The Thibaults (48 page)

Two mugs of foaming beer were set before them. He and she were equally impatient to taste it. Antoine amused himself by timing his gestures with hers, never taking his eyes off her; at the same moment as he felt the soapy, pungent brew lapping his tongue and thawing on it, an icy draught flowed cool on Rachel’s tongue—and it was as if their mouths were mingled once again. The emotion left him dazed with pleasure and a minute passed before he caught what she was saying.

“… and those women treat him like a menial.”

He pulled himself together.

“What women?”

“His mother and the servant.” He realized that Rachel was speaking of the Chasles. “The old woman always addresses him as ‘Woolly Head’!”

“Well, you must admit that she’s not far out.”

“No sooner is he back than she starts badgering him about. Each morning he has to clean their shoes—even the child’s shoes—on the landing.”

“What, the old boy?” Antoine smiled as he recalled another picture: the worthy Chasle writing to M. Thibault’s dictation or solemnly receiving in his employer’s stead some colleague from the Institute of Moral Science.

“And they join forces to bleed him dry; why, they even filch the money from his pockets, pretending they’re brushing his coat before he leaves. Last year the old woman signed I.O.U.’s for three or four thousand francs, forging her son’s signature. The old man nearly fell ill with the shock of it.”

“What did he do?”

“Why, he forked up of course. In six months, by installments. He dared not give his mother away.”

“And to think we see him every day, yet nothing of that sort ever entered our heads!”

“You’ve never been to his place before?”

“Never.”

“Nowadays their home looks poverty-stricken. But you should have seen how the little flat looked even two years ago; with the tiled floor, the panelling and cupboards, you’d think you were back in the time of Voltaire. Inlaid furniture, family portraits, even some fine old silver plate.”

“What’s become of it?”

“The two women disposed of it behind his back. One evening when the old man came home the Louis XVI davenport had decamped; another day it was the tapestry, the easy chairs, the miniatures. They even sold the portrait of his grandfather’—a fine figure of a man in uniform, with a cocked hat on his head and a map open in front of him.”

“A distinguished soldier, perhaps?”

“Yes, he’d made a name for himself. He saw service under Lafayette in America.”

He noticed that she was voluble, but had the knack of expressing herself well. The details she gave had local colour. Obviously she had brains, but, above all, a mental outlook, a gift for noting and remembering facts, that pleased him.

“He never breathes a word of complaint,” Antoine remarked, “when he’s with us at home.”

“No doubt—yet I’ve come across him time and time again when he’d crept out onto the stairs to hide his tears.”

“Well, I’d never have believed it!” he exclaimed, and there was such vivacity in his look and smile that her thoughts veered from her narrative towards the young man himself.

“Are they really so terribly hard up?” he asked.

“Not a bit of it! The two old women are hoarding all the money; they’ve hidden it away somewhere. And, I assure you, they’re lavish enough where they themselves are concerned; but they read him a curtain-lecture if he dares to buy a few gumdrops. The stories I could tell you of what goes on in that flat! Aline wanted—guess what!— to get the old fellow to marry her. Don’t laugh! She nearly brought it off, too. The old woman was backing her up. But, luckily enough, one day they fell out.”

“And Chasle, did he agree?”

“Oh, he’d have ended by giving in, because of Dédette. That child is all the world to him. When they want to squeeze something out of him they threaten to send her away to Aline’s home in Savoie; then he starts crying, and gives way all along the line.”

He hardly heard what Rachel was saying; he watched the movements of the mouth that he had kissed—a well-shaped mouth, fleshy at its centre and clean-cut as an incision at the edges. When in repose, the corners of her lips lifted a little, poised in a smile that was not mocking but serene and gay.

So far were his thoughts from the sorrows of M. Chasle that he murmured under his breath: “I’m a lucky chap, you know!” and blushed.

She burst out laughing. Last night beside the operating-table, she had gauged this man’s true worth, and now she was enchanted to discover that he was half a child; it brought him nearer to her,

“Since when?” she asked him.

He equivocated.

“Since this morning.”

Yet it was true enough. He recalled his feelings when he left .Rachel’s place and plunged into the sunlight of the streets; never had he felt in such fine fettle. In front of the Font-Royal, he remembered, the traffic had been dense, but he had launched himself athwart it with amazing coolness, murmuring to himself as he threaded his way through the moving maze of vehicles: “How sure of myself I am, how well I have my energies in hand! And some people tell you there’s no free will!”

“Let me help you to a fried mushroom,” he suggested.

She answered him in English.

“With pleasure.”

“So you speak English?”

“Rather!
Si son vedute cose più straordinarie
.”

“Italian, too. How about German?”

“
Aber nicht sehr gut
.”

He reflected for a moment. “So you’ve travelled?”

She repressed a smile. “A bit.” There was an enigmatic quality in her voice that made him scan her face intently.

“What was I saying …?” he murmured vaguely.

But their words little mattered—there was a strange telepathy at work, in every look and smile, in their least gestures and their voices.

After a long look at him she exclaimed:

“How different you are today from the man I watched last night!”

“I assure you it’s one and the same man.” He raised his hands still stained with iodine. “But just now I can show off my surgical abilities on nothing better than a cutlet.”

“I had a good look at you last night, you know.”

“And what was your impression?”

She was silent.

“Was it the first time you’d witnessed a performance of that kind?”

She stared at him, hesitated, then began to laugh.

“The first time?” she echoed, and her voice implied: I’ve seen a good many things in my time! But she turned the question adroitly.

“And do
you
have operations like that every day?”

“Never. I don’t go in for surgery. I’m a physician, a child-specialist.”

“But why aren’t you a surgeon? With your ability …”

“I suppose it wasn’t my vocation.”

They were silent for a moment; her words had conjured up a vague regret.

“Pshaw! A doctor or a surgeon!” he exclaimed. “People have a lot of false ideas about ‘vocations.’ Men always imagine they have chosen their vocation. But it’s circumstances …” She saw his face masked for a moment by the resolute look which had so deeply moved her at the child’s bedside. “What’s the good,” he continued, “of raking up the ashes? The path we have chosen is always the best one, provided it enables us to go ahead.” Then suddenly his thoughts returned to the handsome girl seated in front of him and the place that in a few brief hours she had made for herself in his life. A shade of apprehension crossed his face. That’s all very fine, he thought, but first of all I must make sure this business won’t handicap my work, my future… .

She saw the shadow on his brow.

“You’re terribly headstrong, I should say.”

He smiled.

“Look here, don’t laugh at what I’m going to tell you. For many years my motto was a Latin word,
Stabo
: I will stand firm. I had it stamped on my note-paper and the first pages of my books.” He drew forth his watch-chain. “I even had it engraved on this old seal which I still wear.”

She examined the pendant he showed her.

“It’s very pretty.”

“Really? You like it?”

She caught his meaning and handed it back to him.

“No.”

But he had already undone the clasp.

“Do, please… .”

“But what’s come over you?”

“Rachel. To remind you …”

“Of what?”

“Of everything.”

“Everything?” she repeated, her eyes still fixed on his, and laughing heartily.

Adorable she looks just now, he thought. It’s charming too, that unrestrained smile of hers, that almost boyish smile. She was as different from the “professionals” he had known as from the girls or married women who had crossed his path in society functions or at holiday resorts, and whom he always found intimidating, seldom attractive. Rachel did not intimidate him; he met her upon an equal footing. She had the pagan charm and even a little of the frankness one finds in harlots who like their calling; but in Rachel that charm had nothing furtive or vulgar about it. How delightful she is! he thought, and saw in her more than an ideal playmate; for the first time in his life he had encountered a woman who might be a friend, a comrade, to him.

The idea had been simmering in his mind all the morning and he had built a castle in the air, a new design of life, in which Rachel had her place. One thing only was lacking: the consent of the other party to the contract. And now he was burning with childish impatience to take her hands and say: “You are the woman I have waited for. I want to have done with casual adventures. But, as I loathe uncertainty, I’d like our mutual relations settled once for all. You shall be my mistress. Let’s fix things up accordingly.” Now and again he had conveyed a hint of such designs and let fall a word or two touching their future, but always she had seemed to miss his meaning. Knowing her non-committal attitude was deliberate, he hesitated to let her into his plans.

“This is a nice place, isn’t it?” she observed, nibbling at a cluster of crystallized red-currants which stained her lips with carmine.

“Yes, it’s worth making a note of. In Paris you can find everything, even the atmosphere of a country town.” He pointed to the empty tables. “And no risk of meeting anyone.”

“Don’t you want to be seen with me?”

“Oh, come now! I was thinking about you, of course.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“About me?” That he should find her so mysterious delighted her and she was in no hurry to make things clearer. But his unspoken anxiety was writ so large upon his face that she could not but confess: “As I told you, I’m absolutely on my own. I have enough to live on in a simple way and want nothing more. I am quite free.”

His anxious, drawn expression relaxed with frank relief. She guessed the meaning he read into her words: I am yours for the asking. It would have revolted her in any other man, but she had a genuine liking for Antoine. The pleasure of feeling that he desired her outweighed whatever irritation she might feel at his complete misjudgment of her.

Coffee was served. She was silent, lost in thought. For she, too, had not failed to weigh the chances of an understanding between them; indeed she had caught herself thinking only a moment earlier: “I’ll get him to shave off that beard!” All the same, he was a stranger to her and, after all, if she felt drawn towards him now, so she had felt to others in the past. He must, she thought, make no mistake about it, must not go on looking at her as he now did with as much complacency as hunger in his eyes.

“A cigarette?”

“No, thanks. I have my own—they’re milder.”

He held a match to her cigarette. She puffed a cloud of smoke towards him.

“Thanks.”

Yes, she mused, the big thing was to avoid all misunderstanding, from the start. She could speak all the more freely because she knew she ran no risk. She moved her cup forward a little, rested her elbows on the tablecloth, her chin on her locked fingers. Her eyelids, puckered with the smoke, almost completely veiled her eyes.

“I say that I am free.” She weighed her words. “But that doesn’t mean I’m—in the market! You see the point?”

Antoine was wearing his tragic air.

“I must tell you that I’ve been through the mill, I haven’t always had my independence; two years ago I hadn’t it. But now I’ve got it—and I mean to keep it.” (She believed she spoke sincerely.) “I set so much store by my freedom that for nothing in the world would I abandon it. Do you follow me?”

“Yes.”

Now they were silent. He watched her intently. Her eyes were averted; there was the ghost of a smile on her lips as she stirred her coffee.

“What’s more—to speak quite frankly—it’s not in me to be a real friend to a man, or even his trusted mistress. I like to indulge all my whims—every one of them. And for that you have to be free… . You see what I mean?” With an air of unconcern she raised her cup and drank the coffee in little, scalding sips.

For a moment Antoine felt quite desperate. The bitter end! … But no, there she was still in front of him; the battle was not lost, far from it! To give up anything on which his heart was set was quite beyond him; he had no precedents for failure. Anyhow there was no mistaking how things lay, and that was better than mirage. When one has all the facts, action can be taken. Never for an instant did it cross his mind that she might possibly slip through his fingers or meet his projects for their future with a blank refusal. That was Antoine’s way: he never doubted he would gain his end.

The main thing was to get to know her better, to rend the veils that still enveloped her.

“So two years ago you were not free?” His tone was frankly inquisitive. “And are you really free now, now and for the future?”

Rachel looked him all over as if he were a child, while a shade of irony hovered on her face, as though she said: “If I answer, it’s only because I choose to do so.”

“The man with whom I used to live,” she explained, “has settled in the Sudan. He will never return to France.” She ended her explanation with a faint, soundless laugh and averted her eyes. Then, as though to close the subject once for all, she rose from her seat.

“Let’s go!”

When they were outside she took a street leading to the Rue d’Alger. Antoine walked beside her saying nothing, wondering what to do. He could not bring himself to leave her so soon.