“Cold blood! You have too nice a sense of honour. Bibi would have burnt you alive, or suffocated you in cold blood, as you call it.”
And then her eyes softened.
“Yes, it is like you to be generous; but this madness of Bibi’s puts me in a different temper. I am coming to live in Beaucourt.”
“But Manon!”
“You can argue for ever and ever, but I am coming. I have a sense of honour, mon ami. And as for worrying about what old women might say to me, nom d’un chien! but they can go to the devil. I stand by my man.”
XXIV
At seven o’clock on a misty March morning Etienne Castener brought his horse out of the stable and harnessed him to the big blue cart. The two women were busy in Manon’s cottage, and a little yellow dog, bought by Manon the night before, and tied by a piece of string to a leg of the table, kept running round and round until he had wound himself so close to the table leg that any further circumlocutions did not seem worth while. A wooden packing-case, two yellow trunks, a table, an arm-chair, a cupboard, the frame of a wooden bed, a mattress, a hamper of vegetables, and a basket of food had been placed outside the cottage to be loaded to the cart. Manon had been able to save a little furniture before the Germans had entered Beaucourt, and it had been stored in Marie Castener’s grenier.
The blue cart crunched out of the muddy yard into the road, and drew up outside the cottage. A few neighbours had collected to watch the departure; one or two of them brought presents, a few apples, a bag of potatoes, a string of onions. Manon was popular.
Among them was Mère Vitry, a refugee, whose picture of the Sacré Cœur Manon had rescued from the cottage in the Rue Romaine. There were quite a number of refugees in the neighbouring villages; Anatole Durand had a list of the names, and he had visited them all and persuaded them to remain in the villages for another week. Within ten days he hoped to have a supply of food in Beaucourt. “Without food, my friends, we can do nothing.”
Etienne began to load the cart, his mother helping him with hands and tongue. She was very strong and she would not allow Manon to do any more work. “You keep your strength for the other end, my dear. There will be plenty to do in Beaucourt.” So Manon stood and watched, holding the yellow dog by the string, and Mère Vitry stood beside Manon and looked at her as though she were a new Jeanne d’Arc. Mère Vitry had a face like a wrinkled brown boot, with buttons for eyes. Her black skirt had a great plum-coloured patch where her bony old knees had worn the cloth thin.