Part 14

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!”