“I do not like the idea of going to Paradis.”
François, in his shirt-sleeves, was jocular.
“Oh, come now, you are bound to go there. Had I proposed the other place, well, an objection would have been reasonable. Angel.”
He kissed his wife.
“Paradis! Inevitable. If the doctor is a devil we’ll order him to go to hell.”
Monsieur François’ vitality was such, that, like the exuberances of a child, it seemed churlish to quarrel with it. Monsieur François was Madame Claire’s child, and she loved him at all times and in all places, even when he shaved himself and reproached her if she shook their flimsy house on wheels by moving about in it. So the red van trundled along the road to Paradis between rows of Lombardy poplars through which the wind played and made perpetual murmuring. It was June, and the wheat-fields were as vivid as young grass in wet meadows. Great white clouds sailed the sky. The professor’s red van raised little swirls of dust; he drove with less exuberance than he wished, for the Chariot of the Pills was more than twelve years old and very precious. François had to cherish it as he cherished his health.
But, strangely enough, on that perfect June day, with the spire of the church of Paradis piercing the green canopy of groves of poplars, Monsieur François did not feel himself. He was aware of a chilliness, a languor, vague inward discomfort. He perspired, but he persisted.
“Surely it is very hot.”
Claire agreed with him as to the heat.
“It is the engine, too, perhaps. Look.”
A faint plume of steam was rising from the radiator cap.
“Tien. Yes, she is feeling it too. She needs some of our pills.”
He insisted on jocularity. He had set out to go to Paradis and defy that devil of a doctor; and go there he would, in spite of the heat and this feeling of vague physical distress. He was aware of inward qualms, but doubtless they too were due to the heat. Courage! Business was business.
So he drove the red van up the long street of Paradis, and past the house of Dr. Georges Blanc, a tall and narrow house with sneering windows, and parked his show in the “place” by the church, close to a row of pollarded limes. He raised his hat to a group of old women who had brought out their crochet and their mending to the seats under the shade of the trees.
Monsieur François was always polite, especially to the ladies. He knew how to enter a town or village, and also how to leave. It was necessary to be a little gaillard and sensational. But it seemed even hotter in the “place” of Paradis, with the sun blazing down and the houses shutting off the air. It was as though their doorways, like greedy mouths, sucked in all the freshness.
Monsieur François mopped his forehead.
“My dear,” he said, “I think I will have a little glass of cognac with my lunch. And perhaps a little sleep afterwards. We will open the show when it gets cooler. Besides, we must wait till the people come back from the fields.”
Monsieur François had his little glass of cognac and his little sleep, while his wife sat silently mending a pair of her husband’s socks. It was unusual for François to sleep in the middle of the day, and she wondered, and watched him a little anxiously. He appeared uneasy in his sleep, as though some grumble of pain made itself felt.
He woke about half-past three. The van was insufferably hot, though Claire had opened the window and set the door ajar. If you opened the door too lavishly children would be sure to poke their heads inside.
“Mon Dieu, it is hot!”
He sat up, and with a wince of the mouth, put his hand to his side.
Madame regarded him intently.
“François, you are ill?”
But the pride of the Professor was piqued. He—ill? Not a bit of it. It was the heat, and he was feeling a little upset inside, and he would take a dose of salts before going to bed. Besides, there was Dr. Georges Blanc to be considered. Monsieur François was going to sell his pills in Paradis and under the doctor’s nose, even if the sky turned to molten brass.
“Give me a glass of water, my dear. François is never ill.”
About six o’clock the show opened. The side of the van had been lowered, and Monsieur François, looking rather pallid and greasy, began to potter about and make mysterious preparations. He wore his top hat at a jaunty angle; his white shirt bulged. People began to gather, women, children, men back from the fields who grinned at each other and tried to look sceptical. François smiled at them and rubbed his hands.
“Ha, you look very healthy in Paradis, but I am going to tell you a thing or two. The ladies have bright eyes, but I have something that will make them brighter.”
The crowd increased, and François switched on all his lights and crackled his electric gear. He seemed as full of joy as usual. He was inspired, strung up to a particular effort. His bright little eyes watched for his enemy, and in due course he saw the long, sardonic face of Dr. Blanc hung like a mocking mask at the back of the crowd.
Dr. Blanc was a very tall man with moustachios like one of the great Napoleon’s grenadiers, and a spot of bright colour on either cheek. His eyes were set rather like the eyes of a goat.
No doubt professional dignity and a nice sense of proportion should have prevented Dr. Blanc from meddling with the activities of a sedulous little quack, but Dr. Blanc was a quarrelsome person. He held very strong views upon irresponsible charlatanry. Moreover, for some years he had been a childless widower, and a man who lives alone and has no one either to spoil or to contradict him, is always in danger of riding the lean horse of prejudice to death. Dr. Blanc was something of a fanatic, and as ready as a priest to challenge and attack heresy.
He stood and stared fixedly upon the busy little figure of François. His nostrils quivered; his long grey moustachios were fierce and Gallic. It is possible that he thought that the concentrated stare of an accredited practitioner might disconcert the quack, but it had an opposite effect upon Monsieur François. Like the heat it both upset and enraged him; it broiled him in exceptional efforts; it inflamed his audacity. He began to return the doctor’s glare, and to throw his remarks in the direction of that formidable face.
“My discovery, ladies and gentlemen, was not made in the provinces. I, too, have studied in Paris. I have visited the United States of America. I do not keep a drug-shop at the back of an old house. I travel and see the world. I am ready to challenge the whole Faculty of Medicine, the Sorbonne, all the Academies. I live and prove my profession. Look at me.”
He spread his arms.
“Health. Have I ever been ill? Never. In Paradis is there illness—sometimes? I see there your eminent physician. I will challenge him to answer that question.”
The crowd shuffled and stirred. It felt the excitement of an emotional situation, conflict, the spice of a hot argument. Faces were turned towards Dr. Blanc.
His eyes seemed to stand out on stalks. He stood with his heels together, shoulders squared.
“I am not a liar.”
Monsieur François bowed.
“That is a good answer. Monsieur tells us the truth. He confesses——”
But Dr. Blanc’s voice cut him short. It was like a tusk jabbed into Francois’ plump little body.
“But that man is a liar. I have a box of his pills. I have analysed them. It is my duty to stand here and save my fellow-citizens from trash and humbug. I do not argue.”
François was perspiring, for the pain in him had ceased to be a vague qualm and had suddenly become acute and poignant.
“Nor do I argue, my friends. I say that my discovery is a cure which the learned profession——”
He winced, and Dr. Blanc’s sergeant-major’s voice cut the air.
“That man is a liar. I will tell you. That man is ill. He stands up and pretends to all you healthy people who work in the fields that he is healthier than you are. Look at him. I am a doctor. I say that man is ill.”
The crowd gazed upon François, and it gazed in silence, for something was happening in front of the
red lamps. In spite of all that rosy glow the professor’s face had a ghastly sallowness. His mouth was twisted; his eyes looked sunken. And suddenly and incontinently before them all Monsieur François was sick. It was a catastrophe, a disaster.
Dr. Blanc stood with his head reared, gazing. Something flickered in his eyes. Triumph—perhaps? He appeared to stand stiffly, hesitating, as though casual man and social man were in conflict. Then he turned and walked slowly away.
But a woman’s voice had uttered a cry. The red curtains were pulled aside, and François’ wife had her hands on her husband’s shoulders. She drew him through the curtains. Both of them disappeared.
The crowd dispersed itself from about the red van; but much of it remained in doorways and under the shade of the trees, for its interest in the red van and its inhabitants had become controversial. The men were inclined to laugh, and to applaud Dr. Georges. “That fat little humbug has it in the stomach.” The women were more for the professor, for women rally to any man who makes a mystery of things. Also, there was another woman in the van—a woman whose man was sick.
One or two of them approached the door of the van, and the eldest of them knocked.
“Madame, can we be of any use?”
Claire’s face appeared in the doorway, very serious and pale.
“A thousand thanks. If we could have a little fresh milk. Monsieur François is resting. It is the heat which has affected him.”
Meanwhile, inside the van, François was confronting his Waterloo. The pain had abated, and he was talking of resuming the battle, but Claire was obdurate.
“I told you this place was unlucky. That doctor and his goat’s eyes! We will get out of it. We will go to Merville; Merville is a good place.”
François, peevish and pale, was compelled to agree. Very well then, but he would retreat in order; there should be no rout, with that beast of a Prussian in pursuit. He would get up and make a speech to the people of Paradis, apologize for his lapse and explain it, and promise to return to Paradis. He would depart with a dignified gesture.
Dusk was filling the “place” when the professor arose and donned his helmet, the inevitable top hat. Looking very white, he stood on the steps of the red van and addressed a few women and some children. He raised his hat to them and attempted a flourish, a jocular sally, but his wit lacked sparkle. The side of the van had to be raised and bolted, and Madame François assisted, standing on a wooden box, for she was too short to reach the bolts without it.
François removed himself to the starting handle of the red van, bent down, gripped a dumb-iron and gave a pull. But nothing happened. He tried again, groaning slightly, and uttering soft imprecations. His hat fell off. He picked it up, dusted it, flooded the carburettor, and tried again, but when he tried to pull, something hurt inside him.
“Mon Dieu, she is a devil!”
He pushed his hat back, wiped his forehead, and readjusted his hat.
“My dear, we shall have to swing her. I am not myself.”
His wife joined him, and together they bent and wound at the starting handle, their two bodies pressed together in a kind of anguish of effort. The engine, relenting, started with a roar. François, livid and perspiring, climbed up behind the wheel; his wife joined him; the red van lurched forward over the cobbles of the “place.” A few children scampered after it with shouts of derision.
Standing at his window, and conscious of a strange and accusing melancholy, Dr. Georges Blanc saw the red van go by.
“Exodus,” he thought; “Paradis is purged of them. Pedlars of pills. But they are two and I am one. But for my work I would wish to die.”
Night fell. The red van had lit its lights and had travelled a couple of kilometres when it swerved to the side of the road and stopped. A row of beech trees threw a mass of shadow over the vehicle. Monsieur François, with teeth set, was leaning over the steering wheel.
“Oh, mon Dieu, the pain!” he groaned. “I cannot do it. It is too much, too bad. I am sorry, my dear, but I am beaten.”
She embraced him, her face close to his.
“Where is the pain?”
“Down here. Like a hot iron—jabbing. I must lie down.”
Claire helped him out of the seat and into one of the narrow bunks in the interior of the van, and he lay there groaning and twisting. She sat on the other bunk, looking at him, her hands clenched under her chin. She felt helpless.
“François, you must have a doctor.”
“A doctor! The devil! Why, no doctor would touch me. Anathema, outcast.”
“But you are ill.”
He groaned.
“The pain; oh, the pain!”
And suddenly panic seized her, but it was panic with a purpose. She searched for the cognac bottle, gave him a good draught, covered him with a blanket, kissed him and fled. François heard the door slammed, and was suddenly aware of the emptiness of that little cabin. He called after her.
“Claire, Claire, where are you going?”
The wind made a rustling in the leaves of the beech trees.
Madame François ran, she ran towards Paradis. She did not run as Madame François, the wife of a little wandering quack, but as woman in search of help. She was an impulse on two sturdy legs, compassion, poignant and passionate. Her man was in pain, in danger. He was a little, whimpering, groaning boy.
Dr. Georges Blanc had put on his spectacles and was sitting down to read a scientific journal when the door bell rang. It clanged; it appealed; it insisted. The doctor, who for thirty years had listened to the ringing of that bell, and could diagnose from the quality of its clangour the urge and the need of the messenger, looked over the top of his spectacles at his study door.
“Most certainly a midwifery case. Probably young Blanchard. He is a very new husband, and excitable. Probably he has run all the way from Tete Bois.”
Dr. Blanc continued to look over the tops of his spectacles at the study door. He was a man who loved his work, and who persisted in loving it even at the age of five-and-fifty, and because he loved the truth, as he saw it, he hated all quackery and moonshine. The door opened, and his housekeeper put her head into the room.
“A message from the Blanchards?” asked Dr. Georges.
“No; a woman. She says that she must see you.”
“Very well. Show her in.”
Madame François confronted the doctor. He did not know who she was until she began to speak and to explain with a kind of fierce calmness the nature of her need. She stood looking straight up into the doctor’s face, like a determined child; she was flushed; her eyes shone.
“Monsieur, my husband is very ill and in great pain. We are the people who own the red van. Perhaps you will think it gross impertinence that I should come to you, but when a man is in pain——”
The doctor laid his scientific journal on the table.
“Exactly, madame; when there is pain——”
“You will come?”
“Of course.”
Her little, determined face lit up.
“You understand, monsieur? My husband is he who sells pills. We were not polite to you to-day.”
Dr. Georges, looking even more like a fierce old grenadier, raised his hand to his forehead.
“I understand—perfectly. I salute the spirit of my profession. I am at your service, madame.”
“Monsieur, you are a great man. You have the nature of greatness.”
Dr. Georges smiled at her.
“Madame, we are two men in one, sometimes three men in one, but when my bell rings I am the doctor. Where is your husband?”
“In our van, monsieur. He could drive no farther. It is on the road, not very far.”
“I will come with you.”
So in the darkness of that summer night the doctor of Paradis and the wife of the pedlar of pills set out together for the red van and the grove of beech trees, and the rising moon threw their shadows upon the road—a long shadow and a short one. And because of the mystery of
things and the interplay of her emotions Madame François’ tongue was loosed, and she began to speak to Dr. Georges as though he were priest, doctor, and man.
She spoke of her husband, and how he in his early days had desired to be a doctor, but that the way of the world and poverty and an early marriage had made such a dream impossible.
“He wanted to go to Paris, monsieur, and study; but in those days a crust of bread was a crust of bread. He would have made a good doctor. But now—of course—he is too old. We had to do the best we could. And his pills, monsieur, are really very good pills, and we are not swindlers, for people have been the better for them. Moreover, monsieur, I love my husband; he has always been bon garçon. So you will forgive me.”
The doctor’s figure looked straight and thin; he carried himself like a grenadier, and he, too, had his head in the moonlight. He was walking suddenly in a world of memories, listening to a woman’s voice.
He said:
“Madame, I had advantages. In some of us there is a strange passion to help and to heal. But I love truth. And yet, what is truth? We may see it by moonlight or at full noon, and sometimes we are a little arrogant. And I have my work to do.”
She looked up at his fierce old face softened by the moonlight.
“Monsieur, if we came to Paradis no more will you forgive us? We do a little good in our way.”
He stalked along like a man thinking deeply.
“Madame, perhaps the little good that we do—is mysterious, willed into us. I do not know. The scientists dogmatize. Perhaps faith still works. It may be that faith can be compounded in a pill.”
They came to the red van with its two eyes burning under the beech trees, and Madame François opened the door and spoke softly.
“François—François, the doctor has come.”
Her husband’s voice sounded small and faint.
“The doctor? Mon Dieu, then it is a miracle. What doctor?”
“The doctor from Paradis. How is the pain, my dear?”
“The doctor from Paradis! Well, let him come in. I would take off my hat if I could. The pain, oh—yes—the pain.”
Dr. Blanc climbed the steps of the van and removed his hat and sat down on the edge of the bunk beside Monsieur François. Madame held the lamp, and the professor’s face, all creased and puckered and pale, looked up at them.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 42