in the happiness of struggling and suffering together in accomplishment.
But she had only believed in that endeavor, that faith, while they were
gilded by the sun of love: and as the sun died down she saw them as
barren, gloomy mountains standing out against the empty sky: and her
strength failed her, so that she could go no farther on the road: what
was the good of reaching the summit? What was there on the other side?
It was a gigantic phantom and a snare!... Jacqueline could not
understand how Olivier could go on being taken in by such fantastic
notions which consumed life: and she began to tell herself that he was
not very clever, nor very much alive. She was stifling in his
atmosphere, in which she could not breathe, and the instinct of
self-preservation drove her on to the attack, in self-defense. She
strove to scatter and bring to dust the injurious beliefs of the man she
still loved: she used every weapon of irony and seductive pleasure in
her armory: she trammeled him with the tendrils of her desires and her
petty cares: she longed to make him a reflection of herself, ...
herself who knew neither what she wanted nor what she was! She was
humiliated by Olivier's want of success: and she did not care whether it
were just or unjust; for she had come to believe that the only thing
which saves a man of talent from failure is success. Olivier was
oppressed by his consciousness of her doubts, and his strength was
sapped by it. However, he struggled on as best he could, as so many men
have struggled, and will struggle, for the most part vainly, in the
unequal conflict in which the selfish instinct of the woman upholds
itself against the man's intellectual egoism by playing upon his
weakness, his dishonesty, and his common sense, which is the name with
which he disguises the wear and tear of life and his own cowardice.--At
least, Jacqueline and Olivier were better than the majority of such
combatants. For he would never have betrayed his ideal, as thousands of
men do who drift with the demands of their laziness, their vanity, and
their loves, into renunciation of their immortal souls. And, if he had
done so, Jacqueline would have despised him. But, in her blindness, she
strove to destroy that force in Olivier, which was hers also, their common
safeguard: and by an instinctive strategical movement she undermined the
friendship by which that force was upheld.
Since the legacy Christophe had become a stranger in their household.
The affectation of snobbishness and a dull practical outlook on life
which Jacqueline used wickedly to exaggerate in her conversations with
him were more than he could bear. He would lash out sometimes, and say
hard things, which were taken in bad part. They could never have brought
about a rupture between the two friends: they were too fond of each
other. Nothing in the world would have induced Olivier to give up
Christophe. But he could not make Jacqueline feel the same about him;
and, his love making him weak, he was incapable of hurting her.
Christophe, who saw what was happening to him, and how he was suffering,
made the choice easy by a voluntary withdrawal. He saw that he could not
help Olivier in any way by staying, but rather made things worse. He was
the first to give his friend reasons for turning from him: and Olivier,
in his weakness, accepted those inadequate reasons, while he guessed
what the sacrifice must have cost Christophe, and was bitterly sorry for
it.
Christophe bore him no ill-will. He thought that there was much truth in
the saying that a man's wife is his better half. For a man married is
but the half of a man.
He tried to reconstruct his life without Olivier. But it was all in
vain, and it was idle for him to pretend that the separation would only
be for a short time: in spite of his optimism, he had many hours of
sadness. He had lost the habit of loneliness. He had been alone, it is
true, during Olivier's sojourn in the provinces: but then he had been
able to pretend and tell himself that his friend was away for a time,
and would return. Now that his friend had come back he was farther away
than ever. His affection for him, which had filled his life for a number
of years, was suddenly taken from him: it was as though he had lost his
chief reason for working. Since his friendship for Olivier he had grown
used to thinking with him and bringing him into everything he did. His
work was not enough to supply the gap: for Christophe had grown used to
weaving the image of his friend into his work. And now that his friend
no longer took any interest in him, Christophe was thrown off his
balance: he set out to find another affection to restore it.
Madame Arnaud and Philomela did not fail him. But just then such
tranquil friendship as theirs was not enough. However, the two women
seemed to divine Christophe's sorrow, and they secretly sympathized with
him. Christophe was much surprised one evening to see Madame Arnaud come
into his room. Till then she had never ventured to call on him. She
seemed to be somewhat agitated. Christophe paid no heed to it, and set
her uneasiness down to her shyness. She sat down, and for some time said
nothing. To put her at her ease, Christophe did the honors of his room.
They talked of Olivier, with memories of whom the room was filled.
Christophe spoke of him gaily and naturally, without giving so much as
a hint of what had happened. But Madame Arnaud, knowing it, could not help
looking at him pityingly and saying:
"You don't see each other now?"
He thought she had come to console him, and felt a gust of impatience,
for he did not like any meddling with his affairs. He replied:
"Whenever we like."
She blushed, and said:
"Oh! it was not an indiscreet question!"
He was sorry for his gruffness, and took her hands:
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I am always afraid of his being blamed.
Poor boy! He is suffering as much as I.... No, we don't see each other
now."
"And he doesn't write to you?"
"No," said Christophe, rather shamefacedly....
"How sad life is!" said Madame Arnaud, after a moment.
"No; life is not sad," he said. "But there are sad moments in it."
Madame Arnaud went on with veiled bitterness:
"We love, and then we love no longer. What is the good of it all?"
Christophe replied:
"It is good to have loved."
She went on:
"You have sacrificed yourself for him. If only our self-sacrifice could
be of any use to those we love! But it makes them none the happier!"
"I have not sacrificed myself," said Christophe angrily. "And if I have,
it is because it pleased me to do so. There's no room for arguing about
it. One does what one has to do. If one did not do it, one would be
unhappy, and suffer for it! There never was anything so idiotic as this
talk of sacrifice! Clergymen, in the poverty of their hearts, mix it up
with a cramped and morose idea of Protestant gloom. Apparently, if an
act of sacrifice is to be good, it must be besotted.... Good Lord! if a
sacrifice means sorrow to you, and not joy, then don't do it; you are
unworthy of it. A man doesn't sacrifice himself for the King of Prussia,
but for himself. If you don't feel the happiness that lies in the gift
of yourself, then get out! You don't deserve to live."
Madame Arnaud listened to Christophe without daring to look at him.
Suddenly she got up and said:
"Good-by."
Then he saw that she had come to confide in him, and said:
"Oh! forgive me. I'm a selfish oaf, and can only talk about myself.
Please stay. Won't you?"
She said:
"No: I cannot.... Thank you...."
And she left him.
It was some time before they met again. She gave no sign of life; and he
did not go to see either her or Philomela. He was fond of both of them:
but he was afraid of having to talk to them about things that made him
sad. And, besides, for the time being, their calm, dull existence, with
its too rarefied air, was not suited to his needs. He wanted to see new
faces; it was imperative that he should find a new interest, a new love,
to occupy his mind.
By way of being taken out of himself he began to frequent the theaters
which he had neglected for a long time. The theater seemed to him to be
an interesting school for a musician who wishes to observe and take note
of the accents of the passions.
It was not that he had any greater sympathy with French plays than when
he first came to live in Paris. Outside his small liking for their
eternal stale and brutal subjects connected with the psycho-physiology
of love, it seemed to him that the language of the French theater,
especially in poetic drama, was ultra-false. Neither their prose nor
their verse had anything in common with the living language and the
genius of the people. Their prose was an artificial language, the
language of a polite chronicle with the best, that of a vulgar
feuilletonist with the worst. Their poetry justified Goethe's gibe:
"_Poetry is all very well for those who have nothing to say_."
It was a wordy and inverted prose: the profusion of metaphors clumsily
tacked on to it in imitation of the lyricism of other nations produced
an effect of utter falsity upon any sincere person. Christophe set no
more store by these poetic dramas than he did by the Italian operas with
their shrill mellifluous airs and their ornamental vocal exercises. He
was much more interested in the actors than the plays. And the authors
had tried hard to imitate them. "_It was hopeless to think that a play
could be performed with any success unless the author had looked to it
that his characters were modeled on the vices of the actors_." The
situation was hardly at all changed since the time when Diderot wrote
those lines. The actors had become the models of the art of the theater.
As soon as any one of them reached success, he had his theater, his
compliant tailor-authors, and his plays made to measure.
Among these great mannikins of literary fashions Françoise Oudon
attracted Christophe. Paris had been infatuated with her for a couple of
years or so. She, too, of course, had her theater and her purveyors of
parts: however, she did not only act in plays written for her: her mixed
repertory ranged from Ibsen to Sardou, from Gabriele d'Annunzio to Dumas
_fils_, from Bernard Shaw to the latest Parisian playwrights. Upon
occasion she would even venture into the Versailles' avenues of the
classic hexameter, or on to the deluge of images of Shakespeare. But she
was ill at ease in that galley, and her audience was even more so.
Whatever she played, she played herself, nothing but herself, always. It
was both her weakness and her strength. Until the public had been
awakened to an interest in her personality, her acting had had no
success. As soon as that interest was roused, everything she did
appeared marvelous. And, indeed, it was well worth while in watching her
to forget the usually pitiful plays which she betrayed by endowing and
adorning them with her vitality. The mystery of the woman's body, swayed
by a stranger soul, was to Christophe far more moving than the plays in
which she acted.
She had a fine, clear-cut, rather tragic profile. She had not the marked
heavy lines of the Roman style: on the contrary, her lines were delicate
and Parisian, _à la _Jean Goujon--as much like a boy's as a
woman's. A short, finely-modeled nose. A beautiful mouth, with thin
lips, curling rather bitterly. Bright cheeks, girlishly thin, in which
there was something touching, the light of inward suffering. A strong
chin. Pale complexion. One of those habitually impassive faces which are
transparent in spite of themselves, and reveal the soul quivering behind
it, as though it were exposed in its nakedness; one of those faces in
which the soul seems to be ever, in every part of it, just beneath the
skin. She had very fine hair and eyebrows, and her changing eyes were
gray and amber-colored, passing quickly from one light to another,
greenish and golden, like the eyes of a cat. And there was something
catlike in all her nature, in her apparent torpor, her semi-somnolence,
with eyes wide open, always on the watch, always suspicious, while
suddenly she would nervously and rather cruelly relax her watchfulness.
She was not so tall as she appeared, nor so slender; she had beautiful
shoulders, lovely arms, and fine, long hands. She was very neat in her
dress, and her coiffure, always trim and tasteful, with none of the
Bohemian carelessness or the exaggerated smartness of many artists--even
in that she was catlike, instinctively aristocratic, although she had
risen from the gutter. At bottom she was incurably shy and wild.
She must have been a little less than thirty. Christophe had heard
people speak of her at Gamache's with coarse admiration, as a woman of
great freedom, intelligence, and boldness, tremendous and inflexible
energy, and burning ambition, but bitter, fantastic, perplexing, and
violent, a woman who had waded through a deal of mud before she had
reached her present pinnacle of fame, and had since avenged herself.
One day, when Christophe was going by train to see Philomela at Meudon,
as he opened the door of a compartment, he saw the actress sitting
there. She seemed to be agitated and perturbed, and Christophe's
appearance annoyed her. She turned her back on him, and looked
obstinately out of the opposite window. But Christophe was so struck by
the changed expression in her face, that he could not stop gazing at her
with a naïve and embarrassing compassion. It exasperated her, and she
flung an angry look at him which he did not understand. At the next
station she got out and went into another compartment. Then for the
first time it occurred to him--rather late in the day--that he had
driven her away: and he was greatly distressed. A few days later, at a
station on the same line, he was sitting on the only seat in the
platform, waiting for the train back to Paris. She appeared, and came
and sat by his side. He began to move, but she said:
"Stay."
They were alone. He begged her pardon for having forced her to go to
another compartment the other day, saying that if he had had any idea
that he was incommoding her he would have got out himself. She smiled
ironically, and only replied:
"You were certainly unbearable with your persistent staring."
He said:
"I begged your pardon: I could not help it.... You looked so unhappy."
"Well, what of it?" she said.
"It was too strong for me. If you saw a man drowning, wouldn't you hold
out your hand to him?"
"I? Certainly not," she said. "I would push him under water, so as to
get it over quickly."
She spoke with a mixture of bitterness and humor: and, when he looked at
her in amazement, she laughed.
The train came in. It was full up, except for the last carriage. She got
in. The porter told them to hurry up. Christophe, who had no mind to
repeat the scene of a few days before, was for finding another
compartment, but she said:
"Come in."
He got in, and she said:
"To-day I don't mind."
They began to talk. Christophe tried very seriously to prove to her that
it was not right not to take an interest in others, and that people
could do so much for each other by helping and comforting each other....
"Consolation," she said, "is not much in my line...."
And as Christophe insisted:
"Yes," she said, with her impertinent smile; "the part of comforter is
all very well for the man who plays it."
It was a moment or two before he grasped her meaning. When he
understood, when he fancied that she suspected him of seeking his own
interest, while he was only thinking of her, he got up indignantly and
opened the door, and made as though to climb out, although the train was
moving. She prevented him, though not without difficulty. He sat down
again angrily, and shut the door just as the train shot into a tunnel.
"You see," she said, "you might have been killed."
"I don't care," he said.
He refused to speak to her again.
"People are so stupid," he said. "They make each other suffer, they
suffer, and when a man goes to help another fellow-creature, he is
suspected. It is disgusting. People like that are not human."
She laughed and tried to soothe him. She laid her gloved hand on his:
she spoke to him gently, and called him by his name.
"What?" he said. "You know me?"
"As if everybody didn't know everybody in Paris! We're all in the same
boat. But it was horrid of me to speak to you as I did. You are a good
fellow. I can see that. Come; calm yourself. Shake hands! Let us make
peace!"
They shook hands, and went on talking amicably. She said:
"It is not my fault, you know. I have had so many experiences with men
that I have become suspicious."
"They have deceived me, too, many a time," said Christophe. "But I
always give them credit for something better."
"I see; you were born to be gulled."
He began to laugh:
"Yes; I've been taken in a good many times in my life; I've gulped down
a good many lies. But it does me no harm. I've a good stomach. I can put
up with worse things, hardship, poverty, and, if necessary, I can gulp
down with their lies the poor fools who attack me. It does me good, if
anything."
"You're in luck," she said. "You're something like a man."
"And you. You're something like a woman."
"That's no great thing."
"It's a fine thing," he said, "and it may be a good thing, too!"
She laughed:
"To be a woman!" she said. "But what does the world make of women?"
"You have to defend yourself."
"But goodness never lasts long."
"Then you can't have much of it."
"Possibly. And then, I don't think one ought to suffer too much. There
is a point beyond which suffering withers you up."
He was just about to tell her how he pitied her, but he remembered how
she had received it a short while before....
"You'll only talk about the advantages of the part of comforter...."
"No," she said, "I won't say it again. I feel that you are kind and
sincere. Thank you. Only, don't say anything. You cannot know.... Thank
you."
They had reached Paris. They parted without exchanging addresses or
inviting each other to call.
* * * * *
A few months later she came of her own accord and knocked at
Christophe's door.
"I came to see you. I want to talk to you. I have been thinking of you
sometimes since our meeting."
She took a seat.
"Only for a moment. I shan't disturb you for long."
He began to talk to her. She said:
"Wait a moment, please."
They sat in silence. Then she said with a smile:
"I couldn't bear it any longer. I feel better now."
He tried to question her.
"No," she said. "Not that!"
She looked round the room, examined and appraised the things in it, and
saw the photograph of Louisa:
"Your mother?" she said.
"Yes."
She took it and looked at it sympathetically.
"What a good old woman!" she said. "You are lucky!"
"Alas! she is dead."
"That is nothing. You have had the luck to have her for your mother."
"Yes. And you?"
But she turned the subject with a frown. She would not let him question
her about herself.
"No; tell me about yourself. Tell me.... Something about your life...."
"How can it be of any interest to you?"
"Tell me, all the same...."
He would not tell her: but he could not avoid answering her questions,
for she cross-examined him very skilfully: so much so, that he told her
something of what he was suffering, the story of his friendship, and how
Olivier had left him. She listened with a pitying ironical smile....
Suddenly she asked:
"What time is it? Oh! good Heavens! I've been here two whole hours!...
Please forgive me.... Ah! what a rest it has been!..."
She added:
"Will you let me come again?... Not often.... Sometimes.... It would do
me good. But I wouldn't like to bore you or waste your time.... Only a
minute or two every now and then...."
"I'll come and see you," said Christophe.
"No, don't do that. I would much rather come to see you...."
But she did not come again for a long time. One evening he heard by
accident that she was seriously ill, and had not been acting for some
weeks. He went to see her, although she had forbidden it. She was not at
home: but when she heard who it was, she sent and had him brought back
as he was going down the stairs. She was in bed, but much better: she
had had pneumonia, and looked altered: but she still had her ironical
manner and her watchful expression, which there was no disarming.
However, she seemed to be really pleased to see Christophe. She made him
sit by her bedside, and talked about herself in a mocking, detached way,
and said that she had almost died. He was much moved, and showed it.
Then she teased him. He reproached her for not having let him know.
"Let you know? And have you coming to see me? Never!"
"I bet you never even thought of me."
"You've won," she said, with her sad little mocking smile. "I didn't
think of you for a moment while I was ill. To be precise, I never
thought of you until to-day. There's nothing to be glum about, come.
When I am ill I don't think of anybody. I only ask one thing of people;
to be left alone in peace. I turn my face to the wall and wait: I want
to be alone. I want to die alone, like a rat in a hole."
"And yet it is hard to suffer alone."
"I'm used to it. I have been unhappy for years. No one ever came to my
assistance. Now it has become a habit.... Besides, it is better so. No
one can do anything for you. A noise in the room, worrying attentions,
hypocritical jeremiads.... No; I would rather die alone."
"You are very resigned!"
"Resigned? I don't even know what the word means. No: I set my teeth and
I hate the illness which makes me suffer."
He asked her if she had no one to see her, no one to look after her. She
said that her comrades at the theater were kind enough,--idiots,--but
obliging and compassionate (in a superficial sort of way).
"But I tell you, I don't want to see them. I'm a surly sort of
customer."
"I would put up with it," he said.
She looked at him pityingly:
"You, too! You're going to talk like the rest?"
He said:
"Pardon, pardon.... Good Heavens! I'm becoming a Parisian! I am
ashamed.... I swear that I didn't even think what I was saying...."
He buried his face in the bedclothes. She laughed frankly, and gave him
a tap on the head!
"Ah! that's not Parisian! That's something like! I know you again. Come,
show your face. Don't weep all over my bed."
"Do you forgive me?"
"I forgive you. But don't do it again."
She talked to him a little more, asked him what he was doing, and was
then tired, bored, and dismissed him.
He had arranged to go and see her again the following week. But just as
he was setting out he received a telegram from her telling him not to
come: she was having a bad day.--Then, the next day but one, she sent
for him. He went, and found her convalescent, sitting by the window,
with her feet up. It was early spring, with a sunny sky and the young
buds on the trees. She was more gentle and affectionate than he had yet
seen her. She told him that she could not see anybody the other day, and
would have detested him as much as anybody else.
"And to-day?"
"To-day I feel young and fresh, and I feel fond of everything else about
me that feels young and fresh--as you do."
"And yet I am neither very young nor very fresh."
"You will be both until the day of your death."
They talked about what he had been doing since their last meeting, and
about the theater in which she was going to resume her work soon: and on
that she told him what she thought of the theater, which disgusted her,
while it held her in its grip.
She did not want him to come again, and promised to resume her visits to
his flat. He told her the times when she would be least likely to
disturb his work. They arranged a countersign. She was to knock at the
door in a certain way, and he was to open or not as he felt inclined....
She did not go beyond bounds at first. But once, when she was going to a
society At Home, where she was to recite, the idea of it bored her at
the last moment: she stopped on the way and telephoned to say that she
could not come, and she told her man to drive to Christophe's. She only
meant to say good-night to him as she passed. But, as it turned out, she
began to confide in him that night, and told him all her life from her
childhood on.
A sad childhood! An accidental father whom she had never known. A mother
who kept an ill-famed inn in a suburb of a town in the north of France:
the carters used to go and drink there, use the proprietress, and bully
her. One of them married her because she had some small savings: he used
to beat her and get drunk. Françoise had an elder sister who was a
servant in the inn: she was worked to death; the proprietor made her his
mistress in the sight and knowledge of her mother; she was consumptive,
and had died. Françoise had grown up amid scenes of violence and
shameful things. She saw her mother and sister weep, suffer, accept,
degrade themselves, and die. And desperately she made up her mind not to
submit to it, and to escape from her infamous surroundings: she was a
rebel by instinct: certain acts of injustice would set her beside
herself: she used to scratch and bite when she was thrashed. Once she
tried to hang herself. She did not succeed: she had hardly set about it
than she was afraid lest she might succeed only too well; and, even
while she was beginning to choke and desperately clutching at the rope
and trying to loosen it with stiff fumbling fingers, there was writhing
in her a furious desire to live. And since she could not escape by
death,--(Christophe smiled sadly, remembering his own experiences,)--she
swore that she would win, and be free, rich, and trample under foot all
those who oppressed her. She had made it a vow in her lair one evening,
when in the next room she could hear the oaths of the man, and the cries
of her mother as he beat her, and her sister's sobs. How utterly
wretched she felt! And yet her vow had been some solace. She clenched
her teeth and thought:
"I will crush the lot of you."
In that dark childhood there had been one ray of light: