Books: Maurice Guest

H >> Henry Handel Richardson >> Maurice Guest

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51

"Oh, if that's all!--I will never see Maurice Guest again."

"That's not it."

"What is it then?"

"Will you listen quietly?"

"Yes, yes." She ceased to draw back, let herself be held. But he felt her
trembling.

He whispered a few words in her ear. Almost simultaneously she jerked her
head away, and, turning a dark red, stared incredulously at him. Then she
sprang to her feet.

"Oh, what a fool I am! To believe, for one instant, there was a human spot
in you I could get at!--Take your hands away--take them off me! Because
I've had no one to speak to for so long: because I know YOU could
understand if you would--Oh, when a woman is down, anyone may hit her."

"Gently, gently!--You're too good for such phrases."

"I'm no different from other women. It's only you--with your
horrible thoughts of me. YOU! Why, you're no more to me than the floor I
stand on."

"And matters are simplified by that very fact.--I can give you his
address, Lulu."

"Go away! I may hurt you. I could kill you.--Go away!"

"And this," said Krafft, as he put on his coat again, "is how a woman
listens quietly. Well, Lulu, think it over. A word at any time will bring
me, if you change your mind."

One evening, about a week later, Maurice entered Seyffert's Cafe. The
heavy snowfall had been succeeded by a period of thaw--of slush and gloom;
and, on this particular night, a keen wind had risen, making the streets
seem doubly cheerless. It was close on nine o'clock, and Seyffert's was
crowded with its usual guests--young people, who had escaped from more or
less dingy rooms to the warmth and light of the cafe, where the yellow
blinds were drawn against the inclement night. The billiard table in the
centre was never free; those players whose turn had not yet come, or was
over, stood round it, cigarette or large black cigar in hand, and watched
the game.

Maurice had difficulty in finding a seat. When he did, it was at a table
for two, in a corner. A youth who had already eaten his supper, sat alone
there, picking his teeth. Maurice took the opposite chair, and made his
evening meal with a languid appetite. At the other side of the room was a
large and boisterous party, whose leader was Krafft--Krafit in his most
outrageous mood. Every other minute, his sallies evoked roars of laughter.
Maurice refrained from glancing in that direction. When, however, his
VIS-A-VIS got up and went away, he was startled from his conning of the
afternoon paper by seeing Krafft before him. The latter, who carried his
beer-mug in his hand, took the vacated scat, nodded and smiled.

Maurice was on his guard at once; for it seemed to him that they were
being watched by the party Krafft had left. Putting down the newspaper, he
wished his friend good-evening.

"I've something to say to you," said Krafft without responding, and,
having drained his glass, he clapped the lid to attract the waiter's
attention.

With the over-anxious readiness to oblige, which was becoming one of his
most marked traits, and, in reality, cloaked a deathly indifference,
Maurice hung up his paper, and sat forward to listen. Crossing his arms on
the table, Krafft began to speak, meanwhile fixing his companion with his
eye. Maurice was at first too bewildered by what he heard to know
to whom the words referred. Then, the colour mounted to his face; the
nerves in his temples began to throb; and his hand moved along the edge of
the table, in search of something to which it could hold fast.--It was the
first time the name of Louise had been mentioned between them--and in what
a tone!

"Heinz!" he said at last; his voice seemed not to be his own. "How dare
you speak of Miss Dufrayer like that!"

"PARDON!" said Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were aglow, his
limpid eyes shone like stars. "Do you mean Lulu?"

Maurice grew pale. "Mind what you're saying!"

Krafft took a gulp of beer. "Are you afraid of the truth?--But just one
word, and I'm done. You no doubt knew, as every one else did, that Lulu
was Schilsky's mistress. What you didn't know, was this;" and now, without
the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuating word, there
fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which
Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their
relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of a woman's unsatisfied
fancy.

Before the pitiless details, not one of which was spared him, were checked
off, Maurice understood; half rising from his chair, he struck Krafft a
resounding blow in the face. He had intended to hit the mouth, but, his
hand remaining fully open, caught on the cheek, and with such force that
the delicate skin instantly bore a white imprint of all five fingers.

Only the people in their immediate neighbourhood saw what had happened;
but these sprang up; a girl gave a nervous cry; and in a minute, the
further occupants of the room had gathered round them, the
billiard-players with their cues in their hands. Two waiters, napkin on
arm, hastened up, and the proprietor came out from an inner room, and
rubbed his hands.

"MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!"

Krafft had jumped to his feet; he was also unable to refrain from putting
his hand to his tingling face. Maurice, who was very pale, stood staring,
like a person in a trance, at the mark, now deep red, which his hand had
left on his friend's cheek. There was a solemn pause; all eyes were fixed
on Krafft; and the stillness was only broken by the proprietor's
persuasive: "MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!"

In half a minute Krafft had collected himself. Turning, he jauntily waved
his hand to those pressing up behind; though one side of his face still
blazed and burned.

"Don't allow yourselves to be disturbed, gentlemen. The incident
is closed--for the present, at least. My friend here was carried away by a
momentary excitement. Kindly resume your seats, and act as if nothing had
happened. I shall call him to account at my own convenience.--But just one
moment, please!"

The last words were addressed to Maurice. Opening a notebook, Krafft tore
out one of the little pages, and, with his customary indolence of
movement, wrote something on it. Then he folded it through the middle, and
across again, and gave it to Maurice.

Maurice took it, because there seemed nothing else for him to do; he also,
for the same reason, took his coat and hat, which some one handed to him.
He saw nothing of what went on--nothing but the five outspread marks,
which had run together so slowly. He had, however, enough presence of mind
to do what was evidently expected of him; and, in the hush that still
prevailed, he left the cafe.

The wind sent a blast in his face. Round the corners of the streets, which
it was briskly scavenging, it swept in boisterous gusts, which beat the
gas-flames flat as soon as they reared themselves, and made them give a
wavering, uncertain light. Not a soul was visible. But in the moment that
he stood hesitating outside the brilliancy of the yellow blinds, the
hubbub of voices burst forth again. He moved hastily away, and began to
walk, to put distance between himself and the place. He did not shrink
before the wind-scourged meadows, but fought his way forward, till he
reached the woods. There he threw himself face downwards on the first
bench he came to.

A smell of rotting and decay met his nostrils: as if, from the thousands
of leaves, mouldering under the trees on which they had once hung, some
invisible hand had set free thousands of odours, there mounted to him, as
he lay, all that rich and humid earthiness that belongs to sunless places.
And for a time, he was conscious of little else but this morbid fragrance.

An open brawl! He had struck a man in the face before a crowd of
onlookers, and had as good as been ejected from their midst. From now on,
he was an outcast from orderly society, was branded as one who was not
wholly responsible for his actions--he, Maurice Guest, who had ever been
so chary of committing himself. What made the matter seem still blacker,
too, in his own eyes, was the fact of Krafft having once been his
intimate, personal friend. Now, he could never even think of him again,
without, at the same time, seeing the mark of his hand on Krafft's cheek.
If the blow had remained invisible, it might have been more easily
forgotten; but he had seen it, as it were, taken shape before him.--Or,
had it only been returned, it would have helped to lessen the weight of
his present abasement--oh, he would have given all he had to have felt a
return blow on his own face! Even the smallest loss of selfcontrol on the
part of Krafft would have been enough. But the latter was too proud to
give himself away gratuitously: he preferred to take his revenge in the
more unconventional fashion of leaving his friend to bear the ignominy
alone.

Maurice lay stabbing himself with these and similar thoughts. Only little
by little did the tumult that had been roused in him abate. Then, and just
the more vividly for the break in his memory, the gross words Krafft had
said, came back to him. Recalling them, he felt an intense bitterness
against Louise. She was the cause of all his sufferings; were it not for
her, he might still be leading a quiet, decent life. It was her doing that
he was compelled to part, bit by bit, with his selfrespect. Not once, in
all the months they had been together, had the smallest good come to him
through her. Nothing but misery.

Now, he had no further rest where he was. He must go to her, and tax her
with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her very face. She should suffer,
too--and the foretasted anguish and pleasure of hot recriminations dulled
all other feelings in him.

He rose, chilled to the bone from his exposure; one hand, which had hung
down over the bench, was wet and sticky from grasping handfuls of dead
leaves.

It was past eleven o'clock. Louise wakened with a start, and, at the sight
of his muddy, dishevelled dress, rose to her elbow.

"What is it? What's the matter? Where have you been?"

He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at her. The loose masses of
her hair, which had come unplaited, arrested his attention: he had never
seemed to know before how brutally black it was. With his eyes fixed on
it, he repeated what Krafft had told him.

Louise lay with the back of one hand on her forehead, and watched him from
under it. When he had finished, she said: "So Heinz has raked up that old
story again, has he?"

Maurice had expected--yes, what had he expected?--anger, perhaps, or
denial, or, it might be, vituperation; only not the almost impartial
composure with which she listened to him. For he had not spared her a
word.

"Is that all you've got to say?" he cried, suffocated with doubt. "Then
you . . . you admit it?"

"Admit it! Maurice! Are you crazy?--to wake me up for this! It happened
YEARS ago!"

His recoil of disgust was too marked to be ignored. Louise half sat up in
bed again, supporting herself on one hand. Her nightgown was not buttoned;
he saw to the waist a strip of the white skin beneath, saw, too, how a
long black strand of her hair fell in and lay on it.

"You won't tell me you didn't know from the first there had been . . .
something between Heinz and me?" she cried, roused to defend
herself.--"And look here, Maurice, as he told you that, it's my turn now.
I'll tell you why! "And sitting still more upright, she gave a reason
which made him grasp the knob of the bed-post so fiercely that it came
away in his hand. He threw it into a corner.

"Louise! . . . you! to take such words on your tongue! Is there no shame
left in you?" His throat was dry and narrow.

"Shame! You only mean the need for concealment. Before you had got me,
there was no talk of shame."

"Do you know what you're saying?"

"Oh, that's your eternal cry!" and, suddenly spurred to anger, she rose
again. "I know--yes, I know! Do you think I'm a fool? Why must you alone
be so innocent! Why should you alone not know that I was only jealous of a
single person, and that was Krafft?"

Maurice turned away. In the comparative darkness behind the screen, he sat
down on the sofa, put his arms on the table, and his head on his arms. He
was exhausted, and found he must have slept as he sat; for when he lifted
his head again, the hands of the clock had moved forward by several hours.

X.

One morning towards the end of January, Krafft disappeared from Leipzig,
and some days later, the body of Avery Hill was found in a secluded reach
of the Pleisse, just below Connewitz. Some workmen, tramping townwards
soon after dawn, noticed a strip of light stuff twisted round a snag,
which projected slightly above the surface of the water. It proved to be
the skirt of her dress, which had been caught and held fast. Ambulance and
police were summoned, and the body was recovered and taken to the
police-station.

The last of his friends to see Krafft was Madeleine, and the number of
those interested in his departure, and in Avery's quick suicide, was so
large that she several times had to repeat her lively account of the last
visit he paid her. He had come in, one afternoon, and settling himself on
the sofa, refused to be dislodged. As he was in one of his most ambiguous
moods, she left him to himself, and went on with her work.

On rising to go, he had stood for a moment with his hands on her
shoulders.

"Well, Mada, whatever happens, remember I was sorry you wouldn't have me."

"Oh, come now, Heinz, you never really asked me!"

It was snowing hard that night, a moist, soft snow that melted as it
touched the ground, and Krafft borrowed her umbrella. As usual, however,
he returned before he could have got half-way down the stairs, to say that
he had changed his mind and would not take it.

"But you'll get wet through."

"I don't want your umbrella, I tell you.--Or have you two?"

"No; but I'm not going out.--Oh, well, leave it then. And may you reap a
frightful rheumatism!"

As he went down, for the second time, he whistled the ROSE OF SHARON: she
listened to it grow fainter in the distance: and that was the last she or
anyone had heard of Krafft. The following morning, his landlady found a
note on her kitchen-table, instructing her to keep his belongings for four
weeks. If, by that time, they had not been claimed, she might sell
them, and take the money obtained for herself. Only a few personal
articles were missing, such as would be necessary for a hurried
journey.--Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had never
expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leave of his
friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to him for not
pilfering her umbrella, which was silvertopped. All the same, there was
something indecent about his behaviour. It showed how little he had, at
heart, cared for any of them. Only a person who thoroughly despised
others, would treat them in this way, playing with them up to the last
minute, as one plays with dolls or fools.

Avery Hill was laid out in a small room adjoining the policestation. It
was evening before the business of identification was over. Various
members of the American colony had to give evidence, and the services of
the consul were called into play, for there were countless difficulties,
formalities and ceremonies attached to this death by one's own hand in a
foreign country. Before all the technical details were concluded, there
were those who thought--and openly said so--that an intending suicide
might cast a merciful thought on the survivors. Only Dove made no
complaint. He had been one of the first to learn what had happened, and,
in the days that followed, he ran to and fro, from one BUREAU to another,
receiving signatures, and witnessing them, bearing the whole brunt of
surly Saxon officialdom on his own shoulders.

Twenty-four hours later, it had been arranged that the body should be
buried on the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF, and the consul was advised by cablegram to
lay out the money for the funeral. Under the eyes of a police-officer and
a young clerk from the consul's office, Madeleine, assisted by Miss
Jensen, went through the dead girl's belongings, and packed them together.

Miss Jensen kept up, in a low voice, a running commentary on the falsity
of men and the foolishness of women. But, at times, her natural kindness
of heart asserted itself, to the confusion of her theories.

"Poor thing, poor young thing!" she murmured, gazing at a pair of
well-patched boots which she held in her hand. "If only she had come to
us!--and let us help her!"

"Help her?" echoed Madeleine in a testy way; she was one of those who
thought that the dead girl might have shown more consideration for her
friends, standing, as they did, immediately before their PRUFUNGEN. "Could
one help her ever having set eyes on that attractive
scoundrel?--And besides, it's easy enough thinking afterwards, one might
have been able to help, to do this and that. It's a mistake. People don't
want help; and they don't give you a thank-you for offering it. All they
ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungle their lives as they like."

As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once more to the
subject of Krafft's failings.

"I've known many men," she said, "one more credulously vain and stupid
than another; for unless a man is engaged in satisfying his brute
instincts, he can be twisted round the finger of ANY woman. But Mr. Krafft
was the only one I've met, who didn't appear to me to have a single good
impulse."

The big woman's high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine.

"You're quite wrong there," she said more snappily than before. "Heinz had
as many good impulses as anyone else. But he had reduced the concealing of
them to a fine art. He was never happier than when he had succeeded in
giving a totally false impression of himself. Take me for this, for that!
--just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a bone to a dog: there!
that's good enough for you. No one knew Heinz: each of us knew a little
bit of him, and thought it was all there was to know.--He never showed a
good impulse: that is as much as saying that he swarmed with them. And no
doubt he would have considered that, with regard to you, he had been
entirely successful. You have the idea of him he meant you to have."

"He was never her lover," said Louise with a studied carelessness.

Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone of bravado in
which she flaunted subjects of this nature, was stung to retaliation.

"How do YOU know?"

"Well, if you wish to hear--from his own lips."

"Do you mean to say you've spoken to Heinz about things of that
kind?--discussed his relations with other women?"

"Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had ever heard of you?"

He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The events of the
past week had closed over his head as two waves Close over a swimmer,
cutting off light and air. Since the night on which he had left his whilom
friend the mark of his spread fingers as a parting gift, he had
ceased to care greatly about anything.

Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery's suicide and
Krafft's departure touched him lightly. For the girl, he had never cared.
As soon, though, as he heard that Krafft had disappeared, he turned out
his pockets for the scrap of paper Heinz had given him that evening in the
cafe. But it threw no light on what had happened. It was merely an
address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make no more of it than
the words: KLOSTERGASSE 12. He resolved to go through the street of that
name in the afternoon; but, when the time came, he forgot about it, and it
was not till next morning that he carried out his intention. There was,
however, nothing to be learned; number twelve was a gunsmith's shop, and
at his hesitating inquiry, if anything were known there of a music-student
called Krafft, the owner of the shop looked at him as if he were a
lunatic, and answered rudely: was the Herr under the impression that the
shop was an information BUREAU?

Louise was dressed to go out. Pressed as to her destination, she said that
she was going to see the body. Maurice sought in vain to dissuade her.

"It's a perverse thing to do," he cried. "You didn't care a fig for the
girl when she was alive. But now she can't forbid it, you go and stare at
her, out of nothing but curiosity."

"How do you know whether I cared for her or not?" Louise threw at him: she
was tying on her' veil before the glass. "Do you think I tell you
everything?--And as for your 'perverse,' it's the same with all I ever do.
You have made it your business always to find my wishes absurd." She took
up her gloves and, holding them together, hit her muff with them. "In this
case, it doesn't concern you in the least. I don't ask you to come. I want
to go alone."

The more shattered and unsure he grew, the more self-assertive was she.
There was an air of bravado in all she did, at this time--as in the matter
of her determination to go to the dead-house--and she hurt him, with
reckless cruelty, whenever a chance offered. Her pale mouth seemed only to
open to say unkind things, and her eyes weighed him with an ironic
contempt. To his jarred ears, her very laugh sounded less fine. At
moments, she began almost to look ugly to him; but it was a dangerous
ugliness, more seductive than her beauty had ever been. Then, he knew that
she was not too good for him, nor he for her, nor either of them for the
world they lived in.

They walked side by side to the mortuary. It was a very cold day,
and Louise wore heavy furs, from which her face rose enticingly. The
attention she attracted was to Maurice like gall to a wound.

There was not much difficulty in gaining admittance to the dead. A small
coin changed hands, and a man in uniform opened the door.

The post-mortem examination had been held that day, and the body was
swathed from head to foot in a white sheet. It lay on a long, projecting
shelf, and a ticket was pinned on the wall at its head. On the opposite
side of the room, on a similar shelf, was another shrouded figure--the
body of a workingman, found that morning on the outskirts of the town,
with an empty bottle which had contained carbolic acid by its side. The
LEICHENFRAU, the public layer--out of the dead, told them this; it was
she, too, who drew back the sheet from Avery's face in order that they
might see it. She was a rosy, apple-cheeked woman, and her vivid colouring
was thrown into relief by the long black cloak and the close-fitting,
black poke-bonnet that she wore. Maurice, for whom the dead as such had no
attraction, turned from his contemplation of the stark-stretched figure on
the shelf, to watch the living woman. The exuberance of her vitality had
something almost insultant in the presence of these two rigid forms, from
whose faces the colour had fled for ever. Her eyes were alert like those
of a bird; her voice and movements were loud and bustling. In thought he
compared her to a carrion-crow. It was this woman's calling to live on the
dead; she hastened from house to house to cleanse poor, inanimate bodies,
whose dignity had departed from them. He wondered idly whether she gloated
over the announcements of fresh deaths, and mentally sped the dying. Did
she talk of good seasons and of slack seasons, and look forward to the
spread of contagious disease?--Well, at least, she throve on her trade, as
a butcher thrives by continually handling meat.

Louise had eyes only for the face of the dead girl. She stood gazing at
it, with a curious absorption, but without a spark of feeling. The
LEICHENFRAU, having finished tying up a basket, crossed the room and
joined her.

"EINE SCHONE LEICHE!" she said, and nodded, appreciating the fact that a
stranger should admire what was partly her own handiwork.

It was true; Avery's face looked as though it were modelled in wax. She
had not been in the water for more than half an hour, had said the
doctor, not long enough to be disfigured in any way. Only her hair
remained dank and matted, and, although it was laid straight out over the
bolster, it would probably never be quite dry again. No matter, continued
the woman; on. the morrow would come the barber, a good friend of hers, to
dress it for the tomb; he would bring tongs and irons, and other
heating-apparatus with him, and, for certain, would make a good job of it,
so skilled was he: he had all the latest fashions in hair-dressing at his
finger-ends. The face itself was as placid as it had been in life; the
lids were firmly closed--no peeping or squinting here--and the lips met
and rested on each other round and full. Seen like this, it now became
evident that his face was one of those which are, all along, intended for
death--intended, that is, to lie waxen and immobile, to show to best
advantage. In life, there had been too marked a discrepancy between the
extreme warmth of the girl's colouring and the extreme immobility of her
expression. Now that the blood had, as it were, been drained away to the
last drop, now that temples and nostrils had attained transparency, the
fine texture of the skin and the beauty of the curves of lips and chin
were visible to every eye. Only one hand, so the LEICHENFRAU babbled on,
was convulsively closed, and could not be undone; and, as she spoke, she
drew the sheet further down, and displayed the naked arm and hand: the
long, fine fingers were clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise,
Avery appeared to sleep, to sleep profoundly, with an intensity such as
living sleep never attains to--the very epitome of repose. It seemed as if
her eyelids were pressed down by some unseen force; and, in her presence,
the feeling gained ground in one, that it was worth enduring much, to
arrive at a rest of this kind at last.