Autumn Glory Part 14

"Both on the farm. The eldest exempted his brother. They are fine fellows who do not mind hard work; you will see them to-morrow at ma.s.s in Sallertaine."

With a light, happy laugh the young soldier said:

"Ah, by-the-bye, one must get into the way of attending ma.s.s again, I suppose. In the army devotion did not trouble us much. Sundays were rather a favourite day for our chiefs to hold reviews ... they don't look at things as you do. But you see, father, I will soon accustom myself to going to ma.s.s again--even to high ma.s.s--it is not that that will be the difficulty."

"What then, my lad?"

They were both silent for a moment. Another turn in the road had revealed La Fromentiere on their left. With a simultaneous movement father and son had risen and were standing almost upright, one hand on the front of the carriage, contemplating the property, La Rousse trotting along, unheeded by the driver.

A great, tender rush of feeling, cruel withal, paled Andre's face. The land was welcoming a son of its soil; all the scattered recollections of his childhood awoke and called aloud to him; there was not a hillock that did not greet him, not a furze-bush, not a lopped elm but had a friendly look for him. But one and all, too, recalled the brother and sister he would find there no more.

Without turning his eyes from La Fromentiere Driot replied, after a silence, and without naming those of whom he was thinking:

"I will go and see them at La Roche ... of course I will ... but brotherhood is not altogether the same when one has broken from the old place...."

An instant later he was holding Rousille, who had run out into the courtyard to meet him, high in his arms, looking her full in the face, into the very depth of her eyes, with the gaze of a brother whose military experience has made him somewhat suspicious of maidenly virtue; but seeing that her eyes met his in all frankness, but with something of a sad expression, he kissed her, and set her down on terra firma again.

"Always the same, little sister! That's good; but a little sorry at having lost Lionore, eh?"

"You can see that?"

"Ah well! But I have come now. We will try to get on without them, won't we?"

"And I?" put in a thick voice.

The soldier left Rousille, and hastened to Mathurin who was coming towards them; dragging his limbs after him.

"Do not hurry, old man! I must do the running for both; I have sound legs."

Stooping over his crutches, and stroking his elder brother's tawny head, Andre could find no words of comfort. Coming fresh from a military centre where all was young, active, alert, he could not hide the distress and a certain feeling of horror with which Mathurin's infirmity inspired him. However, compelled by the other's anxious look, which seemed to ask, "What do you think of me?--you who come back, judge--can I live?" he hastened to say:

"My poor old man, I am so glad to find you like this. So you have not got any worse?"

With a shrug of the shoulders, the cripple angrily pushed him away.

"I am much better," he returned. "You will see. I walk more easily. I can stand as firmly as I did three years ago, when I thought I was getting well ... and, for a beginning, I am going with you to ma.s.s at Sallertaine to-morrow."

To avoid answering, the young soldier turned to meet his father, who, having unharnessed La Rousse, was coming towards them, with happy, smiling face, having eyes only for his Driot come home to him again.

The men, one following the other, turned towards the house, and went in; but on this happy day it was the farmer who held back, and the returned son who went first. Alert, interested as on a first visit, rejoiced to be made the object of the eyes and ears of the others, he did not sit down but wandered from room to room, the blue and red uniform an unfamiliar sight in this home of the toilers of the field.

To amuse his auditors he made the old walls ring again with words of command; knocked up against corners to feel the strength of the ma.s.sive stones; opened the cupboard, cut himself a slice of bread, and tasted it, with a, "Better than the bread of Algiers, my friends. This is Rousille's baking, eh? It is excellent; we shall have a good farmer's wife in her."

Followed everywhere by his father, Mathurin, and Marie-Rose, he went from the house into the stables and barns.

"I do not know these oxen," said he.

"No, my boy, I bought them last winter at Beauvoir fair."

"Well, I'll bet that I can tell their names from their faces. This dun-coloured one, that does not look great shakes, is n.o.blet, and his companion, the little tawny one, is Matelot?"

"Right," answered his father.

"As for the others, our old ones, they have not changed much, save to put on more horn and muscle. The plough ought to work well drawn by them. Good day, Paladin; good day, Cavalier!"

The good creatures lying in the straw, hearing the young voice that called to them, thrust out their heads, and with their thoughtful eyes followed the young master.

A little further, stooping down, he took up a handful of green forage.

"Fine maize for the time of year," he said. "This must have come from our high land; from La Cailleterie?"

"No."

"From Jobiniere then, where not a grain is lost. Here's a good specimen!"

The father was ready to join in praise of his oxen, his fields, everything, so happy was he that the last of his sons, after three years' absence, still loved the ground.

But the handsome young soldier laughed more than he felt inclined to do, to hide the sad thoughts that would come during his round, and when in the shed affected not to see the traps for blackbirds, made by Francois the preceding winter. In the threshing floor, seeing a bundle of faded gra.s.s lying on the neatly made hayrick, he bent towards Rousille, and murmured:

"Did Francois gather that? Ah, it pains me more than I could have believed, Rousille, not to find Francois here. It quite changes La Fromentiere for me."

But the father heard nothing of this. He only saw that his son was home again, and the future of La Fromentiere a.s.sured. When they had re-entered the general sitting-room, Lumineau pa.s.sed his hand over the blue tunic of the Cha.s.seur d'Afrique, saying:

"I like you in this, but I bet anything that you will not be sorry to lay aside your soldier's toggery."

"All right, father," returned Andre, laughing at the unwitting affront to his uniform, and his father's indirect mode of inviting him to change to civilian dress. "I am not got up in Sallertaine guise; I'll go and change."

From the bottom of the chest in the end room, beside the bed where he was to sleep, Andre took the carefully folded work-day suit, laid there by him the day he left. He took great pains with the waxing of his moustache, and adjusting the brim of his hat, adorned his b.u.t.ton-hole with a sprig of jasmine; then going the length of the house, opened the kitchen door, and there, framed against the old walls, his slim figure clad in cloth suit, was seen the handsomest young Vendeen of the Marais. Bronzed and fair-haired, his joyous face reflected the happiness of the others.

"Ah, Driot," exclaimed the farmer merrily, "now you are quite yourself again! You were my son before, but not so completely my very own as now," then added: "Now come, and we will drink to your health, and that you may stay at La Fromentiere; for I am ageing fast, and you shall take my place."

Mathurin, sitting at table beside his father, became very gloomy. When the gla.s.ses were filled, he raised his with the others, but did not clink it against that of Andre.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE PLACE DE L'EGLISE.

The bells rang out the close of High Ma.s.s; choir boys chanted the _Deo gratias_.

As in its early days, when in the last years of the twelfth century it was erected on the summit of the Isle of Sallertaine, the little church, now yellow with age and growth of lichen and wild-flower, witnessed the crowd of worshippers, dressed in the same fashions as then, pour out from the same doors in the same order and collect in the same groups in the same Place.

The first to be seen were the farm-labourers and farmers' sons, who came out by the east door from the transept where they had heard ma.s.s, and who, pa.s.sing round the choir, grouped themselves on the other side, where the young girls would presently emerge. Two by two they appeared between the pillars of the west porch with eyes lowered to the tips of their sabots. They were well aware that their rosy cheeks, smoothly braided hair beneath the pyramid of muslin, the embroidered stockings peeping under the short petticoat, the manner in which they walked with hands demurely crossed over the moire ap.r.o.ns, made them the cynosure of all eyes. This retired bearing only lasted for some twenty paces; soon the girls had formed themselves into a group close by the Michelonnes' house, at a short distance from that of the younger men. And now in their turn they waited. Eyes grey, blue, brown, very much on the alert; eyes sparkling with life; eyes in which lived a remembrance. Laughing lips, telling of the mere joy of living; the chirping as of a flock of birds greeting one another. Following them came the farmers and their wives; widows, distinguishable by the band of velvet in front of their coifs; older men, men of position; these all issuing from the nave, among them many a grave face still under the influence of devotion, in which like walking saints they seemed wholly absorbed. Many tall, finely set up men there were, with calm, fresh complexioned faces closely shaven, save for a thin line of whisker. All wore the same costume of black cloth coat with straight collar, trousers with flaps, raised on the ankle by a fold in the cloth, blue or green belt extending half way up the waistcoat, round felt hat bound with velvet. They joined the younger men, swelling the groups that shouldered each other, forming by this time a dark swaying ma.s.s reaching to the last b.u.t.tress of the choir.

The matrons, on the contrary, making a pa.s.sage for themselves through the crowd, went their way, looking in their plaited skirts like ornamental round towers. From their calm eyes, and the brief smile with which they exchanged greetings with a town acquaintance, it was plain to see that, having outgrown the follies and illusions of youth, each had settled down to her store of domestic happiness, joy, or sorrow that a green patch in the Marais had reserved for her. They talked with other farmers' wives, were joined by one or other for the homeward way, and thus accompanied, dignified and worthy, they directed their steps towards the plain, or to the various boating stages.

Despite their departure, the gathering in the Place grew denser and denser. It was the place of Sunday meeting where for centuries past the dwellers of the marshes, prisoners of the ca.n.a.l-bound land, had been wont to a.s.semble. To them attendance at ma.s.s was alike a religious duty and an occasion of social gathering. Before wending their way back to their farms, not a man, even the gravest and most considered among them, would have failed to pa.s.s an hour in a wine shop chatting with his friends over a bottle of muscadet and a game of cards, _luette_ particularly, a game imported from Spain in ancient times. Already innkeepers were standing at their doors at the foot of the Place, sounds of merriment and laughter were to be heard from within, and the stock-phrases of _luette_ players, "Your turn." "My turn." "I play a horse." "I take merienne."