Maurice Guest

by Henry Handel Richardson

She laughed, with ready bitterness. "I should think I could. That's nothing new. You are always busy when I ask you to do anything. You have time for everything and every one but me. If this were something you yourself wanted to do to-night, neither your work nor anything else would stand in the way of it; but my wishes can always be ignored. Have you forgotten already that I only came home the day before yesterday?"

He looked sullen. "Now don't make a scene, Lulu. It doesn't do a whit of good."

"A scene!" she cried, seizing on his words. "Whenever I open my lips now, you call it a scene. Tell me what I have done, Eugen! Why do you treat me like this? Are you beginning to care less for me? The first evening, the very first, I get home, you won't stay with me—you haven't even kept that evening free for me—and when I ask you about it, and try to get at the truth—oh, do you remember all the cruel things you said to me yesterday? I shall never forget them as long as I live. And now, when I ask you to come out with me—it is such a little thing-oh, I can't sit at home this evening, Eugen, I can't do it! If you really loved me, you would understand."

She flung herself across the bed and sobbed despairingly. Schilsky, who had again made believe during this outburst to be absorbed in his work, cast a look of mingled anger and discomfort at the prostrate figure, and for some few moments, succeeded in continuing his occupation with a show of indifference; but as, in place of abating, her sobs grew more heart-rending, his own face began to twitch, and finally he dropped pencil and cigarette, and with a loud expression of annoyance went over to the bed.

"Lulu," he said persuasively. "Come, Lulu," and bending over her, he laid his hands on her shoulders and tried to force her to rise. She resisted him with all her might, but he was the stronger, and presently he had her on her feet, where, with her head on his shoulder, she wept out the rest of her tears. He held her to him, and although his face above her was still dark, did what he could to soothe her. He could never bear, to see or to hear a woman cry, and this loud passionate weeping, so careless of anything but itself, racked his nerves, and filled him with an uneasy wrath against invisible powers.

"Don't cry, darling, don't cry!" he said again and again. Gradually she grew calmer, and he, too, was still; but when her sobs were hushed, and she was clinging to him in silence, he put his hands on her shoulders and held her back from him, that he might look at her. His face wore a stubborn expression, which she knew, and which made him appear years older than he was.

"Now listen to me, Lulu," he said. "When you behave in this way again, you won't see me afterwards for a week—I promise you that, and you know I keep my word. Instead of being glad that I am in the right mood and can get something done, you come here—which you know I have repeatedly forbidden you to do—and make a fool of yourself like this. I have explained everything to you. I could not possibly stay on Wednesday night—why didn't you time your arrival better? But it's just like you. You would throw the whole of one's future into the balance for the sake of a whim. Yesterday I was in a beast of a temper—I've admitted it. But that was made all right last night; and no one but you would drag it up again."

He spoke with a kind of dogged restraint, which only sometimes gave way, when the injustice she was guilty of forced itself upon him. "Now, like a good girl, go home—go to the theatre and enjoy yourself. I don't mind you being happy without me. At least, go!—under any circumstances you ought not to be here. How often have I told you that!" His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he was almost unintelligible. "You won't have a rag of reputation left."

"If I don't care, why should you?" She felt for his hand. But he turned his back. "I won't have it, I tell you. You know what the student underneath said the last time he met you on the stair."

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep from bursting anew into sobs, and there was a brief silence—he stood at the window, gazing savagely at the opposite house-wall—before she said: "Don't speak to me like that. I'm going—now—this moment. I will never do it again—never again."