Anna (34 page)

These last were not only a sex, but almost a race, apart. They were the
demi-mondaines
and
filles-de-joie
of a great garrison town. The odour of their patchouli and frangipani filled the air around them; and the sound of their laughter, forced and meaningless, could be heard above the general uproar. Those who had not yet secured a man for themselves sat at the various small tables scattered about the room and were visible to the world as a pair of seductive, mascaraed eyes seen over the edge of a glass of grenadine or mandarin.

The train for Germany did not leave until nearly midnight. Anna and Captain Picard still had the rest of the day before them. But the moment of departure was now too near; it saddened everything. The Captain was morose and moody. And when dinnertime came he sat through the meal scarcely speaking.

“This is the end,” he kept telling himself. “You're filling her glass for the last time. Those lips will be gone to-morrow. Try to remember the scent she's using: it will haunt you even after you've
forgotten it. But it's too late to do more than remember. The wine's spilt now: the last bubbles have risen. This is the end.”

And once or twice during the meal Anna had turned away from him so that he shouldn't see that she was crying.

The big dining-salon itself was crowded, absurdly crowded. Guests stood about in the hall and gathered near the doorways ready to snatch at the first table that fell vacant. And even those who were already eating were chivied and hustled by the waiters, and asked to take their coffees and liqueurs in the vestibule instead of in the dining-room.

There was one man, however, with whom the waiters did not attempt any interference. He sat alone at a table by the window, a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket by his side. When he raised his glass he did so as though the whole world could wait whilst he drank. And with each mouthful he turned the wine over tenderly on his tongue and sat back in his chair regarding the other diners. He had pale, very pale, inquisitive blue eyes, and when Anna entered the room he set down his glass for a moment and followed her with his gaze across the room. He even shifted his chair a little so that he could still observe her.

It was not long before Anna became aware of him. She turned, and her eyes caught his. What she saw was a small, neat man, in a suit with dapper padded shoulders, and a large single diamond in his cravat. His little hands, as pink and delicate looking as a marmoset's, were clasped in front of him. She dismissed him from her thoughts.

Or tried to do so. For his face obstinately remained. It was a smooth, bland face, that betrayed nothing. Not that it seemed that behind such a face there could be anything in particular to be concealed. Indeed, at first sight, the effect was simply that of someone who was smiling; the whole countenance seemed to be covered with a spacious smile, like the smile on a green jade God. But that perhaps was no more than a trick of the light on the large glasses in their glittering gold frames. For the mouth did not appear to be smiling at all. It was a thin, hard line of a mouth, with the lips drawn tightly back against the teeth. And the eyes, those pale, almost colourless eyes behind the round lenses were not smiling either. They were merely unnaturally wide open and observant.

But there was something else about that face that worried her. She turned and looked again; and she saw that she was right. The face was almost hairless. Across the high-domed skull a layer of pale unhairlike hair, fine as silk, had been skilfully brushed. But of eyebrows there was no trace; the forehead simply merged, gently
and without interruption, into the line of the cheek-bones. In the result it was not a pretty face; it was too much of a mask, too much something that was smooth and polished and inscrutable.

The Captain touched her hand.

“The train,” he said, “we must get ready for it.”

Anna started: for the moment she had been conscious only of the pale eyes that were still fixed upon her. And as she turned away she shuddered; for some reason that she could not explain a sudden wave of coldness ran through her. She was frightened.

She passed her hand across her forehead.

“The train,” she repeated. “Yes, the train. We must be there early for it.”

They got up and passed out of the dining-room together. And, as they went, Anna was conscious of the same unwavering gaze from the other table still fixed upon her.

“In another few hours,” she was telling herself, “I shall be out of France. I shall have gone for ever. I shall be leaving behind everything I love, everything that could have made my life happy.”

She glanced up at the clock again: it was the third time she had looked at it during the last ten minutes. And she was afraid each time of what she saw. For the moment she was alone in the overpeopled foyer: the Captain was over at the hotel desk, lost somewhere in the mob of people who were demanding their bills, their luggage, a cab, the hotel porter, the manager.

She took out her handkerchief and rolling it into a ball she pressed it secretly to her eyes; and as she removed it she was aware that there was someone near her, someone standing so close that he was almost touching her. She looked up, and saw that it was the smiling stranger from the other room. Only he was really smiling at her this time.

“You're in trouble?” he asked. “You need help. Can I do anything for you?”

His voice was low and very smooth. There did not seem to be a single rough feature to the man anywhere.

“It is nothing,” she said.

It was clear that she resented him, that she had nothing else to say.

But the stranger did not move away. He remained there smiling down at her. And then, calmly, possessively, as if he were not accustomed to being checked in anything that he set out to do, he drew up a chair from another table. There was an easy and experienced insolence about the man.

“A beautiful woman,” he said, “does not cry for nothing. She cries only when there is something to make her sad.”

He was still smiling, and he bent forward as if he were going to speak to her again.

“I have said that there is nothing,” Anna told him. “I do not want your help.”

He gave a little bow, and raised those small, pink hands of his self-depreciatingly. But the smile remained.

“I would not for a moment intrude if I am not wanted,” he said. “Nothing could be further from my wishes. It is simply”—he drew a wallet from his pocket and removed a card from one of the pockets—“that if Mademoiselle should find that she has any need of me.…”

He placed the card on the table in front of her, and gave a little bow. The same insolence was there, the same assumption that his offer would not be rejected.

Anna glanced at the card, saw the words FERDINAND MORITZ, and brushed it on to the floor.

M. Moritz's smile did not waver: he stooped down and replaced the card on the table before her.

“If I may advise you,” he said, “in times like these, it is unwise to reject any offer of assistance. I see that already you are alone again.…”

This time Anna picked up the card and tore it across.

“Please go away,” she said. “You are bothering me …”

M. Moritz rose.

“No doubt we shall meet again,” he said.

He turned away and, as he did so, found himself face to face with the Captain. Captain Picard was standing there, his heels together, his eyes narrowed down like a fencer's. M. Moritz's smile vanished for a moment, and then reappeared again.

“I was inquiring if I could be of any use to the lady,” he began.

Anna had gone very white, the Captain noticed.

“Please ask him to go away,” she said. “I don't want him here.”

Her voice rose a little as she said it: she was surprised at her own nervousness.

M. Moritz drew back, his fingers playing with one of the buttons on his coat.

“I was already about to go,” he said. “I am afraid that my offer has been misunderstood.”

But the Captain had clenched his hands: he was trembling.

“You have been impertinent,” he said.

M. Moritz's smile had disappeared entirely by now. The line
of his mouth had grown even thinner and more hard. He was being dangerously polite.

“You must forgive me,” he said. “I had failed to realise that the lady was”—here M. Moritz paused for a moment—”your wife.”

He had hardly spoken the words before Captain Picard had struck him. Anna closed her eyes. She was aware only that the Captain had taken up his gloves from the table where they were lying, and had swung them across M. Moritz's face. It was the
frip
that the gloves made as they cut across the bare cheek that roused her.

“I demand an apology,” M. Moritz said. “An immediate apology.”

His voice was shrill as he spoke; it rose and wavered a little. It was only this waver in it that betrayed that he was not quite so brave as he appeared to be.

But Captain Picard
was
brave; that had been the original trouble with the man.

“I give you that apology,” he said.

And he struck M. Moritz across the face a second time.

The uproar in the foyer was now complete. The guests at the neighbouring tables had risen and formed a circle about the two men. Those less well placed for the spectacle were standing on their chairs, even on the table tops. They all wore the staring, dropjawed expressions of people regaled by a spectacle beyond their hopes.

Anna ran forward: she began trying frantically to push her way into the group.

“Stop! Oh, please stop,” she cried.

But the wall of solid, stupid backs through which she was trying to thrust herself resisted her. It was evident that those who were in front of her and had secured themselves a good place for the show regarded her simply as a greedy and importunate late-comer.

“Oh, don't go on,” she cried out again. “Don't let anything happen.”

But, meanwhile, the little drama
inside
the circle was, from the point of view of the spectators, proceeding perfectly.

The challenge of that double blow had been explicit enough. The crowd waited anxiously and delightedly to hear the challenge accepted.

And Captain Picard gave M. Mortiz no time, no possibility for evasion. He uttered the very words that everyone was longing to hear said.

“I challenge you!” he said.

A murmur of still keener excitement ran through the crowd; the whole affair seemed to be promising to get better with every minute.

M. Moritz did not reply immediately. His eyes ran round the arc of faces in front of him as if seeking some channel of escape. But he found none. He began toying nervously with a heavy gold fob that dangled over his waistcoat. His body see-sawed backwards and forwards on his heels.

“Very well, then,” he said. “If you insist.”

He shrugged his shoulders as he spoke, and turned away.

The Captain, however, followed him.

“The time?” he asked.

“To-morrow morning—before breakfast?” he inquired indifferently: he was careful to keep his voice low this time, so that there should be no false note in it anywhere.

“We will meet,” he said, “at the entrance. I will bring my own seconds.”

He removed his wallet with hands that scarcely shook at all, and offered Captain Picard a duplicate of the card that Anna had thrown upon the ground.

As the Captain took it, Anna reached him and threw her arms around him.

“As you love me, don't fight,” she said. “Go back now. Go back to-night; go back before anything happens to you.”

But the Captain seemed almost unaware of her: he was unbuttoning his wallet and offering M. Moritz his card as formally as if it had been at a reception.

His own hand was as steady as a surgeon's.

Captain Picard struck a match and looked at his watch again: it showed five-thirty. Shading the match with his hand, he glanced down at Anna. She had lain awake through the whole night, and now that morning was nearly here she was sleeping. Asleep, she looked even younger than he remembered her. Her hand was under her cheek and the fair, short curls fell across it. The Captain bent over her for a moment and then drew back, the match in his finger burning against the flesh.

“Poor child,” he said. “Let her sleep. She has spent the whole night tormenting herself. I should have made her go away before this happened.”

He lay there with his arms crossed under his head, staring up into the darkness of the ceiling. The noises of the hotel had not yet started, and the whole of Strasbourg, the whole universe it seemed, was in silence. It was one of those moments when the picture of a man's life appears suddenly spread out before him clearly. He saw everything—his childhood, the Military College, his marriage, the war, his disgrace, the meeting with Anna, his attempted suicide—as though they were part of some larger pattern that from the start, from his very childhood even, had been leading forward to this moment in the Hotel de l'Empire. It all seemed logical, and natural and inevitable. And when he thought of the little village of Varaye and of his wife there, and his child, he felt guilty. Guilty, yet helpless to interfere with the prearranged order of things.

“I wonder if I am
not
meant to go back to her,” he asked himself. “The train will be gone now. It will be another day out of our lives together. The other life that I have got to live. Perhaps she has even given up hoping for me.”

And another thought suddenly came into his mind as he lay there.

“Am I, a soldier, right in challenging a civilian to a duel with pistols?” he asked himself. “How do I know if the man can shoot, has ever shot before even? What chance am I giving him? It won't be a duel at all; it will be murder.”

And he began considering whether he should pause long enough to allow his opponent to fire first, permitting the amateur to shoot at him before he himself winged him elegantly and with deliberation, in some spot which would serve to humiliate the little man without assassinating him.