Kitabı oku: «The Children of Alsace (Les Oberlés)», sayfa 10
CHAPTER IX
THE MEETING
Jean came back in fairly good time to the Strasburg station and took the train to Obernai, where he had left his bicycle. While going from Obernai to Alsheim he saw in the meadows through which the Dachs ran, near Bernhardsweiler, a second stork – motionless on one leg.
This was the first thing he told Lucienne, whom he met under the trees in the park. She was reading, and wore a grey linen dress with lace on the bodice. When she heard the noise of the bicycle on the gravel she lifted her intelligent eyes, smiling.
"My dear, how I have missed you. What in the world makes you go away so constantly?"
"I make discoveries, dear sister. First, I have seen two storks, arriving on the sacred day – April 23 – punctual as lawyers."
A slight pout of her red lips showed that the news did not interest her much.
"Then?"
"I spent three hours in the offices of the Forest Conservators, where I learned that – "
"You can tell all that to father," she interrupted. "I see so much wood here, living and dead, that I have no wish to occupy my mind with it unnecessarily. Tell me some Strasburg news, or about some costumes, or some conversation you had with some one in society."
"That is true," said the young man, laughing. "I did meet some one."
"Interesting?"
"Yes; an old acquaintance of Munich, a lieutenant in the Hussars."
"Lieutenant von Farnow?"
"Yes, the very man – Lieutenant Wilhelm von Farnow, lieutenant in the 9th Rhenish Hussars. What is the matter?"
They were halfway down the avenue, hidden by a clump of shrubs. Lucienne, bold and provoking as ever, crossed her arms and said, in a quieter tone of voice:
"Only this – he loves me."
"He?"
"And I love him!"
Jean stepped away from his sister in order to see her better.
"It is not possible!"
"And why not?"
"Why, Lucienne, because he is a German, an officer – a Prussian!"
There was silence; the blow had struck home. Jean, quite pale, went on:
"You must also know that he is a Protestant."
She flung her book on the seat and, holding up her head, quivering all over at the protest:
"Do you imagine I have not thought it all over? I know all you can possibly say. I know that the people in the midst of whom we live in Alsace here, intolerant and narrow-minded as they are, will not hesitate to say what they think on the subject. Yes; they will make a fuss, they will blame me and pity me and try to make me give way. And you; are you not beginning the game? But I warn you that arguments are quite useless – all your arguments. I love him. It is not to be done, it is done. I have only one wish, and that is to know if you are on my side or against me. For I shall not alter my mind."
"Oh, my God! my God!" cried Jean, hiding his face in his hands.
"I never thought it could hurt you so much. I do not understand. Do you share their stupid hatred? Tell me. I am putting a strong control on my feelings that I may talk to you. Tell me then. Speak. You are paler than I am – I, whom this alone concerns."
She caught hold of his hands and uncovered his face. And Jean gazed at her strangely for a moment as do those whose look does not as yet correspond with their thoughts.
Then he said:
"You are mistaken; we are both concerned, Lucienne!"
"Why?"
"We are one against the other, because I, too, must tell you that I love – I love Odile Bastian!"
She was terrified at what she foresaw in connection with this name; she was touched at the same time because the argument had reference to love, and was a confidence. Her irritation passed at once. She put her head on her brother's shoulder. The curls of her fair hair intermixed with auburn lay ruffled and disordered against Jean's neck.
"Poor, dear Jean," she murmured. "Fate pursues us. Odile Bastian and the other. Two love affairs which exclude each other! Oh! my poor dear, it is the drama of our family perpetuating itself through us!" She straightened herself, thinking she heard a step, and taking her brother's arm went on nervously: "We cannot talk here, but we must talk about other than merely surface things. If father suddenly came across us, or mamma, who is working in the drawing-room at heaven knows what everlasting piece of embroidery. Ah, my dear, when I think that only a few steps away from her we are exchanging such secrets as these, which she little suspects! But first we must think of ourselves, must we not? Ourselves…!" For a moment she thought of returning to the house, and of going up to her room with Jean. Then she decided on a better place of refuge. "Come into the fields, there no one will disturb us."
Arm-in-arm, hastening their steps, speaking to each other in low tones and short sentences, they went through the gate, passed the end of the enclosure, and to the right of the road, which was higher than the surrounding land; they went down a sloping path, which could be seen like a grey ribbon winding its seemingly endless way through the young corn. Already each of them, after the first moment of surprise, of dejection, and of real pain caused by the thought of what the other would suffer, had come back to thoughts of self.
"Perhaps we are wrong to worry ourselves," said Lucienne, entering the path. "Is it certain that our plans are irreconcilable?"
"Yes. Odile Bastian's mother will never agree to her daughter becoming the sister-in-law of a German officer."
"And how do you know that this officer would not perhaps prefer marrying into a family a little less behind the times than ours?" said Lucienne, hurt. "Your plan may also injure mine."
"Pardon me; I know Farnow – nothing will stop him."
"To tell the truth, I think so too!" said the young girl, looking up, and blushing with pride.
"He is one of those who are never in the wrong."
"Exactly so."
"You share his ambitions."
"I flatter myself that I do."
"You can rest assured then: he will have no hesitation. The scruples will come from the Bastian side, who are the souls of honour…"
"Ah! if he heard you," said Lucienne, letting go her brother's arm, "he would fight you."
"What would that prove?"
"That he felt your insult as I felt it myself, Jean. For Lieutenant von Farnow is a man of honour!"
"Yes, in his way – which is not our way."
"Very good! Very noble!"
"Rather feudal, this nobility of theirs. They have not had the time to have that of a later date. But after all it does not matter. I am not in a mood for discussion. I suffer too much. All I wish to say is that when I ask for Odile's hand I shall be refused. I foresee it, I am sure of it; and that von Farnow will not understand why, and if he did understand he would not withdraw, he would never think of sacrificing himself. In speaking like this, I am not slandering him. I simply understand him."
They walked on, enveloped in an atmosphere of light and warmth, which they did not enjoy, between long strips of young corn, smiling unnoticed around them. In the plain, some labourers seeing them pass side by side, walking together, envied them. Lucienne could not deny that her brother's forebodings were reasonable. Yes, it must be so, judging from what she herself knew of Lieutenant von Farnow and the Bastians. In any other circumstance she would have pitied her brother, but personal interest spoke louder than pity. She felt a kind of disturbed joy when she heard Jean acknowledge his fears. She felt encouraged not to be generous, because she felt he was anxious. Not being able to pity him, she at any rate drew near to him, and talked to him about herself.
"If we had lived together longer, Jean," she said, "you would have known my ideas on marriage, and I should astonish you less to-day. I had made up my mind to marry only a very rich man. I dislike the fear of what to-morrow may bring; I want certainty and to lead…"
"The conditions are fulfilled," said Jean, with bitterness. "Farnow has a vast property in Silesia. But at the same time he is also lieutenant in the 9th regiment of Rhenish Hussars!"
"Well!"
"Officer in an army against which your father has fought, your uncle has fought, and all your relations, every one old enough to carry arms."
"Quite right. And I would not have asked anything better than to marry an Alsatian. Perhaps I even wished to do so without saying anything about it. But I did not find what I wished. Nearly all who had name, fortune, or influence have chosen France; that is to say, they all left Alsace after the war. They called it patriotism. Truly, words can serve every use. Who remain? You can easily count the young people of Alsatian origin belonging to wealthy families, and who could have aspired to the hand of Lucienne Oberlé."
She went on more excitedly:
"But they did not ask for me; and they will not ask for me, my dear! That is what you have never understood. They kept away, they and their parents, because father…
"They have put us and our family under an interdict. I am, in consequence, one of those they do not marry. Owing to their intolerance, the narrowness of their conception of life, I am condemned by them. They call me the 'beautiful Lucienne Oberlé,' but none of those who like to look at me, and greet me with affected respect would dare to defy his people and make me his wife. I have not had to choose; you cannot reproach me on that score. The situation is such that, willing or not, I shall not be asked in marriage by an Alsatian. It is not my fault. I knew what I was doing when I accepted Lieutenant von Farnow!"
"Accepted?"
"In the sense that I am bound – certainly. During last autumn, but especially for the last four months, Lieutenant von Farnow has paid me a great deal of attention."
"Then it was he on horseback, there on the road, the night I returned?"
"Yes."
"Was it he who recently came to visit the saw-mills with another officer?"
"Yes; but I have met him mostly in society at Strasburg, when father took me to balls and dinners. – You know that mamma, because of her poor health – but above all because of her hatred of everything German – generally avoids accompanying me. I met Lieutenant von Farnow constantly. He had every chance of talking to me.
"At last, when he came here, just lately, he asked father if I would allow him to pay me definite attentions. And this very morning, after lunch, I answered 'Yes.'"
"Then father consents?"
"Yes."
"The others?"
"Know nothing about it. And it will be terrible. Think of it. My mother, my grandfather, Uncle Ulrich! I hoped for your support, Jean, to help me overcome all these difficulties, and to help me also to heal all the wounds I am going to inflict. First of all, von Farnow must be introduced to mamma, who does not know him. Alsheim is quite impossible. We have been thinking of a meeting at some mutual friend's house in Strasburg. But if I have to consider you as one more enemy, what good is there in my telling you my plans?"
They stood still, Jean reflecting for a moment, as he faced the plain, which unrolled its strips of barley, and young corn, intermingling at the edges like the flow and counterflow of running water. Then, gathering his thoughts together and looking at Lucienne, who was waiting for his words, with raised face, suppliant, restless, and ardent.
"You cannot imagine how much I am suffering. You have destroyed all my joy!"
"My dear, I did not know about your love!"
"And I – I have not the courage to destroy yours…"
Lucienne threw her arms round his neck.
"How generous you are, Jean! How good you are!"
He put her away from him, and said sadly:
"Not so generous as you imagine, Lucienne, for that would be to show myself very weak. No; I do not approve of your decision. I have no confidence in your happiness…"
"But at least you will leave me free? You will not go against me? You will help me against mamma?"
"Yes, since you have gone so far, and since our father has given his consent, and since our mother's opposition might only cause still greater unhappiness…"
"You are right, Jean. Greater unhappiness, for father told me that – "
"Yes, I guess. He told you that he would crush all opposition, that he would leave our mother rather than give in. That is all very likely. He would do it. I shall not enter into any struggle with him. Only, I keep my liberty of action with regard to von Farnow."
"What do you mean by that?" she asked quickly.
"I wish," Jean replied, in a tone of authority, in which Lucienne felt her brother's invincible determination, "I wish to let him know exactly what I think. I shall find some means of having an explanation with him. If he persists, after that, in his desire to marry you, he will make no mistake, at least as to the difference of feeling and ideas which separate us."
"I do not mind that," answered Lucienne, reassured, and she smiled, being certain that von Farnow would stand the trial.
She turned towards Alsheim. A cry of victory was on her lips, but she restrained it. For some time she stood silent, breathing quickly, and seeking with her eyes and mind what she could say so that her happiness should not appear an insult to her brother.
Then she shook her head.
"Poor house," she said. "Now that I am going to leave it, it is becoming dear to me. I am persuaded that later on, when life in the garrison takes me away from Alsace, I shall have visions of Alsheim. I shall see it in imagination, just as it stands there."
In the midst of its girdle of orchards were massed together the red roofs of the village. And both village and trees formed an island among the corn and April clover. Little birds, gilded by the sunshine, were flying over Alsheim. The house of the Oberlés at this distance seemed only to be one of many. There was so much sweetness in all things that one might have imagined life itself sweet.
Lucienne gave herself up to this appreciation of beauty, which only came to her as a consequence of her thoughts of love. Again she heard her own words, "I shall have visions of Alsheim just as it stands there." Then the undulating line of the Bastians' wood, which rose like a little blue cloud beyond the farthest gardens, reminded her of Jean's trouble. She only then realised that he had not answered her. She was moved, not enough to ask herself if she should renounce her happiness to make Jean happy, but up to the point of regretting, with a sort of tender violence, this conflict between their loves. She would have liked to soothe the pain she had caused, to comfort it with words, to put it to rest, and not to feel it so close to her and so alive.
"Jean, my brother Jean," she said, "I will requite you for all you are doing for me by helping you, by doing my very best for you. Who knows but by working together we may not be able to solve the problem?"
"No; it is beyond your power and mine."
"Odile loves you? Yes, of course she loves you. Then you will be very strong."
Jean made a movement of weariness.
"Do not try, Lucienne. Let us go back."
"I beseech you. Tell me at least how you came to love her? I can understand that. We said we would tell each other more than the names. You have only me to whom you can speak your mind without danger."
She was making herself out to be humble. She was even humiliated by her secret happiness. She renewed her request, was affectionate, and found the right words to describe Odile's stately beauty, and Jean spoke.
He did it because his need to confide to some one the hope which had been his – a hope which was still struggling not to die. He told of the Easter vigil at Sainte Odile and how he had met the young girl on Maundy Thursday in the cherry avenue. From that, each helping the other to recall happenings, to fix dates, to find words, they went back into the past, up to long-ago times when their parents were not at variance, or at least when the children were ignorant of their dissensions or did not perceive them, when in the holidays Lucienne, Odile, and Jean might believe that the two families, united in intimate friendship, would continue to live as important land-owners, respected and beloved by the village of Alsheim.
Lucienne did not realise that in calling up these pictures of the happy past she was not calming her brother's mind. He may have found pleasure in them for a moment, hoping to get away from the present, but a comparison was immediately drawn, and his revolt was only the more profound, arousing all the powers of his being, against his father, against his sister, against that false pity behind which Lucienne's incapability of sacrifice was hidden. Soon the young man gave up answering his sister. Alsheim was getting nearer, and was now a long outline broken here and there. In the calm evening the Oberlés' house raised its protecting roof amid the tops of the trees, still bare. When the park gates, closed each day when the workmen left, were opened for the two pedestrians, Jean slipped behind Lucienne, and, making her go on, said, in very low, ironical tones:
"Come, Baroness von Farnow, enter the house of the old protesting deputy, Philippe Oberlé."
She was going to make a retort, but an energetic footstep scrunched the gravel, a man turned into the avenue round a gigantic clump of beeches, and a resonant, imperious voice, which was singing in order to appear the voice of a happy man without any regrets, cried:
"There you are, my children! What a nice walk you must have had! From the waterfall by the works I saw you in the corn leaning towards each other like lovers."
M. Joseph Oberlé questioned the faces of his children, and saw that Lucienne at least was smiling.
"Did we have things to tell each other?" he went on. "Great secrets, perhaps?"
Lucienne, embarrassed by the nearness of the lodge, and still more so by the exasperation of her brother, answered quickly:
"Yes; I have spoken to Jean. He has understood. He will not oppose my wishes."
The father seized his son's hand. "I expected nothing else from him. I thank you, Jean. I shall not forget that."
In his left hand he took Lucienne's, and, like a happy father between his two children, he crossed the park by the long, winding carriage drive.
A woman behind the drawing-room window saw them come, and her pleasure in looking at this scene was not undiluted. She asked herself if the father and children had united against her.
"You know, dear Jean," said the father, holding up his head and, as it were, questioning the front of the château. "You know that I wish to spare susceptibilities and to prepare solutions, and not to insist on them until I am forced to do so. We are invited to the Brausigs' – "
"Ah! is it already settled?"
"Yes, to a dinner, to a fairly large evening party – not too many people. I think that would be a very good opportunity to present Lieutenant von Farnow to your mother. I shall only speak of this to your mother later on. And in order not to bias any of her impressions – you know how timid she is – so that she does not meet my look when she talks to this young man, I shall refuse for myself – I shall confide Lucienne's future to you. All my dream is to make this dear one happy. Not a word to my father. He will be the last to learn what does not really concern him but secondarily."
The great empty space by the flight of steps had not seen for a long time such a united group walk on the well-rolled gravel.
In the drawing-room, keeping herself a little back, trying to make her mind easy and not succeeding, Madame Oberlé had left off working. The embroidery was on the floor.
Jean was thinking.
"I shall thus assist at the interview, and I shall take mamma there, who will suspect nothing. What a part to play to avoid greater evils! Happily, she will forgive me one day when she knows everything."
Late that night, kissing her son, Madame Oberlé said:
"Your father insists upon my accepting the Brausigs' invitation. Are you going, my darling?"
"Yes, mamma."
"Then I shall also go."
CHAPTER X
THE DINNER AT THE BRAUSIGS'
At seven o'clock the guests of the Geheimrath Brausig were gathered together in the blue drawing-room – with its plush and gilded wood – which that official had taken with him to the different towns he had lived in. The Geheimrath was a Saxon of excellent education, and of amiable though somewhat fawning manners. He seemed always to bend in any direction in which he was touched. But the frame-work was solid; and, on the contrary, he was a man whose ideas were unchangeable. He was tall, ruddy, nearly blind, and wore his hair long, and his red beard streaked with white, he wore short. He did not wear spectacles, because his eyes, of a pale agate colour, were neither shortsighted nor longsighted, but were worn out and almost dead. He was a great talker. His speciality was to reconcile the most opposite opinions. In his offices, in his relations with his inferiors one saw the real basis of his character. Herr Brausig had an Imperial spirit. He never allowed private people to be in the right. The words "Public interest" seemed to him to answer all arguments. In the official world they talked about raising him to the nobility. He repeated this. His wife was fifty years old, had the remains of beauty and an imposing figure; she had received the officials of eight German towns before coming to live in Strasburg. At her entertainments she gave all her attention to supervising the servants, and her impatience at the countless annoyances connected with their service, which she tried to hide, did not allow her to reply to her neighbours except in sentences absolutely devoid of interest.
The guests formed a mixture of races and professions which one would not so easily come across in any other German town. There are so many imported elements in the Strasburg of to-day! They were fourteen in number, the dining-room could seat sixteen with a little over two feet of table for each person, such space being an essential in the eyes of the Geheimrath. He had in his house, around him – and he dominated them with his sad, insipid head – some protégés, people recommended to him, or friends gathered together from various parts of the empire: two Prussian students from the University of Strasburg, then two young Alsatian artists, two painters who had been working for a year at the decoration of a church; these were the unimportant guests, to which we must add the two Oberlés, brother and sister, and even the mother, who was looked upon in the official world as a person of limited intellect. The guests of note were Professor Knäpple, from Mecklenburg, cultured and studious, whose erudition consisted chiefly of minutiæ, and the author of an excellent work on the socialism of Plato. He was the husband of a pretty wife, round and pink, who seemed fairer and pinker by the side of her dark husband, with his black beard curling like an Assyrian's. The Professor of Æsthetics, Baron von Fincken from Baden – who shaved his cheeks and chin, so that the scars gained in the duels of his student days might be better seen, was of a slender, nervous build; his head was of the energetic type, his nose was turned up and showing the cartilage very plainly; ardent, passionate, and very anti-French, and yet he looked more like a Frenchman than any one present, except Jean Oberlé. There was no Madame von Fincken. But there was beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, the woman who was more envied, sought after, looked up to, than any other woman in the German society of Strasburg, even in the military world, because of her beauty and intelligence. She came from Rhenish Prussia, as did also her husband, the great iron-master, Karl Rosenblatt, multi-millionaire, a man of sanguine temperament, and at the same time methodical and silent, and one said that he was bold and cold and calculating in business.
This party was like all the parties that the Geheimrath gave; there was no homogeneity. The official himself called that conciliating the different elements of the country. He also spoke of the "neutral ground" of his house and of the "open tribunal," for each and every opinion. But many Alsatians did not trust this eclecticism and this liberty. Some maintained that Herr Brausig was simply playing a part, and that whatever was said in his house was always known in higher spheres.
Madame Oberlé and her children were the last to arrive at the Geheimrath. The German guests welcomed Lucienne, who was intimate with them already. They were polite to the mother, because they knew she only went into Government society under constraint. Wilhelm von Farnow, introduced by Madame Brausig, who alone knew about the officer's plans, bowed ceremoniously to the mother and the young girl, drew himself up erect, stood stiffly, then returned at once to the group of men standing near the mirror.
A servant announced that dinner was served. There was a movement among the black coats, and the guests entered the large room, decorated as at the Oberlés' house with evident predilection. But the taste was not the same. The vaulted bays with two mullions, decorated with rose windows in the pointed arch, and filled with stained-glass, of which at this time only the lead-work was to be seen; the sideboards with torso pillars with sculptured panels; the wainscoting rising to the ceiling and ending in little spires; the ceiling itself divided into numerous sunk panels, and in the carving of which electric lamps shone like fire blossoms: the whole decoration recalled to mind Gothic art.
Jean, who came in one of the last in the procession of diners, gave his arm to pretty Madame Knäpple, who had eyes only for the wonderfully made and equally wonderfully worn dress of Madame Rosenblatt. Professor Knäpple's little wife thought she saw that Jean Oberlé was noticing the same thing. So she said:
"The low neck is indecent. Don't you think so?"
"I find it irreproachable. I think that Madame Rosenblatt must go to Paris for her dresses."
"Yes; you have guessed rightly," answered the homely little woman. "When one has such a fortune one has often odd fancies, and but little patriotism."
The beginning of the meal was rather silent. Little by little the noise of different conversations rose. They began to drink. M. Rosenblatt had large bumpers of Rhine wine poured out for him. The two students in spectacles came back to Wolxheim wine, with as serious a mien as if it were some difficult passage in the classics. The voices grew louder. The servants' footsteps could no longer be heard on the parquet floor. General conversation began as the froth of intellects had been moved by the light and the wine. Professor Knäpple, who had a quiet voice, but a manner of pronouncing very clearly and distinctly, was heard above the hum of conversation, when he answered his neighbour, Madame Brausig:
"No; I do not understand that one should join the strong because one is strong. I have always been a liberal."
"You are alluding to the Transvaal perhaps," said the Geheimrath opposite, with a loud laugh, pleased at having guessed.
"Precisely, Herr Geheimrath. It is not political greatness to crush small nations."
"You find that extraordinary?"
"No; very ordinary. But I do say there is nothing to boast about in that."
"Have other nations acted differently?" asked Baron von Fincken.
He turned up his insolent nose. No one carried on the discussion, as if the argument were unanswerable. And the wave of general talk rolled on, intermingling and drowning the private conversations of which it consisted.
Madame Rosenblatt's musical voice broke the hum of talk. She was saying to little Madame Knäpple, placed on the other side of the table:
"Yes, madame, I assure you that the question has been discussed. Everything is possible, madame; however, I should not have thought that the Municipality of a German town could even discuss such an idea."
"Not so devoid of sense; don't you think so, Professor, you who lecture on æsthetics?"
Professor von Fincken, seated at the right hand of the beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, turned towards her, looked into the depths of her eyes, which remained like an unrippled lake, and said:
"What is it about, madame?"
"I told Madame Knäpple that in the Municipal Council the question had been raised of sending the Gobelin Tapestries which the town possesses, to Paris to be mended."
"That is right, madame, the noes have it."
"Why not to Berlin?" asked Madame Knäpple's pretty red mouth. "Do they happen to work so badly in Berlin?"
The Geheimrath found it time to "conciliate." "To make Gobelin tapestry, without doubt, Madame Rosenblatt, is right, and Paris is necessary; but to mend them! I think – it seems to me – that can be done in Germany."
"Send our tapestry to Paris!" expostulated Madame Knäpple. "How do they know if they would ever come back?"
"Oh!" one of the young painters at the end of the table answered gravely. "Oh, madame!"
"How! Oh! You are an Alsatian, sir," said the homely little woman, pricked by the interjection as if it had been the point of a needle. "But we – we have the right to be mistrustful."
She had gone too far. No one stood up for her verdict – general conversation stopped, and was replaced by flattering appreciations made by each guest on some quails in aspic which had just been served. Madame Knäpple herself came back to subjects with which she was more familiar, for she but rarely took any part in discussions when men were present. She turned towards her neighbour, von Farnow, which prevented her from seeing the elegant Madame Rosenblatt, and Madame Rosenblatt's beautiful dress, and the periwinkle-blue eyes of Madame Rosenblatt, and she undertook to explain to the young man how to do quails in aspic, and how to make "Cup" according to her recipe. However, for the second time their thoughts had been turned to the vanquished nation – and this thought continued to disturb their minds in a vague way, while champagne, German-labelled, was sparkling in the glasses.
Madame Brausig had only exchanged very unmeaning words with M. Rosenblatt, her neighbour on the right, and with Professor Knäpple, her neighbour on the left, who preferred talking to Madame Rosenblatt, and Baron von Fincken, her vis-à-vis, and sometimes with Jean Oberlé. It was she, however, who started a fresh discussion, without wishing to. And the conversation rose at once to a height it had not yet reached. The councillor's wife was speaking to M. Rosenblatt – looking all the time angrily at a servant who had just knocked against the chair of her most important guest, Madame Rosenblatt; she was speaking of a marriage between an Alsatian and a German from Hanover, the commandant of the regiment of Foot Artillery No. 10. The iron-master answered quite loudly, without knowing that he was sitting beside the mother of a young girl sought after by an officer:
