"Oh, how funny. Well, he cannot say that he saw many people. They have not disturbed themselves much on his account! There are only the German women of course. They are all there near 'la Cigogne.'"
"Will you shut that door?" replied the farmer angrily.
This time he was obeyed. The second side of the door shut quickly against the first. The twenty persons present heard the noise of the carriage rolling in the silence of the town of Alsheim. There were eyes in all the shadowy corners behind the windows—but no one went outside their doors, and in the gardens the men who were digging the borders seemed so entirely absorbed in their work as to have heard nothing.
When the carriage was about fifty yards past the farm, their imaginations were full of what it would be like at the Oberlés' farther on at the other end of the village, and taking up a handful of hop-stalks, the women and girls asked each other curiously what the son of M. Oberlé was going to do—and they looked stealthily towards the barn. He was no longer there.
He had risen, that he might not break his word, and having run all the way, and pale in spite of his having run, he arrived at the gate of the kitchen garden at the very moment when the Prefect's carriage, on the other side of the demesne, was passing through the park gates.
All the household was ready. Lucienne and Madame Oberlé were seated near the mantelpiece. They did not speak to each other. The factory owner, who had returned from his office half-an-hour ago, had put on the coat he wore to go to Strasburg, and a white waistcoat—with his arms behind his back he watched the carriage coming round the lawn.
The programme was carried out according to the plans arranged by him. The official personage who was just entering the grounds was bringing to M. Oberlé the assurance of German favour. For a moment of inflated pride which thrilled him M. Oberlé saw in imagination the palace of the Reichstag.
"Monica," he said, turning round as breathless as after a long walk, "has your son returned?"
Seated before him in the yellow chair near the fireplace, looking very thin, her features drawn with emotion, Madame Oberlé answered:
"He will be here because he said so!"
"The fact that he is not here is more certain still. And Count Kassewitz is coming—and Victor? I suppose he is at the steps to show him in, as I told him?"
"I suppose so."
M. Joseph Oberlé, furious at the constraint of his wife—at her disapproval, which he encountered even in this submission, crossed the room and pulled the old bell rope violently, and opening the door which led to the hall saw that Victor was not in his place.
He had to draw back, for the sound of footsteps coming up were mingled with the sound of the bell.
M. Joseph Oberlé placed himself near the fireplace facing the door—near his wife. Footsteps sounded on the gravel, on the granite of the steps. However, some one had come in answer to the bell. The door was pushed open the next moment and the Oberlés perceived at the same time that the old cook Salomé, white as wax, her mouth set, was opening the door without saying a word, and M. von Kassewitz close behind her was coming in.
He was very tall, very broad shouldered, and clad in a tight-fitting frock-coat. His face was composed of two incongruous elements, a round bulging forehead, round cheeks, a round nose, then standing straight out from the skin in stiff locks, eyebrows, moustache, and short, pointed beard. This face of a German soldier composed of points and arches was animated by two piercing lively eyes, which ought to have been blue—for his hair was yellow—but which never showed clearly through the shadow of the spreading eyebrows, and because of the man's habit of screwing up his eyelids. His hair, sparse on the top, was brushed up well from the occiput to just above the ears.
M. Joseph Oberlé met him and spoke in German.
"M. Prefect, we are very greatly honoured by this visit. Really to have taken this trouble!"
The official took the hand that M. Oberlé held out, and pressed it. But he did not look at him and he did not stop. His steps sounded heavily on the thick drawing-room carpet. He was looking at the thin apparition in mourning near the fireplace. And the enormous man bowed several times very stiffly.
"The Count von Kassewitz," said M. Oberlé—for the Prefect had never been introduced to the mistress of the house.
She made a slight movement of the head and said nothing. M. von Kassewitz drew himself up, waited a second, then playing his part and affecting good humour, which perhaps he did not feel, he greeted Lucienne, who had blushed, and was smiling.
"I remember having seen Mademoiselle at His Excellency the Statthalter's," he said. "And truly Strasburg is some distance from Alsheim. But I am of the opinion that there are some wonders which are better worth the journey than the ruins in the Vosges, M. Oberlé."
He laughed with a satisfied air, and sat on the yellow couch with his back to the light, facing the fireplace. Then turning to the factory owner, who was seated near him he asked:
"Is your son away?"
M. Oberlé had been listening anxiously for a minute. He was able to say:
"Here he is."
The young man came in. The first person he saw was his mother. That made him hesitate. His eyes, young and impressionable, gave a nervous twitch as if they were hurt. Quickly he turned to the sofa, took the hand which the visitor offered him, and gravely but less embarrassed than his father, and with greater coolness he said in French:
"I have just been for a walk. I had to run not to be late, for I promised my father I would be here when you came."
"You are too kind," said the official, laughing. "We speak German with your father, but I am able to carry on a conversation in another tongue besides our national language."
He went on in French, laying stress on the first syllables of the words.
"I admired your park, Monsieur Oberlé, and even all the little country of Alsheim. It is very pretty. You are surrounded, I believe, by a refractory population—almost invisible; in any case, just now as I came through the village I hardly saw a living soul."
"They are in the fields," said Madame Oberlé.
"Who is the Mayor, then?"
"M. Bastian."
"I remember them: a family very much behind the times."
His look was questioning, and he moved his heavy head towards the two women and Jean. Three answers came at once.
"Behind the times, yes," said Lucienne—"they are, but such good people."
"They are simply old-fashioned folk," said Madame Oberlé.
Jean said:
"Above all very worthy."
"Yes, I know what that means."
The Prefect made an evasive gesture.
"Well, provided they go straight."
The father saved the situation.
"We have but few interesting things to show you, but perhaps you would like to see my works? They are full and animated, I assure you. There are one hundred workmen, and machines at work—pines sixty feet long under the branches, are reduced in three minutes to planks, or cut up as rafters. Would you care to see them?"
"Yes, certainly."
The conversation, thus turned in another direction at once became less constrained. The origin of the Oberlés' works, the Vosges woods, the comparison between the German manner of felling, by the Government, and the French system, by which the owners of a portion of a forest may fell the trees themselves under the supervision of the foresters—all these questions gave each a chance to speak. Lucienne became lively, Madame Oberlé, questioned by her husband, answered. Jean also spoke. The functionary congratulated himself on having come.
When her father made a sign, Lucienne rose, to ring for the footman and to ask that some refreshment might be served. But she had not time to make a single step.
The door opened, and Victor, the servant who had not been at his post a short time ago, appeared, very red, very embarrassed, and lowering his eyes. On his left arm, holding himself as erect as possible, was the grandfather, M. Philippe Oberlé.
The five persons talking were all standing. The servant stopped at the door and withdrew. The old man came in alone, leaning on his stick. M. Philippe Oberlé had put on his best clothes belonging to the time when he was in good health. He wore, unbuttoned, the frock-coat which was still decorated by the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. Intense feeling had transfigured him. One would have said that he was twenty years younger. He came forward taking short steps—his body bent a little forward, but his head held stiffly erect, and he looked at one man only, the German official standing by the side of the couch. His heavy jaw trembled and moved convulsively as if he were articulating words they could not hear.
Was M. Joseph Oberlé mistaken, or did he wish to put him on the wrong scent? He turned to where M. von Kassewitz was standing, astonished and on his guard, and said:
"My father has surprised us by coming down. I never expected he would take part in this."
The eyes of the old deputy, rigid under their heavy lids, did not cease looking at the German, who kept his countenance and remained silent. When M. Philippe Oberlé was three feet from M. von Kassewitz he stopped. With his left hand, which was free, he then drew his slate from the pocket of his frock-coat, and held it out to the Count von Kassewitz: on it two lines were written. The Count bent forward and then drew himself up haughtily.
"Sir!"
Already M. Joseph Oberlé had seized the thin sheet of slate, and read these words, traced with remarkable decision:
The eyes of the old Alsatian added:
"Leave my house!" and they were no longer looking down, nor did they leave the enemy.
"This is too much!" said M. Joseph Oberlé. "Father, how could you come downstairs to insult my guests? You will excuse him, sir; my father is old, over-excited, a little touched by age."
"If you were younger, sir," said M. von Kassewitz in his turn, "we should not stop at this. You will do well to remember that you are also in my home, in Germany, on German territory, and that it is not well even at your age to insult authority."
"Father," said Madame Oberlé, hastening to the old man to support him, "I beg of you—you are doing harm to yourself—this emotion is too much for you."
An extraordinary thing happened. M. Philippe Oberlé, in his violent anger, had found strength to stand upright. He appeared gigantic. He was as tall as M. von Kassewitz. The veins on his temples swelled—the blood was in his cheeks, and his eyes were living once more. And at the same time the half-dead body was trembling and using up in involuntary movements its fragile and factitious life. He signed to Madame Oberlé to stand aside, and not to hold him up.
Lucienne, grown pale, shrugged her shoulders and went towards M. von Kassewitz.
"It is only an act in one of our family tragedies, monsieur. Do not take any notice of it and come to the works with us. Let me pass, grandfather."
The Count took no notice, and she passed out between M. Philippe Oberlé and the functionary who said:
"You are not responsible, mademoiselle, for the insult that has been offered to me. I understand the situation—I understand."
His voice came with difficulty from his contracted throat. Furious—half a head taller than any one there except M. Philippe Oberlé—M. von Kassewitz turned on his heel and went towards the door.
"Come, I pray you," said M. Joseph Oberlé, standing aside to let the Prefect pass.
Lucienne was already outside. Madame Oberlé, as ill from emotion as the old man, who refused her assistance, feeling her tears choke her, ran into the hall and up to her room, where she burst into sobs.
In the drawing-room Jean was alone with the old chief, who had just driven out the stranger. He drew near and said:
"Grandfather, what have you done?"
He wanted to say: It is a terrible insult. My father will never forgive it. The family is completely broken up. He would have said all that. But he raised his eyes to the old fighter, so near the end, still showing fight. He saw now that the grandfather was gazing fixedly at him; that his anger had reached its height; that his chest was moving violently; that the face grimaced and twisted. And suddenly, in the yellow drawing-room, an extraordinary voice, a hoarse voice, powerful and husky, cried out in a kind of nervous gallop:
"Go away! Go away! Go away! Go away!"
The voice rose to a piercing note. Then it broke, and with his mouth still open, the old man reeled and fell on the floor. The voice had sounded to the inmost recesses of the house. This voice that no one ever heard now, Madame Oberlé had recognised it, and through the open door of her room she had been able to catch the words. It was only a cry of rage and suffering, or the contrary to M. Joseph Oberlé, when the terrible sound of the words, which could not be distinguished or guessed at, reached him down two-thirds of the garden path. He had turned for a moment, with a frown—while the foremen and German workmen of the factory greeted M. von Kassewitz with their cheers—then he went on towards them.
Madame Oberlé was the first to run to the drawing-room, then Victor, then old Salome, as white as a sheet, crying with uplifted hands:
"Was not that M. Philippe I heard?"
Then the coachman and the gardener ran in, hesitating to come forward but curious to see this distressing scene. They found Jean and his mother kneeling near M. Philippe Oberlé, who was breathing with difficulty, and was in a state of complete prostration. His effort, his emotion, and his indignation had used up the strength of the old man. They raised him up, and sat him in a chair, and each one tried to revive him. For a quarter of an hour there was going and coming between the first floor and the dining-room. They fetched vinegar, salts, and ether.
"I was afraid that master would have an attack; he has been beside himself all the morning. Ah, there he is moving his eyes a little. His hands are not so cold.
Across the park there came a cry of "Long live the Prefect!" It entered the drawing-room wafted on the warm breeze, where such words had never been heard before. M. Philippe Oberlé did not seem to hear them. But after some minutes he made a sign that he wished to be taken to his room.
Some one came up the steps quickly, and before coming in asked:
"What, again! What are those cries? Ah! my father!"
He changed his tone and said:
"I thought it was you, Monica—that you had a nervous attack. But then who screamed like that?"
"He!"
"He?" said M. Oberlé; "that is not possible!"
He did not dare to ask the question again. His father, now standing, supported by Jean and by his servant, trembling and wavering, moved across the room.
"Jean," said Madame Oberlé, "see to everything. Do not leave your grandfather; I am coming up."
Her husband had kept her back. She wished to get Jean away from this. As soon as she was alone with M. Oberlé on the staircase they heard the noise of footsteps and the rustling of materials, and voices saying:
"Hold him up—take care in turning."
"What did he call out?" asked M. Oberlé.
"He called out: 'Go away! Go away!' Those are words that he often uses, you know."
"The only ones he had at his disposal to show his hatred. Did he say nothing else?"
"No. I came down at once and I found him on the floor. Jean was near him."
"Happily M. von Kassewitz did not witness this second act. The first was enough. In truth, the whole household was leagued together to make this visit—such an honour for us—an occasion of offence and scandal: my father; Victor, who was not ashamed to be an accomplice of the delirious old man; Jean, who was impertinent; you——"
"I did not think you could have had to complain of me!"
"Of you the very first! It is you who are the soul of this resistance, which I will overcome. I shall overcome it! I answer for that."
"My poor friend," she said, clasping her hands; "you are still set on that!"
"Exactly."
"You cannot overcome everything, alas!"
"That is what we are going to see."
Madame Oberlé did not answer and went upstairs quickly. A new anxiety, stronger than the fear of her husband's threats, tortured her now.
"What did my father-in-law wish to say?" she asked herself. "The old man is not delirious. He remembers; he foresees; he watches over the house; he always thinks things out carefully. If only Jean did not understand it as I understand it!"
At the top of the stairs she met her son, who was coming out of the grandfather's room.
"Well?"
"Nothing serious, I hope—he is better—he wishes to be alone."
"And you?" questioned the mother, taking her son's hand, and leading him towards the room he used. "And you?"
"How? I?"
When he had shut the door behind her, she placed herself before him, and her face quite white in the light of the window, her eyes fixed on the eyes of her child:
"You quite understood—did you not—what grandfather wished to say?"
"Yes."
She tried to smile, and it was heart-breaking to see this effort of a tortured soul.
"Yes. He cried: 'Go away!' It is a word he often used to say to strangers. He was addressing M. von Kassewitz. You do not think so?"
Jean shook his head.
"But, my darling, he could not 'address others so!'"
"Pardon; he meant it for me."
"You are mad! You are the best friends in the world, you and your grandfather."
"Just so."
"He did not wish to turn you out of the room?"
"No."
"Then?"
"He was ordering me to leave the house."
"Jean!"
"And for all that, the poor man was delighted to see me come back to it."
Jean would not look at his mother now, because tears had gushed from Madame Oberlé's eyes, because she had come close to him, because she had taken his hands.
"No, Jean, no; he could not have meant that, I assure you; you do not understand. In any case, you will not do it! Say that you will never do it."
She waited for the answer, which did not come.
"Jean, for pity's sake answer me! Promise me that you will not leave us! Oh! what would the house be without my son now? I have only you—you do not think I am miserable enough then? Jean, look at me!"
He could not wholly resist her. She saw the eyes of her son looking at her tenderly.
"I love you with all my heart," said Jean.
"I know it; but do not go away!"
"I pity you and respect you."
"Do not go away!"
And as he said no more she moved away.
"You will promise nothing. You are hard—you also are like——"
She was going to say "Like your father."
Jean thought: "I can give her some weeks of peace; I owe them to her." And trying to smile in his turn said:
"I promise you, mamma, to be at St. Nicholas's Barracks on October 1st—I promise you. Are you pleased?"
She shook her head. But he, kissing her on the brow, not wishing to say anything more, left her in haste.
The town of Alsheim was occupying itself with the scene which had taken place at M. Oberlé's. Through the torrid evening heat, amidst the fertile dust of the cut wheat, of the pollen of flowers, of dried moss which was blown from one field to another, the men came home on foot; the children and young people came on horseback, and the tails of the horses were gold, or silver, or black, or fire-coloured in the burning light which the setting sun cast over the shoulder of the Vosges. Women were waiting for their husbands on the thresholds, and when they drew near, went to meet them in their haste to spread such important news.
"You do not know what has happened at the works. They will speak about it for a long time! It seems that old M. Philippe found his voice in his anger, and that he drove the Prussian out!"
Many of the peasants said:
"You will speak of that at home, wife, when the door is shut!"
Many remarked with anxiety the agitation of their neighbours, and said:
"This will end in a visit from the gendarmes!"
At M. Bastian's farm the women and young girls were finishing their hop-picking. They were chattering, still laughing, or anxious, according to their age. The farmer had forbidden them to reopen the door looking on to the village street. He went on, always prudent in spite of his seeming joviality, to spread out the baskets of hop flowers, shining with fresh pollen. The oxen and the horses, passing near the yard, breathed in the air and stretched their necks.
And one at a time the women got up, shook their aprons, and weary, stretched their youthful arms, yawning at the freshness of the cool puffs of air which came over the roof, then started on their more or less distant way to home and supper.
At the Oberlés' house the dinner-bell rang. The meal was the shortest and the least gay that the wainscoting and delicately tinted paintings had ever witnessed.
Very few words were exchanged.
Lucienne was thinking of the new difficulty in the way of her projected marriage and of the violent irritation of M. von Kassewitz; Jean, of the hell that this house of the family had become; M. Oberlé, of his ambitions probably ruined; Madame Monica, of the possible departure of her son. Towards the end of dinner, at the moment when the servant was about to withdraw, M. Oberlé began to say, as if he were continuing a conversation:
"I am not accustomed, you know, my dear, to give in to violence: it exasperates me, that is all. I am then resolved to do two things—first to build another house in the timber-yard, where I shall be in my own home, then to hasten on Lucienne's marriage with Lieutenant von Farnow. Neither you nor my father nor any one can stop me. And I have just written to him about it."
M. Oberlé looked at each of them—his wife, son, and daughter—with the same expression of defiance. He added:
"These young people must be allowed to see each other and to talk to each other freely, betrothed as they are."
"Oh," said Madame Oberlé, "such things——"
"They are so!" he answered, "by my will, and dating from this evening. Nothing will alter it, nothing. I cannot let them meet here, unfortunately. My father would plan some fresh scandal—or you," and he pointed to his son; "or you," and he pointed to his wife.
"You are mistaken," said Madame Oberlé. "I suffer cruelly on account of this arrangement, but I shall make no scandal which will nullify what you have decided upon."
"Then," said M. Oberlé, "you have the chance to prove your words. I was not going to ask you to do anything, and I had decided to take Lucienne to Strasburg to the house of a third person, who would have let them meet in her drawing-room."
"I have never deserved that."
"Will you then agree to accompany your daughter?"
She thought for a moment, shut her eyes, and said:
"Certainly."
There was a look of surprise in her husband's eyes, and in Jean's, and also in Lucienne's.
"I shall be delighted; for my arrangement did not quite suit my fancy. It is more natural that you should take your daughter. But what rendezvous do you intend to choose?"
Madame Monica answered:
"My house at Obernai."
A movement of stupefaction made the father and son both straighten themselves. The house at Obernai? The home of the Biehlers? The son at least understood the sacrifice which the mother was making, and he rose and kissed her tenderly.
M. Oberlé himself said:
"That is right, Monica—very right. And when will it be convenient to you?"
"Just the time to let M. de Farnow know about it. You will fix the day and the hour—write to him when he answers you."
Lucienne, in spite of her want of tenderness, drew closer to her mother that evening. In the little drawing-room, where she worked at crochet for two hours, she sat near Madame Oberlé, and with her watchful eyes she followed, or tried to follow, the thoughts on the lined face so mobile and still so expressive. But often one can only partly read what is passing in a mind. Neither Lucienne nor Jean guessed the reason which had so quickly prompted Madame Oberlé's act of self-sacrifice.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RAMPARTS OF OBERNAI
Ten days later, Lucienne and her mother had just entered the family house where Madame Oberlé had spent all her childhood, the home of the Biehlers, which lifted its three stories of windows with little green panes, and its fortified gable above the ramparts of Obernai, between two houses of the sixteenth century—just like it.
Madame Oberlé had gone upstairs, saying to the caretaker:
"You will receive a gentleman presently who will ask for me."
In the large room on the first floor which she entered, one of the few rooms which were still furnished, she had seen her parents live and die; the walnut-wood bed, the brown porcelain stove, the chairs covered with woollen velvet which repeated on every seat and every back the same basket of flowers, the crucifix framed under raised glass, the two views of Italy brought back from a journey in 1837, all remained in the same places and in the same order as in the old days. Instinctively in crossing the threshold she sought the holy water stoup hanging near the lintel, where the old people, when they went into the room, moistened their fingers as on the threshold of a holy abode.
The two women went towards the window. Madame Oberlé wore the same black dress she had put on to receive the Prefect of Strasburg. Lucienne had put on a large brimmed hat of grey straw, trimmed with feathers of the same shade, as if to cover her fair hair with a veil of shadow. Her mother thought her beautiful—and did not say so. She would have hastened to say so if the betrothed had not been he whom they expected, and if the sight of the house, and the memory of the good Alsatian folk who had lived in it, had not made the pain she already felt greater.
She leant against the windows and looked down into the garden full of box-trees clipped into rounded shapes, and flower borders outlined by box, and the winding, narrow paths where she had played, grown up, and dreamed. Beyond the garden there was a walk made on the town ramparts, and between the chestnuts planted there one could see the blue plain.
Lucienne, who had not spoken since the arrival at Obernai, guessing that she would have disturbed a being who was asking herself whether she could continue and complete her sacrifice, came quite close to her mother, and with that intelligence which always took everyone's fancy the first time they heard it, but less the second time:
"You must suffer, mamma," she said. "With your ideas, what you are doing is almost heroic!"
The mother did not look up, but her eyelids fluttered more, and quickly.
"You are doing it as a wifely duty, and because of that I admire you. I do not believe I could do what you are doing—give up my individuality to such an extent."
She did not think she was being cruel.
"And you wish to be married?" asked the mother, raising her head quickly.
"Why, yes; but we do not now look upon marriage quite as you do."
The mother saw from Lucienne's smile that she would be contending with a fixed idea, and she felt that the hour for discussion was badly chosen. She kept silence.
"I am grateful to you," continued the young girl. Then after a moment of hesitation:
"Nevertheless, you had another reason besides obeying my father when you agreed to come here—here to receive M. von Farnow."
She let her eyes wander round the room, and brought them back to the woman with smooth hair—that worn-out and suffering woman—who was her mother. There was no hesitation.
"Yes," she said.
"I was sure of it. Can you tell me what it is?"
"Presently."
"Before M. von Farnow?"
"Yes."
Keen annoyance changed the expression of Lucienne's face; it grew hard.
"Although we do not agree with each other very well, surely you are not capable of trying to turn my betrothed against me?"
Tears appeared in the corners of Madame Oberlé's eyelids.
"Oh Lucienne!"
"No, I do not believe it. It is something important?"
"Yes."
"Does it concern me?"
"No; not you."
The young girl opened her mouth to continue, then listened, became a little pale, and turned completely towards the door, while her mother turned only half-round in the same direction. Some one was coming upstairs. Wilhelm von Farnow, preceded by the caretaker, who accompanied him only as far as the landing, saw Madame Oberlé through the opening of the door, and as if on a military parade, he drew himself up and crossed the room quickly, and bowed his haughty head first to the mother, then to the young girl.
He was extremely well dressed in civilian clothes. His face was drawn and pallid with emotion. He said gravely in French:
"I thank you, madame!"
Then he looked at Lucienne, and in his unsmiling blue eyes there was a gleam of proud joy.
The young girl smiled.
Madame Oberlé felt a shudder of aversion, which she tried to repress. She looked straight into the steel-blue eyes of Wilhelm von Farnow, who stood motionless in the same attitude he would have taken under arms and before some great chief.
"You must not thank me. I play no part in what is happening. My husband and my daughter have decided everything."
He bowed again.
"If I were free I should refuse your race, your religion, your army—which are not mine. You see I speak to you frankly. I am determined to tell you that you owe me nothing, but also that I harbour no unjust animosity against you. I even believe that you are a very good soldier and an estimable man. I am so convinced of it that I am going to confide to you an anxiety which tortures me."
She hesitated a moment and continued:
"We had at Alsheim a terrible scene when Count Kassewitz came to the house."
"Count Kassewitz told me about it, madame. He even advised me to give up the idea of marrying your daughter. But I shall not do that. To make me give her up nothing short of——"
He began to laugh—
"Nothing short of an order from the Emperor would make me! I am a good German, as you say. I do not easily give up what I have won. And Count Kassewitz is only my uncle."
"What you do not know is that my father-in-law, for the first time for many, many years, in his exasperation, in the excess of his grief, has spoken. He cried out to Jean: 'Go away! Go away!' I heard the words. I ran quickly. Well, sir, what moved me most was not seeing M. Philippe Oberlé senseless, stretched upon the floor; it was my son's expression, and it is my conviction that at that moment he resolved to obey and to leave Alsace."
"Oh," said Farnow, "that would be bad."
He cast a glance at the fair Lucienne, and saw that she was shaking her blond head in sign of denial.
"Yes, bad," continued the mother without understanding in what sense Farnow used the word. "What an old age for me in my divided house—without my daughter, whom you are going to take away; without my son, who will have gone away. You are astonished, perhaps, that I should tell you an anxiety of this sort?"
He made a gesture which might mean anything.
"It is because," the mother continued more quickly, "I have no one to advise me; no help to hope for—under the circumstances. Understand clearly. To whom shall I go? To my husband? He would be furious? He would start to work and we should find that by his influence Jean would be incorporated in a German regiment in a week's time—away in the north or the east. My brother? He would rather insist on my son leaving Alsace. You see, monsieur, you are the only one who can do anything."
"What exactly?"
"But much. Jean has promised me that he will join the regiment. You can arrange that he shall be received and welcomed, and not discouraged. You can assure him protection, society, comrades—you have known him a long time. You can prevent his giving way to melancholy ideas, and stop him if he were again tempted to carry out such a plan."
The lieutenant, much disturbed, frowned, and the expression of his face changed at the last words. Then he said:
"Up to the first of October you have your son's promise—after that I will look after him."
Then speaking to himself, and again occupied with an idea, which he did not express entirely:
"Yes," he said, "very bad—it must not be."
Lucienne heard it.
"So much the worse," said she. "I betray my brother's secret, but he will forgive me when he knows that I betrayed him to calm mamma. You can be easy, mamma, Jean will not leave Alsace."
"Because?"
"He loves."
"Where then?"
"At Alsheim!"
"Whom?"
"Odile Bastian."
Madame Oberlé asked absolutely amazed:
"Is it true?"
"As true as we are here. He told me everything."
The mother closed her eyes, and, choking with halting breath:
"God be praised. A little hope rises in my heart. Let me cry—indeed I must!"
She pointed to the room, which was also open on the other side of the landing and was lighted by a large bay window, through which a tree could be seen.
Farnow bowed, showing Lucienne that he was following her.
And the girl moved on ahead, passing through the room where her ancestors had loved Alsace so much.
Madame Oberlé turned away; sitting near the window she leaned her head against the panes where as a child she had seen the sleet and the ice form into ferns, and the sun, and the rain, and the vibrating airs of summer-time, and all the land of Alsace.
"Odile Bastian! Odile!" repeated the poor woman. The bright face, the smile, the dresses of the young girl, the corner of Alsheim where she lived—a whole poem of beauty and moral health rose in the mother's mind; and with an effort she held to it jealously, in order to forget the other love-affair on account of which she had come here.
"Why did not Jean confide in me?" she thought. "This is a kind of compensation for the other. It reassures me. Jean will not leave us, since the strongest of ties binds him to the country. Perhaps we shall succeed in overcoming my husband's obstinacy. I will make him see that the sacrifice we are making, Jean and I, in accepting this German——"
Meanwhile laughter came from the next room, unfurnished except for the two chairs on which Lucienne and Farnow were sitting. Lucienne, with an elbow on the balustrade of the open window, the lieutenant a little behind gazing at her, and speaking with an extraordinary fervour; sometimes there was laughter. This laughter hurt Madame Oberlé, but she did not turn round. She still saw in the changing blue of the Alsatian fields the consoling image evoked by Lucienne.
Wilhelm von Farnow was speaking during this time, and was using to the best advantage this hour, which he knew would be short, in which he was permitted to learn to know Lucienne. She was listening to him as if dreaming, looking out across the roofs, but really attentive, and accentuating her answers with a smile and a little grimace. The German said:
"You are a glorious conquest. You will be a queen among the officers of my regiment, and already there is a woman of French family, but born in Austria, and she is ugly. There is an Italian, and some Germans, and some Englishwomen. You unite in yourself all their separate gifts—beauty, wit, brilliancy, German culture, and French spontaneity. As soon as we are married I shall present you in the highest German society. How did you develop in Alsheim?"
Her nature was still proud rather than tender, and these flatteries pleased her.
At this hour, profiting by the absence of M. Joseph Oberlé at Barr, M. Ulrich had gone up to see his nephew Jean. The days were drawing near when the young man would go to the barracks. It was necessary to tell him about the unsuccessful meeting with Odile Bastian's father. M. Ulrich, after having hesitated a long time, finding it harder to destroy young love than to start for a war, went to see his nephew and told him everything.
They talked for an hour, or rather the uncle talked in monologue, and tried to console Jean, who had let him see his grief, and had wept bitterly.
"Weep, my dear boy," said the uncle. "At this moment your mother is assisting at the first interview between Lucienne and the other. I confess I do not understand her. Weep, but don't let yourself be cast down. To-morrow you must be brave. Think, in three weeks you will be in the barracks. They must not see you crying. Well, the year will soon pass, and you will come back to us—and who knows?"
Jean passed his hand over his eyes and said resolutely:
"No, uncle."
"Why not?"
At the same place where in the preceding winter the two men had talked so joyously of the future, they were once more seated at the two ends of the sofa.
Outside, daylight was fading away and the air was warm. M. Ulrich found suddenly on Jean's sorrowful face the energetic expression which had so forcibly struck him on the former occasion, and had so delighted him. The Vosges-coloured eyes, with brows close together, were full of changing gleams of light, and yet the eyes were steady.
"No," said Jean; "it is necessary that you should know—you and one other to whom I will tell it. I shall not do my military service here."
"Where will you do it?"
"In France."
"How can you say that? Are you serious?"
"As serious as it is possible to be."
"And you go away at once?"
"No; after I have joined the corps."
M. Ulrich lifted his hands:
"But you are mad. It will be the most difficult and most dangerous thing to do. You are mad!"
He began to walk up and down the room—from the window to the wall. His emotion found vent in emphatic gestures, but he took care to speak gently for fear of being heard by the people of the house.
"Why after? For, after all, that is the first thing that comes into my mind in face of such an idea, and why?"
"I had intended to go away before joining the regiment," said the young man quietly. "But mamma guessed at something. She made me swear that I would join. So I shall join. Do not try to dissuade me. It is unreasonable, but I promised."
M. Ulrich shrugged his shoulders.
"Yes; the question of time is a serious point, but it is not only that. The serious thing is the resolution. Who made you take it? Is it because your grandfather called out 'Go away!' that you have decided to go?"
"No; he thought as I think, that is all."
"Is it the refusal of my friend Bastian which decided you?"
"Not more than the other. If he had said yes I should have had to tell him what I have told you this evening—I will live neither in Germany nor in Alsace."
"Then your sister's marriage?"
"Yes; that blow alone would have been enough to drive me away. What would my life be like at Alsheim now? Have you thought about that?"
"Be careful, Jean. You forsake your post as an Alsatian!"
"No; I can do nothing for Alsace! I could never gain the confidence of Alsatians now: with my father compromised, and my sister married to a Prussian."
"They will say you deserted!"
"Let them come to tell me so then, when I shall be serving with my regiment in France!"
"And your mother—you are going to leave your mother alone here?"
"That is the great objection, after all, the only great one, for the present, but my mother cannot ask me to let my life be sacrificed and made useless as hers has been. Her next feeling later on will be one of approval, because I have freed myself from the intolerable yoke which has lain so heavily on her. Yes, she will forgive me. And then——"
Jean pointed to the jagged green mountains.
"And then, there is dear France, as you say. It is she who attracts me. It is she who spoke to me first!"
"You child!" cried M. Ulrich.
He placed himself before the young man, who remained seated, and who was almost smiling.
"A nation must be fine indeed who, after thirty years, can evoke such a love as yours! Where are the people one would regret in the same way? Oh! blessed race which speaks again in you!"
He stopped a moment.
"However, I cannot leave you in ignorance of the kind of difficulties and disillusions you are going to encounter. It is my duty. Jean, my Jean, when you have passed the frontier and claimed the qualification of Frenchman according to the law, and finished your year's military service.—What will you do?"
"I shall always be able to earn my bread."
"Do not count too much on that. Do not think that the French will welcome you with favour because you are Alsatian. They have perhaps forgotten that we——In any case, they are like those who owe a very old pension. Do not imagine that they will help you over there more than any one else."
His nephew interrupted him:
"My mind is made up—whatever happens. Do not speak to me about it any more, will you?"
Then Uncle Ulrich—who was caressing his grey, pointed beard as if to get out his words spoken against the dear land, words that were coming out with such difficulty—was silent, and looked at his nephew a long time with his smile of complicity, which grew and spread. And he finished by saying:
"Now that I have done my duty and have not succeeded, I have the right to acknowledge, Jean, that sometimes I had this same idea. What would you say if I followed you to France?"
"You?"
"Not immediately. The only interest I had in living here was in seeing you growing up and continuing the tradition. That is all shattered. Do you know what will be one of the best means of insuring yourself against a cold welcome?"
Jean was too agitated by the gravity of the immediate resolution to take up time in talking about future plans.
"Listen, Uncle Ulrich, in a few days I shall want you. I have told you about my decision precisely that you might help me."
He rose, went towards the library, which was by the entrance-door, took a staff officer's map and came, unfolding it, towards the sofa.
"Sit down again by me, uncle, and let us do some geography together!"
He spread on his knees the map of the frontier of Lower Alsace.
"I have made up my mind to go this way," he said. "There will be a few inquiries to be made."
Uncle Ulrich nodded his head in sign of approval, interested as if it were some plan for a hunt, or an approaching battle.
"Good place," he said, "Grande Fontaine, les Minières. It seems to me that that is the nearest frontier line to Strasburg. Who told you this?"
"François Ramspacher's second son."
"You can rely on it. You will take the train."
"Yes."
"Where to?"
"As far as Schirmeck, I think."
"No; that is too near the frontier, and it is too important a station. In your place I should get out at the station before that, at Russ Hersbach."
"Good! There I take a carriage ordered beforehand—I go to Grande Fontaine—I dash into the forest."
"We dash, you mean?"
"Are you coming?"
The two men looked at each other, proud of each other.
"Really," said M. Ulrich, "this astonishes you? It is my trade. Pathfinder that I am, I am going first to reconnoitre the land, then when I shall have done the wood so thoroughly that I can find my way through it even by night, I will tell you if the plan is a good one, and at the hour agreed upon you will find me there. Be careful to dress like a tourist: soft hat, gaiters, not an ounce of baggage."
"Quite so."
M. Ulrich again scrutinised this handsome Jean who was leaving for ever the land of the Oberlés, the Biehlers, and all their ancestors.
All the same, how sad it is, in spite of the joy of the danger.
"Bah!" said Jean, trying to laugh, "I shall see the Rhine at both ends—there where it is free."
M. Ulrich embraced him.
"Courage, my boy, we shall meet soon. Take care not to let any one guess your plan. Who is it you are going to tell?"
"M. Bastian."
The uncle approved, and already on the threshold, pointing to the next room which M. Philippe Oberlé never left now:
"The poor man! There is more honour in his half of a human personality than in all the others together. Good-bye, Jean!"
Some hours passed and Jean went to the office of the works as usual. But his mind was so distracted that work was impossible. The employees who wished to speak to him noticed it. One of the foremen could not help saying to the clerks in the writing department, Germans like himself:
"The German cavalry is making ravages here: the master looks half mad."
The same patriotic feeling made them all laugh silently.
Then the dinner bell rang. Jean dreaded meeting his mother and Lucienne. Lucienne held her brother back as she was entering the dining-room, and in the half-light tenderly embraced him, holding him closely to her. Like most engaged people, it was probably a little of the other she was embracing without knowing it. However, the thought at least was for Jean. She murmured:
"I saw him at Obernai for a long time. He pleases me very much, because he is proud, like me. He has promised me to protect you in the regiment. But do not let us speak of him at dinner. It will be better not to. Mamma has been very kind—the poor thing touched me. She can do no more. Jean, I was obliged to reassure her by telling her your secret, and I told her that you will not leave Alsace, because you love Odile. Will you forgive me?"
She took her brother's arm, and leaving the hall went into the dining-room, where M. and Madame Oberlé were seated already—silent.
"My poor dear, in this house every joy is paid for by the sorrow of others. Look! I alone am happy!"
The dinner was very short. M. Oberlé immediately after led his daughter into the billiard-room because he wanted to question her. The mother remained a moment at the table near her son, who was now her neighbour. As soon as she was alone with him, the constraint fell like a veil from her face. The mother turned towards her child, admired him, smiled at him, and said in the confidential tone she knew so well how to use:
"I can do no more, my dear. I am completely done up and must go to bed. But I will confess that amidst my suffering a while ago I had one joy. Imagine that till just then I believed most firmly that you were going to leave us."
Jean started.
"I do not believe it now; do not be afraid! I am reassured. Your sister has told me in secret that I shall have some day a little Alsatian for a daughter-in-law. That will do me so much good. I understand that you could not tell me anything yet, while so much has been happening. And then it is still new—isn't it? Why are you trembling like that? I tell you, Jean, that I ask nothing from you now, and that I have entirely lost my fears—I love you so much."
She also embraced Jean. She also pressed him to her breast. But she had no tenderness in her soul except that which she was expressing.
She remembered the child in the cradle, nights and days of long ago, anxieties, dreams, precautions, and prayers of which he had been the object, and she thought:
"All that is nothing compared with what I would always do for him!"
"When she had disappeared, and he had heard the noise she made opening the invalid grandfather's door, to whom she never missed wishing good night, Jean rose and went out. He went through the fields to the trees which surrounded the Bastians' house, went into the park and, hidden there, remained some time watching the light which filtered through the shutters of the large drawing-room. Voices spoke, now one, now another. He recognised the tone but could not distinguish the words. There were pauses between the slowly spoken words, and Jean imagined that they were sad. The temptation came to him to go round those few yards of frontage and enter the drawing-room boldly. He thought: "Now that I have decided to live out of Alsace; now that they have refused me because of my father's attitude and because of Lucienne's marriage, I have no longer the right to question Odile. I shall go away without knowing if she also suffers as I suffer. But can I not see her in her own home for the last time, in the intimacy of the lamplight which brings the three of them together? I will not write to her. I will not try to speak to her, but I must see her; I shall carry away a last look of her—a last remembrance, and she will guess that at least I am deserving of pity."
He hesitated however. This evening he felt too unhappy and too weak. From now to the first of October, would he not have the time to return? A step came from the garden side. Jean looked again at the thin blade of light which escaped from the room where Odile was sitting, and cut the night in two; and he withdrew.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST EVENING
The last evening had come. Jean was to take at Obernai a night train for Strasburg, so as to be in the barracks of St. Nicholas the next morning at seven o'clock, the regulation hour. His uniform, ordered of a Strasburg tailor, as was usual for the one-year service men, was waiting for him, blue and yellow, folded on two chairs, in the room which a month ago Madame Oberlé had taken, facing the barracks of St. Nicholas, about the middle of the rue des Balayeurs. After dinner he said to his mother: "Let me go out alone, so that I can say good-bye to the Alsheim country I shall not see again for a long time."
She smiled. M. Joseph Oberlé answered:
"My dear fellow, you will not see me again; I have bills falling due to-morrow, and I must work in my office. And besides, I do not care about useless sentiment. Well, perhaps you will not find it easy to get leave before two months. I dare say not, but that will only make you the better pleased to come home. Come! Good-bye."
More affectionately than he would have believed it possible he embraced him, and with a word from Lucienne in her clear, young voice, "Soon," he went out.
The night air was laden with moisture to a remarkable degree: not a cloud. A crescent moon, stars in thousands; but between heaven and earth a veil of mist was spread which allowed the light to penetrate, but dispersed it in such a manner that there was no object really in shadow, and none which showed brightly. Everything was bathed in a pearly atmosphere. It was warm to breathe. "How sweet my Alsace is!" said Jean, when he had opened the door of the kitchen garden, and found himself behind the village houses, facing the plain, on which the moonlight was sleeping, blotted here and there with the shadows of an apple-tree or a walnut. An immense languor escaped from the soil, into which the first rains of autumn had sunk. The perfumes of stubble and ploughed land mixed with the odours from all kinds of vegetation come to their fullness of growth and aroma. The mountain was sending out gently to the valley the odour of pine pollen on the breeze, and the mint and the dying strawberries and bilberries, and its juniper berries crushed by the feet of passers-by and flocks. Jean breathed in the odour of Alsace; he thought he could recognise the exquisite perfume of that little mountain which is near Colmar, called Florimont, where the dittany grows, and he thought, "It is the last time. Never again! Never again!"
There were no glittering points of light on the roofs; he followed the line of them on the left of the path: they seemed to have joined fraternal hands round the church, and under each Jean could picture a face known and friendly. Such were his thoughts for a while as he walked on. But as soon as he saw, grey in the middle of the fields, the big clump of trees which hid M. Bastian's house, every other thought fled. Arrived at the farm where the younger son had said to him, "It is by Grande Fontaine that you must cross the frontier," he went into the cherry avenue, and he still remembered and found the white gate. No one was passing. Besides, what did it matter? Jean opened the lattice gate, went in, and walked on the grass border, even with the great trees, to the window of the drawing-room, which was lighted, then going round the house, came to the door which opened on the side opposite the village of Alsheim.
He waited an instant, went into the vestibule, and opened the door of the large room where the Bastian family sat every evening. They were all there in the light of the lamps, just as Jean had imagined. The father was reading the paper. The two women on the other side of the brown table laden with white linen unfolded, were embroidering with initials the towels which were going into the Bastian linen press. The door had opened with no other noise than that of the pad brushing against the parquet. However, all was so calm round the dwelling and in the room, that they turned their eyes to see who was coming in. There was a moment of uncertainty for M. Bastian, and hesitation for Jean. He had fixed his gaze first of all on Odile. He had seen how she also had suffered, and that she was the first, the only one who recognised him, and how she grew pale, and that in her anguish, her raised hand, her breath, her glance, were arrested. The linen Odile was sewing slipped from her hands without her being able to make the slightest movement to lift it up.
It was perhaps by this sign that M. Bastian recognised the visitor. Emotion seized him immediately.
"What?" he asked gently, "is it you, Jean? No one showed you in. What have you come for?"
He slowly put his paper down on the table without ceasing to scrutinise the young man who was standing in the shadow, on the same spot, a step or two from the door.
"I have come to say good-bye," said Jean.
But his voice was so full of pain that M. Bastian understood something unknown, tragic, had entered his house. He rose, saying, "Why, yes, to-morrow will be the first of October. You are going to the barracks, my poor boy. No doubt you wish to speak to me?"
Already M. Bastian had advanced, had held out his hand, and the young man, drawing him back into the darkest corner of the room, had answered in a very low voice, his eyes looking into the eyes of Odile's father. Madame Bastian gazed into the shadow, where they made an indistinct group.
"I am leaving," Jean murmured, "and I shall never come back, M. Bastian; that is why I took the liberty of coming."
He felt the rough hand of the Alsatian tremble. There was an exchange of secret and rapid dialogue between the men, while the two anxious women rose from their chairs, and with their hands leaning on the table, bent forward.
"What do you say? You will come back in a year?"
"No, I am going to join the regiment because I promised to. But I shall leave it."
"You will leave it?"
"The day after to-morrow."
"Where are you going?"
"To France!"
"For ever?"
"Yes."
The old Alsatian turned aside for a moment. "Talk on, you women, talk on; we have business to discuss."
They moved away, whilst he, breathless as though with running, cried: "Be careful what you do; be prudent; don't let yourself be caught."
He placed both hands on Jean's shoulders. "I must stay: that's my way, you see, of loving Alsace; there is no better. I live here, and here I die. But for you, my boy, things are different, I understand—don't let the women guess; it's too serious. Does any one know at your home?"
"No."
"Keep your secret," and then, lowering his voice, "You wanted to see her once more. I don't blame you, since you will never meet again."
Jean nodded as though to say "Yes, I had to see her once more."
"Look at her a minute, and then go. Stay where you are—look over my shoulder."
Over M. Bastian's shoulder Jean could see that the troubled look in Odile's eyes had grown to terror. She met his gaze fearlessly; she had no thought but for the dialogue which she could not hear, the mystery in which she felt she had some part, and her face betrayed her anguish.
"What are they saying? Is it bad news again? Is it better? No; not better, they are not both looking my way."
Her mother was still paler than her daughter.
"Farewell, my boy," said M. Bastian in low tones. "I loved you.... I could not act differently ... but I think highly of you; I will remember you."
Overcome by emotion, the old Alsatian silently pressed Jean's hand and let it fall. As to Jean, trembling and dazed, he walked to the door, looking back for the last time. He was going then—in one minute he would be gone, never to return to Alsheim.
"Au revoir, madame," he said.
He would have liked to say au revoir to Odile, but sobs prevented the words.
He gained the shadow of the corridor; they heard him hurrying away.
"What does it mean?" demanded Madame Bastian. "Xavier, you are hiding something from us."
The old Alsatian sobbed aloud; he threw precaution to the winds—she had guessed.
"Odile," she cried, "run and say good-bye to him."
Odile was already across the room; she caught Jean up at the corner.
"I beg of you to tell me why you are so miserable," she cried.
He turned, determined to be silent, to keep his vow. She was quite close to him; he opened his arms; she threw herself into them.
"Oh God," she cried, "you are leaving; I know it—you are going."
He kissed her hair tenderly, a lifelong farewell, turned the corner, and fled from her.