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.