'I'm sorry for what happened just now,' I said. 'The whole thing was a mistake. Everything got mixed up in my valise.'
He did not answer immediately, and glancing at him, as we turned left up the village hill and past the church, I saw in the narrow mouth, with the droop at the corners, for the first time a resemblance to Blanche. But the prominent nose and thick eye-brows were his own, and the muddy complexion was quite different from hers, which was smooth and pale and fine.
'I don't believe you,' he said. 'If any gesture was deliberate, yours was, to make me look a fool in front of everyone, even the servants. Can't you imagine them now, laughing their heads off in the kitchen? I should be, if I were them.'
'Nonsense,' I said. 'Nobody even noticed. And I've told you already it was a mistake. Forget it.'
He turned out of the village, past a cemetery, and along a straight road towards the line of forest.
'I've put up with practical jokes from you all my life,' he said, 'but there are certain limits. What might be amusing at a club, or between ourselves, is a different thing from jeering openly before our wives, and hurting them into the bargain. Frankly, I didn't know that even you were capable of that amount of bad taste.'
'All right,' I said, 'I've apologized. I can't do more. If you won't believe the thing was a mistake, there's no more to be said.'
The forest closed in upon us, not a forbidding darkness but golden green, a tangle of oak, hornbeam, chestnut, beech - all the trees whose leaf gives light instead of shadow, whose branches spread with time, whose stems grow paler. Unlike the conifer, so deeply black in winter and in summer, they mellow with the changing season, and now, in the fall of the year, they spilled colour on the ground.
'Another thing,' said Paul, 'don't you think it's time you stopped treating Renee as if she were a second Marie-Noel? If you want to make a pet of your own daughter it's your affair, not mine, but I object to my wife being turned into a doll merely to gratify your desire for popularity.'
The role of apologist was not an easy one, and I tried to think what Jean de Gue would have done if he had committed the blunder of producing the nightdress in public.
'All women like to be spoilt,' I said. 'Didn't you see what I gave Francoise? Naturally I brought back something pretty for Renee too. Did you expect me to give her the life of a saint, like the child?'
Paul turned the car to the right, and we were off the tarred surface on to a sandy by-road. The forest was thinning, and there was a clearing ahead.
'Your choice was vulgar and your timing crude,' said Paul. 'I happened to be watching Francoise as well as Renee. Anyway, next time you decide to give my wife a present, consult me first.'
The road narrowed, and I saw that it was a cul-de-sac. Straight before us was a long line of workmen's cottages, and to our right a great shed-like building with a sloping roof and tall stove-pipe chimneys, standing in a wide expanse of rough ground surrounded by other sheds, the whole fenced in and separated from the road and cottages. Workmen were passing in and out of the sheds with barrows, and there was a truck running along rails, backing against a tipped heap of waste. From the chimneys came a peculiar gasping, choking sound of smoke expelled by a furnace. Paul drove the car in through the open gates, stopping in front of the small lodge immediately beside them, and, getting out, without another word to me he walked away across the ground towards a second building, behind the shed with the high chimneys.
I followed him, and as I picked my way between the trolley rails I realized, from the crunching beneath my feet, that the ground was covered with minute particles of glass, fine as sand upon a beach. It was everywhere, part of the soil, part of the mud, and the waste heaps were glass as well, blue and green and amber. Workmen pushing barrows stopped to let us pass, and I noticed that although they nodded to him, to me they smiled; not with any particular deference or respect, but with a certain camaraderie and warmth, as if they were genuinely glad to see my face. The welcome flattered me, boosted my morale, and I felt meanly gratified that the esteem, or whatever it was, had been shown to me, not Paul.
He made straight for a long, two-storeyed, eighteenth-century house, with an old, red-tiled, lichen-covered roof, and opening the door led the way into a square shabby room with panelled walls and a stone floor. There was a table in the middle covered with books and files and papers, and a big desk in one corner. A bald-headed man with spectacles and hollow cheeks, wearing a dark suit, rose from a seat at the table when he saw us.
'Bonjour, Monsieur le Comte,' he said to me. 'You are feeling better, then?'
I realized that Paul must have told him some story of sickness or a hangover, or both, and I noticed that his smile was tremulous, nervous, not warm and friendly as that of the workmen had been, and behind the spectacles he had anxious eyes.
'There was nothing wrong with me,' I said. 'I was merely idle.'
Paul laughed - not the laugh of humour, but the disparaging sound of one who is not amused. 'It must be pleasant to lie in bed in the mornings,' he said. 'It's something I haven't been able to do for a long time, or Jacques either, for that matter.'
The man made a deprecatory gesture, glancing from one to the other of us, wishing to offend neither, and then he said quickly, 'Is there anything you wish to discuss in private? If so, I can leave you.'
'No,' said Paul, 'the future of the verrerie is as much your concern as ours. Like you, I am waiting to hear what was achieved in Paris.'
They looked at me, and I looked back at them. Then I went over to the chair by the desk, sat down, and took a cigarette from the packet lying there.
'What do you want to know exactly?' I asked, bending over to light the cigarette, the action enabling me to hide my face, which might otherwise have betrayed my uncertainty of the proper reply.
'Oh, mon Dieu ...' said Paul in exasperation, as if my cautious, hedging question was the ultimate straw, the final insult to patience too long shown. 'There's only one issue, isn't there? Do we, or do we not, close down?'
Somebody - was it the mother? - had said something about a contract. The visit to Paris hinged on a Carvalet contract. Jean de Gue was expected to bring it back with him. Very well, then, they should have it.
'If you mean did I succeed in getting Carvalet to renew the contract, the answer is yes,' I said.
Both men stared at me, astounded. Jacques burst out with a 'Bravo!' but Paul interrupted, 'On what terms, what stipulations?'
'Our terms,' I said, 'and they made no stipulations.'
'You don't mean to tell me they are willing to take our stuff on precisely the same conditions as before, in spite of the lower quotations they are getting from other firms?'
'I persuaded them to do so.'
'How many discussions did you have?'
'Several.'
'But what's the explanation? Why all those letters? Were they bluffing, trying to make us lower our figure, or what?'
'I couldn't tell you.'
'Then you came away completely satisfied, and we carry on for a further period of six months?'
'That's about it.'
'I can't understand it. You've achieved something I frankly believed to be impossible. My congratulations.'
He took the cigarettes from the desk and handed them to Jacques, lighting one for himself. They began discussing something, without reference to me, and I swivelled round in my chair and looked out of the window, wondering what I had been talking about. In a moment, perhaps, they would begin again with the questions which meant nothing to me, and my wild ignorance would betray itself, but in the meantime ... in the meantime, what? I looked out and saw a tangled orchard, golden in the sun, with apple trees, heavy laden, bowing their branches to the earth. An ancient horse with a flowing white mane browsed in a field beyond. A woman in a black apron, with a grey shawl round her shoulders and sabots on her feet, was hoeing between the vegetables, hens pecking in her path. The scene framed itself in the window-pane like a print, peaceful and soothing, and I wishe
d it could continue with me as onlooker, not participating in any way, a traveller sitting in a train watching the world go by. Yet this was what I had complained of in life hitherto - the non-participation, the lack of contact with the ways of other people.
'Have you got the contract with you?' said Paul.
'No,' I answered. 'They're sending it.'
The woman hoeing lifted her head and looked towards the window. She was large, elderly, broad-hipped, with a lined brown peasant's face, and her first glance at the house was watchful, suspicious; but when she caught sight of me she smiled, and leaving the hoe she plodded across the ground towards the house.
'I suppose it's all right to tell everybody there's no question now of a close-down, Monsieur Paul?' said the man Jacques. 'I've said nothing, naturally, but you know how rumours get around. The whole of last week there was speculation here amongst the men.'
'I know it only too well,' said Paul. 'The atmosphere's been impossible. Yes, spread the news as soon as you like.'
The woman was now directly beneath the window, and Paul, noticing her for the first time, said, 'There's Julie, all ears as usual. Wants to be the first to spill good news or bad.' He leant out of the window. 'Monsieur Jean succeeded in Paris. Don't pretend you don't know what I mean.'
The half-smile broadened on the woman's face. She reached out and plucked a bunch of grapes dangling from the vine on the wall beside her, and offered it to me with the gesture of a queen.
'There you are,' she said. 'Grown especially for you, Monsieur le Comte. Eat them at once before the bloom is off them. So all is well, then, after all?'
'All is well,' said Paul, suddenly human, relaxed.
'It's what I thought,' said the woman. 'It needs someone with brains to kick these people where they feel it most. And who are they, I should like to know, thinking that because they have a big name up in Paris they can dictate to us? It's time they learnt their lesson. I hope you made them feel small, Monsieur Jean.' She had the solidity of Gaston, and his strength, and the same flame of loyalty in her eyes, but she would not hesitate to criticize if those to whom she gave devotion failed. I looked away from her warm, brown, wrinkled face to the drooping apple trees, and the browsing horse, and the line of forest trees beyond the fields. 'So the furnace will continue to roar, and the chimneys to smoke, and the glass to cover the floor of my lodge with filthy dust, and nobody will think about the future for another six months,' she said. 'You will remember to come and say a word to Andre presently, Monsieur le Comte? You heard about his accident, naturally.'
I remembered there had been talk of an injured workman. 'Yes,' I said, 'I'll be along later,' avoiding those loyal yet curious eyes. She went off again to her vegetables, scattering the chickens who fluttered at her feet, and turning my head I saw that Paul was hanging up his coat and putting on overalls.
'There's not been much correspondence in since you were away,' he said. 'It's all there, on the desk. Jacques will show you.'
He opened the door through which we had entered, facing the sheds, and went out, and I was left alone with Jacques and a little stack of letters and papers. I opened them one by one, and they were mostly invoices, curt demands for payment for goods supplied by other firms, a query from a haulage contractor, a statement from the railway. As I looked through them I knew that I understood nothing, absolutely nothing, of what I was supposed to do or say or dictate or write: the jumble of figures was meaningless, and I was as helpless as a child dumped suddenly into an adult world.
Strangely, to speak the truth was the only way out. I swept the file aside and said, 'What is all this? What do you want me to do about it?' Strangely, too, Jacques smiled - he seemed more at his ease now that we were alone together and Paul had gone - and replied, 'It's not necessary to do anything, Monsieur le Comte, now that the contract has been extended. They are only routine matters, and I can deal with them.'
I got up from the desk, went to the door and opened it, and stood on the threshold, looking out on the line of sheds, the workmen passing to and fro, a lorry being driven out of the gates, the pleasing, somewhat incongruous proximity of a farm and farm buildings some fifty yards from the foundry shed itself. Geese were strutting in the yard, a woman spreading linen on a hedge to dry, and mingling with the lowing of cattle from beyond the farm gate came the intermittent clanging of metal within the shed. The smoke billowed out from the stove-pipe chimneys, the old bell on the patched corrugated roof was caught in a sudden gleam of sunshine, and at the entrance two plaster statues, one of the Madonna and Child and the other of St Joseph, stood with raised hands to bless the small community and all who worked and dwelt there. I knew instinctively, because of the age of the buildings, and the atmosphere, that this had been happening in the same way for two or three hundred years, that wars and the Revolution had not altered it. It continued because the family and the workmen believed in it, because they wanted it that way. The small, unchanging glass-foundry was part of the background of their bit of country, like the farmhouse and the fields and the ancient apple trees and the forest, and to destroy it would be like tearing the roots of a live thing from the soil.
I looked over my shoulder to Jacques, sitting at the table, and said, 'How long can a foundry like this compete against big firms with modern machinery, paying high wages?'
He raised his head from the invoices and papers that I had not understood, his eyes blinking nervously behind his spectacles.
'That depends on you, Monsieur le Comte. We know very well it can't go on much longer. It's a rich man's hobby that has become a liability instead of a source of revenue. If you don't mind losing money it's your affair. Only ...'
'Only what?'
'You would not be losing quite so much today if a little more trouble had been taken in the past to look after what belongs to you. Forgive me, I am being frank. I have no business to say this. How can I put it to you, Monsieur le Comte? A business is like a home: it must have a head, a core, a centre, and depending upon that centre so it either thrives or falls to pieces. As you know, I never worked for your father, it was before my time, but he was much respected, he was just and fair, and Monsieur Duval was another like him. Had he lived he would have made his home here in the house, and there would have been a sense of continuity. He understood the workmen, he would have known how to adapt himself to the changing conditions, but as things are ...' He looked at me apologetically, unable to finish his sentence.
'Are you blaming me or my brother?' I asked.
'Monsieur le Comte, I blame neither. Force of circumstance has been against us all. Monsieur Paul has a great sense of duty, and he has devoted himself to this small business since the war, but after all he has been fighting a losing battle against costs and wages, and you know as well as I do that he is not at ease with the workmen, and sometimes that makes things very difficult.'
I thought how unenviable was this man's position, the buffer, the go-between, cursed probably by employer and employed, yet bearing on his shoulders the real sweat and toil of the business - checking orders, pacifying creditors, working overtime, trying to keep some sort of balance, the last prop and support of a tottering system.
'What about me?' I asked. 'Come on, be frank. Aren't you trying to tell me the failure's mine?'
He smiled, with a deprecating, indulgent shrug of the shoulder that explained a world of feeling without words.
'Monsieur le Comte,' he said, 'everybody likes you - no one ever says a word against you. But you are not interested, that's all. The verrerie could fall to pieces tomorrow for all you care. Or, at least, so I believed until you told us the news this afternoon. We all imagined you were going to Paris simply to amuse yourself, instead of which ...' he gestured with his hands, 'as Monsieur Paul said, you've achieved the impossible.'
I looked away from him to the open door, and I saw Julie plod back across the waste ground outside the sheds to her little lodge at the entrance. Some of the workmen called to her, laughing, and she shouted
back to them, chaffing them, her hoe over her shoulder.
'You are not offended, Monsieur le Comte, at what I said?' Jacques asked with a touching humility.
'No,' I answered. 'No, I'm grateful.'
I went out, crossing the short distance to the main foundry shed. Inside, near the furnace, the men were working stripped because of the heat. All round me were vats and tubs, rods and connecting pipes, and there was a roar and a clanging and an odd pungent smell which was not unpleasant. When I advanced to watch what was going on, the men stood back smiling, the same welcoming smile that I had noticed before, half familiar, half tolerant, the smile that adults assume sometimes to a child, indulgent in the sense that if the child wishes to amuse himself he might as well, since whatever he chooses to do can never be anything but play.
Presently I went out again into the cool air, to the other sheds, where men in overalls were working with different tools, with moulds and mixtures, and I turned in my hands the blues and greens and ambers of rejected glass that seemed to me perfect, little flacons and bottles of every shape and size. And so to the sorting and the packing sheds, with consignments ready to be dispatched, and never for one moment was there an impersonal, automatic, factory feeling. What I saw was individual, intimate, a little industry possessed by and possessing the people who worked there, having an enduring quality which the passing of time could not change.
'Amusing yourself, Monsieur Jean?'
I looked up from the glass I held in my hands, and there was the broad smiling face of Julie, the woman from the lodge.
'You can put it that way if you like,' I said.
'Leave the solid work to M'sieur Paul,' she said. 'It has always been like that. Will you come and see Andre now?'
She led the way through the entrance and down the sandy road past the line of cottages. They were yellow-washed, like the house inside the verrerie ground, with the same mottled tiled roofs and dormer windows, separated one from another by small plots of garden and broken fences. She took me into the third cottage, which was living-room and kitchen and surely bedroom in one, for a man was lying there before the hearth on a tumbled wooden bed, while a bright-eyed boy about the age of Marie-Noel played with a broken truck in another corner.