WASHING-DAY

We had reckoned too soon on the coming of spring. On Monday evening we decided to do our home work immediately after four as in the summer, and to get a better light, we dragged two big tables into the playground. But the sky became suddenly cloudy; a drop of rain fell on an exercise-book; we hastened to go in. And we silently watched, out of the large windows of the big classroom now so dark, the flight of the clouds in the grey sky.

Then Meaulnes, who was at the window with us, one hand on the handle, could not refrain from saying, as if he were angry to feel so much regret rise up in him: ‘Ah! the clouds rolled along better than this when I was on the road, in the Fair Star cart.’

‘On what road?’ asked Jasmin.

But Meaulnes made no reply.

‘As for me,’ I said, to create a diversion, ‘I should have loved travelling that way in a carriage, with the rain pouring down, sheltered under a big umbrella.’

‘And reading all the while during the journey, as if you were indoors,’ added another.

‘It was not raining and I had no longing to read,’ replied Meaulnes. ‘I thought only of looking at the countryside.’

But when in his turn Giraudat asked him of what country he spoke, Meaulnes again kept silent. And Jasmin said: ‘I know.... Always that famous adventure!...’

He had said these words in conciliatory and important tones, as if he was himself a little in the secret. It was trouble lost; his advances met with no response; and as night was falling, every one raced off through the cold downpour, his overall wrapped over his head.

The rain continued until the following Thursday. And that Thursday was even gloomier than the last. The whole countryside was bathed in a sort of icy mist as in the worst days of winter.

Millie, led astray by the beautiful sun of the week before, had had the washing done, but there could be no question of hanging it out to dry on the garden hedges, nor even on lines in the lumber-rooms, as the air was so damp and cold.

Discussing the matter with M. Seurel, she conceived the idea, as it was Thursday, of spreading the washing in the classrooms and of heating the stove red-hot. Meals were to be cooked on the stove to dispense with fires in the kitchen and in the dining-room, and we were to spend the day in the top-form classroom.

At first--I was so young!--I regarded this novelty as a treat. A dreary treat!... All the heat of the stove was taken by the washing; it was extremely cold. In the playground a fine wintry rain fell softly and endlessly. Yet it was there that at nine o’clock in the morning, bored to death, I discovered Admiral Meaulnes. Through the bars of the tall gate against which we silently rested our heads, we looked towards the top of the village and watched a funeral procession which had come from remote parts of the country and had stopped at the Cross-Roads. The coffin, brought on an ox wagon, was lowered and placed on a flagstone at the foot of the tall cross where the butcher, one night, had noticed the bohemian’s sentries! Where was he now, the young captain who could so well fake the boarding of a ship?... The vicar and the choir boys, as was the custom, walked up to the coffin and their mournful chants reached us. This, as we knew, would be the only sight the whole day, which would pass like muddy water along the gutter.

‘And now,’ said Meaulnes suddenly, ‘I am going to pack. I must tell you, Seurel: I wrote to my mother last Thursday asking her to let me complete my studies in Paris. I am leaving to-day.’

He continued looking towards the village, his hands against the bars, level with his face. No use asking if his mother, who was rich and indulged all his whims, had allowed this one. No use either to ask why he suddenly wanted to go to Paris!...

But certainly there was regret in him, and fear at leaving this dear land of Sainte-Agathe from which he had set out on his adventure. As for me, a heavy distress rose in my heart which I had not felt at first.

‘Easter is coming!’ he said with a sigh, by way of explanation.

‘As soon as you find her, out there, you will write, won’t you?’ I asked.

‘Of course, that’s agreed. Aren’t you my friend and my brother?...’

And he placed his hand on my shoulder.

Little by little I understood that all was at an end, now that he wanted to complete his studies in Paris; never again should I have my big brother with me!

Our one hope of coming together again was that house in Paris where the trail of our forlorn adventure might be rediscovered.... But with Meaulnes himself so sad, what a poor hope was that for me!

My parents were told the news: M. Seurel showed great surprise, but soon yielded to Augustin’s reasons; Millie, the good housewife, was most upset at the idea that Meaulnes’ mother would see our house in a state of unusual untidiness.... The trunk, alas! was soon packed. We sought out his Sunday shoes from under the stairs; a few underclothes from the cupboard; then his papers and schoolbooks--all that a boy of eighteen possesses in the world.

Mme. Meaulnes arrived at midday with her carriage. She lunched with Augustin at the Café Daniel and took him away with hardly a word of explanation, as soon as the horse had been fed and harnessed. We said good-bye to them on the threshold; and the carriage disappeared at the turning of the Cross-Roads.

Millie rubbed her shoes in front of the door and went back into the cold dining-room, to tidy what had been disarranged. As for me, I found myself obliged, the first time for months, to face alone a long Thursday evening--with the clear feeling that the old carriage had borne away my youth forever.