  Around the Spanish Square the first sun-awnings had been put up in the night, awnings red and yellow, flapping in the mountain wind. In the shops under the arches, in the market in the centre of the "But have you any eggs?" "No eggs this morning." "Any butter?" "None. There has been none these three days." "A pot of condensed milk?" "Mademoiselle, the train did not bring any." "Must I eat anemones? Give me two bunches." And round the Spanish Square the orange awnings protecting the empty shop-fronts shuddered and flapped, like a gay hat worn unsteadily when the stomach is empty. What was there to do on a last day but look and note, and watch, and take one's leave? The buds against the twig-laced sky were larger than ever. To-morrow—the day after to-morrow … it would be spring in England, too! "Tenez, mademoiselle," said the market woman, "there is a little ounce of butter here that you may have!" The morning passed and on drifted the day, and all was finished, all was done, and love gone, too. And with love gone the less divine but wider world lay open. In the "Silver Lion" the patient girl behind the counter shook her head. "There is no letter for you." "And to-morrow I leave for England." "If a letter comes where shall I send it on?" "Thank you, but there will come no letter now. Good-bye." "Good-bye." It was the afternoon. Now such a tea, a happy, lonely tea—the last, the best, in Charleville! Crossing the road from the "Silver Lion" Fanny bought a round, flat, sandwich cake, and carried it to the house which was her own for one more night, placed it in state upon the biggest of the green and gold porcelain plates, and the anemones in a sugar-bowl beside it. She lit the fire, made tea, and knelt upon the floor to toast her bread. There was a half-conscious hurry in her actions. ("So long as nobody comes!" she whispered. "So long as I am left alone!") she feared the good-byes of the concierge, the threatened inventory of Philippe's mother, a call of state farewell from the billeting lieutenant. When the toast was done and the tea made, some whim led her to change her tunic for a white jersey newly back from the wash, to put on the old dancing shoes of Metz—and not until her hair was carefully brushed to match this gaiety did she draw up the armchair with the broken leg, and prop it steadily beside the tea-table. But— Who was that knocking on the door in the street? One of the Section coming on a message? The brigadier to tell her that she had some last duty still? "Shall I go to the window?" (creeping nearer to it). Then, with a glance back at the tea-table, "No, let them knock!" But how they knocked! Persistent, gentle—could one sit peacefully at tea so called and so besought! She went up to the blue curtains, and standing half-concealed, saw the concierge brooding in the sunlight of her window-sill. "Is nobody there?" said a light voice in the hidden street below, and at that she peered cautiously over the edge of the stonework, and saw a pale young man in grey before the door. She watched him. She watched him gravely, for he had come too late. But tenderly, for she had been in love with him. The concierge raised her two black brows in her expressive face and looked upwards. Her look said: "Why don't you let him in?" Yet Fanny stood inactive, her hands resting on the sun-warmed stone. "Julien is here—is here! And does not know that I go to-morrow!" But she put to-morrow from her, and in the stillness she felt her spirit smiling for pleasure in him. She had mourned him once; she never would again. In her pocket lay the key of the street door, and the curtain-cord, long rotted and useless, dangled at her cheek. With a quick wrench she brought its length tumbling beside her on the sill, then knotted it to the key and let it down into the street. The young man saw it hang before his eyes. "Are you coming in?" said a voice above him. "Tea is ready." "Fanny!" "It has been ready for six weeks." "Only wait—" He was trying the key in the door. "What—still longer?" said the voice. He was gone from the pavement, he had entered her house, he was on her stair—the grey ghost of the soldier! She had a minute's grace. Slipping her hand into the cupboard she drew out another cup and saucer, and laid the table for two. There was his face—his hands—at her door! But what a foreign grey body! "Come in, Ghost!" she said, and held out her hands—for now she cared at least for "he who cared"—lest that, too, be lost! Does a ghost kiss? Yes, sometimes. Sometimes they are ghosts who kiss. "Oh, Fanny!" Then, with a quick glance at the table, "You are expecting someone?" "You. How late you come to tea with me!" "But I—You didn't know." "I waited tea for you," she said, and turning to a calendar upon a wooden wheel, she rolled it back a month. She made him sit, she made him drink and eat. He filled the room with his gaiety. He had no reasons upon his tongue, and no excuses; she no reproaches, no farewell. A glance round the room had shown her that there were no signs of her packing; her heavy kitbag was at the station, her suitcase packed and in the cupboard. She put her gravest news away till later. "You came by the new train—that has arrived at last in Charleville?" "Yes, and I go up to Revins to-night." She paused at that. "But how?" "I don't know," he answered, smiling at her. Her eyes sparkled. "Could I?" (She had that morning delivered the car to its new driver.) "Of course. I could! I will, I will, I'll manage! You counted on me to drive you to Revins?" "Will it be difficult to manage?" "No—o—But I must get the car out before dark or there will be no excuse—" She pushed back her chair and went to the window. The sun was sinking over the mountains and the scenery in the western sky was reflected in the fiery pools between the cobbles in the street. "I must go soon and get it. But how—" She paused and thought. "How do you come down to-morrow?" "I don't. I go on to Brussels. There is a car at Revins belonging to my agent. He will take me to Dinant for the Brussels train." "You are bound for Brussels? Yet you could have gone straight from Paris to Brussels?" "Yet I didn't because I wanted to see you!" She took down her cap and coat from the nail on which they were hanging. "Need you go yet?" he said, withdrawing the clothes from her arm, and laying them upon a chair. She sat down again. "The sun is sinking. The town gets dark so quickly here, though it's light enough in the mountains. If I leave it later the men will be gone home, and the garage key with them." "You're right," he said. "Put them on," and he held the coat for her. "But once you have the car there's no hurry over our drive. Yes, fetch it quickly, and then we'll go up above Revins and I'll show you the things I have in mind." "What things?" He drew out a fat, red note-book and held it up. "It's full of my thoughts," he said. "Quick with the car, and we'll get up there while it's light enough to show you!" She slipped out under the apple-red sky, through the streets where the shadows of the houses lay black as lacquer. Before the locked gates of the garage the brigadier lounged smoking his little, dry cigarettes. "We are on fire," he said, pointing up the street at the mountain. "What an evening!" "Yes, and my last!" she said. "Oh, may I have the key of the garage?" "But you've given up the car." "Yes, I have, but—after to-morrow I shall never use your petrol again! And there are my bags to be taken to the station. Ah, let me have the key!" He gave her the key. "Don't be long then. Yet I shall be gone in a few minutes. When you come in hang the key on the nail in the office." Once more she wound up the Renault, drove from the garage, regained the "Come down, come down!" she called up to him, and realised that it would have been better to have made her revelation to him before they started on this journey. For now he was staring at the mountains in an absorbed excited fashion, and she would have to check his flow of spirits, spoil their companionable gaiety, and precipitate such heavy thoughts upon him as might, she guessed, spread to herself. Between his disappearance from the window and the opening of the street door she had a second in which to fight with her disinclination. "And yet, if I've neglected to tell him in the room," she argued, "I can't tell him in the street!" For looking up she saw, as she expected, the deep eyes of the concierge watching her as impersonally as the mountains watched the town. "There'll come a moment," she said to herself as the street door opened and he joined her and climbed into the car, "when it'll come of itself, when it will be easy and natural." By back streets they left the town, and soon upon the step road had climbed through the belt of trees and out on to bare slopes. As they wound up the mountain, sitting so dose together, she felt how familiar his company was to her, and how familiar his silence. Their thoughts, running together, would meet presently, as they had often met, at the juncture when his hand was laid upon hers at the wheel: But when he spoke he startled her. "How long has the railway been extended to Charleville?" "A fortnight," she answered upon reflection. "How about the big stone bridge on this side? The railway bridge?" "Why that lies at the bottom of the river as usual." "And haven't they replaced it yet by a wooden one?" "No, not yet." "And no one is even working there?" "I haven't been there lately," she answered. "Maybe they are by now. Is it your railway to Revin you are thinking of?" He was fingering his big note book. "I can't start anything till the railway runs," he answered, tapping on the book, "but when it runs—I'll show you when we get up there." They came to a quagmire in the red clay of the road. It was an ancient trap left over from the rains of winter, strewn with twigs and small branches so that light wheels might skim, with luck, over its shaking holes. "You see," he said, pursuing his thought, "lorries wouldn't do here. "They would," she agreed, and found that his innocence of her secret locked her words more tightly in her throat. Far above, from an iron peak, the light of the heavy sun was slipping. Beneath it they ran in shadow, through rock and moss. Before the light had gone they had reached the first crest and drew up for a moment at a movement of his hand. Looking back to Charleville, he said, "See where the river winds. The railway crosses it three times. Can we see from here if the bridges are all down?" And he stood up and, steadying himself upon her shoulder, peered down at Charleville, to where man lived in the valleys. But though the slopes ahead of them were still alight, depths, distance, the crowding and thickening of twilight in the hollows behind them offered no detail. "I fear they are," she said, gazing with him. "I think they are. I think Soon they would be at the top of the long descent on Revins. Should she tell him, he who sat so close, so unsuspecting? An arrowy temptation shot through her mind. "Is it possible—Why not write a letter when he is gone!" She saw its beauty, its advantages, and she played with it like someone who knew where to find strength to withstand it. "He is so happy, so gay," urged the voice, "so full of his plans! And you have left it so late. How painful now, just as he is going, to bid him think: 'I will never see her face again!'" (How close he sat beside her! How close her secret sat within her!) "Think how it is with you," pursued the tempting voice. "It is hard to part from a face, but not so hard to part from the writer of a letter." Over the next crest the Belgian Ardennes showed blue and dim in the distance. "Stop!" he said, holding up his hand again. They were on the top of a high plateau; she drew up. A large bird with red under its wings flapped out and hung in the air over the precipice. "See—the Meuse!" he said. "See, on its banks, do you see down there? Hundreds of feet below lay a ribbon-loop of dark, unstirring water. They stood at the edge of the rock looking down together. She saw he was excited. His usually pale face was flushed. "Do you see down there, do you see in this light—a village?" She could see well enough a village. "That's Revins. And those dark dots beyond——" "I see them." "My factories. Before the summer you'll see smoke down there! They are partially destroyed. One can't see well, one can't see how much—" "Julien!" "Yes?" "Have you never been back? Have you never seen what's happened?" She had not guessed this: she was not prepared for this. This was the secret, then of his absorption. "I've not seen it yet. I've not been able to get away. And the Paris factories have held me every minute. But now I'm here, I'm—I'm wondering—You see that dot beyond, standing separate?" "Yes." "That's where I sleep to-night. That's the house." "But can you sleep there?" she asked, still shocked that she had not realised what this journey was to him. "Can I?" "I mean is the house ruined?" "Oh, the house is in bad order," he said. "Not ruined. 'Looted,' my old concierge writes. She was my nurse a hundred years ago. She has been there through the occupation. I wrote to her, and she expects me to-night. To-night it will be too dark, but to-morrow before I leave I shall see what they have done to the factories." "Don't you know at all how bad they are?" "I've had letters. The agent went on ahead five days ago and he has settled there already. But letters don't tell one enough. There are little things in the factories—things I put in myself—" He broke off and drew her to another side of the plateau. "See down there! That unfortunate railway crosses two more bridges. I can't see now, but they're blown up, since all the others are. And such a time for business! It hurts me to think of the things I can't set going till that railway works. Every one is crying out for the things that I can make here." On and on he talked in his excitement, absorbed and planning, leading her from one point of view on the plateau to another. Her eyes followed his pointing hands from crest to crest of the mountains their neighbours, till the valleys were full of creeping shadows. Even when the shades filmed his eager hand he held it out to point here and there as though the whole landscape of the mountains was printed in immortal daylight on his mind. "I can't see," she said. "It's so dark down there. I can't see it," as he pointed to the spot where the Brussels railway once ran. "Well, it's there," he said, staring at the spot with eyes that knew. The blue night deepened in the sky; from east, west, north, south, sprang the stars. "Fanny, look! There's a light in my house!" Fathoms of shade piled over the village and in the heart of it a light had appeared. "Marie has lit the lamp on the steps. I mustn't be too late for her—I must soon go down." "What, you walk? Is there a footpath down?" "I shall go down this mountain path below. It's a path I know, shooting hares. Soon I shall be back again. Brussels one week; then Paris; then here again. I'll see what builders can be spared from the Paris factories. They can walk out here from Charleville. Ten miles, that's nothing! Then we'll get the stone cut ready in the quarries. Do you know, during the war, I thought (when I thought of it), 'If the Revins factories are destroyed it won't be I who'll start them again. I won't take up that hard mountain life any more. If they're destroyed, it's too discouraging, so let them lie!' But now I don't feel discouraged at all. I've new ideas, bigger ones. I'm older, I'm going to be richer. And then, since they're partly knocked down I'll rebuild them in a better way. And it's not only that—See!" He was carried away by his resolves, shaken by excitement, and pulling out his note-book he tilted it this way and that under the starlight, but he could not read it, and all the stars in that sky were no use to him. He struck a match and held the feeble flame under that heavenly magnificence, and a puff of wind blew it out. "But I don't need to see!" he exclaimed, and pointing into the night he continued to unfold his plans, to build in the unmeaning darkness, which, to his eyes, was mountain valleys where new factories arose, mountain slopes whose sides were to be quarried for their stony ribs, rivers to move power-stations, railways to Paris and to Brussels. As she followed his finger her eyes lit upon the stars instead, and now he said, "There, there!" pointing to Orion, and now "Here, here!" lighting upon Aldebrande. As she followed his finger her thoughts were on their own paths, thinking, "This is Julien as he will be, not as I have known him." The soldier had been a wanderer like herself, a half-fantastic being. But here beside her in the darkness stood the civilian, the Julien-to-come, the solid man, the builder, plotting to capture the future. For him, too, she could no longer remain as she had been. Here, below her was the face, the mountain face, of her rival. Unless she became one with his plans and lived in the same blazing light with them, she would be a separate landscape, a strain upon his focus. Then she saw him looking at her. Her face, silver-bright in the starlight, was as unreadable as his own note-book. "Are you sure," he was saying, "that you won't be blamed about the car?" "Sure, quite sure. The men have all gone home." "But to-morrow morning? When they see it has been out?" "Not—to-morrow morning. No, they won't say anything to-morrow morning. "Yes?" "I think, I hope you are going to have a great success here. And don't forget—me—when you—" "—When I come back in a week!" "But your weeks—are so long." "Yet you will be happy without me," he said suddenly. "What makes you say that?" "You've some solace, some treasure of your own." He nodded. "In a way," he said, "I've sometimes thought you half out of reach of pain." She caught her breath, and the starry sky whirled over her head. "You're a happy foreigner!" he finished. "Did you know? Dormans called you that after the first dance. He said to me: 'I wonder if they are all so happy in England! I must go and see.'" "You too, you too!" she said, eagerly, and she wanted him to admit it. "See how happy, how busy, how full of the affairs of life you soon will be! Difficulties of every sort, and hard work and triumph—" |
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