Books: Maurice Guest

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Still she continued to overlook him. "He?--who?--what?" She flung the
little words at him like stones. Yet, in the second that elapsed before
his reply, a faint presentiment widened her eyes.

"You've got the audacity to ask that?" Flinging himself down on the seat,
he put his hands in his pockets, and stretched out his legs. "Who but your
precious Schilsky!--the man who knew how you ought to be treated . . . who
gave you what you deserved!"

His first feeling was one of relief: the truth was out; there was an end
to the torture of the past hour. But after this one flash of sensation, he
ceased to consider himself. At his words Louise turned so white that he
thought she was going to faint. She raised her hand to her throat, and
held it there. She tried to say something, and could not utter a sound.
Her voice had left her. She turned her head and looked at him, in
a strange, apprehensive way, with the eyes of a trapped animal.

"Eugen!--Eugen is here?" she said at last. "Here?--Do you know what you're
saying?" Now that her voice had come, it was a little thin whisper, like
the voice of a sick person. She pushed hat and hair, both suddenly become
an intolerable weight, back from her forehead.

Still he was not warned. "Will you swear to me you didn't know?"

"I know? I swear?" Her voice was still a mere echo of itself. But now she
rose, and standing at the end of the seat furthest from him, held on to
the back of it. "I know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Then she drew a
long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voice and emotion
and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she cried with a startling
loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd be here with you, if I had
known?--if I had known!"

A foreboding of what he had done came to Maurice. "Take care!--take care
what you say!"

She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, which echoed through the
woods.

"Take care!" he said again, and trembled.

"Of what?--of you, perhaps? YOU!"

"I may kill you yet."

"Oh, such as you don't kill!"

She lowered her veil, and stooped for her gloves. He looked up at her
swift movement. There was a blueness round his lips.

"What are you going to do?"

She laughed.

"You're . . . you're going to him! Louise!--you are NOT going to him?"

"Oh, you poor, crazy fool, what made you tell me?"

"Stay here!" He caught her by the sleeve. But she shook his hand off as
though it were a poisonous insect. "For God's sake, think what you're
doing! Have a little mercy on me!"

"Have you ever had mercy on me?"

She took a few, quick steps away from the seat, then with an equally
impulsive resolve, came back and confronted him.

"You talk to me of mercy?--you !--when nothing I could wish you would be
bad enough for you?--Oh, I never thought it would be possible to hate
anyone as I hate you--you mean-souled, despicable dummy of a man!--Why
couldn't you have let me alone? I didn't care that much for you--not THAT
much! But you came, with your pretence of friendship, and your flattery,
and your sympathy--it was all lies, every word of it! Do you think what
has happened to us would ever have happened if you'd been a different kind
of man?--But you have never had a clean thought of me--never! Do you
suppose I haven't known what you were thinking and believing about me in
these last weeks?--those nights when I waited night after night to see a
light come back in his windows? Yes, and I let you believe it; I wanted you
to; I was glad you did--glad to see you suffer. I wish you were dead!--Do
you see that river? Go and throw yourself into it. I'll stand here and
watch you sink, and laugh when I see you drowning.--Oh, I hate you--hate
you! I shall hate you to my last hour!"

She spat on the ground at his feet. Before he could raise his head, she
was gone.

He made an involuntary, but wholly uncertain, movement to follow her, did
not, however, carry it out, and sank back into his former attitude. His
cold hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders drawn up; and his face,
drained of its blood, was like the face of an old man. He had made no
attempt to defend himself, had sat mute, letting her vindictive words go
over him, inwardly admitting their truth. Now he closed his eyes, and kept
them shut, until the thudding of his heart grew less forcible. When he
looked up again, his gaze met the muddy, sluggish water, into which she
had dared him to throw himself. But he did not even recall her taunt. He
merely sat and stared at the river, amazed at the way in which it had, as
it were, detached itself from other objects. All at once it had acquired a
life of its own, and it was difficult to believe that it had ever been an
integral part of the landscape.

He remained sitting till the mists were breast-high. But even when, after
more than one start--for his legs were stiff and numbed--he rose to go
home, he did not realise what had happened to him. He was only aware that
night had fallen, and that it would be better to get back in the direction
of the town.

The twinkling street-lamps did more than anything towards rousing him. But
they also made him long, with a sudden vehemence, for some warm, brightly
lighted interior, where it would be possible to forget the night--haunted
river. He sought out an obscure cafe, and entering, called for brandy. On
this night, he was under no necessity to limit himself; and he
sat, glowering at the table, and emptying his glass, until he had died a
temporary, and charitable, death. The delicious sensation of sipping the
brandy was his chief remembrance of these hours; but, also, like far-off,
incorporate happenings, he was conscious, as the night deepened, of
women's shrill and lively voices. and of the pressure of a woman's arms.

XIII.

He wakened, the next morning, to strange surroundings. Half opening his
eyes, he saw a strip of drab wall-paper, besprinkled with crude pink
roses, and the black and gilt frame of an oblong mirror. He shut them
again immediately, preferring to believe that he was still dreaming.
Somewhere in the back of his head, a machine was working, with slow,
steady throbs, which made his body vibrate as a screw does a steamer. He
lay enduring it, and trying to sleep again, to its accompaniment. But just
as he was on the point of dozing off, a noise in the room startled him,
and made him wide awake. He was not alone. Something had fallen to the
floor, and a voice exclaimed impatiently. Peering through his lids, he
looked out beyond the will which had first chained his attention. His eyes
fell on the back of a woman, who was sitting in front of one of the
windows, doing her hair. In her hand she held a pair of curlingtongs, and,
before her, on the foot-end of the sofa, a hand-glass was propped up. Her
hair was thick and blond. She wore a black silk chemise, which had slipped
low on her plump shoulders; a shabby striped petticoat was bound round her
waist, and her naked feet were thrust into down-trodden, felt shoes.
Maurice lay still, in order that she should not suspect his being awake.
For a few minutes, there was silence; then he was forced to sneeze, and at
the sound the woman muttered something, and came to the side of the bed. A
curl was imprisoned between the blades of the tongs, which she continued
to hold aloft, in front of her forehead.

"NA, KLEINER! . . . had your sleep out?" she asked in a raucous voice. As
Maurice did not reply, but closed his eyes again, blinded by the sunshine
that poured into the room, she laughed, and made a sound like that with
which one urges on a horse. "Don't feel up to much this morning . . . eh?
HERRJE, KLEINER, but you were tight!" and, at some remembrance of the
preceding night, she chuckled to herself. "And now, I bet you, you feel as
if you'd never be able to lift your head again. Just wait a jiffy! I'll
get you something that'll revive you."

She waddled to the door and he heard her call: "JOHANN, EINEN
SCHNAPS!"

Feet shuffled in the passage; she handed Maurice a glass of brandy.

"There you are!--that'll pull you together. Swallow it down," she said, as
he hesitated. "You'll feel another man after it.--And now I'll do what I
wouldn't do for every one--make you a coffee to wash down the nasty
physic."

She laughed loudly at her own joke, and laid the curlingtongs aside. He
watched her move about the room in search of spirit-lamp and coffee-mill.
Beneath the drooping black chemise, her loose breasts swayed.

"Not that I've much time," she went on, as she ground the coffee. "It's
gone a quarter to twelve already, and I like fresh air. I don't miss a
minute of it.--So up you get! Here, dowse your head in this water."

Leaning against the table, Maurice drank the cup of black coffee, and
considered his companion. No longer young, she was as coarsely haggard as
are the generality of women of her class, scanned by cruel daylight. And
while she could never have been numbered among the handsome ones of her
profession, there was yet a certain kindliness in the smallish blue eyes,
and in her jocose manner of treating him.

She, too, eyed him as he drank.

"SAG''MAL KLEINER--will you come again?" she broke the silence.

"What's your name?" he asked evasively, and put the cup down on the table.

"Oh . . . just ask for Luise," she said. On her tongue, the name had three
long-drawn syllables, and there was a v before the i.

She was nettled by his laugh.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked. "GEH', KLEINER, SEI NETT!--won't you
come again?"

"Perhaps."

"Well, ask for Luise, if you do. That's enough."

He turned to put on his coat. As he did so, a disagreeable thought crossed
his mind; he coloured, and ran his hand through his pockets.

"I've no money."

"What?--rooked, are you? Well, it wasn't here, then. I'm an honest girl, I
am!"

She came over to him, not exactly suspicious, still with a slight
diminution of friendliness in eyes and tone; and, as, if there were room
for a mistake on his part, herself went through the likely pockets in
turn.

"Not a heller!"

Her sharp little eyes travelled over him.

"That'd do."

She laid her hand on his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave it to her. She
stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her arms round his neck, and gave
him a hearty kiss.

"DU GEFALLST MIR!" she said. "I like you. Kiss me, too, can't you?"

He looked down on the plump, ungainly figure, and, without feeling either
satisfaction or repugnance, stooped and kissed the befringed forehead.

"ADIEU, KLEINER! Come again."

"ADIEU, LUISE!"

He was eyed--he felt it--from various rooms, the doors of which stood ajar.
The front door was wide open, and he left it so. He descended the stairs
with a sagging step. Half-way down, he stopped short. He had spoken the
truth when he said that he was without money; every pfennig he possessed,
had been in his pocket the night before. Under these circumstances, he
could undertake nothing. But, even while he thought it, his hand sought
his watch, which he carried chainless in a pocket of his vest. It was
there, and as his fingers closed on it, he proceeded on his way.

The day had again set in brilliantly; the shadows on roads and pavements
had real depth, and the outlines of the houses were hard against a
cloudless sky. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground; for the crudeness of
the light made them ache.

His feet bore him along the road they knew better than any other. And
until he had been in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he could not decide what was to
come next. He dragged along, with bowed head, and the distance seemed
unending. Even when he had turned the corner and was in the street itself,
he kept his head down, and only when he was opposite the house, did he
throw a quick glance upwards. His heart gave a terrifying leap, then
ceased to beat: when it began again, it was at a mad gallop, which
prevented him drawing breath. All three windows stood wide open; the white
window-curtains hung out over the sills, and flapped languidly in the
breeze.

He crossed the road with small steps, like a convalescent. He pushed back
the heavy house-door, and entered the vestibule, which was cold
and shadowy. Step by step, he climbed to the first landing. The door of
the flat was shut, but the little door in the wall stood ajar, and he
could see right into the room.

He leaned against the banisters, where the shadow was deepest. Inside the
room that had been his world, two charwomen rubbed and scoured, talking as
they worked in strident tones. The heavy furniture had been pulled into
the middle of the floor, and shrouded in white coverings; chairs were laid
on the bed, with their legs in the air. There was no trace of anything
that had belonged to Louise; all familiar objects had vanished. It was a
strange, unnatural scene: he felt as one might feel who, by means of some
mysterious agency, found it possible to be present at his own burial,
while he was still alive.

One of the women began to beat the sofa; under cover of the blows, which
reverberated through the house, he slunk away. But he did not get far:
when he was recalled to himself by a new noise in one of the upper
storeys, he found that he was standing on the bottom step of the stairs,
holding fast to the round gilt ball that surmounted the last post of the
banisters. He moved from there to the warmth of the house-door, and, for
some time before going out, stood sunning himself, a forlorn figure, with
eyes that blinked at the light. He felt very cold, and weak to the point
of faintness. This sensation reminded him that he had had no solid food
since noon the day before. His first business was obviously to eat a meal.
Fighting a growing dizziness, he trudged into the town, and, having pawned
his watch, went to a restaurant, and forced himself to swallow the meal
that was set before him--though there were moments when it seemed
incredible that it was actually he who plied knife and fork. He would have
been glad to linger for a time, after eating, but the restaurant was
crowded, and the waiter openly impatient for him to be gone. As he rose,
he saw the man flicking the crumbs off the cloth, and setting the table
anew; some one was waiting to take his place.

When he emerged again into the thronged and slightly dusty streets, his
previous strong impression of the unreality of things was upon him again.
Now, however, it seemed as though some submerged consciousness were at
work in him. For, though he was not aware of having reviewed his position,
or of having cast a plan of action, he knew at once what was to be done;
and, as before, his feet bore him, without bidding, where he had to go.

He retraced his steps, and half-way down the KLOSTERGASSE, entered a
gunsmith's shop. The owner, an elderly man in a velvet cap and
gold-rimmed spectacles, looked at him over the tops of these, then said
curtly, he could not oblige him. What was more, he came out after him,
and, standing in the shop-door, watched him go down the street. At his
refusal, Maurice had hurriedly withdrawn: now, as he went, he wa's
troubled by the fact that the man's face was vaguely familiar to him. For
the length of a street-block, he endeavoured to recollect where he had
seen the face before. And suddenly he knew: it was this very shop he had
once been in to inquire after Krafft, and this was the same man who had
then been so uncivil to him. But as soon as he remembered, the knowledge
ceased to interest him.

Rendered cautious by his first experience, he went to another
neighbourhood, and having sought for some time, found a smaller shop, in a
side street. He had ready this time the fiction of a friend and a
commission. But a woman regretted wordily that her husband had just
stepped out; he would no doubt be back again immediately; if the Herr
would take a chair and wait a little?--,But the thought of waiting made him
turn on his heel. Finally, at his third attempt, a young lad gave him what
he desired, without demur; and, after he had known a quick fear lest he
should not have sufficient money for the purchase, the matter was
satisfactorily settled.

On returning to his room, he found a letter lying on the table. He pounced
upon it with a desperate hope. But it was only the monthly bill for the
hire of the piano.

In entering, he had made some noise, and Frau Krause was in the room
before he knew it. She was primed for an angry scene. But he made short
work of her complaints and accusations.

"To-morrow! I'll have time for all that to-morrow."

He turned the key in the door, and sitting down before the writing-table,
commenced to go through drawers and pigeonholes. It had not been a habit
of his to keep letters; but nevertheless a certain number had accumulated,
and these he was averse to let fall into the hands of strangers. He
performed his work coolly, with a pedantic thoroughness. He had no
sympathy with those people, who, doing what he was about to do, left
ragged ends behind them. His mind had always inclined to law and order.
And so, having written a note authorising Frau Krause to keep his books
and clothes, in place of the outstanding rent, he put a match to the fire
which was laid in the stove, and, on his knees before it, burnt all such
personal trifles as had value for himself alone. He postponed, to
the last, even handling the small packet made up of the letters he had had
from Louise. Then their turn came, too. Kneeling before the stovedoor, he
dropped them, one by one, into the flames. The last to burn was the first
he had received--a mere hastily scrawled line, a twisted note, which opened
as it blackened. I MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? As
he watched it shrivel, he had a vivid recollection of that long past day.
He remembered how he had tried to shave, and how he had dressed himself in
his best, only to fling back again into his working-clothes, annoyed with
himself for even harbouring the thought. Yes; but that had always been his
way: he had expended consideration and delicacy where none was necessary;
he had seen her only as he wished to see her.--After this, the photographs.
They were harder to burn; he was forced to tear them across, in two, three
pieces. Even then, the flames licked slowly; he watched them creep up--over
her dress, her hands, her face.

Afternoon had turned to evening. When, at length, everything was in order,
he lay down on the sofa to wait for it to grow quite dark. But almost at
once, as if his back had been eased of a load, he fell asleep. When he
opened his eyes again, the lamp had burned low, and filled the room with a
poisonous vapour. It was two o'clock. This was the time to go. But a
boisterous wind had risen, and was blustering round the house. He said to
himself that he would wait still a little longer, to see if it did not
subside. In waiting, he slept again, heavily, as he had not done for many
a night, and when he wakened next, a clock was striking four. He rose at
once, and with his boots in his hand, crept out of the house.

Day was breaking; as he walked, a thin streak of grey in the east widened
with extreme rapidity, and became a bank of pale grey light. He met an
army of street-sweepers, indistinguishably male and female, returning from
their work, their long brooms over their shoulders. It had rained a
little, and the pavements were damp and shining. The wind had dropped to a
mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners. Before his mind's
eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw one of those early spring days
of illimitable blue highness and white, woofy clouds, which stand
stationary where the earth meets the sky; the brightness of the sun makes
the roads seem whiter and the grass greener, bringing out new tints and
colours in everything it touches. Over it all would run this light,
swift wind, bending the buds, and even, towards afternoon,
throwing up a fine white dust.--And it was to the thought of the dust that
his mind clung most tenaciously, as to some homely and familiar thing
which he would never see again.

He had made straight for the well-known seat with the bosky background.
Arrived at it, he went a few steps aside, into an open space among the
undergrowth, which was now generously sprinkled with buds. The leaves that
had fallen during the previous autumn made a carpet under his feet.
Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing: a body of soldiers was
being marched out to exercise. He opened the case he was carrying, and
laid it on the seat. He was not conscious of feeling afraid; if he had a
fear, it was only lest, in his inexperience, he should do what he had to
do, clumsily. In loosening the clothes at his neck, however, he perceived
that his hand was shaking, and this made him aware that his heart also was
beating unevenly. He stood and fumbled with his collar-stud, which he
could not unfasten at once, and, while he was busied thus, the mists that
blinded him fell away. He ceased, abruptly, to be the mere automaton that
had moved and acted, without will of its own, for the past four-and-twenty
hours. Standing there, with his fingers at his neck, he was pierced by a
sudden lucid perception of what had happened. An intolerable spasm of
remembrance gripped him. With a rush of bitterness, which was undiluted
agony, all the shame and suffering of the past months swept over him once
more, concentrated in a last supreme moment. And, as though this were not
enough, while he still wrenched at his neck, tearing his shirt-collar in
his desperation, her face rose before him--but not the face he had known
and loved. He saw it as he had seen it for the last time, disfigured by
hatred of him, horribly vindictive, as it had been when she spat on the
ground at his feet. This vision gave him an unlooked-for jerk of courage.
Without allowing himself another second in which to reason or reflect, he
caught up the revolver from the seat, and pressed the cold little nozzle
to his chest. Simultaneously he received a sharp blow, and heard the crack
of a report--but far away . . . in the distance. He was on his back,
without knowing how he had got there; straight overhead waved the bare
branches of a tree; behind them, a grey morning cloud was sailing. For
still the fraction of a second, he heard the familiar melody, to which the
soldiers marched; and the branch swayed . . . swayed . . .

Then, as suddenly as the flame of a candle is puffed out by the
wind, his life went from him. His right hand twitched, made as if to open,
closed again, and stiffened round the iron of the handle. His jaw fell,
and, like an inner lid, a glazed film rose over his eyes, which for hours
afterwards continued to stare, with an expression of horror and amaze, at
the naked branches of the tree.

* * * * *

One midday, a couple of years later, a number of those who had formed the
audience at one of the last rehearsals of the season, were gathered round
the back entrance to the Gewandhaus. It was a fresh spring day, gusty and
sunny by turns: sometimes, there came a puff of wind that drove every
one's hand to his hat; at others, the broad square basked in an almost
motionless sunshine. The small crowd lingered in order to see, at close
quarters, the violinist who had played there that morning. Only a few of
those present had known Schilsky personally; but one and all were curious
to catch a glimpse of the quondam Leipzig student, who, it was whispered,
would soon return to the town to take up a leading position in the
orchestra. Schilsky was now KONZERTMEISTER in a large South German town;
but it was rather as a composer that his name had begun to burn on
people's tongues. His new symphonic poem, UBER DIE LETZTEN DINGE, had
drawn down on his head that mixture of extravagant laudation and abusive
derision which constitutes fame.

"Take a look at his wife, if she's there," said one American to another,
who was standing beside him. "She studied here same time he did, and is
said to have been very handsome. An English chap shot himself on her
account."

"You don't say!" drawled his companion. "It's a queer thing, how common
suicide's getting to be. You can't pick up a noospaper, nowadays, without
finding some fool or other has blown his brains out."

"Look out!--here they come."

Behind the thick glass doors, Schilsky became visible. He was talking
volubly to a Jewish-looking stranger in a fur-lined coat. His hat was
pushed far back on his forehead; his face was flushed with elation; and,
consciously unconscious of the waiting crowd, he gesticulated as he
walked, throwing out the palms of his loosely dangling hands, and
emphasising his words with restless movements of the head. He was
respectfully greeted by those who had known him. A minute or two later
came Louise. At her side was a pianist with whom Schilsky had
given a concert earlier in the week--a shabbily dressed young man, with a
world of enthusiasm in his candid blue eyes. He, too, was talking with
animation. But Louise had no attention for anyone but her husband.

"Well, not my taste . . . I must confess," laughed the man who had been
severe on suicide. "Fine eyes, if you like--but give me something fresher."