Maurice Guest

by Henry Handel Richardson

  Produced by Col Choat. HTML version by Al Haines.

  MAURICE GUEST

  by

  Henry Handel Richardson

  Part I

  S'amor non e che dunque e quel ch'io sento? Ma s'egli e amor, per Dio, che cosa e quale?

  PETRARCH

  I.

  One noon in 189-, a young man stood in front of the new Gewandhaus inLeipzig, and watched the neat, grass-laid square, until then white andsilent in the sunshine, grow dark with many figures.

  The public rehearsal of the weekly concert was just over, and, from thehalf light of the warm-coloured hall, which for more than two hours hadheld them secluded, some hundreds of people hastened, with renewedanticipation, towards sunlight and street sounds. There was a medley oftongues, for many nationalities were represented in the crowd thatsurged through the ground-floor and out of the glass doors, and muchnoisy ado, for the majority was made up of young people, at an age thatenjoys the sound of its own voice. In black, diverging lines theypoured through the heavy swinging doors, which flapped ceaselessly toand fro, never quite closing, always opening afresh, and on descendingthe shallow steps, they told off into groups, where all talked at once,with lively gesticulation. A few faces had the strained look thatindicates the conscientious listener; but most of these young musicianswere under the influence of a stimulant more potent than wine, whichmanifested itself in a nervous garrulity and a nervous mirth.

  They hummed like bees before a hive. Maurice Guest, who had come outamong the first, lingered to watch a scene that was new to him, ofwhich he was as yet an onlooker only. Here and there came a member ofthe orchestra; with violin-case or black-swathed wind-instrument inhand, he deftly threaded his way through the throng, bestowing, as hewent, a hasty nod of greeting upon a colleague, a sweep of the hat onan obsequious pupil. The crowd began to disperse and to overflow in thesurrounding streets. Some of the stragglers loitered to swell the groupthat was forming round the back entrance to the building; here thelank-haired Belgian violinist would appear, the wonders of whosetechnique had sent thrills of enthusiasm through his hearers, and whoseclose proximity would presently affect them in precisely the same way.Others again made off, not for the town, with its prosaic suggestion ofwork and confinement, but for the freedom of the woods that lay beyond.

  Maurice Guest followed them.

  It was a blowy day in early spring. Round white masses of cloud movedlightly across a deep blue sky, and the trees, still thin and naked,bent their heads and shook their branches, as if to elude the gambolsof a boisterous playfellow. The sun shone vividly, with restored power,and though the clouds sometimes passed over his very face, the shadowsonly lasted for a moment, and each returning radiance seemed brighterthan the one before. In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustilyswept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender beautiesof a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delightful freshness inthe air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights and serene whitesnow--the untrodden snow of deserted, moon-lit streets--that quickenedthe blood, and sent a craving for movement through the veins. Thepeople who trod the broad, clean roads and the paths of the wood walkedwith a spring in their steps; voices were light and high, and eachbreath that was drawn increased the sense of buoyancy, of undilutedsatisfaction. With these bursts of golden sunshine, so other than thepallid gleamings of the winter, came a fresh impulse to life; and themost insensible was dimly conscious how much had to be made up for, howmuch lived into such a day.

  Maurice Guest walked among the mossgreen tree-trunks, each of whichvied with the other in the brilliancy of its coating. He was under thesway of a twofold intoxication: great music and a day rich in promise.From the flood of melody that had broken over him, the frenzied stormsof applause, he had come out, not into a lamplit darkness that wouldhave crushed his elation back upon him and hemmed it in, but into thespacious lightness of a fair blue day, where all that he felt couldexpand, as a flower does in the sun.

  His walk brought him to a broad stream, which flashed through the woodlike a line of light. He paused on a suspension bridge, and leaningover the railing, gazed up the river into the distance, at the horizonand its trees, delicate and feathery in their nakedness against thesky. Swollen with recent rains and snows, the water came hurryingtowards him--the storm-bed of the little river, which, meandering infrom the country, through pleasant woods, in ever narrowing curves, ranthrough the town as a small stream, to be swelled again on theoutskirts by the waters of two other rivers, which joined it at rightangles. The bridge trembled at first, when other people crossed it, ontheir way to the woods that lay on the further side, but soon the laststragglers vanished, and he was alone.

  As he looked about, eager to discover beauty in the strip of landscapethat stretched before him--the line of water, its banks of leaflesstrees--he was instinctively filled with a desire for something grander,for a feature in the scene that would answer to his mood. There, wherethe water appeared to end in a clump of trees, there, should bemountains, a gently undulating line, blue with the unapproachable blueof distance, and high enough to form a background to the view; insummer, heavy with haze, melting into the sky; in winter, lined andedged with snow. From this, his thoughts sprang back to the music hehad heard that morning. All the vague yet eager hopes that had run riotin his brain, for months past, seemed to have been summed up and madeclear to him, in one supreme phrase of it, a great phrase in C major,in the concluding movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. First soundedby the shrill sweet winds, it had suddenly been given out by thestrings, in magnificent unison, and had mounted up and on, to thejubilant trilling of the little flutes. There was such a courageoussincerity in this theme, such undauntable resolve; it expressed moreplainly than words what he intended his life of the next few years tobe; for he was full to the brim of ambitious intentions, which he hadnever yet had a chance of putting into practice. He felt so ready forwork, so fresh and unworn; the fervour of a deep enthusiasm was rampantin him. What a single-minded devotion to art, he promised himself hisshould be! No other fancy or interest should share his heart with it,he vowed that to himself this day, when he stood for the first time onhistoric ground, where the famous musicians of the past had foundinspiration for their immortal works. And his thoughts spread theirwings and circled above his head; he saw himself already of thesemasters' craft, their art his, he wrenching ever new secrets from them,penetrating the recesses of their genius, becoming one of themselves.In a vision as vivid as those that cross the brain in a sleeplessnight, he saw a dark, compact multitude wait, with breath suspended, tocatch the notes that fell like raindrops from his fingers; saw himselfthe all-conspicuous figure, as, with masterful gestures, he compelledthe soul that lay dormant in brass and strings, to give voice to, tointerpret to the many, his subtlest emotions. And he was overcome by atremulous compassion with himself at the idea of wielding such powerover an unknown multitude, at the latent nobility of mind and aim thispower implied.

  Even when swinging back to the town, he had not shaken himself free ofdreams. The quiet of a foreign midday lay upon the streets, and therewere few discordant sounds, few passers-by, to break the chain of histhought. He had movement, silence, space. And as is usual withactive-brained dreamers, he had little or no eye for the real lifeabout him; he was not struck by the air of comfortable prosperity, ofthriving content, which marked the great commercial centre, and he letpass, unnoticed, the unfamiliar details of a foreign street, thetrifling yet significant incidents of foreign life. Such impressions ashe received, bore the stamp of his own mood. He was sensible, forinstance, in face of the picturesque houses that clustered together inthe centre of the town, of the spiritual GEMUTLICHKEIT, the absence ofany pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the oldbuildings of a
German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged oneinto the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofsand eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with thetrivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wanderedleisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off theMarket Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, withits ground-floor row of busy little shops; and, in fancy, he peopledthese streets with the renowned figures that had once walked them. Helooked up at the dark old houses in which great musicians had lived,died and been born, and he saw faces that he recognised lean out of theprojecting windows, to watch the life and bustle below, to catch thelast sunbeam that filtered in; he saw them take their daily walk alongthese very streets, in the antiquated garments of their time. Theypassed him by, shadelike and misanthropic, and seemed to steal down theopposite side, to avoid his too pertinent gaze. Bluff, preoccupied, hiskeen eyes lowered, the burly Cantor passed, as he had once done dayafter day, with the disciplined regularity of high genius, of thehonest citizen, to his appointed work in the shadows of the organ-loft;behind him, one who had pointed to the giant with a new burst ofardour, the genial little improviser, whose triumphs had been those ofthis town, whose fascinating gifts and still more fascinatingpersonality, had made him the lion of his age. And it was only anotherstep in this train of half-conscious thought, that, before a largelettered poster, which stood out black and white against the reds andyellows of the circular advertisement-column, and bore the word"Siegfried," Maurice Guest should not merely be filled with theanticipation of a world of beauty still unexplored, but that the worldshould stand to him for a symbol, as it were, of the easeful andluxurious side of a life dedicated to art--of a world-wide fame; thesociety of princes, kings; the gloss of velvet; the dull glow ofgold.--And again, tapering vistas opened up, through which he couldpeer into the future, happy in the knowledge, that he stood firm in apresent which made all things possible to a holy zeal, to anunhesitating grasp.

  But it was growing late, and he slowly retraced his steps. In therestaurant into which he turned for dinner, he was the only customer.The principal business of the day was at an end; two waiters sat dozingin corners, and a man behind the counter, who was washing metal-toppedbeer-glasses, had almost the whole pile polished bright before him.Maurice Guest sat down at a table by the window; and, when he hadfinished his dinner and lighted a cigarette, he watched the passers-by,who crossed the pane of glass like the figures in a moving photograph.

  Suddenly the door opened with an energetic click, and a lady came in,enveloped in an old-fashioned, circular cloak, and carrying on one arma pile of paper-covered music. This, she laid on the table next that atwhich the young man was sitting, then took off her hat. When she hadalso hung up the unbecoming cloak, he saw that she was young andslight. For the rest, she seemed to bring with her, into the warm,tranquil atmosphere of the place, heavy with midday musings, a breathof wind and outdoor freshness--a suggestion that was heightened by thequick decisiveness of her movements: the briskness with which shedivested herself of her wrappings, the quick smooth of the hair oneither side, the business-like way in which she drew up her chair tothe table and unfolded her napkin.

  She seemed to be no stranger there, for, on her entrance, the youngerand more active waiter had at once sprung up with officious haste, andalmost before she was ready, the little table was newly spread and set,and the dinner of the day before her. She spoke to the man in afriendly way as she took her seat, and he replied with a pleased andsmiling respect.

  Then she began to eat, deliberately, and with an overemphasised nicety.As she carried her soup-spoon to her lips, Maurice Guest felt that shewas observing him; and throughout the meal, of which she ate butlittle, he was aware of a peculiarly straight and penetrating gaze. Itended by disconcerting him. Beckoning the waiter, he went through thebusiness of paying his bill, and this done, was about to push back hischair and rise to his feet, when the man, in gathering up the money,addressed what seemed to be a question to him. Fearful lest he had madea mistake in the strange coinage, Maurice looked up apprehensively. Thewaiter repeated his words, but the slight nervousness that gained onthe young man made him incapable of separating the syllables, whichwere indistinguishably blurred. He coloured, stuttered, and feltmortally uncomfortable, as, for the third time, the waiter repeated hisremark, with the utmost slowness.

  At this point, the girl at the adjacent table put down her knife andfork, and leaned slightly forward.

  "Excuse me," she said, and smiled. "The waiter only said he thought youmust be a stranger here: DER HERR IST GEWISS FREMD IN LEIPZIG?" Herrather prominent teeth were visible as she spoke.

  Maurice, who understood instantly her pronunciation of the words, wasnot set any more at his ease by her explanation. "Thanks very much." hesaid, still redder than usual. "I ... er ... thought the fellow wassaying something about the money."

  "And the Saxon dialect is barbarous, isn't it?" she added kindly. "Butperhaps you have not had much experience of it yet."

  "No. I only arrived this morning."

  At this, she opened her eyes wide. "Why, you are a courageous person!"she said and laughed, but did not explain what she meant, and he didnot like to ask her.

  A cup of coffee was set on the table before her; she held a lump ofsugar in her spoon, and watched it grow brown and dissolve. "Are yougoing to make a long stay?" she asked, to help him over hisembarrassment.

  "Two years, I hope," said the young man.

  "Music?" she queried further, and, as he replied affirmatively: "Thenthe Con. of course?"--an enigmatic question that needed to beexplained. "You're piano, are you not?" she went on. "I thought so. Itis hardly possible to mistake the hands"--here she just glanced at herown, which, large, white, and well formed, were lying on the table."With strings, you know, the right hand is as a rule shockinglydefective."

  He found the high clearness of her voice very agreeable after the deeproundnesses of German, and could have gone on listening to it. But shewas brushing the crumbs from her skirt, preparatory to rising.

  "Are you an old resident here?" he queried in the hope of detaining her.

  "Yes, quite. I'm at the end of my second year; and don't know whetherto be glad or sorry," she answered. "Time goes like a flash.--Now, lookhere, as one who knows the ways of the place, would you let me give youa piece of advice? Yes?--It's this. You intend to enter theConservatorium, you say. Well, be sure you get under a good man--that'shalf the battle. Try and play privately to either Schwarz or Bendel. Ifyou go in for the public examination with all the rest, the people inthe BUREAU will put you to anyone they like, and that is disastrous.Choose your own master, and beard him in his den beforehand."

  "Yes ... and you recommend? May I ask whom you are with?" he saideagerly.

  "Schwarz is my master; and I couldn't wish for a better. But Bendel isgood, too, in his way, and is much sought after by theAmericans--you're not American, are you? No.--Well, the English colonyruns the American close nowadays. We're a regular army. If you don'twant to, you need hardly mix with foreigners as long as you're here. Wehave our clubs and balls and other social functions--and ourgeniuses--and our masters who speak English like natives ... Butthere!--you'll soon know all about it yourself."

  She nodded pleasantly and rose.

  "I must be off," she said. "To-day every minute is precious. Thatwretched PROBE spoils the morning, and directly it is over, I have torush to an organ-lesson--that's why I'm here. For I can't expect aPENSION to keep dinner hot for me till nearly three o'clock--can I?Morning rehearsals are a mistake. What?--you were there, too?Really?--after a night in the train? Well, you didn't get much, didyou, for your energy? A dull aria, an overture that 'belongs in thetheatre,' as they say here, an indifferently played symphony that onehas heard at least a dozen times. And for us poor pianists, not a freshdish this season. Nothing but yesterday's remains heated up again."

  She laughed as she spoke, and Maurice Guest laughed, too, not beingable at t
he moment to think of anything to say.

  Getting the better of the waiter, who stood by, napkin on arm, smilingand officious, he helped her into the unbecoming cloak; then took upthe parcel of music and opened the door. In his manner of doing this,there may have been a touch of over-readiness, for no sooner was sheoutside, than she quietly took the music from him, and, without evenoffering him her hand, said a friendly but curt good-bye: almost beforehe had time to return it, he saw her hurrying up the street, as thoughshe had never vouchsafed him word or thought. The abruptness of thedismissal left him breathless; in his imagination, they had walked atleast a strip of the street together. He stepped off the pavement intothe road, that he might keep her longer in sight, and for some time hesaw her head, in the close-fitting hat, bobbing along above the headsof other people.

  On turning again, he found that the waiter was watching him from thewindow of the restaurant, and it seemed to the young man that the pale,servile face wore a malicious smile. With the feeling of disconcertionthat springs from being caught in an impulsive action we have believedunobserved, Maurice spun round on his heel and took a few quick stepsin the opposite direction. When once he was out of range of the window,however, he dropped his pace, and at the next corner stoppedaltogether. He would at least have liked to know her name. And what inall the world was he to do with himself now?

  Clouds had gathered; the airy blue and whiteness of the morning hadbecome a level sheet of grey, which wiped the colour out of everything;the wind, no longer tempered by the sun, was chilly, as it whirled downthe narrow streets and freaked about the corners. There was littletemptation now to linger on one's steps. But Maurice Guest was loath toreturn to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut himselfup with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat collar, hebegan to walk slowly along the curved GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE. But thestreets were by this time black with people, most of whom came hurryingtowards him, brisk and bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailingdullness, at the prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He wascontinually obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow abunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the windbeneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy capped, thicksetstudents, to pass him by, unbroken; and it seemed to him that he wasmore frequently off the pavement than on it. He began to feeldisconsolate among these jovial people, who were hastening forward,with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone far, before heturned down a side street to be out of their way. Vaguely damped by hisenvironment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gavehimself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinkingover all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of thedinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitousreplies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets,quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he wasgoing. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangelyalike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: the dark oldhouses, marshalled in rows on either side, stood as if lost incontemplation, in the saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps,which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with thefading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from sideto side in the wind like a woman's hair--these things made hissurroundings seem still shadowier and less real.

  He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what wasapparently the outskirts of the town. With much difficulty he made hisway back, but he was still far from certain of his whereabouts, when anunexpected turn to the right brought him out on the spaciousAUGUSTUSPLATZ, in front of the New Theatre. He had been in this squareonce already, but now its appearance was changed. The big buildingsthat flanked it were lit up; the file of droschkes waiting for fares,under the bare trees, formed a dotted line of lights. A double row ofhanging lamps before the CAFE FRANCAIS made the corner of theGRIMMAISCHESTRASSE dazzling to the eyes; and now, too, the massivewhite theatre was awake as well. Lights shone from all its highwindows, streamed out through the Corinthian columns and low-porcheddoorways. Its festive air was inviting, after his twilight wanderings,and he went across the square to it. Immediately before the theatre,early corners stood in knots and chatted; programme--and text-vendorscried and sold their wares; people came hurrying from all directions,as to a magnet; hastily they ascended the low steps and disappearedbeneath the portico.

  He watched until the last late-comer had vanished. Only he was left; heagain was the outsider. And now, as he stood there in the desertedsquare, which, a moment before, had been so animated, he had a suddensinking of the heart: he was seized by that acute sense of desolationthat lies in wait for one, caught by nightfall, alone in a strangecity. It stirs up a wild longing, not so much for any particular spoton earth, as for some familiar hand or voice, to take the edge off anintolerable loneliness.

  He turned and walked rapidly back to the small hotel near the railwaystation, at which he was staying until he found lodgings. He was tiredout, and for the first time became thoroughly conscious of this; butthe depression that now closed in upon him, was not due to fatiguealone, and he knew it. In sane moments--such as the present--whenneither excitement nor enthusiasm warped his judgment, he was under noillusion about himself; and as he strode through the darkness, headmitted that, all day long, he had been cheating himself in the usualway. He understood perfectly that it was by no means a matter of merelystretching out his hand, to pluck what he would, from this tree thatwaved before him; he reminded himself with some bitterness that hestood, an unheralded stranger, before a solidly compact body of thingsand people on which he had not yet made any impression. It was the oldstory: he played at expecting a ready capitulation of the whole--godsand men--and, at the same time, was only too well aware of thelaborious process that was his sole means of entry and fellowship.Again--to instance another of his mental follies--the pains he had beenat to take possession of the town, to make it respond to his forcedinterpretation of it! In reality, it had repelled him--yes, he waschilled to the heart by the aloofness of this foreign town, to whichnot a single tie yet bound him.

  By the light of a fluttering candle, in the dingy hotel bedroom, he satand wrote a letter, briefly announcing his safe arrival. About to closethe envelope, he hesitated, and then, unfolding the sheet of paperagain, added a few lines to what he had written. These cost him moretrouble than all the rest.

  ONCE MORE, HEARTY THANKS TO YOU BOTH, MY DEAR PARENTS, FOR LETTING MEHAVE MY OWN WAY. I HOPE YOU WILL NEVER HAVE REASON TO REGRET IT. ONETHING, AT LEAST, I CAN PROMISE YOU, AND THAT IS, THAT NOT A DAY OF MYTIME HERE SHALL BE WASTED OR MISSPENT. YOU HAVE NOT, I KNOW, THE SAMEFAITH IN ME THAT I HAVE MYSELF, AND THIS HAS OFTEN BEEN A BITTERTHOUGHT TO ME. BUT ONLY HAVE PATIENCE. SOMETHING STRONGER THAN MYSELFDROVE ME TO IT, AND IF I AM TO SUCCEED ANYWHERE, IT WILL BE HERE. AND IMEAN TO SUCCEED, IF HUMAN WILL CAN DO IT.

  He threw himself on the creaking wooden bed and tried to sleep. But hisbrain was active, and the street was noisy; people talked late in theadjoining room, and trod heavily in the one above. It was long aftermidnight before the house was still and he fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Towards morning, he had a strange dream, from which he wakened in acold sweat. Once more he was wandering through the streets, as he haddone the previous day, apparently in search of something he could notfind. But he did not know himself what he sought. All of a sudden, onturning a corner, he came upon a crowd of people gathered round someobject in the road, and at once said to himself, this is it, here itis. He could not, however, see what it actually was, for the people,who were muttering to themselves in angry tones, strove to keep himback. At all costs, he felt, he must get nearer to the mysteriousthing, and, in a spirit of bravado, he was pushing through the crowd toreach it, when a great clamour arose; every one sprang back, and fledwildly, shrieking: "Moloch, Moloch!" He did not know in the least whatit meant, but the very strangeness of the word added to the horror, andhe, too, fled with the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets an
ddown, watched, it seemed to him, from every window by a cold, malignanteye, but never daring to turn his head, lest he should see the awfulthing behind him; fled on and on, through streets that grew ever vaguerand more shadowy, till at last his feet would carry him no further: hesank down, with a loud cry, sank down, down, down, and wakened to findthat he was sitting up in bed, clammy with fear, and that dawn wasstealing in at the sides of the window.