“We’ll stay here,” she said, pulling in the oars that flashed in the sun as she jerked them, dripping silver, out of the water.
She clasped her hands round her knees and leaned over towards him.
“So that is why you want my revolver… Tell me all about it, from Chartres,” she said, in a choked voice.
“You see, I was arrested at Chartres and sent to a labor battalion, the equivalent for your army prison, without being able to get word to my commanding officer in the School Detachment… ” He paused.
A bird was singing in the willow tree. The sun was under a cloud; beyond the long pale green leaves that fluttered ever so slightly in the wind, the sky was full of silvery and cream-colored clouds, with here and there a patch the color of a robin’s egg. Andrews began laughing softly.
“But, Geneviève, how silly those words are, those pompous, efficient words: detachment, battalion, commanding officer. It would have all happened anyway. Things reached the breaking point; that was all. I could not submit any longer to the discipline… Oh, those long Roman words, what millstones they are about men’s necks! That was silly, too; I was quite willing to help in the killing of Germans, I had no quarrel with, out of curiosity or cowardice… You see, it has taken me so long to find out how the world is. There was no one to show me the way.”
He paused as if expecting her to speak. The bird in the willow tree was still singing.
Suddenly a dangling twig blew aside a little so that Andrews could see him-a small grey bird, his throat all puffed out with song.
“It seems to me,” he said very softly, “that human society has been always that, and perhaps will be always that: organizations growing and stifling individuals, and individuals revolting hopelessly against them, and at last forming new societies to crush the old societies and becoming slaves again in their turn… ”
“I thought you were a socialist,” broke in Geneviève sharply, in a voice that hurt him to the quick, he did not know why.
“A man told me at the labor battalion,” began Andrews again, “that they’d tortured a friend of his there once by making him swallow lighted cigarettes; well, every order shouted at me, every new humiliation before the authorities, was as great an agony to me. Can’t you understand?” His voice rose suddenly to a tone of entreaty.
She nodded her head. They were silent. The willow leaves shivered in a little wind. The bird had gone.
“But tell me about the swimming part of it. That sounds exciting.”
“We were working unloading cement at Passy-cement to build the stadium the army is presenting to the French, built by slave labor, like the pyramids.”
“Passy’s where Balzac lived. Have you ever seen his house there?”
“There was a boy working with me, the Kid, ‘le gosse,’ it’ld be in French. Without him, I should never have done it. I was completely crushed… I suppose that he was drowned… Anyway, we swam under water as far as we could, and, as it was nearly dark, I managed to get on a barge, where a funny anarchist family took care of me. I’ve never heard of the Kid since. Then I bought these clothes that amuse you so, Geneviève, and came back to Paris to find you, mainly.”
“I mean as much to you as that?” whispered Geneviève.
“In Paris, too. I tried to find a boy named Marcel, who worked on a farm near St. Germain. I met him out there one day. I found he’d gone to sea… If it had not been that I had to see you, I should have gone straight to Bordeaux or Marseilles. They aren’t too particular who they take as a seaman now.”
“But in the army didn’t you have enough of that dreadful life, always thrown among uneducated people, always in dirty, foul-smelling surroundings, you, a sensitive person, an artist? No wonder you are almost crazy after years of that.” Geneviève spoke passionately, with her eyes fixed on his face.
“Oh, it wasn’t that,” said Andrews with despair in his voice. “I rather like the people you call low. Anyway, the differences between people are so slight… ” His sentence trailed away. He stopped speaking, sat stirring uneasily on the seat, afraid he would cry out. He noticed the hard shape of the revolver against his leg.
“But isn’t there something you can do about it? You must have friends,” burst out Geneviève. “You were treated with horrible injustice. You can get yourself reinstated and properly demobilised. They’ll see you are a person of intelligence. They can’t treat you as they would anybody.”
“I must be, as you say, a little mad, Geneviève,” said Andrews. “But now that I, by pure accident, have made a gesture, feeble as it is, towards human freedom, I can’t feel that… Oh, I suppose I’m a fool… But there you have me, just as I am, Geneviève.”
He sat with his head drooping over his chest, his two hands clasping the gunwales of the boat. After a long while Geneviève said in a dry little voice:
“Well, we must go back now; it’s time for tea.”
Andrews looked up. There was a dragon fly poised on the top of a reed, with silver wings and a long crimson body.
“Look just behind you, Geneviève.”
“Oh, a dragon fly! What people was it that made them the symbol of life? It wasn’t the Egyptians. O, I’ve forgotten.”
“I’ll row,” said Andrews.
The boat was hurried along by the current. In a very few minutes they had pulled it up on the bank in front of the Rods’ house.
“Come and have some tea,” said Geneviève.
“No, I must work.”
“You are doing something new, aren’t you?”
Andrews nodded.
“What’s its name?”
“The Soul and Body of John Brown.”
“Who’s John Brown?”
“He was a madman who wanted to free people. There’s a song about him.”
“It is based on popular themes?”
“Not that I know of… I only thought of the name yesterday. It came to me by a very curious accident.”
“You’ll come tomorrow?”
“If you’re not too busy.”
“Let’s see, the Boileaus are coming to lunch. There won’t be anybody at tea time. We can have tea together alone.”
He took her hand and held it, awkward as a child with a new playmate.
“All right, at about four. If there’s nobody there, we’ll play music,” he said.
She pulled her hand from him hurriedly, made a curious formal gesture of farewell, and crossed the road to the gate without looking back. There was one idea in his head, to get to his room and lock the door and throw himself face down on the bed. The idea amused some distant part of his mind. That had been what he had always done when, as a child, the world had seemed too much for him. He would run upstairs and lock the door and throw himself face downward on the bed. “I wonder if I shall cry?” he thought.
Madame Boncour was coming down the stairs as he went up. He backed down and waited. When she got to the bottom, pouting a little, she said:
“So you are a friend of Mme. Rod, Monsieur?”
“How did you know that?”
A dimple appeared near her mouth in either cheek.
“You know, in the country, one knows everything,” she said.
“Au revoir,” he said, starting up the stairs.
“Mais, Monsieur. You should have told me. If I had known I should not have asked you to pay in advance. Oh, never. You must pardon me, Monsieur.”
“All right.”
“Monsieur est Americain? You see I know a lot.” Her puffy cheeks shook when she giggled. “And Monsieur has known Mme. Rod et Mlle. Rod a long time. An old friend. Monsieur is a musician.”
“Yes. Bon soir.” Andrews ran up the stairs.
“Au revoir, Monsieur.” Her chanting voice followed him up the stairs.
He slammed the door behind him and threw himself on the bed.