Maurice Guest (81 page)

Madeleine was ready to leave a couple of days after her last performance. Her plans for the future were fixed and sure. She had long ago given up making adventurous schemes for storming America: that had merely been her contribution to the romance of the place. Now she was hastening away to spend the month of March in Paris; she was not due at the school to which she was returning till the end of April; and, in Paris, she intended to take a brief course of finishing lessons, to rub off what she called "German thoroughness." She, too, had made a highly successful exit, though without creating a furore like Dove. Since all she did was well done, it was not possible for her to be a surprise to anyone.

And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was over, the last afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went to the railway station to make arrangements about her luggage. On her way home, she entered Klemm's music-shop, where she stood, for a considerable time, taking leave of one and another. When she emerged again, the town had assumed that spectral look, which, towards evening, made the quaint old gabled streets so attractive.

For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret at having to leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, her years of study; but she was now quite ready to advance, curious to attack the future, and to dominate that also. Still, the dusk on the familiar streets inclined her to feel sentimental. "This time tomorrow, I'll be hundreds of miles away," she said to herself, "and probably shall never see the old place again." As she walked, she looked back upon her residence there—already somewhat in the light of a remembrance—weighing what it had been worth to her. Part of it was intimately associated with Maurice Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. Of late he had passed out of her life; she had been too busy to think of him. Now, however, that she was at the end of this period, the fancy seized her to see him again; and she took a resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant in her for some time.

"I don't see why I shouldn't," she reasoned. "No one will know. And even if they do, I'm leaving, and it won't matter."

And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked up her steps in the direction of the BRAUSTRASSE—a street which she disliked, and never entered if she could avoid it. If he had lived in a better neighbourhood, things might have gone better with him, she mused; for Madeleine was a staunch believer in the influence of surroundings, and could not, for instance, understand a person who lived in dirt and disorder having any but a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from door to door, scanning the numbers, with her head poked a little forward and to one side, like a bird's. As she ascended the stair, she raised her skirts, and her nostrils twitched displeased.

Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at Madeleine with distrust.

"No, he's not," she replied. "And what's more, I couldn't say, if you were to pay me, when he will be."

But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of any landlady alive. "Why? Is he so irregular?" she asked. She had placed her foot in the opening of the door, and now, by a skilful movement, inserted herself bodily into the passage.

Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying her hands on her apron.

"Are you a friend of his, may I ask?" she inquired.

"Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think I'd be here if I weren't?" said Madeleine, looking her up and down.

"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why, because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know how he's going on—that's why, Fraulein!"

"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked round her for a chair.

Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind her hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case."

"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise, which stood on the lid of the piano.

"I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a bad, bold face it is, too."

"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory.

"Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a spice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now—though of course one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes against my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting as he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man anywhere than Herr Guest—if I had a complaint, it was that he was too much of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heed for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to live with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now there isn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please him anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he doesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang on him."

"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way, with her eye on the main points of probable offence.

"Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like their liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a young fellow here——"

"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of it.—A very good bargain!"

She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising that she had met her match in this sharp-tongued young lady, curbed her temper, and launched out into the history of a former lodger.

It was. a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against the door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything was of an extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showing through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A couple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the bureau—that was all that had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was like a room that had never properly been lived in.

While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was heard in the front door, and Frau. Krause, interrupted in her story, had just time to tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: "Here he is!" and dart out of the room. Not so promptly, however, but what Maurice saw where she came from. Madeleine heard them bandying words in the passage.

The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, entering hotly, threw his hat on the table. He did not perceive his visitor till it was too late.

"Madeleine! You here!" he exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment. "I beg your pardon. I didn't see you," and he made haste to recover his hat.

"Yes, don't faint, it's I, Maurice.—But what's the matter? Why are you so angry with the person? Does she pry on you?"

"Pry!" he echoed, and his colour deepened. "Pry's not the word for it. She ransacks everything I have. I never come home but what I find she has overhauled something, though I've forbidden her to enter the room."

"Why don't you—or rather, why didn't you move? It's not much of a place, I'm sure."

"Move?" he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as he spoke, he looked incredulously at Madeleine. He had hung his coat and hat on a peg, and now came forward to the table." Move?" he said once again, and prolonged the word as though the channel of thought it opened up was new to him.

"Good gracious, yes!—If one's not satisfied with one's rooms, one moves, that's all. There's nothing strange about it."

He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and was about to draw up a chair, when his eye caught a letter that was lying on the lowered flap of the bureau. In patent agitation, and without excusing himself, he seized it and tore it open. Madeleine saw his face darken. He read the letter through twice, from beginning to end, then tore it into a dozen pieces and scattered them on the shelf.

"No bad news, I hope?"

He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. "That depends on how you look at it, Madeleine," he said, and laughed in an unpleasant manner.

After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring at the scraps of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she waited. Then she saw herself forced to recall him to the fact of her presence.

"Could you spare me a little attention now?" she asked. At her words, he jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought his wandering thoughts home. "I can't sit here for ever you know," she added.

"I beg your pardon." He came up to the table, and took the chair he had previously had his hand on. "The fact is I—Can I do anything for you, Madeleine?"

"For me? Oh, dear, no!—You are surprised to find me here, no doubt! But as I'm leaving to-morrow morning, I thought I'd run up and say good-bye to you—that's all. A case of Mohammed and the mountain, you see."

"Leaving? To-morrow?"

"Yes.—Goodness, there's nothing wonderful in that, is there? Most people do leave some time or other, you know." His reply was inaudible. "It was very good of you to look me up," he threw in as an afterthought.

Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her lips, had chanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had laid on the table, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in spite of herself by the uncared-for condition of the nails. These were bitten, and broken, and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware of her intent gaze, looked down to see what it was at, hastily withdrew his hands ' and hid them in his pockets.

"This is the first time I've been in your den, you know," she said abruptly. "Really, Maurice, you might have done better. I don't know how you've managed to put up with it so long."

"My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live in a palace?"

"A palace?—absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seventeen marks for this hole. Well, I could have found you any number of better places for the same money—if you had come to me."

"You're very kind. But it has done me well enough."

"So it appears."

Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking up some neutral subject. "Are those your people?" she asked, and nodded at the photograph of a family-group, which stood on the top shelf of the bureau. "Three boys, are you not? You are like your mother," and she stared, with unfeigned curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressed out in their best coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellery.

"Good God, Madeleine!" Maurice burst out at this, his loosely kept patience escaping him. "You didn't come here, I suppose, to remark on my family?"

"Well, I can't congratulate you on an improvement in your manners, since I saw you last."

"I am not aware of having changed."

"As well for you, perhaps. However, I'll tell you about myself, if it interests you." She turned her cool, judicial gaze on him again; and now she set before him her projects for the future. But though he kept his eyes fastened on her face, she saw that he was not listening to what she said, or, at most, that he only half heard it; for, when she ceased to speak, he did not notice her silence.

She waited, curious to see what would come next, and presently he echoed, in his vague way: "Paris, did you say?—Really?"

"Yes—Paris: the capital of France.—I said that, and a good deal more, which I don't think you heard.—And now I won't take up your precious time any longer.—You've nothing new to tell me, I suppose? You still intend staying on here, and fighting out the problem of existence? Well, when you have starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some one will let me know. I'll come over for the funeral."

She rose, and began to button her jacket.

"And England has absolutely no chance? English music must continue to languish, without hope of reform?"

"How can you remember such rot! I was a terrible fool when I talked like that."

"I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your acquired wisdom. And I won't go from here without offering you congratulations, hearty congratulations, on the muddle you've made of things."

"That's entirely my own affair."

"You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else would want the responsibility of it?"

She went out without a further word. But on the landing at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. She felt annoyed with herself that she had allowed an unfriendly tone to dominate their brief interview. This was probably the last time she would see him; the last chance she would have of telling him just what she thought of him. And viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificial delicacy of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vigorously, and, not being used to indecision, turned as she did so, and began to ascend the stairs again. Brushing past Frau Krause, she reopened, without knocking, the door of Maurice's room.

He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and at her entrance was bending over something that lay there, so engrossed that he did not at once raise his head.

"Good gracious! What are you doing?" escaped her involuntarily.

At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writingtable, tried to screen it from her eyes.

She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. "Yes, it's me again," she said with determination. "And I suppose you'll want to accuse me of prying, too, like that female outside.—Look here: it's ludicrous for us who have been friends so long to part in this fashion. And I, for one, don't intend to do it. There's something I want to say before I go—you may be angry and offended if you like; I don't care"—for he frowned forbiddingly. "I'm no denser than other people; and I know just as well as every one else the wretched mess you've got yourself into—one would have to be blind and deaf, indeed, not to know.—Now, look here, Maurice! You once said to me, you may remember, that if you had a sister you'd like her to be something like me. Will you look on me as that sister for a little, and let me give you some sound advice? I told you I was going to Paris, and that I had a clear month there. Well, now, throw your things together and come with me. You haven't had a decent holiday since you've been here. You need freshening up.—Or if not Paris—Paris isn't a necessity—we'll go down by Munich and the Brenner to Italy, and I'll be cicerone. I'll act as banker, too, and you can regard it as a loan in the meantime, and pay me back when you're richer.—Now what do you say? Doesn't the plan tempt you?"