Maurice Guest Part 14

He thought he heard tears in her voice, and looked at her in perplexity. While he contemplated getting her into a quiet corner and making her tell him truthfully what the matter was, they came upon Madeleine, who had been searching everywhere for Maurice. Madeleine had more colour in her cheeks than usual, and, in the pleasing consciousness that she was having a successful evening, she brought her good spirits to bear on Ephie, who stood fidgeting beside them.

"You look nice, child," she remarked in her patronising way. "Your dress is very pretty. But why is your face so red? One would think you had been crying."

Ephie, growing still redder, tossed her head. "It's no wonder, I'm sure. The theatre is as hot as an oven. But at least my nose isn't red as well."

Madeleine was on the point of retorting, but at this moment, the interval came to an end, and the electric bells rang shrilly. The people who were nearest the doors went out at once, upstairs and down.

Among the first were Louise and Schilsky, the latter's head as usual visible above every one else's.

"I will go, too," said Ephie hurriedly. "No, don't bother to come with me. I'll find my way all right. I guess the others are in front."

"There's something wrong with that child to-night," said Madeleine as she and Maurice climbed to the gallery. "Pert little thing! But I suppose even such sparrow-brains have their troubles."

"I suppose they have," said Maurice. He had just realised that the longed-for interval was over, and with it more of the hopes he had nursed.

Dove was already in his seat, eating another roll. He moved along to make room for them, but not a word was to be got out of him, and as soon as he had finished eating, he raised the opera-gla.s.s to his eyes again. Behind his back, Madeleine whispered a mischievous remark to Maurice, but the latter smiled wintrily in return. He had searched swiftly and thoroughly up and down the fourth row of the PARQUET, only to find that Louise was not in it. This time there could be no doubt whatever; not a single white dress was in the row, and towards the middle a seat was vacant. They had gone home then; he would not see her again--and once more the provoking darkness enveloped the theatre.

This second act had no meaning for him, and he found the various scenes intolerably long. Dove volunteered no further aid, and Madeleine's explanations were insufficient; he was perplexed and bored, and when the curtains fell, joined in the applause merely to save appearances.

The others rose, but he said he would not go downstairs; and when they had drawn back to let Dove push by and hurry away, Madeleine said she, too, would stay. However they would at least go into the corridor, where the air was better. After they had promenaded several times up and down, they descended to a lower floor and there, through a little half-moon window that gave on the FOYER below, they watched the living stream which, underneath, was going round as before. Madeleine talked without a pause.

"Look at Dove!" She pointed him out as he went by with the two sisters.

"Did you ever see such a gloomy air? He might sit for Werther to-night.

And oh, look, there's Boehmer with his widow--see, the pretty fattish little woman. She's over forty and has buried two husbands, but is crazy about Boehmer. They say she's going to marry him, though he's more than twenty years younger than she is."

At this juncture, to his astonishment, Maurice saw Schilsky and Louise.

He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and Madeleine understood it. She stopped her gossip to say: "You thought she had gone, didn't you?

Probably she has only changed her seat. They do that sometimes--he hates PARQUET." And, after a pause: "How cross she looks! She's evidently in a temper about something. I never saw people hide their feelings as badly as they do. It's positively indecent."

Her strictures were justifiable; as long as the two below were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as for Louise--Maurice staring hard from his point of vantage could not have believed it possible for her face to change in this way. She looked suddenly older, and very tired; and her mobile mouth was hard.

When, an hour later, after a tedious colloquy between Brunnhilde and Wotan, this long and disappointing evening came to an end, to the more human strains of the FEUERZAUBER, and they, the last of the gallery-audience to leave, had tramped down the wooden stairs, Maurice's heart leapt to his throat to discover, as they turned the last bend, not only the two Cayhills waiting for them, but also, a little distance further off, Louise. She stood there, in her white dress, with a thin scarf over her head.

Madeleine was surprised too. "Louise! Is it you? And alone?"

The girl did not respond. "I want to borrow some money from you, Madeleine--about five or six marks," she said, without smiling, in one of those colourless voices that preclude further questioning.

Madeleine was not sure if she had more than a couple of marks in her purse, and confirmed this on looking through it under a lamp; but both young men put their hands in their pockets, and the required sum was made up. As they walked across the square, Louise explained. Dressed, and ready to start for the theatre, she had not been able to find her purse.

"I looked everywhere. And yet I had it only this morning. At the last moment, I came down here to Markwald's. He knows me; and he let me have the seats on trust. I said I would go in afterwards."

They waited outside the tobacconist's, while she settled her debt.

Before she came out again, Madeleine cast her eyes over the group, and, having made a rapid surmise, said good-naturedly to Johanna: "Well, I suppose we shall walk together as far as we can. Shall you and I lead off?"

Maurice had a sudden vision of bliss; but no sooner had Louise appeared again, with the shopman bowing behind her, then Ephie came round to his side, with a naive, matter-of-course air that admitted of no rebuff, and asked him to carry her opera-gla.s.s. Dove and Louise brought up the rear.

But Dove had only one thought: to be in Maurice's place. Ephie had behaved so strangely in the theatre; he had certainly done something to offend her, and, although he had more than once gone over his conduct of the past week, without finding any want of correctness on his part, whatever it was, he must make it good without delay.

"You know my friend Guest, I think," he said at last, having racked his brains to no better result--not for the world would he have had his companion suspect his anxiety to leave her. "He's a clever fellow, a very clever fellow. Schwarz thinks a great deal of him. I wonder what his impressions of the opera were. This was his first experience of Wagner; it would be interesting to hear what he has to say."

Louise was moody and preoccupied, but Dove's words made her smile.

"Let us ask him," she said.

They quickened their steps and overtook the others. And when Dove, without further ado, had marched round to Ephie's side, Louise, left slightly to herself, called Maurice back to her.

"Mr. Guest, we want your opinion of the WALKURE."

Confused to find her suddenly beside him, Maurice was still more disconcerted at the marked way in which she slackened her pace to let the other two get in front. Believing, too, that he heard a note of mockery in her voice, he coloured and hesitated. Only a moment ago he had had several things worth saying on his tongue; now they would not out. He stammered a few words, and broke down in them half-way. She said nothing, and after one of the most embarra.s.sing pauses he had ever experienced, he avowed in a burst of forlorn courage: "To tell the truth, I did not hear much of the music."

But Louise, who had merely exchanged one chance companion for another, did not ask the reason, or display any interest in his confession, and they went on in silence. Maurice looked stealthily at her: her white scarf had slipped back and her wavy head was bare. She had not heard what he said, he told himself; her thoughts had nothing to do with him.

But as he stole glances at her thus, unreproved, he wakened to a sudden consciousness of what was happening to him: here and now, after long weeks of waiting, he was walking at her side; he knew her, was alone with her, in the summer darkness, and, though a cold hand gripped his throat at the thought, he took the resolve not to let this moment pa.s.s him by, empty-handed. He must say something that would rouse her to the fact of his existence; something that would linger in her mind, and make her remember him when he was not there. But they were half way down the GRIMMAISCHESTRa.s.sE; at the end, where the PETERSTRa.s.sE crossed it, Dove and the Cayhills would branch off, and Madeleine return to them. He had no time to choose his phrases.

"When I was introduced to you this afternoon, Miss Dufrayer, you did not know who I was," he said bluntly. "But I knew you very well--by sight, I mean, of course. I have seen you often--very often."

He had done what he had hoped to do, had arrested her attention. She turned and considered him, struck by the tone in which he spoke.

"The first time I saw you," continued Maurice, with the same show of boldness--"you, of course, will not remember it. It was one evening in Schwarz's room--in April--months ago. And since then, I ... well ...

I----"

She was gazing at him now, in surprise. She remembered at this minute, how once before, that day, his manner of saying some simple thing had affected her disagreeably. Then, she had eluded the matter with an indifferent word; now, she was not in a mood to do this, or in a mood to show leniency. She was dispirited, at war with herself, and she welcomed the excuse to vent her own bitterness on another.

"And since then--well?"

"Since then ..." He hesitated, and gave a nervous laugh at his own daring. "Since then ... well, I have thought about you more than--than is good for my peace of mind."

For a moment amazement kept her silent; then she, too, laughed, and the walls of the dark houses they were pa.s.sing seemed to the young man to re-echo the sound.

"Your peace of mind!"

She repeated the words after him, with such an ironical emphasis that his unreflected courage curled and shrivelled. He wished the ground had swallowed him up before he had said them. For, as they fell from her lips, the audacity he had been guilty of, and the absurdity that was latent in the words themselves, struck him in the face like pellets of hail.

"Your peace of mind! What has your peace of mind to do with me?" she cried, growing extravagantly angry. "I never saw you in my life till to-day; I may never see you again, and it is all the same to me whether I do or not.--Oh, my own peace of mind, as you call it, is quite hard enough to take care of, without having a stranger's thrown at me! What do you mean by making me responsible for it! I have never done anything to you."

All the foolish castles Maurice had built came tumbling about his cars.

He grew pale and did not venture to look at her.

"Make you responsible! Oh, how can you misunderstand me so cruelly!"

His consternation was so palpable that it touched her in spite of herself. Her face had been as naively miserable as a child's, now it softened, and she spoke more kindly.

"Don't mind what I say. To-night I am tired ... have a headache ...

anything you like."

A wave of compa.s.sion drowned his petty feelings of injury, and his sympathy found vent in a few inadequate words.

"Help me?--you?" She laughed, in an unhappy way. "To help, one must understand, and you couldn't understand though you tried. All you others lead such quiet lives; you know nothing of what goes on in a life like mine. Every day I ask myself why I have not thrown myself out of the window, or over one of the bridges into the river, and put an end to it."

Wrapped up though she was in herself, she could not help smiling at his frank gesture of dismay.