Books: Maurice Guest

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One day at this time there was a violent thunderstorm. Towards midday,
the eastern sky grew black with clouds, which, for hours, had been
ominously gathering; a sudden wind rose and swept the dust house-high
through the streets; the thunder rumbled, and each roll came nearer.
When, after a prolonged period of expectation, the storm finally
burst, there was a universal sigh of relief.

The afternoon was damply refreshing. As soon as the rain ceased,
Maurice shut his piano, and walked at a brisk pace to Connewitz, his
head bared beneath the overhanging branches, which were still weighed
down by their burden of drops. At the WALDCAFE on the bank of the
river, in a thickly grown arbour which he entered to drink a glass of
beer, he found Philadelphia Jensen and the pale little American,
Fauvre, taking coffee.

The lady welcomed him with a large, outstretched hand, in the
effusively hearty manner with which she, as it were, took possession
of people; and towards six o'clock, the three walked back through the
woods together, Miss Jensen, resolute of bust as of voice, slightly
ahead of her companions, carrying her hat in her hand, Fauvre dragging
behind, hitting indolently at stones and shrubs, and singing scraps of
melodies to himself in his deep baritone.

Miss Jensen, who had once been a journalist, was an earnest worker for
woman's emancipation, and having now successfully mounted her hobby,
spoke with a thought-deadening eloquence. Maurice had never been
called on to think about the matter, and listened to her words
absent-mindedly, comparing her, as she swept along, to a ship in full
sail. She was just asserting that the ordinary German woman was little
more than means to an end, the end being the man-child, when his
attention was arrested, and, in an instant, jerked far away from Miss
Jensen's theories. As they reached the bend of a path, a sound of
voices came to them through the trees, and on turning a corner,
Maurice caught a glimpse of two people who were going in the opposite
direction, down a side-walk--a passing but vivid glimpse of a light,
flowered dress, of a grey suit of clothes, and auburn hair. Ephie! He
could have sworn to voice and dress; but to whom in all the world was
she talking, so confidentially? At the name that rose to his lips, he
almost stopped short, but the next moment he was afraid lest his
companions should also have seen who it was, and, quickening his
steps, he incited Miss Jensen to talk on. First, however, that
lady said in a surprised tone: "Say, that was Mr. Schilsky, wasn't it?
Who was the lady? Did you perceive?" So there was no possible doubt of
it.

After parting from his companions, he did an errand in the town, and
from there went to the Cayhills' PENSION, determined to ascertain
whether it had really been Ephie he had seen, and if so, what the
meaning of it was.

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were in the sitting-room; Johanna looked very
surprised to see him. They had this moment risen from the
supper-table, she told him; Ephie had only just got home in time.
Before anything further could be said, Ephie herself came into the
room; her face was flushed, and she did not seem well-pleased at his
unexpected visit. She hardly greeted him, and instead, commenced
talking about the weather.

"Then you had a pleasant walk?" asked Johanna in a preoccupied
fashion, without looking up from the letter she was writing; and
before Maurice could speak, Ephie, fondling her sister's neck,
answered: "How could it be anything but sweet--after the rain?"

In the face of this frankness, it was on Maurice's tongue to say:
"Then it was you, I saw?" but again she did not give him time. Still
standing behind Johanna's chair, her eyes fixed on the young man's
face with a curious intentness, she continued: "We walked right to
Connewitz and back without a rest."

"I don't think you should take her so far," said Mrs. Cayhill, looking
up from her book with her kindly smile. "She has never been used to
walking and is easily tired--aren't you, my pet?"

"Yes, and then she can't get up the next morning," said Johanna,
mildly dogmatic, considering the following sentence of her letter.

Gradually it broke upon Maurice that Ephie had been making use of his
name. His consternation at the discovery was such that he changed
colour. The others, however, were both too engrossed to notice it.
Ephie grew scarlet, but continued to rattle on, covering his silence.

"Well, perhaps to-day it was a little too far," she admitted. "But
mummy, I won't have you say I'm not strong. Why, Herr Becker is always
telling me how full my tone is getting. Yes indeed. And look at my
muscle."

She turned back the loose sleeve of her blouse, baring almost
the whole of her rounded arm; then, folding it sharply to her, she
invited one after another to test its firmness.

"Quite a prize-fighter, I declare!" laughed Mrs. Cayhill, at the same
time drawing her little daughter to her, to kiss her. But Johanna
frowned, and told Ephie to put down her sleeve at once; there was
something in the childish action that offended the elder sister, she
did not know why. But Maurice had first to lay two of his fingers on
the soft skin, and then to help her to button the cuff.

When, soon after this, he took his leave, Ephie went out of the room
with him. In the dark passage, she caught at his hand.

"Morry, you mustn't tell tales on me," she whispered; and added
pettishly: "Why ever did you just come to-night?"

He tried to see her face. "What is it all about, Ephie?" he asked.
"Then it WAS you, I saw, in the NONNE--by the weir?"

"Me? In the NONNE!" She was genuinely surprised. "You saw me?"

He nodded. By the light that came from the stairs as she opened the
hall-door, she noticed that he looked troubled, and an impulse rose in
her to throw her arms round his neck and say: "Yes, yes, it was me.
Oh, Morry, I am so happy!" But she remembered the reasons for secrecy
that had been imposed on her, and, at the same time, felt somewhat
defiantly inclined towards Maurice. After all, what business was it of
his? Why should he take her to task for what she chose to do? And so
she merely laughed, with assumed merriment, her own charming,
assuaging laugh.

"In the wood?--you old goose! Listen, Morry, I told them I had been
with you, because--why, because one of the girls in my class asked me
to go to the CAFE FRANCAIS with her, and we stayed too long, and ate
too much ice-cream, and Joan doesn't like it, and I knew she would be
cross--that's all! Don't look so glum, you silly! It's nothing," and
she laughed again.

As long as this laugh rang in his ears--to the bottom of the street,
that is--he believed her. Then, the evidence of his senses reasserted
itself, and he knew that what she had told him was false. He had heard
her voice in the wood too distinctly to allow of any mistake, and she
was still wearing the same dress. Besides, she had lied so artlessly
to the others, without a tremor of her candid eyes--why should she not
lie to him, too? She was less likely to be considerate of him than of
Johanna. But his distress at her skill in deceit was so great
that he said: "Ephie, little Ephie!" aloud to himself, just as he
might have done had he heard that she was stricken down by a mortal
illness.

On the top of this, however, came less selfish feelings. What was
almost a sense of guilt took possession of him; he felt as if, in some
way, he were to blame for what had happened; as if nature had intended
him to stand in the place of a brother to this pretty, thoughtless
child. And yet what could he have done? He did not now see Ephie as
often as formerly, and hardly ever alone; on looking back, he began to
suspect that she had purposely avoided him. The exercises in harmony,
which had previously brought them together, had been discontinued.
First, she had said that her teacher was satisfied with what she
herself could do; then, that he had advised her to give up harmony
altogether: she would never make anything of it. In the light of what
had come to pass, Maurice saw that he had let himself be duped by her;
she had lied then as now.

He puzzled his brains to imagine how she had learned to know Schilsky
in the first instance, and when the affair had begun: what he had
overheard that afternoon implied an advanced stage of intimacy; and he
revolved measures by means of which a stop might be put to it. The
only course he could think of was to lay the matter before Johanna;
and yet what would the use of that be? Ephie would deny everything,
make his story ludicrous, himself impossible, and never forgive him
into the bargain. In the end, he might do more good by watching over
her silently, at a distance. If it had only not been Schilsky who was
concerned! Some of the ugly stories he had heard related of the young
man rose up and took vivid shape before his eyes. If any harm came to
Ephie, he alone would be to blame for it; not Johanna, only he knew
the frivolous temptations the young girl was exposed to. Why, in
Heaven's name, had he not taken both her hands, as they stood in the
passage, and insisted on her confessing to him? No, credulous as
usual, he had once more allowed himself to be hoodwinked and put off.

Thus he fretted, without arriving at any clearer conclusion than this:
that he had unwittingly been made accessory to an unpleasant secret.
But where his mind baulked, and refused to work, was when he tried to
understand what all this might mean to the third person involved. Did
Louise know or suspect anything? Had she, perhaps, for weeks past been
suffering under the knowledge?

He stood irresolute, at the crossing where the MOZARTSTRASSE joined
the PROMENADE. A lamp-lighter was beginning his rounds; he came up
with his long pole to the lamp at the corner, and, with a mild
explosion, the little flame sprang into life. Maurice turned on his
heel and went to see Madeleine.

The latter was making her supper of tea, bread, and cold sausage, and
when she heard that he had not eaten, she set a cup and plate before
him, and was glad that she happened to be late. Propped open on the
table was a Danish Grammar, which she conned as she ate; for, in the
coming holidays, she was engaged to go to Norway, as guide and
travelling-companion to a party of Englishwomen.

"I had a letter from London to-day," she said, "with definite
arrangements. So I at once bought this book. I intend to try and
master at least the rudiments of the language--barbarous though it
is--for I want to get some good from the journey. And if one has one's
wits about one, much can be learnt from cab-drivers and railway-porters."

She traced on a map with her forefinger the route they proposed to
follow, and laughed at the idea of the responsibility lying heavy on
her. But when they had finished their supper, and she had talked
informingly for a time of Norway, its people and customs, she looked
at the young man, who sat irresponsive and preoccupied, and considered
him attentively.

"Is anything the matter to-night? Or are you only tired?"

He was tired. But though she herself had suggested it, she was not
satisfied with his answer.

"Something has bothered you. Has your work gone badly?"

No, it was nothing of that sort. But Madeleine persisted: could she be
of any help to him?

"The merest trifle--not worth talking about."

The twilight had grown thick around them; the furniture of the room
lost its form, and stood about in shapeless masses. Through the open
window was heard the whistle of a distant train; a large fly that had
been disturbed buzzed distractingly, undecided where to re-settle for
the night. It was sultry again, after the rain.

"Look here, Maurice," Madeleine said, when she had observed him for
some time in silence. "I don't want to be officious, but
there's something I should like to say to you. It's this. You are far
too soft-hearted. If you want to get on in life, you must think more
about yourself than you do. The battle is to the strong, you know, and
the strong, within limits, are certainly the selfish. Let other people
look after themselves; try not to mind how foolish they are--you can't
improve them. It's harder, I daresay, than it is to be a person of
unlimited sympathies; it's harder to pass the maimed and crippled by,
than to stop and weep over them, and feel their sufferings through
yourself. But YOU have really something in you to occupy yourself
with. You're not one of those people--I won't mention names!--whose own
emptiness forces them to take an intense interest in the doings of
others, and who, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, are
bored to desperation. just as there are people who have no talent for
making a home home-like, and are only happy when they are out of it."

Here she laughed at her own seriousness.

"But you are smiling inwardly, and thinking: the real old school-marm!"

"You don't practise what you preach, Madeleine. Besides, you're
mistaken. At heart, I'm a veritable egoist."

She contradicted him. "I know you better than you know yourself."

He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the commonplace words
she had last said, went on sounding and resounding, until they had no
more likeness to themselves. Madeleine rose, and pushed back her
chair, with a grating noise.

"I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for foolishness.
Come, wake up, and tell me what plans you have for the holidays."

"If I had a sister, I should like her to be like you," said Maurice,
watching her busy with the lamp. "Clear-headed, and helpful to a fellow."

"I suppose men always will continue to consider that the greatest
compliment they can pay," said Madeleine, and turned up the light so
high that they both blinked.--And then she scolded the young man
soundly for his intention of remaining in Leipzig during the holidays.

But when he rose to go, she said, with an impulsiveness that was
foreign to her: "I wish you had a friend."

It was his turn to smile. "Have you had enough of me?"

Madeleine, who was sitting with crossed arms, remained grave.
"I mean a man. Some one older than yourself, and who has had
experience. The best-meaning woman in the world doesn't count."

Only a very few days later, an occasion offered when, with profit to
himself, he might have acted upon Madeleine's introductory advice. He
had been for a quick, solitary walk, and was returning, in the evening
between nine and ten o'clock, along one of the paths of the wood, when
suddenly, and close at hand, he heard the sound of voices. He stopped
instantaneously, for by the jump his heart gave, he knew that Louise
was one of the speakers. What she said was inaudible to him; but it
was enough to be able to listen, unseen, to her voice. Hearing it like
this, as something existing for itself, he was amazed at its depth and
clearness; he felt that her personal presence had, until now, hindered
him from appreciating a beautiful but immaterial thing at its true
worth. At first, like a cadence that repeats itself, its tones rose
and fell, but with more subtle inflections than the ordinary voice
has: there was a note in it that might have belonged to a child's
voice; another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little
reserve as the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on in a
monotone, like a Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things worn
threadbare by repetition, and already said too often. Gradually, it
died away in the surrounding silence. There was no response but a
gentle rustling of the leaves overhead. It began anew, and, in the
interval, seemed to have gained in intensity; now there was a
bitterness in it which, when it swelled, made it give out a tone like
the roughly touched strings of an instrument; it seemed to be
accusing, to be telling of unmerited suffering. And, this time, it
elicited a reply, but a casual, indifferent one, which might have
related to the weather, or to the time of night. Louise gave a shrill
laugh, and then, as plainly as if the words were being carved in stone
before his eyes, Maurice heard her say: "You have never given me a
moment's happiness."

As before, no answer was returned, and almost immediately his ear
caught a muffled sound of footsteps. At the same moment, a night-wind
shook the tree-tops; there was a general fluttering and swaying around
him; and he came back to himself to find that he was standing rigid,
holding on to a slender tree that grew close by the path. His first
conscious thought was that this wind meant rain . . . there would be
another storm in the night . . . and the summer holidays--time of
partings--were at the door. She would go away . . . and he would perhaps
never see her again.

Since the evening they had walked home from the theatre together, he
had had no further chance of speaking to her. If they met in the
street, she gave him, as Madeleine had foretold of her, a nod and a
smile; and from this coolness, he had drawn the foolish inference that
she wished to avoid him. Abnormally sensitive, he shrank out of her
way. But now, the mad sympathy that had permeated him on the night she
had made him her confidant grew up in him again; it swelled out into
something monstrous--a gigantic pity that rebounded on himself. For he
knew now why she suffered; and he was cast down both for her and for
himself. It seemed unnatural that he was debarred from giving her just
a fraction of the happiness she craved--he, who, had there been the
least need for it, would have lain himself down for her to tread on.
And in some of the subsequent nights when he could not sleep, he
composed fantastic letters to her, in which he told her this and more,
only to colour guiltily, with the return of daylight, at the
impertinent folly of his thoughts.

But he could not forget the words he had heard her say; they haunted
him like an importunate refrain. Even his busiest hours were set to
them--"You have never given me a moment's happiness"--and they were
alike a torture and a joy.

XII.

The second half of July scattered the little circle in all directions.
Maurice spent a couple of days at the different railway-stations,
seeing his friends off. One after another they passed into that
anticipatory mood, which makes an egoist of the prospective traveller:
his thoughts start, as it were, in advance; he has none left for the
people who are remaining behind, and receives their care and attention
as his due.

Dove was packed and strapped, ready to set out an hour after he had
had his last lesson; and while he printed labels for his luggage, and
took a circumstantial leave of his landlady and her family, with whom
he was a prime favourite by reason of his decent and orderly habits,
Maurice fetched for him from the lending library, the pieces of music
set by Schwarz as a holiday task. Dove was on tenterhooks to be off.
Of late, things had gone superlatively well with him: he had performed
with applause in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, and been highly commended by
Schwarz; while, as for Ephie, she had been so sweet and winning, so
modestly encouraging of his suit, that he had every reason to hope for
success in this quarter also. Too dutiful a son, however, to take,
unauthorised, such an important step as that of proposing marriage, he
was now travelling home to sound two elderly people, resident in a
side street in Peterborough, on the advisability of an American
daughter-in-law.

The Cayhills had been among the first to leave, and would be absent
till the middle of September. One afternoon, Maurice started them from
the THURINGER BAHNHOF, on their journey to Switzerland. Having seen
Mrs. Cayhill comfortably settled with her bags, books and cushions, in
the corner of a first-class carriage, and given Johanna assistance with
the tickets, he stood till the train went, talking to Ephie; and he
long retained a picture of her, standing with one foot on the step, in
a becoming travelling-dress, a hat with a veil flying from it, and a
small hand-bag slung across her shoulder, laughing and dimpling, and
well aware of the admiring glances that were cast at her. It was a
relief to Maurice that she was going away for a time; his feeling of
responsibility with regard to her had not flagged, and he had
made a point of seeing her more often, and of knowing more of her
movements than before. As, however, he had not observed anything
further to disturb him, his suspicions were on the verge of
subsiding--as suspicions have a way of doing when we wish them to--and
in the last day or two, he had begun to feel much less sure, and to
wonder if, after all, he had not been mistaken.

"I shall miss you, Morry. I almost wish I were not going," said Ephie,
and this was not untrue, in spite of the pretty new dresses her trunks
contained. "Say, I don't believe I shall enjoy myself one bit. You
will write, Morry, won't you, and tell me what goes on? All the news
you hear and who you see and everything."----

"Be sure you write," said Madeleine, too, when he saw her off early in
the morning to Berlin, where she was to meet her English charges.
"Christiania, POSTE RESTANTE, till the first, and then Bergen. 'FROKEN
WADE,' don't forget."

The train started; her handkerchief fluttered from the window until
the carriage was out of sight.

Maurice was alone; every one he knew disappeared, even Furst, who had
obtained a holiday engagement in a villa near Dresden. An odd
stillness reigned in the BRAUSTRASSE and its neighbourhood; from
houses which had hitherto been clangrous with musical noises, not a
sound issued. Familiar rooms and lodgings were either closely
shuttered, or, in process of scouring, hung out their curtains to
flutter on the sill.

The days passed, unmarked, eventless, like the uniform pages of a dull
book. When the solitude grew unbearable, Maurice went to visit Frau
Furst, and had his supper with the family. He was a welcome guest, for
he not only paid for all the beer that was drunk, but also brought
such a generous portion of sausage for his own supper, that it
supplied one or other of the little girls as well. Afterwards, they
sat round the kitchen-table, listening, the children with the
old-fashioned solemnity that characterised them, to Frau Furst's
reminiscences. Otherwise, he hardly exchanged a word with anyone, but
sat at his piano the livelong day. Of late, Schwarz had been somewhat
cool and off-hand in manner with him; the master had also not
displayed the same detailed interest in his plans for the summer, as
in those of the rest of the class. This was one reason why he had not
gone away like every one else; the other, that he had been unwilling
to write home for an increase of allowance. Sometimes, when the day
was hot, he envied his friends refreshing themselves by wood,
mountain or sea; but, in the main, he worked briskly at Czerny's
FINGERFERTIGKEIT, and with such perseverance that ultimately his
fingers stumbled from fatigue.

With the beginning of August, the heat grew oppressive; all day long,
the sun beat, fierce and unremittent, on this city of the plains, and
the baked pavements were warm to the feet. Business slackened, and the
midday rest in shops and offices was extended beyond its usual limit.
Conservatorium and Gewandhaus, at first given over to relays of
charwomen, their brooms and buckets, soon lay dead and deserted, too;
and if, in the evening, Maurice passed the former building, he would
see the janitor sitting at leisure in the middle of the pavement,
smoking his long black cigar. The old trees in the PROMENADE, and the
young striplings that followed the river in the LAMPESTRASSE, drooped
their brown leaves thick with dust; the familiar smell of roasting
coffee, which haunted most house- and stair-ways, was intensified; and
out of drains and rivers rose nauseous and penetrating odours, from
which there was no escape. Every three or four days, when the
atmosphere of the town had reached a pitch of unsavouriness which it
seemed impossible to surpass, sudden storms swept up, tropical in
their violence: blasts of thunder cracked like splitting beams;
lightning darted along the narrow streets; rain fell in white,
sizzling sheets. But the morning after, it was as hot as ever.

Maurice grew so accustomed to meet no one he knew, that one afternoon
towards the middle of August, he was pulled up by a jerk of surprise
in front of the PLEISSENBURG, on stumbling across Heinrich Krafft. He
had stopped and impulsively greeted the young man, before he recalled
his previous antipathy to him.

Krafft was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, and, on
being accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat moodily at Maurice. The
next moment, however, he laid a hand on the lappel of Maurice's coat,
and, without preamble, burst into a witty and obscene anecdote, which
had evidently been in his mind when they met. This story, and the fact
that, by the North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high,
were the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. His
previous impatience with such eccentricity returned, but none the
less, he looked grudgingly after the other's vanishing form.