Anna (5 page)

“She would have wanted me to have them,” she told herself. “I'm more like her than Berthe is.”

Before she put the box away she took out the big cameo brooch with the silver pin, and set it in the centre of her bosom.

“I've a figure now,” she reflected. “I can wear something there.”

Then she went back on to the landing and called to Berthe.

“Are you ready?” she asked. “I'm going down.”

She heard Berthe's footsteps coming quickly—the child was still shy and did not like entering a room alone—but she went on down the staircase. When she reached the hall where the big lamp was hanging Berthe had caught up with her.

“Anna!” she exclaimed at the sight of the ear-rings.

But Anna had thrown the door open. She was standing there framed in the doorway, with Berthe behind her. M. Latourette, who had been playing a slow, tedious game of chequers with her father, caught one glimpse of her and rose hurriedly. Across the width of the room he and Anna stood staring at each other.

Immediately M. Latourette became aware of that mysterious elation, the electric charging of the whole spirit, which the sight of a pretty woman produces. He bowed charmingly. But as he did so he noticed to his vexation that Anna was no longer even looking in his direction. She had taken Berthe's arm in hers and was going over towards her father.

Herr Karlin pushed back the board and got to his feet as well.

“M. Latourette,” he said in his formal, rather old-fashioned manner. “I have the honour to present my daughters, Anna and Berthe. Children, this your cousin Charles, from Paris.”

M. Latourette took a step forward. This time, Anna, her lips pursed a little to accentuate their fullness, was smiling at him.

It was the Baron who had destroyed the meal. Good-humoured and in excellent spirits when he had entered the room, he had frozen into a state of iciness at the sight of the young Frenchman
who was proposing to sit at the same table with him. In return for the slim hand which M. Latourette had extended, the Baron had thrust out his own thick one as though it had been a club. Latourette had first wavered and then winced at the abruptness and violence of the salute. And from that moment the Baron had ignored him. His voice, loud and menacing, rose above M. Latourette's gentle one: it drowned him. It was only towards Anna that the Baron displayed the outward show of civilisation. To her he spoke in a soft, almost coy whisper, and even helped her to an extra tit-bit of boiled chicken when the dish was brought round to him.

But it was now the Baron's turn to be ignored. His intentions passed utterly unnoticed. Anna, sitting upright beside him, kept her eyes to the table. Not entirely, however. There were several moments in the meal when M. Latourette found her eyes full on him.

“They are positively violet,” he told himself. “The only violet eyes I have ever seen.”

The fact that M. Latourette's German was uttered haltingly and with caution appeared to amuse the Baron. At the end of one long sentence from which M. Latourette had just laboriously emerged—it had been intended as a compliment to the excellence of the dinner—the Baron turned towards Herr Karlin and observed with the uncontradictable majesty of a man who has been accustomed to being the only person of title in the company: “Foreigners speak German as though the words were choking them. For my part, I do not attempt to speak French. It is a language for Frenchmen.”

It was from that point in the meal that Anna addressed M. Latourette exclusively in French. The effect on M. Latourette, as on the Baron, was remarkable. He leant eagerly forward and his eye kindled; it was as though for the second time that day he had been rescued and brought to life again. What particularly astonished him was the attractiveness of her accent. Up to this moment the sound of a German voice, thick and clumsy, speaking French had always offended him: he had laughed over it many times. But this was different, it seemed in the magic of the experience that he was learning his own language for the first time.

The Baron endured the insult for a few moments in silence. Then, again interrupting M. Latourette, who was conversing quietly and politely across the table, he turned once more to Herr Karlin.

“Our little Anna is showing off,” he said. “She is airing her
lessons that her governess taught her. She will be speaking English yet.”

But Herr Karlin only smiled, and gave a little gesture of helplessness in the face of such behaviour. When Marie had first married him he had often heard French spoken at the table; and to-night he had more than distant memories to support him. He was thinking also of 100,000 tulip bulbs all flowering gloriously into profit.

It was as they were passing through to join the two girls in the drawing-room that the Baron placed his hand for a moment on Herr Karlin's arm.

“There is something about which I wish to speak to you.”

“By all means. By all means.” Herr Karlin replied politely. “When shall it be?”

“Now,” said the Baron briefly. And having uttered the word, he added nothing to it.

“Alone?”

“Of course.”

Herr Karlin turned to his other guest and laid his arm affectionately across his shoulders.

“My dear nephew,” he said, “would you, I wonder, excuse me for a moment? I have some business to discuss with the Baron. If you would be so kind as to join the young ladies, I know they will do their utmost to amuse you.”

M. Latourette gave his little bow again, bending forward gracefully from the hips like a dancer.

“I shall endeavour,” he said, “not to disappoint them.”

As soon as the door was closed upon him, the Baron turned upon Herr Karlin and faced him.

“How long has she known him?” he demanded. “Tell me. How long?”

Throughout his life Herr Karlin had been a man of equable temper; his success in business had derived in no small part from the fact that his mind, working slowly along familiar lines, refused resolutely to be rushed or stampeded. He, therefore, quietly motioned the Baron back to the seat from which he had just risen, and pushed the bottle of brandy towards him once again.

“She had never even seen him before to-night,” he answered.

The Baron thrust the bottle roughly away from him.

“I tell you there is an understanding between them,” he said. “Perhaps they have corresponded.”

“There is no understanding between them. They are simply cousins.” Herr Karlin assured him. “Three hours ago they scarcely
knew of each other's existence. It is simply that they were both a little excited at meeting, and Anna forgot her manners.”

“What was it that she was saying to him?” the Baron insisted. “She spoke too fast for me to follow.”

Herr Karlin shrugged his shoulders.

“They were discussing the weather,” he said, “and the distance of Rhinehausen from the station. Apart from that I do not remember.”

The Baron regarded Herr Karlin closely for a moment as though doubting him, and then gave a deep sigh.

“She sounded very interested for such a subject,” he said pointedly. “Very interested indeed.”

Herr Karlin did not reply for a moment: he was lighting another of his mild Dutch cigars.

“You're not jealous surely?” he asked, smiling. “Not jealous of that young man from Paris?”

“I'm jealous of everyone,” the Baron answered gravely, “where Anna's concerned.”

“You've no cause to be,” Herr Karlin replied. “She told Berthe that she intended to marry you. I asked the child.”

“She did?” the Baron exclaimed, drawing himself up as he spoke. “She told Berthe that?”

He paused for a moment, and then resumed.

“And when,” he asked, “does the young man return to Paris.”

“My nephew leaves by the first train to-morrow morning,” Herr Karlin told him. “I am driving him to the station myself.”

The expression on the Baron's face had now perceptibly changed.

“So,” he said. “So.”

He removed the crimson silk handkerchief from his pocket and passed it once or twice across his forehead.

“It's my nature,” he explained. “I was the same when I was courting Hermione. I lost weight. I gave up sleeping. And how I suffered! My indigestion never left me.”

He was interrupted by the sound of singing from the drawingroom. It was Anna's voice, heard above the rise and fall of the piano.

“Schumann,” Herr Karlin remarked. “She sings him very prettily.”

“We will go in and join them,” the Baron answered. “I too am very fond of music.”

The room was half in darkness when they entered. The lamp which was on the table had not been turned up, and existed simply
as a glowing globe, like a dim comet. Berthe, lying back upon the couch, was almost invisible. Over the corner, however, the small lamp on a bracket was burning. Beneath it at the piano were Anna and Charles Latourette. M. Latourette, his eyes half-closed, was dreamily accompanying her. He was in a kind of exalted, oblivious trance. Anna was leaning forward a little as though to study the music.

Her hand was resting lightly on his shoulder.

Next morning, however, M. Latourette did not depart. Herr Karlin had the horses out all ready for him, but a sick headache—a
migraine nerveuse—
as he called it, confined M. Latourette to his bedroom. Herr Karlin sent him up a stiff glass of bismuth and a powder. But M. Latourette, lying prone in the bed in the position of a man just rescued from drowning, expressed himself as unable to take either. All that he wanted, he said, was to be left alone in the darkened room so that the attack might wear itself out. He was, he made it clear, devastated to think of the inconvenience that he was causing: he would endeavour to make atonement for it the moment the
crise
had passed. But for the moment he was helpless, a victim.

Herr Karlin, therefore, gave instructions that his guest was not to be disturbed, and set off, rather late, for his seed-beds.

He was thus all the more pleased to discover on his return at lunch-time that M. Latourette had recovered sufficiently to dress and go down into the garden. He was sitting on the white seat in the little alcove with Anna. She was reading poetry to him.

At the sight of Herr Karlin, M. Latourette began his apologies. But Herr Karlin would not hear them, and led him genially towards the table: he suggested that it was really food that the young man needed. It was not until they had actually sat down that M. Latourette confessed that he still did not feel strong enough to eat. He sipped a little white wine and, as the meal proceeded, teased Berthe politely for not speaking such good French as her sister. It was obvious that every moment he was becoming more and more himself. But even so, the return journey still seemed beyond him. His important business, it seemed, would wait for him.

His prolonged stay pleased Herr Karlin. He used it as an opportunity for discussing further business with the young man, and hinted of vast deals in daffodils and narcissi. He even made
this preliminary encounter over tulip bulbs seem somehow trivial and beneath their associated dignity.

But Herr Karlin found it impossible to excite him: it was as though his mind were on other things all the time. He had remained careful, even fastidious, about his appearance, but there was a kind of brooding vacancy in his face which puzzled the older man. When he had first seen M. Latourette, admittedly his visitor had appeared bored, palpably bored. But this was different. The disturbance had gone deeper. In the middle of a talk on heavy-root crops—and there was money in mangels too, Herr Karlin was explaining—he saw M. Latourette's gaze shift suddenly and become fixed on Anna's moving figure as she walked from the house into the conservatory. He seemed for the moment to be oblivious of everything else. With her disappearance the light went from his face and he became an invalid again. Then, when she came back into sight, this time carrying a crimson flower which she held against the bosom of her yellow dress, M. Latourette revived once more.

They were in the orchard under the loaded branches. The grass there grew almost knee-high and the tree trunk on which they were sitting was half-submerged beneath the moving green sea of it. Anna was leaning back, gazing into the pattern of the sky, and Charles Latourette was watching her.

“It will soon be autumn now,” she was saying. “I adore the autumn.”

It seemed in that moment as though only in the autumn was the sadness of her mood and of nature truly mingled.

M. Latourette paused for a moment.

“In the autumn there is the opera,” he said at last. “I should like you to see the Paris opera.”

Anna uncrossed her arms; they showed slim and very white under the fine muslin of her dress.

“I am never so happy as when I am listening to music,” she confessed to him. “I think I was born to listen to music always.”

“And the people,” M. Latourette went on. “On the first night of the opera every beautiful woman in Paris is present. The scene would still be wonderful if the curtain never went up.”

Anna felt dismayed for a moment; her own inexperience, her innocence of things, troubled her. She tried to imagine the life in Paris, the gaiety of it, the constant amusement, the glitter.

“Do you often go to the opera?” she asked. “Do you know any of the singers?”

Charles Latourette paused for a moment before replying. “My father's business occupies us all so much,” he said sadly.

But the admission brought no disappointment. She now saw this beautiful young man beside her as a new kind of hero. Tied down to commerce, he remained nevertheless faithful to the higher things, the arts. She saw him at one moment calm and successful in business, and at the next in his tail coat and with a carnation, perhaps, in his button-hole among the Countesses and beauties in the stalls.

“If I lived in Paris,” she said, “I should attend the opera every night.”