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Maurice Guest

by Henry Handel Richardson · English · Gutenberg #3727 · 1,289,523 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Maurice Guest

Author: Henry Handel Richardson


        
Release date: February 1, 2003 [eBook #3727]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3727

Credits: Produced by Col Choat.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAURICE GUEST ***




Produced by Col Choat.  HTML version by Al Haines.









MAURICE GUEST


by

Henry Handel Richardson




Part I


  S'amor non e che dunque e quel ch'io sento?
  Ma s'egli e amor, per Dio, che cosa e quale?

PETRARCH




I.


One noon in 189-, a young man stood in front of the new Gewandhaus in
Leipzig, and watched the neat, grass-laid square, until then white and
silent in the sunshine, grow dark with many figures.

The public rehearsal of the weekly concert was just over, and, from the
half light of the warm-coloured hall, which for more than two hours had
held them secluded, some hundreds of people hastened, with renewed
anticipation, towards sunlight and street sounds. There was a medley of
tongues, for many nationalities were represented in the crowd that
surged through the ground-floor and out of the glass doors, and much
noisy ado, for the majority was made up of young people, at an age that
enjoys the sound of its own voice. In black, diverging lines they
poured through the heavy swinging doors, which flapped ceaselessly to
and fro, never quite closing, always opening afresh, and on descending
the shallow steps, they told off into groups, where all talked at once,
with lively gesticulation. A few faces had the strained look that
indicates the conscientious listener; but most of these young musicians
were under the influence of a stimulant more potent than wine, which
manifested itself in a nervous garrulity and a nervous mirth.

They hummed like bees before a hive. Maurice Guest, who had come out
among the first, lingered to watch a scene that was new to him, of
which he was as yet an onlooker only. Here and there came a member of
the orchestra; with violin-case or black-swathed wind-instrument in
hand, he deftly threaded his way through the throng, bestowing, as he
went, a hasty nod of greeting upon a colleague, a sweep of the hat on
an obsequious pupil. The crowd began to disperse and to overflow in the
surrounding streets. Some of the stragglers loitered to swell the group
that was forming round the back entrance to the building; here the
lank-haired Belgian violinist would appear, the wonders of whose
technique had sent thrills of enthusiasm through his hearers, and whose
close proximity would presently affect them in precisely the same way.
Others again made off, not for the town, with its prosaic suggestion of
work and confinement, but for the freedom of the woods that lay beyond.

Maurice Guest followed them.

It was a blowy day in early spring. Round white masses of cloud moved
lightly across a deep blue sky, and the trees, still thin and naked,
bent their heads and shook their branches, as if to elude the gambols
of a boisterous playfellow. The sun shone vividly, with restored power,
and though the clouds sometimes passed over his very face, the shadows
only lasted for a moment, and each returning radiance seemed brighter
than the one before. In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustily
swept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender beauties
of a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delightful freshness in
the air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights and serene white
snow--the untrodden snow of deserted, moon-lit streets--that quickened
the blood, and sent a craving for movement through the veins. The
people who trod the broad, clean roads and the paths of the wood walked
with a spring in their steps; voices were light and high, and each
breath that was drawn increased the sense of buoyancy, of undiluted
satisfaction. With these bursts of golden sunshine, so other than the
pallid gleamings of the winter, came a fresh impulse to life; and the
most insensible was dimly conscious how much had to be made up for, how
much lived into such a day.

Maurice Guest walked among the mossgreen tree-trunks, each of which
vied with the other in the brilliancy of its coating. He was under the
sway of a twofold intoxication: great music and a day rich in promise.
From the flood of melody that had broken over him, the frenzied storms
of applause, he had come out, not into a lamplit darkness that would
have crushed his elation back upon him and hemmed it in, but into the
spacious lightness of a fair blue day, where all that he felt could
expand, as a flower does in the sun.

His walk brought him to a broad stream, which flashed through the wood
like a line of light. He paused on a suspension bridge, and leaning
over the railing, gazed up the river into the distance, at the horizon
and its trees, delicate and feathery in their nakedness against the
sky. Swollen with recent rains and snows, the water came hurrying
towards him--the storm-bed of the little river, which, meandering in
from the country, through pleasant woods, in ever narrowing curves, ran
through the town as a small stream, to be swelled again on the
outskirts by the waters of two other rivers, which joined it at right
angles. The bridge trembled at first, when other people crossed it, on
their way to the woods that lay on the further side, but soon the last
stragglers vanished, and he was alone.

As he looked about, eager to discover beauty in the strip of landscape
that stretched before him--the line of water, its banks of leafless
trees--he was instinctively filled with a desire for something grander,
for a feature in the scene that would answer to his mood. There, where
the water appeared to end in a clump of trees, there, should be
mountains, a gently undulating line, blue with the unapproachable blue
of distance, and high enough to form a background to the view; in
summer, heavy with haze, melting into the sky; in winter, lined and
edged with snow. From this, his thoughts sprang back to the music he
had heard that morning. All the vague yet eager hopes that had run riot
in his brain, for months past, seemed to have been summed up and made
clear to him, in one supreme phrase of it, a great phrase in C major,
in the concluding movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. First sounded
by the shrill sweet winds, it had suddenly been given out by the
strings, in magnificent unison, and had mounted up and on, to the
jubilant trilling of the little flutes. There was such a courageous
sincerity in this theme, such undauntable resolve; it expressed more
plainly than words what he intended his life of the next few years to
be; for he was full to the brim of ambitious intentions, which he had
never yet had a chance of putting into practice. He felt so ready for
work, so fresh and unworn; the fervour of a deep enthusiasm was rampant
in him. What a single-minded devotion to art, he promised himself his
should be! No other fancy or interest should share his heart with it,
he vowed that to himself this day, when he stood for the first time on
historic ground, where the famous musicians of the past had found
inspiration for their immortal works. And his thoughts spread their
wings and circled above his head; he saw himself already of these
masters' craft, their art his, he wrenching ever new secrets from them,
penetrating the recesses of their genius, becoming one of themselves.
In a vision as vivid as those that cross the brain in a sleepless
night, he saw a dark, compact multitude wait, with breath suspended, to
catch the notes that fell like raindrops from his fingers; saw himself
the all-conspicuous figure, as, with masterful gestures, he compelled
the soul that lay dormant in brass and strings, to give voice to, to
interpret to the many, his subtlest emotions. And he was overcome by a
tremulous compassion with himself at the idea of wielding such power
over an unknown multitude, at the latent nobility of mind and aim this
power implied.

Even when swinging back to the town, he had not shaken himself free of
dreams. The quiet of a foreign midday lay upon the streets, and there
were few discordant sounds, few passers-by, to break the chain of his
thought. He had movement, silence, space. And as is usual with
active-brained dreamers, he had little or no eye for the real life
about him; he was not struck by the air of comfortable prosperity, of
thriving content, which marked the great commercial centre, and he let
pass, unnoticed, the unfamiliar details of a foreign street, the
trifling yet significant incidents of foreign life. Such impressions as
he received, bore the stamp of his own mood. He was sensible, for
instance, in face of the picturesque houses that clustered together in
the centre of the town, of the spiritual GEMUTLICHKEIT, the absence of
any pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the old
buildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one
into the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs
and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with the
trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wandered
leisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off the
Market Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, with
its ground-floor row of busy little shops; and, in fancy, he peopled
these streets with the renowned figures that had once walked them. He
looked up at the dark old houses in which great musicians had lived,
died and been born, and he saw faces that he recognised lean out of the
projecting windows, to watch the life and bustle below, to catch the
last sunbeam that filtered in; he saw them take their daily walk along
these very streets, in the antiquated garments of their time. They
passed him by, shadelike and misanthropic, and seemed to steal down the
opposite side, to avoid his too pertinent gaze. Bluff, preoccupied, his
keen eyes lowered, the burly Cantor passed, as he had once done day
after day, with the disciplined regularity of high genius, of the
honest citizen, to his appointed work in the shadows of the organ-loft;
behind him, one who had pointed to the giant with a new burst of
ardour, the genial little improviser, whose triumphs had been those of
this town, whose fascinating gifts and still more fascinating
personality, had made him the lion of his age. And it was only another
step in this train of half-conscious thought, that, before a large
lettered poster, which stood out black and white against the reds and
yellows of the circular advertisement-column, and bore the word
"Siegfried," Maurice Guest should not merely be filled with the
anticipation of a world of beauty still unexplored, but that the world
should stand to him for a symbol, as it were, of the easeful and
luxurious side of a life dedicated to art--of a world-wide fame; the
society of princes, kings; the gloss of velvet; the dull glow of
gold.--And again, tapering vistas opened up, through which he could
peer into the future, happy in the knowledge, that he stood firm in a
present which made all things possible to a holy zeal, to an
unhesitating grasp.

But it was growing late, and he slowly retraced his steps. In the
restaurant into which he turned for dinner, he was the only customer.
The principal business of the day was at an end; two waiters sat dozing
in corners, and a man behind the counter, who was washing metal-topped
beer-glasses, had almost the whole pile polished bright before him.
Maurice Guest sat down at a table by the window; and, when he had
finished his dinner and lighted a cigarette, he watched the passers-by,
who crossed the pane of glass like the figures in a moving photograph.

Suddenly the door opened with an energetic click, and a lady came in,
enveloped in an old-fashioned, circular cloak, and carrying on one arm
a pile of paper-covered music. This, she laid on the table next that at
which the young man was sitting, then took off her hat. When she had
also hung up the unbecoming cloak, he saw that she was young and
slight. For the rest, she seemed to bring with her, into the warm,
tranquil atmosphere of the place, heavy with midday musings, a breath
of wind and outdoor freshness--a suggestion that was heightened by the
quick decisiveness of her movements: the briskness with which she
divested herself of her wrappings, the quick smooth of the hair on
either side, the business-like way in which she drew up her chair to
the table and unfolded her napkin.

She seemed to be no stranger there, for, on her entrance, the younger
and more active waiter had at once sprung up with officious haste, and
almost before she was ready, the little table was newly spread and set,
and the dinner of the day before her. She spoke to the man in a
friendly way as she took her seat, and he replied with a pleased and
smiling respect.

Then she began to eat, deliberately, and with an overemphasised nicety.
As she carried her soup-spoon to her lips, Maurice Guest felt that she
was observing him; and throughout the meal, of which she ate but
little, he was aware of a peculiarly straight and penetrating gaze. It
ended by disconcerting him. Beckoning the waiter, he went through the
business of paying his bill, and this done, was about to push back his
chair and rise to his feet, when the man, in gathering up the money,
addressed what seemed to be a question to him. Fearful lest he had made
a mistake in the strange coinage, Maurice looked up apprehensively. The
waiter repeated his words, but the slight nervousness that gained on
the young man made him incapable of separating the syllables, which
were indistinguishably blurred. He coloured, stuttered, and felt
mortally uncomfortable, as, for the third time, the waiter repeated his
remark, with the utmost slowness.

At this point, the girl at the adjacent table put down her knife and
fork, and leaned slightly forward.

"Excuse me," she said, and smiled. "The waiter only said he thought you
must be a stranger here: DER HERR IST GEWISS FREMD IN LEIPZIG?" Her
rather prominent teeth were visible as she spoke.

Maurice, who understood instantly her pronunciation of the words, was
not set any more at his ease by her explanation. "Thanks very much." he
said, still redder than usual. "I ... er ... thought the fellow was
saying something about the money."

"And the Saxon dialect is barbarous, isn't it?" she added kindly. "But
perhaps you have not had much experience of it yet."

"No. I only arrived this morning."

At this, she opened her eyes wide. "Why, you are a courageous person!"
she said and laughed, but did not explain what she meant, and he did
not like to ask her.

A cup of coffee was set on the table before her; she held a lump of
sugar in her spoon, and watched it grow brown and dissolve. "Are you
going to make a long stay?" she asked, to help him over his
embarrassment.

"Two years, I hope," said the young man.

"Music?" she queried further, and, as he replied affirmatively: "Then
the Con. of course?"--an enigmatic question that needed to be
explained. "You're piano, are you not?" she went on. "I thought so. It
is hardly possible to mistake the hands"--here she just glanced at her
own, which, large, white, and well formed, were lying on the table.
"With strings, you know, the right hand is as a rule shockingly
defective."

He found the high clearness of her voice very agreeable after the deep
roundnesses of German, and could have gone on listening to it. But she
was brushing the crumbs from her skirt, preparatory to rising.

"Are you an old resident here?" he queried in the hope of detaining her.

"Yes, quite. I'm at the end of my second year; and don't know whether
to be glad or sorry," she answered. "Time goes like a flash.--Now, look
here, as one who knows the ways of the place, would you let me give you
a piece of advice? Yes?--It's this. You intend to enter the
Conservatorium, you say. Well, be sure you get under a good man--that's
half the battle. Try and play privately to either Schwarz or Bendel. If
you go in for the public examination with all the rest, the people in
the BUREAU will put you to anyone they like, and that is disastrous.
Choose your own master, and beard him in his den beforehand."

"Yes ... and you recommend? May I ask whom you are with?" he said
eagerly.

"Schwarz is my master; and I couldn't wish for a better. But Bendel is
good, too, in his way, and is much sought after by the
Americans--you're not American, are you? No.--Well, the English colony
runs the American close nowadays. We're a regular army. If you don't
want to, you need hardly mix with foreigners as long as you're here. We
have our clubs and balls and other social functions--and our
geniuses--and our masters who speak English like natives ... But
there!--you'll soon know all about it yourself."

She nodded pleasantly and rose.

"I must be off," she said. "To-day every minute is precious. That
wretched PROBE spoils the morning, and directly it is over, I have to
rush to an organ-lesson--that's why I'm here. For I can't expect a
PENSION to keep dinner hot for me till nearly three o'clock--can I?
Morning rehearsals are a mistake. What?--you were there, too?
Really?--after a night in the train? Well, you didn't get much, did
you, for your energy? A dull aria, an overture that 'belongs in the
theatre,' as they say here, an indifferently played symphony that one
has heard at least a dozen times. And for us poor pianists, not a fresh
dish this season. Nothing but yesterday's remains heated up again."

She laughed as she spoke, and Maurice Guest laughed, too, not being
able at the moment to think of anything to say.

Getting the better of the waiter, who stood by, napkin on arm, smiling
and officious, he helped her into the unbecoming cloak; then took up
the parcel of music and opened the door. In his manner of doing this,
there may have been a touch of over-readiness, for no sooner was she
outside, than she quietly took the music from him, and, without even
offering him her hand, said a friendly but curt good-bye: almost before
he had time to return it, he saw her hurrying up the street, as though
she had never vouchsafed him word or thought. The abruptness of the
dismissal left him breathless; in his imagination, they had walked at
least a strip of the street together. He stepped off the pavement into
the road, that he might keep her longer in sight, and for some time he
saw her head, in the close-fitting hat, bobbing along above the heads
of other people.

On turning again, he found that the waiter was watching him from the
window of the restaurant, and it seemed to the young man that the pale,
servile face wore a malicious smile. With the feeling of disconcertion
that springs from being caught in an impulsive action we have believed
unobserved, Maurice spun round on his heel and took a few quick steps
in the opposite direction. When once he was out of range of the window,
however, he dropped his pace, and at the next corner stopped
altogether. He would at least have liked to know her name. And what in
all the world was he to do with himself now?

Clouds had gathered; the airy blue and whiteness of the morning had
become a level sheet of grey, which wiped the colour out of everything;
the wind, no longer tempered by the sun, was chilly, as it whirled down
the narrow streets and freaked about the corners. There was little
temptation now to linger on one's steps. But Maurice Guest was loath to
return to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut himself
up with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat collar, he
began to walk slowly along the curved GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE. But the
streets were by this time black with people, most of whom came hurrying
towards him, brisk and bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailing
dullness, at the prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He was
continually obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow a
bunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the wind
beneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy capped, thickset
students, to pass him by, unbroken; and it seemed to him that he was
more frequently off the pavement than on it. He began to feel
disconsolate among these jovial people, who were hastening forward,
with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone far, before he
turned down a side street to be out of their way. Vaguely damped by his
environment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gave
himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinking
over all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of the
dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitous
replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets,
quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he was
going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangely
alike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: the dark old
houses, marshalled in rows on either side, stood as if lost in
contemplation, in the saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps,
which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with the
fading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from side
to side in the wind like a woman's hair--these things made his
surroundings seem still shadowier and less real.

He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what was
apparently the outskirts of the town. With much difficulty he made his
way back, but he was still far from certain of his whereabouts, when an
unexpected turn to the right brought him out on the spacious
AUGUSTUSPLATZ, in front of the New Theatre. He had been in this square
once already, but now its appearance was changed. The big buildings
that flanked it were lit up; the file of droschkes waiting for fares,
under the bare trees, formed a dotted line of lights. A double row of
hanging lamps before the CAFE FRANCAIS made the corner of the
GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE dazzling to the eyes; and now, too, the massive
white theatre was awake as well. Lights shone from all its high
windows, streamed out through the Corinthian columns and low-porched
doorways. Its festive air was inviting, after his twilight wanderings,
and he went across the square to it. Immediately before the theatre,
early corners stood in knots and chatted; programme--and text-vendors
cried and sold their wares; people came hurrying from all directions,
as to a magnet; hastily they ascended the low steps and disappeared
beneath the portico.

He watched until the last late-comer had vanished. Only he was left; he
again was the outsider. And now, as he stood there in the deserted
square, which, a moment before, had been so animated, he had a sudden
sinking of the heart: he was seized by that acute sense of desolation
that lies in wait for one, caught by nightfall, alone in a strange
city. It stirs up a wild longing, not so much for any particular spot
on earth, as for some familiar hand or voice, to take the edge off an
intolerable loneliness.

He turned and walked rapidly back to the small hotel near the railway
station, at which he was staying until he found lodgings. He was tired
out, and for the first time became thoroughly conscious of this; but
the depression that now closed in upon him, was not due to fatigue
alone, and he knew it. In sane moments--such as the present--when
neither excitement nor enthusiasm warped his judgment, he was under no
illusion about himself; and as he strode through the darkness, he
admitted that, all day long, he had been cheating himself in the usual
way. He understood perfectly that it was by no means a matter of merely
stretching out his hand, to pluck what he would, from this tree that
waved before him; he reminded himself with some bitterness that he
stood, an unheralded stranger, before a solidly compact body of things
and people on which he had not yet made any impression. It was the old
story: he played at expecting a ready capitulation of the whole--gods
and men--and, at the same time, was only too well aware of the
laborious process that was his sole means of entry and fellowship.
Again--to instance another of his mental follies--the pains he had been
at to take possession of the town, to make it respond to his forced
interpretation of it! In reality, it had repelled him--yes, he was
chilled to the heart by the aloofness of this foreign town, to which
not a single tie yet bound him.

By the light of a fluttering candle, in the dingy hotel bedroom, he sat
and wrote a letter, briefly announcing his safe arrival. About to close
the envelope, he hesitated, and then, unfolding the sheet of paper
again, added a few lines to what he had written. These cost him more
trouble than all the rest.

ONCE MORE, HEARTY THANKS TO YOU BOTH, MY DEAR PARENTS, FOR LETTING ME
HAVE MY OWN WAY. I HOPE YOU WILL NEVER HAVE REASON TO REGRET IT. ONE
THING, AT LEAST, I CAN PROMISE YOU, AND THAT IS, THAT NOT A DAY OF MY
TIME HERE SHALL BE WASTED OR MISSPENT. YOU HAVE NOT, I KNOW, THE SAME
FAITH IN ME THAT I HAVE MYSELF, AND THIS HAS OFTEN BEEN A BITTER
THOUGHT TO ME. BUT ONLY HAVE PATIENCE. SOMETHING STRONGER THAN MYSELF
DROVE ME TO IT, AND IF I AM TO SUCCEED ANYWHERE, IT WILL BE HERE. AND I
MEAN TO SUCCEED, IF HUMAN WILL CAN DO IT.

He threw himself on the creaking wooden bed and tried to sleep. But his
brain was active, and the street was noisy; people talked late in the
adjoining room, and trod heavily in the one above. It was long after
midnight before the house was still and he fell into an uneasy sleep.

Towards morning, he had a strange dream, from which he wakened in a
cold sweat. Once more he was wandering through the streets, as he had
done the previous day, apparently in search of something he could not
find. But he did not know himself what he sought. All of a sudden, on
turning a corner, he came upon a crowd of people gathered round some
object in the road, and at once said to himself, this is it, here it
is. He could not, however, see what it actually was, for the people,
who were muttering to themselves in angry tones, strove to keep him
back. At all costs, he felt, he must get nearer to the mysterious
thing, and, in a spirit of bravado, he was pushing through the crowd to
reach it, when a great clamour arose; every one sprang back, and fled
wildly, shrieking: "Moloch, Moloch!" He did not know in the least what
it meant, but the very strangeness of the word added to the horror, and
he, too, fled with the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets and
down, watched, it seemed to him, from every window by a cold, malignant
eye, but never daring to turn his head, lest he should see the awful
thing behind him; fled on and on, through streets that grew ever vaguer
and more shadowy, till at last his feet would carry him no further: he
sank down, with a loud cry, sank down, down, down, and wakened to find
that he was sitting up in bed, clammy with fear, and that dawn was
stealing in at the sides of the window.




II.


In Maurice Guest, it might be said that the smouldering unrest of two
generations burst into flame. As a young man, his father, then a poor
teacher in a small provincial town, had been a prey to certain dreams
and wishes, which harmonised ill with the conditions of his life. When,
for example, on a mild night, he watched the moon scudding a silvery,
cloud-flaked sky; when white clouds sailed swiftly, and soft spring
breezes were hastening past; when, in a word, all things seemed to be
making for some place, unknown, afar-off, where he was not, then he,
too, was seized with a desire to be moving, to strap on a knapsack and
be gone, to wander through foreign countries, to see strange cities and
hear strange tongues, was unconsciously filled with the desire to
taste, lighthearted, irresponsible, the joys and experiences of the
WANDERJAHRE, before settling down to face the matter-of-factnesss of
life. And as the present continually pushed the realisation of his
dreams into the future, he satisfied the immediate thirst of his soul
by playing the flute, and by breathing into the thin, reedy tones he
drew from it, all that he dreamed of, but would never know. For he
presently came to a place in his life where two paths diverged, and he
was forced to make a choice between them. It was characteristic of the
man that he chose the way of least resistance, and having married, more
or less improvidently, he turned his back on the visions that had
haunted his youth: afterwards, the cares, great and small, that came in
the train of the years, drove them ever further into the background.
Want of sympathy in his home-life blunted the finer edges of his
nature; of a gentle and yielding disposition, he took on the
commonplace colour of his surroundings. After years of unhesitating
toil, it is true, the most pressing material needs died down, but the
dreams and ambitions had died, too, never to come again. And as it is
in the nature of things that no one is less lenient towards romantic
longings than he who has suffered disappointment in them, who has
failed to transmute them into reality, so, in this case, the son's
first tentative leanings to a wider life, met with a more
deeply-rooted, though less decisive, opposition, on the part of the
father than of the mother.

But Maurice Guest had a more tenacious hold on life.

The home in which he grew up, was one of those cheerless, middle-class
homes, across which never passes a breath of the great gladness, the
ideal beauty of life; where thought never swings itself above the
material interests of the day gone, the day to come, and existence
grows as timid and trivial as the petty griefs and pleasures that
intersperse it. The days drip past, one by one, like water from a spout
after a rain-shower; and the dull monotony of them benumbs all
wholesome temerity at its core. Maurice Guest had known days of this
kind. For before the irksomeness of the school-bench was well behind
him, he had begun his training as a teacher, and as soon as he had
learnt how to instil his own half-digested knowledge into the minds of
others, he received a small post in the school at which his father
taught. The latter had, for some time, secretly cherished a wish to
send the boy to study at the neighbouring university, to make a scholar
of his eldest son; but the longer he waited, the more unfavourable did
circumstances seem, and the idea finally died before it was born.

Maurice Guest looked back on the four years he had just come through,
with bitterness; and it was only later, when he was engrossed heart and
soul in congenial work, that he began to recognise, and be vaguely
grateful for, the spirit of order with which they had familiarised him.
At first, he could not recall them without an aversion that was almost
physical: this machine-like regularity, which, in its disregard of mood
and feeling, had something of a divine callousness to human stirrings;
the jarring contact with automaton-like people; his inadequacy and
distaste for a task that grew day by day more painful. His own
knowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, too slight for
self-confidence, just too much and too fresh to allow him to generalise
with the unthinking assurance that was demanded of him. Yet had anyone,
he asked himself, more obstacles to overcome than he, in his efforts to
set himself free? This silent, undemonstrative father, who surrounded
himself with an unscalable wall of indifference; this hard-faced,
careworn mother, about whose mouth the years had traced deep lines, and
for whom, in the course of a single-handed battle with life, the true
reality had come to be success or failure in the struggle for bread.
What was art to them but an empty name, a pastime for the drones and
idlers of existence? How could he set up his ambitions before them, to
be bowled over like so many ninepins? When, at length, after much
heartburning and conscientious scrupling, he was mastered by a
healthier spirit of self-assertion, which made him rebel against the
uselessness of the conflict, and doggedly resolve to put an end to it,
he was only enabled to stand firm by summoning to his aid all the
strengthening egoism, which is latent in every more or less artistic
nature. To the mother, in her honest narrowness, the son's choice of a
calling which she held to be unfitting, was something of a tragedy. She
allowed no item of her duty to escape her, and moved about the house as
usual, sternly observant of her daily task, but her lips were
compressed to a thin line, and her face reflected the anger that burnt
in her heart, too deep for speech. In the months that followed, Maurice
learnt that the censure hardest to meet is that which is never put into
words, which refuses to argue or discuss: he chafed inwardly against
the unspoken opposition that will not come out to be grappled with, and
overthrown. And, as he was only too keenly aware, there was more to be
faced than a mere determined aversion to the independence with which he
had struck out: there was, in the first place, a pardonably human sense
of aggrievedness that the eldest-born should cross their plans and
wishes; that, after the year-long care and thought they had bestowed on
him, he should demand fresh efforts from them; and, again, most
harassing of all and most invulnerable, such an entire want of faith in
the powers he was yearning to test--the prophet's lot in the mean
blindness of the family--that, at times, it threatened to shake his
hard-won faith in himself.--But before the winter drew to a close he
was away.

Away!--to go out into the world and be a musician--that was his longing
and his dream. And he never came to quite an honest understanding with
himself on this point, for desire and dream were interwoven in his
mind; he could not separate the one from the other. But when he weighed
them, and allowed them to rise up and take shape before him, it was
invariably in this order that they did so. In reality, although he
himself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some extent as
means to an end, that, when his eyes had been opened to its presence,
he clutched--like a drowning man who seizes upon a spar--clutched and
held fast to his talent. But the necessary insight into his powers had
first to be gained, for it was not one of those talents which, from the
beginning, strut their little world with the assurance of the peacock.
He was, it is true, gifted with an instinctive feeling for the value
and significance of tones--as a child he sang by ear in a small, sweet
voice, which gained him the only notice he received at school, and he
easily picked out his notes, and taught himself little pieces, on the
old-fashioned, silk-faced piano, which had belonged to his mother as a
girl, and at which, in the early days of her marriage, she had sung in
a high, shrill voice, the sentimental songs of her youth. But here, for
want of incentive, matters remained; Maurice was kept close at his
school-books, and, boylike, he had no ambition to distinguish himself
in a field so different from that in which his comrades won their
spurs. It was only when, with the end of his schooldays in sight, he
was putting away childish things, that he seriously turned his
attention to the piano and his hands. They were those of the pianist,
broad, strong and supple, and the new occupation soon engrossed him
deeply; he gave up all his spare time to it, and, in a few months,
attained so creditable a proficiency, that he went through a course of
instruction with a local teacher of music, who, scenting talent,
dismissed preliminaries with the assurance of his kind, and initiated
his pupil into all that is false and meretricious in the literature of
the piano--the cheaply pathetic, the tinsel of transcription, the
titillating melancholy of Slavonic dance-music--to leave him, but for
an increased agility of finger, not a whit further forward than he had
found him. Then followed months when the phantom of discontent stalked
large through Maurice's life, grew, indeed, day by day more tangible,
more easily defined; for there came the long, restless summer evenings,
when it seemed as if a tranquil darkness would never fall and bar off
the distant, the unattainable; and as he followed some flat, white
country road, that was lost to sight on the horizon as a tapering line,
or looked out across a stretch of low, luxuriant meadows, the very
placidity of which made heart and blood throb quicker, in a sense of
opposition: then the desire to have finished with the life he knew,
grew almost intolerable, and only a spark was needed to set his resolve
ablaze.

It was one evening when the summer had already dragged itself to a
close, that Maurice walked through a drizzling rain to the neighbouring
cathedral town, to attend a performance of ELIJAH. It was the first
important musical experience of his life, and, carried away by the
volumes of sound, he repressed his agitation so ill, that it became
apparent to his neighbour, a small, wizened, old man, who was leaning
forward, his hands hanging between his knees and his eyes fixed on the
floor, alternately shaking and nodding his head. In the interval
between the parts, they exchanged a few words, halting, excited on
Maurice's part, interrogative on his companion's; when the performance
was over, they walked a part of the way together, and found so much to
say, that often, after this, when his week's work was behind him,
Maurice would cover the intervening miles for the pleasure of a few
hours' conversation with this new friend. In a small, dark room, the
air of which was saturated with tobacco-smoke, he learned, by degrees,
the story of the old musician's life: how, some thirty years
previously, he had drifted into the midst of this provincial
population, where he found it easy to earn enough for his needs, and
where his position was below that of a dancing-master; but how, long
ago, in his youth--that youth of which he spoke with a far-away tone in
his voice, and at which he seemed to be looking out as at a fading
shore--it had been his intention to perfect himself as a pianist. Life
had been against him; when, the resolve was strongest, poverty and
ill-heath kept him down, and since then, with the years that passed, he
had come to see that his place would only have been among the multitude
of little talents, whose destiny it is to imitate and vulgarise the
strivings of genius, to swell the over-huge mass of mediocrity. And so,
he had chosen that his life should be a failure--a failure, that is, in
the eyes of the world; for himself, he judged otherwise. The truth that
could be extracted from words was such a fluctuating, relative truth.
Failure! success!--what WAS success, but a clinging fast, unabashed by
smile or neglect, to that better part in art, in one's self, that
cannot be taken away?--never for a thought's space being untrue to the
ideal each one of us bears in his breast; never yielding jot or tittle
to the world's opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudly
conscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard the
lives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was at one
with himself, his life alone was a harmonious whole.

To Maurice Guest, all this mattered little or not at all; it was merely
the unavoidable introduction. The chief thing was that the old man had
known the world which Maurice so desired to know; he had seen life, had
lived much of his youth in foreign lands, and had the conversation been
skilfully set agoing in this direction, he would lay a wrinkled hand on
his listener's shoulder, and tell him of this shadowy past, with short
hoarse chuckles of pleasure and reminiscence, which invariably ended in
a cough. He painted it in vivid colours, and with the unconscious
heightening of effect that comes natural to one who looks back upon a
happy past, from which the countless pricks and stings that make up
reality have faded, leaving in their place a sense of dreamy, unreal
brightness, like that of sunset upon distant hills. He told him of
Germany, and the gay, careless years he had spent there, working at his
art, years of inspiriting, untrammelled progress; told him of famous
musicians he had seen and known, of great theatre performances at which
he had assisted, of stirring PREMIERES, long since forgotten, of
burning youthful enthusiasms, of nights sleepless with holy excitement,
and days of fruitful, meditative idleness. Under the spell of these
reminiscences, he seemed to come into touch again with life, and his
eyes lit with a spark of the old fire. At moments, he forgot his
companion altogether, and gazed long and silently before him, nodding
and smiling to himself at the memories he had stirred up in his brain,
memories of things that had long ceased to be, of people who had long
been quiet and unassertive beneath their handful of earth, but for whom
alone, the brave, fair world had once seemed to exist. Then he would
lose himself among strange names, in vague histories of those who had
borne these names, and of what they had become in their subsequent
journeyings towards the light, for which they had set out, side by
side, with so much ardour (and oftenest what he had to tell was a
modest mediocrity); but the greater number of them had lost sight one
of the other; the most inseparable friends had, once parted, soon
forgotten. And the bluish smoke sent upwards as he talked, in clouds
and spirals that mounted rapidly and vanished, seemed to Maurice
symbolic of the brief and shadowy lives that were unrolled before him.
But, after all this, when the lights came, the piano was opened, and
then, for an hour or two, the world was forgotten in a different way.
It was here that the chief landmarks of music emerged from the mists in
which, for Maurice, they had hitherto been enveloped; here he learned
that Bach and Beethoven were giants, and made uncertain efforts at
appreciation; learnt that Gluck was a great composer, Mozart a genius
of many parts, Mendelssohn the direct successor in this line of kings.
Sonatas, symphonies, operas, were hammered out with tremendous force
and precision on the harsh, scrupulously tuned piano; and all were
dominated alike by the hoarse voice of the old man, who never wavered,
never faltered, but sang from beginning to end with all his might. Each
one of the pleasant hours spent in this new world helped to deepen
Maurice's resolution to free himself while there was yet time; each one
gave more clearness and precision to his somewhat formless desires;
for, in all that concerned his art, the nameless old musician hated his
native land, with the hatred of the bigot for those who are hostile or
indifferent to his faith.

With a long and hot-chased goal in sight, a goal towards which our
hearts, in joyous eagerness, have already leapt out, it is astonishing
how easy it becomes to make light of the last, monotonous stretch of
road that remains to be travelled. Is there not, just beyond, a
resting-place?--and cool, green shadows? Events and circumstances which
had hitherto loomed forth gigantic, threatening to crush, now appeared
to Maurice trivial and of little moment; he saw them in other
proportions now, for it seemed to him that he was no longer in their
midst: he stood above them and overlooked them, and, with his eyes
fixed upon a starry future, he joyfully prepared himself for his new
life. What is more, those around him helped him to this altered view of
things. For as the present marched steadily upon the future, devouring
as it went; as the departure this future contained took on the shape of
a fact, the countless details of which called for attention, it began
to be accepted as even the most unpalatable facts in the long run
usually are, with an ungracious resignation in face of the inevitable.
Thus, with all his ardour to be gone, Maurice Guest came to see the
last stage of his home-life almost in a bright light, and even with a
touch of melancholy, as something that was fast slipping from him,
never to be there in all its entirety, exactly as it now was, again:
the last calm hour of respite before he plunged into the triumphs, but
also into the tossings and agitations of the future.




III.


It was April, and a day such as April will sometimes bring: one of
those days when the air is full of a new, mysterious fragrance, when
the sunshine lies like a flood upon the earth, and high clouds hang
motionless in the far-distant blue--a day at the very heels of which it
would seem that summer was lurking. Maurice Guest stood at his window,
both sides of which were flung open, drinking in the warm air, and
gazing absently up at the stretch of sky, against which the dark
roof-lines of the houses opposite stood out abruptly. His hands were in
his pockets, and, to a light beat of the foot, he hummed softly to
himself, but what, he could not have told: whether some fragment of
melody that had lingered in a niche of his brain and now came to his
lips, or whether a mere audible expression of his mood. The strong,
unreal sun of the afternoon was just beginning to reach the house; it
slanted in, golden, by the side of the window, and threw on the wall
above the piano, a single long bar of light.

He leaned over and looked down into the street far below--still no one
there! But it was only half-past four. He stretched himself long and
luxuriously, as if, by doing so, he would get rid of a restlessness
which arose from repressed physical energy, and also from an impatience
to be more keenly conscious of life, to feel it, as it were, quicken in
him, not unakin to that passionate impulse towards perfection, which,
out-of-doors, was urging on the sap and loosening firm green buds: he
had a day's imprisonment behind him, and all spring's magic was at work
to ferment his blood. How small and close the room was! He leaned out
on the sill, as far out as he could, in the sun. It was shining full
down the street now, gilding the canal-like river at the foot, and
throwing over the tall, dingy houses on the opposite side, a tawdry
brightness, which, unlike that of the morning with its suggestion of
dewy shade, only served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plaster
and paintless window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, where
high-arched doorways and wide entries spoke to better days, and also to
a subsequent decay, now openly admitted in the little placards which
dotted them here and there, bearing the bold-typed words GARCON LOGIS,
and dangling bravely yellow from the windows of the cheap lodgings they
proclaimed vacant. It was very still; the hoarse voice of a
fruit-seller crying his wares in the adjoining streets, was to be heard
at intervals, but each time less distinctly, and from the distance came
the faint tones of a single piano. How different it was in the morning!
Then, if, pausing a moment from his work, he opened the window and
leaned out for a brief refreshment, what a delightful confusion of
sounds met his ear! Pianos rolled noisily up and down, ploughing one
through the other, beating one against the other, key to key, rhythm to
rhythm, each in a clamorous despair at being unable to raise its voice
above the rest, at having to form part of this jumble of discord: some
so near at hand or so directly opposite that, none the less, it was
occasionally possible to follow them through the persistent
reiterations of a fugue, or through some brilliant glancing ETUDE, the
notes of which flew off like sparks; others, further away, of which
were audible only the convulsive treble outbursts and the toneless
rumblings of the bass, now and then cut shrilly through by the piercing
sharpness of a violin, now and then, at quieter moments, borne up and
accompanied by the deep, guttural tones of a neighbouring violoncello.
This was always discovered at work upon scales, uncertain, hesitating
scales on the lower strings, and, heard suddenly, after the other
instruments' genial hubbub, it sounded like some inarticulate animal
making uncouth attempts at expression. At rare intervals there came a
lull, and then, before all burst forth again together, or fell in, one
by one, a single piano or the violin would, like a solo voice in a
symphony, bear the whole burden; or if the wind were in the west, it
would sometimes carry over with it, from the woods on the left, the
mournful notes of a French horn, which some unskilful player had gone
out to practise.

This was that new world of which he was now a part--into which he had
been so auspiciously received.

Yes, the beginning and the thousand petty disquiets that go with
beginnings, were behind him; he had made a start, and he believed a
good one--thanks to Dove. He was really grateful to Dove. A chance
acquaintance, formed on one of those early days when he loitered, timid
and unsure, about the BUREAU of the Conservatorium, Dove had taken him
up with what struck even the grateful new-comer as extraordinary
good-nature, going deliberately out of his way to be of service to him,
meeting him at every turn with assistance and advice. It was Dove who
had helped him over the embarrassments of the examination; it was
through Dove's influence that he had obtained a private interview with
Schwarz, and, in Dove's opinion, Schwarz was the only master in Leipzig
under whom it was worth while to study; the only one who could be
relied on to give the exhaustive TECHNIQUE that was indispensable,
without, in the process, destroying what was of infinitely more
account, the individuality, the TEMPERAMENT of the student. This and
more, Dove set forth at some length in their conversations; then,
warming to his work, he would go further: would go on to speak of
phrasings and interpretations; of an artistic use of the pedals, and
the legitimate participation of the emotions; of the confines of
absolute music as touched in the Ninth Symphony: would refer
incidentally to Schopenhauer and make Wagner his authority, using terms
that were new to his hearer, and, now and then, by way of emphasis,
bringing his palm down flat and noiselessly upon the table.--It had not
taken them long to become friends; fellow-countrymen, of the same age,
with similar aims and interests, they had soon slipped into one of the
easy-going friendships of youth.

A quarter to five! As the strokes from the neighbouring church--clock
died away, the melody of Siegfried's horn was whistled up from the
street, and looking over, Maurice saw his friend. He seized his music
and went hastily down the four flights of stairs.

They crossed the river and came to newer streets. It was delightful
out-of-doors. A light breeze met them as they turned, and a few ragged,
fleecy clouds that it was driving up, only made the sky seem bluer, The
two young men walked leisurely, laughing and talking rather loudly.
Maurice Guest had already, in dress and bearing, taken on a touch of
musicianly disorder, but Dove's lengthier residence had left no trace
upon him; he might have stepped that day from the streets of the
provincial English town to which he belonged. His well brushed clothes
sat with an easy inelegance, his tie was small, his linen clean, and
the only concession he made to his surroundings, the broad-brimmed,
soft felt hat, looked oddly out of place on his close-cut hair. He
carried himself erectly, swinging a little on his hips.

As they went, he passed in review the important items of the day:
so-and-so had strained a muscle, so-and-so had spoilt a second piano.
But his particular interest centred upon that evening's
ABENDUNTERHALTUNG. A man named Schilsky, whom it was no exaggeration to
call their finest, very finest violinist was to play Vieuxtemps'
Concerto in D. Dove all but smacked his lips as he spoke of it. In
reply to a query from Maurice, he declared with vehemence that this
Schilsky was a genius. Although so great a violinist, he could play
almost every other instrument with case; his memory had become a
by-word; his compositions were already famous. At the present moment,
he was said to be at work upon a symphonic poem, having for its base a
new and extraordinary book, half poetry, half philosophy, a book which
he, Dove, could confidently assert, would effect a revolution in human
thought, but of which, just at the minute, he was unable to remember
the name. Infected by his friend's enthusiasm, Maurice here recalled
having, only the day before, met some one who answered to Dove's
description: the genial Pole had been storming up the steps of the
Conservatorium, two at a time, with wild, affrighted eyes, and a halo
of dishevelled auburn hair.--Dove made no doubt that he had been seized
with a sudden inspiration.

Gewandhaus and Conservatorium lay close together, in a new quarter of
the town. The Conservatorium, a handsome, stone-faced building, three
lofty storeys high, was just now all the more imposing in appearance as
it stood alone in an unfinished street-block, and as, opposite,
hoardings still shut in all that had yet been raised of the great
library, which would eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness of
its long front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail to
impress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone daily out
and in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving efforts, imperative
on his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, to many, was as it were
personified by the concert-house in the adjoining square: it was
hither, towards this clear-limned goal, that bore him, like a magic
carpet, the young enthusiast's most ambitious dream.--But in the life
that swarmed about the Conservatorium, there was nothing of a tedious
austerity. It was one of the briskest times of day, and the short
street and the steps of the building were alive with young people of
both sexes. Young men sauntered to and from the cafe at the corner, or
stood gesticulating in animated groups. All alike were conspicuous for
a rather wilful slovenliness, for smooth faces and bushy hair, while
the numerous girls, with whom they paused to laugh and trifle, were,
for the most part, showy in dress and loudly vivacious in manner. On
the kerbstone, a knot of the latter, tittering among themselves, shot
furtive glances at Dove and Maurice as they passed. Here, a pretty,
laughing face was the centre of a little circle; there, a bevy of girls
clustered about a young man, who, his hands in his pockets, leaned
carelessly against the door-arch; and again, another, plump and much
befeathered, with a string of large pearlbeads round her fat, white
neck, had isolated herself from the rest, to take up, on the steps, a
more favourable stand. A master who went by, a small, jovial man in a
big hat, had a word for all the girls, even a chuck of the chin for one
unusually saucy face. Inside, classes were filing out of the various
rooms, other classes were going in; there was a noisy flocking up and
down the broad, central staircase, a crowding about the notice-board, a
going and coming in the long, stone corridors. The concert-hall was
being lighted.

Maurice slowly made his way through the midst of all these people,
while Dove loitered, or stepped out of hearing, with one friend after
another. In a side corridor, off which, cell like, opened a line of
rooms, they pushed a pair of doubledoors, and went in to take their
lesson.

The room they entered was light and high, and contained, besides a
couple of grand pianos, a small table and a row of wooden chairs.
Schwarz stood with his back to the window, biting his nails. He was a
short, thickset man, with keen eyes, and a hard, prominent mouth, which
was rather emphasised than concealed, by the fair, scanty tuft of hair
that hung from his chin. Upon the two new-comers, he bent a cold,
deliberate gaze, which, for some instants, he allowed to rest
chillingly on them, then as deliberately withdrew, having--so at least
it seemed to those who were its object--having, without the tremor of
an eyelid, scanned them like an open page: it was the look,
impenetrable, all-seeing, of the physician for his patient. At the
piano, a young man was playing the Waldstein Sonata. So intent was he
on what he was doing, that his head all but touched the music standing
open before him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorously
from side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood out
beads of perspiration. He had no cuffs on, and his sleeves were a
little turned back. The movement at an end, he paused, and drawing a
soiled handkerchief from his pocket, passed it rapidly over neck and
brow. In the ADAGIO which followed, he displayed an extreme delicacy of
touch--not, however, but what this also cost him some exertion, for,
previous to the striking of each faint, soft note, his hand described a
curve in the air, the finger he was about to use, lowered, the others
slightly raised, and there was always a second of something like
suspense, before it finally sank upon the expectant note. But suddenly,
without warning, just as the last, lingering tones were dying to the
close they sought, the ADAGIO slipped over into the limpid gaiety of
the RONDO, and then, there was no time more for premeditation: then his
hands twinkled up and down, joining, crossing, flying asunder, alert
with little sprightly quirks and turns, going ever more nimbly, until
the brook was a river, the allegretto a prestissimo, which flew wildly
to its end amid a shower of dazzling trills.

Schwarz stood grave and apparently impassive; from time to time,
however, when unobserved, he swept the three listeners with a rapid
glance. Maurice Guest was quite carried away; he had never heard
playing like this, and he leaned forward in his seat, and gazed full at
the player, in open admiration. But his neighbour, a pale, thin man,
with one of those engaging and not uncommon faces which, in mould of
feature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut of hair
and beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conventional
Christ-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a languid interest,
which seemed unable to get the upper hand of melancholy thoughts.
Maurice, who believed his feelings shared by all about him, was chilled
by such indifference: he only learned later, after they had become
friends, that nothing roused in Boehmer a real or lasting interest,
save what he, Boehmer, did himself. Dove sat absorbed, as reverent as
if at prayer; but there were also moments when, with his head a little
on one side, he wore an anxious air, as if not fully at one with the
player's rendering; others again, after a passage of peculiar
brilliancy, when he threw at Schwarz a humbly grateful look. While
Schwarz, the sonata over, was busy with his pencil on the margin of the
music, Dove leaned over to Maurice and whispered behind his hand:
"Furst--our best pianist."

Now came the turn of the others, and the master's attention wandered;
he stretched himself, yawned, and sighed aloud, then, in the search for
something he could not find, turned out on the lid of the second piano
the contents of sundry pockets. While Dove played, he wrote as if for
life in a bulky notebook.

Maurice remarked this without being properly conscious of it, so
impressed had he been by the sonata. The exultant beauty of the great
final theme had permeated his every fibre, inciting him, emboldening
him, and, still under the sway of this little elation when his own turn
to play came, he was the richer by it, and acquitted himself with
unusual verve.

As the class was about to leave the room, Schwarz signed to Maurice to
remain behind. For several moments, he paced the floor in silence; then
he stopped suddenly short in front of the young man, and, with legs
apart, one hand at his back, he said in a tone which wavered between
being brutal and confidential, emphasising his words with a series of
smart pencil-raps on his hearer's shoulder:

"Let me tell you something: if I were not of the opinion that you had
ability, I should not detain you this evening. It is no habit of mine,
mark this, to interfere with my pupils. Outside this room, most of them
do not exist for me. In your case, I am making an exception, because
..."--Maurice was here so obviously gratified that the speaker made
haste to substitute: "because I should much like to know how it is that
you come to me in the state you do." And without waiting for a reply:
"For you know nothing, or, let us say, worse than nothing, since what
you do know, you must make it your first concern to forget." He paused,
and the young man's face fell so much that he prolonged the pause, to
enjoy the discomfiture he had produced. "But give me time," he
continued, "adequate time, and I will undertake to make something of
you." He lowered his voice, and the taps became more confidential.
"There is good stuff here; you have talent, great talent, and, as I
have observed to-day, you are not wanting in intelligence. But," and
again his voice grew harsher, his eye more piercing, "understand me, if
you please, no trifling with other studies; let us have no fiddling, no
composing. Who works with me, works for me alone. And a lifetime, I
repeat it, a lifetime, is not long enough to master such an instrument
as this!"

He brought his hand down heavily on the lid of the piano, and glared at
Maurice as if he expected the latter to contradict him. Then, noisily
clearing his throat, he began anew to pace the room.

As Maurice stood waiting for his dismissal, with very varied feelings,
of which, however, a faint pride was uppermost; as he stood waiting,
the door opened, and a girl looked in. She hesitated a moment, then
entered, and going up to Schwarz, asked him something in a low voice.
He nodded an assent, nodded two or three times, and with quite another
face; its hitherto unmoved severity had given way to an indulgent
friendliness. She laid her hat and jacket on the table, and went to the
piano.

Schwarz motioned Maurice to a chair. He sat down almost opposite her.

And now came for him one of those moments in life, which, unlooked-for,
undivined, send before them no promise of being different, in any way,
from the commonplace moments that make up the balance of our days. No
gently graduated steps lead up to them: they are upon us with the
violent abruptness of a streak of lightning, and like this, they, too,
may leave behind them a scarry trace. What such a moment holds within
it, is something which has never existed for us before, something it
has never entered our minds to go out and seek--the corner of earth,
happened on by chance, which comes most near the Wineland of our
dreams; the page, idly perhaps begun, which brings us a new god; the
face of the woman who is to be our fate--but, whatever it may be, let
it once exist for us, and the soul responds forthwith, catching in
blind haste at the dimly missed ideal.

For one instant Maurice Guest had looked at the girl before him with
unconcern, but the next it was with an intentness that soon became
intensity, and feverishly grew, until he could not tear his eyes away.
The beauty, whose spell thus bound him, was of that subtle kind which
leaves many a one cold, but, as if just for this reason, is almost
always fateful for those who feel its charm: at them is lanced its
accumulated force. The face was far from faultless; there was no
regularity of feature, no perfection of line, nor was there more than a
touch of the sweet girlish freshness that gladdens like a morning in
May. The features, save for a peremptory turn of mouth and chin, were
unremarkable, and the expression was distant, unchanging ... but what
was that to him? This deep white skin, the purity of which was only
broken by the pale red of the lips; this dull black hair, which lay
back from the low brow in such wonderful curves, and seemed, of itself,
to fall into the loose knot on the neck--there was something romantic,
exotic about her, which was unlike anything he had ever seen: she made
him think of a rare, hothouse flower; some scentless, tropical flower,
with stiff, waxen petals. And then her eyes! So profound was their
darkness that, when they threw off their covering of heavy lid, it
seemed to his excited fancy as if they must scorch what they rested on;
they looked out from the depths of their setting like those of a wild
beast crouched within a cavern; they lit up about them like stars, and
when they fell, they went out like stars, and her face took on the
pallor of early dawn.

She was playing from memory. She gazed straight before her with
far-away eyes, which only sometimes looked down at her hands, to aid
them in a difficult passage. At her belt, she wore a costly yellow
rose, and as she once leaned towards the treble, where both hands were
at work close together, it fell to the floor. Maurice started forward,
and picking it up, laid it on the piano; beneath the gaslight, it sank
a shadowy gold image in the mirror-like surface. As yet she had paid no
heed to him, but, at this, she turned her head, and, still continuing
to play, let her eyes rest absently on him.

They sank their eyes in each other's. A thrill ran through Maurice, a
quick, sharp thrill, which no sensation of his later life outdid in
keenness and which, on looking back, he could always feel afresh. The
colour rose to his face and his heart beat audibly, but he did not
lower his eyes, and for not doing so, seemed to himself infinitely
bold. A host of confused feelings bore down upon him, well-nigh
blotting out the light; but, in a twinkling, all were swallowed up in
an overpowering sense of gratitude, in a large, vague, happy
thankfulness, which touched him almost to the point of tears. As it
swelled through him and possessed him, he yearned to pour it forth, to
make an offering of this gratefulness--fine tangle of her beauty and
his own glad mood--and, by sustaining her look, he seemed to lay the
offering at her feet. Nor would any tongue have persuaded him that she
did not understand. The few seconds were eternities: when she turned
away it was as if untold hours had passed over him in a body, like a
flight of birds; as if a sudden gulf had gaped between where he now was
and where he had previously stood.

Dismissed curtly, with a word, he hung about the corridor in the hope
of seeing her again; but the piano went on and on, unceasingly. Here,
after some time, he was found by Dove, who carried him off with loud
expressions of surprise.

The concert was more than half over. The main part of the hall was
brightly lit and full of people: from behind, one looked across a sea
of heads. On the platform at the other end, a girl in red was playing a
sonata; a master sat by her side, and leant forward, at regular
intervals, to turn the leaves of the music. Dove and Maurice remained
standing at the back, under the gallery, among a portion of the
audience which shifted continuously: those about them wandered in and
out of the hall at pleasure, now inside, head in hand, critically
intent, now out in the vestibule, stretching their legs, lounging in
easy chat. In the pause that followed the sonata, Dove went towards the
front, to join some ladies who beckoned him, and, while some one sang a
noisy aria, Maurice gave himself up to his own thoughts. They all led
to the same point: how he should contrive to see her again, how he
should learn her name, and, beside them, everything else seemed remote,
unreal; he saw the people next him as if from a distance. But in a wait
that was longer than usual, he was awakened to his surroundings: a stir
ran over the audience, like a gust of wind over still water; the heads
in the seats before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded;
there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened and
shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward
expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of
applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come
down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body as
he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over his
face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited for the signal to
begin.

Maurice drew a deep breath of anticipation. But the first shrill, sweet
notes had hardly cut the silence, when, the door opening once more,
some one entered and pushed through the standing crowd. He looked
round, uneasy at the disturbance, and found that it was she: what is
more, she came up to his very side. He turned away so hastily that he
touched her arm, causing it to yield a little, and some moments went by
before he ventured to look again. When he did, in some tremor, he saw
that, without fear of discovery, he might look as long or as often as
he chose. She was listening to the player with the raptness of a
painted saint: her whole face listened, the tightened lips, the open
nostrils, the wide, vigilant eyes. Maurice, lost in her presence, grew
dizzy with the scent of her hair--that indefinable odour, which has
something of the raciness in it of new-turned earth--and foolish wishes
arose and jostled one another in his mind: he would have liked to
plunge both hands into the dark, luxuriant mass; still better,
cautiously to draw his palm down this whitest skin, which, seen so
near, had a faint, satin-like sheen. The mere imagining of it set him
throbbing, and the excitement in his blood was heightened by the
sensuous melancholy of the violin, which, just beyond the pale of his
consciousness, throbbed and languished with him under the masterful bow.

Shortly before the end of the concerto, she turned and made her way
out. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then followed. But the long
white corridors stretched empty before him; there was no trace of her
to be seen. As he was peering about, in places that were strange to
him, a tumult of applause shook the hall, the doors flew open and the
audience poured out.

Dove had joined other friends, and a number of them left the building
together; everyone spoke loudly and at once. But soon Maurice and Dove
outstepped their companions, for these came to words over the means
used by Schilsky to mount, with bravour, a certain gaudy scale of
octaves, and, at every second pace, they stopped, and wheeled round
with eloquent gesture. In their presence Dove had said little; now he
gave rein to his feelings: his honest face glowed with enthusiasm, the
names of renowned players ran off his lips like beads off a string,
and, in predicting Schilsky a career still more brilliant, his voice
grew husky with emotion.

Maurice listened unmoved to his friend's outpouring, and the first time
Dove stopped for breath, went straight for the matter which, in his
eyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager was he to learn something of
her, that he even made shift to describe her; his attempt fell out
lamely, and a second later he could have bitten off his tongue.

Dove had only half an ear for him.

"Eh? What? What do you say?" he asked as Maurice paused; but his
thoughts were plainly elsewhere. This fact is, just at this moment, he
was intent on watching some ladies: were they going to notice him or
not? The bow made and returned, he brought his mind back to Maurice
with a great show of interest.

Here, however, they all turned in to Seyffert's Cafe and, seating
themselves at a long, narrow table, waited for Schilsky, whom they
intended to fete. But minutes passed, a quarter, then half of an hour,
and still he did not come. To while the time, his playing of the
concerto was roundly commented and discussed. There was none of the ten
or twelve young men but had the complete jargon of the craft at his
finger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath,
now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping praise. The
spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion,
went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke
with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of
them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom or point a
joke.

Not having heard a note of Schilsky's playing, Maurice did not trust
himself to say much, and so was free to observe his right-hand
neighbour, a young man who had entered late, and taken a vacant chair
beside him. To the others present, the new-comer paid no heed, to
Maurice he murmured an absent greeting, and then, having called for
beer and emptied his glass at a draught, he appeared mentally to return
whence he had come, or to engage without delay in some urgent train of
thought. His movements were noiseless, but startlingly abrupt. Thus,
after sitting quiet for a time, his head in his hands, he flung back in
his seat with a sort of wildness, and began to stare fixedly at the
ceiling. His face was one of those, which, as by a mystery, preserve
the innocent beauty of their childhood, long after childhood is a thing
of the past: delicate as the rosy lining of a great sea-shell was the
colour that spread from below the forked blue veins of the temples, and
it paled and came again as readily as a girl's. Girlish, too, were the
limpid eyes, which, but for a trick of dropping unexpectedly, seemed
always to be gazing, in thoughtful surprise, at something that was
visible to them alone. As to the small, frail body, it existed only for
sake of the hands: narrow hands, with long, fleshless fingers, nervous
hands, that were never still.

All at once, in a momentary lull, he leant towards Maurice, and,
without even looking up, asked the latter if he could recall the
opening bars of the prelude to TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. If so, there was a
certain point he would like to lay before him.

"You see, it's this way, old fellow," he said confidentially. "I've
come to the conclusion that if, at the end of the third bar, Wagner
had----"

"Throw him out, throw him out!" cried an American who was sitting
opposite them. "You might as well try to stop a nigger in heat as
Krafft on Wagner."

"That's so," said another American named Ford, who, on arriving, had
not been quite sober, and now, after a few glasses of beer, was
exceedingly tipsy. "That's so. As I've always said, it's a disgrace to
the township, a disgrace, sir. Ought to be put down. Why don't he write
them himself?"

From the depths of his brown study, Krafft looked vaguely at the
speakers, and checked, but not discomposed, drew out a notebook and
jotted down an idea.

Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Boehmer and a Russian violinist
still harped upon the original string. And, having worked out Schilsky,
they passed on to Zeppelin, his master, and the Russian, who was not
Zeppelin's pupil, set to showing with vehemence that his "method" was a
worthless one. He was barely started when a wiry American, in a high,
grating voice, called Schilsky a wretched fool: why had he not gone to
Berlin at Easter, as he had planned, instead of dawdling on here where
he had no more to gain? At this, several of the young men laughed and
looked significant. Furst--he had proved to be a jolly little man, who,
with unbuttoned vest, absorbed large quantities of beer and perspired
freely--Furst alone was of the opinion, which he expressed forcibly, in
his hearty Saxon dialect, that had Schilsky left Leipzig at this
particular time, he would have been a fool indeed.

"Look here, boys," he cried, pounding the table to get attention.
"That's all very well, but he must have an eye to the practical side of
things, too----"

"DER BIEDERE SACHSE HOCH!" threw in Boehmer, who was Prussian, and of a
more ideal cast of mind.

"--and a chance such as this, he will certainly never have again. A
hundred thousand marks, if a pfennig, and a face to turn after in the
street! No, he is a confounded deal wiser to stay here and make sure of
her, for that sort is as slippery as an eel."

"Krafft can tell us; he let her go; is she?--is it true?" shouted half
a dozen.

Krafft looked up and winked. His reply was so gross and so witty that
there was a very howl of mirth.

"KRAFFT HOCH, HOCH KRAFFT!" they cried, and roared again, until the
proprietor, a mild, round-faced man, who was loath to meddle with his
best customers, advanced to the middle of the floor, where he stood
smiling uneasily and rubbing his hands.

But it was growing late.

"Why the devil doesn't he come?" yawned Boehmer.

"Perhaps," said Dove, mouthing deliberately as if he had a good thing
on his tongue; perhaps, by now, he is safe in the arms of----"

"Jesus or Morpheus?" asked a cockney 'cellist.

"Safe in the arms of Jesus!" sang the tipsy pianist; but he was outsung
by Krafft, who, rising from his seat, gave with dramatic gesture:

  O sink' hernieder,
  Nacht der Liebe,
  gieb Vergessen,
  dass ich lebe ...

After this, with much laughter and ado, they broke up to seek another
cafe in the heart of the town, where the absinthe was good and the
billiard-table better, two of his friends supporting Ford, who was
testily debating with himself why a composer should compose his own
works. At the first corner, Maurice whispered a word to Dove, and,
unnoticed by the rest, slipped away. For some time, he heard the sound
of their voices down the quiet street. A member of the group, in
defiance of the night, began to sing; and then, just as one bird is
provoked by another, rose a clear, sweet voice he recognised as
Krafft's, in a song the refrain of which was sung by all:

  Give me the Rose of Sharon,
  And a bottle of Cyprus wine!

What followed was confused, indistinct, but over and over again he
heard:

  ... the Rose of Sharon,
  ... a bottle of Cyprus wine!

until that, too, was lost in the distance.

When he reached his room, he did not light the lamp, but crossed to the
window and stood looking out into the darkness. The day's impressions,
motley as the changes of a kaleidoscope, seethed in his brain,
clamoured to be recalled and set in order; but he kept them back; he
could not face the task. He felt averse to any mental effort, in need
of a repose as absolute as the very essence of silence itself. The sky
was overcast; a wayward breeze blew coolly in upon him and refreshed
him; a few single raindrops fell. In the air a gentle melancholy was
abroad, and, as he stood there, wax for any passing mood, it descended
on him and enveloped him. He gave himself up to it, unresistingly,
allowed himself to toy with it, to sink beneath it. Just, however, as
he was sinking, sinking, he was roused, suddenly, as from sleep, by the
vivid presentiment that something was about to happen to him: it seemed
as if an important event were looming in the near distance, ready to
burst in upon his life, and not only instantly, but with a monstrous
crash of sound. His pulses beat more quickly, his nerves stretched,
like bows. But it was very still; everything around him slept, and the
streets were deserted.

A keen sense of desolation came over him; never, in his life, had he
felt so utterly alone. In all this great city that spread, ocean-like,
around him, not a heart was the lighter for his being there. Oh, to
have some one beside him!--some one who would talk soothingly to him,
of shadowy, far-off things, or, still better, be merely a sympathetic
presence. He passed rapidly in review people he had known, saw their
faces and heard their voices, but not one of them would do. No, he
wanted a friend, the friend he had often dreamed of, whose thoughts
would be his thoughts, with whom there would be no need of speech. Then
his longing swelled, grew fiercer and more undefined, and a sudden
burst of energy convulsed him and struggled to find vent. His breath
came hard, and he stretched his arms out into the night, uncertainly,
as if to grasp something he did not see; but they fell to his side
again. He would have liked to sweep through the air, to feel the wind
rushing dizzily through him; or to be set down before some feat that
demanded the strength of a Titan--anything, no matter what, to be rid
of the fever in his veins. But it beset him, again and again, only by
slow degrees weakening and dying away.

A bitter moisture sprang to his eyes. Leaning his head on his arms, he
endeavoured to call up her face. But it was of no use, though he
strained every nerve; for some time he could see only the rose that had
lain beside her on the piano, and in the troubled image that at last
crowned his patience, her eyes looked out, like jewels, from a setting
of golden petals.

Lying wakeful in the darkness, he saw them more clearly. Now, though,
they had a bluish light, were like moons, moons that burnt. If he lit
the lamp and tried to read, they got between him and the book, and
danced up and down the pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, like
stage fireflies. He put the light out, and lay staring vacantly at the
pale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expecting
it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, that he
started up on his elbow; and in the second or two it remained--a
Medusa-face, opaquely white, with deep, unfathomable eyes--he
recognised, with a shock, that his peace of mind was gone; that the
sudden experience of a few hours back had given his life new meaning;
that something had happened to him which could not be undone; in other
words--with an incredulous gasp at his own folly--that he was head over
ears in love.

Through the uneasy sleep into which he ultimately fell, she, and the
yellow rose, and the Rose of Sharon--a giant flower, with monstrous
crimson petals--passed and repassed, in one of those glorious tangles,
which no dreamer has ever unravelled.

When he wakened, it was broad daylight, and things wore a different
aspect. Not that his impression of the night had faded, but it was
forced to retire behind the hard, clear affairs of the morning. He got
up, full of vigour, impatient to be at work, and having breakfasted,
sat down at the piano, where he remained until his hands dropped from
the keys with fatigue. Throughout these hours, his mind ran chiefly on
the words Schwarz had said to him, the previous evening. They rose
before him in their full significance, and he leisurely chewed the
honeyed cud of praise. "I will undertake to make something of you,
undertake to make something of you"--his brain tore the phrase to
tatters. "Something" was properly vague, as praise should be, and
allowed the imagination free scope. Under the stimulus, everything came
easy; he mastered a passage of bound sixths that had baffled him for
days. And in this elated frame of mind, there was something almost
pleasurable in the pang with which he would become conscious of a
shadow in the background, a spot on his sun to make him unhappy.

Unhappy?--no: it gave a zest to his goings--out and comings-in. Through
long hours of work he was borne up by an ardent hope: afterwards, he
might see her. It made the streets exciting places of possible
surprises. Might she not, at any moment, turn the corner and be before
him? Might she not, this very instant, be going in the same direction
as he, in the next street? But a very little of this pleasant dallying
with chance was enough. One morning, when the houses opposite were
ablaze with sunshine, and he had settled down to practice with a keen
relish for the obstacles to be overcome; on this morning, within half
an hour, his mood swung round to the other extreme, and, from now on,
his desire to see her again was a burning unrest, which roused him from
sleep, and drove him out, at odd hours, no matter what he was doing.
Moodily he scoured the streets round the Conservatorium, disconcerted
by his own folly, and pricked incessantly by the consciousness of time
wasted. A companion at his side might have dispelled the cobwebs; but
Dove, his only friend, he avoided, for the reason that Dove's unfailing
good spirits needed to be met with a similar mood. And as for speaking
of the matter, the mere thought of the detailed explanation that would
now be necessary, did he open his lips, filled him with dismay. When
four or five days had gone by in this manner, without result, he took
to hanging about, with other idlers, on the steps of the
Conservatorium, always hoping that she would suddenly emerge from the
doors behind him, or come towards him, a roll of music in her hand.

But she never came.

One afternoon, however, as he loitered there, he encountered his
acquaintance of the very first day. He recognised her while she was
still some distance off, by her peculiar springy gait; at each step,
she rose slightly on the front part of her foot, as if her heels were
on springs. As before, she was indifferently dressed; a small, close
hat came down over her face and hid her forehead; her skirt seemed
shrunken, and hung limp about her ankles, accentuating the straightness
of her figure. But below the brim of the hat her eyes were as bright as
ever, and took note of all that happened. On seeing Maurice, she
professed to remember him "perfectly," beginning to speak before she
had quite come up to him.

The following day they met once more at the same place. This time, she
raised her eyebrows.

"You here again?" she said.

She disappeared inside the building; but a few minutes later returned,
and said she was going for a walk: would he come, too?

He assented, with grateful surprise, and they set off together in the
direction of the woods, as briskly as though they were on an errand.
But when they had crossed the suspension-bridge and reached the quieter
paths that ran through the NONNE, they simultaneously slackened their
pace. The luxuriant undergrowth of shrub, which filled in, like
lacework, the spaces between the tree-trunks, was sprinkled with its
first dots and pricks of green, and the afternoon was pleasant for
walking--sunless and still, and just a little fragrantly damp from all
the rife budding and sprouting. It was a day to further a friendship
more effectually than half a dozen brighter ones; a day on which to
speak out thoughts which a June sky, the indiscreet playing of full
sunlight, even the rustling of the breeze in the leaves might scare,
like fish, from the surface.

When they had laughingly introduced themselves to each other Maurice
Guest's companion talked about herself, with a frankness that left
nothing to be desired, and impressed the young man at her side very
agreeably. Before they had gone far, he knew all about her. Her name
was Madeleine Wade; she came from a small town in Leicestershire, and,
except for a step-brother, stood alone in the world. For several years,
she had been a teacher in a large school near London, and the position
was open for her to return to, when she had completed this, the final
year of her course. Then, however, she would devote herself exclusively
to the teaching of music, and, with this in view, she had here taken up
as many branches of study as she had time for. Besides piano, which was
her chief subject, she learned singing, organ, counterpoint, and the
elements of the violin.

"So much is demanded nowadays," she said in her dear soprano. "And if
you want to get on, it doesn't do to be behindhand. Of course, it means
hard work, but that is nothing to me--I am used to work and love it.
Since I was seventeen--I am twenty-six now--I can fairly say I have
never got up in the morning, without having my whole day mapped and
planned before me.--So you see idlers can have no place on my list of
saints."

She spoke lightly, yet with a certain under-meaning. As, however,
Maurice Guest, on whom her words made a sympathetic impression, as of
something strong and self-reliant--as he did not respond to it, she
fell back on directness, and asked him what he had been doing when she
met him, both on this day and the one before.

"I tell you candidly, I was astonished to find you there again," she
said. "As a rule, new-comers are desperately earnest brooms."

His laugh was a trifle uneasy; and he answered evasively, not meaning
to say much. But he had reckoned without the week of silence that lay
behind him; it had been more of a strain than he knew, and his pent-up
speech once set agoing could not be brought to a stop. An almost
physical need of communication made itself felt in him; he spoke with a
volubility that was foreign to him, began his sentences with a
confidential "You see," and said things at which he himself was amazed.
He related impressions, not facts, and impressions which, until now, he
had not been conscious of receiving; he told unguardedly of his plans
and ambitions, and even went back and touched on his home-life,
dwelling with considerable bitterness on the scant sympathy he had
received.

His companion looked at him curiously. She had expected a casual answer
to her casual words, a surface frankness, such as she herself had
shown, and, at first, she felt sceptical towards this unbidden
confidence: she did not care for people who gave themselves away at a
word; either they were naive to foolishness or inordinately vain. But
having listened for some time to his outpourings, she began to feel
reassured; and soon she understood that he was talking thus at random,
merely because he was lonely and bottled-up. Before he had finished,
she was even a little gratified by his openness, and on his confiding
to her what Schwarz had said to him, she smiled indulgently.

"Perhaps I took it to mean more than it actually did," said Maurice
apologetically. "But anyhow it was cheering to hear it. You see, I must
prove to the people at home that I was right and they were wrong.
Failure was preached at me on every side. I was the only soul to
believe in myself."

"And you really disliked teaching so?"

"Hated it with all my heart."

She frankly examined him. He had a pale, longish face, with thin lips,
which might indicate either narrow prejudice or a fanatic tenacity.
When he grew animated, he had a habit of opening his eyes very wide,
and of staring straight before him. At such moments, too, he tossed
back his head, with the impatient movements of a young horse. His hands
and feet were good, his clothes of a provincial cut. Her fingers itched
to retie the bow of his cravat for him, to pull him here and there into
shape. Altogether, he made the impression upon her of being a very
young man: when he coloured, or otherwise grew embarrassed, under her
steady gaze, she mentally put him down for less than twenty. But he had
good manners; he allowed her to pass before him, where the way grew
narrow; walked on the outside of the path; made haste to draw back an
obstreperous branch; and not one of these trifling conventionalities
was lost on Madeleine Wade.

They had turned their steps homewards, and were drawing near the edge
of the wood, when, through the tree-trunks, which here were bare and
far apart, they saw two people walking arm in arm; and on turning a
corner found the couple coming straight towards them, on the same path
as themselves. In the full flush of his talk, Maurice Guest did not at
first grasp what was about to happen. He had ended the sentence he was
at, and begun another, before the truth broke on him. Then he
stuttered, lost the thread of his thought, was abruptly silent; and
what he had been going to say, and what, a moment before, had seemed of
the utmost importance, was never said. His companion did not seem to
notice his preoccupation; she gave an exclamation of what sounded like
surprise, and herself looked steadily at the approaching pair. Thus
they went forward to a meeting which the young man had imagined to
himself in many ways, but not in this. The moment he had waited for had
come; and now he wished himself miles away. Meanwhile, they walked on,
in a brutal, matter-of-fact fashion, and at a fairish pace, though each
step he took was an event, and his feet were as heavy and awkward as if
they did not belong to him.

The other two sauntered towards them, without haste. The man she was
with had his arm through hers, her hand in his left hand, while in his
right he twirled a cane. They were not speaking; she looked before her,
rather listlessly, with dark, indifferent eyes. To see this, to see
also that she was taller and broader than he had believed, and in full
daylight somewhat sallow, Maurice had first to conquer an aversion to
look at all, on account of the open familiarity of their attitude. It
was not like this that he had dreamt of finding her. And so it happened
that when, without a word to him, his companion crossed the path and
confronted the other two, he only lingered for an instant, in an agony
of indecision, and then, by an impulse over which he had no control,
walked on and stood out of earshot.

He drew a deep breath, like one who has escaped a danger; but almost
simultaneously he bit his lip with mortification: could any power on
earth make it clear to him why he had acted in this way? All his
thoughts had been directed towards this moment for so long, only to
take this miserable end. A string of contemptuous epithets for himself
rose to his lips. But when he looked back at the group, the reason of
his folly was apparent to him; at the sight of this other beside her, a
sharp twinge of jealousy had run through him and disturbed his balance.
He gazed ardently at her in the hope that she would look round, but it
was only the man--he was caressing his slight moustache and hitting at
loose stones while the girls talked--who turned, as if drawn by
Maurice's stare, and looked full at him, with studied insolence. In
him, Maurice recognised the violinist of the concert, but he, too, was
taller than he had believed, and much younger. A mere boy, said Maurice
to himself; a mere boy, with a disagreeable dissipated face.

Madeleine Wade came hurrying to rejoin him, apologising for the delay;
the meeting had, however, been fortunate, as she had had a message from
Schwarz to deliver. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then asked
without preamble: "Who is that?"

His companion looked quickly at him, struck both by his tone and by his
unconscious use of the singular. The air of indifference with which he
was looking out across the meadowland, told its own tale.

"Schilsky? Don't you know Schilsky? Our Joachim IN SPE?" she asked, to
tease him.

Maurice Guest coloured. "Yes, I heard him play the other night," he
answered in good faith. "But I didn't mean him. I meant the--the lady
he was with."

The girl at his side laughed, not very heartily.

"ET TU, BRUTE!" she said. "I might have known it. It really is
remarkable that though so many people don't think Louise goodlooking--I
have often heard her called plain--yet I never knew a man go past her
without turning his head.--You want to know who and what she is? Well,
that depends on whom you ask. Schwarz would tell you she was one of his
most gifted pupils--but no: he always says that of his pretty girls,
and some do find her pretty, you know."

"She is, indeed, very," said Maurice with warmth. "Though I think
pretty is not just the word."

"No, I don't suppose it is," said Madeleine, and this time there was a
note of mockery in her laugh. But Maurice did not let himself be
deterred. As it seemed likely that she was going to let the subject
rest here, he persisted: "But suppose I asked you--what would you say?"

She gave him a shrewd side-glance. "I think I won't tell you," she
said, more gravely. "If a man has once thought a girl pretty, and all
the rest of it, he's never grateful for the truth. If I said Louise was
a baggage, or a minx, or some other horrid thing, you would always bear
me a grudge for it, so please note, I don't say it--for we are going to
be friends, I hope?"

"I hope so, too," said the young man.

They walked some distance along the unfinished end of the
MOZARTSTRASSE, where only a few villas stood, in newly made gardens.

"At least, I should like to know her name her whole name. You said
Louise, I think?"

She laughed outright at this. "Her name is Dufrayer, Louise Dufrayer,
and she has been here studying with Schwarz for about a year and a half
now. She has some talent, but is indolent to the last degree, and only
works when she can't help it. Also she always has an admirer of some
kind in tow. This, to-day, is her last particular friend.--Is that
biographical matter enough?"

He was afraid he had made himself ridiculous in her eyes, and did not
answer. They walked the rest of the way in silence. At her house-door,
they paused to take leave of each other.

"Good-bye. Come and see me sometimes when you have time. We were once
colleagues, you know, and are now fellow-pupils. I should be glad to
help you if you ever need help."

He thanked her and promised to remember; then walked home without,
knowing how he did it. He had room in brain for one thought only; he
knew her name, he knew her name. He said it again and again to himself,
walked in time with it, and found it as heady as wine; the mere sound
of the spoken syllables seemed to bring her nearer to him, to establish
a mysterious connection between them. Moreover, in itself it pleased
him extraordinarily; and he was vaguely grateful to something outside
himself, that it was a name he could honestly admire.

In a kind of defiant challenge to unseen powers, he doubled his arm and
felt the muscles in it. Then he sat down at his piano, and, to the
dismay of his landlady--for it was now late evening--practised for a
couple of hours without stopping. And the scales he sent flying up and
down in the darkness had a ring of exultation in them, were like cries
of triumph.

He had discovered the "Open Sesame" to his treasure. And there was time
and to spare. He left everything to the future, in blind trust that it
would bring him good fortune. It was enough that they were here
together, inhabitants of the same town. Besides, he had formed a
friendship with some one who knew her; a way would surely open up, in
which he might make her aware of his presence. In the meantime, it was
something to live for. Each day that dawned might be THE day.

But little by little, like a fountain run dry, his elation subsided,
and, as he lay sleepless, he had a sudden fit of jealous despair. He
remembered, with a horrid distinctness, how he had seen her. Again she
came towards them, at the other's side, hand in hand with him,
inattentive to all but him. Now he could almost have wept at the
recollection. Those clasped hands!--he could have forgiven everything
else, but the thought of these remained with him and stung him. Here he
lay, thinking wild and foolish things, building castles that had no
earthly foundation, and all the time it was another who had the right
to be with her, to walk at her side, and share her thoughts. Again he
was the outsider; behind these two was a life full of detail and
circumstance, of which he knew nothing. His excited brain called up
pictures, imagined fiercely at words and looks, until the darkness and
stillness of the room became unendurable; and he sprang up, threw on
his clothing, and went out. Retracing his steps, he found the very spot
where they had met. Guiltily, with a stealthy look round him, though
wood and night were black as ink, he knelt down and kissed the gravel
where he thought she had stood.




IV.


It was through Dove's agency--Dove was always on the spot to guide and
assist his friends; to advise where the best, or cheapest, or rarest,
of anything was to be had, from secondhand Wagner scores to hair
pomade; he knew those shops where the "half-quarters" of ham or
roast-beef weighed heavier than elsewhere, restaurants where the beer
had least froth and the cutlets were largest for the money; knew the
ins and outs of Leipzig as no other foreigner did, knew all that went
on, and the affairs of everybody, as though he went through life
garnering in just those little facts that others were apt to overlook.
Through Dove, Maurice became a paying guest at a dinner-table kept by
two maiden ladies, who eked out their income by providing a plain meal,
at a low price, for respectable young people.

The company was made up to a large extent of English-speaking
foreigners. There were several university students--grave-faced, older
men, with beards and spectacles--who looked down on the young
musicians, and talked, of set purpose, on abstruse subjects. More
noteworthy were two American pianists: Ford, who could not carry a
single glass of beer, and played better when he had had more than one;
and James, a wiry, red-haired man, with an unfaltering opinion of
himself, and an iron wrist--by means of a week's practice, he could
ruin any piano. Two ladies were also present. Philadelphia Jensen; of
German-American parentage, was a student of voice-production, under a
Swedish singing master who had lately set musical circles in a ferment,
with his new and extraordinary method: its devotees swore that, in
time, it would display marvellous results; but, in the meantime, the
most advanced pupils were only emitting single notes, and the greater
number stood, every morning, before their respective mirrors, watching
their mouths open and shut, fish-fashion, without producing a sound.
Miss Jensen--she preferred the English pronunciation of the J--was a
large, fleshy woman, with a curled fringe and prominent eyes. Her
future stage-presence was the object of general admiration; it was
whispered that she aimed at Isolde. Loud in voice and manner, she was
fond of proclaiming her views on all kinds of subjects, from
diaphragmatic respiration, through GHOSTS, which was being read by a
bold, advanced few, down to the continental methods of regulating
vice--to the intense embarrassment of those who sat next her at table.
Still another American lady, Miss Martin, was studying with Bendel, the
rival of Schwarz; and as she lived in the same quarter of the town as
Dove and Maurice, the three of them often walked home together. For the
most part, Miss Martin was in a state of tragic despair. With the
frankness of her race, she admitted that she had arrived in Leipzig,
expecting to astonish. In this she had been disappointed; Bendel had
treated her like any other of his pupils; she was still playing Haydn
and Czerny, and saw endless vistas of similar composers "back of
these." Dove laid the whole blame on Bendel's method--which he
denounced with eloquence--and strongly advocated her becoming a pupil
of Schwarz. He himself undertook to arrange matters, and, in what
seemed an incredibly short time, the change was effected. For a little,
things went better; Schwarz was reported to have said that she had
talent, great talent, and that he would make something of her; but
soon, she was complaining anew: if there were any difference between
Czerny and Bertini, Haydn and Dussek, some one might "slick up" and
tell her what it was. Off the subject of her own gifts, she was a
lively, affable girl, with china-blue eyes, pale flaxen hair, and
coal-black eyebrows; and both young men got on well with her, in the
usual superficial way. For Maurice Guest, she had the additional
attraction, that he had once seen her in the street with the object of
his romantic fancy.

Since the afternoon when he had heard from Madeleine Wade who this was,
he had not advanced a step nearer making her acquaintance; though a
couple of weeks had passed, though he now knew two people who knew her,
and though his satisfaction at learning her name had immediately
yielded to a hunger for more. And now, hardly a day went by, on which
he did not see her. His infatuation had made him keen of scent; by
following her, with due precaution, he had found out for himself in the
BRUDERSTRASSE, the roomy old house she lived in; had found out how she
came and went. He knew her associates, knew the streets she preferred,
the hour of day at which she was to be met at the Conservatorium. Far
away, at the other end of one of the quiet streets that lay wide and
sunny about the Gewandhaus, when, to other eyes she was a mere speck in
the distance, he learned to recognise her--if only by the speed at
which his heart beat--and he even gave chase to imaginary resemblances.
Once he remained sitting in a tramway far beyond his destination,
because he traced, in one of the passengers, a curious likeness to her,
in long, wavy eyebrows that were highest in the middle of the forehead.

Thus the pale face with the heavy eyes haunted him by day and by night.

He was very happy and very unhappy, by turns--never at rest. If he
imagined she had looked observantly at him as she passed, he was elated
for hours after. If she did not seem to notice him, it was brought home
to him anew that he was nothing to her; and once, when he had gazed too
boldly, instead of turning away his eyes, as she went close by him to
Schwarz's room, and she had resented the look with cold surprise, he
felt as culpable as if he had insulted her. He atoned for his
behaviour, the next time they met, by assuming his very humblest air;
once, too, he deliberately threw himself in her way, for the mere
pleasure of standing aside with the emphatic deference of a slave.
Throughout this period, and particularly after an occasion such as the
last, his self-consciousness was so peculiarly intensified that his
surroundings ceased to exist for him--they two were the gigantic
figures on a shadow background--and what he sometimes could not believe
was, that such feelings as these should be seething in him, and she
remain ignorant of them. He lost touch with reality, and dreamed dreams
of imperceptible threads, finer than any gossamer, which could be spun
from soul to soul, without the need of speech.

He heaped on her all the spiritual perfections that answered to her
appearance. And he did not, for a time, observe anything to make him
waver in his faith that she was whiter, stiller, and more
unapproachable--of a different clay, in short, from other women. Then,
however, this illusion was shattered. Late one afternoon, she came down
the stairs of the house she lived in, and, pausing at the door, looked
up and down the hot, empty street, shading her eyes with her hand. No
one was in sight, and she was about to turn away, when, from where he
was watching in a neighbouring doorway, Maurice saw the red-haired
violinist come swiftly round the corner. She saw him, too, took a few,
quick steps towards him, and, believing herself unseen, looked up in is
face as they met; and the passionate tenderness of the look, the sudden
lighting of lip and eye, racked the poor, unwilling spy for days. To
suit this abrupt descent from the pedestal, he was obliged to carve a
new attribute to his idol, and laboriously adapt it.

Schilsky, this insolent boy, was the thorn in his side. It was Schilsky
she was oftenest to be met with; he was her companion at the most
unexpected hours; and, with reluctance, Maurice had to admit to himself
that she had apparently no thought to spare for anyone else. But it did
not make any difference. The curious way in which he felt towards her,
the strange, overwhelming effect her face had on him, took no account
of outside things. Though he might never hope for a word from her;
though he should learn in the coming moment that she was the other's
promised wife; he could not for that reason banish her from his mind.
His feelings were not to be put on and off, like clothes; he had no
power over them. It was simply a case of accepting things as they were,
and this he sought to do.

But his imagination made it hard for him, by throwing up pictures in
which Schilsky was all-prominent. He saw him the confidant of her joys
and troubles; HE knew their origin, knew what key her day was set in.
If her head ached, if she were tired or spiritless, his hand was on her
brow. The smallest events in her life were an open book to him; and it
was these worthless details that Maurice Guest envied him most. He kept
a tight hold on his fancy, but if, as sometimes happened, it slipped
control, and painted further looks of the kind he had seen exchanged
between them, a kiss or an embrace, he was as wretched as if he had in
reality been present.

At other times, this jealous unrest was not the bitterest drop in his
cup; it was bitterer to know that she was squandering her love on one
who was unworthy of it. At first, from a feeling of exaggerated
delicacy, he had gone out of his way to escape hearing Schilsky's name;
but this mood passed, and gave place to an undignified hankering to
learn everything he could, concerning the young man. What he heard
amounted to this: a talented rascal, the best violinist the
Conservatorium had turned out for years, one to whom all gates would
open; but--this "but" always followed, with a meaning smile and a wink
of the eye: and then came the anecdotes. They had nothing
heaven-scaling in them--these soiled love-stories; this perpetual
impecuniosity; this inability to refuse money, no matter whose the hand
that offered it; this fine art in the disregarding of established
canons--and, to Maurice Guest, bred to sterner standards, they seemed
unspeakably low and mean. Hours came when he strove in vain to
understand her. Ignorant of these things she could not be; was it
within the limits of the possible that she could overlook them?--and he
shivered lest he should be forced to think less highly of her.
Ultimately, sending his mind back over what he had read and heard,
drawing on his own slight experience, he came to a compromise with
himself. He said that most often the best and fairest women loved men
who were unworthy of them. Was it not a weakness and a strength of her
sex to see good where no good was?--a kind of divine frailty, a wilful
blindness, a sweet inability to discern.

At times, again, he felt almost content that Schilsky was what he was.
If the day should ever come when, all barriers down, he, Maurice Guest,
might be intimately associated with her life; if he should ever have
the chance of proving to her what real love was, what a holy mystic
thing, how far removed from a blind passing fancy; if he might serve
her, be her slave, lay his hands under her feet, lead her up and on,
all suffused in a sunset of tenderness: then, she would see that what
she had believed to be love had been nothing but a FATA MORGANA, a
mirage of the skies. And he heard himself whispering words of
incredible fondness to her, saw her listening with wonder in her eyes.

At still other moments, he was ready to renounce every hope, if, by
doing so, he could add jot or tittle to her happiness.

The further he spun himself into his dreams, however, and the better he
learnt to know her in imagination, the harder it grew to take the first
step towards realising his wishes. In those few, brief days, when he
hugged her name to him as a talisman, he waited cheerfully for
something to happen, something unusual, that would bring him to her
notice--a dropped handkerchief, a seat vacated for her at a concert,
even a timely accident. But as day after day went by, in eventless
monotony, he began to cast about him for human aid. From Dove, his
daily companion, Dove of the outstretched paws of continual help, he
now shrank away. Miss Martin was not to be spoken to except in Dove's
company. There was only one person who could assist him, if she would,
and that was Madeleine Wade. He called to mind the hearty invitation
she had given him, and reproached himself for not having taken
advantage of it.

One afternoon, towards six o'clock, he rang the bell of her lodgings in
the MOZARTSTRASSE. This was a new street, the first blocks of which
gave directly on the Gewandhaus square; but, at the further end, where
she lived, a phalanx of redbrick and stucco fronts looked primly across
at a similar line. In the third storey of one of these houses,
Madeleine Wade had a single, large room, the furniture of which was so
skilfully contrived, that, by day, all traces of the room's double
calling were obliterated.

As he entered, on this first occasion, she was practising at a grand
piano which stood before one of the windows. She rose at once, and,
having greeted him warmly, made him sit down among the comfortable
cushions that lined the sofa. Then she took cups and saucers from a
cupboard in the wall, and prepared tea over a spirit-lamp. He soon felt
quite at home with her, and enjoyed himself so well that many such
informal visits followed.

But the fact was not to be denied: it was her surroundings that
attracted him, rather than she herself. True, he found her frankness
delightfully "refreshing," and when he spoke of her, it was as of an
"awfully good sort," "a first-class girl"; for Madeleine was invariably
lively, kind and helpful. At the same time, she was without doubt a
trifle too composed, too sure of herself; she had too keen an eye for
human foibles; she came towards you with a perfectly natural openness,
and she came all the way--there was nothing left for you to explore.
And when not actually with her, it was easy to forget her; there was
never a look or a smile, never a barbed word, never a sudden
spontaneous gesture--the vivid translation of a thought--to stamp
itself on your memory.

But it was only at the outset that he thought things like these.
Madeleine Wade had been through experiences of the same kind before;
and hardly a fortnight later they were calling each other by their
Christian names.

When he came to her, towards evening, tired and inclined to be lonely,
she seated him in a corner of the sofa, and did not ask him to say much
until she made the tea. Then, when the cups were steaming in front of
them, she discussed sympathetically with him the progress of his work.
She questioned him, too, about his home and family, and he read her
parts of his mother's letters, which arrived without fail every Tuesday
morning. She also drew from him a more detailed account of his previous
life; and, in this connection, they had several animated discussions
about teaching, a calling to which Madeleine looked composedly forward
to returning, while Maurice, in strong superlative, declared he had
rather force a flock of sheep to walk in line. She told him, too, some
of the gossip the musical quarter of the town was rife with, about
those in high places; and, in particular, of the bitter rivalry that
had grown up with the years between Schwarz and Bendel, the chief
masters of the piano. If these two met in the street, they passed each
other with a stony stare; if, at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, a pupil of one
was to play, the other rose ostentatiously and left the hall. She also
hinted that in order to obtain all you wanted at the Conservatorium, to
be favoured above your fellows, it was only necessary flagrantly to
bribe one of the clerks, Kleefeld by name, who was open to receive
anything, being wretchedly impecunious and the father of a large family.

Finding, too, that Maurice was bent on learning German, she, who spoke
the language fluently, proposed that they should read it together; and
soon it became their custom to work through a few pages of QUINTUS
FIXLEIN, a scene or two of Schiller, some lyrics of Heine. They also
began to play duets, symphonies old and new, and Madeleine took care
constantly to have something fresh and interesting at hand. To all this
the young man brought an unbounded zeal, and, if he had had his way,
they would have gone on playing or reading far into the evening.

She smiled at his eagerness. "You absorb like a sponge."

When it grew too dark to see, he confided to her that his dearest wish
was to be a conductor. He was not yet clear how it could be managed,
but he was sure that this was the branch of his art for which he had
most aptitude.

Here she interrupted him. "Do you never write verses?"

Her question seemed to him so meaningless that he only laughed, and
went on with what he was saying. For the event of his plan proving
impracticable--at home they had no idea of it--he was training as a
concert-player; but he intended to miss no chance that offered, of
learning how to handle an orchestra.

Throughout these hours of stimulating companionship, however, he did
not lose sight of his original purpose in going to see Madeleine. It
was only that just the right moment never seemed to come; and the name
he was so anxious to hear, had not once been mentioned between them.
Often, in the dusk, his lips twitched to speak it; but he feared his
own awkwardness, and her quick tongue; then, too, the subject was
usually far aside from what they were talking of, and it would have
made a ludicrous impression to drag it in by the hair.

But one day his patience was rewarded. He had carelessly taken up a
paper-bound volume of Chopin, and was on the point of commenting upon
it, for he had lately begun to understand the difference between a
Litolff and a Mikuli. But it slipped from his hand, and he was obliged
to crawl under the piano to pick it up; on a corner of the cover, in a
big, black, scrawly writing, was the name of Marie Louise Dufrayer. He
cleared his throat, laid the volume down, took it up again; then,
realising that the moment had come, he put a bold face on the matter.

"I see this belongs to Miss Dufrayer," he said bluntly, and, as his
companion's answer was only a careless: "Yes, Louise forgot it the last
time she was here," he went on without delay: "I should like to know
Miss Dufrayer, Madeleine. Do you think you could introduce me to her?"

Madeleine, who was in the act of taking down a book from her hanging
shelves, turned and looked at him. He was still red in the face, from
the exertion of stooping.

"Introduce you to Louise?" she queried. "Why?--why do you want to be
introduced to her?"

"Oh, I don't know. For no particular reason."

She sat down at the table, opened the book, and turned the leaves.

"Oh well, I daresay I can, if you wish it, and an opportunity
occurs--if you're with me some day when I meet her.--Now shall we go on
with the JUNGFRAU? We were beginning the third act, I think. Here it is:

  Wir waren Herzensbruder, Waffenfreunde,
  Fur eine Sache hoben wir den Arm!"

But Maurice did not take the book she handed him across the table.

"Won't you give me a more definite promise than that?"

Madeleine sat back in her chair, and, folding her arms, looked
thoughtfully at him.

Only a momentary silence followed his words, but, in this fraction of
time, a series of impressions swept through her brain with the
continuity of a bird's flight. It was clear to her at once, that what
prompted his insistence was not an ordinary curiosity, or a passing
whim; in a flash, she understood that here, below the surface,
something was at work in him, the existence of which she had not even
suspected. She was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolish
obtuseness; she had had these experiences before, and then, as now, the
object of her interest had invariably been turned aside by the first
pretty, silly face that came his way. The main difference was that she
had been more than ordinarily drawn to Maurice Guest; and, believing it
impossible, in this case, for anyone else to be sharing the field with
her, she had over-indulged the hope that he sought her out for herself
alone.

She endeavoured to learn more. But this time Maurice was on his guard,
and the questions she put, straight though they were, only elicited the
response that he had seen Miss Dufrayer shortly after arriving, and had
been much struck by her.

Madeleine's brain travelled rapidly backwards. "But if I remember
rightly, Maurice, we met Louise one day in the SCHEIBENHOLZ, the first
time we went for a walk together. Why didn't you stop then, and be
introduced to her, if you were so anxious?"

"Why do we ever do foolish things?"

Her amazement was so patent that he made uncomfortable apology for
himself. "It is ridiculous, I know," he said and coloured. "And it must
seem doubly so to you. But that I should want to know her--there's
nothing strange in that, is there? You, too, Madeleine, have surely
admired people sometimes--some one, say, who has done a fine thing--and
have felt that you must know them personally, at all costs?"

"Perhaps I have. But romantic feelings of that kind are sure to end in
smoke. As a rule they've no foundation but our own wishes.--If you take
my advice, Maurice, you will be content to admire Louise at a distance.
Think her as pretty as you like, and imagine her to be all that's sweet
and charming: but never mind about knowing her."

"But why on earth not?"

"Why, nothing will come of it."

"That depends on what you mean by nothing."

"You don't understand. I must be plainer.--Do sit down, and don't
fidget so.--How long have you been here now? Nearly two months. Well,
that's long enough to know something of what's going on. You must have
both seen and heard that Louise has no eyes for anyone but a certain
person, to put it bluntly, that she is wrapped up in Schilsky. This has
been going on for over a year now, and she seems to grow more
infatuated every day. When she first came to Leipzig, we were friends;
she lived in this neighbourhood, and I was able to be of service to
her. Now, weeks go by and I don't see her; she has broken with every
one--for Louise is not a girl to do things by halves.--Introduce you?
Of course I can. But suppose it done, with all pomp and ceremony, what
will you get from it? I know Louise. A word or two, if her ladyship is
in the mood; if not, you will be so much thin air for her. And after
that, a nod if she meets you in the street--and that's all."

"It's enough."

"You're easily satisfied.--But tell me, honestly now, Maurice, what
possible good can that do you?"

He moved aimlessly about the room. "Good? Must one always look for good
in everything?--I can see quite well that from your point of view the
whole thing must seem absurd. I expect nothing whatever from it, but
I'm going to know her, and that's all about it."

Still in the same position, with folded arms, Madeleine observed him
with unblinking eyes.

"And you won't bear me a grudge, if things go badly?--I mean if you are
disappointed, or dissatisfied?"

He made a gesture of impatience.

"Yes, but I know Louise, and you don't."

He had picked up from the writing-table the photograph of a curate, and
he stared at it as if he had no thought but to let the mild features
stamp themselves on his mind. Madeleine's eyes continued to bore him
through. At last, out of a silence, she said slowly: "Of course I can
introduce you--it's done with a wave of the hand. But, as your friend,
I think it only right to warn you what you must expect. For I can see
you don't understand in the least, and are laying up a big
disappointment for yourself. However, you shall have your way--if only
to show you that I am right."

"Thanks, Madeleine--thanks awfully."

They settled down to read Schiller. But Maurice made one slip after
another, and she let them pass uncorrected. She was annoyed with
herself afresh, for having made too much of the matter, for having
blown it up to a fictitious importance, when the wiser way would have
been to treat it as of no consequence at all.

The next afternoon he arrived, with expectation in his face; but not on
this day, nor the next, nor the next again, did she bring the subject
up between them. On the fourth, however, as he was leaving, she said
abruptly: "You must have patience for a little, Maurice. Louise has
gone to Dresden."

"That's why the blinds are down," he exclaimed without thinking, then
coloured furiously at his own words, and, to smooth them over, asked:
"Why has she gone? For how long?"

But Madeleine caught him up. "SIEH DA, some one has been playing
sentinel!" she said in raillery; and it seemed to him that every fold
in his brain was laid bare to her, before she answered: "She has gone
for a week or ten days--to visit some friends who are staying there."

He nodded, and was about to open the door, when she added: "But set
your mind at rest--HE is here."

Maurice looked sharply up; but a minute or two passed before the true
meaning of her words broke on him. He coloured again--a mortifying
habit he had not outgrown, and one which seemed to affect him more in
the presence of Madeleine than of anyone else.

"It's hardly a thing to joke about."

"Joke!--who is joking?" she asked, and raised her eyebrows so high that
her forehead was filled with wrinkles. "Nothing was further from my
thoughts."

Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the doorhandle. Then,
following an impulse, he turned and sat down again. "Madeleine, tell
me--I wouldn't ask anyone but you--what sort of a fellow IS this
Schilsky?"

"What sort of a fellow?" She laughed sarcastically. "To be quite
truthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. has turned out for years."

"Now you're joking again. As if I didn't know that. Everyone says the
same."

"You want his moral character? Well, I'll be equally candid. Or, at
least, I'll give you my opinion of him. It's another superlative. Just
as I consider him the best violinist, I also hold him to be the
greatest scamp in the place--and I've no objection to use a stronger
word if you like. I wouldn't take his hand, no, not if he offered it to
me. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he--well,
let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that
were lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it's a fact," she repeated,
complacently eyeing Maurice's dismay. "Otherwise?--oh, otherwise, he
was born, I think, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has one piece
of luck after another. Zeppelin discovered him ten years ago, on a
concert-tour--his father is a smith in Warsaw--and brought him to
Leipzig. He was a prodigy, then, and a rich Jewish banker took him up,
and paid for his education; and when he washed his hands of him in
disgust, Schaefele's wife--Schaefele is head of the HANDELVEREIN, you
know--adopted him as a son--some people say as more than a son, for,
though she was nearly forty, she was perfectly crazy over him, and
behaved as foolishly as any of the dozens of silly girls who have lost
their hearts to him."

"I suppose they are engaged," said Maurice after a pause, speaking out
of his own thoughts.

"Do you?" she asked with mild humour. "I really never asked them.--But
this is just another example of his good fortune. When he has worn out
every one else's patience, through his dishonest extravagance, he picks
up a rich wife, who is not averse to supporting him before marriage."

Maurice looked at her reproachfully. "I wonder you care to repeat such
gossip."

"It's not gossip, Maurice. Every one knows it. Louise makes no mystery
of her doings--doesn't care that much what people say. While as for
him--well, it's enough to know it's Schilsky. The thing is an open
secret. Listen, now, and I'll tell you how it began--just to let you
judge for yourself what kind of a girl you have to deal with in Louise,
and how Schilsky behaves when he wants a thing, and whether such a pair
think a formal engagement necessary to their happiness. When Louise
came here, a year and a half ago, Schilsky was away somewhere with
Zeppelin, and didn't get back till a couple of months afterwards. As I
said, I knew Louise pretty well at that time; she had got herself into
trouble with--but that's neither here nor there. Well, my lord
returns--he himself tells how it happened. It was a Thursday evening,
and a Radius Commemoration was going on at the Con. He went in late,
and stood at the back of the hall. Louise was there, too, just before
him, and, from the first minute he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes
off her--others who were by say, too, he seemed perfectly fascinated.
No one can stare as rudely as Schilsky, and he ended by making her so
uncomfortable that she couldn't bear it any longer, and went out of the
hall. He after her, and it didn't take him an hour to find out all
about her. The next evening, at an ABEND, they were both there again it
was just like Louise to go!--and the same thing was repeated. She left
again before it was over, he followed, and this time found her in one
of the side corridors; and there--mind you, without a single word
having passed between them!--he took her in his arms and kissed her,
kissed her soundly, half a dozen times--though they had never once
spoken to each other: he boasts of it to this day. That same
evening----"

"Don't, Madeleine--please, don't say any more! I don't care to hear
it," broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, at some
points of resemblance to his own case, then grown pale again, and now
he waved his arm meaninglessly in the air. "He is a scoundrel,
a--a----" But he recognised that he could not condemn one without the
other, and stopped short.

"My dear boy, if I don't tell you, other people will. And at least you
know I mean well by you. Besides," she went on, not without a touch of
malice as she eyed him sitting there, spoiling the leaves of a book.
"Besides, I may as well show you, how you have to treat Louise, if you
want to make an impression on her. You call him a scoundrel, but what
of her? Believe me, Maurice," she said more seriously, "Louise is not a
whit too good for him; they were made for each other. And of course he
will marry her eventually, for the sake of her, money "--here she
paused and looked deliberately at him--"if not for her own."

This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words.

"Madeleine!"

He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted.

But Madeleine did not falter. "I told you already, you know, that
Louise doesn't care what is said about her. As soon as this unfortunate
affair began, she threw up the rooms she was in at the time, and moved
nearer the TALSTRASSE--where he lives. Rumour has it also that she
provided herself with an accommodating landlady, who can be blind and
deaf when necessary."

"How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?"

He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were so many arrows,
the points of which remained sticking in him.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your not believing it doesn't affect the
truth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the place when it
happened. And you may despise rumour as you will, my experience is, a
report never springs up that hasn't some basis of fact to go
on--however small."

He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that came to his
lips; of what use was it to make himself still more ridiculous in her
eyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he picked it up, and brushed it
on his sleeve, without knowing what he did. "Oh, well, of course, if
you think that," he said as coolly as he was able, "nothing I could say
would make any difference. Every one is free to his opinions, I
suppose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine"--he grew hot in
spite of himself. "You have been her friend, you say; you have known
her intimately; and yet just because she ... she cares for this fellow
in such a way that she sets caring for him above being cautious--why,
not one woman in a thousand would have the courage for that sort of
thing! It needs courage, not to mind what people--no, what your friends
imagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do. Besides, one has
only to look at her to see how absurd it is. That face and--I don't
know her, Madeleine; I've never spoken to her, and never may, yet I am
absolutely certain that what is said about her isn't true. So certain
that--But after all, if this is what you think about ... about it, then
all I have to say is, we had better not discuss the subject again. It
does no good, and we should never be of the same opinion."

Not without embarrassment, now that he had said his say, he turned to
the door. But Madeleine was not in the least angry. She gave him her
hand, and said, with a smile, yet gravely, too: "Agreed, Maurice! We
will not speak of Louise again."




V.


He shunned Madeleine for days after this. He was morose and unhappy,
and brooded darkly over the baseness of wagging tongues. For the first
time in his life he had come into touch with slander, that invisible
Hydra, and straightway it seized upon the one person to whom he was not
indifferent. In this mood it was a relief to him that certain three
windows in the BRUDERSTRASSE remained closed and shuttered; with the
load of malicious gossip fresh on his mind, he chose rather not to see
her; he must first accustom himself to it, as to the scar left by a
wound.

He did not, of course, believe what Madeleine, with her infernal
frankness, had told him; but the knowledge that such a report was
abroad, depressed him unspeakably: it took colour from the sky and
light from the sun. Sometimes in these days, as he sat at his piano, he
had a sudden fit of discouragement, which made it seem not worth while
to continue playing. It was unthinkable that she could be aware how
busy scandal was with her name, and how her careless acts were spied on
and misrepresented; and he turned over in his mind ways and means by
which she might be induced to take more thought for herself in future.

He did not believe it; but hours of distracting uncertainty came, none
the less, when small things which his memory had stored up made him go
so far as to ask himself, what if it should be true?--what then? But he
had not courage enough to face an answer; he put the possibility away
from him, in the extreme background of his mind, refused to let his
brain piece its observations together. The mere suspicion was a
blasphemy, a blasphemy against her dignified reserve, against her sweet
pale face, her supreme disregard of those about her. Not thus would
guilt have shown itself.

Schilsky, who was the origin of all the evil, he made wide circuits to
avoid. He thought of him, at this time, with what he believed to be a
feeling of purely personal antipathy. In his most downcast moments, he
had swift and foolish visions publicly executing vengeance on him; but
if, a moment later, he saw the violinist's red hair or big hat before
him in the street, he turned aside as though the other had been
plague-struck. Once, however, when he was going up the steps of the
Conservatorium, and Schilsky, in leaping down, pushed carelessly
against him, he returned the knock so rudely and swore with such
downrightness that, in spite of his hurry, Schilsky stopped and fixed
him, and with equal vehemence damned him for a fool of an Englishman.

His despondency spread like a weed. A furious impatience overcame him,
too, at the thought of the innumerable hours he would be forced to
spend at the piano, day in, day out, for months to come, before the
result could be compared with the achievements even of many a
fellow-student. As the private lessons Schwarz gave were too expensive
for him, he decided, as a compromise, to take a course of extra lessons
with Furst, who prepared pupils for the master, and was quite willing
to come to terms, in other words, who taught for what he could get.

Once a week, then, for the rest of the summer, Maurice climbed the
steep, winding stair of the house in the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE where
Furst lived with his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dull
weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different
landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what
seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were
continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various
kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let the
piercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of its
kind in this relatively new street, was divided into countless small
lodgings; three families, with three rooms apiece, lived on each
storey, and on the fifth floor, at the top of the house, the same
number of rooms was let out singly. Part of the third storey was
occupied by a bird-fancier; and between him and the Fursts above waged
perpetual war, one of those petty, unending wars that can only arise
and be kept up when, as here, such heterogeneous elements are forced to
live side by side, under one roof. The fancier, although his business
was nominally in the town, had enough of his wares beside him to make
his house a lively, humming kind of place, and the strife dated back to
a day when, the door standing temptingly ajar, Peter, the Fursts' lean
cat, had sneaked stealthily in upon this, to him, enchanted ground,
and, according to the fancier, had caused the death, from fright, of a
delicate canary, although the culprit had done nothing more than sit
before the cage, licking his lips. This had happened several years ago,
but each party was still fertile in planning annoyances for the other,
and the females did not bow when they met. On the fourth floor, next
the Fursts, lived a pale, harassed teacher, with a family which had
long since outgrown its accommodation; for the wife was perpetually in
childbed, and cots and cradles were the chief furniture of the house.
As the critical moments of her career drew nigh, the "Frau Lehrer"
complained, with an aggravated bitterness, of the unceasing music that
went on behind the thin partition; and this grievance, together with
the racy items of gossip left behind the midwife's annual visit, like a
trail of smoke, provided her and Furst's mother with infinite food for
talk. They were thick friends again a few minutes after a scene so
lively that blows seemed imminent, and they met every morning on the
landing, where, with broom or child in hand, they stood gossiping by
the hour.

When Maurice rang, Frau Furst opened the door to him herself, having
first cautiously examined him through the kitchen window. Drying her
hands on her apron, she ushered him through the tiny entry--a place of
dangers, pitch-dark as it was, and lumbered with chests and
presses--into Franz's room, the "best room" of the house. Here were
collected a red plush suite, which was the pride of Frau Furst's heart,
and all the round, yellowing family photographs; here, too, stood the
well-used Bechstein, pile upon pile of music, a couple of music-stands,
a bust of Schubert, a faded, framed diploma. For years, assuredly, the
windows had never been thrown wide open; the odours of stale coffee and
forgotten dinners, of stove and warmed wood, of piano, music and
beeswax: all these lay as it were in streaks in the atmosphere, and
made it heavy and thought-benumbing.

A willing listener was worth more than gold to Frau Furst and here, the
first time he came, while waiting for Franz, Maurice heard in detail
the history of the family. The father had been an oboist in the
Gewandhaus orchestra, and had died a few years previously, of a chill
incurred after a performance of DIE MEISTERSINGER. At his death, it had
fallen on Franz to support the family; and, thanks to Schwarz's aid and
influence, Franz was able to get as many pupils as he had time to
teach. It was easy to see that this, her eldest son, was the apple of
Frau Furst's eye; her other children seemed to be there only to meet
his needs; his lightest wish was law. Each additional pupil that sought
him out, was a fresh tribute to his genius, each one that left him, no
matter after how long, was unthankful and a traitor. For the nights on
which his quartet met at the house, she prepared as another woman would
for a personal fete; and she watched the candles grow shorter without a
tinge of regret. When Franz played at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, the family
turned out in a body. Schwarz was a god, all-powerful, on whom their
welfare depended; and it was necessary to propitiate him by a quarterly
visit on a Sunday morning, when, over wine and biscuits, she wept real
and feigned tears of gratitude.

In this hard-working, careworn woman, who was seldom to be seen but in
petticoat, bed-jacket, and heelless, felt shoes; who, her whole life
long, had been little better than a domestic servant; in her there
existed a devotion to art which had never wavered. It would have seemed
to her contrary to nature that Franz should be anything but a musician,
and it was also quite in the order of things for them to be poor. Two
younger boys, who were still at school, gave up all their leisure time
to music--they had never in their lives tumbled round a football or
swung a bat--and Franz believed that the elder would prove a skilful
violinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and a good ear,
and was to be a singer--for before this Juggernaut, prejudice went
down. Had anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should be a
clerk, even a teacher, she would have flung up hands of horror; but
music!--that was a different matter. It was, moreover, the single one
of the arts, in which this staunch advocate of womanliness granted her
sex a share.

"Ask Franz," she said to Maurice. "Franz knows. He will explain. All
women can do is to reproduce what some one else has thought or felt."

As an immortal example of the limits set by sex, she invariably fell
back on Clara Schumann, with whom she had more than once come into
personal contact. In her youth, Frau Furst had had a clear soprano
voice, and, to Maurice's interest, she told him how she had sometimes
been sent for to the Schumann's house in the INSELSTRASSE, to sing
Robert's songs for him.

"Clara accompanied me," she said, relating this, the great reminiscence
of her life; "and he was there, too, although I never saw him face to
face. He was too shy for that. But he was behind a screen, and
sometimes he would call: 'I must alter that; it is too high;' or
'Quicker, quicker!' Sometimes even 'Bravo!'"

Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of the few
diversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre--when Franz
had tickets given to him; when one of her favourite operas was
performed; or on the anniversary of her husband's death--and, on such
occasions, she pointed out to the younger children, the links that
bound and would yet bind them to the great house.

"That was your father's seat," she reminded them every time. "The
second row from the end. He came in at the door to the left. And that,"
pointing to the conductor's raised chair, "is where Franz will sit some
day." For she dreamed of Franz in all the glory of KAPELLMEISTER; saw
him swinging the little stick that dominated the theatre-audience,
singers and players alike.

And the children, hanging over the high gallery, shuffling their
restless feet, thus had their path as dearly traced for them, their
destiny as surely sealed, as any fate-shackled heroes of antiquity.


* * * * *


Late one afternoon about this time, Franz might have been found
together with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at the latter's lodging
in the TALSTRASSE. He was astride a chair, over the back of which he
had folded his arms; and his chubby, rubicund face glistened with
moisture.

In the middle of the room, at the corner of a bare deal table that was
piled with loose music and manuscript, Schilsky sat improving and
correcting the tails and bodies of hastily made, notes. He was still in
his nightshirt, over which he had thrown coat and trousers; and, wide
open at the neck, it exposed to the waist a skin of the dead whiteness
peculiar to red-haired people. His face, on the other hand, was sallow
and unfresh; and the reddish rims of the eyes, and the coarsely
self-indulgent mouth, contrasted strikingly with the general
youthfulness of his appearance. He had the true musician's head: round
as a cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the soft fluffy
hair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes were either
desperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally attentive or at
rest; his blunted nose and chin were so short as to make the face look
top-heavy. A carefully tended young moustache stood straight out along
his cheeks. He had large, slender hands, and quick movements.

The air of the room was like a thin grey veiling, for all three puffed
hard at cigarettes. Without removing his from between his teeth,
Schilsky related an adventure of the night before. He spoke in jerks,
with a strong lisp, intent on what he was doing than on what he was
saying.

"Do you think he'd budge?" he asked in a thick, spluttery way. "Not he.
Till nearly two. And then I couldn't get him along. He thought it
wasn't eleven, and wanted to relieve himself at every corner. To
irritate an imaginary bobby. He disputed with them, too. Heavens, what
sport it was! At last I dragged him up here and got him on the sofa.
Off he rolls again. So I let him lie. He didn't disturb me."

Heinrich Krafft, the hero of the episode lay on the short,
uncomfortable sofa, with the table-cover for a blanket. In answer to
Schilsky, he said faintly, without opening his eyes: "Nothing would.
You are an ox. When I wake this morning, with a mouth like gum arabic,
he sits there as if he had not stirred all night. Then to bed, and
snores till midday, through all the hellish light and noise."

Here Furst could not resist making a little joke. He announced himself
by a chuckle-like the click of a clock about to strike.

"He's got to make the most of his liberty. He doesn't often get off
duty. We know, we know." He laughed tonelessly, and winked at Krafft.

Krafft quoted:

  In der Woche zwier--

"Now, you fellows, shut up!" said Schilsky. It was plain that banter of
this kind was not disagreeable to him; at the same time he was just at
the moment too engrossed, to have more than half an car for what was
said. With his short-sighted eyes close to the paper, he was listening
with all his might to some harmonies that his fingers played on the
table. When, a few minutes later he rose and stretched the stiffness
from his limbs, his face, having lost its expression of rapt
concentration, seemed suddenly to have grown younger. He set about
dressing himself by drawing off his nightshirt over his head. At a word
from him, Furst sprang to collect utensils for making coffee. Heinrich
Krafft opened his eyes and followed their movements; and the look he
had for Schilsky was as warily watchful as a cat's.

Schilsky, an undeveloped Hercules--he was narrow in proportion to his
height--and still naked to the waist, took some bottles from a long
line of washes and perfumes that stood on the washstand, and, crossing
to an elegant Venetian-glass mirror, hung beside the window, lathered
his chin. It was a peculiarity of his only to be able to attend
thoroughly to one thing at a time, and a string of witticisms uttered
by Furst passed unheeded. But Krafft's first words made him start.

Having watched him for some time, the latter said slowly. "I say, old
fellow, are you sure it's all square about Lulu and this Dresden
business?"

Razor in hand, Schilsky turned and looked at him. As he did so, he
coloured, and answered with an over-anxious haste: "Of course I am. I
made her go. She didn't want to."

"That's a well-known trick."

The young man scowled and thrust out his under-lip. "Do you think I'm
not up to their tricks? Do you want to teach me how to manage a woman?
I tell you I sent her away."

He tried to continue shaving, but was visibly uneasy. "Well, if you
won't believe me," he said, with sudden anger, though neither of the
others had spoken. "Now where the deuce is that letter?"

He rummaged among the music and papers on the table; in chaotic
drawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the washstand;
between door and stove, through a kind of rubbishheap that had formed
with time, of articles of dress, spoiled sheets of music-paper, soiled
linen, empty bottles, and boots, countless boots, single and in pairs.
When he had found what he looked for, he ran his eyes down the page, as
if he were going to read it aloud. Then, however, he changed his mind;
a boyish gratification overspread his face, and, tossing the letter to
Krafft, he bade them read it for themselves. Furst leaned over the end
of the sofa. It was written in English, in a bold, scrawly hand, and
ran, without date or heading:

MY OWN DEAREST

NOW ONLY FOUR DAYS MORE--I COUNT THEM MORNING AND NIGHT. I AM GOOD FOR
NOTHING--MY THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU. YESTERDAY AT THE GALLERY I
SAT ALONE IN THE ROOM WHERE THE MADONNA IS, PRETENDING
ENTHUSIASM--WHILE THE REST WENT TO HOLBEIN--AND READ YOUR LETTER OVER
AND OVER AGAIN. BUT IT MADE ME A LITTLE UNHAPPY TOO, FOR I SOON FOUND
OUT THAT YOU HAD WRITTEN IT AT THREE DIFFERENT TIMES. IS IT REALLY SO
HARD TO WRITE TO LULU?

HAVE YOU WORKED BETTER FOR WANT OF INTERRUPTION?--MY DAMNED
INTERRUPTIONS, AS YOU CALLED THEM LAST WEEK WHEN YOU WERE SO ANGRY WITH
ME. SHALL YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO SHOW ME WHEN I COME HOME? NO--DON'T
SAY YOU WILL--OR I SHALL HATE ZARATHUSTRA MORE THAN I DO ALREADY.

AND NOW ONLY TILL FRIDAY. THIS TIME YOU WILL MEET ME YES?--AND NOT COME
TO THE STATION AN HOUR LATE, AS YOU SAID YOU DID LAST TIME. IF YOU ARE
NOT THERE--I WARN YOU--I SHALL THROW MYSELF UNDER THE TRAIN. I AM
WRITING, TO GRUNHUT. GET FLOWERS--THERE IS MONEY IN ONE OF THE VASES ON
THE WRITING-TABLE. OH, IF YOU ONLY WILL, WE SHALL HAVE SUCH A HAPPY
EVENING--IF ONLY YOU WILL. AND I SHALL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN, NEVER
AGAIN.

YOUR OWN LOVING, L.

Furst could not make out much of this; he was still spelling through
the first paragraph when Krafft had finished. Schilsky, who had gone on
dressing, kept a sharp eye on his friends--particularly on Krafft.

"Well?" he asked eagerly as the letter was laid down.

Krafft was silent, but Furst kissed his finger-tips to a large hanging
photograph of the girl in question, and was facetious on the subject of
dark, sallow women.

"And you, Heinz? What do you say?" demanded Schilsky with growing
impatience.

Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a violent
irritation.

"Why the devil can't you open your mouth? What's the matter with you?
Have YOU anything like that to show--you Joseph, you?"

Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and trail on the
floor. "The letters were burned, dear boy--when you appeared." He
closed his eyes and smiled, seeming to remember something. But a moment
later, he fixed Schilsky sharply, and asked: "You want my opinion, do
you?"

"Of course I do," said Schilsky, and flung things about the room.

"Lulu," said Krafft with deliberation, "Lulu is getting you under her
thumb."

The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he had been vainly
trying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle that protruded from the
rubbish-heap.

"Me? Me under her thumb?" he spluttered--his lips became more marked
under excitement. "I should like to see her try it. You don't know me.
You don't know Lulu. I am her master, I tell you. She can't call her
soul her own."

"And yet," said Krafft, unmoved, "it's a fact all the same."

Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degree
of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His anger
redoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that what
you call being under her thumb?" he cried.

Furst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. "You're a lucky dog,
old fellow, and you know you are. We all know it--in spite of
occasional tantaras. But you would be still luckier if you took a
friend's sound advice and got you to the registrar. Ten minutes before
the registrar, and everything would be different. Then she might play
up as she liked; you would be master in earnest."

"Registrar?" echoed Krafft with deep scorn. "Listen to the ape! Not if
we can hinder it. When he's fool enough for that--I know him--it will
be with something fresher and less faded, something with the bloom
still on it."

Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age--she was eight
years older than he--was one of his sorest points.

"Oh, come on, now," said Furst as he poured out the coffee. "That's
hardly fair. She's not so young as she might be, it's true, but no one
can hold a candle to her still. Lulu is Lulu."

"Ten minutes before the registrar," continued Krafft, meditatively
shaking his head. "And for the rest of life, chains. And convention.
And security, which stales. And custom, which satiates. Oh no, I am not
for matrimony!"

Schilsky's ill-humour evaporated in a peal of boisterous laughter.
"Yes, and tell us why, chaste Joseph, tell us why," he cried, throwing
a brush at his friend. "Or go to the devil--where you're at home."

Krafft warded off the brush. "Look here," he said, "confess. Have you
kissed another girl for months? Have you had a single billet-doux?"

But Schilsky only winked provokingly. Having finished laughing, he said
with emphasis: "But after Lulu, they are all tame. Lulu is Lulu, and
that's the beginning and end of the matter."

"Exactly my opinion," said Furst. "And yet, boys, if I wanted to make
your mouths water, I could." He closed one eye and smacked his lips. "I
know of something--something young and blond ... and dimpled ... and
round, round as a feather-pillow"--he made descriptive movements of the
hand--"with a neck, boys, a neck, I say----" Here in sheer ecstasy, he
stuck fast, and could get no further.

Schilsky roared anew. "He knows of something ... so he does," he
cried--Furst's pronounced tastes were a standing joke among them. "Show
her to us, old man, show her to us! Where are you hiding her? If she's
under eighteen, she'll do--under eighteen, mind you, not a day over.
Come along, I'm on for a spree. Up with you, Joseph!"

He was ready, come forth from the utter confusion around him, like a
god from a cloud. He wore light grey clothes, a loosely knotted, bright
blue tie, with floating ends and conspicuous white spots, and buttoned
boots of brown kid. Hair and handkerchief were strongly scented.

Krafft, having been prevailed on to rise, made no further toilet than
that of dipping his head in a basin of water, which stood on the tail
of the grand piano. His hair emerged a mass of dripping ringlets,
covetously eyed by his companions.

They walked along the streets, Schilsky between the others, whom he
overtopped by head and shoulders: three young rebels out against the
Philistines: three bursting charges of animal spirits.

There was to be a concert that evening at the Conservatorium, and,
through vestibule and entrance-halls, which, for this reason, were
unusually crowded, the young men made a kind of triumphal progress.
Especially Schilsky. Not a girl, young or old, but peddled for a word
or a look from him; and he was only too prodigal of insolently
expressive glances, whispered greetings, and warm pressures of the
hand. The open flattery and bold adoration of which he was the object
mounted to his head; he felt secure in his freedom, and brimful of
selfconfidence; and, as the three of them walked back to the town, his
exhilaration, a sheer excess of well-being, was no longer to be kept
within decent bounds.

"Wait!" he cried suddenly as they were passing the Gewandhaus. "Wait a
minute! See me make that woman there take a fit."

He ran across the road to the opposite pavement, where the only person
in sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging slowly along, her
arms full of parcels; and, planting himself directly in front of her,
so that she was forced to stop, he seized both her hands and worked
them up and down.

"Now upon my soul, who would have thought of seeing you here, you
baggage, you?" he cried vociferously.

The woman was speechless from amazement; her packages fell to the
ground, and she gazed open-mouthed at the wild-haired lad before her,
making, at the same time, vain attempts to free her hands.

"No, this really is luck," he went on, holding her fast. "Come, a kiss,
my duck, just one! EIN KUSSCHEN IN EHREN, you know----" and, in very
fact, he leaned forward and pecked at her cheek.

The blood dyed her face and she panted with rage.

"You young scoundrel!" she gasped. "You impertinent young dog! I'll
give you in charge. I'll--I'll report you to the police. Let me go this
instant--this very instant, do you hear?--or I'll scream for help."

The other two had come over to enjoy the fun. Schilsky turned to them
with a comical air of dismay, and waved his arm. "Well I declare, if I
haven't been and made a mistake!" he exclaimed, and slapped his
forehead. "I'm out by I don't know how much--by twenty years, at least.
No thank you, Madam, keep your kisses! You're much too old and ugly for
me."

He flourished his big hat in her face, pirouetted on his heel, and the
three of them went down the street, hallooing with laughter.

They had supper together at the BAVARIA, Schilsky standing treat; for
they had gone by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he called in to
investigate the vase mentioned in the letter. Afterwards, they
commenced an informal wandering from one haunt to another, now by
themselves, now with stray acquaintances. Krafft, who was still
enfeebled by the previous night, and who, under the best of
circumstances, could not carry as much as his friends, was the first to
give in. For a time, they got him about between them. Then Furst grew
obstreperous, and wanted to pour his beer on the floor as soon as it
was set before him, so that they were put out of two places, in the
second of which they left Krafft. But the better half of the night was
over before Schilsky was comfortably drunk, and in a state to unbosom
himself to a sympathetic waitress, about the hardship it was to be
bound to some one older than yourself. He shed tears of pity at his
lot, and was extremely communicative. "'N KORPER, SCHA-AGE IHNEN, 'N
KORPER!" but old, old, a "HALB'SCH JAHR' UND'RT" older than he was, and
desperately jealous.

"It's too bad; such a nice young man as you are," said the MAMSELL,
who, herself not very sober, was sitting at ease on his knee, swinging
her legs. "But you nice ones are always chicken-hearted. Treat her as
she deserves, my chuck, and make no bones about it. Just let her
rip--and you stick to me!"




VI.


One cold, windy afternoon, when dust was stirring and rain seemed
imminent, Maurice Guest walked with bent head and his hat pulled over
his eyes. He was returning from the ZEITZERSTRASSE, where, in a
photographer's show-case, he had a few days earlier discovered a large
photograph of Louise. This was a source of great pleasure to him. Here,
no laws of breeding or delicacy hindered him from gazing at her as
often as he chose.

On this particular day, whether he had looked too long, or whether the
unrest of the weather, the sense of something impending, the dusty
dryness that craved rain, had got into his blood and disquieted him:
whatever it was, he felt restless and sick for news of her, and, at
this very moment, was on his way to Madeleine, in the foolish hope of
hearing her name.

But a little adventure befell him which made him forget his intention.

He was about to turn the corner of a street, when a sudden blast of
wind swept round, bearing with it some half dozen single sheets of
music. For a moment they whirled high, then sank fluttering to the
ground, only to rise again and race one another along the road. Maurice
instinctively gave chase, but it was not easy to catch them; no sooner
had he secured one than the next was out of his reach.

Meanwhile their owner, a young and very pretty girl, looked on and
laughed, without making any effort to help him; and the more he exerted
himself, the more she laughed. In one hand she was carrying a
violin-case, in the other a velvet muff, which now and again she raised
to her lips, as if to conceal her mirth. It was a graceful movement,
but an unnecessary one, for her laughter was of that charming kind,
which never gives offence; and, besides that, although it was
continuous, it was neither hearty enough nor frank enough to be
unbecoming the face was well under control. She stood there, with her
head slightly on one side, and the parted lips showed both rows of
small, even teeth; but the smile was unvarying, and, in spite of her
merriment, her eyes did not for an instant quit the young man's face,
as he darted to and fro.

Maurice could not help laughing himself, red and out of breath though
he was.

"Now for the last one," he said in German.

At these words she seemed more amused than ever. "I don't speak
German," she answered in English, with a strong American accent.

Having captured all the sheets, Maurice tried to arrange them for her.

"It's my Kayser," she explained with a quick, upward glance, adding the
next minute with a fresh ripple of laughter. "He's all to pieces."

"You have too much to carry," said Maurice. "On such a windy day, too."

"That's what Joan said--Joan is my sister," she continued. "But I guess
it's so cold this afternoon I had to bring a muff along. If my fingers
are stiff I can't play, and then Herr Becker is angry." But she laughed
again as she spoke, and it was plain that the master's wrath did not
exactly incite fear. "Joan always comes along, but to-day she's sick."

"Will you let me help you?" asked Maurice, and a moment later he was
walking at her side.

She handed over music and violin to him without a trace of hesitation;
and, as they went along the PROMENADE, she talked to him with as little
embarrassment as though they were old acquaintances. It was so kind of
him to help her, she thought; she couldn't imagine how she would ever
have got home without him, alone against the wind; and she was
perfectly sure he must be American--no one but an American would be so
nice. When Maurice denied this, she laughed very much indeed, and was
not sure, this being the case, whether she could like him or not; as a
rule, she didn't like English people; they were stiff and horrid, and
were always wanting either to be introduced or to shake hands. Here she
carried her muff up to her lips again, and her eyes shone mischievously
at him over the dark velvet. Maurice had never known anyone so easily
moved to laughter; whenever she spoke she laughed, and she laughed at
everything he said.

Off the PROMENADE, where the trees were of a marvellous Pale green,
they turned into a street of high spacious houses, the dark lines of
which were here and there broken by an arched gateway, or the delicate
tints of a spring garden. To a window in one of the largest houses
Maurice's little friend looked up, and smiled and nodded.

"There's my sister."

The young man looked, too, and saw a dark, thin-faced girl, who, when
she found four eyes fixed on her, abruptly drew in her head, and as
abruptly put it out again, leaning her two hands on the sill.

"She's wondering who it is," said Maurice's companion gleefully. Then,
turning her face up, she made a speaking-trumpet of her hands, and
cried: "It's all right, Joan.--Now I must run right up and tell her
about it," she said to Maurice. "Perhaps she'll scold; Joan is very
particular. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for being so good to
me--oh, won't you tell me your name?"

The very next morning brought him a small pink note, faintly scented.
The pointed handwriting was still childish, but there was a coquettish
flourish beneath the pretty signature: Ephie Cayhill. Besides a
graceful word of thanks, she wrote: WE ARE AT HOME EVERY SUNDAY. MAMMA
WOULD BE VERY PLEASED.

Maurice did not scruple to call the following week, and on doing so,
found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries,
which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not
excluded--Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends,
awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to
gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a
smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or
covert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all,
to be skilled in the art of looking amiable, while these visitors from
other lands heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all that
did not please them in the life and laws of this country that was
temporarily their home.

Mrs. Cayhill was a handsome woman, who led a comfortable, vegetable
existence, and found it a task to rise from the plump sofa-cushion. Her
pleasant features were slack, and in those moments of life which called
for a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman
who has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on
practical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an
immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and slept
with a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in the
joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence,
remained for the most part completely ignorant of what was going on
around her. When she did happen to become conscious of her
surroundings, she was callous, or merely indifferent, to them; for,
compared with romance, life was dull and diffuse; it lacked the wilful
simplicity, the exaggerative omissions, and forcible perspectives,
which make up art: in other words, life demanded that unceasing work of
selection and rejection, which it is the story-teller's duty to Perform
for his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. Cayhill's net; she lived
in a world of intrigue and excitement, and, seated in her easy-chair by
the sitting-room window, was generally as remote from her family as
though she were in Timbuctoo.

There was a difference of ten years in age between her daughters, and
it was the younger of the two whose education was being completed.
Johanna, the elder, had been a disappointment to her mother. Left to
her own devices at an impressionable age, the girl had developed
bookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by a
free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel,
Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, but
she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felt
her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said:
"Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the fact
that such an emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from the
mild-tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other member
of the family took Johanna's part. So she buried her ambitions, and
kept her mother's house in an admirable, methodical way.

It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna adored her
little sister, and would cheerfully have given up more than this for
her sake. Ephie, who was at that time just emerging from childhood, was
very pretty and precocious, and her mother had great hopes of her. She
also tired early of her lesson-books, and, soon after she turned
sixteen, declared her intention of leaving school. As at least a couple
of years had still to elapse before she was old enough to be introduced
in society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one decisive step of her life,
determined that travel in Europe should put the final touches to
Ephie's education: a little German and French; some finishing lessons
on the violin; a run through Italy and Switzerland, and then to Paris,
whence they would carry back with them a complete and costly outfit.
So, valiantly, Mrs. Cayhill had her trunks packed, and, together with
Johanna, who would as soon have thought of denying her age as of
letting these two helpless beings go out into the world alone, they
crossed the Atlantic.

For some three months now, they had been established in Leipzig. A
circulating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs.
Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that the
greater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place.
Ephie, too, had already had time to learn that, as far as music was
concerned, her business was not so much with finishing as with
beginning, and that the road to art, which she with all the rest must
follow, was a steep one. She might have found it still more arduous,
had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man and very
impressionable. And Ephie never looked more charming than when, with
her rounded, dimpled arm raised in an exquisite curve, she leaned her
cheek against the glossy brown wood of her violin.

She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which
old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full,
white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that were
dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low
forehead, but, both here and at the back of her neck, it broke into
innumerable little curls, which were much lighter in colour than the
rest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin of a cherry;
it had that exquisite freshness which is only to be found in a very
young girl, and is lovelier than the bloom on ripe fruit. Her dark blue
eyes were well opened, but the black lashes were so long and so
peculiarly straight that the eyes themselves were usually hidden, and
this made it all the more effective did she suddenly look up. Moulded
like wax, the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after it;
anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, and
consequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of questioning
amaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the face: bright red, full,
yet delicate, arched like a bow, with corners that went in and upwards,
it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the face of a
little child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and the years
would eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing.

She also had a charming laugh, with a liquid note in it, that made one
think of water bubbling on a dry summer day.

It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday afternoon, and drew the
handful of young men together, time after time.

Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside her book,
was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, and Johanna only
counted in so far as she made and distributed cups of tea at the end of
the room. She did not look with favour on the young men who gathered
there, and her manner to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them in
turn, as he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain for
something to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with Johanna.
The ordinary small change and polite commonplace of conversation, she
met with a silent contempt. In musical chit-chat, she took no interest
whatever, and pretended to none, openly indeed "detested music," and
was unable to distinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, "except by the
noise;" while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on the
literary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled at what
he said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly contradicted him.
She was the thorn in the flesh of these young men; and after having
dutifully spent a few awkward moments at her side, they stole back, one
by one, to the opposite end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchingly
dressed in blue, swung to and fro in a big American
rocking-chair--going backwards, it carried her feet right off the
ground--and talked charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her own
light laugh, and her mother's deeper notes, which went on like an
organ-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephic said, matchlessly
amusing.

As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first time--it now
leaked out that Dove spent every Sunday afternoon in the
LESSINGSTRASSE--he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. Not in a disparaging
way; Dove had never been heard to mention a woman's name otherwise than
with respect. And, in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna's
good qualities, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her,
and remain at her side; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with Ephie,
and had, as it was, more rivals than he cared for, in the field.

"You should get on with her, I think, Guest," he said slily. "You read
these German writers she is so interested in. But don't be discouraged
by her manner. For though she's one of the most unselfish women I ever
met, her way of Speaking is sometimes abrupt. She reminds me, if it
doesn't sound unkind, of a faithful watch-dog, or something of the
sort, which cannot express its devotion as it would like to."

When, after a lively greeting from Ephie, and a few pleasant words from
Mrs. Cayhill, Maurice found himself standing beside Johanna, the truth
of Dove's simile was obvious to him. This dark, unattractive girl had
apparently no thought for anything but her tea-making; she moved the
cups this way and that, filled the pot with water, blew out and lighted
again the flame of the spirit-lamp, without paying the least heed to
Maurice, making, indeed, such an ostentatious show of being occupied,
that it would have needed a brave man to break in upon her duties with
idle words. He remained standing, however, in a constrained silence,
which lasted until she could not invent anything else to do, and was
obliged to drink her own tea. Then he said abruptly, in a tone which he
meant to be easy, but which was only jaunty: "And how do you like being
in Germany, Miss Cayhill? Does it not seem very strange after America?"

Johanna lifted her shortsighted eyes to his face, and looked coolly and
disconcertingly at him through her glasses, as if she had just become
aware of his presence.

"Strange? Why should it?" she asked in an unfriendly tone.

"Why, what I mean is, everything must be so different here from what
you are accustomed to--at least it is from what we are used to in
England," he corrected himself. "The ways and manners, and the
language, and all that sort of thing, you know."

"Excuse me, I do not know," she answered in the same tone as before.
"If a person takes the trouble to prepare himself for residence in a
foreign country, nothing need seem either strange or surprising. But
English people, as is well known, expect to find a replica of England
in every country they go to."

There was a pause, in which James, the pianist, who was a regular
visitor, approached to have his cup refilled. All the circle knew, of
course, that Johanna was "doing for a new man"; and it seemed to
Maurice that James half closed one eye at him, and gave him a small,
sympathetic nudge with his elbow.

So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, without
preamble.

"My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" he
said with a slight upward inflection in his voice.

Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, and
colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things.

"I've done a little in that line myself," continued Maurice, as she
made no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately I
finished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS."

"Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also.

"It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she again
acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "I
suppose you know it? You're sure to."

This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sore
spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose," she
said, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "that
you have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of Jean
Paul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider
Heine the one and only German poet."

Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudly
and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making it
incumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put it
down, and tried to give the matter an airy turn.

"And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong in
thinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? And
you will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has had
anything approaching a style?"

Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything,"
she said. "Like all English people--it flatters your national vanity, I
presume--you think German literature began and ended with Heine.--A
miserable Jew!"

"Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew,
can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, this
being a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And as
Johanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely:
"Then you don't think much of Heine?"

But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an expression
of opinion, and the young man continued, with apology in his tone: "It
may be bad taste on my part, of course. But one hears it said on every
side. If you could tell me what I ought to read ... or, perhaps, advise
me a little?" he ended tentatively.

"I don't lend my books," said Johanna more rudely than she had yet
spoken. And that was all Maurice could get from her. A minute or two
later, she rose and went out of the room.

It became much less restrained as soon as the door had closed behind
her. Ephie laughed more roguishly, and Mrs. Cayhill allowed herself to
find what her little daughter said, droller than before. With an
appearance of unconcern, Maurice strolled back to the group by the
window. Dove was also talking of literature.

"That reminds me, how did you like the book I lent you on Wednesday,
Mrs. Cayhill?" he asked, at the same instant springing forward to pick
up Ephie's handkerchief, which had fallen to the ground.

"Oh, very much indeed, very interesting, very good of you," answered
Mrs. Cayhill. "Ephie, darling, the sun is shining right on your face."

"What was it?" asked James, while Dove jumped up anew to lower the
blind, and Ephie raised a bare, dimpled arm to shade her eyes.

Mrs. Cayhill could not recollect the title just at once she had a
"wretched memory for names"--and went over what she had been reading.

"Let me see, it was ... no, that was yesterday: SHADOWED BY THREE, a
most delightful Book. On Friday, RICHARD ELSMERE, and--oh, yes, I know,
it was about a farm, an Australian farm."

"THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM," put in Dove mildly, returning to his
seat.

"Australian or African, it doesn't matter which," said Mrs. Cayhill.
"Yes, a nice book, but a little coarse in parts, and very foolish at
the end--the disguising, and the dying out of doors, and the
looking-glass, and all that."

"I must say I think it a very powerful book," said Dove solemnly. "That
part, you know, where the boy listens to the clock ticking in the
night, and thinks to himself that with every tick, a soul goes home to
God. A very striking idea!"

"Why, I think it must be a horrid book," cried Ephie. "All about dying.
Fancy some one dying every minute. It couldn't possibly be true. For
then the world would soon be empty."

"Always there are coming more into it," said Furst, in his blunt,
broken English.

A pause ensued. Dove flicked dust off his trouser-leg; and the American
men present were suddenly fascinated by the bottoms of their cups.
Ephie was the first to regain her composure.

"Now let us talk of something pleasant, something quite different--from
dying." She turned and, over her shoulder, laughed mischievously at
Maurice, who was siting behind her. Then, leaning forward in her chair,
with every eye upon her, she told how Maurice had saved her music from
the wind, and, with an arch face, made him appear very ridiculous. By
her prettily exaggerated description of a heated, perspiring young man,
darting to and fro, and muttering to himself in German, her hearers,
Maurice included, were highly diverted--and no one more than Mrs.
Cayhill.

"You puss, you puss!" she cried, wiping her eyes and shaking a finger
at the naughty girl.

The general amusement had hardly subsided when Furst rose to his feet,
and, drawing his heels together, made a flowery little speech, the gist
of which was, that he would have esteemed himself a most fortunate man,
had he been in Maurice's place. Ephie and her mother exchanged looks,
and shook with ill-concealed mirth, so that Furst, who had spoken
seriously and in good faith, sat down red and uncomfortable; and
Boehmer, who was dressed in what he believed to be American fashion,
smiled in a superior manner, to show he was aware that Furst was making
himself ridiculous.

"Look here, Miss Ephie," said James; "the next time you have to go out
alone, just send for me, and I'll take care of you."

"Or me" said Dove. "You have only to let me know."

"No, no, Mr. Dove!" cried Mrs. Cayhill. "You do far too much for her as
it is. You'll spoil her altogether."

But at this, several of the young men exclaimed loudly: that would be
impossible. And Ephie coloured becomingly, raised her lashes, and
distributed winning smiles. Then quiet had been restored, she assured
them that they all very kind, but she would never let anyone go with
her but Joan--dear old Joan. They could not imagine how fond she was of
Joan.

"She is worth more than all of you put together." And at the cries of:
"Oh, oh!" she was thrown into a new fit of merriment, and went still
further. "I would not give Joan's little finger for anyone in the
world."

And meanwhile, as all her hearers--all, that is to say, except Dove,
who sat moody, fingering his slight moustache, and gazing at Ephie with
fondly reproachful eyes--as all of them, with Mrs. Cayhill at their
head, made vehement protest against this sweeping assertion, Johanna
sat alone in her bedroom, at the back of the house. It was a dull room,
looking on a courtyard, but she was always glad to escape to it from
the flippant chatter in the sitting-room. Drawing a little table to the
window, she sat down and began to read. But, on this day, her thoughts
wandered; and, ultimately, propping her chin on her hand, she fell into
reverie, which began with something like "the fool and his Schiller!"
and ended with her rising, and going to the well-stocked book-shelves
that stood at the foot of the bed.

She took out a couple of volumes and looked through them, then returned
them to their places on the shelf. No, she said to herself, why should
she? What she had told the young man was true: she never lent her
books; he would soil them, or, worse still, not appreciate them as he
ought--she could not give anyone who visited there on Sunday, credit
for a nice taste.

Unknown to herself, however, something worked in her, for, the very
next time Maurice was there, she met him in the passage, as he was
leaving, and impulsively thrust a paper parcel into his hand.

"There is a book, if you care to take it."

He did not express the surprise he felt, nor did he look at the title.
But Ephie, who was accompanying him to the door, made a face of
laughing stupefaction behind her sister's back, and went out on the
landing with him, to whisper: "What HAVE you been doing to Joan?"--at
which remark, and at Maurice's blank face, she laughed so immoderately
that she was forced to go down the stairs with him, for fear Joan
should hear her; and, in the house-door, she stood, a white-clad little
figure, and waved her hand to him until he turned the corner.

Having read the first volume of HAMMER UND AMBOSS deep into two nights,
Maurice returned it and carried away the second. But it was only after
he had finished PROBLEMATISCHE NATUREN, and had expressed himself with
due enthusiasm, that Johanna began to thaw a little. She did not
discuss what he read with him; but, going on the assumption that a
person who could relish her favourite author had some good in him, she
gave the young man the following proof of her favour.

Between Ephie and him there had sprung up spontaneously a mutual
liking, which it is hard to tell the cause of. For Ephie knew nothing
of Maurice's tastes, interests and ambitions, and he did not dream of
asking her to share them. Yet, with the safe instincts of a young girl,
she chose him for a brother from among all her other acquaintances;
called him "Morry"; scarcely ever coquetted with him; and let him
freely into her secrets. It is easier to see why Maurice was attracted
to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was also
adorably equable--she did not know what it was to be out of humour. And
she was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits.
When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let
her merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts
to see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a week
with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and he
ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to find old
Tauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill.

The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship of her
daughter with this young man than the ordinary American mother would
have done; but Johanna's toleration of it was, for the most part, to be
explained by the literary interests before mentioned. For Johanna was
always in a tremble lest Ephie should become spoiled; and thoughtless
Ephie could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by being
prettily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming to
have private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. This,
and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when every day might be
expected to widen the distance between them, sometimes made Johanna
very gruff and short, even with Ephie herself. As her sister, she alone
knew how much was good and true under the child's light exterior; she
admired in Ephie all that she herself had not--her fair prettiness, her
blithe manner, her easy, graceful words--and, had it been necessary,
she would have gone down on her knees to remove the stones from Ephie's
path.

Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made the impression
of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings,
intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon come
often enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness;
and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her,
had Johanna shown the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he did
not understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the
depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt in
which she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday--poor fools
who were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should have
been taking plain, hard fare at college. To Dove, Johanna had a
particular aversion; chiefly, and in a contradictory spirit, because it
was evident to all that his intentions were serious. But she could not
hinder wayward Ephie from making a shameless use of him, and then
laughing at him behind his back--a laugh in which Mrs. Cayhill was not
always able to refrain from joining, though it must be said that she
was usually loud in her praises of Dove, at the expense of all visitors
who were not American.

"From these Dutch you can't expect much, one way or the other," she
declared. "And young Guest sometimes sits there with a face as long as
my arm. But Dove is really a most sensible young fellow--why, he thinks
just as I do about Arnerica."

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 BRUDERSTRASSE 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 BRUDERSTRASSE, 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 passed 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
gratitude, 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 pass the time, she suggested that he should help her to make tea,
and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the passage 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 buttoned 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 passed 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 accumulated 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 title-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 passed, 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----"

"You are disgusting!"

She had got the music from him, but he was already at the piano,
parodying, from memory, the conventional accompaniment and sentimental
words of the song. "And this," he said, "from the learned ass who is
not yet convinced that the FEUERZAUBER is music, and who groans like a
dredge when the last act of SIEGFRIED is mentioned. Wendling and
Wagner! Listen to this!--for once, I am a full-blooded Wagnerite."

He felt after the chords that prelude Brunnhilde's awakening by
Siegfried. Until now, Avery Hill had sat indifferent, as though what
went on had nothing to do with her; but no sooner had Krafft commenced
to play than she grew uneasy; her eyes lost their cold assurance, and,
suddenly getting up and going round to the front of the piano, she
pushed the young man's hands from the keys. Krafft yielded his place to
her, and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. She
played very well--even Maurice in his dis

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