Merely Mary Ann
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Israel Zangwill >> Merely Mary Ann
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Mary Ann was equally startled by the unexpected sight of a stranger,
but when he struck the 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 safe-guarding
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.
"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-bye_, 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!" said 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-bye_ 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 fingers 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 bed-room candlestick.
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 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 Sally, 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 sounded 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 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.
Lancelot felt insulted, but retained enough mastery of himself to reply
that he would think it over. As he gave no signs of life or thought,
the popular composer then wrote to him at length on the subject,
offering him fifty pounds for the job, half of it on account. Lancelot
was in sore straits when he got the letter, for his stock of money was
dwindling to vanishing point, and he dallied with the temptation
sufficiently to take the letter home with him. But his spirit was not
yet broken, and the letter, crumpled like a rag, was picked up by Mary
Ann and straightened out, and carefully placed upon the mantel-shelf.
Time did something of a similar service for Mary Ann herself, picking
her up from the crumpled attitude in which Lancelot had detected her on
the doorstep, straightening her out again, and replacing her upon her
semi-poetic pedestal. But, as with the cream-laid notepaper, the
wrinklings could not be effaced entirely; which was more serious for
Mary Ann.
Not that Mary Ann was conscious of these diverse humours in Lancelot.
Unconscious of changes in herself, she could not conceive herself
related to his variations of mood; still less did she realise the
inward struggle of which she was the cause. She was vaguely aware that
he had external worries, for all his grandeur, and if he was by turns
brusque, affectionate, indifferent, playful, brutal, charming, callous,
demonstrative, she no more connected herself with these vicissitudes
than with the caprices of the weather. If her sun smiled once a day it
was enough. How should she know that his indifference was often a
victory over himself, as his amativeness was a defeat?
If any excuse could be found for Lancelot, it would be that which he
administered to his conscience morning and evening like a soothing
syrup. His position was grown so desperate that Mary Ann almost stood
between him and suicide. Continued disappointment made his soul sick;
his proud heart fed on itself. He would bite his lips till the blood
came, vowing never to give in. And not only would he not move an inch
from his ideal, he would rather die than gratify Peter by falling back
on him; he would never even accept that cheque which was virtually his
own.
It was wonderful how, in his stoniest moments, the sight of Mary Ann's
candid face, eloquent with dumb devotion, softened and melted him. He
would take her gloved hand and press it silently. And Mary Ann never
knew one iota of his inmost thought! He could not bring himself to
that; indeed, she never for a moment appeared to him in the light of an
intelligent being; at her best she was a sweet, simple, loving child.
And he scarce spoke to her at all now--theirs was a silent
communion--he had no heart to converse with her as he had done. The
piano, too, was almost silent; the canary sang less and less, though
spring was coming, and glints of sunshine stole between the wires of
its cage; even Beethoven sometimes failed to bark when there was a
knock at the street door.
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