The Thibaults (95 page)

The food was excellent, the beer light and well iced, the atmosphere congenial. Antoine displayed a cheerful interest in the local characteristics; he had noticed that his uncommunicative brother unbent more readily when talking on such subjects. All the same, whenever Jacques opened his mouth he seemed to be flinging himself, desperately, into the conversation. The words came with an obvious effort, in jerks; then, on occasion, for no apparent reason, they would pour out in a torrent, cut by sudden silences. And all the time his eyes were boring into Antoine’s.

“No, Antoine!” he exclaimed. His brother had just made a humorous comment. “You’re quite wrong if you think … I mean it’s not fair to say the Swiss are like that. I’ve seen a lot of other countries, and I can assure you …”

The involuntary look of curiosity on Antoine’s face cut him short. Presently, perhaps regretting the access of ill-humour, he went on, of his own accord.

“That fellow over there, on our right, is far more typical, really. I mean the one who’s talking to the proprietor. A pretty good specimen of the Swiss man in the street. His look, his way of behaving, his voice …”

“Which sounds,” Antoine put in, “as if he had a cold in the head.”

“No!” Jacques expostulated with a slight frown. “It’s a rather slow, drawling voice, the voice of someone who thinks deeply. But what’s most striking is his look of being sufficient unto himself, always minding his own business. That’s thoroughly Swiss. Also that air of feeling secure, always and everywhere.”

“He has intelligent eyes,” Antoine conceded, “but, oh, what a lack of any sort of animation!”

“Well, at Lausanne there are thousands and thousands like him; from morn till night, without wasting a second, without fluster, doing what they have to do. They may run up against other modes of life, but they take no part in them. They rarely cross their frontiers; at every instant of their lives they are wholly taken up with what they’re doing or will do a moment later.”

Antoine listened without interrupting; his attentiveness rather intimidated Jacques, but encouraged him too. And it gave him a secret feeling of importance which made him more loquacious.

“You talked of animation just now,” he said. “People think the Swiss are ‘heavy.’ That’s easily said, but false. They’ve a different mentality from—from yours. More compact, perhaps. Almost as supple, when in action. Not heavy—but
stable
. Which is a very different thing.”

“What surprises me,” Antoine said, taking a cigarette from his case, “is to see you of all people so much at home in this hive of industry.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Jacques moved aside the empty cup he had just missed upsetting. “I’ve lived everywhere, you know; in Italy, Germany, Austria …”

Antoine, his eyes fixed on his match, ventured to add, without looking up:

“And in England?”

“No. Why in England?”

For a moment, in silence, each tried to read the other’s thoughts. Antoine was still looking down. Puzzled though he was, Jacques went on:

“Well, I’m sure I’d never have been able to settle down in any of those countries. It’s impossible to work in them. One’s always at fever-heat. This is the only place where I’ve found my equilibrium.”

Indeed, just then he seemed to have achieved a certain poise. He was sitting aslant, in what seemed to be a frequent attitude of his, with his head bent to one side, the side on which was the unruly lock—as if his brows were overburdened by the mass of hair. His right shoulder was thrust forward. All the upper portion of his body seemed buttressed by his right arm, with its hand solidly planted on his thigh. His left elbow rested lightly on the table and the fingers of the left hand were toying with the bread-crumbs on the cloth. It was a man’s hand now, sinewy, expressive.

He was thinking over what he had just said. “Yes, these people are restful.” There was a note of gratitude in his voice. “Obviously, that stolidity of theirs is only on the surface. There are passions in the air here, as in other countries. But, you see, emotions which, day in, day out, are so well kept in hand aren’t very dangerous. Not so contagious, I mean.” Suddenly he flushed, and added in a low voice: “For in these last three years, you know …”

He paused, flicked back the lock of hair with a quick gesture, and shifted his position.

Antoine did not stir, but swept his eyes over his brother’s downcast face. In his look there was a tacit invitation; at last, perhaps, Jacques was going to say something about himself.

Deliberately Jacques changed the subject, rising from the table.

“It’s still pouring,” he said. “But we’d better be getting back, hadn’t we?”

As they were leaving the restaurant, a passing cyclist jumped off his machine and ran up to Jacques.

“Have you seen anyone from over there?” he panted, without a word of greeting. The mountaineer’s cape which he was wresting from the wind, with his arms locked tightly over his chest, was drenched.

“No,” Jacques replied, without betraying any sign of surprise. “Let’s go in there,” he added, pointing to a building, the street-door of which stood open. Antoine, out of discretion, lingered behind; Jacques, however, turned and called to him. Still, when they were together in the doorway, he made no introductions.

With a toss of his head the cyclist jerked back the hood covering his eyes. He was a man in the thirties and, despite the somewhat abrupt way in which he had accosted them, his expression was mild, almost over-affable. His face was reddened by the biting wind, and across it ran a streak of livid white, the trace of an old scar that, half closing his right eye, slanted up across the eyebrow and disappeared under his hat-brim.

“They’re always falling foul of me,” he said in an excited tone, paying no heed to Antoine’s presence. “And I don’t deserve that, do I now?” He seemed to attach particular importance to Jacques’s verdict. Jacques made a calming gesture. “Why do they go on like that? They say it was done by paid agents. Why blame me? Anyhow, now they’ve cleared out, they know they won’t be informed against.”

“Their scheme can’t work out,” Jacques said decisively, after a moment’s thought. “It’s a choice of two things, either , . .”

“Yes, yes,” the man broke in, with a fervour, a thankfulness, that came as a surprise. “Yes, that’s exactly it! Only we must mind the political papers don’t upset the apple cart before we’re ready.”

“Sabakin will be off the moment he scents trouble,” Jacques replied, lowering his voice. “So will Bisson, you’ll see.”

“Bisson? Well, possibly.”

“But—how about those revolvers?”

“Oh, that’s easily accounted for. Her former lover bought them at Basel, when a gunsmith’s shop was sold out after the owner’s death.”

“Look here, Rayer,” Jacques said. “You mustn’t count on me for the present; I can’t do any writing from here for some time to come. Go and see Richardley. Get him to hand over the papers to you. Tell him you’re acting for me. If he needs a signature, he can ring up MacLair. Got it?”

Rayer clasped Jacques’s hand without replying.

“What about Loute?” Jacques asked, still holding Rayer’s hand.

Rayer dropped his eyes. “I can’t do anything about it,” he replied with a timid laugh. Then, looking up, he muttered ragefully: “No, I can’t do a thing. I love her.”

Jacques dropped Rayer’s hand, was silent for a moment, then said gruffly: “And where’s it all going to land you, the two of you?”

Rayer sighed. “It was such a terribly hard birth, she’ll never get over it; anyhow, never well enough to do any work.”

“Do you know what she said to me?” Jacques broke in. “ ‘If I had an ounce of pluck, there’d be a way out, sure enough.’ ”

“There you are! That’s how it is, and I can’t do a thing, not a thing about it!”

“What about Schneebach?”

The man made an angry gesture, and a gleam of hatred kindled in his eyes.

Jacques’s fingers closed tightly on Rayer’s arm.

“Where will all that land you, Rayer?” he repeated sternly.

The other man gave an impatient jerk of his shoulders. Jacques withdrew his hand. There was a pause, then Rayer raised his right arm with a certain solemnity.

“For us, as for them, death is waiting round the corner—and that’s all there is to it,” he said in a low voice. Then added with a little soundless laugh, as if what he was going to say was childishly self-evident: “Otherwise the living would be the dead, and the dead alive!”

Gripping his bicycle by the seat, he swung it up with one arm. The scar across his face turned an angry red. Then he drew the hood of his cape over his face, like a cowl, and held out his hand.

“Thanks. I’ll see Richardley. You’re damned decent, Baulthy, one of the best.” He sounded cheerful, sure of himself again. “Yes, just meeting you almost reconciles me with the world—with men and books, even the newspapers.
Au revoir
.”

Though he had not the least idea what it was all about, Antoine had not missed a word of the conversation. From the start he had been struck by the attitude of the man who had just left them. He was obviously a good deal older than Jacques, yet treated him with the affectionate deference usually shown to seniors. But what had most impressed, indeed dumbfounded, him during the interview was the change in Jacques’s appearance; not only had the wrinkles left his forehead, not only was no trace of sulkiness left, but he gave an impression of ripened wisdom and even authority. For Antoine it was a revelation. For some minutes he had had a glimpse of an entirely unknown Jacques, of whose existence he had never had an inkling—yet this undoubtedly was the real Jacques for all the world, the Jacques of today.

Rayer had mounted his bicycle, and, without troubling to bid Antoine goodbye, rode off between two sudden spurts of mud.

THE two brothers moved on; Jacques did not volunteer the slightest comment on this meeting. In any case, the wind which forced its way under their clothes and seemed bent especially on playing havoc with Antoine’s umbrella, made any attempt at conversation almost hopeless.

Just when things were at their worst, however, as they came out into the Place de la Riponne—a spacious esplanade where all the winds of heaven seemed to be running riot—Jacques, impervious to the pelting rain, suddenly slackened his pace and asked:

“Tell me, when we were at the restaurant just now, what led you to mention England?”

Antoine was conscious of an aggressive intent behind the question. Ill at ease, he mumbled a few vague words which were swept away by the wind.

“What did you say …?” Jacques had not caught a single word. He had drawn closer and was walking crab-wise, thrusting his shoulder forward like a prow breasting the wind-stream. The questioning look he bent upon his brother was so insistent that Antoine, brought to bay, scrupled to tell a lie.

“Well—er—on account of the red roses, you know,” he confessed.

The tone in which he spoke was rougher than he had intended it to be. Again the memory of Giuseppe and Annetta’s passion had forced itself upon his thoughts; he seemed to see her stumbling, falling upon the grass, and the attendant horde of visions, only too familiar now, yet unbearable as ever, surged through his imagination. Annoyed and irritable, raging against each gust of wind that buffeted him, he swore aloud and angrily shut his umbrella.

Dumbfounded, Jacques had come to a sudden halt; he was evidently far from expecting such an answer. Then, biting his lips, he took a few steps without saying a word… . How often had he not already lamented that moment of incredible sentimentality, and regretted the sending of that basket of roses, bought abroad through an obliging friend—an incriminating message, proclaiming to all and sundry: “I am alive and my thoughts are with you”—at the very time when he wished to be looked upon as dead and buried, by all his family! But it had at least been possible for him, until now, to believe that his rash act had been kept a profound secret. Such in-discreetness on the part of Gise, unexpected and incomprehensible as it was for him, provoked him beyond measure. Nor could he now restrain his bitterness.

“You’ve missed your calling,” he sneered. “You were born to be a detective!”

Annoyed by the tone in which he was addressed, Antoine flared up.

“Look here,” he replied; “when a man’s so keen on keeping his private life a secret, he should not flaunt it publicly in the pages of a magazine.”

Stung to the quick, Jacques shouted in his face:

“Really! Do you mean to say it was my story that informed you of my sending those flowers?”

Antoine was no longer master of himself.

“No,” he replied, with feigned composure, and added in a biting voice, spacing the syllables: “But, anyhow, it did enable me to appreciate the full meaning of the gift.”

Having launched this retort, he forged ahead in the teeth of the wind.

But, immediately, the feeling of having blundered past recall came over him so overpoweringly that it took his breath away. Just a few words too many and everything was in jeopardy: he would now lose Jacques once for all… . Why had he suddenly lost control of himself, given way to that outburst of temper? Because Gise was concerned, most likely. And what was to be done now? Have it out with Jacques, apologize to him? Probably it was too late. Well, he could only try; he was prepared to make all possible amends.

He was about to turn to his brother and as affectionately as possible admit he was in the wrong, when suddenly he felt Jacques lay hold of his arm and cling to him with all his might: an impassioned, utterly unexpected hug, a rough, brotherly embrace, doing away in one second not only with the acid remarks that had passed between them, but also with the whole of the three long silent years they had spent apart from each other. Then a broken voice faltered, close to Antoine’s ear.

“Why, Antoine, what can you have imagined? Did you really suppose that Gise … that I …? You thought that possible? You must be dreaming!”

They gazed deep into each other’s eyes. Jacques’s were sorrowful now, and younger-looking; and over his cheeks offended modesty sent a wave of indignation to mingle with his sorrow. To Antoine it came as an all-healing revelation. Joyfully he pressed his brother’s arm against his side. Had he really suspected the two young people? He could no longer tell. He thought of Gise with intense emotion; and a sense of relief, of deliverance, of splendid happiness, came over him. At last he had found his long-lost brother.