"Prove it?" she echoed. "Are his own words not proof enough! He told the whole story that night, just as he had first told all about you. It had been going on for months. Sometimes, you were hardly out of his room, before the other was in. And if you don"t believe me, ask the person you"re so proud of having attracted, without raising your finger."
Louise moved away from the door, and went back to the table, on which she leaned heavily. All the blood had left her face and the dark rings below her eyes stood out with alarming distinctness. Madeleine felt a sudden compunction at what she had done.
"It"s entirely your own fault that I told you anything whatever about it," she said, heartily annoyed with herself. "You had no right to provoke me by saying what you did. I declare, Louise, to be with you makes one just like you. If it"s any consolation to you to know it, he was drunk at the time, and there"s a possibility it may not be true."
"Go away--go out of my room!" cried Louise. And Madeleine went, without delay, having almost a physical sensation about her throat of the slender hands stretched so threateningly towards her.--And this unpleasant feeling remained with her until she turned the corner of the street.
II.
On the afternoon when Maurice found that Madeleine had kept her word he went home and paced his room in perplexity. He pictured Louise lying helpless, too weak to raise her hand. His brain went stupidly over the few people to whom he might turn for aid. Avery Hill?--Johanna Cayhill?
But Avery was occupied with her own troubles; and Johanna"s relationship to Ephie put her out of the question. He was thinking fantastic thoughts of somehow offering his own services, or of even throwing himself on the goodness of a person like Miss Jensen, whose motherly form must surely imply a corresponding motherliness of heart, when Frau. Krause entered the room, bearing a letter which she said had been left for him an hour or two previously. She carried a lamp in her hand, and eyed her restless lodger with suspicion.
"Why, in the name of goodness, didn"t you bring this in when it came?"
he demanded. He held the unopened letter at arm"s length, as if he were afraid of it.
Frau Krause bridled instantly. Did he think she had nothing else to do than to carry things in and out of his room? The letter had lain on the chest of drawers in the pa.s.sage; he could have seen it for himself, had he troubled to look.
Maurice waved her away. He was staring at the envelope; he believed he knew the handwriting. His heart beat with precise hammerings. He laid the letter on the table, and took a few turns in the room before he picked it up again. On examining it anew, it seemed to him that the lightly gummed envelope had been tampered with, and he made a threatening movement towards the door, then checked himself, remembering that if the letter were what he believed, it would be written in English. He tore it open, destroying the envelope in his nervousness. There was no heading, and it was only a few lines long.
I MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? LOUISE DUFRAYER.
His heart was thumping now. He was to go to her, she said so herself; to go this moment, for it was evening already. As it was, she was perhaps waiting for him, wondering why he did not come. He had not shaved that day, and his first impulse was to call for hot water. In the same breath he gave up the idea: it was out of the question by the poor light of the lamp, and the extraordinary position of the looking-gla.s.s. He made, however, a hasty toilet in his best, only to colour at himself when finished. Was there ever such a fool as he? His act contained the germ of an insult: and he rapidly changed back to his workaday wear.
All this took time, and it was eight o"clock before he rang the door-bell in the BRUDERSTRa.s.sE. Now, the landlady did not mistake him for a possible thief. But she looked at him in an unfriendly way, and said grumblingly that Fraulein had been expecting him for an hour or more. Then she pointed to the door of the room, and left him to make his way in alone.
He knocked gently, but no one answered. The old woman, who stood watching his movements, signed to him to enter, and he turned the handle. The large room was dark, except for the light shed by a small lamp, which stood on the table before the sofa. From somewhere out of the dusk that lay beyond, a white figure rose and came towards him.
Louise was in a crumpled dressing-gown, and her hair was loosened from its coil on her neck. Maurice saw so much, before she was close beside him, her eyes searching his face.
"Oh, you have come," she said with a sigh, as if a load had been lifted from her mind. "I thought you were not coming."
"I only got your note a few minutes ago. I ... I came at once," he said, and stammered, as he saw how greatly illness had changed her.
"I knew you would."
She did not give him her hand, but stood gazing at him; and her look was so helpless and forlorn that he grew uncomfortable.
"You have been ill?" he said, to render the pause that followed less embarra.s.sing.
"Yes; but I"m better now." She supported herself on the table; her indecision seemed to increase, and several seconds pa.s.sed before she said: "Won"t you sit down?"
He took one of the stuffed arm-chairs she indicated; and she went back to the sofa. Again there was silence. With her elbows on her knees, her chin on her two hands, Louise stared hard at the pattern of the tablecloth. Maurice sat stiff and erect, waiting for her to tell him why she had summoned him.
"You will think it strange that I should send for you like this ...
when I know you so slightly," she began at length. "But ...since I saw you last ... I have been in trouble,"--her voice broke, but her eyes remained fixed on the cloth. "And I am quite alone. I have no one to help me. Then I thought of you; you were kind to me once; you offered to help me." She paused, and wound her handkerchief to a ball.
"Anything!--anything that lies in my power," said Maurice fervently. He fidgeted his hands round the brim of his hat, which he was holding to him.
"Won"t you tell me what it is?" he asked, after another long break. "I should be so glad, and grateful--yes, indeed, grateful--if there were anything I could do for you."
She met his eyes, and tried to say something, but no sound came over her lips. She was trying to fasten her thoughts on what she had to say, but, in spite of her efforts, they eluded her. For more than twenty-four hours she had brooded over one idea; the strain had been too great; and, now that the moment had come, her strength deserted her. She would have liked to lay her head on her arms and sleep; it almost seemed to her now, in the indifference of sheer fatigue, that it did not matter whether she spoke or not. But as she looked at the young man, she became conscious of an expression in his face, which made her own grow hard.
"I won"t be pitied."
Maurice turned very red. His heart had gone out to her in her distress; and his feelings were painted on his face. His discomfiture at her discovery was so palpable that it gave her courage to go on.
"You were one of those, were you not, who were present at a certain cafe in the BRUHL, one evening, three weeks ago." It was more of a statement than a question. Her eyes held him fast. His retreating colour rose again; he had a presentiment of what was coming.
"Then you must have heard----" she began quickly, but left the sentence unended.
His suspicions took shape, and he made a large, vague gesture of dissent. "You heard all that was said," she continued, without paying any heed to him. "You heard how ... how some one--no, how the man I loved and trusted ... how he boasted about my caring for him; and not only that, but how, before that drunken crowd, he told how I had been to him ... to his room ... that afternoon----" She could not finish, and pressed her knotted handkerchief to her lips.
Maurice looked round him for a.s.sistance. "You are mistaken," he declared. "I heard nothing of the kind. Remember, I, too, was among those ... in the state you mention," he added as an afterthought, lowering his voice.
"That is not it." Leaning forward, she opened her eyes so wide that he saw a rim of white round the brown of the pupils. "You must also have heard ... how, all this time, behind my back, there was some one else ... someone he cared for ... when I thought it was only me."
The young man coloured, with her and for her. "It is not true; you have been misled," he said with vehemence. And, again, a flash of intuition suggested an afterthought to him. "Can you really believe it? Don"t you think better of him than that?"
For the first time since she had known him, Louise gave him a personal look, a look that belonged to him alone, and held a warm ray of grat.i.tude. Then, however, she went on unsparingly: "I want you to tell me who it was."
He laid his hat on a chair, and used his hands. "But if I a.s.sure you it is not true? If I give you my word that you have been misinformed?"
"Who was it? What is her name?"
He rose, and went away from the table.
"I knew him better than you," she said slowly, as he did not speak: "you or anyone else--a hundred thousand times better--and I KNOW it is true."
Still he did not answer. "Then you won"t tell me?"
"Tell you? How can I? There"s nothing to tell."
"I was wrong then. You have no pity for me?"
"Pity!--I no pity?" he cried, forgetting how, a minute ago, she had resented his feeling it. "But all the same I can"t tell you what you ask me. You don"t realise what it means: putting a slur on a young girl"s name ... which has never been touched."
Directly he had said this, he was aware of his foolishness; but she let the admission contained in the words pa.s.s unnoticed.
"Then she is not with him?" she cried, springing to her feet, and there was a jubilation in her voice, which she did not attempt to suppress.
Maurice made no answer, but in his face was such a mixture of surprise and disconcertion that it was answer enough.
She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, who, in his nervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held it so tightly that it left a furrow in his hand. He was looking into the lamp, and did not at first see that Louise had raised her head again and was contemplating him. When she had succeeded in making him look at her, she sat down on the sofa and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her.
"Come and sit here. I want to speak to you."