Part 18 (1/2)

So one morning the farmer and Andre made their way up to the little field lying well exposed to the south on the high ground which cuts the road between Chalons and La Fromentiere. Before them they saw nothing but seven rows of vine enclosed by furze hedges, stony ground, and the revolving sails of two wind-mills.

”You begin on one row,” said the farmer, ”I will take the next,” and pulling off their coats, despite the cold, for it meant hard work, they began on their task. Coming up the hill they had talked cheerily to each other; but no sooner did they begin to dig than their spirits sank, and they grew silent, not wanting to impart the thoughts that the work of destruction engendered. If a root, perchance, made very tough resistance, the father once or twice attempted to joke, saying playfully: ”It felt quite comfortable there, and did not want to be turned out,” or something else to that effect. But he soon gave up the attempt. He could not succeed in banis.h.i.+ng from his mind, nor from that of the son working beside him, sad thoughts of the time when the vine prospered, and yielded abundantly the white foaming wine they had drunk so merrily in the old happy days of fetes and gatherings. The contrast of his former prosperity with present hard times fretted him; and as far as he could see, it weighed still more upon the spirits of his Driot.

Thus, in silence, they plied their huge, old-fas.h.i.+oned pickaxes, made to be wielded by giants. The earth flew in showers; the trunks trembled; some few shrivelled leaves left upon the branches fell, and were blown about in the wind with a noise as of broken gla.s.s; now the stem was disclosed, vigorous but warped, covered with green moss, the effects of many a summer dew and rain, and tapering off to the size of a tendril. The marks of pruning made by successive vinedressers were not to be numbered; no one could tell the age of the vineyard. Every year since he could remember anything, Driot had pruned it, dressed it, gathered its grapes, drunk of its juice. And now it was dying.

Each time that he gave the final blow to a root he felt a pang; each time that, seizing a portion of the lifeless fibres he threw it on the heap of dead uprooted stems, he shrugged his shoulders with mingled sorrow and rage. Dead those veins through which the red, joyous sap was wont to rise. Dead the fertile branches once bending under the weight of bunches of grapes, until they rested a golden glory on the ground! Never again would the flowerets, pale stars with drops of honey in each centre, attract the summer gnats, nor diffuse their mignonette-like perfume far over the fields, even to La Fromentiere.

Never again would the children of the farmstead push eager hands through the gaps in the hedge to clutch the bunches within reach!

Never again would the women carry away basketfuls at vintage time. For many a long day wine would be scarce at the farm, and would be no more of ”our own growing.” Something belonging to the family, an hereditary and sacred possession seemed to perish with the vineyard, old and faithful servant of the Lumineaus. Father and son were both so intensely penetrated by the sense of their loss, that, as night descended, and the father raised his pickaxe for a final stroke, he could not help exclaiming:

”It's a hateful work, Driot, we have done to-day.”

All the same, there was a difference between the sadness of father and son. Toussaint Lumineau, as he rooted up the vines, was already thinking of the day when he would plant fresh ones, and in his silent musings had seen his successor gathering in the vintage and drinking the muscadet of the new vineyard. He possessed that love, strong and tried, which rises hopefully after every stroke of misfortune. With Andre hope did not speak, because with him love had waxed feeble.

The two men, their figures indistinct in the darkening day, turned to skirt the gra.s.sy edge of the vineyard, then descended the sloping fields that led towards the farm. With weary, stooping frame, shouldering their heavy implements, they looked across the Marais to the crimson horizon, and at the clouds driven by the wind towards the setting sun. It was a melancholy evening; all around them were furze-bushes, ground uncultivated, hedges devastated, leafless trees, the gloom and chill of autumn. Thus they had gone some two hundred yards before the son could make up his mind to speak, as though feeling that his reply would be too hard for the father, who lived on in the same old groove.

”Yes,” he said, ”the day of the vine is at an end in our land, but it flourishes elsewhere.”

”Where, my Driot?”

In the half dark the son extended his disengaged hand above La Fromentiere, sunk below in the shadows; and the action extended so far, away over the Marais and over La Vendee, that through his stout woollen garments Toussaint Lumineau felt the keen blast of the wind.

”What do other countries matter to us, my Driot,” said he, ”seeing that we are living in our own?”

Did the son understand the anxious tenderness of the words? He answered:

”Because in ours it becomes more and more difficult to live.”

Toussaint Lumineau remembered words, almost similar, spoken by Francois and was silent, trying to explain to himself how it was that Andre, who was neither lazy nor a frequenter of town pleasures, could have fallen upon the very same way of thought. As the men, skirting the brown fields, came nearer home, La Fromentiere with its ma.s.ses of trees rose like a dome of denser darkness, above which the winter night was lighting its first stars. The farmer never entered the beloved precincts of his home without emotion; to-night, more than ever, he experienced its sweetness, dear to him as any bridal promise.

Rousille, hearing their approaching footsteps, opened the door, and raised the lamp high in air, like a signal.

”You are late to-night,” she said.

Before they could make reply, the long-drawn sound of a horn was heard coming from the depths of the Marais, beyond Sallertaine.

”It is the horn of La Seuliere,” cried the voice of Mathurin from within. The two men, followed by Rousille, entered the warm room with its blazing hearth.

Mathurin resumed:

”There's a dance at La Seuliere to-night. Will you come, Driot?”

The cripple, half-rising, supporting himself by his arms against the table with a nervous movement, his eyes glaring with long-suppressed desire, was alike painful to see, and fear-inspiring, as one whose reason was tottering.

”I am not much in the mood for dancing,” returned Andre carelessly, ”but it may do me good to-night.”

Silently the farmer pressed his hand on the shoulder of his afflicted eldest son, and the fevered eyes relaxed their stare, the body obeyed, and fell back upon the bench like a sack of wheat that expands as it touches the ground. The men ate their supper hurriedly; towards the end of the meal Toussaint Lumineau, whose mind had reverted to Andre's words, wis.h.i.+ng to take those of his children to witness whose hearts had never swerved in their loyal love to La Fromentiere, said:

”Would you believe, Mathurin, what foolish stuff this Driot was talking to-night? He declares that vines have had their day with us; that they flourish better elsewhere. But when one plants a vine, one expects it to die some day, does one not?”

”Many enough have died before ours,” responded the cripple roughly.

”We are not more unlucky than our neighbours.”