There were voices in the orchard, the voices of Josephine and her
parents. Madame Lorellard had the look of a woman who had lost something
and knew that she would never find it again. Old Lorellard was laughing.
He loved young people and the exciting and romantic things that happen
when a man is young. André, slouching along with his hands in his
pockets, regarded the family with eyes of amusement. André had seen the
world.
“Listen!” said Claire. “They are coming!”
And then the Lorellard family descended upon Tod. Claire had drawn aside
and was standing with her back to the window, her hands resting on the
sill—a softly radiant Claire, with shy eyes that looked at everything
but Tod. Tod stood squarely in the middle of the kitchen, showing
something of the air of a man ready to receive a deputation,
half-smiling, half-solemn, but wholly proud.
The Lorellards had no thought of being formal. They were warm-hearted
French folk, and they enveloped Tod with the vivacity of the French who
can be gay and intimate without touching a note that is familiarly
vulgar.
“Ah, Monsieur le Colonel!”
“What a charming compliment you pay us!”
“Welcome back to Myonville!”
Tod kissed madame just as he would have kissed his mother; it seemed the
natural and properly human thing to do. Old Lorellard shook hands with
joyous enthusiasm. Josephine was laughing and talking for all of them.
André had looked at Claire, made a grimace, and then gone to shake hands
a second time with Tod.
“But what a surprise, monsieur!”
“And you have come all the way from England?”
“Oh, la la! These soldiers are wonderful men!”
“Where are you staying, monsieur? At Abbeville? But Monsieur’s old room
is at his service.”
“And Claire—Claire——”
But Claire had slipped away, and no one had noticed it save André, who
was sufficiently uninvolved to notice everything. The Lorellard family
looked wisely and humorously puzzled.
“But she was here a moment ago!”
“You were all talking so hard,” said André, “and Claire seems to think
it is quieter in the orchard.”
The family looked at Tod, and Tod found himself faced with a public
declaration.
“My dear friends,” he said, “I must ask your pardon for being an
Englishman. I’m afraid that I have behaved in a rather English way. I
have asked Claire to marry me.”
The family had accepted the position of an audience, and Tod had to go
on.
“I came back to Myonville because, by the English law, I am to-day a
free man. I should have asked Claire to marry me a year ago if I had
been free then. Monsieur Lorellard, as is only right and fair, I have
brought all the necessary documents and proofs with me.”
Old Lorellard nodded, smiled and grunted something that was
indistinguishable.
“I wish for the attendance to-morrow of Monsieur le Maire, a notary and
an interpreter, so that everything can be examined properly.”
Then old Lorellard interrupted him.
“Monsieur, let the formalities wait. We trust you with all our hearts.
Josephine, a bottle of wine.”
Josephine went to the cellar for the wine while madame collected the
proper number of glasses. The three men were fraternising round the
table, the two Frenchmen smoking Tod’s cigarettes, when Josephine
returned with the wine.
Old Lorellard looked round the room.
“But what has happened to Claire?” he asked.
“I will go and find her,” said his daughter.
Josephine was away quite a long time, and the Lorellards and Tod talked
about the war. The Frenchmen still seemed fascinated by it, and by the
epic of justice of those last hundred days. They could not understand it
when Tod tried to explain to them that in England people did not wish to
speak about the war.
“But, monsieur, how is it possible?”
“It is very strange,” said Tod. “I could go on talking about it for ever
and ever. It has taught me so much. But the people at home are bored. It
is said that no magazine will publish a tale that mentions the war. The
people wish to forget.”
Old Lorellard was frowning.
“In France, monsieur, we cannot forget. Perhaps it is that your people
in England have not suffered sufficiently.”
“It may be that,” said Tod, “but I do not understand it. I feel like a
Frenchman. I think that you are much greater than we are, monsieur.”
“A nation that forgets so easily,” said Père Lorellard, “is easily
fooled.”
Tod’s thoughts had followed Claire into the orchard, and he was
beginning to wonder why the two girls were so long in returning, when he
heard footsteps crossing the yard. Josephine reappeared in the doorway.
She ignored the family and made a sign to Tod. Tod followed Josephine
into the yard.
“Claire needs you, monsieur,” she said. “Be very gentle with her.”
“Is she unhappy?”
“It is the reaction, monsieur, the panic that sometimes attacks a woman
when she has felt too happy. You will find her in the orchard.”
Tod went in search of Claire, so manfully sure of his own happiness and
of hers that he wondered what was troubling her. He found her sitting on
the wooden seat under one of the apple trees, quite calm, so calm that
no sign of suffering or of struggle betrayed themselves to Tod. She
looked up at him with her frank, grey eyes, a little pathetically
perhaps, but with a frankness that refused to let her love cloud his
future with the emotions of the moment.
“I asked Josephine to send you to me. I wish to talk to you, Tod.”
He sat down beside her on the seat.
“What is troubling you, ma chérie?” he asked.
She made a little gesture with her right hand, a gesture that was meant
to repulse, to hold the man in him aloof.
“Will you listen to me, please? A little while ago I let myself be
overcome without thinking. It was like a dream, a dream that one has
dreamt so often, suddenly coming true. Here—in the orchard—I awoke; I
began to ask myself questions. Do you understand all I say?”
“Every word,” Tod answered her.
“Let me be quite honest,” and she looked at him for a moment, and then
at the house beyond the trees. “I am a peasant girl, Tod, a
schoolmistress; I am very ignorant of many things. You—you were a
colonel, what in England you call a gentleman; your friends will be
gentlemen, men of affairs. It may be that I shall not be suited to such
a life—your life; that I could not help you as I should wish to help
you. Do you understand?”
Tod’s face was shadowed with an almost sacred tenderness.
“I understand everything,” he said. “I have thought about everything all
these months. And I will answer you, Claire, as it is right that you
should be answered, not by throwing my love at you, dear, but with the
truth, the truth that can be so convincing.”
She drew a deep breath.
“I am listening.”
He leant forward slightly with his elbows on his knees.
“I will tell you some of the things about my life. I am a child of the
people. My father kept a little shop, a shop where he made photographs.
My mother worked, just as you and Josephine work. I loved her very
dearly, Claire; she was the best woman in the world. I, too, have worked
in a shop; I have sold furniture and drugs, and I have helped to let
houses. I was just a boy behind the counter. Then I had a business of my
own, and it failed. Afterwards—the war came. I began the war as a
common soldier; I ended it as a colonel. Now, in England, I have a big
friend who wishes me to work for him; he employs many men; he wishes me
to help him with these men. I have accepted. He knows I am here, and why
I am here, and he has wished me good luck. To me he is like a father.”
Tod paused for a moment, and glanced at Claire. She was still the calm,
courageous little woman, holding aloof for his sake, but Tod saw that
her eyes had softened.
“So you were not a rich man?” she said.
“I have no thought of being rich,” he went on; “there are so many better
things in life than money. I shall get money, because it is necessary,
and because I do not want the woman I love to be worried. I have
ambitions. I want to be big, as a man, like my big friend. I am quite a
simple soul, Claire; the war has made me simple. I want a comrade, a
little comrade, a little woman whom I can take in my arms, a little
woman with clever hands and a warm heart. I want her and a home, dear; I
have never had a real home since I was a child. I do not want my wife to
be a great lady, a woman of fashion, a gad-about, an intellectual. I
want her to be my wife, just that.”
Claire gave a little shiver, a shiver of inward exultation.
“You would let her work for you, Tod, and perhaps—perhaps you would let
her have a child?”
“I should want a child—her child,” said Tod.
She sat looking at the sky, and then she spoke again.
“But your friends?”
“My friends will be friends who work. Life is so much more real with
people who work, people who are interested. You know far more than most
English girls.”
“How?”
“You went to a good school at Tourcoing, did you not? Then you studied
at Lille. You have read more than I have read; you know things that I do
not know. You can cook, sew, make clothes, manage a house.”
And then he laughed.
“But do you not know how charming you are, how all men would love you,
men who are weary of feverish women, women who rush about and think of
nothing but excitement and clothes? You are so quick, so witty, so full
of understanding; so wise, so——”
She, too, was laughing now, laughing tenderly with the lover in him. She
laid a protesting hand on his sleeve.
“I am not such a marvel, Tod; I am a little girl who has taught
children, and I love you—greatly.”
“Ma chérie,” he said, and drew her head on to his shoulder.
They sat there for a while, not speaking, like two children in a wood,
heads touching, hands clasped, breathing in the beauty and the mystery
of it all, the green leaves, the blue sky, the shadows, the patches of
sunlight, each other. It was simplicity, the simplicity of deep and
happy emotion, two lovers in the spring of the year, a man and a woman
without guile.
“My Tod,” she said presently, “I hope you will never be ashamed of me. I
am clever—in my way—and I shall try so hard.”
He turned and kissed her hair.
“You must not talk like that. Doesn’t God know what he has given me? Ma
chérie, I’m so happy.”
She looked at him with eyes that were all light.
“Do you know why I, too, am so happy?”
“Tell me.”
“Because I can trust you, it’s so much to me, this love.”
“And to me,” he answered.
And then a sudden playfulness seized him.
“Mon Dieu—there is the family, those dear people sitting solemnly round
a bottle of wine, and waiting!”
“For us?”
“Of course.”
“Let us go,” she said, jumping up, but still holding his hand, “let us
go and begin life, mon mari.”