Mr. Roquevillard fixed his gaze upon La Vigie, that closed and deserted relic of the race that had possessed it. The prospect held and fascinated him. Mother Fauchois had reawakened the instincts of battle in him, had turned away despair from him. The head of the family thrust sorrow from him, to think of the child that was now his charge in life. He must seek some means of saving Maurice. But his yearning gaze fell back blankly before this cruelly cold, clear emptiness of space that was all around him: it gave back no message to him, no word such as the spring or summer or even the autumn of life’s seasons might have uttered to him. How should he defend his son with no weapons but memories of the past? What help could he expect from this deserted soil, this race that had gone down into the tomb? “One doesn’t argue through the dead,” Mr. Battard had said to him on learning of Maurice’s determination.
The sun, touching the line of the mountain ridge, shed its last glory. On the mountain slopes the piledup snow seemed to kindle beneath its fire and grow crimson, as if awakened from its lethargy. Last of all, the still horizon line stirred beneath the light. Silent and immaculate it yielded to the touch of life and gave it forth. The trembling earth separated itself distinctly from the sky, whose pale blue spread into a thousand tints under its dominant gold. Nearer by, the rime that covered the trees and shrubs reflected the rays of the setting sun like crystals that gather up in their tiny space the myriad lights of a chandelier.
Mr. Roquevillard, his eye fixed on La Vigie, beheld this phenomenon of the resurrection. For a few minutes nature lived again beneath the caresses of the evening. Once more the blood coursed through its marble face. Along the vines, on the summit of the hill, where the almost horizontal beams of the sun struck more directly, the dispossessed proprietor could make out now, instead of a piece of land uniform in its whiteness, the distinguishing marks of the different places he had put under cultivation; and behold, here and there were trees, tall poplars standing calm and proud like palms, lindens with tapering branches, thin birches, massive chestnuts, delicate fruit trees puny of limb yet so expert in bearing their branches; trees, but just now nameless and lost in mist, which seemed to him to surge forth again like living beings.
And he was no longer conscious of being alone there, for he knew names for these phantoms. With swelling breast he summoned up all the successive generations that had cleared these lands, the hands that built this mansion and these farm buildings, this rustic work, that had laid the foundation of this domain, from the first shirt-sleeves of the oldest peasant to the lawyer’s robes and the togas of the senate of Savoy. The high plateau which spread before him was invested like a fortress by the hosts of ancestors that had planted with their wheat and rye and oats and orchards and vines in this corner of the earth traditions of uprightness and honour, examples of courage and nobility. And as the products of these their lands had scattered their good repute abroad, so this tradition lighted up the city down there within the circle of the mountains where the shadows were beginning to fall upon it, and the province which it had served and protected and even in certain moments of its history made illustrious; shed lustre even upon their native land, whose power was made of the continuity and hardihood of such breeds of men as they were. “One doesn’t argue through the dead,” he repeated a second time. “With the dead, no; but with the living, yes. They are there, all of them. Not one but will answer to his name. The earth has opened up to let them pass. I will overleap this valley that lies between us. I am going to join them.”
And he measured the already darkened hollow of the vale, as if these phantoms all were massed there before him.
The shadows were laying hold of nature. Already all the plain belonged to them. They rose. Only the mountains were still defiant, especially the storeyed Nivolet that faced the setting sun and received all its flame, glowing with the purple and violet snow like heated metal.
Stooping toward the foot of the hill, Mr. Roquevillard followed this struggle. And all at once his whole being started. With the darkness the shades were mounting, all the shades. They had left La Vigie, they were coming. Just now he had seen them gathered there in the valley’s depths. They were bringing him their presences, their help and testimony. There were some of them on all the hillsides. It was as if an army were rallying round their chief as he stood there at the foot of the old oak. And when all the army was assembled, he could hear it heralding a victory for him.
“We who have loved and laboured, fought and suffered, strove not for our own selfish ends, not for a personal result achieved or missed by any one of us, but for an end more permanent than that, an end beyond ourselves, encompassing all the family. What we have saved thus for the common fund we have given into your care to be handed on. It is not La Vigie. Land can be gained by the sweat of one’s brow, bought with money. The soul of our race you bear within you. We are confident that you will defend it. What are you saying, in your despair, of solitude and death? Will you render us your account and tell us whence you came? From Death? But the family is the very negation of death. While you live we all live. And when you shall join us in your turn, you will live again, you must live again, in those that have been born of you. See: at this deciding moment, we are all here. Put off your sorrow as we have lifted up the stones from above our graves. For you, do you hear, is reserved the honour of defending and saving the last of the Roquevillards. You will speak in our name. Afterwards, when your tasks are done, you can rejoin us here in the peace of God.”
Mr. Roquevillard put out his hand and supported himself against the oak. The darkness was storming Le Nivolet, its last terrace, with a cross upon it, flaming once more before it should go out. A great calm settled on his soul, and he accepted in good faith this mission laid upon him by the past.
“Maurice, your defender shall be no one but myself.... And I’ll not mention the name of Mrs. Frasne.”