Merely Mary Ann

by Израэль Зангвилл

  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 candlestick 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 Mädchen, 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.

  But the publisher was the one thing that was never out of Lancelot's mind, though he drove Lancelot himself nearly out of it. He was like an arrow stuck in the aforesaid bull's-eye, and, the target being conscious, he rankled sorely. Lancelot discovered that the publisher kept a "musical adviser," whose advice appeared to consist of the famous monosyllable, "Don't." The publisher generally published all the musical adviser's own works, his advice having apparently been neglected when it was most worth taking; at least so Lancelot thought, when he had skimmed through a set of Lancers by one of these worthies.

  "I shall give up being a musician," he said to himself grimly. "I shall become a musical adviser."

  Once, half by accident, he actually saw a publisher. "My dear sir," said the great man, "what is the use of bringing quartets and full scores to me? You should have taken them to Brahmson; he's the man you want. You know his address, of course-just down the street."

  Lancelot did not like to say that it was Brahmson's clerks that had recommended him here; so he replied, "But you publish operas, oratorios, cantatas!"

  "Ah yes!-h'm-things that have been played at the big Festivals-composers of prestige-quite a different thing, sir, quite a different thing. There's no sale for these things-none at all, sir-public never heard of you. Now, if you were to write some songs-nice catchy tunes-high class, you know, with pretty words--"

  Now Lancelot by this time was aware of the publisher's wily ways; he could almost have constructed an Ollendorffian dialogue, entitled "Between a Music-Publisher and a Composer." So he opened his portfolio again and said, "I have brought some."

  "Well, send-send them in," stammered the publisher, almost disconcerted. "They shall have our best consideration."

  "Oh, but you might just as well look over them at once," said Lancelot firmly, uncoiling them. "It won't take you five minutes-just let me play one to you. The tunes are rather more original than the average, I can promise you; and yet I think they have a lilt that--"

  "I really can't spare the time now. If you leave them, we will do our best."

  "Listen to this bit!" said Lancelot desperately. And dashing at a piano that stood handy, he played a couple of bars. "That's quite a new modulation."

  "That's all very well," said the publisher; "but how do you suppose I'm going to sell a thing with an accompaniment like that? Look here, and here! Why it's all accidentals."

  "That's the best part of the song," explained Lancelot; "a sort of undercurrent of emotion that brings out the full pathos of the words. Note the elegant and novel harmonies." He played another bar or two, singing the words softly.

  "Yes; but if you think you'll get young ladies to play that, you've got a good deal to learn," said the publisher gruffly. "This is the sort of accompaniment that goes down," and seating himself at the piano for a moment (somewhat to Lancelot's astonishment, for he had gradually formed a theory that music-publishers did not really know the staff from a five-barred gate), he rattled off the melody with his right hand, pounding away monotonously with his left at a few elementary chords.

  Lancelot looked dismayed.

  "That's the kind of thing you'll have to produce, young man," said the publisher, feeling that he had at last resumed his natural supremacy, "if you want to get your songs published. Elegant harmonies are all very well, but who's to play them?"

  "And do you mean to say that a musician in this God-forsaken country must have no chords but t
onics and dominants?" ejaculated Lancelot hotly.

  "The less he has of any other the better," said the great man drily. "I haven't said a word about the melody itself, which is quite out of the ordinary compass, and makes demands upon the singer's vocalisation which are not likely to make a demand for the song. What you have to remember, my dear sir, if you wish to achieve success, is that music, if it is to sell, must appeal to the average amateur young person. The average amateur young person is the main prop of music in this country."

  Lancelot snatched up his song and tied the strings of his portfolio very tightly, as if he were clenching his lips.

  "If I stay here any longer I shall swear," he said: "Good afternoon."

  He went out with a fire at his heart that made him insensitive to the frost without. He walked a mile out of his way mechanically, then, perceiving his stupidity, avenged it by jumping into a hansom. He dared not think how low his funds were running. When he got home he forgot to have his tea, crouching in dumb misery in his easy-chair, while the coals in the grate faded like the sunset from red to grey, and the dusk of twilight deepened into the gloom of night, relieved only by a gleam from the street-lamp.

  The noise of the door opening made him look up.

  "Beg pardon, sir, I didn't yer ye come in."

  It was Mary Ann's timid accents. Lancelot's head drooped again on his breast. He did not answer.

  "You've bin and let your fire go out, sir."

  "Don't bother!" he grumbled. He felt a morbid satisfaction in this aggravation of discomfort, almost symbolic as it was of his sunk fortunes.

  "Oh, but it'll freeze 'ard to-night, sir. Let me make it up." Taking his sullen silence for consent, she ran downstairs and reappeared with some sticks. Soon there were signs of life, which Mary Ann assiduously encouraged by blowing at the embers with her mouth. Lancelot looked on in dull apathy, but as the fire rekindled and the little flames leapt up and made Mary Ann's flushed face the one spot of colour and warmth in the cold, dark room, Lancelot's torpidity vanished suddenly. The sensuous fascination seized him afresh, and ere he was aware of it he was lifting the pretty face by the chin.

  "I'm so sorry to be so troublesome, Mary Ann. There, you shall give me a kiss to show you bear no malice."

  The warm lips obediently met his, and for a moment Lancelot forgot his worries while he held her soft cheek against his.

  This time the shock of returning recollection was not so violent as before. He sat up in his chair, but his right arm still twined negligently round her neck, the fingers patting the warm face. "A fellow must have something to divert his mind," he thought, "or he'd go mad. And there's no harm done-the poor thing takes it as a kindness, I'm sure. I suppose her life's dull enough. We're a pair." He felt her shoulders heaving a little, as if she were gulping down something. At last she said, "You ain't troublesome. I ought to ha' yerd ye come in."

  He released her suddenly. Her words broke the spell. The vulgar accent gave him a shudder.

  "Don't you hear a bell ringing?" he said, with dual significance.

  "Nosir," said Mary Ann ingenuously. "I'd yer it in a moment if there was. I yer it in my dreams, I'm so used to it. One night I dreamt the missus was boxin' my yers and askin' me if I was deaf and I said to 'er--"

  "Can't you say 'her'?" cried Lancelot, cutting her short impatiently.

  "Her," said Mary Ann.

  "Then why do you say ''er'?"

  "Missus told me to. She said my own way was all wrong."

  "Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot. "It's missus that has corrupted you, is it? And pray what used you to say?"

  "She," said Mary Ann.

  Lancelot was taken aback. "She!" he repeated.

  "Yessir," said Mary Ann, with a dawning suspicion that her own vocabulary was going to be vindicated; "whenever I said 'she' she made me say ''er,' and whenever I said 'her' she made me say 'she.' When I said 'her and me' she made me say 'me and she,' and when I said 'I got it from she,' she made me say 'I got it from 'er.'"

  "Bravo! A very lucid exposition," said Lancelot, laughing. "Did she set you right in any other particulars?"

  "Eessir-I mean yessir," replied Mary Ann, the forbidden words flying to her lips like prisoned skylarks suddenly set free. "I used to say, 'Gie I thek there broom, oo't?' 'Arten thee goin' to?' 'Her did say to I.' 'I be goin' on to bed.' 'Look at--'"

  "Enough! Enough! What a memory you've got! Now I understand. You're a country girl."

  "Eessir," said Mary Ann, her face lighting up. "I mean yessir."

  "Well, that redeems you a little," thought Lancelot, with his whimsical look. "So it's missus, is it, who's taught you Cockneyese? My instinct was not so unsound, after all. I dare say you'll turn out something nobler than a Cockney drudge." He finished aloud, "I hope you went a-milking."

  "Eessir, sometimes; and I drove back the milk-trunk in the cart, and I rode down on a pony to the second pasture to count the sheep and the heifers."

  "Then you are a farmer's daughter?"

  "Eessir. But my feyther-I mean my father-had only two little fields when he was alive, but we had a nice garden, with plum trees, and rose bushes and gillyflowers--"

  "Better and better," murmured Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the image of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine was more pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry steps. "What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried aloud, surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, and what else did you do?"

  Mary Ann opened her lips. It was delightful to see how the dull veil, as of London fog, had been lifted from her face; her eyes sparkled.

  Then, "Oh, there's the ground-floor bell," she cried, moving instinctively towards the door.

  "Nonsense: I hear no bell," said Lancelot.

  "I told you I always hear it," said Mary Ann, hesitating and blushing delicately before the critical word.

  "Oh well, run along then. Stop a moment-I must give you another kiss for talking so nicely. There! And-stop a moment-bring me up some coffee, please, when the ground floor is satisfied."

  "Eessir-I mean yessir. What must I say?" she added, pausing troubled on the threshold.

  "Say, 'Yes, Lancelot,'" he answered recklessly.

  "Yessir," and Mary Ann disappeared.

  It was ten endless minutes before she reappeared with the coffee. The whole of the second five minutes Lancelot paced his room feverishly, cursing the ground floor, and stamping as if to bring down its ceiling. He was curious to know more of Mary Ann's history.

  But it proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a child; her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the eldest sister of a young woman who had nursed the vicar's wife. Mrs. Leadbatter had promised the vicar to train up the girl in the way a domestic should go.

  "And when I am old enough she is going to pay me wages as well," concluded Mary Ann, with an air of importance.

  "Indeed-how old were you when you left the village?"

  "Fourteen."

  "And how old are you now?"

  Mary Ann looked confused. "I don't quite know," she murmured.

  "O come," said Lancelot laughingly; "is this your country simplicity? You're quite young enough to tell how old you are."

  The tears came into Mary Ann's eyes.

  "I can't, Mr. Lancelot," she protested earnestly; "I forgot to count-I'll ask missus."

  "And whatever she tells you, you'll be," he said, amused at her unshakable loyalty.

  "Yessir," said Mary Ann.

  "And so you are quite alone in the world?"

  "Yessir-but I've got my canary. They sold everything when my father died, but the vicar's wife she bought my canary back for me because I cried so. And I brought it to London and it hangs in my bedroom. And the vicar, he was so kind to me, he did give me a lot of advice, and Mrs. Amersham, who kept the ch
andler's shop, she did give me ninepence, all in three-penny bits."

  "And you never had any brothers or sisters?"

  "There was our Sally, but she died before mother."

  "Nobody else?"

  "There's my big brother Tom-but I mustn't tell you about him."

  "Mustn't tell me about him? Why not?"

  "He's so wicked."

  The answer was so unexpected that Lancelot, could not help laughing, and Mary Ann flushed to the roots of her hair.

  "Why, what has he done?" said Lancelot, composing his mouth to gravity.

  "I don't know; I was only six. Father told me it was something very dreadful, and Tom had to run away to America, and I mustn't mention him any more. And mother was crying, and I cried because Tom used to give me tickey-backs and go blackberrying with me and our little Sally; and everybody else in the village they seemed glad, because they had said so all along, because Tom would never go to church, even when a little boy."

  "I suppose then you went to church regularly?"

  "Yessir. When I was at home, I mean."

  "Every Sunday?"

  Mary Ann hung her head. "Once I went meechin'," she said in low tones. "Some boys and girls they wanted me to go nutting, and I wanted to go too, but I didn't know how to get away, and they told me to cough very loud when the sermon began, so I did, and coughed on and on till at last the vicar glowed at father, and father had to send me out of church."

  Lancelot laughed heartily. "Then you didn't like the sermon."

  "It wasn't that, sir. The sun was shining that beautiful outside, and I never minded the sermon, only I did get tired of sitting still. But I never done it again-our little Sally, she died soon after."

  Lancelot checked his laughter. "Poor little fool!" he thought. Then to brighten her up again he asked cheerily, "And what else did you do on the farm?"

  "Oh, please sir, missus will be wanting me now."

  "Bother missus. I want some more milk," he said, emptying the milk-jug into the slop-basin. "Run down and get some."

  Mary Ann was startled by the splendour of the deed. She took the jug silently and disappeared.