Manners went on up the steep street of St. Hubert. Always he had been something of a separative soul, and the war had been like a churn consolidating thousands of individual fat-globules into butter. Already he was finding his own personal proclivities re-establishing themselves. He had been sufficiently old to secrete a personal shell, and if it had been mud-coated mud could be removed. He might be an animal, but he was a cultivated animal. Certain sensibilities were reviving, or preparing to put out leaves—though the leaves might not be quite the same as of yore.
He saw the tourelles of the château momentarily and dimly bright against a silvery crevice in the sky. He was conscious of a feeling of pleasure, almost of tenderness. Life had not lost all its pathos.
But he kept an alert eye on the houses. He had lived so much with other men that now his inclination was to remove his essential self into some secret corner. The times were so prodigious, and somehow so dead. He wanted to think.
The emptiness of the street surprised him. He liked it. It was like some dim street in a deserted, mediæval town. It had a shut-up, secret air. No women, no children. Had these Belgian women and children become shy of thousands upon thousands of strange men? Four German years, and now—the English—the deliverers! Well, it wasn’t very likely. Human nature accommodated itself amazingly, and much of the old conventional morality had suffered badly from dry rot. Down in the Place there had been plenty of people, a crowd that could stare at the other brown crowd just as it had stared at the grey one.
And suddenly he paused. A house had attracted his attention. It stood back behind a little garden, a white house with green shutters, and a high roof. The lower shutters were closed, and there was something about the house that intrigued him. He had a certain feeling for houses, and gardens, and for atmosphere. At home he lived and worked in the country, and not merely as a doctor going upon his rounds.
He opened the iron gate, walked up the path and knocked.
There was no response.
He knocked again and more insistently. He heard a faint shuffling sound on the tiles of a passage. The door was unlocked and opened six inches.
He saw a face, a woman’s face, a thin, pale face that seemed all edge. The eyes looked at him mistrustfully. They were curious eyes, of a kind of dead greyness.
Manners saluted.
“Pardon—I am looking for a billet.”
The eyes observed him. They looked frightened. They showed the whites below the iris. They were like the eyes of a creature in a cage.
“You wish for a room, monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“But I am all alone here.”
Something in Manners smiled. Even if the sex adventure suggested itself to him as normal man, he did not infer that he would find it here. The woman was not much more than forty, but she made him think of a yellow skinned fruit that had been sucked dry.
“I shall cause you no trouble, madame. I need a room to sleep and read in. My servant looks after me.”
Her pale eyes flickered.
“Monsieur will not need food?”
“No.”
“But monsieur will have to go in and out.”
“You can give me a key. I want quiet. After the war—yes, quiet.”
She nodded her head. She had smooth black hair with streaks of grey in it. She seemed to commune with herself.
“Monsieur belongs to the cavalry?”
“No, I’m a doctor.”
The flickering, thin flame of her indecision steadied itself.
“I will show you a room, monsieur.”
The room pleased Manners. Its windows opened on the garden at the back of the house, and the garden had high stone walls with fruit trees trained to them, and beyond the garden a steep meadow ascended to a pine wood. He arranged to billet himself here, and returned to the Hotel Bertrand where the unit was to be packed into the empty rooms. Five motor-ambulances were parked in the Place, and the main street was full of an infantry battalion and its transport. The same old brown crowd. Would life in the future be anything else but a crowd? Manners disappeared into the Hotel Bertrand, and got busy. He was in charge of the advance party as well as of the billeting, and a brigade hospital had to be fitted up in the lower rooms of the empty hotel.
The unit poured in on him while he was supervising the activities of the advance party. He heard the colonel’s voice, and he knew at once that there had been trouble on the road, bad march-discipline, something a Red Hat could quarrel with. “Where’s Major Manners?” And Manners went in search of the trouble. He found a big man with very blue eyes scolding a sergeant. He stood by sympathetically; he could sympathize both with O.C. and N.C.O. Moving a unit under the eyes of a liverish General could be a touchy business. Bad temper was infectious.
Besides, he was rather fond of the big man with the blue eyes. When the moment came he interposed the soothing word.
“I have fixed up the mess, sir. Tea should be ready. I’ll show you the house. I’ll fix things up here.”
The big man’s blue eyes grew mild and humorous. Manners and his colonel went off together.
“Two idiots smoking, Manners, when we were supposed to be at attention.”
“Well, there won’t be much more attention, sir. Must say I feel like the men—at times. I want to let out a yell and cut a caper right under the august nose.”
“My nose, Manners?”
They laughed.
“No, General Fus’s, sir. I’ve got you a good billet. A stove and half an acre of floor.”
He sent a tired man in to loosen things and drink tea.
Later, he went down to the mess and found it as usual. Sanger, the debonair and dandified Sanger, who could salute like a guardsman and was never to be relied upon, sat playing a piano. Brown was filling a pipe. The grave Gordon sat scribbling the daily letter to his wife. Tombs produced more tea. Sanger, revolving on a music stool, fired off his usual question:
“Any luck for me, Uncle?”
Manners teased him.
“Not much. An old lady with a fringe.”
“Damn it—I haven’t had anything young and tasty in my billet for the last three weeks.”
“That’s not a very long time, my lad.”
And Sanger broke into one of the war refrains, vamping it on the piano:
“I’m in love—I’m in love,
You can see by the look in my eyes.”
Gordon grew sardonic.
“It’s chronic with you. Permanently polygamous. What are you going to do when you get home?”
“Preach free love, old McTavish.”
Manners drank his tea, and finding that there was fresh butter on the table, was patient even with the foulness of Brown’s unhygienic pipe.
It was dark when he walked up the street to his billet. There seemed to be no light in the house with the green shutters, but when he knocked the woman let him in. She brought him a candle, but he noticed that her eyes remained downcast. The hand holding the candlestick was the colour of wax.
“I am sorry, there is no gas, monsieur, and no electricity.”
He took the candle.
“But there is electric light in other houses.”
“In some, monsieur. I am sorry.”
She was both frightened and propitiatory. No doubt some of these Belgians had had a pretty rough time. Manners had seen the re-occupied French territory, all starved faces and flies.
“My servant has been?”
“Yes, monsieur. Will it be necessary for him to come often?”
“Oh, twice a day. But that won’t inconvenience you, will it?”
“No, monsieur. I keep the door locked.”
Manners had a foot on the first step of the stair. He paused. Had this woman been living in a state of terror for four years, and had fear become a habit? He spoke kindly.
“There is no need for locked doors, madame, now.”
She gave him a queer, upward, startled glance. Almost it accused him of not unde
rstanding something. Her mouth hung open. And then she faced about and disappeared down the passage. Manners went on up the stairs to his room, closed the door and stood listening. He felt puzzled and uneasy. It was as though every other door in that silent house had listened to the closing of this other door. He glanced round the room. Smith—his batman—had put out all his things. A pair of slacks hung on the back of a chair. But there was something alien and sinister about the room. No other room made him feel as this one did, that scores of other men had slept in it, Germans, enemies, men who were dead. But what rot! The Germans were just other men, no worse, no better. He put the candle down upon the table beside letters and an English newspaper that were waiting to be read.
At seven o’clock he went downstairs to go to the mess. Below him a door had opened and closed. The woman was waiting for him.
He asked her for a key.
“You must take the one in the door, monsieur. I have no other.”
He took the key and locked the door on the outside, and heard her try it as he went down the path. Why was she so suspicious? He was beginning to think that he had chosen an uncomfortable billet, and in the mess he heard other revelations. The colonel looked pink and refreshed; he had been offered coffee and cake, he had a stove, and an electric light beside his bed. Sanger had discovered other evidences of civilization, a bottle of red wine and a girl. Brown, too, could boast of a stove.
“These people haven’t done so badly. Old Fritz didn’t skin them as he did the French.”
“I saw a dozen of our chaps crowding into a confectioner’s.”
“What about you, Uncle, any luck?”
Manners replied evasively:
“I’m nice and quiet.”
But he was beginning to wonder what ailed the house with the green shutters.
When, full of the warmth of the mess and its whisky, and after four rubbers of bridge, he returned to his billet, and unlocked the door, and changed the key to the inside of the lock, he felt that someone was listening. The house struck cold. He thought he heard a door open as he climbed the stairs, but he was sleepy and less sensitive to impressions. He undressed and got into bed. It was quite a comfortable bed.
He woke to find Smith, his batman, in the room with a jug of hot water. Smith was a conversational soul, and he had become more so since the armistice.
“Rummy house—this, sir.”
“What’s the matter, Smith?”
“No water. She keeps the kitchen door locked. Had to go down to the mess for your shaving water, sir.”
“No tea, Smith?”
“Sorry, sir. I’ll manage it to-morrow. You see—I didn’t expect to strike a surprise-packet like this.”
He possessed himself of Manners’s boots and went downstairs to clean them. Manners, while shaving, could hear the fellow whistling. It was a cheerful sound in this melancholy house, and he was coming to the conclusion that he would have to find another billet. The mess breakfast was at eight-fifteen, parade at nine. The day looked frosty, and the house struck cold. He put on his British warm, and met the Belgian woman in the passage.
She looked at him anxiously.
“Monsieur has slept well?”
He began to tell her that he might have to change his billet, and his indifferent French seemed to puzzle her, but when he repeated the words her perplexity changed to fear. She appeared strangely agitated.
“Monsieur will not go elsewhere—please. I wish to be hospitable. If monsieur will tell me——”
Manners was surprised, troubled. Why was she so anxious for him to stay, so scared at the idea of his leaving the house?
“I find the room very cold, madame.”
Almost she wrung her hands.
“I have so little coal, monsieur, and it is so difficult to get coal. There is a stove. I will do what I can.”
“And hot water in the morning, madame.”
“Monsieur shall have it.”
Her anxious, hunted eyes worried him, and he relented.
“Thank you, madame, I will stay for a few days.”
She followed him to the door. She had the air of wishing to say more to him, but no words came. She locked the door behind him.
In the little front garden he noticed something that he had not observed before, an oblong patch of soil that looked like a recently filled in grave. He paused to stare at it. Now—what the——? Had she had wine, copper, or valuables buried there, and had disinterred the hoard? But would such things have been hidden in a front garden?
The day proved full of affairs. The brigade hospital was filling with sick; he had a kit inspection to take at ten. In the afternoon he was to help the colonel in overhauling the unit’s transport and harness. Unpleasant things had been said about the unit’s harness. He did not return to his billet till the evening. He found a small fire burning in the stove in his room, and on the table stood a bottle of wine.
He was touched, and just a little shocked. Did that poor, frightened creature think that he had to be propitiated? And why? Had life been rather brutal to her? Oh—perhaps. He left the bottle on the table, sat by the stove and read by the light of two candles. At seven he changed into slacks, and went out on his way to the mess.
She met him in the dim passage.
“Monsieur is more comfortable?”
He thanked her. He mentioned the bottle of wine. He suggested that her generosity was charming but unnecessary.
In the darkness her voice seemed near to tears.
“Monsieur is very kind. I wish to do my best.”
He said something that was half playful, half gentle, and went out wondering whether there had been some tragedy in the house.
Again Manners slept well, but towards morning something disturbed him; he could not say what, a sound or a movement in the house, but he lay awake listening. The curtains at the window were turning grey with the dawn, and above the pine trees on the hill a red flush began to appear. Manners got out of bed and went to the window. Below him he saw the garden shut in by its high grey walls, and the outlines of the paths with their edging of box. In one corner stood a little summer-house with a steep, slated roof, and treillage painted blue.
He was about to get back into bed when he saw a figure emerge from the summer-house, a figure wrapped up in a sort of black cloak with a hood over its head. Madame was out early. But then he realized that the figure was not that of the woman. It was less tall; it moved quite differently; even in that old black cloak it seemed to exhale a youthfulness. It walked round and round the box-edged path like a prisoner in a yard let out for an hour’s exercise.
The daylight strengthened. Manners, standing there in his pyjamas, and forgetting to feel cold, saw a hand go up and put back the hood. It revealed the face of a girl, a pale and rather broad face with dark hair and well-set eyes. It was a type of face that appealed to him, sensitive, sensuous, vaguely sad. She stood and looked at the sky for a moment, and then, turning towards the house, passed out of his field of vision.
Manners got back into bed. Half an hour later, when Smith appeared with his early morning tea, he asked his servant a question:
“Have you seen anyone else in this house, Smith?”
Smith was stooping to collect his officer’s boots.
“Anyone else, sir?”
“Yes, besides the woman.”
The man’s innocent face answered the question.
“Not a living soul, sir. It’s a rummy sort of house. She hadn’t locked the kitchen door on me this morning.”
“You got the hot water all right.”
“Yes, sir. She seems a bit short of fuel, sir. I caught her pushing bits of an old chair into the stove.”
Manners, sipping his tea, and preparing to enjoy that first cigarette, reflected upon this incident. The woman was burning the furniture. But other people could get coal in St. Hubert. Was it that she had no money? And perhaps—hardly any food!
Later in the day another incident threw a more sinister li
ght upon the situation. Manners happened to return to the house about eleven in the morning, and as he climbed the winding street he became aware of a little crowd of women and children outside the railings of the house with the green shutters. It was a slatternly, unwashed, and unpleasant crowd. The children were throwing stones at the shutters, while the women—frowsy and excited—hurled epithets. Obviously, it was a demonstration—a mob display—by the lower elements of this little Belgian town. And as Manners approached the group, his face hardened. Nasty things mobs, even when made up of a score or two of women and urchins.
Discovering him they grew silent. The children scuttled out of his way, but one of the women, fat and yellow, with a large mouth and flattened nose, stood in front of the gate.
“Bad place for English officer.”
Manners motioned her out of the way, and she—seeing the disdain in his eyes—grew insolent.
“Boche women—second-hand. Monsieur likes them so—perhaps. Or perhaps he is a baby.”
She seemed to squelch with laughter, in which the rest of the crowd joined. Manners went pale and pinched about the nose.
“If you please, madame. I do not understand.”
She gave way, and he opened the gate and walked up the path to the house. The crowd had its joke at his expense. He felt both contemptuous and angry. He supposed that the gutter-people were much of a muchness in all countries. But he had begun to divine a part of the secret of this house, yet hardened worldling that he was he was shocked by it.
He tried the door and found it unlocked. This surprised him. And then he saw a figure seated on the stairs, its face clasped between its hands. He closed the door and locked it. He went half-way up the passage and paused.
The woman spoke, and her voice seemed to make a dry whispering.
“It is not true, monsieur.”
Her hands dropped. Her eyes appealed to him, watched him.
“It is not true.”
Manners made a movement of the head. This figure of tragedy blocked the stairs, and he was conscious of sudden compassion.
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