Anna

by Norman Collins

  “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.

  But Anna only shook her head and, keeping her two hands clasped together inside her muff, walked up the stairs beside him.

  The room to which the landlord had led them was low and deepraftered. It was an attic room, and the ceiling slanted over their heads as if the house were falling. But there was a fire already burning in the grate, and the lamp suspended from the centre beam had been lighted. It filled the room with a warm, smoky radiance.

  In front of the fire a heavy oak settle had been drawn up. Anna crossed over and sank down gratefully upon it, and M. Moritz stood back looking at her. The firelight flickered up into her face, and the lamp shining down upon her hair set it glowing. As he looked, the room seemed to draw in upon them and grow smaller: it suddenly became intimate and friendly. At the sight of the firelight, the lamp, and Anna, M. Moritz found himself ready to forgive the uncharity of the night outside. His smile returned to him and he began unbuttoning his coat. He no longer regretted Düsselmunde and the meal that he had ordered at the Kaiser Hof.

  It was the landlord’s wife who broke the spell that had fallen over him. She came sidling into the room bearing a tray, and began setting out the table the clink of cutlery and the rattle of plates made the room cheerful again. And when the landlord himself returned some ten minutes later it was obvious that he was determined to put the best possible front on things. He had changed into a white jacket and, tucked under his arm, was a bottle of wine with the cobwebs still on it.

  He brought the bottle over to M. Moritz and showed it to him proudly, rather in the manner of a mother displaying her new baby. M. Moritz took out a single eyeglass and examined the label.

  “Very well,” he said. “Uncork it.”

  The wine was good. M. Moritz, in fact, was astonished by it. After he had tasted a mouthful of it, he poured out a glass for Anna and took it over to her.

  “My dear,” he said, “for you. I insist.”

  He paused.

  “It’s very strange,” he said slowly, “how fate has thrown the two of us together. It is hard to believe that it was not intended.”

  When Anna did not answer him, M. Moritz resumed in the same quiet voice, as if it were simply that certain thoughts were passing through his mind and he were speaking them.

  “You still probably hate me,” he said. “Hate me for what I’ve done to you. But that is because you are still so young. You do not understand things. Later on, you will look back and see that it had to be. I fired that pistol in my own defence.”

  There was another pause, while M. Moritz slowly sipped the wine that was in his hand.

  “You do hate me, don’t you?” he asked at last.

  Anna did not even turn her head. Her voice was steady and level when she answered him.

  “How could I fail to?” she asked. “You killed him.”

  The reply did not appear to disturb M. Moritz unduly.

  “I should probably admire you less if you had given me any other kind of answer,” he replied. “There is all too little faithfulness in the world: we forget so easily. But one sees life differently as one grows older. Men and women, people one had loved and cherished—they die, and life still goes on without them. Your life didn’t stop when he was killed.”

  Anna pushed back her chair as he was speaking and half-rose from the table.

  “Please,” she said. “I’m tired. Will you ask the landlord to show me to my room?”

  M. Moritz, however, was still speaking.

  “I can’t bear to have you leave me while you still think of me only as a murderer,” he said. “To-morrow I shall deliver you at your father’s house, and”—here M. Moritz spread out his hands as though to represent a bubble bursting—“we shall have separated for ever. If you should wonder anything about me, if you should remember this evening yet forget what it was that I said to you, there will be no one then to ask, no one who can help you.”

  But Anna was not listening to him. She had risen from the table and gone over to the fireplace. The tassel of the bell-pull hung there and Anna raised her hand to it. There was the scraping of wires along the wall and, a moment later, a shrill, clanking rose up from the kitchen somewhere beneath them. Anna stood there facing him.

  “Good-night M. Moritz,” she said.

  M. Moritz rose politely. His smile returned and he poured out the remainder of the wine that was in the bottle.

  “To your night’s rest,” he said.

  He was standing thus, with his glass in his hands, when the landlord entered.

  His own night’s rest was not a particularly good one. The coachman, misinterpreting the situation, had engaged only one room for them both, and there was not another bedroom in the inn. M. Moritz slept—or did not sleep—on the big oak settle in front of the fire.

  III

  She was looking out of the window of the coach, and suddenly the road along which they were travelling was familiar. It sprang out of her memory and was there before her. It was the road from Rhönberg to Rhinehausen, the road along which she had been driven that night when she had fled to Paris. She had been young then, so young. She remembered everything about that night, the sound made by the door of her father’s house in closing after her; the thumping of her own heart; the intolerable slowness of the carriage; the soldiers lined up on the platform in the darkness; the sense of fear that had filled the train as they approached the frontier; and Charles. It was Charles who had removed all terror from her heart. She had lived in expectation then. And now—now she had come back again. It was as though between those two days
there had been nothing; the departure had led straight into the return.

  The coachman had reached the crossroads and was hesitating. Anna leant forward excitedly.

  “There it is,” she said. “There’s Rhinehausen. Behind those trees.”

  She was trembling, and little waves of sickness kept passing through her. When she heard M. Moritz’s voice she started.

  “Are you so eager then to leave me?” he asked.

  But she did not answer. Round the blank corner of the street the grey front and carved porch of Herr Karlin’s house had come abruptly into sight. And she could think of nothing else.

  The coach drew up, swaying on its long springs. Anna leant forward to open the heavy door. But M. Moritz intercepted her hand. He sprang the catch back himself and the door swung open.

  “See. You are home again,” he said, and then, as Anna rose to her feet, he added a little mockingly. “But we must wait for the coachman to let down the steps. You cannot fall into your father’s arms like that. He would think you were escaping from me.”

  She turned and saw that he was smiling at her: it was the same fixed, incomprehensible smile. But this time there was an expression she had never seen before. It was one of regret and sadness, of sorrow even. The corners of the tight mouth were drooping.

  He took hold of her hand, and lifted it to his lips.

  “Good-bye, my little friend,” he said. “Perhaps some time we shall meet again.”

  Her lips moved, but no words came. She dismounted, and began to climb the short flight of steps that led up to the front door.

  M. Moritz remained where he was, watching her.

  “So what she told me is true,” he reflected. “There really is somewhere where she belongs. Perhaps the rest of it is true, too. Maybe she even has a father.”

  And, then as if to shut the fact of her departure from his mind, he sat back and closed his eyes.

  It was not until her hand was actually upon the bell-pull of the door that she changed her mind. This was not the way she had intended to return; this was the way strangers came into the house. Her way led through the orchard where Charles had first told her that he loved her; through the orchard, and then on through the gravelled garden that led right up to the house. She ran back down the steps and turned into the little lane that led up to the carriage-house. She still had the same feeling of sick, half-frightened happiness. The lane was so much part of her; every stone and every bush in it was familiar. It was like walking through her own childhood. And the gate at the end creaked when she opened it as it had always creaked. It dragged its weight across the stone in a groove that the years had made.