Part 14 (1/2)
”Both on the farm. The eldest exempted his brother. They are fine fellows who do not mind hard work; you will see them to-morrow at ma.s.s in Sallertaine.”
With a light, happy laugh the young soldier said:
”Ah, by-the-bye, one must get into the way of attending ma.s.s again, I suppose. In the army devotion did not trouble us much. Sundays were rather a favourite day for our chiefs to hold reviews ... they don't look at things as you do. But you see, father, I will soon accustom myself to going to ma.s.s again--even to high ma.s.s--it is not that that will be the difficulty.”
”What then, my lad?”
They were both silent for a moment. Another turn in the road had revealed La Fromentiere on their left. With a simultaneous movement father and son had risen and were standing almost upright, one hand on the front of the carriage, contemplating the property, La Rousse trotting along, unheeded by the driver.
A great, tender rush of feeling, cruel withal, paled Andre's face. The land was welcoming a son of its soil; all the scattered recollections of his childhood awoke and called aloud to him; there was not a hillock that did not greet him, not a furze-bush, not a lopped elm but had a friendly look for him. But one and all, too, recalled the brother and sister he would find there no more.
Without turning his eyes from La Fromentiere Driot replied, after a silence, and without naming those of whom he was thinking:
”I will go and see them at La Roche ... of course I will ... but brotherhood is not altogether the same when one has broken from the old place....”
An instant later he was holding Rousille, who had run out into the courtyard to meet him, high in his arms, looking her full in the face, into the very depth of her eyes, with the gaze of a brother whose military experience has made him somewhat suspicious of maidenly virtue; but seeing that her eyes met his in all frankness, but with something of a sad expression, he kissed her, and set her down on terra firma again.
”Always the same, little sister! That's good; but a little sorry at having lost Lionore, eh?”
”You can see that?”
”Ah well! But I have come now. We will try to get on without them, won't we?”
”And I?” put in a thick voice.
The soldier left Rousille, and hastened to Mathurin who was coming towards them; dragging his limbs after him.
”Do not hurry, old man! I must do the running for both; I have sound legs.”
Stooping over his crutches, and stroking his elder brother's tawny head, Andre could find no words of comfort. Coming fresh from a military centre where all was young, active, alert, he could not hide the distress and a certain feeling of horror with which Mathurin's infirmity inspired him. However, compelled by the other's anxious look, which seemed to ask, ”What do you think of me?--you who come back, judge--can I live?” he hastened to say:
”My poor old man, I am so glad to find you like this. So you have not got any worse?”
With a shrug of the shoulders, the cripple angrily pushed him away.
”I am much better,” he returned. ”You will see. I walk more easily. I can stand as firmly as I did three years ago, when I thought I was getting well ... and, for a beginning, I am going with you to ma.s.s at Sallertaine to-morrow.”
To avoid answering, the young soldier turned to meet his father, who, having unharnessed La Rousse, was coming towards them, with happy, smiling face, having eyes only for his Driot come home to him again.
The men, one following the other, turned towards the house, and went in; but on this happy day it was the farmer who held back, and the returned son who went first. Alert, interested as on a first visit, rejoiced to be made the object of the eyes and ears of the others, he did not sit down but wandered from room to room, the blue and red uniform an unfamiliar sight in this home of the toilers of the field.
To amuse his auditors he made the old walls ring again with words of command; knocked up against corners to feel the strength of the ma.s.sive stones; opened the cupboard, cut himself a slice of bread, and tasted it, with a, ”Better than the bread of Algiers, my friends. This is Rousille's baking, eh? It is excellent; we shall have a good farmer's wife in her.”
Followed everywhere by his father, Mathurin, and Marie-Rose, he went from the house into the stables and barns.
”I do not know these oxen,” said he.
”No, my boy, I bought them last winter at Beauvoir fair.”