Ephie turned scarlet, and jumping up from the sofa, so that all the blossoms fell from her hair at once, stamped her foot.
"Maurice Guest! How dare you!" she cried angrily, and, to his surprise, the young man saw that she had tears in her eyes.
He had never known Ephie to be even annoyed, and was consequently dumfounded; he could not believe, after the direct provocation she had given him, that his crime had been so great.
"But Ephie dear!" he protested. "I had no idea, upon my word I hadn"t, that you would take it like this. What"s the matter? It was nothing.
Don"t cry. I"m a brute."
"Yes, you are, a horrid brute! I shall never forgive you--never!" said Ephie, and then she began to cry in earnest.
He put his arm round her, and coaxing her to sit down, wiped away her tears with his own handkerchief. In vain did he beg her to tell him why she was so vexed. To all he said, she only shook her head, and answered: "You had no right to do it."
He vowed solemnly that it should never happen again, but at least a quarter of an hour elapsed before he succeeded in comforting her, and even then, she remained more subdued than usual. But when Maurice had gone, and she had dropped the scattered sprays of lilac out of the window on his head, she clasped her hands at the back of her neck, and dropped a curtsy to herself in the locking-gla.s.s.
"Him, too!" she said aloud.
She nodded at her reflected self, but her face was grave; for between these two, small, blue-robed figures was a deep and unsuspected secret.
And Maurice, as he walked away, wondered to himself for still a little why she should have been so disproportionately angry; but not for long; for, when he was not actually with Ephie, he was not given to thinking much about her. Besides, from there, he went straight to the latter half of an ABENDANTERKALTUNG, to hear Furst play Brahms" VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY HANDEL
VIII.
That night he had a vivid dream. He dreamt that he was in a garden, where nothing but lilac grew--grew with a luxuriance he could not have believed possible, and on fantastic bushes: there were bushes like steeples and bushes smaller than himself, big and little, broad and slender, but all were of lilac, and in flower--an extravagant profusion of white and purple blossoms. He gazed round him in delight, and took an eager step forward; but, before he could reach the nearest bush, he saw that it had been an illusion: the bush was stripped and bare, and the rest were bare as well. "You"re too late. It has all been gathered," he heard a voice say, and at this moment, he saw Ephie at the end of a long alley of bushes, coming towards him, her arms full of lilac. She smiled and nodded to him over it, and he heard her laugh, but when she was half-way down the path, he discovered his mistake: it was not Ephie but Louise. She came slowly forward, her laden arms outstretched, and he would have given his life to be able to advance and to take what she offered him; but he could not stir, could not lift hand or foot, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Her steps grew more hesitating, she seemed hardly to move; and then, just as she reached the spot where he stood, he found that it was not she after all, but Madeleine, who laughed at his disappointment and said: "I"m not offended, remember!"--The revulsion of feeling was too great; he turned away, without taking the flowers she held out to him--and awoke.
This dream was present to him all the morning, like a melody that haunts and recalls. But he worked more laboriously than usual; for he was aggrieved with himself for having idled away the previous afternoon, and then, too, Furst"s playing had made a profound impression on him. In vigorous imitation, he sat down to the piano again, after a hasty dinner s.n.a.t.c.hed in the neighbourhood; but as he was only playing scales, he propped open before him a little volume of Goethe"s poems, which Johanna had lent him, and suiting his scales to the metre of the lines, read through one after another of the poems he liked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped playing and held the book in both hands.
He had hardly begun anew when the door of his room was unceremoniously opened, and Dove entered, in the jocose way he adopted when in a rosy mood. Maurice made a movement to conceal his book, merely in order to avoid the explanation he new must follow; but was too late; Dove had espied it. He did not belie himself on this occasion; he was extremely astonished to find Maurice "still at it," but much more so to see a book open before him; and he vented his surprise loudly and wordily.
"Liszt used to read the newspaper," said Maurice, for the sake of saying something. He had swung round in the piano-chair, and he yawned as he spoke, without attempting to disguise it.
"Why, yes, of course, why not?" agreed Dove cordially, afraid lest he had seemed discouraging. "Why not, indeed? For those who can do it. I wish I could. But will you believe me, Guest"--here he seated himself, and settled into an att.i.tude for talking, one hand inserted between his crossed knees--"will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficult business to read at all?--at any time. I find it too stimulating, too ANREGEND, don"t you know? I a.s.sure you, for weeks now, I have been trying to read PAST AND PRESENT, and have not yet got beyond the first page. It gives one so much to think about, opens up so many new ideas, that I stop myself and say: "Old fellow, that must be digested." This, I see, is poetry"--he ran quickly and disparagingly through Maurice"s little volume, and laid it down again. "I don"t care much for poetry myself, or for novels either. There"s so much in life worth knowing that is true, or of some use to one; and besides, as we all know, fact is stranger than fiction."
They spoke also of Furst"s performance the evening before, and Dove gave it its due, although he could not conceal his opinion that Furst"s star would ultimately pale before that of a new-comer to the town, a late addition to the list of Schwarz"s pupils, whom he, Dove, had been "putting up to things a bit." This was a "Manchester man" and former pupil of Halle"s, and it would certainly not be long before he set the place in a stir. Dove had just come from his lodgings, where he had been permitted to sit and hear him practise finger-exercises.
"A touch like velvet," declared Dove. "And a stretch!--I have never seen anything like it. He spans a tenth, nay, an eleventh, more easily than we do an octave."
The object of Dove"s visit was, it transpired, to propose that Maurice should accompany him that evening to the theatre, where DIE WALKURE was to be performed; and as, on this day, Dove had reasons for seeing the world through rose-coloured gla.s.ses, he suggested, out of the fulness of his heart, that they should also invite Madeleine to join them.
Maurice was nothing loath to have the meeting with her over, and so, though it was not quite three o"clock, they went together to the MOZARTSTRa.s.sE.
They found Madeleine before her writing-table, which was strewn with closely written sheets. This was mail-day for America, she explained, and begged the young men to excuse her finishing an important letter to an American journalist, with whom she had once "chummed up" on a trip to Italy.
"One never knows when these people may be of use to one," she was accustomed to say.
Having addressed and stamped the envelope, and tossed it to the others, she rose and gave a hand to each. At Maurice, she smiled in a significant way.
"You should have stayed, my son. Some one came, after all."
Maurice laid an imploring finger on his lips, but Dove had seized the opportunity of glancing at his cravat in the mirror, and did not seem to hear.
She agreed willingly to their plan of going to the theatre; she had thought of it herself; then, a girl she knew had asked her to come to hear her play in ENSEMBLESPIEL.
"However, I will let that slip. Schelper and Moran-Olden are to sing; it will be a fine performance. I suppose some one is to be there," she said laughingly to Dove, "or you would not be of the party."
But Dove only smiled and looked sly.
Without delay, Madeleine began to detail to Maurice, the leading motives on which the WALKURE was built up; and Dove, having hummed, strummed and whistled all those he knew by heart, settled down to a discourse on the legitimacy and development of the motive, and especially in how far it was to be considered a purely intellectual implement. He spoke with the utmost good-nature, and was so unconscious of being a bore that it was impossible to take him amiss. Madeleine, however, could not resist, from time to time, throwing in a "Really!"
"How extraordinary!" "You don"t say so!" among his abstruse remarks.
But her sarcasm was lost on Dove; and even if he had noticed it, he would only have smiled, unhit, being too sensible and good-humoured easily to take offence.
It was always a mystery to his friends where Dove got his information; he was never seen to read, and there was little theorising about art, little but the practical knowledge of it, in the circles to which he belonged. But just as he went about picking up small items of gossip, so he also gathered in stray sc.r.a.ps of thought and information, and being by nature endowed with an excellent memory, he let nothing that he had once heard escape him. He had, besides, the talker"s gift of neatly stringing together these tags he had pulled off other people, of connecting them, and giving them a varnish of originality.
"By no means a fool," Madeleine was in the habit of saying of him. "He would be easier to deal with if he were."
Here, on the leading motive as handled by Wagner and Wagner"s forerunners, he had an unwritten treatise ripe in his brain. But he had only just compared the individual motives to the lettered ribbons that issue from the mouths of the figures in medieval pictures, and began to hint at the IDEE FIXE of Berlioz, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door.
"HEREIN!" cried Madeleine in her clear voice; and at the sight of the person who opened the door, Maurice involuntarily started up from his chair, and taking his stand behind it, held the back of it firmly with both hands, in self-defence.
It was Louise.
On seeing the two young men, she hesitated, and, with the door-handle still in her hand, smiled a faint questioning smile at Madeleine, raising her eyebrows and showing a thin line of white between her lips.
"May I come in?" she asked, with her head a little on one side.
"Why, of course you know you may," said Madeleine with some asperity.
And so Louise entered, and came forward to the table at which they had been sitting; but before anything further could be said, she raised her arms to catch up a piece of hair which had fallen loose on her neck.
The young men were standing, waiting to greet her, Maurice still behind his chair; but she did not hurry on their account, or "just on their account did not hurry," as Madeleine mentally remarked.
Both watched Louise, and followed her movements. To their eyes, she appeared to be very simply dressed; it was only Madeleine who appreciated the cost and care of this seeming simplicity. She wore a plain, close-fitting black dress, of a smooth, shiny stuff, which obeyed and emphasised the lines and outlines of her body; and, as she stood, with her arms upraised, composedly aware of being observed, they could see the line of her side rising and falling with the rise and fall of each breath. Otherwise, she wore a large black hat, with feathers and an overhanging brim, which threw shadows on her face, and made her eyes seem darker than ever.
Letting her arms drop with a sigh of relief, she shook hands with Dove, and Dove--to Madeleine"s diversion and Maurice"s intense disgust--introduced Maurice to her as his friend. She looked full at the latter, and held out her hand; but before he could take it, she withdrew it again, and put both it and her left hand behind her back.
"No, no," she said. "I mustn"t shake hands with you to-day. Today is Friday. And to give one"s hand for the first time on a Friday would bring bad luck--to you, if not to me."
She was serious, but both the others laughed, and Maurice, having let his outstretched hand fall, coloured, and smiled rather foolishly. She did not seem to notice his discomfiture; turning to Madeleine, she began to speak of a piece of music she wished to borrow; and then Maurice had a chance of observing her at his ease, and of listening to her voice, in which he heard all manner of impossible things. But while Madeleine, with Dove"s a.s.sistance, was looking through a pile of music, Louise came suddenly up to him and said: "You are not offended with me, are you?" She had a low voice, with a childish cadence in it, which touched him like a caress.
"Offended? I with you?" He meant to laugh, but his voice shook.
She stared at him, openly astonished, not only at his words, but also at the tone in which they were said; and the strange, fervent gaze bent on her by this man whom she saw for the first time in her life, confused her and made her uneasy. Slowly and coldly she turned away, but Madeleine, who was charitably occupying Dove as long as she could, did not take any notice of her. And as the young man continued to stare at her, she looked out of the window at the lowering grey sky, and said, with a shudder: "What a day for June!"
All eyes followed hers, Maurice"s with the rest; but almost instantly he brought them back again to her face.
"Louise is a true Southerner," said Madeleine; "and is wretched if there"s a cloud in the sky."
Louise smiled, and he saw her strong white teeth. "It"s not quite as bad as that," she said; and then, although herself not clear why she should have answered these searching eyes, she added, looking at Maurice: "I come from Australia."