“The music has evidently moved her deeply,” said Fraulein Mosebach.
“Excuse me,” said Margaret’s young man, who had for some time been preparing a sentence, “but that lady has, quite inadvertently, taken my umbrella.”
“Oh, good gracious me!—I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen.”
“I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do.”
“Tibby, love, you must go.”
“It isn’t of any consequence,” said the young man, in truth a little uneasy about his umbrella.
“But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!”
Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the backs of the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and had found his hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it was “too late” to go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had begun, and one could not move during their performance.
“My sister is so careless,” whispered Margaret.
“Not at all,” replied the young man; but his voice was dead and cold.
“If you would give me your address—”
“Oh, not at all, not at all;” and he wrapped his greatcoat over his knees.
Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret’s ears. Brahms, for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed what it felt like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For this fool of a young man thought that she and Helen and Tibby had been playing the confidence trick on him, and that if he gave his address they would break into his rooms some midnight or other and steal his walking-stick too. Most ladies would have laughed, but Margaret really minded, for it gave her a glimpse into squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as Brahms had grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said, “That is where we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella after the concert, but I didn’t like to trouble you when it has all been our fault.”
His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was W. It was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not daring to be impolite, in case these well-dressed people were honest after all. She took it as a good sign that he said to her, “It’s a fine programme this afternoon, is it not?” for this was the remark with which he had originally opened, before the umbrella intervened.
“The Beethoven’s fine,” said Margaret, who was not a female of the encouraging type. “I don’t like the Brahms, though, nor the Mendelssohn that came first and ugh! I don’t like this Elgar that’s coming.”
“What, what?” called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. “The ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ will not be fine?”
“Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!” cried her aunt.
“Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ and you are undoing all my work. I am so anxious for him to hear what WE are doing in music. Oh—you musn’t run down our English composers, Margaret.”
“For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin,” said Fraulein Mosebach, “on two occasions. It is dramatic, a little.”
“Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art. And English literature, except Shakespeare, and he’s a German. Very well, Frieda, you may go.”
The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common impulse, they rose to their feet and fled from “Pomp and Circumstance.”
“We have this call to pay in Finsbury Circus, it is true,” said Herr Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just as the music started.
“Margaret—” loudly whispered by Aunt Juley.
“Margaret, Margaret! Fraulein Mosebach has left her beautiful little bag behind her on the seat.”
Sure enough, there was Frieda’s reticule, containing her address book, her pocket dictionary, her map of London, and her money.
“Oh, what a bother—what a family we are! Fr—frieda!”
“Hush!” said all those who thought the music fine.
“But it’s the number they want in Finsbury Circus.”
“Might I—couldn’t I—” said the suspicious young man, and got very red.
“Oh, I would be so grateful.”
He took the bag—money clinking inside it—and slipped up the gangway with it. He was just in time to catch them at the swing-door, and he received a pretty smile from the German girl and a fine bow from her cavalier. He returned to his seat upsides with the world. The trust that they had reposed in him was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his mistrust for them, and that probably he would not be “had” over his umbrella. This young man had been “had” in the past badly, perhaps overwhelmingly—and now most of his energies went in defending himself against the unknown. But this afternoon—perhaps on account of music—he perceived that one must slack off occasionally or what is the good of being alive? Wickham Place, W., though a risk, was as safe as most things, and he would risk it.
So when the concert was over and Margaret said, “We live quite near; I am going there now. Could you walk round with me, and we’ll find your umbrella?” he said, “Thank you,” peaceably, and followed her out of the Queen’s Hall. She wished that he was not so anxious to hand a lady downstairs, or to carry a lady’s programme for her—his class was near enough her own for its manners to vex her. But she found him interesting on the whole—every one interested the Schlegels on the whole at that time—and while her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea.
“How tired one gets after music!” she began.
“Do you find the atmosphere of Queen’s Hall oppressive?”
“Yes, horribly.”
“But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more oppressive.”
“Do you go there much?”
“When my work permits, I attend the gallery for the Royal Opera.”
Helen would have exclaimed, “So do I. I love the gallery,” and thus have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these things. But Margaret had an almost morbid horror of “drawing people out,” of “making things go.” She had been to the gallery at Covent Garden, but she did not “attend” it, preferring the more expensive seats; still less did she love it. So she made no reply.
“This year I have been three times—to ‘Faust,’ ‘Tosca,’ and—” Was it “Tannhouser” or “Tannhoyser”? Better not risk the word.
Margaret disliked “Tosca” and “Faust.” And so, for one reason and another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the voice of Mrs. Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.
“I do in a WAY remember the passage, Tibby, but when every instrument is so beautiful, it is difficult to pick out one thing rather than another. I am sure that you and Helen take me to the very nicest concerts. Not a dull note from beginning to end. I only wish that our German friends had stayed till it finished.”
“But surely you haven’t forgotten the drum steadily beating on the low C, Aunt Juley?” came Tibby’s voice. “No one could. It’s unmistakable.”
“A specially loud part?” hazarded Mrs. Munt. “Of course I do not go in for being musical,” she added, the shot failing. “I only care for music—a very different thing. But still I will say this for myself—I do know when I like a thing and when I don’t. Some people are the same about pictures. They can go into a picture gallery—Miss Conder can—and say straight off