His laughter died away. He opened the door, noiselessly, as he had learned by practice to do, and as noiselessly entered the vestibule and went up the stairs.
Several versions of the contretemps with Herries were afloat immediately. All agreed in one point: Maurice Guest had been in an advanced stage of intoxication. A scuffle was said to have taken place in the deserted street; there had been tears, and prayers, and shrill accusing voices. In the version that reached Madeleine's cars, blows were mentioned. She stood aghast at the disclosures the story made, and at all these implied. Until now, Maurice had at least striven to preserve appearances. If once you became callous enough not to care what people said of you, you wilfully made of yourself a social outcast.
That same afternoon, as she was mounting the steps of the Conservatorium, she came face to face with Krafft. They had not met for weeks; and Madeleine remarked this, as they stood together. But she was not thinking very deeply of him or his affairs; and when she asked him if he would go across to her room, and wait for her there, she was following an impulse that had no connection with him. As usual, Krafft had nothing particular to do; and when she returned, half an hour later, she found him lying on her sofa, with his arms under his head, his knees crossed above him. The air of the room was grey with smoke; but, for once, Madeleine set no limit to his cigarettes. Sitting down at the table, she looked meditatively at him. For some moments neither spoke.
But as Krafft drew out his case to take another cigarette, a tattered volume of Reclam's UNIVERSAL LIBRARY fell from his pocket, and spread itself on the floor. Madeleine stooped and pieced it together.
"What have we here?—ah, your Bible!" she said sarcastically: it was a novel by a modern Danish poet, who died young. "You carry it about with you, I see."
"To-day I needed STIMMUNG. But don't say Bible; that's an error of taste. Say 'death-book.' One can study death in it, in all its forms."
"To give you STIMMUNG! I can't understand your love for the book, Heinz. It's morbid."
"Everything's morbid that the ordinary mortal doesn't wish to be reminded of. Some day—if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions—some day I shall write music to it. That would be a melodrama worth making."
"Morbid, Heirtz, morbid!"
"All women are not of your opinion. I remember once hearing a woman say, had the author still lived, she would have pilgrimaged barefoot to see him."
"Oh, I dare say. There are women enough of that kind."
"Fools, of course?"
"Extravagant; unbalanced. The class of person that suffers from a diseased temperament.—But men can make fools of themselves, too. There are specimens enough here to start a museum with."
"Of which you, as NORMALMENSCH, could be showman."
Madeleine pushed her chair back towards the head of the sofa, so that she came to sit out of the range of Krafft's eyes.
"Talking of fools," she said slowly, "have you seen anything of Maurice Guest lately?"
Krafft lowered a spike of ash into the tray. "I have not."
"Yes; I heard he had got into a different hour," she said disconnectedly. As, however, Krafft remained impassive, she took the leap. "Is there—can nothing be done for him, Heinz?"
Here Krafft did just what she had expected him to do: rose on his elbow, and turned to look at her. But her face was inscrutable.
"Explain," he said, dropping back into his former position.
"Oh, explain!" she echoed, firing up at once. "I suppose if a fellow-mortal were on his way to the scaffold, you men would still ask for explanations. Listen to me. You're the only man here Maurice was at all friendly with—I shouldn't turn to you, you scoffer, you may be sure of it, if I knew of anyone else. He liked you; and at one time, what you said had a good deal of influence with him. It might still have. Go to him, Heinz, and talk straight to him. Make him think of his future, and of all the other things he has apparently forgotten.—You needn't laugh! You could do it well enough if you chose—if you weren't so hideously cynical.—Oh, don't laugh like that! You're loathsome when you do. And there's nothing natural about it."
But Krafft enjoyed himself undisturbed. "Not natural? It ought to be," he said when he could speak again. "Oh, you English, you English!—was there ever a people like you? Don't talk to me of men and women, Mada. Only an Englishwoman would look at the thing as you do. How you would love to reform and straitlace all us unregenerate youths! You've done your best for me—in vain!—and now it's Guest. Mada, you have the Puritan's watery fluid in your veins, and Cain's mark on your brow: the mark of the raceace that carries its Sundays, its—language, its drinks, its dress, and its conventions with it, whereever it goes, and is surprised, and mildly shocked, if these things are not instantly adopted by the poor, purblind foreigner.—You are the missionaries of the world!"
"Oh, I've heard all that before. Some day, Heinz, you really must come to England and revise your impressions of us. However, I'm not going to let you shirk the subject. I will tell you this. I know the MILIEU Maurice Guest has sprung from, and I can judge, as you never can, how totally he is unfitting himself to return. The way he's going on—I hear on all sides that he'll never 'make his PRUFUNG,' now, and you yourself know his certificate won't be worth a straw."
"There's something fascinating, I admit," Krafft went on, "about a people of such a purely practical genius. And it follows, as a matter of course, that, being the extreme individualists you are, you should question the right of others to their particular mode of existence. For individualism of this type implies a training, a culture, a grand style, which it has taken centuries to attain—WE have still centuries to go, before we get there. If we ever do! For we are the artists among nations—waxen temperaments, formed to take on impressions, to be moulded this way and that, by our age, our epoch. You are the moralists, we are the ..."
"The immoralists."
"If you like. In your vocabulary, that's a synonym for KUNSTLER."
"You make me ill, Heinz!"
"KUSS' DIE HAND!" He was silent, following a smoke-ring with his eyes. "Seriously, Mada," he said after a moment—but there was no answering seriousness in his face, which mocked as usual. "Seriously, now, I suppose you wouldn't admit what this DRESSUR, this HOHE SCHULE Guest is going through, might be of service to him in the end?"
"No, indeed, I wouldn't," she answered hotly. "You talk as if he were a circus-horse. Think of him now, and think of him as he was when he first came here. A good fellow—wasn't he? And full to the brim of plans and projects—ridiculous enough, some of them—but the great thing is to be able to make plans. As long as a man can do that, he's on the upward grade.—And he had talent, you said so yourself, and unlimited perseverance."
"Good God, Madeleine" burst out Krafft. "That you should have been in this place as long as you have, and still remain so immaculate!—Surely you realise that something more than talent and perseverance is necessary? One can have talent as one has a hat ... use it or not as one likes.—I tell you, the mill Guest is going through may be his salvation—artistically."
"And morally?" asked Madeleine, not without bitterness. "Must one give thanks then, if one's friend doesn't turn out a genius?"
Krafft shrugged his shoulders. "As you take it. The artist has as much to do with morality, as, let us say, your musical festivals have to do with art.—And if his genius isn't strong enough to float him, he goes under, UND DAMIT BASTA! The better for art. There are bunglers enough.—But I'll tell you this," he rose on his elbow again, and spoke more warmly. "Since I've seen what our friend is capable of; how he has allowed himself to be absorbed; since, in short, he has behaved In such a highly un-British way—well, since then, I have some hope of him. He seems open to impression.—And impressions are the only things that matter to the artist."
"Oh, don't go on, please! I'm sick to death of the very words art and artist."
"Cheer up, Mada! You've nothing of the kind in your blood." He stretched himself and yawned. "Nor has he, either, I believe. A face may deceive. And a clear head, and unlimited perseverance, and intelligence, and ambition—none of these things is enough. The Lord asks more of his chosen."
Madeleine clasped her hands behind her head, and tilted back her chair.
"So you couldn't interfere, I see? Your artistic conscience would forbid it."
"Why don't you do it yourself?" He scrutinised her face, with a sarcastic smile.
"Oh, say it out! I know what you think."
"And am I not right?"
"No, you're not. How I hate the construction you put on things! In your eyes, nothing is pure or disinterested. You can't even imagine to yourself a friendship between a man and a woman. Such a thing isn't known here—in your nation of artists. Your men are too inflammatory, and too self-sufficient, to want their calves fatted for any but the one sacrifice. Girls have their very kitchen-aprons tied on them with an undermeaning. And poor souls, who can blame them for submitting! What a fate is theirs, if they don't manage to catch a man! Gossip and needlework are only slow poison."
"Now you're spiteful. But I'll tell YOU something. Such friendships as you speak of are only possible where the woman is old—or ugly—or abnormal, in some way: a man-woman, or a clever woman, or some other freak of nature. Now, our women are, as a rule, sexually healthy. They know what they're here for, too, and are not ashamed of it. Also, they still have their share of physical attraction. While yours—good God! I wonder you manage to keep the breed going!"
"Stop, Heinz!" said Madeleine sternly. "You are illogical, and indecent; and you know there's a limit I don't choose to let you pass.—You're wrong, too. You've only to look about you, here, with unbiassed eyes, to see which race the prettiest girls belong to.—But never mind! You only launch out in this way that you may not be obliged to discuss Maurice Guest. I know you. I can read you like a book."
"You are not very old ... or ugly ... or abnormal, Mada."
She smiled in spite of herself. "And are we not friends, pray?"
"Something that way.—But in all you say about Guest, the impersonal note is wanting. You're jealous."
"I'm nothing of the sort!—But you'll at least allow me to resent seeing a friend of mine in the claws of this ... this vampire?"
Krafft laughed. "Vampire is good!—A poor, distraught—"
"Spare your phrases, Heinz. She's bad through and through, and stupid into the bargain."
"Lulu stupid? EI, EI, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. She has a touch of the other extreme—of genius."
"NA!—Well, if this is another of your manifestations of genius, then permit me to hate—no, to loathe it, in all its forms."
"GANZ NACH BELIEBEN! It's a privilege of your sex, you know. There never was a woman yet who didn't prefer a good, square talent."
"A crack this way, and it's madness; that, and the world says genius. And some people have a peculiar gift for discovering it. Those who set themselves to it can find genius in a flea's jump."
"But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving—that some women have a genius for loving?—No, why do I ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster—a placard."
"What a people you are for words! You make phrases about everything. That's a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle woman—"
"Fickle woman! fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, like sheep."
"Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly: if what you say were true, vice would be condoned."
"Vice!!" he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. "Vice!—my dear Mada!—sweet, innocent child! ... No, no. A special talent is needed for that kind of thing; an unlimited capacity for suffering; an entire renunciation of what is commonly called happiness! You hold the good old Philistine opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers living together in delirious pleasure, in SAUS UND BRAUS.—Nothing could be falser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her nature, and the suffering is there, too. She's born gifted with the faculty. And a woman of the type we're speaking of, is as often as not the flower of her kind.—Or becomes it.—For see all she gains on her way: the mere passing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded—why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience—a turn of thought—it may be only an intuition—which she has not had before."
"And the contamination? The soul?" cried Madeleine; two red spots had come out on her cheeks.
"As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn't need one. All she needs is tact and taste."
"You are the eternal scoffer."
"I never was more serious in my life.—But let us put it another way. What does a—what does any beautiful woman want with a soul, or brains, or morals, or whatever you choose to call it? Let her give thanks, night and day, that she is what she is: one of the few perfect things on this imperfect earth. Let her care for her beauty, and treasure it, and serve it. Time enough when it is gone, to cultivate the soul—if, indeed, she doesn't bury herself alive, as it's her duty to do, instead of decaying publicly. Mada! do you know a more disgusting, more humiliating sight than the sagging of the skin on a neck that was once like marble?—than a mouth visibly losing its form?—the slender shoulders we have adored, broadening into massivity?—all the fine spiritual delicacy of youth being touched to heaviness?—all the barbarous cruelty, in short, with which, before our eyes, time treats the woman who is no longer young.—No, no! As long as she has her beauty, a woman is under no necessity to bolster up her conscience, or to be reasonable, or to think.—Think? God forbid! There are plain women enough for that. We don't ask our Lady of Milo to be witty for us, or to solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, more eloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth—the upward look of two dark eyes—than in all women have said or done from Sappho down. Springy colour, light, music, perfume: they are all to be found in the curves of a perfect throat or arm."
Madeleine's silence bristled with irony.
"And that," he went on, "was where the girl you are blaspheming had such exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct taught her what was required of her. She would fall into an attitude, and remain motionless in it, as if she knew the eye must feast its full. Or if she did move, and speak—for she, too, had hours of a desperate garrulity—then one was content, as well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole body spoke when her lips did; she would pass so rapidly from one position to another that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of all this multitude, you would not be able to carry one away with you.—If some of her ways of expressing herself in motion could be caught and fixed, a sculptor's fame would be made.—A painter's, if he could reproduce the trick she has of smiling entirely with her eyes and eyebrows.—And then her hands! Mada, I wonder you other women don't weep for envy of them. She has only to raise them, to pass them over her forehead, or to finger at her hair, and the world is hers.—Do you really think a man asks soul of a woman with such eyes and hand as those?—Good God, no! He worships her and adores her. Were is only one place for him, and that's on his knees before her."
"Well, really, Heinz!" said Madeleine, and the spots on her cheeks burnt a dull red. "In imagination, do you know, I'm carried just three years backwards? Do you remember that spring evening, when you came rushing in here to me? 'I've seen the most beautiful woman in the world, and I'm drunk with her.' And how I couldn't understand? For I thought her plain, just as I still do.—But then, if I remember aright, your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it ... hm! ... is now."
"It was not.—But now, you understand, Mada, that I think a man makes a good exchange of career, and success, and other such accidents of his material existence, for the right to touch these hands at will. The one thing necessary is, that he be fit for the post. I demand of him that he be a gourmand, a connoisseur in beauty. And it's here, mind you, that I have doubts of our friend.—Is it clear to you?"
"As clear as day, thanks. And you may be QUITE sure: of me never applying to you for help again. I shall respect your principles."
"And mind you, I don't say Guest may not come out of the affair all right—enriched for the rest of his life."
"Very good. And now you may go. I regret that I ever bothered with you."
Krafft went across to where Madeleine was standing, put his hands on her two shoulders, and laid his head on his right arm, so that she, who was taller than he was, looked down on the roundnesses of his curly hair. "You're a good fellow, Mada—a good fellow! JA, JA—who knows! If you had had just a little more of the EWIGWEIBLICHE about you!"
"Too much honour ... But you don't expect Englishwomen to join your harem, do, you?"
"There would have been a certain repose in belonging to a woman of your type. But it's the charm—physical charm—we poor wretches can't do without."
"Upon my word, it's almost a declaration!" cried Madeleine, not unnettled. "Take my advice, Heinz. Hie you home, and marry the person you ought to. Take pity on the poor thing's constancy. Unless," she added, a moment later, with a sarcastic laugh, "since you're still so infatuated with Louise, you persuade her to transfer her favours to you. That would solve all difficulties in the most satisfactory way. She would have the variety that seems necessary to her existence; you could lie on your knees before her all day long; and our friend would be restored to sanity. Think it over, Heinz. It's a good idea."
"Do you think she'd have me?" he asked, as he shook himself into his coat.
"Heaven knows and Heaven only! Where Louise is concerned, nothing's impossible—I've always maintained it."
"Well, ta-ta!—You shall have early news, I promise you."
Madeleine heard him go down the stair, whistling the ROSE OF SHARON. But he could not have been half-way to the bottom, when he turned and came back. Holding her door ajar, he stuck a laughing face into the room.
"Upon my word, Mada, I congratulate you! It's a colossal idea."
But Madeleine had had enough of him. "I'm glad it pleases you. Now go, go! You've played the fool here long enough."
When he emerged from the house, Krafft had stopped whistling. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his felt hat pulled down over his eyes. At the corner, he was so lost in thought as to be unable to guide his feet: he stood and gazed at the pavement. Still on the same spot, he pushed his hat to the back of his head, and burst into such an eerie peal of laughter that some ladies, who were coming towards him, started back, and, picking up their skirts, went off the pavement, in order to avoid passing him too nearly.
The following afternoon, at an hour when Maurice was safely out of the way, Krafft climbed the stair to the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE.
The landlady did not know him. Yes, Fraulein was at home, she said; but— Krafft promptly entered, and himself closed the door.
Outside Louise's room, he listened, with bent head. Having satisfied himself, he turned the handle of the door and went in.
Louise stood at the window, watching the snow fall. It had snowed uninterruptedly since early morning; out of the leaden sky, flake after flake fluttered down, whirled, spun, and became part of the fallen mass. At the opening of the door, she did not stir; for it would only be Maurice coming back to ask forgiveness; and she was too unspeakably tired to begin all over again.
Krafft stood and eyed her, from the crown of her rough head, to the bedraggled tail of the dressing-gown.
"GRUSS' GOTT, LULU!"
At the sound of his voice, she jumped round with a scream.
"You, Heinz! YOU!"
The blood suffused her face a purplish red; her voice was shrill with dismay; her eyes hung on the young man as though he were a returning spirit.
With an effort, she got the better of her first fright, and took a step towards him. "How DARE you come into this room!"
Krafft hung his wet coat over the back of a chair, and wiped his face dry of the melted snow.
"No heroics, Lulu!"
But she could not contain herself. "Oh, how dare you, It's a mean, dishonourable trick—only you would do it!"
"Sit down and listen to what I have to say. It won't take long. And it's to your own advantage, I think, not to make a noise.—May I smoke?"
She obeyed, taking the nearest chair; for she had begun to tremble; her legs shook under her. But when he held out the case of cigarettes to her, she struck it, and the contents were spilled on the floor.
"Look here, Lulu," he said, and crossing his legs, put one hand in his pocket, while with the other he made gestures suitable to his words. "I've not come here to-day to rake up old sores. Time has gone over them and healed them, and it's only your—NEBENBEI GESAGT, extremely bad-conscience that makes you afraid of me. I'm not here for myself, but—"
"Heinz!" The cry escaped her against her will. "For him? You've come from him!"
He removed his cigarette and smiled. "Him? Which? Which of them do you mean?"
"Which?" It was another uncontrollable exclamation. Then the expression of almost savage joy that had lighted up her face, died out. "Oh, I know you! ... know you and hate you, Heinz! I've never hated anyone as much as you."
"And a woman of your temperament hates uncommonly well.—No, all jokes aside,"—the word cut her; he saw this, and repeated it. "Joking apart, I've come to you to-day, merely to ask if you don't think your present little affair has gone far enough?"
She was as composed as he was. "What business is it of yours?"
"Oh, none. Except that the poor fool was once my friend."
She gave a daring laugh, full of suggestion.
But Krafft was not put out by it. "Don't do that again," he said. "It sounds ugly; and you have nothing to do with ugliness, you know. No, I repeat once more: this is not a personal matter."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
It was now she who smiled derisively. "Have you forgotten a certain evening in this room, three years ago?"
But he did not flinch. "Upon my word, if you are bold enough to recall that!—However, the reminder was unnecessary. Tell me now: aren't you about done with Guest?"
For still a moment, she fought to keep up her show of dignity. Then she broke down. "Heinz!—oh, I don't know! Oh, yes, yes, yes—a thousand times, yes! Oh, I'm so tired—I can't tell you how tired I am—of the very sight of him! I never wanted him, believe me, I didn't! He thrust himself on me. It was not my doing."
"Oh, come now! Tell that to some one else."
"Yes, I know: you only think the worst of me. But though I was weak, and yielded, anyone would have done the same. He gave me no peace.—But I've been punished out of all proportion to the little bit of happiness it brought me. There's no more miserable creature alive than I am."
"What interests me," continued Krafft, in a matter-of-fact tone, "is, how you came to choose so far afield from your particular type. It's well enough represented here."
She saw the folly of wasting herself upon him, and gave a deep sigh. Then, however, the same wild change as before came over her face. Stooping, she took his hand and fondled it.
"Heinz! Now that you're here, do one thing—only one—for me! Have pity on me! I've gone through so much—been so unhappy. Tell me—there's only one thing I want to know. Where is he? Will he NEVER come back? For you know. You must know. You have seen him."
She had sunk to her knees; her head was bent over his hand; she laid her cheek against it. Krafft considered her thoughtfully; his eye dwelt with approval on the broad, slender shoulders, the lithe neck—all the sure grace of the crouching body.
"Will you do something for me, Lulu?"
"Anything!"
"Then let your hair down."
He himself drew out the pins and combs that held it, and the black mass fell, and lay in wide, generous waves round face and neck.
"That's the idea! Now go on."
Louise kissed his hand. "Tell me; you must know."
"But is it possible that still interests you?"
"Oh, no! My life depends on it, that's all. You are cruel and bad; but still I can speak to you—for months now, I haven't had a soul to speak to. Be kind to me this once, Heinz. I CAN'T go on living without him. I haven't lived since he left me—not an hour!—Oh, you're my last hope!"
"You'll have plenty of hopes in your life yet."
"In those old days, you hated me, too. But don't bear malice now. There's nothing I won't do for you, if you tell me. I'll never speak to—never even think of you again."
"I'm not so long-suffering."
"Then you won't tell me?"
"I didn't say that."
She crushed his hand between hers. "Here's the chance you asked for—to save your friend! Oh, won't you understand?"
An inward satisfaction, of which only he himself knew the cause, warmed Krafft through at seeing her prostrate before him. But as he continued to look at her, a thought crossed his mind, and quickly resolved, he laid his cigarette on the table, and put his hands, first on her head, amid the tempting confusion of her hair, which met them like a thick stuff pleasant to the touch, and from there to her shoulders, inclining her towards him. She looked up, and though her eyes were full of tears, her white face was alight in an instant with hope again, as he said: "Would you do something else for me if I told you?"
She strained back, so that she might see his face. "Heinz!—what is it?" And then, with a sudden gasp of comprehension:
"Oh, if that's all!—I will never see Maurice Guest again."
"That's not it."
"What is it then?"
"Will you listen quietly?"
"Yes, yes." She ceased to draw back, let herself be held. But he felt her trembling.
He whispered a few words in her ear. Almost simultaneously she jerked her head away, and, turning a dark red, stared incredulously at him. Then she sprang to her feet.
"Oh, what a fool I am! To believe, for one instant, there was a human spot in you I could get at!—Take your hands away—take them off me! Because I've had no one to speak to for so long: because I know YOU could understand if you would—Oh, when a woman is down, anyone may hit her."
"Gently, gently!—You're too good for such phrases."
"I'm no different from other women. It's only you—with your horrible thoughts of me. YOU! Why, you're no more to me than the floor I stand on."
"And matters are simplified by that very fact.—I can give you his address, Lulu."
"Go away! I may hurt you. I could kill you.—Go away!"
"And this," said Krafft, as he put on his coat again, "is how a woman listens quietly. Well, Lulu, think it over. A word at any time will bring me, if you change your mind."
One evening, about a week later, Maurice entered Seyffert's Cafe. The heavy snowfall had been succeeded by a period of thaw—of slush and gloom; and, on this particular night, a keen wind had risen, making the streets seem doubly cheerless. It was close on nine o'clock, and Seyffert's was crowded with its usual guests—young people, who had escaped from more or less dingy rooms to the warmth and light of the cafe, where the yellow blinds were drawn against the inclement night. The billiard table in the centre was never free; those players whose turn had not yet come, or was over, stood round it, cigarette or large black cigar in hand, and watched the game.
Maurice had difficulty in finding a seat. When he did, it was at a table for two, in a corner. A youth who had already eaten his supper, sat alone there, picking his teeth. Maurice took the opposite chair, and made his evening meal with a languid appetite. At the other side of the room was a large and boisterous party, whose leader was Krafft—Krafit in his most outrageous mood. Every other minute, his sallies evoked roars of laughter. Maurice refrained from glancing in that direction. When, however, his VIS-A-VIS got up and went away, he was startled from his conning of the afternoon paper by seeing Krafft before him. The latter, who carried his beer-mug in his hand, took the vacated scat, nodded and smiled.
Maurice was on his guard at once; for it seemed to him that they were being watched by the party Krafft had left. Putting down the newspaper, he wished his friend good-evening.
"I've something to say to you," said Krafft without responding, and, having drained his glass, he clapped the lid to attract the waiter's attention.
With the over-anxious readiness to oblige, which was becoming one of his most marked traits, and, in reality, cloaked a deathly indifference, Maurice hung up his paper, and sat forward to listen. Crossing his arms on the table, Krafft began to speak, meanwhile fixing his companion with his eye. Maurice was at first too bewildered by what he heard to know to whom the words referred. Then, the colour mounted to his face; the nerves in his temples began to throb; and his hand moved along the edge of the table, in search of something to which it could hold fast.—It was the first time the name of Louise had been mentioned between them—and in what a tone!
"Heinz!" he said at last; his voice seemed not to be his own. "How dare you speak of Miss Dufrayer like that!"
"PARDON!" said Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were aglow, his limpid eyes shone like stars. "Do you mean Lulu?"
Maurice grew pale. "Mind what you're saying!"
Krafft took a gulp of beer. "Are you afraid of the truth?—But just one word, and I'm done. You no doubt knew, as every one else did, that Lulu was Schilsky's mistress. What you didn't know, was this;" and now, without the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuating word, there fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of a woman's unsatisfied fancy.
Before the pitiless details, not one of which was spared him, were checked off, Maurice understood; half rising from his chair, he struck Krafft a resounding blow in the face. He had intended to hit the mouth, but, his hand remaining fully open, caught on the cheek, and with such force that the delicate skin instantly bore a white imprint of all five fingers.
Only the people in their immediate neighbourhood saw what had happened; but these sprang up; a girl gave a nervous cry; and in a minute, the further occupants of the room had gathered round them, the billiard-players with their cues in their hands. Two waiters, napkin on arm, hastened up, and the proprietor came out from an inner room, and rubbed his hands.
"MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!"
Krafft had jumped to his feet; he was also unable to refrain from putting his hand to his tingling face. Maurice, who was very pale, stood staring, like a person in a trance, at the mark, now deep red, which his hand had left on his friend's cheek. There was a solemn pause; all eyes were fixed on Krafft; and the stillness was only broken by the proprietor's persuasive: "MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!"
In half a minute Krafft had collected himself. Turning, he jauntily waved his hand to those pressing up behind; though one side of his face still blazed and burned.
"Don't allow yourselves to be disturbed, gentlemen. The incident is closed—for the present, at least. My friend here was carried away by a momentary excitement. Kindly resume your seats, and act as if nothing had happened. I shall call him to account at my own convenience.—But just one moment, please!"
The last words were addressed to Maurice. Opening a notebook, Krafft tore out one of the little pages, and, with his customary indolence of movement, wrote something on it. Then he folded it through the middle, and across again, and gave it to Maurice.
Maurice took it, because there seemed nothing else for him to do; he also, for the same reason, took his coat and hat, which some one handed to him. He saw nothing of what went on—nothing but the five outspread marks, which had run together so slowly. He had, however, enough presence of mind to do what was evidently expected of him; and, in the hush that still prevailed, he left the cafe.
The wind sent a blast in his face. Round the corners of the streets, which it was briskly scavenging, it swept in boisterous gusts, which beat the gas-flames flat as soon as they reared themselves, and made them give a wavering, uncertain light. Not a soul was visible. But in the moment that he stood hesitating outside the brilliancy of the yellow blinds, the hubbub of voices burst forth again. He moved hastily away, and began to walk, to put distance between himself and the place. He did not shrink before the wind-scourged meadows, but fought his way forward, till he reached the woods. There he threw himself face downwards on the first bench he came to.
A smell of rotting and decay met his nostrils: as if, from the thousands of leaves, mouldering under the trees on which they had once hung, some invisible hand had set free thousands of odours, there mounted to him, as he lay, all that rich and humid earthiness that belongs to sunless places. And for a time, he was conscious of little else but this morbid fragrance.
An open brawl! He had struck a man in the face before a crowd of onlookers, and had as good as been ejected from their midst. From now on, he was an outcast from orderly society, was branded as one who was not wholly responsible for his actions—he, Maurice Guest, who had ever been so chary of committing himself. What made the matter seem still blacker, too, in his own eyes, was the fact of Krafft having once been his intimate, personal friend. Now, he could never even think of him again, without, at the same time, seeing the mark of his hand on Krafft's cheek. If the blow had remained invisible, it might have been more easily forgotten; but he had seen it, as it were, taken shape before him.—Or, had it only been returned, it would have helped to lessen the weight of his present abasement—oh, he would have given all he had to have felt a return blow on his own face! Even the smallest loss of selfcontrol on the part of Krafft would have been enough. But the latter was too proud to give himself away gratuitously: he preferred to take his revenge in the more unconventional fashion of leaving his friend to bear the ignominy alone.
Maurice lay stabbing himself with these and similar thoughts. Only little by little did the tumult that had been roused in him abate. Then, and just the more vividly for the break in his memory, the gross words Krafft had said, came back to him. Recalling them, he felt an intense bitterness against Louise. She was the cause of all his sufferings; were it not for her, he might still be leading a quiet, decent life. It was her doing that he was compelled to part, bit by bit, with his selfrespect. Not once, in all the months they had been together, had the smallest good come to him through her. Nothing but misery.
Now, he had no further rest where he was. He must go to her, and tax her with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her very face. She should suffer, too—and the foretasted anguish and pleasure of hot recriminations dulled all other feelings in him.
He rose, chilled to the bone from his exposure; one hand, which had hung down over the bench, was wet and sticky from grasping handfuls of dead leaves.
It was past eleven o'clock. Louise wakened with a start, and, at the sight of his muddy, dishevelled dress, rose to her elbow.
"What is it? What's the matter? Where have you been?"
He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at her. The loose masses of her hair, which had come unplaited, arrested his attention: he had never seemed to know before how brutally black it was. With his eyes fixed on it, he repeated what Krafft had told him.
Louise lay with the back of one hand on her forehead, and watched him from under it. When he had finished, she said: "So Heinz has raked up that old story again, has he?"
Maurice had expected—yes, what had he expected?—anger, perhaps, or denial, or, it might be, vituperation; only not the almost impartial composure with which she listened to him. For he had not spared her a word.
"Is that all you've got to say?" he cried, suffocated with doubt. "Then you ... you admit it?"
"Admit it! Maurice! Are you crazy?—to wake me up for this! It happened YEARS ago!"
His recoil of disgust was too marked to be ignored. Louise half sat up in bed again, supporting herself on one hand. Her nightgown was not buttoned; he saw to the waist a strip of the white skin beneath, saw, too, how a long black strand of her hair fell in and lay on it.
"You won't tell me you didn't know from the first there had been ... something between Heinz and me?" she cried, roused to defend herself.—"And look here, Maurice, as he told you that, it's my turn now. I'll tell you why!" And sitting still more upright, she gave a reason which made him grasp the knob of the bed-post so fiercely that it came away in his hand. He threw it into a corner.
"Louise! ... you! to take such words on your tongue! Is there no shame left in you?" His throat was dry and narrow.
"Shame! You only mean the need for concealment. Before you had got me, there was no talk of shame."
"Do you know what you're saying?"
"Oh, that's your eternal cry!" and, suddenly spurred to anger, she rose again. "I know—yes, I know! Do you think I'm a fool? Why must you alone be so innocent! Why should you alone not know that I was only jealous of a single person, and that was Krafft?"
Maurice turned away. In the comparative darkness behind the screen, he sat down on the sofa, put his arms on the table, and his head on his arms. He was exhausted, and found he must have slept as he sat; for when he lifted his head again, the hands of the clock had moved forward by several hours.
One morning towards the end of January, Krafft disappeared from Leipzig, and some days later, the body of Avery Hill was found in a secluded reach of the Pleisse, just below Connewitz. Some workmen, tramping townwards soon after dawn, noticed a strip of light stuff twisted round a snag, which projected slightly above the surface of the water. It proved to be the skirt of her dress, which had been caught and held fast. Ambulance and police were summoned, and the body was recovered and taken to the police-station.
The last of his friends to see Krafft was Madeleine, and the number of those interested in his departure, and in Avery's quick suicide, was so large that she several times had to repeat her lively account of the last visit he paid her. He had come in, one afternoon, and settling himself on the sofa, refused to be dislodged. As he was in one of his most ambiguous moods, she left him to himself, and went on with her work.
On rising to go, he had stood for a moment with his hands on her shoulders.
"Well, Mada, whatever happens, remember I was sorry you wouldn't have me."
"Oh, come now, Heinz, you never really asked me!"
It was snowing hard that night, a moist, soft snow that melted as it touched the ground, and Krafft borrowed her umbrella. As usual, however, he returned before he could have got half-way down the stairs, to say that he had changed his mind and would not take it.
"But you'll get wet through."
"I don't want your umbrella, I tell you.—Or have you two?"
"No; but I'm not going out.—Oh, well, leave it then. And may you reap a frightful rheumatism!"
As he went down, for the second time, he whistled the ROSE OF SHARON: she listened to it grow fainter in the distance: and that was the last she or anyone had heard of Krafft. The following morning, his landlady found a note on her kitchen-table, instructing her to keep his belongings for four weeks. If, by that time, they had not been claimed, she might sell them, and take the money obtained for herself. Only a few personal articles were missing, such as would be necessary for a hurried journey.—Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had never expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leave of his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to him for not pilfering her umbrella, which was silvertopped. All the same, there was something indecent about his behaviour. It showed how little he had, at heart, cared for any of them. Only a person who thoroughly despised others, would treat them in this way, playing with them up to the last minute, as one plays with dolls or fools.
Avery Hill was laid out in a small room adjoining the policestation. It was evening before the business of identification was over. Various members of the American colony had to give evidence, and the services of the consul were called into play, for there were countless difficulties, formalities and ceremonies attached to this death by one's own hand in a foreign country. Before all the technical details were concluded, there were those who thought—and openly said so—that an intending suicide might cast a merciful thought on the survivors. Only Dove made no complaint. He had been one of the first to learn what had happened, and, in the days that followed, he ran to and fro, from one BUREAU to another, receiving signatures, and witnessing them, bearing the whole brunt of surly Saxon officialdom on his own shoulders.
Twenty-four hours later, it had been arranged that the body should be buried on the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF, and the consul was advised by cablegram to lay out the money for the funeral. Under the eyes of a police-officer and a young clerk from the consul's office, Madeleine, assisted by Miss Jensen, went through the dead girl's belongings, and packed them together.
Miss Jensen kept up, in a low voice, a running commentary on the falsity of men and the foolishness of women. But, at times, her natural kindness of heart asserted itself, to the confusion of her theories.
"Poor thing, poor young thing!" she murmured, gazing at a pair of well-patched boots which she held in her hand. "If only she had come to us!—and let us help her!"
"Help her?" echoed Madeleine in a testy way; she was one of those who thought that the dead girl might have shown more consideration for her friends, standing, as they did, immediately before their PRUFUNGEN. "Could one help her ever having set eyes on that attractive scoundrel?— And besides, it's easy enough thinking afterwards, one might have been able to help, to do this and that. It's a mistake. People don't want help; and they don't give you a thank-you for offering it. All they ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungle their lives as they like."
As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once more to the subject of Krafft's failings.
"I've known many men," she said, "one more credulously vain and stupid than another; for unless a man is engaged in satisfying his brute instincts, he can be twisted round the finger of ANY woman. But Mr. Krafft was the only one I've met, who didn't appear to me to have a single good impulse."
The big woman's high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine.
"You're quite wrong there," she said more snappily than before. "Heinz had as many good impulses as anyone else. But he had reduced the concealing of them to a fine art. He was never happier than when he had succeeded in giving a totally false impression of himself. Take me for this, for that!—just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a bone to a dog: there! that's good enough for you. No one knew Heinz: each of us knew a little bit of him, and thought it was all there was to know.—He never showed a good impulse: that is as much as saying that he swarmed with them. And no doubt he would have considered that, with regard to you, he had been entirely successful. You have the idea of him he meant you to have."
"He was never her lover," said Louise with a studied carelessness.
Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone of bravado in which she flaunted subjects of this nature, was stung to retaliation.
"How do YOU know?"
"Well, if you wish to hear—from his own lips."
"Do you mean to say you've spoken to Heinz about things of that kind?—discussed his relations with other women?"
"Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had ever heard of you?"
He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The events of the past week had closed over his head as two waves Close over a swimmer, cutting off light and air. Since the night on which he had left his whilom friend the mark of his spread fingers as a parting gift, he had ceased to care greatly about anything.
Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery's suicide and Krafft's departure touched him lightly. For the girl, he had never cared. As soon, though, as he heard that Krafft had disappeared, he turned out his pockets for the scrap of paper Heinz had given him that evening in the cafe. But it threw no light on what had happened. It was merely an address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make no more of it than the words: KLOSTERGASSE 12. He resolved to go through the street of that name in the afternoon; but, when the time came, he forgot about it, and it was not till next morning that he carried out his intention. There was, however, nothing to be learned; number twelve was a gunsmith's shop, and at his hesitating inquiry, if anything were known there of a music-student called Krafft, the owner of the shop looked at him as if he were a lunatic, and answered rudely: was the Herr under the impression that the shop was an information BUREAU?
Louise was dressed to go out. Pressed as to her destination, she said that she was going to see the body. Maurice sought in vain to dissuade her.
"It's a perverse thing to do," he cried. "You didn't care a fig for the girl when she was alive. But now she can't forbid it, you go and stare at her, out of nothing but curiosity."
"How do you know whether I cared for her or not?" Louise threw at him: she was tying on her' veil before the glass. "Do you think I tell you everything?—And as for your 'perverse,' it's the same with all I ever do. You have made it your business always to find my wishes absurd." She took up her gloves and, holding them together, hit her muff with them. "In this case, it doesn't concern you in the least. I don't ask you to come. I want to go alone."
The more shattered and unsure he grew, the more self-assertive was she. There was an air of bravado in all she did, at this time—as in the matter of her determination to go to the dead-house—and she hurt him, with reckless cruelty, whenever a chance offered. Her pale mouth seemed only to open to say unkind things, and her eyes weighed him with an ironic contempt. To his jarred ears, her very laugh sounded less fine. At moments, she began almost to look ugly to him; but it was a dangerous ugliness, more seductive than her beauty had ever been. Then, he knew that she was not too good for him, nor he for her, nor either of them for the world they lived in.
They walked side by side to the mortuary. It was a very cold day, and Louise wore heavy furs, from which her face rose enticingly. The attention she attracted was to Maurice like gall to a wound.
There was not much difficulty in gaining admittance to the dead. A small coin changed hands, and a man in uniform opened the door.
The post-mortem examination had been held that day, and the body was swathed from head to foot in a white sheet. It lay on a long, projecting shelf, and a ticket was pinned on the wall at its head. On the opposite side of the room, on a similar shelf, was another shrouded figure—the body of a workingman, found that morning on the outskirts of the town, with an empty bottle which had contained carbolic acid by its side. The LEICHENFRAU, the public layer—out of the dead, told them this; it was she, too, who drew back the sheet from Avery's face in order that they might see it. She was a rosy, apple-cheeked woman, and her vivid colouring was thrown into relief by the long black cloak and the close-fitting, black poke-bonnet that she wore. Maurice, for whom the dead as such had no attraction, turned from his contemplation of the stark-stretched figure on the shelf, to watch the living woman. The exuberance of her vitality had something almost insultant in the presence of these two rigid forms, from whose faces the colour had fled for ever. Her eyes were alert like those of a bird; her voice and movements were loud and bustling. In thought he compared her to a carrion-crow. It was this woman's calling to live on the dead; she hastened from house to house to cleanse poor, inanimate bodies, whose dignity had departed from them. He wondered idly whether she gloated over the announcements of fresh deaths, and mentally sped the dying. Did she talk of good seasons and of slack seasons, and look forward to the spread of contagious disease?—Well, at least, she throve on her trade, as a butcher thrives by continually handling meat.
Louise had eyes only for the face of the dead girl. She stood gazing at it, with a curious absorption, but without a spark of feeling. The LEICHENFRAU, having finished tying up a basket, crossed the room and joined her.
"EINE SCHONE LEICHE!" she said, and nodded, appreciating the fact that a stranger should admire what was partly her own handiwork.
It was true; Avery's face looked as though it were modelled in wax. She had not been in the water for more than half an hour, had said the doctor, not long enough to be disfigured in any way. Only her hair remained dank and matted, and, although it was laid straight out over the bolster, it would probably never be quite dry again. No matter, continued the woman; on the morrow would come the barber, a good friend of hers, to dress it for the tomb; he would bring tongs and irons, and other heating-apparatus with him, and, for certain, would make a good job of it, so skilled was he: he had all the latest fashions in hair-dressing at his finger-ends. The face itself was as placid as it had been in life; the lids were firmly closed—no peeping or squinting here—and the lips met and rested on each other round and full. Seen like this, it now became evident that his face was one of those which are, all along, intended for death—intended, that is, to lie waxen and immobile, to show to best advantage. In life, there had been too marked a discrepancy between the extreme warmth of the girl's colouring and the extreme immobility of her expression. Now that the blood had, as it were, been drained away to the last drop, now that temples and nostrils had attained transparency, the fine texture of the skin and the beauty of the curves of lips and chin were visible to every eye. Only one hand, so the LEICHENFRAU babbled on, was convulsively closed, and could not be undone; and, as she spoke, she drew the sheet further down, and displayed the naked arm and hand: the long, fine fingers were clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise, Avery appeared to sleep, to sleep profoundly, with an intensity such as living sleep never attains to—the very epitome of repose. It seemed as if her eyelids were pressed down by some unseen force; and, in her presence, the feeling gained ground in one, that it was worth enduring much, to arrive at a rest of this kind at last.
"JA, JA," said the woman, and rearranged the covering. "It's a pleasure to handle such a pretty corpse. That one there, now,"—with her chin she pointed to the other figure, and made a face of disgust. "EIN EKLIGER KERL! There was nothing to be done with him."
"Let me see what he's like," begged Louise.
"It's an ugly sight," said the woman. However, she pulled the sheet down, and so far that not only the face, but also a part of the hairy black breast was visible.
Louise shuddered, yet the very horror of the thing fascinated her, and 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.