Autumn Glory; Or, The Toilers of the Field

by René Bazin

Toussaint Lumineau delighted to see him managing his boat near the farm, thus distracting his mind, as he thought, from the ever present regret. He would say: "The lad is regaining his old pleasure in punting. It can but be good for him and for us all." But to Mathurin, to Rousille, to his man, to the passers-by, sometimes even to his oxen, often when alone to himself, he would talk of the son so soon to be home again among them. Help was coming; youth and joy were returning to sorrow-stricken La Fromentière. At table nothing else was talked about:

"Only twelve days; only ten; only seven. I will drive to Chalons to meet him," said Lumineau.

"And I will make him some porridge," said Rousille, "he used to be so fond of it before he joined his regiment."

"And I" said Mathurin, "will go in the punt with him the first time he looks up his friends."

"How much there will be to hear!" exclaimed Rousille. "When he was home on furlough he had an endless store of tales to tell. As for me, I shall have no time to listen to them. I shall have to send him to you, Mathurin. And what a change it will make in the house to have a chatterbox among us." Then she added, with the grave air of one entrusted with the household purse: "One change we must make, father, and that will be to buy a paper on Sunday. He will not like to go without one; our André is sure to want to know the news."

"He is young," said the father, as if to excuse him.

And all André's predilections, every recollection connected with him, all the hopes that centred in his return were incessantly recapitulated by one and the other in the living-room of La Fromentière, where the caress of such discourses must have ascended more than once to the smoke-stained rafters.

Meanwhile the son thus occupying all their thoughts had not been told by any of them of the going of François and Eléonore. Partly from dislike to letter-writing, but principally to spare him pain, and to avoid giving him bad news on the eve of his homecoming, the blow which had so diminished the number of those he was to rejoin had been withheld from him. For they could not tell how he would take the absence of his favourite brother, his childhood's companion; it would be better to break the news to him gently, when he should have come back to France, back to his home. Soon a letter came, bearing the Algiers postmark, giving from day to day the itinerary of the journey; and under the elms of La Fromentière would be heard, every successive four-and-twenty hours, announced by one of the family lovingly, meditated over by the others, "Now Driot must be leaving Algiers." "Now Driot is on the sea." "Now Driot is in the train for Marseilles." "Children, he has reached the soil of France."

So one morning, which chanced to be the last Saturday in September, Toussaint Lumineau gave La Rousse a double feed of oats, and drew out from the coach-house a tilbury, the body and wheels of which were painted red. This tilbury was a relic of former prosperity, and as well known in all the country side as were the round head, white hair, and clear eyes of Toussaint Lumineau himself. He, harnessing the mare, looked so joyous and happy, that Rousille, who had not heard him laugh for many a day, as she watched him from the doorway, felt her eyes fill with tears, she knew not wherefore, as though it were the return of spring. The last strap buckled, the old farmer put on his best coat with upright collar, fastened the broad blue Sunday belt round his waist, and slipped two cigars at a halfpenny each into his coat pocket, a luxury he never indulged in nowadays. Then swinging himself up into the tilbury with a cheery, "Ohé, La Rousse!" he was off.

The mare started at such a pace that an instant later her headstall, ornamented with a rosette, looked like a poppy swept along the hedges by the wind. Bas-Rouge tore along after them. His master had called out on starting, "Driot is coming, Bas-Rouge! Come to meet him!" and the dog, all excitement, had dashed after La Rousse in ungainly gallop. Soon they had reached Chalons. Without slackening speed, the farmer drove through the streets, responding to the greeting of the landlord of the Hotel des Voyageurs, and nicely marking by the angle at which he raised his hat his sense of a tenant farmer's superiority over shopkeepers as he returned their salutations, then proudly erect upon the box-seat, tightening the reins, he turned in the direction of the railway station, some two miles beyond the town.