“The example will pay for it. I suppose that fellow—Louis Blanc—knows of these buildings?”
“Yes.”
“Confound him!” said Durand.
She left him wandering among the ruined cottages, and returned to the café and to Paul. Manon’s ideas had been enlarged by the enthusiasms of old Durand, for he was a man who had remained young, whose brain was vital and alert. Age was horrible to Manon, even though she pitied it, age with its stupidly staring old face, its eternal questions, its eternal condemnation of anything new. She found herself picturing the Beaucourt of the future. What would it be like?—a little world of old men and old women, grumblers, backbiters, grudging folk who could never forgive youth for being young? The figures of Paul, Bibi and old Durand seemed to stand in the foreground of the new Beaucourt. She was more than a little afraid of Paul. How would Beaucourt accept him? Had the war made people broader-minded, more generous, more ready to say “This man has done good things; let us judge him by his works”?
Paul had shifted his ladder to the other side of the house, for he had completed the roofing of the half next the street. Already this house of hers was ceasing to look an empty shell; it had a solidity, an overspreading shadow. Something thrilled in her. She looked up at the man, her man with his brown arms and sturdy back, and a strange new tenderness awoke in her heart. She would stand by him; she would place herself resolutely between him and the past. What did the past matter? It was the future, the brave looking forward, and the light in the eyes, the hands strong for the labour that was to be. These were the things that mattered.
“Paul.”
She called him, and her voice had a new softness, a note that was for his ears alone. He turned and looked down at her, this dark-haired little woman in her black blouse and black and white check skirt. The woman in her and the indefinable perfume of her womanhood seemed to rise to him like the scent of the spring.
“Come down,” she said; “I wish to talk.”
Brent smiled, hesitating.
“I want this finished before the wind gets up.”