The Necessary Evil

by André Couvreur

  Was she truly crazy, to have such dark thoughts? Had he not sworn her an eternal love? She did not have the right to ask him to betray such an oath, to take back his promise.

  “Separate myself from you, Madeleine for such reasons! From you, who are everything of which I dream of the superior, everything for which I am ambitious, everything that I desire! But I feel that my love is made, precisely, of a need and a devotion. If you are ill, I shall bless you again for having to sustain you, to protect your weakness, to surround you with delicacies and cares. But you will be valiant after this ordeal, my beloved. Believe me, believe me!”

  The fiancé’s tears had dried up. Now he was playing with Madeleine’s white hands, interlacing the fingers. She looked at him proudly, forgetting her chagrin, entirely given over to her adoration for the handsome youth with the beautiful soul. And in spite of, or perhaps because of, her condition, gripped by an obscure sensuality, she thought about the joy that she would have in feeling the young man’s vigorous torso against her breast. As ignorant as it is possible to be of physical love, it nevertheless seemed to her that something intoxicating must emerge from the approach of heir two bodies.

  But again, that thought plunged her back into her obsession.

  “But what about the scar?” she said.

  “The scar! I shall cover it with so many kisses that all trace of it will be effaced! Reassure yourself, my beloved. We’re magnifying things at present, we’re seeing things too darkly. I’ve talked very seriously to the doctor about this operation; he’s assured me that you’ll be cured, and that your health won’t suffer thereafter. Of all this, he tells me, nothing will remain in a year’s time but a little white line a few centimeters long. He’s made me understand the nature of the operation very well. And then, what does it matter, my dear, what does it matter, since I love you…since I love you, my adored Madeleine, enough to die of it?”

  The young woman squeezed Georges’ hand more forcefully. But a veil still darkened her tenderness. Her eyes strayed toward infinite dreams. One question, of which she dared not let go, reddened her lips.

  Georges divined her alarm.

  “There’s still something else?” he asked.

  “Yes…what about children?” she replied, in a low voice, hesitant with all the dread of seeing her dearest aspirations cut short by a single word.

  “Children, my dear love! Nothing opposes our having them. The doctor has assured me of it: pink blonde cherubs, darling tyrants that I shall adore, for they will reflect your beauty, your grace and your candor. We’ll have a great many, and they’ll be as many sacred forces binding me even more to you, to your ecstatic eyes, to your holy lips!”

  The young man’s voice had become tender and soft again, melting into an incantation of love that lulled his fiancée, outside of all materiality, offering to her dreams, to her joys, to her hopes, and even to her dolors, a blessed repository.

  Rapidly, under the melody of the passionate words that he was now saying at the hazard of his heart, as rapidly as thoughts come to the lips of a lucid individual on the point of death, she remembered the delicious moments in which she had made the young man’s acquaintance. The slightest scenes of their love story, the slightest tender and delicate words, and innocent details—an entire flood of dormant memories came to assail her consciousness, passing once again before her eyes.

  She remembered the décor of that autumnal evening at Madame Bise’s house, with the flight of tall trees charged with gold in the woods, and the blossoming of the horizon in the infinity, when Georges had taken a first kiss, and the profound emotion of the thrill that had invaded her.

  How short that story was, alas—and was it now to be interrupted before the end? It seemed to her that a voice was crying out to her: “No, you shall go no further!” And that voice had the strange sonority of Caresco’s voice.

  Why was that man persecuting her at this moment? What fatal bond of unknown fibers incessantly brought his evil personality between the two lovers?

  An anxiety darkened Madeleine’s face, and George understood that she was drawing away from their dream, that she was returning to the menace of the day after tomorrow.

  At the very least, he wanted to calm the anxieties of his beloved and put her dread to sleep. And while soothing her with his language, while she leaned upon his arm in the silky aureole of her hair, she was dreaming, pensively, of the approaching hour that threatened their happiness, it was the fiancé wronged by the worst of crimes who sang the praises of the surgeon...

  CHAPTER XVII

  Dr. Cartaux, who had been Bordier’s master at the Hôpital Lariboisière, was in his bedroom, which he had not left for nearly a month. He was sitting in an armchair, his legs extended, covered by a plaid. On a table beside him, within arm’s reach, were a cup of milk and a bottle of Vichy water; on the mantelpiece facing him, surmounting the crackle of logs in the hearth, was a display of labeled bottles and potions.

  Falling from the window, daylight blanched by large snowflakes was illuminating the morning disorder of the room in a melancholy fashion, and the bed in which the savant had passed an atrocious night of pain and poignant thoughts. His features were drawn, his jaundiced face careworn, thinned and disillusioned by the slow conclusion of existence, but that did not prevent his dark eyes from remaining active and brilliant, as if all the life had fled the rest of his body to take refuge therein.

  The clock chimed ten, and the sequence of climes made him shiver.

  “It’s time,” he said, aloud. “Time for the cup of milk. Why? Why want to continue living? What folly, to cling on to a wretched existence, when one is doomed, when the few months that it might still last offer me nothing but the frightful spectacle of my decay. What folly!”

  From the pocket of his dressing-gown he took a bottle of dark glass, bearing a red label with the words EXTERNAL USAGE ONLY printed on it in capital letters. It was a pharmaceutical euphemism meaning “poison.” For three days he had been haunted by the idea of a rapid, abrupt death by means of a few drops of that liquid, a blessed death that would cut short his suffering, the bitterness of the futile struggle that his colleagues had undertaken against the irremediable illness.

  He looked at the bottle without horror, handling it without a tremor in his fingers, and then put it back in his pocket, tranquilly, reassured in a way by knowing that he had it about his person, as a supreme remedy, a final drug that he would find ready for absorption at the moment when, completely resolved to end it, he took the ultimate decision.

  Then he reached out with his trembling hand for the cup of milk, and drank it, disgustedly.

  At that moment the valet came in and handed him a card.

  “This Monsieur insists on being admitted to see Monsieur,” the domestic said.

  “Monsieur Bordier!” exclaimed Dr. Cartaux. “Send him in right away.”

  The young man came into his master’s room with astonishment, surprised to find such a transformation in the valiant worker that he had seen in the breach, making his round of the hospital beds, only a month before.

  “My dear Master! You’re still suffering, then? Oh, it pains me to see you like this. But it won’t be for long, will it—not much longer?”

  “Indeed, my friend, ii won’t be for much longer.” He paused momentarily, let out a sigh, and then added, somberly: “I’m done for.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Cancer of the stomach, my boy. My friends, my physicians, are trying to delude me, employing with me the little lies that I employed with my own patients, the innocent little tricks…but I can see clearly. Anyway, look!”

  He uncovered one of legs, extended on a chair, and offered it to his student’s gaze, swollen, pale, taut and painful.

  “Phlegamasia alba dolens,”19 he said, sententiously, as if he were teaching a class using an example. “Phlebitis! That confirms my opinion. I’m dying of the same malady as my master, the great Trousseau,20 and I’ve made my diagnosis in th
e same fashion as him. My poor friend! You’re more frightened than I am. Oh, life is very little, you know. If I weren’t suffering as much...” He took the young man’s hand and squeezed it paternally. “My boy, your visit is doing me good. Why haven’t you come before?”

  “I was away, Monsieur, traveling—and I didn’t know; otherwise...” He abandoned the sentence, desolate now because of the motive that had brought him to see the old man, but burning nevertheless to tell him about it. He went on: “No, I didn’t know that you were suffering to this extent, and I assure you that it isn’t the reason that brought me to see you.”

  “Do you have something to say to me, Bordier?”

  “Yes, Master, to ask for your advice—important advice. I’ve always appreciated your ability and your knowledge, but those qualities are commonplace, whereas one can’t find everywhere the generosity, the justice and the loyalty that have brought me to you. Oh, what I have to tell you is so painful; it’s a confidence within the jurisdiction of professional secrecy, and I’m so frightened by the consequences of what I’ve discovered that I believe that you alone are capable of giving me direction, of telling me what to do.”

  The passed his hand over his forehead as if to gather up the ideas that were upsetting him; then, at a sign from the old man, he continued: “This is it. A young woman, one of your clients, the fiancée of one of my friends, a young man who is also one of yours, has become pregnant due to the act of a stranger. Everything leads me to believe that he abused her during a crisis of hysteria, and that she is not guilty of a treason toward her fiancé, The young woman, counseled by those around her, goes to consult a surgeon, who, for a reason I dare not define, diagnoses a uterine fibroma and advises the family to permit an operation that he is about to carry out. What should I do?”

  He stopped, with other words swelling his throat—word of indignation and revolt that were about to overflow in a tumultuous flood. But the old man suspended his story with a gesture, and slowly, firmly, in a voice that became firmer still as it progressed, said: “This young woman is Mademoiselle de Jancy; the young man is George Ponviane; and the surgeon is…Caresco…isn’t it?”

  “What!” Bordier exclaimed. “You know?”

  “No,” replied Dr. Cartaux, shaking his head, “I don’t know—but I deduce. I can deduce it for several reasons: firstly, because they’re the only engaged couple among my friends, and secondly because, now that you mention it, I remember having been asked to go to see Mademoiselle de Jancy with regard to some symptoms of illness that surprised me. As for the surgeon, I’d like to believe that only Caresco is capable of such an abomination. Oh my dear boy, my friend, my pupil! Why have you followed that wretched surgeon, why didn’t you come, before going on your journey, to ask my advice?”

  “That’s true, Master, that’s true! I should have spoken to you. Forgive me; advise me—for I’m so demoralized before the gravity of the resolution to be made. What should I do? Is it necessary to betray the confidence of my friend, or to tell him everything, at the cost of breaking is heart? I beg you, Master, enlighten me—help me! Let me rediscover in your words the good faith of old. Master, what must I do?”

  He spoke in a hasty and low tone, of an individual overwhelmed by the rapidity and enormity of events, with mirages of surprise and flushes of impetuous anger in his wide naïve eyes behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. But Dr. Cartaux remained taciturn for a moment, perhaps waiting for a stabbing pain raking the hollow of his stomach to end.

  “Let’s see, Bordier,” he said, finally. “Let’s clarify the matter. The individuals are those I cited just now?”

  “Alas yes.”

  “How did you discover this secret?—for you’ve been traveling, you tell me.”

  “Six days ago, on the eve of my departure for Bordeaux, where that wretch Caresco had sent me to care for a client, in order to get rid of me, I was asked by my friend Ponviane to go see his fiancée, who was suffering. She was in bed; I examined her and acquired the certainty of her pregnancy. I got back from Bordeaux this morning, the client having died. My first concern was to run to the Avenue Hoche, to the sanitarium, and what do I hear? That Mademoiselle de Jancy’s fibroma is to be removed tomorrow—her fibroma!”

  “Why do you assume that Ponviane is not the author of the pregnancy?”

  “Why? Because I’m sure of it.”

  “Have you questioned him?”

  “No—that would have been to reveal everything. But I sounded out the young woman, in a roundabout fashion. And Georges is honesty personified. Do you believe that, seeing his fiancée in that condition, he would not have thought of the consequence if he had committed the act? Then, there are other reasons still, reasons that I dare not tell you, so much would they seem to you to emerge from an infamous machination, which make me presume, which affirm to me, that Caresco has a superior interest in the disappearance of this crime!”

  “So you think that Caresco is the father?” demanded the old man coldly, as if researching the symptoms of a malady.

  But at that question, which shook his fearful soul, Bordier stood up, his arms in the air, extraordinarily distressed to see the thoughts that he was hiding in the remotest corner of his heart discovered.

  “Oh, no, Master,” he said. “Don’t ask me that! I don’t know anything; I can’t tell you anything; I have nothing but suppositions. For pity’s sake, don’t ask me that.”

  The distressed appearance of his pupil, and his fearful response, cemented Dr. Cartaux’s convictions. However, he pretended to abandon that trail, to resume the conversation as a disinterested, impartial judge in search of the best solution.

  “But my dear friend,” he said, “are you sure of your diagnosis? Might you not be mistaken? Or might Caresco’s science have been deceived? One could cite other errors just as gross. For my part, I’ve made several...”

  “Yes,” Bordier replied, “sometimes diagnosis is difficult, but that’s not the case here. I affirm on my honor that Caresco should not have had a moment’s hesitation…unless he’s gone mad.”

  “Which is quite possible,” the old man continued. “At any rate, in the present case, Caresco’s personality and motive are indifferent to us. All the interest of the conversation pivots around the conduct you ought to adopt in regard to your friend. Well, my boy, my opinion is that you ought to say nothing, that you don’t have the right to say anything.”

  “What!” cried Bordier, with an exasperation that could no longer be held back by the respect due to his master. “I don’t have the right to say anything! A crime is about to be committed; something frightful is about to happen, on which a woman’s life might depend—a woman I esteem, that I ought to love, because she is going to be the wife of my best friend—and I don’t have the right to go to that man, my brother, to reveal the trap, to show him the abyss and turn him away from it? Why? What power closes my mouth? What authority shackles my arm?”

  “Professional secrecy, Bordier,” said the old man, firmly. “Professional secrecy. You discovered this secret in the exercise of your functions, and even if you had discovered it outside them, you wouldn’t have the right to reveal anything. The rules are formal and absolute; they are laws, and you would be committing a crime against conscience by breaking them.”

  “Master, Master! Is it you who are speaking thus? You, who have so often given me the example of the purest and sanest justice and verity? But does not my conscience, if I listen to it, order me to violate those absurd rules, to place well above them the tribute that I owe to friendship, to my brother’s confidence, and, in any case, to prevent a crime when I have the possibility of so doing? Professional secrecy!—an absurd amalgam of prejudices and customs, which is at odds with natural sentiments and which I have the right to scorn, to trample underfoot when it’s a matter of unmasking a villain, paralyzing a murderer!”

  “No, no, Bordier,” the old man repeated, more violently, “you don’t have the right. The day when you received the diploma of a d
octor from your masters, you pronounced an oath that you cannot break. Go reread our great legist authors, Tardieu, Brouardel and the rest. Even if such an adventure happened to your own mother, to whomever touches you most profoundly, you would have an absolute duty to remain silent. Oh, my boy, my friend, I realize that the constraint offends your generous and proud sentiments, that there is a revolt in your heart that might lead you to a culpable action. Believe me, though, believe me, since you have submitted yourself to my good sense.”

  Bordier was overwhelmed, with a need for reaction that might have brought him to tears. Thus, his character, having emerged momentarily from its ordinary placid timidity, willingly took refuge in sadness. It was with a real joy that he heard Dr. Cartaux continue as follows:

  “But if the law is formal and absolute, my friend, there are means of getting around it without lowering one’s conscience to an infamy. In the present case, this is what you could do: go find Monsieur Ponviane, and in the name of the amity that unites you, ask him—beg him—to submit his fiancée to the examination of another physician. Perhaps he’d listen to you.”

  “He’d listen to me,” Bordier replied. “I’m sure of it—but would the entourage, particularly that old fool Madame Bise, consent? And the operation is so imminent! Oh, I’m afraid of not succeeding, Master, of acting in vain and only awakening suspicions by taking that step. I’m desperate—desperate!”

  And he looked at his interlocutor with a veritable fear in his eyes, in his gestures, in his attitude, already feeing defeated by the difficult of the task.

  The old man got up dolorously from his armchair, uttered an exclamation of suffering as he moved his heavy and swollen leg, and then, after a moment of reflection, continued: