Up among the Vosges mountains in Lorraine, but just outside the old
half-German province of Alsace, about thirty miles distant from the
new and thoroughly French baths of Plombieres, there lies the
village of Granpere. Whatever may be said or thought here in
England of the late imperial rule in France, it must at any rate be
admitted that good roads were made under the Empire. Alsace, which
twenty years ago seems to have been somewhat behindhand in this
respect, received her full share of Napoleon's attention, and
Granpere is now placed on an excellent road which runs from the town
of Remiremont on one line of railway, to Colmar on another. The
inhabitants of the Alsatian Ballon hills and the open valleys among
them seem to think that the civilisation of great cities has been
brought near enough to them, as there is already a diligence running
daily from Granpere to Remiremont;--and at Remiremont you are on the
railway, and, of course, in the middle of everything.
And indeed an observant traveller will be led to think that a great
deal of what may most truly be called civilisation has found its way
in among the Ballons, whether it travelled thither by the new-fangled
railways and imperial routes, or found its passage along the
valley streams before imperial favours had been showered upon the
district. We are told that when Pastor Oberlin was appointed to his
cure as Protestant clergyman in the Ban de la Roche a little more
than one hundred years ago,--that was, in 1767,--this region was
densely dark and far behind in the world's running as regards all
progress. The people were ignorant, poor, half-starved, almost
savage, destitute of communication, and unable to produce from their
own soil enough food for their own sustenance. Of manufacturing
enterprise they understood nothing, and were only just far enough
advanced in knowledge for the Protestants to hate the Catholics, and
the Catholics to hate the Protestants. Then came that wonderful
clergyman, Pastor Oberlin,--he was indeed a wonderful clergyman,--and
made a great change. Since that there have been the two empires,
and Alsace has looked up in the world. Whether the thanks
of the people are more honestly due to Oberlin or to the late
Emperor, the author of this little story will not pretend to say;
but he will venture to express his opinion that at present the rural
Alsatians are a happy, prosperous people, with the burden on their
shoulders of but few paupers, and fewer gentlemen,--apparently a
contented people, not ambitious, given but little to politics.
Protestants and Catholics mingled without hatred or fanaticism,
educated though not learned, industrious though not energetic, quiet
and peaceful, making linen and cheese, growing potatoes, importing
corn, coming into the world, marrying, begetting children, and dying
in the wholesome homespun fashion which is so sweet to us in that
mood of philosophy which teaches us to love the country and to
despise the town. Whether it be better for a people to achieve an
even level of prosperity, which is shared by all, but which makes
none eminent, or to encounter those rough, ambitious, competitive
strengths which produce both palaces and poor-houses, shall not be
matter of argument here; but the teller of this story is disposed to
think that the chance traveller, as long as he tarries at Granpere,
will insensibly and perhaps unconsciously become an advocate of the
former doctrine; he will be struck by the comfort which he sees
around him, and for a while will dispense with wealth, luxury,
scholarships, and fashion. Whether the inhabitants of these hills
and valleys will advance to farther progress now that they are again
to become German, is another question, which the writer will not
attempt to answer here.
Granpere in itself is a very pleasing village. Though the amount of
population and number of houses do not suffice to make it more than
a village, it covers so large a space of ground as almost to give it
a claim to town honours. It is perhaps a full mile in length; and
though it has but one street, there are buildings standing here and
there, back from the line, which make it seem to stretch beyond the
narrow confines of a single thoroughfare. In most French villages
some of the houses are high and spacious, but here they seem almost
all to be so. And many of them have been constructed after that
independent fashion which always gives to a house in a street a
character and importance of its own. They do not stand in a simple
line, each supported by the strength of its neighbour, but occupy
their own ground, facing this way or that as each may please,
presenting here a corner to the main street, and there an end.
There are little gardens, and big stables, and commodious barns; and
periodical paint with annual whitewash is not wanting. The
unstinted slates shine copiously under the sun, and over almost
every other door there is a large lettered board which indicates
that the resident within is a dealer in the linen which is produced
throughout the country. All these things together give to Granpere
an air of prosperity and comfort which is not at all checked by the
fact that there is in the place no mansion which we Englishmen would
call the gentleman's house, nothing approaching to the ascendancy of
a parish squire, no baron's castle, no manorial hall,--not even a
chateau to overshadow the modest roofs of the dealers in the linen
of the Vosges.
And the scenery round Granpere is very pleasant, though the
neighbouring hills never rise to the magnificence of mountains or
produce that grandeur which tourists desire when they travel in
search of the beauties of Nature. It is a spot to love if you know
it well, rather than to visit with hopes raised high, and to leave
with vivid impressions. There is water in abundance; a pretty lake
lying at the feet of sloping hills, rivulets running down from the
high upper lands and turning many a modest wheel in their course, a
waterfall or two here and there, and a so-called mountain summit
within an easy distance, from whence the sun may be seen to rise
among the Swiss mountains;--and distant perhaps three miles from the
village the main river which runs down the valley makes for itself a
wild ravine, just where the bridge on the new road to Munster
crosses the water, and helps to excuse the people of Granpere for
claiming for themselves a great object of natural attraction. The
bridge and the river and the ravine are very pretty, and perhaps
justify all that the villagers say of them when they sing to
travellers the praises of their country.
Whether it be the sale of linen that has produced the large inn at
Granpere, or the delicious air of the place, or the ravine and the
bridge, matters little to our story; but the fact of the inn matters
very much. There it is,--a roomy, commodious building, not easily
intelligible to a stranger, with its widely distributed parts,
standing like an inverted V, with its open side towards the main
road. On the ground-floor on one side are the large stables and
coach-house, with a billiard-room and cafe over them, and a long
balcony which runs round the building; and on the other side there
are kitchens and drinking-rooms, and over these the chamber for
meals and the bedrooms. All large, airy, and clean, though,
perhaps, not excellently well finished in their construction, and
furnished with but little pretence to French luxury. And behind the
inn there are gardens, by no means trim, and a dusty summer-house,
which serves, however, for the smoking of a cigar; and there is
generally space and plenty and goodwill. Either the linen, or the
air, or the ravine, or, as is more probable, the three combined,
have produced a business, so that the landlord of the Lion d'Or at
Granpere is a thriving man.
The reader shall at once be introduced to the landlord, and informed
at the same time that, in so far as he may be interested in this
story, he will have to take up his abode at the Lion d'Or till it be
concluded; not as a guest staying loosely at his inn, but as one who
is concerned with all the innermost affairs of the household. He
will not simply eat his plate of soup, and drink his glass of wine,
and pass on, knowing and caring more for the servant than for the
servant's master, but he must content himself to sit at the
landlord's table, to converse very frequently with the landlord's
wife, to become very intimate with the landlord's son--whether on
loving or on unloving terms shall be left entirely to himself--and
to throw himself, with the sympathy of old friendship, into all the
troubles and all the joys of the landlord's niece. If the reader be
one who cannot take such a journey, and pass a month or two without
the society of persons whom he would define as ladies and gentlemen,
he had better be warned at once, and move on, not setting foot
within the Lion d'Or at Granpere.
Michel Voss, the landlord, in person was at this time a tall, stout,
active, and very handsome man, about fifty years of age. As his son
was already twenty-five--and was known to be so throughout the
commune--people were sure that Michel Voss was fifty or thereabouts;
but there was very little in his appearance to indicate so many
years. He was fat and burly to be sure; but then he was not fat to
lethargy, or burly with any sign of slowness. There was still the
spring of youth in his footstep, and when there was some weight to
be lifted, some heavy timber to be thrust here or there, some huge
lumbering vehicle to be hoisted in or out, there was no arm about
the place so strong as that of the master. His short, dark, curly
hair--that was always kept clipped round his head--was beginning to
show a tinge of gray, but the huge moustache on his upper lip was
still of a thorough brown, as was also the small morsel of beard
which he wore upon his chin. He had bright sharp brown eyes, a nose
slightly beaked, and a large mouth. He was on the whole a man of
good temper, just withal, and one who loved those who belonged to
him; but he chose to be master in his own house, and was apt to
think that his superior years enabled him to know what younger
people wanted better than they would know themselves. He was loved
in his house and respected in his village; but there was something
in the beak of his nose and the brightness of his eye which was apt
to make those around him afraid of him. And indeed Michel Voss
could lose his temper and become an angry man.
Our landlord had been twice married. By his first wife he had now
living a single son, George Voss, who at the time of our tale had
already reached his twenty-fifth year. George, however, did not at
this time live under his father's roof, having taken service for a
time with the landlady of another inn at Colmar. George Voss was
known to be a clever young man; many in those parts declared that he
was much more so than his father; and when he became clerk at the
Poste in Colmar, and after a year or two had taken into his hands
almost the entire management of that house--so that people began to
say that old-fashioned and wretched as it was, money might still be
made there--people began to say also that Michel Voss had been wrong
to allow his son to leave Granpere. But in truth there had been a
few words between the father and the son; and the two were so like
each other that the father found it difficult to rule, and the son
found it difficult to be ruled.
George Voss was very like his father, with this difference, as he
was often told by the old folk about Granpere, that he would never
fill his father's shoes. He was a smaller man, less tall by a
couple of inches, less broad in proportion across the shoulders,
whose arm would never be so strong, whose leg would never grace a
tight stocking with so full a development. But he had the same eye,
bright and brown and very quick, the same mouth, the same aquiline
nose, the same broad forehead and well-shaped chin, and the same
look in his face which made men know as by instinct that he would
sooner command than obey. So there had come to be a few words, and
George Voss had gone away to the house of a cousin of his mother's,
and had taken to commanding there.
Not that there had been any quarrel between the father and the son;
nor indeed that George was aware that he had been in the least
disobedient to his parent. There was no recognised ambition for
rule in the breasts of either of them. It was simply this, that
their tempers were alike; and when on an occasion Michel told his
son that he would not allow a certain piece of folly which the son
was, as he thought, likely to commit, George declared that he would
soon set that matter right by leaving Granpere. Accordingly he did
leave Granpere, and became the right hand, and indeed the head, and
backbone, and best leg of his old cousin Madame Faragon of the Poste
at Colmar. Now the matter on which these few words occurred was a
question of love--whether George Voss should fall in love with and
marry his step-mother's niece Marie Bromar. But before anything
farther can be said of these few words, Madame Voss and her niece
must be introduced to the reader.
Madame Voss was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, and
had now been a wife some five or six years. She had been brought
from Epinal, where she had lived with a married sister, a widow,
much older than herself--in parting from whom on her marriage there
had been much tribulation. 'Should anything happen to Marie,' she
had said to Michel Voss, before she gave him her troth, 'you will
let Minnie Bromar come to me?' Michel Voss, who was then hotly
in love with his hoped-for bride--hotly in love in spite of his
four-and-forty years--gave the required promise. The said 'something'
which had been suspected had happened. Madame Bromar had died, and
Minnie Bromar her daughter--or Marie as she was always afterwards
called--had at once been taken into the house at Granpere. Michel
never thought twice about it when he was reminded of his promise.
'If I hadn't promised at all, she should come the same,' he said.
'The house is big enough for a dozen more yet.' In saying this he
perhaps alluded to a little baby that then lay in a cradle in his
wife's room, by means of which at that time Madame Voss was able to
make her big husband do pretty nearly anything that she pleased. So
Marie Bromar, then just fifteen years of age, was brought over from
Epinal to Granpere, and the house certainly was not felt to be too
small because she was there. Marie soon learned the ways and wishes
of her burly, soft-hearted uncle; would fill his pipe for him, and
hand him his soup, and bring his slippers, and put her soft arm
round his neck, and became a favourite. She was only a child when
she came, and Michel thought it was very pleasant; but in five
years' time she was a woman, and Michel was forced to reflect that
it would not be well that there should be another marriage and
another family in the house while he was so young himself,--there
was at this time a third baby in the cradle,--and then Marie Bromar
had not a franc of dot. Marie was the sweetest eldest daughter in
the world, but he could not think it right that his son should marry
a wife before he had done a stroke for himself in the world.
Prudence made it absolutely necessary that he should say a word to
his son.
Madame Voss was certainly nearly twenty years younger than her
husband, and yet the pair did not look to be ill-sorted. Michel was
so handsome, strong, and hale; and Madame Voss, though she was a
comely woman,--though when she was brought home a bride to Granpere
the neighbours had all declared that she was very handsome,--carried
with her a look of more years than she really possessed. She had
borne many of a woman's cares, and had known much of woman's sorrows
before she had become wife to Michel Voss; and then when the babes
came, and she had settled down as mistress of that large household,
and taught herself to regard George Voss and Marie Bromar almost as
her own children, all idea that she was much younger than her
husband departed from her. She was a woman who desired to excel her
husband in nothing,--if only she might be considered to be in some
things his equal. There was no feeling in the village that Michel
Voss had brought home a young wife and had made a fool of himself.
He was a man entitled to have a wife much younger than himself.
Madame Voss in those days always wore a white cap and a dark stuff
gown, which was changed on Sundays for one of black silk, and brown
mittens on her hands, and she went about the house in soft carpet
shoes. She was a conscientious, useful, but not an enterprising
woman; loving her husband much and fearing him somewhat; liking to
have her own way in certain small matters, but willing to be led in
other things so long as those were surrendered to her; careful with
her children, the care of whom seemed to deprive her of the power of
caring for the business of the inn; kind to her niece, good-humoured
in her house, and satisfied with the world at large as long as she
might always be allowed to entertain M. le Cure at dinner on
Sundays. Michel Voss, Protestant though he was, had not the
slightest objection to giving M. le Cure his Sunday dinner, on
condition that M. le Cure on these occasions would confine his
conversation to open subjects. M. le Cure was quite willing to eat
his dinner and give no offence.
A word too must be said of Marie Bromar before we begin our story.
Marie Bromar is the heroine of this little tale; and the reader must
be made to have some idea of her as she would have appeared before
him had he seen her standing near her uncle in the long room
upstairs of the hotel at Granpere. Marie had been fifteen when she
was brought from Epinal to Granpere, and had then been a child; but
she had now reached her twentieth birthday, and was a woman. She
was not above the middle height, and might seem to be less indeed in
that house, because her aunt and her uncle were tall; but she was
straight, well made, and very active. She was strong and liked to
use her strength, and was very keen about all the work of the house.
During the five years of her residence at Granpere she had
thoroughly learned the mysteries of her uncle's trade. She knew
good wine from bad by the perfume; she knew whether bread was the
full weight by the touch; with a glance of her eye she could tell
whether the cheese and butter were what they ought to be; in a
matter of poultry no woman in all the commune could take her in; she
was great in judging eggs; knew well the quality of linen; and was
even able to calculate how long the hay should last, and what should
be the consumption of corn in the stables. Michel Voss was well
aware before Marie had been a year beneath his roof that she well
earned the morsel she ate and the drop she drank; and when she had
been there five years he was ready to swear that she was the
cleverest girl in Lorraine or Alsace. And she was very pretty, with
rich brown hair that would not allow itself to be brushed out of its
crisp half-curls in front, and which she always wore cut short
behind, curling round her straight, well-formed neck. Her eyes were
gray, with a strong shade indeed of green, but were very bright and
pleasant, full of intelligence, telling stories by their glances of
her whole inward disposition, of her activity, quickness, and desire
to have a hand in everything that was being done. Her father Jean
Bromar had come from the same stock with Michel Voss, and she, too,
had something of that aquiline nose which gave to the innkeeper and
his son the look which made men dislike to contradict them. Her
mouth was large, but her teeth were very white and perfect, and her
smile was the sweetest thing that ever was seen. Marie Bromar was a
pretty girl, and George Voss, had he lived so near to her and not
have fallen in love with her, must have been cold indeed.
At the end of these five years Marie had become a woman, and was
known by all around her to be a woman much stronger, both in person
and in purpose, than her aunt; but she maintained, almost
unconsciously, many of the ways in the house which she had assumed
when she first entered it. Then she had always been on foot, to be
everybody's messenger,--and so she was now. When her uncle and aunt
were at their meals she was always up and about,--attending them,
attending the public guests, attending the whole house. And it
seemed as though she herself never sat down to eat or drink.
Indeed, it was rare enough to find her seated at all. She would
have a cup of coffee standing up at the little desk near the public
window when she kept her books, or would take a morsel of meat as
she helped to remove the dishes. She would stand sometimes for a
minute leaning on the back of her uncle's chair as he sat at his
supper, and would say, when he bade her to take her chair and eat
with them, that she preferred picking and stealing. In all things
she worshipped her uncle, observing his movements, caring for his
wants, and carrying out his plans. She did not worship her aunt,
but she so served Madame Voss that had she been withdrawn from the
household Madame Voss would have found herself altogether unable to
provide for its wants. Thus Marie Bromar had become the guardian
angel of the Lion d'Or at Granpere.
There must be a word or two more said of the difference between
George Voss and his father which had ended in sending George to
Colmar; a word or two about that, and a word also of what occurred
between George and Marie. Then we shall be able to commence our
story without farther reference to things past. As Michel Voss was
a just, affectionate, and intelligent man, he would not probably
have objected to a marriage between the two young people, had the
proposition for such a marriage been first submitted to him, with a
proper amount of attention to his judgment and controlling power.
But the idea was introduced to him in a manner which taught him to
think that there was to be a clandestine love affair. To him George
was still a boy, and Marie not much more than a child, and--without
much thinking--he felt that the thing was improper.
'I won't have it, George,' he had said.
'Won't have what, father?'
'Never mind. You know. If you can't get over it in any other way,
you had better go away. You must do something for yourself before
you can think of marrying.'
'I am not thinking of marrying.'
'Then what were you thinking of when I saw you with Marie? I won't
have it for her sake, and I won't have it for mine, and I won't have
it for your own. You had better go away for a while.'
'I'll go away to-morrow if you wish it, father.' Michel had turned
away, not saying another word; and on the following day George did go
away, hardly waiting an hour to set in order his part of his father's
business. For it must be known that George had not been an idler
in his father's establishment. There was a trade of wood-cutting
upon the mountain-side, with a saw-mill turned by water beneath,
over which George had presided almost since he had left the
school of the commune. When his father told him that he was bound
to do something before he got married, he could not have intended to
accuse him of having been hitherto idle. Of the wood-cutting and
the saw-mill George knew as much as Marie did of the poultry and the
linen. Michel was wrong, probably, in his attempt to separate them.
The house was large enough, or if not, there was still room for
another house to be built in Granpere. They would have done well as
man and wife. But then the head of a household naturally objects to
seeing the boys and girls belonging to him making love under his
nose without any reference to his opinion. 'Things were not made so
easy for me,' he says to himself, and feels it to be a sort of duty
to take care that the course of love shall not run altogether
smooth. George, no doubt, was too abrupt with his father; or
perhaps it might be the case that he was not sorry to take an
opportunity of leaving for a while Granpere and Marie Bromar. It
might be well to see the world; and though Marie Bromar was bright
and pretty, it might be that there were others abroad brighter and
prettier.
His father had spoken to him on one fine September afternoon, and
within an hour George was with the men who were stripping bark from
the great pine logs up on the side of the mountain. With them, and
with two or three others who were engaged at the saw-mills, he
remained till the night was dark. Then he came down and told
something of his intentions to his stepmother. He was going to
Colmar on the morrow with a horse and small cart, and would take
with him what clothes he had ready. He did not speak to Marie that
night, but he said something to his father about the timber and the
mill. Gaspar Muntz, the head woodsman, knew, he said, all about the
business. Gaspar could carry on the work till it would suit Michel
Voss himself to see how things were going on. Michel Voss was sore
and angry, but he said nothing. He sent to his son a couple of
hundred francs by his wife, but said no word of explanation even to
her. On the following morning George was off without seeing his
father.
But Marie was up to give him his breakfast. 'What is the meaning of
this, George?' she said.
'Father says that I shall be better away from this,--so I'm going
away.'
'And why will you be better away?' To this George made no answer.
'It will be terrible if you quarrel with your father. Nothing can
be so bad as that.'
'We have not quarrelled. That is to say, I have not quarrelled with
him. If he quarrels with me, I cannot help it.'
'It must be helped,' said Marie, as she placed before him a mess of
eggs which she had cooked for him with her own hands. 'I would
sooner die than see anything wrong between you two.' Then there was
a pause. 'Is it about me, George?' she asked boldly.
'Father thinks that I love you:--so I do.'
Marie paused for a few minutes before she said anything farther.
She was standing very near to George, who was eating his breakfast
heartily in spite of the interesting nature of the conversation. As
she filled his cup a second time, she spoke again. 'I will never do
anything, George, if I can help it, to displease my uncle.'
'But why should it displease him? He wants to have his own way in
everything.'
'Of course he does.'
'He has told me to go;--and I'll go. I've worked for him as no
other man would work, and have never said a word about a share in
the business;--and never would.'
'Is it not all for yourself, George?'
'And why shouldn't you and I be married if we like it?'
'I will never like it,' said she solemnly, 'if uncle dislikes it.'
'Very well,' said George. 'There is the horse ready, and now I'm
off.'
So he went, starting just as the day was dawning, and no one saw him
on that morning except Marie Bromar. As soon as he was gone she
went up to her little room, and sat herself down on her bedside.
She knew that she loved him, and had been told that she was beloved.
She knew that she could not lose him without suffering terribly; but
now she almost feared that it would be necessary that she should
lose him. His manner had not been tender to her. He had indeed
said that he loved her, but there had been nothing of the tenderness
of love in his mode of saying so;--and then he had said no word of
persistency in the teeth of his father's objection. She had
declared--thoroughly purposing that her declaration should be
true--that she would never become his wife in opposition to her
uncle's wishes; but he, had he been in earnest, might have said
something of his readiness to attempt at least to overcome his
father's objection. But he had said not a word, and Marie, as she sat
upon her bed, made up her mind that it must be all over. But she made
up her mind also that she would entertain no feeling of anger against
her uncle. She owed him everything, so she thought--making no
account, as George had done, of labour given in return. She was
only a girl, and what was her labour? For a while she resolved that
she would give a spoken assurance to her uncle that he need fear
nothing from her. It was natural enough to her that her uncle
should desire a better marriage for his son. But after a while she
reflected that any speech from her on such a subject would be
difficult, and that it would be better that she should hold her
tongue. So she held her tongue, and thought of George, and
suffered;--but still was merry, at least in manner, when her uncle
spoke to her, and priced the poultry, and counted the linen, and
made out the visitors' bills, as though nothing evil had come upon
her. She was a gallant girl, and Michel Voss, though he could not
speak of it, understood her gallantry and made notes of it on the
note-book of his heart.
In the mean time George Voss was thriving at Colmar,--as the Vosses
did thrive wherever they settled themselves. But he sent no word to
his father,--nor did his father send word to him,--though they were
not more than ten leagues apart. Once Madame Voss went over to see
him, and brought back word of his well-doing.