‘What’s this? You’re sleeping,’ she said, in a lower voice, slightly disappointed.
I felt sorry for her and protested, ‘No, aunt, I promise…’
‘Yes, you are!’ she said. ‘Anyway, I can understand if it doesn’t interest you very much. It’s all about people you don’t know…’
Coward that I am, that time I didn’t reply.
IV
THE GREAT NEWS
When I reached the main street the next morning, it was such lovely holiday weather, so tranquil and with such gentle, familiar sounds throughout the town, that I regained all the joyful confidence of a bringer of good news.
Augustin and his mother lived in the old schoolhouse. His father had inherited a lot of money and retired early; after his death, Meaulnes wanted them to buy the school where the old master had taught for twenty years and where he himself had learnt to read. Not that it was a particularly prepossessing building: it was a large, square house, like the town hall that it had also been, and the ground-floor windows facing the street were so high up that no one ever looked out of them. As for the yard at the back, there was not a single tree in it, and a high shed blocked the view over the countryside: it was far and away the most barren and desolate school yard that I have ever seen…
There was a complicated passage with four doors leading off it where I came on Meaulnes’ mother bringing a large bundle of washing in from the garden: she must have put it out to dry at dawn on that long holiday morning. Her grey hair was half undone, with wisps hanging across her face, and her features were puffy and tired under her old-fashioned cap, as though she had not slept. She had a thoughtful look and downcast eyes.
But, suddenly noticing me, she recognized me and smiled.
‘You’ve come just at the right moment,’ she said. ‘You see, I’m just bringing in the clothes that I was drying for when Augustin goes away. I spent the night settling his accounts and getting his things ready. The train goes at five, but we will manage to prepare everything.’
You would have thought, seeing her so definite, that she had taken the decision herself. In fact, she certainly had no idea where Meaulnes was going.
‘Go on up,’ she said. ‘You’ll find him in the town hall, writing.’
I hastily climbed the stairs, opened the door on the right, which still bore a sign saying Town Hall, and went into a large room with four windows, two on the town, two on the country side, its walls decorated with yellowing portraits of Presidents Grévy and Carnot.15 On a long dais that extended the whole length of the room you could still see the seats of the town councillors in front of a table with a green baize cloth. In the middle, sitting on an old armchair that had belonged to the mayor, Meaulnes was writing, dipping his pen deep into an old-fashioned porcelain inkwell in the shape of a heart. It was here, to this place that seemed to have been made for some well-to-do villager, that Meaulnes would retire in the holidays, when he was not roaming the countryside…
He got up when he recognized me, but not with the eagerness I had expected, just saying ‘Seurel!’ with an air of profound amazement.
He was the same boy with his bony face and close-cropped head; an unkempt moustache was starting to grow on his upper lip. He still had the same frank and honest look… but it was as though a mist had settled over the enthusiasm of earlier times, a mist that was only momentarily parted by glimpses of his former ardour.
He seemed very disturbed at seeing me. I had bounded up on to the dais but, strangely, he didn’t even think to offer me his hand. He turned towards me with his hands behind him, leaning back against the table with a deeply embarrassed air. He was looking at me without seeing me, already absorbed in thinking about what he would say. As ever and always, he was slow in beginning to speak, like all solitary people and hunters and adventurers: he had taken a decision without considering the words needed to explain it. And only now that I was there in front of him did he start painfully to mull over how to say it.
Meanwhile, I was merrily describing my journey, where I spent the night and how surprised I had been to see Madame Meaulnes getting ready for her son’s departure.
‘Ah! She told you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but I don’t suppose it’s for a long journey, is it?’
‘On the contrary, for a very long journey.’
For a moment I was at a loss, not daring to say anything, sensing that very soon, with a word, I would abolish his decision, though I had no idea why he had taken it, and not knowing where to begin.
But at length he started to speak, like someone trying to justify himself.
‘Seurel,’ he said, ‘you know how important that strange adventure at Sainte-Agathe was for me… It was my reason to live and hope… Once I had lost that hope, what would become of me? How could I live like other people? Well, I tried to live in Paris, when I saw that it was all over and that it was not even worthwhile trying to find the Lost Domain… But once a man has taken a step in Paradise, how can he afterwards get used to living like everyone else? The things that make up the happiness of other people seemed ludicrous to me. And when, one day, quite sincerely and deliberately, I decided to behave as others do, that day I stored up enough remorse to last a long time…’
Sitting on a chair on the dais with my head lowered, listening to him without looking at him, I did not know what to think of these vague explanations.
‘Meaulnes,’ I said, ‘can you be a bit clearer? Why the long journey? Do you have to make amends for something? Or do you have a promise to keep?’
‘In fact, yes,’ he replied. ‘Do you remember the promise I made to Frantz?’
‘Ah!’ I said, with relief. ‘Is that it?’
‘That’s it. And perhaps something to make amends for. Both at the same time…’
There followed a moment’s silence in which I made up my mind to start speaking and prepared my words.
‘There’s only one explanation that I believe in,’ he went on. ‘Certainly, I would have liked to see Mademoiselle de Galais once more, just to see her… But now I’m sure that when I discovered the Estate Without a Name, I reached a height, a degree of perfection and purity that I shall never achieve again. In death alone, as I once wrote to you, I may perhaps recapture the beauty of that time…’
His tone changed and he continued, coming closer to me and with a strange intensity in his manner:
‘But, listen, Seurel: this new development and this great journey, the sin that I committed and for which I have to atone, all this, in a sense, is the continuation of my old adventure…’
There was a pause while he tried painfully to recapture his memories. I had missed the last opportunity and I was absolutely determined not to let this one pass, so this time I was the one to speak – but too soon: later I bitterly regretted not having waited for his confession.
Anyway, I spoke my piece, which had been prepared for an earlier moment, and was no longer appropriate. Without a gesture and merely raising my head a little, I said, ‘Suppose I were to tell you that all hope is not lost?’
He looked at me, then, quickly looking away, blushed as I have never seen anyone blush: a rush of blood that must have been beating great hammer blows in his temples.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked at last, in a barely audible voice.
So, without pausing, I told him what I knew, what I had done and how, with the turn that matters had taken, it almost seemed that it was Yvonne de Galais who had sent me to him.
By now, he was horribly pale.
During my story, which he heard in silence, his head bowed a little, with the attitude of someone who has been taken by surprise and does not know how to defend himself, whether to hide or run away, I remember that he only interrupted me once. I was telling him, incidentally, that all of Les Sablonnières had been demolished and that the old estate no longer existed.
‘There!’ he said. ‘You see…’ (as though he had been waiting for an opportunity to justify his behaviour and the despair into w
hich he had fallen). ‘You see: there is nothing left…’
At the end, convinced that my assurance of how easy it would now be would dispel the remains of his misery, I told him that a picnic had been organized by my Uncle Florentin, that Mademoiselle de Galais was to come on horseback and that he, too, was invited… But he appeared completely bewildered and didn’t say anything.
‘You must put off your journey at once,’ I said, impatiently. ‘Let’s go and tell your mother…’
And as we were both going down together, he asked, hesitantly, ‘Do I really have to go on this picnic?’
‘Come, now,’ I replied. ‘How can you ask such a question?’
He looked like someone being pushed along by his shoulders.
Downstairs, Augustin informed Madame Meaulnes that I would be having lunch with them, then dinner, that I would spend the night there and the next day that he would hire a bicycle and cycle with me to Le Vieux-Nançay.
‘Oh! Very good,’ she said, nodding her head, as though this news had confirmed all her suspicions.
I sat down in the little dining room, under the illustrated calendars, the ornamented daggers and the Sudanese leather bottles that one of Monsieur Meaulnes’ brothers, a former soldier in the marines, had brought back from his distant travels.
Augustin left me there for a moment before the meal and, in the adjoining room, where his mother had been packing his suitcases, I heard him tell her, in a quiet voice, not to unpack his trunk because his journey might only be temporarily adjourned…
V
THE OUTING
I had a hard time keeping up with Augustin on the road to Le Vieux-Nançay. He rode like a racing cyclist. He didn’t get off for hills. His inexplicable uncertainty of the previous day had been replaced by a fever, a nervousness, an urge to get there as soon as possible, which even scared me a little. He showed the same impatience at my uncle’s, seeming unable to take an interest in anything until we were settled in the trap around ten o’clock the next morning, ready to set out for the river bank.
It was the end of August, in the last days of summer. The empty burrs of the yellow chestnuts were starting to litter the white roads. It was not a long journey. The farm of Les Aubiers, near the Cher, where we were going, was only two kilometres from Les Sablonnières. From time to time, we met other guests driving to the spot and even young men on horseback whom Florentin had boldly invited in Monsieur de Galais’ name. As in the past, an effort had been made to mix rich and poor, landowners and peasants. So it was that we saw Jasmin Delouche arrive on a bicycle: he had earlier made the acquaintance of my uncle through the forester, Baladier.
‘Now,’ said Meaulnes when he saw him, ‘there is the one who had the key to everything while we went looking as far away as Paris. It’s enough to drive you to despair!’
Every time he looked at him, this bitterness increased. The other boy, who by contrast imagined that he was fully entitled to our gratitude, closely escorted our trap right to the end of the journey. You could see that he had made a pitiful effort to make himself presentable, to no great effect, and the tails of his worn coat were flapping against his cycle mudguard…
Much as he tried to be agreeable, he could not make his old man’s face pleasant to look at; if anything, I felt sorry for him. But, then, for whom would I not feel sorry before that day was done?
I can never recall that outing without a vague and, as it were, stifling feeling of regret. I had been so looking forward to that day! Everything seemed perfectly coordinated for happiness, yet there was so little happiness to be had…
Yet how lovely the Cher looked! On the bank where we stopped, the hillside levelled out into a gentle slope which was divided into little green fields, willow groves with fences between them, like so many minute gardens. On the far side of the river, the banks were made up of steep, rocky, grey hills, and on the furthest of these you could make out, among the fir trees, romantic little châteaux with single turrets. Occasionally, in the distance, we could hear the barking of the hounds from the château of Prevéranges.
We had got here through a maze of little paths, some covered with white stones, others with sand, which water springs transformed into streams as we got closer to the river. As we went past, the branches of wild gooseberries clutched at our sleeves, and we were sometimes plunged into the cool darkness at the bottom of gullies, and sometimes, by contrast, when there were gaps in the hedges, bathed in the clear sunlight that spread across the valley. In the distance, on the far bank, there was a man perched among the rocks, casting a fishing line with a slow gesture. Oh, God, what a lovely day it was!
We settled down on a patch of lawn in the clearing formed by a copse of birch trees. It was a broad expanse of short grass that seemed to have been put there for endless games.
The horses were unharnessed and taken to the farm of Les Aubiers. We started to unpack the food in the woods and to set up on the grass little folding tables which my uncle had brought.
Now, volunteers were needed to go back to the fork on the main road and look out for latecomers to show them where we were. I immediately put up my hand, and Meaulnes did the same, so we went to take up our post near the suspension bridge where several roads joined the one coming from Les Sablonnières.
As we walked up and down, talking about the past and trying as best we could to make the time go by, we waited. Another carriage came from Le Vieux-Nançay, with some unknown countryfolk and a big daughter with ribbons in her hair. Then, nothing – oh, except for three children in a donkey cart, the children of the former gardener at Les Sablonnières.
‘I think I recognize them,’ Meaulnes said. ‘They were the ones, I feel sure, who took my hand, that time, on the first evening in the château, and led me into dinner.’
But just then the donkey stopped, and the children got down to goad him, pull him and hit him as hard as they could and Meaulnes, disappointed, said that he must have been mistaken…
I asked them if they had met Monsieur and Mademoiselle de Galais along the road. One said, no, he hadn’t, while the other said, ‘I think so, Monsieur.’ So that got us nowhere. Finally they started off towards the river bank, some pulling the donkey by its bridle, the rest pushing the cart from behind. We resumed our watch. Meaulnes was staring hard at the bend in the road from Les Sablonnières, awaiting the arrival of the young woman whom he had looked for so eagerly before, but now awaited with a kind of terror. An odd, almost comic, nervous state had seized him, and he took it out on Jasmin. From the top of the little mound up which we had climbed to see further down the road, we could see a group of guests on the grass below us, with Delouche in the middle trying to impress them.
‘Look at him, speechifying, the idiot,’ Meaulnes said.
‘Let him be,’ I answered. ‘He’s doing his best, poor boy.’
Augustin would not let go. A hare or a squirrel must have broken cover and run across the grass. Jasmin was showing off by pretending to pursue it.
‘Just look at that! Now he’s running…’ Meaulnes said, as though this exploit were the worst of all.
I couldn’t help laughing. Meaulnes, too – but only for an instant.
After a further quarter of an hour, he said, ‘Suppose she doesn’t come?’
I answered: ‘But she promised – so just be patient!’
He resumed his watch over the road. But eventually, unable to bear this intolerable wait any longer, he said, ‘Listen, I’m going back to the others. I don’t know what’s up with me at the moment, but I feel sure that if I wait here, she won’t ever come… that it’s impossible that she should appear sometime soon at the end of that road…’
He went back down towards the river bank, leaving me all alone. I marched back and forth once or twice on the side road, to waste time. And at the first bend I saw Yvonne de Galais, riding sidesaddle on her old white horse, though he was so frisky that morning that she had to pull on the reins to stop him from trotting. In front of the horse, in strained s
ilence, walked Monsieur de Galais. They had probably been taking turns as they came, each getting a ride on the old animal.
When she saw me by myself, the girl smiled, lightly dismounted, handed the reins to her father and headed to meet me as I ran towards her.
‘I’m so happy to find you alone,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anyone but you to see old Belisarius or to put him with the other horses. For a start, he’s too old and ugly, and then I’m always scared that one of the others will hurt him. Yet he’s the only horse I dare ride, and when he dies, I won’t go on horseback again.’
Under this charming vivacity and apparently so tranquil grace, in Mademoiselle de Galais as in Meaulnes, I sensed impatience and something close to anxiety. She spoke faster than usual and, despite the pinkness of her cheeks, there was an intense pallor in places around her eyes and on her forehead, in which you could detect the extent of her unease…
We agreed to tie Belisarius up to a tree in a little wood near the road. Old Monsieur de Galais, without a word as always, removed the halter from the saddlebag and tied the creature up – a little low down, I thought. I promised shortly to send hay, oats and straw from the farm…
And Mademoiselle de Galais went down to the river bank as she had once approached the shore of the lake, on the day when Meaulnes saw her for the first time…
Giving her arm to her father and holding aside the flap of the loose white cloak that was wrapped around her, she made her way towards the guests, with that look of hers, at once so serious and so innocent. I was walking beside her. All the guests, scattered around the grassy space or playing some way off had got up and gathered to receive her. There was a brief moment of silence while each of them watched her approach.
Meaulnes had joined the group of young men, and only his height distinguished him from the rest; and even then, there were some young men almost as tall as he was. He did nothing that could draw attention to himself: not a movement, not a step forward. I could see him, dressed in grey, motionless, staring like all the others at this beautiful young woman coming towards them. Yet, at the end, with an awkward, instinctive movement, he put a hand to his bare head as though he wanted, amid the well-combed hair of his companions, to hide his rough, close-cropped peasant’s head.
The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) Page 16