Madame Castener had lit the lamp when someone knocked at the door of her
cottage. The wind was roaring in the poplars and blowing the rain
against the windows, and Marie Castener opened the door no more than an
inch, for lamp glasses were terribly dear.
“Who is there?”
A man’s voice came out of the darkness, a brisk but quiet voice.
“Good evening, madame, I am sorry to trouble you on such a night, but
they tell me that Madame Latour is here.”
Manon was sitting at the table with a sheet of red linen that was to be
the cover of a duvet hanging over her knees. The lamp was turned low and
the corners of the room were in comparative darkness. She saw a little
man wearing a black-caped overcoat and a soft black hat step quickly
into the room while Madame Castener closed the door behind him.
The visitor bowed to Manon, pulled off his hat, and, coming into the
circle of light, began to unbutton his overcoat. He was a compact,
square-shouldered little man, short in the neck and legs, with a shrewd,
grey, close-cropped head, very bright eyes and an air of humorous
benignity. He smiled at Manon as she put the red linen aside on the
table, rose, and held out her hands for his coat.
“Monsieur Durand!”
“I have surprised you.”
She hung the wet coat over the back of a chair, turned up the lamp, and
looked at Monsieur Anatole Durand with eyes that told him nothing.
Monsieur Durand had owned the château at Beaucourt. He was neither an
aristo nor a parvenu, but a solid little man whose father and
grandfather had been solid men before him, millowners at Lille, men who
had made money. Anatole had bought the château at Beaucourt about ten
years before the war. A man of ideas and of energy, he had tried to
teach Beaucourt certain things that it did not know, and Beaucourt—like
most villages—had had no desire to be taught anything. Monsieur Durand
had not been popular. He had lived up there in the château, and he had
not belonged to the château. A peasant may abuse an aristo, but, even in
abusing him, he recognizes the aristo’s indigenous right to be there.
Durand was an importation, a city man, a big little fellow who appeared
to think he had right to interfere with the other little fellows in
Beaucourt. The soul of the peasant had shown its surliness. Durand was
just a bumptious manufacturer who had come to amuse himself in the
country. Beaucourt had held its nostrils at the smell of his autocar.
What did Beaucourt want with an autocar? What did Beaucourt want with
electric light, and a dynamo driven by water power? The man was a fussy,
new-fangled fool.
“Be seated, monsieur.”
Anatole Durand sat down, knees well apart, his hands resting on them.
Marie Castener had drawn up a chair on the other side of the table; she
began to darn stockings with an air of phlegmatic detachment that left
these other two free to talk.
“So you are like the rest of them, Manon,” said Durand, looking her
straight in the face.
“How is that, monsieur?”
She glanced at him and went on with her work.
“Of course—I was unpopular. That busybody, Durand! Always wanting
something new!”
“You know Beaucourt as well as I do, monsieur,” said Manon.
Anatole Durand sat squarely on his chair. He was a square man all over,
square in the boots, the head, the jaw, rather like a little copy of
Thiers, that irrepressible, compact bit of energy.
“Well, they can hate me as much as they please, but I always was a man
who must push a stone out of the way or cut down a rotten tree. I’m an
old fellow, Manon, but my work is over there. I have another ten years
left.”
There was a little quiver of emotion in his voice.
“I have no children, you know, and plenty of money. I am not one of the
ruined ones. You can’t take your money away with you when you die. Did
ever an old fellow have such an opportunity?”
Manon raised her head, and her eyes seemed to see something.
“Why do you come to me, monsieur?”
“You have gone back to Beaucourt.”
“In a sense, yes.”
“You are rebuilding—you are one of those with courage.”
“I have hope, monsieur, and I have had good luck.”
Anatole Durand’s eyes glistened.
“Life is like this, madame; there are those who work and create; there
are those who wait and grumble. Some people sit still and say, ‘What a
tragedy! What can we do? When is the Government going to help us?’ Those
people will not rebuild Beaucourt; they will not bring back the smile
and the good sweat to all that poor desert.”
“You think as I think, Monsieur Durand.”
He gave an audacious and triumphant little wave of the hands.
“Do not call me an egotist, my dear, if I wish to consecrate the rest of
my life to the healing of these wounds. What better work for a
Frenchman! And that is one of the reasons why I have come to you,
because you have the courage, because I felt that you must think as I
have thought.”
Manon put down her work, and looked at Anatole Durand with eyes of
immense seriousness.
“Monsieur, listen a moment. When I first went to Beaucourt I thought
only of my own bit of property, myself, but when I had seen Beaucourt
and felt the pity of it, I began to think of my neighbours. Yet I say to
myself, to help others you must first be strong yourself. So I did not
hesitate to look round and get what I could, timber and iron from some
army huts, tins of beef, tools, bits of furniture—which I shall
return.”
Durand smiled at her.
“It is the spirit of France; do not apologize for it, madame, for it is
the spirit that will rebuild Beaucourt. But now, I ask you, what will
have to be done for the others?”
“Food,” said Manon promptly.
“Yes.”
“Tools, material, wood to build with.”
Old Durand clapped his hands.
“Exactly. Well, it will be my business to try and arrange all that. The
Americans and English will sell us their camps and their stores, and I
shall be one of the first to buy. We shall have to open a canteen at
Beaucourt. Now, madame, I shall drive over in my autocar to-morrow. Will
you go with me?”
“With pleasure, monsieur,” said Manon; “and if I may take a little
bundle——”
“Anything but a piano or a cupboard,” said Anatole, with a laugh.
The storm blew itself out during the night, leaving wet roads and a blue
sky and a smell of spring in the air. Durand and his car, an
old-fashioned four-seater De Dion, called for Manon at nine, with
Anatole at the wheel and a luncheon basket on the back seat. Manon’s
bundle was no terrible affair, stores for Paul tied up in a blanket.
But someone was before them on the Beaucourt road, Louis Blanc on his
bicycle, a Louis Blanc who was not in the best of tempers. He had
visited nearly every farm in Ste. Claire, offering good money for the
hire of a wagon and a couple of horses, but no one had been able to
oblige him. He came into Beaucourt by the Bonnière road. In the Place de
l’Eglise he dismounted and stood staring. Something was missing from the
broken outlines of the ruins of the Hôtel de Paris; the great central
chimney had fallen.
Bibi dashed his bicycle down upon the cobbles. He was in a rage—the
dramatic, white-faced rage of the French “rough,” a rage that must
gesticulate, stamp up and down, let itself loose on something. He
stormed in and looked at the ruin, and a pretty mess the chimney had
made of it. Falling on the gable end next the Rue des Echelles, it had
sent it crashing, and this mass of brickwork, striking the tottering
wall of the Hospice across the way, had brought down the whole façade of
the Hospice into the road. The mouth of the Rue des Echelles was full of
broken bricks and stones.
Bibi looked at it all, and swore. The centre-piece of his house had
gone; there were only three walls instead of four—nothing left that
could carry a roof. The end fronting on the Rue des Echelles would have
to be rebuilt before anything could be done in the way of putting up
timber.
Bibi stamped about, kicking the bricks, and flapping his arms like some
furious bird. He was not a man who could satisfy himself by cursing the
elements or black-guarding a purely impersonal wind. He wanted a
tangible, human enemy, a personal quarrel, a feud that could be
prosecuted with boot and fist. He wanted to take somebody by the throat,
smash his fists against real flesh, smell real blood. Bibi was a savage.
His rage was the anthropomorphic rage of a savage that spits in the face
of its idol-god and hammers it with a club.
That chimney had not fallen itself. Therefore someone had helped it to
fall. Therefore someone had played him a dirty trick. These deductions
following each other easily through Bibi’s mind, proved that someone
could be none other than that fellow of Manon Latour’s.
“Voilà!”
The motive was obvious, so obvious that Bibi had not to search for an
enemy. He had found his quarrel and he fastened on it like a snarling
dog.
He walked up the Rue de Picardie with those cold eyes of his full of a
hard glare. His fists were stuffed into his trouser pockets; he swung
his shoulders as he walked, and jerked his head from side to side. The
fighting mood flared in him.
Paul was at work on the roof. He had carried up about twenty sheets of
corrugated iron, and his hammer began to ring on them as Louis Blanc
came up the street. To Bibi the noise was like the clashing of sword and
buckler, a barbaric sound echoing out of his savage Gaulish past.
“Hallo, there!”
Brent turned, and leaning against the roof, looked down at the man in
the street. Bibi’s figure was foreshortened. His long chin seemed to
stick out; he looked all shoulders and feet.
“Good morning,” said Paul, “it has turned fine after the storm.”
Bibi grinned and looked at the ladder that rested against the front of
the house.
“So you thought that dirty trick of yours rather clever.”
“What trick, Monsieur Blanc?”
Bibi raised a big hand, its fingers hooked, as though he were reaching
for the man up above. He looked ugly, devilish ugly.
“Come down,” he said.
Brent sat and considered him.
“What’s the matter? What are you talking about?”
“Come down,” said Bibi again; “you know what I mean.”
Brent’s eyes went hard. He knew what had happened to Louis Blanc’s
house, having strolled up there soon after dawn, and he sensed some
connexion between the fallen chimney and that ugly figure in the road.
The fellow wanted a row; he had found an excuse for it; but Brent had
made up his mind not to give Bibi his chance. A row might prove most
damnably awkward, and Paul meant to smile the man off.
“Look here,” he said. “I’m busy. What’s all this about?”
“Come down,” barked Bibi, with the persistence of a furious dog.
Brent laughed, turned, and pretended to go on with his work, but he kept
an eye on the top of the ladder that projected above the wall.
“You pig of a coward,” said the voice.
Brent began hammering.
“You knocked away the foundations of my chimney.”
Brent went on hammering.
Then he saw the top of the ladder give a jerk, and he was round in a
flash. Bibi had one foot on the third rung, and the two men stared at
each other.
“Look here,” said Brent, still smiling, “you keep off that ladder. I
have had nothing to do with that chimney of yours.”
“Liar!” shouted the Frenchman.
Brent gave a French shrug.
“It’s the truth; take it or leave it. But get off that ladder.”
Bibi began to climb up, and Brent bent down, gripped the top rung, and
held the ladder out from the wall.
“Look here, if you try to come up, I’ll pitch you over.”
Bibi did try, and Brent kept his promise. Man and ladder went over into
the road, Bibi lying like a big beetle with the thing on top of him. He
slipped from under it, got up, and began to behave like a madman. He
picked up the ladder, dashed it against the raised path so that it broke
in the middle, and then went on to kick it to pieces with his heavy
boots. He was like a wild animal that had lost all control and all sense
of pain, and Brent sat and watched him with something of the feeling of
a man who is safe in the branches of a tree. He understood now why Manon
had looked so serious when she had spoken of Louis Blanc. The fellow
could behave like a beast, and he had the strength of a beast. Brent had
ceased to smile.
“I shall want a long spoon,” he reflected, “a devilish long spoon. Life
in Beaucourt is going to be hot stuff.”
Into the middle of this display of animal energy came Anatole Durand’s
car, poking its red nose round the corner of the Rue Romaine, and
stopping by the well, for Bibi still occupied the road. He had not
finished kicking the ladder to pieces, and his heavy boots made such a
noise that he had not heard the car.
There was a very droll look on old Durand’s face. Manon had glanced at
Paul on the roof, and Paul had smiled at her, but Manon did not smile.
Here was this evil spirit loose in Beaucourt, this man who had always
behaved like a spoilt child when baulked of some desire.
“So that fellow hasn’t been killed,” said Monsieur Durand. “What a pity!
Let us ring for the concierge.”
He sat there and blew blasts on his motor horn as though Louis Blanc
were the walls of Jericho.
Bibi left the remains of the ladder and walked across to the car. The
imperiousness of old Durand’s horn annoyed him, nor was it any pleasure
to him to look into the quizzical and bright eyes of the manufacturer
from Lille. Anatole was not afraid of anything or anybody, and he had
always spoken of Bibi as a dog that wanted thrashing. The presence of
Manon modified the situation, and brought the sex swagger back into
Bibi’s attitude.
“You seem to have no respect for your boots, monsieur,” said old Durand.
Louis Blanc stood in front of the nose of the car, hands in pockets,
feet well apart, his body swung back from the loins.
“If a fellow plays you a dirty trick, monsieur, you go round to give him
a thrashing, hey. But that fellow up there was afraid to come down, so I
have smashed his ladder for him. You see!”
“Tiens!” said old Durand, “but what is it all about?”
“If you ask that fellow up there,” and Bibi shook a fist at Paul,
“whether he did not knock down the chimney and wall of my hotel, he will
tell you a lie.”
The voice of Manon interposed itself.
“Monsieur Blanc imagines that other people behave as he would behave.
That is the whole trouble.”
She looked up at Paul.
“Have you touched Monsieur Blanc’s house?”
“Is it likely? The storm blew the thing down. I heard it fall about nine
o’clock last night.”
Bibi shrugged his shoulders. The violence was dying out of him; it had
exhausted itself for the moment; and he had a certain astuteness; the
grapes were sour on this particular morning.
“You are a man of the world, monsieur,” he said to Anatole Durand; “you
know that things do not happen of themselves, especially when certain
people wish them to happen. But the truth remains; that fellow is a
coward and a liar, and it was to madame’s interest.”
Anatole gave a little bleat on the horn.
“I think you have got a bee in your head, Monsieur Blanc. We French do
not play such tricks on each other.”
“So it is three to one,” said Bibi; “and against a man who was three
times wounded. Voilà! Into the ditch with you all! I’m off.”
He went swinging up the Rue de Picardie, and Durand and Manon sat and
looked at each other.
“What is the matter with that fellow?”
“What was always the matter with Bibi, monsieur? He has an idea that
Beaucourt is an opportunity, that he is going to show off and make
money. He always had the biggest voice in the place, you know.”
“Yes, a fog-horn of a man,” said Durand, “a big drum. But what about our
St. Simon up there?”
They climbed out of the car, and joined in council with Paul. But old
Durand’s attention was divided. He was in Beaucourt, the place of his
Frenchman’s dreams, in the thick of these dear ruins that were to bloom
again under his hand. He looked at Manon’s house, and was delighted, and
his delight almost forgot the worker and the work. Here was his symbol,
his example, his banner of hope. He wanted to run through all the
village on those sturdy little legs of his, and dream hard-headed dreams
of reconstruction.
Manon understood.
“Go and look at Beaucourt, monsieur. I will see to my partner.”
Anatole dashed off, opening a big note-book. He had carried a big
note-book all his life; it was his Bible.
“Expect me in half an hour.”
Manon stood in the road and spoke to Paul.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He came round here like a mad bull, and when he tried to climb the
ladder I pitched him over, ladder and all. It’s a nuisance; I shall have
to make a new ladder.”
Manon laughed. She liked Paul’s shrewdness, his smile of restraint.
“And now I must get you down.”
She happened to know that old Durand carried a length of stout rope in
the locker under the back seat of the car. He had told her it was there.
“If we break down, well, I have a tow-rope.” He liked thoroughness, to
be prepared for all eventualities.
The rope served its purpose. Manon threw up the coil, and at the third
attempt Brent caught it. He fastened the end to one of the rafters and
slid down.
“That’s that,” he said tersely.
Manon looked at him with eyes that were brighter than the eyes of a man.