“This is a moment,” said he, “for every misunderstanding between loyal French hearts to be cleared up. We are now brothers in the defence of our beloved country. Mon brave ami Bigourdin, donne-moi ta main.”
Bigourdin sprang up,—in the public street—but what did that matter?—and cried: “Mon vieux Viriot,” and the two men embraced and kissed each other, and every one, much affected, cried “Bravo! Bravo!” And then Bigourdin, reaching over the marble tables, took young Lucien Viriot’s hands and embraced him and shook him by the shoulders, and cried: “Here is a cuirassier who is going to cut through the Germans like bladders of lard!”
It was a memorable reconciliation.
Fortinbras arrived late at night, probably by the last regular train-services; for on the next day and for many days afterwards there were wild hurry and crowds and confusion on roads and railways all through France.
Into the town poured all the men of the surrounding villages, and the streets were filled with them and their wives and mothers and children, and strange officers in motor-cars whirled through the Rue de Périgueux. Bands of young men falling into the well-remembered step marched along the quays to the station singing the Marseillaise, and women stood at their doorsteps blowing them kisses as they passed. And at the station the great military trains adorned with branches of trees and flowers, steamed away, a massed line of white faces and waving arms; and old men and women young and old waved handkerchiefs until the train disappeared, and then turned away weeping bitterly. Martin, Fortinbras and Bigourdin went to many a train to see off the flower of the youth of the little town. Lucien Viriot went gallantly. “A good war horse suits me better than an office-stool,” he laughed. And Joseph, sloughing for ever Martin’s shiny black raiment, went off too; and the younger waiters of the Café de l’Univers, and Beuzot, the young professor at the Ecole Normale, and the son of the adjoint, and le petit Maurin, who helped his mother at her Débit de Tabac. Many a familiar face was carried away from Brantôme towards some unknown battle-line and the thunder and the slaughter—a familiar face which Brantôme was never to see again. And after a day or two the town seemed futile, like a ball-room from which the last dancers had gone.
Grave was the evening côterie at the Café de l’Univers. The rumour had gone through France that England more than hesitated. Fortinbras magnificently defended England’s honour. He had been very quiet at home, tenderly shy and wistful with Félise, unsuggestive of paths to happiness with Martin; his attitude towards intimate life one of gentle melancholy. He had told Martin that he had retired from business as Marchand de Bonheur. He had lost the trick of it. At Bigourdin’s urgency he had purchased an annuity which sufficed his modest and philosophic needs. No longer having the fierce incentive to gain the hard-earned five-franc piece, no longer involved in a scheme of things harmonious with an irregular profession, he was like the singer deprived of the gift of song, the telepathist stricken with inhibitory impotence. For all his odd learning, for all his garnered knowledge of the human heart, and for all his queer heroic struggle, he stood before his own soul an irremediable failure. So an older and almost a broken Fortinbras had taken up his quarters at the Hôtel des Grottes. But stimulated by the talk of war, he became once more the orator and the seer. He held a brief for England and his passionate sincerity imposed itself on his hearers.
“Thank God!” said he afterwards, “I was right.”
But in the meanwhile, Martin, strung in every fibre to high pitch by what he had heard, by what he had seen and by what he had felt, knew that just as it was ordained that he should come to Brantôme, so it was ordained that he should not stay.
“You talk eloquently and with conviction, Monsieur,” said the Mayor to Fortinbras—there were a dozen in the familiar café corner, tense and eager-eyed, and Monsieur Cazensac, the Gascon proprietor, stood by—“but what proofs have you given us of England’s co-operation?”
Martin, with a thrill through his body, said in a loud voice: