"The end!" repeated Andre, as he came in at the door from the outer darkness. "I am glad not to have seen it."

The good-looking young Maraichin seemed tired and troubled; his eyes were brilliant as if about to shed tears. Toussaint Lumineau thought that the shame of this public auction, so painful to him, had affected his son in like manner, and had been the sole cause of his long absence.

"Sit down, Driot," he said, "you must be hungry. The soup is ready."

"No, I am not hungry," replied Andre.

"Nor am I," returned his father.

Mathurin alone, dragging himself to the table, ladled out a plate of soup; while his father remained sitting beside the fire, and Driot stood leaning against the projecting chimney-corner, looking alternately at his father and brother.

"Where did you go?" asked the farmer.

Andre made a sweeping gesture:

"From one to the other. To your friend Guerineau, of La Pinconniere; to the miller of Moque-Souris; the Levrelles; the Ma.s.sonneau...."

"A good fellow, le Glorieux," interrupted the farmer; "worthy family his."

"I saw the Ricolleaus of Malabrit too."

"What, you went as far as that?"

"The Ertus of La Paree du Mont----"

Toussaint Lumineau looked straight into his son's clear eyes, trying to understand.

"What led you to go and see all these people, my boy?"

"An idea"--no longer able to endure his father's inquiring look, his eyes sought the dark corner wherein stood the bed--"an idea. Well then, going along, I thought I would go as far as La Roche and see Francois."

"Francois?" murmured the farmer. "You are like me then, dear lad, your thoughts are often with him?"

Slowly the young man nodded his head, as he answered:

"Yes, this evening especially; this evening, more than any evening of my whole life, I would have liked to have him beside me."

Andre's words were spoken with such strong emotion, with so mournful a solemnity, that Mathurin, who had not known the date of Andre's departure, understood that the time had come, and that his brother had not many more minutes to remain in La Fromentiere.

The blood rushed to his head, his lips half opened, a violent fit of trembling seized him, while his eyes stared fixedly at Andre. There was an unwonted animation in those eyes of his, for, while they expressed triumphant pride, there was also, in that supreme hour, something of pity and affection, perhaps of remorse. Andre knew that they bade him farewell. The father, meanwhile, had drawn up his chair to the table, and raising the cane horizontally to the level of the lamp, that Andre might the better see it, was caressing the gold ring with his fingers, none too clean from the day's toil. He imagined that his son's thoughts were again with the present, or like his own, were embracing the same future.

"See," said he, "what I bought as a souvenir of M. Henri. How often he has knocked against my door with the point of this cane, tap! tap!

tap! 'Are you there, my old Lumineau?' Andre, when you are the master of La Fromentiere----"

At these words the young man, who was standing behind the farmer, felt all his courage give way. Unable to restrain his tears, and fearing lest his father should turn towards him, he retreated silently towards the door.

Toussaint Lumineau had noticed nothing; he continued: "When you are the master at La Fromentiere, you will see no more of the family. I do not believe that the farmstead will be sold. I greatly hope not, but our Marquises will not come amongst us again. My lad, the new times you will be living in will not be like those I used to know!"

Now Driot's tears fell fast as he looked at the old walls worn with the shoulders of many a Lumineau past and gone.

"Do not distress yourself, dear boy. If the masters go, the land remains." Driot's tears fell fast as he looked on the rosary of Mere Lumineau, hanging at the head of the bed.

"The land is good, though you have spoken ill of it, and so you will find out."

Driot's tears fell as he looked at Mathurin.

"You will do your best for it; and it will do its best for you!"

Driot's tears fell fast as he looked at his father, still fondling the light wood cane. He gazed for some time by the light of the lamp on the tired hands, the h.o.r.n.y hands, seamed with scars gained working for his family for their support and education--the hands that had never known discouragement, and, impelled by respect and grief, he did a thing unknown at La Fromentiere, now that the sons were grown up and the mother dead; he came close in the shadow behind his father, leant over him, and kissed the old man's wrinkled brow.

"Dear boy!" said Toussaint Lumineau, kissing him in return.

"I will be off to bed," murmured Andre. "I am done up."

He seized Mathurin's hand in a warm, hurried clasp. But he took some time to go the ten paces which separated him from the door leading into the kitchen where Rousille was was.h.i.+ng up her dishes. As he shut the door he looked back once more into the room. Then he was heard talking to his sister. Then he was heard no more.

Deep night enveloped the farmstead, the last on which the roof of La Fromentiere would shelter Driot. An hour after, any late wanderers along the road, seeing the ma.s.s of buildings standing out from the trees, darker even than the enveloping fog and as silent, would surely have thought that all within were sleeping soundly. But, save the farm-servant, all within were wide-awake.

Mathurin, greatly excited, had not ceased talking and turning restlessly. The light extinguished, talking still continued between father and son, whose beds were ranged, near each other, beside the wall. Not daring to speak of Andre's flight, the idea of which was ever present with him like a persistent nightmare, the cripple turned feverishly from one subject to another, and his father found it impossible to calm him.

"I a.s.sure you I did see the _Boquin_. I was some distance from him, but I detest him too much to make any mistake about the fellow; he has a sly way of running about like a ferret. He wore a brown suit, and had something tawny in his hat, like oak leaves."

"Go to sleep, Mathurin, you must be mistaken."

"Yes, of course they were oak leaves. When he was here he used to stick them in his hat every now and then out of bombast, to show that his province was richer and more wooded than ours. Ah, the _dannion_!

If I could but have run!"

"You would not have found him, my poor boy! He is at home in his Bocage. What should have brought him to the Marquis' sale?"

"To see my sister, of course! He may even have spoken to her for all I know, for it was too dark for me to see Rousille plainly."

The father, lying in his large canopied bed, sighed, and said:

"Always your sister! You worry yourself too much about her. Go to sleep, Mathurin. They would not dare to speak to each other; they know I should not allow it."

The cripple was silent for a few seconds, then his mind reverted to the events of the day; he enumerated the neighbours who had spoken to him, and what they had said about the probable sale of La Fromentiere; then, impelled by the one master-thought, he recapitulated the things to be done for the improvement of the farmstead, the conditions of the fresh lease to be arranged for with the owners, and added:

"You do think me better, don't you? My back is straighter. I am not so short of breath. Did yoo notice, as we came home to-night, how at every step I used my legs without needing my crutches?"

Several times in the middle of a sentence he had stopped short to listen, seeming to hear that which in imagination he never ceased to see; Driot for the last time leaving the room at the end of the house; Driot going stealthily through the courtyard that his footsteps might not be heard on the gravel; Driot pa.s.sing the door close by, and going away for ever.

Towards eleven o'clock, Bas-Rouge, who had growled at times earlier in the night, began to bark violently to the right of the yard.

"What is the matter with him?" exclaimed Toussaint Lumineau; "one would think there were people moving about in our lane."

Mathurin, growing cold, silently raised himself on his elbows. After a minute the farmer resumed:

"Do you hear how our dog is barking? There certainly must be someone near."