Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 61

Like a bowl of boiling milk, the abysm of s.p.a.ce is overflowing with light. Thou shalt not put me out. The breath of death will set the flame of my life flickering up once more....

On his return from Germany, Christophe wanted to stop in the town where he had known Anna. Since he had left it, he had had no news of her. He had never dared to ask after her. For years her very name was enough to upset him....--Now he was calm and had no fear. But in the evening, in his room in the hotel looking out on the Rhine, the familiar song of the bells ringing in the morrow's festival awoke the images of the past.

From the river there ascended the faint odor of distant danger, which he found it hard to understand. He spent the whole night in recollection.

He felt that he was free of the terrible Lord, and found sweet sadness in the thought. He had not made up his mind what to do on the following day. For a moment--(the past lay so far behind!)--he thought of calling on the Brauns. But when the morrow came his courage failed him: he dared not even ask at the hotel whether the doctor and his wife were still alive. He made up his mind to go....

When the time came for him to go an irresistible force drove him to the church which Anna used to attend: he stood behind a pillar from which he could see the seat where in old days she used to come and kneel. He waited, feeling sure that, if she were still alive, she would come.

A woman did come, and he did not recognize her. She was like all the rest, plump, full-faced, with a heavy chin, and an indifferent, hard expression. She was dressed in black. She sat down in her place, and did not stir. There was nothing in the woman to remind Christophe of the woman he was expecting. Only once or twice she made a certain queer little gesture as though to smooth out the folds of her skirt about her knees. In old days, _she_ had made such a gesture,... As she went out she pa.s.sed slowly by him, with her head erect and her hands holding her prayer-book, folded in front of her. For a moment her somber, tired eyes met Christophe's. And they looked at each other. And they did not recognize each other. She pa.s.sed on, straight and stiff, and never turned her head. It was only after a moment that suddenly, in a flash of memory, beneath the frozen smile, he recognized the lips he had kissed by a certain fold in them.... He gasped for breath and his knees trembled. He thought:

"Lord, is that the body in which she dwelt whom I loved? Where is she?

Where is she? And where am I, myself? Where is the man who loved her?

What is there left of us and the cruel love that consumed us?--Ashes.

Where is the fire?"

And his G.o.d answered and said:

"In Me."

Then he raised his eyes and saw her for the last time in the crowd pa.s.sing through the door into the sunlight.

It was shortly after his return to Paris that he made peace with big old enemy, Levy-Coeur, who had been attacking him for a long time with equal malicious talent and bad faith. Then, having attained the highest success, glutted with honors, satiated, appeased, he had been clever enough secretly to recognize Christophe's superiority, and had made advances to him. Christophe pretended to notice neither attacks nor advances. Levy-Coeur wearied of it. They lived in the same neighborhood and used often to meet. As they pa.s.sed each other Christophe would look through Levy-Coeur, who was exasperated by this calm way of ignoring his existence.

He had a daughter between eighteen and twenty, a pretty, elegant girl, with a profile like a lamb, a cloud of curly fair hair, soft coquettish eyes, and a Luini smile. They used to go for walks together, and Christophe often met them in the Luxembourg Gardens; they seemed very intimate, and the girl would walk arm-in-arm with her father.

Absent-minded though he was, Christophe never failed to notice a pretty face, and he had a weakness for the girl. He would think of Levy-Coeur:

"Lucky beast!"

But then he would add proudly:

"But I too have a daughter."

And he used to compare the two. In the comparison his bias was all in favor of Aurora, but it led him to create in his mind a sort of imaginary friends.h.i.+p between the two girls, though they did not know each other, and even, without his knowing it, to a certain feeling for Levy-Coeur.

When he returned from Germany he heard that "the lamb" was dead. In his fatherly selfishness his first thought was:

"Suppose it had been mine!"

And he was filled with an immense pity for Levy-Coeur. His first impulse was to write to him: he began two letters, but was not satisfied, was ashamed of them, and did not send either. But a few days later when he met Levy-Coeur with a weary, miserable face, it was too much for him: he went straight up to the poor wretch and held out both hands to him.

Levy-Coeur, with a little hesitation, took them in his. Christophe said:

"You have lost her!..."

The emotion in his voice touched Levy-Coeur. It was so unexpected! He felt inexpressibly grateful.... They talked for a little sadly and confusedly. When they parted nothing was left of all that had divided them. They had fought: it was inevitable, no doubt: each man must fulfil the law of his nature! But when men see the end of the tragi-comedy coming, they put off the pa.s.sions that masked them, and meet face to face,--two men, of whom neither is of much greater worth than the other, who, when they have played their parts to the best of their ability, have the right in the end to shake hands.

The marriage of Georges and Aurora had been fixed for the early spring.

Christophe's health was declining rapidly. He had seen his children watching him anxiously. Once he heard them whispering to each other.

Georges was saying:

"How ill he looks! He looks as though he might fall ill at any moment."

And Aurora replied:

"If only he does not delay our marriage!"

He did not forget it. Poor children! They might be sure that he would not disturb their happiness!

But he was inconsiderate enough on the eve of the marriage--(he had been absurdly excited as the day drew near: as excited as though it were he who was going to be married)--he was stupid enough to be attacked by his old trouble, a recurrence of pneumonia, which had first attacked him in the days of the Market-Place. He was furious with himself, and dubbed himself fool and idiot. He swore that he would not give in until the marriage had taken place. He thought of Grazia as she lay dying, never telling him of her illness because of his approaching concert, for fear lest he should be distracted from his work and pleasure. Now he loved the idea of doing for her daughter--for her--what she had done for him.

He concealed his condition, but he found it hard to keep himself going.

However, the happiness of his children made him so happy that he managed to support the long ordeal of the religious ceremony without disaster.

But he had hardly reached Colette's house than his strength gave out: he had just time enough to shut himself up in a room, and then he fainted.

He was found by a servant. When he came to himself Christophe forbade them to say anything to the bride and bridegroom, who were going off on their honeymoon in the evening. They were too much taken up with themselves to notice anything else. They left him gaily, promising to write to him to-morrow, and afterwards....

As soon as they were gone, Christophe took to his bed. He was feverish, and could not shake off the fever. He was alone. Emmanuel was ill too, and could not come. Christophe did not call in a doctor. He did not think his condition was serious. Besides, he had no servant to go for a doctor. The housekeeper who came for two hours in the morning took no interest in him, and he dispensed with her services. He had a dozen times begged her not to touch any of his papers when she was dusting his room. She would do it: she thought she had a fine opportunity to do as she liked, now that he was confined to his bed. In the mirror of his wardrobe door he saw her from his bed turning the whole room upside down. He was so furious--(no, a.s.suredly the old Adam was not dead in him!)--that he jumped out of bed, s.n.a.t.c.hed a packet of papers out of her hands, and showed her the door. His anger cost him a bout of fever and the departure of the servant, who lost her temper and never returned, without even taking the trouble to tell the "old madman," as she called him. So he was left, ill, with no one to look after him. He would get up in the morning to take in the jug of milk left at the door, and to see if the portress had not slipped under the door the promised letter from the lovers. The letter did not come: they had forgotten him in their happiness. He was not angry with them, and thought that in their place he would have done the same. He thought of their careless joy, and that it was he had given it to them.

He was a little better and was able to get up when at last a letter came from Aurora. Georges had been content to add his signature. Aurora asked very little about Christophe and told very little, but, to make up for it, she gave him a commission, begging him to send her a necktie she had left at Colette's. Although it was not at all important--(Aurora had only thought of it as she sat down to write to Christophe, and then only because she wanted something to say),--Christophe was only too delighted to be of use, and went out at once to fetch it. The weather was cold and gusty. The winter had taken an unpleasant turn. Melting snow, and an icy wind. There were no carriages to be had. Christophe spent some time in a parcels' office. The rudeness of the clerks and their deliberate slowness made him irritable, which did not help his business on. His illness was partly responsible for his gusts of anger, which the tranquillity of his mind repudiated; they shook his body, like the last tremors of an oak falling under the blows of an ax. He returned chilled and trembling. As he entered, the portress handed him a cutting from a review. He glanced at it. It was a spiteful attack upon himself. They were growing rare in these days. There is no pleasure in attacking a man who never notices the blows dealt him. The most violent of his enemies were reduced to a feeling of respect for him, which exasperated them, for they still detested him.

_"We believe,"_ said Bismarck, almost regretfully, _"that nothing is more involuntary than love. Respect is even more so...."_

But the writer of the article was one of those strong men, who, being better armed than Bismarck, escape both respect and love. He spoke of Christophe in insulting terms, and announced a series of attacks during the following fortnight: Christophe began to laugh, and said as he went to bed again:

"He will be surprised! He won't find me at home!"

They tried to make him have a nurse, but he refused obstinately, saying that he had lived alone so much that he thought he might at least have the benefit of his solitude at such a time.

He was never bored. During these last years he had constantly been engrossed in dialogues with himself; it was as though his soul was twofold; and for some months past his inward company had been considerably augmented: not two souls, but ten, now dwelt in him. They held converse among themselves, though more often they sang. He would take part in their conversation, or he would hold his peace and listen to them. He had always on his bed, or on the table, within reach of his hand, music-paper on which he used to take down their remarks and his own, and laugh at their rejoinders. It was a mechanical habit: the two actions, thinking and writing, had become almost simultaneous with him; writing was thinking out loud to him. Everything that took him away from the company of his many souls exhausted and irritated him, even the friends he loved best, sometimes. He tried hard not to let them see it, but such constraint induced an extreme la.s.situde. He was very happy when he came to himself again, for he would lose himself: it was impossible to hear the inward voices amid the chattering of human beings. Divine silence!...

He would only allow the portress or one of her children to come three or four times a day to see if he needed anything. He used to give them the notes which, up to the last, he exchanged with Emmanuel. They were almost equally ill, and were under no illusion as to their condition. By different ways the free religious genius of Christophe and the free irreligious genius of Emmanuel had reached the same brotherly serenity.

In their wavering handwriting, which they found it more and more difficult to read, they discoursed, not of their illness, but of the perpetual subject of their conversations, their art, and the future of their ideas.

This went on until the day when, with his failing hand, Christophe wrote the words of the King of Sweden, as he lay dying on the field of battle:

_"Ich habe genug, Bruder: rette dich!"_ [FOOTNOTE: "I have had my fill, brother: save thyself!"]

As a succession of stages he looked back over the whole of his life: the immense effort of his youth to win self-possession, his desperate struggles to exact from others the bare right to live, to wrest himself from the demons of his race. And even after the victory, the forced unending vigil over the fruits of conquest, to defend them against victory itself. The sweetness, the tribulation of friends.h.i.+p opening up the great human family through conflict to the isolated heart. The fullness of art, the zenith of life. His proud dominion over his conquered spirit. His belief that he had mastered his destiny. And then, suddenly at the turn of the road, his meeting with the knights of the Apocalypse, Grief, Pa.s.sion, Shame, the vanguard of the Lord. Then laid low, trampled underfoot by the horses, dragging himself bleeding to the heights, where, in the midst of the clouds, flames the wild purifying fire. His meeting face to face with G.o.d. His wrestling with Him, like Jacob with the Angel. His issue, broken from the fight. His adoration of his defeat, his understanding of his limitations, his striving to fulfil the will of the Lord, in the domain a.s.signed to him. Finally, when the labors of seed-time and harvest, the splendid hard work, were at an end, having won the right to rest at the feet of the sunlit mountains, and to say to them:

"Be ye blessed! I shall not reach your light, but very sweet to me is your shade...."

Then the beloved had appeared to him: she had taken him by the hand; and death, breaking down the barrier of her body, had poured the pure soul of the beloved into the soul of her lover. Together they had issued from the shadow of days, and they had reached the happy heights where, like the three Graces, in a n.o.ble round, the past, the present, and the future, clasped hands, where the heart at rest sees griefs and joys in one moment spring to life, flower, and die, where all is Harmony....

He was in too great a hurry. He thought he had already reached that place. The vise which gripped his panting bosom, and the tumultuous whirl of images beating against the walls of his burning brain, reminded him that the last stage and the hardest was yet to run.... Onward!...

He lay motionless upon his bed. In the room above him some silly woman would go on playing the piano for hours. She only knew one piece, and she would go on tirelessly repeating the same bars; they gave her so much pleasure! They were a joy, an emotion to her; every color, every kind of form was in them. And Christophe could understand her happiness, but she made him weep with exasperation. If only she would not hit the keys so hard! Noise was as odious to Christophe as vice.... In the end he became resigned to it. It was hard to learn not to hear. And yet it was less difficult than he thought. He would leave his sick, coa.r.s.e body. How humiliating it was to have been shut up in it for so many years! He would watch its decay and think: