Maurice Guest Part 9

And as a special mark of favour, when Dove left the house on Sunday afternoon, his pockets bulged with NEW YORK HERALDS.

VII.

Meanwhile, before the blinds in the BRUDERSTRa.s.sE 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 BRUDERSTRa.s.sE, 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude, 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 pa.s.s the time, she suggested that he should help her to make tea, and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the pa.s.sage 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 b.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sed 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 acc.u.mulated 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 t.i.tle-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 pa.s.sed, 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----"