Maurice Guest Part 75

"You are not very old ... or ugly ... or abnormal, Mada."

She smiled in spite of herself. "And are we not friends, pray?"

"Something that way.--But in all you say about Guest, the impersonal note is wanting. You're jealous."

"I'm nothing of the sort!--But you'll at least allow me to resent seeing a friend of mine in the claws of this ... this vampire?"

Krafft laughed. "Vampire is good!--A poor, distraught--"

"Spare your phrases, Heinz. She's bad through and through, and stupid into the bargain."

"Lulu stupid? EI, EI, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. She has a touch of the other extreme--of genius."

"NA!--Well, if this is another of your manifestations of genius, then permit me to hate--no, to loathe it, in all its forms."

"GANZ NACH BELIEBEN! It's a privilege of your s.e.x, you know. There never was a woman yet who didn't prefer a good, square talent."

"A crack this way, and it's madness; that, and the world says genius.

And some people have a peculiar gift for discovering it. Those who set themselves to it can find genius in a flea's jump."

"But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving--that some women have a genius for loving?--No, why do I ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster--a placard."

"What a people you are for words! You make phrases about everything.

That's a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle woman--"

"Fickle woman! fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things--DIE HERREN DICHTER--are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, like sheep."

"Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly: if what you say were true, vice would be condoned."

"Vice!!" he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. "Vice!--my dear Mada!--sweet, innocent child! ... No, no. A special talent is needed for that kind of thing; an unlimited capacity for suffering; an entire renunciation of what is commonly called happiness! You hold the good old Philistine opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers living together in delirious pleasure, in SAUS UND BRAUS.--Nothing could be falser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her nature, and the suffering is there, too. She's born gifted with the faculty. And a woman of the type we're speaking of, is as often as not the flower of her kind.--Or becomes it.--For see all she gains on her way: the mere pa.s.sing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded--why, even the common prost.i.tute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at.

Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience--a turn of thought--it may be only an intuition--which she has not had before."

"And the contamination? The soul?" cried Madeleine; two red spots had come out on her cheeks.

"As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn't need one.

All she needs is tact and taste."

"You are the eternal scoffer."

"I never was more serious in my life.--But let us put it another way.

What does a--what does any beautiful woman want with a soul, or brains, or morals, or whatever you choose to call it? Let her give thanks, night and day, that she is what she is: one of the few perfect things on this imperfect earth. Let her care for her beauty, and treasure it, and serve it. Time enough when it is gone, to cultivate the soul--if, indeed, she doesn't bury herself alive, as it's her duty to do, instead of decaying publicly. Mada! do you know a more disgusting, more humiliating sight than the sagging of the skin on a neck that was once like marble?--than a mouth visibly losing its form?--the slender shoulders we have adored, broadening into ma.s.sivity?--all the fine spiritual delicacy of youth being touched to heaviness?--all the barbarous cruelty, in short, with which, before our eyes, time treats the woman who is no longer young.--No, no! As long as she has her beauty, a woman is under no necessity to bolster up her conscience, or to be reasonable, or to think.--Think? G.o.d forbid! There are plain women enough for that. We don't ask our Lady of Milo to be witty for us, or to solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, more eloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth--the upward look of two dark eyes--than in all women have said or done from Sappho down.

Springy colour, light, music, perfume: they are all to be found in the curves of a perfect throat or arm."

Madeleine's silence bristled with irony.

"And that," he went on, "was where the girl you are blaspheming had such exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct taught her what was required of her. She would fall into an att.i.tude, and remain motionless in it, as if she knew the eye must feast its full. Or if she did move, and speak--for she, too, had hours of a desperate garrulity--then one was content, as well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole body spoke when her lips did; she would pa.s.s so rapidly from one position to another that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of all this mult.i.tude, you would not be able to carry one away with you.--If some of her ways of expressing herself in motion could be caught and fixed, a sculptor's fame would be made.--A painter's, if he could reproduce the trick she has of smiling entirely with her eyes and eyebrows.--And then her hands! Mada, I wonder you other women don't weep for envy of them. She has only to raise them, to pa.s.s them over her forehead, or to finger at her hair, and the world is hers.--Do you really think a man asks soul of a woman with such eyes and hand as those?--Good G.o.d, no!

He wors.h.i.+ps her and adores her. Were is only one place for him, and that's on his knees before her."

"Well, really, Heinz!" said Madeleine, and the spots on her cheeks burnt a dull red. "In imagination, do you know, I'm carried just three years backwards? Do you remember that spring evening, when you came rus.h.i.+ng in here to me? 'I've seen the most beautiful woman in the world, and I'm drunk with her.' And how I couldn't understand? For I thought her plain, just as I still do.--But then, if I remember aright, your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it ...

hm! ... is now."

"It was not.--But now, you understand, Mada, that I think a man makes a good exchange of career, and success, and other such accidents of his material existence, for the right to touch these hands at will. The one thing necessary is, that he be fit for the post. I demand of him that he be a gourmand, a connoisseur in beauty. And it's here, mind you, that I have doubts of our friend.--Is it clear to you?"

"As clear as day, thanks. And you may be QUITE sure: of me never applying to you for help again. I shall respect your principles."

"And mind you, I don't say Guest may not come out of the affair all right--enriched for the rest of his life."

"Very good. And now you may go. I regret that I ever bothered with you."

Krafft went across to where Madeleine was standing, put his hands on her two shoulders, and laid his head on his right arm, so that she, who was taller than he was, looked down on the roundnesses of his curly hair. "You're a good fellow, Mada--a good fellow! JA, JA--who knows! If you had had just a little more of the EWIGWEIBLICHE about you!"

"Too much honour ... But you don't expect Englishwomen to join your harem, do, you?"

"There would have been a certain repose in belonging to a woman of your type. But it's the charm--physical charm--we poor wretches can't do without."

"Upon my word, it's almost a declaration!" cried Madeleine, not unnettled. "Take my advice, Heinz. Hie you home, and marry the person you ought to. Take pity on the poor thing's constancy. Unless," she added, a moment later, with a sarcastic laugh, "since you're still so infatuated with Louise, you persuade her to transfer her favours to you. That would solve all difficulties in the most satisfactory way.

She would have the variety that seems necessary to her existence; you could lie on your knees before her all day long; and our friend would be restored to sanity. Think it over, Heinz. It's a good idea."

"Do you think she'd have me?" he asked, as he shook himself into his coat.

"Heaven knows and Heaven only! Where Louise is concerned, nothing's impossible--I've always maintained it."

"Well, ta-ta!--You shall have early news, I promise you."

Madeleine heard him go down the stair, whistling the ROSE OF SHARON.

But he could not have been half-way to the bottom, when he turned and came back. Holding her door ajar, he stuck a laughing face into the room.

"Upon my word, Mada, I congratulate you! It's a colossal idea."

But Madeleine had had enough of him. "I'm glad it pleases you. Now go, go! You've played the fool here long enough."

When he emerged from the house, Krafft had stopped whistling. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his felt hat pulled down over his eyes.

At the corner, he was so lost in thought as to be unable to guide his feet: he stood and gazed at the pavement. Still on the same spot, he pushed his hat to the back of his head, and burst into such an eerie peal of laughter that some ladies, who were coming towards him, started back, and, picking up their skirts, went off the pavement, in order to avoid pa.s.sing him too nearly.

The following afternoon, at an hour when Maurice was safely out of the way, Krafft climbed the stair to the house in the BRUDERSTRa.s.sE.

The landlady did not know him. Yes, Fraulein was at home, she said; but-- Krafft promptly entered, and himself closed the door.

Outside Louise's room, he listened, with bent head. Having satisfied himself, he turned the handle of the door and went in.

Louise stood at the window, watching the snow fall. It had snowed uninterruptedly since early morning; out of the leaden sky, flake after flake fluttered down, whirled, spun, and became part of the fallen ma.s.s. At the opening of the door, she did not stir; for it would only be Maurice coming back to ask forgiveness; and she was too unspeakably tired to begin all over again.

Krafft stood and eyed her, from the crown of her rough head, to the bedraggled tail of the dressing-gown.

"GRUSS' GOTT, LULU!"

At the sound of his voice, she jumped round with a scream.