I’m going to have a drink at the pump, I can’t hold out any longer. Anyone comin’ too?’
Not one of them was; either they weren’t thirsty or they were afraid of missing a summons.
Downstairs, in a kind of parlour, I found the Aubert girl, her cheeks still blotched with red from her recent despair and her eyes swollen.
She was writing to her family, at a little table, calm now and pleased to be going back to the farm.
I said to her:
‘Look here, didn’t you want to know anything just now?’
She raised her calf’s eyes.
‘Makes me frightened, all that do, and gets me in ever such a state, it do.
Mother sent me to boarding-school, father he didn’t want it, he said I’d do best looking after the house like my sisters, and doing the washing and digging the garden. Mother, she didn’t want it – it was her as they listened to. They made me ill, trying to make me learn – and you see how I come over today.
I said as it would happen!
Now they’ll have to believe me!’
And she went on tranquilly writing her letter.
Upstairs, in the classroom it was hot enough to kill one.
The girls, nearly all red and shiny (lucky I haven’t any tendency to redness!), were scared and tense, straining their ears to hear their names called and obsessed with the idea of not making stupid answers.
Wouldn’t it soon be twelve o’clock so that we could go?
Anais returned from physics and chemistry; she wasn’t red, how could she be red?
I believe that, even in a boiling cauldron, she would remain yellow and cold.
‘Well, everything all right?’
‘Thank goodness, I’ve finished.
You know Roubaud’s taking English into the bargain: he made me read sentences and translate; I don’t know why he squirmed when I read in English … isn’t he idiotic?’
It was the pronunciation! Bother!
It was pretty obvious now that Mademoiselle Aimee Lanthenay, who gave the lessons, did not speak English with excessive purity. And, as a result, any moment now that imbecile of a Professor was going to make fun of me because I didn’t pronounce better!
Still another delightful episode!
I was enraged to think that idiot was going to laugh at me.
Midday at last.
Their Lordships rose and we proceeded to the usual shindy of our departure.
Lacroix, his hair bristling and his eyes starting out of his head, announced that the merry little party would begin again at 2.30.
Mademoiselle sorted us out with difficulty from the swirling tide of chattering young things and took us off to the restaurant.
She was still stiff with me on account of my ‘odious’ conduct with old Lacroix; but I didn’t care!
The heat weighed down on me; I was tired and mute …
Oh, the woods, the dear woods of Montigny!
At that very hour, how well I knew how they hummed!
The wasps and flies that tippled in the flowers of the limes and the elders made the whole forest vibrate like an organ; and the birds did not sing, for, at midday, they perched upright on the branches, seeking the shade, preening their feathers and peering into the undergrowth with bright, shifting eyes.
I would be lying at the edge of the Fir Plantation from which I could see the whole town down there below me with the warm wind in my face, half dead with well-being and laziness.
… Luce saw me far away, completely in another world, and tugged my sleeve, giving me her most fetching smile.
Mademoiselle was reading the papers; my classmates were exchanging sleepy scraps of conversation.
I complained and Luce protested gently:
‘And you never talk to me any more, either!
All day we’re passing exams, in the evening we go to bed and at meals you’re in such a bad temper that I don’t know when to find you any more!’
‘Perfectly simple!
Don’t look for me!’
‘Oh, that’s not a bit nice of you!
You don’t even notice all my patience in waiting for you, the way I put up with your always pushing me away …’
The gawky Anais laughed like a door that needed oiling and the little thing stopped, highly intimidated.
All the same it is true that she has unshakeable patience.
And to think that so much constancy won’t avail her in the least; sad! sad!
Anais was pursuing an idea of her own: she had not forgotten Marie Belhomme’s incoherent answers and, amiable bitch, she kindly asked the poor wretch who was sitting dazed and motionless:
‘What question did they ask you in physics and chemistry?’
‘It’s of no importance,’ growled Mademoiselle crossly. ‘Whatever they asked her, she’ll have given nonsensical answers.’
‘I can’t remember now,’ said poor, flummoxed Marie. ‘Sulphuric acid, I think …’