The Thibaults (78 page)

“Anyone might take us for our little boy’s grandparents,” he observed sadly. “We married late in life. … I am a graduate of the Paris University and German teacher at the lycée Charlemagne.”

“Ernst,” said Antoine to himself, “and that accent of his. An Alsatian, most likely.”

“I don’t want to trespass on your time, doctor, but as you have kindly consented to take up our child’s case it is my bounden duty, as I see it, to inform you of certain matters,
confidential
matters… .” He looked up, and a shadow fell across his eyes as he went on. “Matters, I mean to say, of which my wife knows nothing.”

Antoine’s nod conveyed his understanding of the secrecy required of him.

“Well, then, to begin… .” He seemed to be nerving himself for the plunge. Doubtless he had thought out all he was to say, for he now began to talk, his eyes fixed on the wall in front, in the easy, measured rhythm of one versed in the use of words. Antoine had a feeling that Ernst would rather not be looked at while he spoke.

“In 1896, doctor, I was forty-one and a master at the Versailles lycée.” His voice lost something of its assurance. “I was engaged.” He pronounced the word in three syllables, giving them a curious lilt, like three notes of a major chord, played an 
arpeggio
. “I was, moreover,” he continued in a more emphatic tone, “a fervent champion of the cause of Captain Dreyfus. You are too young, doctor, to realize all it meant, the moral drama of the Dreyfus case”—”tramma,” he pronounced it, with a deep-pitched, solemn resonance—”still, you are doubtless aware how dangerous it was then for a man to be at once a government servant and a militant Dreyfusite. I was one of those who … who took that risk.” His tone was calm, devoid of any bravado, but its firmness gave Antoine a good idea of what, some fifteen years before, had been the faith, the enterprise and rashness of this sedate old fellow with the gnarled forehead, obstinate chin, and eyes still darkly glowing with enthusiasm.

“I tell you this,” M. Ernst went on, “to explain why it was that after the summer of ‘96 I was exiled to the lycée at Algiers. Meanwhile”—his voice grew gentler—”my engagement had been broken off; my brother-in-law to be, a naval officer (in the merchant marine, as it happens—but that made no difference), did not see eye to eye with me, you understand.” Obviously he was doing his utmost to present the facts impartially.

“Four months after I landed in Africa,” he continued in a lower voice, “I found that I was … ill.” His voice faltered once more, but he mastered his weakness. “Why be afraid of words? I had developed syphilis.”

So that’s it, Antoine thought. The little boy . … That explains everything.

“I lost no time in consulting several doctors attached to the Faculty of Medicine at Algiers, and on their advice put myself in the hands of the best local specialist.” He seemed reluctant to give the name. “It was Dr. Lohr; you know his work, very likely,” he said at last, without looking towards Antoine. “The disease was taken at its first stage; only the primary lesion had developed. I was the type of man who obeys his doctor’s orders, however irksome, to the letter. That is what I did. When four years later the excitement of the Dreyfus case had died down and I was recalled to Paris, Dr. Lohr assured me that, for a year past, he had considered me completely cured. I believed him. Anyhow, since then I have not detected any indications, not the slightest symptom, of a relapse.”

He turned calmly towards Antoine and looked him full in the eyes. Antoine’s gesture indicated that he was listening attentively.

But he was not merely listening; he was observing the man himself. Both the look and the demeanour of the little schoolmaster told Antoine of a life of faithful, unremitting service. He had met others of his kind before, but in this case he deemed the man superior to his calling. Obviously, too, his attitude of reserve had long since become second nature with him; he had cultivated the fastidious aloofness that, for certain finer natures, is their only refuge from the struggle for existence, a life of thankless toil which, for all its scant rewards, is accepted with a loyal, steadfast heart. The tone in which he had alluded to the broken engagement expressed better than any words how much that thwarted love had counted in his lonely life, and the veiled emotion that sometimes lit his eyes was poignant evidence that the grey-haired pedagogue was no less keenly sensitive than a youngster in his teens.

“Six years after my return to France,” he went on, “my fiancée lost her brother.” He groped for words, then added simply: “So I could see her again.”

His feelings overpowered him, he could not continue. Antoine kept his eyes lowered and observed a tactful silence. He was almost startled by the sudden outburst of emotion that ensued.

“Doctor, I don’t know what opinion you may have of a man who acts as I did then. My illness—why, it was ancient history, ten years had elapsed! Past and done with. I was over fifty… .” He sighed. “And my loneliness had been weighing on me all those years…But I’m afraid it’s a muddled sort of story I’m telling you, doctor!”

Antoine looked up, but, even before he saw the face of the man before him, he had understood everything. That he had begotten a mentally defective son would in itself be a bitter enough trial in all conscience for a man of erudition. But what was that beside the agony of a father who, racked by remorse, aware that the responsibility was his alone, could only watch the progress of a nemesis that he had set in action, and could not avert?

“All the same I wasn’t easy in my mind about it,” Ernst continued in a weary voice. “I intended to consult a doctor and nearly did so. No, that’s not true. One mustn’t burke the truth. I convinced myself that it was needless. I reminded myself of Lohr’s opinion, and tried to find some easier way out. One day I met a doctor at a friend’s house and steered the conversation towards that topic, just to have him confirm Lohr’s opinion—that the disease can be
permanently
cured. That was all I needed to set my mind at rest.”

He paused again.

“And then, I said to myself, a woman of her age—there’s … there can’t be any danger of her having a … a child.”

His voice failed in a sob, but he still kept his head high, and as he sat there, unmoving, his fingers tightly clenched, such was the nervous tension of all his body that Antoine could see the muscles throbbing in his neck, while across a film of unshed tears his eyes glowed still more deeply. He made an effort to go on speaking, but his voice broke in a strangled cry of grief.

“Doctor … I’m so sorry for … for the poor little fellow!”

Antoine was deeply moved. Happily for him such violent emotions were apt to key him up to a pitch of feverish excitement, an almost frenzied urgency to make a prompt decision, and act upon it.

He did not hesitate for a second.

“Eh? What’s that?” he exclaimed in a tone of feigned bewilderment. He stood up, knitting his brows; it seemed that he had only the haziest idea of what his visitor was driving at, and hesitated to believe his ears. “What possible connexion can there be between that … that little misfortune of yours, which was taken in hand at once and completely cured, and your little boy’s infirmity—which very likely will pass away quite soon?”

Ernst stared at him, dumbfounded.

Antoine’s face lit up with a genial smile.

“If I’ve grasped your meaning, my dear sir, your scruples do you credit. But, speaking as a professional man, let me tell you quite frankly: from the scientific point of view they’re simply … ludicrous!”

M. Ernst rose, as though some sudden impulse drew him towards Antoine. But then he stood stock-still, his eyes distraught with emotion. He was one of those beings whose mental life is deep-set, all of one piece, and who, when once a noxious thought begins to fester in their minds, unable to restrict its influence, surrender to it heart and soul. For years it had been rankling in his heart, that infinite remorse whose secret he had never dared to share even with his companion in distress; this was his first moment of respite, his first hope of deliverance.

Antoine had diagnosed his feelings. But, fearing to be pressed with questions and driven back on detailed and complicated lies, he deliberately changed the subject… . And, anyhow, why waste more time on such futile and depressing fancies?

“Was the child born before term?”

M. Ernst blinked at Antoine; the question took him by surprise.

“What? Before term? … No.”

“Was it a difficult labour?”

“Very much so.”

“Forceps used?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” Antoine murmured as though it threw a flood of light on the problem. “That, I should say, explains quite a lot.” Then, to cut things short, he added: “Well, let’s have a look at our little patient,” and began to move towards the waiting-room.

But then the child’s father stepped quickly forward and clutched Antoine’s arm.

“Is that true, doctor? Is it really true? You’re not saying it just to …? Oh, doctor, will you give me your word for it? Your word of honour?”

Antoine swung round towards him and saw a look of entreaty, of famished hunger to believe, mingled with boundless gratitude. The joy that surged across him was that which follows only on successful effort, on a good deed well done. The child? Well, he would see what he could do. Meanwhile, where the man before him was concerned, his duty was plain; at all costs he must lift the load of anguish from that tormented soul.

He let his gaze sink into the other’s eyes, and answered in a deep, emphatic voice:

“I give you my word of honour!”

After a moment’s silence he opened the door.

In the other room he saw an elderly lady in black and a playful little scamp with curly brown hair whom she was trying to keep quiet, penning him between her knees. Antoine’s first glance was for the child who, at the sound of the opening door, had stopped playing, to gaze with big, dark, intelligent-looking eyes at the stranger. He smiled; then, scared by his own smile, turned sulkily away.

Antoine shifted his gaze towards the child’s mother. There was a sad and gentle beauty in her careworn features that went straight to Antoine’s heart. “Courage!” he said to himself. “It’s only a matter of putting one’s will into it. It’s
always
possible to get results.”

“Would you mind coming this way?”

Raising the curtain to let her pass, followed by the child, he gave the poor woman a reassuring smile—that crumb of comfort, anyhow, he could bestow on her at once. He could hear the laboured breathing of the man behind him as, patiently holding back the curtain, he watched mother and child coming towards him, and a wave of elation swept over his mind. “What a fine profession it is!” he murmured to himself. “Yes, by God, the finest in the world!”

NIGHT had come before the steady stream of patients ceased, but Antoine was oblivious both of the time and of his own exhaustion; as often as he raised the curtain, his energy revived without an effort to meet the new occasion. When he had seen out the last caller, a handsome young woman hugging a strapping baby that was threatened, he feared, with almost total blindness, he was amazed to discover it was eight o’clock. “Too late for the kid with the boil,” he ‘ said to himself. “I’ll look in on my way back from Hequét’s, later in the evening.”

He went back to the consulting-room, opened the window to change the air, and, standing at a low table piled with books, hunted for one to read while he was dining. “Ah, yes,” he reminded himself, “I’ve got to check that reference—the Ernst child’s case.” He fluttered the pages of some back numbers of the
Neurological Review
, trying to trace the epoch-making symposium on aphasia that took place in 1908. “A really typical case, that Ernst boy; I must tell Treuillard about it.”

A smile of amusement flickered on his face as he remembered Treuillard’s eccentric ways, a byword in the profession. He called to mind the year he had spent as the nerve-specialist’s assistant. “What the devil possessed me to do it?” he asked himself. “Looks as if I’ve always had a hankering after that branch of medicine. Perhaps I’d have done better to devote myself to nervous and mental diseases. That’s a field where much remains still to be discovered.” Suddenly a picture formed before his eyes … of Rachel. Now what association of ideas had brought her into his mind? She’d had no medical or scientific training, of course; yet psychological problems of every kind had always appealed to her very strongly. Yes, there was no doubt she had played a part in developing the keen interest he now felt in other people’s lives. In any case—he had noticed it time and time again—she had changed him in a thousand different ways.

A faraway look, a shade of melancholy, dimmed his eyes as he stood beside the table, his shoulders bowed with weariness, swinging the medical journal to and fro between his thumb and forefinger. Rachel! He never could recall without a rush of bitterness the enigmatic girl who had flashed across his life. Never had he received a line of news from her. And, indeed, this did not surprise him; that somewhere in the world Rachel was still alive seemed most improbable. She had succumbed, more likely, to the climate, or malaria, or the tsetse. Or, perhaps, she had come to a violent end, been drowned, or, quite possibly, strangled. Dead she was—of that he was convinced.

He drew himself up and, slipping the journal under his arm, went out into the hall and told Léon to bring his dinner. One of the chief’s sallies came back to his mind. Philip had been away and, on his return, Antoine had given him a brief account of the new patients who had come for treatment; laying his hand on Antoine’s arm, the chief had observed in a tone of affectionate irony: “Better look out, my boy! You’re getting more and more interested in your patients’ mentalities, and less and less in their complaints!”

As Antoine settled down into his chair before the steaming soup-tureen, he realized how tired he was. “Still, it’s a fine profession!” he consoled himself.

His talk with Gise came back to him and, to dispel the memory, he made haste to open the bulky review. In vain; the very air of the room, where something of her presence lingered, seemed still charged with cruel evidences of his failure. He recalled certain obsessions of the past few months. How was it he had dallied a whole summer long with so impossible a project? Now he could look upon his shattered dream as on the wreckage of some flimsy palace on a stage, crumbled into a heap of insubstantial dust. He suffered little or not at all. Only his vanity was wounded. And now it seemed to him that there had been something shoddy about the whole affair, something puerile and beneath him.