The Children of Alsace Part 25

She kissed him fervently.

CHAPTER XI

IN SUSPENSE

As things do not usually happen as we foresee, the visit of Herr von Ka.s.sewitz to Alsheim did not take place on the date Farnow said it would. Towards the end of June--at the moment when the prefect, returned from taking the waters, was getting ready to go to ask for Lucienne's hand, a telegram had asked him to put off the visit. The condition of M. Philippe Oberle had suddenly become worse.

The old man, whom it was necessary to inform of what was going on in the house, had just learned the truth. His son had gone up one morning to the sick man's room. "With circ.u.mlocution and in ways that he took out of respect and consideration for him, he let it be seen that Lucienne was not indifferent to the advances of a cavalry officer belonging to a high German family; he had said that the liking was spontaneous; that he, Joseph Oberle, in spite of certain regrets, did not believe that he had the right to thwart the freedom of his children, and that he hoped that his father, in the interests of peace, would be resigned.

"My father," he said, "you are not ignorant of the fact that your opposition would be useless and purely vexatious. You have a chance to give Lucienne a great proof of your affection, as we ourselves have given; do not repulse her."

The old man had asked in signs:

"And Monica; has she consented?"

M. Joseph Oberle had been able to answer yes, without telling a lie, for the poor woman, threatened with a separation, had yielded once more. Then the sick man put an end to his son's long monologue by writing two words, which were his answer:

"Not I!"

The same evening, fever declared itself. It continued the following day, and soon became so persistent and weakening that the condition of the sick man troubled the Oberles.

From this day on, the health of M. Philippe Oberle became the topic of anxious inquiries, evening and morning. They questioned Madame Monica or Jean, whom he received whilst excluding the others.

"How is he? Is his strength returning? Has he still all his wits about him--the full use of his mental faculties?"

Each one was wondering what was happening up above in the room where the old fighter, who had half disappeared from the world of the living, still governed his divided family, holding them all dependent on him. They spoke of their uneasiness, and under this name, which they rightly used, what projects were hid, what different thoughts!

Jean himself awaited the issue of this crisis with an impatience in which his affection for his grandfather was not the only interest involved. Since the explanation he had had with Lucienne, especially since the party at the Geheimrath's, all intimacy between brother and sister had ceased. Lucienne was as amiable and just as officiously kind as she could be, but Jean no longer responded to her advances. When work kept him no longer at the factories he fled from the house: sometimes to the country, where the first hay harvest attracted all the life from the Alsatian farms. Sometimes he would go and talk to his neighbours the Rams.p.a.chers, already his friends, when at nightfall they came back from the plain; and there he was led on by the hope that he should see the daughter of M.

Bastian walking along the path. But more often still he went up to Heidenbruch. M. Ulrich had received his nephew's confidences and a mission at the same time. Jean had said to him:

"I have now no hope of winning Odile. My sister's marriage will prevent mine. But in spite of that I am bound to ask for the hand of her to whom I have confessed my love. I wish to be certain of what is already breaking my heart, although I am only afraid of it. When M. Bastian has heard that Lucienne is betrothed to Lieutenant von Farnow or that she is going to be--and that will not be delayed if grandfather gets better--you will go to M. Bastian. You will speak to him on my behalf. He will answer you, knowing fully all the facts; you will tell me if he refuses, once for all, his daughter to the brother-in-law of von Farnow; or if he insists on some time of probation--I will accept it, no matter how long it may be; or if he has the courage--in which I do not believe--to pay no attention to the scandal which my sister's marriage will cause."

M. Ulrich had promised.

Towards the middle of August the fever which was wearing out M.

Philippe Oberle disappeared. Contrary to the expectation of the doctor, his strength returned very quickly. It was soon certain that the robust const.i.tution of the invalid had got the better of the crisis. And the truce accorded by M. Joseph Oberle to his father had come to an end. The old man, having recovered to that sad condition of a sick man whom death does not desire, was going to be treated like the others, and would not be spared. There was no fresh scene between the sick man and his son. All went on quietly. On the 22nd of August, after dinner in the drawing-room, where Victor had just brought the coffee, the factory owner said to Madame Oberle:

"My father is now convalescent. There is no longer any reason to put off the visit of Herr von Ka.s.sewitz. I give you notice, Monica, that it will take place during the next few days. You would do well to tell my father, since you alone go to him. And it is necessary that everything should be done in order, without anything like surprise or deception. Is that your opinion?"

"You do not wish to put off this visit any longer?"

"No."

"Then I will tell him!"

Jean wrote the same evening to Heidenbruch, where he was not able to go.

"My uncle, the visit is settled. My father makes no mystery about it; not even before the servants. He evidently wishes that the report of the marriage should be spread abroad. As soon as you hear some one from Alsheim get indignant or sad about us, go and see, I implore you, if the dream that I dreamed can still live on. You will tell M. Bastian that it is the grandson of M. Philippe Oberle who loves Odile."

CHAPTER XII

THE HOP-PICKING

At the foot of Sainte Odile, a little below the vineyards in the deep earth formed by gravel and leaves fallen from the mountain, M.

Bastian and other land-owners or farmers of Alsheim had planted hop-fields. Now the time was come when the flower produces its maximum of odorous pollen--a quickly pa.s.sing hour difficult to seize.

The hop-planters appeared frequently in the hopfields. The brokers went through the villages. One heard buyers and sellers discussing the various merits of Wurtemburg hops and the Grand Duchy of Baden hops, and of Bohemian and Alsatian hops. The newspapers began to publish the first prices of the most famous home-grown: Hallertan, Spalt, and Wolnzach.

A Munich Jew had come to see M. Bastian on Sunday August 26, and had said to him:

"Wurtemburg is promising: Baden will have fine harvests: our own country of Spalt, in Bavaria, has hops which are paying us one hundred and sixty francs the fifty kilos, because they are rich hops--they are as full of the yellow aromatic powder as a grape of juice. Here you have been injured by the drought. But I can offer you one hundred and twenty francs on condition that you pick them at once. They are ripe."

M. Bastian had given in, and had called together his daily hop-pickers for August 28. That was also the day when the Count von Ka.s.sewitz was to pay his visit to M. Joseph Oberle.

From dawn of a day already warmed by wafts of hot air, women had set themselves to walk up what is called "the heights of Alsheim," the region where the cultivated land, hollowed like a bow, will bear hops. Some hundreds of yards from the border of the forest high poles in battle array bore up the green tendrils. They looked like very pointed tents of foliage, or belfries--for the millions of little cones, formed of green scales sprinkled with pollen, swung themselves from the extreme top to the ground like bells whose ringer is the wind. All the inhabitants know the event of the day--one picks hops for M. Bastian. The master, up before dawn, was already in the hop-field, examining each foot, calculating the value of his crop, pressing and crushing in his fingers one of the little muslin-like pine cones whose perfume attracts the bees. At the back on the stubble furrows are two narrow wagons, harnessed to a horse, waiting for the harvest, and near them was Rams.p.a.cher the farmer, his two sons Augustin and Francois, and a farm servant. The women, on the direct road leading up there, came up in irregular bands, three in file, then five abreast, then one following the others, the only one who was old. Each one had put on a working dress of some thin stuff, discoloured and the worse for wear, except, however, the grocer's daughter, Ida, who wore a nearly new dress, blue with white spots, and another elegant girl from Alsheim, Juliette, a brunette, the daughter of the sacristan, and she had a fashionable bodice and a checked ap.r.o.n, pink and white. The greater number were without hats, and had only the shade of their hair, of every tint of fairness, to preserve their complexions. They walked along quietly and heavily. They were young and fresh. They laughed. The farm boy mounted on a farm horse, going to the fields, the reapers, encamped in a corner, and the motionless man with the scythe in the soft lucerne turned their heads, and their eyes followed these women workers, whom one did not generally see in the country: needlewomen, dressmakers, apprentices, all going as if to a fete towards the hop-field of M. Bastian. The vibration of words they could not hear flew to them on the wind that dried the dew. The weather was fair.

Some old people, the pickers of fallen fruit beneath the scattered apple- and walnut-trees, rose from their stooping posture, and blinked their eyes to see the happy band of girls coming up the forest road. These girls without baskets such as the bilberry and whortleberry pickers, and raspberry gatherers had to carry.

They went into the hop-field, which contained eight rows of hops and disappeared as if in a gigantic vineyard. M. Bastian directed the work, and pointed out that they must begin with the part touching the road. Then the old farmer, his two sons and farm servant, seized each of them one of the poles, heavy with the weight of harvest, the tendrils, the little scaly bells, the leaves all trembled; and after the women had knelt down and had cut the stalks even with the ground, the loosened poles came out of the earth and were lowered and despoiled of the climbing plants they had carried.

Stalks, leaves, and flowers were thrown down and placed in heaps--to be carried away by the wagons. The workers did not wait to pick the hops which they would gather at Alsheim in the farmyard in the afternoon. But, already covered with yellow powder and pieces of leaves, the men and women were hurrying to strip the lowered poles.

The hops exhaled their bitter, healthy odour, and the humming of the band of workers, like the noise of early vintage, spread out over the immense stretch of country, striped with meadows, stubble, and lucerne, and the open and fertile Alsatian land which the sun was beginning to warm.

This light, the repose of the night still neighbouring the day, the full liberty which they did not enjoy every day of the week, the instinctive coquetry evoked by the presence of the men, even the desire of being pleasant to M. Bastian, whom they knew to be of a gay disposition, made these girls and children who picked the hops joyful with a boisterous joy. And one of the farm servants having called out while his horses stopped to take breath: "Is no one singing then?" the daughter of the sacristan, Juliette, with the regular features and the beautiful deep eyes under her well combed and nicely dressed hair, answered:

"I know a lovely song."

As she answered she looked at the owner of the property, who was smoking, seated on the first row of stubble above the hop-field, and who was contemplating with tenderness now his hops and now his Alsace, where his mind always dwelt.

"If it is pretty; sing it," said the master. "Is it a song that the police may hear?"

"Part of it."

"Then turn round to the forest side: the police do not often go that way because they find nothing to drink there."

The workers who were stooping and those who were standing upright laughed silently because of the detestation in which they held the gendarmes. And the beautiful Juliette began to sing--of course in Alsatian--one of those songs which poets compose who do not care to sign their works, and who rhyme in contraband.

The full, pure voice sang:

"I have cut the hops of Alsace--they have grown on the soil we tilled--the green hops are certainly ours--the red earth is also ours."

"Bravo!" said gravely M. Bastian's farmer. He took his pipe from his mouth in order to hear better.