Books: Maurice Guest

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"No, I don't think you do, and neither do I. But I do know that you are
being very rude to me." As he made no reply, she went on: "You will,
however, at least give me credit for knowing how to keep men at a
distance, though I can't hinder them from looking at me.--And, for your
own comfort, remember in future that I'm not an inexperienced child.
There's nothing I don't know."

"You needn't throw that up at me."

"--I at YOU?" she laughed hotly. "That's surely reversing the order of
things, isn't it? It ought to be the other way about."

"Unfortunately it isn't." The look he gave her was made up of mingled
anger and entreaty; but as she took no notice of it, he turned away, and
going to the window, leaned his forehead against the glass. What affected
him so disagreeably was not the incident of the man following her, but her
light way of regarding it. And as the knowledge of this came home to him,
he was impelled to go on speaking. "It's a trifle to make a fuss about, I
know," he said. "And I shouldn't give it a second thought, if I could ONLY
feel, Louise, that you looked at it as I do . . . and felt about
it as I do. You seem so indifferent to what it really means--it's almost
as if you enjoyed it. Other women are different. They resent such a thing
instinctively. While you don't even take offence. And men feel that in
you, somehow. That's what makes them look at you and follow you about.
That's what attracts them and always has done--far too easily."

"You among the rest!"

"For God's sake, hold your tongue! You don't know what you're saying."

"Oh, I know well enough." She put her hair back from her forehead, and
passed her handkerchief over her lips. "Instead of lecturing me in this
way, you might be grateful, I think, that I didn't accept the man's offer
and go somewhere to supper with him. It's dull enough here. You don't make
things very gay for me. To-day, altogether, you are treating me as if I
were a criminal."

He did not answer; the words "You among the rest!" went on sounding in his
ears. Yes, there was truth in them, a horrible truth. Who was he to sit in
judgment?--either on her, or on those others who yielded to the attraction
that went out from her. Had not he himself been in love with her before he
even knew her name. Had he then accused her?--laid the blame at her door?

She caught a moth that was fluttering round the lamp, and carried it to
the window. When, a moment later, he turned and gave her another unhappy
look, she felt a kind of pity for him, forced as he was, by his nature, to
work himself into unhappiness over such a trivial matter.

"Don't let us say unkind things to each other," she said slowly. "I'm
sorry. If I had known it would worry you so much, I shouldn't have said a
word about it. That would have been easy."

He felt her touch on his arm. As it grew warm and close, he, too, was
filled with the wish to be at one with her again--to be lulled into
security. He pressed her hand.

"Forgive me! To-day I've been bothered--pestered with black thoughts. Or
else I shouldn't go on like this."

Now she was silent; both stared out into the night. And then a strange
thing happened. He began to speak again, and words rose to his lips, of
which, a moment before, he had had no idea, but which he now knew for
absolute truth. He said: "I don't want to excuse myself; I'm jealous, I
admit it. And yet there IS an excuse for me, Louise. For saying
such things to you, I mean. To-night I--Have you ever thought, dear, what
a difference it would make to us, if you had . . . I mean if I knew . . .
that you had never cared for anyone . . . if you had never belonged to
anyone but me? That's what I wish now more than anything else in the
world. If I could just say to myself: no one but me has ever held her in
his arms; and no one ever will. Do you think then, darling, I could speak
as I have to-night?"

A moment back, he had had no thought of such a thing; now, here it was,
expressed, over his lips--another of those strange, inlying truths, which
were existent in him, and only waited for a certain moment to come to
light. Strangest of all, perhaps, was the manner in which it impressed
itself on him. In it seemed to be summed up his trouble of the afternoon,
his suspense and irritation of the later hours. It was as if he had
suddenly found a formula for them, and, as he stated it, he was
dumbfounded by its far-reaching significance.

A church-clock pealed a single stroke.

"Oh, yes, perhaps," said Louise, in a low voice. She could not rouse
herself to a very keen interest in his feelings.

"No, not perhaps. Yes--a thousand times yes! Everything would be changed
by it. Then I couldn't torment you. And our love would have a certainty
such as it can now never have."

"But you knew, Maurice! I told you--everything! You said it didn't
matter."

"And it doesn't, and never shall. But to make it undone, I would
cheerfully give years of my life. You're a woman--you can't understand
these things--or know what we miss. You mine only--life wouldn't be the
same."

For a moment she did not answer. Then the same toneless voice came out of
the darkness at his side. "But I AM yours only--now. And it's a foolish
thing to wish for the impossible."

VII.

It was, indeed, a preposterous thought to have at this date: no one knew
that better than himself. And as long as he was with Louise, he kept it at
bay; it was a fatuous thing even to allow himself to think, considering
the past, and considering all he knew.

But next morning, as he sat with busy fingers, and a vacant mind, it
returned. He thrust it angrily away, endeavouring to concentrate his
attention on his music open before him. For a time, he believed he had
succeeded. Then, the idea was unexpectedly present to him again, and this
time more forcibly than before; it came like a sharp, swift stab of
remembrance, and forced an exclamation over his lips. Discouraged, he let
his hands drop from the keys of the piano; for now he knew that he would
probably never be rid of it again. This was always the way with unpleasant
thoughts and impressions: if they returned, after he had resolved to have
done with them, they were henceforth part and parcel of himself, fixed
ideas, against which his will was powerless.

In the hope of growing used to the haunting reflection, and to the
unhappiness it implied, he thought it through to the end--this strange,
unsought knowledge, which had lain unsuspected in him, and now became
articulate. Once considered, however, it made many things clear. He could
even account to himself now, for the blasphemous suggestions that had
plagued him not twenty-four hours ago. If he had then not, all
unconsciously, had the feeling that Louise had known too long and too well
what love was, to be willing to live without it, such thoughts as those
would never have risen in him.

In vain he asked himself, why he should only now understand these things.
He could find no answer. Throughout the time he had known Louise, he had
been better acquainted with her mode of life than anyone else: her past
had lain open to him; she had concealed nothing, had been what she called
"brutally frank" with him. And he had protested, and honestly believed,
that what had preceded their intimacy did not matter to him. Who could
foresee that, on a certain day, an idea of this kind would break out in
him--like a canker? But this query took him a step further. Was it
not deluding himself to say break out? Had not this shadow lurked in their
love from the very beginning? Had it not formed an invisible barrier
between them? It was possible no, it was true; though he only recognised
its truth at the present time. It had existed from the first: something
which each of them, in turn, had felt, and vaguely tried to express. It
had little or nothing to do with the fact that they had defied convention.
That, regrettable though it might be, was beside the mark. The confounding
truth was, that, in an emotional crisis of an intensity of the one they
had come through, it was imperative to be able to say: our love is
unparalleled, unique; or, at least: I am the only possible one; I am
yours, you are mine, only. That had not been the case. What he had been
forced to tell himself was, that he was not the first. And now he knew
that, for some time past, he had been aware that he would always occupy
the second place; she was forced to compare him with another, to his
disadvantage. And he knew more. For the first time, he allowed his
thoughts to rove, unchecked, over her previous life, and he was no longer
astonished at the imperfections of the present. To him, the gradual
unfolding of their love had been a wonderful revelation; to her, a
repetition, and a paler and fainter one, of a tale she already knew by
heart. And the knowledge of this awakened a fresh distrust in him. If she
had loved that first time, as she had asserted, as he had seen with his
own eyes that she did, desperately, abandonedly, how had it been possible
for her to change front so quickly, to turn to him and love anew? Was such
a thing credible? Was a woman's nature capable of it? And had it not been
this constant fear, lest he should never be able to efface the image of
his predecessor, which, yesterday, had boldly stalked out as a dread that
what had drawn her to him, had not been love at all?

But this mood passed. He himself cared too well to doubt, for long, that
in her own way she really loved him. What, however, he was obliged to
admit was, that what she felt could in no way be counted the equal of his
love for her: that had possessed a kind of primeval freshness, which no
repetition, however passionately fond, could achieve. And yet, in his
mind, there was still room for doubt--eager, willing doubt. It was due to
his ignorance. He became aware of this, and, while brooding over these
things, he was overmanned by the desire to learn, from her own lips, more
about her past, to hear exactly what it had meant to her, in order
that he might compare it with her present life, and with her feelings for
him. Who could say if, by doing this, he might not drive away what was
perhaps a phantom of his own uneasy brain?

He resolved to make the endeavour. But he was careful not to let her
suspect his intention. First of all, he was full of compunction for his
bad temper of the night before; he was also slightly ashamed of what he
was going to do; and then, too, he knew that she would resent his prying.
What he did must be done with tact. He had no wish to make her unhappy
over it. And so, when he saw her again, he did his best to make her forget
how disagreeable he had been.

But the desire to know remained, became a morbid curiosity. If this were
satisfied, he believed it would make things easier for both of them. But
he was infinitely cautious. Sometimes, without a word, he took her face
between his hands and looked into her eyes, as if to read in them an
answer to the questions he was afraid to put--looked right into the depth
of her eyes, where the pupils swam in an oval of bluish white, overhung by
lids which were finely creased in their folds, and netted with tiny veins.
But he said not a word, and the eyes remained unfathomable, as they had
always been.

Meanwhile, he did what he could to set his life on a solid basis again.
But he was unable to arouse in himself a very vital interest in his work;
some prompter-nerve in him seemed to have been injured. And often, he was
overcome by the feeling that this perpetual preoccupation with music was
only a trifling with existence, an excuse for not facing the facts of
life. He would sometimes rather have been a labourer, worn out with
physical toil. He was much alone, too; when he was not with Louise, he was
given over to his own thoughts, and, day by day, fostered by the long,
empty hours of practice, these moved more and more steadily in the one
direction. The craving for a knowledge of the facts, for certainty in any
form--this became a reason for, a plea in extenuation of, what he felt
escaping him.

Louise did not help him; she assented to what he did without comment, half
sorry for him in what seemed to her his wilful blindness, half disdainful.
But she, too, made a discovery in these tame, flat days, and this was,
that it was one thing to say to herself: it is over and done with, and
another to make the assertion a fact. Energy for the effort was lacking in
her; for the short, sharp stroke, which with her meant action, was
invariably born of intense happiness or unhappiness. Now, as the days went
by, she asked herself why she should do it. It was so much easier to let
things slide, until something happened of itself, either to make the
break, or to fill up the still greater emptiness in her life which a break
would cause. And if he were content with what she could give him, well and
good; she made no attempt to deceive him. And it seemed to her that he was
content, though in a somewhat preoccupied way. But a little later, she
acknowledged to herself that this was not the whole truth. There was habit
to fight against--habit which could still give her hours of
self-forgetfulness--and one could not forgo, all at once, and under no
pressing necessity to do so, this means of escape from the cheerlessness
of life.

But not for long did matters remain at this negative stage. Whereas, until
now, the touch of her lips had been sufficient to chase away the shadows,
the moment came, when, as he held her in his arms, Maurice was paralysed
by the abrupt remembrance: she has known all this before. How was it then?
To what degree is she mine, was she his? What fine, ultimate shade of
feeling is she keeping back from me?--His ardour was damped; and as Louise
also became aware of his sudden coolness, their hands sank apart, and had
no strength to join anew.

Thus far, he had gone about his probings with skill, questioning her in a
roundabout way, trying to learn by means of inference. But after this, he
let himself go, and put a barefaced question. The subject once broached,
there was no further need of concealment, and he flung tact and prudence
to the winds. He could not forget--he was goaded on by--the look she had
given him, as the ominous words crossed his lips: it made him conscious
once more of the unapproachable nature of that first love of hers. He grew
reckless; and while he had hitherto only sought to surprise her and entrap
her, he now began to try to worm things out of her, all the time spying on
her looks and words, ready to take advantage of the least slip on her
part.

At first, before she understood what he was aiming at, Louise had been as
frank as usual with him--that somewhat barbarous frankness, which took
small note of the recipient's feelings. But after he had put a direct
question, and followed it up with others, of which she too clearly saw the
drift, she drew back, as though she were afraid of him. It was not
alone the error of taste he committed, in delving in matters which he had
sworn should never concern him; it was his manner of doing it that was so
distasteful to her--his hints and inuendoes. She grew very white and
still, and looked at him with eyes in which a nascent dislike was visible.

He saw it; but it was now too late. Day by day, his preoccupation with the
man who had preceded him increased. The thought that continued to harass
him was: if she had never known the other, all would now be different.
With jealousy, his state of mind had only as yet, in common, a devouring
curiosity and a morbid imagination, which allowed him to picture the two
of them in situations he would once have blushed to think of. For the one
thing that now mattered to him, what he would have given his life to know,
and would probably never know, was concerned with the ultimate
ratification of love. What had she had for the other that she could not
give him?--that she wilfully refrained from giving him? For that she did
this, and always had refused him part of herself, was now as plain to him
as if it had been branded on her flesh. And the knowledge undermined their
lives. If she was gentle and kind, he read into her words pity that she
could give him no more; if she were cold and evasive, she was remembering,
comparing; if she returned his kisses with her former warmth--well, the
thoughts which in this case seized him were the most murderous of all.

His mental activity ground him down. But it was not all unhappiness; the
beloved eyes and hands, the wilful hair, and pale, sweet mouth, could
still stir him; and there came hours of wishless well-being, when his
tired brain found rest. As the days went by, however, these grew rarer; it
also seemed to him that he paid dearly for them, by being afterwards more
miserable, by suffering in a more active way.

At times, he knew, he was anything but a pleasant companion. But he was
losing the mastery over himself, and often a trifle was sufficient to
start him off afresh on the dreary theme. Once, in a fit of hopelessness,
he made her what amounted to reproaches for her past.

"But you knew!--everythinging!--I told you all," Louise expostulated, and
there were tears in her eyes.

"I know you did. But Louise"--he hesitated, half contrite in advance, for
what he was going to say--"it might have been better if you hadn't told
me--everything, I mean. Yes, I believe it's better not to know."

She did not reply, as she might have done, that she had forewarned
him, afraid of this. She looked away, so that she should not be obliged to
see him.

Another day, when they were walking in the ROSENTAL, she made him
extremely unhappy by disagreeing with him.

"If one could just take a sponge and wipe the past out, like figures from
a slate!" he said moodily.

But, jaded by his persistency, Louise would not admit it. "We should have
nothing to remember."

"That's just it."

"But it belongs to us!" She was roused to protest by the under-meaning in
his words. "It's as much a part of ourselves as our thoughts are--or our
hands."

"One is glad to forget. You would be, Louise? You wouldn't care if your
past were gone? Say you wouldn't."

But she only threw him a dark side-glance. As, however, he would not rest
content, she flung out her hands with an impatient gesture. "How CAN you
torment yourself so! If you insist on knowing, well, then, I wouldn't part
with an hour of what's gone--not an hour! And you know it."

She caught at a few vivid leaves that had remained hanging on a bare
branch, and carried them with her.

He took one she held out to him, looked at it without seeing it, and threw
it away. "Tell me, just this once, something about your life before I knew
you. Were you very happy?--or were you unhappy? Do you know, I once heard
you say you had never known a moment's happiness?--yes, one summer night
long ago, over in the NONNE. How I hoped then it was true! But I don't
know. You've never told me anything--of all there must be to tell."

"What you may have chanced to hear, by eavesdropping, doesn't concern me
now," Louise answered coldly. And then she shut her lips, and would say no
more. She was wiser than she had been a week ago: she refused to hand her
past over to him in order that he might smirch it with his thoughts.

But she could not understand him--understand the motives that made him
want to unearth the past. If this were jealousy, it was a kind she did not
know--a bloodless, bodiless kind, of which she had had no experience.

But it was not jealousy; it was only a craving for certainty in any guise,
and the more surely Maurice felt that he would never gain it, the more
tenaciously he strove. For certainty, that feeling of utter reliance in
the loved one, which sets the heart at rest and leaves the mind
free for the affairs of life, was what Louise had never given him; he had
always been obliged to fall back on supposition with regard to her,
equally at the height of their passion, and in that first and stretch of
time, when it was forbidden him to touch her hand. The real truth, the
last-reaching truth about her, it would not be his to know. Soul would
never be absorbed in soul; not the most passionate embraces could bridge
the gulf; to their last kiss, they would remain separate beings, lonely
and alone.

As this went on, he came to hate the vapidities of the concerto in G
major. Mentally to be stretched on a kind of rack, and, at the same time,
to be forced to reiterate the empty rhetoric of this music! From this time
forward, he could not hear the name of Mendelssohn without a shiver of
repugnance. How he wished now, that he had been content with the bare
sincerity of Beethoven, who at least said no note more than he had to say.

One day, towards the end of November, he was working with even greater
distaste than usual. Finally, in exasperation, he flapped the music to,
shut the piano, and went out. A stroll along the muddy little railed-in
river brought him to the PLEISSENBURG, and from there he crossed the
KONIGSPLATZ to the BRUDERSTRASSE. He had not come out with the intention
of going to Louise, but, although it was barely four o'clock, the
afternoon was drawing in; an interminable evening had to be got through.
He had been walking at haphazard, and without relish; now his pace grew
brisker. Having reached the house, he sprang nimbly up the. stairs, and
was about to insert his key in the little door in the wall, when he was
arrested by a muffled sound of voices. Louise was talking to some one,
and, at the noise he made outside, she raised her voice--purposely, no
doubt. He could not hear what was being said, but the second voice was a
man's. For a minute he stood, with his key suspended, straining his cars;
then, afraid of being caught, he went downstairs again, where he hung
about, between stair and street-door, in order that anyone who came down
would be forced to pass him. At the end of five minutes, however, his
patience was spent: he remembered, too, that the person might be as likely
to go up as down. He mounted the stairs again, rang the bell, and had
himself admitted by the landlady.

He thought she looked significantly at him as, with her usual
pantomime of winks and signs, she whispered to him that a gentleman was
with Fraulein--EIN SCHONER JUNGER MANN! Maurice pushed her aside, and
opened the sitting-room door. Two heads turned at his entrance.

On the sofa, beside Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little student of
medicine with whom she had danced so often at the ball. He sat there,
smiling and dapper, balancing his hard round hat on his knee, and holding
gloves in his hand.

Louise looked the more untidy by contrast: as usual, her hair was half
uncoiled. Maurice saw this in a flash, saw also the look of annoyance that
crossed her face at his unceremonious entry. She raised astonished
eyebrows. Then, however, she shook hands with him.

"I think you know Mr. Herries."

Maurice bowed stiffly across the table; Herries replied in kind, without
discommoding himself.

"How d'ye do? I believe we've met," he said carelessly.

As Maurice made no rejoinder, but remained standing in an uncompromising
attitude, Herries turned to Louise again, and went on with what he had
been saying. He was talking of England.

"I went back to Oxford after that," he continued. "I've diggings there,
don't you know? An old chum of mine's a fellow of Magdalen. I was just in
time for eights' week. A magnificent walk-over for our fellows. Ever seen
the race? No? Oh, I say, that's too bad. You must come over for it, next
year."

"Mr. Herries only returned from England a few days ago," explained Louise,
and again raised warning brows. "Do sit down. There's a chair."

"Yes. I was over for the whole summer. Didn't work here at all, in fact,"
added Herries, once more letting his bright eyes snapshot the young man,
who, on sitting down, laid his shabby felt hat in the middle of the table.

"But now you intend to stay, I think you said?" Louise threw in at random,
after they had waited for Maurice to fill up the pause.

"Yes, for the winter semester, anyhow. And I've got to tumble to, with a
vengeance. But I mean to have a good time all the same. Even though it's
only Leipzig, one can have a jolly enough time."

Again there was silence. Louise flushed. "I suppose you're hard at work
already?"

"Yes. Got started yesterday. Frogs, don't you know?--the effect of
a rare poison on frogs."

This trivial exchange of words stung Maurice. Herries's manner seemed to
him intolerably familiar, lacking in respect; and he kept telling himself,
as he listened, that, having returned frorn England, the fellow's first
thought had been of her. He had not opened his lips since entering; he sat
staring at them, forgetful of good manners; and, after a little, both
began to feel ill at ease. Their eyes met for a moment in this sensation,
and Herries cleared his throat.

"What did you do with yourself in summer?" he queried, and could not
restrain a smile, at the fashion in which the other fellow was giving
himself away. "You weren't in England at all, I think you said? We hoped
we might meet there, don't you remember? Too bad that I had to go off
without saying good-bye."