PART TWO (continued 2)

“Hallo, Tod! I didn’t know you were on leave.”

He got up briskly out of his leather chair, his blue eyes a-shine, that strong, long-fingered hand of his out to be grasped. Julian Burgetrode’s eyes became quite different when he looked at Tod, for Tod had given him the great thing that he had lacked.

“I’m just off the train, sir.”

Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes absorbed Tod in a keen stare. This was not the normal Tod, but a strong man inwardly excited, burning from some blow or shock of shame, a man whose mouth had been shut tight over words that could only be uttered once or twice in a lifetime.

“Sit down.”

Mr. Burgetrode turned to his private secretary, but that discreet man, a student of the Burgetrode climatology, an observer of cyclonic pressures and weather-cocks, was slipping out of the room.

“I see no one for half an hour, Mr. Jukes.”

“Quite so, sir.”

Tod had not sat down, nor had Mr. Burgetrode. They stood facing each other.

“Special leave, Tod?”

“Special leave.”

“What’s happened?”

Tod pulled a letter out of his pocket-book.

“Read that.”

Mr. Burgetrode sat down in his chair, but Tod walked up and down, looking at the books, the maps and diagrams on the walls, restless, excited, one great emotion locked up within him. Mr. Burgetrode seemed to take a very long time reading that letter, and Tod kept giving him quick and impatient glances.

But he had read it at last, and laid it down on his desk.

“Well?”

His blue eyes betrayed nothing.

“Why didn’t she tell me before?” said Tod, with sudden passion. “Good God, why didn’t she tell me before!”

Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes gave a faint gleam. There was a very human cry in Tod’s voice, an emotion that was deeper than a disillusioned man’s anger and humiliation.

“Well, she has told you,” said Mr. Burgetrode quite gently.

Tod faced about.

“Yes, but this has been going on for months. She says so, she admits it. If only she had been honest with me—months ago.”

“What does it matter, man, if you are free now?”

“It may have made all the difference in the world to me,” said Tod. “I wanted to be free then, but I couldn’t behave like a cad.”

And then Mr. Burgetrode understood. His face seemed to grow a little older, a little thinner, the face of a man who found it difficult to adjust his patience to youth’s sudden passionate surprises.

“So that is what has happened,” he said quietly; “sit down and tell me.”

But Tod remained standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the fire. The war had broadened his sympathies and quickened his understanding. Years ago he would not have thought it possible for this fierce old man to be hurt, but now he knew that it was otherwise. And Tod was touched.

“I have never told anyone else.”

“Is that so?”

“I wanted to come straight to you. It’s not because I feel that I owe you debts that I can never repay—it’s because——”

He hesitated, and gave Mr. Burgetrode a queer, shy, human look, a look that made something cry out in the older man’s heart.

“Because of what, Tod?”

“Because you matter. Because you have been the only friend in England that mattered. You have been such a big man to me. It’s like coming to a father.”

Mr. Burgetrode seemed to sink more deeply into his chair.

“Is that how you feel, Tod?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it. Who is she?”

Tod pulled out a pipe, filled it with quick and jerky movements of the fingers, and looked again at the fire.

“She is French.”

“A Parisienne?”

“Oh, no; I met her in a village—last spring. She teaches in the village school. Her people are peasants, well-to-do peasants, gentlefolk in all that counts.”

“How old?”

“Claire—Claire must be twenty-four. The most exquisitely wise thing in petticoats I ever met, and clean as a bit of white light.”

“So she teaches in the school, Tod.”

“Yes, she loves children,” said Tod; “she’s so much of a child herself. And she can run a house, and cook, and mend things, and she has read books that I never heard of. I don’t suppose she had had any new clothes since 1914, and it suited her. She was a bit of France, a France that our people don’t understand.”

Tod was looking at the fire, and Mr. Burgetrode was looking at Tod.

“And so it just happened?”

“Yes, it just happened.”

“And you went away and never told her?”

“I never told her, but I think she knew.”

Then Tod sat down by the fire with his back half turned to Mr. Burgetrode. He was talking out of the deeps of his heart, and the old man knew it.

“I couldn’t tell her, and yet it was hard, most damnably hard. But then I had never had what other men have had, some woman to think of, and perhaps—children. You don’t know how I wanted it at times. I only had the men, the battalion. I suppose this was bound to happen to me, sooner or later. It’s rather hard that it may have happened too late.”

“You haven’t written?”

“Never. It wouldn’t have been fair. Don’t you know how there are some people you can’t trifle with; it would be like cheating a child.”

“I know,” said Mr. Burgetrode; “it would be like me cheating you.”

He got up and came and stood by Tod.

“So you will go back to this village?”

“I must, even if it’s to find that she’s no longer free.”

“And supposing she is free?”

“I shall ask her to marry me. I want her. You don’t know how I want her.”

Mr. Burgetrode smiled at the fire.

“Tod,” he said; “I’m going to be honest with you. When you first told me this I was angry. I was ready to say all sorts of clever and cynical things, but somehow you always kill the cynic in me. Now that first marriage of yours——”

“I know; it was just sex.”

“And now——?”

“I suppose it is sex; but it is something so different. She’s so natural, so simple, and yet so clever. There is nothing smart about her in the modern sense. She’s as natural as the peasant life they live out there; she’d be natural anywhere, just like a flower or an unspoilt child. You might call me the biggest fool on earth, but I know that I am not a fool. To me it’s obvious; instinct—I suppose.”

“You are not a fool, Tod. The worst woman to manage is the greedy woman, the superficially smart woman. The picture of your little schoolmistress touches me. But supposing she refused to leave France?”

Tod glanced up sharply.

“I hadn’t thought of that. Besides, it’s all a dream as yet. I’m not going near her till I’m free.”

“That may mean months.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going there with any excuses. She has eyes that make any sort of excuse look mean.”

“I’m with you utterly. But to return to that question. Supposing she refused to leave France? She’s a Frenchwoman.”

“I don’t think she would refuse,” said Tod; “if she cared for me enough to marry me.”

“Would you turn Frenchman if she did refuse?”

Tod had to face that question, the question that mattered to Mr. Burgetrode.

“I would,” he admitted, “but I don’t think the need would arise. A man has to work where his farm lies, and my farm lies over here. Claire would see that at once, she always looks straight at the heart of things. But I’m dreaming again.”

He relit his pipe and stood up.

“I have had more than that half-hour, sir; I’m wasting your time.”

“This is my time, Tod. The things that concern you will always concern me.”

He made a movement towards his desk chair, but a sudden little lift of Tod’s head, a look of the eyes, half shy, half proud, but wholly affectionate, held him where he was.

“Do you think I don’t appreciate all this? I’m not just a wild boy who has got lost in his great romance.”

“I like the way you have come to me, Tod.”

“Of course I came to you. You have been my one friend at home through all the war. Those letters of yours used to help me, give me a sort of trumpet call when I was down. You are always telling me to be big. I have tried to be big, and you have been big to me to-day.”

Mr. Burgetrode gave a queer and quiet laugh.

“Have I? Perhaps because you have taught me to swallow my own medicine.”

“I want to come back and work for you,” said Tod; “I have been thinking of that—for years. And if Claire came into my life, she would not spoil your work and mine. She’s big in her simple, wise way. I think you would get rather fond of Claire. She’s like my mother—behind her man all the time, not meddling or fussing, but helping with all her heart. There we are, dreams again!”

“I accept the dream,” said Mr. Burgetrode, with strange softness, “and I thank you for letting me share it.”

He turned sharply and went to his desk. His emotion translated itself into action, and found self-expression there. He began to write a letter. Tod remained by the fire.

Mr. Burgetrode finished his letter.

“Tod.”

Tod turned to him.

“This other affair had better be settled at once. Now—about the man?”

“Goldstein? Oh, he has plenty of money. He’s the sort of beast who would have made a million during the war. I wish I could be sure that he could never treat her like a cad. She—was—my wife, after all.”

“Tod,” said the big man, “don’t try and make yourself responsible for anybody else’s bed. You cannot insure happiness for others. Now, I have written this letter.”

“Yes.”

“It is to my own firm of solicitors. I have told them that this divorce must be pushed through at the earliest possible moment. You had better go to them, because what I have asked them to do will be done. There should be no difficulty. She has gone off with the man and there will be no defence.”

He handed Tod the letter.

“Now, one thing more—money.”

“I don’t want any money,” said Tod; “I have saved a little, and there will be my gratuity. Besides——”

“You couldn’t take it? That’s true; not now, and for such a purpose.”

And then he smiled at Tod.

“Has Claire a dot?”

“I haven’t asked her. And we are still dreaming.”

“Perhaps not. I shall give Claire her dot. Now, what about to-morrow, Tod? Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere—yet.”

“Go to the Melton. It is close to my club; and take my card. And to-morrow—what about a long tramp in the country? I want to talk, and I want you to talk.”

“What about?” asked Tod, with a smile.

“Well, if you can forget Claire for a moment, about what the war has taught you.”

“You will have to include yourself in that, sir,” said Tod.

Chapter Thirty-nine

For one day at least Mr. Julian Burgetrode ceased to control anything. He put on the oldest clothes he could find, a shabby brown Norfolk jacket, and a pair of old grey knickers and grey stockings. The athlete in him showed when he put on such clothes, and he looked the long, gaunt, iron-muscled Viking that he was, a man of many adventures and of many victories. And yesterday he had won a victory over himself.

Tod came in from his hotel to breakfast with him, fresh-faced, clean-eyed, carrying himself with a quiet yet boyish dignity. He did not appear to notice Mr. Burgetrode’s clothes, for with Mr. Burgetrode clothes did not matter. He would have dominated and effaced a collection of rags, for the older his clothes were, the better he looked in them.

But he noticed Tod’s.

“Hallo, a new tunic and nice pink breeches!”

“They were waiting for me in town.”

Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes approved of Tod, and approved of him with fierce affection. He was the finest type that England has produced, big-hearted, shrewd, yet simple; very grim when thwarted, yet smiling even when grim; big in the chest, with a fairish and well-squared head; not too bulky like some of the Germans and Americans; a powerful, quick, alert figure, never jerky or self-conscious in speech or movement. And utterly frank; a man who could take blows and keep his temper.

“Porridge?” said Mr. Burgetrode.

“I feel like porridge. What a gorgeous day we’ve got!”

Mr. Burgetrode glanced at the ribbons on Tod’s tunic, the ribbons of the Military Cross, the M.M. and the Croix de Guerre. He glanced too, at Tod’s stiff left arm, and the crown and star on his sleeve. And Mr. Burgetrode was proud, quite absurdly proud, prouder than Tod ever guessed.

“And I daresay the clever little people in London would think him a very ordinary sort of man,” he reflected, “so long as there was nothing but talk. But let a mob get loose, and they would be chattering like frightened apes behind this big boy’s back. Character—character’s everything.”

“Where are we going to-day?”

Tod had left it to Mr. Burgetrode.

“What about your boots, Tod? I shall walk you twenty miles.”

“And we attack at the end of it?”

“My idea it to capture Leith Hill. The car drops us at a little place called East Horsley. We find our way over the downs into Shere, strike across to Abinger Hatch, lunch there, go on to Leith Hill, on to Ockley, and then somewhere along the line of the old Staine Street back to Dorking. The car picks us up there.”

“You won’t be jumping fences to-day, sir?” Tod asked.

“I believe I could beat you at it, my son. Those nice cord riding-breeches would be something of a handicap!”

December had produced its jewel of a day, a softly clouded amethyst, with rents of blue sky and splashes of sunlight. The hills were a grey blue, the valleys full of violet shadow. The day had the soft eyes of a woman, very gentle and very calm.

Here and there the bracken still had a touch of gold in its brownness, and so had the fallen leaves. They were crisp to the feet under the beech trees. The red-throated old Scots firs had a blue bloom on their tops like the bloom on a grape. Nothing could have been more solemn than the massed blackness of the spruces.

Old Burgetrode walked with his head up, keen as a boy, smelling the smell of the woods and finding it good. The fall of the leaf always stimulated him; there was nothing melancholy about it to a man who was destined to die in harness.

Tod had been telling him about the last battles, and how he had been thrilled and touched by all that he had seen in those redeemed French towns and villages.

“It was worth all those years of slogging, to win back the poor, shabby old places—with the poor, shabby, plucky people. It made me feel good. It’s a thing I shall never forget.”

“The most epic thing that ever happened on earth,” said Mr. Burgetrode—“that and the return of the Serbs. But I’m going to catechise you, Tod.”

“Right. What in?”

“How did you run your battalion?”

Tod gave a short laugh.

“Towards the end it seemed to run itself. I never had any bother.”

“A complete and self-regulating organism, every cell functioning automatically? Not quite that, I think! I’m a vitalist, and I always look for the vitaliser. You were the central stimulus, what?”

“I got things done,” said Tod.

“Exactly. That’s a very simple definition of a vitaliser. And the men?”

“They were good chaps.”

“How did you manage them?”

“If I found a man running crooked I had him up alone and talked to him absolutely frankly as man to man. I tried to be the father to him; I gave him that chance.”

“And if he remained bad after that heart to heart talk?”

“I broke him,” said Tod simply; “that was the only thing to do.”

Mr. Burgetrode walked on, head in air, smiling in the deeps of his eyes.

“That is what you are going to do with me—manage men.”

“It’s one of the most interesting games in the world,” said Tod. “I’m fond of men.”

“You won’t find is so easy in civil life.”

“I don’t suppose I shall.”

“You’ll have no machine behind you save the machine that some of our visionaries want to smash. All the discipline will have to come out of yourself. There will be days when you will be tempted to use ferocious blasphemy, when you feel you could smite some fool on the mouth. If you try to discipline some blackguard you may find a thousand men on strike. The solidarity of labour, which may be just organised stupidity.”

“There is a lot of common sense in the average man,” said Tod.

“Yes, when he uses it and doesn’t let himself be tricked by being tempted with a carrot. Socialism is the carrot just at present—not the ordered and scientific Socialism that you and I might try to evolve—but a sort of beautiful dream in which you do half the work you used to do and get twice the money, and you begin the dream by confiscating other people’s superfluous possessions. For Socialism, extreme Socialism, to work effectually, ordinary men would have to be either angels or slaves. Can’t you see the discipline that would be needed? An army might have arrived at that state of discipline, a mass of civilians—well, I’ll say never.”

“You are an individualist?” said Tod.

Mr. Burgetrode laughed.

“Haven’t you glimpsed the real solution—what has happened and will happen every time? Supposing I accept Socialism, the scheme is not complete. Individualism will ride on the patient Socialist ass. The socialised many will be led and managed by the individualised few, enlightened and sympathetic individuals, no doubt. It is the most obvious thing that ever there was.”

“I suppose it is. But have the workers ever had their fair share?”

“They haven’t. And in a very short time they will be wanting more than their fair share. I’m not thinking in money, but in products, the sweat we give and the sweat we live on—other men’s sweat. We live on other men’s sweat, mental or manual; that ought to be obvious—even to your common-sense man, but sometimes it isn’t. John Brown is not going to sweat for you. Charge him more for his sweat and he’ll retaliate. In the end the thing becomes ridiculous; there is a row in the tap-room, and some big person has to restore order. Besides, all this is deep down in the bowels of Nature. Some people say that we have superseded Nature, taken over her job. Bosh! Don’t you believe it.”

They were climbing through the woods to Leith Hill, and the brown-coloured tower showed against a patch of soft grey-cloud.

“Get up high, get a view,” said Julian Burgetrode; “leave your heart down below to learn, but push your head up to the stars to think.”

They sat down on the great grassy mound and looked south over the trough of the Weald. The Downs showed in the far south, and even Chanctonbury Ring was visible, like a patch of smoke from some giant smithy.

“It makes me think of Cassel,” said Tod when he had gazed a long while in silence.

“Why did they make you a lieutenant-colonel, Tod?” Burgetrode asked him suddenly.

“Don’t know, I’m sure,” said Tod; “I suppose they knew I was keen.”

“Exactly. Do you know what your trouble is going to be?”

“What?”

“Managing a unit in which half the men think they ought to be lieutenant-colonels, and want to know why they’re not. The answer’s so simple, but we seem to be afraid of hurting the working man’s feelings. He’s so sensitive, so susceptible, and if you offend his dignity he throws down his tools.”

“I prefer the working man to the rich Jew,” Tod said.

“Tod, my friend, have I ever said that I loved the Jew type? I should think the Assyrians were the most beastly people who ever lived. I have a sort of silly fondness for the plain Englishman; but are you going to play the game by him if you are afraid to stand up and tell him the truth? People don’t like being told the truth, and the plain man is in a very nasty temper.”

“What particular truth?”

“That the plain man has got to work damned hard, and that then some of his dream may come true.”

“Yes,” said Tod.

“That all men are not equal; that all men can’t be colonels, not only because they are not fit to be colonels, but because a world of colonels wouldn’t work.”

“But do they want to be colonels?” Tod laughed.

“Ask the women what they want. What has the great cry been? ‘We want a bigger share in running things.’ Ambition! Quite right. And there you have Nature’s old primitive cry. These fierce and discontented young men in Glasgow and Manchester and Sheffield and London—what do they want? Get to the heart of it. Power! They want to run their own people. Let them. But when they start the poor ignorant mass like a lot of Gadarene swine straight for the precipice—what then?”

A sudden grimness came over Tod’s face.

“We had something like that once or twice over there.”

“And you had to stop it.”

“Yes. I was only a second lieutenant then.”

“And what did you do?”

“Used my revolver. It was beastly—the most damnable thing I have ever had to do. But it stopped it.”

“Quite so. And if the big men fail at a crisis, Nature steps in. Adam, who has been drunk with words, is scourged back to work. And Nature shows no mercy. She sets the slave to clean up the mess he has made.”

Mr. Burgetrode paused suddenly and looked at Tod. And then he laughed.

“Beyond the Downs lies the sea, and across the sea is a bit of old Picardy, where the peasants are at work in the fields and children are sitting in the school.”

“Sorry, Sir,” said Tod, “I couldn’t help it.”

Chapter Forty

Tod spent a week of his leave with Julian Burgetrode and then went to Shaston. The town had a few pleasant memories for him, memories of Tom Lavender, the Mossups, and of poor Kitty who was dead. He put up at the Brunswick, a quiet hotel on the front, and spent his first evening with Tom Lavender.

Old Lavender was the same tranquil soul, but he had aged, and his clothes looked shabby, and the cuffs of his shirt were frayed. Tod noticed these rather pathetic details, also a certain waxy whiteness of his old friend’s face. Tod had seen that look in France—on the faces of old Frenchmen who had not enough to eat.

“I can’t walk as I did,” Tom told him; “if I can get to Ashurst Wood I’m satisfied. After all, you haven’t to go far to find beauty and a few birds.”

“The beauty is inside you,” Tod said to himself, “and you ought to have birds singing round your deathbed.”

But he contrived to sneak a secret interview with Mrs. Jelf, a Mrs. Jelf who looked thinner and sharper about the face.

“Mr. Lavender isn’t well,” said Tod.

The old woman gave him an almost fierce look.

“If I could help it I would,” she said; “I can manage on potatoes and porridge and tea, and a little bread and margarine. He’s proud—terribly proud.”

Tod was shocked.

“Do you mean to say——”

Mrs. Jelf held his sleeve between a sharp forefinger and thumb. She was on the verge of senility, but loyal to the last.

“He thinks I have meat,” she said with a cunning air, putting her face close to Tod’s; “he thinks I have meat every day! Poor dear! I tell him lies; I pretend.”

“So—he—has all the meat, Mrs. Jelf?”

“It isn’t much.”

Tod sat down and pulled out his pocket-book.

“He’s never got to know of this. You’ll promise?”

“He’ll never know,” said Mrs. Jelf; “I pretend I’m such a manager. He’s just like one of his birds, you know.”

Tod handed her two five-pound notes.

“Money’s for use. I’ll send you something every now and again. Doesn’t the shop pay?”

“It never did pay very much,” said Mrs. Jelf, “but then money never did matter to him; he’s above money.”

And then she grew fierce again.

“And to see those sluts all dressed up and showing off their clothes on the seafront! And the money some of the greedy beasts have been making! It near drives me mad sometimes, and him—not enough to eat. I could go out and pull the clothes off their backs, I could.”

“He shan’t go hungry in the future,” said Tod.

“You always was a sort of son to him,” said Mrs. Jelf, beginning to weep.

It amused Tod to stroll round Shaston and look into the shops he had known and register a second impression of some of the people who had had the handling of his youth. He walked into Mr. Snape’s shop and bought a dozen new razor blades. “Mr.-Any-think-Else” had disappeared, but Snape was there more pink and polite than ever.

He did not recognise Tod.

“Be-ootiful weather for the time of year, sir.”

“Splendid,” said Tod, and he could not resist pulling Snape’s leg. “Do you happen to keep Bartrup’s Consumption Cure?”

The chemist looked a little puzzled.

“We do stock it. Three-and-ninepence the bottle, sir.”

“Is it any good?”

Snape pursed up his lips. He did not think it wise to advertise the stuff to an educated customer.

“Well, sir, of course, as you know, phthisis is a bacterial infection. Bartrups contend that their mixture contains a specific remedy, some particular drug——”

“It used to be just ipecac, and sugar,” said Tod, “and was dear at half a crown. Three-and-nine, now, is it?”

Mr. Snape stared at him.

“Yes, three-and-nine. War price, sir.”

“The war has been very useful to a lot of people,” said Tod; “no, I don’t want that rubbish. Good morning.”

He left Mr. Snape still staring, and raking his mental kitchen-midden for some lost memory.

“Seem to have seen him before—somewhere. Fancy his asking for Bartrup’s. Sidey sort of man. I don’t like these army chaps.”

Tod walked down Ponsonby Place and rediscovered the establishment of Flowerdew & Rook. It had been enlarged, and had refined itself into a very superior concern, showing you in one window a room furnished in the Jacobean style, and another in which Sheraton was reproduced with meticulous accuracy in all its details. The place was full of antiques, beautiful old pieces of furniture, china, glass, Sheffield plate, and some big trays full of exquisite enamels. A grey four-seater touring car was standing outside the shop, and just as Tod strolled by, Rook came out and entered the car.

Rook happened to glance at Tod, and recognised him. The two men stared back at each other for a moment, but it was Rook whose eyes flinched and shrank away.

“The Majestic,” he said to the chauffeur, “and hurry up, I’m late.”

Tod walked on.

“Rook has made money,” was Tod’s reflection, “and poor old Tom Lavender hasn’t enough to eat.”

Tod was in search of the Mossup family, and the family proved elusive. The old white cottage with its green porch and green front door had passed into other hands. “We’ve bin here two years,” the old woman who opened the door told him; “yes, Mossup was the name. A delikit chap that kept a shop and was bankrupt. You might try Friday Street down by the gas works.”

Tod tried Friday Street, appealing to a good-natured looking soul who was scrubbing her steps.

“Mossup? The Mossups live in Love Lane. First on the right. It’s number six, I think.”

Tod turned into Love Lane, a little black backwater of a street with the great red gasometers towering over it, and a high wall blinding the lower windows. No. 6 was one of about thirty tightly compressed houses with a door and a window on the ground floor and two windows above. The door of No. 6 was grained in imitation of some imaginary wood, probably oak. The doorstep was clean, and the black door-knocker had just been repainted.

Tod knocked.

A little girl of five opened the door. She had pale eyes, a white face, and a scar on her neck where glands had been removed.

“Does Mr. Arthur Mossup live here?”

The child looked at Tod with solemn wonder.

“Yes, that’s Father. Father’s in the yard, sawing wood.”

“May I come in? I’m a friend of your father’s.”

“Yes, come in,” said the child.

Tod stepped straight into the front parlour, and Miss Mossup closed the door. Tod heard sounds of activity coming from the back of the house, the rasping of a saw, and then the sound of a man coughing.

“Supposing I go through?” he said to the child.

He was smiling, and when Tod smiled at children they smiled back at him.

“Yes, you may. I’ll take you to Daddy.”

She took hold of Tod’s hand, and her little fingers felt cold.

The yard at the back of the house was about twelve feet long and eight feet broad—a respectable tank. Someone had built a small shed in one corner, using old egg-boxes, and squares of tin cut from biscuit tins for the roof. In the other corner lay a pile of old wood, bits of old fence poles and posts. In the centre of the yard a man in shabby black trousers and an old white sweater was sawing at a length of wood, using a packing case with notches cut in it as a sawing-tool. The back of the man’s neck looked thin and yellow. He was wearing carpet slippers, and he had not shaved.

“Hallo, old man!” said Tod.

Mossup turned on him, an aged, shrewish, thin-haired Mossup, with the eyes of a man who slept badly.

“Bless my soul!”

He flushed up in his old shy way, and reached for Tod’s hand.

“Heard you were some sort of big pot, now. How did you find out——?”

“By asking. And Miss Mossup——”

The child was watching Tod.

“Run away, Nan,” said her father, with sudden irritability, “we’re busy.”

The child went slowly into the house, and Tod felt uncomfortable, cooped up in this tank with a man who was so obviously sick in soul and in body.

“Mind if I go on working, old man?” said Mossup.

“Not a bit. I’ll light a pipe. Do you smoke, Arthur? You didn’t use to.”

“Can’t afford it.”

Mossup turned to his sawing-stool. The saw was working badly; it wanted sharpening and setting, but the man in the dirty white sweater struggled with it with a sort of evil and angry patience. He got out of breath, and the veins grew big on his forehead.

Tod felt still more uncomfortable.

“Good exercise, that,” he said.

“Saves a little money,” panted the sawyer. “I got this lot cheap, and it’s cheaper than coal.”

He paused to rest.

“Drat this saw!”

“You’ve been ill, old man,” said Tod abruptly, forcing his way to close quarters.

“Ill? I’m always ill. When the business broke——”

He resumed his sawing.

“I went back to Horrox’s. No good for the army. Then I tried munitioning. Got bronchitis. Now I’ve always got bronchitis or something. No good for work. Oh, damn this saw!”

His chest was heaving, his lower lip thrust out. Then he began to cough.

“Let me have a go,” said Tod.

He almost pushed Mossup aside. The man in the sweater stood and coughed and panted.

“Must do something. Olive manages the millinery in a new shop in King William Street. She works like a horse. Food’s so dear; it’s damnable.”

He caught hold of Tod.

“Ninepence for a loaf, Western, ninepence! And if I want a new pair of boots——”

He began coughing again, and the cough smothered his anger. Tod went on sawing, bending his head over it, the man in him shocked and hurt. Poor, kindly, simple old Mossup! He had been such a good chap, and in his place Tod saw this querulous, sick, soured failure, this pathetic thing that could not bear to be watched by its own child.

“You want a holiday, old man,” he said softly.

“Holiday!”

There was a snarl in Mossup’s voice.

“This is a holiday. This rotten body of mine isn’t fit for anything else. What holiday does Olive get? I’m just a household drudge, an old woman; that’s all I’m fit for.”

“She doesn’t think so,” said Tod.

Mossup gulped something like a sob, and his voice became more human even in its querulousness.

“It’s so humiliating, old man. If you only knew how I——”

He sat down suddenly on an old sugar box.

“She’s an angel, an absolute angel. And I’m—I’m a cantankerous, snarling beast. I always feel sore in the head; I make her miserable. It’s sordid; it’s horrible. I see it all, and yet—somehow—I can’t help it.”

Tod could not bear it any longer. He left the saw standing in the notch and turned to his old friend.

“Look here, old chap——”

“I never paid you that ten pounds, you know,” said Mossup quickly; “I meant to.”

Tod’s eyes were almost angry.

“I gave it you,” he said. “Now, look here, old chap, are you seeing a doctor?”

“What good’s a doctor to me? It’s my self-respect that’s ill. He can’t physic that, can he?”

“But I know somebody who can.”

And then Mossup showed the hysterical and cantankerous temper of a weak man whom life had humiliated.

“Yourself, I suppose?”

“Perhaps.”

“That’s it, that’s just it. You’ve been a success, Western. Your people didn’t fit you out with a rotten body, and now you come swanking around here making me look like a miserable fool before my wife. I won’t have it! I tell you——”

“Old man, shut up.”

It was the soldier who spoke in Tod, the man who had the instinct of authority.

“You are not going to talk like that, Arthur. Do you understand?”

Mossup looked at him vacantly. He thought that Tod was angry, and anger—other people’s anger—frightened him.

“I didn’t mean——”

“You’re ill, old man; that’s what’s the matter. You want your strength back, and then you want work.”

“No one wants me,” began the derelict.

“Shut up! I can get you a job in half an hour, directly you are fit for it, and a good job. I happen to have been lucky. Now, I want you and Olive and Nan to have dinner with me to-night—”

“But I haven’t got any——”

“Go in and shave,” said Tod, “or by George, old man, I’ll do it for you.”

And Mossup went. A clean chin was the beginning of his recovery.

Tod hired a horse one morning and rode over to Pentworth. He stabled the horse at The George and walked by way of Spaniards Row to the little cemetery beyond the railway station. No. 13 was the same queer old lovable lunatic of a house, but the shop had become a saddler’s, and someone had cut down all the sooty laurels and aucubas where Tod’s great snake had lived. Pentworth smelt vividly of his childhood. The northern end of Spaniards Row was littered with the leaves of the great chestnuts and elms, and it had the same damp perfume. Tod could picture the lights beginning to blink out in the little town when the dusk came down like fog from the sea.

Tod found the grass and weeds long and rank over the grave of William and Nancy Western. He had written to a local florist and gardener about the grave and paid the man a yearly fee for the keeping of it. Tod was hurt and angry, and he called at the florist’s shop on his way back to The George.

The proprietor was a surly, off-hand, take-it-or-leave-it sort of person.

“Can’t get the labour,” he said. “We’ve had something better to do than bother about graves.”

“Is that so?” said Tod. “We’ve been rather busy, too, out there. But you took the money, didn’t you?”

The man blustered.

“What money?”

“I paid you by cheques,” said Tod, “and I happened to notice that the cheques went through the bank. That grave hasn’t been touched.”

“You can have the money and you can get out of my shop,” said the man. “Because you’re a colonel or something you needn’t think——”

Tod looked at him very steadily.

“I’m not going to make a row with you about that grave, but I shall call on the rector and tell him to expect a cheque from you and that he can use it as he pleases. Will you have it that way, or shall I put the matter into the hands of my lawyers? I call it fraud.”

And quite suddenly the man became polite.

“You needn’t be so rough about it, sir. I’ve been worried to death what with labour and prices. I’ll look up the amount.”

“Right,” said Tod; “don’t forget. And I think you will send a man down to cut that grass.”

“To-morrow if possible.”

“To-morrow? I think I may be in Pentworth again to-morrow. Good morning.”

Tod had an early lunch at The George and rode back to Shaston, touching at Burnt Farm on the way. He found Uncle Remus in bed—the old man had been hemiplegic for a year—and the carter’s wife looked after the house for him, her husband managing the farm. The woman, a very decent and quiet little body, was glad of a talk to Tod.

“He’s that trying and cantankerous,” she said, “that me and my man wouldn’t stay here if we hadn’t worked for him all these years. He’s always thinking we are after his money.”

Uncle Remus had his iron bedstead by the window where he could look out on the farm. There was no fire in the room and no carpet on the floor, and the old man’s grey head and bluish face contrasted with the red coverlet on the bed.

Uncle Remus was senile, and yet the one great inspiration of his life still dominated him. He was pleased to see Tod, and he crowed at him like a baby.

“What’s them things on your sleeve, Nephew?”

Tod had drawn a chair beside the bed. Uncle Remus had withdrawn one claw of a hand from under the clothes, and was fingering Tod’s sleeve.

“That means I’m a colonel, Uncle.”

“A colonel!” And Uncle Remus opened his pale eyes very wide. “Ain’t we grown? And you killed plenty of Germans?”

“A few.”

“What’s them bits of ribbons?”

He passed a wavering forefinger across Tod’s chest, showing a child’s desire to touch and finger things.

“Medals I have won, Uncle.”

“My!” said Uncle Remus. “You must have killed lots of Germans! Little Tod Western grown up to be a colonel! I’m proud of the boy.”

And then he grew cunning and sly, leaning over and leering at Tod and taking him by the sleeve.

“I’ve left you all my money, every bit of it.”

“It’s very good of you, Uncle Remus.”

“Come here; I don’t want to speak loud. I’ve saved four thousand pounds. You’ll get it.”

He swung back in the bed and sat looking at Tod with an air of sly exultation.

“What d’you think o’ that?”

“I think I’d like you to have a fire in your room, Uncle.”

“Fire! What do I want with a fire? Four thousand pounds! Worth more than a row of ribbons, my boy, though I won’t say I ain’t proud of ’em. I’m a warm man; I don’t want no fire.”

He bent forward again, tapped Tod on the knee, and pointed to the floor.

“She thinks she’s going to get some of it,” he said, with an attempt at a wink.

“Who? Mrs. Dodds?”

“She comes purring round me like a cat. I let her think I’ve left her a hundred pounds.”

“And haven’t you?”

“Not a farthing!”

And Uncle Remus crowed and rocked in the bed as though he had perpetrated the great jest of his life.

“Not a farthing! I’ll be even with her for trying to fool me. Uncle Remus wasn’t easy to fool, was he, my boy?”

“No,” said Tod, thinking that if the old man’s money came to him, Mrs. Dodds should have her hundred pounds, and that Tom Lavender and poor old Mossup would not be the poorer.

He said good-bye to Uncle Remus, promising to come over and see him again, and made westwards into the red glow of a winter sunset. From the high ground above Redling he could see the sea, the sea that lay between him and France. Tod’s thoughts were in old Picardy, in that village not far from St. Valery at the mouth of the Somme, that village where Claire Vignard taught in the school.

A great restlessness came upon him, a sense of something precious slipping out of his life while he remained silent, waiting. Matters were going forward; Julian Burgetrode’s lawyers asserted that the case was beautifully simple—a mere bit of legal machinery. And yet——

“I wonder if I might write to her?” said Tod.

A voice within him answered, “No.”

Perhaps some Frenchman had returned to Myonville, and Claire was happy and forgetting? Tod set his horse at a canter, his blue eyes staring straight into the sunset.

“I wonder?” he said to himself.

And then:

“Why shouldn’t I write to Josephine? I’ll tell her not to breathe a word of it to Claire.”

He wrote to Josephine Lorellard that very night.

Four days later he was back with his division in Belgium, schooling himself to face the months ahead of him and the coming of his liberty.

In March Tod was demobilised. Julian Burgetrode met him on Folkestone pier.

“You will be free in two months or so,” he said to Tod.

Tod said nothing.

Chapter Forty-one

One June morning Tod walked out of his hotel in Abbeville and took the train for Eu. He had reached Abbeville the evening before, and had spent an hour wandering round the familiar old town that had been so savagely bombed during his month at Myonville. He was very much the young English civilian, brown lounge suit, brown boots, fawn-coloured velour hat, wash-leather gloves. His old military cane was the only soldierly thing left to him, save, of course, all that soldierliness that he carried in his heart and head. It was not the Tod Western of Shaston thrown back into civilian clothes, but a man who had the bel air and the eyes of a master.

Tod sat in the train and watched the country go by. He was excited, a little afraid, the boy lover utterly absorbed in the life of the moment. No one expected him in Myonville, nor did he know what he would find there, how they would welcome him, whether the day of days would not end in some tragic anticlimax.

“Claire—why Claire married Jules Loubet six months ago.”

Tod tried to keep such words as these constantly in his ears.

He tested his French by chatting to an old farmer opposite him.

“Monsieur was in the war.”

Yes, Tod was in the war. He found his French flowing freely, but he kept an eye on the landscape, and watched for the green valley and the cliff of trees that meant Myonville and romance.

The great flat fields, the poplars, the straight roads, the little white-walled houses stirred him most profoundly. He was back in France, France that was so unforgettable, so full of poignant memories; and then he sighted that old sugar factory among the beeches on the road to Abbeville. Myonville was less than a mile away, and Tod began to fidget.

The train ran into Myonville through fields of wheat, beetroot and crimson clover. There was the familiar level-crossing, with the red brick Café de la Gare, and its skittle alley in the garden. The church spire seemed to hold up a beckoning finger above the elms and beeches.

The train stopped. Tod raised his hat to the old Frenchman and got out. Myonville had always been a quiet station, and it was so quiet on that June morning that Tod felt the one notorious person on earth, a stranger to be stared at. The station-master took the tickets, and Tod wished him good morning. He had once had a slight altercation with the station-master.

“Bonjour, monsieur.”

He gave Tod a surprised look and then re-examined Tod’s ticket.

“You don’t remember me,” said Tod.

“No, monsieur. The English are so much alike.”

It was an unpromising prelude.

Tod walked up the dusty road from the station to the little Place de l’Eglise. Myonville looked exactly the same, only there were no English soldiers in it. Women were chatting under the shade of the limes. Tod saw the old curé toddling across the cobbles to the church, the identical, rather snuffy and grey-chinned old gentleman. The same brown dog was lying in the same doorway. The fat woman at the baker’s shop had her hair in curling pins, and was arguing as usual, her hands on her hips. From the doorway of the Papillon d’Or the young demoiselle who used much “Fleur de Trèfle” and was Parisian in her atmosphere, looked out questioningly at Tod with eyes that were black and big and alluring. She had troubled the hearts of one or two of Tod’s subalterns. Tod raised his hat to her and blushed.

“Tiens, it is Monsieur le Colonel!”

He passed on and found himself in that quiet and familiar street running softly westwards in the sunlight towards the high shade of an avenue of beeches. And suddenly Tod was afraid, for so much hung on the happenings of the next few minutes. All the dreams of a year were walking with him down that sunlit village street, and for a moment Tod’s courage turned to water. Supposing she had left the place, or was married, or his coming should prove of no meaning to Claire Vignard?

The street curved slightly, so that the Café de la Paix and the schoolhouse next to it were hidden from Tod until he reached the big pond where the peasants watered their horses. He noticed that there were no children to be seen. It was the hour for them to be at school. Walking very fast Tod rounded the curve, and saw the schoolhouse with its iron railings and queer little belfry, and next to it the house of the Lorellards all brown in the sunshine, just as he had seen it when he had walked for the first time to his billet.

Both the sidewalk and the roadway were deserted, save for a figure in light blue standing at its ease outside the Café de la Paix. This French soldier seemed to belong there. Bareheaded, a pipe in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets, he had the air of a man in possession, a man standing on his own doorstep and surveying the world.

“Damn that chap!” said Tod.

He was absurdly interested in the figure of the Frenchman, absurdly afraid of it. Did the man belong to that particular house, or was he a mere chance loafer? He was standing squarely in front of the café doorway, and he stared hard at Tod as the Englishman came up, nor did he offer to move.

It was obvious that the Frenchman did belong to the house of the Lorellards, and his thick-set blue figure closed the doorway.

“Bonjour, monsieur.”

Tod came to a standstill. The Frenchman looked surprised. He was young and rather sallow, the laconic and inexpansive type of peasant.

He took his pipe out of his mouth, but he did not move from the doorstep.

Tod tried a sniper’s venture.

“It is Monsieur André Lorellard—perhaps?”

The Frenchman looked still more surprised.

“That is so, monsieur.”

And Tod laughed.

“We never met, Monsieur André. Your mother and your father were so very kind to me a year ago. You may have heard them speak of me, Colonel Tod Western.”

The French boy’s impassive face changed instantly. He stood aside; he put out a hand, and his rather hard blue eyes became laughing and friendly.

“Monsieur—but what a surprise! I have heard of you so often.”

Tod gave André’s hand an almost savage grip.

“We were friends before we met. You are on leave?”

“I am home to be married, monsieur.”

“Felicitations,” said Tod, seriously scared.

“Perhaps you may have met my fiancée, monsieur?”

“It is possible.”

“Mademoiselle Yvonne Frangonard, of the Petite Folie Farm.”

Tod could have kissed Master André. That gentleman’s figure had become one of cloudless blue.

“Yes, I think I remember Mademoiselle Frangonard. Are your parents at home, André? I have come to see them.”

André smiled queerly at Tod. Then he went into the café and shouted excitedly.

“Josephine! Josephine! Un ami!”

He turned again and laughed in a brotherly way at Tod.

“Wait, monsieur. Such a surprise for them all! They will be so delighted!”

Josephine came into the long room, polishing a glass with a cloth. She looked at André and then at Tod, seemed lost for a moment, and then exclaimed as only a Frenchwoman can exclaim:

“Monsieur Tod!”

She came forward and kissed him. André had disappeared.

Tod sat on one of the deal tables, left foot swinging, smiling shyly at Josephine.

“Yes, I have come back. I said I might come back, you know. And how are Monsieur and Madame?”

“Very well, monsieur,” said Josephine, sitting on the table opposite him.

“And you?”

She laughed.

“It is for monsieur to say.”

“Always charming—and my friend?”

“Perhaps.”

Josephine was waiting the question that mattered, the question that was burning there in Tod’s eyes.

“And Claire?”

Josephine picked up her apron and examined a frayed edge.

“She is—at the school, monsieur.”

“And well?”

“And well.”

“And?”

“She is still Claire Vignard,” said Josephine, dropping her apron and smoothing it with her hands.

Tod got off the table with a flushed and intense face.

“Josephine, I’m free; I’m free. Do you understand?”

She raised her dark eyes to his.

“Monsieur has——?”

“It was not my fault,” he said quickly. “I waited till it was all over before coming here. I have all the necessary papers to prove——”

“Do you think I do not believe you?” she asked, almost sharply; “of course I believe you. Monsieur does not tell lies.”

She glanced over his shoulder at the clock.

“Claire will be here in ten minutes.”

Tod was also looking at the clock.

“Do you think that I have anything of a chance, Josephine?”

The French girl smiled.

“It is a good thing, monsieur, that Claire is not religieuse. It will not matter.”

Tod pondered those words, and Josephine slipped from off her table.

“I will go to the schoolhouse and meet Claire,” she said, “if monsieur will wait in the kitchen.”

“Could I see her——?”

“No one will come into the kitchen for an hour. I will tell her there is a friend—just a friend.”

Tod went and kissed Josephine.

“I can hardly believe it all,” he said.

He sat in the Lorellards’ kitchen, in the place that had always been his, between the stove and the window. Claire’s wooden workbox stood as usual on the window-sill, and Tod lifted the lid and looked at all its neatness with the eyes of a lover. He remembered the way she had pricked her finger on the morning when he told her that the battalion was leaving Myonville. Through the window he could see the neat red bricks of the yard, a washing tub tilted to dry against the wall of the wash-house, the green tops of the orchard trees.

Suddenly Tod stood up. She had come in by the orchard gate and was crossing the yard, the Claire of a year ago, in her daintily shabby black dress, and her hair like a pale brown wreath touched with sunlight. It was the same calm, frank-faced Claire, with her mouth and her grey eyes, more serious, perhaps a little sad. She looked quite innocent and unsuspecting, just a woman who had her work to do, a woman who had come to speak with some casual friend.

A pair of clean shoes were standing against the wall. Claire picked them up, entered the kitchen, and saw Tod.

She dropped the shoes on a chair, and stood looking at him with round grey eyes.

“Monsieur—you!”

And Tod, the man, did not move, for he saw something that his dream had never shown him. Claire was afraid.

Chapter Forty-two

She sat down suddenly at the table, her elbows resting upon it, her little fists clenched under her chin. Her eyes looked straight at Tod.

“Why have you come back?”

There was a fierceness in her voice, an attack in the abrupt words she threw at him.

Tod took his chair and sat down opposite her, his elbows also on the table.

“Because I have a right to come back.”

“Why?”

“I am free. I am no longer married.”

The eyes opposite him gave a kind of flicker, like a light blown by the wind. She did not say anything, but sat there, waiting.

Tod felt in his coat pocket, brought out the little brown Testament and laid it on the table between them.

“You remember?” he asked.

She bowed her head slightly.

“I remember, monsieur.”

“I have carried it—always. I thought I should never come back, that I should never see you again. I was very unhappy then; I knew things that I could not tell you. It would not have been fair. Was I wrong?”

“You were never wrong.”

The words were almost inaudible. Her fists had unclenched themselves, and her hands were curved against her cheeks. She was looking at the table now, and not at Tod, and her eyes were heavy with something deeper than fear.

“I thought I should never come back,” he went on. “Then life changed for me. And yet—I had to wait. The woman I had married had given herself to another man. It had happened before I met you, but I had only guessed it then.”

She stretched out a hand and fingered the little brown book.

“You did not—not love her, monsieur?”

“I did not love her.”

“Never?”

“Once, when I was a boy and did not know.”

She bent her head a little lower, to hide the wondering and melting tenderness of her face.

“It was very hard for you, monsieur.”

One of Tod’s brown hands reached out and covered her hand that was lying on the brown book.

“Claire, I am free.”

He felt a little trembling in the hand beneath his. And the love in Tod blazed out and over her. He half rose, and leant across the table.

“Oh, beloved! is it possible that you care a little? All these months I have been thinking and waiting for this day and for you. It’s just a year ago.”

“A year ago——”

She hung her head, a woman trembling on the edge of her exultation, the exultation of surrender.

“I rushed back. I couldn’t help it. You wouldn’t come down.”

“I couldn’t,” she said.

“But you gave me this. Oh, ma chérie, I love you—I love you.”

She raised her head suddenly and looked right into his eyes.

“I went to the school—after you had gone. I do not know what I taught the children. I did not care.”

“Claire!”

“Yes, it is true. I knew you would never come back to me again, that you could never come back—unless—and I am a woman, Tod!”

Tod bent over the table and took her face between his hands. There was something sacramental in the great tenderness with which he touched her. And thus they remained for a moment, Claire’s hands folded over his wrists, her face dreaming up to his, her grey eyes the eyes of a woman who gives herself utterly and without fear.

“God bless you for ever and ever,” said Tod.

And then he drew back a little.

“Claire!”

Her eyes waited.

“Will you marry me? Listen. I am English, you are French; my work is in England. Would you go with me?”

She smiled up at him.

“I can speak a little English, mon chéri.”

Tod kissed her.

Chapter Forty-three

There were voices in the orchard, the voices of Josephine and her parents. Madame Lorellard had the look of a woman who had lost something and knew that she would never find it again. Old Lorellard was laughing. He loved young people and the exciting and romantic things that happen when a man is young. André, slouching along with his hands in his pockets, regarded the family with eyes of amusement. André had seen the world.

“Listen!” said Claire. “They are coming!”

And then the Lorellard family descended upon Tod. Claire had drawn aside and was standing with her back to the window, her hands resting on the sill—a softly radiant Claire, with shy eyes that looked at everything but Tod. Tod stood squarely in the middle of the kitchen, showing something of the air of a man ready to receive a deputation, half-smiling, half-solemn, but wholly proud.

The Lorellards had no thought of being formal. They were warm-hearted French folk, and they enveloped Tod with the vivacity of the French who can be gay and intimate without touching a note that is familiarly vulgar.

“Ah, Monsieur le Colonel!”

“What a charming compliment you pay us!”

“Welcome back to Myonville!”

Tod kissed madame just as he would have kissed his mother; it seemed the natural and properly human thing to do. Old Lorellard shook hands with joyous enthusiasm. Josephine was laughing and talking for all of them. André had looked at Claire, made a grimace, and then gone to shake hands a second time with Tod.

“But what a surprise, monsieur!”

“And you have come all the way from England?”

“Oh, la la! These soldiers are wonderful men!”

“Where are you staying, monsieur? At Abbeville? But Monsieur’s old room is at his service.”

“And Claire—Claire——”

But Claire had slipped away, and no one had noticed it save André, who was sufficiently uninvolved to notice everything. The Lorellard family looked wisely and humorously puzzled.

“But she was here a moment ago!”

“You were all talking so hard,” said André, “and Claire seems to think it is quieter in the orchard.”

The family looked at Tod, and Tod found himself faced with a public declaration.

“My dear friends,” he said, “I must ask your pardon for being an Englishman. I’m afraid that I have behaved in a rather English way. I have asked Claire to marry me.”

The family had accepted the position of an audience, and Tod had to go on.

“I came back to Myonville because, by the English law, I am to-day a free man. I should have asked Claire to marry me a year ago if I had been free then. Monsieur Lorellard, as is only right and fair, I have brought all the necessary documents and proofs with me.”

Old Lorellard nodded, smiled and grunted something that was indistinguishable.

“I wish for the attendance to-morrow of Monsieur le Maire, a notary and an interpreter, so that everything can be examined properly.”

Then old Lorellard interrupted him.

“Monsieur, let the formalities wait. We trust you with all our hearts. Josephine, a bottle of wine.”

Josephine went to the cellar for the wine while madame collected the proper number of glasses. The three men were fraternising round the table, the two Frenchmen smoking Tod’s cigarettes, when Josephine returned with the wine.

Old Lorellard looked round the room.

“But what has happened to Claire?” he asked.

“I will go and find her,” said his daughter.

Josephine was away quite a long time, and the Lorellards and Tod talked about the war. The Frenchmen still seemed fascinated by it, and by the epic of justice of those last hundred days. They could not understand it when Tod tried to explain to them that in England people did not wish to speak about the war.

“But, monsieur, how is it possible?”

“It is very strange,” said Tod. “I could go on talking about it for ever and ever. It has taught me so much. But the people at home are bored. It is said that no magazine will publish a tale that mentions the war. The people wish to forget.”

Old Lorellard was frowning.

“In France, monsieur, we cannot forget. Perhaps it is that your people in England have not suffered sufficiently.”

“It may be that,” said Tod, “but I do not understand it. I feel like a Frenchman. I think that you are much greater than we are, monsieur.”

“A nation that forgets so easily,” said Père Lorellard, “is easily fooled.”

Tod’s thoughts had followed Claire into the orchard, and he was beginning to wonder why the two girls were so long in returning, when he heard footsteps crossing the yard. Josephine reappeared in the doorway. She ignored the family and made a sign to Tod. Tod followed Josephine into the yard.

“Claire needs you, monsieur,” she said. “Be very gentle with her.”

“Is she unhappy?”

“It is the reaction, monsieur, the panic that sometimes attacks a woman when she has felt too happy. You will find her in the orchard.”

Tod went in search of Claire, so manfully sure of his own happiness and of hers that he wondered what was troubling her. He found her sitting on the wooden seat under one of the apple trees, quite calm, so calm that no sign of suffering or of struggle betrayed themselves to Tod. She looked up at him with her frank, grey eyes, a little pathetically perhaps, but with a frankness that refused to let her love cloud his future with the emotions of the moment.

“I asked Josephine to send you to me. I wish to talk to you, Tod.”

He sat down beside her on the seat.

“What is troubling you, ma chérie?” he asked.

She made a little gesture with her right hand, a gesture that was meant to repulse, to hold the man in him aloof.

“Will you listen to me, please? A little while ago I let myself be overcome without thinking. It was like a dream, a dream that one has dreamt so often, suddenly coming true. Here—in the orchard—I awoke; I began to ask myself questions. Do you understand all I say?”

“Every word,” Tod answered her.

“Let me be quite honest,” and she looked at him for a moment, and then at the house beyond the trees. “I am a peasant girl, Tod, a schoolmistress; I am very ignorant of many things. You—you were a colonel, what in England you call a gentleman; your friends will be gentlemen, men of affairs. It may be that I shall not be suited to such a life—your life; that I could not help you as I should wish to help you. Do you understand?”

Tod’s face was shadowed with an almost sacred tenderness.

“I understand everything,” he said. “I have thought about everything all these months. And I will answer you, Claire, as it is right that you should be answered, not by throwing my love at you, dear, but with the truth, the truth that can be so convincing.”

She drew a deep breath.

“I am listening.”

He leant forward slightly with his elbows on his knees.

“I will tell you some of the things about my life. I am a child of the people. My father kept a little shop, a shop where he made photographs. My mother worked, just as you and Josephine work. I loved her very dearly, Claire; she was the best woman in the world. I, too, have worked in a shop; I have sold furniture and drugs, and I have helped to let houses. I was just a boy behind the counter. Then I had a business of my own, and it failed. Afterwards—the war came. I began the war as a common soldier; I ended it as a colonel. Now, in England, I have a big friend who wishes me to work for him; he employs many men; he wishes me to help him with these men. I have accepted. He knows I am here, and why I am here, and he has wished me good luck. To me he is like a father.”

Tod paused for a moment, and glanced at Claire. She was still the calm, courageous little woman, holding aloof for his sake, but Tod saw that her eyes had softened.

“So you were not a rich man?” she said.

“I have no thought of being rich,” he went on; “there are so many better things in life than money. I shall get money, because it is necessary, and because I do not want the woman I love to be worried. I have ambitions. I want to be big, as a man, like my big friend. I am quite a simple soul, Claire; the war has made me simple. I want a comrade, a little comrade, a little woman whom I can take in my arms, a little woman with clever hands and a warm heart. I want her and a home, dear; I have never had a real home since I was a child. I do not want my wife to be a great lady, a woman of fashion, a gad-about, an intellectual. I want her to be my wife, just that.”

Claire gave a little shiver, a shiver of inward exultation.

“You would let her work for you, Tod, and perhaps—perhaps you would let her have a child?”

“I should want a child—her child,” said Tod.

She sat looking at the sky, and then she spoke again.

“But your friends?”

“My friends will be friends who work. Life is so much more real with people who work, people who are interested. You know far more than most English girls.”

“How?”

“You went to a good school at Tourcoing, did you not? Then you studied at Lille. You have read more than I have read; you know things that I do not know. You can cook, sew, make clothes, manage a house.”

And then he laughed.

“But do you not know how charming you are, how all men would love you, men who are weary of feverish women, women who rush about and think of nothing but excitement and clothes? You are so quick, so witty, so full of understanding; so wise, so——”

She, too, was laughing now, laughing tenderly with the lover in him. She laid a protesting hand on his sleeve.

“I am not such a marvel, Tod; I am a little girl who has taught children, and I love you—greatly.”

“Ma chérie,” he said, and drew her head on to his shoulder.

They sat there for a while, not speaking, like two children in a wood, heads touching, hands clasped, breathing in the beauty and the mystery of it all, the green leaves, the blue sky, the shadows, the patches of sunlight, each other. It was simplicity, the simplicity of deep and happy emotion, two lovers in the spring of the year, a man and a woman without guile.

“My Tod,” she said presently, “I hope you will never be ashamed of me. I am clever—in my way—and I shall try so hard.”

He turned and kissed her hair.

“You must not talk like that. Doesn’t God know what he has given me? Ma chérie, I’m so happy.”

She looked at him with eyes that were all light.

“Do you know why I, too, am so happy?”

“Tell me.”

“Because I can trust you, it’s so much to me, this love.”

“And to me,” he answered.

And then a sudden playfulness seized him.

“Mon Dieu—there is the family, those dear people sitting solemnly round a bottle of wine, and waiting!”

“For us?”

“Of course.”

“Let us go,” she said, jumping up, but still holding his hand, “let us go and begin life, mon mari.”

Chapter Forty-four

On the following day Tod transferred himself from Abbeville, taking a room at the Hôtel Papillon d’Or, since etiquette and his own sense of delicacy would have it so. André was in Tod’s old room overlooking the orchard, and though Josephine had talked of putting André in the attic, Tod had refused to have her brother evicted. Besides, André was to be married on the Sunday. He was the most important man in Myonville for the moment, though André’s romantic pre-eminence was soon usurped by Tod.

“The English colonel had come back to marry little Claire Vignard.”

The mayor knew the secret and talked about it, and the whole village imitated the mayor. It was a great sensation, a sort of fairy tale in real life, a romance that delighted the women and turned Tod into the Prince. Everybody watched him go in and come out. The children ran after him in the street. The girls said that he was very handsome. Being English, he was supposed to be immensely rich. There is no socialism about a love affair, none of your cabbage philosophy in the eternal “Once upon a time.”

Tod was very busy. He made old Lorellard put on his Sunday clothes and go with him to interview Monsieur le Maire. He persuaded the mayor to produce a lawyer and an interpreter. He arranged that there should be a formal meeting at the house of the Lorellards while Claire was at the school, for it was a whim of hers that she should continue to teach the children until her marriage.

Tod was frank with Monsieur le Maire.

“You see, monsieur, I divorced my wife; the decree of the divorce was made absolute, as we call it, a few weeks ago. My English lawyers have given me all the necessary documents, and I want them examined for the benefit of Monsieur Lorellard.”

The mayor patted Tod on the shoulder.

“Monsieur is a man of honour, a man of good sense.”

“I do not wish to see the documents,” grumbled old Lorellard.

“Monsieur, it is necessary,” said Tod; “I like things done properly, honestly.”

“Monsieur is quite right,” said the mayor.

Old Lorellard was looking uncomfortable.

“Has Claire told you, Monsieur Tod?”

“What?”

“She has no dot worth speaking of.”

“I knew that long ago,” laughed Tod. “My foster-father in England is presenting her with a dot.”

“Tiens!” said the mayor, “what generosity, what delicacy! Permit me to say, Monsieur Western, that I am at your service in all ways and at all times.”

The mayor seemed to be on the edge of an oration, and Père Lorellard dragged Tod away.

“He is a good fellow, but a windbag. I have a field to hoe.”

They were walking down the street when the mayor rushed after them.

“Monsieur—Monsieur le Colonel Western!”

Tod turned back to meet him.

“Monsieur, pardon me, but the marriage—it will have to be a civil marriage. Does monsieur understand?”

“Quite. You will do me the honour of performing it. Is not that so?”

The mayor bowed.

“Mademoiselle Vignard is not a bigot. It is a very great mistake to be bigoted. Now in England, Monsieur Western——”

He held Tod fast for five minutes, and when Tod was released he found that Père Lorellard had disappeared. The hoeing of his weeds was of more importance than the eloquence and the information of Monsieur le Maire.

Jan van Eyck would have made a picture of that “family conference” had he seen it as Claire Vignard saw it when she returned unexpectedly from the school. Monsieur le Maire sat at the head of the table, a florid man with his yellow hair standing up like the mane of a lion, very attentive, very solemn. Old Lorellard was in his blue breeches and blue and white striped shirt, and his grey, close-cropped head was the head of one of Napoleon’s grenadiers. He looked tolerant and amused, but his eyes brightened whenever he looked at Tod. The avoué, pince-nez half-way down his nose, was busy with papers. The interpreter, who fidgeted on his chair like a bird on a perch, was always trying to explain things that did not need explaining, and getting himself snubbed by the lawyer. André smoked a cigarette and looked bored. Madame Lorellard sat with her knitting in her lap, clicked her pins and listened. Tod, with his old leather dispatch-box open on the table in front of him, seemed always to be insisting on certain documents or certain figures being explained to Père Lorellard, and Père Lorellard would scratch his head, smile tolerantly at Tod, and allow himself to be convinced twice over.

For the moment no one saw Claire. Tod was making a little speech, and no one interrupted him, but the impressionable and bored André began to smile. Claire was standing behind Tod’s chair, with a mother-look in her eyes, quite unembarrassed by all these functionaires.

“So the dot will be fifty thousand francs,” Tod was saying.

Then someone touched him on the shoulder. He turned and saw Claire.

“What is this?” she asked with an air of severity.

André began to laugh. Tod had jumped up, a little flushed. He was trying to smile at Claire.

She looked at Père Lorellard.

“Have you not told him?” she asked. “There is no dot, no fifty thousand francs? It is absurd!”

She was angry, a little humiliated. Père Lorellard scratched his head and appeared embarrassed, but the mayor was ready to make a speech.

“Mademoiselle——” he began.

She ignored him and turned to Tod.

“I have no dot,” she said. “I thought——”

Tod got hold of her hand; she made a little struggle, but Tod would not let her go.

“Messieurs,” he said, “supposing I leave you to conclude these formalities. You have all the documents. I wish to speak to my fiancée.”

The mayor bowed in his chair.

“Certainly, monsieur. A few words of explanation.”

Tod drew Claire out of the room.

“Come into the orchard, ma petite.”

He put his arm round her.

“I knew you had no dot, ma chérie. For myself I did not desire it. In England we do not worry.”

“Oh, my Tod!” she said. “I bring you nothing—a few hundred francs!”

They were in the orchard now where no one could see them, for the high hedges were thick with leaf. Tod took Claire’s face between his hands and kissed her.

“Look at me, ma petite, right into my eyes. Have you not given me your love, and is not that all that I desire? But you overheard a little secret, a secret that was to have been kept till after our marriage.”

“I do not like secrets,” she said.

“It is no longer a secret. My big friend for whom I work, is like a father to me. He is very rich. It was his wish that he should give you a dot. I consented, because it will be such a pleasure to him, and because he has no children and is lonely.”

“But fifty thousand francs! What shall I do with such a sum?”

“It can be invested. You will have a little income of your own, for your clothes and all that a woman wants. And you will be able to send little presents to Josephine and Madame.”

Her face brightened.

“How good you are. And all those papers, and the mayor, what do they mean?”

Tod smoothed her hair back with his hands and kissed her forehead.

“Claire, I know that these good people trust me, but I wanted to show them everything, so that they could be sure. Remember, I am taking you away to England; I want them to have no shadow left behind; it is only right that I should leave them with no whisper of a doubt. Each year we will come to France and visit them; we can take our holiday here, and Josephine and your aunt can come to us.”

“Oh, how good you are,” she said, “my Tod, mon mari!”

He held her very close.

“To-morrow you will not go to school?”

“But why?”

“I have hired an auto for to-morrow. We go to Abbeville or Eu, whichever you please. Josephine can come with us. We are going shopping.”

“But, Tod!”

“Listen,” he said. “I haven’t spent any money for such a long time, and I am going to enjoy myself. We will go to the jeweller’s and the costumier’s, and visit the ladies who sell chapeaux. Yes, I am going to enjoy myself very much.”

“I have a little dress,” she began, “that will do for the marriage.”

“Of course you have,” he said, “but is that any reason why I should not enjoy myself? Besides, I want you to choose presents for all my good friends.”

She looked at him with sudden, mischievous eyes.

“So you realise that I want nothing?”

“Of course I realise it,” he said, “but it is I who want a very great number of things. And what is more, I am going to get them.”

Chapter Forty-five

The car was waiting at Monsieur Lorellard’s door; not a very brilliant car to be sure, but what did that matter? It needed painting; the upholstering had felt the war, and the chauffeur wore a cloth cap and an old blue military overcoat. Tod looked at the tyres, and half Myonville looked at Tod.

“They are going shopping.”

“To Paris?”

“Paris! Listen to Nanette! The child’s head is always in Paris. No; Abbeville, ma chérie.”

“He is going to buy her a ring, perhaps?”

“Of course.”

“Look, they are going alone! Mademoiselle Josephine is not dressed.”

“Well, it is the English custom, and monsieur is English.”

“I wish I could go to Abbeville and buy pretty clothes,” said Nanette.

Tod was handing Claire into the car. She wore a plain little black hat and a black coat and skirt, and her shoes were not new, nor were her gloves very much newer than her shoes. A white lace collar and a quaint little tartan tie showed at her throat. Yet everything was dainty, distinctive, sleek, indefinably French and charming.

“How pretty you look!” said Tod.

“These clothes? I bought them in Lille six years ago. Josephine, you traitress!”

Josephine, in apron and slippers, laughed at them from the doorway.

“No, no, I never meant to come. I should have been so unnecessary.”

André gave a push to the old car as it smoked off.

“Au revoir. Remember me to all the charming girls at Printemps.”

They did not go to Abbeville; they went to Eu; for Claire had a greater love for that more mysterious, more steeply-streeted, and more shadowy old town. There were scars of the war too in Abbeville, raw places that had not healed, memories of death and of terror. And Claire was happy, happy with the beautiful completeness of a child who rushes out to gather flowers on a morning in June. The woman in her took the joy of a child and held it against her heart. It was her day of days, her first adventure with her lover.

The old car creaked and panted along the upland road, threading the shadows of the long avenues, and thrusting its unpolished snout into the sunlight and the broad blueness of that June day. Tod was holding Claire’s hand. The Frenchman in the front seat kept his eyes on the road.

“It was just here,” said Tod, pointing to the grass bank under the beeches.

“Yes, I remember.”

“And Punch came to the rescue. Poor old Punch! I wanted to buy him, but he got lost at the Base.”

They dreamed awhile.

“Ma chérie,” said Tod suddenly, “what sort of house would you like to live in?”

She was lost in a new languor, the delicious sense of her new intimacy with this dearest of men, but she came out of her dreams and smiled at him.

“A little house, just a little house.”

“You shall have it.”

“And a woman, a sensible woman to help me.”

“Will one be enough?”

“What should I do with more? I want the little house to be my house.”

“You are not always going to be in the house,” said Tod. “I shall want you to come out with me. I shall want people to see my charming little wife.”

“So you would like me to wear pretty dresses, sometimes?”

“It will be a weakness of mine, I’m afraid.”

The car sailed quite jauntily down the long hill into the valley below Eu. Tod was feeling in the breast pocket of his coat; he brought out a rather bulky pocketcase and looked half shyly and half tenderly at Claire.

“Now you are going to let me enjoy myself?”

“What do you mean?”

“I am going to buy things, all sorts of things.”

She resisted, because a part of the subtle and exquisite joy of the day was in resisting, and in the ultimate surrender. A Frenchwoman loves interplay; it is born and bred in her, and she weaves it into all the tender activities of her life. Her exclamation, her smiles, her retaliations are more subtilised and less obvious than those of the Englishwoman. She has not the mental nudity of the average woman across the water. “She is always dressed,” says the critical islander, but when that dress is charming and a little unexpected, why quarrel with it? All civilisation hangs in the grace of a petticoat and the set of a hat.

Tod bent forward and spoke to the driver.

“We shall stay in Eu most of the day. Take us to the best hotel and put up the car there.”

“Bien, monsieur.”

“And make yourself comfortable, monsieur; I wish it.”

The Frenchman smiled.

There was no haste in the mood of the morning. They left the car at the hotel and set out to wander through the streets of Eu. Claire knew all the shops, but she remained dispassionate, tenderly reticent, leaving the spirit of the adventure to Tod. He should discover all the wonderful things that he desired. If necessary she could guide him without appearing to guide, resist by choosing. But she went with him as no cold creature, no prig, no careful woman seizing an opportunity. She was just as excited, just as passionately happy as Tod, but she would keep her head because this dear man had lost his heart.

“We will go in here,” said Tod, after a glance at the rings in the bijoutier’s window.

It was a great affair, the buying of that ring, but a most subtle victory for Claire.

“Look, it is exquisite, this little one. I love it.”

The simple little hoop with its single ruby, like a soft flower with drops of brilliant dew hanging about its petals, might not have satisfied Tod. Nor did a difference of two hundred francs satisfy the bijoutier.

“This other is a very beautiful ring, monsieur.”

“It is,” said Tod.

“Look, then!”

She put it on, closed her fist, and made a quick revelation of the thing’s hardness, its artificiality. Then she pulled it off, and let her hand lie softly on Tod’s sleeve.

“It suits me,” she said; “it is so simple.”

She was right. There was a spirituality in her choice.

“Your taste is better than mine,” he said.

Her eyes lifted to his.

“But does it not please you better, on the hand of this little woman who loves you so?”

“You most exquisite soul,” he said.

They ignored the bijoutier; nothing mattered that day. But the bijoutier still had ambitions.

“One moment, mademoiselle; here!”

“I have chosen,” was all she said, with an air of extraordinary yet gentle finality.

The man said no more. He had studied women.

They wandered out again, Claire glancing at her ring.

“It is so sweet,” she said, “but there is yet another sweetness in it.”

He smiled down at her, with a question in his eyes.

“Well?”

“You let me choose it, you let the woman in me choose.”

“I could not help it,” said Tod.

Twenty yards farther on he wheeled and drew up outside a costumier’s. It was one of those particularly French shops, small, piquant, restrained, showing a few exquisite things in the window, a dress, two hats, a rose-coloured sash, two little grey slippers standing demurely apart. Claire knew this little shop. It was a fragment of Paris, very fashionable, charming, but expensive.

“I think this should do,” said the man.

She admired Tod for choosing that shop.

“My dear, it is very expensive.”

“A few good things are better than a lot of cheap ones.”

She had no answer to that.

They entered the shop, and it was Tod who spoke to a swarthy little Frenchwoman with bright eyes and a merry smile. He stood in the middle of the square of green carpet, his hat in his hand, his blue eyes vaguely amused.

“Madame, have you any Paris models?”

“Everything is from Paris, monsieur.”

“Good,” said Tod. “May we see everything? My fiancée wishes to choose.”

The two women looked at each other. Claire smiled.

“A simple costume, madame, that I can wear at my marriage, and afterwards.”

There was some subtle interchange of sympathy between the two women. Tod, the man, was put gently on to a chair in a corner and persuaded to be a spectator. Madame and Claire began to chatter like old friends.

“Yvonne!”

A pretty girl, like a dark pansy, appeared from behind a glass door. Madame spoke to her with an air of mystery; and the dark girl disappeared, to return with an armful of Parisian creations.

They were displayed, commented on, discussed as though Claire were a daughter.

“What about that pink thing?” said Tod from his corner, the blatant and enthusiastic male.

Madame was very emphatic.

“Oh, no, monsieur—never! Yvonne should not have brought it.”

Tod lapsed and became again the devoted spectator. And yet he was enjoying himself intensely, watching Claire and the two women fingering these beautiful things, Yvonne spreading the costumes over her own figure for Claire to judge them like an impressionist. He beheld a new Claire, vivacious, critical, yet ever charming, smiling at him from time to time, quite capable of holding her own with these experts, betraying an instant and instinctive knowledge of what suited her and what did not.

“That pleases me.”

She appealed to Tod.

“But it is black,” he objected.

Madame suppressed him with motherly impressiveness.

“Black, monsieur, is the most refined, the most restrained, the most cunning of colours. A charming woman never looks better than in black.”

“Supposing you try it on?” said Tod meekly.

The two women, the costumes, and Claire disappeared into a room behind the shop, and Tod waited for the completion of the mystery. Half an hour passed, and then Yvonne came hurrying out.

“Mademoiselle wishes to know if monsieur is ennuyé?”

“I am quite happy, mademoiselle.”

She smiled at him archly and hurried out into the street. Something seemed to be lacking, some little refinement, a detail that was necessary for the completion of a picture. Yvonne returned with an armful of cardboard boxes, but she did not tell Tod what they contained.

Tod heard much pretty chattering in French, the blending of three women’s voices, exclamations of delight and of admiration. Tod felt thrilled, just as excited as the women, for was there not something of a sacramental mystery about all this feminine ritual, this dressing of his most dear lady? And then she appeared to him; vaguely shy, smiling in a way that was new to her, a little, subtle, tender smile, her soft lips ready to ask a question.

“Dear heart!” said Tod.

He stood up and gazed, and his eyes saw nothing but this little woman in a black chiffon velvet gown cut low in the front, threaded about the wrists and neck with twisted threads of cerise and silver, and held at the waist by a belt of silver. On her head was a close-fitting black velvet hat, carrying a little halo of silver filigree work, and underlined with cerise. Grey silk stockings and little black shoes with silver grey uppers showed below the hem of the black dress.

“Well?” her eyes asked him with a little tremble of light.

“Dear heart,” said Tod again, “it’s—it’s perfect.”

She gave him a strange melting look.

“What beauty there may be in me—is yours,” it said.

Madame clapped her hands softly, and Yvonne smiled.

“Monsieur is convinced! Mademoiselle has the beauty of simplicity.”

“It’s—it’s perfect,” said Tod once more, looking into Claire’s eyes.

And he refused to let her change that costume. It was so simple and so charming that he felt that she could have met both Myonville and Paris in those dainty and gentle clothes.

“The other dress can be packed, madame, and we can call for it.”

“Certainly, monsieur.”

“And now,” said Tod, “what about the other things? I’m going out for a short walk.”

He handed his pocket-book to Claire.

“Tod—I——”

“I won’t be long,” he said, escaping out of the shop.

Claire looked at Tod’s pocket-book and then at Madame.

“I do not require anything more,” she said softly, “but a pair of gloves, a petticoat or two, and a simple blouse.”

“But if monsieur——?”

Claire smiled with her grey eyes at the other woman.

“It is sufficient—if I am happy.”

Madame smiled back at her.

“I understand. It is an admirable feeling. Yet, mademoiselle, if you drive in an auto——”

“Yes,” said Claire with a sigh, “I shall need a cloak. A very simple one, one that I could wear too in the winter.”

“We have a black velour, and quite inexpensive. It will harmonise with that costume.”

“It must be quite inexpensive,” said Claire with that softly final air of hers.

Tod returned in half an hour, and wanted to know what she had bought.

“All that I need,” she told him, handing him back his pocket-book. “I have paid madame.”

Tod did not examine his pocket-book until the evening, and then to see whether he needed another cheque cashing at Abbeville. He found that he had more money left than he expected. Claire had refused to seize an opportunity.

From the costumier’s Tod carried her off to lunch at the hotel, a happily proud Tod who looked all Eu in the face with eyes that said “See what an exquisite little woman I have here. And she is going to marry me! Wonderful, isn’t it?” They had a bottle of Pommard for lunch, Claire drinking just one glass of it and looking as though she had been born in that charming frock. She was rather quiet with Tod, perhaps because she was so happy, and thought of the future without a moment of dismay.

“We have more shopping to do yet,” he told her.

“For whom?”

“For you. And there are the presents for the family.”

She resisted gently.

“Ma chérie, you have bought me so much. For the others—yes, if it pleases you.”

“Have you a travelling trunk?” asked the practical Tod.

“A little one.”

“You will want something bigger. Let us run through the list. Answer correctly like a good child.”

She pretended to be extremely solemn.

“Have you an umbrella?”

“Yes.”

“A raincoat?”

“No.”

Tod made a note of it.

“House shoes—pretty ones, I mean?”

She shook her head.

Tod made another note.

“Gloves?”

“Yes.”

“A little handbag for the vanities of women?”

“No.”

“That is essential.”

She held up a hand.

“Please, Tod, no more.”

There was something in her eyes that touched and restrained him.

“Ma petite,” he said, “you have let me enjoy myself. It has been the happiest day of my life. I thank you, with all my heart.”

The day drew to a close, and the shabby old blue auto improvised a finale when they were within half a mile of Myonville by blowing a big burst in one of its back tyres. There was no spare wheel, only a spare tube and tyre. The chauffeur, who had lunched very well, smiled at Tod and asked them if they would remove themselves from the back seat as the tools and the jack were under it.

Tod got out.

“Why shouldn’t we walk? The car can bring on the parcels.”

They decided to walk.

The sunset was behind them, and they came into Myonville with a yellow sky at their backs and the long shadows of the trees falling across the village. One of the high avenues of beeches led them to the end of the village, and from the darkness of this avenue they seemed to step at once into the evening brightness of the wide and open street. The French folk were sitting at their doors, and the passing of Claire and Tod was the passing of a romance.

Myonville behaved like the warm-hearted and simple little place it was. Claire had nothing to fear from these good people. She went past the doorways with shining eyes, the little lady of Tod’s life, so frankly happy that she looked for no evil in the heart of this little world, nor would she have found it had she looked.

“Bon soir, Mademoiselle Vignard; bon soir, monsieur.”

There were smiles, whisperings, a bobbing out of heads when they were past, but not a grudging word, not a sneer, no English gawking, no English giggles. These people were civilised, and Claire Vignard had taught their children.

“Tiens! but what pretty clothes!”

“The Englishman has been spending his money.”

“Is she not looking charming?”

“Yes, Claire Vignard deserves it. It will not spoil her.”

“Ah, what a romance! Did you notice how he looked at her? They say the English make good husbands.”

“No man could help being good to her.”

And then a child ran out and into Claire’s arms.

“Oh, mam’selle! Pretty, pretty!”

Claire kissed her.

“Am I pretty, ma petite, or is it the dress?”

“It is you,” said the child.

Tod bent down in turn and kissed Nanette.

“We think the same, Nanette; we are very wise people, you and I.”

The Lorellards were sitting in the doorway of the café, and it was Josephine who first caught sight of Claire, and Josephine’s good heart betrayed itself.

“They are coming. The auto must have broken down. Ma foi! she is lovely! He has turned her into a little Parisian angel!”

Even the bored André leant forward over his sister’s shoulder.

“It is Printemps,” he said; “Monsieur Tod has discovered Printemps.”

Claire was embraced, exclaimed over, kissed, while Tod stood and watched the pleasure and the playful tenderness of these dear people, a Tod who could not be disconcerted by André’s mischievous smile. Claire had to show her costume, her chapeau, her little shoes, even her silk stockings. They were like children, very lovable, grown-up children, and Tod knew that he was one of them.