Anna (38 page)

But Anna only shook her head and, keeping her two hands clasped together inside her muff, walked up the stairs beside him.

The room to which the landlord had led them was low and deepraftered. It was an attic room, and the ceiling slanted over their heads as if the house were falling. But there was a fire already burning in the grate, and the lamp suspended from the centre beam had been lighted. It filled the room with a warm, smoky radiance.

In front of the fire a heavy oak settle had been drawn up. Anna crossed over and sank down gratefully upon it, and M. Moritz stood back looking at her. The firelight flickered up into her face, and the lamp shining down upon her hair set it glowing. As he looked, the room seemed to draw in upon them and grow smaller: it suddenly became intimate and friendly. At the sight of the firelight, the lamp, and Anna, M. Moritz found himself ready to forgive the uncharity of the night outside. His smile returned to him
and he began unbuttoning his coat. He no longer regretted Düsselmunde and the meal that he had ordered at the Kaiser Hof.

It was the landlord's wife who broke the spell that had fallen over him. She came sidling into the room bearing a tray, and began setting out the table the clink of cutlery and the rattle of plates made the room cheerful again. And when the landlord himself returned some ten minutes later it was obvious that he was determined to put the best possible front on things. He had changed into a white jacket and, tucked under his arm, was a bottle of wine with the cobwebs still on it.

He brought the bottle over to M. Moritz and showed it to him proudly, rather in the manner of a mother displaying her new baby. M. Moritz took out a single eyeglass and examined the label.

“Very well,” he said. “Uncork it.”

The wine was good. M. Moritz, in fact, was astonished by it. After he had tasted a mouthful of it, he poured out a glass for Anna and took it over to her.

“My dear,” he said, “for you. I insist.”

He paused.

“It's very strange,” he said slowly, “how fate has thrown the two of us together. It is hard to believe that it was not intended.”

When Anna did not answer him, M. Moritz resumed in the same quiet voice, as if it were simply that certain thoughts were passing through his mind and he were speaking them.

“You still probably hate me,” he said. “Hate me for what I've done to you. But that is because you are still so young. You do not understand things. Later on, you will look back and see that it had to be. I fired that pistol in my own defence.”

There was another pause, while M. Moritz slowly sipped the wine that was in his hand.

“You do hate me, don't you?” he asked at last.

Anna did not even turn her head. Her voice was steady and level when she answered him.

“How could I fail to?” she asked. “You killed him.”

The reply did not appear to disturb M. Moritz unduly.

“I should probably admire you less if you had given me any other kind of answer,” he replied. “There is all too little faithfulness in the world: we forget so easily. But one sees life differently as one grows older. Men and women, people one had loved and cherished—they die, and life still goes on without them. Your life didn't stop when he was killed.”

Anna pushed back her chair as he was speaking and half-rose from the table.

“Please,” she said. “I'm tired. Will you ask the landlord to show me to my room?”

M. Moritz, however, was still speaking.

“I can't bear to have you leave me while you still think of me only as a murderer,” he said. “To-morrow I shall deliver you at your father's house, and”—here M. Moritz spread out his hands as though to represent a bubble bursting—“we shall have separated for ever. If you should wonder anything about me, if you should remember this evening yet forget what it was that I said to you, there will be no one then to ask, no one who can help you.”

But Anna was not listening to him. She had risen from the table and gone over to the fireplace. The tassel of the bell-pull hung there and Anna raised her hand to it. There was the scraping of wires along the wall and, a moment later, a shrill, clanking rose up from the kitchen somewhere beneath them. Anna stood there facing him.

“Good-night M. Moritz,” she said.

M. Moritz rose politely. His smile returned and he poured out the remainder of the wine that was in the bottle.

“To your night's rest,” he said.

He was standing thus, with his glass in his hands, when the landlord entered.

His own night's rest was not a particularly good one. The coachman, misinterpreting the situation, had engaged only one room for them both, and there was not another bedroom in the inn. M. Moritz slept—or did not sleep—on the big oak settle in front of the fire.

She was looking out of the window of the coach, and suddenly the road along which they were travelling was familiar. It sprang out of her memory and was there before her. It was the road from Rhönberg to Rhinehausen, the road along which she had been driven that night when she had fled to Paris. She had been young then, so young. She remembered everything about that night, the sound made by the door of her father's house in closing after her; the thumping of her own heart; the intolerable slowness of the carriage; the soldiers lined up on the platform in the darkness; the sense of fear that had filled the train as they approached the frontier; and Charles. It was Charles who had removed all terror from her heart. She had lived in expectation then. And now—now
she had come back again. It was as though between those two days there had been nothing; the departure had led straight into the return.

The coachman had reached the crossroads and was hesitating. Anna leant forward excitedly.

“There it is,” she said. “There's Rhinehausen. Behind those trees.”

She was trembling, and little waves of sickness kept passing through her. When she heard M. Moritz's voice she started.

“Are you so eager then to leave me?” he asked.

But she did not answer. Round the blank corner of the street the grey front and carved porch of Herr Karlin's house had come abruptly into sight. And she could think of nothing else.

The coach drew up, swaying on its long springs. Anna leant forward to open the heavy door. But M. Moritz intercepted her hand. He sprang the catch back himself and the door swung open.

“See. You are home again,” he said, and then, as Anna rose to her feet, he added a little mockingly. “But we must wait for the coachman to let down the steps. You cannot fall into your father's arms like that. He would think you were escaping from me.”

She turned and saw that he was smiling at her: it was the same fixed, incomprehensible smile. But this time there was an expression she had never seen before. It was one of regret and sadness, of sorrow even. The corners of the tight mouth were drooping.

He took hold of her hand, and lifted it to his lips.

“Good-bye, my little friend,” he said. “Perhaps some time we shall meet again.”

Her lips moved, but no words came. She dismounted, and began to climb the short flight of steps that led up to the front door.

M. Moritz remained where he was, watching her.

“So what she told me is true,” he reflected. “There really is somewhere where she belongs. Perhaps the rest of it is true, too. Maybe she even has a father.”

And, then as if to shut the fact of her departure from his mind, he sat back and closed his eyes.

It was not until her hand was actually upon the bell-pull of the door that she changed her mind. This was not the way she had intended to return; this was the way strangers came into the house. Her way led through the orchard where Charles had first told her that he loved her; through the orchard, and then on through the gravelled garden that led right up to the house. She ran back
down the steps and turned into the little lane that led up to the carriage-house. She still had the same feeling of sick, half-frightened happiness. The lane was so much part of her; every stone and every bush in it was familiar. It was like walking through her own childhood. And the gate at the end creaked when she opened it as it had always creaked. It dragged its weight across the stone in a groove that the years had made.

She was in the orchard now, and the path wound through the trees in front of her. There were no leaves on the trees yet, and the orchard looked desolate. A rotten windfall, the brown husk of what had been a fruit, lay at her feet, and for some reason the sight saddened her. She went on, and as the house came into view again her excitement mounted. Her heart was hammering now.

It was as she approached the house that she heard the sound of voices. She paused, trying to decide from what direction they came. She felt that at such a moment the right of surprise was hers.

The voices were quite plain now: they came from the conservatory, and she went closer. There was the sound of only one voice now, a man's, and he was speaking rapidly, earnestly, as if it were a lesson he had learnt by heart. She moved forward and put her face up to the pane, but at first she could see nothing—the foliage inside was too dense and heavy. Then, just beside her, she found a gap, and the whole conservatory,
her
conservatory, was there before her, like a tiny stage. And as she looked she saw a pair of broad shoulders and a thick, gross neck that swelled over the top of the military collar. It was the Baron.

He was speaking to someone; but his bulk obscured the other person. All that Anna could tell was that he was very much in earnest. Then she caught some of the words that he was saying.

“It is not as if I were an old man, or even an elderly one,” she heard him say. “I am only now in middle-age.”

He bent forward a little as he was speaking and, as he did so, he revealed his listener. It was Berthe.

But it was not the Berthe whom Anna had known. Even though it was only a year since she had seen her, the child looked already older, much older. Her hair was up now, wound round her head in heavy plaits. And her face had changed. It was not a child's face any more. There was anxiety and suffering in it. The eyes at this moment were fixed on those of the Baron.

“And so,” the Baron was continuing, “when I asked your father's permission to speak to you, he was very pleased. I knew all the time that you were fond of me: I could see it. I am having the Schloss entirely repainted.”

Berthe's eyes opened wide for a moment and she looked a child again. She raised her hands to her mouth as if she were going to cry, and then, as the Baron came towards her, she dropped them to her side again and stood there waiting for him.

“You are excited?” the Baron persisted. “To-morrow you will come with me to Düsseldorf and I will buy you presents.…”

“But it mustn't be. It mustn't be,” Anna told herself. “She's too young for him. It's horrible.”

She stood there outside the conservatory, her cheeks burning.

“I must find my father,” she decided. “I must find him at once so that he can stop it.”

She had reached the garden door and put her foot inside the house before she realised how frightened she was. Frightened of what? she-asked herself. And she could not find the answer. Not of her father surely. That was absurd: he had always been so kind to her, so gentle.

But the fear remained. She was back within her own house, within the one place on earth that had seemed safe to her, and she was terrified. Her hand was trembling as she opened the door of her father's study.

He was sitting there as he always sat at that time of day. The
Frankfurter Zeitung
was spread open in front of him and his pipe was fuming lazily into the air, enveloping him in a little cloud of smoke. His fancy slippers were up resting upon his usual footstool, and, as she looked, she realised that it was this that she had come back for; it was the unchangingness, the continuity with things past, that she wanted. But she did not go nearer. She stood there at the door because she did not want to shatter the image that was in front of her.

“Father,” she said, and waited for him to turn towards her.

But he did not turn. He merely started and put down his paper for a moment. Since she had left he had heard that voice so often, had felt her beside him, or listened for the rustle of her dress upon the stairs, that he no longer trusted himself. He gave a sigh, and opened the paper again at his column of beloved politics.

As she looked, Anna found herself weeping for sheer love of him. She took a step towards him.

“Father,” she said for the second time.

This time it was impossible to doubt that Herr Karlin had heard her. He knew that it was her voice that was speaking to him; but it was the voice of a ghost, and like a ghost it frightened him.
He threw down his paper and swung round sharply in his chair. The pipe he was holding fell from his hand.

She stretched out her arms to him and waited for the smile that would come across his face. But there was no smile there. He was looking past her without seeing her. The room might have been empty in front of him. And as she stood there the fear returned to her.

“Father,” she said for the last time.

This time, when he did not answer, she knew that he was not going to answer, would never answer her.

Looking back on it afterwards, she could not remember what had happened. Only isolated moments of it were clear to her. She was crying, she remembered that; and she had run out into the passage. Run, because she had become too much afraid to remain there any longer. The whole house had suddenly seemed terrifying. She had reached the front door and pulled desperately at the bolts. They were heavy, and she had broken her nails on them. But the door had opened at last, and she was free. It was the crash of the door as it swung to behind her that brought her to her senses. And she realised that she was running away to nowhere. The last refuge had collapsed behind her.

At the foot of the steps she hesitated and gripped the balustrade beside her; she felt dizzy, and the level main street with the flat-fronted shops began to revolve about her. She put her hand up to her forehead.