THE days had no separate meaning to Jean; they came upon him with the
orderly formation of advancing waves, line upon line, they hung above
his little island of consciousness, ominous, cold and dark, to break
and cover him under bitter waters.
He was not conscious that he was unhappy, but he knew that he was
fighting with the hours. They were formidable and long and quite
extraordinarily empty; now and then, indeed, to vary their insistent
monotony, he would feel a sharp stab at the sight or scent of the
flowering spring. A girl with a lilac plume in her hand, the flutter of
the new-born leaves in the garden of the Luxembourg, the gaiety in the
eyes of a child--these things Jean had never known before, but he knew
them now--they were the signals of his retreating joy.
Cartier watched him anxiously; the look of youth had wholly passed from
the boy’s face; it was grey and old, without expression. The features
seemed sunk and the vivid eyes no longer held their light.
It was not Jean who answered Cartier when he spoke to him, but a
creature that seemed dragged up from the depths of the sea. He was
held on the surface for a moment by the brief compulsion of Cartier’s
voice, and when it ceased he sank back without a struggle into an alien
element.
Jean was very docile, he followed Cartier meekly to his rooms for his
last week in Paris. What he liked to do best was to walk up and down,
up and down the long music room with the measured tread of a wild thing
in a cage, but he never did this unless he thought Cartier was out.
There were only two things Jean thought of, one that he might have
killed Flaubert, and the other that he had not stayed with Gabrielle;
but these two things never left him; they rose in turn and possessed
his mind in an orderly routine that did not vary. He might have killed
Flaubert, and he had not stayed with Gabrielle. Cartier interrupted
him sometimes and Jean had to keep his thoughts back from one of these
great wheels, and then as Cartier withdrew his claim Jean’s mind sprang
back released, and he found himself once more turning on his inexorable
wheels.
As the days passed he grew nearer the hidden boundary where madness
lurks; sleep withdrew from him, at first imperceptibly and gently,
a new elastic lengthening of the hours of the night, and then
altogether, with a complete and terrible absence of unconsciousness.
For twenty-four hours Jean was bound on his two wheels swinging in the
chaos of his breaking mind. Then Cartier came to him again. Jean had to
hold his head for a moment to hear what Cartier said; a strange idea
flickered into his mind, without root or continuity, that it might be
easier to kill Cartier than to listen to him; but he put it away; he
could still listen.
Cartier said: “Jean, I’ve heard from Margot; she wants us both to go
to hear her sing to-night; it’s a great occasion, she has an important
part in the new Revue at ‘Le Matin.’ It’s our last evening, you know,
in Paris. You’ll come, won’t you, to hear the little Margot?”
“I have already said good-bye to Margot,” said Jean slowly; and then he
murmured half to himself: “I asked her if she prayed for me, and she
said, ‘Ah Jean! the Blessed Virgin knows that I have prayed.’ I do not
want to hear her say that again. Her eyes are like a sword.”
“She doesn’t want us to go and see her,” Cartier explained carefully.
“She writes that it’s the music she wants you to hear--they’ve given
her a good part.”
“But you don’t know what her voice is like,” expostulated Jean
impatiently. “If I were dead and Margot sang I should know it was her
voice, and I should say, ‘Go slowly, little Margot, fold your wings!’
She is eager like a child, or a bird that must run up into the sky and
cannot wait to get there before he sings.”
Cartier nodded; he understood Margot’s letter now. “Bring him, please
bring him--it’s not me--I never was any good to him, but when I sing
he’ll listen--I think it will make a difference--a difference to him, I
mean.”
Cartier hoped that it might make a difference, for he remembered, as
he looked at Jean, that men had gone mad for love, and he thought that
they must have looked singularly like Jean, as Jean looked now.
“You’ll come,” Cartier pleaded. “You see you’ll help her; she says
you’ve done such wonders for her voice. Why, it’s quite famous now! I
had the pleasure of mentioning the fact to our good Liane the other
night. I said, ‘You must really go and hear the little Selba, _ma
fille_, she is getting a _réclame_ here in Paris, and they say she owes
it all to your little musician.’ _Ma foi!_ The good Liane put back her
big white teeth and wished she could bite. I was not at all sure she
wouldn’t--so I ran away!”
Jean made an intense effort to listen; it seemed to him that he ought
to know who Liane was; then he gave in--after all, it would be easier
to give his consent than to have to talk any more. “I’ll go,” he said
briefly.
It was strange on his way to the theatre that he should keep seeing
Flaubert and Gabrielle in the streets, and it was trying, too, because
he had to think two thoughts at once, and this is not easy without
practice. It makes the mind go so quickly like the long, quivering,
grey band in a threshing machine.
They would pass, Gabrielle and the fat little secretary, in a flying
motor, only the next minute to turn in at a lighted café--though they
might at the same time be standing on the steps of a house above the
street. They even on one occasion leaned out of a window to laugh, and
stood just in front of Jean on the pavement simultaneously; but one
thing was always the same; they were laughing at Jean because he had
not killed Flaubert and because he had not stayed with Gabrielle.
Cartier pretended not to see them; he kept his eyes carefully in front
of him, and walked a little stiffly, with his hand on Jean’s arm. Jean
wasn’t at all sure that Cartier was not laughing at him too; perhaps
after all it would be simpler to kill Cartier; he at least was only
capable of being in one place at a time.
They arrived at the big lighted hall; it was full of little tables and
men smoking; there were women too, with jewels on their necks. And
lights, lights everywhere, and the orchestra played soft, gay music;
but they none of them had a real existence; they all seemed to Jean
like a hideous game of make-believe, played in order to drag him away
from his two great ideas.
The Revue was very like all Revues; it was the latest thing; so that
there wasn’t a joke that was born as late as yesterday or would be
remembered beyond to-morrow. Still it was very clever, very neat, and
topical and gay, and the music was that fine malleable French art,
which is as clear cut as a cameo and as hard as a problem in algebra.
Jean did not pay any attention to it because, of course, he knew it
wasn’t real; and then he suddenly saw Margot. He couldn’t think what
she was doing on a pretence stage and in a place that looked like a
hall and was as hollow as a bad nut; it puzzled and annoyed him to see
her there, but he did not doubt Margot’s reality.
You could, if you were as clever and as cruel as sin, make up anything
on earth, but you couldn’t invent Margot.
“_C’est la petite_ Margot,” he muttered; then she sang.
All the music he had ever thought of, all the music he had ever heard,
sang with her; and sang to set Jean free.
He did not realize at first what was happening to him. Her voice
drowned the bitterness of his heart, there was something in it deeper
than bitterness.
The hours he had starved in Paris drove their old meaning into his
brain; he saw the Parc Monceau in the cold spring dusk, the smell of
the coffee-stalls at dawn came back to him, and the flash of the lights
outside the theatre in the rain.
All these were in Margot’s voice, for out of Jean’s sufferings she had
made her little songs; and as he listened he felt as if a band of iron
had been broken, a band that was pressing his life out.
He was no longer possessed by phantoms. He saw instead the little
figure on the stage. She stood close to the footlights; a tiny frown
came between her brows; she always looked like that when she was very
anxious to please Jean.
The song was over; she had only been singing one of the clever light
songs like all the others, but she had put into it the whole quality of
her voice; and she had pleased Paris. She stood there while the hall
rang with applause and flowers fell right and left upon her.
The orchestra began again, they played a little haunting melody which
laid a sudden hand upon Jean’s heart. He knew this music better than
any other, for he himself had written it for Margot.
It was called _La plainte de l’amour_.
Out of the flowers and the lights his gaze met Margot’s.
Margot’s eyes were very serious, very haunting, very grave. Her voice
rose like a creature spreading great wings.
It was Jean’s music, _La plainte de l’amour_, but it was Margot’s heart.
Paris, that loves its dear, light mockeries, loves simple pathos too;
not quite so much, perhaps; but the Manager was not dissatisfied with
Margot’s applause.
Margot bowed and smiled and stooped to pick up her splendid trophies;
and Jean sprang to his feet, waved his hat and stick and applauded like
the rest. Cartier saw that the transfiguration had come to him; he was
no longer a creature of a different world. He hesitated for a moment,
then he said: “You will come round to her--now?”
But Margot’s turn was over; she had slipped away with her arms full of
flowers.
Jean put his hand on Cartier’s shoulder.
“No! no!” he said. “I will not go round, _mon vieux_! _Cela suffit_--we
have already parted!
“But to-morrow you and I will go to Russia. I feel to-night as if after
all I might do something--who knows--life is not over at twenty-five.
Something has made a new man of me to-night, and I have an idea that
this new man will make a little music. _Mon Dieu!_ broken music,
perhaps, but one cannot have everything complete! At the bottom of all
beauty I find that there is grief.”
And Cartier sighed and smiled and said nothing.
After all there was nothing to be said. Margot was right; she had made
a difference; but the difference was for Jean.
THE END.
_Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold is represented
thus =bold=.