Anna (39 page)

“But I mustn't faint. I must go on,” she kept telling herself. “I must go—somewhere.”

She raised her eyes a little, and started. M. Moritz's coach was still there. It had not moved since she left. And M. Moritz was coming towards her. She felt his arms go around her shoulders.

“A year is a long time,” he was saying. “There are many things that can happen in it. And you were so certain. It was because you were so certain that I couldn't bear to think that you would be disappointed. That was why I waited. Just in case you might need me.”

And gently, very gently, he helped her into the coach.

There was nothing in all Europe quite like Monaco. It was a legend, this toyland monarchy with its prince and its castle and its cream-and-scarlet army of a hundred men.

The small bay, reflecting the hanging gardens of the cliffs, charmed the place. Viewed from the sea, Monte Carlo presented itself as a shining back-cloth of all the luxuries. Some of the buildings were of white Mediterranean marble, and those which were not blazed with the brilliance of painted stucco. To the yachtsman, the face of Monte Carlo kept flashing through the foliage of the palms like a mirror.

On one of the lower terraces of the rock was a garden. Someone had squandered money on it, and paved the lining-stone with mosaics. The cypresses and oleanders grew in patterns, and there were fountains and tiny waterfalls. Behind the garden, leaning up almost against the cliff itself, was a house with honey-coloured walls and trellised windows. It was the house of a dreamer and a romantic. In front of it lay the sea; and the rock behind hid it from the rest of Europe.

It was to this house that M. Moritz was bringing Anna; he had described it to her a hundred times already upon the journey.

“We shall be able to see it in a moment,” M. Moritz was saying. “We turn the next corner, and then we are inside the gates. It is so hidden that you might go past it a score of times and never know that it is there. That was why I bought it: its secrecy amused me.”

He linked his fingers through Anna's and squeezed her hand.

“I hope you will like it,” he said simply. It has been waiting for you so long, and this is the moment that I had always hoped for.”

When Anna did not reply he turned to her anxiously.

“There is nothing about it which you don't like?” he asked. “The situation? The climate?”

Anna shook her head, and M. Moritz continued.

“But you've seen nothing of it yet. It's a jewel. Everything that have collected, my paintings, my tapestries, my bronzes— they are all there. And they will come to life now: they have been so cold before.”

The carriage had turned in sharply at the gate, and was moving between the bushes of azaleas that fringed the drive. The house, open and smiling, lay before them. At the foot of the steps a young man, a very handsome young man, was standing. He was holding a bouquet in his hand.

M. Moritz bent over and whispered in Anna's ear.

“My secretary,” he said. “He lives with us.”

The carriage had stopped now, and M. Moritz addressed the young man.

“Come and be presented,” he said. “Carlos, this is Madame Moritz.”

The young man bowed beautifully. He behaved as if he had been presenting flowers all his life. And he knew exactly how to withdraw. It was evident that he was used to effacing himself.

But M. Moritz called him back again.

“My telegrams arrived?” he asked. “Everything ready?”

“Everything.” Carlos answered. “The orchestra. …”

But M. Moritz waved him into silence. “Do you want to ruin the whole homecoming?” he asked. “For Madame, to-day must be a day of surprises.”

He sprang down and held out his hand to Anna.

“It is the moment I have been waiting for,” he said. “The moment when I should bring you to our home.”

The doors of the house were open as they approached them, and Anna found herself looking into a shadowy hall full of flowers. They had been the subjects of one of M. Moritz's telegrams, those flowers. There were banks upon banks of them, so that it seemed to Anna that she was entering a world entirely of lily and hydrangea. The heavy perfume stifled her, and she wondered whether inside the house she would ever breathe again.

But M. Moritz was enchanted. “Just as I desired it,” he said. “Everything as I would have wished.”

They were inside the house now, and the staff was standing there before them. The housekeeper, a spacious Piedmontese with large bosoms and a great sweep of white skirt, dropped a little curtsey. The moment had come. Behind the hydrangeas a man in evening dress was standing, a baton in his hand. Swinging round, he raised his baton and the hidden players began.

M. Moritz gave his arm to Anna and they mounted the little flight of steps together.

“La da di di! La da di di!”
M. Moritz was chanting in time to the music as he walked. At the top of the stairs he turned again to Anna.

“You see,” he said. “I have thought of everything. Even the wedding march.”

The room into which he led her was the principal room of the villa. Through its long windows the sea sparkled, and there were flowers leaning in across the sills. M. Moritz drew her forward until there was nothing in front of them but the falling garden and the waves.

“The world can never disturb us here,” he said. “It is beautiful always.”

She did not answer, and he glanced nervously towards her.

“But I'm forgetting,” he said. “You're tired. You've been travelling. You will want to rest. You will want to lie down until supper-time. I shall ring immediately for your maid.”

A thought crossed his mind as he was speaking, and he lifted his hand from the bell-pull. “No,” he said. “I must show you to your room myself. I invented it for you. It was nothing before you came.”

He led her up the staircase and threw open a door above which a little bronze cupid was riding. The boudoir that was revealed was all of pink. It was magnificent: there was no way in which M. Moritz could have spent more money on it.

“And in case,” M. Moritz went on, “you should think you will be lonely, let me show you.”

He went over and opened a door which led into another room, pink like the first. “I shall never be far away. If you want me ever you have only to call and I shall hear you.”

M. Moritz had gone now. Anna had stood there watching the door close after him. It seemed to be like release to be alone.

She went over to the dressing-mirror and took off her hat, the fabulously costly hat that M. Moritz had insisted upon giving her; and she sat for a moment looking at her image in the glass. Then she removed the long elegant gloves and ran her fingers through her hair. It was dressed differently now. M. Moritz had taken her to a fashionable coiffeur, and he had played his fancy with it. But she was not thinking of her hair, the gloves, the hat. She was still staring into the glass, staring into the eyes that looked back at her.

Then she raised her hands and put them across her face.

“No,” she said. “It's no use. I can't. I can't go on with it.”

Getting up from the mirror, she threw herself upon the bed. She lay there, her head buried in her arms, her whole body shaking.

She had still not moved when her lady's maid entered the room to set out Anna's gown for dinner.

During the days that followed, M. Moritz seemed to have abandoned all thoughts of business. Letters came and he left them unanswered; telegrams reached him and he stuffed them away into his pocket. He had, indeed, since his arrival at the villa drifted into the happy laziness of a perpetual honeymoon; he appeared content to let Europe struggle back into order without him. He now wore fancy shirts that did not suit him, lay in the sunlight until his face was tanned, cultivated a taste in poetry. And, in their walks through the garden, he was forever reminding Anna that the statues of satyrs and nymphs had been modelled by a race of men who had not shared the modern fear of life.

It was late one evening, when the garden was a pool of shadows and the scent of flowers, that he finally unbared his soul. He removed from his lips the cigar that he had been smoking—the glowing butt made a half-orbit of fire in the dusk—and declared himself. He excused his way of life, his impetuousness, his vast ambitions.

“I have always held,” he went on, “that poverty is one of the chief blessings when one is young. It sharpens the senses. If I had always had enough I should probably never have asked for more. It is the sense of deprivation, of denial, that is so valuable. It is because when I was young I had nothing that I am resolved to have so much to-day. I keep telling myself”—Anna heard his voice rise as he was speaking and saw the cigar butt in his hand tremble— “that I must have more. Even if I could drive the Rothschilds and the Barings from the market, I should still be hungry. I should feel somehow inside me that I had failed.”

His free hand sought Anna's in the darkness. “And now that I have you,” he said, “I shall ask for twice as much.”

Then he spoke again.

“It is not difficult to make a fortune,” he said. “I have made several and spent them. Spent them, not lost them. I have bought everything I have ever wanted. But it hasn't been enough. It has given me nothing really. That's why I want to have children. Children who will be able to enjoy all this. Children who will be born with their feet upon the neck of the world.”

A little shudder ran through her, and she turned away from him.

M. Moritz pulled himself together at once.

“You're cold, my love,” he said. “I must take you into the house again. It's the old cliff: she's treacherous. She cuts out the late sun and then freezes us.”

He drew Anna's wrap about her shoulders and gave his arm to her. The night was dark by now, and the flowering bushes showed only as ragged masses that glowed up at them.

“To have your children,” M. Moritz continued quietly. “That's what would please me. To have a son who could grow up and go out into the world. Someone to play with the banks as I have done. I could make a duke of him, I tell you. We could divide Europe between us. There need be no limit to our power, if only you will give me a son.”

They had reached the house by now, and M. Moritz had one foot upon the low step leading into the drawing-room.

“Go inside,” he said. “Go inside and stand where the light falls on you. I want to look at you.”

When he came inside he put his arms around her.

“You're beautiful,” he said. “The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. But your neck's too bare. There are some pearls I've seen. I'll buy them for you. I'll send the jeweller a telegram in the morning.”

Their honeymoon, as M. Moritz very deliberately called it, was three weeks old now; and in M. Moritz the first signs of restlessness were already to be seen. Not that he neglected Anna. On the contrary, he had never been more attentive and adoring: he paid her compliments, debated by whom he should have her portrait painted, gave her the pearls that he had promised. But he was ready at last to share her with the world. Instead of those rapturous walks in the twilight in the garden, he suggested that they should pay a visit to M. Blanc's casino.

It was obvious from the start that M. Moritz was very much at home there. The commissionaires saluted, the secretary came forward in person to greet him as he entered, and even the croupier at the table in the public rooms gave a little bow of acknowledgement.

But M. Moritz at first seemed content merely to watch, as though the spectacle of money changing hands—not anybody's in particular, but just money—held sufficient fascination for him. And as though there were some obscure mathematical system at work all the time within his mind, he would shake his head dubiously as he saw a stake doubled, or smile pityingly as he saw a player change his mind at the last moment. Then he turned to Anna, as though apologising for his preoccupation.

“But, of course,” he said. “You'd like to play, yourself. That is so, isn't it?”

Anna nodded. It seemed as good a way as any other to forget. And, as she realised that this was why she had accepted, it seemed to her that she had discovered the whole secret of the game. For while M. Moritz had been, surveying the play she had been studying the players. There were some who sat tense and tight-lipped while the ball was spinning, and others who half-closed their eyes and lolled back as though the game were no concern of theirs. But they all had one thing in common. In this hot, frantic world of make-believe they had found fresh anxieties and hazards to take the place of the real ones that were in their minds.

But when Anna moved towards one of the vacant chairs at the table, M. Moritz stopped her.

“Not here,” he said. “Not in the public salons. The play is so lifeless here. We'll go into the Club, where the real game goes on. I'll show you how to make the ball obey you.”

He gave her his arm and led her up the stairs past the flunkeys to where a red vlevet cord was stretched across the staircase. One of the flunkeys took down the cord, and as they approached stood back for them to pass.

M. Moritz turned again to Anna.

“They have to be a little careful,” he explained. “The stakes are sometimes rather high up here. Down there in the public salons a child could play without coming to any harm. But in the Club …”

M. Moritz stopped suddenly. He was staring in front of him and appeared for the moment to be transfixed. But the reason was simple. In front of them at the top of the staircase was a large mirror, and M. Moritz was gazing into it.

“That is what makes me happy,” he said at last. “To see you there beside me. It is something, something not inconsiderable to be accompanied by the most beautiful woman in the whole casino.”