THE MEETING

Next morning Meaulnes was one of the first to be ready. He put on, as he had been told, a simple black old-fashioned suit; a tight-waisted jacket with sleeves puffed out at the shoulders, a double-breasted waistcoat, trousers so wide at the bottom that they hid his dainty shoes, and a top hat.

The courtyard was deserted when he came down. He took a few steps and felt projected into a day of spring. It proved, indeed, to be the most lovely morning of that winter, sunny as in the first days of April. The frost was giving way and the damp grass shone as with dewdrops. In the trees many small birds were singing, and from time to time a warm breeze touched his face as he walked.

He behaved as guests do who wake before their host. He went out into the courtyard, thinking that, at any moment, a friendly and gay voice would call from behind him: ‘Up already, Augustin?’

But he walked alone for a long time in the garden and in the courtyard. Over there, in the main building, nothing stirred, either in the windows or in the turret. Yet the two wings of the heavy-studded door were already open. And at one of the top windows a ray of sunshine shone as in summer in the early morning.

Meaulnes for the first time saw the grounds of the manor in broad daylight. Remains of a wall separated the unkept garden from the courtyard, where quite recently sand had been spread and smoothed over with the rake. At the end of the annex where his room was stood stables built in quaint disorder, which multiplied corners thick with ramping bushes and Virginia creeper. The fir woods, which hid the manor from all the flat country around, encroached onto the very grounds--except towards the east where could be seen blue hills covered with rocks and yet more firs.

For one moment, in the garden, Meaulnes leaned over the shaky fence enclosing the fish-pond; near the edges there remained a little thin ice in folds like froth.... He saw himself reflected in the water, as if bending over the sky in his romantic student’s costume. And he fancied it was another Meaulnes; no longer the schoolboy who had run away in a peasant’s cart, but a charming youth of romance from the pages of some handsome prize-book....

He hurried towards the main building, for he was hungry. A peasant woman was laying the table in the large hall where he had dined the previous evening. As soon as Meaulnes sat down in front of one of the bowls set in a line on the cloth, she poured him some coffee and said: ‘You are the first down, sir?’

He did not wish to answer lest he should suddenly be recognized as a stranger. He only asked at what time the boat would leave for the morning excursion which had been announced.

‘Not for half an hour, sir. No one has come down yet,’ was the reply.

So he continued to wander in search of the landing-stage, all around this long castle-like house, built with unequal wings in the style of a church. When he turned round the south wing, he suddenly saw the reeds which, as far as the eyes could reach, formed the landscape. The water of the lakes, on that side, bathed the foot of the walls, and in front of several doors little wooden balconies overhung the rippling wavelets.

The youth, idly, rambled at leisure along a shore sandy as a towing-path. He peered through the dusty panes of large doors into dilapidated or forsaken rooms and sheds encumbered with wheelbarrows, rusted tools, and broken flower pots, when, suddenly, at the other end of the building, he heard footsteps crunching the sand.

Two women were approaching, one very old and bent, the other a young girl, fair and slender, whose charming dress, after all the fancy costumes of the previous evening, at first appeared strange to Meaulnes.

They stopped a moment to look at the view, while Meaulnes said to himself, with an astonishment which he later viewed as vulgar: ‘That girl must be what is called eccentric--perhaps an actress who has been asked for the fête.’

Meanwhile, the two women passed close to him, and Meaulnes, motionless, watched the girl. Often, in after days, when falling asleep, after having tried in vain to recall the beautiful elusive face, rows of young women, not unlike this one, would pass before him in his dream. One had a hat like hers, another her slightly drooping head; this one her clear gaze, this other her small waist and yet another her blue eyes; but none of these women was ever the tall young girl.

Meaulnes had time to notice under the mass of fair hair a face, rather short but with features outlined with almost painful delicacy. And when she had passed, he observed that she wore what was certainly the most simple and sensible of dresses.

In some perplexity he was asking himself if he should accompany them, when the girl, turning imperceptibly towards him, said to her companion: ‘Surely the boat will soon be here, now?...’

And Meaulnes followed them. The old lady, shaky and worn with age, never ceased chatting and laughing. The girl answered her gently. And when they walked down to the landing-stage she once again had that innocent grave look which seemed to say: ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? I don’t know you. And yet it seems to me that I do know you.’

Other guests were now scattered amongst the trees, waiting. Three pleasure boats came to the shore, ready to take the holiday-makers on board. One by one, as the women, who seemed to be the lady of the manor and her daughter, passed by, the young men bowed low and the girls curtsied. Strange morning! Strange pleasure party! It was cold, in spite of the winter sun, and the women were twisting round their necks those feather boas which were then fashionable.

The old lady remained on shore and, without knowing how, Meaulnes found himself in the same boat as the young lady of the manor. He leaned at the side of the deck, one hand holding on his hat in the high wind, and he was able to watch at his ease the girl who sat in shelter. She watched him, too. She answered her friends, smiled, and then gently let her blue eyes rest on him, biting her lip a little.

There was deep silence on the near banks. The boat glided on with a quiet sound of engine and water. It was easy to imagine one was in the heart of summer. They were going to land, so it seemed, in the beautiful garden of some country house. There, the girl would walk about under a white sunshade. Until evening the moan of doves would be heard.... But suddenly an icy blast came to remind the guests at this strange fête that it was December.

* * * * *

They landed in front of a fir wood. On the landing-stage, the passengers had to wait a moment huddled, one against the other, while one of the boatmen unlocked the gate. With what joy, in after days, Meaulnes recalled the one minute when, on the shore of the lake, he had felt, close to his own, the girl’s face, since lost! He had gazed at that profile, so pure, until his eyes had nearly filled with tears. And he remembered having seen, like a delicate secret she had confided to him, a little powder on her cheek....

On land everything happened as in a dream. While the children ran about with shouts of joy, while groups formed and scattered through the woods, Meaulnes entered a path where ten paces ahead of him the girl was walking.

He was close to her without having had time to think. ‘You are lovely,’ he said simply.

But she hurried on and without replying turned off along another path. Other people were playing and running about the avenues, each wandering where the fancy took him. The young man sharply reproached himself with what he called his thick-headedness, his grossness, his stupidity. He rambled on aimlessly, convinced that he would never again set eye on this gracious being, when suddenly he saw her approaching and forced to pass close to him in the narrow path. With two bare hands, she pushed the folds of her long cloak out of the way. She wore black shoes cut very open. Her ankles were so slender that at times they appeared to bend and you feared they might break.

This time, the young man took off his hat and said, very softly: ‘Will you forgive me?’

‘I forgive you,’ she said gravely. ‘But I must go back to the children, as they are the masters to-day. Good-bye.’

Augustin begged her to stay a moment longer. He spoke to her awkwardly, but in a voice so agitated and so disturbed, that she walked more slowly and listened to him.

‘I do not even know who you are,’ she said at last.

She spoke in an even tone, dwelling on each word in the same way, but saying the last one more softly.... Then she regained her steady look, still biting her lips a little, and her blue eyes looked into the distance.

‘I do not know your name either,’ replied Meaulnes.

They were following a lane no longer under the cover of the woods, and some way off the guests could be seen crowding around an isolated house in the open country.

‘Here is “Frantz’s House,”’ said the girl. ‘I must leave you....’

She hesitated, looked at him a moment, and smiling said: ‘My name?... I am Mademoiselle Yvonne de Galais....’

And she hurried away.

* * * * *

‘Frantz’s House’ was then uninhabited. But Meaulnes found it invaded, up to the attics, by the crowd of guests. He had scarcely leisure, however, to examine the spot where he now stood: they all hastened to eat a cold lunch which had been brought in the boats and which was hardly seasonable, but most likely the children had decided on it; then they set off again.

Meaulnes came close to Mademoiselle de Galais as soon as he saw her leave the house, and in answer to what she had said previously: ‘The name I had given you was much nicer,’ he said.

‘How is that? What was the name?’ she replied, always with the same seriousness.

But he was afraid of having said something silly, and he did not answer.

‘Well, my own name is Augustin Meaulnes,’ he went on, ‘and I am a student.’

‘Oh! you are studying?’ she said.

And they spoke a moment longer. They spoke slowly with happiness--with friendship. Then the girl’s attitude changed. Less haughty and less serious, she now also seemed more uneasy. She seemed to be dreading what Augustin might say and was troubled beforehand. She was close to him, trembling like a swallow alighted for a moment on the ground and already quivering with the longing to resume its flight.

‘What is the good? What is the good?’ she replied gently to the plans which Meaulnes proposed.

But then at last he dared to ask her permission to come back one day to this delightful manor.

‘I will wait for you,’ she replied simply.

They came in sight of the landing-stage.

She stopped suddenly and said thoughtfully: ‘We are two children, we have behaved foolishly. We mustn’t get into the same boat this time. Good-bye; do not follow me.’

For an instant Meaulnes remained dumbfounded, watching her go away. Then he continued his walk. And the girl in the distance, stopped at the moment of disappearing in the crowd of guests, and turning, for the first time, took a long look at him. Was that a last farewell? Was it to forbid him to follow her? Or had she perhaps something else to tell him?...

* * * * *

As soon as they returned to the manor the pony-race started in a big meadow that sloped down at the back of the farm. It was the last item of the fête. According to the arrangements the fiancés were to arrive for it and Frantz was to manage it all.

Yet they had to begin without him. The boys in their jockey suits and the little girls as horsewomen led in some frisky ponies decked with ribbons as well as very old docile horses, amid shouts, children’s laughter, betting, and prolonged sounding of the bell. One could have fancied one’s self on the green and newly mown turf of a miniature race-course.

Meaulnes spotted Daniel and the little girls with feathers in their hats whose voices he had heard the day before in the drive near the wood.... The other part of the show was lost on him, so great was his anxiety to find, among the crowd, the charming hat trimmed with roses and the long brown cloak. But Mademoiselle de Galais never appeared. He was still looking for her when a full peal of the bell and joyful hurrahs announced that the race was over. A little girl mounted on an old white mare had won the prize. She proudly passed by on her mount, the feather of her hat fluttering in the wind.

Then suddenly all was still. The games were ended and Frantz had not come back. There was a moment of hesitation; people consulted uneasily. At last, in groups, the guests went back to the house to await in silence and anxiety the home-coming of the engaged couple.