The Thibaults (14 page)

Jacques nestled up to his brother.

“Yes, I’m awfully keen on poetry,” he whispered. “There are some poems that I love more than anything else in the world. Fontanin lends me books—but you won’t tell anyone, will you? It’s thanks to him I’ve read Laprade and Sully-Prudhomme and Lamartine and Victor Hugo and Musset. Musset’s wonderful! Do you know this one, I wonder?

Pâle étoile du soir messagère lointaine
.

Dont le front sort brillant des voiles du couchant
. 

“And this one:

“V
oilà 
 longtemps que celle avec qui j’ai dormi,

O Seigneur, a quitt
é
 ma couche pour la v
ô
tre,

Et nous sommes encor tout m
ê
l
é
s I’un 
à
 I’autre,

Elle 
à
 demi vivante et moi mort a demi.

“And Lamartine’s ‘Le Crucifix,’ do you know it?

“Toi que j’ai recueilli sur sa bouche expirante,

Avec son dernier souffle et son dernier adieu …

“It’s lovely, isn’t it? So , . . so wonderfully limpid. Each time I read that, the beauty of it almost hurts me.” And now he poured out his heart without reserve. “At home they don’t understand a thing; I’m certain I’d be plagued if they knew that I write poems. You’re not like them”—he pressed Antoine’s arm against his breast—”somehow I’ve felt you weren’t, for ages. Only you never said anything, and, besides, you’re not often there. Oh, if you only knew how happy I am! I feel that now I’m going to have two friends instead of one.”

Antoine recited, smiling, a line of one of Jacques’s own poems:

“Hail Caesar! Lo, the blue-eyed maid from Gaul …”

Jacques moved away suddenly, exclaiming: “You’ve read our exercise-book!”

“But, old chap, why ever …?”

“Has Father read it too?” So piteous was the cry that Antoine dared not tell the truth.

“I don’t really know. A page or two, perhaps.”

Before he could say more Jacques had recoiled to the far corner of the cab; he sat there rocking himself to and fro, his head between his hands.

“It’s foul! That Abbé is a Jesuit, a filthy beast! I shall tell him so, I’ll shout at him in the middle of the class-room, I’ll spit in his beastly face. They can expel me; I don’t care a damn, I’ll run away again. I’ll kill myself!”

His whole body was shaking with fury. Antoine dared not breathe a word. Suddenly the boy stopped shouting and sank back into the corner, pressing his hands to his eyes. His teeth were chattering, and his silence alarmed Antoine even more than his outburst of rage. Fortunately the cab was entering the Rue des Saints-Peres; they were almost home.

Jacques got out first. Antoine, as he paid the cabman, never took his eyes off his brother, fearing he might make a sudden rush into the darkness. But now the boy seemed utterly exhausted; the elfish little face was drawn and haggard with fatigue and disappointment, and the eyes, fixed on the ground, were dry.

“Ring the bell, will you?” Antoine said.

Jacques said nothing and did not move. Antoine gently coaxed him towards the door. Lamb-like, Jacques followed his brother through the hall, without even troubling to think that the curious eyes of the old concierge, Mme. Fruhling, were watching him. He had realized his helplessness and had no heart left to resist. The elevator whisked him up, more dead than alive, to face his father’s righteous indignation. He was trapped again in the prison-house of the Family, of the social order, inescapably.

And yet, when he stood again on the landing, when he saw all the lamps lit in the hall as on the evenings when his father gave his stag dinner-parties, somehow he could not help finding a certain restfulness in the familiar home-life closing in again around him. When he saw Mademoiselle come limping up the hall, thinner and shakier than ever, he felt his rancour passing and a sudden impulse to throw himself into the embrace of the stumpy black-sleeved arms stretched out towards him. She pressed the boy to her, fondling him affectionately, but all the time scolding him in a shrill, quavering monotone. “Oh, dear! What wickedness! The cruel, heartless boy! Did you want to make us die of grief? Bless and save us, what wickedness! Haven’t you any heart at all?” The litany of reproach went on, while large tears brimmed over from her llama-like eyes.

The door of the study opened. Jacques saw his father standing on the threshold, looking down the hall.

His eyes fell at once on Jacques, and he could not check an impulse of affectionate emotion. But then he halted, let his eyelids close; he seemed to be waiting for the culprit to fling himself at his feet, as in the Greuze picture, a copy of which hung in the drawing-room.

Shyness prevented Jacques from moving towards his father.

The study, too, was lit up as if for some festivity, and the two maids had just appeared at the kitchen door. Moreover, M. Thibault was in a frock-coat, though it was the hour when he usually wore a smoking-jacket. The boy felt paralysed by the queerness of it all. He freed himself from Mademoiselle’s embrace, shrank back, and stood, with bowed head, waiting for he knew not what, so flustered by a rush of pent-up feeling that he felt an uncontrollable impulse to weep and, in the same breath, burst out laughing.

But M. Thibault’s first words seemed to ban him from the family circle. Jacques’s attitude, in the presence of witnesses, had effectively dispelled any inclination to indulgence which he might have felt. The better to bring the young rebel to heel, he feigned complete detachment.

“Ah, so you’re back!” He addressed the words solely to Antoine. “I was beginning to wonder. Did everything go off all right?” When Antoine nodded, shaking the flabby hand his father held out to him, he continued: “I’m very grateful to you, my dear boy, for sparing me a distasteful task. Most distasteful indeed!”

He paused, still hoping for some gesture of contrition from his younger son. But the boy was staring sullenly at the carpet. M. Thibault glanced first at the culprit, then at the maids. Now he was definitely angry.

“We’ll decide tomorrow on the best course to adopt, to prevent the repetition of such scandalous misconduct.”

Mademoiselle made a step towards Jacques, to urge him to his father’s arms—a movement Jacques was aware of, though he did not raise his eyes. Indeed he had been waiting for it, his last forlorn chance of reconciliation. But M. Thibault stretched out a peremptory arm.

“Let him be! He’s a young scoundrel, with a heart of stone. Was he worth all the anxiety we’ve gone through on his account?” He turned again to Antoine, who was watching for an opportunity to intervene. “Antoine, dear boy, do us the favour of looking after this miserable boy for one night more. Tomorrow, I promise you, you shall be freed from all responsibility for him.”

There was still a moment of indecision. Antoine went up to his father; Jacques timidly raised his head. But now M. Thibault was speaking again, in a tone that brooked no controversy.

“Now then, Antoine, you heard what I said? Take him off to his room. This revolting scene has lasted quite long enough. Take him away.”

Steering Jacques in front of him, Antoine vanished down the corridor; the maids shrank back against the walls, as if they were watching victims on their way to execution. M. Thibault, his eyes still closed, went back to his study and shut the door behind him.

He went straight across it into the room where he slept. The furniture had come to him from his parents, and the room was exactly like their bedroom as he had known it in his early childhood, in the residence attached to his father’s factory near Rouen. After his father’s death he had brought the whole lot of it to Paris, where he had come to study law. He had kept everything as it was: the mahogany chest of drawers, the old-fashioned chairs, the blue rep curtains, the bed in which his father and his mother had died. Before the
prie-dieu
, the upholstery of which had been embroidered by Mme. Thibault, hung the crucifix which he himself, at a few months’ interval, had placed between their folded, lifeless hands.

Alone now, he could be himself again; he let ‘his shoulders droop, and yet the mask of fatigue seemed to have slipped from the heavy features, leaving them with a simple, almost childish look that recalled the portraits of him as a boy. He went to the prie-dieu and, kneeling down, gave himself up to prayer. His puffy hands moved rapidly to and fro—a habit with him when he was by himself; there was something unconstrained, yet curiously clandestine, in all his gestures now he was alone. He raised his expressionless face, and the eyes, under the half-shut lids, went straight to the crucifix.

M. Thibault was committing this new burden laid upon him, his disappointment, to God’s mercy, and now that his heart was purged of anger, he prayed fervently and with a father’s love for his erring son. From the arm-rest on which he kept his books of devotion he took a rosary which had been given him for his first communion; after forty years’ polishing the beads slipped effortlessly between his fingers. He had shut his eyes again, but his head was still lifted, as if he were gazing at the crucifix. That smile coming from the heart and that look of candid happiness were never seen on his face in ordinary life. The words he was murmuring made his heavy cheeks quiver and the little, jerky movements of his head which he made at regular intervals to free his neck from the stiff, tight collar somehow brought to mind a censer swinging before the altar of his God.

Next morning Jacques was left to himself. Sitting on his unmade bed, he wondered what to do with himself this Saturday morning. It wasn’t the holidays—quite the contrary—and yet here he was, it seemed, spending the day in his room. He thought of school, the history class, Daniel. The domestic sounds he heard outside his door seemed unfamiliar and vaguely hostile: a broom rasping the carpet, doors creaking in the wind. He was not depressed; exalted, rather; but his inactivity, coupled with the mysterious threat brooding over the house, made him feel almost unbearably ill at ease. What a relief it would have been if he could have found an opportunity for some sacrifice, some heroic and absurd act of devotion, which might have given vent to the pent-up emotions that now were suffocating him! Now and then a gust of self-pity caused him to raise his head and he felt a brief thrill of morbid pleasure, a mingled thrill of frustrated love, of pride and hatred.

The door-handle turned. It was Gisèle. Her hair had just been washed and her black curls were drying on her shoulders; she was wearing a shirt and drawers. Her brown neck, arms, and legs gave her the look of a little Algerian lad—what with her flapping drawers, with her fuzzy mop of hair, her ripe young lips, and melting dog-like eyes.

“What do you want?” Jacques asked in a peevish tone.

“I’ve come to see you.” She looked at him intently.

During the past week little ten-year-old Gisèle had guessed more than her elders suspected. And now her Jacquot had come back! But things at home had not resumed their normal course. Just now her aunt, when doing Gisèle’s hair, had suddenly been called away to see M. Thibault, and had left her in her room, her hair “all anyhow,” after making her promise to “be good.”

“Who was it who rang?” he asked.

“The Abbé.”

Jacques frowned. She climbed onto the bed beside him.

“Poor Jacquot!” she whispered.

Her affection did him so much good that, to show his gratitude, he took her on his knees and hugged her. But his ears were on the alert.

“Run! There’s someone coming!” He pushed her towards the door. He had just time enough to jump off the bed and open a grammar-book when he heard the voice of Abbé Vécard behind the door, talking to Gisèle.

“Good morning, my dear. Is Jacquot here?”

Entering, he stopped on the threshold. Jacques looked down. The Abbé came up to him and playfully tweaked his ear.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” he began.

But the stubborn look on the boy’s face made him change his tactics. With Jacques he always proceeded warily. He felt for this so often erring member of his flock a particular regard, not unmixed with curiosity and a certain esteem, for he had realized the vigour of the boy’s personality.

Sitting down he called Jacques towards him.

“The least thing you could do was to ask your father’s forgiveness. Have you done so?” Of course, he knew perfectly well the state of affairs, and, furious with his deceit, Jacques cast him a furtively indignant look, shaking his head. For a while neither spoke.

Then the priest began in a low, somewhat ill-assured voice. “My child, I won’t conceal from you that I have been deeply grieved by what has happened. Till now, for all your unruliness, I’ve always stood up for you. I have often said to your father: ‘Jacques has a good heart, everything will come right, only we must be patient.’ But now I hardly know what to say and, worse still, I have learnt things about you which never, never could I have brought myself to suspect. We’ll come back to that. And yet, I said to myself: ‘He will have had time to reflect, he will return to us repentant, and there is no sin that cannot be atoned for by sincere contrition.’ Instead of that I find you with a stubborn face, without a semblance of regret, without a tear. Your poor father, this time, has really lost heart, and I am grieved for his sake too. He asks himself how far you have sunk in perversity, whether your heart is utterly hardened. And, upon my word, I ask myself that question too.”

Clenching his fists in his pockets, Jacques pressed his chin hard against his chest so that no sob might escape from his throat, no muscle of his face betray him. He alone knew how bitterly he suffered for not having asked forgiveness, what exquisite tears he would have shed, had he had Daniel’s welcome. No! Since it was thus, he would never let anyone see what he felt for his father; that almost animal attachment, tinctured with rancour, seemed to have become even keener, now that there was no hope of its being returned.