Seven Men of Gascony
Page 38
He told her, briefly, of the manner in which Dominique and Jean had followed the others. She said nothing for a while, holding the reins loosely and staring vacantly up the white road towards a gleam on the horizon.
When she spoke again her voice had an odd jerkiness, as though she felt that some explanation was required of her but was not giving it willingly.
“After Nico went I got tired of it all; I went back to France and set up a canteen in Nancy.”
“Were you there through the Peace?”
She ignored the question. “Jean used to say that if you once started moving when you were young, you never stopped again, or not for very long. Jean was no fool except when he caught sight of Bonaparte’s hat.” She paused and he made no comment. After a moment she went on: “When the army marched out again I couldn’t stay there any longer. So I bought this outfit and stocked up with civilian clothes. I kept a day or two’s march behind the army and sold three parts of my stuff within a day and a night. I knew that you’d be beaten, and men will pay anything for civilian clothes when they’re on the run.”
Gabriel was obliged to grin; the scheme was so typical of Nicholette.
They jogged along in silence again for a few minutes. All the horror of the past two days had ebbed from Gabriel and he felt as tranquil as a child.
He busied himself bandaging his hand and it occurred to him that he might never paint again.
For a long time he tried to frame the words that he wanted to say.
Finally they came, haltingly. “I’ve always wanted you, Nico, ever since Lobau. Couldn’t we stay together after this?”
She smiled grimly, remembering they were the same words Nicholas had used years ago in Königsberg.
Her left hand slipped from her lap and fell lightly across his mangled fingers. The gesture was so unexpected, so uncharacteristic, that he had to glance down to assure himself that it had really happened.
“You came at the right time, Gabriel,” she said.
He made no answer, staring ahead, wonderingly, at the static gleam in the distance. It might have been a stationary squadron of cavalry, their cuirasses reflecting the evening sun, or simply a shining curve in the Sambre, winding across the plain towards Namur.
Nicholette said: “The horse needs watering. Look out on your side for a pond.”
Epilogue
When Madame Friant came into the veteran’s room in the morning carrying her lodger’s coffee, she found him asleep, his face laid sideways across a folio of drawings that he appeared to have been examining. She set down the tray and shook him by the shoulder.
After a few attempts to awaken him in this way, she passed round to the far side of the table and looked at him more closely. She was a stolid woman, not given to sudden outcry. After she had satisfied herself that he was quite dead, she went out and fetched Father Pavart, standing by whilst he and Peltier, the ostler, carried the old man over to the bed. As the priest intoned a short prayer she glanced furtively at the books on the table. She had never seen them before and wondered how the old fellow had got them. Father Pavart asked her a few questions, of when and how it happened, whether the old man had been failing recently and what his appetite had been like during the past few weeks.
Madame was faintly irritated by his queries. “You saw him alive as often as I did; you were here with him yesterday afternoon,” she said, and went out to make arrangements about cleaning the room and advertising for a new tenant.
The priest stayed a while longer, rubbing his long chin and idly turning the pages of the grubby sketchbooks. Presently he gathered the books together, tying them round with a piece of string that he found near the hearth. He was a methodical man and went downstairs to inform the landlady that he had borrowed the books and would keep them whilst they were checking over the old man’s effects. He did this because if there was an inventory anywhere he did not want to be accused of stealing them.
Presently the doctor went along to certify the death. He was not very explicit about the cause and, when questioned by Father Pavart on the subject, used a number of long words and said something about old soldiers occasionally dying in middle age as suddenly as their younger comrades had died on the battlefield. The doctor was not particularly interested, and neither was anyone else except Father Pavart, who went away musing. He could not know that, soon after he had left the veteran the previous evening, the man had fallen asleep and dreamed a strange dream.
He had seen himself walking rapidly along a rutted track enclosed by tall hedgerows, and as he rounded a bend he had caught sight of a one-horse wagon travelling slowly along the lane in the same direction. When he first saw the wagon it was about a hundred paces ahead, and as he hurried forward to catch up with the vehicle he saw six men sitting on the tailboard, their legs swinging free.
A great joy flooded his heart. He began to run, calling the men’s names one after the other, until they ceased chattering among themselves and began to shout back at him and to wave their hands.
Although the wagon did not seem to be moving at more than a walking pace, it proved extraordinarily difficult to catch; but the veteran made every effort, pounding along on the sparse grass that grew between the ruts of the track, coming a little nearer with every stride and reaching out to touch the hands of the men that were stretched towards him.
At last, with an immense feeling of relief, he drew near enough to be grabbed by the wrist and pulled into the wagon. The six men squeezed together to make room for him on the crowded tailboard. They shouted and laughed, thumping him between the shoulders, and one of them, a man with a grey, drooping moustache, wrung his right hand. Even in the excitement of the moment Gabriel could not help noticing that the fingers of his hand were straight again and that the palm no longer showed a puckered scar.
The speed of the wagon increased as, somewhere in front of them, a girl’s harsh voice shouted, “Hup, hup!” to the plodding horse.