Books: Maurice Guest

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They crossed the river and came to newer streets. It was delightful
out-of-doors. A light breeze met them as they turned, and a few
ragged, fleecy clouds that it was driving up, only made the sky seem
bluer, The two young men walked leisurely, laughing and talking rather
loudly. Maurice Guest had already, in dress and bearing, taken on a
touch of musicianly disorder, but Dove's lengthier residence had left
no trace upon him; he might have stepped that day from the streets of
the provincial English town to which he belonged. His well brushed
clothes sat with an easy inelegance, his tie was small, his linen
clean, and the only concession he made to his surroundings, the
broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, looked oddly out of place on his
close-cut hair. He carried himself erectly, swinging a little on his
hips.

As they went, he passed in review the important items of the day:
so-and-so had strained a muscle, so-and-so had spoilt a second piano.
But his particular interest centred upon that evening's
ABENDUNTERHALTUNG. A man named Schilsky, whom it was no
exaggeration to call their finest, very finest violinist was to play
Vieuxtemps' Concerto in D. Dove all but smacked his lips as he spoke
of it. In reply to a query from Maurice, he declared with vehemence
that this Schilsky was a genius. Although so great a violinist, he
could play almost every other instrument with case; his memory had
become a by-word; his compositions were already famous. At the present
moment, he was said to be at work upon a symphonic poem, having for
its base a new and extraordinary book, half poetry, half philosophy, a
book which he, Dove, could confidently assert, would effect a
revolution in human thought, but of which, just at the minute, he was
unable to remember the name. Infected by his friend's enthusiasm,
Maurice here recalled having, only the day before, met some one who
answered to Dove's description: the genial Pole had been storming up
the steps of the Conservatorium, two at a time, with wild, affrighted
eyes, and a halo of dishevelled auburn hair.--Dove made no doubt that
he had been seized with a sudden inspiration.

Gewandhaus and Conservatorium lay close together, in a new quarter of
the town. The Conservatorium, a handsome, stone-faced building, three
lofty storeys high, was just now all the more imposing in appearance
as it stood alone in an unfinished street-block, and as, opposite,
hoardings still shut in all that had yet been raised of the great
library, which would eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness of
its long front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail to
impress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone daily out
and in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving efforts,
imperative on his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, to many, was
as it were personified by the concert-house in the adjoining square:
it was hither, towards this clear-limned goal, that bore him, like a
magic carpet, the young enthusiast's most ambitious dream.--But in the
life that swarmed about the Conservatorium, there was nothing of a
tedious austerity. It was one of the briskest times of day, and the
short street and the steps of the building were alive with young
people of both sexes. Young men sauntered to and from the cafe at the
corner, or stood gesticulating in animated groups. All alike were
conspicuous for a rather wilful slovenliness, for smooth faces and
bushy hair, while the numerous girls, with whom they paused to laugh
and trifle, were, for the most part, showy in dress and loudly
vivacious in manner. On the kerbstone, a knot of the latter, tittering
among themselves, shot furtive glances at Dove and Maurice as
they passed. Here, a pretty, laughing face was the centre of a little
circle; there, a bevy of girls clustered about a young man, who, his
hands in his pockets, leaned carelessly against the door-arch; and
again, another, plump and much befeathered, with a string of large
pearlbeads round her fat, white neck, had isolated herself from the
rest, to take up, on the steps, a more favourable stand. A master who
went by, a small, jovial man in a big hat, had a word for all the
girls, even a chuck of the chin for one unusually saucy face. Inside,
classes were filing out of the various rooms, other classes were going
in; there was a noisy flocking up and down the broad, central
staircase, i crowding about the notice-board, a going and coming in
the long, stone corridors. The concert-hall was being lighted.

Maurice slowly made his way through the midst of all these people,
while Dove loitered, or stepped out of hearing, with one friend after
another. In a side corridor, off which, cell like, opened a line of
rooms, they pushed a pair of doubledoors, and went in to take their
lesson.

The room they entered was light and high, and contained, besides a
couple of grand pianos, a small table and a row of wooden chairs.
Schwarz stood with his back to the window, biting his nails. He was a
short, thickset man, with keen eyes, and a hard, prominent mouth,
which was rather emphasised than concealed, by the fair, scanty tuft
of hair that hung from his chin. Upon the two new-comers, he bent a
cold, deliberate gaze, which, for some instants, he allowed to rest
chillingly on them, then as deliberately withdrew, having--so at least
it seemed to those who were its object--having, without the tremor of
an eyelid, scanned them like an open page: it was the look,
impenetrable, all-seeing, of the physician for his patient. At the
piano, a young man was playing the Waldstein Sonata. So intent was he
on what he was doing, that his head all but touched the music standing
open before him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorously
from side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood out
beads of perspiration. He had no cuffs on, and his sleeves were a
little turned back. The movement at an end, he paused, and drawing a
soiled handkerchief from his pocket, passed it rapidly over neck and
brow. In the ADAGIO which followed, he displayed an extreme delicacy
of touch--not, however, but what this also cost him some exertion, for,
previous to the striking of each faint, soft note, his hand described
a curve in the air, the finger he was about to use, lowered,
the others slightly raised, and there was always a second of something
like suspense, before it finally sank upon the expectant note. But
suddenly, without warning, just as the last, lingering tones were
dying to the close they sought, the ADAGIO slipped over into the
limpid gaiety of the RONDO, and then, there was no time more for
premeditation: then his hands twinkled up and down, joining, crossing,
flying asunder, alert with little sprightly quirks and turns, going
ever more nimbly, until the brook was a river, the allegretto a
prestissimo, which flew wildly to its end amid a shower of dazzling
trills.

Schwarz stood grave and apparently impassive; from time to time,
however, when unobserved, he swept the three listeners with a rapid
glance. Maurice Guest was quite carried away; he had never heard
playing like this, and he leaned forward in his seat, and gazed full
at the player, in open admiration. But his neighbour, a pale, thin
man, with one of those engaging and not uncommon faces which, in mould
of feature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut of
hair and beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conventional
Christ-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a languid
interest, which seemed unable to get the upper hand of melancholy
thoughts. Maurice, who believed his feelings shared by all about him,
was chilled by such indifference: he only learned later, after they
had become friends, that nothing roused in Boehmer a real or lasting
interest, save what he, Boehmer, did himself. Dove sat absorbed, as
reverent as if at prayer; but there were also moments when, with his
head a little on one side, he wore an anxious air, as if not fully at
one with the player's rendering; others again, after a passage of
peculiar brilliancy, when he threw at Schwarz a humbly grateful look.
While Schwarz, the sonata over, was busy with his pencil on the margin
of the music, Dove leaned over to Maurice and whispered behind his
hand: "Furst--our best pianist."

Now came the turn of the others, and the master's attention wandered;
he stretched himself, yawned, and sighed aloud, then, in the search
for something he could not find, turned out on the lid of the second
piano the contents of sundry pockets. While Dove played, he wrote as
if for life in a bulky notebook.

Maurice remarked this without being properly conscious of it, so
impressed had he been by the sonata. The exultant beauty of the
great final theme had permeated his every fibre, inciting him,
emboldening him, and, still under the sway of this little elation when
his own turn to play came, he was the richer by it, and acquitted
himself with unusual verve.

As the class was about to leave the room, Schwarz signed to Maurice to
remain behind. For several moments, he paced the floor in silence;
then he stopped suddenly short in front of the young man, and, with
legs apart, one hand at his back, he said in a tone which wavered
between being brutal and confidential, emphasising his words with a
series of smart pencil-raps on his hearer's shoulder:

"Let me tell you something: if I were not of the opinion that you had
ability, I should not detain you this evening. It is no habit of mine,
mark this, to interfere with my pupils. Outside this room, most of
them do not exist for me. In your case, I am making an exception,
because . . ."--Maurice was here so obviously gratified that the
speaker made haste to substitute: "because I should much like to know
how it is that you come to me in the state you do." And without
waiting for a reply: "For you know nothing, or, let us say, worse than
nothing, since what you do know, you must make it your first concern
to forget." He paused, and the young man's face fell so much that he
prolonged the pause, to enjoy the discomfiture he had produced. "But
give me time," he continued, "adequate time, and I will undertake to
make something of you." He lowered his voice, and the taps became more
confidential. "There is good stuff here; you have talent, great
talent, and, as I have observed to-day, you are not wanting in
intelligence. But," and again his voice grew harsher, his eye more
piercing, "understand me, if you please, no trifling with other
studies; let us have no fiddling, no composing. Who works with me,
works for me alone. And a lifetime, I repeat it, a lifetime, is not
long enough to master such an instrument as this!"

He brought his hand down heavily on the lid of the piano, and glared
at Maurice as if he expected the latter to contradict him. Then,
noisily clearing his throat, he began anew to pace the room.

As Maurice stood waiting for his dismissal, with very varied feelings,
of which, however, a faint pride was uppermost; as he stood waiting,
the door opened, and a girl looked in. She hesitated a moment, then
entered, and going up to Schwarz, asked him something in a low voice.
He nodded an assent, nodded two or three times, and with quite
another face; its hitherto unmoved severity had given way to an
indulgent friendliness. She laid her hat and jacket on the table, and
went to the piano.

Schwarz motioned Maurice to a chair. He sat down almost opposite her.

And now came for him one of those moments in life, which,
unlooked-for, undivined, send before them no promise of being
different, in any way, from the commonplace moments that make up the
balance of our days. No gently graduated steps lead up to them: they
are upon us with the violent abruptness of a streak of lightning, and
like this, they, too, may leave behind them a scarry trace. What such
a moment holds within it, is something which has never existed for us
before, something it has never entered our minds to go out and
seek--the corner of earth, happened on by chance, which comes most near
the Wineland of our dreams; the page, idly perhaps begun, which brings
us a new god; the face of the woman who is to be our fate--but,
whatever it may be, let it once exist for us, and the soul responds
forthwith, catching in blind haste at the dimly missed ideal.

For one instant Maurice Guest had looked at the girl before him with
unconcern, but the next it was with an intentness that soon became
intensity, and feverishly grew, until he could not tear his eyes away.
The beauty, whose spell thus bound him, was of that subtle kind which
leaves many a one cold, but, as if just for this reason, is almost
always fateful for those who feel its charm: at them is lanced its
accumulated force. The face was far from faultless; there was no
regularity of feature, no perfection of line, nor was there more than
a touch of the sweet girlish freshness that gladdens like a morning in
May. The features, save for a peremptory turn of mouth and chin, were
unremarkable, and the expression was distant, unchanging . . . but
what was that to him? This deep white skin, the purity of which was
only broken by the pale red of the lips; this dull black hair, which
lay back from the low brow in such wonderful curves, and seemed, of
itself, to fall into the loose knot on the neck--there was something
romantic, exotic about her, which was unlike anything he had ever
seen: she made him think of a rare, hothouse flower; some scentless,
tropical flower, with stiff, waxen petals. And then her eyes! So
profound was their darkness that, when they threw off their covering
of heavy lid, it seemed to his excited fancy as if they must
scorch what they rested on; they looked out from the depths of their
setting like those of a wild beast crouched within a cavern; they lit
up about them like stars, and when they fell, they went out like
stars, and her face took on the pallor of early dawn.

She was playing from memory. She gazed straight before her with
far-away eyes, which only sometimes looked down at her hands, to aid
them in a difficult passage. At her belt, she wore a costly yellow
rose, and as she once leaned towards the treble, where both hands were
at work close together, it fell to the floor. Maurice started forward,
and picking it up, laid it on the piano; beneath the gaslight, it sank
a shadowy gold image in the mirror-like surface. As yet she had paid
no heed to him, but, at this, she turned her head, and, still
continuing to play, let her eyes rest absently on him.

They sank their eyes in each other's. A thrill ran through Maurice, a
quick, sharp thrill, which no sensation of his later life outdid in
keenness and which, on looking back, he could always feel afresh. The
colour rose to his face and his heart beat audibly, but he did not
lower his eyes, and for not doing so, seemed to himself infinitely
bold. A host of confused feelings bore down upon him, well-nigh
blotting out the light; but, in a twinkling, all were swallowed up in
an overpowering sense of gratitude, in a large, vague, happy
thankfulness, which touched him almost to the point of tears. As it
swelled through him and possessed him, he yearned to pour it forth, to
make an offering of this gratefulness--fine tangle of her beauty and
his own glad mood--and, by sustaining her look, he seemed to lay the
offering at her feet. Nor would any tongue have persuaded him that she
did not understand. The few seconds were eternities: when she turned
away it was as if untold hours had passed over him in a body, like a
flight of birds; as if a sudden gulf had gaped between where he now
was and where he had previously stood.

Dismissed curtly, with a word, he hung about the corridor in the hope
of seeing her again; but the piano went on and on, unceasingly. Here,
after some time, he was found by Dove, who carried him off with loud
expressions of surprise.

The concert was more than half over. The main part of the hall was
brightly lit and full of people: from behind, one looked across a sea
of heads. On the platform at the other end, a girl in red was playing
a sonata; a master sat by her side, and leant forward, at regular
intervals, to turn the leaves of the music. Dove and Maurice
remained standing at the back, under the gallery, among a portion of
the audience which shifted continuously: those about them wandered in
and out of the hall at pleasure, now inside, head in hand, critically
intent, now out in the vestibule, stretching their legs, lounging in
easy chat. In the pause that followed the sonata, Dove went towards
the front, to join some ladies who beckoned him, and, while some one
sang a noisy aria, Maurice gave himself up to his own thoughts. They
all led to the same point: how he should contrive to see her again,
how he should learn her name, and, beside them, everything else seemed
remote, unreal; he saw the people next him as if from a distance. But
in a wait that was longer than usual, he was awakened to his
surroundings: a stir ran over the audience, like a gust of wind over
still water; the heads in the seats before him inclined one to
another, wagged and nodded; there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind
him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they
pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to
start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure.
Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his
long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish
hair fell over his face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys,
waited for the signal to begin.

Maurice drew a deep breath of anticipation. But the first shrill,
sweet notes had hardly cut the silence, when, the door opening once
more, some one entered and pushed through the standing crowd. He
looked round, uneasy at the disturbance, and found that it was she:
what is more, she came up to his very side. He turned away so hastily
that he touched her arm, causing it to yield a little, and some
moments went by before he ventured to look again. When he did, in some
tremor, he saw that, without fear of discovery, he might look as long
or as often as he chose. She was listening to the player with the
raptness of a painted saint: her whole face listened, the tightened
lips, the open nostrils, the wide, vigilant eyes. Maurice, lost in her
presence, grew dizzy with the scent of her hair--that indefinable
odour, which has something of the raciness in it of new-turned
earth--and foolish wishes arose and jostled one another in his mind: he
would have liked to plunge both hands into the dark, luxuriant mass;
still better, cautiously to draw his palm down this whitest skin,
which, seen so near, had a faint, satin-like sheen. The mere
imagining of it set him throbbing, and the excitement in his blood was
heightened by the sensuous melancholy of the violin, which, just
beyond the pale of his consciousness, throbbed and languished with him
under the masterful bow.

Shortly before the end of the concerto, she turned and made her way
out. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then followed. But the long
white corridors stretched empty before him; there was no trace of her
to he seen. As he was peering about, in places that were strange to
him, a tumult of applause shook the hall, the doors flew open and the
audience poured out.

Dove had joined other friends, and a number of them left the building
together; everyone spoke loudly and at once. But soon Maurice and Dove
outstepped their companions, for these came to words over the means
used by Schilsky to mount, with bravour, a certain gaudy scale of
octaves, and, at every second pace, they stopped, and wheeled round
with eloquent gesture. In their presence Dove had said little; now he
gave rein to his feelings: his honest face glowed with enthusiasm, the
names of renowned players ran off his lips like beads off a string,
and, in predicting Schilsky a career still more brilliant, his voice
grew husky with emotion.

Maurice listened unmoved to his friend's outpouring, and the first
time Dove stopped for breath, went straight for the matter which, in
his eyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager was he to learn something
of her, that he even made shift to describe her; his attempt fell out
lamely, and a second later he could have bitten off his tongue.

Dove had only half an ear for him.

"Eh? What? What do you say?" he asked as Maurice paused; but his
thoughts were plainly elsewhere. This fact is, just at this moment, he
was intent on watching some ladies: were they going to notice him or
not? The bow made and returned, he brought his mind back to Maurice
with a great show of interest.

Here, however, they all turned in to Seyffert's Cafe and, seating
themselves at a long, narrow table, waited for Schilsky, whom they
intended to fete. But minutes passed, a quarter, then half of an hour,
and still he did not come. To while the time, his playing of the
concerto was roundly commented and discussed. There was none of the
ten or twelve young men but had the complete jargon of the craft at
his finger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a
breath, now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now
heaping praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through
the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the
foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough;
only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to
fetch a racy idiom or point a joke.

Not having heard a note of Schilsky's playing, Maurice did not trust
himself to say much, and so was free to observe his right-hand
neighbour, a young man who had entered late, and taken a vacant chair
beside him. To the others present, the new-comer paid no heed, to
Maurice he murmured an absent greeting, and then, having called for
beer and emptied his glass at a draught, he appeared mentally to
return whence he had come, or to engage without delay in some urgent
train of thought. His movements were noiseless, but startlingly
abrupt. Thus, after sitting quiet for a time, his head in his hands,
he flung back in his seat with a sort of wildness, and began to stare
fixedly at the ceiling. His face was one of those, which, as by a
mystery, preserve the innocent beauty of their childhood, long after
childhood is a thing of the past: delicate as the rosy lining of a
great sea-shell was the colour that spread from below the forked blue
veins of the temples, and it paled and came again as readily as a
girl's. Girlish, too, were the limpid eyes, which, but for a trick of
dropping unexpectedly, seemed always to be gazing, in thoughtful
surprise, at something that was visible to them alone. As to the
small, frail body, it existed only for sake of the hands: narrow
hands, with long, fleshless fingers, nervous hands, that were never
still.

All at once, in a momentary lull, he leant towards Maurice, and,
without even looking up, asked the latter if he could recall the
opening bars of the prelude to TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. If so, there was a
certain point he would like to lay before him.

"You see, it's this way, old fellow," he said confidentially. "I've
come to the conclusion that if, at the end of the third bar, Wagner
had----"

"Throw him out, throw him out!" cried an American who was sitting
opposite them. "You might as well try to stop a nigger in heat as
Krafft on Wagner."

"That's so," said another American named Ford, who, on arriving, had
not been quite sober, and now, after a few glasses of beer, was
exceedingly tipsy. "That's so. As I've always said, it's a disgrace to
the township, a disgrace, sir. Ought to be put down. Why don't he
write them himself?"

From the depths of his brown study, Krafft looked vaguely at the
speakers, and checked, but not discomposed, drew out a notebook and
jotted down an idea.

Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Boehmer and a Russian
violinist still harped upon the original string. And, having worked
out Schilsky, they passed on to Zeppelin, his master, and the Russian,
who was not Zeppelin's pupil, set to showing with vehemence that his
"method" was a worthless one. He was barely started when a wiry
American, in a high, grating voice, called Schilsky a wretched fool:
why had he not gone to Berlin at Easter, as he had planned, instead of
dawdling on here where he had no more to gain? At this, several of the
young men laughed and looked significant. Furst--he had proved to be a
jolly little man, who, with unbuttoned vest, absorbed large quantities
of beer and perspired freely--Furst alone was of the opinion, which he
expressed forcibly, in his hearty Saxon dialect, that had Schilsky
left Leipzig at this particular time, he would have been a fool
indeed.

"Look here, boys," he cried, pounding the table to get attention.
"That's all very well, but he must have an eye to the practical side
of things, too----"

"DER BIEDERE SACHSE HOCH!" threw in Boehmer, who was Prussian, and of
a more ideal cast of mind.