"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 Oberles, 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 Oberle 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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.sure 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 Oberle 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. Oberle 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 rea.s.sured. 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 att.i.tude 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.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST EVENING

The last evening had come. Jean was to take at Obernai a night train for Strasburg, so as to be in the barracks of St. Nicholas the next morning at seven o'clock, the regulation hour. His uniform, ordered of a Strasburg tailor, as was usual for the one-year service men, was waiting for him, blue and yellow, folded on two chairs, in the room which a month ago Madame Oberle had taken, facing the barracks of St. Nicholas, about the middle of the rue des Balayeurs. After dinner he said to his mother: "Let me go out alone, so that I can say good-bye to the Alsheim country I shall not see again for a long time."

She smiled. M. Joseph Oberle answered:

"My dear fellow, you will not see me again; I have bills falling due to-morrow, and I must work in my office. And besides, I do not care about useless sentiment. Well, perhaps you will not find it easy to get leave before two months. I dare say not, but that will only make you the better pleased to come home. Come! Good-bye."

More affectionately than he would have believed it possible he embraced him, and with a word from Lucienne in her clear, young voice, "Soon," he went out.

The night air was laden with moisture to a remarkable degree: not a cloud. A crescent moon, stars in thousands; but between heaven and earth a veil of mist was spread which allowed the light to penetrate, but dispersed it in such a manner that there was no object really in shadow, and none which showed brightly. Everything was bathed in a pearly atmosphere. It was warm to breathe. "How sweet my Alsace is!" said Jean, when he had opened the door of the kitchen garden, and found himself behind the village houses, facing the plain, on which the moonlight was sleeping, blotted here and there with the shadows of an apple-tree or a walnut. An immense languor escaped from the soil, into which the first rains of autumn had sunk. The perfumes of stubble and ploughed land mixed with the odours from all kinds of vegetation come to their fullness of growth and aroma. The mountain was sending out gently to the valley the odour of pine pollen on the breeze, and the mint and the dying strawberries and bilberries, and its juniper berries crushed by the feet of pa.s.sers-by and flocks. Jean breathed in the odour of Alsace; he thought he could recognise the exquisite perfume of that little mountain which is near Colmar, called Florimont, where the dittany grows, and he thought, "It is the last time. Never again! Never again!"

There were no glittering points of light on the roofs; he followed the line of them on the left of the path: they seemed to have joined fraternal hands round the church, and under each Jean could picture a face known and friendly. Such were his thoughts for a while as he walked on. But as soon as he saw, grey in the middle of the fields, the big clump of trees which hid M. Bastian's house, every other thought fled. Arrived at the farm where the younger son had said to him, "It is by Grande Fontaine that you must cross the frontier," he went into the cherry avenue, and he still remembered and found the white gate. No one was pa.s.sing. Besides, what did it matter? Jean opened the lattice gate, went in, and walked on the gra.s.s border, even with the great trees, to the window of the drawing-room, which was lighted, then going round the house, came to the door which opened on the side opposite the village of Alsheim.

He waited an instant, went into the vestibule, and opened the door of the large room where the Bastian family sat every evening. They were all there in the light of the lamps, just as Jean had imagined.

The father was reading the paper. The two women on the other side of the brown table laden with white linen unfolded, were embroidering with initials the towels which were going into the Bastian linen press. The door had opened with no other noise than that of the pad brushing against the parquet. However, all was so calm round the dwelling and in the room, that they turned their eyes to see who was coming in. There was a moment of uncertainty for M. Bastian, and hesitation for Jean. He had fixed his gaze first of all on Odile. He had seen how she also had suffered, and that she was the first, the only one who recognised him, and how she grew pale, and that in her anguish, her raised hand, her breath, her glance, were arrested. The linen Odile was sewing slipped from her hands without her being able to make the slightest movement to lift it up.

It was perhaps by this sign that M. Bastian recognised the visitor.

Emotion seized him immediately.