The Thibaults (87 page)

The very first words came as a shock.

IA Place du Pantheon,

November 25, 1913.

Dear Sir,

I have read your short story …

“A short story! So Jacques is a writer?” he murmured. Then, triumphantly: “He’s alive. This proves it!” The words danced before his eyes. Feverishly he ran his eyes down the page, looking for the signature—”Jalicourt.”

I have read your short story with the keenest interest. Of course you do not expect an elderly “don” like myself …

Jalicourt! Antoine thought. Yes, it’s Valdieu de Jalicourt, the professor, Member of the Academy and so forth. Antoine knew him well, by repute; in fact he had two or three books by Jalicourt on his shelves.

… to give it an unqualified approval; obviously the classical traditions in which my mind is moulded, not to say most of my personal preferences, run counter to the romantic technique you employ. I cannot wholeheartedly commend either the manner or the matter of your tale. But I must own that, even in its extravagances, this work is stamped by the creative impulse and a knowledge of human nature. Reading your story, I was several times reminded of a remark made by a great composer, a friend of mine, to whom a young musician—one, I imagine, of your clan—showed an experimental work of the most provocative audacity: “Take it away at once, sir; I might get to like it!”

Jalicourt.

Antoine was trembling with excitement. He sat down, unable to take his eyes off the letter lying open before him on the desk. Not that it came as any great surprise to learn his brother was alive; he had seen no reason to suppose Jacques had killed himself. The first effect the coming of this letter had had on him was to arouse his hunting instinct; three years earlier he had played the sleuth for months on end, following up each clue that seemed to lead towards the fugitive. And now, with the revival of his detective zeal, came a rush of such affection and so intense a longing to see Jacques again that he felt almost dizzy. Often lately—indeed, that very morning—he had had to fight down a feeling of resentment at being left alone to bear the brunt of his father’s illness; so crushing was the burden that he could not help feeling aggrieved with the runaway brother who was deserting his post at such an hour.

This letter changed everything. Now it looked as if he could get in touch with Jacques, tell him what was happening, bring him back— and no longer stand alone.

He glanced at the address on the letter, then at the clock, then at his engagement-book.

“Right!” he murmured. “I’ve three more appointments this afternoon. Can’t miss that one at half-past four, in the Avenue de Saxe; it’s urgent. Must look up, too, those people in the Rue d’Artois, that scarlet fever case just starting; no time fixed, however. Number three: the child’s getting better; that can wait.” He rose. “Yes, I’ll go to the Avenue de Saxe first, and see Jalicourt immediately after.”

Antoine was in the Place du Pantheon soon after five. It was an old house without an elevator. Anyway, he was feeling too impatient just then to waste time with elevators. He raced up the stairs.

“M. Jalicourt is out. It’s Wednesday. He has his lecture at the Ecole Normale from five to six.”

“Keep cool now!” Antoine admonished himself as he went down the stairs. “There’s just time to see that scarlet fever case.”

At exactly six he alighted briskly from his taxi, outside the Ecole Normale.

He recalled his visit to the principal just after his brother’s disappearance; then, that already distant summer day when he had come to this same grim-looking building with Jacques and Daniel, to learn the results of the entrance examination.

“The lecture isn’t over yet. You’d better go up to the second floor. You’ll see the students coming out.”

An incessant draught whistled through the courtyards, up the staircases, along the corridors. Few and far between, the electric lights had the dull glow of oil-lamps. Flagstones, arcades, and banging doors, an enormous, dark, dilapidated staircase along which, on the dingy walls, tattered notices flapped in the autumn wind—the whole place with its air of general decay, its silence and solemnity, gave the impression of some provincial bishop’s-palace left mouldering for eternity.

Some minutes slowly passed, while Antoine waited outside the lecture-room. Soft footsteps sounded on the flags; a hirsute, down-at-heel student carrying a bottle of wine came down the corridor, giving Antoine a keen glance as he moved by in slippers. Silence again. Then a confused buzz which, when the door of the lecture-room was flung open, rose to the hullabaloo of a parliamentary session. Laughing, shouting to each other, the students came flocking out and rapidly dispersed along the corridors.

Antoine waited. Presumably the professor would be the last to leave. Only when the hive seemed to have disgorged its last inmate, did he enter. The room was large and badly lighted, panelled with wood and flanked with busts. At the far end, he saw a tall, drooping figure; an elderly white-haired man was lethargically arranging sheets of foolscap on a table. Obviously Professor Jalicourt.

Jalicourt had fancied himself alone; on hearing Antoine’s footsteps he looked up with a frown. To see in front of him he had to turn his head to one side; he was blind in one eye and on the other wore a monocle thick as a magnifying glass. When he saw he had a visitor, he moved forward a little and with a courteous gesture signed to Antoine to approach.

Antoine had expected to encounter a venerable don of the old school. This well-set-up man in a light suit, who looked more as if he had just dismounted from a horse than stepped down from a lecture platform, took him by surprise.

He introduced himself. “I’m the son of Oscar Thibault, your colleague at the Institute, and the brother of Jacques Thibault, to whom you wrote yesterday.” As Jalicourt made no sign and continued observing him, affable but aloof, with lifted eyebrows, Antoine went straight to the point. “Can you give me any news, sir, of my brother Jacques? Where is he now?”

Jalicourt made no answer, but his forehead puckered, as if he had taken offence.

“I must explain, sir,” Antoine hastened to add. “I took the liberty of opening your letter. My brother has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yes, he left home three years ago.”

Jalicourt thrust his head forward abruptly and with his keen, shortsighted eye scrutinized the young man at close range. Antoine felt his breath fanning his cheek.

“Yes, three years ago,” he repeated. “He gave no reason for leaving us. Since then he hasn’t communicated with his father or myself. Nor with anyone—except with you, professor. So you’ll understand why I’ve rushed to see you like this. We didn’t even know if he was still alive.”

“Alive he certainly is—as he has just had this story published.”

“When? Where?”

Jalicourt did not reply. His clean-shaven, pointed chin, cleft by a deep furrow, jutted with a certain arrogance between the high peaks of his collar. The slender fingers were toying with the drooping tips of his long, silky, snow-white moustache. When he spoke, his voice was low, evasive.

“After all, I can’t be sure. The story wasn’t signed ‘Thibault’; but with a pen name—which I believed I could identify as his.”

The disappointment was a cruel blow to Antoine. “What was the pen name?” he asked in an unsteady tone.

Jalicourt, his one eye still intent on Antoine, seemed somewhat touched by his anxiety.

“But, M. Thibault,” he said firmly, “I do not think I was mistaken.”

He was obviously on the defensive; not from any exaggerated fear of taking responsibility, but because he had an instinctive aversion to meddling in the private affairs of others, to anything resembling an indiscretion. Realizing that he had to overcome a certain mistrust, Antoine hastened to explain the situation.

“What makes it so urgent is that my father has been suffering from an incurable disease for a year, and his state is getting rapidly worse. The end will come in a few weeks. Jacques and I are the only children. So you understand, don’t you, why I opened your letter? I know Jacques well enough to be sure that if he is alive and I can get at him, and tell him what is happening, he’ll come home.”

Jalicourt pondered for a moment. His face was twitching. Then, with a quick, impulsive gesture he held out his hand.

“That puts a new complexion on it,” he said. “In that case I’ll be only too glad to help you.” He seemed to hesitate, and glanced round the lecture-room. “We can’t talk here. Would you mind coming with me to my place, M. Thibault?”

Quickly, without a word, they made their way across the huge, draughty building. When they came out into the quiet Rue d’Ulm, Jalicourt began speaking, in a friendly tone.

“Yes, I’ll be glad to help. The pen name struck me as pretty obvious: ‘Jack Baulthy.’ Don’t you agree? I recognized the writing, too; your brother had written to me once before. I’ll tell you the little I know. But tell me first, why did he run away like that?”

“Why, indeed? I’ve never been able to find a plausible reason for it. My brother has an impulsive, ill-balanced nature; there’s something of the mystic in him. All his acts are more or less erratic. Sometimes one fancies one has got to know him; then the next day he’s quite different from what he was the day before. I may as well tell you, M. de Jalicourt, that Jacques ran away from home once before, when he was fourteen. He induced a school-friend to go with him; they were found three days later on the Toulon road. To the medical profession—I’m a doctor, by the way—this type of escapade has long been familiar; it has a morbid origin and its characteristics have been diagnosed. It’s just possible that Jacques’s first escapade was of a pathological order. But how can we account for an absence lasting three years? We’ve not found anything in his life that could justify such an act. He seemed happy, he had had a quiet summer vacation with his family. He had done brilliantly in the exam for the Ecole Normale, and was due to enter it at the beginning of November. The act can’t have been premeditated; he took hardly any of his things with him, little or no money, only some manuscripts. He hadn’t let any of his friends know of his project. But he sent a letter to the principal, resigning from the Ecole; I’ve seen the letter, it bears the date on which he left us. Just then I happened to be away from home for a couple of days; Jacques left during my absence.”

“But—hadn’t your brother some reluctance about entering the Ecole?” Jalicourt suggested.

“Do you think so?”

Jalicourt did not continue, and Antoine put no further question.

Never could he recall that dramatic period of his life, without emotion. The absence of which he had just spoken was the occasion of his journey to Le Havre … Rachel, the
Romania
, that last farewell. And no sooner had he come back to Paris, still in the throes of his emotion, than he had found the household in turmoil: his brother vanished on the previous day, and the police called in by his father, who, it seemed, had lost his head completely, and was obstinately repeating: “He’s gone and killed himself!” without deigning to give the least explanation. The domestic catastrophe had come on top of the raw wound left by the tragic ending of his love, and, now he came to think of it, he felt the shock had been a salutary one. That fixed idea of tracking down the runaway had taken his mind off his personal obsession. What little time was left over from his duties at the hospital had been spent in hurried visits to the police-stations, to the Morgue, and to detective-agencies. He had borne the brunt of everything: his father’s morbid, blundering agitation, and the anxieties caused by Gise’s breakdown, which for a time had endangered her life; letters that must be answered, the importunities of callers, the endless investigations carried on by private detectives abroad as well as in France, constantly raising hopes that came to nothing. When all was said and done, the strenuous life imposed on him at that time had saved him from himself. And when, after some months of vain endeavour, he had been forced little by little to give up his inquiries, he found he was inured to living without Rachel.

They were walking fast, but this did not check Jalicourt’s flow of conversation; his sense of the amenities precluded silence. He chatted of one thing and another with easy-going affability. But the more affable he seemed, the more he gave an impression that his thoughts were elsewhere.

They came to the Place du Pantheon. Jalicourt took the four flights of stairs without slackening pace. On his landing, the elderly gentleman drew himself erect, removed his hat, and, standing aside, threw open the door of his flat, with the gesture of one ushering a visitor into the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

The foyer was redolent of all the vegetables known to the French cuisine. Without lingering in it, Jalicourt ceremoniously showed his guest into a drawing-room that opened into his study. The little flat was crowded up with richly inlaid furniture, chairs upholstered in tapestry, ancient portraits, and knick-knacks of all sorts. The study was dark, and gave the impression of being a very small, low-ceiled room, the reason being that the back wall was entirely covered by a gaudy tapestry depicting the Queen of Sheba paying an official visit to King Solomon, and out of all proportion with the height of the room. It had been necessary to fold back the top and bottom edges, with the result that the figures, which were larger than life-size, touched the cornice with their diadems and had their legs cut short.

M. de Jalicourt motioned Antoine to a seat, then he himself sat on the flattened, faded cushions piled on a grandfather’s chair that stood in front of the mahogany desk, littered with books and papers, at which he worked. Against the background of olive-green velvet, between the projecting wings of the old chair, his gaunt features, the large aquiline nose, slanting forehead, and the white curls that looked like a powdered wig, gave him the air of an old eighteenth-century dandy.

“Let’s see now,” he began, fiddling with the signet-ring that kept slipping down his thin finger, “I must set my memories in order. The first relations I had with your brother were by letter. At that time—it must be four or five years ago—your brother was, I believe, studying for his entrance examination. If my memory serves me right, he wrote to me about a certain book I brought out in that bygone era.”