The Thibaults (49 page)

When they had reached the street door, Rachel came to the rescue.

“Will you have a look at Dédette?” she asked. Then, taking herself up, she added: “But what am I thinking of? Very likely you’ve somewhere else to go.”

As a matter of fact Antoine had promised to return to Passy in the afternoon to visit the sick child there. Moreover, he had to go over the proofs of a report that his chief had sent him that morning, asking him to check the references. More important still, he was due to dine that evening at Maisons-Laffitte and meant to keep the appointment; he had firmly resolved to arrive there early so as to have a chat with Jacques before dinner. But all those good resolves went up in smoke, the moment he saw a possibility of staying in Rachel’s company.

“I’m free all day,” he boldly lied, making way for her to enter.

Qualms for the duties left undone, the upset to his scheme of life, glanced lightly off his conscience. So much the worse for them! … So much the better for me! he all but thought.

They climbed the stairs in silence.

At the door of her flat, as she put her key in the lock, she turned towards him. His features were aglow with candid, undisguised desire; desire untrammeled, jubilant, and not to be frustrated.

JACQUES had rushed home from Packmells at headlong speed. When his concierge informed him that M. Antoine had been called away for an accident, his superstitious fears vanished into air, leaving him vexed with his credulity—that he had thought a passing fancy for a mourning suit could have brought about his brother’s death. The absence of the bottle of iodine which he needed for his boil was the last straw; he undressed in the mood of vague but fierce resentment which he knew only too well and always bitterly regretted as unworthy of him. For a long time he could not sleep; he got no joy of his success.

Next morning Antoine met Jacques at the street door, when the latter was just setting out for Maisons-Laffitte, having decided not to await his brother’s return. Antoine gave him a rapid account of the past night’s happenings, but did not breathe a word about Rachel. His eyes were bright and there was a combative expression on his face which his brother put down to the strain of the operation.

The church-bells were ringing full peal when Jacques left the Maisons-Laffitte station. There was no need to hurry: M. Thibault never missed high mass, nor did Gisèle and Mile, de Waize. He had ample time for a stroll before going to the house. The warm shadows in the park were an invitation to saunter. The avenues were empty. He sat down on a bench. No sounds broke the stillness but the hum of insects in the grass, and the sudden whir of sparrows as, one by one, they left the branches above his head. He sat unmoving, a smile on his lips, thinking of nothing in particular, glad simply to be there.

The ancient domain of Maisons, bordering the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was bought under the Restoration by Laffitte, who sold off the fifteen hundred acres of the park in parcels, reserving only the château for his use. But the financier saw to it that the dispersion of the estate did not impair the grandiose vistas that radiated from the château, and that damage to the standing timber should be reduced to a minimum. Thanks to his foresight, Maisons remained a vast seigniorial domain; its avenues of lime-trees hundreds of years old offered magnificent approaches to a whole colony of small estates, unwalled and nestling in the woods.

M. Thibault’s summer residence lay north-east of the château in a grassy clearing, ringed with white palings and the shade of immemorial trees; in the middle of the greensward a round pond gleamed, set off by shrubberies of box.

Jacques made his way slowly towards this green retreat. As the house came into view in the far distance, he discerned a white dress pressed against the garden gate: Gisèle was looking out for him. Her eyes were fixed on the station road and she did not see him coming. Thrilled with sudden joy, he began to run. Then she saw him and, making a speaking-trumpet of her hands, called to him.

“Passed?”

Though she had turned sixteen, she did not dare to go outside the garden without leave from Mademoiselle.

To tease her, he did not answer. But she read the good news in his eyes and began capering like a child. Then she flung herself into his arms.

“Don’t be a silly kid,” he growled, more out of habit than anything else. She drew away laughing, but a moment later threw herself once again into his arms, quivering with excitement. He saw her gleeful smile, tears flashing in her eyes; touched and grateful, he held her for a moment closely to his heart.

Laughing still, she lowered her voice.

“I had to make up such a yarn to get Auntie to go with me to low mass; I thought you’d be here at ten, you see. Father isn’t back yet. Come along!” She led him towards the house.

Mademoiselle’s diminutive figure came into view at the far end of the hall; her back was hunched a little with the years. She hurried forward, her head shaking slightly with excitement. She halted at the edge of the terrace and, as soon as Jacques was near, stretched out her doll-like arms, nearly losing her balance as she kissed him.

“You’ve passed? Yes?” she mumbled as if she had something in her mouth.

“Whoa!” he gaily implored. “Do mind my boil. It’s terribly painful.”

“Turn round! Good heavens!” Jacques’s small infirmity evidently lay more within her province than examinations at the Ecole Normale, for she asked no more about his success, but led him off to have his neck bathed with boiled water and a soothing compress applied.

The minor operation was just ending in Mademoiselle’s room when the gate-bell tinkled. M. Thibault had returned.

“Jacquot’s passed!” Gisèle shouted from the window, while Jacques went down to meet his father.

“Ah, there you are! What place?” M. Thibault asked, a quick flush of satisfaction colouring his pasty cheeks.

“Third.”

M. Thibault’s approval grew even more pronounced. His eyelids did not rise, but the muscles of his nose began to quiver, his glasses dropped to the end of their tether, and he held out his hand.

“Well, well! Not too bad!” he muttered, pressing Jacques’s hand between his flabby fingers. He paused a moment, frowning. Then, “How hot it is!” he murmured. He drew his son to him and kissed him. Jacques’s heart beat faster. He raised his eyes towards his father, but M. Thibault had already turned away and was hurriedly ascending the terrace steps. He went to his study, dropped his prayerbook on the table, and, taking out his handkerchief, mopped his face.

Lunch was on the table. Gisèle had placed a bunch of marshmallows at Jacques’s place and the family table wore a festive air. So blithe was her heart that she could not restrain her laughter. The life she led with the two old people was hard upon her youth, but, such was her vitality, it never weighed on her; with hopes of happiness to come, why not be happy now?

M. Thibault came in, rubbing his hands,

“Well, Jacques,” he said, unfolding his napkin and planting his lists on either side of his plate, “now you mustn’t rest on your laurels. We’re no fools in the family and, as you’ve entered third, what’s to stop you, if you work hard enough, from coming out first in the finals?” Half closing an eye, he perked up his beard with a knowing air. “For may we not assume that in every competitive examination
someone
must be first?”

Jacques greeted his father’s sally with an evasive smile. He was so used to play-acting at the family table that it cost him little effort to carry through his part; occasionally, however, he blamed himself for the habit as lacking dignity.

“To take a first place,” M. Thibault continued, “in the finals of such an Alma Mater as the Ecole Normale—your brother will bear me out—stamps a man for life; he is sure of being looked up to in whatever career he chooses. How is your brother?”

“He said he was coming after lunch.”

The idea of telling his father that there had been an accident in M. Chasle’s household never for an instant crossed Jacques’s mind. All who came in contact with M. Thibault were involved in a conspiracy of silence; they had learned how rash it was to give him any kind of information, for there was no knowing what conclusions that burly busybody would draw from even the smallest piece of news, or what steps he might not take, whether by interviews or correspondence, in the exercise of what he deemed his right of meddling in—and muddling—other people’s business.

“Have you seen that the morning papers confirm the failure of our Villebeau Co-operative Society?” he inquired of Mademoiselle, though he knew she never opened a newspaper. She answered, nevertheless, with an emphatic nod. M. Thibault emitted a short, brittle laugh; thereafter, till the meal ended, he said no more and seemed indifferent to the others’ conversation. Daily he grew more hard of hearing, more isolated from his family. Sometimes throughout a meal he stayed thus—devouring in silence the huge helpings that an appetite worthy of a boxer demanded, and lost in thought. At such moments he was pondering on some complicated scheme, and his inertia was that of a sedulous spider; he was waiting till the tireless workings of his mind had ravelled out some social or administrative problem. Thus, indeed, he had always worked—with eyes half shut, only his brain active, calm as a man of stone. Never had this great worker taken a note, or mapped out the sequence of a speech; everything took form, and was indelibly recorded down to the least detail, behind that brooding forehead.

Mademoiselle sat in front of him, keeping a sharp eye on the servants. Her hands lay folded on the tablecloth, diminutive and comely hands which she kept in condition (a secret, as she thought) with a lotion made of milk of cucumber. She had almost given up eating. For dessert she took a mug of milk and a biscuit only; out of coquetry she never dipped the biscuit in the milk but nibbled it dry with her well-preserved, mouse-like teeth. She was convinced that everyone ate too much, and kept close watch on her niece’s plate. Today, however, in honour of Jacques, she waived her principles so far as to suggest, when the meal ended:

“Jacquot, will you try the jam I’ve been making?”

“ ‘Delicious flavour, perfectly digestible,’ ” Jacques murmured, winking at Gisèle, and this standing joke of theirs, calling up a certain packet of bull’s-eyes and their screams of laughter as children, set them off laughing as in the past, till the tears came to their eyes.

M. Thibault had not heard the remark, but smiled benevolently.

“You’re a bold young scamp!” Mademoiselle protested. “But just look how well they’ve set.” On the dumbwaiter a squad of fifty jam-pots, filled with ruby jelly and protected by a strip of muslin against the flies’ offensive, glowed in anticipation of their caps of rum-soaked parchment.

The French windows opened from the dining-room onto a veranda bright with flower-boxes; and sunbeams, slipping past the blinds, streaked the floor with dazzling light. A wasp buzzed round the jar of greengages and, droning under the caress of noonday, set the whole house ahum. Jacques was destined to recall this meal as the only moment when his success in the examination gave him a fleeting thrill of pleasure.

Gisèle was wildly happy and, though habit kept her silent, exchanged clandestine glances with him, as if to share some unspoken secret. At everything Jacques said she broke into a peal of merry laughter.

“Oh, Gise, that mouth of yours!” Mademoiselle twittered; never could she get over the enormity of Gisèle’s mouth and her thick lips. No better could she abide the dusky warmth that glowed in the girl’s fair skin, her flattish nose, and black, slightly fuzzy hair—all that reminded her only too well of Gisèle’s mother, the half-caste, whom Major de Waize had married during his stay in Madagascar. She never missed a pretext for alluding to her niece’s forebears on her father’s side. “When I was younger,” she used to say, “my grandmother—the one with the Scotch shawl, you know—used to make me repeat ‘prunes and prisms, prunes and prisms’ a hundred times a day, to make my mouth smaller.” While she talked she was flicking her napkin at the wasp, trying to catch it, and laughing every time she missed it. There was nothing of the kill-joy about the worthy old creature; her life had been a hard one, but her contagious laugh rang blithe as ever. “Grandmother,” she continued, “danced at Toulon with Count de Villele, the cabinet-minister. She’d be dreadfully unhappy if she had to live in these present times, for she couldn’t bear the sight of big mouths or big feet.” Mademoiselle was very vain of her feet, shaped like a new-born babe’s, and always wore blunt-ended cloth shoes to keep her toes from losing their shape.

At three, the hour of vespers, the house became empty. Jacques, left to himself, went up to his bedroom. It was an attic on the top floor, but a large, cool room, gay with a floral wallpaper; the view was restricted, but agreeably so, by the high branches of two chestnut-trees whose feathery leaves formed an attractive foreground.

Dictionaries, a textbook of philology, and the like, still littered the table; he bundled them all away into the bottom of a cupboard, and came back to his desk.

Am I still a child or am I a man? he suddenly wondered. Daniel … but that’s another matter altogether. But I—what am I really? He felt a world in himself, a world of warring impulses; a chaos, but a chaos of abundance. Pleased with his private universe, he set his gaze roaming over the expanse of smooth mahogany. Why had he cleared the table? Well, anyhow, he was not short of plans. For how many months had he not been repressing an impulse to set about doing something? “Wait till you’ve passed,” he had admonished himself. And now that liberty deferred was here at last, he could see nothing worthy of his undertaking—not
The Story of Two Young Men
, not
Fires
, nor yet
The Startled Secret
.

He rose from the desk, took a few steps, and glanced towards the shelf where he had been hoarding books (some of them acquired the year before) against the day that set him free. Which of them should be his first choice? he wondered; then, in a fit of petulance, flung himself on the bed, empty-handed.