Part 18 (1/2)
The lieutenant was visibly trying to find out how far he could go.
He was in an annexed country; many incidents of daily life had taught him that. He did not care about renewing the experience. He was feeling his way. Should he promise a call? He did not know yet.
And this uncertainty, so contrary to his energetic nature; this caution, so wounding to his pride--made him hold up his head as if he were going to pick up a challenge.
Jean, on his side, was disturbed. This simple thing, the receiving a former comrade, seemed to him now a delicate problem to solve.
Personally he should have inclined towards the affirmative. But neither Madame Oberle nor the grandfather would admit any exception to the rule so strictly kept up to now--that no Germans, except quick and commonplace business men, should be admitted to the house of the old protesting deputy. They would never consent. But it was hard for Jean to show himself less tolerant in Strasburg than he had been in Munich, and at the first meeting on Alsatian ground to offend the young officer who had come to him with hand outstretched.
He tried at least to put a note of cordiality into his answer:
”I will come and see you, dear Farnow, with pleasure.”
The German understood, frowned, and was silent. Evidently others had refused even to visit him. He did not meet in Oberle that systematic and complete hostility. His anger did not last, or he did not show it. He reached out his slender hand, the wrist of which looked like a bundle of steel threads covered with skin, and with the tips of his fingers he touched the hilt of his sword, which had not left his side.
”I shall be charmed,” he said at last.
He ordered a bottle of Burgundy, and having filled Jean's gla.s.s and his own, drank.
”To your return to Alsheim!” he said.
Then, drinking it in a draught, he placed the gla.s.s upon the table.
”I am really very pleased to see you again. I live pretty well alone, and you know my tastes outside my profession, which I adore, above which I place nothing whatever, nothing if it be not G.o.d, who is the great judge of it. I love hunting best--I think man is made to move in large s.p.a.ces, to strengthen his power and his dominion over the beasts, when he has not the occasion to do it over his kind. For me there is no pleasure to equal it. Apropos of this, it seems that M. Oberle has been ousted from his hunting rights?”
”Yes,” said Jean; ”he has given them up almost entirely----”
”Would you like to have a turn at my place? I have rented some shooting near Haguenau, half wood and half plain; I have roebuck which come from the forest--the ancient Sacred Forest; I have hares and pheasants, and snipe at the time of pa.s.sage; and if you like glowworms, I have some who fly under the pine-trees and s.h.i.+ne like the lances of my Hussars.”
The conversation ran on for a while on this subject. Then Farnow finished the bottle of Carolis wine with Jean, and lifting the hawthorn which beflowered his epaulet and letting it drop to the ground, said:
”If you will allow me, Oberle, I will go some way with you. What direction do you take?”
”Towards the University!”
”That is my way.”
The two young men got up together. They were nearly of the same height and figure; both were of an energetic type, although different in expression--Oberle, careful to relax all that was too serious in his face when at rest; Farnow exaggerating the harshness of his whole personality. The young lieutenant drew down his tunic to take out the creases, took from a chair his flat cap decorated in front with a c.o.c.kade of the Prussian colours, and walking first with a studied stiffness, half turned towards the table where the commandant and the captain were sitting, saluted them with an almost invisible and several times repeated inclination of the body. The respectful good-fellows.h.i.+p of a short time ago was not now in place.
The two chiefs from habit inspected this lieutenant leaving Carolis.
Gentlemen themselves, very jealous of the honour of their corps, having learned by heart all the articles of the code of the perfect officer, they interested themselves in all that had to do with the conduct, the att.i.tude, the dress, and the speech of a subordinate, who is the object of public criticism. The examination must have been favourable to Farnow. With a friendly and protective movement of his hand, the commandant dismissed him.
As soon as they were in the street Farnow asked:
”Well, they were perfect, were they not?”
”Yes.”
”How you say that? Did you not find them kindly? You ought to see them in the service.”
”On the contrary,” interrupted Jean, ”they were too amiable. I see every day more and more that my father must have humiliated himself very much to be so honoured in high places. And that wounds me, Farnow.”