Part 42 (1/2)

”Good night,” he murmured.

Mary Ann made some startled, gurgling sound in reply.

Five minutes afterwards Lancelot was in bed, denouncing himself as a vulgar beast.

”I must have drunk too much whisky,” he said to himself, angrily. ”Good heavens! Fancy sinking to Mary Ann. If Peter had only seen--There was infinitely more poetry in that red-cheeked _Madchen_, and yet I never--It is true-there is something sordid about the atmosphere that subtly permeates you, that drags you down to it. Mary Ann! A transpontine drudge! whose lips are fresh from the coalman's and the butcher's.

Phaugh!”

The fancy seized hold of his imagination. He could not shake it off, he could not sleep till he had got out of bed and sponged his lips vigorously.

Meanwhile Mary Ann was lying on her bed, dressed, doing her best to keep her meaningless, half-hysterical sobs from her mistress's keen ear.

II

It was a long time before Mary Ann came so prominently into the centre of Lancelot's consciousness again. She remained somewhere in the outer periphery of his thought--nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak--as a vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side surveying him curiously, and then he would start, and remember he had rung her up, and try to remember what for. And Mary Ann would turn red, as if the fault was hers.

But the publisher was the one thing that was never out of Lancelot's mind, though he drove Lancelot himself nearly out of it. He was like an arrow stuck in the aforesaid bull's-eye, and, the target being conscious, he rankled sorely. Lancelot discovered that the publisher kept a ”musical adviser,” whose advice appeared to consist of the famous monosyllable, ”Don't.” The publisher generally published all the musical adviser's own works, his advice having apparently been neglected when it was most worth taking; at least so Lancelot thought, when he had skimmed through a set of Lancers by one of these worthies.

”I shall give up being a musician,” he said to himself, grimly. ”I shall become a musical adviser.”

Once, half by accident, he actually saw a publisher. ”My dear sir,” said the great man, ”what is the use of bringing quartets and full scores to me? You should have taken them to Brahmson; he's the very man you want.

You know his address, of course--just down the street.”

Lancelot did not like to say that it was Brahmson's clerks that had recommended him here; so he replied, ”But you publish operas, oratorios, cantatas!”

”Ah, yes!--h'm--things that have been played at the big Festivals--composers of prestige--quite a different thing, sir, quite a different thing. There's no sale for these things--none at all, sir--public never heard of you. Now, if you were to write some songs--nice catchy tunes--high cla.s.s, you know, with pretty words--”

Now Lancelot by this time was aware of the publisher's wily ways; he could almost have constructed an Ollendorffian dialogue, ent.i.tled ”Between a Music Publisher and a Composer.” So he opened his portfolio again and said, ”I have brought some.”

”Well, send--send them in,” stammered the publisher, almost disconcerted.

”They shall have our best consideration.”

”Oh, but you might just as well look over them at once,” said Lancelot, firmly, uncoiling them. ”It won't take you five minutes--just let me play one to you. The tunes are rather more original than the average, I can promise you; and yet I think they have a lilt that--”

”I really can't spare the time now. If you leave them, we will do our best.”

”Listen to this bit!” said Lancelot, desperately. And das.h.i.+ng at a piano that stood handy, he played a couple of bars. ”That's quite a new modulation.”

”That's all very well,” said the publisher; ”but how do you suppose I'm going to sell a thing with an accompaniment like that? Look here, and here! Why, it's all accidentals.”

”That's the best part of the song,” explained Lancelot; ”a sort of undercurrent of emotion that brings out the full pathos of the words.

Note the elegant and novel harmonies.” He played another bar or two, singing the words softly.

”Yes; but if you think you'll get young ladies to play that, you've got a good deal to learn,” said the publisher, gruffly. ”This is the sort of accompaniment that goes down,” and seating himself at the piano for a moment (somewhat to Lancelot's astonishment, for he had gradually formed a theory that music publishers did not really know the staff from a five-barred gate), he rattled off the melody with his right hand, pounding away monotonously with his left at a few elementary chords.

Lancelot looked dismayed.