The Thibaults (11 page)

Jacques felt the world reeling around him. He tried to grasp Daniel’s sleeve, but his fingers went stiff and his nerveless legs gave way under him. People gathered round the boys; Jacques was helped to a seat in a little garden, beside a pump, and a kindly soul began bathing his forehead with cold water. Daniel was as pale as he.

When they returned to the road, the whole village was busy with the barrels. The horses had been extricated. Of the four only one had escaped unscathed; two, their forelegs broken, were kneeling on the road. The fourth was dead and lay sprawling in the ditch into which the wine was flowing, his grey head pressed to the earth, his tongue lolling, his glazed eyes half shut, and his legs neatly doubled up beneath him—as if, before dying, he had tried to make himself as portable as could be for the knacker. The utter stillness of the shaggy grey bulk, smeared with blood and wine and road-dust, was in striking contrast with the heaving flanks of the other horses, standing or kneeling, unheeded, in the middle of the road.

They watched one of the truckmen go up to the dead horse. The old, weathered face with the sweat-matted hair was convulsed with rage yet had a certain gravity ennobling it and proving how much he took to heart the disaster. Jacques could not take his eyes off him. He watched him place between his lips a cigarette he had been holding, then bend over the fallen horse and feel the swollen tongue already black with flies, and insert his finger in the mouth, baring the yellow teeth. He remained for a few moments, stooping, running his fingers over the mottled gums. Then he straightened himself up and sought some friendly eye. His gaze met that of the two boys and, without troubling to wipe his hands, smeared with sticky froth in which flies were crawling, he replaced the cigarette between his lips.

“He wasn’t seven, that poor horse,” he said with an angry jerk of his shoulders. Then he turned to Jacques. “The best one of the team, he was, the hardest worker of the lot. I’d give two of my fingers, these two, to have him back.” He looked away, a wry smile screwing up his lips, and spat.

The boys began to walk away, and now their gaiety had given place to a profound dejection.

“Have you ever seen a real corpse, a human being’s, I mean?” Jacques suddenly inquired.

“No.”

“You’ve no idea, Daniel, how strange it looks. … I’d been thinking about it for a longish while; then one Sunday, at catechism time, I rushed off there.”

“Where?”

“To the Morgue.”

“What? By yourself?”

“Of course. You simply can’t imagine, Daniel, how pale a corpse can be. Just like wax, or plaster of Paris. There were two corpses there that day. One had its face all gashed about, but the other looked almost alive… . Yes, it looked alive,” he repeated, “but at the very first glance you couldn’t help knowing the man was dead. There was something about him—oh, I don’t know what. You saw that horse just now; well, it was just the same thing… . One day, when we’re free,” he added, “some Sunday, you must come there with me, to the Morgue.”

Daniel had ceased to listen. They had just passed below the balcony of a house from which there came the tinkle of a piano: a child was playing scales. Jenny! And suddenly there rose before him Jenny’s delicately moulded features, the expression of her face when she had cried to him: “What are you going to do?” while the tears welled up in her grey eyes, large with wonder.

“Aren’t you sorry you haven’t got a sister?” he asked after a while.

“Yes, I am! An elder sister’s what I’d like. I have a—a sort of little sister.” Seeing Daniel’s puzzled look, he added: “Mademoiselle is bringing up at home a little niece of hers, an orphan. Gise is ten. Her name’s Gisèle, but we call her Gise for short. She’s just lik little sister to me.”

Suddenly his eyes grew moist. Then his thoughts took a new turn. “You, of course, were brought up in a quite different way. For one thing, you’re an ordinary day-boy, you’re almost free, you have much the same life as Antoine… . But, then, you’re such a sensible chap— that makes all the difference.” There was a hint of regret in his tone.

“Meaning—you’re
not
a sensible chap?” There was no irony in Daniel’s tone.

“I ‘sensible’!” Jacques’s eyebrows puckered. “Don’t I know that I’m … unbearable! And there’s nothing to be done about it. Sometimes I have fits of rage, you know, when I lose my grip on things completely—I storm about and break things, I shout most horrible words; when I’d be quite capable of jumping out of a window or knocking somebody down. I’d rather you knew everything about me, that’s why I’m telling you all this.” It was evident that he took a morose pleasure in accusing himself. “I don’t know if it’s my fault, or not. I rather think that, if I lived with you, I shouldn’t be like that. But I’m not so sure.

“At home, when I come back in the evening—if you only could imagine what they’re like!” he went on, after a while, staring into the distance. “Father has never taken me seriously. The Abbés tell him I’m a perfect terror at school; that’s to suck up to him, of course, to make out they’re having no end of trouble bringing up the son of M. Thibault, who has a lot of influence with the Cathedral people. But Papa is kind, you know”—his voice took on a sudden fervour— “awfully kind, really. Only—I don’t know how to explain it. He’s so wrapped up in his public duties, his committees, in his lectures and religion. And Mademoiselle, too; whenever something goes wrong with me, it’s always God who’s punishing me for my sins. Do you understand? After dinner Papa always shuts himself up in his study, and Mademoiselle hears my lessons—I never know them!—in Gise’s room, while she puts her to bed. She won’t even let me stay alone in my room. They’ve unscrewed my switch—would you believe it?— to prevent me using the electric light.”

“What about your brother?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, Antoine, he’s an awfully good sort; only he’s always out. I rather think, though he’s never said anything to me about it, that he, too, doesn’t much like being at home. He was quite grown up when Mother died; he’s exactly nine years older than I—so Mademoiselle never managed to get much of a hold over him. It’s different for me, of course; she’s looked after me all my life.”

Daniel said nothing.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like,” Jacques repeated. “Your people know how to treat
you
; you’ve been brought up quite differently. It’s the same with books.
You
are allowed to read everything; all the bookshelves are open in your home. But I’m never allowed to read anything except rotten old picture-books, bound in red and gold, Jules Verne, and all that sort of rubbish. They don’t even know I write poetry. It’s just as well. They’d raise such a row about it, they wouldn’t understand. And very likely they’d ask the masters to keep an eye on me and give me a putrid time at school.”

There was a rather long silence. Swerving from the sea, the road began to climb towards a grove of cork-trees.

Suddenly Daniel drew nearer Jacques and took his arm.

“Listen,” he said, and his voice, which was just breaking, had a low, sonorous emphasis, “I’m thinking of the future. One never can tell. We might be separated from each other some day. There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, something that would … would seal our friendship, for always. Promise that you’ll dedicate your first book of poems to me. Oh, you needn’t put the name. Just,
To My Friend
. Will you, Jacques?”

“I swear it,” Jacques said, and it seemed to him that he had suddenly grown taller… .

Entering the wood, they sat down under the trees. Over Marseille the sun was setting in a blaze of fire. Feeling his ankles swollen and painful, Jacques took off his shoes and socks and lay down on the grass. Daniel looked at him absent-mindedly; then suddenly he averted his eyes from the small bare feet with the reddened heels.

“Look, there’s a lighthouse!” Jacques exclaimed, pointing towards the horizon. Daniel gave a start. Far away, on the coast, an intermittent gleam raked the dusk. Daniel made no comment.

The air was cooler when they started off again. They had intended to sleep out under the trees, but it looked like being a bitterly cold night.

They walked on for half an hour without exchanging a word. Presently they came to a newly whitewashed inn, with arbours overlooking the sea.

The lights were on in the main room; it was apparently empty. They eyed each other doubtfully. A woman, who had seen them hesitating near the entrance, opened the door. She held up to their faces a glass lamp, the oil in which gleamed like a topaz. She was a short, elderly person, with two gold pendants dangling from her ears along her scraggy neck.

“Excuse me, Madame,” Daniel said; “could you let us have a room with two beds for the night?” Without giving her time to put any questions, he went on. “My brother and I are on our way to meet our father at Toulon; only we left Marseille too late to reach Toulon tonight.”

“That’s a good one!” the woman laughed. She had merry, surprisingly youthful eyes, and gesticulated freely as she talked. “You were going to Toulon on foot, were you? Tell that to the marines, my boy! Anyhow, it’s all the same to me. Yes, you can have a room for two francs—cash down, of course.” And, while Daniel was bringing out his wallet, she added: “I’ve some soup on the fire. Like a couple of platefuls?”

Both said yes.

The room was an attic and there was only one bed, the sheets of which showed signs of having already been used. Prompted by the same unspoken motive, they rapidly took off their shoes and slipped into bed, fully dressed, back to back.

It was long before they fell asleep. The moon shone full through the window. Rats were scampering about in an adjoining loft. Jacques saw a hideous-looking spider crawling on the dingy grey wall and, as he watched it vanish into the darkness, vowed he would stay awake all night. Daniel’s mind was full of pictures of the sensual pleasure of the morning, and imagination was already adding its lascivious glamour to his memories. Sweating, thrilled with delight, disgust, and curiosity, he dared not move.

Next morning, when Jacques was still asleep, Daniel was on the point of rising, to get some respite from the phantoms of his imagination, when he heard a disturbance in the inn-parlour below. So vivid had been his nightlong obsessions that his first idea was that the police were coming to arrest him for his licentious conduct. And, no sooner did the door open (the bolt had broken off) than it was a policeman who appeared, accompanied by the proprietress. As he came in he hit his forehead on the lintel and knocked off his
képi
.

“The youngsters fetched up here last evening, covered with dust.” The woman was still laughing, her ear-drops swaying to and fro. “They told me all sorts of fancy yarns—that they wanted to walk all the way to Toulon, and the good Lord knows what else! And that young scamp”—she extended a long arm jingling with bangles towards Daniel—”gave me a hundred-franc note to pay the four francs fifty for their room and supper.”

The gendarme was dusting his
képi
with an air of bored indifference.

“Come along, boys, up with you!” he grumbled. “Now then, what’s your names, first names, and the rest of it?”

Daniel hesitated. But Jacques jumped off the bed in his knickerbockers and socks, aggressive as a young fighting-cock. For a moment it looked as if he would try to lay out the tall, stalwart gendarme.

“I’m Maurice Legrand!” he shouted in the man’s face. “And this is Georges, my brother. Our father’s at Toulon. And you shan’t stop us going to meet him there. I defy you to!”

A few hours later they were entering Marseille in a farm-cart, with two gendarmes and a miscreant in handcuffs beside them. The lofty prison-gate opened, then clanged to behind them.

“Go in there,” a policeman told them, opening the door of a cell. “Now turn out your pockets. Yes, hand it all over. You’ll be left together till dinner-time, while we check up on your story.”

But long before then a sergeant came and took them to the inspector’s office.

“It’s no use denying it, my boys; you’re nabbed. We’ve been looking for you since Sunday. You’ve come from Paris; the big boy’s name is Fontanin, and you are Thibault. Fancy boys like you, from decent families, taking to the roads like little tramps!”

Daniel had assumed an air of outraged dignity, but inwardly he felt vastly relieved. Thank goodness, it was over! His mother knew by now that he was alive and safe, and she was awaiting his return. He would beg her forgiveness, and that would blot out everything— yes, everything!—even what he was thinking of with such horror at that moment.
That
, anyhow, he would never dare to confess to any one in the world.

Jacques gritted his teeth and, remembering his bottle of iodine and the dagger, clenched his fists ragefully in his empty pockets. A host of schemes for vengeance or escape flashed through his mind. But just then the officer spoke again.

“Your poor parents are in a terrible state.”

Jacques cast a furious glance around him; then suddenly his face seemed to crumple up and he burst into tears. He had pictured his father, Mademoiselle, little Gise… . His heart overflowed with affection and regret.

“Now go and have a sleep,” the inspector went on. “We’ll fix things up for you tomorrow. I’m waiting for instructions.”

FOR two days Jenny had been in a comatose state; the fever had gone down, leaving her very weak. Standing at the window, Mme. de Fontanin was keenly on the alert for every sound that came from the avenue. Antoine had gone to Marseille to fetch the runaways and was due to bring them home that evening. Nine o’clock had just struck; they should be here by now.

She gave a start. That surely was a cab pulling up in front of the house!

In a flash she was out on the landing outside the entrance of her flat, clasping the banisters. The dog had run out after her and was barking to greet the homecomer. Mme. de Fontanin leaned over the rail. There, suddenly, queerly foreshortened by the height, there he was coming up the stairs! That was his hat, with the brim hiding his face; that was the way he had of moving his shoulders as he walked. He was in front; Antoine followed, holding his brother by the hand.