an end as a means. The artistic convictions which he displays are
asserted with so much vehemence merely because they lack depth; no
secret exigence of his temperament necessitates them; they are evoked
by the passing hour; their _mot d’ordre_ is opportunism.
_The Horizontal Bar!_ The things that soonest appear out of date
are those that at first strike us as most modern. Every concession,
every affectation is the promise of a wrinkle. But it is by these
means that Passavant pleases the young. He snaps his fingers at the
future. It is the generation of to-day that he is speaking to--which
is certainly better than speaking to that of yesterday. But as what
he writes is addressed only to that younger generation, it is in
danger of disappearing with it. He is perfectly aware of this and
does not build his hopes on surviving. This is the reason that he
defends himself so fiercely, and that, not only when he is attacked,
but at the slightest restrictions of the critics. If he felt that his
work was lasting he would leave it to defend itself and would not so
continually seek to justify it. More than that, misunderstanding,
injustice, would rejoice him. So much the more food for to-morrow’s
critics to use their teeth upon!
He looks at his watch: 11.35. He ought to have arrived by now. Curious
to know if by any impossible chance Olivier will be at the station to
meet him? He hasn’t the slightest expectation of it. How can he even
suppose that his post-card has come to Olivier’s notice--that post-card
on which he informed Olivier’s parents of his return, and incidentally,
carelessly, absent-mindedly to all appearance, mentioned the day and
hour of his arrival ... as one takes a pleasure in stalking--in setting
a trap for fate itself.
The train is stopping. Quick! A porter! No! His suit-case is not very
heavy, nor the cloak-room very far.... Even supposing he were there,
would they recognize each other in all this crowd? They have seen so
little of each other. If only he hasn’t grown out of recognition!...
Ah! Great Heavens! Can that be he?
IX
EDOUARD AND OLIVIER
WE should have nothing to deplore of all that happened later if only
Edouard’s and Olivier’s joy at meeting had been more demonstrative;
but they both had a singular incapacity for gauging their credit in
other people’s hearts and minds; this now paralysed them; so that each,
believing his emotion to be unshared, absorbed in his own joy, and half
ashamed at finding it so great, was completely preoccupied by trying to
hide its intensity from the other.
It was for this reason that Olivier, far from helping Edouard’s joy by
telling him with what eagerness he had come to meet him, thought fit to
speak of some job or other which he had had to do in the neighbourhood
that very morning, as if to excuse himself for having come. His
conscience, scrupulous to excess, cunningly set about persuading him
that he was perhaps in Edouard’s way. The lie was hardly out of his
mouth when he blushed. Edouard surprised the blush, and as he had at
first seized Olivier’s arm and passionately pressed it, he thought
(scrupulous he, too) that it was this that had made him blush.
He had begun by saying:
“I tried to force myself to believe that you wouldn’t come, but in
reality I was certain that you would.”
Then it came over him that Olivier thought these words presumptuous.
When he heard him answer in an off-hand way: “I had a job to do in this
very neighbourhood,” he dropped Olivier’s arm and his spirits fell
from their heights. He would have liked to ask Olivier whether he had
understood that the post-card which he had addressed to his parents,
had been really intended for him; as he was on the point of putting
the question, his heart failed him. Olivier, who was afraid of boring
Edouard or of being misunderstood if he spoke of himself, kept silent.
He looked at Edouard and was astonished at the trembling of his lip;
then he dropped his eyes at once. Edouard was both longing for the look
and afraid that Olivier would think him too old. He kept rolling a bit
of paper nervously between his fingers. It was the ticket he had just
been given at the cloak-room, but he did not think of that.
“If it was his cloak-room ticket,” thought Olivier, as he watched him
crumple it up and throw it absent-mindedly away, “he wouldn’t throw
it away like that.” And he glanced round for a second to see the wind
carry it off along the pavement far behind them. If he had looked
longer he might have seen a young man pick it up. It was Bernard, who
had been following them ever since they had left the station.... In the
mean while Olivier was in despair at finding nothing to say to Edouard,
and the silence between them became intolerable.
“When we get opposite Condorcet,” he kept repeating to himself, “I
shall say, ‘I must go home now; good-bye.’”
Then, when they got opposite the Lycée, he gave himself till as far as
the corner of the Rue de Provence. But Edouard, on whom the silence
was weighing quite as heavily, could not endure that they should part
in this way. He drew his companion into a café. Perhaps the port
wine which he ordered would help them to get the better of their
embarrassment.
They drank to each other.
“Good luck to you!” said Edouard, raising his glass. “When is the
examination?”
“In ten days.”
“Do you feel ready?”
Olivier shrugged his shoulders. “One never knows. If one doesn’t happen
to be in good form on the day....”
He didn’t dare answer “yes,” for fear of seeming conceited. He
was embarrassed, too, because he wanted and yet was afraid to say
“thou” to Edouard. He contented himself by giving his sentences an
impersonal turn, so as to avoid at any rate saying “you”; and by so
doing he deprived Edouard of the opportunity of begging him to say
“thou”--which Edouard longed for him to do and which he remembered well
enough he _had_ done a few days before his leaving for England.
“Have you been working?”
“Pretty well, but not as well as I might have.”
“People who work well always think they might work better,” said
Edouard rather pompously.
He said it in spite of himself and then thought his sentence ridiculous.
“Do you still write poetry?”
“Sometimes.... I badly want a little advice.” He raised his eyes to
Edouard. “_Your_ advice,” he wanted to say--“_thy_ advice.”
And his look, in default of his voice, said it so plainly that Edouard
thought he was saying it out of deference--out of amiability. But why
should he have answered--and so brusquely too...?
“Oh, one must go to oneself for advice, or to companions of one’s own
age. One’s elders are no use.”
Olivier thought: “I didn’t ask him. Why is he protesting?”
Each of them was vexed with himself for not being able to utter a word
that didn’t sound curt and stiff; and each of them, feeling the other’s
embarrassment and irritation, thought himself the cause and object of
them. Such interviews lead to no good unless something comes to the
rescue. Nothing came.
Olivier had begun the morning badly. When, on waking up, he had found
that Bernard was no longer beside him, that he had left him without
saying good-bye, his heart had been filled with unhappiness; though
he had forgotten it for an instant in the joy of seeing Edouard, it
now surged up in him anew like a black wave and submerged every other
thought in his mind. He would have liked to talk about Bernard, to tell
Edouard everything and anything, to make him interested in his friend.
But Edouard’s slightest smile would have wounded him; and as the
passionate and tumultuous feelings which were shaking him could not
have been expressed without the risk of seeming exaggerated, he kept
silence. He felt his features harden; he would have liked to fling
himself into Edouard’s arms and cry. Edouard misunderstood this silence
of Olivier’s and the look of sternness on his face; he loved him far
too much to be able to behave with any ease. He hardly dared look at
Olivier, whom he longed to take in his arms and fondle like a child,
and when he met his eyes and saw their dull and lifeless expression:
“Of course!” he said to himself. “I bore him--I bore him to death.
Poor child! He’s just waiting for a word from me to escape.” And
irresistibly Edouard said the word--out of sheer pity: “You’d better be
off now. Your people are expecting you for lunch, I’m sure.”
Olivier, who was thinking the same things, misunderstood in the same
way. He got up in a desperate hurry and held out his hand. At least he
wanted to say to Edouard: “Shall I see you--thee--again soon? Shall we
see each other again soon?”... Edouard was waiting for these words.
Nothing came but a commonplace “Good-bye!”
X
THE CLOAK-ROOM TICKET
THE sun woke Bernard. He rose from his bench with a violent headache.
His gallant courage of the morning had left him. He felt abominably
lonely and his heart was swelling with something brackish and bitter
which he would not call unhappiness, but which brought the tears to his
eyes. What should he do? Where should he go?... If his steps turned
towards St. Lazare Station at the time that he knew Olivier was due
there, it was without any definite purpose and merely with the wish to
see his friend again. He reproached himself for having left so abruptly
that morning; perhaps Olivier had been hurt?... Was he not the creature
in the world he liked best?... When he saw him arm in arm with Edouard
a peculiar feeling made him follow the pair and at the same time not
show himself; painfully conscious of being _de trop_, he would yet
have liked to slip in between them. He thought Edouard looked charming;
only a little taller than Olivier and with a scarcely less youthful
figure. It was he whom he made up his mind to address; he would wait
until Olivier left him. But address him? Upon what pretext?
It was at this moment that he caught sight of the little bit of
crumpled paper as it escaped from Edouard’s hand. He picked it up,
saw that it was a cloak-room ticket ... and, by Jove, here was the
wished-for pretext!
He saw the two friends go into a café, hesitated a moment in
perplexity, and then continued his monologue:
“Now a normal fathead would have nothing better to do than to return
this paper at once,” he said to himself.
“‘_How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable_
_Seem to me all the uses of this world!_’
as I have heard Hamlet remark. Bernard, Bernard, what thought is this
that is tickling you? It was only yesterday that you were rifling a
drawer. On what path are you entering? Consider, my boy, consider....
Consider that the cloak-room attendant who took Edouard’s luggage will
be gone to his lunch at 12 o’clock, and that there will be another one
on duty. And didn’t you promise your friend to stick at nothing?”
He reflected, however, that too much haste might spoil everything.
The attendant might be surprised into thinking this haste suspicious;
he might consult the entry book and think it unnatural that a piece
of luggage deposited in the cloak-room a few minutes before twelve,
should be taken out immediately after. And besides, suppose some
passer-by, some busy-body, had seen him pick up the bit of paper....
Bernard forced himself to walk to the Place de la Concorde without
hurrying--in the time it would have taken another person to lunch.
It is quite usual, isn’t it, to put one’s luggage in the cloak-room
whilst one is lunching and to take it out immediately after.... His
headache had gone. As he was passing by a restaurant terrace, he boldly
took a toothpick from one of the little bundles that were set out on
the tables, and stood nibbling it at the cloak-room counter, in order
to give himself the air of having lunched. He was lucky to have in
his favour his good looks, his well-cut clothes, his distinction, the
frankness of his eyes and smile, and that indefinable something in
the whole appearance which denotes those who have been brought up in
comfort and want for nothing. (But all this gets rather draggled by
sleeping on benches.)...
He had a horrible turn when the attendant told him there were ten
centimes to pay. He had not a single, sou left. What should he do? The
suit-case was there, on the counter. The slightest sign of hesitation
would give the alarm--so would his want of money. But the demon is
watching over him; he slips between Bernard’s anxious fingers, as they
go searching from pocket to pocket with a pretence of feigned despair,
a fifty-centime bit, which had lain forgotten since goodness knows
when in his waistcoat pocket. Bernard hands it to the attendant. He
has not shown a sign of his agitation. He takes up the suit-case, and
in the simplest, honestest fashion pockets the forty centimes change.
Heavens! How hot he is! Where shall he go now? His legs are beginning
to fail him and the suit-case feels heavy. What shall he do with it?...
He suddenly remembers that he has no key. No! No! Certainly not! He
will not break open the lock; what the devil, he isn’t a thief!... But
if he only knew what was in it. His arm is aching and he is perspiring
with the heat. He stops for a moment and puts his burden down on the
pavement. Of course he has every intention of returning the wretched
thing to its owner; but he would like to question it first. He presses
the lock at a venture.... Oh miracle! The two shells open and disclose
a pearl--a pocket-book, which in its turn discloses a bundle of
bank-notes. Bernard seizes the pearl and shuts up the oyster.
And now that he has the wherewithal--quick! a hotel. He knows of one
close by in the Rue d’Amsterdam. He is dying of hunger. But before
sitting down to table, he must put his suit-case in safety. A waiter
carries it upstairs before him; three flights; a passage; a door which
he locks upon his treasure. He goes down again.
Sitting at table in front of a beefsteak, Bernard did not dare examine
the pocket-book. (One never knows who may be watching you.) But his
left hand amorously caressed it, lying snug in his inside pocket.
“How to make Edouard understand that I’m not a thief--that’s the
trouble. What kind of fellow is Edouard? Perhaps the suit-case may shed
a little light upon that. Attractive--so much is certain. But there are
heaps of attractive fellows who have no taste for practical joking. If
he thinks his suit-case has been stolen, no doubt he’ll be glad to see
it again. If he’s the least decent he’ll be grateful to me for bringing
it back to him. I shall easily rouse his interest. Let’s eat the sweet
quickly and then go upstairs and examine the situation. Now for the
bill and a soul-stirring tip for the waiter.”
A minute or two later he was back again in his room.
“Now, suit-case, a word with you!... A morning suit, not more than
a trifle too big for me, I expect. The material becoming and in good
taste. Linen; toilet things. I’m not very sure that I shall give any
of all this back. But what proves that I’m not a thief is that these
papers interest me a great deal more than anything else. We’ll begin by
reading this.”
This was the note-book into which Edouard had slipped Laura’s
melancholy letter. We have already seen the first pages; this is what
followed.
XI
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: GEORGE MOLINIER
_Nov. 1st._--A fortnight ago ...
--it was a mistake not to have noted it down at once. It was not so
much that I hadn’t time as that my heart was still full of Laura--or,
to be more accurate, I did not wish to distract my thoughts from
her; moreover, I do not care to note anything here that is casual or
fortuitous, and at that time I did not think that what I am going
to relate could lead to anything, or be, as people say, of any
consequence; at any rate, I would not admit it to myself and it was,
in a way, to prove the unimportance of this incident that I refrained
from mentioning it in my journal. But I feel more and more--it would be
vain to deny it--that it is Olivier’s figure that has now become the
magnet of my thoughts, that their current sets towards him and that
without taking him into account I shall be able neither to explain nor
to understand myself properly.
I was coming back that morning from Perrin’s, the publisher’s, where
I had been seeing about the press copies of the fresh edition of my
old book. As the weather was fine, I was dawdling back along the quays
until it should be time for lunch.
A little before getting to Vanier’s, I stopped in front of a
second-hand bookseller’s. It was not so much the books that interested
me as a small schoolboy, about thirteen years old, who was rummaging
the outside shelves under the placid eye of a shop assistant, who sat
watching on a rush-bottomed chair in the door-way. I pretended to be
examining the bookstall, but I too kept a watch on the youngster out
of the corner of my eye. He was dressed in a threadbare overcoat, the
sleeves of which were too short and showed his other sleeves below
them. Its side pocket was gaping, though it was obviously empty; a
corner of the stuff had given way. I reflected that this coat must
have already seen service with several elder brothers and that his
brothers and he must have been in the habit of stuffing a great many,
too many, things into their pockets. I reflected too that his mother
must be either very neglectful or very busy not to have mended it.
But just then the youngster turned round a little and I saw that the
pocket on the other side was coarsely darned with stout black thread.
And I seemed to hear the maternal exhortations: “Don’t put two books
at a time into your pocket; you’ll ruin your overcoat. Your pocket’s
all torn again. Next time, I warn you, I shan’t darn it. Just look what
a sight you are!...” Things which my own poor mother used to say to
me, too, and to which I paid no more attention than he. The overcoat
was unbuttoned and my eye was attracted by a kind of decoration, a
bit of ribbon, or rather a yellow rosette which he was wearing in the
buttonhole of his inside coat. I put all this down for the sake of
discipline and for the very reason that it bores me to put it down.
At a certain moment the man on the chair was called into the shop; he
did not stay more than a second and came back to his chair at once, but
that second was enough to allow the boy to slip the book he was holding
into his pocket; then he immediately began scanning the shelves again
as if nothing had happened. At the same time he was uneasy; he raised
his head, caught me looking at him and understood that I had seen him.
At any rate, he said to himself that I might have seen him; he was
probably not quite certain; but in his uncertainty he lost all his
assurance, blushed and started a little performance in which he tried
to appear quite at his ease, but which, on the contrary, showed extreme
embarrassment. I did not take my eyes off him. He took the purloined
book out of his pocket, thrust it back again, walked away a few steps,
pulled out of his inside pocket a wretched little pocket-book, in which
he pretended to look for some imaginary money; made a face, a kind of
theatrical grimace, aimed at me, and signifying, “Drat! Not enough!”
and with a little shade of surprise in it as well, “Odd! I thought I
had enough!” The whole thing slightly exaggerated, slightly overdone,
as when an actor is afraid of not being understood. Finally, under the
pressure of my look, I might almost say, he went back to the shelf,
pulled the book, this time decidedly, out of his pocket and put it
back in its place. It was done so naturally that the assistant noticed
nothing. Then the boy raised his head again, hoping that at last he
would be rid of me. But not at all; my look was still upon him, like
the eye that watched Cain--only my eye was a smiling one. I determined
to speak to him and waited until he should have left the bookstall
before going up to him; but he didn’t budge and still stood planted in
front of the books, and I understood that he wouldn’t budge as long as
I kept gazing at him. So, as at Puss in the Corner, when one tries to
entice the pretence quarry to change places, I moved a little away as
if I had seen enough and he started off at once in his own direction;
but he had no sooner got into the open than I caught him up.
“What was that book?” I asked him out of the blue, at the same time
putting as much amenity as I could into my voice and expression.
He looked me full in the face and I felt all his suspicions drop from
him. He was not exactly handsome, perhaps, but what charming eyes he
had! I saw every kind of feeling wavering in their depths like water
weeds at the bottom of a stream.
“It’s a guide-book for Algeria. But it’s too dear. I’m not rich enough.”
“How much?”
“Two francs fifty.”
“All the same, if you hadn’t seen me, you’d have made off with the book
in your pocket.”
The little fellow made a movement of indignation. He expostulated in a
tone of extreme vulgarity:
“Well, I never! What d’you take me for? A thief?” But he said it with
such conviction that I almost began to doubt my own eyes. I felt that
I should lose my hold over him if I went on. I took three coins out of
my pocket:
“All right! Go and buy it. I’ll wait for you.”
Two minutes later he came back turning over the pages of the coveted
work. I took it out of his hands. It was an old guide-book of the year
1871.
“What’s the good of that?” I said as I handed it back to him. “It’s too
old. It’s of no use.”
He protested that it was--that, besides, recent guide-books were much
too dear, and that for all he should do with it the maps of this one
were good enough. I don’t attempt to quote his words, which would lose
their savour without the extraordinarily vulgar accent with which he
said them and which was all the more amusing because his sentences were
not turned without a certain elegance.
* * * * *
This episode must be very much shortened. Precision in the reader’s
imagination should be obtained not by accumulating details but by two
or three touches put in exactly the right places. I expect for that
matter that it would be a better plan to make the boy tell the story
himself; his point of view is of more signification than mine. He is
flattered and at the same time made uncomfortable by the attention I
pay him. But the weight of my look makes him deviate a little from his
own real direction. A personality which is over tender and still too
young to be conscious of itself, takes shelter behind an attitude.
Nothing is more difficult to observe than creatures in the period of
formation. One ought to look at them only sideways--in profile.
The youngster suddenly declared that what he liked best was geography!
I suspected that an instinct for vagabonding was concealed behind this
liking.
“You’d like to go to those parts?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t I?” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.
The idea crossed my mind that he was unhappy at home. I asked him if he
lived with his parents. “Yes.” Didn’t he get on with them? He protested
rather lukewarmly that he did. He seemed afraid that he had given
himself away by what he had just said. He added:
“Why do you ask that?”
“Oh, for nothing,” I answered, and then, touching the yellow ribbon in
his buttonhole, “What’s that?”
“It’s a ribbon. Can’t you see?”
My questions evidently annoyed him. He turned towards me abruptly and
almost vindictively, and in a jeering, insolent voice of which I should
never have thought him capable and which absolutely turned me sick:
“I say ... do you often go about picking up schoolboys?” Then as I was
stammering out some kind of a confused answer, he opened the satchel he
was carrying under his arm to slip his purchase into it. It held his
lesson books and one or two copy-books, all covered with blue paper. I
took one out; it was a history note-book. Its small owner had written
his name on it in large letters. My heart gave a jump as I recognized
that it was my nephew’s:
GEORGE MOLINIER.
(Bernard’s heart gave a jump too as he read these lines and the whole
story began to interest him prodigiously.)