Maurice Guest Part 71

They walked a few paces without speaking. Then he asked: "Who has given you this one?"

"Maurice!" There was a note of warning in her voice. He heard it in vain. "Give it to me, Louise."

"No--let it be. It will wither soon enough where it is."

"Please give it to me," he urged, rendered the more determined by her refusal.

"I wish to keep it."

"And I mean to have it."

To avoid the threatening scene, she took the rose from her belt and gave it to him. He fingered it indecisively for a moment, then threw it over the bridge they were crossing, into the river. It struggled, filled with muddy water, and floated away.

In the next breath, however, he asked himself ruefully what he had gained by his action. She had given him the rose, and he had destroyed it; but he would never know how she had come by it, and what it had been to her.

He was incensed with himself and with her for the whole length of the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then the inevitable regret for his hastiness followed. He took her limply hanging hand and pressed it. But there was no responsive pressure on her part. Louise looked away from him, beyond the woods, as far as she could see, in the vain hope of there discovering some means of escape.

VIII.

In descending one evening the broad stair of the Gewandhaus, and forced, by reason of the crowd, to pause on every step, Madeleine overheard the talk of two men behind her, one of whom, it seemed, had all the gossip of the place at his fingertips. From what she caught up greedily, as soon as Maurice's name was mentioned, she learnt a surprising piece of news. "A cat and dog life," was the phrase used by the speaker. As she afterwards picked her way through snow and slush, Madeleine confessed to herself that it was impossible to feel regret at what she had heard. Perhaps, after all, things would come right of themselves. In order to recover from his infatuation, to learn what Louise really was, it had only been necessary for Maurice to be constantly at her side.--Was it not Goethe who said that the way to cure a bad habit was to indulge it?

But a few days afterwards, her satisfaction was damped. Late one afternoon she had entered Seyffert's Cafe, to drink a cup of chocolate.

At a table parallel with the one she chose, two fellow-students were playing draughts. Madeleine had only been there for a few minutes, when their talk, which went on unrestrainedly between the moves of the game, leapt, with a witticism, to the unlucky pair in whom she was interested. To her astonishment, she now heard Louise's name, coupled with that of another man.

"Well, I never!" said the second of the two behind her. "I say it's your move.--That's rough on Guest, isn't it?"

Madeleine turned in her chair and faced the man who had spoken.

"Excuse me, who is Herries?" she asked without ceremony.

In her own room that evening, she pondered long. It was one thing for the two to drift naturally apart; another for Maurice to see himself superseded. If this were true, jealousy, and nothing else, would be at the root of their disunion. Madeleine felt very unwilling to mix herself up in the affair: it would be like plunging two clean hands into dirty water. But then, you never could tell how a man would act in a case like this: the odds were ten to one he did something foolish.

And so she wrote to Maurice, making her summons imperative. This failing, she tried to waylay him going to or from his cla.s.ses; but the only satisfaction she gained, was the knowledge of his irregularity: during the week she waited she did not once come face to face with him.

Next, she looked round her for some common friend, and found that he had not an intimate left in all Leipzig. She wrote again, still more plainly, and again he ignored her letter.

One Sat.u.r.day afternoon, she was walking along the crowded streets of the inner town. She had been to the MOTETTE, in the THOMASKIRCHE, and was now on her way home, carrying music from the library. The snow had melted to mud, and sleet was falling. Madeleine had no umbrella; the collar of her cloak was turned up round her ears, and her small felt hat covered her head like an extinguisher.

On entering the PETERSTRa.s.sE, she was jostled together with Dove. It was impossible to beat a retreat.

Dove seldom hurried. On this day, as on any other, he walked with a somewhat pompous emphasis through slush and stinging rain, holding his umbrella straight aloft over him, as he might have carried a banner. He was shocked to find Madeleine without one, at once took her under his, and loaded himself with her music--all with that air of matter-of-course-ness, which invariably made her keen to decline his aid. Dove was radiant; he prospered as do only the happy few; and his satisfaction with himself, and with the world in general, was somehow expressed even through the medium of his long neck and gently sloping shoulders. He greeted Madeleine with an exaggerated pleasure, accompanying his words by the slow smile which sometimes set her wondering if he were not, perhaps, being inwardly satirical at the expense of other people, fooling them by means of his own foolishness.

But, however this might be, the cynical feelings that took her in his presence, mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an excess of content was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or wine-bibbing, or any other self-indulgence.

However, she checked the desire to snub him--to snub until she had succeeded in raising that impossible ire, which, she believed, MUST lurk somewhere in Dove--for, as she plodded along at his side, sheltered from the brunt of the weather, it occurred to her that here was some one whom she might tap on the subject of Maurice. She opened fire by congratulating her companion on his recent performance in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG; at the time, even she had been forced to admit it a creditable piece of work. Dove, who privately considered it epochmaking, was outwardly very modest. He could not refrain from letting fall that the old director had afterwards thanked him in person; but, in the next breath, he pointed out a slip he had made in a particular pa.s.sage of the sonata. It had not, it was true, been observed, he believed, by anyone except Schwarz and himself; still it had caused him considerable annoyance; and he now related how, as far as he could judge, it had come about.

The current inquiries concerning the PRUFUNGEN then pa.s.sed between them.

"Poor old Schwarz!" said Madeleine. "We shall be few enough, this year.

Tell me, what of Heinz? I haven't seen him for an age."

"I regret to say that Krafft is making an uncommon donkey of himself,"

said Dove. "He had another shocking row with Schwarz last week."

"Tch, tch, tch!" said Madeleine. "Heinz is a freak.--And Maurice Guest, what about him?"

"I haven't seen him lately."

"Indeed? How is that?"

"I'm not in the same cla.s.s with him now. His hour has been changed."

"Has it indeed?" said Madeleine thoughtfully. This accounted for her having been unable to meet Maurice. "What's he playing, do you know?"

"The G major Mendelssohn, I understand;" and Dove looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

"How's he getting on with it?" she queried afresh, in the same indifferent tone.

"I really couldn't say. As I mentioned, he's in another cla.s.s."

"Oh, but you must have heard!" said Madeleine. "It's no use putting me off," she added, with determination. "I want to find out about Maurice."

"And I fear I can't a.s.sist you. All I HAVE chanced to hear--mere rumour, of course--is that ... well, if Guest doesn't pull himself together, he won't play at all.--By the way, what did you think of James the other night, in the LISZTVEREIN?"

"Oh, that his octaves were marvellous, of course!" said Madeleine tartly. "But I warn you," she continued, "it's of no use changing the subject, or pretending you don't know. I intend to speak of Maurice."

"Then it must be to some one else, Miss Madeleine, not to me."--Dove could never be induced to call her Madeleine, as her other friends did.

"And why, pray, are you to be the exception?"

"Because, as I've already mentioned, I don't see any more of Guest. He mixes in a different set now.--And as for me, well, my thoughts are occupied with, I trust, more profitable things."

"What? You have thoughts, too?"

"I hope you don't claim a monopoly of them?" said Dove, and smiled in his imperturbable way. As, however, Madeleine persisted, he grew grave.

"It's not a pleasant subject. I should really rather not discuss it, Miss Madeleine."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't let us play the prudish or sentimental!"

cried Madeleine, in a burst of impatience. "Of course, it isn't pleasant. Do you think I should "--"bother with you," was on her tongue. She checked herself, and subst.i.tuted--"trouble you about it, if it were? But Maurice was once a friend of ours--you don't deny it, I hope?" she threw in challengingly; for Dove muttered something to himself. "And I want to get at the truth about him. I'm sorrier than I can say, to hear, on all sides, what a fool he's making of himself."

Dove was suavely silent.

"Of course," continued Madeleine with a sarcastic inflection--"of course, I can't expect you to see it as I do. Men look at these things differently, I know. Possibly if I were a man, I, too, should stand by, with my hands in my pockets, and watch a friend b.u.t.t his head against a stone wall--thinking it, indeed, rather good fun."

She had touched Dove on a tender spot. "I can a.s.sure you, Miss Madeleine," he said impressively, as they picked their steps across a dirty road--"I can a.s.sure you, you are mistaken. I think just as strictly in matters of this kind as you yourself.--But as to interfering in Guest's ... in his private affairs, well, frankly, I shouldn't care to try it. He was always a curiously reserved fellow."