Books: Maurice Guest

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Meanwhile, the shadows deepened, and his subconsciousness never ceased to
listen, with an intentness which no whirligigs of thought could distract,
for the sound of her step in the passage. When, at length, some short time
after darkness had set in, he heard her at the door, he drew a long,
sighing breath of relief, as if--though this was unavowed even to
himself--he had been afraid he might listen in vain. And, as always, when
the suspense was over, and she was under the same roof with him again, he
was freed from so intolerable a weight that he was ready to endure
whatever she might choose to put upon him, and for his part to make no
demands.

Louise entered languidly; and so skilled had he grown at interpreting her
moods that he knew from her very walk which of them she was in. He looked
surreptitiously at her, and saw that she was wan and tired. It had been a
mild, enervating day; her hair was blown rough about her face. He
watched her before the mirror take off hat and veil, with slow, yet
impatient fingers; watched her hands in her hair, which she did not
trouble to rearrange, but only smoothed back on either side.

She had not, even in entering, cast a glance at him, and, recognising the
rasped state of her nerves, he had the intent to be cautious. But his
resolutions, however good, were not long proof against her over-emphasised
neglect of his 'presence. Her wilful preoccupation with herself, and with
inanimate objects, exasperated him. Everything was of more worth to her
than he was' and she delighted to show it.

"Haven't you a word for me? Don't you see I'm here?" he asked at length.

Even now she did not look towards him as she answered:

"Of course, I see you. But shall I speak next to the furniture of the
room?"

"So!--That's what I am, is it?--A piece of your furniture!"

"Yes.--No, worse. Furniture is silent."

She was changing her walking-dress for the dressing-gown. This done, she
dabbed powder on her face out of a small oval glass pot--a habit of hers to
which he had never grown accustomed.

"Stop putting that stuff on your face! You know I hate it."

Her only answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the powder was strewn
over the front of her dress and the floor. The clothes she had taken off
were flung on a chair; as she brushed past them, they fell to the ground.
She did not stoop to pick them up, but pushed them out of the way with her
foot. Sitting down in the rocking-chair, she closed her eyes, and spread
her arms out along the arms of the chair.

He could not see her from where he lay, but she was within reach of him,
and, after a brief, unhappy silence, he put out his hand and drew the
chair towards him, urging it forward, inch by inch, until it was beside
the sofa. Then he pulled her head down, so that it also lay on the
cushion, and he could feel her hair against his.

"How you hate me!" he said in a low voice, and as though he were speaking
to himself. Laying her hand on his forehead, he made of it a screen for
his eyes. "Who could have foreseen this!" he said again, in the same
toneless way.

Louise lay still, and did not speak.

"Why do you stay with me?" he went on, looking out from under her hand. "I
often ask myself that. For you're free to come and go as you choose."

Her eyes opened at this, though he did not see it. "And I choose to stay
here! How often am I to tell you that? Why do you come back on it
to-night? I'm tired--tired."

"I know you are. I saw it as soon as you came in. It's been a tiring day,
and you probably . . . walked too far."

With a jerk, she drew her hand out of his, and sat upright in her chair.
Something, a mere tone, the slight pause, in his apparently harmless
words, incensed her. "Too far, did I?--Oh, to-night at least, be honest!
Why don't you ask me straight out where I have been?--and what I have done?
Can't you, for once, be man enough to put an open question?"

"Nothing was further from my mind than to make implications. It's you
who're so suspicious. Just as if you had a bad conscience--something
really to conceal."

"Take care!--or I shall tell you--where I've been! And you might regret
it."

"No. For God's sake!--no more confessions!"

She laughed, and lay back. But a moment later, she cried out: "Why don't
you go away yourself? You know I loathe the sight of you; and yet you
stick on here like like a leech. Go away, oh, why can't you go away!"

"To-day, I might have taken you at your word."

At the mention of Madeleine's name, she pricked up her ears. "Oho!" she
said, when lie had finished his story. "So Madeleine pays you visits, does
she?--the sainted Madeleine! You have her there, and me here.--A pretty
state of things!"

"Hold your tongue! I'm not in the mood to-night to stand your gibes."

"But I'm in the mood to make them. And how is one to help it when one
hears that that ineffable creature is no better than she ought to be?"

"Hold your tongue!" he cried again. "How dare you speak like that of the
girl who has been such a good friend to me!"

"Friend!" she echoed. "What fools men are! She's in love with you, that's
all, and always has been. But you were never man enough to know what it
was she wanted--your friend!"

"Ah, you----!" The nervous strain of the afternoon reached its
climax. "You! Yes!--that's you all over! In your eyes nothing is good or
pure. And you make everything you touch dirty. You're not fit to take a
decent woman's name on your lips!"

She sprang up from her chair. "And that's my thanks!--for all I've
done--all I've sacrificed for you! I'm not fit to take a decent woman's
name on my lips! For shame, for shame! For who has made me what I am but
you! Oh, what a fool I was, ever to let you cross this door! You!--a man
who is content with other men's leavings!"

"It was the worst day's work you ever did in your life. Everything bad has
come from that.--Why couldn't you have held back, and refused me? We might
still have been decent, happy creatures, if you hadn't let your vile
nature get the better of you. You wouldn't marry me--no, no! You prefer to
take your pleasure in other ways.--A man at any cost, Madeleine said once,
and God knows, I believe it was true!"

She struck him in the face. "Oh, you miserable scoundrel! You!--who never
looked at me but with the one thought in your head! Oh, it's too much!
Never, never while I live I would rather die first.--shall you ever touch
me again!"

She continued to weep, long after he had left her. Still crying, her
handkerchief pressed to her eyes, her body shaken by her sobs, she moved
blindly about the room, opening drawers and cupboards, and heaping up
their contents on the bed. There was a limit to everything; she could bear
her life with him no longer; and, with nerveless fingers, she strove to
collect and pack her belongings, preparatory to going away.

XII.

Easter fell early, and the Ninth Symphony had been performed in the
Gewandhaus before March was fairly out. Now, both Conservatorium and
Gewandhaus were closed, and the familiar haunts were empty.

Hitherto, Maurice had made shift to preserve appearances: at intervals,
not too conspicuously far apart, he had gone backwards and forwards to his
classes, keeping his head above water with a minimum of work. Now,
however, there was no further need for deceiving people. Most of those who
had been his fellow-students had left Leipzig; he could not put his finger
on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer acquaintance.
No one was left to comment on what he did and how he lived. And this
knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to
face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up
raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work.
Openly now, he took up his abode in the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the
long, idle days stretched on the sofa, rolling cigarettes--in far greater
numbers than he could smoke, and vacantly, yet with a kind of gusto, as if
his fingers, so long accustomed to violent exercise, had a relish for the
task. He was seldom free from headache; an iron ring, which it was
impossible to loosen, bound his forehead. His disinclination to speech
grew upon him, too; not only had he no thoughts that it was worth breaking
the silence to express; the effort demanded by the forming of words was
too great for him. His feeling of indifference-stupefying
indifference--grew so strong that sometimes he felt it beyond his strength
consciously to take in the shape of the objects about the room.

The days were eventless. He lay and watched her movements, which were
spiritless and hurried, by turns, but now seldom marked by the gracious
impulsiveness that had made up so large a part of her charm. He was
content to live from hour to hour at her side; for that this was his last
respite, he well knew. And the further the month advanced, the more
tenaciously he clung. The one thought which now had force to rouse him
was, that the day would come on which he would see her face for
the last time. The fact that she had given herself to another, while yet
belonging to him, ceased to affect him displeasurably, as did also his
fixed idea that she was, at the present moment, deceiving him anew. His
sole obsession was now a fear of the inevitable end. And it was this fear
which, at rare intervals, broke the taciturn dejection in which he was
sunk, by giving rise to appalling fits of violence. But after a scene of
this kind, he would half suffocate her with remorse. And this, perhaps,
worked destruction most surely of all: the knowledge that, despite the
ungovernable aversion she felt for him, she could still tolerate his
endearments. Not once, as long as they had been together, had she refused
to be caressed.

But the impossibility of the life they were leading broke over Louise at
times, with the shock of an ice-cold wave.

"If you have any feeling left in you--if you have ever cared for me in the
least--go away now!" she wept. "Go to the ends of the earth--only leave
me!"

He was giddy with headache that day. "To whom? Who is it you want now?"

One afternoon as he lay there, the landlady came in with a telegram for
him, which she said had been brought round by one of Frau Krause's
children--she tossed it on the table, as she spoke, to express the contempt
she felt for him. Several minutes elapsed before he put out his hand for
it, and then he did so, because it required less energy to open it than to
leave it unopened. When he had read it, he gave a short laugh, and threw
it back on the table. Louise, who was in the other part of the room, came
out, half-dressed, to see what the matter was. She, tool laughed at its
contents in her insolent way, and, on passing the writing-table, pulled
open the drawer where she kept her money.

"There's enough for two. And you're no prouder in this, I suppose, than in
anything else."

The peremptory summons home, and the announcement that no further
allowance would be remitted, was not a surprise to him; he had known all
along that, sooner or later, he would be thrown on his own resources. It
had happened a little earlier than he had expected--that was all. A week
had still to run till the end of the month.--That night, however, when
Louise was out, he meditated, in a desultory fashion, over the likely and
unlikely occupations to which he could turn his hand.

A few days later, she came home one evening in a different mood:
for once, no cruel words crossed her lips. They sat side by side on the
sofa; and of such stuff was happiness now made that he was content.
Chancing to look up, he was dismayed to see that her eyes were full of
tears, which, as he watched, ran over and down her cheeks. He slid to his
knees, and laid his head in her lap.

She fell asleep early; for, no matter what happened, how uneventful or how
tragically exciting her day was, her faculty for sleep remained unchanged.
It was a brilliant night; in the sky was a great, round, yellow moon, and
the room was lit up by it. The blind of the window facing the bed had not
been lowered; and a square patch of light fell across the bed. He turned
and looked at her, lying in it. Her face was towards him; one arm was
flung up above her head; the hand lay with the palm exposed. Something in
the look of the face, blanched by the unreal light, made him recall the
first time he had seen it, and the impression it had then left on his
mind. While she played in Schwarz's room, she had turned and looked at
him, and it had seemed to him then, that some occult force had gone out
from the face, and struck home in him. And it had never lessened. Strange,
that so small a thing, hardly bigger than one's two closed fists, should
be able to exert such an influence over one! For this face it was--the pale
oval, in the dark setting, the exotic colouring, the heavy-lidded
eyes--which held him; it was this face which drew him surely back with a
vital nostalgia--a homesickness for the sight of her and the touch of
her--if he were too long absent. It had not been any coincidence of
temperament or sympathies--by rights, all the rights of their different
natures, they had not belonged together--any more than it had been a mere
blind uprush of sensual desire. And just as his feelings for her had had
nothing to do with reason, or with the practical conduct of his life so
they had outlasted tenderness, faithfulness, respect. What ever it was
that held him, it lay deeper than these conventional ideas of virtue. The
power her face had over him was undiminished, though he now found it
neither beautiful nor good; though he knew the true meaning of each deeply
graven line.--This then was love?--this morbid possession by a woman's
face.

He laid his arm across his tired eyes, and, without waiting to consider
the question he had propounded, commenced to follow out a new train of
thought. No doubt, for each individual, there existed in one other
mortal some physical detail which he or she could find only in this
particular person. It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, it
seemed, in the colour of an eye; some in the modulations of a voice, the
curve of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion.
Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificant
characteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, to the
one affected by it, made instant appeal, and just to that corner of the
soul which had hitherto suffered aimlessly for the want of it--a suffering
which nothing but this intonation, this particular smile, could allay. He
himself had long since learnt what it was, about her face, that made a
like appeal to him. It was her eyes. Not their size, or their dark
brilliancy, but the manner of their setting: the spacious lid that fell
from the high, wavy eyebrow, first sloping deeply inwards, then curving
out again, over the eyeball; this, and the clean sweep of the broad, white
lid, which, when lowered, gave the face an infantine look--a look of
marble. He knew it was this; for, on the strength of a mere hinted
resemblance, he had been unable to take his eyes off the face of another
woman; the likeness in this detail had met his gaze with a kind of shock.
But what a meaningless thing was life, when the way a lid drooped, or an
eyebrow grew on a forehead, could make such havoc of your nerves! And more
especially when, in the brain or soul that lay behind, no spiritual trait
answered to the physical.--Well, that was for others to puzzle over, not
for him. The strong man tore himself away while there was still time, or
saved himself in an engrossing pursuit. He, having had neither strength
nor saving occupation, had bartered all he had, and knowingly, for the
beauty of this face. And as long as it existed for him, his home was
beside it.

He turned restlessly. Disturbed in her dreams, Louise flung over on her
other side.

"Eugen!" she murmured. "Save me!--Here I am! Oh, don't you see me?"

He shook her by the arm. "Wake up!"

She was startled and angry. "Won't you even let me sleep?"

"Keep your dreams to yourself then!"

There was a savage hatred in her look. "Oh, if I only could! . . . if only
my hands were strong enough!--!I'd kill you!"

"You've done your best."

"Yes. And I'm glad! Remember that, afterwards. I was glad!"

It had been a radiant April morning of breeze and sunshine, but towards
midday, clouds gathered, and the sunlight was constantly intercepted.
Maurice had had occasion to fetch something from his lodgings and was on
his way back. The streets were thronged with people: business men,
shop-assistants and students, returning to work from the restaurants in
which they had dined. At a corner of the ZEITZERSTRASSE, a hand-cart had
been overturned, and a crowd had gathered; for, no matter how busy people
were, they had time to gape and stare; and they were now as eager as
children to observe this incident, in the development of which a stout
policeman was wordily authoritative. Maurice found that he had loitered
with the rest, to watch the gathering up of the spilt wares, and to hear
the ensuing altercation between hawker and policeman. On turning to walk
on again, his eye was caught and held by the tall figure of a man who was
going in the same direction as he, but at a brisk pace, and several yards
in front of him. This person must have passed the group round the cart.
Now, intervening heads and shoulders divided them, obstructing Maurice's
view; still, signs were not wanting in him that his subliminal
consciousness was beginning to recognise the man who walked ahead. There
was something oddly familiar in the gait, in the droop of the shoulders,
the nervous movement of the head, the aimless motion of the dangling hands
and arms--briefly, in all the loosely hung body. And, besides this, the
broad-brimmed felt hat . . . Good God! He stiffened, with a sudden start,
and, in an instant, his entire attention was concentrated in an effort to
see the colour of the hair under the hat. Was it red? He tried to strike
out in lengthier steps, but the legs of the man in front were longer, and
his own unruly. After a moment's indecision, however, he mastered them,
and then, so afraid was he of the other passing out of sight, that he all
but ran, and kept this pace up till he was close behind the man he
followed. There he fell into a walk again, but a weak and difficult walk,
for his heart was leaping in his chest. He had not been mistaken. The
person close before him, so close that he could almost have touched him,
was no other than Schilsky--the Schilsky of old, with the insolent,
short-sighted eyes, and the loose, easy walk.

Maurice followed him--followed warily and yet unreflectingly--right down
the long, populous street. Sometimes blindly, too, for, when the
street and all it contained swam before him, he was obliged to shut his
eyes. People looked with attention at him; he caught a glimpse of himself
in a barber's mirror, and saw that his face had turned a greenish white.
His mind was set on one point. Arrived at the corner where the street ran
out into the KONIGSPLATZ, which turning would Schilsky take? Would he go
to the right, where lay the BRUDERSTRASSE, or would he take the lower
street to the left? Until this question was answered, it was impossible to
decide what should be done next. But first, there came a lengthy pause:
Schilsky entered a musicshop, and remained inside, leaning over the
counter, for a quarter of an hour. Finally, however, the corner was
reached. He appeared to hesitate: for a moment it seemed as if he were
going straight on, which would mean fresh uncertainty. Then, with a sudden
outward fling of the hands, he went off to the left, in the direction of
the Gewandhaus.

Maurice did not follow him any further. He stood and watched, until he
could no longer see the swaying head. After that he had a kind of
collapse. He leaned up against the wall of a house, and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead. Passers by believed him to be drunk, and
were either amused, or horrified, or saddened. He discovered, in truth,
that his legs were shaking as if with an ague, and, stumbling into a
neighbouring wine-shop, he drank brandy--not enough to stupefy him, only
to give back to his legs their missing strength.

To postpone her knowing! To hinder her from knowing at any cost!--his
blurred thoughts got no further than this. He covered the ground at a mad
pace, clinging fast to the belief that he would find her, as he had left
her, in bed. But his first glimpse of her turned him cold. She was
standing before the glass, dressed to go out. This in itself was bad
enough. Worse, far worse, was it that she had put on, to-day, one of the
light, thin dresses she had worn the previous spring, and never since. It
was impossible to see her tricked out in this fashion, and doubt her
knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that she was dressed
to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed and rejuvenated, gave the
last thrust to his tottering sense. He demanded with such savageness the
meaning of her adornment, that the indignant amazement with which she
turned on him was real, and not feigned.

"Take off that dress! You shan't go out of the house in it!--Take it off!"

He raved, threatened, implored, always with icy fingers at his
heart. He knew that she knew; he would have taken his oath on it; and he
only had room in his brain for one thought: to prevent her knowing. His
rage spent itself on the light, flowery dress. As nothing he said moved
her, he set his foot on the skirt, and tore it down from the waist. She
struck at him for this, then took another from the wardrobe--a still
lighter and gaudier one. They had never yet gone through an hour such as
that which followed. At its expiry, clothes and furniture lay strewn about
the room.

When Louise saw that he was not to be shaken off, that, wherever she went
on this day, he would go, too, she gave up any plan she might have had,
and followed where he led. This was, as swiftly as possible, by the
outlying road to the Connewitz woods. If he could but once get her there,
they would be safe from surprise. Once out there, in solitude, among the
screening trees, something, he did not yet know what, but something
would--must--happen.

He dragged her relentlessly along. But until they got there! His eyes grew
stiff and giddy with looking before him, behind him, on all sides. And
never had she seemed to move so slowly; never had she stared so brazenly
about her, as on this afternoon. With every step they took, certainty
burned higher in him; the thin, fixed smile that disfigured her lips said:
do your worst; do all you can; nothing will save you! He did not draw a
full breath till they were far out on the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then he
dropped her arm, and wiped his face.

The road was heavy with mud, from rains of the preceding day. Louise,
dragging at his side, was careless of it, and let her long skirt trail
behind her. He called her attention to it, furiously, and this was the
first time he had spoken since leaving the house. But she did not even
look down: she picked out a part of the road that was still dirtier, where
her feet sank and stuck.

They crossed the bridge, and joined the wood-path. On one of the first
seats they came to, Louise sank exhausted. Filled with the idea of getting
her into the heart of the woods, he was ahead of her, urging the pace; and
he had taken a further step or two before he saw that she had remained
behind. He was forced to return.

"What are you sitting there for?" He turned on her, with difficulty
resisting the impulse to strike her full in her contemptuous white face.

She laughed--her terrible laugh, which made the very nerves twitch
in his finger-tips. "Why does one usually sit down?"

"ONE?--You're not one! You're you!" Now he wished hundreds of listeners
were in their neighbourhood, that the fierceness of his voice might carry
to them.

"And you're a madman!"

"Yes, treat me like the dirt under your feet! But you can't deceive
me.--Do you think I don't know why you're stopping here ?"

She looked away from him, without replying.

"Do you think I don't know why you've decked yourself out like this?"

"For God's sake stop harping on my dress!"

"Why you've bedizened yourself? . . . why you were going out? . . . why
you've spied and gaped eternally from one side of the street to the
other?"

As she only continued to look away, the desire seized him to say something
so incisive that the implacability of her face would have to change, no
matter to what. "I'll tell you then!" he shouted, and struck the palm of
one hand with the back of the other, so that the bones in both bit and
stung. "I'll tell you. You're waiting here . . . waiting, I say! But
you'll wait to no purpose! For you've reckoned without me."

"Oh, very well, then, if it pleases you, I'm waiting! But you can at least
say for what? For you perhaps?--for you to regain your senses?"

"Stop your damned sneering! Will you tell me you don't know who's--don't
know he's here?"