The solitude was unbroken; they might have gone down in the murky water, and no one would ever know how it had happened: a snag caught unawares; a clumsy movement in the light boat; half a minute, and all would be over.--Or, for the first and the last time in his life, he would take her in his arms, hold her to him, feel her cheek on his; he would kiss her, with kisses that were at once an initiation and a farewell; then, covering her eyes with his hands, he would gently, very gently, tilt the boat. A moment"s hesitation; it sought to right itself; rocked violently, and overturned: and beneath it, locked in each other"s arms, they found a common grave....
In fancy, he saw it all. Meanwhile, he rowed on, with long, leisurely strokes; and the lapping of the water round the oars was the only sound to be heard.
At home, on the lid of his piano, lay the prospectuses of music-schools in other towns. They were still arriving, in answer to the impulsive letters he had written off, the night after the theatre. But the last to come had remained unopened.--He was well aware of it: his lingering on had all the appearance of a weak reluctance to face the inevitable.
For he could never make mortal understand what he had come through, in the course of the past week. He could no more put into words the isolated spasms of ecstasy he had experienced--when nothing under the sun seemed impossible--than he could describe the slough of misery and uncertainty, which, on occasion, he had been forced to wade through.
For the most part, he believed that the words of contempt Louise had spoken, came straight from her heart; but he had also known the faint stir ring of a new hope, and particularly was this the case when he had not seen Louise for some time. Then, at night, as he lay staring before him, this feeling became a sudden refulgence, which lighted him through all the dark hours, only to be remorselessly extinguished by daylight.
Most frequently, however, it was so slender a hope as to be a mere distracting flutter at his heart. Whence it sprang, he could not tell--he knew Louise too well to believe, for a moment, that she would make use of pique to hide her feelings. But there was a something in her manner, which was strained; in the fact that she, who had never cared, should at length be moved by words of his; in a certain way she had looked at him, once or twice in these days; or in a certain way she had avoided looking at him. No, he did not know what it was. But nevertheless it was there--a faint, inarticulate existence--and, compared with it, the tangible facts of life were the shadows of a shadow.
Surely she had fallen asleep. He said her name aloud, to try her.
"Louise!" She did not stir, and the word floated out into the night--became an expression of the night itself.
They had pa.s.sed the weir and its foaming, and now glided under the bridges that spanned the narrower windings of the river. The wooden bathing-house looked awesome enough to harbour mysteries. Another sharp turn, among sedge and rushes, and the outlying streets of the town were on their right. The boat-sheds were in darkness, when they drew up alongside the narrow landing-place. Maurice got out with the chain in his hand, and secured the boat. Louise did not follow immediately. Her hair had come down, and she was stiff from the cramped position in which she had been lying. When she did rise to her feet, she could hardly stand. He put out his hand, and steadied her by the arm.
"A heavy dew must be falling. Your sleeve is wet."
She made a movement to draw her arm away; at the same moment, she tangled her foot in her skirt, tripped, and, if he had not caught her, would have fallen forward.
"Take care what you"re doing! Do you want to drown yourself?"
"I don"t know. I shouldn"t mind, I think," she answered tonelessly.
His own balance had been endangered. Directly he had righted himself, he set her from him. But it could not be undone: he had had her in his arms, had felt all her weight on him. The sensation seemed to take his strength away: after the long, black, silent evening, her body was doubly warm, doubly real. He walked her back, along the deserted streets, at a pace she could not keep up with. She lagged behind. She was very pale, and her face wore an expression of almost physical suffering. She looked resolutely away from Maurice; but when her eyes did chance to rest on him, she was swept by such a sense of nervous irritation that she hated the sight of him, as he walked before her.
Upstairs, in her room, when he had laid the cushions on the sofa; when the lamp was lighted and set on the table; when he still stood there, pale, and wretched, and undecided, Louise came to an abrupt decision.
Advancing to the table, she leaned her hands on it, and bending forward, raised her white face to his.
"You told me you were going away; why do you not go? Why have you not already gone?" she asked, and her mouth was hard. "I am waiting ...
expecting to hear."
His answer was so hasty that it was all but simultaneous.
"Louise!--can"t you forgive me?--for what I said the other night?"
"I have nothing to forgive," she replied, coldly in spite of herself.
"You said you must go. I can"t keep you here against your will."
"It has made you angry with me. I have made you unhappy."
"You are making us both unhappy," she said in a low voice. "Now, it is I who say, things can"t go on like this."
"I know it." He drew a deep breath. "Louise! ... if only you could care a little!"
There was silence after these words, but not a silence of conclusion; both knew now that more must follow. He raised his head, and looked into her eyes.
"Can you not see how I love you--and how I suffer?"
It was a statement rather than a question, but he was not aware of this: he was only amazed that, after all, he should be able to speak so quietly, in such an even tone of voice.
There was another pause of suspense; his words seemed like b.a.l.l.s of down that he had tossed into the still air: they sank, lingeringly, without haste; and she stood, and let them descend on her. His haggard eyes hung on her face; and, as he watched, he saw a change come over it: the enmity that had been in it, a few seconds back, died out; the lips softened and relaxed; and when the eyes were raised to his again, they were kind, full of pity.
"I"m sorry. Poor boy ... poor Maurice."
She seemed to hesitate; then, with one of her frankest gestures, held out her hand. At its touch, soft and living, he forgot everything: plans and resolutions, hopes and despairs, happiness and unhappiness no longer existed for him; he knew only that she was sorry for him, that some swift change in her had made her sympathise and understand. He looked down, with dim eyes, at the sweet, pale face, now alight with compa.s.sion then, with disarming abruptness, he took her head between his hands, and kissed her, repeatedly, whereever his lips chanced to fall--on the warm mouth, the closed eyes, temples, and hair.
He was gone before she recovered from her surprise. She had instinctively stemmed her hands against his shoulders; but, when she was alone, she stood just as he left her, her eyes still shut, letting the sensation subside, of rough, unexpected kisses. She had been taken unawares; her heart was beating. For a moment or two, she remained in the same att.i.tude; then she pa.s.sed her hand over her face. "That was foolish of him ... very," she said. She looked down at herself and saw her hands. She stretched them out before her, with a sudden sense of emptiness.
"If I could care! Yes--if I could only care!"
At two o"clock that morning, Maurice wrote:
FORGIVE ME--I DIDN"T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING. FOR I LOVE YOU, LOUISE--NO WOMAN HAS EVER BEEN LOVED AS YOU ARE. I KNOW IT IS FOLLY ON MY PART. I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU. BUT BE MY WIFE, AND I WILL WORK MY FINGERS TO THE BONE FOR YOU.
He went out into the summer night, and posted the letter. Returning to his room, he threw himself on the sofa, and fell into a heavy sleep, from which he did not wake till the morning was well advanced.
Work was out of the question that day, when he waited as if for a sentence of death. He paced his narrow room, incessantly, afraid to go out, for fear of missing her reply. The hours dragged themselves by, as it is their special province to do in crises of life; and with each one that pa.s.sed, he grew more convinced what her answer to his letter would be.
It was late in the afternoon when the little boy she employed as a messenger, put a note into his hands.
COME TO ME THIS EVENING.
It was all but evening now; he went, just as he was, on the heels of the child.
The windows of her room were open. She sprang up to meet him, then paused. He looked desperately yet stealthily at her. The commiseration of the previous night was still in her face; but she was now quite sure of herself: she drew him to the sofa and made him sit down beside her.
Then, however, for a few seconds, in which he waited with hammering pulses, she did not speak. The dull fear at his heart became a certainty; and, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he took one of her hands and laid it on his forehead.
Then she said: "Maurice--poor, foolish Maurice!--it is not possible.
You see that yourself, I"m sure."
"Yes. I know quite well: it is presumption."
"Oh, I don"t mean that. But there are so many reasons. And you, too, Maurice ... Look at me, and tell me if what you wrote was not just an attempt to make up for what happened last night." And as he did not reply, she added: "You mustn"t make yourself reproaches. I, too, was to blame."
"It was nothing of the sort. I"ve been trying for weeks now to tell you. I love you--have loved you since the first time I saw you."
He let go of her hand, and she sat forward, with her arms along her knees. Her eyes were troubled; but she did not lose her calm manner of speaking. "I"m sorry, Maurice, very sorry--you believe me" don"t you, when I say so? But believe me, too, it"s not so serious as you think.
You are young. You will get over it, and forget--if not soon, at least in time. You must forget me, and some day you will meet the nice, good woman, who is to be your wife. And when that happens, you will look back on your fancy for me as something foolish, and unreal. You won"t be able to understand it then, and you will be grateful to me, for not having taken you at your word."
Maurice laughed. All the same, he tried to take his dismissal well: he rose, wrung her hand, and left her.
In the seclusion of his own room, he went through the blackest hour of his life.
He began to make final preparations for his departure. His choice had fallen on Stuttgart: it was far distant from Leipzig; he would be well out of temptation"s way--the temptation suddenly to return. He wrote a letter home, apprising his relatives of his intention: by the time they received the letter, it would be too late for them to interfere.
Otherwise, he took no one into his confidence. He would greatly have liked to wait until the present term was over; another month, and the summer vacation would have begun, and he would have been able to leave without making himself conspicuous. But every day it grew more impossible to be there and not to see her--for four days now he had kept away, fighting down his unreasoning desire to know what she was doing. He intended only to see her once more, to bid her good-bye.
The afternoon before his interview with Schwarz--he had arranged this with himself for the morning, at the master"s private house--he sat at his writing-table, destroying papers and old letters. There was a heap of ashes in the cold stove by the time he took out, tied up in a separate packet, the few odd sc.r.a.ps of writing he had received from Louise. He balanced the bundle in his hand, hesitating what to do with it. Finally, he untied the string, to glance through the letters once again.
At the sight of the bold, black, familiar writing, in which each word--two or three to a line--seemed to have a life of its own; at the well-conned pages, each of which he knew by heart; at the characteristic, almost masculine signature, and the faint perfume that still clung to the paper: at the sight of these things all--that he had been thinking and planning since seeing her last, was effaced from his mind. As often before, where she was concerned, a wild impulse, surging up in him, took entire possession of him; and hours of patient and laborious reasoning were by one swift stroke blotted out.