“Don’t you be so sure,” said Olivier. “The fear of blood is a secret instinctive feeling that on the first shedding of it the beast in man will see red, and the brute will appear again under the crust of civilization: and God knows how it will ever be muzzled! Everybody hesitates to declare war: but when the war does come it will be a frightful thing.”
Christophe shrugged his shoulders and said that it was not for nothing that the heroes of the age were lying heroes, Cyrano the braggart and the swaggering cock, Chantecler.
Olivier nodded. He knew that in France bragging is the beginning of action. However, he had no more faith than Christophe in an immediate movement: it had been too loudly proclaimed, and the Government was on its guard. There was reason to believe that the syndicalist strategists would postpone the fight for a more favorable opportunity.
During the latter half of April Olivier had an attack of influenza: he used to get it every winter about the same time, and it always used to develop into his old enemy, bronchitis. Christophe stayed with him for a few days. The attack was only a slight one, and soon passed. But, as usual, it left Olivier morally and physically worn out, and he was in this condition for some time after the fever had subsided. He stayed in bed, lying still for hours without any desire to get up or even to move: he lay there watching Christophe, who was sitting at his desk, working, with his back towards him.
Christophe was absorbed in his work. Sometimes, when he was tired of writing, he would suddenly get up and walk over to the piano: he would play, not what he had written, but just whatever came into his mind. Then there came to pass a very strange thing. While the music he had written was conceived in a style which recalled that of his earlier work, what he played was like that of another man. It was music of a world raucous and uncontrolled. There were in it a disorder and a violence, and incoherence which had no resemblance at all to the powerful order and logic which were everywhere present in his other music. These unconsidered improvizations, escaping the scrutiny of his artistic conscience, sprang, like the cry of an animal, from the flesh rather than from the mind; and seemed to reveal a disturbance of the balance of his soul, a storm brewing in the depths of the future. Christophe was quite unconscious of it: but Olivier would listen, look at Christophe, and feel vaguely uneasy. In his weak condition he had a singular power of penetration, a farseeing eye: he saw things that no other man could perceive.
Christophe thumped out a final chord and stopped all in a sweat, and looking rather haggard: he looked at Olivier, and there was still a troubled expression in his eyes; then he began to laugh, and went back to his desk. Olivier asked him:
“What was that, Christophe?”
“Nothing,” replied Christophe. “I’m stirring the water to attract my fish.”
“Are you going to write that?”
“That? What do you mean?”
“What you’ve just said.”
“What did I say? I don’t remember.”
“What were you thinking of?”
“I don’t know,” said Christophe, drawing his hand across his forehead.
He went on writing. Silence once mere filled the room. Olivier went on looking at Christophe. Christophe felt that he was looking, and turned. Olivier’s eyes were upon him with such a hunger of affection!
“Lazy brute!” he said gaily.
Olivier sighed.
“What’s the matter?” asked Christophe.
“Oh! Christophe! To think there are so many things in you, sitting there, close at hand, treasures that you will give to others, and I shall never be able to share! …”
“Are you mad? What’s come to you?”
“I wonder what your life will be. I wonder what peril and sorrow you have still to go through. … I would like to follow you. I would like to be with you. … But I shan’t see anything of it all. I shall be left stuck stupidly by the wayside.”
“Stupid? You are that. Do you think that I would leave you behind even if you wanted to be left?”
“You will forget me,” said Olivier.
Christophe got up and went and sat on the bed by Olivier’s side: he took his wrists, which were wet with a clammy sweat of weakness. His nightshirt was open at the neck, showing his weak chest, his too transparent skin, which was stretched and thin like a sail blown out by a puff of wind to rending point. Christophe’s strong fingers fumbled as he buttoned the neckband of Olivier’s nightshirt. Olivier suffered him.
“Dear Christophe!” he said tenderly. “Yet I have had one great happiness in my life!”
“Oh! what on earth are you thinking of?” said Christophe. “You’re as well as I am.”
“Yes,” said Olivier.
“Then why talk nonsense?”
“I was wrong,” said Olivier, ashamed and smiling. “Influenza is so depressing.”
“Pull yourself together, though! Get up.”
“Not now. Later on.”
He stayed in bed, dreaming. Next day he got up. But he was only able to sit musing by the fireside. It was a mild and misty April. Through the soft veil of silvery mist the little green leaves were unfolding their cocoons, and invisible birds were singing the song of the hidden sun. Olivier wound the skein of his memories. He saw himself once more as a child, in the train carrying him away from his native town, through
