“They think it is going to be a little heaven,” was Bibi’s reflection as he sludged back through the dirty yard to drink his morning coffee.
At Beaucourt Paul Brent had spent a very peaceful night, lying safely behind a good door and barricaded windows. He was up at dawn, and washing with confident publicity in the open street, his head full of the thoughts of the coming of Manon. He had become a little less self-conscious in his attitude towards Manon, less ready to consider the possible prudery of a repopulated Beaucourt, less afraid of the activities of Louis Blanc. And romance joined him in the misty street, and walked back with him over the grey cobbles and into the house of Manon Latour. Paul reintroduced sentiment into the house. It is said, perhaps with truth, that the French are a hard-headed and unromantic nation, killers of birds, teaching even the sex-bird to live in a very practical and ungilded cage, but Paul Brent opened the door of the cage. His love sang in the open, welcoming its mate.
He played at being housewife, turning everything out of the cellar where Manon was to sleep, brushing the brick floor, laying out the new blankets she had bought the previous day, and hanging up a little cracked old mirror he had found in one of the houses. The cellar had all the best of the furniture, a couple of chairs, an improvised wash-hand stand, a cupboard, a neat little wooden platform beside the bed for the reception of Manon’s feet when she emerged in the morning. There was a jug and basin, a tin bath, a table beside the bed to hold her candlestick.
Having sentimentalized and prepared the cellar, Paul set to work in the kitchen. He had borrowed a rather battered cupboard-dresser from the école, and on this he arranged all the crockery, plates neatly paraded on the shelves, coffee-pot, cups and glasses clean and polished. The commissariat occupied the cupboard. He arranged a shelf over the stove for the pots and pans. His own bed he pushed away into the far corner, with a couple of ammunition boxes underneath it to hold his few belongings and his clothes. The rest of the furniture included a table, the old arm-chair, a couple of plain chairs, with a second table under the window.
Paul stood and looked round the room. It pleased him; it had the air of a room that was lived in, and yet something was lacking. Everything was in order, even to the box of wood by the stove and a glazed crock full of water. A touch of colour was needed, that little live flame of sentiment, that unpractical something that appeals to the heart. A man does not live by bread alone, nor is love satisfied with pots and pans. Brent went out and searched, and down by the stream he found what he needed, a sallow with its soft yellow “palm” blossoms shining in the thin, March sunlight.
He gathered a bunch of palm, chose a blue and white jug he had found in someone’s back garden, filled it with water, and arranged his bit of “life.” The jug took up its vigil on the table by the window. The sunlight struck a note of colour on the yellow blossoms. Brent stood and smiled. He felt, somehow, that the room was complete.
About eleven o’clock the blue cart turned the corner of the Rue Romaine with Manon and her yellow dog perched in front of the load of baggage. Paul was fixing a window-frame in the window of one of the ground-floor rooms, and he came forward hammer in hand. The yellow dog stood up on Manon’s lap and barked at him.
“Be quiet, silly.”
Manon handed the yellow dog to Etienne and climbed down. She was in a very happy mood, a little excited and exultant.
“Paul, this is Monsieur Etienne Castener.”