Merely Mary Ann

by Израэль Зангвилл

  When she returned he said: "Well, you haven't told me half yet. I suppose you kept bees?"

  "Oh yes, and I fed the pigs."

  "Hang the pigs! Let's hear something more romantic."

  "There was the calves to suckle sometimes, when the mother died or was sold."

  "Calves! H'm! H'm! Well, but how could you do that?"

  "Dipped my fingers in milk, and let the calves suck 'em. The silly creatures thought it was their mothers' teats. Like this."

  With a happy inspiration she put her fingers into the slop-basin, and held them up dripping.

  Lancelot groaned. It was not only that his improved Mary Ann was again sinking to earth, unable to soar in the romantic aether where he would fain have seen her volant; it was not only that the coarseness of her nature had power to drag her down, it was the coarseness of her red, chapped hands that was thrust once again and violently upon his reluctant consciousness.

  Then, like Mary Ann, he had an inspiration.

  "How would you like a pair of gloves, Mary Ann?"

  He had struck the latent feminine. Her eyes gleamed. "Oh, sir!" was all she could say. Then a swift shade of disappointment darkened the eager little face.

  "But I never goes out," she cried.

  "I never go out," he corrected, shuddering.

  "I never go out," said Mary Ann, her lip twitching.

  "That doesn't matter. I want you to wear them indoors."

  "But there's nobody to see 'em indoors!"

  "I shall see them," he reminded her.

  "But they'll get dirty."

  "No they won't. You shall only wear them when you come to me. If I buy you a nice pair of gloves, will you promise to put them on every time I ring for you?"

  "But what'll missus say?"

  "Missus won't see them. The moment you come in, you'll put them on, and just before going out-you'll take them off! See!"

  "Yessir. Then nobody'll see me looking so grand but you."

  "That's it. And wouldn't you rather look grand for me than for anybody else?"

  "Of course I would, sir," said Mary Ann, earnestly, with a grateful little sigh.

  So Lancelot measured her wrist, feeling her pulse beat madly. She really had a very little hand, though to his sensitive vision the roughness of the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a boxing-glove. He bought her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful cardboard box. He could ill afford the gift, and made one of his whimsical grimaces when he got the bill. The young lady who served him looked infinitely more genteel than Mary Ann. He wondered what she would think if she knew for whom he was buying these dainty articles. Perhaps her feelings would be so outraged she would refuse to participate in the transaction. But the young lady was happily unconscious; she had her best smile for the handsome, aristocratic young gentleman, and mentioned his moustache later to her bosom-friend in the next department.

  And thus Mary Ann and Lancelot became the joint owners of a secret, and co-players in a little comedy. When Mary Ann came into the room, she would put whatever she was carrying on a chair, gravely extract her gloves from her pocket, and draw them on, Lancelot pretending not to know she was in the room, though he had just said, "Come in." After allowing her a minute he would look up. In the course of a week this became mechanical, so that he lost the semi-ludicrous sense of secrecy which he felt at first, as well as the little pathetic emotion inspired by her absolute unconsciousness that the performance was not intended for her own gratification. Nevertheless, though he could now endure to see Mary Ann handling the sugar-tongs, he remained cold to her for some weeks. He had kissed her again in the flush of her joy at the sight of the gloves, but after that there was a reaction. He rarely went to the club now (there was no one with whom he was in correspondence except music-publishers, and they didn't reply), but he dropped in there once soon after the glove episode, looked over the papers in the smoking-room, and chatted with a popular composer and one or two men he knew. It was while the waiter was holding out the coffee-tray to him that Mary Ann flashed upon his consciousness. The thought of her seemed so incongruous with the sober magnificence, the massive respectability that surrounded him, the cheerful, marble hearth reddened with leaping flame, the luxurious lounges, the well-groomed old gentlemen smoking eighteenpenny cheroots, the suave, noiseless satellites, that Lancelot felt a sudden pang of bewildered shame. Why, the very waiter who stood bent before him would disdain her. He took his coffee hastily, with a sense of personal unworthiness. This feeling soon evaporated, but it left lees of resentment against Mary Ann which made him inexplicable to her. Fortunately, her habit of acceptance saved her some tears, though she shed others. And there remained always the gloves. When she was putting them on she always felt she was slipping her hands in his.

  And then there was yet a further consolation. For the gloves had also a subtle effect on Lancelot. They gave him a sense of responsibility. Vaguely resentful as he felt against Mary Ann (in the intervals of his more definite resentment against publishers), he also felt that he could not stop at the gloves. He had started refining her, and he must go on till she was, so to speak, all gloves. He must cover up her coarse speech, as he had covered up her coarse hands. He owed that to the gloves; it was the least he could do for them. So, whenever Mary Ann made a mistake, Lancelot corrected her. He found these grammatical dialogues not uninteresting, and a vent for his ill-humour against publishers to boot. Very often his verbal corrections sounded astonishingly like reprimands. Here, again, Mary Ann was forearmed by her feeling that she deserved them. She would have been proud had she known how much Mr. Lancelot was satisfied with her aspirates, which came quite natural. She had only dropped her "h's" temporarily, as one drops country friends in coming to London. Curiously enough, Mary Ann did not regard the new locutions and pronunciations as superseding the old. They were a new language; she knew two others, her mother-tongue and her missus's tongue. She would as little have thought of using her new linguistic acquirements in the kitchen as of wearing her gloves there. They were for Lancelot's ears only, as her gloves were for his eyes.

  All this time Lancelot was displaying prodigious musical activity, so much so that the cost of ruled paper became a consideration. There was no form of composition he did not essay, none by which he made a shilling. Once he felt himself the prey of a splendid inspiration, and sat up all night writing at fever pitch, surrounded with celestial harmonies, audible to him alone; the little room resounded with the thunder of a mighty orchestra, in which every instrument sang to him individually-the piccolo, the flute, the oboes, the clarionets, filling the air with a silver spray of notes; the drums throbbing, the trumpets shrilling, the four horns pealing with long, stately notes, the trombones and bassoons vibrating, the violins and violas sobbing in linked sweetness, the 'cello and the contra-bass moaning their under-chant. And then, in the morning, when the first rough sketch was written, the glory faded. He threw down his pen, and called himself an ass for wasting his time on what nobody would ever look at. Then he laid his head on the table, overwrought, full of an infinite pity for himself. A sudden longing seized him for some one to love him, to caress his hair, to smooth his hot forehead. This mood passed too; he smoothed the slumbering Beethoven instead. After a while he went into his bedroom, and sluiced his face and hands in ice-cold water, and rang the bell for breakfast.

  There was a knock at the door in response.

  "Come in!" he said gently-his emotions had left him tired to the point of tenderness. And then he waited a minute while Mary Ann was drawing on her gloves.

  "Did you ring, sir?" said a wheezy voice at last. Mrs. Leadbatter had got tired of waiting.

  Lancelot started violently-Mrs. Leadbatter had latterly left him entirely to Mary Ann. "It's my hastmer," she had explained to him apologetically, meeting him casually in the passage. "I can't trollop up and down stairs as I used to when I fust took this house five-an'-twenty year ago, and pore Mr. Leadbatter--" and here followed reminiscences long since in their hu
ndredth edition.

  "Yes; let me have some coffee-very hot-please," said Lancelot less gently. The woman's voice jarred upon him; and her features were not redeeming.

  "Lawd, sir, I 'ope that gas 'asn't been burnin' all night, sir," she said as she was going out.

  "It has," he said shortly.

  "You'll hexcoose me, sir, but I didn't bargen for that. I'm only a pore, honest, 'ard-workin' widder, and I noticed the last gas bill was 'eavier than hever since that black winter that took pore Mr. Leadbatter to 'is grave. Fair is fair, and I shall 'ave to reckon it a hextry, with the rate gone up sevenpence a thousand, and my Rosie leavin' a fine nursemaid's place in Bayswater at the end of the month to come 'ome and 'elp 'er mother, 'cos my hastmer--"

  "Will you please shut the door after you?" interrupted Lancelot, biting his lip with irritation. And Mrs. Leadbatter, who was standing in the aperture with no immediate intention of departing, could find no repartee beyond slamming the door as hard as she could.

  This little passage of arms strangely softened Lancelot to Mary Ann. It made him realise faintly what her life must be.

  "I should go mad and smash all the crockery!" he cried aloud. He felt quite tender again towards the uncomplaining girl.

  Presently there was another knock. Lancelot growled, half prepared to renew the battle, and to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind on the subject. But it was merely Mary Ann.

  Shaken in his routine, he looked on steadily while Mary Ann drew on her gloves; and this in turn confused Mary Ann. Her hand trembled.

  "Let me help you," he said.

  And there was Lancelot buttoning Mary Ann's glove just as if her name were Guinevere! And neither saw the absurdity of wasting time upon an operation which would have to be undone in two minutes. Then Mary Ann, her eyes full of soft light, went to the sideboard and took out the prosaic elements of breakfast.

  When she returned, to put them back, Lancelot was astonished to see her carrying a cage-a plain square cage, made of white tin wire.

  "What's that?" he gasped.

  "Please, Mr. Lancelot, I want to ask you to do me a favour." She dropped her eyelashes timidly.

  "Yes, Mary Ann," he said briskly. "But what have you got there?"

  "It's only my canary, sir. Would you-please, sir, would you mind?"-then desperately: "I want to hang it up here, sir!"

  "Here?" he repeated in frank astonishment.

  "Why?"

  "Please, sir, I-I-it's sunnier here, sir, and I-I think it must be pining away. It hardly ever sings in my bedroom."

  "Well, but," he began-then seeing the tears gathering on her eyelids, he finished with laughing good-nature-"as long as Mrs. Leadbatter doesn't reckon it an extra."

  "Oh no, sir," said Mary Ann seriously. "I'll tell her. Besides, she will be glad, because she don't like the canary-she says its singing disturbs her. Her room is next to mine, you know, Mr. Lancelot."

  "But you said it doesn't sing much."

  "Please, sir, I-I mean in summer," exclaimed Mary Ann in rosy confusion; "and-and-it'll soon be summer, sir."

  "Sw-e-ê-t!" burst forth the canary suddenly, as if encouraged by Mary Ann's opinion. It was a pretty little bird-one golden yellow from beak to tail, as though it had been dipped in sunshine.

  "You see, sir," she cried eagerly, "it's beginning already."

  "Yes," said Lancelot grimly; "but so is Beethoven."

  "I'll hang it high up-in the window," said Mary Ann, "where the dog can't get at it."

  "Well, I won't take any responsibilities," murmured Lancelot resignedly.

  "No, sir, I'll attend to that," said Mary Ann vaguely.

  After the installation of the canary Lancelot found himself slipping more and more into a continuous matter-of-course flirtation; more and more forgetting the slavey in the candid young creature who had, at moments, strange dancing lights in her awakened eyes, strange flashes of witchery in her ingenuous expression. And yet he made a desultory struggle against what a secret voice was always whispering was a degradation. He knew she had no real place in his life; he scarce thought of her save when she came bodily before his eyes with her pretty face and her trustful glance.

  He felt no temptation to write sonatas on her eyebrow-to borrow Peter's variation, for the use of musicians, of Shakespeare's "write sonnets on his mistress's eyebrow"-and, indeed, he knew she could be no fit mistress for him-this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek, accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her. The women of his dreams were quite other-beautiful, voluptuous, full of the joy of life, tremulous 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 do, 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 woo-able 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 half-way 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'm working at a grand opera," he said in dry, mechanical tones. "I have hopes of ge
tting it put on. Gasco, the impresario, is a member of my club, and he thinks of running a season in the autumn. I had a talk with him yesterday."

  "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."