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--"Kiss _me_, 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
they _will_ talk 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 he _was_ reduced 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 world _wouldn't_ know.
"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. "_Do_ you
understand?"
"I understand--I shall be with you, always."