Books: Maurice Guest

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"If only winter were over!"

He gazed at the expressive lines of hand and wrist, and was reminded
of an adoring Madonna he had somewhere seen engraved: her hands were
held back in the same way; the thumbs slightly thrown out, the three
long fingers together, the little one apart: here as there, was the
same supple, passionate indolence. But he could find no more to say
than on the occasion of his former visit; she did not help him; and
more and more did it seem to the young man as if the words he bad gone
about hugging to him, had never been spoken. After a desperate quarter
of an hour, he rose to take leave. But simultaneously, she, too, got
up from the rocking-chair, and, standing pale and uncertain before
him, asked him if she might trouble him to do something for her. A box
had been sent to her from England, she told him, while she tumbled
over the dusty letters and papers accumulated on the writing-table,
and had been lying unclaimed at the custom-house for several weeks
now--how many she did not know, and she spread out her fingers, with a
funny little movement, to show her ignorance. She had only remembered
it a day or two ago; the dues would no doubt be considerable. If it
were not too much trouble . . . she would be so grateful; she would
rather ask him than Mr. Eggis.

"I should be delighted," said Maurice.

He went the next morning, at nine o'clock, spent a trying hour with
uncivil officials, and, in the afternoon, called to report to Louise.
As he was saying good-bye to her, he inquired if there were
nothing else of a similar nature he could do for her; he was glad to
be of use. Smiling, Louise admitted that there were other things, many
of them, more than he would have patience for. She should try him and
see, said Maurice, and laid his hat down again, to hear what they
were.

As a consequence of this, the following days saw him on various
commissions in different quarters of the town, scanning the names of
shops, searching for streets he did not know. But matters did not
always run smoothly; complications arose, for instance, over a paid
bill that had been sent in a second time, and over an earlier one that
had not been paid at all; and Maurice was forced to confess his
ignorance of the circumstances. When this had happened more than once,
he sat down, with her consent, at the writing-table, to work through
the mass of papers, and the contents of a couple of drawers.

In doing this, he became acquainted with some of the more intimate
details of her life--minute and troublesome details, for which she had
no aptitude. From her scat at the stove, Louise watched him sorting
and reckoning, and she was as grateful to him as it was possible for
her to be, in her present mood. No one had ever done a thing of the
kind for her before; and she was callous to the fact of its being a
stranger, who had his hands thus in her private life. When, horrified
beyond measure at the confusion that reigned in all belonging to her,
Maurice asked her how she had ever succeeded in keeping order, she
told him that, before her illness, there had, now and again, come a
day of strength and purpose, on which she had had the "courage" to
face these distasteful trifles and to end them. But she did not
believe such a day would ever come again.

Bills, bills, bills: dozens of bills, of varying dates, sent in once,
twice, three times, and invariably tossed aside and forgotten--a mode
of proceeding incomprehensible to Maurice, who had never bought
anything on credit in his life. And not because she was in want of
money: there were plenty of gold pieces jingling loose in a drawer;
but from an aversion, which was almost an inability, to take in what
the figures meant. And the amounts added up to alarming totals;
Maurice had no idea what a woman's dress cost, and could only stand
amazed; but the sum spent on fruit and flowers alone, in two months,
represented to his eyes a small fortune. Then there was the Bluthner,
the unused piano; the hire of it had not been paid since the
previous summer. Three terms were owed at Klemm's musical library,
from which no music was now borrowed; fees were still being charged
against her at the Conservatorium, where she had given no formal
notice of leaving. It really did not matter, she said, with that
carelessness concerning money, which was characteristic of her; but it
went against the grain in Maurice to let several pounds be lost for
want of an effort; and he spent a diplomatic half-hour with the
secretaries in the BUREAU, getting her released from paying the whole
of the term that had now begun. As, however, she would not appear
personally, she was under the necessity of writing a letter, stating
that she had left the Conservatorium; and when she had promised twice
to do, it, and it was still unwritten, Maurice stood over her, and
dictated the words into her pen. A day or two afterwards, he prevailed
upon her to do the same for Schwarz, to inform him of her illness, and
to say that, at Easter, if she were better, she would come to him for
a course of private lessons. This was an idea of Maurice's own, and
Louise looked up at him before putting down the words.

"It's not true. But if you think I should say so--it doesn't matter."

This was the burden of all she said: nothing mattered, nothing would
ever matter again. There was not the least need for the half-jesting
tone in which Maurice clothed his air of authority. She obeyed him
blindly, doing what he bade her without question, glad to be
subordinate to his will. As long as he did not ask her to think. or to
feel, or to stir from her chair beside the stove.

But it was only with regard to small practical things; in matters of
more importance she was not to be moved. And the day came, only too
soon, when the positive help Maurice could give her was at an end; she
did not owe a pfennig to anyone; her letters and accounts were filed
and in order. Then she seemed to elude him again. He did what lay in
his power: brought her books that she did not read, brought news and
scraps of chit-chat, which he thought might interest her and which did
not, and an endless store of sympathy. But to all he said and did, she
made the same response: it did not matter.

Since the night on the river, she had not set foot across the
threshold of her room; nervous fears beset her. Maurice was bent on
her going out into the open air; he also wished her to mix with people
again, and thus rid herself of the morbid fancies that were
creeping on her. But she shrank as he spoke of it, and pressed both
hands to her face: it was too cold, she murmured, and too cheerless;
and then the streets! . . . the publicity of the streets, the noise,
the people! This was what she said to him; to herself she added: and
all the old familiar places, to each of which a memory was attached!
He spent hours in urging her to take up some regular occupation; it
would be her salvation, he believed, and, not allowing himself to be
discouraged, he returned to the attack, day after day. But she only
smiled the thin smile with which she defeated most of his proposals
for her good. Work?--what had she to do with work? It had never been
anything to her but a narcotic, enabling her to get through those
hours of the day in which she was alone.

She let Maurice talk on, and hardly heard what he said. He meant well,
but he did not understand. No one understood. No one but herself knew
the weight of the burden she had borne since the day when her
happiness was mercilessly destroyed. Now she could not raise a finger
to help herself. On waking, in the morning, she turned with loathing
from the new day. In the semi-darkness of the room, she lay mo
tionless, half sleeping, or dreaming with open eyes. The clock ticked
benumbingly the long hours away; the wind howled, or the wind was
still; snow fell, or it was frostily clear; but nothing
happened--nothing at all. The day was well ad vanced before she left
her bed for the seat by the stove; there she brooded until she dragged
herself back to bed. One day was the exact counterpart of another.

The only break in the deathlike monotony was Maurice's visit. He came
in, fresh, and eager to see her; he held her hand and said kind things
to her; he talked persuasively, and she listened or not, as she felt
disposed. But little though he was able to touch her, she
unconsciously began to look to his visits; and one day, when he was
detained and could not come, she was aware of a feeling of injury at
his absence.

As time went by, however, Maurice felt more and more clearly that he
was making no headway. His uneasiness increased; for her want of
spirit had something about it that he could not understand. It began
to look to him like a somewhat morbid indulgence in grief.

"This can't go on," he said sternly.

She was in one of her most pitiable moods; for there were gradations
in her unhappiness, as he had learned to know.

"This can't go on. You are killing yourself by inches--and I'm
a party to it."

For the first time, there was a hint of impatience in his manner. To
his surprise, Louise raised her head, raised it quickly, as he had not
seen her make a movement for weeks.

"By inches? Inches only? Oh, I am so strong . . . Nothing hurts me.
Nothing is of any use."

"If you look in the glass, you will see that you're hurting yourself
considerably."

"You mean that I'm getting old ?--and ugly?" she caught him up. "Do you
think I care?--Oh, if I had only had the courage, that day! A few
grains of something, and it would have been all over, long ago. But I
wasn't brave enough. And now I have no more courage in me than
strength in my little finger."

Maurice looked meditatively at her, without replying: this was the
single occasion on which she had been roused to a retort of any kind;
and, bitter though her words were, he could not prevent the spark of
hope which, by their means, was lit in him.

And from this day on, things went forward of themselves. Again and
again, some harmless observation on his part drew forth a caustic
reply from her; it was as if, having once experienced it, she found an
outcry of this kind a relief to her surcharged nerves. At first, what
she said was directed chiefly against herself--this self for which she
now nursed a fanatic hatred, since it had failed her in her need. But,
little by little, he, too, was drawn within the circle of her
bitterness; indeed, it sometimes seemed as if his very kindness
incited her, by laying her under an obligation to him, which it was in
her nature to resent: at others, again, as if she merely wished to try
him, to see how far she might go.

"Do I really deserve that thrust?" he once could not help asking. He
smiled, as he spoke, to take the edge off his words.

Louise threw a penitent glance at him, and, for all answer, held out
her hand.

But, the very next day, after a similar incident, she crossed the room
to him, with the swiftness of movement that was always disturbing in
her, contrasting as it did with her customary indolence. "Forgive me.
I ought not to. And you are the only friend I have. But there's so
much I must say to some one. If I don't say it, I shall go mad."

"Why, of course. That's what I'm here for," said Maurice.

And so it went on--a strange state of things, in which he never called
her by her name, and seldom touched her hand. He had himself well
under control--except for the moment immediately before he saw her, and
the moment after. He could not yet meet her, after the briefest
absence, unmoved.

For a week on end that penetrating rawness had been abroad, which
precedes and accompanies a thaw; and one day, early in February, when,
after the unequalled severity of the winter, the air seemed of an
incredible mildness, the thaw was there in earnest; on the ice of more
than three months' standing, pools of water had formed overnight. By
the JOHANNATEICH, Maurice and Madeleine stood looking dubiously across
the bank of snow, which, here and there, had already collapsed,
leaving miniature crater-rings, flecked with moisture. Several people
who could not tear themselves away, were still flying about the ice,
dexterously avoiding the watery places; and Dove and pretty Susie Fay
called out to them that it was ' better than it looked. But Maurice
was fastidious and Madeleine indifferent; she was really rather tired
of skating, she admitted, as they walked home, and was ashamed to
think of the time she had wasted on it. As, however, this particular
afternoon was already broken into, she would have been glad to go for
a walk; but Maurice did not take up her suggestion, and parted from
her at her house-door.

"Spring is in the air," he sought to tempt Louise, when, a few minutes
later, he entered her room.

She, too, had been aware of the change; for it had aggravated her
dejection. She raised her eyes to his like a tired child, and had not
strength enough to make her usual stand against him. Oh, if he really
wished it so much, she would go out, she said at last. And so he left
her to dress, and ran to the Conservatorium, arriving just in time for
a class.

Later on, a curious uneasiness drew him back to see how she had fared.
It was almost dark, but she had not returned; and he waited for half
an hour before he heard her step in the hall. Directly she came in, he
knew that something was the matter.

In each of her movements was a concentrated, but noiseless energy: she
shut the door after her as if it were never to open again; tore off
rather than unpinned the thick black veil in which she had
shrouded herself; threw her hat on the sofa, furs and jacket to the
hat; then stood motionless, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. Her
face had emerged from its wrappings with renewed pallor; her eyes
shone as if with belladonna. She took no notice of the silent figure
in the corner, did not even look in his direction.

"You've got back," said Maurice, for the sake of saying something.
"It's too late."

At his words, she dropped on a chair, put her arms on the table, and
hid her face in them.

"What's the matter? Has anything happened?" he asked, in quick alarm,
as she burst into violent sobs. He should have been accustomed to her
way of crying by this time--it sounded worse than it was, as he
knew--but it invariably racked him anew. He stood over her; but the
only comfort he ventured on was to lay his hand on her hair--this wild
black hair, which met his fingers springily, with a will of its own.

"What is the matter?" he besought her. "Tell me, Louise--tell me what
it is."

He had to ask several times before he received an answer. Finally, she
sobbed in a muffled voice, without raising her head: "How could you
make me go out! Oh, how COULD you!"

"What do you mean? I don't understand. What is it?" He had visions of
her being annoyed or insulted.

But she only repeated: "How could you! Oh, it was cruel of you!" and
wept afresh.

Word by word, Maurice drew her story from her. There was not very much
to tell.

She had gone out, and had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets to
the ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her courage
began to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank.
Her surroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily
retreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had
concealed--all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses,
streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly the
people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off which
the soft white coating had slid; their contours were as painful to
see. And the mud--oh, God, the mud! It spread itself over every inch of
the way; the roads were rivers of filth, which spattered and splashed;
at the sides of the streets, the slush was being swept into beds.
Before she had gone any distance, her boots and skirts were heavy with
it; and she hated mud, she sobbed--hated it, loathed it, it
affected her with a physical disgust--and this lie might have known
when he sent her out. In the ROSENTAL, it was no better; the paths
were so soaked that they squashed under her feet; on both sides, lay
layers of rotten leaves from the autumn; the trees were only a
net-work of blackened twigs, their trunks surrounded by an undergrowth
that was as ragged as unkempt hair. And everything was mouldering: the
smell of moist, earthy decay reminded her of open graves. Not a soul
was visible but herself. She sat on a seat, the only living creature
in the scene, and the past rose before her with resistless force: the
intensity of her happiness; the base cruelty of his conduct; her
misery, her unspeakable misery; her forlorn desolation, which was of a
piece with the desolation around her, and which would never again be
otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman.--How long she sat
thinking things of this kind, she did not know. But all of a sudden
she started up, frightened both by her wretched thoughts and by the
loneliness of the wood; and she fled, not looking behind her, or
pausing to take breath, till she reached the streets. Into the first
empty droschke she met, she had sunk exhausted, and been driven home.

It was of no use trying to reason with her, or to console her.

"I can't bear my life," she sobbed. "It's too hard . . . and there is
no one to help me. If I had done anything to deserve it . . . then it
would be different . . . then I shouldn't complain. But I didn't--
didn't do anything--unless it was that I cared too much. At least it
was a mistake--a dreadful mistake. I should never have shown him how I
cared: I should have made him believe he loved me best. But I was a
fool. I flung it all at his feet. And it was only natural he should
get tired of me. The wonder was that I held him so long. But, oh, how
can one care as I did, and yet be able to plot and plan? I couldn't.
It isn't in me to do it."

She wept despairingly, with her head on her outstretched arms. When
she raised it again, her tear-stained face looked out, Medusa-like,
from its setting of ruffled hair. More to herself than to the young
man, as if, on this day, secret springs had been touched in her, she
continued with terse disconnectedness: "I couldn't believe it; I
wouldn't--even when I heard it from his own lips. You thought, all of
you, that I was ill; but I wasn't; I was only trying to get used to
the terrible thought--just as a suddenly blinded man has to get used to
being always in the dark. And while I was still struggling
came Madeleine, with her cruel tongue, and told me--you know what she
told me. Oh, if his leaving me had been hard to bear, this stung like
scorpions. I wonder I didn't go mad. I should have, if you hadn't come
to help me. For a day and night, I did not move from the corner of
that sofa there. I turned her words over till there was no sense left
in them. My nails cut my palms."

Her clasped hands were slightly stretched from her: her whole attitude
betrayed the tension at which she was speaking. "Oh, my God, how I
hated him . . . hated him . . . how I hate him still! If I live to be
an old, old woman, I shall never forgive him. For, in time, I might
have learnt to bear his leaving me, if it had only been his work that
took him from me. It was always between us, as it was; but it was at
least only a pale brain thing, not living flesh and blood. But that
all the time he should have been deceiving me, taking pains to do
it--that I cannot forgive. At first, I implored, I prayed there might
be some mistake: you, too, told me there was. And I hoped against
hope--till I saw her. Then, I knew it was true-----as plainly as if it
had been written on that wall." She paused for breath, in this bitter
pleasure of laying her heart bare. "For I wasn't the person he could
always have been satisfied with--I see it now. He liked a woman to be
fair, and soft, and gentle--not dark, and hot-tempered. It was only a
phase, a fancy, that brought him to me, and it couldn't have lasted
for ever. But all I asked of him was common honesty--to be open with
me: it wasn't much to ask, was it? Not more than we expect of a
stranger in the street. But it was too much for him, all the same. And
so . . . now . . . I have nothing left to remind me that I ever knew
him. That night, when I had seen her, I burned everything--every
photograph, every scrap of writing I had ever had from him . . . if
only one could burn memories too! I had to tear my heart over it; I
used to think I felt it bleeding, drop by drop. For all the suffering
fell on me, who had done nothing. He went free."

"Are you sure of that? It may have been hard for him, too--harder than
you think." Maurice was looking out of the window, and did not turn.

She shook her head. "The person who cares, can't scheme and contrive.
He didn't care. He never really cared for me--only for himself; at
heart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid for it all--I who hate and
shrink from pain, who would do anything to avoid it. I want to
go through life knowing only what is bright and happy; and time and
again, I am crushed and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven't
suffered like this. And now perhaps you understand, why I never want
to hear his name again, and why I shall never--not if I live to be a
hundred years old--never forgive him. It isn't in me to do it. As a
child, I ground my heel into a rose if it pricked me."

There was a silence. Then she sighed, and pushed her hair back from
forehead. "I don't know why I should say all this to you," she said
contritely. "But often, just with you, I seem to forget what I am
saying. It must be, I think, because you're so quiet yourself."

At this, Maurice turned and came over to her. "No, it's for another
reason. You need to say these things to some one. You have brooded
over them to yourself till they are magnified out of all proportion.
It's the best thing in the world for you to say them aloud." He drew
up a chair, and sat down beside her. "Listen to me. You told me once,
not very long ago, that I was your friend. Well, I want to speak to
you to-night as that friend, and to play the doctor a little as well.
Will you not go away from here, for a time?--go away and be with people
who know nothing of . . . all this--people you don't need to be afraid
of? Let yourself be persuaded. You have such a healthy nature. Give it
a chance."

She looked at him with a listless forbearance. "Don't go on. I know
everything you are going to say.--That's always the way with you calm,
quiet people, who are not easily moved yourselves. You still but faith
in these trite remedies; for you've never known the ills they're
supposed to cure."

"Never mind me. It's you we have to think of. And I want you to give
my old-fashioned remedy a trial."

But she did not answer, and again a few minutes went by, before she
stretched out her hand to him. "Forget what I've said to-night. I
shall never speak of it again.--But then you, too, must promise not to
make me go out alone--to think and remember--in all the dirt and
ugliness of the streets."

And Maurice promised.

IX.

The unnatural position circumstances had forced him into, was to him
summed up in the fact that he had spoken in defence of the man he
despised above all others. Only at isolated moments was he content
with the part he played; it was wholly unlike what he had intended. He
had wished to be friend and mentor to her, and he was now both; but
nevertheless, there was something wrong about his position. It seemed
as if he had at first been satisfied with too low a place in her
esteem, ever to allow of him taking a higher one. He was conscious
that in her liking for him, there was a drop of contempt. And he
tormented himself with such a question as: should a new crisis in her
life arise, would she, now that she knows you, turn to you? And in
moments of despondency he answered no. He felt the tolerance that
lurked in her regard for him. Kindness and care on his part were not
enough.

None of his friends had an idea of what was going on. No one he knew
lived in the neighbourhood of the BRUDERSTRASSE; and, the skating at
an end, he was free to spend his time as he chose. When another brief
nip of frost occurred, he alleged pressure of work, and did not take
advantage of it.

Then, early one morning, Dove paid him a visit, with a list in his
hand. Since the night of the skating party, his acquaintances had not
seen much of Dove; for he had been in close attendance on the pretty
little American, who made no scruple of exacting his services. Now,
after some preamble, it came out that he wished to include Maurice in
a list of mutual friends, who were clubbing to give a ball--a
"Bachelors' Ball," Dove called it, since the gentlemen were to pay for
the tickets, and to invite the ladies. But Maurice, vexed at the
interruption, made it clear that he had neither time nor inclination
for an affair of this kind: he did not care a rap for dancing. And
after doing his best to persuade him, and talking round the matter for
half an hour, Dove said he did not of course wish to press anyone
against his will, and departed to disturb other people.