Autumn Glory Part 29

It was late afternoon when Toussaint Lumineau returned to La Fromentiere. It had rained heavily all day. On the hearth in the house-place the largest pot was boiling full of potatoes for the men's supper, and to give food for the pigs. Sitting by the fireside Mathurin and the farm-servant, kept indoors by the inclement weather, were warming themselves and waiting for news. The cripple who had been very gloomy, and in a state of nervous excitement since Andre's departure, had not spoken a word the whole afternoon. Rousille could be heard folding linen and arranging it in piles in the cupboard of the adjacent room.

The farmer ascended the house steps and opened the door.

Simultaneously the thought came into the minds of the three awaiting him: "What did they say? Will they come back? Did they let you go away without even a promise to return?" But no one dared to ask him.

With a curt greeting to his household the farmer went straight to his bedside, and began silently changing his Sunday garb for his working clothes. The best coat, new hat, shoes, were all laid away. The answer must have been unsatisfactory. An awkward silence reigned in the room; as the minutes went on Mathurin's irritation increased. Bent almost double in the chimney-corner, his face drawn, he, the eldest son, felt hurt at being treated like a servant or a woman. Why not have taken him apart? A sign would have sufficed. Why not have given it him?

His ill temper broke forth when his father, having changed his clothes, said peremptorily:

"Rousille, you will come with me and the man into the barn to make baskets. You, Mathurin, for once will take your sister's place, and watch the pot."

"So you think me of no use at all?" said the cripple.

Contrary to his usual habit, which was to give reasons and modify orders, the farmer, raising his voice, made answer:

"I am sole master here. Come, Rousille!" Followed by his daughter and the man, he crossed the yard in the front of the house, went into the barn, and threw open the double doors that separated it from the cart shed. There was the wine press, the red tilbury; and ranged against the walls were wheelbarrows, hen-coops, ladders, rafters, and poles; in the middle of the circle formed by this medley was a sandy s.p.a.ce, where the fowls came to scratch and cover themselves with sand. The farmer sat down upon a joist beside a vat in which a bundle of osiers were steeping, his face turned towards the farmhouse. Rousille kneeling close to him, her back to the light, drew the twigs from the water one by one, peeled them with her pocket-knife and handed them to her father. He, taking the white stems, twisted them round the already prepared framework of the baskets. In a corner the man was chopping poles of chestnut wood with a hedge-bill. The rain came down faster than ever, the air grew colder and more penetrating, spreading a veil of mist between the barn and the house. A fantastic twilight, coming from one knew not whither, uncertain as the rain and driven by the wind, cast a faint glimmer upon the workers. The ducks were quacking merrily in the Marais; sparrows were chirping in the gutters of the roof. Not a word pa.s.sed between the father, his daughter, and the man.

Toussaint Lumineau was looking at Rousille--looking at her more often and attentively than was his wont; his thought was: "She is all that is left to me." At times he stopped plaiting, the white osier remained motionless, and his hand sank nerveless to his side. Then it was that the remembrance of his other children was pa.s.sing, like the rain, in a torrent over his soul. In the depths of his heart the father would cry, "Francois! Andre!" He tried to picture South America as he had seen it on map. Where was his youngest son now in the great wide world? Was he in a town, or wandering along unknown roads, or on the great ocean that sucks in so many victims? Toussaint Lumineau strove to get to him, but the effort was vain. All the scenes his imagination could picture were lost in the unknown.

At that same hour, far away, the heart of a young man was recalling with all the faithfulness of familiar scenes, La Fromentiere and its elms, his father, Rousille, Mathurin, the meadows of the Marais and all the country round. It was the son of whom the old man was thinking with such poignant regret; he, whom all three in the barn were vainly trying to follow in their inexperience of travel.

Tired after a night pa.s.sed in the train, and in going from one agent's office to the other, a stranger and unknown, Andre was sitting on a bundle of sheep-skins in the docks of a great seaport, awaiting the hour of embarkation in a steamer that was to bear him away to the new country. In front of him the waters of the River Scheldt dashed up against the quay; emerging from the fog on one side they formed a kind of half circle, to be lost in deeper fog on the other, their broad expanse covered with s.h.i.+pping. Andre's weary eyes followed the moving panorama of sailing vessels, steamers, coasting and fis.h.i.+ng boats all standing out grey in the fog and the fading light of day, now ma.s.sed together, now disentangling and gliding away each to its own destination.

More often he looked beyond to the low-lying land round which the river curved, meadows half under water, deserted, immeasurable, seeming to float on the pale waters. How they reminded him of the province he had left! How they spoke to him! Neither the rolling of trucks, nor the whistle of commanding officers, nor the voices of the thousands of men of all nations unloading their s.h.i.+ps round about him could draw away his thoughts. Nor did he feel any interest in the great city that extended behind him, and whence at times, amid the noise and bustle of the quay, came the sound of peals of bells such as he had never yet heard. But the time was drawing near. He knew this by the increasing agitation within him. The tramp of an approaching body of people made him turn his head; they were emigrants coming out of the sheds where they had been penned in by the agents, forming a long grey stream, seen through the mist. They come nearer, the foremost making their way through the casks and piles of sacks heaped upon the quay, and crossing the muddy gangway, hasten to secure the best places between decks; others follow, a confused ma.s.s of men, women, and children. Young and old are hard to distinguish; like tears, all look alike; all have the same sad look in their eyes; all are wearing their oldest clothes for the voyage: shapeless coats, jerseys, old mantles, kerchiefs over the women's heads, patched petticoats, odd garments in which they have worked and toiled many a day. They rub against Andre Lumineau, sitting on the bundle of skins, and pay no heed to him. They do not speak to one another, but in their hurried progress families form into distinct groups; mothers holding their children by the hand and s.h.i.+elding them from the wind, fathers with elbows extended protecting them from the pressure. All are carrying something: a bundle of clothing, a loaf of bread, a handbag tied together with string. All have made the same pause at the same place.

As they turn in from the streets through the dock gates, they straighten themselves and stretch out their necks to look across, ever in the same direction, to the plains of the Scheldt, where a golden s.h.i.+mmer through the fog denotes the quarter of the setting sun; and, as though it were their own, they gaze upon a solitary little clock tower which rises out of the misty distance. Then they turn into the docks, find which is their boat, the steam already up, the windla.s.s at work, the bridge black with emigrants. And their courage fails, they are afraid; many among them would fain turn back. But for them there is no turning back, they must embark, their tickets tremble in their shaking hands. In spirit only they return to the old country, to the poverty they have anathematized and now regret; to the deserted rooms, the suburbs, the factories, the country sides where once was "home." Pale and nerveless the living stream suffers itself to be swept on, and embarks.

For a long time Andre Lumineau looked on without joining the crowd. He was seeking a fellow-countryman. Seeing none, he at last put himself in line with the others; he was wearing his military cloak, the b.u.t.tons of which had been changed, and was carrying the black portmanteau that five days ago reposed in the hayloft of Fromentiere.

His neighbours glanced at him with indifference, accepting him without remark.

Among them he crossed the quay, mounted the gangway, and stepped on board, the s.h.i.+p already swaying with the motion of the river. Then while others in the throng who had friends or relations with them were walking the decks in groups, or examining the machinery, or inspecting the cabins, he leaned over the side of the boat at the stern trying to distinguish the river and the grey meadow land, for memories were rus.h.i.+ng thickly upon him, and his courage was nigh to deserting him.

But doubtless the fog had deepened, for he saw nothing.

Beside him, hunched up upon the seat, was an old woman with still fresh complexion, wrapped in a black cloak with a cape to it, her coif fastened with a pair of gold pins, and rocking a child in her arms.

Andre took no notice of her. But she, unable to fix her eyes anywhere in the bustle and confusion of a s.h.i.+p on the point of departure, raised them every now and then to the stranger standing beside her, who so surely was thinking of the home he was leaving. Perhaps she had a son of the same age. The feeling of pity grew in her and albeit, well knowing that her neighbour would not understand her language, the old woman said:

"U heeft pyn."

After she had repeated it several times he understood by the word "pain" and the intonation with which it was said, that the woman asked, "You are in sorrow?" and answered:

"Yes, madame."

The old mother took Driot's hand in her soft shrivelled one, all cold and damp with the fog, and stroked it tenderly, and the young Vendeen broke down utterly and wept, thinking of bygone caresses from his old mother, who, too, had worn a white coif and gold pins on grand occasions.

Mist and fog were sweeping over the Marais of La Vendee, as over the plains of the Scheldt, driven by gusts of wind.

At times an expression of anguish crossed the face of Toussaint Lumineau as he followed with his eyes the quivering points of the osiers Rousille held out to him, as though they had been the masts of s.h.i.+ps labouring in the ocean. At other times he would look long and lingeringly at his one remaining child, and Rousille knew that she was fair to look upon. A violent squall struck the elm-trees, stripping them clear of leaves, and beating their branches against the roof of La Fromentiere. The rainspouts, the tiles, the rafters and walls, the very lizards in the barn groaned and creaked together--and the storm-cry groaned, wildly and madly, over the Marais.

Three hundred leagues away the melancholy whistle of a sirene awoke the echoes, the screw of a huge steamer parted the waters of the river and drew away slowly from sh.o.r.e, as though yet half inert and drifting. No sooner did the emigrants, outcasts of the old world, poor and hopelessly miserable, feel themselves afloat, than they were terrified. The thoughts of all on board flew back to their deserted homes. It was in the darkness of night that Andre Lumineau went forth.

The farmer threw back a handful of osiers into the vat, saying:

"Let us go in. My old hands can work no longer."

But he did not stir. The man, alone, ceased chopping the poles of chestnut wood, and left the barn. Rousille, seeing that her father made no movement to rise, stayed where she was.

CHAPTER XVI.

HER FATHER'S BIDDING.

Evening had come, the evening of a February day, which casts its shadow so soon. Through the door of the barn came only a deceptive gleam, like that of a smouldering cinder, blotting out all form.

Toussaint Lumineau's arms had sunk on either side of his body; still sitting on the joist, his face uplifted in the dusk, he waited till the man should have crossed the yard. When he had seen the door of the house-place, where Mathurin was watching, open and shut, he lowered his eyes to his daughter.

"Rousille," he said, "are you still of the same mind concerning Jean Nesmy?"

The girl, kneeling on the ground, her profile indistinct in the darkness, slowly raised her head and stooped forward as though better to see him who spoke in so unexpected a manner. But she had nothing to conceal, she was not one of those who are timid and fearful; she only quieted her beating heart, which could have cried aloud with joy, and said, with apparent calm:

"Always, father. I have given him my love, and shall never withdraw it. Now that Andre is gone, I quite understand that I cannot leave you to go and live in the Bocage. But I shall never marry; I will stay with you and serve you."

"Then you will not forsake me as they have done?"

"No, father, never."

Her father rested his hand upon her shoulder, and the girl felt herself enveloped in a tenderness. .h.i.therto unknown. A hymn of thanksgiving pa.s.sed from soul to soul. Around them the wind and rain were raging.

"Rousille," resumed the farmer, "I have no longer a son to lean upon.

Andre was the last to betray me. Francois has refused to come back.

And yet La Fromentiere must continue ours."

A firm, sweet voice answered:

"It must."

"Then, little one," continued her father, "your wedding bells must ring!"

Rousille dared not understand. Still on her knees she drew a little closer so as to touch her father. She longed that daylight would come back to reveal the expression of the eyes fixed upon her. But the darkness was impenetrable.

"I had always hoped," continued the farmer, "that there would be one of my name to carry on the farm after me. G.o.d has refused me my desire. As for you, Rousille, I should have liked to have given you to a Maraichin like ourselves; one in like position, and from our part. Perhaps it was pride. Things have not turned out according to my wishes. Do you think that Jean Nesmy will consent to come back to La Fromentiere?"

"I am certain of it! I can answer for him. He will come back!"