Kitabı oku: «The Children of Alsace (Les Oberlés)», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XIII
THE RAMPARTS OF OBERNAI

Ten days later, Lucienne and her mother had just entered the family house where Madame Oberlé had spent all her childhood, the home of the Biehlers, which lifted its three stories of windows with little green panes, and its fortified gable above the ramparts of Obernai, between two houses of the sixteenth century – just like it.

Madame Oberlé had gone upstairs, saying to the caretaker:

"You will receive a gentleman presently who will ask for me."

In the large room on the first floor which she entered, one of the few rooms which were still furnished, she had seen her parents live and die; the walnut-wood bed, the brown porcelain stove, the chairs covered with woollen velvet which repeated on every seat and every back the same basket of flowers, the crucifix framed under raised glass, the two views of Italy brought back from a journey in 1837, all remained in the same places and in the same order as in the old days. Instinctively in crossing the threshold she sought the holy water stoup hanging near the lintel, where the old people, when they went into the room, moistened their fingers as on the threshold of a holy abode.

The two women went towards the window. Madame Oberlé wore the same black dress she had put on to receive the Prefect of Strasburg. Lucienne had put on a large brimmed hat of grey straw, trimmed with feathers of the same shade, as if to cover her fair hair with a veil of shadow. Her mother thought her beautiful – and did not say so. She would have hastened to say so if the betrothed had not been he whom they expected, and if the sight of the house, and the memory of the good Alsatian folk who had lived in it, had not made the pain she already felt greater.

She leant against the windows and looked down into the garden full of box-trees clipped into rounded shapes, and flower borders outlined by box, and the winding, narrow paths where she had played, grown up, and dreamed. Beyond the garden there was a walk made on the town ramparts, and between the chestnuts planted there one could see the blue plain.

Lucienne, who had not spoken since the arrival at Obernai, guessing that she would have disturbed a being who was asking herself whether she could continue and complete her sacrifice, came quite close to her mother, and with that intelligence which always took everyone's fancy the first time they heard it, but less the second time:

"You must suffer, mamma," she said. "With your ideas, what you are doing is almost heroic!"

The mother did not look up, but her eyelids fluttered more, and quickly.

"You are doing it as a wifely duty, and because of that I admire you. I do not believe I could do what you are doing – give up my individuality to such an extent."

She did not think she was being cruel.

"And you wish to be married?" asked the mother, raising her head quickly.

"Why, yes; but we do not now look upon marriage quite as you do."

The mother saw from Lucienne's smile that she would be contending with a fixed idea, and she felt that the hour for discussion was badly chosen. She kept silence.

"I am grateful to you," continued the young girl. Then after a moment of hesitation:

"Nevertheless, you had another reason besides obeying my father when you agreed to come here – here to receive M. von Farnow."

She let her eyes wander round the room, and brought them back to the woman with smooth hair – that worn-out and suffering woman – who was her mother. There was no hesitation.

"Yes," she said.

"I was sure of it. Can you tell me what it is?"

"Presently."

"Before M. von Farnow?"

"Yes."

Keen annoyance changed the expression of Lucienne's face; it grew hard.

"Although we do not agree with each other very well, surely you are not capable of trying to turn my betrothed against me?"

Tears appeared in the corners of Madame Oberlé's eyelids.

"Oh Lucienne!"

"No, I do not believe it. It is something important?"

"Yes."

"Does it concern me?"

"No; not you."

The young girl opened her mouth to continue, then listened, became a little pale, and turned completely towards the door, while her mother turned only half-round in the same direction. Some one was coming upstairs. Wilhelm von Farnow, preceded by the caretaker, who accompanied him only as far as the landing, saw Madame Oberlé through the opening of the door, and as if on a military parade, he drew himself up and crossed the room quickly, and bowed his haughty head first to the mother, then to the young girl.

He was extremely well dressed in civilian clothes. His face was drawn and pallid with emotion. He said gravely in French:

"I thank you, madame!"

Then he looked at Lucienne, and in his unsmiling blue eyes there was a gleam of proud joy.

The young girl smiled.

Madame Oberlé felt a shudder of aversion, which she tried to repress. She looked straight into the steel-blue eyes of Wilhelm von Farnow, who stood motionless in the same attitude he would have taken under arms and before some great chief.

"You must not thank me. I play no part in what is happening. My husband and my daughter have decided everything."

He bowed again.

"If I were free I should refuse your race, your religion, your army – which are not mine. You see I speak to you frankly. I am determined to tell you that you owe me nothing, but also that I harbour no unjust animosity against you. I even believe that you are a very good soldier and an estimable man. I am so convinced of it that I am going to confide to you an anxiety which tortures me."

She hesitated a moment and continued:

"We had at Alsheim a terrible scene when Count Kassewitz came to the house."

"Count Kassewitz told me about it, madame. He even advised me to give up the idea of marrying your daughter. But I shall not do that. To make me give her up nothing short of – "

He began to laugh —

"Nothing short of an order from the Emperor would make me! I am a good German, as you say. I do not easily give up what I have won. And Count Kassewitz is only my uncle."

"What you do not know is that my father-in-law, for the first time for many, many years, in his exasperation, in the excess of his grief, has spoken. He cried out to Jean: 'Go away! Go away!' I heard the words. I ran quickly. Well, sir, what moved me most was not seeing M. Philippe Oberlé senseless, stretched upon the floor; it was my son's expression, and it is my conviction that at that moment he resolved to obey and to leave Alsace."

"Oh," said Farnow, "that would be bad."

He cast a glance at the fair Lucienne, and saw that she was shaking her blond head in sign of denial.

"Yes, bad," continued the mother without understanding in what sense Farnow used the word. "What an old age for me in my divided house – without my daughter, whom you are going to take away; without my son, who will have gone away. You are astonished, perhaps, that I should tell you an anxiety of this sort?"

He made a gesture which might mean anything.

"It is because," the mother continued more quickly, "I have no one to advise me; no help to hope for – under the circumstances. Understand clearly. To whom shall I go? To my husband? He would be furious? He would start to work and we should find that by his influence Jean would be incorporated in a German regiment in a week's time – away in the north or the east. My brother? He would rather insist on my son leaving Alsace. You see, monsieur, you are the only one who can do anything."

"What exactly?"

"But much. Jean has promised me that he will join the regiment. You can arrange that he shall be received and welcomed, and not discouraged. You can assure him protection, society, comrades – you have known him a long time. You can prevent his giving way to melancholy ideas, and stop him if he were again tempted to carry out such a plan."

The lieutenant, much disturbed, frowned, and the expression of his face changed at the last words. Then he said:

"Up to the first of October you have your son's promise – after that I will look after him."

Then speaking to himself, and again occupied with an idea, which he did not express entirely:

"Yes," he said, "very bad – it must not be."

Lucienne heard it.

"So much the worse," said she. "I betray my brother's secret, but he will forgive me when he knows that I betrayed him to calm mamma. You can be easy, mamma, Jean will not leave Alsace."

"Because?"

"He loves."

"Where then?"

"At Alsheim!"

"Whom?"

"Odile Bastian."

Madame Oberlé asked absolutely amazed:

"Is it true?"

"As true as we are here. He told me everything."

The mother closed her eyes, and, choking with halting breath:

"God be praised. A little hope rises in my heart. Let me cry – indeed I must!"

She pointed to the room, which was also open on the other side of the landing and was lighted by a large bay window, through which a tree could be seen.

Farnow bowed, showing Lucienne that he was following her.

And the girl moved on ahead, passing through the room where her ancestors had loved Alsace so much.

Madame Oberlé turned away; sitting near the window she leaned her head against the panes where as a child she had seen the sleet and the ice form into ferns, and the sun, and the rain, and the vibrating airs of summer-time, and all the land of Alsace.

"Odile Bastian! Odile!" repeated the poor woman. The bright face, the smile, the dresses of the young girl, the corner of Alsheim where she lived – a whole poem of beauty and moral health rose in the mother's mind; and with an effort she held to it jealously, in order to forget the other love-affair on account of which she had come here.

"Why did not Jean confide in me?" she thought. "This is a kind of compensation for the other. It reassures me. Jean will not leave us, since the strongest of ties binds him to the country. Perhaps we shall succeed in overcoming my husband's obstinacy. I will make him see that the sacrifice we are making, Jean and I, in accepting this German – "

Meanwhile laughter came from the next room, unfurnished except for the two chairs on which Lucienne and Farnow were sitting. Lucienne, with an elbow on the balustrade of the open window, the lieutenant a little behind gazing at her, and speaking with an extraordinary fervour; sometimes there was laughter. This laughter hurt Madame Oberlé, but she did not turn round. She still saw in the changing blue of the Alsatian fields the consoling image evoked by Lucienne.

Wilhelm von Farnow was speaking during this time, and was using to the best advantage this hour, which he knew would be short, in which he was permitted to learn to know Lucienne. She was listening to him as if dreaming, looking out across the roofs, but really attentive, and accentuating her answers with a smile and a little grimace. The German said:

"You are a glorious conquest. You will be a queen among the officers of my regiment, and already there is a woman of French family, but born in Austria, and she is ugly. There is an Italian, and some Germans, and some Englishwomen. You unite in yourself all their separate gifts – beauty, wit, brilliancy, German culture, and French spontaneity. As soon as we are married I shall present you in the highest German society. How did you develop in Alsheim?"

Her nature was still proud rather than tender, and these flatteries pleased her.

At this hour, profiting by the absence of M. Joseph Oberlé at Barr, M. Ulrich had gone up to see his nephew Jean. The days were drawing near when the young man would go to the barracks. It was necessary to tell him about the unsuccessful meeting with Odile Bastian's father. M. Ulrich, after having hesitated a long time, finding it harder to destroy young love than to start for a war, went to see his nephew and told him everything.

They talked for an hour, or rather the uncle talked in monologue, and tried to console Jean, who had let him see his grief, and had wept bitterly.

"Weep, my dear boy," said the uncle. "At this moment your mother is assisting at the first interview between Lucienne and the other. I confess I do not understand her. Weep, but don't let yourself be cast down. To-morrow you must be brave. Think, in three weeks you will be in the barracks. They must not see you crying. Well, the year will soon pass, and you will come back to us – and who knows?"

Jean passed his hand over his eyes and said resolutely:

"No, uncle."

"Why not?"

At the same place where in the preceding winter the two men had talked so joyously of the future, they were once more seated at the two ends of the sofa.

Outside, daylight was fading away and the air was warm. M. Ulrich found suddenly on Jean's sorrowful face the energetic expression which had so forcibly struck him on the former occasion, and had so delighted him. The Vosges-coloured eyes, with brows close together, were full of changing gleams of light, and yet the eyes were steady.

"No," said Jean; "it is necessary that you should know – you and one other to whom I will tell it. I shall not do my military service here."

"Where will you do it?"

"In France."

"How can you say that? Are you serious?"

"As serious as it is possible to be."

"And you go away at once?"

"No; after I have joined the corps."

M. Ulrich lifted his hands:

"But you are mad. It will be the most difficult and most dangerous thing to do. You are mad!"

He began to walk up and down the room – from the window to the wall. His emotion found vent in emphatic gestures, but he took care to speak gently for fear of being heard by the people of the house.

"Why after? For, after all, that is the first thing that comes into my mind in face of such an idea, and why?"

"I had intended to go away before joining the regiment," said the young man quietly. "But mamma guessed at something. She made me swear that I would join. So I shall join. Do not try to dissuade me. It is unreasonable, but I promised."

M. Ulrich shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes; the question of time is a serious point, but it is not only that. The serious thing is the resolution. Who made you take it? Is it because your grandfather called out 'Go away!' that you have decided to go?"

"No; he thought as I think, that is all."

"Is it the refusal of my friend Bastian which decided you?"

"Not more than the other. If he had said yes I should have had to tell him what I have told you this evening – I will live neither in Germany nor in Alsace."

"Then your sister's marriage?"

"Yes; that blow alone would have been enough to drive me away. What would my life be like at Alsheim now? Have you thought about that?"

"Be careful, Jean. You forsake your post as an Alsatian!"

"No; I can do nothing for Alsace! I could never gain the confidence of Alsatians now: with my father compromised, and my sister married to a Prussian."

"They will say you deserted!"

"Let them come to tell me so then, when I shall be serving with my regiment in France!"

"And your mother – you are going to leave your mother alone here?"

"That is the great objection, after all, the only great one, for the present, but my mother cannot ask me to let my life be sacrificed and made useless as hers has been. Her next feeling later on will be one of approval, because I have freed myself from the intolerable yoke which has lain so heavily on her. Yes, she will forgive me. And then – "

Jean pointed to the jagged green mountains.

"And then, there is dear France, as you say. It is she who attracts me. It is she who spoke to me first!"

"You child!" cried M. Ulrich.

He placed himself before the young man, who remained seated, and who was almost smiling.

"A nation must be fine indeed who, after thirty years, can evoke such a love as yours! Where are the people one would regret in the same way? Oh! blessed race which speaks again in you!"

He stopped a moment.

"However, I cannot leave you in ignorance of the kind of difficulties and disillusions you are going to encounter. It is my duty. Jean, my Jean, when you have passed the frontier and claimed the qualification of Frenchman according to the law, and finished your year's military service. – What will you do?"

"I shall always be able to earn my bread."

"Do not count too much on that. Do not think that the French will welcome you with favour because you are Alsatian. They have perhaps forgotten that we – In any case, they are like those who owe a very old pension. Do not imagine that they will help you over there more than any one else."

His nephew interrupted him:

"My mind is made up – whatever happens. Do not speak to me about it any more, will you?"

Then Uncle Ulrich – who was caressing his grey, pointed beard as if to get out his words spoken against the dear land, words that were coming out with such difficulty – was silent, and looked at his nephew a long time with his smile of complicity, which grew and spread. And he finished by saying:

"Now that I have done my duty and have not succeeded, I have the right to acknowledge, Jean, that sometimes I had this same idea. What would you say if I followed you to France?"

"You?"

"Not immediately. The only interest I had in living here was in seeing you growing up and continuing the tradition. That is all shattered. Do you know what will be one of the best means of insuring yourself against a cold welcome?"

Jean was too agitated by the gravity of the immediate resolution to take up time in talking about future plans.

"Listen, Uncle Ulrich, in a few days I shall want you. I have told you about my decision precisely that you might help me."

He rose, went towards the library, which was by the entrance-door, took a staff officer's map and came, unfolding it, towards the sofa.

"Sit down again by me, uncle, and let us do some geography together!"

He spread on his knees the map of the frontier of Lower Alsace.

"I have made up my mind to go this way," he said. "There will be a few inquiries to be made."

Uncle Ulrich nodded his head in sign of approval, interested as if it were some plan for a hunt, or an approaching battle.

"Good place," he said, "Grande Fontaine, les Minières. It seems to me that that is the nearest frontier line to Strasburg. Who told you this?"

"François Ramspacher's second son."

"You can rely on it. You will take the train."

"Yes."

"Where to?"

"As far as Schirmeck, I think."

"No; that is too near the frontier, and it is too important a station. In your place I should get out at the station before that, at Russ Hersbach."

"Good! There I take a carriage ordered beforehand – I go to Grande Fontaine – I dash into the forest."

"We dash, you mean?"

"Are you coming?"

The two men looked at each other, proud of each other.

"Really," said M. Ulrich, "this astonishes you? It is my trade. Pathfinder that I am, I am going first to reconnoitre the land, then when I shall have done the wood so thoroughly that I can find my way through it even by night, I will tell you if the plan is a good one, and at the hour agreed upon you will find me there. Be careful to dress like a tourist: soft hat, gaiters, not an ounce of baggage."

"Quite so."

M. Ulrich again scrutinised this handsome Jean who was leaving for ever the land of the Oberlés, the Biehlers, and all their ancestors.

All the same, how sad it is, in spite of the joy of the danger.

"Bah!" said Jean, trying to laugh, "I shall see the Rhine at both ends – there where it is free."

M. Ulrich embraced him.

"Courage, my boy, we shall meet soon. Take care not to let any one guess your plan. Who is it you are going to tell?"

"M. Bastian."

The uncle approved, and already on the threshold, pointing to the next room which M. Philippe Oberlé never left now:

"The poor man! There is more honour in his half of a human personality than in all the others together. Good-bye, Jean!"

Some hours passed and Jean went to the office of the works as usual. But his mind was so distracted that work was impossible. The employees who wished to speak to him noticed it. One of the foremen could not help saying to the clerks in the writing department, Germans like himself:

"The German cavalry is making ravages here: the master looks half mad."

The same patriotic feeling made them all laugh silently.

Then the dinner bell rang. Jean dreaded meeting his mother and Lucienne. Lucienne held her brother back as she was entering the dining-room, and in the half-light tenderly embraced him, holding him closely to her. Like most engaged people, it was probably a little of the other she was embracing without knowing it. However, the thought at least was for Jean. She murmured:

"I saw him at Obernai for a long time. He pleases me very much, because he is proud, like me. He has promised me to protect you in the regiment. But do not let us speak of him at dinner. It will be better not to. Mamma has been very kind – the poor thing touched me. She can do no more. Jean, I was obliged to reassure her by telling her your secret, and I told her that you will not leave Alsace, because you love Odile. Will you forgive me?"

She took her brother's arm, and leaving the hall went into the dining-room, where M. and Madame Oberlé were seated already – silent.

"My poor dear, in this house every joy is paid for by the sorrow of others. Look! I alone am happy!"

The dinner was very short. M. Oberlé immediately after led his daughter into the billiard-room because he wanted to question her. The mother remained a moment at the table near her son, who was now her neighbour. As soon as she was alone with him, the constraint fell like a veil from her face. The mother turned towards her child, admired him, smiled at him, and said in the confidential tone she knew so well how to use:

"I can do no more, my dear. I am completely done up and must go to bed. But I will confess that amidst my suffering a while ago I had one joy. Imagine that till just then I believed most firmly that you were going to leave us."

Jean started.

"I do not believe it now; do not be afraid! I am reassured. Your sister has told me in secret that I shall have some day a little Alsatian for a daughter-in-law. That will do me so much good. I understand that you could not tell me anything yet, while so much has been happening. And then it is still new – isn't it? Why are you trembling like that? I tell you, Jean, that I ask nothing from you now, and that I have entirely lost my fears – I love you so much."

She also embraced Jean. She also pressed him to her breast. But she had no tenderness in her soul except that which she was expressing.

She remembered the child in the cradle, nights and days of long ago, anxieties, dreams, precautions, and prayers of which he had been the object, and she thought:

"All that is nothing compared with what I would always do for him!"

"When she had disappeared, and he had heard the noise she made opening the invalid grandfather's door, to whom she never missed wishing good night, Jean rose and went out. He went through the fields to the trees which surrounded the Bastians' house, went into the park and, hidden there, remained some time watching the light which filtered through the shutters of the large drawing-room. Voices spoke, now one, now another. He recognised the tone but could not distinguish the words. There were pauses between the slowly spoken words, and Jean imagined that they were sad. The temptation came to him to go round those few yards of frontage and enter the drawing-room boldly. He thought: "Now that I have decided to live out of Alsace; now that they have refused me because of my father's attitude and because of Lucienne's marriage, I have no longer the right to question Odile. I shall go away without knowing if she also suffers as I suffer. But can I not see her in her own home for the last time, in the intimacy of the lamplight which brings the three of them together? I will not write to her. I will not try to speak to her, but I must see her; I shall carry away a last look of her – a last remembrance, and she will guess that at least I am deserving of pity."

He hesitated however. This evening he felt too unhappy and too weak. From now to the first of October, would he not have the time to return? A step came from the garden side. Jean looked again at the thin blade of light which escaped from the room where Odile was sitting, and cut the night in two; and he withdrew.