The Thibaults (93 page)

Jacques looked up. “In England?”

“Yes, she’s at a convent near London, studying for a diploma, and can’t get away. I’m all alone, and I want your help.”

Though he was unaware of it, Jacques’s dogged resistance had been shaken and, while as yet unformulated in his mind, the notion of a possible return had lost something of its sting. He drew away, took some faltering steps; then as if he preferred to let his mood of black despondency engulf him, he sank into the chair in front of his desk, burying his head in his hands, and broke into a storm of sobs. He did not feel the hand that Antoine laid on his shoulder. He was picturing this place of refuge he had so laboriously built up— in pride and solitude, stone by stone, during the past three years—falling in ruin. In the twilight of his thoughts there was enough clear vision left to confront the inevitable, to see that any resistance on his part was bound to fail, that sooner or later he would have to go home, and his glorious isolation, if not his freedom, had come to an end; that the wisest course was to come to terms with what must be. But his inability to resist made him choke with rankling despite.

Antoine had remained standing, keeping his eyes on his brother, in a thoughtful attitude, as though his affection were for the moment in abeyance. The sight of the bent back shaken with sobs brought to his mind Jacques’s fits of despair in early youth; meanwhile, however, he was coolly weighing his chances. The longer the fit lasted, the better chance there was that Jacques would bring himself to yield. He had withdrawn his hand and, while he took stock of his surroundings, his brain was busy with a host of thoughts. The room, he noticed, was not merely clean, but also cosy. Though the low ceiling showed that it was a converted attic, it was well lit, spacious, and the colour-effect of limpid yellow was agreeable to the eye. Wax-hued and highly polished, the floor emitted faint crackling sounds, no doubt due to the heat from the little white porcelain stove in which a log-fire roared cheerfully. There were two easy chairs covered with a gay cretonne, and several tables strewn with newspapers and documents. Some books, not more than fifty in all, stood on a shelf above the still unmade bed. Not a single photograph, nothing to recall the past. Antoine’s disapproval was tempered with a spice of envy.

He noticed that Jacques was growing calmer, and wondered if it meant that he had yielded, would come back to Paris. Actually, Antoine had always been certain he would carry out his project. And now that the flood-gates were open, a great wave of affection swept over him, an overpowering rush of love and pity; he would have liked to strain his unhappy young brother to his breast. Bending over the bowed back he whispered:

“Jacques!”

With a brusque movement Jacques swung himself erect. Furiously he dried his eyes and glared at his brother.

“Are you angry with me?” Antoine asked.

No reply.

“Father’s dying, you know,” he continued, as though to excuse himself.

Jacques looked away.

“When?” His tone was curt, almost indifferent, but his eyes were haggard. He realized what he had just said, when he caught Antoine’s look.

“When,” he murmured, staring at the floor, “when … do you want to start?”

“As soon as possible. His condition is alarming.”

“Tomorrow?”

Antoine hesitated. “This evening, if it can be managed.”

Their eyes met for a moment. Then Jacques shrugged his shoulders; tonight, tomorrow, what did it matter now?

“The night express then,” he agreed in a toneless voice.

Antoine understood that
their
departure had been settled. But he was still awaiting what he had desired with all his heart; actually he felt neither pleasure nor surprise.

Both were standing now, in the centre of the room. No sound came from the street; they might have been in the heart of the country. Rain was streaming down the steep-pitched roof, and sudden gusts of wind came whistling under the loose tiles. And every moment the tension between them was increasing.

Antoine had a feeling that Jacques wished to be alone.

“I expect you’ve plenty to do,” he said. “I’ll go out for a bit.”

Jacques flushed. “Plenty to do? No; why should I?” Hastily he sat down again.

“Quite sure?”

Jacques shook his head.

“In that case,” Antoine remarked with a cordiality that rang false, “I’ll sit down too. We’ve lots to say to each other.”

What he really wanted was to ask questions, but his courage failed him. To gain time he launched out into a detailed and, despite himself, technical account of the various phases of their father’s illness. These details did not merely recall to his mind a hopeless case; they summoned up the sick-room, the bed, and the dying, swollen, pain-racked body on it, the convulsed features and the piteous cries wrung from an agony which it was almost impossible to subdue. And it was Antoine’s voice now that trembled with emotion, while Jacques, hunched up in his chair, stared at the stove with a look of stubborn aloofness, as if to say: “Father is dying, and you’ve come to drag me away—well and good, I’ll go. But ask no more of me.” At one moment Antoine fancied he saw Jacques unbend a little from his impassibility. It was when he described how he had heard through the door the sick man and Mademoiselle singing together the old nursery song. Jacques remembered the “pretty pony” and, while his eyes remained fixed on the stove, a slow smile formed on his lips. A wan, faraway smile—exactly the smile he used to have as a little boy.

But, almost immediately after, when Antoine said in conclusion: “After all the suffering he’s been through, it will be a happy release,” Jacques, who till then had not said a word, remarked in a harsh, incisive voice:

“For us, undoubtedly.”

Antoine was too profoundly shocked to answer. In Jacques’s callous attitude there was, he realized, a good deal of bravado, but behind it was only too apparent an animosity that would not be disarmed, and this hatred for a sorely afflicted, dying man was more than Antoine could stomach. To his mind it was unjust and, to say die least of it, quite ill-timed, as things were now. He remembered the evening when M. Thibault had shed tears, accusing himself of being responsible for his son’s suicide. Nor could he forget the effect Jacques’s disappearance had had on the old man’s health. Grief and remorse might well have played a part in bringing on the nervous depression which had enabled the malady to take root, and but for which the present complications would perhaps not have developed so rapidly.

Then, as if he had been waiting impatiently for his brother to finish speaking, Jacques stood up abruptly and burst out with the question:

“How did you find out where I was?”

Evasion was impossible.

“Oh, through—through Jalicourt.”

“Jalicourt!” It seemed as if this was the last name he had expected. He repeated it syllable by syllable, incredulously: “Ja-li-court?”

Antoine, who had taken out his pocket-book, quietly handed to his brother the letter from Jalicourt which he had opened. This seemed the simplest course; no verbal explanations would be needed.

Jacques took the letter and glanced over its contents; then, going to the window, he perused it carefully, his eyes half hidden by the lids, and his lips tight-set, inscrutable.

Antoine was observing him. Surely Jacques’s face, which three years earlier had still the undecided features of an adolescent, should not, clean-shaven as it was, now seem so very different? He scanned it with interest, puzzled to define exactly how it had changed. He found in it more energy, less pride, and less unrest as well; less obstinacy and more self-reliance. Jacques had certainly lost his charm, but he had gained in physique. His build was almost stocky; his shoulders had widened, and his head, which had grown larger, seemed set too low between them. Jacques had a way of holding his head well back—giving an impression of pugnacity, not to say of arrogance. His under-j aw was formidable, and, for all their melancholy droop, the lines of his mouth were firm and forceful. What particularly struck Antoine was the changed expression of Jacques’s mouth. His complexion was as pale as ever, with a few freckles over the cheek-bones. Jacques’s hair had changed colour—its auburn tint had darkened into brown—and, growing in a thick, unruly mop, it made the resolute features seem more massive still. A lock of hair, dark brown with glints of gold, which Jacques was always pushing back impatiently, kept falling over his forehead, shadowing a portion of it.

Antoine saw the forehead twitching; two deep furrows had formed between Jacques’s brows. He realized what a shock there must be for Jacques in all the thoughts that letter was evoking, nor was he in the least surprised when, letting the hand that held the letter drop to his side, his brother turned to him and muttered:

“I suppose you … you, too, have read my story?”

Antoine’s only answer was a flutter of the eyelashes. The affection in his gaze—he was smiling less with his lips than with his eyes— gradually got the better of his brother’s vexation. When Jacques spoke again it was in a less aggressive tone.

“And who … who else has read it?”

“No one.”

Jacques looked incredulous.

“No one else, I assure you,” Antoine said emphatically.

Jacques thrust his hands into his pockets, and said nothing. As a matter of fact, he was rapidly getting used to the thought that his brother had read “
La Sorellina
,” and would even have liked to hear his opinion of it. Personally, he was severe in his judgment of this’ work, written in a mood of fiery exaltation, but a year and a half earlier. He believed he had made vast strides since that period, and., he now found unbearable its experimentalism and lyrical effusion, its juvenile exuberance. The oddest thing was that he did not give a thought to its theme, so far as that theme was linked up with his own life. Once he had transmuted past. experience into terms of art, he felt that he had got it definitely out of his system. Nowadays, whenever he chanced to think of those troublous times, it was to tell; himself at once: “I’ve got over all that, thank goodness!”

Thus, when Antoine had said: “I’ve come to fetch you,” his first response had been to reassure himself: “Anyhow, I’ve got over all that,” following it up With: “What’s more, Gise is away, in England.” For, if need be, he could bear with being reminded of Gise, and hearing her name; only of the faintest allusion to Jenny was be fanatically intolerant.

For a moment he stood unmoving, silent, in front of the window, gazing into the distance. Then he turned again.

“Who knows that you’ve come here?”

“No one.”

This time he insisted. “What about Father?”

“I tell you, he knows nothing.”

“And Gise?”

“No. Nobody knows.” To reassure his brother still further; Antoine added: “After what happened, and as Gise is in London, it’s best for her to know nothing, for the present.”

Jacques was watching his brother; the glint of an unspoken question flickered in his eyes, died out.

Again there was a silence—Antoine had come to dread these silences; unfortunately, the greater his desire to break the tension, the more an opening eluded him. Obviously a host of questions suggested themselves, but he dared not voice them. He kept on groping for some harmless, neutral topic which might pave the way for greater intimacy; no such theme presented itself.

The tension was growing strained to breaking-point when suddenly Jacques threw the window open, then stepped back from it. A superb Siamese tom-cat, with dusky muzzle and thick, cream-brown coat, sprang lithely down to the floor.

“Ah, a visitor!” Antoine exclaimed with relief.

Jacques smiled. “A friend.’ And the nicest kind of friend, an intermittent one.”

“Where does he come from?”

“I’ve not been able to find out. From some distance, I imagine. No one in our street knows anything about him.”

The handsome cat made a lordly circuit of the room, purring like a musical top.

“Your friend is soaked through,” Antoine observed; he felt that dreaded silence on the point of closing in again.

“Yes,” Jacques said, “he usually honours me with a visit when it’s raining. Sometimes as late as midnight. He scratches on the pane, jumps in, and gives himself a cleaning in front of the stove. Once he’s done, he asks to be let out. I’ve never persuaded him to let me stroke him, still less to feed him.”

After his inspection of the room, the cat went back towards the window, which was still ajar.

“Look!” Jacques said almost cheerfully. “He didn’t expect to find you here; he’s off again.”

The cat sprang lightly onto the zinc windowsill and, without a look behind, was off along the tiles.

“Your protégé is rather tactless,” Antoine remarked half in earnest, “rubbing it into me like that, that I’m an intruder.”

Jacques went up to the window and shut it; a pretext for not replying. But when he turned round, his cheeks were scarlet. He fell to pacing slowly up and down the room.

Silence again, uneasy, hostile silence.

As a last resort, presumably in the hope of changing Jacques’s attitude, and because his mind was haunted by thoughts of the dying man, Antoine began speaking again of his father. He laid stress on the changes that had come over M. Thibault’s character since the operation, and went so far as to observe:

“You’d judge him differently, perhaps, if you’d seen how he has aged, as I have, during these last three years.”

“Perhaps,” Jacques replied evasively.

But Antoine was not to be discouraged so easily.

“In any case,” he went on, “I’ve often wondered if you and I ever really understood what sort of man he is, at bottom.” It struck him that, while on this subject, he might describe to Jacques a little incident which had happened to him quite recently. “You remember that hairdresser, Faubois, don’t you, in front of our place, next door to the cabinet-maker’s, just before you turn into the Rue du Pré aux Clercs?”

Jacques, who was walking to and fro with lowered eyes, stopped short. Faubois … that little side-street! It was like the sudden, blinding inrush of a world he had fancied out of mind for ever, into the dark seclusion he had deliberately sought. How vividly it all came back, down to the smallest detail: each slab of the sidewalk, every shop-front, the old cabinet-maker with his fingers stained walnut-brown, the gaunt-faced man and his daughter who kept the curiosity shop, and then “our place” (as Antoine called it), with its carriage entrance always kept ajar, and the concierge’s quarters on the ground floor, and Lisbeth, and, further back in time, all the childhood he had abjured: Lisbeth, his first experience. In Vienna he had known another Lisbeth, whose husband had killed himself out of jealousy. Suddenly he remembered he must warn Sophia, old Kammerzinn’s daughter, that he was leaving.