XL
The house was finished, or as good as finished, and then something happened to Paul Brent.
He had been like a child absorbed in a game, building castles on the sands with a playmate to help him, conscious of the sea and the sky as a spacious blueness; of the schoolroom and the copy-book he had thought but little. The house was finished. There was a pause. He stood up, feeling a sudden sense of fateful melancholy spreading across the sands. He seemed to hear voices. He looked into the eyes of his playmate—and awoke.
It had been raining, but the evening sky had cleared when Manon went out to search for her man and found him sitting on the bank of the stream with his back against a poplar tree, and his feet close to the water. He did not hear her footsteps, and she stood still a moment, looking at him.
He appeared to be watching the water, yet she imagined that he did not see it, that he was not aware of its movement. He looked infinitely sad. She had a curious impression of him as having been removed to a great distance from her; and yet never had he seemed so near.
“Chéri,” she said softly, guessing that the panic moment had come, and that her man was awake.
Paul turned his head very slowly, as though it was not easy for him to meet her eyes.
“Hallo! Come and sit down.”
She sat down close to him.
“Well, you will tell me,” she said, “of what you are thinking?”
He hesitated, his hands resting rather helplessly on his knees.
“I was thinking what a mess I had made of things.”
She had known that this awakening must come; this pain of the conscience. She had foreseen it, and she was prepared; she was there at his side.
“You are thinking of our marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Her voice was very soft and curiously tranquil. She did not attempt to caress him, or even to touch him with her hands. She knew that it would hurt, and that there were moments when this man had the soul of a fanatic.
“What have I been doing all these months?”
He appeared to ask himself the question, and she answered it.
“Making me very happy. And now, suddenly, the game is over. We were like children. And now, you wish to tell the truth.”
He raised his eyes and looked at her with a kind of astonished awe.
“How did you know?”
She touched his sleeve with the tip of one forefinger.
“How? Why—was it not inevitable? It was bound to happen to you; I knew that when I came to realize the sort of man you are. Well, I am quite ready. You may tell me the truth. We will go and see Monsieur Lefèbre.”
He rested his chin on his hands and stared at the water.
“It’s amazing,” he said.
“What is, chéri?”
“Your—your——”
“Calmness?”
“Yes, that. And your generosity, and the way you understand.”
She gave a little, touching laugh.
“To get married—in France—one has to exercise much common-sense. People ask questions, demand papers. Of course there were moments—quite long ago—when I was not sure whether you would ever want to tell the truth. And—of course—a woman——”
He looked at her with a quick, brave deepening of the eyes.
“Manon—you mean? What would you have done——?”
She stared at the water, quite still, her lips pressed firmly together.
“I don’t know,” she said presently; “do not ask me to tell you.”
Paul Brent was much moved. He had been in such a confusion of remorse, self-accusation, loneliness and pain, that he had been capable of obeying any rash impulse that raised a cry of retrocession. For the moment the only possible future for him had seemed exile from Beaucourt. He would have to shoulder his knapsack and disappear. And then Manon had come to him, calm, practical and tender. She seemed to have touched him with a cool and soothing hand. There was nothing that he could not say to her or she to him.
“How you help a man,” he said.
She moved close to him and into the hollow of his arm, and they sat there under the poplar while the dusk came down, and the water grew dark and mysterious.
“You thought of running away, chéri?”
“Yes.”
“How much more cruel that would have been to me! What would people have said, and how humiliated I should have felt. I would rather you told the truth.”
“You are not afraid of it?”
“No.”
He turned her face to his and kissed her.
“Little woman, it seems the only way out. Life’s so queer. When I began this adventure and started that harmless lie, I never thought that it would end like this. I shall have to clean the slate again, and that means England and more trouble. Still, there it is.”
“But you are doing it for me.”
“And for myself, too. Let’s be honest.”
She snuggled close.
“Chéri,” she said, “they cannot do anything very terrible to you, can they?”
Brent looked at the dark water. There was a slight rustling of the leaves of the poplar.
“I suppose I’m a deserter, but desertion when a fellow is due to be demobilized isn’t very serious. Then, I impersonated another man, though Beckett wasn’t hurt by it. He was a lone man. And then, of course, I have upset the records and returns; that’s about the worst crime you can commit in the army.”
He laughed.
“You see, I’m dead. They may refuse to let me come to life again. And the official letters that will be written—and the fuss——!”
She laughed with him—glad of this happier mood.
“Why, after all, chéri, it is only a great joke. You have done nobody any harm, and think of how you have helped us in Beaucourt. We shall have good friends here. They, too, will see the joke, this great human adventure. No one will bear you any malice.”
“There is Bibi,” he said.
“What can Bibi do?”
She sent him to bed comforted and utterly in love with her loyalty and her generous common-sense. She was a little woman whose sturdiness helped a man—for most men are little more than big children, and the woman who loves a man is also his mother. Manon refused to utter tragic cries and to dissolve into passionate and romantic misery. Her capable hands pulled the knot to pieces. She had faith in her common-sense.
“We will tell the truth,” she said, “and look happy over it. A smile goes such a long way. If you sneak about looking miserable, the world invents scandals to account for your looks. It may be that you will have to go to England, chéri, but I shall trust you to come back.”
She took the whole affair in hand, for women are more courageous than men. Anatole Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre should be told, but they went first to Monsieur Lefèbre. It was after supper and before dusk when they walked up to the church and found Monsieur Lefèbre repairing the floor of the pulpit. Through the broken west window of the church the sky showed all yellow, and the light was on Manon’s face as she stood by the pulpit steps.
“We have come to confess,” she said, “and to ask for your advice.”
Lefèbre looked at them both—Manon honest and sturdy—Paul a little shy and obscured. He had grown fond of these two, and his sympathies were alarmed.
“What is it, children?” he asked.
“We wish to be married,” said Manon, “but we cannot be married until we have told the truth.”
Monsieur Lefèbre took them into the sacristy, which was also his kitchen, bedroom and salon. He gave Manon and Paul the two chairs, and sat on the box-bed that had been brought from one of the huts. His serious face troubled Paul Brent.
“Now what is the difficulty?”
His dark, jocund eyes looked straight at Paul.
“I had better begin from the beginning, monsieur. It is all my fault.”
“No, I am just as guilty as he is,” said Manon.
Monsieur Lefèbre looked pained. He had certainly been guilty of favouritism in his spiritual attitude towards these two, and here they were confessing some secret sin.
“Let Paul speak——”
But Manon read his face.
“Yes, monsieur, but I wish you to understand that nothing has ever happened between us. He has been more honourable and gentle to me than any man I could have dreamed of. He is a good man, from heart to head.”
She gave Paul a very wonderful look.
“Now, tell Monsieur Lefèbre everything.”
And Paul told him, beginning with his life before the war, and then linking it to that March morning when he had been tempted to lose his old self in Beckett’s death. He watched Monsieur Lefèbre’s face as he made his confession, as though the mirror of this man’s humanity would show him the very judgment of God. Lefèbre sat with his head a little forward, his face very grave and somewhat sad. He had glanced up quickly when Paul had confessed that he was English, but after that he kept his eyes fixed on the table in front of him. The sacristy began to grow dim, and Lefèbre’s face grew dim with it. A feeling of solemnity seemed to fill the place, with its rude, home-made furniture, and its air of austerity. Lefèbre listened and said nothing. He was like some sombre figure in a sanctuary, obscure, enigmatical, waiting to give judgment.
There was a moment when Brent faltered, obsessed by a sudden sense of loneliness. His left arm and hand were resting on the table. He felt something touch his fingers. His hand closed on Manon’s.
His heart seemed to take courage, and the obscure figure of Lefèbre ceased to be terrible.
The man on the bed began to ask him abrupt questions.
“You are a widower?”
“Yes.”
“And this man—whose name you took—he had no wife, mother, or children?”
“No, monsieur; he was one of those men who wander about the world and settle nowhere.”
“And when you came to Beaucourt, you had no idea that it would end like this?”
“No, monsieur, I was so happy working here for Manon that it was not till the place was nearly finished——”
And then, quite suddenly, Monsieur Lefèbre astonished them both. He began to laugh, the generous, rolling laughter of a big, human creature who asks of God that life shall not be mean.
“You children!” he said. “You children!”
He got up, waving his arms like benedictory wings.
“Where is my candle? And the matches. Let us have light here. God be thanked that I am no bigot. Moreover, I thank you two children for coming to me.”
He struck a light and lit the candle that was stuck on the top of an old tin, and they saw that his eyes were all ashine, and his rosy face happy.
“But you gave me a fright, you two. Monsieur Paul, masquerading is the very devil!”
He shook a forefinger at Brent.
“So you will tell the truth.”
“Monsieur,” said Paul, “there is one woman whom a liar could not marry——”
“Chéri, you are not a liar!”
She jumped up and kissed him, and Monsieur Lefèbre raised his hands over them.
“Now, we must be serious. Let us see what we can make of this tangle. What is your idea, Paul?”
“I shall have to surrender myself as a deserter, monsieur. I suppose I shall be sent to England. If they could be persuaded to look at it as you have done——”
“Well, that is not impossible. The great thing is not to be in a hurry. One moment——”
He pulled a note-book towards him, opened it, and read a few notes that were neatly written at the top of one page. He reflected, smiling.
“May I tell Monsieur Durand?”
“We were going to tell him,” said Manon.
“Good. The thing is for some of us to interest somebody else in the affair, and for all of us to give Paul such a character that your English authorities will see this sin of his with our eyes. Sunday, yes, Sunday. On Sunday Monsieur Durand and I go to Amiens.”
He closed the note-book, and smiled at them both.
“Let us keep our mouths closed for a week. It is possible that I may find a way to interest somebody in our Englishman. It is possible that we ourselves will approach the English authorities. Then it will not be as though you went to them as a deserter, friendless, unspoken for——”
He sent them away much happier than they had come to him, which is the best thing that can be said of a man’s religion, and when they had gone he blew out his candle and went up to the château to see Anatole Durand.
The Place de l’Eglise lay in darkness, but there was a light in the post-mistress’s hut, and in passing it Paul and Manon nearly ran against big Philipon, who had come to see if Monsieur Talmas had brought him any letters. Philipon recognized them and stopped.
“Hallo, you two! Good evening, madame.”
Then he tapped Brent on the chest with a friendly forefinger.
“Have you left anybody in charge over there?”
“No.”
“I should get back home. Do you hear?”
They listened, and heard in the distance the sound of men singing a rowdy song.
Philipon nodded.
“A little zig-zag and parading the village! It is time we did something with that buvette of Louis Blanc’s. Hold on; I’ll walk back with you.”
He poked his black head into the post-office.
“Any letters, madame?”
“No, monsieur.”
“What is that boy of mine doing in Germany?”
He took Paul’s arm and the three of them entered the Rue de Picardie. Philipon was an affectionate animal in spite of his frown and his rumbling voice, and Brent had helped him in the rebuilding of his house. His fatherliness stretched out a protective arm over these two. It is the big men who are most warm-hearted and sentimental, and Philipon was always saying to his wife, “Look at those two at the café! What a romance! It does one’s heart good.”
They walked along between the queer shapes and little twinkling lights of Beaucourt, with the stars shining overhead, and Philipon’s big feet falling emphatically on the cobbles. Here and there men and women were sitting in the open doorways. They exchanged remarks with Philipon, whose familiar bulk and swing of the legs were known to all.
“Bibi’s nightingales are singing.”
“It is time we did something with that drinking shop.”
“I hear they are sending us two gendarmes.”
“Gendarmes! We can manage our own affairs. You wait. We are ready to give those fellows a lesson.”
The singing grew louder as they neared the end of the Rue de Picardie, and it appeared that Monsieur Goblet’s young men were coming down the Rue Romaine. Manon was holding to Paul’s arm. She was not frightened, but she was serious.
“We could do so well without them,” she said.
Philipon grunted.
“Don’t worry, madame. People who make the most noise are always the biggest cowards.”
When they reached the end of the garden wall Paul lifted Manon up on the raised path, but he and Philipon kept to the road. About a dozen “roughs,” with arms linked together, had swung round the corner out of the Rue Romaine and were dancing the can-can in the roadway below the café. They were rowdy and derisive, shouting and kicking up their heels in front of the house.
“Hallo—hallo!”
“Profiteers! Stuck-up pigs!”
“Let’s spoil the paint for them.”
“Shut up. They’re in bed. You are interfering with the embrace.”
“You there, is she nice to cuddle?”
“When is the baby expected?”
They roared with laughter, and then Philipon loomed up like a big ship in the starlight.
“Allez! Keep your snouts out of our village. We have sticks ready.”
The choir oscillated, swayed, and seemed inclined to wind itself in a spiral about the smith, but when Philipon rapped the stone wall of the path with the iron bar that he had been carrying these rowdies thought it wiser to laugh.
“Hallo, there goes the dinner-gong.”
“All right, sergeant-major.”
“And there is madame, too!”
“Bon soir, madame; we thought you were in bed. We came to serenade you!”
The human chain gave a wriggle towards the Rue de Picardie, but Philipon put himself in the way.
“You can go back by the other road. Beaucourt is bored with you.”
They chaffed him, but they took his advice. Manon had unlocked the door. She turned and thanked Philipon.
“Come in and drink a glass of wine.”
“Pardon, but I go to bed early in order to get up early. I think those lads are all wind. Good-night.”
“Good-night, monsieur, and thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” said the smith.
Manon was lighting the lamp in the kitchen when Brent came and put his arm round her.
“I wish we could blow Bibi and that crowd off the face of the earth. I don’t like the idea of leaving you here with those fellows about.”