In the full blaze of an August afternoon Louis Blanc made Barbe take him
up the hill to the Bois du Renard. They had locked up the buvette, and
the red-haired girl led Bibi by the hand along the field-path to the
wood. Her head shone like a piece of red metal close to the blackness of
the man’s coat; she had to watch the ground so that Bibi should not
stumble.
“My God, but it is hellish to be blind!” he said; “I cannot even see
you, you know.”
She helped him over an old, fallen trench at the edge of the wood, and
in crossing it he slipped and fell against her. They stood, clinging
together on the edge of the rotten bank; but Barbe had a body like
steel, and she held the man on his feet with his head resting against
her bosom. They remained thus for a moment, Bibi’s face flat against her
red blouse as though he were burying his face in an armful of flowers.
“Ah, but you smell good.”
He took great breaths of her, holding her close, and pressing her body
to his till it was curved like a bow.
“Do you want to break me, you great rough?”
She was delighted, a sensuous cat, her eyes half closed, her chin
resting on the crown of Bibi’s head.
“There is something left in life after all. Let us sit down in the
shade.”
“Anywhere?”
“No. I want to be where I could see all Beaucourt like a meal laid out
on a table.”
She chose a shady place for him at the foot of a beech tree, spreading
out her skirt and making him sit on it. From the Bois du Renard it was
possible to see the whole of Beaucourt and the fields and woods lying
about it in the broad August sunshine. Bibi sat with his knees drawn up
and his elbows resting on them. Barbe let her right arm lie across his
shoulders.
“There it is,” she said; “I can even see little Crapaud putting new
tiles on the factory roof.”
Bibi moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.
“Tell me all about it, just as though you were painting a picture.”
She humoured him, describing Beaucourt and all that she could see
happening in Beaucourt, using that brisk and satirical slang of hers,
the language of the comptoir.
“There is the church with half its spire knocked off, and, I suppose,
inside of it old Lefèbre is splashing whitewash about. The post-office
in the Place—just like a flat grey louse crawling up to have a bite at
the church! Someone is walking about in the ruins of your hotel.”
“Yes, my hotel! Who is it?”
“It’s too far off for me to see, but he has a basket, and seems to be
picking up bricks.”
“My bricks! Well, it doesn’t matter. Go on.”
“Half-way down the Rue de Picardie a peasant is lying flat on the roof
of a house. He has a white patch on the seat of his trousers, as though
the curé had given him a smack with his whitewash brush. Then we come to
the café. I can see the café quite plainly.”
“We will stay there a moment. What is happening at the café?”
“A woman is hanging out linen on a line in the orchard.”
“That’s a waste of time—when we are going to dirty it for them.”
“Oh—yes—and I can see the man. He is standing on a ladder doing
something to the new sign-board.”
“More waste of time. We shall drop a bomb on them next Sunday.”
Bibi remained silent for a while, his blind face like a grotesque
gargoyle spewing hatred over the house of his enemy. Barbe watched him
out of the corners of her eyes, her arm resting upon his shoulders. She
knew that some plan was forming in his mind, and, though he had thrown
out nothing but hints to her, she was ready to help her man.
“What happens on Sunday?”
He turned his blind eyes to her.
“You are not going to cut my hair—like that woman in the Bible.”
She answered sharply.
“You can’t get on without me. Isn’t that so?”
He put an arm round her.
“That’s the truth. You know how to mix the drinks.”
“So that is to be my job?”
“I want all of them mad on Sunday. I shall want old Cordonnier well
fuddled and in a state to swear anything. What’s the best stuff for it?”
She reflected, leaning her chin on the palm of her hand.
“There is that jar of cognac. It is fiery stuff. I could mix it with the
wine. What are you going to do?”
“I keep that card up my sleeve.”
“You must tell me,” she said; “I shan’t give you away.”
He drew her head close to his face, and whispered in her ear.
“The man is a Boche. Now do you see light?”
Neither Manon nor Paul had any suspicion that danger was so near to
them, nor guessed that they were to be made the victims of a drunken
mob. Quiet people do not foresee such catastrophes, nor is happiness a
window that opens upon tragedy. The very house they had rebuilt lulled
them like a cradle. It was so very precious, so much a portion of their
human selves that it shared that immortality that seems part of us when
we love. The wholesomeness of the place was unassailable.
Moreover, Paul Brent’s mood of pessimism and self-distrust had passed.
To share a secret with a friend is to halve the burden of it, and
Lefèbre was more than a friend. He and Durand were at the café early on
the morning after Paul and Manon’s visit to the sacristy. They sat in
Manon’s kitchen, with the doors and windows closed, and talked the
affair over from end to end.
Durand had pretended to be scandalized.
“My favourite Frenchman turning out English! A nice game you have played
with us!”
“I am very sorry, monsieur.”
“Well, well, don’t look so miserable. The war has turned the world
upside down, and after all—it is this that counts.”
He looked round Manon’s kitchen.
“We ought to judge a man by what he does. A simple rule of life and how
rarely we follow it! Now, then—it is for us to provide this Englishman
with a French character.”
He smiled at Lefèbre. There appeared to be some secret between them,
some dramatic and very human dénouement that they guarded like a couple
of sentimental old men.
“It should not be difficult,” said the priest.
Anatole turned to Manon.
“Monsieur Lefèbre and I are going to Amiens on Saturday. We have
business there—a deputation, a meeting upon the devastated regions. I
can interest a friend or two in his little romance; what is more, we
will approach the English authorities. If we give this rogue here a
passport it will make things so much simpler.”
Manon slipped across the room and kissed him.
“I do not think they can be very hard on us.”
“My dear, I had better take you with me to see some English colonel with
a red band round his hat. Feminine influence, you know! If you put your
arms round his neck——!”
“You can tease me as much as you like, both of you, for I love you
both.”
“Lefèbre,” said the manufacturer, “this house is becoming dangerous.”
It was Anatole Durand who advised them to send for Marie Castener from
Ste. Claire, and to arrange for her to stay with them in Beaucourt
during the next few weeks. He pointed out that Brent would have to go to
England, be released by the authorities, and return with the necessary
legal proofs of his identity. Meanwhile Marie would be the very woman to
help Manon in the house. She was so solid, so imperturbable, such a good
friend, quite as capable as a man of dealing with men.
“If any of Goblet’s fellows stroll round here, Marie would only have to
stand in the doorway.”
Durand lent her his car and drove Manon over to Ste. Claire. Marie was
willing to come to Beaucourt, and she accepted Manon’s confession with
her usual phlegmatic reasonableness.
“A good man is the same everywhere. You can trust me to keep your
secret.”
“It will not be a secret long.”
“So much the better. For myself I always prefer to tell people before
they find out. But that man of yours is clever; he took us all in.”
“Well, I helped him,” said Manon.
Marie Castener was to come to them on the Saturday. Etienne would drive
her over in the gig, for Etienne wanted to see how things were going at
Beaucourt. There were people who called it the “miraculous village,” and
she smiled shrewdly at Anatole Durand.
“Monsieur is a wizard.”
Durand, looking happy, shrugged off the compliment.
“Everybody has worked hard. We are so proud of Beaucourt that we have
asked a very great man to come and see it. But I am giving away secrets.
I am very glad that you are coming to look after Manon, madame.”
“I have always found Manon very well able to look after herself,
monsieur. But then—I am—solid.”
A man whose hands are well occupied is not, as a rule, a man of moods,
and yet a quite unexplainable sadness took possession of Paul Brent on
that Friday evening before the coming of Marie Castener. It was the last
evening that he and Manon were to spend alone before the uncertain days
that would follow his surrender to some English Provost-marshal. Paul
had become resigned to the idea of surrender; it was his penance before
his marriage, the only path by which he could come back to Manon with no
lie in his heart. It was the thought of leaving her that troubled him,
and gave an edge of pain to his tenderness. He was astonished to find
how deeply this new life of his had rooted itself in Beaucourt; England
mattered to him hardly at all.
“It is the woman,” he said to himself; “it is the woman who matters.”
As they sat at supper Manon became aware of his silence. She noticed
that his eyes wandered about the room, this room that had seen the
beginnings of the adventure, the defeat of Bibi, the exultation of their
first embrace. She saw Paul look at the pictures on the walls, the new
curtains, the bowl of asters on the table by the window, Philosophe
asleep on the rug by the stove. This familiar room was pleasantly and
wholesomely complete. It was home.
“Yes, without you it would never have happened,” she said.
He looked at her across the table with the tenderness of a grown man
whose love is far deeper than the romantic devotion of a boy.
“It makes me miserable to think of leaving it.”
She stretched out a hand and let it rest on his.
“But you will come back very soon. I have a feeling that they will not
do anything very terrible to you, and Marie and I can carry on.”
Dusk was falling. They did not light the lamp, but went out like lovers
into the orchard and watched the moon coming up huge and solemn in a
cloudless sky. It was one of those perfect summer nights, very gentle
and still, when you can fancy that you can hear the dew falling out of
the silent sky. Holding hands they wandered down to the stream and
followed its flickering movements in the moonlight, walking close to the
poplars and the old pollarded willows. The trees were silent as death.
There were no fences here, and the meadows seemed to stretch into the
illimitable moonlight.
“How peaceful it is.”
She slipped into the hollow of his arm, her head on his shoulder.
“It is so good to be able to trust a man. Do you not know what that
means to me?”
“I know that nothing matters to me—but you.”
They stood close to the trunk of a white poplar, and kissed.
“You belong here now, mon chéri. You are sure that you will never be
home-sick for England?”
Brent looked at the moon.
“It is like this,” he said; “a man learns what life can give him, and
what he wants life to give him. The things that matter—the simple,
happy, restful things! You may run all over the world looking for
something you left in your own village. When you are young you are
always wanting the apples on the other side of the wall. I’m not like
that—now—thank God!”
She stretched out a hand and touched the trunk of the great poplar.
“Trees are so wise. They stay in the same place, it is true, but they
grow; they see the great fields and the good, wise life of the fields.
They feel the wind, and see the sky and the moon and the stars, and hear
the water running through the meadows. Mon mari, I think we are going to
be very happy here, you and I.”