"That is where we differ, Lucienne. It is not so much in our ideas; it is in a whole range of feelings which your education prevents you from possessing."

He kissed her, and the conversation wandered to different topics.

CHAPTER VII

THE EASTER VIGIL

The weather had settled fine. Jean found the plain of Alsace in full spring glory.

However, he only felt a faint and mixed pleasure in the sight he had longed for. He came back from this excursion more upset than he cared to own to himself. It had revealed to him the opposition of the two nations--that is to say, of two minds, the persistent memory of many of the poor, and the difficulty they found to make a livelihood which their prudent and even hidden opinions created for them. He understood better now how difficult a part his would be to play in the family, at the works, in the village, in Alsace.

The pleasure he felt the morning after his return at his father's congratulations on the report of the forest cultivation by the House of Oberle made only a short diversion in the midst of this worry. He tried in vain to appear quite happy, and he duly deceived those whose interest it was to be deceived.

"My Jean," said his mother, kissing him as he was going to sit down to breakfast, "I think you look splendid. The strong Alsheim air agrees with you, and also being near your poor mamma!"

"Fancy that!" said Lucienne, "and I thought him very gloomy!"

"Business," explained M. Joseph Oberle, turning towards the window where his son was sitting, "cares of business. He has handed me a report, on which I must congratulate him publicly; it is very well drawn up, very clear, and the result of which will be that I shall economise, in four places at least, in the transport of my trees.

You understand, father?"

The grandfather made a sign with his head. But he finished writing something on the slate, and showed it to his daughter-in-law.

"Has he already seen the country weep?"

Madame Monica rubbed the sentences out quickly with her fingers. The others looked at her, and all were uneasy, as if there had been some painful explanation between them.

Jean again experienced that intimate sorrow for which there is no remedy. All the afternoon he worked in the office at the saw-mills, but he was distracted and dreamy. He reflected that Lucienne would go away one day, and that nothing would be altered; that the grandfather might disappear also, and that the division would still go on. All the plans that he had had when far away, the hope of being himself a diversion, of bringing peace, of uniting them or of giving them an appearance of union: all that appeared childish to him now. He saw that Lucienne had spoken truly when she made fun of his illusions.

No, the evil was not in his family, it was in the whole of Alsace.

Even if no one of his name lived at Alsheim, Jean Oberle would meet at his door, in the village, among his workmen, his clients, and his friends the same annoyance at certain moments, always the same question. Neither his will nor any will like his could deliver his race, either now or later.

In this melancholy mood the idea of seeing Odile again, and making her love him, came back to him and took possession of his mind. Who else besides Odile could make life at Alsheim acceptable to him, and bring back his scattered and suspicious friends, and re-establish the name of Oberle in the esteem of "Old Alsace"? He saw now that she was more than a pretty woman towards whom his youthful heart went out in song; he saw in her peace and dignity, and the only strength possible in the difficult future which awaited him.

She was the brave and faithful creature whom he needed here.

How to tell her? How to find an opportunity to speak freely to her, without the risk of being surprised, and troubling this orderly and jealous family? Evidently not at Alsheim. Then where should he arrange to meet her? And how could he forewarn her?

Jean thought of this all the evening.

The next day, Maundy Thursday, was the day on which in Catholic churches the Tomb would be decorated with flowers, branches of trees, materials, and torches placed in ledges, where the faithful hasten to adore the Host. It was beautiful weather, clear, even too clear for the time of year, when clearness calls up mist or rain.

After he had talked with his mother and Lucienne in M. Philippe Oberle's room--it was the first time that he had felt that his home held a family--Jean went towards the orchards, which are behind the houses of Alsheim, and followed the road which he had taken a few weeks ago to call on the Bastians. But a little beyond the Rams.p.a.chers' farm he took the path which up to there ran at right angles to the avenue, and was now parallel with it, and with it joined the village road. He came out on to a piece of waste land, used for carts by many farmers on the plain. The neighbouring fields were deserted. The road was partially screened by a bank of earth planted with hazel-trees. Jean walked along the quick-set hedge which ran round the Bastians' property, approached the village, and came back again. He waited. He hoped that Odile would soon come into the path on the other side of the hedge to go to the Alsheim church to pray at the Tomb.

The remembrance of former meetings, at the same place and on the same day, had come into his mind, and had decided him. As he began the walk for the third time he saw what he had not seen at first.

"How wonderful," he said to himself. "The road was made for her!"

At the end of the avenue, for more than two hundred yards in front, the fence, the clumps of trees, a small portion of the long roof appeared in a marvellous frame.

The old cherry-trees had flowered all together in the same week with the almond-trees and the pear-trees. The pear-trees blossom in cl.u.s.ters, the almond-trees in stars; as for the wild cherry-trees, from the forest transplanted to the plain--they blossom into white distaffs of bloom.

Round the substantial branches, swollen and coloured red with sap, thousands of white corollas like a drift of snowflakes, trembled on their fragile stalks, and so thick were they that in many places one could not see the branch itself. Every tree cast its flowery spindles in all directions. So many of the cherry-trees were old that from one side of the avenue to the other the points of the flowering branches touched and intermingled. A swarm of bees covered them with hovering wings. A subtle odour of honey floated in waves down the avenue, and was wafted on the wind far away to the plain, to the fields, to the scarcely covered ground surprised by this feeling of spring. There were no trees in the large open valley which could vie with these for splendour--only to the right--and quite close, the four walnut-trees of the Rams.p.a.chers had begun to show their leaves, and seemed with their heavy branches to be enamels encrusting the farm walls.

The minutes pa.s.sed by--the petals of the cherry-blossoms fell in showers. And lo, here is a woman stooping to unlatch the gate--it is she! She stands erect, and walks onwards in the middle of the path, between its two borders of gra.s.s--quite slowly, for she is gazing upwards. She is looking at the white blossoms which are open. The idea of a bride's wedding wreath, an idea so familiar to young girls, pa.s.ses through her mind. Odile does not smile, only her face beams with an uplifted look, and an involuntary stretching out of her hands gives the greeting and thanks of her youth to the joyous earth.

She goes down towards Alsheim. On her fur cap, on her rounded cheeks, on her blue cloth dress, the wild cherry-trees shed their blossoms. She is serious. In her left hand she carries a prayer book, half hidden in the folds of her skirt. She thinks she is alone.

The splendour of the day speaks to her. But there is nothing languid about her. She is a valiant creature; she is made to face life bravely. Her eyes, which seek the tree-tops, are alive and masters of her thoughts, and do not give themselves up to a tempting dream.

She was drawing near, never suspecting that Jean was waiting for her. The meal-time ended, the usual noises were going on in the village of Alsheim, rumbling cart-wheels, barking dogs, voices of men, of children calling to each other, but all softened by the distance, scattered in the vast aerial s.p.a.ce, drowned in the tide of the wind, as is the noise of a clod of earth which has become loose and falls into the sea.

As she came near, Jean took off his hat and stood up a little on the other side of the hedge. And she who walked between two walls of blossoms, although she was gazing upwards, turned her head, her glance still full of the spring which had excited her.

"Oh, is that you?" she said.

And she came at once across the strip of gra.s.s where the cherry-trees were planted, up to the place in the hedge where Jean was.

"I cannot come to you freely as I used to," he said, "so I came to wait for you. I have a favour to ask of you...."

"A favour? And you say that so seriously!" She tried to smile, but her lips refused. They had both become pale.

"I am going," said Jean, as if he was making a grave declaration; "I am going up to Sainte Odile the day after to-morrow--I shall go to hear the bells ring in Easter. If you also asked for permission to come----"

"You have made a vow?"

He answered:

"Something like it. I must speak to you--to you alone."

Odile withdrew slightly. With something of fear in her look she was trying to find out if Jean was speaking the truth--if she had guessed aright. He was watching her in an agony of anxiety. They were motionless, trembling, and so near and yet so far from each other that one would have said that they were threatening each other. And in fact both felt that the peace of their lives was at stake. They were not children, but a man and a woman of a strong and pa.s.sionate race. All the powers of their being a.s.serted themselves and broke through the hackneyed commonplaces of custom, because in these simple words, "I must speak to you," Odile had heard the breath of a soul which was giving itself, and which demanded a return.

In the deserted avenue the old cherry-trees lifted their white distaffs of blossom, and in the cup of each flower the spring sun was resting.

"The day after to-morrow?" she said, "at Sainte Odile--to hear the bells ring?"

She repeated what he had said. But that was to gain time, and to gaze deeper into those eyes fixed upon her, eyes which looked like the green depths of the forest.

There was a great calm in the plain and in the next village. The wind ceased for a moment--Odile turned away.

"I will go," she said.

Neither of them explained themselves further. A covered cart rolled along the road, not far off. A man shut the gate through which carts pa.s.s to the Bastians' farm. But the great thing was Jean had said what he had to say.

In the profound depths of their souls the words echoed and re-echoed. They were no longer alone. Both had the sacred moment of their meeting enclosed, as it were, in themselves, and they fell back on their own thoughts as the earth in the furrows does when the sowing is done, and the germinating seed is beginning to expand.