Maurice Guest | Page 8

action we have believed
unobserved, Maurice spun round on his heel and took a few quick steps

in the opposite direction. When once he was out of range of the
window, however, he dropped his pace, and at the next corner stopped
altogether. He would at least have liked to know her name. And what in
all the world was he to do with himself now?
Clouds had gathered; the airy blue and whiteness of the morning had
become 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 down
the narrow streets and freaked about the corners. There was little
temptation now to linger on one's steps. But Maurice Guest was loath
to return to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut
himself up with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat
collar, he began to walk slowly along the curved
GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE. But the streets were by this time black
with people, most of whom came hurrying towards him, brisk and
bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailing dullness, at the prospect of
the warm, familiar evening. He was continually obliged to step off the
pavement into the road, to allow a bunch of merry, chattering girls,
their cheeks coloured by the wind beneath the dark fur of their hats, or
a line of gaudy capped, thickset students, to pass him by, unbroken; and
it seemed to him that he was more frequently off the pavement than on
it. He began to feel disconsolate among these jovial people, who were
hastening forward, with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone
far, before he turned down a side street to be out of their way. Vaguely
damped by his environment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its
charm, he gave himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily
engaged in thinking over all that had been said by his quondam
acquaintance of the dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and
felicitous replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down
quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to
where he was going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look
strangely alike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: the dark
old houses, marshalled in rows on either side, stood as if lost in
contemplation, in the saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps,
which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with the
fading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from side
to side in the wind like a woman's hair--these things made his
surroundings seem still shadowier and less real.

He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what was
apparently the outskirts of the town. With much difficulty he made his
way back, but he was still far from certain of his whereabouts, when an
unexpected turn to the right brought him out on the spacious
AUGUSTUSPLATZ, in front of the New Theatre. He had been in this
square once already, but now its appearance was changed. The big
buildings that 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
of hanging lamps before the CAFE FRANCAIS made the corner of the
GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE dazzling to the eyes; and now, too, the
massive white theatre was awake as well. Lights shone from all its high
windows, streamed out through the Corinthian columns and
low-porched doorways. 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-vendors cried and sold their wares; people came hurrying from all
directions, as to a magnet; hastily they ascended the low steps and
disappeared beneath the portico.
He watched until the last late-comer had vanished. Only he was left; he
again was the outsider. And now, as he stood there in the deserted
square, which, a moment before, had been so animated, he had a
sudden sinking of the heart: he was seized by that acute sense of
desolation that lies in wait for one, caught by nightfall, alone in a
strange city. It stirs up a wild longing, not so much for any particular
spot on earth, as for some familiar hand or voice, to take the edge off an
intolerable loneliness.
He turned and walked rapidly back to the small hotel near the railway
station, at which he was staying until he found lodgings. He was tired
out, and for the first time became thoroughly conscious of this; but the
depression that now closed in upon him,