Two Solitudes (28 page)

The hidden voice spoke again, “Get up!”

There was nothing else to do. He crawled out of the bag and rose without a word, sat on the bench and put on his shoes. A hand holding his jacket stretched out into the beam of the torch. “You'll need this too. You're going places.”

He took the jacket. Then the light partially swung away from him, his pupils dilated in the semi-darkness and he was able to see the shadows of the men's forms. The one in uniform looked big and tough. He was the one with the light. He was leaning with his back to the closed door and the light revolved slowly as he played it from his wrist.

Marius straightened and put on his hat. “What time is it?” he said.

He got no answer. He looked around and saw Labelle standing in the patch of moonlight thrown through the window.

“Don't make trouble and you won't be hurt,” Labelle said in French.

Marius stared at him. This was the last humiliation; one of his captors was French. When he reached the door the sergeant made a grab at his wrist, and before Marius knew what was happening, a handcuff was locked on it.

“Goddamn bastard!” Marius said.

He jerked his hand up to hit the sergeant, and the man's arm lifted with it. Then slowly, easily, the sergeant pressed his arm down again. Labelle came up on the other side and took his other arm and with his free hand pulled the door open. They jerked him outside, and the moonlight
flowed over the three of them. They stood there in a clear patch in the maple grove, Marius panting softly as he strained with both arms locked by the men on either side of him, his chest expanded with air. Then, as the men jerked him forward, he stumbled and nearly fell.

“Come on,” Labelle said. “You show some sense, eh?”

His eyes bright and angry in the moon, Marius scrambled to his feet. They walked through the shadows of the grove to the brink of the ridge, then down the path along the edge of the field. They were three tiny black smudges moving down the wide, moon-washed cloth of the hillside.

 

TWENTY-THREE

The next morning the whole parish knew that Marius had been arrested. Mme Drouin had been wakened shortly after midnight by a Ford backfiring outside the store and had got out of bed and gone to the window to see what was happening. The sergeant and Labelle were driving away with another man between them, and she had recognized Marius by the set of his hat. One of the Bergerons also knew about it. He had been in the store playing checkers and had left when Drouin closed up. He had then got a lift into Sainte-Justine from François-Xavier Latulippe. In Sainte-Justine he knew a girl who worked in the station hotel, and when he was leaving the hotel by the back door he had seen the sergeant and Labelle drive up in the Ford and drag Marius out. Marius was handcuffed, and the police had kept him in a room in the hotel all night.

All morning people kept coming into Drouin's with more stories. A woman claimed she had heard a shot in the
night and that Marius had been killed. When told he was not dead, she said he had certainly been wounded, because there was a bloodstain on the road near her house. Drouin said he didn't know for sure, but he wouldn't be surprised but what the surveyors had something to do about it. The surveyors were from the government, and nothing good ever happened when the government had anything to do with it. Then Frenette came in and said he had been speaking with Father Beaubien. The priest had told him only one thing: that he knew who had reported Marius' hiding place to the police.

When Athanase entered the store for his mail, just before noon, the men all glanced at each other and only Drouin spoke to him. He immediately guessed what had happened, and his face was sharp with anger as he took his letters and walked out. He climbed into his carriage and started the mare on her way home. Then he saw Father Beaubien coming down to the road from the porch of his presbytery to speak to him.

Athanase reined in the mare and glanced over his shoulder. He saw that the men had all come out of the store and were now standing around the gasoline pump watching.

The priest's face was stern. “You'd better come inside with me, Mr. Tallard.”

Athanase continued to hold the reins. “I don't think that is necessary, Father.”

The priest walked to the side of the carriage and stood very erect, one hand on his pendant cross, the other at his side. “I take it you know the police have arrested Marius? He was taken off your own land like a criminal.” A quiet intensity entered Father Beaubien's voice. “That is what comes of your friendship with foreigners, Mr. Tallard. It was Mrs. Methuen who told the police where to find your son.
”

Athanase flushed with anger. It seemed incredible. Then he remembered that the children had seen Marius up in the maple grove. They had probably seen him leave the sugar cabin.

“Do you need any more proof that I was right? You let Paul play with those English children, you make friends with them yourself. Now are you satisfied?”

Again Athanase glanced over his shoulder. There were nearly twenty people in front of the store now, all watching.

“I intend to protect my parish, Mr. Tallard,” the priest said slowly. “The sort of thing that happened last night–it is only one of many such examples we can look forward to if you have your way. Now then, I insist that you drop all plans for this factory. I insist that you come back to the Church and live like a Christian.”

Anger choked Athanase. “I won't stand for this. Who do you think you are–giving orders to me?”

The priest's large knuckles whitened as he clenched his hand on the seat-rail of the carriage. “All right, Mr. Tallard…I've done the best I could.” Without taking his eyes from Athanase's face, he nodded sideways. “Those people there–my parishioners–they're watching us. They aren't fools. They know a lot more than you think they do. They're waiting to see what will happen.”

His lips a straight line, Athanase continued to stare at Father Beaubien's set face.

“On Sunday, without naming names,” the priest said steadily, “I shall tell the people the truth about you. I shall tell them that you are no longer a good Catholic. I shall tell them that you are a bad man and a bad example. I shall warn them against having any further dealings with you. It will be known to every voter in your constituency that you no longer
consent to receive the sacraments of their Church. They will know that God will not bless them if they elect a man like you to represent them. I think you know as well as I what this will mean to you, Mr. Tallard?” He stopped. “Do you still want to take your choice?”

Athanase felt the blood rush to his head and his hand clenched on the whip-handle. “I will not be talked to in this way!” he shouted. “Not by anyone!”

He raised the whip and the watching men, seeing his shoulder rise with it, were appalled by the thought that he was going to strike the priest. Father Beaubien stood absolutely still, watching him. Then, still with the whip above his head, Athanase said between his teeth, “No one has ever dared talk to a member of my family like this in our own parish…not in more than two hundred years. You keep away from me! You keep out of my affairs, or by God…”

With a quick turning movement he swung around and brought the whip down with a crack on the mare's flank. The animal reared in the shafts and plunged wildly, then went down the road in a gallop, and Athanase bent forward holding the reins. By the time his gate was reached the mare had slowed to a trot. The welt made by the whip lay in a long, ugly line along her chestnut flank.

As Athanase took the harness off the mare he made up his mind. He would not remain in the position where anyone could presume to talk to him as Father Beaubien had talked to him this summer. Ever since the death of his first wife this moment had been coming. But he was finished with being between two stools now; he was finished with it for the rest of his life, and he would show the whole world that he was to be left alone.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Late that afternoon, John Yardley came back from the village walking slowly and seeing no one. He turned into the path leading up to his house, and when he limped up the steps he nearly stumbled over Daphne and Heather, who were playing with a child's cart on the veranda. Daphne was sitting in it and Heather was pushing from behind, and the wheels made a steady rumbling back and forth across the porch. The children stopped playing and said something to him. He mumbled an answer and went inside, then upstairs to Janet's room.

He found her by the window reading a story in
The Saturday Evening Post
. He hated mourning on any woman, and Janet seemed to him withered by the black dress and black stockings she wore. She looked at least a dozen years older than she had a month ago. Her lips were pressed thin and the lines on either side of her mouth had become severe, making her nose appear long, sad and disdainful.

Yardley sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor. “Janet…there's something I've got to ask you.”

She folded the magazine and tensed herself. During the past month her silence had been constant. If she cried at all, it was when she was alone during the nights. When they had gone into town together to attend the memorial service for her husband, she had maintained the same frozen calm that had horrified Yardley when the news of Harvey's death had first arrived.

“I've got something to ask you, Janet,” he repeated. “Maybe there's not a damn thing in it. But I've got to make sure.” His foot tapped the floor; then, lifting his lantern jaw, he faced her squarely. “Did you tell those policemen where the Tallard boy was?
”

Her eyes snapped open in defiance. “So they did find him there!”

Yardley kept on looking at his daughter, and his pale eyes slowly filled with tears.

“Why shouldn't I have told them? They were police, and they asked me.” Her voice was high and strained. “Why should these people be allowed to get out of it? Harvey didn't.”

The bitter, uncomprehending anger in her voice made Yardley feel sick. “What's come over you, daughter?” he asked quietly.

“He was a cheat,” she said. “That's all he was–a cheat.”

“You don't understand these people here. You never tried to.”

“I understand this much–something you forget about. If we let people like them have their own way we'll lose the war. It would serve them right if they did. If the Germans came here they'd soon see!”

Yardley held her eyes. “They're our neighbours, Janet.”

“They're not my neighbours.”

“They're good people–all of them.”

“After what the war did to you, I'd think…” She bit her lip. “Decent men give their lives, while they…” Her face began to flush as she worked herself up. “It makes me furious, all this pampering of them. It's time they were brought to heel.”

Yardley shook his head wretchedly from side to side. “Daughter…daughter! What kind of talk is this? Where did you ever hear people say things like this?”

Her flush mounted as she pressed her lips together.

“It's not natural for you to talk thet way. You're only repeating some stuff some damned fools thought up to make themselves feel important. Janet, a few more words like thet and…”

“If you've got no patriotism…” She stopped and again bit her lip.

Yardley removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. Then he rubbed the glasses slowly on the end of his necktie. His voice was soft and sad. “It wasn't right, Janet, what you did. It wasn't a natural thing to do. Not all the wars in the world could make a thing like thet right.”

He put on his glasses again, slowly hooking them behind his big ears. Janet continued to look at her father severely, her face not so much angry as stubbornly uncomprehending and righteous. Realizing that there was no sense in talking to her any more, he got up and limped to the door, closed it behind him and went downstairs. The tears were still in his eyes, and as he went out into the hot air of the afternoon he felt more empty than he could ever remember having felt before. He had lost something. He was unable to describe its nature, but it was something he had always assumed to be his.

 

TWENTY-FIVE

Paul was frightened. Something had happened in the household which he couldn't understand but felt was a disaster. Julienne had been crying, his mother had been crying, his father had been shouting at everyone. Now, without explanation, he and his father were going to Montreal on the train.

He sat on the edge of a seat in the day coach with his legs dangling. He was wearing his best suit and was making a constant effort to keep his hands from getting dirtied by the sooty covering of the seat. Opposite him, his father was hidden by his newspaper. He had been reading it for the past half hour, and Paul, sitting very straight with legs hanging and
head turning occasionally to look out the window, felt cut off from him.

His father crinkled up the paper and laid it down, and Paul sensed that a moment of some importance had come. Athanase cleared his throat and surveyed him, and his old face gave a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but was not. “Paul–there are some things you're old enough to know. Do you understand about Marius?”

Paul knew what had happened, but not from his father. The deliberate refusal to mention Marius' name in the house had made everything seem ominous and unnatural.

“Marius is quite all right,” his father said, still trying to be reassuring. He regretted never having been able to talk to children as Yardley did. He supposed there must be some special trick necessary in speaking to a child. “Marius hasn't done anything bad. You're not to worry about him at all. He's all right.”

Paul looked down at his feet as they dangled above the floor and vibrated with the throb of the train. Feeling guilty, supposing he was expected to understand something which he did not, he asked his father in a low voice what had happened to his brother.