The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "Nonsense!" he answered; "why, I'm hardly ever in when she feeds it, and I believe it eats all day long-gets supplied in the morning like a coal-scuttle. Besides, she comes in to dust and all that when she pleases. And I do wish you wouldn't use that word 'mashed.' I loathe it."

  Indeed, he writhed under the thought of being coupled with Mary Ann. The thing sounded so ugly-so squalid. In the actual, it was not so unpleasant, but looked at from the outside-unsympathetically-it was hopelessly vulgar, incurably plebeian. He shuddered.

  "I don't know," said Peter. "It's a very expressive word, is 'mashed.' But I will make allowance for your poetical feelings and give up the word-except in its literal sense, of course. I'm sure you wouldn't object to mashing a music publisher!"

  Lancelot laughed with false heartiness. "Oh, but if I'm to write those popular ballads, you say he'll become my best friend."

  "Of course he will," cried Peter, eagerly sniffing at the red herring Lancelot had thrown across the track. "You stand out for a royalty on every copy, so that if you strike ile-oh, I beg your pardon, that's another of the phrases you object to, isn't it?"

  "Don't be a fool," said Lancelot, laughing on. "You know I only object to that in connection with English peers marrying the daughters of men who have done it."

  "Oh, is that it? I wish you'd publish an expurgated dictionary with most of the words left out, and exact definitions of the conditions under which one may use the remainder. But I've got on a siding. What was I talking about?"

  "Royalty," muttered Lancelot, languidly.

  "Royalty? No. You mentioned the aristocracy, I think." Then he burst into a hearty laugh. "Oh, yes-on that ballad. Now, look here! I've brought a ballad with me, just to show you-a thing that is going like wildfire."

  "Not Good-night and Good-by, I hope," laughed Lancelot.

  "Yes-the very one!" cried Peter, astonished.

  "Himmel!" groaned Lancelot, in comic despair.

  "You know it already?" inquired Peter, eagerly.

  "No; only I can't open a paper without seeing the advertisement and the sickly sentimental refrain."

  "You see how famous it is, anyway," said Peter. "And if you want to strike-er-to make a hit you'll just take that song and do a deliberate imitation of it."

  "Wha-a-a-t!" gasped Lancelot.

  "My dear chap, they all do it. When the public cotton to a thing, they can't have enough of it."

  "But I can write my own rot, surely."

  "In the face of all this litter of 'Ops.' I daren't dispute that for a moment. But it isn't enough to write rot-the public want a particular kind of rot. Now just play that over-oblige me." He laid both hands on Lancelot's shoulders in amicable appeal.

  Lancelot shrugged them, but seated himself at the piano, played the introductory chords, and commenced singing the words in his pleasant baritone.

  Suddenly Beethoven ran towards the door, howling.

  Lancelot ceased playing and looked approvingly at the animal.

  "By Jove! he wants to go out. What an ear for music that animal's got."

  Peter smiled grimly. "It's long enough. I suppose that's why you call him Beethoven."

  "Not at all. Beethoven had no ear-at least not in his latest period-he was deaf. Lucky devil! That is, if this sort of thing was brought round on barrel-organs."

  "Never mind, old man! Finish the thing."

  "But consider Beethoven's feelings!"

  "Hang Beethoven!"

  "Poor Beethoven. Come here, my poor maligned musical critic! Would they give you a bad name and hang you? Now you must be very quiet. Put your paws into those lovely long ears of yours, if it gets too horrible. You have been used to high-class music, I know, but this is the sort of thing that England expects every man to do, so the sooner you get used to it, the better." He ran his fingers along the keys. "There, Peter, he's growling already. I'm sure he'll start again, the moment I strike the theme."

  "Let him! We'll take it as a spaniel obligato."

  "Oh, but his accompaniments are too staccato. He has no sense of time."

  "Why don't you teach him, then, to wag his tail like the pendulum of a metronome? He'd be more use to you that way than setting up to be a musician, which Nature never meant him for-his hair's not long enough. But go ahead, old man, Beethoven's behaving himself now."

  Indeed, as if he were satisfied with his protest, the little beast remained quiet, while his lord and master went through the piece. He did not even interrupt at the refrain:-

  "Kiss me, good-night, dear love,

  Dream of the old delight;

  My spirit is summoned above,

  Kiss me, dear love, good-night."

  "I must say it's not so awful as I expected," said Lancelot, candidly; "it's not at all bad-for a waltz."

  "There, you see!" cried Peter, eagerly; "the public are not such fools after all."

  "Still, the words are the most maudlin twaddle!" said Lancelot, as if he found some consolation in the fact.

  "Yes, but I didn't write them!" replied Peter, quickly. Then he grew red and laughed an embarrassed laugh. "I didn't mean to tell you, old man. But there-the cat's out. That's what took me to Brahmson's that afternoon we met! And I harmonised it myself, mind you, every crotchet. I picked up enough at the Conservatoire for that. You know lots of fellows only do the tune-they give out all the other work."

  "So you are the great Keeley Lesterre, eh?" said Lancelot, in amused astonishment.

  "Yes; I have to do it under another name. I don't want to grieve the old man. You see, I promised him to reform, when he took me back to his heart and business."

  "Is that strictly honourable, Peter?" said Lancelot, shaking his head.

  "Oh, well! I couldn't give it up altogether, but I do practically stick to the contract-it's all overtime, you know. It doesn't interfere a bit with business. Besides, as you'd say, it isn't music," he said slyly. "And just because I don't want it I make a heap of coin out of it-that's why I'm so vexed at your keeping me still in your debt."

  Lancelot frowned. "Then you had no difficulty in getting published?" he asked.

  "I don't say that. It was bribery and corruption so far as my first song was concerned. I tipped a professional to go down and tell Brahmson he was going to take it up. You know, of course, well-known singers get half-a-guinea from the publisher every time they sing a song."

  "No; do they?" said Lancelot. "How mean of them!"

  "Business, my boy. It pays the publisher to give it them. Look at the advertisement!"

  "But suppose a really fine song was published, and the publisher refused to pay this blood-money?"

  "Then I suppose they'd sing some other song, and let that moulder on the foolish publisher's shelves."

  "Great Heavens!" said Lancelot, jumping up from the piano in wild excitement. "Then a musician's reputation is really at the mercy of a mercenary crew of singers, who respect neither art nor themselves. Oh, yes, we are indeed a musical people!"

  "Easy there! Several of 'em are pals of mine, and I'll get them to take up those ballads of yours as soon as you write 'em."

  "Let them go to the devil with their ballads!" roared Lancelot, and with a sweep of his arm whirled Good-night and Good-by into the air. Peter picked it up and wrote something on it with a stylographic pen which he produced from his waistcoat pocket.

  "There!" he said, "that'll make you remember it's your own property-and mine-that you are treating so disrespectfully."

  "I beg your pardon, old chap," said Lancelot, rebuked and remorseful.

  "Don't mention it," replied Peter. "And whenever you decide to become rich and famous-there's your model."

  "Never! Never! Never!" cried Lancelot, when Peter went at ten. "My poor Beethoven! What you must have suffered! Never mind, I'll play you your moonlight sonata."

  He touched the keys gently and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his f
ingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes half closed, seeing only inward visions.

  And then, all at once, he awoke with a start, for Beethoven was barking towards the door, with pricked-up ears and rigid tail.

  "Sh! You little beggar," he murmured, becoming conscious that the hour was late, and that he himself had been noisy at unbeseeming hours. "What's the matter with you?" And, with a sudden thought, he threw open the door.

  It was merely Mary Ann.

  Her face-flashed so unexpectedly upon him-had the piquancy of a vision, but its expression was one of confusion and guilt; there were tears on her cheeks; in her hand was a bedroom candle-stick.

  She turned quickly, and began to mount the stairs. Lancelot put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her face towards him and said in an imperious whisper:-

  "Now then, what's up? What are you crying about?"

  "I ain't-I mean I'm not crying," said Mary Ann, with a sob in her breath.

  "Come, come, don't fib. What's the matter?"

  "I'm not crying, it's only the music," she murmured.

  "The music," he echoed, bewildered.

  "Yessir. The music always makes me cry-but you can't call it crying-it feels so nice."

  "Oh, then you've been listening!"

  "Yessir." Her eyes drooped in humiliation.

  "But you ought to have been in bed," he said. "You get little enough sleep as it is."

  "It's better than sleep," she answered.

  The simple phrase vibrated through him, like a beautiful minor chord. He smoothed her hair tenderly.

  "Poor child!" he said.

  There was an instant's silence. It was past midnight, and the house was painfully still. They stood upon the dusky landing, across which a bar of light streamed from his half-open door, and only Beethoven's eyes were upon them. But Lancelot felt no impulse to fondle her, only just to lay his hand on her hair, as in benediction and pity.

  "So you liked what I was playing," he said, not without a pang of personal pleasure.

  "Yessir; I never heard you play that before."

  "So you often listen!"

  "I can hear you, even in the kitchen. Oh, it's just lovely! I don't care what I have to do then, if it's grates or plates or steps. The music goes and goes, and I feel back in the country again, and standing, as I used to love to stand of an evening, by the stile, under the big elm, and watch how the sunset did redden the white birches, and fade in the water. Oh, it was so nice in the springtime, with the hawthorn that grew on the other bank, and the bluebells-"

  The pretty face was full of dreamy tenderness, the eyes lit up witchingly. She pulled herself up suddenly, and stole a shy glance at her auditor.

  "Yes, yes, go on," he said; "tell me all you feel about the music."

  "And there's one song you sometimes play that makes me feel floating on and on like a great white swan."

  She hummed a few bars of the Gondel-Lied-flawlessly.

  "Dear me! you have an ear!" he said, pinching it. "And how did you like what I was playing just now?" he went on, growing curious to know how his own improvisations struck her.

  "Oh, I liked it so much," she whispered back, enthusiastically; "because it reminded me of my favourite one-every moment I did think-I thought-you were going to come into that."

  The whimsical sparkle leapt into his eyes. "And I thought I was so original," he murmured.

  "But what I liked best," she began, then checked herself, as if suddenly remembering she had never made a spontaneous remark before, and lacking courage to establish a precedent.

  "Yes-what you liked best?" he said encouragingly.

  "That song you sang this afternoon," she said shyly.

  "What song? I sang no song," he said, puzzled for a moment.

  "Oh, yes! That one about-

  "'Kiss me, dear love, good-night.'

  "I was going upstairs but it made me stop just here-and cry."

  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 Sallie, 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 sound
ed 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 of 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.