The mother was no longer weeping. Every word fell upon her head like a stunning hammer-blow. A difficulty in breathing caused her contracted throat to gasp. Caresco had succeeded; he held her in the claws of his will, encircling her with terror.
“Yes, I said all that to Dr. Varon, but he knows little about these matters, which are very specialized. He’s very much of the old school—very conscientious, but very old school! And before that force of inertia, I confess that I’m impotent. I regret having to speak to you so brutally, but I believe it to be my duty.”
Distressed, Madame Savoie had seized his hand.
“Thank you, Doctor, thank you. You’ll save my child. I admire you. I’ll come to you today, bringing you my cherub. You can do as you wish with him. I give him to you.”
“No,” said Caresco, “it’s necessary to protect the susceptibility of your physician, who is also your friend.”
An ironic exclamation escaped the mother. “Oh, Dr. Varon! My child first! Your consultation day is today? I’ll be with you in an hour.”
“So be it—in an hour.”
Dr. Varon came back with Monsieur Savoie. At his approach, the young woman became marble, chilling him with an icy glance.
He had a sudden intuition of the surgeon’s underhand stratagem. The shot that had wounded he mother struck him by ricochet. He refused to shake Caresco’s hand and went his own way.
No matter! thought Armand Caresco, sinking into the back of his coupé and turning up the soft collar of his fur coat. I’m the stronger, anyway. The circumstances of life are trying to get the better of me, but I’m warding off the evil blows…yes, I’m the stronger.
That evening, the operation was decided between the mother and the surgeon. Monsieur Savoie, overcome by his wife’s panic, in a moral depression that prevented him from reacting, let her have her way, apologizing weakly to Dr. Varon, who demanded another consultation in vain, on the authority of his friendship and devotion.
The child was transported to the Avenue Hoche.
CHAPTER XIII
That evening, after having wished Madame Bise—with whom she had been living since the disruption of her bereavement—good night, Madeleine retired to the bedroom that had been set aside for her. Georges Ponviane, retained later than usual at the factor by virtue of the absence of his father—who had gone to Lyon in order to make some wholesale purchases—had not spent the evening with his fiancée, and she felt a kind of distress at that temporary abandonment, the slow conclusion of the dragging in the company of a relative who was a stranger to her heart.
Aunt Bise, whose absurd chatter had been solicited by libations during dinner, aggravated her to an extreme degree. She regretted all the more bitterly the two cherished images, one distanced by professional exigencies, the other disappeared forever, borne away in the arms of the ineluctable. Her initial nervousness seemed to have been reawakened by the shock she had experienced. She lived in a perpetual existential tension and wondered, anxiously, whether she was going to be gripped once again by the strange illness that had spoiled her childhood, once again falling victim to the crises that had overwhelmed her before.
She found in her present condition the symptoms of the sufferings of old: the vapors that, without any appreciable cause, invaded her face; the nauseas; the distaste for food; and, above all, the horrible sensation of a ball departing from the epigastrium, rising through her gut, and clenching her gullet as if to stifle her. Other, equally-incomprehensible malaises were now manifest: her loins seemed heavier, crumpled, as she had been punched repeatedly, and her abdomen, in particular, was heavy, becoming a veritable burden to her. It also seemed that it was increasing in volume, and as her monthly warnings had not appeared, she concluded that some inimical deposit of blood was forming within her, causing her health to deteriorate.
To tell the truth, she was not overly frightened, for during the tormented blossoming of her puberty, the wound that ought to have been regularly manifest had often failed to appear, and Dr. Cartaux, interrogated by her alarmed mother, had not seemed to be worried by it, attributing it to the general state of her health. She therefore believed that it would reappear one day, when she was better, and refrained, in her modest reserve, from confiding those intimate details to Madame Bise, whose exuberant solicitude she feared. However, she had a kind of unconscious fear of what was about to happen, and of what had happened in Armand Caresco’s house—when, during a recent visit to her cousin Aline, now installed in the Avenue Hoche, the sight of the bloodstained apron the surgeon was wearing had caused her to faint.
She went upstairs heavily, therefore. She had only just reached the top step when an imperious shock in the lower abdomen nailed her, astonished and in pain, to the landing she had attained. It was like a dull blow, a muffled explosion originating in her bowels. Her face became pale with anguish; in order not to fall, she had to lean on the balustrade, holding on to the rail.
What affliction was within her, then, for her to find herself endlessly the target of repeated attacks of that tenebrous disease, which had not let her go for several months, seemingly intent on overwhelming her with incessantly-renewed assaults? What wrong had she done to nature for it to show itself so inclement in her regard, seemingly wanting to crush her beneath the burden of this strange malady?
She asked herself that, fearfully. For long minutes she remained there, immobile, waiting for a further shock that did not come.
In the meantime, Madame Bise climbed the stairs to go to her bedroom. On perceiving her niece, whom she thought was getting ready for bed, she could not suppress her astonishment.
“Why, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“Nothing, Aunt,” Madeleine replied. “I’m a little out of breath...”
“There’s something else, darling, which you don’t want to tell me. Tomorrow, we’ll have to send for the doctor.”
“Oh, no, Aunt, it’s not worth the trouble.”
“Go on! You’re quite pale. Go to bed, and tomorrow, I’ll ask Monsieur Caresco to come to see you.”
“Aunt, I’d prefer Monsieur Cartaux.”
“Monsieur Cartaux’s an old doctor, who’s behind the times. Anyway, he’s ill. Go in, child, and I’ll send up some orange-blossom water. Tomorrow, the doctor will come.”
The aggressive tone did not admit any protest, so Madeleine went to her room, and idled for a while, opening the mirror-fronted cupboard, which saluted her with the gift of a whiff of discreet perfume, mingled with the odor of clean linen. She took out a night-dress with a delicate collerette and laid it out on the bed. Then she went to stir the logs on the fire, which were almost consumed, opened the wood-box, and, with the aid of gilded tongs, took out more logs, which she piled on top of those that were burning. What life there was in those golden sparks! What a contrast with the mourning-dress of her heart!
She lingered for a moment to fix her memory on the lightly-framed portraits that ornamented the mantelpiece: her father, the handsome face of a bon viveur, who was almost unknown to her; her mother, still adored, bearing in her expression a generous pensive melancholy; and Georges Ponviane, the handsome and healthy fellow of noble stature, with all the attractiveness of his virile youth and the ardent profundity of his eyes. The past and the present. But why did the future seem to be symbolized by a fourth portrait placed there be Madame Bise? How did Armand Caresco come to be in the company of that dear trio?
He too was handsome, though, with his high and intelligent forehead surmounted by his forceful hair, and the velvet of his dark eyes. But even in the portrait, the gaze was ungraspable, seeming to flee as it did in reality. Obsessed, Madeleine turned the image to the wall, but as it was still imposing, reflected by the mirror, she laid it flat upon he marble.
Finally, as the bed was tempting her with a soft and warm promise, she decided to get undressed, and took off her garments unhurriedly, freeing her figure from the embrace of the corset, and then letting her chemise fall. She was naked. Befo
re covering herself chastely with the fine batiste, in the anxiety of the malady that might be germinating in her abdomen, she considered the lily-white splendor of her flesh.
She had not submitted herself to such an examination for a long time. Thus, it was with a genuine amazement that she observed the transformations that her body had undergone.
The line of her neck was still the same, infinitely graceful, losing itself in the cascade of her gilded hair. But her breasts, augmented in volume, almost doubled, were proudly pointed and had taken on a brown coloration around the areola that contrasted violently with the milky whiteness of the skin under which the blue streaks of veins ran. Lower down, the abdomen bulged abnormally, sufficiently developed to hide from the young woman’s eyes the gilded tuft, the veil of mysterious regions. The hips, marbled by the pink imprints of an overly tight corset, had thickened toward the immeasurably enlarged waist.
Madeleine stood there looking at herself for a long time, seeking in vain for an explanation of the illness that was disrupting the harmony of forms that she had once taken pleasure in admiring, knowing that its lines were beautiful, and having an instinctive notion of the purity of its contours. A host of bleak ideas passed through her mind, a gallop of bitterness and poignant suppositions.
Toward what abyss was she being led by that abdomen, swelling to the point of forcing her to let her corset out by another notch every day? And Georges, her Georges, so tender and sweet—would he still want a deformed wife, dragging with her the misery of all those frightful maladies of the abdomen of which she had vaguely heard mention, which had caused so many ravages around her, which had even killed a few ladies of her acquaintance, like Baronne Spirs?
Not for a single instant did the idea cross her mind that a glorious maternity had invaded her loins, and that she was the victim of an abominable crime accomplished during a cataleptic sleep. How could she have suspected it?—she whose candor did not suspect that the approach of a man could go much further than the brush of a kiss and the union of lips.
Dolorously, she veiled her radiant affliction with the light fabric of hr night-dress, and went to sleep, anxious, with a wrinkle of sadness on her forehead, in the gilded scatter of her hair.
The next morning, Madeleine had a calm awakening. Her ideas seemed to have been subject to an unconscious labor during sleep, to have been filed away, and she envisaged her situation with more tranquility.
Her resolution was made; she would talk to Georges Ponviane about her condition. In whom could she have more confidence than him? Was he not the only one who really loved her, and whose well-balanced mind was capable of making a sane decision?
But she had counted without Madame Bise. In fact, she was still in bed when the latter presented herself, already dressed to go out.
To begin with, she surrounded her niece with affectionate caresses and puerile attentions. She brought chocolate croquettes, which Madeleine, in order not to displease her, tried to swallow. Then, thinking that she had seduced her with that naïve prelude, she suddenly brought up the idea that was haunting her.
“I’m going, out, you know, darling. I’m going to pay a visit on your behalf.”
“On my behalf, Aunt?”
“Yes, for you, alas. I’m going to ask Dr. Caresco to come here. I love you too much to bear this. He’ll cure you, as he’s cured your cousin Aline.”
“Oh, Aunt, I beg you…not Monsieur Caresco!”
“Who, then?” demanded Madame Bise, her voice inflated by anger. “I only have confidence in him. Monsieur Cartaux is nothing but a donkey, and a sick donkey too.”
“Don’t do anything without having talked to Georges,” Madeleine begged, in a tearful voice.
“Monsieur Ponviane’s advice is of no account at present, alas. It’s me who has the responsibility”—and, content with the terms she had employed, she repeated it—“yes, the responsibility for your health, and no one will make my change my idea. Come on, little silly, you know full well that I’m afraid for your welfare, don’t you? Poor darling!”
She covered the insensible Madeleine with kisses. Then, with her usual versatility, she started talking about a meeting of the Feminist Association at the home of her great friend Miss Pisword, for the redemption of the oppressed sex. Then she returned to Madeleine’s malady, and went away, saying that she would not be long in coming back in the company of her favorite physician, and that Madeleine had only to stay in bed and wait for them.
As she arrived at the house in the Avenue Hoche, she saw Monsieur and Madame Romé whose were in discussion with Armand Caresco in the partly-open porch. Their attitude permitted the divination of grave preoccupations. The surgeon’s gestures were emphatic and persuasive.
Madame Bise went up to them, eternally thoughtless, without noticing the drama that was darkening the expressions of the parents. For a veritable fear was drowning their hearts in distress; their daughter Aline, an inmate of the house for a week, after having been admirably well during her sojourn at the clinic, when the color had blossomed in her cheeks again and her sufferings have vanished as if by enchantment, on the very day when her parents had manifested the intention of taking her way from the surgeon’s house, had been suddenly stricken by a new crisis of the liver of unprecedented violence.
Bordier, who had been making his afternoon rounds at the time, summoned in haste, given the exasperation of the pain, had authorized an injection of morphine, which had knocked the young woman out. But the following morning she had woken up jaundiced from head to toe. That persistence of the crises and renewal of the pain—by which the surgeon had not been duped—had nevertheless led him to propose to the parents an exploratory operation in order to search for gallstones that might be blocking the bile duct.
That was what he had just declared to Monsieur and Madame Romé, frightening them with the suddenness of the decision to be made, for here was no time to lose before the threat of the retention of bile, which might produce abscesses and fatal peritonitis. Discreetly, with retinues of words, he displayed for them the alarming list of accidents to be feared, bathing them in terror, enveloping hem with is persuasive speech, pushing them toward the determination to have recourse to his saving scalpel.
The artifice, and the overstatement of the perfection of his method, passed unperceived even by the investigative gaze of Monsieur Romé, so much warm conviction was there in his language, of real effort toward the good. What was the operation, anyway? Very little, in reality: a simple incision in the right flank, and one would fall directly upon the liver. He would avoid any considerable disturbance of the intestines and damage to the peritoneum, and he could, by removing those troublesome gallstones, save a life under threat.
Besides which, did he not make similar interventions every day, without any of his patients ever succumbing to the after-effects of the operation? Yes, when one had waited too long, when suppuration had already set in, abscesses had formed, peritonitis was in progress, it was a veritable crime not to have acted sooner. As for him, he believed that he was doing his duty as an honest man by raising the alarm.
“Let’s see, Doctor,” aid Monsieur Romé, “if the operation isn’t attempted, will the accidents that you fear certainly occur?”
“Certainly? Damn it, I’m not inside her abdomen. No, not certainly, as two and two make four, but probably—very probably. And then, think for a moment, what reproaches would one make in the case of a fatal outcome?”
The sensitive soul of Madame Bise was impressed by that speech. She began to weep, and Madame Romé, sadder than her but until then more courageous, infected by her sister’s tears, could not retain the expression of her grief. Already, idlers were stopping to look at them. Caresco closed the door, and all four of them stood there uncertainly, variously troubled, between the cold walls of the passage, on the threshold of the factory of death, as if the door, in closing, had plunged them into mourning.
“You can’t stay there, in the cold draught,” said the surgeon, pushing
them toward the vestibule. Come in for a moment. Since there’s a decision to make, you can discuss it, all the more so as Madame Bise, who has a say in the matter, is with you.”
He was glad to add the trump card of the fortuitous presence of his protectress to his hand. He knew that she would press for the desired objective.
Monsieur Romé refused to come in, however. “Thank you, Doctor, but I have a meeting, and then, I prefer not to see my daughter again this morning. You understand that sentiment, don’t you? One more thing: I have absolute confidence in you, in your talent, but will you permit me to bring in a medical consultant?”
“Please do,” said Caresco, secretly distressed by that hitch.
“Dr. Cartaux, for instance,” added Monsieur Romé.
“If you wish.”
“Eh? Monsieur Cartaux is till indisposed,” Madame Bise put in. “He’s not leaving his room. I sent for news of him yesterday. Why so much dickering, though? Who else can see the matter more clearly than Monsieur Caresco, who has made a specialty of diseases of the liver? One either has or hasn’t confidence in him. If you have, let him go ahead. That’s what I think, in a nutshell.”
Confronted by that brutal dilemma, Monsieur Romé felt his resistance fading, and came to an abrupt decision. Madame Romé, accustomed to passive obedience, also acquiesced.
The operation was arranged for the following morning.
Again, Armand Caresco, triumphant over destiny, prepared for a fruitful harvest. The Savoie child and Aline Romé were about to contribute to filling the hole excavated by Mathilde’s necklace. Both would undergo operations the following morning; they would be cured or dead before the end of the month and the honoraria would be paid before the due date.
Armand Caresco, who was superstitious—as are the majority of disequilibrated brains, in which genius brushes dementia—had noticed that operations never came singly, one always leading to another. Would this be the commencement of a new series? The veil obscuring his horizon seemed to be tearing in the wind of chance.
The Necessary Evil Page 20