Merely Mary Ann | Page 7

paid. I only go to the club for my letters now. I won't
have them come here. I'm living incognito."

"That's taking fame by the forelock, indeed! Then by what name must I
ask for you next time? For I'm not to be shaken off."
"Lancelot."
"Lancelot what?"
"Only Lancelot! Mr. Lancelot."
"Why, that's like your Mary Ann!"
"So it is!" he laughed, more bitterly than cordially; "it never struck me
before. Yes, we are a pair."
"How did you stumble on this place?"
"I didn't stumble. Deliberate, intelligent selection. You see, it's the next
best thing to Piccadilly. You just cross Waterloo Bridge, and there you
are at the centre, five minutes from all the clubs. The natives have not
yet risen to the idea."
"You mean the rent," laughed Peter. "You're as canny and careful as a
Scotch professor. I think it's simply grand the way you've beaten out
those shillings, in defiance of your natural instincts. I should have
melted them years ago. I believe you have got some musical genius,
after all."
"You overrate my abilities," said Lancelot, with the whimsical
expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most
unamiable moments. "You must deduct the Thalers I made in
exhibitions. As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's
an economy, for every now and again it occurs to you that you are
saving an awful lot, and you take a hansom on the strength of it."
"Well, I haven't torn up that cheque yet----"
"Peter!" said Lancelot, his flash of gaiety dying away, "I tell you these
things as a friend, not as a beggar. If you look upon me as the second, I
cease to be the first."

"But, man, I owe you the money; and if it will enable you to hold out a
little longer--why, in heaven's name, shouldn't you----?"
"You don't owe me the money at all; I made no bargain with you; I am
not a money-lender."
"Pack dich zum Henker!" growled Peter, with a comical grimace. "Was
für a casuist! What a swindler you'd make! I wonder you have the face
to deny the debt. Well, and how did you leave Frau Sauer-Kraut?" he
said, deeming it prudent to sheer off the subject.
"Fat as a Christmas turkey."
"Of a German sausage. The extraordinary things that woman stuffed
herself with. Chunks of fat, stewed apples, Kartoffel salad--all mixed
up in one plate, as in a dustbin."
"Don't! You make my gorge rise. Ach Himmel! to think that this nation
should be musical! O Music, heavenly maid, how much garlic I have
endured for thy sake!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Peter, putting down his whisky that he might
throw himself freely back in the easy-chair and roar.
"Oh that garlic!" he said, panting. "No wonder they smoked so much in
Leipsic. Even so they couldn't keep the reek out of the staircases. Still,
it's a great country is Germany. Our house does a tremendous business
in German patents."
"A great country? A land of barbarians rather. How can a people be
civilised that eats jam with its meat?"
"Bravo, Lancelot! You're in lovely form to-night. You seem to go a
hundred miles out of your way to come the truly British. First it was
oil--now it's jam. There was that aristocratic flash in your eye, too, that
look of supreme disdain which brings on riots in Trafalgar Square.
Behind the patriotic, the national note: 'How can a people be civilised
that eats jam with its meat?' I heard the deeper, the oligarchic accent:

'How can a people be enfranchised that eats meat with its fingers?' Ah,
you are right! How you do hate the poor! What bores they are! You
aristocrats--the products of centuries of culture, comfort, and
cocksureness--will never rid yourselves of your conviction that you are
the backbone of England--no, not though that backbone were picked
clean of every scrap of flesh by the rats of Radicalism."
"What in the devil are you talking about now?" demanded Lancelot.
"You seem to me to go a hundred miles out of your way to twit me with
my poverty and my breeding. One would almost think you were
anxious to convince me of the poverty of your breeding."
"Oh, a thousand pardons!" ejaculated Peter, blushing violently. "But,
good heavens, old chap! There's your hot temper again. You surely
wouldn't suspect me, of all people in the world, of meaning anything
personal? I'm talking of you as a class. Contempt is in your blood--and
quite right! We're such snobs, 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