The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)

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The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) Page 20

by Henri Alain-Fournier


  Mechanically – you could tell that he had been doing this since that morning and was now used to it – he began to rock the crib.

  ‘She can already laugh,’ he said. ‘And she holds your finger. Haven’t you seen her?’

  He opened the curtains, and I saw a puffy little red face and a little head that had been lengthened and deformed by the forceps.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ said Monsieur de Galais. ‘The doctor said that it will all put itself right. Give her your finger and she’ll grasp it.’

  I was discovering a world here that I did not know and felt my heart full of a strange joy that I had not previously experienced…

  Monsieur de Galais carefully half opened the door to the young woman’s bedroom. She was not asleep.

  ‘You can come in,’ he said.

  She was lying there, her face flushed and her blonde hair spread around it. She offered me her hand, smiling, with a weary look. I complimented her on her daughter. In a rather hoarse voice and with unaccustomed roughness – the curt manner of someone returning from combat – she said, with a smile, ‘Yes, but they damaged her for me!’

  I soon had to leave so as not to tire her.

  The next day, Sunday, in the afternoon, I hurried round to Les Sablonnières in an almost joyful mood. A notice pinned to the door stopped my hand in mid-air: ‘Please do not ring’.

  I did not guess what it meant. I knocked quite loudly and heard muffled footsteps running inside. Someone I did not know, the doctor from Vierzon, opened the door.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Hush! Hush!’ he said softly, with an air of irritation. ‘The little girl almost died last night, and the mother is very ill.’

  Completely taken aback, I followed him on tiptoe to the first floor. The baby asleep in her cot was very pale, quite white, like a dead child. The doctor thought he could save her. As for the mother, he could not guarantee anything… He explained it to me at length, as the only friend of the family, talking about pulmonary congestion and embolism. He was hesitant, uncertain… Monsieur de Galais came in, grown horribly old in two days, haggard and shaking.

  He took me into the bedroom without quite knowing what he was doing.

  ‘You mustn’t frighten her,’ he whispered. ‘The doctor’s order is that we must persuade her that it will be all right.’

  Yvonne de Galais was lying with her face congested and her head back as she had been on the day before. Her cheeks and her forehead were dark red and her eyes rolled intermittently as though she were suffocating, as she fought against death with indescribable courage and patience.

  She could not speak, but she held out her burning hand to me with so much affection that I almost burst into tears.

  ‘Well, well, now,’ Monsieur de Galais said, very loudly, with a frightful jollity that seemed close to madness. ‘You can see that for someone ill she doesn’t look so bad!’

  I did not know how to reply, but held the young, dying woman’s burning hand in mine.

  She was trying to say something to me, to ask me a question. She looked towards me, then at the window, as if telling me to go outside and look for someone… But then she was seized by a terrible fit of breathlessness. Her lovely blue eyes, which had for a moment made such a tragic appeal to me, rolled upwards; her cheeks and her brow darkened, and she struggled gently, seeking to the last to control her terror and her despair. They rushed forward – the doctor and the nurses – with an oxygen flask, with towels and bottles, while the old man, leaning over her, was shouting – shouting as though she were already far away from him – in his rough, quavering voice, ‘Don’t be afraid, Yvonne. It’s nothing. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  Then the crisis passed. She was able to breathe a little, but she was still half suffocating, her eyes white, her head thrown back, still struggling, but unable, even for a moment, to pull herself out of the abyss into which she had already sunk, in order to look at me and speak to me. And, since I was unable to do anything, I had to bring myself to leave. Of course, I could have stayed a moment longer – and at the thought I feel seized by terrible remorse. But what can I say? I still had hope. I convinced myself that the end was not so near.

  When I reached the edge of the wood behind the house, remembering the young woman’s eyes turning towards the window, I scrutinized like a sentry or a manhunter the depth of this wood through which Augustin had once come and through which he had left the previous winter. Alas, nothing stirred; not an unusual shadow, not a branch moving… But eventually, in the distance, towards the avenue that led from Préveranges, I heard the faint sound of a bell, and soon at the corner of the path a child in a red skullcap and a schoolboy’s smock appeared, walking behind a priest… And I left, fighting back my tears.

  The next day was the first day of term. By seven o’clock, there were already two or three boys in the courtyard. I waited some time before going down and showing myself. When at last I did appear, turning the key in the door of the musty classroom which had been closed for two months, the thing that I most feared in the world happened: the biggest of the boys left the group playing under the shelter and came over to me. He wanted to let me know that ‘the young lady from Les Sablonnières died yesterday at nightfall’.

  Everything now is muddled for me, everything confused in grief. It seems to me that I shall never again have the strength to teach.

  Just walking across the desolate school yard is a knee-breaking effort. Everything is painful, everything bitter, now that she is dead. The world is empty, the holidays are over. Those long carriage rides are over, the mysterious fête is over… Everything has reverted to the misery it was before…

  I have told the children that there would be no class that morning. They leave in small groups to pass the news on to others in the country around. As for me, I take my black hat and a braided coat that I have, and make my miserable way towards Les Sablonnières.

  Here I am in front of the house that we searched for so long, three years ago. It was in this house that Yvonne de Galais, wife of Augustin Meaulnes, died yesterday evening. A stranger would think it was a chapel, so deep is the silence that has fallen since yesterday on this desolate place.

  So this is what that fine morning at the start of term had in store for us, the treacherous autumn sunlight shining through the branches. How am I to fight against this bitter feeling of outrage, those tears choking in my throat? We had found the beautiful girl; we had conquered her. She was the wife of my friend and I loved her with that deep, secret love that is never spoken. When I looked at her, I was happy as a little child. One day, perhaps, I should have married another girl, and Yvonne would have been the first in whom I would have confided that great secret…

  Yesterday’s notice is still there, near the bell, in the corner of the door. They have already brought the coffin into the hall, downstairs. In the room on the first floor, it is the child’s nurse who greets me, who tells me about her end and gently opens the door… There she is. No more fever, no more struggle. No more flushed face, no more waiting… Only silence and, wrapped in cotton wool, a hard face, white and unfeeling, and a dead brow beneath stiff, hard hair.

  Monsieur de Galais, crouching in a corner with his back to us, is in stockinged feet, without shoes, and searches with dreadful obstinacy in some muddled drawers taken out of a wardrobe. From time to time, with a burst of sobbing that makes his shoulders heave like a burst of laughter, he takes out an already yellowing old photograph of his daughter.

  The burial is to take place at noon. The doctor is afraid of the rapid decomposition that sometimes accompanies an embolism. This is why the face, and, indeed, the rest of the body, is surrounded by cotton wool steeped in phenol.

  When the body was dressed – they put her in her splendid dark-blue velvet dress, spangled with little silver stars, though they had to flatten and rumple the leg-of-mutton sleeves which were by then out of fashion – as the coffin was being brought upstairs, they
realized that it would not go round the corner in the narrow corridor. It had to be taken up with a rope through the window and afterwards lowered down in the same way. But Monsieur de Galais, who was still bending over some old things, looking for heaven knows what lost memories in them, refused with dreadful vehemence.

  ‘Rather than allow such an awful thing,’ he said, in a voice stifled with tears and anger, ‘I will take her myself and bring her down in my arms…’ And he would have done so, at the risk of weakening halfway and crashing down the stairs with her!

  At this, I came forward and did the only thing I could: with the help of the doctor and one of his women assistants, I put one arm under the back of the outstretched corpse and the other under her legs, and held her against my chest. Lying against my left arm, her shoulders resting against my right one, and her head lolling under my chin, she weighed dreadfully on my heart. Slowly, step by step, I went down the long, steep staircase, while they prepared everything downstairs.

  Very soon, both arms feel as if they are dropping with weariness. Every step with this weight against my chest makes me more breathless. Clasping the dead weight of the lifeless body, I bend my head over that of the woman I am carrying; I am breathing heavily and her blonde hair is sucked into my mouth – dead hair with a taste of earth. This taste of earth and of death and this weight on my heart are all that remain for me of the great adventure, and of you, Yvonne de Galais, a woman so long sought and so much loved…

  XIII

  THE MONTHLY COMPOSITION BOOK

  In that house full of sad memories, where all day long women were cradling and comforting a sick infant, old Monsieur de Galais soon had to take to his bed. He died peacefully in the first great cold spell of the winter, and I could not help weeping beside the bed of this delightful old man whose indulgence and whimsy, joined to that of his son, had been the cause of our whole adventure. Fortunately, he died without ever really understanding what had happened and moreover in almost absolute silence. As it was a long time since he had had any relatives or friends in this part of France, his will made me his sole heir until the return of Meaulnes, to whom I had to account for everything if he ever should come back… And from then on I lived at Les Sablonnières. I only went to Saint-Benoist to teach, leaving early in the morning, lunching at noon from a meal that had been prepared at the house, which I had heated up on a stove, and returning home in the evening after prep. In this way, I was able to keep the child with me, and the servants on the estate looked after her. Most of all, I increased my chances of seeing Augustin, if he ever returned to Les Sablonnières.

  In any case, I still hoped that eventually, in some piece of furniture or drawer in the house, I would uncover a sheet of paper or some other clue that would tell me how he had spent his time during the long silence of the preceding years – and so, perhaps, understand the reasons for his departure or at least find some trace of him… I had already searched in vain through I don’t know how many cupboards and wardrobes, and opened a large number of boxes of every kind in storerooms which turned out either to be full of packets of old letters and yellowing photographs of the Galais family, or else crammed with artificial flowers, feathers, plumes and old-fashioned stuffed birds. These boxes gave off an indefinable musty smell, a faded perfume that would suddenly awaken memories and regrets in me and put an end to my search for the rest of the day.

  Finally, on one school holiday, I found a little old trunk in the attic: long and low, covered in worn pigskin, I recognized it as Augustin’s school trunk. I blamed myself for not having started my search there. I had no difficulty in breaking the rusted lock. The trunk was chock full of exercise books and school books from Sainte-Agathe: arithmetic, literature, workbooks, and goodness knows what… More from nostalgia than curiosity, I started to leaf through them, rereading dictations that I still knew by heart because we had copied them out so many times – Rousseau’s ‘Aqueduct’, P.-L. Courier’s ‘An Adventure in Calabria’, and the letter from George Sand to her son…17

  There was also a ‘Monthly Composition Book’. I was surprised to find it because these books stayed at the school and pupils never took them away. It was a green exercise book, yellowing at the edge. The pupil’s name, Augustin Meaulnes, was written on the cover in splendid copperplate. I opened it. From the date of the exercises, April 189–, I realized that Meaulnes had started it only a few days before leaving Sainte-Agathe. The first pages had been kept with the meticulous care that was obligatory when one was working on these composition books, but only three pages had been written on: the rest was blank, and this explained why Meaulnes had taken it away.

  Crouching on the floor and reflecting on these childish forms and rules that had played such a large role in our adolescence, I was turning the edge of the unused pages of the book with my thumb. And so it was that I discovered the writing on the later pages: after leaving four pages blank, someone had started to use the book again.

  It was still Meaulnes’ writing, but fast, careless and barely readable: little paragraphs of unequal width, separated by blank lines. Sometimes there was just one unfinished sentence, sometimes a date. As soon as I started reading, I guessed that there might be some information here on Meaulnes’ past life in Paris, some clues to what I was seeking, so I went down into the dining room to read through the strange document at my leisure and in daylight. The light was that of a clear, breezy winter’s day. At times, the bright sunlight projected the cross of the window frames on to the white curtains, at others a sharp wind dashed an icy shower against the panes. And it was in front of that window, by the fire, that I read the lines that explained so much to me and which I now set down here exactly as I found them…

  XIV

  THE SECRET

  I have passed once more beneath her window. The pane is still dusty and whitened by the double curtain behind it. Were Yvonne de Galais to open it, I should have nothing to say to her, because she is already married… What can I do now? How shall I live?

  Saturday, 13 February. On the embankment, I met the young woman who told me about the closed house in June and who had been waiting, as I was, in front of it. I spoke to her. As she was walking along, I looked sideways at the slight defects of her face: a little line at the corner of the lips, a little sagging of the cheeks, some powder visible by her nose. She turned round suddenly and stared me straight in the face – perhaps because she is prettier full face than in profile – saying curtly, ‘I find you very amusing. You remind me of a young man who once paid court to me in Bourges. We were even engaged…’

  And saying this, after dusk, on the damp, deserted pavement shining in the light of a gaslamp, she suddenly came close to me and asked me to take her to the theatre that evening with her sister. For the first time, I notice that she is dressed in mourning, with a lady’s hat too old for her young face and a long, slender umbrella, like a walking stick. As I am right next to her, when I make a gesture my finger nails scratch the crêpe on her bodice… I try to refuse. She is annoyed and wants to leave at once. Now I’m the one holding her back, begging. And then a workman walking past in the dark mutters, jesting, ‘Don’t go, girl, he’ll do you harm!’

  The two of us stayed there, reduced to silence.

  In the theatre: the two girls, my friend, who is called Valentine Blondeau, and her sister, arrived with cheap scarves.

  Valentine is sitting in front of me. She turns round constantly, uneasily, as though wondering what I want. And, close to her, I feel almost happy: I reply each time with a smile.

  All around us there were women showing too much bosom. And we joked. She smiled first, then she said, ‘I mustn’t laugh: my dress is cut too low as well.’ She wrapped her scarf around her. Under the square of black lace you could see that, in her haste to change her clothes, she had turned down the top of her simple, high-necked chemise.

  There is something indefinably poor and naive about her. In her look, there is an intangible air of suffering and audacity that attracts me.
Near her, the only creature in the world who could tell me about the people of the Estate, I think constantly of the strange adventure I once had… I would like to have questioned her again about the little mansion on the boulevard, but she, in her turn, put such awkward questions to me that I was unable to say anything in reply. I feel that from now on we shall both of us stay silent on the subject. Yet, I know, too, that I shall see her again. Why? And for what? Am I now condemned to follow the trail of any being who has the vaguest and remotest connection with my failed adventure?

  At midnight, alone, in the empty street, I wonder what this new, odd story is going to lead me to. I am walking along beside houses like rows of cardboard boxes in which a whole tribe is sleeping. Suddenly I remember a decision that I took a month or so ago: I would go there in the middle of the night, around one o’clock in the morning, open the garden door at the back of the house, enter like a thief and look for some clue that would allow me to find the Lost Estate, to see her again, just to see her… But I’m tired and hungry. I too was in a hurry to change my clothes before the theatre and I didn’t have dinner… And yet, anxious, worried, I sit on my bed for a long time before going to sleep, feeling a vague sense of regret. Why?

  Another thing: they did not want to be taken home or to tell me where they are staying. But I followed them as long as I could. I know that they live in a little winding street near Notre-Dame. But which number? I guess that they are seamstresses or milliners.

  Without letting her sister know, Valentine arranged to meet me on Thursday at four o’clock in front of the same theatre where we had been.

  ‘If I should happen not to be there on Thursday,’ she said, ‘come back on Friday at the same time, then Saturday, and so on, every day.’

  Thursday, 18 February. I left to meet her in a gusting wind, damp with rain – the kind that makes you feel constantly that rain is coming.

 

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