Jean, on his way to his carriage, half turned and shouted merrily:
“We’re going to show ourselves off at Aix.”
And his fingers seemed to point at random to the various groups clambering into the theatre-train.
Marcel Guibert glanced quickly at the rout of gaily dressed figures. But Paule, looking round, saw Alice leaning out of the window of her carriage to bid her good-bye. She waved her hand to her quickly and undemonstratively, as though she had some misgiving or some superstitious feeling of fear about this seductive vision. Paule was very highly sensitized and her premature misfortunes had made her oversensitive. “Why all these advances?” she asked herself. As her dark eyes rested on her soldier brother, who was leading his mother away on his arm, she added to herself: “Too much good fortune and not enough courage.”
Seeing Trélaz’s vehicle, Marcel cried:
“What, our old carriage!”
“It is the only one we have kept,” explained Madame Guibert, apologetically.
This reply Marcel had not expected when he made the remark. The ancient conveyance had recalled his childhood to him, and now it seemed to him that it also signified the decay of the family. His face darkened. He understood all of a sudden the material difficulties which must have increased the suffering at Le Maupas. Having no personal needs, and accustomed as he was to live on very little, he felt now for his mother and sister and divined the bitterness of their straits. But Madame Guibert was saying to herself, “We ought to have taken a station carriage in his honor.”
They drove across Chambéry, the sleepy capital of Savoy, which the historic castle sets off as if it were a military plume, proud and delicate against the sky. Marcel breathed his native air rapturously. When they left the town, Trélaz’s antiquated equipage recalled a host of recollections. The scene before his eyes suggested his happy, spirited youth. How often, from the Vimines woods, had he enjoyed the bold outlines and vivid lighting of the picture! With the naked walls of Pas-de-la-Fosse in the foreground, and of Granier in the background, which looks out from above over the nearer mountains, it was like a wide sweeping curve of verdure outstretched, and harmoniously defined by three steeples: Belle Combette, softly ensconced among the trees, like a sheep amid the lush grass; Montagnol, the tallest, sombre and dominant like some fortress; Saint-Cassin, humbler and slighter, resting against the thick woods which almost concealed it. A strange incongruous landscape, tempering the harshness of the rough and threatening crags with the sweet softness of this peaceful slope.
When the carriage left the high road, it passed the level crossing over the railway from Saint-André-le-Gaz, and followed the Vimines road, up the steep gradient which plunges into the forest and leads past the open gate of Le Maupas. Marcel got out here to lighten the horse’s burden. He was the first to reach the little rustic house smothered, as in the old days, under the wistaria, jasmine, and roses. And too, as in the old days the twilight lent to the trees in the avenue a sombre, placid, serious look. As he walked, the gravel in the courtyard made the same crunching sound as of old.