“All right. I didn’t like the boy I sat next to.”
“He was very handsome.”
“He is coming to America on business, and he thought we could be useful to him. I didn’t like him at all.”
“And Alix’s friend, who sat on the other side of you?”
“He was nice, but he was talking to Alix.”
“I had a lovely time. And I saw the house. Jean Allégret’s uncle showed me all through the downstairs, as far as the kitchen, and then he took me upstairs, through all the bedrooms, which were wonderful. It was like a museum. And in a dressing room I saw the family tree, painted on wood. It was interminable. It must have gone back at least to Charlemagne. And then we went outside and saw the family chapel. Jean Allégret wants us to come and stay with him up near the Belgian border.… Did you have a nice evening? Afterward, I mean?”
“All except for one thing. I think I hurt Eugène’s feelings. He came and asked me to dance with him and I refused. I was interested in what Sabine was saying, and I didn’t feel like dancing at the moment, and I’m afraid he was offended.”
“He probably understood.… They don’t use the chapel as a chapel any more. They keep wine in it.”
“And I don’t think Sabine had a very good time,” Barbara said. “She sat with Alix or me all evening, and the boys didn’t ask her to dance. I don’t understand it. She’s very pretty, and Mme Viénot said that she was so popular and had so many invitations.”
“The money,” he said.
“What money?”
They were overtaking Alix, and so he did not answer. The winding road was almost white, the distant hills were silver, and they could see as well as in daylight. They rode now in single file, now all together.
“Think of going five miles to a party on bicycles,” Barbara said to Harold, “and coming home in the moonlight!”
In a high, thin, eerie voice, Sabine began to sing: “Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot, prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot …” The tune was not the one the Americans knew, and they drew as near to her as their bicycles permitted. After that she sang “Cadet Rouselle a trois maisons qui n’ont ni poutres ni chevrons …” and they were so taken with the three houses that had no rafters, the three suits, the three hats, the three big dogs, the three beautiful cats, that they begged her to sing it again. Instead she told them a ghost story.
In a village near here, she said, but a long time ago, there was a schoolmaster who drove himself into a frenzy trying to teach reading and writing and the catechism to boys who wanted to be out working in the fields with their fathers. He had a birch cane, which he used frequently, and an expression which he used still more. Whenever any boy didn’t know his lesson, the schoolmaster would say: “One dies as one is born. There is never any improvement.” Then he’d reach for his birch rod.
One rainy autumn evening when he got home, he discovered that he had left his examination books at the school. And though he could have waited until next day to correct them, he was so anxious to find what mistakes his pupils had made that he went back that night, after his supper. A waning moon sailed through black clouds, and the wind whipped his cloak up into the air, and the familiar landscape looked different, as everything does on a windy autumn night. And when he opened the door of the schoolhouse, he saw that one of the pupils was still there, sitting on his bench. “Don’t you even know enough to go home?” he shouted. “One dies as one is born.” And the boy said, in a voice that chilled the schoolmaster’s blood: “I was never born, and therefore I cannot die.” With that he vanished.
Now I know what she’s like, Harold thought. This is her element—telling ghost stories. And this filtered moonlight. All this silveriness.
The supernatural shouldn’t be understood too well; it should have gaps in it for you to think about afterward.… What he missed because he didn’t know the words or because their bicycles swerved, drawing them apart for a moment, merely added to the effect.
The next day, the schoolmaster was very nervous when he came to teach the class. He looked at each face carefully, and saw with relief only the usual ones. But one thing was not usual. André, who had never in his life recited, knew his whole day’s lesson without a fault. Growing suspicious, the schoolmaster stopped calling on him. Even then the hand waved in the air, so anxious was he to recite. That evening, the schoolmaster walked home the long way round, and stopped at Andre’s house, and learned that he was sick in bed. So then he knew.
After that, somebody always knew his lesson, and it wasn’t long before the boys caught on. One at a time they played hookey, knowing that whatever it was—a ghost, a fairy, an uneasy spirit—would come to school that day looking exactly like them, and recite and recite. The schoolmaster grew thin. He began to make mistakes in arithmetic and to misspell words. He would start to say: “One dies as one is—” and then be afraid to finish. Finally, unable to stand the strain any more, he went to the curé one morning before school and told him his troubles. The curé reached for his hat and coat, and filled a small bottle with holy water from the font. “There is only one way that a person can be born,” he said, “and that is in Jésus-Christ. When the possessed boy—because it can only be a case of possession—stands up to recite, I will baptize him.” And that’s what happened. The schoolmaster called on one boy who didn’t know his lesson after another, until he came to Joseph, who was a great doltish boy with arms as long as an ape’s. And when Joseph began to name the kings of France without a single mistake, the curé said: “In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sanctus,” and uncorked the vial of holy water and flung it all in his face. The boy looked surprised and went on reciting. When he had finished, he sat down. There was no change in his appearance. The schoolmaster and the curé rushed off to Joseph’s house and it was as they feared: Joseph was not there. “Isn’t he at school?” his mother asked, in alarm.
“Yes, yes,” the curé said, “he’s at school,” and they left without explaining.
As they were going through the wood, the curé said: “There is only one thing you can do. You must adopt this orphaned spirit, give him your name, and make him your legal heir.” When they came out of the wood they went to the mairie and began to fill out the necessary adoption papers, which took all the rest of the day. When they finished, the maire took them, looked at them blankly, and handed them back. There was no writing on the documents they had spent so much time filling out.
So when the class opened the next day, the boys saw to their surprise that the schoolteacher was not at his desk in the front of the room but sitting on the bench that was always reserved for dunces. They were afraid to titter because of his birch rod, and when he saw their eyes go to it he got up and broke the rod over his knee. Then they sat there and waited. Finally one of the boys summoned enough courage to ask: “What are we waiting for?”
“For the schoolmaster,” the man said. “I have tried very hard to teach you, but I had a harsh unloving father and I never learned how to be a father to anybody else, and so you boys learn nothing from me. But I have learned something from the spirit that takes your place on the days when you are absent, and I know that he should be teaching you, and I am waiting now in the hope that he will come and teach us all.”
After a time, Joseph left his seat and went to the desk and in a voice of the utmost sweetness began to conduct the lesson.
“Are you the spirit?” the boys asked.
“No, I am Joseph,” he said.
“Then how is it you know the lesson?”
“I learned it last night. It took me a long time and it was very hard, but now I know it.”