THE ESCAPE

At two o’clock in the afternoon next day, in the centre of the freezing country, the form-room stands out clear as a ship on the ocean. There is no smell of brine or tar as on a boat, but of herrings fried on the stove and of the scorched woollens of the boys who, on coming back, got too close to the fire.

As the end of the year is drawing near, the exercise books for composition have been given out. And while M. Seurel is setting problems on the board silence prevails, only disturbed by whispered conversations, or broken into by stifled exclamations and with sentences of which the first words alone are uttered to frighten one’s neighbour: ‘Sir! So and So is....’

M. Seurel, writing out the problems, is thinking of something else. From time to time he turns round and looks at us in a stern but vacant way. And this covert disturbance stops entirely for a moment, to begin again immediately, softly at first like a purr.

I alone keep quiet in the midst of this turmoil. I am sitting at the extreme end of one of the tables on the juniors’ side and close to the high windows, and I need only raise myself a little to get a view of the garden, the stream at the lower end of it, and then the fields.

From time to time I stand on tiptoe and look anxiously towards the farm of the Fair Star. As soon as the class opened I had noticed that Meaulnes had not come back after the dinner hour. The boy next him certainly could not have failed to notice it too. Too busy with his essay he had not yet said anything. But as soon as he looks up the news will spread at once, and some one, as usual, will certainly call out, in a loud voice, the first words of the sentence: ‘Sir! Meaulnes....’

I know that Meaulnes has gone. To be more exact I suspect him of having run away. As soon as dinner was over he must have jumped over the low wall, taken his course through the fields, and crossed the stream on the old plank for the Fair Star. He must have asked for the mare to go to the station for Monsieur and Madame Charpentier. They are harnessing her this very moment.

The Fair Star, on the other side of the stream, where the hill slopes down, is a large farm hidden from view in the summer by the oaks and elms in our playground and also by quick-set hedges. It is situated in a little lane which joins the Station Road on one side and on the other an outlying district of the village. The big feudal building is surrounded by high walls, the buttresses of which stand in pools of manure. In the month of June it is buried in leafage, and from the school the rumbling of carts and the shouts of the cowherds alone can be heard at nightfall. But to-day, out of the window and between the stripped trees, I can see the tall grey wall of the farmyard, the entrance gate and then, through gaps in the hedge, a strip of road, white with frost, parallel to the stream and leading to the Station Road.

Nothing moves yet in that clear wintry landscape. Nothing has yet changed.

In the classroom M. Seurel has almost finished writing out the second problem. Generally he set down three. If he only set two to-day ... he would go back to his desk and notice the absence of Meaulnes. He would send two boys to look for him in the village and they would find him before the mare was harnessed....

M. Seurel, once the second problem is on the board, drops his tired arm. Then, to my great relief, he goes to the next line and begins to write again, saying: ‘This one is only child’s play!’

... Two little black streaks showing over the top of the wall at the Fair Star, certainly the upturned shafts of a cart, have now disappeared. I feel sure that over there everything is being made ready for Meaulnes’ departure. Soon the head and the fore parts of the mare emerge between the posts of the gateway, then stop, while, no doubt, behind the cart, they are fixing a second seat for the travellers whom Meaulnes proposes to fetch. At last the complete equipage slowly comes out of the yard, disappears for a moment behind the hedge, and, going at the same slow pace, shows itself again on the strip of white road visible between breaks in the fence. Then I recognise, in the black figure holding the reins, one elbow lazily resting on the side of the cart in peasant fashion, my friend, Augustin Meaulnes.

A moment later everything disappears behind the hedge. Two men who have remained by the gate, looking at the departing cart, begin to converse with increasing liveliness. One of them at last decides to make a speaking-trumpet of his hands and to call after Meaulnes and then to run a few paces along the road in his direction. But then, in the cart, which slowly has reached the Station Road and can certainly no longer be seen from the lane, Meaulnes suddenly changes his attitude. Standing up like the driver of a Roman chariot, one foot resting on the front bar and with both hands shaking the reins, he sets his beast going at a gallop and in a moment disappears on the other side of the slope. On the road the man who has been calling begins to run again, and the other, starting at full speed across the fields, seems to be coming towards us.

In a few minutes, just as M. Seurel having left the blackboard is rubbing the chalk off his hands and at the very moment when three voices call out together from the back of the classroom: ‘Sir! Admiral Meaulnes has gone!’ the man with the blue smock is at the door, which he suddenly throws wide open and lifting his hat asks from the doorstep: ‘Excuse me, sir, is it you as sent that pupil to ask for the cart to drive to Vierzon to meet your parents? We began to suspect....’

‘Certainly not!’ replies M. Seurel.

And at once all the class is in frightful disorder. The three boys close to the door, whose usual job is to chase away with stones the goats or the pigs which stray in the playground and browse the March Pride, rush out. Following the loud clatter of their hobnailed clogs on the flagstones of the room are heard their muffled and hurried steps crushing the sand of the yard and skidding as they sharply turn by the little gate opening on the road. The other boys have crowded to the garden windows. Some have climbed on the table to see better....

But it is too late. Admiral Meaulnes has escaped.

‘You will go to the station with Mouchebœuf all the same,’ says M. Seurel to me. ‘Meaulnes does not know the way to Vierzon. He will lose himself at the Cross-Roads. He will not meet the train at three.’

Millie pokes her head in at the door of the infants’ classroom to ask: ‘What on earth is the matter?’

In the village street people have begun to form groups. The peasant stands there, hat in hand, obstinate, motionless, like a man demanding justice.