So these two went back to the battered old red house with the patches of
white plaster still hanging to the walls of its rooms, and the blue
February sky showing where its roof should have been. The window of the
kitchen looked along the Rue de Picardie and all the broken and jagged
outlines of the village, etched with black rafters and the rawness of
fractured brick. The snapped spire of the church was the colour of
amethyst. White clouds floated above the beeches of the Bois du Renard.
Manon lingered for a moment at this window, her hands clenched,
something between pity and anger in her eyes. Beaucourt mattered to the
little Frenchwoman in a way that no restless dweller in cities could
understand. It had formed the background of her memories, a quiet place
where she had made a little song of the day’s work, a place where life
had been rich in the emotions that are her religion to a woman. She had
been proud of her café, proud of her linen, of her garden. Her happiness
had made Beaucourt what no other place in the world could be to her. As
the old Frenchman had put it, “The roots of life were deep down under
the ruins.”
There were other memories, perhaps, thoughts that left a sour taste in
her mouth, but Manon was thinking of the happier days. She had forgotten
Brent, forgotten her hunger, as she stood looking out upon the ruins;
and Brent waited like a man in the doorway of a church, some sanctuary
that he had not the right to enter, feeling her at her prayers, wise
enough not to disturb her. Her sadness was like a sweet smell of incense
and the soft obscurity of some shrine. She was no mere material
woman,—just a pretty, white-skinned, dark-eyed creature, with a
beautiful bosom and a soft throat. Manon Latour had a soul, a little
white fire burning in her heart. That was what Brent felt about her, the
Brent who asked for those dear moments of mystery in a woman, for the
flash of that spiritual fineness that can fill the eyes with a mist of
tears. He did not want money; he craved for self-expression,—the simple
human things, nearness to someone who was a little better than himself.
Manon’s lingering at the gap in the wall that had been a window lasted
but a few seconds. She turned to Brent with a soft animation that played
like sunlight across the deeps of her seriousness.
“Forgive me, Monsieur Paul.”
He smiled and handed her a box of matches.
“You will find a candle down there, and all that you need. I’m afraid I
have not lit the stove.”
Her eyes seemed to question him. “Is it that you are wiser and a little
more sensitive than other men? You can hold back.”
She went out into the passage, and Brent took her place at the window,
lounging in the sunlight with his hands in his pockets, and recasting
the metal of his vision. For a few short hours life had seemed solid and
real, centred in that cellar in ruined Beaucourt, a life of quaint
adventure, a boyish game played with the elements of existence as the
counters. All this had changed with the return of Manon Latour. Brent
felt himself adrift—on the edge again of a casual vagabondage. He was
surrendering that cellar and all that it contained, food, shelter, even
the vague inspiration that had been born in it. He saw himself packing
his bag and marching.
“Monsieur.”
He had been so absorbed in these thoughts that he had not heard her
re-enter the kitchen. He was struck by her seriousness. She, too, had
been thinking.
“How long have you been in Beaucourt?”
“Since yesterday,” said Brent.
She sat down on the box.
“Since yesterday. And in my cellar I find food for many days, a bed,
plates, blankets, all that a man would think of—if——”
She paused, looking up at him.
“What I did yesterday will be useful to you to-day.”
He smiled as he spoke.
“There is the beginning of a little home for you, madame. I washed the
blankets; they have not been used since I washed them, and they will be
dry by to-night. The food was collected by me—in Beaucourt.”
She interrupted him.
“Then—you meant to stay in Beaucourt?”
His face remained turned to the window, and she saw it in profile.
“I had thought of it. Just a whim, you know, the whim of a man who was
starting life over again. By the way, the matches and the candles
belonged to me. I can leave you two boxes—and if I may take one
candle?”
Her eyes were dark with some emotion that Brent did not fathom.
“And where will you go?”
He refused to look at her.
“Oh, anywhere. It does not matter.”
“There is nothing that does not matter. And—you want your breakfast.
Shall we have it up here in the sunlight?”
Brent’s chin swung round. He stared.
“Just as you please.”
She got up.
“I must light the stove. Or perhaps you are more clever at it than I am.
Supposing I wash those plates. I can find some more boxes and make a
table and seats here. And I have a packet of coffee in my bag.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Brent. “Life is good. I’ll go and light that stove.”
He went about the work like a thoroughly practical man, trying to limit
the day’s outlook to that one word “breakfast,” and refusing to see
anything sentimental in lighting a stove and boiling a saucepan of
water.
“Anyhow, I shall start the day with a meal,” he said to himself; “I
wonder what she will make of this place when I have gone?”
But Manon—the woman—kept intruding herself upon Brent’s prosaic
philosophy.
“Mon ami—I want more water, and there is no bucket.”
Brent went upstairs with the bucket and filled it at the well.
“We ought to have a cistern,” she said when he returned; “it would save
so much trouble.”
Brent was conscious of a shock of surprise. She seemed to be thinking in
twos, while he was carefully limiting the future to one. But then—Brent
knew very little about women. He had not learnt to divide the sex into
its two groups, the woman who can be bought, and the woman who cannot.
The woman who can be bought had always thought Brent a fool, because he
had made a mystery where no mystery existed. Brent was an incorrigible
romanticist, and your material woman detests romance. She suffers it in
novels, but finds the thing a damnable nuisance when it comes gesturing
and dreaming and getting itself mixed up with the very obvious furniture
of her very obvious little life. The woman who could not be bought
understood Brent at once. She was ready to trust him—but that did not
help Brent to understand Manon Latour.
Manon had contrived a table and two seats in the kitchen, and had spread
a clean handkerchief with a pink border to give a touch of feminine
refinement to the deal box that formed the table. That handkerchief
fascinated Brent. He stood staring at it while she was down below making
the coffee. He supposed that she had taken that bit of pink and white
stuff out of her bag. It was one of those little touches of colour, of
imagination, that are like the opening of a flower, or the voice of a
bird when the leaves are still in bud upon the trees.
Then he heard her calling him. She had one of those pleasant, animated
French voices, soft and expressive, a voice that was made to chatter
happily about a house.
“Mon ami—will you help?”
He met her on the stairs.
“The candle is burning out, and I do not know where to find another.
Besides—they are so expensive; we must use more daylight. Be
careful—it is very hot.”
She gave him the pewter coffee-pot, and was ready to follow with the
rest of the meal. And she had a surprise for Brent—a little pat of
fresh butter laid out on a rice-paper serviette.
“Allons!”
They sat down at the table, with the blue sky for a roof. The day was
warm, a day that heartened the world with a breath of the spring, and
the coffee was fragrant, exquisite. Brent spread some of the fresh
butter on a biscuit, and looked vaguely sad.
“It is very pleasant here,” he said.
Manon was cutting herself a slice of bully beef.
“What children we are! And a child is the most inquisitive thing in the
world.”
He gave her a sudden, yet shy look.
“Are you inquisitive?”
“Well, of course. But I do not catechize a friend.”
Brent gulped a mouthful of hot coffee, put the cup down, and stared at
the pink and white handkerchief in the middle of the table.
“I would like to think I was that.”
She understood his hesitation and kept silent. Brent was still staring,
the fingers of his right hand holding the cup.
“I am supposed to be dead,” he said with a kind of unwilling abruptness.
Manon put a slice of corned beef upon his plate.
“A good man has reasons.”
He raised his eyes to hers.
“A good man?—Well—perhaps! You see—I made a mess of life over there
in England. I do not mean to go back.”
Manon’s eyes held his.
“You wish to become a Frenchman?”
Brent smiled one of those human and half-whimsical smiles.
“Perhaps—I want to make a fresh start. I’m not the sort of man who
makes money; I’m too easy-going. I have always liked the things that you
can’t buy.”
“I know what you mean,” said Manon. “One can’t buy happiness, can one?”
Brent’s eyes lit up.
“Now—how did you find that out?”
“I don’t think I ever found it out, mon ami. It’s the sort of thing I
always knew. I suppose my mother gave it me. And yet, half the world
never finds it out, and dies grumbling.”
Brent looked at her as though he had discovered a miracle.
“Extraordinary!—I always knew it—somehow, but the people I happened to
live with did not believe in that sort of foolishness. I suppose my wife
was an unhappy woman; she was always wanting something she had not got
and she was always wanting the wrong thing—something that meant money.
Well, of course, it fell on me.”
She gave him a look that was like a sympathetic caress.
“What a fool! And so——?”
“I smashed. Then, of course, she hated me. I was a failure—according to
her ideas. If I had had a little pity, I might have got up again; but I
did not get any pity. A man does like to have his head stroked, you
know. Then the war came, and I got away.”
He drank his coffee and Manon refilled his cup.
“How did you manage it?” she asked.
“Manage what?”
“To be dead.”
He looked a little embarrassed, and then he told her.
“When my friend was killed down there in the orchard, I had an idea, an
inspiration. He had no wife or children, no one who cared. So I buried
myself in his grave, and took his name. It was so simple. I wanted to
disappear, and to begin life over again.”
She was silent for a while, and her eyes seemed to be looking at a
picture—a picture of this Englishman’s life. Her silence troubled
Brent. He began to fidget.
“Perhaps it was a coward’s trick,” he suggested; “what do you think?”
“It is not easy to judge.”
Manon sat very still—realizing that he was in earnest.
“So you have turned Frenchman?”
He gave her a shy look.
“I managed to buy these clothes in Belgium, and then I disappeared. Paul
Brent died a year ago, and if they look for Tom Beckett, my friend,
well—they will never find him. If necessary, I am a Frenchman who is a
little touched in the head. I have forgotten things. All my people are
lost or dead; that happened in some village—early in the war. I’m just
Paul—a vagabond. If people ask too many questions I just smile and
shrug my shoulders.”
“But—all that—will lead to nothing,” she said gravely; “a dog’s life.
I think you had some other purpose in your mind—and you are hiding it
from me.”
“I have shown you the vagabond, madame, and a vagabond has no rights, no
claims upon anybody.”
“Mon ami,” she said, “many men would say that you were a fool to trust a
woman. You shall not regret it. When I look at these ruins I feel that
the lives of all of us will have to begin over again.”
X
Brent’s day had begun with Manon’s tears, and those tears of hers and
the incident of the untouched treasure had produced in both of them an
atmosphere of emotional candour. Brent’s confession had grown out of the
emotion that the misfortunes of Manon Latour had roused in him, and the
tale that he had told her made her glimpse him as a sort of lost child,
a man who was better than his past. She believed that he had told her
the truth. His plan to begin life over again was so naïve, so whimsical,
and so sad, that it moved her pity and made her wonder whether something
more significant than chance had not brought Brent to Beaucourt.
She saw that he was making ready to go. He had the restless air of a man
who was girding his loins for the road and preparing to shoulder his
bag. She felt that he was sad over it, and that he was not so greatly in
love with the vagabond life of which he spoke so lightly. She thought
that Brent had neither the eyes nor the mouth of a wanderer. She could
fancy him loving a corner by the fire, a bit of garden to dig in, the
smell of a stable, a glass of wine on a summer evening, someone to whom
he could talk, someone who did not listen to him because he was a
stranger. She did not forget the corner he had made for himself in the
cellar. A man who collects cups and plates and lays a store of food has
not the heart of an Ishmaelite.
The meal was over and they were sitting there in silence, very conscious
of each other and of the elemental and simple needs that had made
comrades of them for an hour. Brent was filling his pipe. He looked
vaguely dejected, and she noticed this all the more because he was
making a business of trading in cheerfulness. Brent was a bad salesman.
Manon pulled out a gold watch, a watch that she wore under her blouse
like a locket.
“Eleven o’clock!”
Brent straightened with uneasy self-consciousness; he felt that he ought
to be on the road. Manon had put her watch back, and she appeared to
have forgotten Brent—though she was thinking of him all the while with
a shrewdness that considered everything. If Manon had a heart, she also
had a head.
“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I shall stay here to-night.”
“The cellar is quite dry.”
“That long walk frightens me. It is seventeen kilomètres to Ste.
Claire.”
“Too far,” said Brent with grim cheerfulness; “you will be quite
comfortable here. Those blankets should be dry—and I’ll cut you some
more wood before I go.”
She ignored those last words of his, and stood up, pushing back the box
on which she had been sitting.
“I want to look again at all my little property. Will you come with me?”
Brent glanced at her in surprise.
“Of course.”
He rose and stood waiting while she took her cloak from the nail and
flung it over her shoulders. And suddenly he saw her as a lonely little
figure, a woman left sitting alone in this ruined house, and the man in
him rebelled. He pictured her helplessness, the impossible struggle she
would be carrying on against Nature, and perhaps against men. He
understood that life in Beaucourt would be very primitive, and it was
possible that it might be cruel. There were all the elements of a savage
struggle for existence among these rubbish heaps that had been houses.
“I am ready.”
She gave him a flicker of her brown eyes, eyes that were on the verge of
tears. He saw her bite her lower lip, and stiffen her shoulders as they
went out into the street and stood there together looking up at the red
shell of the house. A little furrow of pain, pain that was being fought
and suppressed, showed on Manon’s forehead.
“Ma pauvre petite maison!”
Brent knew now that he wanted to stay in Beaucourt, that there was work
here, work fit for a man’s hands.
“The walls are good,” he said; “they will stand.”
“But what can I do with bare walls, mon ami?”
She turned and walked into the yard, passing between the stone pillars
that had lost their gates. The yard was full of the cosmopolitan rubbish
that war creates, the elements of a civilized home reduced to one common
scrap-heap. The stable had lost its roof. The little barn and the
cow-house were mere timber frames from which the tiles and the plaster
had fallen. Manon stood and looked at it all, and her mouth quivered.
“You see,” she said with a helpless gesture of the hands; “what is a
woman to do?”
They passed on into the garden, and the garden did not despair. It had
one great wound, a huge shell-hole in its centre, a pit into which the
Germans had pitched their refuse, but an hour or two’s work with a spade
would heal all that. The two holes in the stone wall needed stopping,
and the espaliers cried out for the pruning knife, but as for the weeds,
well they would make green manure. Manon and Paul wandered down into the
orchard, climbing through the shell-hole in the wall, and here too
Nature had a smile of promise, a promise of green growth that nothing
could hinder or dismay.
Manon saw Beckett’s grave and glanced at Brent.
“Yes,—I lie there,” he said; “queer, isn’t it?”
“Was he a good man—your comrade?”
“He was a better man as a soldier than I was. That’s all I care to
remember.”
She turned back into the garden, and her heart failed her as she looked
at the roofless house. There had been an arbour in the garden at the end
of the little avenue of pollarded limes, and Manon’s memories led her
there. The iron frame was unbroken, rambled over by a hardy vine and
some climbing roses,—a round iron table standing in the centre, with a
semi-circular green bench at the back of it. People had forgotten to
break up the wooden bench for firewood.
Manon sat down, and looked up at Brent, who was knocking the bowl of his
pipe against the edge of the iron table. His face was
serious—overshadowed.
“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I think that I am ruined.”
Brent glanced at her, and her eyes hurt him. He sat down on an end of
the bench.
“I can understand,” he said; “it’s—it’s damnable.”
She began to talk with an air of pathetic candour.
“You see—my life lies here; the place is part of my heart. I have the
blood of peasants in me, and all the time I think of the past. This
morning I did not know what I should find here; I had such hopes, such
an excitement of tenderness. And look at the poor place!”
She seemed to be touching something with gentle and caressing hands.
“What can a woman do? I have a little money, but all the others will be
too busy to help. I shall not be able to hire labour. And even if my
hands were the hands of a man I should not know where or how to begin.”
Brent had the stem of his empty pipe gripped between his teeth. He was
staring at the house; and suddenly he turned to Manon.
“I am going to speak out. I shall not hurt you.”
“I am not afraid,” she said simply.
“Do you remember my telling you that I had had a dream? It happened at
Peronne, only a few days ago. My dead friend who is over there came and
spoke to me—we were here in this garden—but I could not understand
what he said. When I woke up I had a feeling that I should come to
Beaucourt, that it was my business to come to Beaucourt. And last night
as I sat in that cellar of yours, I began to wonder whether some wise
spirit had not sent me here. I want work, a new chance, something to
make me feel a man. That’s how it happened; just like that.”
“I can believe it,” she said.
He went on, not looking at her, but staring at the ground:
“I told you I wanted to make a fresh start. Why should I go any farther?
I have a little money, and one will want but little in Beaucourt to
begin with—just food and boots and a little tobacco. Why shouldn’t I
stay and rebuild your house?”
She was looking at him with her brown eyes wide open, softly, and with a
kind of gentle incredulity.
“Mon ami, it is a beautiful thought; but it is not possible.”
She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten.
“You mean that it is impossible for me to stay here?”
“No, no! But how can you put a roof on my house? Where are the wood and
the tiles to come from? Besides——”
He began to smile.
“It could be done.”
“But—you are dreaming?”
“I’m very wide awake,” he said, “and I say that it could be done. You
have not seen as much of Beaucourt as I have. There are army huts over
there—a little knocked about—but I could get enough timber and
corrugated iron out of them to do the job. You see—ten years ago I was
building houses with my own hands.”
“Are you serious?”
“I was never more serious in my life.”
Manon leant forward over the table, one hand shading her eyes and a
faint flush showing upon her face. The forefinger of her right hand
traced crosses and circles on the top of the iron table. She began to
speak, hesitated, and fell back into silence. The colour died away from
her face; she became very pale, so pale that even her red lips looked
blanched. The very intensity of her emotion broke in a storm of fierce
sincerity. She turned on Brent and attacked him.
“What is it that you want?”
And Brent did not flinch.
“I have told you. Work—a new chance—a man’s chance.”
She gave a flick of the head.
“Oh, I know men! They do not do things for nothing. Let us have no
misunderstanding. I have nothing to give but a little money.”
Brent faced it out as he had faced many a bloody ten minutes. He was a
little grim, but very gentle; and all his sympathies were with Manon.
“Now we are down to the foundations,” he said; “you have cleared all the
rubbish away. You can hit out at me; it doesn’t hurt—because you are
being honest, and I’m not a cad. I don’t want your money. I don’t expect
anything. I don’t say that I shouldn’t fall in love with you if I stayed
here—but even if I did, it wouldn’t be the sort of love that makes a
man behave like a beast. That’s all I have to say.”
She smiled; her colour returned; her lips and her eyes softened.
“Somehow I believe you,” she said, “though I could not tell you why. And
yet—what would you get out of such a life, what would it lead to—for
you?”
Brent leant over towards her.
“Manon,” he said, “can you understand a man who has been a failure
wanting to do something that is good and unselfish? Can’t you understand
him craving for a clean taste of life in his mouth?”
“I can understand it,” she answered.
“Good God—do we always sit down and work out a sum on paper? Aren’t
there bits of fine madness in life—glorious things that seem mad to the
careful people?”
She held out a hand.
“My friend, forgive me; but I have been a woman to whom many men have
made love. The fools do it so easily and they expect a woman to be
flattered and to surrender just as one opens a door.”
Brent grasped her hand.
“Then—I may stay?”
“Yes.”
He threw up his head with an air of pride, and a flash of half-boyish
exultation.
“That’s great of you—great. You are giving me my chance. Let’s go and
look at the house; let’s get at it—at once. I want to take my coat
off.”