The Thibaults (53 page)

Perhaps, thought Jenny, perhaps he is not so spoiled as I imagined, not so callous and … In a flash it dawned on her that she had always known Jacques to be sensitive and gentle. The discovery thrilled her and now, as she listened to his narrative, she found herself snatching at each phrase that might confirm her new and kindlier judgment of him.

“Simon had made me sit on his left. I was the only one of his friends to turn up. Daniel had promised, but backed out of it. Not a single member of Simon’s family was present, not even the cousin with whom he had been brought up, and whom he had been counting on till the last train had gone. One felt sorry for the poor devil! He’s a sensitive, rather nice-minded fellow, really; I know a lot of decent things about him. He looked at the people round him— strangers all! He thought of his family. ‘I never dreamt,’ he told me, ‘that they’d be so terribly unrelenting. They
must
have it in for me!’ He came back to it during the meal. ‘Not a word from them, not even a wire! It looks as if they’d blotted me out of their lives. What do you think?’ I didn’t know what to reply. ‘But,’ he made haste to add, ‘I don’t mention this so much on my account—I don’t care a damn! It’s Anne I’m thinking of.’ As luck would have it, the sinister Anne was opening a telegram that had just been delivered, when he spoke. Battaincourt went quite pale. But the telegram was really for her, from a friend. That was the last straw; regardless of all the people watching, even of Anne with her impassive face and steely eyes intent on him, he burst into tears. She was furious, and he realized it soon enough. He was sitting next to her, of course. Putting his hand on her arm, he stammered out excuses like a naughty child: ‘Do forgive me!’ It was dreadful to hear him. She never turned a hair. And then—-it was even more painful to witness than his fit of weeping—he began talking cheerfully, cracking jokes, and sometimes, while he was saying something or other in a tone of forced gaiety, you could see the tears come to his eyes and, still talking away, he brushed them off with the back of his hand.”

Jacques’s emotion made it all so vivid that Jenny too was carried away.

“How horrible!”

Now, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he knew the thrills of authorship. An ecstasy. But he masked it disingenuously and made as if he had not heard her cry.

“Sure I’m not boring you?” He paused, then hurried on with his story. “That’s not all. When dessert was served, they started shouting at the other tables: ‘The bride and groom!’ Battaincourt and his wife had to stand up, smile, and go the round of the room, lifting their glasses of champagne. Just then I observed a little incident that was touching in its way. On their tour round the tables they overlooked her daughter by husband number one—a little girl eight or nine years old. The kid ran after them. They’d got back to their seats by then. Anne embraced the little girl rather roughly, rumpling the child’s collar. Then she pushed her daughter towards Battaincourt. But after that melancholy, unfriended tour of the room, his eyes were swimming with tears; he noticed nothing. Finally they had to put the little girl on his knee; then, with a ghastly, forced smile, he bent towards the other man’s child. The kid held her cheek towards him; sad eyes she had—I shall never forget them. At last he kissed her and, as she stayed where she was, he started tickling her chin in a silly sort of way, like this, with one finger—do you see what I mean? It was painful to watch, I assure you; but it makes a good story, doesn’t it?”

She turned towards Jacques, struck by the tone in which he had said “a good story.” And now she noticed that the brooding, almost bestial look that so displeased her had left his face; the pupils of his eyes showed crystal-clear, sparkling with emotion and vivacity. Oh, why isn’t he always like that? she thought.

Jacques began to smile. Painful as the experience had been, its poignancy weighed little beside the interest he took in other people’s lives, in any display of human thoughts and feelings. Jenny shared his taste and, perhaps in her case just as in his, the pleasure was now enhanced by the knowledge that she was not alone.

They had reached the end of the avenue and the outskirts of the forest were in sight. Under the sun the grass shone like a burnished mirror. Jacques halted.

“I’ve been boring you with all this talk.”

She made no protest.

But, instead of bidding her goodbye, he ventured a suggestion.

“As I’ve come so far, I’d like to have a word with your brother.”

The reminder of the lie she had told was decidedly ill-timed, and she was the more annoyed that he had so readily believed it. She did not answer him, and Jacques took her silence to mean that she had had enough of his company.

He felt chagrined, but could not bring himself to leave her thus, with an unfavourable impression of him—now, least of all, when it seemed to him that something new had come into their relations, something after which, for months, perhaps for years, he had been yearning unawares.

They walked in silence between the acacias lining the road that led to the garden gate. Jacques, who was a little behind Jenny, could see the pensive, graceful outline of her cheek.

The further he advanced, the less excuse he had for leaving her; minute linked minute in a chain. Now they were at the gate. Jenny opened it; he followed her across the garden. The terrace was deserted, the drawing-room empty.

“Mother!” Jenny called.

No one answered. She went to the kitchen window and, bound by her lie, inquired:

“Has my brother come?”

“No, Miss. But a telegram ‘ias just been brought.”

“Don’t disturb your mother,” Jacques said at last. “I’m off.”

Jenny remained stiffly erect, an obdurate look on her face.

“
Au revoir
,” Jacques murmured. “See you tomorrow, perhaps?”

“
Au revoir
” she said, making no move to see him to the gate.

The moment Jacques had turned to go she entered the hall, slammed her racket into the press, and flung it upon a wooden chest, venting her ill-humour in a display of needless violence.

“No, not tomorrow!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not tomorrow!”

Mme. de Fontanin, who was in her bedroom, had not failed to hear her daughter calling, and had recognized Jacques’s voice, but she was too upset to feign an air of calmness. The telegram she had just opened came from her husband. Jerome announced that he was at Amsterdam, penniless and friendless, with Noémie, who had fallen ill. Mme. de Fontanin had come to a speedy decision: she would go to Paris that very day, draw out all the money in her account, and send it to the address given by Jerome.

When her daughter entered the room, she was dressing. Jenny was shocked by the anguish on her mother’s face and the sight of the telegram lying on the table.

“What ever is the matter?” she exclaimed, while the thought flashed through her mind: Something’s happened and I wasn’t there. It’s all Jacques’s fault!

“Nothing serious, darling,” Mme. de Fontanin replied. “Your father … your father’s short of money, that’s all.” Then, ashamed of her own weakness and, most of all, thus to disclose a father’s failings to his child, she blushed and hid her face between her hands.

BEHIND the misted windows dawn was rising. Huddled in a corner of the railway-car, Mme. de Fontanin watched with unseeing eyes the green plains of Holland slipping past.

She had gone to Paris on the previous day and found another telegram from Jerome awaiting her at home: “Doctor given Noémie up. Cannot stay here alone. Implore you come. Bring money if possible.” She had not been able to get in touch with Daniel before the night train left, and had scribbled a note telling him she was leaving and he must look after Jenny.

The train stopped. Voices were crying: “Haarlem!”

It was the last stop before Amsterdam. The lights were switched off. The sun, invisible as yet, sheeted the sky with a pearly lustre, mottled with rainbow gleams. Her fellow-travellers awoke, stretched their limbs, and bundled up their things. Mme. de Fontanin remained unmoving, trying to prolong the apathy which spared her still, to some extent, from realizing what she had undertaken. So Noémie was dying. She tried to peer into her mind. Was she jealous? No. For jealousy—that meant the fiery gusts of feeling that had seared her heart during their early years of married life, when she still kept open house to doubt and blinded herself to reality, fighting back a hateful horde of visual obsessions. For many years past not jealousy had rankled, but a sense of the injustice done her. And had it really rankled, truth to tell? Her trials had been of a quite different order. Had she in fact been at any stage a jealous woman? Her real grief had always been to discover—ever too late—that she had been duped; her feeling towards Jerome’s mistresses was oftener than not a rather distant pity, sometimes touched with fellow-feeling, as towards sisters in distress.

Her fingers were trembling when it was time to fasten up her luggage. She was the last to leave the compartment. The rapid, startled glance she cast about her did not meet the look whose impact she expected. Surely he had got her wire? It might be that his eyes were fixed on her, and at the thought she pulled herself together and followed the outgoing stream of passengers.

Someone touched her arm. Jerome stood before her, looking diffident but delighted. As, with bared head, he bowed towards her, despite his careworn features and the slight stoop he had developed, he had still the exotic charm of some eastern potentate. They were caught in the rush of travellers before he could shape a phrase of welcome for Thérèse, but he took her bag from her hands with tender solicitude. So
she
is not dead, Mme. de Fontanin reflected, and shuddered at the thought that she might have to watch her die.

They entered the station yard in silence and M. de Fontanin hailed a cab. Suddenly, as she was stepping into it, a wave of emotion that was almost joy flooded her senses: she had heard Jerome’s voice. While he was talking to the cabman in Dutch, telling him where to go, she paused a moment on the step in vibrant immobility, then, opening her eyes again, she sank onto the seat.

No sooner was he seated in the open carriage than he turned in her direction; once again she looked into the darkly glowing eyes she knew so well and felt their ardency envelop her like a caress. He seemed about to take her hand, to touch her arm; the gesture was so ill assorted with the courteous reticence of his demeanour that she felt almost shocked, as if he had offered her an insult, yet thrilled by the intimation of a living love, all hope of which had died.

She was the first to break the silence. “How is …?” Stumbling at the name, she hastily went on: “Is she in pain?”

“No, no. That’s all over now.”

Though she would not meet his eyes, the way he spoke convinced her that Noémie was much better; it seemed to her that he was feeling some embarrassment at having summoned his wife to the bedside of a sick mistress. A pang of regret shot through her heart. Now she could not imagine what evil genius had prompted her to take this ill-considered step. What business had she here—now that Noémie would recover, and life go on its way again, unchanged? She decided to leave at once.

“Thank you, Thérèse,” Jerome murmured. “Thank you.”

There was a note of affection in his voice, of diffidence and respect. She noticed that Jerome’s hand, resting on his knee, was thinner, and evidently trembling a little; the massive signet-ring hung slack upon his finger. She would not raise her eyes, but fixed them on his gloveless hand, and now she could not bring herself to regret the impulse that had brought her here. Why go away? She had acted spontaneously, prayer had inspired the impulse, surely no harm could come of it! Now that she could fall back on her faith, as bidding her reject all thoughts of drawing back, her confidence revived. Never had her heavenly guide left her for long the prey of doubts.

They were entering a vast and spacious city, laid out in endless vistas. At this early hour the shutters were still drawn across the shop-fronts, but the sidewalks were loud with workmen hastening to their tasks. The cab turned into a narrower street where short stretches of causeway alternated with hump-backed bridges spanning a sequence of parallel canals. Tall, slender houses lined the waterfront, and the red facades, bare of ornaments but studded with white windows, were mirrored in the almost stagnant water between the branches of elms that drooped beside the quays. Mme. de Fontanin realized that France was very far away.

“How are the children?” Jerome inquired.

She had noticed his hesitation in putting the question; he was moved, and for once made no attempt to hide his emotion.

“Quite well.”

“What’s Daniel doing?”

“He’s at Paris, working. He comes to Maisons whenever he is free.”

“So you’re at Maisons?”

“Yes.”

He was silent; the park, the house beside the forest that he knew so well, rose up before his eyes.

“And … Jenny?”

“She is quite well.” An unspoken question hovered in his eyes. “Jenny’s grown much taller,” she went on; “very much changed, in fact.”

Jerome’s eyelids quivered and his voice was shaken by emotion when he answered her.

“Yes, I suppose that’s so. She must have changed a lot.” Looking away, he relapsed into silence. Then, passing his hand over his forehead, he exclaimed in a sombre voice: “How ghastly it all is!” And, almost in the same breath, added: “I have practically no money left, Thérèse.”

“I’ve brought some,” she answered impulsively.

She had heard such agony in Jerome’s cry that, with the knowledge she could set his fears at rest, her immediate feeling was one of thankfulness. But close upon it came another thought that stung her: the report of Noémie’s illness had, quite likely, been exaggerated—it was for the money, only for that, they had lured her here! And she felt sick with disgust when, after a slight hesitation, in a voice thickened by shame, Jerome blurted out the question:

“How much?”

She fought back a brief temptation to understate the sum.

“All I could scrape together,” she replied. “A little over three thousand francs.”