Part 41 (1/2)
I'm talking of you as a cla.s.s. Contempt is in your blood--and quite right! We're such sn.o.bs, we deserve it. Why d'ye think I ever took to you as a boy at school? Was it because you scribbled inaccurate sonatas and I had myself a talent for knocking tunes off the piano? Not a bit of it. I thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many youthful errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English baronet, and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things Teutonic. And that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You gratify my historic sense--like an old building. You are picturesque. You stand to me for all the good old ideals--including the pride which we are beginning to see is deuced unchristian. Mind you, it's a curious kind of pride when one looks into it. Apparently it's based on the fact that your family has lived on the nation for generations. And yet you won't take my cheque--which is your own. Now don't swear--I know one mustn't a.n.a.lyse things, or the world would come to pieces, so I always vote Tory.”
”Then I shall have to turn Radical,” grumbled Lancelot.
”Certainly you will, when you have had a little more experience of poverty,” retorted Peter. ”There, there, old man! forgive me. I only do it to annoy you. Fact is, your outbursts of temper attract me. They are pleasant to look back upon when the storm is over. Yes, my dear Lancelot, you are like the king you look--you can do no wrong. You are picturesque.
Pa.s.s the whisky.”
Lancelot smiled, his handsome brow serene once more. He murmured, ”Don't talk rot,” but inwardly he was not displeased at Peter's allegiance, half mocking though he knew it.
”Therefore, my dear chap,” resumed Peter, sipping his whisky and water, ”to return to our lambs, I bow to your patrician prejudices in favour of forks. But your patriotic prejudices are on a different level. There, I am on the same ground as you, and I vow I see nothing inherently superior in the British combination of beef and beetroot, to the German amalgam of lamb and jam.”
”d.a.m.n lamb and jam!” burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical look: ”There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on this tack?”
”I don't know,” said Peter, smiling. ”We were talking about Frau Sauer-Kraut, I think. And did you board with her all the time?”
”Yes, and I was always hungry. Till the last, I never learnt to stomach her mixtures. But it was really too much trouble to go down the ninety stairs to a restaurant. It was much easier to be hungry.”
”And did you ever get a reform in the hours of was.h.i.+ng the floor?”
”Ha! ha! ha! No, they always waited till I was going to bed. I suppose they thought I liked damp. They never got over my morning tub, you know.
And that, too, sprang a leak after you left, and helped spontaneously to wash the floor.”
”Shows the fallacy of cleanliness,” said Peter, ”and the inferiority of British ideals. They never bathed in their lives, yet they looked the pink of health.”
”Yes,--their complexion was high,--like the fish.”
”Ha! ha! Yes, the fis.h.!.+ That was a great luxury, I remember. About once a month.”
”Of course, the town is so inland,” said Lancelot.
”I see--it took such a long time coming. Ha! ha! ha! And the Herr Professor--is he still a bachelor?”
As the Herr Professor was a septuagenarian and a misogamist, even in Peter's time, his question tickled Lancelot. Altogether the two young men grew quite jolly, recalling a hundred oddities, and reknitting their friends.h.i.+p at the expense of the Fatherland.
”But was there ever a more madcap expedition than ours?” exclaimed Peter.
”Most boys start out to be pirates--”
”And some do become music-publishers,” Lancelot finished grimly, suddenly reminded of a grievance.
”Ha! ha! ha! Poor fellow!” laughed Peter. ”Then you _have_ found them out already.”
”Does any one ever find them in?” flashed Lancelot. ”I suppose they do exist and are occasionally seen of mortal eyes. I suppose wives and friends and mothers gaze on them with no sense of special privilege, unconscious of their invisibility to the profane eyes of mere musicians.”
”My dear fellow, the mere musicians are as plentiful as n.i.g.g.e.rs on the sea-sh.o.r.e. A publisher might spend his whole day receiving regiments of unappreciated geniuses. Bond Street would be impa.s.sable. You look at the publisher too much from your own standpoint.”
”I tell you I don't look at him from any standpoint. That's what I complain of. He's encircled with a p.r.i.c.kly hedge of clerks. 'You will hear from us.' 'It shall have our best consideration. We have no knowledge of the Ms. in question.' Yes, Peter, two valuable quartets have I lost, messing about with these villains.”
”I tell you what. I'll give you an introduction to Brahmson. I know him--privately.”
”No, thank you, Peter.”
”Why not?”