Anna (24 page)

At the barriers even larger crowds were formed—crowds which refused to disperse until the police charged them. And when a local train drew into one of the side platforms the crowd strained
and crushed into the carriages as though in the belief that because it was a train it must eventually be going somewhere. The glass in all the ticket-offices had already been smashed.

The last train that had left was now ploughing along through the night in total darkness. The lamps had actually been removed from the carriages, and every possible precaution had been taken. A tarpaulin had even been hung down from the back of the driver's cab to obscure the glow from the fire-box.

There were nearly six hundred people in the train, six hundred people all armed with Government priority passes. Some of the passes had cost as much as a thousand francs to obtain. M. Latourette had been one of the lucky ones. He had got his for a mere two hundred and fifty francs and the promise of one quarter of one per cent on a sub-contract that he knew would not come to anything. But he was not despondent; he had other irons in the fire. It was now buttons in which he was interested. He had thoughtfully made out the date-line of this contract as Bordeaux.

“They'll never get as far as Bordeaux,” he kept telling himself. “My buttons are all right. Nothing can happen to my buttons.”

It was himself that he was not so sure about. No one quite knew whether even this train would get through or not. It was certain that nothing following it would be able to penetrate farther than a mere twenty or thirty miles. There were Germans everywhere. The encirclement was nearly complete.

By to-morrow Paris would be an island of Frenchmen in the middle of Prussian Europe.

The fact that the Government had left Paris for Tours still further demoralised everyone; it was as though at the very moment when it was known that the ship was probably sinking, the Captain and the rest of the officers had left in the ship's pinnace. The Military Governor, who remained behind, smelt too much of blood and gunpowder to reassure anyone.

And it was in a way significant that the farther they were removed from the scene of the impending fighting, the more confident and truculent the Government became. The disillusionment was, therefore, all the greater when Bazaine, with his one hundred and sixty thousand men, surrendered with scarcely a struggle to a besieging army smaller than his own. For the rest of their lives, it was hardly safe for any of his men to admit in the streets of Paris that they had been members of this traitor army.

At first the fact that Paris was in reality besieged was too incredible to be realised. People looked at the Place de la Concorde, shining in the September sunlight, or at the Arc de Triomphe, solid as ever and a little ridiculous like all gateways without a wall, and because things looked as they had always looked, they told themselves that there must be some gigantic mistake, that this disaster could not be. In fact, when at last the papers were really telling the truth, people found that it was beyond their capacity to believe.

But there was one thing that served to remind the people of France that only the air above their country was now left open to them—and that was the balloon departures from the capital. These ascents excited the imagination of even the most lethargic, and went to show to what lengths science could be driven in the service of war. It was Gambetta who had made popular this extraordinary means of transport. A romantic, he had put the practical men of the Government to shame, by climbing into the basket of one of these contraptions and sailing away through rain and cloud and Prussian rifle-fire to raise the flag of resistance in the provinces. He was so full-blooded, so virile and confident, that when Gambetta had gone and his balloon was no bigger than a toy above their heads, the people who had gathered to see him off looked at one
another and then remained silent, conscious that the best man in Paris had left them to themselves.

There had been no such feelings when the elderly Thiers, muffled up in his greatcoat, had started off on his tour of Europe in search of friends, and possibly even of allies. And his tour had not so far been any more prepossessing than his appearance. He remained a shabby and rather pathetic commercial traveller endeavouring to sell a brand of goods in which the public no longer believed.

It was balloons and peasant armies fighting for what was theirs that were more in keeping with the spirit of the times.

Anna's own glimpse of these aerial sorties came to her with the abruptness of a revelation. She was standing at the window of her room. It was dark, and low clouds were being driven across the face of the city. Through them at intervals the moon appeared, racing madly across a stormy sky, as if seeking cover, and plunging again into other dense tidal waves of cloud. Then suddenly in a brilliant gap of starry night appeared a vast, ugly shape, straining at the ropes that held it to its basket. The balloon, already distorted by the wind, was being forced madly out of the perpendicular and the basket was swinging like a pendulum, threatening at any moment to come asunder.

Seen in that instant, the huge envelope no longer gave the impression of lightness. It seemed instead to be something too bulky and ponderous to remain aloft. And as it was swept towards her Anna could see the dark shape of two men outlined above the edge of the basket. A jet of what looked like black spray now streamed behind—one of the aeronauts had cut the cord of a bag containing sand ballast. A moment later the whole drama of the scene mounted swiftly as she saw
things
falling from the balloon. These were the ballast bags themselves, which were now being jettisoned in desperation without any attempt being made to open them. They fell intact, each weighing nearly a hundredweight, smashing roofs, chimneys, windows. There were seven such bags.

The balloon for a moment appeared to soar, as though it were being jerked upwards on a string. But, as quickly, it lost height again, and Anna could see that the envelope was now more distorted than ever. It had assumed the shape of a pear, and the skin was visibly flapping. The wind was now driving it straight towards her.

“It will strike this building,” she thought. “The men in it will be killed.”

In the excitement of the occasion she had lost all sense of personal danger.

The moon was shining full on it, and the balloon was near enough for Anna to see every detail. Of all that she saw, there was only one thing that she clearly remembered—and that was a four-pronged anchor that was dangling underneath. The incongruity of it, this anchor in the clouds, riveted the image in her mind.

Then in a swirl of wind the balloon mounted again a little and was carried over the roof-tops. For a second the sky was blotted out, and then the balloon passed over. The night became normal again.

Anna remained at the window motionless. All other details now seemed insignificant beside a new one which she was hugging in her memory.

“I heard the basket
creak,”
she told herself exultantly. “It was as near as that.”

The balloon itself descended, with a rent envelope, in the Bois de Boulogne, less than three miles from its starting-point. One of the occupants was thrown out and killed at once by the impact; the other became entangled in branches and was rescued at daybreak, like a kitten that had climbed too far up an apple tree.

He came down protesting loudly that his vessel had been tampered with.

Because she did not dare to spend any of the remaining fifteen francs which she had set aside for M. Duvivier's rent, and because only four francs remained in her handbag, Anna had not eaten properly for the last two days. The price of food had already gone rocketing, and for forty-eight hours she had fed only on rolls and a little coffee. In the result she was hungry and a little lightheaded.

Fantastic schemes, all directed to the sole end of making money, filled her mind. She saw herself as the mistress of one of the innumberable officers who populated the capital. But the danger of allowing anyone else except M. Duvivier—who unquestionably suspected it—to know that she had no papers was too great. That particular scheme seemed too inevitably to end in prison.

She grew more desperate.

“Or I could take a different rich lover every night,” she told herself. “They need know nothing of me then; and in the morning should be free again.”

But she realised she had nowhere to take them, these imaginary lovers. The grand courtesans lived, like a race of Duchesses, in costly apartments with beds of silk and swansdown, not in an attic in a side street.

“Besides,” she reflected innocently, “I do not know any wealthy lovers. I do not even know how to begin finding them.”

Then she remembered the house in the Palais Royal, the house where she had once sought lodgings, and she shuddered. Between the fantasy and the reality there lay a chasm that she knew she could never bring herself to cross.

“No,” she told herself, “There must be some other way. It cannot be for long now.”

These thoughts, and a score of others all as frantic, as hopeless, were passing through her mind as she walked. The walk had been aimless, purposeless. She had gone out simply because indoors the sense of imprisonment seemed stronger, more unendurable. And now she was turning down the rue Cigale. On the way she passed the shop of M. Adrianopolis, coiffeur and wig-maker. It was a small shop, less imposing than its neighbours, but it still, despite the war, had an air of prosperity and well-being about it. Its sign of a tail of horse-hair suspended from above the door was freshly painted and new-looking. The shop recalled a hairdresser's which she had often visited in Düsseldorf.

But what caught her eye was the side-window full of examples of M. Adrianopolis's art. There were wigs of every pattern and colour. Behind them were ranged row upon row of postiches. Small curls and love-locks decorated the floor of the window.

Anna stood there staring. Her heart had suddenly begun to beat faster. After a moment she turned away and walked on. But at the top of the street she stopped and came hurriedly back again. She went in through the doorway of the little shop without pausing. The colour had gone from her cheeks.

It was M. Adrianopolis himself who confronted her. A small and smiling man, he came forward bowing from the hips like a dancer. With his custom suddenly fallen away to nothing, he was enchanted at the sight of a customer.

“Good-evening, Mademoiselle,” he began. “You wish …”

But Anna interrupted him. “I was looking at your windowful of postiches,” she said. “You buy the hair?”

M. Adrianopolis appeared surprised at the question.

“Why, yes, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “I can guarantee it is all real human hair. I cut most of it myself.”

“Would mine be the right colour?” Anna asked. “Would you buy mine?”

As she spoke, she turned her head a little for the hairdresser to see.

But M. Adrianopolis scarcely even glanced at her.

“At any other time I should have been delighted to discuss it, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “But at the present moment …”

“It is very thick,” Anna told him. “It reaches below my waist.”

There was something in her voice that made him pause and consider. His customer was obviously a lady, and she was as obviously hard up or she would never consider doing such a thing. In the circumstances she would probably accept a fraction of what such hair was worth. And out of the corner of his eye he was already sizing up the mass of it. He could see the great golden coil that it made. Besides, as a Greek, he would have nothing to fear. If Paris fell into German hands, his consul was there to protect him. It was even possible that he might with a little manœuvring be able to secure a most agreeable bargain. Golden hair was, at the moment, probably as good an investment as any other kind of gold.

“I have such stocks of hair,” he said.

He opened one of the drawers with which the shop was lined, and tilted it towards her.

“I have pounds of it stowed away here,” he added. “I wonder shall I ever sell any of it?”

“Then you don't want to buy any more?”

“I am sorry, Mademoiselle.…”

He allowed her to go almost to the door of the shop. Then he stopped her.

“But just in case times should improve,” he said, “perhaps Mademoiselle would permit me to look at it.”

As he spoke he opened the door of a little cubicle and stood back for Anna to enter. She came so readily that he knew that he would have no difficulty about settling a price, and she took off her hat as if actually eager for the sacrifice. As he removed the pins and then began unplaiting, his fingers worked deftly, tenderly. He talked all the time.…

“Thirty francs is a great deal of money,” he was saying. “And the work that has to be put in on it costs so much. But I said thirty francs, so thirty francs it shall be.”

And as he talked he cut. The scissors made a faint squeaking
sound as they sheared, and the pile of hair on the table beside him was growing larger every minute. There was a pair of scales ready there for him to weigh it.

In the mirror in front of her Anna could see each tress as he lifted it carefully and laid it by him. She began crying.

But thirty francs! It meant another two weeks' rent. She did not any longer regret what she had done.

“It will grow again,” she told herself. “I am still young: there is plenty of time.”

She raised her hand to her head: M. Adrianopolis as a part of his bargain, his excellent bargain, had used his curling tongs. Her whole head was now covered in close, bewildering curls.

“He tells me that it suits me,” she reflected; and she turned to catch her profile in the mirror at the side.

IV

There were a police-sergeant and two constables waiting behind the awning of the Restaurant Duvivier as she returned. They had been there for upwards of an hour already, and their feet were getting cold. With his eye close up to the canvas, the sergeant was keeping careful watch on the street. As Anna came into view, he raised his hand warningly.