“I’m going to tell you the whole truth,” he began, gazing intently at his father. “I admit that I’d suspected ill-treatment, privation, solitary confinement, and so forth. Now I know. Happily there is nothing of that sort at Crouy. Jacques is not suffering physically, I grant, but in his mind, his morals—and that’s far worse. You’re being deceived when they tell you that isolation is doing him good. The remedy is far more dangerous than the disease. His days are passed in the most degrading sloth. As for his tutor, the less said the better; the truth is that Jacques does no work, and it’s already obvious that his brain is growing incapable of the least effort. To prolong the treatment, believe me, will be to compromise his future irreparably. He is sinking into such a state of indifference to everything, and his mental flabbiness is such, that in another month or two he’ll be too far gone, it will be too late to bring him back to mental health.”
Antoine’s eyes had never left his father’s face as he was speaking. He seemed to be concentrating the utmost impact of his gaze on the stolid face, trying to force from it some gleam of acquiescence. M. Thibault, withdrawn into himself, preserved a massive immobility; he brought to mind one of those pachyderms whose strength remains hidden so long as they are at-rest, and he had the elephant’s large, flat ears and, now and then, his cunning eye. Antoine’s harangue had reassured him. There had been some incipient scandals at the reformatory, certain attendants had had to be dismissed without the reasons for their departure being bruited abroad, and M. Thibault had for a moment feared that Antoine’s revelations were of this order. Now he breathed freely again.
“Do you think that’s news to me, my dear boy?” he asked with an air of jocular good humour. “All you’ve been saying does credit to your kindness of heart; but permit me to say that these questions of reformatory treatment are extremely complex, and in this field one does not become an expert overnight. Trust my experience, and the opinions of those who are versed in these subjects. You talk of your brother’s—what do you call it?—’mental flabbiness.’ But that’s all to the good. You know what Jacques was like. Don’t you realize that is the only way to crush out such evil propensities as his—by breaking down his will? For by gradually weakening the will-power of a depraved boy, you sap his evil instincts and, in the end, eradicate them. Now, consider the facts. Isn’t your brother completely changed? His fits of rage have ceased; he’s disciplined, polite to all who come in contact with him. You yourself admit that he has come to like the order and routine of his new life. Well, really, shouldn’t we be proud of getting such good results within less than a year?”
He was teasing out the tip of his beard between his puffy fingers as he spoke; when he had finished, he-cast a side-glance at his son. That booming voice and majestic delivery lent an appearance of force to his least words, and Antoine was so accustomed to letting himself be impressed by his father that in his heart he weakened. But now his pride led M. Thibault to commit a blunder.
“Now that I come to think of it,” he said, “I wonder why I’m taking so much trouble to defend the propriety of a step which is not being, and will not be, reconsidered. I’m doing what I consider I ought to do, after taking careful thought, and I do not have to render an account to anyone. Get that into your head, my boy!”
Antoine made a gesture of indignation.
“That’s not the way to silence me, Father! I tell you once more, Jacques must not remain at Crouy.”
M. Thibault again emitted a harsh, sarcastic laugh. Antoine made an effort to keep his self-control.
“No, Father, it would be a crime to leave Jacques there. There are sterling qualities in him which must not be allowed to run to seed. And, let me tell you, Father, you’ve often been mistaken about his character; he irritates you and you don’t see his …”
“What don’t I see? It’s only since he’s gone that we’ve had any peace at home. Isn’t that true? Very well, when he’s reformed, we shall see about having him back. Not before!” His fist rose as if he were about to bring it down upon the table with a crash, but he merely opened his hand and laid his palm flat on the desk. His wrath was still smouldering. Antoine made no effort to restrain his own.
“I tell you, Father,” he shouted, “Jacques shall not stay at Crouy! I’ll see to that!”
“Really now!” M. Thibault sounded frankly amused. “Really! Aren’t you, perhaps, a little inclined to forget that you’re not the master here?”
“No, I’m not forgetting it. That’s why I ask you—what you intend to do.”
“To do?” M. Thibault repeated the words slowly, with a frosty smile. For a moment his eyebrows lifted. “There’s no doubt about what I mean to do: to give M. Faîsme a good dressing-down for admitting you without my authorization, and to forbid you ever again to set foot in Crouy.”
Antoine folded his arms.
“So that’s all they mean,” he said, “your pamphlets, your speeches, all your noble sentiments. They come in handy for public meetings, but when a boy’s mind is being wrecked, your own son’s mind, it’s all the same to you. All you want is a quiet life at home, with no worries— and to hell with all the rest!”
“You young ruffian!” M. Thibault shouted, rising to his feet. “Yes. I’d seen it coming. I’ve known for quite a while what to expect of you. Yes, I’ve noticed them—the remarks you sometimes let fall at table and the books you read, your favourite newspapers. I’ve seen your slackness in performing your religious duties. One thing leads to another; when religious principles go, moral anarchy sets in and, finally, rebellion against all proper authority.”
Antoine made a contemptuous gesture.
“Don’t let’s confuse the issues. We’re talking about the boy, and it’s urgent. Father, promise me that Jacques …”
“I forbid you to speak to me again about him. Not another word. Now have I made myself clear enough?”
Their eyes met, challenging.
“So that’s your last word, is it?”
“Get out!”
“Ah, Father, you don’t know me!” There was defiance in Antoine’s laugh. “I swear to you I’ll get Jacques out of that damned jail! And that I’ll stop at nothing!”
A bulky, menacing form, M. Thibault advanced towards his son, his under-jaw protruding.
“Get out!”
Antoine had opened the door. Turning on the threshold, he faced his father and said in a low, resolute tone:
“At nothing, do you hear? Even if I have to start a campaign, a new one, in my ‘favourite newspapers’!”
V
EARLY next morning, after a sleepless night, Antoine was waiting in a vestry of the Archbishop’s Palace for the Abbé Vécard to finish his mass. It was essential that the priest should know the whole story, and somehow intervene; that was now Jacques’s only chance.
The interview lasted for a long time. The Abbé had had the young man sit beside him, as if for a confession, and listened meditatively to him, in his favourite position, leaning well back in his chair, with his head slightly drooping to the left. He let Antoine have his say without interrupting him. The long-nosed, sallow face was almost expressionless, but now and again he cast a gentle, searching look on his companion, a look that conveyed his wish to read the thoughts behind the spoken words. Though he had seen less of Antoine than of the other members of the Thibault family, he had always treated him with particular esteem; what just now gave a certain piquancy to this attitude was that it was largely due to M. Thibault himself, whose vanity was always agreeably tickled by Antoine’s successes, and who was fond of singing his son’s praises.
Antoine did not try to win over the Abbé by dint of argument, but gave him an unvarnished account of the day he had spent at Crouy, ending by the scene with his father. For that the Abbé reproved him, not by words but by a deprecating flutter of his hands, which he had a way of holding level with his chest. They were the typical priest’s hands, tapering smoothly away from round, plump wrists and capable of manifesting sudde
n animation without moving from where they were; it was as though nature had accorded them the faculty of expression which she had denied the Abbé’s face.
“Jacques’s fate is now in your hands, M. l’Abbé,” Antoine concluded. “You alone can make Father listen to reason.”
The priest did not answer, and the gaze he now gave Antoine was so aloof and sombre that the young man could draw no conclusion from it. It brought home to him his own powerlessness and the appalling difficulties of the task he had undertaken.
“And afterwards?” the Abbé softly questioned.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Supposing your father brings Jacques back to Paris, what will he do with him afterwards?”
Antoine felt embarrassed. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, but wondered how to put it, for he had the gravest doubts as to whether he could get the Abbé to approve of his plan, involving as it did Jacques’s quitting his father’s flat and coming to live with his brother on the ground floor of the same building. And dare he tell the priest that he meant to remove the boy almost entirely from parental authority, to take on himself alone the supervision of Jacques’s education, indeed the entire control of his brother’s life? When he explained this to the priest, the latter smiled, but the smile was perfectly good-humoured.
“You’d be taking on a heavy task, my friend.”
“No matter!” Antoine replied impetuously. “You know I’m absolutely convinced that what the boy needs is plenty of freedom, that he’ll never develop in an atmosphere of repression. You may laugh at me, sir, but I’m positive that if I took entire responsibility for him …”
But he could get nothing more out of the Abbé than another shrug of the shoulders, followed by one of his shrewd, searching glances, that seemed to come from very far away and sink so deep. He felt profoundly disheartened when he left the Abbé. After the furious rebuff from his father, the priest’s unenthusiastic reception of his scheme had left him scarcely any hope. He would have been much surprised to learn that the Abbé had resolved to go to see M. Thibault that very day.
He did not need to take that trouble. When he returned, as he did every day after mass, to drink his cup of cold milk in the flat, a few steps from the Archbishop’s Palace, where he lived with his sister, he found M. Thibault waiting for him in the dining-room. The big, thick-set man, sunk in a chair with his large hands resting on his legs, was still nursing his resentment. At the Abbé’s entrance he rose heavily from the chair.
“So here you are?” he murmured. “I suppose my visit is a surprise to you?”
“Not so much as you suppose,” the Abbé answered. Now and again the ghost of a smile and a gleam of mischievous humour lit up the impassive face. “I have an excellent detective service and there’s little I’m not informed of. But will you excuse me?” he added, going towards the mug of milk awaiting him on the table.
“What’s that? Do you mean you’ve seen …?”
The Abbé drank his milk in little sips.
“I learned how Astier was, yesterday morning, from the Duchess. But it was only last night that I heard of the withdrawal of your competitor.”
“Astier? Do you mean …? I don’t follow. I’ve not been told anything… .”
“Well, now, that’s amazing!” the Abbé smiled. “Is the pleasure of breaking the good news to you to be my privilege?” He took his time. “Well, then, old Astier’s had a fourth stroke; this time the poor man’s doomed, and so the Dean, who’s no fool, is withdrawing, leaving you as the only candidate for election to the vacant seat at the Institute of Moral Science.”
“What!” M. Thibault exclaimed. “The Dean’s withdrawing! But why? I don’t follow.”
“Because, on second thought, he realizes that the post of Registrar would be more suitable for a Dean of the Faculty of Letters, and also because he’d rather wait a few weeks for a seat that isn’t contested than risk his chance against you.”
“Are you quite sure of it?”
“It’s official. I met the permanent secretary at the gathering of the Catholic Association yesterday evening. The Dean had just called in, and he had his letter of withdrawal with him. A candidature that lasted les-° than twenty-four hours—that’s rather unusual, isn’t it?”
“But, in that case …!” M. Thibault panted. His surprise and delight had taken his breath away. He moved a few steps forward, without looking where he was going, his hands behind his back; then, turning to the priest, he all but embraced him. Actually he only clasped his hands.
“Ah, my dear Abbé, I shall never forget. Thank you; Thank you.”
Again delight submerged him, leaving no room for any other feelings, sweeping away his anger; so much so that he had to exercise his memory when the Abbé—having without his noticing it led him to the study—asked in a perfectly natural tone:
“And what can have brought you here so early, my dear friend?”
Then he remembered Antoine, and at once his anger mastered him again. He had come, so he explained, to ask the Abbé’s advice as to the attitude he should adopt towards his elder son, who had much changed lately, changed for the worse, towards a mood of unbelief and insubordination. Was he, for instance, conforming with his religious obligations? Did he go to mass? He was growing more and more erratic in his attendance at the family table—giving his patients as an excuse—and, when he did put in an appearance, behaved in a new and disagreeable manner. He contradicted his father and indulged in unthinkable liberties of speech. At the time of the recent municipal elections, the discussion had several times taken so bitter a turn that it had been necessary to tell him to hold his tongue, as if he were a small boy. In short, if Antoine was to be kept in the way he should go, some new line would have to be taken with him; in this respect M. Thibault felt that the assistance and perhaps the active intervention of his good friend the Abbé were indispensable. As an illustration, M. Thibault described the undutiful conduct of which Antoine had been guilty in going to Crouy, the foolish notions he had brought back with him, and the shocking scene that had followed. Yet all the time, the esteem in which he held Antoine and which, without his knowing it, was actually enhanced by the very acts of insubordination with which he was now reproaching him, was always evident; and the Abbé duly noted it.
Sitting listless at his desk, the priest from time to time signified his approval with little fluttering movements of his fingers on each side of the clerical bands that fell across his chest. Only when Jacques’s name was mentioned did he raise his head and show signs of extreme interest. By a series of skilful, seemingly disconnected questions, he obtained confirmation from the father of all he had been told by the son.
“But really!” he exclaimed vaguely. He seemed to be talking to himself. He meditated for a few moments. M. Thibault waited, in some surprise. When the Abbé spoke again his voice was firm.
“What you tell me about Antoine’s behaviour doesn’t worry me as much as it does you, my friend. It was to be expected. The first effect of scientific studies on an inquiring and active mind is always to puff up a young man in his own conceit and cause his faith to waver. A little knowledge leads a man away from God; a great deal brings him back again. Don’t be alarmed. Antoine’s at the age when a man rushes from one extreme to another. You did well to tell me about it. I’ll make a point of seeing him and talking to him oftener. None of that is very serious. Only have patience, and he’ll come back to the fold.
“But what you tell me about Jacques’s present life makes me feel far more anxious. I had no idea that his seclusion was of so extreme a nature. Why, the life he’s leading is that of a convict, and I cannot but believe it has its perils. In fact, my dear friend, I confess I’m very worried about it. Have you given the matter your earnest consideration?”
M. Thibault smiled. “In all honesty, my dear Abbé, I can say to you as I said yesterday to Antoine: don’t you realize that we are far better equipped than the common run for dealing with such problems?”
/> “I don’t deny it,” the priest agreed good-humouredly. “But the boys you usually have to deal with don’t need the special handling that your younger son’s peculiar temperament calls for. In any case, I gather, they are treated on a different system, they live together, have recreation hours in common, and are employed on manual work. I was, as you will remember, in favour of inflicting on Jacques a severe punishment, and I believed that a taste of somewhat prison-like surroundings might lead him to reflect and mend his ways. But, good heavens, I never dreamt of its being a real imprisonment; least of all that it would be inflicted on him for so long a period. Just think of it! A boy of scarcely fifteen has been kept alone in a cell for eight months under the supervision of an uneducated guard, as to whose probity of character you have only the assurances of the local officials. He has a few lessons—but what do you really know about this tutor from Compiègne who, in any case, devotes a mere three or four hours a week to teaching the boy? I repeat, what do you really know about him? Then again, one of the points you made was your experience. There let me remind you that I’ve lived amongst schoolboys for twelve years, that I’m far from ignorant of what a boy of fifteen is like. The state of physical and, worse, of moral decay into which this poor child may have fallen, without its being apparent to you—it makes one shudder!”
“Well, well!” M. Thibault exclaimed. “I’m surprised at that from you. I wouldn’t have thought you so sentimentally minded,” he added with a brief, ironic laugh. “But we aren’t concerned with Jacques at present.”
“Excuse me,” the Abbé broke in, without raising his voice, “Jacques is our first concern just now. After what I’ve just learned, I consider that the physical and moral health of this child is being exposed to terrible risks.” After seeming to ponder, he added with slow emphasis: “And he should not remain one day longer where he is.”
The Thibaults Page 18