Chapter 20

THE TREADING OF THE GRAPES

The weather for the vintage was splendid. A slight frost in the morning curled and yellowed the vine-leaves, giving, as it does in these provinces, the last touch of ripeness to the grapes, so that they begin to burst their thin skins and to drop from the bunches. This is the perfect moment. Crickets sing; the land is alive with springing grasshoppers; harmless snakes rustle through the grass and bask in the warm sand. The sun shines through an air so light, so crystal clear, that men and beasts hardly know fatigue, though they work under his beams all day long. The evening closes early with hovering mists in the low places, the sudden chill of a country still wild and half-cultivated. This was the moment, in an older France, chosen for the Seigneur's vintage; the peasants had to deal with their own little vineyards either earlier or later, and thus their wine was never so good as his.

The laws of the vintage were old; they were handed down through centuries, from the days of the Romans, but the Revolution swept them and their obligations away. Napoleon's code knew nothing of them. Yet private individuals, when they were clever men like Urbain de la Marinière, were sure by hook or by crook to arrange the vintage at the time that suited their private arrangements. The ancient connection, once of lord and vassal, now of landlord and tenant, between La Marinière and La Joubardière, had been hardly at all disturbed by the Revolution. Joubard was not the man to turn against the old friends of his family. Besides, he believed in the waning moon. So when Monsieur Urbain hit on the precise moment for his own vintage, and summoned him and his people, as well as Monsieur Joseph's people, to help at La Marinière and to let their own vineyards wait a week or two, he made no grievance of it.

"The weather will last," he said, when Martin grumbled, "and the moon will be better. Besides, those slopes are always forwarder than ours. And we shall lose nothing by helping the master. But if we did, I would rather spoil my own wine than disappoint Monsieur Angelot."

"You and the mother are in love with his pretty face," growled the soldier. "Why doesn't he go to the war, and fight for his country, and come home a fine man like his cousin? Ah, you think there are different ways of coming home, do you? Well, if you ask me, I am prouder of my lost limbs than the young captain is of his rank and his uniform."

"And Monsieur Angelot honours you, poor Martin, more than he does his smart cousin," said Joubard. "Allons! Our vintage will not suffer, now that you are at home to see to it. And they will not take you away again, my son!"

So, in those first days of October, the vintage was in full swing at La Marinière. All the peasants came to help, men and women, old and young. Dark, grave faces that matched oddly with a babel of voices and gay laughter; broad straw hats as sunburnt as their owners, white caps, blue shoulders, bobbing among the long rows of bronzed vines loaded with fruit. The vintagers cut off the bunches with sharp knives and dropped them into wooden pails; these were emptied into great _hottes_ on men's backs, and carried to the carts, full of barrels, waiting in the lane. Slowly the patient white horses tramped down to the yard of La Marinière. There, in its own whitewashed building with the wide-arched door, the stone wine-press was ready; the grapes were thrown in in heaps, the barefooted men, splashed red to their waists, trod and crushed with a swishing sound; the red juice ran down in a stream, foaming into the vault beneath, into the vats where it was to ferment and become wine.

Angelot worked in the vineyard like anybody else, sometimes cutting grapes, sometimes leading the carts up and down, and feeding the horses with bunches of grapes, which they munched contentedly. So did the dogs who waited on the vintagers, not daring to venture in among the vines, but sitting outside with eager eyes and wagging tails till their portion of fruit was thrown to them. And the workers themselves, and the little bullet-headed boys and white-capped girls who played about the vineyard, all ate grapes to their satisfaction; for the crop was splendid, and there was no need to stint anybody.

A festal spirit reigned over all. Though most of these people were good Christians, ready to thank God for His gifts without any intention of misusing them, there was something of the old pagan feeling about. Purely a country feeling, a natural religion much older than Christianity, as Urbain remarked to the old Curé, who agreed with Madame Urbain in not quite caring for this way of looking at it. But he was accustomed to such views from Urbain, who never, for instance, let the Rogation processions pass singing through the fields without pointing out their descent from something ancient, pagan, devilish.

"But if you have cast out the devil, dear Curé, what does it matter?" said Urbain. "The beauty alone is left. And all true beauty is good by nature; and what is not beautiful is not good. You want nothing more, it seems to me."

"Ah, your philosophies!" sighed the old man.

However, in different ways, the vintage attracted everybody. Monsieur Joseph and Henriette were there, very busy among the vines; these people would help them another day. A party strolled across from Lancilly; Monsieur and Madame de Sainfoy, idly admiring the pretty scene; Captain Georges, casting superior glances, Sophie and Lucie hanging on their splendid brother's looks and words. They were allowed to walk with him, and were very happy, Mademoiselle Moineau having been left behind in charge of Hélène. The La Marinière vineyards were not considered safe ground for that young culprit. She had to be contented with a distant view, and could see from her window the white horses crawling up and down the steep hill.

Some patronising notice was bestowed by the people from the château on Martin Joubard, who moved slowly about among the old neighbours, a hero to them all, whatever their political opinions might be. For, after all, he went to the wars against his will; and when there he had done his duty; and his enthusiasm for the Emperor was a new spirit in that country, which roused curiosity, if nothing more. No one could fail to rejoice with old Joubard and his wife. Whatever they themselves thought, and hardly dared to say, was said for them by their neighbours. Few indeed had come back, of the conscript lads of Anjou. How much better, people said, to have Martin maimed than not at all. What was a wooden leg? a very useful appendage, on which Martin might limp actively about the farms; and the loss of an arm did not matter so much, for, by his father's account, he could do everything but hold and fire a gun with the one left to him. His mother had dressed him in clean country clothes, laying aside his tattered old uniform in a chest, for he would not have it destroyed. All the girls in the two villages were running after Martin, who had always been popular; all the men wanted to hear his tales of the war. He was certainly the hero of Monsieur Urbain's vintage, the centre figure of that sunny day.

Angelot felt himself drawn to the soldier, whose return home had touched him with so strange a thrill. There was a spark of the heroic in this young fellow. Angelot found himself watching him, listening to him, perhaps as a kind of refuge from the cold looks of his relations; for even Riette dared not run after him as of old.

When purple shadows began to lie long in the yellow evening glow, and the crickets sang louder than ever, and sweet scents came out of the warm ground--when the day's work was nearly done, Angelot walked away with Martin from the vineyard. He wanted some of those stirring stories to himself, it seemed. If one must go away and fight, if the old Angevin life became once for all impossible, then might it not be better under the eagles, as his wise father thought, than with that army and on that side for which, in spite of his mother and his uncle, he could not rouse in himself any enthusiasm? True, he liked little he knew of the Empire and its men, except this poor lamed conscript; but always in his whirling thoughts there was that will-o'-the-wisp, that wavering star of hope that Hélène's father had seemed to offer him. Could he forsake, for any other reason, the sight of the forbidden walls that held her!

He and Martin went away up the lane together, and climbed along the side of the moor towards La Joubardière, Martin telling wild stories of battles and sieges, of long marching and privation, Angelot listening fascinated, as he helped the crippled soldier over the rough ground.

Martin had been wounded under Suchet at the siege of Tortosa, so that he had seen little of the more recent events of the war, but his personal adventures, before and since, had been exciting; and not the least wonderful part of the story was his wandering life, a wounded beggar on his way back across the Pyrenees into his own country. As Angelot listened, the politics of French parties faded away, and he only realised that this was a Frenchman, fighting the enemies of France and giving his young life for her without a word of regret. Napoleon might have conquered the world, it seemed, with such conscript soldiers as this. These, not men like Ratoneau or Georges de Sainfoy, were the heroes of the war.

The sun had set, and swift darkness was coming down, before the young men reached La Joubardière. The lane, the same in which the two carriages had met, ran in a hollow between high banks studded with oaks like gigantic toadstools, adding to the deepness of the shadow.

"There are people following us," said Angelot.

He interrupted Martin in the midst of one of his stories; the soldier was standing still, leaning on his stick, and laughed with a touch of annoyance, for he was growing vain of his skill as a story-teller.

"My father and mother," he said. "And here I am forgetting their soup, which I promised to have ready."

"It is not--I know Maître Joubard's step," said Angelot.

"Some of the vintagers--" Martin was beginning, when he and Angelot were surrounded suddenly in the dusk by several men, two of whom seized Angelot by the shoulders.

"I arrest you, in the Emperor's name," said a third man.

Angelot struggled to free himself, and Martin lifted his stick threateningly.

"What is this, rascals? Do you know what you are saying? This is the son of Monsieur de la Marinière."

"It is some mistake. You have no business to arrest me. You will answer for this, police! You will answer it to Monsieur le Préfet. He is ill, and cannot have given the order. Show me your authority."

"Never mind our authority," said the chief. "We don't want Monsieur de la Marinière, but we do want his son. Are you coming quietly, young gentleman, or must we put on handcuffs? Get out of the way with your stick, you one-legged fellow, or I shall have to punish you."

"Keep back, Martin; you can do nothing. Go and tell my father," said Angelot. He shook off the men's hands, and stood still and upright in the midst of them.

"Why do you arrest me?" he said. "Where are you going to take me?"

"Ah, that you will see," said the police officer.

The snarling malice in his voice seemed suddenly familiar to Angelot.

"Why, I know you--you are--"

"Never mind who I am. It is my business to keep down Chouans."

"But I am not a Chouan!"

"A man is known by his company. Now then--quick march--away!"

"Adieu, Martin! This is all nonsense--I shall soon come back," Angelot cried, as they hustled him on.

A few moments, and the very tramp of their feet was lost in the dusk, for they had dragged their prisoner out of the lane and were crossing the open moor. Martin, in much tribulation, made the best of his way back to meet his father and mother, and with them carried the news to La Marinière.

Half an hour later, Monsieur Urbain, whistling gaily, came back from a pleasant stroll home with his Sainfoy cousins. Everything seemed satisfactory; Adélaïde had been kind, the vintage was splendid. If only Angelot were a sensible boy, there would be nothing left to wish for.

The moon was up, flooding the old yards that were now empty and still. As he came near, he saw Anne waiting for him in the porch, and supposed that the moonlight made her so strangely pale.

"My dearest," he said, as he came up, "there is to be a ball this month at Lancilly, in honour of Georges. But I do not know whether that foolish son of yours will be invited."

Anne looked him in the face; no, it was not the moonlight that made her so pale.

"They have arrested Ange as a Chouan," she said.