Part 54 (2/2)
”Then why not be happy together?”
”Impossible.”
”Why is it impossible?”
”Because her dollars would stick in my throat--the oil would make me sick. And what would Peter say, and my brother (not that I care what _he_ says), and my acquaintances?”
”What does that matter to you? While you were a dead leaf n.o.body bothered to talk about you; they let you starve--you, with your genius--now you can let them talk--you, with your heiress. Five hundred thousand pounds.
More than you will make with all your operas if you live a century.
Fifteen thousand a year. Why, you could have all your works performed at your own expense, and for your own sole pleasure if you chose, as the King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could devote your life to the highest art--nay, is it not a duty you owe to the world? Would it not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings with sordid cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this Heaven-sent boon?”
The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled ma.n.u.script--_opera disjecta_--and turned their pages.
”Yes--yes--give us life!” they seemed to cry to him. ”We are dead drops of ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here, dusty in death? We have waited so patiently--have pity on us, raise us up from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth, chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the echoes of our music and the splendour of your name.”
But he shook his head and sighed, and put them back in their niches, and placed the comic opera he had begun in the centre of the table.
”There lie the only dollars that will ever come my way,” he said aloud.
And, humming the opening bars of a lively polka from the ma.n.u.script, he took up his pen and added a few notes. Then he paused; the polka would not come--the other voice was louder.
”It would be a degradation,” he repeated, to silence it. ”It would be merely for her money. I don't love her.”
”Are you so sure of that?”
”If I really loved her I shouldn't refuse to marry her.”
”Are you so sure of that?”
”What's the use of all this wire-drawing?--the whole thing is impossible.”
”Why is it impossible?”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, refusing to be drawn back into the eddy, and completed the bar of the polka.
Then he threw down his pen, rose and paced the room in desperation.
”Was ever any man in such a dilemma?” he cried aloud.
”Did ever any man get such a chance?” retorted his silent tormentor.
”Yes, but I mustn't seize the chance--it would be mean.”
”It would be meaner not to. You're not thinking of that poor girl--only of yourself. To leave her now would be more cowardly than to have left her when she was merely Mary Ann. She needs you even more now that she will be surrounded by sharks and adventurers. Poor, poor Mary Ann! It is you who have the right to protect her now; you were kind to her when the world forgot her. You owe it to yourself to continue to be good to her.”
”No, no, I won't humbug myself. If I married her it would only be for her money.”
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