Part 21
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——”