XVI
Brentwas up with the dawn. He heard a bird singing somewhere as he went down to the well to fill the bucket, and he stood in the street and looked at the sky with the eyes of a child. In the east and reaching to the zenith great ridges of tawny white cloud broke the intense blue of the sky. A mysterious golden light enveloped everything, the broken walls, the spire of the church, the grey-green hills, the murk of the woods, the tangled, unpruned orchards. Even the cobble-stones had a bloom of gold upon them. The brown blackness of Manon’s house loomed up against the dawn.
Brent’s face was a thing of delight. His beard had a more tawny richness, his eyes a deeper blue.
“By God—life’s good!”
He felt good, good to the core. When he had filled the bucket and drawn it up, the splashing water itself seemed to laugh in the early sunlight. Brent stood in the street and washed, stripped to the waist, dipping his head into the cold water and letting it run over his chest and shoulders. A little spiral of blue smoke had begun to climb like some magic plant up the wall of Manon’s house, and Brent could hear the crackling of wood in the stove. Manon was busy before her ten-mile walk to Ste. Claire.
An hour later she was standing at the top of the flight of steps leading to the street, her bag in her hand, her face upturned to Brent’s. It was a happy face with gentle eyes, the flicker of a smile playing about the mouth.
“Au revoir.”
He held her hand for a moment.
“I will look after everything.”
“And take care of yourself, Paul. I will not forget the tobacco.”
She turned and went down the steps, turned again at the corner by the stone house, and looked back at him with a kind of smiling solemnity. The morning sunlight was on her face, and her plain black dress showed up against the white stonework.
“Au revoir.”
Brent raised a hand like a man uttering a benediction.
He remained standing there after she had gone, filling his pipe with the last dust that was left in his pouch, and smiling without realizing the smile in his eyes. For Brent was happy, extraordinarily happy, and life seemed very good to him that morning. He was conscious of strong and simple purpose, and of the man’s job ready to his hands. He was conscious, too, of being trusted; and Manon’s faith in him was the most precious thing that his hands had touched for many years. He felt that he had a new heart in a new body—that he had begun to love these ruins because of their human significance. There was hope in the air, and the spring was coming.
“Off with your coat, man,” said Life; “swing your hammer and drive your saw. Sweat—sweat and feel good. It is the simple things that matter.”
Brent had the ultimate philosophy of life ripening in his heart. He had worked back to the wholesome state of using his hands, nor were they the hands of a machine minder or of a clerk fribbling with a typewriter or a pen. Yesterday he had worked with a ferocious forcefulness; to-day his body moved like silk, easily and with a smooth balance; his hammer went true to the mark; he had no sense of hurry or fatigue. He was above his work, its master, and in a mood that could open its eyes to the world and catch glimpses of the strange beauty that is everywhere.
In his resting moments, or when he was ready to start off with a load, he would stand for a little while and stare at the graining of a piece of timber, the dark shadows that seemed to hang in the bare woods, the sunlight on the hill, or the way some broken bit of wall cut a zig-zag out of the blue of the sky. His contentment was so complete and so pleasant that he could not help questioning it, turning it over and over like a man examining something that he has found.
“I wonder if I should get bored here—fed up?”
He laughed.
Boredom seemed so far from the mood of the moment; yet he chalked “boredom” on the black-board of his mind, and tabulated all the facts he could accumulate on the subject. He could not remember feeling bored as a boy, except in church and at school, when the buoyant youngster in him had been repressed. His marriage and too much “business” had brought other and more subtle forms of self-repression. He had been very badly bored during the thirties. And he had been short of exercise, wholesome sweat of body and of soul.
“Yes, but this is only an adventure,” said the voice in him.
But was it only an adventure?
He had pushed the gig along the Rue de Rosières, and had begun to unload the timber, stacking it in the back room on the right of the passage. Each time he carried in a length of timber that reached from the floor to some twelve feet up the wall, he found himself thinking, “Another rafter for Manon.”
“Mon ami,” he thought, using those words of hers, “why worry? We fools are always looking six months ahead and missing the glass of wine on the table.”
He decided that he would not be a creator of problems, but march straight ahead towards the broad sweep of this new horizon.
Brent spent the rest of the day in dismantling the framework of the largest of the huts, and in carting the timber to the café. The work had gone so well that he now had nearly all the material he needed for the rough work on the house, and the material included a couple of deal doors and four window-frames. One of the huts in the field on the road to Rosières had a wooden floor, and Brent made up his mind to salve that floor, for the boards would be invaluable when he came to dealing with three upper rooms. Just before dusk fell he trundled the barrow over to the factory and brought back a load of lime, making a second journey for some sand. The first job on the morrow would be the re-bricking of the holes in the walls, and after supper, when the moon rose, he went out again with the barrow and collected bricks.
Brent had not entered the cellar since Manon had left it, and at the end of that long day when he had taken his food cold, and between heroic spells of work, he went down the flight of steps into the darkness of the place. He stood holding the ground sheet aside, aware of a something that was Manon, a faint perfume—a perfume that had clung about her clothes. It made Brent think of a bed of gilliflowers on an evening in May.
He smiled, lit the candle, and glanced round the cellar. Manon had tidied everything before leaving. The cups and plates were white and clean on the shelves, she had made the bed, and left the stove filled with wood ready for a match. Old Mère Vitry’s picture of the Sacred Heart stood on the table, leaning against the wall. Brent found himself looking at it.
“There’s something in that—after all,” he thought; “and yet she says that she is not a Catholic!”
He lit the stove and watched the yellow flames climb up through the wood, and his thoughts were with Manon and her religion. These old beliefs, superstitions, as he had learnt to call them, these woodland shadows and red blaze of sunset glass, those saints, and martyrs, miracles, the wine that was blood, the tears, the terrors, the quaint paganism that lingered like sunlight on the dark edge of the eternal mystery! He had a feeling that the very soil of Beaucourt was saturated with this most human essence. It was like the sap in the roots of the plants and trees. The moderns were educated; they were—in the mass—very material people. Even these French peasants were children of the age of reason, and yet the sap was there under their feet, the mystic heritage of centuries. That was how Paul felt it in the person of Manon Latour. The scientific farmer thinks of his artificial manure and is apt to forget the spring. The miracle has got lost inside the machine. Yet the orchards put on their white garlands like girls who feel the great mystery within them.
“One always comes back to it,” said Brent.
And Manon had knelt in the ruined church of Beaucourt and then told him with a child’s frankness that her religion was her own. Of course it was hers. She was as full of religion as the soil was full of spring. She had not been smothered in a town. She did not sell herself; there was more than mere sense under her petticoat. She had a soul.
“Queer, isn’t it?” thought Brent. “A modern man would think you were a bit cracked if you started talking about a soul. A few hundred years ago he would have felt insulted if you had taken it for granted that he hadn’t one. We’re too damned clever; that’s what’s the matter with us.”
Yet he went to bed a mixture of mystic and materialist. One of the blankets had the faint perfume of Manon’s clothes.
“Smells like the spring,” he said to himself.
And then he fell to gloating over that mass of wood and iron he had stacked in the rooms above.
“Well, what about it?” was the retort of the mystic-materialist. “Even a Bradbury has a potential soul. Depends on what you do with it, of course.”
Manon, meanwhile, was sitting in Madame Castener’s cottage at Ste. Claire. She had reached the hill above Ste. Claire about noon, and had looked down on the village flashing its white walls behind the sun-splashed tops of the poplars. The completeness and the unravaged tranquillity of Ste. Claire had shocked her a little after the ruins of Beaucourt. What luck there had been in the war! Yes, but Beaucourt and its wrecked houses had produced Paul Brent, and to Manon—the woman—Paul Brent had begun to matter.
Veuve Castener’s Flemish face hung out a look of massive surprise when Manon walked into the cottage.
“What! You back?”
“Yes, I am here,” said Manon to this obvious lady; “have I changed?”
Madame Castener wiped her mouth with a corner of her apron.
She was a heavy woman—all bulges and protuberances—a big cow, but kind. A widow, she lived alone. Her married son, Etienne, had the cottage next door.
“There is something to eat.”
Manon took off her cloak and hat.
“Who told you that I was staying at Beaucourt?” she asked.
Veuve Castener never hurried herself. She sat down again at the round table, put a bit of bread in her mouth, munched it, and then replied:
“A man, ma chérie.”
Manon laughed, and fetched herself a plate and knife and fork from the dresser.
“And they say men do not gossip!”
“It was that fellow who used to keep the hotel at Beaucourt.”
“Oh, Bibi!” said Manon, with casual scorn. “I suppose he wanted to find out how long I was staying at Beaucourt. That fellow ought to have been killed in the war.”
She sat down and helped herself to the very plain food that was on the table.
“So Bibi is starting a scandal, is he? How droll!”
She looked at her good friend, who continued to munch like a cow chewing the cud. There were no treacheries and no surprises in Veuve Castener; she was always the same, rolling along like a big wagon that would never land you in the ditch. Her imperturbable stupidity was an asset, weight on a critical occasion, ballast during a storm. Nothing ever threw her into a state of excitement. It was possible that when the Last Trump sounded she might keep all Heaven waiting while she mended a hole in her stocking.
Veuve Castener had helped at the Café de la Victoire before Manon’s marriage. Her very slowness made her loyal, for when she had grown fond of a person there was no time for her to grow tired. Friendship, like her petticoats, seemed to last with Veuve Castener for ever.
Manon was in a dilemma. Had she felt free to do so, she would have told her friend everything, for Marie Castener was to be trusted; but Manon held herself bound to keep Paul’s secret. He was at her mercy, and Manon had a sense of honour.
“I must tell you about Paul,” she said: “you did not know that I had found a partner?”
“I know nothing till I am told, my dear.”
“Not even when Bibi——?”
Marie gave a fat shrug.
“Oh—a man like that! A stallion who comes and neighs on your doorstep. I’m deaf on those occasions.”
“What a good soul you are. Well, I found Paul Rance at Beaucourt; he had arrived there before me, and he had been using his head and his eyes. That leads to another confession, does it not, Marie? Paul had lived in England for seven years before the war. He joined the English army. He used to come to my café,—a quiet fellow who looked at you and said very little, but I did not find out what Paul was till the day of the retreat.”
She described the burying of her treasure, and the coincidence of Brent’s appearing on the scene.
“Yes, he helped me that day, and the money is still hidden there. Paul stayed behind after I had gone; he had the body of a friend to bury, an Englishman, and he was taken prisoner because he remained behind to bury his friend. That is the sort of man Paul Rance is. He came to see me when he was released from Germany, and we struck up a partnership. He is over there—in Beaucourt—putting a roof on my house.”
Veuve Castener absorbed all this information with bland stolidity. She had always had such faith in Manon’s shrewdness that it never occurred to her to explore the affair on her own account. Her inertia accepted things. She sat in a chair and was content with what was given her. A most comfortable woman.
“So Beaucourt is not so bad as you had feared?”
“It made my heart weep,” said Manon; “but it seems that I am one of the lucky ones. The walls are there, and Paul is very confident that he can make the house fit to live in.”
Marie folded her hands over her apron. She had pleasant and pastoral visions of a beneficent future for Manon. Naturally these two had arranged the matter; when the house was ready they would marry; it was an excellent thing for Manon. The romance was so obvious to Marie Castener that she swallowed and digested it, and thought no more of the matter. A very comfortable woman.
“You have a man left to work for you. You are lucky.”
“He is such a good fellow,” said Manon.
“And Monsieur Blanc was annoyed. He will visit you here; I could not get rid of the fellow.”
Manon frowned.
“Most men are such fools. I wish you would put Monsieur Bibi in your cauldron and boil the conceit out of him. But, Marie, I want Etienne to drive me into Amiens, and perhaps you will come with me. Will it be possible to-morrow? I will pay Etienne for the horse and his time. I have things to buy in Amiens.”
Veuve Castener saw no impossibility in driving to Amiens. It was an adventure, and she would not have to use her legs.
“I will arrange it with Etienne.”
Manon spent the evening in drawing out a list of all that she and Brent needed.
At the end of the list she jotted down a rather cryptic note.
“Try and get hold of a pistol for Paul.”
XVII
Theexpedition to Amiens started at an early hour. A big brown horse pulled the big brown cart, with Manon wedged in between Veuve Castener and her son. Marie, her round red face shining from the wrappings of a black shawl, overflowed with a great bunching of skirts over one mud-guard, her right arm round Manon’s waist. Etienne, equally big and heavy, overflowed on the other side. Manon looked like a child between them—the centre of intelligence between two bulging bodies. Her eyes were bright, for Manon was happy.
And Veuve Castener chattered. It was her way. A silent woman when things were quiet, she became conversational in a cart, or when she was turning the handle of the “cream separator,” or pounding dirty clothes in a tub. Adventitious noises seemed to stir her to animation, and the more noise there was, the more she talked.
“Yes, that fellow Louis Blanc is staying at Baudry’s farm, though I would not have a man like that inside my house. Always after the women, though what they can see in the man, heaven knows. Big, of course, and a swaggerer, but with a face like a goat.”
“There are two sorts of women,” said Manon, “those who are attracted by a blackguard and those who are not. Oh, to be sure, a man like that is very successful.”
“I prefer a quiet man—a man who can always be found. Besides, what do women expect?”
“Say—what do they want? A man like Bibi has what most of them want. He just gets hold of them in the barn—or anywhere, and the rest happens. But we are shocking Etienne.”
Monsieur Castener grinned. He was laconic, slow, not interested in anything but his little farm, and he had a wife whom no other man ever bothered to look at.
“That fellow Bibi talks big. He has all the news.”
“Yes; what was that you heard him say the other night in Josephine’s café?”
“He said such a lot,” growled Etienne.
“But about Beaucourt?”
“Beaucourt? He talked as though Beaucourt belonged to him. Said there was a fortune in Beaucourt. France is ruined, you know—but there’s salvation in the English and Americans. Sentimental people. Running about to see the battlefields and graves.”
Manon lifted her chin. She was quick, and through the clumsy disorder of Castener’s words she had a glimpse of the ambitions of Bibi. But why did he boast about them? For Bibi was no fool.
“He means to make money,” she said; “but that hotel of his is a rubbish heap.”
“They say he has plenty of cash. Talks about hiring men; and the timber he has been buying and the army stores. It seems, too, that they are going to repair the factory at Beaucourt, and put in new machinery.”
“I see,” said Manon, glimpsing more and more of Louis Blanc’s possible plans. She understood, too, why Bibi would not be pleased at the idea of rivalry in Beaucourt; he had never been gentle with people who got in his way.
But the day and its temper were so buoyant that Manon put Louis Blanc and his plans aside, and gave herself up to pure enjoyment. The road ran through the pleasant country south of Amiens, a country of wooded hills and deep valleys, all green and brown and purple under the blue sky. The tops of the poplars flashed in the sunlight, in the ditches, and along the banks crept the first shimmer of the year’s greenness. Now and again a great white cloud came sailing over the hills, or, passing between the sun and the earth, threw a mass of shadow upon some brown field or wood.
Etienne knew a little auberge in the Rue Belu by the river where he put up his horse and cart, and Manon and Veuve Castener went off together. Both of them carried string-bags, and a Frenchwoman’s string-bag has an immense capacity.
“We cannot carry everything,” said Manon. “After dinner I shall have to ask Etienne to drive round with the cart.”
Manon bought the smaller things first—coffee, vegetable seeds, haricots, sugar, nails, a few oranges, matches, candles. In an hour she had tired Veuve Castener’s legs, and fat Marie trudged back to the inn. Nor was Manon sorry to be left alone. Her shopping had little moments of intimacy that she did not wish to share with another woman; and she had Paul in her thoughts, and details upon that list of hers that had arrived there as the result of her own observing eyes. Moreover, the excitement of the adventure had invaded Amiens, and Manon found Amiens sympathetic and ready to respond to a little woman who was going back to the ruins. Certainly the prices were extortionate, for shopkeepers are the same all the world over, but Manon fought; that short little nose of hers and her firm chin belonged to a fighter, and the French love argument. She stood squarely to the counter, smiling, hitting out with perfect good-humour, a sturdy little woman quite capable of looking after her own affairs.
She bought blankets, four of them, half a dozen sheets, and a couple of pillows. There was a battle over the blankets; they were poor things, and Manon said so.
“It would seem, monsieur, that you will insist on the refugees sleeping in their petticoats. Where is all the money to come from?”
She contrived to get thirty francs knocked off the price of the blankets.
Then she went in search of bargains, and found a shop that was kept by a little widow. The widow had children to feed, and was ready to fight for them with her finger-nails. The two women talked—and Manon did not try to fight the widow. They spent half an hour chatting to each other, exchanging confidences, and refusing to use their claws.
“It is very hard for all of us,” said Manon, “and you have five children. Mon Dieu!—I have none, but my house is in ruins.”
The woman let Manon have some red cotton for two duvets and several lengths of cretonne for curtains at a price that was honest.
“We women should not devour each other.”
The widow kept a cosmopolitan sort of shop. Manon saw men’s shirts hanging up, and a pile of blue linen trousers on one of the shelves. She knew that Paul had one solitary suit of clothes—clothes that would soon be ruined by the rough work on the house. She bought him two good shirts, two pairs of blue linen trousers, a pair of heavy corduroys, and a black alpaca coat. Manon smiled to herself as she fingered the things and chatted to the widow. There was a suggestive homeliness about buying these clothes for Paul, and she found the future strangely full of him. He seemed to have taken his place in Beaucourt, and she saw him moving about in these blue trousers, sleeves rolled up, head bare, hammering, sawing, fixing doors and windows, scrambling about the roof, indefatigable yet rather silent. She was growing quite familiar with the set and intense look in his blue eyes when he was at work. He had good shoulders and strong arms, and a clean, fresh skin. Yes, she liked Paul, the man. And it would be so easy to hurt him. This good fellow needed a protectress.
Manon wandered in a happy mood through Amiens. She was very alive, and the life of Amiens pleased her. She idled into the cathedral and rested there awhile, breathing in the soft grey tranquil atmosphere of the place, a young woman who knew nothing about Gothic architecture and was not worried by that horrible notion that it was her duty to appreciate the beauty of the building. She left a franc in the alms box and went out in search of a tobacco shop. Manon had a little breeze with the woman who kept it—for it is quite unnecessary to let oneself be cheated even if one has been sitting in a cathedral. A few blunt remarks, with blood to Manon, and she went elsewhere. Two tins of “Capstan” and some French mixture very rich in latakia were put away in the string-bag. The price was horrible, but was she not getting Paul’s sweat for nothing?
She did not forget the dictionary, though it was not a new one; newness might rouse suspicions if it happened to fall into other people’s hands. Last of all she bought a saw, a plane, a folding measure, some garden tools, and a soldering set. There were plenty of leaking pots and pans in Beaucourt, and Paul was a man of resource.
The Casteners were waiting for her at the auberge, and they sat down to dinner. Marie waited to know how Manon had fared with her shopping.
“These shopkeepers are villains.”
“Oh, well, they have children, most of them,” said Manon, thinking of the widow. “I have not done so badly. I suppose we shall all get bargains in heaven.”
They drove round to collect Manon’s bulkier merchandise, and then left the grey spire of Amiens behind them. Veuve Castener had been counting the number of houses they passed that had been damaged by shell-fire during the war. She began to be talkative, stimulated by the rattle of the wheels, and detailing the gossip of some of the French soldiers who had been sent home to their farms.
“Yes, worse things happened than the wrecking of houses. There are those sluts who became too friendly with the Boche. Pierre Ledru was saying the other day that there were French girls who had hidden German soldiers—their lovers. Ledru swore that one girl was shot by her own brother for taking food to a Square-head who was hiding in a wood.”
“It’s easy to be virtuous—over here,” said Manon; “but men are the same all the world over. I know what it must have been like in those occupied villages, especially if you had any looks.”
“A Frenchwoman should always be a Frenchwoman.”
“Mon ami, people do all sorts of strange things when they are starving. But why talk of these tragedies? Look at the sun over there. I love the big impartial sun, he gives the same chance to everybody.”
“That’s right, mother,” said Etienne; “we haven’t had the boot on our faces like those people nearer the frontier. Besides a man has got such a pull; he can talk a woman’s honour away if she won’t give him what he’s after.”
“Etienne is a man of the world,” said Manon.
Veuve Castener grunted. She did not like being corrected by her son.
It was after supper that night, and Marie Castener was emptying the last of the coffee into Manon’s cup, when they heard a man’s footsteps outside the door. He knocked and tried the handle, but the door was bolted. Veuve Castener thought it was Etienne, for Etienne never used his voice when some more primitive sort of sound would serve. Marie went to the door and opened it, and discovered Louis Blanc.
Veuve Castener’s big body filled the doorway. She said nothing. Her bulk and her silence kept Bibi on the doorstep.
“Good evening, madame.”
He had looked over Marie’s shoulder and seen Manon sitting at the table in the yellow circle of light thrown by the lamp.
“Good evening, Madame Latour.”
Bibi pushed the words past Veuve Castener, since her big body kept him out of the room.
Manon looked up.
“Good evening, Monsieur Blanc.”
She replied to him with an air of complete unconcern, betraying neither interest nor antagonism.
Bibi scraped his boots on the doorstep and removed his hat. You might take liberties when you were alone with one woman, but you were polite when there happened to be two of them.
“Is it permitted for a poor man to come in and sit down for ten minutes?”
He smiled, and made eyes at Marie.
“I have a few words to say to Madame Latour. A business matter, you know; we are full of business these days.”
Veuve Castener spoke to Manon in a loud voice, as though Bibi were on the other side of a field.
“Here is Monsieur Louis Blanc who wishes to speak to you, Manon.”
“What does he want?”
“To talk about business.”
“Oh, let him in,” said Manon, yawning a little.
Bibi was angry at being kept on the doorstep, and at the way Mother Castener had snubbed him by talking to Manon as though he were not there. He had seen Manon’s yawn, and appreciated the flat indifference of her voice; the diplomat in Bibi was ruffled. His swagger had lost its fine edge and became a more brutal weapon.
Veuve Castener let him enter. She glanced at Manon, who had reached for her work-basket and had taken out a stocking that needed darning, also wool and a pair of scissors. She dropped the scissors into her lap.
“I am going to wash up.”
Manon understood what was in Marie’s mind. The wash-house was at the back of the cottage, and was reached by crossing a brick-paved yard. Manon nodded.
“Sit down, monsieur.”
But Bibi remained standing, watching Veuve Castener clearing away the plates, his hands in his trouser pockets. Manon glanced up at him once or twice. She noticed that Louis Blanc was wearing new clothes, a well-cut black suit, new boots, a light waistcoat. These clothes were part of Bibi’s “business atmosphere”; he was a fellow who had money.
Veuve Castener disappeared with a tray full of dirty crockery. Bibi stood quite still for a moment, and then went and closed the door that opened on the yard. He came back and stared at Manon across the table.
“That is rather unnecessary, monsieur.”
“Indeed!”
“You and I have nothing to say to each other that my friend may not hear.”
He laughed, one of those soundless laughs, and fidgeted his hands in his pockets.
“You are still devilish pretty, ma petite.”
“And you are still a fool.”
He gave her a vicious yet humorous glance, and began to walk slowly up and down, his boots making a leisurely clatter on the red-tiled floor.
“That should reassure Madame Gossip,—what! So you won’t have sentiment, not even from me! Let us try business, my dear.”
Manon had begun darning the stocking. She looked steadily at Bibi for a moment.
“Very well, keep to business. What is it that you want?”
He swung round and faced her, legs straddling, head thrown back, loins hollowed, pockets and belly thrust forward.
“A partner.”
“What for?”
“You want me to give the whole game away, do you? Yes, you little devil, you always were the best business woman in Beaucourt. And such a leg, too.”
“Be quick,” said Manon; “I am going to help Marie at the end of five minutes.”
Bibi smiled, and began to walk up and down again, and Manon noticed that his track tended to become an orbit, with herself as the centre. Sometimes he was behind her, and she did not like having Bibi behind her, but she remained quite still in her chair, though tense as a steel spring.
“I am going to make money in Beaucourt. A little hotel—what! well advertised for the people with handkerchiefs and the fools of Americans! Kept by one of the veterans of Verdun, with the Médaille Militaire! Allons! That’s all right. What do you say?”
Manon went on with her work, conscious of Bibi standing there close beside her.
“I think many things, monsieur.”
“Let’s have them.”
“You want my house. It is in better condition than yours, is it not?”
“Tiens! What cleverness!”
“You would like to have your own way in Beaucourt, not an hotel or a café within twenty kilomètres.”
“Go on guessing, ma petite.”
“That is all, monsieur.”
And then he bent over her suddenly from behind, tweaked her ear, and caught her by the shoulders. It had always been his way with women, to surprise them, get them into his arms. The magnetic male was very strong in Bibi; he had known women who had fought and then given him all that he wanted.
Manon had been waiting for that attack. She had expected it, knowing Bibi as she did. She said nothing, but picking up the scissors, made a deft jab at Louis Blanc’s left wrist.
“Keep your hands to yourself, if you please.”
She had challenged the beast in Bibi, and she sat there pretending to go on with her work, drawing her breath a little more deeply, ready to spring up, and to call for Marie Castener. Bibi had removed his hands from her shoulders, and was sucking his left wrist. She had drawn blood, quite a good red trickle of it.
“I think that is all, monsieur.”
She saw him come back from behind her chair and move to the other side of the table. He had pulled out a blue handkerchief and was wrapping it round his wrist.
“Your scissors are as sharp as your tongue. A nice way to receive a man who comes to propose a little bit of business.”
“What a fool you are,” she said very quietly. “Don’t you see that you cannot do with me what you have done with other women? You are not the sort of man who appeals to me. You are only wasting your time.”
Bibi stared at her a moment.
“It is as well to know these things,” he said coolly; “nothing like having reconnoitred the other fellow’s bit of trench. Shall I tell old Mother Castener that the talk is over?”
“I am going out there myself. Good-night, monsieur.”
Louis Blanc picked up his hat and opened the door. He stood there for a couple of seconds as though he were about to say something, but he said nothing, and when he closed the door he did it very quietly. Manon heard him walk away.
“A nice neighbour to have,” she said to herself. “I wonder if Paul can fight?”
XVIII
Horseswere scarce in Ste. Claire, and Manon found that Etienne Castener could not hire himself and his brown nag to her more than once a week, so she made a bundle of the things Brent needed and prepared to walk to Beaucourt. It was rather a wonderful bundle, an omnium gatherum of tobacco, matches, nails, six fresh eggs, some brussels sprouts, half a loaf of bread, six slices of fresh meat, a few oranges, three candles, a new shirt, a pair of blue trousers and the dictionary. Marie watched the making of the bundle, and withheld her criticism until the end.
“You are not going to carry that to Beaucourt?”
“Yes, but I am. There is a saw, too, that will have to travel under my arm.”
Marie felt the weight of the bundle.
“Oh, la-la, it is too heavy!”
“I am stronger than you think. See, I push a stick through the cord, put a pad between the stick and my shoulder, and there you are!”
She was away at five o’clock, after a simple breakfast by lamplight in the red-tiled cottage. The morning was very dark and still, one of those mysterious and secret mornings when the heart thrills not a little to the eternal adventure of life. There had been a frost, and the air struck keen and clear, with the smell of fresh earth that some peasant had turned up with his plough. A few stars pricked the black sky. The great poplars guarding the road were still wrapped up in their coats of darkness and of sleep, and as Manon passed along the road and up the hill she felt rather than saw the branches of those trees meeting like a high vault above her head.
She trudged along with her bundle slung over one shoulder, and the saw swathed in paper under the other arm, not hurrying because of her knowledge of the twenty kilomètres that were to be marched that day, and of the work she wished to do at Beaucourt. She was a little woman with a great heart; also—she was happy. The blackness of the morning seemed to shut her up with her own thoughts, and Manon’s thoughts were many and varied as she pushed steadily along the road. The elements of life were mixed up with her thinking, and if, as the clever people tell us, ordinary thinking is but the glow thrown up by the emotions, then Manon’s thoughts were made of human stuff. She felt—and in feeling she knew, and in knowing grasped the quaint and seemingly irrational altruism of this English Paul, the essential badness of Bibi—the great truth that some people give while others take. If you do not give you will never know what life can give you in return. Manon’s view of life was quite simple yet shrewd. Men had to be managed. It was very necessary for a woman to have someone to love; she withered into a stick without it. Happiness can be planned, if you love someone very much, and go about the managing of your happiness like a cheerful little housewife. Simple things matter. Men like to be praised, women to be kissed. Always back your man with your tongue, finger-nails and heart. A comfortable bed, a well-cooked meal, and a glass of wine at the right moment are worth oceans of wise verbiage. A woman should never marry a man who was not a little shy before he kissed her for the first time. Greedy eaters are soon satisfied.
She trudged on, shifting her bundle from shoulder to shoulder, and presently the dawn came, a greyness that grew red like a fire. The bare trees of a wood showed up against it, the branches like some exquisitely carved rood-screen in a church. She heard a bird pipe up somewhere in the wood, and then another and yet another till a good score were singing, for the birds had multiplied during the war. Beyond the wood a great sweep of black and desolate country cut like a broad knife at the red throat of the dawn. A solitary house with half its roof gone, the broken stump of a tree, a rifle, butt end upwards, marking a grave, a pair of wagon-wheels in a shell-hole, all these were like black symbols against that red sky. Yet there was a silence over this wilderness, a beauty, a strangeness that called; and over yonder lay Beaucourt, waiting, waiting for those who would return.
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Manon to herself; “nôtre pays est malade; it calls for help. The strong ought to help the weak. I must not forget that; my little house is not going to stuff itself with food and do nothing for the others. What a pity all the Bibis in the world weren’t killed in the war!—it would have made things so much easier, and I have an idea that Bibi is going to be a nuisance. I wonder what Paul is doing? Lighting the stove?”
Her thoughts centred on Paul, and somehow this wild landscape with the red sky turning to a tawny gold swept away any little feeling of surprise that had lingered in Manon’s mind. The wind blew as it pleased over these leagues of desolate country. Life was a going back to the wilderness—a fight, face to face, with the elements in Nature and in man. The little stuffy conventions had no roof under which to create a moral fog. You went out into the open with your man and laboured till the sweat ran from you, swinging axe and hammer, or plying hoe and spade. Courage and a clear faith in your comrade, that was how Manon sensed it. Adam and Eve, with God looking on, and the Serpent out of a job.
Some three hours later Manon came to Beaucourt in the blue of a March morning. A great white wall stood up at the west end of the village like a gigantic notice board waiting for a message; the wall had been part of the factory owner’s house.
“Yes, there ought to be something on that,” said Manon, smiling in the eyes of the morning.
“Beware of Bibi!” she laughed.
“Or, Tommy’s word, ‘Cheero,’ or just ‘Courage.’ ”
She left the road and made her way over the higher ground, through the orchards above the Rue Romaine, and from this hill she had a view of the Café de la Victoire and a little human glimpse of Paul Brent. He had fixed up a length of telephone wire in the garden, and Manon saw him in the act of hanging out his washing—a shirt, two pairs of socks, and the things that he wore under his trousers.
Now Manon was strangely touched by that glimpse of him. She was smiling, but there was a little shimmer of tenderness in her smile.
“Mon ami, I would have done that for you. But it is rather sweet seeing you playing the blanchisseuse.”
When she came down the hill into the Rue de Picardie she noticed that the shell-holes in the walls of the house had disappeared. Two neat new patches of brickwork had been put in, and Brent had used facing bricks of the same colour as the walls of the house so that the new work was hardly noticeable. He had got the bedding-plates into place along the tops of the walls. Between one of the end gables and the inverted V of the main partition wall a length of timber hung suspended in the air by two lengths of telephone wire, some ingenious contraption of Brent’s for overcoming the problem of how a man could be in two places at the same time.
“Paul, hallo!”
He came through the old blue door in the garden wall, and stood a moment, looking down at her from the raised path. He had not expected her. The surprise and the pleasure of it were as obvious as the blue sky.
“What!—You have walked?”
“Yes.”
And suddenly she was aware of a new shyness in Paul Brent. He was looking at her as a man only looks at a woman when she has become the most wonderful thing in the world. He came down from the path and took her bundle.
“You have carried this from Ste. Claire?”
His shyness spread to Manon. She laughed. The feeling was rather exquisite, a little shiver of delight, the first note of a bird on a soft spring morning.
“Do I look tired?”
“A little.”
She noticed that he seemed afraid to look straight into her eyes.
“Well, there was no horse to be had to-day, and in war the transport must not fail—and here’s the saw.”
He took it with an air of eagerness, pulled off the wrappings, and looked along the line of the teeth.
“Oh, great! I have been wanting it badly.”
And then she fell to admiring the work he had done, and Brent stood and smiled as a shy man smiles on such occasions.
“It is splendid,” said Manon; “you would hardly know that there had been holes in the wall. How clever you are with your hands.”
“I learnt the business when I was no taller than you are.”
“And you have been so quick. I was astonished. And then—the poor man—has had to do his own washing!”
“I had a hot bath last night, and afterwards, I washed the clothes. Well, you see, they wanted it.”
She patted the bundle.
“I have something for you in there. And tell me, Paul, what is that beam doing, hung up there?”
“Oh, that ridge-beam,” said Brent; “it’s a bit awkward to get it into place, and I had rigged up that cradle, but I can do the job to-day with a little help.”
“We will do it together. And now, have you had breakfast? Because I could eat a second one.”
“So could I.”
“An omelette and coffee?”
“I can’t resist an omelette, but what about the eggs?”
“They are in that bundle. Do be careful.”
“Trust me,” said Brent.
Paul had cleaned and fitted the stove in Manon’s kitchen, and she did her cooking there while Paul went out to try the saw. He had contrived a carpenter’s bench in the front room on the other side of the passage, using boxes and the floor boards from one of the huts. There were some two by four battens to be worked up into a door-frame, and Brent squared the ends off with the new saw.
“It cuts like butter,” he called to Manon.
“Butter! Oh, mon ami, have you any butter left? I have forgotten to bring some.”
“Yes, quite a good-sized pat.”
“Thank God! How near we were to a tragedy.”
Half an hour later they sat down in the kitchen to that second breakfast. Manon had taken off her shoes in order to rest her feet, and she told an heroic lie when Brent accused her of having blistered them in walking from Ste. Claire. The omelette was excellent, golden food for the gods, and so was the French bread after a season of army biscuits and ration jam.
Manon Latour found herself looking at Paul as many a savage woman must have looked at the man whom she had chosen for a partner. Strength might matter in Beaucourt, and Paul Brent looked strong. He had a good chest and shoulders, and a squarish and intelligent head well set on a sinewy neck. She had seen him with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and remembered noticing how big and powerful his arms were. She knew that Paul was not the man who would fight for the mere love of fighting. There was too little of the animal about him for such savagery. Moreover, he was too good-tempered, though when a good-tempered man gets angry, the fire is all the more to be feared.
“All Englishmen can box; is not that so, mon ami?”
Paul was drinking his third cup of coffee. He set the cup down and stared at Manon.
“No. Why?”
“It is useful. And you——?”
“I have never boxed in my life,” said Brent.
He saw the faintest of faint frowns on her forehead. Bibi could box, and his boxing included tricks with his feet.
And then she began to tell him about Bibi, how he had come to her and suggested a partnership, but she did not tell Paul that Louis Blanc had tried to get her into his arms.
“You see we quarrelled, and I packed him out of the house, and now we are in his way. His idea is to attract the tourists to Beaucourt, charge them ten francs a bottle for wretched wine, sell them souvenirs, and all that. It will take months to get that hotel of his rebuilt, and this place of mine would have suited him very well while he was rebuilding the hotel. You will have to be very careful of Bibi.”
Brent’s hand had felt instinctively for his pipe. Manon saw it, and leaning over, took a tin of tobacco out of her bundle.
“Voilà! And English too!”
His eyes lit up, not merely at the sight of the tobacco, but because she had remembered.
“That’s good of you, Manon. What did you pay for it?”
“That is my affair.”
“Nonsense. I am not going to let you pay.”
“This time it is a present,” she said; “and when you wish to pay for the next you will have to send me in a bill for the work you have done.”
But he was annoyed.
“Look here, I have fifteen hundred francs down in the cellar.”
“Very well, you shall give me ten presently, if you promise not to argue every time. Don’t you see that I wish to make some return?”
Brent’s face softened.
“I am sorry,” he said; “it is like you to put it in that way.”
He opened the tin, filled his pipe, lit it and puffed with immense relish.
“Now, what about this prize bully, Monsieur Blanc? Do you mean to say that he may come along and try to frighten me out of Beaucourt?”
“That is just what I do mean,” said Manon; “you do not know Bibi as I do.”
Brent’s eyes glimmered.
“I have met men like that. But they always left me alone. I used to laugh at them—and get on with my work. You can’t quarrel with a gatepost.”
“Bibi would,” said Manon; “he’s a savage. Do you know what he did once?”
“Well?”
“There was a bull on one of the farms, a fierce beast. It chased Bibi one day; he had to run. What does he do but come to Beaucourt, pick up an axe, and go back to fight the bull. And he killed it, battered its head all to bits, and then paid the owner. Threw the money at him. Bibi likes a swaggering gesture.”
“What a pleasant brute,” said Brent, but the glimmer had gone out of his eyes.
Manon began putting on her shoes.
“I wanted you to know. You see, if Bibi tried to hurt you, it would be because of me.”
“I don’t ask for a better reason,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes.
And Manon coloured. She bent over and picked up the bundle, and began to place the things in order upon the table.