THE STRANGE FESTIVAL (_end_)

Already, night as it was, a string of vehicles wound slowly towards the gate at the entrance of the wood. A man, in a goatskin, holding a lantern, led the first horse of the procession.

Meaulnes was anxious to find some one to give him a lift. He was anxious to go away. Deep within him he dreaded finding himself suddenly alone at the manor and his trick discovered.

When he arrived in front of the main building, he found the drivers assigning their occupants to the last carriages. The travellers were made to stand while the seats were brought forward or pushed backward, and the girls, swathed in shawls, got up clumsily, the rugs slipping to their feet, and one could distinguish the anxious faces of those whose heads were lowered towards the carriage lights.

One of these drivers Meaulnes recognised as the young peasant who had offered to see him home a while ago.

‘May I get in?’ he called out.

‘Where are you going, my lad?’ replied the other, not recognising him.

‘Sainte-Agathe way.’

‘Then you should ask Maritain for a seat.’

And the big schoolboy started in search of this unknown Maritain amongst the guests who were late in leaving. The man was pointed out to him amongst the convivial spirits in the kitchen.

‘He’s a slacker,’ they told him; ‘he’ll be here till three in the morning.’

Meaulnes thought for a moment of the poor worried girl who, in the midst of her grief and anxiety, would hear the songs of these tipplers filling the place far into the night. In which room was she? Where was her window amongst these mysterious buildings? But there was no point in stopping. He must go. Once back at Sainte-Agathe everything would become clearer; he would no longer be a runaway schoolboy; he would once more be able to dream of the young mistress of the manor.

One by one the vehicles left; the wheels grated on the sand of the drive. One could see them turn to disappear in the night with their loads of muffled-up women and children wrapped in shawls and already dropping asleep. One more big covered cart; then passed a wagonette in which women were huddled shoulder to shoulder, and Meaulnes was left standing bewildered on the steps of the house. Soon, only an old berlin, driven by a peasant in a smock, would be left.

‘You can get in,’ he replied to Augustin’s inquiries. ‘We are going your way.’

With some difficulty Meaulnes opened the door of the rickety old vehicle, while the panes rattled and the hinges creaked. On the seat, in a corner of the carriage two quite small children, a boy and a girl, were asleep. The noise and the cold woke them. They stretched, looked vaguely about them shivering, nestled back in their corner and dropped off to sleep again.

Now the old carriage set off. Meaulnes closed the door more gently, and carefully settled in the other corner; then, hungrily, he tried to make out, through the window, the place he was about to leave and the road by which he had come: he guessed, in spite of the darkness, that the carriage was crossing the courtyard and the garden, passing in front of the stairway leading to his room, going through the gate and leaving the manor grounds to enter the woods. The trunks of the old fir trees could be distinguished moving by the window.

‘Perhaps we shall meet Frantz de Galais,’ Meaulnes said to himself with beating heart.

Suddenly, the carriage swerved in the narrow lane to avoid collision with an obstacle. From its heavy appearance, as far as one could tell in the night, it was a caravan, almost in the middle of the road, which had stopped there during these last days in proximity to the fête.

Having passed that obstacle, the horses started again at a trot, and Meaulnes was beginning to tire of looking out of the window in a vain effort to pierce through the surrounding darkness, when suddenly, in the depths of the woods, there was a flash of light followed by a report. The horses set off at full gallop and Meaulnes could not make out, at first, whether the peasant who drove was attempting to hold them back or on the contrary urging them on. He wanted to open the door. As the handle was on the outside, he tried without success to lower the window; he shook it.... The children waking up in a fright huddled against each other without saying a word. And while he shook the window, his face close to the glass, a bend in the road enabled him to see a white figure running. It was the tall Pierrot of the fête, the bohemian in his fancy costume, but haggard and distracted and carrying in his arms a human body clasped closely to him. Then all disappeared.

In the carriage, tearing on at full gallop in the night, the children were once more asleep. No one to whom to speak of the mysterious happenings of the past two days. After reviewing at length all he had seen or heard, the young man, himself tired, his heart heavy, dropped off to sleep like a sad child....

* * * * *

... It was scarcely dawn when the carriage stopped on the road and Meaulnes was awakened by some one knocking at the window. With some difficulty the driver opened the door and shouted, while the icy wind froze the schoolboy to the bone:

‘You get out here! It’s almost daylight. We are going to take the short cut. You’re quite near Sainte-Agathe.’

Half asleep, Meaulnes obeyed, felt about in the darkest corner of the carriage for his cap which had rolled under the feet of the sleeping children; then he got out, stooping.

‘Well, good-bye,’ said the man, climbing back to his seat; ‘you’ve only got six kilometres to do. Look, there is the milestone by the roadside.’

Meaulnes, still heavy with sleep, dragged himself up to the milestone and sat down with his arms folded and his head bent forward as though to fall asleep again.

‘No, no!’ called out the coachman; ‘you mustn’t think of sleeping there. It’s too cold. Come on, up you get, walk a bit....’

Staggering like a drunken man, the big boy with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up, went slowly along the road of Sainte-Agathe, while the old berlin, the last trace of the mysterious festival, quitted the highroad and jolted silently off over the grass track. Now only the hat of the driver could be seen, dancing above the hedges....