Part 32 (1/2)

”That is right, Monica--very right. And when will it be convenient to you?”

”Just the time to let M. de Farnow know about it. You will fix the day and the hour--write to him when he answers you.”

Lucienne, in spite of her want of tenderness, drew closer to her mother that evening. In the little drawing-room, where she worked at crochet for two hours, she sat near Madame Oberle, and with her watchful eyes she followed, or tried to follow, the thoughts on the lined face so mobile and still so expressive. But often one can only partly read what is pa.s.sing in a mind. Neither Lucienne nor Jean guessed the reason which had so quickly prompted Madame Oberle's act of self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RAMPARTS OF OBERNAI

Ten days later, Lucienne and her mother had just entered the family house where Madame Oberle had spent all her childhood, the home of the Biehlers, which lifted its three stories of windows with little green panes, and its fortified gable above the ramparts of Obernai, between two houses of the sixteenth century--just like it.

Madame Oberle had gone upstairs, saying to the caretaker:

”You will receive a gentleman presently who will ask for me.”

In the large room on the first floor which she entered, one of the few rooms which were still furnished, she had seen her parents live and die; the walnut-wood bed, the brown porcelain stove, the chairs covered with woollen velvet which repeated on every seat and every back the same basket of flowers, the crucifix framed under raised gla.s.s, the two views of Italy brought back from a journey in 1837, all remained in the same places and in the same order as in the old days. Instinctively in crossing the threshold she sought the holy water stoup hanging near the lintel, where the old people, when they went into the room, moistened their fingers as on the threshold of a holy abode.

The two women went towards the window. Madame Oberle wore the same black dress she had put on to receive the Prefect of Strasburg.

Lucienne had put on a large brimmed hat of grey straw, trimmed with feathers of the same shade, as if to cover her fair hair with a veil of shadow. Her mother thought her beautiful--and did not say so. She would have hastened to say so if the betrothed had not been he whom they expected, and if the sight of the house, and the memory of the good Alsatian folk who had lived in it, had not made the pain she already felt greater.

She leant against the windows and looked down into the garden full of box-trees clipped into rounded shapes, and flower borders outlined by box, and the winding, narrow paths where she had played, grown up, and dreamed. Beyond the garden there was a walk made on the town ramparts, and between the chestnuts planted there one could see the blue plain.

Lucienne, who had not spoken since the arrival at Obernai, guessing that she would have disturbed a being who was asking herself whether she could continue and complete her sacrifice, came quite close to her mother, and with that intelligence which always took everyone's fancy the first time they heard it, but less the second time:

”You must suffer, mamma,” she said. ”With your ideas, what you are doing is almost heroic!”

The mother did not look up, but her eyelids fluttered more, and quickly.

”You are doing it as a wifely duty, and because of that I admire you. I do not believe I could do what you are doing--give up my individuality to such an extent.”

She did not think she was being cruel.

”And you wish to be married?” asked the mother, raising her head quickly.

”Why, yes; but we do not now look upon marriage quite as you do.”

The mother saw from Lucienne's smile that she would be contending with a fixed idea, and she felt that the hour for discussion was badly chosen. She kept silence.

”I am grateful to you,” continued the young girl. Then after a moment of hesitation:

”Nevertheless, you had another reason besides obeying my father when you agreed to come here--here to receive M. von Farnow.”

She let her eyes wander round the room, and brought them back to the woman with smooth hair--that worn-out and suffering woman--who was her mother. There was no hesitation.

”Yes,” she said.

”I was sure of it. Can you tell me what it is?”