Maurice Guest Part 59

"It's impossible," said Krafft, and proceeded.

"BARMHERZIGER GOTT!--" The master's short neck reddened, and twisted in its collar.

"Give me music I care to play, and I'll show you how it should be done.

I can make nothing of this," answered Krafft.

Schwarz strode up to the piano, and swept the volume from the rack; it fell with a crash on the keys and on Krafft's hands, and effectually hindered him from continuing.

What had gone before was as a summer shower to a deluge. With his arms stiffly knotted behind his back, Schwarz paced the floor with a tread that shook it. His steely blue eyes flashed with pa.s.sion; the veins stood out on his forehead; his large, prominent mouth gaped above his tuft of beard; he struck ludicrous att.i.tudes, pouring out, meanwhile, without stint--for he had soon pa.s.sed from Krafft's particular case of insubordination to the general one--pouring out the savage anger and deep-felt injury that had acc.u.mulated in him. Finally, he invited the cla.s.s to rise and leave him, there and then. For what, in G.o.d's name, were they waiting? Let them up and away, without more ado!

On receiving the volume of Beethoven on his fingers, Krafft straightened out the pages, and taking down his hat from its peg, left the room, with movements of a calculated coolness. But only a pupil of Bullow's might take such a liberty; the rest had to a.s.sist quietly at the painful scene. Maurice studied his finger nails, and Dove did not once remove his eyes from the leg of the piano. They, at least, knew from experience that, in time, the storm would pa.s.s; also that it sounded worse, than it actually was. But a new-comer, a stout Bavarian lad, with hair cut like Rubinstein's, who was present at the lesson for the first time, was pale and frightened, and sat drinking in every word.

Towards the end of the hour, when quiet was re-established, one's inclination was rather to escape from the room and be free, than to sit down to play something that demanded coolness and concentration. Dove, who was not sensitive to externals, came safely through the ordeal; but Maurice made a poor job of the trio in which he had hoped to excel.

Schwarz did not even offer to turn the pages. This, Beyerlein, the new-comer, did, in a nervous desire to ingratiate himself; but he was still so fl.u.s.tered that, at a critical moment, he brought the music down on the keys. Schwarz said nothing; wrapped in the moody silence that invariably followed his outbursts, he hardly seemed aware that anyone was playing. After two movements of the trio, he signed to Beyerlein to take his turn, and proffered no comment on Maurice's work.

Maurice would have hurried away, without a further word, had he not already learned the early date of his performance. He knew, too, that if the practical side of the affair--rehearsals with string players, and so on--was not satisfactorily arranged, he would be blamed for it.

So he reminded Schwarz of the matter. From what ensued, it was plain that the master still bore him a grudge for absconding in summer.

Schwarz glared coldly at him, as if unsure to what Maurice alluded; and when the latter had recalled the details of the case to his mind, he said rudely: "You went your way, Herr Guest. Now I go mine." He commenced to turn the leaves of his ponderous note-book, and after Maurice had stood for some few minutes, listening to Beyerlein trip and stumble through Mozart, he felt that, for this day at least, he could put up with no more, and left the cla.s.s.

III.

Shaking all disagreeable impressions from him, he sped through the fading light of the September afternoon.

This was the time--it was six o'clock--at which he could rejoin Louise with a free mind. It was the exception for him to go earlier, or at other hours; but, did he chance to go, no matter when, she met him in the same way--sprang towards him from the window, where she had been sitting or standing, with her eyes on the street.

"I believe you watch for me all day long," he said to her once.

On this particular afternoon, when he had used much the same words to her, she put back her head and looked up at him, with a pale, unsmiling face.

"Not quite," she answered slowly. "But I have a fancy, Maurice--a foolish, fancy--that once you will come early--in the morning--and we shall have the whole day together again. Perhaps even go away somewhere ... before summer is quite over."

"And I promise you, dearest, we will. Just let me get through the next fortnight, and then I shall be freer. We'll take the train, and go back to Rochlitz, or anywhere you like. In the meantime, take more care of yourself. You are far too pale. You will go out tomorrow, yes?--to please me?"

But this was a request he had often made, and generally in vain.

Since the afternoon of their return, Louise had made no further attempt to stem or alter circ.u.mstance. She accepted Maurice's absences without demur. But one result was, that her feelings were h.o.a.rded up for the few hours he pa.s.sed with her: these were then a working-off of emotion; and it seemed impossible to cram enough into them, to make good the starved remainder of the day.

Maurice was vaguely troubled. He was himself so busy at this time, and so full of revived energy, that he could not imagine her happy, living as she did, entirely without occupation. At first he had tried to persuade her to take up her music again; but she would not even consider it. To all his arguments, she made the same reply.

"I have no real talent. With me, it was only an excuse--to get away from home."

Nor could he induce her to renew her acquaintance with people she had known.

"Do you know, I once thought you didn't care a jot what people said of you?" It was not a very kind thing to say; it slipped out unawares.

But she did not take it amiss. "I used not to," she answered with her invincible frankness. "But now--it seems--I do."

"Why, dearest? Aren't you happy enough not to care?"

For answer, she took his face between her hands, and looked at him with such an ill-suppressed fire in her eyes that all he could do was to draw her into his arms.

His pains for her good came to nothing. He took her his favourite books, but--with the exception of an occasional novel--Louise was no reader. In those he brought her, she seldom advanced further than the first few pages; and she could sit for an hour without turning a leaf.

He had never seen her with a piece of sewing or any such feminine employment in her hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as a rule, he found her in her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying to influence her, and to become reconciled to the fact that she chose to live only for him. But on this September day, after the unpleasant episode with Schwarz, he had a fancy to go for a walk; Louise was unwilling; and he felt anew how preposterous it was for her to spend these fine autumn days, in this half-dark room.

"You are burying yourself alive--just as you did last winter."

She laid her hand on his lips. "No, no!--don't say that. Now I am happy."

"But are you really? Sometimes I'm not sure." He was tired himself this evening, and found it difficult to be convinced. "It troubles me when I think how dull it must be for you. Dearest, are you--can you really be happy like this?"

"I have you, Maurice."

"But only for an hour or two in the twenty-four. Tell me, what do you think of?"

"Of you."

"All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?"

"You are mine," she said with vehemence, and looked at him with what he called her "hungry-beast" eyes.

"You would like to eat me, I think."

"Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I love best"--and before he knew what she was going to do, she had stooped, and he felt her teeth in the skin of his neck.

"That's a strange way of showing your love," he said, and involuntarily put his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red marks had appeared.

"It's my way. I want you--I WANT you. I want to feel that you're mine--to make you more mine than you've ever been. I wish I had a hundred arms. I would hold you with them all, and never let you go."

"But, dearest, one would think I wanted to go. Do you really believe if I had my own way, I should be anywhere but here with you?"

"No.--I don't know.--How should I know?"

"Doubts?--beloved!"

"No, no, not doubts. It's only--oh, I don't know what it is. If you could always be with me, Maurice, they wouldn't come. For what I never meant to happen HAS happened. I have grown to care too much--far too much. I want you, I need you, at every moment of the day. I want you never to be out of my sight."

Maurice held her at arm's length, and looked at her. "You can say that--at last!" And drawing her to him: "Patience, darling. Just a little patience. Some day you will never be alone again."

"I do have patience, Maurice. But let me be patient in my own way. For I'm not like you. I have no room in me now for other things. I can't think of anything else. If I had my way, we should shut ourselves up alone, and live only for each other. Not share it, not make it just a part of what we do."

"But man can't live on nectar and honey alone. It wouldn't be life."

"It wouldn't be life, no. It would be more than life."

Some of the evening shadows seemed to invade her face. Her expression was childishly pathetic. He drew her to his knee.