Anna (4 page)

And M. Latourette disliked Rhinehausen. He stood there, where the train had dropped him, holding his handkerchief to his nose because of the powerful odours which rose out of the fish-manured fields on either side of him, wondering whether he would really be forced to spend the night in such a place.

As the future successor to his father's business he had opposed the whole idea of making such a trip at all. But M. Latourette
père
had been adamant. A more conscientious business man than his son, he had insisted that one of the family should go in person. He had built up his general merchant's business simply by the richness and variety of his connections—throughout his life he had made none but
useful
friends—and a useful relative was something not to be lightly regarded. The open letter which Charles carried in his pocket expressed the desolation of M. Latourette
père
in not having met Herr Karlin face to face once during the twenty-three years since he had married his half-sister. He had stressed the point in case Herr Karlin should, in the course of time, have entirely forgotten that he even had a brother-in-law.

Charles Latourette gathered up his valise—it was of morocco leather, as light and finely-grained as a lady's—and crossed over the bare track down which the train was now disappearing. It was as he addressed the Station Master, asking him where he could find the seed gardens of Herr Otto Karlin, that the Station Master recognised that his accent was French. It served to explain why his dislike had been so instinctive. And when M. Latourette drew his handkerchief from his pocket and applied it to his nose once more, the Station Master smelt scent. He straightened himself. He had smelt the indisguisable, unspeakable odour of a Frenchman.

Outside in the station-yard, a solitary carriage was standing. It looked as permanent as the railway buildings beside it. The horse, its knees slightly bent and its back curved downwards as though giants had been riding it, was leaning forward in the shafts. On its head was a poke made of plaited straw to protect it from the glare of the sun. The barouche behind it was of an ancient pattern, with ornamental side-lamps supported by a design of brass-work dolphins that might have been stolen from some public square: The wheels had once been yellow.

It was nearly five minutes before the driver could be found. He appeared at last from an obscure shed in the background, wiping his mouth with one hand and buttoning his trousers with the other. And it was with something of a flourish—a relic of those days when he had been a coachman in livery and had sat up in front of the best families in Bonn and Potsdam—that he opened the door. M. Latourette climbed in and found himself enthroned on a hot expanse of seat which the exiguous hood had failed to cover. The texture of the leather was rough and file-like, grooved and pitted with the grit of a thousand journeys. The driver snatched up a whip and put his pitiable contraption to the supreme test of action. With a crescendo of creaks, the vehicle responded.

The landscape as he approached Herr Karlin's seed-ground depressed M. Latourette still further. It was Nature at her very flattest; even a hillock would have inspired things. A featureless highway, ranged with identical trees, stretched in front of him, disappearing in an endless curve into the blue-greyness of the Rhineland haze.

M. Latourette got down from his creaking carriage, told the driver to wait, and approached the wooden building in front of him. As he walked across the gravel square his thin, pointed shoes kicked up little spurts of dust.

The interior was very much as he had feared. A suffocating odour of dried herbs hung over the whole place. M. Latourette produced his handkerchief again and applied it delicately to his nostrils. His shirt clung disgustingly to his shoulders, and his cuffs, worn very long and flowing, already looked as soiled and uncared for as a workman's. There was a small hand bell on the counter, and M. Latourette rang it angrily. The counter in front of him was thick with the white, floury dust that filled the place. M. Latourette waited.

The effect on Herr Karlin when he saw M. Latourette's card was considerable. He had been thinking a great deal of Marie
lately, and here was the past suddenly come near again. He stopped his work altogether and sat back in his chair flicking, very abstractedly at the edges of the pasteboard with his finger-nail. Instead of his seed bins and the file of invoices stuck into nails along the shelving at the side of his desk, he saw the animated face and prodigious hair of Marie Latourette as she had been when he had married her. As the picture came to him—and it grew clearer every moment, until he could see even the French cameo brooch which she had worn on the delicious bosom of her wedding-dress— Herr Karlin felt old. He did not even seem any longer to be the same human being as that audacious youngster who had married a foreign bride and had brought her home so victoriously. He had been poor in those days; quite poor. His wife's dresses had fairly eaten up his money. But what dresses they had been, he remembered. Marie Latourette had never adapted herself to the simple Rhinehausen style of things; had never even attempted to do so. She had remained un-German to the end. She had dressed right up to the days of her last illness, by which time she was the mother of two growing-up children, as though there had been a streetful of jewellers' shops and smart couturiers outside the house, and not simply a market square and a corn exchange.

But Herr Karlin pulled himself up with a jerk. His visitor was being kept waiting long enough, and the letter announcing his arrival had spoken of some possible deal that might be done between the two of them. Herr Karlin rose, straightened his white linen jacket, opened the box of his best cigars and went out eagerly and affectionately to greet this cousin of his by marriage. At the back of his mind he was ready for any business tricks that the Frenchman might care to spring on him.

He reached out and took M. Latourette's slim hand warmly in his large one.

“This is indeed a pleasure,” he began, “a very great pleasure. I am proud …”

“You're very kind,” M. Latourette replied. “I thought I should never get here.” He drew out his handkerchief and applied it to his nostrils again.

“The price is not necessarily impossible to meet,” Herr Karlin was saying, “if only the quantity is large enough. It is the carriage on small lots that is prohibitive.”

“My Father assured me that you would make every effort,” M. Latourette replied politely. “He said that between cousins there would be no need of bargaining.”

Herr Karlin found himself respecting this young man's father: he evidently knew how to use this nincompoop of a son as a very effective envoy. It was impossible, in any case, to bargain with someone who merely smiled and replied that he would have to refer the matter.

“You shall hear from me inside a week, possibly within five days,” Herr Karling assured the young man. “I shall write to Paris, as your father has requested.”

M. Latourette uncrossed his legs and sought to restore the side creases in his trousers, which had become stretched and folded on the journey.

“And the price?” he repeated mechanically. “I can rely on you about the price?”

His boredom over the whole tedious business had never been greater.

Herr Karlin smiled at him, but did not trouble even to reply. It was so obvious, as it should have been to his visitor, that at least on this—the first—deal, the price would be right. The order was so large, too, so astonishingly large, to have come through a general merchant's, that it was obvious that it must have been placed by someone who wished specially to avoid the charges of the ring. Herr Karlin himself could sub-contract the order at an inside price in half a dozen directions and still make his profit. At all other times a conscientious member of the ring, he knew nevertheless when to go outside it.

“You will dine and spend the night with us, of course?” he asked.

M. Latourette rose hurriedly.

“You are kind, very kind,” he replied, “but I must be returning. My work, you know; it's waiting for me.”

Herr Karlin drew out his watch, and his smile broadened.

“There is no train to-day that goes farther than Köln,” he answered. “And that is a slow one: it will take five hours. You would arrive in Köln at midnight.”

He paused and regarded the young man with the patronising air of someone arranging something special for him.

“But at ten o'clock to-morrow there is the express,” he added. “You would be in Köln before lunch-time.”

M. Latourette bowed politely, but remained adamant.

“I cannot thank you enough,” he said, “but my return is unavoidable. “I must catch the first train from Köln to-morrow.”

But Herr Karlin had no intention of letting this valuable newcomer slip through his fingers so easily; it was imperative that
he should return to Paris bowed under by the attentions which he had received. So, with the genial arrogance of an older man, he laid his hand upon M. Latourette's shoulder and thrust him back down into his chair.

“In that case, if you insist,” he said, “we will dine early. We will dine at six. Then I will drive you myself as far as Rhönberg. You will still reach Köln by midnight. And”—here Herr Karlin rubbed his hands expressively across his waistcoat—“you will have your dinner inside you.”

M. Latourette still endeavoured to protest. At the thought of the inevitable grossness of the threatened meal his mind quavered. He wondered how anyone who habitually ate daintily could be expected to endure such an ordeal.

“Really I assure you …” he began.

But he got no further: Herr Karlin was leaning right over him, breathing his cigar smoke into his face.

“My daughters would never forgive me,” he explained. “They would not hear of their cousin going back without visiting them. They see so few people in our little township.”

M. Latourette sighed. He remembered the plainness of all village girls everywhere. He could picture the clean dresses which they would wear, and the way they would brush their long, tow-coloured hair to make themselves agreeable to their distinguished cousin. The meal would be a complicated embarrassment; nothing less. But as a business man he would have to suffer it: it was a part of the price of the hundred thousand bulbs and the six bushels of mixed seeds which his father desired so cheaply.

“I am overwhelmed,” he said feebly. “Quite overwhelmed. I can only apologise that I am not dressed for the company of ladies.”

The two girls were seated side by side at the long dressing-table. The rest of the room was in darkness, but the light from the twin candlesticks shone on to their faces, casting a bloom that made them seem somehow even younger and their skin more fair. They were like two children sitting there; but like women too. Their white dresses spread over the beds behind them, and making two faint pools of light in the dimness, were feminine; they had a subtlety which the clothing of children does not possess. In a stroke these dresses promoted the room from a nursery into a boudoir. The air was warm and close with the fragrance of orrisroot and the scent of hair.

“Did you see him?” Berthe asked. “What was he like?”

Anna shrugged her shoulders.

“Indifferent,” she said. “He seemed of no account to me.”

She drew a small bottle from the drawer of her dressing-table and unwrapped it. Then she poured a little of the yellow liquid on to the palm of her hand.

“What's that?” Berthe asked.

Anna ignored her for a moment and began to sleek the stuff across her hair.

“Liquid pomade,” she said. “Very fashionable.”

“Shall I use some?” Berthe asked.

“You're too young,” she answered. “It wouldn't look right.”

She continued to smooth her hair, oblivious to everything except her own beauty which stared back at her from the glass.

“I shall look more experienced this way,” she told herself. “More of a woman.” And she drew her hair back from her temples so that her ears showed, white and shell-like. The two thick plaits wound over the top of her head were like a crown.

When at length Anna left the mirror, Berthe went over to it. She took her second place, her less importance, quite naturally. Her toilet was simpler and more rapid. She brushed her hair with short, brisk strokes, like a schoolgirl, and slipped her dress over her head in one motion. Her figure was beginning to fill and ripen, but the hard stays flattened it. Already they seemed too tight, too constricting. She envied Anna the handsome corsets which she had bought at Wiesbaden. They were of pink satin, with a damask design across them, and cut low like a lady's.

“Is the Baron coming to-night?” Berthe asked. She glanced quickly at Anna as she said it.

“I expect so,” Anna answered indifferently.

She had finished dressing by now. She fastened her sash and went through to her father's room. The furniture there was dark and heavy; from the light on the landing only the massive carved outlines showed. She crossed straight to the smaller of the two wardrobes and opened it. It had a disused, faintly, musty smell, which the bags of lavender scattered inside it could not dispel. The clothes themselves were packed away in dust sheets and hung limp and lifeless-looking. They had been her mother's clothes and after her death Herr Karlin could not bear to part with them.

In a drawer at one side of the wardrobe stood a black leather box. The key dangled on a cord from the handle. Anna removed the box and laid it on the bed. The lock was stiff from disuse, and grated a little before the catch finally sprang open. Anna paused
for a moment as though hesitating. Then she thrust her hand inside and drew out a pair of heavy turquoise ear-rings. She had always coveted them. Her ears had been pierced when she was a child, and she tried to thrust the long, curved hooks through the lobe. But they hurt too much, the metal was dry and harsh, and the pain seemed to make her hesitate again for a moment. Then she remembered the jar of cream that her father used after shaving, and she thrust the hooks deep into it. When she tried again they slid into place easily, naturally. She could feel the unaccustomed weight pulling at her cars, and she raised her head proudly.