_ About a fortnight later--it was a fine Saturday in early August--
Sophia, with a large pinafore over her dress, was finishing the
portentous preparations for disinfecting the flat. Part of the
affair was already accomplished, her own room and the corridor
having been fumigated on the previous day, in spite of the
opposition of Madame Foucault, who had taken amiss Laurence's
tale-bearing to Sophia. Laurence had left the flat--under exactly
what circumstances Sophia knew not, but she guessed that it must
have been in consequence of a scene elaborating the tiff caused by
Madame Foucault's resentment against Laurence. The brief,
factitious friendliness between Laurence and Sophia had gone like
a dream, and Laurence had gone like a dream. The servant had been
dismissed; in her place Madame Foucault employed a charwoman each
morning for two hours. Finally, Madame Foucault had been suddenly
called away that morning by a letter to her sick father at St.
Mammes-sur-Seine. Sophia was delighted at the chance. The
disinfecting of the flat had become an obsession with Sophia--the
obsession of a convalescent whose perspective unconsciously twists
things to the most wry shapes. She had had trouble on the day
before with Madame Foucault, and she was expecting more serious
trouble when the moment arrived for ejecting Madame Foucault as
well as all her movable belongings from Madame Foucault's own
room. Nevertheless, Sophia had been determined, whatever should
happen, to complete an honest fumigation of the entire flat. Hence
the eagerness with which, urging Madame Foucault to go to her
father, Sophia had protested that she was perfectly strong and
could manage by herself for a couple of days. Owing to the partial
suppression of the ordinary railway services in favour of military
needs, Madame Foucault could not hope to go and return on the same
day. Sophia had lent her a louis.
Pans of sulphur were mysteriously burning in each of the three
front rooms, and two pairs of doors had been pasted over with
paper, to prevent the fumes from escaping. The charwoman had
departed. Sophia, with brush, scissors, flour-paste, and news-
sheets, was sealing the third pair of doors, when there was a ring
at the front door.
She had only to cross the corridor in order to open.
It was Chirac. She was not surprised to see him. The outbreak of
the war had induced even Sophia and her landlady to look through
at least one newspaper during the day, and she had in this way
learnt, from an article signed by Chirac, that he had returned to
Paris after a mission into the Vosges country for his paper.
He started on seeing her. "Ah!" He breathed out the exclamation
slowly. And then smiled, seized her hand, and kissed it.
The sight of his obvious extreme pleasure in meeting her again was
the sweetest experience that had fallen to Sophia for years.
"Then you are cured?"
"Quite."
He sighed. "You know, this is an enormous relief to me, to know,
veritably, that you are no longer in danger. You gave me a fright
... but a fright, my dear madame!"
She smiled in silence.
As he glanced inquiringly up and down the corridor, she said--
"I'm all alone in the flat. I'm disinfecting it."
"Then that is sulphur that I smell?"
She nodded. "Excuse me while I finish this door," she said.
He closed the front-door. "But you seem to be quite at home here!"
he observed.
"I ought to be," said she.
He glanced again inquiringly up and down the corridor. "And you
are really all alone now?" he asked, as though to be doubly sure.
She explained the circumstances.
"I owe you my most sincere excuses for bringing you here," he said
confidentially.
"But why?" she replied, looking intently at her door. "They have
been most kind to me. Nobody could have been kinder. And Madame
Laurence being such a good nurse----"
"It is true," said he. "That was a reason. In effect they are both
very good-natured little women. ... You comprehend, as journalist
it arrives to me to know all kinds of people ..." He snapped his
fingers ... "And as we were opposite the house. In fine, I pray
you to excuse me."
"Hold me this paper," she said. "It is necessary that every crack
should be covered; also between the floor and the door."
"You English are wonderful," he murmured, as he took the paper.
"Imagine you doing that! Then," he added, resuming the
confidential tone, "I suppose you will leave the Foucault now,
hein?"
"I suppose so," she said carelessly.
"You go to England?"
She turned to him, as she patted the creases out of a strip of
paper with a duster, and shook her head.
"Not to England?"
"No."
"If it is not indiscreet, where are you going?"
"I don't know," she said candidly.
And she did not know. She was without a plan. Her brain told her
that she ought to return to Bursley, or, at the least, write. But
her pride would not hear of such a surrender. Her situation would
have to be far more desperate than it was before she could confess
her defeat to her family even in a letter. A thousand times no!
That was a point which she had for ever decided. She would face
any disaster, and any other shame, rather than the shame of her
family's forgiving reception of her.
"And you?" she asked. "How does it go? This war?"
He told her, in a few words, a few leading facts about himself.
"It must not be said," he added of the war, "but that will turn
out ill! I--I know, you comprehend."
"Truly?" she answered with casualness.
"You have heard nothing of him?" Chirac asked.
"Who? Gerald?"
He gave a gesture.
"Nothing! Not a word! Nothing!"
"He will have gone back to England!"
"Never!" she said positively.
"But why not?"
"Because he prefers France. He really does like France. I think it
is the only real passion he ever had."
"It is astonishing," reflected Chirac, "how France is loved! And
yet ...! But to live, what will he do? Must live!"
Sophia merely shrugged her shoulders.
"Then it is finished between you two?" he muttered awkwardly.
She nodded. She was on her knees, at the lower crack of the doors.
"There!" she said, rising. "It's well done, isn't it? That is
all."
She smiled at him, facing him squarely, in the obscurity of the
untidy and shabby corridor. Both felt that they had become very
intimate. He was intensely flattered by her attitude, and she knew
it.
"Now," she said, "I will take off my pinafore. Where can I niche
you? There is only my bedroom, and I want that. What are we to
do?"
"Listen," he suggested diffidently. "Will you do me the honour to
come for a drive? That will do you good. There is sunshine. And
you are always very pale."
"With pleasure," she agreed cordially.
While dressing, she heard him walking up and down the corridor;
occasionally they exchanged a few words. Before leaving, Sophia
pulled off the paper from one of the key-holes of the sealed suite
of rooms, and they peered through, one after the other, and saw
the green glow of the sulphur, and were troubled by its
uncanniness. And then Sophia refixed the paper.
In descending the stairs of the house she felt the infirmity of
her knees; but in other respects, though she had been out only
once before since her illness, she was conscious of a sufficient
strength. A disinclination for any enterprise had prevented her
from taking the air as she ought to have done, but within the flat
she had exercised her limbs in many small tasks. The little
Chirac, nervously active and restless, wanted to take her arm, but
she would not allow it.
The concierge and part of her family stared curiously at Sophia as
she passed under the archway, for the course of her illness had
excited the interest of the whole house. Just as the carriage was
driving off, the concierge came across the pavement and paid her
compliments, and then said:
"You do not know by hazard why Madame Foucault has not returned
for lunch, madame?"
"Returned for lunch!" said Sophia. "She will not come back till
to-morrow."
The concierge made a face. "Ah! How curious it is! She told my
husband that she would return in two hours. It is very grave!
Question of business."
"I know nothing, madame," said Sophia. She and Chirac looked at
each other. The concierge murmured thanks and went off muttering
indistinctly.
The fiacre turned down the Rue Laferriere, the horse slipping and
sliding as usual over the cobblestones. Soon they were on the
boulevard, making for the Champs Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne.
The fresh breeze and bright sunshine and the large freedom of the
streets quickly intoxicated Sophia--intoxicated her, that is to
say, in quite a physical sense. She was almost drunk, with the
heady savour of life itself. A mild ecstasy of well-being overcame
her. She saw the flat as a horrible, vile prison, and blamed
herself for not leaving it sooner and oftener. The air was
medicine, for body and mind too. Her perspective was instantly
corrected. She was happy, living neither in the past nor in the
future, but in and for that hour. And beneath her happiness moved
a wistful melancholy for the Sophia who had suffered such a
captivity and such woes. She yearned for more and yet more
delight, for careless orgies of passionate pleasure, in the midst
of which she would forget all trouble. Why had she refused the
offer of Laurence? Why had she not rushed at once into the
splendid fire of joyous indulgence, ignoring everything but the
crude, sensuous instinct? Acutely aware as she was of her youth,
her beauty, and her charm, she wondered at her refusal. She did
not regret her refusal. She placidly observed it as the result of
some tremendously powerful motive in herself, which could not be
questioned or reasoned with--which was, in fact, the essential
HER.
"Do I look like an invalid?" she asked, leaning back luxuriously
in the carriage among the crowd of other vehicles.
Chirac hesitated. "My faith! Yes!" he said at length. "But it
becomes you. If I did not know that you have little love for
compliments, I--"
"But I adore compliments!" she exclaimed. "What made you think
that?"
"Well, then," he youthfully burst out, "you are more ravishing
than ever."
She gave herself up deliciously to his admiration.
After a silence, he said: "Ah! if you knew how disquieted I was
about you, away there ...! I should not know how to tell you.
Veritably disquieted, you comprehend! What could I do? Tell me a
little about your illness."
She recounted details.
As the fiacre entered the Rue Royale, they noticed a crowd of
people in front of the Madeleine shouting and cheering.
The cabman turned towards them. "It appears there has been a
victory!" he said.
"A victory! If only it was true!" murmured Chirac, cynically.
In the Rue Royale people were running frantically to and fro,
laughing and gesticulating in glee. The customers in the cafes
stood on their chairs, and even on tables, to watch, and
occasionally to join in, the sudden fever. The fiacre was slowed
to a walking pace. Flags and carpets began to show from the upper
storeys of houses. The crowd grew thicker and more febrile.
"Victory! Victory!" rang hoarsely, shrilly, and hoarsely again in
the air.
"My God!" said Chirac, trembling. "It must be a true victory! We
are saved! We are saved! ... Oh yes, it is true!"
"But naturally it is true! What are you saying?" demanded the
driver.
At the Place de la Concorde the fiacre had to stop altogether. The
immense square was a sea of white hats and flowers and happy
faces, with carriages anchored like boats on its surface. Flag
after flag waved out from neighbouring roofs in the breeze that
tempered the August sun. Then hats began to go up, and cheers
rolled across the square like echoes of firing in an enclosed
valley. Chirac's driver jumped madly on to his seat, and cracked
his whip.
"Vive la France!" he bawled with all the force of his lungs.
A thousand throats answered him.
Then there was a stir behind them. Another carriage was being
slowly forced to the front. The crowd was pushing it, and crying,
"Marseillaise! Marseillaise!" In the carriage was a woman alone;
not beautiful, but distinguished, and with the assured gaze of one
who is accustomed to homage and multitudinous applause.
"It is Gueymard!" said Chirac to Sophia. He was very pale. And he
too shouted, "Marseillaise!" All his features were distorted.
The woman rose and spoke to her coachman, who offered his hand and
she climbed to the box seat, and stood on it and bowed several
times.
"Marseillaise!" The cry continued. Then a roar of cheers, and then
silence spread round the square like an inundation. And amid this
silence the woman began to sing the Marseillaise. As she sang, the
tears ran down her cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weeping
or sternly frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could be
heard the rattle of horses' bits, or a whistle of a tug on the
river. The refrain, signalled by a proud challenging toss of
Gueymard's head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable,
overpowering. Sophia, who had had no warning of the emotion
gathering within her, sobbed violently. At the close of the hymn
Gueymard's carriage was assaulted by worshippers. All around, in
the tumult of shouting, men were kissing and embracing each other;
and hats went up continually in fountains. Chirac leaned over the
side of the carriage and wrung the hand of a man who was standing
by the wheel.
"Who is that?" Sophia asked, in an unsteady voice, to break the
inexplicable tension within her.
"I don't know," said Chirac. He was weeping like a child. And he
sang out: "Victory! To Berlin! Victory!" _