CHAPTER XII
THE HOP-PICKING
At the foot of Sainte Odile, a little below the vineyards in the deep earth formed by gravel and leaves fallen from the mountain, M. Bastian and other land-owners or farmers of Alsheim had planted hop-fields. Now the time was come when the flower produces its maximum of odorous pollen—a quickly passing hour difficult to seize.
The hop-planters appeared frequently in the hopfields. The brokers went through the villages. One heard buyers and sellers discussing the various merits of Wurtemburg hops and the Grand Duchy of Baden hops, and of Bohemian and Alsatian hops. The newspapers began to publish the first prices of the most famous home-grown: Hallertan, Spalt, and Wolnzach.
A Munich Jew had come to see M. Bastian on Sunday August 26, and had said to him:
"Wurtemburg is promising: Baden will have fine harvests: our own country of Spalt, in Bavaria, has hops which are paying us one hundred and sixty francs the fifty kilos, because they are rich hops—they are as full of the yellow aromatic powder as a grape of juice. Here you have been injured by the drought. But I can offer you one hundred and twenty francs on condition that you pick them at once. They are ripe."
M. Bastian had given in, and had called together his daily hop-pickers for August 28. That was also the day when the Count von Kassewitz was to pay his visit to M. Joseph Oberlé.
From dawn of a day already warmed by wafts of hot air, women had set themselves to walk up what is called "the heights of Alsheim," the region where the cultivated land, hollowed like a bow, will bear hops. Some hundreds of yards from the border of the forest high poles in battle array bore up the green tendrils. They looked like very pointed tents of foliage, or belfries—for the millions of little cones, formed of green scales sprinkled with pollen, swung themselves from the extreme top to the ground like bells whose ringer is the wind. All the inhabitants know the event of the day—one picks hops for M. Bastian. The master, up before dawn, was already in the hop-field, examining each foot, calculating the value of his crop, pressing and crushing in his fingers one of the little muslin-like pine cones whose perfume attracts the bees. At the back on the stubble furrows are two narrow wagons, harnessed to a horse, waiting for the harvest, and near them was Ramspacher the farmer, his two sons Augustin and François, and a farm servant. The women, on the direct road leading up there, came up in irregular bands, three in file, then five abreast, then one following the others, the only one who was old. Each one had put on a working dress of some thin stuff, discoloured and the worse for wear, except, however, the grocer's daughter, Ida, who wore a nearly new dress, blue with white spots, and another elegant girl from Alsheim, Juliette, a brunette, the daughter of the sacristan, and she had a fashionable bodice and a checked apron, pink and white. The greater number were without hats, and had only the shade of their hair, of every tint of fairness, to preserve their complexions. They walked along quietly and heavily. They were young and fresh. They laughed. The farm boy mounted on a farm horse, going to the fields, the reapers, encamped in a corner, and the motionless man with the scythe in the soft lucerne turned their heads, and their eyes followed these women workers, whom one did not generally see in the country: needlewomen, dressmakers, apprentices, all going as if to a fête towards the hop-field of M. Bastian. The vibration of words they could not hear flew to them on the wind that dried the dew. The weather was fair. Some old people, the pickers of fallen fruit beneath the scattered apple- and walnut-trees, rose from their stooping posture, and blinked their eyes to see the happy band of girls coming up the forest road. These girls without baskets such as the bilberry and whortleberry pickers, and raspberry gatherers had to carry.
They went into the hop-field, which contained eight rows of hops and disappeared as if in a gigantic vineyard. M. Bastian directed the work, and pointed out that they must begin with the part touching the road. Then the old farmer, his two sons and farm servant, seized each of them one of the poles, heavy with the weight of harvest, the tendrils, the little scaly bells, the leaves all trembled; and after the women had knelt down and had cut the stalks even with the ground, the loosened poles came out of the earth and were lowered and despoiled of the climbing plants they had carried.
Stalks, leaves, and flowers were thrown down and placed in heaps—to be carried away by the wagons. The workers did not wait to pick the hops which they would gather at Alsheim in the farmyard in the afternoon. But, already covered with yellow powder and pieces of leaves, the men and women were hurrying to strip the lowered poles. The hops exhaled their bitter, healthy odour, and the humming of the band of workers, like the noise of early vintage, spread out over the immense stretch of country, striped with meadows, stubble, and lucerne, and the open and fertile Alsatian land which the sun was beginning to warm.
This light, the repose of the night still neighbouring the day, the full liberty which they did not enjoy every day of the week, the instinctive coquetry evoked by the presence of the men, even the desire of being pleasant to M. Bastian, whom they knew to be of a gay disposition, made these girls and children who picked the hops joyful with a boisterous joy. And one of the farm servants having called out while his horses stopped to take breath: "Is no one singing then?" the daughter of the sacristan, Juliette, with the regular features and the beautiful deep eyes under her well combed and nicely dressed hair, answered:
"I know a lovely song."
As she answered she looked at the owner of the property, who was smoking, seated on the first row of stubble above the hop-field, and who was contemplating with tenderness now his hops and now his Alsace, where his mind always dwelt.
"If it is pretty; sing it," said the master. "Is it a song that the police may hear?"
"Part of it."
"Then turn round to the forest side: the police do not often go that way because they find nothing to drink there."
The workers who were stooping and those who were standing upright laughed silently because of the detestation in which they held the gendarmes. And the beautiful Juliette began to sing—of course in Alsatian—one of those songs which poets compose who do not care to sign their works, and who rhyme in contraband.
"I have cut the hops of Alsace—they have grown on the soil we tilled—the green hops are certainly ours—the red earth is also ours."
"Bravo!" said gravely M. Bastian's farmer. He took his pipe from his mouth in order to hear better.
"They have grown in the valley—in the valley where every one has passed along, many sorts of people, and the wind, and also anguish—we have chosen our own friends.
"We will drink beer to the health of those who please us. We will have no words on our lips—but we will have words in our hearts—where no one can efface them."
The heavy, solid heads, young and old, remained motionless for a moment when Juliette had finished. They waited for the remainder. The young girls smiled because of the voice and because of life. The eyes of M. Bastian and the Ramspachers shone because of bygone days. The two sons had grown grave. Juliette did not begin to sing again: there was no more to follow.
"I think I know the miller who composed that song," said M. Bastian. "Come, my friends, hurry yourselves; there is the first cart starting for Alsheim. All must be gathered and put in the drying-house before night."
Everybody except that big young François, who had to do his military service in November, and who was driving the wagon, bent again over the hop roots. But at the same moment, from the copse on the border of the great forest, from among the shrubs and the clematis, which made a silky fringe to the mountain forests, a man's voice answered.
What was happening? Who had heard them? They thought they knew the voice, which was strong and unequal, worn, but with touches of a youthful quality; and whisperings arose.
"It is he. He is not afraid!"
The voice answered, in the same rugged tongue:
"The black bow of the daughters of Alsace—has bound my heart with sorrow—has bound my heart with joy. It is a knot of love.
"The black bow of the daughters of Alsace—is a bird with great wings. It can fly across the mountains—and look over them.
"The black bow of the daughters of Alsace is a cross of mourning which we carry in memory of all those—whose soul was like our own soul."
The voice had been recognised. When it had finished singing, the hop-pickers, men and women, began to talk to M. Ulrich, who, barely tolerated in Alsace, had nevertheless more freedom of language than the Alsatians who were German subjects. The noise of laughter and words exchanged grew louder and louder in the hop-field, so the master withdrew.
M. Bastian, with his heavy, sure step, mounted to the edge of the forest whence came the voice, and plunged under the beeches. Some one had seen him coming and waited for him. M. Ulrich Biehler, seated on a rock starred with moss—bare headed, weary with having walked in the sun—had hoped, by singing, to make his old friend Xavier Bastian climb up to him. He was not mistaken.
"I have a place for you here, hop-picker!" he cried from afar, pointing to a large block of stone which had rolled to the foot of the mountain, between two trees, and on which he was seated.
Although they were friends, M. Ulrich and the Mayor of Alsheim saw each other but seldom. There was between them less intimacy than a community of opinions and of aspirations and of memories. They were chosen friends, and old Alsace counted them among her faithful ones. That was enough to make them feel the meeting was a happy one, and to make the signal understood. M. Ulrich had said to himself that M. Bastian having set the workers to work would not be sorry to have a diversion. He had sung in answer to Juliette's song, and M. Bastian had come. Now the pale, fine face of the hermit of Heidenbruch reflected a mixture of pleasure in welcoming his friend and an anxiety difficult to conceal.
"You still sing?" said M. Bastian, pressing M. Ulrich's hand. "You hunt, you run about the hills!"
He sat down breathless on a stone, his feet in the ferns, and looking towards the descending slopes wooded with oaks and beeches and bushes.
"That only in appearance. I am a walker, a forester, a wanderer. You, on the contrary, are the least travelled of men. I visit—you cultivate: these are at bottom two kinds of fidelities. Tell me, Xavier, may I speak to you of something which I have very much at heart?"
The heavy face trembled, the thick lips moved, and one could see by the great change which took place in M. Bastian's face how sensitive he was. As he was of just as reticent a nature, he did not make any reply. He waited.
"I am going to tell you about something which touches me as nearly as if it were a personal matter. He who begged me to see you is my dearest relative. I take the direct method with you, Xavier. Have you guessed that my nephew loves your daughter Odile?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
Suddenly these two, who had been gazing into the distance for a while, looked at each other eye to eye, and they were afraid, one because of the refusal he read there—and the other because of the pain he was going to give.
"No!" said the voice, grown harsh in order to dominate its emotion, which would have made it tremble. "I will not!"
"I expected that; but if I tell you that they love each other?"
"That may be. I cannot!"
"You have some very serious reason then?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
M. Bastian pointed through the trees to the house of the Oberlés.
"To-day, in that house, they are expecting the visit of the Prefect of Strasburg."
"I could not tell you, and I had to wait before speaking about it till every one knew it."
"It is public property now. All the town of Alsheim has been told by the servants. They even say that M. von Kassewitz is coming to ask for the hand of Lucienne for his nephew, Lieutenant von Farnow."
"I know it!"
"And you would have it so?"
"Yes!"
"That I should give my daughter to Jean Oberlé so that she should have a father-in-law who will be a governmental candidate in the coming elections and a brother-in-law who is a Prussian officer?"
M. Ulrich kept calm under the indignant gaze of M. Bastian and answered:
"Yes; these are terrible things for him, but it is not Jean's fault. Where will you find a man more worthy of you and of your daughter?"
"What is he doing to oppose this marriage? He is here—his silence gives consent. He is weak."
M. Ulrich stopped him with a movement.
"No; he is strong!"
"Not like you—you who knew how to close your house."
"My house belongs to me."
"And I have the right to say 'Not like me!' All these young people accept things too easily, my friend. I do not mix myself up with politics. I keep silent. I plough my land. I am looked on with suspicion by the peasants, who no doubt like me, but who begin to find me 'compromising.' I am hated by Germans of every kind and colour. But, as God hears me, that only makes me drive my roots deeper in, and I do not change. I will die with all my old hatreds intact—do you understand—intact?"
His eyes had a gleam in them such as a sharpshooter has when, with gun in hand, and sure that his hand will not tremble, he covers his enemy.
"You stand for something in this generation, Xavier; but you must not be unjust. This man you refuse, because he is not like us, is not the less valiant for that."
"That has to be seen."
"Has he not declared that he will not enter the Government employ?"
"Because the country pleases him better—and my daughter pleases him also!"
"No; firstly because he is Alsatian."
"Not like us, I will answer for that!"
"In a new way. They are obliged to live in the midst of Germans. Their education is carried out in German schools, and their way of loving France leaves room for more honour and more strength of mind than was necessary in our time. Think, it is thirty years ago!"
"Alas!"
"They saw nothing of those times, they have only a traditional love, or a love which is of the imagination, or of family, and examples of forgetfulness are frequent around them!"
"Jean has had, in truth, examples of that sort."
"That is why you ought to be more just to him. Think that your daughter in marrying him will found here an Alsatian family—very powerful, very wealthy. The officer will not live in Alsheim, nor even long in Alsace. He will soon be only a name."
M. Bastian placed his heavy hand on M. Ulrich's shoulder, and spoke in a tone which did not allow the discussion to be continued.
"Listen, my friend, I have only one word. It cannot be, because I will not have that marriage: because all those of my generation, dead and living, would reproach me. And then, even if I yielded, Ulrich, there is a will near me stronger than mine, who will never say yes, do you understand, never!"
M. Bastian slipped down among the ferns, and shrugging his shoulders, and shaking his head—like some one who will hear no more—went downwards to his day workers. When he had passed between the rows of the cut hops and reprimanded each of the workers, there was no more laughing, and the girls of Alsheim, and the farmer's sons, and the farmer himself, stooping under the burning sun, went on in silence with their work, which had been so joyously begun.
Already M. Ulrich was going up to his hermitage on Sainte Odile, distressed, asking himself what serious effect the refusal of M. Bastian was going to have on Jean's destiny, and anxious to tell his nephew the news. Without hoping, without believing that there was any chance of it, he would try to make Odile's father give way, and plans hummed round him, like the gadflies in the pine woods, drunk with the sun, and following the traveller in his lonely climb. The streams were singing. There were flocks of thrushes, harbingers crossing the ravines, darting through the blue air to get to the vines and fruits of the plain. It was in vain—he was utterly downcast. He could think of nothing but of his nephew, so badly rewarded for his return to Alsheim. Between the trees and round the branches he gazed at the house of the Oberlés.
Any one going into that house just then would have found it extraordinarily quiet. Every one there was suffering. M. Philippe Oberlé, as usual had lunched in his room. Madame Oberlé, at the express wish of her husband, had consented to come out of her room when M. von Kassewitz should be announced.
"All the same, I repeat," she said, "that I shall not go out of my way to entertain him. I will be there because by your orders I am bound to receive this person. But I shall not go beyond what is strictly necessary."
"Right," said M. Oberlé, "Lucienne, Jean, and I will talk to him. That will suffice."
And after his meal he had gone at once to his workroom, at the end of the park. Jean, who had shown no enthusiasm, had gone out, for his part, promising to return before three o'clock. Lucienne was alone in the big yellow drawing-room. Very well dressed in a grey princess dress, which had for its only ornament a belt buckle of two shades of gold, like the decorations in the dining-room; she was placing roses in crystal glasses and slender vases of transparent porcelain, which contrasted well with the hard, definite colour of the velvet furniture. Lucienne had the collectedness of a gambler who sees a game coming to an end, and knows she has won. She had herself, in two recent soirées at Strasburg carried the business through, which now wanted only the signatures of the contracting parties; the official candidature promised to M. Joseph Oberlé in the first vacant district.
The visit of M. von Kassewitz was equivalent to the signing of the treaty. The opposing parties held their tongues, as Madame Oberlé held hers, or stood aside in silent sulkiness, like the grandfather. The young girl went from the mantelpiece to the gilt console, surmounted by a mirror, in which she saw herself reflected, and she thought the movement of her lips very pretty when she made them say "Monsieur the Prefect!" One thing irritated her, and checked the pride she felt in her victory: the absolute emptiness which was making itself felt around her.
Even the servants seemed to have made up their minds not to be there when they were wanted. They did not answer the bell. After lunch M. Joseph Oberlé had been obliged to go into the servants' hall to find his father's valet, that good-tempered big Alsatian who looked upon himself as being at the beck and call of every one.
"Victor, you will put on your livery to receive the gentleman who will come about three o'clock!"
Victor had grown red and answered with difficulty:
"Yes, sir!"
"You must be careful to watch for the carriage, and to be at the bottom of the steps——"
"Yes, sir."
Since this promise had been given, which no doubt went very much against Victor's feelings—he had hid himself, and only came at the third or fourth call, quite flustered and pretending that he had not heard.
The Prefect of Strasburg is coming. These words which Lucienne had spoken, Madame Oberlé thought over shut up in her room. They weighed, like a storm cloud, on the mind of the old protesting representative of Alsace—that old forester, Philippe Oberlé, who had given orders that he was to be left alone; they agitated the nervous fingers of M. Joseph Oberlé, who was writing in his room at the saw mills, and he left off writing in order to listen; they rang sadly, like the passing bell of something noble in Jean's heart taking refuge with the Bastians' farmer. They were the theme—the leitmotiv which recurred in twenty different ways, in the animated and sarcastic conversation of the hop-pickers.
For these women and girls of the farm, and the day labourers who had worked in the morning in the hop-field, had assembled, since the mid-day meal in the narrow, long yard of the Ramspachers' farm. Seated on chairs or stools, each one having on their right a hamper or a basket and on their left a heap of hops, they picked off the flowers and threw away the stripped stalks. They formed two lines—one along the stable walls and the other the length of the house. This made an avenue of fair heads and bodies in movement among the piles of leaves, which stretched from one woman to another and bound them together as it were with a garland. At the end, the cart door opened wide on to the square of the town of Alsheim, and allowed the gables of several houses situated opposite to be seen—with their wooden balconies and the flat tiles of their roofings. By this road every half hour fresh loads of hops arrived drawn by one of the farm horses. Old Ramspacher, the farmer, was at his post, in the enormous barn in front of the dwelling-house, and before which sat the first pickers, at work on the little hop cones.
In this building, whose vast roof was supported by a wall on one side, on the other by Vosges pines, the greater part of the work of the farm was done, and much wealth was stored here. Here they trod the grapes; in the autumn and winter months they threshed corn. They kept all the implements of labour in the corner—the covered carts, planks and building materials, empty barrels, and a little hay. There were also many great wooden cases piled up, tiers of screens, on which they put the hops to dry every year. The farmer never allowed others to do this delicate work. So he was at his place, in front of the drying-room, where the first shelves were already full, and standing on a ladder he spread equal layers of the gathered hops, which his sons brought him in hampers.
The heat of the afternoon, at the end of August, the odour of crushed leaves and flowers, which clung to their hands intoxicated the women slightly. The laughter rose louder than in the hop-fields in the morning, and questions were asked and remarks made which called forth twenty answers. Sometimes it was the work which furnished a pretext for this fusillade of words. Sometimes it was a neighbour passing across the square all white with dust and sunshine; but mostly the talk was about two things: the visit of the Prefect and the probable marriage of Lucienne.
The beautiful Juliette, the sacristan's daughter, had begun the conversation saying:
"I tell you Victor told it to the mason's son: the Prefect is to arrive in half an hour. Do you think I shall move when he comes?"
"He would see a very pretty girl," said Augustine Ramspacher, lifting up two hampers of hops. "It is only the ugly ones who will let themselves be seen."
Ida, who had lifted up her blue-and-white-spotted dress, and then Octavie the cow-woman, who wore her hair plaited and rolled like a golden halo round her head, and Reine the daughter of the poor tailor, and others answered together laughing:
"I shall not be seen then. Nor I, nor I!"
And an old woman's voice, the only old woman among them, muttered:
"I know I am as poor as Peter and Paul, but I would rather that he went to other folk's houses than to mine—the Prefect!"
"Certainly."
They were all speaking freely. Words re-echoed from the walls and were lost amid bursts of laughter and the rustling of the broken and crushed leaves. In the barn in the half light, seated on a pile of beams, his chin in his hands, there was a witness who heard, and that witness was Jean Oberlé. But the inhabitants of Alsheim began to know the young man, who had lived among them for five months. They knew he was a good Alsatian. On the present occasion they guessed that Jean had taken refuge there with the Bastians' tenant farmer because he disapproved the ambition to which his father was sacrificing so many things and so many persons. He had come in, under the pretext of resting and taking shelter from the sun; in reality because the triumphant presence of Lucienne was torture to him. And yet he knew nothing of the conversation which his uncle had had in the morning with M. Bastian. The thought of Odile returned to his unhappy mind and he drove it out that he might remain master of himself, for soon he would require all his powers of judgment and all his strength. At other moments he gazed vaguely at the hop-pickers and tried to interest himself in their work and their talk; often he thought he heard the sound of a carriage, and half rising, he remembered the promise he had made, to be at home when M. von Kassewitz arrived.
Juliette's voice rose in decidedly spirited tones.
"What does this Prefect of Strasburg want to come to Alsheim for? We get on so well without the Germans."
"They have sworn to make themselves hated," quickly added the farmer's elder son, who was giving out the hops to the women who had no more. "It seems that they are prohibiting the speaking of French as much as they possibly can."
"A proof—my cousin, François Joseph Steiger," said little Reine, the tailor's daughter. "A gendarme said he had heard him shout 'Vive la France!' in the inn. Those were, I believe, the only French words my cousin knew. That was enough—my cousin got two months in prison."
"Your cousin called out more! But at Alberschweiler they have forbidden a singing society to execute anything in the French tongue."
"And the French conjurer who came the other day to Strasburg? Do you know? It was in the newspaper. They let him pay the tax, hire the hall, print his advertisements, and then they said: 'You will do it in German, my good friend—or you will go!'"
"What happened to M. Haas, the house-painter, is much worse."
"What then?"
"He knew that he could not paint an inscription in French on a shop any more. M. Haas would never—I know it—have painted a stroke of a brush in contravention of the law. But he thought he could at least put a coat of varnish on the sign he was painting, where he had painted a long time ago the word 'Chemiserie.' They made him appear and threatened to take proceedings against him, because he was preserving the inscription with his varnish. Why, that was last October!"
"Oh, oh, would not M. Hamm be pleased if the rain, the wind, and the thunder threw down the sign of the inn here, which is called: 'Le Pigeon blanc' as happened to 'La Cigogne.'"
It was old Josephine the bilberry-picker who said to the farmer's wife, who at this moment appeared on the threshold of her house:
"Sad Alsace! How gay she was when we were young! Wasn't she, Madame Ramspacher?"
"Yes. Now—for nothing—evictions, lawsuits, and prison! The police everywhere."
"You had better keep silence!" said Ramspacher in a reproachful tone.
The younger son Francis took his mother's side.
"There are no traitors here. And then, how can one keep silence? They are too hard. That is why so many young men emigrate!"
From his corner in the shadow, Jean looked at these young girls who were listening—with flashing eyes, some motionless and erect, others continuing to bend and rise over their work of stripping the hop-plants.
"Work then—instead of so much chattering!" said the master's voice.
"One hundred and seventy unsubdued, and condemned by the tribunal at Saverne, in a single day, last January," said Juliette with a laugh that shook her hair. "One hundred and seventy!"
Francis, the great careless boy, who was close by Jean Oberlé at this moment, turned a basketful of hops on the shelf, and bending towards him said:
"It is at Grand Fontaine that one can easily get over the frontier," he said in low tones. "The best crossing, Monsieur Oberlé, is between Grande Fontaine and Les Minières. The frontier is opposite, like a spur. That is the nearest part, but one has to take care of the Forest Guard and the Custom officials. Often they stop people to ask where they are going."
Jean trembled. What did that mean? He began:
"Why do you speak to...?"
But the young peasant had turned away, and was going on with his work. Doubtless he had spoken for himself. He had trusted his plan to his melancholy and silent countryman, whom he would amuse, astonish, or sympathise with.
But Jean had been touched by this confidence.
A clear voice called out:
"There is the carriage coming into the town. It is going to pass M. Bastian's avenue!"
All the hop-pickers raised their heads. Little Franzele was standing up near the pillar which kept the door open—leaning the top of her body over the wall, her curly hair blown by the wind. She was looking to the right, whence came the sound of wheels. In the yard the women had stopped working. She murmured:
"The Prefect, there he is—he is going to pass."
The farmer, drawn from his work by the women's sudden silence as much as by the child's voice, turned towards the yard where the hop-pickers were listening motionless to the noise of the wheels and the horses coming nearer. He commanded:
"Shut the cart-door, Franzele!"
He added, muttering:
"I will not let him see how it is done here—in my place!"
The little girl pushed-to one of the sides of the door, then curious, having stuck her head out again:
"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.