All this time Lancelot was displaying prodigious musical activity, so much so that the cost of ruled paper became a consideration. There was no form of composition he did not essay, none by which he made a shilling. Once he felt himself the prey of a splendid inspiration, and sat up all night writing at fever pitch, surrounded with celestial harmonies, audible to him alone; the little room resounded with the thunder of a mighty orchestra, in which every instrument sang to him individually—the piccolo, the flute, the oboes, the clarionets, filling the air with a silver spray of notes; the drums throbbing, the trumpets shrilling, the four horns pealing with long, stately notes, the trombones and bassoons vibrating, the violins and violas sobbing in linked sweetness, the 'cello and the contra-bass moaning their under-chant. And then, in the morning, when the first rough sketch was written, the glory faded. He threw down his pen, and called himself an ass for wasting his time on what nobody would ever look at. Then he laid his head on the table, overwrought, full of an infinite pity for himself. A sudden longing seized him for some one to love him, to caress his hair, to smooth his hot forehead. This mood passed too; he smoothed the slumbering Beethoven instead. After a while he went into his bedroom, and sluiced his face and hands in ice-cold water, and rang the bell for breakfast.
There was a knock at the door in response.
"Come in!" he said gently—his emotions had left him tired to the point of tenderness. And then he waited a minute while Mary Ann was drawing on her gloves.
"Did you ring, sir?" said a wheezy voice at last. Mrs. Leadbatter had got tired of waiting.
Lancelot started violently—Mrs. Leadbatter had latterly left him entirely to Mary Ann. "It's my hastmer," she had explained to him apologetically, meeting him casually in the passage. "I can't trollop up and down stairs as I used to when I fust took this house five-an'-twenty year ago, and pore Mr. Leadbatter——" and here followed reminiscences long since in their hundredth edition.
"Yes; let me have some coffee—very hot—please," said Lancelot less gently. The woman's voice jarred upon him; and her features were not redeeming.
"Lawd, sir, I 'ope that gas 'asn't been burnin' all night, sir," she said as she was going out.
"It has," he said shortly.
"You'll hexcoose me, sir, but I didn't bargen for that. I'm only a pore, honest, 'ard-workin' widder, and I noticed the last gas bill was 'eavier than hever since that black winter that took pore Mr. Leadbatter to 'is grave. Fair is fair, and I shall 'ave to reckon it a hextry, with the rate gone up sevenpence a thousand, and my Rosie leavin' a fine nursemaid's place in Bayswater at the end of the month to come 'ome and 'elp 'er mother, 'cos my hastmer——"
"Will you please shut the door after you?" interrupted Lancelot, biting his lip with irritation. And Mrs. Leadbatter, who was standing in the aperture with no immediate intention of departing, could find no repartee beyond slamming the door as hard as she could.
This little passage of arms strangely softened Lancelot to Mary Ann.It made him realise faintly what her life must be.
"I should go mad and smash all the crockery!" he cried aloud. He felt quite tender again towards the uncomplaining girl.
Presently there was another knock. Lancelot growled, half prepared to renew the battle, and to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind on the subject. But it was merely Mary Ann.
Shaken in his routine, he looked on steadily while Mary Ann drew on her gloves; and this in turn confused Mary Ann. Her hand trembled.
"Let me help you," he said.
And there was Lancelot buttoning Mary Ann's glove just as if her name were Guinevere! And neither saw the absurdity of wasting time upon an operation which would have to be undone in two minutes. Then Mary Ann, her eyes full of soft light, went to the sideboard and took out the prosaic elements of breakfast.
When she returned, to put them back, Lancelot was astonished to see her carrying a cage—a plain square cage, made of white tin wire.
"What's that?" he gasped.
"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I want to ask you to do me a favour." She dropped her eyelashes timidly.
"Yes, Mary Ann," he said briskly. "But what have you got there?"
"It's only my canary, sir. Would you—please, sir, would you mind?"—then desperately: "I want to hang it up here, sir!"
"Here?" he repeated in frank astonishment.
"Why?"
"Please, sir, I—I—it's sunnier here, sir, and I—I think it must be pining away. It hardly ever sings in my bedroom."
"Well, but," he began—then seeing the tears gathering on her eyelids, he finished with laughing good-nature—"as long as Mrs. Leadbatter doesn't reckon it an extra."
"Oh no, sir," said Mary Ann seriously. "I'll tell her. Besides, she will be glad, because she don't like the canary—she says its singing disturbs her. Her room is next to mine, you know, Mr. Lancelot."
"But you said it doesn't sing much."
"Please, sir, I—I mean in summer," exclaimed Mary Ann in rosy confusion; "and—and—it'll soon be summer, sir."
"Sw—e-ê-t!" burst forth the canary suddenly, as if encouraged by Mary Ann's opinion. It was a pretty little bird—one golden yellow from beak to tail, as though it had been dipped in sunshine.
"You see, sir," she cried eagerly, "it's beginning already."
"Yes," said Lancelot grimly; "but so is Beethoven."
"I'll hang it high up—in the window," said Mary Ann, "where the dog can't get at it."
"Well, I won't take any responsibilities," murmured Lancelot resignedly.
"No, sir, I'll attend to that," said Mary Ann vaguely.
After the installation of the canary Lancelot found himself slipping more and more into a continuous matter-of-course flirtation; more and more forgetting the slavey in the candid young creature who had, at moments, strange dancing lights in her awakened eyes, strange flashes of witchery in her ingenuous expression. And yet he made a desultory struggle against what a secret voice was always whispering was a degradation. He knew she had no real place in his life; he scarce thought of her save when she came bodily before his eyes with her pretty face and her trustful glance.
He felt no temptation to write sonatas on her eyebrow—to borrow Peter's variation, for the use of musicians, of Shakespeare's "write sonnets on his mistress's eyebrow"—and, indeed, he knew she could be no fit mistress for him—this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek, accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her. The women of his dreams were quite other—beautiful, voluptuous, full of the joy of life, tremulous with poetry and lofty thought, with dark, amorous orbs that flashed responsive to his magic melodies. They hovered about him as he wrote and played—Venuses rising from the seas of his music. And then—with his eyes full of the divine tears of youth, with his brain a hive of winged dreams—he would turn and kiss merely Mary Ann! Such is the pitiful breed of mortals.
And after every such fall he thought more contemptuously of Mary Ann. Idealise her as he might, see all that was best in her as he tried to do, she remained common and commonplace enough. Her ingenuousness, while from one point of view it was charming, from another was but a pleasant synonym for silliness. And it might not be ingenuousness—or silliness—after all! For was Mary Ann as innocent as she looked? The guilelessness of the dove might very well cover the wisdom of the serpent. The instinct—the repugnance that made him sponge off her first kiss from his lips—was probably a true instinct. How was it possible a girl of that class should escape the sordid attentions of street swains? Even when she was in the country she was well-nigh of woo-able age, the likely cynosure of neighbouring ploughboys' eyes. And what of the other lodgers?
A finer instinct—that of a gentleman—kept him from putting any questions to Mary Ann. Indeed, his own delicacy repudiated the images that strove to find entry in his brain, even as his fastidiousness shrank from realising the unlovely details of Mary Ann's daily duties—these things disgusted him more with himself than with her. And yet he found himself acquiring a new and illogical interest in the boots he met outside doors. Early one morning he went half-way up the second flight of stairs—a strange region where his own boots had never before trod—but came down ashamed and with fluttering heart as if he had gone up to steal boots instead of to survey them. He might have asked Mary Ann or her "missus" who the other tenants were, but he shrank from the topic. Their hours were not his, and he only once chanced on a fellow-man in the passage, and then he was not sure it was not the tax-collector. Besides, he was not really interested—it was only a flicker of idle curiosity as to the actual psychology of Mary Ann. That he did not really care he proved to himself by kissing her next time. He accepted her as she was—because she was there. She brightened his troubled life a little, and he was quite sure he brightened hers. So he drifted on, not worrying himself to mean any definite harm to her. He had quite enough worry with those music-publishers.
The financial outlook was, indeed, becoming terrifying. He was glad there was nobody to question him, for he did not care to face the facts. Peter's threat of becoming a regular visitor had been nullified by his father despatching him to Germany to buy up some more Teutonic patents. "Wonderful are the ways of Providence!" he had written to Lancelot. "If I had not flown in the old man's face and picked up a little German here years ago, I should not be half so useful to him now. . . . I shall pay a flying visit to Leipsic—not on business."
But at last Peter returned, Mrs. Leadbatter panting to the door to let him in one afternoon without troubling to ask Lancelot if he was "at home." He burst upon the musician, and found him in the most undisguisable dumps.
"Why didn't you answer my letter, you impolite old bear?" Peter asked, warding off Beethoven with his umbrella.
"I was busy," Lancelot replied pettishly.
"Busy writing rubbish. Haven't you got 'Ops.' enough? I bet you haven't had anything published yet."
"I'm working at a grand opera," he said in dry, mechanical tones. "I have hopes of getting it put on. Gasco, theimpresario, is a member of my club, and he thinks of running a season in the autumn. I had a talk with him yesterday."
"I hope I shall live to see it," said Peter sceptically.
"I hope you will," said Lancelot sharply.
"None of my family ever lived beyond ninety," said Peter, shaking his head dolefully; "and then, my heart is not so good as it might be."
"It certainly isn't!" cried poor Lancelot. "But everybody hits a chap when he's down."
He turned his head away, striving to swallow the lump that would rise to his throat. He had a sense of infinite wretchedness and loneliness.
"Oh, poor old chap; is it so bad as all that?" Peter's somewhat strident voice had grown tender as a woman's. He laid his hand affectionately on Lancelot's tumbled hair. "You know I believe in you with all my soul. I never doubted your genius for a moment. Don't I know too well that's what keeps you back? Come, come, old fellow. Can't I persuade you to write rot? One must keep the pot boiling, you know. You turn out a dozen popular ballads, and the coin'll follow your music as the rats did the pied piper's. Then, if you have any ambition left, you kick away the ladder by which you mounted, and stand on the heights of art."
"Never!" cried Lancelot. "It would degrade me in my own eyes. I'd rather starve; and you can't shake them off—the first impression is everything; they would always be remembered against me," he added, after a pause.
"Motives mixed," reflected Peter. "That's a good sign." Aloud he said, "Well, you think it over. This is a practical world, old man; it wasn't made for dreamers. And one of the first dreams that you've got to wake from is the dream that anybody connected with the stage can be relied on from one day to the next. They gas for the sake of gassing, or they tell you pleasant lies out of mere goodwill, just as they call for your drinks. Their promises are beautiful bubbles, on a basis of soft soap and made to 'bust.'"
"You grow quite eloquent," said Lancelot, with a wan smile.
"Eloquent! There's more in me than you've yet found out. Now, then! Give us your hand that you'll chuck art, and we'll drink to your popular ballad—hundredth thousand edition, no drawing-room should be without it."
Lancelot flushed. "I was just going to have some tea. I think it's five o'clock," he murmured.
"The very thing I'm dying for," cried Peter energetically; "I'm as parched as a pea." Inwardly he was shocked to find the stream of whisky run dry.
So Lancelot rang the bell, and Mary Ann came up with the tea-tray in the twilight.
"We'll have a light," cried Peter, and struck one of his own with a shadowy underthought of saving Mary Ann from a possible scolding, in case Lancelot's matches should be again unapparent. Then he uttered a comic exclamation of astonishment. Mary Ann was putting on a pair of gloves! In his surprise he dropped the match.
Mary Ann was equally startled by the unexpected sight of a stranger, but when he struck the second match her hands were bare and red.
"What in heaven's name were you putting on gloves for, my girl?" saidPeter, amused.
Lancelot stared fixedly at the fire, trying to keep the blood from flooding his cheeks. He wondered that the ridiculousness of the whole thing had never struck him in its full force before. Was it possible he could have made such an ass of himself?
"Please, sir, I've got to go out, and I'm in a hurry," said Mary Ann.
Lancelot felt intense relief. An instant after his brow wrinkled itself. "Oho!" he thought. "So this is Miss Simpleton, is it?"
"Then why did you take them off again?" retorted Peter.
Mary Ann's repartee was to burst into tears and leave the room.
"Now I've offended her," said Peter. "Did you see how she tossed her pretty head?"
"Ingenious minx," thought Lancelot.
"She's left the tray on a chair by the door," went on Peter. "What an odd girl! Does she always carry on like this?"
"She's got such a lot to do. I suppose she sometimes gets a bit queer in her head," said Lancelot, conceiving he was somehow safe-guarding Mary Ann's honour by the explanation.
"I don't think that," answered Peter. "She did seem dull and stupid when I was here last. But I had a good stare at her just now, and she seems rather bright. Why, her accent is quite refined—she must have picked it up from you."
"Nonsense, nonsense!" exclaimed Lancelot testily.
The little danger—or rather the great danger of being made to appear ridiculous—which he had just passed through, contributed to rouse him from his torpor. He exerted himself to turn the conversation, and was quite lively over tea.
"Sw—eêt! Sw—w—w—w—eêt!" suddenly broke into the conversation.
"More mysteries!" cried Peter. "What's that?"
"Only a canary."
"What, another musical instrument! Isn't Beethoven jealous? I wonder he doesn't consume his rival in his wrath. But I never knew you liked birds."
"I don't particularly. It isn't mine."
"Whose is it?"
Lancelot answered briskly, "Mary Ann's. She asked to be allowed to keep it here. It seems it won't sing in her attic; it pines away."
"And do you believe that?"
"Why not? It doesn't sing much even here."
"Let me look at it—ah, it's a plain Norwich yellow. If you wanted a singing canary you should have come to me, I'd have given you one 'made in Germany'—one of our patents—they train them to sing tunes, and that puts up the price."
"Thank you, but this one disturbs me sufficiently."
"Then why do you put up with it?"
"Why do I put up with that Christmas number supplement over the mantel-piece? It's part of the furniture. I was asked to let it be here, and I couldn't be rude."
"No, it's not in your nature. What a bore it must be to feed it! Let me see, I suppose you give it canary seed biscuits—I hope you don't give it butter."
"Don't be an ass!" roared Lancelot. "You don't imagine I bother my head whether it eats butter or—or marmalade."
"Who feeds it then?"
"Mary Ann, of course."
"She comes in and feeds it?"
"Certainly."
"Several times a day?"
"I suppose so."
"Lancelot," said Peter solemnly, "Mary Ann's mashed on you."
Lancelot shrank before Peter's remark as a burglar from a policeman's bull's-eye. The bull's-eye seemed to cast a new light on Mary Ann, too, but he felt too unpleasantly dazzled to consider that for the moment; his whole thought was to get out of the line of light.
"Nonsense!" he answered; "why I'm hardly ever in when she feeds it, and I believe it eats all day long—gets supplied in the morning like a coal-scuttle. Besides, she comes in to dust and all that when she pleases. And I do wish you wouldn't use that word 'mashed.' I loathe it."
Indeed, he writhed under the thought of being coupled with Mary Ann. The thing sounded so ugly—so squalid. In the actual, it was not so unpleasant, but looked at from the outside—unsympathetically—it was hopelessly vulgar, incurably plebeian. He shuddered.
"I don't know," said Peter. "It's a very expressive word, is 'mashed.' But I will make allowance for your poetical feelings and give up the word—except in its literal sense, of course. I'm sure you wouldn't object to mashing a music-publisher!"
Lancelot laughed with false heartiness. "Oh, but if I'm to write those popular ballads, you say he'll become my best friend."
"Of course he will," cried Peter, eagerly sniffing at the red herring Lancelot had thrown across the track. "You stand out for a royalty on every copy, so that if you strike ile—oh, I beg your pardon, that's another of the phrases you object to, isn't it?"
"Don't be a fool," said Lancelot, laughing on. "You know I only object to that in connection with English peers marrying the daughters of men who have done it."
"Oh, is that it? I wish you'd publish an expurgated dictionary with most of the words left out, and exact definitions of the conditions under which one may use the remainder. But I've got on a siding. What was I talking about?"
"Royalty," muttered Lancelot languidly.
"Royalty? No. You mentioned the aristocracy, I think." Then he burst into a hearty laugh. "Oh yes—on that ballad. Now, look here! I've brought a ballad with me just to show you—a thing that is going like wildfire."
"'NotGood-night and good-bye, I hope," laughed Lancelot.
"Yes—the very one!" cried Peter, astonished.
"Himmel!" groaned Lancelot in comic despair.
"You know it already?" inquired Peter eagerly.
"No; only I can't open a paper without seeing the advertisement and the sickly-sentimental refrain."
"You see how famous it is, anyway," said Peter. "And if you want to strike—er—to make a hit you'll just take that song and do a deliberate imitation of it."
"Wha-a-a-t!" gasped Lancelot.
"My dear chap, they all do it. When the public cotton to a thing they can't have enough of it."
"But I can write my own rot, surely."
"In the face of all this litter of 'Ops.' I daren't dispute that for a moment. But it isn't enough to write rot—the public want a particular kind of rot. Now just play that over—oblige me." He laid both hands on Lancelot's shoulders in amicable appeal.
Lancelot shrugged them, but seated himself at the piano, played the introductory chords, and commenced singing the words in his pleasant baritone.
Suddenly Beethoven ran towards the door, howling.
Lancelot ceased playing and looked approvingly at the animal.
"By Jove! He wants to go out. What an ear for music that animal's got!"
Peter smiled grimly. "It's long enough. I suppose that's why you call him Beethoven."
"Not at all. Beethoven had no ear—at least not in his latest period—he was deaf. Lucky devil! That is, if this sort of thing was brought round on barrel-organs."
"Never mind, old man! Finish the thing."
"But consider Beethoven's feelings!"
"Hang Beethoven!"
"Poor Beethoven. Come here, my poor maligned musical critic! Would they give you a bad name and hang you? Now you must be very quiet. Put your paws into those lovely long ears of yours if it gets too horrible. You have been used to high-class music, I know, but this is the sort of thing that England expects every man to do, so the sooner you get used to it the better." He ran his fingers along the keys. "There, Peter, he's growling already. I'm sure he'll start again, the moment I strike the theme."
"Let him! We'll take it as a spaniel obligato."
"Oh, but his accompaniments are too staccato. He has no sense of time."
"Why don't you teach him, then, to wag his tail like the pendulum of a metronome? He'd be more use to you that way than setting up to be a musician, which Nature never meant him for—his hair's not long enough. But go ahead, old man, Beethoven's behaving himself now."
Indeed, as if he were satisfied with his protest, the little beast remained quiet, while his lord and master went through the piece. He did not even interrupt at the refrain.
"Kiss me, good-night, dear love,Dream of the old delight;My spirit is summoned above,Kiss me, dear love, good-night."
"I must say it's not so awful as I expected," said Lancelot candidly; "it's not at all bad—for a waltz."
"There, you see!" said Peter eagerly; "the public are not such fools after all."
"Still, the words are the most maudlin twaddle!" said Lancelot, as if he found some consolation in the fact.
"Yes, but I didn't writethem!" replied Peter quickly. Then he grew red and laughed an embarrassed laugh. "I didn't mean to tell you, old man. But there—the cat's out. That's what took me to Brahmson's that afternoon we met! And I harmonised it myself, mind you, every crotchet. I picked up enough at the Conservatoire for that. You know lots of fellows only do the tune—they give out all the other work."
"So you are the great Keeley Lesterre, eh?" said Lancelot in amused astonishment.
"Yes; I have to do it under another name. I don't want to grieve the old man. You see, I promised him to reform, when he took me back to his heart and business."
"Is that strictly honourable, Peter?" said Lancelot, shaking his head.
"Oh well! I couldn't give it up altogether, but I do practically stick to the contract—it's all overtime, you know. It doesn't interfere a bit with business. Besides, as you'd say, it isn't music," he said slyly. "And just because I don't want it I make a heap of coin out of it—that's why I'm so vexed at your keeping me still in your debt."
Lancelot frowned. "Then you had no difficulty in getting published?" he asked.
"I don't say that. It was bribery and corruption so far as my first song was concerned. I tipped a professional to go down and tell Brahmson he was going to take it up. You know, of course, well-known singers get half a guinea from the publisher every time they sing a song."
"No; do they?" said Lancelot. "How mean of them."
"Business, my boy. It pays the publisher to give it them. Look at the advertisement!"
"But suppose a really fine song was published and the publisher refused to pay this blood-money?"
"Then I suppose they'd sing some other song, and let that moulder on the foolish publisher's shelves."
"Great heavens!" said Lancelot, jumping up from the piano in wild excitement. "Then a musician's reputation is really at the mercy of a mercenary crew of singers, who respect neither art nor themselves. Oh yes, we are indeed a musical people!"
"Easy there! Several of 'em are pals of mine, and I'll get them to take up those ballads of yours as soon as you write 'em."
"Let them go to the devil with their ballads!" roared Lancelot, and with a sweep of his arm whirledGood-night and good-byeinto the air. Peter picked it up and wrote something on it with a stylographic pen which he produced from his waistcoat pocket.
"There!" he said, "that'll make you remember it's your own property—and mine—that you are treating so disrespectfully."
"I beg your pardon, old chap," said Lancelot, rebuked and remorseful.
"Don't mention it," replied Peter. "And whenever you decide to become rich and famous—there's your model."
"Never! never! never!" cried Lancelot, when Peter went at ten. "My poor Beethoven! What you must have suffered! Never mind, I'll play you your Moonlight sonata."
He touched the keys gently, and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes, half closed, seeing only inward visions.
And then, all at once, he awoke with a start, for Beethoven was barking towards the door, with pricked-up ears and rigid tail.
"Sh! You little beggar," he murmured, becoming conscious that the hour was late, and that he himself had been noisy at unbeseeming hours. "What's the matter with you?" And, with a sudden thought, he threw open the door.
It was merely Mary Ann.
Her face—flashed so unexpectedly upon him—had the piquancy of a vision, but its expression was one of confusion and guilt; there were tears on her cheeks; in her hand was a bed-room candlestick.
She turned quickly, and began to mount the stairs. Lancelot put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her face towards him, and said in an imperious whisper:
"Now then, what's up? What are you crying about?"
"I ain't—I mean I'mnotcrying," said Mary Ann, with a sob in her breath.
"Come, come, don't fib. What's the matter?"
"I'm not crying; it's only the music," she murmured.
"The music," he echoed, bewildered.
"Yessir. The music always makes me cry—but you can't call it crying—it feels so nice."
"Oh, then you've been listening!"
"Yessir." Her eyes drooped in humiliation.
"But you ought to have been in bed," he said. "You get little enough sleep as it is."
"It's better than sleep," she answered.
The simple phrase vibrated through him like a beautiful minor chord.He smoothed her hair tenderly.
"Poor child!" he said.
There was an instant's silence. It was past midnight, and the house was painfully still. They stood upon the dusky landing, across which a bar of light streamed from his half-open door, and only Beethoven's eyes were upon them. But Lancelot felt no impulse to fondle her; only just to lay his hand on her hair, as in benediction and pity.
"So you liked what I was playing," he said, not without a pang of personal pleasure.
"Yessir; I never heard you play that before."
"So you often listen!"
"I can hear you, even in the kitchen. Oh, it's just lovely! I don't care what I have to do then, if it's grates or plates or steps. The music goes and goes, and I feel back in the country again, and standing, as I used to love to stand of an evening, by the stile, under the big elm, and watch how the sunset did redden the white birches, and fade in the water. Oh, it was so nice in the springtime, with the hawthorn that grew on the other bank, and the bluebells——"
The pretty face was full of dreamy tenderness, the eyes lit up witchingly. She pulled herself up suddenly, and stole a shy glance at her auditor.
"Yes, yes, go on," he said; "tell me all you feel about the music."
"And there's one song you sometimes play that makes me feel floating on and on like a great white swan."
She hummed a few bars of theGondel-Lied—flawlessly.
"Dear me! you have an ear!" he said, pinching it. "And how did you like what I was playing just now?" he went on, growing curious to know how his own improvisations struck her.
"Oh, I liked it so much," she whispered enthusiastically, "because it reminded me of my favourite one—every moment I did think—I thought—you were going to come into that."
The whimsical sparkle leapt into his eyes.
"And I thought I was so original," he murmured.
"But what I liked best," she began, then checked herself, as if suddenly remembering she had never made a spontaneous remark before, and lacking courage to establish a precedent.
"Yes—what you liked best?" he said encouragingly.
"That song you sang this afternoon," she said shyly.
"What song? I sang no song," he said, puzzled for a moment.
"Oh yes! That one about—
'Kiss me, dear love, good-night.'
I was going upstairs, but it made me stop just here—and cry."
He made his comic grimace.
"So it was you Beethoven was barking at! And I thought he had an ear! And I thought you had an ear! But no! You're both Philistines, after all. Heigho!"
She looked sad. "Oughtn't I to ha' liked it?" she asked anxiously.
"Oh yes," he said reassuringly, "it's very popular. No drawing-room is without it."
She detected the ironic ring in his voice. "It wasn't so much the music," she began apologetically.
"Now—now you're going to spoil yourself," he said. "Be natural."
"But it wasn't," she protested. "It was the words——"
"That's worse," he murmured below his breath.
"They reminded me of my mother as she laid dying."
"Ah!" said Lancelot.
"Yes, sir, mother was a long time dying—it was when I was a little girl, and I used to nurse her—I fancy it was our little Sally's death that killed her; she took to her bed after the funeral, and never left it till she went to her own," said Mary Ann, with unconscious flippancy. "She used to look up to the ceiling and say that she was going to little Sally, and I remember I was such a silly then, I brought mother flowers and apples and bits of cake to take to Sally with my love. I put them on her pillow, but the flowers faded and the cake got mouldy—mother was such a long time dying—and at last I ate the apples myself, I was so tired of waiting. Wasn't I silly?" And Mary Ann laughed a little laugh with tears in it. Then growing grave again, she added: "And at last, when mother was really on the point of death, she forgot all about little Sally, and said she was going to meet Tom. And I remember thinking she was going to America. I didn't know people talk nonsense before they die."
"They do—a great deal of it, unfortunately," said Lancelot lightly, trying to disguise from himself that his eyes were moist. He seemed to realise now what she was—a child; a child who, simpler than most children to start with, had grown only in body, whose soul had been stunted by uncounted years of dull and monotonous drudgery. The blood burnt in his veins as he thought of the cruelty of circumstance and the heartless honesty of her mistress. He made up his mind for the second time to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind in the morning.
"Well, go to bed now, my poor child," he said, "or you'll get no rest at all."
"Yessir."
She went obediently up a couple of stairs, then turned her head appealingly towards him. The tears still glimmered on her eyelashes. For an instant he thought she was expecting her kiss, but she only wanted to explain anxiously once again, "That was why I liked that song, 'Kiss me, good-night, dear love.' It was what my mother——"
"Yes, yes, I understand," he broke in, half amused, though somehow the words did not seem so full of maudlin pathos to him now. "And there——"—he drew her head towards him—"Kissme, good-night——"
He did not complete the quotation; indeed, her lips were already drawn too close to his. But, ere he released her, the long-repressed thought had found expression.
"You don't kiss anybody but me?" he said half playfully.
"Oh no, sir," said Mary Ann earnestly.
"What!" more lightly still. "Haven't you got half a dozen young men?"
Mary Ann shook her head, more regretfully than resentfully. "I told you I never go out—except for little errands."
She had told him, but his attention had been so concentrated on the ungrammatical form in which she had conveyed the information, that the fact itself had made no impression. Now his anger against Mrs. Leadbatter dwindled. After all, she was wise in not giving Mary Ann the run of the London streets.
"But"—he hesitated. "How about the—the milkman—and the—the other gentlemen."
"Please, sir," said Mary Ann, "I don't like them."
After that no man could help expressing his sense of her good taste.
"Then you won't kiss anybody but me," he said, as he let her go for the last time. He had a Quixotic sub-consciousness that he was saving her from his kind by making her promise formally.
"How could I, Mr. Lancelot?" And the brimming eyes shone with soft light. "I never shall—never."
It sounded like a troth.
He went back to the room and shut the door, but could not shut out her image. The picture she had unwittingly supplied of herself took possession of his imagination: he saw her almost as a dream-figure—the virginal figure he knew—standing by the stream in the sunset, amid the elms and silver birches, with daisies in her hands and bluebells at her feet, inhaling the delicate scent that wafted from the white hawthorn bushes, and watching the water glide along till it seemed gradually to wash away the fading colours of the sunset that glorified it. And as he dwelt on the vision he felt harmonies and phrases stirring and singing in his brain, like a choir of awakened birds. Quickly he seized paper and wrote down the theme that flowed out at the point of his pen—a reverie full of the haunting magic of quiet waters and woodland sunsets and the gracious innocence of maidenhood. When it was done he felt he must give it a distinctive name. He cast about for one, pondering and rejecting titles innumerable. Countless lines of poetry ran through his head, from which he sought to pick a word or two as one plucks a violet from a posy. At last a half-tender, half-whimsical look came into his face, and picking his pen out of his hair, he wrote merely—"Marianne."
It was only natural that Mary Ann should be unable to maintain herself—or be maintained—at this idyllic level. But her fall was aggravated by two circumstances, neither of which had any particular business to occur. The first was an intimation from the misogamist German Professor that he had persuaded another of his old pupils to include a prize symphony by Lancelot in the programme of a Crystal Palace Concert. This was of itself sufficient to turn Lancelot's head away from all but thoughts of Fame, even if Mary Ann had not been luckless enough to be again discovered cleaning the steps—and without gloves. Against such a spectacle the veriest idealist is powerless. If Mary Ann did not immediately revert to the category of quadrupeds in which she had started, it was only because of Lancelot's supplementary knowledge of the creature. But as he passed her by, solicitous as before not to tread upon her, he felt as if all the cold water in her pail were pouring down the back of his neck.
Nevertheless, the effect of both these turns of fortune was transient. The symphony was duly performed, and dismissed in the papers as promising, if over-ambitious; the only tangible result was a suggestion from the popular composer, who was a member of his club, that Lancelot should collaborate with him in a comic opera, for the production of which he had facilities. The composer confessed he had a fluent gift of tune, but had no liking for the drudgery of orchestration, and as Lancelot was well up in these tedious technicalities, the two might strike a partnership to mutual advantage.
Lancelot felt insulted, but retained enough mastery of himself to reply that he would think it over. As he gave no signs of life or thought, the popular composer then wrote to him at length on the subject, offering him fifty pounds for the job, half of it on account. Lancelot was in sore straits when he got the letter, for his stock of money was dwindling to vanishing point, and he dallied with the temptation sufficiently to take the letter home with him. But his spirit was not yet broken, and the letter, crumpled like a rag, was picked up by Mary Ann and straightened out, and carefully placed upon the mantel-shelf.
Time did something of a similar service for Mary Ann herself, picking her up from the crumpled attitude in which Lancelot had detected her on the doorstep, straightening her out again, and replacing her upon her semi-poetic pedestal. But, as with the cream-laid notepaper, the wrinklings could not be effaced entirely; which was more serious for Mary Ann.
Not that Mary Ann was conscious of these diverse humours in Lancelot. Unconscious of changes in herself, she could not conceive herself related to his variations of mood; still less did she realise the inward struggle of which she was the cause. She was vaguely aware that he had external worries, for all his grandeur, and if he was by turns brusque, affectionate, indifferent, playful, brutal, charming, callous, demonstrative, she no more connected herself with these vicissitudes than with the caprices of the weather. If her sun smiled once a day it was enough. How should she know that his indifference was often a victory over himself, as his amativeness was a defeat?
If any excuse could be found for Lancelot, it would be that which he administered to his conscience morning and evening like a soothing syrup. His position was grown so desperate that Mary Ann almost stood between him and suicide. Continued disappointment made his soul sick; his proud heart fed on itself. He would bite his lips till the blood came, vowing never to give in. And not only would he not move an inch from his ideal, he would rather die than gratify Peter by falling back on him; he would never even accept that cheque which was virtually his own.
It was wonderful how, in his stoniest moments, the sight of Mary Ann's candid face, eloquent with dumb devotion, softened and melted him. He would take her gloved hand and press it silently. And Mary Ann never knew one iota of his inmost thought! He could not bring himself to that; indeed, she never for a moment appeared to him in the light of an intelligent being; at her best she was a sweet, simple, loving child. And he scarce spoke to her at all now—theirs was a silent communion—he had no heart to converse with her as he had done. The piano, too, was almost silent; the canary sang less and less, though spring was coming, and glints of sunshine stole between the wires of its cage; even Beethoven sometimes failed to bark when there was a knock at the street door.
And at last there came a day when—for the first time in his life—Lancelot inspected his wardrobe, and hunted together his odds and ends of jewelry. From this significant task he was aroused by hearing Mrs. Leadbatter coughing in his sitting-room.
He went in with an interrogative look.
"Oh, my chest!" said Mrs. Leadbatter, patting it. "It's no use my denyin' of it, sir, I'm done up. It's as much as I can do to crawl up to the top to bed. I'm thinkin' I shall have to make up a bed in the kitchen. It only shows 'ow right I was to send for my Rosie, though quite the lady, and where will you find a nattier nursemaid in all Bayswater?"
"Nowhere," assented Lancelot automatically.
"Oh, I didn't know you'd noticed her running in to see 'er pore old mother of a Sunday arternoon," said Mrs. Leadbatter, highly gratified. "Well, sir, I won't say anything about the hextry gas, though a poor widder and sevenpence hextry on the thousand, but I'm thinkin' if you would give my Rosie a lesson once a week on that there pianner, it would be a kind of set-off, for you know, sir, the policeman tells me your winder is a landmark to 'im on the foggiest nights."
Lancelot flushed, then wrinkled his brows. This was a new idea altogether. Mrs. Leadbatter stood waiting for his reply, with a deferential smile tempered by asthmatic contortions.
"But have you got a piano of your own?"
"Oh no, sir," cried Mrs. Leadbatter almost reproachfully.
"Well; but how is your Rosie to practise? One lesson a week is of very little use anyway, but unless she practises a good deal it'll only be a waste of time."
"Ah, you don't know my Rosie," said Mrs. Leadbatter, shaking her head with sceptical pride. "You mustn't judge by other gels—the way that gel picks up things is—well, I'll just tell you what 'er school-teacher, Miss Whiteman, said. She says——"
"My good lady," interrupted Lancelot, "I practised six hours a day myself."
"Yes, but it don't come so natural to a man," said Mrs. Leadbatter, unshaken. "And it don't look natural neither to see a man playin' the pianner—it's like seein' him knittin'."
But Lancelot was knitting his brows in a way that was exceedingly natural. "I may as well tell you at once that what you propose is impossible. First of all, because I am doubtful whether I shall remain in these rooms; and secondly, because I am giving up the piano immediately. I only have it on hire, and I—I——" He felt himself blushing.
"Oh, what a pity!" interrupted Mrs. Leadbatter. "You might as well let me go on payin' the hinstalments, instead of lettin' all you've paid go for nothing. Rosie ain't got much time, but I could allow 'er a 'our a day if it was my own pianner."
Lancelot explained "hire" did not mean the "hire system." But the idea of acquiring the piano having once fired Mrs. Leadbatter's brain, could not be extinguished. The unexpected conclusion arrived at was that she was to purchase the piano on the hire system, allowing it to stand in Lancelot's room, and that five shillings a week should be taken off his rent in return for six lessons of an hour each, one of the hours counterbalancing the gas grievance. Reviewing the bargain, when Mrs. Leadbatter was gone, Lancelot did not think it at all bad for him. "Use of the piano. Gas," he murmured, with a pathetic smile, recalling the advertisements he had read before lighting on Mrs. Leadbatter's. "And five shillings a week—it's a considerable relief! There's no loss of dignity either—for nobody will know. But I wonder what the governor would have said!"
The thought shook him with silent laughter; a spectator might have fancied he was sobbing.
But, after the lessons began, it might almost be said it was only when a spectator was present that he was not sobbing. For Rosie, who was an awkward, ungraceful young person, proved to be the dullest and most butter-fingered pupil ever invented for the torture of teachers; at least, so Lancelot thought, but then he had never had any other pupils, and was not patient. It must be admitted, though, that Rosie giggled perpetually, apparently finding endless humour in her own mistakes. But the climax of the horror was the attendance of Mrs. Leadbatter at the lessons, for, to Lancelot's consternation, she took it for granted that her presence was part of the contract. She marched into the room in her best cap, and sat, smiling, in the easy-chair, wheezing complacently and beating time with her foot. Occasionally she would supplement Lancelot's critical observations.
"It ain't as I fears to trust 'er with you, sir," she also remarked about three times a week, "for I knows, sir, you're a gentleman. But it's the neighbours; they never can mind their own business. I told 'em you was going to give my Rosie lessons, and you know, sir, that theywilltalk of what don't concern 'em. And, after all, sir, it's an hour, and an hour is sixty minutes, ain't it, sir?"
And Lancelot, groaning inwardly, and unable to deny this chronometry, felt that an ironic Providence was punishing him for his attentions to Mary Ann.
And yet he only felt more tenderly towards Mary Ann. Contrasted with these two vulgar females, whom he came to conceive as her oppressors, sitting in gauds and finery, and taking lessons which had better befitted their Cinderella—the figure of Mary Ann definitely reassumed some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting that Rosie had anything to do with her tears. He hardly noticed that Rosie had taken to feeding the canary; the question of how he should feed himself was becoming every day more and more menacing. He saw starvation slowly closing in upon him like the walls of a torture-chamber. He had grown quite familiar with the pawnshop now, though he still slipped in as though his goods were stolen.
And at last there came a moment when Lancelot felt he could bear it no longer. And then he suddenly saw daylight. Why should he teach only Rosie? Nay, why should he teach Rosie at all? If hewasreduced to giving lessons—and after all it was no degradation to do so, no abandonment of his artistic ideal, rather a solution of the difficulty so simple that he wondered it had not occurred to him before—why should he give them at so wretched a price? He would get another pupil, other pupils, who would enable him to dispense with the few shillings he made by Rosie. He would not ask anybody to recommend him pupils—there was no need for his acquaintances to know, and if he asked Peter, Peter would probably play him some philanthropic trick. No, he would advertise.
After he had spent his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he realised that to get piano-forte pupils in London was as easy as to get songs published. By the time he had quite realised it, it was May, and then he sat down to realise his future.
The future was sublimely simple—as simple as his wardrobe had grown. All his clothes were on his back. In a week or two he would be on the streets; for a poor widow could not be expected to lodge, partially board (with use of the piano, gas), an absolutely penniless young gentleman, though he combined the blood of twenty county families with the genius of a pleiad of tone-poets.
There was only one bright spot in the prospect. Rosie's lessons would come to an end.
What he would do when he got on the streets was not so clear as the rest of this prophetic vision. He might take to a barrel-organ—but that would be a cruel waste of his artistic touch. Perhaps he would die on a doorstep, like the professor of many languages whose starvation was recorded in that very morning's paper.
Thus, driven by the saturnine necessity that sneers at our puny resolutions, Lancelot began to meditate surrender. For surrender of some sort must be—either of life or ideal. After so steadfast and protracted a struggle—oh, it was cruel, it was terrible; how noble, how high-minded he had been; and this was how the fates dealt with him—but at that moment——
"Sw—eêt" went the canary, and filled the room with its rapturous demi-semi-quavers, its throat swelling, its little body throbbing with joy of the sunshine. And then Lancelot remembered—not the joy of the sunshine, not the joy of life—no, merely Mary Ann.
Noble! high-minded! No, let Peter think that, let posterity think that. But he could not cozen himself thus! He had fallen—horribly, vulgarly. How absurd of him to set himself up as a saint, a martyr, an idealist! He could not divide himself into two compartments like that and pretend that only one counted in his character. Who was he, to talk of dying for art? No, he was but an everyday man. He wanted Mary Ann—yes, he might as well admit that to himself now. It was no use hum-bugging himself any longer. Why should he give her up? She was his discovery, his treasure-trove, his property.
And if he could stoop to her, why should he not stoop to popular work, to devilling, to anything that would rid him of these sordid cares? Bah! away with all pretences?
Was not this shamefaced pawning as vulgar, as wounding to the artist's soul, as the turning out of tawdry melodies?
Yes, he would escape from Mrs. Leadbatter and her Rosie; he would write to that popular composer—he had noticed his letter lying on the mantel-piece the other day—and accept the fifty pounds, and whatever he did he could do anonymously, so that Peter wouldn't know, after all; he would escape from this wretched den and take a flat far away, somewhere where nobody knew him, and there he would sit and work, with Mary Ann for his housekeeper. Poor Mary Ann! How glad she would be when he told her! The tears came into his eyes as he thought of her naïve delight. He would rescue her from this horrid, monotonous slavery, and—happy thought—he would have her to give lessons to instead of Rosie.
Yes, he would refine her; prune away all that reminded him of her wild growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would censure him if it knew, but the world was stupid and prosaic, and measured all things by its coarse rule of thumb. It was the best thing that could happen to Mary Ann—the best thing in the world. And then the worldwouldn'tknow.
"Sw—eêt," went the canary. "Sw—eêt."
This time the joy of the bird penetrated to his own soul—the joy of life, the joy of the sunshine. He rang the bell violently, as though he were sounding a clarion of defiance, the trumpet of youth.
Mary Ann knocked at the door, came in, and began to draw on her gloves.
He was in a mad mood—the incongruity struck him so that he burst out into a roar of laughter.
Mary Ann paused, flushed, and bit her lip. The touch of resentment he had never noted before gave her a novel charm, spicing her simplicity.
He came over to her and took her half-bare hands. No, they were not so terrible, after all. Perhaps she had awakened to her iniquities, and had been trying to wash them white. His last hesitation as to her worthiness to live with him vanished.
"Mary Ann," he said, "I'm going to leave these rooms."
The flush deepened, but the anger faded. She was a child again—her big eyes full of tears. He felt her hands tremble in his.
"Mary Ann," he went on, "how would you like me to take you with me?"
"Do you mean it, sir?" she asked eagerly.
"Yes, dear." It was the first time he had used the word. The blood throbbed madly in her ears. "If you will come with me—and be my little housekeeper—we will go away to some nice spot, and be quite alone together—in the country if you like, amid the foxglove and the meadowsweet, or by the green waters, where you shall stand in the sunset and dream; and I will teach you music and the piano"—her eyes dilated—"and you shall not do any of this wretched nasty work any more. What do you say?"
"Sw—eêt, sw—eêt," said the canary in thrilling jubilation.
Her happiness was choking her—she could not speak.
"And we will take the canary, too—unless I say good-bye to you as well."
"Oh no, you mustn't leave us here!"
"And then," he said slowly, "it will not be good-bye—nor good-night.Do you understand?"
"Yes, yes," she breathed, and her face shone.
"But think, think, Mary Ann," he said, a sudden pang of compunction shooting through his breast. He released her hands. "Doyou understand?"
"I understand—I shall be with you, always."
He replied uneasily: "I shall look after you—always."
"Yes, yes," she breathed. Her bosom heaved. "Always."
Then his very first impression of her as "a sort of white Topsy" recurred to him suddenly and flashed into speech.
"Mary Ann, I don't believe you know how you came into the world. I dare say you 'specs you growed.'"
"No, sir," said Mary Ann gravely; "God made me."
That shook him strangely for a moment. But the canary sang on:
"Sw-eêt. Sw-w-w-w-w-eêt."
And so it was settled. He wrote the long-delayed answer to the popular composer, found him still willing to give out his orchestration, and they met by appointment at the club.
"I've got hold of a splendid book," said the popular composer. "Awfully clever; jolly original. Bound to go—from the French, you know. Haven't had time to set to work on it—old engagement to run over to Monte Carlo for a few days—but I'll leave you the book; you might care to look over it. And—I say—if any catchy tunes suggest themselves as you go along, you might just jot them down, you know. Not worth while losing an idea; eh, my boy! Ha! ha! ha! Well, good-bye. See you again when I come back; don't suppose I shall be away more than a month. Good-bye!" And, having shaken Lancelot's hand with tremendous cordiality, the popular composer rushed downstairs and into a hansom.
Lancelot walked home with the libretto and the five five-pound notes. He asked for Mrs. Leadbatter, and gave her a week's notice. He wanted to drop Rosie immediately, on the plea of pressure of work, but her mother received the suggestion with ill-grace, and said that Rosie should come up and practise on her own piano all the same, so he yielded to the complexities of the situation, and found hope a wonderful sweetener of suffering. Despite Rosie and her giggling, and Mrs. Leadbatter and her best cap and her asthma, the week went by almost cheerfully. He worked regularly at the comic opera, nearly as happy as the canary which sang all day long, and, though scarcely a word more passed between him and Mary Ann, their eyes met ever and anon in the consciousness of a sweet secret.
It was already Friday afternoon. He gathered together his few personal belongings—his books, his manuscripts,operainnumerable. There was room in his portmanteau for everything—now he had no clothes. On the Monday the long nightmare would be over. He would go down to some obscure seaside nook and live very quietly for a few weeks, and gain strength and calm in the soft spring airs, and watch hand-in-hand with Mary Ann the rippling scarlet trail of the setting sun fade across the green waters. Life, no doubt, would be hard enough still. Struggles and trials enough were yet before him, but he would not think of that now—enough that for a month or two there would be bread and cheese and kisses. And then, in the midst of a tender reverie, with his hand on the lid of his portmanteau, he was awakened by ominous sounds of objurgation from the kitchen.
His heart stood still. He went down a few stairs and listened.
"Not another stroke of work do you do in my house, Mary Ann!" Then there was silence, save for the thumping of his own heart. What had happened?
He heard Mrs. Leadbatter mounting the kitchen stairs, wheezing and grumbling: "Well, of all the sly little things!"
Mary Ann had been discovered. His blood ran cold at the thought. The silly creature had been unable to keep the secret.
"Not a word about 'im all this time. Oh, the sly little thing. Who would hever a-believed it?"
And then, in the intervals of Mrs. Leadbatter's groanings, there came to him the unmistakable sound of Mary Ann sobbing—violently, hysterically. He turned from cold to hot in a fever of shame and humiliation. How had it all come about? Oh yes, he could guess. The gloves! What a fool he had been! Mrs. Leadbatter had unearthed the box. Why did he give her more than the pair that could always be kept hidden in her pocket? Yes, it was the gloves. And then there was the canary. Mrs. Leadbatter had suspected he was leaving her for a reason. She had put two and two together, she had questioned Mary Ann, and the ingenuous little idiot had naïvely told her he was going to take her with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step in and make things nasty.
Mrs. Leadbatter's steps and wheezes and grumblings had arrived in the passage, and Lancelot hastily stole back into his room, his heart continuing to flutter painfully.
He heard the complex noises reach his landing, pass by, and move up higher. She wasn't coming in to him, then. He could endure the suspense no longer; he threw open his door and said, "Is there anything the matter?"
Mrs. Leadbatter paused and turned her head.
"His there anything the matter!" she echoed, looking down upon him. "A nice thing when a woman's troubled with hastmer, and brought 'ome 'er daughter to take 'er place, that she should 'ave to start 'untin' afresh!"
"Why, is Rosie going away?" he said, immeasurably relieved.
"My Rosie! She's the best girl breathing. It's that there Mary Ann!"
"Wh-a-t!" he stammered. "Mary Ann leaving you?"
"Well, you don't suppose," replied Mrs. Leadbatter angrily, "as I can keep a gel in my kitchen as is a-goin' to 'ave 'er own nors-end-kerridge!"
"Her own horse and carriage!" repeated Lancelot, utterly dazed. "What ever are you talking about?"
"Well—there's the letter!" exclaimed Mrs. Leadbatter indignantly. "See for yourself if you don't believe me. I don't know how much two and a 'arf million dollars is—but it sounds unkimmonly like a nors-end-kerridge—and never said a word about 'im the whole time, the sly little thing!"
The universe seemed oscillating so that he grasped at the letter like a drunken man. It was from the vicar. He wrote:
"I have much pleasure in informing you that our dear Mary Ann is the fortunate inheritress of two and a half million dollars by the death of her brother Tom, who, as I learn from the lawyers who have applied to me for news of the family, has just died in America, leaving his money to his surviving relatives. He was rather a wild young man, but it seems he became the lucky possessor of some petroleum wells, which made him wealthy in a few months. I pray God Mary Ann may make a better use of the money than he would have done, I want you to break the news to her, please, and to prepare her for my visit. As I have to preach on Sunday, I cannot come to town before, but on Monday (D.V.) I shall run up and shall probably take her back with me, as I desire to help her through the difficulties that will attend her entry into the new life. How pleased you will be to think of the care you took of the dear child during these last five years. I hope she is well and happy. I think you omitted to write to me last Christmas on the subject. Please give her my kindest regards and best wishes, and say I shall be with her (D.V.) on Monday."
The words swam uncertainly before Lancelot's eyes, but he got through them all at last. He felt chilled and numbed. He averted his face as he handed the letter back to Mary Ann's "missus."
"What a fortunate girl!" he said in a low, stony voice.
"Fortunate ain't the word for it. The mean, sly little cat. Fancy never telling me a word about 'er brother all these years—me as 'as fed her, and clothed her, and lodged her, and kepper out of all mischief, as if she'd bin my own daughter, never let her go out Bankhollidayin' in loose company—as you can bear witness yourself, sir—and eddicated 'er out of 'er country talk and rough ways, and made 'er the smart young woman she is, fit to wait on the most troublesome of gentlemen. And now she'll go away and say I used 'er 'arsh, and overworked 'er, and Lord knows what, don't tell me. Oh, my poor chest!"
"I think you may make your mind quite easy," said Lancelot grimly. "I'm sure Mary Ann is perfectly satisfied with your treatment."
"But she ain't—there, listen! don't you hear her going on?" Poor Mary Ann's sobs were still audible, though exhaustion was making them momently weaker. "She's been going on like that ever since I broke the news to 'er and gave her a piece of my mind—the sly little cat! She wanted to go on scrubbing the kitchen, and I had to take the brush away by main force. A nice thing, indeed! A gel as can keep a nors-end-kerridge down on the cold kitchen stones! 'Twasn't likely I could allow that. 'No, Mary Ann,' says I firmly, 'you're a lady, and if you don't know what's proper for a lady, you'd best listen to them as does. You go and buy yourself a dress and a jacket to be ready for that vicar, who's been a real good kind friend to you. He's coming to take you away on Monday, he is, and how will you look in that dirty print? Here's a suvrin,' says I, 'out of my 'ard-earned savin's—and get a pair o' boots, too; you can git a sweet pair for 2s. 11d. at Rackstraw's afore the sale closes,' and with that I shoves the suvrin into 'er hand instead o' the scrubbin' brush, and what does she do? Why, busts out a-cryin', and sits on the damp stones, and sobs, and sulks, and stares at the suvrin in her hand as if I'd told her of a funeral instead of a fortune!" concluded Mrs. Leadbatter alliteratively.
"But you did—her brother's death," said Lancelot. "That's what she's crying about."
Mrs. Leadbatter was taken aback by this obverse view of the situation; but, recovering herself, she shook her head. "Iwouldn't cry for no brother that lef me to starve when he was rollin' in two and a 'arf million dollars," she said sceptically. "And I'm sure my Rosie wouldn't. But she never 'ad nobody to leave her money, poor dear child, except me, please Gaud. It's only the fools as 'as the luck inthisworld." And having thus relieved her bosom, she resumed her panting progress upwards.
The last words rang on in Lancelot's ears long after he had returned to his room. In the utter breakdown and confusion of his plans and his ideas it was the one definite thought he clung to, as a swimmer in a whirlpool clings to a rock. His brain refused to concentrate itself on any other aspect of the situation—he could not, would not, dared not, think of anything else. He knew vaguely he ought to rejoice with her over her wonderful stroke of luck, that savoured of the fairy-story, but everything was swamped by that one almost resentful reflection. Oh, the irony of fate! Blind fate showering torrents of gold upon this foolish, babyish household drudge, who was all emotion and animal devotion, without the intellectual outlook of a Hottentot, and leaving men of genius to starve, or sell their souls for a handful of it! How was the wisdom of the ages justified! Verily did fortune favour fools. And Tom—the wicked—he had flourished as the wicked always do, like the green bay tree, as the Psalmist discovered ever so many centuries ago.
But gradually the wave of bitterness waned. He found himself listening placidly and attentively to the joyous trills and roulades of the canary, till the light faded and the grey dusk crept into the room and stilled the tiny winged lover of the sunshine. Then Beethoven came and rubbed himself against his master's leg, and Lancelot got up as one wakes from a dream, and stretched his cramped limbs dazedly, and rang the bell mechanically for tea. He was groping on the mantel-piece for the matches when the knock at the door came, and he did not turn round till he had found them. He struck a light, expecting to see Mrs. Leadbatter or Rosie. He started to find it was merely Mary Ann.
But she was no longer merely Mary Ann, he remembered with another shock. She loomed large to him in the match-light—he seemed to see her through a golden haze. Tumultuous images of her glorified gilded future rose and mingled dizzily in his brain.