by A. J. Cronin
“It is pleasing to your father to learn of the degree of intimacy which has been achieved between his son and this rabble.” The voice tightened. “Go on, sir. What else took place?”
The child’s breast, racked by sobs, took a great heave.
“We played estallido, father … a game of cards.…”
“Who played?”
“All of us.”
“Whom do you mean by all of us?”
“José and Pedro … and me … with Paquita, Juana, Luisa, Elena, and Bianca. Oh, I’m sorry, Father. I forgot. Maria didn’t play. She was putting fresh linen on the bed.”
The erect figure in the chair grew suddenly more rigid.
“On whose bed?”
“José’s and mine.”
The Consul’s brain reeled. In his emotion he leaned forward slightly as though proffering himself for a blow.
“You and he …” He whispered huskily, then could say no more.
A silence followed, so absolute and sterile it froze even the child’s rasping sobs. Involuntarily, Nicholas began to tremble. His appalled and tear-drenched vision seemed suddenly to magnify the apparition of his father, seated there with stricken brow and cheeks the colour of tallow.
“What … oh, what have I done, Father?”
The Consul rose, plucking at the stiff, immaculate collar which encased his throat, took a few paces, almost lost his balance. Then, holding on to the mantelpiece, his head averted, he spoke in a strangled voice:
“Leave me.… Go upstairs to your room for the present. I shall see you later.”
Another silence, more hollow, more sterile than the first. For many moments after his son had crept out of the room Brande remained bowed, in wild, chaotic thought, by the empty fireplace. At last a deep breath of decision whistled through his dry lips. Yes … that was the best, the only course. No matter how great a man’s capabilities might be, there were certain situations in which he must perforce seek expert help.
Heavily, as though holding himself together, the Consul crossed the hall into the salon, seated himself at the escritoire in the embrasure, took up his pen and wrote.
To Professor Eugene Halevy, 219h Rue des Capucines, Paris, France. Leave everything and come here immediately. The matter is vital and urgent.
Harrington Brande.
He rang the bell, and when Garcia appeared handed him the note.
“Take the car into town and send this telegram at once.”
“Yes, señor.”
Brande remained seated in the embrasure. The speedy purr of the automobile steadied him somewhat. Then his gaze, lifting unguardedly, passed through the window panes into the garden, and the flame sprang out in his heart again, nearly suffocating him.
The gardener stood on the edge of the bright lawn, naked to the waist, young thighs planted well apart, his golden-skinned torso gleaming in the sunlight, swinging the scythe with easy strokes. Fascinated, scarcely breathing, Brande watched the splendid rhythm, every sweep cutting into his flesh. In a sweat of hatred, his fingers twitched and clenched upon the pen, snapping it off short. But he did not notice. Lost in a whirling lust, he still watched, with dilated pupils and throbbing eardrums, that clean, glittering blade, sweeping and sweeping in a perfect arc, sweeping like a scimitar, against the faraway blue mountains.
Chapter Fourteen
Within four hours a telegram from Paris was delivered at the Casa Breza:
Arriving tomorrow Thursday 5.30 p.m. Till then advise complete calm. Devotedly Halevy.
The Professor was as good as his word. Next day, when the afternoon train jolted into San Jorge Station, a little man, precise and almost priestly, of a pale complexion, with small but penetrating eyes set deep in a narrow head, and a trimmed wisp of imperial on his small chin, clad in a black travelling cape and crushed dark hat, descended nimbly from the coach and clasped Harrington Brande’s stiff fingers between both his small, soft hands.
“My poor friend!” Absorbing, with one adroit glance, the Consul’s dark and fretful gloom, his manner seemed to say: I am here now, I forbid all further worry.
The weather had turned cold, and as they entered the car and glided off a fine rain was falling, veiling the lines of the harbour, obscuring a grey and motionless sea.
“I had your letter.” Halevy made the remark, gazing straight ahead. “ But now … your situation has deteriorated?”
“It is infinitely worse,” Brande broke out in a low and concentrated tone. He was about to proceed when Halevy, with an authoritative pressure on his knee, primly restrained him.
“Not now, my friend. We have plenty of time. Relax. I am at your disposal for as long as may be necessary.”
They reached the villa in this enforced silence and swept beneath the dripping mimosas, whose slender branches hung low, pendant with crystal drops. The cliffs were swathed in ghostly vapours, the mountains blanketed with cloud. The air, alive with whispers, held the sound of unseen rivulets, trickling and seeping into the dank yet insatiable earth, and from far off, through the sea fog, the melancholy wail of a fisherman’s conch rose and fell, again, again, falling and fading, like a spent star, into the outer desolation.
But within the house much preparation had been made, fires blazed in the dining-room, the salon, and in the large guest bedroom, filling the air with warmth and the incense of fragrant cedarwood. In the kitchen Magdalena moved massively, and Garcia, with his swift, gliding step, was up and down the stairs a dozen times.
Dinner for two, served at eight o’clock, was near enough perfection to cause the Professor—who, despite his clerical air, clearly had no aversion to the good things of the table—to compliment the Consul upon his cook, and to chide him for failing to do justice to her art. At intervals, as he ate his crawfish espagnol, under the shaded candles, he directed towards his host that glance of hooded inquiry, fully cognizant of the intensity of Brande’s suffering, yet resolved to hurry nothing, to carry out, unruffled, his technique of delayed observation, to remain, as always, master of the situation.
Eugene Halevy, son of a Brest ship’s chandler, had come to Paris, a raw and undergrown lad, some twenty years before, to study medicine and, after several failures in the preliminary examinations, he took an ordinary diploma. About that time the fame, of Charcot had reached its height, and amongst the crowd attracted by that brightness was young Dr. Halevy. He attended the great man’s lectures, haunted his wards in the Salpetrière and, being chosen—at random—to assist once or twice during the celebrated mass-hysteria demonstrations, decided he must specialise in psychiatry.
Beyond a certain provincial sharpness, which gave him an aptitude for picking up the phrases and mannerisms of his chief, Halevy had no qualifications for this type of work. But, aided by a modest inheritance from his father, he went to Vienna, studied under Jung, took a course at Heidelberg, spent eighteen months in the great mental asylum of Mecklenburg. When he returned to Paris he was admitted, on the strength of this experience, to the staff of the Institute Nervosthenique, a small clinic, situated in Passy. Also he began to deliver lectures of a semi-popular nature at the Academy of Mental Hygiene. Gradually he acquired a limited clientele, including the usual following of female neurotics, of borderline cases, and malades imaginaires. His manner, as might be expected, had improved, his eyes were keener, his hands more adroit, he affected a frock-coat and high black stock which gave him, a confirmed bachelor, the look of a clerical savant. Master of hocus-pocus, he flourished, day by day, on the anxieties and pitiful avowals fed into his ears. He learned to be cruel, to extort secrets with a single word, to utter paradoxes and predictions with a kind of sinister seriousness, strangely at odds with his meagre figure.
One summer, during a brief vacation at Knocke, his visit had come to the notice of Harrington Brande, who at that time was officially stationed in this Belgian resort. The Consul, afflicted by his periodic melancholia, had, on an impulse—the most fortunate of his life, he afterwards declared—taken the fateful
decision to consult the Parisian psychiatrist. Immediately an affinity was manifest between these two mediocrities, so different in temperament, so similar in type. Many times thereafter Brande sought out his new physician, who alone seemed to bring him benefit. From the long séances in the Rue des Capucines a tenacious friendship grew between the dignified, frustrated official and the little false priest who heard, scientifically, his closest secrets, and was, thereafter, in growing ascendancy, his master.
When dinner was over the two men went into the salon, seated themselves on either side of the marble hearth. The gaslight in the lustre chandelier was low, the long, decorous room made ruddy by leaping tongues of firelight flickering like troops of phantoms across the spurious tapestries, the ridiculous consoles, the serpentine tables of spindly gilt. Halevy, aware that the point had been reached beyond which his friend could not be restrained, made with his head a motion of assent, significant, almost magisterial. Sunk deep in the chair, he inclined his brow against his thin hand, half covering his eyes and, his head averted like an abbé within his confessional, set himself to listen.
Immediately, the Consul’s tight lips parted and his testimony broke forth, unsparing from the beginning, full and pitiless. Without appearing to watch him, the Professor, from between his parted fingers, missed nothing of the other’s emotion, and although his face revealed merely a professional blankness, his stealthy, deep-set eyes had the stabbing sharpness of a lancet. Yet when, in conclusion, Brande fumbled in the pocket of his frogged velvet smoking jacket and handed him the scribbled sheet of paper, the gleam in his gaze was masked immediately. While in a frenzy of unrest the Consul sat wiping his damp forehead, Halevy deliberately mounted his gold-rimmed pince-nez and methodically read the document twice. Then, his lips pursed, exposing his anaemic gums, he began to nod his head.
“My good friend,” he said at last, in a grave tone, “I will not deny that I view this unfortunate affair in a serious light. Were I less attached to you, I might pretend to gloss it over. Had I a slighter regard for your intelligence, I should perhaps withhold from you certain of the darker implications involved. But you are my friend, a man of the highest faculties and, although a father, a sophisticated citizen of the world. You know that filth exists even in the most unsuspected places. That the sweetest flowers are nourished by the dunghill, that the fairest forest pool, on which pure lilies grow, conceals beneath the surface a bed of muddy ordure.”
The Consul started, but before he could interrupt Halevy mercilessly went on:
“Innocence, my friend … what is it? We psychiatrists can afford to smile at that preposterous word … the sentimental trade-mark of an obsolete faith. Do we not every day uncover fresh running sores, new evidence of human vileness? Are we not all the servants of our bodies, victims of the terrors and disgusts of our desires? Why, even the first involuntary acts of infants, their clinging and clasping, the sensual ferocity with which they seize the maternal breast …” He broke off with a dispassionate shrug. “As for the period which your son is now approaching, ah, there, indeed, we are faced with darker forces, with strange obsessions and hidden longings.… It is indeed unfortunate that, under these circumstances, this imprudent association with an older youth, a Spaniard too, should have arisen.”
The Consul groaned, his hands so tightly clenched that the nails cut into his palms.
“You do not believe that Nicholas has suffered serious harm?”
“I do indeed fear that damage has been done,” Halevy answered impartially. “How much or how little it is my place to discover.”
“To discover?”
“Certainly. Much as I deplore it, I shall be obliged to submit your son to an analysis.”
Brande started back, in sudden misgiving, filled by a perturbation of his whole being.
“But, surely …” he protested, in a faltering tone. “ The child is so young, so upset at this moment, his sensibilities so delicate.…”
Halevy fixed the Consul with a cold glance.
“Do you doubt my professional skill?”
“No, no … dear friend … only … but if you think it necessary.”
“Imperative.” The Professor flung out the word conclusively, with an acid, injured air. “ How other than by probing the subconscious can we discover what took place during these dangerous nocturnal hours?”
“Stop … Halevy.” The Consul clutched his brow, as though the top of his head were coming off.
“Come, come, my friend,” said Halevy with a kind of patronising brutality. “We ourselves are no longer children.”
“No,” the other stammered, overwhelmed, lowering his eyes. “Nevertheless … you know the state of my own health … what I have already suffered through my disastrous marriage … the strains and stresses of my official position … the prolonged creative effort of my literary work … and above all this, the overpowering love which I bear towards my son.…”
“I assure you I shall be as compassionate as I can,” Halevy interjected stiffly. “ I am not without experience.”
“I trust you implicitly, dear friend,” Brande stuttered, driven by his anguish to a kind of frenzy. “It is the brazen, shameless audacity of this fellow which maddens me.”
“You have not dismissed him?” Halevy inquired, quickly.
Blindly, the Consul shook his head.
“Good,” said the Professor approvingly, from between pursed lips. “We shall certainly subject him to a fairly strenuous examination. It may also be necessary for me to interrogate your indoor servants. You have no objection?”
“None. They are an excellent couple. It is this other … this José.”
As he, again, pronounced that name, the rage and hatred in his heart overcame him. Leaning forward, with bursting eyeballs, he brought his fist down on the frail arm of the chair with homicidal fury, and cried:
“He must be punished.”
The Professor inclined his head, again sent out his stealthy glance, which searched like a tentacle, and then withdrew. He paused for a moment, pressing his finger-tips together. Then a strange smile began to play in the folds of his yellow cheeks—the tired smile of one who knows the abject secrets of mankind and is the privileged witness of their disguises, the keeper of their souls.
“Without a doubt, my friend … you did well to send for me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Next morning the rain had ceased, the skies once again were halcyon, and the earth, refreshed, basked in the radiance of a brilliant sun. To Nicholas, gazing wistfully into the garden from his bedroom window—which, greatly daring, he had opened a little way—the balmy air, sweet with fragile perfumes distilled by the alchemy of dawn, seemed to hold the promise of better things. Perhaps to-day he might be released from this cheerless confinement to his room. Now that Professor Halevy had come upon a visit—he had listened last night, with subdued interest, to the sounds of the guest’s arrival—surely his father’s mood would soften. The Consul was always at his best in the society of his Paris doctor.
Meanwhile, Nicholas had made an indifferent breakfast from his usual tray and, dressed in shirt and trousers, was watching intently for the signal that José would make from behind the tool-shed, the swift, outward wave of the arm, directed towards the upper window which, during these two days of enforced separation, had been the sole means of communication between them. Yet only to see that vigorous, reassuring gesture, so charged with meaning and affection, was enough to bring a healing comfort to the little boy’s heart. He knew then that José had not forgotten him. That was enough. Whatever happened to him, more attacks of illness, the dreadful fulfilment of Garcia’s threats, even the visitation of his father’s anger—nothing mattered if José remained his loyal, his loving friend.
It was now almost ten o’clock. José, raking the rain-channelled drive, had begun to move slowly in the direction of the shed where he would be screened from the lower windows of the house. Nicholas’s pulse was already quickening in anticipation when
he heard footsteps in the passage outside, and almost at once the door opened to admit his father and Professor Halevy. He spun round, defensively, his startled blush making him look guilty.
“Good morning, my child.” Halevy nodded amiably.
“Good morning, sir,” Nicholas answered. “Good morning, Father.”
A pause followed which the boy, glancing sharply from one to the other, felt as oddly ominous.
The Consul cleared his throat, spoke in a constrained voice.
“Nicholas, since we are so fortunate as to have Professor Halevy with us, I have asked him to look you over and to reassure me on the state of your health.” He glanced at Halevy. “ You do not wish me to remain, I imagine.”
“We shall manage excellently ourselves, my dear fellow,” responded the Professor briskly, and as Brande, sombrely inclining his head, passed from the room, he turned to Nicholas with that same sly air of collusion. “ There are some things we don’t want even Father to know. Eh, my boy? Now, if you will just stretch out on your bed, we shall get along without the slightest trouble.”
Nicholas stared back at the Professor with surprised perplexity. Accustomed though he was to the medical ritual periodically performed upon his frail body—Halevy had in fact ‘looked him over’ on several previous occasions—the boy sensed nevertheless in this particular approach, in the strange archness of the physician’s manner, a new and more disturbing method. And when he had obediently lain down it was at once apparent to him that the Professor’s examination, his manipulation of the stethoscope, all his tappings and soundings, accompanied by reassuring murmurs and little precise movements of his hands, were no more than cursory, a performance cleverly designed to allay suspicion. And indeed, this misgiving was confirmed when a few minutes later Halevy rose and closed both the shutters, exclaiming:
“That sunlight is most trying to the eyes. There! Isn’t that much more comfortable?”
