Maurice Guest Part 78

X.

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, a.s.sisted 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 a.s.serted 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 sc.r.a.p 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: KLOSTERGa.s.sE 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 gla.s.s. "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 m.u.f.f 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-a.s.sertive 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.