Читать книгу The House of Adventure - Warwick Deeping - Страница 12

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Brent’s day had begun with Manon’s tears, and those tears of hers and the incident of the untouched treasure had produced in both of them an atmosphere of emotional candour. Brent’s confession had grown out of the emotion that the misfortunes of Manon Latour had roused in him, and the tale that he had told her made her glimpse him as a sort of lost child, a man who was better than his past. She believed that he had told her the truth. His plan to begin life over again was so naïve, so whimsical, and so sad, that it moved her pity and made her wonder whether something more significant than chance had not brought Brent to Beaucourt.

She saw that he was making ready to go. He had the restless air of a man who was girding his loins for the road and preparing to shoulder his bag. She felt that he was sad over it, and that he was not so greatly in love with the vagabond life of which he spoke so lightly. She thought that Brent had neither the eyes nor the mouth of a wanderer. She could fancy him loving a corner by the fire, a bit of garden to dig in, the smell of a stable, a glass of wine on a summer evening, someone to whom he could talk, someone who did not listen to him because he was a stranger. She did not forget the corner he had made for himself in the cellar. A man who collects cups and plates and lays a store of food has not the heart of an Ishmaelite.

The meal was over and they were sitting there in silence, very conscious of each other and of the elemental and simple needs that had made comrades of them for an hour. Brent was filling his pipe. He looked vaguely dejected, and she noticed this all the more because he was making a business of trading in cheerfulness. Brent was a bad salesman.

Manon pulled out a gold watch, a watch that she wore under her blouse like a locket.

“Eleven o’clock!”

Brent straightened with uneasy self-consciousness; he felt that he ought to be on the road. Manon had put her watch back, and she appeared to have forgotten Brent—though she was thinking of him all the while with a shrewdness that considered everything. If Manon had a heart, she also had a head.

“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I shall stay here to-night.”

“The cellar is quite dry.”

“That long walk frightens me. It is seventeen kilomètres to Ste. Claire.”

“Too far,” said Brent with grim cheerfulness; “you will be quite comfortable here. Those blankets should be dry—and I’ll cut you some more wood before I go.”

She ignored those last words of his, and stood up, pushing back the box on which she had been sitting.

“I want to look again at all my little property. Will you come with me?”

Brent glanced at her in surprise.

“Of course.”

He rose and stood waiting while she took her cloak from the nail and flung it over her shoulders. And suddenly he saw her as a lonely little figure, a woman left sitting alone in this ruined house, and the man in him rebelled. He pictured her helplessness, the impossible struggle she would be carrying on against Nature, and perhaps against men. He understood that life in Beaucourt would be very primitive, and it was possible that it might be cruel. There were all the elements of a savage struggle for existence among these rubbish heaps that had been houses.

“I am ready.”

She gave him a flicker of her brown eyes, eyes that were on the verge of tears. He saw her bite her lower lip, and stiffen her shoulders as they went out into the street and stood there together looking up at the red shell of the house. A little furrow of pain, pain that was being fought and suppressed, showed on Manon’s forehead.

“Ma pauvre petite maison!”

Brent knew now that he wanted to stay in Beaucourt, that there was work here, work fit for a man’s hands.

“The walls are good,” he said; “they will stand.”

“But what can I do with bare walls, mon ami?”

She turned and walked into the yard, passing between the stone pillars that had lost their gates. The yard was full of the cosmopolitan rubbish that war creates, the elements of a civilized home reduced to one common scrap-heap. The stable had lost its roof. The little barn and the cow-house were mere timber frames from which the tiles and the plaster had fallen. Manon stood and looked at it all, and her mouth quivered.

“You see,” she said with a helpless gesture of the hands; “what is a woman to do?”

They passed on into the garden, and the garden did not despair. It had one great wound, a huge shell-hole in its centre, a pit into which the Germans had pitched their refuse, but an hour or two’s work with a spade would heal all that. The two holes in the stone wall needed stopping, and the espaliers cried out for the pruning knife, but as for the weeds, well they would make green manure. Manon and Paul wandered down into the orchard, climbing through the shell-hole in the wall, and here too Nature had a smile of promise, a promise of green growth that nothing could hinder or dismay.

Manon saw Beckett’s grave and glanced at Brent.

“Yes,—I lie there,” he said; “queer, isn’t it?”

“Was he a good man—your comrade?”

“He was a better man as a soldier than I was. That’s all I care to remember.”

She turned back into the garden, and her heart failed her as she looked at the roofless house. There had been an arbour in the garden at the end of the little avenue of pollarded limes, and Manon’s memories led her there. The iron frame was unbroken, rambled over by a hardy vine and some climbing roses,—a round iron table standing in the centre, with a semi-circular green bench at the back of it. People had forgotten to break up the wooden bench for firewood.

Manon sat down, and looked up at Brent, who was knocking the bowl of his pipe against the edge of the iron table. His face was serious—overshadowed.

“Mon ami,” she said suddenly, “I think that I am ruined.”

Brent glanced at her, and her eyes hurt him. He sat down on an end of the bench.

“I can understand,” he said; “it’s—it’s damnable.”

She began to talk with an air of pathetic candour.

“You see—my life lies here; the place is part of my heart. I have the blood of peasants in me, and all the time I think of the past. This morning I did not know what I should find here; I had such hopes, such an excitement of tenderness. And look at the poor place!”

She seemed to be touching something with gentle and caressing hands.

“What can a woman do? I have a little money, but all the others will be too busy to help. I shall not be able to hire labour. And even if my hands were the hands of a man I should not know where or how to begin.”

Brent had the stem of his empty pipe gripped between his teeth. He was staring at the house; and suddenly he turned to Manon.

“I am going to speak out. I shall not hurt you.”

“I am not afraid,” she said simply.

“Do you remember my telling you that I had had a dream? It happened at Peronne, only a few days ago. My dead friend who is over there came and spoke to me—we were here in this garden—but I could not understand what he said. When I woke up I had a feeling that I should come to Beaucourt, that it was my business to come to Beaucourt. And last night as I sat in that cellar of yours, I began to wonder whether some wise spirit had not sent me here. I want work, a new chance, something to make me feel a man. That’s how it happened; just like that.”

“I can believe it,” she said.

He went on, not looking at her, but staring at the ground:

“I told you I wanted to make a fresh start. Why should I go any farther? I have a little money, and one will want but little in Beaucourt to begin with—just food and boots and a little tobacco. Why shouldn’t I stay and rebuild your house?”

She was looking at him with her brown eyes wide open, softly, and with a kind of gentle incredulity.

“Mon ami, it is a beautiful thought; but it is not possible.”

She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten.

“You mean that it is impossible for me to stay here?”

“No, no! But how can you put a roof on my house? Where are the wood and the tiles to come from? Besides——”

He began to smile.

“It could be done.”

“But—you are dreaming?”

“I’m very wide awake,” he said, “and I say that it could be done. You have not seen as much of Beaucourt as I have. There are army huts over there—a little knocked about—but I could get enough timber and corrugated iron out of them to do the job. You see—ten years ago I was building houses with my own hands.”

“Are you serious?”

“I was never more serious in my life.”

Manon leant forward over the table, one hand shading her eyes and a faint flush showing upon her face. The forefinger of her right hand traced crosses and circles on the top of the iron table. She began to speak, hesitated, and fell back into silence. The colour died away from her face; she became very pale, so pale that even her red lips looked blanched. The very intensity of her emotion broke in a storm of fierce sincerity. She turned on Brent and attacked him.

“What is it that you want?”

And Brent did not flinch.

“I have told you. Work—a new chance—a man’s chance.”

She gave a flick of the head.

“Oh, I know men! They do not do things for nothing. Let us have no misunderstanding. I have nothing to give but a little money.”

Brent faced it out as he had faced many a bloody ten minutes. He was a little grim, but very gentle; and all his sympathies were with Manon.

“Now we are down to the foundations,” he said; “you have cleared all the rubbish away. You can hit out at me; it doesn’t hurt—because you are being honest, and I’m not a cad. I don’t want your money. I don’t expect anything. I don’t say that I shouldn’t fall in love with you if I stayed here—but even if I did, it wouldn’t be the sort of love that makes a man behave like a beast. That’s all I have to say.”

She smiled; her colour returned; her lips and her eyes softened.

“Somehow I believe you,” she said, “though I could not tell you why. And yet—what would you get out of such a life, what would it lead to—for you?”

Brent leant over towards her.

“Manon,” he said, “can you understand a man who has been a failure wanting to do something that is good and unselfish? Can’t you understand him craving for a clean taste of life in his mouth?”

“I can understand it,” she answered.

“Good God—do we always sit down and work out a sum on paper? Aren’t there bits of fine madness in life—glorious things that seem mad to the careful people?”

She held out a hand.

“My friend, forgive me; but I have been a woman to whom many men have made love. The fools do it so easily and they expect a woman to be flattered and to surrender just as one opens a door.”

Brent grasped her hand.

“Then—I may stay?”

“Yes.”

He threw up his head with an air of pride, and a flash of half-boyish exultation.

“That’s great of you—great. You are giving me my chance. Let’s go and look at the house; let’s get at it—at once. I want to take my coat off.”