“Well, this is a nice surprise, Jacques, isn’t it?” the superintendent exclaimed. “But I’m going to scold you, my dear boy. You should put on your overcoat properly. It’s chilly up in the gallery and you might catch cold.”
Jacques had turned away from his brother as soon as he heard M. Faîsme speak and was looking the superintendent in the face with a respectful, remarkably attentive expression, as if he were trying to grasp some underlying meaning that the words might be intended to convey. Then promptly, without answering, he slipped the overcoat on.
“By Jove!” Antoine sounded almost startled. “It’s amazing how you’ve shot up.” He could not take his eyes off his brother, trying to analyse the complete change that had come over the boy’s demeanour, face, and general appearance, and his surprise hampered his spontaneity.
“Would you like to stay outside for a bit?” the superintendent amiably suggested. “It’s such a nice day, isn’t it? Jacques can take you to his room when you’ve done a few turns round the garden.”
Antoine hesitated. His eyes were asking his brother: “What about it?”
Jacques made no sign. Antoine took it to mean that he would rather not stay where he was, in full view of the reformatory windows.
“No,” he said, and turned to Jacques again. “We’ll be better in your room, won’t we?”
“As you like,” the superintendent smiled. “But first of all I want to show you one more thing; you really must have a look at all our boarders, while you’re about it. Come along, Jacques.”
Jacques followed M. Faîsme, who, his arms extended, laughing like a schoolboy playing a practical joke, was shepherding Antoine towards a shelter built against the wall of the porter’s lodge. There were a dozen little rabbit-hutches. M. Falsme, it seemed, had a passion for small-stock raising.
“This litter was born last Monday,” he explained gleefully, “and look, they’re opening their eyes already, dear little things. In this hutch are my buck-rabbits. Have a good look at this one, doctor; he’s a real ‘hard case.’ ” He plunged his arm into a hutch and hauled out by the ears a big silver Champagne, kicking violently.
There was a ring of boyish merriment in his laugh; it seemed impossible to think ill of the little man. Then Antoine remembered the dormitory above and its hutches barred with iron.
The plaintive smile of a misunderstood man came to M. Faîsme’s face. “Good heavens,” he said, “here I am chattering away, and I can see you’re only listening out of pure politeness, eh? I’ll take you as far as Jacques’s door, and leave you. Come, Jacques, show us the way.”
Jacques went in front. Antoine overtook him and put a hand on his shoulder. He was trying vainly to conjure up a picture of the small, nervous, weakly, short-legged urchin he had gone to retrieve at Marseille less than a year before.
“Why, you’re as tall as I am!”
From the shoulder his hand moved up to the boy’s neck. It was as thin and frail as the neck of a bird. Indeed all the boy’s limbs seemed to have outgrown their strength, to be extraordinarily fragile. The elongated wrists protruded from the sleeves, the trousers left his ankles almost unclad, and there was a stiffness, an awkwardness in his way of walking, paradoxically combined with a certain adolescent suppleness, that was quite new to Antoine.
The rooms reserved for the special inmates were in an annex to the administrative offices and could be approached only through them. Five identical rooms gave onto a corridor the walls of which were painted yellow. M. Faîsme explained that as Jacques was the only “special” and the other rooms were unoccupied, the young man who looked after him slept in one, while the others were used as storerooms.
“And here’s our prisoner’s cell,” he said, giving Jacques a playful tap with his plump finger; the boy smiled and drew back to let him enter.
Antoine inspected the room with eager curiosity. It might have been a bedroom in some small, unpretentious, but pleasantly appointed hotel. The wallpaper had a floral pattern and there was a fair amount of light, though it came only from above through two fanlights of frosted glass criss-crossed by iron bars. They were immediately beneath the ceiling and, the room being lofty, nearly ten feet above the floor. Sunlight did not enter, but the room was warmed, not to say overheated, by the heating-plant of the establishment. The furniture consisted of a pitchpine wardrobe, two cane chairs, and a black table covered with an array of books and dictionaries. The little bed was smooth and trim as a billiard-table, and had been freshly laid with clean sheets. The wash-basin stood on a clean cloth and there were several immaculate towels on the towel-rail.
A minute inspection of the room gave the final blow to Antoine’s preconceived ideas about the institution. Everything he had seen during the past hour had been the exact opposite of what he had expected. Jacques was effectively segregated from the other boys and treated with every consideration; the superintendent was a good fellow, as unlike the warden of a prison as one could well imagine. In fact, all M. Thibault had said was true. Obstinate though he was, Antoine was being forced to retract his suspicions one by one.
He caught M. Faîsme’s gaze intent on him.
“Well, I must say you’re pretty comfortable here,” he remarked, rather abruptly, turning to Jacques.
Jacques made no reply. He was taking off his hat and coat, which the servant took from him and hung up on the pegs.
“Your brother has just said that you seem comfortable here,” the superintendent repeated.
Jacques swung round, with a polite, good-mannered air his brother had never seen him assume before. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Very comfortable indeed.”
“No, don’t let us exaggerate,” M. Faismc smiled. “It’s all very primitive really; we only insist it shall be clean. In any case, it’s Arthur we must compliment,” he added, turning to the servant. “That bed does you credit, my lad!”
Arthur’s face lit up. Antoine, who was watching him, found himself making a friendly gesture towards the young man. He had a bullet head, pale eyes, and smooth features, and there was something frank and forthright in his smile and gaze. He had stayed beside the door and was tugging at his moustache, which seemed almost colourless against his sun-tanned cheeks.
“So that’s the grim guard I had pictured—creeping about with a dark lantern and a bunch of keys!” Antoine was saying to himself, and could not help laughing at his mistake. Then he went up to the books and, still laughing, ran his eyes over them.
“Sallust, I see. Are you making good progress with your Latin?” he asked, a cheerful smile still lingering on his face.
It was M. Faîsme who answered his question.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t say it in front of him,” he began with feigned reluctance and a flutter of his eyelashes in Jacques’s direction, “but I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you his tutor is very pleased with his progress. We work our eight hours a day,” he continued in a more serious tone. He went up to the blackboard and straightened it while he went on talking. “Still that doesn’t prevent us from going every day, whatever the weather—your worthy father attaches much importance to it—for a good long two hours’ tramp with Arthur. They’ve both good legs, and I leave them free to choose the walks they like. With old Léon it was another matter; I suspect they didn’t cover much ground, but they made up for it by gathering herbs along the hedgerows. I should tell you old Léon was a pharmacist’s assistant in his youth and knows all about plants, not to mention their Latin names. Jacques must have learned quite a lot from him. Still I must say I’d rather see them taking long walks in the country—much better for Jacques’s health, isn’t it?”
Antoine had turned to his brother several times while M. Faîsme was speaking. Jacques seemed to be listening in a dream; now and then he had to make an effort to follow, and at these moments a look of vague distress crossed his face, his lips parted, and his eyelids quivered.
“There I am again, babbling away, and it’s ages since Jacques had a chance of seeing his big brot
her.” M. Faîsme backed towards the door with little, friendly gestures. “Are you going back by the eleven o’clock train?” he asked.
That had not been Antoine’s intention, but M. Faîsme’s tone implied it was the obvious thing to do, and, moreover, he felt only too glad of the pretext for an early escape. He was conscious that the dreary atmosphere of the place and Jacques’s indifference were getting on his nerves. And, in any case, he had learned what he wanted to learn. What was the use of staying on?
“Yes,” he replied. “Unfortunately I must get back to Paris early, for my afternoon visits.”
“There’s nothing to regret; the next train doesn’t leave till late in the day. Well, so long, doctor!”
The brothers were alone. For a moment both felt embarrassed.
“Take the chair,” Jacques said, and moved towards the bed as if to seat himself on it. Then he noticed the second chair, changed his mind, and, offering it to Antoine, repeated: “Take the chair” in a natural tone, as if he were saying: “Do sit down!”
Nothing of this byplay had escaped Antoine; his suspicions were aroused.
“So you have only one chair as a rule,” he observed.
“Yes. But Arthur’s lent us his today, as he does when my tutor comes.”
Antoine did not press the point.
“Well, they seem to do you pretty well here.” He cast another glance around the room. Pointing to the clean sheets and towels, he added: “Do they change the linen often?”
“Sundays.”
Antoine had been speaking in the crisp, cheerful tone that was usual with him, but somehow in this echoing room, in the atmosphere created by Jacques’s apathy, it sounded incisive, almost aggressive.
“Just think,” he said, “I was worried about you, I hardly know why. I was afraid they might be treating you badly here.”
Jacques gazed at him with surprise, and smiled. Antoine kept his eyes fixed on his brother’s face.
“Well, now, honestly, between ourselves, you’ve nothing to complain of?”
“Nothing.”
“Now that I’m here, isn’t there anything I could fix up for you with the superintendent?”
“What sort of thing?”
“How can I tell? Think, now.”
Jacques seemed to ponder, smiled again, then shook his head.
“No. As you can see, everything’s quite all right.”
His voice had changed, like everything else about him; it was a man’s voice now, with an agreeable, if rather muffled, resonance, which came as a surprise from one so obviously a mere boy.
Antoine gazed at him again. “Yes, Jacques, how you’ve changed! No, ‘changed’ isn’t really the word for it; you’re no longer the same, not a bit, not in any way.”
He still kept his eyes on Jacques, trying to recognize in the unfamiliar face the features he had known. There was still the same reddish hair, a little darker and browner now, but still coarse and growing low on the forehead; there was the same narrow, ill-formed nose, the same cracked lips, shaded now by a faint fringe of down; the same heavy jaw, but more massive than in the past; and the same protuberant ears that seemed tugging at the mouth, keeping it stretched. Yet nothing of it all was really like the youngster of the day before yesterday. “It looks as if his temperament has changed as well,” Antoine mused. “He used to be so changeable, always on edge —and now he looks half asleep, as if his face had been ironed out! Yes, he used to be a nervous type, and now he’s gone lymphatic.”
“Stand up for a moment,” he said.
Jacques submitted to the examination with an amiable smile, but there was no warmth in it. The pupils of his eyes seemed misted over.
Antoine felt his arms and legs.
“Goodness, how you’ve shot up! Sure it isn’t telling on your health?”
Jacques shook his head. Antoine was holding the boy in front of him, by the wrists. He was struck by the paleness of the freckled cheeks and the pouches under the eyes.
“None too healthy, your colour,” he went on, with a touch of seriousness. He frowned, was on the point of saying something more, but stopped.
Suddenly the sight of Jacques’s submissive, expressionless face had revived all the suspicions he had vaguely felt when he first had seen Jacques in the quadrangle.
“I suppose they told you I was waiting for you after mass, didn’t they?” he asked abruptly.
Jacques locked at him uncomprehendingly.
“When you came out of the chapel,” Antoine persisted, “did you know that I was here?”
“Certainly not. How could I know?” Jacques’s smile conveyed candid amazement.
Antoine decided to drop the subject. “Well, I rather thought they had… . Can I smoke here?” he asked, to change the subject.
Jacques looked at him anxiously. Antoine held out his cigarette-case.
“Have one?”
“No, thanks.” A shadow seemed to settle on his face.
Antoine was at a loss what to say. As usually happens when someone wants to prolong a conversation with a taciturn companion, Antoine racked his brains to think of questions he might put.
“So really and truly,” he began, “there’s nothing you need. You’ve got all you want?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Is your bed comfortable? Have you enough blankets?”
“Oh, yes; I’m too warm sometimes.”
“What about your tutor? Is he decent to you?”
“Very.”
“But doesn’t it bore you rather, working like this, all by yourself?”
“No.”
“How do you spend the evenings?”
“I go to bed after dinner, at eight o’clock.”
“When do you get up?”
“When the bell rings, at half-past six.”
“Does the confessor come to see you sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like him?”
Jacques stared blankly at Antoine. He did not understand the question, and made no answer.
“And does the superintendent come as well?”
“Yes, often.”
“He looks a good sort. Do the boys like him?”
“I don’t know. I expect so.”
“You never meet the—the others?”
“Never.”
At each question Jacques, whose eyes were constantly lowered, gave a slight shiver, as if it were a strain for him to jump like this from one subject to another.
“How about your poems? Do you still write poetry?” Antoine asked with a smile.
“Oh, no.”
“Why not?”
Jacques shrugged his shoulders; a placid smile came to his lips and lingered there for some moments. It was the sort of smile Antoine would have expected had his question been: “Do you still play with a hoop?”
In despair Antoine switched the conversation round to Daniel. Jacques was not prepared for that; he flushed a little.
“How do you expect me to know anything about him?” he said. “We don’t get letters here.”
“But,” Antoine went on, “don’t you ever write to him?” He kept his eyes fixed on his brother.
The boy smiled as he had done when Antoine had referred to his poems, and made a faint gesture as if to wave away the topic.
“It’s ancient history, all that. Don’t let’s talk of it any more.”
What did he mean by that? If he had said: “No, I’ve never written to him,” Antoine would have bluntly given him the lie, and felt a secret pleasure in doing so, for Jacques’s air of apathy was beginning to irritate him. But Jacques had eluded his question, and there had been a melancholy finality in his tone that had silenced Antoine. Just then he fancied he saw Jacques’s eyes grow suddenly intent on something behind himself, by the door; and, in his mood of latent irritation, he felt all his suspicions come crowding back. The door had a window in it, no doubt to make it possible to see from outside what was going on in the room, and over the door was a grating
through which what was said could be overheard from outside.
“There’s someone in the corridor, isn’t there?” Antoine asked bluntly, but in a low voice.
Jacques stared at him as if he had gone mad.
“Someone in the corridor? What do you mean? Sometimes people go by. Just now I saw old Léon passing.”
There was a knock at the door and Léon came in to be introduced to the big brother. Without more ado he sat down on the edge of the table.
“I hope you find him fit, sir. Ain’t he shot up since the autumn?”
He was laughing. He looked a typical old-school French sergeant-major. He had a big, drooping moustache, and tanned cheeks which his jovial belly-laugh suffused with a glow of blood that ramified across them in a network of red veins, spreading into the whites of his eyes and blurring their expression, which normally, it seemed, was one of fatherly good humour with a spice of mischief in it.
“They’ve packed me off to the workshops,” he said to Antoine, with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. “And I’d got so used to this young gentleman! Ah, well,” he added, as he moved away, “it’s no use crying over spilt milk, as they say… . Give my respects to M. Thibault, if it ain’t too much trouble, sir. He knows me well, does your old dad.”
“What a fine old chap!” Antoine exclaimed when he had gone.
Then he tried to get their talk under way again.
“I could take him a letter from you, if you want to send one,” he said. When Jacques stared at him uncomprehendingly, he added: “Wouldn’t you like to write a word to Fontanin?”
The Thibaults Page 14