XXXIX
Brent had been at work in the château, putting one of the “wings” in repair against the winter, when that yellow English touring-car pulled up outside the Café de la Victoire. It was a big car, and it contained, besides the chauffeur, a manufacturer from the Midlands, his family, and its appendages.
They were all gathered on the footpath, a big red man in a grey flannel suit, three women rather elaborately dressed, a “flapper” with red hair, and a small boy with eyes like blue marbles. The women had white, puffy faces. They stared at everything, Manon, the house, the resurrected ruins, Paul Brent, the scattering of children, as though they were staring at things in a shop-window. There was a quite extraordinary lack of animation or intelligence about them. They looked overfed, replete, satiated.
The man was trying to explain that they wanted five bedrooms and late dinner. And was there a lock-up garage for the car?
“Mais, non, monsieur, c’est impossible.”
She looked relieved when Paul joined them.
“My fiancé speaks a little English.”
They all looked at Brent as though he were some sort of savage. He heard one of the women remark that it was probable that the beds would be dirty, and that the agent at Amiens had told them a lot of lies.
Brent was annoyed. He spoke to the man in English.
“We can give you a simple meal and two bedrooms. As you see, we are very busy here.”
The small boy and the flapper giggled.
“We’ll have to sleep in the car, pa.”
“But it’s absurd,” said the fattest of the three women, “We were told at Amiens that we could put up here. Of course, if these French people don’t want us or our money——”
They held a family council on Manon’s doorstep, and the fact emerged that two of the women had made up their minds that they wanted to spend the night in a devastated village. It would make ornamental conversation at home. The man was neutral; he had never been in France before, and though of military age, had functioned very successfully on the home front. The chauffeur, an ex-soldier, listened with an air of interested cynicism to the argument.
“All right,” said the Midlander; “you give us three rooms and we can manage.”
Paul translated the proposal to Manon.
“But you would have to turn out.”
“I could sleep in the cellar for a night. Leave it to me. They shall pay through the nose.”
He turned to the man.
“Fifty francs each for the night. That will be three hundred and fifty francs.”
The white, flaccid faces of the women showed a first flicker of animation.
“Fifty francs each!”
“But it’s outrageous! We paid half that at Amiens for the whole day.”
“But think of the rate of exchange,” said Brent; “and this is not Amiens.”
The man looked uncomfortable. He was not so hard as his satiated women—and France had filled him with vague qualms.
“Harriet, you know, these people have suffered a lot.”
His wife looked at him with oblique contempt.
“Oh—well—if you feel like throwing money about! I suppose wine will be included.”
“Wine is an extra, madame.”
Her eyes said, “Robber, and after all we English have done for you!”—but her man made up his mind not to argue. Somehow Beaucourt was too big for him.
“All right. Show us the rooms.”
Brent surrendered the party to Manon, and piloted the chauffeur and the yellow car into the yard. As he switched off the engine, the ex-Tommy gave Paul a brotherly grin.
“You stuck ’em all right. Good biz.”
It was an unfortunate coincidence, but the unpleasant impression stamped upon the consciousness of Beaucourt by these New English reacted upon the popularity of the Café de la Victoire. It was the stupidity of these people, their spiritual obtuseness, that offended the French. The whole family went out to explore the village as though Beaucourt were the “White City.” They had paid their entrance money, and they had come to stare. There was something insolent in their largeness, and in the largeness of the car. Their very clothes were offensive in Beaucourt. They strolled, they talked in loud voices, they pointed. They were amused by the wrong things, and untouched by wounds that should have made them ashamed. There were moments when the man appeared awkward and uncomfortable, and showed a disinclination to loiter. The women were absolutely insensitive. Their super-fatted souls were blind to the sacrilege of certain attitudes. Two of them poked their heads into the interior of Madame Poirel’s cottage. It was one of the side-shows, and they examined it with the eyes of cows. Madame Poirel happened to be sitting in her chair, patching a petticoat. She had lost her two sons in the war.
“What do you wish, mesdames?”
The Englishwomen did not realize they were on sacred ground, standing on the very stone where Madame Poirel’s boys had sat as toddlers. They did not see the room as a place of memories, a dim interior that was almost a shrine. They stared. They made remarks. One of them nodded casually at the Frenchwoman.
Madame Poirel got up and very calmly closed the door.
The explorers were surprised—indignant.
“Well, what manners!”
“It’s quite true what Kate told us. The French hate us.”
“But isn’t it beastly ungrateful of them?”
“My dear, it’s all a question of coal.”
The family moved on. Madame Poupart’s shop amused them immensely. The boy pointed it out with a finger of scorn.
“Ma, look at the rabbit-hutch!”
“Shut up, Fred,” said his father, glimpsing a long and yellow face at the window—the austere face of Madame Poupart.
The women sided with the boy.
“Don’t be so touchy.”
“Aren’t we here to see things?”
“I don’t think the French like it,” said the man.
It did not seem to matter to the women whether the French liked it or not.
The English always visit churches; it seems to be a habit with them, and the Hoskyn family had the unique experience of seeing a French priest, wrapped up in an old sheet, diligently whitewashing the walls of his church. They did not recognize Monsieur Lefèbre as a priest, associating clericalism with an appearance of blackness and physical inactivity. The boy dabbled his fingers in the piscina, and had to be told to take off his cap.
Monsieur Lefèbre was a polite soul, nor was he conscious of any lack of dignity. He turned about and, whitewash brush in hand, gave the Hoskyn family a jocund smile and a slight bow. He was met with obtuse stares.
“The verger—I suppose.”
“There’s nothing to see here, John, and that fellow will be after a tip.”
They sailed out, leaving Monsieur Lefèbre with upraised eyebrows and an expression of amused and irresponsible gaiety.
The family walked along the Rue de Bonnière and discovered Bibi’s buvette. It suggested a chicken-house, and they paused in the road to stare at it, a compliment that was returned by the men who happened to be in the hut. Ledoux, Crapaud and several others crowded to the door. The self-evident contrasts of life provoked an instinctive hostility—and civilization was in the melting-pot.
“Voilà les anglais!”
“They arrived in a big automobile; I saw them. Conspuez les profiteers!”
“Yes, and they are lodging at the Café de la Victoire.”
Bibi pushed his way to the door, feeling the arms and shoulders of the men. Ledoux was speaking with a snarl in his voice.
“Capitalists, look at them! Fat and rich, blood-suckers, tradesmen. We are monkeys in a cage, are we? Get out!”
He shook his fist at the Hoskyn family, and with outraged ideals they moved on.
“These French are savages!”
“Why—we might be Germans!”
The men at the doorway of the buvette continued to discuss the presence of these English in Beaucourt, and Bibi, leaning a hand on the shoulders of Crapaud and Ledoux, turned their passions towards the Café de la Victoire.
“There you are! What did I tell you? These English pay well, and that is all those two at the café care about. They did not build their place for decent working-men, but to make money out of the rich English and Americans who come to stare at our poverty.”
“You have touched it,” said Crapaud; “Bibi goes straight to the heart of things.”
Ledoux stretched out a hand that was like the clawed foot of a bird.
“Capitalists? They sell everything. They ought to be kicked out of Beaucourt.”
“Yes, why don’t we smash the place up?”
Bibi gave a kind of rolling laugh.
“That’s the music. But wait a bit; I am finding out something about those people; I might be blind, but I can see through a wall. Yes, just you wait a bit, my lads, and I may have something surprising to tell you. Then we’ll make a night of it, and send up the balloon.”
If Beaucourt was moved to some resentment against Manon for taking these English into her house, Manon herself soon saw too much of them. She had sent for a girl to help her, and these two Frenchwomen cooked, and made beds, arranged a table for six, and did their best to make the tourists comfortable. About sunset, Paul was at work in the garden when Manon came out to him, a Manon who was wholesomely and humanly angry.
“Mon Dieu, but they are impossible! They have no manners.”
“What has happened, chérie?”
“Happened! Nothing has happened, but everything is wrong. I can understand their grumbling. But they swarm in and behave as though the house belonged to them; they shout down the stairs at me, ‘Femme de chambre, ici, toute de suite!’ They ask for all sorts of impossible things, and the women look at me like angry cows.”
Paul tried to comfort her. He felt rather responsible for these English.
“They have made a lot of money during the war, and they don’t know how to behave. They are leaving to-morrow.”
“Thank God! Paul, are all the English like that?”
“Heavens! no,” he said. “We are very decent folk when we are not too rich. The bother is that people like that are so damnably stupid.”
She snuggled into the hollow of his arm.
“My Paul, I love this place so much. It hurts me to have such people in it.”
“Well, we will have no more. That’s very simple. I like them as little as you do.”
The girl who had come to help Manon appeared suddenly in the garden.
“Oh, madame, o-là-là, ces anglais!”
The Hoskyn family had demanded baths.
“Baths, baths for six! Do they think this is London?”
Brent burst out laughing.
“All right; leave it to me. When do they want the hot water?”
“At ten o’clock, monsieur.”
“Tell them it shall be there.”
Punctually at ten o’clock Paul deposited a tea-cup full of hot water outside each door. He knocked at Mr. Hoskyn’s door. It was the lady who opened it, expecting something in petticoats and not a man. She wore a lace nightcap, and a pink silk dressing-gown.
“What’s this?”
“The water for the bath, madame,” said Paul with complete solemnity; “we shall not charge for it in the bill.”