Books: Maurice Guest

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Ephie did not need twice telling: she turned and fled. He heard the
hall-door bang behind her.

"Do try to control yourself. Miss Dufrayer--Louise! Every one in the
house will hear you."

But she only laughed the more. And now the merest trifles helped to
increase the paroxysm--the way Maurice worked his hands, Ephie's muff
lying forgotten on a chair, the landlady's inquisitive face peering in
at the door. The laugh continued, though it had become a kind of
cackle--a sound without tone. Maurice could bear it no longer. He went
up to her and tried to take her hands. She repulsed him, but he was
too strong for her. He took both her hands in his, and pressed her
down on a chair. He was not clear himself what to do next; but, the
moment he touched her, the laughter ceased. She gasped for breath; he
thought she would choke, and let her hands go again. She pressed them
to her throat; her breath came more and more quickly; her eyes closed;
and falling forward on her knees, she hid her face in the cushioned
seat of the sofa.

Then the tears came, and what tears! In all his life, Maurice had
never heard crying like this. He moved as far away from her as he
could, stood at the window, staring out and biting his lips, while she
sobbed, regardless of his presence, with the utter abandon of a child.
Like a child, too, she wept rebelliously, unchastenedly, as he could
not have believed it possible for a grown person to cry. Such grief as
this, so absolute a despair, had nothing to do with reason or the
reasoning faculties; and the words were not invented that would be
able to soothe it.

But, little by little, a change came over her crying. The rebellion
died out of it; it grew duller, and more blunted, hopeless, without
life. Her strength was almost gone. Now, however, there was another
note of childishness in it, that of complete exhaustion, which it is
so hard to hear. The tears rose to his own eyes; he would have liked
to go to her, to lay his hand on her head, and treat her tenderly, to
make her cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had he
done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all intensely
passionate grief, there comes a moment of subsidence, when the
grief and its origin are forgotten, and the one overruling desire is
the desire to be comforted, no matter who the comforter and what his
means, so long as they are masterful and strong.

She grew calmer; and soon she was only shaken at widening intervals by
a sob. Then these, too, ceased, and Maurice held his breath. But as,
after a considerable time had elapsed, she still lay without making
sound or movement, he crossed the room to look at her. She was fast
asleep, half sitting, half lying, with her head on the cushions, and
the tears wet on her cheeks. He hesitated between a wish to see her in
a more comfortable position, and an unwillingness to disturb her.
Finally, he took an eider-down quilt from the bed, and wrapped it
round her; then slipped noiselessly from the room.

It was past eight o'clock.

* * * * *

Ephie ran down the stairs as if a spectre were at her heels, and even
when in the street, did not venture to slacken her speed. Although the
dusk was rapidly passing into dark, a good deal of notice was
attracted by the sight of a well-dressed young girl running along,
holding a handkerchief to her face, and every now and then emitting a
loud sob. People stood and stared after her, and some little boys ran
with her. Instead of dropping her pace when she saw this, Ephie grew
confused, and ran more quickly than before. She had turned at random,
on coming out of the house; and she was in a part of the town she did
not know. In her eagerness to get away from people, she took any turn
that offered; and after a time she found that she had crossed the
river, and was on what was almost a country road. A little further
off, she knew, lay the woods; if once she were in their shelter, she
would be safe; and, without stopping to consider that night was
falling, she ran towards them at full speed. On the first seat she
came to she sank breathless and exhausted.

Her first sensation was one of relief at being alone. She unpinned and
took off the big, heavy hat, and laid it on the seat beside her, in
order to be more at her case; and then she cried, heartily, and
without precautions, enjoying to the full the luxury of being
unwatched and unheard. Since teatime, she seemed to have been fighting
her tears, exercising a self-restraint that was new to her and
very hard; and not to-day alone--oh, no, for weeks past, she had been
obliged to act a part. Not even in her bed at night had she been free
to indulge her grief; for, if she cried then, it made her pale and
heavy-eyed next day, and exposed her to Joan's comments. And there
were so many things to cry about: all the emotional excitement of the
summer, with its ups and downs of hope and fear; the never-ceasing
need of dissimulation; the gnawing uncertainty caused by Schilsky's
silence; the growing sense of blankness and disappointment; Joan's
suspicions; Maurice's discovery; the knowledge that Schilsky had gone
away without a word to her; and, worst of all, and most inexplicable,
the terrible visit of the afternoon--at the remembrance of the madwoman
she had escaped from, Ephie's tears flowed with renewed vigour. Her
handkerchief was soaked and useless; she held her fur tippet across
her eyes to receive the tears as they fell; and when this grew too
wet, she raised the skirt of her dress to her face. Not a sound was to
be heard but her sobbing; she was absolutely alone; and she wept on
till those who cared for her, whose chief wish was to keep grief from
her, would hardly have recognized in her the child they loved.

How long she had been there she did not know, when she was startled to
her feet by a loud rustling in the bushes behind her. Then, of a
sudden, she became aware that it was pitch-dark, and that she was all
by herself in the woods. She took to her heels, in a panic of fear,
and did not stop running till the street-lamps came into sight. When
she was under their friendly shine, and could see people walking on
the other side of the river, she remembered that she had left her hat
lying on the seat. At this fresh misfortune, she began to cry anew.
But not for anything in the world would she have ventured back to
fetch it.

She crossed the Pleisse and came to a dark, quiet street, where few
people were; and here she wandered up and down. It was late; at home
they would be sitting at supper now, exhausting themselves in
conjectures where she could be. Ephie was very hungry, and at the
thought of the warmth and light of the supper-table, a lump rose in
her throat. If it had been only her mother, she might have faced
her--but Joan! Home in this plight, at this hour, hatless, and with
swollen face, to meet Joan's eyes and questions!--she shivered at the
idea. Moreover, the whole PENSION would get to know what had
happened to her; she would need to bear inquisitive. looks and words;
she would have to explain, or, still worse, to invent and tell stories
again; and of what use were they now, when all was over? A feeling of
lassitude overcame her--an inability to begin fresh. All over: he would
never put his arm round her again, never come towards her, careless
and smiling, and call her his "little, little girl."

She sobbed to herself as she walked. Everything was bleak, and black,
and cheerless. She would perhaps die of the cold, and then all of
them, Joan in particular, would be filled with remorse. She stood and
looked at the inky water of the river between its stone walls. She had
read of people drowning themselves; what if she went down the steps
and threw herself in?--and she feebly fingered at the gate. But it was
locked and chained; and at the idea of her warm, soft body touching
the icy water; at the picture of herself lying drowned, with dank
hair, or, like the Christian Martyr, floating away on the surface; at
the thought of their grief, of HIM wringing his hands over her corpse,
she was so moved that she wept aloud again, and amost ran to be out of
temptation's way.

It had begun to drizzle. Oh, how tired she was! And she was obliged
constantly to dodge impertinently staring men. In a long, wide street,
she entered a door-way that was not quite so dark as the others, and
sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. Here she must have dozed,
for she was roused by angry voices on the floor above. It sounded like
some one who was drunk; and she fled trembling back to the street.

A neighbouring clock struck ten. At this time of night, she could not
go home, even though she wished to. She was wandering the streets like
any outcast, late at night, without a hat--and her condition of
hatlessness she felt to be the chief stigma. But she was starving with
hunger, and so tired that she could scarcely drag one foot after the
other. Oh, what would they say if they knew what their poor little
Ephie was enduring! Her mother--Joan---Maurice!

Maurice! The thought of him came to her like a ray of light. It was to
Maurice she would turn. He would be good to her, and help her; he had
always been kind to her, till this afternoon. And he knew what had
happened; it would not be necessary to explain.--Oh, Maurice, Maurice!

She knew his address, if she could but find the street. A droschke
passed, and she tried to hail it; but she did not like to
advance too far out of the shadow, on account of her bare head.
Finally, plucking up courage, she inquired the way of a feather-hatted
woman, who had eyed her with an inquisitive stare.

It turned out that the BRAUSTRASSE was just round the corner; she had
perhaps been in the street already, without knowing it; and now she
found it, and the house, without difficulty. The street-door was still
open; or she would never have been bold enough to ring.

The stair was poorly lighted, and full of unsavoury smells. In her
agitation, Ephie rang on a wrong floor, and a strange man answered her
timid inquiry. She climbed a flight higher, and rang again. There was
a long and ominous pause, in which her heart beat fast; if Maurice did
not live here either, she would drop where she stood. She was about to
ring a second time, when felt slippers and an oil lamp moved along the
passage, the glass window was opened, and a woman's face peered out at
her. Yes, Herr Guest lived there, certainly, said Frau Krause, divided
between curiosity and indignation at having to rise from bed; and she
held the lamp above her head, in order to see Ephie better. But he was
not at home, and, even if he were, at this hour of night . . . The
heavy words shuffled along, giving the voracious eyes time to devour.

At the thought that her request might be denied her, Ephie's courage
took its last leap.

"Why, I must see him. I have something important to tell him. Could I
not wait?" she urged in her broken German, feeling unspeakably small
and forlorn. And yielding to a desire to examine more nearly the bare,
damp head and costly furs, Frau Krause allowed the girl to pass before
her into Maurice's room.

She loitered as long as she could over lighting the lamp that stood on
the table; and meanwhile threw repeated glances at Ephie, who, having
given one look round the shabby room, sank into a corner of the sofa
and hid her face: the coarse browed woman, in petticoat and
night-jacket, seemed to her capable of robbery or murder. And so Frau
Krause unwillingly withdrew, to await further developments outside:
the holy, smooth-faced Herr Guest was a deep one, after all.

When Maurice entered, shortly before eleven, Ephie started up from a
broken sleep. He came in pale and disturbed, for Frau Krause had met
him in the passage with angry mutterings about a FRAUENZIMMER in his
room; and his thoughts had at once leaped fearfully to Louise.
When he saw Ephie, he uttered a loud exclamation of surprise.

"Good Lord, Ephie! What on earth are you doing here?"

She sprang at his hands, and caught her breath hysterically.

"Oh, Morry, you've come at last. Oh, I thought you would never come.
Where have you been? Oh, Morry, help me--help me, or I shall die!"

"Whatever is the matter? What are you doing here?"

At his perturbed amazement, she burst into tears, still clinging fast
to his hands. He led her back to the sofa, from which she had sprung.

"Hush, hush! Don't cry like that. What's the matter, child? Tell me
what it is--at once--and let me help you."

"Oh, yes, Morry, help me, help me! There's no one else. I didn't know
where to go. Oh, what shall I do!"

Her own words sounded so pathetic that she sobbed piteously. Maurice
stroked her hand, and waited for her to grow quieter. But now that she
had laid the responsibility of herself on other shoulders, Ephie was
quite unnerved: after the dark and fearful wanderings of the evening,
to be beside some one who knew, who would take care of her, who would
tell her what to do!

She sobbed and sobbed. Only with perseverance did Maurice draw from
her, word by word, an account of where she had been that evening,
broken by such cries as: "Oh, what shall I do! I can't ever go home
again--ever! . . . and I lost my hat. Oh, Morry, Morry! And I didn't
know he had gone away--and it wasn't true what I said, that he was
coming back to marry me soon.. I only said it to spite her, because
she said such dreadful things to me. But we were engaged, all the
same; he said he would come to New York to marry me. And now . . . oh,
dear, oh, Morry! . . ."

"Then he really promised to marry you, did he?"

"Yes, oh, yes. Everything was fixed. The last day I was there," she
wept. "But I didn't know he was going away; he never said a word about
it. Oh, what shall I do! Go after him, and bring him back, Morry. He
must come back. He can't leave me like this, he can't--oh, no, indeed!"

"You don't mean to say you went to see him, Ephie?--alone?--at his
room?" queried Maurice slowly, and he did not know how sternly. "When?
How often? Tell me everything. This is no time for fibbing."

But he could make little of Ephie's sobbed and hazy version of the
story; she herself could not remember clearly now; the
impressions of the last few hours had been so intense as to obliterate
much of what had gone before. "I thought I would drown myself . . .
but the water was so black. Oh, why did you take me to that dreadful
woman? Did you hear what she said? It wasn't true, was it? Oh, it
can't be!"

"It was quite true, Ephie. What he told YOU wasn't true. He never
really cared for anyone but her. They were--were engaged for years."

At this, she wept so heart-rendingly that he was afraid Frau Krause
would come in and interfere.

"You MUST control yourself. Crying won't alter things now. If you had
been frank and candid with us, it would never have happened." This was
the only reproach he could make her; what came after was Johanna's
business, not his. "And now I'm going to take you home. It's nearly
twelve o'clock. Think of the state your mother and sister will be in
about you."

But at the mention of Johanna, Ephie flung herself on the sofa again
and beat the cushions with her hands.

"Not Joan, not Joan!" she wailed. "No, I won't go home. What will she
say to me? Oh, I am so frightened! She'll kill me, I know she will."
And at Maurice's confident assurance that Johanna would have nothing
but love and sympathy for her, she shook her head. "I know Joan.
She'll never forgive me. Morry, let me stay with you. You've always
been kind to me. Oh, don't send me away!"

"Don't be a silly child, Ephie. You know yourself you can't stay
here."

But he gave up urging her, coaxed her to lie down, and sat beside her,
stroking her hair. As he said no more, she gradually ceased to sob,
and in what seemed to the young man an incredibly short time, he heard
from her breathing that she was asleep. He covered her up, and stood a
sheet of music before the lamp, to shade her eyes. In the passage he
ran up against Frau Krause, whom he charged to prevent Ephie in the
event of her attempting to leave the house.

Buttoning up his coat-collar, he hastened through the mistlike rain to
fetch Johanna.

There was a light in every window of the PENSION in the
LESSINGSTRASSE; the street-door and both doors of the flat stood open.
As he mounted the stairs a confused sound of voices struck his car;
and when he entered the passage, he heard Mrs. Cayhill crying noisily.
Johanna came out to him at once; she was in hat and cloak. She
listened stonily to his statement that Ephie was safe at his lodgings,
and put no questions; but, on her returning to the sitting-room, Mrs.
Cayhill's sobs stopped abruptly, and several women spoke at once.

Johanna preserved her uncompromising attitude as they walked the
midnight streets. But as Maurice made no mien to explain matters
further, she so far conquered her aversion as to ask: "What have you
done to her?"

The young man's consternation at this view of the case was so evident
that even she felt the need of wording her question differently.

"Answer me. What is Ephie doing at your rooms?"

Maurice cleared his throat. "It's a long and unpleasant story, Miss
Cayhill. And I'm afraid I must tell it from the beginning.--You didn't
suspect, I fear, that . . . well, that Ephie had a fancy for some one
here?"

At these words, which were very different from those she had expected,
Johanna eyed him in astonishment.

"A fancy!" she repeated incredulously. "What do you mean?"

"Even more--an infatuation," said Maurice with deliberation. "And for
some one I daresay you have never even heard of--a...a man here, a
violinist, called Schilsky."

The elaborate fabric she had that day reared, fell together about
Johanna's ears. She stared at Maurice as if she doubted his sanity;
and she continued to listen, with the same icy air of disbelief, to
his stammered and ineffectual narrative, until he said that he
believed "it" had been "going on since summer."

At this Johanna laughed aloud. "That is quite impossible," she said.
"I knew everything Ephie did, and everywhere she went."

"She met him nearly every day. They exchanged letters, and-----"

"It is impossible," repeated Johanna with vehemence, but less surely.

"----and a sort of engagement seems to have existed between them."

"And you knew this and never said a word to me?"

"I didn't know--not till to-night. I only suspected something--once . . .
long ago. And l couldn't--I mean--one can't say a thing like that
without being quite sure----"

But here he broke down, conscious, as never before, of the negligence
he had been guilty of towards Ephie. And Johanna was not
likely to spare him: there was, indeed, a bitter antagonism to his
half-hearted conduct in the tone in which she said: "I stood to Ephie
in a mother's place. You might have warned me--oh, you might, indeed!"

They walked on in silence--a hard, resentful silence. Then Johanna put
the question he was expecting to hear.

"And what has all this to do with to-night?"

Maurice took up the thread of his narrative again, telling how Ephie
had waited vainly for news since returning from Switzerland, and how
she had only learnt that afternoon that Schilsky had been in Leipzig,
and had gone away again, without seeing her, or letting her know that
he did not intend to return.

"And how did she hear it?"

"At a friend's house."

"What friend?"

"A friend of mine, a--No; I had better be frank with you: the girl
this fellow was engaged to for a year or more."

"And Ephie did not know that?"

He shook his head.

"But you knew, and yet took her there?"

It was a hopeless job to try to exonerate himself. "Yes, there were
reasons--I couldn't help it, in fact. But I'm afraid I should not be
able to make you understand."

"No, never!" retorted Johanna, and squared her shoulders.

But there was more to be said--she had worse to learn before Ephie was
handed over to her care.

"And Ephie has been very foolish," he began anew, without looking at
her. "It seems--from what she has told me tonight--that she has been to
see this man . . . been at his rooms . . . more than once."

At first, he was certain, Johanna did not grasp the meaning of what he
said; she turned a blank face curiously to him. But, a moment later,
she gave a low cry, and hardly able to form the words for excitement,
asked: "Who . . . what . . . what kind of a man was he--this . . .
Schilsky?"

"Rotten," said Maurice; and she did not press him further. He heard
her breath coming quickly, and saw the kind of stiffening that went
through her body; but she kept silence, and did not speak again till
they were almost at his house-door. Then she said, in a voice that was
hoarse with feeling: "It has been all my fault. I did not take proper
care of her. I was blind and foolish. And I shall never be able to
forgive myself for it--never. But that Ephic--my little
Ephie--the child I--that Ephie could . . . could do a thing like
this . . ." Her voice tailed off in a sob.

Maurice struck matches, to light her up the dark staircase; and the
condition of the stairs, the disagreeable smells, the poverty of wall
and door revealed, made Johanna's heart sink still further: to
surroundings such as these had Ephie accustomed herself. They entered
without noise; everything was just as Maurice had left it, except that
the lamp had burned too high and filled the room with its fumes. As
Johanna paused, undecided what to do, Ephie started up, and, at the
sight of her sister, burst into loud cries of fear. Hiding her face,
she sobbed so alarmingly that Johanna did not venture to approach her.
She remained standing beside the table, one thin, ungloved hand
resting on it, while Maurice bent over Ephie and tried to soothe her.

"Please fetch a droschke," Johanna said grimly, as Ephie's sobs showed
no signs of abating; and when, after a lengthy search in the night,
Maurice returned, she was standing in the same position, staring with
drawn, unblinking eyes at the smoky lamp, which no one had thought of
lowering. Ephie was still crying, and only Maurice might go near her.
He coaxed her to rise, wrapped his rug round her, and carried her,
more than he led her, down the stairs.

"Be good enough to drive home with us," said Johanna. And so he sat
with his arm round Ephie, who pressed her face against his shoulder,
while the droschke jolted over the cobbled streets, and Johanna held
herself pale and erect on the opposite seat. She mounted the stairs in
front of them. Ephie was limp and heavy going up; but no sooner did
she catch sight of Mrs. Cayhill than, with a cry, she rushed from the
young man's side, and threw herself into her mother's arms.

"Oh, mummy, mummy!"

Downstairs, in the rain-soaked street, Maurice found the
droschke-driver waiting for his fare. It only amounted to a couple of
marks, and it was no doubt a just retribution for what had happened
that he should be obliged to lay it out; but, none the less, it seemed
like the last straw--the last dismal touch--in a day of forlorn
discomfort.

V.

A few weeks later, a great variety of cabin-trunks and saratogas
blocked the corridor of the PENSION. The addresses they bore were in
Johanna's small, pointed handwriting.

On this, the last afternoon of the Cayhills' stay in Leipzig, Maurice
saw Johanna again for the first time. She had had her hands full. In
the woods, on that damp October night, and on her subsequent
wanderings, Ephie had caught a severe cold; and the doctor had feared
an inflammation of the lungs. This had been staved off; but there was
also, it seemed, a latent weakness of the chest, hitherto unsuspected,
which kept them anxious. Ephie still had a dry, grating cough, which
was troublesome at night, and left her tired and fretful by day. They
were travelling direct to the South of France, where they intended to
remain until she had quite recovered her strength.

Maurice sat beside Johanna on the deep sofa where he and Ephie had
worked at harmony together. But the windows of the room were shut now,
and the room itself looked unfamiliar; for it had been stripped of all
the trifles and fancy things that had given it such a comfortable,
home-like air, and was only the bare, lodging-house room once more.
Johanna was as self-possessed as of old, a trifle paler, a trifle
thinner of lip.

She told him that they intended leaving quietly the next morning,
without partings or farewells. Ephie was still weak and the less
excitement she had to undergo, the better it would be for her.

"Then I shall not see Ephie again?" queried Maurice in surprise.

Johanna thought not: it would only recall the unhappy night to her
memory; besides, she had not asked to see him, as she no doubt would
have done, had she wished it.--At this, the eleventh hour, Johanna did
not think it worth while to tell Maurice that Ephie bore him an
unalterable grudge.

"I never want to see him again."

That was all she said to Johanna; but, during her illness, she had
brooded long over his treachery. And even if things had come all right
in the end, she would never have been able to forgive his
speaking to her of Schilsky in the way he had done. No, she was
finished with Maurice Guest; he was too double-faced, too deceitful
for her.--And she cried bitterly, with her face turned to the wall.