Books: Maurice Guest

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In the face of this outpouring, his own opinions seemed of little matter;
his one concern was to ward off the tears that he saw were imminent. He
held her to him, stroked her hair, and murmured words of comfort. But when
she raised her head again, her eyelids were reddened, as though she had
actually wept.

"Now I know you. Now you are my own again," she whispered. "How could I
know you as you were then? I'd never seen you like that--seen you cold and
sensible."

He looked down at her without speaking, in a preoccupied way.

She touched his face with her finger. "Here are lines I don't know--I see
them now for the first time--lines of reason, of common sense, of all that
is strange to me in you."

He caught her hand, continuing to gaze at her with the same
expression of aloofness. "I need them for us both. You have none."

Her lips parted in a smile. Then this faded, and she looked at him with
eyes that reminded him of an untamed animal, or of a startled child.

"Mine . . . still mine!" she said passionately.--And in the hours it took
to reassure her, his primly reasoned conclusions were blown like chaff
before the wind.

II.

The next fortnight flew by; and familiar faces began to appear again. The
steps and inner vestibule of the Conservatorium became a lounge for seeing
acquaintances. In the cafe at the corner, the click of billiard balls was
to be heard from early morning on.

Maurice looked forward to meeting his friends, with some embarrassment. It
was unlikely that the events of the summer had remained a secret; for
that, there was a clique in the place over-much on the alert for scandal,
to which unfortunately the name of Louise Dufrayer lent itself only too
readily. He could not decide what position to take up, with regard to
their present intimacy; to flaunt it openly, to be pointed at as her
lover, would for her sake be repugnant to him. It made him reject an idea
he had revolved, of begging her to let him announce their engagement: for,
in the present state of things, the word "BRAUTIGAM" had an evil sound.
Eventually, he came to the conclusion that they must be more cautious than
they had ever been, and give absolutely no food for talk.

One day, in the GRASSISTRASSE, he came upon a little knot of men he knew.
And it was just as he supposed; the secret was a secret no longer. He saw
it at once in their treatment of him. There was a spice of deference in
their manner: and their looks expressed curiosity, envious surprise, even
a kind of brotherly welcome. After this, Maurice changed his mind. the
only course open to him was to brazen things out. He would not wait for
his friends to show him what they thought; he would be beforehand with
them.

A chance soon offered ofputting his intentions into practice. On entering
Seyffert's one afternoon, he espied Dove, who had just returned. Dove sat
alone at a small table, reading the TAGEBLATT; before him stood a cup of
cocoa. When he saw Maurice, he raised the newspaper a trifle higher, so
that it covered the level of his eyes. But Maurice went across the room,
and touched him on the shoulder. Dove dropped his shield, and sprang up,
exclaiming with surprise. Maurice sat down beside him, and, by dint of a
little wheedling, put Dove at his ease. The latter was bubbling over with
new experiences and future prospects. It seemed that in Peterborough,
Dove's native town, the art of music was taking strides that were
nothing short of marvellous. To hear Dove talk, the palm for progress must
be awarded to Peterborough, over and above all the other towns of Great
Britain; and he was agog with plans and expectations. During the holidays,
he had held conversations with several local magnates, all of whom
expressed themselves in favour of his scheme for founding a school of
music, and promised him their support. Dove had returned to Leipzig in a
brand-new outfit, and a hard hat; his studies were coming to an end in
spring, and he began to think already of casting the skin of Bohemianism.

Maurice listened to him leniently--even drew Dove out a little. But he
kept his eye on the clock. In less than half an hour, he would be with
Louise; from some corner of the semidarkened room, she would spring
towards him, and throw herself into his arms.

The majority of the classes were not yet assembled, when one day, a rumour
rose, and spreading, ran from mouth to mouth. Those who heard it were at
first incredulous; as, however, it continued to make headway, they
whistled to themselves, or vented their surprise in a breathless "ACH!"
Later in the day, they stood about in groups, and excitedly discussed the
subject. Ten of Schwarz's most advanced pupils had left the master for the
outsider named Schrievers. At the head of the list stood Furst.

The Conservatorium, royally endowed and municipally controlled, held to
its time-honoured customs with tenacity. The older masters laboured to
uphold tradition, and such younger ones as were progressively inclined,
had not the influence to effect a change. Unattached teachers were
regarded with suspicion--unless they happened to be former pupils of the
institution, in which case it was assumed that they carried out its
precepts. There had naturally always been plenty of others as well; but
these were comparatively powerless: they could give their pupils neither
imposing certificates, nor gala public performances, such as the
PRUFUNGEN, and, for the most part, they flourished unknown. This was
previous to the arrival of Schrievers. It was now about a year and a half
ago that his settling in Leipzig had caused a flutter in musical circles.
Then, however, he had been forgotten, or at least remembered only at
intervals, when it was heard that he had caught another fish, in the shape
of a renegade pupil.

Schrievers was a burly, red-bearded man, still well under middle
age, and possessed of plenty of push and self-confidence. It soon
transpired that he was an out-and-out champion of modern ideas in music;
for, from the first, he was connected with a leading paper, in which he
made his views known. He had a trenchant pen, and, with unfailing
consistency, criticised the musical conditions of Leipzig adversely. The
progressive LISZTVEREIN, of which he was soon the leading spirit, alone
escaped; the opera, bereft of Nikisch, and the Gewandhaus, under its
gentle and aged conductor, were treated by him with biting sarcasm. But
his chief butt was the Conservatorium, and its ancient methods. He
asserted that not a jot of the curriculum had been altered for fifty
years; and its speedy downfall was the sole result to be expected and
hoped for. The fact that, at this time, some seven hundred odd students
were enrolled on its books went far to discredit this pious hope; but,
nevertheless, Schrievers harped always on the same string; and just as
perpetual dropping wears a stone, so his continued diatribes ate into
emotional and sensitive natures. He began to attract a following, and,
simultaneously, to make himself known as a pupil of Liszt. This brought
him a fresh batch of enemies. Even a small German town is seldom without
its Liszt-pupil, and in Leipzig several were settled, none of whom had
ever heard of Martin Schrievers. They refused to admit him to their
jealous clique. In their opinion, he belonged to that goodly class of
persons, who, having by hook or by crook, contrived to spend an hour in
the Abbe of Weimar's presence, afterwards abused the sacred narre of
pupil. He was hated by these chosen few with more vigour than by the
conservative pedagogues, who, naturally enough, saw the ruin of art in all
he did.

Various reasons were given for his success, no one being willing to
believe that it was due to his merits as a teacher. Some said that he
recognised in a twinkling the weak points of the individual with whom he
had to deal. He humoured foibles, was tender of self-conceit. He also
flattered his pupils by giving them music that was beyond their powers of
execution: those, for instance, who had worked long and with feeble
interest at Czerny, Dussek and Hummel, were dazzled at the prospect of
Liszt and Chopin, which was suddenly thrust beneath their, eyes. Other
ill-wishers believed that his chief bait was the musical SOIREES he gave
when a famous pianist came to the town. By virtue of his journalistic
position, he was personally acquainted with all the great; they
visited at his house, and his pupils had thus not merely the opportunity
of getting to know artists like Rubinstein and d'Albert, and of hearing
them play in private, but, what was more to the point, of themselves
taking part in the performance, and perhaps receiving a golden word from
the great man's lips. And though no huge parchment scroll was forthcoming
on the termination of one's studies, yet Schrievers held the weapon of
criticism in his hand, and, at the first tentative public appearance of
the young performer, could make or mar as he chose. He lived on good
terms, too, with his fellow-critics, so that wire-pulling was
easy--incomparably more so than were the embarrassing visits, open to any
snub, which were common if one was only a pupil of the Conservatorium, and
which, in the case of the ladypupils, included costly bouquets of flowers.

Among those who had deserted Schwarz were some, like Miss Martin,
malcontents, who had flitted from place to place, and from master to
master, in the perpetual hope of discovering that ideal teacher who would
estimate them at their true worth. These were radiantly satisfied with the
change. Miss Martin bore, wherever she went, an octave-study by Liszt, and
flaunted it in the faces of her friends: and Miss Moses, who had been
under Bendel, could not say two sentences without throwing in: "That
Chopin ETUDE I studied last," or: "The Polonaise in E flat I'm working
at;" for, beforehand, she too had been a humble performer of Haydn and
Bertini. James had the prospect of playing a Concerto by Liszt--forbidden
fruit to the pupils of the Conservatorium--in one of the concerts of the
LISZTVEREIN, and was sure, in advance, of being favourably criticised.
Boehmer wished to specialise in Bach, and if Schwarz set himself against
one thing more than another, it was a one-sided musical taste: within the
bounds of classicism, the master demanded catholic sympathies; those
students who had romantic leanings towards Chopin and Schumann, were
castigated with severely classical compositions; and, vice versa, he had
insisted on Boehmer widening his horizon on Schubert and Mendelssohn. And
there were also several others, who, having been dragged forward by
Schwarz, from inefficient beginnings, now left him, to write their
acquired skill to Schrievers' credit. Furst was the greatest riddle of
all. It was he who, on subsequent concert-tours, was to have extended the
fame of the Conservatorium; he was the show pupil of the institution, and,
in the coming PRUFUNGEN, was to have distinguished himself, and
his master with him, by playing Beethoven's Concerto in E flat.

Other teachers besides Schwarz had been forsaken for the new-comer, but in
no case by so large a body of students. They bore their losses
philosophically. Bendel, one of the few masters who spoke English--it was
against the principles of Schwarz to know a word of it: foreign pupils had
to learn his language, not he theirs--Bendel, frequented chiefly by the
American colony, was of a phlegmatic temperament and not easily roused. He
alluded to the backsliders with an ironical jest, preferring to believe
that they were the losers. But Schwarz was of a diametrically opposite
nature. In the short, thickset man, with the all-seeing eyes, and the head
of carefully waved hair, just streaked with grey--a head at once too
massive and too fine for the clumsy body--in Schwarz, dwelt a fierce and
indomitable pride. His was one of those moody, sensitive natures, quick to
resent, always on the look-out for offence. He was ever ready to translate
things into the personal; for though he had an overweening sense of his
own importance, there was yet room in him for a secret doubt; and with
this doubt, he, as it were, put other people to the test. The loss of the
flower of his flock made him doubly unsure; he felt himself a marked man,
for Bendel and other enemies to jeer at. Aloud, he spoke long and
vehemently, as if mere noisy words would heal the wound. And the pupils
who had remained faithful to him, gathered all the more closely round him,
and burned as he did. If wishes could have injured or killed, Furst's
career would then and there have come to an end: his ingratitude, his
treachery, and his lack of moral fibre, were denounced on every hand.

One day, at this time, Maurice entered Schwarz's room. The class was
assembled; but, although the hour was well advanced, no one had begun to
play. The master stood at the window, with his back to the grass-grown
courtyard. He was haranguing, in a strident voice, the three pupils who
sat along the wall. From what followed, Maurice gathered that that very
afternoon Schwarz had been informed of the loss of four more pupils; and
though, as every one knew, he had hitherto not set much store by any of
them, he now discovered latent talent in all four, and was, at the same
time, exasperated that such nonentities should presume to judge him.

To infer from the appearance of those present, the storm had raged fora
considerable period. And still it went on. After the expiry of a
futher interval, Krafft who, throughout, had sat shading his eyes with his
hand, woke as though from sleep, yawned heartily, stretched himself and,
taking out his watch, studied it with profound attention. For the first
time, Schwarz was checked in his flow of words; he coughed, fumbled for an
epithet, then stopped, and, to the general surprise, motioned Krafft to
the piano.

But Heinrich was in a bad mood. He stifled another yawn before beginning,
and played in a mechanical way.

Schwarz had often enough made allowance for this pupil's varying moods; he
was not now in the humour to do so.

"HALT!" he cried before the first page was turned. "What in God's name is
the meaning of this? Do you come here to read from sight?"

Krafft continued to play as if nothing had been said.

"Do you hear me?" thundered Schwarz.

"It's impossible," said Krafft, and proceeded.

"BARMHERZIGER GOTT!--"The master's short neck reddened, and twisted in its
collar.

"Give me music I care to play, and I'll show you how it should be done. I
can make nothing of this," answered Krafft.

Schwarz strode up to the piano, and swept the volume from the rack; it
fell with a crash on the keys and on Krafft's hands, and effectually
hindered him from continuing.

What had gone before was as a summer shower to a deluge. With his arms
stiffly knotted behind his back, Schwarz paced the floor with a tread that
shook it. His steely blue eyes flashed with passion; the veins stood out
on his forehead; his large, prominent mouth gaped above his tuft of beard;
he struck ludicrous attitudes, pouring out, meanwhile, without stint--for
he had soon passed from Krafft's particular case of insubordination to the
general one--pouring out the savage anger and deep-felt injury that had
accumulated in him. Finally, he invited the class to rise and leave him,
there and then. For what, in God's name, were they waiting? Let them up
and away, without more ado!

On receiving the volume of Beethoven on his fingers, Krafft straightened
out the pages, and taking down his hat from its peg, left the room, with
movements of a calculated coolness. But only a pupil of Bullow's might
take such a liberty; the rest had to assist quietly at the painful scene.
Maurice studied his finger nails, and Dove did not once remove his eyes
from the leg of the piano. They, at least, knew from experience that,
in time, the storm would pass; also that it sounded worse, than it
actually was. But a new-comer, a stout Bavarian lad, with hair cut like
Rubinstein's, who was present at the lesson for the first time, was pale
and frightened, and sat drinking in every word.

Towards the end of the hour, when quiet was re-established, one's
inclination was rather to escape from the room and be free, than to sit
down to play something that demanded coolness and concentration. Dove, who
was not sensitive to externals, came safely through the ordeal; but
Maurice made a poor job of the trio in which he had hoped to excel.
Schwarz did not even offer to turn the pages. This, Beyerlein, the
new-comer, did, in a nervous desire to ingratiate himself; but he was
still so flustered that, at a critical moment, he brought the music down
on the keys. Schwarz said nothing; wrapped in the moody silence that
invariably followed his outbursts, he hardly seemed aware that anyone was
playing. After two movements of the trio, he signed to Beyerlein to take
his turn, and proffered no comment on Maurice's work. Maurice would have
hurried away, without a further word, had he not already learned the early
date of his performance. He knew, too, that if the practical side of the
affair--rehearsals with string players, and so on--was not satisfactorily
arranged, he would be blamed for it. So he reminded Schwarz of the matter.
From what ensued, it was plain that the master still bore him a grudge for
absconding in summer. Schwarz glared coldly at him, as if unsure to what
Maurice alluded; and when the latter had recalled the details of the case
to his mind, he said rudely: "You went your way, Herr Guest. Now I go
mine." He commenced to turn the leaves of his ponderous note-book, and
after Maurice had stood for some few minutes, listening to Beyerlein trip
and stumble through Mozart, he felt that, for this day at least, he could
put up with no more, and left the class.

III.

Shaking all disagreeable impressions from him, he sped through the fading
light of the September afternoon.

This was the time--it was six o'clock--at which he could rejoin Louise
with a free mind. It was the exception for him to go earlier, or at other
hours; but, did he chance to go, no matter when, she met him in the same
way--sprang towards him from the window, where she had been sitting or
standing, with her eyes on the street.

"I believe you watch for me all day long," he said to her once.

On this particular afternoon, when he had used much the same words to her,
she put back her head and looked up at him, with a pale, unsmiling face.

"Not quite," she answered slowly. "But I have a fancy, Maurice--a foolish,
fancy--that once you will come early--in the morning--and we shall have
the whole day together again. Perhaps even go away somewhere . . . before
summer is quite over."

"And I promise you, dearest, we will. Just let me get through the next
fortnight, and then I shall be freer. We'll take the train, and go back to
Rochlitz, or anywhere you like. In the meantime, take more care of
yourself. You are far too pale. You will go out tomorrow, yes?--to please
me?"

But this was a request he had often made, and generally in vain.

Since the afternoon of their return, Louise had made no further attempt to
stem or alter circumstance. She accepted Maurice's absences without demur.
But one result was, that her feelings were hoarded up for the few hours he
passed with her: these were then a working-off of emotion; and it seemed
impossible to cram enough into them, to make good the starved remainder of
the day.

Maurice was vaguely troubled. He was himself so busy at this time, and so
full of revived energy, that he could not imagine her happy, living as she
did, entirely without occupation. At first he had tried to persuade her to
take up her music again; but she would not even consider it. To all his
arguments, she made the same reply.

"I have no real talent. With me, it was only an excuse--to get away
from home."

Nor could he induce her to renew her acquaintance with people she had
known.

"Do you know, I once thought you didn't care a jot what people said of
you?" It was not a very kind thing to say; it slipped out unawares.

But she did not take it amiss. "I used not to," she answered with her
invincible frankness. "But now--it seems--I do."

"Why, dearest? Aren't you happy enough not to care?"

For answer, she took his face between her hands, and looked at him with
such an ill-suppressed fire in her eyes that all he could do was to draw
her into his arms.

His pains for her good came to nothing. He took her his favourite books,
but--with the exception of an occasional novel--Louise was no reader. In
those he brought her, she seldom advanced further than the first few
pages; and she could sit for an hour without turning a leaf. He had never
seen her with a piece of sewing or any such feminine employment in her
hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as a rule, he found her in
her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying to influence her, and to
become reconciled to the fact that she chose to live only for him. But on
this September day, after the unpleasant episode with Schwarz, he had a
fancy to go for a walk; Louise was unwilling; and he felt anew how
preposterous it was for her to spend these fine autumn days, in this
half-dark room.

"You are burying yourself alive--just as you did last winter."

She laid her hand on his lips. "No, no!--don't say that. Now I am happy."

"But are you really? Sometimes I'm not sure." He was tired himself this
evening, and found it difficult to be convinced. "It troubles me when I
think how dull it must be for you. Dearest, are you--can you really be
happy like this?"

"I have you, Maurice."

"But only for an hour or two in the twenty-four. Tell me, what do you
think of?"

"Of you."

"All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?"

"You are mine," she said with vehemence, and looked at him with what he
called her "hungry-beast" eyes.

"You would like to eat me, I think."

"Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I love best"--and
before he knew what she was going to do, she had stooped, and he felt her
teeth in the skin of his neck.

"That's a strange way of showing your love," he said, and involuntarily
put his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red marks had appeared.

"It's my way. I want you--I WANT you. I want to feel that you're mine--to
make you more mine than you've ever been. I wish I had a hundred arms. I
would hold you with them all, and never let you go."

"But, dearest, one would think I wanted to go. Do you really believe if I
had my own way, I should be anywhere but here with you?"

"No.--I don't know.--How should I know?"

"Doubts?--beloved!"

"No, no, not doubts. It's only--oh, I don't know what it is. If you could
always be with me, Maurice, they wouldn't come. For what I never meant to
happen HAS happened. I have grown to care too much--far too much. I want
you, I need you, at every moment of the day. I want you never to be out of
my sight."

Maurice held her at arm's length, and looked at her. "You can say that--at
last!" And drawing her to him: "Patience, darling. Just a little patience.
Some day you will never be alone again."

"I do have patience, Maurice. But let me be patient in my own way. For I'm
not like you. I have no room in me now for other things. I can't think of
anything else. If I had my way, we should shut ourselves up alone, and
live only for each other. Not share it, not make it just a part of what we
do."

"But man can't live on nectar and honey alone. It wouldn't be life."

"It wouldn't be life, no. It would be more than life."

Some of the evening shadows seemed to invade her face. Her expression was
childishly pathetic. He drew her to his knee.

"I should like to see you happier, Louise--yes, yes, I know!--but I mean
perfectly happy, as you were sometimes at Rochlitz. Since we came back, it
has never been just the right thing--say what you like."

"If only we had never come back!"

"If you still think so, darling, when I've finished here, we'll go
away at once. In the meantime, patience."

"Oh, I don't mean to be unreasonable!" But her head was on his shoulder,
his arms were round her; and in this position, nothing mattered greatly to
her.

Patience?--yes, there was need for him to exhort her to patience. It ate
already into her soul as iron bands eat into flesh. The greater part of
her life was now spent in practising it. And for sheer loathing of it, she
turned over, on waking, and kept her eyes closed, in an attempt to prolong
the night. For the day stretched empty before her; the hours passed, one
by one, like grey-veiled ghosts. Yet not for a moment had she harboured
his idea of regular occupation; she knew herself too well for that. In the
fever into which her blood had worked itself she could settle to nothing:
her attention was centred wholly in herself; and all her senses were
preternaturally acute. But she suffered, too, under the stress of her
feeling; it blunted her, and made her, on the one hand, regardless of
everything outside it, on the other, morbidly sensitive to trifles. She
waited for him, hour after hour, crouched in a corner of the sofa, or
stretched at full length, with closed eyes.