He had resigned himself to silence and assent with such finality that he decided to put back his artificial teeth. He thrust his hand into his pocket. His cheeks went scarlet. The plate was no longer there.
Meanwhile M. Thibault was placidly continuing his homily. “Don’t you realize, M. Chasle, that when you handed over your savings, the fruits of honest toil, to a secular and questionable institution like that Home, you were the victim of sharp practice? For we could easily have found some religious institution where old folk are looked after free of charge, provided the applicant is penniless and backed by somebody of influence? Were I to fall in with what you seem to be requesting, and include you in the provisions of my will, isn’t it obvious that, when I’m gone, you’d fall again into the clutches of some swindler who would drain you of the last sou of my bequest?”
But M. Chasle had stopped listening. He could remember having taken out his handkerchief; then, presumably, the set of false teeth had dropped on the carpet. He had a horrid vision of this all-too-revealing—possibly malodorous—appliance, in the rude hands of strangers. Craning his neck, his eyes starting out of his head, he was peering under each piece of furniture, flustered and fluttering about like a scared hen.
M. Thibault noticed him, and now was stirred to compassion. “I might increase that legacy,” he thought.
Thinking it would calm his secretary’s ruffled feelings, he went on in a genial tone.
“And after all, M. Chasle, isn’t it a mistake we often make, comparing penury with poverty? Penury, of course, is deplorable; it’s an evil counsellor, for one thing. But poverty—isn’t it often a manifestation, in a disguised form, of God’s grace?”
His employer’s voice came in vague, fitful gusts to M. Chasle’s ears, which were buzzing like those of a drowning man. He made an effort to collect his scattered wits, patted the pockets of his coat and waistcoat, thrust a despairing hand under his coat-tails. Suddenly a cry of joy all but escaped his lips. There they were, the false teeth, entangled in his bunch of keys!
M. Thibault was still discoursing on the same topic. “For a Christian, has poverty ever been incompatible with happiness? And is not the inequality of worldly goods a prime condition of social equilibrium?”
“Rather!” M. Chasle exclaimed, with a little gleeful chuckle and rubbing his hands. Then he added absent-mindedly: “That’s just what makes the charm of it.”
M. Thibault’s energy was flagging, but he turned his eyes towards the little man, touched to find him displaying such proper sentiments, and pleased to feel himself approved of. He made a special effort to be agreeable.
“Yes, M. Chasle, I’ve instilled sound methods into you, and, with your careful, painstaking habits, I don’t doubt that you’ll always find employment.” After a pause he added: “Even if I left this world before you.”
The calmness with which M. Thibault contemplated the misfortunes of such as would outlive him had a sedative effect that was contagious. Moreover, the vast relief that M. Chasle was feeling had for the time being allayed all his worries for the future. His eyes were twinkling with joy behind the glasses as he exclaimed:
“Yes, sir, as far as that’s concerned, you can die in peace! I can always keep my head above water, that’s sure! I’ve got several strings to my bow, I have. Useful inventions, gadgets, as they call them, and so forth,” he added with a laugh. “I have it all worked out already, my little plan. A business I’m going to start—when you’re gone.”
The invalid opened one eye wide; M. Chasle’s involuntary thrust had struck home. “When you’re gone”! What exactly did the old fool mean by that?
Just as M. Thibault was about to put a question, the nurse entered and turned on the switches, flooding the room with sudden light. Like a schoolboy when the bell rings to announce the end of lessons, M. Chasle deftly swept his papers together and with little gestures of farewell slipped out.
II
IT WAS time for M. Thibault’s enema. The nurse had already whisked back the sheets and now was bustling round the bed, making the ritual gestures. M. Thibault was brooding. His mind was haunted by M. Chasle’s last remark and, above all, by the tone in which he had made it. “When you’re gone.” In so natural, so matter-of-fact a tone! Obviously for M. Chasle it was a foregone conclusion that his employer was to “go” in the very near future. “The graceless fool!” M. Thibault muttered irritably. He was only too glad to give way to his vexation; it took his thoughts off the question hovering in the back of his mind.
The nurse had rolled up her sleeves. “Up with you!” she called out briskly.
She had no easy task. A thick layer of towels had to be built in beneath the invalid. M. Thibault was heavy and gave no assistance, merely letting himself be rolled this way and that, like a dead body. But each movement cost him a stab of pain along his legs and in the hollow of his back, and the physical pain was worsened by mental distress. Each phase of this daily ordeal was another outrage to his pride and sense of decency.
Sister Céline had developed a tactless habit of seadng herself at the foot of the bed during the period, more prolonged each day, while they waited for her ministrations to take effect. At first her nearness at such a moment had infuriated the invalid. Now he put up with it; perhaps, indeed, he preferred not being left to himself.
His eyes shut, with wrinkled brows, M. Thibault was turning over and over in his mind that nerve-racking question: Am I really in such a bad way? He opened his eyes, which by chance alighted on the bed-pan that the nurse had placed within easy reach and well in view on the chest of drawers. Huge, absurd, it loomed before him with an air of insolent expectancy. He looked away.
The nurse turned the brief respite to account by telling her beads.
“Pray for me, Sister,” M. Thibault suddenly remarked in a tense whisper, more solicitous and earnest than his usual tone.
She finished the last ave, then replied: “I do, sir, indeed; several times a day.”
There was a short silence, broken abruptly by M. Thibault.
“I am very ill, Sister, as you know. Very, very ill.” The words caught in his throat; he sounded on the brink of tears.
She protested, with a rather forced smile. “Very ill! What an idea!”
But M. Thibault was not to be convinced. “Everyone shirks telling me the truth. But I can feel it in my bones; I shall never get well again.” Noticing she did not interrupt, he added with a certain challenge in his tone: “Yes, I know that I have only a little while to live.”
He was watching her. Shaking her head, she went on with the prayer.
M. Thibault became alarmed.
“I wish the Abbé Vécard to come at once,” he said in a hoarse voice.
The nun merely protested: “Oh, you received Holy Communion last Saturday! There can be nothing on your conscience now.”
M. Thibault made no reply. His forehead was beaded with sweat, his jaws were chattering. The enema was beginning to take effect— seconded by his fears.
“The bed-pan!” he gasped.
A minute later, in the pause between two spasms of colic, two groans, he shot an angry glance at the nun.
“I’m getting weaker,” he panted, “every day. I’ve got to see—to see the Abbé.”
She was too busy pouring hot water into the basin to notice the desperate anxiety with which he was watching her expression.
“As you like,” she said evasively, then put back the kettle and tested the water with her finger. Without raising her eyes, she went on mumbling over the basin.
“… can never be too careful,” was all that M. Thibault caught.
His head dropped over his breast; he gritted his teeth.
A few minutes later, after a wash and change of nightshirt, he was lying in cool, clean sheets—with nothing to do but to nurse his pain.
Sister Céline was back in her chair, still toying with her beads. The ceiling light had been put out, and the room was lit only by a low table-lamp. There was nothing
to take the sufferer’s mind off his apprehensions, or the neuralgic, lancinating pains which grew sharper and sharper, shooting along the posterior surface of his thighs and radiating in every direction, then becoming suddenly localized, as sharp, stabbing twinges, in definite spots on his loin, knee-caps, and ankle-joints. During the momentary lulls when the pain sank to a dull ache, the irritation of the bed-sores left him no peace.
M. Thibault opened his eyes, and stared into vacancy, while his all-too-lucid thoughts turned in the same sad circle: “What do they all really think? Can one be in danger without knowing it? How find out the truth?”
Noticing that her patient was suffering more and more pain, the nurse decided to make the nightly injection of a half-dose of morphine at an earlier hour.
M. Thibault did not see her going out. Suddenly he found he was alone, left helpless before the malignant influences hovering in the silent, darkened room, and a wild panic came over him. He tried to cry out, but just then the pain came back with unwonted violence; he tugged frantically at the bell.
It was Adrienne who rushed into the room.
He was unable to speak; only hoarse, meaningless sounds broke from his writhing lips. The sudden effort he made to draw himself up into a sitting posidon seemed to be tearing his body in two. He sank back, groaning, onto the pillow.
At last he managed to speak. “What do they mean by leaving me to die, all by myself? Where’s the sister? Send for the Abbé. No, fetch Antoine. Quickly!”
Panic-stricken, the maid stared at the old man; the consternation in her eyes was the last straw.
“Go away! Fetch M. Antoine. D’you hear me? Immediately!”
The sister came back with the hypodermic syringe ready. She saw the maid rush past her out of the room, but had no idea what could have occurred. Sprawled half across the bolster, M. Thibault was paying the penalty of his excitement with a new bout of pain. As it happened, he was in a good position for the injection.
“Don’t move,” the sister said, uncovering his shoulder; and without more ado she pressed the needle home.
Antoine was stepping forth into the street when Adrienne caught up with him.
He ran up the stairs at once.
As he entered, M. Thibault turned his head. Antoine’s presence, which in his panic he had invoked with no great hope that it could prove forthcoming, was an immediate solace. He murmured mechanically:
“Ah, so there you are!”
The injection was already beginning to take effect: he felt better. Propped on two cushions, with his arms stretched out, he was inhaling a few drops of ether which the sister had sprinkled on a handkerchief. Through the opening of the nightshirt Antoine could see the old man’s emaciated neck, and his Adam’s apple jutting between two stringy muscles. The nerveless immobility of the forehead was in striking contrast with the constant tremor of the heavy under-jaw. The huge cranium, the ears, and large, flat temples had something of the pachyderm about them.
“Well, Father, what is it?” Antoine smiled.
M. Thibault made no reply, but for some moments stared at his son; then he closed his eyes. He would have liked to cry: “Tell me the truth. Is everybody hoodwinking me? Am I really going to die? Speak out, Antoine—and save me!” But he was tongue-tied by the steadily increasing deference he felt towards his son, and by a superstitious dread that if he put his apprehensions into words he would suddenly give them an inexorable reality.
Antoine’s eyes met the sister’s gaze, which led them towards the table where the thermometer was lying. He went up to it and saw it read 102. The sudden rise puzzled him; till now there had been practically no fever. Going back to the bed, he took his father’s pulse, more to tranquillize the patient than for any diagnostic reason.
“The pulse is good,” he said almost at once. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? I’m suffering the torments of the damned!” M. Thibault exclaimed. “I’ve been in pain all day. I—I nearly died. Isn’t that so?” He shot an imperious glance at the nurse. Then his tone changed and a look of fear came into his eyes. “You mustn’t leave me, Antoine. I’m so nervous, you know. I’m afraid it may start again.”
Antoine’s compassion was aroused. As it happened, there was no urgent reason for him to go out. He promised to stay with his father till dinner-time.
“I had an appointment,” he said, “but I’ll ring up and call it off.”
Sister Céline followed him to the study, where the telephone was installed.
“What sort of day did he have?”
“Not too good. I had to make the first injection at noon, and I’ve just given him another. A half-dose,” she added. “But the real trouble’s his state of mind. He has such terrible ideas. ‘Everyone’s lying to me,’ he says. ‘I want to see the Abbé, I’m going to die,’ and heaven knows what else.”
Antoine’s troubled eyes seemed asking a specific question: “Do you think it possible that he suspects …?” The nun, no longer daring to say no, merely nodded.
Antoine thought it over. That was not enough to explain the temperature, in his opinion.
“What we’ve got to do” —he made an emphatic gesture— “is to root out immediately the least trace of suspicion from his mind.” There flashed across his mind a method, fantastically rash, but drastic; he kept it to himself. “The first thing,” he continued, “is to make sure that he has a calm evening. Please have another eighth of a grain of morphine ready to give him when I tell you.”
He re-entered the bedroom with a cheerful exclamation. “I’ve fixed it! I’m free till seven.” His voice had its incisive ring, and his face the tense, determined look he wore at the hospital. Now, however, he was smiling.
“There was the devil to pay! When I rang up the house where the little girl is ill, her grandmother answered. The poor old thing was dreadfully upset. She kept on wailing down the phone: ‘What? You can’t mean it, doctor? Won’t you be coming this evening?’ ” He suddenly assumed an air of consternation. “ ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve just been called to the bedside of my father, who is dangerously ill.’ ” (M. Thibault’s face grew tense.) “But a woman isn’t put off so easily. She said: ‘I had no idea! What’s he suffering from?’ ”
Carried away by his temerity, Antoine scarcely hesitated a moment before taking the last, fantastic plunge.
“What was I to say? Guess! I said to her, cool as a cucumber: ‘My father, Madame, if you want to know, has a …a prostatic cancer!’ ” He added with a nervous laugh: “After all, why not? While I was about it.”
He saw the nurse’s arm (she was pouring water into a tumbler) go rigid. And suddenly he realized that he was playing with fire; almost he lost his nerve. But it was too late to draw back now.
He burst out laughing.
“But that lie, Father, I set down to your account, you know.”
On the bed M. Thibault seemed to be listening with every fibre of his being. His body was taut; only the hand on the counterpane was trembling. Never could the most precise denials have swept away his fears so utterly. Antoine’s diabolical audacity had, with one deft stroke, laid low the phantoms of his mind, and brought the sick man back to hope and confidence. Opening both eyes, he looked at his son, and could not bring himself, it seemed, to drop the lids again. A new emotion, a warm glow of affection, was quickening in the old man’s heart. He tried to speak, but a sort of dizziness came over him, and at last, after a brief smile of which the young man caught a fleeting glimpse, he shut his eyes once more. . Any man other than Antoine in a like case would have mopped his brow, murmuring perhaps: “Ouf! That was a close shave!” But Antoine, only a trifle paler than before and well pleased with himself, was thinking merely: “The main thing for stunts like that is to make up one’s mind, definitely, to bring them off.”
Some minutes passed. Antoine would not meet the sister’s eyes. M. Thibault’s arm moved; then he spoke, as if continuing a discussion.
“In that case, will you explain why I’ve
more and more pain? It looks almost as if the drugs you’re pumping into me made it more acute, instead of …”
“Of course,” Antoine broke in. “Of course they make it more acute; that’s what shows they’re taking effect.”
“Really?”
M. Thibault asked nothing better than to let himself be convinced. And, as in point of fact the afternoon had not been quite so trying as he made out, he felt almost sorry that his sufferings had not lasted longer.
“What do you feel just now?” Antoine asked. The rise in his father’s temperature worried him.
If M. Thibault had been frank, he would have replied: “I’m feeling extremely comfortable.” Instead he muttered: “I’ve a pain in my legs, and a dull ache in the small of my back.”
“I passed a sound at three,” Sister Céline put in.
“And a sort of weight, a feeling of oppression, here …”
Antoine nodded. “Yes, it’s rather curious,” he began, turning to the sister. He had no idea this time what new story he was going to concoct. “I’m thinking of certain—certain phenomena I’ve observed in connexion with changes of treatment. Thus in skin diseases, we often get unlooked-for results by using different treatments alternately. I dare say Thérivier and I were wrong in deciding to use so continuously this serum, Number—er—17.
“Most certainly you were wrong.” M. Thibault spoke with firm conviction.
The Thibaults Page 67