The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes

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.'

'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 toward 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