THE GREAT GAME

Wind and cold, rain or snow, the impossibility of making any long expedition prevented Meaulnes and me from mentioning again the Lost Land before the end of the winter. There was nothing worth beginning during these short February days--these Thursdays[4] broken up by squalls which invariably ended, about five, in a dismal freezing downpour.

Nothing recalled Meaulnes’ adventure except the strange fact that since the afternoon of his return we no longer had friends. At recreation time the same games were got up as before, but Jasmin never spoke to Admiral Meaulnes. In the evenings, as soon as the classroom was swept, the playground became deserted, as in the days when I was alone, and I now watched my friend strolling to and fro from the garden to the shed and from the playground to the dining-room.

On Thursday mornings each of us settled at the master’s desk in one of the two classrooms to read Rousseau and Paul Louis Courrier whom we had dug out of the cupboards from amongst English textbooks and copybooks of carefully transcribed music. In the afternoon some caller or other caused us to leave the house and we returned to the school.... Sometimes we used to hear some of the senior boys stop for a moment, as if by chance, in front of the big gate, bang against it during some unintelligible military games, and then go away.... This melancholy life went on until the end of February. I was beginning to think that Meaulnes had forgotten everything when an adventure, stranger than the others, came to prove to me that I had been mistaken and that a violent storm was brewing under the dreary surface of this winter life.

It happened to be a Thursday evening towards the end of the month, that the first news of the mysterious manor, the first ripple of that adventure of which we never spoke, reached us. We were all snug for the evening. My grandparents having left, there remained only Millie and my father, who had not the least idea of the secret quarrel by which the form was split into two clans.

At eight o’clock Millie, who had opened the door to shake out the crumbs after the meal, exclaimed: ‘Ah!’ in a voice so clear that we all came near to look. On the doorstep there was a layer of snow.... As it was very dark, I walked a few steps into the playground to see if the layer was thick. I felt light flakes touch my face, to melt at once. I was quickly made to come in, and Millie, feeling chilly, hastened to shut the door.

At nine o’clock we prepared to go to bed; Mother was already holding the lamp in her hand when we quite distinctly heard two violent bangs hammered with great fury against the big gate at the other end of the playground. Millie put down the lamp on the table and we all stood there alert, listening.

No one dreamed of going to see what was the matter. Before getting halfway across the playground the lamp would have been out and the glass broken. There was a short silence and Father was beginning, ‘It must have been ...’ when right under the dining-room window looking on the Station Road, as I have said before, sounded a shrill prolonged whistle which must have been heard as far as the church. And immediately behind the window, scarcely softened by the glass, and coming from people who seemed to have hoisted themselves up to the window-sill, burst loud shouts of: ‘Fetch him along! Fetch him along!’

At the other end of the building other loud shouts responded. These people must have gone through Father Martin’s field and climbed on the low wall separating the field from the playground.

Then cries of ‘Fetch him along,’ shouted on every side by eight or ten unknown persons disguising their voices, burst out from the roof of the larder which they could only reach by climbing over a heap of faggots leaning against the outside wall; from a little wall which ran from the shed to the big gate and on which being rounded you could sit comfortably astride; from the railed wall along the Station Road, quite easy to climb.... Finally a number of stragglers came up from the garden behind, making the same din, but shouting: ‘Let ’em have it!’

And we heard the sound of their yells echoing in the empty classrooms where they had opened the windows.

Meaulnes and I knew so well all the corners and corridors of the big building that we could clearly see, as on a plan, the positions from which the unknown people were launching their attack.

To tell the truth, it was only just at first that we were frightened. The shrill whistle had made the four of us think of tramps and gipsies breaking in. As a matter of fact, for the last fortnight, a tall rogue and a youngster with his head bandaged up had been about in the square behind the church. There were strange workmen, too, at the wheelwright’s and the blacksmith’s.

But as soon as we heard the cries of the assailants we were convinced that we had to do with people--probably youngsters--from the village. Absolute little scalawags--you could spot them by their piercing voices--were among the crowd who stormed our house as they would board a ship.

‘Well, I never....’ exclaimed my father.

And Millie asked in a faint voice: ‘What on earth does it all mean?’

Suddenly the voices near the big gate and the adjoining wall stopped, then those near the window. Two blasts of a whistle came from behind the French window. The cries of those hanging on the larder roof and of those attacking from the garden grew fainter and fainter, then ceased; we heard along the dining-room wall the scuttering steps of the whole gang in hasty retreat, getting lost in the snow.

Some one obviously was disturbing them. At an hour when all slept, they thought they could easily storm a house isolated at the far end of the village. But here was some one upsetting their plan of campaign.

We had scarcely time to recover--for the attack had been sudden as a well-planned boarding of a ship--and prepare to sally out, when we heard a voice we knew call out at the same gate:

‘Monsieur Seurel! Monsieur Seurel!’

It was M. Pasquier, the butcher. The fat little man scraped his clogs on the doorstep, shook his short smock powdered with snow, and came in. He put on the knowing and startled air of one who has surprised the secret of a mystery.

‘I was in my yard which faces the Cross-Roads. I was going to lock up the goats’ shed. Suddenly, standing there in the snow, what d’ye think I saw? Two tall lads as looked posted like sentries or on the watch for something. They were standing by the cross. I went towards them, just two steps.--Lord! there be these lads starting off at full speed towards here. I didn’t wait: not me. I picked up my lantern and I said: I be off to tell M. Seurel of this....’

And once more he begins his story. ‘I was in my yard at the back of my place....’ So we offer him a drink, which he accepts, and we ask him details which he cannot give.

He had seen nothing on reaching our house. All the bands, warned by the two sentries whom he had disturbed, had at once vanished. As for knowing who the rascals could be....

‘Gipsies, quite likely,’ he suggested. ‘For a month they’ve been about in the square wailing for fine weather to give us a play, and must have been hatching some mischief.’

This did not help us much, and we all stood there very puzzled while the man sipped his drink and once more started his story, when Meaulnes, who so far had listened attentively, took the butcher’s lantern from the floor and exclaimed: ‘We must go and see!’

He opened the door and we followed him, M. Seurel, M. Pasquier, and myself.

Millie, quite herself again after the attackers’ departure, and, like all orderly and careful people, very uninquisitive by nature, said: ‘Well, go if you like, but close the door and take the key. As for me, I am going to bed; I’ll leave the lamp burning.’