Jean-Christophe In Paris — ANTOINETTE, I, part 6
It was not long before Olivier gave her other reasons for anxiety.
He was profoundly honest, like herself, but he was weak of will and too open-minded and too complex not to be uneasy, skeptical, indulgent towards what he knew to be evil, and attracted by pleasure.
Antoinette was so pure that it was some time before she understood what was going on in her brother's mind.
She discovered it suddenly, one day.
Olivier thought she was out.
She usually had a lesson at that hour: but at the last moment she had received word from her pupil, telling her that she could not have her that day.
She was secretly pleased, although it meant a few francs less in that week's earnings: but she was very tired and she lay down on her bed: she was very glad to be able to rest for once without reproaching herself.
Olivier came in from school bringing another boy with him.
They sat down in the next room and began to talk.
She could hear everything they said: they thought they were alone and did not restrain themselves.
Antoinette smiled as she heard her brother's merry voice.
But soon she ceased to smile, and her blood ran cold.
They were talking of dirty things with an abominable crudity of expression: they seemed to revel in it.
She heard Olivier, her boy Olivier, laughing: and from his lips, which she had thought so innocent, there came words so obscene that the horror of it chilled her.
Keen anguish stabbed her to the heart.
It went on and on: they could not stop talking, and she could not help listening.
At last they went out, and Antoinette was left alone.
Then she wept: something had died in her: the ideal image that she had fashioned of her brother--of her boy--was plastered with mud: it was a mortal agony to her.
She did not say anything to him when they met again in the evening.
He saw that she had been weeping and he could not think why.
He could not understand why she had changed her manner towards him.
It was some time before she was able to recover herself.
But the worst blow of all for her was one evening when he did not come home.
She did not go to bed, but sat up waiting for him.
It was not only her moral purity that was hurt: her suffering went down to the most mysterious inner depths of her heart--those same depths where there lurked the most awful feelings of the human heart, feelings over which she cast a veil, to hide them from her sight.
Olivier's first aim had been the declaration of his independence.
He returned in the morning, casting about for the proper attitude and quite prepared to fling some insolent remark at his sister if she had said anything to him.
He stole into the flat on tiptoe so as not to waken her.
But when he saw her standing there, waiting for him, pale, red-eyed from weeping, when he saw that, instead of making any effort to reproach him, she only set about silently cooking his breakfast, before he left for school, and that she had nothing to say to him, but was overwhelmed, so that she was, in herself, a living reproach, he could hold out no longer: he flung himself down before her, buried his face in her lap, and they both wept.
He was ashamed of himself, sick at the thought of what he had done: he felt degraded.
He tried to speak, but she would not let him and laid her hand on his lips: and he kissed her hand.
They said no more: they understood each other.
Olivier vowed that he would never again do anything to hurt Antoinette, and that he would be in all things what she wanted him to be.
But though she tried bravely she could not so easily forget so sharp a wound: she recovered from it slowly.
There was a certain awkwardness between them.
Her love for him was just the same: but in her brother's soul she had seen something that was foreign to herself, and she was fearful of it.
* * * * * She was the more overwhelmed by the glimpse she had had into Olivier's inmost heart, in that, about the same time, she had to put up with the unwelcome attentions of certain men.
When she came home in the evening at nightfall, and especially when she had to go out after dinner to take or fetch her copying, she suffered agonies from her fear of being accosted, and followed (as sometimes happened) and forced to listen to insulting advances.
She took her brother with her whenever she could under pretext of making him take a walk: but he only consented grudgingly and she dared not insist: she did not like to interrupt his work.
She was so provincial and so pure that she could not get used to such ways.
Paris at night was to her like a dark forest in which she felt that she was being tracked by dreadful, savage beasts: and she was afraid to leave the house.
But she had to go out.
She would put off going out as long as possible: she was always fearful.
And when she thought that her Olivier would be--was perhaps--like one of those men who pursued her, she could hardly hold out her hand to him when she came in.
He could not think what he had done to change her so, and she was angry with herself.
She was not very pretty, but she had charm, and attracted attention though she did nothing to do so.
She was always very simply dressed, almost always in black: she was not very tall, graceful, frail-looking; she rarely spoke: she tripped quietly through the crowded streets, avoiding attention, which, however, she attracted in spite of herself by the sweetness of the expression of her tired eyes and her pure young lips.
Sometimes she saw that she had attracted notice: and though it put her to confusion she was pleased all the same.
Who can say what gentle and chaste pleasure in itself there may be in so innocent a creature at feeling herself in sympathy with others?
All that she felt was shown in a slight awkwardness in her movements, a timid, sidelong glance: and it was sweet to see and very touching.
And her uneasiness added to her attraction.
She excited interest, and, as she was a poor girl, with none to protect her, men did not hesitate to tell her so.
Sometimes she used to go to the house of some rich Jews, the Nathans, who took an interest in her because they had met her at the house of some friends of theirs where she gave lessons: and, in spite of her shyness, she had not been able to avoid accepting invitations to their parties.
M.
Alfred Nathan was a well-known professor in Paris, a distinguished scientist, and at the same time he was very fond of society, with that strange mixture of learning and frivolity which is so common among the Jews.
Madame Nathan was a mixture in equal proportions of real kindliness and excessive worldliness.
They were both generous, with loud-voiced, sincere, but intermittent sympathy for Antoinette.
--Generally speaking Antoinette had found more kindness among the Jews than among the members of her own sect.
They have many faults: but they have one great quality--perhaps the greatest of all: they are alive, and human: nothing human is foreign to them and they are interested in every living being.
Even when they lack real, warm sympathy they feel a perpetual curiosity which makes them seek out men and ideas that are of worth, however different from themselves they may be.
Not that, generally speaking, they do anything much to help them, for they are interested in too many things at once and much more a prey to the vanities of the world than other people, while they pretend to be immune from them.
But at least they do something: and that is saying a great deal in the present apathetic condition of society.
They are an active balm in society, the very leaven of life.
--Antoinette who, among the Catholics, had been brought sharp up against a wall of icy indifference, was keenly alive to the worth of the interest, however superficial it might be, which the Nathans took in her.
Madame Nathan had marked Antoinette's life of devoted sacrifice: she was sensible of her physical and moral charm: and she made a show of taking her under her protection.
She had no children: but she loved young people and often had gatherings of them in her house: and she insisted on Antoinette's coming also, and breaking away from her solitude, and having some amusement in her life.
And as she had no difficulty in guessing that Antoinette's shyness was in part the result of her poverty, she even went so far as to offer to give her a pretty frock or two, which Antoinette refused proudly: but her kindly patroness found a way of forcing her to accept a few of those little presents which are so dear to a woman's innocent vanity.
Antoinette was both grateful and embarrassed.
She forced herself to go to Madame Nathan's parties from time to time: and being young she managed to enjoy herself in spite of everything.
But in that rather mixed society of all sorts of young people Madame Nathan's protégée, being poor and pretty, became at once the mark of two or three young gentlemen, who with perfect confidence in themselves picked her out for their attentions.
They calculated how far her timidity would go: they even made bets about her.
One day she received certain anonymous letters--or rather letters signed with a noble pseudonym--which conveyed a declaration of love: at first they were love-letters, flattering, ardent, appointing a rendezvous: then they quickly became bolder, threatening, and soon insulting and basely slanderous: they stripped her, exposed her, besmirched her with their coarse expressions of desire: they tried to play upon Antoinette's simplicity by making her fearful of a public insult if she did not go to the appointed rendezvous.
She wept bitterly at the thought of having called down on herself such base proposals: and these insults scorched her pride.
She did not know what to do.
She did not like to speak to her brother about it: she knew that he would feel it too keenly and that he would make the affair even more serious than it was.
She had no friends.
The police?
She would not do that for fear of scandal.
But somehow she had to make an end of it.
She felt that her silence would not sufficiently defend her, that the blackguard who was pursuing her would hold to the chase and that he would go on until to go farther would be dangerous.
He had just sent her a sort of ultimatum commanding her to meet him next day at the Luxembourg.
She went.
--By racking her brains she had come to the conclusion that her persecutor must have met her at Madame Nathan's. In one of his letters he had alluded to something which could only have happened there.
She begged Madame Nathan to do her a great favor and to drive her to the door of the gallery and to wait for her outside.
She went in.
In front of the appointed picture her tormentor accosted her triumphantly and began to talk to her with affected politeness.
She stared straight at him without a word.
When he had finished his remark he asked her jokingly why she was staring at him.
She replied: "You are a coward."
He was not put out by such a trifle as that, and became familiar in his manner.
She said: "You have tried to threaten me with a scandal.
Very well, I have come to give you your scandal.
You have asked for it!"
She was trembling all over, and she spoke in a loud voice to show him that she was quite equal to attracting attention to themselves.
People had already begun to watch them.
He felt that she would stick at nothing.
He lowered his voice.
She said once more, for the last time: "You are a coward," and turned her back on him.
Not wishing to seem to have given in he followed her.
She left the gallery with the fellow following hard on her heels.
She walked straight to the carriage waiting there, wrenched the door open, and her pursuer found himself face to face with Madame Nathan, who recognized him and greeted him by name.
His face fell and he bolted.
Antoinette had to tell the whole story to her companion.
She was unwilling to do so, and only hinted roughly at the facts.
It was painful to her to reveal to a stranger the intimate secrets of her life, and the sufferings of her injured modesty.
Madame Nathan scolded her for not having told her before.
Antoinette begged her not to tell anybody.
That was the end of it: and Madame Nathan did not even need to strike the fellow off her visiting list: for he was careful not to appear again.
About the same time another sorrow of a very different kind came to Antoinette.
At the Nathans' she met a man of forty, a very good fellow, who was in the Consular service in the Far East, and had come home on a few months' leave.
He fell in love with her.
The meeting had been planned unknown to Antoinette, by Madame Nathan, who had taken it into her head that she must find a husband for her little friend.
He was a Jew.
He was not good-looking and he was no longer young.
He was rather bald, and round-shouldered: but he had kind eyes, an affectionate way with him, and he could feel for and understand suffering, for he had suffered himself.
Antoinette was no longer the romantic girl, the spoiled child, dreaming of life as a lovely day's walk on her lover's arm: now she saw the hard struggle of life, which began again, every day, allowing no time for rest, or, if rest were taken, it might be to lose in one moment all the ground that had been gained, inch by inch, through years of striving: and she thought it would be very sweet to be able to lean on the arm of a friend, and share his sorrows with him, and be able to close her eyes for a little, while he watched over her.
She knew that it was a dream: but she had not had the courage to renounce her dream altogether.
In her heart she knew quite well that a dowerless girl had nothing to hope for in the world in which she lived.
The old French middle-classes are known throughout the world for the spirit of sordid interest in which they conduct their marriages.
The Jews are far less grasping with money.
Among the Jews it is no uncommon thing for a rich young man to choose a poor girl, or a young woman of fortune to set herself passionately to win a man of intellect.
But in the French middle-classes, Catholic and provincial in their outlook, almost always money woos money.
And to what end?
Poor wretches, they have none but dull commonplace desires: they can do nothing but eat, yawn, sleep--save.
Antoinette knew them.
She had observed their ways from her childhood on.
She had seen them with the eyes of wealth and the eyes of poverty.
She had no illusions left about them, nor about the treatment she had to expect from them.
And so the attentions of this man who had asked her to marry him came as an unhoped for treasure in her life.
At first she did not think of him as a lover, but gradually she was filled with gratitude and tenderness towards him.
She would have accepted his proposal if it had not meant following him to the colonies and consequently leaving her brother.
She refused: and though her lover understood the magnanimity of her reason for doing so, he could not forgive her: love is so selfish, that the lover will not hear of being sacrificed even to those virtues which are dearest to him in the beloved.
He gave up seeing her: when he went away he never wrote: she had no news of him at all until, five or six months later, she received a printed intimation, addressed in his hand, that he had married another woman.
Antoinette felt it deeply.
She was broken-hearted, and she offered up her suffering to God: she tried to persuade herself that she was justly punished for having for one moment lost sight of her one duty, to devote herself to her brother: and she grew more and more wrapped up in it.
She withdrew from the world altogether.
She even dropped going to the Nathans', for they were a little cold towards her after she refused the marriage which they had arranged for her: they too refused to see any justification for her.
Madame Nathan had decided that the marriage should take place, and her vanity was hurt at its missing fire through Antoinette's fault.
She thought her scruples certainly quite praiseworthy, but exaggerated and sentimental: and thereafter she lost interest in the silly little goose.
It was necessary for her always to be helping people, with or without their consent, and she quickly found another protégée to absorb, for the time being, all the interest and devotion which she had to expend.
Olivier knew nothing of his sister's sad little romance.
He was a sentimental, irresponsible boy, living in his dreams and fancies.
It was impossible to depend on him in spite of his intelligence and charm and his very real tenderheartedness.
Often he would fling away the results of months of work by his irresponsibility, or in a fit of discouragement, or by some boyish freak, or some fancied love affair, in which he would waste all his time and energy.
He would fall in love with a pretty face, that he had seen once, with coquettish little girls, whom perhaps he once met out somewhere, though they never paid any attention to him.
He would be infatuated with something he had read, a poet, or a musician: he would steep himself in their works for months together, to the exclusion of everything else and the detriment of his studies.
He had to be watched always, though great care had to be taken that he did not know it, for he was easily wounded.
There was always a danger of a seizure.
He had the feverish excitement, the want of balance, the uneasy trepidation, that are often found in those who have a consumptive tendency.
The doctor had not concealed the danger from Antoinette.
The sickly plant, transplanted from the provinces to Paris, needed fresh air and light.
Antoinette could not provide them.
They had not enough money to be able to go away from Paris during the holidays.
All the rest of their year every day in the week was full, and on Sundays they were so tired that they never wanted to go out, except to a concert.
There were Sundays in the summer when Antoinette would make an effort and drag Olivier off to the woods outside Paris, near Chaville or Saint-Cloud.
But the woods were full of noisy couples, singing music-hall songs, and littering the place with greasy bits of paper: they did not find the divine solitude which purifies and gives rest.
And in the evening when they turned homewards they had to suffer the roar and clatter of the trains, the dirty, crowded, low, narrow, dark carriages of the suburban lines, the coarseness of certain things they saw, the noisy, singing, shouting, smelly people, and the reek of tobacco smoke.
Neither Antoinette nor Olivier could understand the people, and they would return home disgusted and demoralized.
Olivier would beg Antoinette not to go for Sunday walks again;
and for some time Antoinette would not have the heart to go again.
And then she would insist, though it was even more disagreeable to her than to Olivier: but she thought it necessary for her brother's health.
She would force him to go out once more.
But their new experience would be no better than the last, and Olivier would protest bitterly.
So they stayed shut up in the stifling town, and, in their prison-yard, they sighed for the open fields.
