Summer Will Show (40 page)

She had little idea where she was, and no idea which way to go. But she continued to work westward, guiding herself by the sound of firing and the flux of people in the streets.

After nearly two hours, looking down a side street, she recognised the profile of Notre Dame de Lorette. Up the street, howling, and holding his hand to his cheek, ran a boy; and as he passed, she saw there was blood dripping on to his shoulder. She flattened herself against the wall to let him go by. He ran past without seeming to notice her and hurried on, howling still. The street became full of voices, women leaning out of windows to stare and exclaim, walkers suddenly materialising and turning to run in the boy’s track.

As far as was possible, she would not allow herself to think, bending all her powers to be an animal, an animal that twists and turns and keeps on its way. But she could not prevent herself from comparing the afternoon of this interminable summer day with the evening of the twenty-third of February. People had talked then, questioning and exclaiming. Every one had talked, knit together by a common excitement. These crowds were almost silent, if they spoke it was under their breath, bitterly or fearfully. And at a screaming bugle-call a man, a clerk perhaps or a shop assistant, walking a little in front of Sophia, threw up his hand and clasped his forehead, as though the noise had been an agony to him.

As she overtook him he came closer to her, bade her an endearing good-evening, and tried to put his arm round her waist. Looking into his face she saw that his teeth were chattering with terror. And she struck back his hands with fury, as though terror were a plague, and his touch might infect her.

Even here she could hear shots behind her, and the smell of gunpowder hung on the air, pungent and autumnal. But she had outflanked the fighting, and could cross the boulevard des Italiens and be among the streets she knew. The sky had clouded over, a few large drops of rain fell, and the trees along the boulevard stirred their leaves uneasily. She crossed the river. She was on her old track, soon she would be passing below great-aunt Léocadie’s windows. The house-fronts were shuttered, cautiously impassive. She went up the rue de Grenelle and the noise of fighting roused up again, and the smell of powder.

From the turning into the rue de la Carabine she could see Minna’s windows. They stood open, the curtains swayed to and fro. She began to run.

The echo of her feet on the stairs sounded like some one pursuing her, turned into the footsteps of Madame Coton, holding out the key. She unlocked the door and went into the empty room.

On the table was a plate of sandwiches and some wine, a letter addressed to her with an English stamp on it, and a small box of polished walnut, plain and solid. She lifted the lid, saw the blue velvet lining, and the scrolled label saying, J. Watson, Gunsmith, Piccadilly. One of the pistols was gone, and in its cradle lay a folded slip of paper.

She carried it to the window, and read.

Shaking with fatigue, moving with rigid concentration, she pulled a chair to the table, and poured out a glass of wine. All the time a hollow voice seemed to be prompting her, saying, Now the chair. Now the wine. That’s right. Presently the collaborating voice was helping her to change her shoes and put on a wrap, and look to the pistol.

Leaving the house she left the voice behind. “Yet another promenade?” remarked Égisippe Coton. The taunt, and the voice wizened with rancour, gave her the fillip she needed, and blandly she condoled with him that he could not also allow himself a little stroll to see how things were going. One is very possibly safer out of doors, she observed.

For a while that seemed true enough, unless it were for the risk of breaking one’s ankle. Paving-stones and blocks of cobbles had been hacked up at random, and in the half-light it was easy enough to stumble into the gaps that remained.

Out of an alley darted the wood-seller’s little girl. Her pallor of town-life, her skinniness of under-nourishment, gave her a resemblance to Augusta, whom neither good air nor good food had forwarded; and she had, too, something of Augusta’s elfish decisiveness of diction. Poverty, though, had freed her from any nursery airs. And like a grown woman she greeted Sophia, and stretching upwards, linked arms.

“You are late, Madame Vilobie. You have missed a magnificent spectacle! Such barricades I have never seen before.”

Looking more closely at this experienced veteran, Sophia saw that she had a patch of plaster on her nose.

“Were you wounded, Armandine?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said the child. “A scratch, a graze from a piece of stone sent flying. However, I can say that I have been wounded in the people’s defence.”

“And the others?”

In her voice of a businesslike bird, Armandine detailed the dead and wounded: the butcher’s boy, the pastrycook, the sweep, the wine-merchant’s two nephews, and Monsieur Allin, saddler and National Guard.

“They also are with us,” she said with a sweep of her hand.

It seemed as though this child knew the defenders of the local barricades as well as she knew her father’s clients. These were not disembodied revolutionaries, these men behind the barricades, but the workers of the neighbourhood, figures seen every day. The actual barricades were almost as intimately known to Armandine. In this one was Aunt Zélie’s great wardrobe, in that the cornchandler’s bins, in a third cords of wood from Armandine’s papa and a great mass of books carried out by an old gentleman whom no one had ever set eyes on previously.

“Look,” she exclaimed. “There they are!”

Dark and regular, the barricades traversed the vista of the rue St. Jacques like waves rolling in upon a lee-shore.

“That is Monsieur Allin’s barricade,” said the child. “He came to attack it, but the sweep harangued him, and in a twinkling he was among the defenders. And there, do you see it, is the umbrella of the old gentleman who brought the books. He seems to be a little delicate.”

Like a guide finishing his course, Armandine walked away.

Augusta, gloved and wrapped in wool and cherished, might have been like this, Augusta walking staidly intrepid into the waves on Weymouth beach. But convention and riches had made of Augusta a rather dull and didactic child. Frederick had understood her best, calling her The Twopenny Piece. These men behind the barricades had children they loved, wives with whom they were in amity. Unglorified, undisciplined, under the windows of their own homes they walked out to die.

“I have no place here,” she said to herself, ashamed to the soul. And her hand fell back from the knocker on the door of the cooked-meats shop. The Maison du Four aux Brindilles stood in a quiet by-street near the river, a street of ancient and overhanging houses. The burst of cannonading echoed through it as though from another world.

Cannon! The stature of that sound reared up above the height of the barricades, the minnikin height of man. She banged on the door.

“Is Madame Lemuel ... ?”

The old man had a serious face, large and pale and wrinkled. He trod with the cautious dignity of some one suffering from corns, and on his hand was a wide wedding-ring.

“This way, if you please.”

Beyond the kitchen, spotless and orderly, abundant with looped black puddings, casks of brined pork, bunches of herbs and jars of spices, was a woodhouse opening into a small courtyard. Across the courtyard was another backdoor, another shed, a room where, in semi-darkness, people were sitting round a table eating and a child whimpered. The shop beyond, shuttered and obscure, smelled of blood; putting out her hand Sophia touched something cold and sticky.

“It is only horse-flesh,” said her guide. “Never fear.”

She heard a door being unbarred, stepped through it, stood in a street. It was almost as though she had entered another courtyard, so tall was the barricade. She looked for Minna, and in an instant recognised her. And her first impulse was an irresistible impulse to laugh, for Minna was holding a gun.

The impulse to laugh was succeeded by a feeling of acute anxiety when she observed more closely how the weapon was handled. She hurried forward.

“Sophia! You are safe!” exclaimed Minna, and levelled the gun at Sophia’s bosom.

“How many people have you killed with that?”

“None! But I have wounded several.”

“I can well believe it.”

There was a crowd of people, a great noise of conversation. An old man, red-nosed and serious, with military medals pinned on his coat, was tying up a boy’s wounded hand. The boy was sitting on the ground, his back against the barricade, tears running down his furious rigid face. An old soldier, three National Guards, several students, artisans, small shopkeepers, many ragged and workless, many women ... for a moment it seemed to Sophia that a young officer was also among the defenders of the barricade.

“Our prisoner,” said Minna.

He was seated on a doorstep, his long thin legs sprawling, on his long thin face a look of bewilderment and dejection. Beside him, and seemingly in charge of him, was a very stout old lady with a hairy chin and a magnificent cap. She was haranguing him, emphatically wagging her head, creasing her double chins. Sophia edged a little nearer and heard her say,

“And that is how one gets piles.”

The young officer shut his eyes and swallowed.

The attack which he had led so much too spectacularly (“He came clambering over the barricades, waving a sword, so there was nothing for it but to let him in,”) had been repulsed. The old man with the medals snorted at this. It was a wretched piece of work, he said, he would have been ashamed to be seen dead in it. It was obvious that he spoke with intent, careful to discourage too much elation among the defenders. At every thud of the cannon he cocked his head, made a wry grimace as though he were trying some bitter flavour on his palate. The cannon, Minna said, was firing from the hospital, the Hôtel Dieu. And she made a joke about pills which had obviously not originated with her.

She had completely assimilated the colour of her surroundings, identifying herself with the barricade, knowing all the news, all the rumours, all the nicknames. It was quite genuine, but slightly overdone, and the effect was as though she were a little tipsy. To Sophia, arriving cold and raw in the midst of this scene already warmed with blood and powder, Minna’s demeanour was embarrassing and painful, she could not help feeling that Minna knew every one behind the barricade much better than she knew her.

“How long have you been here?”

“Three hours.”

If I were here as many days, thought Sophia, I should still be out of it. If only there were something for me to do!

As time went on this feeling was augmented by a searching wish that there might be something to eat. And she had her first moment of identification with those around her when the door of the horse-flesh shop opened, and the old man who had let her in to the Maison du Four aux Brindilles came out, treading with his cautious suffering dignity, and carrying wine and bread and slices of pickled pork.

Then, thinking that these refreshments were for those who had fought, whereas she had done nothing but arrive late, hang about, and look on, she stood back, proud and miserable.

“You look so tired.”

Minna was at her elbow with a glass and a hunch of bread and meat.

“Do you know, those are the first words you ever spoke to me.”

“When you came that evening to the rue de la Carabine?”

“Yes.”

In the shabby remains of daylight they stared at each other, startled into recognition.

“To arms! To the barricades!”

A barricade to the southward was being attacked. A moment later the noise of firing broke out in the next street.

“They are doing it in style,” said the old soldier. “Keep down, damn you!” he shouted to those who had mounted the barricade and were watching the fighting, and shouting encouragement; and he grabbed the leg of a red-haired boy and hauled him down.

“Oh, but I say! We’ve got to see how it goes, down there.”

“We shall know soon enough. Now listen! If they carry it, it’ll be our turn. Wait till they come close. Long shots are no good in this cat-light, nothing but waste of powder. Let them come close, and then give them a real peppering. And don’t try any fancy shooting. This is fighting, not target-practice. Aim fair and square at their middles.”

His bellowing harangue over, he climbed heavily up the barricade, and peered down the street. They listened for his report. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and climbed down again. Stumping grandly to and fro, he trod on Sophia’s foot.

“Hey! Can
you
shoot?”

His voice was so contemptuous that the prisoner vented a sound of protest. Turning her back on this champion, Sophia answered,

“I can load.”

“Load, then! Here, Clément, Dujau, Laimable! This lady will load for you.

“As for you, Captain — you’ll see some fighting presently, maybe.”

The prisoner flinched as though the old man’s wrath had caught him a buffet. Then, biting his lip and bridling, he tried to reassert his superior dignity, tossed his head, put on a sneering and haughty expression. The old woman on the camp-stool continued her inflexible narrative. She was trudging through a death in childbed now. If she could keep him an hour or two longer, thought Sophia, she would make mincemeat of him.

It seemed as though they would stand for ever in this smoky dusk, under this confused hubbub of firing and shouting. The echoes rang and rattled through the gully of the narrow street, and a cage of canaries in a window overhead trilled frantically. Suddenly, as though answering the canaries, there was an outburst of shrill cheering.

“Those damned brats!” exclaimed the old soldier. And another voice, snarling and agitated, began to speak of the Gardes Mobiles, trained by the government to savagery like a pack of trained hunting-dogs, until a third voice, solid and peremptory, silenced the recital.