"It wasn't that, sir. The sun was shining that beautiful outside, and
I never minded the sermon, only I did get tired of sitting still. But
I never done it again--our little Sally, she died soon after."
Lancelot checked his laughter. "Poor little fool!" he thought. Then
to brighten her up again he asked cheerily, "And what else did you do
on the farm?"
"Oh, please sir, missus will be wanting me now."
"Bother missus. I want some more milk," he said, emptying the milk-jug
into the slop-basin. "Run down and get some."
Mary Ann was startled by the splendour of the deed. She took the jug
silently and disappeared.
When she returned he said: "Well, you haven't told me half yet. I
suppose you kept bees?"
"Oh yes, and I fed the pigs."
"Hang the pigs! Let's hear something more romantic."
"There was the calves to suckle sometimes, when the mother died or was
sold."
"Calves! H'm! H'm! Well, but how could you do that?"
"Dipped my fingers in milk, and let the calves suck 'em. The silly
creatures thought it was their mothers' teats. Like this."
With a happy inspiration she put her fingers into the slop-basin, and
held them up dripping.
Lancelot groaned. It was not only that his improved Mary Ann was again
sinking to earth, unable to soar in the romantic aether where he would
fain have seen her volant; it was not only that the coarseness of her
nature had power to drag her down, it was the coarseness of her red,
chapped hands that was thrust once again and violently upon his
reluctant consciousness.
Then, like Mary Ann, he had an inspiration.
"How would you like a pair of gloves, Mary Ann?"
He had struck the latent feminine. Her eyes gleamed. "Oh, sir!" was
all she could say. Then a swift shade of disappointment darkened the
eager little face.
"But I never goes out," she cried.
"I never _go_ out," he corrected, shuddering.
"I never _go_ out," said Mary Ann, her lip twitching.
"That doesn't matter. I want you to wear them indoors."
"But there's nobody to see 'em indoors!"
"I shall see them," he reminded her.
"But they'll get dirty."
"No they won't. You shall only wear them when you come to me. If I
buy you a nice pair of gloves, will you promise to put them on every
time I ring for you?"
"But what'll missus say?"
"Missus won't see them. The moment you come in, you'll put them on,
and just before going out--you'll take them off! See!"
"Yessir. Then nobody'll see me looking so grand but you."
"That's it. And wouldn't you rather look grand for me than for anybody
else?"
"Of course I would, sir," said Mary Ann, earnestly, with a grateful
little sigh.
So Lancelot measured her wrist, feeling her pulse beat madly. She
really had a very little hand, though to his sensitive vision the
roughness of the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a
boxing-glove. He bought her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful
cardboard box. He could ill afford the gift, and made one of his
whimsical grimaces when he got the bill. The young lady who served him
looked infinitely more genteel than Mary Ann. He wondered what she
would think if she knew for whom he was buying these dainty articles.
Perhaps her feelings would be so outraged she would refuse to
participate in the transaction. But the young lady was happily
unconscious; she had her best smile for the handsome, aristocratic
young gentleman, and mentioned his moustache later to her bosom-friend
in the next department.
And thus Mary Ann and Lancelot became the joint owners of a secret, and
co-players in a little comedy. When Mary Ann came into the room, she
would put whatever she was carrying on a chair, gravely extract her
gloves from her pocket, and draw them on, Lancelot pretending not to
know she was in the room, though he had just said, "Come in." After
allowing her a minute he would look up. In the course of a week this
became mechanical, so that he lost the semi-ludicrous sense of secrecy
which he felt at first, as well as the little pathetic emotion inspired
by her absolute unconsciousness that the performance was not intended
for her own gratification. Nevertheless, though he could now endure to
see Mary Ann handling the sugar-tongs, he remained cold to her for some
weeks. He had kissed her again in the flush of her joy at the sight of
the gloves, but after that there was a reaction. He rarely went to the
club now (there was no one with whom he was in correspondence except
music-publishers, and they didn't reply), but he dropped in there once
soon after the glove episode, looked over the papers in the
smoking-room, and chatted with a popular composer and one or two men he
knew. It was while the waiter was holding out the coffee-tray to him
that Mary Ann flashed upon his consciousness. The thought of her
seemed so incongruous with the sober magnificence, the massive
respectability that surrounded him, the cheerful, marble hearth
reddened with leaping flame, the luxurious lounges, the well-groomed
old gentlemen smoking eighteenpenny cheroots, the suave, noiseless
satellites, that Lancelot felt a sudden pang of bewildered shame. Why,
the very waiter who stood bent before him would disdain her. He took
his coffee hastily, with a sense of personal unworthiness. This
feeling soon evaporated, but it left lees of resentment against Mary
Ann which made him inexplicable to her. Fortunately, her habit of
acceptance saved her some tears, though she shed others. And there
remained always the gloves. When she was putting them on she always
felt she was slipping her hands in his.
And then there was yet a further consolation. For the gloves had also
a subtle effect on Lancelot. They gave him a sense of responsibility.
Vaguely resentful as he felt against Mary Ann (in the intervals of his
more definite resentment against publishers), he also felt that he
could not stop at the gloves. He had started refining her, and he must
go on till she was, so to speak, all gloves. He must cover up her
coarse speech, as he had covered up her coarse hands. He owed that to
the gloves; it was the least he could do for them. So, whenever Mary
Ann made a mistake, Lancelot corrected her. He found these grammatical
dialogues not uninteresting, and a vent for his ill-humour against
publishers to boot. Very often his verbal corrections sounded
astonishingly like reprimands. Here, again, Mary Ann was forearmed by
her feeling that she deserved them. She would have been proud had she
known how much Mr. Lancelot was satisfied with her aspirates, which
came quite natural. She had only dropped her "h's" temporarily, as one
drops country friends in coming to London. Curiously enough, Mary Ann
did not regard the new locutions and pronunciations as superseding the
old. They were a new language; she knew two others, her mother-tongue
and her missus's tongue. She would as little have thought of using her
new linguistic acquirements in the kitchen as of wearing her gloves
there. They were for Lancelot's ears only, as her gloves were for his
eyes.
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, the _impresario_, 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?" said
Peter, 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."
"'Not _Good-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 write _them_!" 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 whirled _Good-night and good-bye_ into 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'm _not_ crying," 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 the _Gondel-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.'