The Thibaults (74 page)

The English girl, with a casual nod for Antoine, motioned to the child to enter first. As Antoine drew aside to let them pass, the subtle fragrance of two young, delicately nurtured bodies was wafted towards him. Both girls had fair hair and glowing cheeks, were tall and slim.

Huguette was carrying her coat slung over her arm; though barely thirteen, she was so tall that it came as a surprise to see her in so juvenile a frock; short and sleeveless, it showed to full advantage her childish skin, gloriously burnished by the summer sun. Her hair, a rich, warm gold, tumbled in wanton ringlets round her cheeks; its look of youthful gaiety was oddly out of keeping with the listless eyes that gave an impression of profound melancholy, and her nervous smile.

The English girl turned to Antoine. The bloom on her cheeks grew rosier still as she set about explaining in her French, melodious as bird-song, that her employer was lunching out, had asked her to be sure and send back the car, and would be coming presently.

Antoine had gone up to Huguette and, tapping her lightly on the shoulder, made her turn towards the light.

“And how do we feel today?” he inquired vaguely.

Huguette’s only answer was a wan smile and a shake of the head.

Meanwhile Antoine was summarily examining the coloration of lips and gums, and of the conjunctivae; but his deeper thoughts had taken another trend. Just now in the waiting-room he had noticed the awkward way in which the girl, for all the natural grace which obviously was hers, had risen from the chair, and a hint of stiffness in her walk as she approached him. After that, too, when he had tapped her on the shoulder, a slight wince and an almost imperceptible grimace had not escaped his vigilant attention.

This was only his second time of seeing the child; he was not the family doctor. It was no doubt Simon de Battaincourt, an old friend of Jacques, who had persuaded his wife to pay a surprise visit to Antoine during the spring, and take his opinion on the general health of her daughter, who, she said, had outgrown her strength. On that occasion Antoine had not discovered any trace of lesion, though her general condition had impressed him unfavourably. He had prescribed a strict regimen and told the mother to bring the child to see him every month. She had never come again.

“Now will you take your things off, please?” he said.

Huguette turned to the governess.

“Please come, Miss Mary.”

Seated at his desk, Antoine read through the diagnosis he had made in June, with studied impassivity. Though so far he had failed to detect any definite symptom, he had his suspicions. Often enough such first impressions had led him to put his finger on diseases still in the latent state; nevertheless, he refused on principle to accept their verdict over-hastily. He spread out on the table the X-ray photograph that had been taken in the spring and examined it carefully. Then he rose.

Perched on the arm of a chair in the middle of the room, Huguette was indolently letting herself be undressed. Whenever she tried to help her governess to undo a ribbon or a hook, she set about it so clumsily that the Englishwoman pushed her hand aside. At one moment her irritation was so great that she rapped the child smartly over the knuckles. The fretful gesture and a hint of sullenness that flawed the madonna-like purity of Mary’s features convinced Antoine that the pretty governess had little liking for the child. Moreover, Huguette seemed afraid of her.

“Thanks, that will do,” he said, going up to the girl.

The young girl raised her eyes to his—beautiful blue eyes, clear and luminous, for, though she could not say why, she had taken a liking to this “big doctor-man.” (Indeed, for all his opinionated air and the unrelaxing tension of his features, Antoine seldom gave his patients the impression of being really stern. Even the youngest and least observant were rarely led astray; the line across his forehead, his deep-set, insistent eyes, his strong jaw and firmly cut mouth impressed them, rather, as the outward signs of forcefulness and wisdom. “The only thing patients really want,” the chief had once remarked with a sardonic grin, “is—to be taken seriously.”)

Antoine began by a systematic examination. The lungs: nothing wrong there. Like Philip, he proceeded step by step. The heart’s in order, too. But, “Pott’s disease,” something was whispering in his ear. “What about Pott’s disease?”

“Bend forward,” he suddenly commanded. “No, wait a bit! Pick something up—your shoe, for instance.”

To avoid flexing her back, she bent her knees. A bad sign, that. He still hoped he was wrong, but the thing was to make certain.

“Hold yourself straight. Cross your arms. Like that. Now lean forward, please. Bend … more than that!”

As she straightened herself again, her lips slowly parted, with a languid grace, and smiled towards him coaxingly.

“That hurt!” Her voice was soft, apologetic.

“Right!” said Antoine. He considered her a moment covertly. Then he met her eyes and smiled. She was a quaint little thing, desirable too, as she stood there in her young nakedness, with her shoe in her hand and the wondering, tender gaze of her big eyes fixed on Antoine. She had already grown tired of standing up and was leaning now on the back of a chair. The mellow glow of a ripe apricot coloured her shoulders, her arms, her rounded thighs, and made them look almost dark in contrast with the gleaming whiteness of her torso.

“Lie down there!” he told her, spreading a sheet upon the couch. Once more a feeling of deep concern had mastered him, and the smile died from his face. “Lie on your face. Quite flat, please.”

The decisive moment had come. Antoine knelt down, resting the weight of his body on his heels, and thrust his arms out to free his wrists from the cuffs. For a couple of seconds he seemed lost in thought and did not move; his brooding eyes roamed over the firm, muscular skin of the back from the shoulder-blades to the shadowed flexure of the loins. Then, placing his hand on the warm neck that flinched a little under its touch, he laid two exploring fingertips upon the spinal column, and, palpating each segment with an even pressure, told one by one the beads of living tissue, like a rosary… . Suddenly the child’s body twitched, winced from his touch, and Antoine hastily withdrew his hand. A laughing, but emphatic voice, half stifled in the cushions, protested.

“Now you’re hurting me, doctor!”

“Really? Where exactly?” To divert her attention, he touched some other parts of her skin.

“Here?”

“No.”

“And here?”

“No.”

Then, to make assurance the more sure, he briskly tapped the affected vertebra with his forefinger.

“And here?”

The girl uttered a little cry that quickly changed to a forced laugh.

There was a silence.

“Turn over, please,” said Antoine with a fresh, unwonted gentleness in his voice.

He ran his fingers over her neck, her chest and arm-pits. Huguette braced herself up, determined not to cry out again. But, when he pressed the groin-glands, she could not keep back a little moan of pain.

Antoine stood up; his face was impassive, but he eluded the child’s inquiring eyes.

“Well, I’m through with you!” he grumbled, making believe he was scolding her. “I never saw such a cry-baby!”

There was a knock at the door. Before the girl could answer, it swung open and the fair Anne made a tempestuous entrance.

“Here I am, doctor!” There was a warm resonance in her voice. “You must forgive me for being so shockingly late. But really, doctor, you live at the back of beyond!” She laughed. “Anyhow, I hope you didn’t wait for me,” she added, eyeing her daughter. “Mind you don’t catch cold!” There was no tenderness in her tone. Then a sudden change came over her voice; losing its overtone of harshness, it sank to a deep, sensuous contralto. “Mary dear, will you be very sweet and put something round her shoulders?”

She moved towards Antoine. There was a frank appeal in her lithe body, but beneath her lively gestures there lay a vein of hardness, a ruthless obstinacy, mellowed and disciplined though it was by years of practice in the game of seduction, with femininity as her trump-card. A pungent perfume, too heavy, as it seemed, to rise, hung about her. With an airy gesture she held out a white-gloved hand, tinkling with bangles.

“How do you do?”

Greyly her eyes bored into Antoine’s. On her temples, below the waved brown hair, an imperceptible tracery of tiny lines gave the skin round her eyelids a look of great fragility. He turned away his eyes.

“Well, doctor, are you satisfied?” she asked. “How far have you got with your examination?”

“As a matter of fact it’s just over for today,” Antoine replied with a constrained smile; then he turned to the English girl. “You can dress her now.”

“Anyhow, you can’t deny she’s ever so much better,” Mme. de Battaincourt gaily exclaimed, seating herself, as was her habit, with her back to the light. “Did she tell you that we spent …”

Antoine, who had gone to the basin, turned his head politely in her direction, as he began to wash his hands.

“… two months at Ostende, and all on her account? You can see the effects; brown as a berry, isn’t she? But you should have seen her six weeks ago! Shouldn’t he, Mary?”

Antoine was thinking things out. Doubt was no longer possible about the presence of tuberculosis; it was undermining the foundations of the child’s body and already deeply rooted in the spine. He tried to persuade himself that the lesions were curable, but he did not really think so. Despite appearances, her general condition was alarming. The whole glandular system was inflamed. Huguette was old Goupillot’s daughter and the shadow of an evil heredity menaced her future, even her life.

“Did she tell you she got the third prize in the sun-tan contest at the Palace Hotel? And a consolation prize at the Casino?”

She had a very slight lisp, just enough to lend a reassuring touch of childishness to her rather formidable charms. The grey eyes seemed curiously out of place in her dark complexion and at times, for no apparent reason, a rapid, disconcerting gleam would flash out from their pupils. She had taken a vague dislike to Antoine at first sight. Anne de Battaincourt liked to feel she exercised a physical attraction on men and women and, though with the years she turned it less often to account, the more her pleasure in it tended to remain platonic, the greater seemed her eagerness to be assured on every possible occasion of her sensual charm. Antoine’s attitude vexed her, just because the attentive, if slightly quizzing, way in which he looked at her showed he was not wholly insensitive to her appeal; yet, as she saw only too well, he had not the slightest difficulty in controlling his feelings, and would remain coolly critical in every circumstance.

“You must excuse me,” she remarked with a low-pitched laugh, “but I’m simply stifling in this coat.” Remaining seated in the chair and keeping her eyes fixed on the young man, with a lithe movement that set her trinkets jingling, she slipped out of her furs and let them sink onto the seat behind her. Her bosom heaved more freely, and the opening of her blouse revealed a willowy neck, almost a young girl’s neck, that had a quaintly authoritative air—so proudly did it flaunt the little helmeted head with the clean-cut, hawk-like profile.

Leaning forward to dry his hands, Antoine listened to her with half an ear; he was moodily picturing to himself the progressive inflammation of the bony structures, the gradual softening and ultimate collapse of the carious spine. There was just one chance of saving her, and it must be tried at once. She must be immobilized in a plaster cast for months, perhaps for years; a living death!

“We had a very gay season at Ostende last summer,” Mme. de Battaincourt went on, raising her voice so as to compel Antoine’s attention. “The place was simply packed—rather too much so for my liking. A regular omnium gatherum!” She laughed. Then, seeing she could not catch the doctor’s ear, she gradually lowered her voice and ceased speaking, casting an approving glance at Mary, who was helping Huguette into her frock. But she could not bear to play the part of a mere onlooker for long; somehow she had to make her presence felt. Rising abruptly, she smoothed out a crease in Huguette’s collar and settled her blouse with an emphatic little tug. Then, bending familiarly towards the English girl, she began to talk to her in undertones.

“You know, Mary, I like that chemisette from Hudson’s much better; we must get Suzy to copy it. Stand up!” she angrily addressed her daughter. “Always sitting down! How are we to know if you’ve got your dress on straight?” Then with a sinuous movement of her body she turned to Antoine. “You can’t imagine, doctor, what a lazybones she is, this great gawk of a girl of mine. It’s maddening for anyone like me who wants to be always up and about.”

Antoine’s eyes met Huguette’s look of vague interrogation and he could not withhold a little conspiratorial twinkle, which started the child smiling too.

“Let’s see” —he hastily thought out a programme— “it’s Monday today. She must be put in plaster by Friday or Saturday. After that, we’ll see.”

After that? As he stood there, lost in thought, a picture formed before his eyes: the terrace of a sanatorium at Berck-sur-Mer and, in the row of beds like open coffins tilted towards the sea-breeze, one bed, a trifle longer than its neighbours, and, prone on the pillowless mattress, the cripple’s upturned face, blue eyes roaming the low horizon of the dunes.

Meanwhile Mme. de Battaincourt continued airing her grievances against her daughter’s laziness.

“Just imagine! When we were at Ostende there was a dancing-class each morning at the Casino and of course I took her there. Well, after each dance, our young lady used to collapse onto the sofa and start whimpering, trying to look interesting, I suppose.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Personally, I loathe the pathetic touch!” Such was her vehemence, and so ruthless the steely look she flashed at Antoine, that he suddenly remembered certain rumours he once had heard—that Goupillot, turned jealous in old age, had conveniently succumbed to poison. There was a vicious edge to her voice as she added: “In fact she made herself so ridiculous that I had to let her have her way.”