That bitch of an Anais said in an undertone:
‘The papers announce a high rise in the river Lisse.’
Marie, who had heard, burst into uncontrollable laughter mixed with the remains of sobs, and we all laughed wildly too.
And, in a flash, the unstable head of the ploughed candidate had veered round to joy, like a weathercock; she thought how she was going to pass in October and became positively gay.
And nothing seemed more appropriate to us, that heavy, sultry night, than to take a skipping-rope and skip and skip in the square (all of us, yes, even the Jauberts!) up till ten o’clock under the moon.
The next morning, Mademoiselle had already come round and shaken us in our beds at six o’clock, though the train didn’t leave till ten!
‘Get up, get up, you little ticks; you’ve got to pack your things and have your breakfast; you’ll have none too much time!’
She was throbbing with violent trepidation, her sharp eyes gleamed and sparkled; she hustled Luce who was staggering with sleep and pommelled Marie Belhomme who, in her nightdress and slippers, was rubbing her eyes without regaining any clear consciousness of the everyday world.
We were all utterly exhausted but who would have recognized in Mademoiselle the duenna who had chaperoned us these last three days?
Happiness transfigured her; she was going to see her little Aimee again.
From sheer joy, she kept smiling beatifically at nothing in the omnibus that took us back to the station.
Marie seemed a little melancholy about her failure, but I think it was only out of duty that she put on a contrite expression.
And we chattered wildly, all at once, each one telling the story of her exam to five others who were not listening.
‘Old thing!’ screeched Anais. ‘When I heard that he was asking me the dates of the …’
‘I’ve forbidden you a hundred times to call each other “old thing”,’ broke in Mademoiselle.
‘Old thing,’ went on Anais under her breath, ‘I only just had time to open my little notebook in my hand; the most terrific thing is that he saw it – cross my heart he did – and he didn’t say a word!’
‘Oh, you liar of liars!’ cried the honest Marie Belhomme, her eyes starting out of her head. ‘I was there, I was watching, he didn’t see anything at all – he’d have taken it away from you … they certainly took the ruler away from one of the Villeneuve girls …’
‘You’d better keep your mouth shut!
Or run along and tell Roubaud that the Dog’s Grotto is full of sulphuric acid!’
Marie hung her head, turned red and began to cry again at the remembrance of her misfortunes.
I made the gesture of opening an umbrella and Mademoiselle once more emerged from her ‘delicious anticipation’:
‘Anais, you’re a pest!
If you torment one single one of your companions, I’ll make you travel alone in a separate compartment.’
‘The smoking compartment, naturally,’ I observed.
‘You were not being asked your opinion.
Pick up your bags and wraps, don’t stand there like stuffed dummies!’
Once in the train, she paid no more attention to us than if we did not exist; Luce went to sleep, with her head on my shoulder; the Jauberts became absorbed in the contemplation of the fields that slipped past and of the white and dappled sky; Anais bit her nails; Marie declined into a doze, along with her affliction.
At Bresles, the last station before Montigny, we began to fidget a little; ten minutes more and we should be there.
Mademoiselle pulled out her little pocket-mirror and verified the set of her hat, the disorder of her rough frizzy red hair, the cruel crimson of her lips. Absorbed and palpitating with excitement, her expression was almost demented.
Anais pinched her cheeks in the wild hope of bringing a faint touch of red to them; I put on my immense, riotous hat.
For whom we were taking so much pains?
Not for Mademoiselle Aimee, certainly, in the case of us small fry … Oh, well! for no one, for the station officials, for the omnibus-driver, old Racalin, a sixty-year-old drunkard, for the half-wit who sold the papers, for the dogs who would be trotting along the road.
There was the Fir Plantation, and the Bel Air Wood, and then the common, and the goods station; then, at long last, the brakes squeaked!
We jumped out behind Mademoiselle who had already rushed to her little Aimee, who was hopping gaily about on the platform.
She had crushed her in such a fierce embrace that the frail assistant-mistress had suddenly turned red, stifled by it.
We ran up to her and welcomed her in the manner of good little schoolgirls: ‘… ’morning, Mmmselle! … H’are you, Mmmmselle?’
As it was fine and we were in no hurry, we stuffed our suitcases into the omnibus and returned on foot, strolling the whole way between the high hedges where milkwort blossomed, blue and winey pink, and Ave Marias with their flowers like little white crosses.
Happy to be off the leash, to have no French History to revise or maps to colour, we ran in front of and behind those ladies who walked arm in arm, close together and keeping in perfect step.
Aimee had kissed her sister and given her a tap on the cheek, saying:
‘There, you see now, little canary-bird, one gets through somehow, in spite of everything!’
And, after that, she had only eyes and ears for her tall friend.
Disappointed once again, poor Luce attached herself to my person and followed me like a shadow, muttering jeers and threats:
‘It’s truly worth while splitting one’s head to get compliments like that! … What a couple of guys those two look; my sister hanging on the other like a basket! … In front of all the people going by, it’s enough to make you weep!’
They couldn’t have cared less about the people going by.
Triumphal return!
Everyone knew not only where we came from but the results of the examination which Mademoiselle had telegraphed: people were standing in their doorways and made friendly signs to us … Marie felt her distress increasing and effaced herself as much as possible.
The fact of having left the School for a few days made us see it more clearly on returning to it. It was finished, perfect to the last detail, white and spotless. The Town Hall stood in the middle, flanked by the two schools, boys’ and girls’; there lay the big playground, whose cedars they had mercifully spared, with its small, formal, typically French clumps of shrubs, and the heavy iron gates – far too heavy and too redoubtable – that shut us in. There stood the water-closets with six compartments, three for the big girls, three for the little ones (in a touching concession to modesty, the big girls’ lavatories had full doors and the little ones’ half-doors); upstairs were the handsome dormitories whose shining window-panes and white curtains were visible from outside.
The unfortunate ratepayers would be paying for it for years to come.
Anyone might think it was a barracks, it was so handsome!
The girls gave us a noisy welcome. Since Mademoiselle Aimee had kindly confided the supervision of her own pupils and that of the First Class to the chlorotic Mademoiselle Griset during her little trip to the station, the classrooms were strewn with papers, and littered with sabots that had been used as missiles and the cores of wind-fallen apples … At a frown from Mademoiselle Sergent, everything was restored to order; creeping hands picked up the apple-cores and feet stretched out and silently resumed possession of the scattered sabots.