Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 27

"I don't know," said Christophe, drawing his hand across his forehead.

He went on writing. Silence once mere filled the room. Olivier went on looking at Christophe. Christophe felt that he was looking, and turned.

Olivier's eyes were upon him with such a hunger of affection!

"Lazy brute!" he said gaily.

Olivier sighed.

"What's the matter?" asked Christophe.

"Oh! Christophe! To think there are so many things in you, sitting there, close at hand, treasures that you will give to others, and I shall never be able to share!..."

"Are you mad? What's come to you?"

"I wonder what your life will be. I wonder what peril and sorrow you have still to go through.... I would like to follow you. I would like to be with you.... But I shan't see anything of it all. I shall be left stuck stupidly by the wayside."

"Stupid? You are that. Do you think that I would leave you behind even if you wanted to be left?"

"You will forget me," said Olivier.

Christophe got up and went and sat on the bed by Olivier's side: he took his wrists, which were wet with a clammy sweat of weakness. His nightshirt was open at the neck, showing his weak chest, his too transparent skin, which was stretched and thin like a sail blown out by a puff of wind to rending point. Christophe's strong fingers fumbled as he b.u.t.toned the neckband of Olivier's nightshirt. Olivier suffered him.

"Dear Christophe!" he said tenderly. "Yet I have had one great happiness in my life!"

"Oh! what on earth are you thinking of?" said Christophe. "You're as well as I am."

"Yes," said Olivier.

"Then why talk nonsense?"

"I was wrong," said Olivier, ashamed and smiling. "Influenza is so depressing."

"Pull yourself together, though! Get up."

"Not now. Later on."

He stayed in bed, dreaming. Next day he got up. But he was only able to sit musing by the fireside. It was a mild and misty April. Through the soft veil of silvery mist the little green leaves were unfolding their coc.o.o.ns, and invisible birds were singing the song of the hidden sun.

Olivier wound the skein of his memories. He saw himself once more as a child, in the train carrying him away from his native town, through the mist, with his mother weeping. Antoinette was sitting by herself at the other end of the carriage.... Delicate shapes, fine landscapes, were drawn in his mind's eye. Lovely verses came of their own accord, with every syllable and charming rhythm in due order. He was near his desk: he had only to reach out his hand to take his pen and write down his poetic visions. But his will failed him: he was tired: he knew that the perfume of his dreams would evaporate so soon as he tried to catch and hold them. It was always so: the best of himself could never find expression: his mind was like a little valley full of flowers: but hardly a soul had access to it: and as soon as they were picked the flowers faded. No more than just a few had been able languidly to survive, a few delicate little tales, a few pieces of verse, which all gave out a fragrant, fading scent. His artistic impotence had for a long time been one of Olivier's greatest griefs. It was so hard to feel so much life in himself and to be able to save none of it!...--Now he was resigned. Flowers do not need to be seen to blossom. They are only the more beautiful in the fields where no hand can pluck them. Happy, happy fields with flowers dreaming in the sun!--Here in the little valley there was hardly any sun; but Olivier's dreams flowered all the better for it. What stories he wove for his own delight in those days, stories sad and tender and fantastic! They came he knew not whence, sailing like white clouds in a summer sky, melted into thin air, and others followed them: he was full of them. Sometimes the sky was clear: in the light of it Olivier would sit drowsily until once more, with all sail set, there would come gliding the silent ships of dreams.

In the evening the little hunchback would come in. Olivier was so full of stories that he told him one, smiling, eager and engrossed in the tale. Often he would go on talking to himself, with the boy breathing never a word. In the end he would altogether forget his presence....

Christophe arrived in the middle of the story, and was struck by its beauty, and asked Olivier to begin all over again. Olivier refused:

"I am in the same position as yourself," he said. "I don't know anything about it."

"That is not true," said Christophe. "You're a regular Frenchman, and you always know exactly what you are doing and saying. You never forget anything."

"Alas!" said Olivier.

"Begin again, then."

"I'm too tired. What's the good?"

Christophe was annoyed.

"That's all wrong," he said. "What's the good of your having ideas? You throw away what you have. It's an utter waste." "Nothing is ever lost,"

said Olivier.

The little hunchback started from the stillness he had maintained during Olivier's story--sitting with his face towards the window, with eyes blankly staring, and a frown on his face and a fierce expression so that it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. He got up and said:

"It will be fine to-morrow."

"I bet," said Christophe to Olivier, "that he didn't even listen."

"To-morrow, the First of May," Emmanuel went on, while his morose expression lighted up.

"That is his story," said Olivier. "You shall tell it me tomorrow."

"Nonsense!" said Christophe.

Next day Christophe called for Olivier to take him for a walk in Paris.

Olivier was better: but he still had the same strange feeling of exhaustion: he did not want to go out, he had a vague fear, he did not like mixing with the crowd. His heart and mind were brave: but the flesh was weak. He was afraid of a crush, an affray, brutality of all sorts: he knew only too well that he was fated to be a victim, that he could not, even would not, defend himself: for he had as great a horror of giving pain as of suffering it himself. Men who are sick in body shudder away from physical suffering more readily than others, because they are more familiar with it, because they have less power to resist, and because it is presented more immediately and more poignantly to their heated imagination. Olivier was ashamed of this physical cowardice of his which was in entire contradiction to the stoicism of his will: and he tried hard to fight it down. But this morning the thought of human contact of any sort was painful to him, and he would gladly have remained indoors all day long. Christophe scolded him, rallied him, absolutely insisted on his going out and throwing off his stupor: for quite ten days he had not had a breath of air. Olivier pretended not to pay any attention. Christophe said:

"Very well. I'll go without you. I want to see their First of May. If I don't come back to-night, you will know that I have been locked up."

He went out. Olivier caught him up on the stairs. He would not leave Christophe to go alone.

There were very few people in the streets. A few little work-girls wearing sprays of lily-of-the-valley. Working-people in their Sunday clothes were walking about rather listlessly. At the street corners, and near the Metro stations were groups of policemen in plain clothes. The gates of the Luxembourg were closed. The weather was still foggy and damp. It was a long, long time since the sun had shown himself!... The friends walked arm in arm. They spoke but little, but they were very glad of each other. A few words were enough to call up all their tender memories of the intimate past. They stopped in front of a _mairie_ to look at the barometer, which had an upward tendency.

"To-morrow," said Olivier, "I shall see the sun."

They were quite near the house where Cecile lived. They thought of going in and giving the baby a hug.

"No. We can do it when we come back."

On the other side of the river they began to fall in with more people.

Just ordinary peaceful people taking a walk, wearing their Sunday clothes and faces; poor people with their babies: workmen loafing. A few here and there wore the red eglantine in their b.u.t.tonholes: they looked quite inoffensive: they were revolutionaries by dint of self-persuasion: they were obviously quite benevolent and optimistic at heart, well satisfied with the smallest opportunities for happiness: whether it were fine or merely pa.s.sable for their holiday, they were grateful for it ...

they did not know exactly to whom ... to everything and everybody about them. They walked along without any hurry, expansively admiring the new leaves of the trees and the pretty dresses of the little girls who went by: they said proudly:

"Only in Paris can you see children so well dressed as that."

Christophe made fun of the famous upheaval that had been predicted....

Such nice people!... He was quite fond of them, although a little contemptuous.

As they got farther along the crowd thickened. Men with pale hangdog faces and horrible mouths slipped into the stream of people, all on the alert, waiting for the time to pounce on their prey. The mud was stirred up. With every inch the river grew more and more turbid. Now it flowed slowly thick, opaque, and heavy. Like air-bubbles rising from the depths to the greasy surface, there came up calling voices, shrill whistles, the cries of the newsboys, piercing the dull roar of the mult.i.tude, and made it possible to take the measure of its strata. At the end of a street, near Amelie's restaurant, there was a noise like that of a mill-race. The crowd was stemmed up against several ranks of police and soldiers. In front of the obstacles a serried ma.s.s was formed, howling, whistling, singing, laughing, and eddying this way and that.... The laughter of the people is the only means they have of expressing a thousand obscure and yet deep feelings which cannot find an outlet in words!...

The mult.i.tude was not hostile. The people did not know what they wanted.

Until they did know they were content to amuse themselves--after their own nervous, brutal fashion, still without malice--to amuse themselves with pushing and being pushed, insulting the police and each other. But little by little, they lost their ardor. Those who came up from behind got tired of being able to see nothing, and were the more provocative inasmuch as they ran little risk behind the shelter of the human barricade in front of them. Those in front, being crushed between those who were pushing and those who were offering resistance, grew more and more exasperated as their position became more and more intolerable: the force of the current pushing them on increased their own force an hundredfold. And all of them, as they were squeezed closer and closer together, like cattle, felt the warmth of the whole herd creeping through their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and their loins: and it seemed to them then that they formed a solid block: and each was all, each was a giant with the arms of Briareus. Every now and then a wave of blood would surge to the heart of the thousand-headed monster: eyes would dart hatred, murderous cries would go up. Men cowering away in the third and fourth row began to throw stones. Whole families were looking down from the windows of the houses: it was like being at the play: they excited the mob and waited with a little thrill of agonized impatience for the troops to charge.

Christophe forced his way through the dense throng with elbows and knees, like a wedge. Olivier followed him. The living ma.s.s parted for a moment to let them pa.s.s and closed again at once behind them. Christophe was in fine fettle. He had entirely forgotten that only five minutes ago he had denied the possibility of an upheaval of the people. Hardly had he set foot inside the stream than he was swept along: though he was a foreigner in this crowd of Frenchmen and a stranger to their demands, yet he was suddenly engulfed by them: little he cared what they wanted: he wanted it too: little he cared whither they were going: he was going too, drinking in the breath of their madness.