One cold, windy afternoon, when dust was stirring and rain seemed imminent, Maurice Guest walked with bent head and his hat pulled over his eyes. He was returning from the ZEITZERSTRASSE, where, in a photographer's show-case, he had a few days earlier discovered a large photograph of Louise. This was a source of great pleasure to him. Here, no laws of breeding or delicacy hindered him from gazing at her as often as he chose.
On this particular day, whether he had looked too long, or whether the unrest of the weather, the sense of something impending, the dusty dryness that craved rain, had got into his blood and disquieted him: whatever it was, he felt restless and sick for news of her, and, at this very moment, was on his way to Madeleine, in the foolish hope of hearing her name.
But a little adventure befell him which made him forget his intention.
He was about to turn the corner of a street, when a sudden blast of wind swept round, bearing with it some half dozen single sheets of music. For a moment they whirled high, then sank fluttering to the ground, only to rise again and race one another along the road. Maurice instinctively gave chase, but it was not easy to catch them; no sooner had he secured one than the next was out of his reach.
Meanwhile their owner, a young and very pretty girl, looked on and laughed, without making any effort to help him; and the more he exerted himself, the more she laughed. In one hand she was carrying a violin-case, in the other a velvet muff, which now and again she raised to her lips, as if to conceal her mirth. It was a graceful movement, but an unnecessary one, for her laughter was of that charming kind, which never gives offence; and, besides that, although it was continuous, it was neither hearty enough nor frank enough to be unbecoming the face was well under control. She stood there, with her head slightly on one side, and the parted lips showed both rows of small, even teeth; but the smile was unvarying, and, in spite of her merriment, her eyes did not for an instant quit the young man's face, as he darted to and fro.
Maurice could not help laughing himself, red and out of breath though he was.
"Now for the last one," he said in German.
At these words she seemed more amused than ever. "I don't speak German," she answered in English, with a strong American accent.
Having captured all the sheets, Maurice tried to arrange them for her.
"It's my Kayser," she explained with a quick, upward glance, adding the next minute with a fresh ripple of laughter. "He's all to pieces."
"You have too much to carry," said Maurice. "On such a windy day, too."
"That's what Joan said—Joan is my sister," she continued. "But I guess it's so cold this afternoon I had to bring a muff along. If my fingers are stiff I can't play, and then Herr Becker is angry." But she laughed again as she spoke, and it was plain that the master's wrath did not exactly incite fear. "Joan always comes along, but to-day she's sick."
"Will you let me help you?" asked Maurice, and a moment later he was walking at her side.
She handed over music and violin to him without a trace of hesitation; and, as they went along the PROMENADE, she talked to him with as little embarrassment as though they were old acquaintances. It was so kind of him to help her, she thought; she couldn't imagine how she would ever have got home without him, alone against the wind; and she was perfectly sure he must be American—no one but an American would be so nice. When Maurice denied this, she laughed very much indeed, and was not sure, this being the case, whether she could like him or not; as a rule, she didn't like English people; they were stiff and horrid, and were always wanting either to be introduced or to shake hands. Here she carried her muff up to her lips again, and her eyes shone mischievously at him over the dark velvet. Maurice had never known anyone so easily moved to laughter; whenever she spoke she laughed, and she laughed at everything he said.
Off the PROMENADE, where the trees were of a marvellous Pale green, they turned into a street of high spacious houses, the dark lines of which were here and there broken by an arched gateway, or the delicate tints of a spring garden. To a window in one of the largest houses Maurice's little friend looked up, and smiled and nodded.
"There's my sister."
The young man looked, too, and saw a dark, thin-faced girl, who, when she found four eyes fixed on her, abruptly drew in her head, and as abruptly put it out again, leaning her two hands on the sill.
"She's wondering who it is," said Maurice's companion gleefully. Then, turning her face up, she made a speaking-trumpet of her hands, and cried: "It's all right, Joan.—Now I must run right up and tell her about it," she said to Maurice. "Perhaps she'll scold; Joan is very particular. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for being so good to me—oh, won't you tell me your name?"
The very next morning brought him a small pink note, faintly scented. The pointed handwriting was still childish, but there was a coquettish flourish beneath the pretty signature: Ephie Cayhill. Besides a graceful word of thanks, she wrote: WE ARE AT HOME EVERY SUNDAY. MAMMA WOULD BE VERY PLEASED.
Maurice did not scruple to call the following week, and on doing so, found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries, which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not excluded—Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or covert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all, to be skilled in the art of looking amiable, while these visitors from other lands heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all that did not please them in the life and laws of this country that was temporarily their home.
Mrs. Cayhill was a handsome woman, who led a comfortable, vegetable existence, and found it a task to rise from the plump sofa-cushion. Her pleasant features were slack, and in those moments of life which called for a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman who has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on practical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and slept with a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in the joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence, remained for the most part completely ignorant of what was going on around her. When she did happen to become conscious of her surroundings, she was callous, or merely indifferent, to them; for, compared with romance, life was dull and diffuse; it lacked the wilful simplicity, the exaggerative omissions, and forcible perspectives, which make up art: in other words, life demanded that unceasing work of selection and rejection, which it is the story-teller's duty to Perform for his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. Cayhill's net; she lived in a world of intrigue and excitement, and, seated in her easy-chair by the sitting-room window, was generally as remote from her family as though she were in Timbuctoo.
There was a difference of ten years in age between her daughters, and it was the younger of the two whose education was being completed. Johanna, the elder, had been a disappointment to her mother. Left to her own devices at an impressionable age, the girl had developed bookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by a free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel, Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, but she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felt her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said: "Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the fact that such an emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from the mild-tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other member of the family took Johanna's part. So she buried her ambitions, and kept her mother's house in an admirable, methodical way.
It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna adored her little sister, and would cheerfully have given up more than this for her sake. Ephie, who was at that time just emerging from childhood, was very pretty and precocious, and her mother had great hopes of her. She also tired early of her lesson-books, and, soon after she turned sixteen, declared her intention of leaving school. As at least a couple of years had still to elapse before she was old enough to be introduced in society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one decisive step of her life, determined that travel in Europe should put the final touches to Ephie's education: a little German and French; some finishing lessons on the violin; a run through Italy and Switzerland, and then to Paris, whence they would carry back with them a complete and costly outfit. So, valiantly, Mrs. Cayhill had her trunks packed, and, together with Johanna, who would as soon have thought of denying her age as of letting these two helpless beings go out into the world alone, they crossed the Atlantic.
For some three months now, they had been established in Leipzig. A circulating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs. Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that the greater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place. Ephie, too, had already had time to learn that, as far as music was concerned, her business was not so much with finishing as with beginning, and that the road to art, which she with all the rest must follow, was a steep one. She might have found it still more arduous, had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man and very impressionable. And Ephie never looked more charming than when, with her rounded, dimpled arm raised in an exquisite curve, she leaned her cheek against the glossy brown wood of her violin.
She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full, white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that were dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low forehead, but, both here and at the back of her neck, it broke into innumerable little curls, which were much lighter in colour than the rest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin of a cherry; it had that exquisite freshness which is only to be found in a very young girl, and is lovelier than the bloom on ripe fruit. Her dark blue eyes were well opened, but the black lashes were so long and so peculiarly straight that the eyes themselves were usually hidden, and this made it all the more effective did she suddenly look up. Moulded like wax, the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after it; anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, and consequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of questioning amaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the face: bright red, full, yet delicate, arched like a bow, with corners that went in and upwards, it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the face of a little child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and the years would eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing.
She also had a charming laugh, with a liquid note in it, that made one think of water bubbling on a dry summer day.
It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday afternoon, and drew the handful of young men together, time after time.
Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside her book, was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, and Johanna only counted in so far as she made and distributed cups of tea at the end of the room. She did not look with favour on the young men who gathered there, and her manner to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them in turn, as he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain for something to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with Johanna. The ordinary small change and polite commonplace of conversation, she met with a silent contempt. In musical chit-chat, she took no interest whatever, and pretended to none, openly indeed "detested music," and was unable to distinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, "except by the noise;" while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on the literary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled at what he said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly contradicted him. She was the thorn in the flesh of these young men; and after having dutifully spent a few awkward moments at her side, they stole back, one by one, to the opposite end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchingly dressed in blue, swung to and fro in a big American rocking-chair—going backwards, it carried her feet right off the ground—and talked charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her own light laugh, and her mother's deeper notes, which went on like an organ-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephic said, matchlessly amusing.
As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first time—it now leaked out that Dove spent every Sunday afternoon in the LESSINGSTRASSE—he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. Not in a disparaging way; Dove had never been heard to mention a woman's name otherwise than with respect. And, in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna's good qualities, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her, and remain at her side; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with Ephie, and had, as it was, more rivals than he cared for, in the field.
"You should get on with her, I think, Guest," he said slily. "You read these German writers she is so interested in. But don't be discouraged by her manner. For though she's one of the most unselfish women I ever met, her way of Speaking is sometimes abrupt. She reminds me, if it doesn't sound unkind, of a faithful watch-dog, or something of the sort, which cannot express its devotion as it would like to."
When, after a lively greeting from Ephie, and a few pleasant words from Mrs. Cayhill, Maurice found himself standing beside Johanna, the truth of Dove's simile was obvious to him. This dark, unattractive girl had apparently no thought for anything but her tea-making; she moved the cups this way and that, filled the pot with water, blew out and lighted again the flame of the spirit-lamp, without paying the least heed to Maurice, making, indeed, such an ostentatious show of being occupied, that it would have needed a brave man to break in upon her duties with idle words. He remained standing, however, in a constrained silence, which lasted until she could not invent anything else to do, and was obliged to drink her own tea. Then he said abruptly, in a tone which he meant to be easy, but which was only jaunty: "And how do you like being in Germany, Miss Cayhill? Does it not seem very strange after America?"
Johanna lifted her shortsighted eyes to his face, and looked coolly and disconcertingly at him through her glasses, as if she had just become aware of his presence.
"Strange? Why should it?" she asked in an unfriendly tone.
"Why, what I mean is, everything must be so different here from what you are accustomed to—at least it is from what we are used to in England," he corrected himself. "The ways and manners, and the language, and all that sort of thing, you know."
"Excuse me, I do not know," she answered in the same tone as before. "If a person takes the trouble to prepare himself for residence in a foreign country, nothing need seem either strange or surprising. But English people, as is well known, expect to find a replica of England in every country they go to."
There was a pause, in which James, the pianist, who was a regular visitor, approached to have his cup refilled. All the circle knew, of course, that Johanna was "doing for a new man"; and it seemed to Maurice that James half closed one eye at him, and gave him a small, sympathetic nudge with his elbow.
So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, without preamble.
"My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" he said with a slight upward inflection in his voice.
Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, and colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things.
"I've done a little in that line myself," continued Maurice, as she made no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately I finished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS."
"Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also.
"It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she again acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "I suppose you know it? You're sure to."
This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sore spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose," she said, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "that you have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of Jean Paul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider Heine the one and only German poet."
Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudly and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making it incumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put it down, and tried to give the matter an airy turn.
"And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong in thinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? And you will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has had anything approaching a style?"
Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything," she said. "Like all English people—it flatters your national vanity, I presume—you think German literature began and ended with Heine.—A miserable Jew!"
"Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew, can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, this being a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And as Johanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely: "Then you don't think much of Heine?"
But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an expression of opinion, and the young man continued, with apology in his tone: "It may be bad taste on my part, of course. But one hears it said on every side. If you could tell me what I ought to read ... or, perhaps, advise me a little?" he ended tentatively.
"I don't lend my books," said Johanna more rudely than she had yet spoken. And that was all Maurice could get from her. A minute or two later, she rose and went out of the room.
It became much less restrained as soon as the door had closed behind her. Ephie laughed more roguishly, and Mrs. Cayhill allowed herself to find what her little daughter said, droller than before. With an appearance of unconcern, Maurice strolled back to the group by the window. Dove was also talking of literature.
"That reminds me, how did you like the book I lent you on Wednesday, Mrs. Cayhill?" he asked, at the same instant springing forward to pick up Ephie's handkerchief, which had fallen to the ground.
"Oh, very much indeed, very interesting, very good of you," answered Mrs. Cayhill. "Ephie, darling, the sun is shining right on your face."
"What was it?" asked James, while Dove jumped up anew to lower the blind, and Ephie raised a bare, dimpled arm to shade her eyes.
Mrs. Cayhill could not recollect the title just at once she had a "wretched memory for names"—and went over what she had been reading.
"Let me see, it was ... no, that was yesterday: SHADOWED BY THREE, a most delightful Book. On Friday, RICHARD ELSMERE, and—oh, yes, I know, it was about a farm, an Australian farm."
"THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM," put in Dove mildly, returning to his seat.
"Australian or African, it doesn't matter which," said Mrs. Cayhill. "Yes, a nice book, but a little coarse in parts, and very foolish at the end—the disguising, and the dying out of doors, and the looking-glass, and all that."
"I must say I think it a very powerful book," said Dove solemnly. "That part, you know, where the boy listens to the clock ticking in the night, and thinks to himself that with every tick, a soul goes home to God. A very striking idea!"
"Why, I think it must be a horrid book," cried Ephie. "All about dying. Fancy some one dying every minute. It couldn't possibly be true. For then the world would soon be empty."
"Always there are coming more into it," said Furst, in his blunt, broken English.
A pause ensued. Dove flicked dust off his trouser-leg; and the American men present were suddenly fascinated by the bottoms of their cups. Ephie was the first to regain her composure.
"Now let us talk of something pleasant, something quite different—from dying." She turned and, over her shoulder, laughed mischievously at Maurice, who was siting behind her. Then, leaning forward in her chair, with every eye upon her, she told how Maurice had saved her music from the wind, and, with an arch face, made him appear very ridiculous. By her prettily exaggerated description of a heated, perspiring young man, darting to and fro, and muttering to himself in German, her hearers, Maurice included, were highly diverted—and no one more than Mrs. Cayhill.
"You puss, you puss!" she cried, wiping her eyes and shaking a finger at the naughty girl.
The general amusement had hardly subsided when Furst rose to his feet, and, drawing his heels together, made a flowery little speech, the gist of which was, that he would have esteemed himself a most fortunate man, had he been in Maurice's place. Ephie and her mother exchanged looks, and shook with ill-concealed mirth, so that Furst, who had spoken seriously and in good faith, sat down red and uncomfortable; and Boehmer, who was dressed in what he believed to be American fashion, smiled in a superior manner, to show he was aware that Furst was making himself ridiculous.
"Look here, Miss Ephie," said James; "the next time you have to go out alone, just send for me, and I'll take care of you."
"Or me" said Dove. "You have only to let me know."
"No, no, Mr. Dove!" cried Mrs. Cayhill. "You do far too much for her as it is. You'll spoil her altogether."
But at this, several of the young men exclaimed loudly: that would be impossible. And Ephie coloured becomingly, raised her lashes, and distributed winning smiles. Then quiet had been restored, she assured them that they all very kind, but she would never let anyone go with her but Joan—dear old Joan. They could not imagine how fond she was of Joan.
"She is worth more than all of you put together." And at the cries of: "Oh, oh!" she was thrown into a new fit of merriment, and went still further. "I would not give Joan's little finger for anyone in the world."
And meanwhile, as all her hearers—all, that is to say, except Dove, who sat moody, fingering his slight moustache, and gazing at Ephie with fondly reproachful eyes—as all of them, with Mrs. Cayhill at their head, made vehement protest against this sweeping assertion, Johanna sat alone in her bedroom, at the back of the house. It was a dull room, looking on a courtyard, but she was always glad to escape to it from the flippant chatter in the sitting-room. Drawing a little table to the window, she sat down and began to read. But, on this day, her thoughts wandered; and, ultimately, propping her chin on her hand, she fell into reverie, which began with something like "the fool and his Schiller!" and ended with her rising, and going to the well-stocked book-shelves that stood at the foot of the bed.
She took out a couple of volumes and looked through them, then returned them to their places on the shelf. No, she said to herself, why should she? What she had told the young man was true: she never lent her books; he would soil them, or, worse still, not appreciate them as he ought—she could not give anyone who visited there on Sunday, credit for a nice taste.
Unknown to herself, however, something worked in her, for, the very next time Maurice was there, she met him in the passage, as he was leaving, and impulsively thrust a paper parcel into his hand.
"There is a book, if you care to take it."
He did not express the surprise he felt, nor did he look at the title. But Ephie, who was accompanying him to the door, made a face of laughing stupefaction behind her sister's back, and went out on the landing with him, to whisper: "What HAVE you been doing to Joan?"—at which remark, and at Maurice's blank face, she laughed so immoderately that she was forced to go down the stairs with him, for fear Joan should hear her; and, in the house-door, she stood, a white-clad little figure, and waved her hand to him until he turned the corner.
Having read the first volume of HAMMER UND AMBOSS deep into two nights, Maurice returned it and carried away the second. But it was only after he had finished PROBLEMATISCHE NATUREN, and had expressed himself with due enthusiasm, that Johanna began to thaw a little. She did not discuss what he read with him; but, going on the assumption that a person who could relish her favourite author had some good in him, she gave the young man the following proof of her favour.
Between Ephie and him there had sprung up spontaneously a mutual liking, which it is hard to tell the cause of. For Ephie knew nothing of Maurice's tastes, interests and ambitions, and he did not dream of asking her to share them. Yet, with the safe instincts of a young girl, she chose him for a brother from among all her other acquaintances; called him "Morry"; scarcely ever coquetted with him; and let him freely into her secrets. It is easier to see why Maurice was attracted to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was also adorably equable—she did not know what it was to be out of humour. And she was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits. When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let her merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts to see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a week with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and he ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to find old Tauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill.
The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship of her daughter with this young man than the ordinary American mother would have done; but Johanna's toleration of it was, for the most part, to be explained by the literary interests before mentioned. For Johanna was always in a tremble lest Ephie should become spoiled; and thoughtless Ephie could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by being prettily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming to have private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. This, and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when every day might be expected to widen the distance between them, sometimes made Johanna very gruff and short, even with Ephie herself. As her sister, she alone knew how much was good and true under the child's light exterior; she admired in Ephie all that she herself had not—her fair prettiness, her blithe manner, her easy, graceful words—and, had it been necessary, she would have gone down on her knees to remove the stones from Ephie's path.
Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made the impression of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings, intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon come often enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness; and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her, had Johanna shown the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he did not understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt in which she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday—poor fools who were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should have been taking plain, hard fare at college. To Dove, Johanna had a particular aversion; chiefly, and in a contradictory spirit, because it was evident to all that his intentions were serious. But she could not hinder wayward Ephie from making a shameless use of him, and then laughing at him behind his back—a laugh in which Mrs. Cayhill was not always able to refrain from joining, though it must be said that she was usually loud in her praises of Dove, at the expense of all visitors who were not American.
"From these Dutch you can't expect much, one way or the other," she declared. "And young Guest sometimes sits there with a face as long as my arm. But Dove is really a most sensible young fellow—why, he thinks just as I do about Arnerica."
And as a special mark of favour, when Dove left the house on Sunday afternoon, his pockets bulged with NEW YORK HERALDS.
Meanwhile, before the blinds in the BRUDERSTRASSE were drawn up again, Maurice had found his way back to Madeleine. When they met, she smiled at him in a somewhat sarcastic manner, but no reference was made to the little falling-out they had had, and they began afresh to read and play together. On the first afternoon, Maurice was full of his new friends, and described them at length to her. But Madeleine damped his ardour.
"I know them, yes, of course," she said. "The usual Americans—even the blue-stocking, from whom heaven defend us. The little one is pretty enough as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she speaks, every illusion is shattered.—Why I don't go there on a Sunday? Good gracious, do you think they want me?—me, or any other petticoat? Are honours made to be divided?—No, Maurice, I don't like Americans. I was once offered a position in America, as 'professor of piano and voice-production' in a place called Schenectady; but I didn't hesitate. I said to myself, better one hundred a year in good old England, than five in a country where the population is so inflated with its importance that I should always be in danger of running amuck. And besides that, I should lose my accent, and forget how to say 'leg'; while the workings of the stomach would be discussed before me with an unpleasant freedom."
"You're too hard on them, Madeleine," said Maurice, smiling in spite of himself. But he was beginning to stand in awe of her sharp tongue and decided opinions; and, in the week that followed, he took himself resolutely together, and did not let a certain name cross his lips.
Consequently, he was more than surprised on returning to his room one day, to find a note from Madeleine, saying that she expected Louise that very afternoon at three.
It was not news to Maurice that Louise had come home. The evening before, as he turned out of the BRUDERSTRASSE, a closed droschke turned into it. After the vehicle had lumbered past him and disappeared, the thought crossed his mind that she might be inside it. He had not then had time to go back but early this very morning, he had passed the house and found the windows open. So Madeleine had engaged her immediately! As usual, Furst had kept him waiting for his lesson; it was nearly three o'clock already, and he was so hurried that he could only change his collar; but, on the way there, in a sudden spurt of gratitude, he ran to a flower-shop, and bought a large bunch of carnations.
He arrived at Madeleine's room in an elation he did not try to hide; and over the carnations they had a mock reconciliation. Madeleine wished to distribute the flowers in different vases about the room, but he asked her put them all together on the centre table. She laughed and complied.
For several weeks now, musical circles had been in a stir over the advent of a new piano-teacher named Schrievers—a person who called himself a pupil of Liszt, held progressive views, arid, being a free lance, openly ridiculed the antiquated methods of the Conservatorium. Madeleine was extremely interested in the case, and, as they sat waiting, talked about it to Maurice with great warmth, enlarging especially upon the number of people who had the audacity to call themselves pupils of Liszt. To Maurice, in his present frame of mind, the matter seemed of no possible consequence—for all he cared, the whole population of the town might lay claim to having been at Weimar—and he could not understand Madeleine finding it important. For he was in one of those moods when the entire consciousness is so intently directed towards some end that, outside this end, nothing has colour or vitality: all that has previously impressed and interested one, has no more solidity than papier mache. Meanwhile she spoke on, and did not appear to notice how time was flying. He was forced at length to take out his watch, and exclaim, in feigned surprise, at the hour.
"A quarter to four already!"
"Is it so late?" But on seeing his disturbance, she added: "It will be all right. Louise was never punctual in her life."
He did his best to look unconcerned, and they spoke of that evening's ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, at which Furst was to play. But by the time the clock struck four, Maurice had relapsed, in spite of himself, into silence. Madeleine rallied him.
"You must make shift with my company, Maurice. Not but what I am sure Louise will come. But you see from this what she is—the most unreliable creature in the world."
To pass the time, she suggested that he should help her to make tea, and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the passage whizzed harshly, and the next moment there came a knock at the door. But it was not Louise. Instead, two persons entered, one of whom was Heinrich Krafft, the other a short, thickset girl, in a man's felt hat and a closely buttoned ulster.
On recognising her visitors, Madeleine made a movement of annoyance, and drew her brows together. "You, Heinz!" she said.
Undaunted by this greeting, Krafft advanced to her and, taking her hands, kissed them, one after the other. He was also about to kiss her on the lips, but she defended herself. "Stop! We are not alone."
"Just for that reason," said the girl in the ulster drily.
"What ill wind blows you here to-day?" Madeleine asked him.
As he was still wearing his hat, she took it off, and dropped it on the floor beside him; then she recollected Maurice, and made him known to the other two. Coming forward, Maurice recalled to Krafft's memory where they had already met, and what had passed between them. Before he had finished speaking, Krafft burst into an unmannerly peal of laughter. Madeleine laughed, too, and shook her finger at him. "You have been up to your tricks again!" Avery Hill, the girl in the ulster, did not laugh aloud, but a smile played round her mouth, which Maurice found even more disagreeable than the mirth of which he had been the innocent cause. He coloured, and withdrew to the window.
Krafft was so convulsed that he was obliged to sit down on the sofa, where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. He had been seized by a kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and on, in a mirthless way, till Avery Hill said suddenly and angrily: "Stop laughing at once, Heinz! You will have hysterics."
In an instant he was sobered, and now he seemed to fall, without transition, into a mood of dejection. Taking out his penknife, he set to paring his nails, in a precise and preoccupied manner. Madeleine turned to Maurice.
"You'll wonder what all this is about," she said apologetically. "But Heinz is never happier than when he has succeeded in imposing on some one—as he evidently did on you."
"Indeed!" said Maurice. Their laughter had been offensive to him, and he found Krafft, and Madeleine with him, exceedingly foolish.
There was a brief silence. Krafft was absorbed in what he was doing, and Avery Hill, on sitting down, had lighted a cigarette, which she smoked steadily, in long-drawn whiffs. She was a pretty girl, in spite of her severe garb, in spite, too, of her expression, which was too composed and too self-sure to be altogether pleasing. Her face was fresh of skin, below smooth fair hair, and her lips were the red, ripe lips of Botticelli's angels and Madonnas. But the under one, being fuller than the other, gave the mouth a look of over-decision, and it would be difficult to imagine anything less girlish than were the cold grey eyes.
"We came for the book you promised to lend Heinz," she said, blowing off the spike of ash that had accumulated at the tip of the cigarette. "He could not rest till he had it."
Madeleine placed a saucer on the table with the request to use it as an ash-tray, and taking down a volume of De Quincey from the hanging shelf, held it out to Krafft.
"There you are. It will interest me to hear what you make of it."
Krafft ceased his paring to glance at the title-page. "I shall probably not open it," he said.
Madeleine laughed, and gave him a light blow on the hand with the book. "How like you that is! As soon as you know that you can get a thing, you don't want it any longer."
"Yes, that's Heinz all over," said Avery Hill. "Only what he hasn't got, seems worth having."
Krafft shut his knife with a click, and put it back in his pocket. "And that's what you women can't understand, isn't it?—that the best of things is the wishing for them. Once there, and they are nothing—only another delusion. The happiest man is the man whose wishes are never fulfilled. He always has a moon to cry for."
"Come, come now," said Madeleine. "We know your love for paradox. But not to-day. There's no time for philosophising today. Besides, you are in a pessimistic mood, and that's a bad sign."
"I and pessimism? Listen, heart of my heart, I have a new story for you." He moved closer to her, and put his arm round her neck. "There was once a man and his wife——"
But, at the first word, Madeleine put her hands to her ears.
"Mercy, have mercy, Heinz! No stories, I entreat you. And behave yourself, too. Take your arm away." She tried to remove it. "I have told you already, I can't have you here to-day. I'm expecting a visitor."
He laid his head on her shoulder. "Let him come. Let the whole world come. I don't budge. I am happy here."
"You must go and be happy elsewhere," said Madeleine more decisively than she had yet spoken. "And before she comes, too."
"She? What she?"
"Never mind."
"For that very reason, Mada."
She whispered a word in his ear. He looked at her, incredulously at first, then whimsically, with a sham dismay; and then, as if Maurice had only just taken shape for him, he turned and looked at him also, and from him to Madeleine, and back to him, finally bursting afresh into a roar of laughter. Madeleine laid her hand over his mouth. "Take him away, do," she said to Avery Hill—"as a favour to me."
"Yes, when I have finished my cigarette," said the girl without stirring.
Unsettled all the same, it would seem, by what he had heard, Krafft rose and shuffled about the room, with his hands in his pockets. Approaching Maurice, he even stood for a moment and contemplated him, with a kind of mock gravity. Maurice acted as if he did not see Krafft; long since, he had taken up a magazine, and, half hidden in a chair between window and writing-table, pretended to bury himself in its contents. But he heard very plainly all that passed, and, at the effect produced on Krafft by the name of the expected visitor, his hands trembled with anger. If the fellow had stood looking at him for another second, he would have got up and knocked him down. But Krafft turned nonchalantly to the piano, where his attention was caught by a song that was standing on the rack. He chuckled, and set about making merciless fun of the music—the composer was an elderly singing-teacher, of local fame. Madeleine grew angry, and tried to take it from him.
"Hold your tongue, Heinz! If your own songs were more like this, they would have a better chance of success. Now be quiet! I won't hear another word. Herr Wendling is a very good friend of mine."
"A friend! Heavens! She says friend as if it were an excuse for him.—Mada, let your friend cease making music if he hopes for salvation. Let him buy a broom and sweep the streets—let him——"
"You are disgusting!"
She had got the music from him, but he was already at the piano, parodying, from memory, the conventional accompaniment and sentimental words of the song. "And this," he said, "from the learned ass who is not yet convinced that the FEUERZAUBER is music, and who groans like a dredge when the last act of SIEGFRIED is mentioned. Wendling and Wagner! Listen to this!—for once, I am a full-blooded Wagnerite."
He felt after the chords that prelude Brunnhilde's awakening by Siegfried. Until now, Avery Hill had sat indifferent, as though what went on had nothing to do with her; but no sooner had Krafft commenced to play than she grew uneasy; her eyes lost their cold assurance, and, suddenly getting up and going round to the front of the piano, she pushed the young man's hands from the keys. Krafft yielded his place to her, and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. She played very well—even Maurice in his disturbance could, not but notice it—with a firm, masculine touch, and that inborn ease, that enviable appearance of perfect fitness, of being one with the instrument, which even the greatest players do not always attain. She had, besides, grip and rhythm, and long, close-knit hands insinuated themselves artfully among the complicated harmonies.
When she began to play, Madeleine made "Tch, tch, tch!" and shook her head, in despair of now ever being rid of them. Krafft remained standing behind the piano at the window leaning his forehead on the glass. Maurice, who watched them both surreptitiously, saw his face change, and grow thoughtful as he stood there; but when Avery Hill ceased abruptly on a discord, he wheeled round at once and patted her on the back. While looking over to Maurice, he said: "No doubt you found that very pretty and affecting?"
"I think that's none of your business," said Maurice.
But Krafft did not take umbrage. "You don't say so?" he murmured with a show of surprise.
"Now, go, go, go!" cried Madeleine. "What have I done to be subjected to such a visitation? No, Heinz, you don't sit down again. Here's your hat. Away with you!—or I'll have you put out by force."
And at last they really did go, to a cool bow from Maurice, who still sat holding his magazine. But Madeleine had hardly closed the door behind them, when, like a whirlwind, Krafft burst into the room again.
"Mada, I forgot to ask you something," he said in a stage-whisper, drawing her aside. "Tell me—you KUPPLERIN, you!—does he know her?" He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at Maurice.
Madeleine shook her head, in real vexation and distress, and laid a finger on her lip. But it was of no use. Stepping over to Maurice, Krafft bowed low, and held his hat against his breast.
"It is impossible for you to understand how deeply it has interested me to meet you," he said. "Allow me, from the bottom of my heart, to wish you success." Whereupon, before Maurice could say "damn!" he was gone again, leaving his elfin laugh behind him in the air, like smoke.
Madeleine shut the door energetically and gave a sigh of relief.
"Thank goodness! I thought they would never go. And now, the chances are, they'll run into Louise on the stairs. You'll wonder why I was so bent on getting rid of them. It's a long story. I'll tell it to you some other time. But if Louise had found them here when she came, she would not have stayed. She won't have anything to do with Heinz."
"I don't wonder at it," said Maurice. He stood up and threw the magazine on the table.
Madeleine displayed more astonishment than she felt. "Why what's the matter? You're surely not going to take what Heinz said, seriously? He was in a bad mood to-day, I know, and I noticed you were very short with him. But you mustn't be foolish enough to be offended by him. No one ever is. He is allowed to say and do just what he likes. He's our spoilt child."
Maurice laughed. "The fellow is either a cad, or an unutterable fool. You, Madeleine, may find his impertinence amusing. I tell you candidly, I don't!" and he went on to make it clear to her that the fault would not be his, were Krafft and he ever in the same room together again. "The kind of man one wants to kick downstairs. What the deuce did he mean by guffawing like that when you told him who was coming?"
"You mean about Louise?" Madeleine gave a slight shrug. "Yes, Maurice—unfortunately that was not to be avoided. But sit down again, and let me explain things to you. When you hear——"
But he did not want explanations; he did not even want an answer to the question he had put; his chief concern now was to get away. To stay there, in that room, for another quarter of an hour, would be impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay—for what? Only to listen to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As it was, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she still come. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tampering with her good name.
"You will surely not be so childish?" said Madeleine, on seeing him take up his hat.
"Childish?—you call it childish?" he exclaimed, growing angry with her, too. "Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock, you write me, and it's now a quarter past five. I have sat here doing nothing for over two mortal hours. It seems to me that's enough, without being made the butt of your friends' wit into the bargain. I'm sick of the whole thing. Good-bye."
"We seem bound to quarrel," said Madeleine calmly. "And always about Louise. But there's no use in being angry. I am not responsible for what Heinz says and does. And on the mere chance of his coming in to-day, to sit down and unroll another savoury story to you, about your idol—would you have thanked me for it? Remember the time I did try to open you eyes!—It's not fair either to blame me because Louise hasn't come. I did my best for you. I can't help it if she's as stable as water."
"I think you dislike her too much to want to help it," said Maurice grimly. He stood staring at the carnations, and his resentment gave way to depression, as he recalled the mood which he had bought them.
"Come back as soon as you feel better. I'm not offended, remember!" Madeleine called after him as he went down the stairs. When she was alone, she said "Silly boy!" and, still smiling, made excuses for him: he had come with such pleasurable anticipations, and everything had gone wrong. Heinz had behaved disagracefully, as only he could. While as for Louise, one was no more able to rely on her than on a wisp straw; and she, Madeleine, was little better than a fool not to have known it.
She moved about the room, putting chairs and papers in their places, for she could not endure disorder of any kind. Then she sat down to write a letter; and when, some half hour later, the girl for whom they had waited, actually came, she met her with exclamations of genuine surprise.
"Is it really you? I had given you up long ago. Pray, do you know what time it is?"
She took out her watch and dangled it before the other's eyes. But Louise Dufrayer hardly glanced at it. As, however, Madeleine persisted, she said: "I'm late, I know. But it was not my fault. I couldn't get away."
She unpinned her hat, and shook back her hair; and Madeleine helped her to take off her jacket, talking all the time. "I have been much annoyed with you. Does it never occur to you that you may put other people in awkward positions, by not keeping your word? But you are just the same as of old—incorrigible."
"Then why try to improve me?" said the other with a show of lightness. But almost simultaneously she turned away from Madeleine's matter-of-fact tone, passed her handkerchief over her lips, and after making a vain attempt to control herself, burst into tears.
Madeleine eyed her shrewdly. "What's the matter with you?"
But the girl who had sunk into a corner of the sofa merely shook her head, and sobbed; and Madeleine, to whom such emotional outbreaks were distasteful, went to the writing-table and busied herself there, with her back to the room. She did not ask for an explanation, nor did her companion offer any.
Louise abandoned herself to her tears with as little restraint as though she were alone, holding her handkerchief to her eyes with both hands and giving deep, spasmodic sobs, which had apparently been held for some time in cheek.
Afterwards, she sat with her elbow on the end of the sofa, her face on her hand, and, still shaken at intervals by a convulsive breath, watched Madeleine make fresh tea. But when she took the cup that was handed to her, she was so far herself again as to inquire whom she was to have met, although her voice still did not obey her properly.
"Some one who is anxious to know you," replied Madeleine an air of mystery. "But he couldn't, or rather would not, wait so long."
Louise showed no further curiosity. But when Madeleine said with meaning emphasis that Krafft had also been there in the course of the afternoon, she shrank perceptibly and flushed.
"What! Does he still exist?" she asked with an effort at playfulness.
"As you very well know," answered Madeleine drily. "Tell me, Louise, how do you manage to keep out of his way?"
Louise made no rejoinder; she raised her cup to her lips, and the dark blood that had stained her face, in a manner distressing to see, slowly retreated. She continued to look down, and, the light of her big, dark eyes gone out, her face seemed wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her, asked herself, not for the first time, but, as always, with an unclear irritation, what the secret of the other's charm was. Beautiful she had never thought Louise; she was not even pretty, in an honest way—at best, a strange, foreign-looking creature, dark-skinned, black of eyes and hair, with flashing teeth, and a wonderfully mobile mouth—and some people, hopeless devotees of a pink and white fairness, had been known to call her plain. At this moment, she was looking her worst; the heavy, blue-black lines beneath her eyes were deepened by crying; her rough hair had been hastily coiled, unbrushed; and she was wearing a shabby red blouse that was pinned across in front, where a button was missing. There was nothing young or fresh about her; she looked her twenty-eight years, every day of them—and more.
And yet, Madeleine knew that those who admired Louise would find her as desirable at this moment as at any other. Hers was a nameless charm; it was present in each gesture of the slim hands, in each turn of the head, in every movement of, the broad, slender body. Strangers felt it instantly; her very walk seemed provocative of notice; there was something in the way her skirts clung, and moved with her, that was different from the motion of other women's. And those whose type she embodied went crazy about her. Madeleine remembered as though it were yesterday, the afternoon on which Heinz had burst in to rave to her of his discovery; and how he would have dragged her out hatless to see this miracle. She remembered, too, after—days, when she had had him there, pacing the floor, and pouring out his feelings to her, infatuated, mad. An he was not the only one; they bowled over like ninepins; an it would be the same for years to come—was there any reason to wonder at Maurice Guest?
Meanwhile, as Madeleine sat thinking these and similar things, Maurice was tramping through the ROSENTAL. The May afternoon, of lucent sunshine and heaped, fleecy clouds, had tempted a host of people into the great park, but he soon left them all behind him, for he walked as though he were pursued. These people, placid, and content of face, and the brightness of the day, jarred on him; he was out of patience with himself, with Madeleine, with the World at large. Especially with Madeleine, he bore her a grudge for her hints and innuendoes, for being behind the scenes, as it were, and also for being so ready to enlighten him; but, most of all, for a certain malicious gratification, which was to be felt in ever word she said about Louise.
He went steadily on, against the level bars of the afternoon sun and, by the time he had tired himself bodily, he had worked off his inward vexation as well. As he walked back towards the town, he was almost ready to smile at his previous heat. What did all these others matter to him? They could not hinder him from carrying through what he had set his mind on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and the next again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, was infinitely long.
He now felt not only an aversion to dwelling on his thoughts of an hour back, but also the need of forgetting them altogether. And, in nearing the LESSINGSTRASSE, he followed an impulse to go to Ephie and to let her merry laugh wipe out the last traces of his ill-humour.
Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were both reading in the sitting room, and though Johanna agreeably laid aside her book, conversation languished. Ephie was sent for, but did not come, and Maurice was beginning to wish he had thought twice before calling, when her voice was heard in the passage, and, a moment later, she burst into the room, with her arms full of lilac, branches of lilac, which she explained had been bought early that morning at the flower-market, by one of their fellow-boarders. She hardly greeted Maurice, but going over to him held up her scented burden, and was not content till he had buried his face in it.
"Isn't it just sweet?" she cried holding it high for all to see. "And the very first that is to be had. Again, Maurice again, put your face right down into the middle of it—like that."
Mrs. Cayhill laughed, as Maurice obediently bowed his head, but Johanna reproved her sister.
"Don't be silly, Ephie. You behave as if you had never seen lilac before."
"Well, neither I have—not such lilac as this, and Maurice hasn't either," answered Ephie. "You shall smell it too, old Joan!"—and in spite of Johanna's protests, she forced her sister also to sink her face in the fragrant white and purple blossoms. But then she left them lying on the table, and it was Johanna who put them in water.
Mrs. Cayhill withdrew to her bedroom to be undisturbed, and Johanna went out on an errand. Maurice and Ephie sat side by side on the sofa, and he helped her to distinguish chords of the seventh, and watched her make, in her music-book, the big, tailless notes, at which she herself was always hugely tickled, they`reminded her so of eggs. But on this particular evening, she was not in a studious mood, and bock, pencil and india-rubber slid to the floor. Both windows were wide open; the air that entered was full of pleasant scents, while that of the room was heavy with lilac. Ephie had taken a spray from one of the vases, and was playing with it; and when Maurice chid her for thoughtlessly destroying it, she stuck the pieces in her hair. Not content with this, she also put bits behind Maurice's ears, and tried to twist one in the piece of hair that fell on his forehead. Having thus bedizened them, she leaned back, and, with her hands clasped behind her head, began to tease the young man. A little bird, it seemed, had whispered her any number of interesting things about Madeleine and Maurice, and she had stored them all up. Now, she repeated them, with a charming impertinence, and was so provoking that, in laughing exasperation, Maurice took her fluffy, flower-bedecked head between his hands, and stopped her lips with two sound kisses.
He acted impulsively, without reflecting, but, as soon as it was done, he felt a curious sense of satisfaction, which had nothing to do with Ephie, and was like a kind of unconscious revenge taken on some one else. He was not, however, prepared for the effect of his hasty deed. Ephie turned scarlet, and jumping up from the sofa, so that all the blossoms fell from her hair at once, stamped her foot.
"Maurice Guest! How dare you!" she cried angrily, and, to his surprise, the young man saw that she had tears in her eyes.
He had never known Ephie to be even annoyed, and was consequently dumfounded; he could not believe, after the direct provocation she had given him, that his crime had been so great.
"But Ephie dear!" he protested. "I had no idea, upon my word I hadn't, that you would take it like this. What's the matter? It was nothing. Don't cry. I'm a brute."
"Yes, you are, a horrid brute! I shall never forgive you—never!" said Ephie, and then she began to cry in earnest.
He put his arm round her, and coaxing her to sit down, wiped away her tears with his own handkerchief. In vain did he beg her to tell him why she was so vexed. To all he said, she only shook her head, and answered: "You had no right to do it."
He vowed solemnly that it should never happen again, but at least a quarter of an hour elapsed before he succeeded in comforting her, and even then, she remained more subdued than usual. But when Maurice had gone, and she had dropped the scattered sprays of lilac out of the window on his head, she clasped her hands at the back of her neck, and dropped a curtsy to herself in the locking-glass.
"Him, too!" she said aloud.
She nodded at her reflected self, but her face was grave; for between these two, small, blue-robed figures was a deep and unsuspected secret.
And Maurice, as he walked away, wondered to himself for still a little why she should have been so disproportionately angry; but not for long; for, when he was not actually with Ephie, he was not given to thinking much about her. Besides, from there, he went straight to the latter half of an ABENDANTERKALTUNG, to hear Furst play Brahms' VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY HANDEL