There were no seats left in the theater: she met the young musician,
Jean-Christophe, whom she did not know, and he, seeing her disappointment,
offered to share with her a box which he had to give away: in her confusion
she accepted. Her presence with Christophe set tongues wagging in the
little town: and the malicious rumors came at once to the ears of the
Grünebaums, who, being already inclined to believe anything ill of the
young Frenchwoman, and furious with Christophe as a result of certain
events which have been narrated elsewhere, dismissed Antoinette without
more ado.
She, who was so chaste and modest, she, whose whole life had been absorbed
by her love for her brother and never yet had been besmirched with one
thought of evil, nearly died of shame, when she understood the nature
of the charge against her. Not for one moment was she resentful against
Christophe. She knew that he was as innocent as she, and that, if he had
injured her, he had meant only to be kind: she was grateful to him. She
knew nothing of him, save that he was a musician, and that he was much
maligned: but, in her ignorance of life and men, she had a natural
intuition about people, which unhappiness had sharpened, and in her queer,
boorish companion she had recognized a quality of candor equal to her own,
and a sturdy kindness, the mere memory of which was comforting and good
to think on. The evil she had heard of him did not at all affect the
confidence which Christophe had inspired in her. Being herself a victim she
had no doubt that he was in the same plight, suffering, as she did, though
for a longer time, from the malevolence of the townspeople who insulted
him. And as she always forgot herself in the thought of others the idea of
what Christophe must have suffered distracted her mind a little from her
own torment. Nothing in the world could have induced her to try to see him
again, or to write to him: her modesty and pride forbade it. She told
herself that he did not know the harm he had done, and, in her gentleness,
she hoped that he would never know it.
She left Germany. An hour away from the town it chanced that the train in
which she was traveling passed the train by which Christophe was returning
from a neighboring town where he had been spending the day.
For a few minutes their carriages stopped opposite each other, and in the
silence of the night they saw each other, but did not speak. What could
they have said save a few trivial words? That would have been a profanation
of the indefinable feeling of common pity and mysterious sympathy which
had sprung up in them, and was based on nothing save the sureness of their
inward vision. During those last moments, when, still strangers, they
gazed into each other's eyes, they saw in each other things which never
had appeared to any other soul among the people with whom they lived.
Everything must pass: the memory of words, kisses, passionate embraces: but
the contact of souls, which have once met and hailed each other and the
throng of passing shapes, that never can be blotted out. Antoinette bore
it with her in the innermost recesses of her heart--that poor heart, so
swathed about with sorrow and sad thoughts, from out the midst of which
there smiled a misty light, which seemed to steal sweetly from the earth, a
pale and tender light like that which floods the Elysian Shades of Gluck.
* * * * *
She returned to Olivier. It was high time she returned to him. He had just
fallen ill: and the poor, nervous, unhappy little creature who trembled, at
the thought of illness before it came--now that he was really ill, refused
to write to his sister for fear of upsetting her. But he called to her,
prayed for her coming as for a miracle.
When the miracle happened he was lying in the school infirmary, feverish
and wandering. When he saw her he made no sound. How often had he seen her
enter in his fevered fancy!... He sat up in bed, gaping, and trembling lest
it should be once more only an illusion. And when she sat down on the bed
by his side, when she took him in her arms and he had taken her in his,
when he felt her soft cheek against his lips, and her hands still cold from
traveling by night in his, when he was quite, quite sure that it was his
dear sister he began to weep. He could do nothing else: he was still the
"little cry-baby" that he had been when he was a child. He clung to her and
held her close for fear she should go away from him again. How changed they
were! How sad they looked!... No matter! They were together once more:
everything was lit up, the infirmary, the school, the gloomy day: they
clung to each other, they would never let each other go. Before she had
said a word he made her swear that she would not go away again. He had no
need to make her swear: no, she would never go away again: they had been
too unhappy away from each other: their mother was right: anything was
better than being parted. Even poverty, even death, so only they were
together.
They took rooms. They wanted to take their old little flat, horrible though
it was: but it was occupied. Their new rooms also looked out on to a yard:
but above a wall they could see the top of a little acacia and grew fond of
it at once, as a friend from the country, a prisoner like themselves, in
the paved wilderness of the city. Olivier quickly recovered his health, or
rather, what he was pleased to call his health:--(for what was health to
him would have been illness to a stronger boy).--Antoinette's unhappy stay
in Germany had helped her to save a little money: and she made some more by
the translation of a German book which a publisher accepted. For a time,
then, they were free of financial anxiety: and all would be well if Olivier
passed his examination at the end of the year.--But if he did not pass?
No sooner had they settled down to the happiness of being together again
than they were once more obsessed by the prospect of the examination. They
tried hard not to think about it, but in vain, they were always coming back
to it. The fixed idea haunted them, even when they were seeking distraction
from their thoughts: at concerts it would suddenly leap out at them in the
middle of the performance: at night when they woke up it would lie there
like a yawning gulf before them. In addition to his eagerness to please his
sister and repay her for the sacrifice of her youth that she had made for
his sake, Olivier lived in terror of his military service which he could
not escape if he were rejected:--(at that time admission to the great
schools was still admitted as an exemption from service).--He had an
invincible disgust for the physical and moral promiscuity, the kind
of intellectual degradation, which, rightly or wrongly, he saw in
barrack-life. Every pure and aristocratic quality in him revolted from such
compulsion, and it seemed to him that death would be preferable. In these
days it is permitted to make light of such feelings, and even to decry
them in the name of a social morality which, for the moment, has become
a religion: but they are blind who deny it: there is no more profound
suffering than that of the violation of moral solitude by the coarse
liberal Communism of the present day.
The examinations began. Olivier was almost incapable of going in: he was
unwell, and he was so fearful of the torment he would have to undergo,
whether he passed or not, that he almost longed to be taken seriously ill.
He did quite well in the written examination. But he had a cruel time
waiting to hear the results. Following the immemorial custom of the country
of Revolutions, which is the worst country in the world for red-tape and
routine, the examinations were held in July during the hottest days of the
year, as though it were deliberately intended to finish off the luckless
candidates, who were already staggering under the weight of cramming a
monstrous list of subjects, of which even the examiners did not know a
tenth part. The written examinations were held on the day after the holiday
of the 14th July, when the whole city was upside down, and making merry, to
the undoing of the young men who were by no means inclined to be merry, and
asked for nothing but silence. In the square outside the house booths were
set up, rifles cracked at the miniature ranges, merry-go-rounds creaked
and grunted, and hideous steam organs roared from morning till night. The
idiotic noise went on for a week. Then a President of the Republic, by way
of maintaining his popularity, granted the rowdy merry-makers another three
days' holiday. It cost him nothing: he did not hear the row. But Olivier
and Antoinette were distracted and appalled by the noise, and had to keep
their windows shut, so that their rooms were stifling, and stop their ears,
trying vainly to escape the shrill, insistent, idiotic tunes which were
ground out from morning till night and stabbed through their brains like
daggers, so that they were reduced to a pitiful condition.
The _viva voce_ examination began immediately after the publication of
the first results. Olivier begged Antoinette not to go. She waited at the
door,--much more anxious than he. Of course he never told her what he
thought of his performance. He tormented her by telling her what he had
said and what he had not said.
At last the final results were published. The names of the candidates were
posted in the courtyard of the Sorbonne. Antoinette would not let Olivier
go alone. As they left the house, they thought, though they did not say it,
that when they came back they would _know_, and perhaps they would regret
their present fears, when at least there was still hope. When they came
in sight of the Sorbonne they felt their legs give way under them. Brave
little Antoinette said to her brother:
"Please not so fast...."
Olivier looked at his sister, and she forced a smile. He said:
"Shall we sit down for a moment on the seat here?"
He would gladly have gone no further. But, after a moment, she pressed his
hand and said:
"It's nothing, dear. Let us go on."
They could not find the list at first. They read several others in which
the name of Jeannin did not appear. When at last they saw it, they did not
take it in at first: they read it several times and could not believe it.
Then when they were quite sure that it was true that Jeannin was Olivier,
that Jeannin had passed, they could say nothing: they hurried home: she
took his arm, and held his wrist, and leaned her weight on him: they almost
ran, and saw nothing of what was going on about them: as they crossed the
boulevard they were almost run over. They said over and over again:
"Dear ... Darling ... Dear ... Dear...."
They tore upstairs to their rooms and then they flung their arms round each
other. Antoinette took her brother's hand and led him to the photographs of
their father and mother, which hung on the wall near her bed, in a corner
of her room, which was a sort of sanctuary to her: they knelt down before
them: and with tears in their eyes they prayed.
Antoinette ordered a jolly little dinner: but they could not eat a morsel:
they were not hungry. They spent the evening, Olivier kneeling by his
sister's side while she petted him like a child. They hardly spoke at all.
They could not even be happy, for they were too worn out. They went to bed
before nine o'clock and slept the sleep of the just.
Next day Antoinette had a frightful headache, but there was such a load
taken from her heart! Olivier felt, for the first time in his life, that
he could breathe freely. He was saved, she was saved, she had accomplished
her task: and he had shown himself to be not unworthy of his sister's
expectations!... For the first time for years and years they allowed
themselves a little laziness. They stayed in bed till twelve talking
through the wall, with the door between their rooms open: when they looked
in the mirror they saw their faces happy and tired-looking: they smiled,
and threw kisses to each other, and dozed off again, and watched each
other's sleep, and lay weary and worn with hardly the strength to do more
than mutter tender little scraps of words.
* * * * *
Antoinette had always put by a little money, sou by sou, so as to have some
small reserve in case of illness. She did not tell her brother the surprise
she had in store for him. The day after his success she told him that they
were going to spend a month in Switzerland to make up for all their years
of trouble and hardship. Now that Olivier was assured of three years at the
_École Normale_ at the expense of the State, and then, when he left the
_École_, of finding a post, they could be extravagant and spend all their
savings. Olivier shouted for joy when she told him. Antoinette was even
more happy than he,--happy in her brother's happiness,--happy to think that
she was going to see the country once more: she had so longed for it.
It took them some time to get ready for the journey, but the work of
preparation was an unending joy. It was well on in August when they set
out. They were not used to traveling. Olivier did not sleep the night
before. And he did not sleep in the train. The whole day they had been
fearful of missing the train. They were in a feverish hurry, they had been
jostled about at the station, and finally huddled into a second-class
carriage, where they could not even lean back to go to sleep:--(that is
one of the privileges of which the eminently democratic French companies
deprive poor travelers, so that rich travelers may have the pleasure of
thinking that they have a monopoly of it).--Olivier did not sleep a wink:
he was not sure that they were in the right train, and he looked out for
the name of every station. Antoinette slept lightly and woke up very
frequently: the jolting of the train made her head bob. Olivier watched her
by the light of the funereal lamp, which shone at the top of the moving
sarcophagus: and he was suddenly struck by the change in her face. Her eyes
were hollow: her childish lips were half-open from sheer weariness: her
skin was sallow, and there were little wrinkles on her cheeks, the marks
of the sad years of sorrow and disillusion. She looked old and ill.--And,
indeed, she was so tired! If she had dared she would have postponed their
journey. But she did not like to spoil her brother's pleasure: she tried to
persuade herself that she was only tired, and that the country would make
her well again. She was fearful lest she should fall ill on the way.--She
felt that he was looking at her: and she suddenly flung off the drowsiness
that was creeping over her, and opened her eyes,--eyes still young,
still clear and limpid, across which, from time to time, there passed an
involuntary look of pain, like shadows on a little lake. He asked her in
a whisper, anxiously and tenderly, how she was: she pressed his hand and
assured him that she was well. A word of love revived her.
Then, when the rosy dawn tinged the pale country between Dôle and
Pontarlier, the sight of the waking fields, and the gay sun rising from the
earth,--the sun, who, like themselves, had escaped from the prison of the
streets, and the grimy houses, and the thick smoke of Paris:--the waving
fields wrapped in the light mist of their milk-white breath: the little
things they passed: a little village belfry, a glimpse of a winding stream,
a blue line of hills hovering on the far horizon: the tinkling, moving
sound of the angelus borne from afar on the wind, when the train stopped
in the midst of the sleeping country: the solemn shapes of a herd of cows
browsing on a slope above the railway,--all absorbed Antoinette and her
brother, to whom it all seemed new. They were like parched trees, drinking
in ecstasy the rain from heaven.
Then, in the early morning, they reached the Swiss Customs, where they had
to get out. A little station in a bare country-side. They were almost worn
out by their sleepless night, and the cold, dewy freshness of the dawn made
them shiver: but it was calm, and the sky was clear, and the fragrant air
of the fields was about them, upon their lips, on their tongues, down their
throats, flowing down into their lungs like a cooling stream: and they
stood by a table, out in the open air, and drank comforting hot coffee with
creamy milk, heavenly sweet, and tasting of the grass and the flowers of
the fields.
They climbed up into the Swiss carriage, the novel arrangement of which
gave them a childish pleasure. But Antoinette was so tired! She could not
understand why she should feel so ill. Why was everything about her so
beautiful, so absorbing, when she could take so little pleasure in it?
Was it not all just what she had been dreaming for years: a journey with
her brother, with all anxiety for the future left behind, dear mother
Nature?... What was the matter with her? She was annoyed with herself, and
forced herself to admire and share her brother's naïve delight.
They stopped at Thun. They were to go up into the mountains next day. But
that night in the hotel, Antoinette was stricken with a fever, and violent
illness, and pains in her head. Olivier was at his wits' ends, and spent a
night of frightful anxiety. He had to send for a doctor in the morning--(an
unforeseen expense which was no light tax on their slender purse).--The
doctor could find nothing immediately serious, but said that she was run
down, and that her constitution was undermined. There could be no question
of their going on. The doctor forbade Antoinette to get up all day; and
he thought they would perhaps have to stay at Thun for some time. They
were very downcast--though very glad to have got off so cheaply after all
their fears. But it was hard to have come so far to be shut up in a nasty
hotel-room into which the sunlight poured so that it was like a hothouse.
Antoinette insisted on her brother going out. He went a few yards from the
hotel, saw the beautiful green Aar, and, hovering in the distance against
the sky, a white peak: he bubbled over with joy: but he could not keep it
to himself. He rushed back to his sister's room, and told her excitedly
what he had just seen: and when she expressed her surprise at his coming
back so soon and made him promise to go out again, he said, as once before
he had said when he came back from the _Châtelet_ concert:
"No, no. It is too beautiful: it hurts me to see it without you."
That feeling was not new to them: they knew that they had to be together to
enjoy anything wholly. But they always loved to hear it said. His tender
words did Antoinette more good than any medicine. She smiled now,
languidly, happily.--And after a good night, although it was not very wise
to go on so soon, she decided that they would get away very early, without
telling the doctor, who would only want to keep them back. The pure air and
the joy of seeing so much beauty made her stronger, so that she did not
have to pay for her rashness, and without any further misadventure they
reached the end of their journey--a mountain village, high above the lake,
some distance away from Spiez.
There they spent three or four weeks in a little hotel. Antoinette did not
have any further attack of fever, but she never got really well. She still
felt a heaviness, an intolerable weight, in her head, and she was always
unwell. Olivier often asked her about her health: he longed to see her
grow less pale: but he was intoxicated by the beauty of the country, and
instinctively avoided all melancholy thoughts: when she assured him that
she was really quite well, he tried to believe that it was true,--although
he knew perfectly well that it was not so. And she enjoyed to the full her
brother's exuberance and the fine air, and the all-pervading peace. How
good it was to rest at last after those terrible years!
Olivier tried to induce her to go for walks with him: she would have been
happy to join him: but on several occasions when she had bravely set out,
she had been forced to stop after twenty minutes, to regain her breath, and
rest her heart. So he went out alone,--climbing the safe peaks, though they
filled her with terror until he came home again. Or they would go for
little walks together: she would lean on his arm, and walk slowly, and they
would talk, and he would suddenly begin to chatter, and laugh, and discuss
his plans, and make quips and jests. From the road on the hillside above
the valley they would watch the white clouds reflected in the still lake,
and the boats moving like insects on the surface of a pond: they would
drink in the warm air and the music of the goat-bells, borne on the gusty
wind, and the smell of the new-mown hay and the warm resin. And they would
dream together of the past and the future, and the present which seemed to
them to be the most unreal and intoxicating of dreams. Sometimes Antoinette
would be infected with her brother's jolly childlike humor: they would
chase each other and roll about on the grass. And one day he saw her
laughing as she used to do when they were children, madly, carelessly,
laughter clear and bubbling as a spring, such as he had not heard for many
years.
But, most often, Olivier could not resist the pleasure of going for long
walks. He would be sorry for it at once, and later he had bitterly to
regret that he had not made enough of those dear days with his sister. Even
in the hotel he would often leave her alone. There was a party of young
men and girls in the hotel, from whom they had at first kept apart. Then
Olivier was attracted by them, and shyly joined their circle. He had been
starved of friendship: outside his sister he had hardly known any one but
his rough schoolfellows and their girls, who repelled him. It was very
sweet to him to be among well-mannered, charming, merry boys and girls of
his own age. Although he was very shy, he was naïvely curious, sentimental,
and affectionate, and easily bewitched by the little burning, flickering
fires that shine in a woman's eyes. And in spite of his shyness, women
liked him. His frank longing to love and be loved gave him, unknown to
himself, a youthful charm, and made him find words and gestures and
affectionate little attentions, the very awkwardness of which made them all
the more attractive. He had the gift of sympathy. Although in his isolation
his intelligence had taken on an ironical tinge which made him see the
vulgarity of people and their defects which he often loathed,--yet in
their presence he saw nothing but their eyes, in which he would see the
expression of a living being, who one day would die, a being who had only
one life, even as he, and, even as he, would lose it all too soon, then of
that creature he would involuntarily be fond: in that moment nothing in the
world could make him do anything to hurt: whether he liked it or not, he
had to be kind and amiable. He was weak: and, in being so, he was sure to
please the "world" which pardons every vice, and even every virtue,--except
one: force, on which all the rest depend.
Antoinette did not join them. Her health, her tiredness, her apparently
causeless moral collapse, paralyzed her. Through the long years of anxiety
and ceaseless toil, exhausting body and soul, the positions of the brother
and sister had been inverted: now it was she who felt far removed from the
world, far from everything and everybody, so far!... She could not break
down the wall between them: all their chatter, their noise, their laughter,
their little interests, bored her, wearied her, almost hurt her. It hurt
her to be so: she would have loved to go with the other girls, to share
their interests and laugh with them ... But she could not!... Her heart
ached; she seemed to be as one dead. In the evening she would shut herself
up in her room; and often she would not even turn on the light: she would
sit there in the dark, while downstairs Olivier would be amusing himself,
surrendering to the current of one of those romantic little love affairs to
which he so easily succumbed. She would only shake off her torpor when she
heard him coming upstairs, laughing and talking to the girls, hanging about
saying good-night outside their rooms, being unable to tear himself away.
Then in the darkness Antoinette would smile, and get up to turn on the
light. The sound of her brother's laughter revived her.
Autumn was setting in. The sun was dying down. Nature was a-weary. Under
the thick mists and clouds of October the colors were fading fast; snow
fell on the mountains: mists descended upon the plains. The visitors went
away one by one, and then several at a time. And it was sad to see even the
friends of a little while going away, but sadder still to see the passing
of the summer, the time of peace and happiness which had been an oasis in
their lives. They went for a last walk together, on a cloudy autumn day,
through the forest on the mountain-side. They did not speak: they mused
sadly, as they walked along with the collars of their cloaks turned up,
clinging close together: their hands were locked. There was silence in the
wet woods, and in silence the trees wept. From the depths there came the
sweet plaintive cry of a solitary bird who felt the coming of winter.
Through the mist came the clear tinkling of the goat-bells, far away, so
faint they could hardly hear it, so faint it was as though it came up from
their inmost hearts....
They returned to Paris. They were both sad. Antoinette was no better.
* * * * *
They had to set to work to prepare Olivier's wardrobe for the _École_.
Antoinette spent the last of her little store of money, and even sold some
of her jewels. What did it matter? He would repay her later on. And then,
she would need so little when he was gone from her!... She tried not to
think of what it would be like when he was gone: she worked away at his
clothes, and put into the work all the tenderness she had for her brother,
and she had a presentiment that it would be the last thing she would do for
him.
During the last days together they were never apart: they were fearful of
wasting the tiniest moment. On their last evening they sat up very late by
the fireside, Antoinette occupying the only armchair, and Olivier a stool
at her feet, and she made a fuss of him like the spoiled child he was. He
was dreading--though he was curious about it, too--the new life upon which
he was to enter. Antoinette thought only that it was the end of their dear
life together, and wondered fearfully what would become of her. As though
he were trying to make the thought even more bitter for her, he was more
tender than ever he had been, with the innocent instinctive coquetry of
those who always wait until they are just going to show themselves at their
best and most charming. He went to the piano and played her their favorite
passages from Mozart and Gluck--those visions of tender happiness and
serene sorrow with which so much of their past life was bound up.
When the time came for them to part, Antoinette accompanied Olivier as far
as the gates of the _École_. Then she returned. Once more she was alone.
But now it was not, as when she had gone away to Germany, a separation
which she could bring to an end at will when she could bear it no longer
How it was she who remained behind, he who went away: it was he who had
gone away, for a long, long time--perhaps for life. And yet her love for
him was so maternal that at first she thought less of herself than of him:
she thought only of how different the first few days would be for him, of
the strict rules of the _École_, and was preoccupied with those harmless
little worries which so easily assume alarming proportions in the minds of
people who live alone and are always tormenting themselves about those whom
they love. Her anxiety did at least have this advantage, that it distracted
her thoughts from her own loneliness. She had already begun to think of the
half-hour when she would be able to see him next day in the visitors' room.
She arrived a quarter of an hour too soon. He was very nice to her, but he
was altogether taken up with all the new things he had seen. And during the
following days, when she went to see him, full of the most tender anxiety,
the contrast between what those meetings meant for her and what they meant
for him was more and more marked. For her they were her whole life. For
Olivier--no doubt he loved Antoinette dearly: but it was too much to expect
him to think only of her, as she thought of him. Once or twice he came down
late to the visitors' room. One day, when she asked him if he were at all
unhappy, he said that he was nothing of the kind. Such little things as
that stabbed Antoinette to the heart.--She was angry with herself for being
so sensitive, and accused herself of selfishness: she knew quite well that
it would be absurd, even wrong and unnatural, for him to be unable to do
without her, and for her to be unable to do without him, and to have no
other object in life. Yes: she knew all that. But what was the good of her
knowing it? She could not help it if for the past ten years her whole life
had been bound up in that one idea: her brother. Now that the one interest
of her life had been torn from her, she had nothing left.
She tried bravely to keep herself occupied and to take up her music and
read her beloved books ... But alas! how empty were Shakespeare and
Beethoven without Olivier!
...--Yes: no doubt they were beautiful.... But Olivier was not there. What
is the good of beautiful things if the eyes of the beloved are not there to
see them? What is the use of beauty, what is the use even of joy, if they
cannot be won through the heart of the beloved?
If she had been stronger she would have tried to build up her life anew,
and give it another object. But she was at the end of her tether. Now that
there was nothing to force her to hold on, at all costs, the effort of will
to which she had subjected herself snapped: she collapsed. The illness,
which had been gaining grip on her for over a year, during which she had
fought it down by force of will, was now left to take its course.
She spent her evenings alone in her room, by the spent fire, a prey to her
thoughts: she had neither the courage to light the fire again, nor the
strength to go to bed: she would sit there far into the night, dozing,
dreaming, shivering. She would live through her life again, and summon up
the beloved dead and her lost illusions: and she would be terribly sad at
the thought of her lost youth, without love or hope of love. A dumb, aching
sorrow, obscure, unconfessed ... A child laughed in the street: its little
feet pattered up to the floor below ... Its little feet trampled on her
heart ... She would be beset with doubts and evil thoughts; her soul in
its weakness would be contaminated by the soul of that city of selfish
pleasure.--She would fight down her regrets, and burn with shame at certain
longings which she thought, evil and wicked: she could not understand what
it was that hurt her so, and attributed it to her evil instincts. Poor
little Ophelia, devoured by a mysterious evil, she felt with horror dark
and uneasy desires mounting from the depths of her being, from the very pit
of life. She could not work, and she had given up most of her pupils: she,
who was so plucky, and had always risen so early, now lay in bed sometimes
until the afternoon: she had no more reason for getting up than for going
to bed: she ate little or nothing. Only on her brother's holidays--Thursday
afternoons and Sundays--she would make an effort to be her old self with
him.
He saw nothing. He was too much taken up with his new life to notice his
sister much. He was at that period of boyhood when it was difficult for
him to be communicative, and he always seemed to be indifferent to things
outside himself which would only be his concern in later days.--People of
riper years sometimes seem to be more open to impressions, and to take a
simpler delight in life and Nature, than young people between twenty and
thirty. And so it is often said that young people are not so young in
heart as they were, and have lost all sense of enjoyment. That is often a
mistaken idea. It is not because they have no sense of enjoyment that they
seem less sensitive. It is because their whole being is often absorbed by
passion, ambition, desire, some fixed idea. When the body is worn and has
no more to expect from life, then the emotions become disinterested and
fall into their place; and then once more the source of childish tears is
reopened.--Olivier was preoccupied with a thousand little things, the most
outstanding of which was an absurd little passion,--(he was always a victim
to them),--which so obsessed him as to make him blind and indifferent
to everything else.--Antoinette did not know what was happening to her
brother: she only saw that he was drawing away from her. That was not
altogether Olivier's fault. Sometimes when he came he would be glad to see
her and start talking. He would come in. Then all of a sudden he would dry
up. Her affectionate anxiety, the eagerness with which she clung to him,
and drank in his words, and overwhelmed him with little attentions,--all
her excess of tenderness and querulous devotion would deprive him utterly
of any desire to be warm and open with her. He might have seen that
Antoinette was not in a normal condition. Nothing could be farther from her
usual tact and discretion. But he never gave a thought to it. He would
reply to her questions with a curt "Yes" or "No." He would grow more stiff
and surly, the more she tried to win him over: sometimes even he would hurt
her by some brusque reply. Then she would be crushed and silent. Their day
together would slip by, wasted. But hardly had he set foot outside the
house on his way back to the _École_ than he would be heartily ashamed of
his treatment of her. He would torture himself all night as he lay awake
thinking of the pain he had caused her. Sometimes even, as soon as he
reached the _École_, he would write an effusive letter to his sister.--But
next morning, when he read it through, he would tear it up. And Antoinette
would know nothing at all about it. She would go on thinking that he had
ceased to love her.
* * * * *
She had--if not one last joy--one last flutter of tenderness and youth,
when her heart beat strongly once more; one last awakening of love in her,
and hope of happiness, hope of life. It was quite ridiculous, so utterly
unlike her tranquil nature! It could never have been but for her abnormal
condition, the state of fear and over-excitement which was the precursor of
illness.
She went to a concert at the _Châtelet_ with her brother. As he had just
been appointed musical critic to a little Review, they were in better
places than those they occupied in old days, but the people among whom they
sat were much more apathetic. They had stalls near the stage. Christophe
Krafft was to play. Neither of them had ever heard of the German musician.
When she saw him come on, the blood rushed to her heart. Although her tired
eyes could only see him through a mist, she had no doubt when he appeared:
he was the unknown young man of her unhappy days in Germany. She had
never mentioned him to her brother: and she had hardly even admitted his
existence to her thoughts: she had been entirely absorbed by the anxieties
of her life since then. Besides, she was a reasonable little Frenchwoman,
and refused to admit the existence of an obscure feeling which she could
not trace to its source, while it seemed to lead nowhere. There was in her
a whole region of the soul, of unsuspected depths, wherein there slept many
other feelings which she would have been ashamed to behold: she knew that
they were there: but she looked away from them in a sort of religious
terror of that Being within herself which lies beyond the mind's control.
When she had recovered a little, she borrowed her brothers glasses to look
at Christophe: she saw him in profile at the conductor's stand, and she
recognized his expression of forceful concentration. He was wearing a
shabby old coat which fitted him very badly.--Antoinette sat in silent
agony through the vagaries of that lamentable concert when Christophe
joined issue with the unconcealed hostility of his audience, who were
at the time ill-disposed towards German artists, and actively bored
by his music. And when he appeared, after a symphony which had seemed
unconscionably long, to play some piano music, he was received with
cat-calls which left no room for doubt as to their displeasure at having to
put up with him again. However, he began to play in the face of the bored
resignation of his audience: but the uncomplimentary remarks exchanged in a
loud voice by two men in the gallery went on, to the great delight of the
rest of the audience. Then he broke off: and in a childish fit of temper
he played _Malbrouck s'en va t'en guerre_ with one finger, got up from the
piano, faced the audience, and said:
"That is all you are fit for."
The audience were for a moment so taken aback that they did not quite take
in what the musician meant. Then there was an outburst of angry protests.
Followed a terrible uproar. They hissed and shouted:
"Apologize! Make him apologize!"
They were all red in the face with anger, and they blew out their
fury--tried to persuade themselves that they were really enraged: as
perhaps they were, but the chief thing was that they were delighted to
have a chance of making a row, and letting themselves go: they were like
schoolboys after a few hours in school.
Antoinette could not move: she was petrified: she sat still tugging at
one of her gloves. Ever since the last bars of the symphony she had had a
growing presentiment of what would happen: she felt the blind hostility
of the audience, felt it growing: she read Christophe's thoughts, and she
was sure he would not go through to the end without an explosion: she sat
waiting for the explosion while agony grew in her: she stretched every
nerve to try to prevent it; and when at last it came, it was so exactly
what she had foreseen that she was overwhelmed by it, as by some fatal
catastrophe against which there was nothing to be done. And as she gazed
at Christophe, who was staring insolently at the howling audience, their
eyes met. Christophe's eyes recognized her, greeted her, for the space of
perhaps a second: but he was in such a state of excitement that his mind
did not recognize her (he had not thought of her for long enough). He
disappeared while the audience yelled and hissed.
She longed to cry out: to say or do something: but she was bound hand and
foot, and could not stir; it was like a nightmare. It was some comfort to
her to hear her brother at her side, and to know that, without having any
idea of what was happening to her, he had shared her agony and indignation.
Olivier was a thorough musician, and he had an independence of taste
which nothing could encroach upon: when he liked a thing, he would have
maintained his liking in the face of the whole world. With the very first
bars of the symphony, he had felt that he was in the presence of something
big, something the like of which he had never in his life come across. He
went on muttering to himself with heartfelt enthusiasm:
"That's fine! That's beautiful! Beautiful!" while his sister instinctively
pressed close to him, gratefully. After the symphony he applauded loudly by
way of protest against the ironic indifference of the rest of the audience.
When it came to the great fiasco, he was beside himself: he stood up,
shouted that Christophe was right, abused the booers, and offered to fight
them: it was impossible to recognize the timid Olivier. His voice was
drowned in the uproar: he was told to shut up: he was called a "snotty
little kid," and told to go to bed. Antoinette saw the futility of standing
up to them, and took his arm and said:
"Stop! Stop! I implore you! Stop!"
He sat down in despair, and went on muttering:
"It's shameful! Shameful! The swine!..."
She said nothing and bore her suffering in silence: he thought she was
insensible to the music, and said:
"Antoinette, don't _you_ think it beautiful?"
She nodded. She was frozen, and could not recover herself. But when the
orchestra began another piece, she suddenly got up, and whispered to her
brother in a tone of savage hatred:
"Come, come! I can't bear the sight of these people!"
They hurried out. They walked along arm-in-arm, and Olivier went on talking
excitedly. Antoinette said nothing.
* * * * *
All that day and the days following she sat alone in her room, and a
feeling crept over her which at first she refused to face: but then it went
on and took possession of her thoughts, like the furious throbbing of the
blood in her aching temples.
Some time afterwards Olivier brought her Christophe's collection of songs,
which he had just found at a publisher's. She opened it at random. On
the first page on which her eyes fell she read in front of a song this
dedication in German:
"_To my poor dear little victim_," together with a date.
She knew the date well.--She was so upset that she could read no farther.
She put the book down and asked her brother to play, and went and shut
herself up in her room. Olivier, full of his delight in the new music,
began to play without remarking his sister's emotion. Antoinette sat in the
adjoining room, striving to repress the beating of her heart. Suddenly she
got up and looked through a cupboard for a little account-book in which was
written the date of her departure from Germany, and the mysterious date.
She knew it already: yes, it was the evening of the performance at the
theater to which she had been with Christophe. She lay down on her bed and
closed her eyes, blushing, with her hands folded on her breast, while she
listened to the dear music. Her heart was overflowing with gratitude ...
Ah! Why did her head hurt her so?
When Olivier saw that his sister had not come back, he went into her room
after he had done playing, and found her lying there. He asked her if she
were ill. She said she was rather tired, and got up to keep him company.
They talked: but she did not answer his questions at once: her thoughts
seemed to be far away: she smiled, and blushed, and said, by way of excuse,
that her headache was making her stupid. At last Olivier went away. She had
asked him to leave the book of songs. She sat up late reading them at the
piano, without playing, just lightly touching a note here and there, for
fear of annoying her neighbors. But for the most part she did not even
read: she sat dreaming: she was carried away by a feeling of tenderness and
gratitude towards the man who had pitied her, and had read her mind and
soul with the mysterious intuition of true kindness. She could not fix her
thoughts. She was happy and sad--sad!... Ah! How her head ached!
She spent the night in sweet and painful dreams, a crushing melancholy.
During the day she tried to go out for a little to shake off her
drowsiness. Although her head was still aching, to give herself something
to do, she went and made a few purchases at a great shop. She hardly gave
a thought to what she was doing. Her thoughts were always with Christophe,
though she did not admit it to herself. As she came out, worried and
mortally sad, through the crowd of people she saw Christophe go by on
the other side of the street. He saw her, too, at the same moment. At
once,--(suddenly and without thinking), she held out her hands towards
him. Christophe stopped: this time he recognized her. He sprang forward
to cross the road to Antoinette: and Antoinette tried to go to meet him.
But the insensate current of the passing throng carried her along like
a windlestraw, while the horse of an omnibus, falling on the slippery
asphalt, made a sort of dyke in front of Christophe, by which the opposing
streams of carriages were dammed, so that for a few moments there was an
impassable barrier. Christophe tried to force his way through in spite of
everything: but he was trapped in the middle of the traffic, and could not
move either way. When at last he did extricate himself and managed to reach
the place where he had seen Antoinette, she was gone: she had struggled
vainly against the human torrent that carried her along: then she yielded
to it--gave up the struggle. She felt that she was dogged by some fatality
which forbade the possibility of her ever meeting Christophe: against Fate
there was nothing to be done. And when she did succeed in escaping from the
crowd, she made no attempt to go back: she was suddenly ashamed: what could
she dare to say to him? What had she done? What must he have thought of
her? She fled away home.
She did not regain assurance until she reached her room. Then she sat by
the table in the dark, and had not even the strength to take off her hat or
her gloves. She was miserable at having been unable to speak to him: and at
the same time there glowed a new light in her heart: she was unconscious of
the darkness, and unconscious of the illness that was upon her. She went on
and on turning over and over every detail of the scene in the street: and
she changed it about and imagined what would have happened if certain
things had turned out differently. She saw herself holding out her arms to
Christophe, and Christophe's expression of joy as he recognized her, and
she laughed and blushed. She blushed: and then in the darkness of her room,
where there was no one to see her, and she could hardly see herself, once
more she held out her arms to him. Her need was too strong for her: she
felt that she was losing ground, and instinctively she sought to clutch at
the strong vivid life that passed so near her, and gazed so kindly at her.
Her heart was full of tenderness and anguish, and through the night she
cried:
"Help me! Save me!"
All in a fever she got up and lit the lamp, and took pen and paper. She
wrote to Christophe. Her illness was full upon her, or she would never even
have thought of writing to him, so proud she was and timid. She did not
know what she wrote. She was no longer mistress of herself. She called to
him, and told him that she loved him ... In the middle of her letter she
stopped, appalled. She tried to write it all over again: but her impulse
was gone: her mind was a blank, and her head was aching: she had a horrible
difficulty in finding words: she was utterly worn out. She was ashamed ...
What was the good of it all? She knew perfectly well that she was trying to
trick herself, and that she would never send the letter ... Even if she had
wished to do so, how could she? She did not know Christophe's address ...
Poor Christophe! And what could he do for her? Even if he knew all and were
kind to her, what could he do?... It was too late! No, no: it was all in
vain, the last dying struggle of a bird, blindly, desperately beating its
wings. She must be resigned to it....
So for a long time she sat there by the table, lost in thought, unable
to move hand or foot. It was past midnight when she struggled to her
feet--bravely. Mechanically she placed the loose sheets of her letter in
one of her few books, for she had the strength neither to put them in order
nor to tear them up. Then she went to bed, shivering and shaking with
fever. The key to the riddle lay near at hand: she felt that the will of
God was to be fulfilled.--And a great peace came upon her.
On Sunday morning when Olivier came he found Antoinette in bed, delirious.
A doctor was called in. He said it was acute consumption.
Antoinette had known how serious her condition was: she had discovered the
cause of the moral turmoil in herself which had so alarmed her. She had
been dreadfully ashamed, and it was some consolation to her to think that
not she herself but her illness was the cause of it. She had managed to
take a few precautions and to burn her papers and to write a letter to
Madame Nathan: she appealed to her kindness to look after her brother
during the first few weeks after her "death"--(she dared not write the
word)....
The doctor could do nothing: the disease was too far gone, and Antoinette's
constitution had been wrecked by the years of hardship and unceasing toil.
Antoinette was quite calm. Since she had known that there was no hope her
agony and torment had left her. She lay turning over in her mind all the
trials and tribulations through which she had passed: she saw that her work
was done and her dear Olivier saved: and she was filled with unutterable
joy. She said to herself:
"I have achieved that."
And then she turned in shame from her pride and said:
"I could have done nothing alone. God has given me His aid."
And she thanked God that He had granted her life until she had accomplished
her task. There was a catch at her heart as she thought that now she had to
lay down her life: but she dared not complain: that would have been to feel
ingratitude towards God, who might have called her away sooner. And what
would have happened if she had passed away a year sooner?--She sighed, and
humbled herself in gratitude.
In spite of her weakness and oppression she did not complain,--except when
she was sleeping heavily, when every now and then she moaned like a little
child. She watched things and people with a calm smile of resignation. It
was always a joy to her to see Olivier. She would move her lips to call
him, though she made no sound: she would want to hold his hand in hers: she
would bid him lay his head on the pillow near hers, and then, gazing into
his eyes, she would go on looking at him in silence. At last she would
raise herself up and hold his face in her hands and say:
"Ah! Olivier!... Olivier!..."
She took the medal that she wore round her neck, and hung it on her
brother's. She commended her beloved Olivier to the care of her confessor,
her doctor, everybody. It seemed as though she was to live henceforth in
him, that, on the point of death, she was taking refuge in his life, as
upon some island in uncharted seas. Sometimes she seemed to be uplifted by
a mystic exaltation of tenderness and faith, and she forgot her illness,
and sadness changed to joy in her,--a joy divine indeed that shone upon her
lips and in her eyes. Over and over again she said:
"I am happy...."
Her senses grew dim. In her last moments of consciousness her lips moved
and it seemed that she was repeating something to herself. Olivier went to
her bedside and bent down over her. She recognized him once more and smiled
feebly up at him: her lips went on moving and her eyes were filled with
tears. They could not make out what she was trying to say.... But faintly
Olivier heard her breathe the words of the dear old song they used to love
so much, the song she was always singing:
"_I will come again, my sweet and bonny, I will come again._"
Then she relapsed into unconsciousness. So she passed away.
* * * * *
Unconsciously she had aroused a profound sympathy in many people whom she
did not even know: in the house in which she lived she did not even know
the names of the other tenants. Olivier received expressions of sympathy
from people who were strangers to him. Antoinette was not taken to her
grave unattended as her mother had been. Her body was followed to the
cemetery by friends and schoolfellows of her brother, and members of the
families whose children she had taught, and people whom she had met without
saying a word of her own life or hearing a word from them, though they
admired her secretly, knowing her devotion, and many of the poor, and the
housekeeper who had helped her, and even many of the small tradesmen of the
neighborhood. Madame Nathan had taken Olivier under her wing on the day of
his sister's death, and she had carried him off in spite of himself, and
done her best to turn his thoughts away from his grief.
If it had come later in his life he could never have borne up against such
a catastrophe,--but now it was impossible for him to succumb absolutely to
his despair. He had just begun a new life; he was living in a community,
and had to live the common life whatever he might be feeling. The full busy
life of the _École_, the intellectual pressure, the examinations, the
struggle for life, all kept him from withdrawing into himself: he could not
be alone. He suffered, but it proved his salvation. A year earlier, or a
few years earlier, he must have succumbed.
And yet he did as far as possible retire into isolation in the memory of
his sister. It was a great sorrow to him that he could not keep the rooms
where they had lived together: but he had no money. He hoped that the
people who seemed to be interested in him would understand his distress at
not being able to keep the things that had been hers. But nobody seemed
to understand. He borrowed some money and made a little more by private
tuition and took an attic in which he stored all that he could preserve
of his sister's furniture: her bed, her table, and her armchair. He made
it the sanctuary of her memory. He took refuge there whenever he was
depressed. His friends thought he was carrying on an intrigue. He would
stay there for hours dreaming of her with his face buried in his hands:
unhappily he had no portrait of her except a little photograph, taken when
she was a child, of the two of them together. He would talk to her and
weep ... Where was she? Ah! if she had been at the other end of the world,
wherever she might be and however inaccessible the spot,--with what great
joy and invincible ardor he would have rushed forth in search of her,
though a thousand sufferings lay in wait for him, though he had to go
barefoot, though he had to wander for hundreds of years, if only it might
be that every step would bring him nearer to her!... Yes, even though there
were only one chance in a thousand of his ever finding her ... But there
was nothing ... Nowhere to go ... No way of ever finding her again ... How
utterly lonely he was now! Now that she was no longer there to love and
counsel and console him, inexperienced and childish as he was, he was
flung into the waters of life, to sink or swim!... He who has once had the
happiness of perfect intimacy and boundless friendship with another human
being has known the divinest of all joys,--a joy that will make him
miserable for the remainder of his life....
_Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria_....
For a weak and tender soul it is the greatest of misfortunes ever to have
known the greatest happiness.
But though it is sad indeed to lose the beloved at the beginning of life,
it is even more terrible later on when the springs of life are running dry.
Olivier was young: and, in spite of his inborn pessimism, in spite of his
misfortune, he had to live his life. As often seems to happen after the
loss of those dear to us, it was as though when Antoinette passed away she
had breathed part of her soul into her brother's life. And he believed it
was so. Though he had not such faith as hers, yet he did arrive at a vague
conviction that his sister was not dead, but lived on in him, as she had
promised. There is a Breton superstition that those who die young are not
dead, but stay and hover over the places where they lived until they have
fulfilled the normal span of their existence.--So Antoinette lived out her
life in Olivier.
He read through the papers he had found in her room. Unhappily she had
burned most of them. Besides, she was not the sort of woman to keep notes
and tallies of her inner life. She was too modest to uncloak her inmost
thoughts in morbid babbling indiscretion. She only kept a little notebook
which was almost unintelligible to anybody else--a bare record in which she
had written down without remark certain dates, and certain small events in
her daily life, which had given her joys and emotions, which she had no
need to write down in detail to keep alive. Almost all these dates were
connected with some event in Olivier's life. She had kept every letter
he had ever written to her, without exception.--Alas! He had not been so
careful: he had lost almost all the letters she had written to him. What
need had he of letters? He thought he would have his sister always with
him: that dear fount of tenderness seemed inexhaustible: he thought that he
would always be able to quench his thirst of lips and heart at it: he had
most prodigally squandered the love he had received, and now he was eager
to gather up the smallest drops.... What was his emotion when, as he
skimmed through one of Antoinette's books, he found these words written in
pencil on a scrap of paper:
"Olivier, my dear Olivier!..."
He almost swooned. He sobbed and kissed the invisible lips that so spoke
to him from the grave.--Thereafter he took down all her books and hunted
through them page by page to see if she had not left some other words of
him. He found the fragment of the letter to Christophe, and discovered the
unspoken romance which had sprung to life in her: so for the first time he
happed upon her emotional life, that he had never known in her and never
tried to know: he lived through the last passionate days, when, deserted
by himself, she had held out her arms to the unknown friend. She had
never told him that she had seen Christophe before. Certain words in her
letter revealed the fact that they had met in Germany. He understood that
Christophe had been kind to Antoinette, in circumstances the details of
which were unknown to him, and that Antoinette's feeling for the musician
dated from that day, though she had kept her secret to the end.
Christophe, whom he loved already for the beauty of his art, now became
unutterably dear to him. She had loved him: it seemed to Olivier that it
was she whom he loved in Christophe. He moved heaven and earth to meet him.
It was not an easy matter to trace him. After his rebuff Christophe had
been lost in the wilderness of Paris: he had shunned all society and no
one gave a thought to him.--After many months it chanced that Olivier met
Christophe in the street: he was pale and sunken from the illness from
which he had only just recovered. But Olivier had not the courage to stop
him. He followed him home at a distance. He wanted to write to him, but
could not screw himself up to it. What was there to say? Olivier was not
alone: Antoinette was with him: her love, her modesty had become a part of
him: the thought that his sister had loved Christophe made him as bashful
in Christophe's presence as though he had been Antoinette. And yet how he
longed to talk to him of her!--But he could not. Her secret was a seal upon
his lips.
He tried to meet Christophe again. He went everywhere where he thought
Christophe might be. He was longing to shake hands with him. And when he
saw him he tried to hide so that Christophe should not see him.
* * * * *
At last Christophe saw him at the house of some mutual friends where they
both happened to be one evening. Olivier stood far away from him and said
nothing: but he watched him. And no doubt the spirit of Antoinette was
hovering near Olivier that night: for Christophe saw her in Olivier's eyes:
and it was her image, so suddenly evoked, that made him cross the room and
go towards the unknown messenger, who, like a young Hermes, brought him the
melancholy greeting of the blessed dead.