“It’s not quite right,” he had told himself. “Not quite as it should be.”
But he had bought it just the same. And now he was glad.
“It is beautiful,” Anna said. “I love it.”
And as Anna took it from him, he watched her face soften and saw a smile come there.
“At last I have touched her,” he told himself. “At last I have done something to her heart.”
And his mind moved forward and became filled with thoughts of the moment when there would be children of their own and not simply babies of bronze that they could love together.
II
It was to Anna’s own surprise that she found herself surrendering to her life. There was a drugging and insidious rhythm in it, something so regular and unchanging that it seemed as if the rest of existence was in suspension. M. Moritz’s business did not occupy him more than about a couple of hours in the mornings. He shut himself away in his study with Carlos until half-past eleven or thereabouts, and then sauntered out on to the terrace a free man again. He was ready to devote the rest of his day to her.
And it was always the same day. Before lunch there was the drive into the town to take an apéritif at M. Moritz’s favourite café. Then there was lunch at the villa—a perfect lunch that M. Moritz chose himself. In the afternoon there were walks in the garden with sometimes a concert at the Conservatoire at which Italian tenors sang passionate songs and German baritones sentimental ones. There was another apéritif, stronger than the pre-luncheon one, between five and six. Dinner was as perfect as the lunch, only more complicated. And finally there was the Casino.
About everything they did there was the same soothing restfulness. It was soporific; and like all soporifics it worked steadily and gently until she no longer had the strength to fight against it. Even the edge of her misery had slowly been blunted. Instead of those searing, vicious stabs of unhappiness that had previously tormented her—memories of her father at Rhinehausen, glimpses of Charles in the Bois or in the suffocating stuffiness of the Latourettes’ apartment, echoes of the Captain’s voice—she had now sunk into a state in which unhappiness seemed natural and could no longer hurt her. The memories, the glimpses, the echoes were still there. But the power to disturb her had been taken from them.
Even when her father after her twentieth, her thirtieth letter, had still failed to reply to her and she had stopped writing to him, it did not seem any longer that she had lost. And when inside the wallet within her handbag she came upon the photograph of Captain Picard as a cadet and looked into the serious dark eyes and saw the square immature chin, her eyes did not now immediately fill with tears.
Within her mind, too, she was calmer. The impetuousness seemed to have gone from her. During those first days at the villa she had been full of wild thoughts. She had contemplated searching out Captain Picard’s address from the authorities and writing to the widow, the widow with a little child, telling her everything. She had thought even of going and confessing to her in person—it seemed the only way in which she could wipe out the stain. But such thoughts came more rarely now; and, when they came, she could see the folly of them. A letter in the hand of an unknown woman, the woman herself upon the doorstep—it was not in this way that a widow would be comforted. And gradually the image of Madame Picard that she had invented for herself—a pale face like a Madonna, the Captain had said—grew fainter and seemed to fit into the misty pattern of tragedy that lay behind her. It was no longer something that tore her sleep away from her at night, and left her frightened and wretched in the darkness.
At first when M. Moritz had brought new clothes for her she had ignored them, leaving them in the boxes in which the modiste had sent them. There was no one left, she had told herself, whom she was interested in pleasing; no one left who mattered. It was M. Moritz who had insisted that she should wear them: he complained that people would think that the markets had been going against him if he were seen with her in her old ones. And gradually she had grown to accept the presence of such a wardrobe as something natural, something that she had always known. She changed her dresses, three, four times a day; she could not imagine herself unable to do so. The carriage, too: it now seemed so much a part of her that she never walked anywhere. In front of her mirror she told herself that she must be careful;that the slimness of her figure was going. She resolved on walks and special diets. But always in the end she did nothing. The new way of life had claimed her too completely.
Not that she was content. She was aware all the time of that same emptiness which was still as much unfilled as it had been when she had first come there. The books she read, the beauty of life under the shadows of the cliff, the prodigal generosity of M. Moritz, did nothing to appease it.
“It is the price that I have to pay,” she told herself a hundred times, “for having accepted such a life.”
As the thought came to her, she recognised it as the kind of thing that once she would have set down in her diary. But the diary no longer existed: it ceased abruptly at the point where she had torn out the pages about M. Duvivier. She had several times thought of re-starting it, but somehow here at the villa she lacked even the energy to write.
And in any case, writing would only have reminded her of a lot of things that she was still trying to forget.
As the days passed, the lassitude that had come over her increased. She slept later in the mornings, was not ready when the maid brought the tray into her room. She would fall asleep again as she lay there; and often now, she rested in the afternoon, leaving the novel that she had chosen unread beside her on the couch.
At first she accepted the fact, told herself that it was simply the Mediterranean air, the sultriness of the weather. But she came gradually to realise that it was not so, that it must be that she was unwell. She chose her food carefully, avoiding all sweet or creamy things. She drank Vichy water between meals. And when the feeling of heaviness and lassitude continued, she decided that it must be the summer grippe that she had contracted.
Then one morning she fainted as she was getting out of bed. The room suddenly went dark and she collapsed upon the rug. The maid found her stretched out full length and deathly pale when she came back from preparing the bath.
The incident left Anna frightened and apprehensive. But outwardly she remained calm. She bathed her forehead in eau-de cologne, and said that she would rest in the chair in her room for a little. She forbade her maid to mention the affair to anyone. As soon as the girl had gone away, however, she got up and went over to the medicine-chest. She took out a bottle of quinine—it was a quarter full—from the array of scents and lotions, and drank off the contents. She was promptly sick.
The sickness, even though it might have been only the bitter draught that had caused it, alarmed her still further. Every fear that she had known returned to her. And next morning with nothing to provoke it she was sick again.
It was not, however, until another fortnight had elapsed that she had no doubt at all as to her condition. And the certainty—for it was positive by now—stunned her. She grew frightened; took further doses of medicinal quinine; asked herself if there were not other and more desperate remedies by which a child could be avoided; questioned whether she should not confess everything to her maid and solicit her help in finding a doctor somewhere who would take pity on her.
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 turnedagain 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 ma
id 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 speakingto 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?”
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