she plied the woman with questions about the workings of the agonising
poison that had been swallowed. After one hasty glance, Maurice had
turned away, and now stood staring out of the high, barred window into
a gloomy little courtyard, For him, the air of the room was hard to
breathe, owing to the faint, yet unmistakable odour, which even the
waxen figure of the girl had begun to exhale; and he marvelled how
Louise, who was so sensitive, could endure it.
Outside, both drew long breaths of the cold, evening air, and Louise
bought a bunch of violets, which she pressed to nose and mouth.
"Horrible, horrible!" she said, at the same time raising her shoulders
in their heavy cape. "Oh, that man!--I shall never forget his face."
"What do you go to such places for? You have only yourself to thank for
it." He, too, was aware that a needless and repellent memory had been
added to their lives.
"Oh, everything's my own fault--I know that. You are never to blame for
anything!"
"Did I ask you to go there?--did I?"
But she only laughed in reply, through and through hostile to him; and
they walked for some distance in silence.
"Why are you going this way?" he asked suspiciously, when she turned
into a street that led in the opposite direction to that which they
should have taken.
"I'm not going home. I couldn't sit alone in the dark with that ...
that thing before my eyes."
"Who asked you to sit alone?--Where are you going?"
"I don't know ... where I like."
"That's no answer."
"And if I don't choose to answer?--I don't want you. I want to be
alone. I'm sick of your perpetual bad-temper, and your eternal
self-righteousness."
He laughed, just as she had done. The sound enraged her.
"Oh, the dead at least are at peace!" she cried.
"Yes! ... why don't you say it? You wish you were lying there--at peace
from me!"
"Why should I say what you know so well?"
"Go and do it then!--who's hindering you?"
"For you?--kill myself for you?"
One word gave another; they pressed forward, in the falling dusk, like
two distraught creatures, heedless of the notice they attracted, or of
who should hear their bitter words. And because their gestures were, to
some extent, regulated by the conventions of the street, because they
could not face each other with flaming eyes, and throw out hands and
arms to emphasise what they said, their words were all the more cruel.
Louise made straight for home now; she escaped into the house, banging
the door. Maurice strode down the street, in a tumult of resentment,
vowing never to return.
Avery Hill was buried the following afternoon. Maurice went to the
funeral, because, since he had seen the dead girl's body at the
mortuary, he had been invaded by a kind of pity for her, lying alone at
the mercy of barber and LEICHENFRAU. And so, towards three o'clock, he
fought his way against a cutting wind to the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF.
A mere handful of people stood round the grave. In addition to the
English chaplain, and a couple of diggers, there were present Dove, two
Americans, and a young clerk from the consul's office, who was happy to
be associated, in any fashion, with the English residents. It was the
coldest day of that winter. Over the earth swept a harsh, dry wind,
which cut like the blade of a knife, and forced stinging tears from the
eyes. This wind had dried the frozen surface of the ground to the
impenetrability of iron; loose earth crumbled before it like powder.
Grass and shrubs had shrivelled, blighted by its breath; the bare trees
were sooty-black against the sky. So intense was the prevailing
sensation of icy dryness that it seemed as if the earth would never
again know moisture. People's faces grew as wizened as the skins of old
apples; throats and lungs were choked by the grey dust, which whirled
through the streets, and made breathing an effort.
In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shelter of
the houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept as over the
surface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the extraordinary
difficulty they had had in digging the grave; the earth that had been
thrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen lumps. These two men stood in
the background while the service was going on, and stamped their feet
and beat their hands, encased in monstrous woollen gloves, to keep the
blood flowing. The English chaplain, a tall, cadaverous man, with
sunken cheeks and a straw-coloured beard, had wound a red and white
comforter over his surplice; the five young men pulled down the
ear-flaps of their caps, and stood, with high-drawn shoulders,
burrowing their hands in their pockets. The chaplain gabbled the few
necessary prayers: they were inaudible to his hearers; for the rushing
wind carried them straight over his shoulder into space. He was not
more than a bare ten minutes over the service. Then the diggers came
forward to lower the coffin. Owing to the stiffness of their hands, the
ropes slid from their grasp, and the coffin fell forward into the hard
yellow grave with a bump. The young men took the obligatory handfuls of
earth, and struck the side of the coffin with them as gently as
possible. With the last word still on his lips, the chaplain shut his
book and fled; and the rest hastily dispersed. Maurice shook off the
young clerk, who was murmuring unintelligible words of sympathy, and
left the cemetery in the wake of the two Americans, for whom a droschke
was in waiting to take them back to the town.
"Waal, I'm sort o' relieved that wasn't MY funeral," he heard one of
them say.
He walked at full speed to restore his famished circulation. When he
was in the heart of the town again, he entered a cafe; and there he
remained, with his elbows on the little marble table, letting the scene
he had just come through pass once more before his mind. There had been
something grotesquely indecent about the haste of every one concerned:
the chaplain, gabbling like a parrot, out of regard for the safety of
his own lungs; the hurry-skurry of the diggers, whose thoughts were no
doubt running on the size of their gratuities; the openly expressed
satisfaction of the few mourners, when they were free to hurry off
again, as in hurry they had arrived. Not one present but had counted
the minutes, at the expiry of which the dead girl would be consigned to
her appointed hole. What an ending! All the talent, the incipient
genius, that had been in her, thrust away with the greatest possible
despatch, buried out of sight in the hideously hard, cold earth.
Snuffed out like a candle, and with as little ceremony, was all the
warm, complex life that had made up this one, throbbing bit of
humanity: for what it had been, not a soul alive now cared. And what a
night, too, for one's first night underground! Brr!--At the thought of
it, he drank another cup of coffee, and a fiery, stirring liqueur. But
the sense of depression clung to him, and, as he walked home, he
regretted the impulse that had led him to attend the funeral. For all
the melancholy of valediction was his. The dead girl was free--and he
had a sudden vision of her, as she had lain in the mortuary, with the
look of superhuman peace on her face. Over the head of this, he was
sarcastic at his own expense. For though she WERE being treated like a
piece of lumber, what did it matter to her? Beneath the screening lid,
she continued to sleep, tranquil, undisturbed. On the other hand, how
absurd it was that he, who had cared little for her in life, should in
this wise constitute himself her only mourner! And, mentally and
physically, he now jerked himself to rights, and even began to whistle,
as he went, in an attempt to seem at harmony with himself. But the tune
that rose to his lips was Krafft's song, THE ROSE OF SHARON, and he
straightway broke off, in disgust and confusion.
In his room, as soon as he had struck a match to light the lamp, he saw
that a letter was lying on the table. By the gradual spread of the
light, he made out that it bore an Austrian stamp, and directly he took
it in his hand, he recognised the writing. Heinz!--it was from Heinz!
He tore open the envelope with unsteady fingers; what could Heinz have
to write to him about? Instinctively, he connected it in some way with
the events of the afternoon. But it was a very brief note, covering
hardly a page of the paper. Standing beside the lamp, Maurice held the
sheet in the circle of light, and ran his eye over the few lines. He
took them in, in a flash, that is to say, he read them automatically;
but their sense did not penetrate his brain. He tried again, and still
he could not grasp what they meant; still again, and slowly, word by
word, till he could have repeated them by heart; but always without
getting at their inner meaning. Then, however, and all of a sudden, as
if some inner consciousness had understood them, and now gave bodily
warning of it; suddenly, his knees began to shake, and he was forced to
sit down. Sitting, he continued to stare at the page of writing before
him, with contracted pupils. He commenced to read again, and even said
the first line or two of the letter aloud, as if that might aid him.
But the paper fell from his hand, and he gazed, instead, into the flame
of the lamp, right into the inmost flame, till he was blind with it.
His head fell forward, and lay on his hands, and on the rustling sheet
of paper.
"God in Heaven!"
He heard himself say it, and was even conscious of the fact that, like
every mortal in the throes of a strong emotion, he, too, called on God.
A long and profound silence ensued. It went on and on, persisted, was
about to become eternal, when it was rudely broken by the sound of a
child's cry. He raised his head. The walls swam round him: in spite of
the coldness of the night and the fact that the room was unheated, he
was clammy with perspiration. The skin of his face, too, had a
peculiar, drawn feeling, as if it were a mask that was too tight for
it. He shivered. Then his eye fell on the letter lying open on the
table. Without a moment's hesitation, without waiting even to put the
lamp out, he seized it, and went headlong from the house.
But he was strangely unequal to exertion. He felt a craving for
stimulant, and entering a wine-shop, drank a couple of cognacs. His
strength came back to him; people moved out of his way; he had energy
enough to climb the stair, and to go through the business of unlocking
the door.
At his abrupt entrance, Louise concealed something in a drawer, and
turned the key on it. But Maurice was too self-absorbed to heed her
action, or consciously to hear her exclamation at his haggard
appearance. He shut the door, crossed to where she was standing, and,
without speaking, pulled her nearer to the lamp. By its light, he
scanned her face with a desperate eagerness.
"What is it? What's the matter?"
At the sound of her voice, the tension of the past hour relaxed. He let
his head fall on her shoulder, and shut his eyes, swaying as she swayed
beneath his weight.
"Forgive me! ... forgive me!"
"You've been drinking, I think." But she held still under his grasp.
"Yes, I have. Louise! ... tell me it's a horrible mistake. Help me, you
MUST help me!"
"How can I help you, if you won't tell me what the matter is?" She
believed him to be half drunk, and spoke as to a drunken person,
without meaning much.
"Yes, yes ... I will. Only give me time."
But he postponed beginning. Leaning more heavily on her, he pressed his
lips to the stuff of her dress. He would have liked to sleep, just
where he was; indeed, he was invaded by the desire to sleep, never
again to unclose his eyes. But she grew restless, and tried to draw her
shoulder away. Then he looked at her, and a feverish stream of words,
half self-recriminative, half in self-defence, burst from his lips. But
they had little to do with the matter in hand, and were
incomprehensible to her. "It has been a terrible nightmare. And only
you can drive it away." As he spoke, he looked, with a sudden
suspicion, right into her eyes. But they neither faltered nor grew
uneasy.
"It will turn out to be nothing, I know," she said coldly. "You're
always devising some new way of tormenting me."
Her words roused him. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew from it Krafft's
letter. "Is that nothing? Read it and tell me. I found it at home on my
table."
Louise took it with unmoved indifference. But directly she saw whose
handwriting it was, her face grew grave and attentive. She looked back
from the envelope to him, to see what he was thinking, to learn how
much he knew. In spite of his roughness there was a hungry, imploring
look in his eyes, an appeal to her to put him out of misery, and in the
way he desired. And, as always, before such a look, her own face
hardened.
"Read it! What he dares to write to me!"
Slowly, as if it were impossible for her to hurry, she drew the sheet
from the crumpled envelope and smoothed it out. As she did so, she half
turned away. But not so far that he could not see the dark, disfiguring
blood stain her neck and blotch her cheek--even her ear grew crimson.
She read deliberately, lingering over each word, but the instant she
had finished, she crushed the paper to a ball, and threw it to the
other end of the room.
"The scoundrel!" she cried. "Oh, the scoundrel!" Clenching her two
hands, she pressed them to her face.
Maurice did not say a word; he hardly dared to draw breath, for fear
some sign of her guilt might escape him. Leaning against the table, he
marked each tell-tale quiver of lip or eyelid.
"The blackguard!" she cried again, shaken by rage. "If I had him here,
I'd strangle him with my own hands!"
He gloated over her anger. "Yes," he said in a low voice. "I, too ...
could kill him."
There was a pause, in which each followed out a possible means of
revenge.
"Now you see," he said. "When I got home--when I found that--I thought
I should go mad."
Reminded thus, of his share in the matter, Louise turned her head, and
considered him. Her face was tense.
"Forgive me!" said Maurice, and held out his hands to her.
She gave him another look of the same kind. "I forgive YOU. What for?"
"Because ... since I got it, I've been thinking vile things."
"Oh, that!" She moved away, and gave a curt laugh, which met him like a
stab. But she had no consideration for him: she had only room in her
mind for Krafft's treachery. "I could kill him," she said again.
"Don't.... Leave me alone!"--this to Maurice, who was trying to take
her hand. "Don't touch me!"
"Not touch you!--why not?" In an instant his softness passed over into
suspicion: it was like a dry pile that had waited for the match. "I not
touch you?" he repeated. "Do you want to make me believe that what he
says there is true?"
"Believe what you like."
"But that's just what I won't do. Turn here! Look me in the face! Now
tell me it's a lie."
She struggled to free her hands. "You hurt me, Maurice! Let me go!"
"Be careful!--or I shall hurt you more than this. Now answer me!"
"You!--with your ridiculous heroics! Be careful yourself!"
His grip of her grew tighter.
"For your precious peace of mind then--that you may not be kept in
suspense: what Heinz says there is--true!"
He did not at once grasp what she meant. He stood staring stupidly at
her, still clutching her hands. With a determined effort, Louise
wrenched them away.
"Don't you hear what I say? It's true--all true--every word of it!"
At the cruel repetition, he went pale, and after that, seemed to go on
growing paler, until his face was like a sheet of paper. A horrible
silence ensued; neither dared to let go of the other's eyes.
"My God!" he said at last. "My God!"
He sat down at the table, and buried his face in his arms. Louise did
not move; she stood waiting, her hands, which were red and sore,
pressed against her sides. And as minutes passed, and he did not stir,
she began in a vacant way to count the ticks of the clock. If he did
not speak soon, did not go on with what had to come, and get it over,
she would be forced to scream. A scream was mounting in her throat.
"When was it? ... How? ... Why?"
She made no answer.
He straightened himself, holding on to the table. "And if that letter
hadn't come, you wouldn't have told me?"
Again she did not reply. He sprang to his feet, interpreting her
inability to bring forth a sound as mere contemptuous defiance.
"WHY did you tell me? Did I need to know?" he cried, loudly, and, in
the confines of the room, his voice had the force of a shout. As she
still remained dumb, he leaned across the table and actually shouted at
her. "Any more?--are there any more? He won't have been the only one.
Tell me, I say! Good God! Don't you hear me?" The arteries in his
temples were beating like two separate hearts. As nothing he said would
make her open her lips, he snatched up her hands again, and dragged her
a few steps forward--this, to prove to himself that he had at least
bodily power over her. "How dare you stand there and say it's true! You
brazen, shameless----!"
She thought he was going to strike her, and moved her head quickly to
one side. The movement did not escape him; he was amazed at it, and
horrified by it. "You're afraid of me, are you? You expect to be
beaten, when you make a confession of that sort?" And as she kept her
head bent, in suspense, he shouted: "Very well, you shall have
something to be afraid of ... you--!" and lifting his hand, he struck
her a blow on the shoulder. It was given with force, and she sank to
the floor, where she lay in a heap, screening her face with her arm.
The first taste of his greater strength was like the flavour of blood
to a beast of prey. In her mind, she might defy him, physically he was
her master; and he struck her, again and again. But he did not wring
any sound from her. She lay face downwards, and let the blows fall.
When his first onslaught of rage had spent itself, a glimmering of
reason returned to him. He staggered to his feet, and looked down with
horror at the prostrate figure. "My God, what am I doing?--what have I
done?" A sudden fear swept through him that he had killed her.
But now, for the first time, she spoke. "It's true!" he heard her say.
At these words, the desire actually to kill her was so overwhelming
that he moved precipitately away, and, in order not to see her, pressed
his smarting hand to his eyes. But in the greater clearness of thought
this shutting off of externals brought with it, the ultimate meaning of
what she had done was revealed to him; he saw red through his closed
lids, and, going back to her, he struck her anew. The knowledge that,
under her dressing-gown, she had nothing on but a thin nightgown, gave
him pleasure; he felt each of the blows fall full and hard on her firm
flesh.
From time to time, she turned her face to cry: "It's true ... it is
true!" deliberately inciting him to continue.
But the moment came when his arm sank powerless to his side, when, if
his life had depended on it, he could not have struck another blow.
With difficulty, he rose to his feet; and such was the apathy that came
over him, that it was all he could do to drag himself to the sofa. Once
there, he leaned back and closed his eyes.
For half an hour or more, neither of them stirred. Then, when she
understood that he had done, that he was not coming back to her, Louise
pulled herself into a sitting position, and from there to her feet. She
could hardly stand; her head swam; not an inch of her body but ached
and stung. Her exaltation had left her now; she began to feel sick,
and, going over to the bed, she fell heavily upon it.
Maurice heard her movements; but so incapable did he feel of further
effort that lie remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A new sound
roused him: she was shivering, and with such violence that the bedstead
was shaken. After a crucial struggle with himself, he rose, and crossed
the room. She was lying outside the bedclothes. He pulled off an
eider-down quilt, and spread it over her. As he did this, his arms were
round her, all the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished,
he did not remove them, but, kneeling down beside the bed, pressed his
face to the quilt, and to the warm body below.
And so the night wore away.
XI.
Throughout February, and the greater part of March, the HAUPTPRUFUNGEN
were held in the Conservatorium: twice a week, from six to eight
o'clock in the evening, the concert hall was crammed with an eager
crowd. To these concerts, the outside public was admitted, the critics
were invited, and the performances received notices in the newspapers;
in short, the outgoing student was, for the first time, treated like a
real debutant. Concerted music was accompanied by the full orchestra;
the large gallery that ran round the hall was opened up; and the girls,
whose eager faces hung over its edge, were more brightly decked than
usual, in ribbons and laces. Some of those who stepped down the
platform seemed thoroughly to relish their first taste of publicity;
others, on the contrary, were awkward and abashed, and did not venture
to notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were
players as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who
were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely
escaped a total fiasco.
The success of the year was Dove, in his performance of Chopin's
Concerto in E minor. Dove's unshakable self-possession was here of
immense value to him. Not a note was missed, not a turn slurred; the
runs and brilliant passage-work of the concerto left his fingers like
showers of pearls; his touch had the necessary delicacy, and, in
addition to this, his reading was quite a revelation to his friends in
the matter of TEMPERAMENT. It is true that Schwarz prohibited any
undignified display of the emotional side of Chopin; the interpretation
had to be on classical lines; but even the most determined opponents of
Schwarz's method were forced to acknowledge that Dove made no mean show
of the poetic contents of the music. The master himself, in his
imperturbable way--he chose to act as if, all along, he had had this
surprise for people up his sleeve--the master was in transports. His
stern face wore an almost genial expression; he smiled, and talked
loudly, and, when the performance was over, hurried to and fro, full of
importance, shaking hands and accepting congratulations, with a fine
shade of reserve. Dove's fellow-pupils were enraptured for Schwarz's
sake; for, undeniably, the master's numbers this year were poor,
compared with those of other teachers. It behoved the remainder to make
the most of this isolated triumph; they did so, and were entertained by
Schwarz at a special dinner, where many healths were drunk.
Those who had "made their PRUFUNG," as the phrase ran, were, as a rule,
glad to leave Leipzig when the ordeal was behind them. But Dove, who,
on the day following his performance, when his name was to be read in
the newspapers accompanied by various epithets of praise, had proposed
and been accepted, and was this time returning to England a solemnly
engaged man--Dove waited a week for his fiancee and her family, who had
not been prepared for so sudden a move. He was the man of the hour. As
a response to the flattering notices, he had called on all his critics,
and been received by several; and he could hardly walk a street-length,
without running the gauntlet of some belated congratulation. Schwarz
had spoken seriously to him about prosecuting his studies for a further
year, with the not impossible prospect of a performance in the
Gewandhaus at the end of it; but Dove had laid before his master the
reasons why this could not be: he was no longer a free man; there were
now other wishes to be consulted in addition to his own. Besides, if
the truth must be told, Dove had higher aims, and these led him
imperatively back to England.
Madeleine was ready to leave a couple of days after her last
performance. Her plans for the future were fixed and sure. She had long
ago given up making adventurous schemes for storming America: that had
merely been her contribution to the romance of the place. Now she was
hastening away to spend the month of March in Paris; she was not due at
the school to which she was returning till the end of April; and, in
Paris, she intended to take a brief course of finishing lessons, to rub
off what she called "German thoroughness." She, too, had made a highly
successful exit, though without creating a furore like Dove. Since all
she did was well done, it was not possible for her to be a surprise to
anyone.
And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was over, the
last afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went to the railway
station to make arrangements about her luggage. On her way home, she
entered Klemm's music-shop, where she stood, for a considerable time,
taking leave of one and another. When she emerged again, the town had
assumed that spectral look, which, towards evening, made the quaint old
gabled streets so attractive.
For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret at having
to leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, her years of study;
but she was now quite ready to advance, curious to attack the future,
and to dominate that also. Still, the dusk on the familiar streets
inclined her to feel sentimental. "This time tomorrow, I'll be hundreds
of miles away," she said to herself, "and probably shall never see the
old place again." As she walked, she looked back upon her residence
there--already somewhat in the light of a remembrance--weighing what it
had been worth to her. Part of it was intimately associated with
Maurice Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. Of late he had passed
out of her life; she had been too busy to think of him. Now, however,
that she was at the end of this period, the fancy seized her to see him
again; and she took a resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant in
her for some time.
"I don't see why I shouldn't," she reasoned. "No one will know. And
even if they do, I'm leaving, and it won't matter."
And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked up her
steps in the direction of the BRAUSTRASSE--a street which she disliked,
and never entered if she could avoid it. If he had lived in a better
neighbourhood, things might have gone better with him, she mused; for
Madeleine was a staunch believer in the influence of surroundings, and
could not, for instance, understand a person who lived in dirt and
disorder having any but a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from door
to door, scanning the numbers, with her head poked a little forward and
to one side, like a bird's. As she ascended the stair, she raised her
skirts, and her nostrils twitched displeased.
Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at Madeleine with
distrust.
"No, he's not," she replied. "And what's more, I couldn't say, if you
were to pay me, when he will be."
But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of any landlady
alive. "Why? Is he so irregular?" she asked. She had placed her foot in
the opening of the door, and now, by a skilful movement, inserted
herself bodily into the passage.
Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you
like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the
threshold, drying her hands on her apron.
"Are you a friend of his, may I ask?" she inquired.
"Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think I'd be here if I
weren't?" said Madeleine, looking her up and down.
"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why,
because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know
how he's going on--that's why, Fraulein!"
"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked
round her for a chair.
Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind
her hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case."
"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered
Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt
very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise,
which stood on the lid of the piano.
"I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a
bad, bold face it is, too."
"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to
you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory.
"Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a
spice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now--though of
course one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes
against my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting
as he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man
anywhere than Herr Guest--if I had a complaint, it was that he was too
much of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heed
for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to live
with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now there
isn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please
him anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he
doesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang on
him."
"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way,
with her eye on the main points of probable offence.
"Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it
mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the
hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like
their liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a
young fellow here----"
"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said
Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of
it.--A very good bargain!"
She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising that
she had met her match in this sharp-tongued young lady, curbed her
temper, and launched out into the history of a former lodger.
It was a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against the
door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting
sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the
writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and
pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes.
Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the
door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove.
Everything was of an extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showing
through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A
couple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the
bureau--that was all that had been done towards giving the place a
homely air. It was like a room that had never properly been lived in.
While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was heard in the
front door, and Frau. Krause, interrupted in her story, had just time
to tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: "Here he is!" and dart out of the
room. Not so promptly, however, but what Maurice saw where she came
from. Madeleine heard them bandying words in the passage.
The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, entering hotly, threw
his hat on the table. He did not perceive his visitor till it was too
late.
"Madeleine! You here!" he exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment. "I
beg your pardon. I didn't see you," and he made haste to recover his
hat.
"Yes, don't faint, it's I, Maurice.--But what's the matter? Why are you
so angry with the person? Does she pry on you?"
"Pry!" he echoed, and his colour deepened. "Pry's not the word for it.
She ransacks everything I have. I never come home but what I find she
has overhauled something, though I've forbidden her to enter the room."
"Why don't you--or rather, why didn't you move? It's not much of a
place, I'm sure."
"Move?" he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as he spoke, he
looked incredulously at Madeleine. He had hung his coat and hat on a
peg, and now came forward to the table. "Move?" he said once again, and
prolonged the word as though the channel of thought it opened up was
new to him.
"Good gracious, yes!--If one's not satisfied with one's rooms, one
moves, that's all. There's nothing strange about it."
He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and was about to
draw up a chair, when his eye caught a letter that was lying on the
lowered flap of the bureau. In patent agitation, and without excusing
himself, he seized it and tore it open. Madeleine saw his face darken.
He read the letter through twice, from beginning to end, then tore it
into a dozen pieces and scattered them on the shelf.
"No bad news, I hope?"
He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. "That depends on
how you look at it, Madeleine," he said, and laughed in an unpleasant
manner.
After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring at the
scraps of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she waited. Then she
saw herself forced to recall him to the fact of her presence.
"Could you spare me a little attention now?" she asked. At her words,
he jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought his wandering thoughts
home. "I can't sit here for ever you know," she added.
"I beg your pardon." He came up to the table, and took the chair he had
previously had his hand on. "The fact is I--Can I do anything for you,
Madeleine?"
"For me? Oh, dear, no!--You are surprised to find me here, no doubt!
But as I'm leaving to-morrow morning, I thought I'd run up and say
good-bye to you--that's all. A case of Mohammed and the mountain, you
see."
"Leaving? To-morrow?"
"Yes.--Goodness, there's nothing wonderful in that, is there? Most
people do leave some time or other, you know." His reply was inaudible.
"It was very good of you to look me up," he threw in as an afterthought.
Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her lips, had
chanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had laid on the
table, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in spite of herself by
the uncared-for condition of the nails. These were bitten, and broken,
and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware of her intent gaze, looked down to
see what it was at, hastily withdrew his hands and hid them in his
pockets.
"This is the first time I've been in your den, you know," she said
abruptly. "Really, Maurice, you might have done better. I don't know
how you've managed to put up with it so long."
"My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live in a palace?"
"A palace?--absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seventeen marks for
this hole. Well, I could have found you any number of better places for
the same money--if you had come to me."
"You're very kind. But it has done me well enough."
"So it appears."
Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking up some
neutral subject. "Are those your people?" she asked, and nodded at the
photograph of a family-group, which stood on the top shelf of the
bureau. "Three boys, are you not? You are like your mother," and she
stared, with unfeigned curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressed
out in their best coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellery.
"Good God, Madeleine!" Maurice burst out at this, his loosely kept
patience escaping him. "You didn't come here, I suppose, to remark on
my family?"
"Well, I can't congratulate you on an improvement in your manners,
since I saw you last."
"I am not aware of having changed."
"As well for you, perhaps. However, I'll tell you about myself, if it
interests you." She turned her cool, judicial gaze on him again; and
now she set before him her projects for the future. But though he kept
his eyes fastened on her face, she saw that he was not listening to
what she said, or, at most, that he only half heard it; for, when she
ceased to speak, he did not notice her silence.
She waited, curious to see what would come next, and presently he
echoed, in his vague way: "Paris, did you say?--Really?"
"Yes--Paris: the capital of France.--I said that, and a good deal more,
which I don't think you heard.--And now I won't take up your precious
time any longer.--You've nothing new to tell me, I suppose? You still
intend staying on here, and fighting out the problem of existence?
Well, when you have starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some one
will let me know. I'll come over for the funeral."
She rose, and began to button her jacket.
"And England has absolutely no chance? English music must continue to
languish, without hope of reform?"
"How can you remember such rot! I was a terrible fool when I talked
like that."
"I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your acquired wisdom.
And I won't go from here without offering you congratulations, hearty
congratulations, on the muddle you've made of things."
"That's entirely my own affair."
"You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else would want the
responsibility of it?"
She went out without a further word. But on the landing at the bottom
of the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. She felt annoyed
with herself that she had allowed an unfriendly tone to dominate their
brief interview. This was probably the last time she would see him; the
last chance she would have of telling him just what she thought of him.
And viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificial
delicacy of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vigorously,
and, not being used to indecision, turned as she did so, and began to
ascend the stairs again. Brushing past Frau Krause, she reopened,
without knocking, the door of Maurice's room.
He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and at her entrance
was bending over something that lay there, so engrossed that he did not
at once raise his head.
"Good gracious! What are you doing?" escaped her involuntarily.
At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writingtable,
tried to screen it from her eyes.
She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. "Yes,
it's me again," she said with determination. "And I suppose you'll want
to accuse me of prying, too, like that female outside.--Look here: it's
ludicrous for us who have been friends so long to part in this fashion.
And I, for one, don't intend to do it. There's something I want to say
before I go--you may be angry and offended if you like; I don't
care"--for he frowned forbiddingly. "I'm no denser than other people;
and I know just as well as every one else the wretched mess you've got
yourself into--one would have to be blind and deaf, indeed, not to
know.--Now, look here, Maurice! You once said to me, you may remember,
that if you had a sister you'd like her to be something like me. Will
you look on me as that sister for a little, and let me give you some
sound advice? I told you I was going to Paris, and that I had a clear
month there. Well, now, throw your things together and come with me.
You haven't had a decent holiday since you've been here. You need
freshening up.--Or if not Paris--Paris isn't a necessity--we'll go down
by Munich and the Brenner to Italy, and I'll be cicerone. I'll act as
banker, too, and you can regard it as a loan in the meantime, and pay
me back when you're richer.--Now what do you say? Doesn't the plan
tempt you?"
"What I say?" he echoed, and looked round him a little helplessly.
"Why, Madeleine ... It seems you are determined to run off with me.
Once it was America, and now it's Italy or Paris."
"Come, say you'll consent, or at least consider it."
"My dear Madeleine! You're all that is good and kind. But you know
you're only talking nonsense."
She did not answer him at once. "The thing is this," she said with some
hesitation. "I wasn't quite honest in what I said to you a few minutes
ago. I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am to a certain degree
responsible, even to blame, for much of ... what has happened here. And
it isn't a pleasant feeling, Maurice."
"My dear girl!" he said again. "If it's any consolation to you to know
it, I owe you the biggest debt of my life."
"Then you decline my proposal, do you?"
"You're the same good friend you always were. But you're making a
mountain out of a molehill. What's all this fuss about? Merely because
I haven't chosen to work my fingers to the bone, and wear my nerves to
tatters over that old farce of a PRUFUNG. As for my choosing to stay
here, instead of going home like the rest of you--well, that's a matter
of taste, too. Some people--like our friend Dove--want affluence, and a
fixed position in the provinces. Frankly, I don't. I'd rather scrape
along here, as best I can. That's the whole matter in a nutshell, and
it's nothing to make a to-do about. For though you think I'm a fool,
and can't help telling me so--that, too, is a matter of opinion."
"Well, I don't intend to apologise for myself at this date, be sure of
that! And now I'll go. For if you're resolved to hold me at arm's
length, there's nothing more to be said.--No, stop a minute, though.
Here's my address in England. If ever you should return to join us
benighted ignorants, you might let me know. Or if you find you can't
get on here--I mean if it's quite impossible--I have money, you know
... and should be glad--at a proper percentage, of course," she added
ironically.
"That's hardly likely to happen."
She laid the card on the table. "You never can tell.--Well, good-bye,
then, and in spite of your obstinacy, I'll perhaps be able to do you a
good turn yet, Maurice Guest."
As soon as he heard the front door close, he returned to his occupation
of piecing together the bits of the letter. Ever since he had torn it
up--throughout her visit--his brain had been struggling to recall its
exact contents, and without success; for, owing to Madeleine's
presence, he had read it hastily. Otherwise, what he had done to-day
did not differ from his usual method of proceeding. This was not the
first horrible unsigned letter he had received, and he could never
prevail on himself to throw them in the fire, unopened. He read them
through, two or three times, then, angered by their contents and by his
own weakness, tore them to fragments. But the hints and aspersions they
contained, remained imprinted on his mind. In this case, Madeleine's
distracting appearance had enfeebled his memory, and he worked long and
patiently until the sheet lay fitted together again before him. When he
knew its contents by heart, he struck some matches, and watched the
pieces curl and blacken.
Then he left the house.
Her room was in darkness. He stretched himself on the sofa to wait for
her return.
The words of the letter danced like a writing of fire before him; he
lay there and re-read them; but without anger. What they stated might
be true, also it might not; he would never know. For these letters,
which he was ashamed of himself for opening, and still more for
remembering, had not been mentioned between them, but were added to
that category of things they now tacitly agreed to avoid. In his heart,
he knew that he cherished the present state of uncertainty; it was a
twilight state, without crudities or sharp outlines; and it was still
possible to drift and dream in it. Whereas if another terrible
certainty, like the last, descended on him, he would be forced to
marshal his energies, and to suffer afresh. It was better not to know.
As long as definite knowledge failed him, he could give her the benefit
of the doubt. And whether what the letters affirmed was true or not,
hours came when she still belonged wholly to him. Whatever happened on
her absences from him, as soon as the four walls of the room shut them
in again, she was his; and each time she returned, a burning gratitude
for the reprieve filled him anew.
But there was also another reason why he did not breathe a word to her
of his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him--the
dread of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and he
had learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had
passed now, since the night on which he had made his last stand against
her weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had
seemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about a slackening of
the tension between them. The worst that could happen had happened, and
he had survived it: he had not put an end either to himself or to her.
On the contrary, he had accepted the fact--as he now saw that he would
accept every fact concerning her, whether for good or evil. And matters
having reached this point, a kind of lull ensued: for a few days they
had even caught a glimpse again of the old happiness. But the pause was
short-lived: it was like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into
water, which continue just so long as the impetus lasts. Louise had
been a little awed by his greater strength, when she had lain cowering
on the ground before him. But not many days elapsed before her eyes
were wide open with incredulous amazement. When she understood, as she
soon did, that her shameless admission, and still more, his punishment
of her for it, was not to be followed up by any new development; that,
in place of subduing her mentally as well, he was going to be content
to live on as they had been doing; that, in fact, he had already
dropped back into the old state of things, before she was well aware of
what was happening: then her passing mood of submission swept over into
her old flamboyant contempt for him. The fact of his having beaten her
became a weapon in her hands; and she used it unsparingly. To her
taunts, he had no answer to make. For, the madness once passed, he
could not conceive how he had been capable of such a thing; in his sane
moments of dejection and self-distrust, he could not have raised his
hand against her, though his life were at stake.
He had never been able to drag from her a single one of the reasons
that had led to her mad betrayal of him. On this point she was
inflexible. In the course of that long night which he had spent on his
knees by her bed, he had persecuted her to disclose her motive. But he
might as well have spoken to the wind; his questioning elicited no
reply.. Again and again, he had upbraided her: "But you didn't care for
Heinz! He was nothing to you!" and she neither assented nor gainsaid
him. Once, however, she had broken in on him: "You believed bad of me
long before there was any to believe. Now you have something to go on!"
And still again, when the sluggish dawn was creeping in, she had
suddenly turned her head: "But now you can go away. You're free to
leave me. Nothing binds you to a woman like me--who can't be content
with one man." Dizzy with fatigue, he had answered: "No--if you think
that--if you did it just to be rid of me--you're mistaken!"
From this night on, they had never reverted to the subject again--which
is not to say that his brain did not work furiously at it; the search
for a clue, for the hidden motive, was now his eternal occupation. But
to her he was silent, sheerly from the dread of again receiving the
answer: take me as I am, or leave me! In hours such as the present, or
in the agony of sleepless nights, these thoughts rent his brain. The
question was such an involved one, and he never seemed to come any
nearer a solution of it. Sometimes, he was actually tempted to believe
what her words implied: that it had been wilfully done, with a view to
getting rid of him. But against this, his reason protested; for, if the
letter from Krafft had not arrived, he would have known nothing. He did
not believe she would have told him--would there, indeed, have been any
need for her to do so? Nothing was changed between them; she lived at
his side, just as before; and Krafft was out of the way.--At other
times, though, he asked himself if he were not a fool to be surprised
at what had occurred. Had not all roads led here? Had he not, as she
most truly said, for long harboured the unworthiest suspicions of
her?--suspicions which were tantamount to an admission on his part that
his love was no longer enough for her. To have done this, and
afterwards to behave as if she had been guilty of an unpardonable
crime, was illogical and unjust.--And yet again, there came moments
when, in a barbarous clearness of vision, he seemed to get nearest to
the truth. Under certain circumstances, so he now told himself, he
would gladly and straightway have forgiven her. If she had been drawn,
irresistibly, to another, by one of those sudden outbursts of passion
before which she was incapable of remaining steadfast; if she had been
attracted, like this, more than half unwilling, wholly humiliated,
penitent in advance, yet powerless--then, oh then, how willingly he
would have made allowance for her weakness! But Krafft, of all
people!--Krafft, of whom she had spoken to him with derisive
contempt!--this cold and calculated deception of him with some one who
made not the least appeal to her!--Cold and calculated, did he say? No,
far from it! What COULD it have been but the sensual caprice of a
moment?--but a fleeting, manlike desire for the piquancy of change?
These and similar thoughts ran their whirling circles behind his closed
eyes, as he lay in the waning twilight of the March evening, which
still struggled with the light of the lamp. But they were hard pressed
by the contents of the letter: on this night he foresaw that his fixed
idea threatened to divide up into two branches--and he did not know
whether to be glad or to regret it. But he admitted to himself that one
of these days he would be forced to take measures for preserving his
sanity, by somehow dragging the truth from her; better still, by
following her on one of her evening absences, to discover for himself
where she went, and whether what the anonymous writer asserted was
true. If he could only have controlled his brain! The perpetually
repeated circles it drove in--if these could once have been brought to
a stop, all the rest of him infinitely preferred not to know.
Meanwhile, the shadows deepened, and his subconsciousness never ceased
to listen, with an intentness which no whirligigs of thought could
distract, for the sound of her step in the passage. When, at length,
some short time after darkness had set in, he heard her at the door, he
drew a long, sighing breath of relief, as if--though this was unavowed
even to himself--he had been afraid he might listen in vain. And, as
always, when the suspense was over, and she was under the same roof
with him again, he was freed from so intolerable a weight that he was
ready to endure whatever she might choose to put upon him, and for his
part to make no demands.
Louise entered languidly; and so skilled had he grown at interpreting
her moods that he knew from her very walk which of them she was in. He
looked surreptitiously at her, and saw that she was wan and tired. It
had been a mild, enervating day; her hair was blown rough about her
face. He watched her before the mirror take off hat and veil, with
slow, yet impatient fingers; watched her hands in her hair, which she
did not trouble to rearrange, but only smoothed back on either side.
She had not, even in entering, cast a glance at him, and, recognising
the rasped state of her nerves, he had the intent to be cautious. But
his resolutions, however good, were not long proof against her
over-emphasised neglect of his 'presence. Her wilful preoccupation with
herself, and with inanimate objects, exasperated him. Everything was of
more worth to her than he was' and she delighted to show it.
"Haven't you a word for me? Don't you see I'm here?" he asked at length.
Even now she did not look towards him as she answered:
"Of course, I see you. But shall I speak next to the furniture of the
room?"
"So!--That's what I am, is it?--A piece of your furniture!"
"Yes.--No, worse. Furniture is silent."
She was changing her walking-dress for the dressing-gown. This done,
she dabbed powder on her face out of a small oval glass pot--a habit of
hers to which he had never grown accustomed.
"Stop putting that stuff on your face! You know I hate it."
Her only answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the powder was
strewn over the front of her dress and the floor. The clothes she had
taken off were flung on a chair; as she brushed past them, they fell to
the ground. She did not stoop to pick them up, but pushed them out of
the way with her foot. Sitting down in the rocking-chair, she closed
her eyes, and spread her arms out along the arms of the chair.
He could not see her from where he lay, but she was within reach of
him, and, after a brief, unhappy silence, he put out his hand and drew
the chair towards him, urging it forward, inch by inch, until it was
beside the sofa. Then he pulled her head down, so that it also lay on
the cushion, and he could feel her hair against his.
"How you hate me!" he said in a low voice, and as though he were
speaking to himself. Laying her hand on his forehead, he made of it a
screen for his eyes. "Who could have foreseen this!" he said again, in
the same toneless way.
Louise lay still, and did not speak.
"Why do you stay with me?" he went on, looking out from under her hand.
"I often ask myself that. For you're free to come and go as you choose."
Her eyes opened at this, though he did not see it. "And I choose to
stay here! How often am I to tell you that? Why do you come back on it
to-night? I'm tired--tired."
"I know you are. I saw it as soon as you came in. It's been a tiring
day, and you probably ... walked too far."
With a jerk, she drew her hand out of his, and sat upright in her
chair. Something, a mere tone, the slight pause, in his apparently
harmless words, incensed her. "Too far, did I?--Oh, to-night at least,
be honest! Why don't you ask me straight out where I have been?--and
what I have done? Can't you, for once, be man enough to put an open
question?"
"Nothing was further from my mind than to make implications. It's you
who're so suspicious. Just as if you had a bad conscience--something
really to conceal."
"Take care!--or I shall tell you--where I've been! And you might regret
it."
"No. For God's sake!--no more confessions!"
She laughed, and lay back. But a moment later, she cried out: "Why
don't you go away yourself? You know I loathe the sight of you; and yet
you stick on here like like a leech. Go away, oh, why can't you go
away!"
"To-day, I might have taken you at your word."
At the mention of Madeleine's name, she pricked up her ears. "Oho!" she
said, when lie had finished his story. "So Madeleine pays you visits,
does she?--the sainted Madeleine! You have her there, and me here.--A
pretty state of things!"
"Hold your tongue! I'm not in the mood to-night to stand your gibes."
"But I'm in the mood to make them. And how is one to help it when one
hears that that ineffable creature is no better than she ought to be?"
"Hold your tongue!" he cried again. "How dare you speak like that of
the girl who has been such a good friend to me!"
"Friend!" she echoed. "What fools men are! She's in love with you,
that's all, and always has been. But you were never man enough to know
what it was she wanted--your friend!"
"Ah, you----!" The nervous strain of the afternoon reached its climax.
"You! Yes!--that's you all over! In your eyes nothing is good or pure.
And you make everything you touch dirty. You're not fit to take a
decent woman's name on your lips!"
She sprang up from her chair. "And that's my thanks!--for all I've
done--all I've sacrificed for you! I'm not fit to take a decent woman's
name on my lips! For shame, for shame! For who has made me what I am
but you! Oh, what a fool I was, ever to let you cross this door!
You!--a man who is content with other men's leavings!"
"It was the worst day's work you ever did in your life. Everything bad
has come from that.--Why couldn't you have held back, and refused me?
We might still have been decent, happy creatures, if you hadn't let
your vile nature get the better of you. You wouldn't marry me--no, no!
You prefer to take your pleasure in other ways.--A man at any cost,
Madeleine said once, and God knows, I believe it was true!"
She struck him in the face. "Oh, you miserable scoundrel! You!--who
never looked at me but with the one thought in your head! Oh, it's too
much! Never, never while I live I would rather die first.--shall you
ever touch me again!"
She continued to weep, long after he had left her. Still crying, her
handkerchief pressed to her eyes, her body shaken by her sobs, she
moved blindly about the room, opening drawers and cupboards, and
heaping up their contents on the bed. There was a limit to everything;
she could bear her life with him no longer; and, with nerveless
fingers, she strove to collect and pack her belongings, preparatory to
going away.
XII.
Easter fell early, and the Ninth Symphony had been performed in the
Gewandhaus before March was fairly out. Now, both Conservatorium and
Gewandhaus were closed, and the familiar haunts were empty.
Hitherto, Maurice had made shift to preserve appearances: at intervals,
not too conspicuously far apart, he had gone backwards and forwards to
his classes, keeping his head above water with a minimum of work. Now,
however, there was no further need for deceiving people. Most of those
who had been his fellow-students had left Leipzig; he could not put his
finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer
acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how he
lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of
propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person
implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a
needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in the
BRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the long, idle days stretched on the
sofa, rolling cigarettes--in far greater numbers than he could smoke,
and vacantly, yet with a kind of gusto, as if his fingers, so long
accustomed to violent exercise, had a relish for the task. He was
seldom free from headache; an iron ring, which it was impossible to
loosen, bound his forehead. His disinclination to speech grew upon him,
too; not only had he no thoughts that it was worth breaking the silence
to express; the effort demanded by the forming of words was too great
for him. His feeling of indifference-stupefying indifference--grew so
strong that sometimes he felt it beyond his strength consciously to
take in the shape of the objects about the room.
The days were eventless. He lay and watched her movements, which were
spiritless and hurried, by turns, but now seldom marked by the gracious
impulsiveness that had made up so large a part of her charm. He was
content to live from hour to hour at her side; for that this was his
last respite, he well knew. And the further the month advanced, the
more tenaciously he clung. The one thought which now had force to rouse
him was, that the day would come on which he would see her face for the
last time. The fact that she had given herself to another, while yet
belonging to him, ceased to affect him displeasurably, as did also his
fixed idea that she was, at the present moment, deceiving him anew. His
sole obsession was now a fear of the inevitable end. And it was this
fear which, at rare intervals, broke the taciturn dejection in which he
was sunk, by giving rise to appalling fits of violence. But after a
scene of this kind, he would half suffocate her with remorse. And this,
perhaps, worked destruction most surely of all: the knowledge that,
despite the ungovernable aversion she felt for him, she could still
tolerate his endearments. Not once, as long as they had been together,
had she refused to be caressed.
But the impossibility of the life they were leading broke over Louise
at times, with the shock of an ice-cold wave.
"If you have any feeling left in you--if you have ever cared for me in
the least--go away now!" she wept. "Go to the ends of the earth--only
leave me!"
He was giddy with headache that day. "To whom? Who is it you want now?"
One afternoon as he lay there, the landlady came in with a telegram for
him, which she said had been brought round by one of Frau Krause's
children--she tossed it on the table, as she spoke, to express the
contempt she felt for him. Several minutes elapsed before he put out
his hand for it, and then he did so, because it required less energy to
open it than to leave it unopened. When he had read it, he gave a short
laugh, and threw it back on the table. Louise, who was in the other
part of the room, came out, half-dressed, to see what the matter was.
She, tool laughed at its contents in her insolent way, and, on passing
the writing-table, pulled open the drawer where she kept her money.
"There's enough for two. And you're no prouder in this, I suppose, than
in anything else."
The peremptory summons home, and the announcement that no further
allowance would be remitted, was not a surprise to him; he had known
all along that, sooner or later, he would be thrown on his own
resources. It had happened a little earlier than he had expected--that
was all. A week had still to run till the end of the month.--That
night, however, when Louise was out, he meditated, in a desultory
fashion, over the likely and unlikely occupations to which he could
turn his hand.
A few days later, she came home one evening in a different mood: for
once, no cruel words crossed her lips. They sat side by side on the
sofa; and of such stuff was happiness now made that he was content.
Chancing to look up, he was dismayed to see that her eyes were full of
tears, which, as he watched, ran over and down her cheeks. He slid to
his knees, and laid his head in her lap.
She fell asleep early; for, no matter what happened, how uneventful or
how tragically exciting her day was, her faculty for sleep remained
unchanged. It was a brilliant night; in the sky was a great, round,
yellow moon, and the room was lit up by it. The blind of the window
facing the bed had not been lowered; and a square patch of light fell
across the bed. He turned and looked at her, lying in it. Her face was
towards him; one arm was flung up above her head; the hand lay with the
palm exposed. Something in the look of the face, blanched by the unreal
light, made him recall the first time he had seen it, and the
impression it had then left on his mind. While she played in Schwarz's
room, she had turned and looked at him, and it had seemed to him then,
that some occult force had gone out from the face, and struck home in
him. And it had never lessened. Strange, that so small a thing, hardly
bigger than one's two closed fists, should be able to exert such an
influence over one! For this face it was--the pale oval, in the dark
setting, the exotic colouring, the heavy-lidded eyes--which held him;
it was this face which drew him surely back with a vital nostalgia--a
homesickness for the sight of her and the touch of her--if he were too
long absent. It had not been any coincidence of temperament or
sympathies--by rights, all the rights of their different natures, they
had not belonged together--any more than it had been a mere blind
uprush of sensual desire. And just as his feelings for her had had
nothing to do with reason, or with the practical conduct of his life so
they had outlasted tenderness, faithfulness, respect. What ever it was
that held him, it lay deeper than these conventional ideas of virtue.
The power her face had over him was undiminished, though he now found
it neither beautiful nor good; though he knew the true meaning of each
deeply graven line.--This then was love?--this morbid possession by a
woman's face.
He laid his arm across his tired eyes, and, without waiting to consider
the question he had propounded, commenced to follow out a new train of
thought. No doubt, for each individual, there existed in one other
mortal some physical detail which he or she could find only in this
particular person. It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, it
seemed, in the colour of an eye; some in the modulations of a voice,
the curve of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion.
Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificant
characteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, to
the one affected by it, made instant appeal, and just to that corner of
the soul which had hitherto suffered aimlessly for the want of it--a
suffering which nothing but this intonation, this particular smile,
could allay. He himself had long since learnt what it was, about her
face, that made a like appeal to him. It was her eyes. Not their size,
or their dark brilliancy, but the manner of their setting: the spacious
lid that fell from the high, wavy eyebrow, first sloping deeply
inwards, then curving out again, over the eyeball; this, and the clean
sweep of the broad, white lid, which, when lowered, gave the face an
infantine look--a look of marble. He knew it was this; for, on the
strength of a mere hinted resemblance, he had been unable to take his
eyes off the face of another woman; the likeness in this detail had met
his gaze with a kind of shock. But what a meaningless thing was life,
when the way a lid drooped, or an eyebrow grew on a forehead, could
make such havoc of your nerves! And more especially when, in the brain
or soul that lay behind, no spiritual trait answered to the
physical.--Well, that was for others to puzzle over, not for him. The
strong man tore himself away while there was still time, or saved
himself in an engrossing pursuit. He, having had neither strength nor
saving occupation, had bartered all he had, and knowingly, for the
beauty of this face. And as long as it existed for him, his home was
beside it.
He turned restlessly. Disturbed in her dreams, Louise flung over on her
other side.
"Eugen!" she murmured. "Save me!--Here I am! Oh, don't you see me?"
He shook her by the arm. "Wake up!"
She was startled and angry. "Won't you even let me sleep?"
"Keep your dreams to yourself then!"
There was a savage hatred in her look. "Oh, if I only could! ... if
only my hands were strong enough!--! I'd kill you!"
"You've done your best."
"Yes. And I'm glad! Remember that, afterwards. I was glad!"
It had been a radiant April morning of breeze and sunshine, but towards
midday, clouds gathered, and the sunlight was constantly intercepted.
Maurice had had occasion to fetch something from his lodgings and was
on his way back. The streets were thronged with people: business men,
shop-assistants and students, returning to work from the restaurants in
which they had dined. At a corner of the ZEITZERSTRASSE, a hand-cart
had been overturned, and a crowd had gathered; for, no matter how busy
people were, they had time to gape and stare; and they were now as
eager as children to observe this incident, in the development of which
a stout policeman was wordily authoritative. Maurice found that he had
loitered with the rest, to watch the gathering up of the spilt wares,
and to hear the ensuing altercation between hawker and policeman. On
turning to walk on again, his eye was caught and held by the tall
figure of a man who was going in the same direction as he, but at a
brisk pace, and several yards in front of him. This person must have
passed the group round the cart. Now, intervening heads and shoulders
divided them, obstructing Maurice's view; still, signs were not wanting
in him that his subliminal consciousness was beginning to recognise the
man who walked ahead. There was something oddly familiar in the gait,
in the droop of the shoulders, the nervous movement of the head, the
aimless motion of the dangling hands and arms--briefly, in all the
loosely hung body. And, besides this, the broad-brimmed felt hat ...
Good God! He stiffened, with a sudden start, and, in an instant, his
entire attention was concentrated in an effort to see the colour of the
hair under the hat. Was it red? He tried to strike out in lengthier
steps, but the legs of the man in front were longer, and his own
unruly. After a moment's indecision, however, he mastered them, and
then, so afraid was he of the other passing out of sight, that he all
but ran, and kept this pace up till he was close behind the man he
followed. There he fell into a walk again, but a weak and difficult
walk, for his heart was leaping in his chest. He had not been mistaken.
The person close before him, so close that he could almost have touched
him, was no other than Schilsky--the Schilsky of old, with the
insolent, short-sighted eyes, and the loose, easy walk.
Maurice followed him--followed warily and yet unreflectingly--right
down the long, populous street. Sometimes blindly, too, for, when the
street and all it contained swam before him, he was obliged to shut his
eyes. People looked with attention at him; he caught a glimpse of
himself in a barber's mirror, and saw that his face had turned a
greenish white. His mind was set on one point. Arrived at the corner
where the street ran out into the KONIGSPLATZ, which turning would
Schilsky take? Would he go to the right, where lay the BRUDERSTRASSE,
or would he take the lower street to the left? Until this question was
answered, it was impossible to decide what should be done next. But
first, there came a lengthy pause: Schilsky entered a musicshop, and
remained inside, leaning over the counter, for a quarter of an hour.
Finally, however, the corner was reached. He appeared to hesitate: for
a moment it seemed as if he were going straight on, which would mean
fresh uncertainty. Then, with a sudden outward fling of the hands, he
went off to the left, in the direction of the Gewandhaus.
Maurice did not follow him any further. He stood and watched, until he
could no longer see the swaying head. After that he had a kind of
collapse. He leaned up against the wall of a house, and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead. Passers by believed him to be drunk,
and were either amused, or horrified, or saddened. He discovered, in
truth, that his legs were shaking as if with an ague, and, stumbling
into a neighbouring wine-shop, he drank brandy--not enough to stupefy
him, only to give back to his legs their missing strength.
To postpone her knowing! To hinder her from knowing at any cost!--his
blurred thoughts got no further than this. He covered the ground at a
mad pace, clinging fast to the belief that he would find her, as he had
left her, in bed. But his first glimpse of her turned him cold. She was
standing before the glass, dressed to go out. This in itself was bad
enough. Worse, far worse, was it that she had put on, to-day, one of
the light, thin dresses she had worn the previous spring, and never
since. It was impossible to see her tricked out in this fashion, and
doubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that she
was dressed to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed and
rejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering sense. He demanded
with such savageness the meaning of her adornment, that the indignant
amazement with which she turned on him was real, and not feigned.
"Take off that dress! You shan't go out of the house in it!--Take it
off!"
He raved, threatened, implored, always with icy fingers at his heart.
He knew that she knew; he would have taken his oath on it; and he only
had room in his brain for one thought: to prevent her knowing. His rage
spent itself on the light, flowery dress. As nothing he said moved her,
he set his foot on the skirt, and tore it down from the waist. She
struck at him for this, then took another from the wardrobe--a still
lighter and gaudier one. They had never yet gone through an hour such
as that which followed. At its expiry, clothes and furniture lay strewn
about the room.
When Louise saw that he was not to be shaken off, that, wherever she
went on this day, he would go, too, she gave up any plan she might have
had, and followed where he led. This was, as swiftly as possible, by
the outlying road to the Connewitz woods. If he could but once get her
there, they would be safe from surprise. Once out there, in solitude,
among the screening trees, something, he did not yet know what, but
something would--must--happen.
He dragged her relentlessly along. But until they got there! His eyes
grew stiff and giddy with looking before him, behind him, on all sides.
And never had she seemed to move so slowly; never had she stared so
brazenly about her, as on this afternoon. With every step they took,
certainty burned higher in him; the thin, fixed smile that disfigured
her lips said: do your worst; do all you can; nothing will save you! He
did not draw a full breath till they were far out on the SCHLEUSSIGER
WEG. Then he dropped her arm, and wiped his face.
The road was heavy with mud, from rains of the preceding day. Louise,
dragging at his side, was careless of it, and let her long skirt trail
behind her. He called her attention to it, furiously, and this was the
first time he had spoken since leaving the house. But she did not even
look down: she picked out a part of the road that was still dirtier,
where her feet sank and stuck.
They crossed the bridge, and joined the wood-path. On one of the first
seats they came to, Louise sank exhausted. Filled with the idea of
getting her into the heart of the woods, he was ahead of her, urging
the pace; and he had taken a further step or two before he saw that she
had remained behind. He was forced to return.
"What are you sitting there for?" He turned on her, with difficulty
resisting the impulse to strike her full in her contemptuous white face.
She laughed--her terrible laugh, which made the very nerves twitch in
his finger-tips. "Why does one usually sit down?"
"ONE?--You're not one! You're you!" Now he wished hundreds of listeners
were in their neighbourhood, that the fierceness of his voice might
carry to them.
"And you're a madman!"
"Yes, treat me like the dirt under your feet! But you can't deceive
me.--Do you think I don't know why you're stopping here?"
She looked away from him, without replying.
"Do you think I don't know why you've decked yourself out like this?"
"For God's sake stop harping on my dress!"
"Why you've bedizened yourself? ... why you were going out? ... why
you've spied and gaped eternally from one side of the street to the
other?"
As she only continued to look away, the desire seized him to say
something so incisive that the implacability of her face would have to
change, no matter to what. "I'll tell you then!" he shouted, and struck
the palm of one hand with the back of the other, so that the bones in
both bit and stung. "I'll tell you. You're waiting here ... waiting, I
say! But you'll wait to no purpose! For you've reckoned without me."
"Oh, very well, then, if it pleases you, I'm waiting! But you can at
least say for what? For you perhaps?--for you to regain your senses?"
"Stop your damned sneering! Will you tell me you don't know
who's--don't know he's here?"
Still she continued to overlook him. "He?--who?--what?" She flung the
little words at him like stones. Yet, in the second that elapsed before
his reply, a faint presentiment widened her eyes.
"You've got the audacity to ask that?" Flinging himself down on the
seat, he put his hands in his pockets, and stretched out his legs. "Who
but your precious Schilsky!--the man who knew how you ought to be
treated ... who gave you what you deserved!"
His first feeling was one of relief: the truth was out; there was an
end to the torture of the past hour. But after this one flash of
sensation, he ceased to consider himself. At his words Louise turned so
white that he thought she was going to faint. She raised her hand to
her throat, and held it there. She tried to say something, and could
not utter a sound. Her voice had left her. She turned her head and
looked at him, in a strange, apprehensive way, with the eyes of a
trapped animal.
"Eugen!--Eugen is here?" she said at last. "Here?--Do you know what
you're saying?" Now that her voice had come, it was a little thin
whisper, like the voice of a sick person. She pushed hat and hair, both
suddenly become an intolerable weight, back from her forehead.
Still he was not warned. "Will you swear to me you didn't know?"
"I know? I swear?" Her voice was still a mere echo of itself. But now
she rose, and standing at the end of the seat furthest from him, held
on to the back of it. "I know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Then
she drew a long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voice
and emotion and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she cried
with a startling loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd be
here with you, if I had known?--if I had known!"
A foreboding of what he had done came to Maurice. "Take care!--take
care what you say!"
She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, which echoed through the
woods.
"Take care!" he said again, and trembled.
"Of what?--of you, perhaps? YOU!"
"I may kill you yet."
"Oh, such as you don't kill!"
She lowered her veil, and stooped for her gloves. He looked up at her
swift movement. There was a blueness round his lips.
"What are you going to do?"
She laughed.
"You're ... you're going to him! Louise!--you are NOT going to him?"
"Oh, you poor, crazy fool, what made you tell me?"
"Stay here!" He caught her by the sleeve. But she shook his hand off as
though it were a poisonous insect. "For God's sake, think what you're
doing! Have a little mercy on me!"
"Have you ever had mercy on me?"
She took a few, quick steps away from the seat, then with an equally
impulsive resolve, came back and confronted him.
"You talk to me of mercy?--you!--when nothing I could wish you would be
bad enough for you?--Oh, I never thought it would be possible to hate
anyone as I hate you--you mean-souled, despicable dummy of a man!--Why
couldn't you have let me alone? I didn't care that much for you--not
THAT much! But you came, with your pretence of friendship, and your
flattery, and your sympathy--it was all lies, every word of it! Do you
think what has happened to us would ever have happened if you'd been a
different kind of man?--But you have never had a clean thought of
me--never! Do you suppose I haven't known what you were thinking and
believing about me in these last weeks?--those nights when I waited
night after night to see a light come back in his windows? Yes, and I
let you believe it; I wanted you to; I was glad you did--glad to see
you suffer. I wish you were dead!--Do you see that river? Go and throw
yourself into it. I'll stand here and watch you sink, and laugh when I
see you drowning.--Oh, I hate you--hate you! I shall hate you to my
last hour!"
She spat on the ground at his feet. Before he could raise his head, she
was gone.
He made an involuntary, but wholly uncertain, movement to follow her,
did not, however, carry it out, and sank back into his former attitude.
His cold hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders drawn up; and
his face, drained of its blood, was like the face of an old man. He had
made no attempt to defend himself, had sat mute, letting her vindictive
words go over him, inwardly admitting their truth. Now he closed his
eyes, and kept them shut, until the thudding of his heart grew less
forcible. When he looked up again, his gaze met the muddy, sluggish
water, into which she had dared him to throw himself. But he did not
even recall her taunt. He merely sat and stared at the river, amazed at
the way in which it had, as it were, detached itself from other
objects. All at once it had acquired a life of its own, and it was
difficult to believe that it had ever been an integral part of the
landscape.
He remained sitting till the mists were breast-high. But even when,
after more than one start--for his legs were stiff and numbed--he rose
to go home, he did not realise what had happened to him. He was only
aware that night had fallen, and that it would be better to get back in
the direction of the town.
The twinkling street-lamps did more than anything towards rousing him.
But they also made him long, with a sudden vehemence, for some warm,
brightly lighted interior, where it would be possible to forget the
night--haunted river. He sought out an obscure cafe, and entering,
called for brandy. On this night, he was under no necessity to limit
himself; and he sat, glowering at the table, and emptying his glass,
until he had died a temporary, and charitable, death. The delicious
sensation of sipping the brandy was his chief remembrance of these
hours; but, also, like far-off, incorporate happenings, he was
conscious, as the night deepened, of women's shrill and lively voices,
and of the pressure of a woman's arms.
XIII.
He wakened, the next morning, to strange surroundings. Half opening his
eyes, he saw a strip of drab wall-paper, besprinkled with crude pink
roses, and the black and gilt frame of an oblong mirror. He shut them
again immediately, preferring to believe that he was still dreaming.
Somewhere in the back of his head, a machine was working, with slow,
steady throbs, which made his body vibrate as a screw does a steamer.
He lay enduring it, and trying to sleep again, to its accompaniment.
But just as he was on the point of dozing off, a noise in the room
startled him, and made him wide awake. He was not alone. Something had
fallen to the floor, and a voice exclaimed impatiently. Peering through
his lids, he looked out beyond the will which had first chained his
attention. His eyes fell on the back of a woman, who was sitting in
front of one of the windows, doing her hair. In her hand she held a
pair of curlingtongs, and, before her, on the foot-end of the sofa, a
hand-glass was propped up. Her hair was thick and blond. She wore a
black silk chemise, which had slipped low on her plump shoulders; a
shabby striped petticoat was bound round her waist, and her naked feet
were thrust into down-trodden, felt shoes. Maurice lay still, in order
that she should not suspect his being awake. For a few minutes, there
was silence; then he was forced to sneeze, and at the sound the woman
muttered something, and came to the side of the bed. A curl was
imprisoned between the blades of the tongs, which she continued to hold
aloft, in front of her forehead.
"NA, KLEINER! ... had your sleep out?" she asked in a raucous voice. As
Maurice did not reply, but closed his eyes again, blinded by the
sunshine that poured into the room, she laughed, and made a sound like
that with which one urges on a horse. "Don't feel up to much this
morning ... eh? HERRJE, KLEINER, but you were tight!" and, at some
remembrance of the preceding night, she chuckled to herself. "And now,
I bet you, you feel as if you'd never be able to lift your head again.
Just wait a jiffy! I'll get you something that'll revive you."
She waddled to the door and he heard her call: "JOHANN, EINEN SCHNAPS!"
Feet shuffled in the passage; she handed Maurice a glass of brandy.
"There you are!--that'll pull you together. Swallow it down," she said,
as he hesitated. "You'll feel another man after it.--And now I'll do
what I wouldn't do for every one--make you a coffee to wash down the
nasty physic."
She laughed loudly at her own joke, and laid the curlingtongs aside. He
watched her move about the room in search of spirit-lamp and
coffee-mill. Beneath the drooping black chemise, her loose breasts
swayed.
"Not that I've much time," she went on, as she ground the coffee. "It's
gone a quarter to twelve already, and I like fresh air. I don't miss a
minute of it.--So up you get! Here, dowse your head in this water."
Leaning against the table, Maurice drank the cup of black coffee, and
considered his companion. No longer young, she was as coarsely haggard
as are the generality of women of her class, scanned by cruel daylight.
And while she could never have been numbered among the handsome ones of
her profession, there was yet a certain kindliness in the smallish blue
eyes, and in her jocose manner of treating him.
She, too, eyed him as he drank.
"SAG''MAL KLEINER--will you come again?" she broke the silence.
"What's your name?" he asked evasively, and put the cup down on the
table.
"Oh ... just ask for Luise," she said. On her tongue, the name had
three long-drawn syllables, and there was a v before the i.
She was nettled by his laugh.
"What's wrong with it?" she asked. "GEH', KLEINER, SEI NETT!--won't you
come again?"
"Perhaps."
"Well, ask for Luise, if you do. That's enough."
He turned to put on his coat. As he did so, a disagreeable thought
crossed his mind; he coloured, and ran his hand through his pockets.
"I've no money."
"What?--rooked, are you? Well, it wasn't here, then. I'm an honest
girl, I am!"
She came over to him, not exactly suspicious, still with a slight
diminution of friendliness in eyes and tone; and, as, if there were
room for a mistake on his part, herself went through the likely pockets
in turn.
"Not a heller!"
Her sharp little eyes travelled over him.
"That'd do."
She laid her hand on his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave it to her.
She stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her arms round his neck,
and gave him a hearty kiss.
"DU GEFALLST MIR!" she said. "I like you. Kiss me, too, can't you?"
He looked down on the plump, ungainly figure, and, without feeling
either satisfaction or repugnance, stooped and kissed the befringed
forehead.
"ADIEU, KLEINER! Come again."
"ADIEU, LUISE!"
He was eyed--he felt it--from various rooms, the doors of which stood
ajar. The front door was wide open, and he left it so. He descended the
stairs with a sagging step. Half-way down, he stopped short. He had
spoken the truth when he said that he was without money; every pfennig
he possessed, had been in his pocket the night before. Under these
circumstances, he could undertake nothing. But, even while he thought
it, his hand sought his watch, which he carried chainless in a pocket
of his vest. It was there, and as his fingers closed on it, he
proceeded on his way.
The day had again set in brilliantly; the shadows on roads and
pavements had real depth, and the outlines of the houses were hard
against a cloudless sky. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground; for the
crudeness of the light made them ache.
His feet bore him along the road they knew better than any other. And
until he had been in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he could not decide what was to
come next. He dragged along, with bowed head, and the distance seemed
unending. Even when he had turned the corner and was in the street
itself, he kept his head down, and only when he was opposite the house,
did he throw a quick glance upwards. His heart gave a terrifying leap,
then ceased to beat: when it began again, it was at a mad gallop, which
prevented him drawing breath. All three windows stood wide open; the
white window-curtains hung out over the sills, and flapped languidly in
the breeze.
He crossed the road with small steps, like a convalescent. He pushed
back the heavy house-door, and entered the vestibule, which was cold
and shadowy. Step by step, he climbed to the first landing. The door of
the flat was shut, but the little door in the wall stood ajar, and he
could see right into the room.
He leaned against the banisters, where the shadow was deepest. Inside
the room that had been his world, two charwomen rubbed and scoured,
talking as they worked in strident tones. The heavy furniture had been
pulled into the middle of the floor, and shrouded in white coverings;
chairs were laid on the bed, with their legs in the air. There was no
trace of anything that had belonged to Louise; all familiar objects had
vanished. It was a strange, unnatural scene: he felt as one might feel
who, by means of some mysterious agency, found it possible to be
present at his own burial, while he was still alive.
One of the women began to beat the sofa; under cover of the blows,
which reverberated through the house, he slunk away. But he did not get
far: when he was recalled to himself by a new noise in one of the upper
storeys, he found that he was standing on the bottom step of the
stairs, holding fast to the round gilt ball that surmounted the last
post of the banisters. He moved from there to the warmth of the
house-door, and, for some time before going out, stood sunning himself,
a forlorn figure, with eyes that blinked at the light. He felt very
cold, and weak to the point of faintness. This sensation reminded him
that he had had no solid food since noon the day before. His first
business was obviously to eat a meal. Fighting a growing dizziness, he
trudged into the town, and, having pawned his watch, went to a
restaurant, and forced himself to swallow the meal that was set before
him--though there were moments when it seemed incredible that it was
actually he who plied knife and fork. He would have been glad to linger
for a time, after eating, but the restaurant was crowded, and the
waiter openly impatient for him to be gone. As he rose, he saw the man
flicking the crumbs off the cloth, and setting the table anew; some one
was waiting to take his place.
When he emerged again into the thronged and slightly dusty streets, his
previous strong impression of the unreality of things was upon him
again. Now, however, it seemed as though some submerged consciousness
were at work in him. For, though he was not aware of having reviewed
his position, or of having cast a plan of action, he knew at once what
was to be done; and, as before, his feet bore him, without bidding,
where he had to go.
He retraced his steps, and half-way down the KLOSTERGASSE, entered a
gunsmith's shop. The owner, an elderly man in a velvet cap and
gold-rimmed spectacles, looked at him over the tops of these, then said
curtly, he could not oblige him. What was more, he came out after him,
and, standing in the shop-door, watched him go down the street. At his
refusal, Maurice had hurriedly withdrawn: now, as he went, he wa's
troubled by the fact that the man's face was vaguely familiar to him.
For the length of a street-block, he endeavoured to recollect where he
had seen the face before. And suddenly he knew: it was this very shop
he had once been in to inquire after Krafft, and this was the same man
who had then been so uncivil to him. But as soon as he remembered, the
knowledge ceased to interest him.
Rendered cautious by his first experience, he went to another
neighbourhood, and having sought for some time, found a smaller shop,
in a side street. He had ready this time the fiction of a friend and a
commission. But a woman regretted wordily that her husband had just
stepped out; he would no doubt be back again immediately; if the Herr
would take a chair and wait a little?-- But the thought of waiting made
him turn on his heel. Finally, at his third attempt, a young lad gave
him what he desired, without demur; and, after he had known a quick
fear lest he should not have sufficient money for the purchase, the
matter was satisfactorily settled.
On returning to his room, he found a letter lying on the table. He
pounced upon it with a desperate hope. But it was only the monthly bill
for the hire of the piano.
In entering, he had made some noise, and Frau Krause was in the room
before he knew it. She was primed for an angry scene. But he made short
work of her complaints and accusations.
"To-morrow! I'll have time for all that to-morrow."
He turned the key in the door, and sitting down before the
writing-table, commenced to go through drawers and pigeonholes. It had
not been a habit of his to keep letters; but nevertheless a certain
number had accumulated, and these he was averse to let fall into the
hands of strangers. He performed his work coolly, with a pedantic
thoroughness. He had no sympathy with those people, who, doing what he
was about to do, left ragged ends behind them. His mind had always
inclined to law and order. And so, having written a note authorising
Frau Krause to keep his books and clothes, in place of the outstanding
rent, he put a match to the fire which was laid in the stove, and, on
his knees before it, burnt all such personal trifles as had value for
himself alone. He postponed, to the last, even handling the small
packet made up of the letters he had had from Louise. Then their turn
came, too. Kneeling before the stovedoor, he dropped them, one by one,
into the flames. The last to burn was the first he had received--a mere
hastily scrawled line, a twisted note, which opened as it blackened. I
MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? As he watched it
shrivel, he had a vivid recollection of that long past day. He
remembered how he had tried to shave, and how he had dressed himself in
his best, only to fling back again into his working-clothes, annoyed
with himself for even harbouring the thought. Yes; but that had always
been his way: he had expended consideration and delicacy where none was
necessary; he had seen her only as he wished to see her.--After this,
the photographs. They were harder to burn; he was forced to tear them
across, in two, three pieces. Even then, the flames licked slowly; he
watched them creep up--over her dress, her hands, her face.
Afternoon had turned to evening. When, at length, everything was in
order, he lay down on the sofa to wait for it to grow quite dark. But
almost at once, as if his back had been eased of a load, he fell
asleep. When he opened his eyes again, the lamp had burned low, and
filled the room with a poisonous vapour. It was two o'clock. This was
the time to go. But a boisterous wind had risen, and was blustering
round the house. He said to himself that he would wait still a little
longer, to see if it did not subside. In waiting, he slept again,
heavily, as he had not done for many a night, and when he wakened next,
a clock was striking four. He rose at once, and with his boots in his
hand, crept out of the house.
Day was breaking; as he walked, a thin streak of grey in the east
widened with extreme rapidity, and became a bank of pale grey light. He
met an army of street-sweepers, indistinguishably male and female,
returning from their work, their long brooms over their shoulders. It
had rained a little, and the pavements were damp and shining. The wind
had dropped to a mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners.
Before his mind's eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw one of
those early spring days of illimitable blue highness and white, woofy
clouds, which stand stationary where the earth meets the sky; the
brightness of the sun makes the roads seem whiter and the grass
greener, bringing out new tints and colours in everything it touches.
Over it all would run this light, swift wind, bending the buds, and
even, towards afternoon, throwing up a fine white dust.--And it was to
the thought of the dust that his mind clung most tenaciously, as to
some homely and familiar thing which he would never see again.
He had made straight for the well-known seat with the bosky background.
Arrived at it, he went a few steps aside, into an open space among the
undergrowth, which was now generously sprinkled with buds. The leaves
that had fallen during the previous autumn made a carpet under his
feet. Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing: a body of
soldiers was being marched out to exercise. He opened the case he was
carrying, and laid it on the seat. He was not conscious of feeling
afraid; if he had a fear, it was only lest, in his inexperience, he
should do what he had to do, clumsily. In loosening the clothes at his
neck, however, he perceived that his hand was shaking, and this made
him aware that his heart also was beating unevenly. He stood and
fumbled with his collar-stud, which he could not unfasten at once, and,
while he was busied thus, the mists that blinded him fell away. He
ceased, abruptly, to be the mere automaton that had moved and acted,
without will of its own, for the past four-and-twenty hours. Standing
there, with his fingers at his neck, he was pierced by a sudden lucid
perception of what had happened. An intolerable spasm of remembrance
gripped him. With a rush of bitterness, which was undiluted agony, all
the shame and suffering of the past months swept over him once more,
concentrated in a last supreme moment. And, as though this were not
enough, while he still wrenched at his neck, tearing his shirt-collar
in his desperation, her face rose before him--but not the face he had
known and loved. He saw it as he had seen it for the last time,
disfigured by hatred of him, horribly vindictive, as it had been when
she spat on the ground at his feet. This vision gave him an
unlooked-for jerk of courage. Without allowing himself another second
in which to reason or reflect, he caught up the revolver from the seat,
and pressed the cold little nozzle to his chest. Simultaneously he
received a sharp blow, and heard the crack of a report--but far away
... in the distance. He was on his back, without knowing how he had got
there; straight overhead waved the bare branches of a tree; behind
them, a grey morning cloud was sailing. For still the fraction of a
second, he heard the familiar melody, to which the soldiers marched;
and the branch swayed ... swayed ...
Then, as suddenly as the flame of a candle is puffed out by the wind,
his life went from him. His right hand twitched, made as if to open,
closed again, and stiffened round the iron of the handle. His jaw fell,
and, like an inner lid, a glazed film rose over his eyes, which for
hours afterwards continued to stare, with an expression of horror and
amaze, at the naked branches of the tree.
* * * * *
One midday, a couple of years later, a number of those who had formed
the audience at one of the last rehearsals of the season, were gathered
round the back entrance to the Gewandhaus. It was a fresh spring day,
gusty and sunny by turns: sometimes, there came a puff of wind that
drove every one's hand to his hat; at others, the broad square basked
in an almost motionless sunshine. The small crowd lingered in order to
see, at close quarters, the violinist who had played there that
morning. Only a few of those present had known Schilsky personally; but
one and all were curious to catch a glimpse of the quondam Leipzig
student, who, it was whispered, would soon return to the town to take
up a leading position in the orchestra. Schilsky was now KONZERTMEISTER
in a large South German town; but it was rather as a composer that his
name had begun to burn on people's tongues. His new symphonic poem,
UBER DIE LETZTEN DINGE, had drawn down on his head that mixture of
extravagant laudation and abusive derision which constitutes fame.
"Take a look at his wife, if she's there," said one American to
another, who was standing beside him. "She studied here same time he
did, and is said to have been very handsome. An English chap shot
himself on her account."
"You don't say!" drawled his companion. "It's a queer thing, how common
suicide's getting to be. You can't pick up a noospaper, nowadays,
without finding some fool or other has blown his brains out."
"Look out!--here they come."
Behind the thick glass doors, Schilsky became visible. He was talking
volubly to a Jewish-looking stranger in a fur-lined coat. His hat was
pushed far back on his forehead; his face was flushed with elation;
and, consciously unconscious of the waiting crowd, he gesticulated as
he walked, throwing out the palms of his loosely dangling hands, and
emphasising his words with restless movements of the head. He was
respectfully greeted by those who had known him. A minute or two later
came Louise. At her side was a pianist with whom Schilsky had given a
concert earlier in the week--a shabbily dressed young man, with a world
of enthusiasm in his candid blue eyes. He, too, was talking with
animation. But Louise had no attention for anyone but her husband.
"Well, not my taste ... I must confess," laughed the man who had been
severe on suicide. "Fine eyes, if you like--but give me something
fresher."
She was wearing a long cloak. The door, in swinging to, caught an end
of this, and hindered her progress. Both she and her companion stooped
to free it; their hands met; and the bystanders saw the young man
colour darkly over face and neck.
The others had got into one of the droschkes that waited in line beside
the building. The dark stranger put an impatient head out of the
window. The two behind quickened their steps; the young man helped
Louise in, mounted himself, and slammed the door.
The driver gathered up the reins, cracked his whip, and the big-bodied
droschke went swerving round the corner, clattering gutturally on the
cobbled stone pavement.
The group of loiterers at the door dispersed.
End of Project Gutenberg's Maurice Guest, by Henry Handel Richardson