Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 15

"And to think," said Christophe, "that your Republic authorizes such practices! You say that man is free. And you put ideas up to public auction."

"You have had your money," said Hecht.

"Thirty pieces of silver. Yes," said Christophe. "Take them back."

He fumbled in his pockets, meaning to give the three hundred francs back to Hecht. But he had nothing like that sum. Hecht smiled a little disdainfully. His smile infuriated Christophe.

"I want my work back," he said. "I will buy them back from you."

"You have no right to do so," said Hecht. "But as I have no desire to keep a man against his will, I am quite ready to give them back to you,--if you are in a position to pay the indemnity stated in the contract."

"I will do it," said Christophe, "even if I have to sell myself."

He accepted without discussion the conditions which Hecht submitted to him a fortnight later. It was an amazing act of folly, and he bought back his published compositions at a price five times greater than the sum they had brought him in, though it was by no means exorbitant: for it was scrupulously calculated on the basis of the actual profits which had accrued to Hecht. Christophe could not pay, and Hecht had counted on it. He had no intention of squeezing Christophe, of whom he thought more highly, both as a musician and as a man, than of any other young musician: but he wanted to teach him a lesson: for he could not permit his clients to revolt against what was after all within his rights. He had not made the laws: they were those of the time, and they seemed to him equitable. Besides, he was quite sincerely convinced that they were to the benefit of the author as much as to the benefit of the publisher, who knows better than the author how to circulate his work, and is not, like the author, hindered by scruples of a sentimental, respectable order, which are contrary to his real interests. He had made up his mind to help Christophe to succeed, but in his own way, and on condition that Christophe was delivered into his hands, tied hand and foot. He wanted to make him feel that he could not so easily dispense with his services.

They made a conditional bargain: if, at the end of six months, Christophe could not manage to pay, his work should become Hecht's absolute property. It was perfectly obvious that Christophe would not be able to collect a quarter of the sum requisite.

However, he stuck to it, said good-by to the rooms which were so full of memories for him, and took a less expensive flat,--selling a number of things, none of which, to his great surprise, were of any value,--getting into debt, and appealing to Mooch's good nature, who, unfortunately, was at that time very badly off and ill, being confined to the house with rheumatism,--trying to find another publisher, and everywhere finding conditions as grasping as Hecht's, and in some cases a point-blank refusal.

It was just at the time when the attack on him in the musical press was at its height. One of the leading Parisian papers was especially implacable: he was like a red rag to a bull to one of the staff who did not sign his name; not a week pa.s.sed but there appeared in the column headed _echos_ a spiteful paragraph ridiculing him. The musical critic completed the work of his anonymous colleague: the very smallest pretext served him as an opportunity of expressing his animosity. But that was only the preliminary skirmis.h.i.+ng: he promised to return to the subject and deal with it at leisure, and to proceed in due course to execution. They were in no hurry, knowing that a definite accusation has nothing like the same effect on the public as a succession of insinuations repeated persistently. They played with Christophe like a cat with a mouse. The articles were all sent to Christophe, and he despised them, though they made him suffer for all that. However, he said nothing: and, instead of replying--(could he have done so, even if he had wanted to?)--he persisted in the futile and unequal fight with his publisher, provoked by his own vanity. He wasted his time, his strength, his money, and his only weapons, since in the lightness of his heart he was rash enough to deprive himself of the publicity which his music gained through Hecht.

Suddenly there was a complete change. The article announced in the paper never appeared. The insinuations against him were dropped. The campaign stopped short. More than that: a few weeks later, the critic of the paper published incidentally a few eulogistic remarks which seemed to indicate that peace was made. A great publisher at Leipzig wrote to Christophe offering to publish his work, and the contract was signed on terms very advantageous to him. A flattering letter, bearing the seal of the Austrian Emba.s.sy, informed Christophe that it was desired to place certain of his compositions on the programs of the galas given at the Emba.s.sy. Philomela, whom Christophe was pus.h.i.+ng forward, was asked to sing at one of the galas: and, immediately afterwards, she was in great demand in the best houses of the German and Italian colonies in Paris.

Christophe himself, who could not get out of going to one of the concerts, was very well received by the Amba.s.sador. However, a very short conversation showed him that his host, who knew very little about music, was absolutely ignorant of his work. How, then, did this sudden interest come about? An invisible hand seemed to be protecting him, removing obstacles, and making the way smooth for him. Christophe made inquiries. The Amba.s.sador alluded to friends of Christophe--Count and Countess Bereny, who were very fond of him. Christophe did not even know their name: and on the night of his visit to the Emba.s.sy he had no opportunity of being introduced to them. He did not make any effort to meet them. He was pa.s.sing through a period of disgust with men, in which he set as little store by his friends as by his enemies: friends and enemies were equally uncertain: they changed with the wind: he would have to learn how to do without them, and say, like the old fellow of the seventeenth century:

"_G.o.d gave me friends: He took them from me. They have left me. I will leave them and say no more about it_."

Since the day when he left Olivier's house, Olivier had given no sign of life: all seemed over between them. Christophe had no mind to form new friends.h.i.+ps. He imagined Count and Countess Bereny to be like the rest of the sn.o.bs who called themselves his friends: and he made no attempt to meet them. He was more inclined to avoid them. He longed to be able to escape from Paris. He felt an urgent desire to take refuge for a few weeks in soothing solitude. If only he could have a few days, only a few days, to refresh himself in his native country! Little by little that idea became a morbid obsession. He wanted once more to see his dear river, his own native sky, the land of his dead kinsfolk. He felt that he must see them. He could not without endangering his freedom: he was still subject to the warrant of arrest issued against him at the time of his flight from Germany. But he felt that he was prepared to go to any lengths if he could return, though it were only for one day.

As good luck would have it, he spoke of his longing to one of his new patrons. A young attache of the German Emba.s.sy, whom he met at an At Home where he was playing, happened to say to him that his country was proud of so fine a musician as himself, to which Christophe replied bitterly:

"Our country is so proud of me that she lets me die on her doorstep rather than open to me."

The young diplomatist asked him to explain the situation, and, a few days later, he came to see Christophe, and said:

"People in high places are interested in you. A very great personage who alone has the power to suspend the consequence of the sentence which is the cause of your wretchedness has been informed of your position: and he deigns to be touched by it. I don't know how it is that your music can have given him any pleasure: for--(between ourselves)--his taste is not very good: but he is intelligent, and he has a generous heart.

Though he cannot, for the moment, remove the sentence pa.s.sed upon you, the police are willing to shut their eyes, if you care to spend forty-eight hours in your native town to see your family once more. Here is a pa.s.sport. You must have it endorsed when you arrive and when you leave. Be wary, and do not attract attention to yourself."

Once more Christophe saw his native land. He spent the two days which had been granted him in communion with the earth and those who were beneath it. He visited his mother's grave. The gra.s.s was growing over it: but flowers had lately been laid on it. His father and grandfather slept side by side. He sat at their feet. Their grave lay beneath the wall of the cemetery. It was shaded by a chestnut-tree growing in the sunken road on the other side of the low wall, over which he could see the golden crops, softly waving in the warm wind: the sun was s.h.i.+ning in his majesty over the drowsy earth: he could hear the cry of the quails in the corn, and the soft murmuring of the cypress-trees above the graves. Christophe was alone with his dreams. His heart was at peace. He sat there with his hands clasping his knees, and his back against the wall, gazing up at the sky. He closed his eyes for a moment. How simple everything was! He felt at home here with his own people. He stayed there near them, as it were hand in hand. The hours slipped by. Towards evening he heard footsteps scrunching on the gravel paths. The custodian pa.s.sed by and looked at Christophe sitting there. Christophe asked him who had laid the flowers on the grave. The man answered that the farmer's wife from Buir came once or twice a year.

"Lorchen?" said Christophe.

They began to talk.

"You are her son?" said the man.

"She had three," said Christophe.

"I mean the one at Hamburg. The other two turned out badly."

Christophe sat still with his head thrown back a little, and said nothing. The sun was setting.

"I'm going to lock up," said the custodian.

Christophe got up and walked slowly round the cemetery with him. The custodian did the honors of the place. Christophe stopped every now and then to read the names carved on the gravestones. How many of those he knew were of that company! Old Euler,--his son-in-law,--and farther off, the comrades of his childhood, little girls with whom he had played, --and there, a name which stirred his heart: Ada.... Peace be with all of them....

The fiery rays of the setting sun put a girdle round the calm horizon.

Christophe left the cemetery. He went for a long walk through the fields. The stars were peeping....

Next day he came again, and once more spent the afternoon at his vigil.

But the fair silent calm of the day before was broken and thrilling with life. His heart sang a careless, happy hymn. He sat on the curb of the grave, and set down the song he heard in pencil in a notebook resting on his knees. So the day pa.s.sed. It seemed to him that he was working in his old little room, and that his mother was there on the other side of the part.i.tion. When he had finished and was ready to go--he had moved a little away from the grave,--he changed his mind and returned, and buried the notebook in the gra.s.s under the ivy. A few drops of rain were beginning to fall. Christophe thought:

"It will soon be blotted out. So much the better!... For you alone. For n.o.body else."

And he went to see the river once more, and the familiar streets where so many things were changed. By the gates of the town along the promenade of the old fortifications a little wood of acacia-trees which he had seen planted had overrun the place, and they were stifling the old trees. As he pa.s.sed along the wall surrounding the Von Kerichs'

garden, he recognized the post on which he used to climb when he was a little boy, to look over into the grounds: and he was surprised to see how small the tree, the wall, and the garden had become.

He stopped for a moment before the front gateway. He was going on when a carriage pa.s.sed him. Mechanically he raised his eyes: and they met those of a young lady, fresh, plump, happy-looking, who stared at him with a puzzled expression. She gave an exclamation of surprise. She ordered the carriage to stop, and said:

"Herr Krafft!"

He stopped.

She said laughingly:

"Minna...."

He ran to her almost as nervous as he had been on the day when he first met her. [Footnote: See "Jean-Christophe: Morning."]

She was with a tall, stout, bald gentleman, with mustachios brushed up belligerently, whom she introduced as "Herr Reichsgerichtsrat von Brombach"--her husband. She wanted Christophe to go home with her. He tried to excuse himself. But Minna exclaimed:

"No, no. You must come; come and dine with us."

She spoke very loud and very quickly, and, without waiting to be asked, began to tell him her whole life. Christophe was stupefied by her volubility and the noise she made, and only heard half what she said, and stood looking at her. So that was his little Minna. She looked blooming, healthy, well-fed: she had a pretty skin and pink complexion, but her features were rather coa.r.s.e, and her nose in particular was thick and heavy. Her gestures, manners, pretty little ways, were just the same; but her size was greatly altered.

However, she never stopped talking: she told Christophe all the stories of her past; her whole private history, and how she had come to love her husband and her husband her. Christophe was embarra.s.sed. She was an uncritical optimist, who found everything belonging to herself perfect and superior to other people's possessions--(at least, when she was with other people)--her town, her house, her family, her husband, her cooking, her four children, and herself. She said of her husband in his presence that he was "the most splendid man she had even seen," and that there was in him "a superhuman force." "The most splendid man" pinched Minna's cheeks laughingly, and a.s.sured Christophe that she "was a very remarkable woman."

It seemed that _Herr Reichsgerichtsrat_ was informed of Christophe's position, and did not exactly know whether he ought to treat him with or without respect, having regard on the one hand to the warrant out against him, and on the other to the august protection which s.h.i.+elded him: he solved the difficulty by affecting a compromise between the two manners. As for Minna, she went on talking. When she had talked her fill about herself to Christophe, she began to talk about him: she battered him with questions as intimate as her answers had been to the supposit.i.tious questions which he had never asked. She was delighted to see Christophe again: she knew nothing about his music: but she knew that he was famous: it flattered her to think that she had loved him,--(and that she had rejected him).--She reminded him of it jokingly without much delicacy. She asked him for his autograph for her alb.u.m.

She pestered him with questions about Paris. She showed a mixture of curiosity and contempt for that city. She pretended that she knew it, having been to the Folies-Bergere, the Opera, Montmartre, and Saint-Cloud. According to her, the women of Paris were all _cocottes_, bad mothers, who had as few children as possible, and did not look after them, and left them at home while they went to the theater or the haunts of pleasant vice. She did not suffer contradiction. In the course of the evening she asked Christophe to play the piano. She thought it charming.

But at bottom she admired her husband's playing just as much, for she thought him as superior all round as she was herself.

Christophe had the pleasure of meeting Minna's mother once more, Frau von Kerich. He still had a secret tenderness for her because she had been kind to him. She had not lost any of her old kindness, and she was more natural than Minna: but she still treated Christophe with that ironical affection which used to irritate him in the old days. She had stayed very much where he had left her: she liked the same things; and it did not seem possible for her to admit that any one could do better or differently: she set the Jean-Christophe of the old days against the new Jean-Christophe, and preferred the former.

Of those about her no one had changed in mind save Christophe. The rigidity of the little town, and its narrowness of outlook, were painful to him. His hosts spent part of the evening in talking scandal about people he did not know. They picked out the ridiculous points of their neighbors, and they decreed everything ridiculous which was different from themselves or their own way of doing things. Their malicious curiosity, which was perpetually occupied with trifles, at last made Christophe feel quite sick. He tried to talk about his life abroad. But at once he became conscious of the impossibility of making them understand French civilization which had made him suffer, and now became dear to him when he stood for it in his own country--the free Latin spirit, whose first law is understanding: to understand as much as possible of life and mind, at the risk of cheapening moral codes. In his hosts, especially in Minna, he found once more the arrogant spirit with which he had come into such violent contact in the old days, though he had almost forgotten it since,--the arrogance of weakness as much as of virtue,--honesty without charity, pluming itself on its virtue, and despising the weaknesses which it could not understand, a wors.h.i.+p of the conventional, and a shocked disdain of "irregular" higher things. Minna was calmly and sententiously confident that she was always right. There were no degrees in her judgment of others. For the rest, she never made any attempt to understand them, and was only occupied with herself. Her egoism was thinly coated with a blurred metaphysical tinge. She was always talking of her "ego" and the development of her "ego." She may have been a good woman, one capable of loving. But she loved herself too much. And, above all, her respect for herself was too great. She seemed to be perpetually saying a _Paternoster_ and an _Ave_ to her "ego." One felt that she would have absolutely and forever ceased to love the man she might have loved the best, if for a single instant he had failed--(even though he were to regret it a thousand times when it was done)--to show a due and proper respect for the dignity of her "ego."... Hang your "ego"!

Think a little of the second person singular!...

However, Christophe did not regard her severely. He who was ordinarily so irritable listened to her chatter with the patience of an archangel.

He would not judge her. He surrounded her, as with a halo, with the religious memory of his childish love, and he kept on trying to find in her the image of his little Minna. It was not impossible to find her in certain of her gestures: the quality of her voice had certain notes which awoke echoes that moved him. He was absorbed in them, and said nothing, and did not listen to what she was saying, though he seemed to listen and always treated her with tender gentle respect. But he found it hard to concentrate his thoughts: she made too much noise, and prevented his hearing Minna. At last he got up, and thought a little wearily:

"Poor little Minna! They would like me to think that you are there, in that comely, stout woman, shouting at the top of her voice, and boring me to death. But I know that it is not so. Come away, Minna. What have we to do with these people?"