Books: Maurice Guest

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"No, I changed my mind and stayed here. But I shouldn't do it again. It
was so hot."

"Must have been simply beastly."

Maurice jerked his arm; a vase which was standing at his elbow upset, and
the water trickled to the floor. Neither offered to help him; he had to
stoop and mop it up with his handkerchief.

For a few moments longer, the conversation was eked out. Then Herries
rose. With her hand in his, he said earnestly: "Now you must be merciful
and relent. I shan't give up hope. Any time in the next fortnight is time
enough, remember. 'Pon my word, I've dreamt of those waltzes of ours ever
since. And the floor at the PRUSSE is still better, don't you know? You
won't have the heart not to come."

From under her lids, Louise shot a rapid glance at Maurice. He, too, had
risen; he was standing stiff, pale, and solemn, visibly waiting only till
Herries had gone, to make himself disagreeable. She smiled.

"Don't ask me to give an answer to-day. I'll let you know--will that do? A
fortnight is such a long time. And then you've forgotten the chief thing.
I must see if I have anything to wear."

"Oh, I say! . . . if that's all! Don't let that bother you. That black
thing you had on last time was ripping--awfully jolly, don't you know?"

Louise laughed. "Well, perhaps," she said, as she opened the door.

"Good business!" responded Herries.

He nodded in Maurice's direction, and they went out of the room together.
Maurice heard their voices in laughing rejoinder, heard them take leave of
each other at the halldoor. After that there was a pause. Louise lingered,
before returning, to open a letter that was lying on the hall-table; she
also spoke to Fraulein Grunhut. When she did come back, all trace of
animation had gone from her face. She busied herself at once with the
flowers he had disarranged, and this done, ordered her hair before the
hanging glass. Maurice followed her movements with a sarcastic smile.

Suddenly she turned and confronted him.

"Maurice! . . . for Heaven's sake, don't glare at me like that! If you've
anything to say, please say it, and be done with it."

"You know well enough what I have to say." His voice was husky.

"Indeed, I don't."

"Well you ought to."

"Ought to?--No: there's a limit to everything! Take your hat off that
table!--What did you mean by bursting into the room when you heard some
one was here? And, as if that weren't enough--to let everybody see how
much at home you are--your behaviour--your unbearable want of manners..."
She stopped, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips.

"I believed you didn't care what people thought," he threw in, morosely
defiant.

"That's a poor excuse for your rudeness."

"Well, at least tell me what that fool wanted here."

"Have you no ears? Couldn't you hear that he has just come back from
England, and is calling on his friends?"

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"Maurice!"

"Oh, he has always been after you--since that night. It's only because he
wasn't here long enough . . . and his manner shows what he thinks of
you . . . and what he means."

"What do YOU mean? Do you wish to say it's my doing that he came here
to-day?--Don't you believe me?" she demanded, as he did not answer.

"And you in that half-dressed condition!"

"Could I dress before him? How abominable you are!"

He tried to explain. "Yes. Because . . . I hate the sight of the
fellow.--You didn't know he was coming, did you, or you wouldn't have seen
him.?"

"Know he was coming!" She wrenched her hands away. "Oh! . . ."

"Say you didn't!"

"Maurice!--Be jealous, if you must! But surely, surely you don't
believe----"

"Oh, don't ask me what I believe. I only know I won't have that man
hanging about. It was by a mere chance to-day that I came round earlier;
he might have been here for hours, without my suspecting it. Who knows if
you would have told me either?--Would you have told me, Louise?"

"Oh, how can you be like this! What is the matter with you?"

He put his arms round her, with the old cry. "I can't bear you even to
look at another man. For he's in love with you, and has been, ever since
you made him crazy by dancing with him as you did."

With his hands on her shoulders, he rested his face on her hair. "Promise
me you won't see him again."

Wearily, Louise disengaged herself. "Oh there's always something fresh to
promise. I'm tired of it--of being hedged in, and watched, and never
trusted."

"Tired of me, you mean."

She looked bitterly at him. "There you are again?"

"Just this once--to set my mind at rest. Just this once,
Louise!--darling!"

But she was silent.

"Then you'll let him come here again?"

"How do I know?--But if I promised what you ask, I should not be able to
go with him to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE on the fifteenth."

"You mean to go to that dance?"

"Why not? Would there be any harm in my going?"

"Louise!"

"Maurice!" She mocked his tone, and laughed. "Oh, go at once," she broke
out the next moment, "and order Grunhut never to let another visitor
inside the door. Make me promise never to cross the threshold alone--never
to speak to another mortal but yourself! Cut off every pleasure and every
chance of pleasure I have; and then you may be, but only may be, content."

"You're trying how far you can go with me."

"Do you want me to tell you again that dancing is one of the things
I love best? Not six months ago you knew and helped me to it yourself."

"Yes, THEN," he answered. "Then I could refuse you nothing."

She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand to his forehead.
"You won't be so cruel, I know."

"You know more than I do."

"Do you realise what it means if you go?" In fancy, he was present, and
saw her passed from one pair of arms to another.

"I realise nothing--but that I am very unhappy."

"Have I no influence over you any more--none at all?"

"Can't you come, too, then?--if you are afraid to let me out of your
sight?"

"I? To see you----" He broke off with wrathful abruptness. "Thanks, I
would rather be shot." But at the mingled anger and blankness of her face,
he coloured. "Louise, put an end to all this. Marry me--now, at once!"

"Marry you? I? No, thank you. We're past that stage, I think.--Besides,
are you so simple as to believe it would make any difference?"

"Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here!"--and he pulled her to him.

From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was changed. The
incident of Herries's visit, her refusal to promise what he asked, and,
above all, the matter of the coming ball, with regard to which he could
not get certainty from her: these things seemed to open up nightmare
depths, to which he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vague
fears which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and like shadows
faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons for their lack of
happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jot or tittle of
what had happened; he could only make the best of it. And so he ceased to
brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a black,
unknown quantity, but the present was his own. And he would cling to
it--for who knew what the future held in store for him? In these days, he
began to suspect that it was not in the nature of things for her always to
remain satisfied with him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question
reared its head: who will come after me? Another blind attraction only
needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of constancy and
truth? If he had doubted her before, he was now suspicious from a
different cause, and in quite a different way. The face of the trim little
man who had sat beside her, and smiled at her, was persistently present to
him. He did not question her further; but the poison worked the more
surely in secret; he never for an instant forgot; and jealousy, now wide
awake, had at last a definite object to lay hold of.

In his lucid moments, he knew that he was making her life a burden to her.
What wonder if she did, ultimately, turn from him? But his evil moods were
now beyond command. He began to suspect deceit in her actions as well as
in what she said. The idea that this other, this smirking, wax-faced man,
might somehow steal her from him, hung over him like a fog, obscuring his
vision. It necessitated continued watchfulness on his part. And so he
dogged her, mentally, and in fact until his own heart all but broke under
the strain.

One afternoon they walked to Connewitz. It had rained heavily during the
night, and the unpaved roads were inchdeep in mud. The sky was a level
sheet of cloud, darker and more forbidding in the east.

Their direction was Maurice's choice. Louise would have liked better to
keep to the town: for, though the streets, too, were mud-bespattered,
there would soon be lights, and the reflection of lights in damp
pavements. She yielded, however, without even troubling to express her
wish. But just because of the dirt and naked ugliness which met her, at
every turn, she was voluble and excited; and an exaggerated hilarity
seized her at trifles. Maurice, who had left the house in a more composed
frame of mind than usual, gradually relapsed, at her want of restraint,
into silence. He suffered under her looseness of tongue and laughter: her
sallow, heavy-eyed face was ill-adapted to such moods; below her feverish
animation there lurked, he was sure of it, a deadly melancholy. He had
always been rendered uneasy by her spurts of gaiety. Now in addition, he
asked himself: what has happened to make he. like this?

Feeling his hostility, Louise grew quieter, and soon she, too, was silent.
Having gained his end, Maurice wished to atone for it, and slipping his
arm through hers, he took her hand. For a few steps they walked on in this
fashion. Then, he received one of those sudden impressions which flash on
us from time to time, of having seen or done a certain thing
before. For a moment, he could not verify it; then he knew. just in this
way, arm in arm, hand in hand, had she come towards him with Schilsky,
that very first day. It was no doubt a habit of hers. Like this, too, she
would, in all probability, walk with the one who came after. And the
picture of Herries, in the place he now occupied, was photographed on his
brain.

He withdrew his arm, as if hers had burnt him: his mind was off again on
its old round. But she, too, had to suffer for it. As he stood back to let
her pass before him, on a dry strip of the path, his eye caught a yellow
rose she was wearing at her belt. Till now he had seen it without seeing
it.

"Why are you wearing that rose?"

Louise looked down from him to the flower and back again." Why?--you know
I like to wear flowers."

"Where did you get it?"

She foresaw what he was driving at, and did not reply.

"You were wearing a rose like that the first time I saw you. Do you
remember?"

"How should I remember? It's so long ago."

"Where had you got that one from, then?"

She repeated the same words. "How should I know now?"

"But I know. It was from him--he had given it to you."

She raised her shoulders. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps? No. For certain."

"Well, and if so--was there anything strange in that?"

They walked a few paces without speaking. Then he asked: "Who has given
you this one?"

"Maurice!" There was a note of warning in her voice. He heard it in vain.
"Give it to me, Louise."

"No--let it be. It will wither soon enough where it is."

"Please give it to me," he urged, rendered the more determined by her
refusal.

"I wish to keep it."

"And I mean to have it."

To avoid the threatening scene, she took the rose from her belt and gave
it to him. He fingered it indecisively for a moment, then threw it over
the bridge they were crossing, into the river. It struggled, filled with
muddy water, and floated away.

In the next breath, however, he asked himself ruefully what he had gained
by his action. She had given him the rose, and he had destroyed
it; but he would never know how she had come by it, and what it had been
to her.

He was incensed with himself and with her for the whole length of the
SCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then the inevitable regret for his hastiness followed.
He took her limply hanging hand and pressed it. But there was no
responsive pressure on her part. Louise looked away from him, beyond the
woods, as far as she could see, in the vain hope of there discovering some
means of escape.

VIII.

In descending one evening the broad stair of the Gewandhaus, and forced,
by reason of the crowd, to pause on every step, Madeleine overheard the
talk of two men behind her, one of whom, it seemed, had all the gossip of
the place at his fingertips. From what she caught up greedily, as soon as
Maurice's name was mentioned, she learnt a surprising piece of news. "A
cat and dog life," was the phrase used by the speaker. As she afterwards
picked her way through snow and slush, Madeleine confessed to herself that
it was impossible to feel regret at what she had heard. Perhaps, after
all, things would come right of themselves. In order to recover from his
infatuation, to learn what Louise really was, it had only been necessary
for Maurice to be constantly at her side.--Was it not Goethe who said that
the way to cure a bad habit was to indulge it?

But a few days afterwards, her satisfaction was damped. Late one afternoon
she had entered Seyffert's Cafe, to drink a cup of chocolate. At a table
parallel with the one she chose, two fellow-students were playing
draughts. Madeleine had only been there for a few minutes, when their
talk, which went on unrestrainedly between the moves of the game, leapt,
with a witticism, to the unlucky pair in whom she was interested. To her
astonishment, she now heard Louise's name, coupled with that of another
man.

"Well, I never!" said the second of the two behind her. "I say it's your
move.--That's rough on Guest, isn't it?"

Madeleine turned in her chair and faced the man who had spoken.

"Excuse me, who is Herries?" she asked without ceremony.

In her own room that evening, she pondered long. It was one thing for the
two to drift naturally apart; another for Maurice to see himself
superseded. If this were true, jealousy, and nothing else, would be at the
root of their disunion. Madeleine felt very unwilling to mix herself up in
the affair: it would be like plunging two clean hands into dirty water.
But then, you never could tell how a man would act in a case like
this: the odds were ten to one he did something foolish.

And so she wrote to Maurice, making her summons imperative. This failing,
she tried to waylay him going to or from his classes; but the only
satisfaction she gained, was the knowledge of his irregularity: during the
week she waited she did not once come face to face with him. Next, she
looked round her for some common friend, and found that he had not an
intimate left in all Leipzig. She wrote again, still more plainly, and
again he ignored her letter.

One Saturday afternoon, she was walking along the crowded streets of the
inner town. She had been to the MOTETTE, in the THOMASKIRCHE, and was now
on her way home, carrying music from the library. The snow had melted to
mud, and sleet was falling. Madeleine had no umbrella; the collar of her
cloak was turned up round her ears, and her small felt hat covered her
head like an extinguisher.

On entering the PETERSTRASSE, she was jostled together with Dove. It was
impossible to beat a retreat.

Dove seldom hurried. On this day, as on any other, he walked with a
somewhat pompous emphasis through slush and stinging rain, holding his
umbrella straight aloft over him, as he might have carried a banner. He
was shocked to find Madeleine without one, at once took her under his, and
loaded himself with her music--all with that air of matter-of-course-ness,
which invariably made her keen to decline his aid. Dove was radiant; he
prospered as do only the happy few; and his satisfaction with himself, and
with the world in general, was somehow expressed even through the medium
of his long neck and gently sloping shoulders. He greeted Madeleine with
an exaggerated pleasure, accompanying his words by the slow smile which
sometimes set her wondering if he were not, perhaps, being inwardly
satirical at the expense of other people, fooling them by means of his own
foolishness. But, however this might be, the cynical feelings that took
her in his presence, mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an
excess of content was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or
wine-bibbing, or any other self-indulgence.

However, she checked the desire to snub him--to snub until she had
succeeded in raising that impossible ire, which, she believed, MUST lurk
somewhere in Dove--for, as she plodded along at his side, sheltered from
the brunt of the weather, it occurred to her that here was some one whom
she might tap on the subject of Maurice. She opened fire by
congratulating her companion on his recent performance in an
ABENDUNTERHALTUNG; at the time, even she had been forced to admit it a
creditable piece of work. Dove, who privately considered it epochmaking,
was outwardly very modest. He could not refrain from letting fall that the
old director had afterwards thanked him in person; but, in the next
breath, he pointed out a slip he had made in a particular passage of the
sonata. It had not, it was true, been observed, he believed, by anyone
except Schwarz and himself; still it had caused him considerable
annoyance; and he now related how, as far as he could judge, it had come
about.

The current inquiries concerning the PRUFUNGEN then passed between them.

"Poor old Schwarz!" said Madeleine. "We shall be few enough, this year.
Tell me, what of Heinz? I haven't seen him for an age."

"I regret to say that Krafft is making an uncommon donkey of himself,"
said Dove. "He had another shocking row with Schwarz last week."

"Tch, tch, tch!" said Madeleine. "Heinz is a freak.--And Maurice Guest,
what about him?"

"I haven't seen him lately."

"Indeed? How is that?"

"I'm not in the same class with him now. His hour has been changed."

"Has it indeed?" said Madeleine thoughtfully. This accounted for her
having been unable to meet Maurice. "What's he playing, do you know?"

"The G major Mendelssohn, I understand;" and Dove looked at her out of the
corner of his eye.

"How's he getting on with it?" she queried afresh, in the same indifferent
tone.

"I really couldn't say. As I mentioned, he's in another class."

"Oh, but you must have heard!" said Madeleine. "It's no use putting me
off," she added, with determination. "I want to find out about Mauzice."

"And I fear I can't assist you. All I HAVE chanced to hear--mere rumour,
of course--is that . . . well, if Guest doesn't pull himself together, he
won't play at all.--By the way, what did you think of James the other
night, in the LISZTVEREIN?"

"Oh, that his octaves were marvellous, of course!" said Madeleine
tartly. "But I warn you," she continued, "it's of no use changing the
subject, or pretending you don't know. I intend to speak of Maurice."

"Then it must be to some one else, Miss Madeleine, not to me."--Dove could
never be induced to call her Madeleine, as her other friends did.

"And why, pray, are you to be the exception?"

"Because, as I've already mentioned, I don't see any more of Guest. He
mixes in a different set now.--And as for me, well, my thoughts are
occupied with, I trust, more profitable things."

"What? You have thoughts, too?"

"I hope you don't claim a monopoly of them?" said Dove, and smiled in his
imperturbable way. As, however, Madeleine persisted, he grew grave. "It's
not a pleasant subject. I should really rather not discuss it, Miss
Madeleine."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't let us play the prudish or sentimental!"
cried Madeleine, in a burst of impatience. "Of course, it isn't pleasant.
Do you think I should "--"bother with you," was on her tongue. She checked
herself, and subtituted--"trouble you about it, if it were? But Maurice
was once a friend of ours--you don't deny it, I hope?" she threw in
challengingly; for Dove muttered something to himself. "And I want to get
at the truth about him. I'm sorrier than I can say, to hear, on all sides,
what a fool he's making of himself."

Dove was suavely silent.

"Of course," continued Madeleine with a sarcastic inflection--"of course,
I can't expect you to see it as I do. Men look at these things
differently, I know. Possibly if I were a man, I, too, should stand by,
with my hands in my pockets, and watch a friend butt his head against a
stone wall--thinking it, indeed, rather good fun."

She had touched Dove on a tender spot. "I can assure you, Miss Madeleine,"
he said impressively, as they picked their steps across a dirty road--"I
can assure you, you are mistaken. I think just as strictly in matters of
this kind as you yourself.--But as to interfering in Guest's . . . in his
private affairs, well, frankly, I shouldn't care to try it. He was always
a curiously reserved fellow."

"Reserved--obstinate-pig-headed!--call it what you like," said Madeleine.
"But don't imagine I'm asking you to interfere. I only want you to
tell me, briefly and simply, what you know about him. And to make it
easier for you, I'll begin by telling you what I know.--It's an old story,
isn't it, that Maurice once supplanted some one else in a certain young
woman's favour? Well, now I hear that he, in turn, is to be laid on the
shelf.--Is that true, or isn't it?"

"Really, Miss Madeleine!--that's a very blunt way of putting it," said
Dove uncomfortably.

"Oh, when a friend's at stake, I can't hum and haw," said Madeleine, who
could never keep her temper with Dove for long." I call a spade a spade,
and rejoice to do it. What I ask you to tell me is, whether I've been
correctly informed or not. Have you, too, heard Louise Dufrayer's name
coupled with that of a man called Herries?"

But Dove was stubborn. "As far as I'm concerned, Miss Madeleine, the truth
is, I've hardly exchanged a word with Guest since spring. Into his . . .
friendship with Miss Dufrayer, I have never felt it my business to
inquire. I believe--from hearsay--that he is much changed. And I feel
convinced his PRUFUNG will be poor. Indeed, I'm not sure that he should
not be warned off it altogether."

"Could that not be laid before him?"

"I should not care to undertake it."

There was nothing to be done with Dove; Madeleine felt that she was
wasting her breath; and they walked across the broad centre of the
ROSSPLATZ in silence.

"Do you never think," she said, after a time, "how it would simplify life,
if we were able to get above it for a bit, and see things without
prejudice?--Here's a case now, where a little real fellowship and sympathy
might work wonders. But no!--no interference!--that's the chief and only
consideration!"

It had stopped raining. Dove let down his umbrella, and carried it
stiffly, at some distance from him, by reason of its dampness. "Believe
me, Miss Madeleine," he said, as he emerged from beneath it. "Believe me,
I make all allowance for your feelings, which do you credit. A woman's way
of looking at these things is, thank God, humaner than ours. But it's a
man's duty not to let his feelings run away with him. I agree with you,
that it's a shocking affair. But Guest went into it with his eyes open.
And that he could do so--but there was always something a little . . . a
little peculiar about Guest."

"I suppose there was. One can only be thankful, I suppose, that
he's more or less of an exception--among his own countrymen, I mean, of
course. Englishmen are not, as a rule, given to that kind of thing."

"Thank God they're not!" said Dove with emotion.

"We'll, our ways part here," said Madeleine, and halted. As she took her
music from him, she asked: "By the way, when shall we be at liberty to
congratulate you?"

It was not at all "by the way" to Dove. However, he only smiled; for he
had grown wiser, and no longer wore his heart on his coat-sleeve. "You
shall be one of the first to hear, Miss Madeleine, when the news is made
public."

"Thanks greatly. Good-bye.--Oh, no, stop a moment!" cried Madeleine. It
was more than she could bear to see him turn away thus, beaming with
self-content. "Stop a moment. You won't mind my telling you, I'm sure,
that I've been disappointed with you this afternoon. For I've always
thought of you as a saviour in the hour of need, don't you know? One does
indulge in these fancy pictures of one's friends--a strong man, helping
with tact and example. And here you go, toppling my picture over, without
the least remorse.--Well, you know your own business best, I suppose, but
it's unkind of you, all the same, to destroy an illusion. One has few
enough of them in this world.--Ta-ta!"

She laughed satirically, and turned on her heel, regardless of the effect
of her words.

But Dove was not offended; on the contrary, he felt rather flattered. He
did not, of course, care in the least about what Madeleine called her
illusions; but the mental portrait she had drawn of him corresponded
exactly to that attitude in which he was fondest of contemplating himself.
For it could honestly be said that, hitherto, no one had ever applied to
him for aid in vain: he was always ready, both with his time and with good
advice. And the idea that, in the present instance, he was being untrue to
himself, in other words, that he was letting an opportunity slip, ended by
upsetting him altogether.