Maurice Guest Part 6

Here Furst could not resist making a little joke. He announced himself by a chuckle-like the click of a clock about to strike.

"He's got to make the most of his liberty. He doesn't often get off duty. We know, we know." He laughed tonelessly, and winked at Krafft.

Krafft quoted:

In der Woche zwier--

"Now, you fellows, shut up!" said Schilsky. It was plain that banter of this kind was not disagreeable to him; at the same time he was just at the moment too engrossed, to have more than half an car for what was said. With his short-sighted eyes close to the paper, he was listening with all his might to some harmonies that his fingers played on the table. When, a few minutes later he rose and stretched the stiffness from his limbs, his face, having lost its expression of rapt concentration, seemed suddenly to have grown younger. He set about dressing himself by drawing off his nightshirt over his head. At a word from him, Furst sprang to collect utensils for making coffee. Heinrich Krafft opened his eyes and followed their movements; and the look he had for Schilsky was as warily watchful as a cat's.

Schilsky, an undeveloped Hercules--he was narrow in proportion to his height--and still naked to the waist, took some bottles from a long line of washes and perfumes that stood on the washstand, and, crossing to an elegant Venetian-gla.s.s mirror, hung beside the window, lathered his chin. It was a peculiarity of his only to be able to attend thoroughly to one thing at a time, and a string of witticisms uttered by Furst pa.s.sed unheeded. But Krafft's first words made him start.

Having watched him for some time, the latter said slowly. "I say, old fellow, are you sure it's all square about Lulu and this Dresden business?"

Razor in hand, Schilsky turned and looked at him. As he did so, he coloured, and answered with an over-anxious haste: "Of course I am. I made her go. She didn't want to."

"That's a well-known trick."

The young man scowled and thrust out his under-lip. "Do you think I'm not up to their tricks? Do you want to teach me how to manage a woman?

I tell you I sent her away."

He tried to continue shaving, but was visibly uneasy. "Well, if you won't believe me," he said, with sudden anger, though neither of the others had spoken. "Now where the deuce is that letter?"

He rummaged among the music and papers on the table; in chaotic drawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the washstand; between door and stove, through a kind of rubbishheap that had formed with time, of articles of dress, spoiled sheets of music-paper, soiled linen, empty bottles, and boots, countless boots, single and in pairs.

When he had found what he looked for, he ran his eyes down the page, as if he were going to read it aloud. Then, however, he changed his mind; a boyish gratification overspread his face, and, tossing the letter to Krafft, he bade them read it for themselves. Furst leaned over the end of the sofa. It was written in English, in a bold, scrawly hand, and ran, without date or heading:

MY OWN DEAREST

NOW ONLY FOUR DAYS MORE--I COUNT THEM MORNING AND NIGHT. I AM GOOD FOR NOTHING--MY THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU. YESTERDAY AT THE GALLERY I SAT ALONE IN THE ROOM WHERE THE MADONNA IS, PRETENDING ENTHUSIASM--WHILE THE REST WENT TO HOLBEIN--AND READ YOUR LETTER OVER AND OVER AGAIN. BUT IT MADE ME A LITTLE UNHAPPY TOO, FOR I SOON FOUND OUT THAT YOU HAD WRITTEN IT AT THREE DIFFERENT TIMES. IS IT REALLY SO HARD TO WRITE TO LULU?

HAVE YOU WORKED BETTER FOR WANT OF INTERRUPTION?--MY d.a.m.nED INTERRUPTIONS, AS YOU CALLED THEM LAST WEEK WHEN YOU WERE SO ANGRY WITH ME. SHALL YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO SHOW ME WHEN I COME HOME? NO--DON'T SAY YOU WILL--OR I SHALL HATE ZARATHUSTRA MORE THAN I DO ALREADY.

AND NOW ONLY TILL FRIDAY. THIS TIME YOU WILL MEET ME YES?--AND NOT COME TO THE STATION AN HOUR LATE, AS YOU SAID YOU DID LAST TIME. IF YOU ARE NOT THERE--I WARN YOU--I SHALL THROW MYSELF UNDER THE TRAIN. I AM WRITING, TO GRUNHUT. GET FLOWERS--THERE IS MONEY IN ONE OF THE VASES ON THE WRITING-TABLE. OH, IF YOU ONLY WILL, WE SHALL HAVE SUCH A HAPPY EVENING--IF ONLY YOU WILL. AND I SHALL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN.

YOUR OWN LOVING, L.

Furst could not make out much of this; he was still spelling through the first paragraph when Krafft had finished. Schilsky, who had gone on dressing, kept a sharp eye on his friends--particularly on Krafft.

"Well?" he asked eagerly as the letter was laid down.

Krafft was silent, but Furst kissed his finger-tips to a large hanging photograph of the girl in question, and was facetious on the subject of dark, sallow women.

"And you, Heinz? What do you say?" demanded Schilsky with growing impatience.

Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a violent irritation.

"Why the devil can't you open your mouth? What's the matter with you?

Have YOU anything like that to show--you Joseph, you?"

Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and trail on the floor. "The letters were burned, dear boy--when you appeared." He closed his eyes and smiled, seeming to remember something. But a moment later, he fixed Schilsky sharply, and asked: "You want my opinion, do you?"

"Of course I do," said Schilsky, and flung things about the room.

"Lulu," said Krafft with deliberation, "Lulu is getting you under her thumb."

The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he had been vainly trying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle that protruded from the rubbish-heap.

"Me? Me under her thumb?" he spluttered--his lips became more marked under excitement. "I should like to see her try it. You don't know me.

You don't know Lulu. I am her master, I tell you. She can't call her soul her own."

"And yet," said Krafft, unmoved, "it's a fact all the same."

Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degree of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His anger redoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that what you call being under her thumb?" he cried.

Furst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. "You're a lucky dog, old fellow, and you know you are. We all know it--in spite of occasional tantaras. But you would be still luckier if you took a friend's sound advice and got you to the registrar. Ten minutes before the registrar, and everything would be different. Then she might play up as she liked; you would be master in earnest."

"Registrar?" echoed Krafft with deep scorn. "Listen to the ape! Not if we can hinder it. When he's fool enough for that--I know him--it will be with something fresher and less faded, something with the bloom still on it."

Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age--she was eight years older than he--was one of his sorest points.

"Oh, come on, now," said Furst as he poured out the coffee. "That's hardly fair. She's not so young as she might be, it's true, but no one can hold a candle to her still. Lulu is Lulu."

"Ten minutes before the registrar," continued Krafft, meditatively shaking his head. "And for the rest of life, chains. And convention.

And security, which stales. And custom, which satiates. Oh no, I am not for matrimony!"

Schilsky's ill-humour evaporated in a peal of boisterous laughter.

"Yes, and tell us why, chaste Joseph, tell us why," he cried, throwing a brush at his friend. "Or go to the devil--where you're at home."

Krafft warded off the brush. "Look here," he said, "confess. Have you kissed another girl for months? Have you had a single billet-doux?"

But Schilsky only winked provokingly. Having finished laughing, he said with emphasis: "But after Lulu, they are all tame. Lulu is Lulu, and that's the beginning and end of the matter."

"Exactly my opinion," said Furst. "And yet, boys, if I wanted to make your mouths water, I could." He closed one eye and smacked his lips. "I know of something--something young and blond ... and dimpled ... and round, round as a feather-pillow"--he made descriptive movements of the hand--"with a neck, boys, a neck, I say----" Here in sheer ecstasy, he stuck fast, and could get no further.

Schilsky roared anew. "He knows of something ... so he does," he cried--Furst's p.r.o.nounced tastes were a standing joke among them. "Show her to us, old man, show her to us! Where are you hiding her? If she's under eighteen, she'll do--under eighteen, mind you, not a day over.

Come along, I'm on for a spree. Up with you, Joseph!"

He was ready, come forth from the utter confusion around him, like a G.o.d from a cloud. He wore light grey clothes, a loosely knotted, bright blue tie, with floating ends and conspicuous white spots, and b.u.t.toned boots of brown kid. Hair and handkerchief were strongly scented.

Krafft, having been prevailed on to rise, made no further toilet than that of dipping his head in a basin of water, which stood on the tail of the grand piano. His hair emerged a ma.s.s of dripping ringlets, covetously eyed by his companions.

They walked along the streets, Schilsky between the others, whom he overtopped by head and shoulders: three young rebels out against the Philistines: three bursting charges of animal spirits.

There was to be a concert that evening at the Conservatorium, and, through vestibule and entrance-halls, which, for this reason, were unusually crowded, the young men made a kind of triumphal progress.

Especially Schilsky. Not a girl, young or old, but peddled for a word or a look from him; and he was only too prodigal of insolently expressive glances, whispered greetings, and warm pressures of the hand. The open flattery and bold adoration of which he was the object mounted to his head; he felt secure in his freedom, and brimful of selfconfidence; and, as the three of them walked back to the town, his exhilaration, a sheer excess of well-being, was no longer to be kept within decent bounds.

"Wait!" he cried suddenly as they were pa.s.sing the Gewandhaus. "Wait a minute! See me make that woman there take a fit."

He ran across the road to the opposite pavement, where the only person in sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging slowly along, her arms full of parcels; and, planting himself directly in front of her, so that she was forced to stop, he seized both her hands and worked them up and down.