Merely Mary Ann
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Israel Zangwill >> Merely Mary Ann
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"Mary Ann," he cried wildly. The lighted match fell from his fingers and
burnt itself out unheeded on the carpet.
"Yessir."
"Is it true"--his emotion choked him--"is it true you've come into two
and a half million dollars?"
"Yessir, and I've brought you some tea."
The room was dark, but darkness seemed to fall on it as she spoke.
"But why are you waiting on me, then?" he said slowly. "Don't you know
that you--that you----"
"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I wanted to come in and see you." He felt himself
trembling.
"But Mrs. Leadbatter told me she wouldn't let you do any more work."
"I told missus that I must; I told her she couldn't get another girl
before Monday, if then, and if she didn't let me I wouldn't buy a new
dress and a pair of boots with her sovereign--it isn't suvrin, is it,
sir?"
"No," murmured Lancelot, smiling in spite of himself.
"With her sovereign. And I said I would be all dirty on Monday."
"But what can you get for a sovereign?" he asked irrelevantly. He felt
his mind wandering away from him.
"Oh, ever such a pretty dress!"
The picture of Mary Ann in a pretty dress painted itself upon the
darkness. How lovely the child would look in some creamy white evening
dress with a rose in her hair. He wondered that in all his thoughts of
their future he had never dressed her up thus in fancy, to feast his eyes
on the vision.
"And so the vicar will find you in a pretty dress," he said at last.
"No, sir."
"But you promised Mrs. Leadbatter to----"
"I promised to buy a dress with her sovereign. But I shan't be here when
the vicar comes. He can't come till the afternoon."
"Why, where will you be?" he said, his heart beginning to beat fast.
"With you," she replied, with a faint accent of surprise.
He steadied himself against the mantel-piece.
"But----" he began, and ended, "is that honest?"
He dimly descried her lips pouting. "We can always send her another when
we have one," she said.
He stood there, dumb, glad of the darkness.
"I must go down now," she said. "I mustn't stay long."
"Why?" he articulated.
"Rosie," she replied briefly.
"What about Rosie?"
"She watches me--ever since she came. Don't you understand?"
This time he was the dullard. He felt an extra quiver of repugnance for
Rosie, but said nothing, while Mary Ann briskly lit the gas and threw
some coals on the decaying fire. He was pleased she was going down; he
was suffocating; he did not know what to say to her. And yet, as she was
disappearing through the doorway, he had a sudden feeling things couldn't
be allowed to remain an instant in this impossible position.
"Mary Ann," he cried.
"Yessir."
She turned back--her face wore merely the expectant expression of a
summoned servant. The childishness of her behaviour confused him,
irritated him.
"Are you foolish?" he cried suddenly; half regretting the phrase the
instant he had uttered it.
Her lip twitched.
"No, Mr. Lancelot!" she faltered.
"But you talk as if you were," he said less roughly. "You mustn't run
away from the vicar just when he is going to take you to the lawyer's to
certify who you are, and see that you get your money."
"But I don't want to go with the vicar--I want to go with you. You said
you would take me with you." She was almost in tears now.
"Yes--but don't you--don't you understand that--that," he stammered;
then, temporising, "But I can wait."
"Can't the vicar wait?" said Mary Ann. He had never known her show such
initiative.
He saw that it was hopeless--that the money had made no more dint upon
her consciousness than some vague dream, that her whole being was set
towards the new life with him, and shrank in horror from the menace of
the vicar's withdrawal of her in the opposite direction. If joy and
redemption had not already lain in the one quarter, the advantages of the
other might have been more palpably alluring. As it was, her
consciousness was "full up" in the matter, so to speak. He saw that he
must tell her plain and plump, startle her out of her simple confidence.
"Listen to me, Mary Ann."
"Yessir."
"You are a young woman--not a baby. Strive to grasp what I am going to
tell you."
"Yessir," in a half-sob, that vibrated with the obstinate resentment of a
child that knows it is to be argued out of its instincts by adult
sophistry. What had become of her passive personality?
"You are now the owner of two and a half million dollars--that is about
five hundred thousand pounds. Five--hundred thousand--pounds. Think of
ten sovereigns--ten golden sovereigns like that Mrs. Leadbatter gave you.
Then ten times as much as that, and ten times as much as all that"--he
spread his arms wider and wider--"and ten times as much as all that, and
then"--here his arms were prematurely horizontal, so he concluded hastily
but impressively--"and then FIFTY times as much as all that. Do you
understand how rich you are?"
"Yessir." She was fumbling nervously at her gloves, half drawing them
off.
"Now all this money will last for ever. For you invest it--if only at
three per cent.--never mind what that is--and then you get fifteen
thousand a year--fifteen thousand golden sovereigns to spend every----"
"Please, sir, I must go now. Rosie!"
"Oh, but you can't go yet. I have lots more to tell you."
"Yessir; but can't you ring for me again?"
In the gravity of the crisis, the remark tickled him; he laughed with a
strange ring in his laughter.
"All right; run away, you sly little puss."
He smiled on as he poured out his tea; finding a relief in prolonging his
sense of the humour of the suggestion, but his heart was heavy, and his
brain a whirl. He did not ring again till he had finished tea.
She came in, and took her gloves out of her pocket.
"No! no!" he cried, strangely exasperated: "An end to this farce! Put
them away. You don't need gloves any more."
She squeezed them into her pocket nervously, and began to clear away the
things, with abrupt movements, looking askance every now and then at the
overcast handsome face.
At last he nerved himself to the task and said: "Well, as I was saying,
Mary Ann, the first thing for you to think of is to make sure of all this
money--this fifteen thousand pounds a year. You see you will be able to
live in a fine manor house--such as the squire lived in in your
village--surrounded by a lovely park with a lake in it for swans and
boats----"
Mary Ann had paused in her work, slop-basin in hand. The concrete
details were beginning to take hold of her imagination.
"Oh, but I should like a farm better," she said. "A large farm with
great pastures and ever so many cows and pigs and outhouses, and a--oh,
just like Atkinson's farm. And meat every day, with pudding on Sundays!
Oh, if father was alive, wouldn't he be glad!"
"Yes, you can have a farm--anything you like."
"Oh, how lovely! A piano?"
"Yes--six pianos."
"And you will learn me?"
He shuddered and hesitated.
"Well--I can't say, Mary Ann."
"Why not? Why won't you? You said you would! You learn Rosie."
"I may not be there, you see," he said, trying to put a spice of
playfulness into his tones.
"Oh, but you will," she said feverishly. "You will take me there. We
will go there instead of where you said--instead of the green waters."
Her eyes were wild and witching.
He groaned inwardly.
"I cannot promise you now," he said slowly. "Don't you see that
everything is altered?"
"What's altered? You are here, and here am I." Her apprehension made
her almost epigrammatic.
"Ah, but you are quite different now, Mary Ann."
"I'm not--I want to be with you just the same."
He shook his head. "I can't take you with me," he said decisively.
"Why not?" She caught hold of his arm entreatingly.
"You are not the same Mary Ann--to other people. You are a somebody.
Before you were a nobody. Nobody cared or bothered about you--you were
no more than a dead leaf whirling in the street."
"Yes, you cared and bothered about me," she cried, clinging to him.
Her gratitude cut him like a knife. "The eyes of the world are on you
now," he said. "People will talk about you if you go away with me now."
"Why will they talk about me? What harm shall I do them?"
Her phrases puzzled him.
"I don't know that you will harm them," he said slowly, "but you will
harm yourself."
"How will I harm myself?" she persisted.
"Well, one day you will want a--a husband. With all that money it is
only right and proper you should marry----"
"No, Mr. Lancelot, I don't want a husband. I don't want to marry. I
should never want to go away from you."
There was another painful silence. He sought refuge in a brusque
playfulness.
"I see you understand _I'm_ not going to marry you."
"Yessir."
He felt a slight relief.
"Well, then," he said, more playfully still, "suppose I wanted to go away
from _you_, Mary Ann?"
"But you love me," she said, unaffrighted.
He started back perceptibly.
After a moment, he replied, still playfully, "I never said so."
"No, sir; but--but----"--she lowered her eyes; a coquette could not have
done it more artlessly--"but I--know it."
The accusation of loving her set all his suppressed repugnances and
prejudices bristling in contradiction. He cursed the weakness that had
got him into this soul-racking situation. The silence clamoured for him
to speak--to do something.
"What--what were you crying about before?" he said abruptly.
"I--I don't know, sir," she faltered.
"Was it Tom's death?"
"No, sir, not much. I did think of him blackberrying with me and our
little Sally--but then he was so wicked! It must have been what missus
said; and I was frightened because the vicar was coming to take me
away--away from you; and then--oh, I don't know--I felt--I couldn't tell
you--I felt I must cry and cry, like that night when----" She paused
suddenly and looked away.
"When----" he said encouragingly.
"I must go--Rosie," she murmured, and took up the tea-tray.
"That night when----" he repeated tenaciously.
"When you first kissed me," she said.
He blushed. "That--that made you cry!" he stammered. "Why?"
"Please, sir, I don't know."
"Mary Ann," he said gravely, "don't you see that when I did that I
was--like your brother Tom?"
"No, sir. Tom didn't kiss me like that."
"I don't mean that, Mary Ann; I mean I was wicked."
Mary Ann stared at him.
"Don't you think so, Mary Ann?"
"Oh no, sir. You were very good."
"No, no, Mary Ann. Don't say good."
"Ever since then I have been so happy," she persisted.
"Oh, that was because you were wicked, too," he explained grimly. "We
have both been very wicked, Mary Ann; and so we had better part now,
before we get more wicked."
She stared at him plaintively, suspecting a lurking irony, but not sure.
"But you didn't mind being wicked before!" she protested.
"I'm not so sure I mind now. It's for your sake, Mary Ann, believe me,
my dear." He took her bare hand kindly, and felt it burning. "You're a
very simple, foolish little thing--yes, you are. Don't cry. There's no
harm in being simple. Why, you told me yourself how silly you were once
when you brought your dying mother cakes and flowers to take to your dead
little sister. Well, you're just as foolish and childish now, Mary Ann,
though you don't know it any more than you did then. After all, you're
only nineteen. I found it out from the vicar's letter. But a time will
come--yes, I'll warrant in only a few months' time you'll see how wise I
am and how sensible you have been to be guided by me. I never wished you
any harm, Mary Ann, believe me, my dear, I never did. And I hope, I do
hope so much that this money will make you happy. So, you see, you
mustn't go away with me now. You don't want everybody to talk of you as
they did of your brother Tom, do you, dear? Think what the vicar would
say."
But Mary Ann had broken down under the touch of his hand and the
gentleness of his tones.
"I was a dead leaf so long, I don't care!" she sobbed passionately.
"Nobody never bothered to call me wicked then. Why should I bother now?"
Beneath the mingled emotions her words caused him was a sense of surprise
at her recollection of his metaphor.
"Hush! You're a silly little child," he repeated sternly. "Hush! or
Mrs. Leadbatter will hear you." He went to the door and closed it
tightly. "Listen, Mary Ann! Let me tell you once for all, that even if
you were fool enough to be willing to go with me, I wouldn't take you
with me. It would be doing you a terrible wrong."
She interrupted him quietly,
"Why more now than before?"
He dropped her hand as if stung, and turned away. He knew he could not
answer that to his own satisfaction, much less to hers.
"You're a silly little baby," he repeated resentfully. "I think you had
better go down now. Missus will be wondering."
Mary Ann's sobs grew more spasmodic. "You are going away without me,"
she cried hysterically.
He went to the door again, as if apprehensive of an eavesdropper. The
scene was becoming terrible. The passive personality had developed with
a vengeance.
"Hush, hush!" he cried imperatively.
"You are going away without me. I shall never see you again."
"Be sensible, Mary Ann. You will be----"
"You won't take me with you."
"How can I take you with me?" he cried brutally, losing every vestige of
tenderness for this distressful vixen. "Don't you understand that it's
impossible--unless I marry you?" he concluded contemptuously.
Mary Ann's sobs ceased for a moment.
"Can't you marry me, then?" she said plaintively.
"You know it is impossible," he replied curtly.
"Why is it impossible?" she breathed.
"Because----" He saw her sobs were on the point of breaking out, and had
not the courage to hear them afresh. He dared not wound her further by
telling her straight out that, with all her money, she was ridiculously
unfit to bear his name--that it was already a condescension for him to
have offered her his companionship on any terms.
He resolved to temporise again.
"Go downstairs now, there's a good girl; and I'll tell you in the
morning. I'll think it over. Go to bed early and have a long, nice
sleep--missus will let you--now. It isn't Monday yet; we have plenty of
time to talk it over."
She looked up at him with large, appealing eyes, uncertain, but calming
down.
"Do, now, there's a dear." He stroked her wet cheek soothingly.
"Yessir," and almost instinctively she put up her lips for a good-night
kiss. He brushed them hastily with his. She went out softly, drying her
eyes. His own grew moist--he was touched by the pathos of her implicit
trust. The soft warmth of her lips still thrilled him. How sweet and
loving she was! The little dialogue rang in his brain.
"Can't you marry me, then?"
"You know it is impossible."
"Why is it impossible?"
"Because----"
"Because what?" an audacious voice whispered. Why should he not? He
stilled the voice, but it refused to be silent--was obdurate, insistent,
like Mary Ann herself. "Because--oh, because of a hundred things," he
told it. "Because she is no fit mate for me--because she would degrade
me, make me ridiculous--an unfortunate fortune-hunter, the butt of the
witlings. How could I take her about as my wife? How could she receive
my friends? For a housekeeper--a good, loving housekeeper--she is
perfection, but for a wife--_my_ wife--the companion of my
soul--impossible!"
"Why is it impossible?" repeated the voice, catching up the cue. And
then, from that point, the dialogue began afresh.
"Because this, and because that, and because the other--in short, because
I am Lancelot and she is merely Mary Ann."
"But she is not merely Mary Ann any longer," urged the voice.
"Yes, for all her money, she is merely Mary Ann. And am I to sell myself
for her money--I who have stood out so nobly, so high-mindedly, through
all these years of privation and struggle! And her money is all in
dollars. Pah! I smell the oil. Struck ile! Of all things in the
world, her brother should just go and strike ile!" A great shudder
traversed his form. "Everything seems to have been arranged out of pure
cussedness, just to spite me. She would have been happier without the
money, poor child--without the money, but with me. What will she do with
all her riches? She will only be wretched--like me."
"Then why not be happy together?"
"Impossible."
"Why is it impossible?"
"Because her dollars would stick in my throat--the oil would make me
sick. And what would Peter say, and my brother (not that I care what
_he_ says), and my acquaintances?"
"What does that matter to you? While you were a dead leaf nobody
bothered to talk about you; they let you starve--you, with your
genius--now you can let them talk--you, with your heiress. Five hundred
thousand pounds. More than you will make with all your operas if you
live a century. Fifteen thousand a year. Why, you could have all your
works performed at your own expense, and for your own sole pleasure if
you chose, as the King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could
devote your life to the highest art--nay, is it not a duty you owe to the
world? Would it not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings
with sordid cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this heaven-sent
boon?"
The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled
manuscript--_opera disjecta_--and turned their pages.
"Yes--yes--give us life!" they seemed to cry to him. "We are dead drops
of ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here,
dusty in death? We have waited so patiently--have pity on us, raise us
up from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth,
chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the
echoes of our music and the splendour of your name."
But he shook his head and sighed, and put them back in their niches, and
placed the comic opera he had begun in the centre of the table.
"There lie the only dollars that will ever come my way," he said aloud.
And, humming the opening bars of a lively polka from the manuscript, he
took up his pen and added a few notes. Then he paused; the polka would
not come--the other voice was louder.
"It would be a degradation," he repeated, to silence it. "It would be
merely for her money. I don't love her."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"If I really loved her I shouldn't refuse to marry her."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"What's the use of all this wire-drawing?--the whole thing is impossible."
"Why is it impossible?"
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, refusing to be drawn back into the
eddy, and completed the bar of the polka.
Then he threw down his pen, rose and paced the room in desperation.
"Was ever any man in such a dilemma?" he cried aloud.
"Did ever any man get such a chance?" retorted his silent tormentor.
"Yes, but I mustn't seize the chance--it would be mean."
"It would be meaner not to. You're not thinking of that poor girl--only
of yourself. To leave her now would be more cowardly than to have left
her when she was merely Mary Ann. She needs you even more now that she
will be surrounded by sharks and adventurers. Poor, poor Mary Ann. It
is you who have the right to protect her now; you were kind to her when
the world forgot her. You owe it to yourself to continue to be good to
her."
"No, no, I won't humbug myself. If I married her it would only be for
her money."
"No, no, don't humbug yourself. You like her. You care for her very
much. You are thrilling at this very moment with the remembrance of her
lips to-night. Think of what life will be with her--life full of all
that is sweet and fair--love and riches, and leisure for the highest art,
and fame and the promise of immortality. You are irritable, sensitive,
delicately organised; these sordid, carking cares, these wretched
struggles, these perpetual abasements of your highest self--a few more
years of them--they will wreck and ruin you, body and soul. How many men
of genius have married their housekeepers even--good clumsy, homely
bodies, who have kept their husbands' brain calm and his pillow smooth.
And again, a man of genius is the one man who can marry anybody. The
world expects him to be eccentric. And Mary Ann is no coarse city weed,
but a sweet country bud. How splendid will be her blossoming under the
sun! Do not fear that she will ever shame you; she will look beautiful,
and men will not ask her to talk. Nor will you want her to talk. She
will sit silent in the cosy room where you are working, and every now and
again you will glance up from your work at her and draw inspiration from
her sweet presence. So pull yourself together, man; your troubles are
over, and life henceforth one long blissful dream. Come, burn me that
tinkling, inglorious comic opera, and let the whole sordid past mingle
with its ashes."
So strong was the impulse--so alluring the picture--that he took up the
comic opera and walked towards the fire, his fingers itching to throw it
in. But he sat down again after a moment and went on with his work. It
was imperative he should make progress with it; he could not afford to
waste his time--which was money--because another person--Mary Ann to
wit--had come into a superfluity of both. In spite of which the comic
opera refused to advance; somehow he did not feel in the mood for gaiety;
he threw down his pen in despair and disgust. But the idea of not being
able to work rankled in him. Every hour seemed suddenly precious--now
that he had resolved to make money in earnest--now that for a year or two
he could have no other aim or interest in life. Perhaps it was that he
wished to overpower the din of contending thoughts. Then a happy thought
came to him. He rummaged out Peter's ballad. He would write a song on
the model of that, as Peter had recommended--something tawdry and
sentimental, with a cheap accompaniment. He placed the ballad on the
rest and started going through it to get himself in the vein. But
to-night the air seemed to breathe an ineffable melancholy, the words--no
longer mawkish--had grown infinitely pathetic:
"Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
Dream of the old delight;
My spirit is summoned above,
Kiss me, dear love, good-night!"
The hot tears ran down his cheeks, as he touched the keys softly and
lingeringly. He could go no further than the refrain; he leant his
elbows on the keyboard, and dropped his head upon his arms. The clashing
notes jarred like a hoarse cry, then vibrated slowly away into a silence
that was broken only by his sobs. He rose late the next day, after a
sleep that was one prolonged nightmare, full of agonised, abortive
striving after something that always eluded him, he knew not what. And
when he woke--after a momentary breath of relief at the thought of the
unreality of these vague horrors--he woke to the heavier nightmare of
reality. Oh, those terrible dollars!
He drew the blind, and saw with a dull acquiescence that the brightness
of the May had fled. The wind was high--he heard it fly past, moaning.
In the watery sky, the round sun loomed silver-pale and blurred. To his
fevered eye it looked like a worn dollar.
He turned away shivering, and began to dress. He opened the door a
little, and pulled in his lace-up boots, which were polished in the
highest style of art. But when he tried to put one on, his toes stuck
fast in the opening and refused to advance. Annoyed, he put his hand in,
and drew out a pair of tan gloves, perfectly new. Astonished, he
inserted his hand again and drew out another pair, then another.
Reddening uncomfortably, for he divined something of the meaning, he
examined the left boot, and drew out three more pairs of gloves, two new
and one slightly soiled.
He sank down, half dressed, on the bed with his head on his breast,
leaving his boots and Mary Ann's gloves scattered about the floor. He
was angry, humiliated; he felt like laughing, and he felt like sobbing.
At last he roused himself, finished dressing, and rang for breakfast.
Rosie brought it up.
"Hullo! Where's Mary Ann?" he said lightly.
"She's above work now," said Rosie, with an unamiable laugh. "You know
about her fortune."
"Yes; but your mother told me she insisted on going about her work till
Monday."
"So she said yesterday--silly little thing! But to-day she says she'll
only help mother in the kitchen--and do all the boots of a morning. She
won't do any more waiting."
"Ah!" said Lancelot, crumbling his toast.
"I don't believe she knows what she wants," concluded Rosie, turning to
go.
"Then I suppose she's in the kitchen now?" he said, pouring out his
coffee down the side of his cup.
"No, she's gone out now, sir."
"Gone out!" He put down the coffee-pot--his saucer was full. "Gone out
where?"
"Only to buy things. You know her vicar is coming to take her away the
day after tomorrow, and mother wanted her to look tidy enough to travel
with the vicar; so she gave her a sovereign."
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