But he had only taken two steps when the girl called from the landing, “Charlot, has he gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone.” He waited a moment and then called up, “I’ll make sure the back door is closed,” and then he led the man in his stockinged feet down the passage leading to the kitchen quarters, up the back stairs, to his own room.
“You can sleep here,” he said, “and I’ll let you out early tomorrow. Nobody must see you go, or I shall have to go with you.” The man sat comfortably on the bed and stretched his legs. “Are you the Carosse?” Charlot asked curiously.
“I know no other Carosse but myself,” the man said. “I have no brothers, no sisters, and no parents. I wouldn’t know if somewhere in the wastes of the provinces live a few obscure Carosses; there may be a second cousin in Limoges. Of course-he winced slightly-there is still my first wife, the old bitch.”
“And now they are after you?”
“There is an absurd puritanical conception abroad in this country,” Monsieur Carosse said, “that man can live by bread alone. A most un-Catholic idea. I suppose I could have lived on bread-black bread-during the occupation, but the spirit requires its luxuries.” He smiled confidently. “One could only obtain luxuries from one source.”
“But what induced you to come here?”
“The police, my dear fellow, and these ardent young men with guns who call themselves the Resistance. I was aiming south, but unfortunately my features are too well-known, except,” he said with a touch of bitterness, “in this house.”
“But how did you know… what made you think…?”
“Even in classical comedy, my friend, one becomes accustomed to gag.” He smoothed his trousers. “This was a gag, but not, you will say, my most successful. And yet, you know, had I been given time I would have played her in,” he said with relish.
“I still don’t know how you came here.”
“Just an impromptu. I was in an inn about sixty miles from here, a place beginning, I think, with B. I can’t remember its name. A funny old boy who had been released from prison was drinking there with his cronies. He was quite a person in the place, the mayor, I gathered-you know the sort, with a paunch and a fob and a big watch the size of a cheese and enormous pomposity. He was telling them the whole story of this man who bought his life, the tenth man he called him: quite a good title, that. He had some grudge against him, I couldn’t understand what. Well, it seemed to me unlikely that this Chavel would ever have had the nerve to go home-so I decided to go home for him. I could play the part much better than he could-a dull lawyer type, but of course you know the man.”
“Yes, you hadn’t counted on that.”
“Who would? The coincidence is really too great. You were in the prison, I suppose? You aren’t playing the provinces too?”
“No, I was there.”
“Then why did you pretend to recognize me?” Charlot said, “She’s always had the idea that Chavel would turn up one day. It’s been an obsession. I thought you might cure that obsession. Perhaps you have. I’ll have to go now. Unless you want to be turned out into the rain, don’t move from here.”
He found Therese back in the dining room. She was staring at the portrait of his grandfather. “There’s no likeness,” she said, “no likeness at all.”
“Don’t you think perhaps in the eyes…”
“No, I can’t see any. You’re more like that painting than he is.”
He said, “Shall I lay the table now?”
“Oh, no,” she said, “we can’t have it in here now that he’s around.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. You see, the transfer’s genuine. He’ll never trouble you any more.” He said, “You can forget all about him now.”
“That’s just what I can’t do. Oh,” she broke out passionately, “you can see what a coward I am. I said the other day, that everyone’s tested once and afterwards you know what you are. Well, I know now all right. I ought to shake him by the hand and say ‘Welcome, brother: we’re both of the same blood.’”
“I don’t understand,” Charlot said. “You turned him out. What more could you have done?”
“I could have shot him. I always told myself I’d shoot him.”
“You can’t walk away and fetch a gun and come back and shoot a man in cold blood.”
“Why not? He had my brother shot in cold blood. There must have been plenty of cold blood, mustn’t there, all through the night? You told me they shot him in the morning.”
Again he was stung into defense. “There was one thing I didn’t tell you. Once during the night he tried to call the deal off. And your brother would have none of it.”
“Once,” she said, “once. Fancy that. He tried once. I bet he tried hard.”
They had supper as usual in the kitchen. Madame Mangeot asked peevishly what the noise had been in the hall. “It was like a public meeting,” she said.
“Only a beggar,” Charlot said, “who wanted to stay the night.”
“Why did you let him into the house? Such riff-raff we get here when my back’s turned. I don’t know what Michel would say.”
“He didn’t get beyond the hall, Mother,” Therese said.
“But I heard two of them go along the passage toward the kitchen. It wasn’t you. You were upstairs.”
Charlot said quickly, “I couldn’t turn him out without so much as a piece of bread. That wouldn’t have been human. I let him out the back way.” Therese somberly looked away from him, watching the wet world outside. They could hear the rain coming up in gusts against the house, beating against the windows and dripping from the eaves. It wasn’t a night for any human being to be abroad in, and he thought, how she must hate Chavel. He thought of Chavel detachedly as another man: he had been enabled to lose his identity, he thought, forever.
It was a silent meal. When it was over Madame Mangeot lumbered straight off to bed. She never helped in the house now, nor would she wait to see her daughter working. What she didn’t see she didn’t know. The Mangeot’s were landowners: they didn’t work, they hired others…
“He didn’t look a coward,” Therese said.
“You can forget him now.”
“That rain’s following him,” Therese said. “All the way from this house it’s followed him. That particular rain. It’s like a link.”
“You needn’t think about him any more.”
“And Michel’s dead. He’s really dead now.” She passed her palm across the window to wipe away the steam. “Now he’s come and he’s gone again, and Michel’s dead. Nobody else knew him.”
“I knew him.”
“Oh, yes,” she said vaguely. It seemed to be a knowledge that didn’t count.
“Therese,” he said. It was the first time he had called her by that name.
“Yes?” she asked.
He was a conventional man; nothing affected that. His life provided models for behavior in any likely circumstance: they stood around him like tailor’s dummies. There had been no model for a man condemned to death, but he had not grown to middle age without making more than one proposal of marriage. The circumstances, however, had been easier. He had been able to state in fairly exact figures the annual amount of his income and the condition of his property. He had been able before that to establish an atmosphere of the right intimacy, and he had been fairly certain that he and the young woman thought alike on such things as politics, religion and family life. Now he saw himself reflected in a canister, carrying a dishcloth; he was without money, property or possessions, and he knew nothing of the woman-except this blind desire of heart and body, this extraordinary tenderness, a longing he had never experienced before to protect…
“What is it?” she said. She was still turned to the window as though she couldn’t dissociate herself from the long, wet tramp of the pseudo-Chavel.
He said stiffly, “I’ve been here more than two weeks. You don’t know anything about me.”