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

said:

 

“I can’t find any. Go to Lisi, in the next street. She is sure to have

them. She has everything that people want.”

 

He laughed at her way of doing business.

 

“Do you send all your customers away like that?”

 

“Well. You are not the first,” said Sabine warmly.

 

And yet she was a little ashamed:

 

“It is too much trouble to tidy up,” she said. “I put off doing it from day

to day…. But I shall certainly do it to-morrow.”

 

“Shall I help you?” asked Christophe.

 

She refused. She would gladly have accepted: but she dared not, for fear of

gossip. And besides it humiliated her.

 

They went on talking.

 

“And your buttons?” she said to Christophe a moment later. “Aren’t you

going to Lisi?”

 

“Never,” said Christophe. “I shall wait until you have tidied up.”

 

“Oh!” said Sabine, who had already forgotten what she had just said, “don’t

wait all that time!”

 

Her frankness delighted them both.

 

Christophe went to the drawer that she had shut.

 

“Let me look.”

 

She ran to prevent his doing so.

 

“No, now please. I am sure I haven’t any.”

 

“I bet you have.”

 

At once he found the button he wanted, and was triumphant. He wanted

others. He wanted to go on rummaging; but she snatched the box from his

hands, and, hurt in her vanity, she began to look herself.

 

The light was fading. She went to the window. Christophe sat a little away

from her: the little girl clambered on to his knees. He pretended to listen

to her chatter and answered her absently. He was looking at Sabine and she

knew that he was looking at her. She bent over the box. He could see her

neck and a little of her cheek.—And as he looked he saw that she was

blushing. And he blushed too.

 

The child went on talking. No one answered her. Sabine did not move.

Christophe could not see what she was doing, he was sure she was doing

nothing: she was not even looking at the box in her hands. The silence went

on and on. The little girl grew uneasy and slipped down from Christophe’s

knees.

 

“Why don’t you say anything?”

 

Sabine turned sharply and took her in her arms. The box was spilled on the

floor: the little girl shouted with glee and ran on hands and knees after

the buttons rolling under the furniture. Sabine went to the window again

and laid her cheek against the pane. She seemed to be absorbed in what she

saw outside.

 

“Goodnight!” said Christophe, ill at ease. She did not turn her head, and

said in a low voice:

 

“Goodnight.”

 

*

 

On Sundays the house was empty during the afternoon. The whole family went

to church for Vespers. Sabine did not go. Christophe jokingly reproached

her with it once when he saw her sitting at her door in the little garden,

while the lovely bells were bawling themselves hoarse summoning her. She

replied in the same tone that only Mass was compulsory: not Vespers: it was

then no use, and perhaps a little indiscreet to be too zealous: and she

liked to think that God would be rather pleased than angry with her.

 

“You have made God in your own image,” said Christophe.

 

“I should be so bored if I were in His place,” replied she with conviction.

 

“You would not bother much about the world if you were in His place.”

 

“All that I should ask of it would be that it should not bother itself

about me.”

 

“Perhaps it would be none the worse for that,” said Christophe.

 

“Tssh!” cried Sabine, “we are being irreligious.”

 

“I don’t see anything irreligious in saying that God is like you. I am sure

He is flattered.”

 

“Will you be silent!” said Sabine, half laughing, half angry. She was

beginning to be afraid that God would be scandalized. She quickly turned

the conversation.

 

“Besides,” she said, “it is the only time in the week when one can enjoy

the garden in peace.”

 

“Yes,” said Christophe. “They are gone.” They looked at each other.

 

“How silent it is,” muttered Sabine. “We are not used to it. One hardly

knows where one is….”

 

“Oh!” cried Christophe suddenly and angrily.

 

“There are days when I would like to strangle her!” There was no need to

ask of whom he was speaking.

 

“And the others?” asked Sabine gaily.

 

“True,” said Christophe, a little abashed. “There is Rosa.”

 

“Poor child!” said Sabine.

 

They were silent.

 

“If only it were always as it is now!” sighed Christophe.

 

She raised her laughing eyes to his, and then dropped them. He saw that she

was working.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

 

(The fence of ivy that separated the two gardens was between them.)

 

“Look!” she said, lifting a basin that she was holding in heir lap. “I am

shelling peas.”

 

She sighed.

 

“But that is not unpleasant,” he raid, laughing.

 

“Oh!” she replied, “it is disgusting, always having to think of dinner.”

 

“I bet that if it were possible,” he said, “you would go without your

dinner rather than haw the trouble of cooking it.”

 

“That’s true,” cried she.

 

“Wait! I’ll come and help you.”

 

He climbed over the fence and came to her.

 

She was sitting in a chair in the door. He sat on a step at her feet. He

dipped into her lap for handfuls of green pods; and he poured the little

round peas into the basin that Sabine held between her knees. He looked

down. He saw Sabine’s black stockings clinging to her ankles and feet—one

of her feet was half out of its shoe. He dared not raise his eyes to look

at her.

 

The air was heavy. The sky was dull and clouds hung low: There was no wind.

No leaf stirred. The garden was inclosed within high walls: there was no

world beyond them.

 

The child had gone out with one of the neighbors. They were alone. They

said nothing. They could say nothing. Without looking he went on taking

handfuls of peas from Sabine’s lap: his fingers trembled as he touched her:

among the fresh smooth pods they met Sabine’s fingers, and they trembled

too. They could not go on. They sat still, not looking at each other: she

leaned back in her chair with her lips half-open and her arms hanging: he

sat at her feet leaning against her: along his shoulder and arm he could

feel the warmth of Sabine’s leg. They were breathless. Christophe laid his

hands against the stones to cool them: one of his hands touched Sabine’s

foot, that she had thrust out of her shoe, and he left it there, could not

move it. They shivered. Almost they lost control. Christophe’s hand closed

on the slender toes of Sabine’s little foot. Sabine turned cold, the sweat

broke out on her brow, she leaned towards Christophe….

 

Familiar voices broke the spell. They trembled. Christophe leaped to his

feet and crossed the fence again. Sabine picked up the shells in her lap

and went in. In the yard he turned. She was at her door. They looked at

each other. Drops of rain were beginning to patter on the leaves of the

trees…. She closed her door. Frau Vogel and Rosa came in…. He went up

to his room….

 

In the yellow light of the waning day drowned in the torrents of rain, he

got up from his desk in response to an irresistible impulse: he ran to his

window and held out his arms to the opposite window. At the same moment

through the opposite window in the half-darkness of the room he saw—he

thought he saw—Sabine holding out her arms to him.

 

He rushed from his room. He went downstairs. He ran to the garden fence. At

the risk of being seen he was about to clear it. But when he looked at the

window at which she had appeared, he saw that the shutters were closed. The

house seemed to be asleep. He stopped. Old Euler, going to his cellar, saw

him and called him. He retraced his footsteps. He thought he must have been

dreaming.

 

It was not long before Rosa began to see what was happening. She had no

diffidence and she did not yet know what jealousy was. She was ready to

give wholly and to ask nothing in return. But if she was sorrowfully

resigned to not being loved by Christophe, she had never considered the

possibility of Christophe loving another.

 

One evening, after dinner, she had just finished a piece of embroidery at

which she had been working for months. She was happy, and wanted for once

in a way to leave her work and go and talk to Christophe. She waited until

her mother’s back was turned and then slipped from the room. She crept from

the house like a truant. She wanted to go and confound Christophe, who had

vowed scornfully that she would never finish her work. She thought it would

be a good joke to go and take them by surprise in the street. It was no use

the poor child knowing how Christophe felt towards her: she was always

inclined to measure the pleasure which others should have at seeing her by

that which she had herself in meeting them.

 

She went out. Christophe and Sabine were sitting as usual in front of the

house. There was a catch at Rosa’s heart. And yet she did not stop for the

irrational idea that was in her: and she chaffed Christophe warmly. The

sound of her shrill voice in the silence of the night struck on Christophe

like a false note. He started in his chair, and frowned angrily. Rosa waved

her embroidery in his face triumphantly. Christophe snubbed her

impatiently.

 

“It is finished—finished!” insisted Rosa.

 

“Oh! well—go and begin another,” said Christophe curtly.

 

Rosa was crestfallen. All her delight vanished. Christophe went on crossly:

 

“And when you have done thirty, when you are very old, you will at least be

able to say to yourself that your life has not been wasted!”

 

Rosa was near weeping.

 

“How cross you are, Christophe!” she said.

 

Christophe was ashamed and spoke kindly to her. She was satisfied with so

little that she regained confidence: and she began once more to chatter

noisily: she could not speak low, she shouted deafeningly, like everybody

in the house. In spite of himself Christophe could not conceal his

ill-humor. At first he answered her with a few irritated monosyllables:

then he said nothing at all, turned his back on her, fidgeted in his chair,

and ground his teeth as she rattled on. Rosa saw that he was losing his

temper and knew that she ought to stop: but she went on louder than ever.

Sabine, a few yards away, in the dark, said nothing, watched the scene with

ironic impassivity. Then she was weary and, feeling that the evening was

wasted, she got up and went in. Christophe only noticed her departure after

she had gone. He got up at once and without ceremony went away with a curt

“Good-evening.”

 

Rosa was left alone in the street, and looked in bewilderment at the door

by which he had just gone in. Tears came to her eyes. She rushed in, went

up to her room without a sound, so as not to have to talk to her mother,

undressed hurriedly, and when she was in