I BETRAY HIM

What was I to do!

The weather was clearing a little. It seemed as if the sun would come through. Occasionally a door banged in the big house. Then silence returned once more. From time to time my father crossed the playground to fetch a scuttle of coal to feed the stove. I saw the white washing hanging on the lines, and I had no wish to go back to the sad room, changed to a drying-room, in order to face my last task of the year, the preparation for the Training College Entrance Exam, which, however, ought to be my only thought.

A queer thing: a feeling akin to freedom was blended with the boredom which tortured me. Meaulnes gone, the whole adventure ended in failure, I seemed at any rate free from that strange longing, that mysterious preoccupation which kept me from behaving like every one else. Meaulnes gone, I was no longer the fellow-adventurer, no longer the brother on the trail; I became a boy again like other village boys. And this was easy, for I had only to follow my natural inclination.

The youngest of the brothers Roy passed along the muddy street; he was swinging at the end of a string, then flinging into the air three horse-chestnuts which fell into the playground. I was at such a loose end that three or four times I quite liked throwing back the chestnuts to him over the wall.

Suddenly I saw him give up this childish game and run towards a cart which was coming along the Old Plank Road. To climb in at the back of the cart without it stopping was quickly done. I recognised Delouche’s horse and cart. Jasmin was driving and the big Boujardon was standing up in it. They were coming back from the meadow.

‘Come with us, François!’ called out Jasmin, who must already have known that Meaulnes had gone.

And indeed, without a word to a soul, I clambered up into the jolting cart and stood like the others with my back against the tall uprights. It took us to the house of the widow Delouche.

* * * * *

We are now in the back parlour of the good woman who keeps what is both an inn and a grocer’s shop. A white ray of sunlight glints in at the low window, onto the tin boxes and a barrel of vinegar. Big Boujardon sits down on the window-sill, and the huge fellow munches Savoy biscuits, facing us with a fat smile. The biscuit tin, opened on a barrel within reach, is half empty. The young Roy screams with delight. There is a kind of intimacy of the wrong sort between us. Jasmin and Boujardon are to be my friends, now, I see. The course of my life has suddenly changed. It seems to me that Meaulnes has been gone a very long time and that his adventure is an old sad story, but finished.

Young Roy has discovered on a shelf a half-empty bottle of liqueur. Delouche offers us each a drink, but, as there is only one glass, we all drink out of it. They help me first, with slight condescension, as I am not one of themselves, not a sportsman, not a peasant. This rather annoys me. And when Meaulnes is spoken of I become anxious to show that I know his story and to tell some of it, just to scatter my annoyance and regain my composure. In what way could this hurt him since all his adventures here are now finished?...

* * * * *

Am I telling this story badly? It does not produce the effect which I was expecting.

My companions, like good country folk whom nothing surprises, remain unimpressed by such trifles.

‘Only a wedding! What!’ says Boujardon. ‘Delouche has seen one at Préveranges which was still more peculiar.’

The mansion? Oh, there would be in the neighbourhood people who’d heard of it, right enough.

The girl? Meaulnes would marry her when once he had served his year as a soldier. ‘He should have spoken to us about it,’ adds one of them, ‘and shown us his plan, instead of confiding in a gipsy!’

I am caught in failure: here is my chance to quicken their curiosity: I decide to explain who this gipsy was, where he came from; his strange fate.... Boujardon and Delouche do not care to listen.

‘That fellow’s done it all. It’s him who made Meaulnes unsociable, Meaulnes who used to be such a jolly chap! It’s him who started that silly nonsense about boarding ships and night attacks, making us into a kind of school brigade....’

‘You know,’ said Jasmin, looking at Boujardon and shaking his head in repeated nods, ‘it was a jolly good job I reported him to the police. That chap did a lot of mischief in these parts and would have done more!...’

And I almost agree with them. The whole affair would have taken a different turn if we had not come to look upon it as so mysterious and tragic. The influence of that Frantz spoiled everything....

But suddenly, while I am absorbed in these thoughts, a noise is heard in the shop. Jasmin Delouche quickly hides the bottle of liqueur behind a barrel; the fat Boujardon climbs down from his window, places his foot on an empty and dusty bottle which rolls away, and twice he nearly topples over. Young Roy, half choking with laughter, pushes us all from behind to hurry us out.

Without quite understanding what is happening, I run away with them; we cross the yard and by means of a ladder we climb into a hayloft. I hear the voice of a woman calling us good-for-nothings.

‘I should never have thought she would be back so soon,’ says Jasmin in a whisper.

Only then do I understand that we were there for no good, but to steal biscuits and liqueur. I am as much disappointed as that wrecked mariner who, fancying he was talking with a man, suddenly found himself conversing with a monkey. I think only of leaving the loft, these adventures displease me so much. Besides, night is falling.... My companions make me go by back ways, then across two gardens, and round a pond, until I find myself back in a muddy wet street in which the lights of the Café Daniel are reflected.

I am not proud of the way I have spent my evening. I soon find myself at the Cross-Roads. Suddenly, against my will, at the bend of the road, I seem to see, once more, the clean-cut face of a brother smiling at me; a last waving of the hand and the carriage disappearing....

A cold wind, getting into my overall, makes it flap, a wind similar to those of that memorable winter so tragic and so fine. Already everything appears to me less easy. In the big classroom, where my parents await me for dinner, sudden draughts mingle with the feeble heat of the stove. I shiver, while I am being reproached for my afternoon of idle roaming. While the very thing that might help me would be to resume my old regular life, I am even deprived, that evening, of the consolation of sitting at my usual place at dinner. The table has not been laid; we all eat off our knees, each settling where best he can in the dark classroom. I eat in silence the thin cake which has been cooked on the top of the stove and which, intended as a reward for a Thursday of diligent work, has been left to burn on the red-hot rings.

In the evening, alone in my room, I hasten to bed to stifle the remorse which I feel surging up from the depths of my grief. But twice I awoke during the night, fancying at first that I heard the creaking of the bed in which Meaulnes used to turn over, all of a heap, and the second time listening to the light steps of the hunter upon the watch, in the dim distance of the lumber-rooms....