Maurice Guest (37 page)

"Why don't you say something, Joan?" she cried crossly. "I suppose you think it's homely?"

"Frankly, I don't care for it much, dear. To my mind, it's overtrimmed."

This was so precisely Ephie's own feeling that she was more annoyed than ever; she taunted Johanna with old-fashioned, countrified tastes; and, in spite of her mother's comforting assurances, retired in a pet to her own room.

That afternoon, as they sat together at tea, Mrs. Cayhill, who for some time had considered Ephie fondly, said: "I can't understand you thinking she isn't well, Joan. I never saw her look better."

Ephie went crimson. "Now what has Joan been saying about me?" she asked angrily.

Johanna had left the table, and was reading on the sofa.

"I only said what I repeated to yourself, Ephie. That I didn't think you were looking well."

"Just fancy," said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing good-humouredly, "she was saying we ought to leave Leipzig and go to some strange place. Even back home to America. You don't want to go away, darling, do you?"

"No, really, Joan is too bad," cried Ephie, with a voice in which tears and exasperation struggled for the mastery. "She always has some new fad in her head. She can't leave us alone—never! Let her go away, so she wants to. I won't. I'm happy here. I love being here. Even if you both go away, I shall stop."

She got up from the table, and went to a window, where she stood biting her lips, and paying small attention to her mother's elaborate protests that she, too, had no intention of being moved.

Johanna did not raise her eyes from her book. She could have wept: not only at the spirit of rebellious dislike, which was beginning to show more and more clearly in everything Ephie said. But was no one but herself awake to the change that was taking place in the child, day by day? She would write to her father, without delay, and make him insist on their returning to America.

From the moment Maurice entered the room, she did not take her eyes off him; and, under her scrutiny, the young man soon grew nervous. He sat and fidgeted, and found nothing to say.

Ephie was wayward: she did not think she wanted to go out; it looked like rain. Johanna refrained from interfering; but Maurice was most persistent: he begged Ephie not to disappoint him, and, when this failed, said angrily that she had no business to bring him there for such capricious whims. This treatment cowed Ephie; and she went at once to put on her hat and jacket.

"He wants to speak to her; and she knows it; and is trying to avoid it," said Johanna to herself; and her heart beat fast for both of them. But she was alone with Maurice; she must not lose the chance of sounding him a little.

"Where do you think of going for a walk?" she asked, and her voice had an odd tone to her ears.

"Where? Oh, to the ROSENTAL—or the SCHEIBENHOLZ—or along the river. Anywhere. I don't know."

She coughed. "Have you noticed anything strange about Ephie lately? She is not herself. I'm afraid she is not well."

He had noticed nothing. But he did not face Johanna; and he held the photograph he was looking at upside down.

She leaned out of the window to watch them walk along the street. At this moment, she was fully convinced of the correctness of her mother's assumption; and by the thought of what might take place within the next hour, she was much disturbed. During the rest of the afternoon, she found it impossible to settle to anything; and she wandered from one room to another, unable even to read. But it struck six, seven, eight o'clock; it was supper-time; and still Ephie had not come home. Mrs. Cayhill grew anxious, too, and Johanna strained her eyes, watching the dark street. At nine and at ten, she was pacing the room, and at eleven, after a messenger had been sent to Maurice's lodging and had found no one there she buttoned on her rain-cloak, to accompany one of the servants to the police-station.

"Why did I let her go?—Oh, why did I let her go!"

Maurice and Ephie walked along the LESSINGSTRASSE without speaking—it was a dull, mild day, threatening to rain, as it had rained the whole of the preceding night. But Ephie was not accustomed to be silent; she found the stillness disconcerting, and before they had gone far, shot a furtive look at her companion. She did not intend him to see it; but he did, and turned to her. He cleared his throat, and seemed about to speak, then changed his mind. Something in his face, as she observed it more nearly, made Ephie change colour and give an awkward laugh.

"I asked you before how you liked my hat," she said, with another attempt at the airiness which, to-day, she could not command. "And you didn't say. I guess you haven't looked at it. You're in such a hurry."

Maurice turned his head; but he did not see the hat. Instead, he mentally answered a question Louise had put to him the day before, and which he had then not known how to meet. Yes, Ephie was pretty, radiantly pretty, with the fresh, unsullied charm of a flower just blown.

"Joan was so stupid about it," she went on at random; her face still wore its uncertain smile. "She said it was overtrimmed, and top-heavy, and didn't become me. As if she ever wore anything that suited her! But Joan is an old maid. She hasn't a scrap of taste. And as for you, Maurice, why I just don't believe you know one hat from another. Men are so stupid."

Again they went forward in silence.

"You are tiresome to-day," she said at length, and looked at him with a touch of defiance, as a schoolgirl looks at the master with whom she ventures to remonstrate.

"Yes, I'm a dull companion."

"Knowing it doesn't make it any better."

But she was not really cross; all other feelings were swallowed up by the uneasiness she felt at his manner of treating her.

"Where are we going?" she suddenly demanded of him, with a little quick upward note in her voice. "This is not the way to the SCHEIBENHOLZ."

"No." He had been waiting for the question. "Ephie,"—he cleared his throat anew. "I am taking you to see a friend—of mine."

"Is that what you brought me out for? Then you didn't want to speak to me, as you said? Then we're not going for a walk?"

"Afterwards, perhaps. It's like this. Some one I know has been very ill. Now that she is getting better, she needs rousing and cheering up, and that kind of thing; and I said I would bring you to call on her. She knows you by sight—and would like to know you personally," he added, with a lame effort at explanation.

"Is that so?" said Ephie with sudden indifference; and her heart, which had begun to thump at the mention of a friend, quieted down at once. In fancy, she saw an elderly lady with shawls and a footstool, who had been attracted by her fresh young face; the same thing had happened to her before.

Now, however, that she knew the object of their walk, she was greatly relieved, as if a near danger had been averted; but she had not taken many steps forward before she was telling herself that another hope was gone. The only thing to do was to take the matter into her own hands; it was now or never; and simply a question of courage.

"Maurice, say, do many people go away from here in the fall?—leave the Con., I would say?" she asked abruptly. "I mean is this a time more people leave than in spring?"

Maurice started; he had been lost in his own thoughts, which all centred round this meeting he had weakly agreed to arrange. Again and again he had tried to imagine how it would fall out. But he did not know Louise well enough to foresee how she would act; and the nearer the time came, the stronger grew his presentiment of trouble. His chief remaining hope was that there would be no open speaking, that Schilsky's name would not be mentioned; and plump into the midst of this hope fell Ephie's question. He turned on her; she coloured furiously, and walked into a pool of water; and, at this moment, everything was as clear to Maurice as though she had said: "Where is be? Why has he gone?"

"Why do you ask?" he queried with unconscious sharpness. "No, Easter is the general time for leaving. But people who play in the PRUFUNGEN then, sometimes stay for the summer term. Why do you ask?"

"Gracious, Maurice, how tiresome you are! Must one always say why? I only wanted to know. I missed people I used to see about, that's all."

"Yes, a number have not come back."

He was so occupied with what they were saying that he, in his turn, stepped into a puddle, splashing the water up over her shoe. Ephie was extremely annoyed.

"Look!—look what you've done!" she cried, showing him her spikey little shoe. "Why don't you look where you're going? How clumsy you are!" and, in a sudden burst of illhumour: "I don't know why you're bringing me here. It's a horrid part of the city anyway. I didn't have any desire to come. I guess I'll turn back and go home."

"We're almost there now."

"I don't care. I don't want to go."

"But you shall, all the same. What's the matter with you to-day that you don't know your own mind for two minutes together?"

"You didn't inquire if I wanted to come. You're just horrid, Maurice."

"And you're a capricious child."

He quickened his pace, afraid she might still escape him; and Ephie had hard work to keep up with him. As she trotted along, a few steps behind, there arose in her a strong feeling of resentment against Maurice, which was all the stronger because she suspected that she was on the brink of hearing her worst suspicions confirmed. But she could not afford to yield to the feeling, when the last chance she had of getting definite information was passing from her. Knitting both hands firmly inside her muff, she asked, with an earnestness which, to one who knew, was fatally tale-telling: "Did anyone you were acquainted with leave, Maurice?"

"Yes," said the young man at her side, with brusque determination. He remained untouched by the tone of appeal in which Ephie put the question; for he himself suffered under her continued hedging. "Yes," he said, "some one did, and that was a man called Schilsky—a tall, red-haired fellow, a violinist. But he has only just gone. He came back after the vacation to settle his affairs, and say good-bye to his friends. Is there anything else you want to know?"

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. After all, Ephie was such a child. He could not see her face, which was hidden by the brim of the big hat, but there was something pathetic in the line of her chin, and the droop of her arms and shoulders. She seemed to shrink under his words—to grow smaller. As he stood aside to let her pass before him, through the house-door in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he had a quick revulsion of feeling. Instead of being rough and cruel to her, he should have tried to win her confidence with brotherly kindness. But he had had room in his mind for nothing but the meeting with Louise, and now there was no more time; they were going up the stairs. All he could do was to say gently: "I ought to tell you, Ephie, that the person we are going to see has been very, very ill—and needs treating with the utmost consideration. I rely on your tact and good-feeling."

But Ephie did not reply; the colour had left her face, and for once, the short upper-lip closed firmly on the lower one. For some minutes amazed anger with Maurice was all she felt. Then, however, came the knowledge of what his words meant: he knew—Maurice knew; he had seen through her fictions; he would tell on her; there would be dreadful scenes with Joan; there would be reproaches and recriminations; she would be locked up, or taken away. As for what lay beyond, his assertion that Schilsky had been there—had been and gone, without a word to her—that was a sickening possibility, which, at present, her mind could not grasp. She grew dizzy under these blows that rained down on her, one after the other. And meanwhile, she had to keep up appearances, to go on as though nothing had happened, when it seemed impossible even to drag herself to the top of the winding flight of stairs. She held her head down; there was a peculiar clicking in her throat, which she could not master; she felt at every step as if she would have to burst out crying.

At the glass of the door, and at the wizened old face that appeared behind it, she looked with unseeing eyes; and she followed Maurice mechanically along the passage to a door at the end.

In his agitation the young man forgot to knock; and as they entered, a figure sprang up from the sofa-corner, and made a few impulsive steps towards them.

Maurice went over to Louise and took her hand.

"I've brought her," he said in a low tone, and with a kind of appeal in voice and eyes, which he was not himself aware of. Louise answered the look, and went on looking at him, as if she were fearful of letting her eyes stray. Both turned at an exclamation from Ephie. She was still standing where Maurice had left her, close beside the door; but her face was flaming, and her right hand fumbled with the doorhandle.

"Ephie!" said Maurice warningly. He was afraid she would turn the handle, and, going over to her, took her by the arm.

"Say, Maurice, I'm going home," she said under her breath. "I can't stop here. Oh, why did you bring me?"

"Ssh!—be a good girl, Ephie," he replied as though speaking to a child. "Come with me."

An inborn politeness struggled with Ephie's dread. "I can't. I don't know her name," she whispered. But she let him draw her forward to where Louise was standing; and she held out her hand.

"Miss—?" she said in a small voice, and waited for the name to be filled in.

Louise had watched them whispering, with a stony fare, but, at Ephie's gesture, life came into it. Her eyes opened wide; and drawing back from the girl's outstretched hand, yet without seeming to see it, she turned with a hasty movement, and went over to the window, where she stood with her back to them.

This was the last straw; Ephie dropped on a chair, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into the tears she had hitherto restrained. Her previous trouble was increased a hundredfold. For she had recognised Louise at once; she felt that she was in a trap; and the person who had entrapped her was Maurice. Holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes, she sobbed as though her heart would break.

"Don't cry, dear, don't cry," said the young man. "It's all right." But his thoughts were with Louise. He was apprehensive of what she might do next.