The Thibaults (107 page)

For all the blunt directness of the tone, there was a faint, almost imperceptible quaver in Antoine’s voice. Jacques would not meet his brother’s eyes. At last he brought himself to mutter:

“Really I don’t know. Perhaps not …”

Antoine broke at once. “Well
I
would … and I will!”

He had sprung hastily from the chair. But now he halted and, making an uncertain gesture, bent towards his brother.

“Do you disapprove, Jacques?”

Quietly, without hesitation, Jacques answered: “No, Antoine.”

Again their eyes met, and for the first time since their return from Switzerland they had a feeling that was almost joy.

Antoine went back to the fire. Extending his arms, he gripped the marble mantelpiece with both hands. He bent forward and stared into the flames.

His mind was made up. The only problem was that of ways and means, of when and how. No one except Jacques must be in the room. It was getting on towards midnight. Sister Céline’s and Léon’s shift would be returning to duty at one. It must be done before they came. Nothing could be simpler. A blood-letting to begin with; it would weaken the patient and induce a state of torpor—a pretext for sending off Adrienne and the old nun to take a rest before their time was up. Once he was alone with Jacques …

Patting the inner pocket of his white coat, he felt the little botttle of morphine he had had there since—since when? Since the morning of his return. Yes, he remembered now. When he had gone downstairs with Thérivier to get the laudanum, he had slipped the little bottle under his coat, on the off chance … The chance of what? It seemed as if he had had the whole programme mapped out in his mind—all he had now to do was to carry out the details of a long-thought-out plan.

A new attack was coming on. He would have to wait till it was over. Jacques, full of zeal once more, had hastened to his post. “The last attack,” Antoine was thinking and, as he went up to the bed and saw Jacques’s eyes fixed on his, he seemed to read the same thought in his brother’s gaze.

It happened that the period of rigidity was shorter than usual, but the paroxysms were no less severe.

The suffering man was tossing wildly on the bed, foaming at the mouth. Antoine turned to the nurse.

“It might ease him if we let some blood. When he’s calm again, please bring me my instrument-case.”

The effects were almost instantaneous. Weakened by the loss of blood, M. Thibault seemed to fall asleep.

The women were so worn out that they were only too glad to go off duty before the next shift came; no sooner had Antoine made the suggestion than they hastened away to snatch a little extra rest.

Antoine and Jacques were alone.

Both were at some distance from the bed; Antoine had just gone to shut the door that Adrienne had left ajar, and Jacques, without knowing why he did so, had moved away to the fireplace.

Antoine paid no attention to his brother. Just now he had not the least desire to feel an affectionate presence at his side, and he had no need of an accomplice.

He felt in his pocket for the little nickel box. He allowed himself two seconds’ grace. Not that he wished once more to weigh the pros and cons; it was a principle with him, when the time came for action, never to rehearse the arguments that had led up to it. But as his eyes lingered on his father’s face reposing on the whiteness of the pillow—the face that the long course of the malady had rendered day by day yet more familiar—he yielded for a moment to the melancholy thrill of a last impulse of compassion.

The two seconds were up.

“It would be less distasteful,” he reflected as he walked quickly towards the bed, “to do it during an attack.”

He took the bottle from his pocket, shook it, and fitted the needle into the syringe. While he did so, his eyes roved round the room. Then he shrugged his shoulders, ironically; from force of habit he had been looking for the alcohol-lamp on which to sterilize the needle.

Jacques saw nothing from where he stood. His brother’s bent back hid the bed from him. So much the better! Then, “No!” he muttered, and took some steps aside… .

His father seemed asleep. Antoine had unbuttoned a sleeve of the nightshirt and was rolling it up.

“The right arm, yes, for the injection,” Antoine murmured. “It was the left I bled.”

Nipping a fold of flesh between his fingers, he raised the hypodermic syringe.

Jacques shuddered, and pressed his hand to his mouth.

A whimper came from the sleeping man, his shoulder twitched. In the silence, Antoine’s voice:

“Don’t move, Father. It’s to ease your pain.”

“The last words,” Jacques thought, “that any voice will say to him.”

The process of expelling the contents of the glass syringe seemed interminably slow. Supposing somebody came in! Finished now? No. Leaving the needle sticking in the skin, with a deft movement Antoine detached the syringe and refilled it. The level of the liquid went down more and more slowly. Supposing somebody came in…! Another eighth of a grain. What a time it took! Only a few drops more.

Quickly Antoine withdrew the needle, then wiped clean the tiny scar from which a small pink drop was oozing. He buttoned up the nightshirt and drew back the counterpane. Surely, had he been alone, he would have bent over the pale forehead; for the first time in twenty years he found himself wanting to kiss his father. But then he straightened up, stepped back, slipped his instruments into an inner pocket, and took a look round to see that all was in order. At last he turned towards his brother; stoically calm, his eyes seemed to be saying simply: “It’s done.”

Jacques had an impulse to go up to Antoine, grasp his hand, convey his feelings by an affectionate gesture. But Antoine had already turned away; drawing up Sister Céline’s chair, he seated himself beside the bed.

The dying man’s arm lay outside the bedclothes; the hand was almost as white as the sheets and faintly quivering, like a magnetic needle. As the drug gradually took effect, the features were relaxing, the marks of many days of agony being smoothed away, and the mortal lethargy now settling on the tranquil face might have been the calm of a refreshing sleep.

Unable to fix his mind on any definite thought, Antoine had taken his father’s wrist; the pulse was weak and rapid. All his attention was absorbed in counting the beats mechanically: forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.

His consciousness of what had just taken place was growing more and more blurred, his notions of reality lapsing into a dark bewilderment. Fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one. The fingers on the wrist relaxed. He felt himself slipping away into a blissful nonchalance, a backwater of dreams where nothing mattered. Then came a great flood of darkness; oblivion.

Jacques dared not sit down, for fear of waking his brother. Stiff with fatigue, he kept his eyes fixed on the lips of the dying man. They were growing paler and paler, and had all but ceased to flutter with the failing breath.

A sudden fear came over Jacques; he made an abrupt movement.

Waking with a start, Antoine saw the bed, his father; gently he clasped the wrist again.

“Fetch Sister Céline,” he said after a short silence.

When Jacques returned, followed by the sister and the cook, the breathing had become a little stronger and more regular, but accompanied by a peculiar rumbling in the throat.

Antoine stood with folded arms. He had lit the ceiling-lamp.

“The pulse is imperceptible,” he said when Sister Céline came up to him.

But it was the nun’s opinion that the last moments of a life are outside the competence of doctors; experience is needed. Without replying, she sat down on the low chair, felt the pulse, and for a while contemplated the tranquil face. Then, turning, she made a sign of affirmation to Clotilde, who slipped out of the room.

The gasping intensified, with a rattling, nerve-racking undertone; Jacques’s face grew convulsed with horror and distress. Antoine, who had noticed this, was going up to him, to say: “You needn’t be anxious. He can’t feel anything now,” when the door opened. There was a sound of whispers and Mademoiselle appeared in her dressing-jacket, leaning on Clotilde’s arm, her back bent more than ever. Adrienne followed, and after her came M. Chasle on tip-toe.

Vexed by this intrusion, Antoine signed to them to stand back in the doorway, but already all four were kneeling just inside the door. And suddenly Mademoiselle’s piercing voice broke the silence, drowning the gasps of the dying man.

“
O Lord Jesus, I draw nigh to Thee with a contrite and hum-ble heart…
”

Jacques sprang up and ran to his brother. “Stop her! For mercy’s sake!” he panted hysterically.

But Antoine’s calm, melancholy gaze sobered him at once. “Let her be,” he whispered in Jacques’s ear. “It’s almost over. He can’t hear anything.” It had come back to him, that evening when M. Thibault had solemnly charged Mademoiselle to recite, as he breathed his last, the “Litany for a Happy Death”; and the memory touched him.

The two nuns were kneeling now, one on either side of the bed. Sister Céline’s hand still rested on the dying man’s wrist.

“
When my lips, pale and trembling, shall utter for the last time Thine adorable name, gentle Jesus, have mercy on me
”

The poor old creature had mustered up what little will-power still remained to her after twenty years of servitude to redeem the promise she had made.

“
When my face, pale and wan, shall inspire the beholders with pity and dismay, gentle Jesus, have mercy on me.

“When my hair, bathed in the sweat of death and stiffening on my head …
”

Antoine and Jacques kept their eyes bent on their father. The jaws were opening. The eyelids slowly drew apart, showing the glazing eyes set in a blank stare. Was it the end? Sister Céline, who was still holding the wrist and watching the face, made no sign. Mademoiselle’s voice, wheezy as a punctured concertina, squeaked on indefatigably, syllable by syllable.

“When my im-ag-i-na-tion, beset by hor-rid spectres, shall be sunk in an abyss of anguish, gentle Jesus, have mercy on me.

“When my poor heart, oppressed with suf-fer-ing …”

The mouth was still opening. A gold tooth glinted. Half a minute passed. Sister Céline did not move. At last she let go the wrist and looked up at Antoine. The mouth was still gaping. Antoine bent forward at once; the heart had ceased to beat. Then he laid his hand on the tranquil forehead and very gently, with the ball of his thumb, pressed shut the unresisting eyelids, one after the other. Without removing his hand—it was as though he wished its loving pressure to befriend his father on the threshold of eternal rest—he turned to the sister and said in a voice that was almost loud:

“The handkerchief, please.”

The two maids burst into tears.

Kneeling beside M. Chasle, her hands resting on the carpet so that she seemed to be crouching on all fours, with her pigtail dangling on the white dressing-jacket, Mademoiselle, unaware of what had taken place, proceeded with her litany:

“
When my soul, trembling on my lips, shall bid farewell to the world …
”

They had to help her to her feet, and lead her away. Only when she had turned her back to the bed did she seem to realize what had happened; and she began sobbing like a child.

M. Chasle, too, was weeping; clawing Jacques’s arm, he kept on saying, wagging his head to and fro like a Chinese doll:

“Things like that, M. Jacques, they shouldn’t be allowed.”

As Antoine shepherded them all out of the room, he was wondering what had become of Gise.

Before leaving the room he gave it a final look round. At last, after so many weeks, silence had returned to it.

And suddenly, grown larger than life, it seemed, propped up on the pillows under the glare of the lamp, with the ends of the handkerchief that swathed his chin standing up in two quaint horns above his head, M. Thibault had taken on the weird, enigmatic aspect of a personage in some fantastic folk-tale.

AS HE left the flat Antoine found Jacques standing outside the entrance door, and they went down together. The whole house was asleep; the stair-carpet muffled the sound of footsteps. They did not speak; their minds were void of thoughts, and their hearts light, for there was no withstanding the sense of purely physical well-being that had come over them.

Léon, who had gone down earlier, had lit the lamps in the ground-floor flat and, on his own initiative, laid a cold supper in Antoine’s study. Then, discreetly, he had retired from view.

Under the bright light, the little table, with the white cloth and the two places laid opposite each other, had quite a festive air— though neither would acknowledge it. They sat down without a word, each abashed at feeling so hearty an appetite, and trying to keep up an appearance of dejection. The white wine was well iced; the cold meat, bread, and butter rapidly disappeared. At one moment their hands went simultaneously towards the cheese-plate.

“Help yourself.”

“No, after you.”

Antoine cut in half what remained of the gruyere, and helped Jacques to his share.

“It’s really in excellent condition, this cheese,” he said, as if in self-excuse.

These were the first remarks they had exchanged. Their eyes met.

“Shall we …?” Jacques raised his finger, pointing to the upstairs flat.

“No,” Antoine replied.”We’ll go to bed now. There’s nothing to be done upstairs before morning.”

As they were bidding each other good night at the door of Jacques’s room, suddenly a pensive look came over Jacques’s face.

“Did you notice, Antoine,” he murmured, “how, at the end, the mouth keeps on opening wider and wider?”

They gazed at each other in silence. The eyes of both were filled with tears… .

At six o’clock Antoine, feeling somewhat rested, returned to his father’s flat.

To stretch his legs he went upstairs on foot. “Got to send out the usual notices,” he was thinking. “That’s obviously right up M. Chasle’s street. Then the report at the Registrar’s; not before nine, however. Let’s see, who exactly should be written to? Not many in the family, luckily. The Jeannereaus will look after our relations on my mother’s side; Aunt Casimir will see to the rest. For the cousins at Rouen, a wire. An obituary notice in tomorrow’s papers, of course. Must send a line to old Dupre; to Jean, too. Daniel de Fontanin’s at Luneville; I’ll write to him this afternoon; his mother and sister are staying on the Riviera—just as well they can’t come. Anyhow, I doubt if Jacques will feel like going to the service. Léon can ring up the charitable societies; I’ll give him a list. I’ll look in at the hospital. Philip. Good Lord, I was forgetting the Institute!”