Part 15

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.”