Books: Maurice Guest

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And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was over, the last
afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went to the railway station to
make arrangements about her luggage. On her way home, she entered Klemm's
music-shop, where she stood, for a considerable time, taking leave of one
and another. When she emerged again, the town had assumed that spectral
look, which, towards evening, made the quaint old gabled streets so
attractive.

For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret at
having to leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, her years of
study; but she was now quite ready to advance, curious to attack the
future, and to dominate that also. Still, the dusk on the familiar streets
inclined her to feel sentimental. "This time tomorrow, I'll be hundreds of
miles away," she said to herself, "and probably shall never see the old
place again." As she walked, she looked back upon her residence
there--already somewhat in the light of a remembrance--weighing what it had
been worth to her. Part of it was intimately associated with Maurice
Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. Of late he had passed out of her
life; she had been too busy to think of him. Now, however, that she was at
the end of this period, the fancy seized her to see him again; and she
took a resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant in her for some time.

"I don't see why I shouldn't," she reasoned. "No one will know. And even
if they do, I'm leaving, and it won't matter."

And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked up her steps
in the direction of the BRAUSTRASSE--a street which she disliked, and never
entered if she could avoid it. If he had lived in a better neighbourhood,
things might have gone better with him, she mused; for Madeleine was a
staunch believer in the influence of surroundings, and could not, for
instance, understand a person who lived in dirt and disorder having any
but a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from door to door, scanning the
numbers, with her head poked a little forward and to one side, like a
bird's. As she ascended the stair, she raised her skirts, and her nostrils
twitched displeased.

Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at Madeleine with
distrust.

"No, he's not," she replied. "And what's more, I couldn't say, if you were
to pay me, when he will be."

But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of any landlady
alive. "Why? Is he so irregular?" she asked. She had placed her foot in
the opening of the door, and now, by a skilful movement, inserted herself
bodily into the passage.

Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like
to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the
threshold, drying her hands on her apron.

"Are you a friend of his, may I ask?" she inquired.

"Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think I'd be here if I
weren't?" said Madeleine, looking her up and down.

"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why,
because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know how
he's going on--that's why, Fraulein!"

"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked
round her for a chair.

Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind her
hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case."

"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered
Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt
very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise,
which stood on the lid of the piano.

"I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a
bad, bold face it is, too."

"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to
you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory.

"Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a spice
of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now--though of course one
never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes against my heart
to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting as he does. When he
first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man anywhere than Herr
Guest--if I had a complaint, it was that he was too much of a steady-goer.
I used to tell him he ought to take more heed for his health, not to
mention the ears of the people that had to live with him. He sat at that
piano there all the blessed day. And now there isn't a lazier, more
cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please him anyhow. He never
gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he doesn't cat, and he's getting
so thin that his clothes just hang on him."

"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way,
with her eye on the main points of probable offence.

"Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it
mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the
hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like their
liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a young
fellow here----"

"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said
Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of
it.--A very good bargain!"

She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising that she
had met her match in this sharp-tongued young lady, curbed her temper, and
launched out into the history of a former lodger.

It was. a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against the
door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting
sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the
writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and
pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against
the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the door, on
both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything
was of an extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showing through holes in
the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A couple of
photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the bureau--that was all
that had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was like a
room that had never properly been lived in.

While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was heard in the
front door, and Frau. Krause, interrupted in her story, had just time to
tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: "Here he is!" and dart out of the room.
Not so promptly, however, but what Maurice saw where she came from.
Madeleine heard them bandying words in the passage.

The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, entering hotly, threw
his hat on the table. He did not perceive his visitor till it was too
late.

"Madeleine! You here!" he exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment. "I beg
your pardon. I didn't see you," and he made haste to recover his hat.

"Yes, don't faint, it's I, Maurice.--But what's the matter? Why are you so
angry with the person? Does she pry on you?"

"Pry!" he echoed, and his colour deepened. "Pry's not the word for it. She
ransacks everything I have. I never come home but what I find she has
overhauled something, though I've forbidden her to enter the room."

"Why don't you--or rather, why didn't you move? It's not much of a place,
I'm sure."

"Move?" he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as he spoke,
he looked incredulously at Madeleine. He had hung his coat and hat on a
peg, and now came forward to the table." Move?" he said once again, and
prolonged the word as though the channel of thought it opened up was new
to him.

"Good gracious, yes!--If one's not satisfied with one's rooms, one moves,
that's all. There's nothing strange about it."

He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and was about to draw
up a chair, when his eye caught a letter that was lying on the lowered
flap of the bureau. In patent agitation, and without excusing himself, he
seized it and tore it open. Madeleine saw his face darken. He read the
letter through twice, from beginning to end, then tore it into a dozen
pieces and scattered them on the shelf.

"No bad news, I hope?"

He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. "That depends on how
you look at it, Madeleine," he said, and laughed in an unpleasant manner.

After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring at the scraps
of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she waited. Then she saw herself
forced to recall him to the fact of her presence.

"Could you spare me a little attention now?" she asked. At her words, he
jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought his wandering thoughts home.
"I can't sit here for ever you know," she added.

"I beg your pardon." He came up to the table, and took the chair he had
previously had his hand on. "The fact is I--Can I do anything for you,
Madeleine?"

"For me? Oh, dear, no!--You are surprised to find me here, no doubt! But
as I'm leaving to-morrow morning, I thought I'd run up and say good-bye to
you--that's all. A case of Mohammed and the mountain, you see."

"Leaving? To-morrow?"

"Yes.--Goodness, there's nothing wonderful in that, is there? Most people
do leave some time or other, you know." His reply was inaudible. "It was
very good of you to look me up," he threw in as an afterthought.

Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her lips, had
chanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had laid on the
table, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in spite of herself by
the uncared-for condition of the nails. These were bitten, and
broken, and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware of her intent gaze, looked down
to see what it was at, hastily withdrew his hands ' and hid them in his
pockets.

"This is the first time I've been in your den, you know," she said
abruptly. "Really, Maurice, you might have done better. I don't know how
you've managed to put up with it so long."

"My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live in a palace?"

"A palace?--absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seventeen marks for this
hole. Well, I could have found you any number of better places for the
same money--if you had come to me."

"You're very kind. But it has done me well enough."

"So it appears."

Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking up some neutral
subject. "Are those your people?" she asked, and nodded at the photograph
of a family-group, which stood on the top shelf of the bureau. "Three
boys, are you not? You are like your mother," and she stared, with
unfeigned curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressed out in their best
coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellery.

"Good God, Madeleine!" Maurice burst out at this, his loosely kept
patience escaping him. "You didn't come here, I suppose, to remark on my
family?"

"Well, I can't congratulate you on an improvement in your manners, since I
saw you last."

"I am not aware of having changed."

"As well for you, perhaps. However, I'll tell you about myself, if it
interests you." She turned her cool, judicial gaze on him again; and now
she set before him her projects for the future. But though he kept his
eyes fastened on her face, she saw that he was not listening to what she
said, or, at most, that he only half heard it; for, when she ceased to
speak, he did not notice her silence.

She waited, curious to see what would come next, and presently he echoed,
in his vague way: "Paris, did you say?--Really?"

"Yes--Paris: the capital of France.--I said that, and a good deal more,
which I don't think you heard.--And now I won't take up your precious time
any longer.--You've nothing new to tell me, I suppose? You still intend
staying on here, and fighting out the problem of existence? Well, when you
have starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some one will let
me know. I'll come over for the funeral."

She rose, and began to button her jacket.

"And England has absolutely no chance? English music must continue to
languish, without hope of reform?"

"How can you remember such rot! I was a terrible fool when I talked like
that."

"I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your acquired wisdom.
And I won't go from here without offering you congratulations, hearty
congratulations, on the muddle you've made of things."

"That's entirely my own affair."

"You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else would want the
responsibility of it?"

She went out without a further word. But on the landing at the bottom of
the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. She felt annoyed with
herself that she had allowed an unfriendly tone to dominate their brief
interview. This was probably the last time she would see him; the last
chance she would have of telling him just what she thought of him. And
viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificial delicacy
of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vigorously, and, not being
used to indecision, turned as she did so, and began to ascend the stairs
again. Brushing past Frau Krause, she reopened, without knocking, the door
of Maurice's room.

He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and at her entrance
was bending over something that lay there, so engrossed that he did not at
once raise his head.

"Good gracious! What are you doing?" escaped her involuntarily.

At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writingtable, tried
to screen it from her eyes.

She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. "Yes, it's
me again," she said with determination. "And I suppose you'll want to
accuse me of prying, too, like that female outside.--Look here: it's
ludicrous for us who have been friends so long to part in this fashion.
And I, for one, don't intend to do it. There's something I want to say
before I go--you may be angry and offended if you like; I don't care"--for
he frowned forbiddingly. "I'm no denser than other people; and I know just
as well as every one else the wretched mess you've got yourself into--one
would have to be blind and deaf, indeed, not to know.--Now, look here,
Maurice! You once said to me, you may remember, that if you had a sister
you'd like her to be something like me. Will you look on me as that sister
for a little, and let me give you some sound advice? I told you I was
going to Paris, and that I had a clear month there. Well, now, throw your
things together and come with me. You haven't had a decent holiday since
you've been here. You need freshening up.--Or if not Paris--Paris isn't a
necessity--we'll go down by Munich and the Brenner to Italy, and I'll be
cicerone. I'll act as banker, too, and you can regard it as a loan in the
meantime, and pay me back when you're richer.--Now what do you say?
Doesn't the plan tempt you?"

"What I say?" he echoed, and looked round him a little helplessly. "Why,
Madeleine . . . It seems you are determined to run off with me. Once it
was America, and now it's Italy or Paris."

"Come, say you'll consent, or at least consider it."

"My dear Madeleine! You're all that is good and kind. But you know you're
only talking nonsense."

She did not answer him at once. "The thing is this," she said with some
hesitation. "I wasn't quite honest in what I said to you a few minutes
ago. I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am to a certain degree
responsible, even to blame, for much of . . . what has happened here. And
it isn't a pleasant feeling, Maurice."

"My dear girl!" he said again. "If it's any consolation to you to know it,
I owe you the biggest debt of my life."

"Then you decline my proposal, do you?"

"You're the same good friend you always were. But you're making a mountain
out of a molehill. What's all this fuss about? Merely because I haven't
chosen to work my fingers to the bone, and wear my nerves to tatters over
that old farce of a PRUFUNG. As for my choosing to stay here, instead of
going home like the rest of you--well, that's a matter of taste, too. Some
people--like our friend Dove--want affluence, and a fixed position in the
provinces. Frankly, I don't. I'd rather scrape along here, as best I can.
That's the whole matter in a nutshell, and it's nothing to make a to-do
about. For though you think I'm a fool, and can't help telling me so--that,
too, is a matter of opinion."

"Well, I don't intend to apologise for myself at this date, be sure of
that! And now I'll go. For if you're resolved to hold me at arm's
length, there's nothing more to be said.--No, stop a minute, though. Here's
my address in England. If ever you should return to join us benighted
ignorants, you might let me know. Or if you find you can't get on here--I
mean if it's quite impossible--I have money, you know . . . and should be
glad--at a proper percentage, of course," she added ironically.

"That's hardly likely to happen."

She laid the card on the table. "You never can tell.--Well, good-bye, then,
and in spite of your obstinacy, I'll perhaps be able to do you a good turn
yet, Maurice Guest."

As soon as he heard the front door close, he returned to his occupation of
piecing together the bits of the letter. Ever since he had torn it
up--throughout her visit--his brain had been struggling to recall its exact
contents, and without success; for, owing to Madeleine's presence, he had
read it hastily. Otherwise, what he had done to-day did not differ from
his usual method of proceeding. This was not the first horrible unsigned
letter he had received, and he could never prevail on himself to throw
them in the fire, unopened. He read them through, two or three times,
then, angered by their contents and by his own weakness, tore them to
fragments. But the hints and aspersions they contained, remained imprinted
on his mind. In this case, Madeleine's distracting appearance had
enfeebled his memory, and he worked long and patiently until the sheet lay
fitted together again before him. When he knew its contents by heart, he
struck some matches, and watched the pieces curl and blacken.

Then he left the house.

Her room was in darkness. He stretched himself on the sofa to wait for her
return.

The words of the letter danced like a writing of fire before him; he lay
there and re-read them; but without anger. What they stated might be true,
also it might not; he would never know. For these letters, which he was
ashamed of himself for opening, and still more for remembering, had not
been mentioned between them, but were added to that category of things
they now tacitly agreed to avoid. In his heart, he knew that he cherished
the present state of uncertainty; it was a twilight state, without
crudities or sharp outlines; and it was still possible to drift and dream
in it. Whereas if another terrible certainty, like the last, descended on
him, he would be forced to marshal his energies, and to suffer afresh. It
was better not to know. As long as definite knowledge failed him,
he could give her the benefit of the doubt. And whether what the letters
affirmed was true or not, hours came when she still belonged wholly to
him. Whatever happened on her absences from him, as soon as the four walls
of the room shut them in again, she was his; and each time she returned, a
burning gratitude for the reprieve filled him anew.

But there was also another reason why he did not breathe a word to her of
his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him--the dread
of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and he had
learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had passed
now, since the night on which he had made his last stand against herweeks
of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had seemed, his
horrible treatment of her had brought about a slackening of the tension
between them. The worst that could happen had happened, and he had
survived it: he had not put an end either to himself or to her. On the
contrary, he had accepted the fact--as he now saw that he would accept
every fact concerning her, whether for good or evil. And matters having
reached this point, a kind of lull ensued: for a few days they had even
caught a glimpse again of the old happiness. But the pause was
short-lived: it was like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into water,
which continue just so long as the impetus lasts. Louise had been a little
awed by his greater strength, when she had lain cowering on the ground
before him. But not many days elapsed before her eyes were wide open with
incredulous amazement. When she understood, as she soon did, that her
shameless admission, and still more, his punishment of her for it, was not
to be followed up by any new development; that, in place of subduing her
mentally as well, he was going to be content to live on as they had been
doing; that, in fact, he had already dropped back into the old state of
things, before she was well aware of what was happening: then her passing
mood of submission swept over into her old flamboyant contempt for him.
The fact of his having beaten her became a weapon in her hands; and she
used it unsparingly. To her taunts, he had no answer to make. For, the
madness once passed, he could not conceive how he had been capable of such
a thing; in his sane moments of dejection and self-distrust, he could not
have raised his hand against her, though his life were at stake.

He had never been able to drag from her a single one of the
reasons that had led to her mad betrayal of him. On this point she was
inflexible. In the course of that long night which he had spent on his
knees by her bed, he had persecuted her to disclose her motive. But he
might as well have spoken to the wind; his questioning elicited no reply..
Again and again, he had upbraided her: "But you didn't care for Heinz! He
was nothing to you!" and she neither assented nor gainsaid him. Once,
however, she had broken in on him: "You believed bad of me long before
there was any to believe. Now you have something to go on!" And still
again, when the sluggish dawn was creeping in, she had suddenly turned her
head: "But now you can go away. You're free to leave me. Nothing binds you
to a woman like me--who can't be content with one man." Dizzy with fatigue,
he had answered: "No--if you think that--if you did it just to be rid of
me--you're mistaken!"

From this night on, they had never reverted to the subject again--which is
not to say that his brain did not work furiously at it; the search for a
clue, for the hidden motive, was now his eternal occupation. But to her he
was silent, sheerly from the dread of again receiving the answer: take me
as I am, or leave me! In hours such as the present, or in the agony of
sleepless nights, these thoughts rent his brain. The question was such an
involved one, and he never seemed to come any nearer a solution of it.
Sometimes, he was actually tempted to believe what her words implied: that
it had been wilfully done, with a view to getting rid of him. But against
this, his reason protested; for, if the letter from Krafft had not
arrived, he would have known nothing. He did not believe she would have
told him--would there, indeed, have been any need for her to do so? Nothing
was changed between them; she lived at his side, just as before; and
Krafft was out of the way.--At other times, though, he asked himself if
he were not a fool to be surprised at what had occurred. Had not all roads
led here? Had he not, as she most truly said, for long harboured the
unworthiest suspicions of her?--suspicions which were tantamount to an
admission on his part that his love was no longer enough for her. To have
done this, and afterwards to behave as if she had been guilty of an
unpardonable crime, was illogical and unjust.--And yet again, there came
moments when, in a barbarous clearness of vision, he seemed to get nearest
to the truth. Under certain circumstances, so he now told himself, he
would gladly and straightway have forgiven her. If she had been
drawn, irresistibly, to another, by one of those sudden outbursts of
passion before which she was incapable of remaining steadfast; if she had
been attracted, like this, more than half unwilling, wholly humiliated,
penitent in advance, yet powerless--then, oh then, how willingly he would
have made allowance for her weakness! But Krafft, of all people!--Krafft,
of whom she had spoken to him with derisive contempt!--this cold and
calculated deception of him with some one who made not the least appeal to
her!--Cold and calculated, did he say? No, far from it! What COULD it have
been but the sensual caprice of a moment?--but a fleeting, manlike desire
for the piquancy of change?

These and similar thoughts ran their whirling circles behind his closed
eyes, as he lay in the waning twilight of the March evening, which still
struggled with the light of the lamp. But they were hard pressed by the
contents of the letter: on this night he foresaw that his fixed idea
threatened to divide up into two branches--and he did not know whether to
be glad or to regret it. But he admitted to himself that one of these days
he would be forced to take measures for preserving his sanity, by somehow
dragging the truth from her; better still, by following her on one of her
evening absences, to discover for himself where she went, and whether what
the anonymous writer asserted was true. If he could only have controlled
his brain! The perpetually repeated circles it drove in--if these could
once have been brought to a stop, all the rest of him infinitely preferred
not to know.