CHAPTER VI
JEAN bore his new resolutions very easily at first; they filled up his days and they gave him an incentive, and for a time he did not come into contact with any other point of view.
“Voyons,” the concierge’s wife exclaimed to Henri, “you have sent us a saint. I am not the less careful of him on that account, you may imagine. For myself, I believe there is luck in such things. My husband is, as you know, a sceptic; he says that it will not last. Poor young man! I sometimes think to myself it is a little sad—so young and with so much to see, and always to be looking at Heaven!”
But Jean did not find it sad; he thought it was well to keep up his music—monks have been composers before now. So he spent all his spare time at the piano and bought the latest compositions of a famous Russian composer. One could hardly call his music strictly religious, perhaps, but Jean felt confident that it could be religiouslyapplied. Then it occurred to him one day that he was a little selfish. Here he was, professedly conscious of a new truth, leading a splendid and invigorating life and making no attempt to share it. It was not that Jean wanted to preach; he was not a prig, even though he was very much in earnest; but he did want to do good and communicate, and he also wanted sympathy, but of this he was perhaps hardly aware. At twenty-one we are not likely to know very much about our own characters. We are too busy making them. Jean was extremely susceptible to sympathy. Appreciation and approval were like wings to his efforts, even opposition made life easier to him than indifference.
He could not really enjoy being a hermit without someone to say that it was, if not a great success, at least an astonishing attempt, and so far Jean had not surprised anyone in Paris. It came to him one Sunday afternoon with a flash of inspiration, why should he not reveal his new way of life to Maurice Golaud? He was almost certain to be in Paris now; he had said he would, as a matter of course, come up for the winter, and it was already late in December. It was improbable that Maurice would at once desire to share Jean’s austere existence, but he could discuss its charms with Maurice, and point out to him how disappointed he had been in what Maurice had called “life.” Perhaps by this time Maurice was disappointedtoo. At any rate, it would be very jolly to see Maurice again. He ought to go and see Maurice, and he re-read the address. The name Mademoiselle Liane de Brances meant nothing at all to Jean. He did not know that she was a lovely French actress, almost of the first class. How should he? As a hermit he had never entered the theatre, and in his pre-hermit days his fellow clerks had introduced him chiefly to music halls. He did think that it was a pity he should have to find Maurice at this lady’s address; he even thought of writing and arranging an appointment in his own room; but there was that fatal and entrapping confusion between desire and duty. Surely he ought not to waste any time in going to Maurice? He would waste no time—and he went.
Everything was different from what Jean had expected. To begin with, the maid did not think it necessary to inform Jean that Maurice was out; she knew her mistress to be alone and in a bad temper, and in these circumstances she had experienced before the extreme efficacy of a young man. He acted upon Liane’s nerves like a sedative, and Liane’s servants made a point of considering her nerves. So she took Jean’s card straight to her mistress and left him to make what he could of a fashionable actress’s boudoir, while he waited.
Maurice had often spoken to Jean of his “little place” in Paris, but Jean in his wildest dreams had never imagined a little place like this. Theroom was not very large, but it was extraordinarily light and gay. Great bowls full of scented flowers stood everywhere. Signed photographs of names that had reached even to St. Jouin were flung carelessly about, exquisite small ivories and daintybonbonnièreswere set out on little tables. By the delicately curtained windows stood a screen of very fine old miniatures, and on a long, narrow table was a valuable collection of old snuff-boxes.
Everywhere were mirrors—long mirrors, short mirrors, round mirrors, oval mirrors; the tables and chairs were white and gold, and here and there on the walls hung toneless Japanese prints, pale grey, or white with wavy black lines.
There was only one painting in the room—it hung over the mantelpiece, and after Jean had looked at it he saw nothing else.
It was a painting of a woman. She seemed almost to speak as she leaned with bent head out of the picture. There was no smile on her face—lovely and blooming and intensely gay, there was about her an enormous and unlimited satisfaction. She seemed, as it were, clothed in a dauntless confidence. There she sat with uplifted shining eyes, waiting for her opportunity, and relentlessly competent to take it.
Jean heard a faint sound behind him, and turning, he saw the original of the picture.
Liane was fifteen years older now, and she was no longer waiting for her opportunity.
She was a tall woman, whose figure already required care; she had thick coils of magnificent chestnut hair, much of which was still her own.
Her arched eyebrows gave a questioning, mysterious look to her wide grey eyes with their deep bisque shadows. She had the most beautiful mouth in Paris, and she had been famous for her smile. Poets had sung of it, artists had tried to paint it, lovers had sworn they would die for it. They had not found that necessary, but many of them had found it remarkably expensive.
Ten years ago that smile of Liane’s was the talk of Paris, but perhaps rather too many other things had been talked of since. It was by now a little blurred, tightened by repetition, and hardened by inevitable usage, still even now it was a work of art, and, without the stage, it would have afforded Liane a handsome income. It was perhaps no mean test of a hermit.
Jean stood watching her with a hypnotized air; it was a great tribute to Liane, but as an attitude in a Parisian boudoir it was a trifle awkward.
Poor Jean! How beautiful this woman was,—and he had never seen a beautiful woman before.
Liane hardly seemed to move as she approached him; her figure glided through the room like the idle wing of a bird in slow flight across a summer sky. It had taken adanseusetwo years to teach Liane how to walk.
She was dressed in a pale dove-grey tea-gown,with a knot of violets at her breast. It was not surprising that Maurice admired her more even than his own imperially cut and waxed moustache; nevertheless, he had gone to thecoursesthis afternoon without her, and Liane de Brances did not like being left alone.
“Vous êtes le bien-venu, Monsieur,” said Liane, in the modulated musical tone which she had learned for the theatre. It was not her natural voice, and she looked at Jean with a soft enclosing look which seemed to shut out the world.
No woman is very dangerous to a man unless she is a little self-conscious, and Liane was so completely self-conscious that she could afford to be perfectly natural. She knew herself as an artist knows his picture or a captain his ship.
“I think you have fallen from heaven!” she said, sinking into achaise longueand patting the cushions left and right of her into a suitable background. “Or if you have come from the other place that will be more amusing still! Think of it, Maurice has gone to the races, and left me alone in the rain! It was clothes of course—the clothes of a woman, Monsieur, are her tragedy.Mon Dieu!the life one leads! I can assure you, it is a slavery, and yet what can we do? For if one does not strain every nerve to succeed, it becomes a massacre! I believe I may truly say that every woman in the company would murder me with a new costume to-morrow if I did not put myself inthe hands of the greatest tyrant in Paris. You know Madame Berthe, of course? She dresses half the world, and we must attempt to accommodate her. I was, then, at her house, if you will believe me, at ten o’clock this morning—an hour when I am never awake—I must have been driven there in my sleep, I fancy, and if I have caught a cold and ruined my voice, one sees very well why! And after I had sat there an hour—an hour!—and I am without exception the busiest woman in Paris—I am sent a message that she cannot see me until three! I assure you that for two pins I would have burst into her private room and destroyed all the costumes within sight! But I was handicapped by thoughts of the future; I restrained myself, and I return here furious. Maurice appears. I cannot accompany him to thecourses; instead I have to go back to that infamous woman, or she won’t have the second act ready at all; as it is, I shall have to run in and out in pins. And they accuse us of being gay. What a calumny! No housewife works as I do. I have three parts a mile long to learn for next week, and I haven’t looked at one of them! Costumes! Costumes! And then a silly author appears at lunch expecting me to know his twaddle by heart and praise him for it. Oh la! la! the vanity of these men who expect gratitude in return for parts only fit for a sick crow! You have seenLa Fin de l’Amourof course? I ask you frankly, how do I appear in it? You like it,hein? Iassure you I can do better than that; but one is ruined of course by the rest of the cast. I told Colin so yesterday—thepremieris so careless, he forgets half his words and apparently he imagines that the front of the stage was meant only for him. The less said of the women the better, it is a marvel to me they are not hissed off the stage. But my public are always good to me. You like it?”
How was Jean to explain that he had never heard of it, that even if he had, he should have avoided it, that this lady’s whole profession appeared to him to be wrong?
He hesitated, but he did not explain; he said:
“Then, Mademoiselle, you are an actress?”
Liane flung back her head and laughed and laughed.
“Oh,Mon Dieu! An actress—I?” she cried, when she could speak. “But do you not know me, then? Have you never heard of me? I am Liane de Brances?Ma foi, I did not expect to have to explain myself at this time of day! I am not a vain woman, but, Monsieur, Paris knows me!” And she dropped her eyes and lifted them again, with her head bent like the girl in the picture. She spoke no more than the truth. Paris did know her.
“Maurice told me you came from the country,” she added. “But it appears I had over-estimated what the country amuses itself with. Perhaps you have never seen an actress before?”
“Oh yes, I have,” said Jean, flushing a little, “but I have not before had the pleasure——” and he broke off, for Liane was laughing again.
“I am the first, then?” she exclaimed, with caressing mockery. “Really the first? And you are not afraid to meet a lady who is to be seen on the posters?Quel courage, Monsieur!”
Here was Jean’s opportunity presented to him afresh. Now was the time for him to tell Liane that he had come to see Maurice, and Maurice alone, and that his views of life were so different from her own as to make all future communications impossible between them.
Jean saw himself telling Liane this, he saw the incredulous amusement, the offended dignity, and his own ignominious retreat; and then, after all, would it berightto leave her like this? Perhaps if they became friends she might listen more sympathetically to his point of view. It never did to be premature. If he had but known it, this was his one opportunity of escape—women like Liane do not give a second opportunity. But he was fated never to tell her his point of view. He hesitated and was lost.
“Now you must make up for all you have not known, Monsieur,” said Liane, with her enchanting smile, “and I myself will teach you.”
It was a little difficult for Liane to talk to Jean, still for another quarter of an hour she tried. She really made an effort, because she was grateful tohim for the passionate adoration in his eyes. It renewed her youth and gave her a feeling of ease and comfort. It was the sensation of a tired swimmer when the breeze drives back the salt water from his mouth, and nerves him afresh for the struggle. Liane was thirty-five, and lately the salt waters of life had risen threateningly close to those still perfect lips. In the end she knew she must yield to age, and she liked Jean because he made the end seem further off.
She asked him about his uncle, whom everybody knew and who was so charming; she asked him about his aunt, who of course was charming too, but whom unfortunately Liane had not happened to meet.
She was interested, to the point of stifling a yawn, in the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas; and where Jean lived and what he thought of Paris. It was rather like talking in letters of the alphabet to him instead of using civilized words.
But behind the talk she was busily thinking. Who was it Jean reminded her of so much? Someone she had known very well, whose little habits and tricks of talking were familiar to her; she must remember, and yet the name would not come back to her mind. Then her eyes fell on Jean’s hands and she started, they were narrow, well-shaped hands with long fingers and a wide gap between the thumb and the hand, and they were exactly like the hands of a musician—a musician whomLiane would never forget—the only real figure in her life, perhaps. Certainly the only man for whom she had really cared, and oh! how he had cared for Liane! It was long before she was famous, or it would never have done at all. He was poor and struggling and the most unpractical person on earth; he had no idea of what was due to a woman, but he loved fiercely, with the wild, unappeasable hunger of the soul which Liane never attempted to satisfy. Still he had made her laugh and cry, and in the end he had made her famous; because he killed himself for her. It was all a mistake really—it came of his taking things so seriously. He never had anysouplesseabout him, and men who will not bend, break. She had only made an appointment to meet a friend; it was certainly unfortunate that he should happen to hear of it, and then he had promptly and publicly shot himself in her presence, and Liane became the talk of Paris. Through it she was offered the engagement which gave her her great opportunity. Certainly he was not a man to forget. Liane smiled a little as she thought of him, not cruelly at all, but with a feeling of grateful security, and amusement at her own power. She had many rivals on the stage, but she did not think that any woman had ever made men feel so much. She was a queen of the emotions. She leaned forward and laid her soft, perilous fingers on Jean’s.
“You have a musician’s hands,” she said. Jeandid not attempt to return the pressure of her hand; it would, he felt, have been taking advantage of her heavenly kindness.
“I am not yet a musician,” he said, “but it is true that is what I want to be. It is the thing I love best and understand most in life.”
Had he already forgotten his new vocation? It would have astounded Jean to know that he had.
Liane considered; she could not talk to him any more, and he was obviously unfitted at present for any other form of amusement; perhaps he could play, she was really fond of music.
“Play to me then,” she said very gently. Jean drew in his breath. Play to her! Oh, if he could! He who was so little accustomed to play to anybody, how dared he play to her—to the exquisite and angelic human being whom merely to look at and speak to was a delicious and mysterious fever?
“Do you—do you really want me to?” he asked. For of course, if she really wanted him to, he must! Liane smiled.
“Well, yes,” she said. “I really want you to, Monsieur. Do you know ‘Les Jeux d’Eaux,’ that has an especial appeal to me, or better still, Debussy’s ‘Les Jardins sous la Pluie?’”
“I don’t know either of them,” said Jean.
Liane thought him an idiot.
“Play, then, what you will,” she said, and resignedly wondered if she could safely light a cigarette, but she decided to wait. However,she leaned back on thechaise longueluxuriously and closed her eyes. Unless he played too badly she could perhaps go to sleep.
Jean found himself trembling all over when he rose to go over to the piano. Liane had talked to him so cleverly that it had not appeared to him that he had failed to amuse her. On the contrary, he had enjoyed their conversation intensely. Elizabeth was the most sympathetic woman he had ever met, but her conversation was not nearly so interesting as Liane’s. But music! music was different; here he was really afraid to fail, because he knew what good music was, and he knew nothing about amusing conversation. In half an hour’s time he felt he would be eternally disgraced in his own eyes and in Liane’s. Then he began to play some of the Russian music he had just been learning by heart in his rooms as a hermit. In a moment he realized that the music expressed Liane, expressed the wonder of her, the sacred beauty, the incredible force and joy! He was not nervous any more after that, the music became a communication between them, and he let himself go. Jean’s music was an original and instinctive note. He had spoken the truth when he had told Liane it was the only thing for which he cared. It was his only personal channel of expression, roughened by inexperience and without the bell-like clarity of disciplined practice, but it was an authentic, living talent, and it shook theartist in Liane wide awake. She sat up suddenly and opened her eyes. Who was this young man who was playing to her? This quite ordinary, inarticulate young man, with hiscachetoffils de famillewritten all over him? The little Baron D’Ucelles, who oughtn’t by all the rules of the game to do anything better than anyone else?
He had caught at her heart and was holding it with those hands of the master; he was making her think and feel and forcing her back into the currents of life. The notes flowed from his fingers like fire and dew, his vivid impetuosity awaked and astonished her. He had come out of the world where, to Liane, men were as trees walking; and he had become a distinct value. When he stopped playing and came back to her, she looked straight in his eyes.
“Bon!” she cried, “you deceived me, my friend. I thought you were a young gentleman, it appears you are an artist. What, may I ask in the name of all the blessed saints, are you doing in the Bank?”
“Ah!” cried Jean, exhausted but triumphant. “Then you really think I can play? You really believe in me?” Liane looked at her watch.
“I have listened to you for an hour, my child,” she said; “do you not call that belief in you?”
“Oh, but Mademoiselle, I am ashamed, horrified—I have played to you for an hour, a thousand pardons!”
“A thousand nothings of the kind,” interrupted Liane impatiently. “We drop all this now, you know, you and I—we are artists, and artists, as you probably don’t know, are very simple people when they are together and attend strictly to business. You will, of course, throw up this performance at the Bank to-morrow. You had better come here on Sunday at ten o’clock (the evening, you know,mon petit; nothing is done at ten o’clock in the morning but the saying of one’s prayers, unless, indeed, one is under the tyranny of a dressmaker). Then you must play to Cartier; he will take you in hand, I fancy. I will have some other men here too; this affair of yours must be well looked into—and fancy that thatcrétinof a Maurice hadn’t the sense to tell me you were an artist, and there I was stiffening my jaws with the rubbish of an afternoon call.”
Liane spoke to him simply, plainly, and like a man. The awe of her exquisite manner fell away. She no longer seemed to Jean like a mysterious and potent being from another world; but he had no time to regret the destruction of his illusion. For the first time in his life he was talking to a real comrade. Bliss had come out of solitude, and submitted joyously to the reinforcement of humanity. The names of great musicians flashed between them. Liane flung her experiences into his hands and drew out of him in return his ambitions and desires; these at present, it seemed,did not include retirement into a monastery or the rules of the Third Order.
“You are one of the emotional players,” she said to him. “Not the great, broad interpreters who give you the picked bones of a musician’s work—but one of their own brothers, who fire you afresh with their laughter and their tears. You will play Chopin most, I fancy. Schumann and Grieg, and the Russian men—our French moderns too, of course, Debussy above all; for there is so much dream in you—but Cartier won’t let you specialize yet. What he’ll give you is Bach and Mozart; he’ll stuff it into you by the yard. You must meet some singers, too, and play for them. Often one must begin this way.”
In the middle of their talk the door opened and Maurice Golaud stood there, tired and wet from thecourses, but looking at them nevertheless with curious amusement in his eyes.
Jean stood up half embarrassed, with the burden of his youth upon him, and as he did so he saw Liane’s face change; it was as if she had covered herself subtly and suddenly with a veil of intangible gauze, the artist had retreated once more. She was the beautiful woman with the lure in her eyes. Her lips parted, and a glance ran between her and Maurice which seemed to Jean like quick flame. The smile in Maurice’s eyes deepened.
“Ah, you have found us at last,mon ami?” Maurice said to Jean. “For my part, I was fancyingyou must have picked up some pretty amusements elsewhere, since you have been in Paris nearly a month before looking us up. You should have been at thecoursesthis afternoon; it was really not half bad. No, it wouldn’t have amused you,ma chérie, no one was killed and no one was ruined, and the ladies’ clothes lookedpassésin the rain. You really did better for yourself remaining here, and entertaining my dear old Jean.”
Liane smiled, but she did not say anything. She no longer looked at Jean.
He got up to go; they both of them urged him to remain, though Maurice went to the door with him in a bland cordiality of farewell.
“Well, and now you have found your way here you must come often,” he said. “I can see already that Liane likes you.”
It was not easy for Jean to explain to Maurice about his vocation now, but Maurice was, after all, only another man, and Jean was not a coward.
“This is not the kind of life I have been living,” he began lamely. “You see, Maurice, I am bound to say so, I don’t like the—the ways of Paris.”
“No?” said Maurice cheerfully. “Well, that is a pity! Still, if you have been leading a dull life and not mixing with clever people like ourselves—one understands. We must alter all that, you know; I’ll talk to Liane about it.Au revoir, Jean.”
The rain had stopped, and for the first timeJean discovered a charm in the streets of Paris. There was something mysterious and beautiful in the air to-night. The faces of the women in the crowd seemed as fresh as summer flowers, the lights along the Seine wound their way into the heart of the city like a string of fallen stars.
Jean held his head up as he walked; he felt an indefinable sense of youth and vigour in his veins.
He noticed that one or two of the women as he passed looked at him; and he no longer felt like a ghost.
After dinner he went back to his rooms, but he could not stay there. He was dissatisfied with himself and he did not want to think. He went to the window and looked out. It was ten o’clock; if he was going to early Mass to-morrow as usual, he had better go to bed.
La Fin de l’Amourwas on at the Odéon. Jean had never been to the Odéon, but he knew where it was. If he went at once he would be in time to see Liane in the last act.
After all, he had decided nothing, he had taken no vows. How wrong it was of the old Confessor not to let him join the Third Order! If he were living under rule now—then for one moment Jean faced his own soul and would not lie to himself. “If I were living under rule now,” he said beneath his breath, “I should break the rule.” After that he thought no more about the higher life.
“Bon!” said the concierge’s wife, as she sawhim swing off down the street. “One knows very well when they begin to walk like that what has happened to them; but that will not make him better off; one must be careful now about the rent,” and she sighed. She was really at heart rather sad to lose her little saint; her husband, she knew, would triumph over her.
For the concierge’s wife, too, realized that Jean had ceased to be a hermit.