Part 20

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.