Maurice Guest (33 page)

"Yes, it's true."

"Where to? Will he be away long?"

"How should I know?" she cried rudely. "Am I his keeper? Find out for yourself, if you must know," and the door slammed to in his face.

He mentioned the incident to Madeleine that evening. She looked strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A day or two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, he tackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of a praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice look blank with amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing certain incidents in his friendship with Krafft, under a different aspect.

About a fortnight had elapsed since the beginning of Louise's illness; she was still obliged to keep her bed. More than once, of late, Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly out of temper.

"Louise rubs me up the wrong way," she complained to Maurice. "And she isn't in the least grateful for all I've done for her. I really think she prefers having the nurse about her to me."

"Sick people often have such fancies," he consoled her.

"Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have never got on well for long together."

But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and threw it on the piano, with a decisive haste that was characteristic of her in anger.

"That's the end; I don't go back again. I'm not paid for my services, and am under no obligation to listen to such things as Louise said to me to-day. Enough is enough. She is well on the mend, and must get on now as best she can. I wash my hands of the whole affair."

"But you're surely not going to take what a sick person says seriously?" Maurice exclaimed in dismay. "How can she possibly get on with only those strangers about her?"

"She's not so ill now. She'll be all right," answered Madeleine; she had opened a letter that was on the table, and did not look up as she spoke. "There's a limit to everything—even to my patience with her rudeness."

And on returning the following day, he found, sure enough, that, true to her word, Madeleine had not gone back. She maintained an obstinate silence about what had happened, and requested that he would now let the matter drop.

The truth was that Madeleine's conscience was by no means easy.

She had gone to see Louise on that particular afternoon, with even more inconvenience to herself than usual. On admitting her, Fraulein Grunhut had endeavoured to detain her in the passage, mumbling and gesticulating in the mystery-mongering way with which Madeleine had no patience. It incited her to answer the old woman in a loud, clear voice; then, brusquely putting her aside, she opened the door of the sick girl's room.

As she did so, she utttered an exclamation of surprise. Louise, in a flannel dressing-gown, was standing at the high tiled stove behind the door. Both her arms were upraised and held to it, and she leant her forehead against the tiles.

"Good Heavens, what are you doing out of bed?" cried Madeleine; and, as she looked round the room: "And where is Sister Martha?"

Louise moved her head, so that another spot of forehead came in contact with the tiles, and looked up at Madeleine from under her heavy lids, without replying.

Madeleine laid one by one on the table some small purchases she had made on the way there.

"Well, are you not going to speak to me to-day?" she said in a pleasant voice, as she unbuttoned her jacket. "Or tell me what I ask about the Sister?" There was not a shade of umbrage in her tone.

Louise moved her head again, and looked away from Madeleine to the wall of the room. "I have got up," she answered, in such a low voice that Madeleine had to pause in what she was doing, to hear her; "because I could not bear to lie in bed any longer. And I've sent the Sister away—because . . . oh, because I couldn't endure having her about me."

"You have sent Sister Martha away?" echoed Madeleine. "On your own responsibility? Louise!—how absurd! Well, I suppose I must put on my hat again and fetch her back. How can you get on alone, I should like to know? Really, I have no time to come oftener than I do."

"I'm quite well now. I don't need anyone."

"Come, get back into bed, like a good girl, and I will make you some tea," said Madeleine, in the gently superior tone that one uses to a sick person, to a young child, to anyone with whom it is not fitting to dispute.

Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low American rocking-chair, where she crouched despondently.

"I wish I had died," she said in a toneless voice.

Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled the tea-cups. "Nonsense! You mustn't talk about dying—now that you are nearly well again. Besides, you know, such things are easily said. One doesn't mean them."

"I wish I had died. Why didn't you let me die?" repeated Louise in the same apathetic way.

Madeleine did not reply; she was cogitating whether it would be more convenient to go after the nurse at once, and what she ought to do if she could not get her to come back. For Louise would certainly have despatched her in tragedy-fashion.

Meanwhile the latter had laid her arms along the low arms of the chair, and now sat gazing from one to the other of her hands. In their way, these hands of hers had acquired a kind of fame, which she had once been vain of. They had been photographed; a sculptor had modelled them for a statue of Antigone—long, slim and strong, with closely knit fingers, and pale, deep-set nails: hands like those of an adoring Virgin; hands which had an eloquent language all their own, but little or no agility, and which were out of place on the keys of a piano. Louise sat looking at them, and her face was so changed—the hollow setting of the eyes reminded perpetually of the bones beneath; the lines were hammered black below the eyes; nostrils and lips were pinched and thinned—that Madeleine, secretly observing her, remarked to herself that Louise looked at least ten years older than before. Her youth, and, with it, such freshness as she had once had, were gone from her.

"Here is your tea."

The girl drank it slowly, as if swallowing were an effort, while Madeleine went round the room, touching and ordering, and opening a window. This done, she looked at her watch.

"I will go now," she said, "and see if I can persuade Sister Martha to come back. If you haven't mortally offended her, that is."

Louise started up from her chair, and put her cup, only half emptied, on the table.

"Madeleine!—please—please, don't! I can't have her back again. I am quite well now. There was nothing more she could do for me. I shall sleep a thousand times better at night if she is not here. Oh, don't bring her back again! Her voice cut like a knife, and her hands were so hard."

She trembled with excitement, and was on the brink of tears.

"Hush!—don't excite yourself like that," said Madeleine, and tried to soothe her. "There's no need for it. If you are really determined not to have her, then she shall not come and that's the end of it. Not but what I think it foolish of you all the same," she could not refrain from adding. "You are still weak. However, if you prefer it, I'll do my best to run up this evening to see that you have everything for the night."

"I don't want you either."

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders, and her pity became tinged with impatience.

"The doctor says you must go away somewhere, for a change," she said as she beat up the pillows and smoothed out the crumpled sheets, preparatory to coaxing her patient back to bed.

Louise shook her head, but did not speak.

"A few weeks' change of air is what you need to set you up again."

"I cannot go away."

"Nonsense! Of course you can. You don't want to be ill all the winter?"

"I don't want to be well."

Madeleine sniffed audibly. "There's no reasoning with you. When you hear on all sides that it's for your own good——"

"Oh, stop tormenting me!" cried Louise, raising a drawn face with disordered hair. "I won't go away! Nothing will make me. I shall stay here—though I never get well again."

"But why? Give me one sensible reason for not going.—You can't!"

"Yes . . . if . . . if Eugen should come back."

The words could only just be caught. Madeleine stood, holding a sheet with both hands, as though she could not believe her ears.

"Louise!" she said at last, in a tone which meant many things.

Louise began to cry, and was shaken by hard, dry sobs. Madeleine did not look at her again, but went severely on with her bedmaking. When she had finished, she crossed to the washstand, and poured out a glass of water.

Louise took it, humbled and submissive, and gradually her sobs abated. But now Madeleine, in place of getting ready to leave, as she had intended, sat down at the centre table, and revolved what she felt it to be her duty to say. When all sound of crying had ceased, she began to speak, persuasively, in a quiet voice.

"You have brought the matter up yourself, Louise," she said, "and, now the ice is broken, there are one or two things I should like to say to you. First then, you have been very ill, far worse than you know—the immediate danger is over now, so I can speak of it. But who can tell what may happen if you persist in remaining on here by yourself, in the state you are in?"

Louise did not stir; her face was hidden.

"The reason you give for staying is not a serious one, I hope," Madeleine proceeded cautiously choosing her words. "After all the . . . the precautions that were taken to ensure the . . . break, it is not all likely . . . he would think of returning. And Louise," she added with warmth, "even though he did—suppose he did—after the way he has behaved, and his disgraceful treatment of you——"

Louise looked up for an instant. "That is not true," she said.

"Not true?" echoed Madeleine. "Well, if you are able to admire his behaviour—if you don't consider it disgraceful—no, more than that—infamous——" She stopped, not being able to find a stronger epithet.

"It is not true," said Louise in the same expressionless voice. But now she lifted her head, and pressed the palms of her hands together.

Madeleine pushed back her chair, as if she were about to rise. "Then I have nothing more to say," she said; and went on: "If you are ready to defend a man who has acted towards you as he has—in a way that makes a respectable person's blood boil—there is indeed nothing more to be said." She reddened with indignation. "As if it were not bad enough for him to go, after all you have done for him, but that he must do it in such a mean, underhand way—it's enough to make one sick. The only thing to compare with it is his conduct on the night before he left. Do you know, pray, that on the last evening, at a KNEIPE in the GOLDENE HIRSCH, he boasted of what you had done for him—boasted about everything that had happened between you—to a rowdy, tipsy crew? More than that, he gave shameless details, about you going to his room that afternoon——"

"It's not true, it's not true," repeated Louise, as if she had got these few words by heart. She rose from her chair, and leaned on it, half turning her back to Madeleine, and holding her handkerchief to her lips.

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Do you think I should say it, if it weren't?" she asked. "I don't invent scandal. And you are bound to hear it when you go out again. He did this, and worse than I choose to tell you, and if you felt as you ought to about it, you would never give him another thought. He's not worth it. He's not worth any respectable person's——"

"Respectable!" burst in Louise, and raised two blazing eyes to her companion's face. "That's the second time. Why do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He did what he was obliged to—that's all: for I should never have let him go. Can't you see how preposterous it is to think that by talking of respectability, and unworthiness, you can make me leave off caring for him?—when for months I have lived for nothing else? Do you think one can change one's feelings so easily? Don't you understand that to love a person once is to love him always and altogether?—his faults as well—everything he does, good or bad, no matter what other people think of it? Oh, you have never really cared for anyone yourself, or you would know it."

"It's not preposterous at all," retorted Madeleine. "Yes—if he had deserved all the affection you wasted on him, or if unhappy circumstances had separated you. But that's not the case. He has behaved scandalously, without the least attempt at shielding you. He has made you the talk of the place. And you may consider me narrow and prejudiced, but this I must say—I am boundlessly astonished at you. When he has shown you as plainly as he can that he's tired of you, that you should still be ready to defend him, and have so little proper pride that you even say you would take him back!——"

Louise turned on her. "You would never do that, Madeleine, would you?—never so far forget yourself as to crawl to a man's feet and ask—ask?—no, implore forgiveness, for faults you were not conscious of having committed. You would never beg him to go on loving you, after he had ceased to care, or think nothing on earth worth having if he would not—or could not. As I would; as I have done." But chancing to look at Madeleine, she grew quieter. "You would never do that, would you?" she repeated. "And do you know why?" Her words came quickly again; her voice shook with excitement. "Because you will never care for anyone more than yourself—it isn't in you to do it. You will go through life, tight on to the end, without knowing what it is to care for some one—oh, but I mean absolutely, unthinkingly——"

She broke down, and hid her face again. Madeleine had carried the cups and saucers to a side-table, and now put on her hat.

"And I hope I never shall," she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. "If I thought it likely, I should never look at a man again."

But Louise had not finished. Coming round to the front of the rocking-chair, and leaning on the table, she gazed at Madeleine with wild eyes, while her pale lips poured forth a kind of revenge for the suffering, real and imaginary, that she had undergone at the hands of this cooler nature.

"And I'll tell you why. You are doubly safe; for you will never be able to make a man care so much that—that you are forced to love him like this in return. It isn't in you to do it. I don't mean because you're plain. There are plenty of plainer women than you, who can make men follow them. No, it's your nature—your cold, narrow, egotistic nature—which only lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls away."