Maurice Guest Part 74

He turned the key in the house-door. But before he could open the door, Louise, pushing in front of him, threw it back, entered the house, and, the next moment, the door banged in his face. He had just time to withdraw his hand. He heard her steps on the stair, mounting, growing fainter; he heard the door above open and shut.

For a second or two, he stood listening to these sounds. But when it dawned on him that she had shut him out, he pressed both hands against the wood of the heavy door, and tried to shake it open. He even beat his fist against it, and only desisted from this when his knuckles began to smart.

Then, on looking down, he saw that the key was still in the lock. He stared at it, stupidly, without understanding. But, yes--it was his own key; he himself had put it in. He took it out again, and holding it in his hand, looked at it, after the fashion of a drunken man, who does not recognise the object he holds. And even while he did this, he burst into a peal of laughter, which made him lean for support against the wall of the house. The noise he made sounded idiotic, sounded mad, in the quiet street; but he was unable to contain himself. She had left him the key--had left the key! Oh, what a fool he was!

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.

IX.

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 cla.s.s 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 impa.s.sive, 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 G.o.d, 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-ap.r.o.ns 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, s.e.xually 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 G.o.d! 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 pa.s.s.--You're wrong, too. You've only to look about you, here, with unbia.s.sed 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."