He answered with an answer that a lover alone can give, and for some little while silence followed them up the slope of the mountain. Their way lay through woods odorous in pines, by hamlets green and red-roofed in the thickets of the heights. They found the glade of the Niederbronn, with its babbling brook and its shade of chestnut trees and its murmur of the life of summer; and it stood to them as some Eden set in the mountain’s heart to be the home of their affections. And in this glade they lunched as two children abroad upon a holiday.
Remote brakes and dark places of the forest welcomed them when lunch was done, wandering hand in hand, lovers in a garden of their solitude. The health of the mountains shone in their eyes, or gave a new gift of youth to their cheeks. They spoke of no serious things.
“You have taught me to see that the trees are green, chérie,” he said, when the sun had set and “Apollo” was in the shafts again, and the lights of home began to be a pleasant memory. “Some day, perhaps, I will turn farmer and wear a blouse, and you shall drive in the sheep. It would be good to come to Wörth when one had earned the right to rest, and could say, ‘I have done my work for France.’ But I am not one of those men who could take the holiday first and the work after. Even here, and with you at my side, I do not play at doing nothing well. To live is to achieve. The man who has achieved must have the first place at the fireside. When we build our house in the woods, we will people it with all the old friends we have left in Strasburg and in Paris, and we shall remember how we came here at the very beginning of it—before there were wars and victories.”
He did not mean to wound her. There was no thought in his mind but that of his old comrades of the barracks at Strasburg, and of the night just beginning for them. He saw them, in his imagination, in the cafés they haunted; he peeped into the great darkened stables, where the horses lay sleeping; he stood by his own charger; the vision showed him for an instant all the panoply and the glory of the service he loved. But she thought of none of these things. The smile of content left her face. The words which Brandon North had spoken in the salon of the old house were heard again in the murmur of the woods. The shadow of the night had fallen upon her pleasure.
“If the end could be as the beginning, dear,” she said, laying her hand upon his arm gently. “Of course, I know that it cannot; I knew that from the first. But when I am at Wörth, how can I help deceiving myself there? Should I love you if I did not? Why should we remember these things to-night, or even speak of them?”
He read a note of sadness in her voice, and hastened to atone.
“You shall not remember it, mignonne. I am a fool to talk so. There is home and dinner. When the day comes we shall be ready for it. But to-night—to-night I shall only tell you—ah, mon âme, what can I tell you that I have not told you a thousand times? I love you. Do you weary of my book, Beatrix? I can write nothing else but that—I love you.”
He pressed her to him, taking the reins from her hands and shielding her with his strong arm. The hour begat an exquisite tenderness. In the valley below them stars of lights shone out from many a farmhouse and many a village. Bells tinkled on the necks of the roving cattle. The breeze surged in the heights of the pines, scenting the air with sweet odours and the freshness of the night. Alone in that solitude of forest and upland they seemed as those drawn apart from the living world to the very citadels of rest and of love. Even the hamlets became towns to them. Wörth itself, when they espied its lights between the descending spurs of the mountains, was as some great hive of men where love had no part or lot. The old farmhouse, welcoming them again, stood up as a home of their childhood.
Guillaumette, the servant, was at the door of the farm, with a story of dinner ready to be served. To Beatrix she said some pretty word of welcome, but to Edmond she handed a telegram, and he stood in the aureole of light cast out from the open door to read it. Beatrix never forgot that picture of him as, with white face and quickening heart, he read the message, once, twice, thrice, and then crushed the paper quickly in his hand.
He read the message and stood with pale face and trembling hand. A woman’s instinct seemed to tell her that some great hour of her life was at hand. Their eyes met, and she read in his an intensity of love and sympathy such as she had never seen before.