V for Vengeance Read Online Free PDF Page B

we could no longer hope to influence the course of events. It was the same everywhere, from what I hear, and I doubt if the Armies in the south will be able to hold out for more than a day or two longer.’
    â€˜But they are fighting still, and you are not with them,’ sheinsisted. ‘You are here, in Paris, and in civilian clothes. Why?’
    He fingered his small moustache. ‘Naturally it is difficult for you to understand, Madeleine, but have you realised what will happen to all men in uniform when the collapse comes?’
    She shook her head.
    â€˜They will be disarmed and herded into concentration camps. If we ask for an armistice the fighting will stop, but the fighting forces will not be released and allowed to go home until a formal peace is agreed; and that may not be for months. If our Government decides to go to North Africa and fight on it may not even be for years. The Germans are short of food themselves, so they won’t have much to spare for their prisoners. Thousands of our soldiers will die from semi-starvation and the appalling conditions in those camps. Would you have had me surrender myself to such a fate when I had a chance to escape from it? Surely not?’
    â€˜Georges’ death may have made me hard,’ she said slowly, ‘but I can’t help feeling that it was your duty to remain with your regiment, at least until an armistice had been declared. Afterwards, it would have been another matter.’
    â€˜Then it would probably have been too late to escape.’
    â€˜Perhaps; yet you lay all the blame for our defeat upon the Generals. How could they be expected to turn the tide of the invasion if all France’s soldiers had behaved as you have done?’
    â€˜But many of them did,’ he protested. ‘What was the sense of fighting on when anybody who was there could see for themselves that the High Command had broken down and the battle was already lost? We did our best, but when there was no more that we could do the men in my unit held a meeting, and we all decided that the sensible thing was to try to save ourselves. How the others fared I don’t know, but in Beauvais I managed to buy a suit of overalls and get a place on the roof of the last train going through to Paris. I lay doggo in the suburbs for a couple of days, then walked in last night, and, personally, I think I’m darn’ lucky to be here.’
    Suddenly Madeleine stood up. ‘You are a coward and a deserter!’ she shouted, banging the table with her small fist. ‘Get out! Get out!’
    He came slowly to his feet, a look of pained surprise on his good-looking face. He would have given anything now tohave had the last ten minutes over again, so that he could have invented some plausible and praiseworthy reason for his having suddenly appeared again in Paris in civilian clothes. But in his own mind he had seen his conduct as not only logical, but rather commendable. After all, he had exercised considerable ingenuity in succeeding in getting away while the bulk of his fellow-soldiers must almost certainly be caught; but he realised now that he had made a hopeless mess of things, and he was so upset at the idea of having shamed himself so completely before the girl that he loved that he could only wave his elegant hands in a futile gesture and stammer:
    â€˜But, Madeleine, you don’t understand how things were.’
    â€˜Get out!’ she repeated between clenched teeth. ‘Get out! Before I hit you for the coward that you are!’
    With a helpless little shrug and the dejected look of a beaten dog he lowered his brown eyes before her blazing blue ones and walked slowly from the room.
    For some minutes after his departure Madeleine stood there, positively seething with indignation. So that was how France had fallen into this miserable plight. Instead of defending her, as they should have done, her soldiers had thought only of their own skins. Whole