ON THAT Sunday, Mme. de Fontanin, when she came home at about midday, had found a note awaiting her in the hall.
“Daniel tells me he’s been kept for lunch by the Bertiers,” she told Jenny. “Then you weren’t here when he came back?”
“No, I didn’t see him,” Jenny replied without looking up. She had just dropped on all fours, trying to catch her dog Puce, which was hiding under an arm-chair. It seemed to take her a long time, but at last she caught the dog up in her arms and ran off with it to her room, hugging and petting the little animal.
She did not reappear till lunch-time.
“I’m not a bit hungry,” she said, “and I’ve got a headache. I’d like to go to my room and lie down in the dark.”
Her mother put her to bed and drew the curtains. Eagerly Jenny snuggled down between the sheets. But sleep would not come to her. The hours dragged on. Several times in the course of the day Mme. de Fontanin came and laid her cool hand on the little girl’s forehead. Towards evening, in a sudden rush of affection and anxiety, Jenny caught hold of her mother’s hand and began fondling it, unable to keep back her tears.
“You’re overstrung, darling. I’m afraid you must have a touch of fever.”
Seven o’clock struck, then eight. Mme. de Fontanin was waiting for her son before beginning dinner. Never did Daniel miss a meal without telling her in advance; least of all would he have left his mother and sister to dine by themselves on a Sunday. Mme. de Fontanin went out onto the balcony. The evening was mild, but at this hour there were few people about in the Avenue de l’Observatoire. The shadows were deepening between the dark masses of the trees. Several times she fancied she recognized Daniel by his walk, under a street-lamp. There was the roll of a drum in the Luxembourg Gardens. The gates were being shut. Now it was quite dark.
She put on her hat and hurried to the Bertiers’ house; they had been in the country since the day before.
So Daniel had lied!
Mme. de Fontanin was not unused to lies of that sort, but that Daniel, her Daniel, should have lied to her was appalling. His first lie. And he was only fourteen!
Jenny had not gone to sleep yet; she was listening intently to every sound. She called to her mother.
“Where’s Daniel?”
“He’s gone to bed. He thought you were asleep and didn’t want to wake you.” She tried to speak naturally; there was no point in alarming the child.
After glancing at the clock Mme. de Fontanin settled down in an arm-chair, leaving the door on the corridor ajar, so as to hear the boy when he returned.
So the night passed; a new day came… .
Just before seven Puce started growling. The bell had rung. Mme. de Fontanin ran into the hall; she preferred to open the door herself; the less the servants knew, the better. An unknown, bearded young man stood at the door. Had there been an accident?
Antoine gave his name, saying he would like to see Daniel before he left for the lycée.
“I’m afraid … as it so happens, my son can’t be seen this morning,” she stammered.
Antoine made a gesture of surprise. “Forgive me if I insist, Madame, but my brother, who’s a great friend of your son’s, has been missing since yesterday. Naturally, we’re very anxious.”
“Missing?” Her fingers tightened on the fabric of the light veil she had drawn round her hair. She opened the drawing-room door; Antoine followed her in.
“Daniel didn’t come home yesterday, either. And I’m feeling worried, too.” She had lowered her eyes; she looked up as she added: “All the more so as my husband is away from home just now.”
There was a simplicity, a frankness, about her that Antoine had never seen in any other woman. Taken off her guard in this moment of anxiety, after a sleepless night, she made no effort to conceal her feelings from the young man; each successive emotion showed on her features in its natural colours. For a few moments they gazed at each other with all but unseeing eyes. Both were following the vagaries of their own thoughts.
Antoine had sprung out of bed with real detective zest. For he had not taken Jacques’s escapade tragically, and only his curiosity was involved. So he had come here to put the other boy, Jacques’s accomplice, “through it.” But now again it looked as if things would be more complicated than he had foreseen. And that by no means displeased him. Whenever, as now, he came up against the unforeseen, a steely look came into his eyes, and under the square-cut beard his chin, the strong Thibault chin, set like a block of granite.
“What time yesterday morning did your son leave home?” he asked.
“Quite early. But he returned soon after.”
“Ah! Was it between half-past ten and eleven?”
“About that.”
“Like his friend! Yes, they’ve run away together.” His tone was brisk; he sounded almost cheerful about it.
At that moment the door, which till now had stood ajar, was flung wide open and a child’s body, clad only in a chemise, fell forward onto the carpet. Mme. de Fontanin gave a cry. Antoine had already picked up the little girl—she had fainted—and was holding her in his arms. With Mme. de Fontanin showing the way, he carried the child to her room and placed her on the bed.
“Leave her to me, Madame. I’m a doctor. Some cold water, please. Have you any smelling salts?”
After a few minutes Jenny came to. Her mother gave her an affectionate smile, but the child’s eyes were unresponsive.
“She’s all right now,” Antoine said. “All she needs is to have some sleep.”
Whispering: “You hear, darling?” Mme. de Fontanin laid her hand on the child’s clammy forehead. Presently the hand slipped down over the eyelids and held them closed.
They stood for a while unmoving on either side of the bed. The fumes of sal volatile hovered in the air. Antoine, whose eyes had so far been fixed on the graceful hand and outstretched arm, now discreetly took stock of Mme. de Fontanin. The lace wrapped round her head had come loose and he could see now that her hair was fair, sprinkled with strands of grey. He took her age for about forty, though her manner and the vivacity of her face were those of a much younger woman.
Jenny seemed on the point of sleeping; the hand that rested on her eyes withdrew, lightly as a feather. They went out on tip-toe, leaving the door ajar. Mme. de Fontanin, who was walking in front, turned round.
“Thank you,” she said, holding out both hands towards Antoine. The gesture was so spontaneous, so masculine, that Antoine checked his first impulse courteously to press his lips to them.
“She’s so nervous, poor child,” Mme. de Fontanin explained. “She must have heard Puce bark and thought her brother had come back. She hasn’t been at all well since yesterday morning; she’s had fever all night.”
They sat down. Mme. de Fontanin slipped her hand inside her bodice and produced the note Daniel had written her on the previous day. As Antoine read it, she kept her eyes on him. In her relations with others she always let herself be guided by her first impressions, and from the very first she had felt that she could trust Antoine. “A man with a forehead like that,” she thought, “is incapable of an unworthy act.” He wore his hair brushed back and his beard came up rather high upon his cheeks; framed in dark auburn hair, the whole expression of his face seemed concentrated in the deep-set eyes and pale expanse of forehead. He folded up the letter and handed it back to her. He appeared to be turning its contents over in his mind; actually he was wondering how to break certain matters to her.
“I think,” he began tentatively, “we may infer a connexion between their flight and the fact that their friendship—well, their intimacy— had just been detected by their teachers.”
“ ‘Detected’?”
“Yes. The correspondence they had been keeping up, in a special grey exercise-book, had just been found.”
“What correspondence?”
“They used to write letters to each other during lessons. Letters, it seems, of a … a very special nature.” He looked away from
her. “So much so that the two offenders had been threatened with expulsion.”
“ ‘Offenders’? Really, I’m afraid I don’t follow. What was wrong about their writing to each other?”
“The tone of their letters was, I gather, so very …”
“ ‘The tone of their letters’?” Obviously she still did not understand. But she was too sensitive not to have noticed Antoine’s growing embarrassment. Suddenly she shook her head.
“Anything of that sort is out of the question,” she said in a strained voice that shook a little. It was as if a gulf had suddenly opened out between them. She stood up. “That your brother and my son may have planned some sort of schoolboy prank together is quite possible, though Daniel has never uttered in my presence the name of …”
“Thibault.”
“Thibault!” The name, it seemed, surprised her. “That’s curious. My little daughter had a bad dream last night and I distinctly heard her pronounce that name.”
“She may have heard her brother speaking of his friend.”
“No, I tell you that Daniel never …”
“How else could she have learned the name?”
“Oh, these ‘supranormal’ phenomena are fairly common, really.”
“What phenomena?”
“The transmission of thought.” There was an intense, almost otherworldly look on her face.
Her explanation and the tone in which she spoke were so new to him that Antoine looked at her curiously. There was more than earnestness on Mme. de Fontanin’s face; it was illuminated, and on her lips there flickered the gentle smile of the believer who is used to braving the scepticism of the rest of mankind.
For a while they were silent. Then Antoine was struck by an idea that rekindled his detective enthusiasm.
“May I ask you a question, Mme. de Fontanin? You say your daughter spoke my brother’s name. And that all day yesterday she was suffering from an inexplicable attack of fever. Mayn’t that be because your son confided in her before going away?”
Mme. de Fontanin smiled indulgently. “You’d realize that such a suspicion is absurd, M. Thibault, if you knew my children and the way they behave with their mother. Never has either of them hidden anything from—” She stopped abruptly, stung by the thought that Daniel’s recent conduct gave her the lie. “Still,” she went on at once, but with a certain stiffness, moving towards the door, “if Jenny isn’t asleep you can ask her about it yourself.”
The little girl had her eyes open. Her delicately moulded profile showed against the pillow; her cheeks were flushed. The black muzzle of the little dog peeped comically from between the sheets beside her.
“Jenny, this is M. Thibault—the brother of one of Daniel’s friends, you know.”
The child cast at the intruder a look that, eager at first, darkened with mistrust.
Antoine went up to the bed, took her wrist and drew out his watch.
“Still too quick,” he said. Then he listened to her breathing. He put into each professional gesture a rather self-complacent gravity.
“How old is she?”
“Almost thirteen.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have thought it. As a matter of principle one can never be too careful about these feverish attacks. Not that there’s anything to be alarmed about, of course,” he added, looking at the child and smiling. Then, moving from the bedside, he said in a different tone:
“Do you know my brother, Mademoiselle? Jacques Thibault?”
Her forehead wrinkled; she shook her head.
“Really and truly? Your brother has never talked to you about his best friend?”
“Never.”
“But, Jenny,” Mme. de Fontanin insisted, “don’t you remember? When I woke you up last night you were dreaming that Daniel and his friend Thibault were being chased along a road. You said ‘Thibault’ quite distinctly.”
The child seemed to be searching in her memory of the night. Then, “I don’t know the name,” she said at last.
“By the way,” Antoine went on after a short pause, “I’ve just been asking your mother about a detail she can’t remember; we’ve got to know it if we are to find your brother. How was he dressed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you didn’t see him yesterday morning?”
“Yes, I did. Quite early—when he was having his coffee and rolls. But he hadn’t dressed then.” She turned to her mother. “You’ve only to go to his wardrobe, and see what clothes are missing.”
“There’s something else, Mademoiselle, something very important. Was it at nine o’clock, or ten, or eleven that your brother came back to leave the letter? Your mother was out then, so she can’t say.”
“I don’t know.”
Antoine caught a hint of annoyance in Jenny’s voice.
“What a pity!” He made a gesture of disappointment. “That means we’ll have trouble in getting on his track.”
“Wait!” Jenny said raising her arm to make him stay. “It was at ten minutes to eleven.”
“Exactly? Quite sure about it?”
“Yes.”
“You looked at the clock while he was with you, I suppose.”
“No. But that was the time when I went to the kitchen to get some bread-crumbs—for my drawing, you know. If he’d come before that, or if he’d come after, I’d have heard the door and gone to see.”
“Yes, of course.” He pondered for a moment. What use was it to tire her with more questions? He had been mistaken; she knew nothing. “Now,” he went on, “you must make yourself comfy, and shut your eyes, and go to sleep.” He drew the blankets up over the little bare arm, smiling to the child. “A nice long sleep, and when we wake up we’ll be quite well again, and our big brother will be back at home.”
She looked at him. Never afterwards could he forget all that he read at that instant in her gaze: an inner life quite out of keeping with her years, such indifference towards all human consolation, and a distress so deep, so desperately lonely, that he could not help being shaken by it and lowered his eyes.
“You were right,” he said to Mme. de Fontanin, when they had returned to the drawing-room. “That child is innocence itself. She’s suffering terribly, but she knows nothing.”
“Yes,” she replied in a musing tone, “she is innocence itself; but—she knows!”
“You mean …?”
“Yes.”
“How can you think that? Surely her answers …?”
“Her answers?” she repeated in a slow, meditative voice. “But I was near her and I felt it somehow. No, I can’t explain it.” She sat down, but stood up again at once. Her face was anguished. “She knows, she knows—now I’m certain of it.” Then suddenly, in a louder voice: “And I’m certain, too, that she would rather die than betray her secret.”
After Antoine had left and before going to see M. Quillard, the principal of the lycée (as Antoine had advised her to do), Mme. de Fontanin yielded to her curiosity and opened a Who’s Who.
THIBAULT (Oscar-Marie). Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Sometime Member for the Eure. Vice-president of the Child Welfare Society. Founder and President of the Social Defence League. Treasurer of the Joint Committee of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Paris. Residence: 4A Rue de l’Université, Paris VI.
III
TWO HOURS later, after her interview with the principal of the lycée, whom she had left abruptly, without a word, her cheeks aflame, Mme. de Fontanin, not knowing where to turn, decided to go and see M. Thibault. Some secret instinct warned her against the visit, but she overruled it, as she often overruled such premonitions—prompted by a fondness for taking risks and a temperamental wilfulness that she mistook for courage.
At the Thibaults’ a regular family council was in session. The Abbé Binot had arrived at the Rue de l’Université at an early hour, but only a few minutes in advance of the Abbé Vécard, private secretary to His Grace the Archbishop of Paris. This priest was M. Thibault’s confessor, and a great f
riend of the family. A telephone-call had secured his attendance.
Seated at his desk, M. Thibault had the air of a presiding judge. He had slept badly and the unhealthy pallor of his cheeks was even more pronounced than usual. M. Chasle, his secretary, a grey-haired, bespectacled little man, was seated on his employer’s left. Antoine alone had remained standing, leaning against a bookcase. Mademoiselle, too, had been convoked, though it was the hour when normally she attended to her housekeeping. Her shoulders draped in black merino, she sat perched on the edge of her chair, silently observing the proceedings. Under the coils of grey hair looped round her yellow forehead the fawn-like eyes strayed constantly from one priest to the other. The two reverend gentlemen had been installed on either side of the fireplace, in high-backed chairs.
After laying before them the results of Antoine’s inquiries M. Thibault launched into a jeremiad. He liked to feel that he was being approved of by those around him, and the words that came to him, when depicting his anxiety, quickened his emotions. But the presence of his confessor urged him to examine his conscience once again; had he fulfilled all his duties as a father towards the miserable boy? He hardly knew what to answer. Then his thoughts took a new turn: but for that wretched little heretic nothing would have happened.
Rising to his feet, he gave rein to his indignation. “Should not young blackguards like that Fontanin boy be locked up in suitable institutions? Are we to allow our children to be exposed to such contamination?” His hands behind his back, his eyelids lowered, he paced the carpet behind his desk. Though he did not refer to it, the thought of the Congress he was missing rankled bitterly. “For over twenty years I’ve been devoting myself to the problem of juvenile criminality. For twenty years I’ve been fighting the good fight, by means of pamphlets, vigilance societies, and detailed reports addressed to various congresses. But I’ve done more than that!” He turned towards the priests. “Haven’t I created in my reformatory at Crouy a special department where depraved children belonging to a different social class from that of the other inmates are given a special course of moral re-education? Well, you’ll hardly believe it, but that department is always empty! Is it for me to force parents to incarcerate their erring sons there? I’ve moved heaven and earth to get the Ministry of Education to take steps about it. But,” he concluded, shrugging his shoulders and letting himself sink back into his chair, “what do those fine gentlemen who are ousting religion from our French schools care about public morals?”
The Thibaults Page 2