The Lost Estate (12 page)

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.

That’s when I shouted to Meaulnes, ‘Look out! There’s another one behind you.’

He did not have time to turn round before a large fellow leapt out from the gate behind his back and adroitly flung his muffler around my friend’s neck, pulling him over. At once the four others whom Meaulnes had tipped into the snow returned to the fight and pinned down his arms and legs, tied his arms with a rope and his feet with a muffler, while the young man with the bandaged head was looking through his pockets. The last to arrive, the man with the lasso, had lit a small candle, which he cupped in his hand; whenever he found a new piece of paper, the leader went across to this light to see what it said. Finally, he unfolded the rough map covered with annotations on which Meaulnes had been working ever since his return, and he shouted gleefully: ‘This time, we’ve got it. Here is the
plan! Here is the guide. We’ll see if this gentleman really went where I think he did…’

His subordinate blew out the candle, and each of them picked up his cap or his belt. Then they all vanished silently, as they had come, leaving me free to hastily untie my friend.

‘They won’t go very far with that plan,’ said Meaulnes, getting to his feet.

We set off slowly, because he was limping a little. On the church road we found Monsieur Seurel and Old Pasquier.

‘So you didn’t find anything?’ they said. ‘Nor did we…’

Because it was pitch black, they couldn’t see anything. The butcher left us, and Monsieur Seurel hurried home to bed.

But the two of us, up in our room, by the light of the lamp that Millie had left us, stayed for a long time patching up our torn smocks and talking in low voices about what had happened to us, like two fellow soldiers on the evening of a lost battle…

III

THE GYPSY COMES TO SCHOOL

It was hard to get up the next morning. At half-past eight, just as Monsieur Seurel was about to give the signal for the boys to go into school, we arrived panting for breath to take our places in line. As we were late, we slipped in where we could, but usually The Great Meaulnes was first in the long line of pupils waiting for Monsieur Seurel to inspect them as they stood elbow-to-elbow carrying their textbooks, exercise books and pencil cases.

I was surprised by the silent alacrity with which they made room for us near the centre of the line; and while Monsieur Seurel, momentarily delaying the move to the classroom, was inspecting Meaulnes, I leant forward and looked curiously along the line to right and left, to examine the faces of our enemies from the night before.

The first one I noticed was the very one about whom I had not ceased to think, but the last that I could have expected to see here. He was in Meaulnes’ usual place, the first of all, with one foot on the stone step, and one shoulder and a corner of the satchel on his back resting against the doorpost. His fine, very pale face, slightly freckled, was bent forward and turned towards us with a sort of contemptuous and ironic curiosity. His head and one whole side of his face were wrapped in a white bandage. I recognized the head of the gang, the young gypsy who had robbed us the night before.

We were already going into the classroom, and everyone was taking his place. The new pupil sat down near the pillar on the left of the long bench on which Meaulnes occupied the first place, at the right. Giraudat, Delouche and the three others on
the first bench had pressed together to make room for him, as though it had all been agreed in advance…

Often in winter odd pupils like this would spend time with us: bargees trapped in the ice in the canal, apprentices and snow-bound travellers. They would stay at school for two days, perhaps a month, seldom longer… Objects of curiosity to begin with, they would soon cease to attract attention and quickly blended into the mass of ordinary pupils.

But this one was not to be so soon forgotten. I can still remember this unusual being and all the strange treasures he brought along in the satchel that he wore on his back. At first, there were ‘picture’ penholders that he brought out to write dictation: if you closed one eye you could see a picture, through a peephole in the handle, blurred and magnified, of the Basilica at Lourdes, or some unknown monument. He chose one, and the others were quickly passed around. Then there was a Chinese pencil box, full of compasses and curious instruments, which travelled along the bench to the left, slipping silently and surreptitiously from hand to hand, under the exercise books, so that Monsieur Seurel wouldn’t see.