The Lost Estate (22 page)

She said that there were none; she didn’t mention Belisarius.

Then he began to list the objects in his room: the candelabra, the large mirror, the old broken lute… He was inquiring about all this with extraordinary eagerness as though trying to persuade himself that there was nothing remaining of his great adventure and that the young woman would not have anything to bring him, not a single piece of wreckage that would prove that they had not both dreamt it all, like a diver lifting a stone and some seaweed from the ocean depths.

Mademoiselle de Galais and I could not help smiling sadly, and she made up her mind to explain everything:

‘You’ll never see again the fine château that Monsieur de Galais and I got ready for poor Frantz. We spent our lives doing what he asked. He was such a strange and charming creature! But everything vanished with him on the evening of his failed betrothal. Monsieur de Galais was already ruined without us knowing. Frantz had run up debts, and his former friends, when they found out that he had gone, immediately turned to us for payment. We became poor. Madame de Galais died and we lost all our friends in a matter of days.

‘Should Frantz come back, if he is not dead, and should he return to his friends and his fiancée, so that the interrupted wedding can take place, then everything might go back to what it was before. But can one return to the past?’

‘Who knows?’ said Meaulnes, thoughtfully. And he asked no further questions.

All three of us were walking on the short grass, which was already turning a little yellow. Near him, to Augustin’s right, was the girl whom he had thought lost for ever. When he asked one of his hard questions, she turned slowly towards him to answer, with an anxious look on her charming face. And once, as she spoke, she gently put a hand on his arm, with a movement full of trust in his greater strength. Why was The Great Meaulnes behaving like a stranger, like a person who had not found what he was looking for and who could not be interested in anything besides? Three years earlier, he could not have borne this happiness without panic, perhaps without madness. So where had he found this emptiness, this distance, this inability to experience happiness which was in him now?

We were coming to the little wood where, that morning, Monsieur de Galais had tied up Belisarius. The setting sun was lengthening the shadows on the grass. At the far end of the glade, deadened by distance, we could hear a happy buzzing, the sound of people playing games and of young girls, and we remained silent in this admirable calm, when we heard singing from the other side of the wood, towards Les Aubiers, the farm at the water’s edge. It was the distant, young voice of someone
taking cattle to water, a melody as rhythmical as a dance tune, but which the young man was drawing out and making as languorous as a plaintive old ballad:

My shoes are red…

Farewell, my loves…

My shoes are red…

Farewell, for ever…

Meaulnes had looked up and was listening. It was just one of those songs that the peasants were singing as they lingered on their way, at the Estate Without a Name, on the last evening of the festivities, when everything had already fallen through… Just a memory – and the saddest – of those lovely days that would never return.

‘Can you hear him?’ Meaulnes said quietly. ‘Oh, I’m going to see who it is!’ And at once he set off through the little wood. Almost immediately, the singing stopped. For a moment after that we heard the man whistling to his animals as he went away, then nothing more…

I looked at the young woman. She was thoughtful and dejected, staring at the thicket into which Meaulnes had just vanished. How often, later, would she stare in that way, pensively, at the place where The Great Meaulnes had vanished for ever!

She turned back towards me. ‘He is not happy,’ she said, sorrowfully. And she added, ‘And perhaps there is nothing that I can do for him…’

I was reluctant to answer because I was afraid that Meaulnes, who must have quickly got to the farm and would by now be coming back through the wood, might overhear our conversation. Even so, I was going to say something encouraging: to tell her not to worry about offending the tall young man; that he must surely have some secret that was troubling him and that he would never entrust it of his own accord, either to her or to anyone else – when suddenly there was a shout from the far side of the wood. Then we heard what sounded like the stamping and snorting of a horse and the intermittent sound of a quarrel. I guessed at once that old Belisarius had had an
accident and ran towards the spot from which the noise was coming. Mademoiselle de Galais followed me at a distance. Our movement must have been observed from the far end of the meadow, because, just as I was going into the thicket, I heard the shouts of people running towards us.

Old Belisarius, who was tied too low down, had got one of his forelegs caught in the tether. He had not moved until Monsieur de Galais and Delouche had approached him on their walk. Then, startled and over-excited by the oats that he had been given, which he was not used to, he had struggled furiously. The two men tried to release him but so clumsily that they only managed to entangle him further, at the same time risking a dangerous kick from his hooves. It was at that moment that Meaulnes, who happened to be returning from Les Aubiers, had come across the group. Angry at their ineptitude, he had pushed the two men aside, almost sending them tumbling into the bushes. Cautiously, but deftly, he freed Belisarius – too late, because the harm was already done. The horse must have a pulled tendon or perhaps even have broken something, because he was in a pitiful state, with his head hanging, his saddle half slipping from his back, one leg drawn up under his body and trembling all over. Meaulnes bent over, felt his leg and examined him in silence.

When he stood upright, almost everyone had gathered around, but he saw nobody. He was red with fury.

‘I wonder who on earth could have tied him up like that!’ he shouted. ‘And left his saddle on all day? Besides, who dared put a saddle on this old horse who is hardly fit to pull a cart!’

Delouche tried to speak and take the blame on himself.

‘Quiet, you! It’s your fault again. I saw you stupidly pulling his tether to get him free.’

And, bending down again, he started to rub the horse’s hock with the flat of his hand.

Monsieur de Galais, who had said nothing up to now, made the mistake of trying to join the conversation. He stammered: ‘Naval officers are in the habit… My horse…’

‘So! It’s your horse?’ Meaulnes said, calming down a little, though still very flushed, turning towards the old man.

I thought that he would change his tone and make some excuse. For a moment, he breathed heavily, and I noticed that he was taking a bitter, despairing pleasure in aggravating the situation, in destroying it all for ever, as he said, insolently, ‘Well, I can’t congratulate you.’

Someone suggested, ‘Perhaps some cold water… We could bathe him in the ford…’

Meaulnes didn’t reply. ‘What has to be done is to take this old horse away while he can still walk,’ he said. ‘And there’s no time to lose! Then put him in a stable and never take him out again.’

Several young people volunteered their services at once. But Mademoiselle de Galais politely refused them all. Her face blazing, on the brink of tears, she said goodbye to everyone, even to Meaulnes, who was quite abashed and did not dare to look her in the face. She took the animal by the reins, as though giving someone a hand, to draw him towards her rather than to lead him… The late-summer wind was so warm on the road to Les Sablonnières that it felt like May, and the leaves on the hedges were shivering in the southern breeze. We watched her leave, her arm half out of her coat, holding the thick leather rein in her slender hand. Her father walked painfully beside her…

What a sad ending to the day! Little by little, everyone collected the bits and pieces, and the blankets. The chairs were folded and the tables taken down. One by one, the carts set off, loaded with luggage and people, with hats raised and handkerchiefs waving. We stayed until we were the last on the spot with Uncle Florentin, who like us was silently mulling over his regrets and disappointment.

Then we, too, left, carried quickly away in our well-sprung carriage by our fine chestnut horse. The wheel screeched in the sand as it took the corner, and soon Meaulnes and I, who were on the back seat, were looking at the track that old Belisarius and his master had taken as it vanished down the little side road.

But then my friend, who was the person of all I knew least
likely to give in to tears, suddenly turned towards me with his face twisted by an irresistible urge to weep.

‘Stop, please stop,’ he said, putting his hand on Florentin’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll come back on my own, on foot.’

With a single bound, holding on to the mudguard, he leapt down and, to our amazement, started to run back the way we had come, running as far as the little track that we had just passed, the track leading to Les Sablonnières. He must have come to the Estate along the avenue of fir trees that he had taken in that former time, and where, a vagabond hiding among the low branches, he had overheard the mysterious conversation of the pretty, unknown children…

And that evening, sobbing, he asked Mademoiselle de Galais for her hand in marriage.

VII

THE WEDDING DAY

It is a Thursday, early in February, a fine, icy Thursday evening, with a high wind blowing, between three-thirty and four. Since midday, in the villages, the washing has been hanging out on the hedges and drying in the gusts. In every house, the dining-room fire casts its light on a whole votive altar of polished toys. Tired of playing, the child has gone to sit beside his mother and is getting her to tell him about her wedding day…

Anyone who does not wish to be happy has only to go up into the attic and there, until nightfall, he can listen to the whistling and creaking of foundering ships; or else he can go outside on the road, and the wind will throw his scarf back against his mouth like a sudden, warm kiss that will bring tears to his eyes. But for anyone who loves happiness, there is the house of Les Sablonnières, beside a muddy road, where my friend Meaulnes came back with Yvonne de Galais, who had been his wife since noon.

The engagement lasted five months. It was a tranquil time, as tranquil as that first meeting had been troubled. Meaulnes went frequently to Les Sablonnières, by bicycle or in the trap. More than twice a week, as she sat sewing or knitting by the large window, Mademoiselle de Galais would suddenly see his tall shadow quickly going past behind the curtain – because he always came along the side path that he had taken that very first time. But this is the only (and tacit) allusion that he would make to the past. Happiness seems to have quieted his strange anguish.

Small incidents have marked those five calm months. I have been appointed teacher in the hamlet of Saint-Benoist-des-Champs.
Saint-Benoist is not a village, but a number of farms scattered across the countryside, and the schoolhouse stands completely by itself on a hill beside the road. Mine is a very solitary existence, but if I walk through the fields, I can be at Les Sablonnières in three-quarters of an hour. Delouche is now with his uncle, a builders’ merchant in Le Vieux-Nançay. He will soon be boss himself. He often comes to see me. Meaulnes, at Mademoiselle de Galais’ request, is now very friendly towards him. And that explains why the two of us are walking along at around four in the afternoon, when all the wedding guests have already left.

The wedding took place at noon, as quietly as possible, in the old chapel of Les Sablonnières, which has not been pulled down, but is half hidden by the fir trees on the slope of the opposite hill. After a brief wedding breakfast, Meaulnes’ mother, Monsieur Seurel, Millie, Florentin and the others drove off. Only Jasmin and I were left.

We are wandering along the edge of the wood behind the house of Les Sablonnières, on the edge of the large expanse of wasteland which was the site of the now demolished mansion. Without admitting it and without knowing why, we are both full of unease. We try to distract our thoughts and calm our fears by pointing out the burrows of hares as we wander along or the little tracks of sand where rabbits have recently been digging… or a snare… the sign of a poacher… But we return constantly to the edge of the woods, from where we can see the house, silent and closed.

Below the big window overlooking the fir trees there is a wooden balcony, invaded by weeds that bend in the wind. A light, like that of an open fire, shines on the window panes. From time to time, a shadow passes behind the curtains. All around, in the fields, in the vegetable garden and in the only farm that remains of those on the estate, there is silence and solitude. The tenants have gone to the village to celebrate their masters’ joy.

From time to time, the wind, laden with a mist that is almost rain, dampens our faces and brings us the faint sound of a piano which someone is playing in the closed house. At first it
is like a trembling voice, far, far away, scarcely daring to express its happiness. It’s like the laughter of a little girl in her room who has gone to fetch all her toys and is displaying them to a friend. I am reminded, too, of the still timorous joy of a woman who has left to put on a lovely dress and returns to show it off without being sure of the effect it will have… This unknown tune is also a prayer, an entreaty to happiness not to be too cruel, like a greeting and a genuflection to happiness…

I think, ‘At last they are happy. Meaulnes is there with her…’

And knowing this, being sure of it, is enough to bring content to the innocent child that I am.

At that moment, lost in thought and with my face wet from the wind of the plain as though from the spray of the sea, I feel a hand on my shoulder.