Books: Maurice Guest

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"It's all she wants," Krafft had replied, when his companion ventured
to take her part. "She wouldn't thank you to be treated differently.
Believe me, women are all alike; they are made to be trodden on.
Ill-usage brings out their good points--just as kneading makes dough
light. Let them alone, or pamper them, and they spread like a weed,
and choke you"--and he quoted a saying about going to women and not
forgetting the whip, at which Maurice stood aghast.

"But why, if you despise a person like that--why have her always about
you?" he cried, at the end of a flaming plea for woman's dignity and
worth.

Krafft shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose the truth is we are
dependent on them--yes, dependent, from the moment we are laid in the
cradle. It's a woman who puts on our first clothes and a woman who
puts on our last. But why talk about these things?"--he slipped his
arm through Maurice's. "Tell me about yourself; and when you are tired
of talking, I will play."

It usually ended in his playing. They ranged through the highways and
byways of music.

One afternoon--it was a warm, wet, grey day towards the end of
August--Maurice found Krafft in a strangely apathetic mood. The
weather, this moist warmth, had got on his nerves, he said; he had
been unable to settle to anything; was weighed down by a lassitude
heavier than iron. When Maurice entered, he was stretched on the sofa,
with closed eyes; on his chest slept Wotan, the one-eyed cat,
now growing sleek and fat. While Maurice was trying to rally him,
Krafft sprang up. With a precipitance that was the extreme opposite of
his previous sloth, he lowered both window-blinds, and, lighting two
candles, set them on the piano, where they dispersed the immediate
darkness, but no more.

"I am going to play TRISTAN to you."

Maurice had learnt by this time that it was useless to try to thwart
Krafft. He laughed and nodded, and having nothing in particular to do,
lay down in the latter's place on the sofa.

Krafft shook his hair back, and began the prelude to the opera in a
rapt, ecstatic way, finding in the music an outlet for all his
nervousness. At first, he played from memory; when this gave out, he
set the piano-score up before him, then forgot it again, and went on
playing by heart. Sometimes he sang the different parts, in a light,
sweet tenor; sometimes recited them, with dramatic fervour. Only he
never ceased to play, never gave his hearer a moment in which to
recover himself.

Frau Schulz's entry with the lamp, and her grumblings at the
"UNVERSCHAMTE SPEKTAKEL" passed unheeded. A strength that was more
than human seemed to take possession of the frail youth at the piano.
Evening crept on afternoon, night on evening, and still he continued,
drunk with the most emotional music conceived by a human brain.

Even when hands and fingers could do no more, the frenzy that was in
him would not let him rest: he paced the room, and talked--talked for
hours, his eyes ablaze. A church-clock struck ten, then half-past,
then eleven, and not for a moment was he still; his speech seemed,
indeed, to gather impetus as it advanced like a mountain torrent.

Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of a vehement defence of
anti-Semitism, to which he had been led by the misdeeds of those
"arch-charlatans," Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, he stopped short, like a
run-down clock, and, falling into a chair before the table, buried his
face in his arms. There was silence, the more intense for all that had
preceded it. Wotan wakened from sleep, and was heard to stretch his
limbs, with a yawn and a sigh. The spell was broken; Maurice, his head
in a whirl, rose stiff and cramped from his uncomfortable position on
the sofa.

"You rascal, you make one lose all sense of time. And I am starving. I
must snatch something at Canitz's as I go by."

Krafft started, and raised a haggard face with twitching lips.
"You are not going to leave me?--like this?"

Maurice was both hungry and tired--worn out, in fact.

"We will go somewhere in the town," said Krafft. "And then for a walk.
The rain has stopped--look!"

He drew up one of the blinds, and they saw that the stars were shining.

"Yes, but what about to-morrow?--and to-morrow's work?"

"To-morrow may never come. And to-night is."

"Those are only words. Do you know the time?"

Krafft turned quickly from the window. "And if I make it a test of the
friendship you have professed for me, that you stay here with me
to-night?--You can sleep on the sofa."

"Why on earth get personal?" said Maurice; he could not find his hat,
which had fallen in a dark corner. "Heinz, dear boy, be reasonable.
Come, give me the house-key--like a good fellow."

"It's the first--the only thing, I have asked of you."

"Nonsense. You have asked dozens."

Krafft took a few steps towards him, and threw the key on the floor at
his feet. Wotan, who was at the door, mewing to be let out, sprang
back, in affright.

"Go, go, go!" Krafft cried. "I never want to see you again."

Earlier than usual the next morning, Maurice returned to set things
right, and to laugh with Heinz at their extravagance the night before.
But Krafft was not to be seen. From Frau Schulz, who flounced past him
in the passage, first with hot water, then with black coffee, Maurice
learned that Krafft had been brought home early that morning, in a
disgraceful state of intoxication. Frau Schulz still boiled at the
remembrance.

"SO 'N SCHWEIN, SO 'N SCHWEIN!" she cried. "But this time he goes. I
have said it before and, fool that I am, have always let them persuade
me. But this is the end. Not a day after the fifteenth will I have him
in the house."

Maurice slipped away.

Two days passed before he saw his friend again. He found him pale and
dejected, with reddish, heavy eyes and a sneering smile. He was wholly
changed; his words were tainted with the perverse irony, which, at the
beginning of their acquaintance, had made his manner so repellent. But
now, Maurice was not, at once, frightened away by it; he could not
believe Heinrich's pique was serious, and gave himself trouble
to win his friend back. He chid, laughed, rallied, was earnest and
apologetic, and all this without being conscious of having done wrong.

"I think you had better leave him alone," said Avery, after watching
his fruitless efforts. "He doesn't want you."

It was true; now Krafft had no thought for anyone but Avery. It was
Avery here, and Avery there. He called her by a pet name, was anxious
for her comfort, and hung affectionately on her arm.--The worst of it
was, that he did not seem in the least ashamed of his fickleness.

Maurice made one further attempt to move him, then, hurt and angry,
intruded no more. At first, he was chiefly angry. But, gradually, the
hurt deepened, and became a sense of injury, which made him avoid the
street Krafft lived in, and shun him when they met. He missed him,
after the close companionship of the past weeks, and felt as if he had
been suddenly deprived of a part of himself. And he would no doubt
have missed him more keenly still, if, just at this juncture, his
attention had not been engrossed by another and more important matter.

XIII.

The commencement of the new term had just assembled the incoming
students to sign their names in the venerable rollbook, when the
report spread that Schilsky was willing to play his symphonic poem,
ZARATHUSTRA, to those of his friends who cared to hear it. Curiosity
swelled the number, and Furst lent his house for the occasion.

"You'll come, of course," said the latter to Maurice, as they left
Schwarz's room after their lesson; and Madeleine said the same thing
while driving home from the railway-station, where Maurice had met
her. She was no more a friend of Schilsky's than he was, but she
certainly intended to be present, to hear what kind of stuff he had
turned out.

On the evening of the performance, Maurice and she walked together to
the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE. Madeleine had still much to say. She had
returned from her holiday in the best of health and spirits, liberally
rewarded for her trouble, and possessed of four new friends, who, no
doubt, would all be of use to her when she settled in England again.
This was to be her last winter in Leipzig, and she was drawing up
detailed plans of work. From now on, she intended to take private
lessons from Schwarz, in addition to those she received in the class.

"Even though they do cost ten marks each, it makes him ever so much
better disposed towards you."

She also told him that she had found a letter from Louise waiting for
her, in which the latter announced her return for the following week.
Louise wrote from England, and all her cry was to be back in Leipzig.

"Of course--now he is here," commented Madeleine. "You know, I suppose,
that he has been travelling with Zeppelin? He has the luck of I don't
know what."

The Cayhills would be absent till the middle of the month; Maurice had
received from Ephie one widely written note, loud in praise of a
family of "perfectly sweet Americans," whom they had learnt to know in
Interlaken, but also expressing eagerness to be at home again in "dear
old Leipzig." Dove had arrived a couple of days ago--and here
Madeleine laughed.

"He is absolutely shiny with resolution," she declared. "Mind, Maurice,
if he takes you into confidence--as he probably will--you are not on any
account to dissuade him from proposing. A snub will do him worlds of
good."

They were not the first to climb the ill-lighted stair that wound up
to the Fursts' dwelling. The entry-door on the fourth storey stood
open, and a hum of voices came from the sitting-room. The circular
hat-stand in the passage was crowded with motley headgear.

As they passed the kitchen, the door of which was ajar, Frau Furst
peeped through the slit, and seeing Maurice, called him in. The
coffee-pot was still on the stove; he must sit down and drink a cup of
coffee.

"There is plenty of time. Schilsky has not come yet, and I have only
this moment sent Adolfchen for the beer."

Maurice asked her if she were not coming in to hear the music. She
laughed good-naturedly at the idea.

"Bless your heart, what should I do in there, among all you young
people? No, no, I can hear just as well where I am. When my good
husband had his evenings, it was always from the kitchen that I
listened."

Pausing, with a saucepan in one hand, a cloth in the other, she said:
"You will hear something good to-night, Herr Guest. Oh, he has talent,
great talent, has young Schilsky! This is not the usual work of a
pupil. It has form, and it has ideas, and it is new and daring. I know
one of the motives from hearing Franz play it," and she hummed a theme
as she replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. "For such
a young man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, depend upon
it, he will."

Here she threw a hasty glance round the tiny kitchen, at three of the
children sitting as still as mice in the corner, laid a finger on her
lips, and, bursting with mystery, leaned over the table and asked
Maurice if he could keep a secret.

"He is going away," she whispered.

Maurice stared at her. "Going away? Who is? What do you mean?" he
asked, and was so struck by her peculiar manner that he set his cup
down untouched.

"Why Schilsky, of course." She thought his astonishment was disbelief,
and nodded confirmingly. "Yes, yes, he is going away. And soon, too."

"How do you know?" cried Maurice. Sitting back in his chair,
he stemmed his hands against the edge of the table, and looked
challengingly at Frau Furst.

"Ssh--not so loud," said the latter. "It's a secret, a dead secret--
though I'm sure I don't know why. Franz----"

At this very moment, Franz himself came into the kitchen. He looked
distrustfully at his whispering mother.

"Now then, mother, haven't you got that beer yet?" he demanded. His
genial bonhomie disappeared, as if by magic, when he entered his home
circle, and he was particularly gruff with this adoring woman.

"GLEICH, FRANZCHEN, GLEICH," she answered soothingly, and whisked
about her work again, with the air of one caught napping.

Maurice followed Furst's invitation to join the rest of the party.

The folding-doors between the "best room" and the adjoining bedroom
had been opened wide, and the guests were distributed over the two
rooms. The former was brilliantly lighted by three lamps and two
candles, and all the sitting-accommodation the house contained was
ranged in a semicircle round the grand piano. Here, not a place was
vacant; those who had come late were in the bedroom, making shift with
whatever offered. Two girls and a young man, having pushed back the
feather-bed, sat on the edge of the low wooden bedstead, with their
arms interlaced to give them a better balance. Maurice found Madeleine
on a rickety little sofa that stood at the foot of the bed. Dove sat
on a chest of drawers next the sofa, his long legs dangling in the
air. Beside Madeleine, with his head on her shoulder, was Krafft.

"Oh, there you are," cried Madeleine. "Well, I did my best to keep the
place for you; but it was of no use, as you see. Just sit down,
however. Between us, we'll squeeze him properly."

Maurice was glad that the room, which was lighted only by one small
lamp, was in semi-darkness; for, at the sound of his own voice, it
suddenly became clear to him that the piece of gossip Frau Furst had
volunteered, had been of the nature of a blow. Schilsky's departure
threatened, in a way he postponed for the present thinking out, to
disturb his life; and, in an abrupt need of sympathy, he laid his hand
on Krafft's knee.

"Is it you, old man? What have you been doing with yourself?"

Krafft gave him one of those looks which, in the early days of
their acquaintance, had proved so disconcerting--a look of struggling
recollection.

"Oh, nothing in particular," he replied, without hostility, but also
without warmth. His mind was not with his words, and Maurice withdrew
his hand.

Madeleine leaned forward, dislodging Krafft's head from its
resting-place.

"How long have you two been 'DU' to each other?" she asked, and at
Maurice's curt reply, she pushed Krafft from her. "Sit up and behave
yourself. One would think you had an evil spirit in you to-night."

Krafft was nervously excited: bright red spots burnt on his cheeks,
his hands twitched, and he jerked forward in his seat and threw
himself back again, incessantly.

"No, you are worse than a mosquito," cried Madeleine, losing patience.
"Anyone would think you were going to play yourself. And he will be as
cool as an iceberg. The sofa won't stand it, Heinz. If you can't stop
fidgeting, get up."

He had gone, before she finished speaking; for a slight stir in the
next room made them suppose for a moment that Schilsky was arriving.
Afterwards, Krafft was to be seen straying about, with his hands in
his pockets; and, on observing his rose-pink cheeks and tumbled curly
hair, Madeleine could not refrain from remarking: "He ought to have
been a girl."

The air was already hot, by reason of the lamps, and the many breaths,
and the firmly shut double-windows. The clamour for beer had become
universal by the time Adolfchen arrived with his arms full of bottles.
As there were not enough glasses to go round, every two or three
persons shared one between them--a proceeding that was carried out with
much noisy mirth. Above all other voices was to be heard that of Miss
Jensen, who, in a speckled yellow dress, with a large feather fan in
her hand, sat in the middle of the front row of seats. It was she who
directed how the beer should be apportioned; she advised a few
late-comers where they would still find room, and engaged Furst to
place the lights on the piano to better advantage. Next her, a Mrs.
Lautenschlager, a plump little American lady, with straight yellow
hair which hung down on her shoulders, was relating to her neighbour
on the other side, in a tone that could be clearly heard in both
rooms, how she had "discovered" her voice.

"I come to Schwarz, last fall," she said shaking back her
hair, and making effective use of her babyish mouth; "and he thinks no
end of me. But the other week I was sick, and as I lay in bed, I sung
some--just for fun. And my landlady--she's a regular singer herself--who
was fixing up the room, she claps her hands together and says: 'My
goodness me! Why YOU have a voice!' That's what put it in my head, and
I went to Sperling to hear what he'd got to say. He was just tickled
to death, I guess he was, and he's going to make something dandy of
it, so I stop long enough. I don't know what my husband'll say though.
When I wrote him I was sick, he says: 'Come home and be sick at
home'--that's what he says."

Miss Jensen could not let pass the opportunity of breaking a lance for
her own master, the Swede, and of cutting up Sperling's method, which
she denounced as antiquated. She made quite a little speech, in the
course of which she now and then interrupted herself to remind
Furst--who, was as soft as a pudding before her--of something he had
forgotten to do, such as snuffing the candles or closing the door.

"Just let me hear your scale, will you?" she said patronisingly to
Mrs. Lautenschlager. The latter, nothing loath, stuck out her chin,
opened her mouth, and, for a short time, all other noises were drowned
in a fine, full volume of voice.

On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurlee sat in silence, pretending to
listen to Dove, who was narrating his journey. Madeleine was out of
humour; she tapped the floor, and had a crease in her forehead. As for
Maurice, he was in such poor spirits that she could not but observe
it.

"Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter?"

He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of impending
misfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; he knew now what
it signified. If Schilsky went away from Leipzig, Louise would
probably go, too, and that would be the end of everything.

"I represented to him," he heard Dove saying, "that I had seen the
luggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do you think he answered?
He looked me up and down, and said: 'ICH WERDE TELEGRAPHIEREN UND
ERKUNDIGUNGEN EINZIEHEN.' Now, do you think if you said to an English
station-master: 'Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes,' he would
not believe you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway-system
needs revision. Would you believe it, we did not make fifty kilometers
in the hour, and yet our engine broke down before Magdeburg?"

So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and weak
hopes, which he had never put into words even to himself, which had
never properly existed, and yet had been there, nevertheless, a mass
of gloriously vague perhapses. The end was at hand--an end before there
had been any beginning.

". . . the annoyance of the perpetual interruptions," went on the
voice on the other side. "A lady who was travelling in the same
compartment--a very pleasant person, who was coming over to be a
teacher in a school in Dresden--I have promised to show her our lions
when she visits Leipzig: well, as I was saying, she was quite alarmed
the first time he entered in that way, and it took me some time, I
assure you, to make her believe that this was the German method of
revising tickets."

The break occasioned by the arrival of the beer had been of short
duration, and the audience was growing impatient; at the back of the
room, some one began to stamp his feet; others took it up. Furst
perspired with anxiety, and made repeated journeys to the stair-head,
to see if Schilsky were not coming. The latter was almost an hour late
by now, and jests, bald and witty, were made at his expense. Some one
offered to take a bet that he had fallen asleep and forgotten the
appointment, and at this, one of the girls on the bed, a handsome
creature with bold, prominent eyes, related an anecdote to her
neighbours, concerning Schilsky's powers of sleep. All three exploded
with laughter. In a growing desire to be asked to play, Boehmer had
for some time hung about the piano, and was now just about to drop, as
if by accident, upon the stool, when the cry of: "No Bach!" was
raised--Bach was Boehmer's specialty--and re-echoed, and he retired red
and discomfited to his Place in a corner of the room, where his
companion, a statuesque little English widow, made biting observations
on the company's behaviour. The general rowdyism was at its height,
when some one had the happy idea that Krafft should sing them his
newest song. At this, there was a unanimous shriek of approval, and
several hands dragged Krafft to the piano. But himself the wildest of
them all, he needed no forcing. Flinging himself down on the seat, he
preluded wildly in imitation of Rubinstein. His hearers sat with their
mouths open, a fixed smile on their faces, laughter ready in their
throats, and only Madeleine was coolly contemptuous.

"Tom-fool!" she said in a low voice.

Krafft was confidently expected to burst into one of those
songs for which he was renowned. Few of his friends were able to sing
them, and no one but himself could both sing and play them
simultaneously: they were a monstrous, standing joke. Instead of this,
however, he turned, winked at his audience, and began a slow,
melancholy ditty, with a recurring refrain. He was not allowed to
finish the first verse; a howl of disapproval went up; his hearers
hooted, jeered and stamped.

"Sick cats!"

"Damn your 'WENIG SONNE!'"--this was the refrain.

"Put your head in a bag!"

"Pity he drinks!"

"Give us one of the rousers--the rou . . . sers!"

Krafft himself laughed unbridledly. "DAS ICH SPRICHT!"--he announced.
"In C sharp major."

There was a hush of anticipation, in which Dove, stopping his BRETZEL
half-way to his mouth, was heard to say in his tone of measured
surprise: "C sharp major! Why, that is----"

The rest was drowned in the wild chromatic passages that Krafft sent
up and down the piano with his right hand, while his left followed
with full-bodied chords, each of which exceeded the octave. Before,
however, there was time to laugh, this riot ceased, and became a
mournful cadence, to the slowly passing harmonies of which, Krafft
sang:

I am weary of everything that is, under the sun.
I sicken at the long lines of rain, which are black against the sky;
They drip, for a restless heart, with the drip of despair:
For me, winds must rage, trees bend, and clouds sail stormily.

The whirlwind of the prelude commenced anew; the chords became still
vaster; the player swayed from side to side, like a stripling-tree in
a storm. Madeleine said, "Tch!" in disgust, but the rest of the
company, who had only waited for this, burst into peals of laughter;
some bent double in their seats, some leant back with their chins in
the air. Even Dove smiled. Just, however, as those whose sense of
humour was most highly developed, mopped their faces with gestures of
exhaustion, and assured their neighbours that they "could not, really
could not laugh any more," Furst entered and flapped his hands.

"Here he comes!"

A sudden silence fell, broken only by a few hysterical giggles from
the ladies, and by a frivolous American, who cried: "Now for
ALSO SCHRIE ZENOPHOBIA!" Krafft stopped playing, but remained sitting
at the piano, wiping down the keys with his handkerchief.

Schilsky came in, somewhat embarrassed by the lull which had succeeded
the hubbub heard in the passage, but wholly unconcerned at the
lateness of the hour: except in matters of practical advancement, time
did not exist for him. As soon as he appeared, the two ladies in the
front row began to clap their hands; the rest of the company followed
their example, then, in spite of Furst's efforts to prevent it, rose
and crowded round him. Miss Jensen and her friend made themselves
particularly conspicuous. Mrs Lauterischlager had an infatuation for
the young man, of which she made no secret; she laid her hand
caressingly on his coat-sleeve, and put her face as near his as
propriety admitted.

"Disgusting, the way those women go on with him!" said Madeleine. "And
what is worse, he likes it."

Schilsky listened to the babble of compliments with that mixture of
boyish deference and unequivocal superiority, which made him so
attractive to women. He was too good-natured to interrupt them and
free himself, and would have stood as long as they liked, if Furst had
not come to the rescue and led him to the piano. Schilsky laid his
hand affectionately on Krafft's shoulder, and Krafft sprang up in
exaggerated surprise. The audience took its seats again; the thick
manuscript-score was set up on the music-rack, and the three young men
at the piano had a brief disagreement with one another about turning
the leaves: Krafft was bent on doing it, and Schilsky objected, for
Krafft had a way of forgetting what he was at in the middle of a page.
Krafft flushed, cast an angry look at his friend, and withdrew, in
high dudgeon, to a corner.

Standing beside the piano, so turned to those about him that the two
on the sofa in the next room only saw him sideways, and ill at that,
Schilsky gave a short description of his work. He was nervous, which
aggravated his lisp, and he spoke so rapidly and in such a low voice
that no one but those immediately in front of him, could understand
what he said. But it did not matter in the least; all present had come
only to hear the music; they knew and cared nothing about Zarathustra
and his spiritual development; and one and all waited impatiently for
Schilsky to stop speaking. The listeners in the bedroom----merely
caught disjointed words--WERDEGANG, NOTSCHREI, TARANTELN--but not one
was curious enough even to lean forward in his seat. Madeleine
made sarcastic inward comments on the behaviour of the party.