This prospect filled M. Oberlé with joy. It had revived the ambition of this man who found himself up to then repaid but badly for the sacrifices of self-respect, friendships, and memories, which he had had to make. It gave new energies and a definite object to this official temperament, depressed by circumstances. M. Oberlé saw his justification in it, without being able to reveal it. He said to himself that, thanks to his energy, to his contempt for Utopia, to his clear sight of what was possible and what was not, he could hope for a future for himself—a participation in public life—a part he had believed to be reserved for his son. And henceforward it would be the answer that he would make to himself; if ever a doubt entered his mind, it would be his revenge against the mute insults offered him by some backward peasants, who forgot to recognise him in the streets, and by certain citizens of Strasburg or Alsheim, who scarcely, or no longer, saluted him.
He was therefore now going to receive his son in a frame of mind very different from that of the past. To-day, when he knew himself in full personal favour with the Government of Alsace-Lorraine, he was less set on his son carrying out to the letter the plan that he had traced at first. Jean had already assisted his father, as Lucienne was assisting him. He had been an argument, and one of the causes of this long-expected change of the governmental attitude. His collaboration was still going to be useful, but not necessary; and the father, warned by certain allusions and a certain reticence in the last letters written from Berlin by his son, did not feel so irritated when he thought that perhaps he would not follow the career in the German magistracy so carefully prepared for him, and would give up his last three years of terms and his State examinations. Such were the reflections of this man, whose life had been guided by the most unadulterated egotism, at the moment when he was preparing to receive his son's visit. For he had seen Jean and had watched him coming across the park. M. Oberlé had built at the extreme end of the saw-mill a sort of cage or footbridge, from which he could survey everything at once. One window opened on to the timber yard, and allowed him to follow the movements of the men occupied in stowing away and transporting the wood. Another, composed of a double glazed framework, placed the book-keepers under the eye of their master, ranged along a wall in a room like the master's room; and by a third, that is to say by a glass partition, which separated him from the workshop, he took in at a glance the immense hall where machines of all kinds, great saws in leather bands, cogged wheels, drills, and planes, were cutting, boring, and polishing trunks of trees brought to them on sliding grooves. Round him the low woodwork painted water-green; electric lamps in the shape of violets, the call-buttons placed on a copper plaque which served as a pediment to his work bureau, a telephone, a typewriter, light chairs painted white, spoke of his taste for bright colours, for convenient innovations, and for fragile-looking objects.
Seeing his son enter, he had turned towards the window overlooking the park; he had crossed his legs, and placed his right elbow on the desk. He examined curiously this tall, thin, handsome man, his son, who sat down facing him, and he smiled. To see him thus, leaning back in his arm-chair, and smiling his own mechanical and irrelevant smile, by only judging from the full face framed by two grey whiskers, and the gesture of his raised right hand, touching his head and playing with the cord of his eyeglass, it would be easy to understand the mistake of those who took M. Oberlé for a magistrate. But the eyes, a little closed on account of the bright light, were too quick and too hard to belong to any but a man of action. They gave the lie to the mechanical smile of his lips. They had no scientific curiosity, worldly or paternal; they sought simply a way, like those of a ship's captain—in order to pass on. Scarcely had M. Oberlé asked, "What have you to tell me?" than he added, "Have you spoken with your mother this morning?"
"No!"
"With Lucienne?"
"Neither; I have just come from my room."
"It is better so. It is better for us to make our plans together, we two, without any one interfering. I have allowed you to return and to stay here precisely that we may arrange your future. Firstly, your military service in the month of October, with the fixed determination—am I right?"—and he dwelt on the following words—"to become an officer of the reserve?"
Jean, motionless, with head erect and straight look, and with the charming gravity of a young man who speaks of his future and who keeps a sort of quiet hold on himself which is not quite natural to him:
"Yes, father, that is my intention."
"The first point is then settled—and afterwards? You have seen the world. You know the people among whom you are called to live. You know that with regard to the German magistracy the chances of succeeding increased some time ago, because my own position has been considerably bettered in Alsace?"
"I know it."
"You know equally well that I have never wavered in my desire to see you follow the career which would have been mine if circumstances had not been stronger than my will."
As if this word had suddenly excited in him the strength to will, the eyes of M. Oberlé were fixed, imperious and masterful, on those of his son, like the claws of a bird of prey. He left off playing with his eyeglass, and said quickly:
"Your last letters indicated, however, a certain hesitation. Answer me. Will you become a magistrate?"
Jean became slightly pale, and answered:
"No!"
The father bent forward as if he were going to rise, and without taking his eyes off him whose moral energy he was weighing and judging at that moment:
"Administrator?"
"Neither. Nothing official."
"Then your law studies?"
"Useless."
"Because?"
"Because," said the young man, trying to steady his voice, "I have not the German spirit."
M. Oberlé had not expected this answer. It was a disavowal. He started, and instinctively looked into the workshop to make sure that no one had heard or even guessed at such words. He met the raised eyes of many workmen, who thought he was supervising the work, and who turned away at once.
M. Oberlé turned again to his son. A violent irritation had seized him. But he understood that it was best not to let it be seen. For fear that his hands should show his agitation, he had seized the two arms of the arm-chair in which he was seated, bent forward as before, but now considering this young man from head to foot, considering his attitude, his clothes, his manner, this young man who was voicing ideas which seemed like a judgment on the conduct of his father. After a moment of silence, his voice broken, he asked:
"Who has put you against me? Your mother?"
"No one," said Jean Oberlé quickly. "I have nothing against you. Why do you take it like that? I say simply that I have not the German spirit. It is the result of a long comparison, and nothing else."
M. Joseph Oberlé saw that he had shown his hand too much. He withdrew into himself, and putting on that expression of cold irony with which he was accustomed to disguise his true sentiments:
"Then, since you refuse to follow the career which I destined for you, have you chosen another?"
"Without doubt, with your consent."
"Which?"
"Yours. Do not be mistaken with regard to what I have just told you. I have lived without a quarrel for ten years in an exclusively German centre. I know what it has cost me. You ask me the result of my experience. Well, I do not believe that my character is supple enough, or easy-going enough if you like, to do more than that, or to become a German official. I am sure that I should not always understand, and that I should disobey sometimes. My decision is irrevocable. And, on the contrary, your work pleases me."
"You imagine that a manufacturer is independent?"
"No; but he is more independent than many are. I studied law so that I should not refuse to follow without reflection, without examination, the way you pointed out to me. But I have profited by the travels which you suggested, every year."
"You may say which I imposed upon you; that is the truth, and I am going to explain my reasons."
"I have profited by them to study the forest industry wherever I could—in Germany, in Austria, in the Caucasus. I have given more thought and consideration to those questions than you might suppose. And I wish to live in Alsheim. Will you allow me to?"
The father did not answer at first. He was trying on his son an experiment to which he deliberately submitted other men who came to treat with him about some important affair. He was silent at the moment when decisive words were to be expected from him. If the questioner, disturbed, turned away to escape the look which seemed to be oppressive, or if he renewed the explanation already made, M. Joseph Oberlé classed him among weak men, his inferiors. Jean bore his father's look, and did not open his mouth. M. Oberlé was secretly flattered. He understood that he found himself in the presence of a man completely formed, of a very resolute, and probably inflexible spirit. He knew others like him in the neighbourhood. He secretly appreciated their independence of temper, and feared it. With the quickness of combination and organisation habitual to him, he perceived very clearly the industry of Alsheim directed by Jean, and the father of Jean, Joseph Oberlé, sitting in the Reichstag, admitted among the financiers, the administrators, and the powerful men of Germany. He was one of those who know how to turn his mistakes to some advantage, just as he managed to get something from the factory waste. This new vision softened him. Far from being angry, he let the ironical expression relax which he had put on while speaking of his son's project. With a movement of his hand he pointed to the immense workshop, where, without ceasing, with a roar which slightly shook the double windows, the steel blades entered into the heart of the old trees of the Vosges, and said, in a tone of affectionate scolding:
"So be it, my son. It will give joy to my father, to your mother, and to Ulrich. I agree that you put me in the wrong on one point with regard to them, but in one point only. Some years ago I should not have allowed you to refuse the career which seemed to me the best for you, and which would have saved us all from difficulties which you could not take the measure of. At that moment you were not able to judge for yourself. And further, I found my work, my position, too precarious and too dangerous to pass it on to you. That has changed. My business has increased. Life has become possible for me and for you all, thanks to the efforts, and perhaps to the sacrifices, for which those about me are not sufficiently grateful. To-day I admit that the business has a future. You wish to succeed me? I open the door for you immediately! You will go through the practical part of your apprenticeship in the seven months which remain before you join your regiment. Yes, I consent, but on one condition."
"Which?"
"You will not mix yourself up with politics."
"I have no taste for politics."
"Ah, excuse me," continued M. Oberlé with animation; "we must understand one another, must we not? I do not think you have any political ambition for yourself; you are not old enough, and perhaps you are not of the right stuff. And that is not what I forbid—I forbid you to have anything to do with Alsatian chauvinism; to go about repeating, as others do, on every occasion—'France, France'; to wear under your waistcoat a tricolour belt; to imitate the Alsatian students of Strasburg, who, to recognise and encourage one another, and for the fun of it, whistle in the ears of the police the six notes of the Marseillaise 'Form your battalions.' I won't have any of those little proceedings, of those little bravadoes, and of those great risks, my dear fellow! They are forbidden manifestations for us business men who work in a German country. They go against our efforts and interests, for it is not France who buys. France is very far away, my dear fellow; she is more than two hundred leagues from here, at least one would think so, considering the little noise, movement, or money which come to us from there. Do not forget that! You are by your own wish a German manufacturer; if you turn your back on the Germans you are lost. Think what you please about the history of your country, of its past, and of its present. I am ignorant of your opinions on that subject. I will not try to guess what they will be in a neighbourhood so behind the times as ours at Alsheim; but whatever you think, either try to hold your tongue, or make a career for yourself elsewhere."
A smile stole round Jean's turned-up moustache, while the upper part of his face remained grave and firm.
"You are asking yourself, I am sure, what I think about France?"
"Let us hear."
"I love her."
"You do not know her!"
"I have read her history and her literature carefully, and I have compared: that is all. When one is oneself of the nation, that enables one to divine much. I do not know it otherwise, it is true. You have taken your precautions."
"What you say is true, though at the same time you intended to wound——"
"Yes, I have taken my precautions, in order to free your sister and you from that deadly spirit of opposition which would have made your lives barren from the beginning, which would have made you discontented people, powerless, poor; there are too many people of that sort in Alsace, who render no service to France or to Alsace, or to themselves, by perpetually furnishing Germany with reasons for anger. I do not regret that you make me explain myself as to the system of education which I desired for you, and which I alone desired. I wished to spare you the trial I have borne, of which I have just spoken to you: to fail in life. There is still another reason. Ah, I know well that credit will not be given me for that! I am obliged to praise myself in my own family. My child, it is not possible to have been brought up in France, to belong to France through all one's ancestry, and not to love French culture."
He interrupted himself a moment to see the impression this phrase produced, and he could see nothing, not a movement on the impassible face of his son, who decidedly was a highly self-controlled man. The implacable desire for justification which governed M. Oberlé, made him go on:
"You know that the French language is not favourably looked upon here, my dear Jean. In Bavaria you had a literary and historical education, better from that point of view than you would have had in Strasburg. I was able to desire, without prejudicing your masters against you, that you should have many extra French lessons. In Alsace, you and I would both have suffered for that. Those are the motives which guided me. Experience will show whether I was mistaken. I did it in any case in good faith, and for your good."
"My dear father," said Jean, "I have no right to judge what you have done. What I can tell you is that, thanks to that education I have received, if I have not an unbounded taste or admiration for German civilisation, I have at least the habit of living with the Germans. And I am persuaded that I could live with them in Alsace."
The father raised his eyebrows as if he would say, "I am not so sure of that."
"My ideas, up to now, have made me no enemy in Germany; and it seems to me that one can direct a saw-mill in an annexed country with the opinions I have just shown you."
"I hope so," said M. Oberlé simply.
"Then you accept me? I come to you?"
For answer the master pressed his finger on an electric button.
A man came up the steps which led from the machine hall to the observatory that M. Oberlé had had built, and opened the port-hole, and in the opening one saw a square blond beard, long hair, and two eyes like two blue gems.
"Wilhelm," said the master in German, "you will make my son conversant with the works, and you will explain to him the purchases we have made for the past six months. From to-morrow he will accompany you in your round of visits to where the fellings and cuttings are being carried out in the interests of the firm."
The door was shut again.
That young enthusiast, the elegant Jean Oberlé, was standing in front of his father. He held out his hand to him and said, pale with joy:
"Now I am again some one in Alsace! How I thank you!"
The father took his son's hand with a somewhat studied effusion. He thought:
"He is the image of his mother! In him I find again the spirit, the words, and the enthusiasm of Monica." Aloud he said:
"You see, my son, that I have only one aim in view, to make you happy. I have always had it. I agree to your adopting a career quite different from the one I chose for you. Try now to understand our position as your sister understands it."
Jean went away, and his father, a few minutes later, went out also. But while M. Joseph Oberlé went towards the house, being in haste to see his daughter, the only confidante of his thoughts, and to report the conversation he had just had with Jean, the latter crossed the timber yard to the left, passed before the lodge, and took the road to the forest. But he did not go far, because the luncheon hour was approaching. By the road that wound upward he reached the region of the vineyards of Alsheim, beyond the hop-fields which were still bare, where the poles rose tied together, like a stack of arms. His soul was glad. When he came to the entrance of a vineyard which he had known since his earliest childhood, where he had gathered the grapes in the days of long ago, he climbed on to a hill which overlooked the road and the rows of vines at the bottom. In spite of the grey light, in spite of the clouds and the wind, he found his Alsace beautiful, divinely beautiful—Alsace, sloping down very gently in front of him, and becoming a smooth plain with strips of grass and strips of ploughed land, and whence the villages here and there lifted their tile roofs and the point of their belfries. Round, isolated trees—leafless because it was winter—resembled dry thistles; some crows were flying, helped by the north wind, and seeking a newly sown spot.
Jean raised his hands, and spread them as if to embrace the expanse of land stretching out from Obernai, which he saw in the farthest undulations to the left, as far as Barr, half buried under the avalanche of pines down the mountain-side. "I love thee, Alsace, and I have come back to thee!" he cried. He gazed at the village of Alsheim, at the house of red stone which rose a little below him, and which was his; then at the other extremity of the pile of houses, inhabited by the workmen and peasants, he marked a sort of forest promontory which pushed out into the smooth plain. It was an avenue ending in a great group of leafless trees, grey, between which one could see the slopes of a roof. Jean let his eyes rest a long time on this half-hidden dwelling, and said: "Good day, Alsatian woman! Perhaps I am going to find that I love you. It would be so good to live here with you!"
The bell rang for luncheon, rang out from the Oberlés' house, and recalled him to himself. It had a thin, miserable sound, which gave some idea of the immensity of free space in which the noise vanished away, and the strength of the tide of the wind which carried it away over the lands of Alsace.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST FAMILY MEETING
Jean turned slowly towards this bell which was calling him. He was full of joy at this moment. He was taking possession of a world which, after some years, had just been opened to him and pointed out as his place of habitation, of work, and of happiness. These words played on his troubled mind deliciously. They pursued each other like a troop of porpoises, those travellers on the surface, and other words accompanied them. Family life, comfort, social authority, embellishments, enlargements. The house took to itself a name—"the paternal home." He looked at it with tenderness, following the alley near the stream; he went up the steps with a feeling of respect, remembering that they had been built by the grandfather to whom the house still belonged, as also all the grounds except the saw-mill and the timber yard.
After having gone across the entrance hall, which extended from the front to the back of the house, he opened the last door on the left. The dining-room was the only room which had been "done up" according to the directions and the taste of M. Joseph Oberlé. Whilst one found elsewhere—in the drawing-room, the billiard-room, and the other rooms—the furniture bought by the grandfather, of yellow or green Utrecht velvet and mahogany, "My Creation," according to the expression of M. Joseph Oberlé, showed a complete absence of line. Colour took the place of style. The walls were covered with wainscoting of veined maple, blue-grey, purple in places, ash-grey, and pink-grey, covering half the height of the room. Above this, and reaching to the small beams, were four panels of stretched cloth, decorated with designs of smooth felt representing irises, hollyhocks, verbena, and gladioli. Everywhere, as far as possible, the straight line had been modified. The door mouldings described curves which rambled madly like stalks of tropical bindweed without any apparent reason. The framework of the large window was curved. The chairs of bent beechwood came from Vienna. The whole had no character, but a charm of softened light, and a remote resemblance to the vegetable kingdom. One would have taken it for the dining-room of a newly married couple.
The four usual table companions Jean was going to meet there hardly corresponded to this joyous picture, and there was no harmony between them and the decorations of the room. They invariably sat in the same places, round the square table, according to the established order of deep affinities and antipathies.
The first to the left of the window, the nearest to the glass, which shed on her the reflection of its levelled edges, was Madame Monica Oberlé, tall and slender, with a face that had been rounded and fresh, but was now pale, lined, and thin. She gave the impression of a being accustomed only to hear around her the words "You are wrong." Her short-sighted eyes, very gentle, glanced at the guests who were introduced to her with a smile always ready to withdraw and fade away. They only paused after they had looked about for a little time, when nothing had repulsed or misunderstood them. Then they revealed a clear intelligence, a very kind heart, become a little shy and sad, but still capable of illusions and outbursts of youth. No one could have had a more careless youth, nor one that seemed a less fitting preparation for the part she had to play later. She was then called Monica Biehler, of the ancient family Biehler of Obernai. From the top of her father's house, whose fortified gable-end rises on the ramparts of the little town, she saw the immense plain all round her. The garden full of trimmed box and pear-trees, and hawthorn, where she played, was only separated by an iron railing from the public promenade built on the old wall, so that the vision of Alsace was printed each day on this child's soul, and at the same time love of her country, so happy then—love of its beauty, its peace, and its liberty, of its villages, whose names she knew, whose rosy bunches of grapes she could have pointed out among the harvest fields. Monica Biehler knew nothing else. She only left Obernai to go with all the family to spend two summer months in the lodge at Heidenbruch, in the Forest of Sainte Odile. Only once did she happen to cross the Vosges, the year before her wedding, to make a pilgrimage to Domrémy in Lorraine. Those had been three days full of enthusiasm. Madame Oberlé remembered those three days as the purest joy of her life. She would say: "My journey in France." She had remained simple; she had kept, in her very retired life at Alsheim, the easy fears, but also the sincerity—the secret boldness of her youthful affection for the country and for the country people. She had therefore suffered more than another would have done in her place, in seeing her husband draw near to the German party in Alsace, and finally join it. She had suffered in her Alsatian pride, and still more in her maternal love. For the same cause which separated her morally from her husband, her children were taken from her. The lines on her face, faded before its time, could each have borne a name, that of the grief which had scored them there: the line of despised goodness, the line of useless warnings, the line of her insulted country, of separation from Jean and Lucienne, of the uselessness of the treasure of love she had stored up for them during her single and married life.
Her bitterness had been the greater because Madame Oberlé had no illusions as to the true motives which guided her husband. And this he had divined. He was humiliated by this witness whom he could not deceive, and whom he could not help esteeming. She personified for him the cause which he had abandoned. It was to her he spoke when he felt the need of justifying himself, and he did so whenever he had the chance. It was against her that his anger rose, against her mute disapproval. Never once in twenty years had he been able to get her to agree—not by one word—that Alsace was German. This timid woman yielded to force but she did not approve of it. She followed her husband into German society; there she bore herself with such dignity that one could neither deceive oneself as to her attitude, nor bear a grudge against her for it. There she safeguarded more than appearances. A mother, separated from her children, she had not separated herself from her husband. They still used the twin-bedsteads in the same room. They had continual scenes, sometimes on one side, sometimes acrimonious and violent on both sides. Nevertheless Madame Oberlé understood that her husband only hated her clear-sightedness and judgment. She hoped she would not always be in the wrong. Now that the children were grown up she believed that some very important decisions would have to be made with regard to them, and that by her long patience and by her numerous concessions she had perhaps gained the right to speak then and be heard.
Near her, and at her right, the grandfather, M. Philippe Oberlé, had always sat. For some years, five minutes before the time of the meal the dining-room door would open, the old man would come in, leaning on the arm of his valet, trying to walk straight, clothed in an anomalous garment of dark wool, his red ribbon in his button-hole, his head weary and bent, his eyelids nearly closed, his face swollen and bloodless. They placed him in a large chair with arms upholstered in grey; they tied his table napkin round his neck, and he waited, his body leaning against the chair-back, his hands on the table—hands pale as wax, in which the knotted blue veins were distinctly visible. When the others arrived M. Joseph Oberlé shook him by the hand; Lucienne threw him a kiss and a number of words audibly spoken in her fresh young voice; Madame Oberlé bent down and pressed her faithful lips on the old man's forehead. He thanked her by watching her sit down. He did not look at the others. Then he made the sign of the cross, she and he alone, being a son of that old Alsace which still prayed. And served by this neighbour so silently charitable, who knew all his tastes, his shame of a certain clumsiness, and who forestalled his wishes, he began to eat, slowly, with difficulty moving his relaxed muscles. His dreamy head remained leaning against the chair. His head alone was watching in a body nearly destroyed. It was the theatre where, for the pleasure and pain of one alone, there passed before his mental vision the forebears of those whose names were mentioned before him. He did not speak, but he remembered. Sometimes he drew from his pocket a schoolboy's slate and pencil, and he wrote, with an uncertain writing, two or three words, which he made his neighbour read; some rectification, some forgotten date, his approval or disapproval to join in with the words just spoken on the other side of the table. Generally they knew when he was interested by the movement of his heavy eyelids. It was only for a moment. Life sank again to the depth of the prison whose bars she had tried to shake. Night closed in once more round those thoughts of his, unable to make themselves intelligible. And in spite of being accustomed to it, the sight of this suffering and of this ruin weighed on each of the members of the assembled family. It was less painful to strangers who sat for one evening at the Alsheim table, for the grandfather on those days did not try to break the circle of darkness and death which oppressed him. Until these last years M. Joseph Oberlé had always continued to present his guests to his father, up to the day when he wrote on his slate: "Do not present any one to me, above all, no Germans. Let them acknowledge my presence: that will be enough." The son had kept the habit—and it was a touching thought on the part of this selfish man—to give every evening an account of the business of the factory to the old chief. After dinner, smoking in the dining-room, while the two women went into the drawing-room, he told him all about the day's mail, the consignments, and the purchases of wood. Although M. Philippe Oberlé was now only the sleeping partner of the business he had founded, he was under the illusion that he was advising and directing still. He heard talk of the maples, pines and firs, oaks and beeches among which he had breathed for fifty years. He thought much of the "conference," as he called it, as the only moment in the day in which he appeared himself, to himself, and as some one of importance in the lives of others. Except for that he was only a shadow, a dumb soul present, who judged his house, but rarely gave voice to his decision.
His son on some important question disagreed with him. Seated at table just opposite his father, M. Joseph Oberlé could make a show of addressing himself to his wife and daughter only; during the whole of the meal he could avoid seeing the fingers which moved impatiently or which wrote to Madame Oberlé, but he was not the man to keep off painful subjects. Like all those who have had to make a great decision in their lives, and who have not taken it without a profound disturbance of their conscience, he was always reverting to the German Question. Everything gave him a pretext to begin it, praise or blame—various facts, political events announced in the morning's newspaper, a visiting card brought by the postman, an order for planks received from Hanover or Dresden, the wish expressed by Lucienne to accept an invitation to some ball. He felt the need of applauding himself for what he had done, like defeated generals who want to explain the battle, and to demonstrate how the force of circumstances had compelled them to act in such or such a manner. All the resources of his fertile mind were brought to bear on this case of conscience, on which he declared himself a long time resolute, and which aroused no more discussion, either on the part of the sick grandfather or on that of the depressed wife, who had decided to keep silence.
Lucienne alone approved and supported her father.
She did it with the decision of youth, which judges without consideration the grief of old people, the memories and all the charm of the past, without understanding, and as if they were dead things to be dealt with by reason only. She was only twenty, at once very proud and very sincere; she had an artless confidence in herself, an impetuous nature, and a reputation for beauty only partly justified. Tall, like her mother, and, like her, well made, she had her father's larger features more conformed to the usual Alsatian type—with a tendency to thicken. All the lines of her body were already formed and fully developed. To those who saw her for the first time, Lucienne Oberlé gave the impression of being a young woman rather than a young girl. Her face was extremely open and mobile. When she listened, her eyes—not so large as, and of a lighter green than, her brother's, her eyes and her mouth equally sharp when she smiled—followed the conversation and told her thoughts. She dreamed little. Another charm besides the vivacity of her mind explained her social success: the incomparable brightness of her complexion, of her red lips, the splendour of her fair hair, with its shining tresses of blonde and auburn intermingled, so abundant and so heavy that it broke tortoise-shell combs, escaped from hairpins, and hung down behind in a heavy mass and obliged her to raise her brow, which was enhaloed by the light from it, and gave to Lucienne Oberlé the carriage of a proud young goddess.
Her Uncle Ulrich said to her, laughing: "When I kiss you, I think I am kissing a peach growing in the open air." She walked well; she played tennis well; she swam to perfection, and more than once the papers of Baden-Baden had printed the initials of her name in articles in which they spoke of "our best skaters."
This physical education had already alienated her from her mother, who had never been more than a good walker, and was now only a fair one. But other causes had been at work and had separated them more deeply and more irrevocably from each other. Doubtless it was the entirely German education of the Mündner school, more scientific, more solemn, more pedantic, more varied, and much less pious than that which her mother had received, who had been educated partly at Obernai, and partly with the nuns of Notre-Dame, in the convent of the rue des Mineurs in Strasburg. But above all it was owing to the acquaintances she made, and her surroundings. Lucienne, ambitious like her father, like him bent on success, entirely removed from maternal influence, entrusted to German mistresses for seven years, received in German families, living among pupils chiefly German, flattered a little by everybody—here because of the charm of her nature, there for political motives and unconscious proselytism, Lucienne had formed habits of mind very different from those of old Alsace. Once more at home, she no longer understood the past of her people or her family. For her, those who stood up for the old state of things or regretted it—her mother, her grandfather, her uncle Ulrich—were the representatives of an epoch ended, of an unreasonable and childish attitude of mind. At once she placed herself on her father's side against the others. And she suffered from it. It depressed her to be brought into such close contact with persons of this sort, whom the Mündner school and all her worldly acquaintances of Baden-Baden and Strasburg would look upon as behind the times. For two years she had lived in an atmosphere of contradiction. For her family she felt conflicting sentiments; for her mother, for example, she felt a true tenderness and a great pity because she belonged to a condemned society and to another century. She had no confidants. Would her brother Jean be one? Restless at his arrival, almost a stranger to him, desiring affection, worn out with family quarrels, and hoping that Jean would place himself on the side she had chosen, that he would be a support and a new argument, she at once desired and feared this meeting. Her father came to tell her of the conversation he had had with Jean. She had said—cried out rather—"Thank you for giving me my brother!"
They were all four at table when the young man entered the dining-room. The two women who were facing each other and in the light of the window, turned their heads, one sweetly with a smile that said, "How proud I am of my child!"; the other leaning back on her chair, her lips half open, her eyes as tender as if he had been her betrothed who entered, desirous to please and sure of pleasing him, saying aloud: "Come and sit here near me, at the end of the table. I have made myself fine in your honour! Look!" and kissing him, she said in a low tone, "Oh, how good it is to have some one young to say good morning to!" She knew she was pleasant to look upon in her bodice of mauve surah silk trimmed with lace insertion. It also gave her real pleasure to meet this brother whom she had only seen for a moment last night, before catching the train to Strasburg. Jean thanked her with a friendly glance and seated himself at the end of the table between Lucienne and his mother. He unfolded his table napkin, and the servant Victor, son of an Alsatian farmer, with his full-moon face and eyes like a little girl's, always afraid of doing something wrong, approached him, carrying a dish of hors-d'œuvre, when M. Joseph Oberlé, who had just finished writing a note in his pocket-book, stroked his whiskers and said:
"You see Jean Oberlé here present, you my father, you Monica, and you Lucienne. Well, I have a piece of news to give you concerning him. I have agreed that he shall live definitely at Alsheim and become a manufacturer and a wood merchant."
Three faces coloured at once; even Victor, shaking like a leaf, withdrew his hors-d'œuvre dish.
"Is it possible?" said Lucienne, who did not wish to let her mother see that she had already been told of the arrangement. "Will he not finish his referendary course?"
"No."
"After his year's service he will come back here for always?"
"Yes; to stay with us always."
The second moment of emotion is sometimes more unnerving than the first. Lucienne's eyelids fluttered quickly and became moist. She laughed at the same time, tender words trembling on her red lips.
"Oh," said she, "so much the better. I don't know if it is in your own interest, Jean, but for us, so much the better."
She was really pretty at that moment, leaning towards her brother, vibrating with a joy which was not feigned.
"I thank you," said Madame Oberlé, looking gravely at her husband to try to guess what reason he had obeyed; "I thank you, Joseph; I should not have dared to ask it of you."
"But you see, my dear," answered the manufacturer, bending towards her, "you see, when proposals are reasonable I accept them. Besides, I am so little accustomed to be thanked that for once the word pleases me. Yes; we have just had a decisive conversation. Jean will accompany my buyer to-morrow and visit some of our cuttings in work. I never lose time—you know that."
Madame Oberlé saw the awkward hand of the grandfather stretch towards her. She took the slate which he held and read this line:
"That is the final joy of my life!"
There was no sign of happiness on this face, expressionless as a mask, none, if not perhaps the fixedness with which M. Philippe Oberlé looked at his son, who had given back a child to Alsace and a successor to the family. He was astonished, and he rejoiced. He forgot to eat, and all at the table were like him. The servant also forgot to serve; he was thinking of the importance he would have in announcing in the kitchen and in the village: "M. Jean has decided to take the factory! He will never leave the country again!" For some minutes in the dining-room of grey maple each of the four persons who met there every day had a different dream and passed a secret judgment; each had a vision, which was not divulged, of possible or probable consequences which the event would have relative to him or herself; each felt disturbed at the thought that to-morrow might be quite different from what had been imagined. Something was falling to pieces—habits, plans, a rule accepted or submitted to for years. It was like a disorder, or a defeat mixed with joy at the news.
The youngest of all was the first to regain her freedom of mind. Lucienne said:
"Are we not going to have lunch because Jean lunches with us? My dear, we are just like what we were before you came, not every day, but sometimes—mute beings who think only for themselves. That is quite contrary to the charms of meeting again. We are not going to begin again. Tell me?"
She began to laugh, as if from henceforward misunderstandings had disappeared. She joked wittily about silent meals, about the parties at Alsheim that finished at nine o'clock, the rare visits, and the importance of an invitation received from Strasburg. And everybody tacitly encouraged her to speak ill of the past, abolished by the resolution of this man, thoroughly happy, master of himself, who was watching and studying his sister with astonished admiration.
"Now," she said, "all is going to change. From now to October we shall be five instead of four under the roof of Alsheim. Then you will do your service; but that only lasts a year—and besides, you will have leave?"
"Every Sunday."
"You will sleep here?" asked Madame Oberlé.
"I should think so—on Saturday nights."
"And a nice uniform. Do you know," continued Lucienne, "that Attila tunic, cornflower colour, braided with yellow, black boots; but above all I like the full dress sealskin busby, with its plume of black-and-white horsehair—and the white frogs. It is one of the handsomest uniforms in our army."
"Yes, one of the handsomest in the German army," Madame Oberlé hastened to correct, wishing to make amends for the unlucky words of her daughter, for the grandfather had made a gesture with his hand as if to rub out something from the cloth.
M. Joseph Oberlé added, laughing:
"And equally one of the dearest. I am giving you a nice present, Jean, in leaving you to choose the Rhenish Hussars, No. 9, as your regiment. I shall not get off for less than eight thousand marks."
"Do you think so? As expensive as that?"
"I am sure of it. Only yesterday, at the Councillor Von Boscher's, before two officers, I mentioned the amount which I thought exact, and no one contradicted me. Officially, the one year's service man in the infantry should spend two thousand two hundred marks; in reality he spends four thousand. In the artillery he should spend two thousand seven hundred, and spends five thousand; in the cavalry the difference is still more; and when people maintain that you can finish the business with three thousand six hundred marks they are making fun of you. You must reckon seven or eight thousand marks. That is what I contend, and what I uphold."
"The regiment is admirably made up, father," interrupted Lucienne.
"A good deal of fortune in fact...."
"A good deal of nobility also, mixed with the sons of the rich manufacturers on the banks of the Rhine."
A quick smile of intelligence passed between Lucienne and her father. Jean was the only one who noticed it. Scarcely had the young girl had time to straighten her lips when she said:
"The volunteer places in the regiment are taken up so quickly that it is necessary to apply early in order to get one."
"I spoke to your colonel three months ago," said M. Oberlé. "You will be recommended to several of the chiefs."
Lucienne chimed in giddily:
"You will be able to bring some here; it would be amusing!"
Jean did not answer. Madame Oberlé blushed, as she often did when a word too much had been said before her. Lucienne was laughing again, when the grandfather stopped eating, and painfully, by jerks, each of which must have been painful, turned his sad, white head towards his grand-daughter. The eyes of the old Alsatian must have spoken a language very easy to translate, for the young girl ceased laughing, made a gesture of impatience as if she said, "Oh! I did not remember that you were here," and bent towards her father to offer him some Wolxheim wine, but really to escape the reproach she felt weighing on her.
The three others, M. Joseph Oberlé, Jean, and his mother, as if they were agreed not to prolong the incident, began to talk of the service, men at the St. Nicolas barracks, but hurriedly, multiplying their words and their signs of interest with useless gestures.
No one dared raise his head in the direction of the grandfather. M. Philippe Oberlé continued to stare with his look as implacable as remorse, at his grand-daughter, guilty of a giddy and regrettable speech. The meal was shortened owing to the general awkwardness, which had become almost unbearable, when M. Philippe Oberlé, begged by his daughter-in-law to forget what Lucienne had said, had answered "No," and refused to eat further.
Ten minutes later, Lucienne went into the alleys of the park, to rejoin her brother, who had gone out before and was lighting a cigar. Hearing her approach behind him, he turned round. She was no longer laughing. She had put on no hat, in spite of the wind, which disarranged her hair; but having thrown a shawl of white wool round her shoulders, no longer trying to charm but become all at once passionate and domineering, she ran up to him.
"You saw it? It is intolerable!"
Jean lit his cigar, clasping his hands to protect the lighted match, then throwing away the glowing vesta.
"Without doubt, but one must learn to put up with it, little one."
"There is no little one," she interrupted quickly, "there is a grown-up one, on the contrary, who wants to have a clear explanation with you. We have been separated for a long time, my dear, we must learn to know each other, for I hardly know you and you do not know me. I am going to help you—don't be afraid—I came for that."
He had a look of admiration for this fine creature violently moved, who had deliberately come to him; then, without losing his calmness, feeling that his part and his man's honour commanded him to be judge and not to get excited in his turn, he began to walk along by the side of Lucienne, in the alley which ran between a clump of trees on one side and the lawn on the other.
"You can speak to me, Lucienne—you may be sure...."
"Of your discretion? I thank you. I do not want any this morning. I came simply to explain to you my way of thinking on a certain point, and I am not going to make any mystery about it. I repeat that it is intolerable. You may say nothing here about Germany or the Germans, if it is not something bad. As soon as one has a word of praise or only of justice for them mamma bites her lips, and grandfather makes a disgraceful scene and shames me in front of the servants, as happened just now. Is it a crime to say to a volunteer: 'You will bring us some officers to Alsheim'? Can we prevent you serving your turn in a German regiment, in a German town, commanded by officers who, in spite of being Germans, are not the less men of the world?"
She walked nervously, and with her right hand twisted a gold chain which she wore on her mauve bodice.
"If you knew, Jean, what I have suffered by this want of liberty in the house, to find our parents so different from what they have had us trained to be. For I ask, why did they give it to me?"
The young man took the cigar he was smoking from his lips:
"Our education, Lucienne? It was only our father who wished it."
"He alone is intelligent."
"Oh, how can you speak like that of your mother?"
"Understand clearly," she answered, embarrassed. "I am not of those who hide one half of their thoughts and who make the others unrecognisable because of the flowery language they are wrapped up in. I love mamma very much more than you think, but I judge her also. She is possessed of intelligence as regards household affairs; she is refined; she has some little taste for literature, but she cannot deal intelligently with general questions. She does not see farther than Alsheim. My father has understood far better the position which is given us in Alsace; he has been enlightened by his intercourse, which is very wide and of all kinds, by his commercial interest and by his ambition...."
And as Jean made a questioning movement: "What ambition do you mean?"
Lucienne continued: "I surprise you; yes, for a young girl, as you said, I seem audacious and even irreverent. Is it not true?"
"A little."
"My dear Jean, I am only anticipating your own judgment—only hindering you from losing time in comparative psychological studies. You have just come home, I left school two years and a half ago. I am letting you benefit by my experience. Well, there is no doubt about it: our father is ambitious. He has all that is necessary for success. A will of iron for his inferiors, much flexibility vis-à-vis others, wealth, a quickness of mind which makes him the superior of all the manufacturers or German officials we meet here. I prophesy you that now that he is in favour with the Stadthalter you will not be long in seeing him a candidate for the Reichstag."
"That is impossible, Lucienne."
"Perhaps; but it will come to pass, nevertheless; I am sure of it. I do not say that he will stand for Obernai, but for some place in Alsace, and he will be elected, because he will be supported by the Government and he will settle the price.... Perhaps you did not give this a place in your calculations when you decided to return to Alsheim? I know I upset your ideas. You will have many such disturbances. What you must know, my dear Jean"—she laid stress on the word "dear"—"is that the home of the family is not an amusing one. We are irremediably divided."
Jean and Lucienne were silent for a moment, because the lodge was quite near; then they turned towards the lawn and took the second alley, which led to the house.
"Irremediably? You believe this?"
"It would be childish to doubt it. My father will not change and will not become French again, because that would be to give up his future for ever, and many commercial advantages. Mamma will not change, because she is a woman, and because to become a German would be to give up a sentiment which she thinks very noble. You surely do not aim at converting grandfather? Well then?"
She stopped and faced Jean.
"Well, my dear, as you cannot bring peace into the family by gentleness, bring it by being strong. Do not imagine you can remain neutral. Even if you would, circumstances will not permit it. I am sure of that. Join with me and father, even if you do not think as we do in everything.
"I have sought you out to implore you to be on our side. When mamma understands that her two children think her wrong she will defend her childhood's memories less energetically; she will advise grandfather to abstain from demonstrations like those of to-day, and our meals will be less like combats at close quarters. We shall command the situation. It is all that we can hope for. Will you? Papa told me, quickly this morning, that your tenderness for the Germans was not a lively one. But you do not hate them?"
"No."
"I only ask for tolerance and a certain amount of consideration for them—that is to say, for us who see them. You have lived ten years in Germany; you will continue to do here what you did there. You will not leave the drawing-room when one of them comes to see us?"
"Of course not. But you see, Lucienne, even if I act differently from mamma, because my education has made me put up with what is odious to her, I cannot blame her. I can find the most touching reasons why she should be what she is."
"Touching?"
"Yes."
"I find them unreasonable."
Jean's green eyes and Lucienne's lighter ones questioned one another for a moment. The two young people, both grave, with an expression of astonishment and defiance, measured each other and thought: "Is it she I saw just now so smiling and so tender?" "Is it really he who resists me, a brother brought up like me, and who ought to yield to me, if it were only because I am young and he is glad to see me again?" She was displeased. This first meeting had placed in opposition the paternal violence which Lucienne had inherited and the inflexible will which the mother had transmitted to her son. It was Lucienne who broke the silence. She turned to continue the walk, and shaking her head:
"I see," she said. "You imagine that you will have a confidante in mamma, a friend to whom you can open your heart fully? She is worthy of all respect, my dear. But there again you are mistaken. I have tried. She is, or thinks she is, too miserable. All you tell her will immediately serve her as an argument in her own quarrel. If you wished, for example, to marry a German——"
"No, no; but no."
"I am only supposing. Mamma would go at once to find my father, and would say to him: 'Look at this! It is horrible! It is your fault! Yours!' And if you wished to marry an Alsatian our mother would at once take advantage of it and say: 'He is on my side, against you, against you.' No, my dear, the real, true confidante at Alsheim is Lucienne."
She took Jean's hand, and without ceasing to walk she looked up at him, her face beaming with life and youthfulness.
"Believe me, let us be frank with each other. You do not know me well. You have travelled so much. I astonish you. You will see that I have great faults. I am proud and selfish, hardly capable of making sacrifices; something of a flirt, but I have no roundabout ways. Lately, when I was looking forward to your arrival, I promised myself a lasting joy, the joy of having your youth near mine to understand it. I will tell you all that is important in my life, all that I am resolved to do—I have no one here whom I can trust absolutely. You cannot know what I have suffered. Will you?"
"Oh yes."
"You will tell me your thoughts, but above all I shall have spoken to you. I shall not suffocate, as I have often done in this house. I shall have many things to tell you. It will be some way of regaining the intimacy we have almost lost, and will give us a little tardy fraternal companionship. What are you thinking about?"
"About this poor house."
Lucienne lifted her eyes above the slate roof which rose in front. She wished to say, "If you knew how sad it really is," then she embraced her brother, and said:
"I am not so bad as you think me, brother, nor so ungrateful to mamma. I am going to find her to talk about your return. She certainly wants to speak of her happiness to some one."
Lucienne left her brother, turning again to smile at him, and walking as a goddess might, with steps free and finely poised, with her hand replacing the pins which held up her hair so badly, disarranged as it was by the walk and blown about by the wind, she took the fifty steps which separated her from the staircase, and disappeared.
CHAPTER IV
THE GUARDIANS OF THE HEARTH
When Lucienne left Jean he had turned round the house, crossed a semicircular court formed by stables and coach-houses, then a large kitchen-garden surrounded by walls, and opening a private door at the end on the right he found himself in the country, behind the village of Alsheim. His first joy at his return had already lessened and faded. He heard again sentences which had sunk into the depths of his soul; their very accent came back to him with the appearance and the gesture of the one who had uttered them.
He thought of the "sad house" there quite close to the wall which enclosed the grounds, and it pained him to remember what an entirely different idea he had formed years ago of the welcome which awaited him at Alsheim, and the almost religious emotion he had felt far away, in the towns and on the roads of Europe and the East, when he thought, "My mother, my father, my sister! My first day at home after my father has said yes!" The first day had begun. It had not been, up to the present, worthy of this old-time dream.
Even the weather was bad. Before him the plain of Alsace, smooth, scarcely marked with some lines of trees, stretched out to the foot of the Vosges, covered with forests which made their height appear less than it was. The north wind, blowing from the sea, filling all the valley with its continuous wailing, chased the dark clouds from the sky, broken and heaped together like furrows in fields, clouds full of rain and hail, which would dissolve in compact masses to fall in the south, on the side of the Alps. It was cold.
Meanwhile Jean Oberlé, having looked to the left, from the side where the land declined a little, perceived the avenue ending in a little wood, which he had seen in the morning, and he felt again that his youth called to her. He made sure no one was watching him from the windows of his home, and he took the path which turned round the village.
It was really only a track traced by people going to, and coming from work. It followed very nearly the zigzag line made by the sheds, the pig-styes, the stables, the barns, the low boundaries commanded by the manure-heaps, fowl-houses, all the back buildings of the dwellings of Alsheim, which had on the other side, on the road, their principal façade, or at least a white wall, a cart-door, and a great mulberry-tree overflowing the edge of it. The young man walked quietly on the beaten track. He passed the church which, almost in the centre of Alsheim, raised its square tower, surmounted by a slate roof in the form of a steeple, with a metal point, and came to the centre of a group of four enormous walnut-trees, serving as landmarks, as ornament and shelter to the last farm in the village. There began the property of M. Xavier Bastian, the mayor of Alsheim, the old friend of M. Joseph Oberlé, a man of influence, rich and patriotic, and to whose house Jean was going. The sound of flails could be heard in the neighbouring yard. It must be the fine, big sons of the Ramspacher, the Bastians' tenants. One had served his time in the German army, the other was going to join his regiment in the month of November. They were threshing under the barn in the old style. Every autumn, every winter, when the miller's store of corn diminished, and when the weather was bad outside, they spread out some sheaves in the shelter, and their flails struck blithely and galloped like colts let loose in high grass. Nothing had stopped the tradition.
"Isn't my Alsheim old?" said Jean to himself. Although he was very anxious not to be recognised, he approached the latticed door which opened on to the fields on this side, and if he did not see the workers, hidden by an unharnessed cart, he saw again with a friendly smile the yard of the old farm, a kind of road bordered with buildings which were only apparently framework with a little earth between the wooden beams, a demonstration of the everlasting strength of the chestnut which had furnished the jambs, the raising pieces, the wooden balconies, and the framework of the windows. No one heard him, no one saw him. He went on his way and his heart began to beat violently. For immediately after the farm of the Ramspachers, the path fell, at right angles, to an avenue of cherry-trees leading from the village to the house of M. Bastian. It was not probable that in this bad weather the Mayor would be far from home. In a few moments Jean would speak with him; he would meet Odile; he would find some means of knowing if she were betrothed.
Odile. All Jean's early childhood was full of that name. The daughter of M. Bastian had formerly been the playfellow of Lucienne and of Jean when the evolution of M. Oberlé had not been affirmed and known in the country-side; a little later she had become the charming vision which Jean saw again at the Munich Gymnasium when he thought of Alsheim; the young, growing girl, whom one saw in the holidays, on Sundays in church, whom one saluted without approaching when Monsieur or Madame Oberlé were present, but also the passer-by of the grape harvest and of the woods, and the walker who had a smile for Lucienne or for Jean met at the turn of a road. What secret enchantment did this girl of Alsheim possess, brought up entirely in the country, except for two or three years passed with the nuns of Notre-Dame in Strasburg, not worldly—less brilliant than Lucienne, more silent and more grave? The same, no doubt, as the country where she was born. Jean had left her, as he had left Alsace, without being able to forget her. He had forbidden himself to see her during his last short stay in Alsheim, in order to prove himself and to find out if truly the memory of Odile would resist a long separation, studies, and travels. He had thought: "If she marries in the interval, it will be a proof that she has never thought of me, and I shall not weep for her." She had not married. Nothing showed that she was engaged. And certainly Jean was going to see her again.
He preferred not to go down the wild cherry avenue, celebrated for its beauty, which guarded the Bastians' property. The people of the little town, the few workers in the neighbouring country, although they were few, would have recognised the manufacturer's son going to the Mayor of Alsheim's. He followed the trimmed blackthorn hedge, which bounded the alley, walking on the red earth or on the narrow border of grass left by the plough at the edge of the ditch. Behind him the noise of the flails in the barn followed him, fading in the distance and scattered by the wind. Jean asked himself: "How shall I approach M. Bastian? How will he receive me? Bah! I arrive; I am supposed to be ignorant of much!"
Two hundred yards to the south of the farm the avenue of wild cherries ended, and the grove, which one saw from so far off, bordered the sown fields. The wood was composed of fine old trees, oaks, planes, and elms, at this time bare of leaves—under which evergreen trees had grown up: pines, spindletrees, and laurels. Jean continued to follow the hedge as it curved across a field of lucerne to a rustic gate, with worn paint and half rotten, which rose between two jambs. A piece of sandstone thrown across the ditch served as a bridge. The laurel-trees growing out over the fence of blackthorn on each side of the upright posts, closed in the view at two yards. When Jean came near, a blackbird flew off, uttering a warning note. Jean remembered that to enter one had only to pass one's hand through the hedge and to lift an iron hook. So he opened the door, and, a little uneasy at his audacity, grazed from his coat to his gaiters by the overgrown branches of an alley far too narrow and hardly ever entered, he came out on to a sanded space, passed several clumps of shrubs edged with box, and arrived at the house on the far side from Alsheim. Here there were plane-trees more than a hundred years old, planted in a semi-circle, which sheltered a tiny lawn and spread their branches over the tiles of an old, low, squat house, from which two balconies projected, topped with overhanging roofs. Store-rooms, presses, barns, and a bee-hive formed the continuation of the master's house, where abundance, good nature, and the simplicity of the old Alsatian homely spirit were in evidence. Jean, kept back for a moment by the irresistible attraction of these places, once so familiar to him, looked at the plane-trees, the roof, a window with a balcony on which ivy grew. He was going to take the few steps which separated him from the half-open door, when on the threshold a tall man appeared, and recognising the visitor made a sign of surprise. It was M. Xavier Bastian. No man of sixty years of age in the division of Erstein was more robust or of a more youthful turn of mind. He had wide shoulders, a massive head, as wide below as above, quite white hair, divided in short locks overlapping each other, his cheeks and the upper lip shaven, the nose large, the eyes fine and grey, the mouth thickset, and on his countenance the sort of prepossessing pride of those who have never known fear of anything. He wore the long frock-coat to which many notable Alsatians remained faithful, even in the villages such as Alsheim, where the inhabitants have no special costume or any memory of having had any.
Seeing Jean Oberlé, whom he had often dandled on his knees, he made a movement of surprise.
"Is it you, my boy?" he said, in the dialect of Alsace, which he mostly used, and with which he was more familiar than with French. "What has happened to bring you here?"
"Nothing, M. Bastian, if not that I have just come home."
He held out his hand to the old Alsatian, who took it, pressed it, and suddenly lost that gaiety which had been in his welcome, for he thought: "It is now ten years since your father last came here, ten years that your family and mine have been enemies." But he only said, in answer to himself, and as if doing away with an objection:
"Come in all the same, Jean; there is no harm for once."
But the gladness of the first meeting was gone, and did not return.
"How did you know that I was on your land?" asked Jean, who did not understand. "Did you hear me?"
"No; I heard the blackbird. I thought it was my servant, whom I have sent to Obernai to get the lamps of my victoria mended. Come into the hall."
He thought, with a feeling of regret and reprobation: "As your father used to come in when he was worthy."
In the corridor to the left he opened a door, and both went into the "big room," which was at the same time the dining-room and the reception-room of this rich citizen, heir of lands and of the traditions of a long series of ancestors, who had only left the house at Alsheim for the cemetery. Nearly all the picturesque furniture which one still meets with in the old houses of rural Alsace had disappeared from the dwelling of M. Bastian. No more carved cupboards; no more chairs of solid wood, with the backs cut in the shape of hearts; no clock in its painted case; no more little weights at the windows. The few chairs in the big, square, light hall, the table, the cupboard, and the big chest, on the top of which was the cast of a Pietà not known to fame, were all of polished walnut. The only thing that was old was the historical stove of faience, bearing the signature of Master Hugelin of Strasburg, and of which M. Bastian was as proud as if it had been a treasure. About two-thirds down the room, between the stove and the table, a woman of about fifty was sitting, dressed in black, rather stout, having regular, thick features, bands of grey hair, the forehead almost without lines, fine long eyebrows, and eyes as dark as if she had come from the south, calm and dignified, which she lifted first to Jean and then to her husband as if to ask, "How does he come here?"
She was sewing the hem of an unbleached linen sheet, which fell about her in big folds. Seeing Jean enter, she dropped it. She remained dumb with surprise, not understanding how her husband could bring to her the son, educated in Germany, of a renegade father, traitor to Alsace. During the war she had had three brothers killed in the service of France.
"I met him coming to see me," M. Bastian said, as if to excuse himself, "and I begged him to enter, Marie."
"Good day, madame," said the young man, who was hurt by the astonishment and coolness of Madame Bastian's first glance, and who had stopped in the middle of the hall. "Old memories brought me here."
"Good day, Jean."
The words died away before reaching the walls, papered with old peonies. One could hardly hear them. The silence which followed was so cruel that Jean grew pale, and M. Bastian, who had shut the door, and who, a little behind Jean, was scolding gently, with a shake of the head, those beautiful, severe eyes of the Alsatian woman, which did not lower themselves, intervened, saying:
"I have not told you, Marie, that I saw our friend Ulrich this morning in our vineyards of Sainte Odile. He spoke to me of this boy's return to Alsheim. He assured me that we ought to congratulate ourselves that we are going to see his nephew settle in the country. He told me that he was one of ours."
The silent lips of the Alsatian wore a vague smile of incredulity, which died as the words died. And Madame Bastian again began to sew.
Jean turned round, pale, as yet more miserable than irritated, and said in a low voice to M. Bastian:
"I knew that our two families were divided, but not to such an extent as they evidently are. I left Alsheim some time ago. You will excuse me for having come."
"Stay, stay! I will explain to you. Believe me that we have nothing against you, no animosity whatever, neither one nor the other."
The old man placed his hand on Jean's arm in a friendly manner:
"I do not want you to go like that. No; since you are here I will not let you say that I have sent you away without doing the honours. The thought would weigh heavy on me. I will not!"
"No, M. Bastian, I ought not to be here. I am in the way; I cannot stay one instant."