“I do pay—still,” Manora said quietly. “I pay every time I hear someone say, ‘There goes Vanescu. She is Conrad Schreiner’s mistress, you know.’ And, God knows, they say it often enough. To most people our love is just a common intrigue. A little amusing, a little shocking—and they wonder how long it will last.”
“Manora dear,” Anna clasped her arms round Manora, “do you want so much to be Schreiner’s wife then? I didn’t think, somehow, that you felt—like that.”
“I would give my voice to be able to marry him,” Manora said simply.
“Oh!” Anna was profoundly shaken and moved. “He wouldn’t have you do that.”
Manora smiled slightly and shook her head. “Oh no. He would not have me make any sacrifice. But he said once that he would give his right hand—and he meant his conducting—to be able to marry me.”
“But, my dear, my dear,” Anna stroked her arm gently, “you couldn’t possibly love each other more if you were married ten times over.”
“No, of course not.”
“Then does it matter so very much what people say or think?”
“Not of itself, Anna. Only for what it implies.”
“I don’t see—” Anna began; but Manora interrupted her. “Would you like that your love for your Tony should be belittled and laughed at?—that people should speak of it with a shrug, as something wrong and slightly disgusting? So many little things are sweet and significant when you are in love, Anna, but so easily they are crushed and spoilt.”
Anna nodded understandingly. She knew all about that. And she bit her lip with sympathy as Manora went on:
“Have you not noticed that he never kisses me in front of people? Is not natural to him not to, you know. He always did at first, until they hurt him enough to make him remember not to. If he had kissed me as my husband everyone would have said, ‘Is so nice that Schreiner is always so devoted to his wife,’ and thought no more about it. But, as things are, they smile and say behind their hands, ‘Is funny how that affaire lasts. He has been keeping Vanescu for years, and look, he is still so infatuated that he hasn’t the decency to wait until they are alone before he starts kissing her.’ ”
“Oh, Manora,” exclaimed Anna eagerly, “don’t think of the people who say that sort of thing.” (Of course, that was exactly what people like Katherine would love saying.) “They don’t understand. They don’t understand. What do they matter?”
“Not very much, I know,” Manora said gently. “But always, always, they remind you that you only have what you hold in your hand today. You can build nothing much for the future together because you have no foundation on which to build.”
“Do you really think that?” Anna said doubtfully.
“Why, of course. Marriage is the foundation on which two people start to build together. Sometimes they build terrible things,” Manora admitted with a smile. “But, if so, is their own fault. For anything permanent and enduring you must start with marriage for your ground.”
“Darling Manora,” Anna spoke very affectionately, “did you and Schreiner want to build something permanent and enduring out of your beautiful love for each other?”
Manora nodded. She was silent for a moment, and then she said—“Have you ever seen Conrad with children?”
Anna shook her head.
“He is passionately fond of them, you know, and they always adore him,” Manora said, without much expression in her face.
“Do they?” Anna was surprised in the first second; and then she thought it was not at all surprising, after all. There was something in the great director’s magnificent, imperious yet kindly personality which would appeal to children. “He never—had any of his own?” she asked hesitatingly.
“By his wife?” Manora laughed shortly. “Oh no. She was not that sort of a woman at all.”
Anna tried to imagine Schreiner with any woman but Manora—and failed completely.
“What sort was she, then?” she asked, with involuntary interest.
“Um?” Manora looked at Anna absently for a moment. “Oh—spoilt, possessive, utterly selfish. Small and very, very lovely. A typical Viennese to look at. She loved to play the director’s wife in public and shirk playing the director’s wife in private.”
“You knew her?—or did Schreiner tell you this?” Anna asked.
Manora looked surprised. “Conrad tell me?” she exclaimed. “You cannot suppose that Conrad would say anything against a woman he had married.”
“Oh, Manora—” She stopped.
“What?”
Anna smiled. “There’s something so terribly nice about Schreiner. He’s very—simple, really, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Manora laughed a little. “I know how you mean. He is so magnificent and loves to play ‘the great man,’ and yet he is very like a child himself at times. Was for this he was so much at her mercy,” she added sombrely.
“Was she very unkind?”
“She was so ungenerous, Anna. He would give and give and give, and always she asked for more, and never once said thank you. He loves to be generous, you know, but, like a good child, he also loves to be thanked.”
“I know.” Anna smiled at this picture of the great Schreiner. “I have seen him a hundred times wait so eagerly for just one word, and then at last go away very quiet and disappointed. He never learned. And he never saw how was, to her, the way of showing her power.”
“Manora, how disgusting of her! And is that why she won’t divorce him?”
Manora nodded. “Is very good to her that she can still say ‘no’ to such a great man as Conrad Schreiner; and she does not mean that I should ever give him what she would not give him.”
“Oh, Manora dear! If you could have married Schreiner, you would willingly have risked your voice to have his children?”
“My voice?” Manora laughed rather sadly. “If you had to choose between a voice—and a child who would look at you with the eyes of the man you love—what would you do?”
Anna thought of the applause that evening, and she thought of Tony. She turned suddenly and clung to Manora.
“I’d say, ‘Take my voice, and leave me dumb if you like. Only let me keep my eyes, to see the two people I love so dearly.’ ”
“Poor child.” Manora kissed her gently. “Perhaps one day things will be right for you.”
“And for you too, my dear,” Anna exclaimed.
Manora shrugged slightly. “For me, there is not so much time.” She made a little face, as though she disliked very much what she was saying. “I am not so young now, Anna.”
But Anna flung her arms round Manora’s neck and kissed her.
“Don’t say such things. I never saw anyone who was so ageless. You’re like—like Helen, and people like that.”
Manora laughed, but she returned Anna’s kiss very earnestly.
Somewhere a clock struck three slowly.
“Is so late?” Manora looked up, startled. “My child, you must sleep. Is very bad that you stay awake like this after a performance.”
Anna lay down slowly.
“I couldn’t have slept before. But I think I can now,” she said.
Manora touched her hair gently. “Sleep well—and dream of your Tony.”
Anna smiled. “Manora, you are odd. Anyone else would tell me to forget him.”
“But dreams hurt no one,” Manora said.
“Not even when you wake?”
“One can always dream again the next night,” Manora pointed out, with smiling philosophy.
Anna gave a sleepy little laugh like a comforted child.
“No wonder Schreiner loves you,” she said, too sleepy to hear Manora’s little exclamation, half pleasure, hall pain.
And then she fell asleep—to dream she was back in the orchard, and that Tony was there, and it was springtime again.
CHAPTER TEN
It was very late next morning when Anna awoke. Manora—and to tell the truth—Schreiner, too, were knocking on her door.
“Come in,” Anna said sleepily, leaning up on her elbow.
They both promptly came in. Manora was dressed, but Schreiner was wearing his purple dressing-gown, which always struck Anna as being amusingly imperial.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What is it?” repeated Schreiner. “The newspapers, of course.”
“Oh yes, yes, of course.” She sat right up. “Are the notices good? Let me see.” She caught eagerly at the papers in Schreiner’s hands, while Manora put a wrap round her, saying something about her being “a real singer now, and so she must not take cold.”
It gave Anna the oddest feeling to read lines of print that were actually about herself. It seemed as though it must be some other girl. But no—there was her name, over and over again. Not in large-type headings, certainly, but mentioned in every notice as a worth-while artist—possibly a great star in the making-at any rate, someone to be reckoned with in the future.
She slowly put down the last of the newspapers. The notices had varied between cautious prophecy and fulsome praise. But the sum total was that she had “arrived.”
“Well?” Manora smiled indulgently. “Is good, eh?”
“Yes,” said Anna gravely. “It is good.”
She was wondering a little if there was anything in the English newspapers, and, if so, whether Tony had seen it.
Schreiner took his cigar out of his mouth and regarded the tip contentedly.
“Sometimes even the critics are right,” he observed, and, with a satisfied little nod to Anna, he went out of the room, Manora and Anna exchanged an amused little smile of appreciation before Manora followed him.
Anna was up when, an hour later, Mario came to say goodbye before leaving for England once more.
He came into their private sitting-room where they were all three discussing the criticisms once more. To all appearances he was as excited as they, as carefree and as congratulatory.
No one, thought Anna, could possibly have known that, for him, this visit to Paris had been a bitter disappointment. He was just as kind and as carelessly affectionate to her, just as teasing to Manora, just as matter-of-fact to Schreiner.
And she knew, gratefully, that it was all done intentionally. She was not to feel that things had changed or that the friendship which they had both grown to value so much was in any danger.
Only, when he actually said good-bye, he did not kiss her. It was not specially noticeable—and yet she missed it. He and Manora exchanged their usual half-laughing, entirely unimportant kiss, but perhaps he could not quite bring himself to do the same with Anna, and so he had to leave it out altogether.
Instead, he held her hand very warmly between both of his, and said: “I shall always remember with happiness that I was able to come to Paris and hear you make your debut.”
She smiled a little nervously. “I hope it was worth the double journey, Mario.”
“It was worth—everything,” he told her, with his smiling eyes on her face. “Please never think anything else.”
And she felt most strangely comforted.
She remembered the overwhelming sensation she had had, the evening before—that it would never be any good looking backwards in her life. It was only in the future that perhaps one day she would find comfort.
And so, during all that strange and brilliant winter, Anna forced herself to look forward, forward.
She gave several more performances in Paris under Schreiner’s direction, and each time she sang, the criticisms were a little more complimentary. In each one she seemed to take on added stature and significance as an artist.
And then, after Christmas had come and gone in an unbroken wave of work and excitement, she went with him and Manora, first to Vienna and then on to Italy.
It was a strange life, Anna thought. Always travelling, never calling any special place “home”—and all the time there was work to fill every moment of the day. Her natural shyness grew less, and she gained an odd little popularity of her own among the people they met. But she knew she would never have Manora’s easy manner with people. She instinctively withdrew a little from the eager courting of a star, which was beginning to be part of her daily life.
Schreiner said once that her “inscrutable pose” was excellent publicity, but Manora hushed him at once. She knew too well that Anna’s calm hid a good deal of pain and bewilderment still, and, above all a restless longing that was never entirely absent.
It was that which gave such pathos and poignancy to her singing and acting. “So good for her art,” thought Manora, with a sigh. “So bad for her.”
And she did not fail to notice that never once in all that time did Anna so much as glance at an English newspaper.
She scarcely even spoke her own language much, because, as Schreiner said, other languages were likely to serve her better in her career. In any case, she seemed curiously anxious to sever every connection with her old life.
It was a little difficult for her to judge for herself the full extent of her success. She did what Schreiner told her—accepting or rejecting engagements on his advice; she read the critiques of her performances with an odd feeling of pleased detachment, and she knew that, for the first time in her life, she was making a very great deal of money.
“Does it please you to find that you were quite right about your prophecies for my future?” she once asked Schreiner, with a smile.
He looked a little surprised and said: “Yes, it pleases me, of course. But, in any case, I knew that I was right.”
Whereat Anna laughed.
She was strangely moved when she found that their engagements took them to Florence in the late spring. She could not forget that it was here that one of the strangest chapters of Mario’s life had been written. And, illogically, she had the feeling that something important in her own life, too, might happen here.
The flicker of the sunlight on the pink and whitewashed houses; the deep, indescribably sweet notes of the bells in the Campanile, the rushing round of the Arno as it swept under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio—all seemed to have some message for her. She couldn’t catch quite what it was, ever. Only she knew that it excited her, and gave her an odd little feeling of hope.
Not that she looked for anything concrete, like letters from England. Indeed, since those terrible days when she had waited and waited in such an agonising alternation of hope and disappointment, she never appeared to take much interest in letters at all. It wasn’t either that she expected to see Tony suddenly present himself before as he had on that incredible occasion in Paris.
It was just that the warm, smiling carelessness of life under blue Italian skies seemed to suggest a loosening of every bond—even those round her heart.
Sometimes Tony felt oddly near—not in actual fact, but in spirit. As though, if she could have talked to him then, they would have understood each other and been happy.
She used to pretend that he was probably thinking of her at these times. But the days slipped past, and Anna began to tell herself that, after all, these were all just silly fancies of hers. What could happen here in Florence—or anywhere else in the world—beyond the usual success which seemed to follow her so easily now and yet mean so little to her?
On their last morning of all, she stood at the window of her room, looking out across the Arno, and trying to make herself believe yet again that, if one had to forget, one could manage to do so, somehow.
All the principal luggage was packed once more for the next stage in this never-ending move from place to place. Tonight they were to leave Florence for a short holiday in the Dolomites before fresh engagements claimed them.
Anna would really rather have stayed here, but there was no reasonable excuse she could give for doing so, and so, tonight, she too would leave this heavenly spot where she had supposed, so foolishly, that something important might happen.
She turned away from the window with a little sigh as there was a slight knock at the door and Manora’s golden h
ead was thrust round it.
“You come with me for a last drive out to the Piazza le Michelangelo?” Manora said. “Conrad is busy and cannot come. Besides, he says it is too hot.”
“Yes, I’d like to come.”
Anna reached for a big, shady hat. She never minded the heat of the sun.
As they came out of the room Schreiner called Manora from across the landing.
“Wait for me in the lounge,” Manora said, “I will be only five minutes.”
It was cool and rather dim in the lounge, for the blinds had already been partially drawn against the hot morning sunlight.
Anna stood by a table, idly fingering the papers which lay there. And then, on a sudden impulse, she picked up the only English paper. It was really rather ridiculous of her, she thought, refusing to take any interest in her own country, simply because of what had happened. Like shutting up a room in a house because someone dear had died there.
Her eyes skimmed the headlines, without taking in very much. Extraordinary how soon one lost touch. It made her feel ashamed of the way she had shut herself away. After all, it was not as though—And then suddenly her attention was riveted. The one name in the world that really mattered stood out from the print as though in scarlet letters—Hamilton Roone!
Anna groped for a chair, her knees strangely weak and insecure all at once, her eyes unable to leave the printed lines which said such ridiculous and incredible things:
“... trial of Hamilton Roone ... partner in the firm of Roone & Montagu ... son of Mr. Everard Roone, M.P. ... next Thursday ... charge of embezzlement ... delay in bringing the case before the Court owing to the considerable investigations which had to be made...”
Anna was taking in only about one word in six, but it was sufficient. And then the final paragraph:
“It will be remembered that it was the suicide of Montagu, the senior partner, which drew attention to the serious irregularities in the firm’s financial dealings. The prosecution is expected to attach some considerable importance to the fact that on 4th December, immediately after being informed of his partner’s suicide, Mr. Roone flew to Paris...”
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