THE GHOST

I had never been for a really long ride on a bicycle. This was my first. But for a long time Jasmin had been secretly teaching me how to ride in spite of my bad knee. A bicycle is fairly good fun for any ordinary fellow: what should it not mean to a poor chap like me, who, only a short time back, dragged his leg wretchedly along, sweating after a mile or two? To sweep down hills and plunge into the valley hollows; to cover as on wings the far stretches of the road ahead and to find them in bloom at your approach; to pass through a village in a moment, and to take it all with you in one glance ... in dreams only, till then, had I known such a delightful, such an easy way of getting about. I tackled even the hills with zest. For I must own, it was the road leading to Meaulnes’ village I was thus eating up....

‘A little before you reach the place,’ Meaulnes had once said to me, describing his village, ‘you see a great wheel with arms which the wind turns....’ He did not know what it was used for, or perhaps pretended not to know to arouse my curiosity the more.

It was only when this August day was drawing to its close that I noticed, turning to the wind in a huge meadow, the big wheel which must have served to bring up water to a small farm near by. The first dwellings could be seen behind poplars in the meadow. Gradually, as I made my way along the curve where the road turns to follow the brook, the view expanded and opened out.... On reaching the bridge, I discovered at last the village High Street.

In the meadow, cows were grazing, hidden by the reeds, and I heard their bells while, having dismounted from my bicycle, and my hands on the handlebar, I surveyed the country into which I was bringing tidings of such gravity. Houses with approaches over a small wooden bridge were lined up by the side of a ditch which ran down the street and looked like fishing boats at anchor on a peaceful evening with their sails clewed up. It was the time of day when a fire is being lighted in every kitchen.

Then it was that fear, and a kind of vague reluctance at coming to disturb so much peace, began to sap my courage. To increase my sudden weakness, I recalled that my Aunt Moinel lived there, on the small square of La Ferté d’Angillon.

She was one of my great-aunts. All her children were dead, but I had known Ernest well, the youngest of all, a tall boy who was to be a teacher. My Great-Uncle Moinel, the old registry clerk, had soon followed him, and my aunt had remained alone in her queer little house, with the rugs all of patchwork, the tables full of paper cocks, hens, and cats, and the walls decked with old diplomas, portraits of the dear defunct, and lockets containing dead hair.

With all her griefs and mourning, Aunt Moinel was the soul of oddness and good temper. When once I had found the little square where her house stood, I called her loudly through the half-open door, and from the other end of her three rooms leading out of each other, I heard her utter a shrill little cry: ‘Well! Good Heavens!’

She spilled her coffee into the fire--how could she be making coffee at this time of day?--and she appeared ... shoulders well thrown back, and on her head, something which might have been either hat, bonnet, or hood, perched high up over a huge bumpy forehead, suggesting a cross between a Mongol and a Hottentot: and she laughed with little jerks, showing what remained of her small teeth.

But while I kissed her, she clumsily and hastily took hold of the hand which was behind my back. With an air of great mystery--perfectly out of place, as we were quite alone--she squeezed into my palm a small coin which I dared not look at, but guessed to be a franc. Then, as I made a pretence at asking explanations and thanking her, she gave me a poke in the ribs, exclaiming loudly: ‘Oh! go on! As if I didn’t know all about it!’

She had always been poor, always borrowing, always spending.

‘I have always been stupid, always unfortunate,’ she would say without bitterness, in her high-pitched voice.

Feeling sure that I worried over pennies as she did, the dear woman had not waited for me to take breath before pressing into my hand her scanty savings of the day. And, in later days, too, this was always how she welcomed me.

Dinner was as strange as the greeting--both melancholy and queer at the same time. She always had a candle within reach of her hand: sometimes she carried it off and left me in the dark: sometimes she put it on the little table which was littered with chipped and cracked dishes and vases.

‘The Prussians,’ she said, ‘broke the handles off this one in 1870, as they couldn’t take it away.’

It was only then I remembered, on seeing once again this tall vase with its tragic history, that we had once dined and slept there in former days. Father was taking me to the Yonne to see a specialist who was to cure my knee. We had had to take a fast train which started before daybreak.... That melancholy dinner now came back to my mind, and all the stories related by the old clerk as he rested his elbows on the table before his rose-coloured drink.

And I was reminded also of my fears.... After dinner, sitting by the fire, my aunt had taken Father aside to tell him ghost stories: ‘I turn round.... Ah! my dear Louis, what do I see? A little grey woman....’ Her head was known to be packed with terrifying nonsense of this kind.

And this very evening when dinner was over and, tired out with my bicycle ride, I had gone to bed in one of Uncle Moinel’s check nightshirts, she came and sat at the foot of my bed and began to talk in the shrillest, most mysterious voice.

‘Poor François, I must tell you something I’ve not told a soul.’

I thought: ‘Now I’m in for it. Here’s for another night of terror, like ten years ago!...’

And I listened. She nodded her head, looking straight in front of her as if she were relating the story to herself:

‘I was coming back from a party with Moinel. It was the first wedding we’d been to together since poor Ernest’s death; and I met my sister Adèle there, whom I’d not seen for four years. An old friend of Moinel, a very rich man, had invited us to his son’s wedding at his place, the Sand Pit. We’d hired a carriage. That had cost us a good bit of money. We were making our way along the road about seven in the morning, in the middle of winter. The sun was just rising. There was no one about. But what do you think I saw all at once, right in front of us, there on the road? A little fellow posted there, a small young man, as handsome as the day, not moving, but looking at us coming. As we got nearer, we could make out his pretty face--so white and so pretty that it gave one a turn!...

‘I clung to Moinel’s arm; I was shaking like a leaf; I thought if was God himself!... I said to Moinel: “Look! A ghost!”

‘He replied in whispers, quite furious: “Well! I saw it. You’d better shut up, you old chatterbox....”

‘He didn’t know what to do, when suddenly the horse stopped.... At close quarters, it showed a pale face, a forehead covered with beads of sweat, a dirty tammy and long trousers. We heard its sweet voice saying: “I am not a man, I am a girl. I ran away, and I am tired out. Could you take me in your carriage, please, kind people?”

‘At once we got her in. No sooner was she seated than she fainted. And guess who that was we’d come across? It was Frantz de Galais’ sweetheart, the young man at the Sand Pit, where we’d been invited to the wedding!’

‘But there could’ve been no wedding,’ I said, ‘as the fiancée had run off!’

‘Well, of course not,’ she went on, looking at me quite dejectedly. ‘There’d been no wedding, on account of that poor silly girl having got into her head a thousand mad notions that she explained to us. She was one of the daughters of a poor weaver. She firmly believed that so much happiness was impossible; that the young fellow was too young for her; that all the marvels he’d told her about were imagination; so when at last Frantz came to fetch her, Valentine took fright. He used to walk with her in the garden of the Archbishop’s Palace at Bourges, not minding the cold or the wind. The young fellow--out of delicacy, of course, and because he loved the younger sister--was full of attention to the elder. So, my silly girl must needs get notions. She said she wanted to go home and fetch a shawl; but once there, to make sure no one would come after her, she put on man’s clothes and set off on foot along the road to Paris. Her young man got a letter from her in which she said she was off to Paris to join a fellow she was in love with. But that wasn’t true....

‘“I’m happier in my sacrifice,” she said to me, “than if I were his wife.” Yes, poor idiot, but as a matter of fact he had never thought for a second of marrying the sister; he blew out his brains; his blood was seen in the wood, but his body was never found.’

‘And what did you do with that wretched girl?’

‘First of all we brought her round with a drop of brandy. Then we gave her something to eat, and we no sooner got home than she fell asleep by the fire. She stayed with us a good bit of the winter. All day long, while it was light, she stitched, making dresses, trimming hats, or else she cleaned the house in a sort of rage. She it was who stuck back that wall-paper you see there. But in the evening, at nightfall, when her work was done, she would always find some excuse for going into the yard, or into the garden, or just outside the front door, even when it was cold enough to freeze one to death. And there she would be found weeping fit to break her heart.

‘“Well, what’s the matter now? Tell us!”

‘“Nothing, Madame Moinel!”

‘And she would go in.

‘The neighbours used to say: “What a pretty little servant you’ve found, Madame Moinel!”

‘In spite of all we could say, when March came she made up her mind to go on to Paris; I gave her some old dresses which she altered, Moinel paid for her ticket at the station and gave her a little money. She’s not forgotten us; she’s now doing dressmaking in Paris, close to Notre-Dame; she still writes at times to ask if we know anything about the Sand Pit. Once and for all, to free her of these thoughts, I replied that the estate had been sold, the buildings pulled down, the young man gone forever, and the girl married. All this is true, I should think. Since then, dear Valentine has written far less often....’

It was not a ghost story Aunt Moinel was relating in her thin piercing voice, so well fitted for such stories. Yet I was feeling utterly wretched. For we had sworn to Frantz, the bohemian, always to help him as brothers, and now the chance had come....

But was it the moment to spoil the joy I was to bring to Meaulnes the next morning, by telling him what I had just learned? What would be the good of putting him on such an impossible job? True, we had the address of the girl; but where could we find the bohemian who was always on the move?... Better let mad people alone, I thought. Delouche and Boujardon were quite right. How much harm this romantic Frantz had done us! And I resolved to say nothing until I had witnessed the marriage of Augustin Meaulnes with Mademoiselle de Galais.

After making this decision, a painful feeling of ill omen persisted in my mind--a stupid feeling which I quickly brushed aside.

The candle was almost out; a mosquito hummed; but Aunt Moinel, with her elbows on her knees and her head on one side under the velvet bonnet which she never took off except when she went to bed, began her story over again.... From time to time she sharply raised her head to observe what my feelings were or perhaps to see if I was still awake. At last, cunningly, with my head on the pillow, I closed my eyes pretending to be dozing....

‘There! You are asleep ...’ she said in a deeper voice and slightly disappointed.

I took pity on her and I protested: ‘Oh, no, Auntie, I assure you....’

‘Oh! but you are,’ she said; ‘besides, I quite understand that all this can hardly interest you. I am talking of people you’ve never known....’

And this time, like a coward, I made no reply.