The cremaillère had arrived ahead of time. As Paul hurried up the hill the first passengers were leaving the station. The enormous, bearded figure of Manniez (who haunted the station on the days when he was expecting a consignment of merchandise from his own country) came out of the main entrance. At his side, and arm in arm with him, was Michèle. She detached herself from Manniez, ran down the hill, and threw herself with such force into Paul’s arms that he nearly lost his balance.
“Tell please the truth,” said Manniez, panting after her. He turned to Paul and beamed, his open mouth a suggestive clearing in the puberulent undergrowth. “Cheli and me are arrived from Paris. Do not believe when she say she have been in Belgique.”
“Oh, you’re back, you’re really back,” said Paul. He felt as if he had stepped from winter into the sun.
“Is true,” persisted Manniez, leaping between them and taking the arm of each as they started off down the hill. “We went together anywhere, me carrying my elegant smoking with silk facings, Cheli carrying a grass skirt, the most existentialist couple in the most scandalous boîtes de nuit!”
“Oh, mes valises!” Michèle’s hand went to her mouth. She turned pleadingly to Manniez. “Sois gentil. Reviens à la gare et demande au concierge de les faire descendre.”
“Ah! my little maîtresse. She depend on me for everything.”
“Et dépêche-toi!”
Manniez turned to go, then stopped. “Listen, Davenant, you want to buy one electric raseur? Half the price and twice the accomplishment of any raseur in the monde. For you I make yet cheaper—one quarter the price!”
“And four times the accomplishment?”
“Oh! C’est toi qui est raseur,” said Michèle to Manniez, stamping her foot. “Allez, cours …”
“My little maîtresse have but to command …” Manniez brushed Michèle’s hand with the tip of his beard and hurried back to the station.
On the way back to the châlet Paul urgently declared his feelings to Michèle. “I can never again be separated from you, my life just stops, or rather, what is worse, goes on …” Her smile both mocked and encouraged him. “It’s true,” he protested, taking her hand. She smiled again. “I will show you how true it is,” he said very seriously.
“Oh, mademoiselle, grâce à Dieu que vous êtes de retour,” cried Mme. Anniette, putting her head out of the window as they reached the châlet. “Je vous jure que monsieur n’a pas eu le sourire aux lèvres depuis votre départ …”
With practically no intermission of spring, Brisset changed from winter to summer. The tinkling of cow bells, the light bright dresses, the vicarious sensation of being en vacances—the Alpine sun bred euphoria as it bred flowers from the face of the rock.
The afternoons, split by the cure de silence, seemed without beginning or end. Half-way through the cure, at three o’clock, Paul would get up and go to the village to make some purchases either for Mme. Anniette or for one of his friends at the Universel. All the patients and many of the shop-keepers (of whom the majority were anciens malades) would be still in bed; Brisset had the air of an outpost suddenly abandoned by its inhabitants before the advance of the enemy. Sometimes as he tiptoed down the silent streets Paul would encounter Emile slipping into a bar for a fine; sometimes, passing the house in which the petit chou had her room, he would glimpse her watching him from behind the window. But if he turned to wave, she would instantly slam the shutter. At half-past three he would catch the cremaillère to the Universel.
Usually Michèle was sitting up in bed waiting for him. One afternoon, however, he found her asleep, one naked arm hugging a teddy bear, by her side one of Dr. Florent’s paper-bound volumes of Molière still open at the page where she had been reading. Paul closed the door very quietly. A sound from outside disturbed her. She stretched herself lightly, squeezed the teddy bear, kissed its black cotton nose, closed her eyes as if about to sleep again, opened them, glanced at her watch, frowned slightly, and, still unaware of Paul’s presence, recommenced to read.
It became generally known that Paul arrived at the Universel a little before the official end of the cure. One afternoon he was sitting on Michèle’s bed, when he heard the turning of the handle of the outer door. (Oh, admirable institution of outer doors with their split seconds of grace!) But although Paul was on his feet when Dr. Vernet entered, Michèle’s bedding was awry, her hair disordered, her face flushed.
“Bon!” said Dr. Vernet. The monosyllable, pronounced like a judgement, implied all that was contrary to its meaning. He turned and left the room.
Paul hesitated, then hurried after him. As he stepped outside the door, he saw that Dr. Vernet was turning the corner at the end of the passage. “Dr. Vernet!” Paul called out. By the time he had reached the corner, Dr. Vernet was half-way down the corridor which led to the main staircase. “Dr. Vernet!” Paul shouted again. Dr. Vernet started to descend the staircase which spiralled the lift shaft. Paul followed him and Dr. Vernet increased his pace. As soon as Dr. Vernet reached the ground floor he got into the lift which was waiting there; Paul was half-way between the first and the ground floors when the lift shot up past and stopped at the seventh floor, where Dr. Vernet had his bureau de consultation. Paul descended the last few stairs and pressed the button on the lift shaft. The lift remained stationary. Dr. Vernet had left the gate open.
The village clock struck four: the end of the cure de silence. Two waiters pushed a large trolley of tea-trays from the kitchen to where Paul was standing; patients came out of their rooms into the previously deserted corridors. Paul rattled the gate of the lift shaft. “Ascenseur!” shouted someone on another floor. One of the waiters kicked the shaft and shouted: “Ascenseur, s’il vous plaît.” “Ascenseur! Ascenseur!” was taken up by a variety of accents. Then a patient on the sixth floor climbed to the seventh and got into the lift. It descended in a tantalising series of rushes, picking up fresh passengers at every floor.
Designed to hold eight passengers, it contained at least a dozen; the additional weight caused it to sink a few inches below the level of the ground floor and it was impossible to open the gate. There was a lot of laughter. One of the passengers stretched out his hand to press the second-floor button, miscalculated owing to the crush, and the lift quivered, hesitated, then slowly ascended to the sixth.
“Nom de Dieu!” cried the waiter who had originally kicked the lift shaft. He rattled the handle and shook the gate. “Ascenseur! Ascenseur!” cried other patients who were still waiting for the lift on their own floors. The lift redescended to the ground floor and, this time, before it could sink too low a passenger pushed open the gate and, laughing hysterically, the occupants burst out like shrapnel.
“Davenant! Mon cher ami!” It was Glou-Glou. The waiters pushed the trolleys into the lift. “Ah, non! Il n’y a pas de place,” they protested, as Paul tried to follow them. The lift set off again.
“Voulez-vous me donner votre pouls?” cried Glou-Glou, seizing Paul’s wrist as the latter gazed helplessly up the shaft at the disappearing floor of the lift. “Pas de ralentissement, pas d’intermittence,” went on Glou-Glou, pulling out his watch. “C’est bon signe … Vous n’avez toujours pas de vertiges? Bon encore. Vous m’entendez bien? Oui … Pas d’oppressions? Pas de nausée? Etat stationnaire, donc favorable. Mon prognostic reste le même: toutes les chances de guérison. Du repos. Encore du repos. Toujours du repos.”
The lift arrived and discharged another load of passengers. Paul got in and pressed the button for the seventh floor. His heart suddenly started to beat very quickly. What, in actual fact, was he going to say to Dr. Vernet?
He could have spared himself. “The chief is busy. He can’t see you today,” said Sœur Miriam severely, intercepting him before he had time to knock at the door of Dr. Vernet’s bureau.
With a shameful sensation of relief, Paul returned to Michèle’s bedroom. To his surprise, she was not there. She came back a few minutes later, her polka-dotted dressing-gown loosely over her shoulders. Her face was white.
“Where have you been?” demanded Paul.
“With Vernet.”
“But I was standing all the time at the bottom of the lift shaft. I didn’t see you go up.”
“He sent Sœur Miriam for me. She took me up in the side lift.”
“Well, what happened?”
“I’ve never seen anyone so angry.” She sat on the side of the bed in order to regain her composure.
“What did he say?”
“He said that he now considered both our cases to be out of his hands.”
“Both our cases?”
“Yes. And he also said that if ever he again caught you here during the cure, he would send for the police!”
“What a funny thing,” said Dr. Vernet, with amusement. Paul, stripped to the waist, was lying on his side, and Dr. Vernet was seated next to him, a refill needle between thumb and forefinger. “When we say that a case is out of our hands we mean that a patient is better and that he no longer needs us.” With the tip of a finger he felt for a convenient inter-costal space and swabbed it with iodine.
“I took it that you wanted me to find another doctor.”
“You are at liberty to take it like that if you want.”
“I don’t.”
“Good!”
The needle descended. It penetrated and, with a crunching sound, traversed two inches of coriaceous tissue. “Our relationship is that of garagist—is that the word?—and client.” Dr. Vernet connected the refill machine to the needle. “When you want air you stop at my garage and I pump.”
“You said that you would send for the police if you ever found me again at the Universel.” Paul spoke quietly and cautiously—he always feared that talking during a refill might lead to undue expansion and subsequent perforation of the lung. As if he had divined this, Dr. Vernet pushed in the needle a little farther.
“I said that that was what I would do if I found you there during the cure.”
“I see.”
“Besides, the information was for Mademoiselle Duchesne, not for you. In France it is a custom that when we want to caution a delightful but occasionally recalcitrant child we threaten to send for the police.” Dr. Vernet jerked out the needle and dabbed iodine on the puncture.
“And when the child has grown up?”
“We still sometimes threaten to send for the police.” Dr. Vernet motioned Paul into the X-ray cabinet. “All right,” he said, a minute later. Paul got out of the cabinet and put on his vest.
“Do you consider that you are behaving honourably?” asked Dr. Vernet.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said do you consider that you are behaving honourably?”
It was hard to answer questions of that order with dignity whilst tucking in one’s shirt tails. “I can’t say,” Paul replied brusquely.
“You don’t labour under any set of exacting moral standards?”
“In certain things.”
“How very convenient for you.”
Paul did not answer. Dr. Vernet could have the next move if he wanted it. He went over to the mirror and threaded his tie through his collar.
“You are in good circumstances, Monsieur Davenant?”
“No.”
“You will have to earn your living when you leave here?”
“Yes.”
“Then it is not unreasonable to deduce that a marriage is not precisely imminent.”
“I prefer not to discuss it.” Paul took a comb from his pocket and pulled it through his hair.
“You prefer not to discuss it! Very well! What do you prefer to discuss? May I ask, for example, whether you ever have the intention of returning to your own country?”
“Yes, I have.” Paul replaced the comb and turned away from the mirror.
“When Mademoiselle Duchesne leaves?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for keeping me so exactly informed.” Dr. Vernet sat down at his desk and, to show that the interview was at an end, he started to sort some papers.
Paul put on his jacket. “It’s over six months since I have had an X-ray plate,” he said.
Dr. Vernet did not look up.
“And you haven’t examined me since I left Les Alpes.”
“No?”
“Nor have I had a blood or sputum test.”
“Tiens!”
“And you have expressed no opinion as to my condition.”
“I told you last autumn you could return to England.”
“Yes—and nothing since.”
Dr. Vernet gave no indication of having heard the remark. Paul hesitated a moment, then said: “I think that after all you would prefer me to go to another doctor.”
Dr. Vernet put down the papers which he had been sorting. “Monsieur Davenant,” he said, his whole voice dangerously controlled, “you can do what you like and you can go where you like. If you want another doctor, tell me and I will hand over your dossier. Until then, have the courtesy not to examine me respecting my methods.”