“No, nothing.”
“Father——”
“Tell him—tell him to remember that he is the last of the Roquevillards.”
He went out, passing by the castle and on into the country. It was a fine winter’s day, with the sun shining on the snow. Mechanically he took the Lyons road that led to La Vigie, his customary walk. It led through the village of Cognin, and, beyond the sawmills near the Saint Charles bridge, settled into a long defile between the Vimines and Saint Cassin hills, spurs of the mountains of Lepine and Corbelet, coming out at last by the pass of the Echelles. From this place on, lost in his meditations, Mr. Roquevillard followed the rural path on the left which was the way to La Vigie. He crossed the old bridge thrown over the Hyères, now a thin stream of water between too icy borders, the leafless poplars and willow trees no longer hiding it. After a brief circuit he found himself in a fold of the deserted valley, shut in by the slopes of Montagnole, whose bell-tower he could see outlined against the sky. But he took no note of the solitude. On the contrary, he walked more lightly, and was conscious of some lightening of his sorrow, too. Was he not at home here, at home on either side? And did not the good earth bring him the comfort of its old safe friendship, of his childhood memories whose grace it cherished, of all the human past which had remade it after nature finished? In this vineyard on the left, with its shrouded vines—he could distinguish the stakes and the wires that ran between them—he had always gathered the grapes at autumn. On the right, beyond the stream which served as common boundary between him and his neighbour, this dismantled hill, with a single tree standing over it, had borne the woods of beeches red and white, and the oaks, which he had bought with his savings to enlarge his holdings and had ordered cut not long ago. At the top of the ascent he would reach the old house that he had restored, its very age testifying to the hardiness of his race and its taste for solid things. He would enter by the farm, pat the children’s heads, drink a little glass of brandy of his own distilling, with the farmer, who did not object to alcohol; above all, his gaze would sweep the whole horizon, where the storm-tossed mountain forms and fertile plains, with a lake in the distance, made a composition of motionless and inspiring lines; then the nearer horizon of La Vigie with its divers tillages.
He walked briskly, lost thus in his thoughts. On this familiar soil his steps had again their old brisk ring, as in the days when he had felt like a young man despite his years, happily surrounded by those he loved and confident in their love and life.
Suddenly he stopped.
“But I am no longer at home here,” he thought abruptly. “La Vigie is sold. The Roquevillards are no longer masters there. What am I doing? I must get out of this.”
And he turned in his path, his head bent low, like a tramp caught in an orchard.
He stopped at the stream which separated Cognin from Saint Cassin. He cleared it at a bound, and found himself this time on a piece of land which had been outside the straight line of cultivation on the estate, and had not been included in the bill of sale. It remained henceforth his only landed property. At the foot of the slope he stopped a moment to get his breath, like a company that comes upon some shelter in retreat. Then he began to clamber up the slope, not without difficulty, for he slipped and had to thrust his cane in the ground to hold his balance. The path, faintly marked at best, ended by losing itself altogether, and he made his way as well as he could in the direction of the solitary tree that stood out clear against the sky on the summit. It was an old oak, which had been spared, not for its age nor the fine effect of its height and branches, but on account of a beginning of dry rot that impaired its saleability. Its clinging leaves, all tightened and shrivelled up after the manner of oaks, the better to defend themselves against the wind, were loath even now to fall, their rusty tints appearing here and there beneath the rime. Along the hillside the tree trunks cut by the woodsmen, but not carted away before winter came on, lay like corpses in the snow, some still clothed in their bark, others already stripped.
Finally Mr. Roquevillard reached the point he had been making for. He touched with his hand, as if it had been a friend, the tree that had drawn him this far, admiring its grandeur and pride.