Marianne listened, appalled and at the same time vaguely irritated by the flat, expressionless voice. Beyle might have been reciting a lesson – a lesson he had not learned very well. Then, quite suddenly, a dark flush mounted to his cheeks and he began to shout in uncontrollable anger:
'So this is not the moment for you to be talking of your finer feelings, Marianne! Can't you understand that you've no choice! If you won't go with the convoy, then you'll fall into the Emperor's hands before very much longer. Therefore I have decided that you're going with the wounded, whether you like it or not.'
Marianne jibbed at that, stung by his angry tone.
'You have decided, did you say?'
'Yes, I! Mourier will come for you at dawn tomorrow with a carriage – yes, I've even managed to work that miracle for you! You won't have to go on foot. You ought to thank me.'
"Thank you? Who gave you the right to order me about?'
She, too, was beginning to lose her temper. By what right did this young man who, after all, was nothing to her, dare to take that tone with her? He had helped her during the fire but had she not returned his kindness a hundredfold? Forcing herself to remain calm, she said, with awful clarity: 'I refuse absolutely to submit to your dictation, my friend. I have said that I am not going and there is an end of it.'
'And I tell you that you are going because I say you shall. You may think you would prefer to face Napoleon. Your previous intimacy may give you the right to hope for some lessening of his displeasure, but I am in no such happy position and I've no wish to make matters worse for myself than they are. If he finds out, at the very moment when I'm having to confess my failure to produce those damned reserve supplies, that I've been hiding you and helping you to escape from his anger my position will be intolerable! I'll be court martialled, perhaps even shot!'
'Don't talk such nonsense! Why should the Emperor find out all that now? We're not living together any more, are we? And I can't see the Emperor taking a Jewish house for his headquarters. Mourier is the only person who knows that I am a woman and once the convoy has gone no one will ever guess that you helped me.'
'And what of the people here? Believe me, your disguise was transparent enough to the fellows at the commissariat. Then there are the people of this house.'
'Exactly. And it may surprise you to learn that I've nothing to fear from them. I'm sure of that. Far from it, indeed. There's no reason why I shouldn't stay hidden in this house until the time comes when I can get away.'
Beyle shrugged angrily. 'Hide here for months, is it? You really are mad. Anywhere is safer in these days than a Jew's house. Suppose the Russians retake Smolensk! These people you trust so much will throw you out into the street at the first hint of danger. And I'll wager you'd not stay here long if they found out the terms you'd been on with Napoleon. They could find themselves in serious trouble if you were discovered in their house. Enough of that! You'll be fetched tomorrow at dawn – and you will go. I shall get an expulsion order from the governor tonight. It won't be hard to drum up some pretext. Then the house will be searched from top to bottom should you fail to appear. Now do you understand—?'
For a moment they stood facing one another like a pair of fighting cocks. Marianne was white and Beyle red with anger, and both pairs of fists were clenched. The girl was trembling with indignation at the discovery of what changes fear and selfishness could work in a man who at the outset had shown himself good and kind, with a mind and heart not merely better than average but even with a kind of greatness. She had learned enough during the time of their enforced proximity to know that there was the stuff of a great literary genius in this young man. But he had been prised out of his cosy elegancies of life and thrust into the hell of ice and fire by turns that was war. He had been tired and hungry and dirty, and frightened, too, almost certainly. And now to that was added the fear of disgrace, because in his pride and his innocence he was taking on himself all the responsibility for this – by no means unforeseeable – shortage of provisions. If he were not quite himself there might certainly be said to be some excuse for him, but she, Marianne, was not going to allow herself to be infected by his panic.
"This is a great change in you,' was all she said, her anger subsiding all at once, like a ship in a storm. Her calmness acted on Beyle like a shower of cold water. Gradually, his natural colour returned and he shook his head, opened his mouth as if to say something, shut it again and made a helpless gesture with his hands. Then, abruptly, he shrugged and turned away.
'I'll come and say goodbye tomorrow – before you leave,' he said. Then he was gone.
Marianne stood motionless in the middle of the room, listening to the echoes of their quarrel dying away in the quiet house. Then she turned slowly and looked at Barbe.
Barbe was standing by the stove, her arms folded low over her stomach and her breathing sounding strangely loud in the silence of the room. The green eyes and the violet met but Marianne's were beginning to glisten with unshed tears while the Polish woman's showed only a quiet contentment.
'Well,' Marianne said with a sigh, 'it seems we have no choice, Barbe. We must resign ourselves to going with the convoy. We'll defend ourselves as long as we can.'
'No,' Barbe said.
'What do you mean, no? Are you saying we shan't have to defend ourselves?'
'No – because we're not going with the soldiers.'
And before the startled Marianne could say another word, she had marched to the door and opened it.
'Come, my lady,' she said. 'There is no time to lose. Our host awaits us in the parlour.'
'The parlour?'
Barbe smiled briefly. 'Why yes,' she said. 'There is a parlour in the house. Although it may not be quite what you are accustomed to.'
Solomon Levin's house, although the largest and handsomest in the long narrow street that constituted the ghetto of Smolensk, was a cramped building with no more than two rooms on each floor. Downstairs was the shop, dark with age and, opening directly out of it, the kitchen, a cavernous, vaulted place, lit by a single narrow window but containing the unheard-of luxury of a pump. On the first floor (the second consisting of a corn loft and the attic occupied by Marianne and Barbe) was the Levins' bedchamber, over the kitchen, and the parlour, which was directly above the shop. It was a dark room, hung with faded green tapestry, but it was scrupulously clean. The principal piece of furniture was a table covered with a carpet worked in a floral design on which was a large book, bound in black, and a brass candlestick. A number of straight-backed wooden chairs stood guard around the walls.
When Rachel ushered Marianne and Barbe into the room, the candles were alight and old Solomon, a black silk skull cap on his head and a thing like a striped shawl over his shoulders, his spectacles on his nose, was reading from the book – it was the Talmud – with an expression of pious concentration. He closed it as the women entered and as he did so let his hands, which were pale and thin, yet curiously beautiful, caress the binding lovingly. He rose and, bowing slightly, indicated that they should be seated. Then he took off his spectacles and studied Marianne attentively for some time in perfect silence.
She thought that he looked like a weary prophet, with the grey skin of his face sagging a little on the firm bone structure. His beard, which he wore long, seemed made of the same stuff as his skin and the hair under the black cap, which might once have been curly, now hung in sad, wispy corkscrews. But the glance of the dark eyes was still young and steadfast.