CHAPTER X.
THE UPROOTED VINEYARD.
Winter had come. La Fromentière seemed peaceful and happy. Anyone going over the fields and watching the men at work, would have had no fear for the future of the farmstead. The new farm-hand did not excite himself, as Toussaint Lumineau said, that is to say, he worked his fourteen hours a day regularly, without uttering fourteen words. As for André, he was the joy and pride of his father, who, on his part, did not spare himself. Good labourer, good sower, an early riser, careful of the animals and of everything else that came to his hand, the young man seemed to prove that he had found his vocation, and was determined to remain a farmer all his life.
And yet at the bottom of his affectionate, restless heart, there was a growing sore. André could not accustom himself to François' absence. He missed the friend of his young life, the companion without whom La Fromentière had never presented itself to his mind.
The week after his return home, André had gone to see François and Eléonore at La Roche-sur-Yon. He had found them settled in a house in the outskirts, already somewhat discontented: one inveighing against the hardness of his employers; the other that customers did not come; without any regrets, however, for what they had done, and quite decided as to the advantages of living in a town, and being their own masters. He had gone back without the least wish to follow their example—more severe even than before against the renegades from the old home life; but possessed of a fixed idea, he sought François in everything. La Fromentière that knew François no longer was to him empty and void. It became a thing of which he could not shake himself free; a suffering of which he never spoke, but that everyone unwittingly renewed.
The farmer, whose anger had abated, more particularly since he knew that the position of his two absent children at La Roche was none too brilliant, began voluntarily to speak of François as if to secretly encourage the others to remember him, and to do their best to bring him home again. It would be: "To-day we will sow La Cailleterie, where François ploughed the first two furrows," or, "let us have some chestnuts roasted in the embers to-night, Rousille, François used to like them." He thought to do well by so speaking, to re-unite, as it were, in some degree those whom misfortune had parted. And Rousille did the same. Still oftener did everyday objects speak of, and recall the absent one. Now it was a fork he had been wont to use; a basket woven by him; the rope twisted round a rafter of the stables by a hand no longer there; or even a nook or corner of a road or field to which some memory clung; the stump of a tree; a furze-bush; in fact, the whole Marais, where for years two boys of almost the same age, brothers inseparable, had driven the cows, jumped dykes, and gone birds'-nesting together.
Poor François, lazy, spendthrift, pleasure-loving as he was in reality, legendary virtues were already gathering round him at La Fromentière. His place in the diminished family was reserved to him with tender, affectionate regret, a regret that even magnified what had been his place there. André, disheartened, and disappointed in the joy of home coming, had not the same love for the new La Fromentière that he had had for the old one. It was all so changed! He had known it bright with the noise and bustle of a large, united family under the control of a man who, despite his years, was cheery and vigorous, and with more willing hands than were needed to get through the day's work—a home as passionately loved and defended as any nest from which the fledgelings have not yet flown. He found it unrecognisable. Two had gone, leaving the house desolate, the old father inconsolable, the work too heavy for those left behind. Rousille was wearing herself out. André saw clearly that he alone would not suffice to keep La Fromentière in a state of good cultivation, certainly not to improve it, as he had so often meditated through the hot, sleepless nights in Africa, thinking of the elm-trees at home. For this two strong young pair of arms were needed, without counting the help of a farm-servant: François should have been there with André! He struggled against the discouragement that oppressed him, for he was a brave lad. Every morning he went out into the fields with the determination to work so hard that there should be no room for thought; and he worked and ploughed, sowed seed or dug ditches, planted apple-trees with all zest and energy, not taking a moment's rest. But the recollection of François followed him everywhere; in everything he saw the decline of the farmstead. Working alone made the days long; longer still were they in the company of the new farm-hand, who went about his work stolidly, interested neither in the projects nor regrets of the farmer's son.
In the evening when André returned from work in whom should he confide, or who was there to comfort him? His mother was dead; his father had need of all his own hope and buoyancy of spirit that he might not break down himself; Mathurin was so uncertain and so soured that pity might well go out to him, but not real brotherly love. There remained Rousille, possibly. But Rousille was seventeen when André had left home, and he continued to treat her as a child, and told her nothing. Besides she was scarcely ever to be seen, poor girl, always on the run and hurried. The house was dull, and the young man felt it the more that regimental life, hard enough in all conscience, was yet full of go and movement.
Weeks went by, and there was no break in the sadness. Weary of being thus thrown upon himself, little by little André suffered his thoughts to go out from the mournful surroundings amid which he, in vain, tried to recognise the home of his youth. Like all peasants of the coast, he was one of those taciturn labourers who look over the sand-hills towards the sea, and who dream dreams when the wind blows. Sad and dejected he fell back upon the fatal knowledge he had acquired in absence: that life was possible in other places than at La Fromentière on the borders of the Marais of La Vendée.