Part 5 (2/2)
He interrupted himself a moment to see the impression this phrase produced, and he could see nothing, not a movement on the impa.s.sible face of his son, who decidedly was a highly self-controlled man. The implacable desire for justification which governed M. Oberle, made him go on:
”You know that the French language is not favourably looked upon here, my dear Jean. In Bavaria you had a literary and historical education, better from that point of view than you would have had in Strasburg. I was able to desire, without prejudicing your masters against you, that you should have many extra French lessons. In Alsace, you and I would both have suffered for that. Those are the motives which guided me. Experience will show whether I was mistaken. I did it in any case in good faith, and for your good.”
”My dear father,” said Jean, ”I have no right to judge what you have done. What I can tell you is that, thanks to that education I have received, if I have not an unbounded taste or admiration for German civilisation, I have at least the habit of living with the Germans.
And I am persuaded that I could live with them in Alsace.”
The father raised his eyebrows as if he would say, ”I am not so sure of that.”
”My ideas, up to now, have made me no enemy in Germany; and it seems to me that one can direct a saw-mill in an annexed country with the opinions I have just shown you.”
”I hope so,” said M. Oberle simply.
”Then you accept me? I come to you?”
For answer the master pressed his finger on an electric b.u.t.ton.
A man came up the steps which led from the machine hall to the observatory that M. Oberle had had built, and opened the port-hole, and in the opening one saw a square blond beard, long hair, and two eyes like two blue gems.
”Wilhelm,” said the master in German, ”you will make my son conversant with the works, and you will explain to him the purchases we have made for the past six months. From to-morrow he will accompany you in your round of visits to where the fellings and cuttings are being carried out in the interests of the firm.”
The door was shut again.
That young enthusiast, the elegant Jean Oberle, was standing in front of his father. He held out his hand to him and said, pale with joy:
”Now I am again some one in Alsace! How I thank you!”
The father took his son's hand with a somewhat studied effusion. He thought:
”He is the image of his mother! In him I find again the spirit, the words, and the enthusiasm of Monica.” Aloud he said:
”You see, my son, that I have only one aim in view, to make you happy. I have always had it. I agree to your adopting a career quite different from the one I chose for you. Try now to understand our position as your sister understands it.”
Jean went away, and his father, a few minutes later, went out also.
But while M. Joseph Oberle went towards the house, being in haste to see his daughter, the only confidante of his thoughts, and to report the conversation he had just had with Jean, the latter crossed the timber yard to the left, pa.s.sed before the lodge, and took the road to the forest. But he did not go far, because the luncheon hour was approaching. By the road that wound upward he reached the region of the vineyards of Alsheim, beyond the hop-fields which were still bare, where the poles rose tied together, like a stack of arms. His soul was glad. When he came to the entrance of a vineyard which he had known since his earliest childhood, where he had gathered the grapes in the days of long ago, he climbed on to a hill which overlooked the road and the rows of vines at the bottom. In spite of the grey light, in spite of the clouds and the wind, he found his Alsace beautiful, divinely beautiful--Alsace, sloping down very gently in front of him, and becoming a smooth plain with strips of gra.s.s and strips of ploughed land, and whence the villages here and there lifted their tile roofs and the point of their belfries.
Round, isolated trees--leafless because it was winter--resembled dry thistles; some crows were flying, helped by the north wind, and seeking a newly sown spot.
Jean raised his hands, and spread them as if to embrace the expanse of land stretching out from Obernai, which he saw in the farthest undulations to the left, as far as Barr, half buried under the avalanche of pines down the mountain-side. ”I love thee, Alsace, and I have come back to thee!” he cried. He gazed at the village of Alsheim, at the house of red stone which rose a little below him, and which was his; then at the other extremity of the pile of houses, inhabited by the workmen and peasants, he marked a sort of forest promontory which pushed out into the smooth plain. It was an avenue ending in a great group of leafless trees, grey, between which one could see the slopes of a roof. Jean let his eyes rest a long time on this half-hidden dwelling, and said: ”Good day, Alsatian woman! Perhaps I am going to find that I love you. It would be so good to live here with you!”
The bell rang for luncheon, rang out from the Oberles' house, and recalled him to himself. It had a thin, miserable sound, which gave some idea of the immensity of free s.p.a.ce in which the noise vanished away, and the strength of the tide of the wind which carried it away over the lands of Alsace.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST FAMILY MEETING
Jean turned slowly towards this bell which was calling him. He was full of joy at this moment. He was taking possession of a world which, after some years, had just been opened to him and pointed out as his place of habitation, of work, and of happiness. These words played on his troubled mind deliciously. They pursued each other like a troop of porpoises, those travellers on the surface, and other words accompanied them. Family life, comfort, social authority, embellishments, enlargements. The house took to itself a name--”the paternal home.” He looked at it with tenderness, following the alley near the stream; he went up the steps with a feeling of respect, remembering that they had been built by the grandfather to whom the house still belonged, as also all the grounds except the saw-mill and the timber yard.
After having gone across the entrance hall, which extended from the front to the back of the house, he opened the last door on the left.
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