A TALK IN THE RAIN

August, the holiday month, took me away from the Sand Pit and the dear woman. I was booked to go to Sainte-Agathe for my two months’ leave. I once again saw the bare playground, the shelter, the empty classroom.... Everything spoke of Admiral Meaulnes and was filled with the memory of our youth now past. During those long mellowing days, I shut myself in the record room or the deserted classroom as I used to before Meaulnes’ arrival. There I read, wrote, and recalled the past.... Father was often away jack-fishing. Millie, in the drawing-room, played the piano or sewed as of old.... In the absolute silence of the classroom torn green paper wreaths, jackets off prize books, clean blackboards, reminded me that the year was over, that the prizes were given, and that everything awaited autumn, the new school year and fresh endeavour--and here I kept brooding over the fact that our youth was likewise ended and that happiness had failed: and I awaited the return of the school year at the Sand Pit and Augustin’s home-coming which perhaps would never be....

There was, however, one piece of good news I could tell Millie when she insisted on questioning me about the bride. I dreaded her questions, and her way, at once very innocent and very shrewd, of causing you sudden embarrassment by putting her finger on your most secret thoughts. So I checked all inquiry by announcing that the young wife of my friend Meaulnes was expecting to become a mother in October.

As for me, I recalled the day when Yvonne de Galais had made me understand this great news. There had been a moment of silence; I had felt a youth’s uneasiness, and to be rid of it, I had said at once without thinking--realising only too late all the tragedy I was thus stirring up, ‘You must be very happy?’

But she, without reservation or regret, neither remorse nor ill-will, had replied with a beautiful smile, ‘Yes, very happy.’

* * * * *

This last week of the holidays, which was usually the best and most romantic, a week of heavy rain when fires begin to be lit and which I generally spent shooting at Vieux-Nançay, in the black damp fir woods, I made ready to return directly to Saint-Benoist-des-Champs. Firmin, Aunt Julie, and my girl cousins at Vieux-Nançay would have asked too many questions to which I did not want to reply. So I gave up, for once, the joy of spending eight good days shooting in the country, and went back to my schoolhouse four days before term began.

I arrived before night in the playground, which was littered with brown leaves. My driver went away and I entered the stuffy, echoing dining-room, where I sadly undid the parcel of provisions Mother had prepared for me.... Then, restless and anxious, I hurried through a light meal, took my cape and started on a feverish walk which led me straight to the boundaries of the Sand Pit.

I had no wish to intrude on the very first evening of my arrival. Yet, more daring than in February, after a walk around the estate, where Yvonne de Galais’ window alone showed a light, I climbed over the garden fence at the back of the house and in the gathering dusk sat on a bench near the hedge, happy merely to be so close to what thrilled and troubled me more than anything else in the world.

Night approached. Fine rain began to fall. With bowed head I watched my shoes getting wet in the rain and shining--paying them no heed. Darkness slowly enclosed me, and the cool of night, without troubling my reverie. I dreamed sadly and tenderly of the muddy lanes at Sainte-Agathe on such a September evening; I pictured the square full of mist, the butcher boy whistling on his way to the pump, the lights of the café, the waggonette and its merry occupants under a shield of open umbrellas, arriving at Uncle Florentin’s at the end of the holidays.... And I was sadly saying to myself, ‘What good is all this happiness if my friend Meaulnes cannot be there, nor his young wife....’

It was then I raised my head and saw her two steps away. Her shoes made on the sand a slight noise which I had mistaken for raindrops from the hedge. Her head and shoulders were wrapped in a big shawl of black wool and the fine rain was like powder on the hair over her forehead. She must have seen me from her bedroom window, which looked onto the garden, and had come down to me. In the old days Mother used thus to worry about me, hunting me up to say, ‘You must come in,’ but beginning herself to enjoy the night walk in the rain, she would only say, very gently, ‘You will catch cold!’ and remain by me for a long talk....

Yvonne de Galais held out a burning hand; then she gave up the idea of taking me indoors, and sat down on the mossy, rusted bench at the end which was not too wet, while I remained standing, one knee on the bench, and stooped to catch what she was saying.

She at first scolded me in a friendly way for having thus shortened my holidays.

‘But I had to come back as soon as I could,’ I replied, ‘to keep you company.’

‘The fact is,’ she said, almost in whispers and with a sigh, ‘I am still alone. Augustin has not come back....’

Taking this sigh to express regret, an implied reproach, I began slowly to say: ‘So many mad schemes in so beautiful a mind! Perhaps the love of adventure stronger than anything....’

But she interrupted me. And it was there, that very evening, that for the first and last time she spoke to me of Meaulnes.

‘Do not talk like this, François Seurel,’ she said gently, ‘you are my friend. It is only we--it is only me, who am guilty. Think what we did.... We’ve said to him: “Here’s happiness; here’s what you’ve looked for during all your youth; here’s the girl who was the aim of all your dreams!” How could anyone thus pushed into happiness not be seized with misgiving, then fear, then terror! How could he have resisted the temptation of running away!’

‘Yvonne,’ I said softly, ‘you knew quite well you were that very happiness, that very girl....’

‘Ah!’ she sighed. ‘How could such an arrogant thought ever have entered my head? It is that thought caused all the trouble. I had said to you, “Perhaps I can’t do anything for him.” And in my heart I was thinking, “He has searched for me so long and I love him so, I am bound to make him happy.” But when I saw him by my side, with all this fever and anxiety, his mysterious remorse, I understood that I was but a helpless woman like others. “I am not worthy of you,” he kept repeating when daylight came at the end of our wedding night. And I tried to comfort him, to reassure him. But nothing could quiet his anguish. Then I said: “If you must go, if I have come to you at a moment when nothing can make you happy, if you must leave me for a time so as to come back later, after having found peace, I myself ask you to go....”’

In the dusk I saw that she had raised her eyes towards me. It was a sort of confession she had made to me and she was anxiously waiting for my approval or condemnation. But what could I say? Certainly, within me, I pictured the Admiral Meaulnes of old, so clumsy, so awkwardly shy, that he would rather be punished than make excuses for himself or ask permission which would naturally have been granted. No doubt Yvonne de Galais should have shaken him out of this, and, taking his head in her hands, have said to him: ‘What do I care what you did! I love you; are not all men sinners?’ No doubt, with all her generosity and her willingness to sacrifice herself, she had been greatly in the wrong in thus throwing him back on the road to adventure.... But how could I condemn so much kindness, so much love!...

There was a long moment of silence during which, both deeply stirred, we could hear the rain drip in the hedges and beneath the branches of the trees.

‘So he went away in the morning,’ she went on. ‘There was no longer anything separating us. And he kissed me, like a husband leaving his young wife for a long journey....’

She got up. I took her feverish hand in mine, then her arm, and we walked up the avenue, now plunged in darkness.

‘Yet, did he ever write to you?’ I asked.

‘Never,’ she replied.

And then the thought came to us both of the adventurous life he was at this moment leading on the roads of France or Germany; so we began to speak of him as we had never done before. Forgotten details, old recollections came back to our minds while we slowly walked to the house, at each step coming to a long stop, the better to exchange our memories.... And for a long time--as far as the garden-gate--I heard in the night the gentle, low voice of the young wife; and I too was caught up in my old enthusiasm and never wearied of talking to her, with deep friendship, of him who had forsaken us....