Her voice gave out and she had to stop for a moment.
‘When he died he whispered over and over again those two words he used of himself: Poor Kid, Poor Kid. Oh yes, all these brave fellows are poor kids, and some of them are so young, and your horrible war tears off their limbs and makes them suffer so much before it throws them into the ground!’
Every day now Henriette came back like this, shattered by some death-scene, and this suffering of others drew the two of them closer still during the weary hours they spent so much alone together in that big, quiet room. Yet they were very beautiful hours for, as they gradually came to know each other, there had developed between their two hearts an affection which they thought was fraternal. His serious mind had risen to new heights during their long intimacy and she, seeing him so good and sensible, forgot that he was a humble man who had followed the plough before becoming a soldier. They understood each other perfectly and made an ideal couple, as Silvine said with her grave smile. Nor had any awkwardness arisen between them, and she went on attending to his leg without ever turning away those candid eyes. Always in her black widow’s weeds, she seemed to have ceased to be a woman.
All the same, during the long afternoons when he was alone, Jean could not help letting his mind wander. What he felt for her was infinite gratitude and a sort of religious devotion which would have made him thrust aside any thought of sexual love as sacrilegious. Nevertheless he told himself that with a wife like her, so tender, so gentle and yet so practical, life would have been very heaven. His own misfortune, the unpleasant years he had spent at Rognes, his disastrous marriage and the violent death of his wife – all his past life now reminded him of the tenderness he had missed, and inspired in him a vague, scarcely formulated hope of trying to find happiness once more. He would shut his eyes and let himself fall into a half-sleep, when he would see himself somehow in Remilly, remarried and owner of a small-holding that was sufficient to keep a family of honest folk with little ambition. It was such a tenuous vision that it did not really exist, and certainly never would. He didn’t think he had anything left in him but friendship and he only loved Henriette like this because he felt himself to be Maurice’s brother. So this uncertain dream of marriage became a kind of consolation, one of those daydreams one knows to be unrealizable but with which one whiles away hours of sadness.
But no such thoughts even touched Henriette’s mind. After the dreadful drama at Bazeilles her heart remained dead, and any comfort or new affection could only enter it unrecognized, like the unperceived movement of germinating seed that nothing betrays to the human eye. She was not even conscious of the pleasure she had come to take in lingering for hours at Jean’s bedside, reading the papers to him even though they gave her nothing but sorrow. Her hand when it touched his had not even felt any warmth, never had the idea of the morrow left her thoughtful, with a wish to be loved once again. And yet only in this room could she forget or find consolation. When she was there, quietly busying herself with her tasks, she found rest to her soul and felt that her brother would soon come back, that all would work out for the best and they would eventually all be happy together and never be parted again. She talked about it quite freely, for it seemed so natural that things should be so and it never entered her mind to look more deeply into the chaste and hidden gift of her heart.
But one afternoon, as she was setting off for the hospital, the terror that froze her when she saw a Prussian captain and two other officers in the kitchen revealed to her the deep affection she had for Jean. Evidently these men had heard of the presence of the wounded man at the farm and had come to get him, it would inevitably mean departure and captivity in Germany in some fortress. She listened trembling, with her heart beating wildly.
The captain, a big man who spoke French, was giving old Fouchard a violent dressing-down.
‘This can’t go on any longer, what do you take us for?… So I’ve come myself to warn you that if this happens again I shall hold you responsible. Yes, I shall know what steps to take!’
Quite unruffled, the old man pretended to be thunderstruck, standing with dangling arms as though he hadn’t understood.
‘Beg pardon, sir, what do you mean?’
‘Oh, don’t make me lose my temper. You know quite well that the three cows you sold us on Sunday were rotten. Yes, quite rotten and diseased, they had died of some foul disease, and they have poisoned my men, and two of them may be dead by now.’
Thereupon Fouchard registered revolt and indignation.
‘Diseased! What, my cows? It was such good meat, meat you could give a woman with a newborn baby, to build up her strength!’
He snivelled, beat his breast, declared he was an honest man, that he would as soon cut out his own flesh as sell any that was bad. For thirty years everybody had known him, and nobody in the world could say he had not had full weight and finest quality.
‘Those cows were as healthy as I am, sir, and if your soldiers had the colic it may be that they ate too much – unless it was that some evil-intentioned persons put some chemicals into the saucepan.’
He confused him so with his flow of words, with such far-fetched theories that the captain furiously cut him short.
‘That’s enough of that! You’ve been warned, take care! And there’s something else. We suspect all of you in this village of harbouring the guerrillas from the Dieulet woods, who killed another of our sentries the day before yesterday. So take care, you understand?’
When the Prussians had gone old Fouchard shrugged his shoulders and sneered with infinite contempt. Cattle that had died of disease, well of course that’s what he sold them, that’s what he made them eat, and nothing else! All the corpses the peasants brought him that had died of diseases and the ones he picked up himself in the ditches – wasn’t that good enough for those filthy bastards?
He winked as he murmured with triumphant glee, and turning to Henriette, who was feeling very relieved:
‘And then to think, my dear, that there are people who say I’m unpatriotic!… Let them do as much, I say, let them give ’em old carrion and pocket their money. Unpatriotic! Well, for God’s sake! I shall have killed more of them with my dead cows than many a soldier with his rifle!’
But all the same, when he heard the story Jean was worried. If the German authorities suspected that the inhabitants of Remilly harboured the guerrillas from the Dieulet woods they might at any time do house-to-house searches and discover him. He could not bear the thought of compromising his benefactors or causing the least trouble to Henriette. But she prevailed on him to stay a few more days, and he agreed, for his wound was taking a long time to scar over, and he was not strong enough on his legs to join up with one of the fighting regiments in the north or on the Loire.
The days from then until the middle of December were the most disturbing and miserable of their solitude. The cold had become so intense that the stove could not heat the big, empty room. When they looked out of the window at the deep snow on the ground they thought of Maurice buried in a frozen, dead Paris, from which there was no reliable news. They always came back to the same questions. What was he doing? Why didn’t he give any sign of life? They dared not express their awful fears, a wound, sickness, perhaps death. The few odd bits of information that still came through to them in the papers were not calculated to reassure them. After claims of successful sorties, which were always proved false, there had been a rumour of a great victory won on 2 December at Champigny by General Ducrot, but later they knew that the very next day he had abandoned the conquered positions and been forced to recross the Marne. Every hour Paris was being held in a tighter stranglehold, famine was setting in, with potatoes being requisitioned as well as cattle, private people’s gas turned off and soon the streets in darkness, a darkness only streaked by the red paths of shells. Now the two of them could not warm themselves or eat anything without being haunted by a vision of Maurice and two million living souls shut up in that gigantic tomb.
; Moreover the news from all directions, north as well as centre, was getting worse. In the north the 22nd army corps, made up of militia, men from supply depots and soldiers and officers who had escaped from the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had had to abandon Amiens and fall back towards Arras, while Rouen had fallen into enemy hands, for a handful of unattached, demoralized men had not seriously defended it. In the centre the victory at Coulmiers won on the 9 November by the army of the Loire had given rise to wild hopes: Orleans reoccupied, the Bavarians in flight, a march on Etampes and the early relief of Paris. But on 5 December Prince Friedrich Karl recaptured Orleans and cut in two the army of the Loire, three corps of which fell back to Vierzon and Bourges while two others under the command of General Chanzy withdrew to Le Mans in a heroic retreat during a whole week of marching and fighting. The Prussians were everywhere, Dijon and Dieppe, Le Mans and Vierzon. And every morning there was the distant crash of some fortress capitulating to shell fire. Strasbourg had fallen as early as 28 September, after forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven of bombardment, with its walls gashed and monuments riddled by nearly two hundred thousand projectiles. The citadel of Laon was already blown up, Toul had surrendered, and then came the dismal procession, Soissons with its hundred and twenty-eight guns, Verdun with its hundred and thirty-six, Neuf-Brisach a hundred, La Fère seventy, Montmédy sixty-five. Thionville was in flames. Phalsbourg only opened its gates in the twelfth week of its desperate resistance. The whole of France seemed to be ablaze and collapsing in this furious bombardment.
One morning when Jean was determined to go, Henriette took his hands and held them in a desperate grip.
‘No, no! I beg of you don’t leave me alone… You are not strong enough, wait a few more days… I promise I will let you go when the doctor says you are strong enough to go back and fight.’
5
SILVINE and Prosper were alone with Chariot in the big farmhouse kitchen on a cold evening in December, she sewing and he making himself a nice whip. It was seven o’clock, and they had had their dinner at six without waiting for old Fouchard, who must have been delayed at Raucourt, where meat was running short. Henriette, who was then on night duty at the hospital, had just left after telling Silvine not to go to bed without making up Jean’s stove.
It was very dark outside against the white snow. Not a sound came from the shrouded village, and the only thing that could be heard was Prosper’s knife as he busied himself adorning the dogwood handle with lozenges and rosettes. He paused occasionally and glanced at Chariot, whose big blond head was beginning to fall about with sleep. When the child did eventually go to sleep the silence seemed still deeper. His mother gently moved the candle away so that the little boy should not have the light in his eyes, and then, without stopping her sewing, she fell into a daydream.
It was then, after some hesitation, that Prosper made up his mind to speak.
‘I say, Silvine, there’s something I’ve got to tell you… I waited until I was alone with you.’
Looking disturbed already, she raised her eyes.
‘This is what it is… Forgive me if I am upsetting you, but you had better be warned… This morning, in Remilly, at the corner by the church, I saw Goliath as plain as I see you now, oh yes, full view and no mistake.’
She turned deathly pale, her hands shook, and the only sound she could utter was a soft moan.
‘Oh God, oh God!’
Prosper went on, carefully choosing his words, and told her what he had found out during the day by questioning various people. Nobody now doubted that Goliath was a spy who had settled in the neighbourhood to find out about routes, resources and all the minute details of its way of life. They recalled his stay at old Fouchard’s farm, his sudden departure and the jobs he had had since round Beaumont and Raucourt. And now here he was back again, occupying some unspecified post in the commanding officer’s headquarters in Sedan and travelling round the villages, apparently employed to gather evidence against some, tax others and see that the crushing requisitions imposed on the inhabitants were being properly enforced. That morning he had been terrorizing Remilly about a delivery of flour that was incomplete and late.
‘You are now warned,’ Prosper said again, ‘and so you will know what to do when he comes here…’
She cut him short with a cry of terror:
‘Do you think he’ll come here?’
‘Well of course, it seems obvious to me… He would have to be very lacking in curiosity, as he has never set eyes on the kid, although he knows he exists… And besides, there’s you, and you’re not all that bad-looking, and nice to see again.’
She made a sign begging him to stop. But the noise had awakened Chariot, and he looked up. His eyes still out of focus as though he were emerging from a dream, he remembered the insult he had been taught by some Clever Dick in the village, and declared with all the solemnity of a young man of three:
‘Prussian swine!’
His mother snatched him up in her arms and sat him on her lap. Poor little thing, her joy and her despair, whom she loved with all her soul but could never look at without crying, this child of her body it hurt so much to hear maliciously being called the Prussian by the kids of his age when they played with him in the street. She kissed him as though to force the words back into his mouth.
‘Who taught you those wicked words? It’s naughty, you mustn’t say them, my pet.’
So of course with the obstinacy of children Chariot went into a fit of giggles and immediately started again:
‘Prussian swine!’
Then, seeing his mother burst into tears, he began crying too and threw his arms round her neck. Oh God, what fresh misfortune was threatening? Wasn’t it enough to have lost in Honoré the only hope in her life, the certainty of forgetting and being happy again? No, the other man had to come back to complete her misery.
‘Now, now, come to bye-byes, my pettikins… I love you just the same, for you don’t understand how sad you make me.’
So as not to embarrass her by looking at her, Prosper had made a point of carefully going on with carving his whip-handle. She left him alone for a minute.
But before putting Chariot to bed Silvine usually took him to say good night to Jean, with whom the child was great friends. That evening as she went in, holding the candle in her hand, she saw the invalid sitting up in bed, staring into the darkness. So he wasn’t asleep? Oh no, he was turning all sorts of things over in his mind, alone in the silent winter night. While she filled up the stove he played for a minute with Charlot, who rolled on the bed like a kitten. He knew Silvine’s story and he was fond of this brave, quiet girl who had been through so much, mourning the one man she had loved and having only the one consolation left of this poor child, whose birth was her lasting torment. And so, when she had shut down the stove and came over to take the child out of his arms, he noticed that her eyes were red with crying. What, had somebody given her more trouble? But she did not want to tell him – she might later on if there was any point. After all, wasn’t life a continual sorrow for her?
Silvine was taking Chariot away when there was a noise of footsteps and voices in the yard. Jean listened in surprise.
‘What’s up, then? That’s not old Fouchard coming in, I didn’t hear the wheels of his cart.’
In his isolated room he had developed an awareness of the regular life of the farm, and was familiar with the slightest sounds. He listened and then said at once:
‘Oh yes, it’s those men, the guerrillas of the Dieulet woods, coming for provisions.’
‘Quick!’ said Silvine, running off and leaving him in darkness once again. ‘I must run and give them their loaves.’
By now fists were banging on the kitchen door and Prosper, worried because he was on his own, was gaining time by arguing. When the master was not at home he was not keen on opening the door for fear of damage for which he would be held responsible. But he was fortunate in that just then old Fouchard’s trap came down the hill, the
sound of the horse’s feet muffled in the snow. So it was the old man who let them in.
‘Oh good, so it’s you three… What have you got for me in that barrow?’
Sambuc, looking like an emaciated bandit buried in a blue woolly too big for him, didn’t even hear, being furious with Prosper, his gentleman brother as he called him, who was only then making up his mind to open the door.
‘Look here, you, do you take us for beggars, leaving us out here in weather like this?’
But while Prosper, quite unruffled, silently shrugged his shoulders and got on with stabling the trap and horse, old Fouchard broke in again, stooping over the barrow.
‘So you’ve brought me two dead sheep. Good job it’s freezing, otherwise they wouldn’t smell too good!’
Cabasse and Ducat, Sambuc’s two lieutenants, who always went with him on his expeditions, expostulated:
‘Oh,’ said the first, with his loud southern chatter, ‘they’re not more than three days gone… They died at Raffins farm, where there is a bad epidemic among the animals.’
‘Procumbit humi bos,’ declaimed the other, the ex-process-server, whose excessive taste for little girls had lost him his job and who liked airing his Latin quotations.
Old Fouchard went on shaking his head and running down the goods, which he pretended to find too far gone. But he concluded as he went into the kitchen with the three men:
‘Oh well, they’ll have to put up with it… It’s as well that they’ve no meat left at Raucourt. When you’re hungry you eat anything, don’t you?’
Inwardly delighted, he hailed Silvine who was just coming in from putting Charlot to bed.
‘Bring me some glasses and we’ll all drink to Bismarck going to kingdom come.’