“And we can help, mon ami, we can help. I see it—now—and my heart is happy. Allons! There is courage in what we do.”
The factory was a red brick building on the south of the Rue de Bonnière, where the Rue Romaine joined it. Standing in the valley, its chimney and ziz-zag of walls were not part of Beaucourt as the Café de la Victoire saw it, the Arcadian Beaucourt with none of the grimy sweat of industrialism upon it. Yet the factory was to prove a treasure mine to Paul and Manon. Its glass roofs were shattered, and the machinery a chaos of rusty iron, but lying as it did, well away from the Beaucourt cross-roads, it had suffered less than any other building.
The very first thing that Brent saw in the factory yard was an iron hand-barrow tilted against a wall.
“Hallo! Here’s luck.”
He got hold of the barrow and found that it was sound and strong. A piece of shrapnel had torn a hole in the bottom—just for “drainage” as Brent put it. He was quite exulted over this stroke of luck.
Manon was watching him with a glimmer of light in her eyes. She had begun to like this man with his boy’s moods of seriousness and fun, his moments of shyness and enthusiasm.
“It is a little present from le bon Dieu.”
“For two good children. Now, supposing you take all those buildings over there, while I go through the workshops. It will save time. You know what to look for?”
She repeated the list.
“Lime, sand, a trowel—tools, anything that looks useful.”