Anna (43 page)

But she was too closely observed for that; all her movements, even when she was out shopping, were apparently known to M.
Moritz. For all she knew, the maid herself, who seemed so stupid, might be spying on her. And, in her present mood, she became terrified that someone would find out her secret before she had decided. She grew suspicious; thought that she saw the servants glancing at her; imagined their discussing her behind her back.

It was M. Moritz in particular whom she was most careful to avoid. Her hatred of him had suddenly flared up again, and she could not bear to be in the same room with him. Even the sound of his voice made her shudder. For three days on end they scarcely saw each other.

Not that M. Moritz was unduly disturbed. He was at the moment very much preoccupied, and it suited him to be left alone. He had begun sending telegrams again; and waiting for them. He was in fact seeking to buy a bank.

It was the Banque Suisse des Fabricants Internationaux that he had his eye on, and negotiations had just reached their most delicate and precarious point. The price was still in M. Moritz's opinion too high; and he was quietly and discreetly arranging for there to be a run on the bank. His agent in Geneva was attending to the actual details, and M. Moritz was content to remain entirely in the background. His part for the moment was confined merely to waiting for telegrams. And they announced, one after another, that this or that company in which M. Moritz was interested had been persuaded to transfer their account from the unfortunate Banque des Fabricants to the Banque de Genève or to one of the branches of the ubiquitous Credit Lyonnais. M. Moritz calculated he must remain a spectator until some further 500,000 francs had been removed. In the meantime he tried to contain his impatience, and strolled alone on the terrace after dinner or stood on his little rock looking out over the sea.

Then one morning the awaited telegram arrived and, without warning, he announced that he was going away again. He merely said that his business would wait no longer and that he must attend to it personally. It was noticeable that on this occasion there were none of the agonising misgivings which had preceded the previous trip. At nine o'clock in the morning he told Anna that he was going, and by midday he had gone: it was all as simple and rapid as that.

When he finally said good-bye to her, he did so hurriedly and disinterestedly in the manner of a father saying good-bye to a grown-up daughter; the lover had been lost somewhere in the business man. He left without saying how long he would be away; with only an accommodation address to find him; with no secret
instructions to the servants; and this time he did not bother about sending Anna telegrams on the journey.

It was to Anna's amazement as she saw him go that she suddenly felt lost without him. She had been avoiding his company, had sought deliberately to escape from seeing him. But now that he had gone, she was frightened. She even doubted if he were ever coming back.

With the awareness of the child within her, her fears multiplied. And as the thought came to her that this was the opportunity for which she had been waiting, praying, she realised that now there was no one to stop her. It seemed that Fate had deliberately planned everything.

Because her mind was in turmoil she sought more anxiously than ever to be alone. She walked by herself in the garden, choosing the path that ran beside the sea, the path where no one would find her. But even here she was not quite alone. The Captain was with her all the time; and Charles. Out there under the tamarisk tree, she was a child again in Rhinehausen; she was in the train for Paris; she was in prison; in M. Duvivier's garret; in Strasbourg. And throughout all these scenes and images she realised that it was not of them that she was really thinking. Her thoughts, the conscious ones, were solely of the child that was within her, the child that she had dreaded.

“I
will
find a doctor to help me,” she told herself. “I will throw myself upon his mercy. I will not let him refuse.”

But, because she was frightened, she added: “To-morrow. I will go to him to-morrow. I feel too ill to go to-day.”

It was already the third day upon which she had made this resolution.

She looked at her watch—it was a little toy set with jewels, that M. Moritz had given her—and saw that it showed three o'clock. The afternoon stretched endlessly in front of her.

“I will go in and lie down,” she decided. “I shall go mad if I go on walking up and down forever.”

It was as she drew near the house that she was disturbed by the sound of a child's crying. The sound came from somewhere in the direction of the kitchens. And it surprised her: she knew that there was no child living there. She went forward rather as one might go instinctively in the direction of a kitten that has been heard mewing.

It was a part of the garden that she had never visited. Behind a long white wall—it was this side alone of the wall that she knew— was a paved courtyard. In the centre stood an old well head; and
on the coping that ran round it a woman was sitting, a baby stretched out upon her knees. As Anna approached, she saw the woman open the rough blouse that she was wearing and lay bare the full brown breast. Then, gathering up the child in her arms, she began to feed it. The child was greedy and sucked noisily; and as it sucked an expression of entire contentment came on the mother's face. She was young, and because her baby was healthy, she was happy.

As Anna stood there she found herself envying the woman. But the woman had noticed her standing there, and she made ready to move away. She had been delivering something from the town and the empty basket lay beside her.

But Anna begged her not to disturb the child; said how beautiful it was. She went up to the mother and stroked the smooth little head that was in her arms, feeling through the soft shell the life that throbbed within.

And on the way back to the house she walked slowly; the feeling of envy was still strong inside her. She found herself wondering if it were possible to love a child even though one cared nothing for the father.

She spent much of her time now in her room. The maid grew worried for her and asked if she should send for a doctor. But Anna refused one: she still would not confess her state, had not decided finally what she would do. For in her heart she had now begun to doubt herself. Her whole attitude had begun, imperceptibly at first, to change. She became contrite and repentant and asked herself if she were even worthy to become a mother. Her upbringing, the priests who had instructed her, the nuns at the convent who had brought her up as a girl, the daguerrotype of her own mother—all these entered into her mind to accuse her. She saw her sins spread out before her. And new emotion, not merely of misery but of guilt assailed her.

“I must see a priest,” she decided suddenly. “I must confess.”

But, as she said it, she realised the folly, the hopelessness of it. It was not what she had done but what she was now doing, with her present state of grace, that the priest would be concerned. He would explain the uselessness of her coming to him while she was still living in the very heart of sin. He would send her away again empty; he would reject her.

Nevertheless, there would be some comfort in confession; there would be some comfort in even trying to confess. She assured herself that she was not the first abandoned woman who had turned
again to the Church in her misery. The priest would at least
understand
why she had come to him; he would try to find some way in which he could help her. And simply to
tell
someone: that was the great thing. To be able to speak of it. She felt that once she had spoken, even without absolution, her mind would be lighter.

Throughout the night as she lay awake her resolve grew stronger: the need to see a priest became the most compelling thing of her life. She began wondering to what church she should go. She thought of the big church of St. Marco where the Jesuit fathers preached—but that was too big and fashionable. She considered St. Etienne's beside the Casino—but somehow it was not there that she wanted to go. She had passed it so many times with M. Moritz that it seemed almost a part of him. And then she remembered the little Church of Ste. Véronique. It was small and shabby. It had no beauty or distinction. The railway station dwarfed it, and its windows had been wired up for protection against stones. But it was a Church. One day in passing she had heard
O salutaris Hostia
being sung inside and it had seemed in that moment as though something of her childhood had escaped and re-embraced her.

When morning came, however, and the room was full of sunlight again, the decision that had been made in the darkness seemed only a part of the dream that had followed it. The decision ebbed away and, when her maid asked her if she wanted the carriage, she shook her head and said that she would spend the morning in the garden. The morning, and the afternoon as well: for, after lunch, when the maid asked her again, she was still undecided and said that she would read in her room. It was not finally until late in the evening that she rang and said that she wanted to be driven into the town.

The hour for confession was almost over when she reached the church.

Anna looked up. The name of Ignatius was painted above the door. She drew open the drooping red curtain and knelt on the narrow ledge on which a strip of carpet, now worn and patternless, had been nailed. The interior of the box had a close fusty smell.

The priest made the sign of the cross. Then, his fingers folded together, he sat there waiting.

“I am in need of your help, Father,” she began.

“Tell me, my child,” he said.

His voice sounded faint and far away. It was a flat expressionless voice. And as Anna began, it seemed not as if she were speaking
to anyone on this earth at all, but was saying things in her loneliness that God alone could hear.

The priest interrupted her only rarely.

“Until you knew this man, you had been innocent?” he asked.

It was of Charles that he was speaking; and when he heard her answer he was silent again.

Then, after she had spoken for some minutes longer—her story came out so much unchecked, with obviously so little that was deliberately concealed, that he was gentle with her—he spoke again.

“You were in actual fear of your life?” he asked. “There was no desire for this marriage?”

And after he had heard Anna say how much she had detested M. Duvivier, he told her to continue.

The next time he addressed her it was of Captain Picard that he was speaking. He was stern.

“You knew that this other man was married?” he asked, “but you were still ready to accept his love.”

“But I refused him,” Anna protested. “I told him that his duty was to his wife. I insisted that he should go back.”

“You are satisfied that you did not make it more difficult for him?” the priest asked.

He did not speak again until she had finished. There was a long pause and then he delivered his judgment, the one judgment which as a priest of God he could utter.

“You must leave the man with whom you are now living,” he said. “You say that you have no money. But money cannot be of importance beside the salvation of your immortal soul. I will mention your case to the Sisters. They will find work for you to do: they will take care of you until you are strong enough to defend yourself again.”

He sat back: he was tired. He had been hearing confessions for more than two hours and he had done all that he could do. He would speak to the Superior in the morning. She was a woman of great experience in such matters. Her whole life had been spent in re-moulding Magdalens into the image of the Virgin.

“Come to me at this time to-morrow evening,” he said. “I will tell you where to go.”

And when Anna did not answer, he leant forward so that his face was almost touching the cross-cross bars of the grille that divided them.

“You do not say anything, my daughter,” he complained.

There was another pause.

“I have not told you everything,” she said.

Then, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, she added, “I am with child.”

And she began weeping.

The priest found the sound of her weeping oddly comforting. It testified to her sincerity; showed that she was not utterly abandoned. He forgot his tiredness, and remembered only this problem that the Lord had set before him. Contemplating the chaos of her life, he offered up a prayer that he might be given help enough to restore Christ's pattern to it.

This time when he spoke, the words came more slowly. His mind was cautiously feeling its way among the many thorns and slippery places.

“You tell me that when you married that man in Paris,” he repeated, “you were not in love with him. You married him only in peril of your life. It was a civil marriage. You did not seek God's blessing on it. But despite your wickedness, your coldness, God has seen fit to give you his supreme blessing. You are to bear a child. The father of that child is still living. He has shown that he loves you. There is only one course in the Lord's eyes that would be acceptable.”

“And that is?” Anna asked.

She was hanging on his words, waiting for him to show her the way out of so much misery.

“My daughter, I will leave you to ponder over it,” he said. “All that I have done is to remind you of the facts of your own life. I have not sought either to condemn you for them, or to pardon you. I will give you time to take stock of yourself. You will spend to-morrow in prayer and in the evening I will see you again. You may come to the Presbytery.”

She heard him drawing up his soutane ready to rise: the coarse silk make a faint scraping sound in the darkness. And, obediently, she rose to go.

“I will come to-morrow, Father,” she said.

Outside, it was still a warm delicious evening. After the gloom of the confessional, the sky was bright like the dawn. As the carriage passed the Casino she saw men and women in evening dress going in. One of the women wore a high head-dress of diamonds and ostrich feathers.