“And I trust that my dearly loved wife, that saintly soul, will befriend me when I meet my Maker … will inspire me with her courage, her resignation … yes, the courage she displayed in her last hour.” He closed his eyes, and with an awkward effort folded his hands. He seemed asleep.
Sister Céline signed to the maids to leave the room as quietly as possible. Before leaving their master, they gazed earnestly at his face, as if already taking their last leave of a body laid out for burial. The sound of Adrienne’s sobs and Clotilde’s subdued, flustered chatter—she had given the old lady an arm—receded down the corridor. At a loss where to turn, the three women with one accord took refuge in the kitchen, round the table. All were weeping. Clotilde decreed that none of them must go to bed, so as to be ready to go and fetch a priest at a moment’s notice. No sooner had she spoken than she began grinding coffee.
The nun was alone in knowing how things really were; she was used to such scenes. In her view, the serenity of a dying man was always a proof that deep within his heart he believed—often enough quite wrongly—that his life was in no immediate danger. So now, after tidying the room and banking up the fire, she opened the folding bed on which she slept. Ten minutes later, without having exchanged a word with her patient, the nurse slipped tranquilly from prayer to sleep, as she did each night.
M. Thibault, however, had not fallen asleep. The double dose of morphine, while continuing its anodyne effect, was keeping him awake, in a voluptuous lethargy peopled with a host of schemes and fancies. The act of spreading panic around him seemed to have definitively cast out of his mind his own alarms. True, the heavy breathing of the sleeping nurse was rather irritating, but he consoled himself by picturing the day when he would dismiss her with a word of thanks —and a handsome donation to her Order. How much? Well, that could be settled afterwards … very soon. He was fretting with impatience for a return to active life. What was becoming of his charitable societies now he could not attend to them?
A log collapsed into the embers, and he half opened a sleepy eye. A little, vacillating flame set the shadows dancing on the ceiling. And suddenly with his mind’s eye he saw himself, a lighted candle in his hand, groping his way along the corridor of Aunt Marie’s house at Quillebceuf, that musty old corridor which smelt year in year out of apples and saltpetre. There, too, great shadows had suddenly loomed before him and gone dancing up across the ceiling. And he remembered the terrifying black spiders that always lurked at night in the dark corners of the closet. In his mind just now there was so little difference between the timorous boy of many years ago and the old man of today that it cost him an effort to distinguish between them.
The clock struck ten. Then the half-hour … Quillebceuf. The rickety old wagon. The poultry-yard. Léontine …
All this jetsam of the past, which a chance play of light had stirred in the abyss of memory, kept floating up to the surface of his mind, refused to be thrust down again into the depths. And like a desultory burden to these evocations of his childhood, the tune of the old nursery song ran in his head. He could as yet recall hardly any of the words, except the first few lines, which he had gradually pieced together, and part of the refrain which had unexpectedly flashed up across the twilight of his thoughts.
“I have a little pony
And her name is Trilbytrot,
And I would not give my pony
For all the gold you’ve got.
So clinkety and clankety
Along the lanes we go …”
The clock struck eleven.
“I have a little pony
And her name is Trilbytrot …”
IV
AT ABOUT four on the following day, it happened that the journey from one professional call to another took Antoine so near home that he dropped in to hear the latest news. That morning his father had seemed to him considerably weaker; the fever showed no sign of abating. He wondered if some new complication was setting in; or was it merely symptomatic of the general progress of the disease?
Antoine did not want to be seen by the invalid, who might have been alarmed by this unexpected visit, and therefore entered the dressing-room directly from the hall.
There he found Sister Céline, who reassured him in an undertone. So far the patient had had a fairly good day. For the moment M. Thibault was under the influence of a morphine injection. These repeated doses of the drug were becoming imperative, to enable him to bear the pain.
The door leading into the bedroom was not completely closed and a vague murmur, a sound of singing, could be heard. Antoine listened. The nurse shrugged her shoulders.
“He went on at me till I had to go and fetch Mademoiselle; he wanted her to sing him some old song or other. It’s been running in his head all day; he can’t talk of anything else.”
Antoine tip-toed to the door. The little old lady’s quavering voice floated to him across the silence.
“I have a pretty pony
And her name is Trilbytrot,
And I would not give my pony
For all the gold you’ve got,
When clinkety and clankety
Along the lanes we go
To where my lovely Lola
Is waiting for me now.”
Then Antoine heard his father’s voice like a wheezy bagpipe taking up the refrain.
“When clinkety and clankety
Along the lanes we go …”
The quavering soprano broke in again.
“I’ll cull me yonder floweret
While Trilby browses near,
The fairest, rarest floweret
To deck my dark-eyed dear.”
“That’s it!” M. Thibault broke in triumphantly. “We have it! Aunt Marie could never get that right. She used to sing: ‘La-la-la-la, my dear!’ No words. ‘La-la-la-la!’ ”
They joined in the chorus together.
“Then clinkety and clankety
Along the lanes we’ll go
To where my lovely Lola
Is waiting for me now.”
“Anyhow, he doesn’t complain while he’s at it,” the sister whispered.
Sad at heart, Antoine left the room.
As he was going out into the street, the concierge called to him from her doorstep. The postman had just delivered some letters for him. Antoine took them absent-mindedly. His thoughts were still on what was happening upstairs.
“Then clinkety and clankety
Along the lanes we go …”
He was amazed to find himself so distressed by his father’s illness. When, a year earlier, he had realized that there was no hope of saving the old man, he had detected in himself a puzzling but indubitable affection for the father whom, as he had thought till now, he had never loved. It came to him then as a new-born impulse, and yet it somehow had the semblance of a very old, latent affection, which the approach of the irreparable had merely fanned to sudden flame. Moreover, as the malady dragged its course, natural emotion had been implemented by professional instinct; he felt a special interest in this patient, of whose death-sentence he alone was aware and whose last months it was his task to make as bearable as could be.
Antoine had begun walking down the street when his eyes fell on one of the letters in his hand. He stopped short.
M. Jacques Thibault
4A Rue de l’Université
Now and again a stray pamphlet or bookseller’s catalogue addressed to Jacques still came in; a letter was quite another matter… . The envelope was pale blue, the address was written in a tall, flowing, faintly supercilious hand, whether a man’s or a woman’s was hard to say. Antoine turned back. This needed thinking over. He shut himself up in his office. But before even sitting down, he had boldly, unhesitatingly, opened the envelope.
The very first words came as a shock.
IA Place du Pantheon,
November 25, 1913.
Dear Sir,
I have read your short story …
“A short story! So Jacques is a writer?�
� he murmured. Then, triumphantly: “He’s alive. This proves it!” The words danced before his eyes. Feverishly he ran his eyes down the page, looking for the signature—”Jalicourt.”
I have read your short story with the keenest interest. Of course you do not expect an elderly “don” like myself …
Jalicourt! Antoine thought. Yes, it’s Valdieu de Jalicourt, the professor, Member of the Academy and so forth. Antoine knew him well, by repute; in fact he had two or three books by Jalicourt on his shelves.
… to give it an unqualified approval; obviously the classical traditions in which my mind is moulded, not to say most of my personal preferences, run counter to the romantic technique you employ. I cannot wholeheartedly commend either the manner or the matter of your tale. But I must own that, even in its extravagances, this work is stamped by the creative impulse and a knowledge of human nature. Reading your story, I was several times reminded of a remark made by a great composer, a friend of mine, to whom a young musician—one, I imagine, of your clan—showed an experimental work of the most provocative audacity: “Take it away at once, sir; I might get to like it!”
Jalicourt.
Antoine was trembling with excitement. He sat down, unable to take his eyes off the letter lying open before him on the desk. Not that it came as any great surprise to learn his brother was alive; he had seen no reason to suppose Jacques had killed himself. The first effect the coming of this letter had had on him was to arouse his hunting instinct; three years earlier he had played the sleuth for months on end, following up each clue that seemed to lead towards the fugitive. And now, with the revival of his detective zeal, came a rush of such affection and so intense a longing to see Jacques again that he felt almost dizzy. Often lately—indeed, that very morning—he had had to fight down a feeling of resentment at being left alone to bear the brunt of his father’s illness; so crushing was the burden that he could not help feeling aggrieved with the runaway brother who was deserting his post at such an hour.
This letter changed everything. Now it looked as if he could get in touch with Jacques, tell him what was happening, bring him back— and no longer stand alone.
He glanced at the address on the letter, then at the clock, then at his engagement-book.
“Right!” he murmured. “I’ve three more appointments this afternoon. Can’t miss that one at half-past four, in the Avenue de Saxe; it’s urgent. Must look up, too, those people in the Rue d’Artois, that scarlet fever case just starting; no time fixed, however. Number three: the child’s getting better; that can wait.” He rose. “Yes, I’ll go to the Avenue de Saxe first, and see Jalicourt immediately after.”
Antoine was in the Place du Pantheon soon after five. It was an old house without an elevator. Anyway, he was feeling too impatient just then to waste time with elevators. He raced up the stairs.
“M. Jalicourt is out. It’s Wednesday. He has his lecture at the Ecole Normale from five to six.”
“Keep cool now!” Antoine admonished himself as he went down the stairs. “There’s just time to see that scarlet fever case.”
At exactly six he alighted briskly from his taxi, outside the Ecole Normale.
He recalled his visit to the principal just after his brother’s disappearance; then, that already distant summer day when he had come to this same grim-looking building with Jacques and Daniel, to learn the results of the entrance examination.
“The lecture isn’t over yet. You’d better go up to the second floor. You’ll see the students coming out.”
An incessant draught whistled through the courtyards, up the staircases, along the corridors. Few and far between, the electric lights had the dull glow of oil-lamps. Flagstones, arcades, and banging doors, an enormous, dark, dilapidated staircase along which, on the dingy walls, tattered notices flapped in the autumn wind—the whole place with its air of general decay, its silence and solemnity, gave the impression of some provincial bishop’s-palace left mouldering for eternity.
Some minutes slowly passed, while Antoine waited outside the lecture-room. Soft footsteps sounded on the flags; a hirsute, down-at-heel student carrying a bottle of wine came down the corridor, giving Antoine a keen glance as he moved by in slippers. Silence again. Then a confused buzz which, when the door of the lecture-room was flung open, rose to the hullabaloo of a parliamentary session. Laughing, shouting to each other, the students came flocking out and rapidly dispersed along the corridors.
Antoine waited. Presumably the professor would be the last to leave. Only when the hive seemed to have disgorged its last inmate, did he enter. The room was large and badly lighted, panelled with wood and flanked with busts. At the far end, he saw a tall, drooping figure; an elderly white-haired man was lethargically arranging sheets of foolscap on a table. Obviously Professor Jalicourt.
Jalicourt had fancied himself alone; on hearing Antoine’s footsteps he looked up with a frown. To see in front of him he had to turn his head to one side; he was blind in one eye and on the other wore a monocle thick as a magnifying glass. When he saw he had a visitor, he moved forward a little and with a courteous gesture signed to Antoine to approach.
Antoine had expected to encounter a venerable don of the old school. This well-set-up man in a light suit, who looked more as if he had just dismounted from a horse than stepped down from a lecture platform, took him by surprise.
He introduced himself. “I’m the son of Oscar Thibault, your colleague at the Institute, and the brother of Jacques Thibault, to whom you wrote yesterday.” As Jalicourt made no sign and continued observing him, affable but aloof, with lifted eyebrows, Antoine went straight to the point. “Can you give me any news, sir, of my brother Jacques? Where is he now?”
Jalicourt made no answer, but his forehead puckered, as if he had taken offence.
“I must explain, sir,” Antoine hastened to add. “I took the liberty of opening your letter. My brother has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yes, he left home three years ago.”
Jalicourt thrust his head forward abruptly and with his keen, shortsighted eye scrutinized the young man at close range. Antoine felt his breath fanning his cheek.
“Yes, three years ago,” he repeated. “He gave no reason for leaving us. Since then he hasn’t communicated with his father or myself. Nor with anyone—except with you, professor. So you’ll understand why I’ve rushed to see you like this. We didn’t even know if he was still alive.”
“Alive he certainly is—as he has just had this story published.”
“When? Where?”
Jalicourt did not reply. His clean-shaven, pointed chin, cleft by a deep furrow, jutted with a certain arrogance between the high peaks of his collar. The slender fingers were toying with the drooping tips of his long, silky, snow-white moustache. When he spoke, his voice was low, evasive.
“After all, I can’t be sure. The story wasn’t signed ‘Thibault’; but with a pen name—which I believed I could identify as his.”
The disappointment was a cruel blow to Antoine. “What was the pen name?” he asked in an unsteady tone.
Jalicourt, his one eye still intent on Antoine, seemed somewhat touched by his anxiety.
“But, M. Thibault,” he said firmly, “I do not think I was mistaken.”
He was obviously on the defensive; not from any exaggerated fear of taking responsibility, but because he had an instinctive aversion to meddling in the private affairs of others, to anything resembling an indiscretion. Realizing that he had to overcome a certain mistrust, Antoine hastened to explain the situation.
“What makes it so urgent is that my father has been suffering from an incurable disease for a year, and his state is getting rapidly worse. The end will come in a few weeks. Jacques and I are the only children. So you understand, don’t you, why I opened your letter? I know Jacques well enough to be sure that if he is alive and I can get at him, and tell him what is happening, he’ll come home.”
Jalicourt pondered for a mom
ent. His face was twitching. Then, with a quick, impulsive gesture he held out his hand.
“That puts a new complexion on it,” he said. “In that case I’ll be only too glad to help you.” He seemed to hesitate, and glanced round the lecture-room. “We can’t talk here. Would you mind coming with me to my place, M. Thibault?”
Quickly, without a word, they made their way across the huge, draughty building. When they came out into the quiet Rue d’Ulm, Jalicourt began speaking, in a friendly tone.
“Yes, I’ll be glad to help. The pen name struck me as pretty obvious: ‘Jack Baulthy.’ Don’t you agree? I recognized the writing, too; your brother had written to me once before. I’ll tell you the little I know. But tell me first, why did he run away like that?”
“Why, indeed? I’ve never been able to find a plausible reason for it. My brother has an impulsive, ill-balanced nature; there’s something of the mystic in him. All his acts are more or less erratic. Sometimes one fancies one has got to know him; then the next day he’s quite different from what he was the day before. I may as well tell you, M. de Jalicourt, that Jacques ran away from home once before, when he was fourteen. He induced a school-friend to go with him; they were found three days later on the Toulon road. To the medical profession—I’m a doctor, by the way—this type of escapade has long been familiar; it has a morbid origin and its characteristics have been diagnosed. It’s just possible that Jacques’s first escapade was of a pathological order. But how can we account for an absence lasting three years? We’ve not found anything in his life that could justify such an act. He seemed happy, he had had a quiet summer vacation with his family. He had done brilliantly in the exam for the Ecole Normale, and was due to enter it at the beginning of November. The act can’t have been premeditated; he took hardly any of his things with him, little or no money, only some manuscripts. He hadn’t let any of his friends know of his project. But he sent a letter to the principal, resigning from the Ecole; I’ve seen the letter, it bears the date on which he left us. Just then I happened to be away from home for a couple of days; Jacques left during my absence.”
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