IN SEARCH OF THE LOST TRAIL

The sun was breaking through the morning mist on our return: housewives were shaking carpets or chatting in front of their doors: the loveliest spring morning my memory can recall was beginning in the fields and woods round the village.

All the big boys of the top form had been told to come about eight that Thursday morning to prepare, some for Matriculation, others for the Entrance Examination to Training College. When we arrived together--Meaulnes so full of regret and uneasiness that he could not keep still, myself very depressed--the school was empty.... A ray of bright sunlight was glinting on the dust of a worm-eaten bench and the peeling varnish of the globe.

How could we stop there in front of a book, to brood over our disappointment, when everything was calling us out-of-doors: birds chasing one another in the branches close to the windows, the other boys gone off to the woods and the fields, and above all our burning wish to try at once the incomplete route on the map approved by the bohemian--our last card, the one key left which might open the lock?... It was more than we could stand! Meaulnes kept walking up and down, going to the windows to look at the garden, then back again for a look towards the village, as if he was expecting some one who certainly would not come.

‘I’ve a notion,’ he said to me at last--‘I’ve a notion that it mayn’t be as far as we think.... Frantz struck off my plan a good bit of the road I had marked. That may mean the mare went a long way round while I was asleep....’

I sat idle and discouraged on the edge of a big table, one foot on the ground, the other swinging, and I remarked in a dejected way: ‘Yes, but coming back, in the berlin, your journey lasted all night.’

‘We left at midnight,’ he replied quickly. ‘They put me down at four in the morning, six kilometres west of Sainte-Agathe, whereas I’d gone by the east Station Road. So we must knock off these six kilometres from the distance between Sainte-Agathe and the Lost Land. I feel almost sure that from the wood on the Commons to what we’re after, it can’t be more than eight kilometres.’

‘They’re precisely the eight kilometres missing on your map.’

‘That’s true. And getting out of the wood means at least six kilometres from here; but a good walker can do it in a morning.’

Mouchebœuf came in at that moment. He had an irritating way of appearing to be a good pupil, not by working better than others, but by showing off on occasions like this.

‘I knew,’ he said proudly, ‘I should find only you two. The others have gone to the Commons wood, under Jasmin Delouche: he knows the nests.’

And to show off his goodness, he began to relate what they had said to rag the Matric form, M. Seurel, and ourselves while planning this expedition.

‘If they’ve gone to the wood, I shall most likely come across them,’ said Meaulnes, ‘as I’m going that way too. I’ll be back about half-past twelve.’

Mouchebœuf was aghast.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ said Augustin to me, stopping a moment on the step of the partly open door--and thus brought into the room a whiff of air softened by the sun, a medley of twittering, calling, and chirping, the sound of a pail on the curb of a well and the cracking of a whip in the far distance.

‘No,’ I replied, although the temptation was strong, ‘I can’t because of M. Seurel. But hurry up, I’ll be on the itch to know.’

He made a vague gesture and went off quickly, full of hope.

When M. Seurel came in about ten, he had discarded his black alpaca jacket, having put on a fisherman’s coat with big buttoned pockets, a straw hat, and short leather leggings to hold in his trousers. I believe he was hardly surprised at finding no one. He payed no heed to Mouchebœuf, who told him three times that the boys had said: ‘Well, if he wants us, let him come and find us!’

He just said: ‘Put away your things, take your caps, it’s our turn to get even with them, then.... Can you walk as far as that, François?’

I assured him I could and we started.

It was agreed that Mouchebœuf would guide M. Seurel and be his decoy-bird.... That is to say that, knowing the thickets where the nest-hunters had gone, he would call aloud, from time to time: ‘Holla! Hoa! Giraudat! Delouche! Where are you? Got any?... Made any finds?...’

As for me, to my great delight, I was told to follow the outskirts of the wood on the east side, in case the runaways should try to escape that way.

It so happened that, on the plan altered by the bohemian and which I had many times studied with Meaulnes, a line seemed to indicate a path, a beaten track, starting from that side in the direction of the manor. What if I should discover it this morning! I began to feel certain that before midday I should find myself on the road to the Lost Land....

* * * * *

What a marvellous walk!... As soon as we had passed the glacis and gone round the mill, I left my two companions: M. Seurel looking as if he was off to the wars (I believe he had an old pistol in his pocket) and that traitor Mouchebœuf.

I took a cross-road and soon came to the edge of the wood--being alone in the open country for the first time in my life, and feeling like a patrol which has lost its corporal.

Here I am, I imagine, close to that mysterious happiness of which Meaulnes, one day, had a glimpse. The whole morning is mine to explore the edge of the wood--the most deliciously cool and secreted part of the district--while my big brother, too, is off on the search. It is like the old bed of a brook. I make my way under the low branches of trees unknown to me by names, but which must be alders. I have just jumped a hurdle at the end of the path, and I am under a roof of leaves in this wide grass track, treading down nettles and crushing tall valerians.

Sometimes, for a few steps, my foot rests on a stretch of fine sand. And in the silence I hear a bird--I imagine it to be a nightingale, but most likely this is wrong, as nightingales only sing at night--a bird who persists in repeating the same phrase: the voice of the morning, a loving word under the shade of the trees, a charming invitation to a walk amongst the alders. Invisible, obstinate, he seems to follow me under the leaves.

For the first time I, too, am on the road of adventure. I am no longer hunting for shells of bygone streams, under M. Seurel’s guidance, nor orchids unknown to the schoolmaster, nor even, as often before, for the deep and dried-up spring in Father Martin’s field, with a grating so well hidden by weeds and grass that to rediscover it gave us each time greater trouble.... I am searching for something far more mysterious. It is the path told of in books, the ancient obstructed path, the path to which the weary prince could find no entrance. It is found at last at the most forlorn hour of the morning, when you have long since forgotten that eleven or twelve is about to strike.... And suddenly, as one thrusts aside bushes and brier, with a movement of hesitating hands unevenly raised level to the face, it appears in sight as a long shadowy avenue, the outlet of which is a small round patch of light.

But while I hope thus and am enraptured, I unexpectedly come out into a clearing, which is simply a meadow. Without giving it a thought, I have reached the other side of the Commons, which I had always imagined a very long way off. And there, on my right, in between stacks of logs, and astir with life in the shade, stands the forester’s house. Two pairs of stockings are drying on the window-sill. In previous years, whenever we had reached the entrance of the wood, we used to point to a patch of light at the end of a long, dark avenue and say: ‘That house out there, that’s the forester’s cottage, Baladier’s.’ But we had never pushed on as far as that. We had often heard people say, as if referring to some extraordinary venture, ‘He’s been as far as the forester’s cottage!...’

This time, I have been as far as Baladier’s cottage, and I found nothing.

* * * * *

I was just beginning to feel my tired legs and the heat, which I had not so far noticed; I was fearing the return journey all by myself, when close at hand I heard the voice of M. Seurel’s decoy-bird, Mouchebœuf, then other voices calling me....

I saw a group of six big lads, amongst whom Mouchebœuf the traitor was the only one triumphant. There were Giraudat, Auberger, Delage, and others.... Thanks to the decoy, they had been caught, some up a mulberry tree that stood solitary in the clearing, others in the act of robbing a woodpecker’s nest. That fool of a Giraudat, with his swollen eyes and greasy overall, had hidden the little ones against his stomach, in between his shirt and his skin. Two of their companions had run off at M. Seurel’s approach: probably Delouche and the little Coffin. At first they had answered Mouchebœuf by jokes on his name, which the echoes of the wood repeated, and he, believing he had caught them, had replied stupidly in a temper: ‘You’d better come down from there, you know! M. Seurel’s here....’

Then the noise had stopped at once. There had been a silent flight across the wood. As they knew it thoroughly, it was useless to think of catching them. On the other hand, no one knew what had become of Admiral Meaulnes. His voice had not been heard, and we had to give up looking for him.

It was past midday when we slowly started back towards Sainte-Agathe, with drooping heads, tired and muddy. On coming out of the wood, where we scraped and stamped the mud from our shoes on the dry road, the sun began to strike fiercely down. Already it was no longer the fresh and bright morning of spring. The noises of the afternoon had started. Now and again, a cock set up a melancholy crowing in the deserted farms by the roadside. At the descent of the glacis we stopped a moment to chat with some farmhands back at their work after lunch. They were resting with their elbows on the stile, and M. Seurel was saying to them: ‘Ah! the rascals! Here, look at Giraudat. He’s put the brood inside his shirt. They’ve done in there what they liked. It’s _all_ right!...’

It seemed to me the men were laughing at my disaster, too. They laughed and shook their heads, but did not altogether blame the youngsters, whom they knew well. They even confided to us, while M. Seurel was starting off again at the head of our party: ‘There was another chap as went by. That tall fellow, you know.... On the way back he must’ve met the cart from the Barns and been given a lift. He was put down here, at the entrance of the lane to the Barns, covered with mud and ragged. We told him as we’d seen you go by, this morning, but that you were not back yet. He slowly set out for Sainte-Agathe.’

In fact Admiral Meaulnes was waiting for us, seated on a pier of the glacis bridge and looking worn out with fatigue. He said, in answer to M. Seurel’s questions, that he also had gone to look for the truants. But to the question I put to him in whispers, he shook his head and only said with disappointment: ‘No! Nothing! Nothing at all like it!’

After lunch, he sat at one of the big tables in the classroom--stuffy, dark, and empty amidst the glorious countryside--and burying his head in his arms, fell into a long sleep, sullen and heavy. Towards evening he wrote a letter to his mother, after having been a long time lost in thought, and as if coming to an important decision. And that is all I can remember of that melancholy ending to a great day of defeat.