"Know he was coming!" She wrenched her hands away. "Oh! ..."
"Say you didn"t!"
"Maurice!--Be jealous, if you must! But surely, surely you don"t believe----"
"Oh, don"t ask me what I believe. I only know I won"t have that man hanging about. It was by a mere chance to-day that I came round earlier; he might have been here for hours, without my suspecting it.
Who knows if you would have told me either?--Would you have told me, Louise?"
"Oh, how can you be like this! What is the matter with you?"
He put his arms round her, with the old cry. "I can"t bear you even to look at another man. For he"s in love with you, and has been, ever since you made him crazy by dancing with him as you did."
With his hands on her shoulders, he rested his face on her hair.
"Promise me you won"t see him again."
Wearily, Louise disengaged herself. "Oh there"s always something fresh to promise. I"m tired of it--of being hedged in, and watched, and never trusted."
"Tired of me, you mean."
She looked bitterly at him. "There you are again?"
"Just this once--to set my mind at rest. Just this once, Louise!--darling!"
But she was silent.
"Then you"ll let him come here again?"
"How do I know?--But if I promised what you ask, I should not be able to go with him to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE on the fifteenth."
"You mean to go to that dance?"
"Why not? Would there be any harm in my going?"
"Louise!"
"Maurice!" She mocked his tone, and laughed. "Oh, go at once," she broke out the next moment, "and order Grunhut never to let another visitor inside the door. Make me promise never to cross the threshold alone--never to speak to another mortal but yourself! Cut off every pleasure and every chance of pleasure I have; and then you may be, but only may be, content."
"You"re trying how far you can go with me."
"Do you want me to tell you again that dancing is one of the things I love best? Not six months ago you knew and helped me to it yourself."
"Yes, THEN," he answered. "Then I could refuse you nothing."
She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand to his forehead.
"You won"t be so cruel, I know."
"You know more than I do."
"Do you realise what it means if you go?" In fancy, he was present, and saw her pa.s.sed from one pair of arms to another.
"I realise nothing--but that I am very unhappy."
"Have I no influence over you any more--none at all?"
"Can"t you come, too, then?--if you are afraid to let me out of your sight?"
"I? To see you----" He broke off with wrathful abruptness. "Thanks, I would rather be shot." But at the mingled anger and blankness of her face, he coloured. "Louise, put an end to all this. Marry me--now, at once!"
"Marry you? I? No, thank you. We"re past that stage, I think.--Besides, are you so simple as to believe it would make any difference?"
"Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here!"--and he pulled her to him.
From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was changed. The incident of Herries"s visit, her refusal to promise what he asked, and, above all, the matter of the coming ball, with regard to which he could not get certainty from her: these things seemed to open up nightmare depths, to which he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vague fears which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and like shadows faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons for their lack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jot or t.i.ttle of what had happened; he could only make the best of it. And so he ceased to brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a black, unknown quant.i.ty, but the present was his own. And he would cling to it--for who knew what the future held in store for him? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not in the nature of things for her always to remain satisfied with him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question reared its head: who will come after me?
Another blind attraction only needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of constancy and truth? If he had doubted her before, he was now suspicious from a different cause, and in quite a different way. The face of the trim little man who had sat beside her, and smiled at her, was persistently present to him. He did not question her further; but the poison worked the more surely in secret; he never for an instant forgot; and jealousy, now wide awake, had at last a definite object to lay hold of.
In his lucid moments, he knew that he was making her life a burden to her. What wonder if she did, ultimately, turn from him? But his evil moods were now beyond command. He began to suspect deceit in her actions as well as in what she said. The idea that this other, this smirking, wax-faced man, might somehow steal her from him, hung over him like a fog, obscuring his vision. It necessitated continued watchfulness on his part. And so he dogged her, mentally, and in fact until his own heart all but broke under the strain.
One afternoon they walked to Connewitz. It had rained heavily during the night, and the unpaved roads were inchdeep in mud. The sky was a level sheet of cloud, darker and more forbidding in the east.
Their direction was Maurice"s choice. Louise would have liked better to keep to the town: for, though the streets, too, were mud-bespattered, there would soon be lights, and the reflection of lights in damp pavements. She yielded, however, without even troubling to express her wish. But just because of the dirt and naked ugliness which met her, at every turn, she was voluble and excited; and an exaggerated hilarity seized her at trifles. Maurice, who had left the house in a more composed frame of mind than usual, gradually relapsed, at her want of restraint, into silence. He suffered under her looseness of tongue and laughter: her sallow, heavy-eyed face was ill-adapted to such moods; below her feverish animation there lurked, he was sure of it, a deadly melancholy. He had always been rendered uneasy by her spurts of gaiety.
Now in addition, he asked himself: what has happened to make her like this?
Feeling his hostility, Louise grew quieter, and soon she, too, was silent. Having gained his end, Maurice wished to atone for it, and slipping his arm through hers, he took her hand. For a few steps they walked on in this fashion. Then, he received one of those sudden impressions which flash on us from time to time, of having seen or done a certain thing before. For a moment, he could not verify it; then he knew, just in this way, arm in arm, hand in hand, had she come towards him with Schilsky, that very first day. It was no doubt a habit of hers. Like this, too, she would, in all probability, walk with the one who came after. And the picture of Herries, in the place he now occupied, was photographed on his brain.
He withdrew his arm, as if hers had burnt him: his mind was off again on its old round. But she, too, had to suffer for it. As he stood back to let her pa.s.s before him, on a dry strip of the path, his eye caught a yellow rose she was wearing at her belt. Till now he had seen it without seeing it.
"Why are you wearing that rose?"
Louise looked down from him to the flower and back again. "Why?--you know I like to wear flowers."
"Where did you get it?"
She foresaw what he was driving at, and did not reply.
"You were wearing a rose like that the first time I saw you. Do you remember?"
"How should I remember? It"s so long ago."
"Where had you got that one from, then?"
She repeated the same words. "How should I know now?"
"But I know. It was from him--he had given it to you."
She raised her shoulders. "Perhaps."
"Perhaps? No. For certain."
"Well, and if so--was there anything strange in that?"