Ann.
But she was no longer merely Mary Ann, he remembered with another shock. She loomed large to him in the match-light-he seemed to see her through a golden haze. Tumultuous images of her glorified gilded future rose and mingled dizzily in his brain.
And yet, was he dreaming? Surely it was the same Mary Ann, with the same winsome face and the same large pathetic eyes, ringed though they were with the shadow of tears. Mary Ann, in her neat white cap-yes-and in her tan kid gloves. He rubbed his eyes. Was he really awake? Or-a thought still more dizzying-had he been dreaming? Had he fallen asleep and reinless fancy had played him the fantastic trick, from which, cramped and dazed, he had just awakened to the old sweet reality.
'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!'
