Jean-Christophe In Paris — ANTOINETTE, I, part 8
* * * * * She returned to Olivier.
It was high time she returned to him.
He had just fallen ill: and the poor, nervous, unhappy little creature who trembled, at the thought of illness before it came--now that he was really ill, refused to write to his sister for fear of upsetting her.
But he called to her, prayed for her coming as for a miracle.
When the miracle happened he was lying in the school infirmary, feverish and wandering.
When he saw her he made no sound.
How often had he seen her enter in his fevered fancy!...
He sat up in bed, gaping, and trembling lest it should be once more only an illusion.
And when she sat down on the bed by his side, when she took him in her arms and he had taken her in his, when he felt her soft cheek against his lips, and her hands still cold from traveling by night in his, when he was quite, quite sure that it was his dear sister he began to weep.
He could do nothing else: he was still the "little cry-baby" that he had been when he was a child.
He clung to her and held her close for fear she should go away from him again.
How changed they were!
How sad they looked!...
No matter!
They were together once more: everything was lit up, the infirmary, the school, the gloomy day: they clung to each other, they would never let each other go.
Before she had said a word he made her swear that she would not go away again.
He had no need to make her swear: no, she would never go away again: they had been too unhappy away from each other: their mother was right: anything was better than being parted.
Even poverty, even death, so only they were together.
They took rooms.
They wanted to take their old little flat, horrible though it was: but it was occupied.
Their new rooms also looked out on to a yard: but above a wall they could see the top of a little acacia and grew fond of it at once, as a friend from the country, a prisoner like themselves, in the paved wilderness of the city.
Olivier quickly recovered his health, or rather, what he was pleased to call his health:--(for what was health to him would have been illness to a stronger boy).
--Antoinette's unhappy stay in Germany had helped her to save a little money: and she made some more by the translation of a German book which a publisher accepted.
For a time, then, they were free of financial anxiety: and all would be well if Olivier passed his examination at the end of the year.
--But if he did not pass?
No sooner had they settled down to the happiness of being together again than they were once more obsessed by the prospect of the examination.
They tried hard not to think about it, but in vain, they were always coming back to it.
The fixed idea haunted them, even when they were seeking distraction from their thoughts: at concerts it would suddenly leap out at them in the middle of the performance: at night when they woke up it would lie there like a yawning gulf before them.
In addition to his eagerness to please his sister and repay her for the sacrifice of her youth that she had made for his sake, Olivier lived in terror of his military service which he could not escape if he were rejected:--(at that time admission to the great schools was still admitted as an exemption from service).
--He had an invincible disgust for the physical and moral promiscuity, the kind of intellectual degradation, which, rightly or wrongly, he saw in barrack-life.
Every pure and aristocratic quality in him revolted from such compulsion, and it seemed to him that death would be preferable.
In these days it is permitted to make light of such feelings, and even to decry them in the name of a social morality which, for the moment, has become a religion: but they are blind who deny it: there is no more profound suffering than that of the violation of moral solitude by the coarse liberal Communism of the present day.
The examinations began.
Olivier was almost incapable of going in: he was unwell, and he was so fearful of the torment he would have to undergo, whether he passed or not, that he almost longed to be taken seriously ill.
He did quite well in the written examination.
But he had a cruel time waiting to hear the results.
Following the immemorial custom of the country of Revolutions, which is the worst country in the world for red-tape and routine, the examinations were held in July during the hottest days of the year, as though it were deliberately intended to finish off the luckless candidates, who were already staggering under the weight of cramming a monstrous list of subjects, of which even the examiners did not know a tenth part.
The written examinations were held on the day after the holiday of the 14th July, when the whole city was upside down, and making merry, to the undoing of the young men who were by no means inclined to be merry, and asked for nothing but silence.
In the square outside the house booths were set up, rifles cracked at the miniature ranges, merry-go-rounds creaked and grunted, and hideous steam organs roared from morning till night.
The idiotic noise went on for a week.
Then a President of the Republic, by way of maintaining his popularity, granted the rowdy merry-makers another three days' holiday.
It cost him nothing: he did not hear the row.
But Olivier and Antoinette were distracted and appalled by the noise, and had to keep their windows shut, so that their rooms were stifling, and stop their ears, trying vainly to escape the shrill, insistent, idiotic tunes which were ground out from morning till night and stabbed through their brains like daggers, so that they were reduced to a pitiful condition.
The _viva voce_ examination began immediately after the publication of the first results.
Olivier begged Antoinette not to go.
She waited at the door,--much more anxious than he.
Of course he never told her what he thought of his performance.
He tormented her by telling her what he had said and what he had not said.
At last the final results were published.
The names of the candidates were posted in the courtyard of the Sorbonne.
Antoinette would not let Olivier go alone.
As they left the house, they thought, though they did not say it, that when they came back they would _know_, and perhaps they would regret their present fears, when at least there was still hope.
When they came in sight of the Sorbonne they felt their legs give way under them.
Brave little Antoinette said to her brother: "Please not so fast...."
Olivier looked at his sister, and she forced a smile.
He said: "Shall we sit down for a moment on the seat here?"
He would gladly have gone no further.
But, after a moment, she pressed his hand and said: "It's nothing, dear.
Let us go on."
They could not find the list at first.
They read several others in which the name of Jeannin did not appear.
When at last they saw it, they did not take it in at first: they read it several times and could not believe it.
Then when they were quite sure that it was true that Jeannin was Olivier, that Jeannin had passed, they could say nothing: they hurried home: she took his arm, and held his wrist, and leaned her weight on him: they almost ran, and saw nothing of what was going on about them: as they crossed the boulevard they were almost run over.
They said over and over again: "Dear ...
Darling ...
Dear ...
Dear...."
They tore upstairs to their rooms and then they flung their arms round each other.
Antoinette took her brother's hand and led him to the photographs of their father and mother, which hung on the wall near her bed, in a corner of her room, which was a sort of sanctuary to her: they knelt down before them: and with tears in their eyes they prayed.
Antoinette ordered a jolly little dinner: but they could not eat a morsel: they were not hungry.
They spent the evening, Olivier kneeling by his sister's side while she petted him like a child.
They hardly spoke at all.
They could not even be happy, for they were too worn out.
They went to bed before nine o'clock and slept the sleep of the just.
Next day Antoinette had a frightful headache, but there was such a load taken from her heart!
Olivier felt, for the first time in his life, that he could breathe freely.
He was saved, she was saved, she had accomplished her task: and he had shown himself to be not unworthy of his sister's expectations!...
For the first time for years and years they allowed themselves a little laziness.
They stayed in bed till twelve talking through the wall, with the door between their rooms open: when they looked in the mirror they saw their faces happy and tired-looking: they smiled, and threw kisses to each other, and dozed off again, and watched each other's sleep, and lay weary and worn with hardly the strength to do more than mutter tender little scraps of words.
* * * * * Antoinette had always put by a little money, sou by sou, so as to have some small reserve in case of illness.
She did not tell her brother the surprise she had in store for him.
The day after his success she told him that they were going to spend a month in Switzerland to make up for all their years of trouble and hardship.
Now that Olivier was assured of three years at the _École Normale_ at the expense of the State, and then, when he left the _École_, of finding a post, they could be extravagant and spend all their savings.
Olivier shouted for joy when she told him.
Antoinette was even more happy than he,--happy in her brother's happiness,--happy to think that she was going to see the country once more: she had so longed for it.
It took them some time to get ready for the journey, but the work of preparation was an unending joy.
It was well on in August when they set out.
They were not used to traveling.
Olivier did not sleep the night before.
And he did not sleep in the train.
The whole day they had been fearful of missing the train.
They were in a feverish hurry, they had been jostled about at the station, and finally huddled into a second-class carriage, where they could not even lean back to go to sleep:--(that is one of the privileges of which the eminently democratic French companies deprive poor travelers, so that rich travelers may have the pleasure of thinking that they have a monopoly of it).
--Olivier did not sleep a wink: he was not sure that they were in the right train, and he looked out for the name of every station.
Antoinette slept lightly and woke up very frequently: the jolting of the train made her head bob.
Olivier watched her by the light of the funereal lamp, which shone at the top of the moving sarcophagus: and he was suddenly struck by the change in her face.
Her eyes were hollow: her childish lips were half-open from sheer weariness: her skin was sallow, and there were little wrinkles on her cheeks, the marks of the sad years of sorrow and disillusion.
She looked old and ill.
--And, indeed, she was so tired!
If she had dared she would have postponed their journey.
But she did not like to spoil her brother's pleasure: she tried to persuade herself that she was only tired, and that the country would make her well again.
She was fearful lest she should fall ill on the way.
--She felt that he was looking at her: and she suddenly flung off the drowsiness that was creeping over her, and opened her eyes,--eyes still young, still clear and limpid, across which, from time to time, there passed an involuntary look of pain, like shadows on a little lake.
He asked her in a whisper, anxiously and tenderly, how she was: she pressed his hand and assured him that she was well.
A word of love revived her.
Then, when the rosy dawn tinged the pale country between Dôle and Pontarlier, the sight of the waking fields, and the gay sun rising from the earth,--the sun, who, like themselves, had escaped from the prison of the streets, and the grimy houses, and the thick smoke of Paris:--the waving fields wrapped in the light mist of their milk-white breath: the little things they passed: a little village belfry, a glimpse of a winding stream, a blue line of hills hovering on the far horizon: the tinkling, moving sound of the angelus borne from afar on the wind, when the train stopped in the midst of the sleeping country: the solemn shapes of a herd of cows browsing on a slope above the railway,--all absorbed Antoinette and her brother, to whom it all seemed new.
They were like parched trees, drinking in ecstasy the rain from heaven.
Then, in the early morning, they reached the Swiss Customs, where they had to get out.
A little station in a bare country-side.
They were almost worn out by their sleepless night, and the cold, dewy freshness of the dawn made them shiver: but it was calm, and the sky was clear, and the fragrant air of the fields was about them, upon their lips, on their tongues, down their throats, flowing down into their lungs like a cooling stream: and they stood by a table, out in the open air, and drank comforting hot coffee with creamy milk, heavenly sweet, and tasting of the grass and the flowers of the fields.
They climbed up into the Swiss carriage, the novel arrangement of which gave them a childish pleasure.
But Antoinette was so tired!
She could not understand why she should feel so ill.
Why was everything about her so beautiful, so absorbing, when she could take so little pleasure in it?
Was it not all just what she had been dreaming for years: a journey with her brother, with all anxiety for the future left behind, dear mother Nature?...
What was the matter with her?
She was annoyed with herself, and forced herself to admire and share her brother's naïve delight.
They stopped at Thun.
They were to go up into the mountains next day.
But that night in the hotel, Antoinette was stricken with a fever, and violent illness, and pains in her head.
Olivier was at his wits' ends, and spent a night of frightful anxiety.
He had to send for a doctor in the morning--(an unforeseen expense which was no light tax on their slender purse).
--The doctor could find nothing immediately serious, but said that she was run down, and that her constitution was undermined.
There could be no question of their going on.
The doctor forbade Antoinette to get up all day; and he thought they would perhaps have to stay at Thun for some time.
They were very downcast--though very glad to have got off so cheaply after all their fears.
But it was hard to have come so far to be shut up in a nasty hotel-room into which the sunlight poured so that it was like a hothouse.
Antoinette insisted on her brother going out.
He went a few yards from the hotel, saw the beautiful green Aar, and, hovering in the distance against the sky, a white peak: he bubbled over with joy: but he could not keep it to himself.
He rushed back to his sister's room, and told her excitedly what he had just seen: and when she expressed her surprise at his coming back so soon and made him promise to go out again, he said, as once before he had said when he came back from the _Châtelet_ concert: "No, no. It is too beautiful: it hurts me to see it without you."
That feeling was not new to them: they knew that they had to be together to enjoy anything wholly.
But they always loved to hear it said.
His tender words did Antoinette more good than any medicine.
She smiled now, languidly, happily.
--And after a good night, although it was not very wise to go on so soon, she decided that they would get away very early, without telling the doctor, who would only want to keep them back.
The pure air and the joy of seeing so much beauty made her stronger, so that she did not have to pay for her rashness, and without any further misadventure they reached the end of their journey--a mountain village, high above the lake, some distance away from Spiez.
There they spent three or four weeks in a little hotel.
Antoinette did not have any further attack of fever, but she never got really well.
She still felt a heaviness, an intolerable weight, in her head, and she was always unwell.
Olivier often asked her about her health: he longed to see her grow less pale: but he was intoxicated by the beauty of the country, and instinctively avoided all melancholy thoughts: when she assured him that she was really quite well, he tried to believe that it was true,--although he knew perfectly well that it was not so.
And she enjoyed to the full her brother's exuberance and the fine air, and the all-pervading peace.
How good it was to rest at last after those terrible years!
Olivier tried to induce her to go for walks with him: she would have been happy to join him: but on several occasions when she had bravely set out, she had been forced to stop after twenty minutes, to regain her breath, and rest her heart.
So he went out alone,--climbing the safe peaks, though they filled her with terror until he came home again.
Or they would go for little walks together: she would lean on his arm, and walk slowly, and they would talk, and he would suddenly begin to chatter, and laugh, and discuss his plans, and make quips and jests.
From the road on the hillside above the valley they would watch the white clouds reflected in the still lake, and the boats moving like insects on the surface of a pond: they would drink in the warm air and the music of the goat-bells, borne on the gusty wind, and the smell of the new-mown hay and the warm resin.
And they would dream together of the past and the future, and the present which seemed to them to be the most unreal and intoxicating of dreams.
Sometimes Antoinette would be infected with her brother's jolly childlike humor: they would chase each other and roll about on the grass.
And one day he saw her laughing as she used to do when they were children, madly, carelessly, laughter clear and bubbling as a spring, such as he had not heard for many years.
But, most often, Olivier could not resist the pleasure of going for long walks.
He would be sorry for it at once, and later he had bitterly to regret that he had not made enough of those dear days with his sister.
Even in the hotel he would often leave her alone.
There was a party of young men and girls in the hotel, from whom they had at first kept apart.
Then Olivier was attracted by them, and shyly joined their circle.
He had been starved of friendship: outside his sister he had hardly known any one but his rough schoolfellows and their girls, who repelled him.
It was very sweet to him to be among well-mannered, charming, merry boys and girls of his own age.
Although he was very shy, he was naïvely curious, sentimental, and affectionate, and easily bewitched by the little burning, flickering fires that shine in a woman's eyes.
And in spite of his shyness, women liked him.
His frank longing to love and be loved gave him, unknown to himself, a youthful charm, and made him find words and gestures and affectionate little attentions, the very awkwardness of which made them all the more attractive.
He had the gift of sympathy.
Although in his isolation his intelligence had taken on an ironical tinge which made him see the vulgarity of people and their defects which he often loathed,--yet in their presence he saw nothing but their eyes, in which he would see the expression of a living being, who one day would die, a being who had only one life, even as he, and, even as he, would lose it all too soon, then of that creature he would involuntarily be fond: in that moment nothing in the world could make him do anything to hurt: whether he liked it or not, he had to be kind and amiable.
He was weak: and, in being so, he was sure to please the "world" which pardons every vice, and even every virtue,--except one: force, on which all the rest depend.
Antoinette did not join them.
Her health, her tiredness, her apparently causeless moral collapse, paralyzed her.
Through the long years of anxiety and ceaseless toil, exhausting body and soul, the positions of the brother and sister had been inverted: now it was she who felt far removed from the world, far from everything and everybody, so far!...
She could not break down the wall between them: all their chatter, their noise, their laughter, their little interests, bored her, wearied her, almost hurt her.
It hurt her to be so: she would have loved to go with the other girls, to share their interests and laugh with them ...
But she could not!...
Her heart ached; she seemed to be as one dead.
In the evening she would shut herself up in her room; and often she would not even turn on the light: she would sit there in the dark, while downstairs Olivier would be amusing himself, surrendering to the current of one of those romantic little love affairs to which he so easily succumbed.
She would only shake off her torpor when she heard him coming upstairs, laughing and talking to the girls, hanging about saying good-night outside their rooms, being unable to tear himself away.
Then in the darkness Antoinette would smile, and get up to turn on the light.
The sound of her brother's laughter revived her.
Autumn was setting in.
The sun was dying down.
Nature was a-weary.
Under the thick mists and clouds of October the colors were fading fast; snow fell on the mountains: mists descended upon the plains.
The visitors went away one by one, and then several at a time.
And it was sad to see even the friends of a little while going away, but sadder still to see the passing of the summer, the time of peace and happiness which had been an oasis in their lives.
They went for a last walk together, on a cloudy autumn day, through the forest on the mountain-side.
They did not speak: they mused sadly, as they walked along with the collars of their cloaks turned up, clinging close together: their hands were locked.
There was silence in the wet woods, and in silence the trees wept.
From the depths there came the sweet plaintive cry of a solitary bird who felt the coming of winter.
Through the mist came the clear tinkling of the goat-bells, far away, so faint they could hardly hear it, so faint it was as though it came up from their inmost hearts....
They returned to Paris.
They were both sad.
Antoinette was no better.
