He had come to love her of his own free will? It was not a case where he had been "rushed"? There was no solicitous mother or obliging sister in the case?
None at all. Only he had had larger opportunity to cultivate her acquaintance than in the general run of affairs. She was a distant connection of his by a remote marriage, who, in view of her extreme personal connection with the family, had generally ranked as a cousin. In the days when he had had prospects from his uncle they were constantly thrown together, and it was in those days that he engaged himself. All the family looked with favor upon the match, and even encouraged it. Then this wretched old uncle took it suddenly into his head to be actively interested in the nephew's welfare. Wanted him to throw music to the winds as being unworthy of his high prospects, and went the length of telling him in a letter of six words or so to choose between music and the mammon of unrighteousness. Fool, perhaps, that he was, he chose for music. All his family rounded on him at once—or such family as it was; thank God, there was n't much of it—and wrote abject letters to the mammon, telling him how headstrong poor dear Maurice was, and how darling uncle must please give him time, and not be too severe upon his wicked indiscretion. Maurice, dear misguided boy, loved darling uncle very dearly, and would be shocked one day when he came to his senses, and saw how deeply he had grieved him.
And the Other Girl? Did she share the family reproaches?
On the contrary, she said he had acted nobly. He offered her her freedom, of course, as soon as he relinquished the mammon, but she would not accept it.
Had she said to him, for instance: "Dear Maurice, there have been times when I have been troubled to know which of you I loved; you or your uncle's money. And now that the horrid money 's gone, I think it 's you."
Yes, she had said that.
Did he tell her that it was n't for beggars to be choosers, and that if she cared to have a musical pauper she could have him, and there 'd be nothing to pay but his bills?
He believed he had made some witty allusion to that effect.
What did he call pauperdom?
He called two or three hundred a year pauperdom. With the assistance of a few pot-boiling songs under somebody else's name, including, to his shame be it said, a percentage of semi-sacred effusions with angels fluttering in the treble, and organ obligato, he generally managed to supplement this. He also wrote a few elementary teaching pieces for a certain educational firm, under the reassuring title of Ivan Fedor Ivanowitch, which returned him a pittance. There was no demand for his two symphonies or his orchestral suite or his first piano concerto in fa diese. That 's why he was writing another. Altogether, taking one thing with another, his income might be set down—except to the Inland Revenue—at about three hundred and fifty pounds a year. A man could n't be much poorer than that, and talk, Heaven help him, of marriage.