details of her life--minute and troublesome details, for which she had
no aptitude. From her scat at the stove, Louise watched him sorting and
reckoning, and she was as grateful to him as it was possible for her to
be, in her present mood. No one had ever done a thing of the kind for
her before; and she was callous to the fact of its being a stranger,
who had his hands thus in her private life. When, horrified beyond
measure at the confusion that reigned in all belonging to her, Maurice
asked her how she had ever succeeded in keeping order, she told him
that, before her illness, there had, now and again, come a day of
strength and purpose, on which she had had the "courage" to face these
distasteful trifles and to end them. But she did not believe such a day
would ever come again.
Bills, bills, bills: dozens of bills, of varying dates, sent in once,
twice, three times, and invariably tossed aside and forgotten--a mode
of proceeding incomprehensible to Maurice, who had never bought
anything on credit in his life. And not because she was in want of
money: there were plenty of gold pieces jingling loose in a drawer; but
from an aversion, which was almost an inability, to take in what the
figures meant. And the amounts added up to alarming totals; Maurice had
no idea what a woman's dress cost, and could only stand amazed; but the
sum spent on fruit and flowers alone, in two months, represented to his
eyes a small fortune. Then there was the Bluthner, the unused piano;
the hire of it had not been paid since the previous summer. Three terms
were owed at Klemm's musical library, from which no music was now
borrowed; fees were still being charged against her at the
Conservatorium, where she had given no formal notice of leaving. It
really did not matter, she said, with that carelessness concerning
money, which was characteristic of her; but it went against the grain
in Maurice to let several pounds be lost for want of an effort; and he
spent a diplomatic half-hour with the secretaries in the BUREAU,
getting her released from paying the whole of the term that had now
begun. As, however, she would not appear personally, she was under the
necessity of writing a letter, stating that she had left the
Conservatorium; and when she had promised twice to do, it, and it was
still unwritten, Maurice stood over her, and dictated the words into
her pen. A day or two afterwards, he prevailed upon her to do the same
for Schwarz, to inform him of her illness, and to say that, at Easter,
if she were better, she would come to him for a course of private
lessons. This was an idea of Maurice's own, and Louise looked up at him
before putting down the words.
"It's not true. But if you think I should say so--it doesn't matter."
This was the burden of all she said: nothing mattered, nothing would
ever matter again. There was not the least need for the half-jesting
tone in which Maurice clothed his air of authority. She obeyed him
blindly, doing what he bade her without question, glad to be
subordinate to his will. As long as he did not ask her to think, or to
feel, or to stir from her chair beside the stove.
But it was only with regard to small practical things; in matters of
more importance she was not to be moved. And the day came, only too
soon, when the positive help Maurice could give her was at an end; she
did not owe a pfennig to anyone; her letters and accounts were filed
and in order. Then she seemed to elude him again. He did what lay in
his power: brought her books that she did not read, brought news and
scraps of chit-chat, which he thought might interest her and which did
not, and an endless store of sympathy. But to all he said and did, she
made the same response: it did not matter.
Since the night on the river, she had not set foot across the threshold
of her room; nervous fears beset her. Maurice was bent on her going out
into the open air; he also wished her to mix with people again, and
thus rid herself of the morbid fancies that were creeping on her. But
she shrank as he spoke of it, and pressed both hands to her face: it
was too cold, she murmured, and too cheerless; and then the streets!
... the publicity of the streets, the noise, the people! This was what
she said to him; to herself she added: and all the old familiar places,
to each of which a memory was attached! He spent hours in urging her to
take up some regular occupation; it would be her salvation, he
believed, and, not allowing himself to be discouraged, he returned to
the attack, day after day. But she only smiled the thin smile with
which she defeated most of his proposals for her good. Work?--what had
she to do with work? It had never been anything to her but a narcotic,
enabling her to get through those hours of the day in which she was
alone.
She let Maurice talk on, and hardly heard what he said. He meant well,
but he did not understand. No one understood. No one but herself knew
the weight of the burden she had borne since the day when her happiness
was mercilessly destroyed. Now she could not raise a finger to help
herself. On waking, in the morning, she turned with loathing from the
new day. In the semi-darkness of the room, she lay motionless, half
sleeping, or dreaming with open eyes. The clock ticked benumbingly the
long hours away; the wind howled, or the wind was still; snow fell, or
it was frostily clear; but nothing happened--nothing at all. The day
was well advanced before she left her bed for the seat by the stove;
there she brooded until she dragged herself back to bed. One day was
the exact counterpart of another.
The only break in the deathlike monotony was Maurice's visit. He came
in, fresh, and eager to see her; he held her hand and said kind things
to her; he talked persuasively, and she listened or not, as she felt
disposed. But little though he was able to touch her, she unconsciously
began to look to his visits; and one day, when he was detained and
could not come, she was aware of a feeling of injury at his absence.
As time went by, however, Maurice felt more and more clearly that he
was making no headway. His uneasiness increased; for her want of spirit
had something about it that he could not understand. It began to look
to him like a somewhat morbid indulgence in grief.
"This can't go on," he said sternly.
She was in one of her most pitiable moods; for there were gradations in
her unhappiness, as he had learned to know.
"This can't go on. You are killing yourself by inches--and I'm a party
to it."
For the first time, there was a hint of impatience in his manner. To
his surprise, Louise raised her head, raised it quickly, as he had not
seen her make a movement for weeks.
"By inches? Inches only? Oh, I am so strong ... Nothing hurts me.
Nothing is of any use."
"If you look in the glass, you will see that you're hurting yourself
considerably."
"You mean that I'm getting old?--and ugly?" she caught him up. "Do you
think I care?--Oh, if I had only had the courage, that day! A few
grains of something, and it would have been all over, long ago. But I
wasn't brave enough. And now I have no more courage in me than strength
in my little finger."
Maurice looked meditatively at her, without replying: this was the
single occasion on which she had been roused to a retort of any kind;
and, bitter though her words were, he could not prevent the spark of
hope which, by their means, was lit in him.
And from this day on, things went forward of themselves. Again and
again, some harmless observation on his part drew forth a caustic reply
from her; it was as if, having once experienced it, she found an outcry
of this kind a relief to her surcharged nerves. At first, what she said
was directed chiefly against herself--this self for which she now
nursed a fanatic hatred, since it had failed her in her need. But,
little by little, he, too, was drawn within the circle of her
bitterness; indeed, it sometimes seemed as if his very kindness incited
her, by laying her under an obligation to him, which it was in her
nature to resent: at others, again, as if she merely wished to try him,
to see how far she might go.
"Do I really deserve that thrust?" he once could not help asking. He
smiled, as he spoke, to take the edge off his words.
Louise threw a penitent glance at him, and, for all answer, held out
her hand.
But, the very next day, after a similar incident, she crossed the room
to him, with the swiftness of movement that was always disturbing in
her, contrasting as it did with her customary indolence. "Forgive me. I
ought not to. And you are the only friend I have. But there's so much I
must say to some one. If I don't say it, I shall go mad."
"Why, of course. That's what I'm here for," said Maurice.
And so it went on--a strange state of things, in which he never called
her by her name, and seldom touched her hand. He had himself well under
control--except for the moment immediately before he saw her, and the
moment after. He could not yet meet her, after the briefest absence,
unmoved.
For a week on end that penetrating rawness had been abroad, which
precedes and accompanies a thaw; and one day, early in February, when,
after the unequalled severity of the winter, the air seemed of an
incredible mildness, the thaw was there in earnest; on the ice of more
than three months' standing, pools of water had formed overnight. By
the JOHANNATEICH, Maurice and Madeleine stood looking dubiously across
the bank of snow, which, here and there, had already collapsed, leaving
miniature crater-rings, flecked with moisture. Several people who could
not tear themselves away, were still flying about the ice, dexterously
avoiding the watery places; and Dove and pretty Susie Fay called out to
them that it was better than it looked. But Maurice was fastidious and
Madeleine indifferent; she was really rather tired of skating, she
admitted, as they walked home, and was ashamed to think of the time she
had wasted on it. As, however, this particular afternoon was already
broken into, she would have been glad to go for a walk; but Maurice did
not take up her suggestion, and parted from her at her house-door.
"Spring is in the air," he sought to tempt Louise, when, a few minutes
later, he entered her room.
She, too, had been aware of the change; for it had aggravated her
dejection. She raised her eyes to his like a tired child, and had not
strength enough to make her usual stand against him. Oh, if he really
wished it so much, she would go out, she said at last. And so he left
her to dress, and ran to the Conservatorium, arriving just in time for
a class.
Later on, a curious uneasiness drew him back to see how she had fared.
It was almost dark, but she had not returned; and he waited for half an
hour before he heard her step in the hall. Directly she came in, he
knew that something was the matter.
In each of her movements was a concentrated, but noiseless energy: she
shut the door after her as if it were never to open again; tore off
rather than unpinned the thick black veil in which she had shrouded
herself; threw her hat on the sofa, furs and jacket to the hat; then
stood motionless, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. Her face had
emerged from its wrappings with renewed pallor; her eyes shone as if
with belladonna. She took no notice of the silent figure in the corner,
did not even look in his direction.
"You've got back," said Maurice, for the sake of saying something.
"It's too late."
At his words, she dropped on a chair, put her arms on the table, and
hid her face in them.
"What's the matter? Has anything happened?" he asked, in quick alarm,
as she burst into violent sobs. He should have been accustomed to her
way of crying by this time--it sounded worse than it was, as he
knew--but it invariably racked him anew. He stood over her; but the
only comfort he ventured on was to lay his hand on her hair--this wild
black hair, which met his fingers springily, with a will of its own.
"What is the matter?" he besought her. "Tell me, Louise--tell me what
it is."
He had to ask several times before he received an answer. Finally, she
sobbed in a muffled voice, without raising her head: "How could you
make me go out! Oh, how COULD you!"
"What do you mean? I don't understand. What is it?" He had visions of
her being annoyed or insulted.
But she only repeated: "How could you! Oh, it was cruel of you!" and
wept afresh.
Word by word, Maurice drew her story from her. There was not very much
to tell.
She had gone out, and had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets to
the ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her courage
began to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank. Her
surroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily
retreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had
concealed--all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses,
streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly the
people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off which the
soft white coating had slid; their contours were as painful to see. And
the mud--oh, God, the mud! It spread itself over every inch of the way;
the roads were rivers of filth, which spattered and splashed; at the
sides of the streets, the slush was being swept into beds. Before she
had gone any distance, her boots and skirts were heavy with it; and she
hated mud, she sobbed--hated it, loathed it, it affected her with a
physical disgust--and this lie might have known when he sent her out.
In the ROSENTAL, it was no better; the paths were so soaked that they
squashed under her feet; on both sides, lay layers of rotten leaves
from the autumn; the trees were only a net-work of blackened twigs,
their trunks surrounded by an undergrowth that was as ragged as unkempt
hair. And everything was mouldering: the smell of moist, earthy decay
reminded her of open graves. Not a soul was visible but herself. She
sat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, and the past rose
before her with resistless force: the intensity of her happiness; the
base cruelty of his conduct; her misery, her unspeakable misery; her
forlorn desolation, which was of a piece with the desolation around
her, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to be
an old woman.--How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did
not know. But all of a sudden she started up, frightened both by her
wretched thoughts and by the loneliness of the wood; and she fled, not
looking behind her, or pausing to take breath, till she reached the
streets. Into the first empty droschke she met, she had sunk exhausted,
and been driven home.
It was of no use trying to reason with her, or to console her.
"I can't bear my life," she sobbed. "It's too hard ... and there is no
one to help me. If I had done anything to deserve it ... then it would
be different ... then I shouldn't complain. But I didn't--didn't do
anything--unless it was that I cared too much. At least it was a
mistake--a dreadful mistake. I should never have shown him how I cared:
I should have made him believe he loved me best. But I was a fool. I
flung it all at his feet. And it was only natural he should get tired
of me. The wonder was that I held him so long. But, oh, how can one
care as I did, and yet be able to plot and plan? I couldn't. It isn't
in me to do it."
She wept despairingly, with her head on her outstretched arms. When she
raised it again, her tear-stained face looked out, Medusa-like, from
its setting of ruffled hair. More to herself than to the young man, as
if, on this day, secret springs had been touched in her, she continued
with terse disconnectedness: "I couldn't believe it; I wouldn't--even
when I heard it from his own lips. You thought, all of you, that I was
ill; but I wasn't; I was only trying to get used to the terrible
thought--just as a suddenly blinded man has to get used to being always
in the dark. And while I was still struggling came Madeleine, with her
cruel tongue, and told me--you know what she told me. Oh, if his
leaving me had been hard to bear, this stung like scorpions. I wonder I
didn't go mad. I should have, if you hadn't come to help me. For a day
and night, I did not move from the corner of that sofa there. I turned
her words over till there was no sense left in them. My nails cut my
palms."
Her clasped hands were slightly stretched from her: her whole attitude
betrayed the tension at which she was speaking. "Oh, my God, how I
hated him ... hated him ... how I hate him still! If I live to be an
old, old woman, I shall never forgive him. For, in time, I might have
learnt to bear his leaving me, if it had only been his work that took
him from me. It was always between us, as it was; but it was at least
only a pale brain thing, not living flesh and blood. But that all the
time he should have been deceiving me, taking pains to do it--that I
cannot forgive. At first, I implored, I prayed there might be some
mistake: you, too, told me there was. And I hoped against hope--till I
saw her. Then, I knew it was true-----as plainly as if it had been
written on that wall." She paused for breath, in this bitter pleasure
of laying her heart bare. "For I wasn't the person he could always have
been satisfied with--I see it now. He liked a woman to be fair, and
soft, and gentle--not dark, and hot-tempered. It was only a phase, a
fancy, that brought him to me, and it couldn't have lasted for ever.
But all I asked of him was common honesty--to be open with me: it
wasn't much to ask, was it? Not more than we expect of a stranger in
the street. But it was too much for him, all the same. And so ... now
... I have nothing left to remind me that I ever knew him. That night,
when I had seen her, I burned everything--every photograph, every scrap
of writing I had ever had from him ... if only one could burn memories
too! I had to tear my heart over it; I used to think I felt it
bleeding, drop by drop. For all the suffering fell on me, who had done
nothing. He went free."
"Are you sure of that? It may have been hard for him, too--harder than
you think." Maurice was looking out of the window, and did not turn.
She shook her head. "The person who cares, can't scheme and contrive.
He didn't care. He never really cared for me--only for himself; at
heart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid for it all--I who hate and
shrink from pain, who would do anything to avoid it. I want to go
through life knowing only what is bright and happy; and time and again,
I am crushed and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven't suffered
like this. And now perhaps you understand, why I never want to hear his
name again, and why I shall never--not if I live to be a hundred years
old--never forgive him. It isn't in me to do it. As a child, I ground
my heel into a rose if it pricked me."
There was a silence. Then she sighed, and pushed her hair back from
forehead. "I don't know why I should say all this to you," she said
contritely. "But often, just with you, I seem to forget what I am
saying. It must be, I think, because you're so quiet yourself."
At this, Maurice turned and came over to her. "No, it's for another
reason. You need to say these things to some one. You have brooded over
them to yourself till they are magnified out of all proportion. It's
the best thing in the world for you to say them aloud." He drew up a
chair, and sat down beside her. "Listen to me. You told me once, not
very long ago, that I was your friend. Well, I want to speak to you
to-night as that friend, and to play the doctor a little as well. Will
you not go away from here, for a time?--go away and be with people who
know nothing of ... all this--people you don't need to be afraid of?
Let yourself be persuaded. You have such a healthy nature. Give it a
chance."
She looked at him with a listless forbearance. "Don't go on. I know
everything you are going to say.--That's always the way with you calm,
quiet people, who are not easily moved yourselves. You still but faith
in these trite remedies; for you've never known the ills they're
supposed to cure."
"Never mind me. It's you we have to think of. And I want you to give my
old-fashioned remedy a trial."
But she did not answer, and again a few minutes went by, before she
stretched out her hand to him. "Forget what I've said to-night. I shall
never speak of it again.--But then you, too, must promise not to make
me go out alone--to think and remember--in all the dirt and ugliness of
the streets."
And Maurice promised.
IX.
The unnatural position circumstances had forced him into, was to him
summed up in the fact that he had spoken in defence of the man he
despised above all others. Only at isolated moments was he content with
the part he played; it was wholly unlike what he had intended. He had
wished to be friend and mentor to her, and he was now both; but
nevertheless, there was something wrong about his position. It seemed
as if he had at first been satisfied with too low a place in her
esteem, ever to allow of him taking a higher one. He was conscious that
in her liking for him, there was a drop of contempt. And he tormented
himself with such a question as: should a new crisis in her life arise,
would she, now that she knows you, turn to you? And in moments of
despondency he answered no. He felt the tolerance that lurked in her
regard for him. Kindness and care on his part were not enough.
None of his friends had an idea of what was going on. No one he knew
lived in the neighbourhood of the BRUDERSTRASSE; and, the skating at an
end, he was free to spend his time as he chose. When another brief nip
of frost occurred, he alleged pressure of work, and did not take
advantage of it.
Then, early one morning, Dove paid him a visit, with a list in his
hand. Since the night of the skating party, his acquaintances had not
seen much of Dove; for he had been in close attendance on the pretty
little American, who made no scruple of exacting his services. Now,
after some preamble, it came out that he wished to include Maurice in a
list of mutual friends, who were clubbing to give a ball--a "Bachelors'
Ball," Dove called it, since the gentlemen were to pay for the tickets,
and to invite the ladies. But Maurice, vexed at the interruption, made
it clear that he had neither time nor inclination for an affair of this
kind: he did not care a rap for dancing. And after doing his best to
persuade him, and talking round the matter for half an hour, Dove said
he did not of course wish to press anyone against his will, and
departed to disturb other people.
Maurice had also to stand fire from Madeleine; for she had counted on
his inviting her. She was first incredulous, then offended, at his
refusal: and she pooh-poohed his strongest argument--that he did not
own a dress-suit. If that was all, she knew a shop in the BRUHL, where
such things could be hired for a song.
Maurice now thought the matter closed. Not many days later, however,
Dove appeared again, with a crestfallen air. He had still over a dozen
tickets on his hands, and, at the low price fixed, unless all were
sold, the expenses of the evening would not be covered. In order to get
rid of him, Maurice bought a ticket, on the condition that he was not
expected to use it, and also suggested some fresh people Dove might
try; so that the latter went off with renewed courage on his
disagreeable errand.
Maurice mentioned the incident to Louise that evening, as he mentioned
any trifle he thought might interest her. He sat on the edge of his
chair, and did not mean to stay; for he had found her on the sofa with
a headache.
So far, she had listened to him with scant attention; but at this, she
raised her eyebrows.
"Then you don't care for dancing?"--she could hardly believe it.
He repeated the words he had used to Dove.
She smiled faintly, looking beyond him, at a sombre patch of sky.
"I should think not. If it were me!----" She raised her hand, and
considered her fingers.
"If it were you?--yes?"
But she did not continue.
It had been almost a spring day: that, no doubt, accounted for her
headache. Maurice made a movement to rise. But Louise turned quickly on
her side, and, in her own intense way, said: "Listen. You have the
ticket, you say? Use it, and take me with you. Will you?"
He smiled as at the whim of a child. But she was in earnest.
"Will you?"
"No, of course not."
He tempered his answer with the same smile. But she was not pleased--he
saw that. Her nostrils tightened, and then, dilated, as they had a way
of doing when she was annoyed. For some time after, she did not speak.
But the very next day, when he was remonstrating with her over some
small duty which she had no inclination to perform, she turned on him
with an unreasonable irritation. "You only want me to do disagreeable
things. Anything that is pleasant, you set yourself against."
It took him a minute to grasp that she was referring to what he had
said the evening before.
"Yes, but then ... I didn't think you were in earnest."
"Am I in the habit of saying things I don't mean? And haven't you said
yourself that I am killing myself, shut up in here?--that I must go out
and mix with people? Very well, here is my chance."
He kept silence: he did not know whether she was not mainly inspired by
a spirit of contradiction, and he was afraid of inciting her, by
resistance, to say something she would be unable to retract. "I don't
think you've given the matter sufficient thought," he said at last. "It
can't be decided offhand."
She was angry, even more with herself than with him. "Oh, I know what
you mean. You think I shall be looked askance at. As if it mattered
what people say! All my life I haven't cared, and I shall not begin
now, when I have less reason than ever before."
He did not press the subject; he hoped she would change her mind, and
thus render further discussion unnecessary. But this was not the case;
she clung to the idea, and was deaf to reason. To a certain extent, he
could feel for her; but he was too troubled by the thought of
unpleasant possibilities, not to endeavour to persuade her against it:
he knew, as she did not, how unkindly she had been spoken of; and he
was not sure whether her declared bravado was strong enough to sustain
her. But the more he reasoned, the more determined she was to have her
own way; and she took his efforts in very bad part.
"You pretend to be solicitous about me," she said one afternoon, from
her seat by the fire. "Yet when a chance of diversion comes you
begrudge it to me. You would rather I mouldered on here."
"That's not generous of you. It is only you I am thinking of--in all
this ridiculous affair."
The word stung her. "Ridiculous? How dare you say that! I'm still
young, am I not? And I have blood in my veins, not water. Well, I want
to feel it. For months now, I have been walled up in this tomb. Now I
want to live. Not--do you understand?--to go out alone, on a filthy
day, with no companion but my own thoughts. I want to dance--to forget
myself--with light and music. It's the most natural thing in the world.
Anyone but you would think so."
"It is not life you mean; it's excitement."
"What it means is that you don't want to take me.--Yes, that's what it
is. But I can get some one else. I will send for Eggis; he will have no
objection."
"Why drag in that cad's name? You know very well if you do go, it will
be with me, and no one else."
A slight estrangement grew up between them. Maurice was hurt: she had
shown too openly the small value she set on his opinion. In addition to
this, he was disagreeably affected by her craving for excitement at any
cost. To his mind, there was more than a touch of impropriety in the
proceeding; it was just as if a mourner of a few months' standing
should suddenly discard his mourning, and with it all the other
decencies of grief.
She had not been entirely wrong in accusing him of unreadiness to
accompany her. When he pictured to himself the astonished faces of his
friends, he found it impossible to look forward to the event with
composure. He saw now that it would have been better to make no secret
of his friendship with Louise; so harmless was it that every one he
knew might have assisted at it; but now, the very abruptness of its
disclosure would put it in a bad light. Through Dove, he noised it
abroad that he would probably be present at the ball after all; but he
shunned Madeleine with due precaution, and could not bring himself even
to hint who his companion might be. In his heart, he still thought it
possible that Louise might change her mind at the last moment--take
fright in the end, at what she might have to face.
But the night came, and this had not happened. While he dressed himself
in the hired suit, which was too large here, too small there, he laid a
plan of action for the evening. Since it had to be gone through with,
it must be carried off in a highhanded way. He would do what he could
to make her presence in the hall seem natural; he would be attentive,
without devoting himself wholly to her; and he would induce her to
leave early.
He called for her at eight o'clock. The landlady said that Fraulein was
not quite ready, and told him to wait in the passage. But the door of
the room was ajar, and Louise herself called to him to come in.
It was comparatively dark; for she had the lamp behind the screen,
where he heard her moving about. Her skirts rustled; drawers and
cupboards were pulled noisily open. Then she came out, with the lamp in
her hand.
Maurice was leaning against the piano. He raised his eyes, and made a
step forward, to take the lamp from her. But after one swift, startled
glance, he drew back, colouring furiously. For a moment he could not
collect himself: his heart seemed to have leapt into his throat, and
there to be hammering so hard that he had no voice with which to answer
her greeting.
Owing to what he now termed his idiotic preoccupation with himself, he
had overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in evening dress.
Another thing was, he had never seen Louise in any but street-dress, or
the loose dressing-gown. Now he called himself a fool and absurd; this
was how she was obliged to be. Convention decreed it, hence it was
perfectly decorous; it was his own feelings that were unnatural,
overstrained. But, in the same breath, a small voice whispered to him
that all dresses were not like this one; also that every girl was not
of a beauty, which, thus emphasised, made the common things of life
seen poor and stale.
Louise wore a black dress, which glistened over all its surface, as if
it were sown with sparks; it wound close about her, and out behind her
on the floor. But this was only the sheath, from which rose the
whiteness of her arms and shoulders, and the full column of her throat,
on which the black head looked small. Until now, he had seen her bared
wrist--no more. Now the only break on the long arm was a band of black
velvet, which as it were insisted on the petal-white purity of the
skin, and served in place of a sleeve.
Strange thoughts coursed through the young man's mind. His first
impulse had been to avert his eyes; in this familiar room it did not
seem fitting to see her dressed so differently from the way he had
always known her. Before, however, he had followed this sensation to an
end, he made himself the spontaneous avowal that, until now, he had
never really seen her. He had known and treasured her face--her face
alone. Now he became aware that to the beautiful head belonged also a
beautiful body, that, in short, every bit of her was beautiful and
desirable. And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painful
reflection: others besides himself would make a similar observation;
she was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this struck
him as such an unbearable profanation, that he could have gone down on
his knees to her, to implore her to stay at home.
Unconscious of his embarrassment, Louise had gone to the console-glass;
and there, with the lamp held first above her head, then placed on the
console-table, she critically examined her appearance. As if
dissatisfied, she held a velvet bow to the side of her hair, and
considered the effect; she took a powderpuff, and patted cheeks and
neck with powder. Next she picked up a narrow band of velvet, on which
a small star was set, and put it round her throat. But the clasp would
not meet behind, and, having tried several times in vain to fasten it,
she gave an impatient exclamation.
"I can't get it in."
As Maurice did not offer to help her, she went out of the room with the
thing in her hand. During the few seconds she was absent, the young man
racked his brain to invent telling reasons which would induce her not
to go; but when she returned, slightly flushed at the landlady's ready
flattery, she was still so engrossed in herself, and so unmindful of
him, that he recognised once more his utter powerlessness. He only half
existed for her this evening: her manner was as different as her dress.
She gathered her skirts high under her cloak, displaying her feet in
fur-lined snow-boots. In the turmoil of his mind, Maurice found nothing
to say as they went. But she did not notice his silence; there was a
suppressed excitement in her very walk; and she breathed in the cold,
crisp air with open lips and nostrils, like a wild animal.
"Oh, how glad I am I came! I might still have been sitting in that dull
room--when I haven't danced for years--and when I love it so!"
"I can't understand you caring about it," he said, and the few words
contained all his bitterness.
"That is only because you don't know me," she retorted, and laughed.
"Dancing is a passion with me. I have dance-rhythms in my blood, I
think.--My mother was a dancer."
He echoed her words in a helpless way, and a set of new images ran riot
in his brain. But Louise only smiled, and said no more.
They were late in arriving; dancing had already begun; the cloak-rooms
were black with coats and mantles. In the narrow passage that divided
the rooms, two Englishmen were putting on their gloves. As Maurice
changed his shoes, close to the door, he overheard one of these men say
excitedly: "By Jove, there's a pair of shoulders! Who the deuce is it?"
Maurice knew the speaker by sight: he was a medical student, named
Herries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his skill as a
skater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a bunch of violets in
his buttonhole.
"You haven't been here long enough, old man, or you wouldn't need to
ask," answered his companion. Then he dropped his voice, and made a
somewhat disparaging remark--so low, however, but what the listener was
forced to hear it, too.
Both laughed a little. But though Maurice rose and clattered his chair,
Herries persisted, with an Englishman's supreme indifference to the
bystander: "Do you think she can dance?"
"Can't tell. Looks a trifle heavy."
"Well, I'll risk it. Come on. Let's get some one to introduce us."
The blood had rushed to Maurice's head and buzzed there: another
second, and he would have stepped out and confronted the speaker. But
the incident had passed like a flash. And it was better so: it would
have been a poor service to her, to begin the evening with an
unpleasantness. Besides, was this not what he had been bracing himself
to expect? He looked stealthily over at Louise; considering the
proximity of the rooms, it was probable that she, too, had overheard
the derogatory words. But when she had put on her gloves, she took his
arm without a trace of discomfiture.
They entered the hall at the close of a polka, and slipped unnoticed
into the train of those who promenaded. But they had not gone once
round, when they were the observed of all eyes; although he looked
straight in front of him, Maurice could see the astonished eyebrows and
open mouths that greeted their advance. At one end of the hall was an
immense mirror: he saw that Louise, who was flushed, held her head
high, and talked to him without a pause. In a kind of bravado, she made
him take her round a second time; and after the third, which was a
solitary progress, they remained standing with their backs to the
mirror. Eggis at once came up, with Herries in his train, and, on
learning that she had no programme, the latter ran off to fetch one.
Before he returned, a third man had joined them, and soon she was the
centre of a little circle. Herries, having returned with the programme,
would not give it up until he had put his initials opposite several
dances. Louise only smiled--a rather artificial smile that had been on
her lips since she entered the hall.
Maurice had fallen back, and now stood unnoticed behind the group. Once
Louise turned her head, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively; but a
feeling that was mingled pride and dismay restrained him; and as, even
when the choosing of dances was over, he did not come forward, she
walked down the hall on Herries's arm. The musicians began to tune;
Dove, as master of ceremonies, was flying about, with his hands in
gloves that were too large for him; people ranged themselves for the
lancers in lines and squares. Maurice lost sight for a moment of the
couple he was watching. As soon as the dance began, however, he saw
them again; they were waltzing to the FRANCAISE, at the lower end of
the hall.
He was driven from the corner in which he had taken refuge, by hearing
some one behind him say, in an angry whisper: "I call it positively
horrid of her to come." It was Susie Fay who spoke; through some
oversight, she had not been asked to dance. Moving slowly along, behind
the couples that began a schottische, he felt a tap on his arm, and,
looking round, saw Miss Jensen. She swept aside her ample skirts, and
invited him to a seat beside her. But he remained standing.
"You don't care for dancing?" she queried. And, when he had replied:
"Well, say, now, Mr. Guest,--we are all dying to know--however have you
gotten Louise Dufrayer along here this evening? It's the queerest thing
out."
"Indeed?" said the young man drily.
"Well, maybe queer is not just the word. But, why, we all presumed she
was perfectly inconsolable--thinking only of another world. That's so.
And then you work a miracle, and out she pops, fit as can be."
"I persuaded her ... for the sake of variety," mumbled Maurice.
Little Fauvre, the baritone, had come up; but Miss Jensen did not heed
his meek reminder that this was their dance.
"That was excessively kind of you," said the big woman, and looked at
Maurice with shrewd, good-natured eyes. "And no doubt, Louise is most
grateful. She seems to be enjoying herself. Keep quiet, Fauvre, do,
till I am ready.--But I don't like her dress. It's a lovely goods, and
no mistake. But it ain't suitable for a little hop like this. It's too
much."
"How Miss Dufrayer dresses is none of my business."
"Well, maybe not.--Now, Fauvre, come along"--she called it "Fover." "I
reckon you think you've waited long enough."
Maurice, left to himself again, was astonished to hear Madeleine's
voice in his ear. She had made her way to him alone.
"For goodness' sake, pull yourself together," she said cuttingly.
"Every one in the hall can see what's the matter with you."
Before he could answer, she was claimed by her partner--one of the few
Germans scattered through this Anglo-American gathering. "Is zat your
brozzer?" Maurice heard him ask as they moved away. He watched them
dancing together, and found it a ridiculous sight: round Madeleine,
tall and angular, the short, stout man rotated fiercely. From time to
time they stopped, to allow him to wipe his face.
Maurice contemplated escaping from the hall to some quiet room beyond.
But as he was edging forward, he ran into Dove's arms, and that was the
end of it. Dove, it seemed, had had his eye on him. The originator of
the ball confessed that he was not having a particularly good time; he
had everything to superintend--the dances, the musicians, the
arrangements for supper. Besides this, there were at least a dozen too
many ladies present; he believed some of the men had simply given their
tickets away to girl-friends, and had let them come alone. So far, Dove
had been forced to sacrifice himself entirely, and he was hot and
impatient.
"Besides, I've routed half a dozen men out of the billiardroom, more
than once," he complained irrelevantly, wiping the moisture from his
brow. "But it's of no----Now just look at that!" he interrupted
himself. "The 'cellist has had too much to drink already, and they're
handing him more beer. Another glass, and he won't be able to play at
all.--I say, you're not dancing. My dear fellow, it really won't do.
You must help me with some of these women."
Taking Maurice by the arm, he steered him to a corner of the hall where
sat two little provincial English sisters, looking hopeless and
forlorn. Who had invited them, it was impossible to say; but no one
wished to dance with them. They were dressed exactly alike, were alike
in face, too--as like as two nuts, thought Maurice, as he bowed to
them. Their hair was of a nutty brown, their eyes were brown, and they
wore brown dresses. He led them out to dance, one after the other, and
they were overwhelmingly grateful to him. He could hardly tell them
apart; but that did not matter; for, when he took one back to her seat,
the other sat waiting for her turn.
In dancing, he was thrown together with more of his friends, and he was
not slow to catch the looks--cynical, contemptuous, amused--that were
directed at him. Some were disposed to wink, and to call him a sly dog;
others found food for malicious gossip in the way Louise had deserted
him; and, when he met Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed his
advances with a definiteness that left no room for doubt.
Round dances succeeded to square dances; the musicians' playing grew
more mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. An
Englishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often as
Maurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at least
made a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed her
preference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets and the
simpering smile.
They were the two best dancers in the hall. Louise, in particular, gave
herself up to the rhythm of the music with an abandon not often to be
seen in a ball-room. Something of the professional about it, said
Maurice to himself as he watched her; and, in his own estimation, this
was the hardest thought he had yet had of her.
At supper, he sat between the two little sisters, whose birdlike
chatter acted upon him as a reiterated noise acts on the nerves of one
who is trying to sleep. He could hardly bring himself to answer
civilly. At the further end of the table, on the same side as he, sat
Louise. She was with those who had been her partners during the
evening. They were drinking champagne, and were very lively. Maurice
could not see her face; but her loud, excited laugh jarred on his ears.
Afterwards, the same round was to begin afresh, except that the sisters
had generously introduced him to a friend. But when the first dance was
over, Maurice abruptly excused himself to his surprised partner, and
made his way out of the hall.
At the disordered supper-table, a few people still lingered; and
deserters were again knocking balls about the green cloth of the
billiard-table. Maurice went past them, and up a flight of stairs that
led to a gallery overlooking the hall. This gallery was in
semidarkness. At the back of it, chairs were piled one on top of the
other; but the two front rows had been left standing, from the last
concert held in the building, and here, two or three couples were
sitting out the dance. He went into the extreme corner, where it was
darkest.
At last he was alone. He no longer needed to dance with girls he did
not care a jot for, or to keep up appearances. He was free to be as
wretched as he chose, and he availed himself unreservedly of the
chance. It was not only the personal slight Louise had put upon him
throughout the evening, making use of him, as it were, to the very
door, and then throwing him off: but that she could be attracted by a
mere waxen prettiness, and well-fitting clothes--for the first time,
distrust of her was added to his hurt amazement.
He had not been in his hiding-place for more than a very few minutes,
when the door he had entered by reopened, and a couple came down the
steps to the corner where he was sitting.
"Oh, there's some one there!" cried Louise at the sight of the dark
figure. "Maurice! Is it you? What are you doing here?"
"Sssh!" said Herries warningly, afraid lest her clear voice should
carry too far.
"Yes. It's me," said Maurice stiffly, and rose. "But I'm going. I
shan't disturb you."
"Disturb?" she said, and laughed a little. "Nonsense! Of course not."
From her position on Herries's arm, she looked down at him, uncertain
how to proceed. Then she laughed again. "But how fortunate that I found
you! The next is our dance, isn't it?"---she pretended to examine her
programme. "It will begin in a minute. I think I'll wait here."
"The next may be, but not the next again, remember," said Herries,
before he allowed her to withdraw her arm. Louise nodded and laughed.
"AUF WIEDERSEHEN!"
But after the door had dosed behind Herries, she remained standing, a
step higher than Maurice, tipping her face with her handkerchief.
When she descended the step, and was on a level with him, he could see
how her eyes glittered.
"Was that lie necessary?--for me?"
"What's the matter, Maurice? Why are you like this? Why have you not
asked me to dance?"
He was unpleasantly worked on by her free use of his name.
"I, you? Have I had a chance?"
"Wasn't it for you to make the chance? Or did you expect me to come to
you: Mr. Guest, will you do me the honour of dancing with me?--Oh,
please, don't be cross. Don't spoil my pleasure--for this one night at
least."
But she laughed again as she spoke, as though she did not fear his
power to do so, and laid her hand on his arm: and, at her touch, he
seemed to feel through sleeve and glove, the superabundance of vitality
that was throbbing in her this evening. She was unable to be still for
a moment; in the delicate pallor of her face, her eyes burned, black as
jet.
"Are you really enjoying yourself so much? What CAN you find in it all?"
"Come--come down and dance. Listen!--can you resist that music? Quick,
let us go down."
"I dance badly. I'm not Herries."
"But I can suit my step to anyone's. Won't you dance with me?--when I
ask you?"
She had been leaning forward, looking over the balustrade at the
couples arranging themselves below. Now she turned, and put her arm
through his.
They went down the stairs, into the hall. Close beside the door at
which they entered, they began to dance.
In all these months, Maurice had scarcely touched her hand. Now
convention required that he should take her in his arms: he had
complete control over her, could draw her closer, or put her further
away, as he chose. For the first round or two, this was enough to
occupy him entirely: the proximity of the lithe body, the nearness of
the dark head, the firm, warm resistance that her back offered to his
hand.
They were dancing to the music of the WIENER BLUT, most melancholy gay
of waltzes, in which the long, legato, upward sweep of the violins says
as plainly as in words that all is vanity. But with the passing of the
players to the second theme, the melody made a more direct appeal:
there was a passionate unrest in it, which disquieted all who heard it.
The dancers, with flushed cheeks and fixed eyes, responded
instinctively to its challenge: the lapidary swing with which they
followed the rhythm became less circumspect; and a desire to dance till
they could dance no more, took possession of those who were fanatic. No
one yielded to the impulse more readily than Louise; she was quite
carried away. Maurice felt the change in her; an uneasiness seized him,
and increased with every turn. She had all but closed her eyes; her
hair brushed his shoulder; she answered to the lightest pressure of his
arm. Even her face looked strange to him: its expression, its
individuality, all that made it hers, was as if wiped out.
Involuntarily he straightened himself, and his own movements grew
stiffer, in his effort to impart to her some of his own restraint. But
it was useless. And, as they turned and turned, to the maddening music,
cold spots broke out on his forehead: in this manner she had danced
with all her previous partners, and would dance with those to come.
Such a pang of jealousy shot through him at the thought that, without
knowing what he was doing, he pulled her sharply to him. And she
yielded to the tightened embrace as a matter of course.
With a jerk he stopped dancing and loosened his hold of her.
She stood and blinked at lights and people: she had been far away, in a
world of melody and motion, and could not come back to herself all at
once. Wonderingly she looked at Maurice; for the music was going on,
and no one else had left off dancing; and, with the same of
comprehension, but still too dazed to resist, she followed him up the
stairs.
"It's easy to see you don't care for dancing," she said, when they were
back in the corner of the gallery. Her breath came unsteadily, and
again she touched her face with the small, scented handkerchief.
"No. Not dancing like that," he answered rudely. But now again, as so
often before, directly it was put into words, his feeling seemed
strained and puritanic.
Louise leaned forward in her seat to look into his face.
"Like what?--what do you mean? Oh, you foolish boy, what is the matter
with you to-night? You will tell me next I can't dance."
"You dance only too well."
"But you would rather I was a wooden doll--is that it How is one to
please you? First you are vexed with me because YOU did not ask ME to
dance; and when I send my partner away, on your account, you won't
finish one dance with me but exact that I shall sit here, in a dark
corner, and let that glorious music go by. I don't know what to make of
you." But her attention had already wandered to the dancers below.
"Look at them!--Oh, it makes me envious! No one else has dreamt of
stopping yet. For no matter how tired you are beforehand, when you
dance you don't feel it, and as long as the music goes on, you must go
on, too, though it lasted all night.--Oh, how often I have longed for a
night like this! And then I've never met a better dancer than Mr.
Herries."
"And for the sake of his dancing, you can forget what a puppy he is?"
"Puppy?" At the warmth of his interruption, she laughed, the low,
indolent laugh, by means of which she seemed determined, on this night,
to keep anything from touching her too nearly. "How crude you men are!
Because he is handsome and dances well, you reason that he must
necessarily be a simpleton."
"Handsome? Yes--if a tailor's dummy is handsome."
But Louise only laughed again, like one over whom words had no power.
"If he were the veriest scarecrow, I would forgive him--for the sake of
his dancing."
She leant forward, letting her gloved arms lie along her knees; and
above the jet-trimmed line of her bodice, he saw her white chest rise
and fall. At a slight sound behind, she turned and looked expectantly
at the door.
"No, not yet," said the young man at her side. "Besides, even if it
were, this is my dance, remember. You said so yourself."
"You are rude to-night, Maurice--and LANGWEILIG." She averted her face,
and tapped her foot. But the content that lapped her made it impossible
for her to take anything earnestly amiss, and even that others should
show displeasure jarred on her like a false note.
"Don't be angry. To-morrow it will all be different again. Let me have
just this one night of pleasure--let me enjoy myself in my own way."
"To hear you talk, one would think I had no wish but to spoil your
pleasure."
"Oh, I didn't mean that. You misunderstand everything."
"What I say or think has surely no weight with you?"
She gave up the attempt to pacify him, and leaning back in her chair,
stifled a yawn. Then with an exclamation of: "How hot it is up here!"
she peeled off her gloves. With her freed hands, she tidied her hair,
drawing out and thrusting in again the silver dagger that held the coil
together. Then she let her bare arms fall on her lap, where they lay in
strong outline against the black of her dress. One was almost directly
under Maurice's eyes; even by the poor light, he could see the mark
left on the inside of the wrist, by the buttons of the glove. It was a
generously formed arm, but so long that it looked slender, and its firm
white roundness was flawless from wrist to shoulder. He shut his eyes,
but he could see it through his eyelids. Sitting beside her like this,
in the semidarkness, morbidly aware of the perfume of her hair and
dress, he suddenly forgot that he had been rude, and she indifferent.
He was conscious only of the wish to drive it home to her, how unhappy
she was making him.
"Louise," he said so abruptly that she started. "I'm going to ask you
to do something for me. I haven't made many demands, have I?--since you
first called me your friend." He paused and fumbled for words.
"Don't--don't dance any more to-night. Don't dance again."
She stooped forward to look at him. "Not dance again?--I? What do you
mean?"
"What I say. Let us go home."
"Home? Now? When it's only half over?--You don't know what you are
saying." But her surprise was already on the wane.
"Oh, yes, I do. I'm not going to let you dance again."
She laughed, in spite of herself, at the new light in which he was
showing himself. But, the moment after, she ceased to laugh; for, with
an audacity he had not believed himself capable of, Maurice took the
arm that was lying next him, and, midway between wrist and elbow, put
his lips to it, kissing it several times, in different places.
Taken unawares, Louise was helpless. Then she freed herself, ungently.
"No, no, I won't have it. Oh, how can you be so foolish! My
gloves--where is my glove? Pick it up, and give it to me--at once!"
He groped on the dusty floor; the veins in his forehead hammered. She
had moved to a distance, and now stood busy with the gloves; she would
not look at him.
In the uneasy silence that ensued, Herries opened the door: a moment
later, they went out together. Maurice remained standing until he saw
them appear below. Then he dropped back into his seat, and covered his
face with his hands.
He did not regret what he had done; he did not care in the least,
whether he had made her angry with him or not. On the contrary, the
feeling he experienced was akin to relief: disapproval and
mortification, jealousy and powerlessness--all the varying emotions of
the evening--had found vent and alleviation in the few hastily snatched
kisses. He no longer felt injured by her treatment of him: that hardly
seemed to concern him now. His sensations, at this minute, resolved
themselves into the words: "She is mine, she is mine!" which went round
and round in his brain. And then, in a sudden burst of clearness, he
understood what it meant for him to say this. It meant that the farce
of friendship, at which he had played, was at an end; it meant that he
loved her--not as hitherto, with a touch of elegiac resignation--but
with a violence that made him afraid. If seemed incredible to him now
that he had spent two months in close fellowship with her: it was
ludicrous, inhuman. For he now saw, that his ultimate desire had been
neither to help her nor to restore her to life--that was a comedy he
had acted for the benefit of the traditions in his blood. Brutally, at
this moment, he acknowledged that he had only wished to hear her voice
and to touch her hand: to make for himself so indispensable a place
among the necessities of her life that no one could oust him from
it.--Mine--mine! Instinct alone spoke in him to-night--that same blunt
instinct which had reared its head the first time he saw her, but
which, until now, he had kept under, like a medieval ascetic. No reason
came to his aid; he neither looked into the future nor did he consider
the past: he only swore to himself in a kind of stubborn wrath that she
was his, and that no earthly power should take her from him.
One by one the slow-dragging hours wore away. The dancers' ranks were
thinned; but those who remained, gyrated as insensately as ever. There
was an air of greater freedom over the ball-room. The chaperons who,
earlier in the evening, had sat patiently on the red velvet sofas, had
vanished with their charges, and, in their train, the more sedate of
the company: it was past three o'clock, and now, every few minutes, a
cloaked couple crossed a corner of the hall to the street-door.
When Maurice went downstairs, he could not find Louise, and some time
elapsed before she and Herries emerged from the supper-room. Although
the lines beneath her eyes were like rings of hammered iron, she danced
anew, went on to the very end, with a few other infatuated people.
Finally, the tired musicians rose stiffly to pack their instruments;
and, with a sigh of exhaustion, she received on her shoulders the cloak
Maurice stood holding.
They were among the last to leave the hall; the lights went out behind
them. Herries walked a part of the way home with them, and talked much
and idly--ineffable in his self-conceit, thought Maurice. But Louise
urged him on, saying wild, disconnected things, as if, as long as words
were spoken, it did not matter what they were. Again and again her
laugh resounded: it was hoarse, and did not ring true.
"She has had too much champagne," Maurice said to himself, as he walked
silent at her side.
In the ROSSPLATZ, Herries, who was in a becoming fur cap, and a coat
with a fur-lined collar, took a circumstantial leave of her. He raised
both her hands to his lips.
"To the memory of those divine waltzes--our waltzes!" he said
sentimentally. "And to all the others the future has in store for us!"
She left her hands in his, and smiled at him.
"Till to-morrow then," said Herries. "Or shall you forget your promise?"
"It is you who will forget--not I."
After this, Maurice and she walked on alone together. It was that
dreariest of all the hours between sunset and dawn, when it is scarcely
night any longer, and yet not nearly day. The crisp frost of the
previous evening had given place to a bleak rawness; the day that was
coming would crawl in, lugubriously, unable to get the better of the
darkness. The houses about them were wrapped in sleep; they two were
the only people abroad, and their footsteps echoed in the damp streets.
But, for once, Louise was not affected by the gloom of her
surroundings. She walked swiftly, and her chief aim seemed to be to
render any but the most trival words impossible. Now, however, her
strained gaiety had the aspect of a fever; Maurice believed that, for
the most part, she did not know what she was saying.
Until they stood in front of the house-door, she kept up the tension.
But when the young man had fitted the key in the lock and turned it,
she looked at him, and, for the first time this night, gave him her
full attention.
"Good night--my friend!"
She was leaning against the woodwork; beneath the lace scarf, her eyes
were bent on him with a strange expression. Maurice looked down into
them, and, for a second or two, held them with his own, in one of those
looks which are not for ordinary use between a man and a woman. Louise
shivered under it, and gave a nervous laugh; the next moment, she made
a slight movement towards him, an involuntary movement, which was so
imperceptible as to be hardly more than an easing of her position
against the doorway, and yet was unmistakable--as unmistakable as was
the little upward motion with which she resigned herself at the outset
of a dance. For an instant, his heart stopped beating; in a flash he
knew that this was the solution: there was only one ending to this
night of longing and excitement, and that was to take her in his arms,
as she stood, to hold her to him in an infinite embrace, till his own
nerves were stilled, and the madness had gone from her. But the
returning beat of his blood brought the knowledge that a morrow must
surely come--a morrow for both of them--a cold, grey day to be faced
and borne. She was not herself, in the bonds of her unnatural
excitement; it was for him to be wise.
He took her limply hanging hand, and looked at her gravely and kindly.
"You are very tired."
At his voice, the wild light died out of her eyes; she seemed to shrink
into herself. "Yes, very tired. And oh, so cold!"
"Can't you get a cup of tea?--something to warm you?"
But she did not hear him; she was already on the stair. He waited till
her steps had died away, then went headlong down the street. But, when
he came to think things over, he did not pride himself on the
self-control he had displayed. On the contrary, he was tormented by the
wish to know what she would have said or done had he yielded to his
impulse; and, for the remainder of the night, his brain lost itself in
a maze of hazardous conjecture. Only when day broke, a cheerless
February day, was he satisfied that he could not have acted differently.
Upstairs, in her room, Louise lay face downwards on her bed, and there,
her arms thrown wildly out over the pillows, all the froth and
intoxication of the evening gone from her--there lay, and wished she
were dead.
* * * * *
Three days later, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Maurice
watched the train that carried her from him steam out of the DRESDENER
BAHNHOF.
The clearness he had gained as to his own motives, and the ruthless
probing of himself it induced, both led to the same conclusion: Louise
must go away. The day after the ball, too, he had found her in a state
of collapse, which was unparalleled even in the ups and downs of the
past weeks.
"Anything!--do anything you like with me. I wish I had never been
born;" and, though no muscle of her face moved, large slow tears ran
down her sallow cheeks.
Unconsciously twisting and bending Herries's card, which was lying on
the table, Maurice laid his plan before her. And having won the above
consent, he did not let the grass grow under his feet. He applied to
Miss Jensen for practical aid, and that lady was tactful enough to give
it without curiosity. She knew Dresden well, recommended it as a lively
place, and wrote forthwith to a PENSION there, engaging rooms for a
lady who had just recovered from a severe illness. By tacit agreement,
this was understood to cover any extravagance or imprudence, of which
Louise might make herself guilty.
Now she had gone, and with her, the central interest of his life. But
the tired gesture, with which he took off his hat and wiped his
forehead, as he walked home, was expressive of the relief he felt that
he was not going to see her again for some time.
He let a fortnight elapse--a fortnight of colourless days, unbroken by
word or sign from her. Then, one night, he spent several hours writing
to her--writing a carefully worded letter, in which he put forward the
best reasons he could devise, for her remaining away altogether.
To this he received no answer.
X.
From one of the high, wooden benches, at the back of the amphitheatre
in the ALBERTHALLE, where he had lain at full length, listening to the
performance of a Berlin pianist, Krafft rose, full to the brim of
impressions, and eager to state them.
"That man," he began, as he left the hall between Maurice and Avery
Hill, "is a successful teacher. And therewith his fate as an artist is
sealed. No teacher can get on to the higher rungs of the ladder, and no
inspired musician be a satisfactory teacher. If the artist is obliged
to share his art, his pupils, should they be intelligent, may pick up
something of his skill, learn the trick of certain things; but the
moment he begins to set up dogmas, it is the end of him.--As if it were
possible for one person to prescribe to another, of a totally different
temperament, how he ought to feel in certain passages, or be affected
by certain harmonies! If I, for example, choose to play the later
Beethoven sonatas as I would the Brahms Concerto in B flat, with a
thoroughly modern irony, what is it that hinders me from doing it, and
from satisfying myself, and kindred souls, who are honest enough to
admit their feelings? Tradition, nothing in the world but tradition;
tradition in the shape of the teacher steps in and says anathema: to
this we are not accustomed, ERGO, it cannot be good.--And it is just
the same with those composers who are also pedagogues. They know, none
better, that there are no hard and fast rules in their art; that it is
only convention, or the morbid car of some medieval monk, which has
banished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called g pure writing ';
that further, you need only to have the regulation number of years
behind you, to fling squeamishness to the winds. In other words, you
learn rules to unlearn them with infinite pains. But the pupil, in his
innocence, demands a rigid basis to go on--it is a human weakness,
this, the craving for rules--and his teachers pamper him. Instead of
saying: develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teach
yourself is worth knowing--instead of this, they build up walls and
barriers to hedge him in, behind which, for their benefit, he must go
through the antics of a performing dog. But nemesis overtakes them;
they fall a victim to their own wiles, just as the liar finally
believes his own lies. Ultimately they find their chief delight in the
adroitness with which they themselves overcome imaginary obstacles."
His companions were silent. Avery Hill had a nine hours' working-day
behind her, and was tired; besides, she made a point of never replying
to Krafft's tirades. Once only, of late, had she said to him in
Maurice's presence: "You would reason the skin off one's bones, Heinz.
You are the most self-conscious person alive." Krafft had been much
annoyed at this remark, and had asked her to call him a Jew and be done
with it; but afterwards, he admitted to Maurice that she was right.
"And it's only the naive natures that count."
Maurice had found his way back to Krafft; for, in the days of
uncertainty that followed the posting of his letter, he needed human
companionship. Until the question whether Louise would return or not
was decided, he could settle to nothing; and Krafft's ramblings took
him out of himself. Since the ball, his other friends had given him the
cold shoulder; hence it did not matter whether or no they approved of
his renewed intimacy with Krafft--he said "they," but it was Madeleine
who was present to his mind. And Krafft was an easy person to take up
with again; he never bore a grudge, and met Maurice readily, half-way.
It had not taken the latter long to shape his actions or what he
believed to be the best. But his thoughts were beyond control. He was
as helpless against sudden spells of depression as against dreams of an
iridescent brightness. He could no more avoid dwelling on the future
than reliving the Past. If Louise did not return, these memories were
all that were left him. If she did, what form were their relations to
each other going to assume?--and this was the question that cost him
most anxious thought.
A thing that affected him oddly, at this time, was his growing
inability to call up her face. It was incredible. This face, which he
had supposed he knew so well that he could have drawn it blindfold, had
taken to eluding him; and the more impatient he became, the poorer was
his success. The disquieting thing, however, was, that though he could
not materialise her face, what invariably rose before his eyes was her
long, bare arm, as it had lain on the black stuff of her dress. At
first, it only came when he was battling to secure the face; then it
took to appearing at unexpected moments; and eventually, it became a
kind of nightmare, which haunted him. He would start up from dreaming
of it, his hair moist with perspiration, for, strangely enough, he was
always on the point of doing it harm: either his teeth were meeting in
it, or he had drawn the blade of a knife down the middle of the
blue-veined whiteness, and the blood spurted out along the line, which
reddened instantly in the wake of the knife.
April had come, bringing April weather; it was fitfully sunny, and a
mild and generous dampness spurred on growth: shrubs and bushes were so
thickly sprinkled with small buds that, at a distance, it seemed as
though a transparent green veil had been flung over them. In the
Gewandhaus, according to custom, the Ninth Symphony had brought the
concert season to a close; once more, the chorus had struggled
victoriously with the ODE TO JOY. And early one morning, Maurice held a
note in his hand, in which Louise announced that she had "come home,"
the night before.
She had been away for almost two months, and, to a certain extent, he
had grown inured to her absence. At the sight of her handwriting, he
had the sensation of being violently roused from sleep. Now he shrank
from the moment when he should see her again; for it seemed that not
only the present, but all his future depended on it.
Late in the evening, he returned from the visit, puzzled and depressed.
Seven had boomed from church-clocks far and near, before he reached the
BRUDERSTRASSE, but, nevertheless, he had been kept waiting in the
passage for a quarter of an hour: and he was in such an apprehensive
frame of mind that he took the delay as a bad omen.
When he crossed the threshold, Louise came towards him with one of
those swift movements which meant that she was in good spirits, and
confident of herself. She held out her hands, and smiled at him with
all her dark, mobile face, saying words that were as impulsive as her
gesture. Maurice was always vaguely chilled by her outbursts of
light-heartedness: they seemed to him strained and unreal, so
accustomed had he grown to the darker, less adaptable side of her
nature.
"You have come back?" he said, with her hand in his.
"Yes, I'm here--for the present, at least."
The last words caught in his ear, and buzzed there, making his
foreboding a certainty. On the spot, his courage failed him; and though
Louise continued to ring all the changes her voice was capable of, he
did not recover his spirits. It was not merely the sense of
strangeness, which inevitably attacked him after he had not seen her
for some time; on this occasion, it was more. Partly, it might be due
to the fact that she was dressed in a different way; her hair was done
high on her head, and she wore a light grey dress of modish cut and
design. Her face, too, had grown fuller; the hollows in her cheeks had
vanished; and her skin had that peculiar clear pallor that was
characteristic of it in health.
He was stupidly silent; he could not join in her careless vivacity.
Besides, throughout the visit, nothing was said that it was worth his
coming to hear.
But when she wished him good-bye, she said, with a strange smile:
"Altogether, I am very grateful to you, Maurice, for having made me go
away."
He himself no longer felt any satisfaction at what he had done. As soon
as he left her, he tried to comprehend what had happened: the change in
her was too marked for him to be able to console himself that he had
imagined it. Not only had she seemingly recovered, as if by magic, from
the lassitude of the winter--he could even have forgiven her the
alteration in her style of dress, although this, too, helped to
alienate her from him. But what he ended by recognising, with a jealous
throb, was that she had mentally recovered as well; she was once more
the self-contained girl he had first known, with a gift for keeping an
outsider beyond the circle of her thoughts and feelings. An outsider!
The weeks of intimate companionship were forgotten, seemed never to
have been. She had no further need of him, that was the clue to the
mystery, and the end of the matter.
And so it continued, the next day, and the next again; Louise
deliberately avoided touching on anything that lay below the surface.
She vouchsafed no explanation of the words that had disquieted him, nor
was the letter Maurice had written her once mentioned between them.
But, though she seemed resolved not to confide in him, she could not
dispense with the small, practical services, he was able to render her.
They were even more necessary to her than before; for, if one thing was
clear, it was that she no longer intended to cloister herself up inside
her four walls: the day after her return, she had been out till late in
the afternoon, and had come home with her hands full of parcels. She
took it now as a matter of course that Maurice should accompany her;
and did not, or would not, notice his abstraction.
After the lapse of a very short time, however, the young man began to
feel that there was something feverish in the continual high level of
her mood. She broke down, once or twice, in trying to sustain it, and
was more of her eloquently silent self again: one evening, he came upon
her, in the dusk, when she was sitting with her chin on her hand,
looking out before her with the old questioning gaze.
Occasionally he thought that she was waiting for something: in the
middle of a sentence, she would break off, and grow absent-minded; and
more than once, the unexpected advent of the postman threw her into a
state of excitement, which she could not conceal. She was waiting for a
letter. But Maurice was proud, and asked no questions; he took pains to
use the cool, friendly tone, she herself adopted.
Not a week had dragged out, however, since her return, before he was
suffering in a new way, in the oldest, cruellest way of all.
The PENSION at which she had stayed in Dresden, had been frequented by
leisured foreigners: over twenty people, of various nationalities, had
sat down daily at the dinner-table. Among so large a number, it would
have been easy for Louise to hold herself aloof. But, as far as Maurice
could gather, she had felt no inclination to do this. From the first,
she seemed to have been the nucleus of an admiring circle, chief among
the members of which was a family of Americans--a brother and two
sisters, rich Southerners, possessed of a vague leaning towards art and
music. The names of these people recurred persistently in her talk;
and, as the days went by, Maurice found himself listening for one name
in particular, with an irritation he could not master. Raymond van
Houst--a ridiculous name!--fit only for a backstairs romance. But as
often as she spoke of Dresden, it was on her lips. Whether in the
Galleries, or at the Opera, on driving excursions, or on foot, this man
had been at her side; and soon the mere mention of him was enough to
set Maurice's teeth on edge.
One afternoon, he found her standing before an extravagant mass of
flowers, which were heaped up on the table; there were white and purple
violets, a great bunch of lilies of the valley, and roses of different
colours. They had been sent to her from Dresden, she said; but, beyond
this, she offered no explanation. All the vases in the room were
collected before her; but she had not begun to fill them: she stood
with her hands in the flowers, tumbling them about, enjoying the
contact of their moist freshness.
To Maurice's remark that she seemed to take a pleasure in destroying
them, she returned a casual: "What does it matter?" and taking up as
many violets as she could hold, looked defiantly at him over their
purple leaves. Through all she said and did ran a strong undercurrent
of excitement.
But before Maurice left, her manner changed. She came over to him, and
said, without looking up: "Maurice I want to tell you something."
"Yes; what is it?" He spoke with the involuntary coolness this mood of
hers called out in him; and she was quick to feel it. She returned to
the table.
"You ask so prosaically: you are altogether prosaic to-day. And it is
not a thing I can tell you off-hand. You would need to sit down again.
It's a long story; and you were going; and it's late. We will leave it
till to-morrow: that will be time enough. And if it is fine, we can go
out somewhere, and I'll tell you as we go."
It was a brilliant May afternoon: great white clouds were piled one on
the top of another, like bales of wool; and their fantastic bulging
roundnesses made the intervening patches of blue seem doubly distant.
The wind was hardly more than a breath, which curled the tips of thin
branches, and fluttered the loose ends of veils and laces. In the
ROSENTAL, where the meadow-slopes were emerald-green, and each branch
bore its complement of delicately curled leaves, the paths were so
crowded that there could be no question of a connected conversation.
But again, Louise was not in a hurry to begin.
She continued meditative, even when they had reached the KAISERPARK,
and were sitting with their cups before them, in the long, wooden,
shed-like building, open at one side. She had taken off her hat--a
somewhat showy white hat, trimmed with large white feathers--and laid
it on the table; one dark wing of hair fell lower than the other, and
shaded her forehead.
Maurice, who was on tenterhooks, subdued his impatience as long as he
could. Finally, he emptied his cup at a draught, and pushed it away.
"You wanted to speak to me, you said."--His manner was curt, from sheer
nervousness.
His voice startled her. "Yes, I have something to tell you," she said,
with a hesitation he did not know in her. "But I must go back a
little.--If you remember, Maurice, you wrote to me while I was away,
didn't you?" she said, and looked not at him, but at her hands clasped
before her. "You gave me a number of excellent reasons why it would be
better for me not to come back here. I didn't answer your letter at the
time because ... What should you say, Maurice, if I told you now, that
I intended to take your advice?"
"You are going away?" The words jerked out gratingly, of themselves.
"Perhaps.--That is what I want to speak to you about. I have a chance
of doing so."
"Chance? How chance?" he asked sharply.
"That's what I am going to tell you, if you will give me time."
Drawing a letter from her pocket, she smoothed the creases out of the
envelope, and handed it to him.
While he read it, she looked away, looked over the enclosure. Some
people were crossing it, and she followed them with her eyes, though
she had often seen their counterparts before. A man in a heavy
ulster--notwithstanding the mildness of the day--stalked on ahead,
unconcerned about the fate of his family, which dragged, a woman and
two children, in the rear: like savages, thought Louise, where the male
goes first, to scent danger. But the crackling of paper recalled her
attention; Maurice was folding the sheet, and replacing it in the
envelope, with a ludicrous precision. His face had taken on a pinched
expression, and he handed the letter back to her without a word.
She looked at him, expecting him to say something; but he was obdurate.
"This was what I was waiting all these days to tell you," she said.
"You knew it was coming then?" He scarcely recognised his own voice; he
spoke as he supposed a judge might speak to a proven criminal.
Louise shrugged her shoulders. "No. Yes.--That is, as far as it's
possible to know such a thing."
Through the crude glass window, the sun cast a medley of lines and
lights on her hands, and on the checkered table-cloth. There were two
rough benches, and a square table; the coffeecups stood on a metal
tray; the lid of the pot was odd, did not match the set: all these
inanimate things, which, a moment ago, Maurice had seen without seeing
them, now stood out before his eyes, as if each of them had acquired an
independent life, and no longer fitted into its background.
"Let us go home," he said, and rose.
"Go home? But we have only just come!" cried Louise, with what seemed
to him pretended surprise. "Why do you want to go home? It is so quiet
here: I can talk to you. For I need your advice, Maurice. You must help
me once again."
"I help you?--in this? No, thank you. All I can do, it seems, is to
wish you joy." He remained standing, with his hand on the back of the
bench.
But at the cold amazement of her eyes, he took his seat again. "It is a
matter for yourself--only you can decide. It's none of my business." He
moved the empty cups about on the cloth.
"But why are you angry?"
"Haven't I good reason to be? To see you--you!--accepting an
impertinence of this kind so quietly. For it IS an impertinence,
Louise, that a man you hardly know should write to you in this cocksure
way and ask you to marry him. Impertinent and absurd!"
"You have a way of finding most things I want to do absurd," she
answered. "In this case, though, you're mistaken. The tone of the
letter is all it should be. And, besides, I know Mr. Van Houst very
well."
Maurice looked at her with a sardonic smile.
"Seven weeks is a long time," she added.
"Seven weeks!--and for a lifetime!"
"Oh, one can get to know a man inside out, in seven weeks," she said,
with wilful flippancy. "Especially if, from the first, he shows so
plainly ... Maurice, don't be angry. You have always been kind to me;
you're not going to fail me now that I really need help? I have no one
else, as you very well know." She smiled at him, and held out her hand.
He could not refuse to take it; but he let it drop again immediately.
"Let me tell you all about it, and how it happened, and then you will
understand," Louise went on, in a persuasive voice--he had once
believed that the sound of this voice would reconcile him to any fate.
"You think the time was short, but we were together every day, and
sometimes all day long. I knew from the first that he cared for me; he
made no secret of it. If anything, it is a proof of tactfulness on his
part that he should have written rather than have spoken to me himself.
I like him for doing it, for giving me time. And then, listen, Maurice,
what I should gain by marrying him. He is rich, really rich, and
good-looking--in an American way--and thirty-two years old. His sisters
would welcome me--one of them told me as much, and told me, too, that
her brother had never cared for anyone before. He would make an ideal
husband," she added with a sudden recklessness, at the sight of
Maurice's unmoved face. "Americanly chivalrous to the fingertips, and
with just enough of the primitive animal in him to ward off monotony."
Maurice raised his hand, as if in self-defence. "So you, too, then,
like any other woman, would marry just for the sake of marrying?" he
asked, with bitter disbelief.
"Yes.--And just especially and particularly I."
"For Heaven's sake, let us get out of here!"
Without listening to her protest, he went to find the waiter. Louise
followed him out of the enclosure, carrying hat and gloves in her hand.
They struck into narrow by-paths going back, to avoid the people. But
it was impossible to escape all, and those they met, eyed them with
curiosity. The clear English voices rang out unconcerned; the pale girl
with the Italian eyes was visibly striving to appease her companion,
who marched ahead, angry and impassive.
For a few hundred yards neither of them spoke. Then Louise began anew.
"And that is not all. You judge harshly and unfairly because you don't
know the facts. I am almost quite alone in the world. I have no
relatives that I care for, except one brother. I lived with him, on his
station in Queensland, until I came here. But now he's married, and
there would be no room for me in the house--figuratively speaking. If I
go back now, I must share his home with his wife, whom I knew and
disliked. While here is some one who is fond of me, and is rich, and
who offers me not only a home of my own, but, what is far more to me,
an entirely new life in a new world."
"Excellent reasons! But in reckoning them up, you have forgotten what
seems to me the most important one of all; whether or no you care for
him, for this ..." this in his trouble, he could not find a suitable
epithet.
But Louise refused to be touched. "I like him," she answered, and
looked across the slope of meadow they were passing. "I liked him, yes,
as any woman would like a man who treated her as he did me. He was very
good tome. And not in the least repugnant.--But care?" she interrupted
herself. "If by care, you mean ... Then no, a hundred thousand times,
no! I shall never care for anyone in that way again, and you know it. I
had enough of that to last me all my life."
"Very well, then, and I say, if you married a man you care for as
little as that, I should never believe in a woman again.--Not, of
course, that it matters to you what I believe in and what I don't? But
to hear you--you, Louise!--counting up the profits to be gained from
it, like ... like--oh, I don't know what! I couldn't have believed it
of you."
"You are a very uncomfortable person, Maurice."
"I mean to be. And more than uncomfortable. Listen to me! You talk of
it lightly and coolly; but if you married this man, without caring for
him more than you say you do, just for the sake of a home, or his
money, or his good manners, or the primitive animal, or whatever it is
that attracts you in him:"--he grew bitter again in spite of
himself--"if you did this, you would be stifling all that is good and
generous in your nature. For you may say what you like; the man is
little more than a stranger to you. What can you know of his real
character? And what can he know of you?"
"He knows as much of me as I ever intend him to know."
"Indeed! Then you wouldn't tell him, for instance, that only a few
months ago, you were eating your heart out for some one else?"
Louise winced as though the words had struck her in the face. Before
she answered, she stood still, in the middle of the path, and pinned
on, with deliberate movements, the big white hat, beneath the drooping
brim and nodding feathers of which, her eyes were as black as coals.
"No, I should not," she said. "Why should I? Do you think it would make
him care more for me to know that I had nearly died of love for another
man?"
"Certainly not. And it might also make him less ready to marry you."
"That's exactly what I think."
One was as bitter as the other; but Maurice was the more violent of the
two.
"And so you would begin the new life you talk of, with lies and
deceit?--A most excellent beginning!"
"If you like to call it that. I only know, that no one with any sense
thinks of dragging up certain things when once they are dead and
buried. Or are you, perhaps, simple enough to believe any man living
would get over what I have to tell him, and care for me afterwards in
the same way?"
He turned, with tell-tale words on his tongue. But the expression of
her face intimidated him. He had only to look at her to know that, if
he spoke of himself at this moment, she would laugh him to scorn.
But the beloved face acted on him in its own way; his sense of injury
weakened. "Louise," he said in an altered tone; "whatever you say to
the contrary, in a matter like this, I can't advise you. For I don't
understand--and never should.--But of one thing I'm as sure as I am
that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that is, that you won't do it. Do
you honestly think you could go on living, day after day, with a man
you don't sincerely care for?--of whom the most you can say is that
he's not repugnant to you? You little know what it would mean!--And you
may reason as you will; I answer for you; and I say no, and again no.
It isn't in you to do it. You are not mean and petty enough. You can't
hide your feelings, try as you will.--No, you couldn't deceive some
one, by pretending to care for him, for months on end. You would be
miserably unhappy; and then--then I know what would happen. You would
be candid--candid about everything--when it was too late."
There was no mistaking the sincerity of his words. But Louise was
boundlessly irritated, and made no further effort to check her
resentment.
"You have an utterly false and ridiculous idea of me, and of everything
belonging to me."
"I haven't spent all this time with you for nothing. I know you better
than you know yourself. I believe in you, Louise. And I know I am
right. And some day you'll know it, too."
These words only incensed her the more.
"What you know--or think you know--is nothing to me. If you had
listened to me patiently, as I asked you to, instead of losing your
temper, and taking what I said as a personal affront, then, yes, then I
should have told you something else besides. How, when I came back, a
fortnight ago, I was quite resolved to marry this man, if he asked me
marry him and cut myself off for ever from my old life and its hateful
memories.--And why not? I'm still young. I still have a right to
pleasure--and change--and excitement.--And in all these days, I didn't
once hesitate--not till the letter came yesterday--and then not till
night. It wasn't like me; for when once I have made up my mind, I never
go back. So I determined to ask you--ask you to help me to decide. For
you had always been kind to me.--But this is what I get for doing it."
Her anger flared up anew. "You have treated me abominably, to-day,
Maurice; and I shan't forget it. All your ridiculous notions about
right and wrong don't matter a straw. What does matter is, that when I
ask for help, you should behave as if--as if I were going to commit a
crime. Your opinion is nothing to me. If I decide to marry the man, I
shall do it, no matter what you say."
"I'm sure you will."
"And if I don't, let me tell you this: it won't be because of anything
you've said to-day. Not from any high-flown notions of honesty, or
generosity, as you would like to make yourself believe; but merely
because I haven't the energy in me. I couldn't keep it up. I want to be
quiet, to have an easy life. The fact that some one else had to suffer,
too, wouldn't matter to me, in the least. It's myself I think of, first
and foremost, and as long as I live it will always be myself."
Her voice belied her words; he expected each moment that she would
burst out crying. However, she continued to walk on, with her head
erect; and she did not take back one of the unkind things she had said.
They parted without being reconciled. Maurice stood and watched her
mount the staircase, in the vain hope that she would turn, before
reaching the top.
He did not see how the fine May afternoon declined, and passed into
evening; how the high stacks of cloud were broken up at sunset, and
shredded into small flakes and strips of cloud, which, saturated with
gold, vanished in their turn: how the shadows in the corners turned
from blue to black; nor did he note the mists that rose like steam from
the ground, intensifying the acrid smell of garlic, with which the
woods abounded. Screened by the thicket, he sat on his accustomed scat,
and gave himself up to being miserable.
For some time he was conscious only of how deeply he had been
wounded--just as one suffers from the bruise after the blow. At the
moment, he had been stunned into a kind of quiescence; now his nerves
throbbed and tingled. But, little by little, a vivid recollection of
what had actually occurred returned to sting him: and certain details
stood out fixed and unforgettable. Yet, in reliving the hours just
past, he felt no regret at the fact that they had quarrelled. What
first smote him was an unspeakable amazement at Louise. The knowledge
that, for weeks on end, she had been contemplating marriage, was beyond
his belief. Hardly recovered from the throes of a suffering believed
incurable, and while he was still going about her with gloved hands, as
it were, she was ready to throw herself into the arms of the first
likely man she met. He could not help himself: in this connection,
every little trait in her that was uncongenial to him, started up with
appalling distinctness. Hitherto, he had put it down to his own
sensitiveness; he was over-nice. But for the most part, he had forgiven
her on account of all she had come through; for he believed that this
grief had swept destructively through her nature, leaving a jagged
wound, which only time could heal. Now, as if to prove to him what a
fool he was, she showed him that he had been mistaken in this also; she
could recover her equilibrium, while he still hedged her round with
solicitude--recover herself, and transfer her affection to another
person. Good God! Was it so easy, a matter of so little moment, to grow
fond of one who was almost a stranger to her?--for, in spite of what
she said to the contrary, he was persuaded that she had a stronger
feeling for this man than she had been willing to admit: this riper
man, with his experienced way of treating women. Was, then, his own
idea of her wholly false? Was there, after all, something in her nature
that he could not, would not, understand? He denied it fiercely, almost
before he had formulated the question: no matter what her actions were,
or what words she said, deep down in her was an intense will for good,
a spring of noble impulse. It was only that she had never had a proper
chance. But he denied it to a vision of her face: the haunting eyes
which, at first sight, had destroyed his peace of mind; the dead black
hair against the ivory-coloured skin. It was in these things that the
truth lay, not in the blind promptings of her inclination.
For the first time, the idea of marriage took definite shape in his
mind. For all he knew, it might have been lying dormant there, all
along; but he would doubtless have remained unconscious of it, for
weeks to come, had it not been for the events of the afternoon. Now,
however, Louise had made it plain that his feelings for her were of an
exaggerated delicacy; plain that she herself had no such scruples. He
need hesitate no longer. But marry! ... marriage! ... he marry
Louise!--at the thought of it, he laughed. That he, Maurice Guest,
should, for an instant, put himself on a par with her American suitor!
The latter, rich, leisured, able to satisfy her caprices, surround her
with luxury: himself, younger than she by several years, without
prospects, with nothing to offer her but a limitless devotion. He tried
to imagine himself saying: "Louise, will you marry me?" and the words
stuck in his throat; for he saw the amused astonishment of her eyes.
And not merely at the presumption he would be guilty of; what was as
clear to him as day was that she did not really care for him; not as he
cared for her; not with the faintest hint of a warmer feeling. If he
had never grasped this before, he did so now, to the full. Sitting
there, he affirmed to himself that she did not even like him. She was
grateful to him, of course, for his help and friendship; but that was
all. Beyond this, he would not have been surprised to learn from her
own lips that she actually disliked him: for there was something
irreconcilable about their two natures. And never, for a moment, had
she considered him in the light of an eligible lover--oh, how that
stung! Here was she, with an attraction for him which nothing could
weaken; and in him was not the smallest lineament, of body or of mind,
to wake a response in her. He was powerless to increase her happiness
by a hair's breadth. Her nerves would never answer to the inflection of
his voice, or the touch of his hand. How could such things be? What
anomaly was here?
To-day, her face rose before him unsought--the sweet, dark face with
the expression of slight melancholy that it wore in repose, as he loved
it best. It was with him when, stiff and tired, he emerged from his
seclusion, and walked home through the trails of mist that hung,
breast-high, on the meadow-land. It was with him under the
street-lamps, and, to its accompanying presence, the strong conviction
grew in him that evasion on his part was no longer possible. Sooner or
later, come what might, the words he had faltered over, even to
himself, would have to be spoken.
XI.
One day, some few weeks later, Madeleine sat at her writingtable,
biting the end of her pen. A sheet of note-paper lay before her; but
she had not yet written a word. She frowned to herself, as she sat.
Hard at work that morning, she had heard a ring at the door-bell, and,
a minute after, her landlady ushered in a visitor, in the shape of Miss
Martin. Madeleine rose from the piano with ill-concealed annoyance, and
having seated Miss Martin on the sofa, waited impatiently for the gist
of her visit; for she was sure that the lively American would not come
to see her without an object. And she was right: she knew to a nicety
when the important moment arrived. Most of the visit was preamble; Miss
Martin talked at length of her own affairs, assuming, with disarming
candour, that they interested other people as much as herself. She went
into particulars about her increasing dissatisfaction with Schwarz, and
retailed the glowing accounts she heard on all sides of a teacher
called Schrievers. He was not on the staff of the Conservatorium; but
he had been a favourite of Liszt's, and was attracting many pupils.
From this, Miss Martin passed to more general topics, such as the blow
Dove had recently received over the head of his attachment to pretty
Susie Fay. "Why, Sue, she feels perfectly DREADFUL about it. She can't
understand Mr. Dove thinking they were anything but real good friends.
Most every one here knew right away that Sue had her own boy down home
in Illinois. Yes, indeed."
Madeleine displayed her want of interest in Dove's concerns so plainly,
that Miss Martin could not do otherwise than cease discussing them. She
rose to end her call. As, however, she stood for the momentary exchange
of courtesies that preceded the hand-shake, she said, in an off-hand
way: "Miss Wade, I presume I needn't inquire if you're acquainted with
the latest about Louise Dufrayer? I say, I guess I needn't inquire,
seeing you're so well acquainted with Mr. Guest. I presume, though, you
don't see so much of him now. No, indeed. I hear he's thrown over all
his friends. I feel real disappointed about him. I thought he was a
most agreeable young man. But, as momma says, you never can tell. An' I
reckon Louise is most to blame. Seems like she simply CAN'T exist
without a beau. But I wonder she don't feel ashamed to show herself,
the way she's talked of. Why, the stories I hear about her! ... an'
they're always together. She's gotten her a heap of new things, too--a
millionaire asked her to marry him, when she was in Dresden, but he
wasn't good enough for her, no ma'am, an' all on account of Mr.
Guest.--Yes, indeed. But I must say I feel kind of sorry for him,
anyway. He was a real pleasant young man."
"Maurice Guest is quite able to look after himself," said Madeleine
drily.
"Is that so? Well, I presume you ought to know, you were once so well
acquainted with him--if I may say, Miss Wade, we all thought it was you
was his fancy. Yes, indeed."
"Oh, I always knew he liked Louise."
But this was the chief grudge she, too, bore him: that he had been so
little open with her. His seeming frankness had been merely a feint; he
had gone his own way, and had never really let her know what he was
thinking and planning. She now recalled the fact that Louise had only
once been mentioned between them, since the time of her illness, over
six months ago; and she, Madeleine, had foolishly believed his
reticence to be the result of a growing indifference.
Since the night of the ball, they had shunned each other, by tacit
consent. But, though she could avoid him in person, Madeleine could not
close her cars to the gossipy tales that circulated. In the last few
weeks, too, the rumours had become more clamatory: these two misguided
creatures had obviously no regard for public opinion; and several
times, Madeleine had been obliged to go out of her own way, to escape
meeting them face to face. On these occasions, she told herself that
she had done with Maurice Guest; and this decision was the more easy
as, since the beginning of the year, she had moved almost entirely in
German circles. But now the distasteful tattle was thrust under her
very nose. It seemed to put things in a different light to hear Maurice
pitied and discussed in this very room. In listening to her visitor,
she had felt once more how strong her right of possession was in him;
she was his oldest friend in Leipzig. Now she was ready to blame
herself for having let her umbrage stand in the way of them continuing
friends: had he been dropping in as he had formerly done, she might
have prevented things from going so far, and certainly have been of use
in hindering them from growing worse; for, with Louise, one was never
sure. And so she determined to write to him, without delay. In this,
though, she was piqued as well by a violent curiosity. Louise said to
have given up a good match for his sake! xxx she could not believe it.
It was incredible that she could care for him as he cared for her.
Madeleine knew them both too well; Maurice was not the type of man by
whom Louise was attracted.
She wrote in a guarded way.
IT SEEMS ABSURD THAT OLD FRIENDS SHOULD BEHAVE AS WE ARE DOING. IF
ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED WAS MY FAULT, FORGIVE IT, AND SHOW ME YOU DON'T
BEAR ME A GRUDGE, BY COMING TO SEE ME TO-MORROW AFTERNOON.
They had not met for close on four months, and, for the first few
minutes after his arrival, Madeleine was confused by the change that
had taken place in Maurice. It was not only that he was paler and
thinner than of old: his boyish manner had deserted him; and, when he
forgot himself, his eyes had a strange, brooding expression.
"Other-worldly ... almost," thought Madeleine; and, in order to
surmount an awkwardness she had been resolved not to feel, she talked
glibly. Maurice said he could not stay long, and wished to keep his hat
in his hand; but before he knew it, he was sitting in his accustomed
place on the sofa.
As they stirred their tea, she told him how annoyed she had felt at
having recently had a performance postponed in favour of Avery Hill:
and how the latter was said to be going crazy, with belief in her own
genius. Maurice seemed to be in the dark about what was happening, and
made no attempt to hide his ignorance. She could see, too, that he was
not interested in these things; he played with a tassel of the sofa,
and did not notice when she stopped speaking.
It is his turn now, she said to herself, and left the silence that
followed unbroken. Before it had lasted long, however, he looked up
from his employment of twisting the tassel as far round as it would go,
and then letting it fly back. "I say, Madeleine, now I'm here, there's
something I should like to ask you. I hope, though, you won't think it
impertinence on my part." He cleared his throat. "Once or twice lately
I've heard a report about you--several times, indeed. I didn't pay any
attention to it--not till a few days back, that is--when I saw it--or
thought I saw it--confirmed with my own eyes. I was at Bonorand's on
Monday evening; I was behind you."