Merely Mary Ann | Page 5

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
enduring the privations of one, especially at another man's expense. So
I did the Prodigal Son dodge, as you know, and out of the proceeds sent
you my year's exes in that cheque you with your damnable pride sent
me back again. And now, old fellow, that I have you face to face at last,
can you offer the faintest scintilla of a shadow of a reason for refusing
to take that cheque? No, you can't! Nothing but simple beastly
stuckuppishness. I saw through you at once; all your heroics were a
fraud. I was not your friend, but your protégé--something to practise
your chivalry on. You dropped your cloak, and I saw your feet of clay.
Well, I tell you straight, I made up my mind at once to be bad friends

with you for life; only when I saw your fiery old phiz at Brahmson's I
felt a sort of something tugging inside my greatcoat like a thief after
my pocket-book, and I kinder knew, as the Americans say, that in half
an hour I should be sitting beneath your hospitable roof."
"I beg your pardon--you will have some whisky." He rang the bell
violently.
"Don't be a fool--you know I didn't mean that. Well, don't let us quarrel.
I have forgiven you for your youthful bounty, and you have forgiven
me for chucking it up; and now we are going to drink to the Vaterland,"
he added, as Mary Ann appeared with a suspicious alacrity.
"Do you know," he went on, when they had taken the first sip of
renewed amity dissolved in whisky, "I think I showed more musical
soul than you in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules
invented by fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He
picked up some sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have
schooled yourself to scribble all this--you, with your restless
nature--full scores, too! I hope you don't offer this sort of thing to
Brahmson."
"I certainly went there with that intention," admitted Lancelot. "I
thought I'd catch Brahmson himself in the evening--he's never in when
I call in the morning."
Peter groaned.
"Quixotic as ever! You can't have been long in London then?"
"A year."
"I suppose you'd jump down my throat if I were to ask you how much
is left of that----" he hesitated, then turned the sentence facetiously--"of
those twenty thousand shillings you were cut off with?"
"Let this vile den answer."

"Don't disparage the den; it's not so bad."
"You are right--I may come to worse. I've been an awful ass. You know
how lucky I was while at the Conservatoire--no, you don't. How should
you? Well, I carried off some distinctions and a lot of conceit, and
came over here thinking Europe would be at my feet in a month. I was
only sorry my father died before I could twit him with my triumph.
That's candid, isn't it?"
"Yes; you're not such a prig after all," mused Peter; "I saw the old
man's death in the paper--your brother Lionel became the bart."
"Yes, poor beggar, I don't hate him half so much as I did. He reminds
me of a man invited to dinner which is nothing but flowers and
serviettes and silver plate."
"I'd pawn the plate, anyhow," said Peter, with a little laugh.
"He can't touch anything, I tell you; everything's tied up."
"Ah well, he'll get tied up, too. He'll marry an American heiress."
"Confound him! I'd rather see the house extinct first."
"Hoity, toity! She'll be quite as good as any of you."
"I can't discuss this with you, Peter," said Lancelot, gently but firmly.
"If there is a word I hate more than the word heiress, it is the word
American."
"But why? They're both very good words and better things."
"They both smack of the most vulgar thing in the world--money," said
Lancelot, walking hotly about the room. "In America there's no other
standard. To make your pile, to strike ile--oh, how I shudder to hear
these idioms! And can any one hear the word heiress without
immediately thinking of matrimony? Phaugh? It's a prostitution."
"What is? You're not very coherent, my friend."

"Very well, I am incoherent. If a great old family can only bolster up its
greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers,