The Happy Foreigner Part 23

"The move to Chantilly. I am so loth to break up all this."

"Break up?"

"Ah, well, it changes, doesn't it? Even if it is no longer the same landscape it changes!"

After a silence he added: "How fragile it is!"

"What?"

"You!" He covered her hand with both his. "You! What I think you are, and what you think I am. Love and illusion. Too fragile to be given to us with our blunders and our nonsense."

She watched him, silent, and he went on:

"I don't understand this life. That's why I keep quiet and smile, as you say I do. There are often things I don't say when I smile."

"What things?"

"Oh, I wonder how much you believe me. And I listen to that immense interior life, which talks such a different language. I _hate_ to move on to Chantilly."

Suddenly she recognised that they were at a corner which he had wanted her to turn for days. There had been something he had hinted at, something he wanted to tell her. He chafed at some knowledge he had which she did not share, which he wanted her to share.

Once he had said: "I had letters this morning which worried me...."

"Yes?"

"One in particular. It hurt me. It gave me pain."

But she had not wanted to ask what was in the letter. Then he had grown restless, sighed and turned away, but soon they had talked again and it had pa.s.sed.

And now to-night he said:

"Look how detached we are in this town, which is like an island in the middle of the sea. We behave as though we had no past lives, and never expected any future. Especially you."

"Especially I?"

"You behave as though I was born the day before you met me, and would die the day after you leave me. You never ask anything about me; you tell me nothing about yourself. We might be a couple of stars hanging in mid air shining at each other. And then I have the feeling that one might drop and the other wouldn't know where to look for it."

But after a little silence the truth burst out, and he said with despair: "Don't you want to know _anything_ about me?"

(Yes, that was all very well. She did, she did. But not just this that was coming!)

And then he told her....

"What is she like ... Violette?"

"Fair."

After several low questions she seemed to stand between them like a child, thin and fair, delicate and silent, innocently expecting to be spared all pain.

"No, she doesn't go out very much. She stays indoors and does her hair, and her nails, and reads a little book."

"And have you known her for a long time?"

"A long time...."

After this they pretended that she did not exist, and the little wraith floated back to Paris from which she had come, suddenly, on days when she had written him certain letters which had brought tears into his eyes.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAST NIGHT IN METZ: THE JOURNEY

f.a.n.n.y turned again to seek the lights of the town and the dagger points of the churches that climbed against the sky upon the hill behind her, but all that met her eyes was the blanket of wet darkness, and the shimmer of the snowflakes under the lamps.

She slipped through the garage gates, touching the iron bars ... "almost for the last time."

"But what does it matter? All towns are the same and we sing the same song in each and wear the same coloured feathers." She stirred the snow in the yard with her foot. "An inch already and the Renault has so little grip upon the snow. Shall we be able to start to-morrow?"

Then she set out to look for a heap of snow chains which she had noticed before in a corner of the yard. Not far from her another little torch moved in the darkness, and under its downward ray she caught sight of a khaki skirt and a foot. "Someone else has thought of chains, too! And there are so few!" She clicked off her light and moved stealthily along the forest of cars, her fingers sweeping blankets of snow from the mudguards. Pa.s.sing the first line of corpse-cars she saw the light again. "She's in the wrong place!" she thought, and hurried on. "Those bags of chains are just behind the Berliet they brought in backwards."

Behind the Berliet little mounds showed in the snow. She stooped over them, shading her light with her knees, and dug in the light powder with her hand, pulling out a small canvas bag which she dusted and beat with her fingers.

"Are you looking for chains?" she called to the other light, her bag safely in her arms.

"Yes."

"They are here. Here! In this corner!"

"Who are you?" cried the voice.

But she slipped away in silence to the garage door; for on this last black and white night in Metz she longed to creep about unspoken to, unquestioned. A little soldier sat on guard by a brazier of glowing charcoal near the door. She nodded to him as she moved down the long line of cars to her own.

There it stood, the light of the brazier falling faintly upon it, the two points of the windscreen standing up like the ready ears of an interested dog, the beautiful lines of its body, long bonnet and mudguards stretched like a greyhound at a gallop, at rest until the dawn. She flung the bag of chains inside, and, patting the bonnet, slipped away and out into the street without attempting to try the fit of the chains upon the wheels.

She slept a last night in the dark red German room three streets away--first making a little tour of the walls in her nightgown, the candle flame waving from her hand, the hot wax running in a cascade over her fingers--and looked at the stag's horn fastened to the bracket and the cl.u.s.ter of Christmas postcards pinned to the wall.

The postcards arrested her attention, and a light darted in her mind.

They were dark postcards, encrusted with shiny frosting, like the snow outside. Little birds and goblins, a wreath of holly, and a house with red mica windows were designed on them. She put out a finger and gently touched the rough, bright, common stuff; standing opposite them, almost breathless with a wave of memory. She could see herself no taller than the nursery fireguard, with round eyes to which every bright thing was a desire. She could feel herself very small amid the bustle and clatter of Christmas, blowing dark breath marks against the bright silver on the table, pulling the fringe round the iced cake, wetting her finger and picking up "hundreds and thousands" with it from a bag.

These postcards now in front of her were made by some one with the mind of a child. It struck and shook her violently with memory to see them.

"That's why the Germans write good fairy stories!" she thought, and her eyes pa.s.sed to the framed photographs that hung near the postcards, pictures of soldiers in uniform, sitting at a table with the two daughters of the house. But these wooden faces, these bodies pressing through unwieldy clothes seemed unrelated to the childish postcards.

She went contentedly to her bed, the room, bare of all her belongings, except the one bag that stood, filled and open, upon the table; sleeping for the last time in the strange bed in the strange town which she might never see again. It was time indeed to go.

For days past civilians had crept through the gates of Metz, leading old horses, drawing ramshackle carts filled with mattresses, faded silk chairs, gilt ormolu stands, clocks and cloaks and parrot cages; all the strange things that men and women use for their lives. The furniture that had fled in other carts from villages now dust upon a dead plain was returning through all the roads of France, repacked and dusted, to set up the spirit of civilian life again.