Two Solitudes (32 page)

“Anyhow,” Fraser said, “it takes more to kill a German with a bayonet than with an aeroplane. Sergeant-Major Croucher said so.”

“How do you know your brother killed anyone with a bayonet? Good soldiers don't say if they kill anyone. They just kill them and they don't say anything afterwards.”

“My brother didn't say anything,” Fraser said. “Sergeant-Major Croucher told me about it, see.”

“Good soldiers don't talk,” Andrews said. He turned to Paul. “Isn't that a fact, good soldiers don't talk?”

“How does he know? He hasn't got a brother in the army.”

“I have so!” Paul said.

The pipes sounded far down the street, and a rustle went through the waiting crowd like wind through leaves. Paul heard
Sergeant-Major Croucher's voice bellowing at the cadets to stand at ease, then at attention, then at ease again, then easy. Rifle butts banged the asphalt, followed by silence. Croucher stood in front of his cadets, very straight with a swagger-stick under the clamp of his arm. He was a two-hundred pounder with a face like Old Bill, and had fought through the retreat from Mons with the Grenadier Guards. He had been twice wounded, won the Military Medal, been invalided out of the army in 1917, and since then had been gym and cadet instructor at Frobisher.

“Now watch carefully,” he said to the cadets, “and don't forget what I told you.” He made no effort to raise his voice, but it was so naturally loud it carried the length of a block. “Mark how the troops salute when they pass the stand and remember next inspection day how they done it.”

Croucher always told his cadets that troops that were too lazy to salute with a bang were troops he wouldn't trust to hold a brewery cellar in an election riot. On inspection day you could hear the Guards salute half a mile away.

Paul looked across the street. Farther down were boys from a city school who looked different from the boys in Frobisher because they did not wear caps and jackets like a uniform. Directly opposite Paul were the girls from Brock Hall. The younger ones wore their hair in pig-tails down their backs and all of them were dressed in navy-blue smocks and black ribbed stockings. They had been marched in a crocodile under a pair of long-striding Englishwomen down to Sherbrooke Street to take their appointed places. Beyond them were groups from the public schools as far as you could see for two blocks.

Paul looked at the bristly back of Croucher's neck and again at the wiggling figures across the street. The girls stood
more quietly than the boys, turning their heads until the pig-tails bobbed but keeping their feet still. Suddenly in the blurred rows of faces Paul saw someone familiar. It was Daphne, stiff in her school uniform. If Daphne was there, perhaps Heather was too. He saw a sailor hat move in the second row and under it Heather's face with the nose turned pertly up and the chin wagging as she talked. He hoped she would not see him, for she might wave if she did and then the fellows would jeer at him for knowing a girl. You had to be as old as a cadet to know a girl without being jeered at. He pulled the peak of his cap farther down, hoping he would look so tough she would not recognize him. He wished the school wore ordinary caps so you could break the brim and pull the loose part down over one ear and look really tough, spitting out of the corner of your mouth the way the hard fellows did. No one could spit and look tough as if he meant it wearing a pea-bouncer English cap and an old school tie.

The pipes drew nearer, and leaning out of the line, Paul saw the swaying kilts of the band and then the flash of sunlight on fixed bayonets. He wondered if these were the actual bayonets that had fleshed Germans in France.

 

Huntly McQueen sat behind the walnut desk in his office, and his face was blandly expressionless as he looked at Athanase. “I'm sorry, Tallard, I'm afraid there's nothing to do–nothing at all. It's most unfortunate.”

Athanase tried to keep the hopelessness from showing in his face. All winter he had been trying to persuade himself that things would turn out well, while he waited for McQueen to make up his mind to begin construction. McQueen knew he had changed his religion; indeed, he had congratulated him on that, although Athanase had suspected a peculiar look in
his eyes when he had done so. While living in Montreal, Athanase had found it easier to pretend that his quarrel with the priest was unimportant. He had lost nearly all his old French friends, and this hurt; but in Saint James Street nobody seemed to care about matters like that. At any rate, arrangements for the factory had proceeded so far that Athanase had felt sure McQueen would not allow himself to be blocked. Prices could be offered to Tremblay and the other farmers that they could not bring themselves to refuse. A contribution could be made to help clear the parish debt. The bishop could not fail to see the advantage in that. In time, Athanase had pretended, the quarrel would be forgotten. He gave McQueen a calculating look. It was apparently not forgotten yet.

“You mean…” Athanase swallowed. “You mean you want me to get out?”

McQueen took his time answering: a deliberately measured pause, to break the natural flow of feeling between himself and Athanase. “I certainly don't
want
that,” he said finally.

“Then…” Athanase looked down, pressing his hands so tightly together that the knuckles showed white. During the past seven months his face had become as gaunt as an eagle's beak; and yellowish. He looked a sick man. Glancing across the desk at McQueen's heavy face, he suddenly hated him. McQueen was weighing and discarding him. It was a devastating experience to be weighed and discarded at his age by a younger man.

“After all, Tallard,” McQueen said slowly, as if chewing a cud, “I told you in the beginning I would never try to force my way into a place unless assured in advance of good will.”

“And my usefulness to you was to provide good will–and a cheap price–was that it?
”

McQueen regarded him placidly, his expression showing a resigned melancholy. But at the same time his pale blue eyes seemed to be looking right through Athanase and through the wall to some distant point in the future.

“You mean,” Athanase said in sudden bitter astonishment, “you mean that
without me
you'll build this factory? They'll make no objection so long as
I
have nothing to do with it?” His cheek twitched in fury. These damned English! “Me–I've been hurt. I admit it. I've finished myself in Saint-Marc thanks to this factory of yours. I've finished myself with parliament, with everything. And now…”

“Come, Tallard, be reasonable. You French-Canadians make too much trouble for yourselves–far too much.”

Flushing angrily, his shoulders leaning aggressively forward, Athanase snapped back at him. “You English–you talk of making trouble! You upset our lives. You get into wars and conscript us. You throw us over the minute you can't use us any more. But you–you never make trouble. No! You're far too busy making money instead.”

McQueen made a soothing motion with his hand, but his eyes still had the hard, distant look. For a second Athanase had the feeling that McQueen was angry with him for having permitted personal affairs to interfere with his business plans, and that this was his peculiar method of inflicting punishment. But if so, McQueen gave no indication of it. He remained impassive, objective, even meek and inoffensive in a hard and distant way.

“You're getting angry,” McQueen said finally. “You simply mustn't do that. It's quite useless to get angry over anything.” Not moving, his eyes unchanged, his ponderous voice as uninflected as a Presbyterian minister's at prayer, he continued, “After all, your problem is rather unique, don't you see?
After all–what are you to be loyal to: what every French-Canadian thinks or what you think yourself? There's no doubt about it, that's the whole trouble with this province. A business man hardly knows where he is, working here.”

Athanase snapped at him, “What's this lecture to do with the point?”

McQueen smiled blandly. “Now Tallard, be reasonable. We English have our faults, but these things one finds in this province–after all, we have to take them into account when we do business with you. After all, this case of yours proves the point perfectly.”

Athanase felt himself choking. Gripping McQueen was like trying to close your hand over a rubber balloon. And all the time the pale blue eyes never wavered from his face, and he felt like a fly under a microscope. He gestured fiercely. “Listen, I'm not interested in your theories. What has this to do with our business? Theories–at a time like this! What do you try to say? What am I going to do? That's the question,” he said, his voice rising. “What am I going to do?”

Athanase was too excited to realize that his words were naive, that they would be registered by McQueen as just one more proof of his business incompetence. He dropped his eyes. Indignantly he told himself that he was not incompetent, it was just that he had never been trained for this smileless poker game the English and Americans lived for. What if he had been childish during the past winter in his obstinate clinging to his dream? A man had to cling to something. He had to make a start sometime. He had to show before he died that his life was not a total waste.

“After all,” McQueen said, “this is not a catastrophe. Your affairs will be left just as they were before. You can liquidate the mortgage if you want to. Naturally, I intend to take
over your interests in the company. I may tell you, Tallard…I might easily have manipulated things so that you would have lost all you had. As it is, you don't lose anything.”

“Lose anything?” Athanase stared. “My God!” He had already lost every single thing that counted. At best he would be a pensioner for the rest of his life. Only a fortnight ago he had learned that the provincial government was shortly going to end his rights of toll on the bridge.

Suddenly McQueen said, “Why didn't you tell me about your quarrel with your priest? It would have saved time–as well as a lot of unpleasant friction.” The blue eyes were now very hard. “You surely must have known the meaning of a development like that.”

Athanase was angrily silent. He struggled to think. “You're going to build without me. You have fixed it so that the land will be sold and your plans can go ahead so long as I have nothing to do with it–is that what you're trying to tell me?”

“I wouldn't make any definite statement yet. We certainly don't intend to start immediately.”

Athanase rose abruptly and crossed the room. From the window he could see the Saint Lawrence steel blue under a bright sky, and he pulled the window up, feeling choked for fresh air. The window rose with a smooth surge letting a rush of air into the room. The papers on the desk rustled and McQueen's hand shot out to bang them down. Athanase lowered the window to a slit and returned to his chair.

“After all,” McQueen said, “you've still got plenty to do.”

“How long do you expect me to keep my seat in parliament now?”

“Well…”

In the silence they could hear the faint, high singing of bagpipes. McQueen's ear seemed to cock to the sound, a
frown touched his face and he shook his head. “You know, Tallard, those returned soldiers are going to present quite a problem. The war has accustomed them to all sorts of hasty action. We may well be in for a bad time here. I don't see how the country can ever be the same again, after what they've been through. Let's hope the government takes a firm line with no nonsense. After all, they must be protected from themselves.”

Athanase stared at him, indignant at the irrelevancy and shocked by the astonishing realization that McQueen was not being hypocritical. He had really meant every word he had said. Then his own anger blew everything else out of his mind. “You started me in all this. You came to
me
, McQueen–I didn't come to you. Now you want to throw me into the discard. All right! I was a fool to expect loyalty from a business man. I can see they've been getting at you. But just how do you think you can put this business through in Saint-Marc by yourself if you couldn't do it with me?”

“The parish is in debt.”

“You mean you've approached the bishop about it?”

McQueen's face gave nothing definite away. “I certainly showed the bishop what a fine thing it would be for the community. I pointed out that unless work was provided many of the young men would have to leave.”

Athanase nearly choked. This was his own great argument.

“It seems,” McQueen continued, “that the bishop has somewhat different views on industry in general from those held by your Father Beaubien.”

“Are you telling me that the bishop will take
you
–but that he won't have the factory so long as I have any connection with the company?”

McQueen shook his head. “You mustn't be so personal about everything, my dear Tallard. The bishop didn't even mention your name.”

“But that was the impression you got?”

“There are many factors to consider.” Again McQueen shook his head. “After all, Tallard–after all! You know yourself that this situation is unique. You made an open issue of your quarrel with your Church.”

Athanase froze into a calm. His face became grave, reserved, aristocratic. “All right!” He got up and pointed his long finger in McQueen's face. McQueen blinked at him stolidly. “It's the old story. You play us off, one against the other. You do it so naturally you don't even know you do it at all.” His voice broke in its effort to hold in the spilling anger. “Someday the whole country will pay for this sort of thing.”

He turned, straight and dignified, toward the door. McQueen bustled around his desk and laid his hand on his shoulder. “My dear Tallard–what can I do? No one can swim against the current. You don't know what you're talking about. I played nobody off against anyone else. This was a business proposition, that was all. I wanted to build a factory. The bishop agreed with me that a factory would be desirable. That's all.”