The Frontier

As for him, he resumed his walk between the terrace and the drawing-room. He strode with long, even steps, holding his body erect, his chest flung out and his hands in the pockets of his jacket, a blue-drill gardening-jacket, with the point of a pruning-shears and the stem of a pipe sticking out of it. He was tall and broad-shouldered; and his fresh-coloured face seemed young still, in spite of the fringe of white beard in which it was framed.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "what a treat to set eyes upon our dear Philippe again! It must be three years since we saw him last. Yes, of course, not since his appointment as professor of history in Paris. By Jove, the chap has made his way in the world! What a time we shall give him during the fortnight that he's with us! Walking … exercise… He's all for the open-air life, like old Morestal!"

He began to laugh:

"Shall I tell you what would be the thing for him? Six months in camp between this and Berlin!"

"I'm not afraid," she declared. "He's been through the Normal School. The professors keep to their garrisons in time of war."

"What nonsense are you talking now?"

"The school-master told me so."

He gave a start:

"What! Do you mean to say you still speak to that dastard?"

"He's quite a decent man," she replied.

"He! A decent man! With theories like his!"

She hurried from the room, to escape the explosion. But Morestal was fairly started:

"Yes, yes, theories! I insist upon the word: theories! As a district-councillor, as Mayor of Saint-Élophe, I have the right to be present at his lessons. Oh, you have no idea of his way of teaching the history of France!.. In my time, the heroes were the Chevalier d'Assas, Bayard, La Tour d'Auvergne, all those beggars who shed lustre on our country. Nowadays, it's Mossieu Étienne Marcel, Mossieu Dolet… Oh, a nice set of theories, theirs!"

He barred the way to his wife, as she entered the room again, and roared in her face:

"Do you know why Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo?"

"I can't find that large breakfast-cup anywhere," said Mme. Morestal, engrossed in her occupation.

"Well, just ask your school-master; he'll give you the latest up-to-date theories about Napoleon."

"I put it down here, on this chest, with my own hand."

"But there, they're doing all they can to distort the children's minds."

"It spoils my set."

"Oh, I swear to you, in the old days, we'd have ducked our school-master in the horse-pond, if he had dared… But, by Jove, France had a place of her own in the world then! And such a place!

… That was the time of Solferino!.. Of Magenta!.. We weren't satisfied with chucking down frontier-posts in those days: we crossed the frontiers … and at the double, believe me…"

He stopped, hesitating, pricking up his ears. Trumpet-blasts sounded in the distance, ringing from valley to valley, echoing and re-echoing against the obstacles formed by the great granite rocks and dying away to right and left, as though stifled by the shadow of the forests.

He whispered, excitedly:

"The French bugle…"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, there are troops of Alpines manoeuvring … a company from Noirmont… Listen … listen… What gaiety!.. What swagger!.. I tell you, close to the frontier like this, it takes such an air…"

She listened too, seized with the same excitement, and asked, anxiously:

"Do you really think that war is possible?"

"Yes," he replied, "I do."

They were silent for a moment. And Morestal continued:

"It's a presentiment with me… We shall have it all over again, as in 1870… And, mark you, I hope that this time …"

She put down her breakfast-cup, which she had found in a cupboard, and, leaning on her husband's arm:

"I say, the boy's coming … with his wife. She's a dear girl and we're very fond of her… I want the house to look nice for them, bright and full of flowers… Go and pick the best you have in your garden."

He smiled:

"That's another way of saying that I'm boring you, eh? I can't help it. I shall be just the same to my dying day. The wound is too deep ever to heal."

They looked at each other for a while with a great gentleness, like two old travelling-companions, who, from time to time, for no particular reason, stop, exchange glances or thoughts and then resume their journey.

He asked:

"Must I cut my roses? My Gloires de Dijon?"

"Yes."

"Come along then! I'll be a hero!"

***

Morestal, the son and grandson of well-to-do farmers, had increased his fathers' fortune tenfold by setting up a mechanical saw-yard at Saint-Élophe, the big neighbouring village. He was a plain, blunt man, as he himself used to say, "with no false bottom, nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeves;" just a few moral ideas to guide his course through life, ideas as old and simple as could be. And those few ideas themselves were subject to a principle that governed his whole existence and ruled all his actions, the love of his country, which, in Morestal, stood for regret for the past, hatred of the present and, especially, the bitter recollection of defeat.

Elected Mayor of Saint-Élophe and a district-councillor, he sold his works and built, within view of the frontier, on the site of a ruined mill, a large house designed after his own plans and constructed, so to speak, under his own eyes. The Morestals had lived here for the last ten years, with their two servants: Victor, a decent, stout, jolly-faced man, and Catherine, a Breton woman who had nursed Philippe as a baby.

They saw but few people, outside a small number of friends, of whom the most frequent visitors were the special commissary of the government, Jorancé, and his daughter Suzanne.

The Old Mill occupied the round summit of a hill with slopes shelving down in a series of fairly large gardens, which Morestal cultivated with genuine enthusiasm. The property was surrounded by a high wall, the top of which was finished off with an iron trellis bristling with spikes. A spring leapt from place to place and fell in cascades to the bottom of the rocks decked with wild flowers, moss, lichen and maiden-hair ferns.

***

Morestal picked a great armful of flowers, laid waste his rose-garden, sacrificed all the Gloires de Dijon of which he was so proud and returned to the drawing-room, where he himself arranged the bunches in large glass vases.

The room, a sort of hall occupying the centre of the house, with beams of timber showing and a huge chimney covered with gleaming brasses, the room was bright and cheerful and open at both fronts: to the east, on the terrace, by a long bay; to the west, by two windows, on the garden, which it overlooked from the height of a first floor.

The walls were covered with War Office maps, Home Office maps, district maps. There was an oak gun-rack with twelve rifles, all alike and of the latest pattern. Beside it, nailed flat to the wall and roughly stitched together, were three dirty, worn, tattered strips of bunting, blue, white and red.