Maurice Guest Part 65

But Madeleine only sniffed.

"Well, it's over and done with now," she said after a pause. "And talking about it won't mend it.--Tell me, rather, what you intend to do. What are your plans?"

"Plans? I don't know. I haven't any. Sufficient unto the day, etc."

But of this she disapproved with open scorn. "Rubbish! When your time here is all but up! And no plans!--One thing, I can tell you anyhow, is, after to-day you needn't rely on Schwarz for a.s.sistance. You've spoilt your chances with him. The only way of repairing the mischief would be the lesson I spoke of--one a week as long as you re here."

"I couldn't afford it."

"No, I suppose not," she said sarcastically, and tore a piece of paper that came under her fingers into narrow strips. "Tell me," she added a moment later, in a changed tone: "where do you intend to settle when you return to England? And have you begun to think of advertising yourself yet?"

He waved his hand before his face as if he were chasing away a fly.

"For G.o.d's sake, Madeleine! ... these alluring prospects!"

"Pray, what else do you expect to do?"

"Well, the truth is, I ... I'm not going back to England at all. I mean to settle here."

Madeleine repressed the exclamation that rose to her lips, and stooped to brush something off the skirt of her dress. Her face was red when she raised it. She needed no further telling; she understood what his words implied as clearly as though it were printed black on white before her. But she spoke in a casual tone.

"However are you going to make that possible?"

He endeavoured to explain.

"I don't envy you," she said drily, when he had finished. "You hardly realise what lies before you, I think. There are people here who are glad to get fifty pfennigs an hour, for piano lessons. Think of plodding up and down stairs, all day long, for fifty pfennigs an hour!"

He was silent.

"While in England, with a little tact and patience, you would soon have more pupils than you could take at five shillings."

"Tact and patience mean push and a thick skin. But don't worry! I shall get on all right. And if I don't--life's short, you know."

"But you are just at: the beginning of it--and ridiculously young at that! Good Heavens, Maurice!" she burst out, unable to contain herself.

"Can't you see that after you've been at home again for a little while, things that have seemed so important here will have shrunk into their right places? You'll be glad to have done with them then, when you are in orderly circ.u.mstances again."

"I'm afraid not," answered the young man. "I'm not a good forgetter."

"A good forgetter!" repeated Madeleine, and laughed sarcastically. She was going on to say more, but, just at this moment, a clock outside struck ten, and Maurice sprang to his feet.

"So late already? I'd no idea. I must be off."

She stood by, and watched him look for his hat.

"Here it is." She picked it up, and handed it to him, with an emphasised want of haste.

"Good night, Madeleine. Thanks for the truth. I knew I could depend on you."

"It was well meant. And the truth is always beneficial, you know. Good night.--Come again, soon."

He heard her last words half-way down the stairs, which he took two at a time.

The hour he had now to face was a painful ending to an unpleasant day.

It was not merely the fact that he had kept Louise waiting, in aching suspense, for several hours. It now came out that, after their disagreement of the previous night, she had confidently expected him to return to her early in the day, had expected contrition and atonement.

That he had not even suspected this made her doubly bitter against him.

In vain he tried to excuse himself, to offer explanations. She would not listen to him, nor would she let him touch her. She tore her dress from between his fingers, brushed his hand off her arm; and, retreating into a corner of the room, where she stood like an animal at bay, she poured out over him her acc.u.mulated resentment. All she had ever suffered at his hands, all the infinitesimal differences there had been between them, from the beginning, the fine points in which he had failed--things of which he had no knowledge--all these were raked up and cast at him till, numb with pain, he lost even the wish to comfort her. Sitting down at the table, he laid his head on his folded arms.

At his feet were the fragments of the little clock, which, in her anger at his desertion of her, she had trodden to pieces.

VI.

Their first business the next morning was to buy another clock. By daylight, Louise was full of remorse at what she had done, and in pa.s.sing the writing-table, averted her eyes. They went out early to a shop in the GRIMMAISCHESTRa.s.sE; and Maurice stood by and watched her make her choice.

She loved to buy, and entered into the purchase with leisurely enjoyment. The shopman and his a.s.sistant spared themselves no trouble in fetching and setting out their wares. Louise handled each clock as it was put before her, discussed the merits of different styles, and a faint colour mounted to her cheeks over the difficulty of deciding between two which she liked equally well. She had pushed up her veil; it swathed her forehead like an Eastern woman's. Her eagerness, which was expressed in a slight unsteadiness of nostril and lip, would have had something childish in it, had it not been for her eyes. They remained heavy and unsmiling; and the disquieting half-rings below them were more bluely brown than ever. Leaning sideways against the counter, Maurice looked away from them to her hands; her fingers were entirely without ornament, and he would have liked to load them with rings. As it was, he could not even pay for the clock she chose; it cost more than he had to spend in a month.

In the street again, she said she was hungry, and, glad to be able to add his mite to her pleasure, he took her by the arm and steered her to the CAFE FRANCAIS, where they had coffee and ices. The church-steeples were booming eleven when they emerged; it did not seem worth while going home and settling down to work. Instead, they went to the ROSENTAL.

It was a brilliant autumn day, rich in light and shade, and there was only a breath abroad of the racy freshness that meant subsequent decay.

The leaves were turning red and orange, but had not begun to fall; the sky was deeply blue; outlines were sharp and precise. They were both in a mood this morning to be susceptible to their surroundings; they were even eager to be affected by them, and made happy. The disagreements of the two preceding nights were like bad dreams, which they were anxious to forget, or at least to avoid thinking of. Her painful, unreasonable treatment of him, the evening before, had not been touched on between them; after his incoherent attempts to justify himself, after his bitter self-reproaches, when she lay sobbing in his arms, they had both, with one accord, been silent. Neither of them felt any desire for open-hearted explanations; they were careful not to stir up the depths anew. Louise was very quiet; had it not been for her eyes, he might have believed her happy. But here, just as an hour before in the watchmaker's shop, they brooded, unable to forget. And yet there was a pliancy about her this morning, a readiness to meet his wishes, which, as he walked at her side, made him almost content. The old, foolish dreams awoke in him again, and vistas opened, of a gentle comradeship, which might still come true, when the strenuous side of her love for him had worn itself out. If only an hour like the present could have lasted indefinitely!

It was a happy morning. They ended it with an improvised lunch at the KAISERPARK; and it remained imprinted on their minds as an unexpected patch of colour, in an unending row of grey days, given up to duty.

The next one, and the next again, Louise continued in the same yielding mood, which was wholly different from the emotional expansiveness of the past weeks. Maurice took a glad advantage of her willingness to please him, and they had several pleasant walks together: to Napoleon's battlefields; along the GRUNE Ga.s.sE and the POETENWEG to Schiller's house at Gohlis; and into the heart of the ROSENTAL--DAS WILDE ROSENTAL--where it was very solitary, and where the great trees seemed to stagger under their load of stained leaves.

A burst of almost July radiance occurred at this time; and one day, Louise expressed a wish to go to the country, in order that, by once more being together for a whole day on end, they might relive in fancy the happy weeks they had spent on the Rochlitzer Berg. It was never her way to urge over-much, which made it hard to refuse her; so it was arranged that they should set off betimes the following Sat.u.r.day.

Maurice had his reward in the cry of pleasure she gave when he wakened her to tell her that it was a fine day.

"Get up, dear! It's less than an hour till the train goes."

For the first time for weeks, Louise was her impetuous self again. She threw things topsy-turvy in the room. It was he who drew her attention to an unfastened hook, and an unbound ribbon. She only pressed forward.

"Make haste!--oh, make haste! We shall be late."

An overpowering smell of newly-baked rolls issued from the bakers'

shops, and the errand-boys were starting out with their baskets. Women and house-porters were coming out to wash pavements and entrances: the collective life of the town was waking up to another uneventful day; but they two were hastening off to long hours of sunlight and fresh air, unhampered by the pa.s.sing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty; were setting out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken in strange places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. In the train, they were crushed between the baskets of the marketwomen, who were journeying from one village to another. These sat with their wizened hands clasped on their high stomachs, or on the handles of their baskets, and stared, like stupid, placid animals, at the strange young foreign couple before them. Partly for the frolic of astonishing them, and also because he was happy at seeing Louise so happy, Maurice kissed her hand; but it was she who astonished them most. When she gave a cry, or used her hands with a sudden, vivid effect, or flashed her white teeth in a smile, every head in the carriage was turned towards her; and when, in addition, she was overtaken by a fit of loquacity, she was well-nigh devoured by eyes.

They did not travel as far as they had intended. From the carriage window, she saw a wayside place that took her fancy.

"Here, Maurice; let us get out here."

Having breakfasted, and left their bags at an inn, they strayed at random along an inviting road lined with apple-trees. When Louise grew tired, they rested in the arbour of a primitive GASTHAUS, and ate their midday meal. Afterwards, in a wood, he spread a rug for her, and she lay in a nest of sun-spots. Only their own voices broke the silence.

Then she fell asleep, and, until she opened her eyes again, and called to him in surprise, no sound was to be heard but the sudden, crisp rustling of some bird or insect. When evening fell, they returned to their lodging, ate their supper in the smoky public room--for, outside, mists had risen--and then before them stretched, undisturbed, the long evening and the longer night, to be spent in a strange room, of which they had hitherto not suspected the existence, but which, from now on, would be indissolubly bound up with their other memories.

The first day pa.s.sed in such a manner was as flawless as any they had known in the height of summer--with all the added attractions of closer intimacy. In its course, the shadows lifted from her eyes; and Maurice ceased to remember that he had made a mess of his affairs. But the very next one failed--as far as Louise was concerned--to reach the same level: it was like a flower ever so slightly overblown. The lyric charms that had so pleased her--the dewy freshness of the morning, the solitude, the unbroken sunshine--were frail things, and, s.n.a.t.c.hed with too eager a hand, crumbled beneath the touch. They were not made to stand the wear and tear of repet.i.tion. It was also impossible, she found, to live through again days such as they had spent at Rochlitz; time past was past irrevocably, with all that belonged to it. And it was further, a mistake to believe that a more intimate acquaintance meant a keener pleasure; it was just the stimulus of strangeness, the piquancy of feeling one's way, that had made up half the fascination of the summer.