A HALT

Suddenly the mare slowed down as if her foot had stumbled in the dark; Meaulnes saw her head sink and rise twice; then she stopped dead, her nostrils close to the ground, appearing to sniff at something. The trickle of water could be heard by her feet. A stream barred the way. In summer that spot was certainly a ford. But at this time of the year the current was so strong that ice had not formed and it would have been dangerous to push on.

Meaulnes gently pulled on the reins to go back a few yards and stood up in the cart full of perplexity. It was then that he noticed a light between the branches. Only two or three meadows seemed to separate it from the lane....

The schoolboy jumped down from the cart and backed the mare, talking to her to quiet her and to stop the frightened tossing of her head.

‘Come on, old girl, come on. We shan’t go any farther now. We shall soon know where we’ve got to.’

And pushing open the half-shut gate of a small meadow by the lane, he went through with the trap. His feet sank deep into the soft grass. The cart jolted silently. His head was by the mare’s head and he could feel her warmth and her hard breathing....

He took her to the far end of the meadow and threw the rug over her back; then thrusting aside the branches of the hedge, he again noticed the light which came from an isolated house.

None the less he had to cross three meadows and jump over a treacherous brook into which he nearly fell with both feet.... At last, after a final leap from the top of a bank, he found himself in the yard of a rustic farm. A pig was grunting in its sty. At the noise of footsteps on the frozen ground a dog began to bark furiously.

The shutter over the door was open, and the light which Meaulnes had seen came from a wood fire burning on the hearth. There was no other light but that of the fire. In the house, a country woman rose from a chair and came to the door, with no sign of fear. At the same moment the grandfather clock struck half-past seven.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ said the big boy, ‘I believe I have trodden on your chrysanthemums.’

She waited, basin in hand, looking at him.

‘The fact is,’ she said, ‘it’s that dark in the yard you can’t see your way.’

There was a moment’s silence, during which Meaulnes stood looking at walls papered with pages out of illustrated papers, as they are in inns, and at the table on which lay a man’s hat.

‘He’s not in, the boss,’ he said, sitting down.

‘He’ll be back in a moment,’ she replied, quite at her ease now, ‘he’s gone to fetch wood.’

‘I don’t exactly want him,’ went on the young fellow, bringing his chair nearer to the fire, ‘but out there a few of us--sportsmen, you know--are keeping a lookout. I came to ask if you could spare us a little bread.’

Admiral Meaulnes knew quite well that with country folk, above all in an isolated farm, one must speak with caution, even with diplomacy, and above all never show that one does not belong to the district.

‘Bread,’ said she, ‘we shan’t be able to give you much. The baker who always calls on a Tuesday hasn’t come to-day....’

Augustin, who for a moment had hoped he was near a village, took fright.

‘The baker, from where?’ he asked.

‘Why, of course, the baker from Vieux-Nançay,’ replied the woman, astonished.

‘How far is it exactly from here to Vieux-Nançay?’ went on Meaulnes, very anxious.

‘By the road I couldn’t tell exactly; but by the short cut it is three leagues off.’

And she began to relate that her daughter was there in service, that she always walked all the way home on the first Sunday of the month, and that her master and mistress....

But Meaulnes, completely put out, interrupted her to say: ‘Vieux-Nançay, would that be the nearest village from here?’

‘No, the nearest is Les Landes, five kilometres off here. But there are no shops and no baker at Landes, only just a small fair each year on Saint Martin’s Day.’

Meaulnes had never heard of Les Landes. He saw himself so much lost that he was almost tickled. But the woman, busy at the sink washing her basin, turned round, inquisitive in her turn, and said slowly, looking at him quite straight: ‘Don’t you, then, belong to these parts?...’

* * * * *

At that moment an elderly peasant appeared at the door, carrying an armful of wood, which he threw on the stone floor. The woman explained to him, in a very loud voice, as if he were deaf, what was required by the young man.

‘Well! that’s easy,’ said he simply. ‘But come nearer, you’re getting no warmth from the fire.’

A moment later both were settled by the hearth: the old man breaking his wood to put on the fire, Meaulnes enjoying a bowl of milk and some bread which had been offered him. Our traveller, delighted at finding himself in that humble dwelling after so many worries, and thinking that an end had come to his strange adventure, was already making plans for bringing friends with him in the future, to visit these kind people. He did not know that this was only a halt, and that presently he was to resume his journey.

He soon asked to be shown the road to La Motte. And, little by little, coming back to the truth, he related that he had been cut off, with his cart, from the other guns and now found himself completely lost.

Then the man and the woman insisted so much on his putting up at the farm and not starting before broad daylight, that Meaulnes in the end accepted, and walked out to fetch his mare and put her up in the stables.

‘Mind holes in the path,’ said the man.

Meaulnes dared not confess that he had not used ‘the path.’ He nearly brought himself to ask if the good fellow could come with him. For a second he hesitated on the threshold and so great was his indecision that he almost staggered. But he went out into the gloom of the yard.