IT was the night of the presentation of Liane’s new play. Jean sat down
on a box in one of the wings; he could see part of the sloping stage
from where he sat, and far up above him in the distance the pale gleam
of the footlights, with now and then the graceful sweep of a woman’s
dress.
He heard without listening to the words the sound of Liane’s rich,
penetrating voice; it did not seem to him as sweet as usual. There was
a strange sense of fatigue and bitterness upon him to-night, in the
moments when he had time to think, his life seemed cheap, he could not
forgive the world its failure to meet his passionate expectations. It
was not remorse that possessed him, but the revolt of the soul against
the senses, which is sometimes more bitter even than remorse.
Had he reached the truth, he asked himself, about Maurice? Surely Liane
had kept her promise not to see him again? But had she? Did people in
Liane’s world ever keep their promises?
For the moment Jean shrank from asking her, he dared not put his
love to the test of her possible treachery; it seemed to Jean like
undermining something already frail. He was sick of the great foyer of
the Odéon--everyone had business there but himself. He had to stand
aside while the stage carpenters made their way here and there in the
busy scene-shifting foyer behind him, pulling great planks forward,
or manipulating yards of rope with one hand while they pushed the
next scene’s furniture further forward with the other. The supers
hung about, giggling as loud as they dared, and every now and then,
one of the more important artists swept in and out of the distant
dressing-rooms.
A voice sounded at Jean’s shoulder; it was low, but pitilessly distinct
and sharp, “_Voyons_ Selba,” it said, “we have gone through this
before, and I am telling you now for the last time, I cannot employ
an untrained voice here. It is not any use for you to say you cannot
afford to have it trained; you have lived long enough in Paris to know
that is not true. There are Marcet and Dubarras--have they not both
made you offers? _Eh bien!_ accept, then, one of them. Accept, or leave
my company. I am giving you this one more chance because there are
qualities in your voice that please; it is a pity, too, for so young a
girl to throw away a career. Go to Torialli or Barrière and learn the
new part. Do not dare to come here again without an idea and stand up
on the stage like a charity-school girl saying her prayers!
“I tell you, my girl, this is Paris! This is a theatre! You don’t come
here to be prepared for your first Communion. I do not care whom it is,
it is all one to me, Marcet or Dubarras, take your choice. But you must
have money, you must have lessons. Now pull yourself together--there is
your first call--go!”
Jean recognized that it was the voice of Monsieur Picot, the Régisseur
of the Odéon. He turned his head to see to whom the succinct advice had
been given, and saw just behind him the small figure of what seemed
to him to be a little child. In another moment Jean saw that she
was, after all a grown-up young girl, but her obvious fear, her tiny
stature, the great fawn-like eyes, the freshness and innocence of the
round little face were astonishingly out of place in the Odéon. She
did not see Jean. She looked over her shoulder at the manager, who had
turned his attention to a clumsy scene shifter. “_Mais_ Monsieur,” she
whispered, stammering and trembling, on the verge of tears. Monsieur
Picot turned his back and walked away. A second sharp electric bell
rang out her call, she drew herself together, and hurried past Jean on
to the stage.
Jean leaned forward, excited and curious; who was this little girl with
her untouched bloom and her frightened eyes?
He caught a glimpse of the huge stage and Liane standing with easy
majesty, her head bent low, her smile fixed, heavily rouged and
over-emphasized. He could not see Margot Selba, but in a moment he
heard her; her voice rose against the heavy background of light and
heat, the thick scents and the rich, dead gleam of jewelled stuffs,
like the voice of a bird when spring is young. It seemed the only
living thing in a dead world to Jean. The tears came to his eyes as
he listened, good, honest tears, that washed away the bitter sense of
degradation from his heart. He felt himself back in the country again,
with the freedom of the fields before him and the greater freedom
of his own unstained, innocent heart. The song ceased, and Liane’s
powerful voice took its place, showy, flexible, practised. She did what
she liked with it and the scene before her, but it seemed to Jean like
the change from a hillside into a hothouse. The girl crept back into
the wings again; no one took any notice of her; she found a corner
where an old box had been left by the scene-shifters, and then she
crouched down on it, burying her face in her hands.
Jean moved quickly towards her.
“Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle,” he whispered, “do not cry so, do not be
distressed--tell me about your troubles?”
The child lifted her head with a frightened movement.
“It is nothing, it is nothing,” she muttered between her trembling lips.
But Jean sat down on the box beside her, and would not be denied. “It
is not nothing,” he said firmly, “that you are here in trouble and
alone! It is not nothing that you, who are no more than a child, should
be spoken to as I have heard Monsieur Picot speak to you to-night.
_Mon Dieu!_ I had no idea such infamies could go on here in Paris!
Mademoiselle, I implore you, trust me! Speak to me, tell me what I can
do for you, and believe that is the only advantage I will take of your
confidence.”
“Help me, Monsieur?” asked Margot, sitting up straight and regarding
this strange young man with wide-open, astonished eyes. “Why, what
should you do for me? Are you not a friend of de Brances?”
Jean shook his head impatiently. “What difference does that make?” he
exclaimed. “Am I not a man and an artist; do you suppose all men are
inhuman and monstrous like that _crétin_ who spoke to you just now? My
poor child, I will prove to you that all are not!”
“No, no,” said Margot quickly, “indeed I do not think it. I know
that you, Monsieur, are for certain different. You have not seen me
before, perhaps, but I have seen you often; you are not like the other
gentlemen who come here and never leave us alone. I have often wondered
what you came here for, but of course de Brances has many friends who
like to see her on the stage, some of them may be--” Margot hesitated;
it looked a little ungracious to admit to a friend of de Brances that
some few of that lady’s intimates might behave with tolerable decency
behind her back!--“may be artists,” she finished instead, “and that
makes always for a kind of sympathy.”
“I am a musician,” said Jean with emphasis.
“A musician,” echoed Margot very softly.
“And I am very poor,” Jean continued, “I am a struggling artist!”
Jean announced this statement as if it were a proclamation of ascent to
the throne. He succeeded in startling Margot, to whom, however, poverty
did not appear to have quite the same meritorious halo that it wore to
Jean’s less accustomed eyes. But then Margot knew what real poverty
meant.
“But that is a misfortune for Monsieur,” she said gently.
“No, it is not,” replied Jean impatiently; “if I were not poor I could
not offer to help you, you would very justly refuse me; but now I have
a plan that I think you will be willing to accept.”
Margot’s eyes grew rounder and rounder; she was not quite sure that
this strange and attractive gentleman sitting on the box beside her
was sane, but she was quite sure that he was kind, and that it was
extraordinarily interesting to listen to him. Margot thought he must be
rather like an angel; but it is possible that Margot would have felt
uncertain how practical an angel’s plan would be for Paris. She knew
her Paris, and she did not fancy that the heavenly powers made much of
a success there.
“Monsieur has a plan, then?” she murmured.
“I must explain myself,” said Jean, leaning forward with intense
excitement, and stabbing the air with his forefinger. “I have said
that I am a musician! More than that, I am the only kind of musician
who can help you! When I came to Paris six months ago I met Cartier.
You must have heard of him, his touch is famous in Paris--you’ll have
to know him--there is a man who has a soul of gold! He gave me lessons
for which he never charged me a penny, and then he sent me out to
listen to all the best singers in Paris. He told me to study a method
of teaching, and how to accompany the voice; he gave me introductions
to several singers, and I have already accompanied Lucien le Page and
Madame du Buissant. _Enfin!_ I have fitted myself to train a voice.
That is what you need, is it not? Very well then, I will give up my
Bank and train yours!”
“Pardon, Monsieur, your Bank?” exclaimed Margot. “What Bank?”
“It is nothing,” said Jean, with great calmness. “It happens to be
my profession at the moment, but I have been meaning to give it up
for some time. Now it is done! You will trust your voice to me? You
consider my plan good?”
Margot gasped. “But, Monsieur,” she said, “I am not rich! I am not a
Bank! I would gladly let you train my voice if I could afford to pay
you for it; but alas, it is just there that your plan breaks down.”
“Not at all,” said Jean impatiently. “If I make your voice a success
that will bring me into notice. It is a bargain, it is purely business,
I assure you. Money--what is money? There will be no difficulty about
that--what I want is fame.”
“But, Monsieur, meanwhile you must live,” expostulated Margot.
Jean looked annoyed; for a moment he was not sure that Margot was
really an artist.
“That will arrange itself,” he said indifferently; “the great thing is
we are agreed upon my plan?”
Margot hesitated, then she suggested a compromise; if Jean really
didn’t care about the money, and since nothing would induce her to take
up his time and skill without some form of a return, would he care to
occupy her mother’s free room in their little apartment which had just
been vacated by a theological student? It was really very convenient,
as they were so high up he could practise as much as he liked. He would
of course take the room for nothing, and she would then feel free to
accept his lessons.
Still Margot urged him very forcibly not to give up the Bank. She
seemed to attach an absurd importance to what Jean felt to be an
overrated institution. Jean was in the mood for renunciation, and it
seemed to him a small thing to burn this particular boat; he was in the
act of wishing he could burn a larger one when Margot exclaimed:
“Ah! here comes Madame de Brances. _O ciel!_ What a splendid creature
she is! Do you think we are in her way?”
Jean did not answer Margot, he was looking at Liane. Yes, there was
no doubt that Liane looked splendid. She was advancing towards them
like some stately Atlantic liner bearing down upon a small sea tramp,
serenely conscious of her powers. She swept towards them, her lips set
and her great bisque-fringed eyes shining like figured Chinese lanterns
under the tightened rope of her marked eyebrows. Jean glanced from one
woman to the other. Margot looked like an unformed child beside Liane;
she huddled a little awkwardly on her wooden box, the colour going and
coming in her round cheeks. She had no weapons to match the finished
vision before her, nothing but the honesty of her heart, and yet to
Jean that one small jewel outshone the whole golden argosy bearing down
relentlessly upon them. At least, for the moment Jean thought it did.
Meanwhile, even in that moment of recognition, he slipped back into the
mire. Liane leaned forward a little as she reached them; she seemed
to gather Jean up and hold him in her passionate deep eyes, those
terrible possessive eyes that knew how, not in vain, to slip the snare
of the fowler over the fluttering bird.
“_Allons, Jean, viens-tu!_” she whispered in her tenderest voice, as
soft and sweet as honey in the south. She did not look at Margot at
all, but she had seen her.
Jean turned and followed her without a word.