"Please, sir, I don't know."
"Mary Ann," he said gravely, "don't you see that when I did that I
was--like your brother Tom?"
"No, sir. Tom didn't kiss me like that."
"I don't mean that, Mary Ann; I mean I was wicked."
Mary Ann stared at him.
"Don't you think so, Mary Ann?"
"Oh, no, sir. You were very good."
"No, no, Mary Ann. Don't say good."
"Ever since then I have been so happy," she persisted.
"Oh, that was because you were wicked too," he explained grimly. "We have
both been very wicked, Mary Ann; and so we had better part now, before
we get more wicked."
She stared at him plaintively, suspecting a lurking irony, but not sure.
"But you didn't mind being wicked before!" she protested.
"I'm not so sure I mind now. It's for your sake, Mary Ann, believe me, my
dear." He took her bare hand kindly and felt it burning. "You're a very
simple, foolish little thing, yes, you are. Don't cry. There's no harm in
being simple. Why, you told me yourself how silly you were once when you
brought your dying mother cakes and flowers to take to your dead little
sister. Well, you're just as foolish and childish now, Mary Ann, though
you don't know it any more than you did then. After all you're only
nineteen--I found it out from the vicar's letter. But a time will
come--yes, I'll warrant in only a few months' time you'll see how wise I
am and how sensible you have been to be guided by me. I never wished you
any harm, Mary Ann, believe me, my dear, I never did. And I hope, I do
hope so much that this money will make you happy. So you see you mustn't
go away with me now--you don't want everybody to talk of you as they did
of your brother Tom, do you, dear? Think what the vicar would say."
But Mary Ann had broken down under the touch of his hand and the
gentleness of his tones.
"I was a dead leaf so long, I don't care!" she sobbed passionately.
"Nobody never bothered to call me wicked then. Why should I bother now?"
Beneath the mingled emotions her words caused him was a sense of surprise
at her recollection of his metaphor.
"Hush! You're a silly little child," he repeated sternly. "Hush! or Mrs.
Leadbatter will hear you." He went to the door and closed it tightly.
"Listen, Mary Ann! Let me tell you once for all that even if you were
fool enough to be willing to go with me, I wouldn't take you with me. It
would be doing you a terrible wrong."
She interrupted him quietly.
"Why more now than before?"
He dropped her hand as if stung, and turned away. He knew he could not
answer that to his own satisfaction, much less to hers.
"You're a silly little baby," he repeated resentfully. "I think you had
better go down now. Missus will be wondering."
Mary Ann's sobs grew more spasmodic. "You are going away without me," she
cried hysterically.
He went to the door again, as if apprehensive of an eavesdropper. The
scene was becoming terrible. The passive personality had developed with a
vengeance.
"Hush, hush!" he cried imperatively.
"You are going away without me. I shall never see you again."
"Be sensible, Mary Ann. You will be--"
"You won't take me with you."
"How can I take you with me?" he cried brutally, losing every vestige of
tenderness for this distressful vixen. "Don't you understand that it's
impossible--unless I marry you," he concluded contemptuously.
Mary Ann's sobs ceased for a moment.
"Can't you marry me, then?" she said plaintively.
"You know it is impossible," he replied curtly.
"Why is it impossible?" she breathed.
"Because--" He saw her sobs were on the point of breaking out, and had
not the courage to hear them afresh. He dared not wound her further by
telling her straight out that, with all her money, she was ridiculously
unfit to bear his name--that it was already a condescension for him to
have offered her his companionship on any terms.
He resolved to temporise again.
"Go downstairs now, there's a good girl; and I'll tell you in the
morning. I'll think it over. Go to bed early and have a long, nice
sleep--missus will let you--now. It isn't Monday yet; we have plenty
of time to talk it over."
She looked up at him with large appealing eyes, uncertain, but calming
down.
"Do, now, there's a dear." He stroked her wet cheek soothingly.
"Yessir," and almost instinctively she put up her lips for a good-night
kiss. He brushed them hastily with his. She went out softly, drying her
eyes. His own grew moist--he was touched by the pathos of her implicit
trust. The soft warmth of her lips still thrilled him. How sweet and
loving she was! The little dialogue rang in his brain.
"Can't you marry me, then?"
"You know it is impossible."
"Why is it impossible?"
"Because--"
"Because what?" an audacious voice whispered. Why should he not? He
stilled the voice but it refused to be silent--was obdurate, insistent,
like Mary Ann herself. "Because--oh, because of a hundred things," he
told it. "Because she is no fit mate for me--because she would degrade
me, make me ridiculous--an unfortunate fortune-hunter, the butt of the
witlings. How could I take her about as my wife? How could she receive
my friends? For a housekeeper--a good, loving housekeeper--she is
perfection, but for a wife--_my_ wife--the companion of my
soul--impossible!"
"Why is it impossible?" repeated the voice, catching up the cue. And
then, from that point, the dialogue began afresh.
"Because this, and because that, and because the other--in short, because
I am Lancelot and she is merely Mary Ann."
"But she is not merely Mary Ann any longer," urged the voice.
"Yes, for all her money, she is merely Mary Ann. And am I to sell myself
for her money--I who have stood out so nobly, so high-mindedly, through
all these years of privation and struggle? And her money is all in
dollars. Pah! I smell the oil. Struck ile! Of all things in the world,
her brother should just go and strike ile!" A great shudder traversed his
form. "Everything seems to have been arranged out of pure cussedness,
just to spite me. She would have been happier without the money, poor
child--without the money, but with me. What will she do with all her
riches? She will only be wretched--like me."
"Then why not be happy together?"
"Impossible."
"Why is it impossible?"
"Because her dollars would stick in my throat--the oil would make me
sick. And what would Peter say, and my brother (not that I care what _he_
says), and my acquaintances?"
"What does that matter to you? While you were a dead leaf nobody bothered
to talk about you; they let you starve--you, with your genius--now you
can let them talk--you, with your heiress. Five hundred thousand pounds.
More than you will make with all your operas if you live a century.
Fifteen thousand a year. Why, you could have all your works performed at
your own expense, and for your own sole pleasure if you chose, as the
King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could devote your life
to the highest art--nay, is it not a duty you owe to the world? Would it
not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings with sordid
cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this Heaven-sent boon?"
The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled
manuscript--_opera disjecta_--and turned their pages.
"Yes--yes--give us life!" they seemed to cry to him. "We are dead drops
of ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here,
dusty in death? We have waited so patiently--have pity on us, raise us up
from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth,
chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the
echoes of our music and the splendour of your name."
But he shook his head and sighed, and put them back in their niches, and
placed the comic opera he had begun in the centre of the table.
"There lie the only dollars that will ever come my way," he said aloud.
And, humming the opening bars of a lively polka from the manuscript, he
took up his pen and added a few notes. Then he paused; the polka would
not come--the other voice was louder.
"It would be a degradation," he repeated, to silence it. "It would be
merely for her money. I don't love her."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"If I really loved her I shouldn't refuse to marry her."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"What's the use of all this wire-drawing?--the whole thing is
impossible."
"Why is it impossible?"
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, refusing to be drawn back into the
eddy, and completed the bar of the polka.
Then he threw down his pen, rose and paced the room in desperation.
"Was ever any man in such a dilemma?" he cried aloud.
"Did ever any man get such a chance?" retorted his silent tormentor.
"Yes, but I mustn't seize the chance--it would be mean."
"It would be meaner not to. You're not thinking of that poor girl--only
of yourself. To leave her now would be more cowardly than to have left
her when she was merely Mary Ann. She needs you even more now that she
will be surrounded by sharks and adventurers. Poor, poor Mary Ann! It is
you who have the right to protect her now; you were kind to her when the
world forgot her. You owe it to yourself to continue to be good to her."
"No, no, I won't humbug myself. If I married her it would only be for her
money."
"No, no, don't humbug yourself. You like her. You care for her very much.
You are thrilling at this very moment with the remembrance of her lips
to-night. Think of what life will be with her--life full of all that is
sweet and fair--love and riches, and leisure for the highest art, and
fame and the promise of immortality. You are irritable, sensitive,
delicately organised; these sordid, carking cares, these wretched
struggles, these perpetual abasements of your highest self--a few more
years of them--they will wreck and ruin you, body and soul. How many men
of genius have married their housekeepers even--good, clumsy, homely
bodies, who have kept their husband's brain calm and his pillow smooth.
And again, a man of genius is the one man who can marry anybody. The
world expects him to be eccentric. And Mary Ann is no coarse city weed,
but a sweet country bud. How splendid will be her blossoming under the
sun! Do not fear that she will ever shame you; she will look beautiful,
and men will not ask her to talk. Nor will you want her to talk. She will
sit silent in the cosy room where you are working, and every now and
again you will glance up from your work at her and draw inspiration from
her sweet presence. So pull yourself together, man; your troubles are
over, and life henceforth one long blissful dream. Come, burn me that
tinkling, inglorious comic opera, and let the whole sordid past mingle
with its ashes."
So strong was the impulse--so alluring the picture--that he took up the
comic opera and walked towards the fire, his finger itching to throw it
in. But he sat down again after a moment and went on with his work. It
was imperative he should make progress with it; he could not afford to
waste his time--which was money--because another person--Mary Ann to
wit--had come into a superfluity of both. In spite of which the comic
opera refused to advance; somehow he did not feel in the mood for gaiety;
he threw down his pen in despair and disgust. But the idea of not being
able to work rankled in him. Every hour seemed suddenly precious--now
that he had resolved to make money in earnest--now that for a year or
two he could have no other aim or interest in life. Perhaps it was that
he wished to overpower the din of contending thoughts. Then a happy
thought came to him. He rummaged out Peter's ballad. He would write a
song on the model of that, as Peter had recommended--something tawdry and
sentimental, with a cheap accompaniment. He placed the ballad on the rest
and started going through it to get himself in the vein. But to-night the
air seemed to breathe an ineffable melancholy, the words--no longer
mawkish--had grown infinitely pathetic:--
"Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
Dream of the old delight;
My spirit is summoned above,
Kiss me, dear love, good-night!"
The hot tears ran down his cheeks, as he touched the keys softly and
lingeringly. He could go no farther than the refrain; he leant his elbows
on the keyboard, and dropped his head upon his arms. The clashing notes
jarred like a hoarse cry, then vibrated slowly away into a silence that
was broken only by his sobs.
He rose late the next day, after a sleep that was one prolonged
nightmare, full of agonised, abortive striving after something that
always eluded him, he knew not what. And when he woke--after a momentary
breath of relief at the thought of the unreality of these vague
horrors--he woke to the heavier nightmare of reality. Oh, those terrible
dollars!
He drew the blind, and saw with a dull acquiescence that the brightness
of May had fled. The wind was high--he heard it fly past, moaning. In the
watery sky, the round sun loomed silver-pale and blurred. To his fevered
eye it looked like a worn dollar.
He turned away, shivering, and began to dress. He opened the door a
little, and pulled in his lace-up boots, which were polished in the
highest style of art. But when he tried to put one on, his toes stuck
fast in the opening, and refused to advance. Annoyed, he put his hand in,
and drew out a pair of tan gloves, perfectly new. Astonished, he inserted
his hand again and drew out another pair, then another. Reddening
uncomfortably, for he divined something of the meaning, he examined the
left boot, and drew out three more pairs of gloves, two new and one
slightly soiled.
He sank down, half dressed, on the bed with his head on his breast,
leaving his boots and Mary Ann's gloves scattered about the floor. He was
angry, humiliated; he felt like laughing, and he felt like sobbing.
At last he roused himself, finished dressing, and rang for breakfast.
Rosie brought it up.
"Hullo! Where's Mary Ann?" he said lightly.
"She's above work now," said Rosie, with an unamiable laugh. "You know
about her fortune."
"Yes; but your mother told me she insisted on going about her work till
Monday."
"So she said yesterday--silly little thing! But to-day she says she'll
only help mother in the kitchen--and do all the boots of a morning. She
won't do any more waiting."
"Ah!" said Lancelot, crumbling his toast.
"I don't believe she knows what she wants," concluded Rosie, turning to
go.
"Then I suppose she's in the kitchen now?" he said, pouring out his
coffee down the side of his cup.
"No, she's gone out now, sir."
"Gone out!" He put down the coffee-pot--his saucer was full. "Gone out
where?"
"Only to buy things. You know her vicar is coming to take her away the
day after to-morrow, and mother wanted her to look tidy enough to travel
with the vicar; so she gave her a sovereign."
"Ah, yes; your mother said something about it."
"And yet she won't answer the bells," said Rosie, "and mother's asthma is
worse, so I don't know whether I shall be able to take my lesson to-day,
Mr. Lancelot. I'm so sorry, because it's the last."
Rosie probably did not intend the ambiguity of the phrase. There was real
regret in her voice.
"Do you like learning, then?" said Lancelot, softened, for the first
time, towards his pupil. His nerves seemed strangely flaccid to-day. He
did not at all feel the relief he should have felt at forgoing his daily
infliction.
"Ever so much, sir. I know I laugh too much, sometimes; but I don't mean
it, sir. I suppose I couldn't go on with the lessons after you leave
here?" She looked at him wistfully.
"Well"--he had crumbled the toast all to little pieces now--"I don't
quite know. Perhaps I shan't go away after all."
Rosie's face lit up. "Oh, I'll tell mother," she exclaimed joyously.
"No, don't tell her yet; I haven't quite settled. But if I stay--of
course the lessons can go on as before."
"Oh, I _do_ hope you'll stay," said Rosie, and went out of the room with
airy steps, evidently bent on disregarding his prohibition, if, indeed,
it had penetrated to her consciousness.
Lancelot made no pretence of eating breakfast; he had it removed, and
then fished out his comic opera. But nothing would flow from his pen; he
went over to the window, and stood thoughtfully drumming on the panes
with it, and gazing at the little drab-coloured street, with its high
roof of mist; along which the faded dollar continued to spin
imperceptibly. Suddenly he saw Mary Ann turn the corner, and come along
towards the house, carrying a big parcel and a paper bag in her ungloved
hands. How buoyantly she walked! He had never before seen her move in
free space, nor realised how much of the grace of a sylvan childhood
remained with her still. What a pretty colour there was on her cheeks,
too!
He ran down to the street door and opened it before she could knock. The
colour on her cheeks deepened at the sight of him, but now that she was
near he saw her eyes were swollen with crying.
"Why do you go out without gloves, Mary Ann?" he inquired sternly.
"Remember you're a lady now."
She started and looked down at his boots, then up at his face.
"Oh, yes, I found them, Mary Ann. A nice graceful way of returning me my
presents, Mary Ann. You might at least have waited till Christmas. Then
I should have thought Santa Claus sent them."
"Please, sir, I thought it was the surest way for me to send them back."
"But what made you send them back at all?"
Mary Ann's lip quivered, her eyes were cast down. "Oh--Mr. Lancelot--you
know," she faltered.
"But I don't know," he said sharply.
"Please let me go downstairs, Mr. Lancelot. Missus must have heard me
come in."
"You shan't go downstairs till you've told me what's come over you. Come
upstairs to my room."
"Yessir."
She followed him obediently. He turned round brusquely, "Here, give me
your parcels." And almost snatching them from her, he carried them
upstairs and deposited them on his table on top of the comic opera.
"Now, then, sit down. You can take off your hat and jacket."
"Yessir."
He helped her to do so.
"Now, Mary Ann, why did you return me those gloves?"
"Please, sir, I remember in our village when--when"--she felt a
diffidence in putting the situation into words and wound up quickly,
"something told me I ought to."
"I don't understand you," he grumbled, comprehending only too well. "But
why couldn't you come in and give them to me instead of behaving in that
ridiculous way?"
"I didn't want to see you again," she faltered.
He saw her eyes were welling over with tears.
"You were crying again last night," he said sharply.
"Yessir."
"But what did you have to cry about now? Aren't you the luckiest girl in
the world?"
"Yessir."
As she spoke a flood of sunlight poured suddenly into the room; the sun
had broken through the clouds, the worn dollar had become a dazzling
gold-piece. The canary stirred in its cage.
"Then what were you crying about?"
"I didn't want to be lucky."
"You silly girl--I have no patience with you. And why didn't you want to
see me again?"
"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like it."
"Whatever put that into your head?"
"I knew it, sir," said Mary Ann, firmly. "It came to me when I was
crying. I was thinking of all sorts of things--of my mother and our
Sally, and the old pig that used to get so savage, and about the way the
organ used to play in church, and then all at once somehow I knew it
would be best for me to do what you told me--to buy my dress and go back
with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were
so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you
miserable."
"Tw-oo! Tw-oo!" It was the canary starting on a preliminary carol.
"So I thought it best," she concluded tremulously, "not to see you again.
It would only be two days, and after that it would be easier. I could
always be thinking of you just the same, Mr. Lancelot, always. That
wouldn't annoy you, sir, would it? Because you know, sir, you wouldn't
know it."
Lancelot was struggling to find a voice. "But didn't you forget something
you had to do, Mary Ann?" he said in hoarse accents.
She raised her eyes swiftly a moment, then lowered them again.
"I don't know; I didn't mean to," she said apologetically.
"Didn't you forget that I told you to come to me and get my answer to
your question?"
"No, sir, I didn't forget. That was what I was thinking of all night."
"About your asking me to marry you?"
"Yessir."
"And my saying it was impossible?"
"Yessir, and I said, 'Why is it impossible?' and you said, 'Because--'
and then you left off; but please, Mr. Lancelot, I didn't want to know
the answer this morning."
"But I want to tell you. Why don't you want to know?"
"Because I found out for myself, Mr. Lancelot. That's what I found out
when I was crying--but there was nothing to find out, sir. I knew it all
along. It was silly of me to ask you--but you know I am silly sometimes,
sir, like I was when my mother was dying. And that was why I made up my
mind not to bother you any more, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like
to tell me straight out."
"And what was the answer you found out? Ah, you won't speak. It looks as
if _you_ don't like to tell me straight out. Come, come, Mary Ann, tell
me why--why--it is impossible."
She looked up at last and said slowly and simply, "Because I am not good
enough for you, Mr. Lancelot."
He put his hands suddenly to his eyes. He did not see the flood of
sunlight--he did not hear the mad jubilance of the canary.
"No, Mary Ann," his voice was low and trembling. "I will tell you
why it is impossible, I didn't know last night, but I know now. It is
impossible, because--you are right, I don't like to tell you straight
out."
She opened her eyes wide, and stared at him in puzzled expectation.
"Mary Ann," he bent his head, "it is impossible--because I am not good
enough for you."
Mary Ann grew scarlet. Then she broke into a little nervous laugh. "Oh,
Mr. Lancelot, don't make fun of me."
"Believe me, my dear," he said tenderly, raising his head; "I wouldn't
make fun of you for two million million dollars. It is the truth--the
bare, miserable, wretched truth. I am not worthy of you, Mary Ann."
"I don't understand you, sir," she faltered.
"Thank Heaven for that!" he said with the old whimsical look. "If you did
you would think meanly of me ever after. Yes, that is why, Mary Ann. I
am a selfish brute--selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost
essence of my every thought. Beethoven is worth two of me, aren't you,
Beethoven?" The spaniel, thinking himself called, trotted over. "He never
calculates--he just comes and licks my hand--don't look at me as if I
were mad, Mary Ann. You don't understand me--thank Heaven again. Come
now! Does it never strike you that if I were to marry you now, it would
be only for your two and a half million dollars?"
"No, sir," faltered Mary Ann.
"I thought not," he said triumphantly. "No, you will always remain a
fool, I am afraid, Mary Ann."
She met his contempt with an audacious glance.
"But I know it wouldn't be for that, Mr. Lancelot."
"No, no, of course it wouldn't be, not now. But it ought to strike you
just the same. It doesn't make you less a fool, Mary Ann. There! There!
I don't mean to be unkind, and, as I think I told you once before, it's
not so very dreadful to be a fool. A rogue is a worse thing, Mary Ann.
All I want to do is to open your eyes. Two and a half million dollars are
an awful lot of money--a terrible lot of money. Do you know how long it
will be before I make two million dollars, Mary Ann?"
"No, sir." She looked at him wonderingly.
"Two million years. Yes, my child, I can tell you now. You thought I was
rich and grand, I know, but all the while I was nearly a beggar. Perhaps
you thought I was playing the piano--yes, and teaching Rosie--for my
amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out
of--sleeplessness," he smiled at the phrase, "or a wanton desire to burn
Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard
work--by good work if I can, by bad work if I must--but always by hard
work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be
glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred. And while I shall be grinding
away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will
drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day. Don't
look so sad, Mary Ann. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault in the
least. It's only one of the many jokes of existence. The only reason I
want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard. Though I
don't think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who
will think they are ... though they don't know you. It is you, not me,
who are grand and rich, Mary Ann ... beware of men like me--poor and
selfish. And when you do marry--"
"Oh, Mr. Lancelot!" cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, "why do
you talk like that? You know I shall never marry anybody else."
"Hush, hush! Mary Ann! I thought you were going to be a good girl and
never cry again. Dry your eyes now, will you?"
"Yessir."
"Here, take my handkerchief."
"Yessir ... but I won't marry anybody else."
"You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for
Sally you didn't know a time would come when--"
"Oh, please, sir, I know that. But you said yesterday I was a young woman
now. And this is all different to that."
"No, it isn't, Mary Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a
Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and
dressed you up"--a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the
future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye--"why, by that time,
you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake your
head; I know better than you. We grow and become different. Life is full
of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing remains
fixed."
"Then, perhaps"--she flushed up, her eyes sparkled--"perhaps"--she grew
dumb and sad again.
"Perhaps what?"
He waited for her thought. The rapturous trills of the canary alone
possessed the silence.
"Perhaps you'll change, too." She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at
him--her eyes were full of soft light.
This time he was dumb.
"Sw--eet!" trilled the canary, "sw--eet!" though Lancelot felt the
throbbings of his heart must be drowning its song.
"Acutely answered," he said at last. "You're not such a fool after all,
Mary Ann. But I'm afraid it will never be, dear. Perhaps if I also made
two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might
come to you and say--two and two are four--let us go into partnership.
But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even
have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other
things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever
heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be
that very common thing--a complete failure--and be worse off than even
you ever were, Mary Ann."
"Oh, Mr. Lancelot, I'm so sorry." And her eyes filled again with tears.
"Oh, don't be sorry for me. I'm a man. I dare say I shall pull through.
Just put me out of your mind, dear. Let all that happened at Baker's
Terrace be only a bad dream--a very bad dream, I am afraid I must call
it. Forget me, Mary Ann. Everything will help you to forget me, thank
Heaven, it'll be the best thing for you. Promise me now."
"Yessir ... if you will promise me."
"Promise you what?"
"To do me a favour."
"Certainly, dear, if I can."
"You have the money, Mr. Lancelot, instead of me--I don't want it, and
then you could--"
"Now, now, Mary Ann," he interrupted, laughing nervously, "you're getting
foolish again, after talking so sensibly."
"Oh, but why not?" she said plaintively.
"It is impossible," he said curtly.
"Why is it impossible?" she persisted.
"Because--," he began, and then he realised with a start that they had
come back again to that same old mechanical series of questions--if only
in form.
"Because there is only one thing I could ever bring myself to ask you for
in this world," he said slowly.
"Yes; what is that?" she said flutteringly.
He laid his hand tenderly on her hair.
"Merely Mary Ann."
She leapt up: "Oh, Mr. Lancelot, take me, take me! You do love me! You do
love me!"
He bit his lip. "I am a fool," he said roughly. "Forget me. I ought not
to have said anything. I spoke only of what might be--in the dim
future--if the--chances and changes of life bring us together again--as
they never do. No! You were right, Mary Ann. It is best we should not
meet again. Remember your resolution last night."
"Yessir." Her submissive formula had a smack of sullenness, but she
regained her calm, swallowing the lump in her throat that made her
breathing difficult.
"Good-by, then, Mary Ann," he said, taking her hard red hands in his.
"Good-by, Mr. Lancelot." The tears she would not shed were in her voice.
"Please, sir--could you--couldn't you do me a favour?--Nothing about
money, sir."
"Well, if I can," he said kindly.
"Couldn't you just play Good-night and Good-by, for the last time? You
needn't sing it--only play it."
"Why, what an odd girl you are!" he said with a strange, spasmodic laugh.
"Why, certainly! I'll do both, if it will give you any pleasure."
And, releasing her hands, he sat down to the piano, and played the
introduction softly. He felt a nervous thrill going down his spine as he
plunged into the mawkish words. And when he came to the refrain, he had
an uneasy sense that Mary Ann was crying--he dared not look at her. He
sang on bravely:--
"Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
Dream of the old delight;
My spirit is summoned above,
Kiss me, dear love, good-night."
He couldn't go through another verse--he felt himself all a-quiver, every
nerve shattered. He jumped up. Yes, his conjecture had been right. Mary
Ann was crying. He laughed spasmodically again. The thought had occurred
to him how vain Peter would be if he could know the effect of his
commonplace ballad.
"There, I'll kiss you too, dear!" he said huskily, still smiling.
"That'll be for the last time."
Their lips met, and then Mary Ann seemed to fade out of the room in a
blur of mist.
An instant after there was a knock at the door.
"Forgot her parcels after a last good-by," thought Lancelot, and
continued to smile at the comicality of the new episode.
He cleared his throat.
"Come in," he cried, and then he saw that the parcels were gone, too, and
it must be Rosie.
But it was merely Mary Ann.
"I forgot to tell you, Mr. Lancelot," she said--her accents were almost
cheerful--"that I'm going to church to-morrow morning."
"To church!" he echoed.
"Yes, I haven't been since I left the village, but missus says I ought to
go in case the vicar asks me what church I've been going to."
"I see," he said, smiling on.
She was closing the door when it opened again, just revealing Mary Ann's
face.
"Well?" he said, amused.
"But I'll do your boots all the same, Mr. Lancelot." And the door closed
with a bang.
They did not meet again. On the Monday afternoon the vicar duly came and
took Mary Ann away. All Baker's Terrace was on the watch, for her story
had now had time to spread. The weather remained bright. It was cold but
the sky was blue. Mary Ann had borne up wonderfully, but she burst into
tears as she got into the cab.
"Sweet, sensitive little thing!" said Baker's Terrace.
"What a good woman you must be, Mrs. Leadbatter," said the vicar, wiping
his spectacles.
As part of Baker's Terrace, Lancelot witnessed the departure from his
window, for he had not left after all.
Beethoven was barking his short snappy bark the whole time at the
unwonted noises and the unfamiliar footsteps; he almost extinguished the
canary, though that was clamorous enough.
"Shut up, you noisy little devils!" growled Lancelot. And taking the
comic opera he threw it on the dull fire. The thick sheets grew slowly
blacker and blacker, as if with rage; while Lancelot thrust the five
five-pound notes into an envelope addressed to the popular composer, and
scribbled a tiny note:--
"Dear Peter,--If you have not torn up that cheque I shall be glad of it
by return. Yours,
"LANCELOT.
"P.S.--I send by this post a Reverie, called _Marianne_, which is the
best thing I have done, and should be glad if you could induce Brahmson
to look at it."
A big, sudden blaze, like a jubilant bonfire, shot up in the grate and
startled Beethoven into silence.
But the canary took it for an extra flood of sunshine, and trilled and
demi-semi-quavered like mad.
"Sw--eet! Sweet!"
"By Jove!" said Lancelot, starting up, "Mary Ann's left her canary
behind!"
Then the old whimsical look came over his face.
"I must keep it for her," he murmured. "What a responsibility! I suppose
I oughtn't to let Rosie look after it any more. Let me see, what did
Peter say? Canary seed, biscuits ... yes, I must be careful not to give
it butter.... Curious I didn't think of her canary when I sent back all
those gloves ... but I doubt if I could have squeezed it in--my boots are
only sevens after all--to say nothing of the cage."
* * * * *