Anatole Durand jumped out of the car and ran towards the group in the
middle of the street. His bright eyes saw everything, Bibi and Ledoux
held by four men, the figure lying on the cobbles, and the women bending
over it, but the most vivid and arrestive thing of all was the white
face of Manon.
“Monsieur Anatole, a doctor?”
Durand gave a dramatic jerk of the hands.
“We have one here in the car—Monsieur Lafond!”
A man with a black beard was already leaving the grey car. He was short,
compact, square, with alert brown eyes shining behind pince-nez, a
figure of good-humour, and of energy, direct yet easy in all its
movements. He came forward pulling off his gloves. One of the women
threw a folded blanket on the ground beside Paul Brent, and the doctor
knelt upon the blanket.
Durand and Lefèbre were talking to Philipon and Marie Castener, and
Durand’s anger was explosive. He looked across at Bibi and Ledoux, his
nostrils inflated, his bright eyes agleam.
“Those dogs! Presently—presently!”
He faced about, and, walking to the grey car with an air of sturdy
courage, stood close beside the Father of Victory. And these two old
Frenchmen looked each other in the eyes.
“This village of yours, Monsieur Durand, seems a little quarrelsome.”
“I am not humiliated, monsieur, but my heart is sore. You will tell me
that life is ironical?”
Clemenceau laid a hand on Durand’s shoulder.
“My friend, I have always set my teeth. What hurts you hurts me. What
has happened?”
In a few jerky sentences Durand gave Georges Clemenceau the pith and
soul of this village romance.
“The man who raised the flag here, and was the first to attack the
ruins, but then, he had the soul of a peasant, of a worker, a creator;
the city eats and destroys; the countryman grows and harvests. Once
again it is the peasant spirit that will save France.”
He leant his arms on the door of the car.
“Yet is it not strange, monsieur, that I—a foolish old man—should have
chosen this very day to show you the pride of my heart? Perhaps we had
grown a little vain here, and Providence sent a few drunken blackguards
to chasten us.”
Clemenceau was frowning, and his bushy white eyebrows bristled.
“No. The work stands. The quiet men will always thrash the talkers. Is
that the house—there?”
He looked intently at the Café de la Victoire.
“Yes—one man’s work.”
Georges Clemenceau smiled.
“He was very much in love. God forbid that this should end unhappily.”
A little human murmur rose from the crowd, a pleasant sound such as
animals make when their young run to them for milk. The doctor was
smiling behind his glasses, for Brent had opened his eyes. He raised a
hand and touched Manon, a Manon whose face had suddenly lost the calm of
tragedy and was like broken light, quivering, tenderly shaken. She began
to weep—tears of quiet emotion.
“Oh, mon chérie!”
Paul looked up at her and nothing else.
“They have not hurt you?”
“No, no.”
The doctor patted her shoulder and continued to watch Brent.
“I do not think he is going to die, madame.”
“No, monsieur.”
“He has a rib or two broken. We will get him into the house, and I can
dress that wound on his head. It is probable that Monsieur Clemenceau
will let us send the car back to Amiens for the necessary drugs and
dressings. Is there a bed ready?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
The doctor got up, and seeing Philipon, instinctively chose him for the
work that was to be done.
“It is essential that he should be moved very carefully. I shall want a
door, something flat, and four helpers. One has to be cautious when a
man has been kicked about the body.”
Anatole Durand rejoined them with a face that beamed.
“There is nothing very serious? No? Monsieur le docteur, I am overjoyed.
Well, Paul, my boy, we are going to mend you in five minutes.”
He was down on his knees beside Manon.
“My dear, it is your happiness that weeps.”
She raised her face to his.
“Monsieur Anatole, almost I am afraid yet to be happy, but I am not
afraid of all that must follow.”
“The aftermath?”
“Yes, I must speak. Is it true that Monsieur Clemenceau is in that car?”
“Quite true.”
“It is an act of God. Will you ask Monsieur Lefèbre to speak to the
crowd and tell them to stay here? I shall leave Paul and Marie and the
doctor when we have put him to bed. First of all I wish to speak to
Monsieur Clemenceau.”
“He will listen to you, my dear. We told him your tale to-day, and he
understands.”
Philipon had found a length of “duck-board” in one of the yards;
blankets and coats were spread on it, and Brent lifted gently on to this
improvised stretcher. Philipon and three other men carried him into the
house, past the smashed green door that showed scars left by Bibi’s
boots, and into the little room whose window overlooked the garden. He
was put to bed there, Monsieur Lafond helping Manon and Philipon, while
Marie stood in the doorway and watched.
Paul was aware of a voice speaking to the crowd—the deep and pleasant
voice of Monsieur Lefèbre. The curé was standing on the raised path in
front of the café, and his massive and impressive head looked the colour
of bronze.
“My friends, Madame Latour asks you to remain here. She has something to
say to us all, and I—who know the truth—ask you to stay and listen.”
The crowd acquiesced. It had no thought of dispersing when the stage was
still set, and Monsieur Clemenceau himself descending upon Beaucourt
like a god in a car. They had cheered him, and someone had begun to sing
the “Marseillaise,” all the men standing bare-headed in the August
sunshine. Then the crowd resigned itself to interlude, grouping itself
in doorways, and along the raised path, and even sitting on the cobbles.
Most of Goblet’s men had slipped away, but a few loafed defiantly at the
corner of the Rue Romaine. And from that moment it was Anatole Durand
who acted as the master of the ceremonies, going briskly to and fro
between the Tiger’s car and the café. At last he appeared with Manon on
his arm. The crowd stirred with a sound like the rustling of leaves when
a wind ruffles the hanging boughs of a wood.
They saw Manon and Durand descend the steps at the end of the raised
path, and walk towards the grey car. Manon stood close to the
running-board of the car, a sturdy little woman with a dignity of her
own, her tears gone, her eyes steady and determined. Durand introduced
her.
“This is Madame Latour.”
Georges Clemenceau removed his hat.
“Madame, Monsieur Durand made you known to me in Amiens. I have been
admiring your house of adventure. What can I do for you?”
They understood each other at once, these two.
“Monsieur, I wish you to judge us like a father, myself, my betrothed,
and those two men there. I shall speak, and they can answer me. I wish
this to be done before all the village, before all those who honour us.
I shall tell the truth—the whole truth.”
Clemenceau’s eyes glimmered under their white eyebrows. He considered
Manon, and the heart and the head of him found her good.
“Work heals all wounds,” he said, and then, with a smile at this little
Frenchwoman, “I am to give you patriarchal justice? What could be
better! And the doctor needs my car.”
He turned to Durand.
“Let us have some chairs placed on that path in front of the house. Now,
madame.”
He left the car, followed by his two officials, and mounted the raised
path, keeping Manon beside him.
“To begin with,” he said, “I must look at this house of yours while
Monsieur Durand is arranging the stage for us. It interests me vastly,
this house.”
He entered the café, pausing to look at the broken door. “A Prussian
trick, that!” His round, white head seemed to sink more grimly between
his shoulders. Manon had to show him the whole house from cellar to
roof, and to give him an account of how they had lived through that
adventurous spring. His eyes twinkled, he noticed everything; his
interest in all the human details of the house was simple and intense.
Stubbornness and courage appealed to him, and there was courage in every
corner of this little provincial home. He saw in it life, inevitable yet
miraculous, pushing its way through the ruins. It was a poem in timber
and iron, an emotion, a part of the heart of France.
At the foot of the stairs he turned and looked up at Manon.
“He has done well—this man of yours. I will see him presently.”
Then he went out into the sunlight and faced the crowd. Five chairs had
been set in a row along the raised path, and Georges Clemenceau took the
centre chair. On his right sat Lefèbre; on his left Anatole Durand.
Manon had the chair next to Durand, Philipon the one on the extreme
right. Clemenceau nodded to Durand. Bibi and Ledoux were pushed forward
into the open space below the path, and the crowd closed round them.
There was silence.