Summer Will Show (39 page)

“Sophia’s going to faint. We had better break off for a minute or two.”

“No, go on! It is only in my mind that I feel faint. I think of all the money I used to have, and what I did with it. New cushions for the pulpit, subscriptions to memorial tablets and Bible Societies.”

“When I had money,” said Minna, “I gave it away to the poor and to the sick, to artists and beggars and frauds, all in the name of charity. But when I was a child in my father’s house I learned some Hebrew, and one of the things I learned was, that in our Hebrew language there was no word for charity. The word I must use, my father said, was Justice. This libertine word, charity! ... I have used it often enough since, to my shame. But I still sometimes remember what my father taught me. While we cannot give justice, Sophia, it is idle to debate whether or no we have given charity.”

“I have heard old Ingelbrecht make the same point,” observed Dury.

“Yes, I dare say,” answered Minna with gentle pride. “He got it from me.”

They were silent. Dury went on painting. Things were not going so well for him now, he grunted, and cursed dejectedly. They were relieved when there was a knock at the door.

“Some one for you, Sophia.”

On the landing was Mademoiselle Martin, holding a bandbox. Her face shone with sweat, she had white cotton gloves on her large hands. She gave Sophia a note.

“I am to wait for an answer, Madame.”

“
Dear Sophia
,” wrote Ingelbrecht in his clear stiff handwriting. “
You are a good carrier pigeon, I know, punctual and reliable. I have heard you highly praised. May I ask your long legs to do me this favour? Here are five packets, and I want four of them delivered into the hands of the addressees before to-morrow night. They contain tracts, explosive only in the intelligence. As for the fifth packet, I leave it to your wits to scatter the contents about with modesty. Do this on your way back only. The addressed packets are the essential. I am much obliged to you. Josquin Ingelbrecht
.”

She crumpled up the note, saw Mademoiselle Martin’s beady eyes fix and sharpen. Tearing it to pieces, carefully sifting the shreds from hand to hand, she said in her Mrs. Willoughby of Blandamer voice,

“That will do admirably. I will see to it to-morrow. Do you want the box back?”

“If you please, Madame,”

Plotting on a stairhead, she said to herself. Nursing Ingelbrecht’s neat packets under her arm, listening to Mademoiselle Martin’s uneven footsteps on the stairs and the empty bandbox banging against the rails, she remembered Minna’s greeting of the man called Gaston. Here am I, she thought — as gullible as she, for all I know.

The addresses for the packets were on a separate sheet of paper, to be learned by heart, she presumed. It took all Minna’s mongrel-dog knowledge of Paris to work out the itinerary; as for the address in La Villette, even Minna had to admit herself baffled.

“I should leave it to the last, if I were you. Work up that way by the address in the rue des Vinaigriers, and then across to the canal to the Cité Lepage, and after that northward. And come back by those sturdy
Dames Réunies
.”

“Who are they?”

“An omnibus. And if you get into any sort of fix, or think you are being followed, remember that the arms of the Church are always open, and that a Christian is safest on his knees. I took part in a full-length funeral once; and I assure you, my grief was an adornment to it. Poor gentleman, they had never suspected him of keeping such a devoted mistress.”

“I wish it were you, Minna. You would do it with a great deal more style.”

“Would it were!”

Looking back at the house she saw Minna leaning from the balcony, her black hair glittering in the morning sunlight, her large hand waving, and every line of her body expressing an invincible sense of drama.

And I might have taken her after all, she thought, as the omnibus rattled over the cobbles. There was nothing to prevent it, no word of going unaccompanied. With half of her mind she turned back to the rue de la Carabine. But the ticket had been paid for; and when she descended into the boulevard Poissonnière, the sun struck on her with such brutality that she was thankful for the thrifty impulse which had stayed her from haling Minna out for such a day’s discomfort.

She had decided to start as early as possible, for the sake of what freshness there might be in the morning air. But there was no freshness, only the same nervous tension which marked every morning now. Those who loitered looked restless, and the walkers hurried. Above the rumble and jangle of the omnibus she had heard the
rappel
beaten, a noise in these days of not much more significance than the chiming of a cuckoo-clock.

Even Minna’s sense of drama would have flagged under this. The route so lightly undertaken was another thing under the realism of the midsummer sun. Two packets had been delivered over, one to a frowsy woman in a gunshop, another to the lean proprietor of a lean café. Behind his dusty grove of privet she sat down to rest and drink a glass of tepid beer. Over and over she perused the painted advertisement on the house-front opposite. Walk without Fear, it said. Attach the celebrated metal rings of Beaufoin to your heels and save shoe-leather. Walk without Fear. The air shook with a vehement hot panting, the noise of some heavy machine or other. Through the gap in the privet she could see the clustered garments dangling outside the second-hand clothes shop, and among all the other smells of the street she distinguished their sour taint of dried sweat extorted by the sun. The man of the café leaned in his doorway with looks that bade her begone. She was the wrong sort of customer for him, no doubt of it.

She got up, and joined her footsteps to the other footsteps that lagged by. Like every one else on these pavements she was down at heel and too heavily clothed for the season.

It was a quarter of tall factories and warehouses, cowed and shabby dwellings. The windows had paper shades, the food exposed for sale was meagre and unenterprising. On stall after stall she noticed the same platters of sliced cooked meats, the same ready-bunched assortments of salad: a head of chicory, a lettuce, six radishes, some spears of spring onions, a sprig of fennel. As though for prison meals, she thought. So much and no more, and for every one the same.
The Institution of Labour
... .Somewhere she must have heard that phrase, and now her steps trudged it out on the pavement. Somewhere between prisoners in a jail, paupers in an institution, the workers were pent in the Institution of Labour, to do their stint and get their ration. They could no more escape than grow wings, at a dreary best the best-conducted might hope to become sub-warders over their fellows. Sometimes, as now, the running of the Institution failed: there was a shortage of work and a shortage of food. But that would not break down the walls, within the Institution of Labour they must remain — kick their heels, and starve, and breed on.

What idiocy, what futility, to be carrying revolutionary tracts through these streets! The succession of little grasping shops, butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, the factories like ill-kept barracks, the warren-like
cités
badged with the spiritless ensigns of family washing, what written word, what thought exploding in the mind, could leaven them? A woman in a gunshop, a man in a café, and between them a mile of mean streets, streets wavering between shabby-sordid and crass-sordid ... .At least, she had assured herself, Ingelbrecht was not an idealist; but she must revise that opinion now. And it was with something like satisfaction that she took from the receiver of the third packet a mistrusting glare, a word of abuse, a door slammed in her face.

It was not consoling to be told in the rue Furet, La Villette, that Monsieur Georges was out, would not be back until three o’clock at the earliest.

Over the counter, heaped with cheap drugs, ointments for sores and skin diseases, elixirs for the middle-aged, soothing syrup for infants, the chemist’s assistant blinked at her wearily through pale eyelashes. He was pale all over, his voice was pale, his eyes had pink rims. Everything of his physique was noxious and debased, and out of his blinking eyes looked a character of helpless anxious integrity. Scratching his head, stirring his limp straight hair, he repeated,

“No, certainly he will not be back before three. I am very sorry. But it would not do for me to mislead you.”

It was a little before noon. The sensible course would be to go back. No woman in her senses would wish to dangle herself in La Villette for three mortal midday hours. Equally, no woman in her senses would perform the journey to La Villette twice in one midsummer day.

I am bound to be a fool anyhow, she said to herself. I will eat something, and pull myself together.

The meal was cheap, gross, highly-flavoured. It made her sleepy, and heavier-witted than before. From the cheap restaurant she went to a cheap church, and sat there yawning, too vacant even to open the fifth packet and find out with what doctrines Ingelbrecht proposed to kindle men’s minds. While she sat there, two christenings took place. Between the christenings she dawdled round the building, examined the stations of the cross and read a number of obituary cards pinned up on a notice-board. They hung in tattering sheaves, one pinned over another. Death had covered death; few people would come to the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour with leisure enough to pray their way through to the bottom-most yellowing pasteboard. The holy water smelled, the church smelled too — the smell of raw new plaster warring with the odour, already antique, of a dirty congregation.

At three she returned to the chemist’s shop, where the pale young man, looking pleased, informed her that Monsieur Georges had just come in. Monsieur Georges also looked pleased. His was the first face that day to express anything like vigour. He was a fat little man, middle-aged and jaunty, he apologised for delaying her and offered her a glass of wine, which he handed across the counter. While she drank he talked to her about the elixirs and syrups. They were all traditional remedies, he said, perfectly harmless and perfectly useless.

“My professional hours,” said he, “are spent in the vilest cheating and charlatanry. My leisure, on the other hand, I lay out to good account.” And he winked at her as he refilled her glass.

Revived by the wine, she walked uncomplainingly to the omnibus stop, and watched the horses munching from their nose-bags, the driver combing his whiskers and counting over his money. She had been carried some way before she recollected that the fifth packet remained to be distributed, and had been left behind in the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

Cursing herself and Ingelbrecht, and the perpetual sun, she went back. It was there right enough, but the time was now quarter past four and Minna would be anxious, and her purse was growing empty. Taking out a hairpin she wasted some time fishing for coins in the collecting-boxes. She had only extracted seven sous, inadequate even as a tip for the cab she meant to take from the Barrier, when a sniffing woman and a talking child entered the church. For exchange, she tore open the last packet, slipped one of the tracts into the rack of pious booklets, and dropped another on the bench outside the church. She spent no time in reading them, she was in a hurry.

In the chemist’s shop she explained her predicament, and her poor success at church-robbery. He laughed, and lent her five francs with a gesture that went near to being a chuck under the chin. As she was leaving the shop he whistled her back, came to the door and looked up the street.

“I thought so!” he exclaimed. “You get to know a trot like that in La Villette. It’s a blood-horse. Hi, Carrabas! You give this lady a lift down as far as the Barrier.”

The young man addressed as Carrabas was driving a light cart hung with tin-ware. An ancient wild-eyed chestnut was in the shafts.

“Take care of her,” said Monsieur Georges fervently. “She’s just been robbing Holy Church.”

Carrabas flushed to his ears. He seemed unable to speak except to his horse, and as the animal jerked into a trot the clatter of tin-ware seemed to Sophia a sufficient reason to be silent also. However, after about half a mile of swallowing and glancing sideways, he said,

“How far have you to go?”

“Across the river, to the Latin Quarter.”

“You’ll get there all right,” he answered. “Keep round to the west a little, then you’ll get through.”

“Get through?”

“The fighting has started, you know.”

Near the Barrier the streets began to fill up. People stood in their doorways and on the pavement, silent mostly, looking towards Paris. Outside a café she noticed a group of men singing. They sat comfortably behind their table spread with bocks and dominoes, and sang
Mourir pour la Patrie
with gusto, leaning back in their chairs, opening their lungs, waving their shirt-sleeved arms. Beside them stood a young waiter, patient and furious, his bill-tab in his hand, and a fat dog, tied to the table-leg, barked furiously.

“That sort can sing,” observed Carrabas. “They’ll burst their tripes, singing!”

At the Barrier he helped her down, apologising that he could take her no further. And again he told her to keep to the west. Here the street was crowded also, but with a moving crowd. She went with it, towards a noise of firing and the smell of gunpowder. The
rappel
was being beaten hither and thither, a dry bony noise on the stifling air.

The crowd closed about her, thickened, came to a standstill. There was a barricade further along, some one said. Where she stood there was nothing to be seen, but word came back from those in the front, carried from mouth to mouth. Meanwhile the people behind amassed, and pressed forward, and a vacant-faced woman, far gone in pregnancy, kept digging her elbow into Sophia’s ribs, and enquiring, “What is it, what is it?”

“Twins, mother,” a voice replied. There was a guffaw of laughter, and a bickering. In this heat no one is going to keep his temper for long, thought Sophia, uneasily combating her impulse to beat a way out of the crowd; and it was with a feeling of doing something dangerous that she wriggled and pleaded her way to the right, and escaped into a side street.