CHAPTER XXIX
THE days had no separate meaning to Jean; they came upon him with the orderly formation of advancing waves, line upon line, they hung above his little island of consciousness, ominous, cold and dark, to break and cover him under bitter waters.
He was not conscious that he was unhappy, but he knew that he was fighting with the hours. They were formidable and long and quite extraordinarily empty; now and then, indeed, to vary their insistent monotony, he would feel a sharp stab at the sight or scent of the flowering spring. A girl with a lilac plume in her hand, the flutter of the new-born leaves in the garden of the Luxembourg, the gaiety in the eyes of a child—these things Jean had never known before, but he knew them now—they were the signals of his retreating joy.
Cartier watched him anxiously; the look of youth had wholly passed from the boy’s face; it was grey and old, without expression. The features seemed sunk and the vivid eyes no longer held their light.
It was not Jean who answered Cartier when he spoke to him, but a creature that seemed dragged up from the depths of the sea. He was held on the surface for a moment by the brief compulsion of Cartier’s voice, and when it ceased he sank back without a struggle into an alien element.
Jean was very docile, he followed Cartier meekly to his rooms for his last week in Paris. What he liked to do best was to walk up and down, up and down the long music room with the measured tread of a wild thing in a cage, but he never did this unless he thought Cartier was out. There were only two things Jean thought of, one that he might have killed Flaubert, and the other that he had not stayed with Gabrielle; but these two things never left him; they rose in turn and possessed his mind in an orderly routine that did not vary. He might have killed Flaubert, and he had not stayed with Gabrielle. Cartier interrupted him sometimes and Jean had to keep his thoughts back from one of these great wheels, and then as Cartier withdrew his claim Jean’s mind sprang back released, and he found himself once more turning on his inexorable wheels.
As the days passed he grew nearer the hidden boundary where madness lurks; sleep withdrew from him, at first imperceptibly and gently, a new elastic lengthening of the hours of the night, and then altogether, with a complete and terrible absence of unconsciousness.
For twenty-four hours Jean was bound on his two wheels swinging in the chaos of his breaking mind. Then Cartier came to him again. Jean had to hold his head for a moment to hear what Cartier said; a strange idea flickered into his mind, without root or continuity, that it might be easier to kill Cartier than to listen to him; but he put it away; he could still listen.
Cartier said: “Jean, I’ve heard from Margot; she wants us both to go to hear her sing to-night; it’s a great occasion, she has an important part in the new Revue at ‘Le Matin.’ It’s our last evening, you know, in Paris. You’ll come, won’t you, to hear the little Margot?”
“I have already said good-bye to Margot,” said Jean slowly; and then he murmured half to himself: “I asked her if she prayed for me, and she said, ‘Ah Jean! the Blessed Virgin knows that I have prayed.’ I do not want to hear her say that again. Her eyes are like a sword.”