Books: Maurice Guest

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"It's perfectly clear to you, I suppose," she could not refrain from
observing as, at the finish, Dove sagely wagged his head in agreement.

It transpired that there was an ode to be sung before the last section
of the composition, and a debate ensued who, should sing it. The two
ladies in the front had quite a little quarrel--without knowing
anything about the song--as to which of their voices would best suit
it. Schilsky was silent for a moment, tapping his fingers, then said
suddenly: "Come on, Heinz," and looked at Krafft. But the latter, who
was standing morose, with folded arms, did not move. He had a dozen
reasons why he should not sing; he had a cold, was hoarse, was out of
practice, could not read the music from sight.

"Good Heavens, what a fool Heinz is making of himself tonight!" said
Madeleine.

But Schilsky thumped his fist on the lid, and said, if Krafft did not
sing it, no one should; and that was the end of the matter. Krafft was
pulled to the piano.

Schilsky took his seat, and, losing his nervousness as soon as he
touched the keys, preluded firmly and easily, with his large, white
hands. Now, every one leaned forward to see him better; especially the
ladies threw themselves into positions from which they could watch
hair and hands, and the slender, swaying figure.

"Isn't he divine?" said the bold-eyed girl on the bed, in a loud
whisper, and hung upon her companion's neck in an ecstatic attitude.

After the diversity of noises which had hitherto interfered with his
thinking connectedly, Maurice welcomed the continuous sound of the
music, which went on without a break. He sat in a listening attitude,
shading his eyes with his hand. Through his fingers, he
surreptitiously watched the player. He had never before had an
opportunity of observing Schilsky so closely, and, with a kind of
blatant generosity, he now pointed out to himself each physical detail
that he found prepossessing in the other, every feature that was
likely to attract--in the next breath, only to struggle with his honest
opinion that the composer was a slippery, loose-jointed, caddish
fellow, who could never be proved to be worthy of Louise. But he was
too down-hearted at what he had learnt in the course of the evening,
to rise to any active feeling of dislike.

Intermittently he heard, in spite of himself, something of
Schilsky's music; but he was not in a frame of mind to understand or
to retain any impression of it. He was more effectively jerked out of
his preoccupation by single spoken words, which, from time to time,
struck his ear: this was Furst, who, in the absence of a programme,
announced from his seat beside Schilsky, the headings of the different
sections of the work: WERDEGANG; SEILTANZER--here Maurice saw Dove
conducting with head and hand--NOTSCHREI; SCHWERMUT; TARANTELN--and here
again, but vaguely, as if at a distance, he heard suppressed laughter.
But he was thoroughly roused when Krafft, picking up a sheet of music
and coming round to the front of the piano, began to sing DAS TRUNKENE
LIED. By way of introduction, the low F in the bass of F minor sounded
persistently, at syncopated intervals; Schilsky inclined his head, and
Krafft sang, in his sweet, flute-like voice:

Oh, Mensch! Gieb Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
"Ich schlief, ich schlief,
Aus tiefem Schlaf bin ich erwacht:
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht."

--the last phrase of which was repeated by the accompaniment, a
semitone higher.

Tief ist ihr Weh,
Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid:

As far as this, the voice had been supported by simple, full-sounding
harmonies. Now, from out the depths, still of F minor, rose a
hesitating theme, which seemed to grope its way: in imagination, one
heard it given out by the bass strings; then the violas reiterated it,
and dyed it purple; voice and violins sang it together; the high
little flutes carried it up and beyond, out of reach, to a half close.

Weh spricht: vergeh!

Suddenly and unexpectedly, there entered a light yet mournful phrase
in F major, which was almost a dance-rhythm, and seemed to be a small,
frail pleading for something not rightly understood.

Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit,
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit.

The innocent little theme passed away, and the words were sung again
to a stern and fateful close in D flat major.

The concluding section of the work returned to these motives,
developed them, gathered them together, grouped them and interchanged
them, in complicated thermatic counterpoint. Schilsky was barely able
to cope with the difficulties of the score; he exerted himself
desperately, laboured with his head and his whole body, and surmounted
sheerly unplayable parts with the genial slitheriness that is the
privilege of composers.

When, at last, he crashed to a close and wiped his face in exhaustion,
there was a deafening uproar of applause. Loud cries were uttered and
exclamations of enthusiasm; people rose from their seats and crowded
round the piano to congratulate the player. Mrs. Lautenschlager could
not desist from kissing his hand. A tall, thin Russian girl in
spectacles, who had assiduously taken notes throughout, asked in a
loud voice, and her peculiar, hoppy German, for information about the
orchestration. What use had he made of the cymbals? She trusted a
purely Wagnerian one. Schilsky hastened to reopen the score, and sat
himself to answer the question earnestly and at length.

"Come, Maurice, let us go," said Madeleine, rising and shaking the
creases from her skirt. "There will be congratulations enough. He
won't miss ours."

Maurice had had an idea of lingering till everybody else had gone, on
the chance of picking up fresh facts. But he was never good at
excuses. So they slipped out into the passage, followed by Dove; but
while the latter was looking for his hat, Madeleine pulled Maurice
down the stairs.

"Quick, let us go!" she whispered; and, as they heard him coming after
them, she drew her companion down still further, to the cellar flight,
where they remained hidden until Dove had passed them, and his steps
had died away in the street.

"We should have had nothing but his impressions and opinions all the
way home," she said, as they emerged. "He was bottled up from having
to keep quiet so long--I saw it in his face. And I couldn't stand it
to-night. I'm in a bad temper, as you may have observed--or perhaps you
haven't."

No, he had not noticed it.

"Well, you would have, if you hadn't been so taken up with yourself.
What on earth is the matter with you?"

He feigned. surprise: and they walked in silence down one street and
into the next. Then she spoke again. "Do you know--but you're sure not
to know that either--you gave me a nasty turn to-night?"

"I?" His surprise was genuine this time.

"Yes, you--when I heard you say 'DU' to Heinz."

He looked at her in astonishment; but she was not in a hurry to
continue. They walked another street-length, and all she said was:
"How refreshing the air is after those stuffy rooms!"

As they turned a corner however, she made a fresh start.

"I think it's rather hard on me," she said, and laughed as she spoke.
"Here am I again, having to lecture you! The fact is, I suppose, one's
METIER clings to one, in spite of oneself. But there must be something
about you, too, Maurice Guest, that makes one want to do it--want to
look after you, so to speak--as if you couldn't be trusted to take care
of yourself. Well, it disturbed me to-night, to see how intimate you
and Heinz have got."

"Is that all? Why on earth should that trouble you? And anyhow," he
added, "the whole affair came about without any wish of mine."

"How?" she demanded; and when he had told her: "And since then?"

He went into detail, coolly, without the resentment he had previously
felt towards Krafft.

"And that's all?"

"Isn't it enough--for a fellow to go on in that way?"

"And you feel aggrieved?"

"No, not now. At first I was rather sore, though, for Heinz is an
interesting fellow, and we were very thick for a time."

"Yes, of course--until Schilsky comes back. As soon as he appears on
the scene, Master Heinz gives you the cold shoulder. Or perhaps you
didn't know that Heinz is the attendant spirit of that heaven-born
genius?"

Maurice did not reply, and when she spoke again, it was with renewed
seriousness. "Believe me, Maurice, he is no friend for you. It's not
only that you ought to be above letting yourself be treated in this
way, but Heinz's friendship won't do you any good. He belongs to a bad
set here--and Schilsky, too. If you were long with Heinz, you
would be bound to get drawn into it, and then it would be good-bye to
anything you might have done--to work and success. No, take my
advice--it's sincerely meant--and steer clear of Heinz."

Maurice smiled to himself at her womanly idea of Krafft leading him to
perdition. "But you're fond of him yourself, Madeleine," he said. "You
can't help liking him either."

"I daresay I can't. But that is quite a different matter--quite;" and
as if more than enough had now been said, she abruptly left the
subject.

Before going home that night, Maurice made the old round by way of the
BRUDERSTRASSE, and stood and looked up at the closed windows behind
which Louise lived. The house was dark, and as still as was the
deserted street. Only the Venetian blinds seemed to be faintly alive;
the outer windows, removed for the summer, had not yet been replaced,
and a mild wind flapped the blinds, just as it swayed the tops of the
trees in the opposite garden. There was a breath of autumn in the air.
He told himself aloud, in the nightly silence, that she was going
away--as if by repeating the words, he might ultimately grow used to
their meaning. The best that could be hoped for was that she would not
go immediately, but would remain in Leipzig for a few weeks longer.
Then a new fear beset him. What if she never came back again?--if she
had left the place quietly, of set purpose?--if these windows were
closed for good and all? A dryness invaded his throat at the
possibility, and on the top of this evening of almost apathetic
resignation to the inevitable, the knowledge surged up in him that all
he asked was to be allowed to see her just once more. Afterwards, let
come what might. Once again, he must stand face to face with her--must
stamp a picture of her on his brain, to carry with him for ever.

For ever!--And through his feverish sleep ran, like a thread, the
words he had heard Krafft sing, of an eternity that was deep and
dreamless, a joy without beginning or end.

Madeleine had waved her umbrella at him. He crossed the road to where
she was standing in rain-cloak and galoshes. She wished to tell him
that the date of her playing in the ABENDUNTERHALTUNG had been
definitely fixed. About to go, she said:

"Louise is back--did you know?"

Of course he knew, though he did not tell her so--knew almost
the exact hour at which the blinds had been drawn up, the windows
opened, and a flower-pot, in a gaudy pink paper, put out on the sill.

Not many days after this, he came upon Louise herself. She was
standing talking, at a street-corner, to the shabby little Englishman,
Eggis, with whom she had walked the FOYER of the theatre. Maurice was
about to bow and pass by, but she smiled and held out her hand.

"You are back, too, then? To-day I am meeting all my friends."

She had fur about her neck, although the weather was not really cold,
and her face rose out of this setting like a flower from its cup.

This meeting, and the few cordial words she had spoken, helped him
over the days that followed. Sometimes, while he waited for the blow
to fall, his daily life grew very unimportant; things that had
hitherto interested him, now went past like shadows; he himself was a
mere automaton. But sometimes, too, and especially after he had seen
Louise, and touched her living hand, he wondered whether he were not
perhaps tormenting himself unnecessarily. Nothing more had come to
light; no one had hinted by a word at Schilsky's departure; it might
yet prove to be all a mistake.

Then, however, he received a postcard from Madeleine, saying that she
had something interesting to tell him. He went too early, and spent a
quarter of an hour pacing her room. When she entered, she threw him a
look, and, before she had finished taking off her wraps, said:

"Maurice, I have a piece of news for you. Schilsky is going away."

He nodded; his throat was dry.

"Why, you don't mean to say you knew?" she cried, and paused half-way
out of her jacket.

Maurice went to the window, and stood with his back to her. In one of
the houses opposite, at a window on the same level, a girl was
practising the violin; his eyes followed the mechanical movements of
the bow.

He cleared his throat. "Do you--Is it likely--I mean, do you
think?----"

Madeleine understood him. "Yes, I do. Louise won't stay here a day
longer than he does; I'm sure of that."

But otherwise she knew no more than Maurice; and she did not
offer to detain him, when, a few minutes later, he alleged a pressing
appointment. Madeleine was annoyed, and showed it; she had come in
with the intention of being kind to him, of encouraging him, and
discussing the matter sympathetically, and it now turned out that not
only had he known it all the time, but had also kept it a secret from
her. She did not like underhand ways, especially in people whom she
believed she knew inside out.

Now that the pledge of secrecy had been removed from him, Maurice felt
that he wanted facts; and, without thinking more about it than if he
had been there the day before, he climbed the stairs that led to
Krafft's lodging.

He found him at supper; Avery was present, too, and on the table sat
Wotan, who was being regaled with strips of skin off the sausage.
Krafft greeted Maurice with a touch of his former effusiveness; for he
was in a talkative mood, and needed an audience. At his order, Avery
put an extra plate on the table, and Maurice had to share their meal.
It was not hard for him to lead Krafft round to the desired subject.
It seemed that one of the masters in the Conservatorium had expressed
a very unequivocal opinion of Schilsky's talents as a composer, and
Krafft was now sarcastic, now merry, at this critic's expense. Maurice
laid down his knife, and, in the first break, asked abruptly: "When
does he go?"

"Go?--who?" said Krafft indifferently, tickling Wotan's nose with a
piece of skin which he held out of reach.

"Who?--why, Schilsky, of course."

It sounded as if another than he had said the words: they were so
short and harsh. The plate Avery was holding fell to the floor. Krafft
sat back in his chair, and stared at Maurice, with a face that was all
eyes.

"You knew he was going away?--or didn't you?" asked Maurice in a rough
voice. "Every one knows. The whole place knows."

Krafft laughed. "The whole place knows: every one knows," he repeated.
"Every one, yes--every one but me. Every one but me, who had most right
to know. Yes, I alone had the right; for no one has loved him as I
have."

He rose from the table, knocking over his chair. "Or else it is not true?"

"Yes, it is true. Then you didn't know?" said Maurice, bewildered by
the outburst he had evoked.

"No, we didn't know." It was Avery who spoke. She was on her knees,
picking up the pieces of the plate with slow, methodical fingers.

Krafft stood hesitating. Then he went to the piano, opened it,
adjusted the seat, and made all preparations for playing. But with his
fingers ready on the keys, he changed his mind and, instead, laid his
arms on the folded rack and his head on his arms. He did not stir
again, and a long silence followed. The only sound that was to be
heard came from Wotan, who, sitting on his haunches on a corner of the
table, washed the white fur of his belly with an audible swish.

XIV.

Whistling to him to stop, Furst ran the length of a street-block after
Maurice, as the latter left the Conservatorium.

"I say, Guest," he said breathlessly, on catching up with him. "Look
here, I just wanted to tell you, you must be sure and join us
to-night. We are going to give Schilsky a jolly send-off."

They stood at the corner of the WACHTERSTRASSE; it was a blowy day.
Maurice replied evasively, with his eyes on the unbound volume of
Beethoven that Furst was carrying; its tattered edges moved in the
wind.

"When does he go?" he asked, without any show of concern.

Furst looked warily round him, and dropped his voice. "Well, look
here, Guest, I don't mind telling you," he said; he was perspiring
from his run, and dried his neck and face. "I don't mind telling you;
you won't pass it on; for he has his reasons--family or domestic
reasons, if one may say so, tra-la-la!"--he winked, and nudged Maurice
with his elbow--"for not wanting it to get about. It's deuced hard on
him that it should have leaked out at all. I don't know how it
happened; for I was mum, 'pon my honour, I was."

"Yes. And when does he go?" repeated his hearer with the same want of
interest.

"To-morrow morning early, by the first train."

Now to be rid of him! But it was never easy to get away from Furst,
and since Maurice had declared his intention of continuing to take
lessons from him, as good as impossible. Furst was overpowering in his
friendliness, and on this particular occasion, there was no escape for
Maurice before he had promised to make one of the party that was to
meet that night, at a restaurant in the town. Then he bluffly alleged
an errand in the PLAGWITZERSTRASSE, and went off in an opposite
direction to that which his companion had to take.

As soon as Furst was out of sight, he turned into the path that led to
the woods. Overhead, the sky was a monotonous grey expanse, and a
soft, moist wind drove in gusts, before which, on the open
meadow-land, he bent his head. It was a wind that seemed heavy with
unfallen rain; a melancholy wind, as the day itself was melancholy, in
its faded colours, and cloying mildness. With his music under his arm,
Maurice walked to the shelter of the trees. Now that he had learnt the
worst, a kind of numbness came over him; he had felt so intensely in
the course of the past week that, now the crisis was there, he seemed
destitute of feeling.

His feet bore him mechanically to his favourite seat, and here he
remained, with his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the trodden
gravel of the path. He had to learn, once and for all, that, by
tomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding the
wretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever from
understanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor,
conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children had
built a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to the
doorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural
ideas that had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in
his hair, and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his
head. But gradually overcoming this physical dullness, his mind began
to work again. With a sudden vividness, he saw himself as he had
walked these very woods, seven months before; he remembered the
brilliant colouring of the April day, and the abundance of energy that
had possessed him. Then, on looking into the future, all his thoughts
had been of strenuous endeavour and success. Now, success was a word
like any other, and left him cold.

For a long time, in place of passing on to his real preoccupation, he
considered this, brooding over the change that had come about in him.
Was it, he asked himself, because he had so little whole-hearted
endurance, that when once a thing was within his grasp, that grasp
slackened? Was it that he was able to make the effort required for a
leap, then, the leap over, could not right himself again? He believed
that the slackening interest, the inability to fix his attention,
which he had had to fight against of late, must have some such deeper
significance; for his whole nature--the inherited common sense of
generations--rebelled against tracing it back to the day on which he
had seen a certain face for the first time. It was too absurd to be
credible that because a slender, dark-eyed girl had suddenly come
within his range of vision, his life should thus lose form and
purpose--incredible and unnatural as well--and, in his present
mood, he would have laughed at the suggestion that this was love. To
his mind, love was something frank and beautiful, made for daylight
and the sun; whereas his condition was a source of mortification to
him. To love, without any possible hope of return; to love, knowing
that the person you loved regarded you with less than indifference,
and, what was worse, that this person was passionately attached to
another man--no, there was something indelicate about it, at which his
blood revolted. It was the kind of thing that it suited poets to make
tragedies of, but it did not--should not--happen in sober, daily life.
And if, as it seemed in this case, it was beyond mortal's power to
prevent it, then the only fitting thing to do was promptly to make an
end. And because, over the approach of this end, he suffered, he now
called himself hard names. What had he expected? Had he really
believed that matters could always dally on, in this pleasant,
torturous way? Would he always have been content to be third party,
and miserable outsider? No; the best that could happen to him was now
happening; let the coming day once be past, let a very few weeks have
run their course, and the parting would have lost its sting; he would
be able to look back, regretfully no doubt, but as on something done
with, irrecoverable. Then he would apply himself to his work with all
his heart; and it would be possible to think of her, and remember her,
calmly. If once an end were put to these daily chances of seeing her,
which perpetually fanned his unrest, all would go well.

And yet . . . did he close his eyes and let her face rise up before
him--her sweet, white face, with the unfathomable eyes, and pale,
sensuous mouth--he was shaken by an emotion that knocked his
resolutions as flat as a breath knocks a house of cards. It was not
love, nor anything to do with love, this he could have sworn to: it
was merely the strange physical effect her presence, or the
remembrance of her presence, had had upon him, from the first day on:
a tightening of all centres, a heightening of all faculties, an
intense hope, and as intense a despair. And in this moment, he
confessed to himself that he would have been over-happy to live on
just as he had been doing, if only sometimes he might see her. He
needed her, as he had never felt the need of anyone before; his nature
clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He
had no concern with anyone but her--her only--and he could not let her
go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable
infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be
able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a
part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to
be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that
the grip life had of him would relax--he grew sick even at the thought
of how, in some unknown place, in the midst of strangers, she would go
on living, and giving her hand and her smile to other people, while he
would never see her again. And he said her name aloud to himself, as
if he were in bodily pain, or as if the sound of it might somehow
bring him aid: he inwardly implored whatever fate was above him to
give him the one small chance he asked--the chance of fair play.

The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, considerably after
his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, he looked at familiar
objects with unseeing eyes. He was not conscious of hunger, but going
into the kitchen begged for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt
brewing on Frau Krause's stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed
to lift from his brain; he opened and read a letter from home, and was
pricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few scales
run hastily that morning, he had done no work. But while he still
stood, with his arm on the lid of the piano, an exclamation rose to
his lips; and taking up his hat, he went down the stairs again, and
out into the street. What was he thinking of? If he wished to see
Louise once more, his place was under her windows, or in those streets
she would be likely to pass through.

He walked up and down before the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE, sometimes
including a side street, in order to avoid making himself conspicuous;
putting on a hurried air, if anyone looked curiously at him; lingering
for a quarter of an hour on end, in the shadow of a neighbouring
doorway. Gradually, yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to a
close. He had paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of her
had he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness fell.
A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset him again, and
got the upper hand of him; and wild schemes flitted through his mind.
He would mount the stairs, and ring the door-bell, on some pretext or
other, to learn whether she was still there; and his foot was on the
lowest stair, when his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the
idea had taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he
was in; and so, towards seven o'clock, when he had hung about
for three hours, and there was still no sign of life in her room, he
went boldly up the broad, winding stair and rang the bell. When the
door was opened, he would find something to say.