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His brother, about to leave for Vezins on vacation, was told of the specimens which he wanted to complete his collection; for although he had never set foot there since his first departure, he recalled, with remarkable precision, all the plants that grew in his native countryside; their haunts, their singularities, and the characteristics by which one could not fail to recognize them: as well as all the places which they chose by preference, where he used to wander as an urchin; the Parnassia palustris, "which springs up in the damp meadows, below the beech-wood to the west of the village; which bears a superb white flower at the top of a slightly twisted stem, having an oval leaf about its middle"; the purple digitalis, "whose long spindles of great red flowers, speckled with white inside, and shaped like the fingers of a glove," border a certain road; all the ferns that grow on the wastes, "amid which it is often no easy task to recollect one's whereabouts," and on the arid hills all the heathers, pink, white, and bluish, with different foliage, "of which the innumerable species do not, however, very greatly differ."
He joined as usual in our midday dinner; and after dinner, still as usual, took a walk with me and Maud. It happened to be through the beech-wood, almost the identical path that I remembered taking, years and years ago, with John and Ursula.
Thus, almost every evening, we used to spend an hour or more, pacing up and down, or sitting in that little hollow under the brow of the Flat, where, as from the topmost seat of a natural amphitheatre, one could see Rose Cottage and the old well-head where the cattle drank; our own green garden-gate, the dark mass of the beech-wood, and far away beyond that Nunneley Hill, where the sun went down.
Passing homeward through the beech-wood, where through the bare tree-tops a light snow was beginning to fall, John said, musingly: "It will be a hard winter we shall have to help our poor people a great deal. Christmas dinners will be much in request." "There's a saying, that the way to an Englishman's heart is through his stomach. So, perhaps, you'll get justice by spring."
She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted it changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood, where the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous, terror-stricken, driven.
Soft summer days and autumn afternoons, spent under the beech-wood, or on the Flat. Quiet winter evenings, all to ourselves Maud and her mother working, Walter drawing. The father sitting with his back to the lamp its light making a radiance over his brow and white bald crown, and as it thrilled through the curls behind, restoring somewhat of the youthful colour to his fading hair.
Oh, to be at home, in his own beech-wood! But the journey in this weather would be purgatorial. Meantime, there was his walk; and he decided, prosaically, to fortify himself with a slab of chocolate. Instead still more prosaically, he fell sound asleep.... But sleep, in an unnatural position, begets dreams. And Roy dreamed of Lance; of that last awful day when he raved incessantly of Rose.
Or me wilt thou bid to thy grave-mound because thy battle-wrath May nothing more be bridled than the whirl wind on his path? So hearken and do my bidding, for the hauberk shalt thou bear E'en when the other warriors cast off their battle-gear. So come thou, come unwounded from the war-field of the south, And sit with me in the beech-wood, and kiss me, eyes and mouth."
Temple and mademoiselle did most of the conversation, which related to glimpses of scenery, pine, oak, beech-wood, and lake-water, until we gained the plateau where the tower stood, when the giant groom trotted to the front, and worked a clear way for us through a mass of travelling sight-seers, and she leaned to me, talking quite inaudibly amid the laughter and chatting.
As he spoke, the music of our tirailleurs' bugles arose from the glen in front of our centre, where, in a thick beech-wood, the light infantry regiments were posted. "What is it, D'Esterre?" said he to an officer who galloped up at the moment. "They say the Russian Guard, sir, is moving to the front; our skirmishers have orders to fall back without firing."
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