At the extreme end of the small town, a long red house with five glass doors and a Virginia creeper upon its walls ; an immense courtyard with shelters, a washhouse and a huge gateway, on the side looking towards the village; on the north side, a small gate opening on the road leading to the station three kilometres off; on the south, at the back of the house, fields, gardens, meadows joining the outskirts...such is the simple plan of this dwelling where I spent the most troubled but the most happy days of my life - the house from which we launched our adventures and to which they returned to break themselves like waves on a bare rock.
Urchins who were stealing peaches in the garden silently escaped through holes in the hedge . . . My mother, whom we used to call Millie and who was the most methodical housekeeper I ever knew, had at once gone into the rooms full of dusty straw, and had declared with much consternation - as was her custom at each 'removal' - that our furniture would never fit in a house so badly built. . .
Then she had gone back to consider what doors and windows would have to be blocked to make the place habitable ... As for me, wearing a big straw hat with streamers, I was left alone on the gravel of that strange playground, waiting for her, prying shyly around the well and under the cart-shed.
For as soon as I wish to bring back the distant memory of that first evening when I waited in out playground at Sainte-Agathe, at once it is another kind of waiting which I recall, at once I see myself again, both hands pressed to the bars of the front gate, anxiously watching for some one who will soon come down the High Street.
If I try to imagine that first night which I must have spent in my attic, amidst the lumber-rooms on the upper storey, I recall other nights; I am no longer alone in that room; a tall, restless, and friendly shadow moves along its walls and walks to and fro.
And that quiet countryside - the school, old Father Martin's field, with its three walnut trees, the garden daily invaded on the stroke of four by women paying calls - all this is, in my memory, forever stirred and transformed by the presence of him who upset all our youth and whose sudden flight even did not leave us in peace.
That morning she missed Mass, and right up to the sermon, from my place in the choir with the other children, I looked anxiously towards the door to see her come to church wearing her new hat.
'Anyhow,' she said to comfort me, brushing my little suit with her hand, 'even if it had come, this precious hat, I should have had to spend my Sunday making it up again.'
In the square a few villagers had put on their firemen's jackets and piled their arms ; stiff and stamping their feet with cold, they were listening to Boujardon, the corporal, losing himself in theory ...
The christening bells stopped suddenly, like festive chimes at a mistaken time and place. Boujardon and his men, rifles slung over their shoulders, dragged off the fire engine at a slow trot, and I saw them disappear at the first turning, followed by four silent urchins, crushing under their heavy boots the twigs on the frozen road, down which I dared not follow them.
In the village the only place left alive was the Café Daniel, from which I heard the murmurs of the drinkers' talk rise and fall, and hugging the low wall of the big playground which separated our house from the village, I came, rather anxious at being late, to the small gate.
In fact, there stood, outside the dining-room door - the nearest of the five glass doors opening on the playground - a grey-headed woman, leaning forward and trying to look through the curtains.
Without any doubt Millie had received her hat from the station, and, hearing nothing, at the end of the red bedroom, before a bed bestrewed with old ribbons and uncurled feathers, she was stitching, undoing, and remaking her modest headgear. In fact, as soon as I came into the dining-room, followed closely by the visitor, Mother appeared, both her hands to her head, holding wires, ribbons, and feathers which were not yet perfectly secured.
The woman with the old-fashioned bonnet had begun to explain herself. She held between her knees an umbrella and a leather handbag, slightly nodding her head the while, and clicking her tongue as do village women when paying a call.
Herself a widow - and very rich, as she gave us to understand - she had lost the younger of her two children, a boy called Antoine, who had suddenly died one evening, on returning from school, after bathing with his brother in a dirty pond.
I could no longer recognise the grey-headed woman whom, only a minute ago, I had seen stooping in front of the door, with the piteous and haggard bearing of a hen who has lost the wildest chick in her brood.
What she was relating with admiration about her son was surprising enough; he loved doing things to please her, he had often gone along the river-bank for miles barelegged, to bring her wild ducks' and moor hens' eggs hidden amongst the reeds ... He could set nets . . . The other night, he had found a pheasant caught in a snare, in the wood ...
She even motioned to the woman to be quiet; and putting down her 'nest' on the table with great care, she got up silently as if to take some one by surprise ...
Above us, indeed, in a box-room where the blackened remains of the last fourteenth of July fireworks were piled up, an unknown step trod confidently to and fro, shaking the ceiling, crossed the huge dark lumber-rooms of the upper storey and passed at last towards the unused assistant masters' rooms, where lime tree leaves were put to dry and apples to ripen.
We stood, the three of us, with beating hearts ; then the attic door which led to the kitchen was heard to open; some one came down, crossed the kitchen, and appeared in the dim entrance of the dining-room. 8
At first, as night was falling, I saw only his peasant felt hat, pushed to the back of his head, and his black overall tightly belted in the fashion of schoolboys.
He was holding in his hand a little wheel of blackened wood; a string of partly burnt squibs was twisted round it; evidently a Catherine wheel from the fireworks display on the fourteenth of July.
A moment, later, as she came out of the door with Meaulnes' mother after having discussed and settled the boarding fees, my mother saw two sheaves of red-and-white stars rising up under the shelter, hissing like bellows. For a moment's space she caught a glimpse of me as I stood in this magic light, holding by the hand the tall strange boy and showing no fear . ..
So I was seldom allowed to go out, and I recall that Millie, who was very proud of me, more than once brought me home and boxed my ears for having been caught hopping thus with some village urchins.
Father was in the habit of carrying into the dining-room grate the fire remaining in the classroom stove; and, little by little, the last boys who had lingered behind left the chilled building, thick with clouds of smoke.
There were still a few games, some galloping races in the playground, then night came; the two pupils who had swept the classroom fetched their hoods and cloaks, and with their baskets under their arms went away quickly, leaving the big gate open ...
Then, as long as there was a ray of light, I stopped in the record-room at the town hall, with its dead flies and posters that flapped in the draught, and I read, sitting on an old weighing-machine, close to a window looking on the garden.
I climbed three steps of the attic stairs, sat down without a word and, leaning my head on the cold rails of the bannisters, watched Millie light her fire in this narrow kitchen where the flame of one candle flickered . . .
Every day then, in the classroom, despite the cold from the swinging door and the shouts and clatter of the cleaners with their pails of water, a score of the big boys, both those from the countryside and the village, gathered round Meaulnes.
Meaulnes never said anything, but it was because of him that repeatedly one chatterbox or another, making of himself the centre of the group, and taking in turn each of his noisily approving friends as witness, would relate some long story of poaching, which the others followed with gaping mouths and inward laughter.
Then, as night fell and no more light came from the classroom windows on the throng of boys, Meaulnes used suddenly to get up, and pushing his way through, call out:
With Meaulnes, I went at milking-time to barn doors just outside the village. We entered shops, and the weaver, between two clicks of his loom, used to say out of his darkness:
From the street you could hear the squeak of the forge bellows, and you could sometimes make out, by the glow of the forge fire, in this dark and noisy place, the country folk who had stopped their cart to have a chat, or a schoolboy like us, his back to a door, a silent onlooker.
After the last recreation of the day or, as we called it, the last 'quarter,' M. Seurel, who for a while had been walking to and fro lost in thought, suddenly stopped, banged vigorously on the table with a ruler to put an end to the confused buzz with which the last hour of a boring day ends, and, in the attentive silence, asked :
These were my grandparents ; Grandfather Charpentier with his grey woollen burnous ; an old man, a retired gamekeeper wearing a rabbit fur bonnet which he called his képi. . . Little boys knew him well.
A group of children, hands behind backs, watched him With respectful curiosity . . . They also knew Grandma Charpentier, the small peasant woman and her knitted cap - as Millie never failed to bring her, at least once, into the infants' class.
The moment the two, muffled up, smiling, and rather shy, had crossed the threshold, we shut all doors on them, and a glorious week of happiness began for us all.. .
To drive them from the station I needed a steady fellow with me, one who would not upset us into a ditch, and yet a gay lad, too, because Grandfather Charpentier was pretty free with swear words and Grandma rather talkative.
All the big boys seated themselves, as he did, on the table, the wrong way round, feet on the bench, as we used to do in times of rest or great rejoicing.
Meaulnes opened the big gate, hailed the boy, and a moment later the three of us were settled at the back of the hot red shop, across which icy gusts of wind swept. Coffin and I sat close to the forge fire, our muddy feet amongst the white shavings ; Meaulnes, hands in pockets and silent, leaned against the leaf of the door.
From time to time a village woman, stooping to brave the wind, passed by in the street on her return from the butcher, and we looked up to see who she was.
The blacksmith and his assistant - one blowing the bellows, the other beating the hot iron - threw big sharp shadows upon the wall... I recall that evening as one of the great evenings of my youth.
I felt both pleasure and anxiety; I was afraid my companion would deprive me of the small happiness of driving to the station, yet, without daring to own it to myself, I expected some extraordinary scheme from him which would upset everything.
Seeing him thus lost in thought, looking as though across leagues of fog at these quiet folk at their work, I was reminded suddenly of that picture in 'Robinson Crusoe,' where the young Englishman is seen on the eve of his great adventure 'haunting the shop of a basket-maker'. . .
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.
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:
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.
But as soon as he looks up the news will spread at once, and someone, as usual, will certainly call out, in a loud voice, the first words of the sentence:
The Fair Star, on the other side of the stream, where the hill slopes down, is a large farm hidden from our view in the summer by the oaks and elms in its yard and also by quick-set hedges.
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.
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.
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 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.
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:
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.
When I had brought home my grandparents from the station and after dinner, seated in front of the large hearth, they began to relate in full detail all that had happened to them since the last holidays, I soon realised that I was not listening.
But that evening I had nothing to hope for from outside, since all those I loved were met together in our house; and yet I continued to be alert to all the noises of the night and to wait for some one to open our door.
Old Grandfather was there, hairy and bushy in appearance like some big Gascon shepherd, his two feet firmly planted as he sat, his stick between his legs, and with the usual slant of his right shoulder when he stooped to tap the ashes from his pipe against his shoe.
Meaulnes would jump from it and walk in as if nothing had happened ... Of perhaps he had first gone to take back the mare to the Fair Star, and I should soon hear his step sounding on the road, and the gate opening . . .
From time to time above the stillness of the wintry afternoon had arisen the far-away call of a farm girl or of a lad hailing a comrade from one clump of firs to another, and each time that long call over the desolate hills had made me shudder as if it were the voice of Meaulnes inviting me to follow him from afar . . .
He had placed his stick on a chair, his thick shoes under an armchair, he had just put out his candle and we were standing saying good-night, ready to retire to bed, when the noise of a cart silenced us.
I had got quite at the front and, with the others, I was looking at this lost vehicle which had come back to us like wreckage washed ashore by the high tide—the first and perhaps the last wreckage of Meaulnes' adventure.
Then we could decide what we were to tell the village people and to write to Meaulnes' mother ... And the man whipped up his horse, refusing the glass of wine we offered.
As we were coming in without uttering a word and Father was leading the cart towards the farm, Grandfather, who had lit his candle again, called out from his room : 'Has that traveller come back then?'
They came with eyes quite dazed from having crossed hoar-sparkling fields and looked on frozen ponds and coppices from which hares ran . . . Their overalls had a smell of hay and stables which made the air of the classrooms heavy, as they crowded round the red-hot stove.
The two boys of the bench nearest to the door hurried to open it: they had a little confabulation, which we did not hear, just outside, and at last the truant made up his mind to come into the school.
That breath of fresh air coming from the deserted playground, the bits of straw which could be seen clinging to Admiral Meaulnes' clothing, and above all the look he had of a traveller, tired, hungry, but thrilled by wonders, all gave us a strange feeling of pleasure and curiosity.
The boy turned towards us, his back slightly bent, smiling in a mocking way, as do big unruly fellows when punished, and, catching hold of the end of the table with one hand, he let himself drop on his bench.
'You are going to take out a book and read as I tell you,' said the master - all heads were turned then towards Meaulnes - 'while the others finish their dictation.'
From time to time Admiral Meaulnes turned my way, then looked out of the windows from which the white garden was visible, downy and motionless, and the bare fields on which a crow sometimes descended.
At dinner time I found him sitting by the fire near our puzzled grandparents, and as the clock struck twelve the boys, big and little, scattered over the snowclad playground, made off like shadows before the dining-room door.
Everything was icy; the oilcloth without a tablecloth, the cold wine in the glasses, the red flagstones under our feet. It had been decided to put no questions to the truant so as not to rouse him to revolt.
A school playground in the afternoon, with the snow trampled away by clogs ... a playground black all round with drips from the roofs of the shelters . . . a playground thick with games and screams !
At once two or three fellows from the village left their game and ran up to us with shouts of joy; hands in pockets, scarves unloosed, and mud squirting from under their clogs.
There was instant uproar loud and clear; glass panes shaken, clogs stamping on stone; one shove bent the iron bar holding the two leaves of the door; but Meaulnes had already turned the little key in the lock, at the risk of cutting himself on its broken ring.
For a little while the boys kept shoving against the door; they yelled insults at us; then, one by one, they turned tail and went off crestfallen, doing up their scarves as they went.
I was just about to go up to him; I should have placed my hand on his shoulder and, no doubt, we should have followed together, on the map, the route which he had taken, when suddenly the door leading to the infants' room opened with a crash under a violent push, and Jasmin Delouche, followed by a village boy and three fellows from the neighbouring countryside, emerged with a shout of triumph.
With a violent jerk Meaulnes threw him reeling, arms out, to the middle of the room; then gripping Delouche by the neck with one hand and opening the door with the other, he tried to throw him out.
Jasmin clung to the tables and dragged his feet, making his hobnailed shoes grate on the flagstones, while Martin, having regained his balance, came back with measured steps, head forward and furious.
When we went up in the evening, sheltering with one hand the candle which the draughts of the big house threatened to blow out, every time we tried to shut this door and every time we had to give it up.
I swiftly took off all my clothes and threw them in a heap on a chair at the foot of my bed, but my companion, without saying a word, began to undress slowly.
Quite unlike me he was folding and arranging his school clothes in a bitter and distracted way, but with much care. I still see him drop his heavy belt on a chair, over the back of which he folded his black overall extremely creased and soiled, then take off a kind of dark blue tunic which he wore under his overall, and stooping with his back to me, spread the garment at the foot of his bed . .. But when he stood up again and turned to face me, I saw that in place of the brass button uniform waistcoat that should be under the tunic, he was wearing a queer silk waistcoat, cut very open and fastened by a row of small and closely set mother-of-pearl buttons.
I distinctly recall, at that moment, the tall peasant boy, bareheaded - for he had carefully placed his cap on his other clothes - his face so young, so gallant, and already so firmly set.
Twice, with his heavy hand, he brushed back his closely cropped hair, and suddenly, like a man unable to resist desire, slipped his tunic back over the dainty jabot, buttoned it up tightly, and slipped on his rumpled overall ; then he hesitated a moment, looking at me sideways ... Finally he sat on the edge of his bed, took off his shoes, which fell noisily onto the floor, stretched himself on the bed, fully dressed like a soldier ready for the fray, and blew out the candle.
Meaulnes was standing in the middle of the room, his cap on his head, and was looking for something on one of the pegs - a cloak which he threw on his back ... The room was very dark.
He kept walking, stopping and then setting off again more quickly like a man in search of memories which he sorts out, challenges and compares, ponders on, thinks he has discovered, and then the thread breaking the search begins once more . ..
That was not the only night on which, awakened by the sound of his steps, I found him thus, about one in the morning, treading the attic and lumber-rooms, as do sailors who cannot lose the habit of pacing the deck on night watch and who, in the quiet of their Breton holding, get up and dress of a night, at the regulation hour, to keep a land watch.
Admiral Meaulnes was there, on foot, all equipped, his cloak on his back, ready to start, and every time, on the edge of that mysterious country into which he once already had ventured, he stopped, he hesitated.
At the moment of lifting the latch of the door to the stairs and of slipping off by the kitchen door, which he could easily have opened without being heard, he would shrink back once more . . . Then, during the long midnight hours he paced feverishly the disused lumber- rooms, lost in thought.
Meaulnes, who had now entirely dropped out of all the games of his former comrades, had remained seated at his bench during the last recreation of the evening, busily sketching out a mysterious plan, following it with his finger and elaborately measuring it out on the atlas of the Cher.
Boys chased one another from table to table, taking benches and platform at a jump . . . Every one knew that it was not wise to come near Meaulnes when he was working thus; yet, as recreation continued past regulation time, two or three boys from the village advanced towards him for a joke, without any noise, and looked over his shoulder.
One of them was bold enough to push the others on top of Meaulnes . . . The latter hastily closed his atlas, hid his sheet of paper, and caught hold of the last of the three boys while the other two managed to escape.
It was that surly Giraudat, who began to whine, tried to kick, and at last was pushed out of doors by Admiral Meaulnes, to whom he shouted in a rage : 'You great coward ! No wonder they are all against you and want to make war on you ! . . .' and a lot of insults, to which we replied without having quite understood what he meant.
She, no doubt, was infinitely more beautiful than Jeanne, who could be seen in the nuns' garden by looking through the keyhole; or Madeleine, the baker's daughter, so pink and so fair; or Jenny, the daughter of the lady of the manor, so handsome, but insane and living in seclusion.
After four o'clock, on the evening of that new fight, we were both busy putting away garden tools, pickaxes, and spades which had been used to dig trenches, when we heard shouts on the road.
Meaulnes, without saying anything, put away in the shed the pickaxe and the spade which he had on his shoulder. But at midnight I felt his hand on my arm, and I woke up with a start.
'Listen, Meaulnes,' I said, sitting up,'listen to me ; there's only one thing to be done! - and that is to look for the bit of the way we don't know in full daylight with the help of your map.'
Little by little, the cold being piercing, he wrapped his legs in a rug, which at first he had refused, but which the folk at the Fair Star had thrown into the cart.
He skirted a fir wood for some time, but at last, meeting a carter, he used his hands as a trumpet to inquire if he really were on the right road for Vierzon.
The mare pulled on the reins, without stopping her trot; the man must have failed to understand the inquiry; he called out something with a vague gesture, so Meaulnes chanced it and went on.
Once more there was the vast frozen plain without incident or distraction; only at times a magpie startled by the cart flew off to perch on a stunted elm in the distance.
A moment before the mare had stopped trotting, Meaulnes tried to whip her up to the same pace again, but she persisted in walking with extreme slowness, and the big schoolboy, leaning forward, his hands resting on the dashboard, noticed that she was lame in one hind leg.
As a boy who was expert in the handling of beasts he sat on his heels and tried to grasp her right foot with his left hand and put it between his knees, but he was bothered by the cart.
He would not give in and ended by mastering the timid beast, but the stone was so embedded that Meaulnes was obliged to use his peasant's knife before he could get it out.
Anyhow, this lane must lead to some village in time . . . In addition to all these reasons, the big boy, with his foot on the step and the mare already pulling on the reins, ached with exasperation to achieve something and to get somewhere, in defiance of every obstacle!
Sometimes a dead branch from the hedge caught in the wheel and broke with a snap . . . When it was pitch dark Meaulnes thought suddenly with a pang of our dining-room at Sainte-Agathe in which, by this time, all of us ought to be together.
Suddenly the mare slowed down as if her foot had stumbled in the dark; Meaulnes saw her head sink and rise twice; then she stopped dead, her nostrils close to the ground, appearing to sniff at something.
His head was by the mare's head and he could feel her warmth and her hard breathing ... He took her to the far end of the meadow and threw the rug over her back; then thrusting aside the branches of the hedge, he again noticed the light which came from an isolated house.
None the less he had to cross three meadows and jump over a treacherous brook into which he nearly fell with both feet. . . At last, after a final leap from the top of a bank, he found himself in the yard of a rustic farm.
There was a moment's silence, during which Meaulnes stood looking at walls papered with pages out of illustrated papers, as they are in inns, and at the table on which lay a man's hat.
Admiral Meaulnes knew quite well that with country folk, above all in an isolated farm, one must speak with caution, even with diplomacy, and above all never show that one does not belong to the district.
But the woman, busy at the sink washing her basin, turned round, inquisitive in her turn, and said slowly, looking at him quite straight : 'Don't you, then, belong to these parts? . . .'
A moment later both were settled by the hearth; the old man breaking his wood to put on the fire, Meaulnes enjoying a bowl of milk and some bread which had been offered him.
Our traveller, delighted at finding himself in that humble dwelling after so many worries, and thinking that an end had come to his strange adventure, was already making plans for bringing friends with him in the future, to visit these kind people.
Then the man and the woman insisted so much on his putting up at the farm and not starting before broad daylight, that Meaulnes in the end accepted, and walked out to fetch his mare and put her up in the stable.
Slowly and with difficulty, as when he came, he made his way between swamps, through willow hedges, and went to fetch his cart at the farther end of the field where he had left it. The cart was no longer there.
Standing still, with throbbing temples, he strained hard to catch all the sounds of the night, sure that he heard, each moment, the jingle of the horse's collar close at hand.
Obsessed by the obstinate and insane resolve to overtake the cart, his face on fire, a prey to this panic wish, which resembled fear, he went on running . . . Sometimes he stumbled 42 in a rut.
In the utter darkness he ran into hedges when the lane turned, and too tired to stop in time he crashed into brambles, his arms stretched out, his hands torn in the effort to protect his face.
Next moment, the path turning to the left, the light appeared to slip to the right, and Meaulnes reaching a cross-road, in his hurry to regain the poor lodging, without thinking took a path which seemed to lead straight there.
But he had hardly walked ten steps along it when the light disappeared, either because the hedge was hiding it, or else because the peasants were tired of waiting and had closed their shutters.
A hundred yards farther he emerged into a vast grey meadow, where here and there he could distinguish shadows appearing to be juniper trees and a dark shed in a fold of the ground.
He then thought of the mare's rug which he had left in the lane and felt so wretched and so cross with himself that he had a strong desire to cry . ..
Frozen to the bone, he recalled a dream - or rather a vision which he had had when quite a child and of which he had never spoken to any one; one morning, instead of waking up in his room where his trousers and coat were hanging, he had found himself in a long green room with walls like foliage.
Close to the first window a young girl was sewing with her back to him; she seemed to be waiting for him to wake. He had not had strength to creep out of bed into this enchanted dwelling.
He walked with the same fatigue, the icy wind cut his lips and took his breath away, and yet a strange contentment urged him on, a perfect and almost intoxicating peace, the assurance that his goal had been reached and that he had now nothing but happiness to expect.
In the same way he once used to feel faint with excitement on the eve of great summer festivals, when fir trees, whose branches overshadowed his bedroom window, were set up at nightfall along the village streets.
He was really in a lane which looked like the High Street of La Ferté on the morning of Assumption Day ! . . . Had he noticed at the bend of the drive a crowd of holiday-makers raising up the dust as in the month of June, he could not have been more surprised.
One of them, probably a little girl, was speaking in a way so wise and so decided that Meaulnes, although he hardly caught the sense of her words, could not help smiling.
'No one will ever prevent me!' replied the mocking voice of a young boy; 'are we not allowed to do just as we please? . . . Even hurting ourselves, if we like . . .'
Fearing that the children would meet him on their way back along the drive, he passed on through the firs in the direction of the 'dovecot,' without considering at all what he could ask for there.
These carriages were of all kinds and shapes: some elegant and small four-seaters with their shafts up in the air; wagonettes ; coaches quite out of date with their moulded cornices, and even some old berlins with windows raised.
Meaulnes, hidden behind the firs for fear of being seen, was examining the disorder of the place when he noticed, on the other side of the yard, just above the driver's seat of a tall wagonette, a window in one of the outhouses, half open.
He climbed over the wall, painfully because of his wounded knee, and jumping from one carriage to another, from the coachman's box of a wagonette to the roof of a berlin, he hauled himself up to the window, which noiselessly opened under his push, like a door.
And Meaulnes, stretched out, began to wonder if in spite of these strange meetings, in spite of the voices of the children in the drive, in spite of the carriages huddled together, the place was not simply, as he had thought at first, an old disused building in the winter wilderness.
He recalled the days when his mother, still young, used to come in the afternoon, and sit at the drawing-room piano and he, silently, from behind the door leading to the garden, listened to her until night. . .
Disregarding this outburst of emotion, the fat man continued to watch the work with his legs crossed, yawned, quietly sniffed, and then turning his back went away with the pole on his shoulder, saying : 'Come on !
'Sir Sleeper !' said he, with courtly bows and a clown's diction, 'it's up to you now to wake up and dress like a marquis even though you're only a pot-boy like me, and you will descend to the fancy-dress ball, since that is the good pleasure of these little gentlemen and of these little ladies.'
He added, in the tone of a quack at a fair, with a final bow: 'Our friend Maloyau, of the kitchen department, will present the character of Harlequin and your humble servant that of tall Pierrot. . .'
Again he had the impression of being in a house which had been disused for a long time. Going towards the fireplace he nearly stumbled over a pile of cardboard boxes large and small; he reached out an arm, lit the candle, then lifted the lids of the boxes and stooped down to look.
He found young men's costumes of days long gone by, frock coats with high velvet collars, dainty waistcoats cut very open, interminable white cravats, and patent-leather shoes dating from the beginning of the century.
He dared not touch a thing even with his finger-tips ; but shivering as he cleaned himself, he put one of the long cloaks over his schoolboy overall and raised its pleated collar; he changed his hobnailed shoes for elegant pumps and prepared to go downstairs bareheaded.
Gaps yawned at the bottom of the staircase, for the doors had long since been removed; nor had the panes been replaced in the windows, which made black holes in the walls.
Meaulnes, listening, thought he heard something like a song, like children's and young girls' voices down there towards the shadowy buildings where the wind shook the branches in front of the pink, green, and blue opening of the windows.
This little fellow wore a top hat very much curved in, which shone in the night as if made of silver, a frock coat with its collar reaching his hair, a low-cut waistcoat, and peg-top trousers . . . This dandy, who might have been fifteen, was walking on tiptoe as though lifted up by the elastic straps of his trousers, but very swiftly.
He greeted Meaulnes as they met without stopping, automatically bowing low, and disappeared in the darkness in the direction of the central building, farm, castle, or abbey, the turret of which had guided the schoolboy early in the afternoon.
Meaulnes was hesitating whether to push on to the end or open one of the doors behind which he could hear voices, when he saw two little girls, at the end, chasing each other.
A sound of opening doors, two faces of fifteen which the freshness of the evening and the chase had made quite rosy under their poke bonnets, and everything disappeared in a sudden glare of light.
For an instant they twirled round in fun, their wide light skirts rose and bellied up ; one could see the lace of their long quaint drawers ; then, after this pirouette, they bounced into the room together and shut the door again.
They had been dressed in their best clothes : short knickers above the knees, which showed their thick woollen stockings and their heavy boots, a small blue velvet jacket, a cap of the same colour, and a white necktie.
'Me,' said the smaller one, who had a round head and naïve eyes; 'Mummy says that she had a black dress and a round collar and that she looked like a pretty Pierrot.'
Before Meaulnes could say anything, the three of them reached the door of a large room where a big fire was burning. For table, boards had been placed on trestles; white tablecloths had been spread and people of all kinds were dining with ceremony.
But it was easy to see that these had never voyaged farther than the other end of the parish, and if they had been tossed and beaten by winds and storms it had occurred on that rough yet undangerous voyage in cutting the furrow to the field end and guiding back the plough. Few women were to be seen; only some old peasants with round faces as wrinkled as apples under their goffered caps.
Later he came to explain that feeling by saying: If you have ever done something unpardonable you sometimes think, in the midst of much bitterness : 'Yet there are people in the world who would forgive me.'
'Even if all is for the best,' said the elder, in a very shrill comical voice which she vainly tried to soften, 'the lovers will not be here before three o'clock to-morrow.'
This friendly squabble helped to clear matters up a little. Frantz de Galais, the son of the house - who was a student or a sailor or perhaps a cadet in the Navy, one could not be sure - had gone to Bourges to fetch a young girl and marry her; strange to say, this boy, who must be very young and very fantastic, arranged everything in his own way at the manor.
Meaulnes was cautiously going to put other questions when a charming couple appeared at the doorway; a girl of sixteen wearing a velvet bodice and a skirt with deep flounces, a young fellow in peg-top trousers and a frock coat with a high collar.
They crossed the room dancing a pas de deux-, others followed, then again others rushed through screaming and chased by a tall ghastly Pierrot in dangling sleeves, who wore a black cap and smiled from a toothless mouth.
The girls were a little frightened of him, the young men shook him by the hand, and he appeared to be the delight of the children, who chased him with shrieks and laughter.
He, too, caught the fun of it all and began to chase the tall Pierrot through the corridors, now like the wings of a theatre where the play had overflowed from the stage, in every direction.
Sometimes, in a corner of the room devoted to dancing, he talked with some dandy and tried hastily to find out the sort of dress to be worn on the days following.
Rather troubled at last by all this gaiety offered him, and every moment fearing lest his partly open cloak would reveal his schoolboy overall, he sought refuge for a while in the quietest and darkest part of the dwelling.
Some of these, seated on hassocks, were busy turning over the pages of albums open on their knees ; others, squatting on the floor in front of a chair, were gravely engaged in displaying pictures on the seat; others, again, near the fire said nothing and did nothing but listen to the hum of the fête audible throughout the great house.
It was a sort of drawing-room parlour; a woman or a young girl, with a brown cloak thrown over her shoulders and her back turned, was very softly playing tunes of round games and nursery rhymes.
Only now and again one of them, using his wrist as prop, lifted himself up, slid down to the ground, and passed into the dining- room; then one of those who had finished looking at the pictures came to take his place.
After the ball where everything was charming but feverish and mad, where he had himself so madly chased the tall Pierrot, Meaulnes found that he had dropped into the most peaceful happiness on earth.
Noiselessly, while the girl played on, he went back to sit in the dining-room, and opening one of the big red books scattered on the table, he absent-mindedly began to read.
Almost at once one of the little boys crouched on the floor came up to him, and catching hold of his arm, climbed on his knee to look over; another settled on the other side.
His mind could dwell on the fancy that he was married and in his own home during a beautiful evening and that this lovely unknown person playing the piano, close to him, was his wife.
He put on, as he had been told, a simple black old-fashioned suit; a tight-waisted jacket with sleeves puffed out at the shoulders, a double-breasted waistcoat, trousers so wide at the bottom that they hid his dainty shoes, and a top hat.
The fir woods, which hid the manor from all the flat country around, encroached onto the very grounds - except towards the east where could be seen blue hills covered with rocks and yet more firs.
For one moment, in the garden, Meaulnes leaned over the shaky fence enclosing the fish-pond; near the edges there remained a little thin ice in folds like froth . . .
And he fancied it was another Meaulnes; no longer the schoolboy who had run away in a peasant's cart, but a charming youth of romance from the pages of some handsome prize-book . . .
He peered through the dusty panes of large doors into dilapidated or forsaken rooms and sheds encumbered with wheelbarrows, rusted tools, and broken flower pots, when, suddenly, at the other end of the building, he heard footsteps crunching the sand.
Two women were approaching, one very old and bent, the other a young girl, fair and slender, whose charming dress, after all the fancy costumes of the previous evening, at first appeared strange to Meaulnes.
They stopped a moment to look at the view, while Meaulnes said to himself, with an astonishment which he later viewed as vulgar : 'That girl must be what is called eccentric - perhaps an actress who has been asked for the fête.'
One had a hat like hers, another her slightly drooping head; this one her clear gaze, this other her small waist and yet another her blue eyes ; but none of these women was ever the tall young girl.
In some perplexity he was asking himself if he should accompany them, when the girl, turning imperceptibly towards him, said to her companion: 'Surely the boat will soon be here, now? . .
On the landing-stage, the passengers had to wait a moment huddled, one against the other, while one of the boatmen unlocked the gate. With what joy, in after days, Meaulnes recalled the one minute when, on the shore of the lake, he had felt, close to his own, the girl's face, since lost!
While the children ran about with shouts of joy, while groups formed and scattered through the woods, Meaulnes entered a path where ten paces ahead of him the girl was walking.
She spoke in an even tone, dwelling on each word in the same way, but saying the last one more softly. . . Then she regained her steady look, still biting her lips a little, and her blue eyes looked into the distance.
He had scarcely leisure, however, to examine the spot where he now stood; they all hastened to eat a cold lunch which had been brought in the boats and which was hardly seasonable, but most likely the children had decided on it; then they set off again.
The boys in their jockey suits and the little girls as horsewomen led in some frisky ponies decked with ribbons as well as very old docile horses, amid shouts, children's laughter, betting, and prolonged sounding of the bell. One could have fancied one's self on the green and newly mown turf of a miniature race-course.
Meaulnes spotted Daniel and the little girls with feathers in their hats whose voices he had heard the day before in the drive near the wood. . . . The other part of the show was lost on him, so great was his anxiety to find, among the crowd, the charming hat trimmed with roses and the long brown cloak.
Then he began to tidy the room; he hung up his handsome clothes on the pegs, arranged the disordered chairs in a row along the walls, as if he were anxious to make preparations for a long stay.
Remembering, however, that he ought to be ready to leave at a moment's notice, he carefully folded his overall and his other school things like travelling clothes on the back of a chair and put his hobnailed shoes, still thick with mud, under the chair.
What he had found surpassed all his hopes. And it was enough now for his joy to recall, in the high wind, the face of that girl who turned towards him. . .
From the window, which he had left wide open, the wind made his cloak flutter, and each time he passed close to the light a glint of brass buttons on his handsome frock coat caught the eye.
He stopped for an instant in the midst of his troubled walk, leaned over the table, searched in a box, took out several sheets of paper ... By the light of the candle Meaulnes saw in profile very fine and very aquiline features, clean-shaven, under a thick head of hair which was parted on one side.
As he reached the foot of the stairs leading to his isolated lodging, some one came down and bumped into him in the dark, saying: 'Good-bye, sir!' - and wrapping himself in his cloak as if it were very cold, disappeared.
The reflection of the lantern came in at the window; for a brief moment the room around Meaulnes, once familiar and where everything had been so friendly, breathed again, lived again . . . And thus it was that, carefully closing the door, he left this mysterious place which no doubt he was never again to see.
The travellers were made to stand while the seats were brought forward or pushed backward, and the girls, swathed in shawls, got up clumsily, the rugs slipping to their feet, and one could distinguish the anxious faces of those whose heads were lowered towards the carriage lights.
Meaulnes thought for a moment of the poor worried girl who, in the midst of her grief and anxiety, would hear the songs of these tipplers filling the place far into the night. In which room was she?
Meaulnes closed the door more gently, and carefully settled in the other corner; then, hungrily, he tried to make out, through the window, the place he was about to leave and the road by which he had come : he guessed, in spite of the darkness, that the carriage was crossing the courtyard and the garden, passing in front of the stairway leading to his room, going through the gate and leaving the manor grounds to enter the woods.
From its heavy appearance, as far as one could tell in the night, it was a caravan, almost in the middle of the road, which had stopped there during these last days in proximity to the fête.
Having passied that obstacle, the horses started again at a trot, and Meaulnes was beginning to tire of looking out of the window in a vain effort to pierce through the surrounding darkness, when suddenly, in the depths of the woods, there was a flash of light followed by a report.
Half asleep, Meaulnes obeyed, felt about in the darkest corner of the carriage for his cap which had rolled under the feet of the sleeping children; then he got out, stooping.
Staggering like a drunken man, the big boy with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up, went slowly along the road to Sainte-Agathe, while the old berlin, the last trace of the mysterious festival, quitted the highroad and jolted silently off over the grass track.
In the evenings, as soon as the classroom was swept, the playground became deserted, as in the days when I was alone, and I now watched my friend strolling to and fro from the garden to the shed and from the playground to the dining-room.
On Thursday mornings each of us settled at the master's desk in one of the two classrooms to read Rousseau and Paul Louis Courrier whom we had dug out of the cupboards from amongst English textbooks and copybooks of carefully transcribed music.
In the afternoon some caller or other often caused us to leave the house and return to the school . . . Sometimes we used to hear some of the senior boys stop for a moment, as if by chance, in front of the big gate, bang against it during some unintelligible military games, and then go away. . . .
This melancholy life went on until the end of February. I was beginning to think that Meaulnes had forgotten everything when an adventure, stranger than the others, came to prove to me that I had been mistaken and that a violent storm was brewing under the dreary surface of this winter life.
It happened to be a Thursday evening towards the end of the month, that the first news of the mysterious manor, the first ripple of that adventure of which we never spoke, reached us.
At eight o'clock Millie, who had opened the door to shake out the crumbs after the meal, exclaimed: Ah!' in a voice so clear that we all came near to look.
At nine o'clock we prepared to go to bed; Mother was already holding the lamp in her hand when we quite distinctly heard two violent bangs hammered with great fury against the big gate at the other end of the playground.
There was a short silence and Father was beginning, Tt must have heen . . .' when right under the dining-room window looking on the Station Road, as I have said before, sounded a shrill prolonged whistle which must have been heard as far as the church.
And immediately behind the window, scarcely softened by the glass, and coming from people who seemed to have hoisted themselves up to the window-sill, burst loud shouts of: 'Fetch him along!
Then cries of 'Fetch him along,' shouted on every side by eight or ten unknown persons disguising their voices, burst out from the roof of the larder which they could only reach by climbing over a heap of faggots leaning against the outside wall; from a little wall which tan from the shed to the big gate and on which being rounded you could sit comfortably astride; from the railed wall along the Station Road, quite easy to climb . . . Finally a number of stragglers came up from the garden behind, making the same din, but shouting: 'Let 'em have it!'
Meaulnes and I knew so well all the corners and corridors of the big building that we could clearly see, as on a plan, the positions from which the unknown people were launching their attack.
The cries of those hanging on the larder roof and of those attacking from the garden grew fainter and fainter, then ceased ; we heard along the dining- room wall the scuttering steps of the whole gang in hasty retreat, getting lost in the snow.
We had scarcely time to recover - for the attack had been sudden as a well-planned boarding of a ship - and prepared to sally out, when we heard a voice we knew call out at the same gate :
And once more he begins his story. 'I was in my yard at the back of my place . . .' So we offer him a drink, which he accepts, and we ask him details which he cannot give.
This did not help us much, and we all stood there very puzzled while the man sipped his drink and once more started his story, when Meaulnes, who so far had listened attentively, took the butcher's lantern from the floor and exclaimed : 'We must go and see !'
Millie, quite herself again after the attackers' departure, and, like all orderly and careful people, very uninquisitive by nature, said : 'Well, go if you like, but close the door and take the key.
Meaulnes walked ahead, raying out the light from his storm lamp, like a fan. We had scarcely set foot outside the big gate when two figures in hoods sprang up like startled partridges from behind the town weighing-machine.
And leaving behind the two elderly men who could not stand the pace, we rushed in pursuit of the two shadows, who, after skirting the lower part of the village by the Old Plank Road, deliberately went back towards the church.
The place was deserted in the daytime: the journeymen being away, the weavers working indoors ; and during this night of absolute silence it appeared even more forsaken, more asleep than other parts of the village.
You had to go down a rather steep slope paved here and there; then, taking two or three turns amongst weavers' back yards and empty stables, you came to a wide blind alley closed up by a farmyard long since deserted.
I used to visit the Dumb Girl with my mother, and while they talked on silently with flashing fingers and grunts common to people with her affliction, I could look out from the window at the high wall of the farm - the last house on that side of the village - and the closed gate of a disused yard destitute of straw, where nothing ever passed by . . .
He never touched Meaulnes ; he watched the work of his men, who, being dragged in the snow and their clothes torn, had all they could do to tackle the great breathless chap.
Meaulnes shook off top-form boys by twisting violently round on himself and throwing them headlong into the snow... And the Unknown, standing very straight, followed the fight with interest, but perfect calm, saying now and again in a clear voice : 'Go on... Courage... Once more... Go on, my boys...'
His face, like the others', was hidden in a scarf, but when Meaulnes shook off his adversaries and advanced towards him, the gesture the Unknown made to see clearly and face the position, exposed some white linen with which his head was swathed as in a bandage.
At once the four boys who had fallen in the snow came back to the fray to pin Meaulnes down, tying his arms with a cord, his legs with a scarf, while the young man with the bandaged head searched his pockets ... The late comer, the thrower of the lasso, had lit a small candle which he protected with his hand, and at each find of some new piece of paper the leader went to this light to examine what it contained.
But once upstairs in our room, by the light of the lamp which Millie had left us, we both remained a long time mending our overalls and quietly discussing all that had happened, like two brothers in arms on the evening of a lost battle . . .
As we were late, we crept in wherever we could, though generally, during M. Seurel's inspection, Admiral Meaulnes headed the long row of boys who stood elbow to elbow, loaded with lesson-books and pencil-boxes.
It surprised me to see the silent alacrity which every one displayed to make room for us in the middle of the column; and while M. Seurel delayed opening school by a few seconds to inspect Meaulnes, I inquisitively looked around to right and left to see the faces of our enemies of the previous day.
He was in Meaulnes' usual place, at the head, one foot on the stone step, one shoulder and the corner of the satchel he carried on his back, resting against the doorpost.
They remained at school from two days to a month, rarely more . . . Objects of great interest at first, they were soon unheeded and quickly forgotten in the crowd of ordinary pupils.
Then came a Chinese pencil-box, full of compasses and exciting implements which travelled along the bench on the left, being silently and furtively thrust on from hand to hand under the desks, so that M. Seurel might not see.
Then came round some perfectly new books, the titles of which I had often read with longing on the covers of the few books in our library : 'The Blackbird on the Heath,' 'The Seagull's Rock,' 'My Friend Benedict.'. . . Some of the boys, resting a story-book on their knees, used one hand to turn over the pages of these volumes procured no one knew how, probably by theft, and with the other hand wrote their dictation.
Others, while M. Seurel's back was turned and he dictated walking from desk to window, quickly closed one eye and applied the other to the greenish hollow view of Notre Dame of Paris.
Little by little, however, the class became anxious : the objects which were passed round had one by one come to Meaulnes' hands, but absent-mindedly and without looking at them, he carelessly placed them by his side.
And at once he added, with a young aristocrat's ease and freedom of manner which the old schoolmaster could not resist: 'But I place them at your disposal, sir, if you wish to look at them.'
Then, in a few seconds, without any noise, as if not to disturb the new atmosphere just created, the whole class gathered inquisitively around the master whose head, half bald, half curly, bowed over the treasures, while the pale youth, serenely triumphant in the middle of the group, gave all necessary explanations.
Of all the new plays which the bohemian introduced amongst us that morning, I remember only the most violent: a sort of tournament where the bigger boys were horses with the younger ones hoisted on their shoulders.
Divided into two camps at either end of the playground, they charged each other, seeking to upset the enemy by the force of the shock, and the cavaliers using scarves as lassos or their outstretched arms as spears, tried to unhorse their opponents.
The slim cavalier with the bandaged head, mounted on Delage, who had lanky limbs, red hair, and flapping ears, urged on the two rival troops and steered his mount adroitly, shouting with laughter.
He remained there a long while, his cropped head bare, fuming at the comedian who would bring to some harm these lads of whom, not so long ago, he, Meaulnes, was the captain.
Everywhere on the playground, in the absence of M. Seurel, the fight went on: the smaller boys had now climbed on each other's backs ; they were running and tumbling about even before they received the enemy's charge . . . Soon, in the middle of the playground, there remained only one savage whirling group out of which emerged, now and again, the white bandage of the new leader.
Surprised at this sudden decision, I none the less jumped upon his shoulders without a moment's hesitation, and in a second we were in the thick of the fray, while most of the combatants, scared, fled away shouting: 'There's Meaulnes!
In less than no time only the newcomer on Delage remained unthrown; but the latter, not too keen to stand up to Augustin, pulled himself up with a violent jerk of the hips and forced the white rider to dismount. . .
He explained that, being held up by the cold on the square and not even dreaming of arranging evening shows to which no one would come, they had decided he should go to school to amuse himself during the daytime, while his companion looked after the tropical birds and the performing goat.
Then he related their wanderings in the neighbourhood, when the rain pelts on the wretched tin roof of the caravan and you have to get out on steep hills and put your shoulder to the wheel.
The bohemian produced other exciting things : shells, games, songs, and even a little monkey who stealthily scratched inside his satchel... At every moment M. Seurel was obliged to interrupt work to inspect something the clever rogue had pulled out of his bag . . .
It seemed as if, between school hours and recreation, there no longer existed that sharp distinction which renders school life as simple and as regular as the succession of night and day.
As luck would have it, that day it was Meaulnes' turn; and that very morning, while talking with him, I had warned the bohemian that newcomers as a matter of course were always appointed second sweeper on the day of their arrival.
So I sat down on a small table, close to thé window, and read by the last glimmer of daylight, while I saw them both silently shifting the school benches - Admiral Meaulnes glum and cross, his black overall well buttoned up at the back and tightly belted at the waist; the other delicate and nervous, his head bandaged up like a wounded soldier.
But at the moment when both were going up the classroom about to end their job by sweeping the threshold, Meaulnes lowered his head, and without looking at our enemy said in a low voice : 'Your bandage is red with blood and your clothes are torn.'
To make sure of it I stole your map. But, like you, I don't know the name of the manor; I couldn't go back to it; I don't know the whole of the way to it from here.'
'You'll see, you'll see !' replied the young fellow, rather disturbed and embarrassed. 'I've put on the plan a' few indications you hadn't got. . . That's all I could do.'
He was for a moment lost in thought; then he added, so as to leave us no illusions about himself : 'The reason I came to you both this evening is that -1 was sure of it this morning - there is more fun to be got with you than with the whole gang of the others.
And he added, almost solemnly: 'Be my friends in readiness for the day when I shall be again within a hairbreadth of hell, as I have already been . . . Give me your word that you will come to me if ever you hear me call - when I shall call like this - [he uttered a queer call : Hou-ou !] . . . You, Meaulnes swear to it first.'
'In exchange,' he said, 'this is all I can tell you now : I'll tell you the house in Paris where the young lady of the manor usually goes to spend the holidays: Easter and Whitsun, the month of June and sometimes part of the winter.'
Her brother-in-law Dumas, who lived with her, had to start at four, and the sad-looking woman, whose right hand bore the shrivelled scar of an old burn, was hurrying to make coffee in the dark kitchen.
She threw an old shawl over her night camisole, then holding a lighted candle in one hand and with her scarred hand raising her apron to shelter the flame, she crossed the yard littered with empty bottles and packing-cases, and opened the door of the shed, which was also used as a chicken-run, to get her kindling . . . But she had hardly pushed the door ajar, when some one sprang from the darkness, extinguished the candle with a blow of his cap, and with the same blow knocked over the good woman, then took to his heels while the terrified cocks and hens set up an infernal row.
He discovered that the scamp, to get in, must have opened the gate of the small yard with a skeleton key, and that he had escaped by the same way, without shutting it again.
At once, being accustomed to poachers and thieves, Dumas lighted his cart-lamp and carrying it in one hand with his loaded gun in the other, proceeded to follow the track of the thief, a very faint trail - the fellow most likely wore sand-shoes - which led to the Station Road, then disappeared at the gate of a meadow.
The wily and cowardly boy then said to himself, as he later repeated it to us with that unbearable thick pronunciation peculiar to Montluçon: 'They've gone towards the station, but who knows if I mayn't catch others, red-handed, the other side of the village !'
He was going to draw near and ask what had happened when a silent shadow, a shadow walking in sandshoes, emerged from the Nookery and heeding nothing else rushed at full speed towards the steps of the van.
At daybreak they had realised, on opening the yard gate, that the parcels in question were rabbits and poultry. Millie, during the first recreation, found several burnt matches outside the wash-house door.
We came to the conclusion that the thieves did not know our house and had not been able to break in ... At Perreux's, at Boujardon's, and at Clément's it was at first supposed that pigs even had been stolen, but these were found during the morning busily uprooting greens in several gardens.
The whole herd had seized the chance of the opened gate to take a little nocturnal outing . . . Nearly everywhere poultry had been carried away, but that was all.
Madame Pignot, the baker-woman, who did not rear chickens, complained loudly during all that day, that her washing-board and a pound of rinsing blue had been stolen from her, but the deed was never proved and never entered in the records of the case ...
Feverish with anxiety we stood there, not daring to draw near this humble abode which seemed to us the magic portal of the Land to which we had lost the way.
A breeze, delicious as cool water, blew over the wall; the silent rain of the night had moistened the leaves of the peonies; a rich pervasive smell rose from the freshly turned soil in the garden, and in the tree close to the window, I heard a bird which was trying to learn music . . .
We talked leaning against the low wall of the narrow lane, hands in pockets, bareheaded, while the wind sometimes made us shiver with cold, and at other times, with warm puffs, awoke some deep urge within us.
In the twinkling of an eye, we were all at the small gate, napkins in hand ... It was Booby announcing for that evening at eight o'clock, 'in view of the fine weather,' a great performance on the church square.
Then followed a long programme of attractions which the wind prevented us from catching except such words as 'dumb show . . . songs . . . riding displays . . .' the whole thing punctuated by renewed rolling of the drum.
I recall the place, which must have been rather small, as a real circus, with its wide dark stretches of rising seats, where could be seen Madame Pignot, the baker- woman; Fernande, from the grocer shop; the girls from the village; the apprentices from the forges; ladies, urchins, country folks, and every sort of people.
Scarcely were we seated when a pony, fully harnessed, pranced onto the track. He was several times led around the arena by the wounded comedian, and invariably stopped in front of one of us when asked to find the most charming person or the bravest in the audience, but always pointed to Madame Pignot when he had to spot who told the greatest lies, or was the most avaricious or 'the most in love' . . . And all round the lady, there were shrieks of laughter, screams and cackling, as when a flock of geese is chased by a spaniel ! .. .
At the interval, the leading man came to have a chat with M. Seurel, who could not have felt more proud had a Talma or a Léotard spoken to him; as for us, we listened with eager interest to what the comedian was saying : first about his wound - now closed up ; then regarding this show - rehearsed during the long days of winter; then concerning their departure- which was not to be before the end of the month, for they meant to give other variety shows up to then.
Towards the end of the interval, our friend left us, and to reach the caravan's steps was obliged to go through a group of people who had invaded the arena, in the midst of which we suddenly noticed Jasmin Delouche.
As for Jasmin, who appeared to be coming back from a long journey and was talking in a low but animated voice to Madame Pignot, he would evidently have found the local costume with the low collar, the bow of silken cord, and the elephant-like trousers, more to his taste . . . Both thumbs raised to the lapel of his jacket, he stood in a very affected and uneasy attitude.
Out of spite, as the bohemian went by, he said aloud to Madame Pignot a few words I did not catch, but which were certainly an offensive remark, an insult meant for our friend.
It must have been a serious and unexpected threat, for the young fellow could not help turning round and looking at the other, who, to carry it through, grinned and poked his neighbours in the ribs as if to bring them onto his side . . . All this happened in a few seconds.
We could not hear what was being said, but we recognised the two voices as those of the tall man and the young fellow - the first explaining and justifying; the other scolding with both indignation and sadness.
At last, peering in slowly between the curtains, a face emerged, furrowed by wrinkles, expanding in a grin both of mirth and distress, and bespeckled with black patches; there followed the figure of a lanky Pierrot made of three badly jointed parts, screwed up by some awful colic, who, with excess of caution and fear, advanced on tiptoes, his hands entangled in long dangling sleeves which swept the track.
At the climax, perched on a scaffolding of chairs, he dropped in a very long slow fall, and his piercing, melancholy hoot of triumph lasted as long as the fall and was mingled with shrieks of fear from the women.
During the second part of his show, though I do not know why, I recall 'poor wobbly Pierrot' producing a little sawdust doll from his sleeves and acting with her a long tragi-comical scene.
Then, with little pitiful cries, he filled her with porridge, and at the moment when all were attentive and the gaping spectators had their eyes fixed on Pierrot's daughter, bursting and sticky - suddenly catching hold of her by one arm, he hurled her flying across the audience at the face of Jasmin Delouche whose ear she missed before she landed on Madame Pignot's bosom, just under that lady's chin.
The baker-woman shrieked so loud, drew herself back so sharply, and all her neighbours imitated her so well that the bench broke and the baker- woman, Fernande, sad widow Delouche, and twenty others tumbled down, legs in the air, amidst laughter, shrieks, and clapping, while the tall clown, who had fallen on his face, got up to bow and say:
But at that very moment and in the midst of the uproar, Admiral Meaulnes, who had kept silent since the beginning of the dumb show, and seemed every moment more absorbed, hastily got up and clinging to my arm, as if unable to contain himself, said aloud to me : 'Look at the bohemian !
But scarcely had Meaulnes made his gesture and uttered his cry than the young man went into the caravan after giving us a knowing look and smiling with vague sadness, as he usually smiled. 'And the other!' said Meaulnes with excitement; 'how was it I didn't recognise him straightaway!
But already Booby had cut off all access to the track and, one by one, was putting out the four flares; we were obliged to follow the crowd, which in the dim light, and through the narrow channels of the parallel penches, streamed slowly out while we stamped about with impatience.
The tall white shadow which Meaulnes had seen hurrying amongst the trees, on the last evening of the fête, was Booby, who, having rescued the disconsolate fiancé, was running away with him.
Frantz de Galais had, so far, hidden his name from us and pretended not to know the way to the manor, for fear of being forced to go back home ; but why had he, this evening, suddenly wished to reveal himself, letting us guess the whole truth? ...
And I remember that, with sudden generosity of heart, I went up to the ugliest of the notary's daughters, to whom I was often forced to offer my arm, and spontaneously held my hand out to her.
The next day at eight o'clock, as we both emerged on the church square, our shoes well polished, the buckles of our belts shining bright, and our caps brand-new, Meaulnes, who so far had repressed a smile whenever he looked at me, gave a shout and rushed towards the empty square ... At the place where the tent and the vans had stood were only a broken jug and some rags.
And as we were coming back across the village where the life of a Thursday morning was beginning, four mounted policemen, warned the evening before by Delouche, arrived at a gallop on the square and scattered in the by-streets to block all issues, exactly as a patrol of dragoons sent to reconnoitre a village . . . But it was too late.
Warned in time by the incautious remark of Jasmin, Frantz must have suddenly understood what trade kept his companion and himself alive when the cash-box was empty; full of shame and anger, he had at once mapped out the route and decided to make off before the police came.
The sun was breaking through the morning mist on our return: housewives were shaking carpets or chatting in front of their doors : the loveliest spring morning my memory can recall was beginning in the fields and woods round the village.
All the big boys of the top form had been told to come about eight that Thursday morning to prepare, some for Matriculation, others for the Entrance Examination to Training College.
When we arrived together - Meaulnes so full of regret and uneasiness that he could not keep still, myself very depressed - the school was empty ... A ray of bright sunlight was glinting on the dust of a worm-eaten bench and the peeling varnish of the globe.
How could we stop there in front of a book, to brood over our disappointment, when everything was calling us out-of- doors : birds chasing one another in the branches close to the windows, the other boys gone off to the woods and the fields, and above all our burning wish to try at once the incomplete route on the map approved by the bohemian - our last card, the one key left which might open the lock? ... It was more than we could stand!
Meaulnes kept walking up and down, going to the windows to look at the garden, then back again for a look towards the village, as if he was expecting some one who certainly would not come.
'I've a notion,' he said to me at last - 'I've a notion that it mayn't be as far as we think . . . Frantz struck off my plan a good bit of the road I had marked.
I sat idle and discouraged on the edge of a big table, one foot on the ground, the other swinging, and I remarked in a dejected way: 'Yes, but coming back, in the berlin, your journey lasted all night.'
'Aren't you coming?' said Augustin to me, stopping a moment on the step of the partly open door - and thus brought into the room a whiff of air softened by the sun, a medley of twittering, calling, and chirping, the sound of a pail on the curb of a well and the cracking of a whip in the far distance.
When M. Seurel came in about ten, he had discarded his black alpaca jacket, having put on a fisherman's coat with big buttoned pockets, a straw hat, and short leather leggings to hold in his trousers.
It was agreed that Mouchebœuf would guide M. Seurel and be his decoy-bird . . . That is to say that, knowing the thickets where the nest-hunters had gone, he would call aloud, from time to time: 'Holla!
It so happened that, on the plan as altered by the bohemian, which I had many times studied with Meaulnes, a line seemed to indicate a path, a beaten track, starting from that side in the direction of the manor.
What a marvellous walk! ... As soon as we had passed the glacis and gone round the mill, I left my two companions: M. Seurel looking as if he was off to the wars (I believe he had an old pistol in his pocket) and that traitor Mouchebœuf.
I took a cross-road and soon came to the edge of the wood - being alone in the open country for the first time in my life, and feeling like a patrol which has lost its corporal.
The whole morning is mine to explore the edge of the wood - the most deliciously cool and secreted part of the district - while my big brother, too, is off on the search.
I have just jumped a hurdle at the end of the path, and I am under a roof of leaves in this wide grass track, treading down nettles and crushing tall valerians.
And in the silence I hear a bird -1 imagine it to be a nightingale, but most likely this is wrong, as nightingales only sing at night - a bird who persists in repeating the same phrase : the voice of the morning, a loving word under the shade of the trees, a charming invitation to a walk amongst the alders.
I am no longer hunting for shells of bygone streams, under M. Seurel's guidance, nor orchids unknown to the schoolmaster, nor even, as often before, for the deep and dried-up spring in Father Martin's field, with a grating so well hidden by weeds and grass that to rediscover it gave us each time greater trouble ... I am searching for something far more mysterious.
It is found at last at the most forlorn hour of the morning, when you have long since forgotten that eleven or twelve is about to strike . . . And suddenly, as one thrusts aside bushes and brier, with a movement of hesitating hands unevenly raised level to the face, it appears in sight as a long shadowy avenue, the outlet of which is a small round patch of light.
In previous years, whenever we had reached the entrance of the wood, we used to point to a patch of light at the end of a long, dark avenue and say: 'That house out there, that's the forester's cottage, Baladier's.'
I was just beginning to feel my tired legs and the heat, which I had not so far noticed; I was fearing the return journey all by myself, when close at hand I heard the voice of M. Seurel's decoy-bird, Mouchebœuf, then other voices calling me . . .
There were Giraudat, Auberger, Delage, and others . . . Thanks to the decoy, they had been caught, some up a mulberry tree that stood solitary in the clearing, others in the act of robbing a woodpecker's nest.
At first they had answered Mouchebœuf by jokes on his name, which the echoes of the wood repeated, and he, believing he had caught them, had replied stupidly in a temper: 'You'd better come down from there, you know!
They even confided to us, while M. Seurel was starting off again at the head of our party : 'There was another chap as went by. That tall fellow, you know. . .
After lunch, he sat at one of the big tables in the classroom - stuffy, dark, and empty amidst the glorious countryside - and burying his head in his arms, fell into a long sleep, sullen and heavy.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 have been my only thought.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 for the light steps of the hunter upon the watch, in the dim distance of the lumber-rooms ...
I waited in vain for a word from Meaulnes all Easter Monday and the following days - days so calm after the Easter fever that just to wait for summer seemed the only thing to be done.
The lamp could be seen standing alight on the table, scarcely changing the sultry obscurity of June; you could see almost to the other end of the room ... Ah! if the dark window of Yvonne de Galais had suddenly lit up as the others, I believe I should have found courage to go up the stairs, to knock and enter ...
During the night - it was last night - when the women and the children left off their noise in the back yards, and I might have gone to sleep, I began to hear the cabs rolling by in the street.
But no sooner had one gone by than, in spite of myself, I waited for the next: the horse's bell, his hoofs clinking on the asphalt. . . And it went on repeating : empty town, your poor love gone, eternal night, summer, fever . . .
I received the last of the three letters I ever received from Meaulnes, on my return to school, at the end of November, while I was working with melancholy zeal for my final Matriculation, hoping in the following year to secure a teacher's post without going through Bourges Training College.
At the end of these cold autumn Sundays, about the time when night comes, I cannot decide to go home and close the shutters of my room without returning to stand there in the chilly street.
I am like the mad woman of Sainte-Agathe who would go to her front door every minute and look towards the station, one hand raised above her eyes, to see if her dead son were coming home.
Her furs are cold, her veil damp; she brings in with her a flavour of the outside mist; and as she draws near the fire, I see the flaxen fairness of her hair and the soft outlines of her beautiful face bent towards the flame . . .
And this new winter proved as dead as the preceding one had been alive with mysterious life: the church square without gipsies ; the playground which the boys deserted on the stroke of four . . . the classroom where I studied alone and without pleasure ... In February, for the first time that winter, snow fell, definitely burying the tale of our adventures, blurring every trail, blotting out the last traces.
The bad lads of the countryside thought it a lark to smoke cigarettes, to put sugar and water on their hair to make it curl, to kiss girls from the Continuation School in the street, and to call out from behind a hedge, 'Pokebonnet,' to rag a passing nun.
The problem is graver when the bad lad's appearance is wizened and old, when his mind is occupied with low tales of the women roundabout, when he is always making stupid remarks about Gilberte Poquelin for the other boys to laugh.
And soon this Jasmin Delouche and Boujardon and a softish fellow called Denis, son of the deputy mayor, were the only big boys with whom I cared to associate, because they belonged to 'Meaulnes' time.'
To tell the truth, though he had been Admiral Meaulnes' enemy, he wanted to be the Admiral Meaulnes of the school : at any rate, he regretted perhaps not having been his lieutenant.
This old-looking fellow, besides being more of a man than we were, got hold of ripping things which gave him a pull over us : a mongrel with long white hair who answered to the irritating name of Bécali and fetched stones thrown ever so far, without being much good for anything else; a second-hand bicycle which Jasmin let us ride sometimes in the evening after school, but on which he preferred to exercise the village girls ; last but not least, a white donkey, quite blind, which could be harnessed to any vehicle.
And we set out, eight to ten big boys from the top form, going with M. Seurel, some on foot, others hoisted in the donkey cart which we left behind at Deep Waters Farm, where the path along the Cher became like a ravine.
I have good reason to remember in all its minute details one outing of this kind, when Jasmin's donkey took to the Cher the slips, luggage, lemonade, and M. Seurel, while we followed on foot.
We were care-free, and the whole summer, all happiness, seemed to belong to us ; so, early that fine Thursday afternoon, we marched along the road singing, not knowing what we sang or why we sang it.
And he began to relate several risky stories concerning her and her girl friends, while, by way of bragging, our little troop took to the lane and left M. Seurel on the road forging ahead in the donkey cart.
Our feet were on sand and dry mud; our one thought was for the bottle of widow Delouche's lemonade being kept cool in the pool at Deep Waters, a pool hollowed out in the very bank of the Cher.
There were always pale-greenish weeds to be found at thé bottom, and two or three creatures which looked like wood- lice; but the water was so clear, so transparent, that fishermen never hesitated to kneel and drink at it, one hand placed on either bank.
Alas ! it happened that day as it always did . . . Once we were dressed and, squatting on our heels in a circle, were ready to share the cool lemonade out of two tumblers, after inviting M. Seurel to take his share, there came to each of us scarcely more than a little froth which grated on the throat and only aggravated one's thirst.
Several of us, myself included, never managed to quench our thirst: some because they did not like water; others because their throats contracted at the fear of swallowing a woodlouse; others again, deceived by the transparency of the still water and unable to estimate the exact distance to its surface, pushed half of their faces in with their lips and drew in through the nose stinging water which seemed quite hot; others for all these reasons put together . . . What did it matter !
The Deep Waters' track, leading up to the road, was a brook in the winter, but in the summer a ravine unfit for traffic, obstructed by holes and big roots and leading uphill between tall rows of shady trees.
We could hear the others talk and laugh close to us, down below, hidden from sight in the shady path, while Delouche told his mannish tales . . . At the top of the tall row of trees, evening insects were droning and could be seen against the clear sky, as they moved around the lacework of the leaves.
Just as we reached the top of the hill, at the place where two huge ancient stones stand - they are rumoured to be the remains of a fortress - he began to speak of the estates he had visited, above all of one half forsaken in the neighbourhood of Vieux-Nançay: the Sand Pit Manor.
With his Allier accent, which shows affectation in rounding off some words and in shortening others, he related having seen, some years previously, in the tumble-down chapel of the old manor, a tombstone on which were carved the words : here lies sir galois, knight, faithful to his god, his king and his love.
'Well ! I never !' said M. Seurel, slightly shrugging his shoulders, ill at ease at the turn the conversation had taken, yet anxious nevertheless to let us talk like men.
He went on talking . .. talking ... I listened attentively, feeling, without being aware of it, that all this concerned facts well known to me, when suddenly, in the simple way extraordinary things do happen, Jasmin turned to me and touched me on the arm as if struck by an idea which had never occurred to him.
I no longer listened to him, convinced as I was from the first that he had guessed right and that in front of me, far from Meaulnes, far from all hope, there had just opened out, as clear and easy as a familiar road, a path to the manor without a name.
Just as far as I had been an unhappy child, dreamy and retiring, so I now became resolute and as we say at home 'determined,' when I felt that upon me depended the outcome of this high adventure.
Vieux-Nançay was the parish to which the Sand Pit estate belonged and where all M. Seurel's relatives lived, and in particular my Uncle Florentin, a tradesman with whom we often spent the end of September.
Vieux-Nançay was for many years my favourite place in the world, the place that meant holidays, where we only went on rare occasions, when a carriage could be hired to take us.
There had formerly been some disagreement with the branch of the family living there, and no doubt this explains why one had each time to beg Millie so hard to get her to come.
But I cared little about these squabbles ! . . . No sooner was I there than I became lost in the crowd of uncles and cousins, boys and girls, and enjoyed a life crammed with jolly doings.
We used to live with Uncle Florentin and Aunt Julie. They had a boy of my age, Cousin Firmin, and eight daughters, the two eldest of whom, Marie-Louise and Charlotte, might have been seventeen and fifteen.
They kept a large shop in front of the church, at the entrance to this small town in Sologne - a sort of general store, the shopping centre for all the neighbouring gentry and sportsmen living in lonely places in the remote country, often thirty kilometres from any station.
The family lived in the big kitchen, the door of which opened on the shop, and in this kitchen, at the end of September, huge fires were blazing by the side of which the gamekeepers and poachers who sold game to Florentin often came for a drink quite early in the morning, while the little girls, who were already up, went all over the place, making much noise, or smoothed one another's hair with 'some nice-smelling stuff.'
The mornings were always spent there; or in the yard where Florentin grew dahlias and reared guinea-fowls; here, seated on soap chests, you set about roasting coffee, or unpacking crates filled with all kinds of carefully wrapped things, the name of which we did not always know . . .
Marie-Louise, the eldest of my cousins, though one of the smallest, was still in the shop, folding and putting away rolls of cloth and coaxing us to come and cheer her up.
So Firmin and I with all the girls burst into the huge shop, under the overhead porcelain lamps, and coffee-grinders were set turning and acrobatic stunts performed on the counters; sometimes Firmin brought out from the attics some old trombone covered with verdigris, for the trodden earth floor was good to dance on . . .
I still blush at the idea that, at any moment in those previous years, Mlle, de Galais might have come in and caught us at these childish games . . . But it was just before nightfall, one evening of that month of August, while I was quietly talking with Marie-Louise and Firmin, that I saw her for the first time . . .
'Everything has been sold, and the buyers, sportsmen, have pulled down the old buildings to enlarge their shoot; the great courtyard is by now just a waste land of heather and broom.
You'll often have a chance of seeing Mademoiselle de Galais here; it's she does all the shopping, coming sometimes on horseback, sometimes driving, but always, the same old horse, old Bélisaire . . . It's a funny turn-out !'
And it was all broken off suddenly; he ran away and he's never been seen since . . . After the lady's death, Mademoiselle de Galais was suddenly left alone with her father, the old sea captain.'
Elbows on the counter or seated with both hands stretched out flat on the polished wood, we were telling one another all we knew about the mysterious girl - and that was precious little - when a noise of wheels made us turn round.
An old farm carriage with rounded panels and small moulded cornices, the like of which I had never seen before in that district; an old white horse which always seemed to want to graze along the road, so low did he bend his head as he walked; and on the box -1 say it in all simplicity of heart, but knowing well what I say - the most beautiful girl the world may ever have held.
On her pure complexion summer had placed two freckles ... I detected only one defect in so much beauty : in moments of sadness, discouragement, or simply deep thought, this pure face was slightly dappled with red, as happens to people suffering from some serious and unsuspected complaint.
Aunt Julie, being at once informed, came in, and talked quietly, with her hands crossed over her stomach and her peasant shopkeeper's white cap nodding gently. And thus the moment when conversation would begin on my part - which I rather dreaded - was postponed .. .
Aunt Julie was then lighting over our heads the porcelain lamp which gave dim light to the shop ; I saw the girl's sweet childlike face, her candid blue eyes, and was all the more surprised at her clear and serious voice.
There are endless tales of lost pencils, exercise-books too dear, and of children who do not learn . . . Well, I would fight it out with them and they would like me nevertheless.
'For instance,' she said, 'there is perhaps some big silly boy who is looking for me at the other end of the world, while I am here, in Madame Florentin's shop, under this lamp, and my old horse is waiting at the door.
To see her smile, daring seized me, and I felt that it was time to say, while I also laughed : 'And it may be that I know him, that big silly boy?'
There also a porcelain lamp was lit and an old man with a kind, wrinkled face entirely shaven - the type of man nearly always silent like one burdened with age and memories - was seated close to Florentin in front of two glasses of brandy.
'François!' he called out in his strong huckster's voice, as if there was a river between us or many acres of land, 'I have just arranged an afternoon's outing on the banks of the Cher for next Thursday.
When she held out her hand to me at the moment of leaving, there was between us, more clearly than if we had spoken many words, a secret understanding which death alone was to break, and a friendship more moving than a great passion.
It was still night and I had great trouble in finding my belongings on the table, amongst the brass candlesticks and the brand-new statuettes of saints which had been chosen out of the shop to decorate my dwelling on the day before my arrival.
But my day was to be long: I was first going to lunch at Sainte-Agathe to explain my prolonged absence, then, continuing my way, I meant, before the evening, to reach La Ferté d'Angillon and the home of my friend Augustin Meaulnes.
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.
'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.
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.
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 tugs 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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
'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.
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.
Next morning, when I reached the High Street, it was such fine holiday weather, it was so still, and so many peaceful and familiar sounds rose from all over the village, that the happy confidence of a bearer of good news came back to me.
On the death of his father - retired long before this and enriched by a legacy - Meaulnes had pressed his mother to buy the school in which the old schoolmaster had taught for twenty years and where he himself had learned to read.
Not that it was a pleasant house to look at: it was a big square building like a little town hall, which indeed it had once been; the ground-floor windows opened on the street and were so high that no one ever looked in through them; and the yard at the back, where no tree grew and a high shelter blocked any view of the countryside, was certainly the most denuded and the most forlorn of all the forsaken playgrounds I have ever seen.
In the odd-shaped hall on which four doors opened, I found Meaulnes' mother bringing back from the garden a huge bundle of clothes which she must have put to dry at a very early hour of this long holiday morning.
Her grey hair was carelessly twisted up; wisps of it fell across her face; her regular features, under her old-fashioned cap, looked tired and her eyes heavy, as if after a sleepless night, and she kept her head lowered sadly in a dreamy way.
I climbed up the stairs, opened the door on the right, over which the words 'Town Hall' still remained on a board, and found myself in a big room with four windows - two opening on the village, two on the country; the walls were decorated with faded portraits of the Presidents Grévy and Carnot.
Slow to break into speech, then and always, like men who live alone - hunters and adventurers - he had come to a decision without bothering about the words required to explain it.
Out of countenance for a moment, I no longer dared to say nytahing and did not know where to begin with my message, for I felt that presently, by a mere word, I was going to wipe out this decision which I did not understand.
'Well, I tried to live out there in Paris, when I saw that all was finished and that it was scarcely worth while even looking for the Lost Land . . . But how could a man, who had once leapt at one bound into Paradise, get used to living like everybody else?
'Of course, I would have liked, once more, to see Mademoiselle de Galais, simply to see her once more . . . But I am convinced, now, that when I discovered the nameless manor, I was at the height of what stands for perfection and pure motive in any one's heart, a height I shall never reach again.
He looked at me; then, suddenly taking his eyes away, blushed as I have never seen any one blush: a rush of blood which must have beat hard against his temples . . .
Then, in one gush, I related what I knew, what I had done, and how, the appearance of things having altered, it seemed almost as if it were Yvonne de Galais who had sent me to him.
During all this narrative - which he listened to in silence, with head sunk between his shoulders in the attitude of one who is taken by surprise and cannot tell how to defend himself, whether to hide or run away -1 remember that he interrupted me only once.
'Ah !' he said, 'there you are' (as if he had watched for a chance of justifying his behaviour and the despair into which he had sunk). 'There you are: there is nothing left. . .'
To end my tale, as I felt convinced that the assurance of such an easy course would sweep away what remained of his grief, I told him that a country outing had been arranged by my Uncle Florentin, that Mademoiselle de Galais was coming to it on horseback, and that he himself was invited . . . But he appeared completely put out and continued silent.
I sat down in the little dining-room under the illustrated calendars, the chiselled daggers, and the leather bottles from the Sudan which a brother of M. Meaulnes, who had been in the marines, had brought home from his distant travels . . .
Augustin left me there alone for a moment before the meal, and in the next room, where his mother had prepared his luggage, I heard him tell her, in a slightly lowered voice, not to unpack his trunk - as his journey was perhaps only delayed . . .
At my uncle's he showed the same impatience and seemed unable to be interested in anything until about ten next morning, when settled in the carriage, we were ready to start for the river.
Now and again we came across other guests also driving, and even young fellows on horseback, whom Florentin had boldly invited in M. de Galais' name . . . An attempt had been made, as of old, to bring rich and poor together, squires and peasants.
Where we stopped, the hill sloped gently down to the riverside, and the land was divided into small green meadows and willow groves separated by fences like so many tiny gardens.
On the other side, the river had steep banks cut out of rugged grey hills; and on the most distant of these you could make out romantic country seats, each with a turret rising from the firs.
From the small hillock on which we had climbed to survey the road, we could see, on the lawn down below, a group of guests amongst whom Delouche was trying to cut a fine figure.
I don't know what fate is now against me; but if I stay here, I feel sure she will never come - that it is utterly impossible she will presently appear at the end of this road.'
And at the first bend I saw Yvonne de Galais riding side-saddle on an old white horse, so frisky this morning that she was obliged to pull the reins to prevent him trotting.
Taking her father's arm and with her left hand holding aside the flap of the long cloak that wrapped her round, she drew near the guests with her usual expression, at once so serious and so childlike.
At last, however, with an unconscious and uneasy gesture, his hand went over his bare head as if amongst the well-brushed heads of his companions, to hide his own, so rough, and with hair cropped like a peasant's.
She was introduced to the girls and boys she did not know . . . My friend's turn was soon to come and I felt as anxious as he could be.
It was only towards the end of the evening, after boating on the neighbouring pond, games, bathing, and chatting had started everywhere, that Meaulnes found himself again in the girl's presence.
We were sitting on some garden chairs which we had brought, talking with Delouche, when Mademoiselle de Galais, deliberately leaving a group of young people amongst whom she seemed bored, made her way towards us.
And each time the poor tortured girl had to repeat to him that everything was gone: the old queer and oddly shaped house rased to the ground; the lake drained and filled with earth; and the children in their charming costumes dispersed for ever.. .
Then he conjured up the things in his bedroom; the chandeliers, the tall tooking-glass, the old broken lute ... He inquired about all this with unwonted eagerness, as if he wanted to convince himself that nothing survived of his fine adventure, and that the girl would not bring back to him one piece of wreckage which could prove that they had not both lived in a dream - as the diver brings up from the bottom of the sea mere pebbles and seaweeds . . .
We were walking, all three of us, without noise on grass that was short and ever so slightly touched with yellow. Augustin had close to him on his right the girl whom he had thought forever lost.
Whenever he asked one of his cruel questions, her charming and troubled face would slowly turn towards him as she answered; and once, while speaking, she gently placed her hand on his arm in a gesture full of trust and surrender.
We were approaching the little wood where M. de Galais had that morning tied up Bélisaire; the sun, now declining, lengthened our shadows upon the grass. On the far end of the lawn we heard the voices of the little girls and others playing games - voices mellowed by distance to a happy buzz ; and we remained silent in the marvellous quiet; then we heard some one singing on the other side of the wood, from the direction of The Guelders, the farm by the river.
The voice was young and distant, and belonged to some one taking cattle to water: the tune was rhythmic as a dance, but the man sang it with a drawl and dragged it as though it were some old sad ballad:
It was actually one of the tunes which the belated peasants had sung that last evening of the fête at the nameless manor, when everything had fallen to pieces. Nothing but a memory - the most wretched memory - of those beautiful days which would return no more.
I was, however, on the point of encouraging her; of advising her not to mind being rather blunt with the tall boy; that most likely some secret tormented him which he could never confide to her or any one of his own accord - when suddenly a cry came from the other side of the wood; then we heard a thudding, as of a horse furiously pawing the ground, and the noise of wrangling .in broken sentences ... I understood at once that an accident had happened to old Bélisaire and I ran towards the place whence the uproar came.
Old Bélisaire, tied up too low, had caught one of his forefeet in the halter; he had not moved until M. de Galais and Delouche, in the course of their walk, had come near him, then frightened, upset by the unusual oats given him, he had begun to struggle furiously; the two men had tried to free him, but so clumsily that they had only succeeded in further entangling him, at the risk, too, of dangerous kicks.
Too late, though; the damage was done; the horse appeared to have strained a tendon or else to have broken something, for he drooped his head dismally and kept one of his legs held up under his belly; he was trembling all over; his saddle, too, was half off his back.
'This horse must be taken away at once,' said Meaulnes, without replying, 'while he can still walk - and there's no time to be lost! He should be put in the stable and never taken out again.'
The late summer wind was so mild on the Sand Pit road that it seemed like May, and the leaves in the hedges quivered in the south wind . . . We saw her set off thus, her arm partly out of her cloak, and holding in her slim hand the thick leather rein.
Little by little everybody picked up his belongings and the picnic things ; chairs were folded, tables taken down; the carriages, loaded with luggage and guests, went away one by one while hats were raised and handkerchiefs waved.
The wheels grated on the sand as we took the corner, and soon Meaulnes and I, who sat at the back, saw the cross-road which old Bélisaire and his owners had taken slowly disappear.
He must have reached the manor by the avenue of firs he had followed in the old days when, like a tramp hiding in the thicket, he had heard the mysterious conversation of the unknown beautiful children.
Any one who does not wish to be happy has only to climb up to the attics to hear till evening the whistle and moan of shipwrecks ; or he can go out on the road for the wind to flap back his scarf on his mouth as in a sudden warm kiss which will make him weep.
But for him who loves happiness there stands, by the side of a muddy lane, the Sand Pit house which my friend Meaulnes has just entered with Yvonne de Galais who has been his wife since midday.
At least twice a week, as she sat sewing or reading by the window overlooking the moor and the firs, Mademoiselle de Galais would suddenly see his tall hurrying shadow move behind the curtain, for he always comes that roundabout way, up the drive he once came by.
The ceremony was held at midday as quietly as possible, in the old chapel of the Sand Pit, which was not pulled down and stands partly hidden by firs, on the slope of the adjoining hill.
We try in vain to divert our thoughts and beguile our uneasiness during this wandering walk, by attracting one another's attention to the forms of hares and the small sandy furrows where rabbits have been scratching ... to a trap set in the wood ... or to the trail of a poacher . . . But we always come back hauntingly to the edge of the copse from where the silent and closed house can be seen . . .
It is at first like a trembling voice which, from afar, scarcely dares to sing its joy ... It is like the laughter of a little girl who, in her room, fetches all her toys out and displays them to her sweetheart. . .
It also brings to my mind the shy pleasure of a woman who, having gone to put on a beautiful dress, comes back to show it and is not yet sure it will please . . . This air which I do not know is also a prayer, an entreaty to happiness not to be too cruel, a bowing of the head and as it were a falling on the knees before happiness . . .
So, stooping under the branches, we slowly and silently make our way across the copse as far as the big fir wood from where, at regular intervals, rises this prolonged cry, which is not in itself uncanny, yet seems to us an evil omen.
I post myself at one corner of the wood, Jasmin goes to the opposite corner, thus allowing each of us to command, from the outside, a view on two sides of a rectangle and to let neither of the bohemians escape without hailing him.
There is a moment's silence; I am about to call again when from the very heart of the wood and rather too far for my eyes to reach, a voice orders : 'Stay where you are ; he'll come to you.'
He seems to be covered with mud and is badly dressed; trouser clips are tight round his ankles, an old midshipman's cap fits closely on his hair which is too long. I can now see his face, so much thinner . . .
But now one was at first tempted to pity him for having failed in life, then to reproach him for absurdly acting the romantic young hero, as I saw that he persisted in doing . . . And finally I could not help thinking that our handsome Frantz with the beautiful love story had most likely taken to stealing for a living, just like his companion Booby ...
Just as if he were fifteen ! - the age one could easily have taken us to be at Sainte-Agathe, on the evening of the sweeping of the classrooms, when we three took that terrible childlike oath.
All the guests having gone, M. de Galais had opened the door, letting the high wind moan for a second all through the house, then he had set off towards Vieux-Nançay, not to be back until dinner, in time for locking up and giving orders at the farm.
The tick-tick of a small clock recalled the dining-room at Sainte-Agathe . . . He no doubt thought: 'So this is the house so much sought after; the passage once so full of whispers and strange encounters . .
It was in vain then that the young woman showed him all the marvels with which she was burdened: the toys she had played with as a little girl; all the photographs of herself as a child; as a vivandière, herself and Frantz on their mother's knee, and such a pretty mother . . . then all that was left of her sedate little dresses of childhood; 'even this one which I was still wearing just before you came to know me, at the time, so I believe, you must have arrived at the Higher Elementary School at Sainte-Agathe . . .' Meaulnes no longer saw anything or heard anything.
Out there, at the edge of the wood, I began to hear the trembling song brought by the wind, but soon broken into by the second call of the two mad fellows who had come nearer to us through the firs.
From the edge of the wood we saw him first close with some hesitation one of the shutters, then look vaguely our way, close another, and suddenly run off at full speed in our direction.
It has sometimes happened to me, in the poor districts of Paris, to witness a couple which one thought happy, united, and honest, suddenly bring their quarrel into the street to be separated by the intervention of the police.
The scandal had broken out all at once, no matter when, just as they sat down at dinner, before the Sunday walk, when keeping the little boy's birthday. . . and now everything is forgotten and smashed.
The man and the woman in their quarrel are no more than two pitiful fiends, while the children in tears rush up to them, hugging them closely, begging them to keep quiet and not to fight.
But when she once understood that Meaulnes was really there, that this time, at all events, he would not forsake her, she placed her arm under his and could not help laughing amidst her tears as would a child.
And in the bracing high wind which lashed at their faces that wintry evening I left them to go back together, he helping her by the hand at awkward places, she smiling and hastening - towards the home they had for a moment forsaken.
I had to remain shut up in the school during the whole of the following day, a prey to dull anxiety, feeling but little reassured by the happy ending to yesterday's scene.
In the evening I made haste to get my cape, my stick, a piece of bread to eat on the way, and reached the Sand Pit to find everything closed up there just as the day before ... A little light on the first floor; but not noise, not a movement. . .
And I was only partly surprised when, in answer to my ring. M. de Galais appeared alone and spoke to me almost in whispers: Yvonne de Galais was in bed with a high fever; Meaulnes had been obliged to leave on Friday morning to go on a long journey; no one knew when he would come back . . .
The door shut and I remained on the doorstep for a moment, my heart torn, my mind in chaos, watching, without knowing why, a branch of dead wistaria which the wind swayed in a beam of sunshine.
She hardly spoke, but said each sentence with extraordinary animation as though she were longing to convince herself that happiness had not yet vanished ... I have no memory of what we said.
The only lament to which the past prompted her was, I think, at not having been enough her brother's true friend, for on the day of his great disaster he had not dared to tell her more than any one else, and he had thought himself for ever lost.
And, after all, it was indeed a heavy task the young woman had assumed - a perilous task that of seconding a mind as madly fantastic as was her brother's; an overwhelming task when it was a matter of joining one's lot with so adventurous a spirit as my friend Admiral Meaulnes.
One day she gave me the most touching, I could almost say the most mysterious proof of this faith she kept in her brother's childish dreams, and the care she took to preserve at least some fragments of the dream in which he had lived up to his twentieth year.
But to my surprise, when at last it became possible to leave our shelter, the young woman, instead of turning back towards the Sand Pit, went on her way and asked me to follow her.
Yvonne de Galais opened the first door on our right and made me go into a dark room, where, after a moment of uncertainty, I made out a tall look- ing-glass and a small bed covered with a red silk eiderdown, in peasant fashion.
And while a languid ray of sunshine, the first and last of the day, made both our faces paler and the dusk more gloomy, we stood there, frozen and worried, in this strange house !
'Now, the house is empty,' she went on with a sigh; 'it has been so for a long time. M. de Galais, altered by age and grief, has never done anything to trace my brother or call him back.
It pleases me to pretend they are Frantz's old friends ; that he himself is still but a child and that he will soon come back with the fiancée of his choice.
It had needed this shower and this childlike dismay to induce her to confide to me the great grief of which she had never spoken, her deep regret at having lost a brother so mad, so charming, so much admired.
This girl who had been the fairy, the princess, the mysterious love dream of our youth, it was now my lot to take by the arm, finding the necessary words to soften her grief, while my friend had run away.
What can I now say of these days, of these evening talks after school-hours on the hill of Saint-Benoist-des-Champs, of these walks during which the one thing we ought to have discussed was the only one concerning which we were resolved to keep silent?
The only memory I have preserved, though already dimmed, is that of a beautiful face grown thinner, of two eyes whose lids slowly lower when they look at me, as if already they contemplate only an inner world.
And on Thursdays and Sundays we helped to keep going the games of the neighbouring village children, whose laughter and shouts in this lonely spot made the small forsaken house appear more empty, more deserted than ever.
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 194 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 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?'
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.
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.
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.
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 .. .'
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.
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!"
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.
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 . . ." '
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 ! . . .
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 -1 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 the one who had forsaken us . . .
He leaned by my side on the window-sill and told me the story of the night in full detail but happily, and as I listened I became vaguely conscious of someone from a strange country now present in the room with us . . .
Then under the curtains the stranger began to cry, a shrill, prolonged cry . . . And M. de Galais said in a soft voice, 'It's that wound on the head makes her cry.'
She tried to make an effort to say something, to ask me I know not what; she turned her eyes to me, then towards the window as if to make me understand I must go and fetch someone . . . But then a dreadful fit of suffocation came upon her.
Her beautiful blue eyes, which but a moment before had called me so tragically, distended, her cheeks and forehead darkened, and she struggled gently, endeavouring to the end to restrain her terror and despair. Doctors and women hurried to her help with a flask of oxygen, towels, and bottles, while the old man bending over her was shouting in his rough and shaky voice - shouting as if she was already far away from him: 'Don't be frightened, Yvonne.
She managed to breathe a little, yet she continued to be half suffocated, her eyes white, her head thrown back, still struggling, but unable, even for a moment, to look at me or to speak, to emerge from the abyss into which she had already sunk.
When I reached the edge of the firs, behind the house, that last look of Yvonne de Galais towards the window came back to my mind, and I scanned with the attention of a sentry or a man-hunter the depths of that wood from which Augustin had come in former days and into which he had fled this last winter.
But at length, out there, towards the lane coming from Préveranges, I heard the faint sound of a bell; soon a child in a red calotte and black overall appeared at the bend, a priest was following him . . . And I walked away fighting back my tears.
And when 1 appeared at last, unlocking the door of the mouldy classroom which had been closed for two months, what I most dreaded happened : I saw the biggest of the boys leave a group of youngsters playing under the shelter and advance towards me.
M. de Galais, crouched in one corner with his back to us, is there in his socks, searching with tragic obstinacy amongst a confusion of drawers he has pulled out of a cupboard.
The last toilet has been made - she had been dressed in her beautiful frock of dark blue velvet bespangled with little silver stars, its fine but old-fashioned leg-of-mutton sleeves flattened and folded under; but at the moment of bringing up the coffin it is found that there is not room to turn it in the very narrow corridor.
It will have to be hauled up through the window from the outside, by means of a rope, and be lowered again in the same way ... It is then that M. de Galais, still bent over these ancient things amidst which he searches for some lost tokens, suddenly steps in with terrifying impetuosity.
'Rather than allow such a dreadful thing to be done/ he says, in a voice broken by tears and anger, 'I will take her myself in my arms and carry her down . . .'
Then I offer myself, deciding on the only possible course of action; with the help of a doctor and a nurse, placing one arm under the back of the stretched-out dead woman, the other under her legs, I gather her against my breast.
Clinging to the inert and heavy body, I lower my head towards the head of her I carry. I breathe heavily and her fair hair enters my mouth, dead hair with a taste of the earth.
This taste of earth and of death, this weight on my heart, that is all that is left to me of the great adventure and of you, Yvonne de Galais, the woman so long sought - so loved . . .
He passed away peacefully in the first severe weather, and I found it hard to keep back my tears at the bedside of this charming old man whose kindly indulgence and fantastic whims, joined to those of his son, had caused our whole adventure.
As for a long time he had had neither relatives nor friends in this part of France, he chose me for his sole legatee until the return of Meaulnes to whom I was to account for everything, if he ever came back . . . And so I lived henceforth at the Sand Pit.
I no longer went to Saint-Benoist except for school, starting early in the morning, eating at midday a lunch prepared at the farm, which I warmed up on my stove, and coming back in the evening after 'private study.'
Besides, I had not lost hope of finding at last, in a piece of furniture or a drawer at the house, some paper, some indication, which would convey intelligence of his movements during his long silence of the previous years ~ and perhaps thus I might be able to grasp the reason of his flight or at all events to find some trace of him ... I had already searched in vain through innumerable closets and cupboards ; I had opened in the storerooms quantities of boxes of all shapes, which I found full of bundles of old letters and yellowish photographs of the Galais family, or else overflowing with various millinery trimmings: flowers, aigrettes, feathers, and old-fashioned birds.
Out of these boxes came a strange faint perfume, the scent of faded things, which would suddenly awaken in me, for the whole day, memories and regrets, and stop my search . . .
At last, home from school one day, I unearthed in the attic a small old-fashioned trunk, very low and long in shape, covered with pig-hide half eaten through, which I recognised as Augus- tin's school trunk.
Arithmetics, studies in literature, sum-books, goodness knows what! . . . Greatly moved rather than curious, I began to rummage amongst all this, reading over again the dictations I still knew by heart, as we had recopied them so many times : 'The Aqueduct,' by Rousseau; 'An Adventure in Calabria,' by P. L. Courier; 'A Letter of George Sand to her Son.'
I was there on my knees, brooding over these practices and petty rules which had loomed so large during our youth, while my thumb skimmed the pages of the unfinished book causing them to open.
From the first line I came to the conclusion that there might be information concerning Meaulnes' past life in Paris, indications of the trail I was looking for, and I went down into the diningroom to use the daylight in perusing this strange document.
'Saturday, February 13. I met by the river that girl who gave me news in the month of June and who used, like me, to wait before the closed house ...
I spoke to her. While she walked, I noticed, from the side, the slight blemishes in her face : a little line by the lips, a little hollowness in the cheeks, and powder a little thick on her nostrils.
'Moreover, at night, on the deserted wet pavement reflecting the light of a street lamp, she suddenly came close and asked me to take her with her sister to the theatre that evening.
As a matter of fact, under the square of black lace, you could see that in her hurry to change her dress she had rolled back the top of her simple chemise that was working up.
Near her, the only person in the world who could give me news of the people of the manor, I never stop brooding on my strange past adventure ... I wanted to ask' fresh questions about the little house in the boulevard.
And all of a sudden I remember a decision I had taken a month or so ago : I had resolved to go there by night, about one in the morning to go right round the house, to open the garden- gate, to enter like a thief and to search for some indication which would help me to find the lost manor, to see her again, merely to see her again . . .
I, too, hurried to dress for the theatre and I have had no dinner . .. However, I remain a long time seated, much disturbed in mind, on the edge of my bed before lying down, a prey to vague remorse.
I follow with my eyes all young women in mourning whom I see approach and almost feel a kind of gratitude for those who, when nearest to me, have resembled her the longest and made me hope . . .
At nightfall a policeman takes a rough to the station near by and the rough hurls all the filthy insults he knows at him. The policeman is furious, pale, dumb ...
In the passage he begins to strike, then he closes the door to beat the wretched man in peace . . . This terrible thought comes to me: "I have renounced paradise and am now stamping my feet at the gates of hell."
Nothing here for me and I go away . . . I walk through the clear rain which keeps the night back, up to the square where we ought to meet.
While the hours advance, while the day is soon to end - and I should like it ended - thete exist men who have trusted all their hope to it, all their love and their last strength.
'But when I reached the corner of the theatre at four o'clock - there she was 1 Slight and solemn, wearing black, but with powder on her face and a little collar which made her look like a naughty Pierrot.
I think that she wants to prove to herself that she was right in doing the stupid thing she speaks of, that she has nothing to regret and is not worthy of the happiness which was offered her.
But for ever clutched at by the desire to continue the search, to set out again on the tracks of his lost love, he must doubtless have disappeared on several occasions ; and in his letters, with tragic embarrassment, he tried to justify himself to Valentine.
But, strange to say, from this moment, perhaps from a feeling of secret modesty, the journal had been kept in such a broken, irregular manner, scribbled down so hurriedly, that I have been obliged to go over it again myself and rewrite all this part of his story.
The curtain figured with grapes reddened by the sun, the morning voices rising to the silent bedroom, all this mingled with the one impression of waking up in the country at the beginning of delightful summer holidays.
June ij. At the dinner at the farm where they were invited, much to their annoyance (thanks to friends who introduced them as husband and wife), she behaved as shyly as a young bride.
And while Patrice was playing the host like a proper squire, Meaulnes kept thinking : 'By rights, I should be presiding at my own wedding feast this evening, in a low dining- room like this, a lovely room I know well.'
And along the roads and in the courtyard, and hidden in bushes, unknown children would have a fête to welcome us, shouting, "Long life to the bride!" What nonsense, isn't it?'
She turned towards him with warmth and kindness : 'All I have I want to give to you,' she said, 'something which has been more precious to me than anything . . . and you shall burn it!'
'He was my best friend; he was my brother-in-arms, and now I've taken the girl he was engaged to from him! - Ah!' he went on, in fury, 'what mischief you've done us, you who would believe in nothing!
And if you don't come and find me - you know, don't you, that father's too poor to keep me - well, I shall go right back to Paris. I shall tramp the streets as I've done once already; and I shall become a bad girl for certain, I know I shall, as I've no job any more . . .'
Back at La Ferté d'Angillon Meaulnes wrote to Valentine, apparently to reaffirm his resolve never to see her again and to give her the precise reasons for it, but in reality perhaps, so that she could reply.
In one of these letters he asked her what, in his first distress, he had not even dreamed of asking her : Did she know where the manor was, the manor that had been so searched for ? ...
And from the pages which I shall presently give-the last in the journal-I imagine that he must have hired a bicycle one fine morning at the beginning of the holidays and gone to Bourges to visit the cathedral.
He started out early by the lovely road through the woods, inventing, as he went along, any number of reasons for appearing before the girl he had thrown over, without loss of dignity and without asking her to make it up.
So much the better!' knowing quite well that it was really 'So much the worse!' and that under the eyes of that woman, before reaching the gate, he was going to stumble and fall on his knees.
One of them was noisily telling a story about a woman which could be heard in snatches : 'I said to her . . . you ought to know me ... I play with your husband every evening!'
Here and there hung a red lantern, sign of a house of ill fame . . . Meaulnes felt his utter misery in this unclean, vicious quarter, nestling, as in old times, under the buttressed walls of the cathedral.
There came over him a peasant's fear, a loathing for this church of the town, where vices are sculptured on the cornices, which is built among evil places and has no remedy for the purest sorrows of love.
From disgust or for fun, to avenge his love or to destroy it, Meaulnes followed them slowly on his bicycle, and one of them, a wretched girl whose thin yellow hair was held up at the back in a false chignon, gave him a rendezvous for six o'clock in the Garden of the Archbishop's Palace-the very garden in which Frantz in one of his letters had arranged to meet poor Valentine.
But now nothing remained, nothing . . . The sad afternoon dragged on and Meaulnes knew only that somewhere, this very day, the melancholy place she would never come to again was passing before the mind's eye of Valentine, now ruined.
But for Meaulnes at that moment there existed but one love, that unsatisfying love which had just been buffeted so cruelly, and the girl among all girls whom he ought to have protected and kept safe was precisely the girl whom he had just sent to her ruin.
A date, in the corner of one page, led me to believe that this was the long journey for which Madame Meaulnes was making preparations when I came to La Ferté d'Angillon to upset everything.
Meaulnes was noting down his memories and projects in the deserted 'Town Hall' one fine morning at the end of August - when I had pushed open the door and brought him the great news which he had ceased to expect.
Then remorse began and regret and grief, sometimes stifled, sometimes emerging in triumph, until his wedding day on which the cry of the bohemian in the fir wood reminded him dramatically of his young manhood's first oath.
He had hastily scribbled in this same composition test book a few words, at dawn, before going away (with her permission - but forever) from Yvonne de Galais, his wife since the previous day:
She pushed chairs along quite by herself, gripping the rungs, and trying to walk, not minding tumbles, and she made a clatter which woke long remote echoes in the empty house.
Villagers from the neighbourhood often met me in this way for poaching expeditions, tickling trout at night, fishing with nets in prohibited waters . . . On holidays all through the summer time we left at dawn, and did not come back till noon.
That morning, then, I was down at five-thirty, in front of the house in a little shed that leaned against the wall which separated the English garden of the Sand Pit from the kitchen garden of the Farm.
It was not quite day : it was the dawn of a beautiful morning in September; and the shed from which I was hurriedly getting my tackle was half in darkness.
Then, a little to divert this great emotion and this flood of weeping, holding her tightly against him all the while on his right arm, he turned his lowered head to me and said :
And indeed, when I went early in the morning, thoughtful and almost happy towards the house of Frantz which Yvonne de Galais had once shown me empty, I saw from the distance, sweeping the doorstep, a sort of young housewife with a turned- down collar, an object of curiosity and excitement to several little cowherds in their Sunday clothes on the way to mass.
Meanwhile the little girl became annoyed at being squeezed up, and as Augustin, his head on one side to conceal and check his tears, continued not to look at her, she gave him a great slap with her little hand on his bearded, wet mouth.
Rather let down and yet wonder-struck, I realised that the little girl had at last found in him the playfellow she had been dimly expecting . . . Admiral Meaulnes had left me one joy; I felt that he had come back to take it away from me.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week."
You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party."
I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind was less difficult to develop.
He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it.
The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected all the while.
"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield," said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, "and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for."
An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all.
Lady Lucas quieted her fears a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to get a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with him to the assembly.
The girls grieved over such a number of ladies, but were comforted the day before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve he brought only six with him from London--his five sisters and a cousin.
His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.
The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.
Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal people in the room; he was lively and unreserved, danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield.
Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party.
Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, to sit down for two dances; and during part of that time, Mr. Darcy had been standing near enough for her to hear a conversation between him and Mr. Bingley, who came from the dance for a few minutes, to press his friend to join it.
"Which do you mean?" and turning round he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said: "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.
Elizabeth felt Jane's pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough never to be without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball.
They found Mr. Bennet still up. With a book he was regardless of time; and on the present occasion he had a good deal of curiosity as to the event of an evening which had raised such splendid expectations.
So he inquired who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next. Then the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the _Boulanger_--"
Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgement too unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them.
They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others.
They were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade.
His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own; but, though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley was by no means unwilling to preside at his table--nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had married a man of more fashion than fortune, less disposed to consider his house as her home when it suited her.
The manner in which they spoke of the Meryton assembly was sufficiently characteristic. Bingley had never met with more pleasant people or prettier girls in his life; everybody had been most kind and attentive to him; there had been no formality, no stiffness; he had soon felt acquainted with all the room; and, as to Miss Bennet, he could not conceive an angel more beautiful.
Darcy, on the contrary, had seen a collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion, for none of whom he had felt the smallest interest, and from none received either attention or pleasure.
Sir William Lucas had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune, and risen to the honour of knighthood by an address to the king during his mayoralty.
It had given him a disgust to his business, and to his residence in a small market town; and, in quitting them both, he had removed with his family to a house about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world.
That the Miss Lucases and the Miss Bennets should meet to talk over a ball was absolutely necessary; and the morning after the assembly brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to communicate.
Mr. Robinson's asking him how he liked our Meryton assemblies, and whether he did not think there were a great many pretty women in the room, and _which_ he thought the prettiest? and his answering immediately to the last question: 'Oh! the eldest Miss Bennet, beyond a doubt; there cannot be two opinions on that point.'"
By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.
Miss Bennet's pleasing manners grew on the goodwill of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and though the mother was found to be intolerable, and the younger sisters not worth speaking to, a wish of being better acquainted with _them_ was expressed towards the two eldest.
By Jane, this attention was received with the greatest pleasure, but Elizabeth still saw superciliousness in their treatment of everybody, hardly excepting even her sister, and could not like them; though their kindness to Jane, such as it was, had a value as arising in all probability from the influence of their brother's admiration.
"It may perhaps be pleasant," replied Charlotte, "to be able to impose on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all _begin_ freely--a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten a women had better show _more_ affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on." "But she does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If I can perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton, indeed, not to discover it too." "Remember, Eliza, that he does not know Jane's disposition as you do."
She danced four dances with him at Meryton; she saw him one morning at his own house, and has since dined with him in company four times. This is not quite enough to make her understand his character."
"Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded."
Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least.
To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness.
On his approaching them soon afterwards, though without seeming to have any intention of speaking, Miss Lucas defied her friend to mention such a subject to him; which immediately provoking Elizabeth to do it, she turned to him and said:
After a song or two, and before she could reply to the entreaties of several that she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.
Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.
Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well; and Mary, at the end of a long concerto, was glad to purchase praise and gratitude by Scotch and Irish airs, at the request of her younger sisters, who, with some of the Lucases, and two or three officers, joined eagerly in dancing at one end of the room.
Mr. Darcy stood near them in silent indignation at such a mode of passing the evening, to the exclusion of all conversation, and was too much engrossed by his thoughts to perceive that Sir William Lucas was his neighbour, till Sir William thus began:
"I had once had some thought of fixing in town myself--for I am fond of superior society; but I did not feel quite certain that the air of London would agree with Lady Lucas."
And, taking her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Darcy who, though extremely surprised, was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William:
"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to deny me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman dislikes the amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us for one half-hour." "Mr. Darcy is all politeness," said Elizabeth, smiling.
"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."
Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his.
She had a sister married to a Mr. Phillips, who had been a clerk to their father and succeeded him in the business, and a brother settled in London in a respectable line of trade.
The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton; a most convenient distance for the young ladies, who were usually tempted thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to their aunt and to a milliner's shop just over the way.
The two youngest of the family, Catherine and Lydia, were particularly frequent in these attentions; their minds were more vacant than their sisters', and when nothing better offered, a walk to Meryton was necessary to amuse their morning hours and furnish conversation for the evening; and however bare of news the country in general might be, they always contrived to learn some from their aunt.
They could talk of nothing but officers; and Mr. Bingley's large fortune, the mention of which gave animation to their mother, was worthless in their eyes when opposed to the regimentals of an ensign.
Catherine was disconcerted, and made no answer; but Lydia, with perfect indifference, continued to express her admiration of Captain Carter, and her hope of seeing him in the course of the day, as he was going the next morning to London.
I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well--and, indeed, so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young colonel, with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls I shall not say nay to him; and I thought Colonel Forster looked very becoming the other night at Sir William's in his regimentals."
"Mamma," cried Lydia, "my aunt says that Colonel Forster and Captain Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson's as they did when they first came; she sees them now very often standing in Clarke's library."
"If you are not so compassionate as to dine to-day with Louisa and me, we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest of our lives, for a whole day's tete-a-tete between two women can never end without a quarrel.
"Well, my dear," said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note aloud, "if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness--if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders."
Elizabeth, feeling really anxious, was determined to go to her, though the carriage was not to be had; and as she was no horsewoman, walking was her only alternative. She declared her resolution.
"I admire the activity of your benevolence," observed Mary, "but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."
In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of one of the officers' wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk alone, crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise.
That she should have walked three miles so early in the day, in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and Elizabeth was convinced that they held her in contempt for it.
The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as to the occasion's justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was thinking only of his breakfast.
The apothecary came, and having examined his patient, said, as might be supposed, that she had caught a violent cold, and that they must endeavour to get the better of it; advised her to return to bed, and promised her some draughts.
Miss Bingley offered her the carriage, and she only wanted a little pressing to accept it, when Jane testified such concern in parting with her, that Miss Bingley was obliged to convert the offer of the chaise to an invitation to remain at Netherfield for the present.
The sisters, on hearing this, repeated three or four times how much they were grieved, how shocking it was to have a bad cold, and how excessively they disliked being ill themselves; and then thought no more of the matter: and their indifference towards Jane when not immediately before them restored Elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her former dislike.
His anxiety for Jane was evident, and his attentions to herself most pleasing, and they prevented her feeling herself so much an intruder as she believed she was considered by the others.
Miss Bingley was engrossed by Mr. Darcy, her sister scarcely less so; and as for Mr. Hurst, by whom Elizabeth sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at cards; who, when he found her to prefer a plain dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her.
When dinner was over, she returned directly to Jane, and Miss Bingley began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her manners were pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride and impertinence; she had no conversation, no style, no beauty.
"I have an excessive regard for Miss Jane Bennet, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it."
She was still very poorly, and Elizabeth would not quit her at all, till late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her sleep, and when it seemed to her rather right than pleasant that she should go downstairs herself.
On entering the drawing-room she found the whole party at loo, and was immediately invited to join them; but suspecting them to be playing high she declined it, and making her sister the excuse, said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay below, with a book.
"And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I have more than I ever looked into." Elizabeth assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with those in the room.
"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?" "Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished."
The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general.
"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved."
Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice of her implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward.
"Elizabeth Bennet," said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her, "is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art."
"Undoubtedly," replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed, "there is a meanness in _all_ the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable."
Bingley urged Mr. Jones being sent for immediately; while his sisters, convinced that no country advice could be of any service, recommended an express to town for one of the most eminent physicians.
They solaced their wretchedness, however, by duets after supper, while he could find no better relief to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister.
Elizabeth passed the chief of the night in her sister's room, and in the morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable answer to the inquiries which she very early received from Mr. Bingley by a housemaid, and some time afterwards from the two elegant ladies who waited on his sisters.
Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have been very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering immediately, as her restoration to health would probably remove her from Netherfield.
"I am sure," she added, "if it was not for such good friends I do not know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed, and suffers a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the world, which is always the way with her, for she has, without exception, the sweetest temper I have ever met with. I often tell my other girls they are nothing to _her_.
When she was only fifteen, there was a man at my brother Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he did not.
The two girls had been whispering to each other during the whole visit, and the result of it was, that the youngest should tax Mr. Bingley with having promised on his first coming into the country to give a ball at Netherfield.
"Oh! yes--it would be much better to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely Captain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have given _your_ ball," she added, "I shall insist on their giving one also.
Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley had spent some hours of the morning with the invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing-room.
The perpetual commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in union with her opinion of each.
"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp; and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley's."
"The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting.
When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of compliment to yourself--and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?"
Your conduct would be quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Bingley, you had better stay till next week,' you would probably do it, you would probably not go--and at another word, might stay a month."
But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I could."
We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?"
Miss Bingley moved with some alacrity to the pianoforte; and, after a polite request that Elizabeth would lead the way which the other as politely and more earnestly negatived, she seated herself.
She could only imagine, however, at last that she drew his notice because there was something more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other person present.
You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt.
Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.
"I hope," said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery the next day, "you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses."
When the ladies removed after dinner, Elizabeth ran up to her sister, and seeing her well guarded from cold, attended her into the drawing-room, where she was welcomed by her two friends with many professions of pleasure; and Elizabeth had never seen them so agreeable as they were during the hour which passed before the gentlemen appeared.
He was full of joy and attention. The first half-hour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she should suffer from the change of room; and she removed at his desire to the other side of the fireplace, that she might be further from the door.
Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same; and Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation with Miss Bennet.
Miss Bingley's attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr. Darcy's progress through _his_ book, as in reading her own; and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her question, and read on.
At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way!
No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest for some amusement; when hearing her brother mentioning a ball to Miss Bennet, she turned suddenly towards him and said:
"If you mean Darcy," cried her brother, "he may go to bed, if he chooses, before it begins--but as for the ball, it is quite a settled thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I shall send round my cards."
He was directly invited to join their party, but he declined it, observing that he could imagine but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would interfere.
"I have not the smallest objection to explaining them," said he, as soon as she allowed him to speak. "You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other's confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire."
It is, I believe, too little yielding--certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself.
In consequence of an agreement between the sisters, Elizabeth wrote the next morning to their mother, to beg that the carriage might be sent for them in the course of the day.
But Mrs. Bennet, who had calculated on her daughters remaining at Netherfield till the following Tuesday, which would exactly finish Jane's week, could not bring herself to receive them with pleasure before. Her answer, therefore, was not propitious, at least not to Elizabeth's wishes, for she was impatient to get home.
Mrs. Bennet sent them word that they could not possibly have the carriage before Tuesday; and in her postscript it was added, that if Mr. Bingley and his sister pressed them to stay longer, she could spare them very well.
Against staying longer, however, Elizabeth was positively resolved--nor did she much expect it would be asked; and fearful, on the contrary, as being considered as intruding themselves needlessly long, she urged Jane to borrow Mr. Bingley's carriage immediately, and at length it was settled that their original design of leaving Netherfield that morning should be mentioned, and the request made.
The master of the house heard with real sorrow that they were to go so soon, and repeatedly tried to persuade Miss Bennet that it would not be safe for her--that she was not enough recovered; but Jane was firm where she felt herself to be right.
He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should _now_ escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity; sensible that if such an idea had been suggested, his behaviour during the last day must have material weight in confirming or crushing it.
Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and though they were at one time left by themselves for half-an-hour, he adhered most conscientiously to his book, and would not even look at her.
Miss Bingley's civility to Elizabeth increased at last very rapidly, as well as her affection for Jane; and when they parted, after assuring the latter of the pleasure it would always give her to see her either at Longbourn or Netherfield, and embracing her most tenderly, she even shook hands with the former.
Catherine and Lydia had information for them of a different sort. Much had been done and much had been said in the regiment since the preceding Wednesday; several of the officers had dined lately with their uncle, a private had been flogged, and it had actually been hinted that Colonel Forster was going to be married.
"I hope, my dear," said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were at breakfast the next morning, "that you have ordered a good dinner to-day, because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party."
I do think it is the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure, if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it."
They had often attempted to do it before, but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason, and she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.
"The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured father always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach; but for some time I was kept back by my own doubts, fearing lest it might seem disrespectful to his memory for me to be on good terms with anyone with whom it had always pleased him to be at variance.--'There, Mrs. Bennet.'--My mind, however, is now made up on the subject, for having received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England.
As a clergyman, moreover, I feel it my duty to promote and establish the blessing of peace in all families within the reach of my influence; and on these grounds I flatter myself that my present overtures are highly commendable, and that the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the offered olive-branch.
I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the means of injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible amends--but of this hereafter.
If you should have no objection to receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of waiting on you and your family, Monday, November 18th, by four o'clock, and shall probably trespass on your hospitality till the Saturday se'ennight following, which I can do without any inconvenience, as Lady Catherine is far from objecting to my occasional absence on a Sunday, provided that some other clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day.--I remain, dear sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and daughters, your well-wisher and friend,
"There is some sense in what he says about the girls, however, and if he is disposed to make them any amends, I shall not be the person to discourage him."
It was next to impossible that their cousin should come in a scarlet coat, and it was now some weeks since they had received pleasure from the society of a man in any other colour.
As for their mother, Mr. Collins's letter had done away much of her ill-will, and she was preparing to see him with a degree of composure which astonished her husband and daughters.
He had not been long seated before he complimented Mrs. Bennet on having so fine a family of daughters; said he had heard much of their beauty, but that in this instance fame had fallen short of the truth; and added, that he did not doubt her seeing them all in due time disposed of in marriage.
"I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins, and could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of appearing forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young ladies that I come prepared to admire them.
But he was set right there by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen.
During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all; but when the servants were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some conversation with his guest, and therefore started a subject in which he expected him to shine, by observing that he seemed very fortunate in his patroness. Lady Catherine de Bourgh's attention to his wishes, and consideration for his comfort, appeared very remarkable.
She had even condescended to advise him to marry as soon as he could, provided he chose with discretion; and had once paid him a visit in his humble parsonage, where she had perfectly approved all the alterations he had been making, and had even vouchsafed to suggest some herself--some shelves in the closet up stairs."
She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented her from making that progress in many accomplishments which she could not have otherwise failed of, as I am informed by the lady who superintended her education, and who still resides with them. But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies."
His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.
Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society; the greatest part of his life having been spent under the guidance of an illiterate and miserly father; and though he belonged to one of the universities, he had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming at it any useful acquaintance.
The subjection in which his father had brought him up had given him originally great humility of manner; but it was now a good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in retirement, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity.
A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.
Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report.
This was his plan of amends--of atonement--for inheriting their father's estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.
The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a quarter of an hour's tete-a-tete with Mrs. Bennet before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress might be found for it at Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on. "As to her _younger_ daughters, she could not take upon her to say--she could not positively answer--but she did not _know_ of any prepossession; her _eldest_ daughter, she must just mention--she felt it incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged."
Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might soon have two daughters married; and the man whom she could not bear to speak of the day before was now high in her good graces.
In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room of the house, he was used to be free from them there; his civility, therefore, was most prompt in inviting Mr. Collins to join his daughters in their walk; and Mr. Collins, being in fact much better fitted for a walker than a reader, was extremely pleased to close his large book, and go.
The attention of the younger ones was then no longer to be gained by him. Their eyes were immediately wandering up in the street in quest of the officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or a really new muslin in a shop window, could recall them.
All were struck with the stranger's air, all wondered who he could be; and Kitty and Lydia, determined if possible to find out, led the way across the street, under pretense of wanting something in an opposite shop, and fortunately had just gained the pavement when the two gentlemen, turning back, had reached the same spot.
Mr. Denny addressed them directly, and entreated permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, who had returned with him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had accepted a commission in their corps.
Mr. Darcy corroborated it with a bow, and was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes on Elizabeth, when they were suddenly arrested by the sight of the stranger, and Elizabeth happening to see the countenance of both as they looked at each other, was all astonishment at the effect of the meeting.
Mr. Denny and Mr. Wickham walked with the young ladies to the door of Mr. Phillip's house, and then made their bows, in spite of Miss Lydia's pressing entreaties that they should come in, and even in spite of Mrs. Phillips's throwing up the parlour window and loudly seconding the invitation.
Mrs. Phillips was quite awed by such an excess of good breeding; but her contemplation of one stranger was soon put to an end by exclamations and inquiries about the other; of whom, however, she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that Mr. Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a lieutenant's commission in the ----shire.
Some of them were to dine with the Phillipses the next day, and their aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr. Wickham, and give him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn would come in the evening.
He protested that, except Lady Catherine and her daughter, he had never seen a more elegant woman; for she had not only received him with the utmost civility, but even pointedly included him in her invitation for the next evening, although utterly unknown to her before.
As no objection was made to the young people's engagement with their aunt, and all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and the girls had the pleasure of hearing, as they entered the drawing-room, that Mr. Wickham had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in the house.
When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr. Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much gratification; but when Mrs. Phillips understood from him what Rosings was, and who was its proprietor--when she had listened to the description of only one of Lady Catherine's drawing-rooms, and found that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison with the housekeeper's room.
In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily employed until the gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs. Phillips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she heard, and who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could.
To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin, and who had nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and examine their own indifferent imitations of china on the mantelpiece, the interval of waiting appeared very long.
The officers of the ----shire were in general a very creditable, gentlemanlike set, and the best of them were of the present party; but Mr. Wickham was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air, and walk, as _they_ were superior to the broad-faced, stuffy uncle Phillips, breathing port wine, who followed them into the room.
Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.
At first there seemed danger of Lydia's engrossing him entirely, for she was a most determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond of lottery tickets, she soon grew too much interested in the game, too eager in making bets and exclaiming after prizes to have attention for anyone in particular.
Allowing for the common demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore at leisure to talk to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear him, though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be told--the history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy.
"I cannot pretend to be sorry," said Wickham, after a short interruption, "that he or that any man should not be estimated beyond their deserts; but with _him_ I believe it does not often happen.
We are not on friendly terms, and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I have no reason for avoiding _him_ but what I might proclaim before all the world, a sense of very great ill-usage, and most painful regrets at his being what he is.
His father, Miss Bennet, the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men that ever breathed, and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never be in company with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by a thousand tender recollections.
His behaviour to myself has been scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him anything and everything, rather than his disappointing the hopes and disgracing the memory of his father."
I knew it to be a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend Denny tempted me further by his account of their present quarters, and the very great attentions and excellent acquaintances Meryton had procured them.
The church _ought_ to have been my profession--I was brought up for the church, and I should at this time have been in possession of a most valuable living, had it pleased the gentleman we were speaking of just now."
A man of honour could not have doubted the intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it--or to treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance, imprudence--in short anything or nothing.
Certain it is, that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done anything to deserve to lose it.
Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life.
"We were born in the same parish, within the same park; the greatest part of our youth was passed together; inmates of the same house, sharing the same amusements, objects of the same parental care. _My_ father began life in the profession which your uncle, Mr. Phillips, appears to do so much credit to--but he gave up everything to be of use to the late Mr. Darcy and devoted all his time to the care of the Pemberley property.
Mr. Darcy often acknowledged himself to be under the greatest obligations to my father's active superintendence, and when, immediately before my father's death, Mr. Darcy gave him a voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that he felt it to be as much a debt of gratitude to _him_, as of his affection to myself."
I wonder that the very pride of this Mr. Darcy has not made him just to you! If from no better motive, that he should not have been too proud to be dishonest--for dishonesty I must call it."
He has also _brotherly_ pride, which, with _some_ brotherly affection, makes him a very kind and careful guardian of his sister, and you will hear him generally cried up as the most attentive and best of brothers."
It had not been very great; he had lost every point; but when Mrs. Phillips began to express her concern thereupon, he assured her with much earnest gravity that it was not of the least importance, that he considered the money as a mere trifle, and begged that she would not make herself uneasy.
"I know very well, madam," said he, "that when persons sit down to a card-table, they must take their chances of these things, and happily I am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object.
"Mr. Collins," said she, "speaks highly both of Lady Catherine and her daughter; but from some particulars that he has related of her ladyship, I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that in spite of her being his patroness, she is an arrogant, conceited woman."
"I believe her to be both in a great degree," replied Wickham; "I have not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that I never liked her, and that her manners were dictatorial and insolent.
She has the reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I rather believe she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride for her nephew, who chooses that everyone connected with him should have an understanding of the first class."
Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, and they continued talking together, with mutual satisfaction till supper put an end to cards, and gave the rest of the ladies their share of Mr. Wickham's attentions.
She could think of nothing but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent.
Lydia talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the fish she had won; and Mr. Collins in describing the civility of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing that he crowded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.
The possibility of his having endured such unkindness, was enough to interest all her tender feelings; and nothing remained therefore to be done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each, and throw into the account of accident or mistake whatever could not be otherwise explained.
"They have both," said she, "been deceived, I dare say, in some way or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people have perhaps misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, impossible for us to conjecture the causes or circumstances which may have alienated them, without actual blame on either side."
Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as given in compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly flattered by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself, instead of a ceremonious card.
The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham, he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball was, at any rate, a ball.
Elizabeth's spirits were so high on this occasion, that though she did not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not help asking him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's invitation, and if he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to dance.
"I am by no means of the opinion, I assure you," said he, "that a ball of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people, can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing myself, that I shall hope to be honoured with the hands of all my fair cousins in the course of the evening; and I take this opportunity of soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially, a preference which I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right cause, and not to any disrespect for her."
She had fully proposed being engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances; and to have Mr. Collins instead! her liveliness had never been worse timed. There was no help for it, however.
Mr. Wickham's happiness and her own were perforce delayed a little longer, and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as good a grace as she could. She was not the better pleased with his gallantry from the idea it suggested of something more.
It now first struck her, that _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.
Elizabeth, however, did not choose to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the consequence of any reply. Mr. Collins might never make the offer, and till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him.
Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, and looked in vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that might not unreasonably have alarmed her.
But in an instant arose the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy's pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation to the officers; and though this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was pronounced by his friend Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to town on business the day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile, "I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if he had not wanted to avoid a certain gentleman here."
This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not less answerable for Wickham's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.
Attendance, forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away with a degree of ill-humour which she could not wholly surmount even in speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality provoked her.
But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and though every prospect of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not dwell long on her spirits; and having told all her griefs to Charlotte Lucas, whom she had not seen for a week, she was soon able to make a voluntary transition to the oddities of her cousin, and to point him out to her particular notice.
The first two dances, however, brought a return of distress; they were dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn, apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give.
When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to claim her hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a whisper, not to be a simpleton, and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man ten times his consequence.
It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of _some_, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible."
We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."
Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain desirable event, my dear Eliza (glancing at her sister and Bingley) shall take place.
"Yes, always," she replied, without knowing what she said, for her thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon afterwards appeared by her suddenly exclaiming, "I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was unappeasable.
"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that reports may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either."
She said no more, and they went down the other dance and parted in silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not to an equal degree, for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerable powerful feeling towards her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against another.
Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man quite forgot to tell you, among his other communication, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy's steward.
I do not know the particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother thought that he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the way.
"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of _that_, I can assure you, he informed me himself."
On their being joined by Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew to Miss Lucas; to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last partner she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them, and told her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as to make a most important discovery.
I happened to overhear the gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who does the honours of the house the names of his cousin Miss de Bourgh, and of her mother Lady Catherine.
I am most thankful that the discovery is made in time for me to pay my respects to him, which I am now going to do, and trust he will excuse my not having done it before.
Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme, assuring him that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without introduction as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either side; and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in consequence, to begin the acquaintance.
"My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world in your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom--provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained.
You must therefore allow me to follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young lady like yourself."
Her cousin prefaced his speech with a solemn bow and though she could not hear a word of it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the words "apology," "Hunsford," and "Lady Catherine de Bourgh."
He answered me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very handsome thought.
As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Bingley; and the train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to, made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane.
It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as she could do.
It was necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on such occasions it is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs. Bennet to find comfort in staying home at any period of her life.
In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them.
At length, however, Mrs. Bennet had no more to say; and Lady Lucas, who had been long yawning at the repetition of delights which she saw no likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts of cold ham and chicken.
Elizabeth now began to revive. But not long was the interval of tranquillity; for, when supper was over, singing was talked of, and she had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very little entreaty, preparing to oblige the company.
Elizabeth's eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations, and she watched her progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which was very ill rewarded at their close; for Mary, on receiving, amongst the thanks of the table, the hint of a hope that she might be prevailed on to favour them again, after the pause of half a minute began another.
She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued, however, imperturbably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his interference, lest Mary should be singing all night.
"If I," said Mr. Collins, "were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman.
The rector of a parish has much to do. In the first place, he must make such an agreement for tithes as may be beneficial to himself and not offensive to his patron.
Many stared--many smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr. Bennet himself, while his wife seriously commended Mr. Collins for having spoken so sensibly, and observed in a half-whisper to Lady Lucas, that he was a remarkably clever, good kind of young man.
To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he must have witnessed.
That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough, and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.
He assured her, that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it; that his chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to her and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her the whole evening.
The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart, and, by a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet, had to wait for their carriage a quarter of an hour after everybody else was gone, which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her sister scarcely opened their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves.
Elizabeth preserved as steady a silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley; and even Lydia was too much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of "Lord, how tired I am!" accompanied by a violent yawn.
When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most pressingly civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at Longbourn, and addressed herself especially to Mr. Bingley, to assure him how happy he would make them by eating a family dinner with them at any time, without the ceremony of a formal invitation.
Bingley was all grateful pleasure, and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on her, after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next day for a short time.
Of having another daughter married to Mr. Collins, she thought with equal certainty, and with considerable, though not equal, pleasure. Elizabeth was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the man and the match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield.
Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the observances, which he supposed a regular part of the business.
Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction--and a moment's consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to get it over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again and tried to conceal, by incessant employment the feelings which were divided between distress and diversion.
Almost as soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying--and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did."
The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run away with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing, that she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him further, and he continued:
"My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced that it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly--which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness.
Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford--between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry.
Allow me, by the way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the advantages in my power to offer.
You will find her manners beyond anything I can describe; and your wit and vivacity, I think, must be acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and respect which her rank will inevitably excite.
Thus much for my general intention in favour of matrimony; it remains to be told why my views were directed towards Longbourn instead of my own neighbourhood, where I can assure you there are many amiable young women.
But the fact is, that being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured father (who, however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy myself without resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy event takes place--which, however, as I have already said, may not be for several years.
To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the four per cents, which will not be yours till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to.
On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married." It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.
"I am not now to learn," replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, "that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long."
I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time.
"Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so," said Mr. Collins very gravely--"but I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all disapprove of you. And you may be certain when I have the honour of seeing her again, I shall speak in the very highest terms of your modesty, economy, and other amiable qualification."
In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may be considered, therefore, as finally settled."
"When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on the subject, I shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female character."
If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as to convince you of its being one."
My situation in life, my connections with the family of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into further consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you.
As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females."
"You are uniformly charming!" cried he, with an air of awkward gallantry; "and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of being acceptable."
Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his successful love; for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the vestibule to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw Elizabeth open the door and with quick step pass her towards the staircase, than she entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated both him and herself in warm terms on the happy prospect or their nearer connection.
Mr. Collins received and returned these felicitations with equal pleasure, and then proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview, with the result of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, since the refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her character.
"Pardon me for interrupting you, madam," cried Mr. Collins; "but if she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether she would altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my situation, who naturally looks for happiness in the marriage state. If therefore she actually persists in rejecting my suit, perhaps it were better not to force her into accepting me, because if liable to such defects of temper, she could not contribute much to my felicity."
"My dear," replied her husband, "I have two small favours to request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion; and secondly, of my room.
She endeavoured to secure Jane in her interest; but Jane, with all possible mildness, declined interfering; and Elizabeth, sometimes with real earnestness, and sometimes with playful gaiety, replied to her attacks. Though her manner varied, however, her determination never did.
But I tell you, Miss Lizzy--if you take it into your head to go on refusing every offer of marriage in this way, you will never get a husband at all--and I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father is dead. I shall not be able to keep you--and so I warn you.
Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt of my positive happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand; for I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our estimation.
You will not, I hope, consider me as showing any disrespect to your family, my dear madam, by thus withdrawing my pretensions to your daughter's favour, without having paid yourself and Mr. Bennet the compliment of requesting you to interpose your authority in my behalf.
I have certainly meant well through the whole affair. My object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with due consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if my _manner_ has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologise."
He scarcely ever spoke to her, and the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of himself were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all, and especially to her friend.
Elizabeth had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit, but his plan did not appear in the least affected by it. He was always to have gone on Saturday, and to Saturday he meant to stay.
"I found," said he, "as the time drew near that I had better not meet Mr. Darcy; that to be in the same room, the same party with him for so many hours together, might be more than I could bear, and that scenes might arise unpleasant to more than myself."
She highly approved his forbearance, and they had leisure for a full discussion of it, and for all the commendation which they civilly bestowed on each other, as Wickham and another officer walked back with them to Longbourn, and during the walk he particularly attended to her.
The envelope contained a sheet of elegant, little, hot-pressed paper, well covered with a lady's fair, flowing hand; and Elizabeth saw her sister's countenance change as she read it, and saw her dwelling intently on some particular passages.
Jane recollected herself soon, and putting the letter away, tried to join with her usual cheerfulness in the general conversation; but Elizabeth felt an anxiety on the subject which drew off her attention even from Wickham; and no sooner had he and his companion taken leave, than a glance from Jane invited her to follow her up stairs.
She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the information of their having just resolved to follow their brother to town directly, and of their meaning to dine in Grosvenor Street, where Mr. Hurst had a house.
The next was in these words: "I do not pretend to regret anything I shall leave in Hertfordshire, except your society, my dearest friend; but we will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most unreserved correspondence.
To these highflown expressions Elizabeth listened with all the insensibility of distrust; and though the suddenness of their removal surprised her, she saw nothing in it really to lament; it was not to be supposed that their absence from Netherfield would prevent Mr. Bingley's being there; and as to the loss of their society, she was persuaded that Jane must cease to regard it, in the enjoyment of his.
"It is unlucky," said she, after a short pause, "that you should not be able to see your friends before they leave the country. But may we not hope that the period of future happiness to which Miss Bingley looks forward may arrive earlier than she is aware, and that the delightful intercourse you have known as friends will be renewed with yet greater satisfaction as sisters?
"When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the business which took him to London might be concluded in three or four days; but as we are certain it cannot be so, and at the same time convinced that when Charles gets to town he will be in no hurry to leave it again, we have determined on following him thither, that he may not be obliged to spend his vacant hours in a comfortless hotel.
I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you."
I really do not think Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, and accomplishments; and the affection she inspires in Louisa and myself is heightened into something still more interesting, from the hope we dare entertain of her being hereafter our sister.
My brother admires her greatly already; he will have frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing; her relations all wish the connection as much as his own; and a sister's partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call Charles most capable of engaging any woman's heart.
"What do you think of _this_ sentence, my dear Lizzy?" said Jane as she finished it. "Is it not clear enough? Does it not expressly declare that Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to be her sister; that she is perfectly convinced of her brother's indifference; and that if she suspects the nature of my feelings for him, she means (most kindly!) to put me on my guard? Can there be any other opinion on the subject?" "Yes, there can; for mine is totally different. Will you hear it?"
But the case is this: We are not rich enough or grand enough for them; and she is the more anxious to get Miss Darcy for her brother, from the notion that when there has been _one_ intermarriage, she may have less trouble in achieving a second; in which there is certainly some ingenuity, and I dare say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh were out of the way.
But, my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously imagine that because Miss Bingley tells you her brother greatly admires Miss Darcy, he is in the smallest degree less sensible of _your_ merit than when he took leave of you on Tuesday, or that it will be in her power to persuade him that, instead of being in love with you, he is very much in love with her friend."
"You must decide for yourself," said Elizabeth; "and if, upon mature deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you by all means to refuse him."
They agreed that Mrs. Bennet should only hear of the departure of the family, without being alarmed on the score of the gentleman's conduct; but even this partial communication gave her a great deal of concern, and she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that the ladies should happen to go away just as they were all getting so intimate together.
After lamenting it, however, at some length, she had the consolation that Mr. Bingley would be soon down again and soon dining at Longbourn, and the conclusion of all was the comfortable declaration, that though he had been invited only to a family dinner, she would take care to have two full courses.
"It keeps him in good humour," said she, "and I am more obliged to you than I can express." Charlotte assured her friend of her satisfaction in being useful, and that it amply repaid her for the little sacrifice of her time.
This was very amiable, but Charlotte's kindness extended farther than Elizabeth had any conception of; its object was nothing else than to secure her from any return of Mr. Collins's addresses, by engaging them towards herself.
Such was Miss Lucas's scheme; and appearances were so favourable, that when they parted at night, she would have felt almost secure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very soon.
But here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw himself at her feet.
He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins, from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known till its success might be known likewise; for though feeling almost secure, and with reason, for Charlotte had been tolerably encouraging, he was comparatively diffident since the adventure of Wednesday.
Miss Lucas perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane. But little had she dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there.
In as short a time as Mr. Collins's long speeches would allow, everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both; and as they entered the house he earnestly entreated her to name the day that was to make him the happiest of men; and though such a solicitation must be waived for the present, the lady felt no inclination to trifle with his happiness.
The stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that establishment were gained.
Lady Lucas began directly to calculate, with more interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr. Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided opinion, that whenever Mr. Collins should be in possession of the Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife should make their appearance at St. James's.
The whole family, in short, were properly overjoyed on the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes of _coming out_ a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte's dying an old maid.
Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
She resolved to give her the information herself, and therefore charged Mr. Collins, when he returned to Longbourn to dinner, to drop no hint of what had passed before any of the family.
A promise of secrecy was of course very dutifully given, but it could not be kept without difficulty; for the curiosity excited by his long absence burst forth in such very direct questions on his return as required some ingenuity to evade, and he was at the same time exercising great self-denial, for he was longing to publish his prosperous love.
"Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such affectionate attention; and depend upon it, you will speedily receive from me a letter of thanks for this, and for every other mark of your regard during my stay in Hertfordshire.
As for my fair cousins, though my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary, I shall now take the liberty of wishing them health and happiness, not excepting my cousin Elizabeth."
Mrs. Bennet wished to understand by it that he thought of paying his addresses to one of her younger girls, and Mary might have been prevailed on to accept him. She rated his abilities much higher than any of the others; there was a solidity in his reflections which often struck her, and though by no means so clever as herself, she thought that if encouraged to read and improve himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very agreeable companion.
The possibility of Mr. Collins's fancying himself in love with her friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two; but that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far from possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her astonishment was consequently so great as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum, and she could not help crying out:
The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling her story, gave way to a momentary confusion here on receiving so direct a reproach; though, as it was no more than she expected, she soon regained her composure, and calmly replied:
But Elizabeth had now recollected herself, and making a strong effort for it, was able to assure with tolerable firmness that the prospect of their relationship was highly grateful to her, and that she wished her all imaginable happiness.
I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's character, connection, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state."
The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now accepted. She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage.
Elizabeth was sitting with her mother and sisters, reflecting on what she had heard, and doubting whether she was authorised to mention it, when Sir William Lucas himself appeared, sent by his daughter, to announce her engagement to the family.
Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have borne without anger such treatment; but Sir William's good breeding carried him through it all; and though he begged leave to be positive as to the truth of his information, he listened to all their impertinence with the most forbearing courtesy.
Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent on her to relieve him from so unpleasant a situation, now put herself forward to confirm his account, by mentioning her prior knowledge of it from Charlotte herself; and endeavoured to put a stop to the exclamations of her mother and sisters by the earnestness of her congratulations to Sir William, in which she was readily joined by Jane, and by making a variety of remarks on the happiness that might be expected from the match, the excellent character of Mr. Collins, and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London.
Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great deal while Sir William remained; but no sooner had he left them than her feelings found a rapid vent.
In the first place, she persisted in disbelieving the whole of the matter; secondly, she was very sure that Mr. Collins had been taken in; thirdly, she trusted that they would never be happy together; and fourthly, that the match might be broken off.
A week elapsed before she could see Elizabeth without scolding her, a month passed away before she could speak to Sir William or Lady Lucas without being rude, and many months were gone before she could at all forgive their daughter.
Mr. Bennet's emotions were much more tranquil on the occasion, and such as he did experience he pronounced to be of a most agreeable sort; for it gratified him, he said, to discover that Charlotte Lucas, whom he had been used to think tolerably sensible, was as foolish as his wife, and more foolish than his daughter!
Her disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with fonder regard to her sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy she was sure her opinion could never be shaken, and for whose happiness she grew daily more anxious, as Bingley had now been gone a week and nothing more was heard of his return.
After discharging his conscience on that head, he proceeded to inform them, with many rapturous expressions, of his happiness in having obtained the affection of their amiable neighbour, Miss Lucas, and then explained that it was merely with the view of enjoying her society that he had been so ready to close with their kind wish of seeing him again at Longbourn, whither he hoped to be able to return on Monday fortnight; for Lady Catherine, he added, so heartily approved his marriage, that she wished it to take place as soon as possible, which he trusted would be an unanswerable argument with his amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him the happiest of men.
Unwilling as she was to admit an idea so destructive of Jane's happiness, and so dishonorable to the stability of her lover, she could not prevent its frequently occurring. The united efforts of his two unfeeling sisters and of his overpowering friend, assisted by the attractions of Miss Darcy and the amusements of London might be too much, she feared, for the strength of his attachment.
Mr. Collins returned most punctually on Monday fortnight, but his reception at Longbourn was not quite so gracious as it had been on his first introduction. He was too happy, however, to need much attention; and luckily for the others, the business of love-making relieved them from a great deal of his company.
The chief of every day was spent by him at Lucas Lodge, and he sometimes returned to Longbourn only in time to make an apology for his absence before the family went to bed.
Whenever Charlotte came to see them, she concluded her to be anticipating the hour of possession; and whenever she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was convinced that they were talking of the Longbourn estate, and resolving to turn herself and her daughters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Bennet were dead. She complained bitterly of all this to her husband.
"Indeed, Mr. Bennet," said she, "it is very hard to think that Charlotte Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to make way for _her_, and live to see her take her place in it!"
