Books: Maurice Guest

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With a jerk he stopped dancing and loosened his hold of her.

She stood and blinked at lights and people: she had been far away, in
a world of melody and motion, and could not come back to herself all
at once. Wonderingly she looked at Maurice; for the music was going
on, and no one else had left off dancing; and, with the same of
comprehension, but still too dazed to resist, she followed him up the
stairs.

"It's easy to see you don't care for dancing," she said, when they
were back in the corner of the gallery. Her breath came unsteadily,
and again she touched her face with the small, scented handkerchief.

"No. Not dancing like that," he answered rudely. But now again, as so
often before, directly it was put into words, his feeling seemed
strained and puritanic.

Louise leaned forward in her seat to look into his face.

"Like what?--what do you mean? Oh, you foolish boy, what is the matter
with you to-night? You will tell me next I can't dance."

"You dance only too well."

"But you would rather I was a wooden doll--is that it How is one to
please you? First you are vexed with me because YOU did not ask ME to
dance; and when I send my partner away, on your account, you won't
finish one dance with me but exact that I shall sit here, in a dark
corner, and let that glorious music go by. I don't know what to make
of you." But her attention had already wandered to the dancers below.
"Look at them!--Oh, it makes me envious! No one else has dreamt of
stopping yet. For no matter how tired you are beforehand, when you
dance you don't feel it, and as long as the music goes on, you must go
on, too, though it lasted all night.--Oh, how often I have longed for a
night like this! And then I've never met a better dancer than Mr.
Herries."

"And for the sake of his dancing, you can forget what a puppy he is?"

"Puppy?" At the warmth of his interruption, she laughed, the low,
indolent laugh, by means of which she seemed determined, on this
night, to keep anything from touching her too nearly. "How
crude you men are! Because he is handsome and dances well, you reason
that he must necessarily be a simpleton."

"Handsome? Yes--if a tailor's dummy is handsome."

But Louise only laughed again, like one over whom words had no power.
"If he were the veriest scarecrow, I would forgive him--for the sake of
his dancing."

She leant forward, letting her gloved arms lie along her knees; and
above the jet-trimmed line of her bodice, he saw her white chest rise
and fall. At a slight sound behind, she turned and looked expectantly
at the door.

"No, not yet," said the young man at her side. "Besides, even if it
were, this is my dance, remember. You said so yourself."

"You are rude to-night, Maurice--and LANGWEILIG." She averted her face,
and tapped her foot. But the content that lapped her made it
impossible for her to take anything earnestly amiss, and even that
others should show displeasure jarred on her like a false note.

"Don't be angry. To-morrow it will all be different again. Let me have
just this one night of pleasure--let me enjoy myself in my own way."

"To hear you talk, one would think I had no wish but to spoil your
pleasure."

"Oh, I didn't mean that. You misunderstand everything."

"What I say or think has surely no weight with you?"

She gave up the attempt to pacify him, and leaning back in her chair,
stifled a yawn. Then with an exclamation of: "How hot it is up here!"
she peeled off her gloves. With her freed hands, she tidied her hair,
drawing out and thrusting in again the silver dagger that held the
coil together. Then she let her bare arms fall on her lap, where they
lay in strong outline against the black of her dress. One was almost
directly under Maurice's eyes; even by the poor light, he could see
the mark left on the inside of the wrist, by the buttons of the glove.
It was a generously formed arm, but so long that it looked slender,
and its firm white roundness was flawless from wrist to shoulder. He
shut his eyes, but he could see it through his eyelids. Sitting beside
her like this, in the semidarkness, morbidly aware of the perfume of
her hair and dress, he suddenly forgot that he had been rude, and she
indifferent. He was conscious only of the wish to drive it home to
her, how unhappy she was making him.

"Louise," he said so abruptly that she started. "I'm going to
ask you to do something for me. I haven't made many demands, have
I?--since you first called me your friend." He paused and fumbled for
words. "Don't--don't dance any more to-night. Don't dance again."

She stooped forward to look at him. "Not dance again?--I? What do you
mean?"

"What I say. Let us go home."

"Home? Now? When it's only half over?--You don't know what you are
saying." But her surprise was already on the wane.

"Oh, yes, I do. I'm not going to let you dance again."

She laughed, in spite of herself, at the new light in which he was
showing himself. But, the moment after, she ceased to laugh; for, with
an audacity he had not believed himself capable of, Maurice took the
arm that was lying next him, and, midway between wrist and elbow, put
his lips to it, kissing it several times, in different places.

Taken unawares, Louise was helpless. Then she freed herself, ungently.
"No, no, I won't have it. Oh, how can you be so foolish! My
gloves--where is my glove? Pick it up, and give it to me--at once!"

He groped on the dusty floor; the veins in his forehead hammered. She
had moved to a distance, and now stood busy with the gloves; she would
not look at him.

In the uneasy silence that ensued, Herries opened the door: a moment
later, they went out together. Maurice remained standing until he saw
them appear below. Then he dropped back into his seat, and covered his
face with his hands.

He did not regret what he had done; he did not care in the least,
whether he had made her angry with him or not. On the contrary, the
feeling he experienced was akin to relief: disapproval and
mortification, jealousy and powerlessness--all the varying emotions of
the evening--had found vent and alleviation in the few hastily snatched
kisses. He no longer felt injured by her treatment of him: that hardly
seemed to concern him now. His sensations, at this minute, resolved
themselves into the words: "She is mine, she is mine!" which went
round and round in his brain. And then, in a sudden burst of
clearness, he understood what it meant for him to say this. It meant
that the farce of friendship, at which he had played, was at an end;
it meant that he loved her--not as hitherto, with a touch of elegiac
resignation--but with a violence that made him afraid. If seemed
incredible to him now that he had spent two months in close
fellowship with her: it was ludicrous, inhuman. For he now saw, that
his ultimate desire had been neither to help her nor to restore her to
life--that was a comedy he had acted for the benefit of the traditions
in his blood. Brutally, at this moment, he acknowledged that he had
only wished to hear her voice and to touch her hand: to make for
himself so indispensable a place among the necessities of her life
that no one could oust him from it.--Mine--mine! Instinct alone spoke in
him to-night--that same blunt instinct which had reared its head the
first time he saw her, but which, until now, he had kept under, like a
medieval ascetic. No reason came to his aid; he neither looked into
the future nor did he consider the past: he only swore to himself in a
kind of stubborn wrath that she was his, and that no earthly power
should take her from him.

One by one the slow-dragging hours wore away. The dancers' ranks were
thinned; but those who remained, gyrated as insensately as ever. There
was an air of greater freedom over the ball-room. The chaperons who,
earlier in the evening, had sat patiently on the red velvet sofas, had
vanished with their charges, and, in their train, the more sedate of
the company: it was past three o'clock, and now, every few minutes, a
cloaked couple crossed a corner of the hall to the street-door.

When Maurice went downstairs, he could not find Louise, and some time
elapsed before she and Herries emerged from the supper-room. Although
the lines beneath her eyes were like rings of hammered iron, she
danced anew, went on to the very end, with a few other infatuated
people. Finally, the tired musicians rose stiffly to pack their
instruments; and, with a sigh of exhaustion, she received on her
shoulders the cloak Maurice stood holding.

They were among the last to leave the hall; the lights went out behind
them. Herries walked a part of the way home with them, and talked much
and idly--ineffable in his self-conceit, thought Maurice. But Louise
urged him on, saying wild, disconnected things, as if, as long as
words were spoken, it did not matter what they were. Again and again
her laugh resounded: it was hoarse, and did not ring true.

"She has had too much champagne," Maurice said to himself, as he
walked silent at her side.

In the ROSSPLATZ, Herries, who was in a becoming fur cap, and a coat
with a fur-lined collar, took a circumstantial leave of her. He raised
both her hands to his lips.

"To the memory of those divine waltzes--our waltzes!" he said
sentimentally. "And to all the others the future has in store for us!"

She left her hands in his, and smiled at him.

"Till to-morrow then," said Herries. "Or shall you forget your
promise?"

"It is you who will forget--not I."

After this, Maurice and she walked on alone together. It was that
dreariest of all the hours between sunset and dawn, when it is
scarcely night any longer, and yet not nearly day. The crisp frost of
the previous evening had given place to a bleak rawness; the day that
was coming would crawl in, lugubriously, unable to get the better of
the darkness. The houses about them were wrapped in sleep; they two
were the only people abroad, and their footsteps echoed in the damp
streets. But, for once, Louise was not affected by the gloom of her
surroundings. She walked swiftly, and her chief aim seemed to be to
render any but the most trival words impossible. Now, however, her
strained gaiety had the aspect of a fever; Maurice believed that, for
the most part, she did not know what she was saying.

Until they stood in front of the house-door, she kept up the tension.
But when the young man had fitted the key in the lock and turned it,
she looked at him, and, for the first time this night, gave him her
full attention.

"Good night--my friend!"

She was leaning against the woodwork; beneath the lace scarf, her eyes
were bent on him with a strange expression. Maurice looked down into
them, and, for a second or two, held them with his own, in one of
those looks which are not for ordinary use between a man and a woman.
Louise shivered under it, and gave a nervous laugh; the next moment,
she made a slight movement towards him, an involuntary movement, which
was so imperceptible as to be hardly more than an easing of her
position against the doorway, and yet was unmistakable--as unmistakable
as was the little upward motion with which she resigned herself at the
outset of a dance. For an instant, his heart stopped beating; in a
flash he knew that this was the solution: there was only one ending to
this night of longing and excitement, and that was to take her in his
arms, as she stood, to hold her to him in an infinite embrace, till
his own nerves were stilled, and the madness had gone from her. But
the returning beat of his blood brought the knowledge that a morrow
must surely come--a morrow for both of them--a cold, grey day to be
faced and borne. She was not herself, in the bonds of her
unnatural excitement; it was for him to be wise.

He took her limply hanging hand, and looked at her gravely and kindly.

"You are very tired."

At his voice, the wild light died out of her eyes; she seemed to
shrink into herself. "Yes, very tired. And oh, so cold!"

"Can't you get a cup of tea?--something to warm you?"

But she did not hear him; she was already on the stair. He waited till
her steps had died away, then went headlong down the street. But, when
he came to think things over, he did not pride himself on the
self-control he had displayed. On the contrary, he was tormented by
the wish to know what she would have said or done had he yielded to
his impulse; and, for the remainder of the night, his brain lost
itself in a maze of hazardous conjecture. Only when day broke, a
cheerless February day, was he satisfied that he could not have acted
differently.

Upstairs, in her room, Louise lay face downwards on her bed, and
there, her arms thrown wildly out over the pillows, all the froth and
intoxication of the evening gone from her--there lay, and wished she
were dead.

* * * * *

Three days later, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Maurice
watched the train that carried her from him steam out of the DRESDENER
BAHNHOF.

The clearness he had gained as to his own motives, and the ruthless
probing of himself it induced, both led to the same conclusion: Louise
must go away. The day after the ball, too, he had found her in a state
of collapse, which was unparalleled even in the ups and downs of the
past weeks.

"Anything!--do anything you like with me. I wish I had never been
born;" and, though no muscle of her face moved, large slow tears ran
down her sallow cheeks.

Unconsciously twisting and bending Herries's card, which was lying on
the table, Maurice laid his plan before her. And having won the above
consent, he did not let the grass grow under his feet. He applied to
Miss Jensen for practical aid, and that lady was tactful enough to
give it without curiosity. She knew Dresden well, recommended it as a
lively place, and wrote forthwith to a PENSION there, engaging rooms
for a lady who had just recovered from a severe illness. By tacit
agreement, this was understood to cover any extravagance or
imprudence, of which Louise might make herself guilty.

Now she had gone, and with her, the central interest of his life. But
the tired gesture, with which he took off his hat and wiped his
forehead, as he walked home, was expressive of the relief he felt that
he was not going to see her again for some time.

He let a fortnight elapse--a fortnight of colourless days, unbroken by
word or sign from her. Then, one night, he spent several hours writing
to her--writing a carefully worded letter, in which he put forward the
best reasons he could devise, for her remaining away altogether.

To this he received no answer.

X.

From one of the high, wooden benches, at the back of the amphitheatre
in the ALBERTHALLE, where he had lain at full length, listening to the
performance of a Berlin pianist, Krafft rose, full to the brim of
impressions, and eager to state them.

"That man," he began, as he left the hall between Maurice and Avery
Hill, "is a successful teacher. And therewith his fate as an artist is
sealed. No teacher can get on to the higher rungs of the ladder, and
no inspired musician be a satisfactory teacher. If the artist is
obliged to share his art, his pupils, should they be intelligent, may
pick up something of his skill, learn the trick of certain things; but
the moment he begins to set up dogmas, it is the end of him.--As if it
were possible for one person to prescribe to another, of a totally
different temperament, how he ought to feel in certain passages, or be
affected by certain harmonies! If I, for example, choose to play the
later Beethoven sonatas as I would the Brahms Concerto in B flat, with
a thoroughly modern irony, what is it that hinders me from doing it,
and from satisfying myself, and kindred souls, who are honest enough
to admit their feelings? Tradition, nothing in the world but tradition;
tradition in the shape of the teacher steps in and says anathema: to
this we are not accustomed, ERGO, it cannot be good.--And it is just
the same with those composers who are also pedagogues. They know, none
better, that there are no hard and fast rules in their art; that it is
only convention, or the morbid car of some medieval monk, which has
banished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called g pure writing
'; that further, you need only to have the regulation number of years
behind you, to fling squeamishness to the winds. In other words, you
learn rules to unlearn them with infinite pains. But the pupil, in his
innocence, demands a rigid basis to go on--it is a human weakness,
this, the craving for rules--and his teachers pamper him. Instead of
saying: develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teach
yourself is worth knowing--instead of this, they build up walls and
barriers to hedge him in, behind which, for their benefit, he must go
through the antics of a performing dog. But nemesis overtakes them;
they fall a victim to their own wiles, just as the liar
finally believes his own lies. Ultimately they find their chief
delight in the adroitness with which they themselves overcome
imaginary obstacles."

His companions were silent. Avery Hill had a nine hours' working-day
behind her, and was tired; besides, she made a point of never replying
to Krafft's tirades. Once only, of late, had she said to him in
Maurice's presence: "You would reason the skin off one's bones, Heinz.
You are the most self-conscious person alive." Krafft had been much
annoyed at this remark, and had asked her to call him a Jew and be
done with it; but afterwards, he admitted to Maurice that she was
right.

"And it's only the naive natures that count."

Maurice had found his way back to Krafft; for, in the days of
uncertainty that followed the posting of his letter, he needed human
companionship. Until the question whether Louise would return or not
was decided, he could settle to nothing; and Krafft's ramblings took
him out of himself. Since the ball, his other friends had given him
the cold shoulder; hence it did not matter whether or no they approved
of his renewed intimacy with Krafft--he said "they," but it was
Madeleine who was present to his mind. And Krafft was an easy person
to take up with again; he never bore a grudge, and met Maurice
readily, half-way.

It had not taken the latter long to shape his actions or what he
believed to be the best. But his thoughts were beyond control. He was
as helpless against sudden spells of depression as against dreams of
an iridescent brightness. He could no more avoid dwelling on the
future than reliving the Past. If Louise did not return, these
memories were all that were left him. If she did, what form were their
relations to each other going to assume?--and this was the question
that cost him most anxious thought.

A thing that affected him oddly, at this time, was his growing
inability to call up her face. It was incredible. This face, which he
had supposed he knew so well that he could have drawn it blindfold,
had taken to eluding him; and the more impatient he became, the poorer
was his success. The disquieting thing, however, was, that though he
could not materialise her face, what invariably rose before his eyes
was her long, bare arm, as it had lain on the black stuff of her
dress. At first, it only came when he was battling to secure the face;
then it took to appearing at unexpected moments; and eventually, it
became a kind of nightmare, which haunted him. He would start up from
dreaming of it, his hair moist with perspiration, for,
strangely enough, he was always on the point of doing it harm: either
his teeth were meeting in it, or he had drawn the blade of a knife
down the middle of the blue-veined whiteness, and the blood spurted
out along the line, which reddened instantly in the wake of the knife.

April had come, bringing April weather; it was fitfully sunny, and a
mild and generous dampness spurred on growth: shrubs and bushes were
so thickly sprinkled with small buds that, at a distance, it seemed as
though a transparent green veil had been flung over them. In the
Gewandhaus, according to custom, the Ninth Symphony had brought the
concert season to a close; once more, the chorus had struggled
victoriously with the ODE TO JOY. And early one morning, Maurice held
a note in his hand, in which Louise announced that she had "come
home," the night before.

She had been away for almost two months, and, to a certain extent, he
had grown inured to her absence. At the sight of her handwriting, he
had the sensation of being violently roused from sleep. Now he shrank
from the moment when he should see her again; for it seemed that not
only the present, but all his future depended on it.

Late in the evening, he returned from the visit, puzzled and
depressed.

Seven had boomed from church-clocks far and near, before he reached
the BRUDERSTRASSE, but, nevertheless, he had been kept waiting in the
passage for a quarter of an hour: and he was in such an apprehensive
frame of mind that he took the delay as a bad omen.

When he crossed the threshold, Louise came towards him with one of
those swift movements which meant that she was in good spirits, and
confident of herself. She held out her hands, and smiled at him with
all her dark, mobile face, saying words that were as impulsive as her
gesture. Maurice was always vaguely chilled by her outbursts of
light-heartedness: they seemed to him strained and unreal, so
accustomed had he grown to the darker, less adaptable side of her
nature.

"You have come back?" he said, with her hand in his.

"Yes, I'm here--for the present, at least."

The last words caught in his ear, and buzzed there, making his
foreboding a certainty. On the spot, his courage failed him; and
though Louise continued to ring all the changes her voice was
capable of, he did not recover his spirits. It was not merely the
sense of strangeness, which inevitably attacked him after he had not
seen her for some time; on this occasion, it was more. Partly, it
might be due to the fact that she was dressed in a different way; her
hair was done high on her head, and she wore a light grey dress of
modish cut and design. Her face, too, had grown fuller; the hollows in
her cheeks had vanished; and her skin had that peculiar clear pallor
that was characteristic of it in health.

He was stupidly silent; he could not join in her careless vivacity.
Besides, throughout the visit, nothing was said that it was worth his
coming to hear.

But when she wished him good-bye, she said, with a strange smile:
"Altogether, I am very grateful to you, Maurice, for having made me go
away."

He himself no longer felt any satisfaction at what he had done. As
soon as he left her, he tried to comprehend what had happened: the
change in her was too marked for him to be able to console himself
that he had imagined it. Not only had she seemingly recovered, as if
by magic, from the lassitude of the winter--he could even have forgiven
her the alteration in her style of dress, although this, too, helped
to alienate her from him. But what he ended by recognising, with a
jealous throb, was that she had mentally recovered as well; she was
once more the self-contained girl he had first known, with a gift for
keeping an outsider beyond the circle of her thoughts and feelings. An
outsider! The weeks of intimate companionship were forgotten, seemed
never to have been. She had no further need of him, that was the clue
to the mystery, and the end of the matter.

And so it continued, the next day, and the next again; Louise
deliberately avoided touching on anything that lay below the surface.
She vouchsafed no explanation of the words that had disquieted him,
nor was the letter Maurice had written her once mentioned between
them.

But, though she seemed resolved not to confide in him, she could not
dispense with the small, practical services, he was able to render
her. They were even more necessary to her than before; for, if one
thing was clear, it was that she no longer intended to cloister
herself up inside her four walls: the day after her return, she had
been out till late in the afternoon, and had come home with her hands
full of parcels. She took it now as a matter of course that Maurice
should accompany her; and did not, or would not, notice his
abstraction.

After the lapse of a very short time, however, the young man began to
feel that there was something feverish in the continual high level of
her mood. She broke down, once or twice, in trying to sustain it, and
was more of her eloquently silent self again: one evening, he came
upon her, in the dusk, when she was sitting with her chin on her hand,
looking out before her with the old questioning gaze.

Occasionally he thought that she was waiting for something: in the
middle of a sentence, she would break off, and grow absent-minded; and
more than once, the unexpected advent of the postman threw her into a
state of excitement, which she could not conceal. She was waiting for
a letter. But Maurice was proud, and asked no questions; he took pains
to use the cool, friendly tone, she herself adopted.

Not a week had dragged out, however, since her return, before he was
suffering in a new way, in the oldest, cruellest way of all.