Poor girl, worn out with service, beaten to the earth with sorrow, and now devitalized, unwillingly surrendering herself to the—to me—abhorrent power she seemed endowed with, to materialize the dead, and converse with the other side of the veil of life! The refuge of my partnership with her of these secrets was an immense relief. I gathered together my strength, and forced the laugh to my lips, and the merry words to my lips also, for her sake. Thus, with a deepening mutual absorption in each other, brother and sister grew inseparable in feeling and in thought and in affections.
It was almost three weeks later that I was permitted to leave the hospital, and return with my sister to St. Choiseul. It was a return strangely mingling the accents of sorrow, with the notes of a sudden joy. The autumn lights were beautiful, and the darkening vineyards, and the striped hop poles, the yet radiant gladiolus and the glancing lustres of the streams, the long peaceful perspectives, unsullied by war, the romantic cluster of the ivy coated ruins of the chateau towards Briois, the winding road, the straight sentinel line of poplars, and the unchanged village—empty and silent perhaps—crowning the slow ascent, bathed in the soft atmosphere of dewy sweetness—Mon Dieu, it almost made me swoon away with ecstacy!
And here at our doorway, was the little circle, Père Antoine, Père Grandin, the Capitaine, and Privat Deschat, Hortense, and Julie, and the pale faded loveliness of the orphan girl, Dora, but no father or mother was there. The tears rose to my eyes; it was impossible to check their almost unnoticed flow.
I fell into their arms. I kissed them all. I was half swooning with the pain of my affection.
"My son, how good it is to see you again, the vampire has not swallowed you up—Dieu soit benit;" that was Père Antoine.
"Ah Alfred, you see the plague has not touched us yet—the desecrating fiends were near. Yes, they were seen east of Briois—foraging, And you? Well? You look grave. Ah! it is not a time for smiles;" that was Père Grandin.
"Alfred, where are the Boches now? Where? Ma foi it is not this time as it was in '70. You shall tell us all. It is un histoire magnifique. The flag is supreme;" that was the Capitaine.
"Maître Alfred, you must not leave us again. Souvenez vous—I will make the galette aux amandes chaque jour? Eh? You will not go away again?" that was Hortense.
They all laughed a little. But Hortense wiped her eyes with her broad apron.
"Ah Gabrielle, we have been unhappy without you—all of us. Never, never, shall you go away again—OR—you take me with you, and the Capitaine;" that was Dora, and her pallid face, with the serious eyes, haunted now always with sorrow, the expressive index of her life's tragedy, flushed ever so slightly, and her arms were flung about my sister's neck, and she was caught again by Gabrielle, in her own blessed arms of reassurance and protection.