The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  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 then 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 nurse-maid'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," explained Mary Ann, in rosy confusion; "and-and-it'll soon be summer, sir."

  "Sw-e-e-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 o
f 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, 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 wooable 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 halfway 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 am 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 his 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 safeguarding 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-eet! Sw-w-w-w-eet!" 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.