Books: Maurice Guest

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"That is very far away," he said, speaking out of this feeling, and
then was vexed with himself for having done so. His words sounded
foolish as they lingered on in the stillness that followed them, and
would, he believed, lay him open to Madeleine's ridicule. But he had
not much time in which to repent of them; the music had been found,
and she was going again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay:
she had an engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who,
throughout, had kept in the background, looked at his watch and took
up his hat: he had previously offered, unopposed, to do the long wait
outside the theatre, which was necessary when one had no tickets, and
now it was time to go. But when Louise heard the word theatre, she
laid a slim, ungloved hand on Dove's arm.

"The very thing for such a night!"

They all said "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" to one another; she did not offer to
shake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint hope that it was on his
account. He opened the window, leant out, and watched them, until they
went round the corner of the street.

Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he turned, she was
grave. She did not make any reference to what had passed, nor did she,
as he feared she would, put questions to him: instead, she showed him
a song of Krafft's, and asked him to play the accompaniment for her.
He gratefully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. For
the song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp
minor; but it was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys
before it came to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right
hand had much hard passage-work in quaint scales and broken
octaves, to a syncopated bass of chords that were adapted to the
stretch of no ordinary hand.

"LIEBLOS UND OHNE GOTT AUF EINER HAIDE," sang Madeleine on the high F
sharp; but Maurice, having collected neither his wits nor his fingers,
began blunderingly, could not right himself, and after scrambling
through a few bars, came to a dead stop, and let his hands fall from
the keys.

"Not to-day, Madeleine."

She laughed good-naturedly. "Very well--not to-day. One shouldn't ask
you to believe to-day that DIE GANZE WELT IST ZUM VERZWEIFELN
TRAURIG."

While she made tea, he returned to the window, where he stood with his
hands in his pockets, lost in thought. He told himself once more what
he found it impossible to believe: that he was going to see Louise
again in a few hours; and not only to see her, but to speak to her, to
be at her side. And when his jubilation at this had subsided, he went
over in memory all that had just taken place. His first impression, he
could afford now to admit it, had been almost one of disappointment:
that came from having dreamed so long of a shadowy being, whom he had
called by her name, that the real she was a stranger to him.
Everything about her had been different from what he had expected--her
voice, her smile, her gestures--and in the first moments of their
meeting, he had been chill with fear, lest--lest . . . even yet he did
not venture to think out the thought. But this first sensation of
strangeness over, he had found her more charming, more desirable, than
even he had hoped; and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure from him as
he remembered it, was that not the smallest trifle--no touch of
coquetry, no insincerely spoken word--had marred the perfect impression
of the whole. To know her, to stand before her, he recognised it now,
gave the lie to false slander and report. Hardest of all, however, was
it to grasp that the meeting had actually come to pass and was over:
it had been so ordinary, so everyday, the most natural thing in the
world; there had been no blast of trumpets, nor had any occult
sympathy warned her that she was in the presence of one who had
trembled for weeks at the idea of this moment and again he leaned
forward and gazed at the spot in the street, where she had disappeared
from sight. He was filled with envy of Dove--this was the latter's
reward for his unfailing readiness to oblige others--and in fancy he
saw Dove walking street after street at her side.

In reality, the two parted from each other shortly after turning the
first corner.

On any other day, Dove would have been still more prompt to take leave
of his companion; but, on this particular one, he was in the mood to
be a little reckless. In the morning, he had received, with a
delightful shock, his first letter from Ephie, a very frank, warmly
written note, in which she relied on his great kindness to secure her,
WITHOUT FAIL--these words were deeply underscored--two places in the
PARQUET of the theatre, for that evening's performance. Not the letter
alone, but also its confiding tone, and the reliance it placed in him,
had touched Dove to a deep pleasure; he had been one of the first to
arrive at the box-office that morning, and, although he had not
ventured, unasked, to take himself a seat beside the sisters, he was
now living in the anticipation of promenading the FOYER with them in
the intervals between the acts, and of afterwards escorting them home.

On leaving Louise he made for the theatre with a swinging stride--had
he been in the country, stick in hand, he would have slashed off the
heads of innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, he
whistled--an unusual thing for him to do in the street--then assumed the
air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by began to
look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by
accident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised
for his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that was
responsible for Dove's state of mind, and for the heightening and
radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go early to the
theatre, and to stand at the doors for at least three-quarters of an
hour, in order that the others, coming considerably later might still
have a chance of gaining their favourite seats: in doing this, Dove
was not actuated by a wholly unselfish motive, but by the more
complicated one, which, consciously or unconsciously, was present
beneath all the friendly cares and attentions he bestowed on people.
He was never more content with himself, and with the world at large,
than when he felt that he was essential to the comfort and well-being
of some of his fellow-mortals; than when he, so to speak, had a finger
in the pie of their existence. It engendered a sense of importance,
gave life fulness and variety; and this far outweighed the trifling
inconveniences such welldoing implied. Indeed, he throve on them. For,
in his mild way, Dove had a touch of Caesarean mania--of a lust for
power.

Left to herself, Louise Dufrayer walked slowly home to her room in the
BRUDERSTRASSE, but only to throw a hasty look round. It was just as she
had expected: although it was long past the appointed time, he was not
there. At a flower-shop in a big adjoining street, she bought a bunch
of many-coloured roses, and with these in her hands, went straight to
where Schilsky lived.

Mounting to the third floor of the house in the TALSTRASSE, she
opened, without ceremony, the door of his room, which gave direct on
the landing; but so stealthily that the young man, who was sitting
with his back to the door, did not hear her enter. Before he could
turn, she had sprung forward, her arms were round his neck, and the
roses under his nose. He drew his face away from their damp fragrance,
but did not look up, and, without removing his cigarette, asked in a
tone of extreme bad temper: "What are you doing here, Lulu? What
nonsense is this? For God's sake, shut the door!"

She ruffled his hair with her lips. "You didn't come. And the day has
seemed so long."

He tried to free himself, putting the roses aside with one hand,
while, with his cigarette, he pointed to the sheets of music-paper
that lay before him. "For a very good reason. I've had no time."

She went back and closed the door; and then, sitting down on his knee,
unpinned her big hat, and threw it and the roses on the bed. He put
his arm round her to steady her, and as soon as he held her to him,
his ill-temper was vanquished. He talked volubly of the
instrumentation he was busy with. But she, who could point out almost
every fresh note he put on paper, saw plainly that he had not been at
work for more than a quarter of an hour; and, in a miserable swell of
doubt and jealousy, such as she could never subdue, she asked:

"Were you practising as well?"

He took no notice of these words, and she did not trust herself to say
more, until, with his free hand, he began jotting again, making notes
that were no bigger than pin-heads. Then she laid her hand on his. "I
haven't seen you all day."

But he was too engrossed to listen. "Look here," he said pointing to a
thick-sown bar. "That gave me the deuce of a bother. While here "--and
now he explained to her, in detail, the properties of the tenor-tuba
in B, and the bass-tuba in F, and the use to which he intended to put
these instruments. She heard him with lowered eyes, lightly
caressing the back of his hand with her finger-tips. But when he
ceased speaking, she rubbed her cheek against his.

"It is enough for to-day. Lulu has been lonely."

Not one of his thoughts was with her, she saw that, as he answered: "I
must get this finished."

"To-night?"

"If I can. You know well enough, Lulu, when I'm in the swing----"

"Yes, yes, I know. If only it wouldn't always come, just when I want
you most."

Her face lost its brightness; she rose from his knee and roamed about
the room, watched from the wall by her pictured self.

"But is there ever a moment in the day when you don't want me? You are
never satisfied." He spoke abstractedly, without interest in the
answer she might make, and, relieved of her weight, leant forward
again, while his fingers played some notes on the table. But when she
began to let her hands stray over the loose papers and other articles
that encumbered chairs, piano and washstand, he raised his head and
watched her with a sharp eye.

"For goodness' sake, let those things alone, can't you?" he said after
he had borne her fidgeting for some time.

"You have no secrets from me, I suppose?" She said it with her
tenderest smile, but he scowled so darkly in reply that she went over
to him again, to touch him with her hand. Standing behind him, with
her fingers in his hair, she said: "Just to-day I wanted you so much.
This morning I was so depressed that I could have killed myself."

He turned his head, to give her a significant glance.

"Good reason for the blues, Lulu. I warned you. You want too much of
everything. And can't expect to escape a KATER."

"Too much?" she echoed, quick to resent his words. "Does it seem so to
you? Would days and days of happiness be too much after we have been
separated for a week?--after Wednesday night?--after what you said to me
yesterday?"

"Yesterday I was in the devil of a temper. Why rake up old scores? Now
go home. Or at least keep quiet, and let me get something done."

He shook his head free of her caressing hand, and, worse
still, scratched the place where it had lain. She stood irresolute,
not venturing to touch him again, looking hungrily at him. Her eyes
fell on the piece of neck, smooth, lightly browned, that showed
between his hair and the low collar; and, in an uncontrollable rush of
feeling, she stooped and kissed it. As he accepted the caress, without
demur, she said: "I thought of going to the theatre to-night, dear."

He was pleased and showed it. "That's right--it's just what you need to
cheer you up."

"But I want you to come, too."

He struck the table with his fist. "Good God, can't you get it into
your head that I want to work?"

She laughed, with ready bitterness. "I should think I could. That's
nothing new. You are always busy when I ask you to do anything. You
have time for everything and every one but me. If this were something
you yourself wanted to do to-night, neither your work nor anything
else would stand in the way of it; but my wishes can always be
ignored. Have you forgotten already that I only came home the day
before yesterday?"

He looked sullen. "Now don't make a scene, Lulu. It doesn't do a whit
of good."

"A scene!" she cried, seizing on his words. "Whenever I open my lips
now, you call it a scene. Tell me what I have done, Eugen! Why do you
treat me like this? Are you beginning to care less for me? The first
evening, the very first, I get home, you won't stay with me--you
haven't even kept that evening free for me--and when I ask you about
it, and try to get at the truth--oh, do you remember all the cruel
things you said to me yesterday? I shall never forget them as long as
I live. And now, when I ask you to come out with me--it is such a
little thing-oh, I can't sit at home this evening, Eugen, I can't do
it! If you really loved me, you would understand."

She flung herself across the bed and sobbed despairingly. Schilsky,
who had again made believe during this outburst to be absorbed in his
work, cast a look of mingled anger and discomfort at the prostrate
figure, and for some few moments, succeeded in continuing his
occupation with a show of indifference; but as, in place of abating,
her sobs grew more heart-rending, his own face began to twitch, and
finally he dropped pencil and cigarette, and with a loud expression of
annoyance went over to the bed.

"Lulu," he said persuasively. "Come, Lulu," and bending over
her, he laid his hands on her shoulders and tried to force her to
rise. She resisted him with all her might, but he was the stronger,
and presently he had her on her feet, where, with her head on his
shoulder, she wept out the rest of her tears. He held her to him, and
although his face above her was still dark, did what he could to
soothe her. He could never bear, to see or to hear a woman cry, and
this loud passionate weeping, so careless of anything but itself,
racked his nerves, and filled him with an uneasy wrath against
invisible powers.

"Don't cry, darling, don't cry!" he said again and again. Gradually
she grew calmer, and he, too, was still; but when her sobs were
hushed, and she was clinging to him in silence, he put his hands on
her shoulders and held her back from him, that he might look at her.
His face wore a stubborn expression, which she knew, and which made
him appear years older than he was.

"Now listen to me, Lulu," he said. "When you behave in this way again,
you won't see me afterwards for a week--I promise you that, and you
know I keep my word. Instead of being glad that I am in the right mood
and can get something done, you come here--which you know I have
repeatedly forbidden you to do--and make a fool of yourself like this.
I have explained everything to you. I could not possibly stay on
Wednesday night--why didn't you time your arrival better? But it's just
like you. You would throw the whole of one's future into the balance
for the sake of a whim. Yesterday I was in a beast of a temper--I've
admitted it. But that was made all right last night; and no one but
you would drag it up again."

He spoke with a kind of dogged restraint, which only sometimes gave
way, when the injustice she was guilty of forced itself upon him.
"Now, like a good girl, go home--go to the theatre and enjoy yourself.
I don't mind you being happy without me. At least, go!--under any
circumstances you ought not to be here. How often have I told you
that!" His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew
so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he
was almost unintelligible. "You won't have a rag of reputation left."

"If I don't care, why should you?" She felt for his hand. But he
turned his back. "I won't have it, I tell you. You know what
the student underneath said the last time he met you on the stair."

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep from bursting anew
into sobs, and there was a brief silence--he stood at the window,
gazing savagely at the opposite house-wall--before she said: "Don't
speak to me like that. I'm going--now--this moment. I will never do it
again--never again."

As he only mumbled disbelief at this, she put her arms round his neck,
and raised her tear-stained face to his: her eyes were blurred and
sunken with crying, and her lips were white. He knew every line of her
face by heart; he had known it in so many moods, and under so many
conditions, that he was not as sensitive to its influence as he had
once been; and he stood unwilling, with his hands in his pockets,
while she clung to him and let him feel her weight. But he was very
fond of her, and, as she continued mutely to implore forgiveness--she,
Lulu, his Lulu, whom every one envied him--his hasty anger once more
subsided; he put his arms round her and kissed her. She nestled in
against him, over-happy at his softening, and for some moments they
stood like this, in the absolute physical agreement that always
overcame their differences. In his arms, with her head on his
shoulder, she smoothed back his hair; and while she gazed, with
adoring eyes, at this face that constituted her world, she murmured
words of endearment; and all the unsatisfactory day was annulled by
these few moments of perfect harmony.

It was he who loosened his grasp. "Now, it's all right, isn't it? No
more tears. But you really must be off, or you'll be late."

"Yes. And you?"

He had taken up his violin and was tuning it, preparatory to playing
himself back into the mood she had dissipated. He ran his fingers up
and down, tried flageolets, and slashed chords across the strings.

But when she had sponged her face and pinned on her hat, he said, in
response to her beseeching eyes, which, as so often before, made the
granting of this one request, a touchstone of his love for her: "Look
here, Lulu, if I possibly can, I'll drop in at the end of the first
act. Look out for me then, in the FOYER."

And with this, she was forced to be content.

IX.

When, shortly after five o'clock, Madeleine and Maurice arrived at the
New Theatre, they took their places at the end of a queue which
extended to the corner of the main building; and before they had
stood very long, so many fresh people had been added to the line, that
it had lengthened out until it all but reached the arch of the
theatre-cafe. Dove was well to the fore, and would be one of the first
to gain the box-office. A quarter of an hour had still to elapse before
the doors opened; and Maurice borrowed his companion's textbook, and
read studiously, to acquaint himself with the plot of the opera.
Madeleine took out Wolzogen's FUHRER, with the intention of brushing
up her knowledge of the motives; but, before she had finished a page,
she had grown so interested in what two people behind her were saying
that she turned and took part in the conversation.

The broad expanse of the AUGUSTUSPLATZ facing the theatre was bare and
sunny. A policeman arrived, and ordered the queue in a straighter
line; then he strolled up and down, stroking and smoothing his white
gloves. More people came hurrying over the square to the theatre, and
ranged themselves at the end of the tail. As the hands of the big
clock on the post-office neared the quarter past five, a kind of
tremor ran through the waiting line; it gathered itself more compactly
together. One clock after another boomed the single stroke; sounds
came from within the building; the burly policeman placed himself at
the head of the line. There was a noise of drawn bolts and grating
locks, and after a moment's suspense, light shone out and the big door
was flung open.

"Gent--ly!" shouted the policeman, but the leaders of the queue charged
with a will, and about a dozen people had dashed forward, before he
could throw down a stemming arm, on which those thus hindered leaned
as on a bar of iron. Madeleine and Maurice were to the front of the
second batch. And the arm down, in they flew also, Madeleine leading
through the swing-doors at the side of the corridor, up the steep,
wooden stairs, one flight after another, higher and higher, round and
round, past one, two, three, tiers--a mad race, which ended
almost in the arms of the gate-keeper at the topmost gallery.

Dove was waiting with the tickets, and they easily secured the desired
places; not in the middle of the gallery, where, as Madeleine
explained while she tucked her hat and jacket under the seat, the
monstrous chandelier hid the greater part of the stage, but at the
right-hand side, next the lattice that separated the seats at
seventy-five from those at fifty pfennigs.

"This is first-rate for seeing," said Maurice.

Madeleine laughed. "You see too much--that's the trouble. Wait till
you've watched the men running about the bottom of the Rhine, working
the cages the Rhine-daughters swim in."

As yet, with the exception of the gallery, the great building was
empty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken well of the
orchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats on the ground
floor far below, was still encased in white wrappings--her and there an
attendant began to peel them off. Maurice, poring over his book, had
to strain his eyes to read, and this, added to the difficulty of the
German, and his own sense of pleasurable excitement, made him soon
give up the attempt, and attend wholly to what Madeleine was saying.

It was hot already, and the air of the crowded gallery was permeated
with various, pungent odours: some people behind them were eating a
strong-smelling sausage, and the man on the other side of the lattice
reeked of cheap tobacco. When they had been in their seats for about a
quarter of an hour, the lights throughout the theatre went up, and,
directly afterwards, the lower tiers and the ground floor were
sprinkled with figures. One by, one, the members of the orchestra
dropped in,, turned up the lamps attached to their stands, and taking
their instruments, commenced to tune and flourish; and soon stray
motives and scraps of motives came mounting up, like lost birds, from
wind and strings; the man of the drums beat a soft rattatoo, and
applied his ear to the skins of his instruments. Now the players were
in their seats, waiting for the conductor; late-comers in the audience
entered with an air of guilty haste. The chief curtain had risen, and
the stage was hidden only by stuff curtains, bordered with a runic
scroll. A delightful sense of expectation pervaded the theatre.

Maurice had more than once looked furtively at his watch; and, at
every fresh noise behind him, he turned his head--turned so often that
the people in the back seats grew suspicious, and whispered to one
another. Madeleine had drawn his attention to everything worth
noticing; and now, with her opera-glass at her eyes, she pointed out
to him people whom he ought to know. Dove, having eaten a ham-roll at
the buffet on the stair, had ever since sat with his opera-glass glued
to his face, and only at this moment did he remove it with a sigh of
relief.

"There they are," said Madeleine, and showed Maurice the place in the
PARQUET, where Ephie and Johanna Cayhill were sitting. But the young
man only glanced cursorily in the direction she indicated; he was
wondering why Louise did not come--the time had all but gone. He could
not bring himself to ask, partly from fear of being disappointed,
partly because, now that he knew her, it was harder than before to
bring her name over his lips. But the conductor had entered by the
orchestra-door; he stood speaking to the first violinist, and the next
moment would climb into his seat. The players held their instruments
in readiness--and a question trembled on Maurice's tongue. But at this
very moment, a peremptory fanfare rang out behind the scene, and
Madeleine said: "The sword motive, Maurice," to add in the same
breath: "There's Louise."

He looked behind him. "Where?"

She nudged him. "Not here, you silly," she said in a loud whisper.
"Surely you haven't been expecting her to come up here? PARQUET,
fourth row from the front, between two women in plaid dresses--oh, now
the lights have gone."

"Ssh!" said at least half a dozen people about them: her voice was
audible above the growling of the thunder.

Maurice took her opera-glass, and, notwithstanding the darkness into
which the theatre had been plunged, travelled his eyes up and down the
row she named--naturally without success. When the curtains parted and
disclosed the stage, it was a little lighter, but not light enough for
him; he could not find the plaids; or rather there were only plaids in
the row; and there was also more than one head that resembled hers. To
know that she was there was enough to distract him; and he was
conscious of the music and action of the opera merely as something
that was going on outside him, until he received another sharp nudge
from Madeleine on his righthand side.

"You're not attending. And this is the only act you'll be able to make
anything of."