That afternoon she spoke of it to M. Moritz. He was, since his last visit to Geneva, more difficult than ever to get hold of. His business affairs were every day becoming more intricate and more numerous; they bred.
He no longer regarded the bank as the ultimate pinnacle of his career, and now thought of it only as a step on a long, hazardous path. He shut himself away with Carlos in early morning in his little study, and emerged preoccupied and impatient only at meal times. He was so busy in fact that he had scarcely any time to admire his little daughter.
And he was no more than lukewarm about christenings.
“Isn’t it enough,” he asked, “that you should have your little Annette, without wanting to have cold water thrown over it? What is there that a priest can give that she hasn’t got already?”
He was sitting in a low white-painted chair as he spoke, his glass of brandy in his hand, his cigarette in the long tapering holder.
“Besides,” he said. “Priests ask so many questions: they’re naturally inquisitive.”
He paused for a moment and flicked off the ash as delicately as if this were the prime object of smoking.
“I’ve saved you all the absurd embarrassments of our position,” he added. “I attended to the registration myself. When she is old enough she can change her name to mine by deed-poll if she wants to. I’ll ask the lawyers to look after it.”
“Then you don’t want there to be any christening?” Anna asked slowly.
M. Moritz’s smile did not change.
“Why not let us keep our present happiness to ourselves?” he asked. “I’ve always been reluctant to let other people share it; that’s why I’ve discouraged visitors who wanted to come here. If we have a christening there would have to be god-fathers. And there are so few people that I would trust to be god-parent to a daughter of mine.”
Round the corner of the terrace the figure of Carlos came in sight: he carried with him his perpetual air of business and apology.
M. Moritz was the first to notice him.
“He doesn’t give me a moment’s rest,” he complained. “Even my private life, the affairs of my family, are broken into now.”
He rose and kissed Anna lightly on the forehead.
“Forgive me, my dear,” he said. “I’ve rather a lot on hand to-day.”
And instead of waiting for the young man to join them, he hurried off and met him half-way.
III
Three days later, M. Moritz announced that he had to go off to Geneva again. The decision was instantaneous and unpremeditated. And at the last moment, he decided that he must take Carlos with him.
“I shall be back perhaps the day after to-morrow,” he declared, “perhaps in a week, perhaps in ten days’ time. Take care of the child while I’m away.”
And with the kiss of a doting but over-rushed husband, he was gone.
This time, Anna had an immediate purpose in his departure.
“The child is mine now,” she said. “He can’t interfere with me.”
And immediately she began planning for a christening. It was not difficult. There were a dozen churches to any one of which she could go. It was only afterwards that she realised that she had never really thought of any one but Father Ignatius to baptise the child: he knew so much already. By going to him, she told herself, she would show that she was still a good Catholic at heart. And perhaps to see him again, to talk with him, would remove the strange unreasonable dread that hung over her. Ever since his last visit she had felt that she were being watched, had feared that at any moment she might look up and see his black figure standing there.
But when next morning the carriage drew up at the Presbytery and she was shown into the icy bleakness of that bare walled room, her self-confidence had gone again: she admitted that she was nervous. She was still going over in her mind what she should say to him when the door opened and he confronted her.
He looked thinner. The skin was stretched so tightly across his face that there seemed to be no flesh beneath it. His hands, too, showed every branching of the veins. But his eyes remained dark and penetrating as she remembered them.
He greeted her quietly in the flat patient voice of someone who is anxious to reveal nothing. And when he heard why she had come his face betrayed no alteration in his feelings. His hands continued to play with the chain of the rosary that was hanging at his waist.
“I will baptise the child,” he said simply.
Anna paused.
“I know of no one to be god-parent,” she said at last.
Father Ignatius stood there, his deep eyes burning into her.
“I will find her a god-parent,” he answered.
He made no other comment, ignoring, as it were, the whole history that lay behind this visit. From his manner, he might have known nothing of her. The actual time of the christening was fixed in the same cold, deliberate, distant manner.
When he showed her out, he bowed to her.
The nurse wore a new veil of white lawn for the christening: it jutted out beyond her shoulders and fell in a triangle of starchy purity below her waist. It was the kind of veil that she wore when one of the princes of the Church, and not simply an ordinary priest, was officiating.
As for the wet-nurse she wheedled the time of the ceremony out of Anna’s maid—and went separately to the church. She felt that if any one had a right to be there, she had. The verger gave her one of the side pews—he still had no notion how many people he might expect and the sight of Anna’s carriage had encouraged him. In point of fact, the wet-nurse comprised the whole congregation.
Anna and the nurse arrived half an hour later. On the ride the nurse had been talkative. She kept turning to Anna, remarking how sad it was for M. Moritz that he should not have been able to get there and how like her father the child was getting every day.
It was the interior of the church that surprised Anna as she entered. There had evidently been a wedding—a sumptuous floral one—for the pillars were all decked out with flowers. The air was heavy with them. Even the font had its own little wreath of blossoms, and there was a red carpet leading up to the altar.
The nurse concealed her astonishment as she saw the emptiness of the place. She walked with her head in the air. The suspicion that she had felt ever since coming to the villa, that there was something wrong somewhere, had crystallised into certainty.
At the same moment from the shadows of the vestry a dark figure appeared. It was Carlos. He was very neat in the smooth black that he always wore, and in his buttonhole he carried a white camellia. His air of apology was somehow increased by his obvious effort to appear at his ease. He kept smiling and bowing.
“M. Moritz asked me specially to come,” he explained. “We only learnt of the christening last night. He sent a telegram to the florists immediately. And he asked me to bring this.”
He held out his hand and displayed a case containing a gold spoon and porringer.
“Also,” here Carlos smiled more apologetically than ever and gave another little bow, “he has invited me to act as god-parent. I cannot tell you how proud I shall be …”
Chapter XXXIV
I
In The End M. Moritz was away for upwards of a fortnight.
Immediately after the christening, Carlos had returned to Geneva and he and M. Moritz had really got down to their work of sacking the business quarter. The pillage was magnificent and successful. By the time the young man helped M. Moritz into the carriage for the homeward journey, his master had the controlling interest in a firm of cream toffee manufacturers, a precision watch factory and a treble star hotel. And it had not cost M. Moritz a penny. He had simply discovered these unlucky firms to be short of money and had lent them someone else’s.
Even when he did at last get back to the villa it was only to set out again. His business now entirely consumed him. There was Paris, again, as well as Geneva; and Milan; and Amsterdam. Each visit brought with it the vision of new conquests waiting to be achieve
d. It was Carlos who suffered most. M. Moritz dragged him everywhere as a kind of confidential bodyguard; and when he returned to the Pavilion there were still the papers, the bankers’ receipts, the endless documents in spidery handwriting, for Carlos to sort and file and answer. Like M. Moritz, he suffered to grow rich—only not so rich.
In the result of all this activity, Anna saw M. Moritz scarcely at all. When he was actually there he was, as usual, loving and affectionate. He brought back presents; he tried to interest himself in the child and dandled her on his knee; he became a husband again. But even in his fondest moments he was only partially at the villa: the greater part of his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking of promotions, concessions, monopolies; an endless chain and tangle of affairs that stretched from bourse to bourse right across the width of the Continent.
II
Now that Anna had Annette, she was no longer aware of the silence, the emptiness, of the house while M. Moritz was away. She paid no further visits to the Casino, to the terrace of the hotel. It seemed as though she and the child were alone in the world; and she was content that it should be so.
The child was six months old now. She was cutting her first tooth. The nurse had left after the third month for some new accouchement de grand luxe, and she had her replaced by a quiet negative creature who allowed Anna to see her own child. She did not mind even when Anna came into the nursery and put on an apron so that she could bath the infant herself. By now it had became a regular daily occurrence …
“She’s mine,” Anna told herself each time as she held the warm, soft body in her arms. “She’s mine and she loves me. I want her to remember always that I did things for her, that I didn’t leave her when she was a baby.”
And holding her in her arms she began kissing and hugging her so violently that the child cried, and the nurse was forced to say that if she went on in this way she would smother her.
Then something happened to disturb this life; the life that had been going on all the time came breaking in. There was a letter.
The maid brought it up on the breakfast tray that she placed at Anna’s bedside. Could it be for her? she asked: it was addressed to … to Madame Charles Latourette.
As Anna read the name a wave of coldness ran through her. She sat up, but she could scarcely hold the letter because her hand was trembling so much. Then she recognised the handwriting: it was Berthe’s. For a moment she held it, too frightened to open it.
As soon as the maid had gone away, she tore off the top of the envelope. And she saw at once that there was no cause to be frightened. The letter itself was simple and straightforward.
“Dear Sister” it ran, “It is only now that I have found out where you are living. Papa has not been well and I have been staying at home so that there should be someone with him. There was an old letter from you in his writing case. I saw it when I went to get out some papers that he wanted, and I copied out the address. I worried so much when you ran away. How is Charles? He is so handsome that I can understand how you came to fall in love. I am sure that you will be very happy with him. During the war I was so frightened for you. It must have been terrible to have been in Paris. I am only too relieved that you were able to get away. I wish that I could come to see you, but that is impossible. I am married too, you know. The wedding was three months ago. The Baron kept on asking me to marry him. Isn’t it funny, he told me only the other day, that it was with me that he had really been in love all the time. It is very nice up at the Schloss and I have two horses all of my own. The Baron is very kind and keeps on giving me presents. It seemed very strange at first having everybody call me Milady; but I’m quite used to it now and can hardly remember what it was like to be an ordinary Fraulein. I think” —here Berthe had underlined her words in the deep violet ink—” that I’m going to have a baby. Have you got a baby yet? I’m looking forward so much to mine. The Baron says that if it is a boy he must go into his old regiment—but that’s such a long time off I don’t really worry. I can’t ask you to write to me because the Baron is very strict and opens all my letters. Also he doesn’t like me going even into Rhinehausen alone. I wrote this last night while he was still at table and I am going to post it in Wiesbaden where we are going to stay with the Von Runstens—they’re very important people and they’re my cousins by marriage now. I know you will understand about not writing to me. You see the Baron never actually mentions your name. We all behave as though nothing had ever happened. And Papa doesn’t let me talk about you—or at least he didn’t—of course he couldn’t stop me now. The Baron is the only person who can tell me not to do things now. I feel sure that you are happy— something tells me that you are—but I thought that you must miss us all sometimes, and I didn’t want you to think that your own sister had forgotten you. If I get a chance to write to you again, I will send you another letter. But I shall have to be very careful: I don’t want to do anything to hurt the Baron’s feelings. I must close now. I love you so much, my dear Anna. I shall never forget you. You mustn’t forget me either. Tour ever devoted sister, Berthe.”
When Anna had finished the letter she sat with it in her hand. There were tears in her eyes, but she brushed them away angrily.
“I do not know why I am crying,” she told herself. “I do not think it is because she speaks of Charles as if he were still alive. I have grown so used to his death, that I can think about him without it hurting me any more. It is not even that she has married the Baron—though that is horrible. It is the fact that Papa has been ill and I didn’t know, that I cannot bear. And the fact that she knows so little about me, that she understands nothing. It is just as though I had never existed, as though I had died.”
The tears that she had been holding back came freely again, and she threw herself down on the pillow.
“Why did she have to write?” she began asking. “What good did she think it could do? Why couldn’t she have left me alone?”
She took up the letter suddenly and tore it right across. Then she destroyed the two halves, scattering the pieces across the breakfast tray that still stood there untouched.
“This is my life now,” she told herself. “Here with Annette. The old one means nothing to me. I should be grateful for what I have.”
And drawing her wrap around her she went to the nursery where the child was already being dressed. She took the clothes from the nurse and began dressing Annette herself.
III
It was nearly another month before M. Moritz returned. Carlos arrived first. He came without warning one evening in advance of his master. He was out of condition and tired looking. He excused himself to Anna and went straight to M. Moritz’s study where he began working. It was as though even with M. Moritz’s impending arrival, the atmosphere of the villa changed appreciably: it became once again a place where things happen, a place where fortunes are made.
And then M. Moritz arrived. From the moment he stood in the hall telling the coachman to carry the large black box of documents into his study, a fresh sense of urgency was imposed upon the household. And it was significant that M. Moritz himself went into the study before he attempted to see Anna. It seemed that everything that he cherished was somehow shut away inside the four tin walls of that box.
It was some minutes before he emerged and went in search of Anna. When he found her, he kissed her—but there seemed to be something missing from the kiss as though his mind was still preoccupied elsewhere.
“How has my little Anna been amusing herself?” he asked.
Then, without waiting for her reply, he threw himself down on one of the couches and announced how tired he was. All last night in the train, he declared, he had not slept a wink. And as Anna looked at him she saw that the strain on him had at last begun to show. Around his eyes the tiny puckers of fatigue had gathered, and the corners of his mouth dropped downwards. Then she noticed what the real change was. The smile had temporarily disappeared.
“Do you want to see our daughter?” Anna asked at
last.
It was the first time that M. Moritz had not asked to see Annette on his return.
But to-night M. Moritz ignored the child. He continued his one topic of conversation as though she had not spoken.
“Not one wink of sleep,” he went on. “I felt every jolt of the carriage from Lyon to Genoa. And just at the very moment when I wanted my brain to be at it? freshest. It’s intolerable; really quite intolerable. I have some of my very biggest deals on.”
Because of those deals, Anna saw little of him. He remained closeted alone with Carlos in his study. He covered reams of paper with figures; wrote several score of letters, tore up the figures and set to work on new ones; sent telegrams, cancelling the letters; lost his temper; abused Carlos; wept.
And he introduced another innovation: he had his meals served in the study. He excused himself to Anna by saying that his labours were so prodigious that he did not want to be interrupted; and when he did emerge from time to time it was only to take solitary walks in the garden or stand alone on his little eminence looking out over the Mediterranean.
Then, quite suddenly, his whole attitude changed; he became an attentive husband again. He put on a new suit of incredibly light grey, chose himself a buttonhole and announced that they would spend the evening at the Casino. He would ask the chef to prepare his best dinner, he said, and they would have a little celebration.
When he saw Anna at the table he was upset, however, He looked at her in a manner that was half critical, half amused. His old smile had returned to him.
“You aren’t wearing any of the jewellery I gave you,” he said. “Not even a simple string of pearls. That means that you don’t like them. Perhaps the settings are too old-fashioned.”
His whole face lit up and he clapped his hands delightedly.
“I’ll have them all re-set for you,” he said. “You won’t know them.”
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