The Thibaults (46 page)

A flash of joy lit up her eyes as she hastened from the room.

Then Antoine, with redoubled care and gentleness, bent down and drew out the needle, and with the tips of his fingers applied a compress to the tiny wound. He ran his fingers along the arm from which the hand still hung limp.

“Another injection of camphor, old man, just to make sure; and then we’ll have played our last card. Shouldn’t wonder,” he added under his breath, “if we’ve pulled it off.” Once more that sense of power that was half joy elated him.

The woman came back carrying a jar in her arms. She hesitated, then, as he said nothing, came and stood by the child’s feet.

“Not like that!” said Antoine, with the same brusque cheerfulness. “You’ll burn her. Give it here. Just imagine my having to show you how to wrap up a hot-water bottle!”

Smiling now, he snatched up a rolled napkin that caught his eye and, flinging the ring onto the sideboard, wrapped the jar in it and pressed it to the child’s feet. The red-haired woman watched him, taken aback by the boyish smile that made his face seem so much younger.

“Then she’s—saved?” she ventured to ask.

He dared not affirm it as yet.

“I’ll tell you in an hour’s time.” His voice was gruff, but she took his meaning and cast on him a bold, admiring look.

For the third time Antoine asked himself what this handsome girl could be doing in the Chasle household. Then he pointed to the door.

“What about the others?”

A smile hovered on her lips.

“They’re waiting.”

“Hearten them up a bit. Tell them to go to bed. You too, Madame, you’d better take some rest.”

“Oh, as far as I’m concerned …” she murmured, turning to go.

“Let’s get the child back to bed,” Antoine suggested to his colleague. “The same way as before. Hold up her leg. Take the bolster away; we’d better keep her head down. The next thing is to rig up some sort of a gadget… . That napkin, please, and the string from the parcel. Some sort of extension, you see. Slip the string between the rails; handy things these iron bedsteads. Now for a weight. Anything will do. How about this saucepan? No, the flat-iron there will be better. We’ve all we need here. Yes, hand it over. Tomorrow we’ll improve on it. Meanwhile it will do if we stretch the leg a bit, don’t you think so?”

The young doctor did not reply. He gazed at Antoine with spellbound awe—the look that Martha may have given the Saviour when Lazarus rose from the tomb. His lips worked and he stammered timidly:

“May I … shall I arrange your instruments?” The faltered words breathed such a zeal for service and for devotion that Antoine thrilled with the exultation of an acknowledged chief. They were alone. Antoine went up to the younger man and looked him in the eyes.

“You’ve been splendid, my dear fellow.”

The young man gasped. Antoine, who felt even more embarrassed than his colleague, gave him no time to put in a word.

“Now you’d better be off home; it’s late. There’s no need for two of us here.” He hesitated. “We may take it that she’s saved,. I think. That’s my opinion. However, for safety’s safe, I’ll stay here for the night, if you’ll permit me.” The doctor made a vague gesture. “If you permit me, I repeat. For I don’t forget that she’s your patient. Obviously. I only gave a hand, as there was nothing else for it. That’s so, eh? But from tomorrow on I leave her in your hands. They’re competent hands and I have no anxiety.” As he spoke he led the doctor towards the door. “Will you look in again towards noon? I’ll come back when I’m done at the hospital and we will decide on the treatment to follow.”

“Sir, it’s … it’s been a privilege for me to … to …”

Never before had Antoine been “sirred” by a colleague, never before been treated with such deference. It went to his head, like generous wine, and unthinkingly he held out both hands towards the young man. But in the nick of time he regained his self-control.

“You’ve got a wrong impression,” he said in a subdued tone. “I’m only a learner, a novice—like you. Like so many others. Like everyone. Groping our way. We do our best—and that’s all there is to it!”

Antoine had looked forward to the young man’s exit with something like impatience. To be alone, perhaps. Yet, when he heard approaching footsteps, the young woman’s, his face lit up.

“Look here, don’t you intend to go to bed?”

“No, doctor.”

He did not press her further.

The little girl moaned, was shaken by a hiccup, expectorated.

“Good girl, Dédette,” he said. “That’s a good girl.” He took her pulse. “A hundred and twenty. Steady improvement.” He looked at the woman, unsmiling. “I think I can say now that we’re out of the wood.”

She did not reply, but he felt she had faith in him. He wanted to talk to her and cast about for an opening.

“You were very plucky,” he said. Then—as was his wont when he felt shy—he went directly to the point. “What are you here, exactly?”

“I? Nothing. I’m not even a friend of theirs. It’s only that I live on the fifth floor, just below.”

“But who is the child’s mother then? I can’t make head or tail of it.”

“Her mother is dead, I think! She was Aline’s sister.”

“Aline?”

“The servant.”

“The old thing with the shaky hands?”

“Yes.”

“So the child’s not in any way related to the Chasles?”

“No. Aline’s bringing up her little niece here—M. Jules pays, of course.”

They spoke in undertones, bending a little towards each other, and Antoine had a nearer view of her lips and cheeks, and the pale beauty of her skin, touched with a curious glamour by fatigue. He felt overtired and restless, at the mercy of every impulse.

The child stirred in her sleep. As they approached the bed together her eyelids fluttered, then closed again.

“Perhaps the light worries her,” the young woman suggested, taking the lamp and placing it further from the bed. Then, returning to the bedside, she wiped the beads of perspiration from the child’s forehead. Antoine followed her movements with his eyes and, as she stooped, he felt a sudden thrill; outlined as in a shadow-play under the flimsy dressing-gown, the young woman’s body was silhouetted, frankly provocative as if she stood naked before him. He held his breath; a dark fire seemed to sear his eyes, watching through misty shadows the languid rise and fall of her bosom, rhythmed to her breath. Antoine’s hands grew suddenly cold as ice, contracted as in a spasm. Never before with such an urgency of passion had he desired another human being.

“Mile. Rachel,” a voice whispered.

She drew herself up.

“It’s Aline; she wants to come and see the child.”

Smiling, she seemed to plead the servant’s cause and, though vexed by the intrusion, he dared not deny her.

“So your name’s Rachel,” he stammered. “Yes, let her come.”

He hardly noticed the old woman kneeling beside the bed. He went to an open window; his temples were throbbing. No cooling breeze came from without; far above the housetops the distant glimmer of a star or two spangled the darkness. Now at length he realized his weariness; he had been on his feet for three or four hours on end. He looked round for a seat. Between the windows two small mattresses resting on the tiled floor formed a sort of couch. Here, no doubt, Dédette usually slept; the room was evidently Aline’s bedroom. He sank onto the pallet, propping his back against the wall, and again an uncontrollable desire swept over him—to see once again, half veiled beneath the tenuous fabric, Rachel’s firm breasts, their rhythmic rise and fall. But she was no longer standing in the light.

“Didn’t the child move her leg?” he inquired without rising. As she walked towards the bed, her body lithely swayed beneath the wrap.

“No.”

Antoine’s lips were parched and he still felt a burning at the sockets of his eyes. How could he lure Rachel out into the lamplight?

“Is she still as pale as she was?”

“A little less.”

“Move her head straight, will you? Quite flat and straight.”

Now she stepped into the zone of light, but only for a moment, as she passed between the lamp and Antoine. The moment sufficed, however, to quicken his desire anew. He had to shut his eyes, jam his back against the wall and thus remain, clenching his teeth, struggling to keep his eyelids closed upon their secret vision. The stench of cities in the summer, a mingled reek of horse-dung, smoke, and dusty asphalt, stifled the air. Flies pattered on the lampshade, hovered on Antoine’s damp cheeks. Now and again thunder rumbled still, above the remoter suburbs.

Little by little, fever, heat and the very urgency of his emotion sapped his powers of resistance. He was unconscious of the slow tide of lethargy advancing; his muscles relaxed, his shoulders settled down against the wall, he fell asleep… .

It was as if a summons, gently insistent, were calling him from sleep and, still on the verge of dreams, he was vaguely aware of a pleasurable feeling. For a long while he hovered in an ecstatic limbo, unable to discover by what channel and at what point on the surface of his body the warm tide of well-being was seeping in. Presently he traced it to his leg and, at the same moment, grew conscious that someone was seated at his side; that the warmth along his thigh emanated from a living body; that this warmth and the body were Rachel’s and the sensation was really one of sensual pleasure, enhanced now that he knew its origin. Her body must have slipped towards him as she slept. He had self-control enough to sit quite still… . Now he was wideawake. All the feelings of his body were centred in a little space, no wider than a hand’s breadth, where, across the thin covering of their garments, thigh touched thigh. He stayed thus, motionless, breathing rapidly yet fully lucid, finding in the mingling of his body’s warmth with hers a thrill more potent than the subtlest of caresses.

Suddenly Rachel awoke and stretched her arms; drawing away from him, but without haste, she sat up. He made as if he, too, were just awaking, roused by her movement.

“I dozed off,” she confessed with a smile.

“So did I.”

“It’s almost daylight,” she murmured as she raised her arms to settle her hair.

Antoine glanced at his watch; it was just on four.

The child lay all but motionless. Aline’s hands were clasped, as if in prayer. Antoine went to the bed and drew aside the blankets.

“Not a drop of blood—that’s good.”

While his eyes followed Rachel’s movements, he took the child’s pulse; a hundred and ten.

How warm her leg was! he was thinking.

Rachel was examining her reflection in a strip of looking-glass, tacked with three nails to the wall, and smiling. With her shock of red hair, open collar, strong bare arms, and her bold, free-and-easy, slightly scornful air, she might have stood for a heroine of the Revolution, a Marseillaise on the barricades.

“I’m a fine sight!” She pouted at her reflected self, though well aware that the young bloom of her cheeks lost, even in the acid test of waking, nothing of its charm. This was plain to read on Antoine’s face as, moving to her side, he peered into the mirror. She noticed that the young man’s gaze fastened not on her eyes, but on her lips.

But then Antoine took stock of his own appearance—sleeves rolled up, arms burnt with iodine, his shirt crumpled and stained with blood.

“And to think I was due to dine at Packmell’s!” he exclaimed.

A curious smile flickered on Rachel’s face.

“Say! So you go to Packmell’s sometimes?”

Their eyes were smiling, and Antoine’s heart leapt with joy. He knew little of women other than those of easy virtue. Now suddenly Rachel seemed to become less inaccessible to his desire.

“I’ll go downstairs to my flat,” she said and turned to Aline, who was watching them. “If I can be of any help, don’t hesitate to call me.”

Then, without bidding Antoine goodbye, she drew the flaps of her dressing-gown together and discreetly made her exit.

No sooner had she gone than he too felt a wish to leave. “A breath of fresh air,” he murmured, glancing over the housetops towards the morning sky. “Must go home too, and explain to Jacques. I can return when I’ve done with the hospital. Washed, presentable. Might have them send for her to help with the dressing. Or shall I look in on my way up? But I don’t even know if she’s living by herself.”

He explained to Aline what to do, should the child wake before his return. Then, just as he was leaving, a scruple held him back; how about M. Chasle?

“His room opens into the hall alongside the stove,” the servant explained.

Antoine discovered a cupboard door beside the stove, answering to her description. Opening it, he saw a triangular recess, lit from the far end by a makeshift window let into the party-wall of the staircase. This was the so-called bedroom. M. Chasle lay fully dressed on an iron bedstead, his mouth wide open, placidly snoring.

“Sure enough, the old loon’s plugged his ears with cotton-wool!” Antoine exclaimed.

He decided to wait a minute or two, hoping the old fellow would decide to open his eyes. Pious pictures on coloured cardboard mounts lined the walls. Books—devotional, too—filled a whatnot, on whose topmost shelf stood a terrestrial globe, flanked by two rows of empty scent-bottles.

“The Chasle case!” I’ve a mania for seeing “cases” everywhere, Antoine reflected. Nothing complex about him, really; a second-hand face and a fool’s life! Whenever I try to see into people, I distort, exaggerate. Bad habit! That servant-girl at Toulouse, for instance. Now why should I think of her? Because her bedroom window opened onto a staircase, too? No; must be the stale smell of toilet-soap. Funny things, associations of ideas! … He was conscious of a vivid sense of pleasure in recalling that juvenile experience; the chambermaid with whom, when travelling with his father to attend a congress, he had passed a night in an attic room at a hotel. And, at this very minute, he would have given much to possess the buxom maid as he had known her then between the rough sheets of her bed.

M. Chasle went on snoring. Antoine decided not to wait, and returned to the hall.

No sooner had he begun to descend the stairs than he remembered that Rachel occupied the floor below. Coming round the bend of the stairs, he glanced down towards her door; it was open! No other door was visible, so it must be hers. Why was it open?