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The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)

Page 9

by Henri Alain-Fournier


  ‘Can I get up?’ he shouted.

  ‘Where are you going, my lad?’ the other boy asked, no longer recognizing him.

  ‘Towards Sainte-Agathe.’

  ‘Then you want to ask Maritain to take you.’

  So now the schoolboy was having to look for this unknown Maritain among the last to leave. He was pointed out to him among the drinkers singing in the kitchen.

  ‘He’s a merrymaker,’ Meaulnes was told. ‘He’ll still be there at three in the morning.’

  For a moment, Meaulnes thought about the anxious young woman, feverish and distressed, who would have to listen to these ebrious peasants singing in the château into the middle of the night. Which rooms was she in? Among these mysterious buildings, which was her window? But there was no sense in him waiting; he had to leave. Once he was back in Sainte-Agathe, everything would become clearer. He would no longer be a runaway schoolboy. He could once more think about the young lady of the manor.

  One by one, the carriages set off, their wheels grating on the gravel in the main drive. And, through the dark, you could see them turn and vanish, laden with women wrapped against the cold and with children in shawls, already falling asleep. Another big wagon, then a charabanc in which the women were pressed shoulder to shoulder, went by, leaving Meaulnes disconcerted on the threshold of the house. Soon, all that would be left was an old berlin driven by a peasant in a smock.

  ‘You can climb aboard,’ he replied, when Augustin asked. ‘We’re going in that direction.’

  Meaulnes struggled to open the door of the antique conveyance, its windows rattling and its hinges creaking. On the seat, in one corner of the carriage, were two quite small children, a boy and a girl, sleeping. They woke up with the noise and the cold air, stretched, looked vaguely around, then shuddered as they snuggled into their corner and went back to sleep.

  The old vehicle was already on its way. Meaulnes shut the door quietly and cautiously took his place in the other corner, then, avidly, struggled to make out through the window the places that he was leaving and the route by which he had come. Despite the dark, he guessed that the carriage was crossing the courtyard and the garden, passing the stairway up to his room, going through the gate and leaving the estate to enter the wood. He could vaguely make out the trunks of the old fir trees as they flew past the window.

  ‘Perhaps we shall meet Frantz de Galais,’ he thought, with beating heart.

  After a short while, in the narrow road, the carriage swung to one side to avoid an obstacle. As far as one could make out in the dark from its massive bulk, it was a caravan that had halted almost in the middle of the road and must have stayed there for the past few days, close to the festivities.

  Once this obstacle was out of the way, the horses set off at a trot. Meaulnes was starting to get tired of looking through the glass and trying in vain to see through the surrounding gloom when suddenly, in the depths of the wood, there was a flash, followed by the sound of a detonation. The horses set off at a gallop, and at first Meaulnes did not know if the coachman in the smock was attempting to hold them back or, on the contrary, urging them on. He tried to open the door. As the handle was on the outside, he made vain efforts to lower the window, shaking it… The children, waking up in a fright, pressed closer to one another, saying nothing. And while he was shaking the window, with his face pressed to the pane, thanks to a bend in the road, he noticed a white shape running along. It was the tall pierrot from the party, haggard and distraught, the gypsy in his carnival dress, carrying in his arms a human body, which he was holding against his chest. Then they vanished.

  In the carriage driving at full gallop through the night, the two children had gone back to sleep. There was no one to whom he could talk about the mysterious events of the previous two days. After going over in his mind for a long time all that he had seen and heard, the young man, too, tired and heavy of heart, abandoned himself to sleep, like a sad child…

  It was not yet dawn when Meaulnes was awakened, the carriage having stopped on the road, by someone knocking on the window. The driver struggled to get the door open and shouted, while the icy night wind was freezing the boy to the marrow of his bones: ‘You’ll have to get out here. Day is breaking. We’re going to turn off here. You’re quite close to Sainte-Agathe.’

  Only half awake, Meaulnes did as he was told, groping mechanically for his hat, which had fallen under the feet of the two children sleeping in the darkest corner of the carriage. Then he bent over and got down.

  ‘Goodbye, then,’ said the man, getting back on to his seat. ‘You’ve only got six kilometres to walk. Look, there’s the distance stone, by the side of the road.’

  Meaulnes, who was not yet fully awake, walked over, stooping and stumbling, as far as the stone and sat down on it, his arms crossed and head bent forward, as though preparing to go back to sleep…

  ‘No, no!’ the driver shouted. ‘You mustn’t go back to sleep there. It’s too cold. Come on, get up and walk a bit…’

  Swaying like a drunken man, the tall boy, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, set off slowly down the road to Sainte-Agathe. Meanwhile, the old berlin, a last link with the mysterious festivities, left the gravel road and silently jolted its way into the distance over the grass of the side road. All that could be seen was the driver’s hat, bouncing up and down above the hedgerows…

  PART TWO

  I

  THE GREAT GAME

  High winds and cold, rain and snow, and finding ourselves, Meaulnes and I, unable to undertake any lengthy search, meant that we did not speak again about the lost land before winter was over. We couldn’t start anything serious, in those short February days, those squally Thursdays7 which would usually end at around five o’clock with dismal, icy rain.

  Nothing reminded us of Meaulnes’ adventure except the peculiar fact that since the afternoon of his return we had no longer had any friends. In breaks from lessons, they organized the same games as before, but Jasmin never again spoke to The Great Meaulnes. In the evenings, as soon as the classroom had been swept out, the yard emptied as it used to when I was alone, and I saw my friend wander from the garden to the shed and from the yard to the dining room.

  On Thursday mornings, sitting on the desk in one of the classrooms, we would each read works by Rousseau and Paul-Louis Courier8 which we had found in the cupboards between English primers and music books, carefully copied out. In the afternoon, some visitor or other would force us out of the flat and back into the school… Sometimes, we would hear groups of older boys stop for a moment, as though by chance, in front of the main gate, crash against it while playing some incomprehensible war game and then go off. This sad existence continued until the end of February. I was starting to think that Meaulnes had forgotten it all, when an adventure happened, stranger than the rest, which proved to me that I had been wrong, and that a violent outburst was gathering beneath the dreary surface of our winter life.

  It was actually one Thursday evening, around the end of the month, when the first news reached us of the Strange Estate, the first ripple from an adventure that we no longer mentioned. We had settled down for the evening. My grandparents had left, so only Millie and my father were there; and they had no idea of the secret feud that had divided the whole class into two tribes.

  At eight o’clock, Millie opened the door to throw some crumbs from the table outside and said, ‘Oh!’ in such a loud voice that we went over to take a look. There was a blanket of snow on the doorstep… Since it was quite dark, I went a short way into the yard to see how deep it was. I felt the light flakes brushing against my face and melting as they did so. I was soon called back inside, and Millie shut the door, shivering.

  At nine we were getting ready to go up to bed. My mother had already picked up the lamp, when we clearly heard two heavy knocks struck with full force against the gate at the far end of the yard. She put the lamp back on the table and we all stood there, waiting and listening.

&nb
sp; There was no question of going to see what was up. Before we had crossed even half the yard, the lamp would have gone out and the glass shattered in the cold. There was a brief silence, and my father was starting to say, ‘It must have been…’, when, right under the window of the dining room (which, as I have said, overlooked the station road), there was a strident and very long whistle; it must have been audible as far as the road to the church. And, immediately outside the window, hardly muffled by its panes and made by people who must have hauled themselves up using the outside ledge, there was a series of piercing cries: ‘Bring him out! Bring him out!’

  This was echoed by the same shout from the far end of the building. These were people who must have got through Old Martin’s field and climbed up on the low wall separating it from our courtyard.

  Then eight or ten unknown callers, disguising their voices, yelled, ‘Bring him out!’ in succession: from the cellar roof, which they must have reached by climbing on a pile of logs standing against the outer wall; from a little wall linking the shed to the gateway, with a rounded top that was convenient for sitting astride; from the iron fence along the station road that could easily be climbed… And, finally, at the back, a band of late arrivals reached the garden, and made the same kind of racket, this time with yells of: ‘Come on, board them!’

  We could hear the echoes of their shouts ringing through the empty classrooms, where they had opened the windows.

  Meaulnes and I were so well acquainted with the corners and corridors in the big building that we could envisage very clearly, as though on a map, all the points at which these unknown people were assaulting it.

  In fact, it was only in the very first moment that we felt afraid. The whistling made all four of us think that we were being attacked by marauders and gypsies. Indeed, for the past fortnight, a tall ruffian and a young lad with a bandaged head had taken up residence on the square behind the church. There had also been workers, at the wheelwrights’ and the blacksmiths’, who were not from our part of the world.

  But as soon as we heard the attackers shouting, we were convinced that they were people – probably young people – who belonged to the town. Moreover, in the party storming our house, like pirates boarding a ship, there were definitely some children: you could hear that from their high voices.

  ‘Well, I never!’ my father exclaimed.

  And Millie asked quietly: ‘What can it mean?’

  Suddenly the voices at the gate and the fence, then those outside the window, fell silent. There were two blasts on a whistle beyond the casement. The shouts of the people who had climbed on the storehouse and the attackers in the garden faded steadily, then ceased, and, along the wall outside the dining room, we could hear the rustling sound of the whole army as it hurried away, its footsteps muffled by the snow.

  Someone must have disturbed them. At that time, when everyone was asleep, they had thought they could carry out their attack on the house undisturbed, situated as it was alone on the edge of the town. But now their plan of campaign had been interrupted.

  Scarcely had we had time to recover our wits – because the attack had been as sudden as a well-organized boarding party – and were getting ready to go outside, than we heard a voice calling at the little gate, ‘Monsieur Seurel! Monsieur Seurel!’

  It was Monsieur Pasquier, the butcher. This plump little man scraped his clogs on the threshold, shook the powdering of snow off his short smock and came in. He had adopted the knowing and startled manner of someone who has uncovered the secret of a mysterious plot:

  ‘I was in my yard, which looks out on the Place des Quatre-Routes. I was on my way to shut the goats up in their stable. All at once, what do I see standing up in the snow but two great lads who appeared to be on guard or keeping watch for something. They were over by the cross. I went forward. I took a couple of steps – and hop! They’d set off at full speed towards your house. Oh, I didn’t stop to think. I got my lantern and said, “I’ll go and tell Monsieur Seurel about this…”’

  Then he started his story all over again:

  ‘I was in the yard behind my house…’ At which he was offered a drink, which he accepted, and they asked him for details that he was unable to supply.

  He hadn’t seen anything when he got to our house. All the attackers had been warned by the two sentries he had disturbed and they immediately dispersed. As for telling us who the sentries might have been…

  ‘They could well have been gypsies,’ he suggested. ‘They’ve been there on the square for nearly a month now waiting for the weather to improve so they can put on their show, and they must have thought up some trick or other.’

  None of which got us very far, and we were left standing there, quite puzzled, while the man was sipping his liqueur and once more acting out his story, when Meaulnes, who had so far been listening very attentively, picked up the butcher’s lantern and said firmly, ‘We must go out and investigate.’

  He opened the door, and we followed: Monsieur Seurel, Monsieur Pasquier and I.

  Millie, whose mind was now at rest, since the attackers had left, and who, like all well-ordered and scrupulous people, was not at all inquisitive by nature, declared, ‘You go, if you want. But shut the door and take the key. I’m going to bed. I’ll leave the lamp on.’

  II

  WE ARE CAUGHT IN AN AMBUSH

  We set out through the snow, in complete silence. Meaulnes was walking ahead, his covered lantern casting a fan of light ahead of us. We had only just left through the main gate when, from behind the municipal weighing scales which stood against the wall of our shed, two hooded figures shot off together like startled partridges. Whether in mockery, or from pleasure at the strange game they were playing, or from nervous excitement and the fear of being caught, they called out the odd word to us as they ran, laughing at the same time.

  Meaulnes dropped the lantern in the snow and shouted to me, ‘Come on, François!’

  Leaving behind the two older men, who were incapable of running like that, we set off in pursuit of the two shadows, who, after briefly going round the lower part of the town, following the Chemin de la Vieille-Planche, pointedly headed towards the church. They were running steadily without too much haste and we had no trouble following them. They crossed the church road, where everything was quiet and still, and plunged into a maze of small streets and alleyways behind the graveyard.

  This was a district of day labourers, dressmakers and weavers, known as the ‘small corners’ or Petits-Coins. We were not too familiar with it and had never been there after dark. The place was empty by day, with the labourers away at work and the weavers shut up indoors; and on this particularly silent night it seemed more abandoned and asleep than the other parts of the little town. So there was no chance of anyone appearing to help us.

  I only knew one route through these little houses, which were set down haphazardly like cardboard boxes: this was the way leading to the dressmaker known as the Dumb Woman. First, you went down quite a steep slope, paved erratically, then, after turning two or three times through little weavers’ yards and empty stables, you came to a wide street that ended as a cul-de-sac in a long-abandoned farmyard. When we went to see the Dumb Woman, while she was engaged in a silent conversation with my mother, wiggling her fingers, with no sound except for the little noises a deaf person makes, I could look out of the window and see the great yard of the farm, which was the last house on this side of the town, and the closed gate of the dry yard where there was no straw and nothing ever happened…

  This was precisely the route that the two unknown figures were taking. At each corner we were afraid that we would lose them, but to my surprise, we always reached the turning into the next street before they had left it. I say, ‘to my surprise’, because this would not have been possible, given the short length of these sidestreets if, whenever we lost sight of them, they had not slowed down.

  Finally, without hesitation, they started down the street leading to the Dumb Woman’s
house, and I shouted to Meaulnes, ‘We’ve got them, it’s a dead end!’

  In fact, it was they who had got us. They had been leading us where they wanted. Once they reached the wall, they turned round on us with a determined air and one of them gave that same whistle which we had already heard twice that night.

  Immediately, some ten or so boys emerged from the yard of the abandoned farm, where they seemed to have been stationed to wait for us. They were all wearing hoods and had their mufflers over their faces…

  We knew already who they were, but we had resolved to say nothing to Monsieur Seurel: our affairs did not concern him. It was Delouche, Denis, Giraudat and all the rest. As we struggled, we could recognize their way of fighting and the snatches of their voices. But one thing was still disturbing and almost seemed to make Meaulnes afraid: there was someone there whom we did not know, who seemed to be their leader.

  He did not touch Meaulnes. Instead, he watched his soldiers as they took him on, and had a hard time of it: dragged through the snow, with their clothes ripped from top to bottom, they struggled against the tall boy, who was panting as he fought. Two of them were looking after me and had immobilized me with some difficulty, because I was fighting like a devil. I was on the ground, my knees bent, sitting back on my heels, while they held me with my hands behind my back as I watched what was happening with intense curiosity and anxiety.

  Meaulnes had disposed of four boys from the school, unfastening their grip on his smock by turning a smart circle and sending them flying into the snow… Firmly planted to one side, the stranger was following the battle with interest, but very calmly, repeating from time to time in a clear voice, ‘Go on… Be brave… Don’t give up…’ then, in English, ‘Go on, my boys…’

  He was clearly in command. Where did he come from? Where and how had he trained them to fight? We had no idea. Like the rest of them, he had a scarf round his face, but when Meaulnes, having disposed of his adversaries, was advancing on him in a threatening way, he made a movement so that he could see better and defend himself, at the same time revealing a piece of white linen wrapped like a bandage around his head.

 

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