CHAPTER XIII
Next day, in the afternoon, Jack left the room, the establishment of a celebrated firm of pianoforte manufacturers, where he gave his lessons, and walked homeward across Hyde Park. Here he saw approaching him a woman, dressed in light peacock blue, with a pale maize colored scarf on her neck and shoulders, and a large Spanish hat. Jack stood still and looked gloomily at her. She put on a pair of eye glasses; scrutinized him for a moment; and immediately shook them off her nose and stopped.
“You have finished work early to-day,” she said, smiling.
“I have not finished it,” he replied: “I have put them off. I want to go home and work: I cannot spend my life making money — not that I am likely to have the chance. Four lessons — five guineas — lost.”
“You wrote to them, I hope.”
“No. They will find out that I am not there when they call; and then they can teach themselves or go to the devil. They would put me off sooner than lose a tennis party. I will put them off sooner than lose a good afternoon’s work. I am losing my old independence over this moneymaking and society business — I don’t like it. No matter. Are you on your way to Cavendish Square?”
“Yes. But you must not turn back. You did not sacrifice your teaching to gad about the park with me. You want to compose. I know by your face.”
“Are you in a hurry”
“I am not; but—”
“Then come and gad about, as you call it, for a while. It is too fine a day to go indoors and grind tunes.”
She turned; and they strolled across the plain between the Serpentine and the Bayswater Road, crossing a vacant expanse of sward, or picking their way amongst idlers who lay prone on the grass, asleep, or basked supine in the sun. It was a warm afternoon and the sky was cloudless.
“You would not suppose, seeing the world look so pleasant that it is such a rascally place as it is,” said Jack, when they had walked some time in silence.
“It is not so very bad, though, after all, If you were a little of a painter, as I am, this sunlit sward and foliage would repay you for all the stupidities of people who have eyes, but cannot use them.”
“Äye, And painters suppose that their art is an ennobling one. Suppose I held up a lying, treacherous, cruel woman to the admiration of the painter, and reviled him as unimaginative if he would not accept her blue eyes, and silky hair, and fine figure as a compensation for her corrupt heart: he would call me names — cynical sensualist and so forth. What better is he with his boasted loveliness of Nature? There are moments when I should like to see a good hissing, scorching shower of brimstone sear the beauty out of her false face.
“Oh! What, is the matter to-day?”
“Spleen. I am poor. It is the source of most people’s complaints.”
“But you are not poor. Recollect that you have just thrown away five guineas, and that you will make ten tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
“Well, are guineas wealth to a man who wants time and freedom from base people and base thoughts? No: I have starved out the first half of my life alone: I will fight through the second half on the same conditions. I get ten guineas a day at present for teaching female apes to scream, that they may be the better qualified for the marriage market. That is because I am the fashion. How long shall I remain the fashion? Until August, when the world — as it calls itself — will emigrate, and return next spring to make the fortune of the next lucky charlatan who makes a bid for my place. I shall be glad to be rid of them, in spite of their guineas: teaching them wastes my time, and does them no good. Then there is the profit on my compositions, of which I get five per cent, perhaps, in money, with all the honor and glory. The rest goes into the pockets of publishers and concert givers, some of whom will go down halfway to posterity on my back because they have given me, for a symphony with the fruits of twenty years’ hard work in it, about one-fifth of what is given for a trumpery picture or novel everyday. That fantasia of mine has been pirated and played in every musical capital in Europe; and I could not afford to buy you a sable jacket out of what I have made by it.”
“It is very hard, certainly. But do you really care about money?”
“Ha! ha! No, of course not. Music is its own reward. Composers are not human: they can live on diminished sevenths; and be contented with a pianoforte for a wife, and a string quartette for a family. Come,” he added boisterously, “enough of grumbling. When I took to composing, I knew I was bringing my pigs to a bad market. But don’t pretend to believe that a composer can satisfy either his appetite or his affections with music any more than a butcher or a baker can. I daresay I shall live all the more quietly for being an old bachelor.”
“I never dreamt that you would care to marry.”
“And who tells you that I would now?”
“I thought you were regretting your enforced celibacy,” she replied, laughing. He frowned; and she became serious. “Somehow,” she added, “I cannot fancy you as a married man.”
“Why?” he said, turning angrily upon her. “Am I a fish, or a musical box? Why have I less right to the common ties of social life than another man?”
“Of course you have as much right.” she said, surprised that her remark should have hurt him. “But I have known you so long as you are at present—”
“What am I at present?”
“A sort of inspired hermit,” she replied, undaunted. “It seems as if marriage would he an impossible condescension on your part. That is only a fancy, I know. If you could find any woman worthy of you and able to make you happy, I think you ought to marry. I should be delighted to see you surrounded by a pack of naughty children. You would never be an ogre any more then.”
“Do you think I am an ogre, then? Eh?”
“Sometimes. To-day, for instance, I think you are decidedly ogreish. I hope I am not annoying you with my frivolity. I am unusually frivolous to-day.”
“Hm! You seem to me to be speaking to the point pretty forcibly. So you would like to see me married?”
“Happily married, yes. I should be glad to think that your lonely, gloomy lodging was changed for a cheerful hearth; and that you had some person to take care of your domestic arrangements, which you are quite unfit to manage for yourself. Now that you have suggested the idea, it grows on me rapidly. May I set to work to find a wife for you?”
“Of course it does not occur to you,” he said, with unabated ill humor, “that I may have chosen for myself already — that I might actually have some sentimental bias in the business, for instance.”
Mary, much puzzled, put on her spectacles, and tried to find from his expression whether he was serious or joking. Failing, she laughed, and said, “I don’t believe you ever gave the matter a thought.”
“Just so. I am a privileged mortal, without heart or pockets. When you wake up and clap your hands after the coda of Mr Jack’s symphony, you have ministered to all his wants, and can keep the rest to yourself, love, money, and all.”
She could no longer doubt that he was in earnest: his tone touched her. “I had no idea—” she began. “Will you tell me who it is; or am I not to ask?”
He grinned in spite of himself. “What do you think of Mrs Simpson?” said he.
Mary’s mood had taken so grave a turn that she was for a moment unable to follow this relapse into banter.
“But,” she said,