The events that agitated Monsieur Anatole Durand were the arrival of the
“Elephant’s” workmen and the birth of Bibi’s buvette.
Anatole had Marcel Lefèbre at his elbow, and Lefèbre had never hesitated
to say that it was in the factory that the modern social diseases were
hatched and bred. If you argued the point with him and quoted the
example of Monsieur Menier and his Chocolate Town he would answer that
there were very few enlightened men like Monsieur Menier, and that
factories existed not for the good of the workpeople but to make money.
To Marcel Lefèbre the making of money was the root of all evil. It
debauched both the capitalist and the worker, begot the bastard lives
that men live in great cities, made life hectic and unreal. He combated
the assertion that the peasants were hard, greedy, less intelligent than
the dwellers in cities, and he would ask you whether a man who could
carry out all the varied and scientific work on a farm had not a more
fully developed and intelligent life than a workman who spent each day
cutting threads on a screw, who read nothing but the “red rags” and
talked about things that he did not understand. In the villages you
found no venereal disease, few prostitutes, none of the grosser sorts of
crime. An occasional murder, perhaps; but Lefèbre was a man of
passions—disciplined passions—and yet he could understand the violence
that shed blood. There are occasions when the killing of a man is a
wholesome and a cleanly act.
It must be confessed that Lefèbre’s prejudices were justified by the
temper of the men whom Monsieur Goblet introduced into Beaucourt. The
“Elephant” had picked up the dregs of the casual labour that had been
set free from the munition works and the army, fellows who drifted,
youngsters who had learnt too soon the vices of grown men. Very few of
Goblet’s original “hands” had returned; some had been killed; others had
settled elsewhere; for the few who were ready to return there could be
no technical work until the buildings had been repaired and new
machinery installed. Durand had spoken of “riff-raff,” and the words
fitted the case exactly. Monsieur Goblet had picked up the riff-raff
that is to be found in all cities. There were some good men among them,
one or two of the older bricklayers, the engineer, and two of the
mechanics. The rest were a bad lot, ready to run about the village and
make trouble with the women.
As for Louis Blanc’s buvette, that, too, could not be helped, nor does
any sensible Frenchman quarrel with a seller of good wine. Bibi’s
buvette grew up like a gourd, for the workmen over the way saw that the
plant was for their own pleasure, and spent the evenings in helping it
to grow. They put up Bibi’s hut for him, built Mademoiselle Barbe a
throne and a set of shelves, knocked tables and benches together, even
helped with the furniture. Bibi had a small marquée as well as a hut. He
meant to sleep in the marquée, but Mademoiselle Barbe demanded a door
and a lock, and the room that was partitioned off at the end of the hut.
For one day Bibi distributed free drinks in token of his gratitude to
the good fellows who had their eyes fixed on the red-haired girl’s
petticoat. Bibi became popular. He had a fine collection of lewd stories
suited to the gentlemen whom the “Elephant” had imported into Beaucourt.
Durand professed to see virtues in Louis Blanc’s establishment.
“It will keep the roughs out of the village.”
Lefèbre insisted on seeing the truth.
“There is part of the village that may be glad to join the roughs.”
“Mon Dieu,” said Anatole, “are we not rather like a couple of fussy old
hens?”
“My religion spreads its wings over the children. You know very well, my
friend, that Goblet has opened the lid of the box. We shall have trouble
here.”
Durand bit his finger-nails.
“There may be a way of persuading that fellow Blanc to disappear.”
Paul missed the events of those few days, for Amiens had made him a
present, the present that Monsieur Poupart had expected to bring back
with him. Brent went down with influenza, an influenza of a particularly
virulent type. He was alone in the house, Luce Philipon having returned
to her parents, and the disease struck Paul like a dose of poison. He
was at work in the morning; that evening he was delirious, with a
temperature that had soared.
About nine o’clock in the evening old Prosper Cordonnier, who slept at
the château, and acted as Anatole’s “store-guard,” was sent down by
Durand to the Café de la Victoire with a message to Brent. Anatole
wished him to come up next day and make a rough survey of the château.
Cordonnier found the café shut up, but hearing a voice, he knocked at
the door. No one answered the knock, so Cordonnier tried the door, and
finding it unlocked, walked in.
It was still sufficiently light for Cordonnier to see his way about the
house, and he discovered Brent in bed in the little room whose window
overlooked the garden. Paul was delirious, and talking all sorts of
imaginable nonsense, and he was talking in English. Cordonnier stood and
stared at him. This lingo was strange to Prosper, who had passed his
refugee years working on a farm in the Gironde.
Cordonnier bent over the bed, and shook Brent by the shoulder.
“Hallo, old chap, what’s the matter?”
Brent pushed him away.
“Bosh,” he said, “bosh! Oh, go to the devil!”
Cordonnier left him, but he stood in the passage for a minute or two,
rubbing his chin and listening. Prosper had been known in Beaucourt as
“Mutton Head,” a man of slow movements, very stupid, yet touchily
conscious of his stupidity. People had laughed at him, and this laughter
had bred in Cordonnier a stubborn reticence. He used very few words, and
those of the simplest. He talked only of obvious things, and if anyone
asked him for an opinion he bolted back into his silence like a rabbit
into a hole. He had one failing, a fondness for drink, and he had been
heard to argue with a mild recklessness upon the contrasted virtues of
farmyard dung and chemical manures.
Cordonnier went back to the château.
“That fellow Paul might have been talking German,” was the thought that
entered his head, “but we won’t say anything about that. They always
laugh, the fools! A man should keep things to himself.”
He told Durand that Paul was sick. “I found him in bed, monsieur. You
had better see him yourself in the morning.”
“Nothing serious, Prosper?”
Cordonnier avoided expressing his opinion.
“He was in bed, monsieur, so I came away.”
Anatole was with Paul early the next day; the high fever had passed, and
he found Brent flushed but sane. He remembered nothing of Cordonnier’s
visit, nor had it occurred to him that he might have been babbling in
English.
“This comes of taking a holiday in Amiens.”
Durand lit the stove in the kitchen, warmed up some milk, and made Paul
drink it.
“When does Manon come back?”
“To-morrow.”
“I will fetch Mère Vitry. She is a good nurse, and she will be glad to
look after you.”
And there the incident ended. Mère Vitry came in, a very willing angel
of mercy, with her patched skirt, and her bright black eyes. She washed
Paul’s hands and face, talking to him as she would have talked to a
baby, and shuffling about the house in an old pair of felt slippers. In
the toe of one of these slippers a mouse had gnawed a hole, and the
little black circle fascinated Brent. It looked like a bird’s eye.
Manon returned next day in Monsieur Talmas’ cart. She found Mère Vitry
sitting in the kitchen, darning Paul’s socks, her cat asleep on the
table by the window, and the coffee-pot ready on the stove. Manon had
been in a state of pleasant excitement from the moment that she had left
Amiens. She was returning to her home and to her lover.
“You have been looking after my man. How good of you.”
“S-sh!” said Mère Vitry, “he is asleep.”
“Asleep!”
“He has been ill, my dear, but he is better. Monsieur Durand says it is
la grippe. Perhaps you had better not go into the room.”
Manon put her bag on the table, took off her hat, and behaved as Mère
Vitry would have behaved in impulsively flouting her own advice. She
went to the door of Paul’s room, opened it without a sound, and stood
looking at him as he lay in bed asleep.
It was that kiss on the forehead that woke Brent. He opened his eyes to
find her bending over him, her warm red mouth still shaping a kiss. Her
clothes and her bosom smelt faintly of some delicate perfume, and her
hands were touching his shoulders.
“Mon pauvre,” she said.
Brent lay and looked at her. He was thinking that he had never had a
more pleasant awakening than the lips of Manon had given him in their
new home.
“So you are back.”
He was content to look at her, and she understood the happy indolence in
his eyes.
“You should have sent me a message. How long have you been ill?”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, and held one of his hands.
“I am not complaining.”
“No?”
“To wake up like this, and suddenly see you, here. But, little woman,
you ought not to be here.”
“Who says so?”
“I do. I don’t want you ill.”
“Indeed!”
Deliberately, wilfully, she bent forward till her face was close to his.
“I am afraid of nothing that you could give me. So there.”
Brent would not kiss her lips, but he kissed her hand.
“I shall be up in two days. Life is so exciting just now. When does the
furniture arrive?”
“On Friday.”
And suddenly he remembered that Louis Blanc had returned to Beaucourt.
He wondered if Manon knew.
She was leaning back and looking at him, aware of the sudden seriousness
of his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You are in pain?”
“No.”
“But there is something; I am not to be deceived.”
He smiled up at her.
“How you notice things.”
“Yes. I saw Bibi and his new hut near the factory. Is that what is
worrying you? Monsieur Talmas told me. It does not worry me.”
Brent’s face cleared. In some ways women are more courageous and more
imperturbable than men.
“Well, then, it does not matter,” he said, “but I wish that fellow had
taken his blind face somewhere else.”
In their happiness they were ready to forget Louis Blanc and that brown
hut of his among the apple trees on the bank above the Bonnière road.
The buvette was complete. Mademoiselle Barbe had her comptoir and her
shelves for bottles, and at night the factory workmen crowded in and sat
round the improvised tables and drank Bibi’s execrable wine. Those who
were unable to find room in the hut made themselves at home under the
apple trees. They were noisy; they sang. Bibi had a chair beside Barbe’s
comptoir. He talked a great deal, but he never laughed. His blind face
was the face of a man who listened for some particular voice, the voice
of an enemy.
This hut of his was like an outpost, or a rallying point in the
inevitable antagonisms that were stirring in the village. Peasant
Beaucourt looked at it with unfriendly eyes. It was not that these
peasants were saints; far from it; and yet it was as though that
arch-peasant, Monsieur Lefèbre, had placed Bibi and his buvette under an
interdict. There were elemental discords between the tiller of the
fields and these ouvriers. The peasant had his home, his wife, his
daughters, his work, his crops; the factory hand was an Ishmaelite,
noisy, contentious, cynical, full of crude theories about double pay and
less work. He had no woman with him, and your barrack-housed man is a
troublesome dog. He will spend half his night sniffing after petticoats,
and in Beaucourt the petticoats belonged to the peasants.
This tacit antagonism existed long before it was actually provoked by
the inevitable escapades of the “Elephant’s” roughs. To Beaucourt, the
Beaucourt that followed Durand, Lefèbre, Philipon and their party,
Bibi’s buvette was out of bounds. No one went there. If a man wanted a
little red wine, he got it at Manon’s café, and so, almost insensibly,
the Café de la Victoire became involved in the feud.
Prosper Cordonnier was the first of the peasant party to secede, and his
secession was furtive and occasional. This bibulous and inarticulate old
man had felt a dryness at the throat whenever he passed along the Rue de
Bonnière. His timidity and his passion for strong drink struggled
together for a long time before that scorching and dusty day provided
both the temptation and the opportunity. It was three o’clock in the
afternoon; everybody was at work, and Prosper, who had been on an errand
for Anatole Durand, passed Bibi’s buvette at an hour when it was empty.
Bibi himself was sitting in the shadow of the doorway; Mademoiselle
Barbe had gone to Amiens in Talmas’ cart.
Prosper loitered, looking shyly at the board over the door. It occurred
to him that it would be polite and neighbourly to speak to Bibi, this
poor fellow who had lost his sight.
“Good evening, monsieur.”
Bibi sat up very straight in his chair.
“Hallo, who’s that?”
“Prosper Cordonnier.”
“Come up and drink.”
Golden words on a scorching July day! Prosper Cordonnier surrendered.
“Help yourself,” said Bibi.
It was pleasantly cool and shady in the hut, and Prosper, after
selecting a bottle and a glass from Mademoiselle Barbe’s shelves, sat
down on a box by the doorway.
“It is very warm, monsieur. What shall I pay you for the wine?”
“Nothing,” said Bibi.
“But, monsieur——”
“You did me a good turn once, I don’t forget. Pour me out a glass, old
chap.”
Cordonnier had laid a hand upon one of the most potent of Mademoiselle
Barbe’s bottles, and in a little while the cords of his tongue were
loosened. He became affectionate, talkative, foolishly confidential,
dragging his box close to Louis Blanc’s chair, and tapping him on the
knee with an intimate finger. He began to gossip about Beaucourt, the
peasant part of Beaucourt. He had his grievances. His dignity in
Beaucourt had never been sufficiently considered.
“Tiens, but what do I do at my age but run messages for Anatole Durand!
And believe me, monsieur, I get two francs a day for it, my food, and a
couple of blankets. Because a man has learnt to hold his tongue some
people think he is worth nothing at all.”
Bibi sympathized with him. Old Cordonnier was a prodigious bore, but a
blind man has to be patient.
“He is a dull dog, old Durand.”
“What I complain of, monsieur, is that he has favourites. Look at Manon
Latour and that fellow, Paul Rance.”
Bibi yawned.
“Are they favourites of his? Fill up your glass, Prosper.”
Cordonnier babbled on.
“That fellow Paul Rance has a tin of milk a day; I have to carry it down
each morning.”
“What, is he ill?”
“La grippe. And that reminds me of a funny thing, monsieur. I happened
to go down to the café when he was taken ill, and he was all alone there
in bed, and talking to himself in German.”
Bibi sat very still in his chair.
“But that sounds absurd. How did you know it was German?”
“Well, it was not French, monsieur; but of course, nobody ever pays any
attention to me, so I never mention such a thing to anybody.”
He raised his glass and drank to his own neglected dignity.
“It is a great mistake to gossip, monsieur. I always hold my tongue. I’m
not an old woman.”
Bibi did not answer him. His blind face seemed to have sunk back into
the shadow of the hut. He was breathing deeply, nostrils dilated and
twitching. This old fool of a Cordonnier had dropped a casual spark and
set an idea alight.
For Bibi’s hatred of Paul Brent had become an obsession. His blindness
intensified it, shutting him up in the darkness with his hatred of the
man who had taken away his sight. He would sit for hours thinking of a
possible revenge, but he spoke of it to no one, not even Barbe.