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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1598f82 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #65149 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65149) diff --git a/old/65149-0.txt b/old/65149-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8e7042e..0000000 --- a/old/65149-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14047 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House of Adventure, by Warwick Deeping - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The House of Adventure - -Author: Warwick Deeping - -Release Date: April 23, 2021 [eBook #65149] -[Most recently updated: August 18, 2021] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada - team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net from page images generously - made available by the Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF ADVENTURE *** - The - HOUSE OF ADVENTURE - - - By WARWICK DEEPING - - Author of - “Sorrell and Son” - - - [Illustration: decorative medallion] - - A. L. BURT COMPANY - Publishers New York - Published by arrangement with The Macmillan Company - Printed in U. S. A. - - - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - Copyright 1921 and 1922 - By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - * * * * * - - Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1922. - Reissued March, 1928. - - - - - To - Dr. BEDFORD FENWICK - IN MEMORY OF HIS GREAT KINDNESS - - - - - THE - HOUSE OF ADVENTURE - - - - - I - - -Two stragglers lay sleeping in an orchard near the village of Beaucourt, -sprawling upon a grass bank under the branches of an old apple tree. The -sun had cleared the horizon and hung as a great yellow disc in the -purple boughs of the beech trees on the other side of the stream. -Overhead stretched the thin and cloudless blue of a March sky. The grass -was silvered with hoar-frost—and in the wood across the stream a bird -was singing. - -The men slept, two brown figures on the green bank. One sprawled on his -back; the other lay curled on his side. Their boots were the colour of -clay; so were their faces, the clay-coloured faces of men who had been -starved, and who had fallen down to sleep the sleep of exhaustion. They -were dirty with the dirt of five days’ fighting and foot-slogging. Their -chins were painted black with a stubble of hair, and their noses looked -pinched and thin. They had no greatcoats, no packs, no puttees, no -equipment; nothing but a rifle, a blue water-bottle, and a haversack -between them. At the world’s end a man gets rid of unnecessary lumber. - -The dawn was extraordinarily still. There was not a sound to be heard -save the singing of the bird in the wood on the other side of the -stream. The country rolled into blue-grey distances under the level -sunlight and the tranquil sky, a strangely peaceful landscape, the -landscape of an unvexed and impersonal dawn. Beaucourt village slept in -the sunlight on the slopes of its two hills. No smoke rose from the -chimneys; no human sound came from it. Beaucourt was empty. The blue -spire of its church and the gold vaned flèches of the château showed up -against the purple heights of the Bois du Renard. - -The church clock struck six, six calm and level clangs that were -quaintly challenging, almost ironical. From somewhere—a long way -off—came the soft whoof of a gun, an English gun slewed round in some -quiet orchard and firing a solitary shell or two into nothingness. There -was a whine in the air, a whine that quickened over Beaucourt and became -a menacing and snoring rush. The shell burst beyond the village, -smashing an old apple tree and throwing up a great spurt of earth and -smoke. - -The man who had been sleeping curled up on his side, sat up and mopped -the dirt out of his eyes, using his hands like the paws of a cat. A -crack of lightning seemed to have broken the sky just above his head. -The apple tree had been snapped off about three feet from the ground, -and the splintered ends of the stump stood up like torn tendons. - -The other sleeper was no longer a man, but a body. He was not -recognizable, and from the ripped front of his tunic a red identity disc -protruded, dangling pathetically at the end of a piece of frayed string. - - 756941 Pte. Beckett, T. - 2—9——Fusiliers. - -The live man looked dazed. War is an affair in which violent and absurd -things happen, and men forget to be astonished. Moreover, Paul Brent was -little more than a starved body, a dirty man sodden with a week’s -weariness and moments of great excitement and blind fear. - -“Tom’s dead.” - -He uttered the words with the confidential and mumbling foolishness of a -drunkard. It seemed quite natural that Tom should be dead. An immense -apathy lay like so much stagnant water over the mud of Brent’s submerged -emotions. He sat and stared and fingered the hair on his chin. - -The man had been his comrade, his pal of pals, one of those rough-hewn, -violent, warm-hearted creatures. They had fought together, drunk -together, snuggled up close in the same barn or dug-out, shared their -tobacco and a hole in the mud. Tom was dead, and yet if Brent was hurt -by his death, it was a vague and animal pain, like the groanings of an -empty belly. - -He sat and stared. - -His mouth felt dry. - -He noticed that the water-bottle, rifle and haversack that lay between -them had not been touched. He remembered, that there was a little water -left in the bottle, and he reached for it, drew the cork and drank. Some -of the water dribbled down his dirty chin. - -Brent put down the water-bottle, and groped in the right-hand pocket of -his tunic. A few bits of broken biscuit resulted. He sat and munched -them with sunken-eyed stolidity, alone in the midst of that -extraordinary silence, and noticing how the sunlight glinted on the -hob-nails in Tom Beckett’s boots. - -It was that dangling identity disc that gradually absorbed Brent’s -attention, like a little luminous spot of light, a red blur in the fog -of his exhaustion, a point of fire in his brain. It seemed to spread and -to expand, and to change from a little red circle stamped with a man’s -name to a picture, a picture of the man Beckett himself, of his -vagabondage and his triumphs and all his boisterous good-humour. It -seemed to challenge Brent, even made him unfasten his own tunic and -produce the likeness of the thing the dead man wore, that little circle -that was himself, the badge of a broken man and of the patchwork of a -broken man’s career. It became a circle through which he looked at -pictures, the pictures of that other life before the war, his boyhood, -the silly tragedy of his marriage, his cynical success and his still -more cynical failure, those moments of anguish and of shame, the bitter -gibes that covered hidden wounds. - -A look of spiritualized intelligence sharpened Brent’s face. His eyes -ceased to be dead and listless. Something stirred in him, a passion to -escape, perhaps a hunger for the finer things that had passed out of his -life. The coarse-mouthed but most lovable man who lay dead there had -taught him much—the human fineness that mattered, those rough bits of -courage or gentleness that make life something better than a selfish -scramble. For Beckett had been a vagabond with a religion of his own, a -homeless man, a childless man, and yet in his way a sort of savage Walt -Whitman, finding life good and wholesome and free. - -Brent sat and faced it out. Watching beside his dead friend in the early -sunlight of that spring morning, he saw himself as the shabby failure -that he was, a man who had accepted spiritual bankruptcy with the -cynical apathy of a tramp who leaves his self-respect and his -citizenship in some convenient ditch. Acceptance! It was just that blind -and drifting attitude that had doomed him, while Beckett—the -adventurer—had punched his way towards a rude religion. - -In that most singular and prophetic moment of his life Paul Brent had -his vision of non-acceptance. He saw the gap in the wall and leapt -through it, feeling that the dead man was offering him his chance. The -burly audacity of the thing would have drawn a laugh and an approving -punch on the chest from the man who lay dead. Beckett had no wife, no -children, no woman who would be hurt. Brent thought of all that before -he made his choice. - -There was an element of solemnity and of reverence in Paul Brent’s -carrying out of that interchange of identities. He unfastened his own -disc, and that solitary one of Beckett’s. He felt in his dead friend’s -pockets and sorted out his possessions, a complex that included his -pay-book, a pipe, some odd buttons, ten francs and fifty centimes in -money, an English penny, a stubby pencil and a couple of dirty picture -postcards, a hank of string and a few matches. Brent tied Beckett’s -identity disc to his own braces, and put the dead man’s pay-book in his -pocket. His own disc he fastened to the body and left the pay-book lying -upon the grass. - -Then the last comradely act suggested itself, and it stirred Brent to -vague emotion and a softening of his red-lidded eyes. He picked up the -rifle, shouldered it, and walked up the hill to Beaucourt village in -search of a pick and a spade. - -As he walked up between the orchards a strange calmness fell upon him, a -calmness that was neither apathy nor indifference. He became conscious -of the beauty of the morning, and of the more tragic beauty of this -French village with its red roofs and its red and white walls showing -vividly against the purple of the Bois du Renard. Beaucourt was on the -altar of sacrifice. Brent entered it by the little Rue de Rosières, and -he saw things in Beaucourt that he would never forget. It was like a -woman bereft of her children, standing dazed, with blind eyes and open -mouth. It was as though it could not believe that the thing had happened -on that soft day in the coming of the spring. - -The doors of nearly all the little houses and cottages were open, so -that Brent could see into the lower rooms. A gallery of pictures, -impressions of a silent tragedy. Rooms full of a tumult of escape and of -little treasures searched for, snatched up and carried away out of a -world of disorder. Floors littered with clothes, papers, bed-linen, -furniture. Chests of drawers and cupboards standing open. The last meal -left upon a table, dirty plates, bottles, the chairs pushed back as the -people had left them. In one cottage Brent had a glimpse of a woman’s -night-dress and a little black hat trimmed with red ribbon hanging on -the post of a bed. An open window gave him a glimpse of a child’s cot -with the clothes thrown back and one pink sock left lying. Beaucourt -would have hurt the heart of a cynic. At the corner where the Rue de -Rosières joined the Rue de Picardie a melancholy and forlorn brown dog -came nosing up to Brent and followed at his heels. - -Brent petted the beast. - -“You poor old devil.” - -He paused outside the Café de la Victoire—ironical yet prophetic name! -It was a long, two-storied, lovable old house in red brick, set back -beyond a raised path of grey, squared stones, and looking with its -dormer windows into the orchard and garden of the big stone house across -the way. The green shutters hung open. A lace curtain fluttered from one -of the windows. Brent knew the Café de la Victoire; for he and Tom -Beckett had drunk red wine there. - -Paul did not enter the house, but scrambled up on to the raised path and -pushed through a blue door in the stone wall surrounding the garden. -There were pollarded lines beyond the wall, and a quaint bosky path ran -between the rows of trees. Brent followed the path, knowing that it -would bring him to the yard at the back of the house, and that he might -find what he needed in one of the sheds. He had turned the corner where -a clump of old Picardie roses showed a shimmer of green shoots, when he -became aware of the most unexpected of all things—a woman. - -The woman was on the other side of the garden, and close to a gap in the -stone wall where a casual shell had knocked a little avalanche of grey -stones into the garden. She had a spade in her hand and she had just -finished pushing back the earth into a hole, and she was treading a few -green weeds into the raw surface when she turned her head and saw Brent. - -Brent knew her. It was Manon Latour, who owned the café, and he guessed -that she had been burying her little treasures there. She stood -motionless, rigid, staring at him with eyes that looked big and black in -her white face, the eyes of a woman who was afraid. - - - - - II - - -Brent felt challenged. - -He crossed the garden towards her, knocking the moisture from the leaves -of a bed of winter-greens, and still followed by the brown dog. Brent’s -French was very British, the Army French of estaminets and billets, but -his heart was concerned in the convincing of Manon. - -“Madame, allez vous! Le Boche—il arrive toute suite!” - -She stood and stared at him, and it was obvious that she believed that -she had never seen him before; and his present appearance was not -reassuring. She saw a very dirty man with a cut-throat’s beard and a -haggard face, a starved face in which the blue eyes looked like the cold -eyes of a corpse. There was nothing soldierly about him save the rifle -on his shoulder. The disreputable indiscipline of Brent’s whole -atmosphere suggested the one word “loot.” - -“Monsieur, que faites-vous ici?” - -She stood her ground, and kept her eyes on Brent’s face. She was a -black-haired, black-eyed little woman with a skin of ivory; in age about -six and twenty; very sturdy, very strong. Yet there was a softness about -her, a white glow, a femininity, that were wholly pleasant and -appealing. Manon Latour had a heart and courage. You saw the soul of her -in her big, dark, watchful eyes, in her firm white throat, in her -full-lipped, vivid mouth, in the confident poise of her head. She stood -there and defied Brent—this disreputable straggler who had surprised -her burying her treasure. - -The brown dog was sniffing at her black skirt, and at the newly turned -soil. - -Brent managed to smile, and the thinness of his yellow face seemed to -crack with it. - -“Bon garçon,—bon garçon, moi. Allez, madame. Hang it,—do you think I -would touch your stuff?” - -She said nothing, but continued to watch his face. - -Then Paul had an idea. He pointed the muzzle of his rifle at the place -where she had been digging, fumbled for the bit of pencil he had found -in Tom’s pocket, and walking to the wall, began to print three rapid and -rather straggling letters on a piece of plaster. - -“R. I. P.” - -He stood back, cocked his head with a flick of humour, smiled. - -“Compris?” - -She understood. - -“Monsieur, c’est vrai?” - -“Oui—here,—catch hold.” - -He pushed the butt of the rifle towards her. - -“Fusillez, si vous voulez—moi. Cela ne fait rien. Oui. Mon ami, mon -comrade, il est mort. Je suis fini.” - -She put the butt of the rifle aside with a gentle little touch of the -hand. Her eyes had softened, and they were very beautiful eyes. - -“Je me confie à vous, monsieur.” - -“Bon.” - -The brown dog looked up at them both and wagged his tail. He appeared to -approve of the affair, and of Manon’s faith in this scarecrow of a man. - -She walked down the path and into the house, leaving the spade she had -used standing against the wall. Some sudden impulse made her pause in -the doorway and look back at Brent. He had followed her as far as the -gateway leading into the yard, and was resting his crossed hands on the -muzzle of his rifle, and she noticed that he rocked slightly from foot -to foot. The man could hardly stand, and her heart smote her. - -“Monsieur!” - -She disappeared into the house, and returned almost immediately with her -hat and coat, a little leather bag, and a bottle of red wine. The bottle -was half full. - -“Monsieur, pour votre santé.” - -Brent stepped forward, and took the bottle from her. His hand shook. - -“Ah, mon pauvre vieux—comme vous êtes fatigué!” - -She pinned on her hat while Brent drank the wine, looking at him with -eyes that were no longer hard and black, but softly brown and gentle. -She was aware of his dry, cracked lips, the working of the muscles in -his throat, a slight trembling of the arm that held the bottle. - -“Monsieur, venez avec moi.” - -Brent stared. He understood. Then he nodded his head at the spade she -had left by the doorway. - -“Non. Mon ami est mort.—Over there. Compris?” - -“Le bon Dieu vous garde,” she said. - -She put on her coat, picked up her little bag, and was ready to go. The -brown dog looked at them both, and then made up his mind to escape with -the woman. Brent went with her as far as the yard gate. - -“Au revoir, monsieur.” - -“Bon chance,” he said with a cracked smile. - -He watched the little black figure disappear round the angle of the big -stone house that jutted out across the end of the Rue Romaine on the way -to Bonnière. - -“Damned plucky,” he said aloud; “she ought to have gone long ago.” - -Brent went back to the garden and the place where Manon had buried her -treasure. The patch of raw earth was too noticeable and too obvious, in -spite of the weeds she had trampled into it, and Brent looked about for -something with which to camouflage it. The smashed walls and the -scattered stones offered a suggestion. The main mass of the débris lay -close to the spot that Manon Latour had chosen, and Brent set about -re-arranging those stones with an art that aped reality. The pattern he -made pretended that the shell had struck the wall at a slight angle, and -his casual dotting of the outlying fragments made the trick quite -convincing. The raw earth was covered; no one would trouble to go poking -about there. He completed the job by smudging out the letters he had -printed on the wall, using a bit of broken stone and the sleeve of his -tunic. - -“Bon,” he said; “Tom would never have touched the girl’s money. There -was no dirt on Tom.” - -Brent collected a pick from one of the outhouses, appropriated Manon’s -spade, and returned to the orchard above the stream. This orchard -belonged to Manon Latour; so did the meadow below it, and a strip of -woodland on the other side of the little valley. Brent took off his -tunic, hung it on the stump of the apple tree and began to dig. The red -wine had flushed and heartened him, but it was food he needed, and the -sting of the wine soon wore off. Sweat ran from him; the sweat of -exhaustion; he panted and nearly fell forward over his spade when he had -lifted the first layer of sods. - -He sat down on the bank, and putting his head between his knees, -remained thus for some minutes. The faintness passed. The spirit -reasserted itself and coerced the body. - -He got to work again,—and slowly deepened that narrow trench,—giving a -little grunt of physical anguish each time he made a stroke with the -pick. The thing was done at last, and Brent stood resting like an old -man, leaning on the handle of the spade, and looking at Beckett’s body. -He had been so absorbed in the work, and his senses were so dull and -unalert, that he was quite unaware of the fact that a German patrol had -straggled across the field and through the orchard, and that an N.C.O. -and four privates were standing a few yards away, watching him. They, -too, were very dirty, these “field-greys,” sallow-faced and heavy about -the eyes. They looked at Brent with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, -and the elemental sympathy of men for a soldier doing a soldier’s job. - -“Hallo—Tommy!” - -Brent turned and looked at these “field-greys,”—without surprise and -without fear. It was as though he had expected them. They were just -dirty, tired men like himself, part of the earth, part of the great -machine. - -“Morning,—Fritz.” - -He jerked a thumb towards the body. - -“My pal.—I’m done. Give me a hand, will you?” - -The N.C.O. spoke English, but the affair was so elemental and so human -that the whole group understood. They helped Brent to lift the body into -the grave and to put back the earth, using their boots and the spade. - -Brent picked up his pay-book and handed it to the N.C.O. - -“You had better keep that, Fritz.” - -A young, fair-haired German was standing close to Brent and looking at -him intently. He noticed the Englishman’s dry lips and pinched nostrils, -his dirty chin, and starved eyes and forehead. - -He nudged Brent with his elbow. - -Brent saw a bit of brown bread in the young German’s hand. - -“Hungrig?” - -Brent smiled. - -“I am—that.” - -He took the piece of bread, and ate with gross relish, for he was -famished. The “field-greys” stood around and smoked cigarettes, English -cigarettes picked up during the advance. The N.C.O. questioned Brent. - -“Any English up there?” - -Brent shook his head and went on eating. He was thinking of Manon Latour -trudging along in the spring sunshine with the larks singing overhead. - -“She ought to be safe,” he thought; “she had about an hour’s start. -Damned nice little woman, that!” - - - - - III - - -So Brent went as a prisoner to Germany, and was catalogued as “Number -756941 Pte. Beckett, T.”; and Paul Brent’s name appeared among the -“missing,” a casualty that was corrected a few weeks later to “killed.” - -Paul Brent was a prisoner, but he had escaped, escaped from the -tradition of blond hair and a thin mouth, Turkey carpets and a -three-tiered cake-stand, and the memory of the greedy nostrils of a -thoroughly respectable but wholly unprincipled woman. He was free, even -while he sat and peeled potatoes in a prison hut, washed his one shirt, -or slept square-backed on his bed of boards. A sense of liberty soaked -into him. He saw a new sun, a new horizon, new stars, a sportsman’s -chance, a renewal of the great adventure. His manhood tightened his -belt, and discovered itself in better condition, despite its -thirty-seven odd years and an incipient plumpness about the waist. That -plumpness had disappeared in France and Belgium, and Brent’s mental -flabbiness followed it out of the German prison camp. - -Brent happened to be in a “mixed camp” for the first few months, and he -set himself to learn French. He attacked it with such fierceness and -assiduity that Alphonse,—his pedagogue, a French waiter with a family -in Soho,—accused him of being in love. It was a crude accusation, and -Brent demolished it. - -“I finished with that—five years ago.” - -“No nice little French girl, Mister Beckett?” - -“Not even a mam’selle. I want to be able to earn more money. -Business—just business.” - -“I fall in love every month,” said Alphonse; “it is good for my -digestion.” - -“And Madame’s temper?” - -“Oh, that is an affair apart,” said Alphonse; “there is no woman like my -Josephine. It is quite different. She mends my socks, and sees that I -have a clean collar. She has but to say ‘Alphonse,’ and I would leave -all the beauties of the Sultan’s harem and carry her umbrella. It is the -woman that mends one’s socks who matters.” - -“I suppose so,” said Paul; “mine didn’t.” - -But he became quite a creditable Frenchman, even picking up the slang -and the atmosphere of the language, and teaching himself to think in -French. His accent was not too English. “Bong” and “Bo-koop” ceased from -his vocabulary. He learnt to imitate all Alphonse’s tricks, his little -mannerisms, his expressive silences, the way he talked with his -shoulders, hands, and even with his legs and buttons. Alphonse was a -southerner, and gaillard. He did not merely converse; he was an amateur -dramatic society in a shabby uniform of French blue. - -Then the War ended, like a machine of which someone has forgotten to -turn the handle. Brent happened to have been moved into Belgium about -three weeks before the Armistice, and the coincidence rhymed with the -idea he had in his head. Strange things happened one wet night in that -particular prisoners’ camp. There were rumours, a panic, an explosion, a -joyous scramble in the office of an alarmed and fugitive commandant. -Someone discovered the official pay-box. German notes, wads of them, -were stuffed into tunic pockets, and Brent was one of those who came by -a quite respectable handful. - - * * * * * - -It was in a Belgian village on the road between Dinant and Philipville -that Paul met the first English troops he had seen, a battalion that was -settling into billets on its long march to the Rhine. Brent was sludging -along a lane, a dirty grey sock showing through the toe of his right -boot, all his worldly gear in a German sandbag slung over his shoulder. -He had a vile headache, little prickles of heat and shivers of cold -chasing each other up and down his back. He had not shaved for a week, -and his greatcoat was all mud. - -“Hallo, chum!” - -Behind the outswung black door of a stable Brent saw a field-cooker in -steaming fettle, and a couple of cooks hard at work. One of them was -mopping out a camp-kettle with a handful of grass. An exquisite smell of -hot stew wasted itself on Brent’s nostrils. - -“Got any tea?” - -The cook dropped his camp-kettle, and went and laid hold of Brent. - -“Here—chum—hold up! You come and sit down. Been in Germany,—what?” - -“Yes—Germany,” said Paul. - -They sat him down on a ration box,—but he flopped like a sackful of old -clothes, and the sympathetic one had to act as a buttress. - -“You’re done in, chum. Give us some of that stew in my mess-tin, Harry.” - -But the sight and the smell of the stew made Brent feel sick. The cook -held his head like a mother, and Brent’s head felt dry and hot. - -“You want the doc, chum; that’s what’s the matter with you. Ten days in -hospital in a real bed, between real sheets,—with a lovely little nurse -feeding you with a spoon.” - -Brent protested, gripping the cook’s wrist. - -“I don’t want the doc, old chap. I’m done up, that’s all. I’d like a cup -of tea, and a ration biscuit.” - -“Rot,” said the cook, “you’re ill.” - -One of the company stretcher-bearers happened to pass that way. - -“Hi—Chucker, where’s the M.O.?” - -“Headquarters mess.” - -“Run along and tell him there’s a returned prisoner here; he’s sick.” - -“Right-oh,” said Chucker; and he went. - -The battalion doctor came back with the stretcher-bearer, feeling -aggrieved that he should be dragged out at the end of a day’s march to -see some casual devil who did not belong to his own crowd. Human nature -is like that, and this doctor boy was unripe and insolent. - -“Hallo, what’s the matter with you?” - -Brent was crouching on the box, holding his head between his hands. - -“Headache, sir.” - -The M.O. looked at him, brought out a thermometer, glanced at the -mercury and gave the glass tube a sharp flick. - -“Under your tongue. Don’t bite it.” - -The sympathetic cook was damning the doctor with a pair of truculent -blue eyes, eyes that said “You blighter—I’d like to punch your jaw.” -But the officer was not sensitive to psychical impressions; he had left -a game of “Slippery Sam,” and he felt Brent’s pulse while Brent sat and -sucked the thermometer with an air of vacant helplessness. The glass -tube was tweaked out of his mouth, glanced at, and put back in its metal -case. - -“Hospital for you, boy.” - -Brent looked scared. He did not want to go to hospital. - -“I’m just done in, sir. I’ll be all right to-morrow.” - -“Will you!” said the doctor tensely, pulling out a note-book and -beginning to scribble, resting his foot on Brent’s box, and the -note-book on his knee. - -“Name and number?” - -“I don’t want to go to hospital, sir.” - -“Don’t argue. Name and number?” - -“No. 756941 Pte. Beckett, T.” said Brent. - -“Unit?” - -“2-9th Fusiliers.” - -“Bring him along to the medical inspection room, will you? Street by the -church.” - -The doctor snapped the black elastic round his note-book and walked off. - -“He ought to be boiled in muck,” said the cook. - -Five minutes later this sympathetic and expressive soul made a dash down -the road after a figure in a muddy greatcoat, a figure that had sneaked -out of the cook-house with a staggering determination to escape. Brent -collapsed under a hedge outside a cottage, lying face downwards in the -mud. His temperature was 104.7°. - -“What did you do it for, chum?” - -Brent could not explain. He had fainted. - -A field ambulance car collected Paul Brent and carried him off to -another village where he lay in a barn for half an hour, flushed and -torpid, yet resenting the efforts of an orderly to make him drink hot -cocoa. An officer came and examined him, a very quiet man with a big -fair moustache and intelligent eyes. Ten minutes later Brent was put on -a stretcher in one of the big Daimlers, with a card in a brown envelope -fastened to one of the buttons of his greatcoat; there were two other -patients in the car. The quiet officer climbed in and assured himself -that Brent was well covered with blankets. - -“Feel warm enough?” - -“Yes, sir.” - -“Don’t you worry. You’ll soon be comfortable.” - -The officer’s voice made Brent do an absurd thing; he turned his face -towards the canvas, and wept. - -The car left its sick men at a casualty clearing station in Charleroi. -Brent had a vague impression of a great red brick building glooming up -into the murk of a winter night, of boots clattering on tiled floors, of -many voices, and of people who would keep moving about. He was -irritable, a blazing mass of physical discomfort, slipping over the edge -of sanity into delirium. Two orderlies came and carried his stretcher -into a ward. He was laid on a bed, and two other orderlies started to -undress him. - -Brent was struggling to get at something that was buttoned up in the -right breast pocket of his tunic. The orderlies were trying to remove -the tunic, and Brent began to fight. - -“All right, old chap, all right!” - -“Here, leave that alone.” - -“What’s the matter?” - -“I want my money.” - -“You can’t have money in hospital.” - -“B——y hell,—give me——” - -“Let him have it,” said the elder of the two orderlies; “let the poor -blighter have it. Shove it under his pillow. All right, old chap.” - -Brent calmed down like a child, but the nurse in charge had heard the -scrimmage, and came sailing up in her grey dress edged with red. She was -a fair-haired, hard-faced woman, with thin, clean-cut features, her eyes -set too close together, and little irritable lines crimping her mouth. - -“What’s all this noise?” - -Then a strange thing happened to Brent. He sat up in the bed, staring at -the woman with eyes of anger and of horror. - -“What’s she doing here? Take her away—take her away, or I’ll—I’ll cut -her blasted throat!” - -The nurse screwed up her eyes at him, and backed away. - -“He’s delirious,” said one of the orderlies; “lie down, old chap.” - -Brent made a sort of futile grab in the direction of the nurse. - -“Let me . . . She’s a devil!” - -The nurse walked away down the ward with the detached dignity of a woman -whose professional soul moved calmly through the world of sickness and -of words, and Brent fell back on his pillows. - -“What’s she doing here,” he kept saying; “why can’t they let me alone?” - -Paul Brent came very near death in that hospital at Charleroi. Influenza -passed into broncho-pneumonia, and for days he lay there in a quiet -stupor with bluish lips and a grey face. He was just so much pulp, not -caring whether he lived or whether he died, and capable of but two -semi-intelligent mental reflexes, the turning of his face to the wall -when the yellow-haired nurse came near, and the insinuating of a flabby -hand under his pillow to make sure that those German notes were there. -He occupied a corner bed, and sometimes there was a red screen round it. -His neighbour in the next bed nicknamed him “Arthur,” and told everybody -that he was “a bit balmy.” - -But Brent’s illness passed, and he lay there hour by hour, watching -life, and beginning to react and to think. - -He saw the high, bare, yellow walls, the rows of beds with red quilts, -the scrubbed floor, the canvas-shoed orderlies, the nurse, the doctor -with “gig-lamps” and a bald head, the other men who dozed and chattered, -or read magazines and books and letters from home. Some of the men wrote -letters, and Brent’s neighbour offered him a field postcard. - -“What about the missis, Arthur?” - -“Haven’t got one,” said Brent. - -The red screen annoyed him. There was something irritating in the -colour, a vague suggestion of officialdom, red tape, tyranny. Brent -asked to have it taken away. He spent most of his time staring straight -up at the ceiling, and at a black smudge of cobweb in the corner where -the chimney jutted out. The dirty whiteness of the ceiling was restful; -he saw pictures on it, pictures that helped him to think. There was no -pattern on the ceiling; it was like a fresh sheet, a clean piece of -canvas upon which Brent could paint what he pleased; and lying through -those long days he worked out his pictures on the plaster, and -underneath them was written the word, “Escape.” - -He realized that he would have to lose himself again, for the Machine -had reclaimed him and would pass him with stupid efficiency on its -Trucker system to some place where he would be sorted out and railed -back to England. He began to live in fear of being recognized by some -chance friend. Even the blond-haired nurse’s absurd likeness to that -other woman who had died in England still roused in Brent an elemental -antipathy and a fierce alarm. He sulked, and turned over into the blind -corner whenever she came near his bed. - -“What is the matter to-day, Beckett?” - -Her voice was an echo of that other woman’s voice, a metallic voice that -attacked. Brent’s back remained churlishly on the defensive. - -“Don’t want to be bothered—that’s all.” - - - - - IV - - -Brent was convalescent, and as his strength returned, his restlessness -returned with it. He was allowed out in the hospital grounds, where he -trudged about with the idea of getting himself fit, and feeling like an -animal in a cage, and always afraid of meeting some disastrously -inopportune friend. He had glimpses of Charleroi, that black and gray -mining town with its slag-heaps and smoke and its air of shabby -sumptuousness. There were women in Charleroi, swarthy little Belgian -women, shops full of luxurious things at luxurious prices, the glitter -of jewellery, the glare of electric light, Belgian flags, trams, red -wine, pavements where a man could loiter and catch the smell of -fleur-de-trèfle in a woman’s clothes. Charleroi made one think of the -sallow face, the lowering cloth cap, and the sexual swagger of an -apache. - -“Escape” was written on Brent’s heart; and he had staged the first act -of the adventure at Charleroi. He knew that the day of his discharge was -drawing near, and he might expect to find himself handed to some casual -R.T.O. who would pass him down the line to his base-depôt, and Brent had -decided that he must vanish before such a thing could happen. He did not -want to go back to England. He was thoroughly determined that he would -never recross the Channel. - -Early in January he received the final stimulus that shocked him into -immediate action. He was wandering about the hospital grounds when he -saw a little officer with a florid and familiar face limping down the -path between the plane trees. Brent was caught off his guard. He stared, -and then swung round on one heel, but the officer boy stopped. - -“Hallo; isn’t it Brent?—You were in my platoon?” - -Brent had to face it out. - -“So I was, sir.” - -“I got knocked out just before the retreat. What happened to you?” - -“Prisoner,” said Brent. - -“Been sick, have you?” - -“Flue, sir, and pneumonia. I’m all right now. I expect to be discharged -in a day or two.” - -The officer boy shook Brent’s hand, feeling himself half a civilian and -on the edge of demobilization. Besides, Brent had always been a -gentlemanly chap. - -“Well, good luck.” - -“Good luck to you, sir,” said Brent. - -That incident gave the necessary flick to his decision. Men who were -ripe for discharge were allowed out on pass into Charleroi, and Brent -got his pass that evening; it was dated for the following day. The -N.C.O. in charge of the convalescent “wing” was a far more human person -than the yellow-haired nurse. - -So Paul Brent went down into Charleroi on a grey January morning, with -the thrill of an adventure in his blood. He had scrounged a couple of -tins of bully beef and a pocketful of biscuits, his reserve ration for -the road. “Escape” was in the air. The trams clanged it, the shops were -ready to help in the conspiracy: the crowded streets made Brent think of -a dirty, commercialized but fascinating Baghdad. He began to feel -himself part of this continental crowd and no English soldier numbered -and labelled for an immediate return to some niche in that damned temple -of Monotony, the Industrialism of England. He was a little Haroun al -Raschid wandering as he pleased in this city of adventure. - -Brent’s first business was to change that German money, for it would be -no use to him on the road. He found a jeweller and goldsmith’s that was -also a Bureau de Change, and they took a thousand of his German marks -and gave him French notes in exchange. Brent thought it wise to spread -the transaction over a varied surface. He tried a Belgian bank, and came -out with six hundred francs in French paper. A second Bureau de Change -converted the bulk of the remainder. Then Brent went shopping. - -The first thing that he bought was a carpet-bag with black leather -handles, and he bought it at a little shop in a shabby side street. This -magasin sold workmen’s clothes. - -A fat Belgian woman, with a moustache and overflowing cheeks and chin, -showed some surprise when he asked the price of a pair of brown velvet -trousers. - -Brent laughed, and became confidential. - -“We make what we call a stage-play, madame, a concert of varieties. The -war is over; it is necessary for us to be amused.” - -“Clothes are very dear, monsieur.” - -“We English have plenty of money. At home—now—in England—what would -you think I am?” - -Madame scrutinized him with little black eyes half hidden between -bladders of fat. - -“Tiens!—how should I know?” - -“I own three cotton mills and fifty houses. But in the war I was just -this.” - -She became very ready to oblige him, and Brent asked her advice. - -“I am to be an apache, madame. A pair of velveteen breeches.—What -next?” - -“A cloth cap, monsieur.” - -“Yes.” - -“And a coat—a black coat, and a scarf to go round your neck.” - -“Excellent. I will do it thoroughly and have a foreign shirt, also a -leather belt.” - -He packed the things into the carpet-bag, paid madame and asked to be -allowed to leave the bag there behind the counter. - -“I will return later.” - -“Certainly, monsieur.” - -Brent had brought a pack with him, and he had other things to buy, -details of the adventure that he had worked out while he was lying sick -in bed and seeing pictures on the ceiling. The list included matches, a -few candles, some tinned food, cigarettes, a pair of civilian boots, a -woollen vest, soap, a sponge, a comb, and six inches of tri-colour -ribbon. He had a meal at an obscure restaurant, and the meal included a -bottle of red wine that cost him thirty francs. He drank to the health -of the adventure. - -A winter dusk was falling over Charleroi when Brent returned to the shop -where he had left his bag. The wine had made him merry, and he wasted -ten minutes in a gallant little gossip with the lady of the flowing -chin. It would be unwise to appear to be in a hurry; your true artist is -never furtive nor a sloven in his manners. - -“Au revoir, madame.” - -“Au revoir, monsieur l’apache.” - -Brent laughed. - -“I’ll try the costume to-night and see how the boys like it.” - -He went boldly through Charleroi, carrying that carpet-bag for all the -world to see—but avoiding street corners where he might meet some -inquisitive military policeman. The bag and its contents were -explainable, but the explanation might prove embarrassing when the -hospital authorities reported him missing. He came without adventure to -the western outskirts of Charleroi, still warm with that good red wine. -A few stars winked at him between the houses, and above the dark -slag-heaps and the still darker hills. - -In the lane at the back of a railway embankment, a lane that appeared to -end in all the cabbage patches of a miners’ suburb, Brent found the -“green room” of his dreams. It was a tin shed or shelter with no door, -where someone had once stored vegetables and tools. Brent took -possession, lit one of his candles, and carried out a rapid change. He -discarded everything English save his greatcoat, socks and boots. - -There was a big ditch at the back of the shed, full of sooty-looking -water. Brent crammed his tunic, trousers, puttees, shirt and cap into -his pack, added two heavy stones, and sank the whole caboodle in the -ditch. Returning to the hut he completed the metamorphosis by threading -the bit of tri-colour ribbon into his buttonhole and tying it in a bow. -An old rake handle provided him with a stick. He ran the end of it -through the handles of the carpet-bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, and -launched out into the unknown. - - - - - V - - -Paul Brent tramped it through Solre le Château and Sars Poteries to -Avesnes, winning his food from the English he passed upon the road, for -there is no kinder hearted soul on earth than the plain Englishman when -his generosity is challenged. Paul played the part of the French -civilian deported from a captured village early in the war, and the men -in khaki whom he met supplied him with food, and even shared with him -their precious cigarettes. - -Paul remained shy of the larger villages and towns. Sometimes he stopped -at a farm-house or cottage and was given hot coffee fresh from the blue -pot on the stove. He was a little nervous at first of his adopted lingo, -and a pretended deafness helped him when he was posed. But these French -folk accepted him, and were touchingly kind. He slept in their barns and -sometimes in a bed, spending the evening sitting with the family round -the kitchen stove, a rather silent and solemn man with many memories in -his eyes. - -A very gentle mood had fallen upon Brent. He was marching away from -defeat, trudging step by step from his own past, that past that seemed -so full of sordid yet pathetic futilities. He found his heart going out -to children, dogs, and the poor old wrinkled women who had starved so -bravely for four years. Often he shared his food with the cottagers, the -bully beef and jam and biscuits he won upon the road. - -A man who has tasted the full bitterness of failure looks eagerly, -almost incredulously at the gleam in the sky that symbolizes a new hope. -Brent felt that he was escaping from under a thundercloud, and that the -edge of it was behind him. He had known that emptiness of the stomach, -that sense of having fallen through himself into a mood of cynical -apathy and tragic surrender, when a man wonders whether he shall end his -life or struggle on, whether his dead self-respect is worth carrying -upon his shoulders. - -“That damned fool Brent! Had his chance and missed it.” - -But Brent knew that his own incorrigible good nature had brought him to -bankruptcy. He had trusted men, other men who had lived to make money, -and he had been astonished when they had torn him asunder and used him -both as a scapegoat and as a victim. His own wife had never forgiven him -for the catastrophe. She, too, had been greedy. Brent knew that money -was at the bottom of all the harlotry, the commercial treachery, and the -fierce physical greed of a great part of modern life. He had found War -far less savage and contemptible than the assassination of souls that a -rich Peace encourages. - -Other men had scrambled over his body, and, now that the war had set him -on his feet again, he was possessed by a great yearning to begin life -over again, to make some success of the years that were to come. He -wanted to feel the grip of a new self-respect, the stiff back of a new -manhood. He wanted to think that he mattered, that there was yet some -measure of rich blood in him that could make some other creature happy. -He was curiously humble over it, boyish and innocent. And yet as he -foot-slogged it along those muddy winter roads, a pilgrim in search of -his second chance, he became possessed by a vague yet spiritual -conviction that he would find that chance somewhere in poor, battered, -devastated France. - -It was on the road from Avesnes to Maroilles that Brent met the girl -with the black shawl. It was no more than an incident in his pilgrimage, -but an incident that flushed him with the warm red wine of humanism. - -He was sitting on the butt of a broken telegraph pole when the girl came -along the road. She was pretty and dark and rather slender for a French -peasant, and Brent was aware of her as an eager and hurrying figure with -a black shawl folded over her shoulders, and the end of it held so as to -cover her mouth. She came quickly towards him. Her eyes were big and -bright with hope, the desperate hope that her man had come at last. - -Brent saw her falter. Then the light died out of her eyes. Her face -seemed to grow more sallow, and very sad. Yet she approached him, -smiling with a sudden pity, a compassionate friendliness that warmed to -all those lonely ones who returned. - -“You are going home, monsieur?” - -Brent raised his cloth cap. - -“If I find a home.” - -She sighed, dropped the shawl from her mouth, and sat down beside him. -Brent felt that she had suffered very much; she looked ill, her soft -eyes were growing old with watching. - -“I thought you might be my Jean,” she said, with the simplicity of one -who had lived in days of great sadness. - -“I am sorry,” said Brent, “has he not come home yet?” - -Her eyes looked far away. The fingers of her left hand pulled at a -splinter that stood up from the round bulk of the pole. - -“Four years. Yes, it is a long time. And our child died—died of -starvation. For six months I have had no letter.” - -“I am sorry,” said Brent. - -She began to question him—for his presence there seemed to give her -hope—and the lies that he had to tell her turned sour in Brent’s mouth. - -“You have come a long way, monsieur, perhaps from the centre of -Germany?” - -“Yes, a long way. I was in Germany.” - -“It may be that you met my Jean? Jean Bart is his name, a tall man with -thoughtful blue eyes and a scar on his forehead.” - -“I am afraid not, madame. But there must be hundreds of persons who have -not yet come home.” - -“You think so, monsieur?” - -“Many are in hospital. Some were in Russia.” - -She smiled bravely. - -“Oh, I do not give up hope. Some day he will return. I pray to God each -night and morning, when I work and when I eat.” - -“Please God he will,” said Brent, and found that he had uttered a -prayer. - -The girl insisted on Paul going back to her home, a little red farm -among poplars on the green slope of a hill above the windings of a -river. Jean’s father and mother lived there, two quiet people to whom -life had left but little to say. They were very kind to Paul, and he -passed the night at the farm, sleeping in a feather bed in a narrow room -whose window showed him the stars hanging in the bare branches of an old -apple tree. There was the smell of home about the place, the home of the -Frenchman who had not returned. Brent felt that the little house watched -and listened with every window, its gables cocked like the ears of a dog -waiting for its master. - -Brent was touched by the kindness these poor people showed him. They -sent him upon his way with a couple of hard-boiled eggs and some apples -in his pockets, and a sense of the essential goodness of the humbler -folk who suffer. The girl went with him to the gate opening upon the -road. - -“Bon voyage.” - -Her soft eyes and her sadness put new life into Brent. - -“May he return—very soon,” he said; “your husband; perhaps I have -brought you good luck.” - -She watched Brent march off down the road, and his going made her yearn -all the more deeply for the other man who had not returned. - -“Four years,” he said, “four years of his youth—and of mine.” - -Yet Brent’s words might have been prophetic, for Jean Bart came home -that night. - -Brent tramped on through Landrecies and Le Cateau, those tragic towns, -half alive, half dead. It was when he came to the village of Maretz, -lying all red and quiet under a flat grey sky, that Brent felt the new -phase of his adventure, even as a man feels the nearness of the sea. He -was on the edge of the wilderness, fifty rolling miles of grey-green -desolation upon which a few broken villages floated like derelicts. -Brent spent three days in Maretz, living with an old French couple in -their cottage on the road to Serain, very busy as a forager and a -collector of hard rations. He had the wilderness before him, a -wilderness where he could count on neither water nor food. But Brent -left Maretz rather suddenly. He was watching a party of German prisoners -working at the red mountain of rubbish that had been the church when he -became aware of a man in khaki standing a little to one side and staring -at him intently. - -Brent knew the man, a corporal who had served in the same battalion. He -braced himself to the crisis, gave the man stare for stare, a blank look -of curiosity, said something in French, and strolled on. Brent did not -turn his head to see whether the corporal was still interested and -suspicious, but he went straight to the cottage on the road to Serain, -collected his bag and stick, and footed it out of Maretz. - -That night he slept in a half-ruined cottage at Beaurevoir. The morning -brought him luck, and a ride on a lorry that was travelling to Roisel, -and at Roisel he won a hot dinner at the cook-house of a Labour Company. -Things were going well. The lift on the lorry had saved him many miles -of tramping and much food. That evening he reached Peronne, and saw the -brown and battered town outlined against a February sunset, and all the -blue waters of its valley full of the reflection of flushed clouds and -gouts of gold. Brent found a corner in Peronne, a snuggish corner, even -though the stars looked down on him, and it was in Peronne that he had -his vision. - -It was a strangely vivid affair, a dream and yet perhaps more than a -dream. Brent found himself in Beaucourt, standing in the garden of the -Café de la Victoire and looking at a resurrected Tom Beckett, a Beckett -who sat on the heap of stones that he—Brent—had thrown over the -burial-place of Manon Latour’s treasure. Beckett’s boots were muddy, so -were his clothes, and his hair was full of blood and earth. Yet the face -of Beckett was like white light. He sat and talked with the intensity of -a man who was fiercely concerned in making his meaning clear, yet Brent -could not understand a word of all that his dear friend said. He was -conscious of effort, bafflement, suspense. He kept noticing the gap in -the upper row of Beckett’s teeth, a gap that had always made Brent think -of a hole in a white fence. He was astonished by the discovery that he -could see Beckett’s heart beating under his soiled tunic, and see it as -a reddish light that waxed and waned with each beat, a mysterious and -palpitating piece of glowing human flesh. And all the while, Brent was -trying to grasp what his dead friend said, for he was speaking to him, -as though he, Brent, the live man, were in desperate need of some human -message. - -“Sweat,—sweat!” - -That was the one crude, forcible and enigmatic word that Brent -remembered. Then Beckett smiled at him, and vanished off the pile of -stones like a puff of smoke dispersed by the wind. Brent woke up and -stared at the stars. He was shivering. - -“Beaucourt,” he said like a child repeating a lesson; “I have got to go -to Beaucourt.” - - - - - VI - - -There had been a slight frost. It was a brilliant February morning with -a few rolling white clouds low in the blue of the western sky, and the -green earth was covered with a web of silver. - -Brent came to Beaucourt by the road from Rosières, and from the high -ground above the Bois du Roi he could look down through the beech trees -into the valley where Beaucourt lay. The valley seemed full of yellow -sunlight, very tranquil and very still, and Brent could hear the stream -falling over the dam by the mill. Beaucourt seemed to sleep the sleep of -the dead. There was no smoke, no movement, no human sound, and Brent -stood awed by the beauty of its desolation. - -For beautiful it was—even as a ruin. There had been but little fighting -at Beaucourt; it had been taken and passed, retaken and passed again, -and yet Brent could see that there was hardly a whole roof left in the -village. The church had lost half its steeple, and through the windows -of the château the purple of the woods showed like a curtain. Beaucourt -was a shell, a village of squared walls, gaunt gables, and a spidery web -of blackened rafters, when there were any rafters at all. Fires had -blazed here and there, and all about the church and the cross-roads the -English shells had fallen heavily. Many of the little white houses had -had the plaster shaken from the walls, and showed up as masses of -intricate timber-work, pathetically naked, mere skeletons from whose -bones the flesh had fallen. The woods had suffered but little. The -thickets of pines and spruces beyond the church stood up green and -clear. Very few shell-holes spotted the fields and orchards, nor had -Beaucourt that indescribably sordid look of a village that has become a -refuse-heap, a kitchen-midden of the war. - -Brent went down into Beaucourt with a feeling of queer suspense. He was -excited, conscious of a quickening of the heart. Some sub-conscious -emotion seemed to be stirring in him, some quite unexplainable trembling -of the deep waters of his self. It was not the mere fact that Beckett -was buried there, nor the memory of Manon’s treasure, nor yet the -vividness of that fantastic dream. It may have been that Beaucourt had -an elemental yet spiritual meaning for Brent, that it symbolized the -unexpectedness of his own past, and pointed with its broken spire to a -sky that was blue with the coming of spring. - -Beaucourt touched Brent’s heart. It was more than a ruined village; it -was a picture of a broken life, a question mark, a half-realized -opportunity. - -Brent entered it by the Rue de Rosières. The stud and plaster cottages -here were mere shells—doors, windows, woodwork and furniture gone, the -ceilings fallen in, the tiles from the roofs making a red litter on the -ground floors. Brent found himself standing in the triangle where the -Rue de Picardie, the Rue Romaine and the Rue de Rosières met. The stone -house at the corner had huge holes in its walls, and the stone-capped -well in the centre of the triangle still carried a German inscription -announcing the fact that the water was fit to drink. Brent stood and -looked at the Café de la Victoire, or rather at the ghost of it; and -pity—pity for a woman—filled his heart. - -The red roof had gone with its quaintly inquisitive dormer windows. -There were two ragged shell-holes in the front wall, and the gable ends -and chimney-stack stood out bleakly against the blue of the sky. Hardly -a shred of woodwork remained; the house was doorless, windowless. The -gates of the yard gateway had gone. A smashed lime tree hung with its -head over the wall of the garden, its boughs trailing on the raised -path. - -“What a damned shame!” said Brent. - -He had seen hundreds of ruined houses, but somehow the mutilation of -this house of Manon Latour’s affected him quite differently. - -Brent climbed on to the path and entered the café. He found that much of -the rubbish had been cleared away, and that someone had extemporized a -shelter of corrugated iron in the big kitchen and living room on the -left of the passage. He noticed, too, that the beams that had carried -the upper floor were still in their places. - -Brent put his bag down on the tiled floor. The act had a quaint -suggestiveness. He was a traveller, and the Café de la Victoire stood -with a very open doorway, offering him such hospitality as was left to -it, though there was no Manon to cook an omelette and make coffee. - -Then Brent went for a stroll. He wandered down to Beckett’s grave and -found it as a low mound of weedy earth. The broken apple tree had been -cut up and burnt. Brent stood there for some minutes, bare-headed, eyes -looking back into the past, a sturdy, square-shouldered man with a -fresh-coloured face, and a youthful moustache and beard. He looked like -a peasant,—brown, blue-eyed, thoughtful. - -Then he went back to Beaucourt. - -Beaucourt surprised him. He walked down the Rue de Picardie to the Place -de l’Eglise, and saw nothing that lived, not even a half wild cat. The -Post Office, the Hospice, and the Hôtel de Paris were respectable and -voiceless ruins. The école was a little less desolated. But Brent had -expected to find a few people in Beaucourt, a few of those indomitable -French folk who had won the war. The village lay less than ten miles -from the undevastated country, yet Beaucourt seemed to have been -side-tracked, forgotten. - -There was one live thing in Beaucourt and Brent discovered it sitting on -a fallen block of stone by the church, a grey old man, grey as the -jumble of broken buttresses and fallen pinnacles, but far more sad. He -seemed just a bit of the broken stone. Brent went and spoke to him, and -the old man looked at Brent with eyes that seemed dead. - -“Good day, monsieur. You are all alone here?” - -“Yes, I am all alone,” said the old man. - -His voice was flat—toneless and empty of all emotion. It seemed to -Brent that the old Frenchman was beyond feeling things. He sat and -munched a piece of bread; he was not interested in Brent; he was not -interested in anything. When Brent spoke to him he answered like a man -who had been mesmerized. - -“You have come back, monsieur?” - -“I walked twenty kilomètres this morning to see—that.” - -He pointed quite calmly to a little house over the way, a house that had -had its face smashed in, a house that was almost unrecognizable. Brent -felt a pang of pity, yet there was nothing to be said. - -“You stay here?” - -“No, I walk another twenty kilomètres. That has happened to many people. -Their hearts fail them when they see what has happened.” - -“I can understand.” - -“The authorities order us to go back—but can they give an old man a new -heart and strong arms? They speak of help, but no help comes. I blame -nobody; we have suffered so much.” - -“But will no one return?” - -“Oh, yes, we shall come back,” said the old man, “but we wait for the -spring to come, and for food. Our roots are here, I suppose, right under -the ruins of all those houses. But it will need courage—courage!” - -He lit his pipe, got up, and made ready for his second twelve-mile walk. -Endurance, a blind, patient, half-dazed endurance, that was what Brent -saw in him, the endurance that had saved France. It was tragic and it -was splendid, and it filled Brent with a feeling of deep humility. - -“We young men shall have to help the others,” he said. - -The Frenchman gave him a look of surprise. - -“Those are good words. But I have found it a selfish world. Perhaps it -will be a scramble. Everybody will be too busy.” - -And he left Brent to think it over. - -Paul returned to the Café de la Victoire, and it was then that he -remembered that he had not looked at the place where Manon Latour had -buried her treasure. He went out into the garden and saw the mound of -stones had not been moved. Nettles had grown up in between the stones, -and the inference was obvious. - -“She will come back,” was Brent’s thought. - -And he added: - -“Unless she is dead.” - -Brent felt hungry. He had carried a couple of empty ammunition boxes -into the kitchen, one to serve as a seat, the other as a table, when he -remembered the fact that his water-bottle was nearly empty. He went out -at once to examine the well, not liking the idea of getting his water -from the stream. The windlass, chain and bucket had been left behind, -and Brent opened the queer little iron gate in the well-house and sent -the bucket down for a sample. He heard it splash below, and felt the -suck of it as it came up full at the end of the taut chain. When he -lifted out the bucket into the sunlight he found the water looking clean -and wholesome. Brent smelt it, took some in his palm and tasted it. The -water had neither smell nor taste. - -Paul was conscious of a pleasant and boyish elation. Beaucourt made him -think of Crusoe’s Island. It was full of the adventure of finding -things; it challenged a man’s wits, promised all sorts of surprises. The -idea of trying to live in Beaucourt tickled the eternal boy in Brent. He -brought out a battered enamelled mug and plate from his bag, sat himself -down on his ammunition box, and made his first meal in Beaucourt, -tackling the inevitable corned beef and biscuits with the relish of a -clean hunger. - -Satisfied, he lit his pipe, for he still had a little tobacco left, and -carrying his box out into the doorway he sat in the sun and meditated. -His pipe tasted good; the sky was blue; he felt warm, and his boots had -kept out the mud. Even the ruins of Beaucourt had a beauty of their own, -a fantastic unexpectedness, a droll yet pathetic irregularity of -outline. These little ruined houses were very human; some had fallen in -upon themselves and stood huddled in utter dejection; others had the -staring eyes of despair; a few still seemed to be calling for help. The -village resembled a little Pompeii, to be explored and dreamed about, -and yet it differed from Pompeii in that it was potentially alive. It -struck Brent as being rather odd and delightful that he should be the -one and only inhabitant of Beaucourt, a stranger taking a holiday in -this starlit and admirably ventilated ruin. - -And then the old Frenchman’s words recurred to him: - -“We shall come back.” - -Brent’s blue eyes gave a sudden, interested gleam. He foresaw the return -of Manon Latour, and he wondered what she would think of this house of -hers, what she would make of it. - -Brent left his box, jumped down into the roadway, and began to examine -the Café de la Victoire with an intelligently reconstructive eye. There -was something of the Jude in Brent. Twelve years ago he had been a -jobbing builder, carrying on an obscure little business in a -west-country town, a man who had used the trowel and the plumb-line by -day, and read Maeterlinck, or Green’s “History of the English People” or -Montaigne’s Essays at night. Chance, rather than his own inclination, -had pushed him into bigger things, and his marriage had discovered him -seven years later as the practical partner in the exploitation of a -suburban building scheme. He had been the owner of an ambitious wife, a -car, and a very passable library, until other people’s speculative -cynicisms had brought him down with a crash. - -And now, he stood looking at this French café with the critical eyes of -a man who once had worked with his hands. - -“Yes—if I had the stuff!” - -The thought fired an extraordinary series of explosions in Brent’s -brain. He began to walk up and down with his hands in his pockets, an -excited man who glanced from time to time at the old red-walled -building, calculating, contriving. His pipe went out, but remained -gripped between his teeth. Then he re-entered the house. He wanted to -examine the inside of it, every corner of it, even the cellar. One of -his candles gave him the necessary light, and in the cellar he made a -discovery. - -Some man in the near past had been fairly comfortable here. Brent’s -candles showed him a wire bed in one corner, a rough table with some -shelves made of ammunition boxes standing against the wall, and what was -of still more luxurious significance—a rusty but sound Canadian stove -with its flue pipe connected with the little grating that opened just -above the paving of the path. The cellar was quite dry. - -“Well I’m damned!” said Brent; “here’s my new billet.” - - - - - VII - - -Brent went upstairs again, and sat down like Crusoe to consider the -situation. - -A billet in Beaucourt postulated the quest of a number of elemental -necessities. Brent tore the white wood lid off the box on which he was -sitting, produced a pencil, and began the creation of an inventory much -like an ancient scribe dabbing his cuneiform letters upon a tablet of -clay. - -At the top of the board he printed:— - - NECESSITIES - -Under this heading he wrote: - - Food. - Water. - Wood for Stove. - Kettle or Saucepan. - Basin to wash in. - -He headed the second list: - - LUXURIES - - Blankets. - A palliasse. - Furniture. - Plates and cups. - Green food. What price Scurvy - N.B. Try nettle tops. - Milk. - A looking-glass. - -So much for the paper work. Brent bored a hole in the board, using his -jack-knife, and hung his inventory to a nail on the kitchen wall. He was -going to exploit Beaucourt in a thoroughly business-like way, and he was -as full of excitement as a boy. - -Brent took the first item—food. He had noticed some sandbags on the -wire bed in the cellar, and he fetched one of them and started on the -adventure. The last troops to occupy Beaucourt had been Colonials, and -they had left Beaucourt in that open-handed, casual and spacious way of -theirs, not troubling to carry away what they would be supplied with on -the morrow. Brent began by exploring the big stone house across the road -and found nothing that was of any use to him until he poked an -inquisitive head into what had been a wash-house or scullery, a place -that was weather proof and had been used as a kitchen. Brent had struck -oil. He saw a pile of bully-beef tins in a corner, and on a shelf he -found two unopened cartons of jam and one of marmalade, a tin half full -of sugar, and two tins of Ideal Milk. - -“Blessed be all Cobbers!” - -Brent salved seventeen tins of corned beef. He carried the hoard over to -the café, and decided that the cellar was the only safe place for his -store. He made quite a game of stacking his provisions on the rough -shelves, reflecting that these shelves ought to hold books, but that -books were of no use in Beaucourt. - -He adventured out again, and tried the école in the Rue de Picardie, -glimpsing it as a fairly well-preserved place that had been patched with -corrugated iron. The école had two habitable rooms on the ground floor, -rooms that astonished Brent with a display of furniture, an old -tapestry-covered arm-chair with the stuffing bulging out of it, a -dining-room table, a wash-hand stand that had been used as a buffet, -some wooden chairs, even a picture or two. Brent began to realize the -possibilities of Beaucourt. - -But these were luxuries, and Brent was specializing in a supply of food. -The école had been an officers’ mess, and in the room that had been used -as a kitchen he found an old saucepan that looked capable of holding -water, a mess-tin, and a spoon. The spoon was the colour of lead, but -polish would have been superfluous, and Brent pocketed the spoon. In the -brick coal-house at the back of the école he salved two unopened tins of -army biscuits, and a canister full of tea. The tea was a trifle mouldy, -but Brent had an idea that he could dry it over the stove. - -The cellar of the Café de la Victoire began to look like a ration-store, -and Brent attacked the other necessaries on his list. An army pick and a -pile of ammunition boxes in the backyard provided him with unlimited -firewood; he carried armfuls of it down into the cellar and stacked it -by the stove. He had appropriated the bucket from the well, lest the -next comer should take it away. The essentials were shaping splendidly, -but Brent was too full of enthusiasm to play at lighting the stove. He -had noticed that all sorts of wreckage had been thrown into the gardens -at the backs of the houses. He had seen iron bedsteads there, the -remains of mattresses, broken crockery, rusty stoves, garden tools, -coffee grinders, old buckets, enamelled pans, and God knows what. He -went out like a rag-and-bone picker and explored those gardens. Even a -very superficial search among the weeds and rubbish sent him back with -two good plates, a cup, a wine-glass, and a pewter coffee-pot. Moreover -he had seen a couple of blankets and a ground sheet dangling in a -cottage, where they had been nailed up to keep out the draught. - -Brent carried the crockery, glass and plate to his billet, and returned -for those blankets. He had expected to find them rotten, ready to fall -to pieces when touched—but an army blanket has a toughness of fibre and -a vitality that has made it salvable when soaked in liquid mud. These -blankets were in a very fair condition, and Brent handled them with -respect and affection. An ex-soldier is not too fastidious—but Paul -decided to give the blankets a good soaking in the stream, even to use a -little of his precious soap on them, and to hang them near the stove. - -The later the hour the better the deed. He went down to the stream and -found the very place where the poorer women of Beaucourt had washed -their linen, a place where a little platform of flat stones jutted into -the water. The sun was a great red ball behind the beeches of the Bois -du Renard when Brent returned to the Café de la Victoire, lit his candle -in the cellar and prepared for a snug night. - -He hung one of the wet blankets across the cellar doorway, using the -length of telephone wire that had been left there by the previous -occupant. Then Brent made trial of the Canadian stove, and having -neither straw nor paper, he cut shavings and splinters with his -jack-knife, and contrived to get the fire alight with the expenditure of -a single match. Matches were going to be precious; he had five boxes. -The stove behaved like a gentleman, neither smoking nor sulking, but -consuming with relish the wood that Brent fed into it, and developing a -hearty and convivial glow. Paul crowned it with a saucepanful of water, -and having previously washed out the pewter coffee-pot and put a palmful -of the Australian tea into it, he opened a tin of milk with the point of -his jack-knife and sat down to watch the water boil. - -Brent enjoyed that meal more than he had enjoyed anything for a very -long time. He pulled the table up in front of the stove, and felt -completely and cheerfully at home. He had a cup to drink from, white -plates for his meat, biscuits and jam; the tea tasted good—better than -he had expected. And it was hot! - -“Some billet,” he reflected. - -The washing up could be left till the morning, and feeling warm both -within and without, he filled up the stove, lit a pipe, and considered -his new home. A soldier learns to see the beauty of comfort in some -shack that would make a civilian shiver, and to Brent this cellar of his -was quite beautiful. The rusty old stove glowed like bronze. The flame -from the candle and the glow from the hot iron lit up the white stone -vaulting of the cellar; and the well-cut stones and the neat pointing in -between them pleased the eye of a craftsman. The tea-cup, glinting -white, had little pink roses on it. The pewter coffee-pot struck a note -of luxury. Brent looked almost gloatingly at his store of food on the -shelves. He took down some of the tins of bully beef and examined them. -They were a little rusty here and there, but no sign of being “blown.” -He had tested the meat from one of them at tea. - -Again, he blessed the Australians. - -And then his thoughts turned to less material things. He began to dream, -while the smoke of his pipe drifted up towards the little grating where -the stove-pipe met the outer air. He sat with knees spread about the -stove, his body leaning forward, his hands outstretched to the warmth, a -very simple and primitive man, a man who could dream dreams. - -“Supposing I stay here?” he reflected. - -A whole world of strange possibilities opened before him. He saw himself -becoming a settler in Beaucourt, using his strength and his knowledge in -helping these French folk to rebuild their broken houses. And then he -began to wonder whether the French would accept him, and how far it -would be possible for him to play the part of a Frenchman. His accent -was passable, his fluency very fair, and he knew that he had met with no -disaster on the way from Charleroi. He had posed as a southerner, and -had trusted not a little to the vagaries of patois and provincialisms; -but settling in such a place as Beaucourt was a very different problem. -It was obvious that he could pose as a Frenchman who had been domiciled -in England for ten years, and whose accent had become anglicized. It was -equally obvious that he could produce no records and that he would have -to depend upon an amiable acceptance of his tale and an atmosphere that -included no enmity. Yet he could pack his bag and march at an hour’s -notice. He had a little money, and a workman’s craft that could keep -him. His original plan had been to wander, to go east or west as the -chance offered, to spin a yarn about shell-shock and loss of memory if -he found himself in an awkward situation. Nothing mattered so long as he -disappeared. - -Yet the adventure appealed to Brent, and Beaucourt had taken a -mysterious grip of his manhood. As he sat and stared at the reddening -stove and fed it with wood from the heap beside him, he could see the -women and children and a few men coming back to live among these ruins, -unfortunates obsessed by the tradition of “home.” He saw little Manon -Latour trudging along the road from Bonnière and standing with blank -face and hopeless eyes before this shell of a house. He saw old women -grubbing in the ruins, bent figures bowed down and trying to clean the -rubbish and the fallen beams and rafters from the floors. He saw men -working savagely at little shanties, or hammering at some extemporized -roof, and always with an eye on the sky. It would rain; it would blow. -The gardens were full of weeds and rubbish, and would need cleaning -before crops could be grown. The thing seemed almost beyond human -patience. - -What would they make of Beaucourt—these poor people? Would they have -the heart and the courage to begin life over again? - -Brent found himself becoming fascinated by the tragedy of this French -village, a tragedy that was one of the bleeding wounds in the side of -France. He was strangely yet humanly curious to see what would happen, -and more than half tempted to lend a hand in the healing of it. The job -would be a man’s job, better than punching holes in tickets, scribbling -in a ledger, or passing groceries across the counter of a shop. - -Still—it was no more than a dream, and Brent felt sleepy. - -“I wonder what will turn up,” was his thought as he took off his boots -and dragged the wire bed nearer the stove. Placing his carpet-bag to -serve as a pillow, he lay down and wrapped his greatcoat round him. - -And it was still a dream, and no more than a dream, when Brent fell -asleep. - - - - - VIII - - -The cellar of the Café de la Victoire was so snug and warm and Brent so -healthily tired after his first long day in Beaucourt that he slept till -nine o’clock, twelve sound wholesome hours. - -Someone was moving about overhead in the kitchen. A box was overturned, -and the clatter woke Brent. He sat up and listened to a sound that was -surprising and singular because of its unexpectedness, an unexpectedness -that was not without pathos. Brent sat very still, cursing the wire bed -because it creaked even when he breathed and creaked most -self-assertively. He could hear a woman weeping up above there, weeping -her heart out with a passion that broke into little exclamations of -anguish and despair: “O my little house!—what a tragedy!—What a ruin! -Nothing left, not even a door.” - -And Brent understood that Manon Latour had returned. His first sensation -was one of puzzled discomfort. He did not know whether to climb the -steps and add the embarrassment of an explanation to the tumult of her -emotion, or whether he should lie hidden until she had recovered her -self-control. Yet it seemed rather a negative piece of poltroonery for -him to sit there in the cellar listening to the sound of her weeping. -There was a nakedness about her grief that embarrassed Brent. Manon -thought herself alone; she had thrown herself upon the bosom of -Beaucourt’s solitude, and Brent felt like some Peeping Tom spying upon -her nakedness. - -In the end he did what the plain man and soldier in him wanted to do. -Too much psychology might ruin any love affair; in life it is the -emotions that matter. Brent went up the stone steps in his socked feet, -walked along the short passage, and stood in the kitchen doorway, -looking at Manon Latour. - -She was sitting on a box, her hands covering her face as though she were -praying, a little figure in black, a figure that was still tremulous -with emotion. A bag lay on the floor beside the box. Brent noticed her -muddy shoes, her black hat and cloak hung on a nail, and the pretty way -her dark hair was wound like a wreath about her head. She had a mass of -hair, lustrous as the surface of a freshly broken piece of coal, and its -blackness contrasted with the characteristic pallor of her face and -throat. Brent’s recollection of a year ago had left him the memory of a -brave and very determined little woman with bright, dark eyes, a little -woman who had faced him with a sang-froid that had impressed a man who -had learnt to respect one thing and one thing only—courage. And now he -saw her in tears over this wreck of a house, and her tears touched -Brent’s heart. He had a feeling that these were not the tears of a woman -who wept easily like an April sky. She was shocked, overwhelmed, -discouraged. - -“Madame!” - -Her hands dropped from her face. She looked at Brent with eyes that -accepted him as a Frenchman who had happened to wander in, another -homeless soul lost in the ruins of Beaucourt. - -“Good day, monsieur. It is a pleasant home-coming, is it not?—Perhaps -one expects too much!” - -She gave a little twitch of the shoulders. - -“It appears that I have no chair to offer a visitor. My café has plenty -of fresh air, but no furniture.” - -Brent had felt instantly that the house was hers, and that he had no -right to be in it; his sense of ownership vanished; the cellar had -ceased to be his billet. He stood with one shoulder resting against the -wall, considering the situation, while Manon was trying to remember him -as some neighbour whose face had been part of the familiar life of -Beaucourt. She saw a man in velveteen breeches and a black coat, with a -dark blue scarf knotted round his neck, a man with a ruddy and rather -delicate skin, a short brown beard, and a small moustache. His eyes were -of that soft but intense blue that belonged to the north and the open -air; intelligent eyes set well apart under a square forehead. He had a -good-tempered, easy mouth. It was the face of an incomplex man, -whimsical, a little sad. There was nothing distinctive about him, he was -like thousands of other men, neither tall nor short, a very ordinary -person, save perhaps for his eyes. They were a little unusual—less -stupid and self-absorbed than the eyes of most men. There was something -in them that appealed to the woman. - -Manon did not recognize Brent. - -“I am trying to remember you, monsieur.” - -“I do not belong to Beaucourt.” - -She noticed that he was without boots, and again she was puzzled, for -his socks were clean. Either he had been in the house all the while, or -he had left his boots on the doorstep. Brent saw that she was looking at -his feet, and that she was puzzled. - -“I spent the night in your cellar, madame, and my boots are down there.” - -“How droll! I seem to have seen you before.” - -“It was about a year ago.” - -She was interested, challenged. - -“Was it here?” - -“Yes, here in Beaucourt.” - -And then he put his head back and smiled. - -“It is still there; the ground has not been touched.” - -She stared. Her eyes changed from a deep brown to black; her face grew -more serious, and seemed to show little shadow-marks under the eyes and -about the mouth. She stood up, came a step nearer, and looked Brent -straight in the face. - -“Of what do you speak?” - -“The treasure that you buried in the garden.” - -He saw her face as a hard, white surface, and her eyes as two hard, -black circles. - -“But—who are you? It was an English soldier.” - -“I was that English soldier, madame. Shall I prove it?” - -“Yes.” - -He went and groped in the cellar for his boots, and sitting on the top -step, laced them on, while Manon Latour waited in the passage. A little -widow who has kept a café, and has had half the men in the village in -love with her, cannot but know something of man and of the very obvious -habits of the creature. Also, a pretty woman who has a head on her -shoulders is apt to get very bored with the perennial fools. They all -tell the same tale; they all want the same reward. Manon had grown -fastidious. - -But this man puzzled her from the very beginning. What was he doing in -French clothes, and why had he come back to Beaucourt? She chose the -direct method, and asked him the reason. - -Brent was knotting the lace of his left boot. He looked up over his -shoulder and smiled. - -“I had a dream——” - -He saw that she was quite unconvinced. - -“Why does one do certain things? Have you a reason for everything? My -friend was buried here, that’s all.” - -He got up and went out into the yard, and Manon followed him. Brent -turned into the garden through the gate in the stone wall, and walked -along the weedy path between the currant bushes and the dead stalks of -last year’s cabbages. He stopped at the place where the shell had -punched a hole through the wall, and where the stones lay scattered. - -“Is the place as you remember it?” - -Her eyes were still intensely black, her forehead worried. - -“No.” - -“And the difference?” - -“The place was here—just in front of the stump of that old espalier. -There was nothing but earth and weeds. No stones.” - -“I put the stones there,” said Brent. - -She gave him a quick gleam of the eyes. - -“You?” - -“Yes, after you had gone. I thought the thing would look more natural. -Then I went to bury my friend. After that—I was taken prisoner.” - -She remained calm, judicial, compelling herself to a cool realization of -the fact that this man had kept faith with her, if all that she had -buried there was under the soil. And then, another thought prompted her -to ask him a question. - -“You say, monsieur, that you came back to see the grave of your friend?” - -She was aware of Brent’s blue eyes lighting up with a flicker of -shrewdness and humour. - -“No, I did not come back to rob you.” - -“I had not accused you of that.” - -“If the thought was there, it was natural.” - -She felt ashamed of having asked him that question, and her face -softened. - -“It is all so strange. You come back as a Frenchman, and in French -clothes.” - -“That’s of no importance,” he said; “there is only one thing that -matters at this moment—the proof that I did not rob you.” - -“But—wait——” - -She caught his arm as he turned to fetch a rusty spade he had seen lying -among the rubbish in the yard. - -“Supposing someone else had found it—and taken it away?” - -“Then you would disbelieve me?” - -She thought a moment. - -“No.” - -Brent went for the spade, threw the stones aside and began to dig. Manon -did not move or offer to help. She stood and watched him, conscious of -the sudden and peculiar intimacy that was joining her to this unexpected -man. She was convinced that he had told her the truth. - -Brent had opened a hole about a foot deep. - -“Be careful,” she said suddenly; “the silver is in a big crock. You -might strike it with a spade.” - -Brent’s blue eyes flashed her a look of gratitude. She had thrown him a -“Hail, comrade,” uttered one of those little, human confessions of faith -that warm a man’s heart. She wanted him to understand that she believed -in him, and that he should understand it before the spade turned up the -truth. Brent treasured these words. They touched the pride of a man who -had been a failure. - -“How deep did you dig?” he asked. - -“About half a metre—I had so little time.” - -Brent thrust the spade softly into the soil and felt it jar on something -solid. He glanced at Manon with an air of triumph. - -“It is there.” - -She looked down into the hole and then at Brent. - -“You are a man of your word, monsieur. I thank you.” - -Brent spaded out a little more of the soil, and then went on his hands -and knees and began to grope in the hole. First he lifted out a big -crock that was full of loose silver, one-franc, two-franc, and -five-franc pieces. Below the crock lay a tin trunk painted a yellowish -brown. Only a portion of the lid showed—the place where the crock had -stood; the rest was covered with earth. - -He looked questioningly at Manon Latour. - -“Let it stay there,” she said. - -And then she laughed. - -“You will be thinking me a miser, monsieur, but all that belonged to my -husband who is dead.” - -“Shall I put the silver back in the same place?” - -“Yes,—put it back, if you please, monsieur. That hole will make the -safest bank I can think of.” - -“I suppose there is no one watching us?” said Brent, feeling strangely -happy at being included in the conspiracy. - -She looked round the garden, remembering that it was hidden on three -sides by its high stone wall. - -“It is not likely. I saw no one in Beaucourt.” - -Brent replaced the crock, and shovelled back the earth, and Manon helped -him to pile the stones over the spot. She appeared to be thinking, but -her silence was without embarrassment or constraint. Her face had become -the face of a serious child, a child who was neither afraid nor unhappy. - -“How is it you speak French so well?” she asked him with a child’s -abruptness. - -“A Frenchman taught me, while I was a prisoner.” - -She nodded, and the nod seemed to suggest that she understood that he -had reasons, but that she was not worrying her head about them. - -“Tiens! but I am hungry—I had my cup of coffee and a slice of bread at -four. Since then I have walked from Ste. Claire.” - -Brent threw on a last stone. There was a healthy zest in the way she -spoke of her hunger. - -“And Paul has not had even that,” he said; “but your house has a -store-room and a larder.” - -“Then it is a miracle,” she answered. - -“Come and see the miracle. It is right that you should take possession.” - - - - - IX - - -So these two went back to the battered old red house with the patches of -white plaster still hanging to the walls of its rooms, and the blue -February sky showing where its roof should have been. The window of the -kitchen looked along the Rue de Picardie and all the broken and jagged -outlines of the village, etched with black rafters and the rawness of -fractured brick. The snapped spire of the church was the colour of -amethyst. White clouds floated above the beeches of the Bois du Renard. - -Manon lingered for a moment at this window, her hands clenched, -something between pity and anger in her eyes. Beaucourt mattered to the -little Frenchwoman in a way that no restless dweller in cities could -understand. It had formed the background of her memories, a quiet place -where she had made a little song of the day’s work, a place where life -had been rich in the emotions that are her religion to a woman. She had -been proud of her café, proud of her linen, of her garden. Her happiness -had made Beaucourt what no other place in the world could be to her. As -the old Frenchman had put it, “The roots of life were deep down under -the ruins.” - -There were other memories, perhaps, thoughts that left a sour taste in -her mouth, but Manon was thinking of the happier days. She had forgotten -Brent, forgotten her hunger, as she stood looking out upon the ruins; -and Brent waited like a man in the doorway of a church, some sanctuary -that he had not the right to enter, feeling her at her prayers, wise -enough not to disturb her. Her sadness was like a sweet smell of incense -and the soft obscurity of some shrine. She was no mere material -woman,—just a pretty, white-skinned, dark-eyed creature, with a -beautiful bosom and a soft throat. Manon Latour had a soul, a little -white fire burning in her heart. That was what Brent felt about her, the -Brent who asked for those dear moments of mystery in a woman, for the -flash of that spiritual fineness that can fill the eyes with a mist of -tears. He did not want money; he craved for self-expression,—the simple -human things, nearness to someone who was a little better than himself. - -Manon’s lingering at the gap in the wall that had been a window lasted -but a few seconds. She turned to Brent with a soft animation that played -like sunlight across the deeps of her seriousness. - -“Forgive me, Monsieur Paul.” - -He smiled and handed her a box of matches. - -“You will find a candle down there, and all that you need. I’m afraid I -have not lit the stove.” - -Her eyes seemed to question him. “Is it that you are wiser and a little -more sensitive than other men? You can hold back.” - -She went out into the passage, and Brent took her place at the window, -lounging in the sunlight with his hands in his pockets, and recasting -the metal of his vision. For a few short hours life had seemed solid and -real, centred in that cellar in ruined Beaucourt, a life of quaint -adventure, a boyish game played with the elements of existence as the -counters. All this had changed with the return of Manon Latour. Brent -felt himself adrift—on the edge again of a casual vagabondage. He was -surrendering that cellar and all that it contained, food, shelter, even -the vague inspiration that had been born in it. He saw himself packing -his bag and marching. - -“Monsieur.” - -He had been so absorbed in these thoughts that he had not heard her -re-enter the kitchen. He was struck by her seriousness. She, too, had -been thinking. - -“How long have you been in Beaucourt?” - -“Since yesterday,” said Brent. - -She sat down on the box. - -“Since yesterday. And in my cellar I find food for many days, a bed, -plates, blankets, all that a man would think of—if——” - -She paused, looking up at him. - -“What I did yesterday will be useful to you to-day.” - -He smiled as he spoke. - -“There is the beginning of a little home for you, madame. I washed the -blankets; they have not been used since I washed them, and they will be -dry by to-night. The food was collected by me—in Beaucourt.” - -She interrupted him. - -“Then—you meant to stay in Beaucourt?” - -His face remained turned to the window, and she saw it in profile. - -“I had thought of it. Just a whim, you know, the whim of a man who was -starting life over again. By the way, the matches and the candles -belonged to me. I can leave you two boxes—and if I may take one -candle?” - -Her eyes were dark with some emotion that Brent did not fathom. - -“And where will you go?” - -He refused to look at her. - -“Oh, anywhere. It does not matter.” - -“There is nothing that does not matter. And—you want your breakfast. -Shall we have it up here in the sunlight?” - -Brent’s chin swung round. He stared. - -“Just as you please.” - -She got up. - -“I must light the stove. Or perhaps you are more clever at it than I am. -Supposing I wash those plates. I can find some more boxes and make a -table and seats here. And I have a packet of coffee in my bag.” - -“Mon Dieu!” said Brent. “Life is good. I’ll go and light that stove.” - -He went about the work like a thoroughly practical man, trying to limit -the day’s outlook to that one word “breakfast,” and refusing to see -anything sentimental in lighting a stove and boiling a saucepan of -water. - -“Anyhow, I shall start the day with a meal,” he said to himself; “I -wonder what she will make of this place when I have gone?” - -But Manon—the woman—kept intruding herself upon Brent’s prosaic -philosophy. - -“Mon ami—I want more water, and there is no bucket.” - -Brent went upstairs with the bucket and filled it at the well. - -“We ought to have a cistern,” she said when he returned; “it would save -so much trouble.” - -Brent was conscious of a shock of surprise. She seemed to be thinking in -twos, while he was carefully limiting the future to one. But then—Brent -knew very little about women. He had not learnt to divide the sex into -its two groups, the woman who can be bought, and the woman who cannot. -The woman who can be bought had always thought Brent a fool, because he -had made a mystery where no mystery existed. Brent was an incorrigible -romanticist, and your material woman detests romance. She suffers it in -novels, but finds the thing a damnable nuisance when it comes gesturing -and dreaming and getting itself mixed up with the very obvious furniture -of her very obvious little life. The woman who could not be bought -understood Brent at once. She was ready to trust him—but that did not -help Brent to understand Manon Latour. - -Manon had contrived a table and two seats in the kitchen, and had spread -a clean handkerchief with a pink border to give a touch of feminine -refinement to the deal box that formed the table. That handkerchief -fascinated Brent. He stood staring at it while she was down below making -the coffee. He supposed that she had taken that bit of pink and white -stuff out of her bag. It was one of those little touches of colour, of -imagination, that are like the opening of a flower, or the voice of a -bird when the leaves are still in bud upon the trees. - -Then he heard her calling him. She had one of those pleasant, animated -French voices, soft and expressive, a voice that was made to chatter -happily about a house. - -“Mon ami—will you help?” - -He met her on the stairs. - -“The candle is burning out, and I do not know where to find another. -Besides—they are so expensive; we must use more daylight. Be -careful—it is very hot.” - -She gave him the pewter coffee-pot, and was ready to follow with the -rest of the meal. And she had a surprise for Brent—a little pat of -fresh butter laid out on a rice-paper serviette. - -“Allons!” - -They sat down at the table, with the blue sky for a roof. The day was -warm, a day that heartened the world with a breath of the spring, and -the coffee was fragrant, exquisite. Brent spread some of the fresh -butter on a biscuit, and looked vaguely sad. - -“It is very pleasant here,” he said. - -Manon was cutting herself a slice of bully beef. - -“What children we are! And a child is the most inquisitive thing in the -world.” - -He gave her a sudden, yet shy look. - -“Are you inquisitive?” - -“Well, of course. But I do not catechize a friend.” - -Brent gulped a mouthful of hot coffee, put the cup down, and stared at -the pink and white handkerchief in the middle of the table. - -“I would like to think I was that.” - -She understood his hesitation and kept silent. Brent was still staring, -the fingers of his right hand holding the cup. - -“I am supposed to be dead,” he said with a kind of unwilling abruptness. - -Manon put a slice of corned beef upon his plate. - -“A good man has reasons.” - -He raised his eyes to hers. - -“A good man?—Well—perhaps! You see—I made a mess of life over there -in England. I do not mean to go back.” - -Manon’s eyes held his. - -“You wish to become a Frenchman?” - -Brent smiled one of those human and half-whimsical smiles. - -“Perhaps—I want to make a fresh start. I’m not the sort of man who -makes money; I’m too easy-going. I have always liked the things that you -can’t buy.” - -“I know what you mean,” said Manon. “One can’t buy happiness, can one?” - -Brent’s eyes lit up. - -“Now—how did you find that out?” - -“I don’t think I ever found it out, mon ami. It’s the sort of thing I -always knew. I suppose my mother gave it me. And yet, half the world -never finds it out, and dies grumbling.” - -Brent looked at her as though he had discovered a miracle. - -“Extraordinary!—I always knew it—somehow, but the people I happened to -live with did not believe in that sort of foolishness. I suppose my wife -was an unhappy woman; she was always wanting something she had not got -and she was always wanting the wrong thing—something that meant money. -Well, of course, it fell on me.” - -She gave him a look that was like a sympathetic caress. - -“What a fool! And so——?” - -“I smashed. Then, of course, she hated me. I was a failure—according to -her ideas. If I had had a little pity, I might have got up again; but I -did not get any pity. A man does like to have his head stroked, you -know. Then the war came, and I got away.” - -He drank his coffee and Manon refilled his cup. - -“How did you manage it?” she asked. - -“Manage what?” - -“To be dead.” - -He looked a little embarrassed, and then he told her. - -“When my friend was killed down there in the orchard, I had an idea, an -inspiration. He had no wife or children, no one who cared. So I buried -myself in his grave, and took his name. It was so simple. I wanted to -disappear, and to begin life over again.” - -She was silent for a while, and her eyes seemed to be looking at a -picture—a picture of this Englishman’s life. Her silence troubled -Brent. He began to fidget. - -“Perhaps it was a coward’s trick,” he suggested; “what do you think?” - -“It is not easy to judge.” - -Manon sat very still—realizing that he was in earnest. - -“So you have turned Frenchman?” - -He gave her a shy look. - -“I managed to buy these clothes in Belgium, and then I disappeared. Paul -Brent died a year ago, and if they look for Tom Beckett, my friend, -well—they will never find him. If necessary, I am a Frenchman who is a -little touched in the head. I have forgotten things. All my people are -lost or dead; that happened in some village—early in the war. I’m just -Paul—a vagabond. If people ask too many questions I just smile and -shrug my shoulders.” - -“But—all that—will lead to nothing,” she said gravely; “a dog’s life. -I think you had some other purpose in your mind—and you are hiding it -from me.” - -“I have shown you the vagabond, madame, and a vagabond has no rights, no -claims upon anybody.” - -“Mon ami,” she said, “many men would say that you were a fool to trust a -woman. You shall not regret it. When I look at these ruins I feel that -the lives of all of us will have to begin over again.” - - - - - X - - -Brent’s day had begun with Manon’s tears, and those tears of hers and -the incident of the untouched treasure had produced in both of them an -atmosphere of emotional candour. Brent’s confession had grown out of the -emotion that the misfortunes of Manon Latour had roused in him, and the -tale that he had told her made her glimpse him as a sort of lost child, -a man who was better than his past. She believed that he had told her -the truth. His plan to begin life over again was so naïve, so whimsical, -and so sad, that it moved her pity and made her wonder whether something -more significant than chance had not brought Brent to Beaucourt. - -She saw that he was making ready to go. He had the restless air of a man -who was girding his loins for the road and preparing to shoulder his -bag. She felt that he was sad over it, and that he was not so greatly in -love with the vagabond life of which he spoke so lightly. She thought -that Brent had neither the eyes nor the mouth of a wanderer. She could -fancy him loving a corner by the fire, a bit of garden to dig in, the -smell of a stable, a glass of wine on a summer evening, someone to whom -he could talk, someone who did not listen to him because he was a -stranger. She did not forget the corner he had made for himself in the -cellar. A man who collects cups and plates and lays a store of food has -not the heart of an Ishmaelite. - -The meal was over and they were sitting there in silence, very conscious -of each other and of the elemental and simple needs that had made -comrades of them for an hour. Brent was filling his pipe. He looked -vaguely dejected, and she noticed this all the more because he was -making a business of trading in cheerfulness. Brent was a bad salesman. - -Manon pulled out a gold watch, a watch that she wore under her blouse -like a locket. - -“Eleven o’clock!” - -Brent straightened with uneasy self-consciousness; he felt that he ought -to be on the road. Manon had put her watch back, and she appeared to -have forgotten Brent—though she was thinking of him all the while with -a shrewdness that considered everything. If Manon had a heart, she also -had a head. - -“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I shall stay here to-night.” - -“The cellar is quite dry.” - -“That long walk frightens me. It is seventeen kilomètres to Ste. -Claire.” - -“Too far,” said Brent with grim cheerfulness; “you will be quite -comfortable here. Those blankets should be dry—and I’ll cut you some -more wood before I go.” - -She ignored those last words of his, and stood up, pushing back the box -on which she had been sitting. - -“I want to look again at all my little property. Will you come with me?” - -Brent glanced at her in surprise. - -“Of course.” - -He rose and stood waiting while she took her cloak from the nail and -flung it over her shoulders. And suddenly he saw her as a lonely little -figure, a woman left sitting alone in this ruined house, and the man in -him rebelled. He pictured her helplessness, the impossible struggle she -would be carrying on against Nature, and perhaps against men. He -understood that life in Beaucourt would be very primitive, and it was -possible that it might be cruel. There were all the elements of a savage -struggle for existence among these rubbish heaps that had been houses. - -“I am ready.” - -She gave him a flicker of her brown eyes, eyes that were on the verge of -tears. He saw her bite her lower lip, and stiffen her shoulders as they -went out into the street and stood there together looking up at the red -shell of the house. A little furrow of pain, pain that was being fought -and suppressed, showed on Manon’s forehead. - -“Ma pauvre petite maison!” - -Brent knew now that he wanted to stay in Beaucourt, that there was work -here, work fit for a man’s hands. - -“The walls are good,” he said; “they will stand.” - -“But what can I do with bare walls, mon ami?” - -She turned and walked into the yard, passing between the stone pillars -that had lost their gates. The yard was full of the cosmopolitan rubbish -that war creates, the elements of a civilized home reduced to one common -scrap-heap. The stable had lost its roof. The little barn and the -cow-house were mere timber frames from which the tiles and the plaster -had fallen. Manon stood and looked at it all, and her mouth quivered. - -“You see,” she said with a helpless gesture of the hands; “what is a -woman to do?” - -They passed on into the garden, and the garden did not despair. It had -one great wound, a huge shell-hole in its centre, a pit into which the -Germans had pitched their refuse, but an hour or two’s work with a spade -would heal all that. The two holes in the stone wall needed stopping, -and the espaliers cried out for the pruning knife, but as for the weeds, -well they would make green manure. Manon and Paul wandered down into the -orchard, climbing through the shell-hole in the wall, and here too -Nature had a smile of promise, a promise of green growth that nothing -could hinder or dismay. - -Manon saw Beckett’s grave and glanced at Brent. - -“Yes,—I lie there,” he said; “queer, isn’t it?” - -“Was he a good man—your comrade?” - -“He was a better man as a soldier than I was. That’s all I care to -remember.” - -She turned back into the garden, and her heart failed her as she looked -at the roofless house. There had been an arbour in the garden at the end -of the little avenue of pollarded limes, and Manon’s memories led her -there. The iron frame was unbroken, rambled over by a hardy vine and -some climbing roses,—a round iron table standing in the centre, with a -semi-circular green bench at the back of it. People had forgotten to -break up the wooden bench for firewood. - -Manon sat down, and looked up at Brent, who was knocking the bowl of his -pipe against the edge of the iron table. His face was -serious—overshadowed. - -“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I think that I am ruined.” - -Brent glanced at her, and her eyes hurt him. He sat down on an end of -the bench. - -“I can understand,” he said; “it’s—it’s damnable.” - -She began to talk with an air of pathetic candour. - -“You see—my life lies here; the place is part of my heart. I have the -blood of peasants in me, and all the time I think of the past. This -morning I did not know what I should find here; I had such hopes, such -an excitement of tenderness. And look at the poor place!” - -She seemed to be touching something with gentle and caressing hands. - -“What can a woman do? I have a little money, but all the others will be -too busy to help. I shall not be able to hire labour. And even if my -hands were the hands of a man I should not know where or how to begin.” - -Brent had the stem of his empty pipe gripped between his teeth. He was -staring at the house; and suddenly he turned to Manon. - -“I am going to speak out. I shall not hurt you.” - -“I am not afraid,” she said simply. - -“Do you remember my telling you that I had had a dream? It happened at -Peronne, only a few days ago. My dead friend who is over there came and -spoke to me—we were here in this garden—but I could not understand -what he said. When I woke up I had a feeling that I should come to -Beaucourt, that it was my business to come to Beaucourt. And last night -as I sat in that cellar of yours, I began to wonder whether some wise -spirit had not sent me here. I want work, a new chance, something to -make me feel a man. That’s how it happened; just like that.” - -“I can believe it,” she said. - -He went on, not looking at her, but staring at the ground: - -“I told you I wanted to make a fresh start. Why should I go any farther? -I have a little money, and one will want but little in Beaucourt to -begin with—just food and boots and a little tobacco. Why shouldn’t I -stay and rebuild your house?” - -She was looking at him with her brown eyes wide open, softly, and with a -kind of gentle incredulity. - -“Mon ami, it is a beautiful thought; but it is not possible.” - -She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten. - -“You mean that it is impossible for me to stay here?” - -“No, no! But how can you put a roof on my house? Where are the wood and -the tiles to come from? Besides——” - -He began to smile. - -“It could be done.” - -“But—you are dreaming?” - -“I’m very wide awake,” he said, “and I say that it could be done. You -have not seen as much of Beaucourt as I have. There are army huts over -there—a little knocked about—but I could get enough timber and -corrugated iron out of them to do the job. You see—ten years ago I was -building houses with my own hands.” - -“Are you serious?” - -“I was never more serious in my life.” - -Manon leant forward over the table, one hand shading her eyes and a -faint flush showing upon her face. The forefinger of her right hand -traced crosses and circles on the top of the iron table. She began to -speak, hesitated, and fell back into silence. The colour died away from -her face; she became very pale, so pale that even her red lips looked -blanched. The very intensity of her emotion broke in a storm of fierce -sincerity. She turned on Brent and attacked him. - -“What is it that you want?” - -And Brent did not flinch. - -“I have told you. Work—a new chance—a man’s chance.” - -She gave a flick of the head. - -“Oh, I know men! They do not do things for nothing. Let us have no -misunderstanding. I have nothing to give but a little money.” - -Brent faced it out as he had faced many a bloody ten minutes. He was a -little grim, but very gentle; and all his sympathies were with Manon. - -“Now we are down to the foundations,” he said; “you have cleared all the -rubbish away. You can hit out at me; it doesn’t hurt—because you are -being honest, and I’m not a cad. I don’t want your money. I don’t expect -anything. I don’t say that I shouldn’t fall in love with you if I stayed -here—but even if I did, it wouldn’t be the sort of love that makes a -man behave like a beast. That’s all I have to say.” - -She smiled; her colour returned; her lips and her eyes softened. - -“Somehow I believe you,” she said, “though I could not tell you why. And -yet—what would you get out of such a life, what would it lead to—for -you?” - -Brent leant over towards her. - -“Manon,” he said, “can you understand a man who has been a failure -wanting to do something that is good and unselfish? Can’t you understand -him craving for a clean taste of life in his mouth?” - -“I can understand it,” she answered. - -“Good God—do we always sit down and work out a sum on paper? Aren’t -there bits of fine madness in life—glorious things that seem mad to the -careful people?” - -She held out a hand. - -“My friend, forgive me; but I have been a woman to whom many men have -made love. The fools do it so easily and they expect a woman to be -flattered and to surrender just as one opens a door.” - -Brent grasped her hand. - -“Then—I may stay?” - -“Yes.” - -He threw up his head with an air of pride, and a flash of half-boyish -exultation. - -“That’s great of you—great. You are giving me my chance. Let’s go and -look at the house; let’s get at it—at once. I want to take my coat -off.” - - - - - XI - - -From that moment they were like children carried away by the excitement -of the adventure. The droop had gone from Manon’s eyelids. She glowed, -she laughed, she chattered, her brown eyes alight, her heart full of the -spirit of romance. - -“What an adventure!” - -“A very devil of an adventure,” said Brent. “I feel man enough to tackle -the pyramids.” - -She laughed and laid hold of his hand. - -“I shall call you Paul,” she said, “and you can call me Manon. Now, we -must not be in a hurry; we must consider everything—like wise people.” - -“Heads first, hands afterwards. Let us go and look at the house, and get -our plans on paper.” - -He carried the two boxes down into the street, while Manon searched in -her handbag for something. She joined him on the strip of grey pavé -between the wrecked houses, a note-book in one hand, a pencil in the -other. - -“You see I have a head.” - -Brent smiled like a boy. - -“Trust a Frenchwoman to be practical! Just what I wanted. Now then.” - -They sat down side by side in the open street, with the February -sunlight shining on them, and the silence of Beaucourt unbroken save by -their two voices. Brent had the note-book open on his knee, and he was -looking critically at the house. - -“Now then, let’s be obvious. What do you see?” - -Her intense and glowing seriousness delighted him. It was like playing a -game with a charming child. - -“I see no roof,” she said. - -“Exactly. That’s the most obvious thing. Let’s start with that. A roof -means timber, corrugated iron, nails, a saw, a hammer, a jemmy or iron -bar for getting the stuff. That’s bedrock. I’ll make notes of all -these—under the word ‘Roof.’” - -She looked over his shoulder while he wrote. - -“How pleasant it looks on paper. We must find all that we can in -Beaucourt. Can we not go now, at once?” - -He turned and looked at her with eyes that laughed. - -“Who was it said that we must not be in a hurry?” - -“But I’m so excited.” - -“Keep cool. Now, what next?” - -“I see two holes in the wall, one just under where the roof was, the -other on the right of the window of the public room.” - -“We have to fill up those holes before we start the roof. That means -lime, sand, bricks, and a bricklayer’s trowel. I write them down.” - -“But can you lay bricks?” - -“Yes.” - -“What a wonderful man!” - -“Now then—where the devil are we to get lime and sand?” - -“Ah, where?” - -She sat with her head slightly on one side, exquisitely solemn, -frowning. - -“The factory! There used to be sand at the factory. And bricks—they are -everywhere. But lime? O mon Dieu!” - -“We’ll manage somehow,” said Brent, “even if I have to use mud and -straw. Plenty of straw in the old palliasses lying about. What next?” - -“No doors.” - -“A carpenter’s job.” - -“No windows.” - -“H’m,” said Brent reflectively, “I wonder if there is a dump anywhere -about here. Oiled linen? Yes. I don’t mind what I thieve.” - -She laughed. - -“What morals! But—I like it. Oh, what an adventure—what life!” - -Brent was making notes, and Manon pulled out her watch; its hands stood -at five minutes past twelve. There was dinner to be remembered; she -would be responsible for these household necessities, while her man -worked, but Manon was too excited to think of eating. She wanted to -explore Beaucourt, to discover all the wonderful things they needed, -stacks of timber, mountains of corrugated iron. The iron would look -horrible after the old red-brown tiles, but Manon reminded herself that -it could be painted and that it would be the first whole roof in -Beaucourt. - -“Are you hungry, mon ami?” - -“Not a bit.” - -“I want to explore.” - -He put the note-book away, and they started out on their first voyage of -discovery. Brent turned down into the Rosières road and through a stone -gateway into a grass field. He remembered having noticed half a dozen -army huts standing in this field, and he rediscovered them with Manon on -that February morning. There were six of these huts, and three of them -were in very fair condition; one had been wrecked by a shell, and the -other two damaged by splinters. There were doors to be had for the -unscrewing of the hinges, window-frames also, though the oiled linen had -been blown to ribbons. - -Brent went through the huts, examining the rafters and the condition of -the timber framing. He paced the floor of one of them to find its width, -and then stood looking at Manon. - -“Here is our roof.” - -“Is there enough?” - -“Enough in these six huts to roof half a dozen houses. And I think I can -use these rafters.” - -“I shall help,” she said; “I shall work like a man.” - -Brent found a single wire bed in one of the huts. He put it on his back, -and dropped it outside the café as they repassed it on their way into -the village. - -“I can rig that up somewhere. There is the shelter in the kitchen.” - -She looked horrified. - -“But you cannot sleep there.” - -“Why not?” - -“You will be frozen.” - -Brent laughed. - -“I was a soldier for four years. It will be better than the fire-step of -a freezing trench. Now—what about this factory?” - -As they walked along the little Rue Romaine, Brent discovered another -Manon, a Manon who kept stopping to look at some wreck of a house, a -Manon whose brown eyes were full of pity. She forgot the Café de la -Victoire for a moment and lost herself in the tragedy of these obscure -little cottages, and in looking through their broken nakedness at the -weedy gardens that showed behind them. Rain had pulped the fallen -plaster. There was a darkness, a slime about these ruins, a sense of -pollution. Manon’s face seemed to have aged. The irresponsible buoyancy -had disappeared from the adventure and she left the childhood of the day -behind her in passing through the Rue Romaine. - -“O mon ami, my heart bleeds.” - -She passed in front of a cottage in which a picture of the Sacré Cœur -still hung from a wall that had not fallen. “Grandmère Vitry lived here. -Do you see the picture—and the tiled floor all covered with rubbish? -She was so proud of her cottage—and whenever I looked in, Grandmère -seemed to be polishing that floor.” - -She walked on a few steps and then paused again. Her face was serious, -compassionate, troubled. - -“I seem to have been thinking of myself and of no one else. Do you think -me very selfish, Paul?” - -Her eyes appealed to him. - -“I am troubled. I begin to ask myself, ‘Ought we to pull down those -buildings—where people might shelter? Is it fair to snatch things for -ourselves, when others will need them?’” - -Her sudden sensitive hesitation touched Brent. He was being shown -another Manon who thought of others as well as of herself. Brent’s heart -had gone hungry for many years, craving that spiritual food without -which no true man can be happy, and in the hands of this little -Frenchwoman he seemed to see the bread and wine of the great human -sacrament. - -“Let us think it over,” he said. - -He lit his pipe, and stood silent for a moment as though he was trying -to visualize Beaucourt and all that Beaucourt suggested. The war had -taught Brent to reduce life to its elemental facts. He had seen men do -incredibly selfish things, and incredibly generous things. In attacking -it had been necessary to keep your eyes and your mind on the objective, -on some shell-smashed bit of trench that had to be taken—and held. You -did not stop to look at the red poppies growing among the weeds. - -“How many people were there in Beaucourt before the war?” - -“How many? Perhaps two thousand.” - -“And how many houses?” - -“I can’t say—three hundred?” - -“And all—without whole roofs. If we shared out the iron on these huts, -each house might claim three or four pieces. There would be no sense in -it. Besides—I will try to get all that we want from the huts that have -been damaged.” - -They stood there for a while, arguing the ethics of the adventure—nor -did Brent find Manon easy to convince. He liked her none the less for -that. She stood out against herself with a sturdiness and a courage that -searched relentlessly for some sure inspiration that could satisfy the -religious heart of a woman. - -It was Brent who found it. - -“Listen,” he said; “I will tell you something that happened to my -comrade who lies in your orchard. It was in an attack on the ruins of a -village. We were being smashed to bits as we went up the hill; the men -faltered and began to lie down. My comrade went on. We saw him climb up -on a bit of wall and sit there. He lit his pipe, and waved his steel hat -at us. We got up and went on.” - -His face lit up over that grim bit of courage. - -“I can see it all,” she said. - -“Well—we have got to be like that. We shall be the first up the hill. -Perhaps the others will be dismayed, ready to despair. We shall be on -our bit of wall, and we shall wave them on, and shout—‘Courage!’” - -“That is true.” - -And then he saw the light of vision in her eyes. - -“And we can help, mon ami, we can help. I see it—now—and my heart is -happy. Allons! There is courage in what we do.” - -The factory was a red brick building on the south of the Rue de -Bonnière, where the Rue Romaine joined it. Standing in the valley, its -chimney and ziz-zag of walls were not part of Beaucourt as the Café de -la Victoire saw it, the Arcadian Beaucourt with none of the grimy sweat -of industrialism upon it. Yet the factory was to prove a treasure mine -to Paul and Manon. Its glass roofs were shattered, and the machinery a -chaos of rusty iron, but lying as it did, well away from the Beaucourt -cross-roads, it had suffered less than any other building. - -The very first thing that Brent saw in the factory yard was an iron -hand-barrow tilted against a wall. - -“Hallo! Here’s luck.” - -He got hold of the barrow and found that it was sound and strong. A -piece of shrapnel had torn a hole in the bottom—just for “drainage” as -Brent put it. He was quite exulted over this stroke of luck. - -Manon was watching him with a glimmer of light in her eyes. She had -begun to like this man with his boy’s moods of seriousness and fun, his -moments of shyness and enthusiasm. - -“It is a little present from le bon Dieu.” - -“For two good children. Now, supposing you take all those buildings over -there, while I go through the workshops. It will save time. You know -what to look for?” - -She repeated the list. - -“Lime, sand, a trowel—tools, anything that looks useful.” - -“By George—I had forgotten something. What is ladder in French? -Something you climb up, see?” - -He made a show of climbing a ladder, and Manon understood. - -“Echelle! Of course!” - -Brent left her to go on her own voyage of discovery and made his way -into the factory. The tiled floor was littered with broken glass that -crisped and crackled under Brent’s feet. Here and there a girder had -fallen and the place looked as though a Zeppelin had plunged through the -roof and was rusting in a tangled mass of complex metal work. Brent saw -nothing here but scrap-iron. He walked through a doorway, and found -himself in what had been an engineer’s shop. - -The opportune and heaven-blessed discoveries of the Swiss Family -Robinson were not more singular than Brent’s adventure in that -engineer’s shop. The indefatigable Boche appeared to have used the place -as a workshop and then left in a hurry, and the British troops who had -followed had passed through with equal speed. Luckily no Chinese had -been sent to clear up the village, and Brent was the first salvage man -on the spot. He collected a couple of hammers, a wrench, a tommy-bar, -two cold chisels, a brace and a set of bits, a rusty hack-saw—a whole -bag of nails, and an assortment of bolts and nuts. He was like an -excited miser grabbing gold. In a box under one of the benches he found -a jack-plane, a pair of pincers, some files, and a gimlet. The whole -affair was so enormously successful that it seemed absurd. - -He filled a box with the precious treasure, and staggered out to meet -Manon. She, too, had rushed to meet him, a little flushed with -excitement, a blue lacquered tin of corned beef in her hand. - -“I have found a ladder. Its top is broken—but you might mend it.” - -“Great! Look here!” - -He showed her his boxful of tools. - -“O, mon Dieu!” - -“Everything I want! It’s absurd!” - -Her eyes filled with sudden seriousness. - -“Someone watches over us. It is a benediction. Let us not forget.” - -And then she showed him her blue tin. - -“There are dozens of these scattered about in the buildings. We ought to -take care of them. They may help to feed some of the others when they -come.” - -Brent’s heart blessed her. - -“No wonder we are lucky,” he said. - -They went to look at the ladder. Manon had discovered it lying behind -one of the sheds; it was a thirty-rung ladder, and Brent saw that the -right pole needed splinting about three feet from the top. - -“Just long enough,” was the verdict, “I think I’ll take this home before -anyone else borrows it.” - -He shouldered the ladder and marched off, and on his way back met Manon -trundling the barrow along the Rue Romaine. She had loaded the tools -into it, and the iron wheel was making a fine clatter over the cobbles. - -Brent took charge of the barrow. - -“I’m getting hungry,” he observed. - -“Poor Monsieur Paul.” - -She ran on ahead, and when Brent reached the café with his precious -plunder, he found that she had the table ready and had washed the -plates. The two glasses were set out, and in the middle of the table -stood a bottle of red wine. - -“Thunder, what is this?” - -“I brought this with me. We will drink the health of the adventure.” - -She poured him out a glass of wine. - -“And I have a secret.” - -“Then—keep it.” - -She laughed. - -“No secrets between comrades. There are thirty bottles of red wine, -twenty of white, and a flask of cognac buried in the garden.” - -Brent pretended to be shocked. - -“You buried them?” - -“Yes.” - -“I wonder if they are still there. The Boche had a wonderful sense of -smell.” - -“I put something to mark the place, and it has not been touched.” - -“Heavens,” said Brent, “you will be able to stock your cellar. What a -good thing it is that Paul is a sober fellow. But I should like to -remind you, madame, that we have not found that lime.” - -“Did I not tell you? I found a heap of it in the factory stable. I was -so excited about the ladder.” - -“Something very terrible is going to happen to us. We are being too -lucky.” - - - - - XII - - -After dinner they held a council of war. It was Manon who opened it, -Manon the woman, the housewife, the Queen of the Linen and the Store -Cupboard. - -“I shall go to Amiens,” she said; “will you please give me my -note-book?” - -Brent surrendered it to her, and smoked his pipe, while she sat biting -the end of the pencil, a very serious and pre-occupied little woman -whose eyes looked at the mottled and disfigured face of the stone house -over the way, and whose right hand kept jotting down notes on the paper. - -“I can hire a pony and cart at Ste. Claire. Yes, I will go to Ste. -Claire the day after to-morrow, and I shall stay away three days. There -are so many things that we shall need.” - -Brent sunned himself in the pleasant seriousness of her enthusiasm. Now -and again he was conscious of a moment of incredulity as he watched her -intent face with its soft curves and wreath of coal-black hair. Her -brown eyes seemed to be looking into the windows of the magasins of -Amiens. When she was puzzled or in doubt she tapped her white teeth with -the end of the pencil. He became aware of the fact that he himself -appeared to be the centre in the field of her vision. She looked at his -pipe—his boots, his clothes, with the critical eyes of a little mother -fitting out a boy for school. - -“Potatoes!” - -She made a note on the page. - -“I have to think of your health,” she said with wide-eyed candour; “it -is necessary for a man to have good food, a little fresh meat and -vegetables. It will be necessary for me to go marketing once a week.” - -“Then you will let me share.” - -He patted his pocket. - -She looked at him gravely and shook her head. - -“That is my affair. You work, I find the food. That is my part of the -partnership. It is quite reasonable.” - -Brent attempted to argue, but she was very determined, and she had her -way. - -“You must leave me some share, mon ami. It would be absurd if you were -responsible for everything.” - -“Now tell me. What do you require—most urgently?” - -He reflected. - -“A good saw.” - -“Yes.” - -“A dictionary.” - -“But you speak almost like a Frenchman.” - -“I haven’t all the words I want—the names of things.” - -She made a note of the dictionary. - -“Some paint and brushes. And nails—nails of all sizes. We shall eat -nails.” - -When she had completed her list she tore out the leaf and handed the -note-book back to Brent. - -“I am going to tidy the house,” she said. - -Brent had schemes of his own. He went out and paced the length and -breadth of the café, and then sat down on the steps of the stone house -and did sums on paper. He reckoned that he would need some hundred -sheets of corrugated iron if the sheets measured six feet by two feet, -and allowing for overlap. The timber for the rafters worked out at 720 -feet. Then there would be the tie-pieces and battens. He saw, too, that -it would be necessary to fit bedding-plates for the rafters to bear upon -along the tops of the walls. That was a problem that sent him wandering -through Beaucourt on another voyage of discovery. - -In an alley behind the Post Office Brent found a dump of pit-props and -railway sleepers. The sleepers were seven feet in length, well squared, -and in good condition, the very material he needed for his -bedding-plates. He spent an hour shouldering a dozen of them across to -the Café de la Victoire, and stacking them in one of the rooms on the -right of the passage. Brent was shaping his plans with a forethought -that contemplated a complete assembling of all the necessary material. -He was not fool enough to begin building before he had made sure of his -resources. - -Seeing nothing of Manon, he went to explore the Rue de Bonnière between -the Post Office and the factory. There were some biggish houses on the -north of the street, and the remains of a few shops. Brent worked -through the houses, making notes of anything that might be usefully -borrowed. In what appeared to have been the yard of a local builder of -Beaucourt, Brent found the head of a felling axe and a bricklayer’s -rusty trowel. A carpenter’s saw was the one thing he coveted, but -Beaucourt baulked him in the matter of a saw. He collected a coil of -stout telephone wire, a French shovel, and the head of a hoe; but it was -in the backyard of the last house that he made his great find. - -In one corner of the yard, an old gig with black and yellow wheels was -standing with its shafts uptilted, like a praying mantis. Dash-board and -seat were gone, and three of the spokes were broken in one wheel, but -Brent’s brain rushed to imagine the uses of such a vehicle. He got hold -of the shafts, and found that the gig could be trundled quite -successfully; it was light, and the injured wheel would function, -provided that too much was not expected of it. Brent dragged the gig out -of the yard and round into the Rue Romaine, and in the Rue Romaine he -met Manon. - -She was coming out of the ruins of Grandmère Vitry’s cottage, carrying -the picture of the Sacré Cœur. She saw Brent between the shafts of the -gig, lugging it along with an air of triumph. He pulled up—out of -breath, for he had been trundling the gig up-hill. - -“Transport,” he said; “here it is. The very thing for carting our iron -and timber.” - -Her delight was as great as his, and therein lay the secret of this -little woman’s charm. She reacted with the freshness and buoyancy of a -healthy child, and her temperamental and French expressiveness made her -an exquisite playmate. - -“But—it is a triumph! Yes, the doctor’s old gig, with the wheels that -made you think the sun was shining.” - -“I’m borrowing it,” said Brent with a wink; “I’m borrowing everything.” - -She showed him her picture. - -“I shall take care of this for Madame Vitry. It was so sad to see it -hanging there. Now then, you between the shafts pull, and I’ll push.” - -The gig went up the hill with great briskness between the laughing and -chattering pair of them. They ran it into the yard, and examined it -there with much pride, Brent explaining how he could load the timber and -iron from the huts, and run his improvised truck down the slightly -sloping Rue de Rosières. - -Manon had had triumphs of her own. She took Paul into the house with a -dramatic gesture. - -“Voilà!” - -He saw a couple of chairs, one of them the arm-chair from the école, a -real table, and upon it a collection of glass and china. There were -cups, plates, dishes, tumblers, wine-glasses, forks, spoons, even a -couple of rusty knives. A china candlestick was included. On the floor -stood a big earthenware bread-pan, a kettle, and an old tin bath. - -“Magnificent,” said Brent. - -“Borrowed—like your gig,” she added, with a look of mischief. - -“There are times, madame, when it does not do to be too particular.” - -“Ah, I have a piece of work for you—to-morrow. I have found my own -kitchen stove. It is in the école.” - -“No time like the present. I’ll collect it with the barrow.” - -“It takes to bits, mon ami. You will find it in the ground-floor room on -the left.” - -“Map reference not required. I go—toute de suite.” - -So Brent went out again into the ruins of Beaucourt and worked till the -red sun set alight the beeches of the Bois du Renard and the sky was a -steely blue above his head. Brent had been exploring the château on the -hill, and he stood on the grass-grown drive, with the grass crisping -with frost under his feet. He heard a partridge calling to its mate, a -harsh but plaintive sound in the great silence. - -A sudden solemnity fell upon Brent. He looked out over the wooded -country purpling in the hollow of the up-rolling night. The redness -began to die down beyond the Bois du Renard. Presently a star flickered -out. The air was very cold, and Brent’s breath a patch of silver vapour. - -The beauty and strangeness of it all seemed like the fall of a curtain -at the end of that most wonderful day. Brent could hardly believe that -so much had happened in ten short hours, those extraordinary hours full -to the brim with inevitable adventure. He turned his head to look down -at Beaucourt, a ghost village melting slowly into the dusk, a pattern of -broken walls and gables, patches of whiteness, shadowy hollows like the -eye-sockets of a skull. Brent saw a light shine out, a little yellow -square in the darkness, solitary and strange. It was the light in the -Café de la Victoire—Manon’s light. - -Brent did an absurd thing. He took off his cap to it—uncovered his -head. - -“Home,” he said; “how queer!” - -His footsteps seemed to make a great noise in the silent village as he -walked back through the still, cold night—but Brent did not feel the -cold, for his heart was warm in him. Manon was whistling, whistling like -a blackbird; the sound came out of the cellar, a cellar that was full of -the glow from the stove. - -She heard his footsteps up above and ran to the steps. - -“It is you?” - -“Yes.” - -“Come down. Supper is ready.” - -He hesitated at the head of the stairs, a man grown suddenly shy. - -“May I? It is your cellar.” - -“Do not be foolish,” she said; “I have cooked you a hot supper.” - -That wonderful day drew to a close. Manon and Paul were tired, -wholesomely and happily tired, and they ended the day by arguing about -the blankets. - -“One each,” said Manon. - -“You can have both.” - -“Then I will have neither.” - -“My greatcoat is enough for me.” - -“Mon ami,” she said, “if you think that I am going to let you sleep up -there under a bit of tin with nothing but your coat, you are a little -touched in the head. Take your blanket, at once, and do not argue.” - -Brent surrendered. He bade her good-night and went upstairs, taking his -bag for a pillow. He made a sack of his blanket, crept into it, and -settled himself on the creaking wire bed under the four pieces of -corrugated iron. Through the window he could see the stars shining over -Beaucourt, clear, frosty stars. - -Brent pulled his greatcoat over his head, and slept in spite of the -cold. - - - - - XIII - - -Manon did not wake very early, and rays of sunlight were thrusting like -sword blades through the iron grating when she opened her eyes. - -The cellar was warm, and the wire bed surprisingly comfortable, and -Manon lay curled up, looking at the yellow light and feeling in no hurry -to leave the bed. - -“Another fine day,” she said; “I wonder if the man is still asleep.” - -She became aware of a thudding sound coming from the back of the house, -a sound that associated itself with ideas of work—strenuous work on a -frosty morning. Manon felt guilty. She had a vision of Paul warming -himself after a night spent with one blanket under a tin roof, and she -jumped up and lit the stove. She had decided to give him hot coffee. - -When the stove was well alight, she brought a comb and a little mirror -out of her bag and put up her hair. She had slept in her clothes, and -however much she disliked the feeling of it, she realized that such -things as blankets bulk big in any scheme of civilization, and that -without blankets a woman’s sense of daintiness might not be able to -survive. - -“I must go to Amiens,” she reflected, as she washed her hands and face -in an old tin basin half full of cold water; “but what a pity that -things are so dear.” - -The stove needed more wood, and she went up in search of her partner, -discovering him in the yard, breaking up boxes with a pick. - -“You poor man,” she said, “are you frozen?” - -“I had to thaw my feet and hands,” he laughed, “but life is devilish -good.” - -“We will change all that—not the devilish good part of it, Monsieur -Paul. There will be hot coffee in ten minutes.” - -“I am going to splice that ladder before breakfast.” - -“That is permitted. But after that, you will take a holiday.” - -He thought that she was joking. - -“A holiday—with ten hours’ work.” - -“It is Sunday,” she said. - -“That is news to me. I had forgotten the days of the week.” - -“Yes—Sunday. And I am going to church.” - -“All the way to Ste. Claire?” - -“No! here in Beaucourt. The church is still there. And I suppose le bon -Dieu was not driven away by shells.” - -“I shall come with you,” said Paul; “it won’t do me any harm.” - -It was no formal ceremony that church-going, no affair of greased -forelocks, polished boots and conventional self-suppression. Manon -chattered all the way up the deserted street—buoyant as the February -sunshine, talking about this romance of reconstruction with a frank -enthusiasm that accepted God as an interested listener. Even the -battered church with its stump of a spire, and white wounds showing in -its grey bulk, was a thing of life and of hope. God had shared with -these peasants in the tragedy of their ruined homes. That was how Manon -visualized it. The Great Mother stood there amid the rubbish, stretching -out her beneficent and understanding hands. The glass had gone; there -were holes in the roof, and patches of damp on the walls; the tracery of -the windows had had the beauty of its Gothic curves snapped and broken. -Yet this church of Beaucourt seemed to have won a deeper mystery—the -ineffable smile of a martyr, the beautiful exultation that no clever -devilry can kill. - -Manon paused in the Place de l’Eglise. She was silent now, wide-eyed, -serious. She made the sign of the cross as she looked up at the broken -spire. - -“It is still very beautiful. Let us go in.” - -The church of Beaucourt had served many purposes. It had been a -hospital, a supply store, a stable, and it carried the stigmata of all -these experiences upon its stones. Soldiers had scribbled on its walls, -driven in nails, left lewd phrases strung upon the plaster. Whenever it -rained there were puddles on the floor. Rubbish and smashed masonry -choked the aisles. Someone had slept on the altar and left a dirty -mattress there, but the Gothic mystery remained, the awe, that invisible -something that is like the sigh of an invisible god. - -Brent followed Manon into the church, uncovering his head as she dipped -a finger into the imaginary water of the piscina, and made her little -obeisance to the altar. She knelt down on the stone floor, and Brent -knelt down beside her. She remained thus for some minutes, eyes closed, -hands folded,—but Brent did not close his eyes—for his religion was -centred in Manon. Brent was just the ordinary man, supremely indifferent -to dogmatic religion, well able to live without it, rather mistrustful -of the so-called religious people. But Manon’s kneeling figure touched -his sense of the beauty of human emotion. Her simple devoutness had the -charm of a pleasant picture. It added mystery to her, made her eyes more -than mere mirrors of consciousness, her blood more than a red and -vitalizing fluid. Brent had always been something of a mystic, a man who -had disliked his mysticism reduced to printer’s ink and pews. - -A light breeze had sprung up. It played through the broken tracery of -the windows and through the rents in the roof, making a soft and -plaintive murmur like the rush of invisible wings. Manon opened her -eyes, raised her head and smiled. Her face made Brent think of white -light. He felt that he could trust Manon as very few women can be -trusted; she had not the hard little soul of the modern girl; she would -understand a man’s finer impulses; she would not shock him with some -sudden little blasphemous confession of crude and vulgar egotism. And -yet he realized that she was no fool. - -She crossed herself, stood up, and brushed the dirt from her black -skirt. It was the practical, pleasantly dainty little Frenchwoman who -reappeared. - -“They need a broom here. And what a bill there will be for glass!” - -They passed out again into the sunlight. - -“It was good of you to come with me. In these days men are not devout; -they have other things to think of. Are you a Catholic, mon ami?” - -Brent hesitated. - -“No, to be perfectly honest.” - -And then she surprised him. - -“Do not worry your conscience. When I go to church, it is not because I -am this or that, but because I know there is a God, and that life is a -mystery, and that one should kneel down and feel things and try to -understand. I am not a religious woman, as the priests would have it, -nor am I a Catholic. Religious women are often not good women—as I -understand goodness.” - -“You are full of surprises,” he said. - -She gave him a shrewd little smile. - -“I went to a good school, Paul. Do you think that because I live in a -village I have been brought up in a convent? We French are very -practical; we think a great deal. But I am not a little fool who -imagines that she understands everything. One must have a religion, and -it is none the worse if you make it yourself. Never to do mean things, -and never to grow hard. And to remember—always—that one’s orchard and -garden are miracles, and that life did not happen by chance.” - -Brent had put on his cap. He took it off again. - -“You get to the heart of things,” he said. - -Directly ahead of them, and half closing the east end of the Place de -l’Eglise, were the ruins of the Hôtel de Paris. The hotel stood at the -corner where the Rue d’Eschelle ran steeply down to the river, a big -white place, its angles and cornice of faced ashlar, its great central -chimney-stack still standing up red and raw. On the other side of the -street the Hospice towered up like a ragged grey cliff that looked ready -to fall. - -Manon walked towards the Hôtel de Paris. The ruins had a particular -significance for her, for the hotel had belonged to Monsieur Louis -Blanc, vulgarly known as Bibi. Manon had had cause to regard Monsieur -Louis Blanc with peculiar distrust and aversion. He had been her rival, -and he had desired also to be her lover; the intrigue would have suited -both his body and his business. - -“I must tell you about Bibi.” - -Then they looked at each other, for someone was trampling over the piles -of broken brick inside the shell of the Hôtel de Paris. The sound came -towards them. A tall man appeared in the doorway, a man wearing a soft -black hat, a black coat, and the blue breeches and puttees of a French -soldier. He stood and smiled and took off his hat. - -“Good morning, Madame Latour.” - -Manon’s face became a thing of stone. - -“Good morning, Monsieur Blanc. A fine day for the ruins, is it not?” - -Bibi was looking at Brent with a peculiar and cynical curiosity. - -“I have muddled the name, have I? Madame is no longer a widow.” - -Manon snubbed him. - -“I will leave you to guess, monsieur.” - -Bibi laughed. He was a sallow-faced man with a pair of insolent, light -blue eyes, a nose that broadened out towards the nostrils in the shape -of a green fig, and a mouth that looked as though it had been hacked out -in the rough and never finished. He had a way of staring people in the -face with a faintly ironical smile, a smile that put them down in the -mud. He looked very strong with the strength of a great, raw-boned, -nasty-tempered horse. The backs of his hands were covered with black -hair. - -“Perhaps monsieur is less proud?” - -He looked at Brent, cocking one shoulder up, and tilting his head. But -Brent said nothing. He was trying to explain his own instant feeling of -antipathy towards the man, and an instinctive desire to hit Monsieur -Bibi hard and square between the eyes. It was not that the man was evil. -Brent had lived with evil men, and they had not troubled his temper. And -then he struck it. It was Bibi’s swagger, the arrogance of the male -thing who had had many successes with women. Bibi was one great swagger. -He swaggered when he smiled, when he talked, even when he stood still. -His very silence swaggered. And Brent had a suspicion that it was not a -thing of wind and brass—but a huge self-confidence, an audacity that -took life in its hands and laid it next the wall. - -And then Brent remembered that he had not chosen a French name. He -pulled out his pipe, filled it, and looked at Bibi across the top of the -bowl as he struck a match. - -“Here is my fiancée, monsieur. An English girl, too!” - -Bibi’s eyes snapped. He saw the joke, and he had learnt something that -he wished to know. He matched Brent’s pipe with a cigarette, and stood -there, ugly, polite and conversational. Manon’s face remained a thing of -stone. She knew how clever Bibi was—abominably clever, and she wanted -to warn Brent. - -“So you have returned, monsieur?” - -Bibi had a suspicion that she was trying to put herself between him and -the other man. - -“Just to view the scenery, madame. I drove over alone; the cart and -horse are in the factory stable. Is it possible that I may have the -pleasure of driving you home?” - -“I remain here,” she said. - -“Tiens!—Monsieur, perhaps?” - -“He is staying here too,” said Manon with stubborn composure. - -Bibi shrugged. He had learnt something more. - -“You are more lucky than I am, madame; you have a partner.” - -“Yes; it is an excellent arrangement. We have come to see what can be -done—but all this is rather hopeless, is it not?” - -She nodded at the ruined hotel. Bibi inflated himself, spat, smiled at -her. - -“I shall have that up in no time. Pst!—just like that! The bigger the -job, the bigger I feel.” - -And Manon smiled on him. - -“You always were a man of resources, monsieur. I shall have to be -content with a shanty, a couple of rooms,—what we can knock together. -And now I have the fire to attend to; the blankets are damp; Monsieur -Paul discovered them in a cottage. Au revoir, monsieur.” - -Bibi’s hat swaggered to her. - -“Be very careful of those blankets,” he said. - -Manon did not speak to Paul until they were half-way up the Rue de -Picardie. - -“Well!—that is Monsieur Bibi,” she said; “what do you think of him?” - -“A beast.” - -His frankness brought back her animation. - -“Yes, you are right—a beast—and a clever beast. Did you see how he was -trying to find out——?” - -“I ought to have a French name,” said Brent; “how would Paul Rance do? -It is a river—somewhere. And if inquisitive people ask questions, and -worry about my accent you can tell them—or I will—that I lived for -seven years in England.” - -Manon nodded. - -“It is possible that we shall have trouble with Bibi. He has a grudge -against me.” - -“What sort of a grudge?” Brent asked. - -“He wanted to buy my café—because too many people came to it.” - -“Yes.” - -Manon remained silent for a moment. She was thinking. - -“Mon ami,” she exclaimed, “I shall not go to Ste. Claire to-morrow. I -shall stay here several days. There is no time to be lost, and I can -help you. We must take what we need before Bibi thieves everything.” - - - - - XIV - - -They entered the café and sat down on the two wooden chairs that Manon -had salved from one of the houses. The coming of Bibi had introduced a -sudden sinister complexity into the adventure, an element of discord, a -threat of competition. Brent refilled his pipe. He looked worried. - -“We had better begin on those huts,” he said; “I’ll get the tools -together and go down at once.” - -Manon restrained him. - -“No, not yet. We must wait.” - -“Till that fellow has gone?” - -She nodded. - -“Bibi is cunning. He has come here to see what he can find—and there is -no generosity to be expected from Bibi. We must not betray what we are -doing. When he has driven off in that cart of his, then we can work like -slaves.” - -“There will be a moon to-night,” said Brent; “I shall work all night. We -must store the sheeting in one of those rooms, and I will get two doors -and some shutters fitted at the first chance.” - -Manon held up a hand. - -“Listen!” - -They heard a man’s boots clanking on the pavé. - -“I knew he would come here.” - -Monsieur Louis Blanc did not stop outside the Café de la Victoire. He -strolled past it with the detached and casual air of a holiday-maker, -nodding at Manon who stood at the window. - -“Even if you have no wine, madame—they tell me there is plenty of good -water in the well.” - -“Yes, there is plenty of water.” - -He paused for a second—his hands in his pockets, his eyes considering -the house. - -“You have been lucky.” - -“Ah, monsieur, lucky! I have four walls and an abundance of -ventilation.” - -“I have two walls and half a wall. Just because my little hotel was too -near the church! We always shelled churches, you know, just to give le -bon Dieu a personal interest in the affair.” - -He laughed and walked on. - -Manon waited till he had disappeared down the Rue de Rosières, and then -ran out into the garden. She knew that from one corner of the garden it -was possible to see the field where those precious huts stood, but -though she remained on the watch, the figure of Louis Blanc never -appeared in the field. Brent, who was equally interested in the -pilgrimage of Monsieur Bibi, went across to the stone house over the -way, and saw the Frenchman turn back before he had reached the end of -the Rue de Rosières. Bibi stopped to look at the well, gave a casual -glance at the café, and diverging into the Rue Romaine, walked off -towards the factory. - -Brent followed him, keeping to the orchards and the gardens behind the -houses. The ruins of the cottage nearest to the factory served him as an -observation post, and Brent did not quit it till he saw Bibi driving off -in his cart along the road to Bonnière. - -Brent ran back to the café. - -“He has gone,” he said, reaching under the wire bed for the box in which -he kept his tools. - -Manon was ready. - -“He did not see those huts.” - -“I think Bibi was looking at something else,” said Brent; “your café.” - -It is probable that no salvage party ever worked as Paul and Manon did, -stripping the corrugated iron from those army huts in the field on the -road to Rosières. They dragged the yellow gig up the hill, and Manon -loaded it, while Brent used hammer, cold chisel and tommy-bar, and slid -the loosened sheets down to her from the roof. They made a fine and -healthy clatter between them on that Sunday afternoon, but as there was -no one in Beaucourt to hear it, no one was offended. Brent allowed -twenty sheets to a load, remembering the weak wheel of the gig. Then -they set off for the café, Brent between the shafts, Manon pushing -behind, the load banging and clattering as the gig bumped over the pavé. -They carted two such loads before breaking off for dinner, a meal that -lasted less than twenty minutes. - -“Forty sheets. That was pretty quick work. We want a hundred.” - -He had lit his pipe, and was glancing humorously at the bloody finger -and knuckles of his left hand. - -“Nasty stuff to handle. And I was in a hurry.” - -“You worked like a devil,” she said. - -“I’m fresh to the tools. Show me your hands.” - -Manon had a slight cut across her left palm. - -“You ought to have gloves.” - -“I’m not afraid of a cut or two.” - -“Look here, I can manage alone this afternoon. Supposing you collect -bricks for these two holes in the wall!” - -She refused to do any such thing. - -“Do you think that I am some soft little cat from a villa in Paris? I -used to dig and hoe all my garden during the war, and I can carry a sack -of potatoes if someone puts it on my back. I don’t cry off because of a -scratched hand.” - -Brent liked her pluck and determination. - -“Put a sandbag over each hand. There are some in the cellar. I don’t -want you with your arm in a sling.” - -As he crawled about the roof, wrenching off the iron sheets and sending -them skiddering down to Manon, Paul was troubled by the face of Louis -Blanc. The adventure had ceased to be an exciting game played by two -grown-up children; it had taken on more primitive colours, colours that -had not the innocence of the brown eyes and red lips of Manon, of the -purple of the woods and the grey green of the fields. The world and -Monsieur Bibi had come swaggering together into Beaucourt, and Brent was -conscious of the unpleasant significance of the event. - -Straddling the ridge of the roof, and looking at the chequer of red and -white walls, the shadowy interspaces and the patches of broad sunlight -that were Beaucourt, Brent realized that he had become responsible for -Manon. He felt that she belonged to him, which of course was absurd. -Less than two days of close comradeship did not justify a sense of -possession, and yet the instinctive fierceness of the feeling astonished -Brent. Why this bristling of the hair, this clenching of the fist? He -had no difficulty in finding an answer. - -But a far more sensitive and unselfish mood forced itself in front of -these primitive emotions. Brent sat and looked into the face of his own -past, a past that conjured up the present and the future. The coming of -Bibi had made all the difference in the world to Brent’s outlook upon -life. A cloud had wiped the irresponsible and un-self-conscious sunlight -from the landscape. This polite and clever blackguard had reintroduced -the social compact into Beaucourt. The village had ceased to be a -wilderness, even though Louis Blanc’s presence in it had been a mere -matter of hours. His appearance was more than a suggestion. Society had -returned in the spirit, even if it remained absent in the flesh, and -Brent saw Beaucourt full of eyes, mouths, ears and heads. - -His thoughts centred upon Manon. What would Bibi tell people, those -refugees scattered through the villages beyond the region of -devastation? Brent knew how a man of Bibi’s kidney would talk. “Oh, yes, -Manon Latour is living at Beaucourt with some fellow.” Brent swore to -himself—but swearing did not solve the problem. He had discovered that -he was responsible for Manon, even though he knew in his heart of hearts -that this adventure promised to be the cleanest and most beautiful thing -that had ever happened to him in life. - -“Hallo!” - -For the best part of a minute he had been straddling the ridge, staring -at a hole in one of the iron sheets, and doing nothing. Manon was -waiting. His inactivity was so sudden and so obvious that it touched her -curiosity. - -“Tired?” - -He leant forward and knocked off the head of a screw with the chisel and -hammer. - -“No. Thinking.” - -“You looked like murder.” - -“I dare say I did.” - -He loosened another sheet and slid it down to her, but she let it lie -untouched, and stood looking gravely up at him. - -“You were thinking about Bibi?” - -He moved along the roof to attack the next sheet. - -“Well, perhaps I was.” - -“What does Bibi matter, when we are getting all that we want?” - -Brent raised his hammer and let it fall again. - -“It has made a difference.” - -“What has?” - -“His coming here.” - -Her eyes had gone black and opaque, as was their way when she was -seriously puzzled or troubled. It was plain to her that something was -clogging Paul’s mind and hampering his work. - -“What kind of difference?” - -Brent was frowning. - -“Don’t you see what has happened? I am not a fool who goes out to look -for trouble, but we are not alone here any longer. A man has to think of -these things.” - -Her eyes gave a flash. - -“Good heavens—you mean——?” - -“Well, what sort of man is Bibi? Was he pleased to find me here?” - -“You mean that you are afraid,—you want to go?” - -Brent slogged the head off a nail. - -“Damn!—I never thought you would think that! What the devil do I care -what happens to me? But what I do care about——” - -She caught her breath with a little breathless exclamation that was -almost like a cry of pain. - -“Oh, it’s like that? I understand—you will forgive me, mon ami?” - -He looked down at her with eyes that had a queer shine in them. - -“If you will forgive me for swearing!” - -Brent went on with the work. It was the obvious thing to do, and it was -a screen behind which he could hide, for Brent was one of those men who -became absurdly shy in the presence of emotion. He hammered away with -indefatigable ferocity, ignoring Manon who was stroking her chin with -two fingers and looking at something that was a long way off. - -Presently she resumed her loading of the gig, nor did she speak again -till she had dealt with all the sheets that Brent had pushed down to -her. - -“Twenty,” she said, “we have a load.” - -Brent slid down the roof, landed, and put himself between the shafts of -the gig. Manon took her place behind it, and they started out of the -field. - -“Paul,” said her voice, just when they were on the edge of the pavé. - -“Hallo.” - -“I am not afraid of Bibi.” - -The rattle of the wheels and the clanging of the iron sheets made it -difficult for Brent to hear her. - -“What did you say?” - -“I am not afraid of Bibi.” - -He threw his weight against the shafts and stopped the gig. - -“Nor am I. Not for myself. But do you not see my point of view?” - -“I have a pair of eyes in my head,” she retorted, “and in front of me I -see my partner, Monsieur Paul Rance, whom I met when I was at Rennes.” - -“Yes, all that sounds very pleasant, but——” - -“Mon ami,” she broke in, “why are you in such a hurry to explain things -to people, when no one has asked for explanations?” - -She gave a push to the gig. - -“Allons! You are afraid that Bibi will gossip, and that people will -believe him. I am not going to be frightened by Bibi, simply because it -amuses him to frighten people. Besides——” - -Her brown eyes gave him a flash of buoyant audacity. - -“You need not explain a thing that will appear obvious to decent people. -And it is always possible for a man to change his mind.” - -Brent was puzzled. - -“I don’t understand you.” - -She gave another and more vigorous push to the cart, looking at him with -eyes that said, “What a simple fellow you are!” Brent turned about and -put his weight on the shafts, and staring at the pavé in front of him, -spent the whole of that journey in trying to disentangle her meaning. - -During the unloading of the gig Brent watched Manon’s face as though he -hoped to find it a mirror in which he could see the reflection of his -own thoughts. But Manon’s face showed him nothing. She was the -cheerfully determined little Frenchwoman wholly absorbed in helping him -to unload those iron sheets. She refused to be sentimental or to let -herself encourage Brent’s tendency towards too much self-consciousness. -Men are such children, and Brent appeared to be an unusually sensitive -child. He would go and get lost in the woods unless she held him -shrewdly to the great work that mattered. - - - - - XV - - -After working at the huts till ten o’clock, Brent walked back to the -Café de la Victoire by the light of the moon. He was tired, dead tired, -but his weariness was full of a pleasant sense of physical satisfaction; -he had done the best day’s work in his life, and if his hands were sore -and his back one huge ache, what did it matter? - -Manon had gone home earlier to light the stove. She heard Brent’s -footsteps on the pavé, and ran out to meet him. - -“Partner, I’m tired.” - -He laughed over it, for he was a little exultant. - -“I never thought that we could do it, rip off a hundred sheets and get -them carted and stacked here. I have knocked half the weather boarding -off that hut.” - -Manon enveloped him in a soft atmosphere of sympathy, applause, -gratitude. - -“Go down and sit by the fire. The water is boiling. What shall it be, -tea or coffee?” - -“Coffee. Your coffee?” - -The tired yet happy note in his voice touched her. She had been thinking -a great deal about Paul while she was watching the stove grow red and -waiting for the sound of his return. In all her experience of life—and -a woman can see an abundance of life in a little French café—Manon had -never met a personality quite like Paul’s. This little widow knew men -through and through, yet Brent had puzzled her until that moment when he -had sat astride the roof of the hut and betrayed the sensitive prudery -of a sentimentalist. She liked him none the less for that, though it -added to the complexity of the adventure. Manon was not a prude, and -Paul was not a Frenchman. She realized the significance of the fact, nor -did the possible unexpectedness of this man’s romantic boyishness bore -her. She was piqued by it. Most men are so obvious. - -She had a meal ready for this tired man of hers, a man whose body had -performed a tour-de-force, and whose happy weariness was ready to eat, -drink, light its pipe and relax before the fire. Manon was glad of -Brent’s tiredness, even as she was glad of his strength. She wanted him -in that mood of happy relaxation. She saw the white stones of the -cellar’s vault bright with candle light and the glow from the stove. The -water bubbled contentedly in the saucepan. The arm-chair from the école -stood embracing the warmth from the fire. And Manon was sensitively -alert to the impression that the homeliness of the place would make on -Paul. She had been busy here, exerting a woman’s forethought, not for -purely selfish ends, but because a woman’s shrewdness may become -involved in the things that she does for a particular man. - -“You have earned that chair.” - -He took it, after protesting that it should be hers. She saw him lie -back and melt into enjoyment of this atmosphere of simple comfort. - -“I say—this is good.” - -His eyes wandered—and then fell to watching Manon, Manon whose hands -were busy in his service. He became aware of the pleasantness of Manon, -and that it was good to look at her, good to feel her near. As she leant -forward over the stove to fill the coffee-pot Paul noticed the brown -depths of her eyes, the shadowy curves of her nostrils, the pretty line -of her mouth, her frank forehead, and the white fulness of her throat -and chin. He observed a little brown freckle rather quaintly placed in -the centre of her left lower eyelid. Her hands were plump and strong, -with straight, well-formed fingers; generous, capable hands. He was -aware, too, of a perfume, a personal aroma that was subtle and wholly -French. - -“Voilà!” - -She drew the table close to the stove. - -“How is that?” - -“I am being spoilt,” said Brent. - -That was exactly what she wanted him to feel. The memory of this evening -was to have a particular significance. - -“You amazed me to-day.” - -She was pouring out his coffee. - -“I never saw a man work with such ferocity.” - -“I enjoyed it.” - -“Yes, but you must not work too hard. And I am not going to talk to you -until after supper.” - -“Talking is food,” said Brent, “if one happens to be interested.” - -Now Manon’s attitude towards Brent had developed since she had realized -how easily he could be affected by the swaggering cynicism of a man like -Louis Blanc. Hitherto she had not been conscious of any particular -attitude towards this comrade of two days. The adventure had opened with -such verve and simplicity that she had not bothered her head about the -social complexities, but the coming of Bibi and Paul’s instant reaction -to the challenge in the big Frenchman’s sensual eyes had compelled her -to look at Brent more closely. She guessed that he had a thin skin, and -that he was the sort of good fellow who fell into a panic if anyone -accused him of behaving like a blackguard. Like many sensitive men he -was extraordinarily diffident. An audacious beast like Bibi would -squeeze out all his self-confidence. - -“What a comfort it is to have you here.” - -Brent looked surprised, pleasantly disconcerted. - -“In what way?” - -“Because you are rather unusual. Most men—Oh!—well—you know what I -mean.” - -It was the beginning of her conscious effort to humour her man. Paul was -a sentimentalist, but Manon had a philosophy. She knew that life is -always a bit of a scramble and that in Beaucourt life was going to be -rather primitive and savage. Paul’s skin was too thin. She had a feeling -that she would have to guard his sensitiveness—prevent his -impressionable good nature from being at the mercy of hard people. Brent -lacked hardness. She had an idea that this lack of hardness had been the -cause of his failure. - -“But you can’t make a soft man hard,” she said to herself; “it must be -done some other way.” - -She felt that Brent had that queer passion for ethical self-expression -that plain people call “self-sacrifice.” She sensed it vaguely at first, -and she could not have translated the impression into words. It was a -thread, an intuition, and she followed it. - -“This fine weather cannot last,” she said with apparent vagueness. - -She filled his cup a second time. - -“And to-morrow? What will you do to-morrow?” - -He knew at once what he meant to do, and she respected the quiet and -orderly way in which he had mapped out the work. - -“I shall bring the timber across. The rafters of that big hut will be -the right size for us over here. Nothing like having all your material -on the spot, and under your eyes,—especially as there seems some chance -of competition.” - -He frowned when he thought of Bibi, and Manon was prompted by that -frown. She thought of altering her plans, and she was curious to see -what effect such an alteration would have upon Brent, but she wanted her -change of purpose to develop naturally and not to appear as a sudden -decision forced on her from without. - -“More coffee, mon ami?” - -“Please. It’s so jolly good.” - -“No more to eat?” - -“Not another mouthful.” - -She looked at the bully beef, the biscuits, the carton of jam—and the -unappetizing dryness of this fodder gave her her first suggestion. She -made a little grimace, and waved a hand over the table. - -“You poor man. Now, if only we had a savoury omelette and some spinach! -I must change all this. That is obvious.” - -She appeared to reflect. - -“Yes, you must have fresh food,—eggs and butter and vegetables. If I -went three times a week to Ste. Claire——” - -Brent had brought out his pipe, and then slipped it back again into his -pocket. The gesture was full of significance. - -“Smoke.” - -“Not here.” - -“But I like the smell of it.” - -“As a matter of fact, I am at the end of my tobacco.” - -“Quel dommage! But this is a tragedy. It is obvious that I must go to -Amiens; I may be able to buy English tobacco there.” - -He corrected her. - -“What a conscience you have! But, mon ami, could you spare me to-morrow? -Could you carry all that wood?” - -“Easily.” - -“And if I stayed away three days?” - -She saw that he was not in the least dashed by the suggestion. In fact -he approved of it. - -“I shall want that saw.” - -“Yes—and blankets. It must be so horribly cold up there, and you were -quite snug before I came. Oh, mon ami, I have an idea.” - -He looked up at her questioningly. - -“Well——?” - -“It will take many days to put a roof on the house, will it not?” - -“A fortnight—perhaps more.” - -“And then there are the doors and windows.” - -“Yes.” - -“The weather will change. Rain and wind—mon Dieu! And you, under those -pieces of tin! Be quite honest with me, Paul; would it not be more -sensible for me to stay at Ste. Claire and leave you the cellar—until -the roof is on?” - -She watched Brent’s face, and discovered nothing but a faint shadow of -surprise, a surprise that was momentary and transient. He leaned forward -and stirred up the wood in the stove with an old iron bar that they used -for the purpose. The glow from the wood shone on a calm face, and Manon -saw that it had cost him no effort to adjust life to the new atmosphere. - -“A sound idea,” he said, feeding more wood into the stove. - -Perceiving no resistance, Manon let the new plan develop itself. - -“It is not that I am a coward, mon ami, or afraid of a rough life.” - -“You are no coward,” he said with quiet conviction. - -She showed a sudden animation that flowed with the full flood of the new -idea. - -“I can hire a horse and cart in Ste. Claire, and I must see what can be -bought at Amiens. I could drive over here twice a week, and if I started -very early in the morning I should be able to spend most of the day -here, cook for you, and help you when you needed a second pair of hands. -And then, there is the garden.” - -“The garden’s important.” - -“Yes, our living this summer. I could work in the garden and sow seeds, -and I could use the horse and cart to collect things for you. I must -think of my good partner’s comfort.” - -Brent stared at the fire. - -“Don’t worry about me,” he said; “I am not the one to be considered. I -am thinking of you.” - -They had been skimming the surface, but those words of Brent’s went down -beneath the conventional crust. - -“Mon ami, you are very unselfish.” - -“It’s not that. A man has to think of things—other things than bricks -and timber; and when there is a woman about, a man has to think of her.” - -Manon was silent for a while, and in her heart of hearts she knew that -Paul was right. She had used her intuition and her shrewdness to bring -the adventure into sympathy with this man’s simple sense of honour, and -now that the thing was done she felt that Paul was happier. - -“What a good man you are!” - -He smiled at her and said nothing. - -“You think of others before yourself. And how exciting it will be when I -drive over and see what you have done; each time there will be something -fresh, a new piece of roof, a door, a window.” - -“It will be just as exciting to me—the finest game I ever played in my -life.” - -She frowned a little over that word. - -“Game—game! You English are always thinking of games.” - -“The word does not fit; I should not have used it. It is more than a -game.” - -Manon looked at her knees, possessed by a feeling of gentleness and -humility. She knew now that she had been right about Brent, utterly -right in her reading of his simple and sensitive character. He was no -ordinary man, nor was his inspiration the inspiration of the ordinary -man. Brent gave. Most men take. - -“It is very strange,” she said, “that you should be so good to me. I -think—somehow—that doing good things is as pleasant to you as the -tobacco you smoke in your pipe. Is it not so, monsieur?” - -He nodded. - -“Perhaps there’s reason in it.” - -“I am very lucky.” - -And then she added, - -“How good to be able to trust you—with everything! It is like feeling -that God is near.” - - - - - XVI - - -Brent was up with the dawn. He heard a bird singing somewhere as he went -down to the well to fill the bucket, and he stood in the street and -looked at the sky with the eyes of a child. In the east and reaching to -the zenith great ridges of tawny white cloud broke the intense blue of -the sky. A mysterious golden light enveloped everything, the broken -walls, the spire of the church, the grey-green hills, the murk of the -woods, the tangled, unpruned orchards. Even the cobble-stones had a -bloom of gold upon them. The brown blackness of Manon’s house loomed up -against the dawn. - -Brent’s face was a thing of delight. His beard had a more tawny -richness, his eyes a deeper blue. - -“By God—life’s good!” - -He felt good, good to the core. When he had filled the bucket and drawn -it up, the splashing water itself seemed to laugh in the early sunlight. -Brent stood in the street and washed, stripped to the waist, dipping his -head into the cold water and letting it run over his chest and -shoulders. A little spiral of blue smoke had begun to climb like some -magic plant up the wall of Manon’s house, and Brent could hear the -crackling of wood in the stove. Manon was busy before her ten-mile walk -to Ste. Claire. - -An hour later she was standing at the top of the flight of steps leading -to the street, her bag in her hand, her face upturned to Brent’s. It was -a happy face with gentle eyes, the flicker of a smile playing about the -mouth. - -“Au revoir.” - -He held her hand for a moment. - -“I will look after everything.” - -“And take care of yourself, Paul. I will not forget the tobacco.” - -She turned and went down the steps, turned again at the corner by the -stone house, and looked back at him with a kind of smiling solemnity. -The morning sunlight was on her face, and her plain black dress showed -up against the white stonework. - -“Au revoir.” - -Brent raised a hand like a man uttering a benediction. - -He remained standing there after she had gone, filling his pipe with the -last dust that was left in his pouch, and smiling without realizing the -smile in his eyes. For Brent was happy, extraordinarily happy, and life -seemed very good to him that morning. He was conscious of strong and -simple purpose, and of the man’s job ready to his hands. He was -conscious, too, of being trusted; and Manon’s faith in him was the most -precious thing that his hands had touched for many years. He felt that -he had a new heart in a new body—that he had begun to love these ruins -because of their human significance. There was hope in the air, and the -spring was coming. - -“Off with your coat, man,” said Life; “swing your hammer and drive your -saw. Sweat—sweat and feel good. It is the simple things that matter.” - -Brent had the ultimate philosophy of life ripening in his heart. He had -worked back to the wholesome state of using his hands, nor were they the -hands of a machine minder or of a clerk fribbling with a typewriter or a -pen. Yesterday he had worked with a ferocious forcefulness; to-day his -body moved like silk, easily and with a smooth balance; his hammer went -true to the mark; he had no sense of hurry or fatigue. He was above his -work, its master, and in a mood that could open its eyes to the world -and catch glimpses of the strange beauty that is everywhere. - -In his resting moments, or when he was ready to start off with a load, -he would stand for a little while and stare at the graining of a piece -of timber, the dark shadows that seemed to hang in the bare woods, the -sunlight on the hill, or the way some broken bit of wall cut a zig-zag -out of the blue of the sky. His contentment was so complete and so -pleasant that he could not help questioning it, turning it over and over -like a man examining something that he has found. - -“I wonder if I should get bored here—fed up?” - -He laughed. - -Boredom seemed so far from the mood of the moment; yet he chalked -“boredom” on the black-board of his mind, and tabulated all the facts he -could accumulate on the subject. He could not remember feeling bored as -a boy, except in church and at school, when the buoyant youngster in him -had been repressed. His marriage and too much “business” had brought -other and more subtle forms of self-repression. He had been very badly -bored during the thirties. And he had been short of exercise, wholesome -sweat of body and of soul. - -“Yes, but this is only an adventure,” said the voice in him. - -But was it only an adventure? - -He had pushed the gig along the Rue de Rosières, and had begun to unload -the timber, stacking it in the back room on the right of the passage. -Each time he carried in a length of timber that reached from the floor -to some twelve feet up the wall, he found himself thinking, “Another -rafter for Manon.” - -“Mon ami,” he thought, using those words of hers, “why worry? We fools -are always looking six months ahead and missing the glass of wine on the -table.” - -He decided that he would not be a creator of problems, but march -straight ahead towards the broad sweep of this new horizon. - -Brent spent the rest of the day in dismantling the framework of the -largest of the huts, and in carting the timber to the café. The work had -gone so well that he now had nearly all the material he needed for the -rough work on the house, and the material included a couple of deal -doors and four window-frames. One of the huts in the field on the road -to Rosières had a wooden floor, and Brent made up his mind to salve that -floor, for the boards would be invaluable when he came to dealing with -three upper rooms. Just before dusk fell he trundled the barrow over to -the factory and brought back a load of lime, making a second journey for -some sand. The first job on the morrow would be the re-bricking of the -holes in the walls, and after supper, when the moon rose, he went out -again with the barrow and collected bricks. - -Brent had not entered the cellar since Manon had left it, and at the end -of that long day when he had taken his food cold, and between heroic -spells of work, he went down the flight of steps into the darkness of -the place. He stood holding the ground sheet aside, aware of a something -that was Manon, a faint perfume—a perfume that had clung about her -clothes. It made Brent think of a bed of gilliflowers on an evening in -May. - -He smiled, lit the candle, and glanced round the cellar. Manon had -tidied everything before leaving. The cups and plates were white and -clean on the shelves, she had made the bed, and left the stove filled -with wood ready for a match. Old Mère Vitry’s picture of the Sacred -Heart stood on the table, leaning against the wall. Brent found himself -looking at it. - -“There’s something in that—after all,” he thought; “and yet she says -that she is not a Catholic!” - -He lit the stove and watched the yellow flames climb up through the -wood, and his thoughts were with Manon and her religion. These old -beliefs, superstitions, as he had learnt to call them, these woodland -shadows and red blaze of sunset glass, those saints, and martyrs, -miracles, the wine that was blood, the tears, the terrors, the quaint -paganism that lingered like sunlight on the dark edge of the eternal -mystery! He had a feeling that the very soil of Beaucourt was saturated -with this most human essence. It was like the sap in the roots of the -plants and trees. The moderns were educated; they were—in the -mass—very material people. Even these French peasants were children of -the age of reason, and yet the sap was there under their feet, the -mystic heritage of centuries. That was how Paul felt it in the person of -Manon Latour. The scientific farmer thinks of his artificial manure and -is apt to forget the spring. The miracle has got lost inside the -machine. Yet the orchards put on their white garlands like girls who -feel the great mystery within them. - -“One always comes back to it,” said Brent. - -And Manon had knelt in the ruined church of Beaucourt and then told him -with a child’s frankness that her religion was her own. Of course it was -hers. She was as full of religion as the soil was full of spring. She -had not been smothered in a town. She did not sell herself; there was -more than mere sense under her petticoat. She had a soul. - -“Queer, isn’t it?” thought Brent. “A modern man would think you were a -bit cracked if you started talking about a soul. A few hundred years ago -he would have felt insulted if you had taken it for granted that he -hadn’t one. We’re too damned clever; that’s what’s the matter with us.” - -Yet he went to bed a mixture of mystic and materialist. One of the -blankets had the faint perfume of Manon’s clothes. - -“Smells like the spring,” he said to himself. - -And then he fell to gloating over that mass of wood and iron he had -stacked in the rooms above. - -“Well, what about it?” was the retort of the mystic-materialist. “Even a -Bradbury has a potential soul. Depends on what you do with it, of -course.” - -Manon, meanwhile, was sitting in Madame Castener’s cottage at Ste. -Claire. She had reached the hill above Ste. Claire about noon, and had -looked down on the village flashing its white walls behind the -sun-splashed tops of the poplars. The completeness and the unravaged -tranquillity of Ste. Claire had shocked her a little after the ruins of -Beaucourt. What luck there had been in the war! Yes, but Beaucourt and -its wrecked houses had produced Paul Brent, and to Manon—the -woman—Paul Brent had begun to matter. - -Veuve Castener’s Flemish face hung out a look of massive surprise when -Manon walked into the cottage. - -“What! You back?” - -“Yes, I am here,” said Manon to this obvious lady; “have I changed?” - -Madame Castener wiped her mouth with a corner of her apron. - -She was a heavy woman—all bulges and protuberances—a big cow, but -kind. A widow, she lived alone. Her married son, Etienne, had the -cottage next door. - -“There is something to eat.” - -Manon took off her cloak and hat. - -“Who told you that I was staying at Beaucourt?” she asked. - -Veuve Castener never hurried herself. She sat down again at the round -table, put a bit of bread in her mouth, munched it, and then replied: - -“A man, ma chérie.” - -Manon laughed, and fetched herself a plate and knife and fork from the -dresser. - -“And they say men do not gossip!” - -“It was that fellow who used to keep the hotel at Beaucourt.” - -“Oh, Bibi!” said Manon, with casual scorn. “I suppose he wanted to find -out how long I was staying at Beaucourt. That fellow ought to have been -killed in the war.” - -She sat down and helped herself to the very plain food that was on the -table. - -“So Bibi is starting a scandal, is he? How droll!” - -She looked at her good friend, who continued to munch like a cow chewing -the cud. There were no treacheries and no surprises in Veuve Castener; -she was always the same, rolling along like a big wagon that would never -land you in the ditch. Her imperturbable stupidity was an asset, weight -on a critical occasion, ballast during a storm. Nothing ever threw her -into a state of excitement. It was possible that when the Last Trump -sounded she might keep all Heaven waiting while she mended a hole in her -stocking. - -Veuve Castener had helped at the Café de la Victoire before Manon’s -marriage. Her very slowness made her loyal, for when she had grown fond -of a person there was no time for her to grow tired. Friendship, like -her petticoats, seemed to last with Veuve Castener for ever. - -Manon was in a dilemma. Had she felt free to do so, she would have told -her friend everything, for Marie Castener was to be trusted; but Manon -held herself bound to keep Paul’s secret. He was at her mercy, and Manon -had a sense of honour. - -“I must tell you about Paul,” she said: “you did not know that I had -found a partner?” - -“I know nothing till I am told, my dear.” - -“Not even when Bibi——?” - -Marie gave a fat shrug. - -“Oh—a man like that! A stallion who comes and neighs on your doorstep. -I’m deaf on those occasions.” - -“What a good soul you are. Well, I found Paul Rance at Beaucourt; he had -arrived there before me, and he had been using his head and his eyes. -That leads to another confession, does it not, Marie? Paul had lived in -England for seven years before the war. He joined the English army. He -used to come to my café,—a quiet fellow who looked at you and said very -little, but I did not find out what Paul was till the day of the -retreat.” - -She described the burying of her treasure, and the coincidence of -Brent’s appearing on the scene. - -“Yes, he helped me that day, and the money is still hidden there. Paul -stayed behind after I had gone; he had the body of a friend to bury, an -Englishman, and he was taken prisoner because he remained behind to bury -his friend. That is the sort of man Paul Rance is. He came to see me -when he was released from Germany, and we struck up a partnership. He is -over there—in Beaucourt—putting a roof on my house.” - -Veuve Castener absorbed all this information with bland stolidity. She -had always had such faith in Manon’s shrewdness that it never occurred -to her to explore the affair on her own account. Her inertia accepted -things. She sat in a chair and was content with what was given her. A -most comfortable woman. - -“So Beaucourt is not so bad as you had feared?” - -“It made my heart weep,” said Manon; “but it seems that I am one of the -lucky ones. The walls are there, and Paul is very confident that he can -make the house fit to live in.” - -Marie folded her hands over her apron. She had pleasant and pastoral -visions of a beneficent future for Manon. Naturally these two had -arranged the matter; when the house was ready they would marry; it was -an excellent thing for Manon. The romance was so obvious to Marie -Castener that she swallowed and digested it, and thought no more of the -matter. A very comfortable woman. - -“You have a man left to work for you. You are lucky.” - -“He is such a good fellow,” said Manon. - -“And Monsieur Blanc was annoyed. He will visit you here; I could not get -rid of the fellow.” - -Manon frowned. - -“Most men are such fools. I wish you would put Monsieur Bibi in your -cauldron and boil the conceit out of him. But, Marie, I want Etienne to -drive me into Amiens, and perhaps you will come with me. Will it be -possible to-morrow? I will pay Etienne for the horse and his time. I -have things to buy in Amiens.” - -Veuve Castener saw no impossibility in driving to Amiens. It was an -adventure, and she would not have to use her legs. - -“I will arrange it with Etienne.” - -Manon spent the evening in drawing out a list of all that she and Brent -needed. - -At the end of the list she jotted down a rather cryptic note. - -“Try and get hold of a pistol for Paul.” - - - - - XVII - - -The expedition to Amiens started at an early hour. A big brown horse -pulled the big brown cart, with Manon wedged in between Veuve Castener -and her son. Marie, her round red face shining from the wrappings of a -black shawl, overflowed with a great bunching of skirts over one -mud-guard, her right arm round Manon’s waist. Etienne, equally big and -heavy, overflowed on the other side. Manon looked like a child between -them—the centre of intelligence between two bulging bodies. Her eyes -were bright, for Manon was happy. - -And Veuve Castener chattered. It was her way. A silent woman when things -were quiet, she became conversational in a cart, or when she was turning -the handle of the “cream separator,” or pounding dirty clothes in a tub. -Adventitious noises seemed to stir her to animation, and the more noise -there was, the more she talked. - -“Yes, that fellow Louis Blanc is staying at Baudry’s farm, though I -would not have a man like that inside my house. Always after the women, -though what they can see in the man, heaven knows. Big, of course, and a -swaggerer, but with a face like a goat.” - -“There are two sorts of women,” said Manon, “those who are attracted by -a blackguard and those who are not. Oh, to be sure, a man like that is -very successful.” - -“I prefer a quiet man—a man who can always be found. Besides, what do -women expect?” - -“Say—what do they want? A man like Bibi has what most of them want. He -just gets hold of them in the barn—or anywhere, and the rest happens. -But we are shocking Etienne.” - -Monsieur Castener grinned. He was laconic, slow, not interested in -anything but his little farm, and he had a wife whom no other man ever -bothered to look at. - -“That fellow Bibi talks big. He has all the news.” - -“Yes; what was that you heard him say the other night in Josephine’s -café?” - -“He said such a lot,” growled Etienne. - -“But about Beaucourt?” - -“Beaucourt? He talked as though Beaucourt belonged to him. Said there -was a fortune in Beaucourt. France is ruined, you know—but there’s -salvation in the English and Americans. Sentimental people. Running -about to see the battlefields and graves.” - -Manon lifted her chin. She was quick, and through the clumsy disorder of -Castener’s words she had a glimpse of the ambitions of Bibi. But why did -he boast about them? For Bibi was no fool. - -“He means to make money,” she said; “but that hotel of his is a rubbish -heap.” - -“They say he has plenty of cash. Talks about hiring men; and the timber -he has been buying and the army stores. It seems, too, that they are -going to repair the factory at Beaucourt, and put in new machinery.” - -“I see,” said Manon, glimpsing more and more of Louis Blanc’s possible -plans. She understood, too, why Bibi would not be pleased at the idea of -rivalry in Beaucourt; he had never been gentle with people who got in -his way. - -But the day and its temper were so buoyant that Manon put Louis Blanc -and his plans aside, and gave herself up to pure enjoyment. The road ran -through the pleasant country south of Amiens, a country of wooded hills -and deep valleys, all green and brown and purple under the blue sky. The -tops of the poplars flashed in the sunlight, in the ditches, and along -the banks crept the first shimmer of the year’s greenness. Now and again -a great white cloud came sailing over the hills, or, passing between the -sun and the earth, threw a mass of shadow upon some brown field or wood. - -Etienne knew a little auberge in the Rue Belu by the river where he put -up his horse and cart, and Manon and Veuve Castener went off together. -Both of them carried string-bags, and a Frenchwoman’s string-bag has an -immense capacity. - -“We cannot carry everything,” said Manon. “After dinner I shall have to -ask Etienne to drive round with the cart.” - -Manon bought the smaller things first—coffee, vegetable seeds, -haricots, sugar, nails, a few oranges, matches, candles. In an hour she -had tired Veuve Castener’s legs, and fat Marie trudged back to the inn. -Nor was Manon sorry to be left alone. Her shopping had little moments of -intimacy that she did not wish to share with another woman; and she had -Paul in her thoughts, and details upon that list of hers that had -arrived there as the result of her own observing eyes. Moreover, the -excitement of the adventure had invaded Amiens, and Manon found Amiens -sympathetic and ready to respond to a little woman who was going back to -the ruins. Certainly the prices were extortionate, for shopkeepers are -the same all the world over, but Manon fought; that short little nose of -hers and her firm chin belonged to a fighter, and the French love -argument. She stood squarely to the counter, smiling, hitting out with -perfect good-humour, a sturdy little woman quite capable of looking -after her own affairs. - -She bought blankets, four of them, half a dozen sheets, and a couple of -pillows. There was a battle over the blankets; they were poor things, -and Manon said so. - -“It would seem, monsieur, that you will insist on the refugees sleeping -in their petticoats. Where is all the money to come from?” - -She contrived to get thirty francs knocked off the price of the -blankets. - -Then she went in search of bargains, and found a shop that was kept by a -little widow. The widow had children to feed, and was ready to fight for -them with her finger-nails. The two women talked—and Manon did not try -to fight the widow. They spent half an hour chatting to each other, -exchanging confidences, and refusing to use their claws. - -“It is very hard for all of us,” said Manon, “and you have five -children. Mon Dieu!—I have none, but my house is in ruins.” - -The woman let Manon have some red cotton for two duvets and several -lengths of cretonne for curtains at a price that was honest. - -“We women should not devour each other.” - -The widow kept a cosmopolitan sort of shop. Manon saw men’s shirts -hanging up, and a pile of blue linen trousers on one of the shelves. She -knew that Paul had one solitary suit of clothes—clothes that would soon -be ruined by the rough work on the house. She bought him two good -shirts, two pairs of blue linen trousers, a pair of heavy corduroys, and -a black alpaca coat. Manon smiled to herself as she fingered the things -and chatted to the widow. There was a suggestive homeliness about buying -these clothes for Paul, and she found the future strangely full of him. -He seemed to have taken his place in Beaucourt, and she saw him moving -about in these blue trousers, sleeves rolled up, head bare, hammering, -sawing, fixing doors and windows, scrambling about the roof, -indefatigable yet rather silent. She was growing quite familiar with the -set and intense look in his blue eyes when he was at work. He had good -shoulders and strong arms, and a clean, fresh skin. Yes, she liked Paul, -the man. And it would be so easy to hurt him. This good fellow needed a -protectress. - -Manon wandered in a happy mood through Amiens. She was very alive, and -the life of Amiens pleased her. She idled into the cathedral and rested -there awhile, breathing in the soft grey tranquil atmosphere of the -place, a young woman who knew nothing about Gothic architecture and was -not worried by that horrible notion that it was her duty to appreciate -the beauty of the building. She left a franc in the alms box and went -out in search of a tobacco shop. Manon had a little breeze with the -woman who kept it—for it is quite unnecessary to let oneself be cheated -even if one has been sitting in a cathedral. A few blunt remarks, with -blood to Manon, and she went elsewhere. Two tins of “Capstan” and some -French mixture very rich in latakia were put away in the string-bag. The -price was horrible, but was she not getting Paul’s sweat for nothing? - -She did not forget the dictionary, though it was not a new one; newness -might rouse suspicions if it happened to fall into other people’s hands. -Last of all she bought a saw, a plane, a folding measure, some garden -tools, and a soldering set. There were plenty of leaking pots and pans -in Beaucourt, and Paul was a man of resource. - -The Casteners were waiting for her at the auberge, and they sat down to -dinner. Marie waited to know how Manon had fared with her shopping. - -“These shopkeepers are villains.” - -“Oh, well, they have children, most of them,” said Manon, thinking of -the widow. “I have not done so badly. I suppose we shall all get -bargains in heaven.” - -They drove round to collect Manon’s bulkier merchandise, and then left -the grey spire of Amiens behind them. Veuve Castener had been counting -the number of houses they passed that had been damaged by shell-fire -during the war. She began to be talkative, stimulated by the rattle of -the wheels, and detailing the gossip of some of the French soldiers who -had been sent home to their farms. - -“Yes, worse things happened than the wrecking of houses. There are those -sluts who became too friendly with the Boche. Pierre Ledru was saying -the other day that there were French girls who had hidden German -soldiers—their lovers. Ledru swore that one girl was shot by her own -brother for taking food to a Square-head who was hiding in a wood.” - -“It’s easy to be virtuous—over here,” said Manon; “but men are the same -all the world over. I know what it must have been like in those occupied -villages, especially if you had any looks.” - -“A Frenchwoman should always be a Frenchwoman.” - -“Mon ami, people do all sorts of strange things when they are starving. -But why talk of these tragedies? Look at the sun over there. I love the -big impartial sun, he gives the same chance to everybody.” - -“That’s right, mother,” said Etienne; “we haven’t had the boot on our -faces like those people nearer the frontier. Besides a man has got such -a pull; he can talk a woman’s honour away if she won’t give him what -he’s after.” - -“Etienne is a man of the world,” said Manon. - -Veuve Castener grunted. She did not like being corrected by her son. - -It was after supper that night, and Marie Castener was emptying the last -of the coffee into Manon’s cup, when they heard a man’s footsteps -outside the door. He knocked and tried the handle, but the door was -bolted. Veuve Castener thought it was Etienne, for Etienne never used -his voice when some more primitive sort of sound would serve. Marie went -to the door and opened it, and discovered Louis Blanc. - -Veuve Castener’s big body filled the doorway. She said nothing. Her bulk -and her silence kept Bibi on the doorstep. - -“Good evening, madame.” - -He had looked over Marie’s shoulder and seen Manon sitting at the table -in the yellow circle of light thrown by the lamp. - -“Good evening, Madame Latour.” - -Bibi pushed the words past Veuve Castener, since her big body kept him -out of the room. - -Manon looked up. - -“Good evening, Monsieur Blanc.” - -She replied to him with an air of complete unconcern, betraying neither -interest nor antagonism. - -Bibi scraped his boots on the doorstep and removed his hat. You might -take liberties when you were alone with one woman, but you were polite -when there happened to be two of them. - -“Is it permitted for a poor man to come in and sit down for ten -minutes?” - -He smiled, and made eyes at Marie. - -“I have a few words to say to Madame Latour. A business matter, you -know; we are full of business these days.” - -Veuve Castener spoke to Manon in a loud voice, as though Bibi were on -the other side of a field. - -“Here is Monsieur Louis Blanc who wishes to speak to you, Manon.” - -“What does he want?” - -“To talk about business.” - -“Oh, let him in,” said Manon, yawning a little. - -Bibi was angry at being kept on the doorstep, and at the way Mother -Castener had snubbed him by talking to Manon as though he were not -there. He had seen Manon’s yawn, and appreciated the flat indifference -of her voice; the diplomat in Bibi was ruffled. His swagger had lost its -fine edge and became a more brutal weapon. - -Veuve Castener let him enter. She glanced at Manon, who had reached for -her work-basket and had taken out a stocking that needed darning, also -wool and a pair of scissors. She dropped the scissors into her lap. - -“I am going to wash up.” - -Manon understood what was in Marie’s mind. The wash-house was at the -back of the cottage, and was reached by crossing a brick-paved yard. -Manon nodded. - -“Sit down, monsieur.” - -But Bibi remained standing, watching Veuve Castener clearing away the -plates, his hands in his trouser pockets. Manon glanced up at him once -or twice. She noticed that Louis Blanc was wearing new clothes, a -well-cut black suit, new boots, a light waistcoat. These clothes were -part of Bibi’s “business atmosphere”; he was a fellow who had money. - -Veuve Castener disappeared with a tray full of dirty crockery. Bibi -stood quite still for a moment, and then went and closed the door that -opened on the yard. He came back and stared at Manon across the table. - -“That is rather unnecessary, monsieur.” - -“Indeed!” - -“You and I have nothing to say to each other that my friend may not -hear.” - -He laughed, one of those soundless laughs, and fidgeted his hands in his -pockets. - -“You are still devilish pretty, ma petite.” - -“And you are still a fool.” - -He gave her a vicious yet humorous glance, and began to walk slowly up -and down, his boots making a leisurely clatter on the red-tiled floor. - -“That should reassure Madame Gossip,—what! So you won’t have sentiment, -not even from me! Let us try business, my dear.” - -Manon had begun darning the stocking. She looked steadily at Bibi for a -moment. - -“Very well, keep to business. What is it that you want?” - -He swung round and faced her, legs straddling, head thrown back, loins -hollowed, pockets and belly thrust forward. - -“A partner.” - -“What for?” - -“You want me to give the whole game away, do you? Yes, you little devil, -you always were the best business woman in Beaucourt. And such a leg, -too.” - -“Be quick,” said Manon; “I am going to help Marie at the end of five -minutes.” - -Bibi smiled, and began to walk up and down again, and Manon noticed that -his track tended to become an orbit, with herself as the centre. -Sometimes he was behind her, and she did not like having Bibi behind -her, but she remained quite still in her chair, though tense as a steel -spring. - -“I am going to make money in Beaucourt. A little hotel—what! well -advertised for the people with handkerchiefs and the fools of Americans! -Kept by one of the veterans of Verdun, with the Médaille Militaire! -Allons! That’s all right. What do you say?” - -Manon went on with her work, conscious of Bibi standing there close -beside her. - -“I think many things, monsieur.” - -“Let’s have them.” - -“You want my house. It is in better condition than yours, is it not?” - -“Tiens! What cleverness!” - -“You would like to have your own way in Beaucourt, not an hotel or a -café within twenty kilomètres.” - -“Go on guessing, ma petite.” - -“That is all, monsieur.” - -And then he bent over her suddenly from behind, tweaked her ear, and -caught her by the shoulders. It had always been his way with women, to -surprise them, get them into his arms. The magnetic male was very strong -in Bibi; he had known women who had fought and then given him all that -he wanted. - -Manon had been waiting for that attack. She had expected it, knowing -Bibi as she did. She said nothing, but picking up the scissors, made a -deft jab at Louis Blanc’s left wrist. - -“Keep your hands to yourself, if you please.” - -She had challenged the beast in Bibi, and she sat there pretending to go -on with her work, drawing her breath a little more deeply, ready to -spring up, and to call for Marie Castener. Bibi had removed his hands -from her shoulders, and was sucking his left wrist. She had drawn blood, -quite a good red trickle of it. - -“I think that is all, monsieur.” - -She saw him come back from behind her chair and move to the other side -of the table. He had pulled out a blue handkerchief and was wrapping it -round his wrist. - -“Your scissors are as sharp as your tongue. A nice way to receive a man -who comes to propose a little bit of business.” - -“What a fool you are,” she said very quietly. “Don’t you see that you -cannot do with me what you have done with other women? You are not the -sort of man who appeals to me. You are only wasting your time.” - -Bibi stared at her a moment. - -“It is as well to know these things,” he said coolly; “nothing like -having reconnoitred the other fellow’s bit of trench. Shall I tell old -Mother Castener that the talk is over?” - -“I am going out there myself. Good-night, monsieur.” - -Louis Blanc picked up his hat and opened the door. He stood there for a -couple of seconds as though he were about to say something, but he said -nothing, and when he closed the door he did it very quietly. Manon heard -him walk away. - -“A nice neighbour to have,” she said to herself. “I wonder if Paul can -fight?” - - - - - XVIII - - -Horses were scarce in Ste. Claire, and Manon found that Etienne Castener -could not hire himself and his brown nag to her more than once a week, -so she made a bundle of the things Brent needed and prepared to walk to -Beaucourt. It was rather a wonderful bundle, an omnium gatherum of -tobacco, matches, nails, six fresh eggs, some brussels sprouts, half a -loaf of bread, six slices of fresh meat, a few oranges, three candles, a -new shirt, a pair of blue trousers and the dictionary. Marie watched the -making of the bundle, and withheld her criticism until the end. - -“You are not going to carry that to Beaucourt?” - -“Yes, but I am. There is a saw, too, that will have to travel under my -arm.” - -Marie felt the weight of the bundle. - -“Oh, la-la, it is too heavy!” - -“I am stronger than you think. See, I push a stick through the cord, put -a pad between the stick and my shoulder, and there you are!” - -She was away at five o’clock, after a simple breakfast by lamplight in -the red-tiled cottage. The morning was very dark and still, one of those -mysterious and secret mornings when the heart thrills not a little to -the eternal adventure of life. There had been a frost, and the air -struck keen and clear, with the smell of fresh earth that some peasant -had turned up with his plough. A few stars pricked the black sky. The -great poplars guarding the road were still wrapped up in their coats of -darkness and of sleep, and as Manon passed along the road and up the -hill she felt rather than saw the branches of those trees meeting like a -high vault above her head. - -She trudged along with her bundle slung over one shoulder, and the saw -swathed in paper under the other arm, not hurrying because of her -knowledge of the twenty kilomètres that were to be marched that day, and -of the work she wished to do at Beaucourt. She was a little woman with a -great heart; also—she was happy. The blackness of the morning seemed to -shut her up with her own thoughts, and Manon’s thoughts were many and -varied as she pushed steadily along the road. The elements of life were -mixed up with her thinking, and if, as the clever people tell us, -ordinary thinking is but the glow thrown up by the emotions, then -Manon’s thoughts were made of human stuff. She felt—and in feeling she -knew, and in knowing grasped the quaint and seemingly irrational -altruism of this English Paul, the essential badness of Bibi—the great -truth that some people give while others take. If you do not give you -will never know what life can give you in return. Manon’s view of life -was quite simple yet shrewd. Men had to be managed. It was very -necessary for a woman to have someone to love; she withered into a stick -without it. Happiness can be planned, if you love someone very much, and -go about the managing of your happiness like a cheerful little -housewife. Simple things matter. Men like to be praised, women to be -kissed. Always back your man with your tongue, finger-nails and heart. A -comfortable bed, a well-cooked meal, and a glass of wine at the right -moment are worth oceans of wise verbiage. A woman should never marry a -man who was not a little shy before he kissed her for the first time. -Greedy eaters are soon satisfied. - -She trudged on, shifting her bundle from shoulder to shoulder, and -presently the dawn came, a greyness that grew red like a fire. The bare -trees of a wood showed up against it, the branches like some exquisitely -carved rood-screen in a church. She heard a bird pipe up somewhere in -the wood, and then another and yet another till a good score were -singing, for the birds had multiplied during the war. Beyond the wood a -great sweep of black and desolate country cut like a broad knife at the -red throat of the dawn. A solitary house with half its roof gone, the -broken stump of a tree, a rifle, butt end upwards, marking a grave, a -pair of wagon-wheels in a shell-hole, all these were like black symbols -against that red sky. Yet there was a silence over this wilderness, a -beauty, a strangeness that called; and over yonder lay Beaucourt, -waiting, waiting for those who would return. - -“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Manon to herself; “nôtre pays est malade; it -calls for help. The strong ought to help the weak. I must not forget -that; my little house is not going to stuff itself with food and do -nothing for the others. What a pity all the Bibis in the world weren’t -killed in the war!—it would have made things so much easier, and I have -an idea that Bibi is going to be a nuisance. I wonder what Paul is -doing? Lighting the stove?” - -Her thoughts centred on Paul, and somehow this wild landscape with the -red sky turning to a tawny gold swept away any little feeling of -surprise that had lingered in Manon’s mind. The wind blew as it pleased -over these leagues of desolate country. Life was a going back to the -wilderness—a fight, face to face, with the elements in Nature and in -man. The little stuffy conventions had no roof under which to create a -moral fog. You went out into the open with your man and laboured till -the sweat ran from you, swinging axe and hammer, or plying hoe and -spade. Courage and a clear faith in your comrade, that was how Manon -sensed it. Adam and Eve, with God looking on, and the Serpent out of a -job. - -Some three hours later Manon came to Beaucourt in the blue of a March -morning. A great white wall stood up at the west end of the village like -a gigantic notice board waiting for a message; the wall had been part of -the factory owner’s house. - -“Yes, there ought to be something on that,” said Manon, smiling in the -eyes of the morning. - -“Beware of Bibi!” she laughed. - -“Or, Tommy’s word, ‘Cheero,’ or just ‘Courage.’” - -She left the road and made her way over the higher ground, through the -orchards above the Rue Romaine, and from this hill she had a view of the -Café de la Victoire and a little human glimpse of Paul Brent. He had -fixed up a length of telephone wire in the garden, and Manon saw him in -the act of hanging out his washing—a shirt, two pairs of socks, and the -things that he wore under his trousers. - -Now Manon was strangely touched by that glimpse of him. She was smiling, -but there was a little shimmer of tenderness in her smile. - -“Mon ami, I would have done that for you. But it is rather sweet seeing -you playing the blanchisseuse.” - -When she came down the hill into the Rue de Picardie she noticed that -the shell-holes in the walls of the house had disappeared. Two neat new -patches of brickwork had been put in, and Brent had used facing bricks -of the same colour as the walls of the house so that the new work was -hardly noticeable. He had got the bedding-plates into place along the -tops of the walls. Between one of the end gables and the inverted V of -the main partition wall a length of timber hung suspended in the air by -two lengths of telephone wire, some ingenious contraption of Brent’s for -overcoming the problem of how a man could be in two places at the same -time. - -“Paul, hallo!” - -He came through the old blue door in the garden wall, and stood a -moment, looking down at her from the raised path. He had not expected -her. The surprise and the pleasure of it were as obvious as the blue -sky. - -“What!—You have walked?” - -“Yes.” - -And suddenly she was aware of a new shyness in Paul Brent. He was -looking at her as a man only looks at a woman when she has become the -most wonderful thing in the world. He came down from the path and took -her bundle. - -“You have carried this from Ste. Claire?” - -His shyness spread to Manon. She laughed. The feeling was rather -exquisite, a little shiver of delight, the first note of a bird on a -soft spring morning. - -“Do I look tired?” - -“A little.” - -She noticed that he seemed afraid to look straight into her eyes. - -“Well, there was no horse to be had to-day, and in war the transport -must not fail—and here’s the saw.” - -He took it with an air of eagerness, pulled off the wrappings, and -looked along the line of the teeth. - -“Oh, great! I have been wanting it badly.” - -And then she fell to admiring the work he had done, and Brent stood and -smiled as a shy man smiles on such occasions. - -“It is splendid,” said Manon; “you would hardly know that there had been -holes in the wall. How clever you are with your hands.” - -“I learnt the business when I was no taller than you are.” - -“And you have been so quick. I was astonished. And then—the poor -man—has had to do his own washing!” - -“I had a hot bath last night, and afterwards, I washed the clothes. -Well, you see, they wanted it.” - -She patted the bundle. - -“I have something for you in there. And tell me, Paul, what is that beam -doing, hung up there?” - -“Oh, that ridge-beam,” said Brent; “it’s a bit awkward to get it into -place, and I had rigged up that cradle, but I can do the job to-day with -a little help.” - -“We will do it together. And now, have you had breakfast? Because I -could eat a second one.” - -“So could I.” - -“An omelette and coffee?” - -“I can’t resist an omelette, but what about the eggs?” - -“They are in that bundle. Do be careful.” - -“Trust me,” said Brent. - -Paul had cleaned and fitted the stove in Manon’s kitchen, and she did -her cooking there while Paul went out to try the saw. He had contrived a -carpenter’s bench in the front room on the other side of the passage, -using boxes and the floor boards from one of the huts. There were some -two by four battens to be worked up into a door-frame, and Brent squared -the ends off with the new saw. - -“It cuts like butter,” he called to Manon. - -“Butter! Oh, mon ami, have you any butter left? I have forgotten to -bring some.” - -“Yes, quite a good-sized pat.” - -“Thank God! How near we were to a tragedy.” - -Half an hour later they sat down in the kitchen to that second -breakfast. Manon had taken off her shoes in order to rest her feet, and -she told an heroic lie when Brent accused her of having blistered them -in walking from Ste. Claire. The omelette was excellent, golden food for -the gods, and so was the French bread after a season of army biscuits -and ration jam. - -Manon Latour found herself looking at Paul as many a savage woman must -have looked at the man whom she had chosen for a partner. Strength might -matter in Beaucourt, and Paul Brent looked strong. He had a good chest -and shoulders, and a squarish and intelligent head well set on a sinewy -neck. She had seen him with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and remembered -noticing how big and powerful his arms were. She knew that Paul was not -the man who would fight for the mere love of fighting. There was too -little of the animal about him for such savagery. Moreover, he was too -good-tempered, though when a good-tempered man gets angry, the fire is -all the more to be feared. - -“All Englishmen can box; is not that so, mon ami?” - -Paul was drinking his third cup of coffee. He set the cup down and -stared at Manon. - -“No. Why?” - -“It is useful. And you——?” - -“I have never boxed in my life,” said Brent. - -He saw the faintest of faint frowns on her forehead. Bibi could box, and -his boxing included tricks with his feet. - -And then she began to tell him about Bibi, how he had come to her and -suggested a partnership, but she did not tell Paul that Louis Blanc had -tried to get her into his arms. - -“You see we quarrelled, and I packed him out of the house, and now we -are in his way. His idea is to attract the tourists to Beaucourt, charge -them ten francs a bottle for wretched wine, sell them souvenirs, and all -that. It will take months to get that hotel of his rebuilt, and this -place of mine would have suited him very well while he was rebuilding -the hotel. You will have to be very careful of Bibi.” - -Brent’s hand had felt instinctively for his pipe. Manon saw it, and -leaning over, took a tin of tobacco out of her bundle. - -“Voilà! And English too!” - -His eyes lit up, not merely at the sight of the tobacco, but because she -had remembered. - -“That’s good of you, Manon. What did you pay for it?” - -“That is my affair.” - -“Nonsense. I am not going to let you pay.” - -“This time it is a present,” she said; “and when you wish to pay for the -next you will have to send me in a bill for the work you have done.” - -But he was annoyed. - -“Look here, I have fifteen hundred francs down in the cellar.” - -“Very well, you shall give me ten presently, if you promise not to argue -every time. Don’t you see that I wish to make some return?” - -Brent’s face softened. - -“I am sorry,” he said; “it is like you to put it in that way.” - -He opened the tin, filled his pipe, lit it and puffed with immense -relish. - -“Now, what about this prize bully, Monsieur Blanc? Do you mean to say -that he may come along and try to frighten me out of Beaucourt?” - -“That is just what I do mean,” said Manon; “you do not know Bibi as I -do.” - -Brent’s eyes glimmered. - -“I have met men like that. But they always left me alone. I used to -laugh at them—and get on with my work. You can’t quarrel with a -gatepost.” - -“Bibi would,” said Manon; “he’s a savage. Do you know what he did once?” - -“Well?” - -“There was a bull on one of the farms, a fierce beast. It chased Bibi -one day; he had to run. What does he do but come to Beaucourt, pick up -an axe, and go back to fight the bull. And he killed it, battered its -head all to bits, and then paid the owner. Threw the money at him. Bibi -likes a swaggering gesture.” - -“What a pleasant brute,” said Brent, but the glimmer had gone out of his -eyes. - -Manon began putting on her shoes. - -“I wanted you to know. You see, if Bibi tried to hurt you, it would be -because of me.” - -“I don’t ask for a better reason,” he said, looking her straight in the -eyes. - -And Manon coloured. She bent over and picked up the bundle, and began to -place the things in order upon the table. - - - - - XIX - - -Paul watched Manon arrange all this merchandise of hers upon the table, -the yellow oranges, the blue linen trousers, and the white and blue -striped shirt, the tobacco, matches, and candles, the old brown-covered -dictionary, the fresh greens from Veuve Castener’s garden, the slices of -cooked meat wrapped up in a page of _Le Petit Journal_. It was a -wonderful bundle that she had carried from Ste. Claire, and Brent was -touched by all the little things that she had troubled to remember. -After those three days of separation this visit of hers to Beaucourt -with this weight of good human stuff on her sturdy shoulders seemed to -give to their partnership an essential French and intimate solidity. -Brent felt that he mattered to Manon. She had shopped for him, and -shouldered the merchandise ten miles. A shallow man would have felt -flattered, but to Brent it brought a sense of warmth to the heart. - -“Manon?” - -She looked up, smiling. - -“We are going to argue again as we argued over the tobacco.” - -“Oh, very well,” she said with a little gleam of her brown eyes. - -She felt in the pocket of her skirt for her purse, opened it with -serious deliberation, and picked out a few francs and some paper money. -She unfolded the notes, one of fifty francs, two of ten, and three of -five, and spread them on the table, putting an orange on each to keep -them from blowing away. - -“We are going to be very business-like. Let us see; I suppose you are -working here at least ten hours a day, and I can afford to pay you a -franc an hour. Five days of ten hours makes fifty francs. So I begin by -paying you fifty francs.” - -She held out the fifty-franc note to him, but Paul made no effort to -take it. - -She pretended to be surprised. - -“Isn’t it enough?” - -Brent looked at her quickly. - -“I don’t take your money.” - -She flourished the note. - -“There you are! How logical! And I don’t take your money, Paul, so there -is the end of it.” - -Paul answered her with a slow, uneasy smile. - -“That is all very well, but a man can’t live on a woman.” - -And then she scolded him with a sudden fierceness that made Brent think -that she was angry. - -“Do not be so foolish; you are not living on me. What should I do if I -had no one to help me here? Think. Men who can use their hands and their -heads are going to be little gods in a place like Beaucourt. Men are -scarce in France; we have lost so many of them and there is so much to -do. Are we partners, or are we not? If we are partners I pay you good -money, and you pay me for what I buy for you; and if you quarrel about -the money, mon Dieu, I will give you the sack!” - -They burst out laughing—both of them—at the idea of Paul being sacked. - -“There, you see how ridiculous you were making things, wanting to be so -proud.” - -“Yes, but wait a minute. Supposing I decided that I should like you to -buy me a piano.” - -“Then I should begin to think that Paul had been at the red wine. You -are not made that way. You give; you would always be wanting to give. -Now, be a good man and go and try on that shirt and those trousers.” - -Paul went like an obedient boy, and reappeared some five minutes later, -looking quaintly self-conscious. - -“They feel just right.” - -She turned him round with a dominant forefinger. - -“You must take care of your good clothes. I have bought you a fine pair -of velour-à-cotes trousers for Sundays, and a little black jacket. Those -linen trousers will wash. And now—I am quite rested; let us work.” - -That swinging ridge-beam overhead was the first thing to be tackled. -Paul went up the ladder and straddled his way up the gable end to the -chimney-stack, and gave his directions to Manon. She had grasped what he -wanted her to do, and had run out into the yard and got hold of the -telephone wire whose lower end was fastened to a bit of an iron bar that -Brent had driven into the ground. - -“I pull?” - -“That’s it.” - -There was a slot in the throat of the chimney-stack where the original -beam had taken its bearing, and Manon pulled on the stout wire until -Paul held up his hand. He lay along a sloping bit of wall, and guided -the end of his beam into the slot. - -“All right. Fasten the wire again.” - -He scrambled down, shifted the ladder, and climbed the partition wall. -Manon had run round into the room below and had hold of the other wire. - -“Ready.” - -She raised the beam, waiting for Paul’s signal. - -“Enough.” - -He worked the end into the slot at the top of the partition wall, and -the thing was done. - -Manon clapped her hands. - -“How exciting! Now, what next!” - -Paul came down to the top of the front wall of the house. - -“I want to try one of the rafters from the hut. One of those long things -there. If you could give me the end of it——” - -She did so, and Paul tried a balancing feat, like Blondin with a pole. -He had braced the wooden sleepers together so that they lay solidly -along the top of the wall, and resting the butt of the rafter against -one of them, he prepared to lower it towards the ridge-beam. - -“Hallo! Just a minute.” - -He had paused. - -“If the thing falls, our crockery may suffer. Pull that table into the -corner.” - -Manon pushed the table into a safe place, and watched Brent handle that -length of timber. It was a ticklish job; an attack of nerves or some -lack of balance might have landed him down below with a broken neck. -Moreover, it was a test of strength; and when the rafter came to rest -with some three inches of its end projecting over the ridge-beam, Manon -sent up a little cry of applause and triumph. - -“Oh, mon ami, splendid! And how strong you are.” - -It was the man who dominated for the moment their little world of -adventure, the man with the strong hand and the contriving head. Brent -stood looking down at her and smiling. - -“Now, then, the hammer and gimlet, a packetful of long nails, and the -saw. I shall have half those rafters up to-day.” - -She collected the tools and nails, made two journeys up the ladder and -handed them to Brent. One end of the rafter was all ready cut to fit on -the bedding-plate and Brent secured it with a nail driven half home, and -then went up the slope of the partition wall, sawed off the upper end at -an angle so that it dropped flush against the ridge-beam, and drove -nails home. - -“Now—it is going to be easy.” - -He told Manon to fasten another rafter to the end of the wire that they -had used for raising the end of the ridge-beam, he pulled it up, -unfastened the wire, ran the rafter down the opposite slope of the -partition wall, rolled it over till it was on a line with the rafter on -the other side, shaped the upper end with the saw, and nailed it to the -beam; with the two lower ends fastened to the sleepers on the wall Brent -had completed his first span. - -The rest was repetition, with Manon acting as ladder boy, and Paul -working along a framework that grew stronger and more rigid with each -pair of rafters that were fixed. - -Half-way through the morning Brent told Manon to rest. - -“You have another thirteen kilomètres to walk, and I can get along on my -own.” - -“Very well, I am going to cook your dinner.” - -“Is that resting?” - -“Of course. I sit on a chair between the stove and the table. But take -care, you must not drop sawdust into my frying-pan.” - -“I have too much respect for my dinner.” - -So Manon collected wood and her pots and pans, and did her cooking in -the roofless kitchen, while Brent scrambled up above, hammering, sawing, -and whistling “Roses in Picardie,” his blue trousers more vivid than the -blue of the sky. He was happy and strenuous, and kept up such a merry -piping that he made Manon think of a jolly bird in a cage. She sat and -watched him with soft eyes. - -“Quel oiseau y at-il?” - -Brent looked down from his rafters and laughed. - -“A blue bird, Madame Taquine. Blue birds are lucky.” - -“The bird shall have a glass of wine for dinner. And what is that pretty -song you whistle?” - -He told her, and she began to imitate him, picking up the melody and -whistling it while she fed the fire. - -“Now, there are two birds in a cage,” she called up at him, “and what am -I? A black bird with brown eyes?” - -Perched up against the blue sky and climbing about the increasing -intricacies of his roof timbers, Paul developed a healthy hunger, and -the savoury smell of Manon’s cooking drifted up to him from below. All -his old “tool sense” was coming back, and he was working with a speed -and a precision that would have damned him in the world of Go Slow. But -then Paul had an object, a spark of the sacred fire, and the little -capitalist down below there—even Manon—who employed him, would have -opened her eyes very wide if he had preached by his acts the Religion of -Slackness. Paul had seen her slip away into the garden and begin digging -in the corner where the iron summer house stood. She returned, holding -up a bottle of wine to encourage her man. - -“Now you know where it is.” - -She felt that the wine was as safe as the silver. - -The dinner was all that a dinner should be, and they drank the health of -the new roof. To Manon’s eyes the house began to look quite “dressed,” -and already she saw herself voyaging over from Ste. Claire in Etienne -Castener’s big blue cart with the bits of furniture she had collected, -and turning the Café de la Victoire into a home. This house of hers -would lead the way in Beaucourt, and stand as a live thing to encourage -the others. - -“I want to look again at Bibi’s house.” - -Her watch told her that she would have to be on the march in half an -hour, and there was the washing up to be done. She was not going to -leave Paul with a lot of dirty crockery. - -“You can heat up the meat and the vegetables for another meal,” she told -him, “and perhaps you know how to fry eggs.” - -“I can boil them and judge the time,” laughed Paul. - -When Manon was ready for the road, Brent walked with her by way of the -Rue de Picardie to look at the Hôtel de Paris. The place, standing as it -did at the cross-roads, had suffered badly from shell-fire, and the -ragged walls rose out of a deplorable chaos of rubbish—old iron and -broken brick. It had been a biggish building, and Brent saw that the -house had gathered itself round the great central mass of brickwork in -which were the chimney flues, a mass of brickwork that stood like a -lonely tower in the middle of the ruin. The main beams of the roof and -floors had taken their bearings from this central tower. The staircase -had curled round it, and in any reconstructive scheme this mass of -brickwork would serve as a point d’appui. - -Brent climbed over the rubbish and examined the chimney-stack with the -eyes of an expert. There was a great crack running up one side of it, a -crack that spread upwards from a raw chasm at the base of the mass where -a shell had exploded. A good third of the foundations had been blown -away, and the whole pile seemed to balance itself precariously on the -edge of the shell crater. - -Manon had followed Brent over the heaps of brick. - -“Look at that,” and he pointed at Louis Blanc’s chimney-stack. - -“It seems ready to fall.” - -Brent was frowning. - -“Half-an-hour’s work with a pick, or a Mill’s hand-grenade, and a bit of -wind, and the thing would come down like an old factory chimney. Take -that gable end of the house with it too, probably,—and put our dear -friend back for weeks.” - -Manon’s eyes met his. - -“It would be a blow to Bibi?” - -“Well—that brick stack is going to be very useful when they begin -reconstructing the house. And if it fell it would be pretty sure to -bring that wall down.” - -“But we could not do it, Paul.” - -Her face had a touch of fierceness. - -“It would be such a dirty trick, the sort of trick that Bibi would play -on other people.” - -“I thought you would say that,” he told her, with a significant little -smile. - -“Then you wanted to find out——?” - -“Yes.” - -“O my Paul,” she said. - -Brent looked sheepish. - -“I should have known that you had some strong reason—that the fellow is -such a beast.” - -“He may be that, but we could not fight him in that way. I don’t believe -you would have done it, Paul, even if I had asked you.” - -“I was pretty sure you would not ask me.” - -“Thank you,” she said. - -Brent walked with her as far as the factory, and turned homewards along -the Rue Romaine. She had given him a soft look of the eyes, and a little -smile, and Brent was happy. - -“She’s great,” he kept saying to himself; “by God, I’m glad she trusts -me!” - - - - - XX - - -The day dawned very red, with the whole horizon flushed like the inside -of a shell. The sky overhead was as grey as a pearl; there was no wind -moving and the air lay soft and still. - -Brent stood on the doorstep and scented a change in the weather. Rain -was coming, and there might be wind with it, and he looked up at the new -rafters overhead and was glad that he had fixed none of the iron -sheeting. A gale could blow through the timber-work like a north-easter -through the snoring rigging of a ship that has struck her sails, and do -no damage, but Brent took the hint that that red sky gave him. He would -have to block up those doorways and windows before sheeting the roof, or -some malicious devil of a March wind might come crowding in, heave up -the whole structure and deposit it in the backyard. - -He had lit the stove and he had coffee, a boiled egg, and real bread and -butter for breakfast. His pipe tasted good after that meal when he went -up aloft to complete the fixing of the rafters on the half of the house -over the kitchen. The sky looked like a great flat sheet of grey rubber, -with a dirty patch of darker clouds sticking to it here and there. - -“Yes, you are going to rain all right, damn you,” said Brent; “pity you -couldn’t have put it off for three days.” - -Paul had finished the fixing of the rafters and had been nailing on the -battens that were to take the galvanized iron when Louis Blanc cycled -into Beaucourt. He came by the road past the château, and from the high -ground there he could not help seeing the fresh white timber-work of the -Café de la Victoire’s roof showing up against the lead-coloured sky. -Bibi dismounted and stood holding the machine by the handle-bars. Paul -Brent was visible as a blue and white figure moving against the white -timber, and Bibi could hear the faint tap-tap of his hammer. - -The “propriétaire” of the Hôtel de Paris had the mentality of the -superficially civilized man who has retained the worst blood of the -savage. Louis Blanc was a Parisian, a Parisian of the cabaret type who -happened to have been born in the provinces. He had a long head, immense -appetites, and an exaggeration of the Latin temperament that the word -“flamboyant” describes so well. A crowd made him brave, especially a -crowd of women, and one woman would do the trick if she happened to be -pretty. Bibi swaggered; but there was a streak of cowardice in the man -when you cut the hair of his vanity. He was just the precocious, -unlicked, boastful, dirty-minded boy of sixteen who had never been -socialized, and who remained a boy at the age of forty. - -But Bibi had a head. He was ingenious. He had avoided hard work, and he -had prospered. “Always get somebody else to shift your muck for you,” -was one of his sayings. - -He had been very successful with women, though he had had his head -bitten off on occasions. He did not understand that some women are -fastidious. Bibi was not fastidious. - -Beaucourt was in ruins, but the proprietor of the Hôtel de Paris had -glimpsed the possibilities of a ruined village. For the plain person the -problem of Beaucourt was shelter, work, food; the peasant, like Father -Adam, would have to live on his own sweat, reclaiming those fields and -gardens, gulping his potage, and swallowing his own potatoes and -haricots. That was not Louis Blanc’s idea of life. He despised the -peasant. He was modern, no agriculturist, but a manipulator of other -men’s activities. He meant to create an artificial value in Beaucourt. -He had money, and a man who was ready to back him with more money, a -rich Parisian bourgeois whom he had met in the army who had been piqued -by Bibi’s idea. Beaucourt was to be an “exhibition village,” a centre -for the sentimental fools who would visit the battlefields, and might -think it quaint and charming to stay in a village that was rising like -the dead from its ruins. - -A week ago Bibi and his man of money had visited the Tourist Agencies in -Paris. Bibi had declaimed. - -“In three months there will be an hotel in Beaucourt. Some experience, -hey!—for Americans and English to stay in a devastated village! Table -d’hôte inside, and people putting up rabbit hutches, or camping in the -church or the cellars! The tourists will be able to see it all from my -windows, and they will have their comforts too, good beds and full -bellies. People like to be comfortable, messieurs, even after strolling -down a devastated street. Wine—yes—plenty of wine. And -relics—cartloads of relics. You can visit the graves, drive to Albert, -Peronne, Villers Bretonneux, Chaulnes, Roye, Moreuil. Bus services to -St. Quentin and the Hindenburg Line! Do you not see it all, messieurs?” - -One of the principal Tourist Agencies saw it very vividly. Louis Blanc -had an idea. They were ready to put him on their list and to advertise -Beaucourt: “Spend three days in a devastated village. Comfort among the -ruins. Unique provincial hotel just rebuilt after being demolished by -shell-fire.” They rose to Bibi’s idea, but they were a little sceptical -about his scheme for rebuilding the Hôtel de Paris. - -“Thunder, but I am getting the stuff,” said Bibi, “and I am getting the -men.” - -Which was an exaggeration, for neither building material nor labour was -to be had at a wave of the hand. Bibi was agitating his case with the -Préfet and the Mayor of the Commune; he was trying to buy timber, tiles, -army stores, army huts, anything and everything. - -And there he stood on the château hill and saw that damned fellow of -Manon Latour’s putting up a roof before he—Bibi—had bought a foot of -timber! - -“The devil scorch his blue trousers, but where did he get that wood?” - -Louis Blanc walked his bicycle down the château hill, and left it -leaning against the wall by the doorway of the Hôtel de Paris. He went -in and had another critical look at this place of his, crunching over -the broken bricks, examining the walls, the foundations. The precarious -state of the great central chimney-stack was as obvious to him as it had -been to Paul; the raw and ragged concavity at the base of it looked -bigger than ever, so much so that Bibi’s eyes narrowed and little ugly -wrinkles showed about his mouth and nostrils. He was a suspicious beast. -A man who is ready to play dirty tricks on others is always imagining -them being played upon himself. Bibi climbed down into the hole and -examined the brickwork. There were no pick marks upon it, no signs of -freshly broken surface, but Bibi was not satisfied. - -He went and stood in the Place de l’Eglise and surveyed the stage upon -which he was to mount this financial tableau of his. He looked at the -church with its broken spire and worm-eaten walls. Yes, the church was -just as it should be; the scenic effect of it was excellent; sensible -people would leave the church just as it stood, a sensational and -picturesque relic. Here was one of the outrages of the great war slap up -against his windows; the tourists could stare at the church while they -sat at dinner in the salle-à-manger. Bibi suspected that no funds would -be available for the restoration of churches. That was excellent. Who -wanted churches, unless they were of sufficient interest to be written -up in guide-books? The shell-scarred lime trees, ranged round the Place -like the pillars of a piazza, had a decorative and realistic effect, and -Bibi decided that the lime trees must not be touched. He turned his -attention to the Hospice. The Hospice was a very interesting ruin, and -Bibi thought of trying to buy the building, visualizing it as an -admirable annexe in the event of the scheme proving a success. - -The tap-tap of Brent’s hammer echoed faintly through the ruins. The -sound was insistent, challenging, busily competitive. It annoyed Louis -Blanc, kept up a noise like the yapping of a dog, and disturbed his -material visions. - -“Confound that fellow!” - -He called Brent a foul name, and then walked into the Rue de Picardie. -Bibi was jealous of Manon, and jealous of the enterprise she had shown -in gathering up the threads of life in broken Beaucourt. A woman had got -ahead of him, and Bibi’s vanity felt the insult; women were created to -be spectators and to supply the applause. Louis Blanc wanted Manon, and -he wanted her house. She was so plump and pretty and provocative, and -she would have made such an excellent little manageress, for even -tourists like a pretty French madame busy about a house. But Manon had -declared war upon Bibi; he had his grudge against her, and since she was -only a woman, Bibi transferred the grudge to Brent. - -Reaching the end of the Rue de Picardie, Louis Blanc had a view of the -work that Paul had completed, and it was the work of a craftsman, no -bodging job perpetrated in a back garden by an enthusiastic amateur. -Bibi stood in the street and gazed, and the longer he looked, the more -fiercely he disliked Paul. Brent was on the roof, nailing down battens -at great speed, a couple of nails in his mouth, and his back to Louis -Blanc. It was evident to Bibi that Manon had made a catch, and that the -fellow up there on the roof was worth many smiles. - -He shouted at Brent: - -“Good morning, monsieur.” - -And a moment later: - -“Where the devil did you get that wood?” - -Brent turned sharply, and sitting on one of the lower battens, looked -down at Bibi. He saw him as a tall man, feet planted well apart, stomach -thrown forward, his fists bulging out of his trouser pockets, a man who -looked all angles, lean shoulders jutting out, jaw cocked, cap over one -eye, elbows truculent. Bibi reminded Brent of a big and blackguardly -variation of “Captain Kettle.” - -He removed the nails from his mouth, and wished Bibi good morning. The -first drops of rain were beginning to fall. - -Louis Blanc repeated the question that Brent had failed to answer: - -“Where the devil did you get that wood?” - -Brent smiled down at him. - -“Found it,” was all he said, and turning round, resumed his hammering. - -Bibi looked hard at the middle of Paul’s back. It would have been a -great pleasure to him to have climbed up and thrown that fellow off the -roof, but there were things that Bibi wanted to find out. The rain drops -fell on his face, and suggested shelter. Bibi mounted the path and -entered the doorway of the Café de la Victoire. He poked his head into -the room on the right of the passage and saw stacked in the farther room -all that timber and galvanized iron that Paul and Manon had salved from -the huts. - -It was pure chance, but Brent’s hammer took it into its head to slide -off one of the rafters and land on the stone floor of the passage within -two feet of where Louis Blanc was standing. Brent looked down and saw -Bibi, and Bibi was looking up at him. - -“What do you mean by that?” - -“It was an accident,” said Brent. - -“Nicely arranged.” - -“Well, you have no business there, anyway, monsieur.” - -Bibi stooped, picked up the hammer, and sent it whirling into the ruins -across the road. - -“Voilà!” - -He stamped into the other rooms and looked at everything at his leisure, -while Paul came down the ladder to find his hammer. He knew the sort of -man that Bibi was, and he had no intention of letting himself be tricked -into a rough and tumble with him. Such men are best held at arm’s length -by a show of good temper. - -Brent had the luck to find his hammer almost at once, and he was up the -ladder again and hammering hard before Louis Blanc had satisfied his -curiosity. Bibi looked up at him, puzzled. - -“Oh, there you are!” - -“I shan’t drop it again, monsieur. There is no need for a tin helmet.” - -He saw Bibi’s teeth. - -“A nice little hoard you have here. Did you buy it?” - -“We bought it by working for it, monsieur.” - -“You stole it,” said Bibi. - -Brent paused, smiling. - -“Look here, monsieur, you tempt me to drop the hammer on you.” - -“Try it, my boy, try it.” - -Paul let fall a subtle hint instead of the hammer. He wanted to be left -alone. - -“Why don’t you go and look for some yourself, monsieur. The good God -helps those——” - -“Oh, go to hell!” said Bibi. - -He slouched out of the house, turning up the collar of his coat because -of the rain, and Brent saw him walk down the Rue de Rosières. It -appeared that Louis Blanc did not know of those huts, which was amusing -and rather suggestive; Bibi had despised Beaucourt, and had not bothered -to discover what Beaucourt could give him. When a man has big ideas, he -does not trouble to grub among rubbish heaps. - -Brent descended, looped the ground sheet over his shoulders, and went -back to his work. Louis Blanc had disappeared, but presently he came -swinging back along the Rue de Rosières, and Brent had a feeling that he -had seen those huts. - -Bibi went past the café with a cocked chin and a gleaming eye. - -“You had better not take any more of that,” he shouted at Brent; “it -belongs to the State.” - -Paul nodded at him. - -“All right. It’s no use to you, I suppose? Good morning.” - -Bibi called him a certain foul thing, and stalked on. He had made up his -mind to hire a wagon and horses and salve some of that stuff for -himself. - -But he was feeling very evil towards Brent, and when Bibi hated a man he -piled every imaginable infamy upon the enemy’s shoulders. - -“That fellow would play me a dirty trick—if he dared, but I frightened -him a bit about the hammer. Wonder what a woman can see in a tow-headed -sheep like that?” - -It was raining hard and beginning to blow when Bibi got on his bicycle -and rode for Ste. Claire. - -Early in the afternoon the rain came with such a pelt, driven by a -rising wind, that Paul had to leave work on the roof. He began rigging -up a shelter in the big front room on the other side of the passage—a -shelter that would enable him to push on with his doors and -window-frames and defy the weather. He had stacked a reserve supply of -dry firewood in the cellar, and when dusk fell and shut out the wet and -melancholy blur of the Beaucourt ruins, Brent was not sorry to retreat -to the cellar, light the stove and feel snug and dry. He lit the candle, -put the kettle on the stove, and spent the time cutting the mortices for -the window-frames, using a couple of boxes as a bench. - -By nine o’clock the wind had worked to a gale, and its bluster became so -menacing that Brent climbed the cellar steps and stood in the passage -under the shelter of the wall. The wind was snoring through the -timber-work overhead, and now and again a gust would smite the house a -full smack with the open hand, but the walls of the café took the blow -without flinching. Brent thanked his luck that he had not been caught -with the roof half covered, for the gale would have made a mess of the -whole structure. - -As he stood there in the darkness, he became aware of Beaucourt as a -place of weird noises. The broken walls and hollow spaces made so many -Pan’s pipes for the wind to play upon. There was the noise, too, of -things falling. Blocks of brickwork and strips of wall that had braved -it out in quieter times subsided under the push of this furious -north-easter. Remnants of roof slithered down with a clattering of -tiles. Plaster that had clung to the stud-work crumbled to join the -rubbish below. A rusty piece of corrugated iron went clanking and -clashing up the Rue de Picardie, till a gust tossed it into a doorway -and left it at rest. - -Suddenly, like a big gun loosing off in the thick of all the tumult of -the wind’s attack, some mass of masonry or brickwork came down with a -crash. Brent felt a distinct vibration of the earth, a thrill of the -foundations under his feet. - -“Hallo, there goes Bibi’s chimney!” - -He was right. - - - - - XXI - - -Madame Castener had lit the lamp when someone knocked at the door of her -cottage. The wind was roaring in the poplars and blowing the rain -against the windows, and Marie Castener opened the door no more than an -inch, for lamp glasses were terribly dear. - -“Who is there?” - -A man’s voice came out of the darkness, a brisk but quiet voice. - -“Good evening, madame, I am sorry to trouble you on such a night, but -they tell me that Madame Latour is here.” - -Manon was sitting at the table with a sheet of red linen that was to be -the cover of a duvet hanging over her knees. The lamp was turned low and -the corners of the room were in comparative darkness. She saw a little -man wearing a black-caped overcoat and a soft black hat step quickly -into the room while Madame Castener closed the door behind him. - -The visitor bowed to Manon, pulled off his hat, and, coming into the -circle of light, began to unbutton his overcoat. He was a compact, -square-shouldered little man, short in the neck and legs, with a shrewd, -grey, close-cropped head, very bright eyes and an air of humorous -benignity. He smiled at Manon as she put the red linen aside on the -table, rose, and held out her hands for his coat. - -“Monsieur Durand!” - -“I have surprised you.” - -She hung the wet coat over the back of a chair, turned up the lamp, and -looked at Monsieur Anatole Durand with eyes that told him nothing. -Monsieur Durand had owned the château at Beaucourt. He was neither an -aristo nor a parvenu, but a solid little man whose father and -grandfather had been solid men before him, millowners at Lille, men who -had made money. Anatole had bought the château at Beaucourt about ten -years before the war. A man of ideas and of energy, he had tried to -teach Beaucourt certain things that it did not know, and Beaucourt—like -most villages—had had no desire to be taught anything. Monsieur Durand -had not been popular. He had lived up there in the château, and he had -not belonged to the château. A peasant may abuse an aristo, but, even in -abusing him, he recognizes the aristo’s indigenous right to be there. -Durand was an importation, a city man, a big little fellow who appeared -to think he had right to interfere with the other little fellows in -Beaucourt. The soul of the peasant had shown its surliness. Durand was -just a bumptious manufacturer who had come to amuse himself in the -country. Beaucourt had held its nostrils at the smell of his autocar. -What did Beaucourt want with an autocar? What did Beaucourt want with -electric light, and a dynamo driven by water power? The man was a fussy, -new-fangled fool. - -“Be seated, monsieur.” - -Anatole Durand sat down, knees well apart, his hands resting on them. -Marie Castener had drawn up a chair on the other side of the table; she -began to darn stockings with an air of phlegmatic detachment that left -these other two free to talk. - -“So you are like the rest of them, Manon,” said Durand, looking her -straight in the face. - -“How is that, monsieur?” - -She glanced at him and went on with her work. - -“Of course—I was unpopular. That busybody, Durand! Always wanting -something new!” - -“You know Beaucourt as well as I do, monsieur,” said Manon. - -Anatole Durand sat squarely on his chair. He was a square man all over, -square in the boots, the head, the jaw, rather like a little copy of -Thiers, that irrepressible, compact bit of energy. - -“Well, they can hate me as much as they please, but I always was a man -who must push a stone out of the way or cut down a rotten tree. I’m an -old fellow, Manon, but my work is over there. I have another ten years -left.” - -There was a little quiver of emotion in his voice. - -“I have no children, you know, and plenty of money. I am not one of the -ruined ones. You can’t take your money away with you when you die. Did -ever an old fellow have such an opportunity?” - -Manon raised her head, and her eyes seemed to see something. - -“Why do you come to me, monsieur?” - -“You have gone back to Beaucourt.” - -“In a sense, yes.” - -“You are rebuilding—you are one of those with courage.” - -“I have hope, monsieur, and I have had good luck.” - -Anatole Durand’s eyes glistened. - -“Life is like this, madame; there are those who work and create; there -are those who wait and grumble. Some people sit still and say, ‘What a -tragedy! What can we do? When is the Government going to help us?’ Those -people will not rebuild Beaucourt; they will not bring back the smile -and the good sweat to all that poor desert.” - -“You think as I think, Monsieur Durand.” - -He gave an audacious and triumphant little wave of the hands. - -“Do not call me an egotist, my dear, if I wish to consecrate the rest of -my life to the healing of these wounds. What better work for a -Frenchman! And that is one of the reasons why I have come to you, -because you have the courage, because I felt that you must think as I -have thought.” - -Manon put down her work, and looked at Anatole Durand with eyes of -immense seriousness. - -“Monsieur, listen a moment. When I first went to Beaucourt I thought -only of my own bit of property, myself, but when I had seen Beaucourt -and felt the pity of it, I began to think of my neighbours. Yet I say to -myself, to help others you must first be strong yourself. So I did not -hesitate to look round and get what I could, timber and iron from some -army huts, tins of beef, tools, bits of furniture—which I shall -return.” - -Durand smiled at her. - -“It is the spirit of France; do not apologize for it, madame, for it is -the spirit that will rebuild Beaucourt. But now, I ask you, what will -have to be done for the others?” - -“Food,” said Manon promptly. - -“Yes.” - -“Tools, material, wood to build with.” - -Old Durand clapped his hands. - -“Exactly. Well, it will be my business to try and arrange all that. The -Americans and English will sell us their camps and their stores, and I -shall be one of the first to buy. We shall have to open a canteen at -Beaucourt. Now, madame, I shall drive over in my autocar to-morrow. Will -you go with me?” - -“With pleasure, monsieur,” said Manon; “and if I may take a little -bundle——” - -“Anything but a piano or a cupboard,” said Anatole, with a laugh. - -The storm blew itself out during the night, leaving wet roads and a blue -sky and a smell of spring in the air. Durand and his car, an -old-fashioned four-seater De Dion, called for Manon at nine, with -Anatole at the wheel and a luncheon basket on the back seat. Manon’s -bundle was no terrible affair, stores for Paul tied up in a blanket. - -But someone was before them on the Beaucourt road, Louis Blanc on his -bicycle, a Louis Blanc who was not in the best of tempers. He had -visited nearly every farm in Ste. Claire, offering good money for the -hire of a wagon and a couple of horses, but no one had been able to -oblige him. He came into Beaucourt by the Bonnière road. In the Place de -l’Eglise he dismounted and stood staring. Something was missing from the -broken outlines of the ruins of the Hôtel de Paris; the great central -chimney had fallen. - -Bibi dashed his bicycle down upon the cobbles. He was in a rage—the -dramatic, white-faced rage of the French “rough,” a rage that must -gesticulate, stamp up and down, let itself loose on something. He -stormed in and looked at the ruin, and a pretty mess the chimney had -made of it. Falling on the gable end next the Rue des Echelles, it had -sent it crashing, and this mass of brickwork, striking the tottering -wall of the Hospice across the way, had brought down the whole façade of -the Hospice into the road. The mouth of the Rue des Echelles was full of -broken bricks and stones. - -Bibi looked at it all, and swore. The centre-piece of his house had -gone; there were only three walls instead of four—nothing left that -could carry a roof. The end fronting on the Rue des Echelles would have -to be rebuilt before anything could be done in the way of putting up -timber. - -Bibi stamped about, kicking the bricks, and flapping his arms like some -furious bird. He was not a man who could satisfy himself by cursing the -elements or black-guarding a purely impersonal wind. He wanted a -tangible, human enemy, a personal quarrel, a feud that could be -prosecuted with boot and fist. He wanted to take somebody by the throat, -smash his fists against real flesh, smell real blood. Bibi was a savage. -His rage was the anthropomorphic rage of a savage that spits in the face -of its idol-god and hammers it with a club. - -That chimney had not fallen itself. Therefore someone had helped it to -fall. Therefore someone had played him a dirty trick. These deductions -following each other easily through Bibi’s mind, proved that someone -could be none other than that fellow of Manon Latour’s. - -“Voilà!” - -The motive was obvious, so obvious that Bibi had not to search for an -enemy. He had found his quarrel and he fastened on it like a snarling -dog. - -He walked up the Rue de Picardie with those cold eyes of his full of a -hard glare. His fists were stuffed into his trouser pockets; he swung -his shoulders as he walked, and jerked his head from side to side. The -fighting mood flared in him. - -Paul was at work on the roof. He had carried up about twenty sheets of -corrugated iron, and his hammer began to ring on them as Louis Blanc -came up the street. To Bibi the noise was like the clashing of sword and -buckler, a barbaric sound echoing out of his savage Gaulish past. - -“Hallo, there!” - -Brent turned, and leaning against the roof, looked down at the man in -the street. Bibi’s figure was foreshortened. His long chin seemed to -stick out; he looked all shoulders and feet. - -“Good morning,” said Paul, “it has turned fine after the storm.” - -Bibi grinned and looked at the ladder that rested against the front of -the house. - -“So you thought that dirty trick of yours rather clever.” - -“What trick, Monsieur Blanc?” - -Bibi raised a big hand, its fingers hooked, as though he were reaching -for the man up above. He looked ugly, devilish ugly. - -“Come down,” he said. - -Brent sat and considered him. - -“What’s the matter? What are you talking about?” - -“Come down,” said Bibi again; “you know what I mean.” - -Brent’s eyes went hard. He knew what had happened to Louis Blanc’s -house, having strolled up there soon after dawn, and he sensed some -connexion between the fallen chimney and that ugly figure in the road. -The fellow wanted a row; he had found an excuse for it; but Brent had -made up his mind not to give Bibi his chance. A row might prove most -damnably awkward, and Paul meant to smile the man off. - -“Look here,” he said. “I’m busy. What’s all this about?” - -“Come down,” barked Bibi, with the persistence of a furious dog. - -Brent laughed, turned, and pretended to go on with his work, but he kept -an eye on the top of the ladder that projected above the wall. - -“You pig of a coward,” said the voice. - -Brent began hammering. - -“You knocked away the foundations of my chimney.” - -Brent went on hammering. - -Then he saw the top of the ladder give a jerk, and he was round in a -flash. Bibi had one foot on the third rung, and the two men stared at -each other. - -“Look here,” said Brent, still smiling, “you keep off that ladder. I -have had nothing to do with that chimney of yours.” - -“Liar!” shouted the Frenchman. - -Brent gave a French shrug. - -“It’s the truth; take it or leave it. But get off that ladder.” - -Bibi began to climb up, and Brent bent down, gripped the top rung, and -held the ladder out from the wall. - -“Look here, if you try to come up, I’ll pitch you over.” - -Bibi did try, and Brent kept his promise. Man and ladder went over into -the road, Bibi lying like a big beetle with the thing on top of him. He -slipped from under it, got up, and began to behave like a madman. He -picked up the ladder, dashed it against the raised path so that it broke -in the middle, and then went on to kick it to pieces with his heavy -boots. He was like a wild animal that had lost all control and all sense -of pain, and Brent sat and watched him with something of the feeling of -a man who is safe in the branches of a tree. He understood now why Manon -had looked so serious when she had spoken of Louis Blanc. The fellow -could behave like a beast, and he had the strength of a beast. Brent had -ceased to smile. - -“I shall want a long spoon,” he reflected, “a devilish long spoon. Life -in Beaucourt is going to be hot stuff.” - -Into the middle of this display of animal energy came Anatole Durand’s -car, poking its red nose round the corner of the Rue Romaine, and -stopping by the well, for Bibi still occupied the road. He had not -finished kicking the ladder to pieces, and his heavy boots made such a -noise that he had not heard the car. - -There was a very droll look on old Durand’s face. Manon had glanced at -Paul on the roof, and Paul had smiled at her, but Manon did not smile. -Here was this evil spirit loose in Beaucourt, this man who had always -behaved like a spoilt child when baulked of some desire. - -“So that fellow hasn’t been killed,” said Monsieur Durand. “What a pity! -Let us ring for the concierge.” - -He sat there and blew blasts on his motor horn as though Louis Blanc -were the walls of Jericho. - -Bibi left the remains of the ladder and walked across to the car. The -imperiousness of old Durand’s horn annoyed him, nor was it any pleasure -to him to look into the quizzical and bright eyes of the manufacturer -from Lille. Anatole was not afraid of anything or anybody, and he had -always spoken of Bibi as a dog that wanted thrashing. The presence of -Manon modified the situation, and brought the sex swagger back into -Bibi’s attitude. - -“You seem to have no respect for your boots, monsieur,” said old Durand. - -Louis Blanc stood in front of the nose of the car, hands in pockets, -feet well apart, his body swung back from the loins. - -“If a fellow plays you a dirty trick, monsieur, you go round to give him -a thrashing, hey. But that fellow up there was afraid to come down, so I -have smashed his ladder for him. You see!” - -“Tiens!” said old Durand, “but what is it all about?” - -“If you ask that fellow up there,” and Bibi shook a fist at Paul, -“whether he did not knock down the chimney and wall of my hotel, he will -tell you a lie.” - -The voice of Manon interposed itself. - -“Monsieur Blanc imagines that other people behave as he would behave. -That is the whole trouble.” - -She looked up at Paul. - -“Have you touched Monsieur Blanc’s house?” - -“Is it likely? The storm blew the thing down. I heard it fall about nine -o’clock last night.” - -Bibi shrugged his shoulders. The violence was dying out of him; it had -exhausted itself for the moment; and he had a certain astuteness; the -grapes were sour on this particular morning. - -“You are a man of the world, monsieur,” he said to Anatole Durand; “you -know that things do not happen of themselves, especially when certain -people wish them to happen. But the truth remains; that fellow is a -coward and a liar, and it was to madame’s interest.” - -Anatole gave a little bleat on the horn. - -“I think you have got a bee in your head, Monsieur Blanc. We French do -not play such tricks on each other.” - -“So it is three to one,” said Bibi; “and against a man who was three -times wounded. Voilà! Into the ditch with you all! I’m off.” - -He went swinging up the Rue de Picardie, and Durand and Manon sat and -looked at each other. - -“What is the matter with that fellow?” - -“What was always the matter with Bibi, monsieur? He has an idea that -Beaucourt is an opportunity, that he is going to show off and make -money. He always had the biggest voice in the place, you know.” - -“Yes, a fog-horn of a man,” said Durand, “a big drum. But what about our -St. Simon up there?” - -They climbed out of the car, and joined in council with Paul. But old -Durand’s attention was divided. He was in Beaucourt, the place of his -Frenchman’s dreams, in the thick of these dear ruins that were to bloom -again under his hand. He looked at Manon’s house, and was delighted, and -his delight almost forgot the worker and the work. Here was his symbol, -his example, his banner of hope. He wanted to run through all the -village on those sturdy little legs of his, and dream hard-headed dreams -of reconstruction. - -Manon understood. - -“Go and look at Beaucourt, monsieur. I will see to my partner.” - -Anatole dashed off, opening a big note-book. He had carried a big -note-book all his life; it was his Bible. - -“Expect me in half an hour.” - -Manon stood in the road and spoke to Paul. - -“What happened?” she asked. - -“He came round here like a mad bull, and when he tried to climb the -ladder I pitched him over, ladder and all. It’s a nuisance; I shall have -to make a new ladder.” - -Manon laughed. She liked Paul’s shrewdness, his smile of restraint. - -“And now I must get you down.” - -She happened to know that old Durand carried a length of stout rope in -the locker under the back seat of the car. He had told her it was there. -“If we break down, well, I have a tow-rope.” He liked thoroughness, to -be prepared for all eventualities. - -The rope served its purpose. Manon threw up the coil, and at the third -attempt Brent caught it. He fastened the end to one of the rafters and -slid down. - -“That’s that,” he said tersely. - -Manon looked at him with eyes that were brighter than the eyes of a man. - - - - - XXII - - -Anatole Durand was away for two hours, and when he returned to the Café -de la Victoire he found that Brent had extemporized a ladder out of some -lengths of timber and was at work again on the roof of the house. The -gale of the preceding night had been a warning to Manon’s partner, and -he was in a hurry to get the whole roof covered in before the wind rose -again. Manon was helping at the foot of the ladder, and making further -use of Monsieur Durand’s rope. She had knotted a big loop at one end of -it, a loop which would grip a couple of sheets of iron, so that Paul -could draw them up. - -Old Durand sat down on the running-board of his car and watched. He had -seen his château, and he had seen Beaucourt, and perhaps he had been a -little discouraged, though Manon had warned him against what he called -“la maladie des ruines,” but as he watched the cheerful activities of -these two, Brent hauling up the sheets and nailing them down with the -speed and precision of a human machine, the adventure of it thrilled -him. - -“Hallo, that’s life,” he said, “the spirit of youth that strives and -creates. Youth is not daunted. Look at that fellow’s strong brown arms, -and the little Manon with her sleeves rolled up. Mon Dieu! but it is -splendid! Ça ira, ça ira!” - -He threw his big note-book on to the front seat of the car, took off his -coat, and was ready for the dance. He could not resist the music of -those two happy figures, and the fine clang of the hammer. - -“Hallo, you two, here is a recruit. Set me to work, my dear.” - -Manon exclaimed as only a Frenchwoman can exclaim. - -“Monsieur has caught the fever! We shall all call you Papa Durand, Père -de Beaucourt.” - -Anatole winked at Paul. - -“Now let us see what she will give me to do! She has made use of my -rope——” - -Manon stood considering, hands on hips. - -“I have it. Monsieur was always a great gardener.” - -“That’s it. Give me a spade. Turning up the good soil for the first -crops!” - -“It will be the first soil turned in Beaucourt. The honour is yours, -monsieur.” - -“Before God, it is an honour,” said old Durand with sudden solemnity. - -So he set to work in Manon’s garden, clearing the rubbish, and starting -his trench with all the careful deliberation of the professional -gardener. He whistled, he perspired, he took off his waistcoat. Life was -good, the simple life that grows out of the soil. - -Manon went in to cook the meal. She had brought eggs and butter, and she -made an omelette. There was a white cloth on the table, glasses, a -bottle of wine, half a loaf of bread, some cheese. When all was ready, -she went forth with a saucepan and a spoon and hammered her gong. - -“Messieurs, le dîner est servi.” - -Old Durand came in with a shining forehead and eyes that laughed. - -“What, the hotel is open already!” - -He shook hands with Paul. - -“You are the very man we want, my friend. I congratulate madame on her -partner. I hear you have lived in England?” - -“Seven years,” said Brent, and swallowed the lie, not liking it. Durand -was a man to whom it was no pleasure to tell a lie; there was something -of the frank, brave child in him. - -They sat down to the meal, and it was Anatole who talked, and he talked -like his note-book. He expressed himself in energetic, jerky phrases, -like a man pushing a big stone up a hill. - -“Work, that’s it. The world has got to get back to work. There is -nothing so good as work. Look at my appetite! I saw it all mapped out -while I was digging. We must get at the soil, grow our food, grow more -food till we have food to sell. Then we can buy clothes, and pots and -pans, and curtains—the things that the towns have to sell. Quite -simple, is it not? But to begin with we shall have no food and little -shelter. That is where Papa Durand will come in. I shall buy food; we -will open a public kitchen and a canteen. I shall buy stores, timber, -felt, iron sheets, stoves. Perhaps you, Monsieur Paul, will be my -director of works—who knows? Perhaps madame will manage the food. We -must get the strong men and the women back, shelter them, feed them, -give them tools. Not charity, no, but a new chance. It is not wise to -make things too easy; if people do not work, they shall not come to our -canteen. The old women and the children had better stay where they are -until Beaucourt has its feet on the rock. Yes, I shall live here, and -work here, when I am not scouring the country for stores, or shouting at -officials. The officials always have wool in their ears. They say, ‘Your -plan shall be considered,’ and then put it away in a drawer. But you, my -friends, and the like of you, will be the saviours of devastated France. -I drink your health, madame, and wish you ‘bonne chance.’” - -When the meal was over, and Monsieur Durand had lit a cigar, Manon took -him to see the huts in the field off the Rue de Rosières. Two of these -huts were in perfect condition and had not been touched by Brent; and -there were two others that could be put in repair. Each hut would hold -about twenty people. - -Anatole was delighted. - -“Here we are! Shelter for forty men and the same number of -women—barracks for the workers till we can find something better. Then -there are the cellars in Beaucourt. I shall use the cellars of the -château as my depôt for food.” - -He scribbled in his note-book. - -“I shall be in debt to Beaucourt,” said Manon, “but I shall pay the -debt.” - -“How so, my dear?” - -“We have taken more than enough material to make another hut.” - -“The example will pay for it. I suppose that fellow—Louis Blanc—knows -of these buildings?” - -“Yes.” - -“Confound him!” said Durand. - -She left him wandering among the ruined cottages, and returned to the -café and to Paul. Manon’s ideas had been enlarged by the enthusiasms of -old Durand, for he was a man who had remained young, whose brain was -vital and alert. Age was horrible to Manon, even though she pitied it, -age with its stupidly staring old face, its eternal questions, its -eternal condemnation of anything new. She found herself picturing the -Beaucourt of the future. What would it be like?—a little world of old -men and old women, grumblers, backbiters, grudging folk who could never -forgive youth for being young? The figures of Paul, Bibi and old Durand -seemed to stand in the foreground of the new Beaucourt. She was more -than a little afraid of Paul. How would Beaucourt accept him? Had the -war made people broader-minded, more generous, more ready to say “This -man has done good things; let us judge him by his works”? - -Paul had shifted his ladder to the other side of the house, for he had -completed the roofing of the half next the street. Already this house of -hers was ceasing to look an empty shell; it had a solidity, an -overspreading shadow. Something thrilled in her. She looked up at the -man, her man with his brown arms and sturdy back, and a strange new -tenderness awoke in her heart. She would stand by him; she would place -herself resolutely between him and the past. What did the past matter? -It was the future, the brave looking forward, and the light in the eyes, -the hands strong for the labour that was to be. These were the things -that mattered. - -“Paul.” - -She called him, and her voice had a new softness, a note that was for -his ears alone. He turned and looked down at her, this dark-haired -little woman in her black blouse and black and white check skirt. The -woman in her and the indefinable perfume of her womanhood seemed to rise -to him like the scent of the spring. - -“Come down,” she said; “I wish to talk.” - -Brent smiled, hesitating. - -“I want this finished before the wind gets up.” - -“Yes, I know,” she answered; “you work like a devil.” - -He laughed and came down the ladder, and when he was standing at her -side, he felt that they had passed some invisible landmark, and that -Manon knew it and was holding out a hand. - -“Where is Monsieur Anatole?” - -“Dreaming,” she said, “dreaming, but I think his dreams will come true.” - -“A great old man—that.” - -“Because he is not old. He looks forward, not back. If he can only give -his eyes to Beaucourt, it will be good for Beaucourt—and for us.” - -She turned through the gateway into the garden where old Durand’s first -ridge of freshly turned brown soil showed at the end of a green carpet -of weeds. The path under the pollarded limes and between them and the -stone wall was broad enough for two. It had many memories for Manon, -many associations—this old garden; it was an intimate place, and Brent -was no longer a stranger. - -“I am worried about Bibi,” she said. - -She looked up at Paul with a full, frank glance of the eyes, a glance -that seemed to open the whole of her world to him. - -“I can look after myself. I don’t want to quarrel with the fellow.” - -“You are thinking that he could make trouble?” - -“Yes, that’s the danger.” - -They walked to the end of the path in silence, a silence that was like a -lane that led towards a clearer view of the future. - -“How great is the danger, Paul?” - -She spoke very quietly, and in turning, looked calmly up into his face. - -“Do you not think that I ought to know?” - -Brent stood a moment, his eyes set in a stare of thought. He was -wondering what had prompted her to ask him that question, nor had he any -quarrel with her right to ask it, and in a measure, he was glad. - -“You have every right to know—I will tell you.” - -“Wait——” - -She touched his sleeve. - -“Do not misunderstand me. If I wish to defend my friend, I must know how -the attack might come, I must have my eyes open. And then—of course, it -all depends on whether you are happy here.” - -Brent smiled. - -“If you say that I may stay, I stay. Such a second chance does not often -come to a man. And now—I’ll tell you.” - -“Everything,” she said with a quick look at him. - -“Everything.” - -He found the making of that confession far easier than he had thought. -On his first day in Beaucourt he had given her mere hints, sketched a -vague outline, but now he drew in every detail, withholding nothing, -painting his life’s picture with a simplicity and a sincerity begotten -of the war. He had lived two years in an English prison, having been -convicted of fraud—but the fraud had been of another man’s making. -Brent had trusted people; he was good-natured; he had left all the legal -details of the adventure to the other man. - -“Of course I was to blame,” he said; “I was just as responsible as he -was; I ought not to have gone about in blinkers. I abetted his swindling -because I did not take the trouble to find it out. My wife knew it all -the time; she was one of those women who are mad to make a show. I never -forgave her that. When I came out of prison the war had started, and I -had my chance. But after the war—there was nothing. Do you wonder that -I had a horror of going back?” - -“What a tragedy!” she said; “just your good nature.” - -He glanced at Manon. - -“One ought not to be too good-natured. But for that disgrace—and the -truth of it—I’m free.” - -“Quite free?” - -Her dark eyes looked into his with a candour that was almost fierce. And -Brent understood. - -“Yes, free. My wife died during the first year of the war. I’m quit of -the whole miserable business; only, over there, I should always be -labelled an ex-convict. I didn’t mind so much during the war; you lost -yourself in the bigness of it and in the heart of your pal. But when it -was over——” - -“The past came back.” - -And then she smiled, and opening the old blue gate in the garden wall, -looked out over Beaucourt. - -“There’s the old world—everybody’s past. We are beginning all over -again, old Durand—you—I—even Bibi. But Bibi will be just the same as -ever, and after all there is so little for Bibi to find out. You are -just an Englishman who chose to stay in France.” - -“I’m a deserter,” he said. “I suppose they would call me that. -Beckett—the man buried over there would not have grudged me the chance; -he was the sort of fellow who never minded risking his head. I have seen -him go to a farm that was being shelled and bring away the dog that was -chained up in the yard.” - -And then he added, “What do you want me to do?” - -“Nothing. You are just Paul Rance, a Breton who had lived in England, -and who has not gone back to England.” - -“Yes,” said Brent; “but there are occasions in life when a man has to -produce papers, documents, and I have nothing but the pay-book and disc -that belonged to my friend. I would rather like you to take charge of -them.” - -“You can give them to me; I will lock them up in the box I have at Marie -Castener’s. And now that I know everything, it seems nothing.” - -Brent was looking through the gateway at the ruins of the village. - -“You are very generous,” he said. “We will see what Beaucourt makes of -me. If it accepts me as a good sort of fellow, it may ask no questions. -It is about time I got back to work on the roof.” - -They walked back to the house, and before he climbed the ladder, Brent -went down into the cellar and returned with the battered brown Army Book -and the identity disc. He gave them to Manon. - -“There is my pledge.” - -“It shall always be honoured,” she answered him, slipping them into her -blouse. - - - - - XXIII - - -Half an hour before dusk Anatole Durand started up the engine of his -car, and glanced round for Manon, who had been putting on her cloak. -Durand saw in this delay a loitering of lovers, nor had he any quarrel -with a romance that seemed part of the soul of the new Beaucourt. “If I -am loved by the young,” was one of his sayings, “the old can hate me as -much as they please.” His protest was a mild bleat on the horn, and a -jab at the accelerator that set the engine roaring for a couple of -seconds. He had a side glimpse, as he turned the car, of Manon and Paul -coming out of the doorway of the Café de la Victoire, Paul’s blue -trousers very close to Manon’s black and white check skirt. There was an -indescribable nearness about their figures, and yet just a little space -between them, that magnetic space that separates the hearts of lovers -who have not confessed. - -Manon was saying something to Paul. She looked across at Durand. - -“I am coming, monsieur.” - -“I am thinking of those shell-holes in the road near Les Ormes.” - -Manon climbed into the back seat, and Brent leant over and wrapped a -blanket round her. She had a little canvas bag in her hand, a bag that -contained something heavy, and she dropped the bag into one of the -pockets of Paul’s coat. - -“I managed to borrow it,” she said, “after much trouble.” - -Old Durand refrained from looking over his shoulder. - -“Are you ready?” - -“Yes, monsieur.” - -Manon gave Paul a nod and a brightening of the eyes. - -“Be careful,” she said, “or I shall be worried.” - -The red car squeezed its way round the well and disappeared into the Rue -Romaine, leaving Paul Brent looking at the empty sunset and feeling the -canvas bag that Manon had dropped into his pocket. He drew it out, -unfastened the string at the mouth of the bag, and saw protruding the -lacquered butt of a little revolver, a mere cheap toy of a pistol such -as they made by the thousand in Belgium before the war. There were half -a dozen cartridges at the bottom of the canvas bag, and Brent emptied -them into the palm of his hand. - -The forethought was Manon’s and therefore he had no quarrel with it, -discovering in that little weapon associations of tenderness and pathos. -The war had made him a fighting man, yet this pistol did not seem to be -the tool of a fighting man, but rather a thing to be carried in a pocket -like some hooligan’s knife. Brent smiled, but the memories of Manon were -behind the smile. He had seen Bibi in action and the beastliness of it -had sobered him, suggesting a wild dog among the ruins, a dog that might -leap out and snap at your throat. The whole business was primitive and -preposterous, rather unconvincing to an Englishman who had been trained -to a disciplined and orderly way of killing Germans. The idea of being -set upon and bludgeoned in a ruined French village suggested the _Police -News_. - -The dusk approached, and this ghost village had an inhuman silence. Old -Durand’s car seemed to have trailed the last thread of life out of it, -and a sharp shadow fell across Brent’s face. His chin went up; he stood -listening. Somewhere in the Rue de Picardie a loose tile clattered down, -and the fall of it was like the sound of an avalanche. - -Brent slipped six cartridges into the drum of the revolver, and put it -back in his pocket. He stood a moment looking up at the new roof that -covered the western half of the house, and if his pride swelled itself -out a little, the feeling was justified. Under the level light of the -sunset the old house had warmed to a soft, ruddy brown, and those blind -eyes needed only window-frames and shutters painted a battered blue to -make it melt again into its green nest among the orchards. In all his -life Brent had never done a piece of work better or more quickly, and -the man in him exulted. - -He entered the house, and hesitated in the kitchen with a half-puzzled -look upon his face. The sunlight had reached out over Beaucourt like a -great hand, a hand that was suddenly withdrawn, and through the oblong -of the window he saw the outlines of the ghost-houses, ribs showing, -eye-sockets grey and empty. The room itself was filling with the dusk; -objects in it were growing indistinct; the chair on which Manon had sat -looked like a ghost of a chair. The silence was extraordinary. Brent had -known the same silence over No-Man’s Land on quiet nights, but there had -been men near—other men. Here there was desolation, that and nothing -else. - -His own face had a touch of grimness. He was listening all the time, -without perhaps realizing that the drums of his ears were tense; and he -was conscious of a sudden feeling of acute loneliness, an uncomfortable -loneliness, chilly, fidgety, unpleasant. He pulled out his pipe, filled -the bowl, lit the tobacco, and found himself biting hard at the stem and -ceasing to suck at it, in order to listen. - -“Wind up!” - -He smiled. An old soldier getting the wind up in Beaucourt! Did anyone -ever meet a ghost coming down Tottenham Court Road? He sat down in -Manon’s chair, stared at the blank emptiness of the window space, and -thought of lighting the stove and going to bed. Brent had got out of the -habit of locking doors and fastening windows, but Beaucourt, this -silent, twilight Beaucourt, brought him back to a primitive -understanding of the habit. He was a civilized man again who still takes -precautions against primordial savagery. He was the hermit-crab in its -borrowed shell, but this particular shell had gaps in it. And somehow in -the chill of that dusk Brent knew that he did not relish sleeping in -that cellar, where a man could creep down the steps in his stockinged -feet and stun him before he could move. - -He decided that he was not going to sleep in the cellar, and he went -below and carried up the wire bed on his back. Then he brought half a -dozen sheets of galvanized iron and some lengths of timber into the -kitchen so that he could barricade the window and the door. The cunning -of the old soldier suggested an additional device, some sort of harmless -booby-trap to guard the front and back doors, a few old tins scattered -about, a loosely slung wire that would bring a saucepan clattering down -if anybody touched it. The virtues of a good house-dog, and of stout -doors and shutters, needed no emphasizing. - -Brent barricaded the door and window of the kitchen and went to bed. -Manon’s revolver lay ready on a box; also a candle and a box of matches. -Beaucourt was still, extraordinarily still, so silent that it kept Paul -awake, listening for the sound of anyone moving outside the house. - -He was growing accustomed to the stillness, and beginning to feel drowsy -and less on the alert when something brought him back to a state of -acute attention. He could remember having been scared as a boy by the -sound made by a snail crawling across a window-pane, and this sound that -he heard was just as peculiar and unexplainable. It made him think of a -hand rubbing softly across some roughish surface. It seemed quite near, -and yet he was unable to localize it in the darkness. Brent lay -absolutely still, knowing that the confounded wire bed would creak and -complain if he made the lightest movement. - -The sound changed abruptly, became sharper and more metallic. It -suggested finger-nails picking at the edge of a sheet of metal, and in a -flash Brent seemed to visualize the origin and the meaning of the sound. -A man’s hand had been feeling its way across the sheets of corrugated -iron that closed the window until it had come in contact with the edge -of one of the sheets. The hand had been testing the solidity of the -improvised shutter, and whether it was possible to slip one of the -sheets aside. - -The sound ceased, and Brent’s hand went out for the revolver. He fancied -that he could hear a movement along the raised path towards the street -door, and he waited for the clink of one of those tins, but his -booby-traps gave him no warning. There was an interval of silence, quite -a long interval, and Brent’s ears were beginning to play him tricks. He -was lying on his left side, his face turned towards the kitchen doorway, -its barricade of iron sheets and timber a black patch in the plastered -wall opposite him, when he saw a little thread of light outline the -lower edge of the barricade. It was very faint, a mere greyness, -diffused from some light that was burning in one of the rooms on the -other side of the passage. - -Brent pushed back the blankets, drew up his feet, and lifting his legs -slowly over the edge of the bed, sat up. The wire netting creaked, but -the sound coincided with a very distinct and crisp rustling in one of -those other rooms, a rustling that suggested the brushing up of shavings -in a carpenter’s shop. It was one of those sounds that struck an old -familiar memory on Brent’s brain. He had taken the precaution of -carrying the ladder into the kitchen, and it stood slanting against the -partition wall just below the gap in the uncompleted roof. Paul felt his -way to the ladder, tested its steadiness with a pressure of the hands, -and mounted it slowly, Manon’s revolver in his left hand. - -A sudden broadening glow of light met him as he reached the top of the -wall. There was the distinct crackle of burning wood, and then Brent -understood. He caught one of the rafters, pulled himself on to the wall, -and lying flat along it, was able to look down into the back room on the -other side of the passage. - -He saw a man down there, a man who was bending forward and feeding chips -and bits of wood on to the fire he had lit on the floor. He had piled -his shavings against Brent’s stack of timber salved from the dismantled -huts, and the flames were beginning to lick at the pile of floor boards. -Brent set his teeth, and changed his pistol from his left hand to his -right. The man was Louis Blanc; Paul knew him by his cap and clothes, -and those angular projecting shoulders. - -Brent might have saved himself much future suffering and travail if he -had obeyed that first impulse and shot Bibi as he bent forward over the -fire. He did not do it. It was one of those deeds that became impossible -directly the instinctive impulse has been gripped and held. Brent fired -straight at the fire, and the bullet sent a spurt of burning chips over -the feet of the man below. - -Bibi gave a leap like a cat, all four limbs spread. Paul had a momentary -glimpse of his face, lips drawn back tight over the teeth, eyes furious -and surprised. Then he dodged sideways out into the passage, and Paul -heard the saucepan clatter against the stones as Bibi’s ankles struck -the wire. There was a pause, a scuffle, an oath. - -Brent used Bibi’s favourite expletive. - -“Voilà!” he shouted. “I missed you on purpose. Next time I shan’t miss.” - -“Go to the devil,” said the other voice from somewhere in the street. - -Paul scrambled down to save his timber. Manon had brought him a little -electric torch, and after dismantling the barricade across the kitchen -doorway, he stepped into the passage. Bibi might still be hanging about -outside the house, and since it was possible that Bibi was armed, Paul -went to the street doorway, and flashed his torch along the path and -across the road. Seeing no sign of Louis Blanc he made a dash for the -back door, and using a bit of board scooped the mass of burning shavings -away from the timber pile. The floor was of tiles, and Brent was able to -beat out the scattered fire. - -He had no more sleep that night, but sat on a box in the corner of the -kitchen, his blankets wrapped round him, torch and revolver ready. -During that long watch he did some very practical thinking on the -subject of doors and shutters, and the values of a good watch-dog. If -there was to be a battle of wits among the ruins of Beaucourt many of -the advantages would rest with Bibi; he could attack when he pleased; an -eternal “standing to” to repel some chance raid was not a pleasant -prospect. - -“I might put the police on him,” Paul thought, and immediately saw -himself in a legal tangle, and being handed over as a deserter to a -corporal’s guard. - -Before the first greyness of the dawn he lit the fire, made himself some -tea, and then started the day’s work. It took him less than an hour to -finish sheeting the roof covering the right half of the house, and he -saw the sun come up through the beech trees of the Bois du Roi and flood -the broken walls with yellow light. There was nothing to break the -silence save the sound of his hammer, and in the calm of the dawn Brent -found it difficult to believe that Louis Blanc existed. - -He knocked off for breakfast, and then took a stroll up the Rue de -Picardie. Not twenty yards from the café he came upon a rather amusing -and significant proof of the impetuosity of Louis Blanc’s retreat, a -pair of boots standing neatly, even demurely, in the middle of the -street. Bibi had pulled off his boots here before making his attack, and -Brent pictured him in his socks pedalling that bicycle of his back to -Ste. Claire. - -Paul was inclined to be elated over the finding of those boots, and to -attach too triumphant a significance to this rather ridiculous detail. -Louis Blanc had the soul of a “sneak-thief,” and the courage of a bully. -Shot at, he evaporated, and Brent was tempted to believe that he had -finished with Bibi. - -But he kept to his plan, and began by closing the back door of the house -with a barricade of iron sheets and timber backed by ammunition boxes -filled with bricks. There were three ground-floor windows in the -unroofed half of the house and Paul covered them with more sheets, -driving the nails into the hard old mortar of the walls. He was nailing -up the last sheet when he heard the sound of a car. - -Old Durand had chosen a different road that morning, and had come by way -of the Rue de Rosières. He pulled up outside the house, and Paul, -standing there hammer in hand, saw Manon’s eyes fixed on the barricaded -windows. - -She gave a look of interrogation, frowning slightly. - -“Just to keep out the wind,” Paul told her. - -She did not believe him, and while Paul was talking to Durand she went -in and discovered the blackened tiles in the back room, the charred -shavings, and the scorched pile of floor boards. - -Durand drove on to the château. He wished to make a survey of the place -and to examine the cellars, and Paul found Manon standing in the -doorway, a very serious Manon, with eyes that demanded the truth. - -“What happened last night?” - -“What do you mean?” - -Brent’s eyes were tired and red about the lids, the eyes of a man who -had had no sleep. - -“Someone tried to light a fire in there.” - -He nodded. - -“So you have seen it! Yes, it was that pleasant neighbour of ours, Bibi. -He sneaked in when it was dark, but I happened to be awake.” - -She wanted to know everything, and Brent described all that had -happened, and how he had frightened Louis Blanc with the revolver she -had left him. - -“I wish you had killed the beast,” she said with a passion that -surprised Brent; “no one would have been any the wiser.” - -“I couldn’t shoot the man in cold blood.” - -“Cold blood! You have too nice a sense of honour. Bibi would have burnt -you alive, or suffocated you in cold blood, as you call it.” - -And then her eyes softened. - -“Yes, it is like you to be generous; but this madness of Bibi’s puts me -in a different temper. I am coming to live in Beaucourt.” - -“But Manon!” - -“You can argue for ever and ever, but I am coming. I have a sense of -honour, mon ami. And as for worrying about what old women might say to -me, nom d’un chien! but they can go to the devil. I stand by my man.” - - - - - XXIV - - -At seven o’clock on a misty March morning Etienne Castener brought his -horse out of the stable and harnessed him to the big blue cart. The two -women were busy in Manon’s cottage, and a little yellow dog, bought by -Manon the night before, and tied by a piece of string to a leg of the -table, kept running round and round until he had wound himself so close -to the table leg that any further circumlocutions did not seem worth -while. A wooden packing-case, two yellow trunks, a table, an arm-chair, -a cupboard, the frame of a wooden bed, a mattress, a hamper of -vegetables, and a basket of food had been placed outside the cottage to -be loaded to the cart. Manon had been able to save a little furniture -before the Germans had entered Beaucourt, and it had been stored in -Marie Castener’s grenier. - -The blue cart crunched out of the muddy yard into the road, and drew up -outside the cottage. A few neighbours had collected to watch the -departure; one or two of them brought presents, a few apples, a bag of -potatoes, a string of onions. Manon was popular. - -Among them was Mère Vitry, a refugee, whose picture of the Sacré Cœur -Manon had rescued from the cottage in the Rue Romaine. There were quite -a number of refugees in the neighbouring villages; Anatole Durand had a -list of the names, and he had visited them all and persuaded them to -remain in the villages for another week. Within ten days he hoped to -have a supply of food in Beaucourt. “Without food, my friends, we can do -nothing.” - -Etienne began to load the cart, his mother helping him with hands and -tongue. She was very strong and she would not allow Manon to do any more -work. “You keep your strength for the other end, my dear. There will be -plenty to do in Beaucourt.” So Manon stood and watched, holding the -yellow dog by the string, and Mère Vitry stood beside Manon and looked -at her as though she were a new Jeanne d’Arc. Mère Vitry had a face like -a wrinkled brown boot, with buttons for eyes. Her black skirt had a -great plum-coloured patch where her bony old knees had worn the cloth -thin. - -“You will take care of the picture, my dear?” - -“Yes, I will take great care of it,” said Manon. - -Mère Vitry explained that the picture had belonged to her mother in the -days when her father had come back from the Russian war, and that it had -hung in the same place and on the same nail. - -“My father drove that nail, and every two years I used to put a new -piece of cord on the picture. And you say there is no roof left in the -house?” - -“Just a small piece. There are no whole roofs in Beaucourt.” - -“Enough for an old woman to sleep under, perhaps. I shall be there when -the spring comes.” - -Etienne had loaded the cart, and had so arranged the arm-chair that it -formed a seat for Manon. He was going to walk beside his horse. - -“I shall walk,” said Manon. - -Marie Castener scolded her. - -“Get up and save your legs. Etienne can ride all the way home.” - -Manon laughed, kissed Marie, climbed up into her seat and took the dog -in her lap. Marie Castener stood by the wheel; she was feeling important -with all these neighbours listening while she helped to launch Manon on -this great adventure. - -“Etienne’s boy shall come over twice a week with eggs, vegetables, -butter and bread. He can ride a bicycle, you know. If you want anything -write it down on paper, for Pierre forgets everything, save the time for -his meals.” - -Manon leant over towards this stolid, ugly woman who had the heart of a -saint. - -“How good you have been to me.” - -“Don’t be sentimental,” said Marie Castener; “haven’t I enjoyed it?” - -The blue cart moved off, and the neighbours made the departure quite a -public occasion, waving to Manon and shouting “Bonne chance.” It was an -emotional moment, a dramatic moment—Manon sailing out into the -wilderness with all her belongings loaded on the cart, to begin the new -life, the life that was to be so bitter and so heart-breaking to many. - -At the end of the village, just before the road turned up the hill under -the poplars, stood the farm-house where Louis Blanc had been lodging. A -meadow planted with a few apple trees separated the house from the road. -Bibi, an unshaved and slovenly Bibi, was leaning over the farmyard gate -when Manon and the cart went by. She did not see him, but Louis Blanc -watched the brown horse and the blue cart go slowly up the hill. - -His jaw seemed to lengthen; his lower lip protruded; his eyes looked -mere slits. He rubbed his chin between finger and thumb, and spat over -the gate. It appeared that Manon had a way of getting things done; she -had a cart at her service when he, Bibi, had been unable to hire a cart, -and she had a man to work for her. Now she was going to Beaucourt with -all her goods and chattels to take up life in the Café de la Victoire. -Bibi’s nostrils looked pinched, he sneered. - -“A nice fix she would be in,” he thought, “if someone kicked that fellow -of hers out of Beaucourt.” - -That was the centre point of Bibi’s vision. The bottom had fallen out of -his own enterprise, and he had been listening to panegyrics on the -philanthropy of Anatole Durand: “Ah, if all wealthy men were like that, -if there were no profiteers.” The whole business made Bibi savage. Manon -and her man were flaunting their success, while old Durand was preparing -to spoil the place as a fertile field for speculation. And the fools -applauded him! - -“They think it is going to be a little heaven,” was Bibi’s reflection as -he sludged back through the dirty yard to drink his morning coffee. - -At Beaucourt Paul Brent had spent a very peaceful night, lying safely -behind a good door and barricaded windows. He was up at dawn, and -washing with confident publicity in the open street, his head full of -the thoughts of the coming of Manon. He had become a little less -self-conscious in his attitude towards Manon, less ready to consider the -possible prudery of a repopulated Beaucourt, less afraid of the -activities of Louis Blanc. And romance joined him in the misty street, -and walked back with him over the grey cobbles and into the house of -Manon Latour. Paul reintroduced sentiment into the house. It is said, -perhaps with truth, that the French are a hard-headed and unromantic -nation, killers of birds, teaching even the sex-bird to live in a very -practical and ungilded cage, but Paul Brent opened the door of the cage. -His love sang in the open, welcoming its mate. - -He played at being housewife, turning everything out of the cellar where -Manon was to sleep, brushing the brick floor, laying out the new -blankets she had bought the previous day, and hanging up a little -cracked old mirror he had found in one of the houses. The cellar had all -the best of the furniture, a couple of chairs, an improvised wash-hand -stand, a cupboard, a neat little wooden platform beside the bed for the -reception of Manon’s feet when she emerged in the morning. There was a -jug and basin, a tin bath, a table beside the bed to hold her -candlestick. - -Having sentimentalized and prepared the cellar, Paul set to work in the -kitchen. He had borrowed a rather battered cupboard-dresser from the -école, and on this he arranged all the crockery, plates neatly paraded -on the shelves, coffee-pot, cups and glasses clean and polished. The -commissariat occupied the cupboard. He arranged a shelf over the stove -for the pots and pans. His own bed he pushed away into the far corner, -with a couple of ammunition boxes underneath it to hold his few -belongings and his clothes. The rest of the furniture included a table, -the old arm-chair, a couple of plain chairs, with a second table under -the window. - -Paul stood and looked round the room. It pleased him; it had the air of -a room that was lived in, and yet something was lacking. Everything was -in order, even to the box of wood by the stove and a glazed crock full -of water. A touch of colour was needed, that little live flame of -sentiment, that unpractical something that appeals to the heart. A man -does not live by bread alone, nor is love satisfied with pots and pans. -Brent went out and searched, and down by the stream he found what he -needed, a sallow with its soft yellow “palm” blossoms shining in the -thin, March sunlight. - -He gathered a bunch of palm, chose a blue and white jug he had found in -someone’s back garden, filled it with water, and arranged his bit of -“life.” The jug took up its vigil on the table by the window. The -sunlight struck a note of colour on the yellow blossoms. Brent stood and -smiled. He felt, somehow, that the room was complete. - -About eleven o’clock the blue cart turned the corner of the Rue Romaine -with Manon and her yellow dog perched in front of the load of baggage. -Paul was fixing a window-frame in the window of one of the ground-floor -rooms, and he came forward hammer in hand. The yellow dog stood up on -Manon’s lap and barked at him. - -“Be quiet, silly.” - -Manon handed the yellow dog to Etienne and climbed down. She was in a -very happy mood, a little excited and exultant. - -“Paul, this is Monsieur Etienne Castener.” - -The men shook hands, Etienne smiling one of his broad, slow smiles. - -“Tiens, but you have a front door!” - -Manon had not noticed it, for she had been looking at Paul. - -“Mon Dieu, so we have! A real door! When did you finish it?” - -“Last night.” - -“Let me see how it opens and shuts.” - -She ran up the steps of the raised path, and tried the door like a child -playing with a new toy. - -“And it has a lock and bolts!” - -Etienne stood and stared at the house, still smiling that slow, country -smile. He was easily astonished, and the Café de la Victoire astonished -him. - -“You must have worked like the devil,” he said. - -Paul took a fancy to Etienne. He was one of those silent fellows with -the smell of the soil about him, and he had no tricks. - -“Some things are worth working for. Shall I help you unload the cart?” - -Manon had walked into the kitchen and found herself entangled in a new -atmosphere. It, too, had a door, only a matchboard door it is true, but -the door gave the room a new homeliness. She saw the dresser with its -crockery, the box of wood by the stove, the table by the window, the -blue and white jug with its posy of sallow bloom. Her heart seemed to -utter a little cry of pleasure and of tenderness. She went forward, -picked up the jug, and buried her face in the yellow palm. - -“A Frenchman would not have thought of it,” she said. - -She heard the two men struggling with something heavy. - -“Manon!” - -She ran out. - -“Where will you have this?” - -It was the cupboard. - -“It is for you, Paul.” - -He looked at her with the eyes of a lover. - -“In the kitchen, then? I have prepared the cellar for you.” - -“The kitchen, then.” - -She stood and directed the two men, happy as a little housewife -arranging her home for the first time. Then she descended into the -cellar, lit the candle, and experienced a moment of exquisite pleasure. -Her eyes missed none of the details. This little white-arched cellar -held more than a bed, a table, a cracked mirror; she felt in it the soul -of the man who had been busy here. - -Paul was waiting at the top of the steps. She turned and met him. - -“I thought it would be warmer for you down there,” he said. - -She stood leaning against the wall. - -“Thank you, Paul. It is so good to come back, when a man has taken so -much trouble.” - -Brent was silent a moment. - -“What will you have down there? The bed and the trunks?” - -“Please. The wooden box can stay upstairs.” - -When everything was settled, Etienne had unharnessed his horse, fastened -him to the wheel of the cart, and given the beast water and an armful of -hay, they sat down to a meal in the kitchen. Manon had unearthed a -bottle of red wine. She and Paul kept looking at each other, and at the -different pieces of furniture in the room. There was a conspiracy of -pride, of congratulation between them, a half-shy tenderness that looked -and looked again. Castener was all curiosity, all questions. His eyes -kept wandering up to the roof. - -“You have plenty of air,” he said, “plenty of air.” - -And then: - -“What will you do for a ceiling?” - -“I shall put in a floor there when I have finished the rest of the -roof.” - -“And the stairs?” - -“We shall have to be satisfied with a ladder, to begin with.” - -“But you will be able to go to bed. What does it matter! And some day, I -suppose, you will line all the inside of the roof?” - -“Canvas to begin with; wood when we can get it.” - -Etienne munched bread, and still stared at the ceiling. - -“It is wonderful,” he said, “quite astonishing.” - -After the meal he harnessed his horse and prepared to drive off. - -“I must bring my plough over here one day,” he said; “an acre or two of -ploughed ground would be useful.” - -That was the way of the Casteners; they did not appear to see much, but -they saw what mattered. - -When Etienne had gone, Manon lit the stove and put on the coffee-pot. -There was no more work to be done that day; it was a saint’s day; there -was something sacramental about it. Manon pointed out the yellow dog, -who had curled himself on the arm-chair in the sunlight. - -“We will call him ‘Philosophe,’” she said; “he has set us a good -example. But there is no reason why he should have that chair. It is -yours.” - -Brent smiled, picked up Philosophe, and sat down in the chair with the -dog on his lap. He lit his pipe, and they drank coffee, and talked. -Manon’s eyes kept glancing round the room, caressing everything in it, -the soft eyes of a woman who is happy. The room was uncomfortably high, -the walls showed patches of discoloured plaster and raw brickwork, and -the window of the room above let in rather too much fresh air—but it -had the atmosphere of home. You could light a lamp at night, and draw up -intimate chairs close to the stove. - -“What will you do next?” - -Paul was pulling the yellow dog’s ears. - -“Finish all the window-frames and doors on the ground floor, and put up -shutters. I suppose there is no chance of getting any glass.” - -“Linen will have to do, or canvas, to begin with. We must divide up the -day’s work. I shall take all the household work and the garden.” - -“What about seeds?” - -“I have a whole boxful of seeds in that case. The Casteners have -promised to give me potatoes to plant, also young lettuces and cabbages. -If Etienne ploughs up part of the meadow we can put potatoes in there, -and perhaps a little corn and some winter roots. I am going to keep a -few chickens, and later on a cow and a pig.” - -“You will be busy.” - -Manon was looking at the unglazed window-frame. - -“I wish we could get some of that oiled linen that the English have. The -other day, when Monsieur Durand and I drove from Rosières, we passed -what you call a dump.” - -Brent’s eyes brightened. - -“What sort of a dump?” - -“Sheds, and great piles of stores, boxes under tarpaulins, and an -English soldier lying on a bench asleep. It is close to the railway -line. I wonder if the English are selling their stores?” - -“I think I will go over some day and have a look at that dump,” said her -partner. - - - - - XXV - - -When Louis Blanc walked into the Coq d’Or, the old men seated at the -white deal tables became as mute as birds when a hawk sails overhead. -Mademoiselle Barbe was perched on a high chair behind the little -comptoir, surveying the room with a pair of green-blue eyes, eyes that -showed the white of the eyeballs between the lower lid and the edge of -the iris. Mademoiselle Barbe had red hair, a big mouth, and a complexion -like china clay. She was a thin young woman, an enigmatic young woman, -with long limbs, narrow hips, and a rather prominent bosom. - -“Good evening, Monsieur Blanc.” - -Bibi sat down at the table in a corner, his hands in his trouser -pockets, his feet thrust out. He looked in a bad temper. One by one the -old men got up and went out, for there was no pleasure in gossiping with -an uncomfortable fellow like Bibi in the room. He made himself felt like -a thunderstorm concentrated within four walls, an oppressive person, -explosive, threatening to make a noise and blow out the windows. - -Mademoiselle Barbe watched Bibi. She had the arched and voracious -nostrils of the woman who is a natural bird of prey. Her quick temper -made men think her capable of a great passion, a creature who could bite -in the excitement of a love affair, but Mademoiselle Barbe was as cold -as a cat. - -“You are in a bad temper to-night.” - -She took a glass from the shelf, mixed Bibi a drink, and coming round -from behind the comptoir, put the glass on Bibi’s table. She did not go -back to the comptoir, but half leant, half sat on the table next to -Bibi’s, her hands gripping the edge of the table, thin, loose-jointed -hands, rather red about the knuckles. - -Bibi drank. - -“You mix a drink very well.” - -“I always do things well,” said Barbe, with an insolent lift of the -chin. “I have ideas, you know, like a man.” - -Bibi looked up at her with eyes half closed. He had talked a good deal -to Barbe of the Coq d’Or. She stimulated him. She was a clever girl, -provocative, the sort of woman who was Bibi’s natural partner, a woman -who could seize things with her claws. And Louis Blanc’s mentality was -such that when the gas was out of an enterprise and his conceit somewhat -deflated, he needed a woman like Barbe, a glass of absinthe, and a -mouthful of rolling words. - -He had boasted to Barbe of all that he meant to do in Beaucourt, how he -was going to call his hotel the “Champ de Bataille,” and make a fortune -out of American tourists, nor in Bibi’s vision were the people of -Beaucourt forgotten. Army food bought cheaply and retailed at an immense -profit seemed a mere question of shrewd foresight. Barbe had encouraged -Bibi to talk, perhaps because he piqued the tigress in her, and she was -bored with tame men. Mademoiselle was greedy and ambitious, and the Coq -d’Or afforded a girl no scope. - -“That old busybody of a Durand is going to be a nuisance to you,” she -said. - -Bibi jerked his shoulders. He had always posed before the red-haired -girl as a devil of a fellow, a man who always got his own way. - -“Durand! A talker, that’s all. Give me a little of this stuff in -Beaucourt,” and he tapped the glass with a finger-nail, “and we will -explode Anatole like a paper bag. Meanwhile, I have somebody else to -settle with. When people get in my way, I push.” - -Barbe nodded her head. - -“That was a dirty trick, knocking down that chimney of yours.” - -“I haven’t squared the account yet.” - -“I thought you were rather fond of Manon Latour,” said the red-haired -girl. - -“She had a house that could easily be repaired.” - -“How cunning you are!” - -Bibi laughed. - -“But she would not do business with me, you see. Not that I cared two -sous about her; I don’t get excited over black-haired women. I shouldn’t -have meddled with her and her man if they had left me alone; but when a -fellow plays you a trick like that——!” - -“He wants the boot,” said Barbe. - -“He will get it, my dear. The fellow has a pistol and is rather free -with it, but I shall manage. Meanwhile I have my plans.” - -Barbe was interested in Bibi’s plans. She had begun to think that she -would like to share in them, and she believed that she was the very -woman for Louis Blanc. It appeared that Bibi had postponed the scheme -for rebuilding the Hôtel de Paris; his new idea was to buy a couple of -big Adrienne huts and erect them in an orchard at the back of the hotel. -The red ruin would serve as a sort of placard, a dramatic advertisement -for the wooden hotel among the apple trees. “You make your money -quickly,” he explained, “and then clear out. In ten years the -sentimental people will be tired of the battlefields.” - -“But if Manon Latour has the same idea?” Barbe asked. - -Bibi finished his drink. - -“That’s it,” he said; “that place of hers is being repaired too quickly. -But if I frighten that fellow of hers out of Beaucourt, she will be in a -bit of a fix. I shall hire a gang to rush my huts up.” - -“And when are you going to get the huts?” said Barbe, looking straight -into Bibi’s eyes. - -That was what she wanted to know—how much solidity there was behind -this man’s march-music. - -“I am going to Amiens to-morrow to see a contractor, and I expect to -meet my friend who handles the money.” - -“How exciting! And you will come back and tell me all about it?” - -“You can bet on that,” said Bibi. - -He was building hotels in the clouds to impress the red-haired girl and -to encourage his own conceit. Boasting was Bibi’s food of the gods; and, -when he had rolled a procession of fine words off his tongue, he began -to believe that everything would be as he said it was. And yet there was -a streak of cunning in all his vanity. He advertised his visit to -Amiens, let all Ste. Claire know about it, because it was possible that -he might wish people to think him in Amiens when he might be somewhere -else. The contractor who had army huts to sell was a creature of the -imagination, and even Bibi’s financial friend had begun to show an -inconvenient cautiousness. - -But he went to Amiens, walking to Boves with a little black bag in his -hand, and taking the train from Boves to Amiens. He put up at a cheap -hotel in the quarter north of the cathedral, and spent a day visiting -certain agencies, a firm of builders, and an official at the hôtel de -ville. Nobody seemed to know anything; there was a shrugging of -shoulders, a suggestion that everything was waiting for the people at -Paris. Monsieur Clemenceau, it was said, had made some sort of promise, -and the Tiger was a man of his word. The builder whom Bibi visited -hinted that he might be able to obtain one big hut, but it would cost -Bibi forty thousand francs, and the price did not include charges for -transport and re-erection. - -“It is necessary to pay through the nose,” said the gentleman with -brutal candour. - -Bibi spat and went out denouncing profiteers. What was a soldier of the -Republic to do with such wolves ready to tear the wool off a sheep’s -back? - -He fell into a rage, and could think of nothing but of Manon Latour and -the way Brent had managed to baulk him. Bibi was always a man of one -idea, one passion. Since his scheme for capturing and exploiting -Beaucourt seemed in the air, its place was taken by an animal hatred of -Paul and a desire to humiliate Manon. Louis Blanc had something of the -mentality of a madman whose whole strength can be concentrated upon one -definite and violent act. His power of self-expression was purely -physical. He had the cunning of a savage, but very little self-control. -It is difficult for decent people to understand how certain crimes are -committed. Appetite will explain many of them, appetites that flush with -hot blood those baser centres of a brain that have not received the -living impress of social self-consciousness. - -Louis Blanc settled his bill at the hotel, walked to the station and -left his black bag at the consigne. He went out into the town again, -bought some bread and cheese and a bottle of wine, and had supper at an -estaminet. About nine o’clock he started out of Amiens on foot, not -hurrying, for he had plenty of time to reach Beaucourt before daylight. - -About an hour before sunrise he pushed through a gap in a hedge south of -the Rue Romaine and worked his way through the orchards to the back of -the stone house opposite Manon’s café. Bibi had explored the stone house -on one of his previous visits. Its staircase had not been destroyed, and -it was possible to reach the upper rooms, one of which still retained -its joists and a few floor boards. This particular room faced the street -and had had a ragged hole drilled in its front wall by the shell of an -English sixteen-pounder. Bibi entered the stone house from the yard at -the back, treading very carefully lest he should set a tin rolling or -crack a piece of fallen tile under his boot. He sat down in one of the -ground-floor rooms until there was sufficient light to prevent him -bungling the climb up the rickety stairs. The ruin was full of the -greyness of the dawn when he took his boots off, crawled up the stairs, -and, scrambling across the joists, lay flat on the platform of floor -boards, and close to the hole in the wall. - -He had a good view of the house across the street, and by moving his -head he found that he could see the whole of it, and also a large part -of the garden. The shell-hole in the wall was less than a foot in -diameter, and by keeping well back in the shadow Bibi felt pretty sure -that his face would be almost invisible to any one across the way. He -had been lying there about twenty minutes when he heard the café door -unlocked, and saw Brent come out with a bucket in his hand. Paul dropped -out of Bibi’s view when he jumped down from the raised path and went to -the well to draw water. Bibi heard him washing in the street, and -sousing his head in the bucket. - -But Louis Blanc was tired. He had the whole day before him, and he had -his own particular plan. He meant to make Paul fight, hand to hand and -body to body, and he wanted to eliminate the odds in favour of a man who -might carry a pistol in his pocket. So Bibi ate some of his bread and -drank a few mouthfuls of wine, and went to sleep, curled up against the -wall. - -The day’s work was in full swing over the way when Louis Blanc woke up -and looked out through his porthole. It was a March morning, with a wind -humming in the ruins and clouds moving quickly across a broad blue sky. -Paul was up on the roof, fixing the rafters on the other half of the -house, and the splashes of passing sunlight played upon the white -timber, his blue breeches and darker coat. It was the sound of his -hammering that had awakened Bibi. Manon was at work in the garden, -sleeves and skirt rolled up, turning over the soil with a spade. - -Bibi lay like a big cat and watched them. The morning passed away, and -about noon he saw Manon enter the house and move to and fro in the -kitchen. Smoke showed at the top of the chimney, signalling the approach -of the dinner hour. Presently Manon appeared on the path and called to -her man, and Brent came down from the roof. - -When the meal was over, Bibi saw Paul standing at the kitchen window, -lighting his pipe. Manon was clearing the table, and talking to Paul. -Brent loitered a moment, and then came out on to the footpath. - -“I shall be back before dark.” - -Bibi heard the words very clearly. He saw Brent turn back when he had -passed the window, and take something out of his pocket. - -“I’ll leave you this.” - -“Put it on the table,” said Manon. - -Bibi saw Paul reach in, place the revolver on the table, and walk away. -He turned up the road to Rosières, and disappeared behind the ruined -houses. Bibi lay and watched the window, the pistol lying there on the -table and the figure of Manon moving about the room. - -“If she forgets to pocket that pistol?” he thought. - -And Manon did forget it. She went back to her work in the garden, and -Bibi seized his chance. - -He took off his boots, descended the stairs, looked cautiously out of -the doorway, and then made a dash across the street. He came back with -the revolver, and turned to his observation post in the upper room. -Manon was still digging in the garden, turning up the brown soil under -the shadow and sunlight of the March sky. - - - - - XXVI - - -Paul Brent was bound for Harlech Dump, those huts and little hillocks of -stores that Manon had seen on the road to Rosières. - -Paul was not concerned with the economies of Harlech Dump. He had four -fifty-franc notes in his pocket, and in his head a list of articles that -would be very welcome at the Café de la Victoire. He wanted canvas, -oiled linen, screws, nails, door-hinges, window-fittings, paint, -paint-brushes, locks, an additional bucket, some extra tools. Harlech -Dump was like a quarry in a land that had no stone. It was a temptation -to any man involved in the primitive struggle for existence in such a -wilderness. It was food laid out in sight of men who were hungry, and -guarded by a bored N.C.O., two physically unfit privates and the -theoretical fence of international commercial arrangements. Brent wanted -to buy. He did not know what steps the Disposal Board, or whatever the -authority might happen to be called, was taking to rid itself of these -stores. Certain civilized needs cried out for satisfaction. Over there -in England people had houses to live in, a grocer and a butcher round -the corner, roofs to keep out the rain. Kent had not been pulped into -brick dust and Maidstone pounded into a rubbish heap. - -Harlech Dump stood in the corner of a field where the Rosières road -crossed the railway line. The farm-house to which the field had belonged -showed as a red ruin against the background of a wood of poplars. The -dump had all the dreariness, the bald, boot-worn manginess of such -places. There was a stodge of mud about it that was drying with the -March wind and changing its colour from brown to a yellowish grey. Two -rusty Nissen huts faced each other across a roadway made of cinders. -Duck-board tracks lay about the place like huge dead worms oozing into -the sludge and the slime of the soil. - -The dump looked deserted when Brent came down the hill, and crossed a -corduroy bridge over a big ditch. A brown figure sat on the doorstep of -one of the Nissen huts, scraping a pair of boots with a jack-knife. The -man was wearing no puttees; his buttons were dirty; he had not shaved. -Even at a distance of thirty yards Brent recognized all the significant -symptoms of a “fed-upness” that reminded him of Wipers and no leave. - -The man turned his head like a sulky bird and looked at Brent without -curiosity. He was one Corporal Sweeney, in charge of the guard at -Harlech Dump. The guard was asleep and snoring inside the Nissen hut, -sleeping the sleep of the bored. There was no estaminet within ten -miles, and the few trains that were running passed by on the other side. - -Brent walked up the cinder track. He meant to try his French on the -keeper of the dump, and if French would not serve he could fall back on -bastard English improvised for the occasion. - -“Bon jour, monsieur.” - -Corporal Sweeney went on scraping his boots. - -“Go to hell,” he said. - -Brent smiled as though Corporal Sweeney had uttered words of English -politeness. - -“Parlez-vous français, monsieur?” - -“Urn poo,” said the corporal; “learnt it in your billets.” - -“Vous avez bien de choses ici,” Brent indicated the stores with a sweep -of the hand. - -“What’s that?” - -“I spik liddle English, monsieur. I find house—village—napoo—comme -ça. C’est triste, c’est terrible!” - -“Come back to roost in the rubbish, have you?” - -Corporal Sweeney’s broad face lost some of its stiffness. - -“What village?” - -“Beaucourt, monsieur. I work the night, I work the day; I put on roof.” - -“Tidyin’ up the ’appy ’ome.” - -Brent plunged. - -“Is it possible, monsieur, peut-être que vous vendez les choses?” - -“Do what, bloke?” - -“Sell——?” - -“Sell!” said Corporal Sweeney, “I’d sell the whole dump.” - -And then he added, “I want to get home.” - -The thought of “home” caused an emotional explosion in this bored and -unshaven man. It roused a sudden exasperation in him, an exasperation -that produced a feeling of sympathy for this supposed Frenchman. -Corporal Sweeney was home-sick, Paul homeless. The remedy seemed so -obvious to a man who spent a great deal of the day cursing the dump, the -authorities who made the dump, the authorities who kept the dump where -it was. Why the hell didn’t they sell it, give it away, or send it home? -Corporal Sweeney did not bother his head about official subtleties, the -difficulties of transport, the question of finance. He was not -interested in the pocket of the English Public; in fact, he was in a -mood to pick that pocket and distribute the proceeds to his pals. - -“Capitalists! That’s what I’m doin’ here in this muck ’eap. Protectin’ -the property of the bloke that pays taxes. He’s at home, makin’ money, -and lookin’ after the kids.” - -He got up and walked about, and became aware of a fifty-franc note in -Brent’s hand. He flared. - -“What’s that? Put that money away. Compris?” - -Brent put it away. - -“Mais oui, monsieur. Comme vous voulez. Mais, il faut payer——” - -“Come ’ere,” said the brown man. “Lord love you, do you think anybody -knows what they’ve got in the dump? Course they don’t know. Got a list, -have I? Yes, and it’s all wrong; who bothers now the war’s over? What -d’yer want for the home?” - -Brent made a pretence of trying to understand. - -“You no sell, monsieur?” - -“I want to get home,” said the corporal, “and the French—they want this -stuff. Me or Clemenceau or Lloyd George would settle the biz in five -minutes; the Tape-worms’ll take years. Come ’ere.” - -He conducted Brent to a big hut that Paul had not seen before, and -kicked open the door. The hut was full of miscellaneous stores, like a -ship-chandler’s shop or an ironmonger’s warehouse. And Brent was -tempted. Like Corporal Sweeney he was a simple man in need of certain -simple things, and he wanted so little. If he helped himself, he would -owe the British Public something, but the British Public owed Paul Brent -something, his unclaimed gratuity and back pay. His one fear was lest he -should get the corporal into trouble. - -“Catch hold,—prenez.” - -“Mais, monsieur, l’officier vous en voudra, n’est-ce pas?” - -“Officier—fini. They don’t know what’s here any more than I do. And -they don’t b——y well care. Voyez-vous?” - -Brent looked round the hut. He saw the very raw material he needed, -canvas, oiled linen, paint, ironmongery, stuff to make the bowels of a -reconstructive artist yearn. He nodded, smiled at the corporal, and -shrugged his shoulders. - -“You let me take some things, monsieur?” - -“Catch hold,” said Sweeney. - -Paul made his selection, but he made it like a Puritan, and with an eye -as to how much he could carry. A roll of canvas, a smaller roll of oiled -linen, a seven pound tin of red paint and one of green, two brushes, -four locks, six sets of butt-hinges, some screws, a keyhole saw, an -assortment of nails and tacks. He made a bundle of the plunder by -rolling it up in the canvas and lashing it with a length of cord. - -The corporal looked on approvingly. He was a man who worked with his -hands, and the Frenchman’s nice and practical taste in choosing his raw -material piqued the domesticated craftsman in him. Moreover, this fellow -was not greedy. - -“I’ve got an old hen house at home,” he said, “needs paintin’, and some -new tarred felt on the roof. Lord love a duck, wish I was there.” - -Brent tried the bundle on his shoulder. He found that it was not too -heavy for him to carry. - -“Monsieur,” he said, “tousand thanks. If officier says pay—I pay.” - -“Officer—nah poo. The stuff will only rot here, old cock.” - -Paul shook hands with the corporal. - -“Monsieur, you visit Beaucourt. Fumez cigarette, drink glass of vin -rouge.” - -“Bong, très bong,” said Corporal Sweeney; “me for Beaucourt, mossoo, -toote sweet.” - -Brent took the road to Beaucourt with that bundle on his back. The wind -had dropped, and the western sky was a great arch of blue, with the sun -coming and going behind hummocks of white cloud. From the hill above -Harlech Dump Brent could see Beaucourt, a distinct chequer of red and -white between the purple of the woods, the broken spire of its church a -soft blue line against the blue horizon. He dropped his bundle and sat -down to rest on the bank side of the road, with the sunlight playing on -him through the branches of a road-side apple tree. There was a little -wood behind him and in it birds were singing. - -Brent sat and looked towards Beaucourt, and his thoughts were of the -simplest. He was busy making a canvas ceiling or canopy for the kitchen, -and filling his windows with oiled linen. He had a boyish desire to go -home and to paint that front door, at once and without delay—a joyous -April green. It was very pleasant to work for Manon. She was so -delighted with things that he always felt that he wanted to fetch her to -see any new piece of work that he had completed. He liked to watch her -eyes and face light up. - -Some day he would try his hand at painting a sign-board and nail it up -over the front door. “Café de la Victoire,” and underneath it her name, -“Manon Latour.” - -But it was possible that her name might not be Manon Latour. - -Brent smiled and, picking up his bundle, walked on towards Beaucourt. He -was well content with life, a life that was full of the fascination of -contriving, creating, conquering; a simple life in which hands and head -worked together. No thought of Louie Blanc crossed his mind. The evening -was too peaceful. - - - - - XXVII - - -About four o’clock that afternoon Louis Blanc came down the stairs of -the stone house, crossed the street, and walked into the kitchen of the -Café de la Victoire. Manon was still working in the garden, and Bibi -strolled about the room with the air of a man in possession, his hands -in his pockets, his eyes looking at everything with cynical amusement. -These two people were preparing to make themselves comfortable; they had -their furniture, their pots and pans, plenty of food to eat and wood to -burn. The red and blue tiles of the floor had been scrubbed until they -had regained some of their pre-war polish. The table by the window had a -cretonne cover, blue pansies on a green ground. The crockery on the -dresser reflected the pleasant pride of the housewife. - -Bibi threw his cap on the table, pulled the arm-chair up to the stove -and sat down. The blue coffee-pot was standing on the stove, but the -fire had gone out, and it was no business of Bibi’s to light it. - -“I will have my coffee when she comes in,” he said to himself; “it is -her business to serve her clients.” - -The position of the arm-chair did not satisfy him, for there was no -warmth in the stove, and the chair did not occupy the strategic point -necessary to Bibi’s plan. He moved it back against the opposite wall and -close to the door, so that anybody entering by the door would not see -the chair or its occupant until they were well inside the room. Bibi -splurged in it, legs spread, in an attitude of comfortable arrogance. He -was always a man of attitudes, especially when there was a woman in the -game. - -He had been sitting there for half an hour before he heard Manon’s -footsteps on the stones of the raised path. She suspected nothing, but -had suddenly remembered that she had left the revolver on the table by -the window; also it was time to light the fire. Bibi had shut the -kitchen door, nor did Manon remember that she had left it open. Louis -Blanc had drawn in his feet, and was sitting upright in the chair, his -left arm extended and laid across the door like a spring compressed to -close it at the psychological moment. - -Manon lifted the latch and walked in. Her eyes were turned towards the -table by the window and the pistol that should have been there; the door -hid Bibi. She went towards the table. The door closed behind her like -the lid of a trap. - -“Good evening, madame.” - -Manon turned. She saw Bibi sitting there with an unpleasant smile on his -face. He had edged his chair a foot to the left so that it was -impossible for her to open the door. He held her caged. And Manon -understood in that moment of fear that Louis Blanc had her pistol. - -“It is you, monsieur.” - -She spoke quite calmly, for after the first leap of the heart her -courage came back to her. It was necessary to be calm and cool with a -man like Bibi; she knew that by instinct. It was her business to try and -hold all horror and fear at arm’s length, to refuse to believe in Bibi’s -beastliness, to find out what the danger was and how to meet it. - -“You are always a man of surprises, monsieur. Meanwhile I must light the -fire.” - -Bibi kept looking at her and smiling and saying nothing. He reminded -Manon of Marius, the village idiot, who was always smiling and pulling -the hair on his chin; but Marius had never attacked a woman. Manon -walked to the stove, and, standing so that she could watch Bibi, lifted -the round top, and dropped in some paper and wood from the fuel box. - -“I will have coffee,” said Louis Blanc. - -“Bien, monsieur.” - -“And an omelette.” - -“So the café is to be christened, is it? I shall have to charge three -francs for an omelette; provisions are difficult here.” - -“Don’t worry yourself; I owe a bill already.” - -She went to the cupboard and collected what she wanted, eggs, butter, a -frying-pan, bread, coffee and a tin of milk. Bibi watched her. She was -so deliberate, so unflurried, holding him at a distance, treating the -affair as a casual incident. Her composure piqued him. He had a sudden -desire to see Manon inflamed, struggling while he held her down and -buried his mouth deep in her warm throat. - -He put his hand into his coat pocket and drew out the butt of the -revolver. He glanced quickly at Manon. She had seen what he had wished -her to see, and he let the pistol slip back into his pocket. - -“You would like some herbs with your omelette, monsieur?” - -Her eyes were black and steady. - -“Yes, some herbs.” - -“Perhaps you would like to come nearer the stove. It will be warmer.” - -“This place suits me. And hurry up. I’m hungry.” Manon went on with her -cooking, opening the iron door from time to time and pushing a handful -of wood into the stove. She was wondering when Paul would return, and -what would happen when he returned. Bibi was thinking of what might -happen before Brent came back. He no longer desired Manon because she -was Paul’s; he desired her because of her white throat and plump arms, -and that body that would struggle. - -Manon did not hurry. She wished the cooking of that omelette would last -for ever; it seemed a sort of queer barrier between Bibi and herself, a -postponement of the beastly purpose that looked out at her from the -man’s eyes. She knew what she felt, what she feared, what she shrank -from. - -“So you are all alone here?” - -“My partner will be back—very soon.” - -The omelette was ready. She turned it out upon a plate, and Bibi stood -up, pushing the arm-chair against the door with one foot, while he -caught hold of another chair and turned it towards the table. He sat -down. Manon pushed the plate, the bread, and a knife and fork across the -table, and poured out a cup of coffee. - -Bibi ate. He had an unclean way of eating, and an ugly trick of pushing -out his lower lip like a ledge and shovelling the food over it. He tore -the bread with his fingers. Manon had helped herself to a cup of coffee, -and all the while she was listening. - -“Sit down, madame.” - -“I prefer to stand.” - -Bibi looked at her curiously, as though she were part of the food on the -table. - -“This fellow of yours works hard.” - -“He is a very good partner, monsieur.” - -“He works too hard,” and then he made a coarse jest at Paul’s expense. - -Manon stared at Bibi as though she did not understand him. - -“Do not pretend to be so innocent. A woman only pulls up her petticoat -when she pretends to look innocent.” - -“Yes, that was always your idea of a woman, Monsieur Blanc.” - -Bibi finished his second cup of coffee, and wiped his mouth on his hand. - -“So you think this fellow Brent is a better man than I am.” - -“I have never thought about it. There was no necessity.” - -“You are mistaken. I shall have to put the matter right. I don’t like to -think of a pretty woman believing what isn’t true.” - -He got up from the table and went and sat in the arm-chair by the door -and, feeling in the breast pocket of his coat, brought out a little -black cigar. - -“A match.” - -Manon took a box from the shelf and threw it to him. He caught the box, -and flourished it with an air of gaiety, the cigar stuck aggressively -between his lips. Manon watched him light the cigar and puff blue smoke, -making a sucking noise with his lips. She had always hated Bibi, but her -hatred of him became more like a foul taste in her mouth. - -“Something to eat, something to smoke, and a woman to talk to. Come and -sit on my knee, coquette.” - -Manon began to clear the plates from the table. - -“That is not on the bill of fare, monsieur.” - -He was smiling. - -“I’ll include it. I am owed a good deal. Come here—at once.” - -Manon set the plate and cup on the dresser, and loitered a moment, -fighting the horror of Bibi’s gradual attack. She felt herself helpless, -shut up in a cage with a beast who sat there and gloated. She knew that -it was useless to appeal to the decent man in Louis Blanc, and that -evasions would only amuse him. She wondered how long it would be before -he grew violent, how long she would be able to hold him off. And if Paul -returned, it might only add to the horror. - -“Come here.” - -She made herself face Bibi, but kept the table between them. - -“The joke has gone far enough, monsieur; it does not please me.” - -“So you think it is a joke?” - -“Of course.” - -He was lying back in the chair with his legs spread out. - -“No, it is not a joke. Regardez!” - -He took the revolver out of his pocket. - -“Come here, or I shoot.” - -“You are very brave to threaten a woman with a pistol.” - -“Is it the pistol you object to?” - -“Of course.” - -He stood up, and, posing himself, threw the revolver through the -unglazed window. It fell somewhere in the ruins across the road, -breaking the great silence with one ringing and discordant note. The -gesture pleased Bibi. He turned to Manon, smiled, and sat down again in -his chair. - -“Voilà! Your man will have to fight with his fists. And if he does not -fight after I have emptied his glass for him, well, he will smell like a -goat, hey?” - -Manon felt stiff, frozen, unable to move, yet her heart was beating hard -and fast, and she knew that her knees were trembling. She began to grow -angry, angry with the fierceness of a wild thing trapped and played with -and tormented beyond her patience. There was a knife on the table. She -was ready to snatch at that knife and fight. - -“Are you coming here,” said Bibi, “or shall I fetch you?” - -“You beast!” she said. - -Manon had expected his violence and it came like the leap of a dog. Bibi -pushed the table against her with a thrust of one big boot, so that she -was thrown against the stove. She had made a grab at the knife, but -before she could strike at him, Bibi’s long body was leaning over the -table, and he had her by the wrist. - -“Drop it!” - -Her brown eyes blazed into his. - -“You beast.” - -“C’est ça.” - -He took the cigar from his mouth and held the red end against her -forearm. Manon flinched, twisted, cried out. - -“Drop it.” - -Her fingers relaxed, the knife fell on the floor. - -Bibi tossed the cigar into a corner, and suddenly, with a straightening -of his long back he pulled Manon over the table, catching the other -wrist, and turning her over so that her face was under his. - -“Now then——” - -Someone was coming along the path. Manon heard a man whistling, and the -sound of his footsteps. She cried out in anguish: - -“Paul! Paul!” - - - - - XXVIII - - -Paul Brent gave one look through the unglazed window, dropped his bundle -on the path and made for the door. Half a minute ago he had been walking -slowly up the Rue de Rosières with that camel’s hump of a bundle on his -back, feeling fagged and ready for a rest, but there was no tiredness -about the man who went in to rescue his mate. - -When Brent stormed in, overturning the chair that had stood against the -door, he found Bibi waiting for him like a bear with its paws ready to -rip. The overturned chair lay between them, its legs in the air as -though it were shouting a ridiculous protest and trying to keep these -two wild men apart. Manon had slipped away and was leaning against the -dresser, her dress torn open at the throat, her eyes swimming black in a -dead white face. - -Brent and Bibi looked at each other. There was nothing to be said, -nothing that words could express or satisfy. Then Bibi pushed the chair -aside with a sweep of a big foot, and the two men rushed in. - -Bibi could box a little, but there was no science in that fight; it was -just a savage rough and tumble. The Frenchman was a head taller than -Paul, heavier, and longer in the arms. He could have floored Brent at -the first punch had the affair been less of a whirlwind. Paul went in -bull-headed, smothered a smash at his face, and ducking, got his arms -round Bibi’s body. He had the under-grip and was shorter and stockier -than the Frenchman, and he rushed Bibi against the table, heaved him -over and got on top. - -Freeing his right hand, he tried for Louis Blanc’s throat, but in mere -animal strength he was no match for this great stallion who had always -boasted that he had the legs of a horse. Bibi gripped Paul round the -middle. His legs wrapped themselves round Brent’s; he heaved, twisted, -rolled Paul on his side. They remained like that for a moment, Bibi -jerking his lean throat away from the grip of Paul’s right hand. Then -Bibi gave another twist. He came up and had Brent under him, his jaw -digging into Paul’s throat, and so close that his own throat was -guarded. - -“Voilà!” - -Manon saw the smear of satisfaction on his face, and her heart sickened. -She had stood aside, watching, till she saw that Bibi had her man pinned -under his big body. She picked up a knife from the dresser and came -forward. - -“Let go.” - -Bibi glanced up, showing his teeth, and that momentary slackening of his -attention gave Brent a chance. He got one foot round the leg of the -table, and managed to roll Bibi to one side. They had been near the edge -of the table and they fell, Brent uppermost, Bibi’s head striking the -tiled floor. - -Brent broke free and stood up, panting. He saw that he would have to -keep the fighting open, the beast was too strong for him at close -quarters. He jerked a glance at Manon. - -“Run, get out of the room.” - -She tried to force the knife on him, but Brent’s rage would have none of -it. He was not ripe yet for a clutch at any sort of weapon. Bibi, still -giddy, was scrambling up, his mouth and chin all slaver. Brent rushed at -him, and struck hard and straight with a workman’s arm and fist, and -Bibi went back, knees sagging, his feet paddling like the feet of a -duck. Brent swung again, missed, fell against the Frenchman and was -shoved back with the flat of the hand in his face. Brent staggered -against the table, hung there a moment, and went in again like a game -dog that has been rolled over but not hurt. But Bibi had recovered his -balance and had had a second in which to think. As Brent came at him he -lashed out with his right foot, a full, swinging, upward kick that -caught Paul in the stomach. - -Brent’s face went the colour of clay. His mouth gaped. The kick had sent -him reeling down the room. He seemed to bend over himself, to double up -in the middle. He fell in the corner, turned over, writhing, and lay -face downwards, legs quivering. He was conscious of nothing but a knot -of agony in his stomach, a vast nausea, a desire to vomit. - -Bibi stood and stared. His shoulders drooped a little, and his head was -none too steady, but he appeared to perk up into sudden arrogance like a -big, triumphant bird. He flapped his arms, opened his mouth, and the -laugh that came from it was like a crow. - -“That’s burst the balloon,” he said. - -Then he became conscious of Manon. She was standing between him and -Brent, but a little to one side, her face white and stiff with a vague, -shocked wonder. She seemed to hesitate, her impulse stooping towards the -man who now lay huddled in the corner. - -Suddenly she turned on Bibi. Her lips were thin, bloodless; she looked -starved, but in her eyes there was something indescribable, a facing of -the ultimate vileness of Bibi’s strength, a defiance of physical defeat. - -“Yes, and what next?” - -Bibi seemed to rear on his haunches, his hands stuck in his pockets. - -“Your fellow is thrashed. He is no good, is he? I can take what I want, -my dear. What do you say?” - -She hung her head as though beaten, her wits struggling against a sense -of helplessness. - -“And all this happens, because a silly ruin is blown down by the wind.” - -“You got in my way, both of you.” - -“We were here, that’s all. Haven’t you any decent feeling?” - -Bibi looked at her with flat eyes that gloated. The physical rage was -still strong in him, and he was taking his triumph. - -“You wouldn’t have me. You shan’t have him. I can finish with him -presently, and then I’ll finish with you.” - -“There are the gendarmes,” she said. - -Bibi splurged. - -“Rubbish! We’re in the wilderness, wild man’s land. I can do what I -please. That fellow got in my way, and I have kicked his belly in. Who’s -to know if——” - -She shuddered. She was looking at Paul, and suddenly she saw his hand -move as though making a sign. Her eyes swept back to Bibi; he was -watching her; he had not seen. - -“You have beaten him; is that not enough?” - -“If I get what I want for it.” - -“Be reasonable.” - -“Drop that knife,” he said; “you have still got it behind your back.” - -She let it fall on the floor. She wanted to keep Bibi talking to hold -him off. - -And Brent lay there, listening. His strength was coming back; he had -been sick, and the pain had died to an ache of the muscles. His rage was -returning, a cold rage that lay low and was cunning. He was up against -savagery, a beast who had to be fought with the methods of a beast. -Right down in the core of his brain was the thought that he had got to -beat Bibi, even if he killed him. That kick had brought Brent down into -the primitive trough; there were no rules, no nicenesses, no points of -honour in a savage scramble with a man like Louis Blanc. - -He listened. Manon was talking, talking for time. He loved Manon, and -his love was a rage. - -“Paul is dying,” he heard her say. - -Bibi shrugged. - -“He’s quiet, anyway.” - -Brent moved slightly, groaned; but his body was stiffening like a -spring. If only he had some weapon! His right hand went out slowly, -gropingly, into the corner, and touched something smooth and cold. It -was an empty wine-bottle, the bottle that he, Manon, and old Durand had -emptied a few days ago. He gripped the neck of it, braced himself, his -left arm pressed against the wall. - -He was on his feet before Bibi moved. A wooden chair stood against the -wall close to where Brent had been lying, and as the Frenchman rushed -in, Paul grabbed the chair and swung it at Bibi’s feet. It tripped him, -nearly brought him down, and as he hung there, pawing the air to get his -balance, Brent smashed at his head with the empty bottle. It broke, -leaving the neck a jagged end in Paul’s hand. - -Bibi was down over the chair. He made a grab at Brent and caught the -front of his coat; his face was upturned and Paul struck at it with that -dagger of glass. He saw Bibi’s face change like a grotesque mask; the -mouth opened, the eyes closed, the forehead was a knot of anguish. He -uttered a cry, and began to claw at Brent like a beast gone mad. Paul -struck him again, and wrenched free, leaving a piece of his coat in one -of Bibi’s paws. - -Bibi was on his feet now, his face a red stream. He groped, made a rush, -and stumbled over the chair, and Brent realized that the man was blind. -The glass had entered one eye, and the other was full of blood. - -He slipped round the centre table, with a glance at Manon who had run to -the door; he made a sign to her, a sign that she understood. - -Bibi mopped his eyes with his fists. The hideousness of him was a thing -Brent never forgot. And the beast was dangerous, agonized with pain and -the rage of its half blindness. He blundered against the dresser, and -brought half the crockery clattering to the floor. And suddenly he -seemed to get a glimpse of Brent through the red fog of his own blood, -and he charged, arms swinging. Paul slewed the table round, but Bibi -lunged forward over it, and got a grip of Brent’s coat. - -Paul tore free, striking at Bibi’s arm. He had to keep away from those -ferocious and clawing hands, and he knew it, but Bibi was blind again, -and raising himself up from his sprawling position on the table. - -“Paul——” - -Manon had come back, and she carried the short iron crow-bar in her hand -that Brent had used in dismantling the huts. - -“Keep out,” he said hoarsely, “it’s too foul, this.” - -She went, after giving him that bar of iron. - -Bibi was shaking his head like a dog just out of the water. His foot -touched something on the floor—the knife that Manon had dropped; he -groped for it, and stood up. He had begun to curse, calling Brent every -foul thing under the sun, and he kept on cursing as he felt his way -forward. There was cunning in Bibi. He fumbled at the table, seeing Paul -dimly through a red mist, and suddenly he vaulted on to the table and -made a scrambling rush at Brent. - -Brent swung at the upraised arm. The bar caught the forearm bones about -two inches above the wrist, and he heard them crack. The knife fell; -Bibi’s hand sagged over like the absurd stuffed hand of a dummy. But -Brent’s gorge was rising over this filthy scramble, this savagery of -animals in a cage. He steadied himself, brought the bar down over Bibi’s -head, and saw him crumple to the floor. - -Brent stood, staring. He felt sick, unsteady, a man who had got up to -the neck in some foul ditch. There was no exultation in him, yet no -pity. He had downed a mad beast, and he was grim and cautious. - -He bent down and pulled Bibi against the wall. He did not think there -was any more fight in Louis Blanc, but he took no risks. Up-ending the -table, he lowered one end of it on to Bibi’s legs, and loaded the -arm-chair on to the table. That would prevent a man who was playing -’possum from getting up too quickly. - -“It’s all over, thank God.” - -She came in to him, an impetuous passionate figure, arms spread, eyes -alight. - -“Oh, my Paul!” - -Her emotion was like a flood of rain, a perfume, some softening human -passion after those moments of savagery and bloody sweat. She ran to -Brent and Paul caught her. Her head was on his shoulder; she trembled; -she clutched him with tender hands; her body seemed to warm itself -against his. - -“Oh, my Paul, we are saved!” - -“Ma chérie.” - -Then she broke down, and with a passion that went to Paul’s heart. He -was human once more, a decent, gentle fellow; the beast was dead; her -tears seemed to cleanse him. - -“It was my fault, my foolishness. I left the pistol lying by the window, -and he must have been watching. He threw it across the street into the -ruins. It need never have happened.” - -Brent held her head in the hollow of one hand, and looked down into her -wet face. - -“Well, it has happened. Perhaps it was better that it should happen, -once and for all.” - -“Is he dead?” - -Paul glanced over one shoulder at Bibi, and his eyes hardened. - -“No, but he has all he can carry, one eye gone, and a broken wrist.” - -Manon was feeling in the pocket of her apron, and she showed Paul the -pistol that Bibi had thrown into the ruins. “I ran across a moment ago, -and I had good luck. I found it almost at once. Keep it.” Brent slipped -the pistol into his pocket, and discovered that Manon’s face seemed -growing dim. He could not feel his feet; his knees shook; he was -exhausted, and Manon’s tears and clinging hands had exhausted him still -further. This flare of emotion and the exultation of it had left him -faint. - -“Ma chérie, I’m done up.” - -She had felt his weariness almost before he had begun to tremble, and -she became the little woman who had no more use for tears. He staggered -as she helped him towards the table by the window. He seemed to collapse -on it, bending his head till his forehead touched the wood. - -“Oh, you are hurt!” - -“Something to drink,” he said. - -She ran to the cupboard and brought back a bottle half full of red wine, -and sitting on the table, she raised Paul and held his head against her -shoulder. It made her think of giving a sick child its drink, and an -indefinable tenderness stirred in her. She held the bottle to his lips, -letting him drink a little at a time. - -“That’s better,” he said as the wine warmed him and put a new flick into -his heart; “I could eat something.” - -Her shoes crunched on the broken crockery as she searched in the -cupboard for food. She brought him a slice of cold meat, and some bread -and cheese, and Paul ate—while she sat beside him. And suddenly they -seemed to become conscious of the outer world, of a rich sunset, of a -stream of golden light, and the sound of a blackbird singing. A thrill -of joy, of mystery, ran through both of them. They looked into each -other’s eyes, and kissed. - - - - - XXIX - - -Paul had found his pipe; he was filling it and staring at the floor, -when something yellow whisked into the kitchen. It was Philosophe, -Philosophe who had been missing all day and who now floated in with an -air of having been round the corner. The dog yapped and pawed at Manon’s -apron. - -“A lot of use you have been to us,” said Brent. - -But Manon kissed Philosophe’s head and then pushed him away. - -“I could forgive anything to-night.” - -“Even—that?” - -She pressed her hands to her eyes. - -“No, not that. What are we to do now?” - -They heard a sudden sound in the silence, a queer sound that startled -both of them. Philosophe was licking Bibi’s face. - -Brent stood up with a tightening of the mouth and limbs. - -“Come here.” - -The dog sneaked out from behind the table and went and lay down by the -stove. - -Brent removed the chair and the table. He found Manon standing beside -him, and together they looked down at this mountain of a man who lay -stretched along the wall. Dusk had come; the room was filling with it, -and a little darkness covered the mask of Bibi’s mutilated face. He -moved a leg, stirred slightly, and seemed to become conscious of -physical pain. - -Paul and Manon looked at each other. - -“What’s to be done?” her eyes asked his. - -Brent was grim. He stood biting the stem of his pipe, a man who had not -forgotten and who would never forget. Things might have turned out so -differently. He had no pity for the man down there. - -“Don’t touch him,” he said; “keep away. He’s foul.” - -She caught her breath. - -“I couldn’t touch him. But must he stay here?” - -“Good God, no,” said Brent. “This place has got to be cleaned.” - -Bibi moved. He raised his head, propping himself on one elbow. He seemed -to be thinking, remembering, feeling, but like a dull, helpless animal. -He rubbed at his eyes and uttered a foul word. Brent’s back seemed to -stiffen. - -“Hallo,” he said. - -Louis Blanc raised himself to a sitting position, his back against the -wall. He looked up at Paul, his head rolling from side to side, his -slashed face a thing of loathing. Everything was dim to Louis Blanc, -even the voice of the man who spoke to him. - -“Water,” he said. - -Paul stood over him, yet keeping his distance, for though the beast was -maimed he might still be dangerous, and he was taking no chances with -Bibi. - -“Don’t move. Do you hear what I say?” - -Bibi used a foul word, but Brent caught him up. - -“Drop that and listen. I have that pistol, see; we found it all right, -and if you try any tricks I shall shoot and shoot to kill. Sit there and -take your orders, and keep that foul tongue of yours quiet.” - -Bibi said nothing; he was beaten, a battered thing, half blind, sullen -with pain. Paul had spoken to Manon, and she was pouring some wine and -water into a glass that had survived the storm. She brought it to Brent, -also a thick slice of bread cut from a loaf, and Brent put the glass and -the bread on the floor and pushed them within Bibi’s reach, using the -end of the iron bar. - -“That’s the way to feed a wild beast,” he said, “if I touched you again -I might kill you.” - -Bibi lifted the glass in his left hand; his head was very unsteady, and -he spilt some of the wine down his chin; the stuff stung his cut lips, -but he drank it down, and began to mumble the bread. The room was full -of the dusk, and Manon lit the candle. Paul had gone to the window, and -was sitting on the table, watching Bibi. The candle light lit up Brent’s -face; it was a serious, frowning face, the face of a man who had made up -his mind about something. - -“I’ll take a sandwich with me,” he said. - -The candle light flickered in Manon’s eyes. - -“But where are you going?” - -“Half-way to Ste. Claire; sort of slave-gang stunt. He has got to foot -it somehow.” - -She looked into her man’s eyes and said nothing. There was a calm blue -glare in them that she could not have softened even if she had pitied -Bibi. - -“Supposing he cannot walk so far?” - -“We didn’t ask him to come here. He is going to walk four miles. After -that—I have finished with him.” - -He turned to Bibi. - -“Do you hear? You have got to get out of this. You want a doctor. I’ll -see you half-way to Ste. Claire.” - -Bibi grunted. - -“I can’t do it.” - -Brent spoke quietly, but he showed no mercy. - -“Get up. No, I’m not going to help you, or touch you. You will get a -doctor at Ste. Claire; you’ll get no doctor in Beaucourt.” - -And Louis Blanc moved. He rose slowly on his feet, steadying himself -against the wall, and stood there, feeling his strength. - -“Come on,” he said sullenly, “you are merciful sort of people, you two. -I’m half blind. You’d like to see me in the ditch, wouldn’t you? But -I’ll get to Ste. Claire.” - -Manon had slipped a paper of bread and cheese into Paul’s pocket. - -“Quick march.” - -He watched Bibi grope to the door, and half feel his way out of the -house and down into the street. It was growing dark, and Brent followed -him at a distance of a couple of yards, the revolver in one hand, the -iron bar in the other. - -“I shall be back soon,” he called to Manon. - -And so he set out to drive this half-blind Polyphemus out of Beaucourt, -walking among the ruins like Bibi’s shadow, ready to shoot if the man in -front of him hesitated or hung back. Neither of them spoke, save when -Brent uttered a word of warning. “Right . . . Left . . . Keep in the -middle of the road.” He found that Bibi’s pace was lengthening when they -had passed the factory, and were on the road to Bonnière, and he went -along at a steady slouch. The stars were out overhead, and there was no -wind rustling the dead grass and weeds in the wild fields beside the -road. They heard the sound of their own feet on the broken pavé, nothing -more. - -Brent wondered what was passing in the mind of the man in front of him, -and the picture of Bibi lurching along in the darkness brought back the -night of a memory in the Arras battle of 1917. Paul had marched a German -prisoner back from the line, a big, tusk-faced sergeant-major who had -been badly wounded in the right shoulder, and Brent remembered how all -the swagger had gone out of the German. He had thought of one thing and -one thing only, how long it would be before they reached a -dressing-station. He had kept on worrying Brent: “I bleed, Tommy, I -bleed.” - -They had covered two miles when Louis Blanc spoke. He was sullen, but -something stronger than his hatred of Brent marched at his heels. - -“What’s the time?” - -“I don’t know. Perhaps about half past seven.” - -Bibi walked on in silence for several minutes. Brent noticed that their -pace had increased. - -“Have we passed Des Ormes?” - -“Don’t know the place,” said Brent. “Why?” - -“There’s a road that turns off there, the road to Boves.” - -“Why do you want to go to Boves?” - -“I shall find a doctor at Boves. I want one, don’t I?” - -And Brent understood. Like that German at Arras, Louis Blanc was tame; -he had the fear of death in him, or the fear of blindness, which is the -living death. Every step that he took was so much ground covered on the -road to a place where a man might be found with hands that could heal. - -A queer, elemental pity stirred in Brent, a feeling that even penetrated -and suffused itself through his physical loathing of this man. - -“You want to go to Boves?” he asked. - -“Yes.” - -“Where does the road turn off?” - -“Past the farm called Des Ormes, a clump of dead elms close to the -road.” - -“I’ll look out for it,” said Brent. - -He kept his promise, and managed to make out these ghostly trees -reaching out their black and maimed tentacles towards the stars, and -learning from Bibi that the road to Boves branched off on the right hand -about a hundred yards farther on, he watched for it, and found the road -as a greyish streak diverging across the darker fields. - -“This is the place.” - -Louis Blanc grunted. - -“You’ll be bringing in the police, I suppose?” - -Brent did not answer him at once, and Bibi began to fidget. He stood -poking his head like an eager dog in the direction of Boves. - -“It all depends,” said Brent, “on Madame Latour’s wishes.” - -“Hell! Never mind; are you sure this is the road?” - -“It’s the first road on the right after Des Ormes. Can you see?” - -“Enough. I’m off.” - -And he went slouching away into the darkness, leaving Brent standing -there, nor did Brent move until he could no longer hear the grinding of -Bibi’s boots upon the road. - -At Beaucourt, in that room of her simple affection, Manon had sat for a -while by the light of the candle, looking at the débris left by those -two struggling men. What a sordid affair, what a horror to be forgotten -and washed out of the mind! A chair broken, furniture overturned, -crockery smashed on the floor,—a patch of blood on the tiles where Bibi -had been stretched by the wall. And Philosophe, true to his name, asleep -beside the stove, caring nothing for what had happened. - -Manon jumped up. The inspiration was obvious, and yet passionate in its -demands. She must get rid of this pollution, put it at once out of her -life, her life that was Paul’s. A great tenderness was awake in her, a -feeling that this little room was sacred, and that it had to be -resanctified. She lit another candle and set to work to cleanse it; -sweeping up the broken glass and crockery and carrying it out in a box -to the ruins across the road. She set the furniture in order, and -finding the blue and white jug broken on the floor, and Paul’s bunch of -yellow palm lying beside it, she gathered up this emblem of the spring, -found another bowl for it, and placed it in the same place on the table. -There remained that red stain on the floor. It revolted her, but she -made a mop of an old sack, and washed out the stain. Yet her ideal of -purification was not complete; this room was to have a living -atmosphere, warmth, light, homeliness. She wanted Paul to see it again -as he had seen it before that savage fight. She lit the stove, put a pan -of water on to boil, spread a clean cloth on the table, laid two plates, -two cups, two knives and forks, a dish of meat, cheese and bread. Then -she drew the arm-chair close to the stove and sat down to wait. -Philosophe, undisturbed by these practical yet spiritual activities, -still slept, and the dog’s passivity was a piece of comforting -naturalism, like the bunch of yellow palm on the table. - -Paul returned earlier than he had expected. She ran to the door to meet -him, and found him struggling with the bundle that he had left lying on -the path. - -“I had forgotten this, and nearly fell over it.” - -She caught hold of one end, and helped him in with it. Then she closed -the door, and, going to the stove, pretended to be busy making her -coffee, but she was all waiting—as a woman waits—to see whether her -man had the inward and the outward vision. - -Paul noticed everything, the clean floor, the bunch of palm on the table -by the window, the white cloth, the tidy dresser. It was good, all good, -the very touch his heart asked for. He looked at Philosophe, who had not -troubled to get up and greet him. Tranquillity had returned; Manon had -washed away the stains. - -He went softly across the kitchen, and put a shy man’s arm round her. - -“What a good piece of work you make of life,” he said. - -She turned to him quickly. - -“Here is your chair by the stove.” - -She was looking up into his face; he was grey, weary to the point of -exhaustion, but the shine in his eyes broke through all the physical -shadows. - -“Just the same as before,” he said, “and like you, clean and good. Ma -chérie, I’m just all out.” - -She made him sit down in the chair, and drew up the table so that he -could take his supper by the stove. Paul let himself relax, for there -was a sharp ache in the muscles that had been bruised by Bibi’s boot. He -looked at the stove, at the sleeping dog, at Manon, and the day’s work -seemed done. - -“Would you like your plate on your lap?” - -“No, I’ll turn to the table.” - -She did not worry him with questions, sensing his weariness and the -happy and human sloth that had fallen upon his body. His face regained -its colour; the tired lines were softened; he had the air of a man who -was well content. - -Presently he lit his pipe, and looked up at her with a flicker of tender -humour in his eyes. - -“A lot of good that dog was to us! A good name—Philosophe. He got out -of the way, like the clever people during the war.” - -She gave Philosophe a gentle kick, but he took not the least notice. - -“And Bibi?” she asked. - -“He’s beaten,” he said; “I believe we have finished with Bibi.” - -He described Bibi as a big and frightened shadow lurching along the road -to Boves. - -“Shall we put the police on him?” he asked her. - -“It’s for you to say.” - -Brent looked at her. Her eyes had darkened. There are things that no -woman likes to see dragged into the hard light of a law court. - -“Let us leave it alone,” he said. “I have a feeling that we have -finished with Bibi. I hate stirring up mud; life’s been so clean here.” - -She made a sudden movement towards him; and Paul sat up, took her face -between his hands and kissed her. - -“Good God,” he said, “it seems a lot for a man like me to ask for! All -that I know is—that I’m going to make good here. Will you let me prove -it?” - -Manon’s eyes held his. - -“You are too much afraid of people, Paul. If we are partners, let us be -honest. Why should we not tell old Durand and the Casteners and people -like that——” - -“What shall we tell them?” - -“Mon ami, you are making me the man.” - -He drew her face to him again, and kissed her slowly and with great -tenderness. - -“All right,” he said; “but I’ll not marry you till this place is all -that I want to make it.” - -She laid her hands on his shoulders. - -“What queer things you men are, some of you. If it was not for that, I -would——” - -“Tell me,” he said, his hands on her wrists. - -She gave a quick, defensive smile. - -“No, show me what is in that bundle. It’s so exciting, this new home.” - - - - - XXX - - -It seemed to Paul Brent that peace and the spring came suddenly to -Beaucourt, and that even in this war-scarred country there was a beauty -that had a mystery and a strangeness of its own. - -The fruit trees in Manon’s orchard were big with bud. Brent had joined -her in reclaiming the garden; the rubbish and broken boughs had been -cleared away, the wall mended, the fruit trees pruned and cleaned, the -soil dug over. Seeds were in with neat little labels showing the -rows—lettuces, beans, peas, early potatoes. Paul had rescued and nailed -up the hardy vine that grew on the south wall of the house. - -He was happy. He liked to wander down to the stream, and see the willow -blazing gold, the young grass lushing up, the purple woods ready to -burst into leaf. The great chestnuts in the avenue at the château were -beginning to open their brown buds. Paul found violets in flower on a -sunny bank, and came back with a child’s handful of them to Manon. He -heard the wryneck in the woods, and soon the cuckoo would be calling, -and as for the blackbirds they sang to him night and morning. The war -had been merciful to Beaucourt in passing over it so lightly, and the -spring seemed to call for the brown faces and the strong hands of the -peasants. - -It would seem that the world has to rediscover the great truth that it -is the simple things that matter in life. The sap in the stem of a young -oak is worth all the orchids that ever were pampered. Paul Brent was -fortunate in his happy drift into the simple and innocent life, with its -elemental needs and primitive triumphs. He was to escape so much of the -disillusionment of the years after the war, nor was he to become the -victim of that strange physical apathy that flamed now and again into -feverish erotism. Men had had the strong drink of an abnormal excitement -snatched away from them. They were pushed back to the bench and the desk -and the coal seam, and life seemed a damnable dulness. Money meant -escape. There were thousands who were mad for money. - -Brent fell straight into the lap of nature, with a fresh handful of -simple ideals ready to be sown, and he sowed them in Beaucourt and -watered them with a happy, human sweat. He did not want to slack and -talk and theorize; the days were too short for him. He loved the work of -his hands, the simple sensations, the smell of the sawdust, the -crisply-curled shavings his plane ripped from a plank, the new nails he -hammered in, the paint, the clang of his hammer, the snoring of his saw, -the smell of the soil. Life was good. The whole house was re-roofed; he -had more leisure to enjoy the true craftsman’s love of accurate detail; -he could stand in the middle of the road with his hands in his pockets, -and Manon beside him. They were never tired of looking at the house, the -new roof which Paul thought of tiling or thatching some day over the -galvanized iron, the windows with their neat yellow panels of oiled -linen, the front door which Paul had painted a gay green. - -They were as proud as a couple of children over a sand castle. And Brent -had fought for his castle and held it. - -“Looks fine, doesn’t it?” - -And Manon’s eyes were full of the spring. - -In the matter of the more spiritual things these ideals count, and -Paul—that simple fellow—kept his panache. Perhaps there are no English -words capable of expressing the subtle personal pride of a Cyrano de -Bergerac, or the emotional exultation of the chivalrous soul that has -stooped to no foul compromise. Paul kept his panache. He had never heard -of the word, but he was the master of all that it expressed. - -He was in love with Manon. He looked love at her, but he did not make -it, and Manon had the heart to understand. He was one of those natural -gentlemen, bricklayer, shepherd, fisherman, what you will. He had his -notion of chivalry, a chivalry that could give, wait, hold back. He did -not rush to pick the flower and flaunt it in his buttonhole. Such men -are laughed at by the shallow and the dirty-minded, but somehow they -keep the love of a woman. You may find them in cottages, villas, country -houses. They have escaped the curse of wanting to be self-consciously -clever. - -Paul and Manon went to church each Sunday, and stood for a few minutes -under the shattered roof. They were not religious people as religion was -understood in the Victorian days. Their sacrament was a little silence, -a pause, a looking backwards and forwards, a holding of hands, a gentle -generous emotion. They thought of the dead, of the children, of -seed-sowing and harvest, of good comradeship and the peace thereof that -passeth understanding. - -Paul had his ideal, his task. - -“I’ll ask her to marry me when I have made the place good,” was his -thought. - -And Manon accepted this, even though she might have to face little -humiliations in the acceptance. She kept her eyes on the man’s broad -ideal. It was a big tree that would grow; it was strong, slow, hardy. If -casual tongues dropped a few seeds of discord, of gossip, they were but -little bitter weeds which the tree would smother. - -“I love him,” she said to herself. - -And Paul loved her with each nail he drove, each joist he fitted, each -barrow-load he cleared from the place. He loved her in washing, in -eating, in cutting wood for her stove, in looking at the white clouds -sailing over the new roof, when it rained, when it blew, when the sun -shone. She was in every corner of his life, and he in hers. - -Sometimes he was greatly curious to know what that other man of hers had -been, this Gaston Latour who had been killed early in the war. Manon had -been married less than a year. She had a photo of her first husband -somewhere, and one evening Paul asked to see the photo. Sometimes, he -had an uncomfortable feeling that he was wearing a dead man’s shoes; he -wondered, too, how he was filling them. - -Manon took a candle down to the cellar, and brought back the photo. - -“Gaston was a good fellow; we agreed quite well.” - -Paul looked at the man’s picture. Gaston Latour had been one of those -sickly Frenchmen, cold, pale and prominent of eye, with a big forehead -and a weak beard. He stood with his hands resting on the back of a -chair, staring straight in front of him. - -Manon had been watching Paul’s face, and with a sudden, quick but quiet -motion she took the photograph away from him. It is possible that a -woman does not like to see her lover repelled by the face of the man who -had first possessed her. - -“That was nearly five years ago,” she said; “and, if you please, we will -forget it.” - -“I’m sorry,” Brent told her; “weren’t you——?” - -“It was a very excellent marriage; our parents arranged it, and my -father died six months later. No, this house always belonged to us, not -to the Latours.” - -She took the photo back to the cellar, nor did she return for some -minutes, leaving Brent warming his hands at the stove. She had said so -little, but enough to make Paul understand that her first marriage had -not been happy, that it had left no delicate roots behind it. If Brent -was guilty of a secret gladness, he hid it, but the gladness was there. -He felt sorry in an impersonal way for that cold-eyed fellow who lay -dead somewhere in France, but the human part of him was with Manon. He -hoped that it would come all fresh to her, as fresh and as rich and as -generous as it seemed to him. - -April came, and it rained hard for two days, driving Brent indoors. At -dinner they sat and looked at the roof, watching for drips, and exulting -when no drips appeared. Paul had been fixing the floor of the room above -the kitchen. - -“It is a splendid roof,” said Manon; “it is you who rain sawdust.” - -“I can’t taste it.” - -“Look in your potage. I was away only half a minute, but you managed to -drop that wooden salt of yours into the saucepan.” - -Brent gave her an oblique, laughing look. - -“Supposing we put up the ceiling. It will be rather like laying a carpet -upside down.” - -“That canvas?” - -“Yes.” - -“How delightful! But can you do it alone?” - -“No. Two hands to stretch it, while the other nails.” - -“Let’s begin at once,” said Manon. - -And that is how Anatole Durand found them, perched up on the joists, -Manon stretching the canvas while Paul drove in the tacks. They were so -busy hammering, talking, laughing, and the rain made such a patter on -the iron roof that they had not heard his car. But Anatole Durand was an -event. He had not happened for three weeks. - -“Hallo, mes enfants!” - -Two faces looked down at him. - -“Monsieur Durand! But what do you think of our ceiling?” - -“Magnificent!” said Anatole, and, in a hurry to get out a dramatic cry -of his own, “And what do you think of my American dump?” - -“Comment, monsieur?” - -“I have bought it,” he said, shining like a little sun-god. “I have -bought my American dump!” - -They had come down after that, for a canvas ceiling could not suppress -such a little excited, restless sun. Here was an event, a sensational -episode in the history of Beaucourt! Manon brought out her wine, and -they sat round the table, and talked—at least Anatole Durand talked. He -opened his fat note-book on the table and began to roll off figures with -the voice of a curé chanting the mass. - -“Yes, I have bought it, but I had to race around like a comet. Just -listen, my friends.” - -He chanted triumphantly of timber and iron sheets and rolls of felt by -the thousand, tins of preserved meat, fruit, milk, salmon by the tens of -thousand, coffee in hundreds of kilos, blankets, tools, barbed wire, -buckets, candles, soap. Wine and honey in Canaan! The oration was -Biblical, exultant. - -“It must have cost you a fortune, monsieur,” said Manon. - -Durand would not boast about the money he spent. - -“Oh, I have plenty left. It is the best bargain I have ever made in my -life.” - -“And where is the dump, monsieur?” - -“A hundred miles south of Chalons, perhaps. But I have arranged for the -hire of a dozen lorries, and we will have it here in no time. Now see -what it is to be thorough. I have here the cubic space of the dump, and -the cubic space of the cellars at the château, you know what good -cellars they are, and all the food and the blankets can be stored in -them. The timber and the felt and the iron sheeting can be stacked in -the courtyard.” - -“You are a wonderful man, Monsieur Anatole.” - -“I’m just an old boy,” he laughed. - -She poured him out another glass of wine, and he sipped it, looking -round the room with eyes of appreciation. - -“You two children know how to work. You are quite chez-vous here, -already.” - -Manon glanced questioningly at Paul. Brent nodded. - -“And we are fiancés, monsieur.” - -“Why, that’s splendid!” said old Durand holding up his glass; “your very -good health, and good luck to us all.” - -They drank. - -“And that fellow Louis Blanc seems to be out of the picture. The Coq -d’Or was full of the gossip.” - -“Tiens, what has happened to Bibi?” - -“He is in hospital at Amiens, and they have taken out one of his eyes. -It is said, too, that he may go blind in the other. When they asked him -to explain how it happened, he said he had had a quarrel with some -English soldiers, and that three of them set on him.” - -Paul and Manon exchanged glances. - -“Shall I tell him?” her eyes asked him. - -Brent nodded. - -“That is not quite the truth, monsieur. You are our friend, and you can -keep a secret. Bibi came by those wounds in this very room.” - -“Tonnerre—here?” - -Very simply she described to Anatole Durand all that happened, and so -vivid were her words that the old man found it difficult to sit still. -His eyes lit up; he had the eyes of a fighter. - -“But it is incredible! What a wild beast! You did very well, Monsieur -Paul, to thrash that stallion.” - -He jumped up and clapped Paul on the shoulder. - -“So you wish me to say nothing of this?” - -“It is not a pleasant tale for Manon to tell.” - -“And the fellow has got his deserts. I am ready to wish he may lose that -other eye, and be harmless for the rest of his life. But let us talk of -something more pleasant.” - -He lit a cigar, and, walking up and down for a moment on his brisk legs, -paused abruptly in front of Manon. - -“I have some good news for you.” - -“You are full of good news, Monsieur Anatole.” - -“Well, listen. When I was in Amiens I fell in with a gentleman who is -planning excursions to the battlefields. He wanted to know of a place -where the richer sort of people might be able to spend the night, and -get the atmosphere of a devastated village. ‘My friend,’ said I, ‘I know -the very place in my own village, a little hôtel that will be ready to -receive such people in a month or two.’ He jumped. ‘It will be very -simple,’ said I. ‘The simpler the better, my dear fellow. We want the -proper atmosphere.’ So, my dear, if the idea pleases you, I will drive -you over to Amiens in a day or two, and you can make arrangements with -this gentleman. It should be quite a prosperous enterprise.” - -Manon jumped up and kissed him, and Durand did not appear to object. He -was a democrat, and the new Beaucourt was going to be very democratic. - -“What a good friend you are.” - -“I’m just an old boy,” said Durand. - - - - - XXXI - - -That evening, when the sky had cleared, Manon and Brent opened up a hole -under the wall where Manon’s treasure lay buried, and carried the silver -into the cellar. Anatole was to drive over again next day and take Manon -to Amiens where she was to meet the gentleman who was promoting these -pilgrimages in Picardy, and also deposit her valuables with the “Société -Générale.” Paul was shovelling the earth back into the hole when Manon -came back along the path, walking slowly, and stroking a black eyebrow -with a meditative forefinger. - -“Dear soul, look!” - -Her face flushed a sudden excitement. There was a vivacious buoyancy in -her pointing finger. Paul was head up on the instant, ready for some -dramatic event. - -“What is it?” - -She was pointing at the brown soil behind him, and there was a child’s -delight in her eyes. - -“The little green dears!” - -Paul turned and looked, one hand on the handle of his spade, and he -smiled. Strung between two of the white seed pegs stretched a thread of -green thrown into vivid contrast by the rain-darkened soil, nothing more -nor less than a row of lettuce seedlings just opening their twin leaves. -A string of emeralds would never have seemed so innocent or so precious. - -“The first of our children,” said Brent, “the little fellows!” - -He looked shy, but Manon snuggled up and in some silent way made him -understand that her hand wanted to be held. - -“Is it not wonderful?” - -“Everything’s wonderful,” said Brent, with a glimmer of blue between -half-closed eyelids. - -“Here’s where we began, over that hole in the ground. Just because you -happened to catch me playing with a spade. And now—a year -afterwards—these!” - -“Like a live bit of ribbon, isn’t it!” - -“And a few weeks later we shall be eating lettuces!” - -“Méchant!” she said. “Be serious. How do you like Anatole’s idea?” - -“It’s an inspiration.” - -“Very well, we will have supper early, and then we will sit down and -make plans. Oh, I didn’t tell you, Marie is giving me six pullets.” - -“So we shall sit down and make plans for the pullets.” - -“Be serious! No, we must arrange the rooms and the furniture, and see -how much money we can afford.” - -“Oh, that’s it? Well, look here, I put my money into the business or I -go on strike.” - -“But, Paul——” - -His hand closed firmly on hers. - -“It’s got to be. I’m a man. Don’t you understand?” - -She looked up at him with soft, consenting eyes. - -“Oh, yes, I understand perfectly. But who is to handle the firm’s -money?” - -“You, of course,” said Brent. “I always was an idiot with money. I’ll -take my share, keep a little pocket money, and put the rest back into -the business.” - -“Do you understand pigs?” she asked him with quiet irrelevancy. - -“I did keep one once.” - -“And cows?” - -“I dare say I could learn to milk a cow. I’ve studied more difficult -things than that.” - -With supper over, Manon cleared the table, lit two candles, produced a -writing pad and pencil from the cupboard. They drew two chairs up on the -side of the stove, and sat with their heads close together, Manon -sketching out a plan of the house. There would be seven rooms in all, -four on the ground floor, and three above, but the rooms on the other -side of the passage were rather small, and one of them could only be -reached by passing through an outer room. - -“The visitors would have to take their meals here in the kitchen, unless -we arranged to let them use the public room on the other side of the -passage.” - -“English people might not like that. Let them sit and see their own food -cooked; it would amuse them.” - -“I should have to engage a strong girl to help.” - -“That wouldn’t be difficult, would it?” - -“I am thinking of the bedrooms,” Manon said. “We shall have only four, -even if we use the little ground-floor room that looks out on the -garden.” - -She scribbled lines and crosses on the paper, frowning on the problem. - -“Supposing we were to give the girl that little room.” - -“Yes.” - -“Keep the public room where it is, and turn the back room into a little -salon for the visitors or ourselves. But that would only leave us one -spare bedroom.” - -She continued to scribble on the paper. - -“When we get married,” she began, “it will save a bedroom.” - -“Yes, that’s so,” and he also looked at the scribbles on the paper, -scribbles that meant nothing; “meanwhile I might rig myself up something -outside, or sleep in the cellar. But I suppose we shall need the -cellar.” - -“We might put a partition across that room,” and she pointed upwards -with the pencil; “but it would be so much simpler——” - -“All right,” said Paul; “we’ll think about it. Now, what about -furniture?” - -They made a list of the furniture that would be needed, Manon writing -the name of each article under such headings as “Salon,” “Girl’s room,” -“Visitors’ room,” “Our room.” The list began to frighten them not a -little. - -“Hold on,” said Brent; “I can make tables, cupboards, wash-stands, if we -can get some decent wood. Bedsteads and bedding seem to be the main -problem. I expect the prices are up in Amiens.” - -“I have about seventy thousand francs. Sixty thousand are invested in -Rentes. That leaves ten thousand for furniture, and stock and current -expenses.” - -“I can put a thousand to that. Not much, is it?” - -“You are putting in more than money, Paul. It will be yours as well as -mine. All this could never have happened without you.” - -Paul went to bed with his head full of the new enterprise, and the -hundred and one inventions and ingenuities it suggested. He remembered -having seen somewhere a room decorated with arched trellis-work painted -a soft green, the arches hung with mauve wistaria made out of paper. -Then his thoughts jostled against the problem of “baths.” Would English -tourists of the richer sort expect and demand baths? Brent’s enthusiasm -could not see itself rising above hip-baths and one can of water heated -up in the corner of an outhouse. Fuel—like bedrooms—was going to be -precious, and Paul went to sleep thinking of that particular bedroom and -Manon’s simple solution of the difficulty. - -“A good solution, too,” said Brent; “but I’ll stick out till I have -finished the house.” - -Durand’s De Dion was with them early, but not so early that Manon had -not been able to help Paul finish the canvas ceiling of the kitchen. She -was below in the cellar, dressing, while Brent loaded the valuables into -the car. - -“Any news of Louis Blanc?” - -“Nothing,” said Durand. “By the way, do you know all the wells in -Beaucourt?” - -“No.” - -“Then I will send old Prosper Cordonnier over with my sanitary expert; -he knows them all.” - -“You are having all the water tested?” - -“We should look fools if it turned out bad, hey? Hallo—now, voilà le -printemps!” - -Paul turned and beheld the miracle of a French working woman in her -Sunday clothes. It was not that he had never seen Manon before in that -little black chapeau, black velour costume, and those neat suède -high-heeled shoes. He could remember her going to church in those same -clothes when he was billeted in Beaucourt during the war, but now they -seemed different. They had a more personal and a more intimate meaning -for him. He was aware of her small feet, of the quiet, sleek chicness of -her clothes, of the roguish sedateness of that little hat. His thoughts -went back fifteen years. He was thinking of a certain fair-haired girl -with a razor-edged nose and mouth, coming out of the back gate of a big -house, and wearing a blue plush hat covered with red cherries, an -electric blue dress and the yellowest of yellow boots. - -“How you stare!” she said. - -Paul’s thoughts came back from that other life. - -“Monsieur Durand used the exact word.” - -“And what was that?” - -“Printemps;” and he added, “this April seems to belong to me—somehow.” - -They drove off, and Brent went to work, but the sun was shining, and his -thoughts got in the way of his hands. He was so happy that he seemed to -pause and to look suddenly at this happiness of his with the eyes of a -man who was afraid of losing it. He had been nailing down the floor -boards on the joists of the upper room that was to be their bedroom, and -this sudden inward questioning of his own dreams sent him idling into -the sunlight. He crossed the street, sat down on the doorstep of the -stone house over the way, and looked with serious blue eyes at the café. - -It occurred to him again that it would need a sign and that he would -paint it. But might not the painting of that sign be about the last -piece of work he would accomplish in the reconstruction of the “home”? - -He lingered over the word “home.” It was very sweet to him now, but -would it always be so sweet? Certain panic thoughts gathered round him -like officious and penny-wise old women. He was an Englishman; would he -be happy living as a Frenchman? When the house was finished, every stick -painted, and the little farm without a weed, might not a sudden -restlessness seize him? Would he be content to live all his life in a -French village? That other home of his in England had never been a home -in any spiritual sense; he could remember going out one night in a -miserable and lonely rage and throwing bricks through a little -greenhouse that had been his particular pride. But surely this would be -different? Manon was different; he was different. And yet, at the bottom -of this panic mood was a horror of hurting Manon, of falling short of -her some day in the measure of his happiness. - -“Fudge!” he said, and got up suddenly; “it’s just cowardice, that’s all. -Haven’t I seen it in the war, chaps who were always looking for things -to go wrong? It’s the same with the fellows who write books, books in -which everybody gets into the gutter and all the world’s wrong. Just -funk—Hallo!” - -A certain aggressively smart figure had swung round the corner, buttons -and cap badge polished, chin shaved, puttees neatly rolled, boots black -and glossy as the back of a rook. - -“Cheer-oh, cove.” - -It was Corporal Sweeney with the grey grouse out of his eyes, a proper -man, well groomed. - -“Bon jour, monsieur, comme vous êtes gai aujourd-hui.” - -“Demobbed, demain, compris?” - -The two men smiled at each other, and Sweeney cast an eye over the -house. - -“Your dug-out, what?” - -Brent nodded, wondering if he might allow himself a little more English. - -“A bit of all right. Blimy! You’ve got a roof and winders.” - -“Entrez,” said Paul, and took him in and gave him red wine. - -The corporal had cigarettes; he offered Brent one, and lay in the -arm-chair and drank in the goodness of life. - -“Wonder if you get me, bloke?” - -He had begun to philosophize. - -“Me for a bit of garden. Be home in time to get my pertaters in. Ever -kep’ pigeons?” - -“One time, monsieur.” - -“Lot o’ sound gum in pigeons, and chickens. Make you feel sort of homy -on Sunday mornings. Hear ’em cooin’ and cacklin’ and cluckin’. Got any -kids?” - -“Des enfants, monsieur?” - -“Got it.” - -“I get married this year.” - -Corporal Sweeney gave a wise grin. - -“Funny stunt—gettin’ married—but it’s all rite; yes—it’s all rite. -Used t’ think it was kind of bloomin’ monot’nous. Well, I dunno. If you -start goin’ round the corner with strange gals, well, it’s good-bye to -the chickens and the pertaters. Besides it’s a mug’s game. Who’s your -real pal? She as you have ’eard tryin’ not to scream out when she’s -bearin’ the kid you’ve given ’er; she ’oo cooks yer Sunday dinner. -T’aint slosh, it’s the truth.” - -Paul smiled. He pretended to have picked some of the pith out of the -man’s harangue. - -“You talk good, monsieur. I tink I be ver’ happee here.” - -“Course you’ll be happy,” said the soldier almost fiercely; “it’s inside -a chap, ain’t it? ’Course there’s other things that count. So long as a -chap don’t keep spittin’ down his own well! Bein’ happy is like keepin’ -yer buttons polished. It’s a ’abit.” - -Brent could have quoted an occasion when the corporal’s buttons were -distinctly dingy, but he refrained. Mark Tapley might have turned into -an average, decent, grumbling Englishman had he been stuck down at -Harlech Dump. - -“’Ere, bloke,” said the corporal before leaving; “what’s wrong with you -having a little more paint and canvas for the ’appy ’ome. I shall be -gone to-morrer. And you could do with it.” - -Paul fell. He had a passion for paint, and he reckoned that the British -Public still owed him money. - -“Vous êtes très agréable, monsieur.” - -“You come along back with me. I ain’t ’ad an eighteen pounder shell in -my chicken-’ouse. You ’ave.” - - - - - XXXII - - -Over the great wilderness the cuckoo was calling, and the blackbirds -sang deep-throated in the orchards. Cowslip time had come and gone; a -richer season followed after, with all that wild world rushing into -leaf, covering all ugliness with a film of beauty. The old orchards were -white in the narrow valley where the stream ran through deep green ways; -the trees were snow-trees—rose-edged—floating between the mystery of -the woods and upon the blue distance of the horizon. Grass and weeds -were springing up everywhere in the streets, in the ruins themselves, -threading even the rubbish through with emerald wire. There were -blue-bells in the Bois du Renard above the château, and masses of yellow -broom waving on the uplands. - -Beaucourt came to life with the spring. Wonderful things had happened -when that droll, that little wizard of an Anatole Durand had flicked his -wand hither and thither. Dust had risen on the roads. A string of -lorries had lumbered up the street, and a gang of men had unloaded -stores in the green-grey courtyard of the château. The cellars were full -of food; the yard itself stacked with timber and iron. On the circle of -turf at the end of the avenue of chestnuts stood a white tent with a -camp-bed, a chest of drawers, a table, a washing basin, a chair, Anatole -Durand’s home. He took his meals at the Café de la Victoire, where -Brent’s hands were keeping pace with the buoyant rush of the year. - -Men were repairing and cleaning the huts in the field on the road to -Rosières, and a temporary camp-kitchen was being improvised. New winches -and buckets had been fitted to the wells. A couple of tractors and light -waggons had panted over the desert roads, and the tractors were at work, -ploughing from dawn till dusk. Great strips of brown soil waited for a -catch-crop. Old Anatole went about with his note-book, like a -field-marshal or a parish priest, organizing, organizing. - -Then came the day when the first batch of refugees returned. They -arrived in waggons from Ste. Claire and many other villages, with their -few possessions piled up, like a convoy of settlers in the old days -travelling west. The carts and waggons collected in the field where the -huts stood, and with them came Monsieur Lefèbre, the parish priest. -Anatole Durand met them in the field. He and Monsieur Lefèbre kissed -each other, the agnostic and the Christian. - -There was a hot meal ready, iron coppers full of good stew; Manon was in -charge of the hut where meals were to be served. But these peasants sat -down on the grass in the open air like pilgrims on a feast day. They -laughed and talked. One or two of the women wept a little. They had left -the children behind. - -Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre sat side by side on the tail of a cart. They -talked; they looked straight into each other’s eyes. - -“Do you remember, my friend, how we used to disagree?” - -The priest smiled. He had jocund black eyes in a red face, and he was a -good man, if fat. - -“Our text is the same to-day. Go forth and recover the wilderness, and -comfort my children.” - -“I have a bed in my tent,” said Anatole; “you can use it.” - -“That is brotherly of you, but I shall sleep with the men.” - -Durand looked round at the peasants sitting on the grass, and his eyes -blessed them. - -“Monsieur, I wish to speak to these people presently. I wish to explain -what I have done, what I have planned to do, what we all must do. You -will speak to them also. What better place than the church?” - -“In the old days, monsieur.” - -Durand shrugged. - -“Life is so big,” he said, “that we shall forget to knock our feet -against the stones.” - -When the meal was over, Monsieur Lefèbre got up on the cart and told the -people to gather in the church. His jocund black eyes had always been -more persuasive than his preaching, and nobody grumbled at being asked -to go to the church. Monsieur Lefèbre was a good fellow; he deserved his -place on the stage, and to these peasants the day had a religious -meaning; they were attending the sacrament of the soil. Paul and Manon -walked with the crowd, and stood under the broken roof of the church, -with the blue sky showing through it, and grass sprouting through the -stones on the floor. Manon was looking at many familiar faces. There -were the Graviers who had kept the tiny boucherie in the Rue de -Bonnière; the Crampons—Claude Crampon pulling his long nose in the same -odd way as though to make sure he had not lost the end of it; the -Guiveaux, Pierre with his huge flat butter-coloured moustache, and -Josephine, whose red hair was always untidy; the Pouparts, who had kept -a grocery shop, yellow as ever. Old Lebecq carried his cock’s head high -in the air, and behind him his two big daughters giggled together. -Philipon, who had been a blacksmith as well as a farmer, held his pretty -little wife by the arm; his swarthy face was very solemn, and he frowned -as though he wanted to get to work. Lacroix and his wife and boy looked -thin as figures cut out of brown cardboard. Big Jean Roger was smiling -at everybody and picking his teeth with a red match. His daughter -Lucille seemed rather sad; her eyes were vacant; she had lost her lover -in the war. There were one or two younger men who had recently been -demobilized, and a few strong boys who were half inclined to make a joke -of the whole affair. Philipon looked round at them with his fiery eyes -and a gleam of teeth in his black beard. - -“Shut up! The dead don’t make fools of themselves like that.” - -There was no more horseplay. - -Monsieur Lefèbre stood on the steps of the choir. His deep voice rolled -out a prayer, and after the prayer he spoke a few simple words to the -people. He was much moved; his chin shook a little; and the people were -moved with him. They had come back to their homes and their fields; the -blessed spring was with them, the green joy of the year. They would go -out together, without jealousy, helping each other, planting in this -ruined village the imperishable patience of a victorious France. - -Lefèbre gave way to old Durand. Anatole’s grey hair seemed to bristle; -he looked straight at them all with shrewd, smiling eyes; his enthusiasm -had a flash of humour. - -“My friends, we used to quarrel a little. Perhaps it was my fault. -To-day I am happy; I feel that we have something better to do than to -quarrel—work.” - -Philipon gave a growl of applause. - -“That’s it—work!” - -He glared at the group of youths. Anatole went on. - -“Bien. It is not my ground or your ground, it is our ground. It is our -Beaucourt. What do you say? The women to the gardens and the rubbish -heaps, the men to the saw and the hammer and the fields. But you know -what to do. I am an old man, I am enjoying myself; I am spending what I -cannot take with me. I do not stand here and crow; I want to be just a -little old man in Beaucourt.” - -There were cries of emotion from the little crowd. - -“We understand, monsieur.” - -“Without you it could not have happened.” - -Durand made a face as though he were not far from tears. - -“That’s it; we are all Frenchmen together. Now, then, let me explain.” - -He went on to speak of the stores, material and tools that he had -collected. They were to be divided equally and as the need arose. The -tools and the seeds would belong to the village. He wanted a committee, -a village council composed of both men and women to consider what was -fair, and to decide all that should be done. He spoke of Manon and of -Paul, and Paul blushed. Durand called him an expert, a practical -builder. Let them go and look at the Café de la Victoire and see what -Monsieur Paul Rance had accomplished single-handed, and the sight would -cheer up any pessimist. Monsieur Rance had offered to give three hours a -day to the community; and to put himself at the service of anyone who -wanted advice. As for the canteen, well, Madame Latour had that in hand, -but she would need women to help her. - -“Now, let us finish with words. Let us choose our council before we -break up. I suggest a council of four men and two women.” - -“And a president,” said Philipon. - -“I propose Monsieur Durand as president”—this was from old Lebecq. - -Anatole was elected. They chose Philipon, Lebecq, Jean Roger and -Monsieur Lefèbre as the men, Manon Latour and Madame Poupart as the -women. The council agreed to meet three times a week at eight in the -evening, and Monsieur Lefèbre suggested the sacristy of the church as -their council-chamber. A board would be set up in the Place de l’Eglise -on which the notices and the decisions of the council would be posted. - -“Allons!—to work,” said old Durand. - -Philipon echoed him. - -“To work. That’s our motto.” - -In the passing of half a day the whole atmosphere of Beaucourt had -changed, and the familiar silence of the ruins was broken by the new -life. Brent was planting potatoes in the field below the orchard, for -Etienne Castener had brought his plough over in a cart and ploughed up -half the field for them, and as he dibbled in the seed Brent could hear -voices everywhere. The hollow shell of the village echoed with them; the -place was like a comb full of working bees. Each family had gone to what -had been its house, that brick ruin or shelter of timber, and for a -while there had been silence. What problems, what discouragement! Where -and how to begin? They had been told that Beaucourt had been more -fortunate than the majority of villages—villages that had melted into -mere piles of rubbish. The little groups stood about, staring, -bewildered, lamenting, wandering through the wreckage and the gardens, -standing on the tiled floors of what had been rooms. And in nearly all -cases it was the woman whose instinct escaped first from that apathy of -staring. The housewifely habit stirred in her. Perhaps she began to -clean her kitchen floor, throwing old tins, broken bricks and tiles, -rags, anything, out into the street. That was what Durand had advised -them to do; he had planned to have the rubbish carted away and dumped in -some field. Very soon the men were at work with the women, each cleaning -his particular shell, uncovering his kitchen hearth. Their blood warmed. -Beaucourt was full of the sound of voices, the clatter of tins and -broken tiles. Figures appeared on the walls, or in the spider web of the -sagging timber frames, scattering useless patches of tiling, or knocking -down loose beams and joists. Beaucourt was at work. Anatole Durand found -Philipon sweating like a swarthy Hercules in his little house in the Rue -du Château, knocking down useless bits of wall with a big hammer, while -his pretty wife carried off the sound bricks and stacked them in the -yard. - -“Thunder, but this is life!” said the sweating peasant; “I’m happy.” - -Manon was walking back from the canteen when she caught sight of a -little old figure approaching along the Rue Romaine. It was none other -than Mère Vitry dressed in her rusty black Sunday clothes, and carrying -a shabby bag. She had been left behind at Ste. Claire as too old to face -the first struggle with the wilderness; but Mère Vitry had had no -intention of remaining in Ste. Claire, and her indomitable legs had -carried her to Beaucourt. - -Manon went to meet her, greatly touched by this old thing’s courage. - -“Mother, what are you doing here?” - -But Mère Vitry was in no need of pity. She seemed to be overflowing with -the sap of a renewed youth; her little black eyes twinkled; her -weather-beaten face was all smiles. - -“Here I am. Do you think I was going to be left behind?” - -Manon kissed her. - -“Come to my house. You must want something to eat.” - -“I had my meal on the road, my dear. I would not quarrel with a cup of -coffee.” - -Manon took Mère Vitry home with her, and the old lady removed her cloak -and bonnet, and sat down with an air of complete contentment. Her eyes -observed everything; she was the most cheerful soul in Beaucourt. Her -philosophy was touched with the irrepressible optimism of the spring. - -Manon offered her her bed. - -“No, I shall sleep with the others. They thought I should be a nuisance, -no use; you shall see. I shall put on my old clothes here, my dear, and -then go and begin tidying the house. It needs it.” - -It did. There was but a third of the roof left, and no windows and no -doors, and in the garden weeds and rubbish competed with each other. -Mère Vitry put on her old plum-coloured skirt, and black and white check -blouse, borrowed a broom and an old spade, and marched off to battle -like the true Frenchwoman that she was. - -Monsieur Lefèbre, taking a parochial stroll, found Madame Vitry sweeping -out the rubbish from the tiled floors of her kitchen and bedroom. He -stood and watched her a moment, a most human smile on his generous face, -and then that plump right hand of his made the sign of the cross. - -“So you are busy already, madame?” - -She leant on the broom-handle, thin hands clenched, black eyes bright -with renewed youth. - -“One cannot be idle, monsieur, when there is so much to be done.” - -“You have walked from Ste. Claire?” - -“I feel very well, monsieur, very well indeed. To-morrow I am going to -work in my garden.” - -“Splendid,” said the priest. - -Her face lit up. - -“Come inside, Monsieur Lefèbre; I have something to show you in my -garden.” - -She led him through the house and into the garden where the new growth -of the year was pushing up through broken bricks and coils of wire, old -tins, the rusty frame of a bedstead, battered petrol cans, barbed wire, -the wheel of a cart. The wooden frame and rusting springs of an old -box-mattress lay across the path. But Mère Vitry was looking at none of -this rubbish. She was pointing upwards and smiling at a gigantic apple -tree whose limbs had been shot away. The tree was nothing but a torso, a -huge, mutilated stump, but from one limb a young branch had grown out -and brandished against the blue sky two little sprays of white blossom. - -“That is fine, is it not, monsieur? He is holding up his flag; he is not -beaten.” - -She laughed. - -“Here we are together, the old woman and the old tree. I flourish a -broom, he waves a bit of blossom. What do you think of it, monsieur?” - -The priest’s face was lit up like the face of a saint. - -“It is France,” he said, “the very soul of my country.” - - - - - XXXIII - - -Manon had described to Paul Mère Vitry’s return to Beaucourt, and Brent -had been so touched by it that he went down very early next morning to -the house in the Rue Romaine. The old fruit tree welcomed him, throwing -its white banner against the flush of the dawn, and he set to work at -disentangling the miscellaneous rubbish from the dew-wet weeds. He had -cleared away all the heavy débris and made a dump of it on the cobbled -path between the cottage and the roadway when he was surprised by -another enthusiast, Monsieur Marcel Lefèbre. - -“Good morning,” said the priest; “it seems that I am a little late.” - -His black eyes had a glitter of fun in them. He carried his cassock over -his arm, appearing to the world like any good bourgeois ready for an -hour’s work in the garden. - -“That’s the worst of it.” - -Brent touched the pile of rubbish with the toe of a casual boot. - -“So you have left me nothing to do?” - -“There is plenty left, monsieur. I thought I would come down and move -the heavy stuff for the old lady.” - -“We are beginning very well in Beaucourt,” said Lefèbre, “very well -indeed.” - -These two good men stood for a few minutes and talked. They were friends -from the first smile, equally simple and courageous in their outlook -upon life, answering at once to a generous touch of the hand. Lefèbre -had the soul of a peasant, with all its shrewdness, its grasp of the -elemental facts that keep men strong and wholesome. This return of the -people to their homes and to their soil was to him a veritable -sacrament. He knew that it is good for man to suck the milk from the -bosom of Mother Earth. In the towns souls are hand-fed, dissociated from -the great miracle of nature. Lefèbre hated the great towns. They gave -babes strong drink, false appetites, parched mouths, the lust after -lust. Men walked restlessly in the streets, men who are envious and -unhappy after the long dulness of the factory or the shop. They had -turned no soil, nor gone to bed happily tired. - -“What can one make of this little house?” - -He was looking at the patch of brown tiles and the bare rafters. His -face was eager, inquisitive. Brent felt the thrill of his humanity. - -“It could be made quite strong again.” - -“You think so.” - -“The roof can be covered with felt, and later it can be retiled. A door -and some windows—and there you are.” - -Lefèbre hung his cassock over the sill of one of the empty window -spaces. - -“I will go up to the château and get a roll of felt. Would you take down -those tiles?” - -“It would be better.” - -“If you could spare five minutes later in the day for a little -criticism?” - -“I may be able to give you a hand,” Brent said. - -Monsieur Lefèbre went for some tools, nails and a roll of felt, and when -he returned to the Rue Romaine he found Mère Vitry standing in the -garden under the old fruit tree. She was smiling, a child’s wonder in -her eyes. - -“Look, monsieur, a miracle! Someone has been here.” - -“A friend, perhaps.” - -“It was you, monsieur, who carried away all that rubbish?” - -“No. But miracles happen, madame, even in these days. There is always -the miracle of the good man.” - -Mère Vitry crossed herself, and looked at the roll of felt under -Monsieur Lefèbre’s arm. - -“And you—you are going to work, too, monsieur?” - -Lefèbre’s jocund face broke into creases. - -“I am going to try and put a roof on your cottage. That will be another -miracle!” - -Manon had gone to the canteen which she and Madame Poupart were to -manage with the help of two of the older women. They had had a boy -assigned to them, a strong young rascal whose duty was to trundle the -day’s provisions down from the château in a hand-truck, chop wood for -the stoves, and to make himself useful in any way that God or Manon -chose to order. He sulked the first morning, having promised himself the -excitement of helping to pull down some of the ruins. - -“People who are lazy get no dinner.” - -He argued the point with Manon, and it required the dinner hour to -convince him that these women were in earnest. When the file of men had -passed to the tables with full plates, Master Jacques stood by the iron -boiler, holding a tin plate that was empty, and inviting Madame Poupart -to use her ladle. - -“We had to cut the wood,” said the lady, “to cook your dinner. You -refused to cut wood; we give you no dinner.” - -The logic of the thing was so convincing, and Madame Poupart so -determined, that Jacques went out and laboured to earn his plateful of -stew. - -Anatole Durand and Brent spent the morning making a pilgrimage through -the village. They visited each house to which the head of a family had -returned, Paul examining each building and giving his opinion as to what -could be done. Anatole stood by with his inevitable note-book, jotting -down the details of this tour of inspection, while Brent and the owner -looked at walls and gables, sagging roofs, shell-bitten chimney-stacks -and questionable foundations. Each problem differed a little from the -other; each house had its own particular sickness. Some were dead, so -dead that there was nothing to be suggested save that a new house or hut -should be built in the yard or garden. Anatole made a note, “Try and buy -huts.” There were stud and plaster houses with the timber framing fairly -sound; the walls of these could be replastered or covered temporarily -with felt. There were brick houses that a little ingenious patching -would put into passable repair. There were mere broken shells that -needed building up squarely before they could carry the cap of a roof. -In many cases a crumpled mass of tiles and rafters would have to be -removed before the actual work of reconstruction could be begun. The old -houses built of the chalky limestone of the district were the most -hopeless of all. When such a house had been wounded, it had crumbled, -cracked, dropped masses of masonry, dribbled loose stones out of the -wounds, bled itself to death. The war had taught Brent to respect the -extraordinary tenacity of good brickwork. You could square up the ragged -walls, fit a patch into the holes, and the house was as good as ever. - -Beaucourt saw Paul Brent as a brown man with a short, pointed beard and -friendly blue eyes. He seemed a pleasant fellow, capable, rather quiet -in his speech, and with an accent that was vaguely foreign. He was a -stranger and Beaucourt kept a critical eye on strangers, but Brent went -so wholeheartedly about his job and was so obviously a man of his hands -that these peasants accepted him. They were too busy to be inquisitive. -Brent had sat up late for many nights dragging out of the dictionary the -French for such things as plaster, felt, rafters, joists, mortises, -concrete. He had made a list of all the technical words that he could -find, learnt the names by heart, and made Manon hear his lesson. - -“You ought to shout more,” she told him; “you English just talk to -yourselves.” - -He looked at her with the eyes of a lover. - -“Shall I shout those dear words?” - -“You may keep that soft voice—for me.” - -She had been a little anxious for her man, knowing that he had prepared -himself to face a possible ordeal in this return of the natives. It was -not only that he loved her and that he had come to look on Beaucourt as -a home, but he had a man’s horror of betraying himself and of being -damned as something worse than a fool. She knew that he would imagine -that the humiliation would spread to her, and she could picture him -packing his knapsack and marching off into the night. - -He came back to her in the evening with the air of having spent a happy -and a human day. There was laughter in his mood, not the laughter of -ridicule, but laughter that had felt the pathos and beauty of the thing -that had inspired it. He had been down to Mère Vitry’s cottage, and had -discovered Monsieur Lefèbre on the roof, a sprawling, enthusiastic, -happy figure with a distinct celestial shininess about the broad seat of -its breeches. Monsieur Lefèbre was stripping the roof of its remaining -tiles and lowering them carefully in an old bucket with a bit of wire -fastened to the handle. Mère Vitry stood below, unloaded the bucket, and -packed the tiles away in a corner. They were as absorbed as two children -playing a game. - -“It has been a great day,” said Paul; “I don’t seem to have puzzled -anybody. And the way these people work——” - -He sat down in the arm-chair and watched Manon laying the table. She was -very good to watch, and every now and again her eyes gave him the -glimmer of light that a woman gives to her lover. - -“Let him pass—Paul Rance, a good Frenchman.” - -“I believe I shall pass,” he said. “I like your people. They smell of -the soil.” - -She balanced a fork, pointing it at him. - -“And remember, they will like you. You see, you are such a good fellow, -and——” - -He sprang up suddenly and caught her, and holding her face between his -hands, looked long and steadily into her eyes. - -“Yes, you are just my life. I had to fight for you, didn’t I? But I have -been afraid, ma chérie, that these people might not want me here. I -might be found out.” - -“Do not run to meet troubles,” she said; “you will have very good -friends in Beaucourt. Besides——” - -She clasped his wrists for a moment with her two hands, and then moved -gently away to lift a boiling kettle from the stove. - -“Let us look at the house—afterwards, at everything.” - -He stood watching her devoutly. - -“It’s so good that sometimes I am afraid.” - -“What is there to fear in Beaucourt?” - -“I don’t know,” he said. - -When the meal was over they walked out into the garden and looked at the -green crops, those rows of beans and peas and lettuces paraded so -exactly on the clean brown soil. The holes in the wall had been filled -in; the fruit bushes were covered with a film of green, and the -pollarded limes showed a thousand emerald tips. From the garden they -passed to the orchard, and Brent stood a moment by Beckett’s grave. He -had put a white wooden cross there, but he had never been able to -persuade himself to paint up the lie of his own name. - -Manon drew him away. - -“Now we will look at the house.” - -They went over it as though they had not seen the Café de la Victoire -for three months. It still remained a perennial wonder to them, -something of a miracle, a thing that grew and fed upon the labour of -their hands. Already it had an atmosphere, the human friendliness of a -place that is lived in. It was ready to be the secret home of their love -and their memories. - -Brent had put up a simple staircase to the upper rooms. They were still -open to the bare rafters of the roof, but Harlech Dump had provided -canvas for the ceilings, and all the floors were complete, save the -floor of the back room on the right. Brent had used up all the wood that -he had salved from the army huts. - -Manon was dreaming the dreams of a housewife. She stood in the middle of -the room that was to be hers and Brent’s, her back to the window, her -thoughts busy with furniture, curtains, linen. In a week or two she -would be able to go to Amiens and buy furniture for the new home. She -looked at Paul. - -“Come and hold my hand.” - -“What is the problem?” - -“I’m thinking. We will have the bed there, and a big cupboard against -the north wall, and another cupboard with shelves in that corner. I -should like one or two bright-coloured mats.” - -“A little colour is good,” said Brent. - -His left arm went across her shoulders, and they stood silent, thinking. - -“There is only the floor of that room, and the ceilings——” - -“And then?” - -She looked up at him, and her dark eyes were intense. - -“Promise me, you will never run away.” - -“Run away?” - -“Yes, don’t you understand? This is going to be ours, whatever happens. -Besides, what is there that could happen?” - -Paul kissed her. - -“I almost wish——” he said. - -“What do you wish?” - -“That the village knew everything—that it could judge me as an -Englishman who had made a mess of life in his own country.” - -She held his arms. - -“Mon chéri, perhaps, some day, we will tell them, but of what have you -to be ashamed? Let us win them first. How I wish we had wood for that -floor.” - -Brent held her close. - -“Yes, that was my promise. Do you think it is easy for me to hold -out?—and yet, I’m going to hold out for six months. I’ll win Beaucourt -before I ask you to marry me.” - -She stroked his cheek. - -“What spurs you wear on your conscience! Am I to agree? Well, what can a -woman do? Who’s that?” - -Someone had entered the house. It was Anatole Durand, an Anatole who -wanted to gossip, and he stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up. - -“Hallo!” - -“Won’t you come and look, monsieur?” - -He climbed up on his brisk legs, amused, smiling. - -“Talking over the furniture, hey?” - -“There is one room that needs a floor, and we have no more wood.” - -“Wood—wood? Why, I’ll give it you.” - -“But we have had more than our share in taking the wood from those -huts.” - -“Tiens,” said old Durand, “isn’t an old man allowed to be silly now and -again? One can’t help having favourites, you know.” - - - - - XXXIV - - -There were two very happy men in Beaucourt during that miraculous -spring, Anatole Durand and Marcel Lefèbre. - -Things went well, amazingly well. There were no quarrels, very little -jealousy, and no slacking. At the end of the first month more than half -the people were out of the huts and back in their own houses, and though -the roofs were of black felt and the windows of canvas, the critical -period had passed. The Philipons had sent for their children; so had -many others. Mère Vitry was back in her cottage, with the picture of the -Sacré Cœur hanging on its nail, and in her garden were crops of lettuce, -spring cabbage, peas, beetroot, potatoes. There were days when the whole -village went out into the fields, with Monsieur Lefèbre heading the -pilgrimage, and the seed-sowing was a public sacrament. Durand’s -tractors had ploughed up hundreds of acres, and though the season was -too late for wheat, these peasants, labouring from dawn to dusk, seeded -those great brown fields with beans, potatoes, cabbage, beetroot, -turnips, peas and swedes. The luck of the season was with them. It was -sunny and dry, and the battle was with the weeds. A hundred hoes and a -blazing sun fought and suppressed grass and charlock, dock, nettle, -sorrel, buttercup and poppy. - -The orchards had only missed one year’s pruning, and promised well. Even -flower seeds had not been forgotten. Manon was to have beds of -mignonette, marigold, Virginia stock, red linum, gaudy nasturtiums. -There were buds on the old rose trees, and Paul had done some pruning. -The Bois du Renard was in full leaf, and the château chestnuts had had a -wonderful display of white wax candles. The white thorn, too, had looked -like snow. Old Durand had had lilac in bloom, and he had sent Manon a -mass of it for the big bowl in the window. Paul had found her burying -her face in the blossom, and he had caught her in his arms and kissed -her. - -“You smell like the spring.” - -She had ruffled his hair with her hands. - -The village continued to take its principal meals at the canteen, for -this public kitchen saved time, labour and fuel, and allowed the women -to spend the whole day about their houses or in the gardens and fields. -Other families were returning, and, to relieve the congestion in the -huts, some of the people who were more forward in their houses arranged -to do their own cooking and to eat their meals there. The école was -turned into an additional rest-house for the new-comers; they took their -share of the work, food and material; the Council of Beaucourt -administered a patriarchal justice. There were no gendarmes in the -village. - -Civilization began to re-erect its old landmarks, and Beaucourt made -quite a jest of the new post-office when Madame Bonpoint, who was very -fat and very red and a little severe, made Beaucourt think of a broody -hen sitting on a clutch of eggs in a coop. - -Pierre Poirel, the village farceur, put his head inside her doorway and -crowed like a cock. - -“Comment?” said the lady. - -“Are the letters hatched yet, madame?” - -It was Pierre Poirel, too, who scrawled on the doorway of his -eccentric-looking cottage, “Villa des Nouveaux Riches.” And all -Beaucourt laughed at the joke. The village had recovered its sense of -humour, which was an excellent symptom, for a community that can work -hard and laugh has no social sickness to fear. - -Durand restarted a carrier’s service between Amiens and Beaucourt, and -three times a week a carrier’s cart left the Place Vogel, carrying -passengers and parcels. Beaucourt used to take its relaxation in an -evening gossip on the Place de l’Eglise, about the time the carrier’s -cart rolled in. Anatole would be there, Monsieur Lefèbre, the -patriarchs, the women. You could buy _Le Petit Journal_ or the _Echo de -Paris_. For a few sous, too, you could get a good cup of coffee at the -house of Manon Latour, and ask the advice of that fine fellow, Paul -Rance. - -Paul was growing popular. His day was full from dawn to dusk, and when -he was not working at the café or in the garden, he was helping some -villager with his house. Paul tackled all sorts of problems. He rescued -derelict roofs, underpinned dangerous walls, patched broken chimneys. -Manon’s man was a good fellow, a much better fellow than the rather -querulous and thin bearded Gaston who had been Manon’s first husband, -and Beaucourt approved of the betrothal. It accepted Paul. He could use -his hands. - -Brent had a share in preparing one of the great sensations, Beaucourt’s -first shop. The enterprise was Madame Poupart’s. Paul built the shelves, -the counter, the window stage, and, since the venture was a private one, -he was paid good money for the work. He took the notes home and handed -them to Manon. - -“Put them in the partnership bank.” - -He was very happy over that money, and Manon was happy with him. - -Few people could get near Madame Poupart’s shop when first it was -opened. The window was only six feet square, and you had to push hard to -obtain a glimpse of it. Not that Beaucourt was in mad haste to spend its -money, or to buy the cheap pipes, sweets, picture postcards, reels of -cotton, brown crockery, matches or lead pencils that were arranged in -the shop-window. It was the fact that Beaucourt had a shop. People -crowded like children to stare at it. - -Animals began to arrive and they could not have created more interest if -they had walked out of the Ark. The Philipons had a brown cow; Monsieur -Talmas, the messenger, kept two horses; the Lebecques had a pig, but the -idea of keeping a pig was soon plagiarized by other people. Hens clucked -and scratched, and cocks crowed. Someone gave Mère Vitry a cat. - -Nor was the Café de la Victoire without its live-stock, and -Philosophe—a very useful beast—soon had to acknowledge rivals. -Etienne’s blue cart arrived from Ste. Claire, carrying a calf secured -under a net, a coopful of young chickens, and Marie Castener in her -Sunday clothes. Etienne and Paul were left to man-handle the calf, while -Marie stumped all over the house, making Paul’s new floors shake, and -talking as she had not talked for years. She kissed Manon in nearly -every room as though she were sealing a blessing, quite forgetting that -she never could abide people who were impulsive and sentimental. - -“And when are you going to be married?” - -“Very soon, my dear; in three or four months, perhaps.” - -“Three or four months! What are you waiting for? If I were that fellow -Paul I should not be able to keep my hands off you.” - -“He is a very good fellow,” said Manon, “and very patient.” - -“Patient! A man ought not to be patient. Talking of bad men, have you -heard the news about Bibi?” - -Manon’s face hardened. - -“No. What is it?” - -“He’s blind—stone blind. They had to cut out one eye, and the other got -affected. A man like that quarrels once too often; those English -soldiers cut him to pieces.” - -Manon paused on the stairs. - -“Be careful; they are rather steep. Did they ever catch those Tommies?” - -“No.” - -“And what is Bibi doing?” - -“Living at the Coq d’Or. They say there is something between him and -that girl Barbe. She’ll keep him in order, if any woman can do it. I -suppose he has some money.” - -When the Casteners had gone Manon told Paul the news about Louis Blanc. -They were leaning over the stable door, and the calf was sucking Manon’s -fingers, a protest against its weaning. - -“Poor devil!” said Brent, “I would rather be dead. I never thought——” - -“I can’t pity him,” she answered; “I suppose I ought to, but I can’t. I -wonder if he will come back to Beaucourt?” - -“What could a blind man do here?” - -“Make mischief. I hope he will stay where he is; there would be -something horrible about a blind man crawling about the village. Be -careful, ma petite, do you want to eat my hand?” - -Brent leant over and rubbed the calf’s head, and the little beast’s -sapphire blue eyes looked up at them without fear. - -“This thing is tame enough.” - -“Etienne’s beasts are always tame. Yes, you have beautiful eyes, my -dear.” - -And though they did not confess it to each other the thought of Bibi -blind and helpless haunted them all that night. - -The working days slipped by, and in his white tent at the end of the -avenue of chestnuts old Durand slept the sleep of a healthy tired child. -He was irrepressible and he was happy, up soon after dawn each morning, -and shaving in the doorway of his tent before rushing down into the -village to begin another day of creation and adventure. Marcel Lefèbre -was his partner in this early morning enthusiasm. Lefèbre slept on an -old wire bed in the sacristy. Everybody knew that he spent the first two -hours of the day working in the church, clearing out the rubbish, -scraping the floor, and daubing whitewash over the banalities and -blasphemies that casual hands had scribbled on the walls. The -“flip-flop” of that brush and the priest’s splashed face were a rallying -cry and an ensign to Beaucourt. The whole village gathered in the church -for Sunday morning mass. The peasants came because they liked Lefèbre -and because the service seemed to be a sort of social sacrament, a very -human hour when they stood in silence side by side, and felt the -humanity in each other. The dead were there, and the children. And there -were those, Philipon among them, who had called the mass a mummery and a -swindle, but who came to the church because Marcel Lefèbre’s religion -grew in the soil. Even these children of reason felt that it was good to -gather together and to drink of the cup of common humanity. - -Beaucourt was happy, rather proud of itself and ready to echo old -Durand’s cry of “Ça ira, ça ira.” There was a competitive spirit in the -air, a spirit that was good for Beaucourt and for France. People asked -each other, “What are they doing in Peronne, in Domart, in Caix, in -Roye, up in the North? We can show them something here. It grows, it -blossoms.” Beaucourt had some little reason to be proud of its work. - -Yet there was a shadow. It arrived suddenly and unexpectedly, and it was -cast by a man. Nobody save Durand and Lefèbre imagined that there was -anything sinister about the shadow or felt that any new thing had -arrived in Beaucourt. What did a little fat man signify, a manufacturer, -a fellow who had been known as the “Elephant” because he had a nose like -a trunk and trousers that made one think of an elephant’s legs? M. -George Goblet was just a coarse little man whose life had been given to -the making of money. In the old days the factory had seemed good for -Beaucourt; some of the girls and women had worked there, and nothing -terrible had happened. The peasant, not the ouvrier, had dominated the -village. - -Monsieur George arrived in a car. Durand met him walking down the Rue de -Bonnière with Marcel Lefèbre, and Lefèbre had the look of a man whose -dinner had not agreed with him. - -“What, you back!” said Durand, with a quick glance at the priest. - -Monsieur George had lunched in his car on chicken and a bottle of -Château Citron. He smoked. He was cheerful; his face looked red and -beneficent, but Marcel Lefèbre—the Christian—wished him in hell. - -“Monsieur Goblet is restarting the factory.” - -“Tiens,” said Durand; “he will have to bring his own workpeople; we are -too busy here.” - -Monsieur George smiled. - -“Enterprise, my dear sirs. I am going to get the place tidy. Men do not -grow on currant bushes these days, but I have been in Paris and -elsewhere.” - -“Riff-raff,” said Anatole aggressively. - -The “Elephant” looked at him suspiciously with his little eye. He had -never been able to understand Durand; he thought him a fool. And, of -course, they disliked each other. It would never have occurred to Goblet -that these two men had an affection for Beaucourt, an affection that -resembled the love of an old man for a daughter, and that they suspected -him of being ready to debauch her innocence. - -Goblet was a man of platitudes. - -“France has to get to work. There is going to be a race for trade.” - -“Trade? Of course. One is apt to forget these things. We have got to -fill the shop-windows so that silly women may spend money.” - -“I make cloth, Monsieur Lefèbre. That is one of life’s necessities, is -it not, or would you rather have the women running about naked in the -fields?” - -“You are unanswerable, monsieur.” - -Anatole edged Lefèbre gently out of the conversation, for M. Marcel had -a hot temper and a way of losing it with righteous sincerity. - -“Monsieur George has been reading ‘Penguin Island,’ ha, ha! He is right; -we cannot have our villages full of naked angels. But where are you -going to put your workmen?” - -“Tents or huts.” - -“And feed them? We have our own organization, but we can’t feed your -fellows.” - -“I have not asked you to, have I? I did not start business yesterday; I -have my scheme just as you have yours.” - -“And you have managed to buy machinery?” - -“Should I go out without my trousers?” - -Anatole and the priest left the “Elephant” standing coarsely on his -dignity outside the gate of the factory. They walked back arm in arm to -the Place de l’Eglise. - -“My dear friend,” said Durand, “M. George is behaving like a reasonable -and enterprising citizen. What good will it do to us or Beaucourt to -quarrel with him? I think we are in danger of becoming a couple of -sentimentalists.” - -“God forgive the reasonable people,” said Monsieur Lefèbre. “It was the -devilry of common-sense that killed the child in man.” - - - - - XXXV - - -Early in June, the Café de la Victoire being ready for its furniture, -Manon made her great expedition to Amiens. The canvas ceilings were up, -all the timber-work stained or painted, and Paul had papered the walls -of the kitchen, the two best bedrooms, and the coffee room. Manon had -chosen a pattern of pink roses for her room; the windows were to have -rose-coloured curtains, and the bed a rose-coloured duvet; Paul had -stained the floor the colour of old oak. - -They left Philipon’s girl, Luce, in charge of the house, and travelled -to Amiens in the carrier’s cart, sitting on the wooden bench behind M. -Talmas, and under the black canvas cover that had a little window on -either side. Manon had a carpet-bag at her feet; she was to stay three -or four days. Paul carried his travelling gear wrapped up in a black and -white check handkerchief; he wore his velvet trousers and black coat. -There was no one else in the carrier’s cart, and as its grey-blue wheels -rolled slowly along the straight roads under the poplars, beeches, limes -and acacias, Paul felt himself back in some ancient bit of England. M. -Talmas’ van would have found country cousins in the Weald of Sussex or -among the Somersetshire orchards. Cæsar Talmas, too, was a bit of old -France, with the head of a grenadier, a tuft of grey hair on his chin, -and his eyes as blue as his breeches. - -This cart dropped them at the Place Vogel, and they walked to the Rue -Belu, Paul carrying Manon’s bag. Across the green-black water of the -river, and with its windows looking at the chestnut trees and in the -inspired grey glory of the cathedral, stood the Auberge de l’Evêque, a -tall, old, white house with yellow shutters, a rust-red gate and door. -Manon knew the place. It was clean and quiet, and she had written to -retain two bedrooms. - -They stood on the bridge for a moment, and looked at the cathedral. - -“When we have left our luggage,” said Manon, “we will go in and say our -prayers.” - -Madame Berthier of the Auberge de l’Evêque, one of those crisp, -firm-fleshed Frenchwomen, with a ruddy face and fair hair, met them like -an old friend. Manon had a bedroom on the first floor; Paul a little -room under the roof. Madame Berthier gave them coffee, and chattered to -Manon about prices. - -“The cheap shops are not always the cheapest,” was her dictum. - -Manon agreed. - -“If you mean to live with the same furniture all your life, why not have -it good to look at?” - -“Like your wife,” said madame with a roguish look at Paul. - -“Yes, that’s so, madame. I find that she is very pleasant to look at.” - -“Thank you, mon ami. Are you coming out with me to the shops?” - -“Of course.” - -“Then put on your hat.” - -It was a showery day, but that did not trouble them, for whenever the -rain began to fall Manon found a shop in which she wished to enquire the -prices. She was in no hurry, and they had explored all the streets in -the neighbourhood of the Hôtel de Ville before Manon made her choice. -She bought her furniture at a shop in the Rue des Chaudronnières, -cupboards, chairs, wash-hand stands fitted with drawers, a big French -bed. - -They had hesitated over that bed, and the shopkeeper and his wife joined -in a debate that became a sort of family discussion. Manon could buy an -iron bedstead of the English pattern, with a mattress and pillows for -four hundred and ninety-five francs, but the French wooden bed looked -handsome and more homely. It would cost them six hundred francs. - -“What do you think?” - -She looked at Paul. - -“I like the wooden one.” - -“It is a beautiful bed, madame, and the box-mattress is our very best.” - -“Why copy the English?” said the proprietor. “Think of the price they -are charging us for coal.” - -“An iron bedstead looks rather cold in a room.” - -“Yes. More suitable for old maids.” - -“Be quiet, Jules. I assure you, madame, that if you are going to have a -pretty room for yourself and Monsieur——” - -They bought the wooden bed, and walked on to the Rue Dumeril, where -Manon had discovered two shops that had pleased her, one of them a -bazaar that supplied anything from a table-knife to an enamelled -soap-dish. At another shop over the way Manon bought material for -curtains, some cheaper bedding, and two rugs. She had her lists made out -in a note-book, a hypothetical price placed against each article, and -she worked methodically through each list, refusing to be hurried. It -was a very serious affair this restocking of a kitchen and a linen -cupboard, with every sheet, towel and blanket to be examined and -handled, and Paul saw that it would take days. - -“I shall leave you at home this afternoon,” she told him, as they walked -back to dine at the auberge; “a man in a draper’s shop is like a dog on -a string.” - -He laughed. - -“It does not bore me, you know. I just stand and look at you.” - -“Yes, and it upsets my ideas.” - -“I’ll go shopping on my own; there are those tools and fencing wire that -I want to take back to-morrow in Talmas’ cart.” - -“That is a good idea. And, oh, Paul, don’t forget the spinach seed. And -this evening we will go and sit in the cathedral, and afterwards we will -drink coffee or a bock outside the café. You don’t wish to go to a -cinéma, do you?” - -“Is it likely?” said her man. - -Brent had known Amiens during the war, but the Amiens of his wanderings -while Manon shopped was not the city he had known of old. Amiens -depressed him. Its narrow, crowded side-walks and penitential pavé made -life uncomfortable for a stroller who soon grew tired of staring in -shop-windows, and Amiens—like all cities—had the power of impressing -itself with unpleasant vigour upon the casual countryman. The peasant is -jostled out of his little, quiet complacencies. He has not the -spaciousness of the fields to comfort him; the city cinéma-show tries -his eyes. Too many people, too much noise, too much restlessness! - -Amiens made Paul feel home-sick. He sat on a damp seat in one of the -boulevards, a man with the soul of a peasant, a man to whom—after the -first hour of window-gazing—this city could offer nothing. He felt -tired, absurdly tired, and ready to be taken home like a child. Home? -What was home? The place where he worked, where the crops grew, where he -sat by the stove in a French village? Yes, it was that and more than -that, and in those moments of loneliness Paul discovered the blood and -the flesh behind the conventional picture. To man home was a woman, the -woman, that and nothing else. The rest was mere furniture, baggage, call -it what you will, inanimate things that become alive only when a woman -moved among them and turned them into mute symbols of sentiment and -tenderness. It was Manon who mattered, Manon the woman. - -It began to rain again, and Paul jumped up. He walked fast down the wet -streets and the people in the streets had ceased to be strangers. Even -the few figures in khaki refused to accuse him of being an exile, a -bastard Frenchman masquerading in French clothes. He looked up at the -flèche of the cathedral, and his heart felt big in him, big with a sense -of the common humanity of them all. - -Paul went straight to the auberge, and opening the glass-panelled door, -found Madame Berthier knitting. She looked up at him with a smile. - -“Manon is not back?” - -“Not yet.” - -He went out with happy impatience, and waited on the bridge in the rain. -He felt that she would come that way, and while he waited there a very -wonderful thing happened. The battered-looking street, the grey quays, -the green-black water of the river had seemed heavily grey and ugly. -Suddenly the sun broke through, sending down a shower of yellow light, -while the rain continued to fall. A coloured bow overarched the city. -The chestnuts glittered, wet with a beautiful splendour of light. The -cathedral seemed to tower into the sky, flashing its dripping stones and -pinnacles and windows, its flèche ashine against a great black cloud. - -Paul stood spellbound. His eyes were the eyes of an awed yet delighted -child. - -Manon surprised him in that moment of un-self-consciousness. She came -across the bridge without his seeing her, and the look on his face made -her think of a window opened in heaven. His face was wet with the rain; -he was smiling. - -She did not speak, but came and stood beside him as though to share the -beauty that enchanted him; to gaze at the sun-splashed trees and the -splendour of mystery that enveloped the cathedral. Paul’s smiling eyes -came down out of the heaven to her, and the smile became human. - -“I’ve been waiting here. I thought you would come by the bridge.” - -“You have been feeling lonely,” she said. - -“How do you know that?” - -He caught her hand and held it firm and fast, and they leant over the -rail of the bridge and looked at the still water whose surface was no -longer blurred by the rain. There were wonderful reflections in the -water, and there were strange lights in Manon’s eyes. She had felt the -strong grip of Paul’s hand, and a quiver of deep passion that woke a cry -of exultation and of understanding in her heart. - -“I want to go home,” he said. - -“Home?” - -“To Beaucourt.” - -He felt the pressure of her firm, warm fingers. - -“Is Beaucourt home to you?” - -He smiled down at the water. - -“I felt like a lost child this afternoon. I had to come back to try and -find you. I wanted you; I never knew I could want you so much.” - -“Mon chéri,” she said; “so you waited out here in the rain? And then the -sun shone?” - -“And you came back. Home is where you are. That’s a great discovery for -a man to make, is it not?” - -“Had you never discovered it before?” - -“No.” - -“Then I am the first woman you have loved,” she said simply; “I am very -happy.” - -Paul kissed her softly on the cheek, and their reflections in the water -below imitated that kiss. - -Madame Berthier gave the lovers an early supper, and after the meal they -wandered out into Amiens, walking arm in arm. To Paul Amiens was no -longer a strange city full of cold, anonymous faces. They entered the -cathedral and sat a while in the great nave, watching the pigeons flying -to and fro in the sunset light of the clerestory, for the glass was gone -from many of the windows, and the pigeons nested in this great dovecote. -Paul held Manon’s hand. They spoke in whispers. - -“Only good men could have built this place.” - -“Good workmen, anyhow,” said her lover; “I think we have forgotten -something.” - -“Mon Dieu, something I should have bought?” - -He gave a soft laugh. - -“No, not that. This place reminds me of that house of yours.” - -“Ours,” she corrected. - -“Ours. You could put it here inside the cathedral. It’s part of the same -stuff. I don’t want to live in a world of sky-scrapers.” - -“What are sky-scrapers?” - -“The buildings in New York, America. It’s a great age, but, good God, -I’m satisfied with Beaucourt.” - -“Always?” - -“You are not going to die yet, are you?” - -“Mon chéri, not before you marry me.” - -“And there will always be work to do in Beaucourt, the sort of work that -makes a man go to bed happily with the smell of good soil or sawdust in -his nostrils. I say, that was a wonderful bed we bought this morning!” - -“Yes. We should not have liked an iron bed. You will hold me very close, -some day, my Paul.” - -“And I shall never let you go.” - -Next morning Brent tied up his belongings in the check handkerchief, -kissed Manon, shook hands with Madame Berthier, and marched off to the -Place Vogel. Monsieur Talmas’ cart started at nine on the return journey -to Beaucourt, and Paul found two other travellers on the wooden seat, an -old lady who was joining her married daughter, and Monsieur Poupart, who -had been spending two days in Amiens buying goods for the shop. Poupart -had a yellow face and a melancholy manner, and the old woman had been -boring him with the irritating vivacity of second childhood. She asked -interminable questions. - -“Work the pump, will you?” said Poupart to his neighbour; “my arm is -stiff. They had la grippe in the house where I have been staying; I -expect I have caught it; I always do.” - -“I have had la grippe thirteen times,” said the old lady triumphantly, -leaning forward and looking across Paul at the pessimist. - -“The thirteenth attack should have killed you, madame;” and, in a -truculent aside, “you would never have had thirteen attacks if you had -been my mother-in-law.” - -The old lady chattered to Paul all the way to Beaucourt. She was very -inquisitive, and Paul was hard put to keep her curiosity within the -limits of a decent reticence, for her old hands were ready to pull -everything to pieces, even to interfere with her neighbours’ clothes. -She asked Paul if he was married, and cackled when he told her that he -was only betrothed. - -Poupart listened with a sardonic solemnity. He caught Paul’s eye, and -nudged him with his elbow. - -“Push her downstairs.” - -Paul laughed. - -“La Croix would have done that years ago if he had not been a fool.” - -“I understand what you are saying, quite well, Monsieur Poupart. No one -has been able to break my neck for me.” - -“What a pity, madame!” said the man. - -Monsieur Talmas’ cart entered Beaucourt by the Bonnière road, and just -beyond the gates of the factory, where a number of workmen were -lounging, they passed a waggon drawn in at the side of the road and -laden with the sections of a hut. Brent, who had been looking at the -factory, felt himself nudged by Monsieur Poupart’s sharp elbow. - -“Look there!” - -Ten yards beyond the waggon a man was sitting on the grass bank, the man -whose closed eyelids seemed sunk in their eye-sockets. A girl with red -hair was standing beside the man, a girl with narrow lips and a -prominent bosom. She was speaking to the driver of the waggon who was -unhooking his horses. - -“It is Louis Blanc,” said the shopkeeper, staring inquisitively at the -woman. - -Paul was conscious of a shock of astonishment. It was Bibi himself, -blind and bearded, sitting there and listening to what the girl was -saying, his head slightly on one side like the head of a listening bird. -A couple of sticks lay on the bank beside him! He was dressed in his -best clothes. - -“He’s blind, you know,” said Poupart; “poor devil!” - -Brent’s eyes were grim. He realized that he had not prepared himself for -the return of Bibi, for Bibi had passed out of the life of the village, -and his reappearance filled Brent with a feeling akin to nausea. It was -the return of something that was essentially evil, an element of -discord, the spirit of malice. - -Paul was staring hard at Louis Blanc and as the cart passed him Bibi -raised his head with a jerk. His eye-sockets were fixed upon Brent. He -seemed to feel the passing of an enemy and the challenge of an enemy’s -eyes. - -Paul drew back and looked away. He heard Bibi speaking to the girl with -the red hair; he was asking her who was in the cart that had passed. - -“It’s the carrier’s van,” she said. - -“Who’s inside?” - -“Two men and an old woman. Now, then, are you quite sure this is your -piece of ground? It lies opposite the end of the factory wall.” - -Bibi had owned half an acre of orchard here. - -“Yes, that’s it. Count the trees. There used to be thirty-six, all -apples. They were standing there months ago.” - -Barbe, of the Coq d’Or, took a step up the bank and counted the trees. - -“I make the number thirty-five.” - -“Near enough. We will have the hut off the waggon here. Give me a hand; -I can help the fellow to unload.” - -Some of the workmen came across to help in the unloading. They thought -that Bibi had lost his eyesight in the war; and Barbe was very -attractive to men. They fraternized with Bibi. - -“You are good fellows,” he said, “not like these damned peasants. There -will be some good wine here when my buvette goes up.” - -“What, you are going to sell drink, old man?” - -“Plenty of it,” said Bibi. - - - - - XXXVI - - -The events that agitated Monsieur Anatole Durand were the arrival of the -“Elephant’s” workmen and the birth of Bibi’s buvette. - -Anatole had Marcel Lefèbre at his elbow, and Lefèbre had never hesitated -to say that it was in the factory that the modern social diseases were -hatched and bred. If you argued the point with him and quoted the -example of Monsieur Menier and his Chocolate Town he would answer that -there were very few enlightened men like Monsieur Menier, and that -factories existed not for the good of the workpeople but to make money. -To Marcel Lefèbre the making of money was the root of all evil. It -debauched both the capitalist and the worker, begot the bastard lives -that men live in great cities, made life hectic and unreal. He combated -the assertion that the peasants were hard, greedy, less intelligent than -the dwellers in cities, and he would ask you whether a man who could -carry out all the varied and scientific work on a farm had not a more -fully developed and intelligent life than a workman who spent each day -cutting threads on a screw, who read nothing but the “red rags” and -talked about things that he did not understand. In the villages you -found no venereal disease, few prostitutes, none of the grosser sorts of -crime. An occasional murder, perhaps; but Lefèbre was a man of -passions—disciplined passions—and yet he could understand the violence -that shed blood. There are occasions when the killing of a man is a -wholesome and a cleanly act. - -It must be confessed that Lefèbre’s prejudices were justified by the -temper of the men whom Monsieur Goblet introduced into Beaucourt. The -“Elephant” had picked up the dregs of the casual labour that had been -set free from the munition works and the army, fellows who drifted, -youngsters who had learnt too soon the vices of grown men. Very few of -Goblet’s original “hands” had returned; some had been killed; others had -settled elsewhere; for the few who were ready to return there could be -no technical work until the buildings had been repaired and new -machinery installed. Durand had spoken of “riff-raff,” and the words -fitted the case exactly. Monsieur Goblet had picked up the riff-raff -that is to be found in all cities. There were some good men among them, -one or two of the older bricklayers, the engineer, and two of the -mechanics. The rest were a bad lot, ready to run about the village and -make trouble with the women. - -As for Louis Blanc’s buvette, that, too, could not be helped, nor does -any sensible Frenchman quarrel with a seller of good wine. Bibi’s -buvette grew up like a gourd, for the workmen over the way saw that the -plant was for their own pleasure, and spent the evenings in helping it -to grow. They put up Bibi’s hut for him, built Mademoiselle Barbe a -throne and a set of shelves, knocked tables and benches together, even -helped with the furniture. Bibi had a small marquée as well as a hut. He -meant to sleep in the marquée, but Mademoiselle Barbe demanded a door -and a lock, and the room that was partitioned off at the end of the hut. -For one day Bibi distributed free drinks in token of his gratitude to -the good fellows who had their eyes fixed on the red-haired girl’s -petticoat. Bibi became popular. He had a fine collection of lewd stories -suited to the gentlemen whom the “Elephant” had imported into Beaucourt. - -Durand professed to see virtues in Louis Blanc’s establishment. - -“It will keep the roughs out of the village.” - -Lefèbre insisted on seeing the truth. - -“There is part of the village that may be glad to join the roughs.” - -“Mon Dieu,” said Anatole, “are we not rather like a couple of fussy old -hens?” - -“My religion spreads its wings over the children. You know very well, my -friend, that Goblet has opened the lid of the box. We shall have trouble -here.” - -Durand bit his finger-nails. - -“There may be a way of persuading that fellow Blanc to disappear.” - -Paul missed the events of those few days, for Amiens had made him a -present, the present that Monsieur Poupart had expected to bring back -with him. Brent went down with influenza, an influenza of a particularly -virulent type. He was alone in the house, Luce Philipon having returned -to her parents, and the disease struck Paul like a dose of poison. He -was at work in the morning; that evening he was delirious, with a -temperature that had soared. - -About nine o’clock in the evening old Prosper Cordonnier, who slept at -the château, and acted as Anatole’s “store-guard,” was sent down by -Durand to the Café de la Victoire with a message to Brent. Anatole -wished him to come up next day and make a rough survey of the château. -Cordonnier found the café shut up, but hearing a voice, he knocked at -the door. No one answered the knock, so Cordonnier tried the door, and -finding it unlocked, walked in. - -It was still sufficiently light for Cordonnier to see his way about the -house, and he discovered Brent in bed in the little room whose window -overlooked the garden. Paul was delirious, and talking all sorts of -imaginable nonsense, and he was talking in English. Cordonnier stood and -stared at him. This lingo was strange to Prosper, who had passed his -refugee years working on a farm in the Gironde. - -Cordonnier bent over the bed, and shook Brent by the shoulder. - -“Hallo, old chap, what’s the matter?” - -Brent pushed him away. - -“Bosh,” he said, “bosh! Oh, go to the devil!” - -Cordonnier left him, but he stood in the passage for a minute or two, -rubbing his chin and listening. Prosper had been known in Beaucourt as -“Mutton Head,” a man of slow movements, very stupid, yet touchily -conscious of his stupidity. People had laughed at him, and this laughter -had bred in Cordonnier a stubborn reticence. He used very few words, and -those of the simplest. He talked only of obvious things, and if anyone -asked him for an opinion he bolted back into his silence like a rabbit -into a hole. He had one failing, a fondness for drink, and he had been -heard to argue with a mild recklessness upon the contrasted virtues of -farmyard dung and chemical manures. - -Cordonnier went back to the château. - -“That fellow Paul might have been talking German,” was the thought that -entered his head, “but we won’t say anything about that. They always -laugh, the fools! A man should keep things to himself.” - -He told Durand that Paul was sick. “I found him in bed, monsieur. You -had better see him yourself in the morning.” - -“Nothing serious, Prosper?” - -Cordonnier avoided expressing his opinion. - -“He was in bed, monsieur, so I came away.” - -Anatole was with Paul early the next day; the high fever had passed, and -he found Brent flushed but sane. He remembered nothing of Cordonnier’s -visit, nor had it occurred to him that he might have been babbling in -English. - -“This comes of taking a holiday in Amiens.” - -Durand lit the stove in the kitchen, warmed up some milk, and made Paul -drink it. - -“When does Manon come back?” - -“To-morrow.” - -“I will fetch Mère Vitry. She is a good nurse, and she will be glad to -look after you.” - -And there the incident ended. Mère Vitry came in, a very willing angel -of mercy, with her patched skirt, and her bright black eyes. She washed -Paul’s hands and face, talking to him as she would have talked to a -baby, and shuffling about the house in an old pair of felt slippers. In -the toe of one of these slippers a mouse had gnawed a hole, and the -little black circle fascinated Brent. It looked like a bird’s eye. - -Manon returned next day in Monsieur Talmas’ cart. She found Mère Vitry -sitting in the kitchen, darning Paul’s socks, her cat asleep on the -table by the window, and the coffee-pot ready on the stove. Manon had -been in a state of pleasant excitement from the moment that she had left -Amiens. She was returning to her home and to her lover. - -“You have been looking after my man. How good of you.” - -“S-sh!” said Mère Vitry, “he is asleep.” - -“Asleep!” - -“He has been ill, my dear, but he is better. Monsieur Durand says it is -la grippe. Perhaps you had better not go into the room.” - -Manon put her bag on the table, took off her hat, and behaved as Mère -Vitry would have behaved in impulsively flouting her own advice. She -went to the door of Paul’s room, opened it without a sound, and stood -looking at him as he lay in bed asleep. - -It was that kiss on the forehead that woke Brent. He opened his eyes to -find her bending over him, her warm red mouth still shaping a kiss. Her -clothes and her bosom smelt faintly of some delicate perfume, and her -hands were touching his shoulders. - -“Mon pauvre,” she said. - -Brent lay and looked at her. He was thinking that he had never had a -more pleasant awakening than the lips of Manon had given him in their -new home. - -“So you are back.” - -He was content to look at her, and she understood the happy indolence in -his eyes. - -“You should have sent me a message. How long have you been ill?” - -She sat down on the edge of the bed, and held one of his hands. - -“I am not complaining.” - -“No?” - -“To wake up like this, and suddenly see you, here. But, little woman, -you ought not to be here.” - -“Who says so?” - -“I do. I don’t want you ill.” - -“Indeed!” - -Deliberately, wilfully, she bent forward till her face was close to his. - -“I am afraid of nothing that you could give me. So there.” - -Brent would not kiss her lips, but he kissed her hand. - -“I shall be up in two days. Life is so exciting just now. When does the -furniture arrive?” - -“On Friday.” - -And suddenly he remembered that Louis Blanc had returned to Beaucourt. -He wondered if Manon knew. - -She was leaning back and looking at him, aware of the sudden seriousness -of his eyes. - -“What is it?” she asked. - -“Nothing.” - -“You are in pain?” - -“No.” - -“But there is something; I am not to be deceived.” - -He smiled up at her. - -“How you notice things.” - -“Yes. I saw Bibi and his new hut near the factory. Is that what is -worrying you? Monsieur Talmas told me. It does not worry me.” - -Brent’s face cleared. In some ways women are more courageous and more -imperturbable than men. - -“Well, then, it does not matter,” he said, “but I wish that fellow had -taken his blind face somewhere else.” - -In their happiness they were ready to forget Louis Blanc and that brown -hut of his among the apple trees on the bank above the Bonnière road. -The buvette was complete. Mademoiselle Barbe had her comptoir and her -shelves for bottles, and at night the factory workmen crowded in and sat -round the improvised tables and drank Bibi’s execrable wine. Those who -were unable to find room in the hut made themselves at home under the -apple trees. They were noisy; they sang. Bibi had a chair beside Barbe’s -comptoir. He talked a great deal, but he never laughed. His blind face -was the face of a man who listened for some particular voice, the voice -of an enemy. - -This hut of his was like an outpost, or a rallying point in the -inevitable antagonisms that were stirring in the village. Peasant -Beaucourt looked at it with unfriendly eyes. It was not that these -peasants were saints; far from it; and yet it was as though that -arch-peasant, Monsieur Lefèbre, had placed Bibi and his buvette under an -interdict. There were elemental discords between the tiller of the -fields and these ouvriers. The peasant had his home, his wife, his -daughters, his work, his crops; the factory hand was an Ishmaelite, -noisy, contentious, cynical, full of crude theories about double pay and -less work. He had no woman with him, and your barrack-housed man is a -troublesome dog. He will spend half his night sniffing after petticoats, -and in Beaucourt the petticoats belonged to the peasants. - -This tacit antagonism existed long before it was actually provoked by -the inevitable escapades of the “Elephant’s” roughs. To Beaucourt, the -Beaucourt that followed Durand, Lefèbre, Philipon and their party, -Bibi’s buvette was out of bounds. No one went there. If a man wanted a -little red wine, he got it at Manon’s café, and so, almost insensibly, -the Café de la Victoire became involved in the feud. - -Prosper Cordonnier was the first of the peasant party to secede, and his -secession was furtive and occasional. This bibulous and inarticulate old -man had felt a dryness at the throat whenever he passed along the Rue de -Bonnière. His timidity and his passion for strong drink struggled -together for a long time before that scorching and dusty day provided -both the temptation and the opportunity. It was three o’clock in the -afternoon; everybody was at work, and Prosper, who had been on an errand -for Anatole Durand, passed Bibi’s buvette at an hour when it was empty. -Bibi himself was sitting in the shadow of the doorway; Mademoiselle -Barbe had gone to Amiens in Talmas’ cart. - -Prosper loitered, looking shyly at the board over the door. It occurred -to him that it would be polite and neighbourly to speak to Bibi, this -poor fellow who had lost his sight. - -“Good evening, monsieur.” - -Bibi sat up very straight in his chair. - -“Hallo, who’s that?” - -“Prosper Cordonnier.” - -“Come up and drink.” - -Golden words on a scorching July day! Prosper Cordonnier surrendered. - -“Help yourself,” said Bibi. - -It was pleasantly cool and shady in the hut, and Prosper, after -selecting a bottle and a glass from Mademoiselle Barbe’s shelves, sat -down on a box by the doorway. - -“It is very warm, monsieur. What shall I pay you for the wine?” - -“Nothing,” said Bibi. - -“But, monsieur——” - -“You did me a good turn once, I don’t forget. Pour me out a glass, old -chap.” - -Cordonnier had laid a hand upon one of the most potent of Mademoiselle -Barbe’s bottles, and in a little while the cords of his tongue were -loosened. He became affectionate, talkative, foolishly confidential, -dragging his box close to Louis Blanc’s chair, and tapping him on the -knee with an intimate finger. He began to gossip about Beaucourt, the -peasant part of Beaucourt. He had his grievances. His dignity in -Beaucourt had never been sufficiently considered. - -“Tiens, but what do I do at my age but run messages for Anatole Durand! -And believe me, monsieur, I get two francs a day for it, my food, and a -couple of blankets. Because a man has learnt to hold his tongue some -people think he is worth nothing at all.” - -Bibi sympathized with him. Old Cordonnier was a prodigious bore, but a -blind man has to be patient. - -“He is a dull dog, old Durand.” - -“What I complain of, monsieur, is that he has favourites. Look at Manon -Latour and that fellow, Paul Rance.” - -Bibi yawned. - -“Are they favourites of his? Fill up your glass, Prosper.” - -Cordonnier babbled on. - -“That fellow Paul Rance has a tin of milk a day; I have to carry it down -each morning.” - -“What, is he ill?” - -“La grippe. And that reminds me of a funny thing, monsieur. I happened -to go down to the café when he was taken ill, and he was all alone there -in bed, and talking to himself in German.” - -Bibi sat very still in his chair. - -“But that sounds absurd. How did you know it was German?” - -“Well, it was not French, monsieur; but of course, nobody ever pays any -attention to me, so I never mention such a thing to anybody.” - -He raised his glass and drank to his own neglected dignity. - -“It is a great mistake to gossip, monsieur. I always hold my tongue. I’m -not an old woman.” - -Bibi did not answer him. His blind face seemed to have sunk back into -the shadow of the hut. He was breathing deeply, nostrils dilated and -twitching. This old fool of a Cordonnier had dropped a casual spark and -set an idea alight. - -For Bibi’s hatred of Paul Brent had become an obsession. His blindness -intensified it, shutting him up in the darkness with his hatred of the -man who had taken away his sight. He would sit for hours thinking of a -possible revenge, but he spoke of it to no one, not even Barbe. - - - - - XXXVII - - -Brent was up and about on that great day when the furniture arrived from -Amiens. It made a triumphant entry into Beaucourt, piled in two waggons, -and followed by half the youngsters in the village. All the morning was -spent in unloading it and carrying it into the house, for Paul’s -staircase was a staircase of moods and prejudices, and refused to be -taken by storm. The two men who came with the waggons exercised much -patient and laborious persuasion, inspired by the enthusiasms of Manon -and some practical sympathy in the form of red wine. Young Beaucourt -stood on the pathway and stared through the windows. - -Brent was aware of Manon as a pair of happy eyes, and a blue and white -check torchon. She was everywhere, polishing, supervising, issuing -orders in that caressing voice of hers, a housewife in heaven. Paul -followed her about like a Greek chorus. He had been forbidden to carry -anything heavy, and very often he was made to sit down in a chair. - -They hung up curtains, put down rugs, moved the beds to and fro until -Manon’s critical taste was satisfied. She would run forward, give a -touch to some piece of furniture, and then come back to Paul and stand -holding his arm. - -“How does that please you?” - -“Everything pleases me,” he would reply with the broad appreciation of -the male. - -Neighbours arrived and had to be shown over the house, Mère Vitry, -Mesdames Poupart and Philipon. They were enthusiastic and without envy, -for Manon was popular with women, and it was not easy for them to be -jealous of her. There was no guile behind her enthusiasm; she was so -practical yet so human that these older women seemed to feel the -unspoilt child in her. - -“So you will be married soon,” said Madame Poupart with a glance at the -new bed in Manon’s room. - -Manon was laying out the new sheets with the naturalness of a woman -whose whole heart was absorbed in the great affair. - -“Yes, I expect so. Paul is such a man for thoroughness. He insisted on -finishing all the repairs before we thought of marrying. What do you -think of this linen?” - -The women examined the sheets, holding them up to the light, stretching -them between their hands, and even scratching the fabric with their -finger-nails. They talked all the while, and, though Manon used her -tongue, her eyes were the essentially eloquent part of her. “We are -going to be happy,” she said; “I feel it in my blood and in my soul.” - -Madame Philipon was rubbing the linen between a thumb and forefinger. - -“It is not so good as before the war.” - -“Nothing is,” said Madame Poupart; “one cannot expect it.” - -Manon gave a lift of the head, and laughed. - -“What are you laughing at, ma chérie?” - -“Oh, nothing.” - -“You are thinking that your marriage will not be like these sheets?” - -Rosalie Philipon’s eyes were shy and affectionate. - -“Perhaps!” - -“I think you will always be happy. There are some women to whom a man -cannot be unkind.” - -Brent had disappeared downstairs with the amused tolerance of a man who -recognizes his own occasional superfluity. He was sitting -straddle-legged on a chair by the kitchen window watching the two men -preparing to drive their two waggons back to Amiens, and listening to -the voices of the women up above. The animation and the intimacy of -their voices soothed him. He fell into a day-dream in which he felt -happily conscious of all the elemental happenings of life, a woman’s -kisses, the warmth of her bosom in those dear moments of surrender, the -tranquil sound of her breathing, the practical and caressing presence of -her by day and by night. These voices suggested other thoughts and -emotions. They seemed to fill the house with the spirit of the great -human mystery. These women were busy about a bed. It was almost as -though they were waiting for the little cry of a child—that faint -whimpering that fills the hushed house with a sense of tender exultation -and relief. - -Brent’s eyes were blue and vague, but suddenly the alertness came back -to them as he glanced along the Rue de Picardie. Something unusual was -happening in Beaucourt. He saw a crowd of children, an English officer -wheeling a bicycle, and behind them a G. S. waggon with three khaki -figures riding on it. The two waggoners were standing in the middle of -the road staring at the procession. - -Brent had a moment of panic, the panic of a man with a secret. These -familiar uniforms were so unexpected and so reminiscent of much that he -wished to forget. He stood up and felt his heart beating hard and fast. - -The window was open and he heard one of the waggoners explain these -English to his comrade: - -“Les exhumeurs.” - -The truth flashed upon Brent. They had come to open Beckett’s grave. - -He was conscious of a profound discouragement, an inward protest! What -an omen! Why had they chosen this day of all days? He had a feeling that -he wanted to run away out of the house, and to remain away until the -affair was over. - -Cordonnier was knocking at the door. - -“Madame Latour?” - -Brent got a grip on himself. He felt that he could not leave this -business to Manon, and that he did not want the taint of it in her heart -on this most happy and innocent day. He went to the door, and found -Cordonnier and the officer waiting on the path. - -Cordonnier looked under his slow eyelids at Brent. - -“Monsieur Paul, here is an English officer who has come to take away a -body.” - -Brent glanced at the officer. He was the most harmless thing imaginable, -a Moth in Spectacles, one of those anomalous males without masculinity, -in age about five-and-forty, mild, a little frightened, with a brown -moustache that fell down over a precise mouth. Brent seemed to know that -there was a patch of baldness under his cap. He was indifferently -shaved. His tie was in a lump. He wore very new leggings that did not -fit. - -“Bonjour, monsieur.” - -The officer began in text-book French. - -“Bonjour, monsieur, est-ce que vous avez un soldat Anglais enterré ici?” - -“There is a grave in the orchard, monsieur.” - -The officer blinked. - -“Have I your permission to remove the body?” - -“Certainly, monsieur. I will show you.” - -He got the Englishman away before Manon could appear, and taking him -round by way of the yard, showed him the grassy mound and the wooden -cross below the bank in the orchard. The soldiers took off their coats -and set to work. Brent turned away to rout a dozen inquisitive -youngsters who wanted to see the body dug up. - -“Allez!” - -He looked white and fierce, and the children fled. - -Brent sat on the bank and made himself watch this opening of Beckett’s -grave. There was something final about it, something symbolical, and -yet—as performed by these English Tommies—it was utterly without -reverence. They smoked cigarettes; they were immensely casual and -indolent; it was evident that they considered their officer a negligible -old woman. Brent watched them with an increasing dislike. He saw one man -spit into the grave, the instinctively dirty act of a mere common man, -and for a moment he was almost on his feet and ready to call them -“swine.” His eyes met the brown, short-sighted eyes of the officer. -Brent understood that he, too, despised and loathed these men, but that -he was afraid of their brute animal obtuseness. This, too, was -symbolical. It reminded Brent of a saying of Anatole Durand’s: “In these -days the brain of civilization is afraid to tell the body of -civilization what an ignorant brute it is.” - -Manon came out into the orchard, saw Paul sitting there, and understood. -She gave him a mother-look, a caress of the eyes, and slipped away -without his realizing that she had been so near to him. - -One of the soldiers stuck his pick into something. - -“The old ——’s there, chum!” - -The officer winced. Brent looked fierce. He made himself go and stand -beside the officer. - -“Your men have not much respect for the dead, monsieur.” - -The Moth in Spectacles understood French better than he spoke it. He -looked almost timidly at Brent. - -“It is habit, monsieur. They are awkward brutes.” - -He spoke to one of the men. - -“Be careful, Saunders; that Englishman was alive once.” - -“B——y nice job he left us, anyhow,” said the man, with sulky -insolence. - -The disinterment was soon completed. Brent saw his own identity disc -taken out of the grave and handed to the officer, and a sudden curiosity -moved him. He edged close and looked over the little officer’s shoulder -at the red circle lying in his palm. The Tommy had cleaned the disc by -spitting upon it and rubbing it on his breeches. - - 597641 Pte. Brent, P. - 2—9——Fusiliers. - -The officer brought out a note-book and entered the details, while the -men put what was left of Beckett into the wooden shell that they had -brought in the waggon. Brent stood and looked at the hole in the ground. -He was thinking of that morning in March when Beckett had been killed. -He remembered the frost on the grass, the sunlight, the stillness, the -white splinters of the apple tree, the hob-nails in the soles of -Beckett’s boots. The memory carried him to Manon, Manon who was alive, -Manon who loved him. He turned away and walked back to the house, -conscious of an immense gratitude to her, of a tenderness that had felt -the taunt of some unclean act and rushed to purify itself in her -presence. How clean and wholesome and human she was! Those dirty, -soulless men in khaki spitting into Beckett’s grave; those conscript -grave-diggers turning over the bones of a dead valour! - -Manon heard him enter the house. She was upstairs. Something in her -seemed to divine his mood. She called to him. - -“Paul, I am here.” - -He climbed the steep staircase that he had built, and found himself in -her room—their room. And, suddenly, her arms went round him. She held -him close with all her sturdy, human strength, and drew his face down to -her shoulder. - -“My man has such a soft heart.” - -He turned his head, and with an emotion that was very near to tears, -kissed her warm throat. - -“It might have happened some other day.” - -She smiled over him compassionately. - -“Well, it is over. That mound there in the orchard always made me a -little sad. Now, look, all this is yours and mine; it is ours.” - -She made him look round the room at the new bed with its clean linen and -red duvet, the rugs on the floor, the curtains that she had tacked up at -the windows. - -“It is alive,” she said, “our little home.” - -He held her close, and they stood with heads bowed, as though praying. - -In the street a blind man led by a small boy had stopped outside the -Café de la Victoire, and was turning his sightless face to it with a -hatred that had inward eyes. - -“It is a fine house they have now,” said the boy; “the door looks as -green as an apple.” - -Bibi said nothing. The boy led him away down the Rue de Picardie, and -neither Manon nor Paul knew that Bibi had passed their house. - - - - - XXXVIII - - -There is more folly than sin in the world—but an evil man takes folly -and uses it—and in the process makes it evil. - -These factory workers came and drank at Louis Blanc’s buvette. They -talked and talked extravagantly as some men talk after a war—and there -were bad men among them. Mademoiselle Barbe, who was as clever and as -careful as a cat, and who had nothing but scorn for eloquent fools, kept -her eyes in particular on Pompom Crapaud and Lazare Ledoux. - -Little Crapaud was as ugly as his name, an undersized little devil with -a broken nose and dissipated blue eyes. He was always laughing, and when -he laughed he made a noise like a goat. Crapaud had been in prison for -some particularly filthy crime. He had worked on “munitions” during the -war. - -Ledoux was different. He was like a lean dog that had been flayed alive, -and was all red flesh and staring eyes. He was raw both within and -without. He gave the impression of a man who was always leaning forward -to seize something or to spit in an enemy’s face. He talked like a -“flame-thrower,” and his eyes grew more and more red as he talked. You -could see the venom swelling in that long, lean throat of his—his hands -clawed ready to tear and to destroy. His black hair seemed to stand on -end—electrified. He was always dirty, and smelt of stale sweat. - -Ledoux was a “Red.” He had been born and bred a “Red”; it was his -natural colour. He had an infinite capacity for hating anything and -everything that smelt a little sweeter than himself. He called all -clean, good-natured, orderly people “capitalists” or “bourgeois.” He -hated anyone who worked hard, or who was thrifty. He hated all peasants, -especially those peasants who owned land. - -That chance gossip with old Cordonnier had given Bibi an idea, and in -the bitter darkness of these summer days he sat there like a spider -spinning a web. He listened to these roughs talking “communism.” Ledoux -was an orator; he made speeches—malignant, violent speeches that were -very pleasant to discontented men who preferred the new humanitarian -theories to the merciless facts of life. Ledoux had all the old -clap-trap dogmas, and Crapaud—who was his dog—yapped applause. - -“The workers create everything with their hands. All capitalists are -thieves. Everything should belong to the workers.” - -He had the usual sentimental view of the noble workman joyfully pouring -forth sweat for the sake of all the other workers in the world. - -“Never will you see such labour—such wonderful things done, such a mass -of riches for everybody.” - -Bibi listened to Ledoux. He was one great silent sneer, but he never let -Ledoux know that he was sneering. At night, when the men had gone off -and the buvette was shut up, he and Barbe would discuss Ledoux and roar -with laughter. Barbe was a mimic. She knew exactly what life was, and -what men are, and that Ledoux would have been much less of a fool if he -had not been so repulsive to women. - -“What nonsense!” she said; “that fellow has never been allowed to kiss a -pretty girl. I should say that women don’t like him—so he is one of the -mangy dogs with a sore head.” - -She had placed her finger on the inflamed core of Lazare Ledoux’s -discontent. He had failed to get what he had thirsted for in life, and -his red eyes had blazed. He preached love, love of the people who were -like himself—and he was the very essence of hatred. The blood of his -ideals was envy. - -It is easy for a bad man to understand the nonsensical malignity of such -a theorist’s dogmatism. Good-natured people are apt to be moved by the -fanatic’s enthusiasm, his burning words, his apparent altruism. He -offers freedom, noble and more spacious lives. He talks of the “children -of to-morrow.” And Bibi, rogue that he was, laughed at Ledoux, and his -laughter was justified. - -“Voilà!” he said; “give these gentlemen their food and their wine and -other people’s houses—and then ask them to sweat for the good of -humanity! How much work will they do? Precious little. They will loaf -about and talk all day, and make the shopkeepers clean the -streets. . . .” - -“Most men are lazy,” said Barbe, “it is the women and the children who -matter. An empty stomach is man’s master.” - -But if Bibi despised Ledoux and Crapaud and the crowd who listened to -them, he saw that it might be possible for him to make use of their -passions. These men were firebrands, wolves. They talked -internationalism, worshipped Lenin, yet hated the Germans. Ledoux was -more venomous than usual when he spoke of the German Socialists. He had -not forgotten what he had suffered in the trenches—for Ledoux was a -physical coward and sordid fear does not breed love. He was ready to -scream at his brethren across the Rhine: “Yes, you behaved like swine. -You were ready to help the shopkeepers when you thought you were going -to plunder our shops. And you let your honest men be put in prison.” - -If Bibi had the civic morals of a house-agent, he was almost as -successful as the house-agent in trading on the good nature and the -carelessness of the average man and woman. He could create an -atmosphere, spin a web, and wait for the flies to arrive. He set himself -to create an atmosphere about the Café de la Victoire. When Ledoux raged -against the capitalists and the shopkeepers, Bibi would say, “You are -quite right, monsieur; we have them here. I keep a shop and sell wine; -but what can a blind man do?” - -He would tap the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre that he wore on his coat. - -“Anyhow, I would work if I could, and I picked up this in the war.” - -They fell upon Bibi’s neck and reassured him. He was “bon enfant”; he -could tell a good tale, and he sold them wine. He did not give himself -airs. Even Ledoux liked the swaggering frankness of the man who called -the peasants “the muck of the land.” - -Bibi spun one thread at a time. - -“Of course, the shopkeepers will do anything. Now look at these people -in the café over there. Do you know how they got their material?” - -The buvette asked, “How?” - -“Stole it. They came back to the village before any of the others. There -were some army huts in a field. They pulled two of them to pieces and -used the stuff.” - -This made Ledoux furious. - -“That’s individualism. The huts belonged to the community.” - -“That’s what I say. Now, take this hut of mine; I bought it; I look on -it as a sort of pension, a box for an old soldier.” - -“There is nothing wrong in that.” - -Bibi smiled at them all. - -“And the boys are kind to me and drink my wine. Now those people at the -café are capitalists, and their capital gave them a start of everybody -else. Is not that so, monsieur?” - -He turned his face towards Ledoux. - -“There’s the infamy!” Ledoux was standing and reaching out with his -hands. “Even in a place like this the capitalist has all the advantages. -Look—a ruined village, all the poor people coming back! Everybody ought -to start on equal terms—but no! Back comes your capitalist and your -shopkeeper, and they have their feet half-way up the ladder. All capital -should be confiscated.” - -“What about the factory?” said a voice. - -“It ought to belong to us. Who is putting it in order? Who gives the -sweat?” - -“That’s right,” shouted little Crapaud; “old Goblet ought to be paid a -salary—or wages—by us. Why should he have fifty thousand francs a year -for sitting in an office?” - -“Then there is that fellow Durand,” put in someone else. - -Bibi waved his arms. - -“A wash-out! He only amuses himself; he is one of the sentimental fools -who is getting rid of his money. But what makes me savage is the -smugness of the people.” He was working to bring the conversation back -to the Café de la Victoire. - -“Smug! Mon Dieu! They look down on us; we are not good enough to mix -with them. Soon they will be calling their place an hotel. Why, I would -bet you that if a couple of you boys walked into that place and asked -for a drink, they would not serve you.” - -This created an uproar. - -“Let us try it,” shouted little Crapaud. “Here, Lazare, you and I will -go round to-morrow and put the wind up these aristos.” - -Ledoux showed his teeth. - -“I have no objection.” - -“You will be turned out,” said Bibi. - -Crapaud and the orator put Bibi’s prophecy to an experimental test. They -strolled in the cool of the evening to Manon’s café, and saw Manon -herself standing on the path admiring the new sign-board that Paul had -put up that very morning. Brent was working in the garden, and the wall -hid him from view. - -It was Crapaud who did the talking. Ledoux was useless with women, being -too uncouth and too sombre a beast. - -“Good evening, madame; we have come to try your wine.” - -Manon looked at them. She had never seen these two men before. - -“I am sorry, monsieur, but my café has been closed for a week. We have -been too busy.” - -Crapaud winked at his comrade. - -“Then what is that sign doing up there? All that gold lettering looks -very inviting.” - -She did not reply to Crapaud, but entered the house with the finality of -a Frenchwoman who does not argue about her authority in her own home. -Ledoux’s red eyes looked evil, but then Ledoux was a coward. - -“Bourgeoise——!” He used a foul word. - -Pompom Crapaud had the physical audacity that Ledoux lacked. He jumped -up on to the path, entered the café, and, walking into the kitchen, sat -down in Paul’s arm-chair. A minute later Manon found him there, a -cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and his cap over one -eye. - -“What do you want, monsieur?” - -“A drink.” - -Manon kept her temper. - -“I have told you that my café is not open, and this is my kitchen.” - -“You had better take that board down,” said Crapaud; “I protest that I -have the right to sit here as long as it remains up.” - -Manon looked at him, and went for Paul. She explained the situation to -him, and Brent attacked it good-temperedly. He walked into the kitchen -and smiled at Pompom Crapaud. - -“I think you have made a mistake, monsieur.” - -Brent’s smile annoyed the pirate. - -“It is your sign-board that is making the mistake.” - -“Even the sign-board does not give you the right to sit in madame’s -kitchen.” - -“I sit here,” was Crapaud’s retort. “Make what you can of that.” - -Brent made so little of it that he took Crapaud by the collar and -transferred him to the street. The little man had no more strength than -a half-grown chicken, and he went quietly enough. - -But he swore at Ledoux. - -“Here, you are a pretty pal; you are bigger than he is.” - -Ledoux glanced at Brent, and fidgeted his hands in his pockets, but he -did not attack. - -“Well, we have found them out, haven’t we?” - -“Name of a dog—but—I—found them in!” - -They went off quarrelling up the street. - -Other and more sinister incidents enlarged and filled in the outlines of -the feud that was growing in Beaucourt. There was the affair of the Bois -du Renard, an outrage that made old Anatole Durand go down and deliver a -speech in the Place de l’Eglise. A few nights later there was a -scrimmage in the Rue Bonnière in which young François Guiveau had his -jaw broken. It was followed by the incident of the attack on Luce -Philipon as she was walking home alone in the dark along the Rosières -road. Her father had gone to meet her, and he caught the two louts -trying to drag the girl into a field. The blacksmith was a very powerful -man, and he beat both these young roughs senseless with his fists. One -of them had tried to knife him, and Beaucourt never forgot that picture -of Philipon trailing the lout by the arm all the way up the Rue de -Picardie and along the Bonnière road to the factory. There was a crowd -outside Bibi’s buvette, but no one tried to rescue the trailing, bumping -figure. Philipon threw the fellow over the factory gate. He was pulp, -and had to be taken to Amiens in a waggon. - -Lefèbre and Durand deplored these happenings. They turned their eyes -towards Louis Blanc’s buvette, and saw in it a storm-centre, a Pandora’s -box, a pest-house. - -“We shall have to try and get rid of that fellow.” - -Durand’s hair bristled. - -“And Goblet’s men will start a riot. I think we are strong enough to -give them a surprise. I wish I could buy that factory.” - - - - - XXXIX - - -Brent had been at work in the château, putting one of the “wings” in -repair against the winter, when that yellow English touring-car pulled -up outside the Café de la Victoire. It was a big car, and it contained, -besides the chauffeur, a manufacturer from the Midlands, his family, and -its appendages. - -They were all gathered on the footpath, a big red man in a grey flannel -suit, three women rather elaborately dressed, a “flapper” with red hair, -and a small boy with eyes like blue marbles. The women had white, puffy -faces. They stared at everything, Manon, the house, the resurrected -ruins, Paul Brent, the scattering of children, as though they were -staring at things in a shop-window. There was a quite extraordinary lack -of animation or intelligence about them. They looked overfed, replete, -satiated. - -The man was trying to explain that they wanted five bedrooms and late -dinner. And was there a lock-up garage for the car? - -“Mais, non, monsieur, c’est impossible.” - -She looked relieved when Paul joined them. - -“My fiancé speaks a little English.” - -They all looked at Brent as though he were some sort of savage. He heard -one of the women remark that it was probable that the beds would be -dirty, and that the agent at Amiens had told them a lot of lies. - -Brent was annoyed. He spoke to the man in English. - -“We can give you a simple meal and two bedrooms. As you see, we are very -busy here.” - -The small boy and the flapper giggled. - -“We’ll have to sleep in the car, pa.” - -“But it’s absurd,” said the fattest of the three women, “We were told at -Amiens that we could put up here. Of course, if these French people -don’t want us or our money——” - -They held a family council on Manon’s doorstep, and the fact emerged -that two of the women had made up their minds that they wanted to spend -the night in a devastated village. It would make ornamental conversation -at home. The man was neutral; he had never been in France before, and -though of military age, had functioned very successfully on the home -front. The chauffeur, an ex-soldier, listened with an air of interested -cynicism to the argument. - -“All right,” said the Midlander; “you give us three rooms and we can -manage.” - -Paul translated the proposal to Manon. - -“But you would have to turn out.” - -“I could sleep in the cellar for a night. Leave it to me. They shall pay -through the nose.” - -He turned to the man. - -“Fifty francs each for the night. That will be three hundred and fifty -francs.” - -The white, flaccid faces of the women showed a first flicker of -animation. - -“Fifty francs each!” - -“But it’s outrageous! We paid half that at Amiens for the whole day.” - -“But think of the rate of exchange,” said Brent; “and this is not -Amiens.” - -The man looked uncomfortable. He was not so hard as his satiated -women—and France had filled him with vague qualms. - -“Harriet, you know, these people have suffered a lot.” - -His wife looked at him with oblique contempt. - -“Oh—well—if you feel like throwing money about! I suppose wine will be -included.” - -“Wine is an extra, madame.” - -Her eyes said, “Robber, and after all we English have done for -you!”—but her man made up his mind not to argue. Somehow Beaucourt was -too big for him. - -“All right. Show us the rooms.” - -Brent surrendered the party to Manon, and piloted the chauffeur and the -yellow car into the yard. As he switched off the engine, the ex-Tommy -gave Paul a brotherly grin. - -“You stuck ’em all right. Good biz.” - -It was an unfortunate coincidence, but the unpleasant impression stamped -upon the consciousness of Beaucourt by these New English reacted upon -the popularity of the Café de la Victoire. It was the stupidity of these -people, their spiritual obtuseness, that offended the French. The whole -family went out to explore the village as though Beaucourt were the -“White City.” They had paid their entrance money, and they had come to -stare. There was something insolent in their largeness, and in the -largeness of the car. Their very clothes were offensive in Beaucourt. -They strolled, they talked in loud voices, they pointed. They were -amused by the wrong things, and untouched by wounds that should have -made them ashamed. There were moments when the man appeared awkward and -uncomfortable, and showed a disinclination to loiter. The women were -absolutely insensitive. Their super-fatted souls were blind to the -sacrilege of certain attitudes. Two of them poked their heads into the -interior of Madame Poirel’s cottage. It was one of the side-shows, and -they examined it with the eyes of cows. Madame Poirel happened to be -sitting in her chair, patching a petticoat. She had lost her two sons in -the war. - -“What do you wish, mesdames?” - -The Englishwomen did not realize they were on sacred ground, standing on -the very stone where Madame Poirel’s boys had sat as toddlers. They did -not see the room as a place of memories, a dim interior that was almost -a shrine. They stared. They made remarks. One of them nodded casually at -the Frenchwoman. - -Madame Poirel got up and very calmly closed the door. - -The explorers were surprised—indignant. - -“Well, what manners!” - -“It’s quite true what Kate told us. The French hate us.” - -“But isn’t it beastly ungrateful of them?” - -“My dear, it’s all a question of coal.” - -The family moved on. Madame Poupart’s shop amused them immensely. The -boy pointed it out with a finger of scorn. - -“Ma, look at the rabbit-hutch!” - -“Shut up, Fred,” said his father, glimpsing a long and yellow face at -the window—the austere face of Madame Poupart. - -The women sided with the boy. - -“Don’t be so touchy.” - -“Aren’t we here to see things?” - -“I don’t think the French like it,” said the man. - -It did not seem to matter to the women whether the French liked it or -not. - -The English always visit churches; it seems to be a habit with them, and -the Hoskyn family had the unique experience of seeing a French priest, -wrapped up in an old sheet, diligently whitewashing the walls of his -church. They did not recognize Monsieur Lefèbre as a priest, associating -clericalism with an appearance of blackness and physical inactivity. The -boy dabbled his fingers in the piscina, and had to be told to take off -his cap. - -Monsieur Lefèbre was a polite soul, nor was he conscious of any lack of -dignity. He turned about and, whitewash brush in hand, gave the Hoskyn -family a jocund smile and a slight bow. He was met with obtuse stares. - -“The verger—I suppose.” - -“There’s nothing to see here, John, and that fellow will be after a -tip.” - -They sailed out, leaving Monsieur Lefèbre with upraised eyebrows and an -expression of amused and irresponsible gaiety. - -The family walked along the Rue de Bonnière and discovered Bibi’s -buvette. It suggested a chicken-house, and they paused in the road to -stare at it, a compliment that was returned by the men who happened to -be in the hut. Ledoux, Crapaud and several others crowded to the door. -The self-evident contrasts of life provoked an instinctive -hostility—and civilization was in the melting-pot. - -“Voilà les anglais!” - -“They arrived in a big automobile; I saw them. Conspuez les profiteers!” - -“Yes, and they are lodging at the Café de la Victoire.” - -Bibi pushed his way to the door, feeling the arms and shoulders of the -men. Ledoux was speaking with a snarl in his voice. - -“Capitalists, look at them! Fat and rich, blood-suckers, tradesmen. We -are monkeys in a cage, are we? Get out!” - -He shook his fist at the Hoskyn family, and with outraged ideals they -moved on. - -“These French are savages!” - -“Why—we might be Germans!” - -The men at the doorway of the buvette continued to discuss the presence -of these English in Beaucourt, and Bibi, leaning a hand on the shoulders -of Crapaud and Ledoux, turned their passions towards the Café de la -Victoire. - -“There you are! What did I tell you? These English pay well, and that is -all those two at the café care about. They did not build their place for -decent working-men, but to make money out of the rich English and -Americans who come to stare at our poverty.” - -“You have touched it,” said Crapaud; “Bibi goes straight to the heart of -things.” - -Ledoux stretched out a hand that was like the clawed foot of a bird. - -“Capitalists? They sell everything. They ought to be kicked out of -Beaucourt.” - -“Yes, why don’t we smash the place up?” - -Bibi gave a kind of rolling laugh. - -“That’s the music. But wait a bit; I am finding out something about -those people; I might be blind, but I can see through a wall. Yes, just -you wait a bit, my lads, and I may have something surprising to tell -you. Then we’ll make a night of it, and send up the balloon.” - -If Beaucourt was moved to some resentment against Manon for taking these -English into her house, Manon herself soon saw too much of them. She had -sent for a girl to help her, and these two Frenchwomen cooked, and made -beds, arranged a table for six, and did their best to make the tourists -comfortable. About sunset, Paul was at work in the garden when Manon -came out to him, a Manon who was wholesomely and humanly angry. - -“Mon Dieu, but they are impossible! They have no manners.” - -“What has happened, chérie?” - -“Happened! Nothing has happened, but everything is wrong. I can -understand their grumbling. But they swarm in and behave as though the -house belonged to them; they shout down the stairs at me, ‘Femme de -chambre, ici, toute de suite!’ They ask for all sorts of impossible -things, and the women look at me like angry cows.” - -Paul tried to comfort her. He felt rather responsible for these English. - -“They have made a lot of money during the war, and they don’t know how -to behave. They are leaving to-morrow.” - -“Thank God! Paul, are all the English like that?” - -“Heavens! no,” he said. “We are very decent folk when we are not too -rich. The bother is that people like that are so damnably stupid.” - -She snuggled into the hollow of his arm. - -“My Paul, I love this place so much. It hurts me to have such people in -it.” - -“Well, we will have no more. That’s very simple. I like them as little -as you do.” - -The girl who had come to help Manon appeared suddenly in the garden. - -“Oh, madame, o-là-là, ces anglais!” - -The Hoskyn family had demanded baths. - -“Baths, baths for six! Do they think this is London?” - -Brent burst out laughing. - -“All right; leave it to me. When do they want the hot water?” - -“At ten o’clock, monsieur.” - -“Tell them it shall be there.” - -Punctually at ten o’clock Paul deposited a tea-cup full of hot water -outside each door. He knocked at Mr. Hoskyn’s door. It was the lady who -opened it, expecting something in petticoats and not a man. She wore a -lace nightcap, and a pink silk dressing-gown. - -“What’s this?” - -“The water for the bath, madame,” said Paul with complete solemnity; “we -shall not charge for it in the bill.” - - - - - XL - - -The house was finished, or as good as finished, and then something -happened to Paul Brent. - -He had been like a child absorbed in a game, building castles on the -sands with a playmate to help him, conscious of the sea and the sky as a -spacious blueness; of the schoolroom and the copy-book he had thought -but little. The house was finished. There was a pause. He stood up, -feeling a sudden sense of fateful melancholy spreading across the sands. -He seemed to hear voices. He looked into the eyes of his playmate—and -awoke. - -It had been raining, but the evening sky had cleared when Manon went out -to search for her man and found him sitting on the bank of the stream -with his back against a poplar tree, and his feet close to the water. He -did not hear her footsteps, and she stood still a moment, looking at -him. - -He appeared to be watching the water, yet she imagined that he did not -see it, that he was not aware of its movement. He looked infinitely sad. -She had a curious impression of him as having been removed to a great -distance from her; and yet never had he seemed so near. - -“Chéri,” she said softly, guessing that the panic moment had come, and -that her man was awake. - -Paul turned his head very slowly, as though it was not easy for him to -meet her eyes. - -“Hallo! Come and sit down.” - -She sat down close to him. - -“Well, you will tell me,” she said, “of what you are thinking?” - -He hesitated, his hands resting rather helplessly on his knees. - -“I was thinking what a mess I had made of things.” - -She had known that this awakening must come; this pain of the -conscience. She had foreseen it, and she was prepared; she was there at -his side. - -“You are thinking of our marriage?” - -“Yes.” - -“Well?” - -Her voice was very soft and curiously tranquil. She did not attempt to -caress him, or even to touch him with her hands. She knew that it would -hurt, and that there were moments when this man had the soul of a -fanatic. - -“What have I been doing all these months?” - -He appeared to ask himself the question, and she answered it. - -“Making me very happy. And now, suddenly, the game is over. We were like -children. And now, you wish to tell the truth.” - -He raised his eyes and looked at her with a kind of astonished awe. - -“How did you know?” - -She touched his sleeve with the tip of one forefinger. - -“How? Why—was it not inevitable? It was bound to happen to you; I knew -that when I came to realize the sort of man you are. Well, I am quite -ready. You may tell me the truth. We will go and see Monsieur Lefèbre.” - -He rested his chin on his hands and stared at the water. - -“It’s amazing,” he said. - -“What is, chéri?” - -“Your—your——” - -“Calmness?” - -“Yes, that. And your generosity, and the way you understand.” - -She gave a little, touching laugh. - -“To get married—in France—one has to exercise much common-sense. -People ask questions, demand papers. Of course there were moments—quite -long ago—when I was not sure whether you would ever want to tell the -truth. And—of course—a woman——” - -He looked at her with a quick, brave deepening of the eyes. - -“Manon—you mean? What would you have done——?” - -She stared at the water, quite still, her lips pressed firmly together. - -“I don’t know,” she said presently; “do not ask me to tell you.” - -Paul Brent was much moved. He had been in such a confusion of remorse, -self-accusation, loneliness and pain, that he had been capable of -obeying any rash impulse that raised a cry of retrocession. For the -moment the only possible future for him had seemed exile from Beaucourt. -He would have to shoulder his knapsack and disappear. And then Manon had -come to him, calm, practical and tender. She seemed to have touched him -with a cool and soothing hand. There was nothing that he could not say -to her or she to him. - -“How you help a man,” he said. - -She moved close to him and into the hollow of his arm, and they sat -there under the poplar while the dusk came down, and the water grew dark -and mysterious. - -“You thought of running away, chéri?” - -“Yes.” - -“How much more cruel that would have been to me! What would people have -said, and how humiliated I should have felt. I would rather you told the -truth.” - -“You are not afraid of it?” - -“No.” - -He turned her face to his and kissed her. - -“Little woman, it seems the only way out. Life’s so queer. When I began -this adventure and started that harmless lie, I never thought that it -would end like this. I shall have to clean the slate again, and that -means England and more trouble. Still, there it is.” - -“But you are doing it for me.” - -“And for myself, too. Let’s be honest.” - -She snuggled close. - -“Chéri,” she said, “they cannot do anything very terrible to you, can -they?” - -Brent looked at the dark water. There was a slight rustling of the -leaves of the poplar. - -“I suppose I’m a deserter, but desertion when a fellow is due to be -demobilized isn’t very serious. Then, I impersonated another man, though -Beckett wasn’t hurt by it. He was a lone man. And then, of course, I -have upset the records and returns; that’s about the worst crime you can -commit in the army.” - -He laughed. - -“You see, I’m dead. They may refuse to let me come to life again. And -the official letters that will be written—and the fuss——!” - -She laughed with him—glad of this happier mood. - -“Why, after all, chéri, it is only a great joke. You have done nobody -any harm, and think of how you have helped us in Beaucourt. We shall -have good friends here. They, too, will see the joke, this great human -adventure. No one will bear you any malice.” - -“There is Bibi,” he said. - -“What can Bibi do?” - -She sent him to bed comforted and utterly in love with her loyalty and -her generous common-sense. She was a little woman whose sturdiness -helped a man—for most men are little more than big children, and the -woman who loves a man is also his mother. Manon refused to utter tragic -cries and to dissolve into passionate and romantic misery. Her capable -hands pulled the knot to pieces. She had faith in her common-sense. - -“We will tell the truth,” she said, “and look happy over it. A smile -goes such a long way. If you sneak about looking miserable, the world -invents scandals to account for your looks. It may be that you will have -to go to England, chéri, but I shall trust you to come back.” - -She took the whole affair in hand, for women are more courageous than -men. Anatole Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre should be told, but they went -first to Monsieur Lefèbre. It was after supper and before dusk when they -walked up to the church and found Monsieur Lefèbre repairing the floor -of the pulpit. Through the broken west window of the church the sky -showed all yellow, and the light was on Manon’s face as she stood by the -pulpit steps. - -“We have come to confess,” she said, “and to ask for your advice.” - -Lefèbre looked at them both—Manon honest and sturdy—Paul a little shy -and obscured. He had grown fond of these two, and his sympathies were -alarmed. - -“What is it, children?” he asked. - -“We wish to be married,” said Manon, “but we cannot be married until we -have told the truth.” - -Monsieur Lefèbre took them into the sacristy, which was also his -kitchen, bedroom and salon. He gave Manon and Paul the two chairs, and -sat on the box-bed that had been brought from one of the huts. His -serious face troubled Paul Brent. - -“Now what is the difficulty?” - -His dark, jocund eyes looked straight at Paul. - -“I had better begin from the beginning, monsieur. It is all my fault.” - -“No, I am just as guilty as he is,” said Manon. - -Monsieur Lefèbre looked pained. He had certainly been guilty of -favouritism in his spiritual attitude towards these two, and here they -were confessing some secret sin. - -“Let Paul speak——” - -But Manon read his face. - -“Yes, monsieur, but I wish you to understand that nothing has ever -happened between us. He has been more honourable and gentle to me than -any man I could have dreamed of. He is a good man, from heart to head.” - -She gave Paul a very wonderful look. - -“Now, tell Monsieur Lefèbre everything.” - -And Paul told him, beginning with his life before the war, and then -linking it to that March morning when he had been tempted to lose his -old self in Beckett’s death. He watched Monsieur Lefèbre’s face as he -made his confession, as though the mirror of this man’s humanity would -show him the very judgment of God. Lefèbre sat with his head a little -forward, his face very grave and somewhat sad. He had glanced up quickly -when Paul had confessed that he was English, but after that he kept his -eyes fixed on the table in front of him. The sacristy began to grow dim, -and Lefèbre’s face grew dim with it. A feeling of solemnity seemed to -fill the place, with its rude, home-made furniture, and its air of -austerity. Lefèbre listened and said nothing. He was like some sombre -figure in a sanctuary, obscure, enigmatical, waiting to give judgment. - -There was a moment when Brent faltered, obsessed by a sudden sense of -loneliness. His left arm and hand were resting on the table. He felt -something touch his fingers. His hand closed on Manon’s. - -His heart seemed to take courage, and the obscure figure of Lefèbre -ceased to be terrible. - -The man on the bed began to ask him abrupt questions. - -“You are a widower?” - -“Yes.” - -“And this man—whose name you took—he had no wife, mother, or -children?” - -“No, monsieur; he was one of those men who wander about the world and -settle nowhere.” - -“And when you came to Beaucourt, you had no idea that it would end like -this?” - -“No, monsieur, I was so happy working here for Manon that it was not -till the place was nearly finished——” - -And then, quite suddenly, Monsieur Lefèbre astonished them both. He -began to laugh, the generous, rolling laughter of a big, human creature -who asks of God that life shall not be mean. - -“You children!” he said. “You children!” - -He got up, waving his arms like benedictory wings. - -“Where is my candle? And the matches. Let us have light here. God be -thanked that I am no bigot. Moreover, I thank you two children for -coming to me.” - -He struck a light and lit the candle that was stuck on the top of an old -tin, and they saw that his eyes were all ashine, and his rosy face -happy. - -“But you gave me a fright, you two. Monsieur Paul, masquerading is the -very devil!” - -He shook a forefinger at Brent. - -“So you will tell the truth.” - -“Monsieur,” said Paul, “there is one woman whom a liar could not -marry——” - -“Chéri, you are not a liar!” - -She jumped up and kissed him, and Monsieur Lefèbre raised his hands over -them. - -“Now, we must be serious. Let us see what we can make of this tangle. -What is your idea, Paul?” - -“I shall have to surrender myself as a deserter, monsieur. I suppose I -shall be sent to England. If they could be persuaded to look at it as -you have done——” - -“Well, that is not impossible. The great thing is not to be in a hurry. -One moment——” - -He pulled a note-book towards him, opened it, and read a few notes that -were neatly written at the top of one page. He reflected, smiling. - -“May I tell Monsieur Durand?” - -“We were going to tell him,” said Manon. - -“Good. The thing is for some of us to interest somebody else in the -affair, and for all of us to give Paul such a character that your -English authorities will see this sin of his with our eyes. Sunday, yes, -Sunday. On Sunday Monsieur Durand and I go to Amiens.” - -He closed the note-book, and smiled at them both. - -“Let us keep our mouths closed for a week. It is possible that I may -find a way to interest somebody in our Englishman. It is possible that -we ourselves will approach the English authorities. Then it will not be -as though you went to them as a deserter, friendless, unspoken for——” - -He sent them away much happier than they had come to him, which is the -best thing that can be said of a man’s religion, and when they had gone -he blew out his candle and went up to the château to see Anatole Durand. - -The Place de l’Eglise lay in darkness, but there was a light in the -post-mistress’s hut, and in passing it Paul and Manon nearly ran against -big Philipon, who had come to see if Monsieur Talmas had brought him any -letters. Philipon recognized them and stopped. - -“Hallo, you two! Good evening, madame.” - -Then he tapped Brent on the chest with a friendly forefinger. - -“Have you left anybody in charge over there?” - -“No.” - -“I should get back home. Do you hear?” - -They listened, and heard in the distance the sound of men singing a -rowdy song. - -Philipon nodded. - -“A little zig-zag and parading the village! It is time we did something -with that buvette of Louis Blanc’s. Hold on; I’ll walk back with you.” - -He poked his black head into the post-office. - -“Any letters, madame?” - -“No, monsieur.” - -“What is that boy of mine doing in Germany?” - -He took Paul’s arm and the three of them entered the Rue de Picardie. -Philipon was an affectionate animal in spite of his frown and his -rumbling voice, and Brent had helped him in the rebuilding of his house. -His fatherliness stretched out a protective arm over these two. It is -the big men who are most warm-hearted and sentimental, and Philipon was -always saying to his wife, “Look at those two at the café! What a -romance! It does one’s heart good.” - -They walked along between the queer shapes and little twinkling lights -of Beaucourt, with the stars shining overhead, and Philipon’s big feet -falling emphatically on the cobbles. Here and there men and women were -sitting in the open doorways. They exchanged remarks with Philipon, -whose familiar bulk and swing of the legs were known to all. - -“Bibi’s nightingales are singing.” - -“It is time we did something with that drinking shop.” - -“I hear they are sending us two gendarmes.” - -“Gendarmes! We can manage our own affairs. You wait. We are ready to -give those fellows a lesson.” - -The singing grew louder as they neared the end of the Rue de Picardie, -and it appeared that Monsieur Goblet’s young men were coming down the -Rue Romaine. Manon was holding to Paul’s arm. She was not frightened, -but she was serious. - -“We could do so well without them,” she said. - -Philipon grunted. - -“Don’t worry, madame. People who make the most noise are always the -biggest cowards.” - -When they reached the end of the garden wall Paul lifted Manon up on the -raised path, but he and Philipon kept to the road. About a dozen -“roughs,” with arms linked together, had swung round the corner out of -the Rue Romaine and were dancing the can-can in the roadway below the -café. They were rowdy and derisive, shouting and kicking up their heels -in front of the house. - -“Hallo—hallo!” - -“Profiteers! Stuck-up pigs!” - -“Let’s spoil the paint for them.” - -“Shut up. They’re in bed. You are interfering with the embrace.” - -“You there, is she nice to cuddle?” - -“When is the baby expected?” - -They roared with laughter, and then Philipon loomed up like a big ship -in the starlight. - -“Allez! Keep your snouts out of our village. We have sticks ready.” - -The choir oscillated, swayed, and seemed inclined to wind itself in a -spiral about the smith, but when Philipon rapped the stone wall of the -path with the iron bar that he had been carrying these rowdies thought -it wiser to laugh. - -“Hallo, there goes the dinner-gong.” - -“All right, sergeant-major.” - -“And there is madame, too!” - -“Bon soir, madame; we thought you were in bed. We came to serenade you!” - -The human chain gave a wriggle towards the Rue de Picardie, but Philipon -put himself in the way. - -“You can go back by the other road. Beaucourt is bored with you.” - -They chaffed him, but they took his advice. Manon had unlocked the door. -She turned and thanked Philipon. - -“Come in and drink a glass of wine.” - -“Pardon, but I go to bed early in order to get up early. I think those -lads are all wind. Good-night.” - -“Good-night, monsieur, and thank you.” - -“It’s nothing,” said the smith. - -Manon was lighting the lamp in the kitchen when Brent came and put his -arm round her. - -“I wish we could blow Bibi and that crowd off the face of the earth. I -don’t like the idea of leaving you here with those fellows about.” - - - - - XLI - - -In the full blaze of an August afternoon Louis Blanc made Barbe take him -up the hill to the Bois du Renard. They had locked up the buvette, and -the red-haired girl led Bibi by the hand along the field-path to the -wood. Her head shone like a piece of red metal close to the blackness of -the man’s coat; she had to watch the ground so that Bibi should not -stumble. - -“My God, but it is hellish to be blind!” he said; “I cannot even see -you, you know.” - -She helped him over an old, fallen trench at the edge of the wood, and -in crossing it he slipped and fell against her. They stood, clinging -together on the edge of the rotten bank; but Barbe had a body like -steel, and she held the man on his feet with his head resting against -her bosom. They remained thus for a moment, Bibi’s face flat against her -red blouse as though he were burying his face in an armful of flowers. - -“Ah, but you smell good.” - -He took great breaths of her, holding her close, and pressing her body -to his till it was curved like a bow. - -“Do you want to break me, you great rough?” - -She was delighted, a sensuous cat, her eyes half closed, her chin -resting on the crown of Bibi’s head. - -“There is something left in life after all. Let us sit down in the -shade.” - -“Anywhere?” - -“No. I want to be where I could see all Beaucourt like a meal laid out -on a table.” - -She chose a shady place for him at the foot of a beech tree, spreading -out her skirt and making him sit on it. From the Bois du Renard it was -possible to see the whole of Beaucourt and the fields and woods lying -about it in the broad August sunshine. Bibi sat with his knees drawn up -and his elbows resting on them. Barbe let her right arm lie across his -shoulders. - -“There it is,” she said; “I can even see little Crapaud putting new -tiles on the factory roof.” - -Bibi moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. - -“Tell me all about it, just as though you were painting a picture.” - -She humoured him, describing Beaucourt and all that she could see -happening in Beaucourt, using that brisk and satirical slang of hers, -the language of the comptoir. - -“There is the church with half its spire knocked off, and, I suppose, -inside of it old Lefèbre is splashing whitewash about. The post-office -in the Place—just like a flat grey louse crawling up to have a bite at -the church! Someone is walking about in the ruins of your hotel.” - -“Yes, my hotel! Who is it?” - -“It’s too far off for me to see, but he has a basket, and seems to be -picking up bricks.” - -“My bricks! Well, it doesn’t matter. Go on.” - -“Half-way down the Rue de Picardie a peasant is lying flat on the roof -of a house. He has a white patch on the seat of his trousers, as though -the curé had given him a smack with his whitewash brush. Then we come to -the café. I can see the café quite plainly.” - -“We will stay there a moment. What is happening at the café?” - -“A woman is hanging out linen on a line in the orchard.” - -“That’s a waste of time—when we are going to dirty it for them.” - -“Oh—yes—and I can see the man. He is standing on a ladder doing -something to the new sign-board.” - -“More waste of time. We shall drop a bomb on them next Sunday.” - -Bibi remained silent for a while, his blind face like a grotesque -gargoyle spewing hatred over the house of his enemy. Barbe watched him -out of the corners of her eyes, her arm resting upon his shoulders. She -knew that some plan was forming in his mind, and, though he had thrown -out nothing but hints to her, she was ready to help her man. - -“What happens on Sunday?” - -He turned his blind eyes to her. - -“You are not going to cut my hair—like that woman in the Bible.” - -She answered sharply. - -“You can’t get on without me. Isn’t that so?” - -He put an arm round her. - -“That’s the truth. You know how to mix the drinks.” - -“So that is to be my job?” - -“I want all of them mad on Sunday. I shall want old Cordonnier well -fuddled and in a state to swear anything. What’s the best stuff for it?” - -She reflected, leaning her chin on the palm of her hand. - -“There is that jar of cognac. It is fiery stuff. I could mix it with the -wine. What are you going to do?” - -“I keep that card up my sleeve.” - -“You must tell me,” she said; “I shan’t give you away.” - -He drew her head close to his face, and whispered in her ear. - -“The man is a Boche. Now do you see light?” - -Neither Manon nor Paul had any suspicion that danger was so near to -them, nor guessed that they were to be made the victims of a drunken -mob. Quiet people do not foresee such catastrophes, nor is happiness a -window that opens upon tragedy. The very house they had rebuilt lulled -them like a cradle. It was so very precious, so much a portion of their -human selves that it shared that immortality that seems part of us when -we love. The wholesomeness of the place was unassailable. - -Moreover, Paul Brent’s mood of pessimism and self-distrust had passed. -To share a secret with a friend is to halve the burden of it, and -Lefèbre was more than a friend. He and Durand were at the café early on -the morning after Paul and Manon’s visit to the sacristy. They sat in -Manon’s kitchen, with the doors and windows closed, and talked the -affair over from end to end. - -Durand had pretended to be scandalized. - -“My favourite Frenchman turning out English! A nice game you have played -with us!” - -“I am very sorry, monsieur.” - -“Well, well, don’t look so miserable. The war has turned the world -upside down, and after all—it is this that counts.” - -He looked round Manon’s kitchen. - -“We ought to judge a man by what he does. A simple rule of life and how -rarely we follow it! Now, then—it is for us to provide this Englishman -with a French character.” - -He smiled at Lefèbre. There appeared to be some secret between them, -some dramatic and very human dénouement that they guarded like a couple -of sentimental old men. - -“It should not be difficult,” said the priest. - -Anatole turned to Manon. - -“Monsieur Lefèbre and I are going to Amiens on Saturday. We have -business there—a deputation, a meeting upon the devastated regions. I -can interest a friend or two in his little romance; what is more, we -will approach the English authorities. If we give this rogue here a -passport it will make things so much simpler.” - -Manon slipped across the room and kissed him. - -“I do not think they can be very hard on us.” - -“My dear, I had better take you with me to see some English colonel with -a red band round his hat. Feminine influence, you know! If you put your -arms round his neck——!” - -“You can tease me as much as you like, both of you, for I love you -both.” - -“Lefèbre,” said the manufacturer, “this house is becoming dangerous.” - -It was Anatole Durand who advised them to send for Marie Castener from -Ste. Claire, and to arrange for her to stay with them in Beaucourt -during the next few weeks. He pointed out that Brent would have to go to -England, be released by the authorities, and return with the necessary -legal proofs of his identity. Meanwhile Marie would be the very woman to -help Manon in the house. She was so solid, so imperturbable, such a good -friend, quite as capable as a man of dealing with men. - -“If any of Goblet’s fellows stroll round here, Marie would only have to -stand in the doorway.” - -Durand lent her his car and drove Manon over to Ste. Claire. Marie was -willing to come to Beaucourt, and she accepted Manon’s confession with -her usual phlegmatic reasonableness. - -“A good man is the same everywhere. You can trust me to keep your -secret.” - -“It will not be a secret long.” - -“So much the better. For myself I always prefer to tell people before -they find out. But that man of yours is clever; he took us all in.” - -“Well, I helped him,” said Manon. - -Marie Castener was to come to them on the Saturday. Etienne would drive -her over in the gig, for Etienne wanted to see how things were going at -Beaucourt. There were people who called it the “miraculous village,” and -she smiled shrewdly at Anatole Durand. - -“Monsieur is a wizard.” - -Durand, looking happy, shrugged off the compliment. - -“Everybody has worked hard. We are so proud of Beaucourt that we have -asked a very great man to come and see it. But I am giving away secrets. -I am very glad that you are coming to look after Manon, madame.” - -“I have always found Manon very well able to look after herself, -monsieur. But then—I am—solid.” - -A man whose hands are well occupied is not, as a rule, a man of moods, -and yet a quite unexplainable sadness took possession of Paul Brent on -that Friday evening before the coming of Marie Castener. It was the last -evening that he and Manon were to spend alone before the uncertain days -that would follow his surrender to some English Provost-marshal. Paul -had become resigned to the idea of surrender; it was his penance before -his marriage, the only path by which he could come back to Manon with no -lie in his heart. It was the thought of leaving her that troubled him, -and gave an edge of pain to his tenderness. He was astonished to find -how deeply this new life of his had rooted itself in Beaucourt; England -mattered to him hardly at all. - -“It is the woman,” he said to himself; “it is the woman who matters.” - -As they sat at supper Manon became aware of his silence. She noticed -that his eyes wandered about the room, this room that had seen the -beginnings of the adventure, the defeat of Bibi, the exultation of their -first embrace. She saw Paul look at the pictures on the walls, the new -curtains, the bowl of asters on the table by the window, Philosophe -asleep on the rug by the stove. This familiar room was pleasantly and -wholesomely complete. It was home. - -“Yes, without you it would never have happened,” she said. - -He looked at her across the table with the tenderness of a grown man -whose love is far deeper than the romantic devotion of a boy. - -“It makes me miserable to think of leaving it.” - -She stretched out a hand and let it rest on his. - -“But you will come back very soon. I have a feeling that they will not -do anything very terrible to you, and Marie and I can carry on.” - -Dusk was falling. They did not light the lamp, but went out like lovers -into the orchard and watched the moon coming up huge and solemn in a -cloudless sky. It was one of those perfect summer nights, very gentle -and still, when you can fancy that you can hear the dew falling out of -the silent sky. Holding hands they wandered down to the stream and -followed its flickering movements in the moonlight, walking close to the -poplars and the old pollarded willows. The trees were silent as death. -There were no fences here, and the meadows seemed to stretch into the -illimitable moonlight. - -“How peaceful it is.” - -She slipped into the hollow of his arm, her head on his shoulder. - -“It is so good to be able to trust a man. Do you not know what that -means to me?” - -“I know that nothing matters to me—but you.” - -They stood close to the trunk of a white poplar, and kissed. - -“You belong here now, mon chéri. You are sure that you will never be -home-sick for England?” - -Brent looked at the moon. - -“It is like this,” he said; “a man learns what life can give him, and -what he wants life to give him. The things that matter—the simple, -happy, restful things! You may run all over the world looking for -something you left in your own village. When you are young you are -always wanting the apples on the other side of the wall. I’m not like -that—now—thank God!” - -She stretched out a hand and touched the trunk of the great poplar. - -“Trees are so wise. They stay in the same place, it is true, but they -grow; they see the great fields and the good, wise life of the fields. -They feel the wind, and see the sky and the moon and the stars, and hear -the water running through the meadows. Mon mari, I think we are going to -be very happy here, you and I.” - - - - - XLII - - -Sunday came as a day of great heat, sultry and oppressive. There was -thunder in the air, and Beaucourt did not go out to work in the fields, -but remained at home sitting in the shade, or lazily busy in its -gardens. At noon there was hardly a soul to be seen in the streets, and -for an hour no one passed down the Rue de Bonnière save old Prosper -Cordonnier, loping long-legged and guiltily to Bibi’s buvette. The hut -among the apple trees above the factory was the one live, noisy spot in -Beaucourt. The hut itself was like a baker’s oven, and the men lay about -on the grass under the orchard trees and under an awning that Bibi had -put up. Barbe was kept busy serving them with drink, for it was a -thirsty and quarrelsome day, a day when men’s tempers feel the great -heat. - -As Anatole Durand said, after the event had happened, “What a -confession—that so much trouble should be caused by a bottle of cognac, -a drunken ‘sheep’s head’—and a few lies!” Yet Bibi’s plan was so simple -and so dangerously human because it appealed to the baser passions. -Given sufficient cognac, a fuddled and persuadable fool like old -Cordonnier, and one stark audacious lie, and the machine would move. It -happened that there was ample cognac; Cordonnier became valiant and -obstinate in his silliness; and Bibi’s lie had all the assurance and the -completeness of the truth. The Café de la Victoire was a bonfire to -which these rowdies were to put a match. - -Bibi handled the affair very cleverly. He sat on a stool, under the -awning, and twitted Pompom Crapaud and Ledoux with the repulse that they -had suffered at the hands of Paul and Manon. He was playful and -sardonic, and as potent for evil as the cognac with which Barbe had -drugged the wine. - -“Those capitalist swine,” snarled Ledoux, with eyes that looked -inflamed. - -“Well, you funked it, old man,” said Crapaud; “the fellow put me out all -right, and you stood by and watched.” - -Ledoux was lying close to Bibi’s stool, and Louis Blanc bent over him -with ironical playfulness. - -“Did you ever bayonet a Boche, Lazare?” - -“Plenty of them.” - -“So did I. I was rather good with the toasting-fork. But I never ran -away from a Boche.” - -Ledoux looked at him fiercely. - -“Is that a cut at me?” - -“Well, you let a Boche throw your pal into the street. Ask old -Cordonnier over there.” - -That is how it began. Bibi had the whole crowd round him, and old -Cordonnier was swearing to all sorts of things with nods and winks that -were meant to be cunning. He was too fuddled to realize the seriousness -of the affair or to understand whither these men’s passions were -tending. It seemed no more than a riotous and irresponsible jest -invented to make the day merry. - -It was so easy to inflame these roughs whose blood and brains had been -heated by the stuff Barbe had given them to drink. A mob never reflects. -It spills itself like wine out of a split cask and makes straight for -the gutter. - -Bibi told his tale—the tale that his hatred had thought out in the -darkness of those summer days. Cordonnier had given him the idea, and he -had elaborated with an ingenuity that made it convincing. He asserted -that Manon had remained in Beaucourt after the Germans had occupied it; -that she had had an affair with a Boche, that this Boche had “deserted,” -and taken her away with him through the lines. - -“You see how it worked,” he said. “Women are queer fish, and this woman -was infatuated. The fellow may have found out where she had buried her -money. Everything was upside down just then; the ‘front’ was a sieve, -and this Boche was fed up. He gets Manon through the lines, and is taken -prisoner. After the armistice he escapes, and where does he make for? -Beaucourt, of course. He knows that he will find the money and the woman -there. A useful fellow, too, who can use his hands and speak French like -a Frenchman! And there they are in Beaucourt with the best house in the -place. A nice pair, what!” - -There was a confusion of angry and excited voices. - -“A Boche!” - -“But I say, old man, it doesn’t sound possible!” - -Bibi held up a fist. - -“Listen. Cordonnier there heard the man talking German. When he told me -that, I thought I would try it myself, and one night I got Mademoiselle -Barbe to put me under their window. When a man is shut up in a house -with a woman, does he talk German just for the fun of it?” - -“You heard him?” - -“I did. And I can tell you my blood felt hot; it made me think of those -nights when one heard the swine talking in the trenches.” - -It was Lazare Ledoux who jumped up and called for a crusade. He was the -torch-bearer, the inflamer of mobs. - -“Come on! We’ll cut the woman’s hair off, and kick the fellow into the -street. Come on!” - -At the Café de la Victoire the peaceful details of an idle summer day -were proofs of how little this storm-burst was expected. Manon had run -down to Mère Vitry’s with a few lettuces and a basket of beans, and had -stayed chatting with the old lady. Marie Castener was washing up the -dishes. Brent, in his shirt-sleeves, had pulled the arm-chair to the -open window, and was lighting a pipe before sitting down to read a -day-old copy of _Le Petit Journal_. Someone was splitting firewood in a -barn across the way, and the steady chunk-chunk of the hatchet was -almost as rhythmic as the ticking of a big clock. - -Brent had begun to read an article on the coal problem in France, an -article that contained some very bitter criticism of the British miner, -when an unusual and yet familiar sound drew his attention from the -paper. Back in his brain were many memories, sense impressions left by -the war, and this particular sound reminded him of a company of infantry -marching into its village billets. There was the unforgettable pounding -of heavy boots on the pavé, and yet this noise was different. Troops -marched in step. This footwork belonged to the undisciplined and -scrambling rush of a crowd. - -Paul turned in his chair and, leaning sideways, looked along the street. -He remained quite motionless for some seconds, staring at this little -mob of men debouching from the Rue Romaine. The two leading figures gave -Brent the first hint of how the coming of this crowd might be a threat -to the Café de la Victoire. Lazare Ledoux had blind Bibi by the hand, a -Bibi whose face looked white and fatal beside the inflamed faces of the -other men. - -Brent stood up. His jaw and mouth seemed to set into hard, bleak lines -as he saw the wild eyes of these men turned towards the house. Lazare -Ledoux caught sight of him standing at the open window, and Ledoux’s -mouth became a red-edged splodge of howling blackness. - -“Voilà le Boche!” - -The crowd howled in chorus, and Brent felt the cold hand of fear run its -fingers down his spine. He had heard that human and bestial sound before -when a company of drunken Bavarians had rushed over to raid a front-line -trench. The courage in him had felt brittle as glass, and yet as hard. -But now he was conscious of a swift and desperate coolness, an instant’s -lucidity of thought between spasms of pain. - -He went quickly to the door, opened it, and stood facing the crowd, and -from the moment that he looked into the wild faces of these men who hung -at Bibi’s flanks Brent knew that the mob-horror was upon him. There was -no reason in those eyes—nothing in these furious men to which he could -appeal. He had a glimpse of Bibi’s teeth flashing white in his black -beard, and then he shut the door on them and shot the bolts. - -“Fetch him out!” - -“We want the woman.” - -Marie was standing in the passage, her face like a great round wondering -moon. - -“Quick! Get out by the back door, and through the garden. Stop Manon; -she mustn’t come here.” - -Marie stared at him, and Paul went to her and pushed her bodily towards -the back door. - -“They think I’m a Boche. For God’s sake go and stop her. I’ll keep them -interested here.” - -She went blundering across the yard, and out by the gate leading into -the orchard. Crapaud and half a dozen other men just missed the flick of -her petticoat round the angle of the wall as they ran into the yard to -guard the back door. Brent had closed and bolted it, and Marie got away. - -Ledoux and several others had swarmed in through the kitchen window. -They came into the passage as Paul sprang for the stairs. He had no -weapon, but he turned on them there with the ferocity of an animal -driven into a corner. - -“What do you want, you devils? I’m an Englishman. Keep clear.” - -“You are a Boche,” shouted Ledoux; “no more tricks. Drag him down, lads, -out with him into the street.” - - - - - XLIII - - -As Marie Castener turned into the Rue Romaine she heard Bibi shouting -like a madman. - -“Put me at the door, put me at the door.” - -They humoured him, and he began to lash at it with his big feet till the -flimsy thing broke away from its fastenings and showed the struggling -group upon the stairs. Ledoux was leaning against the wall holding his -head in his hands; three other men were dragging Brent down the stairs. - -Marie Castener panted down the Rue Romaine, waving her hands in the air. - -“Mon Dieu—ces hommes!” - -For once in her life her phlegm deserted her, and her emotion overflowed -her bulk. She was to stop Manon—prevent her returning to the Café de la -Victoire—but beyond that her ideas were hazy and uncertain. - -Fifty yards down the Rue Romaine she met Manon coming towards her, a -Manon who had seen Bibi’s mob rush past Mère Vitry’s window. With the -rush of those fatal figures an equal fear had leapt into her heart. She -had hurried out, and here was Marie, stertorous and quaking, and trying -to look calm. From that moment Manon knew what was happening at the Café -de la Victoire, and that it was her love against the mob. - -“They are there?” - -Marie spread out her arms. - -“Don’t go. Paul told me to stop you.” - -“He told you that!” - -She slipped past big Marie as easily as a dog dodges a bull, and began -to run towards the corner where the three roads met. Marie Castener -turned and lumbered after her, and now that the secret was out she began -to use that deep, low voice of hers. Doors were opening, and people -pushing their heads out into the street. Marie shouted to them, waving -an arm like an Amazon heading a charge. - -“Come on, all of you—come on. Help me to save Manon.” - -When Manon came to the meeting of the roads she saw a sight that she was -never likely to forget. A thing that looked like a bundle of torn -clothes was lying in the middle of the street, and Bibi was kicking at -it with his heavy boots. There was something grotesquely disgusting in -this great blind beast feeling for Paul Brent’s body with his feet, -trampling and hacking like a blind stallion. The crowd stood round with -an animal stupidity that is fascinated by violent physical action. - -Manon’s face lit up with a white and inward blaze. She picked up a loose -cobble-stone and ran forward; a little figure of silence, purposeful and -intense. No one in the crowd noticed her until she had opened the -circle, that little arena held by certain elemental passions, and had -flung her stone full in Bibi’s face. It took him between the eyes and -laid him on the cobbles. - -That physical act of hers dominated the crowd. She stood over Paul’s -body and looked round at these men, these creatures of a brutal impulse -whom strong drink and their passions had inflamed. It was a moment of -physical balance, of hesitation, of poignant self-consciousness, when -some little act or word turns men back from the smell of the shambles. - -“Why did you do it?” - -She spoke in a quiet and accusing voice, like a grown child who is -unable to understand the ways of rough men. - -“He had done nothing to you. He was a good man.” - -They stood grouped around her, furtively awkward, suddenly -self-conscious, and therefore very near to shame. She had turned and was -bending over Paul Brent, when Lazare Ledoux, rocking on his heels, shot -out a malignant and accusing hand. - -“The fellow is a Boche.” - -She straightened up and faced Ledoux. - -“It is a lie.” - -He grimaced at her. - -“I say he is a Boche. And you—a Frenchwoman—have given yourself to a -Boche.” - -Manon did not move. Her eyes looked straight at Ledoux. - -“It is a lie. This man is English, and I will prove it. But what have I -to do with any of you? Oh, Marie, help me!” - -Marie Castener appeared, pushing the men aside as though they were bits -of furniture. There were other women with her, a dozen of them, and a -few men. Manon was down on her knees with Paul’s head in her lap, -bending over his grey, dirt-smeared face. He was bleeding from the -mouth, and from a bruised wound on the forehead. - -“He breathes!” - -Marie was down beside her when Ledoux tried to interfere. She turned, -and swinging a huge arm, caught him across the face with the back of her -hand. - -“Get out.” - -Two other women pushed him back, and the crowd laughed. Ledoux, looking -evil, went round to where Bibi was sitting up, still dazed but -potentially dangerous. Ledoux helped him to his feet. - -“It was the woman who hit you with a stone. Come on.” - -Ledoux was too late, for Beaucourt intervened. It came in force down the -Rue de Picardie, led by Philipon, who carried a blacksmith’s hammer. -Someone sprang on the side-walk and collared Pompom Crapaud, who was -caught at the café doorway with a tin of petroleum and a bunch of straw. -The two crowds jostled each other, waiting for some inflammatory word or -act that should set them alight, but that faction fight never developed. -Philipon’s hammer may have had something to do with it; also, these -peasants were quiet fellows; they had the strong bodies and the -obstinate blue eyes of the men of the open country. Almost imperceptibly -they pushed Goblet’s factory roughs back towards the Rue Romaine, took -possession of the central scene, and held it. - -Manon was kneeling, body erect, watching Bibi and Ledoux, who had been -cut off from their friends. Her eyes met Philipon’s. She pointed. - -“Those two.” - -Ledoux had been trying to make away, but Bibi held him by the arm. - -“Hold on, what’s happening? Is the house alight?” - -Ledoux was frightened. - -“Look out! The whole village is here, and the women are spiteful.” - -“He’s dead, that chap, isn’t he? Whose hand is that? Hallo!” - -“Mine!” said Philipon. “You stand where you are, Louis Blanc. And you, -too, you dog with the red eyes. Here, look after these two beauties, -some of you.” - -And suddenly, yet with deliberation, he took Bibi by the beard and held -him as a man might hold a goat. - -“Yes, you, Louis Blanc, it is not for me to spit in the face of a blind -man. Stand still, will you? If there is law in Beaucourt to-day it is -the law of my hammer.” - -Louis Blanc stood still. He had always been afraid of Philipon, the one -man in Beaucourt who was stronger than himself. - -Meanwhile, the unconscious figure of Paul Brent and the two kneeling -women bending over it held the crowd silent and attentive. Here was a -little human scene that had all the helplessness and the inevitableness -of tragedy, a man lying dead in a village street, and a woman holding -his poor head in her lap. That is how the crowd saw it. They looked at -Manon with a shrinking curiosity, a sympathy that was kindly -inarticulate. With her hands she was wiping away the dust from Paul’s -hair, her eyes quite tearless, eyes that seemed to look at a sudden -emptiness, a vacancy in life. Paul was not dead, but she believed that -he was dying. - -Philipon joined them, sombre and gentle. - -“How is it with him? How did it happen?” - -Manon raised her eyes to his. - -“They have kicked him to death. It was Bibi’s doing.” - -She bent over Paul. - -“He still breathes. If only we had a doctor! Marie, what shall we do?” - -Marie Castener had been passing her big, slow, capable hands over -Brent’s body. She had felt his heart beating under his torn shirt. Marie -kept her head. - -“He is not dead—a doctor—that’s it! They always say, ‘Never pull an -unconscious man about.’ Josephine, and you, Claire—run into the house -for some blankets; pull them off the bed. Has anyone a bicycle?” - -“If Anatole were here, he would drive to Amiens for a doctor. He is at -Amiens, if he could be met and told.” - -She raised her head to listen. Philipon, too, was listening with an -attentive look on his face, and in that most dramatic moment in the -history of Beaucourt the whole crowd seemed to turn instinctively to the -opening of the Rue Romaine. They heard the musical bleating of a horn. -Someone on the outskirts of the crowd held up a warning arm as the nose -of a long grey car slid slowly out of the Rue Romaine. Old Durand’s De -Dion was following at the tail of the grey car. The crowd edged back. -They saw Monsieur Lefèbre standing up in Durand’s car, his hand on -Anatole’s shoulder, his jocund face very stern and troubled. The grey -car pushed on until it reached the space about those central figures; it -stopped there like some intelligent beast wholly sensible of its own -dramatic significance. There were four men in the grey car, and one of -them had the white head and the indomitable and unforgettable face of -the man who had refused to see France defeated. It was the “Tiger,” the -Father of Victory, Georges Clemenceau. - - - - - XLIV - - -Anatole Durand jumped out of the car and ran towards the group in the -middle of the street. His bright eyes saw everything, Bibi and Ledoux -held by four men, the figure lying on the cobbles, and the women bending -over it, but the most vivid and arrestive thing of all was the white -face of Manon. - -“Monsieur Anatole, a doctor?” - -Durand gave a dramatic jerk of the hands. - -“We have one here in the car—Monsieur Lafond!” - -A man with a black beard was already leaving the grey car. He was short, -compact, square, with alert brown eyes shining behind pince-nez, a -figure of good-humour, and of energy, direct yet easy in all its -movements. He came forward pulling off his gloves. One of the women -threw a folded blanket on the ground beside Paul Brent, and the doctor -knelt upon the blanket. - -Durand and Lefèbre were talking to Philipon and Marie Castener, and -Durand’s anger was explosive. He looked across at Bibi and Ledoux, his -nostrils inflated, his bright eyes agleam. - -“Those dogs! Presently—presently!” - -He faced about, and, walking to the grey car with an air of sturdy -courage, stood close beside the Father of Victory. And these two old -Frenchmen looked each other in the eyes. - -“This village of yours, Monsieur Durand, seems a little quarrelsome.” - -“I am not humiliated, monsieur, but my heart is sore. You will tell me -that life is ironical?” - -Clemenceau laid a hand on Durand’s shoulder. - -“My friend, I have always set my teeth. What hurts you hurts me. What -has happened?” - -In a few jerky sentences Durand gave Georges Clemenceau the pith and -soul of this village romance. - -“The man who raised the flag here, and was the first to attack the -ruins, but then, he had the soul of a peasant, of a worker, a creator; -the city eats and destroys; the countryman grows and harvests. Once -again it is the peasant spirit that will save France.” - -He leant his arms on the door of the car. - -“Yet is it not strange, monsieur, that I—a foolish old man—should have -chosen this very day to show you the pride of my heart? Perhaps we had -grown a little vain here, and Providence sent a few drunken blackguards -to chasten us.” - -Clemenceau was frowning, and his bushy white eyebrows bristled. - -“No. The work stands. The quiet men will always thrash the talkers. Is -that the house—there?” - -He looked intently at the Café de la Victoire. - -“Yes—one man’s work.” - -Georges Clemenceau smiled. - -“He was very much in love. God forbid that this should end unhappily.” - -A little human murmur rose from the crowd, a pleasant sound such as -animals make when their young run to them for milk. The doctor was -smiling behind his glasses, for Brent had opened his eyes. He raised a -hand and touched Manon, a Manon whose face had suddenly lost the calm of -tragedy and was like broken light, quivering, tenderly shaken. She began -to weep—tears of quiet emotion. - -“Oh, mon chérie!” - -Paul looked up at her and nothing else. - -“They have not hurt you?” - -“No, no.” - -The doctor patted her shoulder and continued to watch Brent. - -“I do not think he is going to die, madame.” - -“No, monsieur.” - -“He has a rib or two broken. We will get him into the house, and I can -dress that wound on his head. It is probable that Monsieur Clemenceau -will let us send the car back to Amiens for the necessary drugs and -dressings. Is there a bed ready?” - -“Yes, monsieur.” - -The doctor got up, and seeing Philipon, instinctively chose him for the -work that was to be done. - -“It is essential that he should be moved very carefully. I shall want a -door, something flat, and four helpers. One has to be cautious when a -man has been kicked about the body.” - -Anatole Durand rejoined them with a face that beamed. - -“There is nothing very serious? No? Monsieur le docteur, I am overjoyed. -Well, Paul, my boy, we are going to mend you in five minutes.” - -He was down on his knees beside Manon. - -“My dear, it is your happiness that weeps.” - -She raised her face to his. - -“Monsieur Anatole, almost I am afraid yet to be happy, but I am not -afraid of all that must follow.” - -“The aftermath?” - -“Yes, I must speak. Is it true that Monsieur Clemenceau is in that car?” - -“Quite true.” - -“It is an act of God. Will you ask Monsieur Lefèbre to speak to the -crowd and tell them to stay here? I shall leave Paul and Marie and the -doctor when we have put him to bed. First of all I wish to speak to -Monsieur Clemenceau.” - -“He will listen to you, my dear. We told him your tale to-day, and he -understands.” - -Philipon had found a length of “duck-board” in one of the yards; -blankets and coats were spread on it, and Brent lifted gently on to this -improvised stretcher. Philipon and three other men carried him into the -house, past the smashed green door that showed scars left by Bibi’s -boots, and into the little room whose window overlooked the garden. He -was put to bed there, Monsieur Lafond helping Manon and Philipon, while -Marie stood in the doorway and watched. - -Paul was aware of a voice speaking to the crowd—the deep and pleasant -voice of Monsieur Lefèbre. The curé was standing on the raised path in -front of the café, and his massive and impressive head looked the colour -of bronze. - -“My friends, Madame Latour asks you to remain here. She has something to -say to us all, and I—who know the truth—ask you to stay and listen.” - -The crowd acquiesced. It had no thought of dispersing when the stage was -still set, and Monsieur Clemenceau himself descending upon Beaucourt -like a god in a car. They had cheered him, and someone had begun to sing -the “Marseillaise,” all the men standing bare-headed in the August -sunshine. Then the crowd resigned itself to interlude, grouping itself -in doorways, and along the raised path, and even sitting on the cobbles. -Most of Goblet’s men had slipped away, but a few loafed defiantly at the -corner of the Rue Romaine. And from that moment it was Anatole Durand -who acted as the master of the ceremonies, going briskly to and fro -between the Tiger’s car and the café. At last he appeared with Manon on -his arm. The crowd stirred with a sound like the rustling of leaves when -a wind ruffles the hanging boughs of a wood. - -They saw Manon and Durand descend the steps at the end of the raised -path, and walk towards the grey car. Manon stood close to the -running-board of the car, a sturdy little woman with a dignity of her -own, her tears gone, her eyes steady and determined. Durand introduced -her. - -“This is Madame Latour.” - -Georges Clemenceau removed his hat. - -“Madame, Monsieur Durand made you known to me in Amiens. I have been -admiring your house of adventure. What can I do for you?” - -They understood each other at once, these two. - -“Monsieur, I wish you to judge us like a father, myself, my betrothed, -and those two men there. I shall speak, and they can answer me. I wish -this to be done before all the village, before all those who honour us. -I shall tell the truth—the whole truth.” - -Clemenceau’s eyes glimmered under their white eyebrows. He considered -Manon, and the heart and the head of him found her good. - -“Work heals all wounds,” he said, and then, with a smile at this little -Frenchwoman, “I am to give you patriarchal justice? What could be -better! And the doctor needs my car.” - -He turned to Durand. - -“Let us have some chairs placed on that path in front of the house. Now, -madame.” - -He left the car, followed by his two officials, and mounted the raised -path, keeping Manon beside him. - -“To begin with,” he said, “I must look at this house of yours while -Monsieur Durand is arranging the stage for us. It interests me vastly, -this house.” - -He entered the café, pausing to look at the broken door. “A Prussian -trick, that!” His round, white head seemed to sink more grimly between -his shoulders. Manon had to show him the whole house from cellar to -roof, and to give him an account of how they had lived through that -adventurous spring. His eyes twinkled, he noticed everything; his -interest in all the human details of the house was simple and intense. -Stubbornness and courage appealed to him, and there was courage in every -corner of this little provincial home. He saw in it life, inevitable yet -miraculous, pushing its way through the ruins. It was a poem in timber -and iron, an emotion, a part of the heart of France. - -At the foot of the stairs he turned and looked up at Manon. - -“He has done well—this man of yours. I will see him presently.” - -Then he went out into the sunlight and faced the crowd. Five chairs had -been set in a row along the raised path, and Georges Clemenceau took the -centre chair. On his right sat Lefèbre; on his left Anatole Durand. -Manon had the chair next to Durand, Philipon the one on the extreme -right. Clemenceau nodded to Durand. Bibi and Ledoux were pushed forward -into the open space below the path, and the crowd closed round them. -There was silence. - - - - - XLV - - -Every man and woman in the crowd watched Georges Clemenceau, for his -presence dominated them all. Even the naturalness with which he sat in -his chair and looked at them from under his bushy eyebrows seemed part -of his greatness, part of his magnificent yet subtle simplicity. They -saw in him the man who had held up the sword-arm of France, a man who -could be stubborn with the stubbornness of a peasant. That round head of -his and that almost feline face had a shrewd and humorous benignity. The -Tiger could smile, he could hate, and he could love. - -He began to speak to them, leaning back in his chair; his hands resting -on his thighs. - -“Let me tell you that in the country men do not make speeches; they put -their hands to the plough and hoe; that is the eloquence we understand. -To-day I came to this village of yours to see if Monsieur Durand had -been telling me fairy tales, and I find a little family quarrel going -on, and someone has asked me to sit here as the head of the family to -decide who is right and who is wrong. At my age—and in these days—the -things that are right and good for our country seem so plain and so -simple that it is easy for us to judge whether a man is a good citizen -or not. The ruins and the very stumps of the dead trees call to us for -help. He who builds, he who plants, he who gives his sweat to France, -that man is the man whom we honour.” - -He paused, smiling round at the listening and attentive faces. He was -speaking like a peasant to peasants, and he had his hand on their -hearts. - -“Let me tell you that I have visited many villages. What happens? The -people crowd round me; they say: ‘Monsieur, when will the Government -help us? We have no material. What are we to do? It is sad, it is -tragic.’ And I say to them, ‘Work, children, work. Do not wait for the -bureaucrats and for indemnities. The world is a selfish world, and -officials do not hurry, but I will hurry them with all the strength that -is left to me. Our sufferings are not yet over, but let us suffer a -little longer for France. Work; look about you, do not sit still and -wait. Clear the ground—gather together what you can; we will see to it -that you have food and fuel. During the war we gave blood; now—we must -give our sweat.’ And they are good people; they see that I cannot -promise miracles and they forgive me.” - -Paul Brent was lying in the little room listening to Monsieur -Clemenceau’s voice. His face was turned to the window that opened on the -garden, and he could see the line of the stone wall and the branches of -the lime trees making a broken pattern against the blue of the sky. -Beaucourt seemed very silent, extraordinarily silent, and yet Brent knew -that nothing but a brick wall separated him from all those people. The -street below the Café de la Victoire was as quiet as a court of justice, -and the voice of Clemenceau was the voice of a judge. - -Marie Castener sat on the chair beside the bed, a big, blond, patient -woman, who listened intently to all that the great man said. Now and -again she nodded her head and made some comment. “Yes, that’s sound -sense.” “This man gets to the heart of things.” “We make our own -miracles.” “Listen, Manon is speaking.” - -They heard Manon’s voice coming out of that same silence, the profound -silence of men and women whose sympathies are challenged by some drama -of life that stirs their emotions, their loves, and their hates. They -had listened to Clemenceau with stolidity and interest, but when Manon -Latour began to speak to them their eyes lit up with living passion. -Into the open space where Bibi and Ledoux were standing someone had -pushed Pompom Crapaud, and at the sight of this sinister little devil -still carrying his tin of petroleum, the crowd uttered its first cry of -anger. These peasants looked meaningly at each other. Mouths and eyes -hardened. A house had become a sacred object in Beaucourt, and Crapaud -had been caught in an act of sacrilege. - -Manon was standing beside her chair. The sight of Crapaud angered her as -it angered the crowd. - -“What had we done to you that you should wish to burn our home?” - -Crapaud giggled. He found himself between Bibi and Ledoux and facing -Clemenceau, that grim old badger with the white moustache. Fear made him -impudent and vicious. He leered up at the blind and sullen face of Louis -Blanc, and at the uncertain and flickering eyes of Lazare Ledoux. - -“You look cheerful—you two!” - -He nudged Bibi with his elbow and was shrugged aside by an angry jerk of -Blanc’s big body. Bibi was sulky and furious; these “roughs” were of no -more use to him. - -“Get out!” - -Crapaud was jostled against Ledoux, who looked like a great melancholy -bird disturbed on its perch. Ledoux was afraid. His red eyes could find -nothing pleasant upon which they could come to rest. - -“The capitalists have got us, old man!” - -“Shut up, you fool.” - -Manon had begun to speak, and in that little, quiet room Paul Brent had -held out a hand to Marie Castener. Instinctively she drew a motherly -chair nearer to the bed. - -“Can you hear?” - -“Yes; she is telling them everything.” - -Paul lay and looked at the blue sky. His body ached; it hurt him to -breathe, but he was conscious of a great tranquillity, the contentment -of a sick man who surrenders himself and his fate to the care of others. - -“I am glad,” he said. - -Manon was invisible to them, but her voice and the words that she -uttered made her visible to Paul Brent. She was speaking very slowly, -and with the naïve persuasiveness of a complete and intimate simplicity. -Brent could picture her standing on the raised path in front of her -house, rather pale but very determined, looking steadily at these many -familiar faces, her eyes as dark as her coal-black hair. She did not -hesitate or search for dramatic effect, but told them the tale of her -house of adventure—how the English soldier—Paul Brent—had come into -her life, how Bibi had grown jealous of their home, and how his brute -violence had lost him his sight. She did not attempt to excuse Paul’s -concealment of his identity, but she explained it. - -“I will tell you,” she said, “how it came about. He had been in an -English prison before the war; he had made himself responsible for -another man’s rogueries. After the war he did not wish to return to -England, but he desired to begin life again as a Frenchman. He came to -Beaucourt where he had buried his friend, and here we met again, by -chance—for he had billeted himself in my cellar.” - -She held the crowd on the most delicate of threads, and instinctively -she made haste to strengthen it. - -“Many of you will ask me why I trusted him, a man who was a deserter, -and almost a stranger to me. I will tell you. - -“He had helped me to bury my treasure. When I returned to Beaucourt, it -was still there. . . . - -“He intended to go away; it was I who asked him to stay. . . . - -“He told me the whole truth from the very beginning, and when we -realized that we loved each other, and that he wished to marry me and -remain in Beaucourt, he told the truth to Messieurs Lefèbre and Durand, -and this very week he was to have surrendered himself to the English in -order that our marriage might be honest and clean.” - -It was Bibi who interrupted her, and it was this very interruption that -gave her the inspiration that she needed. - -“It is rather late in the day—to marry.” - -She turned to Bibi with a calm frankness. - -“You hear what this man says? I will answer him. Had I given my whole -self to my betrothed, would Louis Blanc be the man to accuse me of -shame? But it is not so.” - -She faced the crowd again, with her hands on her bosom. - -“Am I stripping myself that justice may be done to the man I love? Why -do I love him so much? Because he is not so stupid as most men, because -he did not ask me to give him the thing that most men ask for, because I -could trust him. He helped to build my house; he helped to make my home; -he protected me. We are lovers, yes, but he waited, he held back. Do we -love men who are generous and honourable and masters of their own -bodies? Or do we worship the animal?—the beast that seizes love by the -throat and makes it nothing but a carcass? I stand by the man who has -given me the labour of his hands, the man whom I love because he does -good things. Have not the war and these ruins made us long for a life -that looks happily at children and trees and gardens—the clean linen -hanging in the orchard—the steady eyes of the quiet fellow who loves -you and works for you? Envy and violence are hateful to me. I ask to be -left alone with the man who healed the wounds of my home with the labour -of his hands.” - -She stood in silence, holding out her hands to these peasants, and -instantly the crowd rose to her with passionate enthusiasm. She had won -them. She had given her heart into their hands, and they offered her -their human and simple blessing in return. Philipon the smith was the -first to give expression to the emotion that stirred them all. He came -to her behind the row of chairs and kissed Manon on the forehead. - -“You have shown us your heart, and we see how good it is.” - -The women were more deeply moved than the men, for only women know what -a good man means to a woman. They came crowding round Manon, holding out -their hands to her. Old Mère Vitry had tears in her eyes. - -“Brave words, my child.” - -“We believe it all—every word.” - -“If he is English, what does it matter? He is a good man.” - -Bibi was there in the midst of them, surrounded by petticoats, furiously -silent. His teeth showed in his black beard. - -“These cows,” he said. - -Someone heard him. - -“He calls us cows! We women have something to say to him.” - -Monsieur Lefèbre was on his feet, and his deep and pleasant voice was -calling for silence. - -“My children, have patience. Let us be just. Monsieur Clemenceau is here -to judge; let us leave it to him.” - -They obeyed Monsieur Lefèbre, and stood waiting for the old man in the -chair to speak to them. He had not moved, but sat there like a figure of -granite, imperturbable, inexorable. His eyes were fixed on Louis Blanc. - -“Let us keep to facts,” he began, “the things that all of us can see and -understand. Louis Blanc, I am speaking to you.” - -Bibi raised his blind face defiantly. - -“Begin. I am ready.” - -“You were a soldier?” - -“I was a soldier; I have a medal.” - -“Very good. But when you came back to Beaucourt, what did you do?” - -“I wished to rebuild my hotel, but the luck was against me. There was no -labour to be had, and these people had thieved the best of the stuff.” - -Anatole Durand interrupted him. - -“That is not true. They took what lay ready to their hands—and they -have repaid it.” - -Clemenceau smiled at Anatole. - -“Please leave it to me, monsieur. Now, I ask you, Louis Blanc, did you -move a single brick or use your hands to help clearing the ruins?” - -“No. It is not my way.” - -“You are blind, now.” - -“Yes.” - -“We have been told how you came by your blindness. Do you deny it?” - -Bibi’s face was all white and twisted. - -“You have their word for it.” - -“And your violence to-day tells us the truth. If you had no grudge -against these people, why did you lie, why did you raise a crowd against -them, why did you try to kill this man?” - -Bibi shrugged. - -“It can pass,” he said, and Clemenceau smiled. - -“Now then, when you came to Beaucourt a second time, what did you do?” - -“I put up a hut.” - -“Yes?” - -“I sold wine.” - -“To the peasants?” - -“No, to the workmen. I have no use for the cattle.” - -“You made men drunk—sometimes?” - -“It is possible.” - -“Is it a good thing to make men drunk, to turn them into violent beasts, -when there is work to be done?” - -“I am not God, monsieur.” - -“Perhaps that is a blessing!” - -“Madame Latour also sells wine, but that is nothing, I suppose! If an -angel makes men drunk!——” - -“I will ask Beaucourt a question. Has the village been the worse for -Madame Latour’s wine?” - -A number of voices replied to him. - -“Never, monsieur, never.” - -Monsieur Clemenceau had never ceased to watch Louis Blanc, but now he -let his eyes wander over the faces of the crowd. For half a minute he -remained silent, eyelids half closed, his head sunk between his -shoulders. Anatole was holding Manon’s arm and whispering something in -her ear. Lefèbre looked round at these people of his, and his eyes -blessed them. - -Clemenceau was speaking again. - -“Is there anyone in this crowd who has anything to bring against Madame -Latour’s partner?” - -There was a short silence, but no one spoke. - -“Nothing? Is there anyone here who can speak in his favour?” - -Half a dozen voices were raised at once. - -“Yes, monsieur, he has helped many of us.” - -“He worked at my chimney.” - -“He helped me with my roof.” - -“And mine.” - -“Without him I could never have got my walls straight.” - -“He has given us his hands and his head.” - -Clemenceau nodded. Then he sat up very straight in his chair, and made a -sign for them to be silent. His eyes seemed to light up; the colour of -them to deepen. His voice had a more ringing and passionate note, the -voice of the man who had inspired France. - -“My children, it seems to me very simple. Let us look at these two men, -and at their lives. On the one hand you have this Englishman who works -with his hands, who is ready to help other people, who creates, who -restores. Behind me is the house which all of you know so well, a house -that was in ruins, but has become alive once more, a home. On the other -hand you have this Louis Blanc, a man who destroys, a man who is ready -to burn and to kill. What has he done for Beaucourt? Brought envy and -anger and drunkenness into it, turned Frenchmen against Frenchmen, -taught the religion of violence and of hate. My children, I am no bigot, -no Calvinist; sometimes I have hated the so-called good men, and loved -the sinners; but in this case my heart and head do not quarrel.” - -He looked at Bibi, Ledoux and Crapaud. - -“Louis Blanc, and you others, have you anything to say to me?” - -Bibi folded his arms; he was defiant. - -“Nothing.” - -“And you?” - -Lazare Ledoux’s eyes could not meet Clemenceau’s; he was capable of -nothing but mutterings. - -“I am a Red. We do not waste words on the shopkeepers.” - -It is doubtful whether Clemenceau heard him. He had risen from his -chair. His eyes flashed; that sturdy figure of his seemed to dilate and -to give a sudden impression of immense strength and passion. His right -hand shot out as though he was striking a blow; he pointed at Bibi. - -“That man is evil; he is a bad Frenchman; I condemn him. Hatred -destroys; love builds up. What shall be done with him?” - -There were cries from the crowd. - -“We will not have him in Beaucourt.” - -For a moment the street was in an uproar. Clemenceau had beckoned to -Manon, and he was speaking to her and to the three men, Lefèbre, Durand -and Philipon. The people saw Manon shaking her head. Philipon -interposed, moving that heavy and emphatic jaw of his, and beating the -air with his right fist as though spacing out the rhythm of his blunt -sentences. No one in the street could hear what he said, but they saw -the “Tiger’s” face light up. - -He patted Philipon on the shoulder. - -“Solomon! Let Beaucourt make its own laws and carry them out to-day. But -the man has property here?” - -“He will sell it,” said the smith; “he will be glad to sell it. Yes.” - -Anatole Durand had brought out his inevitable note-book. - -“The site of the hotel and an orchard on the Rue de Bonnière. I will buy -the property—at any time. What do you say, Monsieur Lefèbre?” - -“This is justice,” said the priest; “let us drive out the wolves.” - -Philipon took the lead in the last act of this village drama. With his -hammer over his shoulder he marshalled the crowd in the Rue de Picardie, -made them a short speech, and then led them to the Place de l’Eglise. -Bibi, Ledoux and Crapaud marched in a bunch in the centre of the crowd, -guarded by the men. When they reached the Place de l’Eglise, Philipon -called a halt. He saluted the church, and standing on a block of -masonry, spoke these words to the people of Beaucourt: - -“Here, in the centre of our village, we condemn these men, we cast them -out. Let them be accursed. Let them never show their faces again in -Beaucourt. Are we agreed?” - -The crowd echoed his judgment. - -“We cast them out,” was the burden of their cry. - -They marched on down the Rue de Bonnière to Bibi’s buvette among the -apple trees, and here the crowd halted again with great orderliness and -in silence. A dozen or so of Goblet’s men were standing at the factory -gate, and three or four were with Barbe in the buvette, but they were -cowed, and made no attempt to interfere. Barbe, spitting like a cat, was -brought down into the street. The tin of petroleum was taken from Pompom -Crapaud, and Philipon, like some inexorable priest offering up a -sacrifice, drenched the piled chairs and tables and set the place -alight. The buvette blazed, and the crowd stood in silence, watching the -flames, and knowing that an act of primitive justice had been done. - -“Allons!” - -Philipon marshalled them again, with Bibi, the woman and the two men at -the head of the column. They moved on along the Bonnière road into the -wilderness that was ceasing to be a wilderness, and where Nature and the -hands of men were making the earth fruitful and good. They held on until -they reached the dead trees at Les Ormes, and here they cast off Bibi -and the others into the calm and acquiescent splendour of a summer -twilight. - -Philipon stood like a black figure of fate, holding up his hammer. - -“Outcasts,” he said, “go and learn to save France elsewhere. Never shall -you return to us. We peasants are obstinate. Go.” - - - - - XLVI - - -While the peasants of Beaucourt cast Louis Blanc out into the -wilderness, two people were sitting beside Paul Brent’s bed, a man and a -woman. The man had a despatch box on his knees, and he was using it as a -desk upon which to write. The woman was holding Paul’s hands, and -smiling at him with eyes of tenderness and of tranquillity. - -The man who was writing raised his white head. He smiled, and passed the -paper to Manon. With their heads together on the pillow they read what -Georges Clemenceau had written in that room whose window overlooked the -garden. - - “I ask you to be generous to Paul Brent. Let him return - to us soon, for I wish to be present at his marriage. He - will make a good Frenchman, for he knows how to work. - - “Georges Clemenceau.” - - * * * * * - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious -punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. -When discrepancies in spelling occured, majority use has been employed. - -[End of _The House of Adventure_ by Warwick Deeping] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF ADVENTURE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The House of Adventure</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Warwick Deeping</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 23, 2021 [eBook #65149]<br /> -[Most recently updated: August 18, 2021]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net from page images generously made available by the Internet Archive (https://archive.org)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF ADVENTURE ***</div> -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:375px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2em;'>The</p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:0.25em;font-size:2em;'>HOUSE OF ADVENTURE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.5em;'><span class='sc'>By</span> WARWICK DEEPING</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>Author of</span></p> -<p class='line'>“Sorrell and Son”</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/i002.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0001' style='width:15%;height:auto;'/> -</div> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>A. L. BURT COMPANY</p> -<p class='line'>Publishers New York</p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:0.4em;'>Published by arrangement with The Macmillan Company</p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:0.4em;'>Printed in U. S. A.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>Copyright 1921 and 1922</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<hr class='tbk100'/> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1922.</p> -<p class='line'>Reissued March, 1928.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>To</p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>Dr.</span> BEDFORD FENWICK</p> -<p class='line'><span style='font-size:smaller'>IN MEMORY OF HIS GREAT KINDNESS</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2em;'>THE</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2em;'>HOUSE OF ADVENTURE</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'>I</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Two</span> stragglers lay sleeping in an orchard near the -village of Beaucourt, sprawling upon a grass bank under -the branches of an old apple tree. The sun had cleared -the horizon and hung as a great yellow disc in the purple -boughs of the beech trees on the other side of the stream. -Overhead stretched the thin and cloudless blue of a March -sky. The grass was silvered with hoar-frost—and in the -wood across the stream a bird was singing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The men slept, two brown figures on the green bank. -One sprawled on his back; the other lay curled on his -side. Their boots were the colour of clay; so were their -faces, the clay-coloured faces of men who had been -starved, and who had fallen down to sleep the sleep of -exhaustion. They were dirty with the dirt of five days’ -fighting and foot-slogging. Their chins were painted -black with a stubble of hair, and their noses looked pinched -and thin. They had no greatcoats, no packs, no puttees, -no equipment; nothing but a rifle, a blue water-bottle, and -a haversack between them. At the world’s end a man -gets rid of unnecessary lumber.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dawn was extraordinarily still. There was not a -sound to be heard save the singing of the bird in the wood -on the other side of the stream. The country rolled into -blue-grey distances under the level sunlight and the tranquil -sky, a strangely peaceful landscape, the landscape of -an unvexed and impersonal dawn. Beaucourt village slept -in the sunlight on the slopes of its two hills. No smoke -rose from the chimneys; no human sound came from it. -Beaucourt was empty. The blue spire of its church and -the gold vaned flèches of the château showed up against -the purple heights of the Bois du Renard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The church clock struck six, six calm and level clangs -that were quaintly challenging, almost ironical. From -somewhere—a long way off—came the soft whoof of a gun, -an English gun slewed round in some quiet orchard and -firing a solitary shell or two into nothingness. There was -a whine in the air, a whine that quickened over Beaucourt -and became a menacing and snoring rush. The shell -burst beyond the village, smashing an old apple tree and -throwing up a great spurt of earth and smoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man who had been sleeping curled up on his side, -sat up and mopped the dirt out of his eyes, using his -hands like the paws of a cat. A crack of lightning seemed -to have broken the sky just above his head. The apple -tree had been snapped off about three feet from the ground, -and the splintered ends of the stump stood up like torn -tendons.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other sleeper was no longer a man, but a body. -He was not recognizable, and from the ripped front of -his tunic a red identity disc protruded, dangling pathetically -at the end of a piece of frayed string.</p> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>756941 Pte. Beckett, T.</p> -<p class='line'>2—9——Fusiliers.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The live man looked dazed. War is an affair in which -violent and absurd things happen, and men forget to be -astonished. Moreover, Paul Brent was little more than a -starved body, a dirty man sodden with a week’s weariness -and moments of great excitement and blind fear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tom’s dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He uttered the words with the confidential and mumbling -foolishness of a drunkard. It seemed quite natural -that Tom should be dead. An immense apathy lay like -so much stagnant water over the mud of Brent’s submerged -emotions. He sat and stared and fingered the hair on -his chin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man had been his comrade, his pal of pals, one of -those rough-hewn, violent, warm-hearted creatures. They -had fought together, drunk together, snuggled up close in -the same barn or dug-out, shared their tobacco and a hole -in the mud. Tom was dead, and yet if Brent was hurt -by his death, it was a vague and animal pain, like the -groanings of an empty belly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat and stared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His mouth felt dry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He noticed that the water-bottle, rifle and haversack -that lay between them had not been touched. He remembered, -that there was a little water left in the bottle, -and he reached for it, drew the cork and drank. Some of -the water dribbled down his dirty chin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent put down the water-bottle, and groped in the -right-hand pocket of his tunic. A few bits of broken -biscuit resulted. He sat and munched them with sunken-eyed -stolidity, alone in the midst of that extraordinary -silence, and noticing how the sunlight glinted on the hob-nails -in Tom Beckett’s boots.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was that dangling identity disc that gradually absorbed -Brent’s attention, like a little luminous spot of -light, a red blur in the fog of his exhaustion, a point of -fire in his brain. It seemed to spread and to expand, -and to change from a little red circle stamped with a man’s -name to a picture, a picture of the man Beckett himself, -of his vagabondage and his triumphs and all his boisterous -good-humour. It seemed to challenge Brent, even made -him unfasten his own tunic and produce the likeness of -the thing the dead man wore, that little circle that was -himself, the badge of a broken man and of the patchwork -of a broken man’s career. It became a circle through -which he looked at pictures, the pictures of that other -life before the war, his boyhood, the silly tragedy of his -marriage, his cynical success and his still more cynical -failure, those moments of anguish and of shame, the bitter -gibes that covered hidden wounds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A look of spiritualized intelligence sharpened Brent’s -face. His eyes ceased to be dead and listless. Something -stirred in him, a passion to escape, perhaps a hunger for -the finer things that had passed out of his life. The coarse-mouthed -but most lovable man who lay dead there had -taught him much—the human fineness that mattered, -those rough bits of courage or gentleness that make life -something better than a selfish scramble. For Beckett -had been a vagabond with a religion of his own, a homeless -man, a childless man, and yet in his way a sort of savage -Walt Whitman, finding life good and wholesome and free.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent sat and faced it out. Watching beside his dead -friend in the early sunlight of that spring morning, he -saw himself as the shabby failure that he was, a man who -had accepted spiritual bankruptcy with the cynical apathy -of a tramp who leaves his self-respect and his citizenship -in some convenient ditch. Acceptance! It was just that -blind and drifting attitude that had doomed him, while -Beckett—the adventurer—had punched his way towards -a rude religion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In that most singular and prophetic moment of his -life Paul Brent had his vision of non-acceptance. He saw -the gap in the wall and leapt through it, feeling that -the dead man was offering him his chance. The burly -audacity of the thing would have drawn a laugh and an -approving punch on the chest from the man who lay dead. -Beckett had no wife, no children, no woman who would -be hurt. Brent thought of all that before he made his -choice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was an element of solemnity and of reverence -in Paul Brent’s carrying out of that interchange of identities. -He unfastened his own disc, and that solitary one -of Beckett’s. He felt in his dead friend’s pockets and -sorted out his possessions, a complex that included his -pay-book, a pipe, some odd buttons, ten francs and fifty -centimes in money, an English penny, a stubby pencil -and a couple of dirty picture postcards, a hank of string -and a few matches. Brent tied Beckett’s identity disc -to his own braces, and put the dead man’s pay-book in -his pocket. His own disc he fastened to the body and -left the pay-book lying upon the grass.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then the last comradely act suggested itself, and it -stirred Brent to vague emotion and a softening of his -red-lidded eyes. He picked up the rifle, shouldered it, and -walked up the hill to Beaucourt village in search of a -pick and a spade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he walked up between the orchards a strange calmness -fell upon him, a calmness that was neither apathy -nor indifference. He became conscious of the beauty of -the morning, and of the more tragic beauty of this French -village with its red roofs and its red and white walls showing -vividly against the purple of the Bois du Renard. -Beaucourt was on the altar of sacrifice. Brent entered -it by the little Rue de Rosières, and he saw things in Beaucourt -that he would never forget. It was like a woman -bereft of her children, standing dazed, with blind eyes -and open mouth. It was as though it could not believe -that the thing had happened on that soft day in the coming -of the spring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The doors of nearly all the little houses and cottages -were open, so that Brent could see into the lower rooms. -A gallery of pictures, impressions of a silent tragedy. -Rooms full of a tumult of escape and of little treasures -searched for, snatched up and carried away out of a world -of disorder. Floors littered with clothes, papers, bed-linen, -furniture. Chests of drawers and cupboards standing -open. The last meal left upon a table, dirty plates, -bottles, the chairs pushed back as the people had left them. -In one cottage Brent had a glimpse of a woman’s night-dress -and a little black hat trimmed with red ribbon hanging -on the post of a bed. An open window gave him -a glimpse of a child’s cot with the clothes thrown back -and one pink sock left lying. Beaucourt would have hurt -the heart of a cynic. At the corner where the Rue de -Rosières joined the Rue de Picardie a melancholy and forlorn -brown dog came nosing up to Brent and followed at -his heels.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent petted the beast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You poor old devil.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He paused outside the Café de la Victoire—ironical -yet prophetic name! It was a long, two-storied, lovable -old house in red brick, set back beyond a raised path of -grey, squared stones, and looking with its dormer windows -into the orchard and garden of the big stone house across -the way. The green shutters hung open. A lace curtain -fluttered from one of the windows. Brent knew the Café -de la Victoire; for he and Tom Beckett had drunk red -wine there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul did not enter the house, but scrambled up on to -the raised path and pushed through a blue door in the -stone wall surrounding the garden. There were pollarded -lines beyond the wall, and a quaint bosky path ran between -the rows of trees. Brent followed the path, knowing -that it would bring him to the yard at the back of the -house, and that he might find what he needed in one of -the sheds. He had turned the corner where a clump of -old Picardie roses showed a shimmer of green shoots, -when he became aware of the most unexpected of all -things—a woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman was on the other side of the garden, and -close to a gap in the stone wall where a casual shell had -knocked a little avalanche of grey stones into the garden. -She had a spade in her hand and she had just finished -pushing back the earth into a hole, and she was treading a -few green weeds into the raw surface when she turned her -head and saw Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent knew her. It was Manon Latour, who owned -the café, and he guessed that she had been burying her -little treasures there. She stood motionless, rigid, staring -at him with eyes that looked big and black in her white -face, the eyes of a woman who was afraid.</p> - -<div><h1>II</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent</span> felt challenged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He crossed the garden towards her, knocking the -moisture from the leaves of a bed of winter-greens, and -still followed by the brown dog. Brent’s French was very -British, the Army French of estaminets and billets, but -his heart was concerned in the convincing of Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Madame, allez vous! Le Boche—il arrive toute -suite!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood and stared at him, and it was obvious that -she believed that she had never seen him before; and his -present appearance was not reassuring. She saw a very -dirty man with a cut-throat’s beard and a haggard face, -a starved face in which the blue eyes looked like the cold -eyes of a corpse. There was nothing soldierly about him -save the rifle on his shoulder. The disreputable indiscipline -of Brent’s whole atmosphere suggested the one -word “loot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, que faites-vous ici?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood her ground, and kept her eyes on Brent’s -face. She was a black-haired, black-eyed little woman -with a skin of ivory; in age about six and twenty; very -sturdy, very strong. Yet there was a softness about her, -a white glow, a femininity, that were wholly pleasant and -appealing. Manon Latour had a heart and courage. You -saw the soul of her in her big, dark, watchful eyes, in -her firm white throat, in her full-lipped, vivid mouth, -in the confident poise of her head. She stood there and -defied Brent—this disreputable straggler who had surprised -her burying her treasure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The brown dog was sniffing at her black skirt, and at -the newly turned soil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent managed to smile, and the thinness of his yellow -face seemed to crack with it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon garçon,—bon garçon, moi. Allez, madame. Hang -it,—do you think I would touch your stuff?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She said nothing, but continued to watch his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Paul had an idea. He pointed the muzzle of his -rifle at the place where she had been digging, fumbled -for the bit of pencil he had found in Tom’s pocket, and -walking to the wall, began to print three rapid and rather -straggling letters on a piece of plaster.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“R. I. P.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stood back, cocked his head with a flick of humour, -smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Compris?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She understood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, c’est vrai?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oui—here,—catch hold.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He pushed the butt of the rifle towards her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fusillez, si vous voulez—moi. Cela ne fait rien. Oui. -Mon ami, mon comrade, il est mort. Je suis fini.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She put the butt of the rifle aside with a gentle little -touch of the hand. Her eyes had softened, and they -were very beautiful eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Je me confie à vous, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The brown dog looked up at them both and wagged -his tail. He appeared to approve of the affair, and of -Manon’s faith in this scarecrow of a man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She walked down the path and into the house, leaving -the spade she had used standing against the wall. Some -sudden impulse made her pause in the doorway and look -back at Brent. He had followed her as far as the gateway -leading into the yard, and was resting his crossed -hands on the muzzle of his rifle, and she noticed that he -rocked slightly from foot to foot. The man could hardly -stand, and her heart smote her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She disappeared into the house, and returned almost -immediately with her hat and coat, a little leather bag, -and a bottle of red wine. The bottle was half full.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, pour votre santé.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stepped forward, and took the bottle from her. -His hand shook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, mon pauvre vieux—comme vous êtes fatigué!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pinned on her hat while Brent drank the wine, looking -at him with eyes that were no longer hard and black, -but softly brown and gentle. She was aware of his dry, -cracked lips, the working of the muscles in his throat, a -slight trembling of the arm that held the bottle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, venez avec moi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stared. He understood. Then he nodded his -head at the spade she had left by the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Non. Mon ami est mort.—Over there. Compris?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Le bon Dieu vous garde,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She put on her coat, picked up her little bag, and was -ready to go. The brown dog looked at them both, and -then made up his mind to escape with the woman. Brent -went with her as far as the yard gate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Au revoir, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon chance,” he said with a cracked smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He watched the little black figure disappear round the -angle of the big stone house that jutted out across the -end of the Rue Romaine on the way to Bonnière.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Damned plucky,” he said aloud; “she ought to have -gone long ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went back to the garden and the place where -Manon had buried her treasure. The patch of raw earth -was too noticeable and too obvious, in spite of the weeds -she had trampled into it, and Brent looked about for something -with which to camouflage it. The smashed walls and -the scattered stones offered a suggestion. The main mass -of the débris lay close to the spot that Manon Latour had -chosen, and Brent set about re-arranging those stones with -an art that aped reality. The pattern he made pretended -that the shell had struck the wall at a slight angle, and -his casual dotting of the outlying fragments made the -trick quite convincing. The raw earth was covered; no -one would trouble to go poking about there. He completed -the job by smudging out the letters he had printed -on the wall, using a bit of broken stone and the sleeve of -his tunic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon,” he said; “Tom would never have touched the -girl’s money. There was no dirt on Tom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent collected a pick from one of the outhouses, appropriated -Manon’s spade, and returned to the orchard -above the stream. This orchard belonged to Manon -Latour; so did the meadow below it, and a strip of woodland -on the other side of the little valley. Brent took -off his tunic, hung it on the stump of the apple tree and -began to dig. The red wine had flushed and heartened -him, but it was food he needed, and the sting of the wine -soon wore off. Sweat ran from him; the sweat of exhaustion; -he panted and nearly fell forward over his spade -when he had lifted the first layer of sods.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat down on the bank, and putting his head between -his knees, remained thus for some minutes. The faintness -passed. The spirit reasserted itself and coerced the -body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got to work again,—and slowly deepened that -narrow trench,—giving a little grunt of physical anguish -each time he made a stroke with the pick. The thing -was done at last, and Brent stood resting like an old man, -leaning on the handle of the spade, and looking at Beckett’s -body. He had been so absorbed in the work, and -his senses were so dull and unalert, that he was quite unaware -of the fact that a German patrol had straggled -across the field and through the orchard, and that an -N.C.O. and four privates were standing a few yards away, -watching him. They, too, were very dirty, these “field-greys,” -sallow-faced and heavy about the eyes. They -looked at Brent with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, -and the elemental sympathy of men for a soldier doing -a soldier’s job.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo—Tommy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent turned and looked at these “field-greys,”—without -surprise and without fear. It was as though he -had expected them. They were just dirty, tired men like -himself, part of the earth, part of the great machine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Morning,—Fritz.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He jerked a thumb towards the body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My pal.—I’m done. Give me a hand, will you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The N.C.O. spoke English, but the affair was so elemental -and so human that the whole group understood. -They helped Brent to lift the body into the grave and to -put back the earth, using their boots and the spade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent picked up his pay-book and handed it to the -N.C.O.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had better keep that, Fritz.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A young, fair-haired German was standing close to -Brent and looking at him intently. He noticed the Englishman’s -dry lips and pinched nostrils, his dirty chin, -and starved eyes and forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nudged Brent with his elbow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent saw a bit of brown bread in the young German’s -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hungrig?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am—that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took the piece of bread, and ate with gross relish, -for he was famished. The “field-greys” stood around and -smoked cigarettes, English cigarettes picked up during -the advance. The N.C.O. questioned Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Any English up there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent shook his head and went on eating. He was -thinking of Manon Latour trudging along in the spring -sunshine with the larks singing overhead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She ought to be safe,” he thought; “she had about -an hour’s start. Damned nice little woman, that!”</p> - -<div><h1>III</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>So</span> Brent went as a prisoner to Germany, and was catalogued -as “Number 756941 Pte. Beckett, T.”; and Paul -Brent’s name appeared among the “missing,” a casualty -that was corrected a few weeks later to “killed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul Brent was a prisoner, but he had escaped, escaped -from the tradition of blond hair and a thin mouth, Turkey -carpets and a three-tiered cake-stand, and the memory of -the greedy nostrils of a thoroughly respectable but wholly -unprincipled woman. He was free, even while he sat -and peeled potatoes in a prison hut, washed his one shirt, -or slept square-backed on his bed of boards. A sense of -liberty soaked into him. He saw a new sun, a new horizon, -new stars, a sportsman’s chance, a renewal of the -great adventure. His manhood tightened his belt, and -discovered itself in better condition, despite its thirty-seven -odd years and an incipient plumpness about the -waist. That plumpness had disappeared in France and -Belgium, and Brent’s mental flabbiness followed it out of -the German prison camp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent happened to be in a “mixed camp” for the first -few months, and he set himself to learn French. He attacked -it with such fierceness and assiduity that Alphonse,—his -pedagogue, a French waiter with a family in Soho,—accused -him of being in love. It was a crude accusation, -and Brent demolished it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I finished with that—five years ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No nice little French girl, Mister Beckett?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not even a mam’selle. I want to be able to earn more -money. Business—just business.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I fall in love every month,” said Alphonse; “it is -good for my digestion.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Madame’s temper?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, that is an affair apart,” said Alphonse; “there is -no woman like my Josephine. It is quite different. She -mends my socks, and sees that I have a clean collar. -She has but to say ‘Alphonse,’ and I would leave all the -beauties of the Sultan’s harem and carry her umbrella. It -is the woman that mends one’s socks who matters.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose so,” said Paul; “mine didn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he became quite a creditable Frenchman, even -picking up the slang and the atmosphere of the language, -and teaching himself to think in French. His accent was -not too English. “Bong” and “Bo-koop” ceased from his -vocabulary. He learnt to imitate all Alphonse’s tricks, -his little mannerisms, his expressive silences, the way he -talked with his shoulders, hands, and even with his legs -and buttons. Alphonse was a southerner, and gaillard. -He did not merely converse; he was an amateur dramatic -society in a shabby uniform of French blue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then the War ended, like a machine of which someone -has forgotten to turn the handle. Brent happened to have -been moved into Belgium about three weeks before the -Armistice, and the coincidence rhymed with the idea he -had in his head. Strange things happened one wet night -in that particular prisoners’ camp. There were rumours, -a panic, an explosion, a joyous scramble in the office of -an alarmed and fugitive commandant. Someone discovered -the official pay-box. German notes, wads of them, were -stuffed into tunic pockets, and Brent was one of those -who came by a quite respectable handful.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;'>* * * * *</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was in a Belgian village on the road between Dinant -and Philipville that Paul met the first English troops he -had seen, a battalion that was settling into billets on its -long march to the Rhine. Brent was sludging along a -lane, a dirty grey sock showing through the toe of his right -boot, all his worldly gear in a German sandbag slung over -his shoulder. He had a vile headache, little prickles of -heat and shivers of cold chasing each other up and down -his back. He had not shaved for a week, and his greatcoat -was all mud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, chum!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Behind the outswung black door of a stable Brent saw -a field-cooker in steaming fettle, and a couple of cooks hard -at work. One of them was mopping out a camp-kettle -with a handful of grass. An exquisite smell of hot stew -wasted itself on Brent’s nostrils.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Got any tea?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The cook dropped his camp-kettle, and went and laid -hold of Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here—chum—hold up! You come and sit down. -Been in Germany,—what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—Germany,” said Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat him down on a ration box,—but he flopped like -a sackful of old clothes, and the sympathetic one had to -act as a buttress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re done in, chum. Give us some of that stew in -my mess-tin, Harry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the sight and the smell of the stew made Brent -feel sick. The cook held his head like a mother, and -Brent’s head felt dry and hot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You want the doc, chum; that’s what’s the matter -with you. Ten days in hospital in a real bed, between -real sheets,—with a lovely little nurse feeding you with -a spoon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent protested, gripping the cook’s wrist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want the doc, old chap. I’m done up, that’s -all. I’d like a cup of tea, and a ration biscuit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Rot,” said the cook, “you’re ill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of the company stretcher-bearers happened to pass -that way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hi—Chucker, where’s the M.O.?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Headquarters mess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Run along and tell him there’s a returned prisoner -here; he’s sick.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Right-oh,” said Chucker; and he went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The battalion doctor came back with the stretcher-bearer, -feeling aggrieved that he should be dragged out at -the end of a day’s march to see some casual devil who did -not belong to his own crowd. Human nature is like that, -and this doctor boy was unripe and insolent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, what’s the matter with you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was crouching on the box, holding his head -between his hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Headache, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The M.O. looked at him, brought out a thermometer, -glanced at the mercury and gave the glass tube a sharp -flick.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Under your tongue. Don’t bite it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sympathetic cook was damning the doctor with a -pair of truculent blue eyes, eyes that said “You blighter—I’d -like to punch your jaw.” But the officer was not -sensitive to psychical impressions; he had left a game -of “Slippery Sam,” and he felt Brent’s pulse while Brent -sat and sucked the thermometer with an air of vacant -helplessness. The glass tube was tweaked out of his mouth, -glanced at, and put back in its metal case.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hospital for you, boy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked scared. He did not want to go to hospital.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m just done in, sir. I’ll be all right to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you!” said the doctor tensely, pulling out a -note-book and beginning to scribble, resting his foot on -Brent’s box, and the note-book on his knee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Name and number?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want to go to hospital, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t argue. Name and number?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. 756941 Pte. Beckett, T.” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Unit?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“2-9th Fusiliers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bring him along to the medical inspection room, will -you? Street by the church.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The doctor snapped the black elastic round his note-book -and walked off.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He ought to be boiled in muck,” said the cook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Five minutes later this sympathetic and expressive soul -made a dash down the road after a figure in a muddy -greatcoat, a figure that had sneaked out of the cook-house -with a staggering determination to escape. Brent -collapsed under a hedge outside a cottage, lying face downwards -in the mud. His temperature was 104.7°.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you do it for, chum?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent could not explain. He had fainted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A field ambulance car collected Paul Brent and carried -him off to another village where he lay in a barn for half -an hour, flushed and torpid, yet resenting the efforts of -an orderly to make him drink hot cocoa. An officer -came and examined him, a very quiet man with a big -fair moustache and intelligent eyes. Ten minutes later -Brent was put on a stretcher in one of the big Daimlers, -with a card in a brown envelope fastened to one of the -buttons of his greatcoat; there were two other patients -in the car. The quiet officer climbed in and assured himself -that Brent was well covered with blankets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Feel warm enough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you worry. You’ll soon be comfortable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer’s voice made Brent do an absurd thing; -he turned his face towards the canvas, and wept.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The car left its sick men at a casualty clearing station -in Charleroi. Brent had a vague impression of a great -red brick building glooming up into the murk of a winter -night, of boots clattering on tiled floors, of many voices, -and of people who would keep moving about. He was -irritable, a blazing mass of physical discomfort, slipping -over the edge of sanity into delirium. Two orderlies came -and carried his stretcher into a ward. He was laid on a -bed, and two other orderlies started to undress him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was struggling to get at something that was -buttoned up in the right breast pocket of his tunic. The -orderlies were trying to remove the tunic, and Brent -began to fight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, old chap, all right!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, leave that alone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the matter?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want my money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t have money in hospital.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“B——y hell,—give me——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let him have it,” said the elder of the two orderlies; -“let the poor blighter have it. Shove it under his pillow. -All right, old chap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent calmed down like a child, but the nurse in charge -had heard the scrimmage, and came sailing up in her grey -dress edged with red. She was a fair-haired, hard-faced -woman, with thin, clean-cut features, her eyes set too -close together, and little irritable lines crimping her mouth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s all this noise?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then a strange thing happened to Brent. He sat up -in the bed, staring at the woman with eyes of anger and -of horror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s she doing here? Take her away—take her -away, or I’ll—I’ll cut her blasted throat!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The nurse screwed up her eyes at him, and backed -away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s delirious,” said one of the orderlies; “lie down, -old chap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent made a sort of futile grab in the direction of the -nurse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me . . . She’s a devil!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The nurse walked away down the ward with the detached -dignity of a woman whose professional soul moved -calmly through the world of sickness and of words, and -Brent fell back on his pillows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s she doing here,” he kept saying; “why can’t -they let me alone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul Brent came very near death in that hospital at -Charleroi. Influenza passed into broncho-pneumonia, and -for days he lay there in a quiet stupor with bluish lips -and a grey face. He was just so much pulp, not caring -whether he lived or whether he died, and capable of but -two semi-intelligent mental reflexes, the turning of his -face to the wall when the yellow-haired nurse came near, -and the insinuating of a flabby hand under his pillow to -make sure that those German notes were there. He occupied -a corner bed, and sometimes there was a red -screen round it. His neighbour in the next bed nicknamed -him “Arthur,” and told everybody that he was “a bit -balmy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Brent’s illness passed, and he lay there hour by -hour, watching life, and beginning to react and to think.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw the high, bare, yellow walls, the rows of beds -with red quilts, the scrubbed floor, the canvas-shoed orderlies, -the nurse, the doctor with “gig-lamps” and a bald -head, the other men who dozed and chattered, or read -magazines and books and letters from home. Some of the -men wrote letters, and Brent’s neighbour offered him a -field postcard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What about the missis, Arthur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Haven’t got one,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The red screen annoyed him. There was something -irritating in the colour, a vague suggestion of officialdom, -red tape, tyranny. Brent asked to have it taken away. -He spent most of his time staring straight up at the ceiling, -and at a black smudge of cobweb in the corner where -the chimney jutted out. The dirty whiteness of the ceiling -was restful; he saw pictures on it, pictures that helped him -to think. There was no pattern on the ceiling; it was like -a fresh sheet, a clean piece of canvas upon which Brent -could paint what he pleased; and lying through those long -days he worked out his pictures on the plaster, and underneath -them was written the word, “Escape.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He realized that he would have to lose himself again, -for the Machine had reclaimed him and would pass him -with stupid efficiency on its Trucker system to some place -where he would be sorted out and railed back to England. -He began to live in fear of being recognized by some -chance friend. Even the blond-haired nurse’s absurd likeness -to that other woman who had died in England still -roused in Brent an elemental antipathy and a fierce alarm. -He sulked, and turned over into the blind corner whenever -she came near his bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is the matter to-day, Beckett?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her voice was an echo of that other woman’s voice, -a metallic voice that attacked. Brent’s back remained -churlishly on the defensive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t want to be bothered—that’s all.”</p> - -<div><h1>IV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent</span> was convalescent, and as his strength returned, -his restlessness returned with it. He was allowed out in -the hospital grounds, where he trudged about with the -idea of getting himself fit, and feeling like an animal in a -cage, and always afraid of meeting some disastrously inopportune -friend. He had glimpses of Charleroi, that -black and gray mining town with its slag-heaps and smoke -and its air of shabby sumptuousness. There were women -in Charleroi, swarthy little Belgian women, shops full of -luxurious things at luxurious prices, the glitter of -jewellery, the glare of electric light, Belgian flags, trams, -red wine, pavements where a man could loiter and catch -the smell of fleur-de-trèfle in a woman’s clothes. Charleroi -made one think of the sallow face, the lowering cloth cap, -and the sexual swagger of an apache.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Escape” was written on Brent’s heart; and he had -staged the first act of the adventure at Charleroi. He -knew that the day of his discharge was drawing near, and -he might expect to find himself handed to some casual -R.T.O. who would pass him down the line to his base-depôt, -and Brent had decided that he must vanish before -such a thing could happen. He did not want to go back -to England. He was thoroughly determined that he would -never recross the Channel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Early in January he received the final stimulus that -shocked him into immediate action. He was wandering -about the hospital grounds when he saw a little officer -with a florid and familiar face limping down the path between -the plane trees. Brent was caught off his guard. -He stared, and then swung round on one heel, but the -officer boy stopped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo; isn’t it Brent?—You were in my platoon?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had to face it out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So I was, sir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I got knocked out just before the retreat. What happened -to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Prisoner,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Been sick, have you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Flue, sir, and pneumonia. I’m all right now. I expect -to be discharged in a day or two.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer boy shook Brent’s hand, feeling himself -half a civilian and on the edge of demobilization. Besides, -Brent had always been a gentlemanly chap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, good luck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good luck to you, sir,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That incident gave the necessary flick to his decision. -Men who were ripe for discharge were allowed out on -pass into Charleroi, and Brent got his pass that evening; -it was dated for the following day. The N.C.O. in charge -of the convalescent “wing” was a far more human person -than the yellow-haired nurse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Paul Brent went down into Charleroi on a grey -January morning, with the thrill of an adventure in his -blood. He had scrounged a couple of tins of bully beef -and a pocketful of biscuits, his reserve ration for the road. -“Escape” was in the air. The trams clanged it, the shops -were ready to help in the conspiracy: the crowded streets -made Brent think of a dirty, commercialized but fascinating -Baghdad. He began to feel himself part of this continental -crowd and no English soldier numbered and -labelled for an immediate return to some niche in that -damned temple of Monotony, the Industrialism of England. -He was a little Haroun al Raschid wandering as he -pleased in this city of adventure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s first business was to change that German -money, for it would be no use to him on the road. He -found a jeweller and goldsmith’s that was also a Bureau -de Change, and they took a thousand of his German marks -and gave him French notes in exchange. Brent thought -it wise to spread the transaction over a varied surface. -He tried a Belgian bank, and came out with six hundred -francs in French paper. A second Bureau de Change -converted the bulk of the remainder. Then Brent went -shopping.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first thing that he bought was a carpet-bag with -black leather handles, and he bought it at a little shop -in a shabby side street. This magasin sold workmen’s -clothes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A fat Belgian woman, with a moustache and overflowing -cheeks and chin, showed some surprise when he -asked the price of a pair of brown velvet trousers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent laughed, and became confidential.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We make what we call a stage-play, madame, a concert -of varieties. The war is over; it is necessary for us -to be amused.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Clothes are very dear, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We English have plenty of money. At home—now—in -England—what would you think I am?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame scrutinized him with little black eyes half -hidden between bladders of fat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens!—how should I know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I own three cotton mills and fifty houses. But in -the war I was just this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She became very ready to oblige him, and Brent asked -her advice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am to be an apache, madame. A pair of velveteen -breeches.—What next?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A cloth cap, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And a coat—a black coat, and a scarf to go round -your neck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Excellent. I will do it thoroughly and have a foreign -shirt, also a leather belt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He packed the things into the carpet-bag, paid madame -and asked to be allowed to leave the bag there behind -the counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will return later.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had brought a pack with him, and he had other -things to buy, details of the adventure that he had worked -out while he was lying sick in bed and seeing pictures on -the ceiling. The list included matches, a few candles, -some tinned food, cigarettes, a pair of civilian boots, a -woollen vest, soap, a sponge, a comb, and six inches of -tri-colour ribbon. He had a meal at an obscure restaurant, -and the meal included a bottle of red wine that -cost him thirty francs. He drank to the health of the -adventure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A winter dusk was falling over Charleroi when Brent -returned to the shop where he had left his bag. The wine -had made him merry, and he wasted ten minutes in a gallant -little gossip with the lady of the flowing chin. It -would be unwise to appear to be in a hurry; your true -artist is never furtive nor a sloven in his manners.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Au revoir, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Au revoir, monsieur l’apache.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll try the costume to-night and see how the boys -like it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went boldly through Charleroi, carrying that carpet-bag -for all the world to see—but avoiding street corners -where he might meet some inquisitive military policeman. -The bag and its contents were explainable, but the explanation -might prove embarrassing when the hospital -authorities reported him missing. He came without -adventure to the western outskirts of Charleroi, still warm -with that good red wine. A few stars winked at him between -the houses, and above the dark slag-heaps and the -still darker hills.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the lane at the back of a railway embankment, a -lane that appeared to end in all the cabbage patches of a -miners’ suburb, Brent found the “green room” of his -dreams. It was a tin shed or shelter with no door, where -someone had once stored vegetables and tools. Brent -took possession, lit one of his candles, and carried out a -rapid change. He discarded everything English save his -greatcoat, socks and boots.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a big ditch at the back of the shed, full of -sooty-looking water. Brent crammed his tunic, trousers, -puttees, shirt and cap into his pack, added two heavy -stones, and sank the whole caboodle in the ditch. Returning -to the hut he completed the metamorphosis by threading -the bit of tri-colour ribbon into his buttonhole and -tying it in a bow. An old rake handle provided him with -a stick. He ran the end of it through the handles of the -carpet-bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, and launched out -into the unknown.</p> - -<div><h1>V</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Paul Brent</span> tramped it through Solre le Château and -Sars Poteries to Avesnes, winning his food from the English -he passed upon the road, for there is no kinder hearted -soul on earth than the plain Englishman when his generosity -is challenged. Paul played the part of the French -civilian deported from a captured village early in the war, -and the men in khaki whom he met supplied him with -food, and even shared with him their precious cigarettes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul remained shy of the larger villages and towns. -Sometimes he stopped at a farm-house or cottage and -was given hot coffee fresh from the blue pot on the stove. -He was a little nervous at first of his adopted lingo, and -a pretended deafness helped him when he was posed. -But these French folk accepted him, and were touchingly -kind. He slept in their barns and sometimes in a bed, -spending the evening sitting with the family round the -kitchen stove, a rather silent and solemn man with many -memories in his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A very gentle mood had fallen upon Brent. He was -marching away from defeat, trudging step by step from -his own past, that past that seemed so full of sordid yet -pathetic futilities. He found his heart going out to children, -dogs, and the poor old wrinkled women who had -starved so bravely for four years. Often he shared his food -with the cottagers, the bully beef and jam and biscuits -he won upon the road.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man who has tasted the full bitterness of failure -looks eagerly, almost incredulously at the gleam in the -sky that symbolizes a new hope. Brent felt that he was -escaping from under a thundercloud, and that the edge of -it was behind him. He had known that emptiness of the -stomach, that sense of having fallen through himself into -a mood of cynical apathy and tragic surrender, when a -man wonders whether he shall end his life or struggle on, -whether his dead self-respect is worth carrying upon his -shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That damned fool Brent! Had his chance and missed -it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Brent knew that his own incorrigible good nature -had brought him to bankruptcy. He had trusted men, -other men who had lived to make money, and he had been -astonished when they had torn him asunder and used -him both as a scapegoat and as a victim. His own wife -had never forgiven him for the catastrophe. She, too, had -been greedy. Brent knew that money was at the bottom -of all the harlotry, the commercial treachery, and the fierce -physical greed of a great part of modern life. He had -found War far less savage and contemptible than the -assassination of souls that a rich Peace encourages.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Other men had scrambled over his body, and, now that -the war had set him on his feet again, he was possessed -by a great yearning to begin life over again, to make some -success of the years that were to come. He wanted to -feel the grip of a new self-respect, the stiff back of a new -manhood. He wanted to think that he mattered, that -there was yet some measure of rich blood in him that could -make some other creature happy. He was curiously -humble over it, boyish and innocent. And yet as he foot-slogged -it along those muddy winter roads, a pilgrim in -search of his second chance, he became possessed by a -vague yet spiritual conviction that he would find that -chance somewhere in poor, battered, devastated France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was on the road from Avesnes to Maroilles that Brent -met the girl with the black shawl. It was no more than -an incident in his pilgrimage, but an incident that flushed -him with the warm red wine of humanism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was sitting on the butt of a broken telegraph pole -when the girl came along the road. She was pretty and -dark and rather slender for a French peasant, and Brent -was aware of her as an eager and hurrying figure with a -black shawl folded over her shoulders, and the end of it -held so as to cover her mouth. She came quickly towards -him. Her eyes were big and bright with hope, the desperate -hope that her man had come at last.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent saw her falter. Then the light died out of her -eyes. Her face seemed to grow more sallow, and very -sad. Yet she approached him, smiling with a sudden pity, -a compassionate friendliness that warmed to all those -lonely ones who returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are going home, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent raised his cloth cap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I find a home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sighed, dropped the shawl from her mouth, and -sat down beside him. Brent felt that she had suffered -very much; she looked ill, her soft eyes were growing -old with watching.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought you might be my Jean,” she said, with -the simplicity of one who had lived in days of great -sadness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sorry,” said Brent, “has he not come home yet?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes looked far away. The fingers of her left -hand pulled at a splinter that stood up from the round -bulk of the pole.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Four years. Yes, it is a long time. And our child -died—died of starvation. For six months I have had no -letter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sorry,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She began to question him—for his presence there -seemed to give her hope—and the lies that he had to tell -her turned sour in Brent’s mouth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have come a long way, monsieur, perhaps from -the centre of Germany?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, a long way. I was in Germany.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It may be that you met my Jean? Jean Bart is his -name, a tall man with thoughtful blue eyes and a scar on -his forehead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid not, madame. But there must be hundreds -of persons who have not yet come home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think so, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Many are in hospital. Some were in Russia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She smiled bravely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I do not give up hope. Some day he will return. -I pray to God each night and morning, when I work -and when I eat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please God he will,” said Brent, and found that he -had uttered a prayer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl insisted on Paul going back to her home, a -little red farm among poplars on the green slope of a hill -above the windings of a river. Jean’s father and mother -lived there, two quiet people to whom life had left but little -to say. They were very kind to Paul, and he passed the -night at the farm, sleeping in a feather bed in a narrow -room whose window showed him the stars hanging in the -bare branches of an old apple tree. There was the smell -of home about the place, the home of the Frenchman who -had not returned. Brent felt that the little house watched -and listened with every window, its gables cocked like -the ears of a dog waiting for its master.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was touched by the kindness these poor people -showed him. They sent him upon his way with a couple -of hard-boiled eggs and some apples in his pockets, and -a sense of the essential goodness of the humbler folk who -suffer. The girl went with him to the gate opening upon -the road.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon voyage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her soft eyes and her sadness put new life into Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May he return—very soon,” he said; “your husband; -perhaps I have brought you good luck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She watched Brent march off down the road, and his -going made her yearn all the more deeply for the other -man who had not returned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Four years,” he said, “four years of his youth—and -of mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet Brent’s words might have been prophetic, for Jean -Bart came home that night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent tramped on through Landrecies and Le Cateau, -those tragic towns, half alive, half dead. It was when he -came to the village of Maretz, lying all red and quiet under -a flat grey sky, that Brent felt the new phase of his adventure, -even as a man feels the nearness of the sea. He was -on the edge of the wilderness, fifty rolling miles of grey-green -desolation upon which a few broken villages floated -like derelicts. Brent spent three days in Maretz, living -with an old French couple in their cottage on the road to -Serain, very busy as a forager and a collector of hard -rations. He had the wilderness before him, a wilderness -where he could count on neither water nor food. But Brent -left Maretz rather suddenly. He was watching a party -of German prisoners working at the red mountain of rubbish -that had been the church when he became aware of -a man in khaki standing a little to one side and staring -at him intently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent knew the man, a corporal who had served in -the same battalion. He braced himself to the crisis, gave -the man stare for stare, a blank look of curiosity, said -something in French, and strolled on. Brent did not turn -his head to see whether the corporal was still interested -and suspicious, but he went straight to the cottage on -the road to Serain, collected his bag and stick, and footed -it out of Maretz.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That night he slept in a half-ruined cottage at Beaurevoir. -The morning brought him luck, and a ride on a -lorry that was travelling to Roisel, and at Roisel he won a -hot dinner at the cook-house of a Labour Company. Things -were going well. The lift on the lorry had saved him -many miles of tramping and much food. That evening -he reached Peronne, and saw the brown and battered -town outlined against a February sunset, and all the blue -waters of its valley full of the reflection of flushed clouds -and gouts of gold. Brent found a corner in Peronne, a -snuggish corner, even though the stars looked down on -him, and it was in Peronne that he had his vision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a strangely vivid affair, a dream and yet perhaps -more than a dream. Brent found himself in Beaucourt, -standing in the garden of the Café de la Victoire and looking -at a resurrected Tom Beckett, a Beckett who sat on -the heap of stones that he—Brent—had thrown over the -burial-place of Manon Latour’s treasure. Beckett’s boots -were muddy, so were his clothes, and his hair was full -of blood and earth. Yet the face of Beckett was like -white light. He sat and talked with the intensity of a -man who was fiercely concerned in making his meaning -clear, yet Brent could not understand a word of all that -his dear friend said. He was conscious of effort, bafflement, -suspense. He kept noticing the gap in the upper -row of Beckett’s teeth, a gap that had always made Brent -think of a hole in a white fence. He was astonished by -the discovery that he could see Beckett’s heart beating -under his soiled tunic, and see it as a reddish light that -waxed and waned with each beat, a mysterious and palpitating -piece of glowing human flesh. And all the while, -Brent was trying to grasp what his dead friend said, for -he was speaking to him, as though he, Brent, the live man, -were in desperate need of some human message.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sweat,—sweat!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was the one crude, forcible and enigmatic word -that Brent remembered. Then Beckett smiled at him, -and vanished off the pile of stones like a puff of smoke -dispersed by the wind. Brent woke up and stared at the -stars. He was shivering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beaucourt,” he said like a child repeating a lesson; -“I have got to go to Beaucourt.”</p> - -<div><h1>VI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>There</span> had been a slight frost. It was a brilliant February -morning with a few rolling white clouds low in the -blue of the western sky, and the green earth was covered -with a web of silver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent came to Beaucourt by the road from Rosières, -and from the high ground above the Bois du Roi he could -look down through the beech trees into the valley where -Beaucourt lay. The valley seemed full of yellow sunlight, -very tranquil and very still, and Brent could hear the -stream falling over the dam by the mill. Beaucourt seemed -to sleep the sleep of the dead. There was no smoke, no -movement, no human sound, and Brent stood awed by the -beauty of its desolation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For beautiful it was—even as a ruin. There had been -but little fighting at Beaucourt; it had been taken and -passed, retaken and passed again, and yet Brent could see -that there was hardly a whole roof left in the village. -The church had lost half its steeple, and through the windows -of the château the purple of the woods showed like -a curtain. Beaucourt was a shell, a village of squared -walls, gaunt gables, and a spidery web of blackened rafters, -when there were any rafters at all. Fires had blazed -here and there, and all about the church and the cross-roads -the English shells had fallen heavily. Many of -the little white houses had had the plaster shaken from -the walls, and showed up as masses of intricate timber-work, -pathetically naked, mere skeletons from whose bones -the flesh had fallen. The woods had suffered but little. -The thickets of pines and spruces beyond the church stood -up green and clear. Very few shell-holes spotted the fields -and orchards, nor had Beaucourt that indescribably sordid -look of a village that has become a refuse-heap, a kitchen-midden -of the war.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went down into Beaucourt with a feeling of -queer suspense. He was excited, conscious of a quickening -of the heart. Some sub-conscious emotion seemed to be -stirring in him, some quite unexplainable trembling of the -deep waters of his self. It was not the mere fact that -Beckett was buried there, nor the memory of Manon’s -treasure, nor yet the vividness of that fantastic dream. -It may have been that Beaucourt had an elemental yet -spiritual meaning for Brent, that it symbolized the unexpectedness -of his own past, and pointed with its broken -spire to a sky that was blue with the coming of spring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beaucourt touched Brent’s heart. It was more than -a ruined village; it was a picture of a broken life, a question -mark, a half-realized opportunity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent entered it by the Rue de Rosières. The stud -and plaster cottages here were mere shells—doors, windows, -woodwork and furniture gone, the ceilings fallen in, -the tiles from the roofs making a red litter on the ground -floors. Brent found himself standing in the triangle where -the Rue de Picardie, the Rue Romaine and the Rue de -Rosières met. The stone house at the corner had huge -holes in its walls, and the stone-capped well in the centre -of the triangle still carried a German inscription announcing -the fact that the water was fit to drink. Brent stood -and looked at the Café de la Victoire, or rather at the -ghost of it; and pity—pity for a woman—filled his heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The red roof had gone with its quaintly inquisitive -dormer windows. There were two ragged shell-holes in -the front wall, and the gable ends and chimney-stack -stood out bleakly against the blue of the sky. Hardly a -shred of woodwork remained; the house was doorless, -windowless. The gates of the yard gateway had gone. -A smashed lime tree hung with its head over the wall of -the garden, its boughs trailing on the raised path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a damned shame!” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had seen hundreds of ruined houses, but somehow -the mutilation of this house of Manon Latour’s affected -him quite differently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent climbed on to the path and entered the café. -He found that much of the rubbish had been cleared away, -and that someone had extemporized a shelter of corrugated -iron in the big kitchen and living room on the left of the -passage. He noticed, too, that the beams that had carried -the upper floor were still in their places.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent put his bag down on the tiled floor. The act -had a quaint suggestiveness. He was a traveller, and the -Café de la Victoire stood with a very open doorway, -offering him such hospitality as was left to it, though -there was no Manon to cook an omelette and make coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Brent went for a stroll. He wandered down to -Beckett’s grave and found it as a low mound of weedy -earth. The broken apple tree had been cut up and burnt. -Brent stood there for some minutes, bare-headed, eyes -looking back into the past, a sturdy, square-shouldered -man with a fresh-coloured face, and a youthful moustache -and beard. He looked like a peasant,—brown, blue-eyed, -thoughtful.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he went back to Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beaucourt surprised him. He walked down the Rue -de Picardie to the Place de l’Eglise, and saw nothing that -lived, not even a half wild cat. The Post Office, the -Hospice, and the Hôtel de Paris were respectable and -voiceless ruins. The école was a little less desolated. But -Brent had expected to find a few people in Beaucourt, a -few of those indomitable French folk who had won the -war. The village lay less than ten miles from the undevastated -country, yet Beaucourt seemed to have been -side-tracked, forgotten.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was one live thing in Beaucourt and Brent -discovered it sitting on a fallen block of stone by the -church, a grey old man, grey as the jumble of broken -buttresses and fallen pinnacles, but far more sad. He -seemed just a bit of the broken stone. Brent went and -spoke to him, and the old man looked at Brent with eyes -that seemed dead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good day, monsieur. You are all alone here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I am all alone,” said the old man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His voice was flat—toneless and empty of all emotion. -It seemed to Brent that the old Frenchman was beyond -feeling things. He sat and munched a piece of bread; -he was not interested in Brent; he was not interested in -anything. When Brent spoke to him he answered like -a man who had been mesmerized.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have come back, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I walked twenty kilomètres this morning to see—that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He pointed quite calmly to a little house over the way, -a house that had had its face smashed in, a house that -was almost unrecognizable. Brent felt a pang of pity, -yet there was nothing to be said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You stay here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I walk another twenty kilomètres. That has happened -to many people. Their hearts fail them when they -see what has happened.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can understand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The authorities order us to go back—but can they give -an old man a new heart and strong arms? They speak of -help, but no help comes. I blame nobody; we have suffered -so much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But will no one return?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, we shall come back,” said the old man, “but -we wait for the spring to come, and for food. Our roots -are here, I suppose, right under the ruins of all those -houses. But it will need courage—courage!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lit his pipe, got up, and made ready for his second -twelve-mile walk. Endurance, a blind, patient, half-dazed -endurance, that was what Brent saw in him, the -endurance that had saved France. It was tragic and it -was splendid, and it filled Brent with a feeling of deep -humility.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We young men shall have to help the others,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Frenchman gave him a look of surprise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Those are good words. But I have found it a selfish -world. Perhaps it will be a scramble. Everybody will -be too busy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he left Brent to think it over.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul returned to the Café de la Victoire, and it was then -that he remembered that he had not looked at the place -where Manon Latour had buried her treasure. He went -out into the garden and saw the mound of stones had not -been moved. Nettles had grown up in between the stones, -and the inference was obvious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She will come back,” was Brent’s thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he added:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Unless she is dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent felt hungry. He had carried a couple of empty -ammunition boxes into the kitchen, one to serve as a seat, -the other as a table, when he remembered the fact that his -water-bottle was nearly empty. He went out at once to -examine the well, not liking the idea of getting his water -from the stream. The windlass, chain and bucket had been -left behind, and Brent opened the queer little iron gate -in the well-house and sent the bucket down for a sample. -He heard it splash below, and felt the suck of it as it came -up full at the end of the taut chain. When he lifted out -the bucket into the sunlight he found the water looking -clean and wholesome. Brent smelt it, took some in his -palm and tasted it. The water had neither smell nor taste.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was conscious of a pleasant and boyish elation. -Beaucourt made him think of Crusoe’s Island. It was full -of the adventure of finding things; it challenged a man’s -wits, promised all sorts of surprises. The idea of trying -to live in Beaucourt tickled the eternal boy in Brent. He -brought out a battered enamelled mug and plate from -his bag, sat himself down on his ammunition box, and -made his first meal in Beaucourt, tackling the inevitable -corned beef and biscuits with the relish of a clean hunger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Satisfied, he lit his pipe, for he still had a little tobacco -left, and carrying his box out into the doorway he sat in -the sun and meditated. His pipe tasted good; the sky -was blue; he felt warm, and his boots had kept out the -mud. Even the ruins of Beaucourt had a beauty of their -own, a fantastic unexpectedness, a droll yet pathetic -irregularity of outline. These little ruined houses were -very human; some had fallen in upon themselves and -stood huddled in utter dejection; others had the staring -eyes of despair; a few still seemed to be calling for help. -The village resembled a little Pompeii, to be explored -and dreamed about, and yet it differed from Pompeii in -that it was potentially alive. It struck Brent as being -rather odd and delightful that he should be the one and -only inhabitant of Beaucourt, a stranger taking a holiday -in this starlit and admirably ventilated ruin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then the old Frenchman’s words recurred to him:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We shall come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s blue eyes gave a sudden, interested gleam. -He foresaw the return of Manon Latour, and he wondered -what she would think of this house of hers, what she would -make of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent left his box, jumped down into the roadway, -and began to examine the Café de la Victoire with an -intelligently reconstructive eye. There was something of -the Jude in Brent. Twelve years ago he had been a jobbing -builder, carrying on an obscure little business in a -west-country town, a man who had used the trowel and -the plumb-line by day, and read Maeterlinck, or Green’s -“History of the English People” or Montaigne’s Essays at -night. Chance, rather than his own inclination, had -pushed him into bigger things, and his marriage had discovered -him seven years later as the practical partner in -the exploitation of a suburban building scheme. He had -been the owner of an ambitious wife, a car, and a very -passable library, until other people’s speculative cynicisms -had brought him down with a crash.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And now, he stood looking at this French café with -the critical eyes of a man who once had worked with his -hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—if I had the stuff!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The thought fired an extraordinary series of explosions -in Brent’s brain. He began to walk up and down with his -hands in his pockets, an excited man who glanced from -time to time at the old red-walled building, calculating, -contriving. His pipe went out, but remained gripped -between his teeth. Then he re-entered the house. He -wanted to examine the inside of it, every corner of it, even -the cellar. One of his candles gave him the necessary -light, and in the cellar he made a discovery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some man in the near past had been fairly comfortable -here. Brent’s candles showed him a wire bed in one corner, -a rough table with some shelves made of ammunition boxes -standing against the wall, and what was of still more -luxurious significance—a rusty but sound Canadian stove -with its flue pipe connected with the little grating that -opened just above the paving of the path. The cellar -was quite dry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well I’m damned!” said Brent; “here’s my new -billet.”</p> - -<div><h1>VII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent</span> went upstairs again, and sat down like Crusoe to -consider the situation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A billet in Beaucourt postulated the quest of a number -of elemental necessities. Brent tore the white wood lid -off the box on which he was sitting, produced a pencil, -and began the creation of an inventory much like an ancient -scribe dabbing his cuneiform letters upon a tablet of -clay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the top of the board he printed:—</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;'>NECESSITIES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Under this heading he wrote:</p> - -<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';ml:4em;' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Food.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Water.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Wood for Stove.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Kettle or Saucepan.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Basin to wash in.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>He headed the second list:</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;'>LUXURIES</p> - -<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';ml:4em;' --> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Blankets.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>A palliasse.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Furniture.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Plates and cups.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Green food. What price Scurvy</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'> N.B. Try nettle tops.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>Milk.</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:4em;'>A looking-glass.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>So much for the paper work. Brent bored a hole in -the board, using his jack-knife, and hung his inventory to -a nail on the kitchen wall. He was going to exploit -Beaucourt in a thoroughly business-like way, and he was -as full of excitement as a boy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent took the first item—food. He had noticed -some sandbags on the wire bed in the cellar, and he fetched -one of them and started on the adventure. The last -troops to occupy Beaucourt had been Colonials, and they -had left Beaucourt in that open-handed, casual and spacious -way of theirs, not troubling to carry away what they -would be supplied with on the morrow. Brent began by -exploring the big stone house across the road and found -nothing that was of any use to him until he poked an inquisitive -head into what had been a wash-house or scullery, -a place that was weather proof and had been used as a -kitchen. Brent had struck oil. He saw a pile of bully-beef -tins in a corner, and on a shelf he found two unopened -cartons of jam and one of marmalade, a tin half full of -sugar, and two tins of Ideal Milk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Blessed be all Cobbers!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent salved seventeen tins of corned beef. He carried -the hoard over to the café, and decided that the cellar was -the only safe place for his store. He made quite a game -of stacking his provisions on the rough shelves, reflecting -that these shelves ought to hold books, but that books -were of no use in Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He adventured out again, and tried the école in the Rue -de Picardie, glimpsing it as a fairly well-preserved place -that had been patched with corrugated iron. The école -had two habitable rooms on the ground floor, rooms that -astonished Brent with a display of furniture, an old -tapestry-covered arm-chair with the stuffing bulging out -of it, a dining-room table, a wash-hand stand that had -been used as a buffet, some wooden chairs, even a picture -or two. Brent began to realize the possibilities of -Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But these were luxuries, and Brent was specializing in -a supply of food. The école had been an officers’ mess, -and in the room that had been used as a kitchen he found -an old saucepan that looked capable of holding water, a -mess-tin, and a spoon. The spoon was the colour of lead, -but polish would have been superfluous, and Brent -pocketed the spoon. In the brick coal-house at the back of -the école he salved two unopened tins of army biscuits, -and a canister full of tea. The tea was a trifle mouldy, -but Brent had an idea that he could dry it over the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The cellar of the Café de la Victoire began to look like -a ration-store, and Brent attacked the other necessaries on -his list. An army pick and a pile of ammunition boxes -in the backyard provided him with unlimited firewood; -he carried armfuls of it down into the cellar and stacked it -by the stove. He had appropriated the bucket from the -well, lest the next comer should take it away. The essentials -were shaping splendidly, but Brent was too full -of enthusiasm to play at lighting the stove. He had -noticed that all sorts of wreckage had been thrown into -the gardens at the backs of the houses. He had seen -iron bedsteads there, the remains of mattresses, broken -crockery, rusty stoves, garden tools, coffee grinders, old -buckets, enamelled pans, and God knows what. He went -out like a rag-and-bone picker and explored those gardens. -Even a very superficial search among the weeds and rubbish -sent him back with two good plates, a cup, a wine-glass, -and a pewter coffee-pot. Moreover he had seen a -couple of blankets and a ground sheet dangling in a cottage, -where they had been nailed up to keep out the draught.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent carried the crockery, glass and plate to his billet, -and returned for those blankets. He had expected to find -them rotten, ready to fall to pieces when touched—but -an army blanket has a toughness of fibre and a vitality -that has made it salvable when soaked in liquid mud. -These blankets were in a very fair condition, and Brent -handled them with respect and affection. An ex-soldier -is not too fastidious—but Paul decided to give the blankets -a good soaking in the stream, even to use a little of his -precious soap on them, and to hang them near the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The later the hour the better the deed. He went -down to the stream and found the very place where the -poorer women of Beaucourt had washed their linen, a place -where a little platform of flat stones jutted into the water. -The sun was a great red ball behind the beeches of the -Bois du Renard when Brent returned to the Café de la -Victoire, lit his candle in the cellar and prepared for a -snug night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hung one of the wet blankets across the cellar -doorway, using the length of telephone wire that had been -left there by the previous occupant. Then Brent made -trial of the Canadian stove, and having neither straw nor -paper, he cut shavings and splinters with his jack-knife, -and contrived to get the fire alight with the expenditure -of a single match. Matches were going to be precious; -he had five boxes. The stove behaved like a gentleman, -neither smoking nor sulking, but consuming with relish -the wood that Brent fed into it, and developing a hearty -and convivial glow. Paul crowned it with a saucepanful -of water, and having previously washed out the pewter -coffee-pot and put a palmful of the Australian tea into it, -he opened a tin of milk with the point of his jack-knife -and sat down to watch the water boil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent enjoyed that meal more than he had enjoyed -anything for a very long time. He pulled the table up in -front of the stove, and felt completely and cheerfully at -home. He had a cup to drink from, white plates for his -meat, biscuits and jam; the tea tasted good—better than -he had expected. And it was hot!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some billet,” he reflected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The washing up could be left till the morning, and feeling -warm both within and without, he filled up the stove, -lit a pipe, and considered his new home. A soldier learns -to see the beauty of comfort in some shack that would make -a civilian shiver, and to Brent this cellar of his was quite -beautiful. The rusty old stove glowed like bronze. The -flame from the candle and the glow from the hot iron lit -up the white stone vaulting of the cellar; and the well-cut -stones and the neat pointing in between them pleased -the eye of a craftsman. The tea-cup, glinting white, had -little pink roses on it. The pewter coffee-pot struck a note -of luxury. Brent looked almost gloatingly at his store of -food on the shelves. He took down some of the tins of -bully beef and examined them. They were a little rusty -here and there, but no sign of being “blown.” He had -tested the meat from one of them at tea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again, he blessed the Australians.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then his thoughts turned to less material things. -He began to dream, while the smoke of his pipe drifted -up towards the little grating where the stove-pipe met the -outer air. He sat with knees spread about the stove, his -body leaning forward, his hands outstretched to the -warmth, a very simple and primitive man, a man who could -dream dreams.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Supposing I stay here?” he reflected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A whole world of strange possibilities opened before -him. He saw himself becoming a settler in Beaucourt, -using his strength and his knowledge in helping these -French folk to rebuild their broken houses. And then he -began to wonder whether the French would accept him, -and how far it would be possible for him to play the part -of a Frenchman. His accent was passable, his fluency -very fair, and he knew that he had met with no disaster -on the way from Charleroi. He had posed as a southerner, -and had trusted not a little to the vagaries of patois and -provincialisms; but settling in such a place as Beaucourt -was a very different problem. It was obvious that he could -pose as a Frenchman who had been domiciled in England -for ten years, and whose accent had become anglicized. -It was equally obvious that he could produce no records -and that he would have to depend upon an amiable acceptance -of his tale and an atmosphere that included no enmity. -Yet he could pack his bag and march at an hour’s notice. -He had a little money, and a workman’s craft that could -keep him. His original plan had been to wander, to go -east or west as the chance offered, to spin a yarn about -shell-shock and loss of memory if he found himself in -an awkward situation. Nothing mattered so long as he -disappeared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet the adventure appealed to Brent, and Beaucourt -had taken a mysterious grip of his manhood. As he sat -and stared at the reddening stove and fed it with wood -from the heap beside him, he could see the women and children -and a few men coming back to live among these ruins, -unfortunates obsessed by the tradition of “home.” He -saw little Manon Latour trudging along the road from -Bonnière and standing with blank face and hopeless eyes -before this shell of a house. He saw old women grubbing -in the ruins, bent figures bowed down and trying to clean -the rubbish and the fallen beams and rafters from the -floors. He saw men working savagely at little shanties, -or hammering at some extemporized roof, and always with -an eye on the sky. It would rain; it would blow. The -gardens were full of weeds and rubbish, and would need -cleaning before crops could be grown. The thing seemed -almost beyond human patience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What would they make of Beaucourt—these poor people? -Would they have the heart and the courage to begin -life over again?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent found himself becoming fascinated by the tragedy -of this French village, a tragedy that was one of -the bleeding wounds in the side of France. He was -strangely yet humanly curious to see what would happen, -and more than half tempted to lend a hand in the healing -of it. The job would be a man’s job, better than punching -holes in tickets, scribbling in a ledger, or passing -groceries across the counter of a shop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still—it was no more than a dream, and Brent felt -sleepy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder what will turn up,” was his thought as he -took off his boots and dragged the wire bed nearer the -stove. Placing his carpet-bag to serve as a pillow, he lay -down and wrapped his greatcoat round him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And it was still a dream, and no more than a dream, -when Brent fell asleep.</p> - -<div><h1>VIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> cellar of the Café de la Victoire was so snug and -warm and Brent so healthily tired after his first long day -in Beaucourt that he slept till nine o’clock, twelve sound -wholesome hours.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Someone was moving about overhead in the kitchen. -A box was overturned, and the clatter woke Brent. He -sat up and listened to a sound that was surprising and singular -because of its unexpectedness, an unexpectedness -that was not without pathos. Brent sat very still, cursing -the wire bed because it creaked even when he breathed -and creaked most self-assertively. He could hear a -woman weeping up above there, weeping her heart out -with a passion that broke into little exclamations of -anguish and despair: “O my little house!—what a tragedy!—What -a ruin! Nothing left, not even a door.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Brent understood that Manon Latour had returned. -His first sensation was one of puzzled discomfort. He -did not know whether to climb the steps and add the -embarrassment of an explanation to the tumult of her -emotion, or whether he should lie hidden until she had -recovered her self-control. Yet it seemed rather a negative -piece of poltroonery for him to sit there in the cellar listening -to the sound of her weeping. There was a nakedness -about her grief that embarrassed Brent. Manon thought -herself alone; she had thrown herself upon the bosom of -Beaucourt’s solitude, and Brent felt like some Peeping -Tom spying upon her nakedness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the end he did what the plain man and soldier in -him wanted to do. Too much psychology might ruin any -love affair; in life it is the emotions that matter. Brent -went up the stone steps in his socked feet, walked along -the short passage, and stood in the kitchen doorway, -looking at Manon Latour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was sitting on a box, her hands covering her face -as though she were praying, a little figure in black, a figure -that was still tremulous with emotion. A bag lay on the -floor beside the box. Brent noticed her muddy shoes, -her black hat and cloak hung on a nail, and the pretty -way her dark hair was wound like a wreath about her head. -She had a mass of hair, lustrous as the surface of a freshly -broken piece of coal, and its blackness contrasted with -the characteristic pallor of her face and throat. Brent’s -recollection of a year ago had left him the memory of a -brave and very determined little woman with bright, -dark eyes, a little woman who had faced him with a sang-froid -that had impressed a man who had learnt to respect -one thing and one thing only—courage. And now he -saw her in tears over this wreck of a house, and her tears -touched Brent’s heart. He had a feeling that these were -not the tears of a woman who wept easily like an April -sky. She was shocked, overwhelmed, discouraged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Madame!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her hands dropped from her face. She looked at Brent -with eyes that accepted him as a Frenchman who had -happened to wander in, another homeless soul lost in the -ruins of Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good day, monsieur. It is a pleasant home-coming, -is it not?—Perhaps one expects too much!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave a little twitch of the shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It appears that I have no chair to offer a visitor. My -café has plenty of fresh air, but no furniture.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had felt instantly that the house was hers, and -that he had no right to be in it; his sense of ownership -vanished; the cellar had ceased to be his billet. He stood -with one shoulder resting against the wall, considering the -situation, while Manon was trying to remember him as -some neighbour whose face had been part of the familiar -life of Beaucourt. She saw a man in velveteen breeches -and a black coat, with a dark blue scarf knotted round his -neck, a man with a ruddy and rather delicate skin, a short -brown beard, and a small moustache. His eyes were of -that soft but intense blue that belonged to the north and -the open air; intelligent eyes set well apart under a square -forehead. He had a good-tempered, easy mouth. It was -the face of an incomplex man, whimsical, a little sad. -There was nothing distinctive about him, he was like thousands -of other men, neither tall nor short, a very ordinary -person, save perhaps for his eyes. They were a little -unusual—less stupid and self-absorbed than the eyes of -most men. There was something in them that appealed -to the woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon did not recognize Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am trying to remember you, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not belong to Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She noticed that he was without boots, and again she -was puzzled, for his socks were clean. Either he had -been in the house all the while, or he had left his boots on -the doorstep. Brent saw that she was looking at his feet, -and that she was puzzled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I spent the night in your cellar, madame, and my -boots are down there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How droll! I seem to have seen you before.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was about a year ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was interested, challenged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was it here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, here in Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then he put his head back and smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is still there; the ground has not been touched.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stared. Her eyes changed from a deep brown to -black; her face grew more serious, and seemed to show -little shadow-marks under the eyes and about the mouth. -She stood up, came a step nearer, and looked Brent straight -in the face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of what do you speak?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The treasure that you buried in the garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw her face as a hard, white surface, and her eyes -as two hard, black circles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—who are you? It was an English soldier.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was that English soldier, madame. Shall I prove -it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went and groped in the cellar for his boots, and -sitting on the top step, laced them on, while Manon Latour -waited in the passage. A little widow who has kept a -café, and has had half the men in the village in love with -her, cannot but know something of man and of the very -obvious habits of the creature. Also, a pretty woman -who has a head on her shoulders is apt to get very bored -with the perennial fools. They all tell the same tale; they -all want the same reward. Manon had grown fastidious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But this man puzzled her from the very beginning. -What was he doing in French clothes, and why had he -come back to Beaucourt? She chose the direct method, -and asked him the reason.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was knotting the lace of his left boot. He looked -up over his shoulder and smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had a dream——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw that she was quite unconvinced.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why does one do certain things? Have you a reason -for everything? My friend was buried here, that’s all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got up and went out into the yard, and Manon -followed him. Brent turned into the garden through the -gate in the stone wall, and walked along the weedy path -between the currant bushes and the dead stalks of last -year’s cabbages. He stopped at the place where the shell -had punched a hole through the wall, and where the stones -lay scattered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is the place as you remember it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes were still intensely black, her forehead -worried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And the difference?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The place was here—just in front of the stump of -that old espalier. There was nothing but earth and weeds. -No stones.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I put the stones there,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave him a quick gleam of the eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, after you had gone. I thought the thing would -look more natural. Then I went to bury my friend. -After that—I was taken prisoner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She remained calm, judicial, compelling herself to a -cool realization of the fact that this man had kept faith -with her, if all that she had buried there was under the -soil. And then, another thought prompted her to ask -him a question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You say, monsieur, that you came back to see the -grave of your friend?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was aware of Brent’s blue eyes lighting up with -a flicker of shrewdness and humour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I did not come back to rob you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had not accused you of that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If the thought was there, it was natural.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt ashamed of having asked him that question, -and her face softened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is all so strange. You come back as a Frenchman, -and in French clothes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s of no importance,” he said; “there is only one -thing that matters at this moment—the proof that I -did not rob you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—wait——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught his arm as he turned to fetch a rusty spade -he had seen lying among the rubbish in the yard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Supposing someone else had found it—and taken it -away?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you would disbelieve me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She thought a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went for the spade, threw the stones aside and -began to dig. Manon did not move or offer to help. -She stood and watched him, conscious of the sudden and -peculiar intimacy that was joining her to this unexpected -man. She was convinced that he had told her the truth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had opened a hole about a foot deep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be careful,” she said suddenly; “the silver is in a -big crock. You might strike it with a spade.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s blue eyes flashed her a look of gratitude. She -had thrown him a “Hail, comrade,” uttered one of those -little, human confessions of faith that warm a man’s heart. -She wanted him to understand that she believed in him, -and that he should understand it before the spade turned -up the truth. Brent treasured these words. They touched -the pride of a man who had been a failure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How deep did you dig?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About half a metre—I had so little time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent thrust the spade softly into the soil and felt it -jar on something solid. He glanced at Manon with an -air of triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked down into the hole and then at Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are a man of your word, monsieur. I thank you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent spaded out a little more of the soil, and then went -on his hands and knees and began to grope in the hole. -First he lifted out a big crock that was full of loose silver, -one-franc, two-franc, and five-franc pieces. Below the -crock lay a tin trunk painted a yellowish brown. Only -a portion of the lid showed—the place where the crock had -stood; the rest was covered with earth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked questioningly at Manon Latour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let it stay there,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will be thinking me a miser, monsieur, but all -that belonged to my husband who is dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I put the silver back in the same place?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,—put it back, if you please, monsieur. That -hole will make the safest bank I can think of.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose there is no one watching us?” said Brent, -feeling strangely happy at being included in the conspiracy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked round the garden, remembering that it was -hidden on three sides by its high stone wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not likely. I saw no one in Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent replaced the crock, and shovelled back the earth, -and Manon helped him to pile the stones over the spot. -She appeared to be thinking, but her silence was without -embarrassment or constraint. Her face had become the -face of a serious child, a child who was neither afraid nor -unhappy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How is it you speak French so well?” she asked him -with a child’s abruptness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A Frenchman taught me, while I was a prisoner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded, and the nod seemed to suggest that she -understood that he had reasons, but that she was not -worrying her head about them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens! but I am hungry—I had my cup of coffee and -a slice of bread at four. Since then I have walked from -Ste. Claire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent threw on a last stone. There was a healthy -zest in the way she spoke of her hunger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Paul has not had even that,” he said; “but -your house has a store-room and a larder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then it is a miracle,” she answered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come and see the miracle. It is right that you should -take possession.”</p> - -<div><h1>IX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>So</span> these two went back to the battered old red house -with the patches of white plaster still hanging to the walls -of its rooms, and the blue February sky showing where -its roof should have been. The window of the kitchen -looked along the Rue de Picardie and all the broken and -jagged outlines of the village, etched with black rafters -and the rawness of fractured brick. The snapped spire -of the church was the colour of amethyst. White clouds -floated above the beeches of the Bois du Renard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon lingered for a moment at this window, her hands -clenched, something between pity and anger in her eyes. -Beaucourt mattered to the little Frenchwoman in a way -that no restless dweller in cities could understand. It -had formed the background of her memories, a quiet place -where she had made a little song of the day’s work, a place -where life had been rich in the emotions that are her -religion to a woman. She had been proud of her café, -proud of her linen, of her garden. Her happiness had -made Beaucourt what no other place in the world could -be to her. As the old Frenchman had put it, “The roots -of life were deep down under the ruins.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were other memories, perhaps, thoughts that -left a sour taste in her mouth, but Manon was thinking of -the happier days. She had forgotten Brent, forgotten her -hunger, as she stood looking out upon the ruins; and Brent -waited like a man in the doorway of a church, some sanctuary -that he had not the right to enter, feeling her at -her prayers, wise enough not to disturb her. Her sadness -was like a sweet smell of incense and the soft obscurity of -some shrine. She was no mere material woman,—just a -pretty, white-skinned, dark-eyed creature, with a beautiful -bosom and a soft throat. Manon Latour had a soul, a -little white fire burning in her heart. That was what Brent -felt about her, the Brent who asked for those dear moments -of mystery in a woman, for the flash of that spiritual fineness -that can fill the eyes with a mist of tears. He did not -want money; he craved for self-expression,—the simple -human things, nearness to someone who was a little better -than himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s lingering at the gap in the wall that had been -a window lasted but a few seconds. She turned to Brent -with a soft animation that played like sunlight across the -deeps of her seriousness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forgive me, Monsieur Paul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled and handed her a box of matches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will find a candle down there, and all that you -need. I’m afraid I have not lit the stove.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes seemed to question him. “Is it that you are -wiser and a little more sensitive than other men? You -can hold back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went out into the passage, and Brent took her -place at the window, lounging in the sunlight with his -hands in his pockets, and recasting the metal of his vision. -For a few short hours life had seemed solid and real, centred -in that cellar in ruined Beaucourt, a life of quaint -adventure, a boyish game played with the elements of -existence as the counters. All this had changed with the -return of Manon Latour. Brent felt himself adrift—on -the edge again of a casual vagabondage. He was surrendering -that cellar and all that it contained, food, shelter, -even the vague inspiration that had been born in it. He -saw himself packing his bag and marching.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had been so absorbed in these thoughts that he had -not heard her re-enter the kitchen. He was struck by her -seriousness. She, too, had been thinking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How long have you been in Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Since yesterday,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat down on the box.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Since yesterday. And in my cellar I find food for -many days, a bed, plates, blankets, all that a man would -think of—if——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused, looking up at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I did yesterday will be useful to you to-day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled as he spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is the beginning of a little home for you, -madame. I washed the blankets; they have not been -used since I washed them, and they will be dry by to-night. -The food was collected by me—in Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She interrupted him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then—you meant to stay in Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His face remained turned to the window, and she saw -it in profile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had thought of it. Just a whim, you know, the -whim of a man who was starting life over again. By -the way, the matches and the candles belonged to me. -I can leave you two boxes—and if I may take one candle?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes were dark with some emotion that Brent did -not fathom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And where will you go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He refused to look at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, anywhere. It does not matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is nothing that does not matter. And—you -want your breakfast. Shall we have it up here in the sunlight?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s chin swung round. He stared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just as you please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She got up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must light the stove. Or perhaps you are more clever -at it than I am. Supposing I wash those plates. I can -find some more boxes and make a table and seats here. -And I have a packet of coffee in my bag.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon Dieu!” said Brent. “Life is good. I’ll go and -light that stove.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went about the work like a thoroughly practical -man, trying to limit the day’s outlook to that one word -“breakfast,” and refusing to see anything sentimental in -lighting a stove and boiling a saucepan of water.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anyhow, I shall start the day with a meal,” he said -to himself; “I wonder what she will make of this place -when I have gone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Manon—the woman—kept intruding herself upon -Brent’s prosaic philosophy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami—I want more water, and there is no bucket.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went upstairs with the bucket and filled it at the -well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We ought to have a cistern,” she said when he returned; -“it would save so much trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was conscious of a shock of surprise. She seemed -to be thinking in twos, while he was carefully limiting the -future to one. But then—Brent knew very little about -women. He had not learnt to divide the sex into its two -groups, the woman who can be bought, and the woman -who cannot. The woman who can be bought had always -thought Brent a fool, because he had made a mystery -where no mystery existed. Brent was an incorrigible -romanticist, and your material woman detests romance. -She suffers it in novels, but finds the thing a damnable -nuisance when it comes gesturing and dreaming and getting -itself mixed up with the very obvious furniture of -her very obvious little life. The woman who could not -be bought understood Brent at once. She was ready to -trust him—but that did not help Brent to understand -Manon Latour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had contrived a table and two seats in the -kitchen, and had spread a clean handkerchief with a pink -border to give a touch of feminine refinement to the deal -box that formed the table. That handkerchief fascinated -Brent. He stood staring at it while she was down below -making the coffee. He supposed that she had taken that -bit of pink and white stuff out of her bag. It was one of -those little touches of colour, of imagination, that are like -the opening of a flower, or the voice of a bird when the -leaves are still in bud upon the trees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he heard her calling him. She had one of those -pleasant, animated French voices, soft and expressive, -a voice that was made to chatter happily about a house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami—will you help?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He met her on the stairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The candle is burning out, and I do not know where -to find another. Besides—they are so expensive; we -must use more daylight. Be careful—it is very hot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave him the pewter coffee-pot, and was ready to -follow with the rest of the meal. And she had a surprise -for Brent—a little pat of fresh butter laid out on a rice-paper -serviette.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allons!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat down at the table, with the blue sky for a roof. -The day was warm, a day that heartened the world with -a breath of the spring, and the coffee was fragrant, exquisite. -Brent spread some of the fresh butter on a biscuit, -and looked vaguely sad.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is very pleasant here,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was cutting herself a slice of bully beef.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What children we are! And a child is the most inquisitive -thing in the world.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gave her a sudden, yet shy look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you inquisitive?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, of course. But I do not catechize a friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent gulped a mouthful of hot coffee, put the cup down, -and stared at the pink and white handkerchief in the -middle of the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I would like to think I was that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She understood his hesitation and kept silent. Brent -was still staring, the fingers of his right hand holding the -cup.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am supposed to be dead,” he said with a kind of -unwilling abruptness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon put a slice of corned beef upon his plate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A good man has reasons.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He raised his eyes to hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A good man?—Well—perhaps! You see—I made a -mess of life over there in England. I do not mean to go -back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s eyes held his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You wish to become a Frenchman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled one of those human and half-whimsical -smiles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps—I want to make a fresh start. I’m not the -sort of man who makes money; I’m too easy-going. I -have always liked the things that you can’t buy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know what you mean,” said Manon. “One can’t -buy happiness, can one?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes lit up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now—how did you find that out?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think I ever found it out, mon ami. It’s -the sort of thing I always knew. I suppose my mother -gave it me. And yet, half the world never finds it out, -and dies grumbling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked at her as though he had discovered a -miracle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Extraordinary!—I always knew it—somehow, but the -people I happened to live with did not believe in that -sort of foolishness. I suppose my wife was an unhappy -woman; she was always wanting something she had not -got and she was always wanting the wrong thing—something -that meant money. Well, of course, it fell on me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave him a look that was like a sympathetic caress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a fool! And so——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I smashed. Then, of course, she hated me. I was -a failure—according to her ideas. If I had had a little -pity, I might have got up again; but I did not get any -pity. A man does like to have his head stroked, you -know. Then the war came, and I got away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drank his coffee and Manon refilled his cup.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did you manage it?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Manage what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To be dead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked a little embarrassed, and then he told her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When my friend was killed down there in the orchard, -I had an idea, an inspiration. He had no wife or children, -no one who cared. So I buried myself in his grave, and -took his name. It was so simple. I wanted to disappear, -and to begin life over again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was silent for a while, and her eyes seemed to be -looking at a picture—a picture of this Englishman’s life. -Her silence troubled Brent. He began to fidget.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps it was a coward’s trick,” he suggested; “what -do you think?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not easy to judge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon sat very still—realizing that he was in earnest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you have turned Frenchman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gave her a shy look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I managed to buy these clothes in Belgium, and then -I disappeared. Paul Brent died a year ago, and if they -look for Tom Beckett, my friend, well—they will never -find him. If necessary, I am a Frenchman who is a little -touched in the head. I have forgotten things. All my -people are lost or dead; that happened in some village—early -in the war. I’m just Paul—a vagabond. If people -ask too many questions I just smile and shrug my shoulders.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—all that—will lead to nothing,” she said gravely; -“a dog’s life. I think you had some other purpose in your -mind—and you are hiding it from me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have shown you the vagabond, madame, and a -vagabond has no rights, no claims upon anybody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” she said, “many men would say that you -were a fool to trust a woman. You shall not regret it. -When I look at these ruins I feel that the lives of all of us -will have to begin over again.”</p> - -<div><h1>X</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent’s</span> day had begun with Manon’s tears, and those -tears of hers and the incident of the untouched treasure -had produced in both of them an atmosphere of emotional -candour. Brent’s confession had grown out of the emotion -that the misfortunes of Manon Latour had roused -in him, and the tale that he had told her made her glimpse -him as a sort of lost child, a man who was better than -his past. She believed that he had told her the truth. -His plan to begin life over again was so naïve, so whimsical, -and so sad, that it moved her pity and made her -wonder whether something more significant than chance -had not brought Brent to Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw that he was making ready to go. He had -the restless air of a man who was girding his loins for the -road and preparing to shoulder his bag. She felt that -he was sad over it, and that he was not so greatly in love -with the vagabond life of which he spoke so lightly. She -thought that Brent had neither the eyes nor the mouth of -a wanderer. She could fancy him loving a corner by the -fire, a bit of garden to dig in, the smell of a stable, a glass -of wine on a summer evening, someone to whom he could -talk, someone who did not listen to him because he was -a stranger. She did not forget the corner he had made for -himself in the cellar. A man who collects cups and plates -and lays a store of food has not the heart of an Ishmaelite.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The meal was over and they were sitting there in -silence, very conscious of each other and of the elemental -and simple needs that had made comrades of them for -an hour. Brent was filling his pipe. He looked vaguely -dejected, and she noticed this all the more because he was -making a business of trading in cheerfulness. Brent was -a bad salesman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon pulled out a gold watch, a watch that she wore -under her blouse like a locket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Eleven o’clock!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent straightened with uneasy self-consciousness; he -felt that he ought to be on the road. Manon had put -her watch back, and she appeared to have forgotten -Brent—though she was thinking of him all the while with -a shrewdness that considered everything. If Manon had -a heart, she also had a head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I shall stay here -to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The cellar is quite dry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That long walk frightens me. It is seventeen kilomètres -to Ste. Claire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Too far,” said Brent with grim cheerfulness; “you -will be quite comfortable here. Those blankets should -be dry—and I’ll cut you some more wood before I go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ignored those last words of his, and stood up, -pushing back the box on which she had been sitting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to look again at all my little property. Will -you come with me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent glanced at her in surprise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rose and stood waiting while she took her cloak -from the nail and flung it over her shoulders. And suddenly -he saw her as a lonely little figure, a woman left -sitting alone in this ruined house, and the man in him -rebelled. He pictured her helplessness, the impossible -struggle she would be carrying on against Nature, and -perhaps against men. He understood that life in Beaucourt -would be very primitive, and it was possible that it -might be cruel. There were all the elements of a savage -struggle for existence among these rubbish heaps that had -been houses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave him a flicker of her brown eyes, eyes that -were on the verge of tears. He saw her bite her lower lip, -and stiffen her shoulders as they went out into the street -and stood there together looking up at the red shell of the -house. A little furrow of pain, pain that was being fought -and suppressed, showed on Manon’s forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ma pauvre petite maison!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent knew now that he wanted to stay in Beaucourt, -that there was work here, work fit for a man’s -hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The walls are good,” he said; “they will stand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what can I do with bare walls, mon ami?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned and walked into the yard, passing between -the stone pillars that had lost their gates. The yard was -full of the cosmopolitan rubbish that war creates, the elements -of a civilized home reduced to one common scrap-heap. -The stable had lost its roof. The little barn and -the cow-house were mere timber frames from which the -tiles and the plaster had fallen. Manon stood and looked -at it all, and her mouth quivered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see,” she said with a helpless gesture of the -hands; “what is a woman to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They passed on into the garden, and the garden did not -despair. It had one great wound, a huge shell-hole in its -centre, a pit into which the Germans had pitched their -refuse, but an hour or two’s work with a spade would heal -all that. The two holes in the stone wall needed stopping, -and the espaliers cried out for the pruning knife, but as -for the weeds, well they would make green manure. Manon -and Paul wandered down into the orchard, climbing -through the shell-hole in the wall, and here too Nature -had a smile of promise, a promise of green growth that -nothing could hinder or dismay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon saw Beckett’s grave and glanced at Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,—I lie there,” he said; “queer, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Was he a good man—your comrade?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was a better man as a soldier than I was. That’s -all I care to remember.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned back into the garden, and her heart failed -her as she looked at the roofless house. There had been -an arbour in the garden at the end of the little avenue of -pollarded limes, and Manon’s memories led her there. -The iron frame was unbroken, rambled over by a hardy -vine and some climbing roses,—a round iron table standing -in the centre, with a semi-circular green bench at the -back of it. People had forgotten to break up the wooden -bench for firewood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon sat down, and looked up at Brent, who was -knocking the bowl of his pipe against the edge of the iron -table. His face was serious—overshadowed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I think that I am -ruined.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent glanced at her, and her eyes hurt him. He sat -down on an end of the bench.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can understand,” he said; “it’s—it’s damnable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She began to talk with an air of pathetic candour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see—my life lies here; the place is part of my -heart. I have the blood of peasants in me, and all the time -I think of the past. This morning I did not know what -I should find here; I had such hopes, such an excitement -of tenderness. And look at the poor place!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She seemed to be touching something with gentle and -caressing hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What can a woman do? I have a little money, but -all the others will be too busy to help. I shall not be able -to hire labour. And even if my hands were the hands of a -man I should not know where or how to begin.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had the stem of his empty pipe gripped between -his teeth. He was staring at the house; and suddenly he -turned to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to speak out. I shall not hurt you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not afraid,” she said simply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you remember my telling you that I had had a -dream? It happened at Peronne, only a few days ago. My -dead friend who is over there came and spoke to me—we -were here in this garden—but I could not understand what -he said. When I woke up I had a feeling that I should -come to Beaucourt, that it was my business to come to -Beaucourt. And last night as I sat in that cellar of yours, -I began to wonder whether some wise spirit had not sent -me here. I want work, a new chance, something to make -me feel a man. That’s how it happened; just like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can believe it,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went on, not looking at her, but staring at the ground:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I told you I wanted to make a fresh start. Why -should I go any farther? I have a little money, and one -will want but little in Beaucourt to begin with—just food -and boots and a little tobacco. Why shouldn’t I stay and -rebuild your house?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was looking at him with her brown eyes wide -open, softly, and with a kind of gentle incredulity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami, it is a beautiful thought; but it is not -possible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean that it is impossible for me to stay here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no! But how can you put a roof on my house? -Where are the wood and the tiles to come from? -Besides——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He began to smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It could be done.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—you are dreaming?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m very wide awake,” he said, “and I say that it -could be done. You have not seen as much of Beaucourt -as I have. There are army huts over there—a little -knocked about—but I could get enough timber and corrugated -iron out of them to do the job. You see—ten years -ago I was building houses with my own hands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you serious?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was never more serious in my life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon leant forward over the table, one hand shading -her eyes and a faint flush showing upon her face. The -forefinger of her right hand traced crosses and circles on -the top of the iron table. She began to speak, hesitated, -and fell back into silence. The colour died away from her -face; she became very pale, so pale that even her red lips -looked blanched. The very intensity of her emotion broke -in a storm of fierce sincerity. She turned on Brent and -attacked him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it that you want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Brent did not flinch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have told you. Work—a new chance—a man’s -chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave a flick of the head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I know men! They do not do things for nothing. -Let us have no misunderstanding. I have nothing to give -but a little money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent faced it out as he had faced many a bloody ten -minutes. He was a little grim, but very gentle; and all -his sympathies were with Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now we are down to the foundations,” he said; “you -have cleared all the rubbish away. You can hit out at me; -it doesn’t hurt—because you are being honest, and I’m -not a cad. I don’t want your money. I don’t expect -anything. I don’t say that I shouldn’t fall in love with -you if I stayed here—but even if I did, it wouldn’t be -the sort of love that makes a man behave like a beast. -That’s all I have to say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She smiled; her colour returned; her lips and her -eyes softened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Somehow I believe you,” she said, “though I could -not tell you why. And yet—what would you get out of -such a life, what would it lead to—for you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent leant over towards her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Manon,” he said, “can you understand a man who -has been a failure wanting to do something that is good -and unselfish? Can’t you understand him craving for a -clean taste of life in his mouth?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can understand it,” she answered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God—do we always sit down and work out a -sum on paper? Aren’t there bits of fine madness in life—glorious -things that seem mad to the careful people?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She held out a hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My friend, forgive me; but I have been a woman to -whom many men have made love. The fools do it so easily -and they expect a woman to be flattered and to surrender -just as one opens a door.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent grasped her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then—I may stay?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw up his head with an air of pride, and a flash -of half-boyish exultation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s great of you—great. You are giving me my -chance. Let’s go and look at the house; let’s get at it—at -once. I want to take my coat off.”</p> - -<div><h1>XI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>From</span> that moment they were like children carried away -by the excitement of the adventure. The droop had gone -from Manon’s eyelids. She glowed, she laughed, she chattered, -her brown eyes alight, her heart full of the spirit of -romance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What an adventure!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A very devil of an adventure,” said Brent. “I feel -man enough to tackle the pyramids.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed and laid hold of his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall call you Paul,” she said, “and you can call me -Manon. Now, we must not be in a hurry; we must consider -everything—like wise people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Heads first, hands afterwards. Let us go and look -at the house, and get our plans on paper.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He carried the two boxes down into the street, while -Manon searched in her handbag for something. She -joined him on the strip of grey pavé between the wrecked -houses, a note-book in one hand, a pencil in the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see I have a head.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled like a boy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Trust a Frenchwoman to be practical! Just what I -wanted. Now then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat down side by side in the open street, with the -February sunlight shining on them, and the silence of -Beaucourt unbroken save by their two voices. Brent had -the note-book open on his knee, and he was looking critically -at the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now then, let’s be obvious. What do you see?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her intense and glowing seriousness delighted him. -It was like playing a game with a charming child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see no roof,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Exactly. That’s the most obvious thing. Let’s start -with that. A roof means timber, corrugated iron, nails, -a saw, a hammer, a jemmy or iron bar for getting the -stuff. That’s bedrock. I’ll make notes of all these—under -the word ‘Roof.’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked over his shoulder while he wrote.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How pleasant it looks on paper. We must find all -that we can in Beaucourt. Can we not go now, at -once?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned and looked at her with eyes that laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who was it said that we must not be in a hurry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I’m so excited.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Keep cool. Now, what next?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see two holes in the wall, one just under where the -roof was, the other on the right of the window of the -public room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have to fill up those holes before we start the -roof. That means lime, sand, bricks, and a bricklayer’s -trowel. I write them down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But can you lay bricks?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a wonderful man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now then—where the devil are we to get lime and -sand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, where?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat with her head slightly on one side, exquisitely -solemn, frowning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The factory! There used to be sand at the factory. -And bricks—they are everywhere. But lime? O mon -Dieu!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll manage somehow,” said Brent, “even if I have -to use mud and straw. Plenty of straw in the old palliasses -lying about. What next?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No doors.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A carpenter’s job.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No windows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m,” said Brent reflectively, “I wonder if there is -a dump anywhere about here. Oiled linen? Yes. I -don’t mind what I thieve.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What morals! But—I like it. Oh, what an adventure—what -life!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was making notes, and Manon pulled out her -watch; its hands stood at five minutes past twelve. There -was dinner to be remembered; she would be responsible -for these household necessities, while her man worked, -but Manon was too excited to think of eating. She wanted -to explore Beaucourt, to discover all the wonderful things -they needed, stacks of timber, mountains of corrugated -iron. The iron would look horrible after the old red-brown -tiles, but Manon reminded herself that it could -be painted and that it would be the first whole roof in -Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you hungry, mon ami?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a bit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to explore.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He put the note-book away, and they started out on -their first voyage of discovery. Brent turned down into -the Rosières road and through a stone gateway into a -grass field. He remembered having noticed half a dozen -army huts standing in this field, and he rediscovered them -with Manon on that February morning. There were six -of these huts, and three of them were in very fair condition; -one had been wrecked by a shell, and the other -two damaged by splinters. There were doors to be had -for the unscrewing of the hinges, window-frames also, -though the oiled linen had been blown to ribbons.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went through the huts, examining the rafters -and the condition of the timber framing. He paced the -floor of one of them to find its width, and then stood looking -at Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here is our roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is there enough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Enough in these six huts to roof half a dozen houses. -And I think I can use these rafters.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall help,” she said; “I shall work like a man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent found a single wire bed in one of the huts. He -put it on his back, and dropped it outside the café as they -repassed it on their way into the village.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can rig that up somewhere. There is the shelter -in the kitchen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked horrified.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you cannot sleep there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will be frozen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was a soldier for four years. It will be better than -the fire-step of a freezing trench. Now—what about this -factory?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As they walked along the little Rue Romaine, Brent -discovered another Manon, a Manon who kept stopping to -look at some wreck of a house, a Manon whose brown eyes -were full of pity. She forgot the Café de la Victoire for -a moment and lost herself in the tragedy of these obscure -little cottages, and in looking through their broken nakedness -at the weedy gardens that showed behind them. -Rain had pulped the fallen plaster. There was a darkness, -a slime about these ruins, a sense of pollution. Manon’s -face seemed to have aged. The irresponsible buoyancy -had disappeared from the adventure and she left the childhood -of the day behind her in passing through the Rue -Romaine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“O mon ami, my heart bleeds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She passed in front of a cottage in which a picture of -the Sacré Cœur still hung from a wall that had not fallen. -“Grandmère Vitry lived here. Do you see the picture—and -the tiled floor all covered with rubbish? She was so -proud of her cottage—and whenever I looked in, Grandmère -seemed to be polishing that floor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She walked on a few steps and then paused again. -Her face was serious, compassionate, troubled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I seem to have been thinking of myself and of no one -else. Do you think me very selfish, Paul?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes appealed to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am troubled. I begin to ask myself, ‘Ought we to -pull down those buildings—where people might shelter? -Is it fair to snatch things for ourselves, when others will -need them?’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her sudden sensitive hesitation touched Brent. He -was being shown another Manon who thought of others -as well as of herself. Brent’s heart had gone hungry for -many years, craving that spiritual food without which no -true man can be happy, and in the hands of this little -Frenchwoman he seemed to see the bread and wine of the -great human sacrament.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us think it over,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lit his pipe, and stood silent for a moment as though -he was trying to visualize Beaucourt and all that Beaucourt -suggested. The war had taught Brent to reduce -life to its elemental facts. He had seen men do incredibly -selfish things, and incredibly generous things. In attacking -it had been necessary to keep your eyes and your mind -on the objective, on some shell-smashed bit of trench that -had to be taken—and held. You did not stop to look at -the red poppies growing among the weeds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How many people were there in Beaucourt before the -war?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How many? Perhaps two thousand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And how many houses?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t say—three hundred?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And all—without whole roofs. If we shared out the -iron on these huts, each house might claim three or four -pieces. There would be no sense in it. Besides—I will -try to get all that we want from the huts that have been -damaged.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood there for a while, arguing the ethics of the -adventure—nor did Brent find Manon easy to convince. -He liked her none the less for that. She stood out against -herself with a sturdiness and a courage that searched relentlessly -for some sure inspiration that could satisfy the -religious heart of a woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Brent who found it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen,” he said; “I will tell you something that happened -to my comrade who lies in your orchard. It was -in an attack on the ruins of a village. We were being -smashed to bits as we went up the hill; the men faltered -and began to lie down. My comrade went on. We saw -him climb up on a bit of wall and sit there. He lit his -pipe, and waved his steel hat at us. We got up and -went on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His face lit up over that grim bit of courage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can see it all,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—we have got to be like that. We shall be -the first up the hill. Perhaps the others will be dismayed, -ready to despair. We shall be on our bit of wall, and we -shall wave them on, and shout—‘Courage!’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then he saw the light of vision in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And we can help, mon ami, we can help. I see it—now—and -my heart is happy. Allons! There is courage -in what we do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The factory was a red brick building on the south of -the Rue de Bonnière, where the Rue Romaine joined it. -Standing in the valley, its chimney and ziz-zag of walls -were not part of Beaucourt as the Café de la Victoire -saw it, the Arcadian Beaucourt with none of the grimy -sweat of industrialism upon it. Yet the factory was -to prove a treasure mine to Paul and Manon. Its glass -roofs were shattered, and the machinery a chaos of rusty -iron, but lying as it did, well away from the Beaucourt -cross-roads, it had suffered less than any other building.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The very first thing that Brent saw in the factory yard -was an iron hand-barrow tilted against a wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo! Here’s luck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got hold of the barrow and found that it was sound -and strong. A piece of shrapnel had torn a hole in the -bottom—just for “drainage” as Brent put it. He was -quite exulted over this stroke of luck.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was watching him with a glimmer of light in -her eyes. She had begun to like this man with his boy’s -moods of seriousness and fun, his moments of shyness and -enthusiasm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a little present from le bon Dieu.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For two good children. Now, supposing you take -all those buildings over there, while I go through the -workshops. It will save time. You know what to look -for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She repeated the list.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lime, sand, a trowel—tools, anything that looks useful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By George—I had forgotten something. What is -ladder in French? Something you climb up, see?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He made a show of climbing a ladder, and Manon -understood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Echelle! Of course!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent left her to go on her own voyage of discovery -and made his way into the factory. The tiled floor was -littered with broken glass that crisped and crackled under -Brent’s feet. Here and there a girder had fallen and the -place looked as though a Zeppelin had plunged through -the roof and was rusting in a tangled mass of complex -metal work. Brent saw nothing here but scrap-iron. He -walked through a doorway, and found himself in what had -been an engineer’s shop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The opportune and heaven-blessed discoveries of the -Swiss Family Robinson were not more singular than -Brent’s adventure in that engineer’s shop. The indefatigable -Boche appeared to have used the place as a workshop -and then left in a hurry, and the British troops who had -followed had passed through with equal speed. Luckily no -Chinese had been sent to clear up the village, and Brent -was the first salvage man on the spot. He collected a -couple of hammers, a wrench, a tommy-bar, two cold -chisels, a brace and a set of bits, a rusty hack-saw—a -whole bag of nails, and an assortment of bolts and nuts. -He was like an excited miser grabbing gold. In a box -under one of the benches he found a jack-plane, a pair -of pincers, some files, and a gimlet. The whole affair -was so enormously successful that it seemed absurd.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He filled a box with the precious treasure, and staggered -out to meet Manon. She, too, had rushed to meet him, -a little flushed with excitement, a blue lacquered tin of -corned beef in her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have found a ladder. Its top is broken—but you -might mend it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Great! Look here!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He showed her his boxful of tools.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“O, mon Dieu!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything I want! It’s absurd!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes filled with sudden seriousness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Someone watches over us. It is a benediction. Let -us not forget.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she showed him her blue tin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are dozens of these scattered about in the -buildings. We ought to take care of them. They may -help to feed some of the others when they come.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s heart blessed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No wonder we are lucky,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They went to look at the ladder. Manon had discovered -it lying behind one of the sheds; it was a thirty-rung -ladder, and Brent saw that the right pole needed -splinting about three feet from the top.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just long enough,” was the verdict, “I think I’ll take -this home before anyone else borrows it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shouldered the ladder and marched off, and on -his way back met Manon trundling the barrow along -the Rue Romaine. She had loaded the tools into it, -and the iron wheel was making a fine clatter over the -cobbles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent took charge of the barrow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m getting hungry,” he observed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor Monsieur Paul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran on ahead, and when Brent reached the café -with his precious plunder, he found that she had the table -ready and had washed the plates. The two glasses were -set out, and in the middle of the table stood a bottle of -red wine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thunder, what is this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I brought this with me. We will drink the health of -the adventure.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She poured him out a glass of wine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I have a secret.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then—keep it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No secrets between comrades. There are thirty bottles -of red wine, twenty of white, and a flask of cognac buried -in the garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent pretended to be shocked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You buried them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder if they are still there. The Boche had a -wonderful sense of smell.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I put something to mark the place, and it has not -been touched.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Heavens,” said Brent, “you will be able to stock your -cellar. What a good thing it is that Paul is a sober -fellow. But I should like to remind you, madame, that -we have not found that lime.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did I not tell you? I found a heap of it in the factory -stable. I was so excited about the ladder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something very terrible is going to happen to us. We -are being too lucky.”</p> - -<div><h1>XII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>After</span> dinner they held a council of war. It was Manon -who opened it, Manon the woman, the housewife, the -Queen of the Linen and the Store Cupboard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall go to Amiens,” she said; “will you please -give me my note-book?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent surrendered it to her, and smoked his pipe, while -she sat biting the end of the pencil, a very serious and pre-occupied -little woman whose eyes looked at the mottled -and disfigured face of the stone house over the way, and -whose right hand kept jotting down notes on the paper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can hire a pony and cart at Ste. Claire. Yes, I -will go to Ste. Claire the day after to-morrow, and I shall -stay away three days. There are so many things that we -shall need.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent sunned himself in the pleasant seriousness of -her enthusiasm. Now and again he was conscious of a -moment of incredulity as he watched her intent face with -its soft curves and wreath of coal-black hair. Her brown -eyes seemed to be looking into the windows of the magasins -of Amiens. When she was puzzled or in doubt she tapped -her white teeth with the end of the pencil. He became -aware of the fact that he himself appeared to be the centre -in the field of her vision. She looked at his pipe—his -boots, his clothes, with the critical eyes of a little mother -fitting out a boy for school.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Potatoes!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made a note on the page.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have to think of your health,” she said with wide-eyed -candour; “it is necessary for a man to have good food, -a little fresh meat and vegetables. It will be necessary for -me to go marketing once a week.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you will let me share.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He patted his pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him gravely and shook her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is my affair. You work, I find the food. That -is my part of the partnership. It is quite reasonable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent attempted to argue, but she was very determined, -and she had her way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must leave me some share, mon ami. It would -be absurd if you were responsible for everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now tell me. What do you require—most urgently?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He reflected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A good saw.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A dictionary.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you speak almost like a Frenchman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t all the words I want—the names of things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made a note of the dictionary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some paint and brushes. And nails—nails of all sizes. -We shall eat nails.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she had completed her list she tore out the leaf -and handed the note-book back to Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to tidy the house,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had schemes of his own. He went out and paced -the length and breadth of the café, and then sat down on -the steps of the stone house and did sums on paper. He -reckoned that he would need some hundred sheets of corrugated -iron if the sheets measured six feet by two feet, -and allowing for overlap. The timber for the rafters -worked out at 720 feet. Then there would be the tie-pieces -and battens. He saw, too, that it would be necessary -to fit bedding-plates for the rafters to bear upon along -the tops of the walls. That was a problem that sent him -wandering through Beaucourt on another voyage of discovery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In an alley behind the Post Office Brent found a dump -of pit-props and railway sleepers. The sleepers were seven -feet in length, well squared, and in good condition, the -very material he needed for his bedding-plates. He spent -an hour shouldering a dozen of them across to the Café de -la Victoire, and stacking them in one of the rooms on the -right of the passage. Brent was shaping his plans with a -forethought that contemplated a complete assembling of -all the necessary material. He was not fool enough to begin -building before he had made sure of his resources.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Seeing nothing of Manon, he went to explore the Rue -de Bonnière between the Post Office and the factory. -There were some biggish houses on the north of the street, -and the remains of a few shops. Brent worked through the -houses, making notes of anything that might be usefully -borrowed. In what appeared to have been the yard of a -local builder of Beaucourt, Brent found the head of a felling -axe and a bricklayer’s rusty trowel. A carpenter’s -saw was the one thing he coveted, but Beaucourt baulked -him in the matter of a saw. He collected a coil of stout -telephone wire, a French shovel, and the head of a hoe; -but it was in the backyard of the last house that he made -his great find.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In one corner of the yard, an old gig with black and -yellow wheels was standing with its shafts uptilted, like -a praying mantis. Dash-board and seat were gone, and -three of the spokes were broken in one wheel, but Brent’s -brain rushed to imagine the uses of such a vehicle. He -got hold of the shafts, and found that the gig could be -trundled quite successfully; it was light, and the injured -wheel would function, provided that too much was not -expected of it. Brent dragged the gig out of the yard and -round into the Rue Romaine, and in the Rue Romaine he -met Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was coming out of the ruins of Grandmère Vitry’s -cottage, carrying the picture of the Sacré Cœur. She saw -Brent between the shafts of the gig, lugging it along with -an air of triumph. He pulled up—out of breath, for he -had been trundling the gig up-hill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Transport,” he said; “here it is. The very thing for -carting our iron and timber.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her delight was as great as his, and therein lay the -secret of this little woman’s charm. She reacted with the -freshness and buoyancy of a healthy child, and her temperamental -and French expressiveness made her an exquisite -playmate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—it is a triumph! Yes, the doctor’s old gig, with -the wheels that made you think the sun was shining.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m borrowing it,” said Brent with a wink; “I’m -borrowing everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She showed him her picture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall take care of this for Madame Vitry. It was -so sad to see it hanging there. Now then, you between -the shafts pull, and I’ll push.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The gig went up the hill with great briskness between -the laughing and chattering pair of them. They ran it -into the yard, and examined it there with much pride, -Brent explaining how he could load the timber and iron -from the huts, and run his improvised truck down the -slightly sloping Rue de Rosières.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had had triumphs of her own. She took Paul -into the house with a dramatic gesture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw a couple of chairs, one of them the arm-chair -from the école, a real table, and upon it a collection of -glass and china. There were cups, plates, dishes, tumblers, -wine-glasses, forks, spoons, even a couple of rusty knives. -A china candlestick was included. On the floor stood a big -earthenware bread-pan, a kettle, and an old tin bath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Magnificent,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Borrowed—like your gig,” she added, with a look of -mischief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are times, madame, when it does not do to -be too particular.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, I have a piece of work for you—to-morrow. I -have found my own kitchen stove. It is in the école.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No time like the present. I’ll collect it with the -barrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It takes to bits, mon ami. You will find it in the -ground-floor room on the left.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Map reference not required. I go—toute de suite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Brent went out again into the ruins of Beaucourt and -worked till the red sun set alight the beeches of the Bois du -Renard and the sky was a steely blue above his head. -Brent had been exploring the château on the hill, and -he stood on the grass-grown drive, with the grass crisping -with frost under his feet. He heard a partridge calling -to its mate, a harsh but plaintive sound in the great -silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sudden solemnity fell upon Brent. He looked out -over the wooded country purpling in the hollow of the up-rolling -night. The redness began to die down beyond -the Bois du Renard. Presently a star flickered out. The -air was very cold, and Brent’s breath a patch of silver -vapour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The beauty and strangeness of it all seemed like the -fall of a curtain at the end of that most wonderful day. -Brent could hardly believe that so much had happened in -ten short hours, those extraordinary hours full to the brim -with inevitable adventure. He turned his head to look -down at Beaucourt, a ghost village melting slowly into the -dusk, a pattern of broken walls and gables, patches of -whiteness, shadowy hollows like the eye-sockets of a skull. -Brent saw a light shine out, a little yellow square in the -darkness, solitary and strange. It was the light in the -Café de la Victoire—Manon’s light.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent did an absurd thing. He took off his cap to it—uncovered -his head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Home,” he said; “how queer!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His footsteps seemed to make a great noise in the silent -village as he walked back through the still, cold night—but -Brent did not feel the cold, for his heart was warm in -him. Manon was whistling, whistling like a blackbird; -the sound came out of the cellar, a cellar that was full of -the glow from the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She heard his footsteps up above and ran to the steps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come down. Supper is ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hesitated at the head of the stairs, a man grown -suddenly shy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I? It is your cellar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not be foolish,” she said; “I have cooked you -a hot supper.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That wonderful day drew to a close. Manon and Paul -were tired, wholesomely and happily tired, and they -ended the day by arguing about the blankets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One each,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can have both.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I will have neither.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My greatcoat is enough for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” she said, “if you think that I am going -to let you sleep up there under a bit of tin with nothing -but your coat, you are a little touched in the head. Take -your blanket, at once, and do not argue.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent surrendered. He bade her good-night and went -upstairs, taking his bag for a pillow. He made a sack of -his blanket, crept into it, and settled himself on the creaking -wire bed under the four pieces of corrugated iron. -Through the window he could see the stars shining over -Beaucourt, clear, frosty stars.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent pulled his greatcoat over his head, and slept in -spite of the cold.</p> - -<div><h1>XIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Manon</span> did not wake very early, and rays of sunlight -were thrusting like sword blades through the iron grating -when she opened her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The cellar was warm, and the wire bed surprisingly -comfortable, and Manon lay curled up, looking at the -yellow light and feeling in no hurry to leave the bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Another fine day,” she said; “I wonder if the man is -still asleep.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She became aware of a thudding sound coming from -the back of the house, a sound that associated itself with -ideas of work—strenuous work on a frosty morning. -Manon felt guilty. She had a vision of Paul warming himself -after a night spent with one blanket under a tin roof, -and she jumped up and lit the stove. She had decided to -give him hot coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the stove was well alight, she brought a comb and -a little mirror out of her bag and put up her hair. She -had slept in her clothes, and however much she disliked -the feeling of it, she realized that such things as blankets -bulk big in any scheme of civilization, and that without -blankets a woman’s sense of daintiness might not be able -to survive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must go to Amiens,” she reflected, as she washed -her hands and face in an old tin basin half full of cold -water; “but what a pity that things are so dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The stove needed more wood, and she went up in search -of her partner, discovering him in the yard, breaking -up boxes with a pick.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You poor man,” she said, “are you frozen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had to thaw my feet and hands,” he laughed, “but -life is devilish good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will change all that—not the devilish good part -of it, Monsieur Paul. There will be hot coffee in ten -minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to splice that ladder before breakfast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is permitted. But after that, you will take a -holiday.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He thought that she was joking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A holiday—with ten hours’ work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is Sunday,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is news to me. I had forgotten the days of -the week.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—Sunday. And I am going to church.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All the way to Ste. Claire?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No! here in Beaucourt. The church is still there. -And I suppose le bon Dieu was not driven away by shells.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall come with you,” said Paul; “it won’t do me -any harm.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was no formal ceremony that church-going, no affair -of greased forelocks, polished boots and conventional -self-suppression. Manon chattered all the way up the -deserted street—buoyant as the February sunshine, talking -about this romance of reconstruction with a frank -enthusiasm that accepted God as an interested listener. -Even the battered church with its stump of a spire, and -white wounds showing in its grey bulk, was a thing of life -and of hope. God had shared with these peasants in the -tragedy of their ruined homes. That was how Manon -visualized it. The Great Mother stood there amid the -rubbish, stretching out her beneficent and understanding -hands. The glass had gone; there were holes in the roof, -and patches of damp on the walls; the tracery of the -windows had had the beauty of its Gothic curves snapped -and broken. Yet this church of Beaucourt seemed to have -won a deeper mystery—the ineffable smile of a martyr, -the beautiful exultation that no clever devilry can kill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon paused in the Place de l’Eglise. She was silent -now, wide-eyed, serious. She made the sign of the cross -as she looked up at the broken spire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is still very beautiful. Let us go in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The church of Beaucourt had served many purposes. -It had been a hospital, a supply store, a stable, and it -carried the stigmata of all these experiences upon its stones. -Soldiers had scribbled on its walls, driven in nails, left -lewd phrases strung upon the plaster. Whenever it rained -there were puddles on the floor. Rubbish and smashed -masonry choked the aisles. Someone had slept on the -altar and left a dirty mattress there, but the Gothic mystery -remained, the awe, that invisible something that is -like the sigh of an invisible god.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent followed Manon into the church, uncovering his -head as she dipped a finger into the imaginary water of the -piscina, and made her little obeisance to the altar. She -knelt down on the stone floor, and Brent knelt down beside -her. She remained thus for some minutes, eyes closed, -hands folded,—but Brent did not close his eyes—for his -religion was centred in Manon. Brent was just the ordinary -man, supremely indifferent to dogmatic religion, -well able to live without it, rather mistrustful of the so-called -religious people. But Manon’s kneeling figure -touched his sense of the beauty of human emotion. Her -simple devoutness had the charm of a pleasant picture. -It added mystery to her, made her eyes more than mere -mirrors of consciousness, her blood more than a red and -vitalizing fluid. Brent had always been something of a -mystic, a man who had disliked his mysticism reduced to -printer’s ink and pews.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A light breeze had sprung up. It played through the -broken tracery of the windows and through the rents in -the roof, making a soft and plaintive murmur like the rush -of invisible wings. Manon opened her eyes, raised her -head and smiled. Her face made Brent think of white -light. He felt that he could trust Manon as very few -women can be trusted; she had not the hard little soul of -the modern girl; she would understand a man’s finer -impulses; she would not shock him with some sudden -little blasphemous confession of crude and vulgar egotism. -And yet he realized that she was no fool.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She crossed herself, stood up, and brushed the dirt -from her black skirt. It was the practical, pleasantly -dainty little Frenchwoman who reappeared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They need a broom here. And what a bill there will -be for glass!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They passed out again into the sunlight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was good of you to come with me. In these days -men are not devout; they have other things to think of. -Are you a Catholic, mon ami?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent hesitated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, to be perfectly honest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she surprised him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not worry your conscience. When I go to church, -it is not because I am this or that, but because I know there -is a God, and that life is a mystery, and that one should -kneel down and feel things and try to understand. I am -not a religious woman, as the priests would have it, nor -am I a Catholic. Religious women are often not good -women—as I understand goodness.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are full of surprises,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave him a shrewd little smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I went to a good school, Paul. Do you think that -because I live in a village I have been brought up in a convent? -We French are very practical; we think a great -deal. But I am not a little fool who imagines that she -understands everything. One must have a religion, and it -is none the worse if you make it yourself. Never to do -mean things, and never to grow hard. And to remember—always—that -one’s orchard and garden are miracles, and -that life did not happen by chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had put on his cap. He took it off again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You get to the heart of things,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Directly ahead of them, and half closing the east end -of the Place de l’Eglise, were the ruins of the Hôtel de -Paris. The hotel stood at the corner where the Rue -d’Eschelle ran steeply down to the river, a big white place, -its angles and cornice of faced ashlar, its great central -chimney-stack still standing up red and raw. On the other -side of the street the Hospice towered up like a ragged grey -cliff that looked ready to fall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon walked towards the Hôtel de Paris. The ruins -had a particular significance for her, for the hotel had -belonged to Monsieur Louis Blanc, vulgarly known as -Bibi. Manon had had cause to regard Monsieur Louis -Blanc with peculiar distrust and aversion. He had been -her rival, and he had desired also to be her lover; the -intrigue would have suited both his body and his business.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must tell you about Bibi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then they looked at each other, for someone was -trampling over the piles of broken brick inside the shell of -the Hôtel de Paris. The sound came towards them. A -tall man appeared in the doorway, a man wearing a soft -black hat, a black coat, and the blue breeches and puttees of -a French soldier. He stood and smiled and took off his hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good morning, Madame Latour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s face became a thing of stone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good morning, Monsieur Blanc. A fine day for the -ruins, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi was looking at Brent with a peculiar and cynical -curiosity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have muddled the name, have I? Madame is no -longer a widow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon snubbed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will leave you to guess, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi laughed. He was a sallow-faced man with a pair -of insolent, light blue eyes, a nose that broadened out -towards the nostrils in the shape of a green fig, and a -mouth that looked as though it had been hacked out in the -rough and never finished. He had a way of staring people -in the face with a faintly ironical smile, a smile that put -them down in the mud. He looked very strong with the -strength of a great, raw-boned, nasty-tempered horse. The -backs of his hands were covered with black hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps monsieur is less proud?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at Brent, cocking one shoulder up, and tilting -his head. But Brent said nothing. He was trying to -explain his own instant feeling of antipathy towards the -man, and an instinctive desire to hit Monsieur Bibi hard -and square between the eyes. It was not that the man was -evil. Brent had lived with evil men, and they had not -troubled his temper. And then he struck it. It was -Bibi’s swagger, the arrogance of the male thing who had -had many successes with women. Bibi was one great -swagger. He swaggered when he smiled, when he talked, -even when he stood still. His very silence swaggered. -And Brent had a suspicion that it was not a thing of wind -and brass—but a huge self-confidence, an audacity that -took life in its hands and laid it next the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then Brent remembered that he had not chosen a -French name. He pulled out his pipe, filled it, and looked -at Bibi across the top of the bowl as he struck a match.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here is my fiancée, monsieur. An English girl, too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi’s eyes snapped. He saw the joke, and he had -learnt something that he wished to know. He matched -Brent’s pipe with a cigarette, and stood there, ugly, polite -and conversational. Manon’s face remained a thing of -stone. She knew how clever Bibi was—abominably clever, -and she wanted to warn Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you have returned, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi had a suspicion that she was trying to put herself -between him and the other man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just to view the scenery, madame. I drove over alone; -the cart and horse are in the factory stable. Is it possible -that I may have the pleasure of driving you home?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I remain here,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens!—Monsieur, perhaps?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is staying here too,” said Manon with stubborn -composure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi shrugged. He had learnt something more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are more lucky than I am, madame; you have a -partner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; it is an excellent arrangement. We have come -to see what can be done—but all this is rather hopeless, is -it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded at the ruined hotel. Bibi inflated himself, -spat, smiled at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall have that up in no time. Pst!—just like that! -The bigger the job, the bigger I feel.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Manon smiled on him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You always were a man of resources, monsieur. I -shall have to be content with a shanty, a couple of rooms,—what -we can knock together. And now I have the fire -to attend to; the blankets are damp; Monsieur Paul discovered -them in a cottage. Au revoir, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi’s hat swaggered to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be very careful of those blankets,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon did not speak to Paul until they were half-way -up the Rue de Picardie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well!—that is Monsieur Bibi,” she said; “what do -you think of him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A beast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His frankness brought back her animation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, you are right—a beast—and a clever beast. Did -you see how he was trying to find out——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I ought to have a French name,” said Brent; “how -would Paul Rance do? It is a river—somewhere. And if -inquisitive people ask questions, and worry about my -accent you can tell them—or I will—that I lived for seven -years in England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is possible that we shall have trouble with Bibi. -He has a grudge against me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What sort of a grudge?” Brent asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He wanted to buy my café—because too many people -came to it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon remained silent for a moment. She was thinking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” she exclaimed, “I shall not go to Ste. -Claire to-morrow. I shall stay here several days. There -is no time to be lost, and I can help you. We must take -what we need before Bibi thieves everything.”</p> - -<div><h1>XIV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>They</span> entered the café and sat down on the two wooden -chairs that Manon had salved from one of the houses. -The coming of Bibi had introduced a sudden sinister complexity -into the adventure, an element of discord, a threat -of competition. Brent refilled his pipe. He looked -worried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We had better begin on those huts,” he said; “I’ll -get the tools together and go down at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon restrained him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not yet. We must wait.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Till that fellow has gone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bibi is cunning. He has come here to see what he can -find—and there is no generosity to be expected from Bibi. -We must not betray what we are doing. When he has -driven off in that cart of his, then we can work like slaves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There will be a moon to-night,” said Brent; “I shall -work all night. We must store the sheeting in one of -those rooms, and I will get two doors and some shutters -fitted at the first chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon held up a hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They heard a man’s boots clanking on the pavé.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I knew he would come here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Louis Blanc did not stop outside the Café de -la Victoire. He strolled past it with the detached and -casual air of a holiday-maker, nodding at Manon who -stood at the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even if you have no wine, madame—they tell me -there is plenty of good water in the well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, there is plenty of water.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He paused for a second—his hands in his pockets, his -eyes considering the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have been lucky.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, monsieur, lucky! I have four walls and an abundance -of ventilation.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have two walls and half a wall. Just because my -little hotel was too near the church! We always shelled -churches, you know, just to give le bon Dieu a personal -interest in the affair.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed and walked on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon waited till he had disappeared down the Rue -de Rosières, and then ran out into the garden. She knew -that from one corner of the garden it was possible to see -the field where those precious huts stood, but though she -remained on the watch, the figure of Louis Blanc never -appeared in the field. Brent, who was equally interested -in the pilgrimage of Monsieur Bibi, went across to the -stone house over the way, and saw the Frenchman turn -back before he had reached the end of the Rue de Rosières. -Bibi stopped to look at the well, gave a casual glance at -the café, and diverging into the Rue Romaine, walked off -towards the factory.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent followed him, keeping to the orchards and the -gardens behind the houses. The ruins of the cottage -nearest to the factory served him as an observation post, -and Brent did not quit it till he saw Bibi driving off in his -cart along the road to Bonnière.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent ran back to the café.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has gone,” he said, reaching under the wire bed -for the box in which he kept his tools.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was ready.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He did not see those huts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think Bibi was looking at something else,” said -Brent; “your café.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is probable that no salvage party ever worked as -Paul and Manon did, stripping the corrugated iron from -those army huts in the field on the road to Rosières. They -dragged the yellow gig up the hill, and Manon loaded it, -while Brent used hammer, cold chisel and tommy-bar, -and slid the loosened sheets down to her from the roof. -They made a fine and healthy clatter between them on -that Sunday afternoon, but as there was no one in Beaucourt -to hear it, no one was offended. Brent allowed -twenty sheets to a load, remembering the weak wheel of -the gig. Then they set off for the café, Brent between the -shafts, Manon pushing behind, the load banging and clattering -as the gig bumped over the pavé. They carted two -such loads before breaking off for dinner, a meal that -lasted less than twenty minutes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Forty sheets. That was pretty quick work. We want -a hundred.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had lit his pipe, and was glancing humorously at -the bloody finger and knuckles of his left hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nasty stuff to handle. And I was in a hurry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You worked like a devil,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m fresh to the tools. Show me your hands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had a slight cut across her left palm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You ought to have gloves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not afraid of a cut or two.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, I can manage alone this afternoon. Supposing -you collect bricks for these two holes in the wall!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She refused to do any such thing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think that I am some soft little cat from a villa -in Paris? I used to dig and hoe all my garden during the -war, and I can carry a sack of potatoes if someone puts -it on my back. I don’t cry off because of a scratched -hand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent liked her pluck and determination.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Put a sandbag over each hand. There are some in the -cellar. I don’t want you with your arm in a sling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he crawled about the roof, wrenching off the iron -sheets and sending them skiddering down to Manon, Paul -was troubled by the face of Louis Blanc. The adventure -had ceased to be an exciting game played by two grown-up -children; it had taken on more primitive colours, colours -that had not the innocence of the brown eyes and red lips -of Manon, of the purple of the woods and the grey green -of the fields. The world and Monsieur Bibi had come -swaggering together into Beaucourt, and Brent was conscious -of the unpleasant significance of the event.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Straddling the ridge of the roof, and looking at the -chequer of red and white walls, the shadowy interspaces -and the patches of broad sunlight that were Beaucourt, -Brent realized that he had become responsible for Manon. -He felt that she belonged to him, which of course was -absurd. Less than two days of close comradeship did not -justify a sense of possession, and yet the instinctive fierceness -of the feeling astonished Brent. Why this bristling -of the hair, this clenching of the fist? He had no difficulty -in finding an answer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But a far more sensitive and unselfish mood forced -itself in front of these primitive emotions. Brent sat and -looked into the face of his own past, a past that conjured -up the present and the future. The coming of Bibi had -made all the difference in the world to Brent’s outlook upon -life. A cloud had wiped the irresponsible and un-self-conscious -sunlight from the landscape. This polite and -clever blackguard had reintroduced the social compact into -Beaucourt. The village had ceased to be a wilderness, -even though Louis Blanc’s presence in it had been a mere -matter of hours. His appearance was more than a suggestion. -Society had returned in the spirit, even if it -remained absent in the flesh, and Brent saw Beaucourt -full of eyes, mouths, ears and heads.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His thoughts centred upon Manon. What would Bibi -tell people, those refugees scattered through the villages -beyond the region of devastation? Brent knew how a man -of Bibi’s kidney would talk. “Oh, yes, Manon Latour is -living at Beaucourt with some fellow.” Brent swore to -himself—but swearing did not solve the problem. He had -discovered that he was responsible for Manon, even though -he knew in his heart of hearts that this adventure promised -to be the cleanest and most beautiful thing that had ever -happened to him in life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the best part of a minute he had been straddling -the ridge, staring at a hole in one of the iron sheets, and -doing nothing. Manon was waiting. His inactivity was -so sudden and so obvious that it touched her curiosity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tired?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He leant forward and knocked off the head of a screw -with the chisel and hammer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. Thinking.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You looked like murder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I dare say I did.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He loosened another sheet and slid it down to her, but -she let it lie untouched, and stood looking gravely up at -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were thinking about Bibi?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He moved along the roof to attack the next sheet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, perhaps I was.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What does Bibi matter, when we are getting all that -we want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent raised his hammer and let it fall again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It has made a difference.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What has?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“His coming here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes had gone black and opaque, as was their way -when she was seriously puzzled or troubled. It was plain -to her that something was clogging Paul’s mind and hampering -his work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What kind of difference?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was frowning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you see what has happened? I am not a fool -who goes out to look for trouble, but we are not alone here -any longer. A man has to think of these things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes gave a flash.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good heavens—you mean——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, what sort of man is Bibi? Was he pleased to -find me here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean that you are afraid,—you want to go?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent slogged the head off a nail.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Damn!—I never thought you would think that! -What the devil do I care what happens to me? But -what I do care about——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught her breath with a little breathless exclamation -that was almost like a cry of pain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, it’s like that? I understand—you will forgive -me, mon ami?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked down at her with eyes that had a queer -shine in them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you will forgive me for swearing!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went on with the work. It was the obvious -thing to do, and it was a screen behind which he could -hide, for Brent was one of those men who became absurdly -shy in the presence of emotion. He hammered away -with indefatigable ferocity, ignoring Manon who was -stroking her chin with two fingers and looking at something -that was a long way off.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently she resumed her loading of the gig, nor did -she speak again till she had dealt with all the sheets that -Brent had pushed down to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Twenty,” she said, “we have a load.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent slid down the roof, landed, and put himself -between the shafts of the gig. Manon took her place -behind it, and they started out of the field.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul,” said her voice, just when they were on the -edge of the pavé.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not afraid of Bibi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The rattle of the wheels and the clanging of the iron -sheets made it difficult for Brent to hear her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not afraid of Bibi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw his weight against the shafts and stopped the -gig.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nor am I. Not for myself. But do you not see my -point of view?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have a pair of eyes in my head,” she retorted, “and -in front of me I see my partner, Monsieur Paul Rance, -whom I met when I was at Rennes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, all that sounds very pleasant, but——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” she broke in, “why are you in such a -hurry to explain things to people, when no one has asked -for explanations?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave a push to the gig.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allons! You are afraid that Bibi will gossip, and that -people will believe him. I am not going to be frightened -by Bibi, simply because it amuses him to frighten people. -Besides——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her brown eyes gave him a flash of buoyant audacity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You need not explain a thing that will appear obvious -to decent people. And it is always possible for a man to -change his mind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was puzzled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t understand you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave another and more vigorous push to the cart, -looking at him with eyes that said, “What a simple -fellow you are!” Brent turned about and put his weight -on the shafts, and staring at the pavé in front of him, -spent the whole of that journey in trying to disentangle -her meaning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>During the unloading of the gig Brent watched Manon’s -face as though he hoped to find it a mirror in which he -could see the reflection of his own thoughts. But Manon’s -face showed him nothing. She was the cheerfully determined -little Frenchwoman wholly absorbed in helping him -to unload those iron sheets. She refused to be sentimental -or to let herself encourage Brent’s tendency towards too -much self-consciousness. Men are such children, and -Brent appeared to be an unusually sensitive child. He -would go and get lost in the woods unless she held him -shrewdly to the great work that mattered.</p> - -<div><h1>XV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>After</span> working at the huts till ten o’clock, Brent walked -back to the Café de la Victoire by the light of the moon. -He was tired, dead tired, but his weariness was full of a -pleasant sense of physical satisfaction; he had done the -best day’s work in his life, and if his hands were sore and -his back one huge ache, what did it matter?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had gone home earlier to light the stove. She -heard Brent’s footsteps on the pavé, and ran out to meet -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Partner, I’m tired.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed over it, for he was a little exultant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never thought that we could do it, rip off a hundred -sheets and get them carted and stacked here. I have -knocked half the weather boarding off that hut.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon enveloped him in a soft atmosphere of sympathy, -applause, gratitude.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go down and sit by the fire. The water is boiling. -What shall it be, tea or coffee?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Coffee. Your coffee?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The tired yet happy note in his voice touched her. -She had been thinking a great deal about Paul while she -was watching the stove grow red and waiting for the sound -of his return. In all her experience of life—and a woman -can see an abundance of life in a little French café—Manon -had never met a personality quite like Paul’s. -This little widow knew men through and through, yet -Brent had puzzled her until that moment when he had sat -astride the roof of the hut and betrayed the sensitive prudery -of a sentimentalist. She liked him none the less for -that, though it added to the complexity of the adventure. -Manon was not a prude, and Paul was not a Frenchman. -She realized the significance of the fact, nor did the possible -unexpectedness of this man’s romantic boyishness -bore her. She was piqued by it. Most men are so obvious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had a meal ready for this tired man of hers, a -man whose body had performed a tour-de-force, and whose -happy weariness was ready to eat, drink, light its pipe -and relax before the fire. Manon was glad of Brent’s -tiredness, even as she was glad of his strength. She wanted -him in that mood of happy relaxation. She saw the white -stones of the cellar’s vault bright with candle light and the -glow from the stove. The water bubbled contentedly in -the saucepan. The arm-chair from the école stood embracing -the warmth from the fire. And Manon was sensitively -alert to the impression that the homeliness of the -place would make on Paul. She had been busy here, exerting -a woman’s forethought, not for purely selfish ends, -but because a woman’s shrewdness may become involved -in the things that she does for a particular man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have earned that chair.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took it, after protesting that it should be hers. -She saw him lie back and melt into enjoyment of this -atmosphere of simple comfort.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say—this is good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His eyes wandered—and then fell to watching Manon, -Manon whose hands were busy in his service. He became -aware of the pleasantness of Manon, and that it was good -to look at her, good to feel her near. As she leant forward -over the stove to fill the coffee-pot Paul noticed the brown -depths of her eyes, the shadowy curves of her nostrils, the -pretty line of her mouth, her frank forehead, and the white -fulness of her throat and chin. He observed a little brown -freckle rather quaintly placed in the centre of her left -lower eyelid. Her hands were plump and strong, with -straight, well-formed fingers; generous, capable hands. -He was aware, too, of a perfume, a personal aroma that -was subtle and wholly French.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She drew the table close to the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How is that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am being spoilt,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was exactly what she wanted him to feel. The -memory of this evening was to have a particular significance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You amazed me to-day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was pouring out his coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never saw a man work with such ferocity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I enjoyed it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but you must not work too hard. And I am -not going to talk to you until after supper.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Talking is food,” said Brent, “if one happens to be -interested.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now Manon’s attitude towards Brent had developed -since she had realized how easily he could be affected by -the swaggering cynicism of a man like Louis Blanc. -Hitherto she had not been conscious of any particular attitude -towards this comrade of two days. The adventure -had opened with such verve and simplicity that she had -not bothered her head about the social complexities, but -the coming of Bibi and Paul’s instant reaction to the challenge -in the big Frenchman’s sensual eyes had compelled -her to look at Brent more closely. She guessed that he had -a thin skin, and that he was the sort of good fellow who -fell into a panic if anyone accused him of behaving like -a blackguard. Like many sensitive men he was extraordinarily -diffident. An audacious beast like Bibi would -squeeze out all his self-confidence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a comfort it is to have you here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked surprised, pleasantly disconcerted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In what way?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because you are rather unusual. Most men—Oh!—well—you -know what I mean.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the beginning of her conscious effort to humour -her man. Paul was a sentimentalist, but Manon had a -philosophy. She knew that life is always a bit of a -scramble and that in Beaucourt life was going to be rather -primitive and savage. Paul’s skin was too thin. She -had a feeling that she would have to guard his sensitiveness—prevent -his impressionable good nature from being -at the mercy of hard people. Brent lacked hardness. She -had an idea that this lack of hardness had been the cause -of his failure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you can’t make a soft man hard,” she said to -herself; “it must be done some other way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt that Brent had that queer passion for ethical -self-expression that plain people call “self-sacrifice.” -She sensed it vaguely at first, and she could not have -translated the impression into words. It was a thread, an -intuition, and she followed it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This fine weather cannot last,” she said with apparent -vagueness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She filled his cup a second time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And to-morrow? What will you do to-morrow?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He knew at once what he meant to do, and she respected -the quiet and orderly way in which he had mapped out -the work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall bring the timber across. The rafters of that -big hut will be the right size for us over here. Nothing like -having all your material on the spot, and under your eyes,—especially -as there seems some chance of competition.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He frowned when he thought of Bibi, and Manon was -prompted by that frown. She thought of altering her -plans, and she was curious to see what effect such an alteration -would have upon Brent, but she wanted her change -of purpose to develop naturally and not to appear as a -sudden decision forced on her from without.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“More coffee, mon ami?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please. It’s so jolly good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No more to eat?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not another mouthful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at the bully beef, the biscuits, the carton -of jam—and the unappetizing dryness of this fodder gave -her her first suggestion. She made a little grimace, and -waved a hand over the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You poor man. Now, if only we had a savoury -omelette and some spinach! I must change all this. That -is obvious.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She appeared to reflect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, you must have fresh food,—eggs and butter -and vegetables. If I went three times a week to Ste. -Claire——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had brought out his pipe, and then slipped it -back again into his pocket. The gesture was full of significance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Smoke.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I like the smell of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As a matter of fact, I am at the end of my tobacco.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quel dommage! But this is a tragedy. It is obvious -that I must go to Amiens; I may be able to buy English -tobacco there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He corrected her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a conscience you have! But, mon ami, could -you spare me to-morrow? Could you carry all that -wood?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Easily.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if I stayed away three days?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw that he was not in the least dashed by the -suggestion. In fact he approved of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall want that saw.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—and blankets. It must be so horribly cold up -there, and you were quite snug before I came. Oh, mon -ami, I have an idea.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked up at her questioningly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will take many days to put a roof on the house, -will it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A fortnight—perhaps more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then there are the doors and windows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The weather will change. Rain and wind—mon Dieu! -And you, under those pieces of tin! Be quite honest with -me, Paul; would it not be more sensible for me to stay -at Ste. Claire and leave you the cellar—until the roof -is on?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She watched Brent’s face, and discovered nothing but -a faint shadow of surprise, a surprise that was momentary -and transient. He leaned forward and stirred up the wood -in the stove with an old iron bar that they used for the -purpose. The glow from the wood shone on a calm face, -and Manon saw that it had cost him no effort to adjust life -to the new atmosphere.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A sound idea,” he said, feeding more wood into the -stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perceiving no resistance, Manon let the new plan develop -itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not that I am a coward, mon ami, or afraid of a -rough life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are no coward,” he said with quiet conviction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She showed a sudden animation that flowed with the -full flood of the new idea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can hire a horse and cart in Ste. Claire, and I must -see what can be bought at Amiens. I could drive over here -twice a week, and if I started very early in the morning I -should be able to spend most of the day here, cook for -you, and help you when you needed a second pair of -hands. And then, there is the garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The garden’s important.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, our living this summer. I could work in the -garden and sow seeds, and I could use the horse and cart -to collect things for you. I must think of my good partner’s -comfort.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stared at the fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t worry about me,” he said; “I am not the one to -be considered. I am thinking of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had been skimming the surface, but those words of -Brent’s went down beneath the conventional crust.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami, you are very unselfish.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s not that. A man has to think of things—other -things than bricks and timber; and when there is a woman -about, a man has to think of her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was silent for a while, and in her heart of hearts -she knew that Paul was right. She had used her intuition -and her shrewdness to bring the adventure into sympathy -with this man’s simple sense of honour, and now that -the thing was done she felt that Paul was happier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a good man you are!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled at her and said nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think of others before yourself. And how exciting -it will be when I drive over and see what you -have done; each time there will be something fresh, a -new piece of roof, a door, a window.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will be just as exciting to me—the finest game I -ever played in my life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She frowned a little over that word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Game—game! You English are always thinking of -games.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The word does not fit; I should not have used it. It -is more than a game.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon looked at her knees, possessed by a feeling of -gentleness and humility. She knew now that she had been -right about Brent, utterly right in her reading of his -simple and sensitive character. He was no ordinary man, -nor was his inspiration the inspiration of the ordinary -man. Brent gave. Most men take.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is very strange,” she said, “that you should be so -good to me. I think—somehow—that doing good things -is as pleasant to you as the tobacco you smoke in your pipe. -Is it not so, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps there’s reason in it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am very lucky.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she added,</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How good to be able to trust you—with everything! -It is like feeling that God is near.”</p> - -<div><h1>XVI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent</span> was up with the dawn. He heard a bird singing -somewhere as he went down to the well to fill the bucket, -and he stood in the street and looked at the sky with the -eyes of a child. In the east and reaching to the zenith -great ridges of tawny white cloud broke the intense blue -of the sky. A mysterious golden light enveloped everything, -the broken walls, the spire of the church, the grey-green -hills, the murk of the woods, the tangled, unpruned -orchards. Even the cobble-stones had a bloom of gold -upon them. The brown blackness of Manon’s house loomed -up against the dawn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s face was a thing of delight. His beard had a -more tawny richness, his eyes a deeper blue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By God—life’s good!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt good, good to the core. When he had filled -the bucket and drawn it up, the splashing water itself -seemed to laugh in the early sunlight. Brent stood in the -street and washed, stripped to the waist, dipping his -head into the cold water and letting it run over his chest -and shoulders. A little spiral of blue smoke had begun to -climb like some magic plant up the wall of Manon’s house, -and Brent could hear the crackling of wood in the stove. -Manon was busy before her ten-mile walk to Ste. Claire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An hour later she was standing at the top of the flight -of steps leading to the street, her bag in her hand, her face -upturned to Brent’s. It was a happy face with gentle -eyes, the flicker of a smile playing about the mouth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Au revoir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He held her hand for a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will look after everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And take care of yourself, Paul. I will not forget -the tobacco.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned and went down the steps, turned again at -the corner by the stone house, and looked back at him -with a kind of smiling solemnity. The morning sunlight -was on her face, and her plain black dress showed up -against the white stonework.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Au revoir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent raised a hand like a man uttering a benediction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He remained standing there after she had gone, filling -his pipe with the last dust that was left in his pouch, and -smiling without realizing the smile in his eyes. For Brent -was happy, extraordinarily happy, and life seemed very -good to him that morning. He was conscious of strong -and simple purpose, and of the man’s job ready to his -hands. He was conscious, too, of being trusted; and -Manon’s faith in him was the most precious thing that his -hands had touched for many years. He felt that he had -a new heart in a new body—that he had begun to love -these ruins because of their human significance. There -was hope in the air, and the spring was coming.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Off with your coat, man,” said Life; “swing your -hammer and drive your saw. Sweat—sweat and feel good. -It is the simple things that matter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had the ultimate philosophy of life ripening in his -heart. He had worked back to the wholesome state of -using his hands, nor were they the hands of a machine -minder or of a clerk fribbling with a typewriter or a pen. -Yesterday he had worked with a ferocious forcefulness; -to-day his body moved like silk, easily and with a smooth -balance; his hammer went true to the mark; he had no -sense of hurry or fatigue. He was above his work, its -master, and in a mood that could open its eyes to the world -and catch glimpses of the strange beauty that is everywhere.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his resting moments, or when he was ready to start -off with a load, he would stand for a little while and stare -at the graining of a piece of timber, the dark shadows -that seemed to hang in the bare woods, the sunlight on the -hill, or the way some broken bit of wall cut a zig-zag out -of the blue of the sky. His contentment was so complete -and so pleasant that he could not help questioning it, -turning it over and over like a man examining something -that he has found.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wonder if I should get bored here—fed up?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Boredom seemed so far from the mood of the moment; -yet he chalked “boredom” on the black-board of his mind, -and tabulated all the facts he could accumulate on the -subject. He could not remember feeling bored as a boy, -except in church and at school, when the buoyant youngster -in him had been repressed. His marriage and too -much “business” had brought other and more subtle forms -of self-repression. He had been very badly bored during -the thirties. And he had been short of exercise, wholesome -sweat of body and of soul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but this is only an adventure,” said the voice -in him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But was it only an adventure?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had pushed the gig along the Rue de Rosières, and -had begun to unload the timber, stacking it in the back -room on the right of the passage. Each time he carried -in a length of timber that reached from the floor to some -twelve feet up the wall, he found himself thinking, “Another -rafter for Manon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami,” he thought, using those words of hers, -“why worry? We fools are always looking six months -ahead and missing the glass of wine on the table.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He decided that he would not be a creator of problems, -but march straight ahead towards the broad sweep of -this new horizon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent spent the rest of the day in dismantling the framework -of the largest of the huts, and in carting the timber to -the café. The work had gone so well that he now had -nearly all the material he needed for the rough work on -the house, and the material included a couple of deal doors -and four window-frames. One of the huts in the field on -the road to Rosières had a wooden floor, and Brent made -up his mind to salve that floor, for the boards would -be invaluable when he came to dealing with three upper -rooms. Just before dusk fell he trundled the barrow over -to the factory and brought back a load of lime, making -a second journey for some sand. The first job on the morrow -would be the re-bricking of the holes in the walls, and -after supper, when the moon rose, he went out again with -the barrow and collected bricks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had not entered the cellar since Manon had left -it, and at the end of that long day when he had taken his -food cold, and between heroic spells of work, he went down -the flight of steps into the darkness of the place. He stood -holding the ground sheet aside, aware of a something that -was Manon, a faint perfume—a perfume that had clung -about her clothes. It made Brent think of a bed of gilliflowers -on an evening in May.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled, lit the candle, and glanced round the cellar. -Manon had tidied everything before leaving. The cups -and plates were white and clean on the shelves, she had -made the bed, and left the stove filled with wood ready for -a match. Old Mère Vitry’s picture of the Sacred Heart -stood on the table, leaning against the wall. Brent found -himself looking at it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s something in that—after all,” he thought; -“and yet she says that she is not a Catholic!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lit the stove and watched the yellow flames climb -up through the wood, and his thoughts were with Manon -and her religion. These old beliefs, superstitions, as he -had learnt to call them, these woodland shadows and red -blaze of sunset glass, those saints, and martyrs, miracles, -the wine that was blood, the tears, the terrors, the quaint -paganism that lingered like sunlight on the dark edge of -the eternal mystery! He had a feeling that the very soil -of Beaucourt was saturated with this most human essence. -It was like the sap in the roots of the plants and trees. -The moderns were educated; they were—in the mass—very -material people. Even these French peasants were -children of the age of reason, and yet the sap was there -under their feet, the mystic heritage of centuries. That -was how Paul felt it in the person of Manon Latour. The -scientific farmer thinks of his artificial manure and is apt -to forget the spring. The miracle has got lost inside the -machine. Yet the orchards put on their white garlands -like girls who feel the great mystery within them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One always comes back to it,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Manon had knelt in the ruined church of Beaucourt -and then told him with a child’s frankness that her -religion was her own. Of course it was hers. She was -as full of religion as the soil was full of spring. She had -not been smothered in a town. She did not sell herself; -there was more than mere sense under her petticoat. She -had a soul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Queer, isn’t it?” thought Brent. “A modern man -would think you were a bit cracked if you started talking -about a soul. A few hundred years ago he would have -felt insulted if you had taken it for granted that he -hadn’t one. We’re too damned clever; that’s what’s the -matter with us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet he went to bed a mixture of mystic and materialist. -One of the blankets had the faint perfume of Manon’s -clothes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Smells like the spring,” he said to himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then he fell to gloating over that mass of wood -and iron he had stacked in the rooms above.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, what about it?” was the retort of the mystic-materialist. -“Even a Bradbury has a potential soul. -Depends on what you do with it, of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon, meanwhile, was sitting in Madame Castener’s -cottage at Ste. Claire. She had reached the hill above -Ste. Claire about noon, and had looked down on the village -flashing its white walls behind the sun-splashed tops of the -poplars. The completeness and the unravaged tranquillity -of Ste. Claire had shocked her a little after the ruins of -Beaucourt. What luck there had been in the war! Yes, -but Beaucourt and its wrecked houses had produced Paul -Brent, and to Manon—the woman—Paul Brent had begun -to matter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener’s Flemish face hung out a look of massive -surprise when Manon walked into the cottage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What! You back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I am here,” said Manon to this obvious lady; -“have I changed?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Castener wiped her mouth with a corner of -her apron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was a heavy woman—all bulges and protuberances—a -big cow, but kind. A widow, she lived alone. Her -married son, Etienne, had the cottage next door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is something to eat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon took off her cloak and hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who told you that I was staying at Beaucourt?” -she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener never hurried herself. She sat down -again at the round table, put a bit of bread in her mouth, -munched it, and then replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A man, ma chérie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon laughed, and fetched herself a plate and knife -and fork from the dresser.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And they say men do not gossip!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was that fellow who used to keep the hotel at -Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Bibi!” said Manon, with casual scorn. “I suppose -he wanted to find out how long I was staying at -Beaucourt. That fellow ought to have been killed in the -war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat down and helped herself to the very plain food -that was on the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So Bibi is starting a scandal, is he? How droll!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at her good friend, who continued to munch -like a cow chewing the cud. There were no treacheries -and no surprises in Veuve Castener; she was always the -same, rolling along like a big wagon that would never land -you in the ditch. Her imperturbable stupidity was an -asset, weight on a critical occasion, ballast during a storm. -Nothing ever threw her into a state of excitement. It -was possible that when the Last Trump sounded she might -keep all Heaven waiting while she mended a hole in her -stocking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener had helped at the Café de la Victoire -before Manon’s marriage. Her very slowness made her -loyal, for when she had grown fond of a person there was -no time for her to grow tired. Friendship, like her petticoats, -seemed to last with Veuve Castener for ever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was in a dilemma. Had she felt free to do so, -she would have told her friend everything, for Marie -Castener was to be trusted; but Manon held herself bound -to keep Paul’s secret. He was at her mercy, and Manon -had a sense of honour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must tell you about Paul,” she said: “you did not -know that I had found a partner?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know nothing till I am told, my dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not even when Bibi——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie gave a fat shrug.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—a man like that! A stallion who comes and neighs -on your doorstep. I’m deaf on those occasions.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a good soul you are. Well, I found Paul Rance -at Beaucourt; he had arrived there before me, and he -had been using his head and his eyes. That leads to another -confession, does it not, Marie? Paul had lived in England -for seven years before the war. He joined the English -army. He used to come to my café,—a quiet fellow who -looked at you and said very little, but I did not find out -what Paul was till the day of the retreat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She described the burying of her treasure, and the coincidence -of Brent’s appearing on the scene.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, he helped me that day, and the money is still -hidden there. Paul stayed behind after I had gone; he -had the body of a friend to bury, an Englishman, and he -was taken prisoner because he remained behind to bury -his friend. That is the sort of man Paul Rance is. He -came to see me when he was released from Germany, and -we struck up a partnership. He is over there—in Beaucourt—putting -a roof on my house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener absorbed all this information with bland -stolidity. She had always had such faith in Manon’s -shrewdness that it never occurred to her to explore the -affair on her own account. Her inertia accepted things. -She sat in a chair and was content with what was given -her. A most comfortable woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So Beaucourt is not so bad as you had feared?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It made my heart weep,” said Manon; “but it seems -that I am one of the lucky ones. The walls are there, -and Paul is very confident that he can make the house fit -to live in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie folded her hands over her apron. She had pleasant -and pastoral visions of a beneficent future for Manon. -Naturally these two had arranged the matter; when the -house was ready they would marry; it was an excellent -thing for Manon. The romance was so obvious to Marie -Castener that she swallowed and digested it, and thought -no more of the matter. A very comfortable woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have a man left to work for you. You are -lucky.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is such a good fellow,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Monsieur Blanc was annoyed. He will visit -you here; I could not get rid of the fellow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon frowned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Most men are such fools. I wish you would put -Monsieur Bibi in your cauldron and boil the conceit out -of him. But, Marie, I want Etienne to drive me into -Amiens, and perhaps you will come with me. Will it be -possible to-morrow? I will pay Etienne for the horse and -his time. I have things to buy in Amiens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener saw no impossibility in driving to -Amiens. It was an adventure, and she would not have -to use her legs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will arrange it with Etienne.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon spent the evening in drawing out a list of all -that she and Brent needed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the end of the list she jotted down a rather cryptic -note.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Try and get hold of a pistol for Paul.”</p> - -<div><h1>XVII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> expedition to Amiens started at an early hour. A -big brown horse pulled the big brown cart, with Manon -wedged in between Veuve Castener and her son. Marie, -her round red face shining from the wrappings of a black -shawl, overflowed with a great bunching of skirts over one -mud-guard, her right arm round Manon’s waist. Etienne, -equally big and heavy, overflowed on the other side. -Manon looked like a child between them—the centre of -intelligence between two bulging bodies. Her eyes were -bright, for Manon was happy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Veuve Castener chattered. It was her way. A -silent woman when things were quiet, she became conversational -in a cart, or when she was turning the handle of -the “cream separator,” or pounding dirty clothes in a tub. -Adventitious noises seemed to stir her to animation, and -the more noise there was, the more she talked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that fellow Louis Blanc is staying at Baudry’s -farm, though I would not have a man like that inside my -house. Always after the women, though what they can -see in the man, heaven knows. Big, of course, and a -swaggerer, but with a face like a goat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are two sorts of women,” said Manon, “those -who are attracted by a blackguard and those who are not. -Oh, to be sure, a man like that is very successful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I prefer a quiet man—a man who can always be found. -Besides, what do women expect?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say—what do they want? A man like Bibi has what -most of them want. He just gets hold of them in the -barn—or anywhere, and the rest happens. But we are -shocking Etienne.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Castener grinned. He was laconic, slow, not -interested in anything but his little farm, and he had a -wife whom no other man ever bothered to look at.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That fellow Bibi talks big. He has all the news.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; what was that you heard him say the other -night in Josephine’s café?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He said such a lot,” growled Etienne.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But about Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beaucourt? He talked as though Beaucourt belonged -to him. Said there was a fortune in Beaucourt. France -is ruined, you know—but there’s salvation in the English -and Americans. Sentimental people. Running about to -see the battlefields and graves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon lifted her chin. She was quick, and through the -clumsy disorder of Castener’s words she had a glimpse of -the ambitions of Bibi. But why did he boast about them? -For Bibi was no fool.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He means to make money,” she said; “but that hotel -of his is a rubbish heap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They say he has plenty of cash. Talks about hiring -men; and the timber he has been buying and the army -stores. It seems, too, that they are going to repair the -factory at Beaucourt, and put in new machinery.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see,” said Manon, glimpsing more and more of Louis -Blanc’s possible plans. She understood, too, why Bibi -would not be pleased at the idea of rivalry in Beaucourt; -he had never been gentle with people who got in his -way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the day and its temper were so buoyant that Manon -put Louis Blanc and his plans aside, and gave herself up -to pure enjoyment. The road ran through the pleasant -country south of Amiens, a country of wooded hills and -deep valleys, all green and brown and purple under the -blue sky. The tops of the poplars flashed in the sunlight, -in the ditches, and along the banks crept the first shimmer -of the year’s greenness. Now and again a great white -cloud came sailing over the hills, or, passing between the -sun and the earth, threw a mass of shadow upon some -brown field or wood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Etienne knew a little auberge in the Rue Belu by the -river where he put up his horse and cart, and Manon and -Veuve Castener went off together. Both of them carried -string-bags, and a Frenchwoman’s string-bag has an immense -capacity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We cannot carry everything,” said Manon. “After -dinner I shall have to ask Etienne to drive round with the -cart.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon bought the smaller things first—coffee, vegetable -seeds, haricots, sugar, nails, a few oranges, matches, -candles. In an hour she had tired Veuve Castener’s legs, -and fat Marie trudged back to the inn. Nor was Manon -sorry to be left alone. Her shopping had little moments of -intimacy that she did not wish to share with another -woman; and she had Paul in her thoughts, and details -upon that list of hers that had arrived there as the result -of her own observing eyes. Moreover, the excitement of -the adventure had invaded Amiens, and Manon found -Amiens sympathetic and ready to respond to a little -woman who was going back to the ruins. Certainly the -prices were extortionate, for shopkeepers are the same all -the world over, but Manon fought; that short little nose -of hers and her firm chin belonged to a fighter, and the -French love argument. She stood squarely to the counter, -smiling, hitting out with perfect good-humour, a sturdy -little woman quite capable of looking after her own affairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She bought blankets, four of them, half a dozen sheets, -and a couple of pillows. There was a battle over the -blankets; they were poor things, and Manon said so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would seem, monsieur, that you will insist on the -refugees sleeping in their petticoats. Where is all the -money to come from?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She contrived to get thirty francs knocked off the price -of the blankets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she went in search of bargains, and found a shop -that was kept by a little widow. The widow had children -to feed, and was ready to fight for them with her finger-nails. -The two women talked—and Manon did not try -to fight the widow. They spent half an hour chatting to -each other, exchanging confidences, and refusing to use -their claws.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is very hard for all of us,” said Manon, “and you -have five children. Mon Dieu!—I have none, but my -house is in ruins.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman let Manon have some red cotton for two -duvets and several lengths of cretonne for curtains at a -price that was honest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We women should not devour each other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The widow kept a cosmopolitan sort of shop. Manon -saw men’s shirts hanging up, and a pile of blue linen -trousers on one of the shelves. She knew that Paul had -one solitary suit of clothes—clothes that would soon be -ruined by the rough work on the house. She bought him -two good shirts, two pairs of blue linen trousers, a pair of -heavy corduroys, and a black alpaca coat. Manon smiled -to herself as she fingered the things and chatted to the -widow. There was a suggestive homeliness about buying -these clothes for Paul, and she found the future strangely -full of him. He seemed to have taken his place in Beaucourt, -and she saw him moving about in these blue trousers, -sleeves rolled up, head bare, hammering, sawing, fixing -doors and windows, scrambling about the roof, indefatigable -yet rather silent. She was growing quite familiar -with the set and intense look in his blue eyes when he -was at work. He had good shoulders and strong arms, -and a clean, fresh skin. Yes, she liked Paul, the man. -And it would be so easy to hurt him. This good fellow -needed a protectress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon wandered in a happy mood through Amiens. -She was very alive, and the life of Amiens pleased her. -She idled into the cathedral and rested there awhile, -breathing in the soft grey tranquil atmosphere of the place, -a young woman who knew nothing about Gothic architecture -and was not worried by that horrible notion that -it was her duty to appreciate the beauty of the building. -She left a franc in the alms box and went out in search of a -tobacco shop. Manon had a little breeze with the woman -who kept it—for it is quite unnecessary to let oneself be -cheated even if one has been sitting in a cathedral. A few -blunt remarks, with blood to Manon, and she went elsewhere. -Two tins of “Capstan” and some French mixture -very rich in latakia were put away in the string-bag. The -price was horrible, but was she not getting Paul’s sweat -for nothing?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not forget the dictionary, though it was not a -new one; newness might rouse suspicions if it happened -to fall into other people’s hands. Last of all she bought -a saw, a plane, a folding measure, some garden tools, and -a soldering set. There were plenty of leaking pots and -pans in Beaucourt, and Paul was a man of resource.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Casteners were waiting for her at the auberge, and -they sat down to dinner. Marie waited to know how -Manon had fared with her shopping.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“These shopkeepers are villains.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, well, they have children, most of them,” said -Manon, thinking of the widow. “I have not done so badly. -I suppose we shall all get bargains in heaven.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drove round to collect Manon’s bulkier merchandise, -and then left the grey spire of Amiens behind -them. Veuve Castener had been counting the number of -houses they passed that had been damaged by shell-fire -during the war. She began to be talkative, stimulated by -the rattle of the wheels, and detailing the gossip of some -of the French soldiers who had been sent home to their -farms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, worse things happened than the wrecking of -houses. There are those sluts who became too friendly -with the Boche. Pierre Ledru was saying the other day -that there were French girls who had hidden German -soldiers—their lovers. Ledru swore that one girl was shot -by her own brother for taking food to a Square-head who -was hiding in a wood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s easy to be virtuous—over here,” said Manon; -“but men are the same all the world over. I know what -it must have been like in those occupied villages, especially -if you had any looks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A Frenchwoman should always be a Frenchwoman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami, people do all sorts of strange things when -they are starving. But why talk of these tragedies? -Look at the sun over there. I love the big impartial sun, -he gives the same chance to everybody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s right, mother,” said Etienne; “we haven’t -had the boot on our faces like those people nearer the -frontier. Besides a man has got such a pull; he can talk -a woman’s honour away if she won’t give him what he’s -after.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Etienne is a man of the world,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener grunted. She did not like being corrected -by her son.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was after supper that night, and Marie Castener was -emptying the last of the coffee into Manon’s cup, when -they heard a man’s footsteps outside the door. He knocked -and tried the handle, but the door was bolted. Veuve -Castener thought it was Etienne, for Etienne never used -his voice when some more primitive sort of sound would -serve. Marie went to the door and opened it, and discovered -Louis Blanc.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener’s big body filled the doorway. She -said nothing. Her bulk and her silence kept Bibi on the -doorstep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had looked over Marie’s shoulder and seen Manon -sitting at the table in the yellow circle of light thrown by -the lamp.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, Madame Latour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi pushed the words past Veuve Castener, since her -big body kept him out of the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon looked up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, Monsieur Blanc.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She replied to him with an air of complete unconcern, -betraying neither interest nor antagonism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi scraped his boots on the doorstep and removed -his hat. You might take liberties when you were alone -with one woman, but you were polite when there happened -to be two of them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it permitted for a poor man to come in and sit -down for ten minutes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled, and made eyes at Marie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have a few words to say to Madame Latour. A -business matter, you know; we are full of business these -days.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener spoke to Manon in a loud voice, as -though Bibi were on the other side of a field.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here is Monsieur Louis Blanc who wishes to speak to -you, Manon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What does he want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To talk about business.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, let him in,” said Manon, yawning a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi was angry at being kept on the doorstep, and at -the way Mother Castener had snubbed him by talking to -Manon as though he were not there. He had seen Manon’s -yawn, and appreciated the flat indifference of her voice; -the diplomat in Bibi was ruffled. His swagger had lost its -fine edge and became a more brutal weapon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener let him enter. She glanced at Manon, -who had reached for her work-basket and had taken out a -stocking that needed darning, also wool and a pair of scissors. -She dropped the scissors into her lap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to wash up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon understood what was in Marie’s mind. The -wash-house was at the back of the cottage, and was reached -by crossing a brick-paved yard. Manon nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sit down, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bibi remained standing, watching Veuve Castener -clearing away the plates, his hands in his trouser pockets. -Manon glanced up at him once or twice. She noticed that -Louis Blanc was wearing new clothes, a well-cut black suit, -new boots, a light waistcoat. These clothes were part of -Bibi’s “business atmosphere”; he was a fellow who had -money.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Veuve Castener disappeared with a tray full of dirty -crockery. Bibi stood quite still for a moment, and then -went and closed the door that opened on the yard. He -came back and stared at Manon across the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is rather unnecessary, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indeed!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You and I have nothing to say to each other that my -friend may not hear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed, one of those soundless laughs, and fidgeted -his hands in his pockets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are still devilish pretty, ma petite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you are still a fool.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gave her a vicious yet humorous glance, and began -to walk slowly up and down, his boots making a leisurely -clatter on the red-tiled floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That should reassure Madame Gossip,—what! So -you won’t have sentiment, not even from me! Let us try -business, my dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had begun darning the stocking. She looked -steadily at Bibi for a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well, keep to business. What is it that you -want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He swung round and faced her, legs straddling, head -thrown back, loins hollowed, pockets and belly thrust -forward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A partner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You want me to give the whole game away, do you? -Yes, you little devil, you always were the best business -woman in Beaucourt. And such a leg, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be quick,” said Manon; “I am going to help Marie -at the end of five minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi smiled, and began to walk up and down again, -and Manon noticed that his track tended to become an -orbit, with herself as the centre. Sometimes he was behind -her, and she did not like having Bibi behind her, but she -remained quite still in her chair, though tense as a steel -spring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to make money in Beaucourt. A little -hotel—what! well advertised for the people with handkerchiefs -and the fools of Americans! Kept by one of the -veterans of Verdun, with the Médaille Militaire! Allons! -That’s all right. What do you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon went on with her work, conscious of Bibi standing -there close beside her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think many things, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let’s have them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You want my house. It is in better condition than -yours, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens! What cleverness!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You would like to have your own way in Beaucourt, -not an hotel or a café within twenty kilomètres.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go on guessing, ma petite.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is all, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then he bent over her suddenly from behind, -tweaked her ear, and caught her by the shoulders. It had -always been his way with women, to surprise them, get -them into his arms. The magnetic male was very strong -in Bibi; he had known women who had fought and then -given him all that he wanted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had been waiting for that attack. She had -expected it, knowing Bibi as she did. She said nothing, -but picking up the scissors, made a deft jab at Louis -Blanc’s left wrist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Keep your hands to yourself, if you please.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had challenged the beast in Bibi, and she sat there -pretending to go on with her work, drawing her breath -a little more deeply, ready to spring up, and to call for -Marie Castener. Bibi had removed his hands from her -shoulders, and was sucking his left wrist. She had drawn -blood, quite a good red trickle of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think that is all, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She saw him come back from behind her chair and -move to the other side of the table. He had pulled out -a blue handkerchief and was wrapping it round his wrist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your scissors are as sharp as your tongue. A nice -way to receive a man who comes to propose a little bit -of business.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a fool you are,” she said very quietly. “Don’t -you see that you cannot do with me what you have done -with other women? You are not the sort of man who -appeals to me. You are only wasting your time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi stared at her a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is as well to know these things,” he said coolly; -“nothing like having reconnoitred the other fellow’s bit -of trench. Shall I tell old Mother Castener that the talk -is over?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going out there myself. Good-night, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc picked up his hat and opened the door. -He stood there for a couple of seconds as though he were -about to say something, but he said nothing, and when -he closed the door he did it very quietly. Manon heard -him walk away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A nice neighbour to have,” she said to herself. “I -wonder if Paul can fight?”</p> - -<div><h1>XVIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Horses</span> were scarce in Ste. Claire, and Manon found -that Etienne Castener could not hire himself and his -brown nag to her more than once a week, so she made -a bundle of the things Brent needed and prepared to walk -to Beaucourt. It was rather a wonderful bundle, an -omnium gatherum of tobacco, matches, nails, six fresh -eggs, some brussels sprouts, half a loaf of bread, six slices -of fresh meat, a few oranges, three candles, a new shirt, -a pair of blue trousers and the dictionary. Marie watched -the making of the bundle, and withheld her criticism until -the end.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are not going to carry that to Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but I am. There is a saw, too, that will have to -travel under my arm.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie felt the weight of the bundle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, la-la, it is too heavy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am stronger than you think. See, I push a stick -through the cord, put a pad between the stick and my -shoulder, and there you are!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was away at five o’clock, after a simple breakfast -by lamplight in the red-tiled cottage. The morning was -very dark and still, one of those mysterious and secret -mornings when the heart thrills not a little to the eternal -adventure of life. There had been a frost, and the air -struck keen and clear, with the smell of fresh earth that -some peasant had turned up with his plough. A few stars -pricked the black sky. The great poplars guarding the -road were still wrapped up in their coats of darkness and -of sleep, and as Manon passed along the road and up the -hill she felt rather than saw the branches of those trees -meeting like a high vault above her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She trudged along with her bundle slung over one -shoulder, and the saw swathed in paper under the other -arm, not hurrying because of her knowledge of the twenty -kilomètres that were to be marched that day, and of the -work she wished to do at Beaucourt. She was a little -woman with a great heart; also—she was happy. The -blackness of the morning seemed to shut her up with her -own thoughts, and Manon’s thoughts were many and -varied as she pushed steadily along the road. The elements -of life were mixed up with her thinking, and if, as -the clever people tell us, ordinary thinking is but the glow -thrown up by the emotions, then Manon’s thoughts were -made of human stuff. She felt—and in feeling she knew, -and in knowing grasped the quaint and seemingly irrational -altruism of this English Paul, the essential badness -of Bibi—the great truth that some people give while -others take. If you do not give you will never know -what life can give you in return. Manon’s view of life -was quite simple yet shrewd. Men had to be managed. -It was very necessary for a woman to have someone to -love; she withered into a stick without it. Happiness -can be planned, if you love someone very much, and go -about the managing of your happiness like a cheerful -little housewife. Simple things matter. Men like to -be praised, women to be kissed. Always back your man -with your tongue, finger-nails and heart. A comfortable -bed, a well-cooked meal, and a glass of wine at the right -moment are worth oceans of wise verbiage. A woman -should never marry a man who was not a little shy before -he kissed her for the first time. Greedy eaters are soon -satisfied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She trudged on, shifting her bundle from shoulder to -shoulder, and presently the dawn came, a greyness that -grew red like a fire. The bare trees of a wood showed up -against it, the branches like some exquisitely carved rood-screen -in a church. She heard a bird pipe up somewhere -in the wood, and then another and yet another till a -good score were singing, for the birds had multiplied -during the war. Beyond the wood a great sweep of black -and desolate country cut like a broad knife at the red -throat of the dawn. A solitary house with half its roof -gone, the broken stump of a tree, a rifle, butt end upwards, -marking a grave, a pair of wagon-wheels in a shell-hole, -all these were like black symbols against that red sky. -Yet there was a silence over this wilderness, a beauty, a -strangeness that called; and over yonder lay Beaucourt, -waiting, waiting for those who would return.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Manon to herself; “nôtre -pays est malade; it calls for help. The strong ought to -help the weak. I must not forget that; my little house is -not going to stuff itself with food and do nothing for the -others. What a pity all the Bibis in the world weren’t -killed in the war!—it would have made things so much -easier, and I have an idea that Bibi is going to be a -nuisance. I wonder what Paul is doing? Lighting the -stove?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her thoughts centred on Paul, and somehow this wild -landscape with the red sky turning to a tawny gold swept -away any little feeling of surprise that had lingered in -Manon’s mind. The wind blew as it pleased over these -leagues of desolate country. Life was a going back to the -wilderness—a fight, face to face, with the elements in -Nature and in man. The little stuffy conventions had no -roof under which to create a moral fog. You went out into -the open with your man and laboured till the sweat ran -from you, swinging axe and hammer, or plying hoe and -spade. Courage and a clear faith in your comrade, that -was how Manon sensed it. Adam and Eve, with God -looking on, and the Serpent out of a job.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some three hours later Manon came to Beaucourt in -the blue of a March morning. A great white wall stood up -at the west end of the village like a gigantic notice board -waiting for a message; the wall had been part of the factory -owner’s house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, there ought to be something on that,” said Manon, -smiling in the eyes of the morning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beware of Bibi!” she laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or, Tommy’s word, ‘Cheero,’ or just ‘Courage.’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She left the road and made her way over the higher -ground, through the orchards above the Rue Romaine, and -from this hill she had a view of the Café de la Victoire -and a little human glimpse of Paul Brent. He had fixed -up a length of telephone wire in the garden, and Manon -saw him in the act of hanging out his washing—a shirt, -two pairs of socks, and the things that he wore under his -trousers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now Manon was strangely touched by that glimpse of -him. She was smiling, but there was a little shimmer of -tenderness in her smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami, I would have done that for you. But it -is rather sweet seeing you playing the blanchisseuse.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she came down the hill into the Rue de Picardie -she noticed that the shell-holes in the walls of the house -had disappeared. Two neat new patches of brickwork had -been put in, and Brent had used facing bricks of the same -colour as the walls of the house so that the new work was -hardly noticeable. He had got the bedding-plates into -place along the tops of the walls. Between one of the end -gables and the inverted V of the main partition wall a -length of timber hung suspended in the air by two lengths -of telephone wire, some ingenious contraption of Brent’s -for overcoming the problem of how a man could be in two -places at the same time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul, hallo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He came through the old blue door in the garden wall, -and stood a moment, looking down at her from the raised -path. He had not expected her. The surprise and the -pleasure of it were as obvious as the blue sky.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What!—You have walked?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And suddenly she was aware of a new shyness in Paul -Brent. He was looking at her as a man only looks at -a woman when she has become the most wonderful thing -in the world. He came down from the path and took -her bundle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have carried this from Ste. Claire?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His shyness spread to Manon. She laughed. The -feeling was rather exquisite, a little shiver of delight, the -first note of a bird on a soft spring morning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do I look tired?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A little.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She noticed that he seemed afraid to look straight -into her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, there was no horse to be had to-day, and in -war the transport must not fail—and here’s the saw.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took it with an air of eagerness, pulled off the wrappings, -and looked along the line of the teeth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, great! I have been wanting it badly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she fell to admiring the work he had done, -and Brent stood and smiled as a shy man smiles on such -occasions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is splendid,” said Manon; “you would hardly know -that there had been holes in the wall. How clever you -are with your hands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I learnt the business when I was no taller than you -are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you have been so quick. I was astonished. -And then—the poor man—has had to do his own washing!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had a hot bath last night, and afterwards, I washed -the clothes. Well, you see, they wanted it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She patted the bundle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have something for you in there. And tell me, -Paul, what is that beam doing, hung up there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, that ridge-beam,” said Brent; “it’s a bit awkward -to get it into place, and I had rigged up that cradle, but I -can do the job to-day with a little help.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will do it together. And now, have you had breakfast? -Because I could eat a second one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So could I.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An omelette and coffee?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t resist an omelette, but what about the eggs?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are in that bundle. Do be careful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Trust me,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul had cleaned and fitted the stove in Manon’s -kitchen, and she did her cooking there while Paul went out -to try the saw. He had contrived a carpenter’s bench in -the front room on the other side of the passage, using boxes -and the floor boards from one of the huts. There were -some two by four battens to be worked up into a door-frame, -and Brent squared the ends off with the new saw.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It cuts like butter,” he called to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Butter! Oh, mon ami, have you any butter left? I -have forgotten to bring some.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, quite a good-sized pat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank God! How near we were to a tragedy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Half an hour later they sat down in the kitchen to that -second breakfast. Manon had taken off her shoes in order -to rest her feet, and she told an heroic lie when Brent -accused her of having blistered them in walking from Ste. -Claire. The omelette was excellent, golden food for the -gods, and so was the French bread after a season of army -biscuits and ration jam.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon Latour found herself looking at Paul as many a -savage woman must have looked at the man whom she had -chosen for a partner. Strength might matter in Beaucourt, -and Paul Brent looked strong. He had a good chest and -shoulders, and a squarish and intelligent head well set on a -sinewy neck. She had seen him with his shirt-sleeves -rolled up, and remembered noticing how big and powerful -his arms were. She knew that Paul was not the man who -would fight for the mere love of fighting. There was too -little of the animal about him for such savagery. Moreover, -he was too good-tempered, though when a good-tempered -man gets angry, the fire is all the more to be -feared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All Englishmen can box; is not that so, mon ami?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was drinking his third cup of coffee. He set the -cup down and stared at Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is useful. And you——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have never boxed in my life,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw the faintest of faint frowns on her forehead. -Bibi could box, and his boxing included tricks with his -feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she began to tell him about Bibi, how he had -come to her and suggested a partnership, but she did not -tell Paul that Louis Blanc had tried to get her into his -arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see we quarrelled, and I packed him out of the -house, and now we are in his way. His idea is to attract -the tourists to Beaucourt, charge them ten francs a bottle -for wretched wine, sell them souvenirs, and all that. It -will take months to get that hotel of his rebuilt, and this -place of mine would have suited him very well while he -was rebuilding the hotel. You will have to be very careful -of Bibi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s hand had felt instinctively for his pipe. Manon -saw it, and leaning over, took a tin of tobacco out of her -bundle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà! And English too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His eyes lit up, not merely at the sight of the tobacco, -but because she had remembered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s good of you, Manon. What did you pay for -it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is my affair.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nonsense. I am not going to let you pay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This time it is a present,” she said; “and when you -wish to pay for the next you will have to send me in a bill -for the work you have done.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he was annoyed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, I have fifteen hundred francs down in -the cellar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well, you shall give me ten presently, if you -promise not to argue every time. Don’t you see that I -wish to make some return?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s face softened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sorry,” he said; “it is like you to put it in that -way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He opened the tin, filled his pipe, lit it and puffed with -immense relish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, what about this prize bully, Monsieur Blanc? -Do you mean to say that he may come along and try to -frighten me out of Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is just what I do mean,” said Manon; “you do -not know Bibi as I do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes glimmered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have met men like that. But they always left me -alone. I used to laugh at them—and get on with my -work. You can’t quarrel with a gatepost.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bibi would,” said Manon; “he’s a savage. Do you know -what he did once?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There was a bull on one of the farms, a fierce beast. -It chased Bibi one day; he had to run. What does he do -but come to Beaucourt, pick up an axe, and go back to -fight the bull. And he killed it, battered its head all to -bits, and then paid the owner. Threw the money at him. -Bibi likes a swaggering gesture.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a pleasant brute,” said Brent, but the glimmer -had gone out of his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon began putting on her shoes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wanted you to know. You see, if Bibi tried to hurt -you, it would be because of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t ask for a better reason,” he said, looking her -straight in the eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Manon coloured. She bent over and picked up -the bundle, and began to place the things in order upon -the table.</p> - -<div><h1>XIX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Paul</span> watched Manon arrange all this merchandise of -hers upon the table, the yellow oranges, the blue linen -trousers, and the white and blue striped shirt, the tobacco, -matches, and candles, the old brown-covered dictionary, -the fresh greens from Veuve Castener’s garden, the slices -of cooked meat wrapped up in a page of <span class='it'>Le Petit Journal</span>. -It was a wonderful bundle that she had carried from Ste. -Claire, and Brent was touched by all the little things that -she had troubled to remember. After those three days -of separation this visit of hers to Beaucourt with this -weight of good human stuff on her sturdy shoulders seemed -to give to their partnership an essential French and intimate -solidity. Brent felt that he mattered to Manon. -She had shopped for him, and shouldered the merchandise -ten miles. A shallow man would have felt flattered, -but to Brent it brought a sense of warmth to the heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Manon?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up, smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are going to argue again as we argued over the -tobacco.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, very well,” she said with a little gleam of her -brown eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt in the pocket of her skirt for her purse, opened -it with serious deliberation, and picked out a few francs -and some paper money. She unfolded the notes, one of -fifty francs, two of ten, and three of five, and spread them -on the table, putting an orange on each to keep them from -blowing away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are going to be very business-like. Let us see; -I suppose you are working here at least ten hours a day, -and I can afford to pay you a franc an hour. Five days -of ten hours makes fifty francs. So I begin by paying you -fifty francs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She held out the fifty-franc note to him, but Paul made -no effort to take it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pretended to be surprised.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t it enough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked at her quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t take your money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flourished the note.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There you are! How logical! And I don’t take your -money, Paul, so there is the end of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul answered her with a slow, uneasy smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is all very well, but a man can’t live on a woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she scolded him with a sudden fierceness that -made Brent think that she was angry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not be so foolish; you are not living on me. -What should I do if I had no one to help me here? Think. -Men who can use their hands and their heads are going to -be little gods in a place like Beaucourt. Men are scarce in -France; we have lost so many of them and there is so -much to do. Are we partners, or are we not? If we are -partners I pay you good money, and you pay me for -what I buy for you; and if you quarrel about the money, -mon Dieu, I will give you the sack!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They burst out laughing—both of them—at the idea of -Paul being sacked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There, you see how ridiculous you were making things, -wanting to be so proud.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, but wait a minute. Supposing I decided that I -should like you to buy me a piano.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I should begin to think that Paul had been at -the red wine. You are not made that way. You give; -you would always be wanting to give. Now, be a good -man and go and try on that shirt and those trousers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul went like an obedient boy, and reappeared some -five minutes later, looking quaintly self-conscious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They feel just right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned him round with a dominant forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must take care of your good clothes. I have -bought you a fine pair of velour-à-cotes trousers for Sundays, -and a little black jacket. Those linen trousers will -wash. And now—I am quite rested; let us work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That swinging ridge-beam overhead was the first thing -to be tackled. Paul went up the ladder and straddled his -way up the gable end to the chimney-stack, and gave -his directions to Manon. She had grasped what he wanted -her to do, and had run out into the yard and got hold of -the telephone wire whose lower end was fastened to a bit -of an iron bar that Brent had driven into the ground.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I pull?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a slot in the throat of the chimney-stack -where the original beam had taken its bearing, and Manon -pulled on the stout wire until Paul held up his hand. He -lay along a sloping bit of wall, and guided the end of his -beam into the slot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. Fasten the wire again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He scrambled down, shifted the ladder, and climbed -the partition wall. Manon had run round into the room -below and had hold of the other wire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She raised the beam, waiting for Paul’s signal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He worked the end into the slot at the top of the partition -wall, and the thing was done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon clapped her hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How exciting! Now, what next!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul came down to the top of the front wall of the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to try one of the rafters from the hut. One -of those long things there. If you could give me the end -of it——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did so, and Paul tried a balancing feat, like -Blondin with a pole. He had braced the wooden sleepers -together so that they lay solidly along the top of the wall, -and resting the butt of the rafter against one of them, he -prepared to lower it towards the ridge-beam.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo! Just a minute.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had paused.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If the thing falls, our crockery may suffer. Pull that -table into the corner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon pushed the table into a safe place, and watched -Brent handle that length of timber. It was a ticklish job; -an attack of nerves or some lack of balance might have -landed him down below with a broken neck. Moreover, -it was a test of strength; and when the rafter came to rest -with some three inches of its end projecting over the -ridge-beam, Manon sent up a little cry of applause and -triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, mon ami, splendid! And how strong you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the man who dominated for the moment their -little world of adventure, the man with the strong hand -and the contriving head. Brent stood looking down at her -and smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, then, the hammer and gimlet, a packetful of -long nails, and the saw. I shall have half those rafters -up to-day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She collected the tools and nails, made two journeys up -the ladder and handed them to Brent. One end of the -rafter was all ready cut to fit on the bedding-plate and -Brent secured it with a nail driven half home, and then -went up the slope of the partition wall, sawed off the -upper end at an angle so that it dropped flush against the -ridge-beam, and drove nails home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now—it is going to be easy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He told Manon to fasten another rafter to the end of -the wire that they had used for raising the end of the -ridge-beam, he pulled it up, unfastened the wire, ran the -rafter down the opposite slope of the partition wall, rolled -it over till it was on a line with the rafter on the other -side, shaped the upper end with the saw, and nailed it -to the beam; with the two lower ends fastened to the -sleepers on the wall Brent had completed his first span.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The rest was repetition, with Manon acting as ladder -boy, and Paul working along a framework that grew -stronger and more rigid with each pair of rafters that were -fixed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Half-way through the morning Brent told Manon to -rest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have another thirteen kilomètres to walk, and -I can get along on my own.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well, I am going to cook your dinner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that resting?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course. I sit on a chair between the stove and -the table. But take care, you must not drop sawdust -into my frying-pan.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have too much respect for my dinner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Manon collected wood and her pots and pans, and -did her cooking in the roofless kitchen, while Brent scrambled -up above, hammering, sawing, and whistling -“Roses in Picardie,” his blue trousers more vivid than -the blue of the sky. He was happy and strenuous, and -kept up such a merry piping that he made Manon think -of a jolly bird in a cage. She sat and watched him with -soft eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quel oiseau y at-il?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked down from his rafters and laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A blue bird, Madame Taquine. Blue birds are -lucky.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The bird shall have a glass of wine for dinner. And -what is that pretty song you whistle?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He told her, and she began to imitate him, picking up -the melody and whistling it while she fed the fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, there are two birds in a cage,” she called up at -him, “and what am I? A black bird with brown eyes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perched up against the blue sky and climbing about -the increasing intricacies of his roof timbers, Paul developed -a healthy hunger, and the savoury smell of Manon’s -cooking drifted up to him from below. All his old “tool -sense” was coming back, and he was working with a speed -and a precision that would have damned him in the world -of Go Slow. But then Paul had an object, a spark of the -sacred fire, and the little capitalist down below there—even -Manon—who employed him, would have opened her -eyes very wide if he had preached by his acts the Religion -of Slackness. Paul had seen her slip away into the garden -and begin digging in the corner where the iron summer -house stood. She returned, holding up a bottle of wine -to encourage her man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now you know where it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt that the wine was as safe as the silver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dinner was all that a dinner should be, and they -drank the health of the new roof. To Manon’s eyes the -house began to look quite “dressed,” and already she saw -herself voyaging over from Ste. Claire in Etienne -Castener’s big blue cart with the bits of furniture she had -collected, and turning the Café de la Victoire into a home. -This house of hers would lead the way in Beaucourt, and -stand as a live thing to encourage the others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to look again at Bibi’s house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her watch told her that she would have to be on the -march in half an hour, and there was the washing up to -be done. She was not going to leave Paul with a lot of -dirty crockery.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can heat up the meat and the vegetables for -another meal,” she told him, “and perhaps you know how -to fry eggs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can boil them and judge the time,” laughed Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Manon was ready for the road, Brent walked with -her by way of the Rue de Picardie to look at the Hôtel de -Paris. The place, standing as it did at the cross-roads, -had suffered badly from shell-fire, and the ragged walls -rose out of a deplorable chaos of rubbish—old iron and -broken brick. It had been a biggish building, and Brent -saw that the house had gathered itself round the great -central mass of brickwork in which were the chimney flues, -a mass of brickwork that stood like a lonely tower in -the middle of the ruin. The main beams of the roof -and floors had taken their bearings from this central -tower. The staircase had curled round it, and in any -reconstructive scheme this mass of brickwork would serve -as a point d’appui.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent climbed over the rubbish and examined the -chimney-stack with the eyes of an expert. There was a -great crack running up one side of it, a crack that spread -upwards from a raw chasm at the base of the mass where -a shell had exploded. A good third of the foundations -had been blown away, and the whole pile seemed to balance -itself precariously on the edge of the shell crater.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had followed Brent over the heaps of brick.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look at that,” and he pointed at Louis Blanc’s -chimney-stack.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems ready to fall.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was frowning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Half-an-hour’s work with a pick, or a Mill’s hand-grenade, -and a bit of wind, and the thing would come -down like an old factory chimney. Take that gable end -of the house with it too, probably,—and put our dear -friend back for weeks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s eyes met his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would be a blow to Bibi?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—that brick stack is going to be very useful when -they begin reconstructing the house. And if it fell it -would be pretty sure to bring that wall down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we could not do it, Paul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her face had a touch of fierceness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would be such a dirty trick, the sort of trick that -Bibi would play on other people.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought you would say that,” he told her, with a -significant little smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you wanted to find out——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“O my Paul,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked sheepish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should have known that you had some strong reason—that -the fellow is such a beast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He may be that, but we could not fight him in that -way. I don’t believe you would have done it, Paul, even -if I had asked you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was pretty sure you would not ask me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent walked with her as far as the factory, and turned -homewards along the Rue Romaine. She had given him -a soft look of the eyes, and a little smile, and Brent was -happy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s great,” he kept saying to himself; “by God, -I’m glad she trusts me!”</p> - -<div><h1>XX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> day dawned very red, with the whole horizon -flushed like the inside of a shell. The sky overhead was -as grey as a pearl; there was no wind moving and the -air lay soft and still.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stood on the doorstep and scented a change in -the weather. Rain was coming, and there might be wind -with it, and he looked up at the new rafters overhead and -was glad that he had fixed none of the iron sheeting. A -gale could blow through the timber-work like a north-easter -through the snoring rigging of a ship that has -struck her sails, and do no damage, but Brent took the -hint that that red sky gave him. He would have to block -up those doorways and windows before sheeting the roof, -or some malicious devil of a March wind might come -crowding in, heave up the whole structure and deposit -it in the backyard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had lit the stove and he had coffee, a boiled egg, -and real bread and butter for breakfast. His pipe tasted -good after that meal when he went up aloft to complete -the fixing of the rafters on the half of the house over the -kitchen. The sky looked like a great flat sheet of grey -rubber, with a dirty patch of darker clouds sticking to it -here and there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, you are going to rain all right, damn you,” said -Brent; “pity you couldn’t have put it off for three -days.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul had finished the fixing of the rafters and had been -nailing on the battens that were to take the galvanized -iron when Louis Blanc cycled into Beaucourt. He came -by the road past the château, and from the high ground -there he could not help seeing the fresh white timber-work -of the Café de la Victoire’s roof showing up against -the lead-coloured sky. Bibi dismounted and stood holding -the machine by the handle-bars. Paul Brent was -visible as a blue and white figure moving against the white -timber, and Bibi could hear the faint tap-tap of his hammer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The “propriétaire” of the Hôtel de Paris had the mentality -of the superficially civilized man who has retained -the worst blood of the savage. Louis Blanc was a Parisian, -a Parisian of the cabaret type who happened to have been -born in the provinces. He had a long head, immense appetites, -and an exaggeration of the Latin temperament that -the word “flamboyant” describes so well. A crowd made -him brave, especially a crowd of women, and one woman -would do the trick if she happened to be pretty. Bibi -swaggered; but there was a streak of cowardice in the -man when you cut the hair of his vanity. He was just -the precocious, unlicked, boastful, dirty-minded boy of sixteen -who had never been socialized, and who remained a -boy at the age of forty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Bibi had a head. He was ingenious. He had -avoided hard work, and he had prospered. “Always get -somebody else to shift your muck for you,” was one of -his sayings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had been very successful with women, though he -had had his head bitten off on occasions. He did not -understand that some women are fastidious. Bibi was -not fastidious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beaucourt was in ruins, but the proprietor of the -Hôtel de Paris had glimpsed the possibilities of a ruined -village. For the plain person the problem of Beaucourt -was shelter, work, food; the peasant, like Father Adam, -would have to live on his own sweat, reclaiming those -fields and gardens, gulping his potage, and swallowing his -own potatoes and haricots. That was not Louis Blanc’s -idea of life. He despised the peasant. He was modern, -no agriculturist, but a manipulator of other men’s activities. -He meant to create an artificial value in Beaucourt. -He had money, and a man who was ready to -back him with more money, a rich Parisian bourgeois -whom he had met in the army who had been piqued by -Bibi’s idea. Beaucourt was to be an “exhibition village,” -a centre for the sentimental fools who would visit the battlefields, -and might think it quaint and charming to stay -in a village that was rising like the dead from its ruins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A week ago Bibi and his man of money had visited the -Tourist Agencies in Paris. Bibi had declaimed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In three months there will be an hotel in Beaucourt. -Some experience, hey!—for Americans and English to -stay in a devastated village! Table d’hôte inside, and people -putting up rabbit hutches, or camping in the church -or the cellars! The tourists will be able to see it all from -my windows, and they will have their comforts too, good -beds and full bellies. People like to be comfortable, -messieurs, even after strolling down a devastated street. -Wine—yes—plenty of wine. And relics—cartloads of -relics. You can visit the graves, drive to Albert, Peronne, -Villers Bretonneux, Chaulnes, Roye, Moreuil. Bus -services to St. Quentin and the Hindenburg Line! Do -you not see it all, messieurs?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of the principal Tourist Agencies saw it very -vividly. Louis Blanc had an idea. They were ready to -put him on their list and to advertise Beaucourt: “Spend -three days in a devastated village. Comfort among the -ruins. Unique provincial hotel just rebuilt after being -demolished by shell-fire.” They rose to Bibi’s idea, but -they were a little sceptical about his scheme for rebuilding -the Hôtel de Paris.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thunder, but I am getting the stuff,” said Bibi, “and -I am getting the men.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Which was an exaggeration, for neither building material -nor labour was to be had at a wave of the hand. -Bibi was agitating his case with the Préfet and the Mayor -of the Commune; he was trying to buy timber, tiles, army -stores, army huts, anything and everything.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And there he stood on the château hill and saw that -damned fellow of Manon Latour’s putting up a roof before -he—Bibi—had bought a foot of timber!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The devil scorch his blue trousers, but where did he -get that wood?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc walked his bicycle down the château hill, -and left it leaning against the wall by the doorway of the -Hôtel de Paris. He went in and had another critical look -at this place of his, crunching over the broken bricks, -examining the walls, the foundations. The precarious -state of the great central chimney-stack was as obvious to -him as it had been to Paul; the raw and ragged concavity -at the base of it looked bigger than ever, so much so that -Bibi’s eyes narrowed and little ugly wrinkles showed about -his mouth and nostrils. He was a suspicious beast. A man -who is ready to play dirty tricks on others is always imagining -them being played upon himself. Bibi climbed -down into the hole and examined the brickwork. There -were no pick marks upon it, no signs of freshly broken -surface, but Bibi was not satisfied.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went and stood in the Place de l’Eglise and surveyed -the stage upon which he was to mount this financial -tableau of his. He looked at the church with its broken -spire and worm-eaten walls. Yes, the church was just as -it should be; the scenic effect of it was excellent; sensible -people would leave the church just as it stood, a sensational -and picturesque relic. Here was one of the outrages -of the great war slap up against his windows; the tourists -could stare at the church while they sat at dinner in the -salle-à-manger. Bibi suspected that no funds would be -available for the restoration of churches. That was excellent. -Who wanted churches, unless they were of sufficient -interest to be written up in guide-books? The shell-scarred -lime trees, ranged round the Place like the pillars -of a piazza, had a decorative and realistic effect, and Bibi -decided that the lime trees must not be touched. He -turned his attention to the Hospice. The Hospice was a -very interesting ruin, and Bibi thought of trying to buy -the building, visualizing it as an admirable annexe in -the event of the scheme proving a success.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The tap-tap of Brent’s hammer echoed faintly through -the ruins. The sound was insistent, challenging, busily -competitive. It annoyed Louis Blanc, kept up a noise like -the yapping of a dog, and disturbed his material visions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Confound that fellow!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He called Brent a foul name, and then walked into the -Rue de Picardie. Bibi was jealous of Manon, and jealous -of the enterprise she had shown in gathering up the -threads of life in broken Beaucourt. A woman had got -ahead of him, and Bibi’s vanity felt the insult; women -were created to be spectators and to supply the applause. -Louis Blanc wanted Manon, and he wanted her house. -She was so plump and pretty and provocative, and she -would have made such an excellent little manageress, for -even tourists like a pretty French madame busy about a -house. But Manon had declared war upon Bibi; he had -his grudge against her, and since she was only a woman, -Bibi transferred the grudge to Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Reaching the end of the Rue de Picardie, Louis Blanc -had a view of the work that Paul had completed, and it -was the work of a craftsman, no bodging job perpetrated -in a back garden by an enthusiastic amateur. Bibi stood -in the street and gazed, and the longer he looked, the more -fiercely he disliked Paul. Brent was on the roof, nailing -down battens at great speed, a couple of nails in his mouth, -and his back to Louis Blanc. It was evident to Bibi that -Manon had made a catch, and that the fellow up there on -the roof was worth many smiles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shouted at Brent:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good morning, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And a moment later:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where the devil did you get that wood?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent turned sharply, and sitting on one of the lower -battens, looked down at Bibi. He saw him as a tall man, -feet planted well apart, stomach thrown forward, his fists -bulging out of his trouser pockets, a man who looked all -angles, lean shoulders jutting out, jaw cocked, cap over one -eye, elbows truculent. Bibi reminded Brent of a big and -blackguardly variation of “Captain Kettle.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He removed the nails from his mouth, and wished Bibi -good morning. The first drops of rain were beginning to -fall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc repeated the question that Brent had failed -to answer:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where the devil did you get that wood?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled down at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Found it,” was all he said, and turning round, resumed -his hammering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi looked hard at the middle of Paul’s back. It -would have been a great pleasure to him to have climbed -up and thrown that fellow off the roof, but there were -things that Bibi wanted to find out. The rain drops fell -on his face, and suggested shelter. Bibi mounted the path -and entered the doorway of the Café de la Victoire. He -poked his head into the room on the right of the passage -and saw stacked in the farther room all that timber and -galvanized iron that Paul and Manon had salved from -the huts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was pure chance, but Brent’s hammer took it into -its head to slide off one of the rafters and land on the stone -floor of the passage within two feet of where Louis Blanc -was standing. Brent looked down and saw Bibi, and Bibi -was looking up at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean by that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was an accident,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nicely arranged.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you have no business there, anyway, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi stooped, picked up the hammer, and sent it whirling -into the ruins across the road.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stamped into the other rooms and looked at everything -at his leisure, while Paul came down the ladder to -find his hammer. He knew the sort of man that Bibi -was, and he had no intention of letting himself be tricked -into a rough and tumble with him. Such men are best -held at arm’s length by a show of good temper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had the luck to find his hammer almost at once, -and he was up the ladder again and hammering hard before -Louis Blanc had satisfied his curiosity. Bibi looked -up at him, puzzled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, there you are!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shan’t drop it again, monsieur. There is no need -for a tin helmet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw Bibi’s teeth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A nice little hoard you have here. Did you buy it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We bought it by working for it, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You stole it,” said Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent paused, smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, monsieur, you tempt me to drop the hammer -on you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Try it, my boy, try it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul let fall a subtle hint instead of the hammer. He -wanted to be left alone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why don’t you go and look for some yourself, monsieur. -The good God helps those——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, go to hell!” said Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He slouched out of the house, turning up the collar of -his coat because of the rain, and Brent saw him walk down -the Rue de Rosières. It appeared that Louis Blanc did -not know of those huts, which was amusing and rather -suggestive; Bibi had despised Beaucourt, and had not -bothered to discover what Beaucourt could give him. -When a man has big ideas, he does not trouble to grub -among rubbish heaps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent descended, looped the ground sheet over his -shoulders, and went back to his work. Louis Blanc had -disappeared, but presently he came swinging back along -the Rue de Rosières, and Brent had a feeling that he -had seen those huts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi went past the café with a cocked chin and a gleaming -eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had better not take any more of that,” he shouted -at Brent; “it belongs to the State.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul nodded at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. It’s no use to you, I suppose? Good -morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi called him a certain foul thing, and stalked on. -He had made up his mind to hire a wagon and horses and -salve some of that stuff for himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he was feeling very evil towards Brent, and when -Bibi hated a man he piled every imaginable infamy upon -the enemy’s shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That fellow would play me a dirty trick—if he dared, -but I frightened him a bit about the hammer. Wonder -what a woman can see in a tow-headed sheep like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was raining hard and beginning to blow when Bibi -got on his bicycle and rode for Ste. Claire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Early in the afternoon the rain came with such a -pelt, driven by a rising wind, that Paul had to leave work -on the roof. He began rigging up a shelter in the big front -room on the other side of the passage—a shelter that would -enable him to push on with his doors and window-frames -and defy the weather. He had stacked a reserve supply -of dry firewood in the cellar, and when dusk fell and shut -out the wet and melancholy blur of the Beaucourt ruins, -Brent was not sorry to retreat to the cellar, light the stove -and feel snug and dry. He lit the candle, put the kettle -on the stove, and spent the time cutting the mortices for -the window-frames, using a couple of boxes as a bench.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By nine o’clock the wind had worked to a gale, and its -bluster became so menacing that Brent climbed the cellar -steps and stood in the passage under the shelter of the wall. -The wind was snoring through the timber-work overhead, -and now and again a gust would smite the house a full -smack with the open hand, but the walls of the café took -the blow without flinching. Brent thanked his luck that -he had not been caught with the roof half covered, for -the gale would have made a mess of the whole structure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he stood there in the darkness, he became aware -of Beaucourt as a place of weird noises. The broken walls -and hollow spaces made so many Pan’s pipes for the wind -to play upon. There was the noise, too, of things falling. -Blocks of brickwork and strips of wall that had braved it -out in quieter times subsided under the push of this -furious north-easter. Remnants of roof slithered down -with a clattering of tiles. Plaster that had clung to the -stud-work crumbled to join the rubbish below. A rusty -piece of corrugated iron went clanking and clashing up -the Rue de Picardie, till a gust tossed it into a doorway -and left it at rest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly, like a big gun loosing off in the thick of all -the tumult of the wind’s attack, some mass of masonry -or brickwork came down with a crash. Brent felt a distinct -vibration of the earth, a thrill of the foundations -under his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, there goes Bibi’s chimney!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was right.</p> - -<div><h1>XXI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Madame Castener</span> had lit the lamp when someone -knocked at the door of her cottage. The wind was roaring -in the poplars and blowing the rain against the windows, -and Marie Castener opened the door no more than -an inch, for lamp glasses were terribly dear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man’s voice came out of the darkness, a brisk but -quiet voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, madame, I am sorry to trouble you -on such a night, but they tell me that Madame Latour is -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was sitting at the table with a sheet of red linen -that was to be the cover of a duvet hanging over her knees. -The lamp was turned low and the corners of the room were -in comparative darkness. She saw a little man wearing -a black-caped overcoat and a soft black hat step quickly -into the room while Madame Castener closed the door -behind him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The visitor bowed to Manon, pulled off his hat, and, -coming into the circle of light, began to unbutton his -overcoat. He was a compact, square-shouldered little -man, short in the neck and legs, with a shrewd, grey, close-cropped -head, very bright eyes and an air of humorous -benignity. He smiled at Manon as she put the red linen -aside on the table, rose, and held out her hands for his -coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Durand!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have surprised you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hung the wet coat over the back of a chair, turned -up the lamp, and looked at Monsieur Anatole Durand with -eyes that told him nothing. Monsieur Durand had owned -the château at Beaucourt. He was neither an aristo nor -a parvenu, but a solid little man whose father and grandfather -had been solid men before him, millowners at Lille, -men who had made money. Anatole had bought the -château at Beaucourt about ten years before the war. A -man of ideas and of energy, he had tried to teach Beaucourt -certain things that it did not know, and Beaucourt—like -most villages—had had no desire to be taught anything. -Monsieur Durand had not been popular. He had -lived up there in the château, and he had not belonged -to the château. A peasant may abuse an aristo, but, even -in abusing him, he recognizes the aristo’s indigenous -right to be there. Durand was an importation, a city man, -a big little fellow who appeared to think he had right -to interfere with the other little fellows in Beaucourt. -The soul of the peasant had shown its surliness. Durand -was just a bumptious manufacturer who had come to -amuse himself in the country. Beaucourt had held its -nostrils at the smell of his autocar. What did Beaucourt -want with an autocar? What did Beaucourt want with -electric light, and a dynamo driven by water power? The -man was a fussy, new-fangled fool.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be seated, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand sat down, knees well apart, his hands -resting on them. Marie Castener had drawn up a chair -on the other side of the table; she began to darn stockings -with an air of phlegmatic detachment that left these other -two free to talk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you are like the rest of them, Manon,” said Durand, -looking her straight in the face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How is that, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She glanced at him and went on with her work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course—I was unpopular. That busybody, Durand! -Always wanting something new!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know Beaucourt as well as I do, monsieur,” said -Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand sat squarely on his chair. He was a -square man all over, square in the boots, the head, the -jaw, rather like a little copy of Thiers, that irrepressible, -compact bit of energy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, they can hate me as much as they please, but -I always was a man who must push a stone out of the way -or cut down a rotten tree. I’m an old fellow, Manon, but -my work is over there. I have another ten years left.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a little quiver of emotion in his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have no children, you know, and plenty of money. -I am not one of the ruined ones. You can’t take your -money away with you when you die. Did ever an old -fellow have such an opportunity?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon raised her head, and her eyes seemed to see -something.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why do you come to me, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have gone back to Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In a sense, yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are rebuilding—you are one of those with -courage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have hope, monsieur, and I have had good luck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand’s eyes glistened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Life is like this, madame; there are those who work -and create; there are those who wait and grumble. Some -people sit still and say, ‘What a tragedy! What can we -do? When is the Government going to help us?’ Those -people will not rebuild Beaucourt; they will not bring -back the smile and the good sweat to all that poor desert.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think as I think, Monsieur Durand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gave an audacious and triumphant little wave of -the hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not call me an egotist, my dear, if I wish to consecrate -the rest of my life to the healing of these wounds. -What better work for a Frenchman! And that is one -of the reasons why I have come to you, because you have -the courage, because I felt that you must think as I -have thought.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon put down her work, and looked at Anatole -Durand with eyes of immense seriousness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, listen a moment. When I first went to -Beaucourt I thought only of my own bit of property, -myself, but when I had seen Beaucourt and felt the pity -of it, I began to think of my neighbours. Yet I say to -myself, to help others you must first be strong yourself. -So I did not hesitate to look round and get what I could, -timber and iron from some army huts, tins of beef, tools, -bits of furniture—which I shall return.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand smiled at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is the spirit of France; do not apologize for it, -madame, for it is the spirit that will rebuild Beaucourt. -But now, I ask you, what will have to be done for the -others?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Food,” said Manon promptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tools, material, wood to build with.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Old Durand clapped his hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Exactly. Well, it will be my business to try and -arrange all that. The Americans and English will sell -us their camps and their stores, and I shall be one of -the first to buy. We shall have to open a canteen at Beaucourt. -Now, madame, I shall drive over in my autocar to-morrow. -Will you go with me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“With pleasure, monsieur,” said Manon; “and if I may -take a little bundle——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anything but a piano or a cupboard,” said Anatole, -with a laugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The storm blew itself out during the night, leaving wet -roads and a blue sky and a smell of spring in the air. -Durand and his car, an old-fashioned four-seater De Dion, -called for Manon at nine, with Anatole at the wheel -and a luncheon basket on the back seat. Manon’s bundle -was no terrible affair, stores for Paul tied up in a -blanket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But someone was before them on the Beaucourt road, -Louis Blanc on his bicycle, a Louis Blanc who was not in -the best of tempers. He had visited nearly every farm in -Ste. Claire, offering good money for the hire of a wagon -and a couple of horses, but no one had been able to oblige -him. He came into Beaucourt by the Bonnière road. -In the Place de l’Eglise he dismounted and stood staring. -Something was missing from the broken outlines of the -ruins of the Hôtel de Paris; the great central chimney -had fallen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi dashed his bicycle down upon the cobbles. He was -in a rage—the dramatic, white-faced rage of the French -“rough,” a rage that must gesticulate, stamp up and down, -let itself loose on something. He stormed in and looked at -the ruin, and a pretty mess the chimney had made of it. -Falling on the gable end next the Rue des Echelles, it had -sent it crashing, and this mass of brickwork, striking the -tottering wall of the Hospice across the way, had brought -down the whole façade of the Hospice into the road. The -mouth of the Rue des Echelles was full of broken bricks -and stones.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi looked at it all, and swore. The centre-piece of -his house had gone; there were only three walls instead -of four—nothing left that could carry a roof. The end -fronting on the Rue des Echelles would have to be rebuilt -before anything could be done in the way of putting -up timber.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi stamped about, kicking the bricks, and flapping -his arms like some furious bird. He was not a man who -could satisfy himself by cursing the elements or black-guarding -a purely impersonal wind. He wanted a tangible, -human enemy, a personal quarrel, a feud that could -be prosecuted with boot and fist. He wanted to take somebody -by the throat, smash his fists against real flesh, smell -real blood. Bibi was a savage. His rage was the anthropomorphic -rage of a savage that spits in the face of its -idol-god and hammers it with a club.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That chimney had not fallen itself. Therefore someone -had helped it to fall. Therefore someone had played him -a dirty trick. These deductions following each other easily -through Bibi’s mind, proved that someone could be none -other than that fellow of Manon Latour’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The motive was obvious, so obvious that Bibi had not -to search for an enemy. He had found his quarrel and he -fastened on it like a snarling dog.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He walked up the Rue de Picardie with those cold eyes -of his full of a hard glare. His fists were stuffed into his -trouser pockets; he swung his shoulders as he walked, and -jerked his head from side to side. The fighting mood -flared in him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was at work on the roof. He had carried up -about twenty sheets of corrugated iron, and his hammer -began to ring on them as Louis Blanc came up the street. -To Bibi the noise was like the clashing of sword and -buckler, a barbaric sound echoing out of his savage -Gaulish past.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, there!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent turned, and leaning against the roof, looked down -at the man in the street. Bibi’s figure was foreshortened. -His long chin seemed to stick out; he looked all shoulders -and feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good morning,” said Paul, “it has turned fine after -the storm.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi grinned and looked at the ladder that rested -against the front of the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you thought that dirty trick of yours rather clever.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What trick, Monsieur Blanc?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi raised a big hand, its fingers hooked, as though he -were reaching for the man up above. He looked ugly, -devilish ugly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come down,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent sat and considered him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the matter? What are you talking about?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come down,” said Bibi again; “you know what I -mean.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes went hard. He knew what had happened -to Louis Blanc’s house, having strolled up there soon after -dawn, and he sensed some connexion between the fallen -chimney and that ugly figure in the road. The fellow -wanted a row; he had found an excuse for it; but Brent -had made up his mind not to give Bibi his chance. A row -might prove most damnably awkward, and Paul meant to -smile the man off.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here,” he said. “I’m busy. What’s all this -about?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come down,” barked Bibi, with the persistence of a -furious dog.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent laughed, turned, and pretended to go on with -his work, but he kept an eye on the top of the ladder that -projected above the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You pig of a coward,” said the voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent began hammering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You knocked away the foundations of my chimney.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent went on hammering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he saw the top of the ladder give a jerk, and he -was round in a flash. Bibi had one foot on the third rung, -and the two men stared at each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here,” said Brent, still smiling, “you keep off -that ladder. I have had nothing to do with that chimney -of yours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Liar!” shouted the Frenchman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent gave a French shrug.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the truth; take it or leave it. But get off that -ladder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi began to climb up, and Brent bent down, gripped -the top rung, and held the ladder out from the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, if you try to come up, I’ll pitch you -over.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi did try, and Brent kept his promise. Man and -ladder went over into the road, Bibi lying like a big beetle -with the thing on top of him. He slipped from under it, -got up, and began to behave like a madman. He picked -up the ladder, dashed it against the raised path so that it -broke in the middle, and then went on to kick it to pieces -with his heavy boots. He was like a wild animal that had -lost all control and all sense of pain, and Brent sat and -watched him with something of the feeling of a man who -is safe in the branches of a tree. He understood now -why Manon had looked so serious when she had spoken of -Louis Blanc. The fellow could behave like a beast, and -he had the strength of a beast. Brent had ceased to smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall want a long spoon,” he reflected, “a devilish -long spoon. Life in Beaucourt is going to be hot stuff.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Into the middle of this display of animal energy came -Anatole Durand’s car, poking its red nose round the corner -of the Rue Romaine, and stopping by the well, for Bibi still -occupied the road. He had not finished kicking the ladder -to pieces, and his heavy boots made such a noise that -he had not heard the car.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a very droll look on old Durand’s face. -Manon had glanced at Paul on the roof, and Paul had -smiled at her, but Manon did not smile. Here was this -evil spirit loose in Beaucourt, this man who had always -behaved like a spoilt child when baulked of some desire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So that fellow hasn’t been killed,” said Monsieur -Durand. “What a pity! Let us ring for the concierge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat there and blew blasts on his motor horn as -though Louis Blanc were the walls of Jericho.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi left the remains of the ladder and walked across -to the car. The imperiousness of old Durand’s horn -annoyed him, nor was it any pleasure to him to look into -the quizzical and bright eyes of the manufacturer from -Lille. Anatole was not afraid of anything or anybody, -and he had always spoken of Bibi as a dog that wanted -thrashing. The presence of Manon modified the situation, -and brought the sex swagger back into Bibi’s attitude.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You seem to have no respect for your boots, monsieur,” -said old Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc stood in front of the nose of the car, hands -in pockets, feet well apart, his body swung back from the -loins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If a fellow plays you a dirty trick, monsieur, you go -round to give him a thrashing, hey. But that fellow up -there was afraid to come down, so I have smashed his -ladder for him. You see!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens!” said old Durand, “but what is it all about?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you ask that fellow up there,” and Bibi shook a fist -at Paul, “whether he did not knock down the chimney -and wall of my hotel, he will tell you a lie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The voice of Manon interposed itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Blanc imagines that other people behave as -he would behave. That is the whole trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up at Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you touched Monsieur Blanc’s house?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it likely? The storm blew the thing down. I -heard it fall about nine o’clock last night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi shrugged his shoulders. The violence was dying -out of him; it had exhausted itself for the moment; and -he had a certain astuteness; the grapes were sour on this -particular morning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are a man of the world, monsieur,” he said to -Anatole Durand; “you know that things do not happen of -themselves, especially when certain people wish them to -happen. But the truth remains; that fellow is a coward -and a liar, and it was to madame’s interest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole gave a little bleat on the horn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you have got a bee in your head, Monsieur -Blanc. We French do not play such tricks on each other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So it is three to one,” said Bibi; “and against a man -who was three times wounded. Voilà! Into the ditch -with you all! I’m off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went swinging up the Rue de Picardie, and Durand -and Manon sat and looked at each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is the matter with that fellow?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What was always the matter with Bibi, monsieur? -He has an idea that Beaucourt is an opportunity, that he -is going to show off and make money. He always had the -biggest voice in the place, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, a fog-horn of a man,” said Durand, “a big drum. -But what about our St. Simon up there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They climbed out of the car, and joined in council with -Paul. But old Durand’s attention was divided. He was -in Beaucourt, the place of his Frenchman’s dreams, in the -thick of these dear ruins that were to bloom again under -his hand. He looked at Manon’s house, and was delighted, -and his delight almost forgot the worker and the work. -Here was his symbol, his example, his banner of hope. -He wanted to run through all the village on those sturdy -little legs of his, and dream hard-headed dreams of reconstruction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon understood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go and look at Beaucourt, monsieur. I will see to -my partner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole dashed off, opening a big note-book. He had -carried a big note-book all his life; it was his Bible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Expect me in half an hour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon stood in the road and spoke to Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What happened?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He came round here like a mad bull, and when he -tried to climb the ladder I pitched him over, ladder and -all. It’s a nuisance; I shall have to make a new ladder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon laughed. She liked Paul’s shrewdness, his smile -of restraint.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now I must get you down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She happened to know that old Durand carried a length -of stout rope in the locker under the back seat of the car. -He had told her it was there. “If we break down, well, -I have a tow-rope.” He liked thoroughness, to be prepared -for all eventualities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The rope served its purpose. Manon threw up the coil, -and at the third attempt Brent caught it. He fastened -the end to one of the rafters and slid down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s that,” he said tersely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon looked at him with eyes that were brighter than -the eyes of a man.</p> - -<div><h1>XXII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Anatole Durand</span> was away for two hours, and when -he returned to the Café de la Victoire he found that Brent -had extemporized a ladder out of some lengths of timber -and was at work again on the roof of the house. The gale -of the preceding night had been a warning to Manon’s -partner, and he was in a hurry to get the whole roof covered -in before the wind rose again. Manon was helping at -the foot of the ladder, and making further use of Monsieur -Durand’s rope. She had knotted a big loop at one -end of it, a loop which would grip a couple of sheets of -iron, so that Paul could draw them up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Old Durand sat down on the running-board of his car -and watched. He had seen his château, and he had seen -Beaucourt, and perhaps he had been a little discouraged, -though Manon had warned him against what he called -“la maladie des ruines,” but as he watched the cheerful -activities of these two, Brent hauling up the sheets and -nailing them down with the speed and precision of a -human machine, the adventure of it thrilled him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, that’s life,” he said, “the spirit of youth that -strives and creates. Youth is not daunted. Look at -that fellow’s strong brown arms, and the little Manon -with her sleeves rolled up. Mon Dieu! but it is splendid! -Ça ira, ça ira!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw his big note-book on to the front seat of the -car, took off his coat, and was ready for the dance. He -could not resist the music of those two happy figures, and -the fine clang of the hammer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, you two, here is a recruit. Set me to work, -my dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon exclaimed as only a Frenchwoman can exclaim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur has caught the fever! We shall all call you -Papa Durand, Père de Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole winked at Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now let us see what she will give me to do! She has -made use of my rope——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon stood considering, hands on hips.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have it. Monsieur was always a great gardener.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s it. Give me a spade. Turning up the good -soil for the first crops!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will be the first soil turned in Beaucourt. The -honour is yours, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Before God, it is an honour,” said old Durand with -sudden solemnity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So he set to work in Manon’s garden, clearing the -rubbish, and starting his trench with all the careful deliberation -of the professional gardener. He whistled, he -perspired, he took off his waistcoat. Life was good, the -simple life that grows out of the soil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon went in to cook the meal. She had brought -eggs and butter, and she made an omelette. There was -a white cloth on the table, glasses, a bottle of wine, half -a loaf of bread, some cheese. When all was ready, she -went forth with a saucepan and a spoon and hammered -her gong.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Messieurs, le dîner est servi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Old Durand came in with a shining forehead and eyes -that laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What, the hotel is open already!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook hands with Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are the very man we want, my friend. I congratulate -madame on her partner. I hear you have lived -in England?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Seven years,” said Brent, and swallowed the lie, not -liking it. Durand was a man to whom it was no pleasure -to tell a lie; there was something of the frank, brave -child in him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sat down to the meal, and it was Anatole who -talked, and he talked like his note-book. He expressed -himself in energetic, jerky phrases, like a man pushing a -big stone up a hill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Work, that’s it. The world has got to get back to -work. There is nothing so good as work. Look at my -appetite! I saw it all mapped out while I was digging. -We must get at the soil, grow our food, grow more food -till we have food to sell. Then we can buy clothes, and -pots and pans, and curtains—the things that the towns -have to sell. Quite simple, is it not? But to begin with -we shall have no food and little shelter. That is where -Papa Durand will come in. I shall buy food; we will open -a public kitchen and a canteen. I shall buy stores, timber, -felt, iron sheets, stoves. Perhaps you, Monsieur Paul, will -be my director of works—who knows? Perhaps madame -will manage the food. We must get the strong men and -the women back, shelter them, feed them, give them tools. -Not charity, no, but a new chance. It is not wise to make -things too easy; if people do not work, they shall not -come to our canteen. The old women and the children -had better stay where they are until Beaucourt has its feet -on the rock. Yes, I shall live here, and work here, when -I am not scouring the country for stores, or shouting at -officials. The officials always have wool in their ears. They -say, ‘Your plan shall be considered,’ and then put it away -in a drawer. But you, my friends, and the like of you, -will be the saviours of devastated France. I drink your -health, madame, and wish you ‘bonne chance.’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the meal was over, and Monsieur Durand had lit -a cigar, Manon took him to see the huts in the field off the -Rue de Rosières. Two of these huts were in perfect condition -and had not been touched by Brent; and there -were two others that could be put in repair. Each hut -would hold about twenty people.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole was delighted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here we are! Shelter for forty men and the same -number of women—barracks for the workers till we can -find something better. Then there are the cellars in -Beaucourt. I shall use the cellars of the château as my -depôt for food.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He scribbled in his note-book.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be in debt to Beaucourt,” said Manon, “but -I shall pay the debt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How so, my dear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have taken more than enough material to make -another hut.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The example will pay for it. I suppose that fellow—Louis -Blanc—knows of these buildings?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Confound him!” said Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She left him wandering among the ruined cottages, -and returned to the café and to Paul. Manon’s ideas had -been enlarged by the enthusiasms of old Durand, for he -was a man who had remained young, whose brain was vital -and alert. Age was horrible to Manon, even though she -pitied it, age with its stupidly staring old face, its eternal -questions, its eternal condemnation of anything new. -She found herself picturing the Beaucourt of the future. -What would it be like?—a little world of old men and old -women, grumblers, backbiters, grudging folk who could -never forgive youth for being young? The figures of Paul, -Bibi and old Durand seemed to stand in the foreground of -the new Beaucourt. She was more than a little afraid of -Paul. How would Beaucourt accept him? Had the war -made people broader-minded, more generous, more ready -to say “This man has done good things; let us judge him -by his works”?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul had shifted his ladder to the other side of the -house, for he had completed the roofing of the half next the -street. Already this house of hers was ceasing to look an -empty shell; it had a solidity, an overspreading shadow. -Something thrilled in her. She looked up at the man, -her man with his brown arms and sturdy back, and a -strange new tenderness awoke in her heart. She would -stand by him; she would place herself resolutely between -him and the past. What did the past matter? It was the -future, the brave looking forward, and the light in the -eyes, the hands strong for the labour that was to be. -These were the things that mattered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She called him, and her voice had a new softness, a -note that was for his ears alone. He turned and looked -down at her, this dark-haired little woman in her black -blouse and black and white check skirt. The woman in -her and the indefinable perfume of her womanhood seemed -to rise to him like the scent of the spring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come down,” she said; “I wish to talk.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled, hesitating.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want this finished before the wind gets up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know,” she answered; “you work like a devil.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed and came down the ladder, and when he -was standing at her side, he felt that they had passed some -invisible landmark, and that Manon knew it and was holding -out a hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where is Monsieur Anatole?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dreaming,” she said, “dreaming, but I think his -dreams will come true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A great old man—that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because he is not old. He looks forward, not back. -If he can only give his eyes to Beaucourt, it will be good -for Beaucourt—and for us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned through the gateway into the garden where -old Durand’s first ridge of freshly turned brown soil -showed at the end of a green carpet of weeds. The path -under the pollarded limes and between them and the stone -wall was broad enough for two. It had many memories -for Manon, many associations—this old garden; it was an -intimate place, and Brent was no longer a stranger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am worried about Bibi,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up at Paul with a full, frank glance of the -eyes, a glance that seemed to open the whole of her world -to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can look after myself. I don’t want to quarrel with -the fellow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are thinking that he could make trouble?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that’s the danger.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They walked to the end of the path in silence, a silence -that was like a lane that led towards a clearer view of -the future.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How great is the danger, Paul?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She spoke very quietly, and in turning, looked calmly -up into his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you not think that I ought to know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stood a moment, his eyes set in a stare of -thought. He was wondering what had prompted her to ask -him that question, nor had he any quarrel with her right -to ask it, and in a measure, he was glad.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have every right to know—I will tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wait——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She touched his sleeve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not misunderstand me. If I wish to defend my -friend, I must know how the attack might come, I must -have my eyes open. And then—of course, it all depends -on whether you are happy here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you say that I may stay, I stay. Such a second -chance does not often come to a man. And now—I’ll tell -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything,” she said with a quick look at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He found the making of that confession far easier than -he had thought. On his first day in Beaucourt he had -given her mere hints, sketched a vague outline, but now -he drew in every detail, withholding nothing, painting his -life’s picture with a simplicity and a sincerity begotten of -the war. He had lived two years in an English prison, -having been convicted of fraud—but the fraud had been -of another man’s making. Brent had trusted people; he -was good-natured; he had left all the legal details of the -adventure to the other man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course I was to blame,” he said; “I was just as -responsible as he was; I ought not to have gone about in -blinkers. I abetted his swindling because I did not take -the trouble to find it out. My wife knew it all the time; -she was one of those women who are mad to make a show. -I never forgave her that. When I came out of prison the -war had started, and I had my chance. But after the war—there -was nothing. Do you wonder that I had a horror -of going back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a tragedy!” she said; “just your good nature.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He glanced at Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One ought not to be too good-natured. But for that -disgrace—and the truth of it—I’m free.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite free?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her dark eyes looked into his with a candour that was -almost fierce. And Brent understood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, free. My wife died during the first year of the -war. I’m quit of the whole miserable business; only, -over there, I should always be labelled an ex-convict. I -didn’t mind so much during the war; you lost yourself -in the bigness of it and in the heart of your pal. But -when it was over——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The past came back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then she smiled, and opening the old blue gate in -the garden wall, looked out over Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s the old world—everybody’s past. We are -beginning all over again, old Durand—you—I—even -Bibi. But Bibi will be just the same as ever, and after -all there is so little for Bibi to find out. You are just an -Englishman who chose to stay in France.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a deserter,” he said. “I suppose they would -call me that. Beckett—the man buried over there would -not have grudged me the chance; he was the sort of fellow -who never minded risking his head. I have seen him go to -a farm that was being shelled and bring away the dog -that was chained up in the yard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then he added, “What do you want me to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing. You are just Paul Rance, a Breton who had -lived in England, and who has not gone back to England.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Brent; “but there are occasions in life -when a man has to produce papers, documents, and I have -nothing but the pay-book and disc that belonged to my -friend. I would rather like you to take charge of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can give them to me; I will lock them up in the -box I have at Marie Castener’s. And now that I know -everything, it seems nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was looking through the gateway at the ruins of -the village.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are very generous,” he said. “We will see what -Beaucourt makes of me. If it accepts me as a good -sort of fellow, it may ask no questions. It is about time -I got back to work on the roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They walked back to the house, and before he climbed -the ladder, Brent went down into the cellar and returned -with the battered brown Army Book and the identity disc. -He gave them to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is my pledge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It shall always be honoured,” she answered him, -slipping them into her blouse.</p> - -<div><h1>XXIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Half an hour</span> before dusk Anatole Durand started up -the engine of his car, and glanced round for Manon, -who had been putting on her cloak. Durand saw in this -delay a loitering of lovers, nor had he any quarrel with -a romance that seemed part of the soul of the new Beaucourt. -“If I am loved by the young,” was one of his -sayings, “the old can hate me as much as they please.” -His protest was a mild bleat on the horn, and a jab at the -accelerator that set the engine roaring for a couple of -seconds. He had a side glimpse, as he turned the car, of -Manon and Paul coming out of the doorway of the Café -de la Victoire, Paul’s blue trousers very close to Manon’s -black and white check skirt. There was an indescribable -nearness about their figures, and yet just a little space between -them, that magnetic space that separates the hearts -of lovers who have not confessed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was saying something to Paul. She looked -across at Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am coming, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am thinking of those shell-holes in the road near -Les Ormes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon climbed into the back seat, and Brent leant -over and wrapped a blanket round her. She had a little -canvas bag in her hand, a bag that contained something -heavy, and she dropped the bag into one of the pockets of -Paul’s coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I managed to borrow it,” she said, “after much -trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Old Durand refrained from looking over his shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you ready?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon gave Paul a nod and a brightening of the eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be careful,” she said, “or I shall be worried.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The red car squeezed its way round the well and -disappeared into the Rue Romaine, leaving Paul Brent -looking at the empty sunset and feeling the canvas bag that -Manon had dropped into his pocket. He drew it out, unfastened -the string at the mouth of the bag, and saw protruding -the lacquered butt of a little revolver, a mere -cheap toy of a pistol such as they made by the thousand in -Belgium before the war. There were half a dozen cartridges -at the bottom of the canvas bag, and Brent emptied -them into the palm of his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The forethought was Manon’s and therefore he had no -quarrel with it, discovering in that little weapon associations -of tenderness and pathos. The war had made him -a fighting man, yet this pistol did not seem to be the -tool of a fighting man, but rather a thing to be carried in a -pocket like some hooligan’s knife. Brent smiled, but the -memories of Manon were behind the smile. He had seen -Bibi in action and the beastliness of it had sobered him, -suggesting a wild dog among the ruins, a dog that might -leap out and snap at your throat. The whole business was -primitive and preposterous, rather unconvincing to an -Englishman who had been trained to a disciplined and -orderly way of killing Germans. The idea of being set -upon and bludgeoned in a ruined French village suggested -the <span class='it'>Police News</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dusk approached, and this ghost village had an -inhuman silence. Old Durand’s car seemed to have trailed -the last thread of life out of it, and a sharp shadow fell -across Brent’s face. His chin went up; he stood listening. -Somewhere in the Rue de Picardie a loose tile clattered -down, and the fall of it was like the sound of an avalanche.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent slipped six cartridges into the drum of the revolver, -and put it back in his pocket. He stood a moment -looking up at the new roof that covered the western half -of the house, and if his pride swelled itself out a little, the -feeling was justified. Under the level light of the sunset -the old house had warmed to a soft, ruddy brown, and those -blind eyes needed only window-frames and shutters painted -a battered blue to make it melt again into its green nest -among the orchards. In all his life Brent had never done -a piece of work better or more quickly, and the man in -him exulted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He entered the house, and hesitated in the kitchen with -a half-puzzled look upon his face. The sunlight had -reached out over Beaucourt like a great hand, a hand -that was suddenly withdrawn, and through the oblong of -the window he saw the outlines of the ghost-houses, ribs -showing, eye-sockets grey and empty. The room itself -was filling with the dusk; objects in it were growing indistinct; -the chair on which Manon had sat looked like a -ghost of a chair. The silence was extraordinary. Brent -had known the same silence over No-Man’s Land on quiet -nights, but there had been men near—other men. Here -there was desolation, that and nothing else.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His own face had a touch of grimness. He was listening -all the time, without perhaps realizing that the drums of -his ears were tense; and he was conscious of a sudden -feeling of acute loneliness, an uncomfortable loneliness, -chilly, fidgety, unpleasant. He pulled out his pipe, filled -the bowl, lit the tobacco, and found himself biting hard -at the stem and ceasing to suck at it, in order to listen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wind up!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled. An old soldier getting the wind up in -Beaucourt! Did anyone ever meet a ghost coming down -Tottenham Court Road? He sat down in Manon’s chair, -stared at the blank emptiness of the window space, and -thought of lighting the stove and going to bed. Brent had -got out of the habit of locking doors and fastening windows, -but Beaucourt, this silent, twilight Beaucourt, -brought him back to a primitive understanding of the -habit. He was a civilized man again who still takes precautions -against primordial savagery. He was the hermit-crab -in its borrowed shell, but this particular shell had -gaps in it. And somehow in the chill of that dusk Brent -knew that he did not relish sleeping in that cellar, where a -man could creep down the steps in his stockinged feet -and stun him before he could move.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He decided that he was not going to sleep in the cellar, -and he went below and carried up the wire bed on his -back. Then he brought half a dozen sheets of galvanized -iron and some lengths of timber into the kitchen so that -he could barricade the window and the door. The cunning -of the old soldier suggested an additional device, some sort -of harmless booby-trap to guard the front and back doors, -a few old tins scattered about, a loosely slung wire that -would bring a saucepan clattering down if anybody touched -it. The virtues of a good house-dog, and of stout doors -and shutters, needed no emphasizing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent barricaded the door and window of the kitchen -and went to bed. Manon’s revolver lay ready on a box; -also a candle and a box of matches. Beaucourt was still, -extraordinarily still, so silent that it kept Paul awake, -listening for the sound of anyone moving outside the -house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was growing accustomed to the stillness, and beginning -to feel drowsy and less on the alert when something -brought him back to a state of acute attention. He -could remember having been scared as a boy by the sound -made by a snail crawling across a window-pane, and this -sound that he heard was just as peculiar and unexplainable. -It made him think of a hand rubbing softly across -some roughish surface. It seemed quite near, and yet he -was unable to localize it in the darkness. Brent lay absolutely -still, knowing that the confounded wire bed would -creak and complain if he made the lightest movement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sound changed abruptly, became sharper and more -metallic. It suggested finger-nails picking at the edge of -a sheet of metal, and in a flash Brent seemed to visualize -the origin and the meaning of the sound. A man’s hand -had been feeling its way across the sheets of corrugated -iron that closed the window until it had come in contact -with the edge of one of the sheets. The hand had been -testing the solidity of the improvised shutter, and whether -it was possible to slip one of the sheets aside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sound ceased, and Brent’s hand went out for the -revolver. He fancied that he could hear a movement along -the raised path towards the street door, and he waited for -the clink of one of those tins, but his booby-traps gave -him no warning. There was an interval of silence, quite a -long interval, and Brent’s ears were beginning to play him -tricks. He was lying on his left side, his face turned towards -the kitchen doorway, its barricade of iron sheets -and timber a black patch in the plastered wall opposite -him, when he saw a little thread of light outline the lower -edge of the barricade. It was very faint, a mere greyness, -diffused from some light that was burning in one of the -rooms on the other side of the passage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent pushed back the blankets, drew up his feet, and -lifting his legs slowly over the edge of the bed, sat up. -The wire netting creaked, but the sound coincided with a -very distinct and crisp rustling in one of those other rooms, -a rustling that suggested the brushing up of shavings in a -carpenter’s shop. It was one of those sounds that struck -an old familiar memory on Brent’s brain. He had taken -the precaution of carrying the ladder into the kitchen, and -it stood slanting against the partition wall just below -the gap in the uncompleted roof. Paul felt his way to the -ladder, tested its steadiness with a pressure of the hands, -and mounted it slowly, Manon’s revolver in his left -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sudden broadening glow of light met him as he -reached the top of the wall. There was the distinct crackle -of burning wood, and then Brent understood. He caught -one of the rafters, pulled himself on to the wall, and lying -flat along it, was able to look down into the back room on -the other side of the passage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He saw a man down there, a man who was bending -forward and feeding chips and bits of wood on to the fire -he had lit on the floor. He had piled his shavings against -Brent’s stack of timber salved from the dismantled huts, -and the flames were beginning to lick at the pile of floor -boards. Brent set his teeth, and changed his pistol from -his left hand to his right. The man was Louis Blanc; -Paul knew him by his cap and clothes, and those angular -projecting shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent might have saved himself much future suffering -and travail if he had obeyed that first impulse and shot -Bibi as he bent forward over the fire. He did not do it. -It was one of those deeds that became impossible directly -the instinctive impulse has been gripped and held. Brent -fired straight at the fire, and the bullet sent a spurt of -burning chips over the feet of the man below.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi gave a leap like a cat, all four limbs spread. -Paul had a momentary glimpse of his face, lips drawn -back tight over the teeth, eyes furious and surprised. Then -he dodged sideways out into the passage, and Paul heard -the saucepan clatter against the stones as Bibi’s ankles -struck the wire. There was a pause, a scuffle, an oath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent used Bibi’s favourite expletive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!” he shouted. “I missed you on purpose. Next -time I shan’t miss.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go to the devil,” said the other voice from somewhere -in the street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul scrambled down to save his timber. Manon had -brought him a little electric torch, and after dismantling -the barricade across the kitchen doorway, he stepped into -the passage. Bibi might still be hanging about outside -the house, and since it was possible that Bibi was armed, -Paul went to the street doorway, and flashed his torch -along the path and across the road. Seeing no sign of -Louis Blanc he made a dash for the back door, and using -a bit of board scooped the mass of burning shavings away -from the timber pile. The floor was of tiles, and Brent -was able to beat out the scattered fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had no more sleep that night, but sat on a box in -the corner of the kitchen, his blankets wrapped round him, -torch and revolver ready. During that long watch he did -some very practical thinking on the subject of doors and -shutters, and the values of a good watch-dog. If there was -to be a battle of wits among the ruins of Beaucourt many -of the advantages would rest with Bibi; he could attack -when he pleased; an eternal “standing to” to repel some -chance raid was not a pleasant prospect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I might put the police on him,” Paul thought, and -immediately saw himself in a legal tangle, and being -handed over as a deserter to a corporal’s guard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Before the first greyness of the dawn he lit the fire, -made himself some tea, and then started the day’s work. -It took him less than an hour to finish sheeting the roof -covering the right half of the house, and he saw the sun -come up through the beech trees of the Bois du Roi and -flood the broken walls with yellow light. There was nothing -to break the silence save the sound of his hammer, and -in the calm of the dawn Brent found it difficult to believe -that Louis Blanc existed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He knocked off for breakfast, and then took a stroll up -the Rue de Picardie. Not twenty yards from the café he -came upon a rather amusing and significant proof of the -impetuosity of Louis Blanc’s retreat, a pair of boots standing -neatly, even demurely, in the middle of the street. -Bibi had pulled off his boots here before making his -attack, and Brent pictured him in his socks pedalling -that bicycle of his back to Ste. Claire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was inclined to be elated over the finding of those -boots, and to attach too triumphant a significance to this -rather ridiculous detail. Louis Blanc had the soul of a -“sneak-thief,” and the courage of a bully. Shot at, he -evaporated, and Brent was tempted to believe that he -had finished with Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he kept to his plan, and began by closing the back -door of the house with a barricade of iron sheets and -timber backed by ammunition boxes filled with bricks. -There were three ground-floor windows in the unroofed -half of the house and Paul covered them with more sheets, -driving the nails into the hard old mortar of the walls. -He was nailing up the last sheet when he heard the sound -of a car.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Old Durand had chosen a different road that morning, -and had come by way of the Rue de Rosières. He pulled -up outside the house, and Paul, standing there hammer in -hand, saw Manon’s eyes fixed on the barricaded windows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave a look of interrogation, frowning slightly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just to keep out the wind,” Paul told her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not believe him, and while Paul was talking to -Durand she went in and discovered the blackened tiles in -the back room, the charred shavings, and the scorched pile -of floor boards.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand drove on to the château. He wished to make -a survey of the place and to examine the cellars, and Paul -found Manon standing in the doorway, a very serious -Manon, with eyes that demanded the truth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What happened last night?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes were tired and red about the lids, the eyes -of a man who had had no sleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Someone tried to light a fire in there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you have seen it! Yes, it was that pleasant neighbour -of ours, Bibi. He sneaked in when it was dark, but -I happened to be awake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She wanted to know everything, and Brent described -all that had happened, and how he had frightened Louis -Blanc with the revolver she had left him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish you had killed the beast,” she said with a -passion that surprised Brent; “no one would have been -any the wiser.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I couldn’t shoot the man in cold blood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cold blood! You have too nice a sense of honour. -Bibi would have burnt you alive, or suffocated you in cold -blood, as you call it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then her eyes softened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, it is like you to be generous; but this madness -of Bibi’s puts me in a different temper. I am coming to -live in Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Manon!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can argue for ever and ever, but I am coming. -I have a sense of honour, mon ami. And as for worrying -about what old women might say to me, nom d’un chien! -but they can go to the devil. I stand by my man.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXIV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>At</span> seven o’clock on a misty March morning Etienne -Castener brought his horse out of the stable and harnessed -him to the big blue cart. The two women were busy in -Manon’s cottage, and a little yellow dog, bought by Manon -the night before, and tied by a piece of string to a leg of -the table, kept running round and round until he had -wound himself so close to the table leg that any further -circumlocutions did not seem worth while. A wooden -packing-case, two yellow trunks, a table, an arm-chair, a -cupboard, the frame of a wooden bed, a mattress, a hamper -of vegetables, and a basket of food had been placed outside -the cottage to be loaded to the cart. Manon had been -able to save a little furniture before the Germans had -entered Beaucourt, and it had been stored in Marie Castener’s -grenier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The blue cart crunched out of the muddy yard into -the road, and drew up outside the cottage. A few neighbours -had collected to watch the departure; one or two -of them brought presents, a few apples, a bag of potatoes, -a string of onions. Manon was popular.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Among them was Mère Vitry, a refugee, whose picture -of the Sacré Cœur Manon had rescued from the cottage -in the Rue Romaine. There were quite a number of -refugees in the neighbouring villages; Anatole Durand had -a list of the names, and he had visited them all and persuaded -them to remain in the villages for another week. -Within ten days he hoped to have a supply of food -in Beaucourt. “Without food, my friends, we can do -nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Etienne began to load the cart, his mother helping him -with hands and tongue. She was very strong and she -would not allow Manon to do any more work. “You keep -your strength for the other end, my dear. There will be -plenty to do in Beaucourt.” So Manon stood and watched, -holding the yellow dog by the string, and Mère Vitry stood -beside Manon and looked at her as though she were a new -Jeanne d’Arc. Mère Vitry had a face like a wrinkled -brown boot, with buttons for eyes. Her black skirt had -a great plum-coloured patch where her bony old knees had -worn the cloth thin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will take care of the picture, my dear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I will take great care of it,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mère Vitry explained that the picture had belonged -to her mother in the days when her father had come back -from the Russian war, and that it had hung in the same -place and on the same nail.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My father drove that nail, and every two years I -used to put a new piece of cord on the picture. And you -say there is no roof left in the house?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just a small piece. There are no whole roofs in -Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Enough for an old woman to sleep under, perhaps. -I shall be there when the spring comes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Etienne had loaded the cart, and had so arranged the -arm-chair that it formed a seat for Manon. He was going -to walk beside his horse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall walk,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie Castener scolded her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Get up and save your legs. Etienne can ride all the -way home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon laughed, kissed Marie, climbed up into her seat -and took the dog in her lap. Marie Castener stood by the -wheel; she was feeling important with all these neighbours -listening while she helped to launch Manon on this great -adventure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Etienne’s boy shall come over twice a week with eggs, -vegetables, butter and bread. He can ride a bicycle, you -know. If you want anything write it down on paper, for -Pierre forgets everything, save the time for his meals.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon leant over towards this stolid, ugly woman who -had the heart of a saint.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How good you have been to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be sentimental,” said Marie Castener; “haven’t -I enjoyed it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The blue cart moved off, and the neighbours made -the departure quite a public occasion, waving to Manon -and shouting “Bonne chance.” It was an emotional moment, -a dramatic moment—Manon sailing out into the -wilderness with all her belongings loaded on the cart, to -begin the new life, the life that was to be so bitter and -so heart-breaking to many.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the end of the village, just before the road turned -up the hill under the poplars, stood the farm-house where -Louis Blanc had been lodging. A meadow planted with -a few apple trees separated the house from the road. -Bibi, an unshaved and slovenly Bibi, was leaning over the -farmyard gate when Manon and the cart went by. She -did not see him, but Louis Blanc watched the brown horse -and the blue cart go slowly up the hill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His jaw seemed to lengthen; his lower lip protruded; -his eyes looked mere slits. He rubbed his chin between -finger and thumb, and spat over the gate. It appeared -that Manon had a way of getting things done; she had -a cart at her service when he, Bibi, had been unable to hire -a cart, and she had a man to work for her. Now she was -going to Beaucourt with all her goods and chattels to -take up life in the Café de la Victoire. Bibi’s nostrils -looked pinched, he sneered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A nice fix she would be in,” he thought, “if someone -kicked that fellow of hers out of Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was the centre point of Bibi’s vision. The bottom -had fallen out of his own enterprise, and he had -been listening to panegyrics on the philanthropy of -Anatole Durand: “Ah, if all wealthy men were like -that, if there were no profiteers.” The whole business -made Bibi savage. Manon and her man were flaunting -their success, while old Durand was preparing to spoil -the place as a fertile field for speculation. And the fools -applauded him!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They think it is going to be a little heaven,” was Bibi’s -reflection as he sludged back through the dirty yard to -drink his morning coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At Beaucourt Paul Brent had spent a very peaceful -night, lying safely behind a good door and barricaded -windows. He was up at dawn, and washing with confident -publicity in the open street, his head full of the thoughts -of the coming of Manon. He had become a little less -self-conscious in his attitude towards Manon, less ready to -consider the possible prudery of a repopulated Beaucourt, -less afraid of the activities of Louis Blanc. And romance -joined him in the misty street, and walked back with him -over the grey cobbles and into the house of Manon Latour. -Paul reintroduced sentiment into the house. It is said, -perhaps with truth, that the French are a hard-headed -and unromantic nation, killers of birds, teaching even the -sex-bird to live in a very practical and ungilded cage, but -Paul Brent opened the door of the cage. His love sang in -the open, welcoming its mate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He played at being housewife, turning everything out -of the cellar where Manon was to sleep, brushing the brick -floor, laying out the new blankets she had bought the previous -day, and hanging up a little cracked old mirror he -had found in one of the houses. The cellar had all the best -of the furniture, a couple of chairs, an improvised wash-hand -stand, a cupboard, a neat little wooden platform beside -the bed for the reception of Manon’s feet when she -emerged in the morning. There was a jug and basin, a tin -bath, a table beside the bed to hold her candlestick.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Having sentimentalized and prepared the cellar, Paul -set to work in the kitchen. He had borrowed a rather -battered cupboard-dresser from the école, and on this he -arranged all the crockery, plates neatly paraded on the -shelves, coffee-pot, cups and glasses clean and polished. -The commissariat occupied the cupboard. He arranged a -shelf over the stove for the pots and pans. His own bed -he pushed away into the far corner, with a couple of ammunition -boxes underneath it to hold his few belongings -and his clothes. The rest of the furniture included a -table, the old arm-chair, a couple of plain chairs, with a -second table under the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul stood and looked round the room. It pleased -him; it had the air of a room that was lived in, and yet -something was lacking. Everything was in order, even -to the box of wood by the stove and a glazed crock full of -water. A touch of colour was needed, that little live flame -of sentiment, that unpractical something that appeals to -the heart. A man does not live by bread alone, nor is -love satisfied with pots and pans. Brent went out and -searched, and down by the stream he found what he -needed, a sallow with its soft yellow “palm” blossoms -shining in the thin, March sunlight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gathered a bunch of palm, chose a blue and white -jug he had found in someone’s back garden, filled it with -water, and arranged his bit of “life.” The jug took up -its vigil on the table by the window. The sunlight struck -a note of colour on the yellow blossoms. Brent stood and -smiled. He felt, somehow, that the room was complete.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>About eleven o’clock the blue cart turned the corner -of the Rue Romaine with Manon and her yellow dog -perched in front of the load of baggage. Paul was fixing -a window-frame in the window of one of the ground-floor -rooms, and he came forward hammer in hand. The -yellow dog stood up on Manon’s lap and barked at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be quiet, silly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon handed the yellow dog to Etienne and climbed -down. She was in a very happy mood, a little excited -and exultant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul, this is Monsieur Etienne Castener.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The men shook hands, Etienne smiling one of his -broad, slow smiles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens, but you have a front door!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had not noticed it, for she had been looking at -Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon Dieu, so we have! A real door! When did you -finish it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Last night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me see how it opens and shuts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran up the steps of the raised path, and tried the -door like a child playing with a new toy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And it has a lock and bolts!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Etienne stood and stared at the house, still smiling -that slow, country smile. He was easily astonished, and -the Café de la Victoire astonished him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must have worked like the devil,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul took a fancy to Etienne. He was one of those -silent fellows with the smell of the soil about him, and -he had no tricks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some things are worth working for. Shall I help you -unload the cart?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had walked into the kitchen and found herself -entangled in a new atmosphere. It, too, had a door, only -a matchboard door it is true, but the door gave the room -a new homeliness. She saw the dresser with its crockery, -the box of wood by the stove, the table by the window, -the blue and white jug with its posy of sallow bloom. -Her heart seemed to utter a little cry of pleasure and of -tenderness. She went forward, picked up the jug, and -buried her face in the yellow palm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A Frenchman would not have thought of it,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She heard the two men struggling with something -heavy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Manon!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where will you have this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the cupboard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is for you, Paul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her with the eyes of a lover.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In the kitchen, then? I have prepared the cellar for -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The kitchen, then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood and directed the two men, happy as a little -housewife arranging her home for the first time. Then -she descended into the cellar, lit the candle, and experienced -a moment of exquisite pleasure. Her eyes missed -none of the details. This little white-arched cellar held -more than a bed, a table, a cracked mirror; she felt in it -the soul of the man who had been busy here.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was waiting at the top of the steps. She turned -and met him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought it would be warmer for you down there,” -he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood leaning against the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you, Paul. It is so good to come back, when -a man has taken so much trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was silent a moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What will you have down there? The bed and the -trunks?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please. The wooden box can stay upstairs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When everything was settled, Etienne had unharnessed -his horse, fastened him to the wheel of the cart, and given -the beast water and an armful of hay, they sat down to a -meal in the kitchen. Manon had unearthed a bottle of red -wine. She and Paul kept looking at each other, and at the -different pieces of furniture in the room. There was a conspiracy -of pride, of congratulation between them, a half-shy -tenderness that looked and looked again. Castener -was all curiosity, all questions. His eyes kept wandering -up to the roof.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have plenty of air,” he said, “plenty of air.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What will you do for a ceiling?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall put in a floor there when I have finished the -rest of the roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And the stairs?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We shall have to be satisfied with a ladder, to begin -with.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you will be able to go to bed. What does it -matter! And some day, I suppose, you will line all the -inside of the roof?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Canvas to begin with; wood when we can get it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Etienne munched bread, and still stared at the ceiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is wonderful,” he said, “quite astonishing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After the meal he harnessed his horse and prepared -to drive off.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must bring my plough over here one day,” he said; -“an acre or two of ploughed ground would be useful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was the way of the Casteners; they did not appear -to see much, but they saw what mattered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Etienne had gone, Manon lit the stove and put -on the coffee-pot. There was no more work to be done -that day; it was a saint’s day; there was something sacramental -about it. Manon pointed out the yellow dog, who -had curled himself on the arm-chair in the sunlight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will call him ‘Philosophe,’ ” she said; “he has -set us a good example. But there is no reason why he -should have that chair. It is yours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled, picked up Philosophe, and sat down in -the chair with the dog on his lap. He lit his pipe, and -they drank coffee, and talked. Manon’s eyes kept glancing -round the room, caressing everything in it, the soft eyes of -a woman who is happy. The room was uncomfortably -high, the walls showed patches of discoloured plaster and -raw brickwork, and the window of the room above let in -rather too much fresh air—but it had the atmosphere of -home. You could light a lamp at night, and draw up -intimate chairs close to the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What will you do next?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was pulling the yellow dog’s ears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Finish all the window-frames and doors on the ground -floor, and put up shutters. I suppose there is no chance -of getting any glass.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Linen will have to do, or canvas, to begin with. -We must divide up the day’s work. I shall take all the -household work and the garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What about seeds?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have a whole boxful of seeds in that case. The -Casteners have promised to give me potatoes to plant, -also young lettuces and cabbages. If Etienne ploughs up -part of the meadow we can put potatoes in there, and -perhaps a little corn and some winter roots. I am going -to keep a few chickens, and later on a cow and a pig.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will be busy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was looking at the unglazed window-frame.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish we could get some of that oiled linen that the -English have. The other day, when Monsieur Durand and -I drove from Rosières, we passed what you call a dump.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes brightened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What sort of a dump?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sheds, and great piles of stores, boxes under tarpaulins, -and an English soldier lying on a bench asleep. It is -close to the railway line. I wonder if the English are -selling their stores?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think I will go over some day and have a look at -that dump,” said her partner.</p> - -<div><h1>XXV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>When</span> Louis Blanc walked into the Coq d’Or, the old -men seated at the white deal tables became as mute as -birds when a hawk sails overhead. Mademoiselle Barbe -was perched on a high chair behind the little comptoir, surveying -the room with a pair of green-blue eyes, eyes that -showed the white of the eyeballs between the lower lid and -the edge of the iris. Mademoiselle Barbe had red hair, -a big mouth, and a complexion like china clay. She was a -thin young woman, an enigmatic young woman, with -long limbs, narrow hips, and a rather prominent bosom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, Monsieur Blanc.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi sat down at the table in a corner, his hands in -his trouser pockets, his feet thrust out. He looked in a -bad temper. One by one the old men got up and went out, -for there was no pleasure in gossiping with an uncomfortable -fellow like Bibi in the room. He made himself felt -like a thunderstorm concentrated within four walls, an -oppressive person, explosive, threatening to make a noise -and blow out the windows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mademoiselle Barbe watched Bibi. She had the arched -and voracious nostrils of the woman who is a natural bird -of prey. Her quick temper made men think her capable -of a great passion, a creature who could bite in the excitement -of a love affair, but Mademoiselle Barbe was as cold -as a cat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are in a bad temper to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took a glass from the shelf, mixed Bibi a drink, -and coming round from behind the comptoir, put the glass -on Bibi’s table. She did not go back to the comptoir, but -half leant, half sat on the table next to Bibi’s, her hands -gripping the edge of the table, thin, loose-jointed hands, -rather red about the knuckles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi drank.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mix a drink very well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I always do things well,” said Barbe, with an insolent -lift of the chin. “I have ideas, you know, like a -man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi looked up at her with eyes half closed. He had -talked a good deal to Barbe of the Coq d’Or. She stimulated -him. She was a clever girl, provocative, the sort of -woman who was Bibi’s natural partner, a woman who -could seize things with her claws. And Louis Blanc’s mentality -was such that when the gas was out of an enterprise -and his conceit somewhat deflated, he needed a -woman like Barbe, a glass of absinthe, and a mouthful of -rolling words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had boasted to Barbe of all that he meant to do in -Beaucourt, how he was going to call his hotel the “Champ -de Bataille,” and make a fortune out of American tourists, -nor in Bibi’s vision were the people of Beaucourt forgotten. -Army food bought cheaply and retailed at an immense -profit seemed a mere question of shrewd foresight. Barbe -had encouraged Bibi to talk, perhaps because he piqued -the tigress in her, and she was bored with tame men. -Mademoiselle was greedy and ambitious, and the Coq d’Or -afforded a girl no scope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That old busybody of a Durand is going to be a -nuisance to you,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi jerked his shoulders. He had always posed before -the red-haired girl as a devil of a fellow, a man who always -got his own way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Durand! A talker, that’s all. Give me a little of -this stuff in Beaucourt,” and he tapped the glass with a -finger-nail, “and we will explode Anatole like a paper bag. -Meanwhile, I have somebody else to settle with. When -people get in my way, I push.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Barbe nodded her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was a dirty trick, knocking down that chimney -of yours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t squared the account yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought you were rather fond of Manon Latour,” -said the red-haired girl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She had a house that could easily be repaired.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How cunning you are!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she would not do business with me, you see. -Not that I cared two sous about her; I don’t get excited -over black-haired women. I shouldn’t have meddled with -her and her man if they had left me alone; but when a -fellow plays you a trick like that——!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He wants the boot,” said Barbe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will get it, my dear. The fellow has a pistol and -is rather free with it, but I shall manage. Meanwhile I -have my plans.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Barbe was interested in Bibi’s plans. She had begun -to think that she would like to share in them, and she -believed that she was the very woman for Louis Blanc. It -appeared that Bibi had postponed the scheme for rebuilding -the Hôtel de Paris; his new idea was to buy a couple -of big Adrienne huts and erect them in an orchard at the -back of the hotel. The red ruin would serve as a sort -of placard, a dramatic advertisement for the wooden hotel -among the apple trees. “You make your money quickly,” -he explained, “and then clear out. In ten years the -sentimental people will be tired of the battlefields.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if Manon Latour has the same idea?” Barbe -asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi finished his drink.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s it,” he said; “that place of hers is being -repaired too quickly. But if I frighten that fellow of hers -out of Beaucourt, she will be in a bit of a fix. I shall hire -a gang to rush my huts up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And when are you going to get the huts?” said Barbe, -looking straight into Bibi’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was what she wanted to know—how much solidity -there was behind this man’s march-music.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to Amiens to-morrow to see a contractor, -and I expect to meet my friend who handles the money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How exciting! And you will come back and tell me -all about it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can bet on that,” said Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was building hotels in the clouds to impress the red-haired -girl and to encourage his own conceit. Boasting -was Bibi’s food of the gods; and, when he had rolled a -procession of fine words off his tongue, he began to believe -that everything would be as he said it was. And yet there -was a streak of cunning in all his vanity. He advertised -his visit to Amiens, let all Ste. Claire know about it, because -it was possible that he might wish people to think -him in Amiens when he might be somewhere else. The -contractor who had army huts to sell was a creature of -the imagination, and even Bibi’s financial friend had begun -to show an inconvenient cautiousness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he went to Amiens, walking to Boves with a little -black bag in his hand, and taking the train from Boves to -Amiens. He put up at a cheap hotel in the quarter north -of the cathedral, and spent a day visiting certain agencies, -a firm of builders, and an official at the hôtel de ville. -Nobody seemed to know anything; there was a shrugging -of shoulders, a suggestion that everything was waiting -for the people at Paris. Monsieur Clemenceau, it was -said, had made some sort of promise, and the Tiger was -a man of his word. The builder whom Bibi visited -hinted that he might be able to obtain one big hut, but -it would cost Bibi forty thousand francs, and the price -did not include charges for transport and re-erection.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is necessary to pay through the nose,” said the -gentleman with brutal candour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi spat and went out denouncing profiteers. What -was a soldier of the Republic to do with such wolves -ready to tear the wool off a sheep’s back?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He fell into a rage, and could think of nothing but of -Manon Latour and the way Brent had managed to baulk -him. Bibi was always a man of one idea, one passion. -Since his scheme for capturing and exploiting Beaucourt -seemed in the air, its place was taken by an animal hatred -of Paul and a desire to humiliate Manon. Louis Blanc had -something of the mentality of a madman whose whole -strength can be concentrated upon one definite and violent -act. His power of self-expression was purely physical. -He had the cunning of a savage, but very little self-control. -It is difficult for decent people to understand -how certain crimes are committed. Appetite will explain -many of them, appetites that flush with hot blood those -baser centres of a brain that have not received the living -impress of social self-consciousness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc settled his bill at the hotel, walked to the -station and left his black bag at the consigne. He went -out into the town again, bought some bread and cheese and -a bottle of wine, and had supper at an estaminet. About -nine o’clock he started out of Amiens on foot, not hurrying, -for he had plenty of time to reach Beaucourt before -daylight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>About an hour before sunrise he pushed through a gap -in a hedge south of the Rue Romaine and worked his way -through the orchards to the back of the stone house opposite -Manon’s café. Bibi had explored the stone house on one -of his previous visits. Its staircase had not been destroyed, -and it was possible to reach the upper rooms, one of which -still retained its joists and a few floor boards. This particular -room faced the street and had had a ragged hole -drilled in its front wall by the shell of an English sixteen-pounder. -Bibi entered the stone house from the yard at -the back, treading very carefully lest he should set a tin -rolling or crack a piece of fallen tile under his boot. He -sat down in one of the ground-floor rooms until there -was sufficient light to prevent him bungling the climb -up the rickety stairs. The ruin was full of the greyness -of the dawn when he took his boots off, crawled up the -stairs, and, scrambling across the joists, lay flat on the -platform of floor boards, and close to the hole in the -wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had a good view of the house across the street, and -by moving his head he found that he could see the whole -of it, and also a large part of the garden. The shell-hole -in the wall was less than a foot in diameter, and by keeping -well back in the shadow Bibi felt pretty sure that his face -would be almost invisible to any one across the way. -He had been lying there about twenty minutes when he -heard the café door unlocked, and saw Brent come out -with a bucket in his hand. Paul dropped out of Bibi’s -view when he jumped down from the raised path and went -to the well to draw water. Bibi heard him washing in the -street, and sousing his head in the bucket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Louis Blanc was tired. He had the whole day -before him, and he had his own particular plan. He meant -to make Paul fight, hand to hand and body to body, and he -wanted to eliminate the odds in favour of a man who might -carry a pistol in his pocket. So Bibi ate some of his bread -and drank a few mouthfuls of wine, and went to sleep, -curled up against the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The day’s work was in full swing over the way when -Louis Blanc woke up and looked out through his porthole. -It was a March morning, with a wind humming in the -ruins and clouds moving quickly across a broad blue sky. -Paul was up on the roof, fixing the rafters on the other -half of the house, and the splashes of passing sunlight -played upon the white timber, his blue breeches and darker -coat. It was the sound of his hammering that had -awakened Bibi. Manon was at work in the garden, sleeves -and skirt rolled up, turning over the soil with a spade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi lay like a big cat and watched them. The morning -passed away, and about noon he saw Manon enter the -house and move to and fro in the kitchen. Smoke showed -at the top of the chimney, signalling the approach of the -dinner hour. Presently Manon appeared on the path -and called to her man, and Brent came down from the -roof.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the meal was over, Bibi saw Paul standing at the -kitchen window, lighting his pipe. Manon was clearing -the table, and talking to Paul. Brent loitered a moment, -and then came out on to the footpath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be back before dark.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi heard the words very clearly. He saw Brent turn -back when he had passed the window, and take something -out of his pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll leave you this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Put it on the table,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi saw Paul reach in, place the revolver on the -table, and walk away. He turned up the road to Rosières, -and disappeared behind the ruined houses. Bibi lay -and watched the window, the pistol lying there on the -table and the figure of Manon moving about the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If she forgets to pocket that pistol?” he thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Manon did forget it. She went back to her work -in the garden, and Bibi seized his chance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took off his boots, descended the stairs, looked cautiously -out of the doorway, and then made a dash across -the street. He came back with the revolver, and turned -to his observation post in the upper room. Manon was -still digging in the garden, turning up the brown soil under -the shadow and sunlight of the March sky.</p> - -<div><h1>XXVI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Paul Brent</span> was bound for Harlech Dump, those huts -and little hillocks of stores that Manon had seen on the -road to Rosières.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was not concerned with the economies of Harlech -Dump. He had four fifty-franc notes in his pocket, and in -his head a list of articles that would be very welcome at -the Café de la Victoire. He wanted canvas, oiled linen, -screws, nails, door-hinges, window-fittings, paint, paint-brushes, -locks, an additional bucket, some extra tools. -Harlech Dump was like a quarry in a land that had no -stone. It was a temptation to any man involved in the -primitive struggle for existence in such a wilderness. It -was food laid out in sight of men who were hungry, and -guarded by a bored N.C.O., two physically unfit privates -and the theoretical fence of international commercial arrangements. -Brent wanted to buy. He did not know -what steps the Disposal Board, or whatever the authority -might happen to be called, was taking to rid itself of these -stores. Certain civilized needs cried out for satisfaction. -Over there in England people had houses to live in, a -grocer and a butcher round the corner, roofs to keep out -the rain. Kent had not been pulped into brick dust and -Maidstone pounded into a rubbish heap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Harlech Dump stood in the corner of a field where the -Rosières road crossed the railway line. The farm-house to -which the field had belonged showed as a red ruin against -the background of a wood of poplars. The dump had all -the dreariness, the bald, boot-worn manginess of such -places. There was a stodge of mud about it that was drying -with the March wind and changing its colour from -brown to a yellowish grey. Two rusty Nissen huts faced -each other across a roadway made of cinders. Duck-board -tracks lay about the place like huge dead worms oozing into -the sludge and the slime of the soil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dump looked deserted when Brent came down the -hill, and crossed a corduroy bridge over a big ditch. A -brown figure sat on the doorstep of one of the Nissen huts, -scraping a pair of boots with a jack-knife. The man was -wearing no puttees; his buttons were dirty; he had not -shaved. Even at a distance of thirty yards Brent recognized -all the significant symptoms of a “fed-upness” that -reminded him of Wipers and no leave.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man turned his head like a sulky bird and looked at -Brent without curiosity. He was one Corporal Sweeney, -in charge of the guard at Harlech Dump. The guard was -asleep and snoring inside the Nissen hut, sleeping the -sleep of the bored. There was no estaminet within ten -miles, and the few trains that were running passed by on -the other side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent walked up the cinder track. He meant to try -his French on the keeper of the dump, and if French would -not serve he could fall back on bastard English improvised -for the occasion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon jour, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Corporal Sweeney went on scraping his boots.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go to hell,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled as though Corporal Sweeney had uttered -words of English politeness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Parlez-vous français, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Urn poo,” said the corporal; “learnt it in your -billets.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Vous avez bien de choses ici,” Brent indicated the -stores with a sweep of the hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I spik liddle English, monsieur. I find house—village—napoo—comme -ça. C’est triste, c’est terrible!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come back to roost in the rubbish, have you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Corporal Sweeney’s broad face lost some of its stiffness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What village?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beaucourt, monsieur. I work the night, I work the -day; I put on roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tidyin’ up the ’appy ’ome.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent plunged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it possible, monsieur, peut-être que vous vendez -les choses?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do what, bloke?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sell——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sell!” said Corporal Sweeney, “I’d sell the whole -dump.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then he added, “I want to get home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The thought of “home” caused an emotional explosion -in this bored and unshaven man. It roused a sudden -exasperation in him, an exasperation that produced a -feeling of sympathy for this supposed Frenchman. Corporal -Sweeney was home-sick, Paul homeless. The remedy -seemed so obvious to a man who spent a great deal of the -day cursing the dump, the authorities who made the dump, -the authorities who kept the dump where it was. Why the -hell didn’t they sell it, give it away, or send it home? -Corporal Sweeney did not bother his head about official -subtleties, the difficulties of transport, the question of -finance. He was not interested in the pocket of the -English Public; in fact, he was in a mood to pick that -pocket and distribute the proceeds to his pals.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Capitalists! That’s what I’m doin’ here in this muck -’eap. Protectin’ the property of the bloke that pays taxes. -He’s at home, makin’ money, and lookin’ after the kids.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got up and walked about, and became aware of a -fifty-franc note in Brent’s hand. He flared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s that? Put that money away. Compris?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent put it away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mais oui, monsieur. Comme vous voulez. Mais, il -faut payer——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come ’ere,” said the brown man. “Lord love you, -do you think anybody knows what they’ve got in the dump? -Course they don’t know. Got a list, have I? Yes, and it’s -all wrong; who bothers now the war’s over? What d’yer -want for the home?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent made a pretence of trying to understand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You no sell, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to get home,” said the corporal, “and the -French—they want this stuff. Me or Clemenceau or Lloyd -George would settle the biz in five minutes; the Tape-worms’ll -take years. Come ’ere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He conducted Brent to a big hut that Paul had not -seen before, and kicked open the door. The hut was full -of miscellaneous stores, like a ship-chandler’s shop or an -ironmonger’s warehouse. And Brent was tempted. Like -Corporal Sweeney he was a simple man in need of certain -simple things, and he wanted so little. If he helped himself, -he would owe the British Public something, but the -British Public owed Paul Brent something, his unclaimed -gratuity and back pay. His one fear was lest he should -get the corporal into trouble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Catch hold,—prenez.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mais, monsieur, l’officier vous en voudra, n’est-ce -pas?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Officier—fini. They don’t know what’s here any -more than I do. And they don’t b——y well care. Voyez-vous?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked round the hut. He saw the very raw -material he needed, canvas, oiled linen, paint, ironmongery, -stuff to make the bowels of a reconstructive artist -yearn. He nodded, smiled at the corporal, and shrugged -his shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You let me take some things, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Catch hold,” said Sweeney.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul made his selection, but he made it like a Puritan, -and with an eye as to how much he could carry. A roll of -canvas, a smaller roll of oiled linen, a seven pound tin of -red paint and one of green, two brushes, four locks, six sets -of butt-hinges, some screws, a keyhole saw, an assortment -of nails and tacks. He made a bundle of the plunder by -rolling it up in the canvas and lashing it with a length -of cord.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The corporal looked on approvingly. He was a man -who worked with his hands, and the Frenchman’s nice and -practical taste in choosing his raw material piqued the -domesticated craftsman in him. Moreover, this fellow was -not greedy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got an old hen house at home,” he said, “needs -paintin’, and some new tarred felt on the roof. Lord love -a duck, wish I was there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent tried the bundle on his shoulder. He found that -it was not too heavy for him to carry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur,” he said, “tousand thanks. If officier says -pay—I pay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Officer—nah poo. The stuff will only rot here, old -cock.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul shook hands with the corporal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, you visit Beaucourt. Fumez cigarette, -drink glass of vin rouge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bong, très bong,” said Corporal Sweeney; “me for -Beaucourt, mossoo, toote sweet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent took the road to Beaucourt with that bundle on -his back. The wind had dropped, and the western sky was -a great arch of blue, with the sun coming and going behind -hummocks of white cloud. From the hill above Harlech -Dump Brent could see Beaucourt, a distinct chequer of -red and white between the purple of the woods, the broken -spire of its church a soft blue line against the blue horizon. -He dropped his bundle and sat down to rest on the bank -side of the road, with the sunlight playing on him through -the branches of a road-side apple tree. There was a little -wood behind him and in it birds were singing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent sat and looked towards Beaucourt, and his -thoughts were of the simplest. He was busy making a -canvas ceiling or canopy for the kitchen, and filling his -windows with oiled linen. He had a boyish desire to go -home and to paint that front door, at once and without -delay—a joyous April green. It was very pleasant to -work for Manon. She was so delighted with things that he -always felt that he wanted to fetch her to see any new piece -of work that he had completed. He liked to watch her -eyes and face light up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some day he would try his hand at painting a sign-board -and nail it up over the front door. “Café de la -Victoire,” and underneath it her name, “Manon Latour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But it was possible that her name might not be Manon -Latour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent smiled and, picking up his bundle, walked on -towards Beaucourt. He was well content with life, a life -that was full of the fascination of contriving, creating, -conquering; a simple life in which hands and head worked -together. No thought of Louie Blanc crossed his mind. -The evening was too peaceful.</p> - -<div><h1>XXVII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>About</span> four o’clock that afternoon Louis Blanc came -down the stairs of the stone house, crossed the street, and -walked into the kitchen of the Café de la Victoire. Manon -was still working in the garden, and Bibi strolled about -the room with the air of a man in possession, his hands in -his pockets, his eyes looking at everything with cynical -amusement. These two people were preparing to make -themselves comfortable; they had their furniture, their -pots and pans, plenty of food to eat and wood to burn. -The red and blue tiles of the floor had been scrubbed until -they had regained some of their pre-war polish. The table -by the window had a cretonne cover, blue pansies on a -green ground. The crockery on the dresser reflected the -pleasant pride of the housewife.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi threw his cap on the table, pulled the arm-chair up -to the stove and sat down. The blue coffee-pot was standing -on the stove, but the fire had gone out, and it was no -business of Bibi’s to light it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will have my coffee when she comes in,” he said to -himself; “it is her business to serve her clients.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The position of the arm-chair did not satisfy him, for -there was no warmth in the stove, and the chair did not -occupy the strategic point necessary to Bibi’s plan. He -moved it back against the opposite wall and close to the -door, so that anybody entering by the door would not see -the chair or its occupant until they were well inside the -room. Bibi splurged in it, legs spread, in an attitude of -comfortable arrogance. He was always a man of attitudes, -especially when there was a woman in the game.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had been sitting there for half an hour before he -heard Manon’s footsteps on the stones of the raised path. -She suspected nothing, but had suddenly remembered -that she had left the revolver on the table by the window; -also it was time to light the fire. Bibi had shut the -kitchen door, nor did Manon remember that she had -left it open. Louis Blanc had drawn in his feet, and was -sitting upright in the chair, his left arm extended and -laid across the door like a spring compressed to close it -at the psychological moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon lifted the latch and walked in. Her eyes were -turned towards the table by the window and the pistol -that should have been there; the door hid Bibi. She -went towards the table. The door closed behind her -like the lid of a trap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon turned. She saw Bibi sitting there with an -unpleasant smile on his face. He had edged his chair a -foot to the left so that it was impossible for her to open -the door. He held her caged. And Manon understood -in that moment of fear that Louis Blanc had her pistol.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is you, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She spoke quite calmly, for after the first leap of the -heart her courage came back to her. It was necessary -to be calm and cool with a man like Bibi; she knew that -by instinct. It was her business to try and hold all -horror and fear at arm’s length, to refuse to believe in -Bibi’s beastliness, to find out what the danger was and -how to meet it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are always a man of surprises, monsieur. Meanwhile -I must light the fire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi kept looking at her and smiling and saying nothing. -He reminded Manon of Marius, the village idiot, -who was always smiling and pulling the hair on his chin; -but Marius had never attacked a woman. Manon walked -to the stove, and, standing so that she could watch Bibi, -lifted the round top, and dropped in some paper and -wood from the fuel box.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will have coffee,” said Louis Blanc.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bien, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And an omelette.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So the café is to be christened, is it? I shall have to -charge three francs for an omelette; provisions are difficult -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t worry yourself; I owe a bill already.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went to the cupboard and collected what she wanted, -eggs, butter, a frying-pan, bread, coffee and a tin of -milk. Bibi watched her. She was so deliberate, so unflurried, -holding him at a distance, treating the affair -as a casual incident. Her composure piqued him. He -had a sudden desire to see Manon inflamed, struggling -while he held her down and buried his mouth deep in her -warm throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He put his hand into his coat pocket and drew out -the butt of the revolver. He glanced quickly at Manon. -She had seen what he had wished her to see, and he let -the pistol slip back into his pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You would like some herbs with your omelette, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes were black and steady.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, some herbs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps you would like to come nearer the stove. -It will be warmer.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This place suits me. And hurry up. I’m hungry.” -Manon went on with her cooking, opening the iron door -from time to time and pushing a handful of wood into -the stove. She was wondering when Paul would return, -and what would happen when he returned. Bibi was -thinking of what might happen before Brent came back. -He no longer desired Manon because she was Paul’s; he -desired her because of her white throat and plump arms, -and that body that would struggle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon did not hurry. She wished the cooking of that -omelette would last for ever; it seemed a sort of queer -barrier between Bibi and herself, a postponement of the -beastly purpose that looked out at her from the man’s eyes. -She knew what she felt, what she feared, what she shrank -from.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you are all alone here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My partner will be back—very soon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The omelette was ready. She turned it out upon a -plate, and Bibi stood up, pushing the arm-chair against -the door with one foot, while he caught hold of another -chair and turned it towards the table. He sat down. -Manon pushed the plate, the bread, and a knife and fork -across the table, and poured out a cup of coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi ate. He had an unclean way of eating, and an -ugly trick of pushing out his lower lip like a ledge and -shovelling the food over it. He tore the bread with his -fingers. Manon had helped herself to a cup of coffee, and -all the while she was listening.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sit down, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I prefer to stand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi looked at her curiously, as though she were part -of the food on the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This fellow of yours works hard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is a very good partner, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He works too hard,” and then he made a coarse jest -at Paul’s expense.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon stared at Bibi as though she did not understand -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not pretend to be so innocent. A woman only -pulls up her petticoat when she pretends to look innocent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that was always your idea of a woman, Monsieur -Blanc.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi finished his second cup of coffee, and wiped his -mouth on his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you think this fellow Brent is a better man than -I am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have never thought about it. There was no -necessity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are mistaken. I shall have to put the matter -right. I don’t like to think of a pretty woman believing -what isn’t true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got up from the table and went and sat in the arm-chair -by the door and, feeling in the breast pocket of his -coat, brought out a little black cigar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A match.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon took a box from the shelf and threw it to -him. He caught the box, and flourished it with an air of -gaiety, the cigar stuck aggressively between his lips. -Manon watched him light the cigar and puff blue smoke, -making a sucking noise with his lips. She had always -hated Bibi, but her hatred of him became more like a foul -taste in her mouth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something to eat, something to smoke, and a woman to -talk to. Come and sit on my knee, coquette.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon began to clear the plates from the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is not on the bill of fare, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll include it. I am owed a good deal. Come -here—at once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon set the plate and cup on the dresser, and loitered -a moment, fighting the horror of Bibi’s gradual attack. -She felt herself helpless, shut up in a cage with a beast who -sat there and gloated. She knew that it was useless to -appeal to the decent man in Louis Blanc, and that evasions -would only amuse him. She wondered how long it would -be before he grew violent, how long she would be able to -hold him off. And if Paul returned, it might only add to -the horror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made herself face Bibi, but kept the table between -them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The joke has gone far enough, monsieur; it does not -please me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you think it is a joke?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was lying back in the chair with his legs spread out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it is not a joke. Regardez!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took the revolver out of his pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come here, or I shoot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are very brave to threaten a woman with a -pistol.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it the pistol you object to?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stood up, and, posing himself, threw the revolver -through the unglazed window. It fell somewhere in the -ruins across the road, breaking the great silence with one -ringing and discordant note. The gesture pleased Bibi. -He turned to Manon, smiled, and sat down again in his -chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà! Your man will have to fight with his fists. -And if he does not fight after I have emptied his glass -for him, well, he will smell like a goat, hey?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon felt stiff, frozen, unable to move, yet her heart -was beating hard and fast, and she knew that her knees -were trembling. She began to grow angry, angry with the -fierceness of a wild thing trapped and played with and -tormented beyond her patience. There was a knife on the -table. She was ready to snatch at that knife and fight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you coming here,” said Bibi, “or shall I fetch -you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You beast!” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had expected his violence and it came like the -leap of a dog. Bibi pushed the table against her with a -thrust of one big boot, so that she was thrown against the -stove. She had made a grab at the knife, but before she -could strike at him, Bibi’s long body was leaning over the -table, and he had her by the wrist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drop it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her brown eyes blazed into his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You beast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“C’est ça.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took the cigar from his mouth and held the red end -against her forearm. Manon flinched, twisted, cried out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drop it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her fingers relaxed, the knife fell on the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi tossed the cigar into a corner, and suddenly, with -a straightening of his long back he pulled Manon over the -table, catching the other wrist, and turning her over so that -her face was under his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now then——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Someone was coming along the path. Manon heard -a man whistling, and the sound of his footsteps. She cried -out in anguish:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul! Paul!”</p> - -<div><h1>XXVIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Paul Brent</span> gave one look through the unglazed window, -dropped his bundle on the path and made for the door. -Half a minute ago he had been walking slowly up the Rue -de Rosières with that camel’s hump of a bundle on his -back, feeling fagged and ready for a rest, but there was -no tiredness about the man who went in to rescue his -mate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Brent stormed in, overturning the chair that -had stood against the door, he found Bibi waiting for him -like a bear with its paws ready to rip. The overturned -chair lay between them, its legs in the air as though it were -shouting a ridiculous protest and trying to keep these two -wild men apart. Manon had slipped away and was leaning -against the dresser, her dress torn open at the throat, -her eyes swimming black in a dead white face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent and Bibi looked at each other. There was nothing -to be said, nothing that words could express or satisfy. -Then Bibi pushed the chair aside with a sweep of a big -foot, and the two men rushed in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi could box a little, but there was no science in that -fight; it was just a savage rough and tumble. The Frenchman -was a head taller than Paul, heavier, and longer in -the arms. He could have floored Brent at the first punch -had the affair been less of a whirlwind. Paul went in bull-headed, -smothered a smash at his face, and ducking, got -his arms round Bibi’s body. He had the under-grip and -was shorter and stockier than the Frenchman, and he -rushed Bibi against the table, heaved him over and got on -top.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Freeing his right hand, he tried for Louis Blanc’s -throat, but in mere animal strength he was no match for -this great stallion who had always boasted that he had the -legs of a horse. Bibi gripped Paul round the middle. -His legs wrapped themselves round Brent’s; he heaved, -twisted, rolled Paul on his side. They remained like that -for a moment, Bibi jerking his lean throat away from the -grip of Paul’s right hand. Then Bibi gave another twist. -He came up and had Brent under him, his jaw digging -into Paul’s throat, and so close that his own throat was -guarded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon saw the smear of satisfaction on his face, and -her heart sickened. She had stood aside, watching, till -she saw that Bibi had her man pinned under his big body. -She picked up a knife from the dresser and came forward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi glanced up, showing his teeth, and that momentary -slackening of his attention gave Brent a chance. He got -one foot round the leg of the table, and managed to roll -Bibi to one side. They had been near the edge of the table -and they fell, Brent uppermost, Bibi’s head striking the -tiled floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent broke free and stood up, panting. He saw that -he would have to keep the fighting open, the beast was too -strong for him at close quarters. He jerked a glance at -Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Run, get out of the room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tried to force the knife on him, but Brent’s rage -would have none of it. He was not ripe yet for a clutch -at any sort of weapon. Bibi, still giddy, was scrambling -up, his mouth and chin all slaver. Brent rushed at him, -and struck hard and straight with a workman’s arm and -fist, and Bibi went back, knees sagging, his feet paddling -like the feet of a duck. Brent swung again, missed, fell -against the Frenchman and was shoved back with the flat -of the hand in his face. Brent staggered against the table, -hung there a moment, and went in again like a game -dog that has been rolled over but not hurt. But Bibi had -recovered his balance and had had a second in which to -think. As Brent came at him he lashed out with his right -foot, a full, swinging, upward kick that caught Paul in the -stomach.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s face went the colour of clay. His mouth gaped. -The kick had sent him reeling down the room. He seemed -to bend over himself, to double up in the middle. He fell -in the corner, turned over, writhing, and lay face downwards, -legs quivering. He was conscious of nothing but -a knot of agony in his stomach, a vast nausea, a desire to -vomit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi stood and stared. His shoulders drooped a little, -and his head was none too steady, but he appeared to perk -up into sudden arrogance like a big, triumphant bird. -He flapped his arms, opened his mouth, and the laugh that -came from it was like a crow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s burst the balloon,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he became conscious of Manon. She was standing -between him and Brent, but a little to one side, her face -white and stiff with a vague, shocked wonder. She seemed -to hesitate, her impulse stooping towards the man who now -lay huddled in the corner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly she turned on Bibi. Her lips were thin, -bloodless; she looked starved, but in her eyes there was -something indescribable, a facing of the ultimate vileness -of Bibi’s strength, a defiance of physical defeat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, and what next?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi seemed to rear on his haunches, his hands stuck -in his pockets.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your fellow is thrashed. He is no good, is he? I can -take what I want, my dear. What do you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hung her head as though beaten, her wits struggling -against a sense of helplessness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And all this happens, because a silly ruin is blown -down by the wind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You got in my way, both of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We were here, that’s all. Haven’t you any decent -feeling?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi looked at her with flat eyes that gloated. The -physical rage was still strong in him, and he was taking his -triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You wouldn’t have me. You shan’t have him. I can -finish with him presently, and then I’ll finish with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There are the gendarmes,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi splurged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Rubbish! We’re in the wilderness, wild man’s land. -I can do what I please. That fellow got in my way, and -I have kicked his belly in. Who’s to know if——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shuddered. She was looking at Paul, and suddenly -she saw his hand move as though making a sign. Her -eyes swept back to Bibi; he was watching her; he had not -seen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have beaten him; is that not enough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I get what I want for it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be reasonable.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drop that knife,” he said; “you have still got it behind -your back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She let it fall on the floor. She wanted to keep Bibi -talking to hold him off.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Brent lay there, listening. His strength was coming -back; he had been sick, and the pain had died to an -ache of the muscles. His rage was returning, a cold rage -that lay low and was cunning. He was up against savagery, -a beast who had to be fought with the methods of -a beast. Right down in the core of his brain was the -thought that he had got to beat Bibi, even if he killed him. -That kick had brought Brent down into the primitive -trough; there were no rules, no nicenesses, no points of -honour in a savage scramble with a man like Louis Blanc.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He listened. Manon was talking, talking for time. -He loved Manon, and his love was a rage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul is dying,” he heard her say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi shrugged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s quiet, anyway.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent moved slightly, groaned; but his body was stiffening -like a spring. If only he had some weapon! His -right hand went out slowly, gropingly, into the corner, and -touched something smooth and cold. It was an empty -wine-bottle, the bottle that he, Manon, and old Durand had -emptied a few days ago. He gripped the neck of it, braced -himself, his left arm pressed against the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was on his feet before Bibi moved. A wooden chair -stood against the wall close to where Brent had been lying, -and as the Frenchman rushed in, Paul grabbed the chair -and swung it at Bibi’s feet. It tripped him, nearly -brought him down, and as he hung there, pawing the air to -get his balance, Brent smashed at his head with the empty -bottle. It broke, leaving the neck a jagged end in Paul’s -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi was down over the chair. He made a grab at -Brent and caught the front of his coat; his face was upturned -and Paul struck at it with that dagger of glass. -He saw Bibi’s face change like a grotesque mask; the -mouth opened, the eyes closed, the forehead was a knot -of anguish. He uttered a cry, and began to claw at Brent -like a beast gone mad. Paul struck him again, and -wrenched free, leaving a piece of his coat in one of Bibi’s -paws.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi was on his feet now, his face a red stream. He -groped, made a rush, and stumbled over the chair, and -Brent realized that the man was blind. The glass had -entered one eye, and the other was full of blood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He slipped round the centre table, with a glance at -Manon who had run to the door; he made a sign to her, -a sign that she understood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi mopped his eyes with his fists. The hideousness -of him was a thing Brent never forgot. And the beast -was dangerous, agonized with pain and the rage of its half -blindness. He blundered against the dresser, and brought -half the crockery clattering to the floor. And suddenly he -seemed to get a glimpse of Brent through the red fog of his -own blood, and he charged, arms swinging. Paul slewed -the table round, but Bibi lunged forward over it, and got -a grip of Brent’s coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul tore free, striking at Bibi’s arm. He had to keep -away from those ferocious and clawing hands, and he knew -it, but Bibi was blind again, and raising himself up from -his sprawling position on the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had come back, and she carried the short iron -crow-bar in her hand that Brent had used in dismantling -the huts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Keep out,” he said hoarsely, “it’s too foul, this.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went, after giving him that bar of iron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi was shaking his head like a dog just out of the -water. His foot touched something on the floor—the -knife that Manon had dropped; he groped for it, and stood -up. He had begun to curse, calling Brent every foul thing -under the sun, and he kept on cursing as he felt his way -forward. There was cunning in Bibi. He fumbled at -the table, seeing Paul dimly through a red mist, and suddenly -he vaulted on to the table and made a scrambling -rush at Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent swung at the upraised arm. The bar caught the -forearm bones about two inches above the wrist, and he -heard them crack. The knife fell; Bibi’s hand sagged -over like the absurd stuffed hand of a dummy. But -Brent’s gorge was rising over this filthy scramble, this -savagery of animals in a cage. He steadied himself, -brought the bar down over Bibi’s head, and saw him -crumple to the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stood, staring. He felt sick, unsteady, a man -who had got up to the neck in some foul ditch. There was -no exultation in him, yet no pity. He had downed a mad -beast, and he was grim and cautious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He bent down and pulled Bibi against the wall. He -did not think there was any more fight in Louis Blanc, but -he took no risks. Up-ending the table, he lowered one end -of it on to Bibi’s legs, and loaded the arm-chair on to the -table. That would prevent a man who was playing ’possum -from getting up too quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all over, thank God.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She came in to him, an impetuous passionate figure, -arms spread, eyes alight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my Paul!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her emotion was like a flood of rain, a perfume, some -softening human passion after those moments of savagery -and bloody sweat. She ran to Brent and Paul caught her. -Her head was on his shoulder; she trembled; she clutched -him with tender hands; her body seemed to warm itself -against his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my Paul, we are saved!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ma chérie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she broke down, and with a passion that went to -Paul’s heart. He was human once more, a decent, gentle -fellow; the beast was dead; her tears seemed to cleanse -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was my fault, my foolishness. I left the pistol lying -by the window, and he must have been watching. He -threw it across the street into the ruins. It need never -have happened.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent held her head in the hollow of one hand, and -looked down into her wet face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, it has happened. Perhaps it was better that -it should happen, once and for all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is he dead?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul glanced over one shoulder at Bibi, and his eyes -hardened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, but he has all he can carry, one eye gone, and a -broken wrist.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was feeling in the pocket of her apron, and she -showed Paul the pistol that Bibi had thrown into the ruins. -“I ran across a moment ago, and I had good luck. I -found it almost at once. Keep it.” Brent slipped the -pistol into his pocket, and discovered that Manon’s face -seemed growing dim. He could not feel his feet; his -knees shook; he was exhausted, and Manon’s tears and -clinging hands had exhausted him still further. This flare -of emotion and the exultation of it had left him faint.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ma chérie, I’m done up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had felt his weariness almost before he had begun -to tremble, and she became the little woman who had no -more use for tears. He staggered as she helped him -towards the table by the window. He seemed to collapse -on it, bending his head till his forehead touched the wood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you are hurt!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something to drink,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran to the cupboard and brought back a bottle half -full of red wine, and sitting on the table, she raised Paul -and held his head against her shoulder. It made her think -of giving a sick child its drink, and an indefinable tenderness -stirred in her. She held the bottle to his lips, letting -him drink a little at a time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s better,” he said as the wine warmed him and -put a new flick into his heart; “I could eat something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her shoes crunched on the broken crockery as she -searched in the cupboard for food. She brought him a -slice of cold meat, and some bread and cheese, and Paul -ate—while she sat beside him. And suddenly they seemed -to become conscious of the outer world, of a rich sunset, -of a stream of golden light, and the sound of a blackbird -singing. A thrill of joy, of mystery, ran through both of -them. They looked into each other’s eyes, and kissed.</p> - -<div><h1>XXIX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Paul</span> had found his pipe; he was filling it and staring -at the floor, when something yellow whisked into the -kitchen. It was Philosophe, Philosophe who had been -missing all day and who now floated in with an air of -having been round the corner. The dog yapped and -pawed at Manon’s apron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A lot of use you have been to us,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Manon kissed Philosophe’s head and then pushed -him away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could forgive anything to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even—that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pressed her hands to her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not that. What are we to do now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They heard a sudden sound in the silence, a queer -sound that startled both of them. Philosophe was licking -Bibi’s face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stood up with a tightening of the mouth and -limbs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dog sneaked out from behind the table and went -and lay down by the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent removed the chair and the table. He found -Manon standing beside him, and together they looked -down at this mountain of a man who lay stretched along -the wall. Dusk had come; the room was filling with it, -and a little darkness covered the mask of Bibi’s mutilated -face. He moved a leg, stirred slightly, and seemed to -become conscious of physical pain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul and Manon looked at each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s to be done?” her eyes asked his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was grim. He stood biting the stem of his -pipe, a man who had not forgotten and who would never -forget. Things might have turned out so differently. He -had no pity for the man down there.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t touch him,” he said; “keep away. He’s foul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught her breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I couldn’t touch him. But must he stay here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God, no,” said Brent. “This place has got to be -cleaned.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi moved. He raised his head, propping himself on -one elbow. He seemed to be thinking, remembering, feeling, -but like a dull, helpless animal. He rubbed at his -eyes and uttered a foul word. Brent’s back seemed to -stiffen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc raised himself to a sitting position, his -back against the wall. He looked up at Paul, his head -rolling from side to side, his slashed face a thing of loathing. -Everything was dim to Louis Blanc, even the voice -of the man who spoke to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Water,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul stood over him, yet keeping his distance, for though -the beast was maimed he might still be dangerous, and he -was taking no chances with Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t move. Do you hear what I say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi used a foul word, but Brent caught him up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drop that and listen. I have that pistol, see; we -found it all right, and if you try any tricks I shall shoot -and shoot to kill. Sit there and take your orders, and -keep that foul tongue of yours quiet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi said nothing; he was beaten, a battered thing, half -blind, sullen with pain. Paul had spoken to Manon, and -she was pouring some wine and water into a glass that had -survived the storm. She brought it to Brent, also a thick -slice of bread cut from a loaf, and Brent put the glass and -the bread on the floor and pushed them within Bibi’s reach, -using the end of the iron bar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the way to feed a wild beast,” he said, “if -I touched you again I might kill you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi lifted the glass in his left hand; his head was very -unsteady, and he spilt some of the wine down his chin; -the stuff stung his cut lips, but he drank it down, and -began to mumble the bread. The room was full of the -dusk, and Manon lit the candle. Paul had gone to the -window, and was sitting on the table, watching Bibi. The -candle light lit up Brent’s face; it was a serious, frowning -face, the face of a man who had made up his mind about -something.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll take a sandwich with me,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The candle light flickered in Manon’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But where are you going?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Half-way to Ste. Claire; sort of slave-gang stunt. He -has got to foot it somehow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked into her man’s eyes and said nothing. There -was a calm blue glare in them that she could not have -softened even if she had pitied Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Supposing he cannot walk so far?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We didn’t ask him to come here. He is going to -walk four miles. After that—I have finished with him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you hear? You have got to get out of this. You -want a doctor. I’ll see you half-way to Ste. Claire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi grunted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent spoke quietly, but he showed no mercy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Get up. No, I’m not going to help you, or touch -you. You will get a doctor at Ste. Claire; you’ll get no -doctor in Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Louis Blanc moved. He rose slowly on his feet, -steadying himself against the wall, and stood there, feeling -his strength.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come on,” he said sullenly, “you are merciful sort -of people, you two. I’m half blind. You’d like to see me -in the ditch, wouldn’t you? But I’ll get to Ste. Claire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had slipped a paper of bread and cheese into -Paul’s pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quick march.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He watched Bibi grope to the door, and half feel his -way out of the house and down into the street. It was -growing dark, and Brent followed him at a distance of a -couple of yards, the revolver in one hand, the iron bar in -the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be back soon,” he called to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And so he set out to drive this half-blind Polyphemus -out of Beaucourt, walking among the ruins like Bibi’s -shadow, ready to shoot if the man in front of him hesitated -or hung back. Neither of them spoke, save when Brent -uttered a word of warning. “Right . . . Left . . . Keep in -the middle of the road.” He found that Bibi’s pace was -lengthening when they had passed the factory, and were -on the road to Bonnière, and he went along at a steady -slouch. The stars were out overhead, and there was no -wind rustling the dead grass and weeds in the wild fields -beside the road. They heard the sound of their own feet -on the broken pavé, nothing more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent wondered what was passing in the mind of the -man in front of him, and the picture of Bibi lurching along -in the darkness brought back the night of a memory in -the Arras battle of 1917. Paul had marched a German -prisoner back from the line, a big, tusk-faced sergeant-major -who had been badly wounded in the right shoulder, -and Brent remembered how all the swagger had gone out -of the German. He had thought of one thing and one -thing only, how long it would be before they reached a -dressing-station. He had kept on worrying Brent: “I -bleed, Tommy, I bleed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had covered two miles when Louis Blanc spoke. -He was sullen, but something stronger than his hatred of -Brent marched at his heels.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the time?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know. Perhaps about half past seven.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi walked on in silence for several minutes. Brent -noticed that their pace had increased.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have we passed Des Ormes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t know the place,” said Brent. “Why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s a road that turns off there, the road to Boves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why do you want to go to Boves?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall find a doctor at Boves. I want one, don’t I?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Brent understood. Like that German at Arras, -Louis Blanc was tame; he had the fear of death in him, -or the fear of blindness, which is the living death. Every -step that he took was so much ground covered on the road -to a place where a man might be found with hands that -could heal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A queer, elemental pity stirred in Brent, a feeling that -even penetrated and suffused itself through his physical -loathing of this man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You want to go to Boves?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where does the road turn off?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Past the farm called Des Ormes, a clump of dead -elms close to the road.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll look out for it,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He kept his promise, and managed to make out these -ghostly trees reaching out their black and maimed tentacles -towards the stars, and learning from Bibi that the -road to Boves branched off on the right hand about a -hundred yards farther on, he watched for it, and found the -road as a greyish streak diverging across the darker fields.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is the place.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc grunted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll be bringing in the police, I suppose?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent did not answer him at once, and Bibi began to -fidget. He stood poking his head like an eager dog in -the direction of Boves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It all depends,” said Brent, “on Madame Latour’s -wishes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hell! Never mind; are you sure this is the road?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the first road on the right after Des Ormes. Can -you see?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Enough. I’m off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he went slouching away into the darkness, leaving -Brent standing there, nor did Brent move until he could no -longer hear the grinding of Bibi’s boots upon the road.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At Beaucourt, in that room of her simple affection, -Manon had sat for a while by the light of the candle, looking -at the débris left by those two struggling men. What a -sordid affair, what a horror to be forgotten and washed -out of the mind! A chair broken, furniture overturned, -crockery smashed on the floor,—a patch of blood on the -tiles where Bibi had been stretched by the wall. And -Philosophe, true to his name, asleep beside the stove, caring -nothing for what had happened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon jumped up. The inspiration was obvious, and -yet passionate in its demands. She must get rid of this -pollution, put it at once out of her life, her life that was -Paul’s. A great tenderness was awake in her, a feeling -that this little room was sacred, and that it had to be -resanctified. She lit another candle and set to work to -cleanse it; sweeping up the broken glass and crockery and -carrying it out in a box to the ruins across the road. She -set the furniture in order, and finding the blue and white -jug broken on the floor, and Paul’s bunch of yellow palm -lying beside it, she gathered up this emblem of the spring, -found another bowl for it, and placed it in the same place -on the table. There remained that red stain on the floor. It -revolted her, but she made a mop of an old sack, and -washed out the stain. Yet her ideal of purification was -not complete; this room was to have a living atmosphere, -warmth, light, homeliness. She wanted Paul to see it -again as he had seen it before that savage fight. She lit -the stove, put a pan of water on to boil, spread a clean cloth -on the table, laid two plates, two cups, two knives and -forks, a dish of meat, cheese and bread. Then she drew -the arm-chair close to the stove and sat down to wait. -Philosophe, undisturbed by these practical yet spiritual -activities, still slept, and the dog’s passivity was a piece of -comforting naturalism, like the bunch of yellow palm on -the table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul returned earlier than he had expected. She ran -to the door to meet him, and found him struggling with -the bundle that he had left lying on the path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had forgotten this, and nearly fell over it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught hold of one end, and helped him in with it. -Then she closed the door, and, going to the stove, pretended -to be busy making her coffee, but she was all waiting—as -a woman waits—to see whether her man had the inward -and the outward vision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul noticed everything, the clean floor, the bunch of -palm on the table by the window, the white cloth, the -tidy dresser. It was good, all good, the very touch his -heart asked for. He looked at Philosophe, who had not -troubled to get up and greet him. Tranquillity had returned; -Manon had washed away the stains.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went softly across the kitchen, and put a shy man’s -arm round her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a good piece of work you make of life,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to him quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here is your chair by the stove.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was looking up into his face; he was grey, weary -to the point of exhaustion, but the shine in his eyes broke -through all the physical shadows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just the same as before,” he said, “and like you, -clean and good. Ma chérie, I’m just all out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made him sit down in the chair, and drew up the -table so that he could take his supper by the stove. Paul -let himself relax, for there was a sharp ache in the muscles -that had been bruised by Bibi’s boot. He looked at the -stove, at the sleeping dog, at Manon, and the day’s work -seemed done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would you like your plate on your lap?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I’ll turn to the table.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not worry him with questions, sensing his -weariness and the happy and human sloth that had fallen -upon his body. His face regained its colour; the tired -lines were softened; he had the air of a man who was well -content.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently he lit his pipe, and looked up at her with a -flicker of tender humour in his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A lot of good that dog was to us! A good name—Philosophe. -He got out of the way, like the clever people -during the war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave Philosophe a gentle kick, but he took not the -least notice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Bibi?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s beaten,” he said; “I believe we have finished -with Bibi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He described Bibi as a big and frightened shadow -lurching along the road to Boves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall we put the police on him?” he asked her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s for you to say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked at her. Her eyes had darkened. There -are things that no woman likes to see dragged into the -hard light of a law court.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us leave it alone,” he said. “I have a feeling -that we have finished with Bibi. I hate stirring up mud; -life’s been so clean here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made a sudden movement towards him; and Paul -sat up, took her face between his hands and kissed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God,” he said, “it seems a lot for a man like -me to ask for! All that I know is—that I’m going to -make good here. Will you let me prove it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s eyes held his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are too much afraid of people, Paul. If we are -partners, let us be honest. Why should we not tell old -Durand and the Casteners and people like that——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What shall we tell them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon ami, you are making me the man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drew her face to him again, and kissed her slowly -and with great tenderness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right,” he said; “but I’ll not marry you till this -place is all that I want to make it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laid her hands on his shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What queer things you men are, some of you. If it -was not for that, I would——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me,” he said, his hands on her wrists.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave a quick, defensive smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, show me what is in that bundle. It’s so exciting, -this new home.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>It</span> seemed to Paul Brent that peace and the spring came -suddenly to Beaucourt, and that even in this war-scarred -country there was a beauty that had a mystery and a -strangeness of its own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The fruit trees in Manon’s orchard were big with bud. -Brent had joined her in reclaiming the garden; the rubbish -and broken boughs had been cleared away, the wall -mended, the fruit trees pruned and cleaned, the soil -dug over. Seeds were in with neat little labels showing -the rows—lettuces, beans, peas, early potatoes. Paul had -rescued and nailed up the hardy vine that grew on the -south wall of the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was happy. He liked to wander down to the stream, -and see the willow blazing gold, the young grass lushing -up, the purple woods ready to burst into leaf. The great -chestnuts in the avenue at the château were beginning to -open their brown buds. Paul found violets in flower on a -sunny bank, and came back with a child’s handful of them -to Manon. He heard the wryneck in the woods, and -soon the cuckoo would be calling, and as for the blackbirds -they sang to him night and morning. The war had been -merciful to Beaucourt in passing over it so lightly, and the -spring seemed to call for the brown faces and the strong -hands of the peasants.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It would seem that the world has to rediscover the great -truth that it is the simple things that matter in life. The -sap in the stem of a young oak is worth all the orchids that -ever were pampered. Paul Brent was fortunate in his -happy drift into the simple and innocent life, with its -elemental needs and primitive triumphs. He was to -escape so much of the disillusionment of the years after the -war, nor was he to become the victim of that strange -physical apathy that flamed now and again into feverish -erotism. Men had had the strong drink of an abnormal -excitement snatched away from them. They were pushed -back to the bench and the desk and the coal seam, and life -seemed a damnable dulness. Money meant escape. There -were thousands who were mad for money.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent fell straight into the lap of nature, with a fresh -handful of simple ideals ready to be sown, and he sowed -them in Beaucourt and watered them with a happy, human -sweat. He did not want to slack and talk and theorize; -the days were too short for him. He loved the work of -his hands, the simple sensations, the smell of the sawdust, -the crisply-curled shavings his plane ripped from a plank, -the new nails he hammered in, the paint, the clang of his -hammer, the snoring of his saw, the smell of the soil. -Life was good. The whole house was re-roofed; he had -more leisure to enjoy the true craftsman’s love of accurate -detail; he could stand in the middle of the road with his -hands in his pockets, and Manon beside him. They were -never tired of looking at the house, the new roof which -Paul thought of tiling or thatching some day over the galvanized -iron, the windows with their neat yellow panels -of oiled linen, the front door which Paul had painted a -gay green.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were as proud as a couple of children over a sand -castle. And Brent had fought for his castle and held it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Looks fine, doesn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Manon’s eyes were full of the spring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the matter of the more spiritual things these ideals -count, and Paul—that simple fellow—kept his panache. -Perhaps there are no English words capable of expressing -the subtle personal pride of a Cyrano de Bergerac, or the -emotional exultation of the chivalrous soul that has stooped -to no foul compromise. Paul kept his panache. He had -never heard of the word, but he was the master of all that -it expressed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was in love with Manon. He looked love at her, -but he did not make it, and Manon had the heart to understand. -He was one of those natural gentlemen, bricklayer, -shepherd, fisherman, what you will. He had his notion of -chivalry, a chivalry that could give, wait, hold back. He -did not rush to pick the flower and flaunt it in his buttonhole. -Such men are laughed at by the shallow and the -dirty-minded, but somehow they keep the love of a woman. -You may find them in cottages, villas, country houses. -They have escaped the curse of wanting to be self-consciously -clever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul and Manon went to church each Sunday, and stood -for a few minutes under the shattered roof. They were -not religious people as religion was understood in the Victorian -days. Their sacrament was a little silence, a pause, -a looking backwards and forwards, a holding of hands, a -gentle generous emotion. They thought of the dead, of -the children, of seed-sowing and harvest, of good comradeship -and the peace thereof that passeth understanding.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul had his ideal, his task.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll ask her to marry me when I have made the place -good,” was his thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Manon accepted this, even though she might have -to face little humiliations in the acceptance. She kept her -eyes on the man’s broad ideal. It was a big tree that -would grow; it was strong, slow, hardy. If casual tongues -dropped a few seeds of discord, of gossip, they were but -little bitter weeds which the tree would smother.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I love him,” she said to herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Paul loved her with each nail he drove, each joist -he fitted, each barrow-load he cleared from the place. He -loved her in washing, in eating, in cutting wood for her -stove, in looking at the white clouds sailing over the new -roof, when it rained, when it blew, when the sun shone. -She was in every corner of his life, and he in hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes he was greatly curious to know what that -other man of hers had been, this Gaston Latour who had -been killed early in the war. Manon had been married less -than a year. She had a photo of her first husband somewhere, -and one evening Paul asked to see the photo. -Sometimes, he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was -wearing a dead man’s shoes; he wondered, too, how he -was filling them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon took a candle down to the cellar, and brought -back the photo.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gaston was a good fellow; we agreed quite well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul looked at the man’s picture. Gaston Latour had -been one of those sickly Frenchmen, cold, pale and prominent -of eye, with a big forehead and a weak beard. He -stood with his hands resting on the back of a chair, staring -straight in front of him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had been watching Paul’s face, and with a sudden, -quick but quiet motion she took the photograph away -from him. It is possible that a woman does not like to -see her lover repelled by the face of the man who had first -possessed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was nearly five years ago,” she said; “and, if -you please, we will forget it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry,” Brent told her; “weren’t you——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was a very excellent marriage; our parents arranged -it, and my father died six months later. No, this house -always belonged to us, not to the Latours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took the photo back to the cellar, nor did she return -for some minutes, leaving Brent warming his hands at the -stove. She had said so little, but enough to make Paul -understand that her first marriage had not been happy, -that it had left no delicate roots behind it. If Brent was -guilty of a secret gladness, he hid it, but the gladness was -there. He felt sorry in an impersonal way for that cold-eyed -fellow who lay dead somewhere in France, but the -human part of him was with Manon. He hoped that it -would come all fresh to her, as fresh and as rich and as -generous as it seemed to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>April came, and it rained hard for two days, driving -Brent indoors. At dinner they sat and looked at the roof, -watching for drips, and exulting when no drips appeared. -Paul had been fixing the floor of the room above the -kitchen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a splendid roof,” said Manon; “it is you who -rain sawdust.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t taste it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look in your potage. I was away only half a minute, -but you managed to drop that wooden salt of yours into the -saucepan.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent gave her an oblique, laughing look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Supposing we put up the ceiling. It will be rather -like laying a carpet upside down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That canvas?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How delightful! But can you do it alone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. Two hands to stretch it, while the other nails.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let’s begin at once,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And that is how Anatole Durand found them, perched -up on the joists, Manon stretching the canvas while Paul -drove in the tacks. They were so busy hammering, talking, -laughing, and the rain made such a patter on the iron -roof that they had not heard his car. But Anatole Durand -was an event. He had not happened for three weeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, mes enfants!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two faces looked down at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Durand! But what do you think of our -ceiling?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Magnificent!” said Anatole, and, in a hurry to get -out a dramatic cry of his own, “And what do you think of -my American dump?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Comment, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have bought it,” he said, shining like a little sun-god. -“I have bought my American dump!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had come down after that, for a canvas ceiling -could not suppress such a little excited, restless sun. -Here was an event, a sensational episode in the history of -Beaucourt! Manon brought out her wine, and they sat -round the table, and talked—at least Anatole Durand -talked. He opened his fat note-book on the table and -began to roll off figures with the voice of a curé chanting -the mass.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I have bought it, but I had to race around like -a comet. Just listen, my friends.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He chanted triumphantly of timber and iron sheets and -rolls of felt by the thousand, tins of preserved meat, fruit, -milk, salmon by the tens of thousand, coffee in hundreds -of kilos, blankets, tools, barbed wire, buckets, candles, -soap. Wine and honey in Canaan! The oration was -Biblical, exultant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It must have cost you a fortune, monsieur,” said -Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand would not boast about the money he spent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I have plenty left. It is the best bargain I have -ever made in my life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And where is the dump, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A hundred miles south of Chalons, perhaps. But I -have arranged for the hire of a dozen lorries, and we will -have it here in no time. Now see what it is to be thorough. -I have here the cubic space of the dump, and the cubic -space of the cellars at the château, you know what good -cellars they are, and all the food and the blankets can be -stored in them. The timber and the felt and the iron -sheeting can be stacked in the courtyard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are a wonderful man, Monsieur Anatole.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m just an old boy,” he laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She poured him out another glass of wine, and he sipped -it, looking round the room with eyes of appreciation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You two children know how to work. You are quite -chez-vous here, already.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon glanced questioningly at Paul. Brent nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And we are fiancés, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, that’s splendid!” said old Durand holding up his -glass; “your very good health, and good luck to us all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drank.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that fellow Louis Blanc seems to be out of the -picture. The Coq d’Or was full of the gossip.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens, what has happened to Bibi?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is in hospital at Amiens, and they have taken out -one of his eyes. It is said, too, that he may go blind in -the other. When they asked him to explain how it happened, -he said he had had a quarrel with some English -soldiers, and that three of them set on him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul and Manon exchanged glances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I tell him?” her eyes asked him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is not quite the truth, monsieur. You are our -friend, and you can keep a secret. Bibi came by those -wounds in this very room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tonnerre—here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Very simply she described to Anatole Durand all that -happened, and so vivid were her words that the old man -found it difficult to sit still. His eyes lit up; he had the -eyes of a fighter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it is incredible! What a wild beast! You did -very well, Monsieur Paul, to thrash that stallion.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He jumped up and clapped Paul on the shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you wish me to say nothing of this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not a pleasant tale for Manon to tell.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And the fellow has got his deserts. I am ready to -wish he may lose that other eye, and be harmless for the -rest of his life. But let us talk of something more -pleasant.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lit a cigar, and, walking up and down for a moment -on his brisk legs, paused abruptly in front of Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have some good news for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are full of good news, Monsieur Anatole.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, listen. When I was in Amiens I fell in with a -gentleman who is planning excursions to the battlefields. -He wanted to know of a place where the richer sort of -people might be able to spend the night, and get the -atmosphere of a devastated village. ‘My friend,’ said I, ‘I -know the very place in my own village, a little hôtel that -will be ready to receive such people in a month or two.’ -He jumped. ‘It will be very simple,’ said I. ‘The simpler -the better, my dear fellow. We want the proper -atmosphere.’ So, my dear, if the idea pleases you, I will -drive you over to Amiens in a day or two, and you can -make arrangements with this gentleman. It should be -quite a prosperous enterprise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon jumped up and kissed him, and Durand did not -appear to object. He was a democrat, and the new Beaucourt -was going to be very democratic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a good friend you are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m just an old boy,” said Durand.</p> - -<div><h1>XXXI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>That</span> evening, when the sky had cleared, Manon and -Brent opened up a hole under the wall where Manon’s -treasure lay buried, and carried the silver into the cellar. -Anatole was to drive over again next day and take Manon -to Amiens where she was to meet the gentleman who was -promoting these pilgrimages in Picardy, and also deposit -her valuables with the “Société Générale.” Paul was -shovelling the earth back into the hole when Manon came -back along the path, walking slowly, and stroking a black -eyebrow with a meditative forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear soul, look!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her face flushed a sudden excitement. There was a -vivacious buoyancy in her pointing finger. Paul was -head up on the instant, ready for some dramatic event.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was pointing at the brown soil behind him, and there -was a child’s delight in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The little green dears!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul turned and looked, one hand on the handle of his -spade, and he smiled. Strung between two of the white -seed pegs stretched a thread of green thrown into vivid -contrast by the rain-darkened soil, nothing more nor less -than a row of lettuce seedlings just opening their twin -leaves. A string of emeralds would never have seemed so -innocent or so precious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The first of our children,” said Brent, “the little -fellows!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked shy, but Manon snuggled up and in some -silent way made him understand that her hand wanted to -be held.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it not wonderful?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything’s wonderful,” said Brent, with a glimmer -of blue between half-closed eyelids.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here’s where we began, over that hole in the ground. -Just because you happened to catch me playing with a -spade. And now—a year afterwards—these!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like a live bit of ribbon, isn’t it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And a few weeks later we shall be eating lettuces!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Méchant!” she said. “Be serious. How do you like -Anatole’s idea?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s an inspiration.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well, we will have supper early, and then we -will sit down and make plans. Oh, I didn’t tell you, -Marie is giving me six pullets.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So we shall sit down and make plans for the pullets.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be serious! No, we must arrange the rooms and the -furniture, and see how much money we can afford.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, that’s it? Well, look here, I put my money into -the business or I go on strike.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Paul——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His hand closed firmly on hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s got to be. I’m a man. Don’t you understand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up at him with soft, consenting eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, I understand perfectly. But who is to handle -the firm’s money?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You, of course,” said Brent. “I always was an idiot -with money. I’ll take my share, keep a little pocket -money, and put the rest back into the business.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you understand pigs?” she asked him with quiet -irrelevancy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did keep one once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And cows?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I dare say I could learn to milk a cow. I’ve studied -more difficult things than that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With supper over, Manon cleared the table, lit two -candles, produced a writing pad and pencil from the cupboard. -They drew two chairs up on the side of the stove, -and sat with their heads close together, Manon sketching -out a plan of the house. There would be seven rooms in -all, four on the ground floor, and three above, but the -rooms on the other side of the passage were rather small, -and one of them could only be reached by passing through -an outer room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The visitors would have to take their meals here in -the kitchen, unless we arranged to let them use the public -room on the other side of the passage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“English people might not like that. Let them sit -and see their own food cooked; it would amuse them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should have to engage a strong girl to help.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That wouldn’t be difficult, would it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am thinking of the bedrooms,” Manon said. “We -shall have only four, even if we use the little ground-floor -room that looks out on the garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She scribbled lines and crosses on the paper, frowning on -the problem.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Supposing we were to give the girl that little room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Keep the public room where it is, and turn the back -room into a little salon for the visitors or ourselves. But -that would only leave us one spare bedroom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She continued to scribble on the paper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When we get married,” she began, “it will save a -bedroom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that’s so,” and he also looked at the scribbles -on the paper, scribbles that meant nothing; “meanwhile -I might rig myself up something outside, or sleep in the -cellar. But I suppose we shall need the cellar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We might put a partition across that room,” and she -pointed upwards with the pencil; “but it would be so -much simpler——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right,” said Paul; “we’ll think about it. Now, -what about furniture?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They made a list of the furniture that would be needed, -Manon writing the name of each article under such headings -as “Salon,” “Girl’s room,” “Visitors’ room,” “Our -room.” The list began to frighten them not a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hold on,” said Brent; “I can make tables, cupboards, -wash-stands, if we can get some decent wood. Bedsteads -and bedding seem to be the main problem. I expect the -prices are up in Amiens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have about seventy thousand francs. Sixty thousand -are invested in Rentes. That leaves ten thousand -for furniture, and stock and current expenses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can put a thousand to that. Not much, is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are putting in more than money, Paul. It will -be yours as well as mine. All this could never have -happened without you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul went to bed with his head full of the new enterprise, -and the hundred and one inventions and ingenuities -it suggested. He remembered having seen somewhere a -room decorated with arched trellis-work painted a soft -green, the arches hung with mauve wistaria made out of -paper. Then his thoughts jostled against the problem of -“baths.” Would English tourists of the richer sort expect -and demand baths? Brent’s enthusiasm could not see itself -rising above hip-baths and one can of water heated -up in the corner of an outhouse. Fuel—like bedrooms—was -going to be precious, and Paul went to sleep thinking -of that particular bedroom and Manon’s simple solution -of the difficulty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A good solution, too,” said Brent; “but I’ll stick out -till I have finished the house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand’s De Dion was with them early, but not so -early that Manon had not been able to help Paul finish the -canvas ceiling of the kitchen. She was below in the cellar, -dressing, while Brent loaded the valuables into the car.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Any news of Louis Blanc?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing,” said Durand. “By the way, do you know -all the wells in Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I will send old Prosper Cordonnier over with -my sanitary expert; he knows them all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are having all the water tested?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We should look fools if it turned out bad, hey? -Hallo—now, voilà le printemps!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul turned and beheld the miracle of a French working -woman in her Sunday clothes. It was not that he had -never seen Manon before in that little black chapeau, black -velour costume, and those neat suède high-heeled shoes. -He could remember her going to church in those same -clothes when he was billeted in Beaucourt during the war, -but now they seemed different. They had a more personal -and a more intimate meaning for him. He was -aware of her small feet, of the quiet, sleek chicness of her -clothes, of the roguish sedateness of that little hat. His -thoughts went back fifteen years. He was thinking of a -certain fair-haired girl with a razor-edged nose and mouth, -coming out of the back gate of a big house, and wearing -a blue plush hat covered with red cherries, an electric -blue dress and the yellowest of yellow boots.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How you stare!” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul’s thoughts came back from that other life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Durand used the exact word.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what was that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Printemps;” and he added, “this April seems to -belong to me—somehow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drove off, and Brent went to work, but the sun -was shining, and his thoughts got in the way of his hands. -He was so happy that he seemed to pause and to look -suddenly at this happiness of his with the eyes of a man -who was afraid of losing it. He had been nailing down -the floor boards on the joists of the upper room that was to -be their bedroom, and this sudden inward questioning of -his own dreams sent him idling into the sunlight. He -crossed the street, sat down on the doorstep of the stone -house over the way, and looked with serious blue eyes at -the café.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It occurred to him again that it would need a sign and -that he would paint it. But might not the painting of -that sign be about the last piece of work he would accomplish -in the reconstruction of the “home”?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He lingered over the word “home.” It was very sweet -to him now, but would it always be so sweet? Certain -panic thoughts gathered round him like officious and penny-wise -old women. He was an Englishman; would he be -happy living as a Frenchman? When the house was -finished, every stick painted, and the little farm without -a weed, might not a sudden restlessness seize him? Would -he be content to live all his life in a French village? That -other home of his in England had never been a home in any -spiritual sense; he could remember going out one night in -a miserable and lonely rage and throwing bricks through a -little greenhouse that had been his particular pride. But -surely this would be different? Manon was different; -he was different. And yet, at the bottom of this panic -mood was a horror of hurting Manon, of falling short of -her some day in the measure of his happiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fudge!” he said, and got up suddenly; “it’s just cowardice, -that’s all. Haven’t I seen it in the war, chaps who -were always looking for things to go wrong? It’s the -same with the fellows who write books, books in which -everybody gets into the gutter and all the world’s wrong. -Just funk—Hallo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A certain aggressively smart figure had swung round -the corner, buttons and cap badge polished, chin shaved, -puttees neatly rolled, boots black and glossy as the back of -a rook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cheer-oh, cove.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Corporal Sweeney with the grey grouse out of -his eyes, a proper man, well groomed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon jour, monsieur, comme vous êtes gai aujourd-hui.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Demobbed, demain, compris?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two men smiled at each other, and Sweeney cast -an eye over the house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your dug-out, what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent nodded, wondering if he might allow himself a -little more English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A bit of all right. Blimy! You’ve got a roof and -winders.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Entrez,” said Paul, and took him in and gave him red -wine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The corporal had cigarettes; he offered Brent one, and -lay in the arm-chair and drank in the goodness of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wonder if you get me, bloke?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had begun to philosophize.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me for a bit of garden. Be home in time to get my -pertaters in. Ever kep’ pigeons?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One time, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lot o’ sound gum in pigeons, and chickens. Make -you feel sort of homy on Sunday mornings. Hear ’em -cooin’ and cacklin’ and cluckin’. Got any kids?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Des enfants, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Got it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I get married this year.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Corporal Sweeney gave a wise grin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Funny stunt—gettin’ married—but it’s all rite; yes—it’s -all rite. Used t’ think it was kind of bloomin’ monot’nous. -Well, I dunno. If you start goin’ round the -corner with strange gals, well, it’s good-bye to the chickens -and the pertaters. Besides it’s a mug’s game. Who’s -your real pal? She as you have ’eard tryin’ not to scream -out when she’s bearin’ the kid you’ve given ’er; she ’oo -cooks yer Sunday dinner. T’aint slosh, it’s the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul smiled. He pretended to have picked some of -the pith out of the man’s harangue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You talk good, monsieur. I tink I be ver’ happee -here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Course you’ll be happy,” said the soldier almost -fiercely; “it’s inside a chap, ain’t it? ’Course there’s -other things that count. So long as a chap don’t keep -spittin’ down his own well! Bein’ happy is like keepin’ yer -buttons polished. It’s a ’abit.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent could have quoted an occasion when the corporal’s -buttons were distinctly dingy, but he refrained. -Mark Tapley might have turned into an average, decent, -grumbling Englishman had he been stuck down at Harlech -Dump.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“ ’Ere, bloke,” said the corporal before leaving; “what’s -wrong with you having a little more paint and canvas for -the ’appy ’ome. I shall be gone to-morrer. And you -could do with it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul fell. He had a passion for paint, and he reckoned -that the British Public still owed him money.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Vous êtes très agréable, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You come along back with me. I ain’t ’ad an eighteen -pounder shell in my chicken-’ouse. You ’ave.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXXII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Over</span> the great wilderness the cuckoo was calling, and -the blackbirds sang deep-throated in the orchards. Cowslip -time had come and gone; a richer season followed after, -with all that wild world rushing into leaf, covering all -ugliness with a film of beauty. The old orchards were -white in the narrow valley where the stream ran through -deep green ways; the trees were snow-trees—rose-edged—floating -between the mystery of the woods and upon the -blue distance of the horizon. Grass and weeds were -springing up everywhere in the streets, in the ruins themselves, -threading even the rubbish through with emerald -wire. There were blue-bells in the Bois du Renard above -the château, and masses of yellow broom waving on the -uplands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beaucourt came to life with the spring. Wonderful -things had happened when that droll, that little wizard of -an Anatole Durand had flicked his wand hither and thither. -Dust had risen on the roads. A string of lorries had lumbered -up the street, and a gang of men had unloaded stores -in the green-grey courtyard of the château. The cellars -were full of food; the yard itself stacked with timber -and iron. On the circle of turf at the end of the avenue -of chestnuts stood a white tent with a camp-bed, a chest -of drawers, a table, a washing basin, a chair, Anatole -Durand’s home. He took his meals at the Café de la -Victoire, where Brent’s hands were keeping pace with the -buoyant rush of the year.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Men were repairing and cleaning the huts in the field -on the road to Rosières, and a temporary camp-kitchen -was being improvised. New winches and buckets had -been fitted to the wells. A couple of tractors and light -waggons had panted over the desert roads, and the tractors -were at work, ploughing from dawn till dusk. Great -strips of brown soil waited for a catch-crop. Old Anatole -went about with his note-book, like a field-marshal or a -parish priest, organizing, organizing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then came the day when the first batch of refugees -returned. They arrived in waggons from Ste. Claire and -many other villages, with their few possessions piled up, -like a convoy of settlers in the old days travelling west. -The carts and waggons collected in the field where the -huts stood, and with them came Monsieur Lefèbre, the -parish priest. Anatole Durand met them in the field. -He and Monsieur Lefèbre kissed each other, the agnostic -and the Christian.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a hot meal ready, iron coppers full of good -stew; Manon was in charge of the hut where meals were -to be served. But these peasants sat down on the grass -in the open air like pilgrims on a feast day. They laughed -and talked. One or two of the women wept a little. They -had left the children behind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre sat side by side on the -tail of a cart. They talked; they looked straight into -each other’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you remember, my friend, how we used to disagree?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The priest smiled. He had jocund black eyes in a red -face, and he was a good man, if fat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Our text is the same to-day. Go forth and recover -the wilderness, and comfort my children.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have a bed in my tent,” said Anatole; “you can use -it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is brotherly of you, but I shall sleep with the -men.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand looked round at the peasants sitting on the -grass, and his eyes blessed them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, I wish to speak to these people presently. -I wish to explain what I have done, what I have planned -to do, what we all must do. You will speak to them also. -What better place than the church?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In the old days, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand shrugged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Life is so big,” he said, “that we shall forget to knock -our feet against the stones.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the meal was over, Monsieur Lefèbre got up on -the cart and told the people to gather in the church. His -jocund black eyes had always been more persuasive than -his preaching, and nobody grumbled at being asked to go -to the church. Monsieur Lefèbre was a good fellow; he -deserved his place on the stage, and to these peasants -the day had a religious meaning; they were attending the -sacrament of the soil. Paul and Manon walked with the -crowd, and stood under the broken roof of the church, -with the blue sky showing through it, and grass sprouting -through the stones on the floor. Manon was looking at -many familiar faces. There were the Graviers who had -kept the tiny boucherie in the Rue de Bonnière; the Crampons—Claude -Crampon pulling his long nose in the same -odd way as though to make sure he had not lost the end -of it; the Guiveaux, Pierre with his huge flat butter-coloured -moustache, and Josephine, whose red hair was -always untidy; the Pouparts, who had kept a grocery -shop, yellow as ever. Old Lebecq carried his cock’s head -high in the air, and behind him his two big daughters -giggled together. Philipon, who had been a blacksmith -as well as a farmer, held his pretty little wife by the arm; -his swarthy face was very solemn, and he frowned as -though he wanted to get to work. Lacroix and his wife -and boy looked thin as figures cut out of brown cardboard. -Big Jean Roger was smiling at everybody and picking his -teeth with a red match. His daughter Lucille seemed -rather sad; her eyes were vacant; she had lost her lover in -the war. There were one or two younger men who had recently -been demobilized, and a few strong boys who were -half inclined to make a joke of the whole affair. Philipon -looked round at them with his fiery eyes and a gleam of -teeth in his black beard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shut up! The dead don’t make fools of themselves -like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was no more horseplay.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre stood on the steps of the choir. His -deep voice rolled out a prayer, and after the prayer he -spoke a few simple words to the people. He was much -moved; his chin shook a little; and the people were moved -with him. They had come back to their homes and their -fields; the blessed spring was with them, the green joy of -the year. They would go out together, without jealousy, -helping each other, planting in this ruined village the imperishable -patience of a victorious France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lefèbre gave way to old Durand. Anatole’s grey hair -seemed to bristle; he looked straight at them all with -shrewd, smiling eyes; his enthusiasm had a flash of -humour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My friends, we used to quarrel a little. Perhaps it -was my fault. To-day I am happy; I feel that we have -something better to do than to quarrel—work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon gave a growl of applause.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s it—work!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He glared at the group of youths. Anatole went on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bien. It is not my ground or your ground, it is our -ground. It is our Beaucourt. What do you say? The -women to the gardens and the rubbish heaps, the men to -the saw and the hammer and the fields. But you know -what to do. I am an old man, I am enjoying myself; I -am spending what I cannot take with me. I do not stand -here and crow; I want to be just a little old man in -Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were cries of emotion from the little crowd.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We understand, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Without you it could not have happened.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand made a face as though he were not far from -tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s it; we are all Frenchmen together. Now, -then, let me explain.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went on to speak of the stores, material and tools -that he had collected. They were to be divided equally -and as the need arose. The tools and the seeds would -belong to the village. He wanted a committee, a village -council composed of both men and women to consider -what was fair, and to decide all that should be done. He -spoke of Manon and of Paul, and Paul blushed. Durand -called him an expert, a practical builder. Let them go and -look at the Café de la Victoire and see what Monsieur Paul -Rance had accomplished single-handed, and the sight would -cheer up any pessimist. Monsieur Rance had offered to -give three hours a day to the community; and to put himself -at the service of anyone who wanted advice. As for -the canteen, well, Madame Latour had that in hand, but -she would need women to help her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, let us finish with words. Let us choose our -council before we break up. I suggest a council of four -men and two women.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And a president,” said Philipon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I propose Monsieur Durand as president”—this was -from old Lebecq.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole was elected. They chose Philipon, Lebecq, -Jean Roger and Monsieur Lefèbre as the men, Manon -Latour and Madame Poupart as the women. The council -agreed to meet three times a week at eight in the evening, -and Monsieur Lefèbre suggested the sacristy of the church -as their council-chamber. A board would be set up in the -Place de l’Eglise on which the notices and the decisions -of the council would be posted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allons!—to work,” said old Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon echoed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To work. That’s our motto.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the passing of half a day the whole atmosphere of -Beaucourt had changed, and the familiar silence of the -ruins was broken by the new life. Brent was planting -potatoes in the field below the orchard, for Etienne Castener -had brought his plough over in a cart and ploughed -up half the field for them, and as he dibbled in the seed -Brent could hear voices everywhere. The hollow shell of -the village echoed with them; the place was like a comb -full of working bees. Each family had gone to what had -been its house, that brick ruin or shelter of timber, and for -a while there had been silence. What problems, what -discouragement! Where and how to begin? They had -been told that Beaucourt had been more fortunate than -the majority of villages—villages that had melted into -mere piles of rubbish. The little groups stood about, -staring, bewildered, lamenting, wandering through the -wreckage and the gardens, standing on the tiled floors of -what had been rooms. And in nearly all cases it was the -woman whose instinct escaped first from that apathy of -staring. The housewifely habit stirred in her. Perhaps -she began to clean her kitchen floor, throwing old tins, -broken bricks and tiles, rags, anything, out into the street. -That was what Durand had advised them to do; he had -planned to have the rubbish carted away and dumped in -some field. Very soon the men were at work with the -women, each cleaning his particular shell, uncovering his -kitchen hearth. Their blood warmed. Beaucourt was -full of the sound of voices, the clatter of tins and broken -tiles. Figures appeared on the walls, or in the spider web -of the sagging timber frames, scattering useless patches of -tiling, or knocking down loose beams and joists. Beaucourt -was at work. Anatole Durand found Philipon -sweating like a swarthy Hercules in his little house in the -Rue du Château, knocking down useless bits of wall with -a big hammer, while his pretty wife carried off the sound -bricks and stacked them in the yard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thunder, but this is life!” said the sweating peasant; -“I’m happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was walking back from the canteen when she -caught sight of a little old figure approaching along the -Rue Romaine. It was none other than Mère Vitry dressed -in her rusty black Sunday clothes, and carrying a shabby -bag. She had been left behind at Ste. Claire as too old -to face the first struggle with the wilderness; but Mère -Vitry had had no intention of remaining in Ste. Claire, -and her indomitable legs had carried her to Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon went to meet her, greatly touched by this old -thing’s courage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mother, what are you doing here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Mère Vitry was in no need of pity. She seemed to -be overflowing with the sap of a renewed youth; her little -black eyes twinkled; her weather-beaten face was all -smiles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here I am. Do you think I was going to be left -behind?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon kissed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come to my house. You must want something to -eat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had my meal on the road, my dear. I would not -quarrel with a cup of coffee.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon took Mère Vitry home with her, and the old -lady removed her cloak and bonnet, and sat down with an -air of complete contentment. Her eyes observed everything; -she was the most cheerful soul in Beaucourt. Her -philosophy was touched with the irrepressible optimism of -the spring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon offered her her bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I shall sleep with the others. They thought I -should be a nuisance, no use; you shall see. I shall put -on my old clothes here, my dear, and then go and begin -tidying the house. It needs it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It did. There was but a third of the roof left, and no -windows and no doors, and in the garden weeds and rubbish -competed with each other. Mère Vitry put on her old -plum-coloured skirt, and black and white check blouse, -borrowed a broom and an old spade, and marched off to -battle like the true Frenchwoman that she was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre, taking a parochial stroll, found -Madame Vitry sweeping out the rubbish from the tiled -floors of her kitchen and bedroom. He stood and watched -her a moment, a most human smile on his generous face, -and then that plump right hand of his made the sign of -the cross.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you are busy already, madame?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She leant on the broom-handle, thin hands clenched, -black eyes bright with renewed youth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One cannot be idle, monsieur, when there is so much -to be done.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have walked from Ste. Claire?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I feel very well, monsieur, very well indeed. To-morrow -I am going to work in my garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Splendid,” said the priest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her face lit up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come inside, Monsieur Lefèbre; I have something to -show you in my garden.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She led him through the house and into the garden -where the new growth of the year was pushing up through -broken bricks and coils of wire, old tins, the rusty frame -of a bedstead, battered petrol cans, barbed wire, the wheel -of a cart. The wooden frame and rusting springs of an -old box-mattress lay across the path. But Mère Vitry -was looking at none of this rubbish. She was pointing -upwards and smiling at a gigantic apple tree whose limbs -had been shot away. The tree was nothing but a torso, -a huge, mutilated stump, but from one limb a young -branch had grown out and brandished against the blue -sky two little sprays of white blossom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is fine, is it not, monsieur? He is holding up -his flag; he is not beaten.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here we are together, the old woman and the old -tree. I flourish a broom, he waves a bit of blossom. -What do you think of it, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The priest’s face was lit up like the face of a saint.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is France,” he said, “the very soul of my country.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXXIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Manon</span> had described to Paul Mère Vitry’s return to -Beaucourt, and Brent had been so touched by it that he -went down very early next morning to the house in the -Rue Romaine. The old fruit tree welcomed him, throwing -its white banner against the flush of the dawn, and he -set to work at disentangling the miscellaneous rubbish from -the dew-wet weeds. He had cleared away all the heavy -débris and made a dump of it on the cobbled path between -the cottage and the roadway when he was surprised by -another enthusiast, Monsieur Marcel Lefèbre.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good morning,” said the priest; “it seems that I am -a little late.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His black eyes had a glitter of fun in them. He -carried his cassock over his arm, appearing to the world -like any good bourgeois ready for an hour’s work in the -garden.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the worst of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent touched the pile of rubbish with the toe of a -casual boot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you have left me nothing to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is plenty left, monsieur. I thought I would -come down and move the heavy stuff for the old lady.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are beginning very well in Beaucourt,” said Lefèbre, -“very well indeed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These two good men stood for a few minutes and -talked. They were friends from the first smile, equally -simple and courageous in their outlook upon life, answering -at once to a generous touch of the hand. Lefèbre had -the soul of a peasant, with all its shrewdness, its grasp of -the elemental facts that keep men strong and wholesome. -This return of the people to their homes and to their soil -was to him a veritable sacrament. He knew that it is -good for man to suck the milk from the bosom of Mother -Earth. In the towns souls are hand-fed, dissociated from -the great miracle of nature. Lefèbre hated the great -towns. They gave babes strong drink, false appetites, -parched mouths, the lust after lust. Men walked restlessly -in the streets, men who are envious and unhappy -after the long dulness of the factory or the shop. They -had turned no soil, nor gone to bed happily tired.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What can one make of this little house?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was looking at the patch of brown tiles and the bare -rafters. His face was eager, inquisitive. Brent felt the -thrill of his humanity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It could be made quite strong again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The roof can be covered with felt, and later it can -be retiled. A door and some windows—and there you -are.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lefèbre hung his cassock over the sill of one of the -empty window spaces.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will go up to the château and get a roll of felt. -Would you take down those tiles?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It would be better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you could spare five minutes later in the day for a -little criticism?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I may be able to give you a hand,” Brent said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre went for some tools, nails and a roll -of felt, and when he returned to the Rue Romaine he found -Mère Vitry standing in the garden under the old fruit tree. -She was smiling, a child’s wonder in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look, monsieur, a miracle! Someone has been here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A friend, perhaps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was you, monsieur, who carried away all that -rubbish?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. But miracles happen, madame, even in these -days. There is always the miracle of the good man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mère Vitry crossed herself, and looked at the roll of -felt under Monsieur Lefèbre’s arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you—you are going to work, too, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lefèbre’s jocund face broke into creases.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going to try and put a roof on your cottage. -That will be another miracle!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had gone to the canteen which she and Madame -Poupart were to manage with the help of two of the -older women. They had had a boy assigned to them, a -strong young rascal whose duty was to trundle the day’s -provisions down from the château in a hand-truck, chop -wood for the stoves, and to make himself useful in any -way that God or Manon chose to order. He sulked the -first morning, having promised himself the excitement of -helping to pull down some of the ruins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“People who are lazy get no dinner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He argued the point with Manon, and it required the -dinner hour to convince him that these women were in -earnest. When the file of men had passed to the tables -with full plates, Master Jacques stood by the iron boiler, -holding a tin plate that was empty, and inviting Madame -Poupart to use her ladle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We had to cut the wood,” said the lady, “to cook your -dinner. You refused to cut wood; we give you no dinner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The logic of the thing was so convincing, and Madame -Poupart so determined, that Jacques went out and -laboured to earn his plateful of stew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand and Brent spent the morning making -a pilgrimage through the village. They visited each house -to which the head of a family had returned, Paul examining -each building and giving his opinion as to what could -be done. Anatole stood by with his inevitable note-book, -jotting down the details of this tour of inspection, while -Brent and the owner looked at walls and gables, sagging -roofs, shell-bitten chimney-stacks and questionable foundations. -Each problem differed a little from the other; each -house had its own particular sickness. Some were dead, so -dead that there was nothing to be suggested save that a -new house or hut should be built in the yard or garden. -Anatole made a note, “Try and buy huts.” There were -stud and plaster houses with the timber framing fairly -sound; the walls of these could be replastered or covered -temporarily with felt. There were brick houses that a -little ingenious patching would put into passable repair. -There were mere broken shells that needed building up -squarely before they could carry the cap of a roof. In -many cases a crumpled mass of tiles and rafters would -have to be removed before the actual work of reconstruction -could be begun. The old houses built of the -chalky limestone of the district were the most hopeless -of all. When such a house had been wounded, it had -crumbled, cracked, dropped masses of masonry, dribbled -loose stones out of the wounds, bled itself to death. The -war had taught Brent to respect the extraordinary tenacity -of good brickwork. You could square up the ragged walls, -fit a patch into the holes, and the house was as good as -ever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beaucourt saw Paul Brent as a brown man with a -short, pointed beard and friendly blue eyes. He seemed a -pleasant fellow, capable, rather quiet in his speech, and -with an accent that was vaguely foreign. He was a -stranger and Beaucourt kept a critical eye on strangers, -but Brent went so wholeheartedly about his job and was -so obviously a man of his hands that these peasants accepted -him. They were too busy to be inquisitive. Brent -had sat up late for many nights dragging out of the dictionary -the French for such things as plaster, felt, rafters, -joists, mortises, concrete. He had made a list of all the -technical words that he could find, learnt the names by -heart, and made Manon hear his lesson.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You ought to shout more,” she told him; “you English -just talk to yourselves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her with the eyes of a lover.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shall I shout those dear words?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may keep that soft voice—for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had been a little anxious for her man, knowing -that he had prepared himself to face a possible ordeal in -this return of the natives. It was not only that he loved -her and that he had come to look on Beaucourt as a home, -but he had a man’s horror of betraying himself and of -being damned as something worse than a fool. She knew -that he would imagine that the humiliation would spread -to her, and she could picture him packing his knapsack -and marching off into the night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He came back to her in the evening with the air of -having spent a happy and a human day. There was -laughter in his mood, not the laughter of ridicule, but -laughter that had felt the pathos and beauty of the thing -that had inspired it. He had been down to Mère Vitry’s -cottage, and had discovered Monsieur Lefèbre on the roof, -a sprawling, enthusiastic, happy figure with a distinct -celestial shininess about the broad seat of its breeches. -Monsieur Lefèbre was stripping the roof of its remaining -tiles and lowering them carefully in an old bucket with a -bit of wire fastened to the handle. Mère Vitry stood below, -unloaded the bucket, and packed the tiles away in -a corner. They were as absorbed as two children playing -a game.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It has been a great day,” said Paul; “I don’t seem -to have puzzled anybody. And the way these people -work——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat down in the arm-chair and watched Manon -laying the table. She was very good to watch, and every -now and again her eyes gave him the glimmer of light -that a woman gives to her lover.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let him pass—Paul Rance, a good Frenchman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe I shall pass,” he said. “I like your people. -They smell of the soil.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She balanced a fork, pointing it at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And remember, they will like you. You see, you are -such a good fellow, and——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sprang up suddenly and caught her, and holding -her face between his hands, looked long and steadily -into her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, you are just my life. I had to fight for you, -didn’t I? But I have been afraid, ma chérie, that these -people might not want me here. I might be found out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do not run to meet troubles,” she said; “you will -have very good friends in Beaucourt. Besides——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She clasped his wrists for a moment with her two -hands, and then moved gently away to lift a boiling -kettle from the stove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us look at the house—afterwards, at everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stood watching her devoutly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s so good that sometimes I am afraid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is there to fear in Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the meal was over they walked out into the -garden and looked at the green crops, those rows of beans -and peas and lettuces paraded so exactly on the clean -brown soil. The holes in the wall had been filled in; the -fruit bushes were covered with a film of green, and the -pollarded limes showed a thousand emerald tips. From -the garden they passed to the orchard, and Brent stood -a moment by Beckett’s grave. He had put a white -wooden cross there, but he had never been able to persuade -himself to paint up the lie of his own name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon drew him away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now we will look at the house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They went over it as though they had not seen the Café -de la Victoire for three months. It still remained a -perennial wonder to them, something of a miracle, a thing -that grew and fed upon the labour of their hands. Already -it had an atmosphere, the human friendliness of a -place that is lived in. It was ready to be the secret home -of their love and their memories.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had put up a simple staircase to the upper -rooms. They were still open to the bare rafters of the -roof, but Harlech Dump had provided canvas for the ceilings, -and all the floors were complete, save the floor of the -back room on the right. Brent had used up all the wood -that he had salved from the army huts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was dreaming the dreams of a housewife. She -stood in the middle of the room that was to be hers and -Brent’s, her back to the window, her thoughts busy with -furniture, curtains, linen. In a week or two she would be -able to go to Amiens and buy furniture for the new home. -She looked at Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come and hold my hand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is the problem?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m thinking. We will have the bed there, and a big -cupboard against the north wall, and another cupboard -with shelves in that corner. I should like one or two -bright-coloured mats.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A little colour is good,” said Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His left arm went across her shoulders, and they stood -silent, thinking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is only the floor of that room, and the -ceilings——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up at him, and her dark eyes were intense.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Promise me, you will never run away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Run away?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, don’t you understand? This is going to be ours, -whatever happens. Besides, what is there that could -happen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul kissed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I almost wish——” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you wish?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That the village knew everything—that it could judge -me as an Englishman who had made a mess of life in his -own country.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She held his arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon chéri, perhaps, some day, we will tell them, but -of what have you to be ashamed? Let us win them first. -How I wish we had wood for that floor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent held her close.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that was my promise. Do you think it is easy -for me to hold out?—and yet, I’m going to hold out for -six months. I’ll win Beaucourt before I ask you to marry -me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stroked his cheek.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What spurs you wear on your conscience! Am I to -agree? Well, what can a woman do? Who’s that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Someone had entered the house. It was Anatole Durand, -an Anatole who wanted to gossip, and he stood at the -foot of the staircase, looking up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t you come and look, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He climbed up on his brisk legs, amused, smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Talking over the furniture, hey?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is one room that needs a floor, and we have no -more wood.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wood—wood? Why, I’ll give it you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we have had more than our share in taking the -wood from those huts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens,” said old Durand, “isn’t an old man allowed -to be silly now and again? One can’t help having -favourites, you know.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXXIV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>There</span> were two very happy men in Beaucourt during -that miraculous spring, Anatole Durand and Marcel -Lefèbre.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Things went well, amazingly well. There were no -quarrels, very little jealousy, and no slacking. At the end -of the first month more than half the people were out of -the huts and back in their own houses, and though the -roofs were of black felt and the windows of canvas, the -critical period had passed. The Philipons had sent for -their children; so had many others. Mère Vitry was back -in her cottage, with the picture of the Sacré Cœur hanging -on its nail, and in her garden were crops of lettuce, -spring cabbage, peas, beetroot, potatoes. There were days -when the whole village went out into the fields, with Monsieur -Lefèbre heading the pilgrimage, and the seed-sowing -was a public sacrament. Durand’s tractors had ploughed -up hundreds of acres, and though the season was too late -for wheat, these peasants, labouring from dawn to dusk, -seeded those great brown fields with beans, potatoes, -cabbage, beetroot, turnips, peas and swedes. The luck of -the season was with them. It was sunny and dry, and -the battle was with the weeds. A hundred hoes and a -blazing sun fought and suppressed grass and charlock, -dock, nettle, sorrel, buttercup and poppy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The orchards had only missed one year’s pruning, and -promised well. Even flower seeds had not been forgotten. -Manon was to have beds of mignonette, marigold, Virginia -stock, red linum, gaudy nasturtiums. There were buds -on the old rose trees, and Paul had done some pruning. -The Bois du Renard was in full leaf, and the château chestnuts -had had a wonderful display of white wax candles. -The white thorn, too, had looked like snow. Old Durand -had had lilac in bloom, and he had sent Manon a mass of -it for the big bowl in the window. Paul had found her -burying her face in the blossom, and he had caught her -in his arms and kissed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You smell like the spring.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had ruffled his hair with her hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The village continued to take its principal meals at the -canteen, for this public kitchen saved time, labour and -fuel, and allowed the women to spend the whole day about -their houses or in the gardens and fields. Other families -were returning, and, to relieve the congestion in the huts, -some of the people who were more forward in their houses -arranged to do their own cooking and to eat their meals -there. The école was turned into an additional rest-house -for the new-comers; they took their share of the -work, food and material; the Council of Beaucourt administered -a patriarchal justice. There were no gendarmes -in the village.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Civilization began to re-erect its old landmarks, and -Beaucourt made quite a jest of the new post-office when -Madame Bonpoint, who was very fat and very red and a -little severe, made Beaucourt think of a broody hen sitting -on a clutch of eggs in a coop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pierre Poirel, the village farceur, put his head inside -her doorway and crowed like a cock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Comment?” said the lady.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are the letters hatched yet, madame?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Pierre Poirel, too, who scrawled on the doorway -of his eccentric-looking cottage, “Villa des Nouveaux -Riches.” And all Beaucourt laughed at the joke. The -village had recovered its sense of humour, which was an -excellent symptom, for a community that can work hard -and laugh has no social sickness to fear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand restarted a carrier’s service between Amiens -and Beaucourt, and three times a week a carrier’s cart left -the Place Vogel, carrying passengers and parcels. Beaucourt -used to take its relaxation in an evening gossip on -the Place de l’Eglise, about the time the carrier’s cart -rolled in. Anatole would be there, Monsieur Lefèbre, the -patriarchs, the women. You could buy <span class='it'>Le Petit Journal</span> -or the <span class='it'>Echo de Paris</span>. For a few sous, too, you could -get a good cup of coffee at the house of Manon Latour, -and ask the advice of that fine fellow, Paul Rance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was growing popular. His day was full from -dawn to dusk, and when he was not working at the café -or in the garden, he was helping some villager with his -house. Paul tackled all sorts of problems. He rescued -derelict roofs, underpinned dangerous walls, patched -broken chimneys. Manon’s man was a good fellow, a -much better fellow than the rather querulous and thin -bearded Gaston who had been Manon’s first husband, and -Beaucourt approved of the betrothal. It accepted Paul. -He could use his hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had a share in preparing one of the great sensations, -Beaucourt’s first shop. The enterprise was Madame -Poupart’s. Paul built the shelves, the counter, the window -stage, and, since the venture was a private one, he was -paid good money for the work. He took the notes home -and handed them to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Put them in the partnership bank.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was very happy over that money, and Manon was -happy with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Few people could get near Madame Poupart’s shop -when first it was opened. The window was only six feet -square, and you had to push hard to obtain a glimpse of -it. Not that Beaucourt was in mad haste to spend its -money, or to buy the cheap pipes, sweets, picture postcards, -reels of cotton, brown crockery, matches or lead pencils -that were arranged in the shop-window. It was the fact -that Beaucourt had a shop. People crowded like children -to stare at it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Animals began to arrive and they could not have created -more interest if they had walked out of the Ark. The -Philipons had a brown cow; Monsieur Talmas, the messenger, -kept two horses; the Lebecques had a pig, but the -idea of keeping a pig was soon plagiarized by other -people. Hens clucked and scratched, and cocks crowed. -Someone gave Mère Vitry a cat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nor was the Café de la Victoire without its live-stock, -and Philosophe—a very useful beast—soon had to acknowledge -rivals. Etienne’s blue cart arrived from Ste. Claire, -carrying a calf secured under a net, a coopful of young -chickens, and Marie Castener in her Sunday clothes. -Etienne and Paul were left to man-handle the calf, while -Marie stumped all over the house, making Paul’s new -floors shake, and talking as she had not talked for years. -She kissed Manon in nearly every room as though she -were sealing a blessing, quite forgetting that she never -could abide people who were impulsive and sentimental.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And when are you going to be married?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very soon, my dear; in three or four months, perhaps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Three or four months! What are you waiting for? -If I were that fellow Paul I should not be able to keep -my hands off you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is a very good fellow,” said Manon, “and very -patient.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Patient! A man ought not to be patient. Talking -of bad men, have you heard the news about Bibi?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s face hardened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. What is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s blind—stone blind. They had to cut out one -eye, and the other got affected. A man like that quarrels -once too often; those English soldiers cut him to pieces.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon paused on the stairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be careful; they are rather steep. Did they ever -catch those Tommies?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what is Bibi doing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Living at the Coq d’Or. They say there is something -between him and that girl Barbe. She’ll keep him in -order, if any woman can do it. I suppose he has some -money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the Casteners had gone Manon told Paul the -news about Louis Blanc. They were leaning over the -stable door, and the calf was sucking Manon’s fingers, a -protest against its weaning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor devil!” said Brent, “I would rather be dead. -I never thought——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t pity him,” she answered; “I suppose I ought -to, but I can’t. I wonder if he will come back to Beaucourt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What could a blind man do here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Make mischief. I hope he will stay where he is; -there would be something horrible about a blind man -crawling about the village. Be careful, ma petite, do you -want to eat my hand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent leant over and rubbed the calf’s head, and the -little beast’s sapphire blue eyes looked up at them without -fear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This thing is tame enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Etienne’s beasts are always tame. Yes, you have -beautiful eyes, my dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And though they did not confess it to each other the -thought of Bibi blind and helpless haunted them all that -night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The working days slipped by, and in his white tent at -the end of the avenue of chestnuts old Durand slept the -sleep of a healthy tired child. He was irrepressible and -he was happy, up soon after dawn each morning, and shaving -in the doorway of his tent before rushing down into the -village to begin another day of creation and adventure. -Marcel Lefèbre was his partner in this early morning enthusiasm. -Lefèbre slept on an old wire bed in the sacristy. -Everybody knew that he spent the first two hours of the -day working in the church, clearing out the rubbish, -scraping the floor, and daubing whitewash over the banalities -and blasphemies that casual hands had scribbled on -the walls. The “flip-flop” of that brush and the priest’s -splashed face were a rallying cry and an ensign to Beaucourt. -The whole village gathered in the church for Sunday -morning mass. The peasants came because they liked -Lefèbre and because the service seemed to be a sort of -social sacrament, a very human hour when they stood in -silence side by side, and felt the humanity in each other. -The dead were there, and the children. And there were -those, Philipon among them, who had called the mass a -mummery and a swindle, but who came to the church because -Marcel Lefèbre’s religion grew in the soil. Even -these children of reason felt that it was good to gather -together and to drink of the cup of common humanity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Beaucourt was happy, rather proud of itself and ready -to echo old Durand’s cry of “Ça ira, ça ira.” There was -a competitive spirit in the air, a spirit that was good for -Beaucourt and for France. People asked each other, -“What are they doing in Peronne, in Domart, in Caix, in -Roye, up in the North? We can show them something -here. It grows, it blossoms.” Beaucourt had some little -reason to be proud of its work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet there was a shadow. It arrived suddenly and unexpectedly, -and it was cast by a man. Nobody save -Durand and Lefèbre imagined that there was anything -sinister about the shadow or felt that any new thing had -arrived in Beaucourt. What did a little fat man signify, a -manufacturer, a fellow who had been known as the “Elephant” -because he had a nose like a trunk and trousers -that made one think of an elephant’s legs? M. George -Goblet was just a coarse little man whose life had been -given to the making of money. In the old days the factory -had seemed good for Beaucourt; some of the girls and -women had worked there, and nothing terrible had happened. -The peasant, not the ouvrier, had dominated the -village.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur George arrived in a car. Durand met him -walking down the Rue de Bonnière with Marcel Lefèbre, -and Lefèbre had the look of a man whose dinner had not -agreed with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What, you back!” said Durand, with a quick glance -at the priest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur George had lunched in his car on chicken -and a bottle of Château Citron. He smoked. He was -cheerful; his face looked red and beneficent, but Marcel -Lefèbre—the Christian—wished him in hell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Goblet is restarting the factory.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens,” said Durand; “he will have to bring his own -workpeople; we are too busy here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur George smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Enterprise, my dear sirs. I am going to get the -place tidy. Men do not grow on currant bushes these -days, but I have been in Paris and elsewhere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Riff-raff,” said Anatole aggressively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The “Elephant” looked at him suspiciously with his -little eye. He had never been able to understand Durand; -he thought him a fool. And, of course, they disliked each -other. It would never have occurred to Goblet that these -two men had an affection for Beaucourt, an affection that -resembled the love of an old man for a daughter, and that -they suspected him of being ready to debauch her innocence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Goblet was a man of platitudes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“France has to get to work. There is going to be a -race for trade.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Trade? Of course. One is apt to forget these things. -We have got to fill the shop-windows so that silly women -may spend money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I make cloth, Monsieur Lefèbre. That is one of -life’s necessities, is it not, or would you rather have the -women running about naked in the fields?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are unanswerable, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole edged Lefèbre gently out of the conversation, -for M. Marcel had a hot temper and a way of losing it -with righteous sincerity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur George has been reading ‘Penguin Island,’ -ha, ha! He is right; we cannot have our villages full -of naked angels. But where are you going to put your -workmen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tents or huts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And feed them? We have our own organization, -but we can’t feed your fellows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have not asked you to, have I? I did not start -business yesterday; I have my scheme just as you have -yours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you have managed to buy machinery?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Should I go out without my trousers?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole and the priest left the “Elephant” standing -coarsely on his dignity outside the gate of the factory. -They walked back arm in arm to the Place de l’Eglise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear friend,” said Durand, “M. George is behaving -like a reasonable and enterprising citizen. What good -will it do to us or Beaucourt to quarrel with him? I think -we are in danger of becoming a couple of sentimentalists.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God forgive the reasonable people,” said Monsieur -Lefèbre. “It was the devilry of common-sense that killed -the child in man.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXXV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Early</span> in June, the Café de la Victoire being ready for -its furniture, Manon made her great expedition to Amiens. -The canvas ceilings were up, all the timber-work stained -or painted, and Paul had papered the walls of the kitchen, -the two best bedrooms, and the coffee room. Manon had -chosen a pattern of pink roses for her room; the windows -were to have rose-coloured curtains, and the bed a rose-coloured -duvet; Paul had stained the floor the colour of -old oak.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They left Philipon’s girl, Luce, in charge of the house, -and travelled to Amiens in the carrier’s cart, sitting on the -wooden bench behind M. Talmas, and under the black -canvas cover that had a little window on either side. -Manon had a carpet-bag at her feet; she was to stay three -or four days. Paul carried his travelling gear wrapped -up in a black and white check handkerchief; he wore his -velvet trousers and black coat. There was no one else in -the carrier’s cart, and as its grey-blue wheels rolled slowly -along the straight roads under the poplars, beeches, limes -and acacias, Paul felt himself back in some ancient bit of -England. M. Talmas’ van would have found country -cousins in the Weald of Sussex or among the Somersetshire -orchards. Cæsar Talmas, too, was a bit of old France, -with the head of a grenadier, a tuft of grey hair on his -chin, and his eyes as blue as his breeches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This cart dropped them at the Place Vogel, and they -walked to the Rue Belu, Paul carrying Manon’s bag. -Across the green-black water of the river, and with its -windows looking at the chestnut trees and in the inspired -grey glory of the cathedral, stood the Auberge de l’Evêque, -a tall, old, white house with yellow shutters, a rust-red -gate and door. Manon knew the place. It was clean -and quiet, and she had written to retain two bedrooms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood on the bridge for a moment, and looked -at the cathedral.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When we have left our luggage,” said Manon, “we -will go in and say our prayers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Berthier of the Auberge de l’Evêque, one of -those crisp, firm-fleshed Frenchwomen, with a ruddy face -and fair hair, met them like an old friend. Manon had a -bedroom on the first floor; Paul a little room under the -roof. Madame Berthier gave them coffee, and chattered -to Manon about prices.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The cheap shops are not always the cheapest,” was -her dictum.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon agreed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you mean to live with the same furniture all your -life, why not have it good to look at?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like your wife,” said madame with a roguish look -at Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that’s so, madame. I find that she is very pleasant -to look at.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank you, mon ami. Are you coming out with me -to the shops?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then put on your hat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a showery day, but that did not trouble them, -for whenever the rain began to fall Manon found a shop -in which she wished to enquire the prices. She was in no -hurry, and they had explored all the streets in the neighbourhood -of the Hôtel de Ville before Manon made her -choice. She bought her furniture at a shop in the Rue -des Chaudronnières, cupboards, chairs, wash-hand stands -fitted with drawers, a big French bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had hesitated over that bed, and the shopkeeper -and his wife joined in a debate that became a sort of -family discussion. Manon could buy an iron bedstead of -the English pattern, with a mattress and pillows for four -hundred and ninety-five francs, but the French wooden bed -looked handsome and more homely. It would cost them -six hundred francs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you think?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like the wooden one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a beautiful bed, madame, and the box-mattress -is our very best.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why copy the English?” said the proprietor. “Think -of the price they are charging us for coal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An iron bedstead looks rather cold in a room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. More suitable for old maids.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be quiet, Jules. I assure you, madame, that if -you are going to have a pretty room for yourself and -Monsieur——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They bought the wooden bed, and walked on to the -Rue Dumeril, where Manon had discovered two shops -that had pleased her, one of them a bazaar that supplied -anything from a table-knife to an enamelled soap-dish. At -another shop over the way Manon bought material for -curtains, some cheaper bedding, and two rugs. She had -her lists made out in a note-book, a hypothetical price -placed against each article, and she worked methodically -through each list, refusing to be hurried. It was a very -serious affair this restocking of a kitchen and a linen cupboard, -with every sheet, towel and blanket to be examined -and handled, and Paul saw that it would take days.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall leave you at home this afternoon,” she told -him, as they walked back to dine at the auberge; “a man -in a draper’s shop is like a dog on a string.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It does not bore me, you know. I just stand and -look at you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, and it upsets my ideas.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll go shopping on my own; there are those tools -and fencing wire that I want to take back to-morrow in -Talmas’ cart.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is a good idea. And, oh, Paul, don’t forget the -spinach seed. And this evening we will go and sit in the -cathedral, and afterwards we will drink coffee or a bock -outside the café. You don’t wish to go to a cinéma, do -you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it likely?” said her man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had known Amiens during the war, but the -Amiens of his wanderings while Manon shopped was not -the city he had known of old. Amiens depressed him. Its -narrow, crowded side-walks and penitential pavé made life -uncomfortable for a stroller who soon grew tired of staring -in shop-windows, and Amiens—like all cities—had the -power of impressing itself with unpleasant vigour upon -the casual countryman. The peasant is jostled out of his -little, quiet complacencies. He has not the spaciousness -of the fields to comfort him; the city cinéma-show tries -his eyes. Too many people, too much noise, too much -restlessness!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Amiens made Paul feel home-sick. He sat on a damp -seat in one of the boulevards, a man with the soul of a -peasant, a man to whom—after the first hour of window-gazing—this -city could offer nothing. He felt tired, -absurdly tired, and ready to be taken home like a child. -Home? What was home? The place where he worked, -where the crops grew, where he sat by the stove in a -French village? Yes, it was that and more than that, and -in those moments of loneliness Paul discovered the blood -and the flesh behind the conventional picture. To man -home was a woman, the woman, that and nothing else. -The rest was mere furniture, baggage, call it what you -will, inanimate things that become alive only when a -woman moved among them and turned them into mute -symbols of sentiment and tenderness. It was Manon who -mattered, Manon the woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It began to rain again, and Paul jumped up. He -walked fast down the wet streets and the people in the -streets had ceased to be strangers. Even the few figures -in khaki refused to accuse him of being an exile, a bastard -Frenchman masquerading in French clothes. He looked -up at the flèche of the cathedral, and his heart felt big in -him, big with a sense of the common humanity of them -all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul went straight to the auberge, and opening the -glass-panelled door, found Madame Berthier knitting. -She looked up at him with a smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Manon is not back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went out with happy impatience, and waited on the -bridge in the rain. He felt that she would come that way, -and while he waited there a very wonderful thing happened. -The battered-looking street, the grey quays, the -green-black water of the river had seemed heavily grey and -ugly. Suddenly the sun broke through, sending down a -shower of yellow light, while the rain continued to fall. A -coloured bow overarched the city. The chestnuts glittered, -wet with a beautiful splendour of light. The cathedral -seemed to tower into the sky, flashing its dripping stones -and pinnacles and windows, its flèche ashine against a -great black cloud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul stood spellbound. His eyes were the eyes of an -awed yet delighted child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon surprised him in that moment of un-self-consciousness. -She came across the bridge without his seeing -her, and the look on his face made her think of a window -opened in heaven. His face was wet with the rain; he -was smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not speak, but came and stood beside him as -though to share the beauty that enchanted him; to gaze -at the sun-splashed trees and the splendour of mystery -that enveloped the cathedral. Paul’s smiling eyes came -down out of the heaven to her, and the smile became -human.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve been waiting here. I thought you would come -by the bridge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have been feeling lonely,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you know that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He caught her hand and held it firm and fast, and they -leant over the rail of the bridge and looked at the still -water whose surface was no longer blurred by the rain. -There were wonderful reflections in the water, and there -were strange lights in Manon’s eyes. She had felt the -strong grip of Paul’s hand, and a quiver of deep passion -that woke a cry of exultation and of understanding in her -heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to go home,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Home?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt the pressure of her firm, warm fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is Beaucourt home to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled down at the water.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I felt like a lost child this afternoon. I had to come -back to try and find you. I wanted you; I never knew -I could want you so much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon chéri,” she said; “so you waited out here in -the rain? And then the sun shone?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you came back. Home is where you are. That’s -a great discovery for a man to make, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Had you never discovered it before?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I am the first woman you have loved,” she said -simply; “I am very happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul kissed her softly on the cheek, and their reflections -in the water below imitated that kiss.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Berthier gave the lovers an early supper, -and after the meal they wandered out into Amiens, walking -arm in arm. To Paul Amiens was no longer a strange -city full of cold, anonymous faces. They entered the -cathedral and sat a while in the great nave, watching the -pigeons flying to and fro in the sunset light of the clerestory, -for the glass was gone from many of the windows, -and the pigeons nested in this great dovecote. Paul held -Manon’s hand. They spoke in whispers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only good men could have built this place.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good workmen, anyhow,” said her lover; “I think -we have forgotten something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon Dieu, something I should have bought?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He gave a soft laugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not that. This place reminds me of that house -of yours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ours,” she corrected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ours. You could put it here inside the cathedral. -It’s part of the same stuff. I don’t want to live in a world -of sky-scrapers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are sky-scrapers?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The buildings in New York, America. It’s a great -age, but, good God, I’m satisfied with Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Always?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are not going to die yet, are you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon chéri, not before you marry me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And there will always be work to do in Beaucourt, -the sort of work that makes a man go to bed happily -with the smell of good soil or sawdust in his nostrils. -I say, that was a wonderful bed we bought this morning!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. We should not have liked an iron bed. You -will hold me very close, some day, my Paul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I shall never let you go.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Next morning Brent tied up his belongings in the check -handkerchief, kissed Manon, shook hands with Madame -Berthier, and marched off to the Place Vogel. Monsieur -Talmas’ cart started at nine on the return journey to -Beaucourt, and Paul found two other travellers on the -wooden seat, an old lady who was joining her married -daughter, and Monsieur Poupart, who had been spending -two days in Amiens buying goods for the shop. Poupart -had a yellow face and a melancholy manner, and -the old woman had been boring him with the irritating -vivacity of second childhood. She asked interminable -questions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Work the pump, will you?” said Poupart to his -neighbour; “my arm is stiff. They had la grippe in the -house where I have been staying; I expect I have caught -it; I always do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have had la grippe thirteen times,” said the old lady -triumphantly, leaning forward and looking across Paul -at the pessimist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The thirteenth attack should have killed you, madame;” -and, in a truculent aside, “you would never have -had thirteen attacks if you had been my mother-in-law.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old lady chattered to Paul all the way to Beaucourt. -She was very inquisitive, and Paul was hard put to keep -her curiosity within the limits of a decent reticence, for -her old hands were ready to pull everything to pieces, -even to interfere with her neighbours’ clothes. She asked -Paul if he was married, and cackled when he told her that -he was only betrothed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Poupart listened with a sardonic solemnity. He caught -Paul’s eye, and nudged him with his elbow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Push her downstairs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“La Croix would have done that years ago if he had -not been a fool.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I understand what you are saying, quite well, Monsieur -Poupart. No one has been able to break my neck -for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a pity, madame!” said the man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Talmas’ cart entered Beaucourt by the Bonnière -road, and just beyond the gates of the factory, where -a number of workmen were lounging, they passed a waggon -drawn in at the side of the road and laden with the sections -of a hut. Brent, who had been looking at the factory, -felt himself nudged by Monsieur Poupart’s sharp elbow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look there!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ten yards beyond the waggon a man was sitting on -the grass bank, the man whose closed eyelids seemed sunk -in their eye-sockets. A girl with red hair was standing -beside the man, a girl with narrow lips and a prominent -bosom. She was speaking to the driver of the waggon -who was unhooking his horses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is Louis Blanc,” said the shopkeeper, staring inquisitively -at the woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was conscious of a shock of astonishment. It -was Bibi himself, blind and bearded, sitting there and -listening to what the girl was saying, his head slightly on -one side like the head of a listening bird. A couple of -sticks lay on the bank beside him! He was dressed in his -best clothes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s blind, you know,” said Poupart; “poor devil!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes were grim. He realized that he had not -prepared himself for the return of Bibi, for Bibi had -passed out of the life of the village, and his reappearance -filled Brent with a feeling akin to nausea. It was the return -of something that was essentially evil, an element of -discord, the spirit of malice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was staring hard at Louis Blanc and as the cart -passed him Bibi raised his head with a jerk. His eye-sockets -were fixed upon Brent. He seemed to feel the -passing of an enemy and the challenge of an enemy’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul drew back and looked away. He heard Bibi -speaking to the girl with the red hair; he was asking her -who was in the cart that had passed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the carrier’s van,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who’s inside?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Two men and an old woman. Now, then, are you -quite sure this is your piece of ground? It lies opposite -the end of the factory wall.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi had owned half an acre of orchard here.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that’s it. Count the trees. There used to be -thirty-six, all apples. They were standing there months -ago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Barbe, of the Coq d’Or, took a step up the bank and -counted the trees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I make the number thirty-five.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Near enough. We will have the hut off the waggon -here. Give me a hand; I can help the fellow to unload.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some of the workmen came across to help in the unloading. -They thought that Bibi had lost his eyesight -in the war; and Barbe was very attractive to men. They -fraternized with Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are good fellows,” he said, “not like these damned -peasants. There will be some good wine here when my -buvette goes up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What, you are going to sell drink, old man?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Plenty of it,” said Bibi.</p> - -<div><h1>XXXVI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> events that agitated Monsieur Anatole Durand -were the arrival of the “Elephant’s” workmen and the -birth of Bibi’s buvette.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole had Marcel Lefèbre at his elbow, and Lefèbre -had never hesitated to say that it was in the factory that -the modern social diseases were hatched and bred. If you -argued the point with him and quoted the example of -Monsieur Menier and his Chocolate Town he would answer -that there were very few enlightened men like Monsieur -Menier, and that factories existed not for the good -of the workpeople but to make money. To Marcel Lefèbre -the making of money was the root of all evil. It debauched -both the capitalist and the worker, begot the bastard -lives that men live in great cities, made life hectic and -unreal. He combated the assertion that the peasants were -hard, greedy, less intelligent than the dwellers in cities, -and he would ask you whether a man who could carry out -all the varied and scientific work on a farm had not a -more fully developed and intelligent life than a workman -who spent each day cutting threads on a screw, who read -nothing but the “red rags” and talked about things that -he did not understand. In the villages you found no -venereal disease, few prostitutes, none of the grosser sorts -of crime. An occasional murder, perhaps; but Lefèbre -was a man of passions—disciplined passions—and yet he -could understand the violence that shed blood. There -are occasions when the killing of a man is a wholesome and -a cleanly act.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It must be confessed that Lefèbre’s prejudices were -justified by the temper of the men whom Monsieur Goblet -introduced into Beaucourt. The “Elephant” had picked -up the dregs of the casual labour that had been set free -from the munition works and the army, fellows who -drifted, youngsters who had learnt too soon the vices of -grown men. Very few of Goblet’s original “hands” -had returned; some had been killed; others had settled -elsewhere; for the few who were ready to return there -could be no technical work until the buildings had been -repaired and new machinery installed. Durand had -spoken of “riff-raff,” and the words fitted the case exactly. -Monsieur Goblet had picked up the riff-raff that is to be -found in all cities. There were some good men among -them, one or two of the older bricklayers, the engineer, -and two of the mechanics. The rest were a bad lot, ready -to run about the village and make trouble with the women.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As for Louis Blanc’s buvette, that, too, could not be -helped, nor does any sensible Frenchman quarrel with a -seller of good wine. Bibi’s buvette grew up like a gourd, -for the workmen over the way saw that the plant was for -their own pleasure, and spent the evenings in helping it to -grow. They put up Bibi’s hut for him, built Mademoiselle -Barbe a throne and a set of shelves, knocked tables and -benches together, even helped with the furniture. Bibi -had a small marquée as well as a hut. He meant to sleep -in the marquée, but Mademoiselle Barbe demanded a door -and a lock, and the room that was partitioned off at the -end of the hut. For one day Bibi distributed free drinks -in token of his gratitude to the good fellows who had their -eyes fixed on the red-haired girl’s petticoat. Bibi became -popular. He had a fine collection of lewd stories suited to -the gentlemen whom the “Elephant” had imported into -Beaucourt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand professed to see virtues in Louis Blanc’s establishment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will keep the roughs out of the village.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lefèbre insisted on seeing the truth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is part of the village that may be glad to join -the roughs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon Dieu,” said Anatole, “are we not rather like a -couple of fussy old hens?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My religion spreads its wings over the children. You -know very well, my friend, that Goblet has opened the -lid of the box. We shall have trouble here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand bit his finger-nails.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There may be a way of persuading that fellow Blanc -to disappear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul missed the events of those few days, for Amiens -had made him a present, the present that Monsieur -Poupart had expected to bring back with him. Brent -went down with influenza, an influenza of a particularly -virulent type. He was alone in the house, Luce Philipon -having returned to her parents, and the disease struck -Paul like a dose of poison. He was at work in the morning; -that evening he was delirious, with a temperature -that had soared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>About nine o’clock in the evening old Prosper Cordonnier, -who slept at the château, and acted as Anatole’s -“store-guard,” was sent down by Durand to the Café de -la Victoire with a message to Brent. Anatole wished him -to come up next day and make a rough survey of the -château. Cordonnier found the café shut up, but hearing -a voice, he knocked at the door. No one answered the -knock, so Cordonnier tried the door, and finding it unlocked, -walked in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was still sufficiently light for Cordonnier to see his -way about the house, and he discovered Brent in bed in -the little room whose window overlooked the garden. -Paul was delirious, and talking all sorts of imaginable -nonsense, and he was talking in English. Cordonnier -stood and stared at him. This lingo was strange to Prosper, -who had passed his refugee years working on a farm -in the Gironde.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier bent over the bed, and shook Brent by the -shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, old chap, what’s the matter?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent pushed him away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bosh,” he said, “bosh! Oh, go to the devil!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier left him, but he stood in the passage for a -minute or two, rubbing his chin and listening. Prosper -had been known in Beaucourt as “Mutton Head,” a man -of slow movements, very stupid, yet touchily conscious of -his stupidity. People had laughed at him, and this -laughter had bred in Cordonnier a stubborn reticence. He -used very few words, and those of the simplest. He talked -only of obvious things, and if anyone asked him for an -opinion he bolted back into his silence like a rabbit into -a hole. He had one failing, a fondness for drink, and he -had been heard to argue with a mild recklessness upon -the contrasted virtues of farmyard dung and chemical -manures.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier went back to the château.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That fellow Paul might have been talking German,” -was the thought that entered his head, “but we won’t say -anything about that. They always laugh, the fools! A -man should keep things to himself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He told Durand that Paul was sick. “I found him in -bed, monsieur. You had better see him yourself in the -morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing serious, Prosper?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier avoided expressing his opinion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was in bed, monsieur, so I came away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole was with Paul early the next day; the high -fever had passed, and he found Brent flushed but sane. -He remembered nothing of Cordonnier’s visit, nor had it -occurred to him that he might have been babbling in -English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This comes of taking a holiday in Amiens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand lit the stove in the kitchen, warmed up some -milk, and made Paul drink it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When does Manon come back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will fetch Mère Vitry. She is a good nurse, and she -will be glad to look after you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And there the incident ended. Mère Vitry came in, a -very willing angel of mercy, with her patched skirt, and -her bright black eyes. She washed Paul’s hands and face, -talking to him as she would have talked to a baby, and -shuffling about the house in an old pair of felt slippers. -In the toe of one of these slippers a mouse had gnawed a -hole, and the little black circle fascinated Brent. It -looked like a bird’s eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon returned next day in Monsieur Talmas’ cart. -She found Mère Vitry sitting in the kitchen, darning -Paul’s socks, her cat asleep on the table by the window, and -the coffee-pot ready on the stove. Manon had been in a -state of pleasant excitement from the moment that she -had left Amiens. She was returning to her home and to -her lover.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have been looking after my man. How good of -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“S-sh!” said Mère Vitry, “he is asleep.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Asleep!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has been ill, my dear, but he is better. Monsieur -Durand says it is la grippe. Perhaps you had better not -go into the room.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon put her bag on the table, took off her hat, and -behaved as Mère Vitry would have behaved in impulsively -flouting her own advice. She went to the door of Paul’s -room, opened it without a sound, and stood looking at him -as he lay in bed asleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was that kiss on the forehead that woke Brent. He -opened his eyes to find her bending over him, her warm -red mouth still shaping a kiss. Her clothes and her bosom -smelt faintly of some delicate perfume, and her hands were -touching his shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon pauvre,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent lay and looked at her. He was thinking that he -had never had a more pleasant awakening than the lips -of Manon had given him in their new home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you are back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was content to look at her, and she understood the -happy indolence in his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You should have sent me a message. How long have -you been ill?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat down on the edge of the bed, and held one of -his hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not complaining.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To wake up like this, and suddenly see you, here. -But, little woman, you ought not to be here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who says so?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do. I don’t want you ill.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indeed!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Deliberately, wilfully, she bent forward till her face -was close to his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am afraid of nothing that you could give me. So -there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent would not kiss her lips, but he kissed her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall be up in two days. Life is so exciting just -now. When does the furniture arrive?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On Friday.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And suddenly he remembered that Louis Blanc had -returned to Beaucourt. He wondered if Manon knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was leaning back and looking at him, aware of the -sudden seriousness of his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are in pain?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there is something; I am not to be deceived.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled up at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How you notice things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I saw Bibi and his new hut near the factory. -Is that what is worrying you? Monsieur Talmas told me. -It does not worry me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s face cleared. In some ways women are more -courageous and more imperturbable than men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, then, it does not matter,” he said, “but I wish -that fellow had taken his blind face somewhere else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In their happiness they were ready to forget Louis -Blanc and that brown hut of his among the apple trees on -the bank above the Bonnière road. The buvette was complete. -Mademoiselle Barbe had her comptoir and her -shelves for bottles, and at night the factory workmen -crowded in and sat round the improvised tables and drank -Bibi’s execrable wine. Those who were unable to find room -in the hut made themselves at home under the apple trees. -They were noisy; they sang. Bibi had a chair beside -Barbe’s comptoir. He talked a great deal, but he never -laughed. His blind face was the face of a man who -listened for some particular voice, the voice of an enemy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This hut of his was like an outpost, or a rallying point -in the inevitable antagonisms that were stirring in the -village. Peasant Beaucourt looked at it with unfriendly -eyes. It was not that these peasants were saints; far -from it; and yet it was as though that arch-peasant, Monsieur -Lefèbre, had placed Bibi and his buvette under an -interdict. There were elemental discords between the -tiller of the fields and these ouvriers. The peasant had -his home, his wife, his daughters, his work, his crops; the -factory hand was an Ishmaelite, noisy, contentious, -cynical, full of crude theories about double pay and less -work. He had no woman with him, and your barrack-housed -man is a troublesome dog. He will spend half his -night sniffing after petticoats, and in Beaucourt the petticoats -belonged to the peasants.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This tacit antagonism existed long before it was actually -provoked by the inevitable escapades of the “Elephant’s” -roughs. To Beaucourt, the Beaucourt that followed -Durand, Lefèbre, Philipon and their party, Bibi’s buvette -was out of bounds. No one went there. If a man wanted -a little red wine, he got it at Manon’s café, and so, almost -insensibly, the Café de la Victoire became involved in the -feud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Prosper Cordonnier was the first of the peasant party -to secede, and his secession was furtive and occasional. -This bibulous and inarticulate old man had felt a dryness -at the throat whenever he passed along the Rue de Bonnière. -His timidity and his passion for strong drink -struggled together for a long time before that scorching -and dusty day provided both the temptation and the -opportunity. It was three o’clock in the afternoon; everybody -was at work, and Prosper, who had been on an errand -for Anatole Durand, passed Bibi’s buvette at an hour -when it was empty. Bibi himself was sitting in the -shadow of the doorway; Mademoiselle Barbe had gone to -Amiens in Talmas’ cart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Prosper loitered, looking shyly at the board over the -door. It occurred to him that it would be polite and neighbourly -to speak to Bibi, this poor fellow who had lost his -sight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi sat up very straight in his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, who’s that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Prosper Cordonnier.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come up and drink.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Golden words on a scorching July day! Prosper Cordonnier -surrendered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Help yourself,” said Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was pleasantly cool and shady in the hut, and Prosper, -after selecting a bottle and a glass from Mademoiselle -Barbe’s shelves, sat down on a box by the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is very warm, monsieur. What shall I pay you -for the wine?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing,” said Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, monsieur——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You did me a good turn once, I don’t forget. Pour -me out a glass, old chap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier had laid a hand upon one of the most potent -of Mademoiselle Barbe’s bottles, and in a little while the -cords of his tongue were loosened. He became affectionate, -talkative, foolishly confidential, dragging his box close -to Louis Blanc’s chair, and tapping him on the knee with -an intimate finger. He began to gossip about Beaucourt, -the peasant part of Beaucourt. He had his grievances. -His dignity in Beaucourt had never been sufficiently -considered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tiens, but what do I do at my age but run messages -for Anatole Durand! And believe me, monsieur, I get -two francs a day for it, my food, and a couple of blankets. -Because a man has learnt to hold his tongue some people -think he is worth nothing at all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi sympathized with him. Old Cordonnier was a -prodigious bore, but a blind man has to be patient.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is a dull dog, old Durand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I complain of, monsieur, is that he has favourites. -Look at Manon Latour and that fellow, Paul -Rance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi yawned.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are they favourites of his? Fill up your glass, -Prosper.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier babbled on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That fellow Paul Rance has a tin of milk a day; I -have to carry it down each morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What, is he ill?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“La grippe. And that reminds me of a funny thing, -monsieur. I happened to go down to the café when he -was taken ill, and he was all alone there in bed, and talking -to himself in German.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi sat very still in his chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that sounds absurd. How did you know it was -German?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, it was not French, monsieur; but of course, -nobody ever pays any attention to me, so I never mention -such a thing to anybody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He raised his glass and drank to his own neglected -dignity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a great mistake to gossip, monsieur. I always -hold my tongue. I’m not an old woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi did not answer him. His blind face seemed to -have sunk back into the shadow of the hut. He was -breathing deeply, nostrils dilated and twitching. This old -fool of a Cordonnier had dropped a casual spark and set -an idea alight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For Bibi’s hatred of Paul Brent had become an -obsession. His blindness intensified it, shutting him up in -the darkness with his hatred of the man who had taken -away his sight. He would sit for hours thinking of a possible -revenge, but he spoke of it to no one, not even Barbe.</p> - -<div><h1>XXXVII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent</span> was up and about on that great day when the furniture -arrived from Amiens. It made a triumphant entry -into Beaucourt, piled in two waggons, and followed by half -the youngsters in the village. All the morning was spent -in unloading it and carrying it into the house, for Paul’s -staircase was a staircase of moods and prejudices, and refused -to be taken by storm. The two men who came with -the waggons exercised much patient and laborious persuasion, -inspired by the enthusiasms of Manon and some -practical sympathy in the form of red wine. Young -Beaucourt stood on the pathway and stared through the -windows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was aware of Manon as a pair of happy eyes, and -a blue and white check torchon. She was everywhere, -polishing, supervising, issuing orders in that caressing -voice of hers, a housewife in heaven. Paul followed her -about like a Greek chorus. He had been forbidden to -carry anything heavy, and very often he was made to sit -down in a chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They hung up curtains, put down rugs, moved the beds -to and fro until Manon’s critical taste was satisfied. She -would run forward, give a touch to some piece of furniture, -and then come back to Paul and stand holding his -arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How does that please you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything pleases me,” he would reply with the -broad appreciation of the male.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Neighbours arrived and had to be shown over the house, -Mère Vitry, Mesdames Poupart and Philipon. They were -enthusiastic and without envy, for Manon was popular -with women, and it was not easy for them to be jealous -of her. There was no guile behind her enthusiasm; she -was so practical yet so human that these older women -seemed to feel the unspoilt child in her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you will be married soon,” said Madame Poupart -with a glance at the new bed in Manon’s room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was laying out the new sheets with the naturalness -of a woman whose whole heart was absorbed in the -great affair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I expect so. Paul is such a man for thoroughness. -He insisted on finishing all the repairs before -we thought of marrying. What do you think of this -linen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The women examined the sheets, holding them up to -the light, stretching them between their hands, and even -scratching the fabric with their finger-nails. They talked -all the while, and, though Manon used her tongue, her -eyes were the essentially eloquent part of her. “We are -going to be happy,” she said; “I feel it in my blood and -in my soul.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Philipon was rubbing the linen between a -thumb and forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not so good as before the war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing is,” said Madame Poupart; “one cannot -expect it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon gave a lift of the head, and laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are you laughing at, ma chérie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are thinking that your marriage will not be like -these sheets?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Rosalie Philipon’s eyes were shy and affectionate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you will always be happy. There are some -women to whom a man cannot be unkind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had disappeared downstairs with the amused -tolerance of a man who recognizes his own occasional -superfluity. He was sitting straddle-legged on a chair -by the kitchen window watching the two men preparing -to drive their two waggons back to Amiens, and listening -to the voices of the women up above. The animation and -the intimacy of their voices soothed him. He fell into a -day-dream in which he felt happily conscious of all the -elemental happenings of life, a woman’s kisses, the warmth -of her bosom in those dear moments of surrender, the -tranquil sound of her breathing, the practical and caressing -presence of her by day and by night. These voices suggested -other thoughts and emotions. They seemed to fill -the house with the spirit of the great human mystery. -These women were busy about a bed. It was almost as -though they were waiting for the little cry of a child—that -faint whimpering that fills the hushed house with a sense -of tender exultation and relief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s eyes were blue and vague, but suddenly the -alertness came back to them as he glanced along the Rue -de Picardie. Something unusual was happening in Beaucourt. -He saw a crowd of children, an English officer -wheeling a bicycle, and behind them a G. S. waggon with -three khaki figures riding on it. The two waggoners were -standing in the middle of the road staring at the procession.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had a moment of panic, the panic of a man with -a secret. These familiar uniforms were so unexpected -and so reminiscent of much that he wished to forget. He -stood up and felt his heart beating hard and fast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The window was open and he heard one of the waggoners -explain these English to his comrade:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Les exhumeurs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The truth flashed upon Brent. They had come to -open Beckett’s grave.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was conscious of a profound discouragement, an -inward protest! What an omen! Why had they chosen -this day of all days? He had a feeling that he wanted to -run away out of the house, and to remain away until the -affair was over.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier was knocking at the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Madame Latour?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent got a grip on himself. He felt that he could not -leave this business to Manon, and that he did not want -the taint of it in her heart on this most happy and innocent -day. He went to the door, and found Cordonnier and -the officer waiting on the path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cordonnier looked under his slow eyelids at Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Paul, here is an English officer who has -come to take away a body.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent glanced at the officer. He was the most harmless -thing imaginable, a Moth in Spectacles, one of those -anomalous males without masculinity, in age about five-and-forty, -mild, a little frightened, with a brown moustache -that fell down over a precise mouth. Brent seemed -to know that there was a patch of baldness under his cap. -He was indifferently shaved. His tie was in a lump. He -wore very new leggings that did not fit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bonjour, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer began in text-book French.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bonjour, monsieur, est-ce que vous avez un soldat -Anglais enterré ici?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is a grave in the orchard, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer blinked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have I your permission to remove the body?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly, monsieur. I will show you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got the Englishman away before Manon could appear, -and taking him round by way of the yard, showed -him the grassy mound and the wooden cross below the -bank in the orchard. The soldiers took off their coats and -set to work. Brent turned away to rout a dozen inquisitive -youngsters who wanted to see the body dug up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allez!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked white and fierce, and the children fled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent sat on the bank and made himself watch this -opening of Beckett’s grave. There was something final -about it, something symbolical, and yet—as performed by -these English Tommies—it was utterly without reverence. -They smoked cigarettes; they were immensely casual and -indolent; it was evident that they considered their officer -a negligible old woman. Brent watched them with an -increasing dislike. He saw one man spit into the grave, the -instinctively dirty act of a mere common man, and for a -moment he was almost on his feet and ready to call them -“swine.” His eyes met the brown, short-sighted eyes of -the officer. Brent understood that he, too, despised and -loathed these men, but that he was afraid of their brute -animal obtuseness. This, too, was symbolical. It reminded -Brent of a saying of Anatole Durand’s: “In these -days the brain of civilization is afraid to tell the body of -civilization what an ignorant brute it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon came out into the orchard, saw Paul sitting -there, and understood. She gave him a mother-look, a -caress of the eyes, and slipped away without his realizing -that she had been so near to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of the soldiers stuck his pick into something.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The old ——’s there, chum!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer winced. Brent looked fierce. He made -himself go and stand beside the officer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your men have not much respect for the dead, -monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Moth in Spectacles understood French better than -he spoke it. He looked almost timidly at Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is habit, monsieur. They are awkward brutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He spoke to one of the men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Be careful, Saunders; that Englishman was alive -once.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“B——y nice job he left us, anyhow,” said the man, -with sulky insolence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The disinterment was soon completed. Brent saw his -own identity disc taken out of the grave and handed to -the officer, and a sudden curiosity moved him. He edged -close and looked over the little officer’s shoulder at the -red circle lying in his palm. The Tommy had cleaned the -disc by spitting upon it and rubbing it on his breeches.</p> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>597641 Pte. Brent, P.</p> -<p class='line'>2—9——Fusiliers.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer brought out a note-book and entered the -details, while the men put what was left of Beckett into -the wooden shell that they had brought in the waggon. -Brent stood and looked at the hole in the ground. He -was thinking of that morning in March when Beckett had -been killed. He remembered the frost on the grass, the -sunlight, the stillness, the white splinters of the apple -tree, the hob-nails in the soles of Beckett’s boots. The -memory carried him to Manon, Manon who was alive, -Manon who loved him. He turned away and walked -back to the house, conscious of an immense gratitude to -her, of a tenderness that had felt the taunt of some unclean -act and rushed to purify itself in her presence. How clean -and wholesome and human she was! Those dirty, soulless -men in khaki spitting into Beckett’s grave; those -conscript grave-diggers turning over the bones of a dead -valour!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon heard him enter the house. She was upstairs. -Something in her seemed to divine his mood. She called -to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paul, I am here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He climbed the steep staircase that he had built, and -found himself in her room—their room. And, suddenly, -her arms went round him. She held him close with all -her sturdy, human strength, and drew his face down to her -shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My man has such a soft heart.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned his head, and with an emotion that was very -near to tears, kissed her warm throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It might have happened some other day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She smiled over him compassionately.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, it is over. That mound there in the orchard -always made me a little sad. Now, look, all this is yours -and mine; it is ours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made him look round the room at the new bed -with its clean linen and red duvet, the rugs on the floor, -the curtains that she had tacked up at the windows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is alive,” she said, “our little home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He held her close, and they stood with heads bowed, -as though praying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the street a blind man led by a small boy had -stopped outside the Café de la Victoire, and was turning -his sightless face to it with a hatred that had inward eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a fine house they have now,” said the boy; -“the door looks as green as an apple.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi said nothing. The boy led him away down the -Rue de Picardie, and neither Manon nor Paul knew that -Bibi had passed their house.</p> - -<div><h1>XXXVIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>There</span> is more folly than sin in the world—but an evil -man takes folly and uses it—and in the process makes it -evil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These factory workers came and drank at Louis Blanc’s -buvette. They talked and talked extravagantly as some -men talk after a war—and there were bad men among -them. Mademoiselle Barbe, who was as clever and as -careful as a cat, and who had nothing but scorn for -eloquent fools, kept her eyes in particular on Pompom -Crapaud and Lazare Ledoux.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Little Crapaud was as ugly as his name, an undersized -little devil with a broken nose and dissipated blue eyes. -He was always laughing, and when he laughed he made a -noise like a goat. Crapaud had been in prison for some -particularly filthy crime. He had worked on “munitions” -during the war.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux was different. He was like a lean dog that -had been flayed alive, and was all red flesh and staring -eyes. He was raw both within and without. He gave the -impression of a man who was always leaning forward to -seize something or to spit in an enemy’s face. He talked -like a “flame-thrower,” and his eyes grew more and more -red as he talked. You could see the venom swelling in -that long, lean throat of his—his hands clawed ready to -tear and to destroy. His black hair seemed to stand on -end—electrified. He was always dirty, and smelt of stale -sweat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux was a “Red.” He had been born and bred a -“Red”; it was his natural colour. He had an infinite -capacity for hating anything and everything that smelt -a little sweeter than himself. He called all clean, good-natured, -orderly people “capitalists” or “bourgeois.” He -hated anyone who worked hard, or who was thrifty. He -hated all peasants, especially those peasants who owned -land.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That chance gossip with old Cordonnier had given -Bibi an idea, and in the bitter darkness of these summer -days he sat there like a spider spinning a web. He -listened to these roughs talking “communism.” Ledoux -was an orator; he made speeches—malignant, violent -speeches that were very pleasant to discontented men who -preferred the new humanitarian theories to the merciless -facts of life. Ledoux had all the old clap-trap dogmas, -and Crapaud—who was his dog—yapped applause.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The workers create everything with their hands. All -capitalists are thieves. Everything should belong to the -workers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had the usual sentimental view of the noble workman -joyfully pouring forth sweat for the sake of all the -other workers in the world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never will you see such labour—such wonderful things -done, such a mass of riches for everybody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi listened to Ledoux. He was one great silent sneer, -but he never let Ledoux know that he was sneering. At -night, when the men had gone off and the buvette was -shut up, he and Barbe would discuss Ledoux and roar -with laughter. Barbe was a mimic. She knew exactly -what life was, and what men are, and that Ledoux would -have been much less of a fool if he had not been so repulsive -to women.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What nonsense!” she said; “that fellow has never been -allowed to kiss a pretty girl. I should say that women -don’t like him—so he is one of the mangy dogs with a -sore head.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had placed her finger on the inflamed core of -Lazare Ledoux’s discontent. He had failed to get what -he had thirsted for in life, and his red eyes had blazed. -He preached love, love of the people who were like himself—and -he was the very essence of hatred. The blood -of his ideals was envy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is easy for a bad man to understand the nonsensical -malignity of such a theorist’s dogmatism. Good-natured -people are apt to be moved by the fanatic’s enthusiasm, -his burning words, his apparent altruism. He offers -freedom, noble and more spacious lives. He talks of the -“children of to-morrow.” And Bibi, rogue that he was, -laughed at Ledoux, and his laughter was justified.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà!” he said; “give these gentlemen their food -and their wine and other people’s houses—and then ask -them to sweat for the good of humanity! How much -work will they do? Precious little. They will loaf about -and talk all day, and make the shopkeepers clean the -streets. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Most men are lazy,” said Barbe, “it is the women and -the children who matter. An empty stomach is man’s -master.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But if Bibi despised Ledoux and Crapaud and the -crowd who listened to them, he saw that it might be possible -for him to make use of their passions. These men -were firebrands, wolves. They talked internationalism, -worshipped Lenin, yet hated the Germans. Ledoux was -more venomous than usual when he spoke of the German -Socialists. He had not forgotten what he had suffered -in the trenches—for Ledoux was a physical coward and -sordid fear does not breed love. He was ready to scream -at his brethren across the Rhine: “Yes, you behaved -like swine. You were ready to help the shopkeepers -when you thought you were going to plunder our shops. -And you let your honest men be put in prison.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Bibi had the civic morals of a house-agent, he was -almost as successful as the house-agent in trading on the -good nature and the carelessness of the average man and -woman. He could create an atmosphere, spin a web, and -wait for the flies to arrive. He set himself to create an -atmosphere about the Café de la Victoire. When Ledoux -raged against the capitalists and the shopkeepers, Bibi -would say, “You are quite right, monsieur; we have -them here. I keep a shop and sell wine; but what can -a blind man do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He would tap the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre that -he wore on his coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anyhow, I would work if I could, and I picked up -this in the war.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They fell upon Bibi’s neck and reassured him. He -was “bon enfant”; he could tell a good tale, and he sold -them wine. He did not give himself airs. Even Ledoux -liked the swaggering frankness of the man who called the -peasants “the muck of the land.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi spun one thread at a time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, the shopkeepers will do anything. Now -look at these people in the café over there. Do you know -how they got their material?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The buvette asked, “How?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stole it. They came back to the village before any -of the others. There were some army huts in a field. -They pulled two of them to pieces and used the stuff.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This made Ledoux furious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s individualism. The huts belonged to the community.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what I say. Now, take this hut of mine; I -bought it; I look on it as a sort of pension, a box for an -old soldier.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is nothing wrong in that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi smiled at them all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And the boys are kind to me and drink my wine. -Now those people at the café are capitalists, and their -capital gave them a start of everybody else. Is not that -so, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned his face towards Ledoux.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s the infamy!” Ledoux was standing and -reaching out with his hands. “Even in a place like this the -capitalist has all the advantages. Look—a ruined village, -all the poor people coming back! Everybody ought to -start on equal terms—but no! Back comes your capitalist -and your shopkeeper, and they have their feet half-way -up the ladder. All capital should be confiscated.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What about the factory?” said a voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It ought to belong to us. Who is putting it in order? -Who gives the sweat?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s right,” shouted little Crapaud; “old Goblet -ought to be paid a salary—or wages—by us. Why should -he have fifty thousand francs a year for sitting in an -office?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then there is that fellow Durand,” put in someone -else.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi waved his arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A wash-out! He only amuses himself; he is one of -the sentimental fools who is getting rid of his money. -But what makes me savage is the smugness of the people.” -He was working to bring the conversation back to the -Café de la Victoire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Smug! Mon Dieu! They look down on us; we are -not good enough to mix with them. Soon they will be -calling their place an hotel. Why, I would bet you that -if a couple of you boys walked into that place and asked -for a drink, they would not serve you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This created an uproar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us try it,” shouted little Crapaud. “Here, Lazare, -you and I will go round to-morrow and put the wind up -these aristos.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux showed his teeth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have no objection.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will be turned out,” said Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Crapaud and the orator put Bibi’s prophecy to an -experimental test. They strolled in the cool of the evening -to Manon’s café, and saw Manon herself standing on -the path admiring the new sign-board that Paul had put -up that very morning. Brent was working in the garden, -and the wall hid him from view.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Crapaud who did the talking. Ledoux was useless -with women, being too uncouth and too sombre a -beast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good evening, madame; we have come to try your -wine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon looked at them. She had never seen these two -men before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am sorry, monsieur, but my café has been closed -for a week. We have been too busy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Crapaud winked at his comrade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then what is that sign doing up there? All that -gold lettering looks very inviting.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not reply to Crapaud, but entered the house -with the finality of a Frenchwoman who does not argue -about her authority in her own home. Ledoux’s red eyes -looked evil, but then Ledoux was a coward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bourgeoise——!” He used a foul word.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pompom Crapaud had the physical audacity that -Ledoux lacked. He jumped up on to the path, entered -the café, and, walking into the kitchen, sat down in Paul’s -arm-chair. A minute later Manon found him there, a -cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and his -cap over one eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you want, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A drink.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon kept her temper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have told you that my café is not open, and this is -my kitchen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had better take that board down,” said Crapaud; -“I protest that I have the right to sit here as long as it -remains up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon looked at him, and went for Paul. She explained -the situation to him, and Brent attacked it good-temperedly. -He walked into the kitchen and smiled at -Pompom Crapaud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think you have made a mistake, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent’s smile annoyed the pirate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is your sign-board that is making the mistake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even the sign-board does not give you the right to -sit in madame’s kitchen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I sit here,” was Crapaud’s retort. “Make what you -can of that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent made so little of it that he took Crapaud by -the collar and transferred him to the street. The little -man had no more strength than a half-grown chicken, and -he went quietly enough.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he swore at Ledoux.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, you are a pretty pal; you are bigger than he -is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux glanced at Brent, and fidgeted his hands in -his pockets, but he did not attack.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, we have found them out, haven’t we?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Name of a dog—but—I—found them in!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They went off quarrelling up the street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Other and more sinister incidents enlarged and filled -in the outlines of the feud that was growing in Beaucourt. -There was the affair of the Bois du Renard, an outrage -that made old Anatole Durand go down and deliver a -speech in the Place de l’Eglise. A few nights later there -was a scrimmage in the Rue Bonnière in which young -François Guiveau had his jaw broken. It was followed -by the incident of the attack on Luce Philipon as she was -walking home alone in the dark along the Rosières road. -Her father had gone to meet her, and he caught the two -louts trying to drag the girl into a field. The blacksmith -was a very powerful man, and he beat both these young -roughs senseless with his fists. One of them had tried to -knife him, and Beaucourt never forgot that picture of -Philipon trailing the lout by the arm all the way up the -Rue de Picardie and along the Bonnière road to the factory. -There was a crowd outside Bibi’s buvette, but no one -tried to rescue the trailing, bumping figure. Philipon -threw the fellow over the factory gate. He was pulp, -and had to be taken to Amiens in a waggon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lefèbre and Durand deplored these happenings. They -turned their eyes towards Louis Blanc’s buvette, and saw -in it a storm-centre, a Pandora’s box, a pest-house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We shall have to try and get rid of that fellow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand’s hair bristled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Goblet’s men will start a riot. I think we are -strong enough to give them a surprise. I wish I could -buy that factory.”</p> - -<div><h1>XXXIX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Brent</span> had been at work in the château, putting one -of the “wings” in repair against the winter, when that -yellow English touring-car pulled up outside the Café de -la Victoire. It was a big car, and it contained, besides -the chauffeur, a manufacturer from the Midlands, his -family, and its appendages.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were all gathered on the footpath, a big red man -in a grey flannel suit, three women rather elaborately -dressed, a “flapper” with red hair, and a small boy with -eyes like blue marbles. The women had white, puffy -faces. They stared at everything, Manon, the house, the -resurrected ruins, Paul Brent, the scattering of children, -as though they were staring at things in a shop-window. -There was a quite extraordinary lack of animation or intelligence -about them. They looked overfed, replete, -satiated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man was trying to explain that they wanted five -bedrooms and late dinner. And was there a lock-up garage -for the car?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mais, non, monsieur, c’est impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked relieved when Paul joined them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My fiancé speaks a little English.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They all looked at Brent as though he were some sort -of savage. He heard one of the women remark that it -was probable that the beds would be dirty, and that the -agent at Amiens had told them a lot of lies.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent was annoyed. He spoke to the man in English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can give you a simple meal and two bedrooms. -As you see, we are very busy here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The small boy and the flapper giggled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll have to sleep in the car, pa.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s absurd,” said the fattest of the three women, -“We were told at Amiens that we could put up here. -Of course, if these French people don’t want us or our -money——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They held a family council on Manon’s doorstep, and -the fact emerged that two of the women had made up -their minds that they wanted to spend the night in a devastated -village. It would make ornamental conversation -at home. The man was neutral; he had never been in -France before, and though of military age, had functioned -very successfully on the home front. The chauffeur, an -ex-soldier, listened with an air of interested cynicism to -the argument.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right,” said the Midlander; “you give us three -rooms and we can manage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul translated the proposal to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you would have to turn out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could sleep in the cellar for a night. Leave it to -me. They shall pay through the nose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to the man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fifty francs each for the night. That will be three -hundred and fifty francs.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The white, flaccid faces of the women showed a first -flicker of animation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fifty francs each!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s outrageous! We paid half that at Amiens -for the whole day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But think of the rate of exchange,” said Brent; “and -this is not Amiens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man looked uncomfortable. He was not so hard -as his satiated women—and France had filled him with -vague qualms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Harriet, you know, these people have suffered a -lot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His wife looked at him with oblique contempt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—well—if you feel like throwing money about! I -suppose wine will be included.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wine is an extra, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her eyes said, “Robber, and after all we English -have done for you!”—but her man made up his mind -not to argue. Somehow Beaucourt was too big for -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. Show us the rooms.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent surrendered the party to Manon, and piloted -the chauffeur and the yellow car into the yard. As he -switched off the engine, the ex-Tommy gave Paul a -brotherly grin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You stuck ’em all right. Good biz.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was an unfortunate coincidence, but the unpleasant -impression stamped upon the consciousness of Beaucourt -by these New English reacted upon the popularity of the -Café de la Victoire. It was the stupidity of these people, -their spiritual obtuseness, that offended the French. The -whole family went out to explore the village as though -Beaucourt were the “White City.” They had paid their -entrance money, and they had come to stare. There was -something insolent in their largeness, and in the largeness -of the car. Their very clothes were offensive in Beaucourt. -They strolled, they talked in loud voices, they pointed. -They were amused by the wrong things, and untouched -by wounds that should have made them ashamed. There -were moments when the man appeared awkward and uncomfortable, -and showed a disinclination to loiter. The -women were absolutely insensitive. Their super-fatted -souls were blind to the sacrilege of certain attitudes. Two -of them poked their heads into the interior of Madame -Poirel’s cottage. It was one of the side-shows, and they -examined it with the eyes of cows. Madame Poirel happened -to be sitting in her chair, patching a petticoat. -She had lost her two sons in the war.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you wish, mesdames?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Englishwomen did not realize they were on sacred -ground, standing on the very stone where Madame Poirel’s -boys had sat as toddlers. They did not see the room as a -place of memories, a dim interior that was almost a shrine. -They stared. They made remarks. One of them nodded -casually at the Frenchwoman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Madame Poirel got up and very calmly closed the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The explorers were surprised—indignant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, what manners!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s quite true what Kate told us. The French hate -us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But isn’t it beastly ungrateful of them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, it’s all a question of coal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The family moved on. Madame Poupart’s shop amused -them immensely. The boy pointed it out with a finger -of scorn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ma, look at the rabbit-hutch!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shut up, Fred,” said his father, glimpsing a long and -yellow face at the window—the austere face of Madame -Poupart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The women sided with the boy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be so touchy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Aren’t we here to see things?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think the French like it,” said the man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It did not seem to matter to the women whether the -French liked it or not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The English always visit churches; it seems to be a -habit with them, and the Hoskyn family had the unique -experience of seeing a French priest, wrapped up in an -old sheet, diligently whitewashing the walls of his church. -They did not recognize Monsieur Lefèbre as a priest, -associating clericalism with an appearance of blackness -and physical inactivity. The boy dabbled his fingers in -the piscina, and had to be told to take off his cap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre was a polite soul, nor was he conscious -of any lack of dignity. He turned about and, -whitewash brush in hand, gave the Hoskyn family a -jocund smile and a slight bow. He was met with obtuse -stares.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The verger—I suppose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s nothing to see here, John, and that fellow -will be after a tip.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They sailed out, leaving Monsieur Lefèbre with upraised -eyebrows and an expression of amused and irresponsible -gaiety.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The family walked along the Rue de Bonnière and discovered -Bibi’s buvette. It suggested a chicken-house, -and they paused in the road to stare at it, a compliment -that was returned by the men who happened to be in the -hut. Ledoux, Crapaud and several others crowded to the -door. The self-evident contrasts of life provoked an instinctive -hostility—and civilization was in the melting-pot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà les anglais!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They arrived in a big automobile; I saw them. Conspuez -les profiteers!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, and they are lodging at the Café de la Victoire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi pushed his way to the door, feeling the arms and -shoulders of the men. Ledoux was speaking with a snarl -in his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Capitalists, look at them! Fat and rich, blood-suckers, -tradesmen. We are monkeys in a cage, are we? Get -out!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook his fist at the Hoskyn family, and with outraged -ideals they moved on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“These French are savages!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—we might be Germans!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The men at the doorway of the buvette continued to -discuss the presence of these English in Beaucourt, and -Bibi, leaning a hand on the shoulders of Crapaud and -Ledoux, turned their passions towards the Café de la -Victoire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There you are! What did I tell you? These English -pay well, and that is all those two at the café care -about. They did not build their place for decent working-men, -but to make money out of the rich English and -Americans who come to stare at our poverty.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have touched it,” said Crapaud; “Bibi goes -straight to the heart of things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux stretched out a hand that was like the clawed -foot of a bird.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Capitalists? They sell everything. They ought to be -kicked out of Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, why don’t we smash the place up?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi gave a kind of rolling laugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the music. But wait a bit; I am finding out -something about those people; I might be blind, but I can -see through a wall. Yes, just you wait a bit, my lads, and -I may have something surprising to tell you. Then we’ll -make a night of it, and send up the balloon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Beaucourt was moved to some resentment against -Manon for taking these English into her house, Manon -herself soon saw too much of them. She had sent for a -girl to help her, and these two Frenchwomen cooked, and -made beds, arranged a table for six, and did their best -to make the tourists comfortable. About sunset, Paul -was at work in the garden when Manon came out to him, -a Manon who was wholesomely and humanly angry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon Dieu, but they are impossible! They have no -manners.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What has happened, chérie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Happened! Nothing has happened, but everything -is wrong. I can understand their grumbling. But they -swarm in and behave as though the house belonged to -them; they shout down the stairs at me, ‘Femme de -chambre, ici, toute de suite!’ They ask for all sorts of -impossible things, and the women look at me like angry -cows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul tried to comfort her. He felt rather responsible -for these English.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They have made a lot of money during the war, and -they don’t know how to behave. They are leaving to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank God! Paul, are all the English like that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Heavens! no,” he said. “We are very decent folk -when we are not too rich. The bother is that people like -that are so damnably stupid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She snuggled into the hollow of his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My Paul, I love this place so much. It hurts me to -have such people in it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, we will have no more. That’s very simple. -I like them as little as you do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl who had come to help Manon appeared suddenly -in the garden.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, madame, o-là-là, ces anglais!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Hoskyn family had demanded baths.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Baths, baths for six! Do they think this is London?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent burst out laughing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right; leave it to me. When do they want the -hot water?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At ten o’clock, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell them it shall be there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Punctually at ten o’clock Paul deposited a tea-cup -full of hot water outside each door. He knocked at -Mr. Hoskyn’s door. It was the lady who opened it, expecting -something in petticoats and not a man. She wore -a lace nightcap, and a pink silk dressing-gown.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The water for the bath, madame,” said Paul with -complete solemnity; “we shall not charge for it in the -bill.”</p> - -<div><h1>XL</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>The</span> house was finished, or as good as finished, and then -something happened to Paul Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had been like a child absorbed in a game, building -castles on the sands with a playmate to help him, conscious -of the sea and the sky as a spacious blueness; of -the schoolroom and the copy-book he had thought but -little. The house was finished. There was a pause. He -stood up, feeling a sudden sense of fateful melancholy -spreading across the sands. He seemed to hear voices. -He looked into the eyes of his playmate—and awoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been raining, but the evening sky had cleared -when Manon went out to search for her man and found -him sitting on the bank of the stream with his back against -a poplar tree, and his feet close to the water. He did not -hear her footsteps, and she stood still a moment, looking -at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He appeared to be watching the water, yet she imagined -that he did not see it, that he was not aware of its movement. -He looked infinitely sad. She had a curious impression -of him as having been removed to a great distance -from her; and yet never had he seemed so near.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chéri,” she said softly, guessing that the panic moment -had come, and that her man was awake.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul turned his head very slowly, as though it was not -easy for him to meet her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo! Come and sit down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat down close to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you will tell me,” she said, “of what you are -thinking?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hesitated, his hands resting rather helplessly on -his knees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was thinking what a mess I had made of things.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had known that this awakening must come; this -pain of the conscience. She had foreseen it, and she was -prepared; she was there at his side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are thinking of our marriage?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her voice was very soft and curiously tranquil. She -did not attempt to caress him, or even to touch him -with her hands. She knew that it would hurt, and that -there were moments when this man had the soul of a -fanatic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What have I been doing all these months?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He appeared to ask himself the question, and she -answered it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Making me very happy. And now, suddenly, the -game is over. We were like children. And now, you -wish to tell the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He raised his eyes and looked at her with a kind of -astonished awe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did you know?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She touched his sleeve with the tip of one forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How? Why—was it not inevitable? It was bound -to happen to you; I knew that when I came to realize the -sort of man you are. Well, I am quite ready. You -may tell me the truth. We will go and see Monsieur -Lefèbre.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rested his chin on his hands and stared at the -water.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s amazing,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is, chéri?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your—your——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Calmness?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that. And your generosity, and the way you -understand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave a little, touching laugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To get married—in France—one has to exercise much -common-sense. People ask questions, demand papers. -Of course there were moments—quite long ago—when -I was not sure whether you would ever want to tell the -truth. And—of course—a woman——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her with a quick, brave deepening of the -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Manon—you mean? What would you have -done——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stared at the water, quite still, her lips pressed -firmly together.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” she said presently; “do not ask me -to tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul Brent was much moved. He had been in such a -confusion of remorse, self-accusation, loneliness and pain, -that he had been capable of obeying any rash impulse that -raised a cry of retrocession. For the moment the only -possible future for him had seemed exile from Beaucourt. -He would have to shoulder his knapsack and disappear. -And then Manon had come to him, calm, practical and -tender. She seemed to have touched him with a cool and -soothing hand. There was nothing that he could not say -to her or she to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How you help a man,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved close to him and into the hollow of his arm, -and they sat there under the poplar while the dusk came -down, and the water grew dark and mysterious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You thought of running away, chéri?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How much more cruel that would have been to me! -What would people have said, and how humiliated I -should have felt. I would rather you told the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are not afraid of it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned her face to his and kissed her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Little woman, it seems the only way out. Life’s so -queer. When I began this adventure and started that -harmless lie, I never thought that it would end like this. -I shall have to clean the slate again, and that means -England and more trouble. Still, there it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you are doing it for me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And for myself, too. Let’s be honest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She snuggled close.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chéri,” she said, “they cannot do anything very terrible -to you, can they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked at the dark water. There was a slight -rustling of the leaves of the poplar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose I’m a deserter, but desertion when a fellow -is due to be demobilized isn’t very serious. Then, -I impersonated another man, though Beckett wasn’t hurt -by it. He was a lone man. And then, of course, I have -upset the records and returns; that’s about the worst -crime you can commit in the army.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see, I’m dead. They may refuse to let me come -to life again. And the official letters that will be written—and -the fuss——!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She laughed with him—glad of this happier mood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, after all, chéri, it is only a great joke. You -have done nobody any harm, and think of how you have -helped us in Beaucourt. We shall have good friends here. -They, too, will see the joke, this great human adventure. -No one will bear you any malice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is Bibi,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What can Bibi do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sent him to bed comforted and utterly in love with -her loyalty and her generous common-sense. She was a -little woman whose sturdiness helped a man—for most -men are little more than big children, and the woman -who loves a man is also his mother. Manon refused to -utter tragic cries and to dissolve into passionate and -romantic misery. Her capable hands pulled the knot to -pieces. She had faith in her common-sense.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will tell the truth,” she said, “and look happy -over it. A smile goes such a long way. If you sneak -about looking miserable, the world invents scandals to -account for your looks. It may be that you will have -to go to England, chéri, but I shall trust you to come -back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took the whole affair in hand, for women are more -courageous than men. Anatole Durand and Monsieur -Lefèbre should be told, but they went first to Monsieur -Lefèbre. It was after supper and before dusk when they -walked up to the church and found Monsieur Lefèbre repairing -the floor of the pulpit. Through the broken west -window of the church the sky showed all yellow, and -the light was on Manon’s face as she stood by the pulpit -steps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have come to confess,” she said, “and to ask for -your advice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lefèbre looked at them both—Manon honest and sturdy—Paul -a little shy and obscured. He had grown fond -of these two, and his sympathies were alarmed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it, children?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We wish to be married,” said Manon, “but we cannot -be married until we have told the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre took them into the sacristy, which -was also his kitchen, bedroom and salon. He gave Manon -and Paul the two chairs, and sat on the box-bed that -had been brought from one of the huts. His serious face -troubled Paul Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now what is the difficulty?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His dark, jocund eyes looked straight at Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had better begin from the beginning, monsieur. -It is all my fault.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I am just as guilty as he is,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre looked pained. He had certainly -been guilty of favouritism in his spiritual attitude towards -these two, and here they were confessing some secret sin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let Paul speak——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Manon read his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, monsieur, but I wish you to understand that -nothing has ever happened between us. He has been more -honourable and gentle to me than any man I could have -dreamed of. He is a good man, from heart to head.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave Paul a very wonderful look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, tell Monsieur Lefèbre everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Paul told him, beginning with his life before the -war, and then linking it to that March morning when he -had been tempted to lose his old self in Beckett’s death. -He watched Monsieur Lefèbre’s face as he made his confession, -as though the mirror of this man’s humanity -would show him the very judgment of God. Lefèbre sat -with his head a little forward, his face very grave and -somewhat sad. He had glanced up quickly when Paul -had confessed that he was English, but after that he kept -his eyes fixed on the table in front of him. The sacristy -began to grow dim, and Lefèbre’s face grew dim with it. -A feeling of solemnity seemed to fill the place, with its -rude, home-made furniture, and its air of austerity. Lefèbre -listened and said nothing. He was like some sombre -figure in a sanctuary, obscure, enigmatical, waiting to give -judgment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a moment when Brent faltered, obsessed -by a sudden sense of loneliness. His left arm and hand -were resting on the table. He felt something touch his -fingers. His hand closed on Manon’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His heart seemed to take courage, and the obscure -figure of Lefèbre ceased to be terrible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man on the bed began to ask him abrupt questions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are a widower?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And this man—whose name you took—he had no -wife, mother, or children?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, monsieur; he was one of those men who wander -about the world and settle nowhere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And when you came to Beaucourt, you had no idea -that it would end like this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, monsieur, I was so happy working here for -Manon that it was not till the place was nearly -finished——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then, quite suddenly, Monsieur Lefèbre astonished -them both. He began to laugh, the generous, rolling -laughter of a big, human creature who asks of God that -life shall not be mean.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You children!” he said. “You children!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He got up, waving his arms like benedictory wings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where is my candle? And the matches. Let us -have light here. God be thanked that I am no bigot. -Moreover, I thank you two children for coming to me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He struck a light and lit the candle that was stuck on -the top of an old tin, and they saw that his eyes were all -ashine, and his rosy face happy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you gave me a fright, you two. Monsieur Paul, -masquerading is the very devil!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook a forefinger at Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you will tell the truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur,” said Paul, “there is one woman whom a -liar could not marry——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chéri, you are not a liar!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She jumped up and kissed him, and Monsieur Lefèbre -raised his hands over them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, we must be serious. Let us see what we can -make of this tangle. What is your idea, Paul?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shall have to surrender myself as a deserter, monsieur. -I suppose I shall be sent to England. If they -could be persuaded to look at it as you have done——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, that is not impossible. The great thing is not -to be in a hurry. One moment——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He pulled a note-book towards him, opened it, and -read a few notes that were neatly written at the top of one -page. He reflected, smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“May I tell Monsieur Durand?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We were going to tell him,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good. The thing is for some of us to interest somebody -else in the affair, and for all of us to give Paul such -a character that your English authorities will see this sin -of his with our eyes. Sunday, yes, Sunday. On Sunday -Monsieur Durand and I go to Amiens.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He closed the note-book, and smiled at them both.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us keep our mouths closed for a week. It is -possible that I may find a way to interest somebody in our -Englishman. It is possible that we ourselves will approach -the English authorities. Then it will not be as though -you went to them as a deserter, friendless, unspoken -for——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sent them away much happier than they had come -to him, which is the best thing that can be said of a -man’s religion, and when they had gone he blew out -his candle and went up to the château to see Anatole -Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Place de l’Eglise lay in darkness, but there was a -light in the post-mistress’s hut, and in passing it Paul and -Manon nearly ran against big Philipon, who had come to -see if Monsieur Talmas had brought him any letters. -Philipon recognized them and stopped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, you two! Good evening, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he tapped Brent on the chest with a friendly -forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you left anybody in charge over there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should get back home. Do you hear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They listened, and heard in the distance the sound of -men singing a rowdy song.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon nodded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A little zig-zag and parading the village! It is time -we did something with that buvette of Louis Blanc’s. -Hold on; I’ll walk back with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He poked his black head into the post-office.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Any letters, madame?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is that boy of mine doing in Germany?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took Paul’s arm and the three of them entered the -Rue de Picardie. Philipon was an affectionate animal in -spite of his frown and his rumbling voice, and Brent had -helped him in the rebuilding of his house. His fatherliness -stretched out a protective arm over these two. It is the -big men who are most warm-hearted and sentimental, and -Philipon was always saying to his wife, “Look at those -two at the café! What a romance! It does one’s heart -good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They walked along between the queer shapes and little -twinkling lights of Beaucourt, with the stars shining overhead, -and Philipon’s big feet falling emphatically on -the cobbles. Here and there men and women were sitting -in the open doorways. They exchanged remarks with -Philipon, whose familiar bulk and swing of the legs were -known to all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bibi’s nightingales are singing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is time we did something with that drinking shop.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hear they are sending us two gendarmes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gendarmes! We can manage our own affairs. You -wait. We are ready to give those fellows a lesson.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The singing grew louder as they neared the end of the -Rue de Picardie, and it appeared that Monsieur Goblet’s -young men were coming down the Rue Romaine. Manon -was holding to Paul’s arm. She was not frightened, but -she was serious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We could do so well without them,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon grunted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t worry, madame. People who make the most -noise are always the biggest cowards.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When they reached the end of the garden wall Paul -lifted Manon up on the raised path, but he and Philipon -kept to the road. About a dozen “roughs,” with arms -linked together, had swung round the corner out of the -Rue Romaine and were dancing the can-can in the roadway -below the café. They were rowdy and derisive, -shouting and kicking up their heels in front of the -house.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo—hallo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Profiteers! Stuck-up pigs!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let’s spoil the paint for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shut up. They’re in bed. You are interfering with -the embrace.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You there, is she nice to cuddle?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When is the baby expected?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They roared with laughter, and then Philipon loomed -up like a big ship in the starlight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allez! Keep your snouts out of our village. We -have sticks ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The choir oscillated, swayed, and seemed inclined to -wind itself in a spiral about the smith, but when Philipon -rapped the stone wall of the path with the iron bar that -he had been carrying these rowdies thought it wiser to -laugh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hallo, there goes the dinner-gong.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, sergeant-major.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And there is madame, too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bon soir, madame; we thought you were in bed. We -came to serenade you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The human chain gave a wriggle towards the Rue de -Picardie, but Philipon put himself in the way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can go back by the other road. Beaucourt is -bored with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They chaffed him, but they took his advice. Manon -had unlocked the door. She turned and thanked Philipon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come in and drink a glass of wine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pardon, but I go to bed early in order to get up -early. I think those lads are all wind. Good-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-night, monsieur, and thank you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s nothing,” said the smith.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was lighting the lamp in the kitchen when -Brent came and put his arm round her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish we could blow Bibi and that crowd off the -face of the earth. I don’t like the idea of leaving you -here with those fellows about.”</p> - -<div><h1>XLI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>In</span> the full blaze of an August afternoon Louis Blanc -made Barbe take him up the hill to the Bois du Renard. -They had locked up the buvette, and the red-haired girl led -Bibi by the hand along the field-path to the wood. Her -head shone like a piece of red metal close to the blackness -of the man’s coat; she had to watch the ground so that -Bibi should not stumble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God, but it is hellish to be blind!” he said; “I -cannot even see you, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She helped him over an old, fallen trench at the edge -of the wood, and in crossing it he slipped and fell against -her. They stood, clinging together on the edge of the -rotten bank; but Barbe had a body like steel, and she -held the man on his feet with his head resting against her -bosom. They remained thus for a moment, Bibi’s face -flat against her red blouse as though he were burying his -face in an armful of flowers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, but you smell good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He took great breaths of her, holding her close, and -pressing her body to his till it was curved like a bow.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you want to break me, you great rough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was delighted, a sensuous cat, her eyes half closed, -her chin resting on the crown of Bibi’s head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is something left in life after all. Let us sit -down in the shade.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anywhere?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. I want to be where I could see all Beaucourt -like a meal laid out on a table.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She chose a shady place for him at the foot of a beech -tree, spreading out her skirt and making him sit on it. -From the Bois du Renard it was possible to see the whole -of Beaucourt and the fields and woods lying about it in -the broad August sunshine. Bibi sat with his knees drawn -up and his elbows resting on them. Barbe let her right -arm lie across his shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There it is,” she said; “I can even see little Crapaud -putting new tiles on the factory roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me all about it, just as though you were painting -a picture.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She humoured him, describing Beaucourt and all that -she could see happening in Beaucourt, using that brisk -and satirical slang of hers, the language of the comptoir.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is the church with half its spire knocked off, -and, I suppose, inside of it old Lefèbre is splashing whitewash -about. The post-office in the Place—just like a flat -grey louse crawling up to have a bite at the church! -Someone is walking about in the ruins of your hotel.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, my hotel! Who is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s too far off for me to see, but he has a basket, and -seems to be picking up bricks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My bricks! Well, it doesn’t matter. Go on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Half-way down the Rue de Picardie a peasant is -lying flat on the roof of a house. He has a white patch on -the seat of his trousers, as though the curé had given him -a smack with his whitewash brush. Then we come to -the café. I can see the café quite plainly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will stay there a moment. What is happening -at the café?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A woman is hanging out linen on a line in the orchard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a waste of time—when we are going to dirty it -for them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh—yes—and I can see the man. He is standing on a -ladder doing something to the new sign-board.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“More waste of time. We shall drop a bomb on them -next Sunday.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi remained silent for a while, his blind face like a -grotesque gargoyle spewing hatred over the house of his -enemy. Barbe watched him out of the corners of her eyes, -her arm resting upon his shoulders. She knew that some -plan was forming in his mind, and, though he had thrown -out nothing but hints to her, she was ready to help her -man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What happens on Sunday?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned his blind eyes to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are not going to cut my hair—like that woman -in the Bible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She answered sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t get on without me. Isn’t that so?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He put an arm round her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the truth. You know how to mix the drinks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So that is to be my job?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want all of them mad on Sunday. I shall want old -Cordonnier well fuddled and in a state to swear anything. -What’s the best stuff for it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She reflected, leaning her chin on the palm of her -hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is that jar of cognac. It is fiery stuff. I could -mix it with the wine. What are you going to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I keep that card up my sleeve.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You must tell me,” she said; “I shan’t give you -away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drew her head close to his face, and whispered in -her ear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The man is a Boche. Now do you see light?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Neither Manon nor Paul had any suspicion that danger -was so near to them, nor guessed that they were to be -made the victims of a drunken mob. Quiet people do not -foresee such catastrophes, nor is happiness a window that -opens upon tragedy. The very house they had rebuilt -lulled them like a cradle. It was so very precious, so much -a portion of their human selves that it shared that immortality -that seems part of us when we love. The wholesomeness -of the place was unassailable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Moreover, Paul Brent’s mood of pessimism and self-distrust -had passed. To share a secret with a friend is to -halve the burden of it, and Lefèbre was more than a friend. -He and Durand were at the café early on the morning -after Paul and Manon’s visit to the sacristy. They sat -in Manon’s kitchen, with the doors and windows closed, -and talked the affair over from end to end.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand had pretended to be scandalized.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My favourite Frenchman turning out English! A -nice game you have played with us!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am very sorry, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, well, don’t look so miserable. The war has -turned the world upside down, and after all—it is this -that counts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked round Manon’s kitchen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We ought to judge a man by what he does. A simple -rule of life and how rarely we follow it! Now, then—it -is for us to provide this Englishman with a French -character.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He smiled at Lefèbre. There appeared to be some -secret between them, some dramatic and very human -dénouement that they guarded like a couple of sentimental -old men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It should not be difficult,” said the priest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole turned to Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Lefèbre and I are going to Amiens on -Saturday. We have business there—a deputation, a meeting -upon the devastated regions. I can interest a friend -or two in his little romance; what is more, we will approach -the English authorities. If we give this rogue here -a passport it will make things so much simpler.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon slipped across the room and kissed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not think they can be very hard on us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, I had better take you with me to see some -English colonel with a red band round his hat. Feminine -influence, you know! If you put your arms round his -neck——!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can tease me as much as you like, both of you, -for I love you both.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lefèbre,” said the manufacturer, “this house is becoming -dangerous.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Anatole Durand who advised them to send for -Marie Castener from Ste. Claire, and to arrange for her to -stay with them in Beaucourt during the next few weeks. -He pointed out that Brent would have to go to England, -be released by the authorities, and return with the necessary -legal proofs of his identity. Meanwhile Marie would -be the very woman to help Manon in the house. She was -so solid, so imperturbable, such a good friend, quite as -capable as a man of dealing with men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If any of Goblet’s fellows stroll round here, Marie -would only have to stand in the doorway.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand lent her his car and drove Manon over to Ste. -Claire. Marie was willing to come to Beaucourt, and she -accepted Manon’s confession with her usual phlegmatic -reasonableness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A good man is the same everywhere. You can trust -me to keep your secret.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will not be a secret long.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So much the better. For myself I always prefer to -tell people before they find out. But that man of yours -is clever; he took us all in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I helped him,” said Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie Castener was to come to them on the Saturday. -Etienne would drive her over in the gig, for Etienne -wanted to see how things were going at Beaucourt. There -were people who called it the “miraculous village,” and -she smiled shrewdly at Anatole Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur is a wizard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand, looking happy, shrugged off the compliment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everybody has worked hard. We are so proud of -Beaucourt that we have asked a very great man to come -and see it. But I am giving away secrets. I am very -glad that you are coming to look after Manon, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have always found Manon very well able to look -after herself, monsieur. But then—I am—solid.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man whose hands are well occupied is not, as a rule, -a man of moods, and yet a quite unexplainable sadness -took possession of Paul Brent on that Friday evening before -the coming of Marie Castener. It was the last evening -that he and Manon were to spend alone before the uncertain -days that would follow his surrender to some English -Provost-marshal. Paul had become resigned to the idea -of surrender; it was his penance before his marriage, -the only path by which he could come back to Manon -with no lie in his heart. It was the thought of leaving her -that troubled him, and gave an edge of pain to his tenderness. -He was astonished to find how deeply this new -life of his had rooted itself in Beaucourt; England mattered -to him hardly at all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is the woman,” he said to himself; “it is the -woman who matters.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As they sat at supper Manon became aware of his -silence. She noticed that his eyes wandered about the -room, this room that had seen the beginnings of the adventure, -the defeat of Bibi, the exultation of their first -embrace. She saw Paul look at the pictures on the walls, -the new curtains, the bowl of asters on the table by the -window, Philosophe asleep on the rug by the stove. This -familiar room was pleasantly and wholesomely complete. -It was home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, without you it would never have happened,” -she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her across the table with the tenderness -of a grown man whose love is far deeper than the romantic -devotion of a boy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It makes me miserable to think of leaving it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stretched out a hand and let it rest on his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you will come back very soon. I have a feeling -that they will not do anything very terrible to you, and -Marie and I can carry on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dusk was falling. They did not light the lamp, but -went out like lovers into the orchard and watched the -moon coming up huge and solemn in a cloudless sky. It -was one of those perfect summer nights, very gentle and -still, when you can fancy that you can hear the dew falling -out of the silent sky. Holding hands they wandered down -to the stream and followed its flickering movements in -the moonlight, walking close to the poplars and the old -pollarded willows. The trees were silent as death. There -were no fences here, and the meadows seemed to stretch -into the illimitable moonlight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How peaceful it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She slipped into the hollow of his arm, her head on his -shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is so good to be able to trust a man. Do you not -know what that means to me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know that nothing matters to me—but you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood close to the trunk of a white poplar, and -kissed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You belong here now, mon chéri. You are sure that -you will never be home-sick for England?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent looked at the moon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is like this,” he said; “a man learns what life -can give him, and what he wants life to give him. The -things that matter—the simple, happy, restful things! -You may run all over the world looking for something you -left in your own village. When you are young you are -always wanting the apples on the other side of the wall. -I’m not like that—now—thank God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stretched out a hand and touched the trunk of -the great poplar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Trees are so wise. They stay in the same place, it -is true, but they grow; they see the great fields and the -good, wise life of the fields. They feel the wind, and see -the sky and the moon and the stars, and hear the water -running through the meadows. Mon mari, I think we are -going to be very happy here, you and I.”</p> - -<div><h1>XLII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Sunday</span> came as a day of great heat, sultry and oppressive. -There was thunder in the air, and Beaucourt did not -go out to work in the fields, but remained at home sitting -in the shade, or lazily busy in its gardens. At noon there -was hardly a soul to be seen in the streets, and for an -hour no one passed down the Rue de Bonnière save old -Prosper Cordonnier, loping long-legged and guiltily to -Bibi’s buvette. The hut among the apple trees above the -factory was the one live, noisy spot in Beaucourt. The hut -itself was like a baker’s oven, and the men lay about on -the grass under the orchard trees and under an awning -that Bibi had put up. Barbe was kept busy serving them -with drink, for it was a thirsty and quarrelsome day, a -day when men’s tempers feel the great heat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As Anatole Durand said, after the event had happened, -“What a confession—that so much trouble should be -caused by a bottle of cognac, a drunken ‘sheep’s head’—and -a few lies!” Yet Bibi’s plan was so simple and so -dangerously human because it appealed to the baser passions. -Given sufficient cognac, a fuddled and persuadable -fool like old Cordonnier, and one stark audacious lie, and -the machine would move. It happened that there was -ample cognac; Cordonnier became valiant and obstinate in -his silliness; and Bibi’s lie had all the assurance and -the completeness of the truth. The Café de la Victoire -was a bonfire to which these rowdies were to put a match.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi handled the affair very cleverly. He sat on a -stool, under the awning, and twitted Pompom Crapaud -and Ledoux with the repulse that they had suffered at -the hands of Paul and Manon. He was playful and sardonic, -and as potent for evil as the cognac with which -Barbe had drugged the wine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Those capitalist swine,” snarled Ledoux, with eyes -that looked inflamed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you funked it, old man,” said Crapaud; “the -fellow put me out all right, and you stood by and watched.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux was lying close to Bibi’s stool, and Louis Blanc -bent over him with ironical playfulness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you ever bayonet a Boche, Lazare?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Plenty of them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So did I. I was rather good with the toasting-fork. -But I never ran away from a Boche.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux looked at him fiercely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that a cut at me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you let a Boche throw your pal into the street. -Ask old Cordonnier over there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That is how it began. Bibi had the whole crowd -round him, and old Cordonnier was swearing to all sorts -of things with nods and winks that were meant to be cunning. -He was too fuddled to realize the seriousness of -the affair or to understand whither these men’s passions -were tending. It seemed no more than a riotous and -irresponsible jest invented to make the day merry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was so easy to inflame these roughs whose blood and -brains had been heated by the stuff Barbe had given them -to drink. A mob never reflects. It spills itself like wine -out of a split cask and makes straight for the gutter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi told his tale—the tale that his hatred had thought -out in the darkness of those summer days. Cordonnier -had given him the idea, and he had elaborated with an -ingenuity that made it convincing. He asserted that -Manon had remained in Beaucourt after the Germans had -occupied it; that she had had an affair with a Boche, -that this Boche had “deserted,” and taken her away -with him through the lines.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You see how it worked,” he said. “Women are queer -fish, and this woman was infatuated. The fellow may -have found out where she had buried her money. Everything -was upside down just then; the ‘front’ was a sieve, -and this Boche was fed up. He gets Manon through -the lines, and is taken prisoner. After the armistice he -escapes, and where does he make for? Beaucourt, of -course. He knows that he will find the money and the -woman there. A useful fellow, too, who can use his hands -and speak French like a Frenchman! And there they are -in Beaucourt with the best house in the place. A nice -pair, what!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a confusion of angry and excited voices.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A Boche!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I say, old man, it doesn’t sound possible!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi held up a fist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen. Cordonnier there heard the man talking -German. When he told me that, I thought I would try -it myself, and one night I got Mademoiselle Barbe to put -me under their window. When a man is shut up in a -house with a woman, does he talk German just for the -fun of it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You heard him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did. And I can tell you my blood felt hot; it -made me think of those nights when one heard the swine -talking in the trenches.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Lazare Ledoux who jumped up and called for -a crusade. He was the torch-bearer, the inflamer of mobs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come on! We’ll cut the woman’s hair off, and kick -the fellow into the street. Come on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the Café de la Victoire the peaceful details of an -idle summer day were proofs of how little this storm-burst -was expected. Manon had run down to Mère Vitry’s with -a few lettuces and a basket of beans, and had stayed -chatting with the old lady. Marie Castener was washing -up the dishes. Brent, in his shirt-sleeves, had pulled the -arm-chair to the open window, and was lighting a pipe -before sitting down to read a day-old copy of <span class='it'>Le Petit -Journal</span>. Someone was splitting firewood in a barn across -the way, and the steady chunk-chunk of the hatchet was -almost as rhythmic as the ticking of a big clock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent had begun to read an article on the coal problem -in France, an article that contained some very bitter -criticism of the British miner, when an unusual and yet -familiar sound drew his attention from the paper. Back -in his brain were many memories, sense impressions left -by the war, and this particular sound reminded him of a -company of infantry marching into its village billets. -There was the unforgettable pounding of heavy boots on -the pavé, and yet this noise was different. Troops marched -in step. This footwork belonged to the undisciplined and -scrambling rush of a crowd.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul turned in his chair and, leaning sideways, looked -along the street. He remained quite motionless for some -seconds, staring at this little mob of men debouching from -the Rue Romaine. The two leading figures gave Brent -the first hint of how the coming of this crowd might be a -threat to the Café de la Victoire. Lazare Ledoux had -blind Bibi by the hand, a Bibi whose face looked white -and fatal beside the inflamed faces of the other men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Brent stood up. His jaw and mouth seemed to set -into hard, bleak lines as he saw the wild eyes of these men -turned towards the house. Lazare Ledoux caught sight -of him standing at the open window, and Ledoux’s mouth -became a red-edged splodge of howling blackness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Voilà le Boche!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The crowd howled in chorus, and Brent felt the cold -hand of fear run its fingers down his spine. He had heard -that human and bestial sound before when a company of -drunken Bavarians had rushed over to raid a front-line -trench. The courage in him had felt brittle as glass, and -yet as hard. But now he was conscious of a swift and -desperate coolness, an instant’s lucidity of thought between -spasms of pain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He went quickly to the door, opened it, and stood -facing the crowd, and from the moment that he looked into -the wild faces of these men who hung at Bibi’s flanks Brent -knew that the mob-horror was upon him. There was no -reason in those eyes—nothing in these furious men to -which he could appeal. He had a glimpse of Bibi’s teeth -flashing white in his black beard, and then he shut the door -on them and shot the bolts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fetch him out!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We want the woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie was standing in the passage, her face like a -great round wondering moon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quick! Get out by the back door, and through the -garden. Stop Manon; she mustn’t come here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie stared at him, and Paul went to her and pushed -her bodily towards the back door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They think I’m a Boche. For God’s sake go and -stop her. I’ll keep them interested here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went blundering across the yard, and out by the -gate leading into the orchard. Crapaud and half a dozen -other men just missed the flick of her petticoat round the -angle of the wall as they ran into the yard to guard the -back door. Brent had closed and bolted it, and Marie -got away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux and several others had swarmed in through -the kitchen window. They came into the passage as Paul -sprang for the stairs. He had no weapon, but he turned -on them there with the ferocity of an animal driven into -a corner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you want, you devils? I’m an Englishman. -Keep clear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are a Boche,” shouted Ledoux; “no more tricks. -Drag him down, lads, out with him into the street.”</p> - -<div><h1>XLIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>As</span> Marie Castener turned into the Rue Romaine she -heard Bibi shouting like a madman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Put me at the door, put me at the door.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They humoured him, and he began to lash at it with his -big feet till the flimsy thing broke away from its fastenings -and showed the struggling group upon the stairs. Ledoux -was leaning against the wall holding his head in his hands; -three other men were dragging Brent down the stairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie Castener panted down the Rue Romaine, waving -her hands in the air.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mon Dieu—ces hommes!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For once in her life her phlegm deserted her, and her -emotion overflowed her bulk. She was to stop Manon—prevent -her returning to the Café de la Victoire—but -beyond that her ideas were hazy and uncertain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fifty yards down the Rue Romaine she met Manon -coming towards her, a Manon who had seen Bibi’s mob -rush past Mère Vitry’s window. With the rush of those -fatal figures an equal fear had leapt into her heart. She -had hurried out, and here was Marie, stertorous and quaking, -and trying to look calm. From that moment Manon -knew what was happening at the Café de la Victoire, and -that it was her love against the mob.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie spread out her arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t go. Paul told me to stop you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He told you that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She slipped past big Marie as easily as a dog dodges a -bull, and began to run towards the corner where the three -roads met. Marie Castener turned and lumbered after -her, and now that the secret was out she began to use that -deep, low voice of hers. Doors were opening, and people -pushing their heads out into the street. Marie shouted -to them, waving an arm like an Amazon heading a charge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come on, all of you—come on. Help me to save -Manon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Manon came to the meeting of the roads she -saw a sight that she was never likely to forget. A thing -that looked like a bundle of torn clothes was lying in the -middle of the street, and Bibi was kicking at it with his -heavy boots. There was something grotesquely disgusting -in this great blind beast feeling for Paul Brent’s body with -his feet, trampling and hacking like a blind stallion. The -crowd stood round with an animal stupidity that is fascinated -by violent physical action.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon’s face lit up with a white and inward blaze. -She picked up a loose cobble-stone and ran forward; a -little figure of silence, purposeful and intense. No one in -the crowd noticed her until she had opened the circle, -that little arena held by certain elemental passions, and -had flung her stone full in Bibi’s face. It took him between -the eyes and laid him on the cobbles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That physical act of hers dominated the crowd. She -stood over Paul’s body and looked round at these men, -these creatures of a brutal impulse whom strong drink -and their passions had inflamed. It was a moment of -physical balance, of hesitation, of poignant self-consciousness, -when some little act or word turns men back from -the smell of the shambles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why did you do it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She spoke in a quiet and accusing voice, like a grown -child who is unable to understand the ways of rough men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He had done nothing to you. He was a good man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They stood grouped around her, furtively awkward, -suddenly self-conscious, and therefore very near to shame. -She had turned and was bending over Paul Brent, when -Lazare Ledoux, rocking on his heels, shot out a malignant -and accusing hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The fellow is a Boche.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She straightened up and faced Ledoux.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a lie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He grimaced at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say he is a Boche. And you—a Frenchwoman—have -given yourself to a Boche.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon did not move. Her eyes looked straight at -Ledoux.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is a lie. This man is English, and I will prove it. -But what have I to do with any of you? Oh, Marie, help -me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie Castener appeared, pushing the men aside as -though they were bits of furniture. There were other -women with her, a dozen of them, and a few men. Manon -was down on her knees with Paul’s head in her lap, bending -over his grey, dirt-smeared face. He was bleeding -from the mouth, and from a bruised wound on the forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He breathes!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie was down beside her when Ledoux tried to interfere. -She turned, and swinging a huge arm, caught him -across the face with the back of her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Get out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two other women pushed him back, and the crowd -laughed. Ledoux, looking evil, went round to where Bibi -was sitting up, still dazed but potentially dangerous. -Ledoux helped him to his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was the woman who hit you with a stone. Come on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux was too late, for Beaucourt intervened. It -came in force down the Rue de Picardie, led by Philipon, -who carried a blacksmith’s hammer. Someone sprang on -the side-walk and collared Pompom Crapaud, who was -caught at the café doorway with a tin of petroleum and -a bunch of straw. The two crowds jostled each other, -waiting for some inflammatory word or act that should set -them alight, but that faction fight never developed. -Philipon’s hammer may have had something to do with it; -also, these peasants were quiet fellows; they had the -strong bodies and the obstinate blue eyes of the men of -the open country. Almost imperceptibly they pushed -Goblet’s factory roughs back towards the Rue Romaine, -took possession of the central scene, and held it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was kneeling, body erect, watching Bibi and -Ledoux, who had been cut off from their friends. Her -eyes met Philipon’s. She pointed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Those two.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux had been trying to make away, but Bibi held -him by the arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hold on, what’s happening? Is the house alight?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ledoux was frightened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look out! The whole village is here, and the women -are spiteful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s dead, that chap, isn’t he? Whose hand is that? -Hallo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mine!” said Philipon. “You stand where you are, -Louis Blanc. And you, too, you dog with the red eyes. -Here, look after these two beauties, some of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And suddenly, yet with deliberation, he took Bibi by -the beard and held him as a man might hold a goat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, you, Louis Blanc, it is not for me to spit in the -face of a blind man. Stand still, will you? If there is -law in Beaucourt to-day it is the law of my hammer.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Louis Blanc stood still. He had always been afraid of -Philipon, the one man in Beaucourt who was stronger -than himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, the unconscious figure of Paul Brent and -the two kneeling women bending over it held the crowd -silent and attentive. Here was a little human scene that -had all the helplessness and the inevitableness of tragedy, -a man lying dead in a village street, and a woman holding -his poor head in her lap. That is how the crowd saw it. -They looked at Manon with a shrinking curiosity, a sympathy -that was kindly inarticulate. With her hands she -was wiping away the dust from Paul’s hair, her eyes quite -tearless, eyes that seemed to look at a sudden emptiness, -a vacancy in life. Paul was not dead, but she believed -that he was dying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon joined them, sombre and gentle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How is it with him? How did it happen?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon raised her eyes to his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They have kicked him to death. It was Bibi’s -doing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She bent over Paul.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He still breathes. If only we had a doctor! Marie, -what shall we do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie Castener had been passing her big, slow, capable -hands over Brent’s body. She had felt his heart beating -under his torn shirt. Marie kept her head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is not dead—a doctor—that’s it! They always -say, ‘Never pull an unconscious man about.’ Josephine, -and you, Claire—run into the house for some blankets; -pull them off the bed. Has anyone a bicycle?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If Anatole were here, he would drive to Amiens for -a doctor. He is at Amiens, if he could be met and told.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She raised her head to listen. Philipon, too, was -listening with an attentive look on his face, and in that -most dramatic moment in the history of Beaucourt the -whole crowd seemed to turn instinctively to the opening -of the Rue Romaine. They heard the musical bleating of -a horn. Someone on the outskirts of the crowd held up a -warning arm as the nose of a long grey car slid slowly out -of the Rue Romaine. Old Durand’s De Dion was following -at the tail of the grey car. The crowd edged back. -They saw Monsieur Lefèbre standing up in Durand’s car, -his hand on Anatole’s shoulder, his jocund face very stern -and troubled. The grey car pushed on until it reached -the space about those central figures; it stopped there like -some intelligent beast wholly sensible of its own dramatic -significance. There were four men in the grey car, -and one of them had the white head and the indomitable -and unforgettable face of the man who had refused to see -France defeated. It was the “Tiger,” the Father of -Victory, Georges Clemenceau.</p> - -<div><h1>XLIV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Anatole Durand</span> jumped out of the car and ran towards -the group in the middle of the street. His bright -eyes saw everything, Bibi and Ledoux held by four men, -the figure lying on the cobbles, and the women bending -over it, but the most vivid and arrestive thing of all was -the white face of Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Anatole, a doctor?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand gave a dramatic jerk of the hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have one here in the car—Monsieur Lafond!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man with a black beard was already leaving the -grey car. He was short, compact, square, with alert -brown eyes shining behind pince-nez, a figure of good-humour, -and of energy, direct yet easy in all its movements. -He came forward pulling off his gloves. One of -the women threw a folded blanket on the ground beside -Paul Brent, and the doctor knelt upon the blanket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durand and Lefèbre were talking to Philipon and Marie -Castener, and Durand’s anger was explosive. He looked -across at Bibi and Ledoux, his nostrils inflated, his bright -eyes agleam.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Those dogs! Presently—presently!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He faced about, and, walking to the grey car with an -air of sturdy courage, stood close beside the Father of -Victory. And these two old Frenchmen looked each other -in the eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This village of yours, Monsieur Durand, seems a -little quarrelsome.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not humiliated, monsieur, but my heart is sore. -You will tell me that life is ironical?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clemenceau laid a hand on Durand’s shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My friend, I have always set my teeth. What hurts -you hurts me. What has happened?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In a few jerky sentences Durand gave Georges Clemenceau -the pith and soul of this village romance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The man who raised the flag here, and was the first -to attack the ruins, but then, he had the soul of a peasant, -of a worker, a creator; the city eats and destroys; the -countryman grows and harvests. Once again it is the -peasant spirit that will save France.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He leant his arms on the door of the car.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yet is it not strange, monsieur, that I—a foolish old -man—should have chosen this very day to show you the -pride of my heart? Perhaps we had grown a little vain -here, and Providence sent a few drunken blackguards to -chasten us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clemenceau was frowning, and his bushy white eyebrows -bristled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. The work stands. The quiet men will always -thrash the talkers. Is that the house—there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked intently at the Café de la Victoire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—one man’s work.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Georges Clemenceau smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He was very much in love. God forbid that this -should end unhappily.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little human murmur rose from the crowd, a pleasant -sound such as animals make when their young run to them -for milk. The doctor was smiling behind his glasses, for -Brent had opened his eyes. He raised a hand and touched -Manon, a Manon whose face had suddenly lost the calm -of tragedy and was like broken light, quivering, tenderly -shaken. She began to weep—tears of quiet emotion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, mon chérie!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul looked up at her and nothing else.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They have not hurt you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The doctor patted her shoulder and continued to watch -Brent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do not think he is going to die, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has a rib or two broken. We will get him into -the house, and I can dress that wound on his head. It is -probable that Monsieur Clemenceau will let us send the -car back to Amiens for the necessary drugs and dressings. -Is there a bed ready?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The doctor got up, and seeing Philipon, instinctively -chose him for the work that was to be done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is essential that he should be moved very carefully. -I shall want a door, something flat, and four -helpers. One has to be cautious when a man has been -kicked about the body.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand rejoined them with a face that beamed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is nothing very serious? No? Monsieur le -docteur, I am overjoyed. Well, Paul, my boy, we are -going to mend you in five minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was down on his knees beside Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My dear, it is your happiness that weeps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She raised her face to his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur Anatole, almost I am afraid yet to be happy, -but I am not afraid of all that must follow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The aftermath?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I must speak. Is it true that Monsieur Clemenceau -is in that car?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite true.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is an act of God. Will you ask Monsieur Lefèbre -to speak to the crowd and tell them to stay here? I shall -leave Paul and Marie and the doctor when we have put -him to bed. First of all I wish to speak to Monsieur -Clemenceau.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will listen to you, my dear. We told him your -tale to-day, and he understands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon had found a length of “duck-board” in one -of the yards; blankets and coats were spread on it, and -Brent lifted gently on to this improvised stretcher. Philipon -and three other men carried him into the house, past -the smashed green door that showed scars left by Bibi’s -boots, and into the little room whose window overlooked -the garden. He was put to bed there, Monsieur Lafond -helping Manon and Philipon, while Marie stood in the -doorway and watched.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul was aware of a voice speaking to the crowd—the -deep and pleasant voice of Monsieur Lefèbre. The -curé was standing on the raised path in front of the café, -and his massive and impressive head looked the colour -of bronze.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My friends, Madame Latour asks you to remain here. -She has something to say to us all, and I—who know the -truth—ask you to stay and listen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The crowd acquiesced. It had no thought of dispersing -when the stage was still set, and Monsieur Clemenceau -himself descending upon Beaucourt like a god in a car. -They had cheered him, and someone had begun to sing -the “Marseillaise,” all the men standing bare-headed in the -August sunshine. Then the crowd resigned itself to interlude, -grouping itself in doorways, and along the raised -path, and even sitting on the cobbles. Most of Goblet’s -men had slipped away, but a few loafed defiantly at the -corner of the Rue Romaine. And from that moment it was -Anatole Durand who acted as the master of the ceremonies, -going briskly to and fro between the Tiger’s car and the -café. At last he appeared with Manon on his arm. The -crowd stirred with a sound like the rustling of leaves when -a wind ruffles the hanging boughs of a wood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They saw Manon and Durand descend the steps at the -end of the raised path, and walk towards the grey car. -Manon stood close to the running-board of the car, a -sturdy little woman with a dignity of her own, her tears -gone, her eyes steady and determined. Durand introduced -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is Madame Latour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Georges Clemenceau removed his hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Madame, Monsieur Durand made you known to me -in Amiens. I have been admiring your house of adventure. -What can I do for you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They understood each other at once, these two.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Monsieur, I wish you to judge us like a father, myself, -my betrothed, and those two men there. I shall speak, -and they can answer me. I wish this to be done before all -the village, before all those who honour us. I shall tell -the truth—the whole truth.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clemenceau’s eyes glimmered under their white eyebrows. -He considered Manon, and the heart and the -head of him found her good.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Work heals all wounds,” he said, and then, with a -smile at this little Frenchwoman, “I am to give you -patriarchal justice? What could be better! And the -doctor needs my car.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to Durand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us have some chairs placed on that path in front -of the house. Now, madame.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He left the car, followed by his two officials, and -mounted the raised path, keeping Manon beside him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To begin with,” he said, “I must look at this house -of yours while Monsieur Durand is arranging the stage -for us. It interests me vastly, this house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He entered the café, pausing to look at the broken -door. “A Prussian trick, that!” His round, white head -seemed to sink more grimly between his shoulders. Manon -had to show him the whole house from cellar to roof, and -to give him an account of how they had lived through -that adventurous spring. His eyes twinkled, he noticed -everything; his interest in all the human details of the -house was simple and intense. Stubbornness and courage -appealed to him, and there was courage in every corner -of this little provincial home. He saw in it life, inevitable -yet miraculous, pushing its way through the ruins. It -was a poem in timber and iron, an emotion, a part of the -heart of France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the foot of the stairs he turned and looked up at -Manon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has done well—this man of yours. I will see him -presently.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he went out into the sunlight and faced the -crowd. Five chairs had been set in a row along the raised -path, and Georges Clemenceau took the centre chair. On -his right sat Lefèbre; on his left Anatole Durand. Manon -had the chair next to Durand, Philipon the one on the -extreme right. Clemenceau nodded to Durand. Bibi and -Ledoux were pushed forward into the open space below -the path, and the crowd closed round them. There was -silence.</p> - -<div><h1>XLV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>Every</span> man and woman in the crowd watched Georges -Clemenceau, for his presence dominated them all. Even -the naturalness with which he sat in his chair and looked -at them from under his bushy eyebrows seemed part of -his greatness, part of his magnificent yet subtle simplicity. -They saw in him the man who had held up the sword-arm -of France, a man who could be stubborn with the stubbornness -of a peasant. That round head of his and that almost -feline face had a shrewd and humorous benignity. The -Tiger could smile, he could hate, and he could love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He began to speak to them, leaning back in his chair; -his hands resting on his thighs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me tell you that in the country men do not make -speeches; they put their hands to the plough and hoe; -that is the eloquence we understand. To-day I came to -this village of yours to see if Monsieur Durand had been -telling me fairy tales, and I find a little family quarrel -going on, and someone has asked me to sit here as the head -of the family to decide who is right and who is wrong. -At my age—and in these days—the things that are right -and good for our country seem so plain and so simple that -it is easy for us to judge whether a man is a good citizen -or not. The ruins and the very stumps of the dead trees -call to us for help. He who builds, he who plants, he who -gives his sweat to France, that man is the man whom we -honour.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He paused, smiling round at the listening and attentive -faces. He was speaking like a peasant to peasants, and -he had his hand on their hearts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me tell you that I have visited many villages. -What happens? The people crowd round me; they say: -‘Monsieur, when will the Government help us? We have -no material. What are we to do? It is sad, it is tragic.’ -And I say to them, ‘Work, children, work. Do not wait -for the bureaucrats and for indemnities. The world is a -selfish world, and officials do not hurry, but I will hurry -them with all the strength that is left to me. Our sufferings -are not yet over, but let us suffer a little longer for -France. Work; look about you, do not sit still and wait. -Clear the ground—gather together what you can; we will -see to it that you have food and fuel. During the war we -gave blood; now—we must give our sweat.’ And they -are good people; they see that I cannot promise miracles -and they forgive me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul Brent was lying in the little room listening to -Monsieur Clemenceau’s voice. His face was turned to the -window that opened on the garden, and he could see the -line of the stone wall and the branches of the lime trees -making a broken pattern against the blue of the sky. -Beaucourt seemed very silent, extraordinarily silent, and -yet Brent knew that nothing but a brick wall separated -him from all those people. The street below the Café de -la Victoire was as quiet as a court of justice, and the voice -of Clemenceau was the voice of a judge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Marie Castener sat on the chair beside the bed, a big, -blond, patient woman, who listened intently to all that -the great man said. Now and again she nodded her head -and made some comment. “Yes, that’s sound sense.” -“This man gets to the heart of things.” “We make our -own miracles.” “Listen, Manon is speaking.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They heard Manon’s voice coming out of that same -silence, the profound silence of men and women whose -sympathies are challenged by some drama of life that -stirs their emotions, their loves, and their hates. They -had listened to Clemenceau with stolidity and interest, -but when Manon Latour began to speak to them their -eyes lit up with living passion. Into the open space where -Bibi and Ledoux were standing someone had pushed Pompom -Crapaud, and at the sight of this sinister little devil -still carrying his tin of petroleum, the crowd uttered its -first cry of anger. These peasants looked meaningly at -each other. Mouths and eyes hardened. A house had -become a sacred object in Beaucourt, and Crapaud had -been caught in an act of sacrilege.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was standing beside her chair. The sight of -Crapaud angered her as it angered the crowd.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What had we done to you that you should wish to -burn our home?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Crapaud giggled. He found himself between Bibi and -Ledoux and facing Clemenceau, that grim old badger with -the white moustache. Fear made him impudent and -vicious. He leered up at the blind and sullen face of -Louis Blanc, and at the uncertain and flickering eyes of -Lazare Ledoux.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You look cheerful—you two!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nudged Bibi with his elbow and was shrugged aside -by an angry jerk of Blanc’s big body. Bibi was sulky and -furious; these “roughs” were of no more use to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Get out!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Crapaud was jostled against Ledoux, who looked like -a great melancholy bird disturbed on its perch. Ledoux -was afraid. His red eyes could find nothing pleasant upon -which they could come to rest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The capitalists have got us, old man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shut up, you fool.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon had begun to speak, and in that little, quiet -room Paul Brent had held out a hand to Marie Castener. -Instinctively she drew a motherly chair nearer to the bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can you hear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; she is telling them everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Paul lay and looked at the blue sky. His body ached; -it hurt him to breathe, but he was conscious of a great -tranquillity, the contentment of a sick man who surrenders -himself and his fate to the care of others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am glad,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Manon was invisible to them, but her voice and the -words that she uttered made her visible to Paul Brent. -She was speaking very slowly, and with the naïve persuasiveness -of a complete and intimate simplicity. Brent -could picture her standing on the raised path in front of -her house, rather pale but very determined, looking steadily -at these many familiar faces, her eyes as dark as her coal-black -hair. She did not hesitate or search for dramatic -effect, but told them the tale of her house of adventure—how -the English soldier—Paul Brent—had come into her -life, how Bibi had grown jealous of their home, and how -his brute violence had lost him his sight. She did not -attempt to excuse Paul’s concealment of his identity, but -she explained it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will tell you,” she said, “how it came about. He -had been in an English prison before the war; he had -made himself responsible for another man’s rogueries. -After the war he did not wish to return to England, but -he desired to begin life again as a Frenchman. He came -to Beaucourt where he had buried his friend, and here we -met again, by chance—for he had billeted himself in my -cellar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She held the crowd on the most delicate of threads, -and instinctively she made haste to strengthen it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Many of you will ask me why I trusted him, a man -who was a deserter, and almost a stranger to me. I will -tell you.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He had helped me to bury my treasure. When I -returned to Beaucourt, it was still there. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He intended to go away; it was I who asked him to -stay. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He told me the whole truth from the very beginning, -and when we realized that we loved each other, and that -he wished to marry me and remain in Beaucourt, he told -the truth to Messieurs Lefèbre and Durand, and this very -week he was to have surrendered himself to the English -in order that our marriage might be honest and clean.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Bibi who interrupted her, and it was this very -interruption that gave her the inspiration that she needed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is rather late in the day—to marry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to Bibi with a calm frankness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You hear what this man says? I will answer him. -Had I given my whole self to my betrothed, would Louis -Blanc be the man to accuse me of shame? But it is not -so.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She faced the crowd again, with her hands on her bosom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I stripping myself that justice may be done to -the man I love? Why do I love him so much? Because -he is not so stupid as most men, because he did not ask -me to give him the thing that most men ask for, because -I could trust him. He helped to build my house; he -helped to make my home; he protected me. We are -lovers, yes, but he waited, he held back. Do we love -men who are generous and honourable and masters of -their own bodies? Or do we worship the animal?—the -beast that seizes love by the throat and makes it nothing -but a carcass? I stand by the man who has given me the -labour of his hands, the man whom I love because he does -good things. Have not the war and these ruins made us -long for a life that looks happily at children and trees and -gardens—the clean linen hanging in the orchard—the -steady eyes of the quiet fellow who loves you and works -for you? Envy and violence are hateful to me. I ask -to be left alone with the man who healed the wounds of -my home with the labour of his hands.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood in silence, holding out her hands to these -peasants, and instantly the crowd rose to her with passionate -enthusiasm. She had won them. She had given -her heart into their hands, and they offered her their -human and simple blessing in return. Philipon the smith -was the first to give expression to the emotion that stirred -them all. He came to her behind the row of chairs and -kissed Manon on the forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have shown us your heart, and we see how -good it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The women were more deeply moved than the men, -for only women know what a good man means to a -woman. They came crowding round Manon, holding out -their hands to her. Old Mère Vitry had tears in her -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Brave words, my child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We believe it all—every word.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If he is English, what does it matter? He is a good -man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi was there in the midst of them, surrounded by -petticoats, furiously silent. His teeth showed in his black -beard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“These cows,” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Someone heard him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He calls us cows! We women have something to -say to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Lefèbre was on his feet, and his deep and -pleasant voice was calling for silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My children, have patience. Let us be just. Monsieur -Clemenceau is here to judge; let us leave it to him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They obeyed Monsieur Lefèbre, and stood waiting for -the old man in the chair to speak to them. He had not -moved, but sat there like a figure of granite, imperturbable, -inexorable. His eyes were fixed on Louis Blanc.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let us keep to facts,” he began, “the things that all -of us can see and understand. Louis Blanc, I am speaking -to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi raised his blind face defiantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Begin. I am ready.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were a soldier?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was a soldier; I have a medal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very good. But when you came back to Beaucourt, -what did you do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wished to rebuild my hotel, but the luck was -against me. There was no labour to be had, and these -people had thieved the best of the stuff.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand interrupted him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That is not true. They took what lay ready to their -hands—and they have repaid it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clemenceau smiled at Anatole.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please leave it to me, monsieur. Now, I ask you, -Louis Blanc, did you move a single brick or use your -hands to help clearing the ruins?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. It is not my way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are blind, now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have been told how you came by your blindness. -Do you deny it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi’s face was all white and twisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You have their word for it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And your violence to-day tells us the truth. If you -had no grudge against these people, why did you lie, why -did you raise a crowd against them, why did you try to -kill this man?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi shrugged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It can pass,” he said, and Clemenceau smiled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now then, when you came to Beaucourt a second -time, what did you do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I put up a hut.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I sold wine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To the peasants?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, to the workmen. I have no use for the cattle.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You made men drunk—sometimes?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is possible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it a good thing to make men drunk, to turn them -into violent beasts, when there is work to be done?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am not God, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps that is a blessing!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Madame Latour also sells wine, but that is nothing, -I suppose! If an angel makes men drunk!——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will ask Beaucourt a question. Has the village -been the worse for Madame Latour’s wine?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A number of voices replied to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never, monsieur, never.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Monsieur Clemenceau had never ceased to watch Louis -Blanc, but now he let his eyes wander over the faces of -the crowd. For half a minute he remained silent, eyelids -half closed, his head sunk between his shoulders. Anatole -was holding Manon’s arm and whispering something in her -ear. Lefèbre looked round at these people of his, and his -eyes blessed them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clemenceau was speaking again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is there anyone in this crowd who has anything to -bring against Madame Latour’s partner?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a short silence, but no one spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing? Is there anyone here who can speak in his -favour?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Half a dozen voices were raised at once.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, monsieur, he has helped many of us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He worked at my chimney.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He helped me with my roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And mine.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Without him I could never have got my walls straight.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has given us his hands and his head.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clemenceau nodded. Then he sat up very straight in -his chair, and made a sign for them to be silent. His eyes -seemed to light up; the colour of them to deepen. His -voice had a more ringing and passionate note, the voice of -the man who had inspired France.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My children, it seems to me very simple. Let us -look at these two men, and at their lives. On the one -hand you have this Englishman who works with his hands, -who is ready to help other people, who creates, who restores. -Behind me is the house which all of you know so -well, a house that was in ruins, but has become alive once -more, a home. On the other hand you have this Louis -Blanc, a man who destroys, a man who is ready to burn -and to kill. What has he done for Beaucourt? Brought -envy and anger and drunkenness into it, turned Frenchmen -against Frenchmen, taught the religion of violence -and of hate. My children, I am no bigot, no Calvinist; -sometimes I have hated the so-called good men, and loved -the sinners; but in this case my heart and head do not -quarrel.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at Bibi, Ledoux and Crapaud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Louis Blanc, and you others, have you anything to -say to me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bibi folded his arms; he was defiant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lazare Ledoux’s eyes could not meet Clemenceau’s; -he was capable of nothing but mutterings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am a Red. We do not waste words on the shopkeepers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is doubtful whether Clemenceau heard him. He -had risen from his chair. His eyes flashed; that sturdy -figure of his seemed to dilate and to give a sudden impression -of immense strength and passion. His right hand -shot out as though he was striking a blow; he pointed at -Bibi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That man is evil; he is a bad Frenchman; I condemn -him. Hatred destroys; love builds up. What -shall be done with him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were cries from the crowd.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We will not have him in Beaucourt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment the street was in an uproar. Clemenceau -had beckoned to Manon, and he was speaking to her and -to the three men, Lefèbre, Durand and Philipon. The -people saw Manon shaking her head. Philipon interposed, -moving that heavy and emphatic jaw of his, and beating -the air with his right fist as though spacing out the rhythm -of his blunt sentences. No one in the street could -hear what he said, but they saw the “Tiger’s” face light -up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He patted Philipon on the shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Solomon! Let Beaucourt make its own laws and -carry them out to-day. But the man has property here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He will sell it,” said the smith; “he will be glad to -sell it. Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Anatole Durand had brought out his inevitable note-book.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The site of the hotel and an orchard on the Rue de -Bonnière. I will buy the property—at any time. What -do you say, Monsieur Lefèbre?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is justice,” said the priest; “let us drive out -the wolves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon took the lead in the last act of this village -drama. With his hammer over his shoulder he marshalled -the crowd in the Rue de Picardie, made them a short -speech, and then led them to the Place de l’Eglise. Bibi, -Ledoux and Crapaud marched in a bunch in the centre of -the crowd, guarded by the men. When they reached the -Place de l’Eglise, Philipon called a halt. He saluted the -church, and standing on a block of masonry, spoke these -words to the people of Beaucourt:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, in the centre of our village, we condemn these -men, we cast them out. Let them be accursed. Let -them never show their faces again in Beaucourt. Are we -agreed?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The crowd echoed his judgment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We cast them out,” was the burden of their cry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They marched on down the Rue de Bonnière to Bibi’s -buvette among the apple trees, and here the crowd halted -again with great orderliness and in silence. A dozen or -so of Goblet’s men were standing at the factory gate, and -three or four were with Barbe in the buvette, but they -were cowed, and made no attempt to interfere. Barbe, -spitting like a cat, was brought down into the street. The -tin of petroleum was taken from Pompom Crapaud, and -Philipon, like some inexorable priest offering up a sacrifice, -drenched the piled chairs and tables and set the place -alight. The buvette blazed, and the crowd stood in silence, -watching the flames, and knowing that an act of primitive -justice had been done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Allons!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon marshalled them again, with Bibi, the woman -and the two men at the head of the column. They moved -on along the Bonnière road into the wilderness that was -ceasing to be a wilderness, and where Nature and the -hands of men were making the earth fruitful and good. -They held on until they reached the dead trees at Les -Ormes, and here they cast off Bibi and the others into the -calm and acquiescent splendour of a summer twilight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Philipon stood like a black figure of fate, holding up -his hammer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Outcasts,” he said, “go and learn to save France elsewhere. -Never shall you return to us. We peasants are -obstinate. Go.”</p> - -<div><h1>XLVI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='sc'>While</span> the peasants of Beaucourt cast Louis Blanc out -into the wilderness, two people were sitting beside Paul -Brent’s bed, a man and a woman. The man had a despatch -box on his knees, and he was using it as a desk upon -which to write. The woman was holding Paul’s hands, -and smiling at him with eyes of tenderness and of tranquillity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man who was writing raised his white head. He -smiled, and passed the paper to Manon. With their heads -together on the pillow they read what Georges Clemenceau -had written in that room whose window overlooked the -garden.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p class='pindent'>“I ask you to be generous to Paul Brent. Let him -return to us soon, for I wish to be present at his marriage. -He will make a good Frenchman, for he knows how to -work.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>“<span class='sc'>Georges Clemenceau.</span>”</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr class='tbk101'/> - -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.1em;font-weight:bold;'><a id='notes'></a>Transcriber’s Notes:</p> - -<p class='noindent'>Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious -punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected -without note. When discrepancies in spelling occured, majority use -has been employed.</p> - -<p class='line'> </p> - -<p class='noindent'>[End of <span class='it'>The House of Adventure</span> by Warwick Deeping]</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF ADVENTURE ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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