The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett [179]
"Do I look like an invalid?" she asked, leaning back luxuriously in the carriage among the crowd of other vehicles.
Chirac hesitated. "My faith! Yes!" he said at length. "But it becomes you. If I did not know that you have little love for compliments, I—"
"But I adore compliments!" she exclaimed. "What made you think that?"
"Well, then," he youthfully burst out, "you are more ravishing than ever."
She gave herself up deliciously to his admiration.
After a silence, he said: "Ah! if you knew how disquieted I was about you, away there…! I should not know how to tell you. Veritably disquieted, you comprehend! What could I do? Tell me a little about your illness."
She recounted details.
As the fiacre entered the Rue Royale, they noticed a crowd of people in front of the Madeleine shouting and cheering.
The cabman turned towards them. "It appears there has been a victory!" he said.
"A victory! If only it was true!" murmured Chirac, cynically.
In the Rue Royale people were running frantically to and fro, laughing and gesticulating in glee. The customers in the cafes stood on their chairs, and even on tables, to watch, and occasionally to join in, the sudden fever. The fiacre was slowed to a walking pace. Flags and carpets began to show from the upper storeys of houses. The crowd grew thicker and more febrile. "Victory! Victory!" rang hoarsely, shrilly, and hoarsely again in the air.
"My God!" said Chirac, trembling. "It must be a true victory! We are saved! We are saved! … Oh yes, it is true!"
"But naturally it is true! What are you saying?" demanded the driver.
At the Place de la Concorde the fiacre had to stop altogether. The immense square was a sea of white hats and flowers and happy faces, with carriages anchored like boats on its surface. Flag after flag waved out from neighbouring roofs in the breeze that tempered the August sun. Then hats began to go up, and cheers rolled across the square like echoes of firing in an enclosed valley. Chirac's driver jumped madly on to his seat, and cracked his whip.
"Vive la France!" he bawled with all the force of his lungs.
A thousand throats answered him.
Then there was a stir behind them. Another carriage was being slowly forced to the front. The crowd was pushing it, and crying, "Marseillaise! Marseillaise!" In the carriage was a woman alone; not beautiful, but distinguished, and with the assured gaze of one who is accustomed to homage and multitudinous applause.
"It is Gueymard!" said Chirac to Sophia. He was very pale. And he too shouted, "Marseillaise!" All his features were distorted.
The woman rose and spoke to her coachman, who offered his hand and she climbed to the box seat, and stood on it and bowed several times.
"Marseillaise!" The cry continued. Then a roar of cheers, and then silence spread round the square like an inundation. And amid this silence the woman began to sing the Marseillaise. As she sang, the tears ran down her cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weeping or sternly frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could be heard the rattle of horses' bits, or a whistle of a tug on the river. The refrain, signalled by a proud challenging toss of Gueymard's head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable, overpowering. Sophia, who had had no warning of the emotion gathering within her, sobbed violently. At the close of the hymn Gueymard's carriage was assaulted by worshippers. All around, in the tumult of shouting, men were kissing and embracing each other; and hats went up continually in fountains. Chirac leaned over the side of the carriage and wrung the hand of a man who was standing by the wheel.
"Who is that?" Sophia asked, in an unsteady voice, to break the inexplicable tension within her.
"I don't know," said Chirac. He was weeping like a child. And he sang out: "Victory! To Berlin! Victory!"
V
Sophia walked alone, with tired limbs, up the damaged oak stairs to the flat. Chirac had decided that, in the circumstances of the victory, he would do well to go to the offices of his paper rather earlier than usual. He had brought her back to the Rue Breda. They had taken leave of each other in a sort of dream or general enchantment due to their participation in the vast national delirium which somehow dominated individual feelings. They did not define their relations. They had been conscious only of emotion.