unreasoningly, without trying to convince him, without trying to cure
him, but just by loving and pitying him. Love is the only balm for the
wounds of love. But love is not inexhaustible even with those who love
the best: they have only a limited store of it. When the sick man's
friends have once written all the words of affection they can find, when
they have done what they consider their duty, they withdraw prudently,
and avoid him like a criminal. And as they feel a certain secret shame
that they can help him so little, they help him less and less: they try
to let him forget them and to forget themselves. And if the sick man
persists in his misfortune and, indiscreetly, an echo of it penetrates
to their ears, then they judge harshly his want of courage and inability
to bear up against his trials. And if he succumbs, it is very certain
that lurking beneath their really genuine pity lies this disdainful
under-thought:
"Poor devil! I had a better opinion of him."
Amid such universal selfishness what a marvelous amount of good can be
done by a simple word of tenderness, a delicate attention, a look of
pity and love! Then the sick man feels the worth of kindness. And how
poor is all the rest compared with that!... Kindness brought Olivier
nearer to Madame Arnaud than anybody else, even his friend Christophe.
However, Christophe most meritoriously forced himself to be patient, and
in his affection for him, concealed what he really thought of him. But
Olivier, with his natural keenness of perception sharpened by suffering,
saw the conflict in his friend, and what a burden he was upon him with
his unending sorrow. It was enough, to make him turn from Christophe,
and fill him with a desire to cry:
"Go away. Go."
So unhappiness often divides loving hearts. As the winnower sorts the
grain, so sorrow sets on one side those who have the will to live, and
on the other those who wish to die. It is the terrible law of life,
which is stronger than love! The mother who sees her son dying, the
friend who sees his friend drowning,--if they cannot save them, they do
not cease their efforts to save themselves: they do not die with them.
And yet, they love them a thousand times better than their lives....
In spite of his great love, there were moments when Christophe had to
leave Olivier. He was too strong, too healthy, to be able to live and
breathe in such airless sorrow. He was mightily ashamed of himself! He
would feel cold and dead at heart to think that he could do nothing for
his friend: and as he needed to avenge himself on some one, he visited
his wrath upon Jacqueline. In spite of Madame Arnaud's words of
understanding and sympathy, he still judged her harshly, as a young,
ardent, and whole-hearted man must, until he has learned enough of life
to have pity on its weaknesses.
He would go and see Cécile and the child who had been entrusted to her.
That refreshed his soul. Cécile was transfigured by her borrowed
motherhood: she seemed to be young again, and happy, more refined and
tender. Jacqueline's departure had not given her any unavowed hope of
happiness. She knew that the memory of Jacqueline must leave her farther
away from Olivier than her presence. Besides, the little puff of wind
that had set her longing had passed: it had been a moment of crisis,
which the sight of poor Jacqueline's frenzied mistake had helped to
dissipate: she had returned to her normal tranquillity, and she could
not rightly understand what it was that had dragged her out of it. All
that was best in her need of love was satisfied by her love for the
child. With the marvelous power of illusion--of intuition--of women, she
found the man she loved in the little child: in that way she could have
him, weak and utterly dependent, utterly her own: he belonged to her:
and she could love him, love him passionately, with a love as pure as
the heart of the innocent child, and his dear blue eyes, like little
drops of light.... True, there was mingled with her tenderness a
regretful melancholy. Ah! It could never be the same thing as a child of
her own blood!... But it was good, all the same.
Christophe now regarded Cécile with very different eyes. He remembered
an ironic saying of Françoise Oudon:
"How is it that you and Philomela, who would do so well as husband and
wife, are not in love with each other?"
But Françoise knew the reason better than Christophe: it is very rarely
that a man like Christophe loves those who can do him good: rather he is
apt to love those who can do him harm. Opposites meet: his nature seeks
its own destruction, and goes to the burning and intense life rather
than to the cautious life which is sparing of itself. And a man like
Christophe is quite right, for his law is not to live as long as
possible, but as mightily as possible.
However, Christophe, having less penetration than Françoise, said to
himself that love is a blind, inhuman force, throwing those together who
cannot bear with each other. Love joins those together who are like each
other. And what love inspires is very small compared with what it
destroys. If it be happy it dissolves the will. If unhappy it breaks
hearts. What good does it ever do?
And as he thus maligned love he saw its ironic, tender smile saying to
him:
"Ingrate!"
* * * * *
Christophe had been unable to get out of going to one of the At Homes
given at the Austrian Embassy. Philomela was to sing _lieder_ by
Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Christophe. She was glad of her success and
that of her friend, who was now made much of by a certain set.
Christophe's name was gaining ground from day to day, even with the
great public: it had become impossible for the Lévy-Coeurs to ignore him
any longer. His works were played at concerts: and he had had an opera
accepted by the Opéra Comique. The sympathies of some person unknown
were enlisted on his behalf. The mysterious friend, who had more than
once helped him, was still forwarding his claims. More than once
Christophe had been conscious of that fondly helping hand in everything
he did: some one was watching over him and jealously concealing his or
her identity. Christophe had tried to discover it: but it seemed as
though his friend were piqued by his not having attempted sooner to find
out who he was, and he remained unapproachable. Besides, Christophe was
absorbed by other preoccupations: he was thinking of Olivier, he was
thinking of Françoise: that very morning he had just read in the paper
that she was lying seriously ill at San Francisco: he imagined her alone
in a strange city, in a hotel bedroom, refusing to see anybody, or to
write to her friends, clenching her teeth, and waiting, alone, for
death.
He was obsessed by these ideas and avoided the company present: and he
withdrew into a little room apart: he stood leaning against the wall in
a recess that was half in darkness, behind a curtain of evergreens and
flowers, listening to Philomela's lovely voice, with its elegiac warmth,
singing _The Lime-tree_ of Schubert: and the pure music called up
sad memories. Facing him on the wall was a large mirror which reflected
the lights and the life of the next room. He did not see it: he was
gazing in upon himself: and the mist of tears swam before his eyes....
Suddenly, like Schubert's rustling tree, he began to tremble for no
reason. He stood so for a few seconds, very pale, unable to move. Then
the veil fell from before his eyes, and he saw in the mirror in front of
him his "friend," gazing at him.... His "friend"? Who was she? He knew
nothing save that she was his friend and that he knew her: and he stood
leaning against the wall, his eyes meeting hers, and he trembled. She
smiled. He could not see the lines of her face or her body, nor the
expression in her eyes, nor whether she was tall or short, nor how she
was dressed. Only one thing he saw: the divine goodness of her smile of
compassion.
And suddenly her smile conjured up in Christophe an old forgotten memory
of his early childhood.... He was six or seven, at school, unhappy: he
had just been humiliated and bullied by some older, stronger boys, and
they were all jeering at him, and the master had punished him unjustly:
he was crouching in a corner, utterly forlorn, while the others were
playing: and he wept softly. There was a sad-faced little girl who was
not playing with the others,--(he could see her now, though he had never
thought of her since then; she was short, and had a big head, fair,
almost white hair and eyebrows, very pale blue eyes, broad white cheeks,
thick lips, a rather puffy face, and small red hands),--and she came
close up to him, then stopped, with her thumb in her mouth and stood
watching him cry: then she laid her little hand on Christophe's head and
said hurriedly and shyly, with just the same smile of compassion:
"Don't cry! Don't cry!"
Then Christophe could not control himself any longer, and he burst into
sobs, and buried his face in the little girl's pinafore, while, in a
quavering, tender voice, she went on saying:
"Don't cry...."
She died soon afterwards, a few weeks perhaps: the hand of death must
have been upon her at the time of that little scene.... Why should he
think of her now? There was no connection between the child who was dead
and forgotten, the humble daughter of the people in a distant German
town, and the aristocratic young lady who was gazing at him now. But
there is only one soul for all: and although millions of human beings
seem to be all different one from another, different as the worlds
moving in the heavens, it is the same flash of thought or love which
lights up the hearts of men and women though centuries divide them.
Christophe had just seen once more the light that he had seen shining
upon the pale lips of the little comforter....
It was all over in a second. A throng of people filled the door and shut
out Christophe's view of the other room. He stepped back quickly into
the shade, out of sight of the mirror: he was afraid lest his emotion
should be noticed. But when he was calm again he wanted to see her once
more. He was afraid she would be gone. He went into the room and he
found her at once in the crowd, although she did not look in the least
like what he had seen in the mirror. Now he saw her in profile sitting
in a group of finely dressed ladies: her elbow was resting on the arm of
her chair, she was leaning forward a little, with her head in her hand,
and listening to what they were saying with an intelligent absent smile:
she had the expression and features of the young St. John, listening and
looking through half-closed eyes, and smiling at his own thoughts, of
_The Dispute_ of Raphael.... Then she raised her eyes, saw him, and
showed no surprise. And he saw that her smile was for himself. He was
much moved, and bowed, and went up to her.
"You don't recognize me?" she said.
He knew her again that very moment.
"Grazia".... he said. [Footnote: See "Jean-Christophe in Paris: The
Market Place."]
At the same moment the ambassador's wife passed by, and smiled with
pleasure to see that the long-sought meeting had at last come about: and
she introduced Christophe to "Countess Berény." But Christophe was so
moved that he did not even hear her, and he did not notice, the new
name. She was still his little Grazia to him.
* * * * *
Grazia was twenty-two. She had been married for a year to a young
attaché of the Austrian Embassy, a nobleman, a member of a great family,
related to one of the Emperor's chief ministers, a snob, a man of the
world, smart, prematurely worn out; with whom she had been genuinely in
love, while she still loved him, though she judged him. Her old father
was dead. Her husband had been appointed to the Embassy in Paris.
Through Count Berény's influence, and her own charm and intelligence,
the timid little girl, whom the smallest thing used to set in a flutter,
had become one of the best-known women in Parisian society, though she
did nothing to procure that distinction, which embarrassed her not at
all. It is a great thing to be young and pretty, and to give pleasure,
and to know it. And it is a thing no less great to have a tranquil
heart, sound and serene, which can find happiness in the harmonious
coincidence of its desires and its fate. The lonely flower of her life
had unfolded its petals: but she had lost some of the calm music of her
Latin soul, fed by the light and the mighty peace of Italy. Quite
naturally she had acquired a certain influence in Parisian society: it
did not surprise her, and she was discreet and adroit in using it to
further the artistic or charitable movements which turned to her for aid:
she left the official patronage of these movements to others: for
although she could well maintain her rank, she had preserved a secret
independence from the days of her rather wild childish days in the
lonely villa in the midst of the fields, and society wearied while it
amused her, though she always disguised her boredom by the amiable smile
of a courteous and kind heart.
She had not forgotten her great friend Christophe. No doubt there was
nothing left of the child in whom an innocent love had burned in
silence. This new Grazia was a very sensible woman, not at all given to
romance. She regarded the exaggerations of her childish tenderness with
a gentle irony. And yet she was always moved by the memory of it. The
thought of Christophe was associated with the purest hours of her life.
She could not hear his name spoken without feeling pleasure: and each of
his successes delighted her as though she had shared in it herself: for
she had felt that they must come to him. As soon as she arrived in Paris
she tried to meet him again. She had invited him to her house, and had
appended her maiden name to her letter. Christophe had paid no attention
to it, and had flung the invitation into the waste-paper basket
unanswered. She was not offended. She had gone on following his doings
and, to a certain extent, his life, without his knowing it. It was she
whose helping hand had come to his aid in the recent campaign against
him in the papers. Grazia was in all things correct and had hardly
any connection with the world of the Press: but when it came to doing a
friend a service, she was capable of a malicious cunning in wheedling
the people whom she most disliked. She invited the editor of the paper
which was leading the snarling pack, to her house: and in less than no
time she turned his head: she skilfully flattered his vanity: and she
gained such an ascendancy over him, while she overawed him, that it
needed only a few careless words of contemptuous astonishment at the
attacks on Christophe for the campaign to be stopped short. The editor
suppressed the insulting article which was to appear next day: and when
the writer asked why it was suppressed he rated him soundly. He did
more: he gave orders to one of his factotums to turn out an enthusiastic
article about Christophe within a fortnight: the article was turned out
to order; it was enthusiastic and stupid. It was Grazia, too, who
thought of organizing performances of her friend's music at the Embassy,
and, knowing that he was interested in Cécile, helped her to make her
name. And finally, through her influence among the German diplomatists,
she began gently, quietly, and adroitly to awaken the interest of the
powers that be in Christophe, who was banished from Germany: and little
by little she did create a current of opinion directed towards obtaining
from the Emperor a decree reopening the gates of his country to a great
artist who was an honor to it. And though it was too soon to expect such
an act of grace, she did at least succeed in procuring an undertaking
that the Government would close its eyes to his two days' visit to his
native town.
And Christophe, who was conscious of the presence of his invisible
friend hovering about him without being able to find out who she was, at
last recognized her in the young St. John whose eyes smiled at him in
the mirror.
* * * * *
They talked of the past. Christophe hardly knew what they said. A man
hears the woman he loves just as little as he sees her. He loves her.
And when a man really loves he never even thinks whether he is loved or
no. Christophe never doubted it. She was there: that was enough. All the
rest had ceased to exist....
Grazia stopped speaking. A very tall young man, quite handsome,
well-dressed, clean-shaven, partly bald, with a bored, contemptuous
manner, stood appraising Christophe through his eye-glass, and then
bowed with haughty politeness.
"My husband," said she.
The clatter and chatter of the room rushed back to his ears. The inward
light died down. Christophe was frozen, said nothing, bowed, and
withdrew at once.
How ridiculous and consuming are the unreasonable demands of the souls
of artists and the childish laws which govern their passionate lives!
Hardly had he once more found the friend whom he had neglected in the
old days when she loved him, while he had not thought of her for years,
than it seemed to him that she was his, his very own, and that if
another man had taken her he had stolen her from him: and she herself
had no right to give herself to another. Christophe did not know clearly
what was happening to him. But his creative daimon knew it perfectly,
and in those days begat some of his loveliest songs of sorrowful love.
Some time passed before he saw her again. He was obsessed by thoughts of
Olivier's troubles and his health. At last one day he came upon the
address she had given him and he made up his mind to call on her.
As he went up the steps he heard the sound of workmen hammering. The
anteroom was in disorder and littered with boxes and trunks. The footman
replied that the Countess was not at home. But as Christophe was
disappointedly going away after leaving his card, the servant ran after
him and asked him to come in and begged his pardon. Christophe was shown
into a little room in which the carpets had been rolled up and taken
away. Grazia came towards him with her bright smile and her hand held
out impulsively and gladly. All his foolish rancor vanished. He took her
hand with the same happy impulsiveness and kissed it.
"Ah!" she said, "I am glad you came! I was so afraid I should have to go
away without seeing you again!"
"Go away? You are going away!"
Once more darkness descended upon him.
"You see...." she said, pointing to the litter in the room. "We are
leaving Paris at the end of the week."
"For long?"
She shrugged:
"Who knows?"
He tried to speak. But his throat was dry.
"Where are you going?"
"To the United States. My husband has been appointed first secretary to
the Embassy."
"And so, and so...." he said ... (his lips trembled) ... "it is all
over?"
"My dear friend!" she said, touched by his tone.... "No: it is not all
over."
"I have found you again only to lose you?"
There were tears in her eyes.
"My dear friend," she said again.
He held his hand over his eyes and turned away to hide his emotion.
"Do not be so sad," she said, laying her hand on his.
Once more, just then, he thought of the little girl in Germany. They
were silent.
"Why did you come so late?" she asked at last, "I tried to find you. You
never replied."
"I did not know. I did not know," he said.... "Tell me, was it you who
came to my aid so many times without my guessing who it was?... Do I owe
it to you that I was able to go back to Germany? Were you my good angel,
watching over me?"
She said:
"I was glad to be able to do something for you. I owe you so much!"
"What do you owe?" he asked. "I have done nothing for you."
"You do not know," she said, "what you have been to me."
She spoke of the days when she was a little girl and met him at the
house of her uncle, Stevens, and he had given her through his music the
revelation of all that is beautiful in the world. And little by little,
with growing animation she told him with brief allusions, that were both
veiled and transparent, of her childish feeling for him, and the way in
which she had shared Christophe's troubles, and the concert at which he
had been hissed, and she had wept, and the letter she had written and he
had never answered: for he had not received it. And as Christophe
listened to her, in all good faith, he projected his actual emotion and
the tenderness he felt for the tender face so near his own into the
past.
They talked innocently, fondly, and joyously. And, as he talked,
Christophe took Grazia's hand. And suddenly they both stopped: for
Grazia saw that Christophe loved her. And Christophe saw it too....
For some time Grazia had loved Christophe without Christophe knowing or
caring. Now Christophe loved Grazia: and Grazia had nothing for him but
calm friendship: she loved another man. As so often happens, one of the
two clocks of their lives was a little faster than the other, and it was
enough to have changed the course of both their lives....
Grazia withdrew her hand, and Christophe did not stay her. And they sat
there for a moment, mum, without a word.
And Grazia said:
"Good-bye."
Christophe said plaintively once more:
"And it is all over?"
"No doubt it is better that it should be so."
"We shall not meet again before you go."
"No," she said.
"When shall we meet again?"
She made a sad little gesture of doubt.
"Then," said Christophe, "what's the good, what's the good of our having
met again?"
Her eyes reproached him, and he said quickly:
"No. Forgive me. I am unjust."
"I shall always think of you," said she.
"Alas!" he replied, "I cannot even think of you. I know nothing of your
life."
Very quietly she described her ordinary life in a few words and told him
how her days were spent. She spoke of herself and of her husband with
her lovely affectionate smile.
"Ah!" he said jealously. "You love him?"
"Yes," she said.
He got up.
"Good-bye."
She got up too. Then only he saw that she was with child. And in his
heart there was an inexpressible feeling of disgust, and tenderness, and
jealousy, and passionate pity. She walked with him to the door of the
little room. There he turned, bent over her hands, and kissed them
fervently. She stood there with her eyes half closed and did not stir.
At last he drew himself up, turned, and hurried away without looking at
her.
... _E chi allora m'avesse domandalo di cosa alcuna, la mia
risponsione sarebbe stata solamente AMORE, con viso vestito
d'umiltà_....
All Saints' Day. Outside, a gray light and a cold wind. Christophe was
with Cécile, who was sitting near the cradle, and Madame Arnaud was
bending over it. She had dropped in. Christophe was dreaming. He was
feeling that he had missed happiness: but he never thought of
complaining: he knew that happiness existed.... Oh! sun, I have no need
to see thee to love thee! Through the long winter days, when I shiver in
the darkness, my heart is full of thee: my love keeps me warm: I know
that thou art there....
And Cécile was dreaming too. She was pondering the child, and she had
come to believe that it was indeed her own. Oh, blessed power of dreams,
the creative imagination of life! Life.... What is life? It is not as
cold reason and our eyes tell us that it is. Life is what we dream, and
the measure of life is love.
Christophe gazed at Cécile, whose peasant face with its wide-set eyes
shone with the splendor of the maternal instinct,--she was more a mother
than the real mother. And he looked at the tender weary face of Madame
Arnaud. In it, as in books that moved him, he read the hidden sweetness
and suffering of the life of a married woman which, though none ever
suspects it, is sometimes as rich in sorrow and joy as the love of
Juliet or Ysolde: though it touches a greater height of religious
feeling ....
_Socia rei humanæ atque divinæ...._
And he thought that children or the lack of children has as much to do
with the happiness or unhappiness of those who marry and those who do
not marry as faith and the lack of faith. Happiness is the perfume of
the soul, the harmony that dwells, singing, in the depths of the heart.
And the most beautiful of all the music of the soul is kindness.
Olivier came in. He was quite calm and reposeful in his movements: a new
serenity shone in him. He smiled at the child, shook hands with Cécile
and Madame Arnaud, and began to talk quietly. He watched them with a
sort of surprised affection. He was no longer the same. In the isolation
in which he had shut himself up with his grief, like a caterpillar in
the nest of its own spinning, he had succeeded after a hard struggle in
throwing off his sorrow like an empty shell. Some day we shall tell how
he thought he had found a fine cause to which to devote his life, in
which he had no interest save that of sacrifice: and, as it is ordered,
on the very day when in his heart he had come to a definite renunciation
of life, it was kindled once more. His friends looked at him. They did
not know what had happened, and dared not ask him: but they felt that he
was free once more, and that there was in him neither regret nor
bitterness for anything or against anybody in the whole wide world.
Christophe got up and went to the piano, and said to Olivier:
"Would you like me to sing you a melody of Brahms?"
"Brahms?" said Olivier. "Do you play your old enemy's music nowadays?"
"It is All Saints' Day," said Christophe. "The day when all are
forgiven."
Softly, so as not to wake the child, he sang a few bars of the old
Schwabian folk-song: