Merely Mary Ann | Page 4

a bilious liver-coloured Blenheim spaniel.
"Like master like dog," said the swarthy young man, defending himself at the point of the umbrella. "Really your animal is more intelligent than the overrated common or garden dog, which makes no distinction between people calling in the small hours and people calling in broad daylight under the obvious patronage of its own master. This beast of yours is evidently more in sympathy with its liege lord. Down, Fido, down! I wonder they allow you to keep such noisy creatures--but stay! I was forgetting you keep a piano. After that, I suppose, nothing matters."
Lancelot made no reply, but surprised Beethoven into silence by kicking him out of the way. He lit the gas with a neatly written sheet of music which he rammed into the fire Mary Ann had been keeping up, then as silently he indicated the easy-chair.
"Thank you," said the swarthy young man, taking it. "I would rather see you in it, but as there's only one, I know you wouldn't be feeling a gentleman; and that would make us both uncomfortable."
"'Pon my word, Peter," Lancelot burst forth, "you're enough to provoke a saint."
"'Pon my word, Lancelot," replied Peter imperturbably, "you're more than enough to provoke a sinner. Why, what have you to be ashamed of? You've got one of the cosiest dens in London and one of the comfortablest chairs. Why, it's twice as jolly as the garret we shared at Leipsic--up the ninety stairs."
"We're not in Germany now. I don't want to receive visitors," answered Lancelot sulkily.
"A visitor! you call me a visitor! Lancelot, it's plain you were not telling the truth when you said just now you had forgiven me."
"I had forgiven--and forgotten you."
"Come, that's unkind. It's scarcely three years since I threw up my career as a genius, and you know why I left you, old man. When the first fever of youthful revolt was over, I woke to see things in their true light. I saw how mean it was of me to help to eat up your wretched thousand pounds. Neither of us saw the situation nakedly at first--it was sicklied o'er with Quixotic foolishness. You see, you had the advantage of me. Your governor was a gentleman. He says, 'Very well, if you won't go to Cambridge, if you refuse to enter the Church as the younger son of a blue-blooded but impecunious baronet should, and to step into the living which is fattening for you, then I must refuse to take any further responsibility for your future. Here is a thousand pounds; it is the money I had set aside for your college course. Use it for your musical tomfoolery if you insist, and then--get what living you can.' Which was severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician. But what does my governor do? That cantankerous, pig-headed old Philistine--God bless him!--he's got no sense of the respect a father owes to his offspring. Not an atom. You're simply a branch to be run on the lines of the old business, or be shut up altogether. And, by the way, Lancelot, he hasn't altered a jot since those days when--as you remember--the City or starvation was his pleasant alternative. Of course, I preferred starvation--one usually does at nineteen; especially if one knows there's a scion of aristocracy waiting outside to elope with him to Leipsic."
"But you told me you were going back to your dad, because you found you had mistaken your vocation."
"Gospel truth also! My heavens, shall I ever forget the blank horror that grew upon me when I came to understand that music was a science more barbarous than the mathematics that floored me at school, that the life of a musical student, instead of being a delicious whirl of waltz tunes, was 'one dem'd grind,' that seemed to grind out all the soul of the divine art and leave nothing but horrid technicalities about consecutive fifths and suspensions on the dominant? I dare say most people still think of the musician as a being who lives in an enchanted world of sound, rather than as a person greatly occupied with tedious feats of penmanship; just as I myself still think of a prima ballerina not as a hard-working gymnast, but as a fairy, whose existence is all bouquets and lime-light."
"But you had a pretty talent for the piano," said Lancelot in milder accents. "No one forced you to learn composition. You could have learnt anything for the paltry fifteen pounds exacted by the Conservatoire--from the German flute to the grand organ; from singing to scoring band parts."
"No, thank you. Aut Caesar aut nihil. You remember what I always used to say: 'Either Beethoven----' (The spaniel pricked up his ears.) --or bust.' If I could not be a great musician it was hardly worth while