XLIV
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.