impossible not to be seen in it if they had wished. It is useless to say
that their entry passed unnoticed. Christophe made the girl sit at the
front, while he stayed a little behind so as not to embarrass her. She sat
stiffly upright, not daring to turn her head: she was horribly shy: she
would have given much not to have accepted. To give her time to recover her
composure and not knowing what to talk to her about, Christophe pretended
to look the other way. Whichever way he looked it was easily seen that his
presence with an unknown companion among the brilliant people of the boxes
was exciting much curiosity and comment. He darted furious glances at
those who were looking at him: he was angry that people should go on being
interested in him when he took no interest in them. It did not occur to him
that their indiscreet curiosity was more busied with his companion than
with himself and that there was more offense in it. By way of showing his
utter indifference to anything they might say or think he leaned towards
the girl and began to talk to her. She looked so scared by his talking and
so unhappy at having to reply, and it seemed to be so difficult for her to
wrench out a "Yes" or a "No" without ever daring to look at him, that he
took pity on her shyness, and drew back to a corner. Fortunately the play
began.
Christophe had not seen the play bill and he hardly cared to know what part
the great actress was playing: he was one of those simple people who go
to the theater to see the play and not the actors. He had never wondered
whether the famous player would be Ophelia or the Queen; if he had wondered
about it he would have inclined towards the Queen, bearing in naiad the
ages of the two ladies. But it could never have occurred to him that she
would play Hamlet. When he saw Hamlet, and heard his mechanical dolly
squeak, it was some time before he could believe it; he wondered if he were
not dreaming.
"But who? Who is it?" he asked half aloud. "It can't be...."
And when he had to accept that it _was_ Hamlet, he rapped out an oath,
which fortunately his companion did not hear, because she was a foreigner,
though it was heard perfectly in the next box: for he was at once
indignantly bidden to be silent. He withdrew to the back of the box to
swear his fill. He could not recover his temper. If he had been just he
would have given homage to the elegance of the travesty and the _tour de
force_ of nature and art, which made it possible for a woman of sixty to
appear in a youth's costume and even to seem beautiful in it--at least to
kindly eyes. But he hated all _tours de force_, everything which violates
and falsifies Nature, He liked a woman to be a woman, and a man a man. (It
does not often happen nowadays.) The childish and absurd travesty of the
Leonora of Beethoven did not please him much. But this travesty of Hamlet
was beyond all dreams of the preposterous. To make of the robust Dane,
fat and pale, choleric, cunning, intellectual, subject to hallucinations,
a woman,--not even a woman: for a woman playing the man can only be
a monster,--to make of Hamlet a eunuch or an androgynous betwixt and
between,--the times must be flabby indeed, criticism must be idiotic, to
let such disgusting folly be tolerated for a single day and not hissed
off the boards! The actress's voice infuriated Christophe. She had that
singing, labored diction, that monotonous melopoeia which seems to have
been dear to the least poetic people in the world since the days of the
_Champmeslé_ and the _Hôtel de Bourgogne_. Christophe was so exasperated by
it that he wanted to go away. He turned his back on the scene, and he made
hideous faces against the wall of the box like a child put in the corner.
Fortunately his companion dared not look at him: for if she had seen him
she would have thought him mad.
Suddenly Christophe stopped making faces. He stopped still and made no
sound. A lovely musical voice, a young woman's voice, grave and sweet, was
heard. Christophe pricked his ears. As she went on with her words he turned
again, keenly interested to see what bird could warble so. He saw Ophelia.
In truth she was nothing like the Ophelia of Shakespeare. She was a
beautiful girl, tall, big and fine like a young fresh statue--Electra or
Cassandra. She was brimming with life. In spite of her efforts to keep
within her part, the force of youth and joy that was in her shone forth
from her body, her movements, her gestures, her brown eyes that laughed in
spite of herself. Such is the power of physical beauty that Christophe who
a moment before had been merciless in judging the interpretation of Hamlet
never for a moment thought of regretting that Ophelia was hardly at all
like his image of her: and he sacrificed his image to the present vision of
her remorselessly. With the unconscious faithlessness of people of passion
he even found a profound truth in the youthful ardor brimming in the depths
of the chaste and unhappy virgin heart. But the magic of the voice, pure,
warm, and velvety, worked the spell: every word sounded like a lovely
chord: about every syllable there hovered like the scent of thyme or wild
mint the laughing accent of the Midi with its full rhythm. Strange was this
vision of an Ophelia from Arles! In it was something of that golden sun and
its wild northwest wind, its _mistral_.
Christophe forgot his companion and came and sat by her side at the front
of the box: he never took his eyes off the beautiful actress whose name he
did not know. But the audience who had not come to see an unknown player
paid no attention to her, and only applauded when the female Hamlet spoke.
That made Christophe growl and call them: "Idiots!" in a low voice which
could be heard ten yards away.
It was not until the curtain was lowered upon the first act that he
remembered the existence of his companion, and seeing that she was still
shy he thought with a smile of how he must have scared her with his
extravagances. He was not far wrong: the girl whom chance had thrown in his
company for a few hours was almost morbidly shy; she must have been in an
abnormal state of excitement to have accepted Christophe's invitation. She
had hardly accepted it than she had wished at any cost to get out of it, to
make some excuse and to escape. It had been much worse for her when she had
seen that she was an object of general curiosity, and her unhappiness had
been increased almost past endurance when she heard behind her back--(she
dared not turn round)--her companion's low growls and imprecations. She
expected anything now, and when he came and sat by her she was frozen with
terror: what eccentricity would he commit next? She would gladly have sunk
into the ground fathoms down. She drew back instinctively: she was afraid
of touching him.
But all her fears vanished when the interval came and she heard him say
quite kindly:
"I am an unpleasant companion, eh? I beg your pardon."
Then she looked at him and saw his kind smile which had induced her to come
with him.
He went on:
"I cannot hide what I think.... But you know it is too much!... That woman,
that old woman!..."
He made a face of disgust.
She smiled and said in a low voice:
"It is fine in spite of everything."
He noticed her accent and asked:
"You are a foreigner?"
"Yes," said she.
He looked at her modest gown.
"A governess?" he said.
"Yes."
"What nationality?"
She said:
"I am French."
He made a gesture of surprise:
"French? I should not have thought it."
"Why?" she asked timidly.
"You are so ... serious!" said he.
(She thought it was not altogether a compliment from him.)
"There are serious people also in France," said she confusedly. He looked
at her honest little face, with its broad forehead, little straight nose,
delicate chin, and thin cheeks framed in her chestnut hair. It was not she
that he saw: he was thinking of the beautiful actress. He repeated:
"It is strange that you should be French!... Are you really of the same
nationality as Ophelia? One would never think it"
After a moment's silence he went on:
"How beautiful she is!" without noticing that he seemed to be making a
comparison between the actress and his companion that was not at all
flattering to her. But she felt it: but she did not mind: for she was of
the same opinion. He tried to find out about the actress from her: but she
knew nothing: it was plain that she did not know much about the theater.
"You must be glad to hear French?" he asked. He meant it in jest, but he
touched her.
"Ah!" she said with an accent of sincerity which struck him, "it does me so
much good! I am stifled here."
He looked at her more closely: she clasped her hands, and seemed to be
oppressed. But at once she thought of how her words might hurt him:
"Forgive me," she said. "I don't know what I am saying."
He laughed:
"Don't beg pardon! You are quite right. You don't need to be French to be
stifled here. Ouf!"
He threw back his shoulders and took a long breath.
But she was ashamed of having been so free and relapsed into silence.
Besides she had just seen that the people in the boxes next to them were
listening to what they were saying: he noticed it too and was wrathful.
They broke off: and until the end of the interval he went out into the
corridor. The girl's words were ringing in his ears, but he was lost in
dreams: the image of Ophelia filled his thoughts. During the succeeding
acts she took hold of him completely, and when the beautiful actress came
to the mad scene and the melancholy songs of love and death, her voice gave
forth notes so moving that he was bowled over: he felt that he was going
to burst into tears. Angry with himself for what he took to be a sign
of weakness--(for he would not admit that a true artist can weep)--and
not wishing to make an object of himself, he left the box abruptly. The
corridors and the foyer were empty. In his agitation he went down the
stairs of the theater and went out without knowing it. He had to breathe
the cold night air, and to go striding through the dark, half-empty
streets. He came to himself by the edge of a canal, and leaned on the
parapet of the bank and watched the silent water whereon the reflections
of the street lamps danced in the darkness. His soul was like that: it was
dark and heaving: he could see nothing in it but great joy dancing on the
surface. The clocks rang the hour. It was impossible for him to go back to
the theater and hear the end of the play. To see the triumph of Fortinbras?
No, that did not tempt him. A fine triumph that! Who thinks of envying the
conqueror? Who would be he after being gorged with all the wild and absurd
savagery of life? The whole play is a formidable indictment of life. But
there is such a power of life in it that sadness becomes joy, and
bitterness intoxicates....
Christophe went home without a thought for the unknown girl, whose name
even he had not ascertained.
* * * * *
Next morning he went to see the actress at the little third-rate hotel in
which the impresario had quartered her with her comrades while the great
actress had put up at the best hotel in the town. He was conducted to a
very untidy room where the remains of breakfast were left on an open piano,
together with hairpins and torn and dirty sheets of music. In the next room
Ophelia was singing at the top of her voice, like a child, for the pleasure
of making a noise. She stopped for a moment when her visitor was announced
to ask merrily in a loud voice without ever caring whether she were heard
through the wall:
"What does he want? What is his name? Christophe? Christophe what?
Christophe Krafft? What a name!"
(She repeated it two or three times, rolling her _r_'s terribly.)
"It is like a swear--"
(She swore.)
"Is he young or old? Pleasant? Very well. I'll come."
She began to sing again:
"_Nothing is sweeter than my love_...." while she rushed about her room
cursing a tortoise-shell pin which had got lost in all the rubbish. She
lost patience, began to grumble, and roared. Although he could not see her
Christophe followed all her movements on the other side of the wall in
imagination and laughed to himself. At last he heard steps approaching, the
door was flung open, and Ophelia appeared.
She was half dressed, in a loose gown which she was holding about her
waist: her bare arms showed in her wide sleeves: her hair was carelessly
done, and locks of it fell down into her eyes and over her cheeks. Her
fine brown eyes smiled, her lips smiled, her cheeks smiled, and a charming
dimple in her chin smiled. In her beautiful grave melodious voice she asked
him to excuse her appearance. She knew that there was nothing to excuse and
that he could only be very grateful to her for it. She thought he was a
journalist come to interview her. Instead of being annoyed when he told her
that he had come to her entirely of his own accord and because he admired
her, she was delighted. She was a good girl, affectionate, delighted to
please, and making no effort to conceal her delight. Christophe's visit and
his enthusiasm made her very happy--(she was not yet spoiled by flattery).
She was so natural in all her movements and ways, even in her little
vanities and her naïve delight in giving pleasure, that he was not
embarrassed for a single moment. They became old friends at once. He could
jabber a few words of French: and she could jabber a few words of German:
after an hour they told each other all their secrets. She never thought
of sending him away. The splendid gay southern creature, intelligent and
warm-hearted, who would have been bored to tears with her stupid companions
and in a country whose language she did not know, a country without the
natural joy that was in herself, was glad to find some one to talk to. As
for Christophe it was an untold blessing for him to meet the free-hearted
girl of the Midi filled with the life of the people, in the midst of his
narrow and insincere fellow citizens. He did not yet know the workings of
such natures which, unlike the Germans, have no more in their minds and
hearts than they show, and often not even as much. But at the least she was
young, she was alive, she said frankly, rawly, what she thought: she judged
everything freely from a new and a fresh point of view: in her it was
possible to breathe a little of the northwest wind that sweeps away mists.
She was gifted. Uneducated and unthinking, she could at once feel with her
whole heart and be sincerely moved by things which were beautiful and good;
and then, a moment later, she would burst out laughing. She was a coquette
and made eyes; she did not mind showing her bare arms and neck under
her half open gown; she would have liked to turn Christophe's head, but
it was all purely instinctive. There was no thought of gaining her own
ends in her, and she much preferred to laugh, and talk blithely, to be
a good fellow, a good chum, without ceremony or awkwardness. She told
him about the underworld of the theater, her little sorrows, the silly
susceptibilities of her comrades, the bickerings of Jezebel--(so she called
the great actress)--who took good care not to let her shine. He confided
his sufferings at the hands of the Germans: she clapped her hands and
played chords to him. She was kind and would not speak ill of anybody; but
that did not keep her from doing so, and while she blamed herself for her
malice, when she laughed at anybody, she had a fund of mocking humor and
that realistic and witty gift of observation which belongs to the people of
the South; she could not resist it and drew cuttingly satirical portraits.
With her pale lips she laughed merrily to show her teeth, like those of a
puppy, and dark eyes shone in her pale face, which was a little discolored
by grease paint.
They noticed suddenly that they had been talking for more than an hour.
Christophe proposed to come for Corinne--(that was her stage name)--in the
afternoon and show her over the town. She was delighted with the idea, and
they arranged to meet immediately after dinner.
At the appointed hour, he turned up. Corinne was sitting in the little
drawing-room of the hotel, with a book in her hand, which she was reading
aloud. She greeted him with smiling eyes but did not stop reading until she
had finished her sentence. Then she signed to him to sit down on the sofa
by her side:
"Sit there," she said, "and don't talk. I am going over my part. I shall
have finished in a quarter of an hour."
She followed the script with her finger nail and read quickly and
carelessly like a little girl in a hurry. He offered to hear her her words.
She passed him the book and got up to repeat what she had learned. She
floundered and would repeat the end of one sentence four times before going
on to the next. She shook her head as she recited her part; her hair-pins
fell down and all over the room. When she could not recollect sometimes
some word she was as impatient as a naughty child; sometimes she
swore comically or she would use big words;--one word with which she
apostrophized herself was very big and very short. Christophe was
astonished by the mixture of talent and childishness in her. She would
produce moving tones of voice quite aptly, but in the middle of a speech
into which she seemed to be throwing her whole heart she would say a whole
string of words that had absolutely no meaning. She recited her lesson
like a parrot, without troubling about its meaning, and then she produced
burlesque nonsense. She did not worry about it. When she saw it she would
shout with laughter. At last she said: "Zut!", snatched the book from him,
flung it into a corner of the room, and said:
"Holidays! The hour has struck!... Now let us go out."
He was a little anxious about her part and asked:
"You think you will know it?"
She replied confidently:
"Certainly. What is the prompter for?" She went into her room to put on her
hat. Christophe sat at the piano while he was waiting for her and struck a
few chords. From the next room she called:
"Oh! What is that? Play some more! How pretty it is!"
She ran in, pinning on her hat. He went on. When he had finished she
wanted him to play more. She went into ecstasies with all the little arch
exclamations habitual to Frenchwomen which they make about _Tristan_ and a
cup of chocolate equally. It made Christophe laugh; it was a change from
the tremendous affected, clumsy exclamations of the Germans; they were
both exaggerated in different directions; one made a mountain out of a
mole-hill, the other made a mole-hill out of a mountain; the French was not
less ridiculous than the German, but for the moment it seemed more pleasant
because he loved the lips from which it came. Corinne wanted to know what
he was playing, and when she learned that he had composed it she gave a
shout. He had told her during their conversation in the morning that he was
a composer, but she had hardly listened to him. She sat by him and insisted
on his playing everything that he had composed. Their walk was forgotten.
It was not mere politeness on her part; she adored music and had an
admirable instinct for it which supplied the deficiencies of her education.
At first he did not take her seriously and played his easiest melodies. But
when he had played a passage by which he set more store and saw that she
preferred it too, although he had not said anything about it, he was
joyfully surprised. With the naïve astonishment of the Germans when they
meet a Frenchman who is a good musician he said:
"Odd. How good your taste is! I should never have thought it...."
Corinne laughed in his face.
He amused himself then by selecting compositions more and more difficult
to understand, to see how far she would go with him. But she did not seem
to be put out by his boldness, and after a particularly new melody which
Christophe himself had almost come to doubt because he had never succeeded
in having it accepted in Germany, he was greatly astonished when Corinne
begged him to play it again, and she got up and began to sing the notes
from memory almost without a mistake! He turned towards her and took her
hands warmly:
"But you are a musician!" he cried.
She began to laugh and explained that she had made her début as a singer in
provincial opera houses, but that an impresario of touring companies had
recognized her disposition towards the poetic theater and had enrolled her
in its services. He exclaimed:
"What a pity!"
"Why?" said she. "Poetry also is a sort of music."
She made him explain to her the meaning of his _Lieder_; he told her the
German words, and she repeated them with easy mimicry, copying even the
movements of his lips and eyes as he pronounced the words. When she had
these to sing from memory, then she made grotesque mistakes, and when she
forgot, she invented words, guttural and barbarously sonorous, which made
them both laugh. She did not tire of making him play, nor he of playing
for her and hearing her pretty voice; she did not know the tricks of the
trade and sang a little from the throat like little girls, and there was a
curious fragile quality in her voice that was very touching. She told him
frankly what she thought. Although she could not explain why she liked
or disliked anything there was always some grain of sense hidden in her
judgment. The odd thing was that she found least pleasure in the most
classical passages which were most appreciated in Germany; she paid him a
few compliments out of politeness; but they obviously meant nothing. As she
had no musical culture she had not the pleasure which amateurs and even
artists find in what is _already heard_, a pleasure which often makes them
unconsciously reproduce, or, in a new composition, like forms or formulæ
which they have already used in old compositions. Nor did she have the
German taste for melodious sentimentality (or, at least, her sentimentality
was different; Christophe did not yet know its failings)--she did not go
into ecstasies over the soft insipid music preferred in Germany; she did
not single out the most melodious of his _Lieder_,--a melody which he
would have liked to destroy because his friends, only too glad to be able
to compliment him on something, were always talking about it. Corinne's
dramatic instinct made her prefer the melodies which frankly reproduced
a certain passion; he also set most store by them. And yet she did not
hesitate to show her lack of sympathy with certain rude harmonies which
seemed quite natural to Christophe; they gave her a sort of shock when she
came upon them; she would stop then and ask "if it was really so." When he
said "Yes," then she would rush at the difficulty; but she would make a
little grimace which did not escape Christophe. Sometimes even she would
prefer to skip the bar. Then he would play it again on the piano.
"You don't like that?" he would ask.
She would screw up her nose.
"It is wrong," she would say.
"Not at all," he would reply with a laugh. "It is quite right. Think of its
meaning. It is rhythmic, isn't it?"
(He pointed to her heart.)
But she would shake her head:
"May be; but it is wrong here." (She pulled her ear.)
And she would be a little shocked by the sudden outbursts of German
declamation.
"Why should he talk so loud?" she would ask. "He is all alone. Aren't you
afraid of his neighbors overhearing him? It is as though--(Forgive me! You
won't be angry?)--he were hailing a boat."
He was not angry; he laughed heartily, he recognized that there was some
truth in what she said. Her remarks amused him; nobody had ever said such
things before. They agreed that declamation in singing generally deforms
the natural word like a magnifying glass. Corinne asked Christophe to write
music for a piece in which she would speak to the accompaniment of the
orchestra, singing a few sentences every now and then. He was fired by the
idea in spite of the difficulties of the stage setting which, he thought,
Corinne's musical voice would easily overcome, and they made plans for the
future. It was not far short of five o'clock when they thought of going
out. Night fell early. They could not think of going for a walk. Corinne
had a rehearsal at the theater in the evening; nobody was allowed to be
present. She made him promise to come and fetch her during the next
afternoon to take the walk they had planned.
* * * * *
Next day they did almost the same again. He found Corinne in front of her
mirror, perched on a high stool, swinging her legs; she was trying on a
wig. Her dresser was there and a hair dresser of the town to whom she was
giving instructions about a curl which she wished to have higher up. As she
looked in the glass she saw Christophe smiling behind her back; she put out
her tongue at him. The hair dresser went away with the wig and she turned
gaily to Christophe:
"Good-day, my friend!" she said.
She held up her cheek to be kissed. He had not expected such intimacy, but
he took advantage of it all the same. She did not attach so much importance
to the favor; it was to her a greeting like any other.