Summer Will Show (42 page)

He shook his head, a gentle rebuke. Then his bright eyes perused the faces of the firing-squad, and he continued,

“But that is how this delay affects
us
. For you, who are here to execute us, it is probably more tedious, certainly more embarrassing. For this break in the common routine, it lets in a draught of cold air, it gives an inconvenient leisure in which to reflect on this odd business of killing one’s fellow-men, one’s country-men, and people of the same class as oneself, at a word of command. For after all, you and we have much more in common that you and your officer, you and the ruling class whose orders your officer orders you to carry out. That ruling class — you would not marry their daughters, sit at their table. You and they are different nations. And if you reflect on it, you will see that you and they are constantly at war with each other, and have been during all your lives and the lives of your forefathers. But as it is a war in which, so far, they have always won, you have failed to notice that it is a war.

“And here we wait, face to face, people of the same class, fellow-combatants in this profound war in which, so far, we have never gained a victory — waiting for that word of command at which you kill us. Not that I speak against words of command, to be able to carry out an order is admirable and essential — provided that the order does not come from the enemy. But as things are — no! And it seems to me, a prisoner, that you are pretty much prisoners yourselves, and likely, sooner or later, to die very much as we are going to die — blown to bits because some one of the ruling class has ordered it. You are disciplined and courageous prisoners, I grant it. But we have a boast too in our ragged regiment, and it seems to me better than yours. We know what we are dying for, we have fought and will die at our own word of command, not the enemy’s.”

The priest had been brought, and Martin fell silent, retiring, as the defending counsel might, to listen impassively to the speech of the prosecuting counsel. Professional as the lick of a mother-cat’s tongue the absolution was given, and the officer, hovering in the background, crossed himself more and more devoutly, soaped his hands in an increasing ecstasy of sentiment and grand self-approbation.

It was over, this satisfying interlude, the soul was saved, and the order to prepare given. Suddenly his eye lighted upon Sophia.

“I cannot consent to the death of a woman.”

“Death of a woman!” she cried out furiously. “Death of a woman! And how many women are dead already, and how many more will be, with your consent and complaisance? Dead in besieged towns, and towns taken by storm. Dead in insurrections and massacres. Dead of starvation, dead of the cholera that follows starvation, dead in childbed, dead in the workhouse and the hospital for venereal diseases. You are not the man to boggle at the death of a woman.”

It seemed to her, and she was glad, that she had screamed this out like a virago of the streets.

But with a bow he reasserted,

“I cannot consent to the death
of a lady
.”

Bitterly humiliated, she found herself taken out of the rank of the doomed. As she stumbled forward the student leaned after her.

“I am to tell you that Martin feels great satisfaction to think you will remain alive.”

While they were untying her hands she heard the words of command, and the volley. Then the priest was at her side, saying something about mercies and thankfulness, and the dangerous state of the streets. She ran out of the courtyard, not glancing behind her.

She was her own creature again — flipped back into the farewelled world, to fend for herself, sink or swim.

Martin had not much to congratulate himself upon that she was still alive. Never was there a woman with less heart to live. And maybe I shall be killed yet, she said to herself as a bullet went past her. But there was no conviction in the words. No life so charmed as the life that would be laid down. Creaky doors hang longest.

Probably I shall live to a profound old age. And people will say of me, “Do you know, old Mrs. Willoughby went through the Revolution of ’48 in Paris?” And some one else will answer, “How extraordinary! One would never think it.”

With a sleep-walking obstinacy her body was taking her back to the barricade. Murderers go back. And if it comes to that, I may be said to have murdered Caspar. “Do you know, in the year ’48 old Mrs. Willoughby murdered her uncle’s illegitimate son — a boy of fifteen, a poor stupid blackamoor who worshipped the ground she trod on?” “No, really? One would never think it.” “Such a dull old woman. Rather cold-hearted, don’t you think?” This icy pain in her bosom, this pain of a heart becolded, it would go on and on, she supposed, the counterpart to that flowering crimson on Minna’s white muslin gown, that flowering of her warm and generous blood.

It was difficult to get back. Where there was not fighting, there was ruin — houses gutted, streets impassable. Crowds of people had settled upon the ruins, like bluebottles. She could hear their buzzing voices, their crawling exploring footsteps. People thrust their heads through broken windows, recounting what they had found within, holding out a bloodied rag, a musket, a broken chamber-pot, as testimony.

She flinched aside from these, wary as a hunted animal. These carrion sight-seers, they might settle on her if she gave them the chance.

There was the place she sought, and there, too, another crawling inspecting crowd. She tried to drive herself forward, began to sicken and tremble, could not go on. Then she remembered the quiet by-street, the stone-hooded door which had let her in. She made her way back, and found the narrow turning. Above a high stone wall a tree, an aspen, whispered and sighed. Paris was full of trees — all those May-time trees which had waved their vivid greeting to her happiness. And actually she must have seen the aspen on the day when they walked together down the narrow by-street and found the unexpected shop with its romantic name of an old-fashioned provinciality, and bought that remarkably good potted hare; but happy and companioned, she had ignored the aspen tree, sighing then as it sighed now, for from the moment the leaves put out the tree utters its whispering plaint. She had not noticed the tree till now.

She reached the stone-hooded porch. The door had been broken, and roughly boarded up. Through the gaps in the boarding she could discern the dusky shop, dishevelled and pillaged. She sat down on the step and buried her face in her hands.

It was nothing out of the way to see a woman in despair. She heard a child’s trotting step go by, never pausing, and heavier footsteps went by too, and did not pause either. Yet when at last a heavy and slippered treading stopped beside her, she thought it better to be left alone, and resolutely hid her face.

The slippers shuffled as their wearer eased her weight from one leg to another. Sometimes a staybone creaked, petticoats dragged over the cobbles. With these slight movements a smell detached itself, a humble smell, mixed of oil, and yellow soap, and garlic, and calico. At last, sullenly enough, she raised her head, and looked into the face of the stout old woman who had sat on a camp-stool haranguing the young officer.

“There!”

Her voice was a sort of soft rumble, her expression compassionate. With her hands folded over her stomach she stood slowly shaking her head, easing her weight from one leg to another.

“I thought it was you. You aren’t the sort of person one is mistaken about. Well, we didn’t think it would go like this, did we?”

A sort of cloud, a look of more immediate, more compassionate concern, crossed her face.

“I suppose you’ve come back about that other poor lady. You were friends, I reckon.”

Minna dead.
On some faces, Sophia, death falls like a fall of snow
. Minna sitting up in bed, weeping and munching biscuits. Minna dead.

“Where ——”

“She’s not here now, my dear.”

“What!”

This lance-thrust of hope jerked her to her feet, sent the echo of her voice, hoarse and shrieking, down the alley.

“She’s dead, my dear. Don’t let yourself think otherwise. Her body’s gone, but she was dead for certain sure before that. I saw her with my living eyes, and I wouldn’t deceive you.”

It was as though she were proffering a comfort, the way she insisted that Minna was dead.

Afterwards, sitting on a small chair in a very small room, and looking at Madame Guy’s enormous bed, Sophia began to think that for all her kindness the old woman was not to be trusted; that for all her protestations she knew, and would conceal, that Minna was still alive.

Instantly she began to tremble again, to drown in an icy faintness. For, having been so sure of dying, now to return to life and uncertainty was an agony like the bodily agony of the thawing-out of a frostbitten limb. “And I shan’t come back till I hear you having a good cry,” the old woman had said, “for that’s what you need.” Not a tear had come. But for all that Madame Guy presently walked in, her survivor’s gregariousness too strong for her good resolutions. I will let her talk, thought Sophia. She’s the sort that lets out the truth by accident.

Watchful and antagonised, she listened to the old woman’s babble, that flowed on innocent as a brook. But just as a brook may flow, innocent and tinkling, and through the limpidity of its waters one may see on the bed of the stream broken tins, a foul old boot, the jawbone of a dead animal, so under Madame Guy’s guileless chatter was death, misery and exploitation. As she said, she had seen a lot of trouble in her time.

“And it’s a terrible thing, you know, to see your good neighbours killed and chopped about, or taken off to prison to be transported maybe. Particularly at my time of life. For though new families may move in — you may be sure of that, for as Jesus said, The poor you shall have always with you, and living in a poor neighbourhood like this, I can vouch for the truth of it — I shan’t be able to feel the same interest in them, I’m too old now to make new friends.

“And another thing I can’t get over, is taking those boys and teaching them to act like so many young demons. When I saw them scrambling over the barricade last night like wicked monkeys it came over me like a thunderclap that the rich have no mortal right or justice to turn boys into demons just because boys are poor and plentiful. Your poor friend, too, dead and gone! I could see she was a kind-hearted lady. Stuck through by one of them, wasn’t she?”

“I tried to kill him. Did I?”

“I can’t tell you, my dear. I was running, by then. And don’t my legs know it this morning? But I dare say you did. They carried off several of their dead, so I hear. They didn’t carry off our dead, though. Left the poor bodies to lie in the street till their own folk came and found them.”

“Where is her body, then?”

“They took it, they took it — maybe because she was a lady. Now, my dear, don’t you go and get it into your head that she is still alive. She was dead before they took her, I can swear to it, I saw her lying dead with my own eyes.”

“But you were running away ... .Why do you lie to me like this? She is alive and you know it.”

Madame Guy turned pale. Tears began to run down her large face.

“Oh, this world of misery! One can do nothing to better it.”

That was all she would say, offering her great wet countenance to Sophia’s furious questions as to a succession of blows. At last she turned and walked out of the room.

“You shan’t get away from me without an answer.”

Madame Guy walked on, walked into the courtyard at the back of the house, and through it, and knocked softly on a door.

“Monsieur Guillaume, Monsieur Guillaume! It’s me, it’s the old Virginie.”

The door opened a very little. They went in. There was the cooked-meat-shop man, with his head bandaged. He was covered with cobwebs and dirt, as though he had been hiding in a cellar.

“Monsieur Guillaume, this lady — you remember her — has come back asking for her friend. For her friend who was killed. I tell her and I tell her, but she won’t believe me. You, you tell her that the lady was certainly dead.”

“I assure you, she was dead.”

There was a heavy groan from Madame Guy. On his lips it became so palpably a lie.

“Aha! They are lying to you just as they lied to me! She was alive enough when they carried her off, alive enough to cry out with pain, for I heard her. They are sparing your feelings, that’s all.”

It was a woman’s voice, young, speaking in a tone of such imperious despair that it seemed to Sophia that it might well have been her own voice speaking.

“She was alive, right enough! She was alive, for I heard her scream as they hauled her up from the ground where she lay. But whether she’s alive now, that’s another matter. For maybe they grew tired of pulling her along, and knocked her over the head like a dog. Or threw her into the river. Or sabred her, as they did that good Ingelbrecht. But dead or alive, they took her and they’ve got her. And if she’s still alive, then God help her, I say, for then she’s herded into some barracks, or some prison, or some cellar, yes, with hundreds of others, mad with thirst, mad with pain, suffocating in this heat, or else down in the vaults below the river level, with the water rising, the filthy stagnant water, and the rats galloping overhead, and ... ”

“Mathilde!” exclaimed the old man imploringly.

“She is my daughter-in-law,” he said. “She is half distracted, poor creature. For my son is missing since yesterday, and we fear he may have been taken prisoner. And now she has heard these rumours. There are already these rumours. They spring up, they are everywhere, one cannot prove or disprove them ... .”

“One cannot prove them?” She came forward, clapping her hands together, taut as a lightning-flash. “One cannot prove them? But if one has seen these things happening, if one has stood outside a building and heard within the shrieking and the shooting? — If one has seen the cobbles spattered with blood, covered with bits of bones as though bottles had been broken there, as it is in the rue des Mathurins, where they shot the twenty-six prisoners? — One cannot prove these rumours? And if they are only rumours, why do you hide in the cellar?”