Books: Maurice Guest

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With his music in his hand, he turned to Schwarz, to learn what success he
had had, from the master's face. According to custom, Schwarz shook hands
with him; he also nodded. but he did not smile. He was, however, in a
hurry; the old: white-haired director had left his seat, and stood waiting
to speak to him. Both 'cellist and violinist had vanished on the instant;
the audience, eager as ever at the end of a concert to shake off an
imposed restraint, had risen while Maurice still played the final notes;
and, by this time, the hall was all but empty.

He slowly ascended the platform. Now that it was over, he felt how
tired he was; his very legs were tired, as though he had walked for miles.
The green-room was deserted; the gas-jet had been screwed down to a peep.
None of his friends had come to say a word to him. He had really hardly
expected it; but, all the same, a hope had lurked in him that Krafft would
perhaps afterwards make some sign--even Madeleine. As, however, neither of
them appeared, he seemed to read a confirmation of his failure in their
absence, and he loitered for some time in the semi-darkness, unwilling to
face the dispersing crowd. When at length he went down the passage, only a
few stragglers remained. One or two acquaintances congratulated him in due
form, but he knew neither well enough to try to get at the truth. As he
was nearing the street-door, however, Dove came out of the BUREAU. He made
for Maurice at once; his manner was eager, his face bore the imprint of
interesting news.

"I say, Guest!" he cried, while still some way off. "An odd coincidence.
Young Leumann is to play this very same trio next week. A little chap in
knickerbockers, you know--pupils of Rendel's. He is said to have a
glorious LEGATO--just the very thing for the VARIATIONS."

"Indeed?" said Maurice with a well-emphasised dryness. His tone nudged
Dove's memory.

"By the way, all congratulations, of course," he hastened to add. "Never
heard you play better. Especially the MENUETTO. Some people sitting behind
me were reminded of Rubinstein."

"Well, good-night, I'm off," said Maurice, and, even as he spoke, he shot
away, leaving his companion in some surprise.

Once out of Dove's sight, he took off his hat and passed his hand over his
forehead. Any slender hope he might have had was now crushed; his playing
had been so little remarkable that even Dove had been on the point of
overlooking it altogether.

Louise threw herself into his arms. At last! she exulted to herself. But
his greeting had not its usual fervour; instead of kissing her, he laid
his face against her hair. Instantly, she became uncertain. She did not
quite know what she had been expecting; perhaps it had been something of
the old, pleasurable excitement that she had learnt to associate with an
occasion like the present. She put back her head and looked at him, and
her look was a question.

"Yes. At least it's over, thank goodness!" he said in reply.

Not knowing what answer to make to this, she led him to the sofa. They sat
down, and, for a few minutes, neither spoke. Then, he did what on the way
there, he had imagined himself doing: laid his head on her lap, and
himself placed her hands on his hair. She passed them backwards and
forwards; her sense of having been repulsed, yielded, and she tried to
change the current of his thoughts.

"Did you notice, Maurice, as you came along, how full the air was of
different scents to-night?" she asked as her cool hands went to and fro.
"It was like an evening in July. I was at the window trying to make them
out. But the roses were too strong for them; for you see--or rather you
have not seen--all the roses I have got for you--yes, just dark red roses.
This afternoon I went to the little shop at the corner, and bought all
they had. The pretty girl served me--do you remember the pretty girl with
the yellow hair, who tried to make friends with you last summer? You like
roses, too, don't you? Though not as much as I do. They were always my
favourite flowers. As a child, I used to imagine what it would be like to
gather them for a whole day, without stopping. But, like all my wishes
then, this had to be postponed, too, till that wonderful future, which was
to bring me all I wanted. There were only a few bushes where I lived; it
was too dry for them. But the smell of them takes me back--always. I have
only to shut my eyes, and I am full of the old extravagant longings--the
childish impatience with time, which seemed to crawl so slowly . . . even
to stand still."

"Tell me all about it," he murmured, without raising his head.

She smiled and humoured him.

"I like flowers best for their scents," she went on. "No matter what
beautiful colours they have. A camelia is a foolish flower; like a blind
man's face--the chief thing is wanting. But then, of course, the smell
must remind one of pleasant things. It's strange, isn't it, how much
association has to do with pleasure?--or pain. Some things affect me so
strongly that they make me wretched. There's music I can't listen to; I
have to put my hands to my ears, and run away from it; and all because it
takes me back to an unhappy hour, or to a time of my life that I hated.
There are streets I never walk through, even words I dread to hear anyone
say, because they are connected with some one I disliked, or a day
I would rather not have lived. And it is just the same with smells. Wood
smouldering outside!--and all the country round is smoky with bush fires.
Mimosa in the room--and I can feel the sun beating down on deserted shafts
and the stillness of the bush. Rotting leaves and the smell of moist
earth, and I am a little girl again, in short dresses, standing by a
grave--my father's to which I was driven in a high buggy, between two men
in black coats. I can't remember crying at all, or even feeling sorry; I
only smelt the earth--it was in the rainy season and there was water in
the grave.--But flowers give me my pleasantest memories. Passion-flowers
and periwinkles--you will say they have no smell, but it's not true. Flat,
open passionflowers--red or white--with purplish-fringed centres, have a
honey-smell, and make me think of long, hot, cloudless days, which seemed
to have neither beginning nor end. And little periwinkles have a cool
green smell; for they grew along an old paling fence, which was shady and
sometimes even damp. And violets? I never really cared for violets; not
till . . . I mean . . . I never . . ."

She had entangled herself, and broke off so abruptly that he moved. He was
afraid this soothing flow of words was going to cease.

"Yes, yes, go on, tell me some more--about violets."

She hastened to recover herself. "They are silly little flowers. Made to
wither in one's dress . . . or to be crushed. Unless one could have them
in such masses that they filled the room. But lilac, Maurice, great sprays
and bunches of lilac-white and purple--you know, don't you, who will
always be associated with lilac for me? Do you remember some of those
evenings at the theatre, on the balcony between the acts? The gallery was
so hot, and out there it seemed as if the whole town were steeped in
lilac. Or walking home--those glorious nights--when some one was so
silent . . . so moody--do you remember?"

At the peculiar veiled tone that had come into her voice; at this reminder
of a past day of alternate rapture and despair, so different from the
secured happiness of the present; at the thought of this common memory
that had built itself up for them round a flower's scent, a rush of
grateful content overcame Maurice, and, for the first time since entering
the room, he looked up at her with a lover's eyes.

Safe, with her arms round him, he was strong enough to face the
worst. "How good you are to me, dearest! And I don't deserve it. To-night,
you might just have sent me away again, when I came. For I was in a
disagreeable mood--and still am. But you won't give me up just yet for all
that, will you? However despondent I get about myself? For you are all I
have, Louise--in the whole world. Yes, I may as well confess it to you,
to-night was a failure--not a noisy, open one but all the same, it's no
use calling it anything else."

He had laid his head on her lap again, so did not see her face. While he
spoke, Louise looked at him, in a kind of unwilling surprise.
Instinctively, she ceased to pass her hands over his hair.

"Oh, no, Maurice," she then protested, but weakly, without conviction.

"Yes--failure," he repeated, and put more emphasis than before on the
word. "It's no good beating about the bush.--And do you realise what
it--what failure means for us, Louise?"

"Oh, no," she said again, vaguely trying to ward off what she foresaw was
coming. "And why talk about it to-night? You are tired. Things will seem
different in the morning. Shut your eyes again, and lie quite still."

But, the ice once broken, he felt the need of speaking--of speaking out
relentlessly all that was in him. And, as he talked. he found it
impossible to keep still; he paced the room. He was very pale and very
voluble, and made a clean breast of everything that troubled him; not so
much, however, with the idea of confessing it to her, as of easing his own
mind. And now, again, he let her see into his real self, and, unlike the
previous occasion, it was here more than a glimpse that she caught. He was
distressingly frank with her. She heard now, for the first time, of the
foolish ambitions with which he had begun his studies in Leipzig; heard of
their gradual subsidence, and his humble acceptance of his inferiority, as
well as of his present fear that, when his time came to an end, he would
have nothing to show for it--and under the influence of what had just
happened, this fear grew more vivid. It was one thing, he made clear to
her, and unpleasant enough at best, to have to find yourself to rights as
a mediocrity, when you had hoped with all your heart that you were
something more. But what if, having staked everything on it, you should
discover that you had mistaken your calling altogether?

"To-night, you see, I think I should have been a better chimney-sweep. The
real something that makes the musician--even the genuinely musical
outsider--is wanting in me. I've learnt to see that, by degrees, though I
don't know in the least what it is.--But even suppose I were mistaken--who
could tell me that I was? One's friends are only too glad to avoid giving
a downright opinion, and then, too, which of them would one care to trust?
I believe in the end I shall go straight to Schwarz, and get him to tell
me what he thinks of me--whether I'm making a fool of myself or not."

"Oh, I wouldn't do that," Louise said quickly.

It was the first time she had interrupted him. She had sat and followed
his restless movements with a look of apprehension. A certain board in the
floor creaked when he trod on it, and she found herself listening, each
time, for the creaking of this board. She was sorry for him, but she could
not attach the importance he did to his assumed want of success, nor was
she able to subdue the feeling of distaste with which his doubtings
inspired her. It was so necessary, too, this outpouring; she had never
felt curious about the side of his nature which was not the lover's side.
Tonight, it became clear to her that she would have preferred to remain in
ignorance of it. And besides, what he said was so palpable, so undeniable,
that she could not understand his dragging the matter to the surface: she
had never thought of him but as one of the many honest workers, who swell
the majority, and are not destined to rise above the crowd. She had not
dreamed of his considering himself in another light, and it was painful to
her now, to find that he had done so. To put an end to such embarrassing
confidences, she went over to him, and, with her hands on his shoulders,
her face upturned, said all the consoling words she could think of, to
make him forget. They had never yet failed in their effect. But to-night
too much was at work in Maurice, for him to be influenced by them. He
kissed her, and touched her cheek with his hand, then began anew; and she
moved away, with a slight impatience, which she did not try to conceal.

"You brood too much, Maurice . . . and you exaggerate things, too. What if
every one took himself so seriously?--and talked of failure because on a
single occasion he didn't do himself justice?"

"It's more than that with me, dear.--But it's a bad habit, I know--not
that I really mean to take myself too seriously; but all my life I have
been forced to worry about things, and to turn them over."

"It's unhealthy always to be looking into yourself. Let things go
more, and they'll carry you with them."

He took her hands. "What wise-sounding words! And I'm in the wrong, I
know, as usual. But, in this case, it's impossible not to worry. What
happened this evening seems a trifle to you, and no doubt would to every
one else, too. But I had made a kind of touchstone of it; it was to help
to decide the future--that hideously uncertain future of ours! I believe
now, as far as I'm concerned, I don't care whether I ever come to anything
or not. Of course, I should rather have been a success--we all would!--but
caring for you has swallowed up the ridiculous notions I once had. For
your sake--it's you I torment myself about. WHAT is to become of us?"

"If that's all, Maurice! Something will turn up, I'm sure it will. Have a
little patience, and faith in luck . . . or fate . . . or whatever you
like to call it."

"That's a woman's way of looking at things."

He was conscious of speaking somewhat unkindly; but he was hurt by her
lack of sympathy. Instead, however, of smoothing things over, he was
impelled, by an unconquerable impulse, to disclose himself still further.
"Besides, that's not all," he said, and avoided her eyes. "There's
something else, and I may just as well make a clean breast of it. It's not
only that the future is every bit as shadowy to-night as it has always
been: I haven't advanced it by an inch. But I feel to-night that if I
could have been what I once hoped to be--no, how shall I put it? You know,
dear, from the very beginning there has been something wrong, a kind of
barrier between ushasn't there? How often I've tried to find out what it
is! Well, to-night I seem to know. If I were not such an out-and-out
mediocrity, if I had really been able to achieve something, you would care
for me--yes, that's it!--as you can't possibly care now. You would have
to; you wouldn't be able to help yourself."

Her first impulsive denial died on her lips; as he continued to speak, she
seemed to feel in his words an intention to wound her, or, at least, to
accuse her of want of love. When she spoke, it was in a cool voice, as
though she were on her guard against being touched too deeply.

"That has nothing whatever to do with it," she said. "It's you yourself,
Maurice, I care for--not what you can or can't do."

But these words added fuel to his despondency. "Yes, that's just
it," he answered. "For you, I'm in two parts, and one of them means
nothing to you. I've felt it, often enough, though I've never spoken of it
till to-night. Only one side of me really matters to you. But if I'd been
able to accomplish what I once intended--to make a name for myself, or
something of that sort--then it would all have been different. I could
have forced you to be interested in every single thing I did--not only in
the me that loves you, but in every jot of my outside life as well."

Louise did not reply: she had a moment of genuine despondency. The staunch
tenderness she had been resolved to feel for him this evening, collapsed
and shrivelled up; for the morbid self-probing in which he was indulging
made her see him with other eyes. What he said belonged to that category
of things which are too true to be put into words: why could not he, like
every one else, let them rest, and act as if they did not exist? It was as
clear as day: if he were different, the whole story of their relations
would be different, too. But as he could not change his nature, what was
the use of talking about it, and of turning out to her gaze, traits of
mind with which she could not possibly sympathise? Standing, a long white
figure, beside the piano, she let her arms hang weakly at her sides. She
did not try to reason with him again, or even to comfort him; she let him
go on and on, always in the same strain, till her nerves suddenly rebelled
at the needless irritation.

"Oh, WHY must you be like this to-night?" she broke in on him. "Why try to
destroy such happiness as we have? Can you never be content?"

From the way in which he seized upon these words, it seemed as if he had
only been waiting for her to say them. "Such happiness as we have!" he
repeated. "There!--listen!--you yourself admit it. Admit all I've been
saying.--And do you think I can realise that, and be happy? No, I've
suffered under it from the first day. Oh, why, loving you as I do, could I
not have been different?--more worthy of you. Why couldn't I, too, be one
of those favoured mortals . . .? Listen to me," he said lowering his
voice, and speaking rapidly. "Let me make another confession. Do you know
why to-night is doubly hard to bear? It's because--yes, because I know you
must be forced--and not to-night only, but often--to compare me what I am
and what I can do--with . . . with . . . you know who I mean. It's
inevitable--the comparison must be thrust on you every day of your
life. But does that, do you think, make it any the easier for me?"

As the gist of what he was trying to say was borne in upon her, Louise
winced. Her face lost its tired expression, and grew hard. "You are
breaking your word," she said, in a tone she had never before used to him.
"You promised me once, the past should never be mentioned between us."

"I'm not blind, Louise," he went on, as though she had not spoken. "Nor am
I in a mood to-night to make myself any illusions. The remembrance of what
he was--he was never doubtful of himself, was he?--must always--HAS always
stood between us, while I have racked my brains to discover what it was.
To-night it came over me like a flash that it was he--that he . . . he
spoiled you utterly for anyone else; made it impossible for you to care
for anyone who wasn't made of the same stuff as he was. It would never
have occurred to him, would it, to torment you and make you suffer for his
own failure? For the very good reason that he never was a failure. Oh, I
haven't the least doubt what a sorry figure I must cut beside him!"

The unhappy words came out slowly, and seemed to linger in the air. Louise
did not break the pause that followed, and by her silence, assented to
what he said. She still stood motionless beside the piano.

"Or tell me," Maurice cried abruptly, with a ray of hope; "tell me the
truth about it all, for once. Was it mere exaggeration, or was he really
worth so much more than all the rest of us? Of course he could play--I
know that--but so can many a fool. But all the other part of it--his
incredible talent, or luck in everything he touched--was it just report,
or was it really something else?--Tell me."

"He was a genius," she answered, very coldly and distinctly; and her voice
warned him once more that he was trespassing on ground to which he had no
right. But he was too excited to take the warning.

"A genius!" he echoed. "He was a genius! Yes, what did I tell you? Your
very words imply a comparison as you say them. For I?--what am I? A
miserable bungler, a wretched dilettant--or have you another word for it?
Oh, never mind--don't be afraid to say it!--I'm not sensitive tonight. I
can bear to hear your real opinion of me; for it could not possibly be
lower than my own. Let us get at the truth for once, by all means!--But
what I want to know," he cried a moment later, "is, why one should
be given so much and the other so little. To one all the talents and all
your love; and the other unhappy wretch remains an outsider his whole life
long. When you speak in that tone about him, I could wish with all my
heart that he had been no better than I am. It would give me pleasure to
know that he, too, had only been a dabbling amateur--the victim of a
pitiable wish to be what he hadn't the talent for."

He could not face her amazement; he stared at the yellow globe of the lamp
till his eyes smarted.

"It no doubt seems despicable to you," he went on, "but I can't help it. I
hate him for the way he was able to absorb you. He's my worst enemy, for
he has made it impossible for you--the woman I love--to love me wholly in
return.--Of course, you can't--you WON'T understand. You're only aghast at
what you think my littleness. Of all I've gone through, you know nothing,
and don't want to know. But with him, it was different; you had no
difficulty in understanding him. He had the power over you. Look!--at this
very moment, you are siding, not with me, but with him. All my struggling
and striving counts for nothing.--Oh, if I could only understand you!" He
moved to and fro in his agitation. "Why is a woman so impossible? Does
nothing matter to her but tangible success? Do care and consideration
carry no weight? Even matched against the blackguardly egoism of what you
call genius?--Or will you tell me that he considered you? Didn't he treat
you from beginning to end like the scoundrel he was?"

She raised hostile eyes. "You have no right to say that," she said in a
small, icy voice, which seemed to put him at an infinite distance from
her. "You are not able to judge him. You didn't know him as . . . as I
did."

With the last words a deeper note came into her voice, and this was all
Maurice heard. A frenzied fear seized him.

"Louise!" he cried violently. "You care for him still!"

She started, and raised her arms, as if to ward off a blow. "I don't . . .
I don't . . . God knows I don't! I hate him--you know I do!" She had
clapped both hands to her face, and held them there. When she looked up
again, she was able to speak as quietly as before. "But do you want to
make me hate you, too? Do you think it gives me a higher opinion of you,
to hear you talk like that about some one I once cared for? How can I find
it anything but ungenerous?--Yes, you are right, he WAS different--in
every way. He didn't know what it meant to be envious of anyone. He was
as different from you as day from night."

Maurice was hurt to the quick. "Now I know your real opinion of me! Till
now you have been considerate enough to hide it. But to-night I have heard
it from your own lips. You despise me!"

"Well, you drove me to say it," she burst out, wounded in her turn. "I
should never have said it of my own accord--never! Oh, how ungenerous you
are! It's not the first time you've goaded me into saying something, and
then turned round on me for it. You seem to enjoy finding out things you
can feel hurt by.--But have I ever complained? Did I not take you just as
you were, and love you--yes, love you! I knew you couldn't be
different--that it wasn't your fault if you were faint-hearted and . . .
and--But you?--what do you do? You talk as if you worship the ground I
walk on: but you can't let me alone. You are always trying to change
me--to make me what you think I ought to be."

Her words came in haste, stumbling one over the other, as it became plain
to her how deeply this grievance, expressed now for the first time, had
eaten into her soul. "You've never said to yourself, she's what she is
because it's her nature to be. You want to remake my nature and correct
it. You are always believing something is wrong. You knew very well, long
ago, that the best part of me had belonged to some one else. You swore it
didn't matter. But to-night, because there's absolutely nothing else you
can cavil at, you drag it up again--in spite of your promises. I have
always been frank with you. Do you thank me for it? No, it's been my old
fault of giving everything, when it would have been wiser to keep
something back, or at least to pretend to. I might have taken a lesson
from you, in parsimonious reserve. For there's a part of you, you couldn't
give away--not if you lived with a person for a hundred years."

Of all she said, the last words stung him most.

"Yes, and why?" he cried. "Ask yourself why I You are unjust, as only a
woman can be. You say there's a part of me you don't know. If that's true,
what does it mean? It means you don't want to know it. You don't want it
even to exist. You want everything to belong to you. You don't care for me
well enough to be interested in that side of my life which has nothing to
do with you. Your love isn't strong enough for that."

"Love!--need we talk about love?" Her face was so unhappy that it
seerned to have grown years older. "Love is something quite different. It
takes everything just as it is. You have never reaily loved me.".

"I have never really loved you?"

He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand them, and
with his right hand grasped the table; the ground seemed to be slipping
from under his feet. But Louise did not offer to retract what she had
said, and Maurice had a moment of bewilderment: there, not three yards
from him, sat the woman who was the centre of his life; Louise sat there,
and with all appearance of believing it, could cast doubts on his love for
her. At the thought of it, he was exasperated.