Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 57

"Have you read this?"

The other replied:

"How sorry I am! The writer of it has always been so well disposed towards me! Really, I am very sorry. The best thing is to pay no attention to it."

Christophe laughed and thought: "He is right! The little sneak."

And he decided to forget all about it.

But chance would have it that Georges, who seldom read the papers, and that hastily, except for the sporting articles, should light on the most violent attacks on Christophe. He knew the writer. He went to the cafe where he knew he would meet him, found him, struck him, fought a duel with him, and gave him a nasty scratch on the shoulder with his rapier.

Next day, at breakfast, Christophe had a letter from a friend telling him of the affair. He was overcome. He left his breakfast and hurried to see Georges. Georges himself opened the door. Christophe rushed in like a whirlwind, seized him by the arms, and shook him angrily, and began to overwhelm him with a storm of furious reproaches.

"You little wretch!" he cried. "You have fought a duel for me! Who gave you leave! A boy, a fly-by-night, to meddle in my affairs! Do you think I can't look after myself? What good have you done? You have done this rascal the honor of fighting him. He asked no more. You have made him a hero. Idiot! And if it had chanced ... (I am sure you rushed at it like a madman as usual) ... if you had been wounded, killed perhaps!... You wretch! I should never have forgiven you as long as you lived!..."

Georges laughed uproariously at this last threat, and was so overcome with merriment, that he cried:

"My dear old friend, how funny you are! Ah! You're unique! Here are you insulting me for having defended you! Next time I shall attack you.

Perhaps you'll embrace me then."

Christophe stopped and hugged Georges, and kissed him on both cheeks, and then once more he said:

"My boy!... Forgive me. I am an old idiot.... But my blood boiled when I heard the news. What made you think of fighting? You don't fight with such people. Promise me at once that you will never do it again."

"I'll promise nothing of the kind," said Georges. "I shall do as I like."

"I forbid it. Do you hear? If you do it again, I'll never see you again.

I shall publicly disown you in the newspapers I shall...."

"You will disinherit me, you mean."

"Come, Georges. Please. What's the good of it?"

"My dear old friend, you are a thousand times a better man than I am, and you know infinitely more: but I know these people better than you do. Make yourself easy. It will do some good. They will think a little now before they let loose their poisonous insults upon you."

"But what can these idiots do to me? I laugh at anything they may say."

"But I don't. And you must mind your own business."

Thereafter Christophe lived on tenterhooks lest some fresh article might rouse Georges's susceptibilities. It was quite comic to see him during the next few days going to a cafe and devouring the newspapers, which he never read as a rule, ready to go to all lengths (even to trickery) if he found an insulting article, to prevent it reaching Georges. After a week he recovered his equanimity. The boy was right. His action had given the yelping curs food for a moment's reflection.--And, though Christophe went on grumbling at the young lunatic who had made him waste eight working days, he said to himself that, after all, he had no right to lecture him. He remembered a certain day, not so very long ago, when he himself had fought a duel for Olivier's sake. And he thought he heard Olivier's voice saying:

"Let be, Christophe. I am giving you back what you lent me!"

Though Christophe took the attacks on himself lightly, there was one other man who was very far from such disinterestedness. This was Emmanuel.

The evolution of European thought was progressing swiftly. It was as though it had been accelerated by mechanical inventions and the new motors. The stock of prejudices and hopes which in old days were enough to feed humanity for twenty years was now exhausted in five years. The generations of the mind were galloping ahead, one behind the other, often one trampling the other down, with Time sounding the charge.--Emmanuel had been left behind.

The singer of French energy had never denied the idealism of his master, Olivier. Pa.s.sionate as was his national feeling, he identified himself with his worship of moral greatness. If in his poetry he loudly proclaimed the triumph of France, it was because in her, by an act of faith, he adored the loftiest ideas of modern Europe, the Athena Nike, the victorious Law which takes its revenge on Force.--And now Force had awakened in the very heart of Law, and it was springing up in all its savage nakedness. The new generation, robust and disciplined, was longing for combat, and, before its victory was won, had the att.i.tude of mind of the conqueror. This generation was proud of its strength, its thews, its mighty chest, its vigorous senses so thirsting for delight, its wings like the wings of a bird of prey hovering over the plains, waiting to swoop down and try its talons. The prowess of the race, the mad flights over the Alps and the sea, the new crusades, not much less mystic, not much less interested than those of Philip Augustus and Villehardouin, had turned the nation's head. The children of the nation who had never seen war except in books had no difficulty in endowing it with beauty. They became aggressive. Weary of peace and ideas, they hymned the anvil of battle, on which, with b.l.o.o.d.y fists, action would one day new-forge the power of France. In reaction against the disgusting abuse of systems of ideas, they raised contempt of the idea to the level of a profession of faith. Bl.u.s.teringly they exalted narrow common sense, violent realism, immodest national egoism, trampling underfoot the rights of others and other nations, when it served the turn of their country's greatness. They were xenophobes, anti-democrats, and--even the most skeptical of them--set up the return to Catholicism, in the practical necessity for "digging channels for the absolute," and shutting up the infinite under the surveillance of order and authority.

They were not content to despise--they regarded the gentle dotards of the preceding generation, the visionary idealists, the humanitarian thinkers of the preceding generation, as public malefactors. Emmanuel was among them in the eyes of the young men. He suffered cruelly and was very angry.

The knowledge that Christophe was, like himself,--more than himself--the victim of their injustice, made him sympathetic. His ungraciousness had discouraged Christophe's visits. He was too proud to show his regret by seeking him out. But he contrived to meet him, as if by chance, and forced Christophe to make the first advances. Thereafter his umbrageous susceptibilities were at rest, and he did not conceal the pleasure he had in Christophe's company. Thereafter they often met in each other's rooms.

Emmanuel confided his bitterness to Christophe. He was exasperated by certain criticisms, and, thinking that Christophe was not sufficiently moved by them, he made him read some of the newspaper appreciations of himself. Christophe was accused of not knowing the grammar of his work, of being ignorant of harmony, of having stolen from other musicians, and, generally, of dishonoring music. He was called: "This old toss-brain...." They said: "We have had enough of these convulsionaries.

We are order, reason, cla.s.sic balance...."

Christophe was vastly entertained.

"It is the law," he said. "The young bury the old.... In my day, it is true, we waited until a man was sixty before we called him an old man.

They are going faster, nowadays.... Wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes....

A generation is more quickly exploded.... Poor devils! They won't last long! Let them despise us and strut about in the sun!"

But Emmanuel had not his sanity. Though he was fearless in thought, he was a prey to his diseased nerves; with his ardent soul in his rickety body, he was driven on to the fight and was unfitted for it. The animosity of certain opinions of his work drew blood.

"Ah!" he would say. "If the critics knew the harm they do artists by the unjust words they throw out so recklessly, they would be ashamed of their trade."

"But they do know, my friend. That is the justification of their existence. Everybody must live."

"They are butchers. One is drenched with the blood of life, worn out by the struggle we have to wage with art. Instead of holding out their hands to us, and compa.s.sionately telling us of our faults, and brotherly helping us to mend them, they stand there with their hands in their pockets and watch you dragging your burden up the slope, and say: 'You can't do it!' And when you reach the top, some of them say: 'Yes, but that is not the way to climb up.' While the others go on blandly saying: 'You couldn't do it!...' You're lucky if they don't send great stones rolling down on you to send you flying!"

"Bah! There are plenty of good men among them, and think of the good they can do! There are bad men everywhere. They're not peculiar to criticism. Do you know anything worse than an ungenerous, vain, and embittered artist, to whom the world is only loot, that he is furious because he cannot grab? You must don patience for your protection. There is no evil but it may be of good service. The worst of the critics is useful to us; he is a trainer: he does not let us loiter by the way.

Whenever we think we have reached the goal, the pack hound us on. Get on! Onward! Upward! They are more likely to weary of running after me than I am of marching ahead of them. Remember the Arabian proverb: _'It is no use flogging sterile trees. Only those are stoned whose front is crowned with golden fruit....'_ Let us pity the artists who are spared. They will stay half-way, lazily sitting down. When they try to get up their legs will be so stiff that they will be unable to walk.

Long live my friend the enemy! They do me more good in my life than the enemy, my friend!"

Emmanuel could not help smiling. Then he said:

"All the same, don't you think it hard for a veteran like you to be taken to task by recruits who are just approaching their first battle?"

"They amuse me," said Christophe. "Such arrogance is the mark of young, hot blood tingling to be up and doing. I was like that once. They are like the showers of March falling on the new-born soil.... Let them take us to task! They are right, after all. Old people must learn from the young! They have profited by us, and are ungrateful: that is in the order of things. But, being enriched by our efforts, they will go farther than we, and will realize what we attempted. If we still have some youth left, let us learn in our turn, and try to rejuvenate ourselves. If we cannot, if we are too old, let us rejoice in them. It is fine to see the perpetual new-flowering of the human soul that seemed, exhausted, the vigorous optimism of these young men, their delight in action and adventures, the races springing to new life for the conquest of the world."

"What would they be without us? Their joy is the fruit of our tears.

Their proud force is the flower of the sufferings of a whole generation.

_Sic vos non n.o.bis_...."

"The old saying is wrong. It is for ourselves that we worked, and our reward lies in the creation of a race of men who shall surpa.s.s us. We ama.s.sed their treasury, we h.o.a.rded it in a wretched hovel open to all the winds of Heaven: we had to strain every nerve to keep the doors closed against death. Our arms carved out the triumphal way along which our sons shall march. Our sufferings have saved the future. We have borne the Ark to the threshold of the Promised Land. It will reach that Land with them, and through us."

"Will they ever remember those who crossed the wilderness, bearing the sacred fire, the G.o.ds of our race, and them, those children, who now are men? For our share we have had tribulation and ingrat.i.tude."

"Do you regret it?"

"No. There is a sort of intoxication in the tragic grandeur of the sacrifice of a mighty epoch like ours to the epoch that it has brought into being. The men of to-day would not be more capable of tasting the sovereign joy of renunciation."

"We have been the happier. We have scaled Mount Nebo, at whose feet lie stretched the countries that we shall never enter. But we enjoy them more than those who will enter them. When you descend to the plain, you lose sight of the plain's immensity and the far horizon."

The soothing influence that Christophe exercised over Georges and Emmanuel had the source of its power in Grazia's love. It was through this love that he felt himself so near to all young things, and had an inexhaustible fund of sympathy for every new form of life. Whatever the forces might be that rekindled the earth, he was always with them, even when they were against him: he had no fear for the immediate future of the democracies, that future which caused such an outcry against the egoism of a handful of privileged men: he did not cling desperately to the paternosters of an old art: he felt quite sure that from the fabulous visions, the realized dreams of science and action, a new art, more puissant than the old, would spring forth: he hailed the new dawn of the world, even though the beauty of the old world were to die with it.

Grazia knew the good that her love did for Christophe: and this consciousness of her power lifted her out of herself. Through her letters she exercised a controlling power over her friend. She was not so absurdly pretentious as to try to control his art: she had too much tact, and knew her limitations. But her true, pure voice was the diapason to which he attuned his soul. Christophe had only to hear her voice echoing his thought to think nothing that was not just, pure, and worthy of repet.i.tion. The sound of a beautiful instrument is to a musician like a beautiful body in which his dream at once becomes incarnate. Mysterious is the fusion of two loving spirits: each takes the best from the other, but only to give it back again enriched with love. Grazia was not afraid to tell Christophe that she loved him.