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

and

sweet with the juice of the plums: and she returned his kiss without more

ceremony.

 

“Where are you going?” he asked.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Are you out alone?”

 

“No. I am with friends. But I have lost them…. Hi! Hi!” she called

suddenly as loudly as she could.

 

No answer.

 

She did not bother about it any more. They began to walk, at random,

following their noses.

 

“And you … where are you going?” said she.

 

“I don’t know, either.”

 

“Good. We’ll go together.”

 

She took some plums from her gaping blouse and began to munch them.

 

“You’ll make yourself sick,” he said.

 

“Not I! I’ve been eating them all day.”

 

Through the gap in her blouse he saw the white of her chemise.

 

“They are all warm now,” she said.

 

“Let me see!”

 

She held him one and laughed. He ate it. She watched him out of the corner

of her eye as she sucked at the fruit like a child. He did not know how the

adventure would end. It is probable that she at least had some suspicion.

She waited.

 

“Hi! Hi!” Voices in the woods.

 

“Hi! Hi!” she answered. “Ah! There they are!” she said to Christophe. “Not

a bad thing, either!”

 

But on the contrary she was thinking that it was rather a pity. But speech

was not given to woman for her to say what she is thinking…. Thank God!

for there would be an end of morality on earth….

 

The voices came near. Her friends were near the road. She leaped the ditch,

climbed the hedge, and hid behind the trees. He watched her in amazement.

She signed to him imperiously to come to her. He followed her. She plunged

into the depths of the wood.

 

“Hi! Hi!” she called once more when they had gone some distance. “You see,

they must look for me!” she explained to Christophe.

 

Her friends had stopped on the road and were listening for her voice to

mark where it came from. They answered her and in their turn entered the

woods. But she did not wait for them. She turned about on right and on

left. They bawled loudly after her. She let them, and then went and called

in the opposite direction. At last they wearied of it, and, making sure

that the best way of making her come was to give up seeking her, they

called:

 

“Good-bye!” and went off singing.

 

She was furious that they should not have bothered about her any more than

that. She had tried to be rid of them: but she had not counted on their

going off so easily. Christophe looked rather foolish: this game of

hide-and-seek with a girl whom he did not know did not exactly enthrall

him: and he had no thought of taking advantage of their solitude. Nor did

she think of it: in her annoyance she forgot Christophe.

 

“Oh! It’s too much,” she said, thumping her hands together. “They have left

me.”

 

“But,” said Christophe, “you wanted them to.”

 

“Not at all.”

 

“You ran away.”

 

“If I ran away from them that is my affair, not theirs. They ought to look

for me. What if I were lost?…”

 

Already she was beginning to be sorry for herself because if what might

have happened if … if the opposite of what actually had occurred had come

about.

 

“Oh!” she said. “I’ll shake them!” She turned back and strode off.

 

As she went she remembered Christophe and looked at him once more.—But it

was too late. She began to laugh. The little demon which had been in her

the moment before was gone. While she was waiting for another to come she

saw Christophe with the eyes of indifference. And then, she was hungry. Her

stomach was reminding her that it was supper-time: she was in a hurry to

rejoin her friends at the inn. She took Christophe’s arm, leaned on it with

all her weight, groaned, and said that she was exhausted. That did not keep

her from dragging Christophe down a slope, running, and shouting, and

laughing like a mad thing.

 

They talked. She learned who he was: she did not know his name, and seemed

not to be greatly impressed by his title of musician. He learned that she

was a shop-girl from a dressmaker’s in the Kaiserstrasse (the most

fashionable street in the town): her name was Adelheid—to friends, Ada.

Her companions on the excursion were one of her friends, who worked at the

same place as herself, and two nice young men, a clerk at Weiller’s bank,

and a clerk from a big linen-draper’s. They were turning their Sunday to

account: they had decided to dine at the Brochet inn, from which there is a

fine view over the Rhine, and then to return by boat.

 

The others had already established themselves at the inn when they arrived.

Ada made a scene with her friends: she complained of their cowardly

desertion and presented Christophe as her savior. They did not listen to

her complaints: but they knew Christophe, the bank-clerk by reputation, the

clerk from having heard some of his compositions—(he thought it a good

idea to hum an air from one of them immediately afterwards)—and the

respect which they showed him made an impression on Ada, the more so as

Myrrha, the other young woman—(her real name was Hansi or Johanna)—a

brunette with blinking eyes, bumpy forehead, hair screwed back, Chinese

face, a little too animated, but clever and not without charm, in spite of

her goat-like head and her oily golden-yellow complexion,—at once began to

make advances to their Hof Musicus. They begged him to be so good as to

honor their repast with his presence.

 

Never had he been in such high feather: for he was overwhelmed with

attentions, and the two women, like good friends as they were, tried each

to rob the other of him. Both courted him: Myrrha with ceremonious manners,

sly looks, as she rubbed her leg against his under the table—Ada, openly

making play with her fine eyes, her pretty mouth, and all the seductive

resources at her command. Such coquetry in its almost coarseness incommoded

and distressed Christophe. These two bold young women were a change from

the unkindly faces he was accustomed to at home. Myrrha interested him, he

guessed her to be more intelligent than Ada: but her obsequious manners and

her ambiguous smile were curiously attractive and repulsive to him at the

same time. She could do nothing against Ada’s radiance of life and

pleasure: and she was aware of it. When she saw that she had lost the bout,

she abandoned the effort, turned in upon herself, went on smiling, and

patiently waited for her day to come. Ada, seeing herself mistress of the

field, did not seek to push forward the advantage she had gained: what she

had done had been mainly to despite her friend: she had succeeded, she was

satisfied. But she had been caught in her own game. She felt as she looked

into Christophe’s eyes the passion that she had kindled in him: and that

same passion began to awake in her. She was silent: she left her vulgar

teasing: they looked at each other in silence: on their lips they had the

savor of their kiss. From time to time by fits and starts they joined

vociferously in the jokes of the others: then they relapsed into silence,

stealing glances at each other. At last they did not even look at each

other, as though they were afraid of betraying themselves. Absorbed in

themselves they brooded over their desire.

 

When the meal was over they got ready to go. They had to go a mile and a

half through the woods to reach the pier. Ada got up first: Christophe

followed her. They waited on the steps until the others were ready: without

speaking, side by side, in the thick mist that was hardly at all lit up by

the single lamp hanging by the inn door.—Myrrha was dawdling by the

mirror.

 

Ada took Christophe’s hand and led him along the house towards the garden

into the darkness. Under a balcony from which hung a curtain of vines they

hid. All about them was dense darkness. They could not even see each other.

The wind stirred the tops of the pines. He felt Ada’s warm fingers entwined

in his and the sweet scent of a heliotrope flower that she had at her

breast.

 

Suddenly she dragged him to her: Christophe’s lips found Ada’s hair, wet

with the mist, and kissed her eyes, her eyebrows, her nose, her cheeks, the

corners of her mouth, seeking her lips, and finding them, staying pressed

to them.

 

The others had gone. They called:

 

“Ada!…”

 

They did not stir, they hardly breathed, pressed close to each other, lips

and bodies.

 

They heard Myrrha:

 

“They have gone on.”

 

The footsteps of their companions died away in the night. They held each

other closer, in silence, stifling on their lips a passionate murmuring.

 

In the distance a village clock rang out. They broke apart. They had to run

to the pier. Without a word they set out, arms and hands entwined, keeping

step—a little quick, firm step, like hers. The road was deserted: no

creature was abroad: they could not see ten yards ahead of them: they went,

serene and sure, into the beloved night. They never stumbled over the

pebbles on the road. As they were late they took a short cut. The path led

for some way down through vines and then began to ascend and wind up the

side of the hill. Through the mist they could hear the roar of the river

and the heavy paddles of the steamer approaching. They left the road and

ran across the fields. At last they found themselves on the bank of the

Rhine but still far from the pier. Their serenity was not disturbed. Ada

had forgotten her fatigue of the evening. It seemed to them that they could

have walked all night like that, on the silent grass, in the hovering

mists, that grew wetter and more dense along the river that was wrapped in

a whiteness as of the moon. The steamer’s siren hooted: the invisible

monster plunged heavily away and away. They said, laughing:

 

“We will take the next.”

 

By the edge of the river soft lapping waves broke at their feet. At the

landing stage they were told:

 

“The last boat has just gone.”

 

Christophe’s heart thumped. Ada’s hand grasped his arm more tightly.

 

“But,” she said, “there will be another one to-morrow.”

 

A few yards away in a halo of mist was the flickering light of a lamp hung

on a post on a terrace by the river. A little farther on were a few lighted

windows—a little inn.

 

They went into the tiny garden. The sand ground under their feet. They

groped their way to the steps. When they entered, the lights were being put

out. Ada, on Christophe’s arm, asked for a room. The room to which they

were led opened on to the little garden. Christophe leaned out of the

window and saw the phosphorescent flow of the river, and the shade of the

lamp on the glass of which were crushed mosquitoes with large wings. The

door was closed. Ada was standing by the bed and smiling. He dared not look

at her. She did not look at him: but through her lashes she followed

Christophe’s every movement. The floor creaked with every step. They could

hear the least noise in the house.