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

woolen comforter, presented him with little toilet things, and all so

gently that he never was put about by her care or her presents. In short,

she gave him all the little attentions and the quasi-maternal care which

come to every good woman instinctively for a child who is intrusted to

her, or trusts himself to her, without her having any deep feeling for

it. But Jean-Christophe thought that all the tenderness was given to him

personally, and he was filled with gratitude; he would break out into

little awkward, passionate speeches, which seemed a little ridiculous to

Frau von Kerich, though they did not fail to give her pleasure.

 

With Minna his relation was very different. When Jean-Christophe met her

again at her first lesson, he was still intoxicated by his memories of

the preceding evening and of the girl’s soft looks, and he was greatly

surprised to find her an altogether different person from the girl he had

seen only a few hours before. She hardly looked at him, and did not listen

to what he said, and when she raised her eyes to him, he saw in them so

icy a coldness that he was chilled by it. He tortured himself for a long

time to discover wherein lay his offense. He had given none, and Minna’s

feelings were neither more nor less favorable than on the preceding day;

just as she had been then, Minna was completely indifferent to him. If on

the first occasion she had smiled upon him in welcome, it was from a girl’s

instinctive coquetry, who delights to try the power of her eyes on the

first comer, be it only a trimmed poodle who turns up to fill her idle

hours. But since the preceding day the too-easy conquest had already lost

interest for her. She had subjected Jean-Christophe to a severe scrutiny

and she thought him an ugly boy, poor, ill-bred, who played the piano well,

though he had ugly hands, held his fork at table abominably, and ate his

fish with a knife. Then he seemed to her very uninteresting. She wanted to

have music-lessons from him; she wanted, even, to amuse herself with him,

because for the moment she had no other companion, and because in spite of

her pretensions of being no longer a child, she had still in gusts a crazy

longing to play, a need of expending her superfluous gaiety, which was, in

her as in her mother, still further roused by the constraint imposed by

their mourning. But she took no more account of Jean-Christophe than of

a domestic animal, and if it still happened occasionally during the days

of her greatest coldness that she made eyes at him, it was purely out of

forgetfulness, and because she was thinking of something else, or simply

so as not to get out of practice. And when she looked at him like that,

Jean-Christophe’s heart used to leap. It is doubtful if she saw it; she was

telling herself stories. For she was at the age when we delight the senses

with sweet fluttering dreams. She was forever absorbed in thoughts of love,

filled with a curiosity which was only innocent from ignorance. And she

only thought of love, as a well-taught young lady should, in terms of

marriage. Her ideal was far from having taken definite shape. Sometimes she

dreamed of marrying a lieutenant, sometimes of marrying a poet, properly

sublime, à la Schiller. One project devoured another and the last

was always welcomed with the same gravity and just the same amount of

conviction. For the rest, all of them were quite ready to give way before

a profitable reality, for it is wonderful to see how easily romantic girls

forget their dreams, when something less ideal, but more certain, appears

before them.

 

As it was, sentimental Minna was, in spite of all, calm and cold. In spite

of her aristocratic name, and the pride with which the ennobling particle

filled her, she had the soul of a little German housewife in the exquisite

days of adolescence.

 

*

 

Naturally Jean-Christophe did not in the least understand the complicated

mechanism—more complicated in appearance than in reality—of the feminine

heart. He was often baffled by the ways of his friends, but he was so happy

in loving them that he credited them with all that disturbed and made him

sad with them, so as to persuade himself that he was as much loved by them

as he loved them himself. A word or an affectionate look plunged him in

delight. Sometimes he was so bowled over by it that he would burst into

tears.

 

Sitting by the table in the quiet little room, with Frau von Kerich a few

yards away sewing by the light of the lamp—Minna reading on the other

side of the table, and no one talking, he looking through the half-open

garden-door at the gravel of the avenue glistening under the moon, a soft

murmur coming from the tops of the trees—his heart would be so full of

happiness that suddenly, for no reason, he would leap from his chair, throw

himself at Frau von Kerich’s feet, seize her hand, needle or no needle,

cover it with kisses, press it to his lips, his cheeks, his eyes, and sob.

Minna would raise her eyes, lightly shrug her shoulders, and make a face.

Frau von Kerich would smile down at the big boy groveling at her feet, and

pat his head with her free hand, and say to him in her pretty voice,

affectionately and ironically:

 

“Well, well, old fellow! What is it?”

 

Oh, the sweetness of that voice, that peace, that silence, that soft air

in which were no shouts, no roughness, no violence, that oasis in the

harsh desert of life, and—heroic light gilding with its rays people and

things—the light of the enchanted world conjured up by the reading of the

divine poets! Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, springs of strength, of

sorrow, and of love!…

 

Minna, with her head down over the book, and her face faintly colored by

her animated delivery, would read in her fresh voice, with its slight lisp,

and try to sound important when she spoke in the characters of warriors

and kings. Sometimes Frau von Kerich herself would take the book; then she

would lend to tragic histories the spiritual and tender graciousness of her

own nature, but most often she would listen, lying back in her chair, her

never-ending needlework in her lap; she would smile at her own thoughts,

for always she would come back to them through every book.

 

Jean-Christophe also had tried to read, but he had had to give it up; he

stammered, stumbled over the words, skipped the punctuation, seemed to

understand nothing, and would be so moved that he would have to stop in the

middle of the pathetic passages, feeling tears coming. Then in a tantrum he

would throw the book down on the table, and his two friends would burst out

laughing…. How he loved them! He carried the image of them everywhere

with him, and they were mingled with the persons in Shakespeare and Goethe.

He could hardly distinguish between them. Some fragrant word of the poets

which called up from the depths of his being passionate emotions could not

in him be severed from the beloved lips that had made him hear it for the

first time. Even twenty years later he could never read Egmont or Romeo, or

see them played, without there leaping up in him at certain lines the

memory of those quiet evenings, those dreams of happiness, and the beloved

faces of Frau von Kerich and Minna.

 

He would spend hours looking at them in the evening when they were reading;

in the night when he was dreaming in his bed, awake, with his eyes closed;

during the day, when he was dreaming at his place in the orchestra, playing

mechanically with his eyes half closed. He had the most innocent tenderness

for them, and, knowing nothing of love, he thought he was in love. But he

did not quite know whether it was with the mother or the daughter. He went

into the matter gravely, and did not know which to choose. And yet, as it

seemed to him he must at all costs make his choice, he inclined towards

Frau von Kerich. And he did in fact discover, as soon as he had made up

his mind to it, that it was she that he loved. He loved her quick eyes,

the absent smile upon her half-open lips, her pretty forehead, so young in

seeming, and the parting to one side in her fine, soft hair, her rather

husky voice, with its little cough, her motherly hands, the elegance of her

movements, and her mysterious soul. He would thrill with happiness when,

sitting by his side, she would kindly explain to him the meaning of some

passage in a book which he did not understand; she would lay her hand on

Jean-Christophe’s shoulder; he would feel the warmth of her fingers, her

breath on his cheek, the sweet perfume of her body; he would listen in

ecstasy, lose all thought of the book, and understand nothing at all. She

would see that and ask him to repeat what she had said; then he would say

nothing, and she would laughingly be angry, and tap his nose with her book,

telling him that he would always be a little donkey. To that he would reply

that he did not care so long as he was her little donkey, and she did not

drive him out of her house. She would pretend to make objections; then she

would say that although he was an ugly little donkey, and very stupid, she

would agree to keep him—and perhaps even to love him—although he was good

for nothing, if at the least he would be just good. Then they would both

laugh, and he would go swimming in his joy.

 

*

 

When he discovered that he loved Frau von Kerich, Jean-Christophe broke

away from Minna. He was beginning to be irritated by her coldness and

disdain, and as, by dint of seeing her often, he had been emboldened little

by little to resume his freedom of manner with her, he did not conceal his

exasperation from her. She loved to sting him, and he would reply sharply.

They were always saying unkind things to each other, and Frau von Kerich

only laughed at them. Jean-Christophe, who never got the better in such

passages of words, used sometimes to issue from them so infuriated that he

thought he detested Minna; and he persuaded himself that he only went to

her house again because of Frau von Kerich.

 

He went on giving her music lessons. Twice a week, from nine to ten in the

morning, he superintended the girl’s scales and exercises. The room in

which they did this was Minna’s studio—an odd workroom, which, with an

amusing fidelity, reflected the singular disorder of her little feminine

mind.

 

On the table were little figures of musical cats—a whole orchestra—one

playing a violin, another the violoncello—a little pocket-mirror, toilet

things and writing things, tidily arranged. On the shelves were tiny busts

of musicians—Beethoven frowning, Wagner with his velvet cap, and the

Apollo Belvedere. On the mantelpiece, by a frog smoking a red pipe, a paper

fan on which was painted the Bayreuth Theater. On the two bookshelves

were a few books—Lübke, Mommsen, Schiller, “Sans Famille,” Jules Verne,

Montaigne. On the walls large photographs of the Sistine Madonna, and

pictures by Herkomer, edged with blue and green ribbons. There was also

a view of a Swiss hotel in a frame of silver thistles; and above all,

everywhere in