A Noble Profession Read online

  “Sir!” said Morvan.

  “Yes?”

  He reported in correctly: Corporal Morvan, of a Signal Corps unit. Cousin asked him sternly what he was doing there. Morvan told him what had happened, somewhat diffidently, but to the best of his ability in his evident anxiety to make himself quite clear. He and his unit had been overrun and taken prisoner when they thought they were miles away from the front. But since the Germans who had captured them—a motorized unit thrusting inland—had no time to deal with them, they had simply seized their weapons and destroyed their vehicles; then they had driven on, announcing that the war would soon be over and ordering them to remain where they were.

  Morvan had come to the conclusion that anything was better than just staying there until the main body of the enemy troops arrived. He had convinced some of his comrades, Bretons like himself, and they had struck out toward the west without meeting any opposition. He had lost his companions on the way and pushed on alone, marching instinctively in the direction of his village, situated near the Ranee, between Dinan and Dinard, which seemed to him the only desirable refuge in these circumstances beyond his comprehension.

  Had he done wrong? He questioned Cousin with eyes full of uncertainty. At the start of his trek he had come across a few officers on their own, but none of them had been able to give him definite instructions. He had approached the police, with equal lack of success. A police sergeant had told him, however, that the war was over, or almost, and probably the best thing for everyone was simply to go home. He had therefore kept going. He was now about twenty kilometers away

  from his village, where his mother must be worrying about him. His one thought at the moment, it was plain, was to lengthen his stride and put her mind at ease as soon as possible.

  “Was that the right thing to do, sir?” he asked in an apprehensive tone of voice.

  Cousin was appalled by the man’s irresolute attitude toward the situation. His own position struck him as being utterly different from Morvan’s. Yet, after thinking it over, he had to admit that the extent of the disaster and the general disorganization was some excuse for the mental confusion of certain feeble characters—this corporal, he now felt sure, was lacking in moral fiber—and he made a noncommittal reply in a condescending tone of voice. He told him he was probably not to blame if he had really done all he could to rejoin a fighting unit. Perhaps there would be further orders for him after he got home.

  Automatically they went on walking together. Morvan was thankful to have an officer with him. As for Cousin, if he was mortified by the thought that his presence beside Morvan could authorize this runaway to establish an analogy between their respective conducts, he nevertheless saw a certain advantage in his company: two men already formed the nucleus of a platoon and offered less ground for the suspicion of desertion that he had noticed in the eyes of some of the civilians and that still made him smart with shame.

  3

  “Are you tired, sir?”

  Cousin frowned. In this considerate question he thought he detected a tendency to familiarity, which he could not stand in a man like Morvan. However, he really was worn out, having marched for several weeks with scarcely any rest.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, squaring his shoulders with an effort. “It’s my duty to keep going.”

  Although they had barely exchanged a word since joining forces, he had thought it advisable to intimate to his companion that he was engaged on an important secret mission, his purpose being to make it impossible for the corporal to draw a comparison between their respective positions—a fear that had nagged him ever since their meeting. He had given no details—the corporal did not ask for any—but had simply made some vague allusions to certain contacts he had to make, which amounted to half believing in them himself.

  "Sir,” Morvan went on diffidently, "this is the turnoff to my village. It's less than an hour away. It will soon be dark. I suggest you come and stay the night with us. There's only my mother, who runs a grocery, and my sister. We could put you up if you're not too fussy.”

  Since Cousin did not reply, he went on in a roundabout way to explain at great length that his sister had left school and in normal circumstances worked as a stenographer in the town. But the firm that employed her had shut down at the beginning of the war and she had come back to the village until she could find some other job. Cousin listened to him without paying much attention, concentrating only on his suggestion.

  "It'll certainly be better than sleeping out on the roadside, sir,” the corporal went on. “Besides, if the Germans come through here, you’re liable to be taken prisoner.”

  "I must not be captured,” said Cousin.

  He had already decided to accept the invitation, and the threat of Germans made his acquiescence seem perfectly natural. He repeated with fierce insistence that, whatever happened, he could not risk falling into enemy hands, as though his personal liberty were a matter of national importance.

  "You’ll be all right with us. The village is well off the main road.”

  After hesitating a moment longer, Cousin finally accepted. Morvan was delighted. He seemed desperate not to lose this officer who had miraculously turned up on the road to take the place of all the other missing authorities. Cousin thought with animosity that he had been invited only because his presence would help blind the corporal’s family to his somewhat inglorious homecoming.

  They walked on through a wooded area where the only sign of human habitation was a handful of scattered cottages buried among the trees. Morvan informed his companion that they were now in the valley of the Ranee, not very far from the sea. Presently they reached a village that seemed to be deserted. The inhabitants must have locked up for the night. The grocery was closed. Morvan banged several times on the shutters and called out his name. A moment later Cousin found himself in the presence of Morvan’s mother, an old peasant woman with a wrinkled face, and of Claire, his sister, a girl of about twenty, whom he judged at first glance to be made of sterner stuff than her brother.

  After being warmly embraced by the two women, Morvan respectfully introduced his companion as an officer on a special mission. Cousin could not help feeling grateful for this and did not contradict him. The idea that he was not simply running away—this idea had so possessed him that it had lost every trace of fiction.

  The homely atmosphere dispelled the dreams of valor that had occupied his mind for several days, and at last he thought of asking for news of the war. He had paid little attention to the rumors that were rife on the roads. The two women, who listened to the radio regularly, were aware of the latest developments. The situation could not be worse. The Germans were everywhere. There was talk of an armistice.

  It was Claire who told him this. The old woman merely nodded her head and occasionally muttered the word “Boche” with a snarl. Both of them looked utterly dejected, but a gleam came into the girl’s eyes when she mentioned the broadcast they had heard the day before. She had not understood it all—the reception had been bad—but she had caught the gist of it. A French general in London had declared that the disaster was not irreparable and had called on his compatriots to come and join him in continuing the struggle.

  When she had finished speaking, Cousin noticed that she was gazing at them both, at her brother as well as at him, with a sort of impatience, as though she were waiting for some reaction on their part. He flushed. He felt he ought to answer her unvoiced question. He was about to do so automatically, in the favorable way his deep concern for the opinion of others demanded and also for his own self-respect, when the young girl abruptly switched the conversation.

  “You’d better change into civvies,” she said to her brother; “and you, too, Lieutenant. And you must be dying of hunger.”

  She went off to find them some clothes and prepare a meal. An hour later. Cousin, dressed like a peasant in his Sunday best, sat down to dinner with the family in the back parlor, drooping with fatigue and lulled by the peace and quiet of
this country retreat. Outside, the village lay wrapped in silence. Claire had switched on the radio and kept glancing at the clock with impatience. The BBC eventually came on the air and they gathered around to listen. It was a rebroadcast of the

  French general’s appeal.

  In a flash Cousin felt wide awake, and the gift of intellectual zeal that had been bestowed on him at birth found itself once again roused to its highest pitch. It seemed to him that this appeal was addressed to him alone and that it was the natural justification of his odyssey across France. His exalted imagination established an immediate connection between the program outlined in the broadcast and the mysterious mission on which he had claimed to be engaged. He did not think of the urgent acts implied by his acquiescence. He felt subconsciously that this was a unique enterprise worthy only of a small elite, and the ecstasy into which he was plunged by this idea excluded every other material preoccupation from his mind.

  He noticed that Claire was again watching them, Morvan and himself, with the same intent expression she had worn before dinner.

  “Some fellows managed to get away yesterday,” she said. “They found a trawler. I helped them.”

  “Get away where?” her brother muttered in amazement.

  Morvan, like the others, had listened in silence, but he seemed to have taken in nothing and showed no sign of emotion. Cousin was shocked by this attitude, as though it were a mark of cowardice, and he fancied this lack of enthusiasm was equally galling to Claire. The indignant tone in which he replied reflected his feelings.

  “Where? To England, of course! To carry on with the struggle.”

  “I see,” Morvan replied simply, after a moment’s reflection. “Do you really think we ought to try and get away, sir?”

  “There’s no question about it,” Cousin said with determination, although he had not yet even considered the practicability of such an enterprise.

  “To England?”

  “To England.”

  “If that’s the way it is, sir . .”

  Morvan's placid attitude remained unchanged. He was spared all mental confusion by the directives given in such a decisive manner by higher authority. He thought it over for a moment longer, then turned to his sister.

  “Where can we find a boat?”

  The spontaneity of her reply showed that she had already anticipated this question.

  "There are no more transports, but we’ve still got our little launch. Mother and I managed to hide it away in a creek up the estuary.”

  Cousin quickly switched his gaze to the old woman, who was taking no part in the conversation and seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.

  “What about fuel?” Morvan asked as calmly as before.

  “I filled her up, just in case. And there are some spare tins Mother has hidden away.”

  “In that case, sir . . .” said Morvan. “It's a fine night. I’m not a bad seaman. We shan’t be able to get as far as England in the launch, but there’s a chance we might be picked up by some Allied vessel out at sea. What should we take with us?”

  He was a creature devoid of all imagination. Pure thought was alien to him, and he avoided ideas that were too complicated by reducing them to a practical level. His sister cast a glance of relief in his direction.

  Cousin hesitated for a moment, taken unawares both by the suddenness and the simplicity of this decision, resenting the haste that tended to disturb the elements of his dream. He felt it was almost an act of barbarity to let enthusiasm be swamped in this manner by immediate action. He liked to turn heroic projects over in his mind and savor them at greater length. However, he felt he ought to appear even more impulsive than Morvan, and so declared:

  “We’ll leave just as we are. We don’t need anything.”

  “I’ve already packed some supplies,” said Claire.

  “There’s enough for three people. I’m coming with you.”

  To her brother’s astonishment, she explained that some men from a neighboring village, who had come home a few days earlier, had told her that Morvan had escaped. She and her mother had therefore expected him to turn up sooner or later.

  “We got everything ready, just in case,” she concluded.

  “Good work,” said Morvan.

  Her completely natural tone and absence of unnecessary remarks elicited in Cousin a mixture of envy and irritation. Her attitude seemed to belittle the heroism of his own conduct. She repeated calmly, “I’m coming with you,” and her mother raised no objection. “Just in case,” as she put it, everything had been made ready, and there was no use turning back now. Once again he felt that his role demanded a little overacting.

  “Let’s be off at once,” he said, rising to his feet. “We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

  Claire quietly told him that the boat was only an hour away and that they would have to wait a little longer for a favorable tide.

  “We’d do better to wait by the boat.”

  He urged them to hurry. The old woman, in spite of her fortitude, was in tears. Yet she did not try to hold her children back. She realized the danger of the expedition but preferred them to be well out of the way of the Germans, whose imminent arrival filled her

  with horror.

  “You youngsters,” she muttered; “it’s best for you not to stay here.”

  Cousin stood in the background, keeping a watchful eye on this farewell scene. Claire was weeping. Morvan had turned his head aside. So they were showing a few signs of weakness at last! This gave him a sense of relief. He would now be able to resume his role of leader. He was familiar with every aspect of it and was glad to know he could play it to perfection. In fact, he

  played it so well that he succeeded, by his facial expression alone, in convincing the others that it was only from a sense of duty that he was hurrying them on, and that in spite of his commanding, even obdurate, attitude, he himself was having to make an effort to hold back his tears. They were deeply grateful to him for this. When the desired effect had been obtained, his features hardened, and from then on he appeared to them only as the leader who had no right to let his feelings get the better of him. He snatched them from their mother’s arms, ordered them to get moving, and hustled them outside, toward the great adventure, without having any feeling that he was being led by them.

  With him, mental reactions invariably preceded the physical, but thus far his body had never lagged far behind. It always followed—after a certain lapse of time, to be sure—but it always did follow, urged on by the imperative demands created by his mind.

  4

  Morvan was not boasting when he said he was a fairly good seaman. Moreover, fortune favored them. They moved out of the estuary, sailed safely through the night, and at first light, having run out of fuel, were sighted by a British patrol vessel that took them on board. The captain had explicit orders concerning seafarers of this sort. He took them straight to a beach in England where a camp for French refugees had been established. There they went through the procedure common to all foreigners arriving by unusual means. They were subjected to several interrogations, sometimes with suspicion but always with courtesy, and over and over again had to answer the question that exasperated a great many men of good will at this period:

  “What brought you here?”

  They were housed in a tent and informed that they could not be sent to London for several days. Meanwhile a security officer asked them to prepare as detailed a report as possible on their voyage and to give any information they were in a position to provide. Morvan and his sister handed in their contribution that very evening. It consisted of a single sheet of paper, and the corporal had had to cudgel his brains to expand it even to this length.

  Cousin, on the other hand, embarked on this report with the respect that any form of writing inspired in him and with the particular enthusiasm he felt for a series of events in which he had played a leading part. This extraordinary odyssey—it was he who had lived through it, none other than he. He let this idea
sink in until it was firmly fixed in his mind, and he felt a thrill of delight at the thought that he had now become, beyond all doubt, a seasoned adventurer.

  His opus occupied him all the time they were in camp, which was over a week, yet he did not feel the slightest impatience at the slowness of the administrative machinery that was retarding the realization of his dreams of glory. He needed this breathing space to tot up the score of his exploits, to work out the sum total of his prowess, while setting it off to the best advantage in his own particular medium.

  As in all his literary work, he subjected himself to the strictest objectivity and accuracy in dealing with the facts. Facts are intangible, and his talent came into play only with their presentation, their coordination, and the subsequent inquiry into their significance. But even then he was careful not to let himself be carried away by his inspiration. He was held in check by the soundest professional conscience and never allowed a statement to pass without first submitting it to a rigorous critical analysis.

  Referring to his meeting with Morvan, for instance, he mentioned, without undue emphasis and with great reserve, that he had been sorry to find him resigned to defeat. This was strictly accurate. Before committing it to paper, he recalled the indignation he had felt when he saw that Morvan’s one and only idea was to get back to his village. He added that perhaps there

  was some excuse for the corporal's momentary lack of resolution and that Morvan had realized where his real duty lay as soon as he, Cousin, had pointed it out. He was sure Morvan would turn out to be a first-rate sol- dier now that he had been set once again on the right course . . . “and provided he is properly led,” he added after a moment’s reflection, in an effort to condense his whole opinion into one brief sentence.

  In connection with this “duty,” which, with supreme tact, he refrained from defining, merely allowing its nature to be implicitly and plainly inferred, a slight confusion of dates had conveniently taken root in his mind. Thus his fierce desire to continue the struggle had inspired every move he had made—in particular his retreat—ever since he had been aware of the disorganization of the army. His decision had been made long before the appeal he had heard on the radio, which had merely served to give a definite ma- terial form to his hopes and to a plan he had worked out some time before. It was an insignificant distinction in itself and lent itself quite naturally to his pen, seeing that it gave such a logical and coherent aspect to the memory of his trek.