CHAPTER VII
JEAN did see Liane in the last act ofLa Fin de l’Amour, and Liane saw him.
Up to that moment she had no very definite intentions about Jean. She thought if she wasn’t too busy she would really give him an “evening” to meet a few artists. She was good-natured and liked to do inexpensive good turns, and if there was really anything remarkable in Jean’s powers it would decidedly prove something of aréclamefor Liane herself. But it had never occurred to her to regard him more personally. Now as she looked over the footlights and saw in one of the front stalls the fierce ardour of his eyes, another idea occurred to her. She was extremely sentimental and not a little superstitious. “My first musician brought me luck,” she said to herself, “why not try the second? It is of course an extravagance. He has no money and no importance, but one never knows what may come of a good action.”
From this reflection it will be seen that Liane’s moral code was a trifle perverted. Still she had a moral code, as most of us have, and Liane’s took the form of occasionally doing things that did not pay her. It almost seemed to Jean that Liane’s smile was specially for him; perhaps it was. The next evening he came in time for the first act ofLa Fin de l’Amourthough he could not again afford the stalls. It was all very wonderful to Jean, but it soon became merged and forgotten in the central wonder of Liane.
To Liane acting was a business, but it was a business brought to such perfection that it became an art. It is not enough in Paris for an actress to be beautiful, she must also act, and Liane on the stage was a very tremendous power indeed.
It seemed inconceivable to Jean that he should ever have had the privilege of words with her in private; his love became an effortless, impassioned dream. It was no use his thinking about her, so of course he thought of nothing else. Then one night he actually received a message from behind the scenes:
“Won’t you come and see me? Liane de Brances.”
He followed her messenger, though he still believed there was some mistake. Liane could not have seen him, and if she had, why should she remember him? It was five days since he had called upon her, but it had seemed like fiveyears to Jean. The Odéon is a very big theatre—old-fashioned and given up to long passages and bare rooms; it lacks the exquisite arrangements of the first artists’ boudoir, the colour schemes and artistic furniture of the more modern theatres, but to Jean it all seemed magnificent enough, and Liane’s room of white and gold, stiflingly hot and brilliantly lighted, with a small dressing-room leading out of it, astounded him by its importance. Nothing could be too important for her, but he had never known that artists’ dressing-rooms would be the least like this. Liane was giving the little finishing touches to her third-act costume. The dresser was still in her room, passing her all the things she might want, and receiving a running fire of dispassionate abuse for her pains.
“What animals these women are!” said Liane, giving Jean her left hand, while she touched up the thick bisque of her arched eyebrows. “They are born clumsy, awkward, infuriating—now you may go,” she added to the impassive dresser, “and don’t forget to come in time for the next act; if I have to ring twice for you again, you shall be sent to paint the clown’s cheek in the next pantomime! Well, Monsieur Jean, do you realize that to-morrow is Sunday and that I wish you to meet all those grand music-makers I told you about at ten o’clock,chez moi; and how do you findLa Fin de l’Amour? I perceive you have been here often enough; am I to congratulate its authoron having at last found his public? The same piece five nights running—that I call faithfulness! And it is evident that no woman has influenced you, for you have never been seen in the green room!”
“I have not come to see the play,” said Jean quite simply. “I have come to see you.” He looked a little frightened at his boldness, but Liane only laughed, and ran a powder-puff lightly over her cheek and lips. “And I shall go on coming to see you,” he added firmly.
“But of course; it would be dreadful if you stopped!” said Liane, “that would be the end of the compliment; but does the front of the house satisfy you?”
Jean trembled. He could hardly believe his ears, but his eyes were more faithful witnesses, and he saw that Liane was still smiling.
“Not now,” he interposed, “not now, Liane.”
An electric bell rang out with a terrible persistent sound, close to Jean’s ear. Liane caught up a soft gauze wrap that lay on a chair.
“I must be off,” she said placidly. “A demain, mon petit; run away now, this passage to your right. But yes, you may kiss my hand if you like.Au revoir!” And Liane sailed swiftly off, leaving Jean to find his way back to his seat in the house, dizzy and stunned with emotion.
He did not ask himself what she meant; he did not ask himself what he meant. There aretimes when we do not care to look too closely at our intentions. He only said to himself: “I shall see her again,” and it appeared to him as if the entire theatre and the whole of Paris could read this splendid promise in his eyes. A week ago and the thought of actually seeing—and more tremendous still—playing beforedes hommes arrivésin the musical world would have absorbed his every thought. But at present he did not greatly consider these gentlemen—he was to see Liane again, and not once only. And every word she had said in their short interview wrote itself across his brain and heart like fire.
Liane’s Sunday evenings were famous all over Paris. She was in the habit of gathering together a brilliant circle of writers, musicians, artists, and actors. Maurice was seldom made particularly welcome on these occasions. Liane preferred to keep herintimesseparate, but she could not very well refuse to allow him to attend Jean’s début, so that when Jean arrived the first figure his eyes fell on was that of his old friend, trying to play the experienced host and man of the world to a group of men who were more successful in ignoring him. They did not want Maurice to put them at their ease, for they were at their ease already, and they still less cared to be entertained, for they were more than capable of entertaining and being entertained by each other. Liane was dressed in a close-fitting gown of sea-green satin, withouta single ornament. She was not in the very best of tempers, but that hardly appeared for the moment, though Maurice, who saw that it would probably manifest itself to some purpose in the future, felt extremely nervous and kept pressing earnest offers of food and drink upon everyone he could get to listen to him.
“Ah, my dear fellow!” he cried, with real delight, when Jean was announced. “I am so glad to see you. Come here! come here! You needn’t be alarmed with all these big-wigs; they are very good friends of mine and Liane’s—and I’ll introduce them all to you presently. Come into the dining-room and have a drink—you can smoke here also, you know.”
Liane’s velvety voice cut across Maurice’s bluff hospitality with merciless softness.
“Monsieur D’Ucelles will stay here with me, Maurice,” she said gently. There was a little silence for a moment.Maurice bit his lips and escaped into the dining-room by himself. He was relieved later by the appearance of two actress friends of Liane’s who greatly preferred his company to hers. At another time Liane would have resented this, but at present it suited her purpose, and she let it pass. Even the attraction of other women can be useful sometimes.
“Here is the Baron D’Ucelles,” said Liane, after Maurice’s disappearance. “He really plays, you know, and you must listen to him,comme debons enfants. Afterwards,” she said smilingly to Jean, “you shall hear their names, but not until you have made your own. Have I not put that prettily?” And as all Liane’s friends werebons enfantsand quite acknowledged Liane to be one too, they prepared to listen.
Jean, seeing the keen, impassive attention on the faces before him, felt physically incapacitated to move. There were no young men present, the youngest could not have been under forty. Life and struggle and success were written in the lines of their faces. Liane had more than kept her word to him, these were alldes hommes arrivés—the picked brains of Paris, which is the brain of the world. Liane glanced at Jean impatiently, but one of the men near her came forward and put his hand on Jean’s shoulder. He looked quite as confident and sure of himself as the other men did, but he looked something else too, he looked confident and sure of Jean.
“We’ve all of us been through this, you know,” he said, with a charming smile. “It’s deuced uncomfortable, of course, but it doesn’t last; nothing does, you know. Come over by the window, and when they’ve all forgotten what we’re about, you can make a start.” Jean obeyed him mechanically. The other men nodded, and began to discuss with neat, finished phrases the last great exhibition of Van Gogh; it seemed that they knew all about pictures. The room was full of smoke and softlight. Liane lay back on herchaise longue, just as she had done when Jean played to her a week ago, only this time her eyes were open; she kept them away from Jean, though, for she was annoyed with him for not playing at once.
This did not have as devastating an effect upon Jean as it might have had—for once Jean had succeeded in forgetting Liane, as a man will always forget a woman when he is face to face with the thing to be done. He could not so easily get away from the piano. He looked hesitatingly at his companion, Jacques Cartier.
“Our good Liane tells me you are fond of Russian music, it seems,” he said. Then Jean, hardly knowing what he was doing, found himself on the music-stool at last. “I, too, am very fond of it; we go to the Russians, we Frenchmen, to learn what is primitive again—for ourselves we have none of thatgenreleft, you know. We can only create complications, and complications are a purely modern note, don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know,” faltered Jean stupidly. He was trying to think of the first bar of anything; it seemed to him as if there were no first bars left. Then he began to play; he was not quite sure how it happened, because he didn’t consciously remember the first bar even then, but it appeared as if his fingers took volition into themselves and began without him. There was an instant lull in the conversation. Cartier leaned forward a little, listening.They all listened as men in Paris listen, with ruthless criticism and quite deadly lucidity of brain. Jean played nervously and unequally at first, but he soon began to gather strength out of the very thinness of the sound, and at last he made his attack, stung to desperation by the fear of failure, and flung himself headlong into the music, dragging out from his inmost being his own authentic note.
Then the listening artists nodded across Liane to each other. “She has found someone, the good girl,” their eyes said; and when he finished they attacked him with one voice.
They pointed out that he couldn’t play a chord; that that wasn’t the way to strike a note; they assured him that his style was feeble and that his conceptions wanted training. As for Jacques Cartier, he was the most merciless of all.
“What you want,” he explained, “is brain, pure brain, Monsieur; feeling runs about on the surface like a dog with a tin can tied to his tail. Anyone can hear him howl, yes, but that obtained, what follows? With brain it is different, that is walking about inside of yourself, and arriving at something.”
“Practice is what you want,” said an old man on the other side of Liane. “Practise eight hours a day; you were born with velvet in those finger-tips of yours; practise till one feels the steel behind them.”
Then they all began together again, and pointedout to Jean that he wouldn’t do at all as he was, and that he must take instant steps towards becoming different, and Jean was overwhelmed with delight, because he saw that they really took him seriously, and that they meant that he could one day do something after all, and behind them was Liane smiling at him, as if she were pleased (as indeed she really was). The hubbub of sound drew Maurice and the actresses into the room again, and then Monsieur Cartier got on to the piano-stool and played an imitation of Jean, just to show him where his faults were, and it was quite screamingly funny, and not at all unkind, because everyone took Jean into the joke and chaffed him unmercifully in the jolliest, friendliest way, as if they were all schoolboys together, but none of them praised him and said flattering things. They took him far too seriously for that. Maurice clapped him on the back, and the actresses made eloquent eyes at him, when they thought Liane couldn’t see them. And Liane found out, and there would have been terrible trouble, only that Liane discovered that Jean hadn’t known they were in the room; how could he look at anyone but her? Which made everyone begin laughing except the two actresses, who were naturally a little annoyed.
And Jean was so glad, so relieved, and so bewildered with their friendliness that for the first time in his life he got very drunk indeed, and Liane and the two other ladies, with the help ofMaurice, who had at last begun to enjoy himself, had to put him to bed in the flat, where he fell happily asleep to the sound of immoderate laughter, and it was no wonder that the head clerk spoke to the Director about Jean’s appearance at twelve o’clock on the following morning.
It was really a very happy time if one swallowed the bad moments quickly and ran on fast enough into the good ones. Monsieur Jacques Cartier gave Jean lessons every Sunday morning for nothing, and the other men were always sending him tickets when they were going to perform, and often asking him to play for them. It was a fascinating world, but none of it meant money, and all of it meant life. So that at the end of just six months in Paris, neither the Curé nor the doctor would have recognized Jean. Miss Prenderghast might have done so, because she had made up her mind that Jean was going to change very much, and that all of it would be for the worse.