He walked blindly ahead, debating still—but only with himself. “One thing’s sure: for me, morality simply doesn’t exist! ‘Ought’ and ‘ought not,’ ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ are meaningless to me—just words I use, like everyone else, as the small change of conversation; but in my heart I’ve always known they have no application to reality. Yes, I’ve always thought like that. No, that’s going too far. I’ve thought like that since …” Rachel’s face rose suddenly before his eyes. “Well, for quite a long time, anyhow.” For a while he made a conscientious effort to sort out the principles governing his daily life. He could find none. “A kind of sincerity?” he ventured tentatively. He thought again and found a better definition. “Isn’t it rather a kind of clear-sightedness?” His mind was still unsettled, but he was fairly satisfied with his discovery. “Yes. Obviously it doesn’t amount to much. But, when I look into myself, my impulse to think clearly— well, it’s about the only sure and solid thing I can find. Very likely I’ve made of it—unconsciously, no doubt—a kind of moral principle, my private creed. ‘Complete freedom, provided I see clearly.’ That sums it up, I imagine. Rather a risky principle, when you look into it. But it works out pretty well. The way one sees things, that’s the only thing that matters. To profit by one’s scientific training and examine oneself under the microscope coolly, impartially. To see oneself as one is; and, as a corollary, to accept oneself as one is. And then? Then I could almost say: Nothing is forbidden me! Nothing, provided I don’t dupe myself; I know what I am doing and, as far as possible, why I am doing it.”
But, almost at once, a wry smile pursed his lips. “The queerest thing is that, if I look into it carefully—my life, I mean, with its famous gospel of ‘complete freedom’ that does away with good and evil—the queer thing is, my life is almost entirely devoted to ‘doing good,’ as people call it! What has it brought me to, my precious emancipation? To acting not merely just like everybody else, but, oddly enough, in the very way which according to the present code of morals sets me among the best of men! The way I behaved just now is a case in point. Can it be that, for all practical purposes and despite myself, I’ve come to kotow to the cut-and-dried morality of those around me? Philip would smile… . No, I can’t allow that our human obligation to behave as social animals should overrule our impulses as individuals. How then explain the line I took just now? It’s fantastic how little the way we think fits in with, or even influences, the way we act. For, in my heart of hearts—why quibble over it?—I think Studler’s right. The platitudes that I hurled at him carried no weight at all. It’s he that has logic on his side; that poor child’s sufferings are so much needless agony, the issue of her fight with death is a foregone conclusion, foregone and imminent, too. Well, then—the least reflection tells me that if her death can be accelerated, it’s so much the better on every count. Not only for the child, but for her mother; it’s obvious that in her present condition the sight of the baby’s lingering agony may well prove dangerous to her—as Hequét, no doubt, is well aware. And there are no two ways about it; on a purely logical view the soundness of such arguments is as plain as daylight. But isn’t it odd how mere logic seldom or never really satisfies us? I don’t say that just to condone an act of cowardice; indeed, I know quite well that what drove me to act as I did this evening, or, rather, to refuse to act, was not mere cowardice. No, it was something as urgent, as imperative as a law of nature. But what it was, that urgency—that’s what passes me.” He ran over in his mind some possible explanations. Was it one of those inchoate ideas (he was convinced that such exist) that seem to sleep below the level of our lucid thoughts, but sometimes come awake and, rising to the surface, take control of us, impel us to an act— only to sink back once more, inexplicably, into the limbo of our unknown selves? Or—to take a simpler view—why not admit that a law of herd-morality exists and it is practically impossible for a man to act as if he were an isolated unit?
He seemed to be turning in a circle, his eyes blindfolded. He tried to recall the wording of Nietzsche’s well-known dictum: that a man should not be a problem, but the solution of a problem. A self-evident axiom, he used to think, but one with which, year after year, he had found it ever harder to conform. He had already had occasion to observe that some of his decisions—the most spontaneous, as a rule; often the most important ones he made—clashed with his reasoned scheme of life; so much so, indeed, that he had sometimes wondered: “Can I be really the man I think I am?” The mere suspicion left him dazed and startled; it came like a lightning-flash that slits the shadows, leaving them the darker for its passing. But he was always quick to brush the thought aside, and now again he flouted it.
Chance befriended him. As he came into the Rue Royale a whiff of baking bread, warm as a living creature’s breath, came to his nostrils from the vent-hole of a bakery, and started off his thoughts on a new tack. Yawning, he looked about him for an open tavern; then he was suddenly impelled to go and have something to eat at Zemm’s, a little café near the Comédie Francaise which stayed open till dawn and where he sometimes dropped in at night before proceeding homewards across the river.
“Yes, it’s a queer thing,” he admitted to himself after a moment of no thoughts. “We can doubt, destroy, make a clean sweep of all our beliefs, but, whether we like it or not, there remains a solid kernel proof against every doubt, the human instinct to trust our reason. A truism of which I’ve been the living proof for the last hour or so!” .
He felt tired, disconsolate, and hunted for a reassuring formula apt to restore his peace of mind. He fell back on an easy compromise. “Conflict is the common rule, and so it has always been. What is happening in my mind just now is going on throughout the universe: the clash of life with life.”
For a while he walked on mechanically, thinking of nothing in particular. He was nearing the serried tumult of the boulevards and questing women here and there pressed on him their companionable charms; he shook them off good-humouredly.
But all the time his brain was unconsciously at work, his thoughts were crystallizing round an idea.
“I am-a living being; in other words I am always choosing between alternatives and acting accordingly. So far so good. But there my quandary begins. What is the guiding principle on which I choose and act? I’ve no idea. Is it the clear-sightedness I was thinking of just now? No, hardly that. That’s theory, not practice. My zeal for clarity has never really guided me to a decision or an act. It’s only after I have acted that my lucidity comes into play—to justify to me what I have done. And yet, ever since I’ve been a sentient being, I’ve felt myself directed by a kind of instinct, a driving force that leads me almost all the time to choose this and not that, to act in this way,, not in another. But—most puzzling thing of all!—I notice that all my acts follow precisely the same lines; everything takes place as if I were being controlled by an unalterable law. Exactly. But what law? I haven’t a notion! Whenever at some critical moment of my life that driving force inside me leads me to take a certain course and act in consequence, I ask myself in vain: What was the principle that guided me? It’s like running up against a wall of darkness! I feel sure of my ground, intensely alive, lawful in my occasions, so to speak—yet I’m outside the law. Lawful and lawless! Neither in the teaching of the past nor in any modern philosophy, not even in myself, can I find any satisfactory answer. I see clearly enough all the laws which I can’t endorse, but I see none to which I could submit; not -one of all the standard moral codes has ever seemed to me even approximately to fit my case, or to throw any light upon the way in which I act. Yet, all the same, I forge ahead, and at a good pace, too, without the least hesitation, and, what’s more, keeping a pretty straight course. Yes, it’s extraordinary! Driving full-steam ahead like a fast liner whose steersman’s scrapped the compass! It almost looks as if I were acting under orders. Yes, that’s exactly what I feel; my way of life is ordered. Under orders, yes; but whose orders? … Meanwhile I don’t complain; I’m happy.
I’ve not the least wish to change; only I’d like to know why I am as I am. It’s more than simple curiosity; there’s a touch of apprehension in it. Has every man alive his mystery? I wonder. And shall I ever find the key to mine? Shall I know one day what it is: my guiding principle?”
He quickened his steps. Beyond the crossroads a flashing shop-sign, Zemm’s, had caught his eye, and hunger drove out thought.
So quickly did he dive into the entrance of the cafe that he stumbled over a pile of oyster-baskets that filled the passage with the sour smell of brine. The restaurant was in the basement, to which a narrow spiral staircase, picturesque and vaguely conspiratorial in appearance, gave access. At this late hour the room was full of night-birds taking their ease in a warm bath of vapour, thick with the fumes of alcohol, cigar-smoke, and odours from the kitchen, all churned up together by the whizzing fans. With its polished mahogany and green leather seats the long, low, windowless tavern had the aspect of a liner’s smoking-room.
Antoine made for a corner of the room, deposited his overcoat beside him, and sat down. He felt a mood of calm well-being gaining on him. Then all at once there rose before his eyes a very different scene: the nursery, the little body bathed in sweat and vainly struggling against its unseen foe. He seemed to hear the rhythmic cadence of the swaying cradle, like a tragic footfall marking time. A spasm of horror gripped him and he shrank together.
“Supper, sir?”
“Yes. Roast beef and black bread. And some whisky in a big tumbler; iced water, please, not soda.”
“Will you have some of our cheese-soup, sir?”
“Very well.”
On each table stood a generous bowl of potato-chips, spangled with salt-flakes, brittle and thin as “honesty” pods, infallible thirst-producers. The zest with which he crunched the chips gave Antoine the measure of his hunger as he waited for the gruyere-soup to come; simmering and cheese-scummed, stringy and crisped with shreds of onion, it was one of Zemm’s specialties.
At the cloak-room near his corner some people were calling for their coats. One of the noisy group, a girl, glanced covertly at Antoine and, as their eyes met, gave him a faint smile. Where was it he had seen that smooth, sleek face that brought to mind a Japanese print, with its etched-in eyebrows and tiny, slightly oblique eyes? He was amused by the clever way in which she had signalled to him without being noticed by the others. Why, of course, she was a model he had seen several times at Daniel de Fontanin’s place—his old studio in the Rue Mazarine. It all came back to him now quite clearly: the sweltering summer afternoon, the model on her “throne”; why, he could remember even the hour it was, the lighting of the room, the model’s pose—and then the emotion which had made him linger on, though he was pressed for time. His eyes followed her as she went out. What was it Daniel called her? Some name that sounded like a brand of tea. She looked back at him from the door. Yes, now he remembered how he had then been struck by the flatness of her body; an athlete’s body, clean-limbed and sinewy.
While, during the last few months, he fancied himself in love with Gise, other women had hardly counted in his life. In fact, since he had broken off with Mme. Javenne—the liaison had lasted two months and all but ended in a catastrophe—he had dispensed with mistresses. Now, for a few seconds, he bitterly regretted it. He took a few sips of the whisky which had just been brought; then, lifting the lid of the soup-tureen, relished its appetizing fumes.
Just then the page-boy brought him a crumpled fragment of a music-hall programme, folded envelope-wise, in the corner of which some words were scrawled in pencil:
Zemm’s tomorrow, 10 p.m.???
“Anybody waiting for an answer?” he asked with interest, but in some perplexity.
“No, sir. The lady’s gone.”
Antoine was determined to take no action on the assignation; all the same he slipped the note into his pocket before beginning his meal.
“What a damned fine thing life is!” he suddenly reflected as an unexpected rout of cheerful thoughts danced through his brain. “Yes, I’m in love with life!” He took a moment’s thought. “And, in reality, I don’t depend on anyone at all.” Once more a memory of Gise flitted across his mind. Now he was sure that life itself, even if love were lacking, sufficed to make him happy. He honestly admitted to himself that when Gise had been away in England he had not felt her absence in the least. Truth to tell, had any woman ever held a large place in his life or in his happiness? Rachel? Yes. But what would have been the outcome, had not Rachel gone away? Anyhow, he had said goodbye to passions of that order once and for all. No, as he saw things now, he would no longer dare to describe his feeling towards Gise as “love.” He tried to find another, apter word. “An attachment?” For a few moments yet Gise held the foreground of his thoughts and he resolved to clarify his feelings of the past few months. One thing was sure: he had imagined an ideal Gise, the mirror of his dreams, quite other than the flesh-and-blood Gise who, only this afternoon … But he declined to work out the comparison.
He took a pull of his whisky and water, tackled the roast beef, and told himself once more he was in love with life.
Life, as he saw it, was a vast, open arena into which the man of action has but to launch himself enthusiastically. By “love of life” he really meant self-love, self-confidence. Still, when he visualized his own life in particular, it presented itself as something far more definite than a wide field of action placed by some miracle at his disposal and offering an infinity of possible achievements; he saw it, rather, as a clean-cut track, a long, straight road leading infallibly towards a certain goal.
There was a familiar ring about the phrases he had just employed, but their sound was always welcome to his ears. “Thibault?” the inner voice went on. “He’s thirty-two: the very age when great careers begin. What of his body? Remarkably fit; he’s always in fine fettle, and strong as a cart-horse. And his mind? Quick in perception, adventurous, a pioneering intellect. His capacity for work? All but unlimited… . And comfortably off, into the bargain. All that a man can want, in fact! No vices, no bad habits, nothing to trammel his vocation… . On the crest of the wave!”
He stretched his limbs and lit a cigarette.
His vocation… . Since he was fifteen all things medical had always had a singular appeal for him. Even now it was his firm conviction that in the science of medicine we may see the fine flower of nil man’s intellectual efforts in the past, the most signal reward of twenty centuries’ research in every branch of knowledge, and the richest field available for human genius. It knew no limits on the speculative side, yet it was founded on the very bedrock of reality and kept in close and constant contact with humanity itself. He had a special leaning towards its human aspect. Never would he have consented to shut himself up in a laboratory and glue his eyes upon a microscopic field; no, what most delighted him was the doctor’s never-ending tussle with proteiform reality.
“What is needed,” the inner voice resumed, “is that Thibault should work more on his own account and not, like Terrignier or Boistelot, let himself be hamstrung by his practice. He should find time to organize and follow up experiments, collate results, and thus evolve the outlines of a system!’ For Antoine pictured for himself a career akin to those of the great masters of his profession; before he was fifty he would have a host of new discoveries to his credit and, above all, he would have laid the foundations of a system of his own, glimpses of which, vague though they were as yet, he seemed to have at certain moments. “Yes, soon, quite soon… .”
Leaping an interval of darkness, his father’s death, his thoughts came out again into the cheerful sunlight of the near future. Between two puffs at his cigarette he contemplated his father’s death from a new angle, without the least misgiving or distress. Rather, he saw it now as a prime condition of his long-awaited freedom, opening new horizons and favouring the swift ascension of his star. His brain teemed with new projects. “I’ll have to thin out my practice at once so as to get some spar
e time for myself. Then I shall need an assistant for my research-work, or a secretary, why not? Not a collaborator; no, quite a youngster, someone open to ideas whom I could train, who’d do the spade-work for me. Then I could really get down to it, put everything I’ve got into it! And make discoveries. Yes, one day, that’s certain, I’ll bring off something big!” The ghost of a smile hovered on his lips, an upcrop of the optimistic mood that buoyed him.
He threw his cigarette away, struck by a sudden thought. “That’s a queer thing, now that I think of it! The moral sense that I’ve cast out of my life, from which I felt only an hour ago that I’d escaped for good and all—why, here it is, all of a sudden, back again in its old place! Not skulking furtively in a dark byway of my awareness; no, on the contrary, solid and serene, and very much in evidence, standing up like a rock square in the centre of my active life—the nucleus of my professional career! No, it’s no use beating about the bush; as a doctor and a scientist I’ve an absolutely rigid code of right and wrong and, what’s more, I’m pretty certain I’ll stand by it, come what may. But then—how the devil is one to fit that in with …? Oh, after all,” he consoled himself, “why want to make every blessed thing ‘fit in’?” And very soon he gave up the attempt, letting his thoughts grow blurred, and indolently yielding to a mood of vague well-being mingled with fatigue, a comfortable lethargy.
The Thibaults Page 65