with poetry and lofty thought, with dark amorous orbs that flashed responsive to his magic melodies. They hovered about him as he wrote and played-Venuses rising from the seas of his music. And then-with his eyes full of the divine tears of youth, with his brain a hive of winged dreams-he would turn and kiss merely Mary Ann! Such is the pitiful breed of mortals.
And after every such fall, he thought more contemptuously of Mary Ann. Idealise her as he might, see all that was best in her as he tried to, she remained common and commonplace enough. Her ingenuousness, while from one point of view it was charming, from another was but a pleasant synonym for silliness. And it might not be ingenuousness-or silliness-after all! For, was Mary Ann as innocent as she looked? The guilelessness of the dove might very well cover the wisdom of the serpent. The instinct-the repugnance that made him sponge off her first kiss from his lips-was probably a true instinct. How was it possible a girl of that class should escape the sordid attentions of street swains? Even when she was in the country she was well-nigh of wooable age, the likely cynosure of neighbouring ploughboys' eyes. And what of the other lodgers!
A finer instinct-that of a gentleman-kept him from putting any questions to Mary Ann. Indeed, his own delicacy repudiated the images that strove to find entry in his brain, even as his fastidiousness shrank from realising the unlovely details of Mary Ann's daily duties-these things disgusted him more with himself than with her. And yet he found himself acquiring a new and illogical interest in the boots he met outside doors. Early one morning he went halfway up the second flight of stairs-a strange region where his own boots had never before trod-but came down ashamed and with fluttering heart as if he had gone up to steal boots instead of to survey them. He might have asked Mary Ann or her 'missus' who the other tenants were, but he shrank from the topic. Their hours were not his, and he only once chanced on a fellow-man in the passage, and then he was not sure it was not the tax- collector. Besides, he was not really interested-it was only a flicker of idle curiosity as to the actual psychology of Mary Ann. That he did not really care he proved to himself by kissing her next time. He accepted her as she was- because she was there. She brightened his troubled life a little, and he was quite sure he brightened hers. So he drifted on, not worrying himself to mean any definite harm to her. He had quite enough worry with those music publishers.
The financial outlook was, indeed, becoming terrifying. He was glad there was nobody to question him, for he did not care to face the facts. Peter's threat of becoming a regular visitor had been nullified by his father despatching him to Germany to buy up some more Teutonic patents. 'Wonderful are the ways of Providence!' he had written to Lancelot. 'If I had not flown in the old man's face and picked up a little German here years ago, I should not be half so useful to him now.... I shall pay a flying visit to Leipsic-not on business.'
But at last Peter returned, Mrs. Leadbatter panting to the door to let him in one afternoon without troubling to ask Lancelot if he was 'at home.' He burst upon the musician, and found him in the most undisguisable dumps.
'Why didn't you answer my letter, you impolite old bear?' Peter asked, warding off Beethoven with his umbrella.
'I was busy,' Lancelot replied pettishly.
'Busy writing rubbish. Haven't you got 'Ops.' enough? I bet you haven't had anything published yet.'
'I am working at a grand opera,' he said in dry, mechanical tones. 'I have hopes of getting it put on. Gasco, the
'I hope I shall live to see it,' said Peter, sceptically.
'I hope you will,' said Lancelot, sharply.
'None of my family ever lived beyond ninety,' said Peter, shaking his head dolefully; 'and then, my heart is not so good as it might be.'
'It certainly isn't!' cried poor Lancelot. 'But everybody hits a chap when he's down.'
He turned his head away, striving to swallow the lump that would rise to his throat. He had a sense of infinite wretchedness and loneliness.
'Oh, poor old chap; is it so bad as all that?' Peter's somewhat strident voice had grown tender as a woman's. He laid his hand affectionately on Lancelot's tumbled hair. 'You know I believe in you with all my soul. I never doubted your genius for a moment. Don't I know too well that's what keeps you back? Come, come, old fellow. Can't I persuade you to write rot? One must keep the pot boiling, you know. You turn out a dozen popular ballads, and the coin'll follow your music as the rats did the pied piper's. Then, if you have any ambition left, you kick away the ladder by which you mounted, and stand on the heights of art.'
'Never!' cried Lancelot. 'It would degrade me in my own eyes. I'd rather starve; and you can't shake them off- the first impression is everything; they would always be remembered against me,' he added after a pause.
'Motives mixed,' reflected Peter. 'That's a good sign.' Aloud he said, 'Well, you think it over. This is a practical world, old man; it wasn't made for dreamers. And one of the first dreams that you've got to wake from is the dream that anybody connected with the stage can be relied on from one day to the next. They gas for the sake of gassing, or they tell you pleasant lies out of mere goodwill, just as they call for your drinks. Their promises are beautiful bubbles, on a basis of soft soap, and made to 'bust.''
'You grow quite eloquent,' said Lancelot, with a wan smile.
'Eloquent! There's more in me than you've yet found out. Now then! Give us your hand that you'll chuck art, and we'll drink to your popular ballad-hundredth thousand edition, no drawing-room should be without it.'
Lancelot flushed. 'I was just going to have some tea. I think it's five o'clock,' he murmured.
'The very thing I'm dying for,' cried Peter, energetically; 'I'm as parched as a pea.' Inwardly he was shocked to find the stream of whisky run dry.
So Lancelot rang the bell, and Mary Ann came up with the tea-tray in the twilight.
'We'll have a light,' cried Peter, and struck one of his own with a shadowy underthought of saving Mary Ann from a possible scolding, in case Lancelot's matches should be again unapparent. Then he uttered a comic exclamation of astonishment. Mary Ann was putting on a pair of gloves! In his surprise he dropped the match.
Mary Ann was equally startled by the unexpected sight of a stranger, but when he struck his 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 safeguarding 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.'
