“Personal reasons? Wait a minute! Would that be Zephe’s daughter? Yes, Marguerite, the one that went to
Paris two years ago. A pretty wench, she is, and typical of the family by all accounts!”
Ferdinand turned and tightened a strap of the bay’s harness to avoid the necessity of replying.
“I know you’re going to remind me,” he said, “that the Malorets were always against our father.”
“A fat lot I care about that!” said Honore with scorn. “You aren’t going to hold that old sharpshooter story against Zephe — a thing that happened fifteen years ago! It would be foolish as well as ungenerous, as you will be the first to admit.”
Honore was silent. Turning his back on his brother, he drew open the horse’s lips, pretending to examine its teeth. But sheer rage made him clumsy, and the bay broke away with a brisk jerk of its head. Ferdinand saw that he had touched upon the crux of the matter, and in his anxiety to get his way he was driven to exclaim:
“If one kept count of all the tiffs one has had with people over twenty years, one would be left without a single friend! However much in the wrong Zephe may have been, you can surelv forgive him now.”
“No,” said Honore.
“Oh, but really! After all, you didn’t die of it.”
Honore shrugged his shoulders. Wanting to keep the horse’s head down, he jerked the bit with a nervous movement which caused it to give a snort of pain. Ferdinand could no longer suppress his impatience.
“And anyway how much truth is there in that sharpshooter story? The whole thing’s so vague. It was never even talked about in the neighbourhood.”
Honore turned suddenly and gripped his brother by the arm.
“No, you’ve never heard it talked about. Would you like to know why?”
“Not particularly. I don’t care-”
“Well, you’re going to know. Do you hear? And after that perhaps you’ll stop annoying me!”
Honore was pale, and Ferdinand felt apprehensive. He tried to draw away, but Honore thrust him towards the ditch and compelled him to sit beside him at its edge. Finding itself ignored by the two men, the bay pulled the gig as far as the farmyard and came to rest in the shade of a walnut tree.
“When the Prussians came. said Honore.
He broke off, looked Ferdinand in the eyes and exclaimed violently:
“There’s no reason why I should keep it to myself! You’re going to hear the whole thing!”
He controlled himself and went on more quietly:
“I was one of a crowd who drifted round the countryside without much knowing what to do. When we heard that they’d arrived in Claquebue we hid in the fringe of the woods. It was a silly thing to do, but we’d spent the night getting drunk in an inn at Rouilleux. We were trying to be clever, and the fact is we were all sorry we hadn’t gone back with the troops of the line who were holding the heights of Bellechaume. I was just at the edge of the Champ-Brule, behind a hornbeam thicket that stood out into the flatland. They’ve cut it down since. It was just over there.”
He pointed to a part of the woods five or six hundred yards away.
“At about two in the afternoon I saw their pointed helmets coming over the crest of the Montee-Rouge. You could hear their pipes squealing. The tune they were playing, even now when I think of it I seem to feel it in my guts. I watched the swine coming across the fields, and what with keeping an eye on the house you can understand that I was pretty well choking with fright. About a dozen yards away from me there was a kid of eighteen called Toucheur. Not a bad boy but young and still hadn’t learnt any sense. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him say in a queer sort of voice, ‘The Prussians have just gone into the Raicart woods.’ At first I wanted to tell him to hold his jaw, but then I thought that in the mob we had with us there’d be bound to be at least one or two who’d be fools enough to start shooting, and half Claquebue would end up with their throats cut. ‘It’s true,’ I said to him. ‘They’re going to try and corner us between the two ponds.’ Toucheur was on my left, but five minutes later the story came back to me from my right that the sausage-eaters were trying to surround us between the ponds. And everything went just the way I expected. The boys began to get ready to break out, brave as lions, and I, knowing what it was ail about, well I was just in a cold sweat, to put it no worse. And also I wasn’t going to sit there by myself watching the Prussians, so I started to move off, meaning to go deeper into the woods. . ”
“Deserting your post in the face of the enemy,” said Ferdinand.
“Tripe! I moved round a bit to the left, and as I reached a path near the edge I saw Toucheur leave the wood and jump down into that sunken lane that runs to the house, you know the one I mean. I went after him, and when I got down into the lane I saw him running like mad straight towards our place. I called out his name at the top of my voice, but if I’d been yelling right in his ear he wouldn’t have taken any notice. All he wanted was to defend the first house the Germans were coming for — our house, in fact. Well, you know what it would have meant, a sharpshooter in our house, the mayor’s house — it would have been enough to get the whole village shot. So there was I trying to catch the boy, who had a hundred yards start of me and half out of his wits into the bargain. He’d already got inside the house by the time I reached the road, and that’s where I passed Zephe Maloret. Naturally, I didn’t waste time stopping to talk to him.”
“In fact, you’re not even sure that Zephe was the only person who saw the two of you?”
“He admitted it himself — one day when I shoved his face into a heap of muck.”
Honore uttered a satisfied chuckle as he recalled that avowal. Ferdinand remarked for the second time that the matter was not very serious, since after all no one had been hurt.
“Just let me finish. So I went into our house, and there I found the kid in tears, hanging round the neck of our mother, who was trying to comfort him. They were in the kitchen. I grabbed young Toucheur by the neck and sent him staggering over to the door. I ought to have cleared off with him at once, but you know how it is, Mother was there all by herself because Adelaide and the children were with you, and father had been at the
Council Offices all the morning waiting for the Prussians. I had to stop and give the old woman a hug and say a few words to her. Toucheur went and tried to hide in the corner by the clock, with his chin between his knees and his heels sticking into his bottom, huddled up in a blue funk. By the time I’d got him back on his feet and kicked him a few times to get him to pull himself together, there were the Prussians just coming round the corner. It seems they were Bavarians, the worst kind of Prussians, the worst of the whole lot. There were about fifteen of them, with a sergeant. Well, I say a sergeant — he could have been an officer for all I know. Their N.C.Os. don’t wear stripes on their sleeves or even on their caps. You may say it’s a minor detail, but just the same it’s one of the things that prove they’re no better than savages. From where they were they could see all the front and one side of the house — no chance of getting away into the barn. It was even risky to get out by the back window, although I’d have tried it if I’d been alone. But with Toucheur there was no chance at all, he was clinging to my coat with his teeth chattering. Mother didn’t lose her head, she opened the bedroom door so we could go in and hide under the bed. Toucheur asked nothing better, it was all he wanted, you couldn’t so much as hear him breathe. As for me, I wasn’t worrying too much. Why should they search the bedrooms? We could stay there and clear out after dark. Mother went back to the kitchen, leaving the door open. I heard her say, ‘Honore, they’re stopping. The leader’s talking to Zephe.’ At that moment I must admit I didn’t think anything of it; it never occurred to me that. . ‘Now they’re coming on again,’ mother said. . Then suddenly I didn’t hear any more because she shut the bedroom door. And then there was the sound of boots on the kitchen tiles. God Almighty! I lay there stiff as a corpse under the mattress!. . The sergeant said, ‘You’ve got some sharpshooters hiding here.’ You ought to have heard the kind of French he talked, the sod! Mother argued like mad and swore she’d never even seen a sharpshooter, but he said he was sure of it. Well, in the end the voices died down and I didn’t hear anything more for a bit. Then the sergeant started talking to his men in their lingo — probably ordering them to search the barn and the hay lofts. .