Part 14 (1/2)
Odile went away. Jean admired the healthy and beautiful woman disappearing along the road. She walked well, without swinging her body. Above the white neck, Jean placed in imagination the big black bows of the Alsatian women who live beyond Strasburg. She no longer raised her eyes towards the cherry-trees. She let her skirt trail, and it swept the gra.s.s, making a little dust fly, and the petals of cherry blossoms, which flew about a little in the wind before dying.
The day after to-morrow was slow in coming. Jean had said to his father:
”Some pilgrims are going up to Sainte Odile on Sat.u.r.day to hear the Easter bells. I have never been there at this time. If you do not mind, it is an excursion I should much like to make.”
He did not mind.
Jean opened his window when he woke that morning. There was a thick fog. The fields near the house were invisible.
”You will not go in this weather?” asked Lucienne, when she saw her brother come into the dining-room, where she was drinking her chocolate.
”Yes, I shall go.”
”You will see nothing.”
”I shall hear.”
”Is it then so extraordinary?”
”Yes.”
”Then will you take me?”
She did not wish to go to Sainte Odile. Dressed in a light morning-gown trimmed with lace, and drinking her chocolate in little sips, she had no intention whatever of doing anything but stop her brother on his way and kiss him.
”Seriously, are you making a kind of pilgrimage up there?”
”Yes--a kind of----”
Bending at this moment over her cup, she did not see the quick smile which accompanied the words. She answered a little bitterly:
”You know I'm not devout. I fulfil my obligations as a Catholic but poorly, and the practices of devotion do not tempt me. But you, you have more faith than I have. I am going to tell you what you ought to ask for--it will be worth a pilgrimage, I can tell you.” She changed her tone, and her voice became suddenly pa.s.sionate; she raised her eyebrows, her eyes were at once self-willed and affectionate, and she said:
”You must ask for that miracle of perfection among women who will live with you here. When I am married and go away life will be terrible for you here. You will have to bear all alone the misery of the family quarrels, and the suspicions of the peasants. You will have no one to pity you. That is the part to play. Ask for some one strong enough, gay enough, and with a conscience fine enough to do it, since you would live at Alsheim. You see, my thought is that of a friend.”
”Of a great friend.”
They kissed each other.
”Good-bye, Pilgrim, good-bye--good luck!”
”Good-bye.”
Jean got away. He was soon in the park, turned after pa.s.sing through the gate, went through the hop-fields and the vineyards, and so into the forest.
The forest was also full of mist. The serried ma.s.ses of pines, which took the hill as it were by storm, appeared grey from one bank of the stream to the other, and were almost immediately lost in a thick mist without sun and without shadow.
Jean did not go up the beaten track. He went gaily climbing up the woods when not too steep, and stopping sometimes to take breath and to listen if he could not catch above as below, somewhere in the mysterious and impenetrable mists of the mountain, either the voice of Odile or the chant of the pilgrims. But no; he only heard the rus.h.i.+ng of water, or perhaps the voice of some one calling to his dog, or the timid call of some poor peasant of Obernai picking up dead sticks with his child, in spite of the regulation which allows wood-picking only on Thursdays. The saucepan must boil on Easter Sunday! And was not this fog which hid everything a divine protection against the forest guard?
Jean experienced great pleasure from this solitary, stiff climb. As he went up he thought of Odile more and more, and he was more and more glad that he had chosen this holy place of Alsace in which to meet her--and this day--doubly affecting. Everywhere around him the beautiful scalefern which carpets the rocky slopes unfolded its velvet fronds. On all last year's shoots of honeysuckle there were little leaves; the first strawberries were in flower, and the first lilies of the valley. The geraniums, which are so fine in Sainte Odile, lifted their hairy stalks, and the mult.i.tude of whortle berries and bilberries and raspberries, that is the entire undergrowth, whole fields of it, began to pour out on the breeze the perfume of their moving sap. The fog retained these few scents and kept them in like a net work on the sides of the Vosges.