“You weren’t in the drawing-room last night.”
“No, but my bedroom’s just above, and I could hear it. It went like this.” She hummed a few bars.
Maurice began to play once more. It was a mischievous, tender, eccentric little dance that went laughing about the piano as if it were mad. Marjorie had finished her work, and rose from the table and stood beside him, watching him with dark, attentive eyes as he played. She was thinking that she liked Maurice. He knew the right way to treat her. Aunt Julia treated her like a baby, and other visitors often appeared to be under the impression that children like inanity. Her father was rather an apathetic man, yet he had the sincerest affection for his wife, his only daughter, and young Maurice Grey. He had many acquaintances, but no other friends. He had been “Meyner and Sons,” who did great things in iron, but he disposed of his business to a company soon after his marriage. He was absorbed in the study of psychology, and made many curious experiments upon himself. In one or two of these young Maurice had been of some service to him. But in his family affections, his studies, or his experiments, he showed very little enthusiasm. He never expected to get great results. “The evidence is so bad,” he said to Maurice once, speaking of his favourite pursuit. “On my subject men lie often intentionally; and often deceive themselves and lie unintentionally, and rarely speak the truth. Also I find out more and more that I cannot even trust my own senses. The human brain is a shockingly defective instrument.” He was a little sensitive, and to visitors in his house—with the exception of Maurice—he would talk of anything but psychology. Psychology, he found, was a thing they never understood at all, and at which they generally laughed. Marjorie’s mother, Mrs. Meyner, was not so apathetic or so pessimistic, but then her horizon was not extended. The circle of her friends and relations gave her enough to think about and to make life worth living. She was a very gentle, unselfish woman, and had a provoking knack of sincerely liking nearly everybody. Her half-sister, Julia, had the opposite knack of hating nearly everybody. Julia was old and unmarried, and had a wonderful tongue; she dressed perfectly, had snowy hair, a kind face, a sweet smile, gentle ways, and a perfectly venomous disposition. Marjorie did not like her Aunt Julia. She did not like Miss Matthieson much better—a sentimental woman. Miss Dean was too chilly a person to like exactly; Marjorie respected her sometimes. But she did like Maurice, and she liked the music that he was playing now.
“That is awfully nice,” she said, when the piece was finished. “What is it?”
Marjorie’s aunt Julia had asked the same question of him the night before in the drawing-room, and he had told her that the piece was by Grieg, which was untrue, and which he knew to be untrue. He was not aware that that cheerful, spiteful, and horribly intellectual old lady also knew that he was lying. He had felt it better to blaspheme the name of Grieg than to give her a chance by owning that he had composed the thing himself. He was a young man of dangerously diverse talents. He was just at the end of his first year at Cambridge, and was reading for the Classical Tripos. Now the Classical Tripos is a jealous mistress, and admits of no rivals. Nevertheless, he had become a very fair oar, was socially popular, and had devoted much time to psychology and more to music. The end of such a course is generally failure. He did not mind telling Marjorie about the little dance he had just been playing.
“Well,” he said, “I have a general impression that it is mine; but there’s a touch of Grieg about it. In fact, I risked telling your aunt Julia last night that it was Grieg’s. I daren’t tell her it was mine.”
“Yes,” said Marjorie sadly, “she is awful. She pats me gently on the head, and tells me I’m a good little child, and that I may run away to the nursery and play. It’s perfectly maddening. She knows as well as I do that I’m nearly fifteen, and that it’s absolute nonsense to talk like that. She does it on purpose to make me angry, and I hate being angry.”
Maurice took a long sip at his cold tea.
“Yes,” he said, “the people in this world want sorting. Have you finished your piece about the beetle and the gridirons?”
“Oh, yes! There’s nothing in it really about gridirons, but a beetle comes into it—a dead beetle——”