Jean-Christophe, vol 1, Romain Rolland [book club recommendations .txt] 📗

want to see your mother?… I will go instead of you.”

 

“When?”

 

“To-night.”

 

“Really! You will do that?”

 

“I will go.”

 

She took her shawl and put it round her head.

 

“Write a letter. I will take it to her. Come with me. I will give you some

ink.”

 

She took him into the inner room. At the door she turned, and addressing

her lover:

 

“And do you get ready,” she said. “You must take him. You must not leave

him until you have seen him over the frontier.”

 

He was as eager as anybody to see Christophe over into France and farther

if possible.

 

Lorchen went into the next room with Christophe. He was still hesitating.

He was torn by grief at the thought that he would not be able to embrace

his mother. When would he see her again? She was so old, so worn out, so

lonely! This fresh blow would be too much for her. What would become of her

without him?… But what would become of him if he stayed and were

condemned and put in prison for years? Would not that even more certainly

mean destitution and misery for her? If he were free, though far away, he

could always help her, or she could come to him.—He had not time to see

clearly in his mind. Lorchen took his hands—she stood near him and looked

at him; their faces were almost touching; she threw her arms round his neck

and kissed his mouth:

 

“Quick! Quick!” she whispered, pointing to the table, He gave up trying to

think. He sat down. She tore a sheet of squared paper with red lines from

an account book.

 

He wrote:

 

“My DEAR MOTHER: Forgive me. I am going to hurt you much. I cannot do

otherwise. I have done nothing wrong. But now I must fly and leave the

country. The girl who brings you this letter will tell you everything. I

wanted to say good-bye to you. They will not let me. They say that I should

be arrested. I am so unhappy that I have no will left. I am going over the

frontier but I shall stay near it until you have written to me; the girl

who brings you my letter will bring me your reply. Tell me what to do. I

will do whatever you say. Do you want me to come back? Tell me to come

back! I cannot bear the idea of leaving you alone. What will you do to

live? Forgive me! Forgive me! I love you and I kiss you….”

 

“Be quick, sir, or we shall be too late,” said Lorchen’s swain, pushing the

door open.

 

Christophe wrote his name hurriedly and gave the letter to Lorchen.

 

“You will give it to her yourself?”

 

“I am going,” she said.

 

She was already ready to go.

 

“To-morrow,” she went on, “I will bring you her reply; you must wait for me

at Leiden,—(the first station beyond the German frontier)—on the

platform.”

 

(She had read Christophe’s letter over his shoulder as he wrote.)

 

“You will tell me everything and how she bore the blow and everything she

says to you? You will not keep anything from me?” said Christophe

beseechingly.

 

“I will tell you everything.”

 

They were not so free to talk now, for the young man was at the door

watching them:

 

“And then, Herr Christophe,” said Lorchen, “I will go and see her sometimes

and I will send you news of her; do not be anxious.”

 

She shook hands with him vigorously like a man.

 

“Let us go!” said the peasant.

 

“Let us go!” said Christophe.

 

All three went out. On the road they parted. Lorchen went one way and

Christophe, with his guide, the other. They did not speak. The crescent

moon veiled in mists was disappearing behind the woods. A pale light

hovered over the fields. In the hollows the mists had risen thick and milky

white. The shivering trees were bathed in the moisture of the air.—They

were not more than a few minutes gone from the village when the peasant

flung back sharply and signed to Christophe to stop. They listened. On the

road in front of them they heard the regular tramp of a troop of soldiers

coming towards them. The peasant climbed the hedge into the fields.

Christophe followed him. They walked away across the plowed fields. They

heard the soldiers go by on the road. In the darkness the peasant shook his

fist at them. Christophe’s heart stopped like a hunted animal that hears

the baying of the hounds. They returned to the road again, avoiding the

villages and isolated farms where the barking of the dogs betrayed them to

the countryside. On the slope of a wooded hill they saw in the distance the

red lights of the railway. They took the direction of the signals and

decided to go to the first station. It was not easy. As they came down into

the valley they plunged into the fog. They had to jump a few streams. Soon

they found themselves in immense fields of beetroot and plowed land; they

thought they would never be through. The plain was uneven; there were

little rises and hollows into which they were always in danger of falling.

At last after walking blindly through the fog they saw suddenly a few yards

away the signal light of the railway at the top of an embankment. They

climbed the bank. At the risk of being run over they followed the rails

until they were within a hundred yards of the station; then they took to

the road again. They reached the station twenty minutes before the train

went. In spite of Lorchen’s orders the peasant left Christophe; he was in a

hurry to go back to see what had happened to the others and to his own

property.

 

Christophe took a ticket for Leiden and waited alone in the empty

third-class waiting room. An official who was asleep on a seat came and

looked at Christophe’s ticket and opened the door for him when the train

came in. There was nobody in the carriage. Everybody in the train was

asleep. In the fields all was asleep. Only Christophe did not sleep in

spite of his weariness. As the heavy iron wheels approached the frontier he

felt a fearful longing to be out of reach. In an hour he would be free. But

till then a word would be enough to have him arrested…. Arrested! His

whole being revolted at the word. To be stifled by odious force!… He

could not breathe. His mother, his country, that he was leaving, were no

longer in his thoughts. In the egoism of his threatened liberty he thought

only of that liberty of his life which he wished to save. Whatever it might

cost! Even at the cost of crime. He was bitterly sorry that he had taken

the train instead of continuing the journey to the frontier on foot. He had

wanted to gain a few hours. A fine gain! He was throwing himself into the

jaws of the wolf. Surely they were waiting for him at the frontier station;

orders must have been given; he would be arrested…. He thought for a

moment of leaving the train while it was moving, before it reached the

station; he even opened the door of the carriage, but it was too late; the

train was at the station. It stopped. Fire minutes. An eternity. Christophe

withdrew to the end of the compartment and hid behind the curtain and

anxiously watched the platform on which a gendarme was standing motionless.

The station master came out of his office with a telegram in his hand and

went hurriedly up to the gendarme. Christophe had no doubt that it was

about himself. He looked for a weapon. He had only a strong knife with two

blades. He opened it in his pocket. An official with a lamp on his chest

had passed the station master and was running along the train. Christophe

saw him coming. His fist closed on the handle of the knife in his pocket

and he thought:

 

“I am lost.”

 

He was in such a state of excitement that he would have been capable of

plunging the knife into the man’s breast if he had been unfortunate enough

to come straight to him and open his compartment. But the official stopped

at the next carriage to look at the ticket of a passenger who had just

taken his seat. The train moved on again. Christophe repressed the

throbbing of his heart. He did not stir. He dared hardly say to himself

that he was saved. He would not say it until he had crossed the

frontier…. Day was beginning to dawn. The silhouettes of the trees were

starting out of the night. A carriage was passing on the road like a

fantastic shadow with a jingle of bells and a winking eye…. With his face

close pressed to the window Christophe tried to see the post with the

imperial arms which marked the bounds of his servitude. He was still

looking for it in the growing light when the train whistled to announce its

arrival at the first Belgian station.

 

He got up, opened the door wide, and drank in the icy air. Free! His whole

life before him! The joy of life!… And at once there came upon him

suddenly all the sadness of what he was leaving, all the sadness of what he

was going to meet; and he was overwhelmed by the fatigue of that night of

emotion. He sank down on the seat. He had hardly been in the station a

minute. When a minute later an official opened the door of the carriage he

found Christophe asleep. Christophe awoke, dazed, thinking he had been

asleep an hour; he got out heavily and dragged himself to the customs, and

when he was definitely accepted on foreign territory, having no more to

defend himself, he lay down along a seat in the waiting room and dropped

off and slept like a log.

 

*

 

He awoke about noon. Lorchen could hardly come before two or three o’clock.

While he was waiting for the trains he walked up and down the platform of

the little station. Then he went straight on into the middle of the fields;

It was a gray and joyless day giving warning of the approach of winter. The

light was dim. The plaintive whistle of a train stopping was all that broke

the melancholy silence. Christophe stopped a few yards away from the

frontier in the deserted country. Before him was a little pond, a clear

pool of water, in which the gloomy sky was reflected. It was inclosed by a

fence and two trees grew by its side. On the right, a poplar with leafless

trembling top. Behind, a great walnut tree with black naked branches like a

monstrous polypus. The black fruit of it swung heavily on it. The last

withered leaves were decaying and falling one by one upon the still

pond….

 

It seemed to him that he had already seen them, the two trees, the pond

…—and suddenly he had one of those moments of giddiness which open great

distances in the plain of life. A chasm in Time. He knew not where he was,

who he was, in what age he lived, through how many ages he had been so.

Christophe had a feeling that it had already been, that what was, now, was

not, now, but in some other time. He was no longer himself. He was able to

see himself from outside, from a great distance,