He stood the two portraits on the mantelpiece, amongst his specimens of stones and fossils.
The room was rapidly undergoing a complete transformation. Th miscellaneous objects and papers littering his desk had still to be ax ranged. He set about it with a will and, when everything was in place, surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction. As for my clothes and linen, he decided lazily, that’s old Mother Friihling’s affair. To make his escape from Mademoiselle’s leading-strings still more complete, he had arranged for the concierge to do all the work in the ground-floor flat, without help or interference from above. Lighting a cigarette, he settled luxuriously into one of the leather arm-chairs. It was seldom he had a whole evening to himself like this, without anything definite to do, and he was feeling rather lost. It was too early to go to bed and he wondered what to do with himself. Should he stay where he was, smoking cigarettes, thinking of anything, or nothing? Of course he had letters to write but—no, he didn’t feel like letter-writing.
I know, he suddenly thought, rising from the chair and going to the bookcase. I meant to look up what Hemon says about infantile diabetes. Setting the fat, paper-bound volume on his knee, he began glancing through its pages. Yes, I ought to have known that; it’s obvious. A frown had settled on his face. Yes, I was completely mistaken; if it hadn’t been for Philip that poor child would be done for, and it would be my fault. Well, not exactly my fault. Still … He closed the book and slammed it onto the table. Curious how stiff, almost cutting, the chief can be on such occasions. Of course he’s awfully vain, likes to act impressive. “My poor good Thibault,” that’s what he said. “My poor good Thibault, the diet you prescribed was bound to make the child get worse.” Yes, he said that in front of the nurses and students; a nasty slap in the eye!
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took a few steps in the room. I really ought to have answered him back. I should have said: “For one thing, if you did your own duty …” Just that. He’d have said: “M. Thibault, on that score I do not see how anyone …” Then I’d have driven home my point. “Excuse me, Chief. If you came to the hospital punctually in the morning, and if you stayed until the end of the consultation hour, instead of dashing off at half-past eleven to visit your paying patients, I wouldn’t have to do your work for you, and I wouldn’t run the risk of making blunders.” Yes! In front of them all! What a sensation! Of course he’d have been sick to death with me for a couple of weeks or so—but what the devil would that matter? Who cares?
A vindictive expression had suddenly come over his face. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he began absent-mindedly winding up the clock. He shivered, put on his coat again, and went back to his chair. His cheerfulness of a short while back had evaporated and he felt a sudden chill at his heart. The damned fool! His lips twisted in a rancorous grin. Crossing his legs impatiently, he lit another cigarette. But even as he murmured: “Damned fool!” he had been thinking of the sureness of eye, the experience, the amazing intuition of Dr. Philip, and at that moment the genius of his chief seemed to him something almost superhuman.
What about me? he thought, and a vague distress seemed to grip his throat. Shall I ever get to understand things in a flash, as he does? Shall I ever have that almost infallible perspicacity which is what really makes the great physician? Shall I? Of course I’ve a good memory, I’m hard-working, persevering. But those are virtues of the underling. Have I anything more in me? It’s not the first time I’ve boggled over an easy diagnosis—yes, there’s no getting over that, it was simplicity itself, a “classical” case, with all the obvious symptoms. Suddenly he flung his arms up. Yes, it’s going to be a hard struggle. I’ve got to work, pile up knowledge day by day. But then his face grew pale. He had remembered Jacques was coming next day. Tomorrow evening, he thought, Jacques will be in the room over there, and I …
He had jumped up. And now the project he had formed of living with his brother appeared to him in its true light, as the most irreparable of follies! He was no longer thinking of the responsibility he had undertaken, he was thinking only of the handicap that was bound from now on, whatever he might do, to retard his progress. What a fool he had been! It was he himself who had hung this millstone round his own neck. And now there was no escape.
He crossed the hall unthinkingly, opened the door of the room that had been prepared for Jacques, and stood on the threshold, unmoving, peering into the darkness. He felt profoundly discouraged. “Damn it!” he said aloud. “Is there no way of escape, no place where one can have some peace? Where one could work, and have only oneself to think about? Here one has to give in all the time—to the family, to friends, and now to Jacques! They all conspire to prevent me from working, to make a mess of my life!” The blood had gone to his head; his throat was parched. He ran to the kitchen, drank two glasses of cold water, and returned to his study.
In a mood of black depression he began to undress. All in this room, in which he had not yet got used to his surroundings, in which familiar objects seemed different from their former selves—everything in the room suddenly seemed hostile.
He took an hour to go to bed, and longer still to fall asleep. He was not accustomed to have the noises of the street so near; each passing footfall made him start. His mind was obsessed with trifles; he remembered the trouble he had had in finding a cab, coming home the other night from an evening at Philip’s place. And from time to time the thought of Jacques’s return came back with harrowing intensity, and he started tossing this side and that in nervous exasperation.
Furiously he adjured himself: I’ve my own way to make, blast it! Let them look after themselves! I shall let him live here, now that it’s all fixed up, and I’ll see he does the work he has to do. But there it ends. I’ve promised to look after him, and that’s all. It must not stand in the way of my career. My career! That’s the big thing!
Of his affection for the boy not a trace remained that night. Antoine recalled his visit to Crouy. He pictured his brother as he then had seen him: emaciated, with the pale cast of loneliness. Quite possibly, it struck him now, the boy was consumptive. In that case he would persuade his father to pack off Jacques to a good sanatorium, to Auvergne, to the Pyrenees, or, better still, to Switzerland; then he, Antoine, would be alone, his own master, free to work just as he pleased. He even caught himself thinking: I’d take his room and use it as my bedroom.
VIII
ANTOINE woke up in an entirely different mood. In the course of the morning, at the hospital, he frequently consulted his watch with cheerful impatience, all eagerness to go and take over his brother from the hands of M. Faisme. He was at the station long before the train was due and, while he walked up and down the platform, busied himself memorizing what he intended to say to M. Faisme about the Foundation. But when the train came in and he saw Jacques’s form and the superintendent’s glasses amidst the press of passengers, he completely forgot the home-truths he had intended to rub in.
M. Faisme was all smiles, very spick and span, and accosted Antoine as if he were a bosom friend. He wore light-coloured gloves, and his yellow face, close-shaved to an immaculate smoothness, gave the impression of having been liberally powdered. He seemed little disposed to part company with the brothers and urged them to a cafe terrace for a drink. Only by promptly hailing a taxi did Antoine manage to escape. M. Faisme himself lifted Jacques’s bag onto the seat, and when the cab moved off, at the risk of having the toes of his patent-leather shoes run over, he thrust his head in through the window and effusively clasped the brothers’ hands, bidding Antoine meanwhile convey his profound respects to the eminent Founder.
Jacques was crying.
He had not yet said a word, or made the least response to his brother’s cordial welcome. But the state of prostration the boy was evidently in increased Antoine’s pity and the new gentleness stirring in his heart. Had anyone ventured to remind him of his rageful feelings of the previous night, he would have disclaimed them indignantly and affirmed in perfect good faith
that he had never ceased to feel that the boy’s return would give at last a point and purpose to his life, so lamentably empty and futile hitherto.
When he had led his brother into their flat and closed the door behind them, he was as pleasantly elated as a young lover doing the honours of the home he has prepared for her to his first mistress. Indeed that very idea flashed through his mind and made him laugh; perhaps he was being ridiculous, but he was feeling far too cheerful to mind that. And though in vain he tried to catch some gleam of satisfaction on his brother’s face, he never doubted for a moment that he was going to make a success of the task he had undertaken.
Jacques’s room had been visited at the last moment by Mademoiselle; she had lit the fire to give it a cosier air and placed well to the fore a plateful of the almond cakes dusted with vanilla sugar for which Jacques had had a special fondness in the past. On the bedside table, in a glass, was a little bunch of violets with a streamer cut out of paper attached to it, on which Gisèle had written in chalk of various colours: “For Jacquot.”
But Jacques paid no heed to any of these preparations. Almost the moment he entered, while Antoine was taking off his coat, he had sat down near the door, holding his hat.
“Come along, Jacques, and have a look round our estate!” Antoine called out.
The boy went up to him lethargically, cast a listless glance into the other room, and went back to his seat. He seemed to be waiting for, and afraid of, something.
“What do you say to going up and seeing ‘them’ now?” Antoine suggested. And he guessed from Jacques’s shiver that, with all his dread of the impending encounter, he would rather get it over as soon as possible.
“Yes? Well, let’s go at once. We’ll only stay a minute or two,” Antoine added, to give him courage.
M. Thibault was waiting for them in his study. He was in a good humour. The sky was cloudless and spring was in the air. Moreover, that morning when he had gone to mass at the parish church, sitting in his special pew, he had had the pleasure of reminding himself that on the next Sunday there would doubtless be, sitting in that same seat, a new and eminent member of the Institute. He went up to his sons, and kissed the younger. Jacques was sobbing. M. Thibault saw in his tears proof of his remorse and good resolutions; he was more moved than he cared to show. He had the boy sit in one of the high-backed chairs on each side of the fireplace, and stalking up and down the room, his hands behind his back, puffing and blowing as was his wont, he pronounced a brief homily, affectionate yet firm, recalling the terms on which Jacques had been given the privilege of coming home again to his father’s house, and bidding him show Antoine as much deference and obedience as if Antoine were his father.
An unexpected caller cut short the peroration; it was a future colleague, and M. Thibault, eager not to keep him cooling his heels in the drawing-room, dismissed his sons. Nevertheless he escorted them up to his study door and, as with one hand he drew back the curtain, placed the other on the head of the repentant boy. Jacques felt his father’s hand stroking his hair and patting his neck with an indulgence so unwonted that he could not restrain his emotion and, turning, seized the thick, flabby hand to raise it to his lips. Taken by surprise, M. Thibault opened a displeased eye, and withdrew his hand with a feeling of embarrassment.
“Tch! Tch!” he muttered gruffly, jerking his neck clear of the collar several times. Jacques’s sentimentality seemed to him to augur no good.
They found Mademoiselle dressing Gisèle for vespers. When Mademoiselle, instead of the little imp of mischief she was expecting, saw a tall, pale youth with haggard eyes enter the room, she wrung her hands alarmedly and the ribbon she was tying in the little girl’s hair slipped from her fingers. Such was her consternation that it was some little time before she could bring herself to kiss him.
“Bless and save us, Jacques! Is it really you?” was all she managed to say; then flung her arms around him. After hugging him to her bosom, she stepped back to have another look at him, but, though her shining eyes lingered on every feature, they could find no semblance of her dear youngster’s face.
Gise was still more startled by the change, and feeling so shy that she kept her eyes fixed on the carpet, she had to bite her lip to restrain herself from bursting into laughter. And Jacques’s first smile of the day was for her.
“So you don’t recognize me, Gise!” He went up to her and, now that the ice was broken, she threw herself into his arms and then began skipping round him like a young lamb, still clinging to his hand. But she dared not talk to him as yet, not even ask if he had seen her flowers.
They all went down together. Gisèle had not let go Jacques’s hand and was nestling against him with the innocent sensuality of a young animal. At the foot of the staircase they parted hands, but in the portico as she was going out she blew him, through the glass door, a big kiss with both hands; he did not see it.
Now they were alone in their new home, Antoine’s first glance at Jacques told him a weight had been lifted from the boy’s mind by this meeting with the members of the family, and that he was already feeling better.
“You know, I think we’ll do very well here, you and I. Nice little flat, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, sit down, Jacques, and make yourself at home. Try that chair over there, it’s very comfortable, and tell me what you think of it. Now I’ll make some tea. I suppose you’re hungry? Go and choose us some cakes at the pastrycook’s.”
“Thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“But I am!” Nothing could repress Antoine’s geniality. After a laborious, solitary youth, Antoine was now experiencing for the first time the pleasure of loving and protecting someone, sharing his life with another. And for the sheer joy of it he was laughing, carried away by an exhilaration that was making him expansive as he had never been before.
“Have a cigarette then. No? You keep on looking at me… . Don’t you smoke? You keep on looking at me, I was going to say, as if I was laying a trap for you. Look here, Jacques, let yourself go a bit. Have a little confidence, damn it! You’re not in the reformatory now. Can’t you trust me even now?”
“Of course I trust you.”
“Well, then, what is it? Are you afraid I’ve let you down, that I’ve got you back on false pretences and you’re not as free as you expected?”
“N-no.”
“Then what’s worrying you? Are you missing anything?”
“No.”
“Then what is it? What’s going on behind that stubborn-looking forehead of yours? Out with it!” He went up to the boy, on the point of bending over him, giving him a brotherly kiss, but he refrained. Jacques looked up at his brother with forlorn, hopeless eyes; he realized an answer was expected of him.
“Why do you ask me all those questions?” He shuddered slightly, then added in a very low voice: “What difference can it make?”
There was a short silence. Antoine was gazing at his brother, and there was such affectionate compassion in his eyes that once more Jacques felt inclined to cry.
“Yes, Jacques, just now you’re like a sick man.” All the gaiety had left Antoine’s voice. “But, never fear, you’ll get over it. Only let yourself be looked after—and loved!” he added shyly, without looking at the boy. “We don’t yet know one another well. Just think, nine years between us—it was a regular abyss as long as you were a child. You were eleven when I was twenty; we couldn’t have anything in common. But now it’s very different… . No, I couldn’t say if I had any affection for you in those days. I didn’t ever think about it. You see I’m being quite frank with you. But now—well, all that, too, is changed. I’m delighted—yes, damn it—I’m thrilled to have you here with me. Life will be more pleasant, better in many ways, now that there are two of us. Don’t you think so? For instance, when I’m coming back from the hospital, I’m sure to hurry now, so as to get home quickly. And I’ll find you here, sitting at your desk, after a strenuous day’s work. Shan’t I? And in the evening
we’ll come down from dinner early, and each will settle down in his own study, under a lamp; but we’ll leave the doors open so as to see each other and ^eel we are together. Or else, some nights, we’ll have a good talk, like two old friends, and it’ll be an effort to drag ourselves to bed. What’s up? Why are you crying?”
He went up to Jacques, sat on the arm of his chair, and after a brief hesitation took his hand. Jacques turned away his tearful face, but returned the pressure of Antoine’s hand, and for some moments clung to it feverishly with all his might.
“Oh, Antoine!” The cry seemed choking in his throat. “If you only knew all that’s happened inside me, in the last year!”
He was sobbing so violently that Antoine did not dream of putting any further questions. Placing his arm round Jacques’s shoulders, he pressed the boy tenderly to him. Once before, on that evening when in the darkness of the cab the barriers between them had fallen, he had experienced that thrill of vast compassion, that sensation of a sudden access of strength and will-power’—the feeling that he alone must supply the vital force for both of them. And very often since, an idea had hovered in the background of his mind, an idea which now was taking clear and definite form. Rising, he began to pace the room.
“Listen!” he began. His voice had an unusual intensity of feeling. “I don’t know why I’m speaking to you of this so soon, on our first day. Anyhow, we’ve plenty of time to return to it. Well, this is what I’ve been thinking—you and I are brothers. That doesn’t sound much of a discovery, does it? And yet the idea is a new one, for me, and one that deeply moves me. We’re brothers! Not merely of the same blood, but springing from the same origins since the beginning of time, from the same germ-cells, the same vital impulse. We’re not just any two young men, named Antoine and Jacques; we’re two Thibaults, we are the Thibaults. Do you see what I mean? And what’s so alarming in a way is that we both have in us that same vital impulse, that special Thibault temperament. Do you see? For we Thibaults are somehow different from the rest of mankind. I rather suspect we have something in us that others haven’t got; just because we are Thibaults. Personally, wherever I’ve been, in college, medical school, or hospital, I’ve felt myself a man apart; I hardly like to say ‘superior to the others’—though, after all, why shouldn’t I? Yes, we are superior, we’re equipped with an energy others don’t possess. What’s your opinion? Don’t you agree? I know that you passed for a bit of a duffer at school, but didn’t you feel it there, too, that ‘urge’ as they call it, which somehow gave you more—more driving force than the other boys?”
The Thibaults Page 22