Anna

by Norman Collins

  “Anna,” he said—his voice was low and she could feel his heart beating against hers—“don’t go away again. Stop here with me.”

  “Don’t ask me, Charles,” she said. “Don’t ask me, my darling. I’m not strong enough to refuse.”

  Then as his hands went upwards to the throat of the long bedgown, already pulling it apart, unbuttoning it, she acknowledged at last in her own heart why it was that she had come to him, what it was that had driven her there.

  Interlude with the German chancellor

  The Dog which lay at count Bismarck’s feet had been trained to growl at the approach of visitors; it was as surly and intractable as its master. That the doors of the Chancellery suite were guarded was not enough. Even the sound of voices in the corridor distracted the Chancellor; and he could not afford to be distracted at this moment. There was no one else in Prussia, he had often told himself, who really understood politics; no one else who could guide the Reich to its rightful place among the nations. He worked austerely, sitting upright as though on horseback, in a uniform which was not even a general’s, shut away completely from the outside world. Shut away in a room that had suddenly become the very centre of Europe.

  The need for his isolation was greater than ever now—the impending events were so much larger. And everything that happened afterwards in history had to happen first in his own lonely mind. It was the future that he was living in. The wars with Denmark and Austria had been trivial field practices in comparison with what was coming: Koniggratz and Sadowa had been no more than scale exercises in the military art. But very useful exercises nevertheless. They had shown that the Prussian Army was at last what he and von Moltke had been striving, one in the Reichstag and the other in the field, to make it: it was a vast, efficient machine in which the officers—even junior officers— could exercise their own discretion. That was the crux of the whole matter—discretion. And so far only one of the Generals, General von Steinmetz, had shown any signs of being likely to abuse it. But even occasional abuses, he reminded himself, were better than the deadening central command of the French. The power of discretion meant that every corps, every unit, every platoon of the German army was a complete, living, sentient thing, not merely an arm or a leg groping blindly for a gap or a foothold.

  That war was inevitable he did not question. He had designed the events of the past years so carefully, so thoroughly, that there could really be no doubt now as to the eventual result. And even if it were not inevitable, if there were still some loophole through which the fat Napoleon could squeeze himself, he could still make it inevitable. He could always in the last resort declare war himself. And, what is more, the judgment of history would justify him, would bless the name of Bismarck for having brought peace and serenity to the troubled continent. Once France had been crushed and trampled on and disposed of, life for the real Europeans, not the Latins, could begin in earnest. The nation of Bonaparte had been too ready to cross her frontiers in the past for any German to sleep soundly at night whilst she was still intact.

  And there was another peril which France, corrupt and democratic and decaying, represented: the peril of ideas. Guns and fortresses were no security against these. The soldiers of France might be held back for a lifetime on their own soil, but still the subtle, lingering poison of republicanism would come drifting over the defences, paralysing and invisible, sifting down to rest in men’s minds, festering and cankering, destroying everything they touched.

  It was, then, Bismarck’s duty, his clear duty, to go to war; and it was no more than a diplomatic convenience that he had arranged that his opponent should declare war first. For how could they now fail to declare war, he kept asking himself? A Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain, the enemy on the back-doorstep as well as on the threshold—how could any country, especially a country like France, eaten up with pride and self-glory, endure such a thing? Besides, the King himself had just snubbed the French Ambassador, doing as much in a single stroke to further the war as a military demonstration opposite Metz and Sedan would have done. And the forgery of the Emms telegram was one of those things that history would understand and condone. It had made mobilisation a certainty. The lances and helmets of war—this war in which German blood would be shed to make future generations of Germans, children in the womb and babes yet unconceived, safe in their own heritage—were now visible on the horizon, moving, massing.

  Count Bismarck awaited the future, which in his mind was the past already, with the calm and equanimity which is born of the consciousness of perfect preparation.

  The wars of the past, the easy destruction of armies caught unawares, had gone forever. It was no longer the tactics of the battlefield, the adroit handling of twenty or thirty thousand men, which mattered. Tactics had given place to strategy, and wars were won or lost even before the first shot was fired. It was the conscription of everyone in peacetime that now decided the destiny of nations.…

  Count Bismarck, who had eaten nothing all day—lit another of his mild cigars and thought contentedly of his evening meal; of his evening meal and of the million men of the Landwehr and the Landsturm, ready and waiting, aware each one of them inside his good German soul, of the sanctity of his mission in this new crusade. Gott mit Uns had become the password of a nation.

  By the middle of July, Bismarck promised himself, Prussia and France would be at war.

  Chapter V

  I

  The Station at Rhönberg when Charles and Herr Karlin reached it was as melancholy as a restaurant before the diners have arrived. It was the first train of the day on which Herr Karlin was placing his guest, and the platforms were deserted except for a group of workmen getting into the hard wooden carriages at the back.

  Herr Karlin himself was smiling and courteous.

  “He looks,” he reflected, as he studied the drawn mouth and heavy eyelids of the young man, “as though he had given himself a sleepless night over the departure. I think that he has fallen a little in love with his cousin.”

  And Charles Latourette, regarding the robust rounded figure of Herr Karlin, could only smile wanly in return, and think bitterly: “If he knew the truth about me, how would he look at me then? What would he say if he knew the secret of his own house?”

  They stayed there, Charles Latourette and Herr Karlin, talking in the delicious coolness of the morning, until the stationmaster rang his bell and the train began to move out of the station.

  Charles Latourette sank back into the padded corner of the compartment and covered his face with his hand.

  “My life is finished, finished,” he told himself. “This train is carrying me away to exile, nothing less.”

  His whole life was directed now to the moment of his return. In front of him lay Paris and his father. Behind him, everything that he so much desired.

  “Why,” Charles Latourette asked himself, “was I born to be more miserable than other men? Why was I even allowed to see Anna if we were to be separated again so soon? Why was I not permitted to live my life without ever knowing what I could not have?”

  He tried to find some distraction by looking out of the window.

  “I love her,” he kept saying fiercely to himself. “I love her, love her, love her.”

  Then he remembered his father, and a little wave of coldness ran through him. If it were not for Anna, he reflected, he would have been back again in Paris already: the deal in bulbs successfully carried to its profitable conclusion would have covered him with a kind of domestic glory. And, as it was, he would be inviting nothing but abuse and scorn upon himself. He could picture the whole scene as he sat there. M. Latourette père had never attempted to conceal the contempt which he had for his son: he seemed to take a savage delight in humiliating him. In the present crisis he would certainly spare him nothing.

  “And how can I expect him to give his approval when he has never met her?” he asked himself. “He has always insisted on choosing any friend whom I have ever had.”

 
; And by easy stages he remembered Céline, who came often to their house and used to sit watching him with eyes like a spaniel’s under her dark fringe, while he sang. M. Auguste, Céline’s father held the Paris agency of a hardware and ironmongery firm in Lille, and M. Latourette, in consequence, had a special regard for her. She was very soft and gentle, and chiffon seemed to have been made for her. Charles, however, dismissed even the thought of Céline as unworthy of him.

  “I should never have been happy with her, never,” he told himself; and he remembered her thick wrists and dumpy fingers, and loathed himself for ever imagining such a marriage.

  “But at least,” another voice inside prompted him, “you would not then have been so unhappy as you are now.”

  And it was not Céline alone whom he remembered. There was a Mlle. Yvette d’Enbois also. She had all the style which in poor Céline was missing. She painted a little, composed verses, and played charmingly and with a kind of hysterical sweetness upon the harp. Her mother, moreover, had left her handsomely provided for out of a legacy deriving from the cheese and preserved meats trade. Admittedly her nose as she bent forward over the harp-strings appeared to be of a length almost unimaginable in a woman. But she had beautiful, skilful hands and a most aristocratic voice; and he had more than once morbidly wondered if, counting other blessings, a husband could forget such a nose. To have spoken of her to his father would have been within the limits of his parent’s comprehension. The two families were in the same line of business, and she was French.

  There were others as well. Thérèse, Marie, Cecile, devout sheltered girls anxious to equip themselves with a husband and capable of providing for him. His future up to the moment of his departure from Paris could have branched in any one of a dozen hopeful directions.

  And Anna?

  “She is something from another life altogether,” he admitted. “She does not even look like a French girl. In Paris people would turn and point her out for a German—not a very pleasant experience if this high feeling continues. She has been used to a wide garden with orchards and lawns. How would she ever adapt herself to life in an apartment with only a canary in a cage or perhaps a little tank of tropical fish to introduce the touch of nature? And why should her father, a German, be ready to bestow her dowry upon a Frenchman?”

  But as these thoughts came to him he suddenly saw her as she had been that day beneath the trees, her head thrown back and the sunlight through the branches making patterns on her face.

  “There is no one else,” he told himself, “in my life there can never be another.”

  And he fell to thinking again of the meeting with his father, and the terrible urgency of his love which somehow he must try to convey to him.…

  II

  On his return from the station Herr Karlin regarded Anna closely. Over breakfast, which had been kept waiting for him, he studied her with a keen and morbid intentness. But he detected nothing.

  She was a trifle pale, perhaps. But her eyes were clear and fresh, and she had pinned a flower on to her bodice already. With a little sigh of relief he sat back and settled himself to his plateful of raw ham.

  “At least she does not show that she is missing him,” he told himself. “And with a woman that is always a good sign. It is when she grows careless in her dress that matters have become serious.”

  The postman did not deliver his letters in Rhinehausen until nearly ten-thirty in the morning. When he arrived Anna was in the hall waiting for him.

  “But this is ridiculous,” she told herself, “he could not have written yet: there can be no possibility of it. And what more is there that he could say until he has spoken to his father?”

  But, she reflected, it would have been beautiful if he could have found some way of having a letter delivered to her immediately after his departure. Even a letter posted in Rhinehausen on the previous evening would have been a romantic and delicious attention. As it was, the day was dead for her.

  Yet in a fashion she was not despondent: she was so sure of him.

  “His father will not be able to resist him when he asks,” she kept repeating by way of reassurance. “And once he has M. Latourette’s permission he will return at once. In a week’s time he may be here again, and everything will have been arranged. I shall be Madame Latourette and live in Paris and go to the opera every night of the season and bear Charles’s children. I shall not have to sacrifice myself to the Baron.”

  And instead of alarm over his absence a new calm, a contentment almost, had descended upon her.

  “He knows now how much I love him.” she said in her own mind. “And I have taken his love too. I am a woman now; and as a woman, I can be strong and wait for him.”

  On the second morning she was again ready when the postman called. But again she told herself that it was impossible that he could have written: even if he had spoken to his father on the very moment of his arrival, the letter could not be more than somewhere on the way. And the when then third day came, and the fourth, and there was still no letter, she pictured terrible scenes that were taking place, the ordeal that he was enduring for her sake.

  “To-morrow there will be a letter,” she told herself, “I know that there will be a letter.”

  But by the end of the week, when it was obvious that something had actually prevented him from writing, her real terror began.

  “Perhaps he met with an accident on the journey,” she began thinking. “Or he is ill, and cannot write to me …”

  Her mind began to weave fantastic patterns of disaster, placing Charles in a variety of terrible circumstances. She saw him shooting himself, taking poison, casting himself into the Seine—all because of her.

  “I should never have permitted him to love me,” she began. “I shall be to blame if his life is in danger.”

  - But, at the same moment, fear for her own position overwhelmed her.

  “And if he does not return, if I never hear from him again, what will become of me then? What shall I do if I am left alone—now?”

  And again her thoughts fled uncontrollably forwards.

  “For all I know,” she admitted, “I may be going to have a child.”

  The continued non-arrival of the letter began now to affect her in a diversity of ways. She lost her sleep. As soon as she closed her eyes in the darkness the whole pageant of her tragedy loomed over her. And food became unendurable: she toyed with her meals and ate nothing. Even the clothes she wore no longer mattered. She dressed her hair rapidly and without interest, and discarded her few pieces of jewellery. But by then Herr Karlin’s suspicions had been allayed: he no longer scrutinised her, and so observed nothing.

  On the Saturday, ten days after Charles’s departure, Anna grew desperate. She was certain now that he must have written and that the letter must somehow have miscarried.

  “He is waiting for my answer. Waiting. Waiting.” she told herself, transferring her suspense on to him. “And I cannot write because I do not know his message.”

  She spent the afternoon in a hundred empty ways, trying to occupy herself. She tried to play the piano a little. But her thoughts were wandering and the music would not come. She walked in the garden. She quarrelled with Berthe over nothing, and left the child in tears.

  It was Saturday now, the day of her confession. She tried to prepare her mind for it. She reproached herself for having forgotten everything except her own misery, and sought to fix her mind on other sufferers who had remembered their faith in the midst of their affliction. She read portions of the lives of the Saints. But her anxiety was too great and too immediate for any consolation.

  “There is no comfort anywhere,” she told herself. And she began her diary that night with this very sentence.

  As the hour of confession approached she abandoned all hope of preparation.

  “I must go,” she resolved, “I cannot afford to stay away.”

  She paused.

  “At least it will be a distraction,” she added: “While I am co
nfessing, I shall not be able to think of other things.”

  On her way to the Church an idea came to her. Perhaps there had been a letter waiting at the post-office all the time, and it was simply that the postman could not read the French handwriting on the envelope. She was astonished at herself for not having thought of so simple an explanation before. Looking carefully over her shoulder, to make sure that she was not observed, she turned and went into the little post-office. But the Herr Postmaster was insistent that there was nothing that had come that could not be delivered. He was a sentimental and tender-hearted man, and his emotions were stirred.

  “Poor child,” he decided, “it is evident that she is in love and that her sweetheart has disappointed her.”

  He offered to bring the letter over to Herr Karlin’s house whenever it arrived, and her refusal to allow such a thing merely confirmed the postmaster in his suspicions.

  “So it is a letter which she does not wish her father to see,” he decided. “That is more appealing still.”

  He smiled at her knowingly through his thick glasses, and for a moment Anna felt herself blush beneath his stare.

  She dropped her eyes, and left the shop, conscious that already she had compromised herself.

  There was now only the confession that remained; in a few moments she would be on her knees and the priest would be hearing it. She sorted out the transgressions that she would tell him, and remembered to confess that she had forgotten one of last week’s penances—a petty sin could thus be magnified into a big one and made to occupy more time. Then suddenly she realised the weight of sin that did at the moment actually rest on her. For a moment the thought bewildered her; if she were truthful, it would be the confession of an utterly abandoned woman. But she dismissed the thought as abruptly as it had come to her.