Lancelot checked his laughter. "Poor little fool!" he thought. Then to brighten her up again he asked cheerily, "And what else did you do on the farm?"

"Oh, please sir, missus will be wanting me now."

"Bother missus. I want some more milk," he said, emptying the milk-jug into the slop-basin. "Run down and get some."

Mary Ann was startled by the splendour of the deed. She took the jug silently and disappeared.

When she returned he said: "Well, you haven't told me half yet. I suppose you kept bees?"

"Oh yes, and I fed the pigs."

"Hang the pigs! Let's hear something more romantic."

"There was the calves to suckle sometimes, when the mother died or was sold."

"Calves! H'm! H'm! Well, but how could you do that?"

"Dipped my fingers in milk, and let the calves suck 'em. The silly creatures thought it was their mothers' teats. Like this."

With a happy inspiration she put her fingers into the slop-basin, and held them up dripping.

Lancelot groaned. It was not only that his improved Mary Ann was again sinking to earth, unable to soar in the romantic aether where he would fain have seen her volant; it was not only that the coa.r.s.eness of her nature had power to drag her down, it was the coa.r.s.eness of her red, chapped hands that was thrust once again and violently upon his reluctant consciousness.

Then, like Mary Ann, he had an inspiration.

"How would you like a pair of gloves, Mary Ann?"

He had struck the latent feminine. Her eyes gleamed. "Oh, sir!" was all she could say. Then a swift shade of disappointment darkened the eager little face.

"But I never goes out," she cried.

"I never _go_ out," he corrected, shuddering.

"I never _go_ out," said Mary Ann, her lip twitching.

"That doesn't matter. I want you to wear them indoors."

"But there's n.o.body to see 'em indoors!"

"I shall see them," he reminded her.

"But they'll get dirty."

"No they won't. You shall only wear them when you come to me. If I buy you a nice pair of gloves, will you promise to put them on every time I ring for you?"

"But what'll missus say?"

"Missus won't see them. The moment you come in, you'll put them on, and just before going out--you'll take them off! See!"

"Yessir. Then n.o.body'll see me looking so grand but you."

"That's it. And wouldn't you rather look grand for me than for anybody else?"

"Of course I would, sir," said Mary Ann, earnestly, with a grateful little sigh.

So Lancelot measured her wrist, feeling her pulse beat madly. She really had a very little hand, though to his sensitive vision the roughness of the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a boxing-glove. He bought her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful cardboard box. He could ill afford the gift, and made one of his whimsical grimaces when he got the bill. The young lady who served him looked infinitely more genteel than Mary Ann. He wondered what she would think if she knew for whom he was buying these dainty articles.

Perhaps her feelings would be so outraged she would refuse to partic.i.p.ate in the transaction. But the young lady was happily unconscious; she had her best smile for the handsome, aristocratic young gentleman, and mentioned his moustache later to her bosom-friend in the next department.

And thus Mary Ann and Lancelot became the joint owners of a secret, and co-players in a little comedy. When Mary Ann came into the room, she would put whatever she was carrying on a chair, gravely extract her gloves from her pocket, and draw them on, Lancelot pretending not to know she was in the room, though he had just said, "Come in." After allowing her a minute he would look up. In the course of a week this became mechanical, so that he lost the semi-ludicrous sense of secrecy which he felt at first, as well as the little pathetic emotion inspired by her absolute unconsciousness that the performance was not intended for her own gratification. Nevertheless, though he could now endure to see Mary Ann handling the sugar-tongs, he remained cold to her for some weeks. He had kissed her again in the flush of her joy at the sight of the gloves, but after that there was a reaction. He rarely went to the club now (there was no one with whom he was in correspondence except music-publishers, and they didn't reply), but he dropped in there once soon after the glove episode, looked over the papers in the smoking-room, and chatted with a popular composer and one or two men he knew. It was while the waiter was holding out the coffee-tray to him that Mary Ann flashed upon his consciousness. The thought of her seemed so incongruous with the sober magnificence, the ma.s.sive respectability that surrounded him, the cheerful, marble hearth reddened with leaping flame, the luxurious lounges, the well-groomed old gentlemen smoking eighteenpenny cheroots, the suave, noiseless satellites, that Lancelot felt a sudden pang of bewildered shame. Why, the very waiter who stood bent before him would disdain her. He took his coffee hastily, with a sense of personal unworthiness. This feeling soon evaporated, but it left lees of resentment against Mary Ann which made him inexplicable to her. Fortunately, her habit of acceptance saved her some tears, though she shed others. And there remained always the gloves. When she was putting them on she always felt she was slipping her hands in his.

And then there was yet a further consolation. For the gloves had also a subtle effect on Lancelot. They gave him a sense of responsibility.

Vaguely resentful as he felt against Mary Ann (in the intervals of his more definite resentment against publishers), he also felt that he could not stop at the gloves. He had started refining her, and he must go on till she was, so to speak, all gloves. He must cover up her coa.r.s.e speech, as he had covered up her coa.r.s.e hands. He owed that to the gloves; it was the least he could do for them. So, whenever Mary Ann made a mistake, Lancelot corrected her. He found these grammatical dialogues not uninteresting, and a vent for his ill-humour against publishers to boot. Very often his verbal corrections sounded astonishingly like reprimands. Here, again, Mary Ann was forearmed by her feeling that she deserved them. She would have been proud had she known how much Mr. Lancelot was satisfied with her aspirates, which came quite natural. She had only dropped her "h's" temporarily, as one drops country friends in coming to London. Curiously enough, Mary Ann did not regard the new locutions and p.r.o.nunciations as superseding the old. They were a new language; she knew two others, her mother-tongue and her missus's tongue. She would as little have thought of using her new linguistic acquirements in the kitchen as of wearing her gloves there. They were for Lancelot's ears only, as her gloves were for his eyes.

All this time Lancelot was displaying prodigious musical activity, so much so that the cost of ruled paper became a consideration. There was no form of composition he did not essay, none by which he made a shilling. Once he felt himself the prey of a splendid inspiration, and sat up all night writing at fever pitch, surrounded with celestial harmonies, audible to him alone; the little room resounded with the thunder of a mighty orchestra, in which every instrument sang to him individually--the piccolo, the flute, the oboes, the clarionets, filling the air with a silver spray of notes; the drums throbbing, the trumpets shrilling, the four horns pealing with long, stately notes, the trombones and ba.s.soons vibrating, the violins and violas sobbing in linked sweetness, the 'cello and the contra-ba.s.s moaning their under-chant. And then, in the morning, when the first rough sketch was written, the glory faded. He threw down his pen, and called himself an a.s.s for wasting his time on what n.o.body would ever look at. Then he laid his head on the table, overwrought, full of an infinite pity for himself. A sudden longing seized him for some one to love him, to caress his hair, to smooth his hot forehead. This mood pa.s.sed too; he smoothed the slumbering Beethoven instead. After a while he went into his bedroom, and sluiced his face and hands in ice-cold water, and rang the bell for breakfast.

There was a knock at the door in response.

"Come in!" he said gently--his emotions had left him tired to the point of tenderness. And then he waited a minute while Mary Ann was drawing on her gloves.

"Did you ring, sir?" said a wheezy voice at last. Mrs. Leadbatter had got tired of waiting.

Lancelot started violently--Mrs. Leadbatter had latterly left him entirely to Mary Ann. "It's my hastmer," she had explained to him apologetically, meeting him casually in the pa.s.sage. "I can't trollop up and down stairs as I used to when I fust took this house five-an'-twenty year ago, and pore Mr. Leadbatter----" and here followed reminiscences long since in their hundredth edition.

"Yes; let me have some coffee--very hot--please," said Lancelot less gently. The woman's voice jarred upon him; and her features were not redeeming.

"Lawd, sir, I 'ope that gas 'asn't been burnin' all night, sir," she said as she was going out.

"It has," he said shortly.

"You'll hexcoose me, sir, but I didn't bargen for that. I'm only a pore, honest, 'ard-workin' widder, and I noticed the last gas bill was 'eavier than hever since that black winter that took pore Mr.

Leadbatter to 'is grave. Fair is fair, and I shall 'ave to reckon it a hextry, with the rate gone up sevenpence a thousand, and my Rosie leavin' a fine nursemaid's place in Bayswater at the end of the month to come 'ome and 'elp 'er mother, 'cos my hastmer----"

"Will you please shut the door after you?" interrupted Lancelot, biting his lip with irritation. And Mrs. Leadbatter, who was standing in the aperture with no immediate intention of departing, could find no repartee beyond slamming the door as hard as she could.

This little pa.s.sage of arms strangely softened Lancelot to Mary Ann.

It made him realise faintly what her life must be.

"I should go mad and smash all the crockery!" he cried aloud. He felt quite tender again towards the uncomplaining girl.

Presently there was another knock. Lancelot growled, half prepared to renew the battle, and to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind on the subject. But it was merely Mary Ann.

Shaken in his routine, he looked on steadily while Mary Ann drew on her gloves; and this in turn confused Mary Ann. Her hand trembled.

"Let me help you," he said.

And there was Lancelot b.u.t.toning Mary Ann's glove just as if her name were Guinevere! And neither saw the absurdity of wasting time upon an operation which would have to be undone in two minutes. Then Mary Ann, her eyes full of soft light, went to the sideboard and took out the prosaic elements of breakfast.

When she returned, to put them back, Lancelot was astonished to see her carrying a cage--a plain square cage, made of white tin wire.