Anna (37 page)

“Why did they have to suffer like that?” she asked herself. “Why did God let it happen?”

But it was not for long of the war that she was thinking. It was of one soldier in it, a soldier who had given his life uselessly for her.

“He wasn't even killed in battle, as Charles was …” she began, and stopped herself. She realised with a feeling of shame that she had not thought of Charles for days now. He had gone from her mind already.

“Oh, I'm worthless,” she exclaimed. “Worthless. It's because I'm so worthless that God has taken everything from me.”

And she began to weep again.

The next thing that she remembered was that M. Moritz was trying to rouse her. The coach had drawn up in the courtyard of an inn, and the coachman had already got down from his box and was lowering the steps for them. She sat up and looked out
the window. It was the sort of scene that she had thought she would never see again. There was a small garden dotted with little metal tables and chairs, and in the centre was a wooden dais for dancing. Down the steps of the inn the landlord, a fat, round man with a shaven head, was coming.

It seemed for a moment like stepping back into the world she knew, a world which somehow had remained miraculously unchanged. And then she saw the bivouacs of soldiers set right up against the hotel, and the two worlds somehow related themselves again. There was nothing that was unchanged, she told herself. Nothing.

“We'll go inside,” M. Moritz was saying. “You must try to eat something. Nobody can live for ever without food.”

The food was German; it was rich food, heavy food. There was a thick layer of cream on top of the cake that stood on the sideboard. And M. Moritz ate heartily, like a man without even the slightest weight upon his conscience. This meal and the duel from which he had just emerged might have been taking place in two different lives. He ordered Hock, cross-examined the landlord as to whether it was good year, and was concerned that Anna would eat nothing.

“You'll do yourself no good,” he told her. “After what you've been through you need to eat something. I'm only sorry the food isn't better.”

And when Anna still showed no sign of eating—she sipped a little wine and left the rest of the glass untouched—he tried to reason with her.

“I don't want you to go on hating me,” he said. “What I did this morning gave me no pleasure. As I told you, I did my utmost, even at the last moment, to avoid it.”

Anna paused.

“You killed him,” she said quietly.

“But in a duel,” M. Moritz replied in a tone of some surprise. “In a duel there is always one who wins and one who loses.”

He sat back in his chair and twisted the stem of his wine-glass reflectively in his fingers.

“If mine hadn't been the lucky shot where should I be now?” he asked himself. “The Captain was the better marksman. I recognise the fact.”

“Oh stop,” Anna said. “Please stop.”

And M. Moritz obediently allowed the matter of the duel to drop from the conversation. But he went on as smoothly, as solicitously as before.

“You say your father has not seen you since you left for Paris?” he asked.

Anna nodded.

“And he is expecting you?”

“He does not even know that I am still alive.”

M. Moritz bent forward again.

“I have changed my mind,” he said. “I am not going to trust you to the railways. I shall take you back to Rhinehausen myself. I make myself responsible to your father.”

Anna raised her eyes for a moment and they met M. Moritz's. She looked away again.

“I shall deliver you in person,” he went on. “My own business can wait for the present.”

As M. Moritz undressed that night he found himself thinking all the time of this girl who was to sleep under the same roof with him. He had seen her installed in a room at the far end of the corridor and had wished her good-night. And then, as he had returned slowly to his own room he had reflected that his instinct at least in one direction was infallible.

“In a foyer with a hundred women seated there I singled her out at a glance,” he told himself. “I saw beauty, and I recognised it.”

And now that he was in front of the dressing-table mirror he found that his mind was still following the same insistent pattern.

“She
is
beautiful,” he repeated. “Very beautiful.”

He broke off and began massaging some cream into the little pouches under his eyes.

“She has told me nothing about herself,” he reflected. “All that I know about her I have guessed. Anyone, of course, could tell that she is young, quite young, twenty-two perhaps, or twenty-three. And she's been ill; starved probably, if she's been through the siege. I doubt if she's a widow. Most likely someone has betrayed her. She certainly doesn't say anything about her husband despite the ring she's wearing.”

He paused and regarded himself closely in the mirror: the pale blue eyes in the smooth, hairless face smiled back at him, and he turned sideways to study the profile.

“I'm fortunate in my face,” he said aloud. “I might be any age. I might be a bridegroom or a grandfather.”

As he slid into his long silk nightshirt he was still thinking of his companion.

“It's certainly an extraordinarily fine line, the way her throat runs down into her bosom,” he went on. “It's one of the most
gratifying things I've seen. And her hair. I like the style she's adopted. I find it provoking.”

He paused and shook his head sadly for a moment.

“But it's no use,” he said at last. “I mustn't begin imagining. It's always been my imagination that has run away with me. I must keep it in check somehow. I'm on a business trip. I mustn't let anything interfere with that. And besides”—here M. Moritz raised the pair of snuffers that lay in the candlestick—”I must show some feelings in the matter. I can't kill the poor girl's lover one day and then go and carry her off the next.”

With these resolutions of caution, M. Moritz put out the light.

By nine o'clock they were on the road once more.

M. Moritz seemed impatient. He was unable to sit still. He kept snapping open the window in the roof of the coach and demanding why, with a second pair of horses, they couldn't keep up a better pace. When he was not pestering the driver, he would open his bulging brief-case, remove the first handful of papers, glance intently at them for a moment, and then restore them with a gesture of annoyance. But he was not all impatience: between his shows of irritation he would sit back in his corner, his face supported by his hand, regarding Anna. Once or twice he leant forward as though he were about to speak to her, but each time he evidently thought better of it and withdrew again, into his corner, his eyes still fixed upon her.

“It's perfectly damnable,” he said to himself at last, “how the girl fascinates me. I wonder if it's really her father that she's going back to.”

He sat back and tried to sleep. But his mind was too full of jagged and conflicting thoughts: his business, the big deals that he had been planning, the bankers and the heads of issuing houses whom he had arranged to meet, the Hotel de l'Empire and Anna—all these jostled together, thrusting themselves forward inside his brain until it was Anna alone, and not the bankers and financiers, who finally remained there.

Opening his eyes, he glanced sideways at her. But her face was turned away from him and he could see nothing. Only the slight movement of her shoulders and the white corner of the handkerchief which she was holding in her hand told him that she was crying.

“It's only natural,” he reflected. “I've told myself that I shall have to be patient.”

It was late that night when the coach finally drew up. Throughout
the day they had travelled hard; and every time the coachman had paused for a moment to rest his horses M. Moritz had insisted that they should press on. Even when darkness fell, M. Moritz would not hear of their stopping. They proceeded hazardously, the vehicle lurching along strange roads lit only by the uncertain glimmer of its two oil lamps. To the coachman peering anxiously into the enfolding gloom it was like being mounted upon a faded comet as it charged madly through space.

The spot where the coachman at last pulled up his horses—he insisted that neither he nor they could go any farther—was a poor one. M. Moritz lowered the window and peered out into the dark. The scene that gradually came to life in the blackness did nothing to please him. He could discern only the outline of two or three dejected cottages, the blunt point of a spire, and a lighted window. It was the window that had attracted the eye of the coachman: the contrast between the pleasant friendly life that was going on within and the ordeal that he was enduring up there on the box was too much for him. Something told him that there was an inn there.

M. Moritz surveyed the place for a few seconds and then addressed his servant.

“Is this where we are supposed to spend the night?” he demanded.

The coachman hesitated for a moment and then replied that he had intended at that very moment to go inside and arrange for their accommodation.

But M. Moritz would have none of it.

“This isn't Düsselmunde,” he replied.

“Düsselmunde is fifteen kilometres away, your honour,” the coachman answered.

“Then drive there,” M. Moritz shouted at him.

“But, your Honour, one of the horses has gone lame,” the coachman protested. “I've been nursing him for the last ten miles.”

“Lame,” M. Moritz repeated contemptuously. “They're always lame. You lame them deliberately. What's the name of this place anyhow?”

“I don't know, your Honour. It wasn't shown on the map.”

M. Moritz's temper then overcame him.

“Not shown on the map, you fool?” he roared. “And you expect this lady to spend the night here?”

The coachman had clambered down, and was standing beside the coach by now. He was trembling.

“Oh, your Honour,” he began, “I assure you it looks a most respectable hostelry. I should never have stopped the coach if I hadn't thought …”

M. Moritz by now was leaning out of the window, striving to make out something, anything, in the gloom. But he could see nothing. Beyond the cottages and the spire, blank primal chaos reigned.

“Then go inside, you dolt, and find out what's the best that they can do for us,” he ordered. “Don't keep us waiting here in the cold.”

He slammed the window up again and turned to Anna. His voice suddenly became gentle and affectionate again. It was as though this alarming temper of his was something that he could turn on and off at will.

“My dear,” he said. “I shall have to get a new coachman: the man is ridiculous. This inn is an insult. I sent a special telegram to Düsselmunde only last night. I booked the best rooms they had. I told them to get a fire going and air the sheets. I ordered a dinner, a beautiful dinner. And now”—here M. Moritz spread out his hands helplessly—”that idiot has reduced us to this.”

He remained there, fixed in the gesture of despair. For that moment, M. Moritz was neither banker nor lover: he was an artist, a failed and bitterly disappointed one. His particular medium in art was luxury—and here he was compelled to take Anna into an inn that a shopkeeper's wife would have refused to enter.

After some ten minutes, the coachman had still not returned to them. M. Moritz's impatience was increasing every second.

“The man's probably been murdered,” he said at last. “No doubt they've never seen anyone in livery before.”

But as he was speaking the front door of the inn opened and a broad shaft of light cut into the darkness. Silhouetted in the doorway was the missing coachman.

M. Moritz let down the window with a rattle and shouted at him to hurry.

The coachman was evidently pleased with himself. There was an ingratiating smile on his face, and he thrust his hand out ready to open the coach door.

“It's all right, your Honour,” he said. “I've arranged everything. Two beautiful rooms. I've seen them myself. The drawingroom upstairs: they've lit a fire there. And they're taking some dinner up there the moment it's ready.

He let down the carriage steps, swung open the door and stood there, waiting for them to descend: But for a moment M. Moritz did not move. Then he gave a little bow towards Anna.

“I can only apologise,” he said.

And jumping down, he held his hand out to her. But as she touched his fingers she shuddered.

The heat of the inn struck at their faces as they entered. It was a dense, suffocating heat, the thick animal heat of a dozen human bodies crowded round a blazing fire. And the air was blue and heavy from tobacco smoke. The landlord, still struggling into his jacket, came forward smiling and bowing. But M. Moritz ignored him. He took out his handkerchief and applied it hurriedly to his nose. Then he turned towards Anna.

“It's like entering a pigsty,” he said. “I feel that you never will forgive me.”

The occupants of the room, working men in patched, sweaty blouses, had turned towards the door when it opened, and sat staring resentfully at M. Moritz as he stood in front of them. They did not want him: he did not belong to their world. Moreover, he was letting a stream of cold night air into the snug oven that they had made for themselves. A little murmur of grumbling sprang up, and one of their number took the stem of his pipe from his mouth and shot a brown stream of spittle into the centre of the fire. Then someone caught sight of Anna—her face was framed over M. Moritz's shoulder—and rose respectfully to his feet. The others rose too. One by one they got up and stood meekly to attention.

Their behaviour seemed to soften M. Moritz a little. For the first time he paid a little attention to what the landlord was saying to him. And when the man began to back across the room in the direction of the open staircase, as though M. Moritz and the lady were of the blood royal, he followed. It was only at the foot of the stairs that he paused for a moment. And that was to offer Anna his arm.