The Thibaults (77 page)

She nodded and opened the door; then, as if she had come to a sudden decision, she turned back to Antoine. No, it was useless. What could she say to him? Since she couldn’t tell him everything, what would be the good? Wrapping her shawl more closely round her, she went out, her eyes still fixed on the ground.

“The elevator’s just coming down,” Léon pointed out. “Won’t you wait for it, Miss?”

Shaking her head, she began to walk up the stairs, slowly, broodingly. All her will was bent on that one obsession: London! Yes, she must leave at the earliest moment, must not even wait till the end of her holiday. Oh, if only Antoine could guess all that it meant to her—to be over there, across the Channel!

It had happened two years ago, ten months after Jacques’s disappearance. One morning in September Gise had chanced to meet the postman coming up the garden-path at Maisons-Laffitte, and he had handed her a hamper bearing the label of a London flower-shop and addressed to her. Puzzled, but with a sudden intuition that somehow it concerned her deeply, she contrived to reach her room without being seen, cut the string, tore off the lid, and all but fainted with emotion when she saw, lying on a bed of damp moss, a simple bunch of roses. Her thoughts flew to Jacques. Their roses! Crimson roses with tiny dusky hearts; exactly, yes, exactly the same. And September: the anniversary! The meaning of the nameless gift was as clear to her as a code-telegram, worded in a familiar code. Jacques was not dead, M. Thibault was wrong, Jacques was living in England, and—
Jacques loved her!
Her first impulse was to open the door wide, call out for all to hear: “Jacques is alive!” Just in time, she pulled herself together. Fortunately. How could she have explained just why it was these crimson roses conveyed so wonderful a meaning? They would badger her with questions and—anything, anything rather than betray her secret! Closing the door, she prayed to God for strength to hold her peace, till the evening, anyhow; for she knew that Antoine was expected back at Maisons for dinner.

That evening she led him aside and spoke to him of a mysterious present, a box of flowers sent her from London, where she knew no one; mightn’t it be Jacques? In any case the clue should be followed up without delay. Antoine’s interest was aroused, though a series of failures during the past year had made him sceptical, and lost no time in setting an inquiry on foot in London-The florist supplied a detailed description of the customer who had sent the flowers, but the man in question was not in the least like Jacques. So this line of inquiry also had been dropped.

But not by Gise. She alone had certain knowledge. But she said no more about it. With a power of self-control extraordinary for her seventeen years, she kept her secret. But she was determined to go to England and, cost what it might, to follow up Jacques’s trail herself The plan seemed doomed to fail. But, for two long years, with the subtle, silent assiduity of the dark jungle-folk from whom she sprang, she had paved the way for her departure, and plotted it out, step by step. And what a struggle it had been! She recalled each gradual advance. She had needed all her patience, every artifice, to instill certain ideas into her aunt’s reluctant mind. First, she had needed to convince her that a penniless young girl, even though she came of a good family, should be able to earn her living; then she had had to bring her round to the idea that her niece, like herself, had a vocation for educating young children, and furthermore that, considering the keen competition for such posts, it was essential nowadays for any would-be teacher to have a good command of English. Next, she had to inveigle her aunt into meeting a local woman-teacher who had just finished a course at an English training-school, established in the neighbourhood of London by a group of Catholic nuns. As good luck would have it, M. Thibault was moved to make inquiries and received a favourable report on the institution. In the previous spring, after a thousand and one delays, Mile, de Waize had at last been won over to her niece’s view, and Gise had spent the summer in England. But those four months had not given the results she hoped for; she had been victimized by shady detective-agencies, and nothing but disappointment had come of her attempts. Now at last she would be able to take action and pull the necessary strings. She had just sold some jewellery and collected her savings. Moreover, she had at last got into touch with honest agencies. Best of all, she had managed to interest the daughter of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in her romantic quest; she had been invited to lunch with the Commissioner on her return to England, and he well might prove a very useful friend in need. How then could she do otherwise than hope?

Gise had to ring at the door of the Thibaults’ flat; her aunt had never let her have a latch-key.

“Yes, how can I do otherwise than hope?” she asked herself, and suddenly the certainty that she would find Jacques again came back with overwhelming force, sweeping all doubt before it. Antoine had said “it” might last three months. “Three months?” she murmured. “Why, in less than that I shall have succeeded!”

Meanwhile, downstairs, Antoine was standing where she had left him in Jacques’s room, facing the closed door with a steadfast gaze that seemed to beat in vain against its dark, impenetrable barrier. He felt his life had reached a turning-point. Often in the past he had pitted his will against the most formidable difficulties, and overcome them, but never had he vainly grappled with a sheer impossibility. And, just now, something was being wrenched from his existence; it was not Antoine’s way to persevere in a hopeless struggle.

He took two hesitating steps, glanced into the mirror, then, leaning on the mantelpiece, with his face thrust forward, gazed intently for some seconds at his reflected self. “And supposing she’d said it, like that: ‘Yes, marry me’?” A thrill of retrospective apprehension ran through his body. “Playing with fire—a fool’s game!” He turned on his heel. “Good Lord! It’s five o’clock! And … how about Queen Elisabeth?”

As he hurried to the surgery Léon met him, his lips impassive as ever, a whimsical smile flickering on his lips.

“M. Rumelles has left. He’s made an appointment for the same time tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Antoine, much relieved. And for the moment this small relief sufficed to blunt the edge of his chagrin.

He went back to the consulting-room, crossed it diagonally, and, slipping back the curtain with the familiar gesture which, every time he made it, gave him a vague satisfaction, opened the door of the waiting-room.

“Hallo!” he exclaimed, with a friendly pinch of the cheek for a pale-faced little boy who came towards him, looking thoroughly scared. “So you’ve come all by yourself, like a big boy! How are your father and mother?”

Taking the child’s arm, he led him to the window and, seated on a stool with his back to the light, pressed back the docile little head gently but firmly, so as to have a clear view of the throat. “Well, well,” he murmured without raising his eyes, “there’s no mistaking them this time, those tonsils of yours!” His voice had automatically regained the brisk and sonorous, almost astringent, quality which acted like a tonic on his patients.

As he bent forwards, gazing intently at the little boy, a sudden twinge of wounded pride fretted his mind and he could not repress the thought: “Anyhow, if I think fit, we can always wire for her to come back.”

AS HE was seeing the boy off, Antoine was not a little surprised to discover Mary, the English girl with the peach-bloom complexion, sitting in the hall. When he went up to her she rose and bestowed on him a leisurely, bewitching smile; then, silently but with a resolute air, she handed him a pale blue envelope.

Her present attitude, so changed from her aloofness of two hours ago, and her bold, if enigmatic, look convinced Antoine—though he could have given no reason for his belief—that there was something abnormal about her errand.

Much mystified, he remained standing in the hall and was hastily opening the envelope, when he observed the English girl deliberately making for the consulting-room, the door of which stood open. He followed her, unfolding the letter as he went.

My Dear Doctor,

I have two small requests to make of you and, to ensure they won’t be frowned on, I send them by the least forbidding messenger I can find.

Firstly, my scatter-brained little Mary was silly enough to wait till she had left your place before telling me that she’d been feeling out of sorts for some days past, and couldn’t sleep for coughing the last few nights. Would you be so good as to give her a thorough going-over, and also your advice?

Nextly, we have an old fellow, a retired keeper, living on the estate, who suffers most terribly from arthritis; the poor old chap goes through agonies at this time of the year. Simon has taken compassion on him and gives him injections to ease the pain. We usually keep some morphine in the house, but his last attacks have quite used up our little reserve and Simon has asked me to be sure and bring some back—which I can’t do without a doctor’s prescription. I quite forgot to tell you about it this afternoon. Now will you be terribly nice and give the charming bearer of this note a prescription—one which can be used again, if possible—so that I can get five or six dozen tubes at once?

Thanks in advance for attending to my little “nextly.” As to my request number one, which of us, my dear Doctor, should be the grateful one? I feel sure you often have much less attractive patients to examine!

Very sincerely yours,

Anne-Marie S. de Battaincourt.

P.S. You may think it odd that Simon shouldn’t ask our local doctor to fix it up. Well, he’s a narrow-minded, fanatical old curmudgeon who always votes against us and has his knife into the “château people”— meaning us—for refusing to call him in. Otherwise, of course, I wouldn’t have troubled you.        A.

Though Antoine had read the last word he did not raise his eyes from the page. His first feeling was one of indignation—what did they take him for? Then the whole business struck him as rather comic; why not laugh over it instead?

There were two mirrors in the consulting-room and Antoine, who had once been caught that way himself, had learned a trick that could be played with them. From where he stood, resting his elbow on the mantelpiece, he had only to change the angle of his gaze under his lowered eyelids to study the English girl without her seeing it. He did so. Mary was sitting a little way behind him. She had unfastened her cape, freeing her neck and throat, and, while she pulled off her gloves, kept her eyes fixed, with a show of absent-mindedness, on her toe-cap, toying with a fringe of the carpet. She looked perturbed, but on her mettle. Thinking he could not see her without moving from where he was, with a sudden lift of her long eyelashes, she sped a quick glance at him, blue as lightning and as vivid.

Her indiscretion did away with any doubts that lingered still in Antoine’s mind. He began to laugh and, with bent head, perused the fair tempter’s letter for the last time; then slowly refolded it. Smiling still, he drew himself up and looked Mary in the face; each experienced a sudden shock, sharp as a blow, as eye met eye.

For a moment the English girl seemed in a quandary. He did not say a word but, dropping his eyelids, shook his head slowly from one side to the other several times, to signify an unequivocal “no.” He still was smiling, but his expression made his meaning so clear that Mary could not be mistaken. It was exactly as if he were saying in so many words, with cool effrontery: “No, my dear young lady, there’s nothing doing; it simply won’t work. Don’t imagine I’m shocked. I’m too old a hand at the game, you see, to be anything but amused. Only I must regretfully inform you that, even on the terms you offer, you’ll get nothing out of me!”

She rose, speechless, her cheeks aflame with vexation, and, stumbling over the carpet, backed out into the hall. He escorted her out as calmly as if her hurried exit were not in the least unusual, but chuckling inwardly. Tongue-tied, her eyes fixed on the ground, she continued to retreat, trying to button up her collar with feverish, ungloved fingers that showed deathly pale against her blazing cheeks.

In the hall, when he moved to her side to open the door, she made as if to bow. He was just about to return her greeting when, with a brusque movement, she snatched the letter from his fingers and darted through the doorway; a professional pickpocket could not have done it more neatly.

Antoine could but pay grudging tribute to the girl’s adroitness and presence of mind.

When he returned to his room he tried to picture their faces when the three of them—the fair Anne, Mary, and himself—would have their next encounter (in a few days, presumably) and, at the prospect, smiled again. A glove lay on the carpet; he picked it up and sniffed it before flinging it light-heartedly into the wastepaper basket… .

Those English girls … a queer lot! And Huguette, he wondered —what sort of life would she have, poor little thing, with those two women in charge of her?

Night was falling; Léon came in to close the shutters.

“Has Mme. Ernst come?” Antoine asked, after a glance at his engagement-book.

“Yes, sir, she’s been here quite a time. There’s a whole family of them: the mother, father, and a little boy.”

“Good!” said Antoine cheerfully, as he swung back the curtain.

A LITTLE man, in the sixties, came forward to meet him.

“Would you be so very kind, doctor, as to see me first?” He spoke in a thick, somewhat drawling voice; his manner was that of a well-bred, rather timid man. “There are some things I should like to tell you.”

Antoine carefully closed the door and pointed to a chair.

“My name is Ernst. Dr. Philip has told you, I presume… . Thank you,” he murmured, settling down into the chair.

M. Ernst impressed Antoine favourably. He had deep-set eyes and a gaze that, for all its melancholy and wistfulness, glowed with youthful fervour. Not so his face, an old man’s face; furrowed and worn, dried up yet fleshy, it was all in pits and ridges, without a level inch on it; chin, cheeks, and forehead, all seemed gouged and modelled out by some sculptor’s rough thumb. A short, stiff, iron-grey moustache seemed to cut his face in two; his hair was sparse and drab, like the rank grass that sprouts on sand-dunes. It was impossible to tell if he was conscious of Antoine’s tactful scrutiny.