The Thibaults (83 page)

M. Thibault’s eyes were still closed, but the tip of his short, pointed beard was quivering; the old man was in such a weak state that the least emotion had an overwhelming effect.

“A very fine letter, M. Chasle,” he said, once he had mastered his feelings. “Don’t you agree it’s well worth printing in our next year’s
Bulletin
? Please be good enough to refresh my memory, when the time comes. Next.”

“A letter from the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Prisons Department.”

“What’s that …?”

“No,” M. Chasle amended. “It’s only a circular of some kind or other. Incomprehensible.”

The door opened slightly; Sister Céline sidled in.

“Must get the letters finished first,” M. Thibault said gruffly.

The nurse made no protest but went to the fireplace and added another log. (She always kept a log-fire burning to counteract the odour in the sick-room, which, as she sometimes put it, making a wry face, “smelled like a hospital.”) After a moment she went out.

“What next, M. Chasle?”

“The Institute of France. A meeting on the twenty-seventh.”

“Speak louder. Next?”

“The Diocesan Charities. Governing Committee meetings on November 23 and 30. In December, on …”

“Send a card to the Abbé Baufremont, asking him to excuse my absence on the twenty-third. And on the thirtieth as well,” he added after a moment’s thought. “Note the December meetings in the engagement-book. Next.”

“That’s all, sir. That’s to say, only a subscription form from the Parish Relief Fund. And some visiting-cards; the callers yesterday were Father Nussey, M. Ludovic Roye, Secretary of the
Revue des Deux Mondes
, and General Kerigan. This morning the Vice-President of the Senate called to inquire for you. And some circulars. Parish magazines. Newspapers.”

The door opened again, this time inexorably. Sister Céline entered, and now she carried a steaming poultice laid out on a plate.

M. Chasle lowered his eyes and left the room—on tip-toe, to prevent his boots from squeaking.

The nurse had already begun turning back the blankets. Fomentations were her latest fad. As a matter of fact, though they reduced the pain, they had none of the hoped-for effect on the sluggish organs. Indeed, so ineffectual were they that now, notwithstanding M. Thibault’s repugnance, she had no choice but to use a sound again.

Once the operation was over, he felt some physical relief, but the nurse’s activities had left him in a despondent mood. It had just struck half-past three; the close of the afternoon threatened to be a gloomy one. The effects of the morphine were beginning to wear off; the five o’clock enema was not due for more than an hour. To keep her patient’s mind off his troubles, the nun took it upon herself to call M. Chasle back.

The little man entered discreetly and took his seat again by the window.

He was feeling worried. When, a moment before, he met fat Clotilde in the corridor, she had whispered in his ear: “This last week the master’s been going downhill fast, there’s no denying it.” And while M. Chasle gazed at her with startled eyes, she had added: “No, that disease he has don’t let no one off.”

M. Thibault lay quiet in bed, though now and then he gave a little gasp, or groaned—from sheer force of habit, for the pain had not come back yet. In fact just now he was feeling comfortable, at ease. But, always fearing that the twinges might return, he wanted to doze off, and his secretary’s presence fretted him.

Lifting an eyelid, he cast a melancholy glance towards the window.

“Don’t waste your time waiting here, M. Chasle. Any more work is out of the question for me today. Look at me!” He tried to raise his arm. “Yes, I’m at the end of my tether.”

M. Chasle made no attempt to hide his feelings. “Already!” he exclaimed, in a tone of consternation.

Surprised, M. Thibault turned his head; there was a glint of humour in his half-closed eyes.

“Can’t you see my strength is failing day by day?” he sighed. “What’s the good of nursing false hopes? If one’s got to die, the sooner it’s over the better.”

“What’s that? To die!” M. Chasle wrung his hands emotionally.

M. Thibault was amusing himself.

“Yes, to die,” he repeated in a gruff tone, opened both eyes suddenly, and closed them again.

Speechless with horror, M. Chasle stared at the puffy, inert face, which seemed already corpse-like. Had Clotilde been right? In that case, what about himself? The prospect of a penniless old age loomed up before him.

M. Chasle began trembling as he always did when he had to screw up his courage; soundlessly he slipped off his chair.

“There comes an hour,” M. Thibault went on in a low voice—he was already on the brink of sleep—”there comes an hour when rest is all one yearns for. Death should have no terrors for a Christian.”

With closed eyes he listened to the echoes of the words he had just uttered buzzing in his head. He gave a start on hearing M. Chasle’s voice almost in his ear.

“That’s so. Death should have no terrors.” The little man was scared by his own temerity. He stammered: “Yes, indeed, for me, M—Mother’s death …” He stopped short, as if his breath had failed him.

A set of false teeth, which he had only recently begun wearing, gave him difficulty in speaking. It was a prize he had won in a puzzle competition promoted by a dental institute in the South of France, the specialty of which was treatment by correspondence and the supply of dentures built to fit the wax impressions sent by their clients. As a matter of fact M. Chasle found his false teeth quite satisfactory, provided he took them out for meals and when he had a good deal to say. He had developed a technique of jerking them out of his mouth and catching them in his handkerchief, while pretending to sneeze. He did so now.

Freed from his incubus, he spoke more briskly.

“For me, too, my mother’s death—would you believe it?—has no terrors. Why should I be afraid of it? Still, it’s a quiet time for us just now with her away in the Home; and a quiet time, that’s what makes the charm of life, even in childhood.”

He paused again, trying to link up what he had said with what he had in mind.

“I don’t live by myself, you know; that’s why I said ‘for us.’ Perhaps you know it, sir? Aline has stayed on with me; she used to be Mother’s servant. And Dédette, her niece, the little girl M. Antoine operated on, that famous night. Yes,” he added with a smile that lit up his face with a sudden glow of tenderest affection, “the little girl’s living with us; why, she even calls me ‘Uncle Jules’—it’s a way she’s got into. What makes it so funny is that I’m not really her uncle.”

The smile died from his lips and a shadow crossed his face. Then he blurted out in a rather harsh voice:

“Three mouths to feed, my word, that takes a lot of money!”

With an unwonted familiarity he had edged up quite near the bed, as if he had some pressing information to convey, but he was careful not to look M. Thibault in the face.

Taken by surprise, the invalid had not yet quite closed his eyes, and now was scrutinizing M. Chasle. The little man’s remarks, for all their incoherence, seemed to be hovering round some unstated project; there was something unusual, not to say disquieting, about it all that vanquished M. Thibault’s desire to be left to sleep.

Suddenly M. Chasle stepped back and fell to pacing up and down the room. His shoes were squeaking, but now he paid no heed to this.

When he spoke again there was a certain bitterness in his voice.

“What’s more, the thought of my own death doesn’t scare me, either. When all is said and done, that’s my Maker’s concern, not mine. But life’s a different story. Ah, yes, I’m afraid of life, and I don’t deny it. Growing old, you know.” He turned on his heel and murmured: “Eh?” in a puzzled voice, before continuing. “I’d saved up ten thousand francs. I brought them one evening to the Superannuates’ Home. ‘Here’s my mother and here’s ten thousand francs. Take them!’ That was the fee they charged. Things like that oughtn’t to be allowed. It meant a quiet life, that’s sure—but ten thousand francs … I ask you! All my savings. What about Dédette? Nothing in hand, nothing coming in. Less than nothing, as Aline’s advanced me two thousand francs, her own money. For our living expenses, just to keep us afloat. Now suppose we reckon it out; the four hundred francs a month I’m getting here isn’t such a great deal. Not for the three of us. The little girl, you see, she needs her bread and butter too. She’s only an apprentice and doesn’t earn anything as yet, so she costs money. But I ask you to believe me, sir, on my Bible oath—we’re thrifty folk. Thrifty about everything, even the newspapers; nowadays we read the old ones that we’d put by.” There was a quaver in his voice. “I hope you’ll excuse me, sir, if I’m lowering myself by telling you about the newspapers. But such things oughtn’t to be allowed, no, they shouldn’t indeed, after twenty centuries of our Christian era, not to mention all they say about our civilization.”

There was a slight flutter of M. Thibault’s hands, but M. Chasle could not bring himself to look towards the bed. He began speaking again.

“Suppose I stopped getting those four hundred francs, what would become of us?” Turning away towards the window, he cocked his ear as if hoping to hear “voices.” Then abruptly, as though a sudden light had come to him, he exclaimed: “Why, of course! A legacy!” Almost at once he frowned. “Heaven knows, four thousand eight hundred francs, that’s the very least the three of us can do on. Well, if God is just and merciful to us, He’ll provide a bit of capital to yield that much. Yes, sir, He’ll send us a—a little nest-egg.”

He took out his pocket-handkerchief and mopped his forehead, as if he had just put forth a herculean effort.

“ ‘Have confidence, M. Chasle!’ That’s what they’re always saying —the gentlemen at Saint Roch’s, for instance. ‘It isn’t as if you didn’t have a protector.
You
have nothing to fear.’ Well, I’m not denying it; it’s not as if I hadn’t a protector. And, as for confidence, I’d be only too glad to have that too. Only I’d like to have that bit of capital first, that nest-egg.”

He had halted at the bedside, but still refrained from looking towards M. Thibault. “It’d be easier to have confidence,” he murmured, “if one could be
sure
. Yes, indeed, sir!”

Little by little his gaze, like a bird that is getting over its first panic, was hovering nearer the old man; lightly it skimmed the face upon the pillows, sped back and settled on the quiet brows, fluttered away again, again alighted, and finally came to rest for good, as if it had been snared, on the closed eyes. The light was failing now. When at last M. Thibault’s eyelids lifted, he saw across the dusk M. Chasle’s eyes riveted on his.

The surprise finally dispelled his lethargy. For a long time past he had regarded it as his duty to provide for his secretary’s future by a legacy; indeed the bequest was explicitly included in his will. But it seemed to him essential that the beneficiary should be unaware of this until the will was read. M. Thibault, who thought he understood human nature, mistrusted everyone. He believed that if M. Chasle got wind of the bequest, he would cease being a punctual employee—and his generosity would defeat itself. “I think I get your meaning, M. Chasle.” His tone was amiable.

A sudden flush rose to the secretary’s cheeks, and he looked away.

M. Thibault pondered for some moments before continuing.

“But—how shall I put it?—isn’t there more courage, in certain cases, in rejecting a suggestion such as yours, on the strength of well-established principles, than in yielding to it, without consideration, out of blindness or a false sentiment of charity—out of weakness, in a word?”

Standing at the bedside, M. Chasle nodded meekly. The tone of self-assurance in his employer’s harangues always had such a compelling effect on him, and he was so used to falling in with all M. Thibault’s opinions, that now as usual he was quite unable to stand up against them. Only later did it strike him that, by thus agreeing with what had just been said, he was approving the frustration of his hopes. He resigned himself at once. He was used to disappointments. How often had he made the most legitimate petitions in his prayers—and they had not been granted! But he did not rebel, for that, against Divine Providence. And M. Thibault, likewise, had come to be credited by his secretary with supreme, impenetrable wisdom, to which, as a matter of course, he bowed.

He had resigned himself to silence and assent with such finality that he decided to put back his artificial teeth. He thrust his hand into his pocket. His cheeks went scarlet. The plate was no longer there.

Meanwhile M. Thibault was placidly continuing his homily. “Don’t you realize, M. Chasle, that when you handed over your savings, the fruits of honest toil, to a secular and questionable institution like that Home, you were the victim of sharp practice? For we could easily have found some religious institution where old folk are looked after free of charge, provided the applicant is penniless and backed by somebody of influence? Were I to fall in with what you seem to be requesting, and include you in the provisions of my will, isn’t it obvious that, when I’m gone, you’d fall again into the clutches of some swindler who would drain you of the last sou of my bequest?”

But M. Chasle had stopped listening. He could remember having taken out his handkerchief; then, presumably, the set of false teeth had dropped on the carpet. He had a horrid vision of this all-too-revealing—possibly malodorous—appliance, in the rude hands of strangers. Craning his neck, his eyes starting out of his head, he was peering under each piece of furniture, flustered and fluttering about like a scared hen.

M. Thibault noticed him, and now was stirred to compassion. “I might increase that legacy,” he thought.

Thinking it would calm his secretary’s ruffled feelings, he went on in a genial tone.

“And after all, M. Chasle, isn’t it a mistake we often make, comparing penury with poverty? Penury, of course, is deplorable; it’s an evil counsellor, for one thing. But poverty—isn’t it often a manifestation, in a disguised form, of God’s grace?”

His employer’s voice came in vague, fitful gusts to M. Chasle’s ears, which were buzzing like those of a drowning man. He made an effort to collect his scattered wits, patted the pockets of his coat and waistcoat, thrust a despairing hand under his coat-tails. Suddenly a cry of joy all but escaped his lips. There they were, the false teeth, entangled in his bunch of keys!