Anna (9 page)

The cause of last night's anger had been his son's lateness. It was not the major lateness of having overstayed his visit to Rhinehausen, but a merely minor one of having stayed out long enough to see a handful of his friends at a café. It was this dawdling on the way home that M. Latourette had been unable to forgive.

The row, once it had got started, had shaken up the whole apartment. M. Latourette had called his son an idler, a wastrel, a good-for-nothing, a spendthrift. He had accused him of immoral habits and of robbing the family business by his laziness. He had threatened at the first recurrence to shoot him out into the street without a sou. And it had all ended with M. Latourette's shedding bitter, scalding tears over his son's ingratitude for the opportunities which had been laid open to him.

“I must leave home,” Charles told himself bitterly as he lay there. “I must go away somewhere where my soul can be my own.”

He had made this same decision many times before, and the boldness of the resolution was by now familiar to him. But where? And who was to pay for the luxury of it? It was these two un-answerable
questions that on every other occasion had immobilised him.

“How can I leave home when I want to marry Anna?” he asked himself. “How can I ever do anything?”

He turned over on his face and buried his head among the pillows.

“I am unworthy. Utterly unworthy,” he continued. “I have been home six days now, and still I have not dared to ask him.”

He raised himself on one elbow and took a deep breath.

“To-day I shall do it,” he resolved. “I shall not go to bed to-night until I have spoken to him.”

He looked at his watch, which lay on the chair at the bedside, and rose hurriedly. It was seven-thirty already, and M. Latourette made a point of breakfasting early. Charles shaved quickly and badly, and took his place at the table just as M. Latourette was observing that, in the morning, lateness was a crime.

It was towards six o'clock in the evening when Charles finally addressed his father. He had summoned his courage like a bather on the brink of a high dive, and, now that the time had arrived to speak, he was trembling.

“There is something that I wanted to ask you if you are not too busy,” he began.

M. Latourette unwound the cord on which his pince-nez were hanging and replaced his glasses on his nose.

“You have something that you want to ask me if I am not too busy,” he repeated slowly. “I wonder what that can be.”

He crossed his legs and sat back drumming with his fingers on the arms of his chair.

Now that the moment had actually come, now that there was no withdrawing, Charles found that his throat was so taut that he could scarcely speak: it was as though the membranes had been drawn together.

“Why is it,” he asked himself, “that alone of all men it should be my own father who makes me so afraid when I try to speak to him?”

“I am waiting,” he heard M. Latourette say.

For a moment the room seemed to revolve about him, but he steadied himself.

“I wish to ask your permission to get married,” he said, avoiding his father's eye as he spoke.

Even his own voice sounded false to him: it was timid and faltering, unlike the voice of a man who was determined to have his way.

M. Latourette continued drumming with his fingers as though he had not heard. Then, with what seemed an effort, he roused himself.

“Am I to take this request seriously?” he asked.

He spoke casually, as if he attached only the most slender significance to the whole conversation.

“I have never been so serious in my life before,” Charles answered, still in the same forced, unnatural voice.

The reply clearly infuriated M. Latourette: he began tapping with his heel on the floor as well, so that, with the drumming of his fingers on the chair-arm, his whole body now seemed to be twitching with irritation. And this time he spoke promptly.

“Then you must be out of your senses,” he said. “How can you afford to marry?”

“He has not yet refused me,” Charles told himself. “He is only placing difficulties in my way. I must be strong enough to persuade him.”

He felt his confidence returning.

“I was going to … to ask you to increase the salary that I draw,” he explained. “I had thought that when I married you might be ready to take me into partnership.”

M. Latourette got up suddenly and crossed over to the window.

“You,” he shouted. “You ask me to take you into partnership. What have you ever done to deserve it? I tell you that the girl who copies my letters is worth more to me than you are. I won't increase your salary by a single franc: not by a single franc.”

He had advanced towards him as he was speaking, and snapped his fingers contemptuously into Charles's face. Then he turned his back on him again.

“Let me hear no more of this,” he added. “I forbid it absolutely.”

“But listen to me please,” Charles stopped him. “Please listen to me.”

“I
refuse
to listen,” M. Latourette retorted. “I refuse to hear another word from you.”

“But …”

“I tell you I refuse to discuss it,” M. Latourette replied. “You may go.”

For a moment Charles stood undecided.

“Now that he is like this,” he asked himself, “how can I hope to make him agree? I shall ruin all my chances. I must wait until he is no longer angry with me. I must go now and return again later.”

But at the door M. Latourette stopped him. He held up his finger as if he were summoning a servant.

“There is one thing that I must insist on knowing,” he said. “You must tell me the name of the lady.”

Charles paused, his eyes meeting his father's now.

“Why should I tell you?” he demanded.

“Because I wish to know what sort of company my son has been keeping,” M. Latourette replied.

“I refuse,” Charles answered.

His voice sounded firm and strong again: he found that he was less afraid of his father now that he was openly defying him.

“Then you are ashamed of her already,” M. Latourette told him. “It is probably someone whom you have already slept with.”

At the words, Charles had gone very pale. He was trembling again more violently than before. But it was anger, not fear, that filled him. He walked up to M. Latourette and thrust his face down to his.

“If you were any man but my father,” he shouted as M. Latourette himself had shouted earlier, “I should strike you. I should knock you down. I shall never forgive what you have just said.”

Then, before M. Latourette could answer, he had walked over to the door and closed it behind him. Outside in the corridor, his courage abruptly slipped from him. He was shaking, and he felt sick.

He had to hold on to a door handle to support himself.

It was a part of M. Latourette's contempt for his son that he made no further reference to the incident. At dinner, when Charles took his place beside him at the same table, he was sitting with his napkin up to his chin, as though oblivious of the fact that half an hour before they had nearly come to blows.

M. Latourette did not even take the trouble to ignore him. On the contrary he addressed his remarks to Charles as though he were an unusually silent visitor who had somehow to be entertained. M. Latourette commented in turn upon the wine, upon the braised sweetbreads and upon the stormy political situation.

“You have not yet told us your impressions of Germany,” he concluded. “A merchant has got to keep his ear very close to the ground if he is to avoid loss: it is necessary that he should notice all the signs. Even the gossip of the common people in the streets is sometimes useful. Did you gain the impression that the German people are prepared to fight us?”

Charles put down the glass that he had just raised to his lips.

“I was scarcely in the position to find out,” he replied. “I was ill during most of my stay.”

“But did you see no one?” M. Latourette persisted. “Were there no visitors to our cousin's house?”

“There was a local Baron who was there quite often,” Charles said slowly. “He was very insulting about the Emperor. He said repeatedly that France was not ready to fight.”

M. Latourette raised his hands in a little gesture of satisfaction.

“So you see that you
have
found out,” he said. “You have discovered the attitude of a member of the German landed class: that is invaluable. If
he
thinks that France is not ready, he is probably repeating something that was said by someone more important than himself. No doubt that feeling extends through the entire ministry. Maybe Count Bismarck thinks so himself.”

M. Latourette paused and took up the long loaf which stood in the centre of the table. The bread knife which lay beside it had been whetted and rewhetted until it was no more than a shallow crescent of razor-like steel. M. Latourette ran his finger lovingly along the blade, and suddenly cut a circle clean off the loaf.

“Like that,” he said triumphantly. “That is how we shall attack when the moment comes. Then Germany will discover whether France is ready or not.”

There was a sound like a little whimper that came from Madame Latourette at the foot of the table. She had not spoken previously, and until this moment her existence had been entirely disregarded by M. Latourette. She had been simply a negative wispy presence that cut out a little of the light.

“What is the trouble now?” M. Latourette demanded.

“It's the fighting,” Madame Latourette explained hurriedly. “And the bloodshed. All the young men getting killed. If there's a war Charles will have to go. I can't bear to think of it. It's the way I'm made.”

M. Latourette pushed back his chair a little and smiled at her.

“If there is a war,” he said, “Charles will be very proud to go. His grandfather was a soldier. He would wish to serve his country at the first opportunity.”

He turned towards Charles, and his smile was now more open and inviting than ever.

“That is so, is it not?” he asked. “You will be ready for the call when it comes?”

Charles did not raise his eyes from the plate before him.

“Quite ready,” he said.

M. Latourette folded his napkin and rose.

“That is the answer I had expected,” he said. “It is the only answer a true Frenchman can give.”

M. Latourette lit a cigarette and, for a moment, he appeared to be at peace with the entire world. Then he turned towards Charles again.

“I trust that you wrote to our cousin thanking him for his hospitality,” he remarked.

But before Charles could answer M. Latourette was speaking again.

“It occurred to me that you might have forgotten to do so,” he said. “It is of no importance. I wrote myself yesterday. I do not wish to be found wanting in manners by a German.”

Whenever he closed his eyes the same visions were always there, tempting and bewitching him. He saw the white adobe huts and mud churches of Mexico, glittering in a sun more brilliant and savage than any that shone on Europe. In the glare, the scene shimmered into mirages and dissolved, and he saw instead caravans and Bedouins in a desert vaster than the whole of France. But this too evaporated and grew confused, and there were Buddhas and temples and harbours with junks riding in them, and black ape-like faces from Madagascar.

“I was born to be an Emperor and not a King,” he told himself. “My mind embraces too much: I see all history so clearly. It is the Bonaparte blood: I need conquest and fresh lands to realise myself. This Continent is stale and overwrought.
My
hand reaches out to the New World and the East. That is where the richest prizes lie, the jewels that make up a crown …”

But the bubble of his thoughts burst suddenly in his face and he remembered Maximilian—his own choice, the King of his appointment—blindfolded and facing a Mexican firing squad in the courtyard at Querétaro; and he remembered, too, the Hohenzollern whom Bismarck was trying to place upon the throne of Spain. For a moment his heart inside him was chilled and he recalled how pitifully alone he was.

“If they should all turn against me at the same time,” he asked himself, “what then?” And he thought of the Emperors whose Empires had trickled like sand through fingers that had clenched and reclenched themselves in vain.

“But there is always Russia,” he thought consolingly. “She is an ally to decide any war. England has withdrawn from politics.
And Austria. Austria won't fight under Bismarck. I shall have Austria.”

And he fell back to wondering if Marshal le Boeuf or von Moltke were the greater genius in military affairs, and if the chassepot had not forever swung the balance in favour of the defender …

Outside the woods of Fontainebleau were heavy and sleepy with the suffocating incense of summer, and the
île des plaisirs des rois
sparkled enchantingly in the centre of the lake. Perhaps in the cool of the evening, if he were not too busy, he would allow himself to be rowed there. Eugénie would sit in the stern trailing her hand in the water, and they would watch the kingfishers and the sunset, and for a moment he would be able to forget the whirlpool of politics that was always trying to suck him down.

But already someone was bringing him in another of the interminable decrees that he ought to read. He roused himself and squared his shoulders.

“Of course,” he resolved boldly, “we shall fight Prussia single-handed if need be. She is too much dragooned and martialled to be formidable. One cannot be afraid of an army of slaves.”

As it was already nearly midnight, the Café Weber was crowded. Inside, amid the plush and the overhanging branches of the palms, the ladies had removed their wraps, and their white shoulders gleamed under the light of the hissing chandeliers. The mirrors round the walls presented a gallery of pictures of bare, swelling bosoms and painted lips, and eyes smiling through the dark shadows of mascara.