Suddenly he gave way to a flood of tears.
He had a strange feeling of frustration, as if, for all his efforts, he could not help lying, and the more he tried to tell the truth, the worse he succeeded in doing so. Yet nothing of what he had said was actually untrue. But by his tone, by overcolouring his troubles, and by the choice of facts he had described, he was conscious of having given a false impression of his life—and yet he could not do otherwise.
They had been making slow progress and were only half-way back. And it was half-past five. There was plenty of daylight left, but a mist was rising from the river, brimming over into the fields and swathing them in drifting vapour.
Antoine, as he helped the stumbling youngster on his way, was thinking hard. Not of what he must do; on that score his mind was made up: he must get the boy out of it. But he was wondering how to get his consent, and that looked like being difficult. At his first words Jacques clung to his arm, sobbing, reminding him of his promise to say nothing, do nothing.
“But of course, old man; I’ve sworn it! I’ll do nothing you don’t want me to do. Only, listen. Do you want to go on like this, frittering your life away in idleness, with no one of your own kind to talk to, in these sordid surroundings? And to think that only this morning I imagined you were happy here!”
“But I am happy!” In a moment all he had complained of fled from his mind, and all he now was conscious of was the languid ease of his seclusion, the somnolent routine and absence of control, not to mention his isolation from the family.
“Happy? If you were, I’d be ashamed of you! No, Jacques, I can’t believe you really enjoy rotting away in that place. You’re degrading yourself, ruining your brains—and it’s been going on for far too long. I’ve promised you not to act without your consent; I’ll keep my word, don’t worry. But do think seriously about it; let’s look the facts squarely in the face, like two friends, you and I—for we’re friends now, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then? What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t want to go back to Paris.”
“Look here, Jacques, after the picture you’ve given me of your life here, family life couldn’t be worse.”
“Yes, it could!”
The bitterness in his voice stunned Antoine into silence, and he began to feel less sure of himself. “Damn it!” he muttered, vainly racking his brain for a solution. Time pressed, and he felt as if he were walking in pitch darkness. Then suddenly he saw light, he had hit on the solution! In a flash the whole plan was outlined in his head. He laughed.
“Jacques!” he cried. “Now listen to me and don’t interrupt. Or, rather, answer. Suppose we found ourselves, you and I, alone in the world, wouldn’t you like to come and live with me?”
At first the boy failed to understand what Antoine meant.
“But, Antoine,” he said at last, “what ever do you mean? There’s Papa… .”
Menacing, between them and the future, loomed their father’s figure. The same idea crossed the minds of both: how easy things would be if he …! Catching its reflection in his brother’s gaze, Antoine felt suddenly ashamed and averted his eyes.
“Of course,” Jacques was saying, “if I’d lived with you and only you, I’d have turned out quite different. I’d have worked well … I would work well; I might become, perhaps, a great poet.”
Antoine stopped him with a gesture. “Well, then, listen; if I gave you my word that no one except myself should have anything to do with you, would you agree to leave this place?”
“Ye-es,” Jacques murmured doubtfully. It was his craving for affection and his reluctance to offend his brother that led him to agree.
“But would you promise to let me plan out your life and studies, and keep an eye on you generally, just as if you were my son?”
“Yes.”
“Right!” For a while Antoine kept silent, thinking things out. His desires were always so imperative that he never questioned their feasibility, and indeed he had never failed so far in bringing off what he had set his heart on, definitely and doggedly. He turned to the youngster, smiling.
“It’s not a daydream, Jacques.” His tone was emphatic, though the smile did not leave his lips. “I know what I’m embarking on. Within a fortnight—do you hear?—within a fortnight it shall happen; take my word for it. Now, you’ve got to go back to your precious institution, looking as innocent as a lamb. Got it? And within two weeks, I swear it, you shall be free.”
Though he had hardly heard what his brother was saying, Jacques pressed against Antoine, seized by a sudden longing for affection; he would have liked to take him in his arms and hug him and to stay thus, unmoving, pressed to the comforting warmth of his big brother’s chest.
“You can depend on me,” Antoine repeated.
He, too, was feeling comforted and uplifted in his own esteem, rejoicing in a welcome sense of power. He compared his life with Jacques’s. “Poor devil,” he thought, “things are always happening to him that would never happen to anyone else!” He meant: “the sort of things that have never happened to me.” He pitied Jacques, but above all he felt a very keen joy at being the man he was, so levelheaded and so well equipped for happiness, for becoming a personality, a great doctor. He felt inclined to quicken his step, to whistle a gay tune. But Jacques seemed tired, and could make only slow progress. Anyhow, they were coming into Crouy.
“Trust me,” he murmured once again, tightening his pressure on Jacques’s arm.
M. Faîsme was smoking a cigar in front of the entrance-gate. No sooner did he catch sight of them than he came tripping along the road towards them.
“Hallo, my friends! Had a good time, eh? I don’t mind betting you’ve been to have a look at Compiègne.” Laughing out of sheer high
spirits, he waved his arms in the direction of the town. “You went along the towpath, didn’t you? Such a nice walk that is! Really, the country round here is charming, too charming for words!” He took out his watch. “I don’t want to hurry you, doctor, but if you don’t want to miss your train again …”
“I’m off,” Antoine said. There was emotion in his voice as he said quietly: “Au revoir, Jacques!”
Night was falling. Jacques had his back to the fading light, and Antoine dimly saw a young, submissive face and eyes gazing towards the dark horizon. Again he said:
“Au revoir!”
Arthur was waiting in the quadrangle. Jacques would have preferred to take leave of the superintendent politely, but M. Faîsme had turned his back on him. He was bolting the entrance-gate, as he did every evening. The dog was barking loudly and across the noise Jacques made out Arthur’s voice.
“Now then! Are you coming?”
He followed Arthur obediently.
He came back to his cell with a feeling of relief. Antoine’s chair was still there by the table, and his elder brother’s affection seemed still lingering round it. He put on his old suit. His body was tired, but his brain active. There seemed to be within him, beside the everyday Jacques, a second self, an immaterial being, new-born today, who watched the first self going about its tasks, and dominated it.
Somehow he found it impossible to sit still and he began pacing round and round the room. He was in the grip of a new and powerful emotion, which kept him on his feet, a vital force that thrust itself upon his consciousness. He went to the door and stood there, his forehead resting on the glass pane, his eyes fixed on the lamp in the deserted corridor. The stifling atmosphere from the hot pipes increased his fatigue. He was half asleep now. Suddenly on the far side of the glass a shadow loomed up. The double-locked door opened; Arthur was bringing his dinner.
“Come along, get a move on, you little Schwein!”
Before starting on the lentils, Jacques removed from the tray the slice of gruyere and the mug of wine and water.
“For me?” the young man asked. Smiling, he took the
piece of cheese and moved across to the wardrobe before starting to eat it, so as not to be visible from the door. It was the time when, before beginning his dinner, M. Faîsme made a round of inspection along the corridors. He always wore slippers and oftener than not his visits became known only after his departure, by the reek of cigar-smoke wafted through the grating.
Jacques ate what remained of his bread, dipping the pieces into the lentil juice. No sooner had he finished than Arthur called to him.
“Now, young man, turn in!”
“But it’s not eight yet.”
“Don’t you know it’s Sunday and the boys are waiting for me downtown? Get a move on!”
Without answering, Jacques began to undress. Arthur, his hands in his pockets, watched him. There was a touch of unexpected, almost feminine grace in the coarse face and stalwart, stocky figure of the fair-haired young man.
“That brother of yours,” he said with a knowing air, “he’s a bit of all right; a real gent he is!” Smiling, he made as if to slip a coin into his pocket, then took the empty tray and went out.
When he returned Jacques was in bed.
“Mighty quick you’ve been tonight.” The young man kicked Jacques’s shoes under the washstand. “Look here, can’t you tidy up your things a bit before turning in?” He came up to the bed. “Hear what I say, you little Schwein?” He pressed his hands on Jacques’s shoulders and gave a little laugh. The smile on the boy’s face grew more and more strained. “Quite sure you aren’t hiding anything between the sheets? No books? No candles?”
He slipped his hand between the sheets. But with a movement that Arthur could neither foresee nor forestall, the boy broke free and flung himself away, his back to the wall. His eyes were dark with hatred.
“Aha!” Arthur chuckled. “We’re very high and mighty tonight, ain’t we? … But I could tell some tales, too—and don’t you forget it!” He spoke in a low tone, keeping an eye on the door. Then, without paying any more attention to Jacques, he lit the oil-lamp that remained on all night, shut off the electric circuit with his master-key, and went out, whistling.
Jacques heard the key turn twice in the lock and then a sound of receding steps, rope-soled shoes padding away along the corridor. Then he rolled into the middle of the bed, stretched his limbs, and lay on his back. His teeth were chattering. He had lost heart, and when he recalled the events of the day and his confessions, he had an access of fury quickly followed by a mood of utter misery. Glimpses rose before him of Paris, of Antoine and his home, of quarrels and work and parental discipline. Yes, he had made an irremediable blunder, he had made himself over to his enemies! “But what do they want of me? Why can’t they leave me alone?” He began to cry. Despairingly he tried to console himself with the thought that Antoine’s fantastic idea would come to nothing, that M. Thibault would put his foot down. And now he saw his father as a deliverer. Yes, of course nothing would come of it, they would end by leaving him in peace, by letting him stay here, in this haven of repose, of lethargy and loneliness.
Above his head, on the ceiling, the light from the night-lamp flickered, flickered… .
Yes, here was peace, peace and happiness.
IV
ON THE ill-lit staircase Antoine met his father’s secretary, M. Chasle, coming down, slinking rat-like close along the wall. Seeing Antoine, he pulled up abruptly with a startled look.
“Ah, so it’s you?” He had picked up from his employer the trick of opening a conversation with this remark. Then he announced in a confidential whisper: “There’s bad news! The university group are backing the Dean of the Faculty of Letters for the vacant seat at the Institute; that’s fifteen votes lost at least; with those of the law members that makes twenty-five votes gone. Bad luck, isn’t it? Your father will tell you all about it.” He coughed. M. Chasle was always coughing, out of nervousness, but, believing himself to be a victim of chronic catarrh, sucked cough-lozenges all day. “I must fly now, or Mother will be getting anxious,” he went on, seeing that Antoine made no comment. He took out his watch, listened to it before looking at the time, turned up his collar, and went on down the stairs.
For seven years the little bespectacled man had been coming daily to work for M. Thibault, yet Antoine hardly knew him better now than on the first day. He spoke little, and always in. a low voice, and his conversation was a tissue of commonplaces, a thesaurus of catchwords. He was a creature of trivial habits and a model of punctuality, and he seemed to have a touching devotion for his mother, with whom he lived. His shoes always squeaked. His Christian name was Jules, but M. Thibault, mindful of his ‘own dignity, always addressed his secretary as “M. Chasle.” Antoine and Jacques had two nicknames for him: “Old Gumdrop” and the “Pest.”
Antoine went straight to his father’s study. He found him setting his papers in order before going to bed.
“Ah, so it’s you? Bad news!”
“I know,” Antoine said. “M. Chasle told me about it.”
With an irritated jerk of his head M. Thibault freed his chin from his collar; it always vexed him to find that what he was proposing to announce was known already. But just now Antoine was not inclined to pay attention to his father’s mood; his mind was full of the object of this interview, and he was unpleasantly conscious that a sort of paralysis was creeping over him. He decided for a frontal attack, before it was too late.
“I, too, have some bad news for you, I’m sorry to say. Jacques cannot stay at Crouy.” He took a deep breath, then went on at once: “I’ve just come back from there. I’ve seen him. I got him to talk frankly, and I’ve learned some abominable things. I want to talk to you about it. It’s up to you to get him out of the place as soon as possible.”
For some seconds M. Thibault did not move; his stupefaction was perceptible only in his voice.
“What’s that? You’ve been to Crouy? When? Why did you go there? You must be off your head. I insist on your explaining this conduct.”
Relieved though he was to have taken the obstacle in his first stride, Antoine was extremely ill at ease and incapable of speaking. There followed an oppressive silence. M. Thibault had opened his eyes; now they closed again slowly, reluctantly, it seemed. Then he sat down and set his fists on the desk.
“Explain yourself, my dear boy,” he said. He spoke each syllable with careful emphasis. “You say you have been to Crouy. When did you go?”
“Today.”
“With whom?”
“Alone.”
“Did they—let you in?”
“Naturally.”
“Did they let you see your brother?”
“I have spent the day with him. Alone with him.”
Antoine had a belligerent way of rapping out the last word of every phrase he spoke; it made M. Thibault angrier than ever, but also warned him to go warily with his son.
“You are a child no longer.” The way he said this gave the impression he had just inferred Antoine’s age from the sound of his voice. “You must understand the unsuitability of acting thus, behind my back. Had you any particular reason for going to Crouy without telling me? Did your brother write to you to come?”
“No. I had suddenly become anxious about him, that’s all.”
“Anxious? In what way?”
“About everything, about the whole system, about the effects of the life Jacques has been subjected to for nine months.”
“Really, my dear fellow, you—you surprise me.” He hesitated. The measured terms he was deliberately employing were belied by the large, tightly clenched hands and the furious way he jerked his head forward at each pause. “This mistrust of your father is …”
“Anybody can make mistakes,” Antoine broke in. “And I can prove what I say.”
“Prove it?”
“Listen, Father, it’s no use losing your temper. I suppose we both desire the same thing—Jacques’s welfare. When you know the state of moral decay I found him in, I’m sure you will be the first to decide that he must leave t
he reformatory at the earliest possible moment.”
“That I will not!”
Antoine tried not to hear the sneering laugh which accompanied the remark.
“You will, Father.”
“I tell you I will not!”
“Father, when you’ve heard …”
“Do you, by any chance, take me for a fool? Do you suppose I’ve had to wait for you to go and look round Crouy to learn how things are done there? I’d have you know that for over ten years I’ve been making a thorough inspection of the place every month and followed it up by a written report. No new step is taken there without being first discussed by the committee whose president I am. Now are you satisfied?”
“Father, what I saw there …”
“That’s enough. Your brother may have poisoned your mind with all the lies he pleases; you’re easy game. But you’ll find I’m not so easy to hoodwink.”
“Jacques didn’t breathe a word of complaint.”
M. Thibault seemed thunderstruck.
“Then, why on earth …?” he asked, raising his voice a little.
“Quite the contrary,” Antoine continued, “and that’s the alarming thing. He told me he didn’t worry; in fact he said he was happy, that he likes being there.” Provoked by his father’s chuckle of self-satisfaction, Antoine added in a cutting tone: “The poor boy has such memories of family life that even prison life strikes him as more agreeable.”
The insult missed its mark.
“Very well,” M. Thibault retorted, “then everything’s as it should be; we’re at one on that. What more do you want?”
As he was feeling less sure now of Jacque’s release, Antoine judged it wiser not to repeat to M. Thibault all the boy had told him. He resolved to keep to generalities and withhold his detailed complaints.
The Thibaults Page 17