Broken Music , page 5
It could not help surprising Jean; and it did not occur to him that there are as many forms of one particular kind of temptation as there are shapes of one particular feature, and because you do not admire a snub nose there is still the possibility of submission to the shape of a perfect Greek. At first Jean thought that perhaps the world was right and he was wrong (this is a great admission for any youth to make) and that the only difficulty lay in amusement being an acquired taste. So without confiding to his fellow clerks how extremely he disliked their little parties (which were for the most part harmless enough and not more vulgar than the extremely small salaries at their disposal warranted) Jean set himself to acquire the missing flavour. He was very much in earnest about it, and he spent an awful evening trying to entertain a little lady, who sang at a café, and to whom he had been introduced as a great and enormous privilege the evening before. The little lady had one idea of amusement and poor Jean had quite another. She wanted to attract attention, and it appeared that Jean did not. When at the end of the evening she got up on a table and danced, Jean would have liked to get under it and be no more seen.
It was then that he made his second decision. He saw that he was meant to be a hermit. It was quite probable that the lady would have agreed with him.
Jean set about altering his life as fast as possible; at twenty-one there is never any time to lose. So far his religion had been as natural as the air he breathed, but it had not been, so he owned himself, very practical. He had been born a good Catholic, as he had been born a gentleman, and he had considered his faith in the light of spiritual good manners. One fasted on Fridays and vigils and went to Mass on Sunday; it would have been extremely bad form and regrettably republican not to do so; still Jean felt that there were depths he had never plumbed. He told his Confessor this, and he pointed out to him that he was drawn to a higher life; he also added that he could not for a moment understand a taste for any other. The Confessor was an old man, he knew a good deal about life, and he listened very humbly to Jean. He saw that Jean was suffering from a feeling that the Church had hardly done its duty in permitting sin at this time of day to exist, and that something ought to be done about it at once. Jean explained to the Confessor that he thought the world, the flesh and the devil overrated as temptations, and if only the Church would show people how dull and vulgar all life that was not a direct spiritual vocation was, hermits would increase from that moment. The Confessor did not say that this, to him, would hardly be a desirable termination. He was not at all a sarcastic Confessor, and he was very fond of young men.
“I think, perhaps,” he said rather cautiously, “you do not know all about it yet. There are”—he hesitated again; he seemed a painfully slow old man to Jean—“so many different kinds of things.” He finished very lamely, Jean thought.
“To me there are only two kinds of things,” said Jean firmly—“what is beautiful and what is not. I have chosen.” He expected the priest to say something more, something a little appreciative perhaps, but he only sighed. “Of course, other people may be different,” added Jean, who was afraid he might have sounded intolerant.
“But I do not think they are,” said his Confessor gently. “My dear son, I think we are all very much alike. I have lived a long while, and I have seen very few different people, and those who have sometimes thought themselves so have not always proved very wise.”
Jean let this pass, it did not sound to him very probable.
“But you approve of my desire, do you not, father?” he added with impatience; he was beginning to think he had not made a good choice of a Confessor.
“I do not think I know quite what it is,” said the priest, after a pause.
“I mean to join the Third Order of St. Francis, and, while endeavouring, for a year at least, to stay in the world, to be preparing myself possibly for a sterner vocation.” How proud and pleased the good Curé at home would have been if he could have heard Jean, and how disgusted the doctor! But Jean’s present auditor was neither pleased nor disgusted, nor even very much surprised.
“I should not join any Order yet if I were you,” he answered. “You have told me that you are twenty-one—no, I should not join any Order; but for the rest I approve, my son, only——” The Confessor paused again.
“Yes, my father?” said Jean. He felt that every moment was wasted in which he was not leading the higher life, and he was impatient for the Confessor to give him some rules.
“Only,” said the father at last, “I think we should all beware of spiritual pride, it is apt to weaken the mind. I fancy we cannot see very clearly what is right if we are too sure about what is wrong. I fear I express myself very badly.”
Jean privately thought he did, but he could not very well say so; besides, he knew that he was in no danger from spiritual pride, he meant to be very humble and absolutely obedient, even to this rather foolish old man. It was a great sacrifice to Jean not to join the Third Order, but he never dreamed of doing so after his Confessor had advised him not to.
“If you can help it,” added his Confessor, “do not make up your mind very much about anything else, just now.”
“But do not you think it well to be definite, my father?” Jean asked, in great astonishment.
The old priest spoke quite firmly this time, it was the end of the interview.
“No, my son,” he said. “I do not think it well to be very definite; I think it better to be obedient. We all know a great deal—that is our danger; let us see that we do a little of it—this is our security.” And he dismissed Jean, to whom he had not given a single rule, at least Jean could not remember that he had.
CHAPTER VI
Table of Contents
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 religiously applied. 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 disappointed too. 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. The room 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 dainty bonbonnières were 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 a danseuse two 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 the courses this 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 a chaise longue and 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 in the 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 the courses; 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 seen La Fin de l’Amour of course? I ask you frankly, how do I appear in it? You like it, hein? I assure you I can do better than that; but one is ruined of course by the rest of the cast. I told Colin so yesterday—the premier is 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 be right to 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 to him 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.
