now, the touch of her lips had been sufficient to chase away the shadows, the moment came, when, as he held her in his arms, Maurice was paralysed by the abrupt remembrance: she has known all this before. How was it then? To what degree is she mine, was she his? What fine, ultimate shade of feeling is she keeping back from me?–His ardour was damped; and as Louise also became aware of his sudden coolness, their hands sank apart, and had no strength to join anew.
Thus far, he had gone about his probings with skill, questioning her in a roundabout way, trying to learn by means of inference. But after this, he let himself go, and put a barefaced question. The subject once broached, there was no further need of concealment, and he flung tact and prudence to the winds. He could not forget–he was goaded on by–the look she had given him, as the ominous words crossed his lips: it made him conscious once more of the unapproachable nature of that first love of hers. He grew reckless; and while he had hitherto only sought to surprise her and entrap her, he now began to try to worm things out of her, all the time spying on her looks and words, ready to take advantage of the least slip on her part.
At first, before she understood what he was aiming at, Louise had been as frank as usual with him–that somewhat barbarous frankness, which took small note of the recipient’s feelings. But after he had put a direct question, and followed it up with others, of which she too clearly saw the drift, she drew back, as though she were afraid of him. It was not alone the error of taste he committed, in delving in matters which he had sworn should never concern him; it was his manner of doing it that was so distasteful to her–his hints and inuendoes. She grew very white and still, and looked at him with eyes in which a nascent dislike was visible.
He saw it; but it was now too late. Day by day, his preoccupation with the man who had preceded him increased. The thought that continued to harass him was: if she had never known the other, all would now be different. With jealousy, his state of mind had only as yet, in common, a devouring curiosity and a morbid imagination, which allowed him to picture the two of them in situations he would once have blushed to think of. For the one thing that now mattered to him, what he would have given his life to know, and would probably never know, was concerned with the ultimate ratification of love. What had she had for the other that she could not give him?–that she wilfully refrained from giving him? For that she did this, and always had refused him part of herself, was now as plain to him as if it had been branded on her flesh. And the knowledge undermined their lives. If she was gentle and kind, he read into her words pity that she could give him no more; if she were cold and evasive, she was remembering, comparing; if she returned his kisses with her former warmth–well, the thoughts which in this case seized him were the most murderous of all.
His mental activity ground him down. But it was not all unhappiness; the beloved eyes and hands, the wilful hair, and pale, sweet mouth, could still stir him; and there came hours of wishless well-being, when his tired brain found rest. As the days went by, however, these grew rarer; it also seemed to him that he paid dearly for them, by being afterwards more miserable, by suffering in a more active way.
At times, he knew, he was anything but a pleasant companion. But he was losing the mastery over himself, and often a trifle was sufficient to start him off afresh on the dreary theme. Once, in a fit of hopelessness, he made her what amounted to reproaches for her past.
“But you knew!–everythinging!–I told you all,” Louise expostulated, and there were tears in her eyes.
“I know you did. But Louise”–he hesitated, half contrite in advance, for what he was going to say–“it might have been better if you hadn’t told me–everything, I mean. Yes, I believe it’s better not to know.”
She did not reply, as she might have done, that she had forewarned him, afraid of this. She looked away, so that she should not be obliged to see him.
Another day, when they were walking in the ROSENTAL, she made him extremely unhappy by disagreeing with him.
“If one could just take a sponge and wipe the past out, like figures from a slate!” he said moodily.
But, jaded by his persistency, Louise would not admit it. “We should have nothing to remember.”
“That’s just it.”
“But it belongs to us!” She was roused to protest by the under-meaning in his words. “It’s as much a part of ourselves as our thoughts are–or our hands.”
“One is glad to forget. You would be, Louise? You wouldn’t care if your past were gone? Say you wouldn’t.”
But she only threw him a dark side-glance. As, however, he would not rest content, she flung out her hands with an impatient gesture. “How CAN you torment yourself so! If you insist on knowing, well, then, I wouldn’t part with an hour of what’s gone–not an hour! And you know it.”
She caught at a few vivid leaves that had remained hanging on a bare branch, and carried them with her.
He took one she held out to him, looked at it without seeing it, and threw it away. “Tell me, just this once, something about your life before I knew you. Were you very happy?–or were you unhappy? Do you know, I once heard you say you had never known a moment’s happiness?–yes, one summer night long ago, over in the NONNE. How I hoped then it was true! But I don’t know. You’ve never told me anything–of all there must be to tell.”
“What you may have chanced to hear, by eavesdropping, doesn’t concern me now,” Louise answered coldly. And then she shut her lips, and would say no more. She was wiser than she had been a week ago: she refused to hand her past over to him in order that he might smirch it with his thoughts.
But she could not understand him–understand the motives that made him want to unearth the past. If this were jealousy, it was a kind she did not know–a bloodless, bodiless kind, of which she had had no experience.
But it was not jealousy; it was only a craving for certainty in any guise, and the more surely Maurice felt that he would never gain it, the more tenaciously he strove. For certainty, that feeling of utter reliance in the loved one, which sets the heart at rest and leaves the mind free for the affairs of life, was what Louise had never given him; he had always been obliged to fall back on supposition with regard to her, equally at the height of their passion, and in that first and stretch of time, when it was forbidden him to touch her hand. The real truth, the last-reaching truth about her, it would not be his to know. Soul would never be absorbed in soul; not the most passionate embraces could bridge the gulf; to their last kiss, they would remain separate beings, lonely and alone.
As this went on, he came to hate the vapidities of the concerto in G major. Mentally to be stretched on a kind of rack, and, at the same time, to be forced to reiterate the empty rhetoric of this music! From this time forward, he could not hear the name of Mendelssohn without a shiver of repugnance. How he wished now, that he had been content with the bare sincerity of Beethoven, who at least said no note more than he had to say.
One day, towards the end of November, he was working with even greater distaste than usual. Finally, in exasperation, he flapped the music to, shut the piano, and went out. A stroll along the muddy little railed-in river brought him to the PLEISSENBURG, and from there he crossed the KONIGSPLATZ to the BRUDERSTRASSE. He had not come out with the intention of going to Louise, but, although it was barely four o’clock, the afternoon was drawing in; an interminable evening had to be got through. He had been walking at haphazard, and without relish; now his pace grew brisker. Having reached the house, he sprang nimbly up the. stairs, and was about to insert his key in the little door in the wall, when he was arrested by a muffled sound of voices. Louise was talking to some one, and, at the noise he made outside, she raised her voice–purposely, no doubt. He could not hear what was being said, but the second voice was a man’s. For a minute he stood, with his key suspended, straining his cars; then, afraid of being caught, he went downstairs again, where he hung about, between stair and street-door, in order that anyone who came down would be forced to pass him. At the end of five minutes, however, his patience was spent: he remembered, too, that the person might be as likely to go up as down. He mounted the stairs again, rang the bell, and had himself admitted by the landlady.
He thought she looked significantly at him as, with her usual pantomime of winks and signs, she whispered to him that a gentleman was with Fraulein–EIN SCHONER JUNGER MANN! Maurice pushed her aside, and opened the sitting-room door. Two heads turned at his entrance.
On the sofa, beside Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little student of medicine with whom she had danced so often at the ball. He sat there, smiling and dapper, balancing his hard round hat on his knee, and holding gloves in his hand.
Louise looked the more untidy by contrast: as usual, her hair was half uncoiled. Maurice saw this in a flash, saw also the look of annoyance that crossed her face at his unceremonious entry. She raised astonished eyebrows. Then, however, she shook hands with him.
“I think you know Mr. Herries.”
Maurice bowed stiffly across the table; Herries replied in kind, without discommoding himself.
“How d’ye do? I believe we’ve met,” he said carelessly.
As Maurice made no rejoinder, but remained standing in an uncompromising attitude, Herries turned to Louise again, and went on with what he had been saying. He was talking of England.
“I went back to Oxford after that,” he continued. “I’ve diggings there, don’t you know? An old chum of mine’s a fellow of Magdalen. I was just in time for eights’ week. A magnificent walk-over for our fellows. Ever seen the race? No? Oh, I say, that’s too bad. You must come over for it, next year.”
“Mr. Herries only returned from England a few days ago,” explained Louise, and again raised warning brows. “Do sit down. There’s a chair.”
“Yes. I was over for the whole summer. Didn’t work here at all, in fact,” added Herries, once more letting his bright eyes snapshot the young man, who, on sitting down, laid his shabby felt hat in the middle of the table.
“But now you intend to stay, I think you said?” Louise threw in at random, after they had waited for Maurice to fill up the pause.
“Yes, for the winter semester, anyhow. And I’ve got to tumble to, with a vengeance. But I mean to have a good time all the same. Even though it’s only Leipzig, one can have a jolly enough time.”
Again there was silence. Louise flushed. “I suppose you’re hard at work already?”
“Yes. Got started yesterday. Frogs, don’t you know?–the effect of a rare poison on frogs.”
This trivial exchange of words stung Maurice. Herries’s manner seemed to him intolerably familiar, lacking in respect; and he kept telling himself, as he listened, that, having returned frorn England, the fellow’s first thought had been of her. He had not opened his lips since entering; he sat staring at them, forgetful of good manners; and, after a little, both began to feel ill at ease. Their eyes met for a moment in this sensation, and Herries cleared his throat.
“What did you do with yourself in summer?” he queried, and could not restrain a smile, at the fashion in which the other fellow was giving himself away. “You weren’t in England at all, I think you said? We hoped we might meet there, don’t you remember? Too bad that I had to go off without saying good-bye.”
“No, I changed my mind and stayed here. But I shouldn’t do it again. It was so hot.”
“Must have been simply beastly.”
Maurice jerked his arm; a vase which was standing at his elbow upset, and the water trickled to the floor. Neither offered to help him; he had to stoop and mop it up with his handkerchief.
For a few moments longer, the conversation was eked out. Then Herries rose. With her hand in his, he said earnestly: “Now you must be merciful and relent. I shan’t give up hope. Any time in the next fortnight is time enough, remember. ‘Pon my word, I’ve dreamt of those waltzes of ours ever since. And the floor at the PRUSSE is still better, don’t you know? You won’t have the heart not to come.”
From under her lids, Louise shot a rapid glance at Maurice. He, too, had risen; he was standing stiff, pale, and solemn, visibly waiting only till Herries had gone, to make himself disagreeable. She smiled.
“Don’t ask me to give an answer to-day. I’ll let you know–will that do? A fortnight is such a long time. And then you’ve forgotten the chief thing. I must see if I have anything to wear.”
“Oh, I say! . . . if that’s all! Don’t let that bother you. That black thing you had on last time was ripping–awfully jolly, don’t you know?”
Louise laughed. “Well, perhaps,” she said, as she opened the door.
“Good business!” responded Herries.
He nodded in Maurice’s direction, and they went out of the room together. Maurice heard their voices in laughing rejoinder, heard them take leave of each other at the halldoor. After that there was a pause. Louise lingered, before returning, to open a letter that was lying on the hall-table; she also spoke to Fraulein Grunhut. When she did come back, all trace of animation had gone from her face. She busied herself at once with the flowers he had disarranged, and this done, ordered her hair before the hanging glass. Maurice followed her movements with a sarcastic smile.
Suddenly she turned and confronted him.
“Maurice! . . . for Heaven’s sake, don’t glare at me like that! If you’ve anything to say, please say it, and be done with it.”
“You know well enough what I have to say.” His voice was husky.
“Indeed, I don’t.”
“Well you ought to.”
“Ought to?–No: there’s a limit to everything! Take your hat off that table!–What did you mean by bursting into the room when you heard some one was here? And, as if that weren’t enough–to let everybody see how much at home you are–your behaviour–your unbearable want of manners…” She stopped, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips.
“I believed you didn’t care what people thought,” he threw in, morosely defiant.
“That’s a poor excuse for your rudeness.”
“Well, at least tell me what that fool wanted here.”
“Have you no ears? Couldn’t you hear that he has just come back from England, and is calling on his friends?”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“Maurice!”
“Oh, he has always been after you–since that night. It’s only because he wasn’t here long enough . . . and his manner shows what he thinks of you . . . and what he means.”
“What do YOU mean? Do you wish to say it’s my doing that he came here to-day?–Don’t you believe me?” she demanded, as he did not answer.
“And you in that half-dressed condition!”
“Could I dress before him? How abominable you are!”
He tried to explain. “Yes. Because . . . I hate the sight of the fellow.–You didn’t know he was coming, did you, or you wouldn’t have seen him.?”
“Know he was coming!” She wrenched her hands away. “Oh! . . .”
“Say you didn’t!”
“Maurice!–Be jealous, if you must! But surely, surely you don’t believe—-“
“Oh, don’t ask me what I believe. I only know I won’t have that man hanging about. It was by a mere chance to-day that I came round earlier; he might have been here for hours, without my suspecting it. Who knows if you would have told me either?–Would you have told me, Louise?”
“Oh, how can you be like this! What is the matter with you?”
He put his arms round her, with the old cry. “I can’t bear you even to look at another man. For he’s in love with you, and has been, ever since you made him crazy by dancing with him as you did.”
With his hands on her shoulders, he rested his face on her hair. “Promise me you won’t see him again.”
Wearily, Louise disengaged herself. “Oh there’s always something fresh to promise. I’m tired of it–of being hedged in, and watched, and never trusted.”
“Tired of me, you mean.”
She looked bitterly at him. “There you are again?”
“Just this once–to set my mind at rest. Just this once, Louise!–darling!”
But she was silent.
“Then you’ll let him come here again?”
“How do I know?–But if I promised what you ask, I should not be able to go with him to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE on the fifteenth.”
“You mean to go to that dance?”
“Why not? Would there be any harm in my going?”
“Louise!”
“Maurice!” She mocked his tone, and laughed. “Oh, go at once,” she broke out the next moment, “and order Grunhut never to let another visitor inside the door. Make me promise never to cross the threshold alone–never to speak to another mortal but yourself! Cut off every pleasure and every chance of pleasure I have; and then you may be, but only may be, content.”
“You’re trying how far you can go with me.”
“Do you want me to tell you again that dancing is one of the things I love best? Not six months ago you knew and helped me to it yourself.”
“Yes, THEN,” he answered. “Then I could refuse you nothing.”
She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand to his forehead. “You won’t be so cruel, I know.”
“You know more than I do.”
“Do you realise what it means if you go?” In fancy, he was present, and saw her passed from one pair of arms to another.
“I realise nothing–but that I am very unhappy.”
“Have I no influence over you any more–none at all?”
“Can’t you come, too, then?–if you are afraid to let me out of your sight?”
“I? To see you—-” He broke off with wrathful abruptness. “Thanks, I would rather be shot.” But at the mingled anger and blankness of her face, he coloured. “Louise, put an end to all this. Marry me–now, at once!”
“Marry you? I? No, thank you. We’re past that stage, I think.–Besides, are you so simple as to believe it would make any difference?”
“Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here!”–and he pulled her to him.
From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was changed. The incident of Herries’s visit, her refusal to promise what he asked, and, above all, the matter of the coming ball, with regard to which he could not get certainty from her: these things seemed to open up nightmare depths, to which he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vague fears which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and like shadows faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons for their lack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jot or tittle of what had happened; he could only make the best of it. And so he ceased to brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a black, unknown quantity, but the present was his own. And he would cling to it–for who knew what the future held in store for him? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not in the nature of things for her always to remain satisfied with him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question reared its head: who will come after me? Another blind attraction only needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of constancy and truth? If he had doubted her before, he was now suspicious from a different cause, and in quite a different way. The face of the trim little man who had sat beside her, and smiled at her, was persistently present to him. He did not question her further; but the poison worked the more surely in secret; he never for an instant forgot; and jealousy, now wide awake, had at last a definite object to lay hold of.
In his lucid moments, he knew that he was making her life a burden to her. What wonder if she did, ultimately, turn from him? But his evil moods were now beyond command. He began to suspect deceit in her actions as well as in what she said. The idea that this other, this smirking, wax-faced man, might somehow steal her from him, hung over him like a fog, obscuring his vision. It necessitated continued watchfulness on his part. And so he dogged her, mentally, and in fact until his own heart all but broke under the strain.
One afternoon they walked to Connewitz. It had rained heavily during the night, and the unpaved roads were inchdeep in mud. The sky was a level sheet of cloud, darker and more forbidding in the east.
Their direction was Maurice’s choice. Louise would have liked better to keep to the town: for, though the streets, too, were mud-bespattered, there would soon be lights, and the reflection of lights in damp pavements. She yielded, however, without even troubling to express her wish. But just because of the dirt and naked ugliness which met her, at every turn, she was voluble and excited; and an exaggerated hilarity seized her at trifles. Maurice, who had left the house in a more composed frame of mind than usual, gradually relapsed, at her want of restraint, into silence. He suffered under her looseness of tongue and laughter: her sallow, heavy-eyed face was ill-adapted to such moods; below her feverish animation there lurked, he was sure of it, a deadly melancholy. He had always been rendered uneasy by her spurts of gaiety. Now in addition, he asked himself: what has happened to make he. like this?
Feeling his hostility, Louise grew quieter, and soon she, too, was silent. Having gained his end, Maurice wished to atone for it, and slipping his arm through hers, he took her hand. For a few steps they walked on in this fashion. Then, he received one of those sudden impressions which flash on us from time to time, of having seen or done a certain thing before. For a moment, he could not verify it; then he knew. just in this way, arm in arm, hand in hand, had she come towards him with Schilsky, that very first day. It was no doubt a habit of hers. Like this, too, she would, in all probability, walk with the one who came after. And the picture of Herries, in the place he now occupied, was photographed on his brain.
He withdrew his arm, as if hers had burnt him: his mind was off again on its old round. But she, too, had to suffer for it. As he stood back to let her pass before him, on a dry strip of the path, his eye caught a yellow rose she was wearing at her belt. Till now he had seen it without seeing it.
“Why are you wearing that rose?”
Louise looked down from him to the flower and back again.” Why?–you know I like to wear flowers.”
“Where did you get it?”
She foresaw what he was driving at, and did not reply.
“You were wearing a rose like that the first time I saw you. Do you remember?”
“How should I remember? It’s so long ago.”
“Where had you got that one from, then?”
She repeated the same words. “How should I know now?”
“But I know. It was from him–he had given it to you.”
She raised her shoulders. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps? No. For certain.”
“Well, and if so–was there anything strange in that?”
They walked a few paces without speaking. Then he asked: “Who has given you this one?”
“Maurice!” There was a note of warning in her voice. He heard it in vain. “Give it to me, Louise.”
“No–let it be. It will wither soon enough where it is.”
“Please give it to me,” he urged, rendered the more determined by her refusal.
“I wish to keep it.”
“And I mean to have it.”
To avoid the threatening scene, she took the rose from her belt and gave it to him. He fingered it indecisively for a moment, then threw it over the bridge they were crossing, into the river. It struggled, filled with muddy water, and floated away.
In the next breath, however, he asked himself ruefully what he had gained by his action. She had given him the rose, and he had destroyed it; but he would never know how she had come by it, and what it had been to her.
He was incensed with himself and with her for the whole length of the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then the inevitable regret for his hastiness followed. He took her limply hanging hand and pressed it. But there was no responsive pressure on her part. Louise looked away from him, beyond the woods, as far as she could see, in the vain hope of there discovering some means of escape.
VIII.
In descending one evening the broad stair of the Gewandhaus, and forced, by reason of the crowd, to pause on every step, Madeleine overheard the talk of two men behind her, one of whom, it seemed, had all the gossip of the place at his fingertips. From what she caught up greedily, as soon as Maurice’s name was mentioned, she learnt a surprising piece of news. “A cat and dog life,” was the phrase used by the speaker. As she afterwards picked her way through snow and slush, Madeleine confessed to herself that it was impossible to feel regret at what she had heard. Perhaps, after all, things would come right of themselves. In order to recover from his infatuation, to learn what Louise really was, it had only been necessary for Maurice to be constantly at her side.–Was it not Goethe who said that the way to cure a bad habit was to indulge it?
But a few days afterwards, her satisfaction was damped. Late one afternoon she had entered Seyffert’s Cafe, to drink a cup of chocolate. At a table parallel with the one she chose, two fellow-students were playing draughts. Madeleine had only been there for a few minutes, when their talk, which went on unrestrainedly between the moves of the game, leapt, with a witticism, to the unlucky pair in whom she was interested. To her astonishment, she now heard Louise’s name, coupled with that of another man.
“Well, I never!” said the second of the two behind her. “I say it’s your move.–That’s rough on Guest, isn’t it?”
Madeleine turned in her chair and faced the man who had spoken.
“Excuse me, who is Herries?” she asked without ceremony.
In her own room that evening, she pondered long. It was one thing for the two to drift naturally apart; another for Maurice to see himself superseded. If this were true, jealousy, and nothing else, would be at the root of their disunion. Madeleine felt very unwilling to mix herself up in the affair: it would be like plunging two clean hands into dirty water. But then, you never could tell how a man would act in a case like this: the odds were ten to one he did something foolish.
And so she wrote to Maurice, making her summons imperative. This failing, she tried to waylay him going to or from his classes; but the only satisfaction she gained, was the knowledge of his irregularity: during the week she waited she did not once come face to face with him. Next, she looked round her for some common friend, and found that he had not an intimate left in all Leipzig. She wrote again, still more plainly, and again he ignored her letter.
One Saturday afternoon, she was walking along the crowded streets of the inner town. She had been to the MOTETTE, in the THOMASKIRCHE, and was now on her way home, carrying music from the library. The snow had melted to mud, and sleet was falling. Madeleine had no umbrella; the collar of her cloak was turned up round her ears, and her small felt hat covered her head like an extinguisher.
On entering the PETERSTRASSE, she was jostled together with Dove. It was impossible to beat a retreat.
Dove seldom hurried. On this day, as on any other, he walked with a somewhat pompous emphasis through slush and stinging rain, holding his umbrella straight aloft over him, as he might have carried a banner. He was shocked to find Madeleine without one, at once took her under his, and loaded himself with her music–all with that air of matter-of-course-ness, which invariably made her keen to decline his aid. Dove was radiant; he prospered as do only the happy few; and his satisfaction with himself, and with the world in general, was somehow expressed even through the medium of his long neck and gently sloping shoulders. He greeted Madeleine with an exaggerated pleasure, accompanying his words by the slow smile which sometimes set her wondering if he were not, perhaps, being inwardly satirical at the expense of other people, fooling them by means of his own foolishness. But, however this might be, the cynical feelings that took her in his presence, mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an excess of content was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or wine-bibbing, or any other self-indulgence.
However, she checked the desire to snub him–to snub until she had succeeded in raising that impossible ire, which, she believed, MUST lurk somewhere in Dove–for, as she plodded along at his side, sheltered from the brunt of the weather, it occurred to her that here was some one whom she might tap on the subject of Maurice. She opened fire by congratulating her companion on his recent performance in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG; at the time, even she had been forced to admit it a creditable piece of work. Dove, who privately considered it epochmaking, was outwardly very modest. He could not refrain from letting fall that the old director had afterwards thanked him in person; but, in the next breath, he pointed out a slip he had made in a particular passage of the sonata. It had not, it was true, been observed, he believed, by anyone except Schwarz and himself; still it had caused him considerable annoyance; and he now related how, as far as he could judge, it had come about.
The current inquiries concerning the PRUFUNGEN then passed between them.
“Poor old Schwarz!” said Madeleine. “We shall be few enough, this year. Tell me, what of Heinz? I haven’t seen him for an age.”
“I regret to say that Krafft is making an uncommon donkey of himself,” said Dove. “He had another shocking row with Schwarz last week.”
“Tch, tch, tch!” said Madeleine. “Heinz is a freak.–And Maurice Guest, what about him?”
“I haven’t seen him lately.”
“Indeed? How is that?”
“I’m not in the same class with him now. His hour has been changed.”
“Has it indeed?” said Madeleine thoughtfully. This accounted for her having been unable to meet Maurice. “What’s he playing, do you know?”
“The G major Mendelssohn, I understand;” and Dove looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
“How’s he getting on with it?” she queried afresh, in the same indifferent tone.
“I really couldn’t say. As I mentioned, he’s in another class.”
“Oh, but you must have heard!” said Madeleine. “It’s no use putting me off,” she added, with determination. “I want to find out about Mauzice.”
“And I fear I can’t assist you. All I HAVE chanced to hear–mere rumour, of course–is that . . . well, if Guest doesn’t pull himself together, he won’t play at all.–By the way, what did you think of James the other night, in the LISZTVEREIN?”
“Oh, that his octaves were marvellous, of course!” said Madeleine tartly. “But I warn you,” she continued, “it’s of no use changing the subject, or pretending you don’t know. I intend to speak of Maurice.”
“Then it must be to some one else, Miss Madeleine, not to me.”–Dove could never be induced to call her Madeleine, as her other friends did.
“And why, pray, are you to be the exception?”
“Because, as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t see any more of Guest. He mixes in a different set now.–And as for me, well, my thoughts are occupied with, I trust, more profitable things.”
“What? You have thoughts, too?”
“I hope you don’t claim a monopoly of them?” said Dove, and smiled in his imperturbable way. As, however, Madeleine persisted, he grew grave. “It’s not a pleasant subject. I should really rather not discuss it, Miss Madeleine.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t let us play the prudish or sentimental!” cried Madeleine, in a burst of impatience. “Of course, it isn’t pleasant. Do you think I should “–“bother with you,” was on her tongue. She checked herself, and subtituted–“trouble you about it, if it were? But Maurice was once a friend of ours–you don’t deny it, I hope?” she threw in challengingly; for Dove muttered something to himself. “And I want to get at the truth about him. I’m sorrier than I can say, to hear, on all sides, what a fool he’s making of himself.”
Dove was suavely silent.
“Of course,” continued Madeleine with a sarcastic inflection–“of course, I can’t expect you to see it as I do. Men look at these things differently, I know. Possibly if I were a man, I, too, should stand by, with my hands in my pockets, and watch a friend butt his head against a stone wall–thinking it, indeed, rather good fun.”
She had touched Dove on a tender spot. “I can assure you, Miss Madeleine,” he said impressively, as they picked their steps across a dirty road–“I can assure you, you are mistaken. I think just as strictly in matters of this kind as you yourself.–But as to interfering in Guest’s . . . in his private affairs, well, frankly, I shouldn’t care to try it. He was always a curiously reserved fellow.”
“Reserved–obstinate-pig-headed!–call it what you like,” said Madeleine. “But don’t imagine I’m asking you to interfere. I only want you to tell me, briefly and simply, what you know about him. And to make it easier for you, I’ll begin by telling you what I know.–It’s an old story, isn’t it, that Maurice once supplanted some one else in a certain young woman’s favour? Well, now I hear that he, in turn, is to be laid on the shelf.–Is that true, or isn’t it?”
“Really, Miss Madeleine!–that’s a very blunt way of putting it,” said Dove uncomfortably.
“Oh, when a friend’s at stake, I can’t hum and haw,” said Madeleine, who could never keep her temper with Dove for long.” I call a spade a spade, and rejoice to do it. What I ask you to tell me is, whether I’ve been correctly informed or not. Have you, too, heard Louise Dufrayer’s name coupled with that of a man called Herries?”
But Dove was stubborn. “As far as I’m concerned, Miss Madeleine, the truth is, I’ve hardly exchanged a word with Guest since spring. Into his . . . friendship with Miss Dufrayer, I have never felt it my business to inquire. I believe–from hearsay–that he is much changed. And I feel convinced his PRUFUNG will be poor. Indeed, I’m not sure that he should not be warned off it altogether.”
“Could that not be laid before him?”
“I should not care to undertake it.”
There was nothing to be done with Dove; Madeleine felt that she was wasting her breath; and they walked across the broad centre of the ROSSPLATZ in silence.
“Do you never think,” she said, after a time, “how it would simplify life, if we were able to get above it for a bit, and see things without prejudice?–Here’s a case now, where a little real fellowship and sympathy might work wonders. But no!–no interference!–that’s the chief and only consideration!”
It had stopped raining. Dove let down his umbrella, and carried it stiffly, at some distance from him, by reason of its dampness. “Believe me, Miss Madeleine,” he said, as he emerged from beneath it. “Believe me, I make all allowance for your feelings, which do you credit. A woman’s way of looking at these things is, thank God, humaner than ours. But it’s a man’s duty not to let his feelings run away with him. I agree with you, that it’s a shocking affair. But Guest went into it with his eyes open. And that he could do so–but there was always something a little . . . a little peculiar about Guest.”
“I suppose there was. One can only be thankful, I suppose, that he’s more or less of an exception–among his own countrymen, I mean, of course. Englishmen are not, as a rule, given to that kind of thing.”
“Thank God they’re not!” said Dove with emotion.
“We’ll, our ways part here,” said Madeleine, and halted. As she took her music from him, she asked: “By the way, when shall we be at liberty to congratulate you?”
It was not at all “by the way” to Dove. However, he only smiled; for he had grown wiser, and no longer wore his heart on his coat-sleeve. “You shall be one of the first to hear, Miss Madeleine, when the news is made public.”
“Thanks greatly. Good-bye.–Oh, no, stop a moment!” cried Madeleine. It was more than she could bear to see him turn away thus, beaming with self-content. “Stop a moment. You won’t mind my telling you, I’m sure, that I’ve been disappointed with you this afternoon. For I’ve always thought of you as a saviour in the hour of need, don’t you know? One does indulge in these fancy pictures of one’s friends–a strong man, helping with tact and example. And here you go, toppling my picture over, without the least remorse.–Well, you know your own business best, I suppose, but it’s unkind of you, all the same, to destroy an illusion. One has few enough of them in this world.–Ta-ta!”
She laughed satirically, and turned on her heel, regardless of the effect of her words.
But Dove was not offended; on the contrary, he felt rather flattered. He did not, of course, care in the least about what Madeleine called her illusions; but the mental portrait she had drawn of him corresponded exactly to that attitude in which he was fondest of contemplating himself. For it could honestly be said that, hitherto, no one had ever applied to him for aid in vain: he was always ready, both with his time and with good advice. And the idea that, in the present instance, he was being untrue to himself, in other words, that he was letting an opportunity slip, ended by upsetting him altogether.
Until now, he had not regarded Maurice and Maurice’s doings from this point of view. By nature, Dove was opposed to excess of any kind; his was a clean, strong mind, which caused him instinctively to draw back from everything, in morals as in art, that passed a certain limit. Nothing on earth would have persuaded him to discuss his quondam friend’s backsliding with Madeleine Wade; he was impregnated with the belief that such matters were unfit for virtuous women’s ears, and he applied his conviction indiscriminaetely. Now, however, the notion of Maurice as a Poor erring sheep, waiting, as it were, to be saved–this idea was of undeniable attractiveness to Dove, and the more he revolved it, the more convinced he grew of its truth.
But he had reasons for hesitating. Having valiantly overcome his own disappointments, first in the case of Ephie, then of pretty Susie, he now, in his third suit, was on the brink of success. The object of his present attachment was a Scotch lady, no longer in her first youth, and several years older than himself but of striking appearance, vivacious manners, and, if report spoke true, considerable fortune. Her appearance in Leipzig was due to the sudden burst of energy which often inspires a woman of the Scotch nation when she feels her youth escaping her. Miss MacCallum, who was abroad nominally to acquire the language, was accompanied by her aged father and mother; and it was with these two old people that it be hoved Dove to ingratiate himself; for, according to the patriarchal habits of their race, the former still guided and determined their daughter’s mode of life, as though she were thirteen instead of thirty. Dove was obliged to be of the utmost circumspection in his behaviour; for the old couple, uprooted violently from their native soil, lived in a mild but constant horror at the iniquity of foreign ways. They held the pro fession of music to be an unworthy one, and threw up their hands in dismay at the number of young people here complacently devoting themselves to such a frivolous object. It was necessary for Dove to prove to them that a student of music might yet be a man of untarnished principles and blame less honour. And he did not find the task a hard one; the whole bent of his mind was towards sobriety. He frequented the American church with his new friends on Sunday after noon; gave up skating on that day; went with the old gentleman to Motets and Passions; and eschewed the opera.
But now, his ambition had been insidiously roused, and day by day it grew stronger. If only the affair with Maurice had not been of so unsavoury a nature! Did he, Dove, become seriously involved, it might be difficult to prove to judges so severe as his future parents-in-law, that he had acted out of pure goodness of heart. For, that he would be embroiled, in other words, that he would have success in his mission, there was no manner of doubt in his mind–a conviction he shared with the generality of mankind: that it is only necessary for an offender’s eyes to be opened to the enormity of his wrongdoing, for him to be reasonable and to renounce it.
While Dove hesitated thus, torn between his reputation on the one hand, his missionary zeal on the other; while he hesitated, an incident occurred, which acted as a kind of moral fingerpost. In the piano-class, one day, just as Dove was about to leave the room, Schwarz asked him if he were not a friend of Herr Guest’s. The latter had been absent now from two lessons in succession. Was he ill? Did no one know what had happened to him? Dove made light of the friendship, but volunteered his services, and was bidden to make inquiries.
He went that afternoon.
Frau Krause looked a little gruffer than of old; and left him to find his own way to Maurice’s room. In accordance with the new state of things, Dove knocked ceremoniously at the door. While his knuckles still touched the wood, it was flung open, and he stood face to face with Maurice. For a moment the latter did not seem to recognise his visitor; he had evidently been expecting some one else.
Then he repaired his tardiness, ceased to hold the door, and Dove entered, apologising for his intrusion.
“Just a moment. I won’t detain you. As you were absent from the class all last week, Schwarz asked to-day if you were ill, and I said I would step round and see.”
“Very good of you, I’m sure. Sit down,” said Maurice. His face changed as he spoke; a look of relief and, at the same time, of disappointment flitted across it.
“Thanks. If I am not disturbing you,” answered Dove. As he said these words, he threw a glance, the significance of which might have been grasped by a babe, at the piano. It had plainly not been opened that day.
Maurice understood. “No, I was not practising,” he said. “But I have to go out shortly,” and he looked at his watch.
“Quite so. Very good. I won’t detain you,” repeated Dove, and sat down on the proffered chair. “But not practising? My dear fellow, how is that? Are you so far forward already that it isn’t necessary? Or is it a fact that you are not feeling up to the mark?”
“Oh, I’m all right. I get my work over in the morning.”
Now he, too, sat down, at the opposite side of the table. Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at random, of other things.
Maurice tapped the table. He kept his eyes fixed on Dove’s face, as though he were drinking in his companion’s solemn utterances. In reality, whole minutes passed without his knowing what was said. At Dove’s knock, he had been certain that a message had come from Louise–at last. This was the night of the ball; and still she had given him no promise that she would not go. They had parted, the evening before, after a bitter quarrel; and he had left her, vowing that he would not return till she sent for him. He had waited the whole day, in vain, for a sign. What was Dove with his pompous twaddle to him? Every slight sound on the stairs or in the passage meant more. He was listening, listening, without cessation.
When he came back to himself, he heard Dove droning on, like a machine that has been wound up and cannot stop.
“Now, I hope you won’t mind my saying so,” were the next words that pierced his brain. “You must not be offended at my telling you; but you are hardly fulfilling the expectations we, your friends, you know, had formed of you. My dear fellow, you really must pull yourself together, or February will find you still unprepared.”
Maurice went a shade paler; he was clear, now, as to the object of Dove’s visit. But he answered in an off-hand way. “Oh, there’s time enough yet.”
“No. That’s a mistaken point of view, if I may say so,” replied Dove in his blandest manner. “Time requires to be taken by the forelock, you know.”
“Does it?” Maurice allowed the smile that was expected of him to cross his face.
“Most emphatically–And we fellow-students of yours are not the only people who have noticed a certain–what shall I say?–a certain abatement of energy on your part. Schwarz sees it, too–or I am much mistaken.”
“What?–he, too?” said Maurice, and pretended a mild surprise. For some seconds now he had been mentally debating with himself whether he should not, there and then, show Dove the door. He decided against it. A “Damn your interference!” meant plain-speaking, on both sides; it meant a bandying of words; and more expenditure of strength than he had to spare for Dove. Once more he drew out and consulted his watch.
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Dove, ignoring the hint. “I assume it, from something he let drop this afternoon. Now, you know, your Mendelssohn ought to have been a brilliant piece of work–yes, the expression is not too strong. And it still must be. My dear Guest, what I came to say to you to-day–one, at any rate, of the reasons that brought me–was, that you must not allow your interest in what you are doing to flag at the eleventh hour.”
Maurice laughed. “Oh, certainly not! Most awfully good of you to trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” Dove assured him. He flicked some dust from his trouser-knee before he spoke again. “I . . . er . . . that is, I had some talk the other day with Miss Wade.”
“Indeed!” replied Maurice, and was now able accurately to gauge the motor origin of Dove’s appearance. “How is she? How is Madeleine?”
“She was speaking of you, Guest. She would, I think, like to see you.”
“Yes. I’ve rather neglected her lately, I’m afraid.–But when there’s so much to do, you know . . .”
“It’s a pity,” said Dove, passing over the last words, and nodding his head sagaciously. “She’s a staunch friend of yours, is Miss Madeleine. I think it wouldn’t be too much to say, she was feeling a little hurt at your neglect of her.”
“Really? I had no idea so many people took an interest in me.”
“That is just where you are mistaken,” said Dove warmly. “We all do. And for that very reason, I said to myself, I will be spokesman for the rest: I’ll go to him and tell him he must pull through, and do himself credit–and Schwarz, too. We are so few this year, you know.”
“Yes, poor old man! He has got badly left.”
“Yes. That was one reason. And then . . . but you assure me, don’t you, that you will not take what I am going to say amiss?”
“Not in the least. It’s awfully decent of you. But I’m sorry to say my time’s up. And every minute is precious just now–as you know yourself.”
He rose, and, for the third time, referred to his watch. After an ineffectual attempt to continue, Dove was also forced to rise, with the best part of his message unuttered. And Maurice hurried him, glum and crestfallen, to the door, for fear of the still worse tactlessness of which he might make himself guilty.
They groped in silence along the dark lobby. For the sake of parting with a friendly and neutral word, Maurice said, as he opened the door: “By the way, I hear we shall soon have to offer congratulations and good wishes.”
To his surprise, Dove, who had already crossed the threshold, looked blank, and drew himself up.
“Indeed?” he said, and the tone was, for him, quite short. “I. . the fact is . . . I’ve no idea of what you are referring to.”
On re-entering his room, Maurice went back to the window, and taking up his former attitude, began to beat anew that tattoo on the panes, which had been his chief employment during the day. His eyes were sore with straining at the corner of the street, tired of looking at his watch to see how the time passed. He had steadfastly believed that Louise would yield in this. matter, and, at the last, recall him in a burst of impulsive regret. But, as the day crawled by without a word from her, his confident conviction weakened; and, at the same time, his resolve not to go back till she sent for him, failed. He repeated, in memory, some of the bitter things they had said to each other, to see if he had not left himself a loophole of escape; but only with one half of his brain: the other was persistently occupied with the emptiness of the street below. When a clock struck half-past seven, he could bear the suspense no longer: he put on his hat and coat, and went out. He felt tired and unslept, and dragged along as if his body were a weight to him. A fine snow was falling, which froze into icicles on the beards of the passers-by, and on the glistening pavements. The distance had never seemed so long to him; it had also never seemed so short.
A faint and foolish hope still refused to be extinguished. But it went out directly he had unlocked the door; and he learned what he had come to learn, without the exchange of a word. The truth met him, that he should have been here hours ago, commanding, imploring; instead of which he had sat at home, nursing a futile and paltry pride.
The room was warm, and bright with extra candles. It was also in that state of confusion which accompanied an elaborate toilet on the part of Louise. Fully dressed, she stood before the console-glass, and arranged something in her hair. She did not turn at his entrance, but she raised her eyes and met his in the mirror, without pausing in what she was doing.
He looked over her shoulder at her reflected face. The cold steadiness, the open hostility of her look, took his strength away. He sat down on the foot-end of the bed, and put his head in his hands. Minutes passed, and still he remained in this position. For what was the use of his speaking? Her mind was made up; nothing would move her now.
Then came the noise of wheels in the street below. Uncovering his eyes, Maurice looked at her again; and, as he did so, his feelings which, until now, had had something of the nature of a personal wound, gave place to others with the rush of a storm. She wore the same sparkling, low-cut dress as on the previous occasion; arms and shoulders were as ruthlessly bared to view. He remembered what he had heard said of her that night, and felt that his powers of endurance were at an end. With a stifled exclamation, he got up from the bed, and going past her, into the half of the room beyond the screen, caught up the first object that came to hand, and threw it to the floor. It was a Dresden-china figure, and broke to pieces.
Louise gave a cry, and came running out to see what he had done. “Are you mad? How dare you! . . . break my things.”
She held a candle above her head, and by its light, he saw, in the skin of neck and shoulder, all the lines and folds that were formed by the raising of her arm. He now saw, too, that her hair was dressed in a different way, that her dark eyebrows had been made still darker, and that she was powdered. This discovery had a peculiar effect on him: it rendered it easier for him to say hard things to her; at the same time, it strengthened his determination not to let her go out of the house. Moving aimlessly about the room, he stumbled against a chair, and kicked it from him.
“A month ago, if some one had sworn to me that you would treat me as you are doitng to-night, I should have laughed in his face,” he said at last.
Louise had put the candle down, and was standing with her back to him. Taking up a pair of long, black gloves, she began to draw one over her hand. She did not look up at his words, but went on stroking the kid of the glove.
“You’re only doing it to revenge yourself–I know that! But what have I done, that you should take less thought for my feelings than if I were a dog?”
Still she did not speak.
“You won’t really go, Louise?–you won’t have the heart to.–I say you shall not go! It will be the end–the end of everything!–if you leave the house to-night.”
She pulled her dress from his hand. “You’re out of your senses, I think. The end of everything! Because, for once, I choose to have some pleasure on my own account! Any other man would be glad to see the woman he professes to care for, enjoy herself. But you begrudge it to me. You say my pleasures shall only come through you–who have taken to making life a burden to me! Can’t you understand that I’m glad to get away from you, and your ill-humours and mean, abominable jealousy. You’re not my master. I’m not your slave.” She tugged at a recalcitrant glove. “It is absurd,” she went on a moment later. “All because I wish to go out alone for once.–But did I even want to? Why, if it means so much to you, couldn’t you have bought a ticket and come too? But no! you wouldn’t go yourself, and so I was not to go either. It’s on a level with all your other behaviour.”
“I go!” he cried. “To watch you the whole evening in that man’s arms!–No, thank you! It’s not good enough.–You, with your indecent style of dancing!”
She wheeled round, as if the insult had struck her; and for a moment faced him, with open lips. Then she thought better of it: she laughed derisively, with a wanton undertone, in order to hurt him.
“You would at least have had me under your own eyes.”
As she spoke, she nodded to the old woman who opened the door to say that the droschke waited below. A lace scarf was lying on the table; Louise twisted it mechanically round her head, and began to struggle with an evening cloak. Just as she had succeeded in getting it over her shoulders, Maurice took her by the arms and bent her backwards, so that the cloak fell to the floor.
“You shall not go!”
She stemmed her hands against him, and determinedly, yet. with caution, pushed herself free.
“My dress–my hair! How dare you!”
“What do I care for your dress or your hair? You make me mad!”
“And what do I care whether you’re mad or not? Take your hands away!”
“Louise! . . . for God’s sake! . . . not with that man. At least, not with him. He has said infamous things of you. I never told you–yes, I heard him say–heard him compare you with . . . soiled goods he called you.–Louise! Louise!”
“Have you any more insults for me?”
“No, no more!” He leaned his back against the door. “Only this: if you leave this room to-night, it’s the end.”
She had picked up her cloak again. “The end!” she repeated, and looked contemptuously at him. “I should welcome it, if it were.–But you’re wrong. The end, the real end, came long ago. The beginning was the end!–Open that door, and let me out!”
He heard her go along the hall, heard the front door shut behind her, and, after a pause, heard the deeper tone of the house door. The droschke drove away. After that, he stood at the window, looking out into the pitch-dark night. Behind him, the landlady set the room in order, and extinguished the additional candles.
When she had finished, and shut the door, Maurice faced the empty room. His eyes ranged slowly over it; and he made a vague gesture that signified nothing. A few steps took him to the writing-table, on which her muff was lying. He lifted it up, and a bunch of violets fell into his hand. They brought her before him as nothing else could have done. Beside the bed, he went down on his knees, and drawing her pillow to him, pressed it round his head.
The end, the end!–the beginning the end: there was truth in what she had said. Their love had had no stamina in it, no vital power. He was losing her, steadily and surely losing her, powerless to help it–rather it seemed as if some malignant spirit urged him to hasten on the crisis. Their thoughts seemed hopelessly at war.–And yet, how he loved her! He made himself no illusions about her now; he understood just what she was, and what she would always be; the many conflicting impulses of her nature lay bare to him. But he loved her, loved her: all the dead weight of his physical craving for her was on him again, confounding, overmastering. None the less, she had left him; she had no need for him; and the hours would come, oftener and oftener, when she could do without him, when, as now, she voluntarily sought the company of other men. The thought suffocated him; he rose to his feet, and hastened out of the house.
A little before one o’clock, he was stationed opposite the sideentrance to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE. He had a long time to wait. As two o’clock approached, small batches of people emerged, at first at intervals, then more and more frequently. Among the last were Herries and Louise. Maurice remained standing in the shadow of some houses, until they had parted from their companions. He heard her voice above all the rest; it rang out clear and resonant, just as on that former occasion when she had drunk freely of champagne.
With many final words and false partings, she and Herries separated from the group, and turned to walk down the street. As they did so, Maurice sprang out from his hiding-place, and was suddenly in front of them, blocking their progress.
At his unexpected apparition, both started; and when he roughly took hold of her arm, Louise gave a short cry. Herries put out his hand, and smacked Maurice’s down.
“What are you doing there? Take your hands off this lady, damn you!” he cried in broken German, not recognising Maurice, and believing that he had to deal with an ordinary NACHTSCHWARMER.
The savageness with which he was turned on, enlightened him. “Damn you!” retorted Maurice in English. “Take your hands off her yourself I She belongs to me–to me, do you hear?–and I intend to keep her.”
“You drunken cur!” said Herries. He had instinctively allowed Louise to withdraw her arm; now he stood irresolute, uncertain how she would wish him to act. She had gone very pale; he believed she was afraid. “Isn’t there a droschke anywhere?” he said, and looked angrily round. “I really can’t see you exposed to this . . . this sort of thing, you know.”
Louise answered hurriedly. “No, no. And please go! I shall be all right. I’m sorry.–I had enjoyed it so much. I will tell you another time, how much. Good night, and thank you. No . . . PLEASE!> . . . yes, a delightful evening.” Her words were almost inaudible.
“Delightful indeed!” said Herries with warmth. Then he stood aside, raised his hat, and let them pass.
Maurice had his hand on her wrist, and he dragged her after him, over the frozen pavements, far more quickly than she could in comfort go, hampered as she was by snow-boots and by her heavy cloak. But she fqllowed him, allowed herself to be drawn, without protest. She felt strangely will-less. Only sometimes, when the thought of the indignity he had laid upon her came over her anew. did she whisper: “How dare you! … oh, how dare you!”
He did not look at her, or answer her, and all might have gone well, so oddly did this treatment affect her, had he only persisted in it. But the mere contact of her hand softened him towards her; her nearness worked on him as it never failed to do. He was exhausted, too, mentally and physically, and at the thought that, for this night at least, his sufferings were over, he could have shed tears of relief. Slackening his pace, he began to speak, began to excuse and exculpate himself before ever she had blamed him, endeavouring to make her understand something of what he had gone through. In advance, and before she had expressed it, he sought to break down her spirit of animosity.
The longer he spoke, the harder she felt herself grow. He was at it again, back at his eternal self-justification. Oh, why, for this one evening at least, could he not have enforced his will, and have made her do what he wished, without explanation! But the one plain, simple way was the only way he never thought of taking. “I hate you and despise you! I shall never forgive you for your behaviour to-night!–never!” And now it was she who pressed forward, to get away from him.
He turned the key in the house-door. But before he could open the door, Louise, pushing in front of him, threw it back, entered the house, and, the next moment, the door banged in his face. He had just time to withdraw his hand. He heard her steps on the stair, mounting, growing fainter; he heard the door above open and shut.
For a second or two, he stood listening to these sounds. But when it dawned on him that she had shut him out, he pressed both hands against the wood of the heavy door, and tr to shake it open. He even beat his fist against it, and only desisted from this when his knuckles began to smart.
Then, on looking down, he saw that the key was still in the lock. He stared at it, stupidly, without understanding. But, yes–it was his own key; he himself had put it in. He took it out again, and holding it in his hand, looked at it, after the fashion of a drunken man, who does not recognise the object he holds. And even while he did this, he burst into a peal of laughter, which made him lean for support against the wall of the house. The noise he made sounded idiotic, sounded mad, in the quiet street; but he was unable to contain himself. She had left him the key–had left the key! Oh, what a fool he was!
His laughter died away. He opened the door, noiselessly, as he had learned by practice to do, and as noiselessly entered the vestibule and went up the stairs.
IX.
Several versions of the contretemps with Herries were afloat immediately. All agreed in one point: Maurice Guest had been in an advanced stage of intoxication. A scuffle was said to have taken place in the deserted street; there had been tears, and prayers, and shrill accusing voices. In the version that reached Madeleine’s cars, blows were mentioned. She stood aghast at the disclosures the story made, and at all these implied. Until now, Maurice had at least striven to preserve appearances. If once you became callous enough not to care what people said of you, you wilfully made of yourself a social outcast.
That same afternoon, as she was mounting the steps of the Conservatorium, she came face to face with Krafft. They had not met for weeks; and Madeleine remarked this, as they stood together. But she was not thinking very deeply of him or his affairs; and when she asked him if he would go across to her room, and wait for her there, she was following an impulse that had no connection with him. As usual, Krafft had nothing particular to do; and when she returned, half an hour later, she found him lying on her sofa, with his arms under his head, his knees crossed above him. The air of the room was grey with smoke; but, for once, Madeleine set no limit to his cigarettes. Sitting down at the table, she looked meditatively at him. For some moments neither spoke.
But as Krafft drew out his case to take another cigarette, a tattered volume of Reclam’s UNIVERSAL LIBRARY fell from his pocket, and spread itself on the floor. Madeleine stooped and pieced it together.
“What have we here ?–ah, your Bible!” she said sarcastically: it was a novel by a modern Danish poet, who died young. “You carry it about with you, I see.”
“To-day I needed STIMMUNG. But don’t say Bible; that’s an error of taste. Say ‘ death-book.’ One can study death in it, in all its forms.”
“To give you STIMMUNG! I can’t understand your love for the book, Heinz. It’s morbid.”
“Everything’s morbid that the ordinary mortal doesn’t wish to be reminded of. Some day–if I don’t turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions–some day I shall write music to it. That would be a melodrama worth making.”
“Morbid, Heirtz, morbid!”
“All women are not of your opinion. I remember once hearing a woman say, had the author still lived, she would have pilgrimaged barefoot to see him.”
“Oh, I dare say. There are women enough of that kind.”
“Fools, of course?”
“Extravagant; unbalanced. The class of person that suffers from a diseased temperament.–But men can make fools of themselves, too. There are specimens enough here to start a museum with.”
“Of which you, as NORMALMENSCH, could be showman.”
Madeleine pushed her chair back towards the head of the, sofa, so that she came to sit out of the range of Krafft’s eyes.
“Talking of fools,” she said slowly, “have you seen anything of Maurice Guest lately?”
Krafft lowered a spike of ash into the tray. “I have not.”
“Yes; I heard he had got into a different hour,” she said disconnectedly. As, however, Krafft remained impassive, she took the leap. “Is there–can nothing be done for him, Heinz?”
Here Krafft did just what she had expected him to do: rose on his elbow, and turned to look at her. But her face was inscrutable.
“Explain,” he said, dropping back into his former position.
“Oh, explain!” she echoed, firing up at once. “I suppose if a fellow-mortal were on his way to the scaffold, you men would still ask for explanations. Listen to me. You’re the only man here Maurice was at all friendly with–I shouldn’t turn to you, you scoffer, you may be sure of it, if I knew of anyone else. He liked you; and at one time, what you said had a good deal of influence with him. It might still have. Go to him, Heinz, and talk straight to him. Make him think of his future, and of all the other things he has apparently forgotten.–You needn’t laugh! You could do it well enough if you chose–if you weren’t so hideously cynical.–Oh, don’t laugh like that! You’re loathsome when you do. And there’s nothing natural about it.”
But Krafft enjoyed himself undisturbed. “Not natural? It ought to be,” he said when he could speak again. “Oh, you English, you English!–was there ever a people like you? Don’t talk to me of men and women, Mada. Only an Englishwoman would look at the thing as you do. How you would love to reform and straitlace all us unregenerate youths! You’ve done your best for me–in vain!–and now it’s Guest. Mada, you have the Puritan’s watery fluid in your veins, and Cain’s mark on your brow: the mark of the raceace that carries its Sundays, its–language, its drinks, its dress, and its conventions with it, whereever it goes, and is surprised, and mildly shocked, if these things are not instantly adopted by the poor, purblind foreigner.–You are the missionaries of the world!”
“Oh, I’ve heard all that before. Some day, Heinz, you really must come to England and revise your impressions of us. However, I’m not going to let you shirk the subject. I will tell you this. I know the MILIEU Maurice Guest has sprung from, and I can judge, as you never can, how totally he is unfitting himself to return. The way he’s going on–I hear on all sides that he’ll never ‘make his PRUFUNG,’ now, and you yourself know his certificate won’t be worth a straw.”
“There’s something fascinating, I admit,” Krafft went on, “about a people of such a purely practical genius. And it follows, as a matter of course, that, being the extreme individualists you are, you should question the right of others to their particular mode of existence. For individualism of this type implies a training, a culture, a grand style, which it has taken centuries to attain–WE have still centuries to go, before we get there. If we ever do! For we are the artists among nations–waxen temperaments, formed to take on impressions, to be moulded this way and that, by our age, our epoch. You are the moralists, we are the . . .”
“The immoralists.”
“If you like. In your vocabulary, that’s a synonym for KUNSTLER.”
“You make me ill, Heinz!”
“KUSS’ DIE HAND!” He was silent, following a smoke-ring with his eyes. “Seriously, Mada,” he said after a moment–but there was no answering seriousness in his face, which mocked as usual. “Seriously, now, I suppose you wouldn’t admit what this DRESSUR, this HOHE SCHULE Guest is going through, might be of service to him in the end?”
“No, indeed, I wouldn’t,” she answered hotly. “You talk as if he were a circus-horse. Think of him now, and think of him as he was when he first came here. A good fellow–wasn’t he? And full to the brim of plans and projects–ridiculous enough, some of them–but the great thing is to be able to make plans. As long as a man can do that, he’s on the upward grade.–And he had talent, you said so yourself, and unlimited perseverance.”
“Good God, Madeleine” burst out Krafft. “That you should have been in this place as long as you have, and still remain so immaculate!–Surely you realise that something more than talent and perseverance is necessary? One can have talent as one has a hat . . . use it or not as one likes.–I tell you, the mill Guest is going through may be his salvation–artistically.”
“And morally?” asked Madeleine, not without bitterness. “Must one give thanks then, if one’s friend doesn’t turn out a genius?”
Krafft shrugged his shoulders. “As you take it. The artist has as much to do with morality, as, let us say, your musical festivals have to do with art.–And if his genius isn’t strong enough to float him, he goes under, UND DAMIT BASTA! The better for art. There are bunglers enough.–But I’ll tell you this,” he rose on his elbow again, and spoke more warmly. “Since I’ve seen what our friend is capable of; how he has allowed himself to be absorbed; since, in short, he has behaved In such a highly un-British way–well, since then, I have some hope of him. He seems open to impression.–And impressions are the only things that matter to the artist.”
“Oh, don’t go on, please! I’m sick to death of the very words art and artist.”
“Cheer up, Mada! You’ve nothing of the kind in your blood.” He stretched himself and yawned. “Nor has he, either, I believe. A face may deceive. And a clear head, and unlimited perseverance, and intelligence, and ambition–none of these things is enough. The Lord asks more of his chosen.”
Madeleine clasped her hands behind her head, and tilted back her chair.
“So you couldn’t interfere, I see? Your artistic conscience would forbid it.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?” He scrutinised her face, with a sarcastic smile.
“Oh, say it out! I know what you think.”
“And am I not right?”
“No, you’re not. How I hate the construction you put on things! In your eyes, nothing is pure or disinterested. You can’t even imagine to yourself a friendship between a man and a woman. Such a thing isn’t known here–in your nation of artists. Your men are too inflammatory, and too self-sufficient, to want their calves fatted for any but the one sacrifice. Girls have their very kitchen-aprons tied on them with an undermeaning. And poor souls, who can blame them for submitting! What a fate is theirs, if they don’t manage to catch a man! Gossip and needlework are only slow poison.”
“Now you’re spiteful. But I’ll tell YOU something. Such friendships as you speak of are only possible where the woman is old–or ugly–or abnormal, in some way: a man-woman, or a clever woman, or some other freak of nature. Now, our women are, as a rule, sexually healthy. They know what they’re here for, too, and are not ashamed of it. Also, they still have their share of physical attraction. While yours–good God! I wonder you manage to keep the breed going!”
“Stop, Heinz!” said Madeleine sternly. “You are illogical, and indecent; and you know there’s a limit I don’t choose to let you pass.–You’re wrong, too. You’ve only to look about you, here, with unbiassed eyes, to see which race the prettiest girls belong to.–But never mind! You only launch out in this way that you may not be obliged to discuss Maurice Guest. I know you. I can read you like a book.”
“You are not very old . . . or ugly . . . or abnormal, Mada.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “And are we not friends, pray?”
“Something that way.–But in all you say about Guest, the impersonal note is wanting. You’re jealous.”
“I’m nothing of the sort!–But you’ll at least allow me to resent seeing a friend of mine in the claws of this . . . this vampire?”
Krafft laughed. “Vampire is good!–A poor, distraught–“
“Spare your phrases, Heinz. She’s bad through and through, and stupid into the bargain.”
“Lulu stupid? EI, EI, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. She has a touch of the other extreme–of genius.”
“NA!–Well, if this is another of your manifestations of genius, then permit me to hate–no, to loathe it, in all its forms.”
“GANZ NACH BELIEBEN! It’s a privilege of your sex, you know. There never was a woman yet who didn’t prefer a good, square talent.”
“A crack this way, and it’s madness; that, and the world says genius. And some people have a peculiar gift for discovering it. Those who set themselves to it can find genius in a flea’s jump.”
“But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving–that some women have a genius for loving?–No, why do I ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster–a placard.”
“What a people you are for words! You make phrases about everything. That’s a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle woman–“
“Fickle woman! fickle fiddle-sticks!” he interrupted. “That’s only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things–DIE HERREN DICHTER–are not agreed to this day whet it’s man who’s fickle or woman. In this mood it’s one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, like sheep.”
“Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly: if what you say were true, vice would be condoned.”
“Vice!!” he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. “Vice!–my dear Mada!–sweet, innocent child! . . . No, no. A special talent is needed for that kind of thing; an unlimited capacity for suffering; an entire renunciation of what is commonly called happiness! You hold the good old Philistine opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers living together in delirious pleasure, in SAUS UND BRAUS.–Nothing could be falser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her nature, and the suffering is there, too. She’s born gifted with the faculty. And a woman of the type we’re speaking of, is as often as not the flower of her kind.–Or becomes it.–For see all she gains on her way: the mere passing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded–why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience–a turn of thought–it may be only an intuition–which she has not had before.”
“And the contamination? The soul?” cried Madeleine; two red spots had come out on her cheeks.
“As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn’t need one. All she needs is tact and taste.”
“You are the eternal scoffer.”
“I never was more serious in my life.–But let us put it another way. What does a–what does any beautiful woman want with a soul, or brains, or morals, or whatever you choose to call it? Let her give thanks, night and day, that she is what she is: one of the few perfect things on this imperfect earth. Let her care for her beauty, and treasure it, and serve it. Time ,enough when it is gone, to cultivate the soul–if, indeed, she doesn’t bury herself alive, as it’s her duty to do, instead of decaying publicly. Mada! do you know a more disgusting, more humiliating sight than the sagging of the skin on a neck that was once like marble?– than a mouth visibly losing its form?–the slender shoulders we have adored, broadening into massivity?–all the fine spiritual delicacy of youth being touched to heaviness?–all the barbarous cruelty, in short, with which, before our eyes, time treats the woman who is no longer young.–No, no! As long as she has her beauty, a woman is under no necessity to bolster up her conscience, or to be reasonable, or to think. –Think? God forbid! There are plain women enough for that. We don’t ask our Lady of Milo to be witty for us, or to solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, more eloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth–the upward look of two dark eyes–than in all women have said or done from Sappho down. Springy colour, light, music, perfume: they are all to be found in the curves of a perfect throat or arm.”
Madeleine’s silence bristled with irony.
“And that,” he went on, “was where the girl you are blaspheming had such exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct taught her what was required of her. She would fall into an attitude, and remain motionless in it, as if she knew the eye must feast its full. Or if she did move, and speak–for she, too, had hours of a desperate garrulity–then one was content, as well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole body spoke when her lips did; she would pass so rapidly from one position to another that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of all this multitude, you would not be able to carry one away with you.–If some of her ways of expressing herself in motion could be caught and fixed, a sculptor’s fame would be made.–A painter’s, if he could reproduce the trick she has of smiling entirely with her eyes and eyebrows.–And then her hands! Mada, I wonder you other women don’t weep for envy of them. She has only to raise them, to pass them over her forehead, or to finger at her hair, and the world is hers.–Do you really think a man asks soul of a woman with such eyes and hand as those?–Good God, no! He worships her and adores her. Were is only one place for him, and that’s on his knees before her.”
“Well, really, Heinz!” said Madeleine, and the spots on her cheeks burnt a dull red. “In imagination, do you know, I’m carried just three years backwards? Do you remember that spring evening, when you came rushing in here to me? ‘I’ve seen the most beautiful woman in the world, and I’m drunk with her.’ And how I couldn’t understand? For I thought her plain, just as I still do.–But then, if I remember aright, your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it . . . hm! . . . is now.”
“It was not.–But now, you understand, Mada, that I think a man makes a good exchange of career, and success, and other such accidents of his material existence, for the right to touch these hands at will. The one thing necessary is, that he be fit for the post. I demand of him that he be a gourmand, a connoisseur in beauty. And it’s here, mind you, that I have doubts of our friend.–Is it clear to you?”
“As clear as day, thanks. And you may be QUITE sure: of me never applying to you for help again. I shall respect your principles.”
“And mind you, I don’t say Guest may not come out of the affair all right–enriched for the rest of his life.”
“Very good. And now you may go. I regret that I ever bothered with you.”
Krafft went across to where Madeleine was standing, put his hands on her two shoulders, and laid his head on his right arm, so that she, who was taller than he was, looked down on the roundnesses of his curly hair. “You’re a good fellow, Mada–a good fellow! JA, JA–who knows! If you had had just a little more of the EWIGWEIBLICHE about you!”
“Too much honour . . . But you don’t expect Englishwomen to join your harem, do, you?”
“There would have been a certain repose in belonging to a woman of your type. But it’s the charm–physical charm–we poor wretches can’t do without.”
“Upon my word, it’s almost a declaration!” cried Madeleine, not unnettled. “Take my advice, Heinz. Hie you home, and marry the person you ought to. Take pity on the poor thing’s constancy. Unless,” she added, a moment later, with a sarcastic laugh, “since you’re still so infatuated with Louise, you persuade her to transfer her favours to you. That would solve all difficulties in the most satisfactory way. She would have the variety that seems necessary to her existence; you could lie on your knees before her all day long; and our friend would be restored to sanity. Think it over, Heinz. It’s a good idea.”
“Do you think she’d have me?” he asked, as he shook himself into his coat.
“Heaven knows and Heaven only! Where Louise is concerned, nothing’s impossible–I’ve always maintained it.”
“Well, ta-ta!–You shall have early news, I promise you.”
Madeleine heard him go down the stair, whistling the ROSE OF SHARON. But he could not have been half-way to the bottom, when he turned and came back. Holding her door ajar, he stuck a laughing face into the room.
“Upon my word, Mada, I congratulate you! It’s a colossal idea.”
But Madeleine had had enough of him. “I’m glad it pleases you. Now go, go! You’ve played the fool here long enough.”
When he emerged from the house, Krafft had stopped whistling. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his felt hat pulled down over his eyes. At the corner, he was so lost in thought as to be unable to guide his feet: he stood and gazed at the pavement. Still on the same spot, he pushed his hat to the back of his head, and burst into such an eerie peal of laughter that some ladies, who were coming towards him, started back, and, picking up their skirts, went off the pavernent, in order to avoid passing him too nearly.
The following afternoon, at an hour when Maurice was safely out of the way, Krafft climbed the stair to the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE.
The landlady did not know him. Yes, Fraulein was at home, she said; but– Krafft promptly entered, and himself closed the door.
Outside Louise’s room, he listened, with bent head. Having satisfied himself, he turned the handle of the door and went in.
Louise stood at the window, watching the snow fall. It had snowed uninterruptedly since early morning; out of the leaden sky, flake after flake fluttered down, whirled, spun, and became part of the fallen mass. At the opening of the door, she did not stir; for it would only be Maurice coming back to ask forgiveness; and she was too unspeakably tired to begin all over again.
Krafft stood and eyed her, from the crown of her rough head, to the bedraggled tail of the dressing-gown.
“GRUSS’ GOTT, LULU!”
At the sound of his voice, she jumped round with a scream.
“You, Heinz! YOU!”
The blood suffused her face a purplish red; her voice was shrill with dismay; her eyes hung on the young man as though he were a returning spirit.
With an effort, she got the better of her first fright, and took a step towards him. “How DARE you come into this room!”
Krafft hung his wet coat over the back of a chair, and wiped his face dry of the melted snow.
“No heroics, Lulu!”
But she could not contain herself. “Oh, how dare you, It’s a mean, dishonourable trick–only you would do it!”
“Sit down and listen to what I have to say. It won’t take long. And it’s to your own advantage, I think, not to make a noise.–May I smoke?”
She obeyed, taking the nearest chair; for she had begun to tremble; her legs shook under her. But when he held out the case of cigarettes to her, she struck it, and the contents were spilled on the floor.
“Look here, Lulu,” he said, and crossing his legs, put one hand in his pocket, while with the other he made gestures suitable to his words. “I’ve not come here to-day to rake up old sores. Time has gone over them and healed them, and it’s only your–NEBENBEI GESAGT, extremely bad-conscience that makes you afraid of me. I’m not here for myself, but–“
“Heinz!” The cry escaped her against her will. “For him? You’ve come from him!”
He removed his cigarette and smiled. “Him? Which? Which of them do you mean?”
“Which?” It was another uncontrollable exclamation. Then the expression of almost savage joy that had lighted up her face, died out. “Oh, I know you! . . . know you and hate you, Heinz! I’ve never hated anyone as much as you.”
“And a woman of your temperament hates uncommonly well.–No, all jokes aside,”–the word cut her; he saw this, and repeated it. “Joking apart, I’ve come to you to-day, merely to ask if you don’t think your present little affair has gone far enough?”
She was as composed as he was. “What business is it of yours?”
“Oh, none. Except that the poor fool was once my friend.”
She gave a daring laugh, full of suggestion.
But Krafft was not put out by it. “Don’t do that again,” he said. “It sounds ugly; and you have nothing to do with ugliness, you know. No, I repeat once more: this is not a personal matter.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
It was now she who smiled derisively. “Have you forgotten a certain evening in this room, three years ago?”
But he did not flinch. “Upon my word, if you are bold enough to recall that!–However, the reminder was unnecessary. Tell me now: aren’t you about done with Guest?”
For still a moment, she fought to keep up her show of dignity. Then she broke down. “Heinz!–oh, I don’t know! Oh, yes, yes, yes–a thousand times, yes! Oh, I’m so tired–I can’t tell you how tired I am–of the very sight of him! I never wanted him, believe me, I didn’t! He thrust himself on me. It was not my doing.”
“Oh, come now! Tell that to some one else.”
“Yes, I know: you only think the worst of me. But though I was weak, and yielded, anyone would have done the same. He gave me no peace.–But I’ve been punished out of all proportion to the little bit of happiness it brought me. There’s no more miserable creature alive than I am.”
“What interests me,” continued Krafft, in a matter-of-fact tone, “is, how you came to choose so far afield from your particular type. It’s well enough represented here.”
She saw the folly of wasting herself upon him, and gave a deep sigh. Then, however, the same wild change as before came over her face. Stooping, she took his hand and fondled it.
“Heinz! Now that you’re here, do one thing–only one–for me! Have pity on me! I’ve gone through so much–been so unhappy. Tell me–there’s only one thing I want to know. Where is he? Will he NEVER come back? For you know. You must know. You have seen him.”
She had sunk to her knees; her head was bent over his hand; she laid her cheek against it. Krafft considered her thoughtfully; his eye dwelt with approval on the broad, slender shoulders, the lithe neck–all the sure grace of the crouching body.
“Will you do something for me, Lulu?”
“Anything!”
“Then let your hair down.”
He himself drew out the pins and combs that held it, and the black mass fell, and lay in wide, generous waves round face and neck.
“That’s the idea! Now go on.”
Louise kissed his hand. “Tell me; you must know.”
“But is it possible that still interests you?”
“Oh, no! My life depends on it, that’s all. You are cruel and bad; but still I can speak to you–for months now, I haven’t had a soul to speak to. Be kind to me this once, Heinz. I CAN’T go on living without him. I haven’t lived since he left me–not an hour!–Oh, you’re my last hope!”
“You’ll have plenty of hopes in your life yet.”
“In those old days, you hated me, too. But don’t bear malice now. There’s nothing I won’t do for you, if you tell me. I’ll never speak to–never even think of you again.”
“I’m not so long-suffering.”
“Then you won’t tell me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She crushed his hand between hers. “Here’s the chance you asked for–to save your friend! Oh, won’t you understand?”
An inward satisfaction, of which only he himself knew the cause, warmed Krafft through at seeing her prostrate before him. But as he continued to look at her, a thought crossed his mind, and quickly resolved, he laid his cigarette on the table, and put his hands, first on her head, amid the tempting confusion of her hair, which met them like a thick stuff pleasant to the touch, and from there to her shoulders, inclining her towards him. She looked up, and though her eyes were full of tears, her white face was alight in an instant with hope again, as he said: “Would you do something else for me if I told you?”
She strained back, so that she might see his face. “Heinz!–what is it?” And then, with a sudden gasp of comprehension:
“Oh, if that’s all!–I will never see Maurice Guest again.”
“That’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
“Will you listen quietly?”
“Yes, yes.” She ceased to draw back, let herself be held. But he felt her trembling.
He whispered a few words in her ear. Almost simultaneously she jerked her head away, and, turning a dark red, stared incredulously at him. Then she sprang to her feet.
“Oh, what a fool I am! To believe, for one instant, there was a human spot in you I could get at!–Take your hands away–take them off me! Because I’ve had no one to speak to for so long: because I know YOU could understand if you would–Oh, when a woman is down, anyone may hit her.”
“Gently, gently!–You’re too good for such phrases.”
“I’m no different from other women. It’s only you–with your horrible thoughts of me. YOU! Why, you’re no more to me than the floor I stand on.”
“And matters are simplified by that very fact.–I can give you his address, Lulu.”
“Go away! I may hurt you. I could kill you.–Go away!”
“And this,” said Krafft, as he put on his coat again, “is how a woman listens quietly. Well, Lulu, think it over. A word at any time will bring me, if you change your mind.”
One evening, about a week later, Maurice entered Seyffert’s Cafe. The heavy snowfall had been succeeded by a period of thaw–of slush and gloom; and, on this particular night, a keen wind had risen, making the streets seem doubly cheerless. It was close on nine o’clock, and Seyffert’s was crowded with its usual guests–young people, who had escaped from more or less dingy rooms to the warmth and light of the cafe, where the yellow blinds were drawn against the inclement night. The billiard table in the centre was never free; those players whose turn had not yet come, or was over, stood round it, cigarette or large black cigar in hand, and watched the game.
Maurice had difficulty in finding a seat. When he did, it was at a table for two, in a corner. A youth who had already eaten his supper, sat alone there, picking his teeth. Maurice took the opposite chair, and made his evening meal with a languid appetite. At the other side of the room was a large and boisterous party, whose leader was Krafft–Krafit in his most outrageous mood. Every other minute, his sallies evoked roars of laughter. Maurice refrained from glancing in that direction. When, however, his VIS-A-VIS got up and went away, he was startled from his conning of the afternoon paper by seeing Krafft before him. The latter, who carried his beer-mug in his hand, took the vacated scat, nodded and smiled.
Maurice was on his guard at once; for it seemed to him that they were being watched by the party Krafft had left. Putting down the newspaper, he wished his friend good-evening.
“I’ve something to say to you,” said Krafft without responding, and, having drained his glass, he clapped the lid to attract the waiter’s attention.
With the over-anxious readiness to oblige, which was becoming one of his most marked traits, and, in reality, cloaked a deathly indifference, Maurice hung up his paper, and sat forward to listen. Crossing his arms on the table, Krafft began to speak, meanwhile fixing his companion with his eye. Maurice was at first too bewildered by what he heard to know to whom the words referred. Then, the colour mounted to his face; the nerves in his temples began to throb; and his hand moved along the edge of the table, in search of something to which it could hold fast.–It was the first time the name of Louise had been mentioned between them–and in what a tone!
“Heinz!” he said at last; his voice seemed not to be his own. “How dare you speak of Miss Dufrayer like that!”
“PARDON!” said Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were aglow, his limpid eyes shone like stars. “Do you mean Lulu?”
Maurice grew pale. “Mind what you’re saying!”
Krafft took a gulp of beer. “Are you afraid of the truth?–But just one word, and I’m done. You no doubt knew, as every one else did, that Lulu was Schilsky’s mistress. What you didn’t know, was this;” and now, without the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuating word, there fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of a woman’s unsatisfied fancy.
Before the pitiless details, not one of which was spared him, were checked off, Maurice understood; half rising from his chair, he struck Krafft a resounding blow in the face. He had intended to hit the mouth, but, his hand remaining fully open, caught on the cheek, and with such force that the delicate skin instantly bore a white imprint of all five fingers.
Only the people in their immediate neighbourhood saw what had happened; but these sprang up; a girl gave a nervous cry; and in a minute, the further occupants of the room had gathered round them, the billiard-players with their cues in their hands. Two waiters, napkin on arm, hastened up, and the proprietor came out from an inner room, and rubbed his hands.
“MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!”
Krafft had jumped to his feet; he was also unable to refrain from putting his hand to his tingling face. Maurice, who was very pale, stood staring, like a person in a trance, at the mark, now deep red, which his hand had left on his friend’s cheek. There was a solemn pause; all eyes were fixed on Krafft; and the stillness was only broken by the proprietor’s persuasive: “MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!”
In half a minute Krafft had collected himself. Turning, he jauntily waved his hand to those pressing up behind; though one side of his face still blazed and burned.
“Don’t allow yourselves to be disturbed, gentlemen. The incident is closed–for the present, at least. My friend here was carried away by a momentary excitement. Kindly resume your seats, and act as if nothing had happened. I shall call him to account at my own convenience.–But just one moment, please!”
The last words were addressed to Maurice. Opening a notebook, Krafft tore out one of the little pages, and, with his customary indolence of movement, wrote something on it. Then he folded it through the middle, and across again, and gave it to Maurice.
Maurice took it, because there seemed nothing else for him to do; he also, for the same reason, took his coat and hat, which some one handed to him. He saw nothing of what went on–nothing but the five outspread marks, which had run together so slowly. He had, however, enough presence of mind to do what was evidently expected of him; and, in the hush that still prevailed, he left the cafe.
The wind sent a blast in his face. Round the corners of the streets, which it was briskly scavenging, it swept in boisterous gusts, which beat the gas-flames flat as soon as they reared themselves, and made them give a wavering, uncertain light. Not a soul was visible. But in the moment that he stood hesitating outside the brilliancy of the yellow blinds, the hubbub of voices burst forth again. He moved hastily away, and began to walk, to put distance between himself and the place. He did not shrink before the wind-scourged meadows, but fought his way forward, till he reached the woods. There he threw himself face downwards on the first bench he came to.
A smell of rotting and decay met his nostrils: as if, from the thousands of leaves, mouldering under the trees on which they had once hung, some invisible hand had set free thousands of odours, there mounted to him, as he lay, all that rich and humid earthiness that belongs to sunless places. And for a time, he was conscious of little else but this morbid fragrance.
An open brawl! He had struck a man in the face before a crowd of onlookers, and had as good as been ejected from their midst. From now on, he was an outcast from orderly society, was branded as one who was not wholly responsible for his actions–he, Maurice Guest, who had ever been so chary of committing himself. What made the matter seem still blacker, too, in his own eyes, was the fact of Krafft having once been his intimate, personal friend. Now, he could never even think of him again, without, at the same time, seeing the mark of his hand on Krafft’s cheek. If the blow had remained invisible, it might have been more easily forgotten; but he had seen it, as it were, taken shape before him.–Or, had it only been returned, it would have helped to lessen the weight of his present abasement–oh, he would have given all he had to have felt a return blow on his own face! Even the smallest loss of selfcontrol on the part of Krafft would have been enough. But the latter was too proud to give himself away gratuitously: he preferred to take his revenge in the more unconventional fashion of leaving his friend to bear the ignominy alone.
Maurice lay stabbing himself with these and similar thoughts. Only little by little did the tumult that had been roused in him abate. Then, and just the more vividly for the break in his memory, the gross words Krafft had said, came back to him. Recalling them, he felt an intense bitterness against Louise. She was the cause of all his sufferings; were it not for her, he might still be leading a quiet, decent life. It was her doing that he was compelled to part, bit by bit, with his selfrespect. Not once, in all the months they had been together, had the smallest good come to him through her. Nothing but misery.
Now, he had no further rest where he was. He must go to her, and tax her with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her very face. She should suffer, too–and the foretasted anguish and pleasure of hot recriminations dulled all other feelings in him.
He rose, chilled to the bone from his exposure; one hand, which had hung down over the bench, was wet and sticky from grasping handfuls of dead leaves.
It was past eleven o’clock. Louise wakened with a start, and, at the sight of his muddy, dishevelled dress, rose to her elbow.
“What is it? What’s the matter? Where have you been?”
He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at her. The loose masses of her hair, which had come unplaited, arrested his attention: he had never seemed to know before how brutally black it was. With his eyes fixed on it, he repeated what Krafft had told him.
Louise lay with the back of one hand on her forehead, and watched him from under it. When he had finished, she said: “So Heinz has raked up that old story again, has he?”
Maurice had expected–yes, what had he expected?–anger, perhaps, or denial, or, it might be, vituperation; only not the almost impartial