The Thibaults (51 page)

Why ever did I get Antoine to come? Jacques asked himself as, an hour later, he accompanied his brother down the green avenue, flanked by centenarian lime-trees, that led from the château to the forest. His neck was smarting; Mademoiselle had insisted on having the boil inspected by Antoine, who had thought fit to lance it, despite his victim’s protest-—for the idea of paying a visit with a bandage on his neck did not at all appeal to him.

Antoine was tired but talkative; his thoughts were all for Rachel. Yesterday at this hour he did not know her yet, and now she filled every moment of his life.

His exuberance contrasted with his brother’s mood; Jacques had passed a restful day and now, as he walked on, his thoughts were busy with a visit whose prospect stirred in him a fugitive emotion, sometimes akin to hope. He felt dissatisfied and mistrustful as he walked at Antoine’s side. Some cautionary instinct warned him against his brother, setting a wall of silence between them, though their conversation was cordial as ever. But in reality each was building up a screen of words and smiles, like hostile forces tossing up clods of earth to make a barrier against attack. Neither was hoodwinked by the other’s strategy. The tie of blood linked them so intimately that nothing of importance could remain a secret between them. The very tone of Antoine’s voice as he praised the fragrance of a late-flowering lime—it had called up a secret memory of Rachel’s scented hair—if it did not tell Jacques everything, was all but tantamount to a confession. So he was little surprised when Antoine, yielding to his obsession, caught his arm and, setting a faster pace, launched forth into an account of his eventful night, and of its aftermath. Antoine’s tone, his grown-up air, taken with certain broad details little in keeping with his normal, elder-brotherly reserve, made Jacques feel strangely ill at ease. He put a good face on it, smiled and nodded his approval —but he was distressed. He was angry with his brother for causing this distress, and even for the sentiment of disapproval which accompanied it. The more his brother hinted at the state of rapture in which he had been living for the past twelve hours, the more Jacques shrank back into his shell of cold disdain and felt the thirst for chastity grow strong within him. When Antoine, describing his afternoon, ventured to use the words “a day of love,” Jacques was profoundly shocked, and showed it.

“No, Antoine,” he protested, “no, and no again! ‘Love’—that’s something quite different.”

A rather self-complacent smile hovered on Antoine’s lips; but he was taken aback for all that, and said no more.

The Fontanins were living in an old house, left them by Mme. de Fontanin’s mother, at the far end of the park on the outskirts of the forest. The house abutted on the old park wall. A road, lined with acacias and so seldom used that patches of rank grass were growing on it, led from the main avenue to a postern gate let into the garden wall.

Night was falling when they arrived, and lights shone in some of the windows. A bell tinkled and, at the bottom of the garden beside the house, Puce, Jenny’s dog, began to bark. Antoine and Jacques knew where to find them. After meals the Fontanins resorted to the far side of the house where, shaded by two plane-trees, a natural terrace overhung the ancient fosse. A car had pulled up in the drive and they had to grope their way around it.

“Visitors!” Jacques murmured, and suddenly regretted he had come.

But Mme. de Fontanin was already on her way to meet them.

“I knew it was you!” she exclaimed as soon as she saw their faces. She hastened towards them with brisk, glad steps, holding out her hands and smiling her greetings. “We were ever so pleased this morning when Daniel’s wire came.” Jacques did not flinch. “But I
knew
you would pass,” she continued, looking earnestly at Jacques. “Something told me so that Sunday in June when you came here with Daniel. Dear Daniel, how delighted, how proud he must feel! Jenny was delighted, too.”

“So Daniel isn’t here tonight?” Antoine remarked.

As they neared the circle of chairs, they heard a sound of gay voices. Jacques singled out at once a certain voice with a distinctive quality of its own, vibrant yet subdued: Jenny’s voice. She was seated beside another girl, her cousin Nicole, and a man some thirty years of age towards whom Antoine advanced with an air of surprise—a young surgeon who had been his colleague at the Necker Hospital. The two men shook hands cordially.

Mme. de Fontanin beamed. “So you know each other. Antoine and Jacques Thibault are great friends of Daniel’s,” she explained to Dr. Hequét. “So you won’t mind letting them into the secret, will you?” She turned to Antoine. “I’m sure my little Nicole will let me tell you about her engagement—won’t you, darling? It’s not really quite official yet, but, as you see, Nicole’s already brought her fianc
e
 here to meet her aunt, and you need only look at them to guess their secret.”

Jenny had not gone to meet the brothers and did not rise till they were actually standing before her; she shook hands with them coldly.

“Nico dear, come and see my pigeons,” she said to Nicole before they had time to sit down again. “I’ve eight baby pigeons who are …”

“Still on the bottle,” Jacques broke in; his voice, which he meant to sound insolent, was merely ill-mannered and out of place. This he realized at once, and clenched his teeth.

Jenny did not seem to hear.

“… who are just learning to fly,” she continued smoothly.

“But they’re all in bed by now,” Mme. de Fontanin protested, to keep her from going.

“So much the better. You can’t get near them in the daytime. Will you come too, Felix?”

Dr. Hequét, who was talking to Antoine, hastened to follow the two girls.

As soon as the engaged couple was out of earshot Mme. de Fontanin bent towards Antoine and Jacques.

“It’s a most fascinating little match, you know. Our little Nicole has no means of her own and she was quite set against being on anyone’s hands. So for three years she’s been earning her living as a nurse. And now, just see how she has been rewarded! Dr. Hequét met her at the bedside of a patient and was so impressed by her devotion and intelligence, and the plucky way she was facing life, that he fell in love with her. There’s the whole story. Now don’t you think it’s perfectly charming?”

The romantic glamour of her tale, where virtue triumphed and every sentiment was lofty, enchanted her simple soul, and the light of faith shone in her eyes. Most of her remarks were addressed to Antoine and she spoke to him in a cordial manner that seemed to imply they saw eye to eye in everything. She liked his forehead and keen gaze, never reflecting that he was sixteen years her junior; that she might, or almost might, have been his mother. She was overjoyed when he assured her Felix Hequét was a first-rate surgeon with a great future before him.

Jacques took no part in the conversation. “On the bottle”! He was furious with himself. Everything, even Mme. de Fontanin’s effusive amiability, had been ruffling his nerves ever since he came. He had not been able to hear her congratulations out, but turned away, feeling ashamed on her account—that she should seem to attach any importance to his success, the news of which, however, he had been at pains to telegraph to her. “Jenny at least spared me her compliments,” he murmured to himself. “Did she realize that I am capable of better things? I wonder. No. Just indifference. Better things! ‘Still on the bottle’! I wonder if she even knows what the Ecole Normale means. Anyhow, what does she care about my future? She hardly said ‘Good evening’ to me. But how about me? Why did I make that idiotic remark?” He blushed, gritting his teeth again. “And while she said ‘Good evening’ she went on listening to her cousin. Her eyes—inscrutable, they are. The rest of her face is almost childish, but her eyes …!” At every moment painful twinges were reminding him of his boil, but he resented still more the bandage that all of them— not only Mademoiselle but Gisèle too—had foisted on him. A hideous sight he must be looking!

Antoine was talking cheerfully, paying no heed to Jacques.

“… and from the moral point of view …” he was saying.

When Antoine talks, Jacques thought, there’s no room for anybody else. Then suddenly his brother’s easy manners in society and that “moral point of view,” following as it did avowals of a very different order, disgusted him as a piece of unforgivable hypocrisy. How different from him his brother was! Rushing to extremes, Jacques decided that he had not a single thing in common with Antoine. Sooner or later their ways would part, inevitably; their different bents were incompatible and had no point of contact. A mood of utter hopelessness came over him; even their five years of close communion, he realized, had failed to make them proof against this coming estrangement, could not prevent them from growing indifferent to each other, strangers, or even enemies! He all but rose, snatching at any pretext for escape. Ah, could he but wander away alone into the darkness, out into the forest, anywhere! One human being had smiled her way into his heart: little Gisèle. Yesterday’s success—how gladly would he forgo it, could he but be with her again at this very moment, lying on the grass, watching her face and eyes—so unmysterious, hers!—and hear her cry: “You will, won’t you?” with that cooing laugh of hers! Now that he thought of it, never had he seen Jenny laugh; even her smile seemed disillusioned. What ever has come over me? he wondered and tried to pull himself together. But the dark mood was stronger than his will, a bitter nausea filling him with loathing for everything and everybody, for Mme. de Fontanin’s remarks, Antoine’s degradation, people in general, his own wasted youth, the world at large—yes, and for Jenny too, who seemed so much at home in a world of futility.

“What are your plans for the vacation?” Mme. de Fontanin inquired. “Couldn’t you induce Daniel to spend a few weeks away from Paris? It would be so nice for you both and would benefit you in other ways.” She was discovering with some dismay that the brilliant career on which she had hoped to see her son embark was slow to shape itself and, for all her reluctance to linger on such thoughts, she was sometimes worried by the life he led; it was too free, too easy-going and—though she shirked the thought—too dissipated.

When Jacques told her that he intended to stay at Maisons, she was delighted.

“That’s splendid! I hope you’ll persuade Daniel to go out a bit; he never will take a holiday and I’m so afraid he will make himself ill. Jenny!” She had noticed the girl returning with her friends. “Good news! Jacques will be here all summer. That will mean some good tennis, won’t it? Jenny’s simply mad about tennis this summer; she spends all her mornings at the club. Our local tennis-club is quite famous in its way,” she explained to Dr. Hequét, who had taken the chair beside her. “Such nice young people! They all turn up there every morning. The courts are excellent and they’re always arranging matches, tournaments, and that sort of thing. I don’t know much about it,” she added with a smile, “but it’s terribly exciting, they tell me. And they’re always grumbling about the shortage of men. Are you still a member, Jacques?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good. Nicole, you must bring Dr. Hequét and stay a week or ten days with us this summer. That will be nice, won’t it, Jenny? I’m sure Dr. Hequét is a good player, too.”

Jacques turned towards Hequét. The drawing-room lamp shone through the open window, showing up the young surgeon’s lean, austere face, his close-cropped brown beard and temples prematurely streaked with silver. He certainly looked ten years older than Nicole. The lamplight, glinting on his glasses, masked the expression of his eyes, but his thoughtful air was 
decidedly 
engaging. Yes, thought Jacques,
there
is a man—and I am only a child! A man who can inspire love. Whereas I …

Antoine had risen from his chair. He felt tired and did not want to miss his train. Jacques cast him an angry look. Though a few minutes before he himself had been in half a mind to snatch at any pretext for departure, now he could not bring himself to end the evening thus. Still, he would have to leave at the same time as his brother.

He moved towards Jenny.

“Whom are you playing tennis with at the club this summer?”

She looked at him, and the slender line of her eyebrows knitted a little.

“With anyone who happens to be there,” she replied.

“Meaning the two Casins, and Fauquet, and the Perigault crowd?”

“Naturally.”

“They’re just the same, I suppose, and as witty as ever?”

“What about it? We can’t all be shining lights at the Ecole Normale!”

“Yes, I dare say one has to be a bit of a fool to play tennis properly.”

“Very likely.” She threw him an aggressive look. “Anyhow, you should know about that; you used to be pretty good at tennis once.” Then, ostentatiously breaking off their conversation, she turned to her cousin. “You’re not going yet, Nicole darling, I hope.”

“Ask Felix.”

“What’s this you’re to ask Felix?” said Dr. Hequét, who had approached the two girls.

Antoine’s eyes were fixed on Nicole; yes, he mused, the girl certainly has a dazzling complexion. But, beside Rachel’s …! And suddenly his heart beat faster.

“So, Jacques, we’ll be seeing you again quite soon?” said Mme. de Fontanin. “Are you going to play tomorrow, Jenny?”

“I don’t know, Mamma—I hardly think so.”

“Well, if it isn’t tomorrow, you’re bound to meet there one morning,” Mme. de Fontanin continued in a conciliatory tone. And, despite Antoine’s protest, she insisted on escorting the two young men to the gate.

“I must say, darling, you weren’t very nice to your friends!” Nicole exclaimed as soon as the Thibaults were out of earshot.

“To begin with, they’re not my friends,” Jenny replied.

“I’ve worked with Thibault,” Hequét observed. “He’s a first-rate man and has already made his mark. I’ve no ideas about his brother but”—behind the glasses his grey eyes twinkled quizzingly, for he had overheard the short passage between Jacques and Jenny—”it’s rather rare for a duffer to get through the Normale exam at his first shot, and take a high place, too.”