Books: Maurice Guest

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"Miss you? What does it matter whether I miss you or not? It
seems to me that counts least of all. You, at any rate, will have
acted properly. You will have nothing to reproach yourself with.--Oh, I
wouldn't be a man for anything on earth! You are all--all alike. I hate
you and despise you--every one of you!"

They were within a few steps of the house. She pressed on, and,
without looking back at him, or wishing him good-night, disappeared in
the doorway.

XII.

It was a hot evening in June: the perfume of the lilac, now in fullest
bloom, lay over squares and gardens like a suspended wave. The sun had
gone down in a cloudless sky; an hour afterwards, the pavements were
still warm to the touch, and the walls of the buildings radiated the
heat they had absorbed. The high old houses in the inner town had all
windows set open, and the occupants leaned out on their
window-cushions, with continental nonchalance. The big garden-cafes
were filled to the last scat. In the woods, the midges buzzed round
people's heads in accompanying clouds; and streaks of treacherous
white mist trailed, like fixed smoke, over the low-lying meadow-land.

Maurice and Louise had rowed to Connewitz; but so late in the evening
that most of the variously shaped boats, with coloured lanterns at
their bows, were returning when they started.

Louise herself had proposed it. When he went to her that afternoon, he
found her stretched on the sofa. A theatre-ticket lay on the table--for
she had taken him at his word, and shown him that she could do without
him. But to-night she had no fancy for the theatre: it was too hot.
She looked very slight and young in her white dress; but was moody and
out of spirits.

On the way to Connewitz, they spoke no more than was necessary. Coming
back, however, they had the river to themselves; and she no longer
needed to steer. He placed cushions for her at the bottom of the boat;
and there she lay, with her hands clasped under her neck, watching the
starry strip of sky, which followed them, between the tops of the
trees above, like a complement of the river below.

The solitude was unbroken; they might have gone down in the murky
water, and no one would ever know how it had happened: a snag caught
unawares; a clumsy movement in the light boat; half a minute, and all
would be over.--Or, for the first and the last time in his life, he
would take her in his arms, hold her to him, feel her cheek on his; he
would kiss her, with kisses that were at once an initiation and a
farewell; then, covering her eyes with his hands, he would gently,
very gently, tilt the boat. A moment's hesitation; it sought
to right itself; rocked violently, and overturned: and beneath it,
locked in each other's arms, they found a common grave. . . .

In fancy, he saw it all. Meanwhile, he rowed on, with long, leisurely
strokes; and the lapping of the water round the oars was the only
sound to be heard.

At home, on the lid of his piano, lay the prospectuses of
music-schools in other towns. They were still arriving, in answer to
the impulsive letters he had written off, the night after the theatre.
But the last to come had remained unopened.--He was well aware of it:
his lingering on had all the appearance of a weak reluctance to face
the inevitable. For he could never make mortal understand what he had
come through, in the course of the past week. He could no more put
into words the isolated spasms of ecstasy he had experienced--when
nothing under the sun seemed impossible--than he could describe the
slough of misery and uncertainty, which, on occasion, he had been
forced to wade through. For the most part, he believed that the words
of contempt Louise had spoken, came straight from her heart; but he
had also known the faint stir ring of a new hope, and particularly was
this the case when he had not seen Louise for some time. Then, at
night, as he lay staring before him, this feeling became a sudden
refulgence, which lighted him through all the dark hours, only to be
reorselessly extinguished by daylight. Most frequently, however, it
was so slender a hope as to be a mere distracting flutter at his
heart. Whence it sprang, he could not tell--he knew Louise too well to
believe, for a moment, that she would make use of pique to hide her
feelings. But there was a something in her manner, which was strained;
in the fact that she, who had never cared, should at length be moved
by words of his; in a certain way she had looked at him, once or twice
in these days; or in a certain way she had avoided looking at him. No,
he did not know what it was. But nevertheless it was there--a faint,
inarticulate existence--and, compared with it, the tangible facts of
life were the shadows of a shadow.

Surely she had fallen asleep. He said her name aloud, to try her.
"Louise!" She did not stir, and the word floated out into the
night--became an expression of the night itself.

They had passed the weir and its foaming, and now glided under the
bridges that spanned the narrower windings of the river. The wooden
bathing-house looked awesome enough to harbour mysteries. Another
sharp turn, among sedge and rushes, and the outlying streets
of the town were on their right. The boat-sheds were in darkness, when
they drew up alongside the narrow landing-place. Maurice got out with
the chain in his hand, and secured the boat. Louise did not follow
immediately. her hair had come down, and she was stiff from the
cramped position in which she had been lying. When she did rise to her
feet, she could hardly stand. He put out his hand, and steadied her by
the arm.

"A heavy dew must be falling. Your sleeve is wet."

She made a movement to draw her arm away; at the same moment, she
tangled her foot in her skirt, tripped, and, if he had not caught her,
would have fallen forward.

"Take care what you're doing! Do you want to drown yourself?"

"I don't know. I shouldn't mind, I think," she answered tonelessly.

His own balance had been endangered. Directly he had righted himself,
he set her from him. But it could not be undone: he had had her in his
arms, had felt all her weight on him. The sensation seemed to take his
strength away: after the long, black, silent evening, her body was
doubly warm, doubly real. He walked her back, along the deserted
streets, at a pace she could not keep up with. She lagged behind. She
was very pale, and her face wore an expression of almost physical
suffering. She looked resolutely away from Maurice; but when her eyes
did chance to rest on him, she was swept by such a sense of nervous
irritation that she hated the sight of him, as he walked before her.

Upstairs, in her room, when he had laid the cushions on the sofa; when
the lamp was lighted and set on the table; when he still stood there,
pale, and wretched, and undecided, Louise came to an abrupt decision.
Advancing to the table, she leaned her hands on it, and bending
forward, raised her white face to his.

"You told me you were going away; why do you not go? Why have you not
already gone?" she asked, and her mouth was hard. "I am waiting . . .
expecting to hear."

His answer was so hasty that it was all but simultaneous.

"Louise!--can't you forgive me?--for what I said the other night?"

"I have nothing to forgive," she replied, coldly in spite of herself.
"You said you must go. I can't keep you here against your will."

"It has made you angry with me. I have made you unhappy."

"You are making us both unhappy," she said in a low voice. "Now, it is
I who say, things can't go on like this."

"I know it." He drew a deep breath. "Louise! . . . if only you could
care a little!"

There was silence after these words, but not a silence of conclusion;
both knew now that more must follow. He raised his head, and looked
into her eyes.

"Can you not see how I love you--and how I suffer?"

It was a statement rather than a question, but he was not aware of
this: he was only amazed that, after all, he should be able to speak
so quietly, in such an even tone of voice.

There was another pause of suspense; his words seemed like balls of
down that he had tossed into the still air: they sank, lingeringly,
without haste; and she stood, and let them descend on her. His haggard
eyes hung on her face; and, as he watched, he saw a change come over
it: the enmity that had been in it, a few seconds back, died out; the
lips softened and relaxed; and when the eyes were raised to his again,
they were kind, full of pity.

"I'm sorry. Poor boy . . . poor Maurice."

She seemed to hesitate; then, with one of her frankest gestures, held
out her hand. At its touch, soft and living, he forgot everything:
plans and resolutions, hopes and despairs, happiness and unhappiness
no longer existed for him; he knew only that she was sorry for him,
that some swift change in her had made her sympathise and understand.
He looked down, with dim eyes, at the sweet, pale face, now alight
with compassion then, with disarming abruptness, he took her head
between his hands, and kissed her, repeatedly, whereever his lips
chanced to fall--on the warm mouth, the closed eyes, temples, and hair.

He was gone before she recovered from her surprise. She had
instinctively stemmed her hands against his shoulders; but, when she
was alone, she stood just as he left her, her eyes still shut, letting
the sensation subside, of rough, unexpected kisses. She had been taken
unawares; her heart was beating. For a moment or two, she remained in
the same attitude; then she passed her hand over her face. "That was
foolish of him . . . very," she said. She looked down at herself and
saw her hands. She stretched them out before her, with a sudden sense
of emptiness.

"If I could care! Yes--if I could only care!"

At two o'clock that morning, Maurice wrote:

FORGIVE ME--I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING. FOR I LOVE YOU, LOUISE--NO
WOMAN HAS EVER BEEN LOVED AS YOU ARE. I KNOW IT IS FOLLY ON MY PART. I
HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU. BUT BE MY WIFE, AND I WILL WORK MY FINGERS
TO THE BONE FOR YOU.

He went out into the summer night, and posted the letter. Returning to
his room, he threw himself on the sofa, and fell into a heavy sleep,
from which he did not wake till the morning was well advanced.

Work was out of the question that day, when he waited as if for a
sentence of death. He paced his narrow room, incessantly, afraid to go
out, for fear of missing her reply. The hours dragged themselves by,
as it is their special province to do in crises of life; and with each
one that passed, he grew more convinced what her answer to his letter
would be.

It was late in the afternoon when the little boy she employed as a
messenger, put a note into his hands.

COME TO ME THIS EVENING.

It was all but evening now; he went, just as he was, on the heels of
the child.

The windows of her room were open. She sprang up to meet him, then
paused. He looked desperately yet stealthily at her. The commiseration
of the previous night was still in her face; but she was now quite
sure of herself: she drew him to the sofa and made him sit down beside
her. Then, however, for a few seconds, in which he waited with
hammering pulses, she did not speak. The dull fear at his heart became
a certainty; and, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he took one
of her hands and laid it on his forehead.

Then she said: "Maurice--poor, foolish Maurice!--it is not possible. You
see that yourself, I'm sure."

"Yes. I know quite well: it is presumption."

"Oh, I don't mean that. But there are so many reasons. And you, too,
Maurice . . . Look at me, and tell me if what you wrote was not just
an attempt to make up for what happened last night." And as he did not
reply, she added: "You mustn't make yourself reproaches. I, too, was
to blame."

"It was nothing of the sort. I've been trying for weeks now to
tell you. I love you--have loved you since the first time I saw you."

He let go of her hand, and she sat forward, with her arms along her
knees. Her eyes were troubled; but she did not lose her calm manner of
speaking. "I'm sorry, Maurice, very sorry--you believe me' don't you,
when I say so? But believe me, too, it's not so serious as you think.
You are young. You will get over it, and forget--if not soon, at least
in time. You must forget me, and some day you will meet the nice, good
woman, who is to be your wife. And when that happens, you will look
back on your fancy for me as something foolish, and unreal. You won't
be able to understand it then, and you will be grateful to me, for not
having taken you at your word."

Maurice laughed. All the same, he tried to take his dismissal well: he
rose, wrung her hand, and left her.

In the seclusion of his own room, he went through the blackest hour of
his life.

He began to make final preparations for his departure. His choice had
fallen on Stuttgart: it was far distant from Leipzig; he would be well
out of temptation's way--the temptation suddenly to return. He wrote a
letter home, apprising his relatives of his intention: by the time
they received the letter, it would be too late for them to interfere.
Otherwise, he took no one into his confidence. He would greatly have
liked to wait until the present term was over; another month, and the
summer vacation would have begun, and he would have been able to leave
without making himself conspicuous. But every day it grew more
impossible to be there and not to see her--for four days now he had
kept away, fighting down his unreasoning desire to know what she was
doing. He intended only to see her once more, to bid her good-bye.

The afternoon before his interview with Schwarz--he had arranged this
with himself for the morning, at the master's private house--he sat at
his writing-table, destroying papers and old letters. There was a heap
of ashes in the cold stove by the time he took out, tied up in a
separate packet, the few odd scraps of writing he had received from
Louise. He balanced the bundle in his hand, hesitating what to do with
it. Finally, he untied the string, to glance through the letters once
again.

At the sight of the bold, black, familiar writing, in which each
word--two or three to a line--seemed to have a life of its own; at the
well-conned pages, each of which he knew by heart; at the
characteristic, almost masculine signature, and the faint perfume that
still clung to the paper: at the sight of these things all--that he
had been thinking and planning since seeing her last, was effaced from
his mind. As often before, where she was concerned, a wild impulse,
surging up in him, took entire possession of him; and hours of patient
and laborious reasoning were by one swift stroke blotted out.

He rose, locked the letters up again, rested his arm on the lid of the
piano, his head on his arm. The more he toyed with his inclination to
go to her, the more absorbent it became, and straightway it was an
ungovernable longing: it came over him with a dizzy force, which made
him close his eyes; and he was as helpless before it as the drunkard
before his craving to drink. Standing thus, he saw with a flash of
insight that, though he went away as far as steam could carry him, he
would never, as long as he lived, be safe from overthrows of this
kind. It was something elemental, which he could no more control than
the flow of his blood. And he did not even stay to excuse himself to
himself: he went headlong to her, with burning words on his lips.

"My poor boy," she said, when he ceased to speak. "Yes, I know what it
is--that sudden rage that comes over one, to rush back, at all costs,
no matter what happens afterwards.--I'm so sorry for you, Maurice. It
is making me unhappy."

"You are not to be unhappy. It shall not happen again, I promise
you.--Besides, I shall soon be gone now." But at his own words, the
thought of his coming desolation pierced him anew. "Give me just one
straw to cling to! Tell me you won't forget me all at once; that you
will miss me and think of me--if ever so little."

"You asked me that the other night. Was what I said then, not answer
enough?--And besides, in these last four days, since I have been alone,
I've learnt just how much I shall miss you, Maurice. It's my
punishment, I suppose, for growing so dependent on anyone."

"You must go away, too. You can't stay here by yourself. We must both
go, in opposite directions, and begin afresh."

She did not reply at once. "I shouldn't know where to go," she said,
after a time. "Will nothing else do, Maurice? Is there no other
way?--Oh, why can't we go on being friends, as we were!"

He shook his head. "I've struggled against it so long--you don't know.
I've never really been your friend--only I couldn't hurt you
before, by telling you. And it has worn me out; I'm good for nothing.
Louise!--think, just once more--ask yourself, once more, if it's quite
impossible, before you send me into the outer darkness."

She was silent.

"I don't ask you to love me," he went on, in a low voice. "I've come
down from that, in these wretched days. I would be content with less,
much less. I only ask you to let yourself be loved--as I could love
you. If only you could say you liked me a little, all the rest would
come, I'm confident of it. In time, I should make you love me. For I
would take, oh, such care of you! I want to make you happy, only to
make you happy. I've no other wish than to show you what happiness
is."

"It sounds so good . . . you are good, Maurice. But the future--tell
me, have thought of the future?"

"I should think I have.--Do you suppose it means nothing to me to be so
despicably poor as I am? To have absolutely nothing to offer you?"

She took his hand. "That's not what I mean. And you know it. Come, let
us talk sensibly this afternoon, and look things straight in the
face.--You want to marry me, you say, and let the rest come? That is
very, very good of you, and I shall never forget it.--But what does it
mean, Maurice? You have been here a little over a year now, haven't
you?--and still have about a year to stay. When that's over, you will
go back to England. You will settle in some small place, and spend
your life, or the best part of your life, there--oh, Maurice, you are
my kind friend, but I tell you frankly, I couldn't face life in an
English provincial town. I'm not brave enough for that."

He gleaned a ray of hope from her words. "We could live here--anywhere
you liked. I would make it possible. I swear I would."

She shook her head, and went on, with the same reasonable sweetness.
"And then, there's another thing. If I married you, sooner or later
you would have to take me home to your people. Have you really thought
of that, and how you would feel about it, when it came to the
point?--No, no, it's impossible for me to marry you."

"But that--that American!--you would have married him?"

"That was different," she said, and her voice grew thinner.
"It's the knowing that tells, Maurice. You would have that still to
learn. You don't realise it yet, but afterwards, it would come home to
you.--Listen! You have always been kind to me, I owe you such a debt of
gratitude, that I'm going to be frank, brutally frank with you. I've
told you often that I shall never really care for anyone again. You
know that, don't you? Well, I want to tell you, too--I want you to
understand quite, quite clearly that . . . that I belonged to him
altogether--entirely--that I . . . Oh, you know what I mean!"

Maurice covered his face with his hands. "The past is the past. It
should never be mentioned between us. It doesn't matter--nothing
matters now."

"You say that--every one says that--beforehand," she answered; and not
only her words, but also her way of saying them, seemed to set her
down miles away from him, on a lonely pinnacle of experience.
"Afterwards, you would think differently."

"Louise, if you really cared, it would be different. You wouldn't say
such things, then--you would be only too glad not to say them."

In her heart she knew that he was right, and did not contradict him.
The busy little clock on the writing-table ticked away a few seconds.
With a jerk, Maurice rose to his feet. Louise remained sitting, and he
looked down on her black head. His gaze was so insistent that she felt
it, and raised her eyes. His forlorn face moved her.

"Why is it--what is the matter with me?--that I must upset your life
like this? I can't bear to see you so unhappy.--And yet I haven't done
anything, have I? I have always been honest with you; I've never made
myself out to be better than I am. There must be something wrong with
me, I think, that no one can ever be satisfied to be just my
friend.--Yet with you I thought it was different. I thought things
could go on as they were. Maurice, isn't it possible? Say it is! Show
me just one little spark of good in myself!"

"I'm not different from other men, Louise. I deluded myself long
enough, God knows!"

She made a despondent gesture, and turned away. "Well, then, if either
of us should go, I'm the one. You have your work. I do nothing; I have
no ties, no friends--I never even seem to have been able to make
acquaintances. And if I went, you could stay quietly on. In time, you
would forget me.--If I only knew where to go! I am so alone,
and it is all so hard. I shall never know what it is to be happy
myself, or to make anyone else happy--never!" and she burst into tears.

It was his turn now to play the comforter. Drawing a. chair up before
her, he took her hand, and said all he could think of to console her.
He could bear anything, he told her, but to see her unhappy. All would
yet turn out to be for the best. And, on one point, she was to set her
mind at rest: her going away would not benefit him in the least. He
would never consent to stay on alone, where they had been so much
together.

"I've nothing to look forward to, nothing," she sobbed. "There's
nothing I care to live for."

As soon as she was quieter, he left her.

For an hour or more Louise lay huddled up on the sofa, with her face
pressed to her arm.

When she sat up again, she pushed back her heavy hair, and, clasping
her hands loosely round her knees, stared before her with vacant eyes.
But not for long; tired though she was, and though her head ached from
crying, there was still a deep residue of excitement in her. The level
beams of the sun were pouring blindly into the room; the air was dense
and oppressive. She rose to her feet and moved about. She did not know
what to do with herself: she would have liked to go out and walk; but
the dusty, jarring light of the summer streets frightened her. She
thought of music, of the theatre, as a remedy for the long evening
that yawned before her: then dismissed the idea from her mind. She was
in such a condition of restlessness, this night, that the fact of
being forced to sit still between two other human beings, would make
her want to scream.

The sun was getting low; the foliage of the trees in the opposite
gardens was black, with copper edges, against the refulgence of the
sky. She leaned her hands on the sill, and gazed fixedly at the
stretch of red and gold, which, like the afterglow of a fire, flamed
behind the trees. Her eyes were filled with it. She did not think or
feel: she became one, by looking, with the sight before her. As she
stood there, nothing of her existed but her two widely opened eyes;
she was a miracle wrought by the sunset; she WAS the sunset--in one of
those vacancies of mind, which all intense gazers know.

How long she had remained thus she could not have told, when a strange
thing happened to her. From some sub-conscious layer of her brain,
which started into activity because the rest of it was so
passive, a small, still thought glided in, and took possession of her
mind. At first, it was so faint that she hardly grasped it; but, once
established there, it became so vivid that, with one sweep, it blotted
out trees and sunset; so real that it seemed always to have been
present to her. Without conscious effort on her part, the solution to
her difficulties had been found; a decision had been arrived at, but
not by her; it was the work of some force outside herself.

She turned from the window, and pressed her hands to her blinded eyes.
Good God! it was so simple. To think that this had not occurred to her
before!--that, throughout the troubled afternoon, the idea had never
once suggested itself! There was no need of loneliness and suffering
for either of them. He might stay; they both might stay; she could
make him happy, and ward off the change she so dreaded.--Who was she to
stick at it?

But she remained dazed, doubtful as it were of this peaceful ending;
her hand still covered her eyes. Then, with one of the swift movements
by which it was her custom to turn thought into action, she went to
the writing-table, and scrawled a few, big words.

MAURICE, I HAVE FOUND A WAY. COME BACK TO-MORROW EVENING.

She hesitated only over the last two words, and, before writing them,
sat with her chin in her hand, and deliberately considered. Then she
addressed the envelope, and stamped it: it would be soon enough if he
got it through the post, the following morning.