The Thibaults (85 page)

“What do you feel just now?” Antoine asked. The rise in his father’s temperature worried him.

If M. Thibault had been frank, he would have replied: “I’m feeling extremely comfortable.” Instead he muttered: “I’ve a pain in my legs, and a dull ache in the small of my back.”

“I passed a sound at three,” Sister Céline put in.

“And a sort of weight, a feeling of oppression, here …”

Antoine nodded. “Yes, it’s rather curious,” he began, turning to the sister. He had no idea this time what new story he was going to concoct. “I’m thinking of certain—certain phenomena I’ve observed in connexion with changes of treatment. Thus in skin diseases, we often get unlooked-for results by using different treatments alternately. I dare say Thérivier and I were wrong in deciding to use so continuously this serum, Number—er—17.

“Most certainly you were wrong.” M. Thibault spoke with firm conviction.

Good-humouredly Antoine broke in. “But that’s your fault, Father. You’re in such a hurry to get well. We’ve been forcing the pace, that’s it.” Turning to the sister, he addressed her with the utmost gravity. “Where did you put the ampoules I brought yesterday—the D 92, you know?”

She made an awkward gesture; not because she had the least objection to mystifying a patient, but because she had some difficulty in finding her way about amongst all the new “serums” Antoine kept on inventing whenever the occasion arose.

“Please make an injection immediately with D 92. I want it made before the effects of Number 17 have worn off. I’d like to see how the mixture affects the blood.”

M. Thibault had noticed the nurse’s hesitant air, and his glance in her direction had not escaped Antoine. To cut short any suspicion that might have been aroused, he added:

“I’m afraid you’ll find this injection a bit more painful, Father. D 92 is less fluid than the others. But that’s only a moment’s discomfort. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, you’ll feel very much relieved tonight.”

Antoine said to himself: “I’m getting smarter at this sort of thing every day,” and noted it with satisfaction, as a sign of his professional progress. Moreover, in the macabre game he was playing, there was not only a constant element of difficulty but a spice of risk, which, Antoine had to own, appealed to him.

The sister came back.

M. Thibault submitted to the injection with a certain nervousness; before the needle had even touched his skin, he began to whimper.

“Most painful, this new stuff of yours,” he muttered, when it was over. “Much thicker than the other. Like liquid fire under the skin. And it has a smell—don’t you notice? The other, anyhow, was scentless.”

Antoine had sat down. He made no reply. There was not the faintest difference between this last injection and the one before it; the ampoules came out of the same box, the needle and the hand that used it were identical. Only—it was supposed to have a different label. Yes, he thought, one has only to set the mind off on a wrong track, and all the senses “play up” to the delusion. What feeble instruments, those senses or ours, which we fancy infallible! And what of that childish craving we all have, to humour our intellect at all costs? Even for a sick man the tragedy of tragedies is not to “understand.” Once we have managed to give a name to what is happening and assign to it a plausible cause, once our poor brain contrives to link up two ideas with a show of logic, we’re pleased as Punch. “And yet,” Antoine murmured, “surely intelligence is the one fixed point in the eternal flux. Without it, where’d we be?”

M. Thibault had closed his eyes again.

Antoine signed to Sister Céline to leave the room. They had noticed that the patient was apt to be more fretful when they were together at his bedside.

Though Antoine had been seeing his father daily, he was struck now by the change in his appearance. The skin had an amber translucence, and a peculiar gloss that augured ill. The face was puffier than ever, and flabby pouches had formed under the eyes. The nose, however, had shrunk to a long, lean ridge, which oddly changed the whole expression of the face.

The old man made a movement. Little by little his features were growing animated, losing their moroseness. And between the eyelids, which parted more and more frequently, the dilated pupils had an unwonted brilliance.

“The double injection is taking effect,” Antoine thought. “In a few moments he’ll be getting talkative!”

M. Thibault was experiencing a sort of general relaxation and a desire for repose, all the more agreeable for being unaccompanied by any sense of weariness. Nevertheless, his thoughts still turned on his death; only, now that he no longer believed in it, he found it possible, not to say pleasant, to discourse about it. What with the added stimulus of the morphine, he was unable to resist the temptation of staging, for his own benefit and his son’s, the edifying spectacle of a Christian deathbed.

“Listen to me, Antoine!” he said abruptly, in a solemn tone. Then, without more preamble, he began: “In the will that you find after my death …” He made a slight pause, like an actor waiting for a cue.

Good-humouredly Antoine played his part. “Really, Father,” he exclaimed, “I didn’t know you were in such a hurry to see the last of us!” He laughed. “Why, only a moment ago I was pointing out how eager you were to get back into harness again.”

Satisfied, the old man raised a monitory hand.

“Let me speak, my boy. It is possible that, on the strictly scientific view, my life is not in danger. But within myself I know …I have a feeling that …In any case, death … The good—alas, so little!—that I have tried to do in this world will be set down to my account. And, if the day has come when …” He cast a fleeting glance at Antoine to make sure the incredulous smile was still on his lips. “Well, we must not lose heart. God’s mercy is infinite.”

Antoine listened in silence.

“But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. At the end of my will, you’ll find a list of bequests. Old servants. I’d specially like to draw your attention to that codicil, my boy. It’s several years old now. Perhaps I haven’t been quite … quite generous enough. I’m thinking of M. Chasle. That worthy man owes much to me, I grant you. Indeed he owes everything to me. But that’s no reason why his … his devotion should not be rewarded, even if the reward’s … superfluous.”

His remarks were frequently interrupted by coughing, which obliged him to stop and take breath. “It looks as if the disease is rapidly becoming generalized,” Antoine thought. “That cough is getting worse, so is the nausea. The tumour must be invading other parts of the body. The lungs and stomach are involved. His vitality’s at the mercy of the first complication, that may arise.”

“I have always,” continued M. Thibault, whom the drug was rendering at once more lucid and more incoherent, “I have always been proud of belonging to that prosperous middle class which in all ages has been the mainstay of my country and my Church. But, my boy, that relative affluence imposes certain duties.” Again his thoughts took a new turn. “You, Antoine, have a most regrettable tendency; you’re much too self-centered.” He spoke abrupty, casting an angry look at his son. “But you’ll change when you grow up.” He corrected himself. “When you’re older and, like me, have founded a family. A family,” he repeated. The word “family,” which he always spoke with a certain emphasis, called forth a host of vagrant echoes in his mind, fragments of speeches he had made in former-days. Once more he dropped the thread of his thoughts. His voice grew orotund. “Undoubtedly, my boy, once we grant that the family must be regarded as the germ-cell of the social organism, is not its proper function to build up that … that plebeian aristocracy from which the leaders of the nation will henceforth be recruited? Ah, the Family! I ask you, are we not the pivot on which turn the middle-class democracies of today?”

“Why, of course, Father; I quite agree with you,” Antoine said gently.

The old man seemed not to hear him. Gradually his tone was becoming less pompous, and his real meaning easier to grasp.

“You’ll grow out of it, my boy. I’m positive of that, and so’s the Abbé. You’ll get over certain views of life, and my prayer is that the change of heart may come quite soon. Ah, Antoine, how I wish that change had come already! When I am about to leave this world, isn’t it a bitter thought that my son …? Brought up as you were, living under this roof, should you not have …? Some religious zeal, in short. A faith that’s more robust, more loyal to its duties.”

Antoine was thinking: “If he had the least idea of what my ‘faith’ amounts to!”

“Who knows,” M. Thibault sighed, “if God will not set it down against me? Ah, if only that dear, departed saint, your mother, had not been taken from us so soon, had been spared to help me in that Christian duty!”

Tears were welling up between his eyelids; Antoine watched them brim over and trickle down the old cheeks. He had not expected this, and could not help being stirred by emotion, which increased when he heard his father’s next remark. M. Thibault began speaking in a confidential, almost urgent undertone that Antoine had not heard before; and he now was perfectly coherent.

“I have other accounts to render to my Maker. For Jacques’s death. Poor lad! Did I do all I should have done for the boy? I wanted to be firm; I was hard. Yes, I accuse myself before the judgment seat of having been hard towards my son. I never managed to win his trust. Nor yours, Antoine. No, don’t protest; that’s the truth. It was God’s will to withhold from me my children’s trust. My two sons! They’ve respected me, feared me; but from their youth up, they’ve kept aloof from me. Pride! Mine, and theirs… . And yet, did I not do my whole duty by them? Didn’t I make them over to the Church from their early years? Didn’t I take the utmost care of their education? Ingratitude! O Father in heaven, judge if the fault was mine. Jacques was always up in arms against me. And yet …! How could I possibly give my consent to that … to such a thing? How could I?”

He was silent for a moment, then suddenly exclaimed: “Go away, shameless son!”

Antoine stared at his father in bewilderment. The words were obviously not addressed to him. Was the old man getting delirious? His jaws were set, his forehead clammy with sweat; he was waving his arms as if bereft of reason.

“Go away!” he said again. “Have you forgotten all you owe to your father, to his name and rank? Are they nothing to you—the family honour, your soul’s salvation? There are certain acts which— which take effect beyond ourselves, which imperil all traditions. I’ll— I’ll break you! Go away!” Fits of coughing cut across the phrases. He took a deep breath. His voice sank lower still. “O Lord, I am not assured of Thy forgiveness… . ‘What did you make of your son?’ ”

Antoine broke in. “Father …!”

“Alas, I failed to shield him. Evil influences. The plotting of those Huguenots… .”

Antoine thought: “Ah, the Huguenots again!” No one had ever discovered the origin of the old man’s fixed idea about the “Huguenots.” Antoine’s theory was that shortly after Jacques’s disappearance, while the inquiries were still in progress, thanks to some indiscretion, M. Thibault had discovered that throughout the previous summer Jacques had been seeing a great deal of the Fontanins, at Maisons-Laffitte. From that moment there had been no way of shaking the old Catholic’s obsession; blinded by his aversion for all Protestants, harking back presumably to memories of Jacques’s escapade to Marseille in Daniel’s company, and perhaps confounding the present with the past, he had never ceased to hold the Fontanins wholly responsible for his son’s disappearance.

“Where are you going?” he shouted, trying to raise himself on the pillow.

Then he opened his eyes, and seemed to take heart when, through his tears, he saw Antoine beside him.

“Poor lad!” he murmured brokenly. “Those Huguenots lured him away. Yes, they stole him from us, my boy. It’s all their fault. They drove him to suicide.”

“Oh, come, Father!” Antoine exclaimed. “Why do you persist in imagining that he …?”

“He killed himself. He went away; he went off and killed himself.” Antoine seemed to hear a faint whisper, “My curse”; but the words were meaningless; he concluded he had been mistaken. The rest of the phrase was stifled by weak, heartrending sobs, which gave place to a fit of coughing that died down almost at once.

Antoine had an impression that his father was falling asleep, and was careful not to make a sound.

Some silent minutes passed.

“Antoine!”

Antoine gave a start.

“That boy, Aunt Marie’s son—do you remember Aunt Marie who lived at Quilleboeuf? No, of course you can’t have known her. Well, he—he did the same thing. I was a youngster when it happened. With his shotgun one evening; he’d been out shooting. They never learned …”

In a half-dream, his mind adrift on a flood of memories, M. Thibault was smiling to himself.

“How she used to rile Mamma with her songs—she was always singing! What was that song now? About the ‘pretty pony,’ ‘clinkety-clankety’ something. During the summer vacation, at Quillebceuf. You didn’t know old Niqueux’s rickety wagon, of course. Ha! Ha! Ha! That time the servants’ luggage tumbled off it. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Antoine rose abruptly; his father’s merriment was even more painful than his sobs. During the past few weeks M. Thibault had often shown a tendency, especially after the injections, to hark back to trivial details of bygone days. In the old brain, half emptied now of memories, these details took on an amplitude, like murmurs in a hollow shell. Then for days on end he would con them over and over, laughing to himself like a baby.

Turning cheerfully to Antoine, he began. singing in a soft, almost childish voice:

“I have a pretty pony,

And her name is … something trot,

And I wouldn’t give my pony

For all the—yes—all the gold you’ve got.

So clinkety and clankety . , .”