The Thibaults

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The Thibaults Page 34

by Roger Martin Du Gard


  Daniel left Paule and, lighting a cigarette, strolled round the bar, greeting his friends; then he returned and settled down in the further room. Ludwigson and Ma Juju had their backs to him, but he was directly opposite Rinette, though the full width of the room lay between them. A breezy conversation had sprung up all at once around the glasses of Asti. Rinette was smiling at Ludwigson’s sallies; leaning towards her, he made no secret of his admiration and spared no pains to please her. When she saw Daniel watching she put on an even gayer air.

  The two rooms adjoined, and dancing couples kept coming and going through the opening between them. A little rosy-cheeked “professional,” who might have stepped out of a Lawrence canvas, had perched herself on the first step of the tiny white staircase behind the bar, and, with both hands on the banisters and standing on one leg, she swung the other to and fro in time with the music, and yelled, her face uptilted, a meaningless refrain that everyone that summer knew by heart:

  “Timmyloo, lammylod, pan, pan, timmylahl”

  Daniel, a cigarette between his lips, rested his head on his hands; his eyes were riveted on Rinette. He had ceased smiling; his features had grown rigid, his lips pinched. “Where have I seen him before?” the girl asked herself. She laughed over-noisily, studiously evading Daniel’s gaze. But evasion grew more and more difficult; oftener and oftener, like a lark lured towards a mirror, she found her attention caught and held by his unswerving eyes. Shadowed yet clear, they seemed precisely focused on a point in space far beyond Rinette; keen, burning eyes and never faltering; twin magnets from whose pull she managed to break free each time, but each time found it harder.

  Suddenly Daniel felt something moving almost at his side. Such was the tension of his nerves that he could not help starting. It was the little orphan who had gone to sleep on the settle, curled up in Dolores’s silky mantle, one finger near his mouth, and eyelashes still moist with half-dried tears.

  The band had ceased playing while the violinist went his round in quest of tips. When he came to Daniel the latter slipped a banknote under the napkin.

  “The next boston—make it last a quarter of an hour, non-stop,” he whispered. The musician’s dusky eyelashes fluttered in assent.

  Daniel felt that Rinette was watching him and, raising his eyes, he took possession of her gaze. And now he knew that it was in his thrall; once or twice—to amuse himself—he played at cat-and-mouse, pouncing on it and letting it go, to test his power. And then … he let it go no more.

  Ludwigson, greatly smitten, waxed more and more insistent in his wooing, while the attention Rinette paid him grew more and more perfunctory and vacillating. When the violin struck up another waltz, from the first touch of the bow upon the strings, she knew by the thrill his tense features gave her that things were coming to a head. Yes, there was Daniel getting up! Coolly, with eyes fixed on his prey, he crossed the room, came straight up to her. It flashed across him that he was risking his post with Ludwigson and the thought was like a rowel to his passion. Rinette watched him come, and in her glassy stare there was something so abnormal that Ludwigson and Ma Juju both swung round at once. Ludwigson, imagining that Daniel meant to greet him, made a tentative gesture in his direction. But Daniel did not seem even to know him. As he leaned forward his look bored into the girl’s sea-green eyes, bright with mingled terror and consent. Subdued, she rose. Without a word he slipped his arm around her, drew her close, and disappeared with her into the further room where the band was playing.

  For a second or two Ludwigson and Ma Juju sat in stony silence, blankly staring at their retreating backs. Then their eyes met.

  “Well, of all the damned cheek …!” Ma Juju could heardly speak and her double chin quivered with fury.

  Ludwigson’s eyebrows lifted, but he did not answer. He was naturally so pale that he could not grow paler. The nails of his huge fingers glowed darkly like cornelians as he reached for his glass and raised the Asti to his lips.

  Ma Juju was panting like a winded sprinter. “Anyhow,” she ventured, with the dry chuckle of a woman getting her revenge, “that means the sack for the young scallawag, I guess, as far as you’re concerned.”

  Ludwigson looked surprised.

  “M. de Fontanin? But why should you think that?”

  His smile implied that a man of breeding does not stoop to such acts of petty spite. Cool and collected, he drew on his gloves. Perhaps, indeed, he was genuinely tickled at the situation. Taking a note from his pocket-book, he tossed it onto the table and rose with a courteous gesture of farewell to Ma Juju. Then he went to the room where dancing was in progress and halted on the threshold till the couple came round to where he stood. Daniel caught his drowsy gaze, in which a spice of malice mingled with jealousy and admiration; then he saw him sidling past the settles towards the exit and vanish through the swinging-door, which seemed to swish him round in its wake, into the outer darkness.

  Daniel waltzed slowly; his body did not seem to move, and he held his head erect. There was a certain coolness in his deportment, partly ease and partly stiffness; he danced on the tips of his toes and his feet never left the ground. Rinette, lost to her surroundings—whether spellbound or outraged, she could not decide—followed so perfectly Daniel’s least movements that it was as if they had always danced together. After ten minutes they were the last couple left in; the others, whose energy had failed them long before, formed a circle round them. Five more minutes passed and left them dancing still. Then, after a last repeat, the band cried quarter. They danced on till the final chord—the girl half swooning on his shoulder, Daniel self-possessed, veiling with closed eyelids the burning gaze which now and again he let fall on her, thrilling her by turns with loathing and desire.

  To the accompaniment of clapping hands Daniel led Rinette back to Ludwigson’s table, quite composedly took the vacant chair, asked for another glass, and, filling it with Asti, gaily lifted it to Ma Juju and drained it at a draught.

  “Faugh!” he exclaimed. “What syrup!”

  Rinette broke into a nervous laugh and her eyes filled with tears.

  Ma Juju stared at Daniel, big-eyed with wonder; her anger had evaporated. She rose and, shrugging her shoulders, sighed comically.

  “Well, that ain’t nothing so long as you keep fit!”

  Half an hour later Daniel and Rinette left Packmell’s together.

  Rain had fallen.

  “A taxi?” the page inquired.

  “Let’s walk a bit first,” Rinette proposed. There was a soft fall in her voice that Daniel found charming.

  Despite the rain, the air was still sultry. The ill-lit streets Were empty. They went slowly on along the rain-bright sidewalk.

  An infantryman passed by; he held two Women by the waist and was laughingly teaching them how to change step. “Left, right! Not like that. Hop on your left foot! Left, right!” Laughter rang receding, long echoing along the silent house-fronts.

  When they left the cabaret she thought he would slip his arm through hers at once. But Daniel so keenly relished joys deferred that he would postpone them almost to the breaking-point. She made the first move, startled by a distant flash of lightning.

  “The storm’s not over yet. It’ll rain again.”

  “And that will be delightful.” His voice was like a caress, charged with hidden meanings, rather too subtle for the girl, whom his aloofness disconcerted.

  “You know, I can’t get it out of my head that I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

  He smiled in the shadow, thankful that she kept to commonplace remarks. He was far from suspecting that she really thought she had met him before, and all but answered: “Nor can I,” by way of joining in the game; then, of course, they would fall to guessing when it had happened. But it amused him more to go on mystifying her by keeping silence.

  “Why do they call you ‘Prophet’?” she asked, after a pause.

  “Because my name is Daniel.”

  “Daniel what …?”

  He h
esitated, reluctant to drop the defensive, even on a minor point. Still Rinette’s curiosity was so patently ingenuous that he felt it unfair to dupe her with a false name.

  “Daniel de Fontanin.”

  She did not reply, but gave a start of astonishment. She’s stumbled, he thought, and made as if to come to her aid; but she eluded him. That was enough to make him eager to coerce her and, going up to her, he tried to take her arm. Swerving nimbly aside, she kept beyond his reach; then suddenly she turned away, making for a side-street. Playing a game with me, he thought; well, I’ll join in! But it looked as if she were trying to escape him in earnest; she quickened her step till he could hardly keep his distance without breaking into a run. Their point-to-point along the deserted streets amused him. But, when she dived into a darker street that would have brought them back, by a roundabout way, to their starting-point, feeling rather tired, he made a third attempt to grasp her arm. She eluded him again.

  “Don’t be so silly!” he cried angrily. “Stop now!”

  But she fled all the faster, darting into patches of shadow and constantly swerving from one sidewalk to the other, as if she really meant to shake off his pursuit. All at once she broke into a run. With a few strides he drew level and brought her to bay before a door-porch. Then on her face he caught a look of terror that could not have been feigned.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She crouched in the dripping doorway, panting, staring up at him with haggard eyes. He thought for a moment. It was clear to him, though he could make nothing of it, that she had had some serious shock. He tried to draw her towards him; she recoiled in such panic haste that a flounce of her dress was torn.

  “What on earth is the matter?” he asked again, moving back a pace. “Are you afraid of me? Or do you feel ill?”

  A nervous shudder passed through her body; she could not utter a sound and never took her eyes off him.

  It was all as much a mystery as ever, but now he took pity on her.

  “Would you rather I left you?”

  She nodded. Feeling slightly ridiculous, he repeated his question: “You mean it? You’d rather I went away?” He might have been soothing a lost child, such was the gentleness he put into his voice.

  “Yes.” Her tone was almost brutal.

  Obviously, he decided, this was no acting. He realized that any more insistence on his part would be unmannerly and, suddenly resigned to losing her, determined to take it like a sport.

  “Have it your own way,” he said. “Only I can’t leave you stranded here in the middle of the night, in this doorway. We’ll hunt round for a taxi first, and then I’ll leave you… . Right?”

  The lights of the Avenue de l’Opera were visible in the distance and they walked silently towards them. Quite soon an empty taxi came their way and, at a sign from Daniel, drew up beside the kerb. Rinette kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Daniel opened the door. Only when her foot was on the step did she turn towards him and look him in the face; it was as if something compelled her to survey him once again. With a forced smile he stood before her, bare-headed, doing his best to keep up the appearance of a friend who is bidding a casual goodbye. Once she was sure he would not try to accompany her, her features relaxed. She told the driver where to go. Then, turning to Daniel, she whispered an apology.

  “I’m sorry, but tonight, M. Daniel, you must leave me. I’ll explain tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said, with a bow. “But—where?”

  “Oh, yes… . Where?” she repeated innocently. “At Mme. Juju’s, if you like. Yes, at her place. Three o’clock.”

  “Right!”

  He took her extended hand in his, and his lips lightly brushed the tips of her gloved fingers.

  The taxi started.

  Then suddenly a gust of anger swept over Daniel. He was just mastering it when he observed the girl’s white shoulders leaning from the window and saw her bid the driver stop.

  In a few strides he had caught up the taxi, the door of which Rinette had opened. He saw her huddled together at the far end of the seat, her eyes staring into the darkness. He read their meaning and sprang in beside her; when he took her in his arms, she crushed her lips to his and now he knew it was no fear or weakness that moved her to surrender, but that she freely gave herself. She was sobbing, sobbing desperately, and murmured broken phrases:

  “I want … I want …”

  Daniel was dumbfounded by the words that followed:

  “I want … to have … a child by you!”

  “Same address, sir?” the taxi-driver inquired.

  III

  AFTER leaving Jacques and his friends Antoine had the taxi take him to Passy, where he had “a pneumonia case” to visit; thence to his father’s residence in the Rue de l’Université, where for the past five years he and his brother had shared the ground-floor flat between them. Lolling in the car that took him homewards, a cigarette between his lips, he decided that his little patient was certainly on the mend, that his day’s work was over, and that he was feeling in excellent spirits.

  Yesterday, he mused, I wasn’t too pleased with myself. As a rule, when expectoration ceases so abruptly … Pulsus bonus, urina bona, sed cega’ moritur. The essential now is to prevent endocarditis. His mother’s still a pretty woman. Paris is looking pretty, too, this evening.

  As the car sped by, his eyes searched the green shadows of the Trocadero and he swung round to follow with his gaze a couple turning up a lonely pathway. The Eiffel Tower, the statues on the bridges and the Seine were flushed with rosy light. In my heart tra-la-la … The engine purred a ground-bass to his voice. In my heart … sleeps, he suddenly added. Got it! In my heart sleeps la-la-la. Provoking not to be able to remember the words. Now what the devil sleeps in anybody’s heart? The beast in all of us, he thought, smiling to himself. And again his wandering thoughts veered to the prospect of a festive evening at Packmell’s. Some girl, perhaps …? He felt glad to be alive, borne on an undercurrent of desire. Throwing away the cigarette, he crossed his legs and drew a deep breath of air, to which the rapid motion of the taxi lent an illusive coolness. Let’s hope Belin didn’t forget the cupping-glasses for that child. We’ll save the poor kid—what’s more, without an operation. I’d love to see the look on Loiselle’s face. Those surgeons! They’re all the rage but—what are they? Mere acrobats. As old man Black used to say: “If I had three sons, I’d say to the least gifted one: ‘Go in for midwifery!’; to the most sporting: ‘The lancet for you, my boy!’; but, to the cleverest, I’d say: ‘Be a general practitioner, treat lots of patients, and try to better your knowledge every day.’ ” A joyous mood swept over him again; he felt each sinew tense with deep-set joy. “I’ve played my cards well,” he murmured under his breath.

  When he reached home, the open door of Jacques’s room reminded him that his brother had passed his examination, a success that crowned his five years’ vigilance and careful handling of the boy. How well I remember, he mused, the evening when I met Favery in the Rue des Ecoles and the idea of urging Jacques to join the Ecole Normale first came to me! The Square Monge was white with snow. A bit cooler than this! he sighed. Zestfully he foresaw his body under the cool, clear water, and tossed his garments hither and thither with childish impatience.

  He felt a new man when he turned off the shower and, thinking of Packmell’s, whistled merrily. He accorded but a minor role in his life to “the girls,” as he called them; and none to sentimental love. Easy come, easy go, was his method, and he prided himself on its matter-of-factness. Moreover, certain nights excepted, he held aloof from “that sort of thing”—not for discipline’s sake or through physical indifference, but because “that sort of thing” belonged to a scheme of life in which the line he had decided once for all to take had no part. He had a feeling that such preoccupations were fit for weaklings, whereas he was a “strong man.”

  There was a ring at the bell. He glanced at the clock; if it came to that, he would have time to visit a pa
tient before joining the others at Packmell’s.

  “Who’s there?” he called through the door.

  “It’s I, M. Antoine.”

  He recognized M. Chasle’s voice and opened the door. During M. Thibault’s absence at Maisons-Laffitte his secretary continued to work in the Rue de l’Université.

  “Ah, there you are!” murmured M. Chasle vaguely. Abashed by the vision of Antoine in his shorts, he looked aside, muttering: “What?” with an interrogative grimace. “I see you’re dressing,” he added almost immediately, one finger uplifted, as though he had just solved an enigma. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “I have to be off in twenty-five minutes,” Antoine made haste to inform him.

  “That’s more than enough. Look here, doctor.” He put down his hat and, taking off his glasses, opened his eyes wide. “Don’t you see anything?”

  “Where?”

  “In my eye?”

  “Which eye?”

  “This one.”

  “Keep still. No, I can’t see anything at all. You got it in a draught, perhaps?”

  “Yes, it must be that. Thank you. I’d opened both windows.” He coughed shortly and replaced his spectacles. “Thanks. You’ve set my mind at rest. That was all; a draught. An airy nothing. Hee! Hee!” He tittered to himself before continuing. “You see, I haven’t taken up much of your time.” But, instead of reaching for his hat, he perched himself on the arm of a chair and mopped his forehead.

  “It’s hot,” Antoine observed.

  “Terribly.” M. Chasle knitted his brows with a knowing air. “Thunder about, that’s sure. It’s hard on people who’re bound to keep moving, people who have got steps to take… .”

  Antoine, who was lacing up his shoes, glanced at him inquiringly.

  “ ‘Steps to take’?”

 

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