The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 56

He saw her eyes were welling over with tears.

"You were crying again last night," he said sharply.

"Yessir."

"But what did you have to cry about now? Aren't you the luckiest girl in the world?"

"Yessir."

As she spoke a flood of sunlight poured suddenly into the room; the sun had broken through the clouds, the worn dollar had become a dazzling gold-piece. The canary stirred in its cage.

"Then what were you crying about?"

"I didn't want to be lucky."

"You silly girl--I have no patience with you. And why didn't you want to see me again?"

"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like it."

"Whatever put that into your head?"

"I knew it, sir," said Mary Ann, firmly. "It came to me when I was crying. I was thinking of all sorts of things--of my mother and our Sally, and the old pig that used to get so savage, and about the way the organ used to play in church, and then all at once somehow I knew it would be best for me to do what you told me--to buy my dress and go back with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you miserable."

"Tw-oo! Tw-oo!" It was the canary starting on a preliminary carol.

"So I thought it best," she concluded tremulously, "not to see you again.

It would only be two days, and after that it would be easier. I could always be thinking of you just the same, Mr. Lancelot, always. That wouldn't annoy you, sir, would it? Because you know, sir, you wouldn't know it."

Lancelot was struggling to find a voice. "But didn't you forget something you had to do, Mary Ann?" he said in hoa.r.s.e accents.

She raised her eyes swiftly a moment, then lowered them again.

"I don't know; I didn't mean to," she said apologetically.

"Didn't you forget that I told you to come to me and get my answer to your question?"

"No, sir, I didn't forget. That was what I was thinking of all night."

"About your asking me to marry you?"

"Yessir."

"And my saying it was impossible?"

"Yessir, and I said, 'Why is it impossible?' and you said, 'Because--'

and then you left off; but please, Mr. Lancelot, I didn't want to know the answer this morning."

"But I want to tell you. Why don't you want to know?"

"Because I found out for myself, Mr. Lancelot. That's what I found out when I was crying--but there was nothing to find out, sir. I knew it all along. It was silly of me to ask you--but you know I am silly sometimes, sir, like I was when my mother was dying. And that was why I made up my mind not to bother you any more, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like to tell me straight out."

"And what was the answer you found out? Ah, you won't speak. It looks as if _you_ don't like to tell me straight out. Come, come, Mary Ann, tell me why--why--it is impossible."

She looked up at last and said slowly and simply, "Because I am not good enough for you, Mr. Lancelot."

He put his hands suddenly to his eyes. He did not see the flood of sunlight--he did not hear the mad jubilance of the canary.

"No, Mary Ann," his voice was low and trembling. "I will tell you why it is impossible, I didn't know last night, but I know now. It is impossible, because--you are right, I don't like to tell you straight out."

She opened her eyes wide, and stared at him in puzzled expectation.

"Mary Ann," he bent his head, "it is impossible--because I am not good enough for you."

Mary Ann grew scarlet. Then she broke into a little nervous laugh. "Oh, Mr. Lancelot, don't make fun of me."

"Believe me, my dear," he said tenderly, raising his head; "I wouldn't make fun of you for two million million dollars. It is the truth--the bare, miserable, wretched truth. I am not worthy of you, Mary Ann."

"I don't understand you, sir," she faltered.

"Thank Heaven for that!" he said with the old whimsical look. "If you did you would think meanly of me ever after. Yes, that is why, Mary Ann. I am a selfish brute--selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost essence of my every thought. Beethoven is worth two of me, aren't you, Beethoven?" The spaniel, thinking himself called, trotted over. "He never calculates--he just comes and licks my hand--don't look at me as if I were mad, Mary Ann. You don't understand me--thank Heaven again. Come now! Does it never strike you that if I were to marry you now, it would be only for your two and a half million dollars?"

"No, sir," faltered Mary Ann.

"I thought not," he said triumphantly. "No, you will always remain a fool, I am afraid, Mary Ann."

She met his contempt with an audacious glance.

"But I know it wouldn't be for that, Mr. Lancelot."

"No, no, of course it wouldn't be, not now. But it ought to strike you just the same. It doesn't make you less a fool, Mary Ann. There! There!

I don't mean to be unkind, and, as I think I told you once before, it's not so very dreadful to be a fool. A rogue is a worse thing, Mary Ann.

All I want to do is to open your eyes. Two and a half million dollars are an awful lot of money--a terrible lot of money. Do you know how long it will be before I make two million dollars, Mary Ann?"

"No, sir." She looked at him wonderingly.

"Two million years. Yes, my child, I can tell you now. You thought I was rich and grand, I know, but all the while I was nearly a beggar. Perhaps you thought I was playing the piano--yes, and teaching Rosie--for my amus.e.m.e.nt; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out of--sleeplessness," he smiled at the phrase, "or a wanton desire to burn Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard work--by good work if I can, by bad work if I must--but always by hard work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred. And while I shall be grinding away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day. Don't look so sad, Mary Ann. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault in the least. It's only one of the many jokes of existence. The only reason I want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard. Though I don't think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who will think they are ... though they don't know you. It is you, not me, who are grand and rich, Mary Ann ... beware of men like me--poor and selfish. And when you do marry--"

"Oh, Mr. Lancelot!" cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, "why do you talk like that? You know I shall never marry anybody else."

"Hush, hush! Mary Ann! I thought you were going to be a good girl and never cry again. Dry your eyes now, will you?"

"Yessir."

"Here, take my handkerchief."

"Yessir ... but I won't marry anybody else."

"You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for Sally you didn't know a time would come when--"