Paul smiled. He pretended to have picked some of the pith out of the man’s harangue.
“You talk good, monsieur. I tink I be ver’ happee here.”
“Course you’ll be happy,” said the soldier almost fiercely; “it’s inside a chap, ain’t it? ’Course there’s other things that count. So long as a chap don’t keep spittin’ down his own well! Bein’ happy is like keepin’ yer buttons polished. It’s a ’abit.”
Brent could have quoted an occasion when the corporal’s buttons were distinctly dingy, but he refrained. Mark Tapley might have turned into an average, decent, grumbling Englishman had he been stuck down at Harlech Dump.
“ ’Ere, bloke,” said the corporal before leaving; “what’s wrong with you having a little more paint and canvas for the ’appy ’ome. I shall be gone to-morrer. And you could do with it.”
Paul fell. He had a passion for paint, and he reckoned that the British Public still owed him money.
“Vous êtes très agréable, monsieur.”
“You come along back with me. I ain’t ’ad an eighteen pounder shell in my chicken-’ouse. You ’ave.”
XXXII
Over the great wilderness the cuckoo was calling, and the blackbirds sang deep-throated in the orchards. Cowslip time had come and gone; a richer season followed after, with all that wild world rushing into leaf, covering all ugliness with a film of beauty. The old orchards were white in the narrow valley where the stream ran through deep green ways; the trees were snow-trees—rose-edged—floating between the mystery of the woods and upon the blue distance of the horizon. Grass and weeds were springing up everywhere in the streets, in the ruins themselves, threading even the rubbish through with emerald wire. There were blue-bells in the Bois du Renard above the château, and masses of yellow broom waving on the uplands.