Books: Maurice Guest

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Maurice had also to stand fire from Madeleine; for she had counted on
his inviting her. She was first incredulous, then offended, at
his refusal: and she pooh-poohed his strongest argument--that he did
not own a dress-suit. If that was all, she knew a shop in the BRUHL,
where such things could be hired for a song.

Maurice now thought the matter closed. Not many days later, however,
Dove appeared again, with a crestfallen air. He had still over a dozen
tickets on his hands, and, at the low price fixed, unless all were
sold, the expenses of the evening would not be covered. In order to
get rid of him, Maurice bought a ticket, on the condition that he was
not expected to use it, and also suggested some fresh people Dove
might try; so that the latter went off with renewed courage on his
disagreeable errand.

Maurice mentioned the incident to Louise that evening, as he mentioned
any trifle he thought might interest her. He sat on the edge of his
chair, and did not mean to stay; for he had found her on the sofa with
a headache.

So far, she had listened to him with scant attention; but at this, she
raised her eyebrows.

"Then you don't care for dancing?"--she could hardly believe it.

He repeated the words he had used to Dove.

She smiled faintly, looking beyond him, at a sombre patch of sky.

"I should think not. If it were me!----" She raised her hand, and
considered her fingers.

"If it were you?--yes?"

But she did not continue.

It had been almost a spring day: that, no doubt, accounted for her
headache. Maurice made a movement to rise. But Louise turned quickly
on her side, and, in her own intense way, said: "Listen. You have the
ticket, you say? Use it, and take me with you. Will you?"

He smiled as at the whim of a child. But she was in earnest.

"Will you?"

"No, of course not."

He tempered his answer with the same smile. But she was not pleased--he
saw that. Her nostrils tightened, and then, dilated, as they had a way
of doing when she was annoyed. For some time after, she did not speak.

But the very next day, when he was remonstrating with her over some
small duty which she had no inclination to perform, she turned on him
with an unreasonable irritation. "You only want me to do
disagreeable things. Anything that is pleasant, you set yourself
against."

It took him a minute to grasp that she was referring to what he had
said the evening before.

"Yes, but then . . . I didn't think you were in earnest."

"Am I in the habit of saying things I don't mean? And haven't you said
yourself that I am killing myself, shut up in here?--that I must go out
and mix with people? Very well, here is my chance."

He kept silence: he did not know whether she was not mainly inspired
by a spirit of contradiction, and he was afraid of inciting her, by
resistance, to say something she would be unable to retract. "I don't
think you've given the matter sufficient thought," he said at last.
"It can't be decided offhand."

She was angry, even more with herself than with him. "Oh, I know what
you mean. You think I shall be looked askance at. As if it mattered
what people say! All my life I haven't cared, and I shall not begin
now, when I have less reason than ever before."

He did not press the subject; he hoped she would change her mind, and
thus render further discussion unnecessary. But this was not the case;
she clung to the idea, and was deaf to reason. To a certain extent, he
could feel for her; but he was too troubled by the thought of
unpleasant possibilities, not to endeavour to persuade her against it:
he knew, as she did not, how unkindly she had been spoken of; and he
was not sure whether her declared bravado was strong enough to sustain
her. But the more he reasoned, the more determined she was to have her
own way; and she took his efforts in very bad part.

"You pretend to be solicitous about me," she said one afternoon, from
her seat by the fire. "Yet when a chance of diversion comes you
begrudge it to me. You would rather I mouldered on here."

"That's not generous of you. It is only you I am thinking of--in all
this ridiculous affair."

The word stung her. "Ridiculous? How dare you say that! I'm still
young, am I not? And I have blood in my veins, not water. Well, I want
to feel it. For months now, I have been walled up in this tomb. Now I
want to live. Not--do you understand?--to go out alone, on a filthy day,
with no companion but my own thoughts. I want to dance--to
forget myself--with light and music. It's the most natural thing in the
world. Anyone but you would think so."

"It is not life you mean; it's excitement."

"What it means is that you don't want to take me.--Yes, that's what it
is. But I can get some one else. I will send for Eggis; he will have
no objection."

"Why drag in that cad's name? You know very well if you do go, it will
be with me, and no one else."

A slight estrangement grew up between them. Maurice was hurt: she had
shown too openly the small value she set on his opinion. In addition
to this, he was disagreeably affected by her craving for excitement at
any cost. To his mind, there was more than a touch of impropriety in
the proceeding; it was just as if a mourner of a few months' standing
should suddenly discard his mourning, and with it all the other
decencies of grief.

She had not been entirely wrong in accusing him of unreadiness to
accompany her. When he pictured to himself the astonished faces of his
friends, he found it impossible to look forward to the event with
composure. He saw now that it would have been better to make no secret
of his friendship with Louise; so harmless was it that every one he
knew might have assisted at it; but now, the very abruptness of its
disclosure would put it in a bad light. Through Dove, he noised it
abroad that he would probably be present at the ball after all; but he
shunned Madeleine with due precaution, and could not bring himself
even to hint who his companion might be. In his heart, he still
thought it possible that Louise might change her mind at the last
moment--take fright in the end, at what she might have to face.

But the night came, and this had not happened. While he dressed
himself in the hired suit, which was too large here, too small there,
he laid a plan of action for the evening. Since it had to be gone
through with, it must be carried off in a highhanded way. He would do
what he could to make her presence in the hall seem natural; he would
be attentive, without devoting himself wholly to her; and he would
induce her to leave early.

He called for her at eight o'clock. The landlady said that Fraulein
was not quite ready, and told him to wait in the passage. But the door
of the room was ajar, and Louise herself called to him to come in.

It was comparatively dark; for she had the lamp behind the
screen, where he heard her moving about. Her skirts rustled; drawers
and cupboards were pulled noisily open. Then she came out, with the
lamp in her hand.

Maurice was leaning against the piano. He raised his eyes, and made a
step forward, to take the lamp from her. But after one swift, startled
glance, he drew back, colouring furiously. For a moment he could not
collect himself: his heart seemed to have leapt into his throat, and
there to be hammering so hard that he had no voice with which to
answer her greeting.

Owing to what he now termed his idiotic preoccupation with himself, he
had overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in evening dress.
Another thing was, he had never seen Louise in any but street-dress,
or the loose dressing-gown. Now he called himself a fool and absurd;
this was how she was obliged to be. Convention decreed it, hence it
was perfectly decorous; it was his own feelings that were unnatural,
overstrained. But, in the same breath, a small voice whispered to him
that all dresses were not like this one; also that every girl was not
of a beauty, which, thus emphasised, made the common things of life
seen poor and stale.

Louise wore a black dress, which glistened over all its surface, as if
it were sown with sparks; it wound close about her, and out behind her
on the floor. But this was only the sheath, from which rose the
whiteness of her arms and shoulders, and the full column of her
throat, on which the black head looked small. Until now, he had seen
her bared wrist--no more. Now the only break on the long arm was a band
of black velvet, which as it were insisted on the petal-white purity
of the skin, and served in place of a sleeve.

Strange thoughts coursed through the young man's mind. His first
impulse had been to avert his eyes; in this familiar room it did not
seem fitting to see her dressed so differently from the way he had
always known her. Before, however, he had followed this sensation to
an end, he made himself the spontaneous avowal that, until now, he had
never really seen her. He had known and treasured her face--her face
alone. Now he became aware that to the beautiful head belonged also a
beautiful body, that, in short, every bit of her was beautiful and
desirable. And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painful
reflection: others besides himself would make a similar observation;
she was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this struck
him as such an unbearable profanation, that he could have gone
down on his knees to her, to implore her to stay at home.

Unconscious of his embarrassment, Louise had gone to the
console-glass; and there, with the lamp held first above her head,
then placed on the console-table, she critically examined her
appearance. As if dissatisfied, she held a velvet bow to the side of
her hair, and considered the effect; she took a powderpuff, and patted
cheeks and neck with powder. Next she picked up a narrow band of
velvet, on which a small star was set, and put it round her throat.
But the clasp would not meet behind, and, having tried several times
in vain to fasten it, she gave an impatient exclamation.

"I can't get it in."

As Maurice did not offer to help her, she went out of the room with
the thing in her hand. During the few seconds she was absent, the
young man racked his brain to invent telling reasons which would
induce her not to go; but when she returned, slightly flushed at the
landlady's ready flattery, she was still so engrossed in herself, and
so unmindful of him, that he recognised once more his utter
powerlessness. He only half existed for her this evening: her manner
was as different as her dress.

She gathered her skirts high under her cloak, displaying her feet in
fur-lined snow-boots. In the turmoil of his mind, Maurice found
nothing to say as they went. But she did not notice his silence; there
was a suppressed excitement in her very walk; and she breathed in the
cold, crisp air with open lips and nostrils, like a wild animal.

"Oh, how glad I am I came! I might still have been sitting in that
dull room--when I haven't danced for years--and when I love it so!"

"I can't understand you caring about it," he said, and the few words
contained all his bitterness.

"That is only because you don't know me," she retorted, and laughed.
"Dancing is a passion with me. I have dance-rhythms in my blood, I
think.--My mother was a dancer."

He echoed her words in a helpless way, and a set of new images ran
riot in his brain. But Louise only smiled, and said no more.

They were late in arriving; dancing had already begun; the cloak-rooms
were black with coats and mantles. In the narrow passage that divided
the rooms, two Englishmen were putting on their gloves. As Maurice
changed his shoes, close to the door, he overheard one of
these men say excitedly: "By Jove, there's a pair of shoulders! Who
the deuce is it?"

Maurice knew the speaker by sight: he was a medical student, named
Herries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his skill as a
skater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a bunch of violets in
his buttonhole.

"You haven't been here long enough, old man, or you wouldn't need to
ask," answered his companion. Then he dropped his voice, and made a
somewhat disparaging remark--so low, however, but what the listener was
forced to hear it, too.

Both laughed a little. But though Maurice rose and clattered his
chair, Herries persisted, with an Englishman's supreme indifference to
the bystander: "Do you think she can dance?"

"Can't tell. Looks a trifle heavy."

"Well, I'll risk it. Come on. Let's get some one to introduce us."

The blood had rushed to Maurice's head and buzzed there: another
second, and he would have stepped out and confronted the speaker. But
the incident had passed like a flash. And it was better so: it would
have been a poor service to her, to begin the evening with an
unpleasantness. Besides, was this not what he had been bracing himself
to expect? He looked stealthily over at Louise; considering the
proximity of the rooms, it was probable that she, too, had overheard
the derogatory words. But when she had put on her gloves, she took his
arm without a trace of discomfiture.

They entered the hall at the close of a polka, and slipped unnoticed
into the train of those who promenaded. But they had not gone once
round, when they were the observed of all eyes; although he looked
straight in front of him, Maurice could see the astonished eyebrows
and open mouths that greeted their advance. At one end of the hall was
an immense mirror: he saw that Louise, who was flushed, held her head
high, and talked to him without a pause. In a kind of bravado, she
made him take her round a second time; and after the third, which was
a solitary progress, they remained standing with their backs to the
mirror. Eggis at once came up, with Herries in his train, and, on
learning that she had no programme, the latter ran off to fetch one.
Before he returned, a third man had joined them, and soon she was the
centre of a little circle. Herries, having returned with the
programme, would not give it up until he had put his initials
opposite several dances. Louise only smiled--a rather artificial smile
that had been on her lips since she entered the hall.

Maurice had fallen back, and now stood unnoticed behind the group.
Once Louise turned her head, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively;
but a feeling that was mingled pride and dismay restrained him; and
as, even when the choosing of dances was over, he did not come
forward, she walked down the hall on Herries's arm. The musicians
began to tune; Dove, as master of ceremonies, was flying about, with
his hands in gloves that were too large for him; people ranged
themselves for the lancers in lines and squares. Maurice lost sight
for a moment of the couple he was watching. As soon as the dance
began, however, he saw them again; they were waltzing to the
FRANCAISE, at the lower end of the hall.

He was driven from the corner in which he had taken refuge, by hearing
some one behind him say, in an angry whisper: "I call it positively
horrid of her to come." It was Susie Fay who spoke; through some
oversight, she had not been asked to dance. Moving slowly along,
behind the couples that began a schottische, he felt a tap on his arm,
and, looking round, saw Miss Jensen. She swept aside her ample skirts,
and invited him to a seat beside her. But he remained standing.

"You don't care for dancing?" she queried. And, when he had replied:
"Well, say, now, Mr. Guest,--we are all dying to know--however have you
gotten Louise Dufrayer along here this evening? It's the queerest
thing out."

"Indeed?" said the young man drily.

"Well, maybe queer is not just the word. But, why, we all presumed she
was perfectly inconsolable--thinking only of another world. That's so.
And then you work a miracle, and out she pops, fit as can be."

"I persuaded her . . . for the sake of variety," mumbled Maurice.

Little Fauvre, the baritone, had come up; but Miss Jensen did not heed
his meek reminder that this was their dance.

"That was excessively kind of you," said the big woman, and looked at
Maurice with shrewd, good-natured eyes. "And no doubt, Louise is most
grateful. She seems to be enjoying herself. Keep quiet, Fauvre, do,
till I am ready.--But I don't like her dress. It's a lovely goods, and
no mistake. But it ain't suitable for a little hop like this. It's too
much."

"How Miss Dufrayer dresses is none of my business."

"Well, maybe not.--Now, Fauvre, come along"--she called it "Fover." "I
reckon you think you've waited long enough."

Maurice, left to himself again, was astonished to hear Madeleine's
voice in his ear. She had made her way to him alone.

"For goodness' sake, pull yourself together," she said cuttingly.
"Every one in the hall can see what's the matter with you."

Before he could answer, she was claimed by her partner--one of the few
Germans scattered through this Anglo-American gathering. "Is zat your
brozzer?" Maurice heard him ask as they moved away. He watched them
dancing together, and found it a ridiculous sight: round Madeleine,
tall and angular, the short, stout man rotated fiercely. From time to
time they stopped, to allow him to wipe his face.

Maurice contemplated escaping from the hall to some quiet room beyond.
But as he was edging forward, he ran into Dove's arms, and that was
the end of it. Dove, it seemed, had had his eye on him. The originator
of the ball confessed that he was not having a particularly good time;
he had everything to superintend--the dances, the musicians, the
arrangements for supper. Besides this, there were at least a dozen too
many ladies present; he believed some of the men had simply given
their tickets away to girl-friends, and had let them come alone. So
far, Dove had been forced to sacrifice himself entirely, and he was
hot and impatient.

"Besides, I've routed half a dozen men out of the billiardroom, more
than once," he complained irrelevantly, wiping the moisture from his
brow. "But it's of no----Now just look at that!" he interrupted
himself. "The 'cellist has had too much to drink already, and they're
handing him more beer. Another glass, and he won't be able to play at
all.--I say, you're not dancing. My dear fellow, it really won't do.
You must help me with some of these women."

Taking Maurice by the arm, he steered him to a corner of the hall
where sat two little provincial English sisters, looking hopeless and
forlorn. Who had invited them, it was impossible to say; but no one
wished to dance with them. They were dressed exactly alike, were alike
in face, too--as like as two nuts, thought Maurice, as he bowed to
them. Their hair was of a nutty brown, their eyes were brown, and they
wore brown d resses. He led them out to dance, one after the other,
and they were overwhelmingly grateful to him. He could hardly
tell them apart; but that did not matter; for, when he took one back
to her seat, the other sat waiting for her turn.

In dancing, he was thrown together with more of his friends, and he
was not slow to catch the looks--cynical, contemptuous, amused--that
were directed at him. Some were disposed to wink, and to call him a
sly dog; others found food for malicious gossip in the way Louise had
deserted him; and, when he met Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed
his advances with a definiteness that left no room for doubt.

Round dances succeeded to square dances; the musicians' playing grew
more mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. An
Englishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often
as Maurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at
least made a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed
her preference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets and
the simpering smile.

They were the two best dancers in the hall. Louise, in particular,
gave herself up to the rhythm of the music with an abandon not often
to be seen in a ball-room. Something of the professional about it,
said Maurice to himself as he watched her; and, in his own estimation,
this was the hardest thought he had yet had of her.

At supper, he sat between the two little sisters, whose birdlike
chatter acted upon him as a reiterated noise acts on the nerves of one
who is trying to sleep. He could hardly bring himself to answer
civilly. At the further end of the table, on the same side as he, sat
Louise. She was with those who had been her partners during the
evening. They were drinking champagne, and were very lively. Maurice
could not see her face; but her loud, excited laugh jarred on his
ears.

Afterwards, the same round was to begin afresh, except that the
sisters had generously introduced him to a friend. But when the first
dance was over, Maurice abruptly excused himself to his surprised
partner, and made his way out of the hall.

At the disordered supper-table, a few people still lingered; and
deserters were again knocking balls about the green cloth of the
billiard-table. Maurice went past them, and up a flight of stairs that
led to a gallery overlooking the hall. This gallery was in
semidarkness. At the back of it, chairs were piled one on top of the
other; but the two front rows had been left standing, from the last
concert held in the building, and here, two or three couples were
sitting out the dance. He went into the extreme corner, where it was
darkest.

At last he was alone. He no longer needed to dance with girls
he did not care a jot for, or to keep up appearances. He was free to
be as wretched as he chose, and he availed himself unreservedly of the
chance. It was not only the personal slight Louise had put upon him
throughout the evening, making use of him, as it were, to the very
door, and then throwing him off: but that she could be attracted by a
mere waxen prettiness, and well-fitting clothes--for the first time,
distrust of her was added to his hurt amazement.

He had not been in his hiding-place for more than a very few minutes,
when the door he had entered by reopened, and a couple came down the
steps to the corner where he was sitting.

"Oh, there's some one there!" cried Louise at the sight of the dark
figure. "Maurice! Is it you? What are you doing here?"

"Sssh!" said Herries warningly, afraid lest her clear voice should
carry too far.

"Yes. It's me," said Maurice stiffly, and rose. "But I'm going. I
shan't disturb you."

"Disturb?" she said, and laughed a little. "Nonsense! Of course not."
From her position on Herries's arm, she looked down at him, uncertain
how to proceed. Then she laughed again. "But how fortunate that I
found you! The next is our dance, isn't it?"---she pretended to
examine her programme. "It will begin in a minute. I think I'll wait
here."

"The next may be, but not the next again, remember," said Herries,
before he allowed her to withdraw her arm. Louise nodded and laughed.
"AUF WIEDERSEHEN!"

But after the door had dosed behind Herries, she remained standing, a
step higher than Maurice, tipping her face with her handkerchief.

When she descended the step, and was on a level with him, he could see
how her eyes glittered.

"Was that lie necessary?--for me?"

"What's the matter, Maurice? Why are you like this? Why have you not
asked me to dance?"

He was unpleasantly worked on by her free use of his name.

"I, you? Have I had a chance?"

"Wasn't it for you to make the chance? Or did you expect me to come to
you: Mr. Guest, will you do me the honour of dancing with me?--Oh,
please, don't be cross. Don't spoil my pleasure--for this one night at
least."

But she laughed again as she spoke, as though she did not fear
his power to do so, and laid her hand on his arm: and, at her touch,
he seemed to feel through sleeve and glove, the superabundance of
vitality that was throbbing in her this evening. She was unable to be
still for a moment; in the delicate pallor of her face, her eyes
burned, black as jet.

"Are you really enjoying yourself so much? What CAN you find in it
all?"

"Come--come down and dance. Listen!--can you resist that music? Quick,
let us go down."

"I dance badly. I'm not Herries."

"But I can suit my step to anyone's. Won't you dance with me?--when I
ask you?"

She had been leaning forward, looking over the balustrade at the
couples arranging themselves below. Now she turned, and put her arm
through his.

They went down the stairs, into the hall. Close beside the door at
which they entered, they began to dance.

In all these months, Maurice had scarcely touched her hand. Now
convention required that he should take her in his arms: he had
complete control over her, could draw her closer, or put her further
away, as he chose. For the first round or two, this was enough to
occupy him entirely: the proximity of the lithe body, the nearness of
the dark head, the firm, warm resistance that her back offered to his
hand.

They were dancing to the music of the WIENER BLUT, most melancholy gay
of waltzes, in which the long, legato, upward sweep of the violins
says as plainly as in words that all is vanity. But with the passing
of the players to the second theme, the melody made a more direct
appeal: there was a passionate unrest in it, which disquieted all who
heard if. The dancers, with flushed cheeks and fixed eyes, responded
instinctively to its challenge: the lapidary swing with which they
followed the rhythm became less circumspect; and a desire to dance
till they could dance no more, took possession of those who were
fanatic. No one yielded to the impulse more readily than Louise; she
was quite carried away. Maurice felt the change in her; an uneasiness
seized him, and increased with every turn. She had all but closed her
eyes; her hair brushed his shoulder; she answered to the lightest
pressure of his arm. Even her face looked strange to him: its
expression, its individuality, all that made it hers, was as if wiped
out. Involuntarily he straightened himself, and his own movements grew
stiffer, in his effort to impart to her some of his own restraint. But
it was useless. And, as they turned and turned, to the
maddening music, cold spots broke out on his forehead: in this manner
she had danced with all her previous partners, and would dance with
those to come. Such a pang of jealousy shot through him at the thought
that, without knowing what he was doing, he pulled her sharply to him.
And she yielded to the tightened embrace as a matter of course.