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Unwilling to be involved in the brawl, the more sober of the party had
begun to seek out their hats and to slink away. A little group round
Schilsky blarneyed and expostulated. Why should the whole
sport of the evening be spoilt in this fashion? What did it matter
what the damned cranky Englishman said? Let him be left to his
swilling. They would clear out, and wind up the night at the BAUER;
and at four, when that shut, they would go on to the BAYRISCHE
BAHNHOF, where they could not only get coffee, but could also see
Schilsky off by a train soon after five. These persuasions prevailed,
and, still swearing, and threatening, and promising, by all that was
holy, to bring Lulu there, by the hair of her head if necessary, to
show whether or no he had the power over her he boasted of, Schilsky
finally allowed himself to be dragged off, and those who were left
lurched out in his wake.

With their exit an abrupt silence fell, and Maurice sank into a heavy
sleep, in which he saw flowery meadows and heard a gently trickling
brook. . . .

"Now then, up with you!--get along!" some one was shouting in his ear,
and, bit by bit, a pasty-faced waiter entered his field of view. "It's
past time, anyhow," and yawning loudly, the waiter turned out all the
gas-jets but one. "Don't yer hear? Up with you! You'll have to look
after the other--now, damn me, if there isn't another of you as well!"
and, from under the table, he drew out a recumbent body.

Maurice then saw that he was still in the company of Dove, who sat
staring into space--like a dead man. Krafft, propped on a chair, hung
his head far back, and the collarless shirt exposed the whole of his
white throat.

The waiter hustled them about. Maurice was comparatively steady on his
legs; and it was found that Dove could walk. But over Krafft, the man
scratched his head and called a comrade. At the mention of a droschke,
however, Maurice all but wept anew with ire and emotion: this was his
dearest friend, the friend of his bosom; he was ready at any time to
stake his life for him, and now he was not to be allowed even to see
him home.

A difficulty arose about Maurice's hat: he was convinced that the one
the waiter jammed so rudely on his head did not belong to him; and it
seemed as if nothing in the world had ever mattered so much to him as
now getting back his own hat. But he had not sufficient fluency to
explain all he meant; before he had finished, the man lost patience;
and suddenly, without any transition, the three of them were in the
street. The raw night air gave them a shock; they gasped and choked a
little. Then the wall of a house rose appositely and met them.
They leaned against it, and Maurice threw the hat from him and
trampled on it, chuckling at the idea that he was revenging himself on
the waiter.

It was a journey of difficulties; not only was he unclear what
locality they were in, but innumerable lifeless things confronted them
and formed obstacles to their progress; they had to charge an
advertisement-column two or three times before they could get round
it. Maurice grew excessively angry, especially with Dove. For while
Heinz let himself be lugged this way and that, Dove, grown loud and
wilful, had ideas of his own, and, in addition to this, sang the whole
time with drunken gravity:

Sez the ragman, to the bagman,
I'll do yees no harm.

"Stop it, you oaf!" cried Maurice, goaded to desperation. "You
beastly, blathering, drunken idiot!"

Then, for a street-length, he himself lapsed into semi-consciousness,
and when he wakened, Dove was gone. He chuckled anew at the thought
that somehow or other they had managed to outwit him.

His intention had been to make for home, but the door before which
they ultimately found themselves was Krafft's. Maurice propped his
companion against the wall, and searched his own pockets for a key.
When he had found one, he could not find the door, and when this was
secured, the key would not fit. The perspiration stood out on his
forehead; he tried again and again, thought the keyhole was dodging
him, and asserted the fact so violently that a window in the first
storey was opened and a head thrust out.

"What in the name of Heaven are you doing down there?" it cried. "You
drunken SCHWEIN, can't you see the door's open?"

In the sitting-room, both fell heavily over a chair; after that, with
infinite labour, he got Heinz on the sofa. He did not attempt to make
a light; enough came in from a street-lamp for him to see what he was
doing.

Lying on his face, Krafft groaned a little, and Maurice suddenly
grasped that he was taken ill. Heinz was ill, Heinz, his best friend,
and he was doing nothing to help him! Shedding tears, he poured out a
glass of water. He believed he was putting the carafe safely back on
the table, but it dropped with a crash to the floor. He was
afraid Frau Schulz would come in, and said in a loud voice: "It's that
fellow there, he's dead drunk, beastly drunk!" Krafft would not drink
the water, and in the attempt to force him, it was spilled over him.
He stirred uneasily, put up his arms and dragged Maurice down, so that
the latter fell on his knees beside the sofa. He made a few
ineffectual efforts to free himself; but one arm held him like a vice;
and in this uncomfortable position, he went to sleep.

Part II

O viva morte, e dilettoso male!

PETRARCH.

I.

The following morning, towards twelve o'clock, a note from Madeleine
was handed to Maurice. In it, she begged him to account to Schwarz for
her absence from the rehearsal of a trio, which was to have taken
place at two.

GO AND EXPLAIN THAT IT IS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO COME, she wrote.
LOUISE IS VERY ILL; THE DOCTOR IS AFRAID OF BRAIN FEVER. I AM RUSHING,
OFF THIS MOMENT TO SEE ABOUT A NURSE--AND SHALL STAY TILL ONE COMES.

He read the words mechanically, without taking in their meaning. From
the paper, his eyes roved round the room; he saw the tumbled, unopened
bed, from which he had just risen, the traces of his boots on the
coverings. He could not remember how he had come there; his last
recollection was of being turned out of Krafft's room, in what seemed
to be still the middle of the night. Since getting home, he must have
slept a dead sleep.

"Ill? Brain fever?" he repeated to himself, and his mind strove to
pierce the significance of the words. What had happened? Why should
she be ill? A racking uneasiness seized him and would not let him
rest. His inclination was to lay his aching head on the pillow again;
but this was out of the question; and so, though he seldom braved Frau
Krause, he now boldly went to her with a request to warm up his
coffee.

When he had drunk it, and bathed his head, he felt considerably
better. But he still could not call to mind what had occurred. The
previous evening was blurred in its details; he only had a sense of
oppression when he thought of it, as of something that had threatened,
and still did. He was glad to have a definite task before him, and
went out at once, in order to catch Schwarz before he left the
Conservatorium; but it was too late; the master's door was locked. It
was a bright, cold day with strong sunlight; Maurice's eyes ached, and
he shrank from the wind at every corner. Instead of going home, he
went to Madeleine's room and sat down to wait for her. She had
evidently been away since early morning; the piano was dusty and
unopened; the blind at the head of it had not been drawn up. It was a
pleasant dusk; he put his arms on the table, his head on his arms,
and, in spite of his anxiety, fell into a sound sleep.

He was wakened by Madeleine's entrance. It was three o'clock. She came
bustling in, took off her hat, laid it on the piano, and at once drew
up the blind. She was not surprised. to find him there, but exclaimed
at his appearance.

"Good gracious, Maurice, how dreadful you look! Are you ill?"

He hastened to reassure her, and she was a little put out at her
wasted sympathy.

"Well, no wonder, I'm sure, after the doings there were last night. A
pretty way to behave! And that you should have mixed yourself up in it
as you did!--I wouldn't have believed it of you. How I know? My dear
boy, it's the talk of the place."

Her words called up to him a more lucid remembrance of the past
evening than he had yet been capable of. In his eagerness to recollect
everything, he changed colour and looked away. Madeleine put his
confusion down to another cause.

"Never mind, it's over now, and we won't say any more about it. Sit
still, and I'll make you some tea. That will do your head good--for you
have a splitting headache, haven't you? I shall be glad of some
myself, too, after all the running about I've had this morning. I'm
quite worn out."

When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for bread and
sausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only when she sat down,
with her cup before her, did he get a chance to say: "What is it,
Madeleine? Is she very ill?"

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, she is ill enough. It's not
easy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor is to see her again
this evening. And I found a nurse."

"Then she is not going away?" He did not mean to say the words aloud;
they escaped him against his will.

His companion raised her eyebrows, filling her forehead with wrinkles.
"Going away?" she echoed. "I should say not. My dear Maurice, what is
more, it turns out she hadn't an idea he was going either. What do you
say to that?" She flushed with sincere indignation. "Not an idea--until
yesterday. My lord had the intention of sneaking off without a word,
and of leaving her to find it out for herself. Oh, it's an
abominable affair altogether!--and has been from beginning to end.
There's much about Louise, as you know, that I don't approve of, and I
think she has behaved weakly--not to call it by a harder name--all
through. But now, she has my entire sympathy. The poor girl is in a
pitiable state."

"Is she . . . dangerously ill?"

"Well, I don't think she'll die of it, exactly--though it might be
better for her if she did. NA!. . . let me fill up your cup. And eat
something more. Oh, he is . . . no words are bad enough for him;
though honestly speaking, I think we might have been prepared for
something of this kind, all along. It seems he made his arrangements
for going on the quiet. Frau Schaefele advanced him the money; for of
course he has nothing of his own. But what condition do you think the
old wretch made? That he should break with Louise. Furst has told me
all about it. I went to him at once this morning. She was always
jealous of Louise--though to him she only talked of the holiness of art
and the artist's calling, and the danger of letting domestic ties
entangle you, and rubbish of that kind. I believe she was at the
bottom of it that he didn't marry Louise long ago. Well, however that
may be, he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing
on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he
was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were
not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling!
To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he
was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery
has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would
always prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don't you
know?--and ruffle the necessary artistic composure." She laughed
scornfully. "However, I'm glad to say, he didn't escape scot-free
after all. Everything went well till yesterday afternoon, when Louise,
who was as unsuspecting as a child, heard of it from some one--they say
it was Krafft. Without thinking twice--you know her . . . or rather you
don't--she went straight to Schilsky and confronted him. I can't tell
you what took place between them, but I can imagine something of it,
for when Louise lets herself go, she knows no bounds, and this was a
matter of life and death to her."

Madeleine rose, blew out the flame of the spirit-lamp, and refilled
the teapot.

"Fraulein Grunhut, her landlady, heard her go out yesterday
afternoon, but didn't hear her come in, so it must have been late in
the evening. Louise hates to be pried on, and the old woman is lazy,
so she didn't go to her room till about half-past eight this morning,
when she took in the hot water. Then she found Louise stretched on the
floor, just as she had come in last night, her hat lying beside her.
She was conscious, and her eyes were open, but she was stiff and cold,
and wouldn't speak or move. Grunhut couldn't do anything with her, and
was mortally afraid. She sent for me; and between us we got her to
bed, and I went for a doctor. That was at nine, and I have been on my
feet ever since."

"It's awfully good of you."

"No, she won't die," continued Madeleine meditatively, stirring her
tea. "She's too robust a nature for that. But I shouldn't wonder if it
affected her mind. As I say, she knows no bounds, and has never learnt
self-restraint. It has always been all or nothing with her. And this I
must say: however foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she was
devoted to Schilsky, and sacrificed everything--work, money and
friends--to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is a
moral judgment on her. Excess of any kind brings its own punishment
with it."

She rose and smoothed her hair before the mirror.

"And now I really must get to work, and make up for the lost morning.
I haven't touched a note to-day. As for you, Maurice, if you take my
advice, you'll go home and go to bed. A good sleep is what you're
needing. Come to-morrow, if you like, for further news. I shall go
back after supper, and hear what the doctor says. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Madeleine. You're a brick."

Having returned to his room, he lay face downwards on the sofa. He was
sick at heart. Viewed in the light of the story he had heard from
Madeleine, life seemed too unjust to be endured. It propounded riddles
no one could answer; the vast output of energy that composed it, was
misdirected; on every side was cruelty and suffering. Only the
heartless and selfish--those who deserved to suffer--went free.

He pressed the back of his hand to his tired eyes; and, despite her
good deeds, he felt a sudden antipathy to Madeleine, who, on a day
like this, could take up her ordinary occupation.

In the morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was seized by a
fear lest Louise should have died in the night. Through
brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he went early to
Madeleine, making a detour through the BRUDERSTRASSE, where his
suspicions were confirmed by the lowered blinds. He had almost two
hours to wait; it was eleven o'clock before Madeleine returned. Her
face was so grave that his heart seemed to stop beating. But there was
no change in the sick girl's condition; the doctor was perplexed, and
spoke of a consultation. Madeleine was returning at two o'clock to
relieve the nurse.

"You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether," she reproved
Maurice. "And it won't mend matters in the least. Go home and settle
down to work, like a sensible fellow."

He tried to follow Madeleine's advice. But it was of no use; when he
had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how
monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his
fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a
crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he
felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those
around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car,
seemed of a ludicrous vanity compared with the grim little tragedy
that touched him so nearly; and in this mood he remained, throughout
the days of suspense that now ensued.

He went regularly every afternoon to Madeleine, and, if she were not
at home, waited till she returned, an hour, two hours, as the case
might be. This was the vital moment of the day--when he read her
tidings from her face.

At first they were always the same: there was no change. Fever did not
set in, but, day and night, Louise lay with wide, strained eyes; she
refused nourishment, and the strongest sleeping-draught had no effect.
Then, early one morning, for some trifling cause which, afterwards, no
one could recall, she broke into a convulsive fit of weeping, went on
till she was exhausted, and subsequently fell asleep.

On the day Maurice learnt that she was out of danger, he walked deep
into the woods. The news had lifted such a load from his mind that he
felt almost happy. But before he reached home again, his brain had
begun to work at matters which, during the period of anxiety, it had
left untouched. At first, in desperation, he had been selfless enough
to hope that Schilsky would return, on learning what had happened.
Now, however, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely
through the ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest anything
should occur to soil the robe of saintly suffering, in which he draped
her.

He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. Furst
received him with open arms, and no allusion was made to the night in
the BRUHL. With the cessation of his anxiety, a feeling of benevolence
towards other people awakened in him, and when, one afternoon, Schwarz
asked the assembled class if no one knew what had become of Krafft,
whether he was ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice who
volunteered to find out. He remembered now that he had not seen Krafft
at the Conservatorium for a week or more.

Frau Schulz looked astonished to see him, and, holding the door in her
hand, made no mien to let him enter. Herr Krafft was away, she said
gruffly, had been gone for about a week, she did not know where or
why. He had left suddenly one morning, without her knowledge, and the
following day a postcard had come from him, stating that all his
things were to lie untouched till his return.

"He was so queer lately that I'd he just as pleased if he stayed away
altogether," she said. "That's all I can tell you. Maybe you'd get
something more out of her. She knows more than she says, anyhow," and
she pointed with her thumb at the door of the adjoining PENSION.

Maurice rang there, and a dirty maid-servant showed him Avery's room.
At his knock, she opened the door herself, and first looked surprised,
then alarmed at seeing him.

"What's the matter? Has anything happened?" she stammered, like one on
the look-out for bad news.

"Then what do you want?" she asked in her short, unpleasant way, when
he had reassured her.

"I came up to see Heinz. And they tell me he is not here; and Frau
Schulz sent me to you. Schwarz was asking for him. Is it true that he
has gone away?"

"Yes, it's true."

"Where to? Will he be away long?"

"How should I know?" she cried rudely. "Am I his keeper? Find out for
yourself, if you must know," and the door slammed to in his face.

He mentioned the incident to Madeleine that evening. She looked
strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A day
or two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, he
tackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of a
praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice
look blank with amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing
certain incidents in his friendship with Krafft, under a different
aspect.

About a fortnight had elapsed since the beginning of Louise's illness;
she was still obliged to keep her bed. More than once, of late,
Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly out of temper.

"Louise rubs me up the wrong way," she complained to Maurice. "And she
isn't in the least grateful for all I've done for her. I really think
she prefers having the nurse about her to me."

"Sick people often have such fancies," he consoled her.

"Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have never got on
well for long together."

But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and threw it on
the piano, with a decisive haste that was characteristic of her in
anger.

"That's the end; I don't go back again. I'm not paid for my services,
and am under no obligation to listen to such things as Louise said to
me to-day. Enough is enough. She is well on the mend, and must get on
now as best she can. I wash my hands of the whole affair."

"But you're surely not going to take what a sick person says
seriously?" Maurice exclaimed in dismay. "How can she possibly get on
with only those strangers about her?"

"She's not so ill now. She'll be all right," answered Madeleine; she
had opened a letter that was on the table, and did not look up as she
spoke. "There's a limit to everything--even to my patience with her
rudeness."

And on returning the following day, he found, sure enough, that, true
to her word, Madeleine had not gone back. She maintained an obstinate
silence about what had happened, and requested that he would now let
the matter drop.

The truth was that Madeleine's conscience was by no means easy.

She had gone to see Louise on that particular afternoon, with even
more inconvenience to herself than usual. On admitting her, Fraulein
Grunhut had endeavoured to detain her in the passage, mumbling and
gesticulating in the mystery-mongering way with which Madeleine had no
patience. It incited her to answer the old woman in a loud, clear
voice; then, brusquely putting her aside, she opened the door of the
sick girl's room.

As she did so, she utttered an exclamation of surprise.
Louise, in a flannel dressing-gown, was standing at the high tiled
stove behind the door. Both her arms were upraised and held to it, and
she leant her forehead against the tiles.

"Good Heavens, what are you doing out of bed?" cried Madeleine; and,
as she looked round the room: "And where is Sister Martha?"

Louise moved her head, so that another spot of forehead came in
contact with the tiles, and looked up at Madeleine from under her
heavy lids, without replying.

Madeleine laid one by one on the table some small purchases she had
made on the way there.

"Well, are you not going to speak to me to-day?" she said in a
pleasant voice, as she unbuttoned her jacket. "Or tell me what I ask
about the Sister?" There was not a shade of umbrage in her tone.

Louise moved her head again, and looked away from Madeleine to the
wall of the room. "I have got up," she answered, in such a low voice
that Madeleine had to pause in what she was doing, to hear her;
"because I could not bear to lie in bed any longer. And I've sent the
Sister away--because . . . oh, because I couldn't endure having her
about me."

"You have sent Sister Martha away?" echoed Madeleine. "On your own
responsibility? Louise!--how absurd! Well, I suppose I must put on my
hat again and fetch her back. How can you get on alone, I should like
to know? Really, I have no time to come oftener than I do."

"I'm quite well now. I don't need anyone."

"Come, get back into bed, like a good girl, and I will make you some
tea," said Madeleine, in the gently superior tone that one uses to a
sick person, to a young child, to anyone with whom it is not fitting
to dispute.

Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low American
rocking-chair, where she crouched despondently.

"I wish I had died," she said in a toneless voice.

Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled the
tea-cups. "Nonsense! You mustn't talk about dying--now that you are
nearly well again. Besides, you know, such things are easily said. One
doesn't mean them."

"I wish I had died. Why didn't you let me die?" repeated Louise in the
same apathetic way.

Madeleine did not reply; she was cogitating whether it would be more
convenient to go after the nurse at once, and what she ought
to do if she could not get her to come back. For Louise would
certainly have despatched her in tragedy-fashion.

Meanwhile the latter had laid her arms along the low arms of the
chair, and now sat gazing from one to the other of her hands. In their
way, these hands of hers had acquired a kind of fame, which she had
once been vain of. They had been photographed; a sculptor had
modelled them for a statue of Antigone--long, slim and strong, with
closely knit fingers, and pale, deep-set nails: hands like those of an
adoring Virgin; hands which had an eloquent language all their own,
but little or no agility, and which were out of place on the keys of a
piano. Louise sat looking at them, and her face was so changed--the
hollow setting of the eyes reminded perpetually of the bones beneath;
the lines were hammered black below the eyes; nostrils and lips were
pinched and thinned--that Madeleine, secretly observing her, remarked
to herself that Louise looked at least ten years older than before.
Her youth, and, with it, such freshness as she had once had, were gone
from her.

"Here is your tea."

The girl drank it slowly, as if swallowing were an effort, while
Madeleine went round the room, touching and ordering, and opening a
window. This done, she looked at her watch.