That was enough. He left her.
It is easy to manage a man who has a certain kind of honour. You touch his pride, and you touch the one thing in him more fundamental than his desires, and by which he can control them. “I cannot think,” said Gabrielle to herself, “why Louis finds him difficult to deal with; men are so stupid.” Then she rang for her maid and finished her toilette. Madame Torialli never wasted her time.
CHAPTER XXVI
“IS that thing yours?” asked Cartier.
It was Sunday evening in the vast solitude of Cartier’s music room. There was nothing in it but space—a couple of armchairs and the blur of tobacco smoke. The sound of Jean’s playing on Cartier’s perfect grand reached his listener’s ear without anything to deaden or blur the clear stream of the falling notes.
“Yes, it’s mine,” replied Jean wearily. “At least I suppose it is—it may be an imitation of yours, mon maître, for anything I know to the contrary. I was half dead with sleep last night when it came to me. Flaubert broke down, you know, after his ball, and went off for a week—so I’ve been doing his work for him—and, to tell you the truth, I prefer his work to his company. But you like it—this little idea? I call it ‘Autumn in Spring’—because I feel it is that moment when the dead leaves are still in the ground and yet life stirs.”
“I don’t know whether I like it or not,” said Cartier slowly, “but you should do nothing else.”
“That is easily said,” Jean answered a little bitterly; “only there must be a basis for bread and butter—I used to think one had nothing to do but to sit and hear music come, but when everything else went I found myself getting up and going after it. Counterpoint and harmony—even the study of les vieux—they weren’t worth the smell of a cup of coffee and a fresh petit pain; and—well, it’s thanks to you, Cartier, that I’m not starving now.”
“It’s not thanks to me,” said Cartier quietly. “But, Jean, you’ve got to get back to counterpoint and harmony and les vieux! I never much cared for the Toriallis for you; it’s a footman’s place with the jingle of the piano thrown in. Now you’re on your feet again I have another idea. I want you to throw it up and come with me to Russia for a year. I promised to go back to play through the winter at St. Petersburg, but I have a notion to go off somewhere into the country for the summer. They’ve fine forests there and silences deeper than anything you’ve ever dreamed of. Friends of mine have offered me a house the size of a Paris boulevard. I don’t want to go alone—but if you’d come with me it would give you time enough to yourself to hammer out a little stuff—and I should see then better what is in you. For me, unless I have one of les jeunes at my side I grow top-heavy and old-fashioned. Let it be a bargain then—you shall have all expenses paid and whatever the good Toriallis have seen fit to dole out to you thrown in!”
Jean drew a deep breath; then he got up and crossed the big, sounding salon to Cartier’s side.