"I beg your pardon-you will have some whisky." He rang the bell violently.
"Don't be a fool-you know I didn't mean that. Well, don't let us quarrel. I have forgiven you for your youthful bounty, and you have forgiven me for chucking it up; and now we are going to drink to the Vaterland," he added, as Mary Ann appeared with a suspicious alacrity.
"Do you know," he went on, when they had taken the first sip of renewed amity dissolved in whisky, "I think I showed more musical soul than you in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself to scribble all this-you, with your restless nature-full scores, too! I hope you don't offer this sort of thing to Brahmson."
"I certainly went there with that intention," admitted Lancelot. "I thought I'd catch Brahmson himself in the evening-he's never in when I call in the morning."
Peter groaned.
"Quixotic as ever! You can't have been long in London then?"
"A year."
"I suppose you'd jump down my throat if I were to ask you how much is left of that--" he hesitated, then turned the sentence facetiously-"of those twenty thousand shillings you were cut off with?"
"Let this vile den answer."
"Don't disparage the den; it's not so bad."
"You are right-I may come to worse. I've been an awful ass. You know how lucky I was while at the Conservatoire-no, you don't. How should you? Well, I carried off some distinctions and a lot of conceit, and came over here thinking Europe would be at my feet in a month. I was only sorry my father died before I could twit him with my triumph. That's candid, isn't it?"
"Yes; you're not such a prig after all," mused Peter; "I saw the old man's death in the paper-your brother Lionel became the bart."
"Yes, poor beggar, I don't hate him half so much as I did. He reminds me of a man invited to dinner which is nothing but flowers and serviettes and silver plate."
"I'd pawn the plate, anyhow," said Peter, with a little laugh.
"He can't touch anything, I tell you; everything's tied up."
"Ah well, he'll get tied up, too. He'll marry an American heiress."
"Confound him! I'd rather see the house extinct first."
"Hoity, toity! She'll be quite as good as any of you."
"I can't discuss this with you, Peter," said Lancelot, gently but firmly. "If there is a word I hate more than the word heiress, it is the word American."
"But why? They're both very good words and better things."
"They both smack of the most vulgar thing in the world-money," said Lancelot, walking hotly about the room. "In America there's no other standard. To make your pile, to strike ile-oh, how I shudder to hear these idioms! And can any one hear the word heiress without immediately thinking of matrimony? Phaugh? It's a prostitution."
"What is? You're not very coherent, my friend."
"Very well, I am incoherent. If a great old family can only bolster up its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let the family perish with honour."
"But the daughters of oil-strikers are sometimes very charming creatures. They are polished with their fathers' oil."
"You are right. They reek of it. Pah! I pray to Heaven Lionel will either wed a lady or die a bachelor."
"Yes; but what do you call a lady?" persisted Peter.
Lancelot uttered an impatient snarl, and rang the bell violently. Peter stared in silence. Mary Ann appeared.
"How often am I to tell you to leave my matches on the mantel-shelf?" snapped Lancelot. "You seem to delight to hide them away, as if I had time to play parlour games with you."
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, any way," 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!"
&n
bsp; "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 overrate 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 money-lender."
"Pack dich zum Henker!" growled Peter, with a comical grimace. "Was für 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."
"Of 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.
"Oh 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 anyone 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 h
im 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 machinâ 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 re-established them in their mutual esteem, they chatted lazily and spasmodically till past midnight, with more smoke than fire in their conversation.
Merely Mary Ann Page 2
