Beaucourt came to life with the spring. Wonderful things had happened when that droll, that little wizard of an Anatole Durand had flicked his wand hither and thither. Dust had risen on the roads. A string of lorries had lumbered up the street, and a gang of men had unloaded stores in the green-grey courtyard of the château. The cellars were full of food; the yard itself stacked with timber and iron. On the circle of turf at the end of the avenue of chestnuts stood a white tent with a camp-bed, a chest of drawers, a table, a washing basin, a chair, Anatole Durand’s home. He took his meals at the Café de la Victoire, where Brent’s hands were keeping pace with the buoyant rush of the year.
Men were repairing and cleaning the huts in the field on the road to Rosières, and a temporary camp-kitchen was being improvised. New winches and buckets had been fitted to the wells. A couple of tractors and light waggons had panted over the desert roads, and the tractors were at work, ploughing from dawn till dusk. Great strips of brown soil waited for a catch-crop. Old Anatole went about with his note-book, like a field-marshal or a parish priest, organizing, organizing.
Then came the day when the first batch of refugees returned. They arrived in waggons from Ste. Claire and many other villages, with their few possessions piled up, like a convoy of settlers in the old days travelling west. The carts and waggons collected in the field where the huts stood, and with them came Monsieur Lefèbre, the parish priest. Anatole Durand met them in the field. He and Monsieur Lefèbre kissed each other, the agnostic and the Christian.
There was a hot meal ready, iron coppers full of good stew; Manon was in charge of the hut where meals were to be served. But these peasants sat down on the grass in the open air like pilgrims on a feast day. They laughed and talked. One or two of the women wept a little. They had left the children behind.
Durand and Monsieur Lefèbre sat side by side on the tail of a cart. They talked; they looked straight into each other’s eyes.
“Do you remember, my friend, how we used to disagree?”
The priest smiled. He had jocund black eyes in a red face, and he was a good man, if fat.
“Our text is the same to-day. Go forth and recover the wilderness, and comfort my children.”
“I have a bed in my tent,” said Anatole; “you can use it.”
“That is brotherly of you, but I shall sleep with the men.”