The Thibaults (71 page)

“Were you waiting for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who told you …?” He opened the door leading to the staircase. “Come in anyhow; don’t stay out in the draught. Who told you to come here?”

“No one.” The child’s face lit up. “Of course I know you very well. Why, I’m the office boy at the lawyer’s—at the bottom of the courtyard, you know.”

Unthinkingly Antoine had clasped the hand of the little invalid beside him, and somehow he could never help being moved by the contact of a clammy palm or fevered wrist.

“Where do your parents live, my boy?”

The younger boy raised his lack-lustre eyes towards his companion.

“Robbie!”

Robert came to the rescue.

“We haven’t any, sir,” he said; then added after a short pause: “We’re living in the Rue de Verneuil.”

“Neither father nor mother?”

“No.”

“Grandparents, perhaps?”

“No, sir.”

The boy’s composed expression, his candid eyes, made it evident he had no wish to play on Antoine’s sympathy, or even curiosity; nor did he seem the least dejected. Indeed, it was Antoine, rather, whose amazement struck a puerile note.

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“And—his age?”

“Thirteen and a half.”

Confound them! Antoine thought. Why, it’s a quarter to one already! I must telephone to Philip; lunch; see them upstairs; then go back to the Faubourg Saint-Honore before my consultations. Today of all days!

“Come along!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Let’s have a look at it!”

Robert’s face lit up with joy, though he did not seem at all surprised; to avoid meeting his happy eyes, Antoine stepped hastily in front of him, pulled out his latch-key, and opened the door of his flat. Then he shepherded the boys into his consulting-room.

Léon appeared at the kitchen door.

“Luncheon will have to wait a bit, Léon… . Now then, my boy” —he turned to he child— “hurry up and get your things off. Your brother will help you… . Gently does it… . Right, come here!”

A puny arm, swathed in a bandage that was almost clean. Just above the wrist a superficial boil, clearly defined, seemed to have come to a head. Antoine, no longer mindful of the passing minutes, laid his forefinger on the pustule while, with two fingers of the other hand, he gently pressed another aspect of the swelling. Good! He could distincly feel the liquid shifting under his forefinger.

“Does it hurt there as well?” He ran his hand along the swollen forearm, then up along the upper arm as far as the dilated glands of the axilla.

“Only a little bit,” the child whispered. He was holding himself stiffly, his eyes fixed on the other boy.

“No, it hurts a lot,” Antoine corrected him gruffly. “But I can see you’re a plucky little fellow.” He fixed his gaze full on the child’s eyes and, as the contact was established, a spark of sudden confidence flickered in their misted depths, then boldly leapt out towards him. When at last Antoine’s lips relaxed into a smile, the little boy dropped his eyes at once. Antoine patted his cheek and gently lifted the boy’s chin, which seemed to yield reluctantly.

“Look here! We’ll make a tiny puncture just there and in half an hour it’ll hardly hurt at all. Now then, come along with me!”

The child, duly impressed, advanced bravely enough for a few steps, but, as soon as Antoine’s eyes were turned, his courage faltered, and he looked imploringly at his brother.

“Robbie! You come with me, too!”

The adjoining room, with its tiled floor, linoleum, sterilizer, and white-enamelled table placed under a powerful lamp, served on occasion for minor operations. In earlier days a bathroom, it had become what Léon styled “The Surgery.” The ground-floor flat under M. Thibaults which Antoine and his brother used to share had proved quite inadequate, even after Antoine had become its only occupant. He had jumped at an opportunity which had recently presented itself of renting a four-room flat, also on the ground floor, in an adjoining house, and had shifted his consulting-room and bedroom to his new quarters, where he had had the “surgery” installed as well. His whilom consulting-room had been converted into the patients’ waiting-room. A passage had been opened in the party-wall between the two flats, which were thus merged in one.

A few minutes later he was neatly puncturing the abscess with his scalpel.

“Keep a stiff upper lip, my boy… . Here goes! … Once more now. There, it’s over!” Antoine stepped back a pace and the child, pale and half fainting, sank into his brother’s waiting arms.

“Hi there, Léon!” Antoine shouted cheerfully. “A spot of brandy for these young hopefuls!” He dipped two lumps of sugar in a finger’s depth of cognac. “Here, get your teeth into that! You, too!” He bent towards the little patient. “Not too strong for you?”

“It’s nice,” the child whispered, with a wan smile.

“Show me your arm. Don’t be frightened. I told you it was over. Washing and bandaging—that doesn’t hurt a bit.”

A ring at the telephone; Léon’s voice in the hall. “No, Madame, the doctor is engaged. Not this afternoon, it’s the doctor’s consulting-day. Oh, hardly before dinner-time. Very good, Madame, thank you.”

“Yes, a gauze drain, to make sure,” Antoine murmured. “Right. And the bandage pretty firm, that’s essential… . Now you, big boy, listen to what I say. You’ll take your brother home at once and seethat he’s put to bed, to be sure he doesn’t move his arm. Whom do you live with? Surely there’s someone who looks after your little brother?”

“
I
do.”

There was a glow of honest self-assurance in his eyes, and in his look such dignity that it was quite impossible to smile at the emphatic declaration. Antoine glanced at the clock and once more had to repress his curiosity.

“What number in the Rue de Verneuil?”

“37B.”

“Robert what?”

“Robert Bonnard.”

When he had jotted down the address Antoine looked up and saw the two boys side by side, gazing at him with candid eyes in which he read no trace of gratitude, but only self-surrender, illimitable confidence.

“Now then, young men, off you go! I’m in a hurry. I’ll look in some time between six and eight to change the drain. Got that?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the elder boy, who seemed to take it quite as a matter of course. “It’s the top floor, room 3, opposite the stairs.”

No sooner were the children gone than Antoine told Léon to serve luncheon. Then he went to the telephone.

“Hallo, Elysées 0132.” On the hall table, beside the telephone, his engagement-book lay open. Holding the receiver to his ear, Antoine bent over it and read the entries:
1913. October 13. Monday. 2:30 p.m., Mme. de Battaincourt
. I shan’t be back; she can wait,
3:30. Rumelles
, yes,
Lioutin
, right!
Mme. Ernst
, don’t know her.
Vianzoni … de Fayelles
… . Right! Hallo, 0132? Is Professor Philip back yet? Dr. Thibault speaking.” There was a pause. “Hallo! Good morning, Chief. Hope I’m not taking you from your lunch. It’s about a consultation. Very urgent. Hequét’s child. Yes, Hequét, the surgeon. … In a very bad way, I fear, hopeless; an otitis that’s been neglected, all sorts of complications. I’ll explain. … A bad business… . No, Chief, it’s you he wants, he’s set on seeing you. You surely can’t refuse him that. … Of course, as soon as possible, immediately. I’m in the same boat, Monday’s my consulting-day… . Right, that’s settled then; I call for you at a quarter to. Thanks, Chief.”

Hanging up the receiver, he went over the day’s appointments once again. “Whew! What a day!” But the sigh was mere convention and his contented look belied it.

Léon stood before him, a rather fatuous grin rippling his clean-shaven cheeks.

“Do you know, sir, the cat had her kittens this morning?”

“Really?”

Smiling, Antoine followed his servant to the kitchen. Snug in a cosy nest of rags, the cat lay on her side amid a writhing mass of small black lumps of sticky fur which she was scrubbing vigorously with her rasp-like tongue.

“How many are there?”

“Seven. My sister-in-law would like one kept for her.”

Léon was the concierge’s brother. For the two years and more that he had been in Antoine’s service he had performed his duties with ritual assiduity. He was a man of few words and uncertain age; his skin was colourless and on his elongated head straggled a scanty growth of pale, downy hair; his overlong, drooping nose and his trick of lowering his eyelids gave him an air of sheepishness, which his smile accentuated. But all this was only a convenient mask, even, perhaps, a studied pose; behind it lay a keen intelligence, shrewd common sense, and a natural gift of humour.

“How about the other six?” Antoine asked. “You’ll drown them all, of course.”

“Well, sir,” Léon placidly replied, “do you wish me to keep them?”

Antoine smiled, turned on his heel, and hastened to the room which once was occupied by Jacques and now served as a dining-room.

His meal was all laid out ready on the table: an omelet, veal cutlets on spinach, and fruit; for Antoine could not endure waiting between courses. The omelet smelt deliciously of melted butter and the frying-pan… . Brief interlude of fifteen restful minutes between a morning at the hospital and the afternoon’s engagements.

“No message from upstairs?”

“No, sir.”

“Did Mme. Franklin telephone?”

“Yes, sir. She made an appointment for Friday. It’s down in the book.”

There was a ring at the telephone. “No, Madame,” Léon answered, “he will not be free at five-thirty. Nor at six. Thank you, Madame.”

“Who?”

“Mme. Stockney.” He made bold to shrug his shoulders slightly. “About a friend’s little boy. She will write.”

“Who is this Mme. Ernst, at five?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on. “Will you ask Mme. de Battaincourt to excuse me? I shall be at least twenty minutes late. The newspapers, please. Thank you.” He glanced at the clock. “They should have finished upstairs, eh? Give them a ring, please. Ask for Mile. Gisèle and bring the receiver here. At once, along with the coffee.”

As he picked up the receiver his features relaxed and he smiled towards an unseen face, almost as though he had taken wings and been transported to the other end of the wire.

“Hallo! Yes, it’s I. Yes, I’ve almost done… .” He began laughing. “No, grapes; a present from a patient, and very good they are! … And how are things upstairs?” As he spoke a shadow fell upon his face. “What? Before or after the injection? Anyhow the main thing is to convince him that it’s quite normal.” Another pause, and now his face brightened up again. “I say, Gise, are you by yourself at the phone? Look here, I must see you today. I’ve something to say to you. Something important. Why, here, of course. Any time you like after half-past three. Léon will see you don’t have to wait… . Good. I’ll just finish my coffee and come upstairs.”

ANTOINE had the key of his father’s flat; he entered without ringing, and went directly to the linen-room.

“The master has been taken to the study,” Adrienne informed him.

He made his way on tip-toe down a passage reeking like a pharmacy, to M. Thibault’s dressing-room. “Curious the sort of oppression I always feel the moment I set foot inside this flat,” he said to himself. “For a doctor, you’d think … But here, of course, it isn’t the same for me as in other people’s houses.”

His eyes went straight to the temperature-chart pinned to the wall. The dressing-room looked like a laboratory; table and whatnot were littered with phials, china recipients, and packets of cotton-wool. “Let’s have a look at the bottle,” he said to himself. “Yes, it’s as I thought; kidneys … the analysis will bring that out. And the morphine-—how much is gone?” He opened the box of ampoules whose labels he had camouflaged to keep the patient from suspecting anything. “Half a grain in twenty-four hours. Already! Let’s see, where’s the sister put—ah, here it is—the graduate.”

With brisk, almost light-hearted gestures he set about the analysis; just as he was heating a test-tube over the alcohol-lamp the door creaked on its hinges; the sound made his heart beat faster and he turned hastily to see who had come in. But it was not Gise. It was Mademoiselle, bent double, like an old witch, who was ambling towards him; nowadays her stoop was so pronounced that, even when she craned her neck, she could hardly lift her eyes (which still shone bright as ever behind the smoked-glass spectacles) to the level of Antoine’s hands. Were she in the least upset or frightened, her tiny forehead, yellow as old ivory between the snowy bandeaux, started swaying like a pendulum.

“Ah, so you’ve come, Antoine,” she sighed and, in a voice that quavered with each wobble of her head, plunged into her subject: “Really, since yesterday, things have been going from bad to worse. Sister Céline took it into her head to waste two jars of broth and a quart of milk quite needlessly. She’s always peeling bananas for him to eat—they cost a pretty penny, too—and then he won’t touch them. And the things he leaves can’t be used, because of the microbes. Oh, I’ve nothing against her, or anyone; she’s a good, religious young woman. But do speak to her, Antoine, do tell her to stop! What’s the good of pressing food on an invalid? Much better wait till he asks for it. But she’s always trying to foist things on him. This morning it was an ice—just think! Imagine offering him an ice—why, the chill of it might make his heart stop! And where’s Clotilde to find the time to go running round to the ice-man, with all the household to cook for? Tell me that!”

Antoine was patiently completing the test, giving her only non-committal grunts by way of answer. “She’s had to put up with the old fellow’s harangues,” he said to himself, “for a quarter of a century without saying a word, and now she’s getting even!”

“Do you know,” the old lady went on, “how many mouths I have to feed—how many they come to with the nursing sister and Gise as well? Three in the kitchen, three of us, and then your father. Work it out for yourself! And really, considering I’ve turned seventy-five, and the state of my—“

She drew aside abruptly; Antoine had stepped back from the table and was on his way to the basin. She was still as terrified as ever of infection and disease; for a year past she had been obliged to live in the shadow of a serious illness, to rub shoulders with doctors and nurses and breathe a sick-room atmosphere; the experience had affected her like a slow poison taken in daily doses, and was hastening the general decline that had set in three years before. Moreover, she was not wholly unaware of her decrepitude. “Since it was His will,” she would lament, “to take Jacques out of my life, I’m only the ghost of what I used to be.”