Merely Mary Ann

I >> Israel Zangwill >> Merely Mary Ann

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"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 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
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."

"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 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 re-established them in their mutual esteem, they
chatted lazily and spasmodically till past midnight, with more smoke than
fire in their 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 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 _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.

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 tonics 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."

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