The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  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, anyway," 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 over-rate 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 moneylender."

  "Pack dick sum Henker!" growled Peter, with a comical grimace. "Was fuer 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."

  "Or 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.

  "O 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 any one 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 machina 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 reestablished them in their mutual esteem, they chatted lazily and spasmodically till past midnight, with more smoke than fire in the 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 candle-stick 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!

  From a neighbouring steeple came a harsh, resonant clang, "One."

  It roused him from his dream. He shivered a little, closed the door, bolted it and put up the chain, and turned, half sighing, to take up his bedroom candle again. Then his heart stood still for a moment. A figure-a girl's figure-was coming towards him from the kitchen stairs. As she came into the dim light he saw that it was merely Mary Ann.

  She looked half drowsed. Her cap was off, her hair tangled loosely over her forehead. In her disarray she looked prettier than he had ever remembered her. There was something provoking about the large, dreamy eyes, the red lips that parted at the unexpected sight of him.

  "Good heavens!" he cried. "Not gone to bed yet?"

/>   "No, sir. I had to stay up to wash up a lot of crockery. The second floor front had some friends to supper late. Missus says she won't stand it again."

  "Poor thing!" He patted her soft cheek-it grew hot and rosy under his fingers, but was not withdrawn. Mary Ann made no sign of resentment. In his mood of tenderness to all creation his rough words to her recurred to him.

  "You mustn't mind what I said about the matches," he murmured. "When I am in a bad temper I say anything. Remember now for the future, will you?"

  "Yessir."

  Her face-its blushes flickered over strangely by the candle-light-seemed to look up at him invitingly.

  "That's a good girl." And bending down he kissed her on the lips.

  "Good night," he murmured.

  Mary Ann made some startled, gurgling sound in reply.

  Five minutes afterwards Lancelot was in bed, denouncing himself as a vulgar beast.

  "I must have drunk too much whisky," he said to himself, angrily. "Good heavens! Fancy sinking to Mary Ann. If Peter had only seen-There was infinitely more poetry in that red-cheeked Maedchen, and yet I never-It is true-there is something sordid about the atmosphere that subtly permeates you, that drags you down to it. Mary Ann! A transpontine drudge! whose lips are fresh from the coalman's and the butcher's. Phaugh!"

  The fancy seized hold of his imagination. He could not shake it off, he could not sleep till he had got out of bed and sponged his lips vigorously.

  Meanwhile Mary Ann was lying on her bed, dressed, doing her best to keep her meaningless, half-hysterical sobs from her mistress's keen ear.

  II.

  It was a long time before Mary Ann came so prominently into the centre of Lancelot's consciousness again. She remained somewhere in the outer periphery of his thought-nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak-as a vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side surveying him curiously, and then he would start, and remember he had rung her up, and try to remember what for. And Mary Ann would turn red, as if the fault was hers.