The Lost Estate (21 page)

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 which 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 His inexplicable uncertainty of the previous day had been replaced by a fever, a nervousness, an urge to get there as soon as possible, which even scared me a little.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 silence, 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.

Then the group surrounded Mademoiselle de Galais, and she was introduced to the young men and women whom she did not know. It was about to be my friend’s turn, and I felt as anxious as he must have been. I was getting ready to do the introduction myself. But before I could say anything, the girl went over to him with surprising gravity and firmness.

‘I recognize you, Augustin Meaulnes,’ she said. And she held out her hand.

VI

THE OUTING

(end)

New arrivals came almost at once to greet Yvonne de Galais, so the two young people were separated. By ill luck they were not put together at the same little table for lunch. But Meaulnes seemed to have regained strength and confidence. Several times, as I was cut off between Delouche and Monsieur de Galais, I saw him giving me a friendly wave from a distance.

It was only towards the end of the afternoon, when most people had been organized into playing games, bathing, conversational groups and the boating trips on the nearby pond, that Meaulnes found himself once more in the young woman’s company. We were chatting with Delouche, sitting on some garden chairs that we had brought with us, when, deliberately leaving a group of young people who seemed to be boring her, Mademoiselle de Galais came over to us. I remember that she asked why we were not boating with the others on the Lac des Aubiers.

‘We did go out a few times this afternoon,’ I said. ‘But it’s a bit tedious and we soon got tired of it.’

‘So why not go on the river?’ she asked.

‘The current is too strong; we could be carried away.’

‘What we need,’ said Meaulnes, ‘is a motor boat or a steam boat, like the one you used to have.’

‘We don’t have it any longer,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘We sold it.’

There was an embarrassed silence. Jasmin took advantage of it to announce that he was going to join Monsieur de Galais.

‘I’ll find him,’ he said.

By a quirk of fate these two, quite dissimilar individuals had taken a liking to one another and had been together since the morning. Monsieur de Galais had led me to one side for a moment earlier in the afternoon and congratulated me on having a friend who was so full of tact, so respectful and possessed of so many other fine qualities. He might even have gone so far as to tell him about the existence of Belisarius and confide the secret of where he was hidden.

I was also thinking of leaving, but I felt the two of them to be so ill at ease and so nervous with one another that I decided it would be wiser not to do so.

Little was achieved by all Jasmin’s discretion and all my own solicitude. They talked; but invariably, with a persistence of which he was surely not aware, Meaulnes kept returning to all the wonders of the past, and each time, the girl, miserably, had to repeat that it had all vanished: the old mansion, which was so strange and so convoluted, had been pulled down; the great lake had been dried up and filled in; the children, with their delightful costumes, had gone their own ways…

‘Ah!’ was all that Meaulnes said, despairingly, as though each of these disappearances proved him right, while either she or I was in the wrong.

We were walking along, side by side. I tried in vain to offer some distraction from the sadness that affected all three of us. Once again, Meaulnes gave in to his obsession, asking for information about everything that he had seen there: the little girls, the driver of the old berlin, the racing ponies…‘Have the ponies been sold, too? Aren’t there any more horses at the château?’