Cloudless May (54 page)

Piriac was standing when they came into his room. For less than a moment, Labenne was awed by the old general's severe self-assurance. With that air he must have sent thousands of poor devils to be killed, he thought; for noble inhumanity you can't beat these old soldiers.

He escaped from his moment of awe by pretending that Piriac was his village schoolmaster, grown very old. . . . Good-morning, Monsieur Eustache-Anne Piriac! As you see, I'm not a child any longer, and I'm glad that you treat me differently. . . . Fastened to the wall behind the general's shoulder was the small wooden statue of Joan of Arc presented to him by the newly-formed League. Labenne walked across to look at it. He had his back to Piriac and could speak frankly. You and I, my girl, he said, are both peasants, but you didn't understand politics; it cost you your life. He turned round.

“You have a fine thing here, General.”

Piriac's face softened. “She was a good child, honest, ignorant—a true child of the people before they were spoiled.” He laughed, almost silently. “She was shrewd, you know, no one could beat her in an argument, she was tough and she had faith—all the virtues of the old France. We must revive them.”

He seemed certain that they had died.

Labenne made a solemn face. Faith? he said to himself. Honesty? My dear headmaster, do you know the meaning of
these words you're teaching us? Do you believe they will help you against the Germans when they arrive to take over Seuilly? As for shrewdness, I am the shrewdest person here, and I should certainly have let our saint burn; she was too much of a good thing.

He watched Piriac settling himself, with Thiviers's help, in his chair. . . . What does he believe? . . . Behind the passivity of Piriac's face he saw the stirrings of a childish, that is, an immeasurable vanity. . . . He believes that he will survive as a saint. . . .

“Gentlemen,” said Piriac in a slow voice, “I've sent for you to report on the feeling in the town. I have the Prefect's reports. I should like yours.”

“I hope you don't mistrust Monsieur Bergeot,” Labenne said.

“I wish to inform myself as fully as possible,” Piriac said calmly.

Labenne looked at him with admiration. Old fox, he thought. “There's a good deal of uneasiness. What can you expect—with all these precautions and volunteers and the rest?”

Thiviers crossed and uncrossed his hands. “People are saying that you can't guarantee the town's safety. They're grumbling already about doing the soldiers' work for them.”

That argument won't impress him, Labenne said to himself. “Our people always grumble,” he said drily. “What is far more significant is yesterday's meeting.”

“What meeting?”

What in fact it had been was a meeting of small vine-growers to protest against the import of Algerian wines, and market gardeners infuriated by the town charges, with a few retired civil servants who were being driven to suicide by the cut in their pensions and rising prices. In Labenne's mouth their protests in the name of simple despair or greed became cries of revolt. All these bolsheviks in shabby morning-coats or straw hats and blouses would begin cutting throats the moment their leader, Monsieur Bergeot, gave the sign. . . . Labenne knew he was safe. His listeners knew nothing about peasants and clerks who were nearly all the sons of peasants; they would believe anything, even accepting, as proof of a bad motive, the speech made by the old postman who said, “Gentlemen, I
want to live; my wife also wants to live” . . . he tried to go on, but these few words had exhausted his passion and his courage. Ashamed, he sat down. . . .

“You can imagine how sinister such a meeting is,” Labenne finished, “with the Germans at Compiègne, the Marne lost, and their armoured divisions pouring over the Seine at Vernon. Speaking humbly—as an ignorant layman should speak to a great soldier—I believe that revolution will break out here in a fortnight. If the war lasts so long as that. But since—as everyone foresaw—Paris is not going to be defended——”

He stopped. With as much effort as if they were paving-stones, Piriac had lifted both his hands; he let them fall. “But it would have been wicked to defend it. Think of the destruction!”

“Think,” Thiviers retorted gently, “of the destruction of Seuilly if it is defended.”

“Do you, sir, believe that Seuilly is defensible?” Labenne asked.

“No.”

“Then——”

“I shall do my duty,” the general interrupted.

How the devil, thought Labenne, can you argue with a man whose mind is made up of a few levers and responses? “Even if you are only obeying orders,” he said respectfully, “you will be held responsible by history. Seuilly is in your hands. You can destroy it uselessly—since it can't be defended. Or, whatever happens, whatever orders you receive, you can save it by”—he felt for the painless word—“withdrawal. I beg your pardon for giving you my opinion. I know you won't consider your reputation. I'm less noble, I shall be heartbroken if history records that on the eve of an armistice you sacrificed thousands of civilian lives and an historic city.” He let his voice rise. “I'll even say: On the eve of defeat. What is defeat, what is the enemy from outside compared with the enemy lying in wait inside the house to murder us in our sleep?”

Taking up his sublime voice, Thiviers said, “In defeat will be our salvation.”

Looking at Piriac, Labenne saw that he was neither offended nor distressed. “I have proof,” he went on more quietly, “that the communists in Seuilly intend to destroy the Town Hall, the
post office, and the aircraft works. Not, you notice, the Prefecture. I must honestly say that I have no proof that the Prefect—who would like you to arm these same men—knows of their plans. Possibly he's only reckless. But the danger is real.”

This invention startled not only the general but M. de Thiviers. Since it described one of his nightmares, he believed it. He turned pale and implored Piriac to take steps at once. Labenne was delighted: he had not even to show himself forcing Piriac to act: Thiviers had done that for him, and the general himself would be responsible.

Piriac dragged himself from his chair. “Don't alarm yourself, Monsieur de Thiviers. I shall send troops to guard the Town Hall, and your factory. And there will be no civil volunteers, even unarmed. If your workers give you any trouble, you can call on the officer commanding the troops. He will have his instructions.”

“Thank you,” Thiviers murmured. He was pale now with relief.

“Forgive me,” Labenne said, “I should like the men guarding me to be out of sight. The crypt of Ste. Marie-Madeleine has an outlet into the Town Hall cellars. They could be placed there.”

“And in the underground garage near my works,” Thiviers said. “The Mayor is right. We ought not to give our hot-headed Prefect a handle.”

“I always mistrusted him,” Piriac said simply.

“He's a fool,” Labenne jeered suddenly. “Why didn't he settle down? Suppose he is turned out of the Prefecture? Where can he go? To lodge with Madame de Freppel? That's not my idea of a family.”

He was sincere—for the first time since he came into the room; unconsciously, in condemning Bergeot, he made the gesture his father used to make when he refused to buy an unsound beast.

The old general nodded. He, too, despised in Bergeot the man who had not regularised his life. Immorality was distasteful to him; to avoid talking about it he said,

“The people of Seuilly are my children. They will listen to me.”

“Of course,” Labenne said.

One of these days, he thought, you'll discover that politics in this country is not a nursery game. What will you do then? Die—and enter the heaven of old generals, with its councils of war, dedications, and armies which can be revived after battle and killed to infinity. A delicious eternity of manæuvres.

With Thiviers, he went directly to the Prefecture. He allowed Thiviers to pass on the commander-in-chief's change of mind. Bergeot flew into a rage. For once, his humiliation is getting the better of his vanity, Labenne thought: he'll blush when we've gone, when he remembers that he let us see what he is feeling.

He was struck, too, by the pleasure Thiviers showed when he could insult Bergeot. Something here, he said to himself. I must find out. . . . No information comes amiss when your instruments are men's fears, vices, vanities.

“My good Thiviers,” Bergeot said, “you're talking nonsense. I've just seen a deputation—of ordinary men—who want me to represent to General Piriac that they're willing to risk anything to defend Seuilly. They're not communists. There's no unrest in the town. No plots. As it happens, a Superintendent Rozier is waiting to see me. We'll have him in and you can question him.”

The Superintendent, who had no idea when he got up that morning that he was ruined, came in. Labenne knew him. A man of forty, he amused himself by trying to grow open-air melons; it was his only weakness; he and his wife were economising savagely to educate three sons. On Labenne's private file he figured as doubtful—that is, without a known vice, and possibly too set in his ways to become supple again.

“These gentlemen,” Bergeot said to him, “want you to tell them anything you know about political unrest in Seuilly.”

The Superintendent looked relieved. When he saw the Mayor he had expected he was going to be told off to arrange the safety of some Minister who had taken into his head to make a speech in Seuilly. His objection to orators was that they robbed his melons of the leisure sacred to them.

“There is none,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Thiviers exclaimed.

“I beg your pardon,” the Superintendent said, startled. “Perhaps I haven't understood the question.”

“Do you expect any disturbances?” Bergeot said. “Are there any signs—don't omit the smallest—of trouble among the workers? Think carefully.”

“But there's nothing,” the Superintendent repeated. He was delighted to be able to reassure them. “Never were there so few crimes. Everything is absolutely quiet.”

“Good,” Labenne said, smiling.

The Superintendent caught his eye. He knew at once that he had seriously offended the powerful Mayor. Forgetting, in his terrible agitation, that Labenne professed to be a left-wing Radical, he said,

“All the Radicals and Radical Socialists have gone to the front. There's no one to make trouble.”

“You've reassured us,” Labenne said, with a menacing smile.

“You can go,” Bergeot said.

The unfortunate man went out: he was scarcely able to move his shoulders, the Mayor's smile had gone in deeply between them.

“And there you have the truth,” the Prefect said. He looked at them with triumph. “And you,” he said to Labenne, “you approved my civil defence plans.”

“I? Rubbish,” Labenne said brutally. “Don't try to father your romantic pieties on me, I'm not guilty.”

Bored now, he jumped up and went away, leaving Thiviers to finish the job. Before Bergeot could speak, Thiviers said gravely, “My poor Émile, prepare yourself for a shock.”

The Prefect had reason to suspect this tone of calm evangelical pity. He had heard it used by Thiviers to subordinates he was going to sack in disgrace.

“What is it?”

Thiviers told him in the same voice that Labenne was going to ruin Marguerite. The Mayor had documents and letters proving that for the past four years she had been selling places in the administration, “using her influence over you, my poor friend”; she had her agents in the least reputable house in Seuilly; her letters, most of them on official paper, were
in the hands of scandalous people, including ladies of the town. “I've seen these letters in Labenne's hands, and though I don't know how he got them, I can assure you they're genuine. I know her writing.”

He waited. Bergeot was silent. Stunned, he felt that he had always known about Marguerite's activities, had known that she did not, as he had pretended, interest herself in the administration only to enjoy the sense of being a privileged person. He had known and refused to know—as, with all the evidence under her eye, a mother will deny that her son is a liar and thief. His tenderness for her had joined with a sort of cowardice—was he afraid that if he knew too much his “marriage” with the Comtesse de Freppel would turn out to be something less exalted?—to shut his eyes. But he had suspected. Without asking Thiviers to produce any evidence, he believed all he was told—that she had disgraced herself, and him with her. Why? She wanted money, he said to himself. It was such a mean ambition that his heart ached. My poor girl, he thought, how little I've been able to do for you.

“What is Labenne going to do?” he said at last.

“You can buy him off.”

“I thought so,” Bergeot interrupted. He could not resist a sarcasm he knew he would pay for. “Why are you acting for him? Do you draw a commission?”

“My dear Émile, you're suffering,” Thiviers said. He went on to explain, with as many phrases as he hoped would fatigue Bergeot before he need say anything openly disagreeable or disloyal, that Labenne only wanted a little non-intervention—a trick which could be attributed to any number of highly respectable statesmen. If Edgar Vayrac's friends were able to arrange for his provisional release—he leaned on the word provisional, as though in itself it were an attribution of good faith—would the Prefect use his influence to see that the local press did not make a bad use of this merciful act?

“You mean,” Bergeot said, “will I approve the setting free of a spy, and will I silence the editor of the
Journal
—who has already been silenced, I don't know for how long, by brutes your friend Derval could tell you about.”

Thiviers said calmly, “Don't go too far.”

In fact, Bergeot had alarmed himself by the reckless way he
was accusing the man he had always thought of as his protector. He made a blind turn.