He turned slowly: 'You'd better go to sleep after dejeuner.' He turned to the woman. 'If she could come back at four o'clock?' To Rose: 'Would you like to come and have tea with us this afternoon - English tea?'
She said shyly: 'Oui, monsieur.'
She went away and Howard gave the children their dinner. Sheila was still hot with a slight temperature. He put the tray outside the door when they had finished, and made Ronnie lie down on the bed with his sister. Then he stretched out in the arm-chair, and began to read to them from a book given to him by their mother, called Amelianne at the Circus. Before very long the children were asleep: Howard laid down the book and slept for an hour himself.
Later in the afternoon he walked up through the town again to the Bureau de Ville, leading Ronnie by the hand, with a long telegram to Cavanagh in his pocket. He searched for some time for the right office, and finally found it, picketed by an anxious and discontented crowd of French people. The door was shut. The censor had closed the office and gone off for the evening, nobody knew where. The office would be open again at nine in the morning.
'It is not right, that,' said the people. But it appeared that there was nothing to be done about it.
Howard walked back with Ronnie to the hotel. There were troops in the town again, and a long convoy of lorries blocked the northward road near the station. In the station yard three very large tanks were parked, bristling with guns, formidable in design but dirty and unkempt. Their tired crews were refuelling them from a tank lorry, working slowly and sullenly, without enthusiasm. A little chill shot through the old man as he watched them bungling their work. What was it Dickinson had said? 'Running like rabbits.'
It could not possibly be true. The French had always fought magnificently.
At Ronnie's urgent plea they crossed to the square, and spent some time examining the tanks. The little boy told him: They can go right over walls and houses even. Right over!'
The old man stared at the monsters. It might be true, but he was not impressed with what he saw. 'They don't look very comfortable,' he said mildly.
Ronnie scoffed at him. 'They go ever so fast, and all the guns go bang, bang, bang.' He turned to Howard. 'Are they going to-stay here all night?'
'I don't know. I expect they will. Come on, now; Sheila will want her tea. I expect you want yours, too.'
Food was a magnet, but Ronnie looked back longingly over his shoulder. 'May we come and see them tomorrow?'
'If they're still here.'
Things were still happy in the bedroom. La petite Rose, it seemed, knew a game which involved the imitation of animals in endless repetition- My great-aunt lives in Tours, In a house with a cherry-tree With a little mouse (squeak, squeak)
And a big lion (roar, roar)
And a wood pigeon (coo, coo)... and so on quite indefinitely. It was a game that made no great demand on the intelligence, and Sheila wanted nothing better. Presently, they were all playing it; it was so that the femme de chambre found them.
She came in with the tea, laughing all over her face. 'In Touraine I learned that, as a little girl, myself,' she said. 'It is pretty, is it not? All children like 'my great-aunt lives in Tours' - always, always. In England, monsieur, do the children play like that?'
'Much the same,' he said. 'Children in every country play the same games.'
He gave them their milk and bread and butter and jam. Near the Bureau de Ville he had seen a shop selling ginger-bread cakes, the tops of which were covered in crystallised fruits and sweets. He had bought one of these; as he was quite unused to housekeeping it was three times as large as was necessary. He cut it with his pen-knife on the dressing-table and they all had a slice. It was a very merry tea-party, so merry that the grinding of caterpillar tracks and the roaring of exhausts outside the window passed them by unnoticed.
They played a little more after tea; then he washed the children as the femme de chambre re-made the bed. She helped him to undress them and put them into their new pyjamas; then she held Sheila on her capacious lap while the old man took her temperature carefully under the arm. It was still a degree or so above normal, though the child was obviously better; whatever had been wrong with her was passing off. It would not be right, he decided, to travel on the next day; he had no wish to be held up with another illness in less comfortable surroundings.. But on the day after that, he thought it should be possible to get away. If they started very early in the morning they would get through to St Malo in the day. He would see about the car that night.
Presently, both the children were in bed, and kissed good night. He stood in the passage outside the room with the femme de chambre and her little girl. 'Tonight, monsieur,' she said, 'presently, when they are asleep, I will bring a mattress and make up a bed for monsieur on the floor. It will be better than the arm-chair, that.'
'You are very kind,' he said. 'I don't know why you should be so very, very good to us. I am most grateful.' She said: 'But monsieur, it is you who are kind...' He went down to the lobby, wondering a little at the effusive nature of the French.
Again the hotel was full of officers. He pushed his way to the desk and said to the girl: 'I want to hire a car, not now, but the day after tomorrow - for a long journey. Can you tell me which garage would be the best?' She said: 'For a long journey, monsieur? How far?'
'To St Malo, in Normandy. The little girl is still not very well. I think it will be easier to take her home by car.'
She said doubtfully: 'The Garage Citroen would be the best. But it will not be easy, monsieur. You understand - the cars have all been taken for the army. It would be easier to go by train.' He shook his head. 'I'd rather go by car.' She eyed him for a moment. 'Monsieur is going away, then, the day after tomorrow?'
'Yes, if the little girl is well enough to travel.' She said, awkwardly: 'I am desolated, but it will be necessary for monsieur to go then, at the latest. If the little one is still ill, we will try to find a room for monsieur in the town. But we have heard this afternoon, the hotel is to be taken over tomorrow by the Bureau Principal of the railway, from Paris.'
He stared at her. 'Are they moving the offices from Paris, then?'
She shook her head. 'I only know what I have told you, monsieur. All our guests must leave.'
He was silent for a minute. Then he said: 'What did you say was the name of the garage?'
'The Garage Citroen, monsieur. I will telephone and ask them, if you wish?'
He said: 'Please do.'
She turned away and went into the box; he waited at the desk, worried and anxious. He felt that the net of circumstances was closing in on him, driving him where he did not want to go. The car to St Malo was the knife that would cut through his difficulties and free him. Through the glass of the booth he saw her speaking volubly into ihe telephone; he waited on tenterhooks.
She came back presently. 'It is impossible,' she said. 'There is no car available for such a journey. I regret -Monsieur Duval, the proprietor of the garage, regrets also but monsieur will have to go by train.'
He said very quietly: 'Surely it would be possible to arrange something? There must be a car of some sort or another?'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'Monsieur could go to see Monsieur Duval perhaps, at the garage. If anybody in Dijon could produce a car for such a journey it would be he.'
She gave him directions for finding the garage; ten minutes later he was in the Frenchman's office. The garage owner was quite positive. 'A car, yes,' he declared. 'That is the least thing, monsieur, I could find the car. But petrol - not a litre that has not been taken by the army. Only by fraud can I get petrol for the car - you understand? And then, the roads. It is not possible to make one's way along the road to Paris, not possible at all, monsieur.'
'Finally,' he said, 'I could not find a driver for a journey such as that. The Germans are across the Seine, monsieur; they are across the Marne. Who knows where they will be the day after tomorrow?'
The old man was silent.
The Frenchman said: 'If monsieur wishes to get back to England he should go by train, and he should go very soon.'
Howard thanked him for the advice, and went out into the street. Dusk was falling; he moved along the pavement, deep in thought. He stopped by a cafe and went in, and ordered a Pernod with water. He took the drink
