Lancelot surrendered himself to a roar of laughter. "This is a real
original," he said to himself, just a touch of pity blending with his
amusement.
"I suppose, though, you'd be willing to lend a hand occasionally?" he
could not resist saying.
"Missus says I must do anything I'm asked," she said, in distress, the
tears welling to her eyes. And a merciless bell mercifully sounding from
an upper room, she hurried out.
How much Mary Ann did, Lancelot never rightly knew, any more than he knew
the number of lodgers in the house, or who cooked his chops in the
mysterious regions below stairs. Sometimes he trod on the toes of boots
outside doors and vaguely connected them with human beings, peremptory
and exacting as himself. To Mary Ann each of those pairs of boots was a
personality, with individual hours of rising and retiring, breakfasting
and supping, going out and coming in, and special idiosyncrasies of diet
and disposition. The population of 5 Baker's Terrace was nine, mostly
bell-ringers. Life was one ceaseless round of multifarious duties; with
six hours of blessed unconsciousness, if sleep were punctual. All the
week long Mary Ann was toiling up and down the stairs or sweeping them,
making beds or puddings, polishing boots or fire-irons. Holidays were
not in Mary Ann's calendar; and if Sunday ever found her on her knees, it
was only when she was scrubbing out the kitchen. All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy; it had not, apparently, made Mary Ann a bright
girl.
The piano duly came in through the window like a burglar. It was a good
instrument, but hired. Under Lancelot's fingers it sang like a bird and
growled like a beast. When the piano was done growling Lancelot usually
started. He paced up and down the room, swearing audibly. Then he would
sit down at the table and cover ruled paper with hieroglyphics for hours
together. His movements were erratic to the verge of mystery. He had no
fixed hours for anything; to Mary Ann he was hopeless. At any given
moment he might be playing on the piano, or writing on the curiously
ruled paper, or stamping about the room, or sitting limp with despair in
the one easy-chair, or drinking whisky and water, or smoking a black
meerschaum, or reading a book, or lying in bed, or driving away in a
hansom, or walking about Heaven alone knew where or why. Even Mrs.
Leadbatter, whose experience of life was wider than Mary Ann's,
considered his vagaries almost unchristian, though to the highest degree
gentlemanly. Sometimes, too, he sported the swallow-tail and the
starched breast-plate, which was a wonder to Mary Ann, who knew that
waiters were connected only with the most stylish establishments.
Baker's Terrace did not wear evening dress.
Mary Ann liked him best in black and white. She thought he looked like
the pictures in the young ladies' novelettes, which sometimes caught her
eye as she passed newsvendors' shops on errands. Not that she was read
in this literature--she had no time for reading. But, even when clothed
in rough tweeds, Lancelot had for Mary Ann an aristocratic halo; in his
dressing-gown he savoured of the grand Turk. His hands were masterful:
the fingers tapering, the nails pedantically polished. He had fair hair,
with moustache to match; his brow was high and white, and his grey eyes
could flash fire. When he drew himself up to his full height, he
threatened the gas globes. Never had No. 5 Baker's Terrace boasted of
such a tenant. Altogether, Lancelot loomed large to Mary Ann; she
dazzled him with his own boots in humble response, and went about sad
after a reprimand for putting his papers in order. Her whole theory of
life oscillated in the presence of a being whose views could so run
counter to her strongest instincts. And yet, though the universe seemed
tumbling about her ears when he told her she must not move a scrap of
manuscript, howsoever wildly it lay about the floor or under the bed, she
did not for a moment question his sanity. She obeyed him like a dog;
uncomprehending, but trustful. But, after all, this was only of a piece
with the rest of her life. There was nothing she questioned. Life stood
at her bedside every morning in the cold dawn, bearing a day heaped high
with duties; and she jumped cheerfully out of her warm bed and took them
up one by one, without question or murmur. They _were_ life. Life had
no other meaning any more than it has for the omnibus hack, which cannot
conceive existence outside shafts, and devoid of the intermittent flick
of a whip point. The comparison is somewhat unjust; for Mary Ann did not
fare nearly so well as the omnibus hack, having to make her meals off
such scraps as even the lodgers sent back. Mrs. Leadbatter was extremely
economical, as much so with the provisions in her charge as with those
she bought for herself. She sedulously sent up remainders till they were
expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by
habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from
surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there
was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of
an ethical battleground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her
hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at _his_ provisions was too
sacrilegious to be entertained. And yet--so queerly are we and life
compounded--she was probably less unhappy at this period than Lancelot,
who would come home in the vilest of tempers, and tramp the room with
thunder on his white brow. Sometimes he and the piano and Beethoven
would all be growling together, at other times they would all three be
mute; Lancelot crouching in the twilight with his head in his hands; and
Beethoven moping in the corner, and the closed piano looming in the
background like a coffin of dead music.
One February evening--an evening of sleet and mist--Lancelot, who had
gone out in evening dress, returned unexpectedly, bringing with him for
the first time a visitor. He was so perturbed that he forgot to use his
latchkey, and Mary Ann, who opened the door, heard him say angrily,
"Well, I can't slam the door in your face, but I will tell you in your
face I don't think it at all gentlemanly of you to force yourself upon me
like this."
"My dear Lancelot, when did I ever set up to be a gentleman? You know
that was always your part of the contract." And a swarthy, thick-set
young man with a big nose lowered the dripping umbrella he had been
holding over Lancelot, and stepped from the gloom of the street into the
fuscous cheerfulness of the ill-lit passage.
By this time Beethoven, who had been left at home, was in full ebullition
upstairs, and darted at the intruder the moment his calves appeared.
Beethoven barked with short, sharp snaps, as became a bilious
liver-coloured Blenheim spaniel.
"Like master like dog," said the swarthy young man, defending himself at
the point of the umbrella. "Really your animal is more intelligent than
the overrated common or garden dog, which makes no distinction between
people calling in the small hours and people calling in broad daylight
under the obvious patronage of its own master. This beast of yours is
evidently more in sympathy with its liege lord. Down, Fido, down! I
wonder they allow you to keep such noisy creatures--but stay! I was
forgetting you keep a piano. After that, I suppose, nothing matters."
Lancelot made no reply, but surprised Beethoven into silence by kicking
him out of the way. He lit the gas with a neatly written sheet of music
which he rammed into the fire Mary Ann had been keeping up, then as
silently he indicated the easy-chair.
"Thank you," said the swarthy young man, taking it. "I would rather see
you in it, but as there's only one, I know you wouldn't be feeling a
gentleman; and that would make us both uncomfortable."
"'Pon my word, Peter," Lancelot burst forth, "you're enough to provoke a
saint."
"'Pon my word, Lancelot," replied Peter imperturbably, "you're more than
enough to provoke a sinner. Why, what have you to be ashamed of? You've
got one of the cosiest dens in London and one of the comfortablest
chairs. Why, it's twice as jolly as the garret we shared at Leipsic--up
the ninety stairs."
"We're not in Germany now. I don't want to receive visitors," answered
Lancelot sulkily.
"A visitor! you call me a visitor! Lancelot, it's plain you were not
telling the truth when you said just now you had forgiven me."
"I had forgiven--and forgotten you."
"Come, that's unkind. It's scarcely three years since I threw up my
career as a genius, and you know why I left you, old man. When the first
fever of youthful revolt was over, I woke to see things in their true
light. I saw how mean it was of me to help to eat up your wretched
thousand pounds. Neither of us saw the situation nakedly at first--it
was sicklied o'er with Quixotic foolishness. You see, you had the
advantage of me. Your governor was a gentleman. He says, 'Very well, if
you won't go to Cambridge, if you refuse to enter the Church as the
younger son of a blue-blooded but impecunious baronet should, and to step
into the living which is fattening for you, then I must refuse to take
any further responsibility for your future. Here is a thousand pounds;
it is the money I had set aside for your college course. Use it for your
musical tomfoolery if you insist, and then--get what living you can.'
Which was severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician. But what does
my governor do? That cantankerous, pig-headed old Philistine--God bless
him!--he's got no sense of the respect a father owes to his offspring.
Not an atom. You're simply a branch to be run on the lines of the old
business, or be shut up altogether. And, by the way, Lancelot, he hasn't
altered a jot since those days when--as you remember--the City or
starvation was his pleasant alternative. Of course, I preferred
starvation--one usually does at nineteen; especially if one knows there's
a scion of aristocracy waiting outside to elope with him to Leipsic."
"But you told me you were going back to your dad, because you found you
had mistaken your vocation."
"Gospel truth also! My heavens, shall I ever forget the blank horror
that grew upon me when I came to understand that music was a science more
barbarous than the mathematics that floored me at school, that the life
of a musical student, instead of being a delicious whirl of waltz tunes,
was 'one dem'd grind,' that seemed to grind out all the soul of the
divine art and leave nothing but horrid technicalities about consecutive
fifths and suspensions on the dominant? I dare say most people still
think of the musician as a being who lives in an enchanted world of
sound, rather than as a person greatly occupied with tedious feats of
penmanship; just as I myself still think of a _prima ballerina_ not as a
hard-working gymnast, but as a fairy, whose existence is all bouquets and
lime-light."
"But you had a pretty talent for the piano," said Lancelot in milder
accents. "No one forced you to learn composition. You could have learnt
anything for the paltry fifteen pounds exacted by the Conservatoire--from
the German flute to the grand organ; from singing to scoring band parts."
"No, thank you. _Aut Caesar aut nihil_. You remember what I always used
to say: 'Either Beethoven----' (The spaniel pricked up his ears.) --or
bust.' If I could not be a great musician it was hardly worth while
enduring the privations of one, especially at another man's expense. So
I did the Prodigal Son dodge, as you know, and out of the proceeds sent
you my year's exes in that cheque you with your damnable pride sent me
back again. And now, old fellow, that I have you face to face at last,
can you offer the faintest scintilla of a shadow of a reason for refusing
to take that cheque? No, you can't! Nothing but simple beastly
stuckuppishness. I saw through you at once; all your heroics were a
fraud. I was not your friend, but your protégé--something to practise
your chivalry on. You dropped your cloak, and I saw your feet of clay.
Well, I tell you straight, I made up my mind at once to be bad friends
with you for life; only when I saw your fiery old phiz at Brahmson's I
felt a sort of something tugging inside my greatcoat like a thief after
my pocket-book, and I kinder knew, as the Americans say, that in half an
hour I should be sitting beneath your hospitable roof."
"I beg your pardon--you will have some whisky." He rang the bell
violently.
"Don't be a fool--you know I didn't mean that. Well, don't let us
quarrel. I have forgiven you for your youthful bounty, and you have
forgiven me for chucking it up; and now we are going to drink to the
_Vaterland_," he added, as Mary Ann appeared with a suspicious alacrity.
"Do you know," he went on, when they had taken the first sip of renewed
amity dissolved in whisky, "I think I showed more musical soul than you
in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by
fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some
sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself
to scribble all this--you, with your restless nature--full scores, too!
I hope you don't offer this sort of thing to Brahmson."
"I certainly went there with that intention," admitted Lancelot. "I
thought I'd catch Brahmson himself in the evening--he's never in when I
call in the morning."
Peter groaned.
"Quixotic as ever! You can't have been long in London then?"
"A year."
"I suppose you'd jump down my throat if I were to ask you how much is
left of that----" he hesitated, then turned the sentence facetiously--"of
those twenty thousand shillings you were cut off with?"
"Let this vile den answer."
"Don't disparage the den; it's not so bad."
"You are right--I may come to worse. I've been an awful ass. You know
how lucky I was while at the Conservatoire--no, you don't. How should
you? Well, I carried off some distinctions and a lot of conceit, and
came over here thinking Europe would be at my feet in a month. I was
only sorry my father died before I could twit him with my triumph.
That's candid, isn't it?"
"Yes; you're not such a prig after all," mused Peter; "I saw the old
man's death in the paper--your brother Lionel became the bart."
"Yes, poor beggar, I don't hate him half so much as I did. He reminds me
of a man invited to dinner which is nothing but flowers and serviettes
and silver plate."
"I'd pawn the plate, anyhow," said Peter, with a little laugh.
"He can't touch anything, I tell you; everything's tied up."
"Ah well, he'll get tied up, too. He'll marry an American heiress."
"Confound him! I'd rather see the house extinct first."
"Hoity, toity! She'll be quite as good as any of you."
"I can't discuss this with you, Peter," said Lancelot, gently but firmly.
"If there is a word I hate more than the word heiress, it is the word
American."
"But why? They're both very good words and better things."
"They both smack of the most vulgar thing in the world--money," said
Lancelot, walking hotly about the room. "In America there's no other
standard. To make your pile, to strike ile--oh, how I shudder to hear
these idioms! And can any one hear the word heiress without immediately
thinking of matrimony? Phaugh? It's a prostitution."
"What is? You're not very coherent, my friend."
"Very well, I am incoherent. If a great old family can only bolster up
its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let
the family perish with honour."
"But the daughters of oil-strikers are sometimes very charming creatures.
They are polished with their fathers' oil."
"You are right. They reek of it. Pah! I pray to Heaven Lionel will
either wed a lady or die a bachelor."
"Yes; but what do you call a lady?" persisted Peter.
Lancelot uttered an impatient snarl, and rang the bell violently. Peter
stared in silence. Mary Ann appeared.
"How often am I to tell you to leave my matches on the mantel-shelf?"
snapped Lancelot. "You seem to delight to hide them away, as if I had
time to play parlour games with you."
Mary Ann silently went to the mantel-piece, handed him the matches, and
left the room without a word.
"I, say, Lancelot, adversity doesn't seem to have agreed with you," said
Peter severely. "That poor girl's eyes were quite wet when she went out.
Why didn't you speak? I could have given you heaps of lights, and you
might even have sacrificed another scrap of that precious manuscript."
"Well, she has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said
Lancelot somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called
Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had
another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I
went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly
way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is, she's been
called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's forgotten her father's
name--if she ever had any. I must do her the justice, though, to say she
answers to the name of Mary Ann in every sense of the phrase."
"She didn't seem at all bad-looking, any way," said Peter.
"Every man to his taste!" growled Lancelot. "She's as _platt_ and
uninteresting as a wooden sabot."
"There's many a pretty foot in a sabot," retorted Peter, with an air of
philosophy.
"You think that's clever, but it's simply silly. How does that fact
affect this particular sabot?"
"I've put my foot in it," groaned Peter comically.
"Besides, she might be a houri from heaven," said Lancelot; "but a houri
in a patched print-frock----" He shuddered, and struck a match.
"I don't know exactly what houris from heaven are, but I have a kind of
feeling any sort of frock would be out of harmony----!"
Lancelot lit his pipe.
"If you begin to say that sort of thing, we must smoke," he said,
laughing between the puffs. "I can offer you lots of tobacco--I'm sorry
I've got no cigars. Wait till you see Mrs. Leadbatter--my landlady--then
you'll talk about houris. Poverty may not be a crime, but it seems to
make people awful bores. Wonder if it'll have that effect on me? _Ach
Himmel_! how that woman bores me. No, there's no denying it--there's my
pouch, old man--I hate the poor; their virtues are only a shade more
vulgar than their vices. This Leadbatter creature is honest after her
lights--she sends me up the most ridiculous leavings--and I only hate her
the more for it."
"I suppose she works Mary Ann's fingers to the bone from the same
mistaken sense of duty," said Peter acutely. "Thanks; think I'll try one
of my cigars. I filled my case, I fancy, before I came out. Yes, here
it is; won't _you_ try one?"
"No, thanks, I prefer my pipe."
"It's the same old meerschaum, I see," said Peter.
"The same old meerschaum," repeated Lancelot, with a little sigh.
Peter lit a cigar, and they sat and puffed in silence.
"Dear me!" said Peter suddenly; "I can almost fancy we're back in our
German garret, up the ninety stairs, can't you?"
"No," said Lancelot sadly, looking round as if in search of something; "I
miss the dreams."
"And I," said Peter, striving to speak cheerfully, "I see a dog too much."
"Yes," said Lancelot, with a melancholy laugh. "When you funked becoming
a Beethoven, I got a dog and called him after you."
"What? you called him Peter?"
"No, Beethoven!"
"Beethoven! Really?"
"Really. Here, Beethoven!"
The spaniel shook himself, and perked his wee nose up wistfully towards
Lancelot's face.
Peter laughed, with a little catch in his voice. He didn't know whether
he was pleased, or touched, or angry.
"You started to tell me about those twenty thousand shillings," he said.
"Didn't I tell you? On the expectations of my triumph, I lived
extravagantly, like a fool, joined a club, and took up my quarters there.
When I began to realise the struggle that lay before me, I took chambers;
then I took rooms; now I'm in lodgings. The more I realised it, the less
rent I paid. I only go to the club for my letters now. I won't have
them come here. I'm living incognito."
"That's taking fame by the forelock, indeed! Then by what name must I
ask for you next time? For I'm not to be shaken off."
"Lancelot."
"Lancelot what?"
"Only Lancelot! Mr. Lancelot."
"Why, that's like your Mary Ann!"
"So it is!" he laughed, more bitterly than cordially; "it never struck me
before. Yes, we are a pair."
"How did you stumble on this place?"
"I didn't stumble. Deliberate, intelligent selection. You see, it's the
next best thing to Piccadilly. You just cross Waterloo Bridge, and there
you are at the centre, five minutes from all the clubs. The natives have
not yet risen to the idea."
"You mean the rent," laughed Peter. "You're as canny and careful as a
Scotch professor. I think it's simply grand the way you've beaten out
those shillings, in defiance of your natural instincts. I should have
melted them years ago. I believe you _have_ got some musical genius,
after all."
"You overrate my abilities," said Lancelot, with the whimsical expression
that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable
moments. "You must deduct the Thalers I made in exhibitions. As for
living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy, for
every now and again it occurs to you that you are saving an awful lot,
and you take a hansom on the strength of it."
"Well, I haven't torn up that cheque yet----"
"Peter!" said Lancelot, his flash of gaiety dying away, "I tell you these
things as a friend, not as a beggar. If you look upon me as the second,
I cease to be the first."
"But, man, I owe you the money; and if it will enable you to hold out a
little longer--why, in heaven's name, shouldn't you----?"
"You don't owe me the money at all; I made no bargain with you; I am not
a money-lender."
"_Pack dich zum Henker_!" growled Peter, with a comical grimace. "_Was
für_ a casuist! What a swindler you'd make! I wonder you have the face
to deny the debt. Well, and how did you leave Frau Sauer-Kraut?" he
said, deeming it prudent to sheer off the subject.
"Fat as a Christmas turkey."
"Of a German sausage. The extraordinary things that woman stuffed
herself with. Chunks of fat, stewed apples, Kartoffel salad--all mixed
up in one plate, as in a dustbin."
"Don't! You make my gorge rise. _Ach Himmel_! to think that this nation
should be musical! O Music, heavenly maid, how much garlic I have
endured for thy sake!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Peter, putting down his whisky that he might throw
himself freely back in the easy-chair and roar.
"Oh that garlic!" he said, panting. "No wonder they smoked so much in
Leipsic. Even so they couldn't keep the reek out of the staircases.
Still, it's a great country is Germany. Our house does a tremendous
business in German patents."
"A great country? A land of barbarians rather. How can a people be
civilised that eats jam with its meat?"
"Bravo, Lancelot! You're in lovely form to-night. You seem to go a
hundred miles out of your way to come the truly British. First it was
oil--now it's jam. There was that aristocratic flash in your eye, too,
that look of supreme disdain which brings on riots in Trafalgar Square.
Behind the patriotic, the national note: 'How can a people be civilised
that eats jam with its meat?' I heard the deeper, the oligarchic accent:
'How can a people be enfranchised that eats meat with its fingers?' Ah,
you are right! How you do hate the poor! What bores they are! You
aristocrats--the products of centuries of culture, comfort, and
cocksureness--will never rid yourselves of your conviction that you are
the backbone of England--no, not though that backbone were picked clean
of every scrap of flesh by the rats of Radicalism."
"What in the devil are you talking about now?" demanded Lancelot. "You
seem to me to go a hundred miles out of _your_ way to twit me with my
poverty and my breeding. One would almost think you were anxious to
convince me of the poverty of _your_ breeding."
"Oh, a thousand pardons!" ejaculated Peter, blushing violently. "But,
good heavens, old chap! There's your hot temper again. You surely
wouldn't suspect _me_, of all people in the world, of meaning anything
personal? I'm talking of you as a class. Contempt is in your blood--and
quite right! We're such snobs, we deserve it. Why d'ye think I ever
took to you as a boy at school? Was it because you scribbled inaccurate
sonatas and I had myself a talent for knocking tunes off the piano? Not
a bit of it. I thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many
youthful errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English
baronet, and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things
Teutonic. And that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You
gratify my historic sense--like an old building. You are picturesque.
You stand to me for all the good old ideals, including the pride which we
are beginning to see is deuced unchristian. Mind you, it's a curious
kind of pride when one looks into it. Apparently it's based on the fact
that your family has lived on the nation for generations. And yet you
won't take my cheque, which is your own. Now don't swear--I know one
mustn't analyse things, or the world would come to pieces, so I always
vote Tory."
"Then I shall have to turn Radical," grumbled Lancelot.
"Certainly you will, when you have had a little more experience of
poverty," retorted Peter. "There, there, old man! forgive me. I only do
it to annoy you. Fact is, your outbursts of temper attract me. They are
pleasant to look back upon when the storm is over. Yes, my dear
Lancelot, you are like the king you look--you can do no wrong. You are
picturesque. Pass the whisky."
Lancelot smiled, his handsome brow serene once more. He murmured, "Don't
talk rot," but inwardly he was not displeased at Peter's allegiance, half
mocking though he knew it.
"Therefore, my dear chap," resumed Peter, sipping his whisky and water,
"to return to our lambs, I bow to your patrician prejudices in favour of
forks. But your patriotic prejudices are on a different level. There, I
am on the same ground as you, and I vow I see nothing inherently superior
in the British combination of beef and beetroot, to the German amalgam of
lamb and jam."
"Damn lamb and jam," burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical
look: "There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on this
tack?"
"I don't know," said Peter, smiling. "We were talking about Frau
Sauer-Kraut, I think. And did you board with her all the time?"
"Yes, and I was always hungry. Till the last, I never learnt to stomach
her mixtures. But it was really too much trouble to go down the ninety
stairs to a restaurant. It was much easier to be hungry."
"And did you ever get a reform in the hours of washing the floor?"
"Ha! ha! ha! No, they always waited till I was going to bed. I suppose
they thought I liked damp. They never got over my morning tub, you know.
And that, too, sprang a leak after you left, and helped spontaneously to
wash the floor."
"Shows the fallacy of cleanliness," said Peter, "and the inferiority of
British ideals. They never bathed in their lives, yet they looked the
pink of health."
"Yes--their complexion was high--like the fish."
"Ha! ha! Yes, the fish! That was a great luxury, I remember. About
once a month."
"Of course, the town is so inland," said Lancelot.
"I see--it took such a long time coming. Ha! ha! ha! And the Herr
Professor--is he still a bachelor?"
As the Herr Professor was a septuagenarian and a misogamist, even in
Peter's time, his question tickled Lancelot. Altogether the two young
men grew quite jolly, recalling a hundred oddities, and reknitting their
friendship at the expense of the Fatherland.
"But was there ever a more madcap expedition than ours?" exclaimed Peter.
"Most boys start out to be pirates----"
"And some do become music-publishers," Lancelot finished grimly, suddenly
reminded of a grievance.
"Ha! ha! ha! Poor fellow'" laughed Peter. "Then you _have_ found them
out already."
"Does anyone ever find them in?" flashed Lancelot. "I suppose they do
exist and are occasionally seen of mortal eyes. I suppose wives and
friends and mothers gaze on them with no sense of special privilege,
unconscious of their invisibility to the profane eyes of mere musicians."
"My dear fellow, the mere musicians are as plentiful as niggers on the
sea-shore. A publisher might spend his whole day receiving regiments of
unappreciated geniuses. Bond Street would be impassable. You look at
the publisher too much from your own standpoint."
"I tell you I don't look at him from any standpoint. That's what I
complain of. He's encircled with a prickly hedge of clerks. 'You will
hear from us.' 'It shall have our best consideration.' 'We have no
knowledge of the MS. in question.' Yes, Peter, two valuable quartets
have I lost, messing about with these villains."
"I tell you what. I'll give you an introduction to Brahmson. I know
him--privately."
"No, thank you, Peter."
"Why not?"
"Because you know him."
"I couldn't give you an introduction if I didn't. This is silly of you,
Lancelot."
"If Brahmson can't see any merits in my music, I don't want you to open
his eyes. I'll stand on my own bottom. And what's more, Peter, I tell
you once for all"--his voice was low and menacing--"if you try any
anonymous _deus ex machinâ_ tricks on me in some sly, roundabout fashion,
don't you flatter yourself I shan't recognise your hand. I shall, and,
by God, it shall never grasp mine again."
"I suppose you think that's very noble and sublime," said Peter coolly.
"You don't suppose if I could do you a turn I'd hesitate for fear of
excommunication? I know you're like Beethoven there--your bark is worse
than your bite."
"Very well; try. You'll find my teeth nastier than you bargain for."
"I'm not going to try. If you want to go to the dogs--go. Why should I
put out a hand to stop you?"
These amenities having re-established them in their mutual esteem, they
chatted lazily and spasmodically till past midnight, with more smoke than
fire in their conversation.
At last Peter began to go, and in course of time actually did take up his
umbrella. Not long after, Lancelot conducted him softly down the dark,
silent stairs, holding his bedroom candlestick in his hand, for Mrs.
Leadbatter always turned out the hall lamp on her way to bed. The old
phrases came to the young men's lips as their hands met in a last hearty
grip.
"_Lebt wohl_!" said Lancelot.
"_Auf Wiedersehen_!" replied Peter threateningly.
Lancelot stood at the hall door looking for a moment after his
friend--the friend he had tried to cast out of his heart as a recreant.
The mist had cleared--the stars glittered countless in the frosty heaven;
a golden crescent moon hung low; the lights and shadows lay almost
poetically upon the little street. A rush of tender thoughts whelmed the
musician's soul. He saw again the dear old garret, up the ninety stairs,
in the Hotel Cologne, where he had lived with his dreams; he heard the
pianos and violins going in every room in happy incongruity, publishing
to all the prowess of the players; dirty, picturesque old Leipsic rose
before him; he was walking again in the _Hainstrasse_, in the shadow of
the quaint, tall houses. Yes, life was sweet after all; he was a coward
to lose heart so soon; fame would yet be his; fame and love--the love of
a noble woman that fame earns; some gracious creature breathing sweet
refinements, cradled in an ancient home, such as he had left for ever.
The sentimentality of the Fatherland seemed to have crept into his soul;
a divinely sweet, sad melody was throbbing in his brain. How glad he was
he had met Peter again!