reached the castle depended on others; but I promised myself I should act with dignity, and behave as though I were not desperately anxious, hiding from them the fact that when I thought of what my future could be if they rejected me, I faced panic. I should let no one know how much this commission meant to me.

My appearance I felt for the first time in my life was in my favour.

I was twenty-eight and, in my dun-coloured travelling cloak and felt hat of the same colour, calculated to be useful rather than decorative, and after having travelled all night; I certainly looked my age. I was unmarried and had frequently intercepted pitying glances on that account and had heard myself referred to as ‘an old maid’ and ‘on the shelf. This had irritated me with its implication that the main reason for a woman’s existing was dedication to the service of some man a masculine assumption which, since my twenty-third birthday, I had determined to prove false; and I believed I was doing so. There could be other interests in life; and I consoled myself that I had found one.

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