Maurice Guest (32 page)

"What in the name of Heaven are you doing down there?" it cried. "You drunken SCHWEIN, can't you see the door's open?"

In the sitting-room, both fell heavily over a chair; after that, with infinite labour, he got Heinz on the sofa. He did not attempt to make a light; enough came in from a street-lamp for him to see what he was doing.

Lying on his face, Krafft groaned a little, and Maurice suddenly grasped that he was taken ill. Heinz was ill, Heinz, his best friend, and he was doing nothing to help him! Shedding tears, he poured out a glass of water. He believed he was putting the carafe safely back on the table, but it dropped with a crash to the floor. He was afraid Frau Schulz would come in, and said in a loud voice: "It's that fellow there, he's dead drunk, beastly drunk!" Krafft would not drink the water, and in the attempt to force him, it was spilled over him. He stirred uneasily, put up his arms and dragged Maurice down, so that the latter fell on his knees beside the sofa. He made a few ineffectual efforts to free himself; but one arm held him like a vice; and in this uncomfortable position, he went to sleep.

O viva morte, e dilettoso male!
PETRARCH.

The following morning, towards twelve o'clock, a note from Madeleine was handed to Maurice. In it, she begged him to account to Schwarz for her absence from the rehearsal of a trio, which was to have taken place at two.

GO AND EXPLAIN THAT IT IS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO COME, she wrote. LOUISE IS VERY ILL; THE DOCTOR IS AFRAID OF BRAIN FEVER. I AM RUSHING, OFF THIS MOMENT TO SEE ABOUT A NURSE—AND SHALL STAY TILL ONE COMES.

He read the words mechanically, without taking in their meaning. From the paper, his eyes roved round the room; he saw the tumbled, unopened bed, from which he had just risen, the traces of his boots on the coverings. He could not remember how he had come there; his last recollection was of being turned out of Krafft's room, in what seemed to be still the middle of the night. Since getting home, he must have slept a dead sleep.

"Ill? Brain fever?" he repeated to himself, and his mind strove to pierce the significance of the words. What had happened? Why should she be ill? A racking uneasiness seized him and would not let him rest. His inclination was to lay his aching head on the pillow again; but this was out of the question; and so, though he seldom braved Frau Krause, he now boldly went to her with a request to warm up his coffee.

When he had drunk it, and bathed his head, he felt considerably better. But he still could not call to mind what had occurred. The previous evening was blurred in its details; he only had a sense of oppression when he thought of it, as of something that had threatened, and still did. He was glad to have a definite task before him, and went out at once, in order to catch Schwarz before he left the Conservatorium; but it was too late; the master's door was locked. It was a bright, cold day with strong sunlight; Maurice's eyes ached, and he shrank from the wind at every corner. Instead of going home, he went to Madeleine's room and sat down to wait for her. She had evidently been away since early morning; the piano was dusty and unopened; the blind at the head of it had not been drawn up. It was a pleasant dusk; he put his arms on the table, his head on his arms, and, in spite of his anxiety, fell into a sound sleep.

He was wakened by Madeleine's entrance. It was three o'clock. She came bustling in, took off her hat, laid it on the piano, and at once drew up the blind. She was not surprised. to find him there, but exclaimed at his appearance.

"Good gracious, Maurice, how dreadful you look! Are you ill?"

He hastened to reassure her, and she was a little put out at her wasted sympathy.

"Well, no wonder, I'm sure, after the doings there were last night. A pretty way to behave! And that you should have mixed yourself up in it as you did!—I wouldn't have believed it of you. How I know? My dear boy, it's the talk of the place."

Her words called up to him a more lucid remembrance of the past evening than he had yet been capable of. In his eagerness to recollect everything, he changed colour and looked away. Madeleine put his confusion down to another cause.

"Never mind, it's over now, and we won't say any more about it. Sit still, and I'll make you some tea. That will do your head good—for you have a splitting headache, haven't you? I shall be glad of some myself, too, after all the running about I've had this morning. I'm quite worn out."

When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for bread and sausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only when she sat down, with her cup before her, did he get a chance to say: "What is it, Madeleine? Is she very ill?"

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, she is ill enough. It's not easy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor is to see her again this evening. And I found a nurse."

"Then she is not going away?" He did not mean to say the words aloud; they escaped him against his will.

His companion raised her eyebrows, filling her forehead with wrinkles. "Going away?" she echoed. "I should say not. My dear Maurice, what is more, it turns out she hadn't an idea he was going either. What do you say to that?" She flushed with sincere indignation. "Not an idea—until yesterday. My lord had the intention of sneaking off without a word, and of leaving her to find it out for herself. Oh, it's an abominable affair altogether!—and has been from beginning to end. There's much about Louise, as you know, that I don't approve of, and I think she has behaved weakly—not to call it by a harder name—all through. But now, she has my entire sympathy. The poor girl is in a pitiable state."

"Is she . . . dangerously ill?"

"Well, I don't think she'll die of it, exactly—though it might be better for her if she did. NA!. . . let me fill up your cup. And eat something more. Oh, he is . . . no words are bad enough for him; though honestly speaking, I think we might have been prepared for something of this kind, all along. It seems he made his arrangements for going on the quiet. Frau Schaefele advanced him the money; for of course he has nothing of his own. But what condition do you think the old wretch made? That he should break with Louise. Furst has told me all about it. I went to him at once this morning. She was always jealous of Louise—though to him she only talked of the holiness of art and the artist's calling, and the danger of letting domestic ties entangle you, and rubbish of that kind. I believe she was at the bottom of it that he didn't marry Louise long ago. Well, however that may be, he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don't you know?—and ruffle the necessary artistic composure." She laughed scornfully. "However, I'm glad to say, he didn't escape scot-free after all. Everything went well till yesterday afternoon, when Louise, who was as unsuspecting as a child, heard of it from some one—they say it was Krafft. Without thinking twice—you know her . . . or rather you don't—she went straight to Schilsky and confronted him. I can't tell you what took place between them, but I can imagine something of it, for when Louise lets herself go, she knows no bounds, and this was a matter of life and death to her."

Madeleine rose, blew out the flame of the spirit-lamp, and refilled the teapot.

"Fraulein Grunhut, her landlady, heard her go out yesterday afternoon, but didn't hear her come in, so it must have been late in the evening. Louise hates to be pried on, and the old woman is lazy, so she didn't go to her room till about half-past eight this morning, when she took in the hot water. Then she found Louise stretched on the floor, just as she had come in last night, her hat lying beside her. She was conscious, and her eyes were open, but she was stiff and cold, and wouldn't speak or move. Grunhut couldn't do anything with her, and was mortally afraid. She sent for me; and between us we got her to bed, and I went for a doctor. That was at nine, and I have been on my feet ever since."

"It's awfully good of you."

"No, she won't die," continued Madeleine meditatively, stirring her tea. "She's too robust a nature for that. But I shouldn't wonder if it affected her mind. As I say, she knows no bounds, and has never learnt self-restraint. It has always been all or nothing with her. And this I must say: however foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she was devoted to Schilsky, and sacrificed everything—work, money and friends—to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is a moral judgment on her. Excess of any kind brings its own punishment with it."

She rose and smoothed her hair before the mirror.

"And now I really must get to work, and make up for the lost morning. I haven't touched a note to-day. As for you, Maurice, if you take my advice, you'll go home and go to bed. A good sleep is what you're needing. Come to-morrow, if you like, for further news. I shall go back after supper, and hear what the doctor says. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Madeleine. You're a brick."

Having returned to his room, he lay face downwards on the sofa. He was sick at heart. Viewed in the light of the story he had heard from Madeleine, life seemed too unjust to be endured. It propounded riddles no one could answer; the vast output of energy that composed it, was misdirected; on every side was cruelty and suffering. Only the heartless and selfish—those who deserved to suffer—went free.

He pressed the back of his hand to his tired eyes; and, despite her good deeds, he felt a sudden antipathy to Madeleine, who, on a day like this, could take up her ordinary occupation.

In the morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was seized by a fear lest Louise should have died in the night. Through brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he went early to Madeleine, making a detour through the BRUDERSTRASSE, where his suspicions were confirmed by the lowered blinds. He had almost two hours to wait; it was eleven o'clock before Madeleine returned. Her face was so grave that his heart seemed to stop beating. But there was no change in the sick girl's condition; the doctor was perplexed, and spoke of a consultation. Madeleine was returning at two o'clock to relieve the nurse.

"You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether," she reproved Maurice. "And it won't mend matters in the least. Go home and settle down to work, like a sensible fellow."

He tried to follow Madeleine's advice. But it was of no use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of a ludicrous vanity compared with the grim little tragedy that touched him so nearly; and in this mood he remained, throughout the days of suspense that now ensued.

He went regularly every afternoon to Madeleine, and, if she were not at home, waited till she returned, an hour, two hours, as the case might be. This was the vital moment of the day—when he read her tidings from her face.

At first they were always the same: there was no change. Fever did not set in, but, day and night, Louise lay with wide, strained eyes; she refused nourishment, and the strongest sleeping-draught had no effect. Then, early one morning, for some trifling cause which, afterwards, no one could recall, she broke into a convulsive fit of weeping, went on till she was exhausted, and subsequently fell asleep.

On the day Maurice learnt that she was out of danger, he walked deep into the woods. The news had lifted such a load from his mind that he felt almost happy. But before he reached home again, his brain had begun to work at matters which, during the period of anxiety, it had left untouched. At first, in desperation, he had been selfless enough to hope that Schilsky would return, on learning what had happened. Now, however, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely through the ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest anything should occur to soil the robe of saintly suffering, in which he draped her.

He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. Furst received him with open arms, and no allusion was made to the night in the BRUHL. With the cessation of his anxiety, a feeling of benevolence towards other people awakened in him, and when, one afternoon, Schwarz asked the assembled class if no one knew what had become of Krafft, whether he was ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice who volunteered to find out. He remembered now that he had not seen Krafft at the Conservatorium for a week or more.

Frau Schulz looked astonished to see him, and, holding the door in her hand, made no mien to let him enter. Herr Krafft was away, she said gruffly, had been gone for about a week, she did not know where or why. He had left suddenly one morning, without her knowledge, and the following day a postcard had come from him, stating that all his things were to lie untouched till his return.

"He was so queer lately that I'd he just as pleased if he stayed away altogether," she said. "That's all I can tell you. Maybe you'd get something more out of her. She knows more than she says, anyhow," and she pointed with her thumb at the door of the adjoining PENSION.

Maurice rang there, and a dirty maid-servant showed him Avery's room. At his knock, she opened the door herself, and first looked surprised, then alarmed at seeing him.

"What's the matter? Has anything happened?" she stammered, like one on the look-out for bad news.

"Then what do you want?" she asked in her short, unpleasant way, when he had reassured her.

"I came up to see Heinz. And they tell me he is not here; and Frau Schulz sent me to you. Schwarz was asking for him. Is it true that he has gone away?"