The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
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Title: The Way of Ambition
Author: Robert Hichens
Illustrator: J. H. Gardner Soper
Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19491]
Language: English
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[Illustration: "CHARMIAN, WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT AN EXTRAORDINARY CORNISH
GENIUS? D'YOU LIKE HIM SO MUCH?"--_Page 76_]
THE
WAY OF AMBITION
BY
ROBERT HICHENS
_Author of "The Garden of Allah," "The Fruitful Vine,"
"The Woman with the Fan," "Tongues of
Conscience," "Felix," etc._
WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR
AND FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE BY
J. H. GARDNER SOPER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1913, by
ROBERT HICHENS
Copyright, 1912, 1913, by
THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.
_August, 1913_
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Charmian, what's all this about an extraordinary
Cornish genius? D'you like him so much?'" _Frontispiece_
"'This is the last thing I've done'" 40
"'Of course we wives of composers are apt to be
prejudiced'" 242
"At her feet the crouching Arabs never stirred" 258
"'Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win!'" 378
THE WAY OF AMBITION
CHAPTER I
"We want a new note in English music," said Charmian, in her clear and
slightly authoritative voice. "The Hallelujah Chorus era has gone at
last to join all the Victorian relics. And the nation is drifting
musically. Of course we have a few composers who are being silly in the
attempt to be original, and a few others who still believe that all the
people can stand in the way of home-grown products is a ballad or a Te
Deum. But what we want is an English composer with a soul. I'm getting
quite sick of heads. They are bearable in literature. But when it comes
to music, one's whole being clamors for more."
"I have heard a new note in English music," observed a middle-aged, bald
and lively-looking man, who was sitting on the opposite side of the
drawing-room in Berkeley Square.
"Oh, but, Max, you always--"
"An absolutely new note," interrupted Max Elliot with enthusiastic
emphasis, turning to the man with the sarcastic mouth who had just
spoken. "Your French blood makes you so inclined to incredulity, Paul,
that you are incapable of believing anything but that I am carried
away."
"As usual!"
"As sometimes happens, I admit. But you will allow that in matters
musical my opinion is worth something, my serious and deliberately
formed opinion."
"How long has this opinion been forming?"
"Some months."
"Some months!" exclaimed Charmian. "You've kept your new note to
yourself all that time! Is it a woman? But of course it can't be. I
don't believe there will ever be a great woman composer."
"It is not a woman."
"Was it born in the gutter?" asked Paul Lane.
"No."
"Don't say it's aristocratic!" said Charmian, slightly screwing up her
rather Japanese-looking eyes. "I cannot believe that anything really
original in soul, really intense, could emanate from the British
peerage. I know it too well."
"It is neither aristocratic nor from the gutter. It is of the middle
classes. Its father is a banker in the West of England."
"A banker!" said Charmian in a deplorable voice.
"It is Cornish."
"Cornish! That's better. Strange things sometimes come out of Cornwall."
"It has a little money of its own."
"And its name--"
"Is Claude Heath."
"Claude Heath," slowly repeated Charmian. "The name means nothing to me.
Do you know it, Mr. Lane?"
Paul Lane shook his smooth black head.
"Heath has not published anything," said Max Elliot, quite unmoved by
the scepticism with which the atmosphere of Mrs. Mansfield's
drawing-room was obviously charged.
"Not even a Te Deum?" asked Charmian.
"No, though I confess he has composed one."
"If he has composed a Te Deum I give him up. He is _vieux jeu_. He
should go and live in the Crystal Palace."
"And it's superb!" added Max Elliot. "Till I heard it I never realized
what the noble words of the Te Deum meant."
Suddenly he got up and moved toward the window murmuring, "All the Earth
doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting."
There was a silence in the room. Charmian's eyes suddenly filled with
tears, she scarcely knew why. She felt as if a world was opening out
before her, as if there were wide horizons to call to the gaze of those
fitted to look upon them, and as if, perhaps, she were one of these
elect.
"Father Everlasting!" The words, and the way in which Max Elliot had
spoken them, struck into her heart, and so made her feel keenly that
she was a girl who had a heart that was not hard, that was eager,
desirous, perhaps deep. As to Paul Lane, he stared at his remarkably
perfect boots, and drew down the corners of his lips, and his white face
seemed to darken as if a cloud floated through his mind and cast a
shadow outward.
In the pause the drawing-room door opened, and a woman with blazing dark
eyes and snow-white hair, wearing a white tea-gown and a necklace of
very fine Egyptian scarabs, came in, with an intense, self-possessed and
inquiring look. This was Mrs. Mansfield, "my only mother," as Charmian
sometimes absurdly called her.
"You are talking, or you were talking, of something or somebody
interesting," she said at once, looking round her at the three occupants
of the room.
Max Elliott turned eagerly toward her. He rejoiced in Mrs. Mansfield,
and often came to her to "warm his hands at her delightful blaze."
"Of somebody very interesting."
"Whom we don't know?"
"Whom very few people in London know."
"A composer, my only mother, who never publishes, and who is the son of
a banker in the West of England."
Charmian seemed suddenly to have recovered her former mood, but she
blinked away two tears as she spoke.
"Why shouldn't he be?" said Mrs. Mansfield, sitting down on a large sofa
which stood at right angles to the wood fire.
"I know, but it doesn't seem right."
"Don't be ridiculously conventional, my only child."
Charmian laughed, showing lovely, and very small teeth. She was not
unlike her mother in feature, but she was taller, more dreamy, less
vivid, less straightforward in expression. At times there was a hint of
the minx in her. She emerged from her dreams to be impertinent. A
certain shrewdness mingled with her audacity. At such moments, as men
sometimes said, "you never knew where to have her." She was more
self-conscious and more worldly than her mother. Secret ambition worried
at her mind, and made her restless in body. When she looked at a crowd
she sometimes felt an almost sick sensation as of one near to drowning.
"Oh, to rise, to be detached from all these myriads!" she thought. "To
be apart and recognized as apart! Only that can make life worth the
living." She had been heard to say, "I would rather sink forever in the
sea than in the sea of humanity. I would rather die than be one of the
unknown living." Charmian sometimes exaggerated. But she was genuinely
tormented by the modern craze for notoriety. Only she called it fame.
Once she had said something to her mother of her intense desire to
emerge from the crowd. Mrs. Mansfield's reply was: "Do you believe you
have creative force in you then?" "How can I know?" Charmian had
answered. "I'm so young." "Try to create something and probably you'll
soon find out," returned her mother. Since that day Charmian had tried
to create something, and had found out. But she had not told Mrs.
Mansfield. She was now twenty-one, and had been just eighteen when her
mother's advice had driven her into the energy which had proved futile.
Max Elliot crossed the room and sat down on the sofa by Mrs. Mansfield.
He adored her quite openly, as many men did. The fact that she was a
widow and would never marry again made adoration of her agreeably
uncomplex. Everybody knew that Mrs. Mansfield would never marry again,
but nobody perhaps could have given a perfectly clear explanation of
how, or why, that knowledge had penetrated him. The truth was that she
was a woman with a great heart, and had given that heart to the husband
who was dead, and for whom she had never worn "weeds."
"What are we to do for Charmian, my dear Max?" continued Mrs. Mansfield,
throwing a piteous look into her mobile face, a piteous sound into her
voice. "What can anyone do for a young woman of twenty-one who, when she
is thinking naturally, thinks it impossible for a West of England banker
to cause the birth of a son talented in an art?"
"I always said there was intellectual cruelty in mother," said Charmian,
drawing her armchair nearer to the fire.
"It's bracing, tones up the mind," said Paul Lane. "But what about this
new note? All we know is a Cornish extraction, a banker papa and a Te
Deum."
"Oh--a Te Deum!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, looking suddenly sceptical.
"I know! I know!" said Max Elliot. "I didn't want to hear it till I had
heard it. And then I wanted to hear nothing else. The touch of genius
startles everything into life."
"Another genius!" said Paul Lane.
And thereupon, as if acting on a sudden impulse, he got up, said
good-bye, and went away with his curiosity, if he had any, ungratified.
"He's spoilt by the French blood his mother gave him," said Mrs.
Mansfield as the door closed. "If he had been all French, one might have
delighted in him, taken him on the intellectual side, known where one
was, skipped the coldness and the irony, clung to the wit, vivacity and
easy charm. But he's a modern Frenchman, boxing with an Englishman and
using his feet half the time. And that's dreadful. In an English
drawing-room I don't like the Savate. Now tell us, tell us! I am so
thankful he is not a celebrity."
"Nor ever likely to be unless he marries the wrong woman."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Charmian with curiosity.
"A woman who is ambitious for him and pushes him."
"But if this Claude Heath has so much talent, surely it would be a fine
thing to make him give it to the world."
"That depends on his temperament, I daresay," said Mrs. Mansfield. "I
believe there are people who ought to hide their talents in a napkin."
"Oh, mother! Explain!"
"Some plants can only grow in darkness."
"Very nasty ones, I should think! Deadly nightshade! That sort of
thing!"
"Poor dear! I gave her light in a vulgar age. She can't help it," said
Mrs. Mansfield to Max Elliot. "We are her refined seniors. But sheer
weight of years has little influence. Never mind. Go on. You and I at
least can understand."
As she spoke she laid her hand, on which shone several curious rings,
over Charmian's, and she kept it there while Max Elliot gave some
account of Claude Heath.
"He's not particularly handsome in features. He's quite conventional in
dress. His instinct would probably be to use the shell as a close
hiding-place for anything strange, unusual that it contains. He crops
his hair, and, I should think, wets it two or three times a day for fear
people should see that it has a natural wave in it. His neckties are the
most humdrum that can be discovered in the shops."
"Does he dislike his appearance?" asked Charmian.
"I daresay. The worst of it is that he has eyes that give the whole
thing away to a Mrs. Mansfield."
"What, and not to me?" said Charmian, in an injured note.
"She's fairly sharp, poor dear!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, in a rescuing
voice. "You mustn't be too hard on her."
Max Elliot smiled.
"And a Charmian Mansfield."
"What color are his eyes?" inquired Charmian.
"I really can't tell you for certain, but I should think dark gray."
"And where does he live?"
"In a little house not far from St. Petersburg Place on the north side
of the Park, Mullion House he calls it. He's got a studio there which
opens into a pocket-handkerchief of a garden. He keeps two women
servants."
"Any dogs?" said Charmian.
"No."
"Cats?"
"Not that I know of."
"I don't feel as if I should like him. Does he compose at the piano?"
"No, away from it."
"He's unsympathetic. Cropped hair watered down, humdrum neckties,
composing away from the piano, no animals--it's all against me except
the little house."
"Because you take the wholly conventional view of the musician," said
her mother. "If I dared to say such a thing to my own child I might add,
without telling a dangerous lie, because you are so old-fashioned in
your views. You can't forget having read the _Vie de Bohême_, and having
heard, and unfortunately seen, Paderewski when you were a schoolgirl at
Brighton."
"It is my beloved mother's fault that I ever was a schoolgirl at
Brighton."
"Ah, don't press down that burden of crime upon my soul! Lift it, by
freeing yourself from the Brighton tradition, which I ought to have kept
for ever from you. And now, Max, tell us, whom does Mr. Heath know?"
"I know very little about his acquaintance. I met him first at
Wonderland."
"What's that?" asked Charmian. "It sounds more promising."
"It's gone now, but it was a place in Whitechapel, where they had boxing
competitions, Conky Joe against the Nutcracker--that kind of thing."
"I give him up, Te Deum, Conky Joe and all!" she exclaimed in despair.
"Do you mean me to meet him, Max?" asked Mrs. Mansfield.
"Yes. I can't keep him to myself any longer. I must share him with
someone who understands. Come to-morrow evening, won't you, after
dinner? Heath is dining with me."
"Yes. Is Charmian invited?"
Max Elliot looked at Charmian, and she steadily returned his gaze.
"You know," he said after a pause, "that you've got a certain hankering
after lions?"
"Hankering! Don't, don't!"
"But you really have!"
"I will not be put with the vulgar crowd like that. I do not care for
lions. Tigers are my taste."
He laughed.
"Do come then. But remember, there are plants which can only grow in
darkness. And I believe this is one of them."
When Max Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking
into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the
prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had dropped
away from her.
"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very
vulgar?"
"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather 'in it' in
London," returned her mother.
"Surely I'm not a climber, without knowing it!"
"No, I don't think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd
naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort
to keep your head above water."
"How very awful! I don't know why it is, but your head always is well
above water without your making any effort."
"I don't bother as to whether it is or not, you see."
"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"
"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you'll be
inclined to rave about him."
"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"
"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner's
_Teosofia_.
CHAPTER II
In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play
leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in
it." Mrs. Mansfield's father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated,
charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and
been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his
day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of
beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much
admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She,
too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick
Leighton's little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a
chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were
seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party
which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic
function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now
inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at
which might be met the _crème de la crème_ of the intellectual and
artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and prominent,
was ever to be seen.
Mrs. Mansfield, quite instinctively and naturally, had carried on the
family tradition; at first with her husband, Arthur Mansfield, one of
the most cultivated and graceful members of their "set," and after his
death alone. She was well off, had a love of beauty and comfort, but a
horror of display, and knew everyone she cared to know, without having
the vaguest idea who was, or was not, included in "the smart set."
Having been brought up among lions, she had never hunted a lion in her
life, though she had occasionally pulled the ears of one, or stroked its
nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women
who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within
herself the power to create anything original, and was far too
intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be
what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her own clearly seen
limitations.
Unlike Mrs. Mansfield in this respect Charmian struggled, and her mother
knew it.
On the following evening, when Charmian and her mother were dining
together before going to Max Elliot's, she said rather abruptly:
"Why didn't Mr. Elliot invite us to dinner to-night, do you think?"
"Why should he have invited us?"
"Well, perhaps it wasn't necessary. But surely it would have been quite
natural."
"Probably he wanted to prepare the new note for you."
"Why should I require preparation?"
"The new note!"
"Why should the new note require preparation against me?"
"I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is
in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess."
Delia was Max Elliot's wife, a graceful nonentity who, having never done
a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being
obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable
doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber,
living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying
injections of salt water. She was also being massaged perpetually by a
stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No
letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated.
"Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic
masseuse, at the very moment when Charmian said:
"There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!"
"He's accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she
may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say."
"Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!"
"Are you going to be tiresome to-night?"
"No, I won't, I won't. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep
like a tired child."
"I don't suppose he will."
"I feel he's going to."
"Then why were you so anxious to go?"
"I don't like to be left out of things. No one does."
"Except the elect. How thoughtful of you to dress in black!"
"Well, dearest, you are always in white. And I love to throw up my
beautiful mother."
Mrs. Mansfield put an arm gently round her as they left the dining-room.
"You could make any mother be a sister to you."
Just before ten their motor glided up to the Elliots' green door in
Cadogan Place.
Max Elliot was the very successful senior partner of an old-established
stockbroking firm in the City. This was a fact, so people had to accept
it. But acceptance was made difficult by his almost strangely
unfinancial appearance and manner. Out of the City he never spoke of the
City. He was devoted to the arts, and especially to music, of which he
had a really considerable knowledge. All prominent musicians knew him.
He was the friend of _prime donne_, a pillar of the opera, an ardent
frequenter of all the important concerts. Where Threadneedle Street came
into his life nobody seemed to know. Nevertheless, his numerous clients
trusted him completely as a business man. And more than one singer,
whose artistic temperament had brought her--or him, as the case might
be--to the door of the poorhouse, had reason to bless Max Elliot's
shrewd business head and generous industry in friendship. He had a good
heart as well as a fine taste, and his power of criticism had not
succeeded in killing his capacity for enthusiasm.
"_He's_ not begun yet!" murmured Charmian to her mother, as the butler
led them sedately down a rather long hall, past two or three doors, to
the music-room which Elliot had built out at the back of his house.
"I never heard that he was going to begin at all. We haven't come here
for a performance, but to make an acquaintance."
Charmian twisted her lips, and the butler opened the door and announced
them.
At the end of the room, which was panelled with wood and was high, by a
large open fireplace, Max Elliot was sitting with Paul Lane and two
other people, a woman and a young man. The woman was large and broad,
with brown hair, reckless hazel eyes, and a nose and mouth which
suggested a Roman emperor. She looked about thirty-five. In her large
ears, which were set very flat against her head, there were long,
diamond earrings, and diamonds glittered round her neck. She was
laughing when the Mansfields came in, and went on laughing while Max
Elliot went to receive them.
"Mrs. Shiffney has just come," he said. "Paul has been dining."
"And--the other?" murmured Charmian, with a hushed air of awed
expectation which was not free from a hint of mockery.
Mrs. Mansfield sent her a glance of half-humorous rebuke.
"Claude Heath," answered Elliot.
"How wonderful he is."
"Charmian, don't be tiresome!" observed her mother, as they went toward
the fire.
The two men got up, and Charmian had an impression of height, of a bony
slimness that was almost cadaverous, of irregular features, rather high
cheek-bones, brown, very short hair, and large, enthusiastic and
observant eyes that glanced almost piercingly at her, and quickly looked
away.
Mrs. Shiffney remained in her armchair, moved her shoulders, and said in
a rather deep, but not disagreeable voice:
"Mr. Heath and I are hearing all about 'Marella.' It builds you up if
you are a skeleton and pulls you down if you are enormous, as I am. It
makes you sleep if you suffer from insomnia, and if you have the
sleeping sickness it wakes you up. Dr. Curling has patented it, and
feeds his patients on nothing else. Delia is living entirely on it, and
is to emerge looking seventeen and a female Sandow. Mr. Heath is longing
to try it."
She had held out a powerful hand to the new arrivals, and now turned
toward the composer, who stood waiting to be introduced.
"Oh, but no, please!" said Heath, speaking quickly and almost anxiously,
with a certain naïveté that was attractive, but that did not suggest
simplicity, but rather great sensitiveness of mind. "I never take quack
medicines or foods. I have no need to. And I think they're all invented
to humbug us."
Max Elliot took him by the arm.
"I want to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Mansfield."
He paused and added:
"Mr. Claude Heath--Miss Mansfield."
Paul Lane began talking to Charmian when the two handshakes--Heath had
shaken hands quickly--were over. She looked across the room, and saw her
mother in conversation with the composer. And she knew immediately that
he had conceived a strong liking for her mother. It seemed to her in
that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from
liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint
sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man
admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in his
favor.
Perhaps to-night she was in a tiresome mood, as her mother had hinted.
As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years,
and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on
the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many
people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about
him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether
he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested
her.
Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost
emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not
handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness
which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his
whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from
his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather
thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it.
His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite
free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut,
reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere,
combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and
manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven.
He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly
on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious
intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how
she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother.
"Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane.
"Not specially so. Music was never mentioned."
"Was boxing?"
"Boxing!"
"Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in
Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker."
Lane smiled with his mouth.
"I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species,
but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This
one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the
truth is, nobody is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that
it is so."
Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed:
"You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames
say."
This time Lane really smiled.
"I hope so," he said. "Or else I should certainly lack variety. Well,
Max, what is it?"
"Mrs. Shiffney wants you."
"I always want him. I swim in his irony and can't sink, like a tourist
in the Dead Sea."
"What a left-handed compliment!"
"A right-handed one would bore you to death, and my aim in life is--"
"To avoid being bored. How often do you succeed in your aim?"
"Whenever I am with you in this delightful house."
"It is delightful," said Charmian to her host. "But why? Of course it is
beautiful. But that's not all. It's personal. Perhaps that's it."
She got up, and walked slowly away from the fire, very naturally, with a
gesture, just touching her soft cheek and fluttering her fingers toward
the glow, as if she were too hot. Max Elliot accompanied her.
"And all the lovely music that has sounded here," she continued,
"perhaps lingers silently in the air, and, without being aware of it, we
feel the vibrations."
She sat down on a sofa near the Steinway grand piano, which stood on a
low dais, looked up at Max Elliot, and added, in quite a different
voice:
"Shall we hear any of his music to-night?"
"I believe now we may."
"Why--now?"
Elliot looked toward Mrs. Mansfield.
"Because of mother, you mean?"
"He likes her."
"Anyone can see that."
After a moment she added, with a touch of irritation:
"He's evidently very difficile for an unknown man."
"No, it isn't that at all. If you ever know him well, you will
understand."
"What?" she asked with petulance.
"That his reserve is a right instinct, nothing more. Between ourselves,"
he bent toward her, "I made a little mistake in asking Mrs. Shiffney,
delightful though she is."
"I wondered why you had asked her, when you didn't want even to ask me."
"Middle-aged as I am, I get carried away by people. I met Mrs. Shiffney
to-day at a concert. She was so absolutely right in her enthusiasm, so
clever and artistic--though she's ignorant of music--over the whole
thing, that--well, here she is."
"And here I am!"
"Yes, here you are!" he said genially.
He had been standing. Now he sat down beside her, crossed one leg over
the other, held his knee with his clasped hands, and continued:
"The worst of it is Mrs. Shiffney has made him bolt several doors. When
she looked at him I could see at once that she made him feel
transparent."
"Poor thing! Tell me, do you enjoy very much protecting all the
sensitive artistic temperaments that come into this room? Do you enjoy
arranging the cotton-wool wadding so that there may be no chance of a
nasty jar, to say nothing of a breakage?"
He pursed his rather thick lips, that smiled so easily.
"When the treasure is a treasure, genuinely valuable, I don't mind it. I
feel then that I am doing worthy service."
"You really are a dear, you know!" she said, with a sudden change, a
melting. "It was good of you to ask me, when you didn't want to."
She leaned a little toward him, with one light hand palm downward on the
cushion of the sofa, and her small, rather square chin thrust forward in
a way that made her look suddenly intense.
"I'll try not to be like Mrs. Shiffney. I'll try not to make him feel
transparent."
"I'm not sure that you could," he said, smiling at her.
"How horrid of you to doubt my powers! Why, why will nobody believe I
have anything in me?"
She brought the words out with a force that was almost vicious. As she
said them it happened that Claude Heath turned a little. His eyes
travelled down the room and met hers. Perhaps her mother had just been
speaking to him of her, had been making some assertion about her. For he
seemed to look at her with inquiry.
When Charmian turned away her eyes from his she added to Max Elliot:
"But what does it matter? Because people, some people, can't see a
thing, that doesn't prove that it has no existence. And I don't really
care what people think of me."
"This--to your old friend!"
"Yes. And besides, I expect one must possess to discover."
Her voice was almost complacent.
"You deal in enigmas to-night."
"One ought to carry a light when one goes into a cave to seek for gold."
But Elliot would not let her see that he had from the first fully
understood her impertinence.
"Let us go back to the fire," he said. "Unless you are really afraid of
the heat. Let us hear what your mother and Heath are talking about."
"I'm not afraid of anything except a Te Deum."
"There's Mrs. Shiffney speaking to him. I don't think we shall have it
to-night."
"Then I'll venture to draw near," said Charmian, again assuming a
semblance of awe.
The minx was evidently uppermost in her as they approached the others.
She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were
almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close
to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the
world worldly, languid, almost prettily disdainful.
Mrs. Shiffney was speaking of the concert of that afternoon with
discrimination and with enthusiasm.
"Of course he's a little monkey," she concluded, evidently alluding to
some artist. "But _what_ a little monkey! I was in the front row, and he
called my attention to everything he was going to do, sometimes in
Russian, sometimes in dreadful French, or in English that was really a
criminal offense, and very often with his right elbow. He has a way of
nudging the air in one's direction so that one feels it in one's side.
Animal magnetism, I suppose. And he begs for sympathy as if it were a
biscuit. Do you know him, Mr. Heath?"
"No, not at all. I know very few big artists."
"But all the young coming ones, I suppose? Did you study abroad?"
"I went to the Royal College at Kensington Gore."
Mrs. Shiffney, who was very cosmopolitan, had a flat in Paris, and was
more often out of England than in it, slightly raised her eyebrows.
"You haven't studied in France or Germany?"
Heath began to look rather uncomfortable, and slightly self-conscious.
"No," he said quickly.
He paused, then as if with a decided effort he added:
"I think the training a student gets at the Royal College is splendid."
"Of course it is," said Max Elliot, heartily.
Mrs. Shiffney shook her shoulders.
"I'm sure it's quite perfect," she said, in her rather deep voice,
gazing at the young composer with eyes in which a light satire twinkled.
"Don't think I'm criticizing it. Only I'm so dreadfully un-English, and
I think English musicians get rather into a groove. The Hallelujah
bow-wow, you know!"
At this point in the conversation Charmian tranquilly interposed.
"Mr. Heath," she said, slightly protruding her chin, "when you've done
with my only mother"--Mrs. Shiffney's lips tightened ever so little--"I
want you to be very nice to me."
"Please tell me," said Heath, with the almost anxious eagerness that
seemed to be characteristic of him.
Mrs. Mansfield fixed her blazing eyes on her daughter, slightly drawing
down her gray eyebrows.
"Well, it's rather a secret."
Charmian glanced round at the others, then she added:
"It's about the Nutcracker."
"The Nutcracker!"
Heath puckered up his forehead.
"Yes." She moved a little, and looked at the chair not far from the fire
on which she had sat when first she came into the room. "I care rather
for boxing. Now"--she went slowly toward the chair, followed by Heath,
"what I want to know, and what you can tell me, is this"--she sat down,
and leaned her chin on her upturned palm--"on _present_ form do you
believe the Nutcracker is up to Conky Ja-ky Joe?"
As Claude Heath sat down to reply to this question, Mrs. Shiffney said:
"Conky Jarky Joe! I thought I was _dans le mouvement_ up to my
dog-collar, but I know nothing about the phenomenon. Where does it
belong to?"
"Wonderland," said Elliot, in a gravely romantic voice.
"That's the land I've never seen, although I've had the yacht for so
many years."
"Nor I!" said Paul Lane. "I don't believe it exists, or we must have
been there. We have both been everywhere."
"Tell the poor things about it," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Then Adelaide can
get up steam on _The Wanderer_ and realize her dreams."
"But Mr. Elliot told me he met you there, and I remember distinctly his
saying the fight was on between those two pets of the ring," said
Charmian plaintively, after a certain amount of negation from Claude
Heath.
"Yes, but I'm sure he didn't tell you I was an authority on boxing
form."
"You aren't?"
"No, indeed!"
"But you want to be?"
"I shouldn't mind. But it isn't my chief aim in life."
Charmian was silent. She leaned back, taking her chin from her hand, and
at last said gravely:
"It isn't _that_, then?"
"That--what?" exclaimed Heath, looking at her and away from her.
"That you want. It's something else. Because you know you want a very,
very great deal of something."
"Oh, a good many of us do, I suppose."
"I don't think I do. I'm quite satisfied with my life. I have a good
mother, a comfortable home. What should a properly-brought-up English
girl, who has been educated at Brighton, want more?"
"I'm very glad indeed to know that a Brighton education stands its
receiver in such good stead in the after years, very glad indeed!"
"You are laughing at me. And that's unchristian."
"Oh, but--but you were laughing at me!"
Despite Heath's eagerness, and marked social readiness of manner,
Charmian was disagreeably conscious of a mental remoteness in him. Only
the tip of his mind, perhaps scarcely that, was in touch with hers. Now
she almost regretted that she had chosen to begin their acquaintance
with absurdity, that she had approached Heath with a pose. She scarcely
knew why she had done so. But she half thought, only half because of her
self-respect, that she had been a little afraid of him, and so had
instinctively caught up some armor, put a shield in front of her. Was
she really impressed by a well-spoken-of Te Deum? She glanced at Heath
inscrutably, as only woman can, and knew that she was not. It was the
man himself who had caused her to fall into what she already thought of
as a mistake. There was in Heath something that almost confused her. And
she was not accustomed to be confused.
"I've made a bad beginning," she almost blurted out, not able to escape
from artifice, yet speaking truth. "And I'm generally rather good at
beginnings. It's so easy to take the first step, I think, despite that
silly saying which, of course, I'm not going to quote. It's when one is
getting to know a person really well that difficulties generally begin."
"Do they?"
"Yes, because it's then that very reserved people begin hurriedly
building barricades, isn't it? I ask you, because I'm not at all
reserved."
"But how should I know any better than you?"
"You mean, when you're so unreserved, too? No, that's true."
Heath's eyes troubled Charmian. She was feeling with every moment less
at ease in his companionship and more determined to seem at ease. Being
generally self-possessed, she had a horror of slipping into shyness and
so retrograding from her usual vantage ground. She expected him to
speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had
seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a
heavy-footed approach to sacred ground. What a blunderer she was
to-night! Desperation seized her.
"We must leave the question to the reserved," she said. "Poor things! I
always pity them. They can never taste life as you and I and our kind
are able to. We are put here to try to know and to be known. I feel sure
of that. So the reserved are for ever endeavoring to escape their
destiny. No wonder they are punished!"
"I am not sure that I entirely agree with your view as to the reason why
we are put here," observed Heath, without a trace of obvious sarcasm.
Nevertheless, the mere words stung Charmian's almost childish
self-conceit.
"But I wasn't claiming to have pierced the Creator's most secret
designs!" she exclaimed. "I was simply endeavoring to state that it can
scarcely be natural for men and women to try to hide all they are from
each other. I think there's something ugly in hiding things; and
ugliness can't be meant."
"Ugliness is certainly not meant," said Heath, and for the first time
she felt as if she were somewhere not very far from him. "Except very
often by man. Isn't it astonishing that men created Venice and that men
have now put steam launches in the canals of Venice!"
Venice! Charmian seized upon the word, mentally leaped upon and clung to
the city in the sea. From that moment their conversation became easier,
and gradually Charmian began to recover from her strange social
prostration. So she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt.
Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the
talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their
intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of
course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments
must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is
Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about?
Charmian said that to herself afterward, and was amazed at her own
vulgarity of mind. Ah, yes! That was what she had disliked in Claude
Heath--his faculty of making her feel almost vulgar-minded,
vulgar-intellected! She coined horrible bastard words in her efforts to
condemn him. But all that was later on, when she had even said
good-night to her only mother.
Their tête-à-tête was broken by Mrs. Shiffney's departure to a reception
at the Ritz. She must surely have been disappointed in the musician;
but, if so, she was too clever to show it. And she was by way of being a
good-natured woman and seldom seemed to think ill of anybody. "I have so
many sins on my own conscience," she sometimes said, "that I decline to
see other people's. I want them to be blind to mine. Sin and let sin is
an excellent rule in social life." She seldom condemned anyone except a
bore.
"If you ever pay a call, which I doubt," she said to Claude Heath as she
was going, "I'm in Grosvenor Square. The Red Book will tell you."
She looked at him with her almost insolently self-possessed and careless
eyes, and added:
"Perhaps some day you'll come on the yacht and show me the course to set
for Wonderland. Mr. Elliot says you know it. And of course we all want
to. I've been everywhere except there."
"I doubt if a yacht could take us there," said Heath, smiling as if to
cover something grave or sad.
A piercing look again came into Mrs. Shiffney's eyes.
"I really hope I shall see you in Grosvenor Square," she said.
Without giving him time to say anything more she went away, accompanied
from the room by Max Elliot, walking carelessly and looking very
powerful and almost outrageously self-possessed.
Within the music-room there was a moment's silence. Then Paul Lane said:
"Delightful creature!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Adelaide is delightful. And why? She always
thinks of herself, lives for herself. She wouldn't put herself out for
anyone. I've known her for years and would never go to her in a
difficulty or trust her with a confidence. And yet I delight in her. I
think it's because she's so entirely herself."
"She's a darling!" said Lane. "She's so preposterously human, in her
way, and yet she's always distinguished. And she's so clever as well as
so ignorant. I love that combination. Even on a yacht she never seems
to have a bad day."
Charmian looked at Claude Heath, who was silent. She was wondering
whether he meant to call in Grosvenor Square, whether he would ever set
sail with Mrs. Shiffney on _The Wanderer_.
CHAPTER III
When Max Elliot came back they gathered round the fire, no longer split
up into duets, and the conversation was general. Heath joined in
frequently, and with the apparent eagerness which was evidently
characteristic of him. He had facility in speaking, great quickness of
utterance, and energy of voice. When he listened he suggested to
Charmian a mind so alive as to be what she called "on the pounce." He
had an odd air of being swayed, carried away, by what those around him
were saying, even by what they were thinking, as if something in his
nature demanded to acquiesce. Yet she fancied that he was secretly
following his own line of thought with a persistence that was almost
cold.
Lane led the talk at first, and displayed less of his irony than usual.
He was probably not a happy man, though he never spoke of being unhappy.
His habitual expression was of discontent, and he was too critical of
life, endeavor, character, to be easily satisfied. But to-night he
seemed in a softer mood than usual. Perhaps he had an object in seeming
so. He was a man very curious in the arts. Elliot, who knew him well,
was conscious that something in Heath's personality had made a strong
impression upon him, and thought he was trying to create a favorable
atmosphere in the hope that music might come of it. If this was so, he
labored in vain. And soon doubtless he knew it. For he, too, pleaded
another engagement, and, like Mrs. Shiffney, got up to go.
Directly the door shut behind him Charmian was conscious of relief and
excitement. She even, almost despite herself, began to hope for a Te
Deum; and, hoping, she found means to be wise. She effaced herself, so
she believed, by withdrawing a little into a corner near the fire,
holding up her Conder fan open to shield her face from the glow, and
taking no part in the conversation, while listening to it with a pretty
appearance of dreaminess. She was conscious of her charming attitude,
of the line made by her slender upraised arm, and not unaware of the
soft and almost transparent beauty the light of a glowing fire gives to
delicate flesh. Nevertheless, she really tried, in a perhaps
half-hearted way, to withdraw her personality into the mist. And this
she did because she knew well that her mother, not she, was en rapport
with Claude Heath.
"I'm out of it," she said to herself, "and mother's in it."
Mrs. Shiffney had been a restraint, Lane had been a restraint. It would
be dreadful if she were the third restraining element. She would have
liked to be triumphantly active in bringing things about. Since that was
evidently quite out of the question she was resolved to go to the other
extreme.
"My only chance is to be a mouse!" she thought.
At least she would be a graceful mouse.
She gazed at the delicate figures on her Conder fan. They, those three a
little way from her, were talking now, really talking.
Mrs. Mansfield was speaking of the endeavor of certain Londoners to
raise the theater out of the rut into which it had fallen, and to make
of it something worthy to claim the attention of those who did not use
it merely for digestive purposes. She related a story of a disastrous
theater-party which she had once joined, and which had been arranged by
an aspiring woman with little sense of fitness.
"We dined with her first. She had, somehow, persuaded Burling, the
Oxford historian, Mrs. Hartford, the dear poetess who never smiles, and
her husband, and Cummerbridge, the statistician, to be of the party.
After dinner where do you think she took us?"
"To the Oxford?" said Elliot, flinging his hands round his knee and
beginning to smile.
"To front row stalls at the Criterion, where they were giving a
knockabout farce called _My Little Darling_ in which a clergyman was put
into a boiler, a guardsman hidden in a linen cupboard, and a penny
novelette duchess was forced to retreat into a shower-bath in full
activity. I confess that I laughed more than I had ever done in my life.
I sat between Burling, who looked like a terrified hen, and Mr.
Hartford, who was seriously attentive from beginning to end, and kept
murmuring, 'Really! Really!' And I had the poetess's sibylline profile
in full view. I was almost hysterical when it was over. As we were
coming out Mr. Hartford said to his wife, 'Henrietta, I'm glad we came.'
She rolled an eye on him and answered, with tears in the voice, 'Why?'
'It's a valuable lesson. We now know what the British public needs.' Her
reply was worthy of her."
"What was it?" said Elliot, eagerly.
"'There are many human needs, Gabriel, which it is criminal to gratify.'
Burling went home in a four-wheeler. Cummerbridge had left after the
first act--a severe attack of neuralgia in the right eye."
Elliot's full-throated laugh rang through the room. Heath was smiling,
but almost sadly, Charmian thought.
"Perhaps it was _My Little Darling_ which brought about the attempt at
better things you were speaking of," he said to Mrs. Mansfield.
"Ah, but their prophet is not mine!" she answered.
An almost feverish look of vitality had come into her face, which was
faintly pencilled by the fingers of sorrow.
"Sometimes I think I hate the disintegrating drama more than I despise
the vulgar idiocies which, after all, never really touch human life,"
she continued. "No doubt it is sheer weakness on my part to be affected
by it. But I am. Only last week Charmian and I saw the play that
they--the superior ones--are all flocking to. The Premier has seen it
five times already. I loathed its cleverness. I loathed the element of
surprise in it. I laughed, and loathed my own laughter. The man who
wrote it would put cap and bells on St. Francis of Assisi and make a
mock of OEdipus."
She paused, then, leaning forward, in a low and thrilling voice she
quoted, "'For we are in Thy hand; and man's noblest task is to help
others by his best means and powers.'"
Claude Heath gazed at her while she was speaking, and in his eyes
Charmian, glancing over her fan, saw what she thought of as two torches
gleaming.
"I came out of the theater," continued Mrs. Mansfield, "and I confess it
with shame, feeling as if I should never find again the incentive to a
noble action, as if the world were turned to chaff. And yet I had
laughed--how I had laughed!"
Suddenly she began to laugh at the mere recollection of something in the
play.
"The wretch is terribly clever!" she exclaimed. "But he seems to me
destructive."
"Well, but--" began Elliot. "Some such accusation has been brought
against many really great men. The Empress Frederick told a friend of
mine that no one who had not lived in Germany, and observed German life
closely, could understand the evil spread through the country by
Wagner's _Tristan_."
"Then the fault, the sin if you like, was in the hearers," said Heath,
almost with excitement.
He got up and stood by the fire.
"Wagner was a builder. I believe Germany is the better for a _Tristan_,
and I believe we should be the better for an English _Tristan_. But I
doubt if we gain essentially by the drama in cap and bells."
Elliot, who was fond of defending his friends, came vigorously to the
defense of the playwright, to whom he was devoted and whose first nights
he seldom missed. In the discussion which followed Charmian saw more
clearly how peculiarly in tune her mother's mind was with Heath's.
"This is the beginning of a great intimacy," she said to herself. "One
of mother's great intimacies."
And, for the first time she consciously envied her mother, consciously
wished that she had her mother's brains, temperament, and unintentional
fascination. The talk went on, and presently she drifted into it, took
her small part in it. But she felt herself too brainless, too ignorant
to be able to contribute to it anything of value. Her usually happy and
innocent self-conceit has deserted her, with all her audacities. She was
oddly subdued, was almost sad.
"How old is he really?" she thought more than once as she looked at
Claude Heath.
There was no mention of music, and at last Mrs. Mansfield got up to go.
As they said good-night she looked at Heath and remarked:
"We shall meet again?"
He clasped her hand, and answered, slightly reddening:
"Oh, I hope so! I do hope so!"
That was all. There was no mention of the Red Book, of being at home on
Thursdays, no "If you're ever near Berkeley Square," etc. All that was
unnecessary. Charmian touched a long-fingered hand and uttered a cold
little "Good-night." A minute more and her mother and she were in the
motor gliding through damp streets in the murky darkness.
After a short silence Mrs. Mansfield said:
"Well, Charmian, you escaped! Are you very thankful?"
"Escaped!" said a rather plaintive voice from the left-hand corner of
the car.
"The dreaded Te Deum."
"Is he a musician at all? I believe Max Elliot has been humbugging us."
"He warned you not to expect too much in the way of hair."
"It isn't that. How old do you think he is?"
"Certainly not thirty."
"What did you tell him about me?"
"About you? I don't remember telling him anything."
"Oh, but you did, mother!"
"What makes you think so?"
"I know you did, when I was sitting near the piano with Max Elliot."
"Perhaps I did then. But I can't remember what it was. It must have been
something very trifling."
"Oh, of course I know that!" said Charmian almost petulantly.
Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but
she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the
putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject
quietly, and they were soon at home.
Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs.
Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom
went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her.
"I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the
door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when
she was alone.
Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her.
"Wonderful mother!"
"What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!"
"Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and
hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry
child."
"And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a
little."
"No, not to-night, you darling!"
Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went
away up the stairs between white walls to bed.
CHAPTER IV
Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the
beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."
Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short
time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends.
She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a
special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young
man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that
each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion
to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art.
Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other,
perhaps the two reserves clung together.
These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the
other that was hidden from the gaze of the world.
A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the
other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this--Charmian was not included
in it.
This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother. She was
incapable of shutting any door, beyond which she did not stand alone,
against her child. The generosity of her nature was large, warm,
chivalrous, the link between her and Charmian very strong. The girl was
wont to accept her mother's friends with a pretty eagerness. They
spoiled her, because of her charm, and because she was the child of the
house in which they spent some of their happiest hours. Never yet had
there lain on Charmian's life a shadow coming from her mother. But now
she entered a faintly shadowed way, as it seemed deliberately and of her
own will. She tacitly refused to accept the friendship between her
mother and Claude Heath as she had accepted the other friendships.
Gently, subtly, almost mysteriously, she excluded herself from it.
Or was she gently, subtly, almost mysteriously excluded from it by
Claude Heath?
She chose to think so. And there were moments in which he chose to think
that she obstinately declined to accept him as her mother accepted him,
because she disliked him, was perhaps jealous of his intimacy with Mrs.
Mansfield.
All this was below the surface. Charmian seemed friendly with Heath, and
he, generally, at ease with her. But when he was alone with Mrs.
Mansfield he was a different man. At first she thought little of this.
She attributed it to the fact that Heath had a reserved nature and that
she happened to hold a key which could unlock it, or unlock a room or
two of it, leaving, perhaps, many rooms closed. But, being not only a
very intelligent but a delicately sensitive woman, she presently began
to think that there was some secret antagonism between her child and
Heath.
This pained her. She even considered whether she ought not to put an end
to her intimacy with Heath. She had grown to value it. She was incapable
of entering into a sentimental relation with any man. She had loved
deeply, had had her beautiful summer. It had died. The autumn was upon
her. She regretted. Often her heart was by a grave, often it was beyond,
seeking, like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the
golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not
repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in
people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of
becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to
her, and was drawn, in her turn, to them.
Claude Heath had brought into her life something her other friends had
not given her. She realized this clearly when she first considered
Charmian in connection with herself and him. If he ceased from her life,
sank away into the crowd of unseen men, he would leave a gap which
another could not fill. She had a feeling that she was valuable to him.
She did not know exactly how or why. And he was valuable to her.
But of course Charmian was the first interest in her life, had the
first claim upon her consideration. She sat wondering what it was in
Heath which the girl disliked, what it was in Charmian which, perhaps,
troubled or irritated Heath.
Charmian was out that day at an afternoon concert, and Mrs. Mansfield
had made an engagement to go to tea with Heath in his little old house
near St. Petersburg Place. She had never yet visited him, although she
had known him for nearly three months. And she had never heard a note of
his music. The latter fact did not strike her as strange. She had never
mentioned her dead husband to him.
Max Elliot had at first been perturbed by this reticence of the
musician. He had specially wished Mrs. Mansfield to hear what he had
heard. After that evening in Cadogan Square he had several times asked:
"Well, have you heard the Te Deum?" or "Has Heath played any of his
compositions to you yet?" To Mrs. Mansfield's invariable unembarrassed
"No!" he gave a shrug of the shoulders, a "He's an extraordinary
fellow!" or a "Well, I've made a failure of it this time!" Once he
added: "Don't you want to hear his music?" "Not unless he wants me to
hear it," Mrs. Mansfield replied. Elliot looked at her for a minute with
his large, prominent and kind eyes, and said: "No wonder you're adored
by your friends!" Several times since the evening in Cadogan Square he
had heard Heath play his compositions, and he now began to feel as if he
owed this pleasure to his busy and almost vulgar curiosity about musical
development and the progress of artists, as if Heath's reserve were his
greatest proof of regard and friendship. He had not succeeded in
persuading Heath to come to one of his Sunday musical evenings, at which
crowds of people in society and many artists assembled. Mrs. Mansfield
taught him not to attempt any more persuasion. He realized that his
first instinct had been right. The plant must grow in darkness. But he
was always being carried away by artistic enthusiasms, and had an
altruistic desire to share good things. And he dearly loved "a musical
find." He had a certain name as a discoverer of talent, and there's so
much in a name. The lives that have been changed, moulded, governed by a
hastily conferred name!
Mrs. Mansfield was inclined to believe that Heath had invited her to
tea with the intention of at last submitting his talent to her opinion.
They had sometimes talked together of music, but much oftener of books,
character, people, national movements, topics of the day. As she went to
her bedroom to dress for her expedition, she felt a certain hesitation,
almost a disinclination to go. To go was to draw a step or two nearer to
Heath, and so, perhaps, to retreat a step or two from her child. To-day
the fact that Charmian and Heath did not quite "hit it off together"
vexed her spirit, and the slight mystery of their relation troubled her.
As she went down to get into the motor she was half inclined to speak to
Heath on the subject. She was quite certain that she would not speak to
Charmian.
The month was February, and by the time Mrs. Mansfield reached Mullion
House evening was falling. A large motor was drawn up in front of the
house, and as Mrs. Mansfield's chauffeur sounded a melodious chord the
figure of a smartly dressed woman walked across the pavement and stepped
into it. After an instant of delay, caused by this woman's footman, who
spoke to her at the window, the car moved off and disappeared rapidly in
the gathering darkness.
"Was that Adelaide?" Mrs. Mansfield asked herself as she got out.
She was not certain, but she thought the passing figure had looked like
Mrs. Shiffney's.
The door of Mullion House stood open, held by a thin woman with very
large gray eyes, who smiled at Mrs. Mansfield and made a slight motion,
almost as if she mentally dropped a curtsey, but physically refrained
out of respect for London ways.
"Oh, yes, ma'am, he is in! He's expecting you."
The emphasis on the last word was marked. Mrs. Mansfield looked at this
woman, toward whom at once she felt friendly.
"There's some here and there that would bother him to death, I'm sure,
if they was let!" continued the woman, closing the little front door
gently. "But it will be a pleasure to him to see you. We all knows
that!"
"I'm very glad to hear it!" responded Mrs. Mansfield, liking this
unconventional but very human servant. "Mr. Heath has spoken of my
coming, then?"
"I should think so, ma'am. This way, if you please!"
Mrs. Searle, Heath's cook-housekeeper, crossed the little dimly lit hall
and walked quickly down a rather long and narrow passage.
"He's in the studio, ma'am," she remarked over her narrow shoulder,
sharply turning her head. "Fan is with him."
"Who's Fan? A dog?"
"My little girl, ma'am."
"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
"Not knowing you were there, when the other lady went I sends her in to
him for company as he wasn't working. 'Run, Fan!' says I. 'Go and cheer
Mr. Heath up, there's a good girl!' I says. I knows very well there's
nothing like a child to put you right after you've been worried. They're
so simple, aren't they, ma'am? And we're all simple, I b'lieve, at
'eart, though we're ashamed to show it. I'm sure I don't know why!"
As she concluded she opened a door and ushered Mrs. Mansfield into the
composer's workroom.
At the far end of it, in a flicker of firelight, Mrs. Mansfield saw him
stooping down over a very fair and Saxon-looking child of perhaps three
years old, whose head was thickly covered with short yellow hair
inclined to be curly, and who was dressed in a white frock with an
almost artful blue bow in the front. As Mrs. Mansfield came in the child
was holding up to Heath a small naked doll of a rather blurred
appearance, and was uttering some explanatory remarks in the uneven but
arresting voice that seems peculiar to childhood.
"Mrs. Mansfield, if you please, sir!" said Mrs. Searle. Then, with a
change of voice: "Come along, Fan! And bring Masterman with you, there's
a good girl! We must get on his clothes or he'll catch cold." (To Mrs.
Mansfield.) "You'll excuse her, ma'am, but she's that nat'ral, clothes
or no clothes it's all one to her."
Fan turned round, holding Masterman by one leg and staring with bright
blue eyes at Mrs. Mansfield. Her countenance expressed a dignified
inquiry combined, perhaps, with a certain amount of very natural
surprise at so unseemly an interruption of her strictly private
interview with Claude Heath and Masterman. Her left thumb mechanically
sought the shelter of her mouth, and it was obvious that she was "sizing
up" Mrs. Mansfield with all the caution, if not suspicion, of the female
nature in embryo.
Heath took her gently by the shoulder as he came forward, smiling, and
propelled her slowly toward the middle of the large dim room.
"Welcome!" he said, holding out his hand. "Yes, Fantail, I quite
understand. He's been sick and now he's getting better. Go with mother!"
Fan was exchanged for Mrs. Mansfield and vanished, speaking slowly and
continuously about Masterman's internal condition and "the new lydy,"
while Mrs. Mansfield took off her fur coat and looked around her and at
Heath.
"I didn't kiss her," she said, "because I think it's a liberty to kiss
one of God's creatures at first sight without a special invitation."
"I know--I know!"
Heath seemed restless. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes,
always full of a peculiar vitality, looked more living even than usual.
He glanced at Mrs. Mansfield, then glanced away, almost guiltily, she
thought.
"Do come and sit down by the fire. Would you like a cushion?"
"No, thank you! What a nice old settle!"
"Yes, isn't it? I live in this room. Alling, the painter, built it for
his studio. The other rooms are tiny."
"What a delightful servant you have!"
"Mrs. Searle--yes. She's a treasure! Humanity breaks out of her whatever
the occasion. And my goodness, how she understands men!"
He laughed, but the laugh sounded slightly unnatural.
"Fantail's delightful, too!" he added.
"What is her real name?"
"Fanny. I call her Fantail." He paused. "Well, because I like her, I
suppose."
"I know."
There was a moment of silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the
room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in,
perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very
handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but
there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books,
not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which
furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and
papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose manuscript music. The
piano was open, and there was more music on it. The armchairs were well
worn but comfortable, and looked "sat in." Over the windows there were
dim orange-colored curtains that looked old but not shabby. On the floor
there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only
flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a
mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano
there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that
anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by
oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in
color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not
discern their subjects. On the high wooden mantelpiece there were a few
photographs, of professors and students at the Royal College of Music
and of a serious and innocent-looking priest in black coat and round
white collar.
To Mrs. Mansfield the room suggested a recluse who liked to be cosy,
who, perhaps, was drawn toward mystery, even mysticism, and who loved
the life of the brain.
"And you've a garden?" she asked, breaking the little pause.
"The size of a large pocket-handkerchief. I'm not at all rich, you know.
But I can just afford my little house and to live without earning a
penny."
A woman servant, not Mrs. Searle, came in with tea and retreated,
walking very softly and slowly. She looked almost rustic.
"That's my only other servant, Harriet," said Heath, pouring out tea.
"There's something very un-Londony in it all," said Mrs. Mansfield,
again looking round, almost with a puzzled air.
"That's what I try for. I'm fond of London in a way, but I can't bear
anything typical of London in my home."
"It is quite a home," she said; "and the home of a worker. One gets
weary of being received in reception-rooms. This is a retreat."
Heath looked at her with his bright almost too searching and observant
eyes.
"I wonder," he said almost reluctantly, "whether--may I talk about
myself to-day?" he interrupted himself.
"Do, if you like to."
"I think I should."
"Do, then."
"I wonder whether a man is a coward to raise up barriers between himself
and life, whether it is a mistake to have a retreat, as you rightly call
this room, this house, and to spend the greater part of one's time alone
in it? But"--he moved restlessly--"the real question is whether one
ought to let oneself be guided by a powerful instinct."
"I expect one ought to."
"Do you? Oh, you're not eating anything!"
"I will help myself."
"Mrs. Shiffney wouldn't agree with you."
"No."
"Didn't--didn't you see her? She went just before you came."
"I saw someone. I thought it might be Adelaide. I wasn't sure."
"It was she. I hadn't asked her to come and wasn't expecting her."
He stopped, then added abruptly:
"It was wonderfully kind of her to come, though. She is kind and clever,
too. She has fascination, I think...."
"I'm sure she has."
"And yet, d'you know, there's something in her, and in lots of people I
might get to know, I suppose, through her and Max Elliot, that I--well,
I almost hate it."
"What is it?"
"Well, whenever I come across one of them by chance I seem to hear a
voice repeating, 'To-morrow we die--to-morrow we die--to-morrow we die.'
And I seem to see something inside of them with teeth and claws
fastening on pleasure. It's--it's like a sort of minotaur, and it gives
me horrors. And yet I might go to it."
Mrs. Mansfield said nothing for a moment. She had finished her cup of
tea, and now, with a little gesture, refused to have another.
"It's quite true. There is the creature with teeth and claws, and it is,
perhaps, horrible. But it's so sad that I scarcely see anything but its
sadness."
"You are kinder than I."
He leaned forward.
"D'you know, I think you're the kindest human being I ever met, except
one, that priest up there on the mantelpiece."
"Forgive me," she said, making allowance for herself to-day because of
Heath's evident desire to talk intimately, a desire which she believed
she ought to help, "but are you a Roman Catholic?"
"Oh, no! I wish I was!"
"But I suppose you can't be?"
"Oh, no! I suppose I'm one of those unsatisfactory people whose soul and
whose brain are not in accord. That doesn't make for inward calm or
satisfaction. But I can only hope for better days."
There was something uneasy in his speech. She felt the strong reserve in
him always fighting against the almost fierce wish to be unreserved with
her.
"They will come, surely!" she said. "If you are quite sincere, sincere
with yourself always and sincere with others as often as is possible."
"You're right about its not being possible to be always sincere with
others."
She smiled.
"They simply wouldn't let you!"
"No," he said. "I feel as if I could be rather sincere with you
sometimes."
"Specially to-day, perhaps."
"Yes, I think so. We do get on, don't we?"
"Yes, we do."
"I often wonder why. But we do. I'll move the table if you've really
finished."
He put the table away and sat down on the settle beside her, at the far
end. And he turned, leaning his back against the upright end, and
stretching one arm along the wooden top, on which his long fingers
restlessly closed.
"I was sorry I went to Max Elliot's till you came into the room," he
said. "And ever since then I've been partly very glad."
"But only partly?"
"Yes, because I've always had an instinctive dread of getting drawn in."
"To the current of our modern art life. I'm sure you mean that."
"I do. And of course Elliot is in the thick of it. Mrs. Shiffney's in
it, and all her lot, which I don't know. And that fellow Lane is in it
too."
"And I suppose I am in it with Charmian."
Heath looked at the floor. Ignoring Mrs. Mansfield's remark, he
continued:
"I have some talent. It isn't the sort of talent to win popularity.
Fortunately, I don't desire--in fact, I'm very much afraid of
popularity. But as I believe my talent is--is rather peculiar,
individual, it might easily become--well, I suppose I may say the rage
in a certain set. They might drop me very soon. Probably they would--I
don't know. But I have a strong feeling that they'd take me up violently
if I gave them a chance. That's what Max Elliot can't help wanting. He's
such a good fellow, but he's a born exploiter. Not in any nasty way, of
course!" Heath concluded hastily.
"I quite understand."
"And, I don't want to seem conceited, but I see there's something about
me that set would probably like. Mrs. Shiffney's showed me that. I have
never called upon her. She has sent me several invitations. And to-day
she called. She wants me to go with her on _The Wanderer_ for a cruise."
"To Wonderland?"
Heath shrugged his shoulders.
"In the Mediterranean, I believe."
"Doesn't that tempt you?"
"Yes, terribly. But I flatly refused to go. But she knew I was tempted.
It's only curiosity on her part," he added, with a sort of hot, angry
boyishness. "She can't make me out, and I didn't call. That's why she
asked me."
Mrs. Mansfield mentally added a "partly" to the last sentence.
"You're very much afraid of exposing yourself--or is it your talent?--to
the influence of what we may as well call the world," she said.
"I suppose one's talent is oneself, one's best self."
"Perhaps so. I have none. You know best about that. I expect you are
right in being afraid."
"You don't think I'm merely a rather absurd coward and egoist?"
"Oh, no! But some people--many, I think--would say a talent is meant to
be used, to be given to the light."
"I know. But I don't think the modern world wants mine. I"--he
reddened--"I always set words from the Bible nearly or from the
Prayer-Book."
Smiling a little, as if saving something by humor, he added:
"Not the _Song of Solomon_."
"But don't the English--"
He stopped her.
"Good heavens! I know you are thinking of the Handel Festival and
_Elijah_ in the provinces!" he exclaimed. "I know you are!"
She laughed.
"I should like to play you one or two of my things," he said
impulsively. "Then you'll see at once."
He went toward the piano. She sat still. She was with the striking
unreserve of the reserved man when he has cast his protector or his
demon away. With his back to her Heath turned over some music, moved a
pile of sheets, set them down on the floor under the piano, searched.
"Oh, here it is!"
[Illustration: "'THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE'"--_Page 41_]
He grasped some manuscript, put it on the music-stand, and sat down.
"This is the last thing I've done. The words are taken from the
sixteenth chapter of Revelation--'And I heard a great voice out of the
temple saying to the seven angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials
of the wrath of God upon the earth."' And so on."
With a sort of anger his hands descended and struck the keys. Speaking
through his music he gave Mrs. Mansfield indications of what it was
expressing.
"This is the sea. 'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea,
and it became as the blood of a dead man.... The fourth angel poured out
his vial upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with
fire.... The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River
Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings
of the East might be prepared.'"
The last words which Heath had set were those in the fifteenth verse of
the chapter--"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and
keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame."
When he had finished he got up from the piano with a flushed face and,
again speaking in a boyish and almost naive manner, said quickly:
"There, that gives you an idea of the sort of thing I do and care about
doing. For, of course, I never will attempt any subject that doesn't
thoroughly interest me."
He stood for a moment, not looking toward Mrs. Mansfield; then, as if
struggling against an inward reluctance, he again sat down on the
settle.
"Have you orchestrated it?" she asked.
"Yes. I've just finished the orchestration."
"Surely you want to hear it given with voices and the orchestra?
Frankly, I won't believe you if you say you don't."
"I do."
The reluctance seemed to fade out of him.
"The fact is I'm torn between the desire to hear my things and a mighty
distaste for publicity."
He sprang up.
"If you'll allow me I'll just give you an idea of my Te Deum. And then
I'll have done."
He went once more to the piano.
When he was sitting beside her again Mrs. Mansfield felt shy of him.
After a moment she said:
"You are sincere in your music?"
"Yes."
He did not seem specially anxious to get at her exact opinion of his
work, and this fact, she scarcely knew why, pleased Mrs. Mansfield.
"I had two or three things done at the College concerts," Heath
continued. "I don't think they were much liked. They were considered
very clever technically. But what's that? Of course, one must conquer
one's means or one can't express oneself at all."
"And now you work quite alone?"
"Yes. I've got just a thousand a year of my own," he said abruptly.
"You are independent, then."
"Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of
thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money
temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my
compositions. I know that."
Mrs. Mansfield thought, "If he were to get a mystical libretto and write
an opera!" But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to
suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to
see him "a success." In her ears were perpetually sounding the words,
"and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the
East might be prepared." They took her away from London. They set her in
the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost
riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said
exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the
thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath
and said:
"I quite understand about Mrs. Shiffney now."
"Yes?"
"You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and very powerful
imagination. I think your music might make you enemies."
Heath looked pleased.
"I'm glad you think that. I know exactly what you mean."
They sat together on the settle and talked for more than an hour. Mrs.
Mansfield's feeling of shyness speedily vanished, was replaced by
something maternal with which she was much more at ease.
Mrs. Searle let her out. She had said good-bye to Heath in the studio
and asked him not to come to the front door.
"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't
stayed too long?"
"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's
nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do
keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"
"I daresay there are."
"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women
runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."
"Has Fan begun yet?"
Mrs. Searle blushed.
"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone
interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."
"I must take care what I'm about."
"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure--"
The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked
out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened,
almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was
dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."
The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself
wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just
heard.
CHAPTER V
Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she
was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an
Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs.
Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was
still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of
the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive
look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From
her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her
perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in
search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady
Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless
and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong
while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved
nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.
Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was
fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently
when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as
they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably
cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do with
_The Wanderer_ unless she lay snug in harbor. His hobby was racing. He
was a good horseman, disliked golf, and seldom went out of the British
Isles, though he never said that his own country was good enough for
him. When he did cross the Channel he visited Paris, Monte Carlo,
Homburg, Biarritz, or some place where he was certain to be in the midst
of his "pals." The strain of wildness, which made his wife uncommon and
interesting, did not exist in him, but he was rather proud of it in her,
and had been heard to say more than once, "Addie's a regular gipsy," as
if the statement were a high compliment. He was a tall, well-built,
handsome man of fifty-two, with gray hair and moustache, an agreeable
tenor voice, which was never used in singing, and the best-cut clothes
in London. Although easily kind he was thoroughly selfish. Everybody had
a good word for him, and nobody, who really knew him, ever asked him to
perform an unselfish action. "That isn't Jimmy's line" was their
restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to
Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And
Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a
sensible fellow.
Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her
husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.
"What's up, Addie?" he asked, with the sympathy he never withheld from
her. "Another gown gone wrong?"
Mrs. Shiffney shook her powerful head, on which was a marvellous black
hat crowned with a sort of factory chimney of stiff black plumes.
Mr. Shiffney lit a cigar.
"Poor old Addie!" he said. He leaned down and stroked her shoulder. "I
wish you could get hold of somebody or something that'd make you happy,"
he remarked. "I'm sure you deserve it."
His wife dried her tears and sniffed two or three times almost with the
frankness of a grief-stricken child.
"I never shall!"
"Why not, Addie?"
"There's something in me--I don't know! I should get tired of anyone who
didn't get tired of me!"
She almost began to cry again, and added despairingly:
"So what hope is there? And I _do_ so want to enjoy myself! I wonder if
there ever has been a woman who wanted to enjoy herself as much as I
do?"
Mr. Shiffney blew forth a cloud of smoke, extending the little finger of
the hand which held his cigar.
"We all want to have a good time," he observed. "A first-rate time. What
else are we here for?"
He spoke seriously.
"We are here to keep things going, I s'pose--to keep it up, don't you
know? We mustn't let it run down. But if we don't enjoy ourselves down
it goes. And that doesn't do, does it?"
He flicked the ash from his cigar.
"What's the special row this time?" he continued, without any heated
curiosity, but with distinct sympathy.
Mrs. Shiffney looked slightly more cheerful. She enjoyed telling things
if the things were closely connected with herself.
"Well, I want to start for a cruise," she began. "I can't remain for
ever glued to Grosvenor Square. I must move about and see something."
She had just been for a month in Paris.
"Of course. What are we here for?" observed her husband.
"You always understand! Sit down, you old thing!"
Mr. Shiffney sat down, gently pulling up his trousers.
"And the row is," she continued, shaking her shoulders, "that I want
Claude Heath to come and he won't. And, since he won't, he's really the
only living man I want to have on the cruise."
"Who is he?" observed Mr. Shiffney. "I've never heard of him. Is he one
of your special pals?"
"Not yet. I met him at Max's. He's a composer, and I want to know what
he's like."
"I expect he's like all the rest."
"No, he isn't!" she observed decisively.
"Why won't he come? Perhaps he's a bad sailor."
"He didn't even trouble himself to say that. He was in such a hurry to
refuse that he didn't bother about an excuse. And this afternoon he
called, when I was in, and never asked for me, only left cards and
bolted, although I had been to his house to ask him to come on _The
Wanderer_."
"Afraid of you, is he?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. He's never been among _us_."
"Poor chap! But surely that's a reason for him to want to get in?"
"Wouldn't you think so? Wouldn't anyone think so? The way I'm bombarded!
But he seems only anxious to keep out of everything."
"A pose very likely."
"I don't believe it is."
"I leave it to you. No one sharper in London. Is he a gentleman--all
that sort of thing?"
"Oh, of course!"
Mr. Shiffney pulled up his trousers a little more, exposing a pair of
striped silk socks which emerged from shining boots protected by white
spats.
"To be sure. If he hadn't been he'd have jumped at you and _The
Wanderer_."
"Naturally. I shan't go at all now! What an unlucky woman I always am!"
"You never let anyone know it."
"Well, Jimmy, I'm not quite a fool. Be down on your luck and not a soul
will stay near you."
"I should think not. Why should they? One wants a bit of life, not to
hear people howling and groaning all about one. It's awful to be with
anyone who's under the weather."
"Ghastly! I can't stand it! But, all the same, it's a fearful _corvée_
to keep it up when you're persecuted as I am."
"Poor old Addie!"
Mr. Shiffney threw his cigar into the grate reflectively and lightly
touched his moustaches, which were turned upward, but not in a military
manner.
"Things never seem quite right for you," he continued.
"And other women have such a splendid time!" she exclaimed. "The
disgusting thing is that he goes all the while to Violet Mansfield."
"She's dull enough and quite old too."
"No, she isn't dull. You're wrong there."
"I daresay. She doesn't amuse me."
"She's not your sort."
"Too feverish, too keen, brainy in the wrong way. I like brains, mind
you, and I know where they are. But I don't see the fun of having them
jumped at one."
"He does, apparently, unless it's really Charmian."
"The girl? She's not bad. Wants to be much cleverer than she is, of
course, like pretty nearly all the girls, except the sporting lot; but
not bad."
"Jimmy"--Mrs. Shiffney's eyes began once more to look audacious--"shall
I ask Charmian Mansfield to come on the yacht?"
"You think that might bring him? Why not ask both of them?"
"No; I won't have the mother!"
"Why not?"
"Because I won't!"
"The best of reasons, too."
"You understand us better than any man in London."
She sat reflecting. She was beginning to look quite cheerful.
"It would be rather fun," she resumed, after a minute. "Charmian
Mansfield, Max--if he can get away--Paul Lane. It isn't the party I'd
thought of, but still--"
"Which of them were you going to take?"
"Never mind."
"I don't. And where did you mean to go?"
"I told him to the Mediterranean."
"But it wasn't!"
"Oh, I don't know! Where can one go? That's another thing. It's always
the same old places, unless one has months to spare, and then one gets
bored with the people one's asked. Things are so difficult."
"One place is very much like another."
"To you. But I always hope for an adventure round the corner."
"I've been round a lot of corners in my time, but I might almost as well
have stuck to the club."
"Of course _you_ might!"
She got up.
"I must think about Charmian," she said, as she went casually out of the
room.
Mrs. Shiffney turned the new idea over and over in her restless mind,
which was always at work in a desultory but often clever way. She could
not help being clever. She had never studied, never applied herself,
never consciously tried to master anything, but she was quick-witted,
had always lived among brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen
everything, been everywhere, known everyone, looked into all the books
that had been talked about, cast at least a glance at all the pictures
which had made any stir. And she gathered impressions swiftly, and,
moreover, had a natural flair for all that was first-rate, original, or
strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own
line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon
became liked in London and Paris throughout a large circle.
Unfortunately, she was changeable and apt to be governed by personal
feeling in matters connected with art. When she cast away an artist she
generally cast away his art with him. If it was first-rate she did not
condemn it as bad. She contented herself with saying that she was "sick
of it." And very soon a great many of her friends, and their friends,
were sick of it, too. She was a quicksand because she was a singularly
complete egoist. But very few people who met her failed to come under
the spell of her careless charm, and many, because she had much impulse,
swore that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally,
in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly,
did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her
gaiety and _joie de vivre_ and for the energy with which she pursued
enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned.
She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. With her time
she was less generous. She was not of those who are charitable with
their golden hours. "I can't be bothered!" was the motto of her life.
And wise people did not bother her.
She had seen that, for a moment, Claude Heath had been tempted by the
invitation to the cruise. A sudden light had gleamed in his eyes, and
her swift apprehension had gathered something of what was passing in his
imagination. But almost immediately the light had vanished and the quick
refusal had come. And she knew that it was a refusal which she could not
persuade him to cancel unless she called someone to her assistance. His
austerity, which attracted her whimsical and unscrupulous nature, fought
something else in him and conquered. But the something else, if it could
be revived, given new strength, would make a cruise with him, even to
all the old places, quite interesting, Mrs. Shiffney thought. And any
refusal always made her greedy and obstinate. "I _will_ have it!" was
the natural reply of her nature to any "You can't have it!"
She often acted impulsively, hurried by caprices and desires, and that
same evening she sent the following note to Charmian:
GROSVENOR SQUARE,
_Thursday._
DEAR CHARMIAN,--You've never been on the yacht, though
I've always been dying to have you come. I've been glued to London
for quite a time, and am getting sick of it. Aren't you? Always the
same things and people. I feel I must run away if I can get up a
pleasant party to elope with me. Will you be one? I thought of
starting some time next month on _The Wanderer_ for a cruise, to
the Mediterranean or somewhere. I don't know yet who'll tuck in,
but I shall take Susan Fleet to play chaperon to us and the crew
and manage things. Max Elliot may come, and I thought of trying to
get your friend, Mr. Heath, though I hardly know him. I think he
works too hard, and a breeze might do him good. However, it's all
in the air. Tell me what you think about it. Love to the beautiful
mother.--In tearing haste, Yours,
ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY.
"Why has she asked me?" said Charmian to herself, laying this note down
after reading it twice.
She had always known Mrs. Shiffney, but she had never before been asked
to go on a cruise in the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had always called her
Charmian, as she called Mrs. Mansfield Violet. But there had never been
even a hint of genuine intimacy between the girl and the married woman,
and they seldom met except in society, and then only spoke a few casual
and unmeaning words. They had little in common, Charmian supposed,
except their mutual knowledge of quantities of people and of a certain
social life.
Claude Heath on _The Wanderer_!
Charmian took the note to her mother.
"Mrs. Shiffney has suddenly taken a fancy to me, Madretta," she said.
"Look at this!"
Mrs. Mansfield read the note and gave it back.
"Do you want to go?" she asked, looking at the girl, not without a still
curiosity.
Charmian twisted her lips.
"I don't know. You see, it's all very vague. I should like to be sure
who's going. I think it's very reckless to take any chances on a yacht."
"Claude Heath isn't going."
Charmian raised her eyebrows.
"But has she asked him?"
"Yes. And he's refused. He told me so on Monday."
"You're quite sure he won't go?"
"He said he wasn't going."
Charmian looked lightly doubtful.
"Shall I go?" she said. "Would you mind if I did?"
"Do you really want to?"
"I don't think I care much either way. Why has she asked me?"
"Adelaide? I daresay she likes you. And you wouldn't be unpleasant on a
yacht, would you?"
"That depends, I expect. You'd allow me to go?"
"If I knew who the rest of the party were to be--definitely."
"I won't answer till to-morrow."
Mrs. Mansfield did not feel sure what was Charmian's desire in the
matter. She did not quite understand her child. She wondered, too, why
Mrs. Shiffney had asked Charmian to go on the yacht, why she implied
that Claude Heath might make one of the party when he had refused to go.
It occurred to Mrs. Mansfield that Adelaide might mean to use Charmian
as a lure to draw Heath into the expedition. But, if so, surely she
quite misunderstood the acquaintanceship between them. Heath was
her--Mrs. Mansfield's--friend. How often she had wished that Charmian
and he were more at ease together, liked each other better. It was odd
that Adelaide should fall into such a mistake. And yet what other
meaning could her note have? She wrote as if the question of Heath's
going or not were undecided.
Was it undecided? Did Adelaide, with her piercing and clever eyes, see
more clearly into Heath's nature than Mrs. Mansfield could?
Mrs. Shiffney had an extraordinary capacity for getting what she wanted.
The hidden tragedy of her existence was that she was never satisfied
with what she got. She wanted to draw Claude Heath out of his retirement
into the big current of life by which she and her friends were buoyantly
carried along through changing and brilliant scenes. His refusal had no
doubt hardened a mere caprice into a strong desire. Mrs. Mansfield
realized that Adelaide would not leave Heath alone now. The note to
Charmian showed an intention not abandoned. But why should Adelaide
suppose that Heath's acceptance might be dependent on anything done by
Charmian?
Mrs. Mansfield knew well, and respected, Mrs. Shiffney's haphazard
cleverness, which, in matters connected with the worldly life, sometimes
almost amounted to genius. That note to Charmian gave a new direction to
her thoughts, set certain subtleties of the past which had vaguely
troubled her in a new and stronger light. She awaited, with an interest
that was not wholly pleasant, Charmian's decision of the morrow.
Charmian had been very casual in manner when she came to her mother with
the surprising invitation. She was almost as casual on the following
morning when she entered the dining-room where Mrs. Mansfield was
breakfasting by electric light. For a gloom as of night hung over the
Square, although it was ten o'clock.
"Have you been thinking it over, Charmian?" said her mother, as the girl
sat languidly down.
"Yes, mother--lazily."
She sipped her tea, looking straight before her with a cold and dreamy
expression.
"Have you been active enough to arrive at any conclusion?"
"I got up quite undecided, but now I think I'll say 'Yes,' if you don't
mind. When I looked out of the window this morning I felt as if the
Mediterranean would be nicer than this. There's only one thing--why
don't you come, too?"
"I haven't been asked."
"And why not?"
"Adelaide's too modern to ask mothers and daughters together," said Mrs.
Mansfield, smiling.
"Would you go if she asked you?"
"No. Well, now the thing is to find out what the party is to be. Write
the truth, and say you'll go if I know who's to be there and allow you
to go. Adelaide knows quite well she has lots of friends I shouldn't
care for you to yacht with. And it's much better to be quite frank about
it. If Susan Fleet and Max go, you can go."
"I believe you are really the frankest person in London. And yet people
love you--miracle-working mother!"
Charmian turned the conversation to other subjects and seemed to forget
all about _The Wanderer_. But when breakfast was over, and she was alone
before her little Chippendale writing-table, she let herself go to her
excitement. Although she loved, even adored her mother, she sometimes
acted to her. To do so was natural to Charmian. It did not imply any
diminution of love or any distrust. It was but an instinctive assertion
of a not at all uncommon type of temperament. The coldness and the
dreaminess were gone now, but her excitement was mingled with a great
uncertainty.
On receiving Mrs. Shiffney's note Charmian had almost instantly
understood why she had been asked on the cruise. Her instinct had told
her, for she had at that time known nothing of Heath's refusal. She had
supposed that he had not yet been invited. Mrs. Shiffney had invited her
not for herself, but as a means of getting hold of Heath. Charmian was
positive of that. Months ago, in Max Elliot's music-room, the girl had
divined the impression made by Heath on Mrs. Shiffney, had seen the
restless curiosity awake in the older woman. She had even noticed the
tightening of Mrs. Shiffney's lips when she, Charmian, had taken Heath
away from the little group by the fire, with that "when you've quite
done with my only mother," which had been a tiny slap given to Mrs.
Shiffney. And she had been sure that Mrs. Shiffney meant to know Heath.
She had a great opinion of Mrs. Shiffney's social cleverness and
audacity. Most girls who were much in London society had. She did not
really like Mrs. Shiffney, or want to be intimate with her, but she
thoroughly believed in her flair, and that was why the note had stirred
in Charmian excitement and uncertainty. If Mrs. Shiffney thought she
saw something, surely it was there. She would not take shadow for
substance.
But might she not fire a shot in the dark on the chance of hitting
something?
"Why did she ask me instead of mother?" Charmian said to herself again
and again. "If she had got mother to go Claude Heath would surely have
gone. Why should he go because I go?"
And then came the thought, "She thinks he may, perhaps thinks he will.
Will he? Will he?"
The note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it
came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even
despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost
reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs.
Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the
party. And then what would Heath do?
As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs.
Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right."
She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned
herself to a period of patience.
CHAPTER VI
By return there came a note hastily scribbled:
"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.--A.
S."
But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing
more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother,
who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they
never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and
then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them.
Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in,
composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house,
and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a
conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he
disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push
everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one
afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional
acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or
three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came
into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.
"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.
He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by
playing before sitting down to work.
"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard
you playing, and knew you were in."
"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"
"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."
Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out
at the piano.
"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.
"In the drawing-room, sir."
"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."
He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely
ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it,
looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon
him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world
with which he had nothing to do.
"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with
a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."
Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly
stiff.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and--"
He touched her powerful hand.
"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too
bad of me."
He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man
as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her.
Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position,
her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified?
No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally.
He felt savage, but he felt flattered.
"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.
Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered
chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.
"May I give you some tea?"
Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she
regarded him as a boy.
"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."
"But really, I am--"
"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I
know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."
"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with
sudden reserve.
"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little
room! But you never sit in it."
"Not often."
"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."
There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.
"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said.
"It's about the yacht."
"I'm really so very sorry that--"
"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that
I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate
the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may
think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."
"I am tempted."
"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel
just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet--she's a sort of
chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course--Max
Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps--if he can't come some charming man whom you'd
delight in--and Charmian Mansfield."
Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:
"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."
"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."
"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."
"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over
to Sicily and Tunis."
She saw his eyes beginning to shine.
"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's
rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could
leave the yacht at Alexandria--"
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid
cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."
"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are
not to enjoy life!"
"It isn't that at all."
"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought
artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the
whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I
suppose _English_ artists are different. I often wonder whether they are
wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the
Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in
Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do
forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know
it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the
Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."
She laughed and moved her shoulders.
"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in
the stream of life."
"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are
foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.
She saw anger in his eyes.
"Perhaps you are getting something--some sacred cantata--ready for one
of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you
mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands or Tunis.
Besides, you'd get all the wrong sort of inspiration in such places. I
shall never forget the beautiful impression I received at--was it
Worcester?--once when I saw an English audience staggering slowly to its
feet in tribute to the Hallelujah Chorus. I am sure you are writing
something that will bring Worcester to its feet, aren't you?"
He forced a very mirthless laugh.
"I'm really not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us
talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I
feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I
can't accept it, unfortunately for me."
"_Mal-au-coeur?_"
"Yes, yes. I don't think I'm a good sailor."
"_Mal-au-coeur!_" she repeated, smiling satirically at him.
"I'm in the midst of something."
"The Puritan tradition?"
"Perhaps it is that. Whatever it is, I suppose it suits me; it's in my
line, so I had better stick to it."
"You are bathing in the Ganges?"
Her eyes were fixed upon him.
"Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?"
Claude looked down.
"I must leave that to you. I am sure you will have a very delightful
party."
Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was looking the soul of careless good-nature,
and quite irresistible, though very Roman.
"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a
solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll
give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on
Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No
berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot,
Paul Lane, and you--I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to
me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really,
though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get
one!"
Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but
something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just
then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of
the world. As she got into her motor she said:
"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"
The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She
was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He
went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried
to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in
life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the
spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at
least with ardor--a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly,
absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction
had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive.
Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffney thought
of him? But there was within him--and he knew it--a surely weak
inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he
was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature
side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be
what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept
him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left
the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening
darkness.
He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.
How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her
persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential
position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown
man, and she had troops of friends, battalions of acquaintances. She
could get anyone she liked to go on the yacht, and she wanted him. It
was flattering to his masculine vanity. He felt that there was something
in him which stretched out and caught at people, without intention on
his part, which grasped and held them. It was not his talent, he told
himself, for he kept that in the dark. It was himself. Although he was
less conceited than the average Englishman of talent, for a few minutes
he braced his legs and had the cordial conquering sensation.
He had till Sunday to decide.
How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs.
Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was
really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused
again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any
woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or
impolite.
What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which
kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the
great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a
coward, a rejector of life's offerings.
Well, he had till Sunday.
Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were
Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in
the great world. They were very clannish, were quite satisfied with
their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to
share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber.
Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were,
to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The
Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented
without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart
from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from
them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of
them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt
that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what
satisfied them.
Although he had lived for some years in London he had never tried, or
even thought of trying, to push his way into what are called "the inner
circles." He had assiduously cultivated his musical talent, but never
with a view to using it as a means of opening shut doors. He knew
comparatively few people, and scarcely any who were "in the swim," who
were written of in social columns, whose names were on the lips of the
journalists and of the world. He never thought about his social position
as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did
not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the
obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to
climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of
ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination
toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the
Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had been
happy enough in his sheltered and perhaps rather selfish existence.
Dwelling in the center of a great struggle for life, he had enjoyed it
because he had had nothing to do with it. His own calm had been
agreeably accentuated by the turmoil which surrounded and enclosed it.
How many times had he blessed his thousand a year, that armor of gold
with which fate had provided him! How often had he imagined himself
stripped of it, realized mentally the sudden and fierce alteration in
his life and eventually, no doubt, in himself that must follow if
poverty came!
He had a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies,
the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and
terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical
education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great
talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts
labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the
tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the
will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the
stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened
instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because
artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers,
conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that
should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a
cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with
the torn feathers of the fallen.
The many books which he had read dealing with the lives of great
artists, sometimes their own autobiographies, had only confirmed him in
his wish to keep out of the struggle. Such books, deeply interesting
though they were, often made him feel almost sick at heart. As he read
them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime.
Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions
only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And
angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed
born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as
the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions
which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.
He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently
humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the
fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.
But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of
strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the
physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any
combat.
Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which had driven Claude
forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the
London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him
instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he
dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster
with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the
voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a
groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to
scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to
rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant
temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the
yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own
safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about
Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his
armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take
him on its current whither it would?
He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he
might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He
fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted,
which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of
this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs.
Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it,
though something else in him disliked, despised, almost dreaded it.
He had answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs.
Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he
read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now
felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her
he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were
transparent. And she had evidently seen something he had supposed to be
hidden, something he wished were not in existence.
Her remarks about English musicians, her banter about the provincial
festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to
him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain
so because of his way of life!
Abruptly he became solicitous of opinion. He thought of Mrs. Mansfield,
and wondered what had been her opinion of his music. Almost mechanically
he crossed the broad road by the Marble Arch, turned into the windings
of Mayfair, and made his way to Berkeley Square.
"I'll ask her. I'll find out!" was his thought.
He rang Mrs. Mansfield's bell.
"Is Mrs. Mansfield at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is she alone?"
"Yes, sir."
Heath stepped in quickly. He still felt excited, uncertain of himself,
even self-conscious under the eyes of the butler. There was no one in
the drawing-room. As he waited he wondered whether Charmian was in the
house, whether he would see her. And now, for the first time, he began
to wonder also why Mrs. Shiffney had made so much of the fact that
Charmian was to be on the yacht. He recalled her words, "Poor Charmian
Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?" Had he been asked on Charmian's
account? That seemed to him very absurd. She certainly disliked him.
They were not en rapport. In the yacht they would be thrown together
incessantly. He thought of the expression in Mrs. Shiffney's eyes and
felt positive that she had pressed him to come for herself. But possibly
she fancied he liked Charmian because he came so often to Berkeley
Square. The cleverest woman, it seemed, made mistakes. But he could not
quite understand Mrs. Shiffney's proceedings. If he did, after all, go
on the yacht it would be rather amusing to study her. And Charmian?
Heath said to himself that he did not want to study her. She was too
uncertain, not without a certain fascination perhaps, but too ironic,
too something. He scarcely knew what it was that he disliked, almost
dreaded, in her. She was mischievous at wrong moments. The minx peeped
up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and
did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite
at his ease.
The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and
took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he
usually did, and in need of a real friend.
"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.
"Why should it be anything special?"
"But it is!"
He laughed almost uneasily.
"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed.
"Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or
three things, if I may."
Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.
"Anything," she said.
"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other
evening? Did you--did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think
it"--he paused--"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.
"Provincial!"
Heath was answered, but he persisted.
"What did you think?"
"I thought it alarming."
"Alarming?"
"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."
"Disturbed your mind?"
"Or my heart, perhaps."
"But why? How?"
"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."
Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt
very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had
moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he
were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to
conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and
despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner
was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be
reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who
had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought,
what anyone thought of his music.
"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.
"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.
"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"
"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon
me."
"It did really make a strong impression?"
"Very strong."
"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking
care of?"
"I am sure you have."
"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.
"Is that what you came to ask me?"
Her fiery eyes seemed to search him. She sat very still, looking
intensely alive.
"To-night I feel as if I didn't know, didn't know at all! You see, I
avoid so many things, so many experiences that I might have."
"Do you?"
"Yes. I think I've done that for years. I know I'm doing it now."
He moved restlessly.
"Mrs. Shiffney has asked me again to go yachting with her."
"But I thought you had refused."
"I did. But she has been again to-day. She says your daughter is going."
"Charmian has been asked."
"Mrs. Shiffney said she had accepted the invitation."
"Yes."
"And now I'm to give my answer on Sunday."
"You seem quite upset about it," she said, without sarcasm.
"Of course it seems a small matter. People would laugh at me, I know,
for worrying. But what I feel is that if I go with Mrs. Shiffney, or go
to Max Elliot's parties, I shall very soon be drawn into a life quite
different from the one I have always led. And I do think it matters very
much to--to some people just how they live, whom they know well, and so
on. Men say, of course, that a man ought to face the rough and tumble of
life. And some women say a man ought to welcome every experience. I
wonder what the truth is?"
Still with her eyes on him, Mrs. Mansfield said:
"Follow your instinct."
"Can't one have conflicting instincts?"
"Oh, no!"
"Then one's instinct may not be strong enough to make itself known."
"I doubt that."
"But I am a man, you a woman. Women are said to have stronger instincts
than men."
"Aren't you playing with your own convictions?"
"Am I?"
He stared at her, but for a moment his eyes looked unconscious of her.
"Mrs. Shiffney said something to me that struck me," he said presently.
"She implied that experiences of all kinds are the necessary food for
anyone who wishes to be at all a big artist. She evidently thinks that
England has failed to produce great musicians because the English are
hampered by tradition."
"She thinks uncleanliness necessary to the producing of beauty perhaps!"
"Ah, I believe you have put into words what I have been thinking!"
"Is it wisdom to grope for stars in the mud?"
"No, no! It can't be!"
He was silent. Then he said:
"St Augustine, and many others, went through mud to the stars though."
"St. Francis didn't--if we are to talk of the saints."
"I believe you could guide me."
Mrs. Mansfield looked deeply touched. For an instant tears glistened in
her eyes. Nevertheless, her next remark was almost sternly
uncompromising.
"Even if I could, don't let me."
"Why?"
"I want the composer of the music I heard at the little house to be very
strong in every way. No, no; I am not going to try to guide you, my
friend!"
There was a sound in her voice as if she were speaking to herself.
"I never met anyone so capable of comradeship--no woman, I mean--as
you."
"That's a compliment I like!"
At this moment the door opened and Charmian came in, wrapped in furs,
her face covered by a veil. When she saw Heath with her mother she
pushed the veil up rather languidly.
"Oh, Mr. Heath! We haven't seen you for ages. What have you been about?"
"Nothing in particular."
"Haven't you?"
"Take off that thick coat, Charmian, and come and talk to us."
"Shall I?"
She unbuttoned the fur slowly. Claude helped her to take it off. As she
emerged he thought, "How slim she is!" He had often before looked at
girls and wondered at their slimness, and thought that it seemed part of
their mystery. It both attracted and repelled him.
"Are you talking of very interesting things?" she asked, coming toward
the fire.
"I hear you are going for a cruise with Mrs. Shiffney," said Claude,
uneasily.
"I believe I am. It would be rather nice to get out of this weather. But
you don't mind it."
"How can you know that?"
"It's very simple, almost as simple as some of Sherlock Holmes's
deductions. You have refused the cruise which I have accepted. I expect
you were right. No doubt one might get terribly bored on a yacht, unable
to get away from people. I almost wonder that I dared to say 'Yes!'"
"Where are you going to sit, Charmian?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
"Dearest mother, I'm afraid I must go upstairs. I've got to try on coats
and skirts."
She turned toward Heath.
"The voyage, you know. I wish you could have come!"
She held out her thin hand, smiling. She was looking very serene, very
sure of herself.
"I'm to answer Mrs. Shiffney on Sunday," said Heath abruptly.
Something in Charmian's voice and manner had made him feel defiant.
"Oh, I thought you had answered! Is Sunday your day for making up your
mind?"
Before he could reply she went out of the room slowly, smiling.
CHAPTER VII
On the following Sunday night at ten o'clock Max Elliot gave one of his
musical parties.
Delia had long since emerged from her rest cure, but was still suffering
severely from its after-effects. It had completely broken her down, poor
thing. The large quantities of "Marella" which she had imbibed had
poisoned the system. The Swedish massage had made her bulky. And the
prohibition as to letters had so severely shaken her nerve ganglions
that she had been forced to seek the strengthening air of an expensive
Swiss altitude, from which she had only just returned by way of Paris,
where she had been nearly finished off by the dressmakers. However,
being a woman of courage, she was down in peach color, with a pale
turquoise-blue waist-belt, to receive her guests and to help to make
things cheery. And she devoured condolences with an excellent appetite.
"Whatever you do, never touch 'Marella'!" she was saying in her quick,
light voice as Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian came into the music-room.
"It's poison. It turns everything to I forget what, but something that
develops the microbes instead of destroying them. I nearly died of it.
Ah, Violet! Don't let Charmian be massaged by a Swede. It will ruin her
figure. I've had to starve in Switzerland, or I couldn't have got into
any of my new gowns. There's nothing so fatal as a rest cure. It sets
every nerve on edge. The terrible monotony, and not knowing whether
those one loves are alive or dead, whether the Government's gone out, or
if there's a new King, or anything. Quite unnatural! It unfits one to
face life and cope with one's friends. But Max would make me. Dear old
Max! He's such a faddist. Men are the real faddists. I'll tell you about
a marvellous new Arab remedy presently. I heard about it in Paris. We
are going to have a lot of music in a minute. Yes, yes!"
She spoke rapidly, looking about the room and seldom hearing what was
said to her. Perpetual society had destroyed in her all continuity of
mind. Ever since she could remember she had forgotten how to listen. She
wanted to see, hear, know everybody, everything. Her mind hovered on the
horizon, her restless and pale-blue eyes sought the farthest corners of
the chamber to see what was happening in them, while she spoke to those
within a foot or two of her. She laughed at jokes she did not catch or
want to catch. She replied to questions she had divined by the
expression on a face while she was glancing over the head it belonged
to. She asked for information and travelled away ere it was given. Yet
many people liked her. She was one of those very fair and small women
who always look years younger than almost anyone really is, was full of
vague charm, was kind, not stupid, and a good little thing, had two
children and was only concentrated when at the dressmaker's or trying on
hats.
Max was devoted to her and rejoiced in spoiling her. He was one of those
men who like to have a butterfly in the room with them.
Mrs. Mansfield never tried to talk to Delia in a crowd, and she and
Charmian went on into the big room. It was already full of people, many
of whom were sitting on chairs grouped about the dais on which was the
piano, while others stood about, and still others looked down upon the
throng from recessed balconies, gained from a hidden corridor with which
the main staircase of the house communicated.
Charmian saw Mrs. Shiffney not far off, talking and laughing with a
great portrait painter, who looked like a burly farmer, and with a
renowned operatic baritone, whose voice had left him in the prime of his
life and who now gave singing lessons, and tried to fight down the
genius which was in him and to which he could no longer give expression.
He had a pale, large, and cruel face, and gray eyes that had become
sinister since the disaster which had overtaken him. Near this group
were three men, a musical critic, Paul Lane, and a famous English
composer, prop and stay of provincial festivals. The composer was
handsome, with merry eyes and a hearty laugh which seemed to proclaim
"Sanity! Sanity! Sanity! Don't be afraid of the composer!" The critic
was tall, gay, and energetic, and also looked--indeed, seemed to mean
to look--a thorough good fellow who had a hatred of shams. Lane, pale
and discontented, had an air of being out of place in their company.
Pretty women were everywhere, and there were many young and very smart
men. On a sofa close to Charmian a dégagée-looking Duchess was telling a
"darkie" story to a lively and debonair writer, who was finding his
story to cap it while he listened and smiled. Just beyond them were two
impertinent and picturesquely dressed girls, sisters, whom Charmian knew
intimately and met at almost every party she went to. One of them, who
wore gold laurel leaves in her dark hair, made a little face at
Charmian, which seemed to express a satirical welcome and the promise of
sarcasm when they should be near enough to talk. The other was being
prettily absurd with an excellent match. Close to the piano stood a very
beautiful woman dressed in black, without jewels or gloves, who had an
exquisite profile, hollow cheeks and haggard but lovely brown eyes. She
was talking to several people who were gathered about her, and never
smiled. It was impossible to imagine that she could ever smile. Her name
was Lady Mildred Burnington, and she was an admirable amateur violinist,
married to Admiral Sir Hilary Burnington, one of the Sea Lords. Max
Elliot was in the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of
musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Opéra Comique, stood by
him with her right hand on his arm, as if she wanted to interrupt him.
She was deathly pale, with hair like the night, ebon, and a face almost
as exaggeratedly expressive as a tragic pierrot's. People pointed her
out as Millie Deans, a Southern American never yet heard in London. She
spoke to Max Elliot, then looked round the room, with sultry, defiant
and yet anxious eyes.
As if in answer to Millie Deans's words, Max Elliot moved away with her,
and took her through the throng to Mrs. Shiffney, who turned round with
her movement of the shoulders as they came up. Charmian, watching, saw
Mrs. Shiffney's gay and careless smile, the piercing light in her eyes
as she looked swiftly at the singer, who faced her with a tragic and
determined expression. The portrait painter stood by, with his rather
protruding eyes fixed on Miss Deans.
As Charmian glanced round at the crowd and spoke to one person and
another she was seized again by her horror of being one of the unknown
lives. She saw many celebrities. She yearned to be numbered among them.
If she could even be as Mrs. Shiffney, an arbiter of taste, a setter of
fashions in admiration; if she could see people look at her, as Millie
Deans looked at Mrs. Shiffney, with the hard determination to win her
over to their side in the battle of art, she thought she could be happy.
But to be nobody, "that pretty little Charmian," "that graceful Charmian
Mansfield, but she's not half as clever as her mother"! To-night she
felt as if she could not bear it.
Mrs. Shiffney had turned away from the singer, and now her eyes rested
on Charmian. She nodded and smiled and made a beckoning motion with her
left hand. But at this moment a singer and composer, half Spanish, half
nobody knew what, who called himself Ferdinand Rades, sat down before
the piano with a lighted cigarette in his mouth and struck a few soft
chords, looking about him with a sort of sad and languid insolence and
frowning till his thick eyebrows came down to make a penthouse roof
above his jet black eyes.
"Hush--hush, please!" said Max Elliot, loudly. "'Sh--'sh--'sh! Monsieur
Rades is going to sing."
He bent to Rades.
"What is it? Monsieur Rades will sing _Le Moulin_, and _Le Retour de
Madame Blague_."
There was a ripple of applause, and Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way
to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at
Rades, who turned and stared at her. Then, taking the cigarette from his
mouth, he sang _Le Moulin_ at her, leaning back, swaying and moving his
thick eyebrows. It was a sad song, full of autumnal atmosphere, a
delicate and sensual caress of sorrow. The handsome composer and the
lusty musical critic listened to it, watched the singer with a sort of
bland contempt. But when he threw away his cigarette and sang _Le Retour
de Madame Blague_, an outrageous trifle, full of biting esprit and
insolent wit, with a refrain like the hum of Paris by night, and a long
_bouche fermée_ effect at the end, even they joined in the laughter and
the applause, though with a certain reluctance, as if, in doing so, they
half feared to descend into a gutter where slippery and slimy things
made their abode.
Mrs. Shiffney got up and begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning
several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently
boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time
she was speaking to him.
"_Non, non! Ce soir non! Impossible!_"
"Then sing _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!" she exclaimed at last.
And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "_Petite
Fille de Tombouctou_."
There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel
leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And
Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's
answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing. His
accompaniment was almost terribly rhythmical, with a suggestion of the
little drums that the black men love. She saw fierce red flowers while
he sang, strange alleys with houses like huts, trees standing stiffly in
a blaze of heat, sand, limbs the color of slate. The sound of the
curious voice had become Eastern, the look in the insolent black eyes
Eastern. There seemed to be an odd intoxication in the face, pale,
impassive, and unrighteous, as if the effects of a drug were beginning
to steal upon the senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently
upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so
little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when
the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept
for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that
seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the
provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the
room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing.
After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach's _Heart
Ever Faithful_. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan
Square.
"Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into
God's air now."
The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice
at the nets.
"Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end!
What a stroke of genius!"
Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach--in the supper
room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left
the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian
found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.
Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London. Their
father was a very rich iron-master, a self-made man, who had been
created a Baronet and had married an ultra-aristocratic woman, the
beautiful Miss Enid Blensover, related to half the Peerage. The blend
had resulted in the two girls, who were certainly anything rather than
ordinary. They were half Blensovers and half Drakes: delicate, languid,
hot-house plants; shrewd, almost coarse, and pushing growths, hardy and
bold, and inclined to be impudent. In appearance they resembled their
mother, and they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying
manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by
wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective.
But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to
opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for
himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of
half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their
mother nor they cared about anybody's private life or morals, provided
the sinner was celebrated, lovely, or amusing, they knew intimately,
even to calling by Christian names, all sorts of singers, actresses,
dancers, sculptors, writers, and painters, who were never received in
any sort of good society on the Continent or in America. London's
notorious carelessness in such matters was led gaily by their mother and
by them. Their house in Park Lane was popularly known as "the ragbag,"
and they were perpetually under the spell of some rage of the moment.
Now they were twin Bacchantes, influenced by a Siberian dancer at the
Palace; now curiously Eastern, captured by a Nautch girl whom they had
come to know in Paris. For a time they were Japanese, when the
Criterion opened its doors to a passionate doll from Yokohama, who
became their bosom friend. Italy touched them with the lovely hands of
La Divina Carlotta, our lady of tears from a slum of Naples. The
Sicilians turned them to fire and the Swedish singers to snow. At this
moment Margot was inclined to be classic, caught by a plastic poseuse
from Athens, who, attired solely in gold-leaf, was giving exhibitions at
the Hippodrome to the despair of Mrs. Grundy. And Kit was waiting for a
new lead and marking time in the newest creations from Paris.
"Charmian, come and sit down for just a moment! Run away and play, Lord
Mark!"
"With whom?" said a handsome boy plaintively.
"With Jenny Smythe, with Lady Dolly, anyone who can play pretty. Come
back in ten minutes and I'll be bothered with you again--perhaps. Let's
sit here, Charmian. Wasn't the _Fille_ too perfect? But the Bach was
like the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. Max shouldn't have
allowed it. What do you think of my gold gown?"
"It's lovely!"
"The Greeks knew everything and we know nothing. This dress hangs in
such a calm way that one can't be anything but classic in it. Since I've
known the Persephone I've learnt how to live. You must go to the
Hippodrome. But what's all this about your going yachting with the
Adelaide and an extraordinary Cornish genius? What's the matter?"
The last words came out in a suddenly business-like and almost self-made
voice, and Margot's deep eyes, full hitherto of a conscious calm,
supposed to be Greek, abruptly darted questioning fires which might have
sprung from a modern hussy.
"D'you like him so much?" continued Margot, before Charmian had time to
answer.
"You're making a great mistake," said Charmian, with airy dignity. "I
was only surprised to hear that Claude Heath was coming. I didn't know
it. I understood he had refused to come. He always refuses everything.
How did you hear of him?"
"The Adelaide has been talking about him. She says he's a genius who
hates the evil world, and will only know her and your mother, and that
he's going with her and you and Max Elliot to the Greek Isles on one
condition--that nobody else is to be asked and that he is to be
introduced to no one. If it's really the Greek Isles, I think I ought to
be taken. I told the Adelaide so, but she said Claude Heath would rather
die than have a girl like me with him on the yacht."
"So he really has accepted?"
"Evidently. Now you don't look pleased."
"Mr. Heath's Madretta's friend, not mine," said Charmian.
"Really? Then your mother should go to Greece. Why did the Adelaide ask
you?"
"I can't imagine."
"Now, Charmian!"
"I assure you, Margot, I was amazed at being asked."
"But you accepted."
"I wanted to get out of this weather."
"With a Cornish genius?"
"Mr. Heath only looks at middle-aged married women," said Charmian. "I
think he has a horror of girls. He and I don't get on at all."
"What is he like?"
"Plain and gaunt."
"Is his music really so wonderful?"
"I've never heard a note of it."
"Hasn't your mother?"
With difficulty Charmian kept a displeased look out of her face as she
answered sweetly:
"Once, I think. But she has said very little about it."
At this moment the tragic mask of Miss Deans was seen in a doorway, and
Margot got up quickly.
"There's that darling Millie from Paris!"
"Who? Where?"
"Millie Deans, the only real actress on the operatic stage. Until you've
seen her in _Crêpe de Chine_ you've never seen opera as it ought to be.
Millie! Millie!"
She went rather aggressively toward Miss Deans, forgetting her calm gown
for the moment.
So Claude Heath had accepted. Charmian concluded this from Margot
Drake's remarks. No doubt Mrs. Shiffney had received his answer that
day. She loved giving people the impression that she was adventurous and
knew strange and wonderful beings who wouldn't know anyone else. So she
had not been able to keep silence about Claude Heath and the Greek
Isles. Charmian's heart bounded. The peculiar singing of Ferdinand
Rades, which had upon hearers much of the effect made upon readers by
the books of Pierre Loti, had excited and quickened her imagination.
Secretly Charmian was romantic, though she seldom seemed so. She longed
after wonders, and was dissatisfied with the usual. Yet she was capable
of expecting wonders to conform to a standard to which she was
accustomed. There was much conventionality in her, though she did not
know it. "The Brighton tradition" was not a mere phrase in her mother's
mouth. Laughingly said it contained, nevertheless, particles of truth.
But at this moment it seemed far away from Charmian, quite foreign to
her. The Greek Isles and--
Millie Deans had stepped upon the dais, accompanied by a very thin,
hectic French boy, who sat down at the piano. But she did not seem
inclined to sing. She looked round, glanced at the hectic boy, folded
her hands in front of her, and waited. Max Elliot approached with his
genial air and spoke to her. She answered, putting her dead-white face
close to his. He also looked round the room, then hurried out. There was
a pause.
"What is it?" people murmured, turning their heads.
Paul Lane bent down and said to the dégagée Duchess:
"She won't sing till Mr. Brett, of the opera, comes."
His lips curled in a sarcastic smile.
"What a fuss they all make about themselves!" returned the Duchess.
"It's a hard face."
"Millie's? She's in a violent temper. You'll see; until Mr. Brett comes
she won't open her mouth."
Miss Deans stood rigid, with her hands always crossed in front of her
and her eyes watching the door. The boy at the piano moved his hands
over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a
laugh, and Mrs. Shiffney came carelessly in with Rades, followed by a
small, stout man, Mr. Brett, and Max Elliot. When he saw Miss Deans the
stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney
to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door.
Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to
Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking
sensitive. Mr. Brett leaned against the wall looking critical.
Charmian was in one of the balconies now with a young man. She saw her
mother opposite to her with Sir Hilary Burnington, looking down on the
singer and the crowd, and she thought her mother must have heard
something very sad. Millie Deans sang an aria of Mozart in a fine,
steady, and warm soprano voice. Then she sang two _morceaux_ from the
filmy opera, _Crêpe de Chine_, by a young Frenchman, which she had
helped to make the rage of Paris. Her eyes were often on Mr. Brett,
commanding him to be favorable, yet pleading with him too.
As Mrs. Mansfield looked down she was feeling sad. The crowded room
beneath her was a small epitome of the world to which talent and genius
are flung, to be kissed or torn to pieces, perhaps to be kissed then
torn to pieces. And too often the listeners felt that they were superior
to those they listened to, because to them an appeal was made, because
they were in the position of judges. "Do we like her? Shall we take
her?" Many faces expressed such questions as this strange-looking woman
sang. "What does Mr. Brett think of her?" and eyes turned toward the
stout man leaning against the wall.
Did not Claude Heath do well to keep out of it all?
The question passed through Mrs. Mansfield's mind as she felt the
humiliation of the yoke which the world fastens on the artist's neck.
She had come to care for Heath almost a little jealously, but quite
unselfishly. She was able to care unselfishly, because she had given all
of herself that was passionate long ago to the man who was dead. Never
again could she be in love. Never again could she desire the closest
relation woman can be in with man. But she felt protective toward Heath.
She had the strong instinct, to shelter his young austerity, his
curious talent, his reserve, and his sensitiveness. And she was thinking
now, "If he goes yachting with Adelaide! If he allows Max to exploit
him! If he becomes known, perhaps the fashion, even the rage! And if
they get sick of him?" Yet what is talent for? Why is it given to any
man? Surely to be used, displayed, bestowed.
There was a hard and cruel expression on many of the listening faces
below. Singers were there, appraising; professional critics coldly
judging, jaded, sated, because they had heard too much of the wonderful
sounds of the world; men like Paul Lane, by temperament inclined to
sneer and condemn; women who loved to be in camps and whose idea of
setting an artist on high was to tear all other artists down.
Battlefields! Battlefields! Mrs. Mansfield was painfully conscious that
the last thing to be found in any circle of life is peace. Too often
there was poison in the cup which the artist had to drink. Too often to
attract the gaze of the world was to attract and concentrate many of the
floating hatreds of the world. The little old house near Petersburg
Place was a quiet refuge. Mrs. Searle, a kindly dragon, kept the door.
Yellow-haired Fan was the fairy within. The faded curtains of orange
color shut out very much that was black and horrid. And there the Kings
of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a
dead man.
"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.
He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog,
looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be
detached.
"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."
"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."
The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished
violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.
"Don't you?"
"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."
"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musical critic
standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."
"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice
and the--the what you may call it all wrong."
"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and
shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."
"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.
"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic,
puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.
"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.
"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a
forced-up mezzo."
Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:
"Charming! No, I haven't heard _Crêpe de Chine_. I don't care much for
Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really
going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us
_Enigme_." Mr. Brett had disappeared.
"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie
Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began _Enigme_ in his
most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris
that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a _diseur_. No one would
dream of putting him in a programme with me."
"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my
programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention--"
"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose
education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a
very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you
all here, is as ignorant of music as--as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I
say!"
"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You
will come back, you--"
"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in
his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"
At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric
brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.
Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness.
Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss
Deans did not appeal to him.
"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.
And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a
similar ennui when the American was singing.
"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who,
with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of
Miss Deans.
And again her mind went to Claude Heath.
"Better to keep out of it! Better to keep out of it!" a voice said
within her.
And apparently Heath was of one mind with her on this matter.
As Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian were going away they met Mrs. Shiffney in
the hall with Ferdinand, who was holding her cloak.
"Oh, Charmian!" she said, turning quickly, with the cloak over one of
her broad shoulders. "I heard from Claude Heath to-day."
"Did you?" said Charmian languidly, looking about her at the crowd.
"Yes. He can't come. His mother's got a cold and he doesn't like to
leave her, or something. And he's working very hard on a composition
that nobody is ever to hear. And--I forget what else. But there were
four sides of excuses."
She laughed.
"Poor boy! He hasn't much savoir-faire. Good-night! I'll let you know
when we start."
Her eyes pierced Charmian.
"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden
on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."
That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the
door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:
"If only Rades had not sung _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!"
That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would
never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such
music was cruel when life went wrong.
"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.
Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that
from the first she had hated Claude Heath.
CHAPTER VIII
A fortnight later _The Wanderer_ lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers.
But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney,
Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred
Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over
to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at
the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur.
Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough,
and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got
out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently,
volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great
many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one
else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.
Nevertheless, though she wanted to see Bou-Saada, she was reconciled to
her lot. She liked Charmian very well, though she knew her very little.
And she had the great advantage in life--so, at least, she considered
it--of being a theosophist.
Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again
_Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ she had felt she must get out of Europe, if
only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian
would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's
refusal to go. A run over to Algiers was nothing. They could be back in
England in two or three weeks. So _The Wanderer_ had gone round to
Marseilles, and the party of six had come out by train to meet her
there.
Susan Fleet was one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt
to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had
not married, and at the age of forty-nine and nine months she was
sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some
people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance
was the wearing of white gloves which fitted her hands perfectly. Her
collars were immaculate, and she always looked almost startlingly neat.
All her dresses were "off the ground." In appearance she was plain, but
she was not ugly. She had a fairly good nose and mouth, but they were
never admired, thick brown hair which no one ever noticed, and a
passable complexion. Her eyes were her worst feature. They looked as if
they were loose in her head and might easily drop out, and they were
rather glazed than luminous, and were indefinite in color. But they were
eyes which reassured doubtful people, eyes which could be, and were,
trusted "on sight," eyes which had seen a good deal but which could
never take nastiness into the soul to its harming. Her father was dead,
and she had a mother who, at the age of sixty-seven--she had really been
married at sixteen--was living as companion at Folkestone with an old
lady of eighty-two.
Susan Fleet was one of those absolutely unsycophantic and naturally
well-bred persons who are often liked by those "at the top of the tree,"
and who sometimes, without beauty, great talent, money, or other worldly
advantages, and without any thought of striving, achieve "positions"
which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was
liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about,
had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just
herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from
every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many
said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She
possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a
snob, and she was completely ignorant of possessing it. Mrs. Shiffney
and various other very rich women could not do without Susan. Unlike her
mother, she had no permanent post. But she was always being "wanted,"
and was well paid, not always in money only, for the excellent services
she was able to render. She never made any secret of her poverty, though
she never put it forward, and it was understood by everyone that she
had to earn her own living. Many years ago she had qualified to do this
by mastering various homely accomplishments. She was a competent
accountant, an excellent typewriter, a lucid writer of letters, knew how
to manage servants, and was a mistress of the art of travelling. When
looking out trains she never made a mistake. She was never sea or train
sick, never lost her temper or her own or other people's luggage, had a
perfect sense of time without being aggressively punctual, and seemed
totally unaffected by changes of climate. And she knew nothing about the
meaning of the word shyness.
When the big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian
suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation--alone above
Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed
like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney
always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when the yacht was
in harbor, "to make a change." It was full of English and Americans, but
they knew nobody, and, having two sitting-rooms, had no reason to seek
public rooms where acquaintances are made. Charmian wondered how long
Mrs. Shiffney would stay at Bou-Saada.
"Back to-morrow!" she had said airily as she waved her hand. The
assertion meant next week if only she were sufficiently amused.
Charmian had been really stricken on the stormy voyage, and still had a
sensation of oppression in the head, of vagueness, of smallness, and of
general degradation. She felt also terribly depressed, like one under
sentence not of death, but of something very disagreeable. And when
Susan Fleet said to her in a chest voice, "Do you want to do anything
this afternoon?" she answered:
"I'll keep quiet to-day. I'll sit in the garden. But, please, don't
bother about me."
"I'll come and sit in the garden, too," said Miss Fleet in a calm and
business-like manner.
Charmian thought she was going to add, "And bring my work with me." But
she did not.
On the first terrace there were several people in long chairs looking
lazy; women with picture papers, men smoking, old buffers talking about
politics and Arabs. Charmian glanced at them and instinctively went on,
descending toward a quieter part of the prettily and cleverly arranged
garden. The weather was beautiful, warm, but not sultry. Already she was
conscious of a feeling of greater ease.
"Shall we sit here?" she said, pointing to two chairs under some palm
trees by a little table.
"Yes. Why not?" returned Susan Fleet.
They sat down.
"Do you feel better?" asked Susan.
"I shall."
"It must be dreadful being ill at sea. I never am."
"And you have travelled a great deal, haven't you?"
"Yes, I have. I often go with Adelaide. Once we went to India."
"Was it there you became a Theosophist?"
"That had something to do with it, I suppose. When we were at Benares
Adelaide thought she would like to live there. The day after she thought
so she found we must go away."
Miss Fleet carefully peeled off her white gloves and leaned back. Her
odd eyes seemed to drop in their sockets, as if they were trying to
tumble out.
"Isn't it--" Charmian began, and stopped abruptly.
"Yes?"
"I don't know what I was going to say."
"Perhaps a great bore not to be one's own mistress?" suggested Miss
Fleet, composedly.
"Something of that sort perhaps."
"Oh, no! I'm accustomed to it. Freedom is a phrase. I'm quite as free as
Adelaide. It's usually a great mistake to pity servants."
"And oneself? I suppose you would say it was a great mistake to pity
oneself?"
"I never do it," replied Miss Fleet.
She had charming hands. One of them lay on the little table with a beam
of the sun on it.
"Perhaps you haven't great desires? Perhaps you don't want many
things?"
"I suppose I've been like most women in that respect. But I shall be
fifty almost directly."
"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment.
"No, it isn't."
"Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled.
"It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it
quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of
course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday."
Charmian put her chin in her hand.
"How did you know what I thought?"
"A girl of your age would be almost certain to think something of that
kind."
"Yes, I suppose so."
Charmian sighed, and then suddenly felt rather angry, and lifted her
chin.
"But surely I need not be exactly like every other girl of twenty-one!"
she exclaimed, with much more vivacity.
"You aren't. No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a
moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a
_vieille fille_ who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man
who didn't want to marry her."
Miss Fleet was smiling.
"But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think
men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad."
"How calm you are!"
"Why not?"
"I could never be like that."
"Perhaps when you are fifty."
"Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of
caution very rare in her.
"I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty."
Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was
entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had
principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed
in a religion--the Protestant religion it happened to be. And yet--yes,
certainly--she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even
felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything
else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To
"go on" at all, ever--how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some
minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair.
An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a
motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden.
The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where _The
Wanderer_ lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going
to be here again?"
"Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it
for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her
chair.
"I did once."
"Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you
have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or
two?"
"I can't say I do."
"I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies."
"I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance.
"I--I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said
Charmian.
"I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on
board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear
old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time."
One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary!
And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan
Fleet?
"And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm
lucky."
"I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian.
"Yes?"
"To be as you are."
After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was going to be
fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the
following afternoon.
"I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better
we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are
several that are beautiful."
Quite eagerly Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry
that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly
now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last
frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion.
Algiers affected her somewhat as the _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ had
affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it
to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude
Heath. What a lie that had been before the mirror after Max Elliot's
party. How dreadful it was to walk in these exquisite and tropical
gardens, to stand upon these terraces, to wander over these marble
pavements and beneath these tiled colonnades, to hear these fountains
singing under orange trees, to see these far stretches of turquoise and
deep blue water, to watch Arabs on white roads passing noiselessly by
night under a Heaven thick with stars, and to know "He is not here and I
am nothing to him!"
Charmian's romantic tendency, her sense of, and desire for, wonder were
violently stirred by the new surroundings. She was painfully affected.
She began to feel almost desperate. That terrible sensation, known
perhaps in its frightening nightmare fulness only to youth, "My life is
done, all real life is at an end for me, because I cannot be linked with
my other half, because I have found it, but it has not found me!"
besieged, assailed her. It shook her, as neurasthenia shakes its victim,
squeezing as if with fierce and powerful hands till the blood seems to
be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of
beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a
lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and
not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body
meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere
specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But
what can I do? How will it end?" She longed to do something active, to
make an exertion, and struggle out of all this assailing strangeness.
Like one attacked in a tunnel by claustrophobia, she had an impulse to
dash open doors and windows, to burst arching, solid walls, and to be
elsewhere.
At first she carefully concealed her condition from Susan Fleet, but
when three days had gone by, and no word came from Mrs. Shiffney, she
began to feel that fate had left her alone with the one human being of
whom she could make a confidante. Again and again she looked furtively
at Miss Fleet's serene and practical face, and wondered what effect her
revelation would have upon the very sensible personality it indicated.
"She'll think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!"
thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In
self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge
of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she
spoke.
They were visiting "Djenan el Ali," the lovely villa of an acquaintance
of Mrs. Shiffney's who was away in Europe. Miss Fleet had been there
before and knew the servants, who gladly gave her permission to show
Charmian everything. After wandering through the house, which was a pure
gem of Arab architecture, five hundred years old, and in excellent
preservation, they descended into the garden, which was on the slope of
the hill over which the houses of Mustapha Supérieur are scattered. Here
no sounds of voices reached them, no tram bells, no shrieks from motors
buzzing along the white road high above them. The garden was large and
laid out with subtle ingenuity. The house was hidden away from the world
that was so near.
Miss Fleet strolled on, descending by winding paths, closely followed by
Charmian, till she came to a sheet of artificial water, whose uneven
banks were covered with masses of azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos, and
flowering shrubs. In the midst of this lake there was a tiny island,
just big enough to give room for the growth of one gigantic date palm,
and for a mass of arum lilies from which it rose towering toward the
delicate blue of the cloudless sky. The lilies and the palm--they were
the island, round which slept greenish-yellow water guarded by the
azaleas, the rhododendrons, the bamboos, and the shrubs. And on the path
where Charmian and Miss Fleet stood there was a long pergola of roses,
making a half-moon.
Charmian stood still and looked. The ground formed a sort of basin
sheltering the little lake. Even the white Arab house was hidden from it
by a screen of trees. The island, a wonderfully clever thing, attained
by artificiality a sort of strange exoticism which almost intoxicated
Charmian. Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in
quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades
in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was.
It had been planned to communicate a thrill to highly civilized people,
to suggest to them--what? the Fortunate Isles, perhaps, the strange
isles, which they dream of when they have a moment to dream, but which
they will certainly never see. It was a suggestive little isle. One
longed to sail away, to land on it--and then?
Charmian stood as if hypnotized by it. Her eyes went from the lilies up
the great wrinkled trunk of the palm to its far away tufted head, then
travelled down to the big white flowers. She sighed and gazed. And just
at that moment she felt that she was going to tell Susan Fleet
immediately.
On the shore of the lake there was a seat.
"I must tell you something," Charmian said, sinking down on it. "I'm
very unhappy."
She looked again at the island and the tears came to her eyes.
"He never has even let me hear a note of his music!" she thought,
connecting Claude Heath's talent with the lilies and the palm in some
strange way that seemed inevitable.
Susan Fleet sat down and folded her white-gloved hands in her neat
tailor-made lap.
"I'm sorry for that," she said.
"And seeing that island, seeing all these lovely places and things makes
it so much worse. I didn't know--till I came here. At least, I didn't
really know I knew. Oh, Miss Fleet, how happy I could be here if I
wasn't so dreadfully wretched."
A sort of wave of desperation--it seemed a hot wave--surged through
Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and
receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness.
"Surely," she said, "when you are in places like this you must feel that
nothing is of any real use if one has it alone."
"But I'm with you now," returned Miss Fleet, evidently wishing to give
Charmian a chance to regain her reserve.
"With me! What's the use of that? You must know what I mean."
"I suppose you mean a man."
Charmian blushed.
"That sounds--oh, well, how can we help it? It is not our fault. We have
to be so, even if we hate it. And I do hate it. I don't want to care
about him. I never have. He's not in my set. He doesn't know anyone I
know, or do anything I do, or care for almost anything I care
for--perhaps. But I feel I could do such things for him, that he will
never do for himself. And I want to do them. I must do them, but he will
never let me."
"I hope he's a gentleman. I don't believe in mixing classes, simply
because it seems to me that one class never really understands another,
not at all because one class isn't just as good as another."
"Of course he's a gentleman. Mrs. Shiffney asked him to come on the
yacht."
"Oh! Mr. Heath!" observed Miss Fleet.
Charmian thought she detected a slight change in the deep chest tone of
her companion's voice.
"D'you know him?" she asked, almost sharply.
"No."
"Have you seen him?"
"No, never. I only heard that he might be coming from Adelaide, and then
that he wasn't coming."
"He knew I was coming and he refused to come. Isn't it degrading?"
"Is he a great friend of yours?"
"No, but he is of my mother's. What must you think of me? What do you
think of me?"
Charmian put her hand impulsively on Miss Fleet's arm.
"I didn't know till I came here. I thought I disliked him, I almost
thought I hated him."
"That's always a bad sign, I believe," said Miss Fleet.
"Yes, I know. But he doesn't hate me. He doesn't think about me. He's
mother's friend and not even my enemy. Do tell me, Miss Fleet--or may I
call you Susan to-day?"
"Of course, and to-morrow, too."
"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality?
Do you think I--am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous
idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all
the other girls--you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"
There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched
Susan Fleet.
"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."
"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I
ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for
him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."
"Perhaps he likes you."
"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I
have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we
know a thing by instinct--don't we?"
"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within
us."
"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous,
who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius,
I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he
has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the
world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know,
nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have
anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and
pined to be extraordinary!"
"Extraordinary? In what way?"
"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't
endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately--quite
lately--I've begun to realize what I could be, do. I could be the
perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"
"I'm not laughing."
"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've
always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've
made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm
at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social
capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't.
And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would
feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man _manqué_ because of a
sort of kink in his temperament. And--I know that I could get rid of
that kink _if_--"
She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be
madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed,
almost fiercely.
"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."
"When I look at that island--"
Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said,
in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:
"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go
to rust."
Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a
dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She
was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her
intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.
"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day,
when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to
me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has
come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of
things--here."
"Tell me what it is."
"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha
Ali, walking toward the hotel--when he was just under that arch of pink
roses. The horn of a motor sounded in the road, and the white dust flew
up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a ship. It was all
an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt--I shall be here
again with _him_."
She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.
"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems
to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they
knew, and told me."
Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.
"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn
through that man, and to teach him."
"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"
Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with
possibility.
"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."
"Learn! Why, I've just told you--"
"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be
expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."
Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman
had astonished her.
"Do you?" she almost blurted out.
"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I
think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."
"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone
else."
CHAPTER IX
Just before Charmian left England Mrs. Mansfield had begun to suspect
her secret. Already from time to time she had wondered whether Charmian
refused to accept Claude Heath, as she had accepted all the other
habitués of the house, because she really liked him much better than she
liked them. She had wondered and she had said, "No, it is not so." Had
she not been less than frank with herself, and for another reason which
made her reluctant to see truth? She scarcely knew. But when Charmian
was gone and her mother was quite alone, she felt almost sure that she
had to face a fact very unpleasant to her. There had been something in
the girl's eyes as she said good-bye, a slight hardness, a lurking
defiance, something about her lips, something even in the sound of her
voice which had troubled Mrs. Mansfield, which continued to trouble her
while Charmian was away.
Charmian in love with Claude Heath!
It seemed to the mother in those first moments of contemplation that, if
she were right in her surmise, Charmian could scarcely have set her
affections on a man less suited to enter into her life, less likely to
make her happy.
Charmian belonged to a certain world not merely because she was born in
it, and had always lived in it, but by temperament, by character.
Essentially she was of it. She could surely never be happy in the life
led by Claude Heath. Could Claude Heath be happy in the sort of life led
by her?
Abruptly Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she did not really know Heath very
well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was
beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she
wished very much to be more clear about that.
Among her many friends Heath stood apart, and for this reason: all the
other men of talent whom she knew intimately were in the same set, or
belonged to sets which overlapped and intermingled. They were men who
were making, or had made, their names; men who knew, and were known by,
her friends and acquaintances, who needed no explanation, who were
thoroughly "in it." Only Heath was outside, was unknown, was not taking
an active part in the battle of art or of life. And this fact gave him a
certain strangeness, not free from romance, gave him a peculiar value in
Mrs. Mansfield's eyes. She secretly cherished the thought of his
individuality. She could not wish it changed. But she knew very well
that though such an individuality might attract her child, indeed, she
feared, had attracted Charmian, yet Charmian, if she had any influence
over it, would not be satisfied to let it alone, to leave it quietly to
its own natural development. Charmian would never let any plant that
belonged to her grow in darkness. She understood well enough the many
clever men who frequented the house, men with ambitions which they were
gratifying, men who were known, or who wished and intended to be known,
men, as a rule, who were fighting, or who had fought, hard battles. To
several of these men Charmian could have made an excellent wife.
But if she had set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake.
His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in
Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had
excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having
perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the
farther side. Mrs. Mansfield was glad that Charmian was away. Hitherto
she had cultivated the friendship with Heath without arrière pensée. Now
she was more conscious in it. Her great love of her only child made her
wish to study Heath.
The more she studied him the more she hoped that her guess about
Charmian had been wrong, and yet the more she studied him the better she
liked him. There was an intensity in him that captivated her intense
mind, an unworldliness that her soul approved. His lack of social
ambition, of all desire to be rich and prosperous, refreshed her. She
compared him secretly with other men of great talent. Some of them were
not greedy for money, but even they were greedy for fame, were almost
fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social
position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies
accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the
desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to
make ruins and dust.
Among all the men whom she knew, Claude Heath was the only one who was
alone with his art, and who wished to remain alone with the thing he
loved. There was a purity in the situation which delighted Mrs.
Mansfield. Yet she realized that Heath was a man who might be won away
from that which was best in him, from that which he almost sternly clung
to and cherished. And one day he made her aware that he knew this.
They went to a concert together at Queen's Hall, and sat in the gallery,
in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was
orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear
perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the
conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element
of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him
back from worlds he desired to enter.
Between the two parts of the not long concert there was a pause. During
it Mrs. Mansfield and Claude left their seats and strolled about in the
corridor, talking. They were both of them heated by music and ready for
mental intimacy. But they did not discuss the works they had just heard.
Combinations of melody and harmony turned them toward life and humanity.
The voices of the great orchestral family called them toward the dim
avenues where in the shadows destiny wanders. Some music enlarges the
borders, sets us free in regions whose confines we cannot perceive. They
spoke of aims, of ideals, of goals which are very far off.
"Fine music gives me the conception of great distances," Mrs. Mansfield
said presently. "It makes me feel that the soul is born for travel."
Heath stood still.
"The winding white road over the hills that loses itself in the
vagueness which, in a picture, only some shade of blue can suggest. The
road! The road!"
He stood leaning against the wall. As she stood by him Mrs. Mansfield
felt strangely, almost cruelly, young. It was as if student days had
come for them both. She could hardly believe that her hair was
snow-white, and that Charmian had been going to parties for nearly four
years.
"The worst of it is," Claude continued, "that it is so hard sometimes
not to wander from it."
"It seems to me you never wander."
"Because I know that, if I did, I should probably never come back to the
road. What you perhaps consider my strength takes its rise, I believe,
in my knowledge of my weakness. Things that are right for others aren't
right for me."
No one was near them. The music seemed to have abolished for the moment
the difference in age between them. Claude spoke to her as he had seldom
spoken to her before, with an almost complete unreserve of manner.
"Do you know why some men enter the cloister?" he continued. "It's
because they feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines.
Mullion House is my cloister. I haven't got the power of apportioning my
life with sweet reason, so much work, so much play, so much retirement,
so much society, so much restraint, so much license. I could never
pursue my art through wildness, as so many men have done, women too. I
don't believe I could even stick to it in the midst of the ordinary life
of pleasures and distractions. It's like a bone that I have to seize and
take away into a cave where no one can see me gnaw it. Isn't that a
beastly simile?"
"Is that why you won't go to Max Elliot's, that you refused Mrs.
Shiffney? Do you think that the sort of thing which inspires many
men--the audience, let us say, watching the combat--would unnerve you?"
"I don't say that. But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance,
or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted
irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me
which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate it, but it's
there."
"And yet you're so uncompromising."
"That's my armor. I daren't wear ordinary clothes, lest every arrow
should pierce me."
A bell sounded. They returned to the concert room. When the second part
was over Heath looked at Mrs. Mansfield and said:
"Where are we going?"
They were in the midst of the crowd passing out. Women were winding soft
things about their necks, men were buttoning up their coats. For a March
wind was about in the great city. She returned his look and smiled.
"Ah! You guessed! It's the gallery, I suppose. I'm not accustomed to all
this fun. Isn't it amazing what a groove one lives in? Berkeley Square
shadows the whole of my life I begin to believe."
"Don't say the motor is waiting!"
"No, it isn't."
"Shall we go to some preposterous place--to the Monico?"
"Where you like. It's just tea time, or coffee time."
They walked to the Monico in the March wind, and went in with a group of
Italians, passing the woman who sells foreign papers, and seeing names
that transported them to Paris, to Milan, to Rome, to Berlin. A vastness
of marble contained a myriad of swarthy strangers, releasing souls
astoundingly foreign in vivid gesture and talk. They had coffee with
cream like a burgeoning cloud floating airily on the top.
"The only word to describe the effect of all this upon me is spree,"
said Mrs. Mansfield. "I am out on the spree."
"Capital! And if I stepped right in to your sort of life," said Heath,
"would it have the same kind of effect upon me?"
"I don't think it could. It's too conscious, too critical, too
fastidious. There's nothing fastidious in a spree. I like the March wind
outside, too--the thought of it."
Suddenly her mind went to Charmian and Algiers.
"Charmian's in the sun," she said.
Directly she said this Heath looked slightly self-conscious.
"Have you heard from her?"
"This morning. She has made great friends with Susan Fleet."
"Yes?"
"Oh, a woman we all like, who often helps Adelaide Shiffney with
things."
"We all like," he repeated.
"A _cliché_! And indeed I scarcely know Susan Fleet. You see what an
absurd close borough I live in, have always lived in. And I never
thoroughly realized that till I met you."
"And I live in loneliness, outside of it all, of everything almost."
Lightly she answered:
"With Mrs. Shiffney and others holding open the door, holding up the
lamp, and imploring you to come in, to come right in as they say on the
other side of the Atlantic."
"You don't do that."
"Do you wish me to?"
"I don't know what I wish. But I am dissatisfied."
He frowned, moving his chair, lit a cigarette, pushed away his coffee
cup.
"What is it like at Algiers?"
"Very beautiful, Charmian says. Adelaide and the others have gone off to
a desert place called Bou-Saada--"
"Bou-Saada!" he said slowly.
"And Charmian and Susan Fleet are up on the hill at Mustapha Supérieur.
They've left the yacht for a few days. They are visiting Arab villas and
exploring tropical gardens."
She watched him and sipped her coffee. All the student feeling had gone
from her. And now she was deeply aware of the difference between her age
and Heath's.
"I suppose they won't be back for a good while," he said.
"Oh, I expect them in a week or two."
"So soon?"
"Adelaide is always in a hurry, and this was only to be quite a short
trip."
"Once out there how can they come away so soon? I should want to stay
for months. If I once began really to travel there would never be an end
to it, unless I were not my own master."
"It's quite extraordinary how you master yourself," Mrs. Mansfield said.
"You are a dragon to yourself, and what a fierce unyielding dragon!
It's a fine thing to have such a strong will."
"Ah! But if I let it go!"
"Do you think you ever will?"
"Yes," he said with a sort of deep sadness. "On one side's the will. But
on the other side there's an absurd impulsiveness. But don't let's talk
any more of me. Do tell me some more about Algiers and your daughter."
When Heath left her that day Mrs. Mansfield said to herself, "If
Charmian really does care for him he doesn't know it."
What were Heath's feelings toward Charmian she could not divine. She was
unconscious of any desire to baffle her on Heath's part, and was
inclined to think that he was so wrapped up in the rather solitary life
he had planned out for himself, and in his art, was so detached from the
normal preoccupations of strong and healthy young men, that Charmian
meant very little, perhaps nothing at all, to him. She had noted, of
course, the slightly self-conscious look which had come into Heath's
face when she had mentioned Charmian, but she explained that to herself
easily enough. Her mention of Charmian in the sun had recalled to him
the persistence of Mrs. Shiffney, which he knew she was aware of. In
such matters he was like a sensitive boy. He had the peculiar delicacies
of the nervously constituted artist, which seem very ridiculous to the
average man, but not to the discerning woman. Mrs. Mansfield felt almost
sure that his self-consciousness arose not from memories of Charmian,
but of Adelaide Shiffney. And she supposed that he was probably quite
indifferent to Charmian. It was better so. Although she believed that it
was wise for most men to marry, and not very late in life, she excepted
Heath from her theory. She could not "see" him married. She could not
pick out any girl or woman whom she knew, and say: "That would be the
wife for him." Evidently he was one of the exceptional men for whom the
normal conditions are not intended. She thought again of his music, and
found a reason there. But then she remembered yellow-haired Fan. He was
at home with a child, why not with a wife and child of his own? She put
aside the problem, but did not resign the thought, "In any case Charmian
would be the wrong woman for him to marry." And when she said that to
herself she was thinking solely of the welfare of Heath. Because he was
a man, and had been unreserved with her, Mrs. Mansfield instinctively
desired to protect his life. She had the feeling, "I understand him
better than others." In a chivalrous nature understanding breeds a
strong sense of obligation. Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she had duties
toward Heath. During the two weeks which elapsed before Charmian's
return from Algiers she thought more about his future than about her
child's. But she was a very feminine woman and, to her, a man's future
always seemed to matter more than a woman's.
Heath, too, had his great talent. That might need protection in the
future. Mrs. Mansfield did not believe in an untroubled life for such a
man as Heath. There was something disturbing both in his personality and
in his music which seemed to her to preclude the possibility of his
dwelling always in peace. But she hoped he would be true to his
instinct, to the strange instinct which kept him now in a sort of
cloistered seclusion. She knew he had friends, acquaintances, made
during his time at the College of Music, through the introductions he
had brought to London from Cornwall, through family connections. Human
intercourse must be part of every life. But she was glad, very glad,
that neither Mrs. Shiffney nor Max Elliot had persuaded him into the
world where artists are handed on and on till they "know everybody." His
words: "Do you know why some men enter the cloister? It's because they
feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines," remained with
her. Doubtless Heath knew himself. She thought of those who have pursued
their art through wildness--Heath's expression--with an inflexibility
quite marvellous, an order in the midst of disorder, which to the
onlooker seems no less than a miracle. But they were surely Bohemians
born, and full of characteristics that were racial. Such characteristics
did not exist in Heath, she thought. She pondered. He was surely not a
Bohemian. And yet he did not belong to the other race so noticeable in
England, the race of the cultured talented, who live well-ordered lives
in the calm light of a mild and unobjectionable publicity, who produce
in the midst of comfort, giving birth to nothing on straw, who are sane
even to the extent of thinking very much as the man in Sloane Street
thinks, who occasionally go to a levée, and have set foot on summer days
in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Heath, perhaps, could not be dubbed
with a name. Was he a Bohemian who, for his health's sake, could not
live in Bohemia? She remembered the crucifix standing in front of the
piano where he passed so many hours, the strange and terrible words he
had chosen to set to music, the setting he had given them. It was an
uncompromising nature, an uncompromising talent. And yet--there was the
other side. There was something ready to rush out to satisfy
expectation.
She was deeply interested in Heath.
About ten days after the "spree" at the Monico she received a telegram
from Marseilles--"Starting to-night, home the day after to-morrow;
love.--CHARMIAN."
Heath dropped in that day, and Mrs. Mansfield mentioned the telegram.
"Charmian will be back on Thursday. I told you Adelaide Shiffney would
be in a hurry."
"Then they are not going on to the Greek Isles," he said.
"Not this time."
She glanced at him and thought he was looking rather sad.
"Will you come and dine on Thursday night just with me and Charmian?"
she said. "If she is tired with the journey from Paris you may be alone
with me. If not, she can tell us about her little African experiences."
"Thank you. Yes, I should like to come very much!"
The strangely imaginative expression, which made his rather plain face
almost beautiful, shone in his eyes and seemed to shed a flicker of
light about his brow and lips, as he added:
"I have travelled so little that to me there is something almost
wonderful in the arrival of someone from Africa. Even the name comes to
me always like fire and black mystery. Last night, just before I went to
bed, I was reading Chateaubriand, and I came across a passage that kept
me awake for hours."
"What was it?"
She leaned a little forward, ready to be fascinated as evidently he had
been.
"He is writing of Napoleon, and says of him something like this."
Heath paused, looked down, seemed to make an effort, and continued, with
his eyes turned away from Mrs. Mansfield:
"'His enemies, fascinated, seek him and do not see him. He hides himself
in his glory, as the lion of the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the
sun to escape from the searching eyes of the dazzled hunters.' Isn't
that simply gorgeous? It set my imagination galloping. 'As the lion of
the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the sun'--by Jove!" He got up.
"I was out of England last night. And to think that Miss Charmian is
actually arriving from Africa!"
When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield said to herself: "He's a child, too!"
And she felt restless and troubled. Naïveté leads men of genius into
such unsuitable regions sometimes. It was rather wonderful that he could
feel as he did about Africa and refuse to go to Africa. For Adelaide
would have taken him anywhere. Would Charmian bring back with her
something of the wonder of the East? Mrs. Mansfield felt for a moment as
if she were going to welcome a stranger in her child. The feeling
returned to her on the Thursday afternoon, when she was waiting for
Charmian's arrival in her writing-room.
Charmian was due at Charing Cross at three-twenty-five. She ought to be
in Berkeley Square about four, unless the train was very crowded, and
there was a long delay at the Customs. Four o'clock chimed from the
Dresden china clock on the mantelpiece, and she had not arrived. Mrs.
Mansfield was conscious of a restlessness almost amounting to
nervousness. She got up from her chair, laid down the book she had been
reading, and moved slowly about the room.
How would Charmian receive the news that Claude Heath was to dine with
them that night? Would she be too tired by the journey to dine? She was
a bad sailor. Perhaps the sea in the Channel had been rough. If so, she
would arrive not looking her best. Mrs. Mansfield had invited Heath
because she wished to be sure at the first possible moment whether
Charmian was in love with him or not. And she was positive that now,
consciously alert and suspicious, if she saw the two together even for a
short time she would know.
And if she knew that it was so, that Charmian had set her affections on
Heath--what then?
She resolved not to look beyond the day. But as the moments passed, and
she waited, her mind, like a thing beyond control, began to occupy
itself with that question. The distant hoot of a motor startled her.
Although their motor had a horn exactly the same as a thousand others
she knew at once that Charmian was entering the Square. Half a minute
later, standing in the doorway of her sitting-room, she heard the door
bell and the footsteps of Lassell, the butler. Impulsively she went to
the staircase.
"Charmian!" she called. "Charmian!"
"My only mother!" came up a voice from below.
She saw Charmian pushing up her veil over her three-cornered
travelling-hat with a bright red feather.
"Where are you? Oh, there!"
She came up the stairs.
"Such a crossing! I'm an unlucky girl! Remedies are no use. Dearest!"
She put two light hands on her mother's shoulders and kissed her twice
with lips which were rather cold. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked
unusually haggard and restless. An atmosphere of excitement seemed to
surround her like an aura, Mrs. Mansfield thought. She put her arm
through her mother's.
"Tea with you, and then I think I must go to bed. How nice to be in my
own dear bed again! I thought of my pillows on board with a yearning
that came from the soul, I'm sure. Of course, we left the yacht at
Marseilles. The yachting there was such a talk about resolved itself
into the two crossings. I wasn't sorry, for we never saw a calm sea
except from the shore."
"No? What a shame! Sit here."
Charmian threw herself down with a movement that was very young and
began taking off her long gloves. As her thin, pretty hands came out of
them, Mrs. Mansfield bent down and kissed her.
"Dear child! How nice to have you safe home!"
"Is it?"
"What a silly question to ask your only mother!"
"This chair makes me feel exactly how tired I am. It tells me."
"Take off your hat."
"Shall I?" She put up her hands, but she left the hat where it was, and
her mother did not ask why.
"Is Adelaide back?"
"No, I left her glued to Paris. I crossed with Susan Fleet. Oh!"
She rested her head on the back of the big chair, and shut her eyes.
"Only tea. I can't eat!"
"Here it is."
"I feel as if I'd been away for centuries, as if London must have
changed."
"It hasn't."
"And you?"
"Oh, of course, I've shed my nature, as you see!"
"I believe you think I've shed mine."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Her eyes wandered about the room.
"Everything just the same."
"Then Africa really has made a great difference?"
The alert look that Mrs. Mansfield knew so well came into Charmian's
face despite her fatigue.
"Who thought it would?"
"Well, you've never been out of Europe before."
"You did?"
"Wouldn't it be natural if I had fancied it might?"
"Perhaps. But it was only the very edge of Africa. I never went beyond
Mustapha Supérieur. I didn't even want to go. I wonder if Susan Fleet
did."
"Do you think so?"
"I'm afraid I didn't think very much about it. But I begin to wonder
now. I think she's so unselfish that perhaps she makes other people
selfish."
"You made great friends, didn't you?"
"Yes. I think she's rather wonderful. She's very unlike other women. She
seemed actually glad to give me the address of the place where she gets
her coats and skirts. If Theosophy made more women like that I should
wish it to spread like cholera in the alleys of Naples. Madre, don't
mind me! I was really ill coming across. My head feels all light and
empty."
She put up her hands to her temples.
"It's as if everything in my poor little brain-box had been shaken
about."
"Poor child! And I've been very inconsiderate."
"Inconsiderate? How?"
"About to-night."
"You haven't accepted a party for me?"
"It isn't so bad as that. But I've invited someone to dinner."
"Mother!" Charmian looked genuinely surprised. "Not Aunt Kitty!"
Aunt Kitty was a sister of Mrs. Mansfield's whom Charmian disliked.
"Oh, no--Claude Heath."
After a slight but perceptible pause, Charmian said:
"Mr. Heath. Oh, you asked him for to-night before you knew I should be
here. I see."
"No, I didn't. I thought he would like to hear about your African
experiences. I asked him after your telegram came."
Charmian got up slowly, and stood where she could see herself in a
mirror without seeming intent on looking in the glass. Her glance to it
was very swift and surreptitious, and she spoke, to cover it perhaps.
"I'm afraid I've got very little to tell about Algiers that could
interest Mr. Heath. Would you mind very much if I gave it up and dined
in bed?"
"Do just as you like. It was stupid of me to ask him. I suppose I acted
on impulse without thinking first."
"What time is dinner?"
"Eight as usual."
"I'll lie down and rest and then see how I feel. I'll go now. Nice to be
with you again, dearest Madre!"
She bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. The touch of her lips just
then was not quite pleasant to Mrs. Mansfield. When she was in her
bedroom alone, Charmian took off her hat, and, without touching her
hair, looked long and earnestly into the glass that stood on her
dressing-table. Then she bent down and put her face close to the glass.
"I look dreadful!" was her comment.
Her maid knocked at the door and was sent away. Charmian undressed
herself, got into bed, and lay very still. She felt very interesting,
and as if she were going to be involved in interesting and strange
events, as if destiny were at work, and were selecting instruments to
help on the coming of that which had to be. She thought of her mother as
one of these instruments.
It was strange that her mother should have been moved to ask Claude
Heath, the man she meant to marry, to come to the house alone on the
evening of her return. This action was not a very natural one on her
mother's part. It had always been tacitly understood that Heath was Mrs.
Mansfield's friend. Yet Mrs. Mansfield had invited him for her daughter.
Had thought, for which space does not exist, reached across the sea from
child to mother mysteriously, saying to the mother, "Do this!"
But unless the glass told a new tale at seven o'clock Charmian did not
mean to go down to dinner.
She closed her eyes and said to herself, again and again, "Look better!
Look better! Look better!"
CHAPTER X
When seven o'clock struck she got out of bed, and again looked in the
glass. She felt rested in body, and no longer had the tangled sensation
in her head. But the face which confronted her reminded her disagreeably
of Millie Deans, the American singer. It had what Charmian called the
"Pierrot look," a too expressive and unnatural whiteness which surely
told secrets. It seemed to her, too, a hard face, too determined in
expression, repellent almost. And surely nothing is likely to be more
repellent to a man than a girl's face that is hard.
Since her conversation with Susan Fleet by the little lake in the
Algerian garden, Charmian had felt that destiny had decreed her marriage
with Claude Heath. So she put the matter to herself. Really that
conversation had caused her secretly to decide that she would marry
Claude Heath.
"It may be so," Susan Fleet had said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is
to learn through that man, and to teach him."
The words had gone to join the curious conviction that had come to
Charmian out of the white dust floating up from the road that runs
through Mustapha, out of the lilies, out of the wrinkled trunk of the
great palm that was separated by the yellow-green water from all its
fellows, "I shall be here again with him."
Surely the strong assertion of the will is the first step that takes a
human being out of the crowd. Charmian had suffered because she was in
the crowd, undistinguished, lost like a violet in a prairie abloom with
thousands of violets. Something in Algeria, something perhaps in Susan
Fleet, had put into her a resolve, unacknowledged even to herself. She
had returned to England, meaning to marry Claude Heath, meaning to use
her will as the ardent and capable servant of her heart.
But what she said to herself was this, "I believe destiny means to bring
us together." She wrapped a naked little fact up in a soft tissue of
romance and wonder.
But the face in the glass which now looked at her was too determined,
too hard. It startled her. And she changed the expression on it. But
then it looked insincere, meretricious, affected, and always haggard.
For a minute Charmian hesitated, almost resolved to go back to bed. But,
oh, the dulness of the long evening shut in there! Three hours ago, at
Charing Cross Station, she had looked forward to it. But now!
Only once in her life had Charmian made up her face. She knew many girls
who disfigured their youth by concealing it with artifice. She thought
them rather absurd and rather horrid. Nevertheless she had rouge and
powder. One day she had bought them, shut herself in, made up her face,
and been thoroughly disgusted with the effect. Yes, but she had done it
in a hurry, without care. She had known she was not going to be seen.
Softly she pulled out a drawer.
At half-past seven there was a knock at the door. She opened it and saw
her maid.
"If you please, miss, Mrs. Mansfield wishes to know whether you feel
rested enough to dine downstairs."
"Yes, I do. Just tell mother, and then come back, please, Halton."
When Halton came Charmian watched her almost as a cat does a mouse, and
presently surprised an inquiring look that degenerated into a look of
suspicion.
"What's the matter, Halton?"
"Nothing, miss. Which dress will you wear?"
So Halton had guessed, or had suspected--there was not much difference
between the two mental processes.
"The green one I took on the yacht."
"Yes, miss."
"Or the--wait a minute."
"Yes, miss?"
"Yes--the green one."
When the maid had taken the dress out Charmian said: "Why did you look
at me as you did just now, Halton? I wish to know."
"I don't know, miss."
"Well, I have put something on."
"Yes, miss."
"I looked so sea-sick--yellow. No one wants to look yellow."
"No, I'm sure, miss."
"But I don't want--come and help me, Halton. I believe you know things I
don't."
Halton had been with the lovely Mrs. Charlton Hoey before she came to
Charmian, and she did know things unknown to her young mistress.
Trusted, she was ready to reveal them, and Charmian went downstairs at
three minutes past eight more ingenious than she had been at ten minutes
before that hour.
Although she was quite, quite certain that neither her mother nor Claude
Heath would discover what had been done with Halton's assistance, she
was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her
hand on the drawing-room door, and it was a tremor in which a sense of
shame had a part.
Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield. As Charmian looked at
him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed
to her a stranger. Was this really the man who had made her suffer,
weep, confide in Susan Fleet, in Algeria? Had pink roses and dust,
far-off and near sounds, movements and stillnesses, and that strange
little island spoken to her of him, prophesied to her about him? She had
a sense of banality, of disillusion, as if all that had been in her own
brain only, almost crazily conceived without any action of events to
prompt it.
But when she met his eyes the disagreeable sensation dropped away. For
his eyes searched her in a way that made her feel suddenly important. He
was looking for Africa, but she did not know it.
Although he did not see what Charmian had done to her face, he noticed
change in her. She seemed to him more of a personage than she had seemed
before she went away. He was not sure that he liked the change. But it
made an impression upon him. And what he considered as the weakness
within him felt a desire to please and conciliate it.
Mrs. Mansfield had seen at a glance that Charmian had touched up her
face, but she showed nothing of what she felt, if she felt anything,
about this new departure. And when Heath said to Charmian, "How well you
are looking!" Mrs. Mansfield added:
"Your rest has done you good."
"Yes, I feel rather less idiotic!" said Charmian; "but only rather. You
mustn't expect me to be quite my usual brilliant self, Mr. Heath. You
must wait a day or two for that. What have you been doing all this
time?"
It seemed to Heath that there was a hint of light patronage in her tone
and manner. He was unpleasantly conscious of the woman of the world. But
he did not realize how much Charmian had to conceal at this moment.
When almost immediately they went in to dinner, Mrs. Mansfield
deliberately turned the conversation to Charmian's recent journey. This
was to be Charmian's dinner. Charmian was the interesting person, the
traveller from Algeria. Had not Claude Heath been invited to hear all
about the trip? Mrs. Mansfield remembered the imaginative look which had
transformed his face just before he had quoted Chateaubriand. And she
remembered something else, something Charmian had once said to her: "You
jump into minds and hearts and poor little I remain outside, squatting,
like a hungry child!" She had a sincere horror of the elderly mother who
clings to that power which should rightly be in the hands of youth. And
to-night something in her heart said: "Give place! give place!" The fact
which she had noticed in connection with Charmian's face had suddenly
made something within her weep over the child, take herself to task.
There was still much impulse in Mrs. Mansfield. To-night a subtlety in
Charmian, which no man could have detected, set that impulse in a
generous and warm blaze; filled her with a wish to abdicate in the
child's favor, to make her the center of the evening's attention, the
source of the evening's conversation; to show Heath that Charmian could
be as interesting as herself and more attractive than she was.
The difficulty was to obtain the right response from Charmian. She had
learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to
pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize
that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well
as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared
to play the schoolgirl if she made much of her experience. Algiers meant
so much to her just then that she belittled Algiers in self-defense.
Heath was chilled by her curt remarks.
"Of course, it's dreadfully French!" she said. "I suppose the conquerors
wish to efface all the traces of the conquered as much as possible. I
quite understand their feelings. But it's not very encouraging to the
desirous tourist."
"Then you were disappointed?" said Heath.
"You should have gone to Bou-Saada," said Mrs. Mansfield. "You would
have seen the real thing there. Why didn't you?"
"Adelaide Shiffney started in such a hurry, before I had had time to see
anything, or recover from the horrors of yachting. You know how she
rushes on as if driven by furies."
There was a small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the
wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was
unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often
takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The
demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really
express her character. And realizing that she must be seeming rather
horrid in condemning her hostess and representing the trip as a failure,
she felt defiant and almost hard.
"Did you envy me?" she said to Heath, almost a little aggressively.
"Well, I thought you must be having a very interesting time. I thought a
first visit to Africa must be a wonderful experience."
"But, then--why refuse to come?"
She gazed full into his face, and made her long eyes look impertinent,
challenging. Mrs. Mansfield felt very uncomfortable.
"I!" said Heath. "Oh, I didn't know I was in question! Surely we were
talking about the impression Algiers made upon you."
"Well, but if you condemn me for not being more enthusiastic, surely it
is natural for me to wonder why you wouldn't for anything set foot in
the African Paradise."
She laughed. Her nerves felt on edge after the journey. And something in
the mental atmosphere affected her unfavorably.
"But, Miss Charmian, I don't condemn you. It would be monstrous to
condemn anyone for not being able to feel in a certain way. I hope I
have enough brains to see that."
He spoke almost hotly.
"Your mother and I had been imagining that you were having a wonderful
time," he added. "Perhaps it was stupid of us."
"No. Algiers is wonderful."
Heath had changed her, had suddenly enabled her to be more natural.
"I include Mustapha, of course. Some of the gardens are marvellous, and
the old Arab houses. And I think perhaps you would have thought them
more marvellous even than I did."
"But, why?"
"Because I think you could see more in beautiful things than I can,
although I love them."
Her sudden softness was touching. Heath had never been paid a compliment
that had pleased him so much as hers. He had not expected it, and so it
gained in value.
"I don't know that," he said hesitatingly.
"Madretta, don't you agree with me?"
"No doubt you two would appreciate things differently."
"But what I mean is that Mr. Heath in the things we should both
appreciate could see more than I."
"Pierce deeper into the heart of the charm? Perhaps he could. Oh, eat a
little of this chicken!"
"No, dearest mother, I can't. I'm in a Nebuchadnezzar mood. Spinach for
me."
She took some.
"Everything seems a little vague and Channelly to-night, even spinach."
She looked up at Heath, and now he saw a sort of evasive charm in her
eyes.
"You must forgive me if I'm tiresome to-night, and remember that while
you and Madre have been sitting comfortably in Mullion House and
Berkeley Square, I've been roaring across France and rolling on the sea.
I hate to be a slave to my body. Nothing makes one feel so contemptible.
But I haven't attained to the Susan Fleet stage yet. I'll tell you all
about her some day, Mr. Heath, but not now. You would like her. I know
that. But perhaps you'll refuse to meet her. Do you know my secret name
for you? I call you--the Great Refuser."
Heath flushed and glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
"I have my work, you see."
"We heard such strange music in Algiers," she answered. "I suppose it
was ugly. But it suggested all sorts of things to me. Adelaide wished
Monsieur Rades was with us. He's clever, but he could never do a big
thing. Could he, mother?"
"No, but he does little things beautifully."
"What it must be to be able to do a big thing!" said Charmian. "To draw
in color and light and perfume and sound, and to know you will be able
to weave them together, and transform them, and give them out again with
you in them, making them more strange, more wonderful. We saw an island,
Susan Fleet and I, that--well, if I had had genius I could have done
something exquisite the day I saw it. It seemed to say to me: 'Tell
them! Tell them! Make them feel me! Make them know me! All those who are
far away, who will never see me, but who would love me as you do, if
they knew me.' And--it was very absurd, I know!--but I felt as if it
were disappointed with me because I had no power to obey it. Madre,
don't you think that must be the greatest joy and privilege of genius,
that capacity for getting into close relations with strange and
beautiful things? I couldn't obey the little island, and I felt almost
as if I had done it a wrong."
"Where was it? In the sea?"
"No--oh, no! But I can't tell you! It has to be seen--"
Suddenly there came upon her again, almost like a cloud enveloping her,
the strong impression that destiny would lead her some day to that
Garden of the Island with Heath. She did not look at him. She feared if
she did he would know what was in her mind and heart. Making an effort,
she recovered her self-command, and said:
"I expect you think I'm a rather silly and rhapsodizing girl, Mr. Heath.
Do you mind if I tell you what _I_ think?"
"No, tell me please!" he said quickly.
"Well, I think that, if you've got a great talent, perhaps genius, you
ought to give it food. And I think _you_ don't want to give it food."
"Swinburne's food was Putney!" said Mrs. Mansfield, "and I could mention
many great men who scarcely moved from their own firesides and yet whose
imagination was nearly always in a blaze."
Heath joined in eagerly, and the discussion lasted till the end of
dinner. Never before had Charmian felt herself to be on equal terms with
her mother and Heath. She was secretly excited and she was able to give
herself to her excitement. It helped her, pushed on her intelligence.
She saw that Heath found her more interesting than usual. She began to
realize that her journey had made her interesting to him. He had refused
to go, and now was envying her because she had not refused. Her
depreciation of Algiers had been a mistake. She corrected it now. And
she saw that she had a certain influence upon Heath. She attributed it
to her secret assertion of her will. She was not going to sit down any
longer and be nobody, a pretty graceful girl who didn't matter. Will is
everything in the world. Now she loved she had a fierce reason for using
her will. Even her mother, who knew her in every mood, was surprised by
Charmian that evening.
Heath stayed till rather late. When he got up to go away, Charmian said:
"Don't you wish you had come on the yacht? Don't you wish you had seen
the island?"
He hesitated, looking down on her and Mrs. Mansfield, and holding his
hands behind him. After a strangely long pause he answered:
"I don't want to wish that, I don't mean to wish it."
"Do you really think we can control our desires?" she asked, and now she
spoke very gravely, almost earnestly.
"I suppose so. Why not?"
"Oh!" she said petulantly. "You remind me of Oliver Cromwell--somebody
of that kind--you ought to have lived in Puritan days. It's
England--England--England in you shrivelling you up. I'm sure in all
Algiers there isn't one person (not English) who thinks as you do. But
if you were to travel, if you were to give yourself a chance, how
different you'd be!"
"Charmian, you impertinent child!" said Mrs. Mansfield, smiling, but in
a voice that was rather sad.
"It's the Channel! It's the Channel! I'm not myself to-night!"
Heath laughed and said something light and gay. But as he went out of
the room his face looked troubled.
As soon as he had gone, Charmian got up and turned to her mother.
"Are you very angry with me, Madre?"
"No. There always was a touch of the minx in you, and I suppose it is
ineradicable. What have you been doing to your face?"
Charmian flushed. The blood even went up to her forehead, and for once
she looked confused, almost ashamed.
"My face? You--you have noticed something?"
"Of course, directly you came down. Has Adelaide taught you that?"
"No! Are you angry, mother?"
"No. But I like young things to look really young as long as they can.
And to me the first touch of make-up suggests the useless struggle
against old age. Now I'm not very old yet, not fifty. But I've let my
hair become white."
"And how it suits you, my beautiful mother!"
"That's my little compensation. A few visits to Bond Street might make
me look ten years younger than I do, but if I paid them, do you know I
think I should lose one or two friendships I value very much."
Mrs. Mansfield paused.
"Lose--friendships?" Charmian almost faltered.
"Yes. Some of the best men value sincerity of appearance in a woman more
than perhaps you would believe to be possible."
"In friendship!" Charmian almost whispered.
Again there was a pause. Mrs. Mansfield knew very well that a sentence
from her at this moment would provoke in Charmian an outburst of
sincerity. But she hesitated to speak that sentence. For a voice within
her whispered, "Am I on Charmian's side?"
After a moment she got up.
"Bedtime," she said.
"Yes, yes."
Charmian kissed her mother lightly first on one eyelid then on the
other.
"Dearest, it is good to be back with you."
"But you loved Algiers, I think."
"Did I? I suppose I did."
"I must get a book," said Mrs. Mansfield, going toward a bookcase.
When she turned round with a volume of Browning in her hand Charmian had
vanished.
Mrs. Mansfield did not regret the silence that had saved her from
Charmian's sincerity. In reply to it what could she have said to help
her child toward happiness?
For did not the fact that Charmian had made up her face because she
loved Claude Heath show a gulf between her and him that could surely
never be bridged?
CHAPTER XI
Heath was troubled and was angry with himself for being troubled.
Looking back it seemed to him that he had taken a false step when he
consented to that dinner with Max Elliot. Surely since that evening he
had never been wholly at peace. And yet on that evening he had entered
into his great friendship with Mrs. Mansfield. He could not wish that
annulled. It added value to his life. But Mrs. Shiffney and Charmian in
combination had come into his life with her. And they began to vex his
spirit. He felt as if they represented a great body of opinion which was
set against a deep conviction of his own. Their motto was, "The world
for the artist." And what was his, or what had been his until now? "His
world within the artist." He had fed upon himself, striving rather to
avoid than to seek outside influences. After Charmian's return from
Africa a persistent doubt assailed him. His strong instinct might be a
blind guide. The opinion of the world, represented by the shrewd married
woman and the intelligent girl, might have reason on its side.
Certainly Charmian's resolute assertion of herself on the evening of her
return had been surprisingly effective. In an hour she had made an
impression upon Heath such as she had failed to make in many weeks of
their previous acquaintanceship. Her attack had gone home. "If you were
to give yourself a chance how different you'd be!" And then her outburst
about the island! There had been truth in it. Color and light and
perfume and sound are material given out to the artist. He takes them,
uses them, combines them, makes them his. He helps them! Ah! That was
the word! He, as it were, gives them wings so that they may fly into the
secret places, into the very hearts of men.
Heath looked round upon his hermitage, the little house near St.
Petersburg Place, and he was companioned by fears. His energies
weakened. The lack of self-confidence, which often affected him when he
was divorced from his work, began to distress him when he was working.
He disliked what he was doing. Music, always the most evasive of the
arts, became like a mist in his sight. There were moments when he hated
being a composer, when he longed to be a poet, a painter, a sculptor.
Then he would surely at least know whether what he was doing was good or
bad. Now, though he was inclined to condemn, he did not feel certain
even of ineptitude.
Mrs. Searle noted the change in her master, and administered her
favorite medicine, Fan, with increasing frequency. As the neurasthenic
believes in strange drugs, expensive cures, impressive doctors, she
believed in the healing powers of the exceedingly young. Nor was Fan
doubtful of her own magical properties. She supposed that her intense
interest in herself and the affairs of her life was fully shared by
Heath. Her confidences to him in respect of Masterman and other
important matters were unbridled. She seldom strove to charm by
listening, and never by talking to Heath about himself. Her method of
using herself as a draught of healing was to draw him into the current
of her remarkable life, to set him floating on the tides of her fate.
Heath had a habit of composing after tea, from five or five-thirty
onward. And Fan frequently appeared at the studio door about half-past
four, turned slightly sideways with an expectant glance into the large
room with the book-lined walls, the dim paintings, and the
orange-colored curtains. A faint air of innocent coquetry hung about
her. After a pause and a smile from Heath, she would move forward with
hasty confidence, sometimes reaching the hearthrug with a run. She was
made welcome, petted, apparently attended to with a whole mind. But
while she delivered her soul of its burden, at great length and with
many indrawn breaths and gusts of feeling, Heath was often saying to
himself, "Am I provincial?"
The word rankled now that Charmian had spoken out with such almost
impertinent abruptness. Had he then lost faith in Mrs. Mansfield? She
had never said that she wished him different from what he was. And
indirectly she had praised his music. He knew it had made a powerful
impression upon her. Nevertheless, he could not forget Charmian's
words. Nor could he help linking her with Mrs. Shiffney in his mind.
Fan pulled at his sleeve, raising her voice. He was reminded of a little
dog clawing to attract attention.
"Yes, Fantail! I mean no, of course not! If Masterman refuses to take a
bath, of course you are obliged to punish him. Yes, yes, I know. Wear
something? What? What's that? Like you? But he's a man. Very well, we'll
get him a pair of trousers. No, I won't forget. Yes, like mine, long
ones like mine. It'll be all right. Take care with that cup. I think
mother must be wanting you. Press the bell hard. Well, use your thumb
then. That's it--harder. There, you see, mother does want you. Harriet
says so."
Harriet, discreet almost to dumbness though she was, was capable of
receiving a hint conveyed by her master's expressive eyebrows. And Fan
passed on, leaving Heath alone with his piano. He played what he had
played to Mrs. Mansfield to reassure himself. But he was not wholly
reassured. And he knew that desire for a big verdict which often
tortures the unknown creator. This was a new and, he thought, ugly phase
in his life. Was he going to be like the others? Was he going to crave
for notoriety? Why had the words of a mere girl, of no unusual
cleverness or perception, had such an effect upon him? How thin she had
looked that day when she emerged from her furs. That was before she
started for Africa. The journey had surely made a great difference in
her. She had come back more of a personage, more resolute. He felt the
will in her as he had not felt it before. Till she came back he had only
felt the strong soul in her mother. That was like an unwavering flame.
How Mrs. Mansfield's husband must have loved her.
And Heath's hands slipped from the piano, and he dreamed over women.
He was conscious of solitude.
Susan Fleet was now in town. After the trip to Algiers she had been to
Folkestone to visit her mother and dear old Mrs. Simpkins. She had also
combined business with pleasure and been fitted for a new coat and
skirt. A long telegram from Adelaide Shiffney called her back to London
to under-take secretarial and other duties. As the season approached
Mrs. Shiffney's life became increasingly agitated. Miss Fleet was an
excellent hand at subduing, or, if that were impossible, at getting
neatness into agitation. She knew well how to help fashionable women to
be absurd with method. She made their silliness almost business-like,
and assisted them to arrange their various fads in apple-pie order. Amid
their often hysterical lives she moved with a coolness that was
refreshing even to them. She never criticized their actions except
sometimes by tacitly declining to join in them. And they seldom really
wanted her to do that. Her value to them would have been diminished, if
not destroyed, had she been quite as they were.
For the moment she was in Grosvenor Square.
Charmian envied Adelaide Shiffney. But she was resolved to see more of
Miss Fleet at whatever cost. Recently she had been conscious of a tiny
something, not much more than a thread, dividing her from her mother.
Since her mother knew that she had made up her face on Claude Heath's
account, she had often felt self-conscious at home. Knowing that, her
mother, of course, knew more. If Charmian had told the truth she would
not have minded the fact that it was known. But she did mind very much
its being known when she had not told it. Sometimes she said to herself
that she was being absurd, that Mrs. Mansfield knew, even suspected,
nothing. But unfortunately she was a woman and, therefore, obliged to be
horribly intelligent in certain directions. Her painted cheeks and
delicately-darkened eyelashes had spoken what her lips had never said.
It was vain to pretend the contrary. And she sedulously pretended it.
Her sense of separation from her mother made Charmian the more desirous
of further intercourse with Susan Fleet. She felt as if only Miss Fleet
could help her, though how she did not know. After repeated attempts on
her part a meeting was at last arranged, and one afternoon the
Theosophist made her appearance in Berkeley Square and was shown
upstairs to Charmian's little sitting-room.
Charmian was playing a Polonaise of Chopin's on a cottage piano. She
played fairly well, but not remarkably. She had been trained by a
competent master and had a good deal of execution. But her playing
lacked that grip and definite intention which are the blood and bone of
a performance. Several people thought nevertheless that it was full of
charm.
"Oh, Susan!"--she stopped abruptly on a diminished seventh. "Come and
sit here! May I?"
She kissed the serene face, clasping the white-gloved hands with both of
hers.
"Another from Folkestone?"
"Yes."
"What a fit! I simply must go there. D'you like my little room?"
Susan looked quietly round, examining the sage-green walls, the
water-colors, the books in Florentine bindings, the chairs and sofas
covered with chintz, which showed a bold design of purple grapes with
green leaves, the cream-colored rough curtains, and Charmian's
dachshund, Caroline, who lay awake before the small fire which burned in
a grate lined with Morris tiles.
"Yes, I like it very much. It looks like your home and as if you were
fond of it."
"I am, so far as one can be fond of a room."
She paused, hesitating, thinking of the little island and her sudden
outburst, longing to return at once to the subject which secretly
obsessed her, yet fearing to seem childish, too egoistic, perhaps
naively indiscreet. Susan looked at her with a friendly gaze.
"How are things going with you? Are you happier than you were at
Mustapha?"
"You mean--about that?"
"I'm afraid you have been worrying."
"Do I look uglier?" cried Charmian, almost with sharpness.
Susan Fleet could not help smiling, but in her smile there was no
sarcasm, only a gentle, tolerant humor.
"I hardly know. People say my ideas about looks are all crazy. I can't
admire many so-called beauties, you see. There's more expression in your
face, I think. But I don't know that I should call it happy expression."
"I wish I were like you. I wish I could feel indifferent to happiness!"
"I don't suppose I am indifferent. Only I don't feel that every small
thing of to-day has power over me, any more than I feel that a grain of
dust which I can flick from my dress makes me unclean. It's a long
journey we are making. And I always think it's a great mistake to fuss
on a journey."
"I don't know anyone who can give me what you do," said Charmian.
"It's a long journey up the Ray," said Susan.
"The Ray?" said Charmian, seized with a sense of mystery.
"The bridge that leads from the personal which perishes to the immortal
which endures."
"I can't help loving the personal. I'm not like you. I do love the
feeling of definite personality, separated from everything, mine, me.
It's no use pretending."
"Pretence is always disgusting."
"Yes, of course. But still--never mind, I was only going to say
something you wouldn't agree with."
Susan did not ask what it was, but quietly turned the conversation, and
soon succeeded in ridding Charmian of her faint self-consciousness.
"I want you to meet--him."
At last Charmian had said it, with a slight flush.
"I have met him," returned Miss Fleet, in her powerful voice.
"What!" cried Charmian, on an almost indignant note.
"I met him last night."
"How could you? Where? He never goes to anything!"
"I went with Adelaide to the Elgar Concert at Queen's Hall. He was there
with a musical critic, and happened to be next to us."
Charmian looked very vexed and almost injured.
"Mrs. Shiffney--and you talked to him?"
"Oh, yes. Adelaide introduced us."
There was a silence. Then Charmian said:
"I don't suppose he was his real self--with Adelaide Shiffney. But did
you like him?"
"I did. I thought him genuine. And one sees the spirit clearly in his
face."
"I'm sure he liked you."
"I really don't know."
"I do. Did he--did you--either of you say anything about me?"
"Certainly we did."
"Did he--did he seem--did you notice whether he was at all--? Caroline,
be quiet!"
The dachshund, who had shown signs of an intention to finish her reverie
on Charmian's knees, blinked, looked guilty, lay down again, turned over
on her left side with her back to her mistress, and heaved a sigh that
nearly degenerated into a whimper.
"I suppose he talked most of the time with Mrs. Shiffney?"
"Well, we had quite five minutes together. I spoke about our time at
Mustapha."
"Did he seem interested?"
"Very much, I thought."
"Very much! Oh, Susan! But he has a manner of seeming interested. It may
not mean anything. But still I do think since I have come back he sees
that I am not quite a nonentity. He has been here several times, for
mother of course. Even now I have never heard his music. But there is a
difference. I believe in such a place as London unless one has
resolution to assert oneself people think one is a sort of shadow. I
have so often thought of what you said about my perhaps having to learn
through Claude Heath and to teach him, too. Sometimes when I look at him
I feel it must be so. But what have I to teach? D'you know
since--since--well, it makes me feel humble often. And yet I know that
the greatest man needs help. Men are a sort of children. I've often been
surprised by the childishness of really big men. Please tell me all he
said to you."
Very calmly Susan told. She had just finished, and Charmian was about to
speak again, when Mrs. Mansfield opened the door. Charmian sprang up so
abruptly that Caroline was startled into a husky bark.
"Oh, Madre! Susan Fleet is here!"
Mrs. Mansfield knew at once that she had broken in upon a confidential
interview, not by Miss Fleet's demeanor, but by Charmian's. But she did
not show her knowledge. She sat down and joined pleasantly in the talk.
She had often seen Miss Fleet in London, but she did not know her well.
At once she realized that Charmian had found an excellent friend. And
she was not jealous because of the confidence given but not given to
her. Youth, she knew, is wilful and must have its way. The nearest, for
some inscrutable reason, are generally told the least.
When Miss Fleet went away, Mrs. Mansfield said:
"That is one of the most thoroughbred human beings I have ever seen. No
wonder the greatest snobs like her. There is nothing a snob hates so
much as snobbery in another. _Viva_ to your new friend, Charmian!"
She wondered a little whether Miss Fleet's perception of character was
as keen as her breeding was definite, when she heard that Claude Heath
had met her.
Heath told Mrs. Mansfield this. Miss Fleet had made a strong impression
upon him. At the moment when he had met her he had felt specially
downcast. The musical critic, with whom he had gone to the concert, had
been a fellow student with him at the Royal College. Being young the
critic was very critical, very sure of himself, very decisive in his
worship of the new idols and in his scathing contempt for the old. He
spoke of Mendelssohn as if the composer of _Elijah_ had earned undying
shame, of Gounod as if he ought to have been hanged for creating his
_Faust_. His glorification of certain modern impressionists in music
depressed Heath, almost as much as his abuse of the dead who had been
popular, and who were still appreciated by some thousands, perhaps
millions, of nobodies. He made Heath, in his discontented condition,
feel as if all art were futile.
"Why give up everything," he thought, "merely to earn in the end the
active contempt of men who have given up nothing? What is it that drives
me on? A sort of madness, perhaps, something to be rooted out."
He almost shivered as the conviction came to him that he must have been
composing for posterity, since he did not desire present publicity. No
doubt he had tried to trick himself into the belief that he had toiled
for himself alone, paid the tribute of ardent work to his own soul. Now
he asked himself, with bitter scepticism: "Does any man really ever do
that?" And his world seemed to fall about him like shadows dropping down
into a void.
Then came his five minutes of talk with Susan Fleet.
When Heath spoke of it to Mrs. Mansfield he said:
"I was a cripple when we began. When we stopped I felt as if I could
climb to a peak. And she said nothing memorable. But I had been in her
atmosphere."
"And you are very susceptible to atmosphere."
"Too susceptible. That's why I keep so much to myself."
"I know--the cloister."
She looked at him earnestly, even searchingly. He slightly reddened,
looked down, said slowly:
"It's not a natural life, the life of the cloister."
"Perhaps you mean to come out."
"I don't know what I mean. I am all at a loose end lately."
"Since when?"
Her eyes were still on him.
"I hardly know. Perhaps hearing about Africa, of that voyage I might
have made, unsettled me. I'm a weakling, I'm afraid."
"Very strong in one way."
"Very weak in another, perhaps. It would have been better to go and have
done with it, than to brood over not having gone."
"You are envying Charmian?"
"Some days I envy everyone who isn't Claude Heath," he answered
evasively, with a little covering laugh. "Of one thing I am quite sure,
that I wish I were a male Miss Fleet. She knows what few people know."
"What is that?"
"What is small and what is great."
"And you found that out in five minutes at a concert?"
"Elgar's is music that helps the perceptions."
Mrs. Mansfield's perceptions were very keen. Yet she was puzzled by
Heath. She realized that he was disturbed and attributed that
disturbance to Charmian. Had he suspected, or found out, that Charmian
imagined herself to be in love with him? He came as usual to the house.
His friendship with Mrs. Mansfield did not seem to her to have changed.
But his relation to Charmian was not what it had been. Indeed, it was
scarcely possible that it should be so. For Charmian had continued to be
definite ever since her drastic remarks at dinner on the evening of her
return. She bantered Heath, laughed at him, patronized him in the pretty
way of a pretty London girl who takes the world for her own with the
hands of youth. When she found him with her mother she did not glide
away, or remain as a mere listener while they talked. She stayed to hold
her own, sometimes even--so her mother thought, not without pathos--a
little aggressively.
Heath's curious and deep reserve, which underlay his apparent quick and
sensitive readiness to be sympathetic with those about him, to give them
what they wanted of him, was not abated by Charmian's banter, her
delicate impertinences, her laughing attacks. Mrs. Mansfield noticed
that. He turned to her still when he wished to speak for a moment out of
his heart.
But he was becoming much more at home in Charmian's company. She stirred
him at moments into unexpected bursts of almost boyish gaiety. She knew
how to involve him in eager arguments.
One day, as he was about to leave the house in Berkeley Square he said
to Mrs. Mansfield:
"Miss Charmian ought to have some big object in life on which she could
concentrate. She has powers, you know."
When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield smiled and sighed.
"And when will he find out that he is Charmian's big object in life?"
she thought.
She knew men well. Nevertheless, their stupidities sometimes surprised
her. It was as if something in them obstinately refused to see.
"It's their blindness that spoils us," she said to herself. "If they
could see, we should have ten commandments to obey--perhaps twenty."
CHAPTER XII
Toward the end of the London season the management of the Covent Garden
Opera House startled its subscribers by announcing for production a new
opera, composed by a Frenchmen called Jacques Sennier, whose name was
unknown to most people. Mysteriously, as the day drew near for the first
performance of this work, which was called _Le Paradis Terrestre_, the
inner circles of the musical world were infected with an unusual
excitement. Whispers went round that the new opera was quite
extraordinary, epoch-making, that it was causing a prodigious impression
at rehearsal, that it was absolutely original, that there was no doubt
of its composer's genius. Then reports as to the composer's personality
and habits began to get about. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, knew him. But
she had introduced him to nobody. He was her personal prey at present.
She, however, allowed it to be known that he was quite charming, but the
strangest creature imaginable. It seemed that he had absolutely no moral
sense, did not know what it meant. If he saw an insect trodden upon, or
a fly killed on a window-pane, he could not work for days. But when his
first wife--he had been married at sixteen--shot herself in front of
him, on account of his persistent cruelty and infidelity, he showed no
sign of distress, had the body carried out of his studio, and went on
composing. Decidedly an original! Everybody was longing to know him. The
libraries and the box-office of the Opera House were bombarded with
demands for seats for the first performance, at which the beautiful
Annie Meredith, singer, actress, dancer, speculator, and breeder of
prize bulldogs, was to appear in the heroine's part.
Three nights before the première, a friend, suddenly plunged into
mourning by the death of a relation, sent Mrs. Mansfield her box.
Charmian was overjoyed. Max Elliot, Lady Mildred Burnington, Margot and
Kit Drake, Paul Lane, all her acquaintances, in fact, were already
"raving" about Jacques Sennier, without knowing him, and about his
opera, without having heard it. Sensation, success, they were in the
air. Not to go to this première would be a disaster. Charmian's
instinctive love of being "in" everything had caused her to feel acute
vexation when her mother had told her that their application for stalls
had been refused. Now, at the last moment, they had one of the best
boxes in the house.
"Whom shall we take?" said Mrs. Mansfield. "There's room for four."
"Why not invite Mr. Heath?" said Charmian, with a rather elaborate
carelessness. "As he's a musician it might interest him."
"I will if you like. But he's sure to refuse."
Of late Heath had retired into his shell. Mrs. Shiffney had not seen him
for months. Max Elliot had given him up in despair. Even in Berkeley
Square he was but seldom visible. His excuse for not calling was that he
knew nobody had any time to spare in the season.
"Don't write to him, Madre, or he will. Get him to come here and ask
him. He really ought to follow the progress of his own art, silly
fellow. I have no patience with his absurd fogeydom."
She spoke with the lightest scorn, but in her long eyes there was an
intentness which contradicted her manner.
Heath came to the house, was invited to come to the box, and had just
refused when Charmian entered the room.
"You're afraid, Mr. Heath," she said, smiling at him.
"Afraid! What of?" he asked quickly, and a little defiantly.
"Afraid of hearing what the foreign composers of your own age are doing,
of comparing their talents with your own. That's so English! Never mind
what the rest of the world is about! We'll go on in our own way! It
seems so valiant, doesn't it? And really it's nothing but cowardice,
fear of being forced to see that others are advancing while we are
standing still. I'm sick of English stolidity!"
Heath's eyes shown with something that looked like anger.
"I really don't think I'm afraid!" he said stiffly.
Perhaps to prove that he was not, he rescinded his refusal and came to
the première with the Mansfields. It was a triumph for Charmian, but she
did not show that she knew it.
Heath was in his most reserved mood. He had the manner of the defiant
male lured from behind his defenses into the open against his will. Some
intelligence within him knew that his cold stiffness was rather
ridiculous, and made him unhappy. Mrs. Mansfield was really sorry for
him.
Nothing is more humorously tragic than pleasure indulged in under
protest. And Heath's protest was painfully apparent.
Charmian, who was looking her best, her most self-possessed, a radiant
minx, with fleeting hints of depths and softnesses, half veiled by the
firm habit of the world, seemed to tower morally above the composer. He
marvelled afresh at the triumphant composure of modern girlhood. Sitting
between the two women in the box--no one else had been asked to join
them--he looked out, almost shyly, at the crowded and brilliant house.
Mrs. Shiffney, large, powerful and glittering with jewels, came into a
box immediately opposite to theirs, accompanied by Ferdinand Rades, Paul
Lane, and a very smart, very French, and very ugly woman, who was
covered thickly with white paint, and who looked like all the feminine
intelligence of Paris beneath her perfectly-dressed red hair. In the box
next the stage on the same side were the Max Elliots with Sir Hilary
Burnington and Lady Mildred.
Charmian looked eagerly about the house, putting up her opera-glasses,
finding everywhere friends and acquaintances. She frankly loved the
world with the energy of her youth.
At this moment the sight of the huge and crowded theater, full of
watchful eyes and whispering lips, full of brains and souls waiting to
be fed, the sound of its hum and stir, sent a warm thrill through her,
thrill of expectation, of desire. She thought of that man, Jacques
Sennier, hidden somewhere, the cause of all that was happening in the
house, of all that would happen almost immediately upon the stage. She
envied him with intensity. Then she looked at Claude Heath's rather grim
and constrained expression. Was it possible that Heath did not share her
feeling of envy?
There was a tap at the door. Heath sprang up and opened it. Paul Lane's
pale and discontented face appeared.
"Halloa! Haven't seen you since that dinner! May I come in for a
minute?"
He spoke to the Mansfields.
"Perfectly marvellous! Everyone behind the scenes is mad about it! Annie
Meredith says she will make the success of her life in it. Who's that
Frenchwoman with Adelaide Shiffney? Madame Sennier, the composer's
wife--his second, the first killed herself. Very clever woman. She's not
going to kill herself. Sennier says he could do nothing without her,
never would have done this opera but for her. She found him the
libretto, kept him at it, got the Covent Garden management interested in
it, persuaded Annie Meredith to come over from South America to sing the
part. An extraordinary woman, ugly, but a will of iron, and an ambition
that can't be kept back. Her hour of triumph to-night. There goes the
curtain."
As Lane slipped out of the box, he whispered to Heath:
"Mrs. Shiffney hopes you'll come and speak to her between the acts. Her
name's on the door."
Heath sat down a little behind Mrs. Mansfield. Although the curtain was
now up he noticed that Charmian, with raised opera-glasses, was
earnestly looking at Mrs. Shiffney's box. He noticed, too, that her left
hand shook slightly, almost imperceptibly.
"Her hour of triumph!" Yes, the hour proved to be that. Madame Sennier's
energies had not been expended in vain. From the first bars of music,
from the first actions upon the stage, the audience was captured by the
new work. There was no hesitating. There were no dangerous moments. The
evening was like a crescendo, admirably devised and carried out. And
through it all Charmian watched the ugly white face of the red-haired
woman opposite to her, lived imaginatively in that woman's heart and
brain, admired her, almost hated her, longed to be what she was.
Between the acts she saw men pouring into Mrs. Shiffney's box. And every
one was presented to the ugly woman, whose vivacity and animation were
evidently intense, who seemed to demand homage as a matter of course.
Several foreigners kissed her hand. Max Elliot's whole attitude, as he
bent over her, showed adoration and enthusiasm. Even Paul Lane was
smiling, as he drew her attention to a glove split by his energy in
applause.
Heath had spoken of Mrs. Shiffney's message. He was evidently reluctant
to obey it, but Charmian insisted on his going.
"I want to know what Madame Sennier is like. You must ask her if she is
happy, find out how happy she is."
"Charmian, Mr. Heath isn't a mental detective!"
"I speak such atrocious French!" said Heath, looking nervous and
miserable.
"I suppose you can say, '_Chère Madame, j'espère que vous étes bien
contente ce soir_?'"
When Heath had left the box Mrs. Mansfield said gravely to her daughter:
"Charmian!"
"Yes, Madretta."
"I don't think you are behaving very kindly this evening. You scarcely
seem to remember that Mr. Heath is our guest."
"Against his will," she said, in a voice that was almost hard. There was
a hardness, too, in her whole look and manner.
"I think that only makes the hostess's obligation the stronger," said
Mrs. Mansfield. "I don't at all like the Margot manner with men."
"I'm sorry, Madre; but I had no idea I was imitating Margot Drake."
Mrs. Mansfield said no more. Charmian, with flushed cheeks and shining
eyes, turned to look once more at Adelaide Shiffney's box.
In about three minutes she saw Mrs. Shiffney glance behind her. Max
Elliot, who was still with her, got up and opened the door, and Heath
stood in the background. Charmian frowned and pressed her little teeth
on her lower lip. Her body felt stiff with attention, with scrutiny. She
saw Heath come forward, Max Elliot holding him by the arm, and talking
eagerly and smiling. Mrs. Shiffney smiled, too, laughed, gave him her
powerful hand. Now he was being introduced to Madame Sennier, who surely
appraised him with one swift, almost cruelly intelligent glance.
His French! His French! Charmian trembled for it, for him because of it.
If Mrs. Mansfield could have known how solicitous, how tender, how
motherly, the girl felt at that moment under her mask of shining,
radiant hardness! But Mrs. Mansfield was glancing about the house with
grave and even troubled eyes.
Heath was talking to Madame Sennier. He was even sitting down beside
her. She spoke, evidently with volubility, making rapid gestures with
her hands. Then she paused. She was listening attentively to Heath. Mrs.
Shiffney and Elliot listened, too, as if absorbed. Heath's French must
really be excellent. Why had he--? If only she could hear what he was
saying! She tingled with curiosity. How he held them, those three
people! From here he looked distinguished, interesting. He stood out
even in this crowd as an interesting man. Madame Sennier made an upward
movement of her head, full of will. She put out her hand, and laid it on
Heath's arm. Now they all seemed to be talking together. Madame Sennier
looked radiant, triumphant, even autocratic. She pointed toward the
stage emphatically, made elaborate descriptive movements with her hands.
A bell sounded somewhere. Heath got up. In a moment he and Max Elliot
had left the box together. The two women were alone. They leaned toward
each other apparently in earnest conversation.
"I know they are talking about him! I know they are!"
Charmian actually formed the words with her lips. The curtain rose as
Heath quietly entered the box. Charmian did not turn to him or look at
him then. Only when the act was over did she move and say:
"Well, Mr. Heath, your French evidently comes at call."
"What--oh, we were talking in English!"
"Madame Sennier speaks English?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
"Excellently!"
Charmian felt disappointed.
"Is she happy?" she asked, moving her hand on the edge of the box.
"She seems so."
"Did you tell her what you thought?"
"Yes," said Heath.
His voice had become suddenly deeper, more expressive.
"I told her that I thought it wonderful. And so it is. She said--in
French this: 'Ah, my friend, wait till the last act. Then it is no
longer the earthly Paradise!'"
There was a moment of silence. Then Charmian said, in a voice that
sounded rather dry:
"You liked her?"
"I don't know. Yes, I think I did. We were all rather carried away, I
suppose."
"Carried away! By what?"
"Well, it is evidently a great moment in Madame Sennier's life. One must
sympathize."
Charmian looked and saw two spots of color burning high up on his
cheeks. His voice had suddenly quivered.
"I should think so," said Mrs. Mansfield. "This evening probably means
more to Madame Sennier even than to her husband."
Charmian said nothing more till the end of the evening. Beneath the
radiant coolness of her demeanor, the air of triumphant self-possession,
she was secretly quivering with excitement. She feared to betray
herself. Soon she was spellbound by the music of the last act and by the
wonderful performance of Annie Meredith. As she listened, leaning
forward in the box, and always feeling intensely the nearness to her of
Heath, and of Heath's strong musical talent, she remembered something
she had once said in the drawing-room in Berkeley Square, "We want a new
note." Here was the new note in French music, the new talent given to
the wondering and delighted world to-night. To-morrow doubtless Europe
and America would know that the husband of the red-haired woman opposite
had taken his place among the famous men to whom the world must pay
attention. From to-morrow thousands of art lovers would be looking
toward Jacques Sennier with expectation, the curious expectation of
those who crave for fresh food on which they may feed their intellects,
and their souls. The great tonic of a new development in art was
offered to all those who cared to take it by the man who would probably
be staring from behind the footlights at the crowd in a few moments.
If only the new note had been English!
"It shall be! It shall be!" Charmian repeated to herself.
She looked again and again at Madame Sennier, striving to grasp the
secret of her will for another, even while she gave herself to the
enchantment of the music. But for that woman in all probability the
music would never have been given life. Somewhere, far down in the
mystery of an individual, it would have lain, corpse-like. A woman had
willed that it should live. She deserved the homage she had received,
and would receive to-night. For she had made her man do a great thing,
because she had helped him to understand his own greatness.
Suddenly, out of the almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the
music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to
detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the
Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some day with him!" so
now she seemed to be aware that the future would show a brilliant crowd
assembled in some great theater, not for Jacques Sennier, but for one
near her. Really she was violently willing that it should be so. But she
thought she was receiving--from whom, or from what, she could not
tell--a mysterious message.
And the red-haired woman's place was filled by another.
At last the curtain fell on the final scene, and the storm which meant a
triumph was unchained. Heath sprang up from his seat, carried away by a
generous enthusiasm. He did not know how to be jealous of anyone who
could do a really fine thing. Charmian, in the midst of the uproar,
heard him shouting "Bravo!" behind her, in a voice quick with
excitement. His talent was surely calling to a brother. The noise all
over the house strengthened gradually, then abruptly rose like a great
wave. A small, thin, and pale man, with a big nose, a mighty forehead,
scanty black hair and beard, and blinking eyes, had stepped out before
the curtain. He leaned forward, made a movement as if to retreat, was
stopped by a louder roar, stepped quickly to the middle of the small
strip of stage that was visible, and stood still with his big head
slightly thrust out toward the multitude which acclaimed him.
Charmian turned round to Claude Heath, who towered above her. He did not
notice her movement. He was gazing at the stage while he violently
clapped his hands. She gazed up at him. He felt her eyes, leaned down.
For a moment they looked at each other, while the noise in the house
increased. Claude saw that Charmian wanted to speak to him--and
something else. After a moment, during which the blood rose in his
cheeks and forehead, and he felt as if he were out in wind and rain, in
falling snow and stern sunshine, he said:
"What is it?"
"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be--for you!"
CHAPTER XIII
In the studio of Mullion House that night, Harriet, moving softly,
placed a plate of sandwiches and a long bottle of Rhine wine before she
went up to bed. Moonlight shone on the scrap of garden, gleamed on the
leaded panes of the studio windows, from which the orange-colored
curtains were drawn back. The aspect of the big room had changed because
it was summer. It looked bigger, less cosy without a fire. One lamp was
lighted and cast a gentle glow over the books that lay near it, and over
the writing-table on which there were sheets of manuscript music. The
piano stood open. A spray of white roses in a tall vase looked spectral
against the shadows. After Harriet's departure the clock ticked for a
long time in an empty room.
It was nearly two o'clock, and the moon was waning, when the studio door
was opened to let in Heath. He was alone. Holding the door with one
hand, he stood and stared at the room, examined it with a sort of
excited and close attention. Then he took off his hat, shut the door,
laid hat and coat on the sofa, went to the table where Harriet had put
the tray, and poured out a glass of wine. He sighed, looked at the gold
of the wine, made beautiful by the lamplight, drank it, and sat down in
the worn armchair which faced the line of window. Then he lit a cigar,
leaned back, and smoked, keeping his eyes on the glass.
Upon the leaded panes the faint silver shifted, faded, and presently
died. Heath watched, and thought, "The moon gone!" He did not feel as if
he could ever wish to sleep again. The excitement within him was like a
ravaging disease. He was capable of excitement that never comes to the
ordinary man, although he took sedulous care to hide that fact. His
imagination bristled like a spear held by one alert for attack. What was
life going to do to him? What was he going to let it do?
Charmian Mansfield loved him, and believed in his genius, as he did not
believe, or had not till now believed in it. He was loved, he was
believed in, by the thin mystery of a modern girl, who had known many
men with talents, with names, with big reputations. Under that
triumphant composure, that almost cruel banter, that whimsical airy
contempt, that cool frivolity of the minx, there was emotion, there was
love for him and for his talent. Always that night he thought of his
talent in connection with Charmian's love, he scarcely knew why. For how
long had she loved him? And why did she love him? He thought of his
body, and it surprised him that she loved that. He thought of his mind,
his imagination, his temper, his tricks, his faults, his habits. He
thought of his deep reserve, and of the intense emotion he sometimes
felt when he was quite alone and composing. Sometimes he felt like a
great fire then. Sometimes he felt brutal, almost savage, decisive in a
sense that was surely cruel. Did she suspect all that? Did she love all
that without consciously suspecting it? Sometimes, when he had been
working very hard, overworking perhaps, he felt inclined to do evil. If
she knew that!
But she did not, she could not know him. Why, then, did she love him?
Heath was not a conceited man, but he did not at this moment doubt
Charmian's love for him. Though he was sometimes child-like, and could
be, like most men, very blind, he had a keen intellect which could
reason about psychology. He knew how women love success. He knew how, in
a moment of excitement such as that at the end of the opera, when
Jacques Sennier came before the curtain, they instinctively concentrate
on the man who has made the success. He knew, or divined, what woman's
concentration is. And he realized the bigness of the tribute paid to him
by Charmian's abrupt detachment from the hour and the man, by the sweep
of her brain and her heart to him. Any conqueror of women might have
been proud of such a tribute, have considered it rare. Her eyes, her
voice, in the tempest they had thrilled him. He had been only thinking
of Sennier's music and of Sennier, of art and the human being behind it.
Nothing within him had consciously called to Charmian. Nor had there--he
felt sure now--been the unconscious call sent out by the man of talent
who feels himself left out in the cold, who cannot stifle the greedy
voice of the jealousy which he despises. No, the initiative had been
wholly hers. And something irresistible must have moved her, driven her,
to do what she had done. She must have been mastered by an impulse bred
out of strong excitement. She had been mastered by an impulse.
"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be for you."
She had only whispered the words, but they had seemed to stab him, with
so much mental force had she sent them out. Mrs. Mansfield had not heard
them. And how extraordinary Charmian's eyes had been during that moment
when she and he had gazed at one another. He had not known eyes could
look like that, as if the whole spirit of a human being were crouching
in them, intent. How far away from the eyes the human spirit must often
be!
As Heath thought of Charmian's eyes he felt as if he knew very little of
real life yet.
She had turned away. Again and again Jacques Sennier had been called. He
had returned with Annie Meredith, to whom he had made the gift of a
splendid rôle. They shook hands before the audience, not perfunctorily,
but as if they loved one another, were bound together, comrades in the
beautiful. He--Heath--had stood upright again, had gone on applauding
with the rest. But his thoughts had then all been on himself. "If all
this were for me! If I should ever have such an hour in my life, such a
tribute as this! If within me is the capacity to conquer all these
diverse natures and temperaments, to weld them together in a common
desire, the desire to show thankfulness for what a man has been able to
give them!" And he had thrilled for the first time with a fierce new
longing, the longing for the best that is meant by fame.
This longing persisted now.
Heath had left Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian under the arcade of the Opera
House, after putting them into their car. The crush coming out had been
great. They had had to wait for nearly half an hour in the vestibule.
During that time the Mansfields had talked to many friends. Charmian
had completely regained her composure. She had introduced Heath to
several people, among others to Kit and Margot Drake, who spoke of
nothing but the opera and its composer and Annie Meredith. The vestibule
was full of the voices of praise. Everybody seemed unusually excited.
Paul Lane had actually come up to them with beads of perspiration
standing on his forehead, and his eyes shining with excitement.
"This is a red-letter night in my life," he had said. "I have felt a
strong and genuine emotion. There's a future for music, after all, and a
big one. If only there were one or two more Jacques Senniers!"
Even then Charmian had not looked again at Heath. She had answered
lightly.
"Perhaps there are. Who knows? Even Monsieur Sennier was practically
unknown four hours ago."
"There are not many parts of the civilized world in which his name will
be unknown in four days from now," said Paul Lane, "or even in
twenty-four hours. I'm going to meet him and his wife at supper at
Adelaide Shiffney's, so I must say good-night--oh, and good-night, Mr.
Heath."
Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath.
Claude had walked all the way home alone slowly. He had passed through
Piccadilly Circus, through Regent Street, through Oxford Street, along
the north side of the closed and deserted Park on which the faint
moonlight lay. When he reached his door he had not gone in. He had
turned, had paced up and down. The sight of a very large policeman
looking attentive, then grimly inquiring, then crudely suspicious, had
finally decided him to enter his house.
What was life going to do to him if he did not hold back, did not
persist any longer in his mania for refusal? There was a new world
spread out before him. He stood upon its border. He wanted to step into
it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated,
was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he
wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to
him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had
said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath,
whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the
instinct of self-preservation."
What was Jacques Sennier's strongest instinct?
Madame Sennier had made a powerful impression on Heath, and he had been
greatly flattered by the deep attention with which she had listened to
what he had to say about her husband's opera.
"Here's a man who knows what he is talking about," she exclaimed, when
he finished speaking. When he got up to leave the box she had looked
full into his eyes and said: "You are going to do something, too."
Could Jacques Sennier have won his triumph alone?
Impulse was boiling up in Heath. After all that had happened that night
he felt as if he could not go to bed without accomplishing some decisive
action. Powers were on tiptoe within him surely ready for the giant
leap.
He got up, went to the piano, went to his writing-table, fingered the
manuscript paper covered with tiny notes which lay scattered upon it.
But, no, it would be absurd, mad, to begin to work at such an hour. And,
beside, he could not work. He could not be patient. He wanted to do
something with a rush, to change his life in a moment, to take a leap
forward, as Sennier had done that night, a leap from shadow into light.
He wanted to grasp something, to have a new experience. All the long
refusal of his life, which had not seemed to cost him very much till
this moment, abruptly, revengefully attacked him in the very soul,
crying: "You must pay for me! Pay! Pay!" He hated the thought of his
remote and solitary life. He hated the memory of the lonely evenings
passed in the study of scores, or in composition, by the lamp that shed
a restricted light.
The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed,
he lusted for fame.
Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."
Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been
something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet
surely showed her love. Perhaps instinctively she knew that he needed
venom, and that she alone could supply it.
The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, knew
nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital
force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She
was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must
have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of
greatness.
He loved her just then for that.
"Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath."
Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.
Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big
room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was
dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn
his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of
inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of
Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to
reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its
atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his
opera here. In vain to try.
With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table,
snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them
across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere
futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of
unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was
bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he
resolved to have done with it.
Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly
down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason,
but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick
whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had
known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know
ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to
the instinct of love.
He took a pen, leaned over the table, wrote a letter swiftly, violently
even. His pen seemed to form the words by itself. He was unconscious of
guiding it. The letter was not long, only two sides of a sheet. He
blotted it, thrust it into an envelope, addressed, closed, and stamped
it, got up, took his hat, and went out of the studio.
In a moment he was in the deserted road. The large policeman, who had
eyed him with such grave suspicion, was gone. No one was in sight. The
silver of the moonlight had given place to a faint grayness, a weariness
of the night falling toward the arms of dawn.
Claude walked swiftly on, turned the corner, and came into the
thoroughfare which skirts Kensington Gardens and the Park. Some fifty
yards away there was a letter box. He hurried toward it, driven on by
defiance of that within him which would fain have held him back, by the
blind instinct to trample which sometimes takes hold of a strong and
emotional nature in a moment of unusual excitement.
"The great refuser! No, I'll not be that any longer."
As he drew near to the letter box he felt that till now he had been a
composer. Henceforth he would be a man. He had lived for an art.
Henceforth he would live for life, and would make life feel his art.
He dropped his letter into the box.
In falling out of his sight it made a faint, uneasy noise.
Claude stood there like one listening.
The grayness seemed to grow slightly more livid over the tree-tops and
behind the branches. The letter did not speak again. So he thought of
that tiny noise, as the speech of the dropping letter. It must have slid
down against the side of the box. Now it was lying still. There was
nothing more for him to do but to go home. Yet he waited before the
letter box, with his eyes fixed upon the small white plaque on which was
printed the time of the next delivery--eight-forty A.M.
Was it the sound, or was it the movement preceding the sound, which had
worked a cold change in his heart? He felt almost stunned by what he had
done, like a man who strikes and sees the result of his blow, who has
not measured its force, and sees his victim measure it. Eight-forty
A.M.
A step sounded. He looked, and saw in the distance the large policeman
slowly advancing.
When he was again in his house he closed the front door softly, and went
once more to the studio. He looked round it, examining the familiar
objects: the piano, his work table, the books, the deep, well-worn,
homely chairs, the rugs which Mrs. Mansfield had liked. On the floor, by
his table, lay the fragments of manuscript music. How had he come to
tear it, his last composition?
He went over to the window, opened a square of the glass, sat down on
the window-seat, and looked out to the tiny garden. A faint smell, as of
dewy earth, rose from it, fresh, delicate, and--somehow--pathetic. As
Claude leaned on the window-sill this frail scent, which seemed part of
the dying night, connected itself in his mind with his past life. He
drew it in through his nostrils, he thought of it, and vaguely it
floated about the long days and nights of his work-filled loneliness,
making them sad, yet sweet. He had had an ideal and he had striven to
guard it carefully. He had lived for it. To-night he had cast it out in
a moment of strange excitement. Had he done wrong? Had he been false to
himself?
The mere fact that he was sitting and forming such questions in his mind
at such a moment proved to him that he had acted madly when he had
written and posted his letter. And he was overcome by a sense of dread.
He feared himself, that man who could act on a passionate impulse,
brushing aside all the restraints that his reason would oppose. And he
feared now almost unspeakably the result of what he had done. He had
given himself to the life which till now he had always avoided. He had
broken with the old life.
At eight-forty that morning his letter would be taken out of the box and
would start on its journey. Before night it would have been read and
probably answered. Sweat broke out on his face--a feeling of desperation
seized him. He loved his complete command of his own life, complete,
that is, in the human sense. He had never known how much he loved it,
clung to it, till now. And he must part from it. He had invited another
to join with him in the directing of his life. He had written burning
words. The thought of Madame Sennier and all she had done for her
husband had winged his pen.
The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He
had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth
poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence.
No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and
in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In
this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was
impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great
mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its
little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had
carried him away in the theater.
Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that
was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had
never written that letter of love to Charmian.
The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the
fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude
looked at them, and thought:
"If only my letter lay there instead!"
CHAPTER XIV
It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude
Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new
strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both
of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if
possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful.
For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to
Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan,
Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their
feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said:
"Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there.
Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at
by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!"
Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church
door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge.
Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and
Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old
life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of
fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude
to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter
she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her
ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would
emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for
laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done,
with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must
not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient.
The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and
Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.
Charmian thought of this house in Kensington Square as a compromise.
Claude had wished to give up Mullion House on his marriage. Seeing the
obligation to enter upon a new way of life before him he had resolved,
almost with fierceness, to break away from his austere past, to destroy,
so far as was possible, all associations that linked him with it. With
an intensity that was honorable, he set out to make a success of his
life with Charmian. To do that, he felt that he must create a great
change in himself. He had become wedded to habits. Those habits must all
be divorced from him. An atmosphere had enfolded him, had become as it
were part of him, drowning his life in its peculiar influence. He must
emerge from it. But he would never be able to emerge from it in the
little old house which he loved. So he got rid of his lease, with
Charmian's acquiescence.
She did not really want to live on the north side of the Park. And the
neighborhood was "Bayswatery." But she guessed that Claude was not quite
happy in deserting his characteristic roof-tree, and she eagerly sought
for another. It was found in Kensington Square. Several interesting and
even famous persons lived there. The houses were old, not large,
compact. They had a "flavor" of culture, which set them apart from the
new and mushroom dwellings of London, and from all flats whatsoever.
They were suitable to "artistic" people. A great actress, much sought
after in the social world, had lived for years in this square. A famous
musician was opposite to her. A baronet, who knew how to furnish, and
whose wife gave delightful small parties, was next door but three. A
noted novelist had just moved there from a flat in Queen Anne's
Mansions. In fact, there was a cachet on Kensington Square.
And though it was rather far out, you can go almost anywhere in ten
minutes if you can afford to take a taxi-cab. Charmian and Claude had
fifteen hundred a year between them. She had no doubt of their being
able to take taxi-cabs on such an income. And, later on, of course
Claude would make a lot of money. Jacques Sennier's opera was bringing
him in thousands of pounds, and he had received great offers for future
works from America, where _Le Paradis Terrestre_ had just made a furore
at the Metropolitan Opera House. He and Madame Sennier were in New York
now, having a more than lovely time. The generous American nation had
taken them both to its heart. Charmian had read several accounts of
their triumphs, artistic and social, in English newspapers. She had said
to herself "Ours presently!" And with renewed and vital energy, she had
devoted herself afresh to the task of "getting into" the new house.
Mrs. Mansfield had helped her, with sober love and devotion.
Now at last the house was ready, four servants were engaged, and the
ceremony of hanging the _crémaillère_ was being duly accomplished.
The Heaths' house-warming had brought together Charmian's friends.
Heath, true to his secret determination to break away from his old life,
had wished that it should be so. His few intimates in London were not in
the Mansfields' set, and would not "mix in" very well with Kit and
Margot Drake, the Elliots, the Burningtons, Paul Lane, and the many
other people with whom Charmian was intimate; who went where she had
always been accustomed to go, and who spoke her language. So it was
Charmian's party and Heath played the part of host to about fifty
people, most of whom were almost, or quite, strangers to him.
And he played it well, though perhaps with a certain anxiety which he
could not quite conceal. For he was in a new country with people to all
of whom it was old.
Late in the evening he at last had a few minutes alone with his
mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa
in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the
Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child
in a white frock, standing against a pale blue background, by
Burne-Jones, he felt like a man who had been far away from himself, and
who was suddenly again with himself. Mrs. Mansfield's quiet tenderness
flowed over him, but unostentatiously. She had much to conceal from
Claude now; her understanding of the struggle, the fear, the almost
desperate determination within him, her deep sympathy with him in his
honorable conduct, her anxiety about his future with her child, her
painful comprehension of Charmian, which did not abate her love for the
girl, but perhaps strengthened it, giving it wings of pity. She was one
of those middle-aged people of great intelligence, who have learned
through deep experience, to divine. Her power had not failed her during
the period of her daughter's engagement to Heath. If she had not acted
strongly it was because she was supremely delicate in mind, and had a
great respect for personal liberty. She disliked intensely those elderly
people who are constantly trying to interfere with the happiness of
youth. Perhaps she was overscrupulous in her reserve. Perhaps she should
have acted on the prompting of her quick understanding. She did not. It
seemed to her that she could not.
She could not tell her child that Claude Heath was not really in love.
Nor could she tell Charmian that an affection threaded through and
through with a personal, and rather vulgar, ambition is not the kind of
affection likely to form a firm basis for the building of happiness.
So she had to hide her understanding, her regret, her anxiety. She alone
knew whether pride helped her, perhaps had helped to prompt her, to
reticence, to concealment. She had been Claude Heath's great friend. The
jealousies of women are strong. She knew herself free from jealousy. But
another woman, even her own daughter, might misunderstand. It was bitter
to think so, but she did think so. And her lips were sealed. Beneath the
more human fears in her crouched a fear that seemed apart, almost
curiously isolated and very definite, the fear for Claude Heath's
strange talent.
On the night of the house-warming, as they sat together hearing the
laughter, the buzz of talk, from those near them; as, a moment later,
they heard those sounds diminish upon the narrow staircase, when
everybody but themselves trooped down gaily to "play with a little food
unceremoniously," as Charmian expressed it, Mrs. Mansfield found herself
thinking of her first visit to the big studio in Mullion House, and of
those Kings of the East whom the man beside her had made to live in her
warm imagination.
"What is it?" Claude said, when the human sounds in the house came up
from under their feet.
"From to-morrow!" she answered, looking at him with her strong, intense
eyes.
"From to-morrow--yes, Madre?"
She put her thin and firm hand on his.
"Life begins again, the life of work put off for a time. To-morrow you
take it up once more."
"Yes--yes!"
He glanced about the pretty room, listened to the noise of the gaieties
below them. Distinctly he heard Max Elliot's genial laugh.
"Of course," he said. "I must start again on something. The question is,
what on?"
"Surely you have something in hand?"
"I had. But--well, I've left it for so long that I don't know whether I
could get back into the mood which enabled me to start it. I don't
believe I could somehow. I think it would be best to begin on something
quite fresh."
"You know that. Do you think you will like the new workroom?"
"Charmian has made it very pretty and cozy," he answered.
His imaginative eyes looked suddenly distressed, almost persecuted, and
he raised his eyebrows.
"She is very clever at creating prettiness around her," he continued,
after an instant of silence, during which Mrs. Mansfield looked down.
"It is quite wonderful. And how energetic she is!"
"Yes, Charmian can be very energetic when she likes. Adelaide Shiffney
never turned up to-night."
"She telegraphed this morning that she had to go over unexpectedly to
Paris. Something to do with the Senniers probably. You know how devoted
she is to him. And now he is the rage in America, Charmian says. Every
day I expect to hear that Mrs. Shiffney had sailed for New York."
He laughed, but not quite naturally.
"What a change in his life that evening at Covent Garden made!" he
added.
"And what a change in yours!" was Mrs. Mansfield's thought.
"He found himself, as people call it, on that night, I suppose," she
said. "He is one of those men with a talent made for the great public.
And he knew it, perhaps, for the first time that night. He is launched
now on his destined career."
"You believe in destiny?"
She detected the sadness she had surprised in his eyes in his voice now.
"Perhaps in our making of it."
"Rather than in some great Power's imposing of it upon us?"
"Ah, it's so difficult to know! When I was a child we had a game we
loved. We went into a large room which was pitch dark. A person was
hidden in it who had a shilling. Whichever child found that person had
the shilling. There were terror and triumph in that game. It was
scarcely like a game, it roused our feelings so strongly."
"It is not everyone's destiny to find the holder of the shilling," said
Claude.
For a moment their eyes met. Claude suddenly reddened.
"Have I? Does she suspect? Does she know?" went through his mind. And
even Mrs. Mansfield felt embarrassed. For in that moment it was as if
they had spoken to each other with a terrible frankness despite the
silence of their lips.
"Shan't we go down?" said Claude. "Surely you want something to eat,
Madre?"
"No, really. And I like a quiet talk with my new son."
He said nothing, but she saw the strong affection in his face, lighting
it, and she knew Claude loved her almost as a son may love a perfect
mother. She wished that she dared to trust that love completely. But the
instinctive reserve of the highly civilized held her back. And she only
said:
"You must not let marriage interfere too much with your work, Claude. I
care very much for that. For years your work was everything to you. It
can't be that, it oughtn't to be that now. But I want your marriage with
Charmian to help, not to hinder you. Be true to your own instinct in
your art and surely all must go well."
"Yes, yes. To-morrow I must make a fresh start. I could never be an
idler. I must--I must try to use life as food for my art!"
He was speaking out his thought of the night when he wrote his letter to
Charmian. But how cold, how doubtful it seemed when clothed in words.
"Some can do that," said Mrs. Mansfield. "But, as I remember saying on
the night of Charmian's return from Algiers, Swinburne's food was
Putney. There is no rule. Follow your instinct."
She spoke with a sort of strong pressure. And again their eyes met.
"How well she understands me!" he thought. "Does she understand me too
well?"
He became hot, then cold, at the thought that perhaps she had divined
his lack of love for her daughter.
For marriage with Charmian, and three months of intimate intercourse
with her, had not made Claude love her. He admired her appearance. He
felt, sometimes strongly, her physical attraction. Her slim charm did
not leave him unmoved. Often he felt obliged to respect her energy, her
vitality. But anything that is not love is far away from love. In
marrying Charmian, Claude had made a secret sacrifice on the altar of
honor. He had done "the decent thing." Impulse had driven him into a
mistake and he had "paid for it" like a man without a word of complaint
to anyone. He had hoped earnestly, almost angrily, that love would be
suddenly born out of marriage, that thus his mistake would be cancelled,
his right dealing rewarded beautifully.
It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had
become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from
the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke,
with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find
salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell
her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker
who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies
of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays
them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all
things in his life work together for good.
"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.
When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair
before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first
drawing-room.
"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You
aren't sleepy, are you?"
"Not a bit."
He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.
"It went off well, didn't it?"
She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were
clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a
yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it
looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her
face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.
"Yes, I think it did."
"They all liked you."
"I'm glad!"
"You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!
You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or
not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like
yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max
Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide Shiffney not to come!"
Her voice had suddenly changed.
"Did you want Mrs. Shiffney to come so particularly?" Claude asked, not
without surprise.
"Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of
her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after
accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she
rushed off to Paris like that?"
"I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max
Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier."
Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.
"Max does exactly the same," said Charmian. "It really becomes rather
silly--in a man."
"But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him."
"I never said there was. But still--Margot is rather tiresome, too, with
her rages first for this person and then for the other."
"Who is it now?"
"Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others."
"Still?"
"Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I
believe, just to hear the _Paradis_ once at the Metropolitan. Five days
out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put
in the _Daily Mail_. And then she says she can't think how things about
her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!"
"Still, she admires the right thing when she admires Sennier's talent,"
said Claude, with a sort of still decision.
Charmian turned her eyes away from the fire and looked at him.
"How odd you are!" she said, after a little pause.
"Why? In what way am I odd?"
"In almost every way, I think. But it's all right. You ought to be odd."
"What do you mean, Charmian?"
"Jacques Sennier's odd, extraordinary. People like that always are. You
are."
She was examining him contemplatively, as a woman examines a possession,
something that the other women have not. Her look made him feel very
restive and intensely reserved.
"I doubt if I am the least like Jacques Sennier," he said.
"Oh, yes, you are. I know."
His rather thin and very mobile lips tightened, as if to keep back a
rush of words.
"You don't know yourself," Charmian continued, still looking at him with
those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is part
of themselves."
"Do women?"
"What does it matter? I am thinking about you, about my man."
There was a long pause, which Claude filled by getting up and lighting a
cigarette. A hideous, undressed sensation possessed him, the undressed
sensation of the reserved nature that is being stared at. He said to
himself: "It is natural that she should look at me like this, speak to
me like this. It is perfectly natural." But he hated it. He even felt as
if he could not endure it much longer, and would be obliged to do
something to stop it.
"Don't sit down again," said Charmian, as he turned with the cigarette
in his mouth.
She got up with lithe ease, like one uncurling.
"Let's go and look at your room, where you're going to begin work
to-morrow."
She put her hand on his arm. And her hand was possessive as her eyes had
been.
Claude's workroom was at the back of the house on the floor above the
drawing-room. An upright piano replaced the grand piano of Mullion
House, now dedicated to the drawing-room. There was a large flat
writing-table in front of the window, where curtains of Irish frieze,
dark green in color, hung shutting out the night and the ugliness at the
back of Kensington Square. The walls were nearly covered with books. At
the bottom of the bookcases were large drawers for music. A Canterbury
held more music, and was placed beside the writing-table. The carpet was
dark green without any pattern. In the fireplace were some curious
Morris tiles, representing Æneas carrying Anchises, with Troy burning in
the background. There were two armchairs, and a deep sofa covered in
dark green. A photograph of Charmian stood on the writing-table. It
showed her in evening dress, holding her Conder fan, and looking out
with half-shut eyes. There was in it a hint of the assumed dreaminess
which very sharp-witted modern maidens think decorative in photographs,
the "I follow an ideal" expression, which makes men say, "What a
charming girl! Looks as if she'd got something in her, too!"
"It's a dear little room, isn't it, Claude?" said Charmian.
"Yes, very."
"You really like it, don't you? You like its atmosphere?"
"I think you've done it delightfully. I was saying to Madre only this
evening how extraordinarily clever you are in creating prettiness around
you."
"Were you? How nice of you."
She laid her cheek against his shoulder.
"You'll be able to work here?"
"Why not?"
"Let's shut the door, and just _feel_ the room for a minute."
"All right."
He shut the door.
"Don't let us speak for a moment," she whispered.
She was sitting now on the deep sofa just beyond the writing-table.
Claude stood quite still. And in the silence which followed her words he
strove to realize whether he would be able to work in the little room.
Would anything come to him here? His eyes rested on Anchises, crouched
on the back of his son, on the burning city of Troy. He felt confused,
strange, and then _dépaysé_. That word alone meant what he felt just
then. Ah, the little house with the one big room looking out on to the
scrap of garden, yellow-haired Fan, Harriet discreet unto dumbness, Mrs.
Searle with her scraps of wisdom--he with his freedom!
The room was a cage, wire bars everywhere. Never could he work in it!
"It is good for work, isn't it, Claudie? Even poor little I can feel
that. What wonderful things you are going to do here. As wonderful as--"
She checked herself abruptly.
"As what?" he asked, striving to force an interest, to banish his secret
desperation.
"I won't tell you now. Some day--in a year, two years--I'll tell you."
Her eyes shone. He thought they looked almost greedy.
"When my man's done something wonderful!"
CHAPTER XV
In Charmian's conception of the perfect helpmate for a great man
self-sacrifice shone out as the first of the virtues. She must sacrifice
herself to Claude, must regulate her life so that his might glide
smoothly, without any friction, to the appointed goal. She must be
patient, understanding, and unselfish. But she must also be firm at the
right moment, be strong in judgment, be judicious, the perfect critic as
well as the ardent admirer. During her life among clever and well-known
men she had noticed how the mere fact of marriage often seems to make a
man think highly of the intellect of his chosen woman. Again and again
she had heard some distinguished writer or politician, wedded to
somebody either quite ordinary, or even actually stupid, say: "I'd take
my wife's judgment before anyone's," or "My wife sees more clearly for a
man than anyone I know." She had known painters and sculptors submit
their works to the criticism of women totally ignorant in the arts,
simply because those women had had the faultless taste to marry them. If
such women exercised so strong an influence over their men, what should
hers be over Claude? For she had been well educated, was trained in
music, had always moved in intellectual and artistic sets, and was
certainly not stupid. Indeed, now that the main stream of her life was
divided from her mother's, she often felt as if she were decidedly
clever. Susan Fleet, long ago, had roused up her will. Since that day
she had never let it sleep. And her success in marrying Claude had made
her rely on her will, rely on herself. She was a girl who could "carry
things through," a girl who could make of life a success. As a young
married woman she showed more of assurance than she had showed as an
unmarried girl. There was more of decision in her expression and her way
of being. She was resolved to impress the world, of course for her
husband's sake.
Life in the house in Kensington had to be arranged for Claude with
every elaborate precaution. That must be the first move in the campaign
secretly planned out by Charmian, and now about to be carried through.
On the morning after the house-warming, when a late breakfast was
finished, but while they were still at the breakfast-table in the long
and narrow dining-room, which looked out on the quiet square, Charmian
said to her husband:
"I've been speaking to the servants, Claude. I've told them about being
very quiet to-day."
He pushed his tea-cup a little away from him.
"Why?" he asked. "I mean why specially to-day?"
"Because of your composing. Alice is a good girl, but she is a little
inclined to be noisy sometimes. I've spoken to her seriously about it."
Alice was the parlor-maid. Charmian would have preferred to have a man
to answer the door, but she had sacrificed to economy, or thought she
had done so, by engaging a woman. As Claude said nothing, Charmian
continued:
"And another thing! I've told them all that you're never to be disturbed
when you're in your own room, that they're never to come to you with
notes, or the post, never to call you to the telephone. I want you to
feel that once you are inside your own room you are absolutely safe,
that it is sacred ground."
"Thank you, Charmian."
He pushed his cup farther away, with a movement that was rather brusque,
and got up.
"What about lunch to-day? Do you eat lunch when you are composing? Do
you want something sent up to you?"
"Well, I don't know. I don't think I shall want any lunch to-day. You
see we've breakfasted late. Don't bother about me."
"It isn't a bother. You know that, Claudie. But would you like a cup of
coffee, tea, anything at one o'clock?"
"Oh, I scarcely know. I'll ring if I do."
He made a movement. Charmian got up.
"I do long to know what you are going to work on," she said, in a
changed, almost mysterious, voice, which was not consciously assumed.
She came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Ever since I first heard your music--you remember, two days after we
were engaged--I've longed to be able to do a little something to help
you on. You know what I mean. In the woman's way, by acting as a sort of
buffer between you and all the small irritations of life. We who can't
create can sometimes be of use to those who can. We can keep others from
disturbing the mystery. Let me do that. And, in return, let me be in the
secret, won't you?"
Claude stood rather stiffly under her hands.
"You are kind, good. But--but don't make any bother about me in the
house. I'd rather you didn't. Let everything just go on naturally. I
don't want to be a nuisance."
"You couldn't be. And you will let me?"
"Perhaps--when I know it myself."
He made a little rather constrained laugh.
"One's got to think, try. One doesn't always know directly what one
wishes to do, can do."
"No, of course not."
She took away her hands gently.
"Now I don't exist till you want me to again."
Claude went up to the little room at the back of the house. At this
moment he would gladly, thankfully, have gone anywhere else. But he felt
that he was expected to go there. Five women, his wife and the four
maids, expected him to go there. So he went. He shut himself in, and
remained there, caged.
It was a still and foggy day of frost. In the air, even within the
house, there was a feeling of snow, light, thin, and penetrating. London
seemed peculiarly silent. And the silence seemed to have something to do
with the fog, the frost, and the coming snow. When the door of his room
was shut Claude stood by his table, then before the fire, feeling
curiously empty headed, almost light headed. He stared at the fire,
listened to its faint crackling, and felt as if his life were a hollow
shell.
Probably he had stood thus for a considerable time--he did not know
whether for five minutes or an hour--when he was made self-conscious by
an event in the house. He heard two women's voices in conversation,
apparently on the staircase.
One of them said:
"The duster, I tell you!"
The other replied:
"Well, I didn't leave it. Ask Fanny, can't you!"
"Fanny doesn't know."
"She ought to know, then!"
"Ought yourself! Fanny's no business with the duster no more than--"
At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was
Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:
"Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house.
Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If
you must speak, go downstairs."
There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then
again silence.
Claude came away from the fire.
"Your master is at work."
He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost
of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the
devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he
was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be
doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen
discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid
musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her
lap. And he ground his teeth.
"I can't--I can't--I never shall be able to!"
He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands.
When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed,
photographed eyes.
Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing
vigorously, almost angrily, "You are Queen of my heart to-night," came
up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by
distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began,
continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle
of a phrase.
Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had
rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in
the land without light.
The master was working.
But the master was not working.
Day followed day, and Claude kept his secret, the secret that he was
doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the
atmosphere created by Charmian.
One thing specially troubled him.
So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or
perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of
effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own
"diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and
golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had
never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.
But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the
young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a
lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized
this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever
he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual
rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his
account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his
art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in
sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own
masculinity.
This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from
home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.
He thought of the text, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor
until the evening." If only he could go forth! If only he could forget
the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering
maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies,
sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.
During this time Charmian was beginning to "put out feelers." Her work
for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington
Square, was to be social. Women can do very much in the social way. And
she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in
it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words
"worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the
man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he
was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so
"atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were
destined to conquer.
All the "set" had come to call in Kensington Square. Most of them were
surprised at the match. They recognized the worldly instinct in Charmian,
which many of them shared, and could not quite understand why she had
chosen Claude Heath as her husband. They had not heard much of him. He
never went anywhere, was personally unknown to them. It seemed rather
odd. They had scarcely thought Charmian Mansfield would make that kind
of marriage. Of course he was a thorough gentleman, and a man with
pleasant, even swiftly attractive manners. But still--! The general
verdict was that Charmian must have fallen violently in love with the
man.
She felt the feelings of the "set." And she felt that she must justify
her choice as soon as possible. To the set Claude Heath was simply a
nobody. Charmian meant to turn him into a somebody.
This turning of Claude into a somebody was to be the first really
important step in her campaign on his behalf. It must be done subtly,
delicately, but it must be done swiftly. She was secretly impatient to
justify her choice.
She had at first relied on Max Elliot to help her. He was an
enthusiastic man and had influence. Unluckily she soon found that for
the moment he was so busy adoring Jacques Sennier that he had no time to
beat the big drum for another. Sennier had carried him off his feet, and
Madame Sennier had "got hold of him." The last phrase was Charmian's. It
was speedily evident to her that, womanlike, the Frenchwoman was not
satisfied with the fact of her husband's immense success. She was
determined that no rival should spring up to divide adorers into camps.
No doubt she argued that there is in the musical world only a limited
number of discriminating enthusiasts, capable of forming and fostering
public opinion, of "giving a lead" to the critics, and through them to
the world. She wanted them all for her husband. And their allegiance
must be undivided. Although she was in New York, she had Max Elliot "in
her pocket" in London. It was a feat which won Charmian's respect, but
which irritated her extremely. Max Elliot was charming, of course, when
she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was
concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment
want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a
pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had
taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of
friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various
admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, who really was, as Paul Lane had
said, an extraordinary woman, had a keen eye to the main chance. She
acted as a sort of agent to her husband, and was reported on all hands
to be capable of driving a very hard bargain. She and Max Elliot were
perpetually cabling to each other across the Atlantic, and Max was
seriously thinking of imitating Margot Drake and "running over" to New
York on the _Lusitania_. Only his business in London detained him. He
spoke of Sennier invariably as "Jacques," of Madame Sennier as
"Henriette." Living English composers scarcely existed any more in his
sight. France was the country of music. Only from France could one
expect anything of real value to the truly cultured.
Charmian began to hate this absurd entente cordiale.
Another person on whom she had secretly set high hopes was Adelaide
Shiffney. It was for this reason that she had been irritated at Mrs.
Shiffney's defection on the night of the house-warming. Now that she was
married to a composer Charmian understood the full value of Mrs.
Shiffney's influence in the fashionable world. She must get Adelaide on
their side. But here again Sennier stood in her path. Mrs. Shiffney was,
musically speaking of course, in love with Jacques Sennier. Since Wagner
there had been nobody to play upon feminine nerves as the little
Frenchman played, to take women "out of themselves." As a well-known
society woman said, with almost pathetic frankness, "When one hears
Sennier's music one wants to hold hands with somebody." Apparently Mrs.
Shiffney wanted to hold hands with the composer himself. She had "no
use" at the moment for anyone else, and had already arranged to take the
Senniers on a yachting cruise after the London season, beginning with
Cowes.
The "feelers" which Charmian put out found the atmosphere rather chilly.
But she remembered what battles with the world most of its great men
have had to fight, how many wives of great men have had to keep the
flame alive in gross darkness. She was not daunted. But she presently
began to feel that, without being frank with Claude, she must try to get
a certain amount of active help from him. She had intended by judicious
talk to create the impression that Claude was an extraordinary man, on
the way to accomplish great things. She believed this thoroughly
herself. But she now realized that, owing to the absurd Sennier "boom,"
unless she could get Claude to show publicly something of his talent
nobody would pay any attention to what she said.
"What is he doing?" people asked, when she spoke about his long hours of
work, about the precautions she had to take lest he should be disturbed.
She answered evasively. The truth was that she did not know what Claude
was doing. What he had done, or some of it, she did know. She had heard
his Te Deum, and some of his strange settings of words from the
scriptures. But her clever worldly instinct told her that this was not
the time when her set would be likely to appreciate things of that kind.
The whole trend of the taste she cared about was setting in the
direction of opera. And whenever she tried to find out from Claude what
he was composing in Kensington Square she was met with evasive answers.
One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park
Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise,
without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out
definitely what sort of composition he was working on at the present
moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame
Sennier. Margot had returned from America more enthusiastic, more
_engouée_ than ever.
She had been as straw to the flame of American enthusiasm. All her
individuality seemed to have been burnt out of her. She was at present
only a sort of receptacle for Sennier-mania. In dress, hair, manner, and
even gesture, she strove to reproduce Madame Sennier. For one of the
most curious features of Sennier's vogue was the worship accorded by
women as well as by men to his dominating wife. They talked and thought
almost as much about her as they did about him. And though his was the
might of genius, hers seemed to be the might of personality. The
perpetual chanting of the Frenchwoman's praises had "got upon"
Charmian's nerves. She felt this afternoon as if she could not bear it
much longer, unless some outlet was provided for her secret desires. And
she arrived at Kensington Square in a condition of suppressed nervous
excitement.
She paid the driver of the taxi-cab and rang the bell. She had forgotten
to take her key. Alice answered the door.
"Is Mr. Heath in?" asked Charmian.
"He's been playing golf, ma'am. But he's just come in," answered Alice,
a plump, soft-looking girl, with rather sulky blue eyes.
"Oh, of course! It's Saturday."
On Saturday Claude generally took a half-holiday, and went down to
Richmond to play golf with a friend of his who lived there, an old
Cornish chum called Tregorwan.
"Where is Mr. Heath?" continued Charmian, standing in the little hall.
"Having his tea in the drawing-room, ma'am."
"Oh!"
She took off her fur coat and went quickly upstairs. She did not care
about golf, and to-day the mere sound of the name irritated her.
Englishmen were always playing golf, she said to herself. Jacques
Sennier did not waste his time on such things, she was sure. Then she
remembered for how many hours every day Claude was shut up in his little
room, how he always went there immediately after breakfast. And she
realized the injustice of her dawning anger, and also her nervous state,
and resolved to be very gentle and calm with Claude.
It was a cold day at the end of March. She found him sitting near the
wood fire in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with thick, heavily
nailed boots, covered with dried mud, on his feet, and thick brown and
red stockings on his legs. It was almost impossible to believe he was a
musician. His hair had been freshly cut, but he had not "watered" it.
Since his marriage Charmian had never allowed him to do that. He jumped
up when he saw his wife. Intimacy never made Claude relax in courtesy.
"I'm having tea very late," he said. "But I've only just got in."
"I know. Sit down and go on, dear old boy. I'll come and sit with you.
Don't you want more light?"
"I like the firelight."
He sat down again and lifted the teapot.
"I shall spoil my dinner. But never mind."
"You remember we're dining with Madre!"
"Oh--to be sure!"
"But not till half-past eight."
She sat down with her back to the drawn window curtains at right angles
to Claude. Alice had "shut up" early to make the drawing-room look cozy
for Claude. The firelight played about the room, illuminating now one
thing, now another, making Claude's face and head, sometimes his musical
hands look Rembrandtesque, powerful, imaginative, even mysterious. Now
that Charmian had sat down she lost her impression of the eternal
golfer, received another impression which spurred her imagination.
"I've been at the Drakes," she began. "Only a very few to welcome Margot
back from New York."
"Did she enjoy her visit?"
"Immensely. She's--as she calls it--tickled to death with the Americans
in their own country. She meant to stay only one night, but she was
there three weeks. It seems all New York has gone mad over Jacques
Sennier."
"I'm glad they see how really fine his opera is," Claude said,
seriously, even earnestly.
"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most
enthusiastic nation in the world."
"If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think."
How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy
in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier!
She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said:
"How is the work getting on?"
There was a slight pause. Then Claude said:
"The work?"
"Yes, yours."
She hesitated. There was something in her husband's personality that
sometimes lay upon her like an embargo. She was conscious of this
embargo now. But her nervous irritation made her determined to defy it.
"Claudie," she went on, "you don't know, you can't know, how much I care
for your work. It's part of you. It is you. You promised me once you
would let me be in the secret. Don't you remember?"
"Did I? When?"
"The day after our party when you were going to begin work again. And
now it's nearly two months."
She stopped. He was silent. A flame burst out of a log in the grate and
lit up strongly one half of his face. She thought it looked stern,
almost fierce, and very foreign. Many Cornish people have Spanish blood
in them, she remembered. That foreign look made her feel for a moment
almost as if she were sitting with a stranger.
"Nearly two months," she repeated in a more tentative voice.
"Is it?"
"Yes. Don't you think I've been very patient?"
"But, surely--surely--why should you want to know?"
"I do want. Your work is your life. I want it to be mine, too."
"Oh, it could never be that--the work of another."
"I want to identify myself with you."
There was another silence. And this time it was a long one. At last
Claude moved, turned round to face Charmian fully, and said, with the
voice of one making a strong, almost a desperate effort:
"You wish to know what I've been working on during these weeks when I've
been in my room?"
"Yes."
"I haven't been working on anything."
"What?"
"I haven't been working at all."
"Not working!"
"No."
"But--you must--but we were all so quiet! I told Alice--"
"I never asked you to."
"No, but of course--but what have you been doing up there?"
"Reading Carlyle's _French Revolution_ most of the time."
"Carlyle! You've been reading Carlyle!"
In her voice there was a sound of outrage. Claude got up and stood by
the fire.
"It isn't my fault," he said. "The truth is I can't work in that room. I
can't work in this house."
"But it's our home."
"I know, but I can't work in it. Perhaps it's because of the maids,
knowing they're creeping about, wondering--I don't know what it is. I've
tried, but I can't do anything."
"But--how dreadful! Nearly two months wasted!"
He felt that she was condemning him, and a secret anger surged through
him. His reserve, too, was suffering torment.
"I'm sorry, Charmian. But I couldn't help it."
"But then, why did you go up and shut yourself in day after day?"
"I hoped to be able to do something."
"But----"
"And I saw you expected me to go."
The truth was out. Claude felt, as he spoke it, as if he were tearing
off clothes. How he loathed that weakness of his, which manifested
itself in the sometimes almost uncontrollable instinct to give, or to
try to give, others what they expected of him.
"Expected you! But naturally--"
"Yes, I know. Well, that's how it is! I can't work in this house."
He spoke almost roughly now.
"I don't want to assume any absurd artistic pose," he continued. "I hate
the affectations sometimes supposed to belong to my profession. But it's
no use pretending about a thing of this kind. There are some places,
some atmospheres, if you like to use the word generally used, that help
anyone who tries to create, and some that hinder. It's not only a matter
of place, I suppose, but of people. This house is too small, or
something. There are too many people in it. I feel that they are all
bothering and wondering about me, treading softly for me." He threw out
his hands. "I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm paralyzed here. I
suppose you think I'm half mad."
To his great surprise, she answered, in quite a different voice from the
voice which had suggested outrage:
"No, no; great artists are always like that. They are always
extraordinary."
There was a mysterious pleasure, almost gratification, in her voice.
"You would be like that. I should have known."
"Oh, as to that--"
"I understand, Claudie. You needn't say any more."
Claude turned rather brusquely round to face the fire. As he said
nothing, Charmian continued:
"What is to be done now? We have taken this house--"
He wheeled round.
"Of course we shall stay in this house. It suits us admirably. Besides,
to move simply because--"
"Your work comes before all."
He compressed his lips. He began to hate his own talent.
"I think the best thing to do," he said, "would be for me to look for a
studio somewhere. I could easily find one, put a piano and a few chairs
in, and go there every day to work. Lots of men do that sort of thing.
It's like going to an office."
"Capital!" she said. "Then you'll be quite isolated, and you'll get on
ever so fast. Won't you?"
"I think probably I could work."
"And you will. Before we married you worked so hard. I want"--she got
up, came to him, and put her hand in his--"I want to feel that marriage
has helped you, not hindered you, in your career. I want to feel that I
urge you on, don't hold you back."
Claude longed to tell her to leave him alone. But he thought of coming
isolation in the studio, and refrained. Bending down, he kissed her.
"It will be all right," he said, "when I've got a place where I can be
quite alone for some hours each day."
CHAPTER XVI
With an energy that was almost feverish, Charmian threw herself into the
search for a studio. The little room had been a failure, through no
fault of hers. She must make a success of the studio. She and Claude set
forth together, and soon bent their steps toward Chelsea. There were
studios to be had in Kensington, of course. But Claude happened to
mention Chelsea, and at once Charmian took up the idea. The right
atmosphere--that was the object of this new quest, the end and aim of
their wanderings. If it were to be found in Chelsea, then in Chelsea
Claude must make his daily habitation. Charmian seconded the Chelsea
proposition with an enthusiasm that was almost a little anxious. Chelsea
was so picturesque, so near the river, that somber and wonderful heart
of London. Such interesting and famous people lived in Chelsea now, and
had lived there in the past. She wondered they had not decided to live
in Chelsea instead of in Kensington. But Claude was right, unerring in
his judgment. Of course the studio must be in Chelsea.
One was found not far from Glebe Place, in a large red building with an
arched entrance, handsome steps, and several artistic-looking windows,
with leaded panes and soda-water bottle grass. It was on the ground
floor, but it was quiet, large but not enormous, and well-planned. It
contained however, one unnecessary, though not unattractive, feature. At
one end, on the left of the door, there was a platform reached by a
flight of steps, and screened off with wood from the rest of the room.
The caretaker, who had the key and showed them round, explained that
this had been planned and put up by an Austrian painter, who used the
chamber formed by the platform and the upper part of the screen as a
bedroom, and the space below, roofed by the platform as a kitchen.
The rent was one hundred pounds a year.
This seemed too much to Claude. He felt ashamed to spend such a large
sum on what must seem an unnecessary caprice to the average person, even
probably to people who were above the average. If he were known as a
composer, if he were popular or famous, the matter, he felt, would be
quite different. Everyone understands the artistic needs of the famous
man, or pretends to understand them. But Claude and his work were
entirely unknown to fame. And now, as he hesitated about the payment of
this hundred pounds, he regretted this, as he had never before regretted
it.
But Charmian was strong in her insistence upon his having this
particular studio. She saw he had taken a fancy to it.
"I know you feel there's the right atmosphere here," she said. "I can
see you do. It would be fatal not to take this studio if you have that
feeling. Never mind the expense. We shall get it all back in the
future."
"Back in the future!" he said, as if startled. "How?"
She saw she had been imprudent, had made a sort of slip.
"Oh, I don't know. Some day when your father--But don't let's talk of
that. A hundred a year is not very much. It will only mean not quite so
many new hats and dresses for me."
Claude flushed, suddenly and violently.
"Charmian! You can't suppose--"
"Surely a wife has the right to do something to help her husband?"
"But I don't need--I mean, I could never consent--"
She made a face at him, drawing down her brows, and turning her eyes to
the left where the caretaker stood, with a bunch of keys in his large,
gouty, red hands. Claude said no more. As they went out Charmian smiled
at the caretaker.
"We are going to take it. My husband likes it."
"Yes, ma'am. It's a mighty fine studio. The Baron was sorry to leave it,
but he had to go back to Vi-henner."
"I see."
"Now the next thing is to furnish it," said Charmian, as they walked
away.
"I shall only want my piano, a chair, and a table," said Claude.
It was only by making a very great effort that he was able to speak
naturally, with any simplicity.
"Besides," he added quickly, "it's really too expensive. A hundred a
year is absurd."
"If it were two hundred a year it wouldn't be a penny too much if you
really like it, if you will feel happy and at home in it. I'm going to
furnish it for you, quite simply, of course. Just rugs and a divan or
two, and a screen to shut out the door, two or three pretty comfortable
chairs, some draperies--only thin ones, nothing heavy to spoil the
acoustics--a few cushions, a table or two. Oh, and you must have a
spirit-lamp, a little _batterie de cuisine_, and perhaps a tea-basket."
"But, my dear Charmian--"
"Hush, old boy! You have genius, but you don't understand these things.
These are the woman's things. I shall love getting together everything.
Surely you don't want to spoil my little fun. I've made a failure of
your workroom in Kensington. Do let me try to make a success of the
studio."
What could Claude do but thank her, but let her have her way?
The studio was taken for three years and furnished. For days Charmian
talked and thought of little else. She was prompted, carried on, by two
desires--one, that Claude should be able to work hard as soon as
possible; the other, that people should realize what an energetic,
capable, and enthusiastic woman she was. The Madame Sennier spirit
attended her in her goings out and her comings in, armed her with
energy, with gaiety, with patience.
When at length all was ready, she said:
"Claude, to-morrow I want you to do something for me."
"What is it? Of course I will do it. You've been so good, giving up
everything for the studio."
Charmian had really given up several parties, and explained why she
could not go to them to inquiring hostesses of the "set."
"I want you to let us _pendre la crémaillère_ to-morrow evening all
alone, just you and I together."
"In the studio?"
"Of course."
"Well, but"--he smiled, then laughed rather awkwardly--"but what could
we do there all alone? What is there to do? And, besides, there's that
party at Mrs. Shiffney's to-morrow night. We were both going to that."
"We could go there afterward if we felt inclined. But--I don't know that
I want to go to Adelaide Shiffney just now."
"But why not?"
"Perhaps--only perhaps, remember--I'll tell you to-morrow night in the
studio."
She assumed in the last words that the matter was settled, and Claude
raised no further objection. He saw she was set upon the carrying out of
her plan. There was will in her long eyes. He could not help fancying
that either she had some surprise in store for him, or that she meant to
do, or say, something extremely definite, which she had already decided
upon in her mind, to-morrow in the studio.
He felt slightly uneasy.
On the following morning Charmian looked distinctly mysterious, and
rather as if she wished Claude to notice her mystery. He ignored it,
however, though he realized that some plan must be maturing in her head.
His suspicion of the day before was certainly well founded.
"What about this evening, Charmian?" he asked.
"Oh, we are going to _pendre la crémaillère_. You remember we decided
yesterday."
"Before or after dinner? And what about Mrs. Shiffney?"
"Well, I thought we might go to the studio about half-past seven or
eight. Could you meet me there--say at half-past seven?"
"Meet you?"
"Yes; I've got to go out in that direction and could take it on the way
home."
"All right. But dinner? That's just at dinner-time--not that I care."
"We could have something when we get home. I can tell Alice to put
something in the dining-room for us. There's that pie, and we can have a
bottle of champagne to drink success to the studio, if we want it."
"And Mrs. Shiffney's given up?"
"We can see how we feel. She only asked us for eleven. We can easily
dress and go, it we want to."
So it was settled.
As Claude had not yet begun to work he took a long and solitary walk in
the afternoon. He made his way to Battersea Park, and spent nearly two
hours there. That day he felt as if a crisis, perhaps small but very
definite, had arisen in his life. For some five months now he had been
inactive. He had lost the long habit of work. He had allowed his life to
be disorganized. No longer had he a grip on himself and on life. From
to-morrow he must get that grip again. In the isolation of the studio he
would surely be able to get it. Yet he felt very doubtful. He did not
know what he wanted to do. He seemed to have drifted very far away from
the days when his talent, or his genius, spoke with no uncertain voice,
dictated to him what he must do. In those days he was seldom in doubt.
He did not have to search. There was no vagueness in his life. The
Bible, that inexhaustible mine of great literature, prompted him to
music. But, then, he was living in comparative solitude. Quiet days
stretched before him, empty evenings. He could give himself up to what
was within him. Even now he could have quiet days. He had recently
passed not a few with the _French Revolution_. But the evenings of
course were not, could not be, empty. He often went out with Charmian.
He was beginning to know something of the society in which she had
always lived. There were many pleasant, some charming, people in it. He
found a certain enjoyment in the little dinners, the theater parties,
even in the few receptions he had been to. But he was obliged to
acknowledge to himself that, when in this society, he disliked the fact
that he was an unknown man. This society did not give him the incentive
to do anything great. On the other hand it made him dislike being--or
was it only seeming?--small. Charmian's attitude, too, had often
rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He
had been conscious of a lurking dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely
repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But
he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her
position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he
were closely connected with it, though he had not quite understood how.
All this now rose up, seemed to spread out before his mind as he walked
in Battersea Park. And he said to himself, "It can't go on. I simply
must get to work on something. I must get a grip on myself and my life
again." He remembered the heat of his soul after he had heard Jacques
Sennier's opera, the passion almost to do something great that had
glowed in him, the longing for fame. Then he had said to himself: "My
life shall feed my art. I'll live, and by living I'll achieve." Out of
that heat no rare flower had arisen. He had come out into the world. He
had married Charmian, had travelled in Italy. And that was all.
That day he was angry with himself, was sick of his idle life. But he
did not feel within him the strong certainty that he would be able to
take his life in hand and transform it, which drives doubt and sorrow
out of a man. He kept on saying, "I must!" But he did not say, "I
shall!"
The fact was that the mainspring was missing from the watch. Claude was
living as if he loved, but he was not loving.
At half-past seven he passed up the handsome steps and under the arch
which led to his studio.
The caretaker with gouty hands met him. This man had been a soldier, and
still had a soldier's eyes, and a way of presenting himself, rather
sternly and watchfully, to those arriving in "my building," as he called
the house full of studios, which was military. But gout, and it is to be
feared drink, had long ago made him physically flaccid, and mentally
rather sulky and vague. He looked a wreck, and as if he guessed that he
was a wreck. An artist on the first floor had labelled him, "The
derelict looking for tips to the offing."
"The lady's here, sir," he observed, on seeing Claude.
"Is she?"
"Been 'ere"--he sometimes dropped an aitch and sometimes did not--"this
half hour."
The fact apparently surprised him, almost indeed upset him.
"This 'alf hour," he repeated, this time dropping the aitch to make a
change.
"Oh," said Claude, disdaining the explanation which seemed to be
expected.
He walked on, leaving the guardian to his gout.
The studio was lit up, and directly Claude opened the door he smelt
coffee and something else--sausages, he fancied. At once he guessed why
Charmian had arranged to meet him at the studio, instead of going there
with him. He shut the door slowly. Yes, certainly, sausages.
"Charmian!" he called.
She came out from behind the screen, dressed in a very plain,
workmanlike black gown, over which she was wearing a large butcher blue
apron. Her sleeves were turned up and her face was flushed. Claude
thought she looked younger than she usually did.
"What are you doing?"
"Cooking the dinner," she replied, in a practical voice. "It will be
ready in a minute. Take off your coat and sit down."
She turned round and disappeared. Something behind the screen was
hissing like a snake.
Claude now saw a table laid in the middle of the studio. On a rough
white cloth were plates, knives, and forks, large coffee cups with
flowers coarsely painted on a gray ground with a faint tinge of blue in
it, rolls of bread, butter, a cake richly brown in color. A vase of
coarse, but effective pottery, full of scented wild geranium, stood in
the midst. Claude took off hat and coat, hung them up on a hook, and
glanced around.
Certainly Charmian had arranged the furniture well, chosen it well, too.
The place looked cosy, and everything was in excellent taste. There was
comfort without luxury. Claude felt that he ought to be very grateful.
"Coming!"
Her voice cried out from behind the screen, and she appeared bearing a
large dish full of smoking sausages, which she set down on the table.
"Now for the eggs and the coffee!" she said.
Another moment and they were on the table, too, with a plateful of
buttered toast.
"Studio fare!" she said, taking off the blue apron, pulling down her
sleeves, and looking at Claude. "Are you surprised?"
"I was for the first moment."
"And then?"
"Well, I had felt sure you were up to something, that you had some
scheme in your head, some plan for to-day. But I didn't connect it with
sausages."
Her expression changed slightly.
"Perhaps it isn't only sausages. But it begins with them. Are you
hungry?"
"Yes, very. I've been walking in Battersea Park."
"Claudie, how awful!"
They sat down and fell to--Charmian's expression. She was playing at the
Vie de Bohème, but she thought she was being rather serious, that she
was helping to launch Claude in a new and suitable life. And behind the
light absurdity of this quite unnecessary meal there was intention,
grave and intense. The wasted two months must be made up for, the hours
given to the _French Revolution_ be redeemed. This meal was only the
prelude to something else.
"Is it good?" she asked, as Claude ate and drank.
"Excellent! Where have you been to-day?"
"I've seen Madre and Susan Fleet."
"Miss Fleet at last."
"Yes. It is so tiresome her moving about so much. I care for her more
than for any woman in London. All this time she's been in Paris doing
things for Adelaide Shiffney."
"Did Madre know about to-night?"
"No."
"Why didn't you tell her? Why not have asked her to come? We belong to
her and she to us. It would have been natural."
"I love Madre. But I didn't want even her to-night."
Claude realized that he was assisting at a prelude. But he only said:
"I suppose she is going to Mrs. Shiffney's to-night?"
"Yes."
When they had finished Charmian said:
"Now I'll clear away."
"I'll help you."
"No, you mustn't. I want you to sit down in that cosy chair there, and
light your cigar--oh, or your pipe! Yes, to-night you must smoke a
pipe."
"I haven't brought it."
"Well, then, a cigar. I won't be long."
She began clearing the table. Claude obediently drew out his cigar-case.
He still felt uneasy. What was coming? He could not tell. But he felt
almost sure that something was coming which would distress his secret
sensitiveness, his strong reserve.
He lit a cigar, and sat down in the armchair Charmian had indicated. She
flitted in and out, removing things from the table, shook out and folded
the rough white cloth, laid it away somewhere behind the screen, and at
last came to sit down.
The studio was lit up with electric light.
"There's too much light," she said. "Don't move. I'll do it."
She went over to the door, and turned out two burners, leaving only one
alight.
"Isn't that ever so much better?" she said, coming to sit down near
Claude.
"Well, perhaps it is."
"Cosier, more intime."
She sat down with a little sigh.
"I'm going to have a cigarette."
She drew out a thin silver case, opened it.
"A teeny Russian one."
Claude struck a match. She put the cigarette between her lips, and
leaned forward to the tiny flame.
"That's it."
She sighed.
After a moment of silence she said:
"I'm glad you couldn't work in the little room. If you had been able to
we should never have had this."
"We!" thought Claude.
"And," she continued, "I feel this is the beginning of great things for
you. I feel as if, without meaning to, I'd taken you away from your
path, as if now I understood better. But I don't think it was quite my
fault if I didn't understand. Claudie, do you know you're terribly
reserved?"
"Am I?" he said.
He shifted in his chair, took the cigar out of his mouth, and put it
back again.
"Well, aren't you? Two whole months, and you never told me you couldn't
work."
"I hated to, after you'd taken so much trouble with that room."
"I know. But, still, directly you did tell me, I perfectly understood.
I"--she spoke with distinct pressure--"I am a wife who can understand.
Don't you remember that night at Jacques Sennier's opera?"
"Yes."
"Didn't I understand then? At the end when they were all applauding?
I've got your letter, the letter you wrote that night. I shall always
keep it. Such a burning letter, saying I had inspired you, that my love
and belief had made you feel as if you could do something great if you
changed your life, if you lived with me. You remember?"
"Yes, Charmian, of course I remember."
Claude strove with all his might to speak warmly, impetuously, to get
back somehow the warmth, the impulse that had driven him to write that
letter. But he remembered, too, his terrible desire to get that letter
back out of the box. And he felt guilty. He was glad just then that
Charmian had turned out those two burners.
"In these months I think we seem to have got away from that letter, from
that night."
Claude became cold. Dread overtook him. Had she detected his lack of
love? Was she going to tax him with it?
"Oh, surely not! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was
a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that
high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."
"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a
genius."
At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man,
which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of
melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words
intensified it.
"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he
said, with a bluntness not usual in him.
"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget
things Max Elliot has said about you--long ago. And Madre thinks--I know
that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some
of your things."
"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.
He had never before asked his wife what she thought of his music. She
had often spoken about it, but never because he had asked her to. But
this apparently was to be an evening of a certain frankness. Charmian
had evidently planned that it should be so. He would try to meet her.
"That's partly what I wanted to talk about to-night."
Claude felt as if something in him suddenly curled up. Was Charmian
about to criticize his works unfavorably, severely perhaps? At once he
felt within him a sort of angry contempt for her judgment.
Charmian was faintly conscious of his fierce independence, as she had
been on the night of their first meeting; of the something strong and
permanent which his manner so often contradicted, a mental remoteness
which was disagreeable to her, but which impressed her. To-night,
however, she was resolved to play the Madame Sennier to her husband, to
bring up battalions of will.
"Well?" Claude said.
"I think, just as I know Madre does, that your things are wonderful. But
I don't think they are for everybody."
"For everybody! How do you mean?"
"Oh, I know the bad taste of the crowd. Why, Madre always laughs at me
for my horror of the crowd. But there is now a big cosmopolitan public
which has taste. Look at the success of Strauss, for instance, of
Debussy, and now of Jacques Sennier--our own Elgar, too! What I mean is
that perhaps the things you have done hitherto are for the very few.
There is something terrible about them, I think. They might almost
frighten people. They might almost make people dislike you."
She was thinking of the Burningtons, the Drakes, of other
Sennier-worshippers.
"I believe it is partly because of the words you set," she added. "Great
words, of course. But where can they be sung? Not everywhere. And people
are so strange about the Bible."
"Strange about the Bible!"
"English people, and even Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of
queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio."
She paused. Claude said nothing. He was feeling hot all over.
"I can't help wishing, for your own sake, that you wouldn't always go to
the Bible for your inspiration."
"I daresay it is very absurd of me."
"Claudie, you could never be absurd."
"Anybody can be absurd."
"I could never think you absurd. But I suppose everyone can make a
mistake. It seems to me as if there are a lot of channels, some short,
ending abruptly, some long, going almost to the center of things. And
genius is like a liquid poured into them. I only want you to pour yours
into a long channel. Is it very stupid, or perverse, of me?"
As she said the last words she felt deeply conscious of her feminine
intelligence, of that delicate ingenuity peculiar to women, unattainable
by man.
"No, Charmian, of course not. So you think I've been pouring into a very
short channel?"
"Don't you?"
"I'm afraid I've never thought about it."
"I know. It wants another to do that, I think."
"Very likely."
"You care for strange things. One can see that by your choice of words.
But there are strange and wonderful words not in the Bible. The other
day I was looking into Rossetti's poems. I read _Staff and Scrip_ again
and _Sister Helen_. There are marvellous passages in both of those. I
wish sometimes you'd let me come in here, when you're done working, and
make tea for you, and just read aloud to you anything interesting I come
across."
That was the beginning of a new connection between husband and wife, the
beginning also of a new epoch in Claude's life as a composer.
When they left the studio that night he had agreed to Charmian's
proposal that she should spend some of her spare time in looking out
words that might be suitable for a musical setting, "in your peculiar
vein," as she said. By doing this he had abandoned his complete liberty
as a creator. So at least he felt. Yet he also felt unable to refuse his
wife's request. To do so, after all her beneficent energies employed on
his behalf, would be churlish. He might have tried to explain that the
something within him which was really valuable could not brook bridle or
spur, that unless it were left to range where it would in untrammelled
liberty, it was worth very little to the world. He knew this. But a man
may deny his knowledge even to himself, deny it persistently through
long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which
instinctively wished to give to others what they expected of him, or
strongly desired from him. On that evening in the studio Charmian's
definiteness gained a point for her. She was encouraged by this fact to
become more definite.
They were in Kensington by ten o'clock that night. Charmian was in high
spirits. A strong hope was dawning in her. Already she felt almost like
a collaborator with Claude.
"Don't let us go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Let us dress and go to
Adelaide Shiffney's."
"Very well," replied Claude. "By the way, what were you going to tell me
about her?"
"Oh, nothing!" she said.
And they went up to dress.
There was a crowd in Grosvenor Square. A good many people were still
abroad, but there were enough in London to fill Mrs. Shiffney's
drawing-rooms. And notorieties, beauties, and those mysterious nobodies
who "go everywhere" until they almost succeed in becoming somebodies,
were to be seen on every side. Charmian perceived at once that this was
one of Adelaide's non-exclusive parties. Mrs. Shiffney seldom
entertained on a very large scale.
"One bore, or one frump, can ruin a party," was a favorite saying of
hers. But even she, now and then, condescended to "clear people off."
Charmian realized that Adelaide was making a clearance to-night.
Since her marriage with Claude she had not been invited to No. 14
B--Mrs. Shiffney's number in the Square--before.
As she came in to the first drawing-room and looked quickly round she
thought:
"She is clearing off me and Claude."
And for a moment she wished they had not come. Her old horror of being
numbered with the great crowd of the undistinguished came upon her once
more. Then she thought of the conversation in the studio, and she
hardened herself in resolve.
"He shall be famous. I will make him famous, whether he wishes it, cares
for it, or not."
Mrs. Shiffney was not standing close to the first door to "receive"
solemnly. She could not "be bothered" to do that. The Heaths presently
came upon her, looking very large and Roman, in the middle of the second
drawing-room.
In the room just beyond a small orchestra was playing. This was a sure
sign of a "clearance" party. Mrs. Shiffney never had an orchestra
playing alone, and steadily, through an evening unless bores and frumps
were present. "Hungarians in distress" she called these uniformed
musicians, "trying to help bores in distress and failing inevitably."
She held out her hand to Charmian with a faintly ironic smile.
"I'm so glad to see you. Ah, Mr. Heath--Benedick as the married man. I
expect you are doing something wonderful as one hears nothing about you.
The deep silence fills me with expectation."
She smiled again, and turned to speak to an old lady with fuzzy white
hair.
"One of the fuzzywuzzies who go to private views, and who insist on
knowing me once a year for my sins."
Charmian's lips tightened as she walked slowly on.
She met many people whom she knew, too many; and that evening she felt
peculiarly aware of the insignificance of Claude and herself, combined
as a "married couple," in the eyes of this society. What were they? Just
two people with fifteen hundred a year and a little house near
Kensington High Street. As an unmarried girl in Berkeley Square, with a
popular mother, possibilities had floated about her. Clever, rising men
came to that house. She had charm. She was "in" everything. Now she felt
that a sort of fiat had been pronounced, perhaps by Adelaide Shiffney,
and her following, "Charmian's dropping out."
No doubt she exaggerated. She was half conscious that she was
exaggerating. But there was surely a change in the attitude people
adopted toward her. She attributed it to Mrs. Shiffney. "Adelaide hates
Claude," she said to herself, adding a moment later the woman's reason,
"because she was in love with him before he married me, and he wouldn't
look at her." Such a hatred of Adelaide's would almost have pleased her,
had not Adelaide unfortunately been so very influential.
Claude caught sight of Mrs. Mansfield and went to join her, while
Charmian spoke to Lady Mildred Burnington, and then to Max Elliot.
Lady Mildred, whose eyes looked more feverish even than usual, and whose
face was ravaged, as if by some passion or sorrow for ever burning
within her, had a perfunctory manner which fought with her expression.
Her face was too much alive. Her manner was half dead. Only when she
played the violin was the whole woman in accord, harmonious. Then truth,
vigor, intention emerged from her, and she conquered. To-night she spoke
of the prospects for the opera season, looking about her as if seeking
fresh causes for dissatisfaction.
"It's going to be dull," she said. "Covent Garden has things all its own
way, and therefore it goes to sleep. But in June we shall have Sennier.
That is something. Without him it would really not be worth while to
take a box. I told Mr. Brett so."
"What did he say?" asked Charmian.
"One Sennier makes a summer."
It was at this moment that Max Elliot came up, looking as he nearly
always did, cheerful and ready to be kind.
"I know," he said to Lady Mildred, "you're complaining about the opera.
I've just been with the Admiral."
"Hilary knows less about music than even the average Englishman."
"Well, he's been swearing, and even--saving your presence--cursing by
Strauss."
"He thinks that places him with the connoisseurs. It's his ambition to
prove to the world that one may be an Admiral and yet be quite
intelligent, even have what is called taste. He declines to be a
sea-dog."
"I think it's only living up to you. But have you really no hope of the
opera?"
"Very little--unless Sennier saves the situation."
"Has he anything new?" asked Charmian.
Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
"Madame Sennier says he hasn't."
"We ought to have a rival enterprise here as they have in New York at
present," said Lady Mildred.
"Sennier's success at the Metropolitan has nearly killed the New Era,"
said Elliot. "But Crayford has any amount of pluck, and a purse that
seems inexhaustible. I suppose you know he's to be here to-night."
"Mr. Jacob Crayford, the Impresario!" exclaimed Charmian. "He's in
England?"
"Arrived to-day by the _Lusitania_ in search of talent, of someone who
can 'produce the goods' as he calls it. Adelaide sent a note to meet him
at the Savoy, and he's coming. Shows his pluck, doesn't it? This is the
enemy's camp."
Max Elliot laughed gaily. He loved the strong battles of art, backed by
"commercial enterprise," and was friends with everyone though he could
be such a keen and concentrated partisan.
"Crayford would give a hundred thousand dollars without a murmur to get
Jacques away from the Metropolitan," he continued.
"Won't he go for that?" asked Lady Mildred, in her hollow voice. "Is
Madame Sennier holding out for two hundred thousand?"
Again Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
"Henriette! Has she anything to do with it?"
"Mr. Elliot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."
"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"
"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.
"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there.
Margot Drake is speaking to him."
"Margot--of course! But I can't see them."
Max Elliot moved.
"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"
Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.
"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."
"To be sure!"
"What--that little man!"
"Why not?"
"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."
"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can assure you Mr. Crayford
is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous
men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his
way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last
fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him
point and even charm as a man."
"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you
know him?"
"Yes."
"Do introduce me to him."
She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face,
and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney
kept him in conversation. Margot Drake stood close to him, and fixed
her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul
Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were
converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite
understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which
marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she
repeated quietly, but with determination:
"Please introduce me to him."
CHAPTER XVII
A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm,
to sex charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who
will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not
been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew
that he belonged to the latter class. She only spent some five minutes
in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But
she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of
his personality.
Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown
eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head
which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined
features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was
intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be
unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a
carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a
faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to
grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather
surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic.
His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve
links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first
introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his
eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong
imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His
eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little
brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance
which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It
showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to
be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.
"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I
wanted to know the great fighter."
She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some
people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave
her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it
suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do
with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.
Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows
sometimes suddenly upward.
"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he
said, speaking rapidly.
"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."
"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."
"I hope it isn't true."
"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr.
Crayford.
"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his
_Paradis Terrestre_, and it altered my whole life."
"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another
Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."
"I do hope you'll be successful."
"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man
can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you
interested in music?"
"Intensely."
She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating
whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain.
Something told her to refrain, and she added:
"I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of
everything."
"Well, opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition.
And it's going to be a bigger proposition than most people dream of."
His eyes flashed.
"Wait till I build an opera house in London, something better than that
old barn of yours over against the Police Station."
"Are you going to build an opera house here?"
"Why not? But I've got to find some composers. They're somewhere about.
Bound to be. The thing is to find them. It was a mere chance Sennier
coming up. If he hadn't married his wife he'd be starving at this
minute, and I'd be licking the Metropolitan into a cocked hat."
Charmian longed to put her hand on the little man's arm and to say:
"I've married a musician, I've married a genius. Take him up. Give him
his chance."
But she looked at those big brown eyes which confronted her under the
twitching eyebrows. And now that the flash was gone she saw in them the
soul of the business man. Claude was not a "business proposition." It
was useless to speak of him yet.
"I hope you'll find your composer," she said quietly, almost with a
dainty indifference.
Then someone came up and claimed Crayford with determination.
"That's a pretty girl," he remarked. "Is she married? I didn't catch her
name."
"Oh, yes, she's married to an unknown man who composes."
"The devil she is!"
The lips above the tiny beard stretched in a smile that was rather
sardonic.
Before going away Charmian wanted to have a little talk with Susan
Fleet, who was helping Mrs. Shiffney with the "fuzzywuzzies." She found
her at length standing before a buffet, and entertaining a very thin and
angular woman, dressed in black, with scarlet flowers growing out of her
toilet in various unexpected places. Miss Fleet welcomed Charmian with
her usual unimpassioned directness, and introduced her quietly to Miss
Gretch, as her companion was called, surprisingly.
Miss Gretch, who was drinking claret cup, and eating little rolls which
contained hidden treasure of pâté de foie gras, bowed and smiled with
anxious intensity, then abruptly became unnaturally grave, and gazed
with a sort of piercing attention at Charmian's hair, jewels, gown, fan,
and shoes.
"She seems to be memorizing me," thought Charmian, wondering who Miss
Gretch was, and how she came to be there.
"Stay here just a minute, will you?" said Susan Fleet. "Adelaide wants
me, I see. I'll be back directly."
"Please be sure to come. I want to talk to you," said Charmian.
As Susan Fleet was going she murmured:
"Miss Gretch writes for papers."
Charmian turned to the angular guest with a certain alacrity. They
talked together with animation till Susan Fleet came back.
A week later, on coming down to breakfast before starting for the
studio, Claude found among his letters a thin missive, open at the ends,
and surrounded with yellow paper. He tore the paper, and three newspaper
cuttings dropped on to his plate.
"What's this?" he said to Charmian, who was sitting opposite to him.
"Romeike and Curtice! Why should they send me anything?"
He picked up one of the cuttings.
"It's from a paper called _My Lady_."
"What is it about?"
"It seems to be an account of Mrs. Shiffney's party, with something
marked in blue pencil, 'Mrs. Claude Heath came in late with her
brilliant husband, whose remarkable musical compositions have not yet
attained to the celebrity which will undoubtedly be theirs within no
long time. The few who have heard Mr. Heath's music place him with
Elgar, Max Reger, and Delius.' Then a description of what you were
wearing. How very ridiculous and objectionable!"
Claude looked furious and almost ashamed.
"Here's something else! 'A Composer's Studio,' from _The World and His
Wife_. It really is insufferable."
"Why? What can it say?"
"'Mr. Claude Heath, the rising young composer, who recently married the
beautiful Miss Charmian Mansfield, of Berkeley Square, has just rented
and furnished elaborately a magnificent studio in Renwick Place,
Chelsea. Exquisite Persian rugs strew the floor----'"
Claude stopped, and with an abrupt movement tore the cuttings to pieces
and threw them on the carpet.
"What can it mean? Who on earth----? Charmian, do you know anything of
this?"
"Oh," she said, with a sort of earnest disgust, mingled with surprise,
"it must be that dreadful Miss Gretch!"
"Dreadful Miss Gretch! I never heard of her. Who is she?"
"At Adelaide Shiffney's the other night Susan Fleet introduced me to a
Miss Gretch. I believe she sometimes writes, for papers or something. I
had a little talk with her while I was waiting for Susan to come back."
"Did you tell her about the studio?"
"Let me see! Did I? Yes, I believe I did say something. You see, Claude,
it was the night of----"
"I know it was. But how could you----?"
"How could I suppose things said in a private conversation would ever
appear in print? I only said that you had a studio because you composed
and wanted quiet, and that I had been picking up a few old things to
make it look homey. How extraordinary of Miss Gretch!"
"It has made me look very ridiculous. I am quite unknown, and therefore
it is impossible for the public to be interested in me. Miss Gretch is
certainly a very inefficient journalist. Elgar! Delius too! I wonder she
didn't compare me with Scriabine while she was about it. How hateful it
is being made a laughing-stock like this."
"Oh, nobody reads those papers, I expect. Still, Miss Gretch----"
"Gretch! What a name!" said Claude.
His anger vanished in an abrupt fit of laughter, but he started for the
studio in half an hour looking decidedly grim. When he had gone Charmian
picked up the torn cuttings which were lying on the carpet. She had been
very slow in finishing breakfast that day.
Since her meeting with Jacob Crayford her mind had run perpetually on
opera. She could not forget his words, spoken with the authority of the
man who knew, "Opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big
proposition." She could not forget that he had left England to "put
Europe through his sieve" for a composer who could stand up against
Jacques Sennier. What a chance there was now for a new man. He was being
actively searched for. If only Claude had written an opera! If only he
would write an opera now!
Charmian never doubted her husband's ability to do something big. Her
instinct told her that he had greatness of some kind in him. His music
had deeply impressed her. But she was sure it was not the sort of thing
to reach a wide public. It seemed to her against the trend of taste of
the day. There was an almost terrible austerity in it, combined, she
believed, with great power and originality. She longed to hear some of
it given in public with the orchestra and voices. She had thought of
trying to "get hold of" one of the big conductors, Harold Dane, or
Vernon Randall, of trying to persuade him to give Claude a hearing at
Queen's Hall. Then a certain keen prudence had held her back. A voice
had whispered, "Be patient!" She realized the importance of the first
step taken in public. Jacques Sennier had been utterly unknown in
England. He appeared as the composer of the _Paradis Terrestre_. If he
had been known already as the composer of a number of things which had
left the public indifferent, would he have made the enormous success he
had made? She remembered Mascagni and his _Cavalleria_, Leoncavallo and
his _Pagliacci_. And she was almost glad that Claude was unknown. At any
rate, he had never made a mistake. That was something to be thankful
for. He must never make a mistake. But there would be no harm in
arousing a certain interest in his personality, in his work. A man like
Jacob Crayford kept a sharp look-out for fresh talent. He read all that
appeared about new composers of course. Or someone read for him. Even
"that dreadful Miss Gretch's" lucubrations might come under his notice.
For a week now Claude had gone every day after breakfast to the studio.
Charmian had not yet disturbed him there. She felt that she must handle
her husband gently. Although he was so kind, so disposed to be
sympathetic, to meet people half way, she knew well that there was
something in him to which as yet she had never probed, which she did not
understand. She was sufficiently intelligent not to deceive herself
about this, not to think that because Claude was a man of course she, a
woman, could see all of him clearly. The hidden something in her husband
might be a thing resistent. She believed she must go to work gently,
subtly, even though she meant to be very firm. So she had let Claude
have a week to himself. This gave him time to feel that the studio was a
sanctum, perhaps also that it was a rather lonely one. Meanwhile, she
had been searching for "words."
That task was a difficult one, because her mind was obsessed by the
thought of opera. Oratorio had always been a hateful form of art to her.
She had grown up thinking it old-fashioned, out-moded, absurdly
"plum-puddingy," and British. In the realm of orchestral music she was
more at home. She honestly loved orchestral music divorced from words.
But the music of Claude's which she knew was joined with words. And he
must do something with words. For that, as it were, would lead the way
toward opera. Orchestral music was more remote from opera. If Claude set
some wonderful poem, and a man like Jacob Crayford heard the setting, he
might see a talent for opera in it. But he could scarcely see that in a
violin concerto, a quartet for strings, or a symphony. So she argued.
And she searched anxiously for words which might be set dramatically,
descriptively. She dared not assail Claude yet with a libretto for
opera. She felt sure he would say he had no talent for such work, that
he was not drawn toward the theater. But if she could lead him gradually
toward things essentially dramatic, she might wake up in him forces the
tendency of which he had never suspected.
She re-read Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, dipped into William
Morris,--Wordsworth no--into Fiona Macleod, William Watson, John
Davidson, Alfred Noyes. Now and then she was strongly attracted by
something, she thought, "Will it do?" And always at such moments a
vision of Jacob Crayford seemed to rise up before her, with large brown
eyes, ears like a faun, nervous hands, and the tiny beard. "Is it a
business proposition?" The moving lips said that. And she gazed again at
the poem which had arrested her attention, she thought, "Is it a
business proposition?" Keats's terribly famous _Belle Dame Sans Merci_
really attracted her more than anything else. She knew it had been set
by Cyril Scott, and other ultra-modern composers, but she felt that
Claude could do something wonderful with it. Yet perhaps it was too well
known.
One lyric of William Watson's laid a spell upon her:
"Pass, thou wild heart,
Wild heart of youth that still
Hast half a will
To stay.
I grow too old a comrade, let us part.
Pass thou away."
She read that and the preceding verse again and again, in the grip of a
strange and melancholy fascination, dreaming. She woke, and remembered
that she was young, that Claude was young. But she had reached out and
touched old age. She had realized, newly, the shortness of the time. And
a sort of fever assailed her. Claude must begin, must waste no more
precious hours; she would take him the poem of William Watson, would
read it to him. He might make of it a song, and in the making he would
learn something perhaps--to hasten on the path.
She started for the studio one day, taking the _Belle Dame_, William
Watson's poems, and two or three books of French poetry, Verlaine,
Montesquiou, Moréas.
She arrived in Renwick Place just after four o'clock. She meant to make
tea for Claude and herself, and had brought with her some little cakes
and a bottle of milk. Quite a load she was carrying. The gouty hands of
the caretaker went up when he saw her.
"My, ma'am, what a heavy lot for you to be carrying!"
"I'm strong. Mr. Heath's in the studio?"
Before the man could reply she heard the sound of a piano.
"Oh, yes, he is. Is there water there? Yes. That's right. I'm going to
boil the kettle and make tea."
She went on quickly, opened the door softly, and slipped in.
Claude, who sat with his back to her playing, did not hear her. She
crept behind the screen into what she called "the kitchen." What fun!
She could make the tea without his knowing that she was there, and bring
it in to him when he stopped playing.
As she softly prepared things she listened attentively, with a sort of
burning attention, to the music. She had not heard it before. She knew
that when her husband was composing he did not go to the piano. This
must be something which he had just composed and was trying over. It
sounded to her mystic, remote, very strange, almost like a soul
communing with itself; then more violent, more sonorous, but always very
strange.
The kettle began to boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked
two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor.
"What's that? Who's there?"
Claude had stopped playing abruptly. His voice was the voice of a man
startled and angry.
"Who's there?" he repeated loudly.
She heard him get up and come toward the screen.
"Claudie, do forgive me! I slipped in. I thought I would make tea for
you. It's all ready. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was waiting
till you had finished. I'm so sorry."
"You, Charmian!"
There was an odd remote expression in his eyes, and his whole face
looked excited.
"Do--do forgive me, Claudie! Those dreadful spoons!"
She picked them up.
"Of course. What are all these books doing here?"
"I brought them. I thought after tea we might talk over words. You
remember?"
"Oh, yes. Well--but I've begun on something."
"Were you playing it just now?"
"Some of it."
"What is it?"
"Francis Thompson's _The Hound of Heaven_."
Jacob Crayford--what would he think of that sort of thing?
"You know it, don't you?" Claude said, as she was silent.
"I've read it, but quite a while ago. I don't remember it well. Of
course I know it's very wonderful. Madre loves it."
"She was speaking of it at the Shiffney's the other night. That's why it
occurred to me to study it."
"Oh. Well, now you have stopped shall we have tea?"
"Yes. I've done enough for to-day."
After tea Charmian said:
"I'll study _The Hound of Heaven_ again. But now do you mind if I read
you two or three of the things I have here?"
"No," he said kindly, but not at all eagerly. "Do read anything you
like."
It was six o'clock when Charmian read Watson's poem "to finish up with."
Claude who, absorbed secretly by the thought of his new composition, had
listened so far without any keen interest, at moments had not listened
at all, though preserving a decent attitude and manner of attention,
suddenly woke up into genuine enthusiasm.
"Give me that, Charmian!" he exclaimed. "I scarcely ever write a song.
But I'll set that."
She gave him the book eagerly.
That evening they were at home. After dinner Claude went to his little
room to write some letters, and Charmian read _The Hound of Heaven_. She
decided against it. Beautiful though it was, she considered it too
mystic, too religious. She was sure many people could not understand it.
"I wish Madre hadn't talked to Claude about it," she thought. "He thinks
so much of her opinion. And she doesn't care in the least whether Claude
makes a hit with the public or not."
The mere thought of the word "hit" in connection with Mrs. Mansfield
almost made Charmian smile.
"I suppose there's something dreadfully vulgar about me," she said to
herself. "But I belong to the young generation. I can't help loving
success."
Mrs. Mansfield had been the friend, was the friend, of many successful
men. They came to her for sympathy, advice. She followed their upward
careers with interest, rejoiced in their triumphs. But she cared for the
talent in a man rather than for what it brought him. Charmian knew that.
And long ago Mrs. Mansfield had spoken of the plant that must grow in
darkness. At this time Charmian began almost to dread her mother's
influence upon her husband.
She was cheered by a little success.
Claude set Watson's poem rapidly. He played the song to Charmian, and
she was delighted with it.
"I know people would love that!" she cried.
"If it was properly sung by someone with temperament," he replied. "And
now I can go on with _The Hound of Heaven_."
Her heart sank.
"I'm only a little afraid they may think you are imitating Elgar," she
murmured after a moment.
"Imitating Elgar!"
"Not that you are, or ever would do such a thing. It isn't your music,
it's the subject, that makes me a little afraid. It seems to me to be an
Elgar subject."
"Really!"
The conversation dropped, and was not resumed. But a fortnight later,
when Charmian came to make tea in the studio, and asked as to the
progress of the new work, Claude said rather coldly:
"I'm not going on with it at present."
She saw that he was feeling depressed, and realized why. But she was
secretly triumphant at the success of her influence, secretly delighted
with her own cleverness. How deftly, with scarcely more than a word, she
had turned him from his task. Surely thus had Madame Sennier influenced,
guided her husband.
"I believe I could do anything with Claude," she said to herself that
day.
"Play me your Watson song again, Claudie," she said. "I do love it so."
"It's only a trifle."
"I love it!" she repeated.
He sat down at the piano and played it to her once more. When he had
finished she said:
"I've found someone who could sing that gloriously."
"Who?" he asked.
Playing the song had excited him. He turned eagerly toward her.
"A young American who has been studying in Paris. I met him at the
Drakes' two or three days ago. Mr. Jacob Crayford, the opera man, thinks
a great deal of him, I'm told. Let me ask him to come here one day and
try the _Wild Heart_. May I?"
"Yes, do," said Claude.
"And meanwhile what are you working on instead of _The Hound of
Heaven_?"
Claude's expression changed. He seemed to stiffen with reserve. But he
replied, with a kind of elaborate carelessness:
"I think of trying a violin concerto. That would be quite a new
departure for me. But you know the violin was my second study at the
Royal College."
"That won't do," thought Charmian.
"If only Kreisler would take it up when it is finished as he took up--"
she began.
Claude interrupted her.
"It may take me months, so it's no use thinking about who is to play it.
Probably it will never be played at all."
"Then why compose it?" she nearly said.
But she did not say it. What was the use, when she had resolved that the
concerto should be abandoned as _The Hound of Heaven_ had been?
She brought the young American, whose name was Alston Lake, to the
studio. Claude took a fancy to him at once. Lake sang the _Wild Heart_,
tried it a second time, became enthusiastic about it. His voice was a
baritone, and exactly suited the song. He begged Claude to let him sing
the song during the season at the parties for which he was engaged. They
studied it together seriously. During these rehearsals Charmian sat in
an armchair a little way from the piano listening, and feeling the
intensity of an almost feverish anticipation within her.
This was the first step on the way of ambition. And she had caused
Claude to take it. Never would he have taken it without her. As she
listened to the two men talking, discussing together, trying passages
again and again, forgetful for the moment of her, she thrilled with a
sense of achieved triumph. Glory seemed already within her grasp. She
ran forward in hope, like a child almost. She saw the goal like a thing
quite near, almost close to her.
"People will love that song! They will love it!" she said to herself.
And their love, what might it not do for Claude, and to Claude? Surely
it would infect him with the desire for more of that curious heat-giving
love of the world for a great talent. Surely it would carry him on, away
from the old reserves, from the secrecies which had held him too long,
from the darkness in which he had labored. For whom? For himself
perhaps, or no one. Surely it would carry him on along the great way to
the light that illumined the goal.
CHAPTER XVIII
At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square
was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and
Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a
couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended
to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the
Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur, and from there to prosecute
their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle
down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music,
containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's
hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying
on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than
England's.
This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.
The young American singer, Alston Lake, had been true to his word.
During the past London season he had sung Claude's _Wild Heart of Youth_
everywhere. And people, the right people, had liked it. Swiftly composed
in an hour of enthusiasm it was really a beautiful and original song. It
was a small thing, but it was a good thing. And it was presented to the
public by a new and enthusiastic man who at once made his mark both as a
singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a
composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some
attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort
of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously
fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and
inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of
drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed
floating on a pool that had depths, responded to the applause, to the
congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to
concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want
of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to
his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed
too much--that is his surface enjoyed too much--the pleasure it gave,
the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the
congratulations of easily touched women.
Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure
in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see
that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband
made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were
working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She
blossomed with expectation.
Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to
lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new
surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.
His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had
sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and
he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the
opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the
Metropolitan.
"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!"
Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I
wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's
bullier."
"What's that?"
"The devil's own ambition."
Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will
of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He
had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it.
His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly
vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had rebelled, then
had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving
his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for
business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he
hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly
threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or
nothing. The Wall Street magnate stopped all supplies. Then Crayford
took Alston up. For three years Alston had lived on the impresario's
charity in Paris. Was it matter for wonder if he set his teeth and
resolved to win out? He had in him the grit of young America, that
intensity of life which sweeps through veins like a tide.
"Father's going to see presently," he often said to himself. "He's just
got to, and that's all there is to it."
This young man was almost as a weapon in Charmian's hand.
He was charming, and specially charming in his enthusiasm. He had the
American readiness to meet others half way, the American lack of
shyness. Despite the iron of his will, the fierceness of his young
determination, he was often naive almost as a schoolboy. The evil of
Paris had swirled about him and had left him unstained by its blackness.
He was no fool. He was certainly not ignorant of life. But he preserved
intact a delightful freshness that often seemed to partake of innocence.
And he worked, as he expressed it, "like the devil."
Charmian, genuinely liking him, but also seeing his possibilities as a
lever, or weapon, was delightful to him. Claude also took to him at
once. The song seemed to link them all together happily. Very soon
Alston was almost as one of the Heath family. He came perpetually to the
studio to "try things over." He brought various American friends there.
He ate improvised meals there at odd times, Charmian acting as cook. He
had even slept there more than once, when they had been making, music
very late. And Charmian had had a bed put on the platform behind the
screen, and called it "the Prophet's chamber."
This young and determined enthusiast had a power of flooding others
with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made
his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant to "produce the
goods."
Never before had Claude come closely in contact with the vigor, with the
sharply cut ideals, of the new world. He began to see many things in a
new way, to see some things which he had never perceived before. Among
them he saw the fine side of ambition. He respected Alston's
determination to win out, to justify his conduct in his father's eyes,
and pay back to Mr. Crayford with interest all he had received from that
astute, yet not unimaginative, man. He loved the lad for his eagerness.
When Alston came to Renwick Place a wind from the true Bohemia seemed to
blow through the studio, and the day seemed young and golden.
Yet Alston, quite ignorantly, did harm to Claude. For he helped to win
Claude away from his genuine, his inner self, to draw him into the path
which he had always instinctively avoided until his marriage with
Charmian.
Although unspoiled, Alston Lake had not been unaffected by Paris, which
had done little harm to his morals, but which had decidedly influenced
his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul,
but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very
un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the
complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the
obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love
of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as
he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an
egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical
development was likely to take place in the direction of opera.
"Opera's going to be the big proposition!" was his art cry. There was no
doubt of Jacob Crayford's influence upon him.
He was the first person who turned Claude's mind seriously toward opera,
and therefore eventually toward a villa in Algeria.
Having launched the song with success, Alston Lake naturally wished to
hear more of Claude's music. Claude played to him a great deal of it. He
was interested in it, admired it. But--and here his wholly unconscious
egoism came into play--he did not quite "believe in it." And his lack of
belief probably emanated from the fact that Claude's settings of words
from the Bible were not well suited to his own temperament, talent, or
training. Being very frank, and already devoted to Claude, he said
straight out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing
her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved
and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come
out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about
art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which
he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to
compose with a view to pleasing the public taste; by which they both
meant the taste of the cultivated public which was now becoming widely
diffused, and which had acquired power. He could not say that his talent
was one which had no appeal to the world, that he was incapable of
pleasing. One song was nothing. So he declared. Charmian and Alston Lake
in their enthusiasm elevated it into a great indication, lifted it up
like a lamp till it seemed to shed rays of light on the way in which
they urged Claude to walk.
He had long abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting
of the _Belle Dame Sans Merci_ for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But
before it was finished--and during the season his time for work was
limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and
Alston Lake involved him--an event took place which had led directly to
the packing of those boxes which now stood ready for a journey. Jacob
Crayford reappeared in London after putting Europe through his sieve.
And Claude was introduced to him by Alston Lake, who insisted on his
patron hearing Claude's song.
Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big
proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness
for Lake, and Lake's boyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some
attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time.
But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently
this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet.
But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was
something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was
Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her
"darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her
husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you
wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the
little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he
hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about
running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting."
"My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed
Charmian demurely.
From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on
an opera.
Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had
come to London again in June. The _Paradis Terrestre_ had been revived
at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before.
"Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night
in his studio.
Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and
had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on
their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of
his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped
for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking
lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening.
"I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said.
"Why not?"
"I have no bent toward the theater."
Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-shaved, with gray
eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and
rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box,
and glanced at Charmian.
"What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone
voice.
Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs.
Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes.
"Well--" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know--now."
"Now, old chap?"
"I mean I hardly know."
"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston
triumphantly.
Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark
hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more
definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She
glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening
she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost
miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly
dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said
nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.
"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and
up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."
"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting
managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that
fires him."
"That's just what I think," said Charmian.
Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music
and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly
always in agreement.
"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the
big lad--he looked little more than a lad--good-naturedly.
"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was
Crayford."
He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.
"Crayford's a marvellous man. He'll lick the Metropolitan crowd yet.
He's going to make me."
"You mean you're going to make yourself?" interrupted Claude.
"Takes two to do it!"
Again he looked over to Charmian.
"Without Crayford I should never have believed I could be a big opera
singer. As it is, I mean to be. And, what is more, I know I shall be.
Now, Claude, old fellow, don't get on your hind legs, but just listen to
me. Every man needs help when he's a kid, needs somebody who
knows--_knows_, mind you--to put him in the right way. What is wanted
nowadays is operatic stuff, first-rate operatic stuff. Now, look here,
I'm going to speak out straight, and that's all there is to it. I wanted
Crayford to hear your big things"--Claude shifted in his chair,
stretched out his legs and drew them up--"I told him about them and how
strong they were. 'What subjects does he treat?' he said. I told him. At
least, I began to tell him. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, stopping me on the
nail--but you know how busy he is. He can't waste time. And he's out for
the goods, you know--'Oh, Lord!' he said. 'Don't bother me with the
Bible. The time for oratorio has gone to join Holy Moses!' I tried to
explain that your stuff was no more like old-fashioned oratorio than
Chicago is like Stratford-on-Avon, but he wouldn't listen. All he said
was, 'Gone to join Holy Moses, my boy! Tell that chap Heath to bring me
a good opera and I'll make him more famous than Sennier. For I know how
to run him, or any man that can produce the goods, twice as well as
Sennier's run.' There, old chap! I've given it you straight. Look what a
success we've had with the song!"
"And _I_ found him that!" Charmian could not help saying quickly.
"Find him a first-rate libretto, Mrs. Charmian! I'll tell you what, I
know a lot of fellows in Paris who write. Suppose you and I run over to
Paris--"
"Would you let me, Claudie?" she interrupted.
"Oh!" he said, laughing, but without much mirth. "Do whatever you like,
my children. You make me feel as if I know nothing about myself, nothing
at all."
"Weren't you one of the best orchestral pupils at the Royal College?"
said Alston. "Didn't you win----?"
"Go--go to Paris and bring me back a libretto!" he exclaimed, assuming a
mock despair.
He did not reckon with Charmian's determination. He had taken it all as
a kind of joke. But when, at the end of the season, he suggested a visit
to Cornwall to see his people, Charmian said:
"You go! And I'll take Susan Fleet as a chaperon and run over to Paris
with Alston Lake."
"What--to find the libretto? But there's no one in Paris in August."
"Leave that to us," she answered with decision.
Claude still felt as if the whole thing were a sort of joke. But he let
his wife go. And she came back with a very clever and powerful libretto,
written by a young Algerian who knew Arab life well, and who had served
for a time with the Foreign Legion. Claude read it carefully, then
studied it minutely. The story interested him. The plot was strong.
There were wonderful opportunities for striking scenic effects. But the
whole thing was entirely "out of his line." And he told Charmian and
Lake so.
"It would need to be as Oriental in the score as _Louise_ is French," he
said. "And what do I know----"
"Go and get it!" interrupted Lake. "Nothing ties you to London. Spend a
couple of years over it, if you like. It would be worth it. And Crayford
says there's going to be a regular 'boom' in Eastern things in a year or
two."
"Now how can he possibly know that?" said Claude.
"My boy, he does know it. Crayford knows everything. He looks ahead, by
Jove! Fools don't know what the people want. Clever men do know what
they want. And Crayfords know what they're going to want."
And now the Heath's boxes were actually packed, and the great case of
scores stood in the hall in Berkeley Square.
As Claude looked at it he felt like one who had burnt his boats.
Ever since he had decided that he would "have a try at opera," as Alston
Lake expressed it, he had been studying orchestration assiduously in
London with a brilliant master. For nearly three months he had given all
his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already
been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the
most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless
energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him
was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room,
with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had
been sent on by the strange force which lives and perpetually renews
itself in a man's own genius, when he is at the work he was sent into
the world to do. Now he had scourged himself on by a self-consciously
exercised force of will. He had set his teeth. He had called upon all
the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man
among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be
gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object
now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object
when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any
object in working--in giving up. But, if he had, it was surely the thing
itself. He had desired to create a certain thing. Once the thing was
created he had passed on to something else.
Sometimes now he looked back on that life of his, and it seemed very
strange, very far away. A sort of halo of faint and caressing light
surrounded it; but it seemed a thing rather vague, almost a thing of
dreams. The life he was entering now was not vague, nor dreamlike, but
solid, firmly planted, rooted in intention. He read the label attached
to the case of scores: "Claude Heath, passenger to Algiers, via
Marseilles." And he could scarcely believe he was really going.
As he looked up from the label he saw the post lying on the hall-table.
Two letters for him, and--ah, some more cuttings from Romeike and
Curtice. He was quite accustomed to getting those now. "That dreadful
Miss Gretch" had infected others with her disease of comment, and his
name was fairly often in the papers.
"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Heath are about to leave their charming and
artistic house in Kensington and to take up their residence near
Algiers. It is rumored that there is an interesting reason, not wholly
unconnected with things operatic, for their departure, etc."
Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was
wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall.
Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had
become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted
to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his
"interests." And yet--and yet--
Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become
accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very
grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she--was
she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants
that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in
Algiers when they were quite alone together?
He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.
He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.
She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her
eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.
As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought
she looked very sad.
"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.
"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."
"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"
He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for
a moment.
"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.
Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him.
He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.
"If you want me."
"If!"
"I'm not quite sure that you will."
Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out
into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which
till that moment he had scarcely been aware?
"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I
know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."
"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."
"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"
"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"
Claude sighed.
"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed
to be within reach of you."
"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily
never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are
withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."
"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"
"Do you?"
He moved rather uneasily.
"I--I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still--still we
sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not
natural to us."
"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from
unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen
our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means
of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to
us."
"What means?"
"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to
us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves, if we can incorporate
it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it
continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward.
I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I
expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"
Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes
sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.
"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"
"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."
"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."
She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of
Romeike and Curtice.
"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear,
slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A
year--two years, perhaps--out of the world! It will be a new experience
for me, won't it, Madretta?"
"Quite new."
The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.
"And I shall see the island with you."
"The island?" he said.
"Don't you remember--the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined
here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in
an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about
the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it.
But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and
sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again,
better than the truth, because _I_ was added to them. Don't you
remember, Claudie?"
"Yes, now I remember."
"You are going to do that where I could not do it."
Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from
her.
CHAPTER XIX
Charmian and her husband went first to the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha
Supérieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there
for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a
hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up
the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in
Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money
to throw away.
During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of
work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in
upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That
spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to
his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which,
carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life
running its course in the darkness of his soul.
In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose.
And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The
phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted
her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England
or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their
time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the
production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly
with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of
"steeping" her husband.
She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had
sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be
worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She
honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she
was so keenly, so incessantly alive to the reason of their coming to
Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their
coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was
sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to
his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to
Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his
precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.
But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now.
You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first
she began to assert herself in your art life."
And he kept silence.
Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's
love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish
from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.
She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too
concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as
she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was
it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another--a not
completely hidden reason?
Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the
garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in
England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a
Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian,
and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the
edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.
And presently she said:
"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."
Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the
curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned
on the seat and looked at her.
"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.
Something in his eyes almost startled her.
"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."
He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an
expression which made her feel almost uneasy.
"Something here"--she almost faltered, called on her will, and
continued--"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here
some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.
She thought his voice sounded insincere.
"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here
for our honeymoon."
"I thought of it. I wanted to."
"Then why didn't you?"
"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."
"And now the right time has come?"
"Yes, now it has come."
She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That
curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had
troubled her spirit.
The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down
the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red
roses in his earthy hand.
He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the
garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw
him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was
hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener
spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and
blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he
seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with
the old man and began to talk with him.
It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.
That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:
"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."
"Old Robert!"
"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things
about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests
me--us--is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year,
Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but in good repair, pure Arab in style, so
he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But
there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here
in the best part of Mustapha Inférieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"
"Isn't it rather late?"
"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.
"Yes, let us go to-morrow."
Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude,
and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the
high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the
hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one
could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de
Manoeuvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of
the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old
Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the
white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two
tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the
roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden
door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was
roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small
stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the
bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The
house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles,
confronted them, holding its many secrets.
"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.
"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.
"I know it will do."
She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its
mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the
faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with
multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the
low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery
running right round it from which the few small bedrooms opened by low
black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a
background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables
suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness
and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back
into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household,
when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned
him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an
addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had
been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which
formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over
the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas.
Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles
purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored
distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which
opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than
the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate
lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and
a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow
beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the
time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green
curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the
tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen
dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red
of the crowding houses of the town.
It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than
the studio in Renwick Place.
"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.
The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin
containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little
dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And
Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of
geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall,
and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.
Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an
astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande
Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the
house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a
soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery
at Staouëli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi,
and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently
fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief
which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little
woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets,
charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on
her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the
courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had
first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had
always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to
the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone.
She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed
in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.
Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the
future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had
had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to
whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes,
tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his
orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him.
It was her rôle to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging.
But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with
its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and
because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities,
passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to
Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied.
Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in a _milieu_
where they had no friends, no acquaintances even, except two or three
casually met in the Hôtel St. George, and the British Consul-General and
his wife, who had been to call on them.
Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them
during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat."
She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab
house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had
carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places
for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with
Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost
overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a
great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands
her true feeling abruptly.
In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a
full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests,
occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to
look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now
confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear.
He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the
real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of
such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so,
for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his
life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going
to do?
Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for
popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they
wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But
now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of
him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa
he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of
every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather
strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the
contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who
would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the
force which he had often felt in London, a force which had often
secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without
tonic properties.
With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was
ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed
task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He
laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of
inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him
to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of
work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that
something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square,
when he read Carlyle's _French Revolution_ and sometimes felt criminal.
There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not
Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were
broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he
could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he
began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do
a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel
inclined to or not."
Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in,
more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of
living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete
novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his
brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual
activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to
give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera
was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!
Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan
Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on
theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant
inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply
because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she
had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going"
to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy
and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the
opportunity presented itself.
Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater,
among them _The Astral Plane_, _Reincarnation_, _Death--and After?_ and
_The Seven Principles of Man_. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet,
Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the
manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no
propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If
Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The
letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When
Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task
which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for
Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for
herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather
vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and
patience. Just now--indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would
need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long
preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's
with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time
she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up
so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what
Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing _Le
Paradis Terrestre_, how long he had taken in the creation of that
stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.
She had begun with _The Seven Principles of Man_. The short preface had
attracted her. "Life easier to bear--death easier to face." If theosophy
helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely
inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death.
But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden
in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when
she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The
crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed
attention of the world--they were all so far away.
Resolutely she read _The Seven Principles of Man_.
Then she dipped into _Reincarnation_ and _Death--and After?_
Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she
received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of
illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She
read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone
with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote
in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to
renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid
traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and
unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were
she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize
thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard
her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint--as, say,
Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She
certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of
nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other
hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in
her life.
Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she
began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.
One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano
above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed
for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window,
leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation
dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of
permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was
playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would
be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She
could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without
them.
Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier,
the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his
family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but
Claude had never seen him, though he had corresponded with him, and
sent him a cheque of £100 for his work.
Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with
a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was
handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened,
and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache
curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely
covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.
Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and
cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest
son, but who was now resigned to the latter's _étranges folies_. The
fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and
then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds
down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes
of him.
When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian
received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a
denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of
ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with
the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes
with him, and preparing him for Claude.
This man must "fire" Claude.
Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to
the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible
mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance
upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of
good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he
changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success
for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality,
he exclaimed:
"_Eh bien_, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"
Charmian looked at him and hesitated.
"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and
suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle, morbid perhaps?
Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful
imaginings?"
Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled
at the upward-pointing ends.
"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My
libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to
music must have lived also to do it justice."
There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class,
in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.
Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly
that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized
the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for
him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this
short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help
Claude to bridge that gulf.
"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.
CHAPTER XX
Mrs. Shiffney, who was perpetually changing her mind in the chase after
happiness, changed it about India. After all the preparations had been
made, innumerable gowns and hats had been bought, a nice party had been
arranged, and the yacht had been "sent round" to Naples, she decided
that she did not want to go, had never wanted to go. Whether the
defection of a certain Spanish ex-diplomat, who was to have been among
the guests, had anything to do with her sudden dislike of "that boresome
India," perhaps only she knew, and the ex-diplomat guessed. The whole
thing was abruptly given up, and January found her in Grosvenor Square,
much disgusted with her persecution by Fate, and wondering what on earth
was to become of her.
In such crises she generally sent for Susan Fleet, if the theosophist
were within reach. She now decided to telegraph to Folkestone, where
Susan was staying in lodgings not far from the house of dear old Mrs.
Simpkins. Susan replied that she would come up on the following day, and
she duly arrived just before the hour of lunch.
She found Mrs. Shiffney dressed to go out.
"Oh, Susan, what a mercy to see you! We are going to the Ritz. We shall
be by ourselves. I want you to advise me what to do. Things have got so
mixed up. Is the motor there?"
"Yes."
"Come along, then."
At the Ritz, although she met many acquaintances, Mrs. Shiffney would
not join any one for lunch or let any one join her.
"Susan and I have important matters to discuss," she said, smiling.
Her face and manner had completely changed directly she got out of the
motor. She now looked radiant, like one for whom life held nothing but
good things. And all the time she and Susan were lunching and talking
she preserved a radiant demeanor. Her reward was that everyone said how
handsome Adelaide Shiffney was looking. She even succeeded in continuing
to look handsome when she found that Susan had made private plans for
the immediate future.
"I've promised to go to Algiers," Susan said over the _oeufs en
cocotte_, when Mrs. Shiffney asked what was to be done to make things
lively.
"To Algiers! Why? What is there to do there? You know it inside out."
"Scarcely that. I'm going to stay with Charmian Heath."
Mrs. Shiffney's large mouth suddenly looked a little hard, though her
general expression hardly altered.
"Oh! Whereabouts are they?"
"Up at Mustapha, not far from Mrs. Graham."
"They say he's trying to write an opera. Poor fellow! The very last
thing he could do, I should think. But she pushes him on. Since that
song of his--I forget the name, heart something or other--her head has
been completely turned about his talent. The fact is, Susan, Sennier's
sudden fame has turned all their heads, the young composers, _les
jeunes_, you know. They are all trying to write operas. In Paris it's
too absurd! But an Englishman, with his temperament, too--Oliver
Cromwell in Harris tweed!--she must be mad. Of course even if he ever
finishes it he will never get it produced."
Susan quietly went on eating her eggs.
"A totally unknown man. She thinks that song has made him quite a
celebrity. But nobody has ever heard of him."
"Nobody had ever heard of Sennier till that night at Covent Garden,"
observed Susan, lifting a glass of water to her lips.
"Oh, yes, they had!"
Mrs. Shiffney's musical passion for Sennier often led her to embroider
facts.
"Among the people who matter in Paris he was quite famous."
"Oh, I didn't know that," said Susan, without a trace of doubt or of
sarcasm.
"How could you? Besides, Sennier is a great man, the only man we have,
in fact. So you were going to stay with the Heaths?"
"I am going. I promised Charmian Heath."
"When?"
"In about ten days, I think. My mother is rather unwell, only a bad
cold. But I like to be at Folkestone to help Mrs. Simpkins."
"Susan, what an extraordinary person you are!"
"Why?"
"You are. But you are so extraordinary that I could never make you see
why. Sandringham and Mrs. Simpkins! There is no one like you."
She branched off to various topics, but presently returned to the
Algerian visit.
"What do you think of Charmian Heath, Susan--really think, I mean? Do
you care for her?"
"Yes, I do."
"Oh, I don't mean as a theosophist, I mean as a human being."
Susan smiled. "We are human beings."
"You are certainly. But, of course, I know you embrace Charmian Heath
with your universal love, just as you embrace me and Mrs. Simpkins and
the King and the crossing-sweeper at the corner. That doesn't interest
me. I wish to know whether you like her as you don't like me and the
King and the crossing-sweeper?"
"Charmian Heath and I are good friends. I am interested in her."
"In a woman!"
"Greatly because she is a woman."
"I know you're a suffragette at heart!"
They talked a little about politics. When coffee came, Mrs. Shiffney
suddenly said:
"I'll take you over to Algiers, Susan."
"But you don't want to go there."
"It's absurd your going in one of those awful steamers from Marseilles
when the yacht is only about half an hour away."
"Half an hour! I thought she was at Naples."
"I said _about_ half an hour on purpose to be accurate."
"Really, I would just as soon take the steamer," said Susan.
This definite, though very gentle, resistance to her suddenly conceived
project decided Mrs. Shiffney. If Susan genuinely wished to go to
Algiers by the public steamer, then she would have to go on the yacht.
Mrs. Shiffney had realized from the beginning of their conversation that
Susan wished to go to Algiers alone. There had been something in the
tone of her voice, in her expression, her quiet manner, which had
convinced Mrs. Shiffney of that. Her curiosity was awake, and something
else.
"Susan dear, you must allow me to take care of you as far as Algiers,"
she said. "If you don't want me there I'll just put you ashore on the
beach, near Cap Matifou or somewhere, and leave you there with your
trunks. You are an eccentric, but that's no reason why you shouldn't
have a comfortable voyage."
"Very well. It's very kind of you, Adelaide," Susan returned, without a
trace of vexation.
That very day Mrs. Shiffney telegraphed to the captain of the yacht to
bring her round to Marseilles. In the evening Susan Fleet returned to
Folkestone.
Mrs. Shiffney did not intend to make the journey alone with Susan, and
to be left "in the air" at Algiers. She must get a man or two. After a
few minutes' thought she sent a message to Max Elliot asking him to look
in upon her. When he came she invited him to join the party.
"You must come," she said. "Only ten days or so. Surely you can get
away. And you'll see your protégé, Mr. Heath."
"My protégé!"
"Well, you were the first to discover him."
"But he's impossible. A charming fellow with undoubted talent, but so
bearish about his music. I gave it up, as you know, though I'm always
the Heaths' very good friend."
"Well, but his song?"
"One song! What's that? And his wife made him compose it. Nobody has
ever heard his really fine work, his Te Deum, and his settings of sacred
words."
"His wife and mother have, I believe."
"His wife--yes. And she will take care no one else ever does hear them
now."
"Why?"
Max Elliot looked at Mrs. Shiffney. Into his big and genial eyes there
came an expression of light sarcasm, almost of contempt. He shrugged his
shoulders.
"Art and the world!" he said enigmatically.
"Well, but, Max, don't you represent the world in connection with the
art of music?"
"I! Do I?" he said, suddenly grave.
She laughed.
"I should think so, _mon cher_. I don't believe either you or I have a
right to talk!"
It was a moment of truth, and was followed, as truth often is, by a
moment of silence. Then Mrs. Shiffney said:
"Claude Heath has gone to Algiers to compose an opera."
"Oh, all this opera madness is owing to the success of Jacques!"
"Of course. I know that. But another Jacques might spring up, I suppose.
Henriette wouldn't like that."
"Like it!" exclaimed Max Elliot, twisting his thick lips. "She wants a
clear field for the next big event. And I must say she deserves it."
"Just what I think. Well, you'll come to Algiers and hear how the new
opera's getting on?"
He glanced at her determined eyes.
"Yes, I'll come. But it must be only for ten days. I've got such a lot
of work on hand!"
"Perhaps I'll ask Ferdinand to come, too. Or--"
Suddenly Mrs. Shiffney leaned forward. Her face had become eager, almost
excited.
"Shall I ask Henriette and Jacques to come with us? They don't go to New
York this year."
Max Elliot seemed to hesitate. He was an enthusiast, and apt to be
carried away by his enthusiasms, sometimes even into absurdity. But he
was a thoroughly good fellow, and had not the slightest aptitude or
taste for intrigue. Mrs. Shiffney saw his hesitation.
"I will ask them," she said, "Charmian Heath will love to know them, I'm
sure. She has such a fine taste in celebrities."
* * * * *
On a brilliant day in the first week of February _The Wanderer_ glided
into the harbor of Algiers, and, like a sentient being with a
discriminating brain, picked her way to her moorings. On board of her
were Mrs. Shiffney, Susan Fleet, Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and
Max Elliot.
The composer had been very ill on the voyage. His lamentations and cries
of "_Ah, mon Dieu!_" and "_O la la là!_" had been distressing. Madame
Sennier had never left him. She had nursed him as if he were a child,
holding his poor stomach and back in the great crises of his malady,
laying him firmly on his enormous pillows when exhaustion brought a
moment of respite, feeding him with a spoon and drenching him with eau
de Cologne. She now gave him her arm to help him on deck, twining a
muffler round his meager throat.
"It's lovely, my cabbage! You must lift the head! You must regard the
jewelled Colonial crown of our beloved France!"
"_Ah, mon Dieu! O la la là!_" replied her celebrated husband.
"My little chicken, you must have courage!"
Susan Fleet had let Charmian know how she was coming, and had mentioned
Mrs. Shiffney. But she had said nothing about the Senniers, for the
simple reason that Adelaide had told her nothing about them until they
stepped into the _wagon-lit_ in Paris. Then she had remarked carelessly:
"Oh, yes, I believe they're crossing with us! Why not?"
As soon as the yacht was moored the whole party prepared to leave her.
Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Hôtel St. George. And Susan
Fleet was going at once to Djenan-el-Maqui.
"Tell Charmian Heath I'll look in this afternoon with Max, Susan, about
tea-time. Don't say anything about the Senniers. They won't come, I'm
sure. He says he's going straight to bed directly he reaches the hotel.
Charmian would be disappointed. I'll explain to her."
These were Mrs. Shiffney's last words to Susan, as she pulled down her
thick white veil, opened her parasol, and stepped into the landau to
drive up to the hotel. Madame Sennier was already in the carriage, where
the composer lay back opposite to her with closed eyes. Even the
brilliant sunshine, the soft and delicious air, the gay cries and the
movement at the wharf, where many Arabs were unloading bales of goods
from the ships, or were touting for employment as porters and guides,
failed to rouse him.
"I must go to bed!" was his sole remark.
"My cat, you shall have the best bed in Africa and stay there for a
week. Only have courage for another five minutes!" said his wife,
speaking to him with the intonation of a strong-hearted mother
reassuring a little child.
When Susan arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Charmian there alone.
Charmian greeted her eagerly, but looked at her anxiously, almost
suspiciously, after the first kiss.
"Where's Adelaide? On the yacht?"
"She's gone to the Hôtel St. George."
"Oh! Close to us! How long is she going to stay? Oh, Susan, why did you
let her come?"
"I couldn't help it. But why need you mind?"
"Adelaide hates me!"
"Oh, no!"
"She does. And you know it."
"I really don't think she has time to hate you, Charmian. And Adelaide
can be very kind."
"Your theosophy prevents you from allowing that there are any faults in
your friends. Yes, Susan, it does."
"Have you read the manuals carefully?"
"Yes, but I can't think of them now. Adelaide's being here will spoil
everything."
"No it won't! She'll only stay a day or two, not that, perhaps."
"But why did she come at all?"
"She didn't tell me. She's coming to see you to-day with Mr. Elliot."
"Max Elliot, too! Of course it is Claude whom Adelaide wants to see. I
quite understand that. But he's not here."
"What has become of him?"
"Susan, you know of course he wished to welcome you. He is devoted to
you. But--well, the truth is"--she slightly lowered her voice, although
there was no one in the room--"he had to go away for the opera. He has
gone to Constantine with Armand Gillier, the author of the libretto, to
study the native music there, and military life, I believe. There is a
big garrison at Constantine, you know. Monsieur Gillier is a most
valuable friend for Claude, and can help him tremendously in many ways;
with the opera, I mean."
She stopped. Then she added:
"Adelaide Shiffney might have been of great use to Claude, too. But
before we were married he offended her, I think. And now, of course,
she's on the other side."
"I don't know whether I quite understand what you mean."
"She's on Sennier's side."
It seemed to Susan Fleet that Charmian was living rather prematurely in
a future that was somewhat problematic. But she only said:
"Don't let us make too much of it. I hoped you might learn from the
manuals not to worry. But while I'm here we can talk them over, if you
like."
"Yes, yes," said Charmian, changing, melting almost into happiness. "Oh,
I am glad you've come, even though it entails Adelaide for a day or two.
Of course she knows about the opera?"
"Yes, she does."
"I knew." She looked into Susan's face, smiled, and concluded: "Never
mind!"
At five o'clock that day the peace of Djenan-el-Maqui was broken by the
sound of animated voices in the courtyard. A bell jangled and a moment
later Pierre, with his most birdlike demeanor, ushered into the
drawing-room Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, her husband, and Max
Elliot.
"What a dear little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round
her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing
worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite envy
them."
"It's charming!" said Max Elliot.
"Love in a harem! Better than in a cottage."
Madame Sennier pushed up her huge floating veil and showed her powerful
face of a clown covered with white pigment. Her lips made a scarlet bar
across it.
"What is she like? I remember the man. He's clever."
"Oh, she--she is charming; thin and charming."
"That's well!" observed the composer. "That's very well."
He appeared to have quite recovered from his despair, and now looked
almost defiantly cheerful. Small in body, with a narrow chest and
shoulders, and a weakly growing beard, he was nevertheless remarkable,
even striking in appearance. His large nose suggested Semitic blood, but
also power, which was shown, too, in his immense forehead and strong,
energetic head. He had a habit of blinking his eyes. But they were fine
eyes, full of feeling, imagination, and emotion, but also at moments
full of sarcasm and shrewdness. His dark, hairy and small hands were
rather monkeylike, and looked destructive.
"Every woman should be thin and charming," he continued. "The camel
species, the elephant-type, the cowlike ruminating specimen--milky
mother of the lowing herd, as an English poet has expressed it, and very
well, too--should"--he flung out one little hairy hand vehemently--"_go_
with the advance of corset-makers and civilization. She comes!"
The door had opened, and Charmian came in.
Instantly her eyes fastened on Madame Sennier.
She was so surprised that she stood still by the door, and her whole
face was suffused with blood. So much had this woman meant, did she
still mean in Charmian's life, that even the habit of the world did not
help Charmian to complete self-control at this moment.
"I'm afraid our coming has quite startled you," said Mrs. Shiffney.
"Didn't Susan tell you we were going to look in?"
"Yes, of course. I'm delighted!"
Charmian moved. She was secretly furious with herself.
Max Elliot took her hand, and Mrs. Shiffney carelessly introduced the
Senniers.
"What a dear little retreat you've found here, and how deliciously
you've arranged everything," she said. "You've made a perfect nest for
your genius. We are all longing to see him."
They were sitting now. Charmian was on a divan beside Madame Sennier.
"A clever man!" said Madame Sennier, decisively. "I met him once at the
opera. You remember, Jacques, I told you what he said about your
orchestration?"
"Yes, yes, about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings
and the horns to give the effect of water."
"I want Monsieur Sennier to know him," said Mrs. Shiffney.
"I'm so sorry, but he's not here," said Charmian.
Just then Susan Fleet came in. Mrs. Shiffney turned to her.
"Susan! Such a disappointment! But, of course, you know!"
"About Mr. Heath? Yes."
"Has he gone back to England?" said Max Elliot.
"Oh, no. He's in Algeria."
Charmian obviously hesitated, saw that any want of frankness would seem
extraordinary, and added:
"He has gone to Constantine with a friend."
Her voice was reluctant.
"Do have some tea!" she added quickly, pulling the bell, which Pierre
promptly answered with the tea things.
"Constantine!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "That's no distance, only a night in
the train. Can't you persuade him to come back and see us? Do be a dear
and telegraph."
She spoke in her most airy way.
"I would in a minute. But he's not gone merely to amuse himself."
"The opera!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "By the way, is it indiscreet to ask
who wrote the libretto?"
Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.
"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His
name is Gillier."
"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out
his hands in a gesture of surprise.
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three
libretti by him have I rejected--three, madame. He challenged me to a
duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he
cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband
accepted?"
Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant
eyes--they were yellow eyes, and small--fixed upon her.
"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.
Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.
"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was
clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can
say!"
"Brave! But why?"
Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.
"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."
"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what
does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"
She had turned to Max Elliot.
"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously
ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the
Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"
She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a
dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her
immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because
she was the hindmost. That was certain.
Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went
over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation
with Madame Sennier.
She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with
her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was
completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red
mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame
Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and
disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge
that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of
ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously
English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply.
There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian
felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she,
Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or
only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her
wealth, influence, even, it seemed, a curious adoration. She wondered,
too, if this woman had known the first Madame Sennier.
Presently Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was apt to be restless.
"May we go and look about outside?" she said.
"Of course. Shall I--"
"No, no. I see you are interested in each other. Two wives of geniuses!
I don't want to spoil it. Come, Jacques, let us explore."
They went away to the court of the goldfish. Max Elliot followed them.
As they went Madame Sennier fixed her eyes for a moment on her departing
husband. In that moment Charmian found out something. Madame Sennier
certainly cared for the man, as well as for the composer. Charmian
fancied that love, that softness for the one, bred hatred, hardness, for
many others, that it was an exclusive and almost terrible love. Now that
she was alone with Madame Sennier, enclosed as it were in that strong
perfume, she felt almost afraid of her. She was conscious of being with
someone far cleverer than herself. And she realized what an effective
weapon in certain hands is an absolute lack of scruple. It seemed to her
as she sat and talked, about Paris, America, London, art, music, that
this woman must have divined her secret and intense ambition. Those
yellow eyes had surely looked into her soul, and knew that she had
brought Claude to Algeria in order that some day he might come forth as
the rival of Jacques Sennier. Almost she felt guilty. She made a strong
effort, and turned the conversation to the subject of the _Paradis
Terrestre_, expressing her enthusiasm for it.
Madame Sennier received the praises with an air of gracious
indifference, as if her husband's opera were now so famous that it was
scarcely worth while to talk about it. This carelessness accentuated
brutally the difference between her position and Charmian's. And it
stung Charmian into indiscretion. Something fiery and impetuous seemed
to rise up in her, something that wanted to fight. She began to speak of
her husband's talent.
Madame Sennier listened politely, as one who listens on a height to
small voices stealing vaguely up from below. Charmian began to underline
things. It was as if one of the voices from below became strident in the
determination to be adequately heard, to make its due effect. Finally
she was betrayed into saying:
"Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced."
Madame Sennier stared.
"But," added Charmian, "people who really know think a great deal of my
husband; Mr. Crayford, for instance."
Directly she had said this she repented of it. She realized that Claude
would have hated the remark had he heard it.
Madame Sennier seemed unimpressed, and at that moment the others came in
from the garden. But Charmian, why she did not know, felt increasing
regret for her inadvertence. She even wished that Madame Sennier had
shown some emotion, surprise, even contemptuous incredulity. The
complete blankness of the Frenchwoman at that moment made Charmian
uneasy.
When they were all going Mrs. Shiffney insisted on Charmian and Susan
Fleet dining at the Hôtel St. George that evening. Charmian wanted to
refuse and wished to go. Of course she accepted. She and Susan had no
engagement to plead.
Jacques Sennier clasped her hands on parting and gazed fervently into
her eyes.
[Illustration: "'OF COURSE WE WIVES OF COMPOSERS ARE APT TO BE
PREJUDICED'"--_Page 242_]
"Let me come sometimes and sit in your garden, may I, Madame?" he said,
as if begging for some great boon. "Only"--he lowered his voice--"only
till your husband comes back. There is inspiration here!"
Charmian knew he was talking nonsense. Nevertheless she glanced round
half in dread of Madame Sennier. The yellow eyes were smiling. The white
face looked humorously sarcastic.
"Of course! Whenever you like!" she said lightly.
The monkeylike hands pressed hers more closely.
"The freedom of Africa, you give it me!"
He whisked round, with a sharp and absurd movement, and joined the
others.
"She is delicious!" he observed, as they walked away. "But she is very
undeveloped. She has certainly never suffered. And no woman can be of
much use to an artist unless she has suffered."
"Henriette, have you suffered?" said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
"Terribly!" said Jacques Sennier, answering for his wife. "But
unfortunately not through me. That is the great flaw in our connection."
He frowned.
"I must make her suffer!" he muttered.
"My cabbage, you are a little fool and you know it!" observed Madame
Sennier imperturbably. "_Mon Dieu!_ What dust!"
They had emerged into the road, and were enveloped in a cloud sent up by
a passing motor.
"If it doesn't rain, or they don't water the roads, I shall run away to
Constantine," observed Mrs. Shiffney. "There'll be no dust in
Constantine at this time of year."
CHAPTER XXI
In the evening of the following day Charmian and Susan Fleet had just
sat down to dinner, and Pierre was about to lift the lid off the soup
tureen, when there was a ring at the front door bell.
"What can that be?" said Charmian.
She looked at Susan.
"Susan, I feel as if it were somebody, or something important."
Pierre raised the lid with a pathetic gesture, and went out carrying it
high in his left hand.
"I wonder what it is?" said Charmian.
All day they had not seen Mrs. Shiffney or her party. They had passed
the hours alone in the garden, talking, working, reading, but chiefly
discussing Charmian's affairs. And calm had flowed upon Charmian, had
enfolded her almost against her will. At the end of the day she had
said:
"Susan, you do me more good than anyone I know. I don't understand how
it is, but you seem to purify me almost, as a breeze from the sea--when
it's calm--purifies a room if you open the window to it."
But now, as she waited for Pierre's return, she felt strung up and
excited.
"If it should be Claude come back!" she said.
"Would he ring?" asked Susan.
"No. But he might!"
At this moment a loud murmur of talk was audible in the hall, and then a
voice exclaiming:
"_Ca ne fait rien! Ca ne fait rien! Laissez moi passer, mon bon!_"
"Surely it's Monsieur Sennier!" exclaimed Charmian.
As she spoke, the door opened and the composer entered, pushing past
Pierre, whose thin face wore an outraged look.
"_Me voici!_" he exclaimed. "Deserted, abandoned, I come to you. How
can I eat alone in a hotel? It is impossible! I tried. I sat down. They
brought me caviare, _potage_. I looked, raised my fork, my spoon.
Impossible! Will you save me from myself? See, I am in my smoking! I
shall not disgrace you."
"Of course! Pierre, please lay another place. But who has abandoned
you?"
"Everyone--Henriette, Adelaide, even the faithful Max. They would have
taken me, but I refused to go."
"Where to?"
"Batna, Biskra, _que sais-je_? Adelaide is restless as an enraged cat!"
He sat down, and began greedily to eat his soup.
"Ah, this is good! Your cook is to be loved. For once--may I?"
Glancing up whimsically, almost like a child, he lifted his napkin
toward his collar.
"I may! Madame, you are an angel. You are a flock of angels. Why, I said
to them, should I leave this beautiful city to throw myself into the
arms of a mad librettist, who desires my blood simply because he cannot
write? Must genius die because an idiot has practised on bottles with a
revolver? It shall not be!"
"Do you mean Monsieur Gillier? Then they are going to Constantine!" said
Charmian sharply.
"To Constantine, Tunis, Batna, Biskra, the Sahara--_que sais-je_?
Adelaide is like a cat enraged! She cannot rest! And she has seduced my
Henriette."
He seemed perfectly contented, ate an excellent dinner, stayed till very
late in the night, talked, joked, and finally, sitting down at the
piano, played and sang. He was by turns a farceur, a wit, a man of
emotion, a man with a touch of genius. And in everything he said and did
he was almost preposterously unreserved. He seemed to be child, monkey
and artist in combination. It was inconceivable that he could ever feel
embarrassed or self-conscious.
At first, after his unexpected entry, Charmian had been almost painfully
preoccupied. Sennier, without apparently noticing this, broke her
preoccupation down. He was an egoist, but a singularly amusing and even
attractive one, throwing open every door, and begging you to admire and
delight in every room. Charmian began to study him, this man of a great
success. How different he was from Claude. Now that she was with Sennier
she was more sharply aware of Claude's reserve than she had ever been
before, of a certain rigidity which underlay all the apparent social
readiness.
When Sennier sang, in a voice that scarcely existed but that charmed,
she was really entranced. When he played after midnight she was excited,
intensely excited.
It was past one o'clock when he left reluctantly, promising to return on
the morrow, to take all his meals at Djenan-el-Maqui, to live there,
except for the very few hours claimed by sleep, till the "cat enraged"
and his wife returned. Charmian helped him to put on his coat. He
resigned himself to her hands like a child. Standing quite still, he
permitted her to button the coat. He left, singing an air from an opera
he was composing, arm in arm with Pierre, who was to escort him to his
hotel.
"I dare not go alone!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid of the Arabs! The
Arabs are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"
When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn,
Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away
because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an
instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was
coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be
gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier
with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when
she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired
Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and
apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness
returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could
either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or
interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if
they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And
she felt as if she had been like an angry child when she had talked of
her husband to Madame Sennier. Women--clever, influential women--can do
much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.
Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But,
blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she
resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and
wished her "Good-night."
"I know I shan't sleep," she said.
"Why not?"
"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."
"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."
Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment
of resolving quietly on anything.
She lay awake nearly all night.
Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the
night-train travelling to Constantine.
It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless
abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the
garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on
to the big terrace, and had said:
"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away
to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."
Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind
had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention
to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand Gillier.
Elliot had a very kind heart, and by its light he sometimes read clearly
a human prose that did not please him. Now, as he lay in his narrow
berth in the _wagon-lit_ jolting toward Constantine, he read some of
Adelaide Shiffney's prose. Faintly, for the train was noisy, he heard
voices in the next compartment, where Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier
were talking in their berths. Mrs. Shiffney was in the top berth. That
fact gave the measure of Madame Sennier's iron will.
"You really believe it?" cried Madame Sennier.
"How is one to know? But Crayford is moving Heaven and earth to find a
genius. He may have his eye on Claude Heath. He believes in _les
jeunes_."
"Jacques is forty."
"If one has arrived it doesn't matter much what age one is."
"You don't think Crayford can have given this man a secret commission to
compose an opera?"
"Oh, no. Why should he? Besides, if he had, she would have let it out.
She could never have kept such a thing to herself."
"Max thought his music wonderful, didn't he?"
"Yes, but it was all sacred. Te Deums, and things of that sort that
nobody on earth would ever listen to."
"I should like to see the libretto."
"What? I can't hear. I'm right up against the roof, and the noise is
dreadful."
"I say, I should like to see the libretto!" almost screamed Madame
Sennier.
"Probably it's one that Jacques refused."
"No, it can't be."
"What?"
"No, it can't be. He never saw a libretto that was Algerian. And this
one evidently is. I wonder if it's a good one."
"Make him show it to you."
"Gillier! He wouldn't. He hates us both."
"Not Gillier, Claude Heath."
"What?"
Mrs. Shiffney leaned desperately out over the side of her narrow berth.
"Claude Heath--or I'll make him."
"I never cared very much for the one Jacques is setting for the
Metropolitan. But it was the best sent in. I chose it. I read nearly a
hundred. It would be just like Gillier to write something really fine,
and then not to let us see it. I always knew he was clever and might
succeed some day."
"I'll get hold of it for you."
"What?"
"I'll get hold of it for you from Heath. When will Jacques be ready, do
you think?"
"Oh, not for ages. He works slowly, and I never interfere with him.
Nobody but a fool would interfere with the method of a man of genius."
"Do you think Charmian Heath is a fool?"
At this moment the train suddenly slackened, and Mrs. Shiffney and
Madame Sennier, leaning down and up, exchanged sibilant and almost
simultaneous hushes.
Max Elliot heard them quite distinctly. They were the only part of the
conversation which reached him.
He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to
their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that
these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were
driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something
secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided
to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly
disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of
other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between
Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame.
Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd,
he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish
that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path
clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of
every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man.
Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the
nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very
little about her.
She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's
family in Marseilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness
that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out.
Afterward she had remained in Marseilles, but not as a governess.
Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been
very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had
throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some
women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and
underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind.
She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the
midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When
she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected
with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable
to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques
was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped
to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was
capable of betraying everyone for Jacques.
Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He
was the only person she trusted--for a week. She meant to be back at
Mustapha within a week.
After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more.
"It makes my throat ache shouting up against the roof," said Mrs.
Shiffney.
She had, how or why she scarcely knew, come to occupy an upper berth for
the first time in her life. She resented this. And she resented it still
more when Madame Sennier replied:
"I wanted you to choose the lower bed, but I thought you preferred being
where you are."
Mrs. Shiffney made no reply, but turned carefully over till she was
looking at the wall.
"Why do I do things for this woman?" was her thought. She had told
herself more than once that she was travelling to Constantine for
Henriette. Apparently she was actually beginning to believe her own
statement. She closed her eyes, opened them again, looked at the
ceiling, which almost touched her nose, and at the wall, which her nose
almost touched.
"Why does a woman ever do anything for another woman?" she asked
herself, amplifying her first thought.
Adelaide Shiffney in an upper berth! It was the incredible
accomplished!
CHAPTER XXII
"What a setting for melodrama!" said Mrs. Shiffney. She was standing on
the balcony of a corner room on the second floor of the Grand Hotel at
Constantine, looking down on the Place de la Brèche. Evening was
beginning to fall. The city roared a tumultuous serenade to its delicate
beauty. The voices sent up from the dusty gardens, the squares, and the
winding alleys, from the teeming bazaars, the dancing-houses, the houses
of pleasure, and the painted Moorish cafés, seemed to grow more defiant
as the light grew colder on the great slopes of the mountains that
surround Constantine, as in the folds of the shallow valleys the
plantations of eucalyptus darkened beside the streams.
Madame Sennier was standing with Mrs. Shiffney and was also looking
down.
"Listen to all the voices!" she said. "Nobody but Jacques could ever get
this sort of effect into an opera."
A huge diligence, painted yellow, green, and red, with an immense hood
beneath which crowded Arabs vaguely showed, came slowly down the hill,
drawn by seven gray horses. The military Governor passed by on
horseback, preceded by a mounted soldier, and followed by two more
soldiers and by a Spahi, whose red jacket gleamed against the white coat
of his prancing stallion. Bugles sounded; bells rang; a donkey brayed
with dreary violence in a side street. Somewhere a mandoline was being
thrummed, and a very French voice rose above it singing a song of the
Paris pavements. In the large cafés just below the balcony where the two
women were standing crowds of people were seated at little tables,
sipping absinthe, vermouth, and bright-colored syrups. Among the
Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of
well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with
high turbans bound by ropes of camel's hair, stood out, the conquered
looking like conquerors.
"_Cirez! Cirez!"_ cried incessantly the Arab boot-polishers, who
scuffled and played tricks among themselves while they waited for
customers. "_Cirez, moosou! Cirez!_" Long wagons, loaded with stone from
the quarries of the Gorge, jangled by, some of them drawn by mixed teams
of eleven horses and mules, on whose necks chimed collars of bells.
Chauffeurs sounded the horns of their motors as they slowly crept
through the nonchalant crowd of natives, which had gathered in front of
the post-office and the Municipal Theater to discuss the affairs of the
day. Maltese coachmen, seated on the boxes of large landaus, cracked
their whips to announce to the Kabyle Chasseurs of the two hotels the
return of travellers from their excursions. Omnibuses rolled slowly up
from the station loaded with luggage, which was vehemently grasped by
native porters, brought to earth, and carried in with eager violence.
The animation of the city was intense, and had in it something barbaric
and almost savage, something that seemed undisciplined, bred of the
orange and red soil, of the orange and red rocks, of the snow and
sun-smitten mountains, of the terrific gorges and precipices which made
the landscape vital and almost terrible.
Yet in the evening light the distant slopes, the sharply cut silhouettes
of the hills, held a strange and exquisitely delicate serenity. The sky,
cloudless, shot with primrose, blue, and green, deepening toward the
West into a red that was flecked with gold, was calm and almost tender.
Nature showed two sides of her soul; but humanity seemed to respond only
to the side that was fierce and violent.
"What a setting for melodrama!" repeated Mrs. Shiffney.
She sighed. At that moment the presence of Henriette irritated her. She
wanted to be alone, leaning to watch this ever-shifting torrent of
humanity. This balcony belonged to her room. She had revenged herself
for the upper berth by securing a room much better placed than
Henriette's. But if Henriette intended to live in it--
Suddenly she drew back rather sharply. She had just seen, in the midst
of the crowd, the tall figure of Claude Heath moving toward the café
immediately opposite to her balcony.
"Is my tea never coming?" she said. "I think I shall get into a tea-gown
and lie down a little before dinner."
Madame Sennier followed her into the room.
"Till dinner, then," she said. "We are sure to see them, I suppose?"
"Of course. Leave the libretto entirely to me. He would be certain to
suspect any move on your part."
Madame Sennier's white face looked very hard as she nodded and left the
room. She met the waiter bringing Mrs. Shiffney's tea at the door.
When she and the waiter were both gone Mrs. Shiffney drank her tea on
the balcony, sitting largely on a cane chair. She felt agreeably
excited. Claude Heath had gone into the café on the other side of the
road, and was now sitting alone at a little table on the terrace which
projects into the Place beneath the Hôtel de Paris. Mrs. Shiffney saw a
waiter take his order and bring him coffee, while a little Arab,
kneeling, set to work on his boots.
All day long Claude and Gillier had remained invisible. Mrs. Shiffney,
Henriette, and Max Elliot, after visiting the native quarters in the
morning, had expected to see the two men at lunch, but they had not
appeared. Now the two women had just returned from a drive round the
city and to the suspension bridge which spans the terror of the Gorge.
And here was Claude Heath just opposite to Mrs. Shiffney, no doubt
serenely unconscious of her presence in Constantine! As Mrs. Shiffney
sipped her tea and looked down at him she thought again, "What a setting
for melodrama!"
She was a very civilized child of her age, and believed that she had a
horror of melodrama, looking upon it as a degraded form of art, or
artlessness, which pleased people whom she occasionally saw but would
never know. But this evening some part of her almost desired it, not as
a spectacle, but as something in which she could take an active part. In
this town she felt adventurous. It was difficult to look at this crowd
without thinking of violent lives and deeds of violence. It was
difficult to look at Claude Heath without the desire to pay him back
here with interest for a certain indifference.
"But I'm not really melodramatic," said Adelaide Shiffney to herself.
She could resent, but she was not a very good hater. She felt generally
too _affairée_, too civilized to hate. In her heart she rather disliked
Claude Heath as once she had rather liked him. He had had the
impertinence and lack of taste to decline her friendship, tacitly, of
course, but quite definitely. She had never been in love with him. If
she had been she would have been more definite with him. But he had
attracted her a good deal; and she always resented even the crossing of
a whim. Something in his personality and something in his physique had
appealed to her, a strangeness and height, an imaginativeness and
remoteness which features and gesture often showed in despite of his
intention. He was not like everybody. It would have been interesting to
take him in hand. It had certainly been irritating to make no impression
upon him. And now he was married and living in a delicious Arab nest
with that foolish Charmian Mansfield. So Mrs. Shiffney called Charmian
at that moment. Suddenly she felt rather melancholy and rather cross.
She wanted to give somebody a slap. She put down her tea-cup, lit a
cigarette, and drew her chair to the rail of the balcony.
Claude Heath was sipping his coffee. One long-fingered musical hand lay
on his knee. His soft hat was tilted a little forward over the eyes that
were watching the crowd. Probably he was thinking about his opera.
Mrs. Shiffney was incapable of Henriette's hard and bitter
determination. Her love was not fastened irrevocably on any man. She
wished that it was, or thought she did. Such a passion must give a new
interest to life. Often she fancied she was in love; but the feeling
passed, and she bemoaned its passing. Henriette was determined to keep a
clear field for her composer. She was ready to be suspicious, to be
jealous of every musical shadow. Mrs. Shiffney found herself wishing
that she had Henriette's incentive as she looked at Claude Heath. She
could not see his face quite clearly. Perhaps when she did--
That he should have married that silly Charmian Mansfield! Ever since
then Mrs. Shiffney had resolved to wipe them both off her
slate--gradually. Charmian had been right in her supposition. But now
Mrs. Shiffney thought she was perhaps on the edge of something that
might be more amusing than a mere wiping off the slate.
Of course Claude Heath and Gillier would be at dinner. It would be
rather fun to see Claude's face when she walked in with Henriette and
Max Elliot.
She got up and stood by the rail; and now she looked down on Claude with
intention, willing that he should look up at her. Why should not she
have the fun of seeing his surprise while she was alone? Why should she
share with Henriette?
Without turning his eyes in her direction Claude rapped on his table
with a piece of money, paid a waiter for his coffee, got up, made his
way out of the café, and mingled with the crowd. He did not come toward
the hotel, but turned up the street leading to the Governor's palace and
disappeared. Mrs. Shiffney noticed an Arab in a blue jacket and a white
burnous, who joined him as he left the café.
"Local color, I suppose," she murmured to herself. She wished she could
go off like that in the strange and violent crowd, could be quite
independent.
"What a curse it is to be a woman!" she thought.
Then she resolved after dinner to go out for a stroll with Claude.
Henriette should not come. If she, Adelaide Shiffney, were going to work
for Henriette she must be left to work in her own way. She thought of
the little intrigue that was on foot, and smiled. Then she looked out
beyond the Place, over the dusty public gardens and the houses, to the
far-off, serene, bare mountains. For a moment their calm outlines held
her eyes. For a moment the clamor of voices from below seemed to die out
of her ears. Then she shivered, drew back into her room, and felt for
the knob of the electric light. Darkness was falling, and it was growing
cold on this rocky height which frowned above the gorge of the Rummel.
Neither Claude Heath nor Gillier appeared at dinner. Their absence was
discussed by Mrs. Shiffney and her friends, and Mrs. Shiffney told them
that she had seen Claude Heath that evening in a café. After dinner
Henriette Sennier remarked discontentedly:
"What are we going to do?"
"Max, why don't you get a guide and take Henriette out to see some
dancing? There is dancing only five minutes from here," said Mrs.
Shiffney.
"Well, but you--aren't you coming?"
She had exchanged a glance with Henriette.
"I must write some letters. If I'm not too long over them perhaps I'll
follow you. I can't miss you. All the dancing is in the same street."
"But I don't think there are any dancing women here."
"The Kabyle boys dance. Go to see them, and I'll probably follow you."
As soon as they were gone Mrs. Shiffney put on a fur coat, summoned an
Arab called Amor, who had already spoken to her at the door of the
hotel, and said to him:
"You know the tall Englishman who is staying here?"
"The one who takes Aloui as guide?"
"Perhaps. I don't know. But he is fond of music; he--"
"It is Aloui's Englishman," interrupted Amor, calmly.
"Where does he go at night? He's a friend of mine. I should like to meet
him."
"He might be with Said Hitani."
"Where is that?"
"If madame does not mind a little walk--"
"Take me there. Is it far?"
"It is on the edge of the town, close to the wall. When Said Hitani
plays he likes to go there. He is growing old. He does not want to play
where everybody can hear. Madame has a family in England?"
Mrs. Shiffney satisfied Amor's curiosity as they walked through the
crowded streets till they came to the outskirts of the city. The stars
were out, but there was no moon. The road ran by the city wall. Far down
below, in the arms of the darkness, lay the gorge, from which rose
faintly the sound of water; lay the immense stretches of yellow-brown
and red-brown country darkened here and there with splashes of green;
the dim plantations, the cascades which fall to the valley of Sidi
Imcin; the long roads, like flung-out ribands, winding into the great
distances which suggest eternal things. From the darkness, as from the
mouth of a mighty cavern, rose a wind, not strong, very pure, very keen,
which seemed dashed with the spray of water. Now and then an Arab
passed muffled in burnous and hood, a fold of linen held to his mouth.
The noise of the city was hushed.
Presently Amor stood still.
"_Voilà_ Said Hitani!"
Mrs. Shiffney heard in the distance a sound of music. Several
instruments combined to make it, but the voice of a flute was dominant
among them. Light, sweet, delicate, it came to her in the night like a
personality full of odd magic, full of small and subtle surprises,
intricate, gay, and sad.
"Said Hitani!" she said. "He's delicious! Take me to him, Amor."
She knew at once that he was the flute-player.
They walked on, and soon came to a patch of light on the empty road.
This was shed by the lamps of the café from which the music issued.
Under the two windows, which were protected by wire and by iron bars,
five Arabs were squatting, immersed in a sea of garments in which their
figures and even their features were lost. Only their black eyes looked
out, gazing steadily into the darkness. A big man, with bare legs and a
spotted turban, came to the door of the café to invite them to go in;
but Mrs. Shiffney refused by a gesture.
"In a minute!" she said to Amor.
Amor spoke in Arabic to the attendant, who at once returned to the
coffee niche. Within the music never ceased, and now singing voices
alternated with the instruments. Mrs. Shiffney kept away from the door
and looked into the room through the window space next to it.
She saw a long and rather narrow chamber, with a paved floor, strewn
with clean straw mats, blue-green walls, and an orange-colored ceiling.
Close to the door was the coffee niche. At the opposite end of the room
five musicians were squatting, four in a semicircle facing the coffee
niche, the fifth alone, almost facing them. This fifth was Said Hitani,
the famous flute-player of Constantine--a man at this time sixty-three
years old. In front of him was a flat board, on which lay two freshly
rolled cigarettes and several cigarette ends. Now and then he took his
flute from his lips, replaced it with a lighted cigarette, smoked for a
moment, then swiftly renewed his strange love-song, playing with a
virile vigor as well as with airy daintiness and elaborate grace. Of his
companions, one played a violin, held upright by the left hand, with its
end resting on his stockinged foot; the second a species of large
guitar; the third a derbouka; and the fourth a tarah, or native
tambourine, ornamented with ten little discs of brass, which made a soft
clashing sound when shaken. On the left of the room, down one side,
squatted a row of Arabs with coffee-cups and cigarettes. By the door two
more were playing a game of draughts. And opposite to the windows, on an
Oriental rug, the long figure of Claude Heath was stretched out. He lay
with his hat tilted to the left over one temple, his cheek on his left
hand, listening intently to the music. On a wooden board beside him was
some music paper, and now and then with a stylograph he jotted down some
notes. He looked both emotional and thoughtful. Often his imaginative
eyes rested on the small and hunched-up figure of Said Hitani, dressed
in white, black, and gold, with a hood drawn over the head. Now and then
he looked toward the window, and it seemed to Mrs. Shiffney then that
his eyes met hers. But he saw nothing, except perhaps some Eastern
vision summoned up by his lit imagination.
The music very gradually quickened and grew louder, became steadily more
masculine, powerful, and fierce, till it sounded violent. The volume of
tone produced by the players astonished Mrs. Shiffney. The wild vagaries
of the flute seemed presently to be taking place in her brain. She drew
close to the window, put her hands on the bars. At her feet the
crouching Arabs never stirred. Behind her the cold wind came up from the
gorge and the great open country with the sound of the rushing water.
At that moment she had the thing that she believed she lived for--a
really keen sensation.
Suddenly, when the music had become almost intolerably exciting, when
the players seemed possessed, and noise and swiftness to rush together
like foes to the attack, the flute wavered, ran up to a height, cried
out like a thing martyred; the violin gave forth a thin scream; on the
derbouka the brown fingers of the player pattered with abrupt
feebleness; the guitar died away; the little brass discs shivered and
fell together. Another thin cry from the flute upon some unknown height,
and there was silence, while Claude wrote furiously, and the musicians
began to smoke.
[Illustration: "AT HER FEET THE CROUCHING ARABS NEVER STIRRED"--_Page
258_]
"Now I'll go in!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Amor.
He led the way and she followed. Claude glanced up, stared for a moment,
then sprang up.
"Mrs. Shiffney!"
His voice was almost stern.
"Mrs. Shiffney!" he repeated.
"Come to hear your music, for I know they are all playing only for you
and the opera."
Her strong, almost masculine hand lingered in his, and how could he let
it go without impoliteness?
"Aren't they?"
"I suppose so."
"It's wonderful the way they play. Said Hitani is an artist."
"You know his name?"
"And I must know him. May I stay a little?"
"Of course."
He looked round for a seat.
"No, the rug!" she said.
And, despite her bulk, she sank down with a swift ease that was almost
Oriental.
"Now please introduce me to Said Hitani!"
Till late in the night she stayed between the blue-green walls,
listening to the vehement voices and to the instruments, following all
the strange journeys of Said Hitani's flute. She was genuinely
fascinated, and this fact made her fascinating. As she had caught at Max
Elliot that day when he asked her, against his intention, to meet Claude
Heath, so now she caught at Claude Heath himself. She had come to the
café with a purpose, and, as she forgot it, she carried it out. Never
before had Claude understood completely why she had gained her position
in London and Paris, realized fully her fascination. Her delightful
naturalness, her pleasure, her almost boyish gaiety, her simplicity, her
humor took him captive for the moment. She explained that she had left
her companions and stolen away to enjoy Constantine alone.
"And now I'm interrupting you. But you must forgive me just for this one
night!"
Through Amor, who acted as interpreter, she carried on a lively
intercourse with Said Hitani. The other musicians smiled, but seldom
spoke, and only among themselves. But Said Hitani, the great artist of
his native city, a man famous far and wide among the Arabs, was
infinitely diverting and descriptive in talk even as when he gave
himself to the flute. With an animation that was youthful he described
the meaning of each new song. He had two flutes on which he played
alternately--"Mousou et Madame," he called them. And he knew, so he
declared, over a hundred songs. Mrs. Shiffney, speaking to him always
through Amor, told him of London, and what a sensation he and his
companions would make there in the _décor_ of a Moorish café. Said
Hitani pulled his little gray beard with his delicate hands, swayed to
and fro, and smiled. Then sharply he uttered a torrent of words which
seemed almost to fight their way out of some chamber in his narrow
throat.
"Said Hitani says you have only to send money and the address and they
are all coming whenever you like. They are very pleased to come."
At this point one of the musicians, a fair man with pale eyes who played
the tarah, interposed a remark which was uttered with great seriousness.
"Can they go to London on camels, he wishes to know," observed Amor
gently.
Said Hitani waited for Mrs. Shiffney's answer with a slightly judicial
air, moving his head as if in approval of the tarah-player's
forethought.
"I'm afraid they can't."
The tarah-player spoke again.
"He says, can they go on donkeys?"
"No. It is further than Paris, tell him."
"Then they must go on the sea. Paris is across the sea."
"Yes, they will have to take a steamer."
At this juncture it was found that the tarah-player would not be of the
party.
"He says he would be very sick, and no man can play when he is sick."
"What will Madame pay?" interposed Said Hitani.
Mrs. Shiffney declared seriously that she would think it over, make a
calculation, and Amor should convey her decision as to price to him on
the morrow.
All seemed well satisfied with this. And the tarah-player remarked,
after a slight pause, that he would wait to know about the price before
he decided whether he would be too sick to play in London. Then, at a
signal from Said Hitani, they all took up their instruments and played
and sang a garden song called _Mabouf_, describing how a Sheik and his
best loved wife walked in a great garden and sang one against the other.
"It has been quite delicious!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude, when at
last the song _Au Revoir_, tumultuously brilliant with a tremendous
crescendo at the close, had been played, and with many salaams and good
wishes the musicians had departed.
"I love their playing," Claude answered. "But really you shouldn't have
paid them. I have arranged with Hitani to come every evening."
"Oh, but I paid them for wanting to know whether they could go to London
on camels. What a success your opera ought to be if you have got a fine
libretto."
They were just leaving the café.
"Do let us stand by the wall for a minute," she added. "By that tree. It
is so wonderful here."
Claude's guide, Aloui, had come to accompany him home, and was behind
with Amor. They stayed in the doorway of the café. Mrs. Shiffney and
Claude leaned on the wall, looking down into the vast void from which
rose the cool wind and the sound of water.
"What would I give to be a creative artist!" she said. "That must add so
much meaning to all this. Do you know how fortunate you are? Do you know
you possess the earth?"
The sable sleeve of her coat touched Claude's arm and hand. Her deep
voice sounded warm and full of genuine feeling. A short time ago, when
she had come into the café, he had been both astonished and vexed to see
her. Now he knew that he had enjoyed this evening more than any other
evening that he had spent in Constantine.
"But there are plenty of drawbacks," he said.
"Oh, no, not real ones! After this evening--well, I shall wish for your
success. Till now I didn't care in the least. Indeed, I believe I hoped
you never would have a great success."
She moved slightly nearer to him.
"Did you?" he said.
"Yes. You've always been so horrid to me, when I always wanted to be
nice to you."
"Oh, but--"
"Don't let us talk about it. What does it matter now? I thought I might
have done something for you once, have helped you on a little, perhaps.
But now you are married and settled and will make your own way. I feel
it. You don't want anyone's help. You've come away from us all, and how
right you've been. And Charmian's done the right thing, too, giving up
all our nonsense for your work. Sacrifice means success. You are bound
to have it. I feel you are going to. Ah, you don't know how I sometimes
long to be linked, really linked, to the striving, the abnegation, the
patience, the triumph of a man of genius! People envy my silly little
position, as they call it. And what is it worth? And yet I do know, I
have an instinct, a flair, for the real thing. I'm ignorant. I can dare
to acknowledge it to you. But I can tell what is good and bad, and
sometimes even why a thing is good. I'm led away, of course. In a silly
social life like mine everybody is led away. We can't help it. But I
could have been worth something in the art life of a big man, if I'd
loved him."
How soft sable is against a hand!
"I'm sure you could," Claude said.
"And as it is--"
She stopped speaking abruptly. Then with a marked change of voice she
said:
"Oh, do forgive me for committing the unpardonable sin--babbling about
myself! You're the only person I have ever--Forget all about it, won't
you? I don't know why I did it. It was the music, I suppose, and the
strangeness of this place, and thinking of your work and your hopes for
the future. It made me wish I had some too, either for myself or
for--for someone like you."
As if irresistibly governed by feeling her voice had again changed,
become once more warm as with emotion. But now she drew herself up a
little and laughed.
"Don't be afraid! It's over! But you have had a glimpse no one else has
ever had, and I know you'll keep it to yourself. Let's talk of something
else--anything. Tell me something about your libretto, if you care to."
As they walked slowly toward the heart of the city, followed by the two
Arabs, she took Claude's arm, very naturally, as if half for protection,
half because it was dark and false steps were possible.
And he told her a good deal, finally a great deal, about the libretto.
"It sounds wonderful!" she said. "I'm so glad! But may I give you a
little bit of advice?"
"Yes, do."
"Don't say anything about it to Henriette--Madame Sennier."
"No. But--"
"Why not? I scarcely know. My instinct! Don't!"
"I won't," Claude said.
"I'd give anything to read it. But if I were you I wouldn't let anyone
read it. As you probably know, I'm in half the secrets of the artistic
world, and always have been. But there isn't one woman in a hundred who
can be trusted to hold her tongue. Is this the hotel? Good-night. Yes,
isn't it a delicious coat? _Bonne nuit_, Amor! _À demain!_"
A minute later Mrs. Shiffney tapped at Henriette's door, which was
immediately opened.
"It is all right," she whispered. "I shall have the libretto
to-morrow."
CHAPTER XXIII
Two days later Mrs. Shiffney slipped Gillier's libretto surreptitiously
into Claude's hand.
"It's splendid!" she almost whispered. "With such a libretto you can't
fail."
They were in the deserted salon of the hotel, among armchairs, albums
and old French picture-papers. Mrs. Shiffney looked toward the door.
"Don't let anyone know I've read it--especially Henriette. She's a dear
and a great friend of mine, but, all the same, she'd be horribly
jealous. There's only one thing about the libretto that frightens me."
"What is it? Do tell me!"
"Having so many Easterns in it. If by any chance you should ever want to
produce your opera--" She hesitated, with her eyes fixed upon him. "In
America, I fancy--no, I think I'm being absurd."
"But what do you mean? Do tell me! Not that there's the slightest chance
yet of my opera ever being done anywhere."
"Well, it's only that Americans do so hate what they call color."
"Oh, but that is only in negroes!"
"Is it? Then I'm talking nonsense! I'm so glad! Not a word to Henriette!
Hush! Here she is!"
At that moment the door opened and the white face of Madame Sennier
looked in.
"What are you two doing here? Where is Max?"
"Gone to arrange about the sleeping-car."
Claude slipped the libretto into the pocket of his jacket. In London he
had been rather inclined to like Madame Sennier. In Constantine he felt
ill at ease with her. He detected the secret hostility which she
scarcely troubled to conceal, though she covered it with an air of
careless indifference. Now and then a corner of the covering slipped
down, leaving a surface exposed, which, to Claude, seemed ugly. To-day
at this moment she seemed unable to mask entirely some angry feeling
which possessed her. How different she was from Mrs. Shiffney! Claude
had enjoyed Mrs. Shiffney's visit. She had rescued him from his solitude
with Gillier--a solitude which he had endured for the sake of the opera,
but which had been odious to him. She had warmed him by her apparent
enthusiasm, by her sympathy. He had been obliged to acknowledge that she
was very forgiving. He had certainly not been "nice" to her in London.
Her simplicity in telling him she had felt his conduct, her sweetness in
being so ready to forget it, to enter into his expectations, to wish him
well, had fascinated him, roused his chivalry. But most of all had her
few words by the wall after Said Hitani's music touched him, been
instrumental in bringing him nearer to her.
"She showed me a bit of her real self," he thought. "And she was not
sorry afterward that she had shown it to me."
He had made her a return for this, the return which she had wanted; but
to Claude it seemed no return at all.
"You are really going away to-night?" he said now. And there was a note
of regret in his voice which was not missed by her.
"I can't possibly leave Jacques alone any longer," said Madame Sennier.
"And what have we to do here? We aren't getting local color for an
opera."
"No, no; of course, you want to get away!" said Claude quickly, and
stiffening with constraint.
"I should love to stay on. This place fascinates me by its strangeness,
its marvellous position," said Mrs. Shiffney.
She looked at Claude.
"But I suppose we must go back. Will you take me for a last walk before
tea?"
"Of course."
Madame Sennier passed the tip of her tongue across her scarlet lips.
"Over the bridge and up into the pine-wood?"
"Wherever you like."
At this moment Armand Gillier walked brusquely into the room. Mrs.
Shiffney turned to Henriette.
"We'll leave Monsieur Gillier to take care of you."
Henriette's lips tightened. Gillier said:
"_Bien_, madame!"
As Mrs. Shiffney and Claude left the room Gillier bowed with very formal
politeness. The door shut. After a pause Gillier said:
"You go away to-night, madame?"
Madame Sennier sat down on a settee by a round table on which lay
several copies of _L'Illustration_, in glazed black covers, _La Dépêche
Algérienne_, and a guide to Constantine.
She had been awake most of the previous night, with jealous care
studying the libretto Gillier had sold to Claude, which had been put
into her hands by Mrs. Shiffney. At once she had recognized its unusual
merit. She had in a high degree the faculty, possessed by many clever
Frenchwomen, of detecting and appraising the value of a work of art. She
was furious because Gillier's libretto had never been submitted to her
husband; but she could not say all that was in her mind. She and
Adelaide Shiffney had been frank with each other in the matter, and she
had no intention of making any mistake because she was angry.
"We haven't much time to spare. Jacques has to get on with his new
opera."
Gillier sat down on a chair with a certain cold and reluctant but
definite politeness. His look and manner said: "I cannot, of course,
leave this lady whom I hate."
"He is a great man now. I congratulate you on his success."
"Jacques was always a great man, but he didn't quite understand it."
"You enlightened him, madame."
"Exactly."
"That was very clever of you."
"It wasn't stupid. But I don't happen to be a stupid woman." Her yellow
eyes narrowed.
"I know how to detect quality. And I suppose you do?"
"Why, madame?"
"You tried to sell libretti to my husband before he was famous."
"And failed."
"Yes. But now I'm glad to know you have succeeded with another man who
is not famous yet."
Gillier laid his right hand down on one of the glazed black covers of
_L'Illustration_.
"You do not believe in my talent, madame. I cannot understand why you
should be interested in such a matter."
"You make the mistake of supposing that a talented man can never be
immature. What you offered to my husband was immature; but I always knew
you had talent."
"Indeed? You never told me so that I remember."
"You appeared to be fully aware of it."
Gillier made a fist of his hand on the cover. He wished Jacques Sennier
were setting the libretto he had sold to Claude Heath, and Madame
Sennier wished exactly the same thing. He did not know her thought; but
she divined his. With all her soul, greedy for her Jacques and for
herself, she coveted that libretto. She almost hated Claude Heath for
possessing it. And now, as she sat opposite to Gillier, with the round
table between them, always alert for intrigue, she began to wonder
whether in truth the libretto was irrevocably lost to them.
"Weren't you?" she said, fixing her unflinching eyes upon him.
"I knew I was not quite such a fool as your husband certainly thought
me."
"Jacques is a mere baby outside of his art."
"_Si?_"
"That is why I have to think for him very often. Which of the libretti
has Mr. Heath bought?"
"It is not one of those I had the honor of showing to Monsieur Sennier."
"Really? You have written another specially for Mr. Heath?"
"I wrote another to please myself. His wife saw it and took it to him.
He was so foolish as to think it good enough to buy."
"Let us hope his music will be good enough to produce on the stage."
Gillier looked very sharply at her, and began to tug at his moustache;
but he said nothing. After a moment Madame Sennier said, with a change
of tone and manner that seemed to indicate an intention to be more
friendly:
"When you write another libretto, why not let me see it?"
"You desire to inflict a fourth rejection upon me, madame?"
"If you like, I'll tell you the only thing I desire," she replied, with
a sort of brutal frankness well calculated to appeal to his rough
character. "It has nothing to do with you. I haven't your interests at
my heart. Why should I bother about them? All I want is to get something
fine for my husband when a chance arises. I know what's good better than
you do, my friend. You showed me three libretti that didn't do. Show me
one that does do, and I'll pay you a price that will astonish you."
Gillier's large eyes shone.
"How much would you pay?"
"Show me a fine libretto!"
"Tell me how much you'd pay."
She laughed.
"Five times as much as anyone else offered you. But you would have to
prove the offer to my satisfaction."
Gillier fidgeted on his chair, took hold of the _Dépêche Algérienne_,
and began carefully to fold it into pleats.
"I should want a royalty," he said, keeping his shining eyes on her.
"If I were satisfied I would see that you got it."
There was a long silence, during which they looked at each other.
Gillier was puzzled. He did not believe Claude Heath had shown the
libretto to her. Yet she was surely prompted now by some very definite
purpose. He could not guess what it was. At last he looked down at the
paper he was folding mechanically.
"I haven't got anything to sell at present," he almost growled, in a
very low voice.
"That's a pity. We must hope for the future. There is no reason why you
and I should be mortal enemies since you haven't had a chance to murder
my poor old cabbage."
"He's a coward," said Gillier.
"Of course he is. And I'm very thankful for it. Cowards live long."
She got up from the settee. Gillier, returning to his varnish, sprang
up, dropping the paper, and opened the door.
"Don't forget what I said," she remarked as she went out. "Five times
the price anyone else offers, on account of a royalty to be fixed by
mutual agreement. But it would have to be a libretto _numéro un_."
He looked at her but did not say a word.
When she was gone he sat down again by the round table and stared at the
cloth, with his head bent and his muscular, large-boned arms laid one
upon the other.
And presently he swore under his breath.
Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney and Claude were making their way through the
crowded and noisy street toward the unfinished Suspension Bridge which
spans the gorge, linking the city to the height which is crowned by the
great hospital. Beyond the hospital, opposite to the Grand Rocher, a
terrific precipice of rock beneath which a cascade leaps down to the
valley where lie the baths of Sidi Imcin, is a wood of fir-trees
commanding an immense view. This was the objective of their walk. The
sun shone warmly, brightly, over the roaring city, perched on its savage
height and crowding down to its precipices, as if seeking for
destruction. Clarions sounded from the woods, where hidden soldiers were
carrying out evolutions. Now and then a dull roar in the distance, like
the noise of a far-off earthquake, proclaimed the activities of men
among the rocks. From the bazaars in the maze of covered alleys that
stretch down the hill below the Place du Chameau, from the narrow and
slippery pavements that wind between the mauve and the pale yellow house
fronts, came incessant cries and the long and dull murmur of voices.
Bellebelles were singing everywhere in their tiny cages, heedless of
their captivity. On tiny wooden tables and stands before the insouciant
workers at trades, and the indifferent sellers of goods, were set vases
of pale yellow jonquils. Round the minarets fluttered the pigeons. And
again, floating across the terrific gorge, came the brave notes of the
military clarions.
"There is something here which I have never felt in any other place,"
said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude. "A peculiar wildness. It makes one want to
cry out. The rocks seem to have life almost under one's feet. And the
water in that terrible gorge, that's like a devil's moat round the city,
is more alive than water in other places. It's so strange to have known
you in Mullion House and to find you here. How eternally interesting
life is!"
She did not always think so, but at this moment she really found life
interesting.
"I shall never forget this little time!" she added. "I haven't enjoyed
myself so much for years. And now it's nearly over. What a bore!"
Claude felt exhilarated too. The day was so bright, so alive, seemed
full of wildness and gaiety and lusty freedom.
"Let us enjoy what is left!" he said.
She stole a side glance at him as he swung along by her. How would it be
to be married to a man like him--a man with his way to make?
They came down to the bridge, escaping from the bustle of the city. From
the fir woods the clarions sounded louder, calling to each other like
bold and triumphant voices.
"Have you got those in your opera?" she asked him.
"I shall have them."
"Of course."
They talked a little about the libretto as they crossed the bridge, with
the sound of the water in their ears.
"It is good to be out of the city!" Claude said, as they came to the
rubble of the unfinished track on the farther side, where Arabs worked
under the supervision of a French overseer. "I did not know you were a
walker."
"I don't think you knew very much about me."
"That's quite true. Where do you wish to go?"
"Anywhere--to the left. Let us sit on a rock under the trees and look at
the view."
"Can you get up here?"
"If you give me your hand."
They walked a little way in the shadow of the fir-trees, leaving the
hospital on their right. The plantation was almost deserted. The
soldiers were evidently retiring, for the clarions sounded more distant
now. Here and there the figure of an Arab was visible sauntering slowly
among the trees, with the smoke of his cigarette dispersing above him.
Some young Jews went by, holding hands, laughing and talking. They sent
glances of hard inquiry at Mrs. Shiffney's broad figure from their too
intelligent eyes. Soon their thin forms vanished among the gray trunks.
"Shall we sit there?" asked Claude.
"Yes; just in the sun."
"Oh, but you wanted--"
"No, let us sit in the sun."
She opened her green parasol.
Almost at the edge of the cliff, which descended steeply to the high
road to Philippeville, was a flat ledge of rock warmed by the sunbeams.
"It's perfect here," she said, sitting down. "And what a view!"
They were exactly opposite to the terrific Grand Rocher, a gray and pale
yellow precipice, with the cascades and the Grand Moulin at its foot,
the last houses of the city perched upon its summit in the sky.
"And to think that women have been flung from there!" said Claude,
clasping his hands round his knees.
"Unfaithful women! Rather hard on them!" she answered. "If London
husbands--" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I
suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"
"I think I did."
"Don't you ever regret that little house?"
She saw his eyebrows move downward.
"Oh, I--I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."
"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You
seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."
"Was there?"
"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel
that without ever hearing your music? I did."
"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"
"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate
evasiveness.
Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense
view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him
too well, perhaps.
"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house.
But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own
particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite
unlike anyone else's."
"I certainly got to love my little house."
"Because it was doing things for you."
Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were.
As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent--as if in
answer to his gaze.
"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.
"But--forgive me--how can you know?"
"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain
directions. That's why a lot of people--silly people, you think, I
daresay--follow my lead."
"Well, but--"
"Go on!"
"I think I'd better not."
"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."
"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out
of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly,
hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.
"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."
"Why?"
Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to
blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.
Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.
"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.
Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of Charmian had
come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.
"Yes, I suppose they are," he said coldly.
He did not mean to speak coldly; but directly he had said the words he
knew that his voice had become frigid.
"What a stupid ass I am!" was his comment on himself. But how to be
different?
Mrs. Shiffney was looking very grave. Her drawn-down brows, her powerful
lips suggested to him at this moment suffering. In London he had thought
of her as a typical pleasure-seeking woman, greedy of sensation,
reckless in the chase after it. And he had disliked, almost feared her,
despite her careless charm. Now he felt differently about her. He had
come to that point in a man's acquaintance with a woman when he says to
himself, "I never understood her properly." He seemed to himself a
brute. Yet what had he done?
She did not speak for several minutes. He wanted to speak, to break a
silence which, to him, was painful; but he could think of nothing to
say. He felt oddly moved, yet he could not have said why, perhaps even
to himself. Keeping his hands clasped round his knees, he looked out
beyond the gorge over the open country. Far down, at the foot of the
cascades, he saw in a hollow, the clustering trees about the baths of
Sidi Imcin. Along the reddish bareness of the hill showed the white
blossoms of some fruit-trees, almost like a white dust flung up against
the tawny breast of the earth. The water made a hoarse noise in the
hidden depths of the gorge, lifted its voice into a roar as it leaped
down into the valley, murmured like the voice of a happy dreamer where
it slipped by among the trees. And Claude, as he sat in silence,
believed that he heard clearly the threefold utterance, subtly combined,
and, like some strange trinity, striving to tell him truths of life.
His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops,
beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open
country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly spacious, fiercely blooming
in the strong colors--reds, yellows, golds--with long rolling slopes,
dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for
hundreds of kilometers, far-off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests
seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or
perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must
exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only
that something experienced made life truly life.
For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his
companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for
women rather than a woman.
During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires
connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had
come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her
mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette--was, perhaps, at
this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different
she might well have been on his side. Even now--
Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she
deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it
matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as
marriage got to do with it?
Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that
firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive
loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it.
He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the
minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of
it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not.
All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he
understood her desire and was recoiling from it.
Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed
every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face,
transforming it.
"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think
you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"
As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her
tailor-made skirt.
Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.
"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to
seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was
unknown by her at this moment.
"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."
She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward
the bridge.
"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."
Claude said nothing, and she continued:
"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his
knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his
talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as
inflexible as the Grand Rocher."
She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.
"That is why women always love and hate him."
Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and
looked at him, smiling:
"I am sure Charmian knows that."
Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.
"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.
"And, so, very few inflexible men?"
"I have never--"
He pulled himself up.
"Yes?" she said encouragingly.
"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have
never laid claim to anything--anything in the way of talent. It isn't
quite fair, is it, to assume that I consider myself a man of talent or
an important person when I don't?"
"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of
talent?"
"I am entirely unknown."
"What has that to do with it?"
"Nothing, of course, but--but perhaps it is only when he has something
to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."
"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."
Claude looked down.
"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its
production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be
specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I
have been privileged. I have read the libretto."
As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian,
of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by
events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which
always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered
the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had
guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it
angel or demon in his life?
"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."
He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.
They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities,
into the perpetual uproar of the city.
By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers.
Claude went down to the station to see them off.
On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in
his hand.
Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.
From the window of the _wagon-lit_ Mrs. Shiffney looked at the two men
standing together as the train drew away from the platform.
Then she nodded and waved her hand.
There was a mocking smile on her face.
When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.
"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to
suspect it?"
"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette.
"What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the
window."
"No, don't!"
"Why not?"
"They are a symbol of your reconciliation with Armand Gillier."
"He isn't altogether a fool, I fancy," remarked Henriette, laying
Gillier's bouquet down on the seat beside her. "But we shall see."
"Oh, Max! Yes, come in and sit with us!"
The faces of the two women changed as Max Elliot joined them.
CHAPTER XXIV
After their return from Constantine Mrs. Shiffney and her party only
stayed two nights at Mustapha. Then they descended to the harbor and
went on board _The Wanderer_, which weighed anchor and set sail for
Monte Carlo. Before leaving they paid a visit to Djenan-el-Maqui to say
adieu to Charmian.
The day was unusually hot for the time of year, and both Mrs. Shiffney
and Madame Sennier were shrouded in white veils with patterns. These,
the latest things from Paris, were almost like masks. Little of the
faces beneath them could be seen. But no doubt they preserved
complexions from the destructive influence of the sun.
Jacques Sennier had told his friends and his wife the story of his days
of desertion. A name summed it up, Djenan-el-Maqui. With the utmost
vivacity, however, he had described all he had eaten, drunk, smoked, and
done in that hospitable house and garden; the impression he had made
upon the occupants and had received from them.
"I am beloved by all!" he had cried, with enthusiasm. "They would die
for me. As for the good Pierre, each night he led me home as if I were
his own child!"
"We must certainly go and thank them," said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
The visit was not without intensities.
"We've come to say 'Good-bye,'" said Mrs. Shiffney, when they came into
the "harem," as she persisted in calling the drawing-room. "We are just
back from our little run, and now we must be off to Monte Carlo. By the
way, we came across your husband in Constantine."
"I know. He wrote to me all about it," said Charmian.
Claude had really written a very short note, ending with the maddening
phrase, "all news when we meet." She was burning with curiosity, was
tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw
the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the
two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless in the open.
"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame
Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over
there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you
with our affairs."
"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a
delightful time."
"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry,
the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"--he
flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the
evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"
He blew a kiss.
"Shall I forget them? Never!"
Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.
"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've
spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"
"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.
The composer seized his arm.
"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of
the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan,
come!"
He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing
like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with
him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three
women were left alone.
"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there.
There's a little breeze from the sea."
"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.
When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant
murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as
if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to
Constantine.
"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and
extraordinary."
And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame
Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days
before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to
death by their Arab husbands.
"_C'est affreux!_" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her
hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with
twisting fingers.
"_Les Arabes sont des monstres._"
As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the
interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.
"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.
She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its
African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had
read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and
instinctive disgust.
The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.
"_Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!_"
"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of
eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white
parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong
antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans
really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because
they are picturesque."
"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they
call color drives them quite mad!"
"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.
"It is all the same. _Ils sont tous des monstres affreux._"
"Tst! Tst! Tst!"
The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.
"What is it?"
"Tst! Tst!"
They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming
and of native music.
"I must go! I must hear, see!"
The composer cried out.
"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"
There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter
from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.
"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.
She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.
"How hot it is!"
Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit
syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.
"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to
the syrups. "I wonder--" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with
my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.
Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white
kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made
ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism
declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed
a negative.
"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut
and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your
husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."
"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French,"
said Charmian, in a constrained voice.
"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
Was she smiling behind the veil?
"You ought to go to America," said Madame Sennier. "Nobody knows what
real life is who has not seen New York in the season. Paris, London,
they are sleepy villages in comparison with New York."
"I should like to see it," replied Charmian. "But we have nothing to
take us there, no reason to go."
She laughed and added:
"And Claude and I are not millionaires."
Madame Sennier talked for two or three minutes of the great expense of
living in a smart New York hotel, and then said:
"But some day you will surely go."
"There doesn't seem any prospect of it," said Charmian.
"D'you remember meeting a funny little man called Crayford in my house
one night, an impresario?" said Mrs. Shiffney, moving her shoulders, and
pulling at one of her long gloves, as if she were bored and must find
some occupation.
"Yes, I believe I do--a man with a tiny beard."
"Like a little inquiring goat's! D'you know that he's searching the
world to find some composer to run against Jacques? Isn't it so,
Henriette?"
"So they say in New York," said Madame Sennier. "I wish he could find
one; then perhaps he would leave off bothering us with absurd proposals.
And I'm sure there is plenty of room for some more shining lights. I
told Crayford if he worried Jacques any more I would unearth someone for
him. He doesn't know where to look."
"But surely--" began Charmian.
"Why do you think that?" asked Mrs. Shiffney, in an uninterested voice.
Her brilliant eyes looked extraordinary, like some strange exotic bird's
eyes, through her veil.
"Because he began his search with England," said Madame Sennier.
"Well, really--Henriette!" observed Mrs. Shiffney, with a faint laugh.
"Ought I to apologize?" said Madame Sennier, turning to Charmian. "When
art is in question I believe in speaking the plain truth. Oh, I know
your husband is by way of writing an opera! But, of course, one sees
that--well, you are here in this delicious little house, having what the
Americans call a lovely time, enjoying North Africa, listening to the
fountain, walking, as my old baby says, among passion-flowers, and
playing about with that joke from the Quartier Latin, Armand Gillier.
_Mais, ma chère, ce n'est pas sérieux!_ One has only to look at your
interesting husband, to see him in the African _milieu_, to see that.
And, of course, one realizes at once that you see through it all! A
pretty game! If one is well off one can afford it. Jacques and I
starved; but it was quite right that we should. The English talent is
not for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one
form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis, that is where
the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders
went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted
for the last time! Here are your syrups."
Jacques Sennier came, almost running.
"Did they ever nearly starve?" Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a
moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some
wild joke of the composer's.
"Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating
all your biscuits now."
When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He
insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande
Jeanne." He took Pierre in his arms, solemnly blessed Caroline, and
warmly pressed his lips to Charmian's hands as he held them, squeezed
one on the top of the other, in both his own.
"I shall dedicate my new opera to you and to your syrups!" he exclaimed.
"To the greengage, ah, and the passion-flowers! Max, you old person,
have you seen them, or have you not? The wonderful Washington was not
more truthful than I."
His eyes twinkled.
"Were it not that I am a physical coward, I would not go even now. But
to die because a man who cannot write has practised on soda-water
bottles! I fly before Armand Gillier. But, madame, I fear your
respectable husband is even more cowardly than I!"
"Why?" said Charmian, at length releasing her hands from his Simian
grasp.
"He accepted a libretto!"
When they were gone Charmian was suddenly overcome by a sense of
profound depression such as she had never felt before. With them seemed
to go a world; and it was a world that some part of her loved and longed
for. Sennier stood for fame, for success; his wife for the glory of the
woman who aids and is crowned; Mrs. Shiffney and Max Elliot for the joy
and the power that belong to great patrons of the arts. An immense
vitality went away with them all. So long as they were with her the
little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of
things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled
Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in
both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and
temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And
they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the
great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone--who counted--knew
who they were.
As to Jacques Sennier, he left a crevasse in the life at
Djenan-el-Maqui. It had been a dangerous experience for Charmian, the
associating in intimacy with the little famous man. Her secret ambitions
were irritated almost to the point of nervous exasperation. But she only
knew it now that he was gone.
Madame Sennier had frightened her.
"_Mais, ma chère, ce n'est pas sérieux!_"
The words had been said with an air of hard and careless authority, as
if the speaker knew she was expressing the obvious truth, and a truth
known to both her hearers; and then the words which had followed: "One
has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the African
_milieu_, to see that!"
What had happened at Constantine? How had Claude been?
Charmian wanted so much to see him, to hear his account of the whole
matter, that she telegraphed:
"Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull
here.--CHARMIAN."
She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her rôle;
but her nerves drove her into the weakness.
Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.
Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men
together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On
the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He
seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.
"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remember what a keen
interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."
Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she
thought. Then he said formally:
"I am delighted to stay, madame."
During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to
become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in
hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could
not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was
talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.
The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually
unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his
voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated.
Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her
with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.
Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and
Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums.
Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his
Turkish coffee, poured out a glass of old brandy, clipped a big Havana
cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him.
His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably
expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his
remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay
that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.
"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful
carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my
husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him
with his music?"
"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."
Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and
looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.
"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.
Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.
"Who knows, madame?"
"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"
"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to
have certain doubts."
"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I
don't quite understand."
"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much
knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an
original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."
"Then--"
"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"
"Naturally!"
"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the
public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I
will never get on together."
"Why not?"
"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel
anxious."
"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"
"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of
it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally,
but I am not _homme du monde_. I am not a little man of the salons. I am
not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.
I have been, and I still am, poor--poor, madame! But, madame, I do not
intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"
"Of course not--with your talent!"
"Ah, that is just it!"
His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and
speaking almost with violence.
"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known
that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew
it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work
will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to
go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"--he paused, finished his glass of
brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great
effort after self-control--"but is your husband's talent for the stage
as great as mine? I doubt it."
"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you
to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet,
not a note of it."
"No. And that enables me--"
"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur
Gillier?"
"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--"
"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be
thinking of?"
"I feared by your words, your manner--"
"I assure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish
what you were saying."
"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your
husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal
offense--pronouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--" He paused.
The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily
in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.
"Yes?" said Charmian.
"Madame?"
"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of
us."
"I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want
success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in
Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame,
believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be
associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too
different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who
has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has
lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him
understand something of the life not merely in, but that
underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I
say?"--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
"It is only the difference between the French and English
temperaments."
"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who
is not afraid to live."
"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a
matter which I can discuss with you."
"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"--he looked
down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I
am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I
sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit
your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose
a hundred pounds rather than to--"
"Have you spoken to my husband of this?" Charmian interrupted him.
She was almost trembling with anger and excitement, but she managed to
speak quietly.
"No, madame."
"You have asked me a question--"
"I have asked no question, madame!"
"Do you mean to say you are not asking me if we will resell the
libretto?"
Gillier was silent.
"My answer is that the libretto is our property and that we intend to
keep it. If you offered us five times what we gave you for it the answer
would be the same."
She paused. Gillier said nothing. She looked at him and suddenly anger,
a sense of outrage, got the better of her, and she added with intense
bitterness:
"We are living here in North Africa, we have given up our home, our
friends, our occupations, everything--our life in England"--her voice
trembled. "Everything, I say, in order to do justice to your work, and
you come, you dare to come to us, and ask--ask--"
Gillier got up.
"Madame, I see it is useless. You have bought my work, if you choose to
keep it--"
"We do choose to keep it."
"Then I can do nothing."
He pulled out his watch.
"It is late. I must wish you good-night, madame. Kindly say good-night
for me to that lady, your friend, and to Monsieur Heath."
He bowed. Charmian did not hold out her hand. She meant to, but it
seemed to her that her hand refused to move, as if it had a will of its
own to resist hers.
"Good-night," she said.
She watched his rather short and broad figure pass across the open space
of the court and disappear.
After he had gone she moved across the court to the fountain and sat
down at its edge. She was trembling now, and her excitement was growing
in solitude. But she still had the desire to govern it, the hope that
she would be able to do so. She felt that she had been grossly insulted
by Gillier. But she was not only angry with him. She stared at the
rising and falling water, clasping her hands tightly together. "I will
be calm!" she was saying to herself. "I will be calm, mistress of
myself."
But suddenly she got up, went swiftly across the court to the garden
entrance, and called out:
"Susan! Claude! Where are you?"
Her voice sounded to her sharp and piercing in the night.
"What is it, Charmian?" answered Claude's voice from the distance.
"I'm going to bed. It's late. Monsieur Gillier has gone."
"Coming!" answered Claude's voice.
Charmian retreated to the house.
As she came into the drawing-room she looked at her watch. It was barely
ten o'clock. In a moment Susan Fleet entered, followed by Claude.
Susan's calm eyes glanced at Charmian's face. Then she said, in her
quiet, agreeable voice:
"I'm going to my room. I have two or three letters to write, and I shall
read a little before going to bed. It isn't really very late, but I
daresay you are tired."
She took Charmian's hand and held it for an instant. And during that
instant Charmian felt much calmer.
"Good-night, Susan dear. Monsieur Gillier asked me to say good-night to
you for him."
Susan did not kiss her, said good-night to Claude, and went quietly
away.
"What is it?" Claude said, directly she had gone. "What's the matter,
Charmian? Why did Gillier go away so early?"
"Let us go upstairs," she answered.
Remembering the sound of her voice in the court, she strove to keep it
natural, even gentle, now. Susan's recent touch had helped her a little.
"All right," he answered.
"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in
the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story
of the house.
Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she
wrote her letters and did accounts.
"Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into
this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.
"How could you show the libretto to Madame Sennier?" said Charmian. "How
could you be so mad as to do such a thing?"
As she finished speaking she sat down on the little divan in the
embrasure of the small grated window.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have never shown the libretto to
Madame Sennier. What could put such an idea into your head?"
"But you must have shown it!"
"Charmian, I have this moment told you that I haven't."
"She has read it."
"Nonsense."
"I am positive she has read it."
"Then Gillier must have shown her a copy of it."
Charmian was silent for a minute. Then she said:
"You did not show it to anyone while you were at Constantine?"
"I didn't say that."
"Ah! You--you let Mrs. Shiffney see it!"
Her voice rose as she said the last words.
"I suppose I have a right to allow anyone I choose to read a libretto I
have bought and paid for," he said coldly, almost sternly.
"You did give it to Mrs. Shiffney then! You did! You did!"
"Certainly I did!"
"And then--then you come to me and say that Madame Sennier hasn't read
it!"
There was a sound of acute, almost of fierce exasperation in her voice.
"She had not read my copy."
"I say she has!"
"Mrs. Shiffney herself specially advised me not to show it to her."
"To her--to Madame Sennier?"
"Yes."
"Mrs. Shiffney advised you! Oh--you--oh, that men should claim to have
keener intellects than we women! Ah! Ah!"
She began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly put a handkerchief before
her mouth, turned her head away from him and pressed her face, with the
handkerchief still held to it, against the cushions of the divan. Her
body shook.
"Charmian!" he said. "Charmian!"
She looked up. All one side of her face was red. She dropped her
handkerchief on the floor.
"Do you understand now?" she said. "But, of course, you don't. Well,
then!"
She put both her hands palm downward on the divan, and, speaking slowly
with an emphasis that was cutting, and stretching her body till her
shoulders were slightly raised, she said:
"Just now, while Susan and you were in the garden, Armand Gillier asked
me if we would give up his libretto."
"Give up the libretto?"
"Sell it back to him for one hundred pounds. He also said he was very
poor. Do you put the two things together?"
"You think he fancies--"
"No. I am sure he knows he could resell it at an advance to Jacques
Sennier. Those two--Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier--went to
Constantine with the intention of finding out what you were doing."
"Absurd!"
"Is it? Just tell me! Wasn't it Mrs. Shiffney who began to talk of the
libretto?"
"Well--"
"Of course it was! And didn't she pretend to be deeply interested in
what you were doing?"
Claude flushed.
"And didn't she talk of how other artists had trusted her with secrets
nobody else knew? And didn't she--didn't she--"
But something in Claude's eyes stopped her as she was going to
say--"make love to you."
"And so you gave your libretto up to our enemy to read, and now they are
trying to bribe Gillier to ruin us. Why are we here? Why did I give up
everything, my whole life, my mother, my friends, our little house,
everything I cared for, everything that has made my life till now?
Simply for you and for your success. And then for the first woman who
comes along--"
Her cheeks were flaming. As she thought more about what had happened a
storm of jealousy swept through her heart.
"That's not true or fair--what you imply!" said Claude. "I never--Mrs.
Shiffney is absolutely nothing to me--nothing!"
"Do you understand now that she got the libretto in order to show it to
Madame Sennier?"
"Did Gillier ever say so?"
"Of course not! Even if he knows it, do you think it was necessary he
should--to a woman!"
The contempt in her voice seemed to cut into him. He began, against his
will, to feel that Charmian must be right in her supposition, to believe
that he had been tricked.
"We have no proof," he said.
Charmian raised her eyebrows and sank back on the divan. She was
struggling against an outburst of tears. Her lips moved.
"Proof! Proof!" she said at last.
Her lips moved violently. She got up, and tried hurriedly to go by
Claude into the gallery; but he put out a hand and caught her by the
arm.
"Charmian!"
She tried to get away. But he held her.
"I do understand. You have given up a lot for me. Perhaps I was a great
fool at Constantine. I begin to believe I was. But, after all, there's
no great harm done. The libretto is mine--ours, ours. And we're not
going to give it up. I'll try--I'll try to put my heart into the music,
to bring off a real success, to give you all you want, pay you back for
all you've given up for me and the work. Of course, I may fail--"
She stopped his mouth with her lips, wrenched herself from his grasp,
and hurried away.
A moment later he heard the heavy low door of her bedroom creak as she
pushed it to, then the grinding of the key in the lock.
He sat down on the divan she had just left. For a moment he sat still,
facing the gallery, and the carved wooden balustrade which protected its
further side. Then he turned and looked out through the low, grated
window, from which no doubt in days long since gone by veiled Arab women
had looked as they sat idly on the divan.
He saw a section of almost black-purple sky. He saw some stars. And,
leaning his cheek on his hand, he gazed through the little window for a
long, long time.
CHAPTER XXV
More than a year had passed away. April held sway over Algeria.
In the white Arab house on the hill Claude and Charmian still lived and
Claude still worked. To escape the great heat of the previous summer
they had gone to England for a time, but early October had found them
once more at Djenan-el-Maqui, and since then they had not stirred.
Their visit to London had been a strange experience for Charmian.
They had arrived in town at the beginning of July, and had stayed with
Mrs. Mansfield in Berkeley Square. Mrs. Mansfield had not paid her
proposed visit to Algiers. She had written that she was growing old and
lazy, and dreaded a sea voyage. But she had received them with a warmth
of affection which had earned their immediate forgiveness. There was
still a month of "season" to run, and Charmian went about and saw her
old friends. But Claude refused to go out, and returned at once to
orchestral studies with his "coach." He even remained in London during
the whole of August and September, while Charmian paid some visits, and
went to the sea with her mother. Thus they had been separated for a time
after their long sojourn together in the closest intimacy.
Charmian found that she missed Claude very much. One day she said to her
mother, with pretended lightness and smiling:
"Madre, I've got such a habit of Claude and Claude's work that I seem to
be in half when I'm not with him."
Mrs. Mansfield wondered whether her son-in-law felt in half when he was
by himself in London.
To Charmian, coming back, London and "the set" seemed changed. She had
sometimes suffered from ennui in Africa, even from loneliness in the
first months there. She had got up dreading the empty days, and had
often longed to have a party in the evening to look forward to. In
England she realized that not only had she got a habit of Claude, but
that she had got a habit, or almost a habit, of Africa and a quiet life
in the sunshine under blue skies. If the opera were finished, the need
for living in Mustapha removed, would she be glad not to return to
Djenan-el-Maqui? The mere thought of never seeing the little white house
with its cupolas and its flat roof again sent a sharp pang through her.
Pierre, with his arched eyebrows and upraised, upturned palm, "La Grande
Jeanne," Bibi, little Fatma, they had become almost a dear part of her
life.
But soon she fell into old ways of thought and of action, though she was
never, she believed, quite the same Charmian as before. She longed, as
of old, but even more strongly, to conquer the set, and this world of
pleasure-seekers and connoisseurs. But she looked upon them from the
outside, whereas before she had been inside. During her long absence she
had certainly "dropped out" a little. She realized the root indifference
of most people to those who are not perpetually before them, making a
claim to friendship. When she reappeared in London many whom she had
hitherto looked upon as friends greeted her with a casual, "Oh, are you
back after all? We thought you had quite forsaken us!" And it was
impossible for even Charmian to suppose that such a forsaking would have
been felt as a great affliction.
This recognition on her part of the small place she had held, even as
merely a charming girl, in this society, made Charmian think of
Djenan-el-Maqui with a stronger affection, but also made her long in a
new, and more ruthless way, to triumph in London, as clever wives of
great celebrities triumph. She saw Madame Sennier several times, as
usual surrounded and fêted. And Madame Sennier, though she nodded and
said a few words, scarcely seemed to remember who Charmian was. Only
once did Charmian see a peculiarly keen expression in the yellow eyes as
they looked at her. That was when some mention was made of a project of
Crayford's, his intention to build a big opera house in London. Madame
Sennier had shrugged her shoulders. But as she answered, "What would be
the use? The Metropolitan has nearly killed him. Covent Garden, with
its subscription, would simply finish him off. He has moved Heaven and
earth to get Jacques' new opera either for America or England, but of
course we laughed at him. He may pretend as much as he likes, but he's
got nothing up his sleeve"--the yellow eyes had fixed themselves upon
Charmian with an intent look that was almost like a look of inquiry.
To Sennier she had only spoken twice. The first time he had forgotten
who she was. The second time he had exclaimed, "Ah, the syrups! the
greengage! and the moonlight among the passion-flowers!" and had greeted
her with effusion.
But he had never come to call on her.
She still felt a sort of fondness for him; but she understood that he
was like a child who needed perpetual petting and did not care very much
from whom it came.
The impression she received, on coming back to this world after a long
absence, was of a shifting quicksand. She also now knew absolutely how
much of a nobody she was in it.
She had returned to Africa caring for it much less, but longing much
more to conquer it and to dominate it.
On that day in October, a gorgeous day which had surely lain long in the
heart of summer, when she saw again the climbing white town on the hill,
when later she stood again in the Arab court, hearing the French voices
of the servants, the guttural chatter of Bibi and Fatma, seeing the
three gold fish making their eternal pilgrimage through the water shed
by the fountain into the marble basin, she felt an intimate thrill at
her heart. There was something here that she loved as she loved nothing
in London.
From the night when Claude and Armand Gillier had returned to Mustapha
after the visit to Constantine "the opera" had been to Charmian almost
as a living thing--a thing for which she had fought, from which she had
beaten off enemies. She thought of it as their child, Claude's and hers.
They had no other child. She did not regret that.
Claude had long ago learnt to work in his home without difficulty. The
paralysis which had beset him in Kensington had not returned. He was
inclined to believe that by constant effort he had strengthened his
will. But he had also become thoroughly accustomed to married life. And
the fact that Charmian had become accustomed to it, too, had helped him
without his being conscious of it. The embarrassment of beginnings was
gone. And something else was gone; the sense of secret combat which in
the first months of their marriage had made life so difficult to both of
them.
The man had given in to the woman. When Claude left England with
Gillier's bought libretto he was a conquered man. And this fact had
brought about a cessation of struggle and had created a sensation of
calm even in the conquered.
Every day now, when Claude went up to his room on the roof to work at
the opera, he was doing exactly what his wife wished him to do. By
degrees he had come to believe that he was also doing what he wished to
do.
He was no longer reserved about his work with Charmian. The barriers
were broken down. The wife knew what the husband was doing. They "talked
things over."
Twice during their long sojourn at Mustapha they had been visited by
Alston Lake. And now, in the first days of April, came a note from Saint
Eugene. Gillier was once more in Algeria. He had never given them a sign
of life since he had tried to buy back his libretto from them. Now he
wrote formally, saying he was paying a short visit to his family, and
asking permission to call at Djenan-el-Maqui at any hour that would suit
them. His note was addressed to Claude, who at once showed it to
Charmian.
"Of course we must let him come," Claude said.
"Of course!"
She turned the note over, twisted it in her fingers.
"How I hate him!" she said. "I can't help it. His insult to you and--"
"Don't let us go into all that again. It is so long ago."
"This letter brings it all back."
She made a grimace of disgust.
"Why should you see him?" said Claude. "Let me see him alone. You can
easily have an engagement. You are going to those theatricals at the
Hotel Continental on Friday. Let me have him here then."
"Shall I?" She glanced at Claude. "No, I'd better be here too."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know--but I'd better! Tell him to come on Thursday."
"Lunch?"
"Oh, no! Let us just have him in the afternoon."
Gillier came at the time appointed, and was received by Charmian, who
made a creditable effort to behave as if she were at her ease and glad
to see him. She made him sit down with her in the cosiest corner of the
drawing-room, gave him coffee and a cigarette, and promised that Claude
would come in a moment.
In the morning of that day she had persuaded Claude to let her have a
quarter of an hour alone with Gillier. He had asked her why she wanted
to be alone with a man she disliked. She had replied, "After
Constantine, don't you think you had better leave the practical part of
it to me?" Claude had reddened slightly, but he had only said, "Very
well. But I don't quite see what you mean. We have no reason to suppose
Gillier has a special purpose in coming."
"No, but I should like that quarter of an hour."
So now she and Gillier sat together in the shady drawing-room, and she
asked him about Paris and his family, and he replied with a stiff
formality which had in it something military.
Directly Charmian had looked at Gillier she had realized that he had a
definite purpose in coming. She was on the defensive, but she tried not
to show it. Presently she said:
"Have you been working--writing?"
"Yes, madame."
"Another libretto?"
"Madame," Gillier said, with a sort of icy fierceness, "I cannot believe
that you are good enough to be genuinely interested in my unsuccessful
life."
After the unpleasant scene at Djenan-el-Maqui Gillier had returned to
Paris, shut himself in, and labored almost with fury on a libretto
destined for Jacques Sennier. He had taken immense pains and trouble,
and had not spared time. At last the work had been completed, typed,
and submitted to Madame Sennier. After a week of anxious waiting Gillier
had received the libretto with the following note:
"DEAR GILLIER,--This might do very well for some unknown
genius, say Monsieur Heath, but it is no good to a man like Jacques.
Nevertheless, we believe in you still, and renew our offer. Send us
a fine libretto, _such as I know you can write_, and we will pay you
five times as much as anyone else would, on account of a royalty. We
should not mind even if _someone else_ had already tried to set it.
All we care about is to get your _best work_.
HENRIETTE SENNIER."
Gillier had torn this note up with fury. Then he had thought things over
and paid Madame Sennier a visit. It was this visit which had prompted
his return to Djenan-el-Maqui.
"But I hope it won't be unsuccessful much longer," Charmian said, with
deliberate graciousness.
"I hope so too, madame."
Something in his voice, a new tone, almost startled her. But she
continued, without any change of manner:
"We must all hope for a great success."
"We, madame?"
"You and I and my husband."
Gillier bit his moustache and looked down. A heavy gloom seemed to have
overspread him. After a moment he looked up, leaned back, as if
determined to be at his ease, and said abruptly:
"Monsieur Sennier has completed a new opera. It is to be produced at the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York some time next winter."
"Is it?"
Charmian tried to keep all expression out of her voice as she spoke.
"Since I last saw you, madame," Gillier continued, "I have managed to
get a look at the libretto."
Without knowing that she did so Charmian leaned forward quickly and
moved her hands.
"It does not approach my work, the work your husband bought from me for
only one hundred pounds, in strength and drama."
"Your libretto is splendid. Mr. Lake and I have always thought so; and
of course my husband agrees with us. But you know that."
Gillier pulled his thick moustache, looked quickly round the room, then
at his hands, which he had abruptly brought down on his knees, and then
at Charmian.
"I have reason to believe that Jacques Sennier--or rather Madame
Sennier, for she read all the libretti sent in to him, and only showed
him those she thought worth considering--that if Madame Sennier had seen
the libretto I sold to your husband Sennier would have set
mine--mine--in preference to the one he has set."
"Indeed!" said Charmian, with studied indifference.
"Yes!" he exclaimed, almost with violence.
"All this is very interesting. But I don't see what it has to do with me
and my husband. You were good enough to offer to buy back your libretto
from us last year. We refused. Our refusal--"
"Your refusal, madame! I never spoke about the matter to your husband. I
never asked him."
"Have you come here now to ask him? Is that what you mean, monsieur?"
Gillier got up, throwing his cigarette end into the brass coffee tray.
He was evidently much excited. As he stood up in front of her Charmian
thought that he looked suddenly more common, coarser. He thrust his
hands into the pockets of his black trousers.
"I must understand the position," he began.
"It is perfectly clear. Forgive me, monsieur, but I must say I think it
rather bad taste on your part to return to a subject which has been
finally disposed of and which is very disagreeable to me."
"Madame, I am here to say to you that I cannot consider it as finally
disposed of till I have discussed it with Monsieur Heath. I came here
prepared to make a proposition."
"It is useless."
"Madame, I trust that your husband is not endeavoring to avoid me."
Charmian got up and sharply clapped her hands. The Arab boy, Bibi,
appeared.
"Bibi, ask monsieur to come," she said to him in French.
"_Bieng, madame_," replied Bibi, who turned and walked softly away.
During the two or three minutes which elapsed before Claude came in
Charmian and Gillier said nothing. Gillier, who, under the influence of
excitement, was losing his veneer of good manners, moved about the room
pretending to examine the few bibelots it contained. His face was
flushed. He still kept his hands in his pockets. Charmian sat still in
her corner, watching him. She was too angry to speak. And what was there
to be said now? Although she had a good deal of will she was clever
enough to realize when its exercise would be useless. She knew that she
could do nothing more with this man. Otherwise she would not have sent
for Claude.
"_V'là, Mousou!_"
Bibi had returned and gently pointed to his master, smiling.
"_Bon jour_, Gillier!" said Claude, as the Frenchman swung round
sharply.
"_Bon jour!_"
They shook hands. Claude looked from Gillier to his wife.
"You were smoking?" he said, glancing at the tray. "Won't you have
another cigarette?"
"_Merci!_"
"Anyhow, I will."
He picked up the cigarette box.
"We haven't seen you for a long while." He lit a cigarette. "Aren't you
going to sit down?"
After a pause Gillier sat down. His eyes were fixed on Claude.
"I am glad you have come," he said. "Madame does not quite understand--"
"I understand perfectly, Monsieur Gillier," Charmian interrupted. "Pray
don't endow me with a stupidity which I don't possess."
"I prefer at any rate to explain the reason of my visit to Monsieur
Heath, madame."
"Have you come with a special object then?" said Claude.
"Yes."
"By all means tell me what it is."
"_Mon Dieu!_" said Gillier. "What is the good of a cloud of words
between two men? I want to buy back the libretto I sold to you more than
a year ago."
Charmian gazed at her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive
face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought
it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied:
"Do you? Why?"
"Why? Because I don't think you and I are suited to work together. I
don't think we could ever make a satisfactory combination in art. This
has been my opinion ever since I was with you at Constantine."
"More than a year ago. And you only come here and say so now!"
Gillier was silent and fidgeted on the divan.
"Surely you must have some other reason?" said Claude in a very quiet,
almost unnaturally quiet voice.
"That is one reason, and an excellent one. Another is, however, that if
you will consent to sell me back my libretto I believe I could get it
taken up by a man, a composer, who is more in sympathy with me and my
artistic aims than you could ever be."
"I see. And what about all the months of work I have put in? What about
all the music I have composed? Are you here to ask me to throw it away,
or what?"
Gillier was silent.
"Surely your proposition isn't a serious one?" said Claude, still
speaking with complete self-control.
"But I say it is! I say"--Gillier raised his voice--"that it is serious.
I am a poor man, and I am sick of waiting for success. I sold my
libretto to you in a hurry, not knowing what I was doing. Now I have a
chance, a great chance, of being associated with someone who is already
famous, who would make the success of my libretto a certainty--"
"A chance, when your libretto is my property!" interrupted Claude.
"Oh, I know as well as you do that it's a hard thing to ask you to throw
away all these months of labor! I don't think I could have done it,
though in this world every man, every artist especially, must think of
himself, if it wasn't for one thing."
"And that is--?"
"Your heart isn't in the work!" said Gillier defiantly, but with a
curious air of conviction--the conviction of an acute man who had made a
discovery which could not be contested or gainsaid.
"That's not true, Monsieur Gillier!" said Charmian, with hot energy.
Claude said nothing, and Gillier continued, raising his voice:
"It is true. Your talent and mine are not fitted to be joined together,
and you are artist enough to know it as well as I do. I haven't heard
your music; but I can tell. I may be poor, I may be unknown--that
doesn't matter! I've got the instinct that doesn't lie, can't lie. If I
had known you as I do now, before I had sold my libretto, you never
should have had it, even if you had offered me five hundred pounds
instead of a hundred, and nobody else would have looked at it. With your
temperament, with your way of thinking, you'll never make a success of
it--never! I tell you that--I who am speaking to you!"
The veins in his temples swelled, and he frowned.
"Give me back my libretto and take back your money! Let me have my
chance of success. Madame--she is hard! She cares nothing! But--"
"Monsieur, I must ask you to leave my wife's name out," said Claude.
And for the first time since he had come into the room he spoke with
stern determination.
He had become very pale, and now looked strangely moved.
"I won't have her name brought in," he added. "This is my affair."
"Very well! Will you let me buy back my libretto?"
Charmian expected an instant stern refusal from her husband. But after
Gillier's question there was a prolonged pause. She wanted to break it,
to answer fiercely for Claude; but she did not dare to. For a moment
something in her husband's look and manner dominated her. For a moment
she was in subjection. She sat still staring at Claude, waiting for him
to speak. He sat looking down, and it seemed to her as if he were
wrestling as Jacob wrestled with the angel. His white forehead drew her
eyes. She was filled with fear; but when he looked up at her the fear
grew. She felt almost sick--sick with apprehension.
"Claude!" she said. "Oh, Claude!"
It seemed that his eyes had put a great question to her, and now her
voice had answered it.
Claude turned to Armand Gillier.
"Monsieur," he said, "you can't have your libretto back. It's mine, and
I'm going to keep it."
When Gillier was gone Charmian said, almost in a faltering voice, and
with none of her usual self-possession of manner:
"How--how could you bear that man's insults as you did?"
"His insults?"
"Yes."
Claude looked at her in silence. And again she was conscious of fear.
"Don't let us ever speak of this again," he answered at last.
He went away.
That day he was in his workroom till very late. He did not come to tea.
The evening fell; but he was not working on the opera. Charmian heard
him playing Bach.
* * * * *
At the end of April Alston Lake came once more to visit them.
Since those London days when they had first met him Lake had made great
progress toward the fulfilment of his ambition. His energy and will were
beginning to reap a good reward. He was making money, enough money to
live upon; but he had still to pay back his big debt to Jacob Crayford,
had still to achieve his great desire, an appearance in Grand Opera.
When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui he brought with him, as of old, an
infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm. With his iron will he combined a
light heart. He had none of the childishness that surprised, and
sometimes charmed, in Jacques Sennier, but much that was boyish still
pleasantly lingered with him. In him, too, there was something
courageous that inspired courage in others.
This time he announced he could stay for a month if they did not mind.
He wanted a thorough rest before the many concerts he was going to sing
at during the London season. Both Charmian and Claude were delighted.
When Claude heard of it he was silent for a moment. Then he began to
reckon.
"The thirtieth to-day, isn't it? By a month do you mean a month or four
weeks?"
"Well, four weeks, old chap!"
"That is less than a month."
"I wish it weren't. But I have to sing in London at the Bechstein Hall
early in June. So I'm running it pretty close as it is."
"May the twenty-eighth you go, then," said Claude.
"That's it. But why these higher mathematics?"
Claude only smiled and went out of the room.
"What is he up to, Mrs. Charmian?" asked Lake mystified.
"I don't know," she answered.
"Does he want to get rid of me? Is that why he was so keen to know
whether it was four weeks or a month?" said Lake, laughing.
"I am afraid that probably is it. But come up and see the flowers I've
put in your room."
"This is a little Paradise," said Lake, in his ringing baritone voice.
"Sometimes this winter in Paris, when I was all in, don't you know--"
"All in?"
"Blues."
"Oh, yes!"
"I'd think of Djenan-el-Maqui, and wish I was a composer instead of a
singer--for a fifth of a minute."
"Oh!" she said reproachfully. "Only a fifth!"
"I know. It wasn't long. But you see I'm born to sing, so I'm bound to
love it more than anything else. Making a noise--oh, it's rare!"
He opened his mouth and ran up a scale to the high A.
"I can get there pretty well now, don't you think?"
"Splendid! Your voice gets bigger and bigger!" she said, with real
enthusiasm. "But it's almost--"
He stopped her.
"I know what you're going to say; but I shall always be a baritone. If
you knew as much as I do about baritones turned into tenors, you'd say,
'Leave it alone, my boy!' and that's what I'm going to do. Now what
about these flowers? It is good to be here."
Claude did not join Alston Lake in making holiday. Indeed, Charmian
noticed that he was working much harder than usual, as if Lake's coming
had been an incentive to him.
"I don't apologize to you, Alston," he said.
"Odd if you did when I was the first to try and set you on to an opera.
Besides, you can't get ahead too fast now. There's--"
He stopped.
"Crayford'll be over this summer," he remarked, giving a casual tone to
his voice.
"Ah!" said Claude.
And the conversation dropped.
Only in the early morning, and for an hour, or an hour and a half after
lunch, did Claude intermit his labors. In the morning the three of them
rode, on good horses hired from the Vitoz stables. After lunch they sat
in the little court of the fountain, smoked and talked. Conversation
never flagged when Alston was there. His young energy bred a desire for
expression in those about him. And Charmian and Claude were now his most
intimate friends. He identified himself with them in a charming way, was
devoted to their fortunes, and assumed, without a trace of conceit,
their devotion to his. When Claude, about three o'clock, got up and went
away to his workroom Alston often went off for a stroll alone. Between
tea and dinner time, if Charmian had no engagement, she and Alston
walked together in the scented Bois de Boulogne, past "Tananarivo," or
drove down to the Jardin d'Essai, and spent an hour there near the
shimmering sea.
In these many intimate hours Charmian learnt to appreciate the chivalry
and delicacy peculiar to well-bred American men in their relations with
women. Although she and Alston were both young, and she was an
attractive woman, she felt as safe with him as if he were her brother.
His life in Paris had left him entirely unspoiled, had even left him in
possession of the characteristic and open-hearted naïveté which was one
of his chief attractions, though he was quite unaware of it. She was
very happy with Alston. But often she thought of Claude, far away on the
hill, shut in, resigning all this freedom, this delicious open-air life,
which she was enjoying with his friend.
"He's working almost too hard," she said one day when they were sitting
in the Jardin d'Essai, "and he will work at night now. He never used to
do that. Don't you think he's beginning to look rather white and worn
out?"
She spoke with some anxiety.
"Sometimes he does look a bit tired," Alston allowed. "But a man's bound
to when he puts his back into a thing. And there's not much doubt as to
whether old Claude's back is in the opera. I say, Mrs. Charmian, how far
has he got exactly?"
"Practically the whole of the music is composed, I believe. It's the
orchestration that takes such a lot of time."
"Well, and how far has that got? Claude's never told me plump out.
Composers never do. And I know better than to pump them. It's
fatal--that! They simply can't stand it."
"I know. I believe the opera might be ready by the end of this year."
"Not before then?"
They looked at each other, then Charmian said:
"Oh, Alston, if you only knew how difficult it is to me to wait--to wait
and not to show any impatience to him. Sometimes--well, now and then,
I've shut myself in and cried with impatience, cried angrily. I've
wanted to bite things. One day I actually did bite a pillow."
She laughed, but her cheeks were flushed.
"It's the perpetual keeping it in that is such a torment. I know how
wicked it would be to hurry him. And he does work so hard. And I've
heard of people taking ten years over an opera. Claude only began about
a year and five months ago. He's been marvellously quick, really. But,
oh, sometimes I feel as if this suppressed impatience were making me
ill, physically and mentally, as if it were a kind of poison stealing
all through me! Can you understand?"
"Can I? You bet! I only wish the thing could be ready before Crayford
goes back to the States."
"When does he go?"
"Some time in September, I believe. He goes on the Continent after July.
Of course, July he's in London, June too. Then he has his cure at
Divonne. If only---- When do you come to London?"
Charmian suddenly grasped his arm.
"Alston, I'll keep him here, give up London, anything to have the opera
finished by the end of August!"
"Well, but the heat!"
"I don't believe it's too hot upon the hill where we are, with all those
trees. Every afternoon I expect there's a breeze from the sea. I know we
could stand it. It's only April now. That would mean four solid months
of steady work. But then?"
"I'd bring Crayford over."
"Would he come?"
"I'd make him."
"But we might--"
"No, Mrs. Charmian. He ought to hear it in Mustapha. I know him. He's a
hard business man. But he's awfully susceptible too. And then he's great
on scenic effects. Now, he's never been in Africa. Think of the glamour
of it, especially in summer, when the real Africa emerges, by Gee, in
all its blue and fire! We'd plunge him in it, you and I. That Casbah
scene--you know, the third act! I'd take him there by moonlight on a
September night--full moon--show him the women on their terraces and in
their courts, the town dropping down to the silver below, while the
native music--by Gee! We'd dazzle him, we'd spread the magic carpet for
him, we'd carry him away till he couldn't say no, till he'd be as mad on
the thing as we are!"
"Oh, Alston, if we could!"
She had caught all his enthusiasm. It seemed to her that in North Africa
Mr. Crayford could not refuse the opera. From that moment she had made
up her mind. No London season! Whatever happened, she and Claude were
going to remain at Djenan-el-Maqui till the opera was finished, finished
to the last detail. That very evening she spoke about it to Claude.
"Claudie," she said. "Are you very keen on going to London this year?"
He looked at her as if almost startled.
"I? But, surely--do you mean that you don't want to go?"
She moved her head.
"Not one little bit."
"Well, but then where do you wish to go?"
"Where? Why should we go anywhere?"
"Stay here?"
"I've come to love this little house, the garden, even those absurd
goldfish that are always looking for nothing."
"Well, but the heat!"
His voice did not sound reluctant or protesting, only a little doubtful
and surprised.
"Lots of people stay. Algiers doesn't empty of human beings, only of
travellers, because it's summer. And we are up on a height."
"That's true. And I could work on quietly."
"Absolutely undisturbed."
"The only thing is I meant to see Jernington."
Jernington was the professor with whom Claude studied orchestration in
London.
"Get him over here."
"Jernington! Why, he never leaves London!"
"Get him to for a month. We'll pay all his expenses and everything, of
course."
"How you go ahead!" he said, laughing. "You must be a twin of Alston's,
I think."
"What has got to be done can be done."
"Well, but the expense; you know, Charmian, we live right up to our
income."
"Hang the expense! Oh, as Alston would say!"
He laughed.
"You really are a marvellous wife!"
"Am I? Am I?"
"I might sound old Jernington. He'll think I'm raving mad, but still--"
"I only hope," she said, smiling and eager, "that he won't be so raving
sane as to refuse."
"But what will Madre think, not seeing you--us, I mean?"
Charmian looked grave.
"Yes, I know. But Madre has never come to see us here."
"Oh, Charmian, there could never be a cloud between Madre and us!"
"No, no, never! Still, why has she never come?"
"She really hates the sea. You know she has never in her life done more
than cross the Channel."
"Do you think that is the reason why she has never come?"
"How can I know?"
"Claude, Madre is strange sometimes. Don't you think so?"
"Strange? She is absolutely herself. She does not take anyone else's
color, if that is what you mean. I love that in her."
"So do I. Still, I think she is strange."
At this moment Alston came in and the conversation dropped. But both
husband and wife thought many times of "Madre" that day, and not without
a certain uneasiness. Was the heart of the mother with them in their
enterprise?
Charmian put that question to herself. But Claude did not put it. He
thought of Mrs. Mansfield's intense and fiery eyes. They saw far, saw
deep. He loved them, the look in them. But he must try to forget them.
He must give himself to the enthusiasm of his wife and of Alston Lake.
He sent a long telegram to Jernington, saying how difficult it was for
him to leave Mustapha, and begging Jernington to come over during the
summer so that they might work together in quiet. All expenses were to
be paid. Next day he received a telegram from Jernington: "Very
difficult is it absolutely impossible for you to come to England?"
"I'll answer that," said Charmian.
She telegraphed, "Absolutely impossible--HEATH."
In the late evening a second telegram came from Jernington: "Very well
suppose I must come--JERNINGTON."
Charmian laughed as she read it over Claude's shoulder.
"The pathos of it," she said. "Poor old Jernington! He is
horror-stricken. Bury St. Edmunds has been his farthest beat till now
except for his year in Germany. Claudie, he loves the opera or he would
never have consented to come. I felt it was a test. The opera, the
child, has stood it triumphantly. I love old Jernington. And he is a
first-rate critic, isn't he?"
"Of orchestration, certainly."
"That's half the battle in an opera. I feel so happy. Let us have an
audition to-night!"
"All right," he said.
"And play us an act right through; the first act. Alston has only heard
it in bits."
"I don't really care for anyone to hear it yet," Claude said, with
obvious reluctance.
Yet he desired a verdict--of praise. He longed for encouragement. In old
days, when he had composed for himself, he had felt indifferent to that.
But now he was working on something which was planned, which was being
executed, with the intention to strike upon the imagination of a big
public. He was no longer indifferent. He was secretly anxious. He longed
to be told that what he was doing was good.
That evening he was genuinely warmed by the enthusiasm of his wife and
of Alston.
"And surely," he said to himself, "they would be inclined to be more
critical than others, to be hypercritical."
He forgot that in some natures desire creates conviction.
On the last day of Alston's visit Charmian and he understood why
Claude's mathematical powers had been brought to bear on the question of
its exact duration. Claude himself explained with rather a rueful face.
"I hoped--I thought if you were going to stay for the extra days I might
possibly have the finale of the opera finished. Even when you told me
your month meant four weeks I thought I would have a tremendous try to
complete it. Well, I have had a tremendous try. But I've failed. I must
have two more weeks, I believe, before I conquer the monster."
He was looking very pale, had dark rings under his eyes, and moved his
hands nervously while he was speaking.
"That was it!" exclaimed Alston.
"Yes, that was it."
Charmian and Alston exchanged a quick glance.
"When you've done the finale," Alston said, with the firmness of one who
spoke with permission, even perhaps by special request, "will the opera
be practically finished?"
"Finished? Good Heavens, no!"
"Well, but if it's the finale of the whole opera?" said Charmian.
"I've got bits here and there to do, and a lot to re-do."
Again Charmian and the American exchanged glances.
"I say, old chap," said Alston. "You read Balzac, don't you?"
"Of course. But what has that to do with the opera?"
"Did you ever read that story of his about a painter who was always
striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for
ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One
day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they
found a mere mess of paint representing nothing."
"Well?" said Claude, rather stiffly.
"You've got a splendid talent. I hope you're going to trust it."
Claude said nothing, and Alston, in his easy, almost boyish way, glanced
off to some other topic. But before he started for England he said to
Charmian:
"Do watch him a bit if you can, Mrs. Charmian, for over-elaboration.
Don't let him work it to death, I mean, till all the spontaneity is
gone. I believe that's a danger with him. Somehow I think he lacks
complete confidence in himself."
"You see it's the first time he has ever tried to do an opera."
"I know. It's natural enough. But do watch out for over-elaboration."
"I'll try to. But I have to be very careful with Claude."
"How d'you mean exactly?"
"He can be very reserved."
"Yes, but you know how to take him. And--well--we can't let the opera be
anything but a big success, can we?"
If Claude had heard that "we!"
"I say, shall we walk around the garden?" Alston added, after a pause.
"It isn't quite time to go, and I want to talk over things before Claude
comes down to see the last of me."
"Yes, yes."
They went out, and descended the steps from the terrace.
"I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Charmian, that I'm going to bring Crayford
over whatever happens, whether the opera's done or not. There's heaps
ready for him to judge by. And you must read him the libretto."
"I?" exclaimed Charmian, startled.
"Yes, you. Study it up! Recite it to yourself. Learn to give it all and
more than its value. That libretto is going to catch hold of Crayford
right away, if you read it, and read it well."
When she had recovered from her first shock of surprise Charmian felt
radiantly happy. She had something to do. Alston, with his shrewd
outlook, was bringing her a step farther into this enterprise. He was
right. She remembered Crayford. A woman should read him the libretto,
and in a _décor_--swiftly her imagination began to work. The _décor_
should be perfection; and her gown!
"How clever of you to think of that, Alston!" she exclaimed. "I'll study
as if I were going to be an actress."
"That's the proposition! By Jove, you and I understand each other over
this. I know Crayford by heart. We've got to what the French call
'_éblouir_' him when we get him here. We must play upon him with the
scenery proposition; what he can do in the way of wonderful new stage
effects. When we've got him thoroughly worked up over the libretto and
the scenery prop., we'll begin to let him hear the music, but not a
moment before. We can't be too careful, Mrs. Charmian. Crayford's a man
who doesn't start going in a hurry on newly laid rails. He wants to test
every sleeper pretty nearly. But once get him going, and the evening
express from New York City to Chicago isn't in it with him. Now you and
I have got to get him started before ever he comes to old Claude. In
fact--"
He paused, put one finger to his firm round chin.
"But we can decide that a bit later on."
"That? What, Alston?"
"I was going to say it might be as well to get Claude out of the way for
a day or two while we start on old Crayford here. I suppose it could be
managed somehow?"
"Alston--" Charmian stopped on the path between the geraniums. "Anything
can be managed that will help to persuade Mr. Crayford to accept
Claude's opera."
"Right you are. That's talking! I'll think it all over and let you
know."
"Oh," she exclaimed. "How I wish the end of August was here! You'll be
in London. All your time will be filled up. You'll be singing, being
applauded, _getting on_. And I have to sit here, and wait--wait."
"You'll be studying the libretto."
"So I shall!"
She sent him a grateful look.
"What a good friend you are to us, Alston!" she said, and there was
heart at that moment in her voice.
"And haven't you been good friends to me? What about the studio? What
about the Prophet's Chamber? Why, you've given me a sort of a home and
family, you and old Claude. I can tell you I've often felt lonesome in
Europe, I've often felt all in, right away from everybody, and my Dad
trying to starve me out, and all my people dead against what I was
doing. Since I've known you, well, I've felt quite bully in comparison
with what it used to be. Claude's success and yours, it's just going to
be my success too. And that's all there is to it."
He wrung her hand and shouted for Claude.
It was nearly time for him to go.
CHAPTER XXVI
Jernington, after sending to Claude several anxious and indeed almost
deplorable letters, pleading to be let off his bargain by telegram,
arrived in Algiers in the middle of the following July, with a great
deal of fuss and very little luggage.
The Heaths welcomed him warmly.
Although he was a native of Suffolk, and had only spent a year in
Germany, he succeeded in looking almost exactly like a German student.
Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with
Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his
head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were
pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just
above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh.
Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently
boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave
a Bohemian touch to his pleasant and innocent appearance. He was dressed
for cool weather in England, and wore boots with square toes and elastic
sides.
In his special line he was a man of extraordinary talent.
He had intended to be a composer, but had little faculty for original
work. His knowledge of composition, nevertheless, was enormous, and he
was the best orchestral "coach" in England.
His heart was in his work. His devotion to a clever pupil knew no
limits. And he considered Claude the cleverest pupil he had ever taught.
Charmian, therefore, accepted him with enthusiasm--boots, tie, little
roll of white flesh, the whole of him.
He settled down with them in Mustapha, once he had been conveyed into
the house, as comfortably as a cat in front of whom, with every tender
precaution, has been placed a bowl of rich milk. In a couple of days it
seemed as if he had always been there.
Charmian did not see very much of him. The two men toiled with diligence
despite the great heat which lay over the land. They began early in the
morning before the sun was high, rested and slept in the middle of the
day, resumed work about five, and, with an interval for dinner, went on
till late in the night.
The English Colony had long since broken up. Only the British
Vice-Consul and his wife remained, and they lived a good way out in the
country. Since May few people had come to disturb the peace of
Djenan-el-Maqui. Charmian dwelt in a strange and sun-smitten isolation.
She was very much alone. Only now and then some French acquaintance
would call to see her and sit with her for a little while at evening in
the garden, or in the courtyard of the fountain.
The beauty, the fierce romance of this land, sometimes excited her
spirit. Sometimes, with fiery hands, it lulled her into a condition
almost of apathy. She listened to the fountain, she looked at the sea
which was always blue, and she felt almost as if some part of her nature
had fallen away from her, leaving her vague and fragmentary, a Charmian
lacking some virtue, or vice, that had formerly been hers and had made
her salient. But this apathy did not last long. The sound of
Jernington's strangely German voice talking loudly above would disturb
it, perhaps, or the noise of chords or passages powerfully struck upon
the piano. And immediately the child was with her again, she was busy
thinking, planning, hoping, longing, concentrated on the future of the
child.
She had studied the libretto minutely, had practised reading it aloud.
It was of course written in French, and she found a clever woman,
retired from a theatrical career in Paris, Madame Thénant, who gave her
lessons in elocution, and who finally said that she read the libretto
"_assez bien_." This from Madame Thénant, who had played Dowagers at the
Comédie Francaise, was a high compliment. Charmian felt that she was
ready to make an effect on Jacob Crayford. She was in active
correspondence with Alston Lake, who was still in London, and who had
had greater success than before. From him she knew that Crayford was in
town, and would take his usual "cure" in August at Divonne-les-Bains.
Lake had "begun upon him" warily, but had not yet even hinted at the
visit to Africa. After his "cure" Crayford proposed making a motor tour.
He thought nothing of running all over Europe in his car. Lake was going
presently to speak of the perfect surfaces of the Algerian roads, "the
best way perhaps of getting him to go to Algeria." He still wanted
operas "badly," and had asked after the Heaths directly he arrived in
London. Lake had replied that Claude was finishing off an opera. Was he?
Where? Alston had evaded the question, giving the impression that Claude
wished to remain hidden away. Thereupon Crayford had asked after
Charmian, and had been informed that of course she was with her husband.
Turtle doves, eh? Crayford had dropped the subject, but had eventually
returned to it again in a casual way. Had Lake heard the opera? Some of
it. Did it seem any good? Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had
shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected,
had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he
saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the
giant hand of one of the great Trusts. Lake's air of mystery had
evidently made him suspect that Claude had some reason for keeping away
and making a sort of secret of what he was doing. Finally he had
inquired point blank whether any one was "after young Heath's opera."
Lake could not say anything as to that. "Why don't he write in Europe
anyway, where folk could get at him if they wanted to?" had been the
next question. Lake's answer had rather indicated that the composer was
very glad to have a good stretch of ocean between himself and any "folk"
who might want to get at him.
This was the point at which the Lake correspondence with Charmian stood
in the first week of August. His last letter lay on her knee one
afternoon, as she sat in a hidden nook at the bottom of the garden, with
delicate bamboos rustling in a warm south wind about her.
Claude knew nothing of this exchange of letters, of all the planning and
plotting. It was all for him. Some day, when the result was success, he
should be told everything, unless by that time it was too late, and the
steps to success were all forgotten. Charmian did nothing to disturb
him. She wished him to be obsessed by the work, to do it now merely for
its own sake. The result of his labors would probably be better if that
were so. If Crayford did come--and he must come! Charmian was willing it
every day--his coming would be a surprise to Claude, and would seem to
be a surprise to Charmian. She would get rid of Claude for a few days
when Lake forewarned her that their arrival was imminent; would persuade
him to take a little holiday, to go, perhaps, up into the cork woods to
Hammam R'rirha. He was very pale, had dark circles beneath his eyes. The
incessant work was beginning to tell upon him severely. Charmian saw
that. But how could she beg him to rest now, when Jernington had come
out, when it was so vital to their interests that the opera should be
finished as soon as possible! Besides, she was certain that even if she
spoke Claude would not listen to her. Jernington, so he said, always
gave him an impetus, always excited him. It was a keen pleasure to show
a man of such deep knowledge what he had been doing, a keener pleasure
still when he approved, when he said, in his German voice, "That goes!"
And they had been trying over passages with instrumentalists who had
been "unearthed," as Jernington expressed it, in Algiers. They had got
hold of a horn player, had found another man who played the clarinet,
the violin, and a third instrument.
In fact, they were living for, and in, the opera. And Charmian, devoured
by her secret ambition, had no heart to play a careful wife's part. She
had the will to urge her man on. She had no will to hold him back.
Afterward he could rest, he should rest--on the bed of his laurels.
She smiled now when she thought of that.
Presently she felt that some one was approaching her. She looked up and
saw Jernington coming down the path, wiping his pale forehead with a
silk handkerchief in which various colors seemed fortuitously combined.
"Is the work over?" she cried out to him.
He threw up one square-nailed white hand.
"No. But for once he has got a passage all wrong. I have left him to
correct it. He kicked me out, in fact!"
Jernington threw back his head and laughed gutturally. His laugh always
contradicted his eyes. They were romantic, but his laugh was prosaic.
He sat down by Charmian and put his hands on his knees. One still
grasped the handkerchief.
"Dear Mr. Jernington, tell me!" she said. "You know so much. Claude says
your knowledge is extraordinary. Isn't the opera fine?"
Now Jernington was a specialist, and he was one of those men who cannot
detach their minds from the subject in which they specialize in order to
take a broad view. His vision was extraordinarily acute, but it was
strictly limited. When Charmian spoke of the opera he believed he was
thinking of the opera as a whole, whereas he was in reality only
thinking about the orchestration of it.
"It is superb!" he replied enthusiastically. "Never before have I had a
pupil with such talent as your husband."
With a rapid movement he put one hand to the back of his neck and softly
rubbed his little roll of white flesh.
"He has an instinct for orchestration such as I have found in no one
else. Now, for example--"
He flung himself into depths of orchestral knowledge, dragging Charmian
with him. She was happily engulfed. When they emerged in about half an
hour's time she again threw out a lure for general praise.
"Then you really admire the opera as a whole? You think it undoubtedly
fine, don't you?"
Jernington wiped his perspiring face, his forehead, and, finally, his
whole head and neck, manipulating the huge handkerchief in a masterly
manner almost worthy of an expensive conjurer.
"It is superb. When it is given, when the world knows that the great
Heath studied with me--well, I shall have to take a studio as large as
the Albert Hall, there will be such a rush of pupils. Do you know that
his employment of the oboe in combination with the flute, the strings
being divided--"
And once more he plunged down into the depths of orchestral knowledge
taking Charmian with him. He quoted Prout, he quoted Vincent d'Indy; he
minutely compared passages in Elgar's second symphony with passages in
Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony; he dissected the delicate orchestral
effects in Debussy's _Nuages_ and _Fête Nocturne_, compared the modern
French methods in orchestration with Richard Strauss's gigantic, and
sometimes monstrous combinations. But again and again he returned to his
pupil, Claude. As he talked his enthusiasm mounted. The little roll of
flesh trembled as he emphatically moved his head. His voice grew
harsher, more German. He untied and reknotted his flowing cravat, pulled
up his boots with elastic sides, thrust his cuffs, which were not
attached to his shirt, violently out of sight up his plump arms.
Charmian could not doubt his admiration for the opera. It was expressed
in a manner peculiar to Jernington that became almost epileptic, but it
was undoubtedly sincere.
When he left her and went back to Claude's workroom she was glowing with
pride and happiness.
"That funny old thing knows!" she thought. "He knows!"
Jernington was usually called an old thing, although he was not yet
forty.
His departure was due about the twentieth of August, but when that day
drew near Claude begged him to stay on till the end of the month.
Charmian was secretly dismayed. She had news from Lake that his campaign
on Claude's behalf had every prospect of success. Crayford was now at
Divonne-les-Bains, but had invited Lake to join him in a motor tour as
soon as his "cure"--by no means a severe one--was over.
"That tour, Mrs. Charmian, as I'm a living man with good prospects, will
end on the quay at Marseilles, and start again on the quay at Algiers.
Crayford has tried to bring off a fresh deal with Sennier, but been
beaten off by the pierrot in petticoats, as he calls the great
Henriette. She asked for the earth, and all the planets and
constellations besides. Now they are at daggers drawn. That's bully for
us. Take out your bottom dollar, and bet it that I bring him over before
September is ten days old."
September--yes. But Lake was impulsive. He might hurry things, might
arrive with the impresario sooner. Jernington must not be at
Djenan-el-Maqui when he arrived. If Claude were found studying with a
sort of professor Crayford would certainly get a wrong impression. It
might just make the difference between the success of the great plan and
its failure. Claude must present himself, or be presented by Lake as a
master, not as a pupil.
She must get rid of old Jernington as soon as possible.
But it now became alarmingly manifest that old Jernington was in no
hurry to go. He was one of those persons who arrive with great
difficulty, but who find an even greater difficulty in bringing
themselves to the point of departure. Never having been out of Europe
before, it seemed that he was not unwilling to end his days in a
tropical exile. He "felt" the heat terribly, but professed to like it,
was charmed with the villa and the comfort of the life, and "really had
no need to hurry away" now that he had definitely relinquished his
annual holiday at Bury St. Edmunds.
As Claude wished him to stay on, and had no suspicion that any plan was
in the wind, Charmian found herself in a difficult position as the days
went by and the end of August drew near. Her imagination revolved about
all sorts of preposterous means for getting rid of the poor fellow, whom
she honestly liked, and to whom she was grateful for his enthusiastic
labors. She thought of making a hole in his mosquito net, to permit the
entry of those marauders whom he dreaded; of casually mentioning that
there had been cases suspiciously resembling Asiatic cholera in the
Casbah of Algiers; of pretending to fall ill and saying that Claude must
take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a
telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in
his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought
of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of
circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died
almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in
number as they were robust in constitution.
She dismissed the idea of the telegram. She even said to herself that of
course she had never entertained it. But what was she to do?
She tried to be a little cold to Jernington, thinking it might be
possible to convey to him subtly the idea that perhaps his visit had
lasted long enough, that his hostess had other plans in which his
presence was not included.
But Jernington was conscious of no subtleties except those connected
with the employment of musical instruments. And Charmian found it almost
impossible to be glacial to such a simple and warm-hearted creature. His
very boots seemed to claim her cordiality with their unabashed elastic
sides. The way in which he pushed his cuffs out of sight appealed to the
goodness of her heart, although it displeased her æsthetic sense. She
had to recognize the fact that old Jernington was one of those tiresome
people you cannot be unkind to.
Nevertheless she must get him out of the house and out of Africa.
If he stuck to the plan of leaving them at the end of August there would
probably be no need of diplomacy, or of forcible ejection; but it had
become obvious to Charmian that the last thing old Jernington was
capable of doing was just that sticking to a plan.
"Do you mean to sail on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ or the _Ville d'Alger_?"
she asked him.
"I wonder," he replied artlessly. "In my idea Berlioz was not really the
founder of modern orchestration as some have asserted. Your husband and
I--"
She could not stop him. She began to feel almost as if she hated the
delicious orchestral family. Jernington had a special passion for the
oboe. Charmian found herself absurdly feeling against that rustic and
Arcadian charmer an enmity such as she had scarcely ever experienced
against a human being. One night she spoke unkindly, almost with a
warmth of malignity, about the oboe. Jernington sprang amorously to its
defense. She tried to quarrel with him, but was disarmed by his fidelity
to the object of his affections. She was too much a woman to rail
against fidelity.
The 30th of August arrived. In the afternoon of that day she received
the following telegram from Alston Lake:
"Crayford and I start motor trip to-morrow he thinks Germany have no
fear all right Marseilles or I Dutchman.--LAKE."
As she read this telegram Charmian knew that the two men would come to
Algiers. She believed in Alston Lake. He had an extraordinary faculty
for carrying things through; and Crayford was fond of him. Crayford had
been kind, generous to the boy, and loved him as a man may love his own
good action. Lake, as he had said in private to Charmian, could "do a
lot with dear old Crayford."
He would certainly bring Crayford to Mustapha. Old Jernington must go.
The 31st of August dawned and began to fade.
Charmian felt desperate. She resolved to tackle Claude on the matter.
Old Jernington would never understand unless she said to him, "Go! For
Heaven's sake, go!" And even then he would probably think that she was
saying the reverse of what she meant, in an effort after that type of
playful humor which, for all she knew, perhaps still prevailed in his
native Suffolk. She had bent Claude to her purposes before. She must
bend him to her purpose now.
"Claudie," she said, "you know what an old dear I think Jernington,
don't you?"
Claude looked up at her with rather searching eyes. She had come into
his workroom at sunset. All day she had been considering what would be
the best thing to do. Old Jernington was strolling in the garden smoking
a very German pipe after having been "at it" for many hours.
"Jernington?"
"Yes, old Jernington."
"Of course he's an excellent fellow. What about him?"
She sat down delicately. She was looking very calm, and her movement was
very quiet.
"Well, I'm beginning almost to hate him!" she remarked quietly.
"What do you mean, Charmian?"
"If I tell you are you going to get angry?"
"Why should I get angry?"
"You are looking very fierce."
He altered his expression.
"It's the work," he muttered. "When one grinds as I do one does feel
fierce."
"That's why I'm beginning to--well, love Mr. Jernington a little less
than I used to. He's almost killing you."
"Jernington!"
"Yes. It's got to stop."
Her voice and manner had quite changed. She spoke now with earnest and
very serious decision.
"What?"
"The work, Claude. I've seen for some time that unless you take a short
holiday you are going to break down."
"Well, but you have always encouraged me to work!"
She noticed a faint suspicion in his expression and voice.
"I know. I've been too eager, too keen on the opera. I haven't realized
what a strain you are going through. But--it's just like a woman, I'm
afraid!--now I see another urging you on, I see plainly. It may be
jealousy--"
"You jealous of old Jernington!"
"I believe I am a tiny bit. But, apart really from that, you are looking
dreadful these last few days. When you asked Jernington to prolong his
visit I was horrified. You see, he's come to it all fresh. And then he's
not creating. That's the tiring work. It's all very well helping and
criticising."
"That's very true," Claude said.
He sighed heavily. She had told him that he was very tired, and he felt
that he was very tired.
"It is a great strain," he added.
"It has got to stop, Claude."
There was a little silence. Then she said:
"These extra months have made a great difference, haven't they?"
"Enormous."
"You've got on very far?"
"Farther than I had thought would be possible."
Her heart bounded. But she only said:
"There's a boat to Marseilles the day after to-morrow. Old Jernington is
going by it."
"Oh, but Charmian, we can't pack the dear old fellow--"
"The dear old fellow is going by that boat, Claudie."
"But what a tyrant you are!"
"I've been selfish. My keenness about your work has blinded me.
Jernington has made me see. We've been two slave-drivers. It can't go
on. If he could stay and be different--but he can't. He's a marvel of
learning, but he has only one subject--orchestration. You've got to
forget that for a little. So Jernington must go. Dear old boy! When I
see your pale cheeks and your burning eyes I--I--"
Tears came into her eyes. From beneath the trickster the woman arose.
Her own words touched her suddenly, made her understand how Claude had
sacrificed himself to his work, and so to her ambition. She got up and
turned away.
"Old Jernington shall go by the _Maréchal Bugeaud_," she said, in a
voice that slightly shook.
And by the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ old Jernington did go.
So ingeniously did Charmian manage things that he believed he went of
his own accord, indeed that it had been his "idea" to go. She told
Claude to leave it to her and not to say one word. Then she went to
Jernington, and began to talk of his extraordinary influence over her
husband. He soon pulled at his boots, thrust his cuffs up his arms, and
showed other unmistakable symptoms of gratification.
"You can do anything with him," she said presently. "I wish I could."
Jernington protested with guttural exclamations.
"He's killing himself," she resumed. "And I have to sit by and see it,
and say nothing."
"Killing himself!"
Jernington, who believed in women, was shocked.
"With overwork. He's on the verge of a complete breakdown. And it's you,
Mr. Jernington, it's all you!"
Jernington was more than shocked. His gratification had vanished. A
piteous, almost a guilty expression, came into his large fair face.
"Ach!" he exclaimed. "What have I done?"
"Oh, it's not your fault. But Claude almost worships you. He thinks
there is no one like you. He's afraid to lose a moment of time while you
are with him. Your learning, your enthusiasm excite him till he's beside
himself. He can't rest with such a worker as you in the house, and no
wonder. You are an inspiration to him. Who could rest with such an
influence near? What are we to do? Unless he has a complete holiday he
is going to break completely down. Do watch him to-day! Notice! See for
yourself!"
Jernington, much impressed--for Charmian's despair had been very
definite indeed, "oleographic in type," as she acknowledged to
herself--did notice, did see for himself, and inquired innocently of
Charmian what was to be done.
"I leave that to you," she answered, fixing her eyes almost hypnotically
upon him.
Secretly she was willing him to go. She was saying in her mind: "Go! Go!
Go!" was striving to "suggestion" him.
"Perhaps--" he paused, and pulled his cuffs down over his large, pale
hands.
"Yes?"
"Perhaps I had better take him away for a little holiday."
She could have slapped him. But she only said eagerly:
"To England, you mean! Why not? There's a boat going the day after
to-morrow take your passage on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_. Don't say a word
to Claude. But and leave the rest to me. I know how to manage Claude.
And if I get a little help from you!"
Old Jernington took his passage on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ and left the
rest to Charmian, with this result. Late the next night, when they were
all going to bed, she whispered to him, "I've put a note in your room.
Don't say a word to him!" She touched her lips. Much intrigued by all
this feminine diplomacy Jernington went to his room, and found the
following note under a candlestick. (Charmian had a sense of the
dramatic.)
"DEAR MR. JERNINGTON,--Claude _won't_ go. It's no use for
me to say anything. He is in a highly nervous state brought on by
this overwork. I see the only thing is to let him have his own way
in everything. Don't even mention that we had thought of this
holiday in England. The least thing excites him. And as he _won't_
go, what is the use of speaking of it? If I can get him to join you
later well and good. For the moment we can only give in and be
discreet. You have been such a dear to us both. The house will
seem quite different without you. _Not a word to Claude. Burn
this!_
"C. H."
And old Jernington burnt it in the flame of the candle, and went away
alone on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ the next morning, with apologies to
Claude.
The house did seem to Charmian quite different without him.
CHAPTER XXVII
Two days later, on the 4th of September, Charmian had got rid of Claude
as well as of old Jernington, and, in a condition of expectation that
was tinged agreeably with triumph, was awaiting the arrival of important
visitors. She had received a telegram from Lake:
"Have got him into the Chateaux country going on to Orange hope on hope
ever--ALSTON."
And she knew that the fateful motor would inevitably find its way to the
quay at Marseilles.
She had had no difficulty in persuading Claude to go. When Jernington
had departed Claude felt as if a strong prop had suddenly been knocked
from under him, as if he might collapse. He could not work. Yet he felt
as if in the little house which had seen his work he could not rest.
"Go away," Charmian said to him. "Take a couple of weeks' complete
holiday."
"Where shall we go?"
"But I am not going."
He looked surprised. But she noticed that he did not look displeased.
Nevertheless, thinking of the future and remembering Alston Lake's
advice, she continued:
"You need a complete change of people as well as of place. Is there
anyone left in Algiers?"
"If you don't come," he interrupted her quickly, "I'd much rather go
quite alone. It will rest me much more."
She saw by the look in his eyes that this sudden prospect of loneliness
appealed to him strongly. He moved his shoulders, stretched out his
arms.
"Yes, it will do me good. You are right, Charmian. It is sweet of you to
think for me as you do."
And he bent down and kissed her.
Then he hurried to his room, packed a very small trunk, and took the
first train, as she had suggested, to Hammam R'rirha.
"If you move from there mind you let me know your address," she said, as
he was starting.
"Of course."
"I want always to know just where you are."
"Of course I shall let you know. But I think I shall stay quietly at
Hammam R'rirha."
Charmian had been alone for five days when another telegram came:
"Starting to-morrow for Algiers by the _Timgad_
Hurrah--ALSTON."
She read that telegram again and again. She even read it aloud. Then she
hurried to her room to get her copy of the libretto. Two days and they
would be here! Her heart danced, sang. Everything was going well, more
than well. The omens were good. She saw in them a tendency. Success was
in the air. She did not doubt, she would not doubt, that Crayford's
coming meant his eventual acceptance of the opera. The combination of
Alston and herself was a strong one. They knew their own minds; they
were both enthusiasts; they both had strong wills. Crayford was devoted
to his protégé, and he admired her. She had seen admiration in his eyes
the first time they had looked at her. Madame Sennier had surely never
worked for her husband more strenuously and more effectively than she,
Charmian, had worked for Claude; and she would work more strenuously,
more effectively, during the next few days. The libretto! She snatched
it up and sat down once more to study it. But she could not sit still,
and she took it down with her into the garden. There she paced up and
down, reading it aloud, reciting the strongest passages in it without
looking at the words. She nearly knew the whole of it by heart.
When the day came on which the _Timgad_ was due she was in a fever of
excitement. She went about the little house re-arranging the furniture,
putting flowers in all the vases. Of course Mr. Crayford and Alston
would stay at a hotel. But no doubt they would spend a good deal of time
at the villa. She would insist on their dining with her that night.
"Jeanne! Jeanne!"
She hurried toward the kitchen. It occurred to her that she was not
supposed to know that the two men were coming. Oh, but of course, when
he found them there, Claude would understand that naturally Alston had
telegraphed from Marseilles. So she took "La Grande Jeanne" into her
confidence without a scruple. They must have a perfect little dinner, a
dinner for three such as had never yet been prepared in Mustapha!
She and Jeanne were together for more than an hour. Afterward she went
out to watch for the steamer from a point of vantage on the Boulevard
Bleu. Just after one o'clock she saw it gliding toward the harbor over
the glassy sea. Then she went slowly home in the glaring heat, rested,
put on a white gown, very simple but quite charming, and a large white
hat, and went out into the Arab court with a book to await their
arrival.
It was half-past four when a sound struck on her ears, a loud and
trembling chord, a buzz, the rattle of a "cut-out." The blessed noises
drew near. They were certainly in the little by-road which led to the
house. They ceased. She did not move, but sat where she was with a
fast-beating heart.
"Well, this is a cute little snuggery and no mistake!"
It was Crayford's voice in the court of the bougainvillea.
She bent her head and pored over her book. In a moment Alston Lake's
voice said, in French:
"In the garden! No, don't call her, Bibi, we will find her!"
"Look well on the stage that boy!" said Crayford's voice. "No mistake at
all about its being picturesque over here."
Then the two men came in sight in the sunshine. Instantly Alston said,
as he took off his Panama hat:
"You got my wire from Marseilles, Mrs. Charmian?"
"Oh, yes, I was expecting you! But I didn't know when. Mr. Crayford, how
kind of you to come over here in September! No one ever does."
She had got up rather languidly and was holding out her hand.
"Guess it's the proper time to come," said Crayford, squeezing her hand
with his dried-up palm. "See a bit of the real thing! I don't believe
in tourist seasons at all. Tourists always choose the wrong time, seems
to me."
By the look in his eyes as he glanced around him Charmian saw that he
was under the spell of Djenan-el-Maqui.
"You must have tea, iced drinks, whatever you like," she said. "I'm all
alone--as you see."
"What's that?" said Crayford.
"My husband is away."
Crayford's lips pursed themselves. For a moment he looked like a man who
finds he has been "had." In that moment Charmian knew that his real
reason in "running over" to North Africa had certainly been the opera.
She did not suppose he had acknowledged this to Lake, or ever would
acknowledge it to anyone. But she was quite certain of it.
"Gone to England?" asked Crayford, carelessly.
"Oh, no. He's been working too hard, and run away by himself for a
little holiday to a place near here, Hammam R'rirha. He'll be sorry to
miss you. I know how busy you always are, so I suppose you'll only stay
a day or two."
Crayford's keen eyes suddenly fastened upon her.
"Yes, I haven't too much time," he remarked drily.
They all sat down, and again Crayford looked around, stretching out his
short and muscular legs.
"Cute, and no mistake!" he observed, with a sigh, as he pulled at the
tiny beard. "Think of living here now! Pity I'm not a composer, eh,
Alston?"
He ended with a laugh.
"And what's your husband been up to, Mrs. Heath?" he continued, settling
himself more comfortably in his big chair, and pushing his white Homburg
hat backward to leave his brown forehead bare to a tiny breeze which
spoke softly, very gently, of the sea. "You've been over here for a big
bunch of Sundays, Alston tells me, week-days too."
"Oh--" She seemed to be hesitating.
Alston's boyish eyes twinkled with appreciation.
"Well, we came here--we wanted to be quiet."
"You've got out of sight of Broadway, that's certain."
Tea and iced drinks were brought out. They talked of casual matters.
The softness of late afternoon, warm, scented, exotic, dreamed in the
radiant air. And Crayford said:
"It's cute! It's cute!"
He had removed his hat now and almost lay back in his chair. Presently
he said:
"Seems to me years since I've rested like this, Alston!"
"I believe it is many years," said Lake, with a little satisfied laugh.
"I've never seen you do it before."
"'Cepting the cure. And that don't amount to anything."
"Stay and dine, won't you?" said Charmian. "If you're not bored."
"Bored!" said Crayford.
"We'll dine just as we are. I'll go in and see the cook about it."
"Very good of you I'm sure," said Crayford. "But I don't want to put you
out."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Excelsior," said Lake.
"Right down in the town. You must stay. It is cooler here."
She got up and went slowly into the house.
"Stunning figure she's got and no mistake!" observed Crayford, following
her with his eyes. "But I say, Alston, what about this fellow Heath? Now
I'm over here I ought to have a look at what he's up to. She seemed to
want to avoid the subject, I thought. D'you think he's writing on
commission? Or perhaps someone's seen the music. The Metropolitan
crowd--"
They fell into a long discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston
Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some
secret in connection with Claude Heath's opera. This set the impresario
bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole.
Charmian's little dinner that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a
seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his
armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he
was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with.
That night it came rather near to the surface of him. As he stepped out
into the court to take coffee, with an excellent Havana in his mouth,
as he saw the deep and limpid sky glittering with strong, almost fierce
stars, and farther fainter stars, he heaved a long sigh.
"Bully!" he breathed. "Bully, and no mistake!"
Exactly how it all came about Charmian did not remember afterward;
Alston, she thought, must have prepared the way with masterly ingenuity.
Or perhaps she--no, she was not conscious of having brought it about
deliberately. The fact was this. At ten o'clock that night, sitting with
a light behind her, Charmian began to read the libretto of the opera to
the two men who were smoking near the fountain.
It had seemed inevitable. The hour was propitious. They were all "worked
up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had
done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive
mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The
opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It
had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke
almost with emotion--a liqueur-glass of excellent old brandy in his
hand--of the young talented ones who must bear the banner of art bravely
before the coming generations.
"I love the young!" he said. "It is my proudest boast to seek out and
bring forward the young. Aren't it, Alston?"
Influenced perhaps by the satiny texture of the old brandy, in
combination with the scented and jewelled night, he spoke as if he
existed only for the benefit of the young, never thought about
money-making, or business propositions. Charmian was touched. Alston
also seemed moved. Claude was young. Crayford spoke of him, of his
talent. Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be,
thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could
she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner,
when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were
centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which
only comes on a night of nights?
The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or
did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously betrayed into the
definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each
other's hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was
able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to
"come about of itself."
Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of,
Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and
applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as
only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a
rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest!
We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder
for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's
agreeable voice.
Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander.
The night was so vast, so starry and still, that--as he afterward said
to himself--"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had
not studied with Madame Thénant for nothing. This was an almost supreme
moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another
opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame
Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before
her. She took her feet off the stool--she was no odalisque to be
pampered with footstools and cushions--and she let herself go.
Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:
"That's the best libretto since _Carmen_, and I know something about
libretti."
Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:
"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"
Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was
incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.
"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed
to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and
yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted
him--"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from
wherever he is?"
With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.
"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But--but I think he needs the holiday he
is taking badly."
"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"
"Yes."
"Young 'uns must sweat if they're to get there. That's all right. Aren't
it, Alston?"
"Rather!"
"Can't you get him back?" continued Crayford.
The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was
dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom
forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.
"Well, I might. But--why?"
"Don't he want to see his chum Alston?"
"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."
"Well then?"
"The only thing is he needs complete rest."
"And so do I, but d'you think I'm going to take it? Not I! It's the
resters get left. You might telegraph that to your husband, and say it
comes straight from me."
He got up from his chair, and threw away the stump of the fourth cigar
he had enjoyed that night.
"We've no room for resters in New York City."
"I'm sure you haven't. But my husband doesn't happen to belong to New
York City."
As they were leaving Djenan-el-Maqui, after Mr. Crayford had had a long
drink, and while he was speaking to his chauffeur, who had the bonnet of
the car up, Alston Lake whispered to Charmian:
"Don't wire to old Claude. Keep it up. You are masterly, quite masterly.
Hulloa! anything wrong with the car?"
When they buzzed away Charmian stood for a moment in the drive till
silence fell. She was tired, but how happily tired!
And to think that Claude knew nothing, nothing of it all! Some day she
would have to tell him how hard she had worked for him! She opened her
lips and drew into her lungs the warm air of the night. She was not a
"rester." She would not surely "get left."
Pierre yawned rather loudly behind her.
"Oh, Pierre!" she said, turning quickly, startled. "It is terribly late.
Stay in bed to-morrow. Don't get up early. _Bonne nuit._"
"_Bonne nuit, madame._"
On the following day she received a note from Alston.
"DEAR MRS. CHARMIAN,--You are a wonder. No one on earth
could have managed him better. You might have known him from the
cradle--yours, of course, not his! I'm taking him around to-day. He
wants to go to Djenan-el-Maqui, I can see that. But I'm keeping him
off it. Lie low and mum's the word as to Claude.--Your fellow
conspirator,
"ALSTON."
It was difficult to "lie low." But she obeyed and spent the long day
alone. No one came to see her. Toward evening she felt deserted,
presently even strangely depressed. As she dined, as she sat out
afterward in the court with Caroline reposing on her skirt in a curved
attitude of supreme contentment, she recalled the excitement and emotion
of the preceding night. She had read well. She had done her part for
Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of
herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be
produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she
strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had
the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long
had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian
could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone
with Claude. Now they were a _ménage à trois_. She recalled the
beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable
they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The
river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it was flowing.
Surely so much thought, care, labor and love could not be bestowed on a
thing in vain; surely the opera, child of so many hopes, bearer of such
a load of ambition, could not "go down"? She tried to regain her
strength of anticipation. But all the evening she felt depressed. If
only Alston would come in for five minutes! Perhaps he would. She
looked at the tiny watch which hung by her side at the end of a thin
gold chain. The hands pointed to half-past nine. He might come yet. She
listened. The night, one of a long succession of marvellous African
nights, was perfectly still. The servants within the villa made no
sound. Caroline heaved a faint sigh and stirred, turning to push her
long nose into a tempting fold of Charmian's skirt. But, midway in her
movement she paused, lifted her head, stared at the darkness with her
small yellow eyes, and uttered a muffled bark which was like an inquiry.
Her nose was twitching.
"What is it, Caroline?" said Charmian.
She lifted the dog on to her knees.
"What is it?"
Caroline barked faintly again.
"Someone is coming," thought Charmian. "Alston is coming."
Almost directly she heard the sound of wheels, and Caroline jumping down
with her lopetty movement, delivered herself up to a succession of calm
barks. She was a gentle individual, and never showed any great
animation, even in such a crisis as this. The sound of wheels ceased,
and in a moment a voice called:
"Charmian! Where are you?"
"Claude!"
She felt that her face grew hot, though she was alone, and she had
spoken the name to herself, for herself.
"I'm out here on the terrace!"
She felt astonished, guilty. She had thought that he would only come
when she summoned him, perhaps to-morrow, that he would learn by
telegram of the arrival of Crayford and Alston. Now she would have to
tell him.
He came out into the court, looking very tall in the night.
"Are you surprised?"
He kissed her.
"Very! Very surprised!"
"I thought I had had enough holiday, that I would get back. I only
decided to-day, quite suddenly."
"Then didn't you enjoy your holiday?"
"I thought I was going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I
was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for
to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away from the
opera."
Charmian was conscious of a sharp pang. It felt like a pang of jealousy.
"Have you had any dinner?" she asked, in a rather constrained voice.
"Yes. I dined at Gruber's."
She wondered why, but she did not say so.
"I nearly stayed the night in town. I felt--it seemed so absurd my
rushing back like this."
He ended with a little laugh.
"Who do you think is here?" she said.
"Here?"
He glanced round.
"I mean in Algiers."
He looked at her with searching eyes.
"Someone we know well?"
"Two people."
"Tell me!"
"No--guess!"
"Women? Men?"
"Men."
"Sennier?"
She shook her head.
"Max Elliot?"
"No. One is--Alston Lake."
"Alston? But why isn't he up here, then?"
"He has brought someone with him."
"Whom?"
"Jacob Crayford."
"Crayford here? What has he come here for?"
"He's taking a holiday motoring."
"But to come to Algiers in summer!"
"He goes everywhere, and can't choose his season. He's far too busy."
"To be sure. Has he been to see you?"
"Yes; he dined here yesterday and stayed till past midnight. He wants
to see you. I meant to telegraph to you almost directly."
"Wants to see me?"
"Yes. Claude, last night I read the libretto of the opera to him and
Alston."
He was silent. It was dark in the court. She could not see his face
clearly enough to know whether he was pleased or displeased.
"Do you mind?"
"Why should I?"
"I think you sound as if you minded."
"Well? What did Crayford think of it?"
"He said, 'It's the best libretto since _Carmen_.'"
"It is a good libretto."
"He was enthusiastic. Claude"--she put her hand on his arm--"he wants to
hear your music."
"Has he said so?"
"Not exactly; not in so many words; but he seemed very much put out when
he found you weren't here. And, after he had heard the libretto, he
suggested my telegraphing to you to come straight back."
"Funny I should have come without your telegraphing."
"It almost seems--" She paused.
"What?"
"As if you had been led to come back of your own accord, as if you had
felt you ought to be here."
"Are you glad?" he said.
"Yes, now."
"Did you mean--"
"Claude," she said, taking a resolution, "I don't think it would be wise
for us to seem too eager about the opera with Mr. Crayford."
"But I have never even thought--"
"No, no. But now he's here, and thinks so much of the libretto, and
wants to see you, it would be absurd of us to pretend that he could not
be of great use to us. I mean, to pretend to ourselves. Of course if he
would take it it would be too splendid."
"He never will."
"Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera."
"I'm not a Sennier unfortunately."
"What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed,
almost angrily.
She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin
their prospects.
"O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a
little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can--"
She pulled herself up sharply.
"I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much,
and then you speak like this."
Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this
breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude.
"My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I
don't know why."
But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition
was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something,
was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she
had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget
Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have
pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her.
"I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself."
Claude put his arm round her gently.
"I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very
aggravating," he said. "But--"
He stopped, said nothing more.
"Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed--"your own child. Then
others will believe in it, too. Alston does."
She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes.
"And Jacob Crayford shall."
After a moment she added:
"If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things."
"How could I spoil my own music?" he asked.
But she only answered:
"Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
"So the darned rester's come back, has he?"
Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow
linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver
cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into
the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel.
"They gave you the note, then?" said Alston.
"Yaw."
Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge
Havana.
"I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up.
"Of course she telegraphed him to come."
"I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically.
"Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily.
He sat down and crossed his legs.
"No. But even you can't see what isn't."
"There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at
Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the
big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well,
that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent
little thing, that's all."
Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable
expression.
"She's brought the rester back so as not to miss the opportunity of his
life. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right up to
Djen-anne. I'm going to take the rester by myself, and I'm just going to
hear that darned opera; and neither the little lady nor you's going to
get a look in. This is up to me, and you'll just keep right out of it.
See?"
He turned the cigar in his mouth, and his tic suddenly became very
apparent.
"And what am I to do?" asked Alston.
"When I get to Djen-anne, I'll open out at once, come right to business.
You stop here. As likely as not the little lady'll come back in the car
to take you for a spin. If she does, keep her out till late. You can
tell her a good bit depends on it."
"Very well."
"Happen she'll dine with you?" threw out Crayford, always with the same
half-humorous dryness.
"Do you mean that you wish me to try and keep Mrs. Heath to dinner?"
said Alston, with bland formality.
"She might cheer you up. You might cheer each other up."
At this point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to
distort slightly one corner of his mouth.
Charmian did come down from Mustapha in Crayford's big yellow car. She
was in a state of great excitement.
"O Alston!" she exclaimed, "where are we going? What a man he is when it
comes to business! He simply packed me off. I have never been treated in
such a way before. We've got hours and hours to fill up somehow. I feel
almost as if I were waiting to be told on what day I am to be
guillotined, like a French criminal. How will Claude get on with him?
Just think of those two shut in together!"
As Alston got into the car she repeated:
"Where are we going?"
"_Allez au Diable!_" said Alston to Crayford's chauffeur, who was a
Frenchman.
"_Bien, m'sieu!_"
"And--" Alston pulled out his watch. "You must take at least seven hours
to get there."
"_Très bien, m'sieu._"
"That's a cute fellow," said Alston to Charmian, as they drove off.
"Knows how to time things!"
It was evening when they returned to the hotel, dusty and tired.
"You'll dine with me, Mrs. Charmian!" said Alston.
"Oh, no; I must go home now. I can't wait any longer."
"Better dine with me."
She took off her big motor veil, and looked at him.
"Did Mr. Crayford say I was to dine with you?"
"No. But he evidently thought it would be a suitable arrangement."
"But what will people think?"
"What they always do, I suppose."
"Yes, but what's that?"
"I've wondered for years!"
He held out his big hand. Charmian yielded and got out of the car.
At ten o'clock Crayford had not reappeared, and she insisted on
returning home.
"I can't stay out all night even for an impresario," she said.
Alston agreed, and they went out to the front door to get a carriage.
"Of course I'll see you home, Mrs. Charmian."
"Yes, you may."
As they drove off she exclaimed:
"That man really is a terror, Alston, or should I say a holy terror? Do
you know, I feel almost guilty in daring to venture back to my own
house."
"Maybe we'll meet him on the way up."
"If we do be sure you stop the carriage."
"But if he doesn't stop his?"
"Then I'll stop it. Keep a sharp look-out. I'm tired, but oh! I do feel
so excited. You look out all the time on your side, and I'll do the same
on mine."
"Well, but we meet everything on the--"
"Never mind! Oh, don't be practical at such a moment! He might pass us
on any side."
Alston laughed and obeyed her mandate.
They were a long way up the hill, and were near to the church of the
Holy Trinity when Charmian cried out:
"There's a carriage coming. I believe he's in it."
"Why?"
"Because I do! Be ready to stop him."
"Gee! He is in it! Hi! Mr. Crayford! Crayford!"
Charmian, leaning quickly forward, gave their astonished coachman a
violent push in the small of his back.
"Stop! Stop!"
He pulled up the horses with a jerk.
"Hello!" said Crayford.
He took off his hat.
"Goin' home to roost?" he added to Charmian.
"If you have no objection," she answered, with a pretense of dignity.
They looked at one another in the soft darkness which was illumined by
the lamps of the two carriages. Crayford, as usual, was smoking a big
cigar.
"Have you dined?" said Alston.
"Not yet."
"Have you--" Charmian began, and paused. "Have you been hearing the
opera all this time?"
"Yaw."
He blew out a smoke ring.
"Hearing it and talking things over."
Her heart leaped with hope and with expectation.
"Then you--then I suppose--"
"See here, little lady," said Crayford. "I'm not feeling quite as full
as I should like. I think I'll be getting home along. Your husband will
tell you things, I've no doubt. Want Lake to see you in, do you?"
"No. I'm almost there."
"Then what do you say to his coming back with me?"
"Of course. Good-night, Mr. Lake. No, no! I don't want you really! All
the coachmen know me here, and I them. I've driven alone dozens of
times. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Crayford."
She almost pushed Alston out of the carriage in her excitement. She was
now burning with impatience to be with Claude.
"Good-night, good-night!" she called, waving her hands as the horses
moved forward.
"She's a oner," said Crayford. "And so are you to keep a woman like that
quiet all these hours. My boy, I'm empty, I can tell you."
He said not a word to Alston about the opera that night, and Alston did
not attempt to make him talk.
When Charmian arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little
dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning
her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at
the cold chicken he was eating.
"O Claude!" she said, as he looked round. "Such a day! Well?"
She came to the table, pushed Caroline ruthlessly to the floor, took the
dog's chair, and repeated, "Well?"
Claude's face was flushed, his short hair was untidy, and the eyes which
he fixed upon her looked excited, tired, and, she thought, something
else.
"Is anything the matter?"
"No, why should there be? Where have you been?"
"With Alston. He insisted on my keeping out of the way. Crayford I mean,
of course. Has it gone well? Did you play the whole of it; all you've
composed, I mean?"
"Yes."
"What did he say? What did he think of it?"
"It isn't easy to know exactly what that kind of man thinks."
"Was he disagreeable? Didn't you get on?"
"Oh, I suppose we did."
"What did he say, then?"
"All sorts of things."
"Go on eating. You look dreadfully tired. Tell me some of the things."
"Well, he liked some of it."
"Only some?"
"He seemed to like a good deal. But he suggested quantities of
alterations."
"Where? Which part?"
"I should have to show you."
"Drink some wine. I'm sure you need it. Give me some idea. You can
easily do that without showing me to-night."
"He says a march should be introduced. You know, in that scene--"
"I know, the soldiers, the Foreign Legion. Well, that would be easy
enough. You could do that in a day."
"Do you think one has only to sit down?"
"Two days, then; a week if you like! You have wonderful facility when
you choose. And what else? Here, I'll pour out the wine. What else?"
"Heaps of things. He wants to pull half the opera to pieces, I think."
"Oh, no, Claudie! You are exaggerating. You always do, dear old boy. And
if you do what he says, what then?"
"How d'you mean?"
"Would he take it? Would he produce it?"
"He didn't commit himself."
"Of course not! They never do. But would he? You must have gathered
something from his manner, from what he said, what he looked like."
"He seemed very much struck with the libretto. He said there were great
opportunities for new scenic effects."
"He is going to take it! He is! He is!" she cried exultantly. "I knew he
would. I always knew. Why, why do you look so grim, Claudie?"
She threw one arm round his neck and kissed him.
"Don't look like that when we are on the eve of everything we've been
working for, waiting--longing for, for months and years! Caroline!
Caroline!"
Caroline hastily indicated her presence.
"Come up! The darling, she shall have a piece of cake, two pieces!
There! And the sugary part, too!"
"You'll make her ill."
"Never mind. If she is ill it is in a good cause. Claudie, just think,
you are going to be another Jacques Sennier! It's too wonderful. And yet
I knew it. Didn't I tell you that night in the opera house? I said it
would be so. Didn't I? Can you deny it?"
"I don't deny it. But--"
"You are made of buts. If it were not for me you would go and hide away
your genius, and no one would ever know you existed at all. It's
pathetic. But you've married a wife who knows what you are, and others
shall know too. The whole world shall know."
He could not help laughing at her wild enthusiasm. But he said, with a
sobriety that almost made her despair:
"You are going too fast, Charmian. I'm not at all sure that I shall be
able to consent to make changes in the opera."
Then began a curious conflict which lasted for days between Claude Heath
on the one side, and Charmian, Alston Lake, and Crayford on the other.
It was really a tragic conflict, for it was, Claude believed, the last
stand made by an artist in defense of his art. Never had he felt so much
alone as during these days of conflict. Yet he was in his own home, with
a wife who was working for him, a devoted friend who was longing for his
success, and a man who was seriously thinking of bringing him and his
work into the notice of the vast world that loves opera. No one knew of
his loneliness. No one even suspected it. And comedy hung, as it ever
does, about the heels of tragedy.
Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and
before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States,
and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one
circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other
delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music
halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in
halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first
men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile
with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath
the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had
been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that
had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And
this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling
its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the
inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always
wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class
artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of
New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."
Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a fine theater on
Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in
productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the
staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and
had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in
the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of
dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was
prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last.
He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a
profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever.
Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned
a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he
would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less
than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often
carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win
out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him
inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises
as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often
led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity.
He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood,"
and was for ever on the look-out for it.
He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.
But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a
long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names
he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But
people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not
touch them.
Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was
passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his
side because of gratitude, and in expectation.
The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was
absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his
ideas.
"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's
to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the
conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if
the darned thing's a failure."
There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside,
the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered
with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue
could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the
calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly,
unexpectedly.
Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little
rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him,
bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences
it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And
from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in
concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips
to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes
travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.
"Then if we--I mean if my husband does what you wish, you _will_ spend
thousands over it?" she said, "you _will_ produce it, give it its
chance?"
Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything
definite. Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time
over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But
he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which
could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole
affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude
dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face
of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt
that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a
successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the
face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate
for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within
him. He strove to summon up that strength, but a sense of pity, that
perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent.
Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not
strike it down into the dust of despair.
Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that
was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth,
looked at Charmian, and said:
"Yah!"
Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word.
But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back,
beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.
"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going
to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the
only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and
bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever
trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get
down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or
not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it.
I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your
getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and
your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you
write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then.
You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the
best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start,
but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you
to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though
you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the
center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of
feet above it."
"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.
"Ah!" breathed Charmian.
Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he
twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably
thought Napoleonic.
"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and
my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"--his tone was
changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost
paternal--"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big
success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger--eh, little
lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"
"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.
His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of
the room, out of the villa, to rush away--away into some desert place,
and to be alone.
"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."
"I can't help--how would you have me look?"
"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"
"Claudie, we all only want--"
"I know--I know!"
He clenched his wet hands.
"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what
we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in
this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell--don't mind me, little
lady! I'll stop right there!--we're getting on to something that's going
to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about--'s going to
astonish--the--world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"
And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made
no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather
feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the
tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were
moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when
the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it
glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this
opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own
consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his
own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be
really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he
had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that
narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly
what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all
his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.
And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm--a genuine
enthusiasm--of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be
carried on by their hopes.
As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where
Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every
day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and
business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude
had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre
eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The
more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and
interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out
and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.
"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or
"that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"--thought of by himself--"makes
your opera a different thing."
And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he
would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it
off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he
reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded
came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young
people.
"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got
hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and
I'll make him another Battistini. See here"--and he turned sharply to
Claude--"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could
easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why,
it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I
wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes
first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But
the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the
opera."
That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude
rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he,
the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of
form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite
shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all.
But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as
strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in
hand.
"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.
Claude was tempted to reply:
"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."
But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with
Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He
admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities,
which delighted her.
"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never
met an Englishwoman like her!"
Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man,
recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated
before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She
felt almost as if she were a creator.
"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."
While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised
by Crayford--and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of
those about him, scourged to his work by their desires--Lake studied the
baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian
"put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."
"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I
can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."
"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.
"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he
answered. "Now, see here--"
They plunged deep into the libretto.
Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the
opera.
"We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs.
I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind."
That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian
went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of
odd people.
"I'm out for dancers to-day," he said one morning.
And they set off to "put Algiers through the sieve" for dancing girls.
They found painters, and Crayford took them to the Casbah, and to other
nooks and corners of the town, to make drawings for him to carry away to
New York as a guide to his scenic artist. They got hold of a Fakir, who
had drifted from India to North Africa, and Crayford engaged him on the
spot to appear in one of the scenes and perform some of his marvels.
"Claude"--the composer was Claude to him now--"can write in something
weird to go with it," he said.
And Charmian of course agreed.
It had been decided that the opera should be produced at the New Era
Opera House some time in the New Year, if Claude carried out faithfully
all the changes which Crayford demanded.
"He will. He has promised to do everything you wish," said Charmian.
"You stand by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when
I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to
think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the
changes. I can see that."
"It will be all right, I promise you. Claude isn't so mad as to lose the
chance you are offering him."
"It's the chance of a lifetime. I can tell you that."
"He realizes it."
"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."
"I won't tell a soul."
"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude
against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for
the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's
going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is
expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"--Charmian
thrilled at that word--"just about the same time, a day or two before,
or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or
the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been
seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what
opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to
run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night
stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till
every note in his score's in its place."
"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."
"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from
what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the
writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a
scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed
everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,'
I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have
to bring him over."
"Of course! Of course!"
"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like
old bones."
He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a
grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:
"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it
if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."
He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:
"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it,
though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's
a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish
of it."
"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.
From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must
be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.
CHAPTER XXIX
On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just
finished dinner, and Claude got up, rather slowly and wearily, from the
small table which stood in the middle of their handsome red sitting-room
on the eighth floor of the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
"How terribly hot this room is!" he said.
"Americans like their rooms hot. But open a little bit of the window,
Claudie."
"If I do the noise of Fifth Avenue will come in."
He spoke almost irritably, like a man whose nerves were tired. But
Charmian did not seem to notice it. She looked bright, resolute,
dominant, as she replied in her clear voice:
"Let it come in. I like to hear it. It is the voice of the world we are
here to conquer. Don't look at me like that, dear old boy, but open the
window. The air will do you good. You're tired. I shouldn't have allowed
you to work during the voyage."
"I had to work."
"Well, very soon you'll be able to rest, and on laurels."
Claude went to open the big window, pulling aside the blind, while
Charmian lighted a cigarette, and curled herself up on the padded sofa.
And as, in a moment, the roar of the gigantic city swelled in a fierce
crescendo, she leaned forward with the cigarette in her hand, listening
intently, half smiling, with an eager light in her eyes.
"What a city it is!" she said, as Claude turned and came toward her. "It
makes London seem almost like a village. I'm glad it is here the opera
is to be given for the first time."
"So am I," he said, sitting down.
But he spoke almost gloomily, looking at the floor. His face was white
and too expressive, and his left hand, as it hung down between his
knees, fluttered. He lifted it, turning the fingers inward.
"Why?" Charmian said.
He looked up at her.
"Oh, I--they are all strangers here."
She said nothing, and just then the telephone bell sounded. Mr. Alston
Lake was below asking if Mr. Heath was in.
In a moment he entered, looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and
vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost
greedily, of expectation and virile optimism.
"My!" he said, as he shook them both by the hand. "You look settled in
for the night."
"So we are," said Charmian.
Alston laughed.
"I've come to take you to the theater."
"But they're not rehearsing to-night," said Claude.
"No; but Crayford's trying effects."
"Mr. Crayford! Is he back from Philadelphia?" exclaimed Charmian.
"Been back an hour and hard at work already. He sent me to fetch you.
They're all up on the stage trying to get the locust effect."
"The locusts! Wait a minute, Alston! I'll change my gown."
She hurried out of the room.
"Well, old chap, what's up? You don't look too pleased," said Alston to
Claude as the door shut. "Don't you want to come out? But we must put
our backs into this, you know. The fight's on, and a bully big fight it
is. Seen the papers to-day?"
"No. I haven't had a minute. I've been going through the orchestration
with Meroni."
"What does he say?"
"He was very nice," answered Claude evasively. "But what's in the
papers?"
"A bit of news that's made Crayford bristle like a scrubbing brush. The
Metropolitan's changed the date for the production of Sennier's new
opera, put it forward by nearly a fortnight, pledged themselves to be
ready by the first of March."
"What does it matter?"
"Well, I like that! It takes all the wind out of our sails. In a big
race the getting off is half the battle. We were coming first. But if I
know anything of Crayford we shall come first even now. It's all Madame
Sennier. She's mad against Crayford and the opera and you, and she's
specially mad against Mrs. Charmian. The papers to-night are full of a
lot of nonsense about the libretto."
"Which libretto?"
"Yours. Apparently Madame Sennier's been saying it was really written
for Sennier and had been promised to him."
"That's a lie."
"Of course it is. But she's spread herself on it finely, I can tell you.
Crayford's simply delighted."
"Delighted, when I'm accused of mean conduct, of stealing another man's
property."
"It's no use getting furious over our papers! Doesn't pay! Besides, it
makes a story, works up public interest. Still, I think she might have
kept out Mrs. Charmian's name."
"Charmian is in it?"
"Yes, a lot of rubbish about her hearing what a stunner the libretto
was, and rushing over to Paris to bribe it away before Sennier had
considered it in its finished state."
"How abominable! I shall--"
"I know, but I wouldn't. Crayford says it will give value to the
libretto, prepare the public mind for a masterpiece, and help to carry
your music to success."
"I see! With this and the locusts!"
He turned away toward the open window, through which came the incessant
roar of traffic, the sound of motor horns, and now, for a moment, a
chiming of bells from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
"Well, we must do all we know. We mustn't give away a single chance. The
whole Metropolitan crowd is just crazy to down us, and we must put up
the biggest fight we can. Leave it all to Crayford. He knows more than
any living man about a boom. And he said just now Madame Sennier was a
deed fool to have given us such a lift with her libel. There'll be a
crowd of pressmen around at the theater about it to-night, you can bet.
Here she comes! Get on your coat, and let's be off, or Crayford'll be
raging."
Claude stood still for an instant, looking from Alston to Charmian, who
walked in briskly, wearing a sealskin coat that reached to her heels,
and buttoning long white gloves. Then he said, "I won't be a minute!"
and went out of the room.
As he disappeared Charmian and Alston looked after him. Then Alston came
nearer to her, and they began to talk in rather low voices.
"The fight is on!"
How Claude hated those words; how he hated the truth which they
expressed! To-night, in New York, as he went to fetch his overcoat from
the smart and brilliantly lit bedroom which was opposite to the
sitting-room across a lobby, he wondered why Fate had led him into this
situation, why he had been doomed to become a sort of miserable center
of intrigue, recrimination, discussion, praise, blame, dissension. No
man, surely, on the face of the earth had loved tranquillity more than
he had. Few men had more surely possessed it. He had known his soul and
he had been its faithful guardian once--but long ago, surely centuries
ago! That he should be the cause of battle, what an irony!
Thinking with great rapidity, during this brief interval of loneliness,
while he got ready to go out, a rapidity to which his fatigue seemed to
contribute, giving it wings, Claude reviewed his life since the first
evening at Elliot's house. Events and periods and details flashed by;
his close friendship with Mrs. Mansfield (who had refused to come to
America), his almost inimical acquaintance with Charmian, Mrs.
Shiffney's capricious endeavors to get hold of him, the firmness of his
refusals, the voyage to Algiers, his regret at missing the wonders of
Africa, Charmian's return full of a knowledge he lacked, the dinner
during which he had looked at her with new eyes.
(He took down from its hook his heavy fur coat bought for the bitter
winter of New York.)
Chateaubriand's description of Napoleon, the little island in Mrs.
Grahame's garden, the production of Jacques Sennier's opera--they were
all linked together closely at this moment in a tenacious mind; with the
expression in Charmian's eyes at the end of the opera, Oxford Street by
night as he walked home, the spectral bunch of white roses on his table,
the furtive whisper of the letter of love to Charmian as it dropped in
the box, the watchful policeman, the noise of his heavy steps, the dying
of the moonlight on the leaded panes of the studio, the scent of the
earth as the dawn near drew.
Events and periods, and little details! And who or what had guided him
through the maze of them? And whither was he going? Whither and to what
was he hastening?
His marriage and the new life came back to him. He heard the maids
whispering together on the stairs in Kensington Square, and the sound of
the street organ in the frost. He saw the studio in Renwick Place,
Charmian coming in with books of poetry in her hands. There, had been
the beginning of that which had led to Algiers and now to New York, his
abdication. There, he had taken the first step down from the throne of
his own knowledge of himself.
He saw a gulf black beneath him.
But Charmian called:
"Claude, do make haste!"
He caught up hat and gloves and went out into the lobby. But even as he
went, with an extraordinary swiftness he reviewed the incidents of his
short time in America; the arrival in the cruel coldness of a winter
dawn; the immensity of the city's aspect seen across the tufted waters,
its towers--as they had seemed to him then--climbing into Heaven, its
voices companioning its towers; the throngs of pressmen and
photographers, who had gazed at him with piercing, yet not unkind, eyes,
searching him for his secrets; the meeting with Crayford and Crayford's
small army of helpers; publicity agents, business and stage managers,
conductors, producers, machinists, typewriters, box-office people, scene
painters, singers, instrumentalists. Their figures rushed across
Claude's mind with a vertiginous rapidity. Their faces flashed by
grimacing. Their hands beckoned him on in a mad career. And he saw the
huge theater, a monster of masonry, with a terrific maw which he--he of
all men!--was expected to fill, a maw gaping for human beings, gaping
for dollars. What a coldness it had struck into him, as he stood for the
first time looking into its dimness as into the dimness of some gigantic
cavern. In that moment he had realized, or had at least partially
realized, the meaning of a tremendous failure, and how far the circles
of its influence radiate. And he had felt very cold, as a guilty man may
feel who hugs his secret. And the huge theater had surely leaned over,
leaned down, filled suddenly with a sinister purpose, to crush him into
the dust.
"Claude!"
"Here I am!"
"What a time you've been! We--are you very tired?"
"Not a bit. Come along!"
They went out into the corridor lined with marble, stepped into a lift,
shot down, and passed through the vestibule to the street where a
taxi-cab was waiting. A young man stood on the pavement, and while
Charmian was getting in he spoke to Claude.
"Mr. Claude Heath, I believe?"
"Yes."
"I represent--"
"Very sorry I can't wait. I have to go to the theater."
He sprang in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and
rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left
where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park
showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed
the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty
air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending
procession, little gleaming worlds, each holding its group of strangers,
gazing, gesticulating, laughing, intent on some unknown errand. The
pavements were thronged with pedestrians, muffled to the ears and
walking swiftly. The taxi-cab, caught in the maze of traffic, jerked as
the chauffeur applied the brakes, and slowed down almost to walking
pace. Under a lamp Claude saw a colored woman wearing a huge pink hat.
She seemed to be gazing at him, and her large lips parted in a smile. In
an instant she was gone. But Claude could not forget her. In his
excitement and fatigue he thought of her as a great goblin woman, and
her smile was a terrible grin of bitter sarcasm stretching across the
world. Charmian and Alston were talking unweariedly. Claude did not hear
what they were saying. He saw snowflakes floating down between the
lights, strangely pure and remote, lost wanderers from some delicate
world where the fragile things are worshipped. And, with a strange
emotion, his heart turned to the now remote children of his imagination,
those children with whom he had sat alone by his wood fire on lonely
evenings, when the pale blue of the flames had struck on his eyes like
the soft notes of a flute on his ears, those children with whom he had
kept long vigils and sometimes seen the dawn. How far they had retreated
from him, as if they thought him a stern, or neglectful father! He shut
his eyes, and seemed to see once more the smile of the goblin woman, and
then the fiery gaze of Mrs. Mansfield.
"How could she say it? But I don't know that I mind!"
"Minding things doesn't help any in a place like New York."
"But will they believe it?"
"If they do half of them will think you worth while."
"Yes, but the other half?"
"As long as you get there it's all right."
The cab stopped at the stage door of Crayford's opera house.
As they went in two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for
information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear
them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had
deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the
pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard it and
envied Alston.
From a room on the right of the entrance a very dark young man came
carrying some letters.
"More letters!" he said to Claude, with a smile.
"Oh, thank you."
"They're all on the stage. The locusts will be real fine when they fix
them right. We have folks inquiring about them all the time. Nothing
like that in the Sennier opera."
He smiled again with pleasant boyishness. Claude longed to take him by
the shoulders and say to him:
"It isn't a swarm of locusts that will make an opera!" But he only
nodded and remarked:
"All the better for us!"
Then hastily he opened his letters. Three were from autograph hunters,
and he thrust them into the pocket of his coat. The fourth was from
Armand Gillier. When Claude saw the name of his collaborator he stood
still and read the note frowning.
"Letters! Always letters!" said Charmian, coming up. "Anything
interesting, Claudie?"
"Gillier is coming out after all."
"Armand Gillier!"
"Yes. Or--he arrived to-day, I expect, though this was posted in France.
What day does the _Philadelphia_--"
"This morning," said Alston.
"Then he's here."
Charmian looked disgusted.
"It's bad taste on his part. After his horrible efforts to ruin the
opera he ought to have kept away."
"What does it matter?" said Claude.
"He'll be interviewed on the libretto," said Alston. "Gee knows what
he'll say, the beast!"
"If he backs up Madame Sennier in her libelous remarks it will be
proclaiming that he can be bribed," exclaimed Charmian.
"I suppose he's bound to throw in his lot with us," added Alston, as
they came into the huge curving corridor which ran behind the ground
tier boxes.
"How dark it is! Claudie, give me your hand. It slopes, doesn't it?"
"Yes. The entrance is just here."
"How hot your hand is!"
"Here we are!" said Alston.
He pushed a swing door, and they came into the theater. It was dimly
lighted, and over the rows of stalls pale coverings were drawn. The
hundreds of empty boxes gaped. The distant galleries were lost in the
darkness. It was a vast house, and the faint light and the emptiness of
it made it look even vaster than it was.
"The maw, and I am to fill it!" Claude thought again. And he was
conscious of unimportance. He even felt as if he had never composed any
music, as if he knew nothing about composition, had no talent at all. It
seemed to him incredible that, because of him, of what he had done,
great sums of money were being spent, small armies of people were at
work, columns upon columns were being written in myriads of newspapers,
a man such as Crayford was putting forth all his influence, lavishing
all his powers of showman, impresario, man of taste, fighting man. He
remembered the night when Sennier's opera was produced, and it seemed to
him impossible that such a night could ever come to him, be his night.
He thought of it somewhat as a man thinks of Death, as his neighbor's
visitant not as his own.
"Chaw-_lee_!" shouted an imperative voice. "Chaw-ley! Chaw-_lee_!"
"Ah!" cried a thin voice from somewhere behind the stage.
"Get down that light! Give us your ambers! No, not the blues! Your
ambers! Where's Jimber? I say, where is Jimber?"
Mr. Mulworth, the stage producer, who was the speaker, appeared running
sidewise down an uncovered avenue between two rows of stalls close to
the stage. Although a large man, he proceeded with remarkable rapidity.
Emerging into the open he came upon Claude.
"Oh, Mr. Crayford is here. He wants very much to see you."
"Where is he?"
"Somewhere behind. I think he's viewing camels. Can you come with me?"
"Of course!"
He went off quickly with Mr. Mulworth, who shouted:
"I say, where is Jimber?" to some unknown personality as he ran toward a
door which gave on to the stage.
"Let us go and sit down at the back of the stalls, Alston," said
Charmian. "They don't seem to be trying the locusts yet."
"No. There are always delays. The patience one needs in a theater! Talk
of self-control! Here, I'll pull away the--or shall we go to that box?"
"Yes. I'll get on this chair. Help me! That's it."
They sat down in a dark box at the back of the stalls. Far off, across a
huge space, they saw the immense stage, lit up now by an amber glow
which came not from the footlights but from above. The stage was set
with a scene representing an oasis in the desert with yellow sand in the
distance. Among some tufted palms stood three or four stage hands, pale,
dusty, in shirt sleeves. At the extreme back of the scene, against the
horizon, Mr. Mulworth crossed, with a thick-set, lantern-jawed, and very
bald man, who was probably Jimber. Claude followed two or three yards
behind them, and disappeared. His face looked ghastly under the stream
of amber light.
"It's dreadful to see people on the stage not made up!" said Charmian.
"They all look so corpse-like. O Alston, are we going to have a
success?"
"What! You beginning to doubt!"
"No, no. But when I see this huge dark theater I can't help thinking,
'Shall we fill it?' What a fight art is! I never realized till now that
we are on a battlefield. Alston, I feel I would almost rather die than
fail."
"Fail! But--"
"Or quite rather die."
"In any case it couldn't be your failure."
She turned and looked at him in the heavy dimness.
"Couldn't it?"
"You didn't write the libretto. You didn't compose the music."
"And yet," she said, in a low tense voice, "it would be my failure if
the opera failed, because but for me it never would have been written,
never have been produced out here. Alston, it's a great responsibility.
And I never really understood how great till I saw Claude go across the
stage just now. He looked so--he looked--"
She broke off.
"Whatever is it, Mrs. Charmian?"
"He looked like a victim, I thought."
"Everyone does in that light unless--there's Crayford!"
At this moment Mr. Crayford came upon the stage from the side on which
Claude had just vanished. He had a soft hat on the back of his head, and
a cigar in his mouth.
"He doesn't!" whispered Charmian.
"Now go ahead!" roared Crayford. "Work your motors and let's see!"
There was a sound like a rushing mighty wind.
At two o'clock in the morning Crayford was still smoking, still
watching, still shouting. Charmian and Alston were still in the darkness
of the box, gazing, listening, sometimes talking. They had not seen
Claude again. If he came into the front of the theater they meant to
call him. But he did not come. The hours had flown, and now, when Alston
looked at his watch and told Charmian the time, she could scarcely
believe him.
"Where can Claude be?"
"I'll go behind."
"Jimber!" roared Mr. Crayford. "Where is Jimber?"
Mr. Mulworth, who looked now as if he had lain awake in his clothes for
more nights than he cared to remember, rushed upon the stage almost
fanatically.
"The locusts are all in one corner!" shouted Crayford. "What's the use
of that? They must spread."
"Spread your locusts!" bawled Mr. Mulworth.
He lifted both his arms in a semaphore movement, which he continued
until it seemed as if his physical mechanism had escaped from the
control of his brain.
"Spread your locusts, Jimber!" he wailed. "Spread! Spread! I tell
you--spread your locusts!"
He vanished, always moving his arms. His voice died away in the further
regions.
Charmian was alone. She had nodded in reply to Alston's remark. To-night
she felt rather anxious about Claude. She could not entirely rid her
mind of the remembrance of him crossing under the light, looking
unnatural, ghastly, like a persecuted man. And now that she was alone
she felt as if she were haunted. Eager to be reassured, she fixed her
eyes on the keen figure, the resolute face, of Mr. Crayford. The power
of work in Americans was almost astounding, she thought. All the men
with whom she and Claude had had anything to do seemed to be working all
the time, unresting as waves driven by a determined wind. Keenness! That
was the characteristic of this marvellous city, this marvellous land.
And it had acted upon her almost like electricity. She had felt charged
with it.
It would be terrible to fail before a nation that worshipped success,
that looked for it with resolute piercing eyes.
And she recalled her arrival with Claude in the cold light of early
morning, her first sensation of enchantment when a pressman, with
searching eyes and a firm mouth turned down at the corners, had come up
to interview her. At that moment she had felt that she was leaving the
dulness of the unknown life behind her for ever. It was no doubt a
terribly vulgar feeling. She had been uneasily conscious of that. But,
nevertheless, it had grown within her, fostered by events. For
Crayford's publicity agent had been masterly in his efforts. Charmian
and Claude had been snapshotted on the deck of the ship by a little army
of journalists. They had been snapshotted again on the gangplank. In the
docks they had been interviewed by more than a dozen people. A little
later, in the afternoon of the same day, they had held a reception of
pressmen in their sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel. Charmian thought
of these men now as she waited for Alston's return.
They had been introduced by Mr. Cane, Crayford's publicity agent, and
had arrived about three o'clock. All of them were, or looked as if they
were, young men, smart and alert, men who meant something. And they had
all been polite and charming. They had "sat around" attentively, and had
put their questions without brutality. They had seemed interested,
sympathetic, as if they really cared about Claude's talent and the
opera. His song, _Wild Heart of Youth_, had been touched upon, and a
tall young man, with a pale face and anxious eyes, had told Charmian
that he loved it. Then they had discussed music. Claude at first had
seemed uncomfortable, almost too modest, Charmian had thought. But the
pressmen had been so agreeable, so unself-conscious, that his discomfort
had worn off. His natural inclination to please, to give people what
they seemed to expect of him, had come to his rescue. He had been
vivacious and even charming. But when the pressmen had gone he had said
to Charmian:
"Pleasant fellows, weren't they? But their eyes ask one for success.
Till the opera is out I shall see those eyes, asking, always asking!"
And he had gone out of the room with a gesture suggestive of anxiety,
almost of fear.
Charmian saw those eyes now as she sat in the box. What Claude had said
was true. Beneath the sympathy, the charm, the frankness, the readiness
in welcome of these Americans, there was a silent and strong demand--the
demand of a powerful, vital country.
"We are here to make you known over immense distances to thousands of
people!" the eyes of the pressmen had seemed to say. "But--produce the
goods!" In other words, "Be a success!"
"Be a success! Be a success!" It seemed to Charmian as if all America
were saying that in her ears unceasingly. "We will be kind to you. We
will shower good-will upon you. We have hospitable hands, keen brains,
warm hearts at your service. We only ask to give of our best to you.
But--be a success! Be a success!"
And the voice grew so strong that at last it seemed almost stern, almost
fierce in her ears. At last it seemed as if peril would attend upon
non-compliance with its demand.
She thought of Claude crossing the stage under the amber light, she
looked into the vast dim theater with its thousands of empty seats, and
excitement and fear burned in her, mingled together. Then something
determined in her, the thing perhaps which had enabled her to take
Claude for her husband, and later to play a part in his art life, rose
up and drove out the fear. "It is fear which saps the will, fear which
disintegrates, fear which calls to failure." She was able to say that to
herself and to cast fear away. And her mind repeated the words she had
often heard Crayford utter, "It's up to us now to bring the thing off
and we've just got to bring it off!"
"No, no, I tell you! They're too much on one side of the scene still!
Who in thunder ever saw locusts swarming in a corner when they've got
the whole desert to spread themselves in? It aren't their nature. What?
Well, then, you must alter the position of your motors. Where is
Jimber?"
And Mr. Crayford strode behind the scenes.
Half-past two in the morning! What could Claude be doing? Was Alston
never coming back? Charmian suddenly began to feel tired and cold. She
buttoned her sealskin coat up to her throat. For a moment there was no
one on the stage. From behind the scenes came no longer the clever
imitation of a roaring wind. An abrupt inaction, that was like
desolation, made the great house seem oddly vacant. She sat staring
rather vaguely at the palms and the yellow sands.
After she had sat thus for perhaps some five minutes she saw Claude walk
hastily on to the stage. He had a large black note-book and a pencil in
his hand, and seemed in search of someone. Crayford came on brusquely
from the opposite side of the scene and met him. They began to confer
together.
The box door behind Charmian was opened and Alston came in.
"Old Claude's too busy to come. He wants me to take you home."
"What has he been doing all this time?"
"No end of things. It's just as I said. Crayford's determined to be
first in the field. This move of the Metropolitan has put him on the
run, and he'll keep everyone in the theater running till the opera's
out. Claude's been with the pressmen behind, and having a hairy-teary
heart to heart with Enid Mardon. Come, Mrs. Charmian!"
"But I don't like to leave Claude."
"There's nothing for us to do, and he'll follow us as soon as ever he
can. I'll just leave you at the hotel."
"What was the matter with Miss Mardon?" Charmian asked anxiously, as she
got up to go.
"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted
everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a
monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's
pulling her part to pieces now."
"How did Claude take it?"
"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."
"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home
without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the
end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."
"He'll send us away."
"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.
The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.
CHAPTER XXX
It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford,
Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the
stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the
taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the
cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel
Claude asked him to come in.
"I can't go to bed," he said.
"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.
"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the
question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar,
and try to quiet down."
"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."
"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."
At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly,
intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly
vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were
dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.
"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I
think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"
He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a glass of
champagne, he added:
"I say, let us make a bargain!"
"What is it, old chap?"
"Let us--just us three--have supper together after the first
performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of
semi-strangers."
"I'll come! Drink to that night!"
They drank.
Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room. Words rushed to the
lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled
under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them
the history of the night in the theater. They interrupted, put
questions, made comments, protested, argued, encouraged, exclaimed.
Mr. Cane had brought pressman after pressman to interview Claude on the
libretto scandal, as they called it. It seemed that Madame Sennier had
made her libelous statement in a violent fit of temper, brought on by a
bad rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House. Annie Meredith, who was
to sing the big rôle in Sennier's new opera, and who was much greater as
an actress than as a vocalist, had complained of the weakness of the
libretto, and had attacked Madame Sennier for having made Jacques set
it. Thereupon the great Henriette had lost all control of her powerful
temperament. The secret bitterness engendered in her by her failure to
capture the libretto of Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no
doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers.
The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to
muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame
Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false
move. The only thing to do now was to make a sensation of it.
As Claude told of the pressmen's questions his mind burned with
excitement, and a recklessness, such as he had never felt before,
invaded him. He had been indignant, had even felt a sort of shame, when
he was asked whether he had been "cute" in the libretto matter, whether
he had stolen a march on his rival. Crayford's treatment of the affair
had disgusted him. For Crayford, with his sharp eye to business, had
seen at once that their "game" was, of course with all delicacy, all
subtlety, to accept the imputation of shrewdness. The innocent "stunt"
was "no good to anyone" in his opinion. And he had not scrupled to say
so to Claude. There had been an argument--the theater is the Temple of
Argument--and Claude had heard himself called a "lobster," but had stuck
to his determination to use truth as a weapon in his defense. But now,
as he told all this, he felt that he did not care either way. What did
it matter if dishonorable conduct, if every deadly sin, were imputed to
him out here so long as he "made good" in the end with the work of his
brain, the work which had led him to Africa and across the Atlantic?
What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a
poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added
to? What did it matter if the locusts swarmed over it--so long as it was
a success? The blatant thing--everyone, every circumstance, was urging
Claude to snatch at it; and in this early hour of the winter morning,
excited by the intensity of the strain he was undergoing, by the pull on
his body, but far more by the pull on his soul, he came to a sudden and
crude decision; at all costs the blatant thing should be his, the
popular triumph, the success, if not of the high-bred merit, then of
sheer spectacular sensation. There is an intimate success that seems to
be of the soul, and there is another, reverberating, resounding, like
the clashing of brass instruments beaten together. Claude seemed to hear
them at this moment as he talked with ever-growing excitement.
One of the pressmen had mentioned Gillier, who had arrived and been
interviewed at the docks. He had evidently been delighted to find his
work a "storm center," but had declined to commit himself to any direct
statement of fact. The impression left on the pressmen by him, however,
had been that a fight had raged for the possession of his libretto,
which must have been won by the Heaths since Claude Heath had set it to
music. Or had the fight really been between Joseph Crayford and the
management of the Metropolitan Opera House? Gillier had finally
remarked, "I must leave it to you, messieurs. All that matters to me is
that my poor work should be helped to success by music and scenery,
acting and singing. I am not responsible for what Madame Sennier, or
anyone else, says to you."
"Then what do they really believe?" exclaimed Charmian, raising herself
up on the cushions, and resting one flushed cheek on her hand.
"The worst, no doubt!" said Alston.
"What does it matter?" said Claude.
Quickly he took out of a box, clipped, lit, and began to smoke a fresh
cigar.
"What does anything matter so long as we have a success, a big,
resounding success?"
Charmian and Alston exchanged glances, half astonished, half
congratulatory.
"I never realized till I came here," Claude continued, "the necessity of
success to one who wants to continue doing good work. It is like the
breaths of air drawn into his lungs by the swimmer in a race, who, to
get pace, keeps his head low, his mouth under water half the time. I've
simply got to win this race. And if anything helps, even lies from
Madame Sennier, and the sly deceit of Gillier, I mean to welcome it.
That's the only thing to do. Crayford is right. I didn't see it at
first, but I see it now. It's no earthly use the artist trying to keep
himself and his talent in cotton wool in these days. If you've got
anything to give the public it doesn't do to be sensitive about what
people say and think. I had a lecture to-night from Crayford on the uses
of advertisement which has quite enlightened me."
"What did he say?" interjected Alston.
"'My boy, if I were producing some goods, and it would help any to let
them think I'd killed my mother, and robbed my father of his last
nickel, d'you think I'd put them right, switch them on to the truth? Not
at all! I'd get them all around me, and I'd say, "See here, boys,
mother's gone to glory, and father's in the poorhouse, but it isn't up
to me to say why. That's my affair. I know I can rely on you all
to--keep my name before the public."'"
Charmian and Alston broke into laughter, but Claude's face continued to
look grave and excited.
"The fact of the matter is that the work has got to come before the
man," he said. "And now we've all got so far in this affair nothing must
be allowed to keep us back from success. Let the papers say whatever
they like so long as they talk about us. Let Madame Sennier rail and
sneer as much as she chooses. It will be all to the good. Crayford told
me so to-night. He said, 'My boy, it shows they're funky. They think our
combination may be stronger than theirs.' It seems Sennier's new
libretto has come out quite dreadfully at rehearsal, and they've been
trying to re-write a lot of it and change situations. Now, we got
nearly everything cut and dried at Djenan-el-Maqui. By Jove, how I did
work there! D'you remember old Jernington's visit, Charmian? He believed
in the opera, didn't he?"
"I should think so!" she cried. "Why, he positively raved about it. And
he's not an amateur. He only cares for the music--and he's a man who
knows."
"Yes, he does know. What a change in our lives, eh, Charmian, if we
bring off a big success! And you'll be in it Alston."
"Rather! The coming baritone!"
"What a change!"
His eyes shone with excitement.
"I used to be almost afraid of celebrity, I think. But now I want it, I
need it. America has made me need it."
"This is the country that wakes people up," said Alston.
"It drives me almost mad!" cried Claude, with sudden violence.
"Claudie!" exclaimed Charmian.
"It does! There's something here that pumps nervous energy into one
until one's body and mind seem to be swirling in a mill race. When I
think of my life in Mullion House and my life here!"
Charmian, with a quick movement, sat upright on the sofa.
"Then you do realize--" she began, almost excitedly. She paused, gazing
at Claude.
The two men looked at her.
"What is it?" Claude said at length, as she remained silent.
"You do realize that I did see something for you that you hadn't seen
for yourself, when you shut yourself and your talent in, when you
wouldn't look at, wouldn't touch the world?"
"Of course. I hadn't courage then. I dreaded contact with life. Now I
defy life to get the better of me. I know it, and I'm beginning to know
how to deal with it. I say, let us plan out our campaign if Madame
Sennier persists in her accusations."
He sat down between them.
"But first tell us exactly what you gave out to the pressmen to-night,"
said Alston.
They talked till the dawn crept along the sky.
When at last Alston got up to go, Claude said:
"If three strong wills are worth anything we must succeed."
"And we've got Crayford's back of ours," said Alston, putting his arms
behind him into the sleeves of his coat. "Good-morning! I'm really
going."
And he went.
Charmian had got up from her sofa, and was standing by the
writing-table, which was in an angle of the room on the right of the
window. As Alston went out, her eyes fell on an envelope lying by itself
a little apart from the letters with which the table was strewn.
Scarcely thinking about what she was doing she stretched out her hand.
Her intention was to put the envelope with its fellows. But when she
took it up she saw that it had not been opened and contained a letter,
or note, addressed to Claude.
"Why, here's a letter for you, Claudie!" she said, giving it to him.
"Is there? Another autograph hunter, I suppose."
Without glancing at the writing he tore the envelope, took out a letter,
and began to read it.
"It's from Mrs. Shiffney!" he said. "She arrived to-day on the same ship
as Gillier."
"I knew she would come!" cried Charmian. "Though they all pretended she
was going to winter at Cap Martin."
"And she's brought Susan Fleet with her."
"Susan!"
"But read what she says. It seems to have all been quite unexpected, a
sudden caprice."
"You poor thing!" said Charmian, looking at him with pitiful eyes. "When
will you begin to understand?"
"What?"
"Us."
Claude sent a glance so keen that it was almost like a dart at Charmian.
But she did not see it for she was reading the letter.
"THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL,
_Friday._
"DEAR MR. HEATH,--I've just arrived with Susan Fleet on
the _Philadelphia_. I heard such reports of the excitement over
your opera out here that I suddenly felt I must run over. After all
you told me about it at Constantine I'm naturally interested. Do be
nice and let me into a rehearsal. I never take sides in questions
of art, and though of course I'm a friend of the Senniers, I'm
really praying for you to have a triumph. Surely the sky has room
for two stars. What nonsense all this Press got-up rivalry is.
Don't believe a word you see in the papers about Henriette and your
libretto. She knows nothing whatever about it, of course. Such
rubbish! Susan is pining to see her beloved Charmian. Can't you
both lunch with us at Sherry's to-morrow at one o'clock? Love to
Charmian.--Yours very sincerely,
ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."
"Well?" said Claude, as Charmian sat without speaking, after she had
finished the letter. "Shall we go to Sherry's to-morrow?"
He spoke as if he were testing her, but she did not seem to notice it.
"Yes, Claudie, I think we will."
She looked at him.
"What are you thinking?" she asked quickly.
"Do you still believe Mrs. Shiffney tricked me at Constantine?"
"I know she did."
"And yet--"
She interrupted him.
"We are in the arena!"
"Ah--I understand."
"If we go to Sherry's, and Mrs. Shiffney speaks about coming to a
rehearsal, what do you mean to do?"
"What do you think about it?"
"Of course she only wants to come in the hope of being able to carry a
bad report to the Senniers."
Claude was silent for a moment. Then he said:
"That may be. But--we are in the arena."
"What is it?"
"You dislike Mrs. Shiffney, you distrust her, but you do think she has
taste, judgment, don't you?"
"Yes--some."
"A great deal?"
"When she isn't biased by personal feeling. But she is biased against
you."
Claude's eyes had become piercing.
"I think," he said, "that if I were with Mrs. Shiffney at a rehearsal I
should divine her real, her honest opinion, the opinion one has of a
thing whether one wishes to have it or not. If _she_ were to admire the
opera--" He paused. His face looked self-conscious.
"Yes?"
"I only mean that I think it might be the verdict in advance."
"I see," she said slowly. "Yes, I see."
She got up.
"We simply must go to bed."
"Come along then. But I feel as if I should never want to sleep again."
"We must sleep. The verdict in advance--yes, I see. But Adelaide might
make a mistake."
"She really has a flair."
"I know. Oh, Claudie, the verdict!"
They were now in their bedroom. Charmian sighed and put her arms round
his neck.
"The verdict!" she breathed against his cheek softly.
He felt moisture on his cheek. She had pressed wet eyes against it.
"Charmian, what is it? Why--"
"Hush! Just put your arms round me for a minute--yes, like that!
Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win. Oh, not altogether
selfishly! I--I am an egoist, I suppose. I do care for my husband to be
a success. But there's more than that. Yes, yes, there is!"
She held him, with passion, and suddenly kissed his eyes. She was crying
quite openly now, but not unhappily.
[Illustration: "'CLAUDIE, I WANT YOU TO WIN, I WANT YOU TO WIN!'"--_Page
378_]
"There's something in you far, far down, that I love," she whispered. "I
am not always conscious of it, but I am now. It called me to you, I
believe, at the very first. And I want that to win, I want that to win!"
Claude's face had become set. He bent over Charmian. For a moment he was
on the verge of a strange confession. But something that still had great
power held him back from it. And he only said:
"You have worked hard for me. If we do win it will be your victory."
"And if we lose?" she whispered.
"Charmian--" he kissed her. "We must try to sleep."
CHAPTER XXXI
On a night of unnatural excitement Claude had come to a crude
resolution. He kept to it, at first only by a strong effort, during the
days and the nights which followed, calling upon his will with a
recklessness he had never known before, a recklessness which made him
sometimes feel hard and almost brutal. He was "out for" success on the
large scale, and he was now fiercely determined to win it. Within him
the real man seemed to recede like a thing sensitive seeking a
hiding-place. Sometimes, during these strange and crowded days and
nights, he felt as if he were losing himself in the turmoil around him
and within him. And the wish came to him to lose himself, and to have
done for ever with that self which once he had cherished, but which was
surely of no use, of no value at all, in the violent blustering world.
Now and then he saw the pale shining of the lamp in the quiet studio,
where he had dwelt with the dear children of his imagination; now and
then he listened, and seemed to hear the silence there. Then the crowd
closed about him, the noises of life rushed upon him, and the Claude
Heath of those far-off days seemed to pass by him fantastically on the
way to eternal darkness. And, using his will with fury, he cried out to
the fugitive, "Go! Go!" as to something shameful that must not be seen.
Always he was suffering, as a man only suffers when he tries to do
violence to himself, when he treats himself as an enemy. But when he had
time he strove to sneer at his own suffering. Coolness, hardness,
audacity, these were the qualities needed in life as he knew it now;
swiftness not sensitiveness, boldness not delicacy. The world was not
gentle enough for the trembling qualities which vibrate at every touch
of emotion, giving out subtle music. And he would nevermore wish it
gentle. Things as they are! Fall down and worship them! Accommodate
yourself to them lest you be the last of fools!
Claude acted, and carried on by excitement, he acted well. He was helped
by his natural inclination to meet people half-way when he had to meet
them. And he was helped, too, by the cordiality, the quickness of
response, in those about him. Charmian did her part with an energy and
brilliance to which the apparent change in him gave an impetus. Hitherto
she had tried to excite in Claude the worldly qualities which she
supposed to make for success. Now Claude excited them in her. His
vivacity, his intensity, his power to do varied work, and especially the
dominating faculty which he now began to display, sometimes almost
amazed her. She said to herself, "I have never known him till now!" She
said to Alston Lake, "Isn't it extraordinary how Claude is coming out?"
And she began to look up to him in a new way, but with the worldly eyes,
not with the mild or the passionate eyes of the spirit.
Others, too, were impressed by the change in Claude. After the luncheon
at Sherry's Mrs. Shiffney said, with a sort of reluctance, to Charmian:
"The air of America seems to agree with your composer. Has he been on
Riverside Drive getting rid of the last traces of the Puritan tradition?
Or is it the theater which has stirred him up? He's a new man."
"There's a good deal more in Claude than people were inclined to suppose
in London," said Charmian, trying to speak with light indifference, but
secretly triumphing.
"Evidently!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Perhaps, now that you've forced him to
come out into the open, he enjoys being a storm-center, as they call it
out here."
"Oh, but I didn't force him!"
"Playfully begged him not to come, I meant."
Claude was sitting a little way off talking to Susan Fleet. Mrs.
Shiffney had "managed" this. She wanted to feel how things were through
the woman. Then perhaps she would tackle the man. At lunch it had seemed
to her as if success were in the air. Had she always been mistaken in
her judgment of Claude Heath! Had Charmian seen more clearly and farther
than she had? She felt more interested in Charmian than she had ever
felt before, and disliked her, in consequence, much more than formerly.
How Charmian would triumph if the Heath opera were a success! How
unbearable she would be! In fancy Mrs. Shiffney saw Charmian enthroned,
and "giving herself" a thousand airs. Mrs. Shiffney had never forgiven
Charmian for taking possession of Claude. She did not hate her for that.
Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked
those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as
the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating
Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in
which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she
wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his
intensity, his vivacity, his resolution, she was conscious of
fascination. He puzzled her. "There really is a great deal in him," she
said to herself. And she wished that some of that "great deal" could be
hers. As it could not be hers, unless her judgment of a man, not happily
come to, and now almost angrily accepted, was at fault, she wished to
punish. She could not help this. But she did not desire to help it.
Mrs. Shiffney separated from the Heaths that day without speaking of the
"libretto-scandal," as the papers now called the invention of Madame
Sennier. They parted apparently on cordial terms. And Mrs. Shiffney's
last words were:
"I'm coming to see you one day in your eyrie at the Saint Regis. I take
no sides where art is in question, and I want both the operas to be
brilliant successes."
She had said not a word about the rehearsals at the New Era Opera House.
Charmian was almost disappointed by her silence. She had turned over and
over in her mind Claude's words about the verdict in advance. She
continued to dwell upon them mentally after the meeting with Mrs.
Shiffney. By degrees she became almost obsessed by the idea of Mrs.
Shiffney as arbiter of Claude's destiny and hers.
Mrs. Shiffney's position had always fascinated Charmian, because it was
the position she would have loved to occupy. Even in her dislike, her
complete distrust of Mrs. Shiffney, Charmian was attracted by her. Now
she longed with increasing intensity to use Mrs. Shiffney as a test.
Rehearsals of Claude's opera were being hurried on. Crayford was
determined to produce his novelty before the Metropolitan crowd produced
theirs.
"They've fixed the first," he said. "Then it's up to us to be ready by
the twenty-eighth, and that's all there is to it. We'll get time enough
to die all right afterward. But there aren't got to be no dying nor
quitting now. We've fixed the locusts, and now we'll start in to fix all
the rest of the cut-out."
He had begun to call Claude's opera "the cut-out" because he said it was
certain to cut out Sennier's work. The rumors about the weakness of
Sennier's libretto had put the finishing touch to his pride and
enthusiasm. Thenceforth he set no bounds to his expectations.
"We've got a certainty!" he said. "And they know it."
His energy was volcanic. He knew neither rest nor the desire to rest.
His season so far had been successful, much more successful than any
former season of his. He knew that he was making way with the great New
York public, and he was carried on by the vigor which flames up in a
strong and determined man who believes himself to be almost within reach
of the satisfaction of his greatest desire.
Claude, in his new character of the man determined to win a great
popular triumph, appealed forcibly to Crayford.
"I've made him over!" he exclaimed to Charmian, almost with exultation.
"He's a man now. When I lit out on him he was--well, well, little lady,
don't you begin to fire up at me! All I mean is that Claude knows how to
carry things with him now. Look how he's stood up against all the
nonsense about the libretto! Why, he's right down enjoyed it. And the
first night the pressmen started in he was like a man possessed, talked
about his honor, and all that kind of rubbish. Now he says 'Stir it up!
It's all for the good of the opera!' Cane's fairly mad about him, says
he's on the way to be the best boom-center that ever made a publicity
agent feel young. I'm proud of him! And he's moving all the time. He'll
get there and no mistake!"
"I always knew Claude would rise to his chance if he got it," she said.
"He's got it now, don't you worry yourself. Not one man in a million has
such a chance at his age. I tell you, Claude is a made man!"
A made man! Charmian felt a thrill at her heart. But again she longed
for a verdict from outside, for a verdict from Mrs. Shiffney.
In the midst of the tumult of her life one day, very soon after the
lunch at Sherry's, she begged Susan Fleet to come to see her. That day
Claude and she had been with Gillier at the theater. As they had ignored
Mrs. Shiffney's treachery in the affair of the libretto, so they had
ignored Gillier's insulting behavior to them at Djenan-el-Maqui. Against
his will he was with them now in the great enterprise. They had resolved
to be charming to him, and had taken care to be so. And Gillier,
delighted with the notoriety that was his, his conceit decked out with
feathers, met them half-way. He was impressed by the situation which
Crayford's powerful efforts had created for them. He was moved by the
marked change in Claude. These people did not seem to him the same
husband and wife he had known in the hidden Arab house at Mustapha. They
had gained immeasurably in importance. Comment rained upon them.
Conflict swirled about them. Expectations centered upon them. And they
had the air of those upon whose footsteps the goddess, Success, is
following. Gillier began to lose his regret for his lost opportunity. He
was insensibly drawn to the Heaths by the spell of united effort. Now
that Claude did not seem to care twopence for him, or for anyone else,
Gillier began to respect him, to think a good deal of him. In Charmian
he had always been aware of certain faculties which often make for
success.
On the day when Charmian was expected to see Susan Fleet she had just
come from an afternoon rehearsal which had gone well. Gillier had been
almost savagely delighted with the performance of Enid Mardon, who sang
and acted the rôle of the heroine. He knew little of music, but in the
scene rehearsed Claude had introduced a clever imitation, if not an
exact reproduction, of the songs of Said Hitani and his companions.
This had aroused the enthusiasm of Gillier, who had a curious love of
the country where he had spent the wild years of his youth. It had been
evident both to Charmian and to Claude that he began to have great hopes
of the opera. Charmian had become so exultant on noticing this that she
had been unable to refrain from saying to Gillier, "Do you begin to
believe in it?" As she sat now waiting for Susan she remembered his
answer, "Madame, if the whole opera goes like that scene--well!" He had
finished with a characteristic gesture, throwing out his strong hands
and smiling at her. She almost felt as if she liked Gillier. She began
to find excuses for his former conduct. He was a poor man struggling to
make his way, terribly anxious to succeed. Madame Sennier had "got at"
him. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that he had wished to associate
himself with Jacques Sennier. Of course he had had no right to suggest
the withdrawal of his libretto from Claude. That had been insulting. But
still--that day Charmian found room in her heart for charity. She had
not felt so happy, so safe, for a very long time. It was almost as if
she held success in her hand, as a woman may hold a jewel and say, "It
is mine!"
A slight buzzing sound told her that there was someone at the outer door
of the lobby. In a moment Susan walked in, looking as usual temperate,
kind, and absolutely unconscious of herself. She was warmly wrapped in a
fur given to her by Mrs. Shiffney. When she had taken it off and sat
down beside Charmian in the over-heated room, Charmian began at once to
use her as a receptacle. She proceeded to pour her exultation into
Susan. The rehearsal had greatly excited her. She was full of the ardent
impatience of one who had been patient by force of will in defiance of
natural character, and who now felt that a period was soon to be put to
her suffering and that she was to enter into her reward. As, long ago,
in an Algerian garden, she had used Susan, she used her now. And Susan
sat quietly listening, with her odd eyes dropping in their sockets.
"Oh, Susan, do take off your gloves!" Charmian exclaimed presently. "You
are going to stay a good while, aren't you?"
"Yes, if you like me to."
"I should like to be with you every day for hours. You do me good. We'll
have tea."
She went to the telephone, came back quickly, sat down again, and
continued talking enthusiastically. When the tea-table was in front of
her, and the elderly German waiter had gone, she said:
"Isn't it wonderful? I shall never forget how you spoke of destiny to me
when we were by the little island. It was then, I think, that I felt it
was my fate to link myself with Claude, to help him on. Do you remember
what you said?"
"That perhaps it was designed that you should teach Mr. Heath."
"Don't say mister--on such a day as this!"
"Claude, then."
"And, Susan, I don't want to seem vain, but I have taught him, I have
taught him to know and rely on himself, to believe in himself, in his
genius, to dominate. He's marvellously changed. Everyone notices it. You
do, of course!"
"There is a change. And I remember saying that perhaps it was designed
that you should learn from him. Do you recollect that?"
Charmian was handing Susan her tea-cup.
"Oh--yes," she said.
She looked at Susan as the latter took the cup with a calm and steady
hand.
"What excellent tea!" observed Susan.
"Is it? Susan!"
"Well?"
"I believe you are very reserved."
"No, I don't think so."
"Yes, you keep half your thoughts about things and people entirely to
yourself."
"I think most of us do that."
"About me, for instance! I've been talking a great deal to you in here.
And you've been listening, and thinking."
There was an uneasy sound in Charmian's voice.
"Yes. Didn't you wish me to listen?"
"I suppose I did. But you've been thinking. What have you been
thinking?"
"That it's a long journey up the ray," said Susan, with a sort of gentle
firmness.
"Ah--the ray! I remember your saying that to me long ago."
"We've got a great deal to learn, I think, as well as to teach."
Charmian was silent for a minute.
"Do you mean that you think I only care to teach, that I--that I am not
much of a pupil?" she said at length.
"Perhaps that is putting it too strongly. But I believe your husband had
a great deal to give."
"Claude! Do you? But yes, of course--Susan!" Charmian's voice changed,
became almost sharply interrogative. "Do you mean that Claude could
teach me more than I could ever teach him?"
"It is impossible for me to be sure of that."
"Perhaps. But, tell me, do you think it is so?"
"I am inclined to."
Charmian felt as if she flushed. She was conscious of a stir of
something that was like anger within her. It hurt her very much to think
that perhaps Susan put Claude higher than her. But she controlled the
expression of what she felt, and only said, perhaps a little coldly:
"It ought to be so. He is so much cleverer than I am."
"I don't think I mean that. It isn't always cleverness we learn from."
"Goodness then!"
Charmian forced herself to smile.
"Do you think me far below Claude from the moral point of view?" she
added, with an attempt at laughing lightness.
"It isn't that either. But I think he has let out an anchor which
reaches bottom, though perhaps at present he isn't aware of it. And I'm
not sure that you ever have. By the way, I've a message from Adelaide
for you."
"Yes?"
"She wants to know how your rehearsals are going."
"Wonderfully well, as I said."
Charmain spoke almost gravely. Her exultant enthusiasm had died away for
the moment.
"And, if it is allowed, she would like to go to one. Can she?"
Charmian hesitated. But the strong desire for Mrs. Shiffney's verdict
overcame a certain suddenly born reluctance of which she was aware, and
she said:
"I should think so. Why not? Even a spy cannot destroy the merit of the
enemy's work by wishing."
Susan said nothing to this.
"You must come with her if she does come," Charmian added.
She was still feeling hurt. She had looked upon Susan as her very
special friend. She had let Susan see into her heart. And now she
realized that Susan had criticized that heart. At that moment Charmian
was too unreasonable to remember that criticism is often an
inevitable movement of the mind which does not touch the soul to change
it. Her attempt at cordiality was, therefore, forced.
"I don't know whether she will want me," said Susan. "But at any rate I
shall be there for the first night."
"Ah--the first night!" said Charmian.
Again she changed. With the thought of the coming epoch in her life and
Claude's her vexation died.
"It's coming so near!" she said. "There are moments when I want to rush
toward it, and others when I wish it were far away. It's terrible when
so much hangs on one night, just three or four hours of time. One does
need courage in art. But Claude has found it. Yes, Susan, you are right.
Claude is finer than I am. He is beginning to dominate me here, as he
never dominated me before. If he triumphs--and he will, he shall
triumph!--I believe I shall be quite at his feet."
She laughed, but tears were not far from her eyes. This period she was
passing through in New York was tearing at her nerves with teeth and
claws although she scarcely knew it.
Susan, who had seen clearly the hurt she had inflicted, moved, came
nearer to Charmian, and gently took one of her hands.
"My dear," she said. "Does it matter so much which it is?"
"Matter! Of course it does. Everything hangs upon it--for us, I mean, of
course. We have given up everything for the opera, altered our lives. It
is to be the beginning of everything for us."
Susan looked steadily at Charmian with her ugly, beautiful eyes.
"Perhaps it might be that in either case," she said. "Dear Charmian, I
think preaching is rather odious. I hope I don't often step into the
pulpit. But we've talked of many things, of things I care for and
believe in. May I tell you something I think with the whole of my mind,
and even more than that as it seems to me?"
"Yes. Yes, Susan!"
"I think the success or failure only matters really as it affects
character, and the relation existing between your soul and your
husband's. The rest scarcely counts, I think. And so, if I were to pray
about such a thing as this opera, pray with the impulse of a friend who
really does care for you, I should pray that your two souls might have
what they need, what they must be asking for, whether that is a great
success, or a great failure."
The door opened and Claude came in on the two women.
"Did I hear the word failure?" he said, smiling, as he went up to Susan
and took her hand. "Charmian, I wonder you allow it to be spoken in our
sitting-room."
"I--I didn't--we weren't," she almost stammered. But quickly recovering
herself, she said:
"Susan has come with a message from Adelaide Shiffney."
"You mean about being let in at a rehearsal?"
"Yes," said Susan.
"I've just been with Mrs. Shiffney. She called at the theater after you
had gone, Charmian. I drove to the Ritz with her and went in."
Charmian looked narrowly at her husband.
"Then of course she spoke about the rehearsal?"
"Yes. Madame Sennier dropped in upon us. What do you think of that?"
Charmian thought that his face and manner were strangely hard.
"Madame Sennier! And did you stay, did you--"
"Of course. I thanked her for giving the opera such a lift with her
slanders about the libretto. I tackled her. It was the greatest fun. I
only wish Crayford had been there to hear me."
"How did she take it?" asked Charmian, glancing at Susan, and feeling
uncomfortable.
"She was furious, I think. I hope so. I meant her to be. But she didn't
say much, except that the papers were full of lies, and nobody believed
them except fools. When she was going I gave her a piece of news to
comfort her."
"What was that?"
"That my opera will be produced the night before her husband's."
Susan got up.
"Well, I must go," she said. "I've been here a long time, and daresay
you both want to rest."
"Rest!" exclaimed Claude. "That's the last thing we want, isn't it,
Charmian?"
He helped Susan to put on her fur.
"There's another rehearsal to-night after the performance of _Aïda_. You
see it's a race, and we mean to be in first. I wish you could have seen
Madame Sennier's face when I told her we should produce on the
twenty-eighth."
He laughed. But neither Charmian nor Susan laughed with him. As Susan
was leaving he said:
"You come from the enemy's camp, but you do wish us success, don't you?"
"I have just been telling Charmian what I wish you," answered Susan
gently, with her straight and quiet look.
"Have you?" He wheeled round to Charmian. "What was it?"
Charmian looked taken aback.
"Oh--what was it?"
"Yes?" said Claude.
"The--the very best! Wasn't it, Susan?"
"Yes. I wished you the very best."
"Capital! Too bad, you are going!"
He went with Susan to the door.
When he came back he said to Charmian:
"Susan Fleet is very quiet, the least obtrusive person I ever met. But
she's strange. I believe she sees far."
His face and manner had changed. He threw himself down in a chair and
leaned his head against the back of it.
"I'm going to relax for a minute, Charmian. It's the only way to rest.
And I shall be up most of the night."
He shut his eyes. His whole body seemed to become loose.
"She sees far, I think," he murmured, scarcely moving his sensitive
lips.
Charmian sat watching his pale forehead, his white eyelids.
And New York roared outside.
CHAPTER XXXII
The respective publicity agents of the two opera houses had been so
energetic in their efforts on behalf of their managements, that, to the
Senniers, the Heaths, and all those specially interested in the rival
enterprises, it began to seem as if the whole world hung upon the two
operas, as if nothing mattered but their success or failure. Charmian
received all the "cuttings" which dealt with the works and their
composers, with herself and Madame Sennier, from a newspaper clipping
bureau. And during these days of furious preparation she read no other
literature. Whenever she was in the hotel, and not with people, she was
poring over these articles, or tabulating and arranging them in books.
The Heaths, Claude Heath, Charmian Heath, Claude Heath's opera, Armand
Gillier and Claude Heath, Madame Sennier's quarrel with Claude Heath,
Mrs. Heath's brilliant efforts for her talented husband, Joseph
Crayford's opinion of Mrs. Charmian Heath, how a clever woman can help
her husband--was there really anything of importance in this world
except Charmian and Claude Heath's energy, enterprise, and ultimate
success?
From the hotel she went to the Opera House. And there she was in the
midst of a world apart, which seemed to her the whole of the world.
Everybody whom she met there was concentrated on the opera. She talked
to orchestral players about the musical effects; to the conductor about
detail, color, ensemble; to scene-painters about the various "sets,"
their arrangement, lighting, the gauzes used in them, the properties,
the back cloths; to machinists about the locusts and other sensations;
to the singers about their rôles; to dancers about their strange Eastern
poses; to Fakirs about their serpents and their miracles. She lived in
the opera, as the opera lived in the vast theater. She was, as it were,
enclosed in a shell within a shell. New York was the great sea murmuring
outside. And always it was murmuring of the opera. In consequence of
Jacob Crayford's great opinion of Charmian she was the spoilt child in
his theater. Her situation there was delightful. Everybody took his cue
from Crayford. And Crayford's verdict on Charmian was, "She's a
wonderful little lady. I know her, and I say she's a peach. Heath did
the cleverest thing he ever did in his life when he married her."
Charmian really had influence with Crayford, and she used it, revelling
in a sense of her power and importance. He consulted her about many
points in the performance. And she spoke her mind with decision, growing
day by day in self-reliance. In the theater she was generally
surrounded, and she grew to love it as she had never loved any place
before. The romance and beauty of Djenan-el-Maqui were as nothing in
comparison with the fascination of the Monster with the Maw, vast, dark,
and patient, waiting for its evening provender. To Charmian it seemed
like a great personality. Often she found herself thinking of it as
sentient, brooding over the opera, secretly attentive to all that was
going on in connection with it. She loved its darkness, the ghostly
lightness of the covers spread over it, the ranges of its gaping boxes,
the far-off mystery of its galleries receding into a heaven of ebon
blackness. She wandered about it, sitting first here, then there,
becoming intimate with the monster on whom she sometimes felt as if her
life and fortunes depended.
"All this we are doing for you!" something within her seemed to whisper.
"Will you be satisfied with our efforts? Will you reward us?"
And then, in imagination, she saw the monster changed. No longer it
brooded, watched, considered, waited. It had sprung into ardent life,
put off its darkness, wrapped itself in a garment of light.
"You have given me what I needed!" she heard it saying. "Look!"
And she saw the crowd!
Then sometimes she shut her eyes. She wanted to feel the crowd, those
masses of souls in masses of bodies for which she had done so much.
Always surely they had been keeping the ring for Claude and for her. And
it seemed to her that, unseen, they had circled the Isle in the far-off
Algerian garden where she first spoke of her love and desire for Claude,
that they had ever since been attending upon her life. Had they not
muttered about the white house that held the worker? Had they not stared
at the one who sat waiting by the fountain? Had they not seen the
arrival of Jacob Crayford? Had they not assisted at those long
colloquies when the opera which was for them was changed? Absurdly, she
felt as if they had. And now, very soon, it would be for them to speak.
And striving to shut her eyes more firmly, or pressing her fingers upon
them, Charmian saw moving hands, a forest of them below, circles above
circles of them, and in the distance of the gods a mist of them. And she
saw the shining of thousands of eyes, in which were mirrored strangely,
almost mystically, souls that Claude's music, conceived in patience and
labor, had moved and that wished to tell him so.
She saw the crowd! And she saw it returning to listen again. And she
remembered, with the extraordinary vitality of an ardent woman, who was
still little more than a girl, how she had sat opposite to the
white-faced, red-haired heroine on the first night of Jacques Sennier's
_Paradis Terrestre_; how she had watched her, imaginatively entered into
her mind, become one with her. That night Claude had written his letter
to her, Charmian. The force in her, had entered into him, had inspired
him to do what he did that night, had inspired him to do what he had
since done always near to her. And soon, very soon, the white-faced,
red-haired woman would be watching her.
Then something that was almost like an intoxication of the senses,
something that, though it was born in the mind, seemed intimately
physical, came upon, rushed over Charmian. It was the intoxication of an
acute ambition which believed itself close to fulfilment. Life seemed
very wonderful to her. Scarcely could she imagine anything more
wonderful than life holding the gift she asked for, the gift something
in her demanded. And she connected love with ambition, even with
notoriety. She conceived of a satisfied ambition drawing two human
beings together, cementing their hearts together, merging their souls in
one.
"How I shall love Claude triumphant!" she thought exultantly, even
passionately, as if she were thinking of a man new made, more lovable by
a big measure than he had been before. And she saw love triumphant with
wings of flame mounting into the regions of desire, drawing her soul up.
"Claude's triumph will develop me," she thought. "Through it I shall
become the utmost of which I am capable. I am one of those women who can
only thrive in the atmosphere of glory."
Claude triumphant, and made triumphant by her! She cherished that
imagination. She became possessed by it.
Everything conspired to keep that imagination alive and powerful within
her. Crayford was an enthusiast for the opera, and infected all those
who belonged to him, who were connected with his magnificent theater,
with his own enthusiasm. The scene-painter, who had, almost with genius,
prepared exquisite Eastern pictures, was an enthusiast foreseeing that
he would gain in the opera the triumph of his career. The machinist was
"fairly wild" about the opera. Had he not invented the marvellous locust
effect, which was to be a new sensation? Mr. Mulworth, by dint of
working with fury and sitting up all night, had become fanatical about
the opera. He existed only for it. No thought of any other thing could
find a resting-place in his mind. His "production" was going to be a
masterpiece such as had never before been known in the history of the
stage. Nothing had been forgotten. He had brought the East to New York.
It was inconceivable by him that New York could reject it. He spoke
about the music, but he meant his "production." The man was a marvel in
his own line, and such a worker as can rarely be found anywhere. He
believed the opera was going to mark an epoch in the history of the
lyric stage. And he said so, almost wildly, in late hours of the night
to Charmian.
Then there was Alston, who was to have his first great chance in the
opera, and who grew more fervently believing with each rehearsal.
The great theater was pervaded by optimism, which flowed from the
fountain-head of its owner. And this optimism percolated through certain
sections of society in New York, as had been the case in London before
Sennier's _Paradis Terrestre_ was given for the first time.
Report of the opera was very good. And with each passing day it became
better.
Charmian remembered what had happened in London, and thought exultantly,
"Success is in the air."
It certainly seemed to be so. Rumor was busy and spoke kind things.
Charmian noticed that the manner of many people toward her and Claude
was becoming increasingly cordial. The pressmen whom she met gave her
unmistakable indications that they expected great things of her husband.
Two of them, musical critics both, came to dine with her and Claude one
night at the St. Regis, and talked music for hours. One of them had
lived in Paris, and was steeped in modernity. He was evidently much
interested in Claude's personality, and after dinner, when they had all
returned from the restaurant to the Heaths' sitting-room, he said to
Charmian:
"Your husband is the most interesting English personality I have met. He
is the only Englishman who has ever given to me the feeling of
strangeness, of the beyond."
He glanced around with his large Southern eyes and saw that there was a
piano in the room.
"Would he play to us, do you think?" he said, rather tentatively. "I am
not asking as a pressman but as a keen musician."
"Claude!" Charmian said. "Mr. Van Brinen asks if you will play us a
little bit of the opera."
Claude got up.
"Why not?" he said.
He spoke firmly. His manner was self-reliant, almost determined. He went
to the piano, sat down, and played the scene Gillier had liked so much,
the scene in which some of Said Hitani's curious songs were reproduced.
The two journalists were evidently delighted.
"That's new!" said Van Brinen. "Nothing like that has ever been heard
here before. It brings a breath of the East to Broadway."
Claude had turned half round on the piano stool. His eyes were fixed
upon Van Brinen. And now Van Brinen looked at him. There was an instant
of silence. Then Claude swung round again to the piano and began to play
something that was not out of the opera. Charmian had never heard it
before. But Mrs. Mansfield had heard it.
"'I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven
angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God
upon the earth...."
"'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became
as the blood of a dead man....
"'The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was
given to him to scorch men with fire....
"'The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river
Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the
Kings of the East might be prepared....
"'Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and
keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.'"
When Claude ceased there was a silence that seemed long. He remained
sitting with his back to his wife and his guests, his face to the piano.
At last he got up and turned, and his eyes again sought the face of Van
Brinen. Then Van Brinen moved, clasped his long and thin hands tightly
together, and said:
"That's great! That's very great!"
He paused, gazing at Claude.
"That's enormous!" he said. "Do you mean--is that from the opera?"
"Oh, no!" said Claude.
He came to sit down, and began to talk quickly of all sorts of things.
When the two pressmen were about to go away Van Brinen said:
"I wish you success, Mr. Heath, as I have very seldom wished it for any
man. For since I have heard some of your music, I feel that you deserve
it as very few musicians I know anything of do."
Claude's face flushed painfully, became scarlet.
"Thank you very much," he almost muttered. But he wrung Van Brinen's
thin hand hard, and when he was alone with Charmian he said:
"Of all the men I have met in New York that is the one I like best."
Van Brinen had considerable influence in the musical world of New York,
and after that evening he used it on Claude's behalf. The members of the
art circles of the city had Claude's name perpetually upon their lips.
Articles began to appear which voiced the great expectation musicians
were beginning to found upon Claude's work. The "boom" grew, and was no
longer merely sensational, a noisy thing worked up by paid agents.
Charmian became quickly aware of this and exulted. Now and then she
remembered her conversation with Susan Fleet and had a moment of doubt,
of wonder. Now and then a fleeting expression in the pale face of her
husband, a look in his eyes, a sound in his voice, even a movement, sent
a slight chill through her heart. But these faintly disagreeable
sensations passed swiftly from her. The whirling round of life took her,
swept her on. She had scarcely time to think, though she had always time
to feel intensely.
Often during these days of fierce preparation she was separated from
Claude. He had innumerable things to do connected with the production.
Charmian haunted the opera house, but was seldom actually with Claude
there, though she often saw him on the stage or in the orchestra, heard
him discussing points concerning his work. And Claude was very often
away, when rehearsals did not demand his attention, visiting the singers
who were to appear in the opera, going through their rôles with them,
trying to imbue them with his exact meaning. Charmian meanwhile was with
some of the many friends she had made in New York.
Thus it happened that Claude was able to meet Mrs. Shiffney several
times without Charmian's knowledge.
It was an understood thing--and Charmian knew this--that Mrs. Shiffney
was to come to the first full rehearsal of the opera. The verdict in
advance was to be given and taken. Mrs. Shiffney had called once at the
St. Regis, when Claude was out, and had sat for ten minutes with
Charmian. And Charmian had called upon her at the Ritz-Carlton and had
not found her. Here matters had ended in connection with "Adelaide," so
far as Charmian knew. Mrs. Shiffney had multitudes of friends in New
York, and was always rushing about. It never occurred to Charmian that
she had any time to give to Claude, or that Claude had any time to give
to her. But Mrs. Shiffney always found time to do anything she really
cared to do. And just now she cared to meet Claude.
Long ago in London, when he was very genuine, she had been attracted by
him. Now, in New York, when he was dressed up in motley, with painted
face and eyes that strove, though sometimes in vain, to be false, he
fascinated her. The new Claude, harder, more dominant, secretly unhappy,
feverish with a burning excitement of soul and brain, appealed to this
woman who loved all that was strange, exotic, who hated and despised the
commonplace, and who lived on excitement.
She threw out one or two lures for Claude, and he, who in London had
refused her invitations, in New York accepted them. Why did he do this?
Because he had flung away his real self, because he was secretly angry
with, hated the self to which he was giving the rein, because he, too,
during this period was living on excitement, because he longed
sometimes, with a cruel longing, to raise up a barrier between himself
and Charmian.
And perhaps there were other reasons that only a physician could have
explained, reasons connected with tired and irritated nerves, with a
brain upon which an unnatural strain had been put. The overworked man of
talent sometimes is confronted with strange figures making strange
demands upon him. Claude knew these figures now.
He had always been aware of fascination in Mrs. Shiffney. Now he let
himself go toward this fascination. He had always, too, felt what he had
called the minotaur-thing in her, the creature with teeth and claws
fastening upon pleasure. Now he was ready to be with the minotaur-thing.
For something within him, that was intimately connected with whatever he
had of genius, murmured incessantly, "To-morrow I die!" And he wanted,
at any cost, to dull the sound of that voice. Why should not he let his
monster fasten on pleasure too? The situation was full of a piquancy
which delighted Mrs. Shiffney. She was "on the other side," and was now
preparing to make love in the enemy's camp. Nothing pleased her more
than to mingle art with love, linking the intelligence of her brain with
the emotion, such as it was, of her thoroughly pagan heart. And the
feeling that she was a sort of traitress to her beloved Jacques and
Henriette was quite enchanting. One thing more gave a very feminine zest
to her pursuit--the thought of Charmian, who knew nothing about it, but
who, no doubt, would know some day. She rejoiced in intrigue, loved a
secret that would eventually be hinted at, if not actually told, and
revelled in proving her power on a man who, in his unknown days, had
resisted it, and who now that he was on the eve, perhaps, of a wide
fame, seemed ready to succumb to it. There were even moments when she
found herself wishing for the success of Claude's opera, despite her
active dislike of Charmian. It would really be such fun to take Claude
away from that silly Charmian creature in the very hour of a triumph.
Yet she did not wish to see Charmian even the neglected wife of a great
celebrity. Her feelings were rather complex. But she had always been at
home with complexity.
She managed to get rid of Susan Fleet, by persuading her to visit some
friends of Susan who lived in Washington. Then it was easy enough to see
Claude quietly, in her apartment at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and
elsewhere. Mrs. Shiffney was a past mistress of what she called "playing
about." Claude recognized this, and had a glimpse into a life strangely
different from his own, an almost intimate glimpse which both interested
and disgusted him.
In his determination to grasp at the blatant thing, the big success, a
determination that pushed him almost inevitably into a certain
extravagance of conduct, because it was foreign to his innermost nature,
Claude gave himself to the vulgar vanity of the male. He was out here to
conquer. Why not conquer Mrs. Shiffney? To do that would be scarcely
more spurious than to win with a "made over" opera.
He kept secret assignations, which were not openly supposed to be secret
by either Mrs. Shiffney or himself. For Mrs. Shiffney was leading him
gently, savoring nuances, while he was feeling blatant, though saved by
his breeding from showing it. They had some charming, some almost
exciting talks, full of innuendo, of veiled allusions to personal
feeling and the human depths. And all this was mingled with art and the
great life of human ambition. Mrs. Shiffney's attraction to artists was
a genuine thing in her. She really felt the pull of that which was
secretly powerful in Claude. And she, not too consciously, made him know
this. The knowledge drew him toward her.
One day Claude went to see her after a long rehearsal. When he reached
the hotel it was nearly eight o'clock. The rehearsal of his opera had
only been stopped because it had been necessary to get ready for the
evening performance. Claude had promised to dine with Van Brinen that
night, and Charmian was dining with some friends. But, at the last
moment, Van Brinen had telephoned to say that he was obliged to go to a
concert on behalf of his paper. Claude had left the opera house, weary,
excited, doubtful what to do. If he returned to the St. Regis he would
be all alone. At that moment he dreaded solitude. After hesitating for a
moment outside the stage door, he called a taxi-cab, and ordered the man
to drive to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Mrs. Shiffney would probably be out, would almost certainly have some
engagement for the evening. The hour was unorthodox for a visit. Claude
did not care. He had been drowned in his own music for hours. He was in
a strongly emotional condition, and wanted to do something strange,
something bizarre.
He sent up his name to Mrs. Shiffney, who was at home. In a few moments
she sent down to say she would see him in her sitting-room. When Claude
came into it he found her there in an evening gown.
"Do forgive me! You're going out?" he said.
"Where are you dining?" she answered.
Claude made a vague gesture.
"Have you come to dine with me?" she said, smiling.
"But I see you are going out!"
She shook her powerful head.
"We will dine up here. But I must telephone to a number in Fifth
Avenue."
She went toward the telephone.
"Oh, but I can't keep you at home. It is too outrageous!" he said.
"Give me time to telephone!" she answered, looking round at him over her
shoulder.
"You are much too kind!" he said. "I--I looked in to settle about your
coming to that rehearsal."
She got on to the number in Fifth Avenue and spoke through the telephone
softly.
"There! That's done! And now help me to order a dinner for--" she
glanced at him shrewdly--"a tired genius."
Claude smiled. They consulted together, amicably arranging the menu.
The dinner was brought quickly, and they sat down, one on each side of a
round table decorated with lilies of the valley.
"I'm playing traitress to-night," Mrs. Shiffney said in her deep voice.
"I was to have been at a dinner arranged for the Senniers by Mrs.
Algernon Batsford."
"I am so ashamed."
"Or are you a little bit flattered?"
"Both, perhaps."
"A divinely complex condition. Tell me about the rehearsal."
They plunged into a discussion on music. Mrs. Shiffney was a past
mistress in the art of subtle flattery, when she chose to be. And she
always chose to be, in the service of her caprices. She understood well
the vanity of the artistic temperament. She even understood its reverse
side, which was strongly developed in Claude. Her efforts were dedicated
to the dual temperament, and beautifully. The discussion was long and
animated, lasting all through dinner to the time of Turkish coffee.
Claude forgot his fatigue, and Mrs. Shiffney almost forgot her caprice.
She became genuinely interested in the discussion merely as a
discussion. Her sincere passion for art got the upper hand in her. And
this made her the more delightful. The evening fled and its feet were
winged.
"I was going to a party at Eve Inness's," she said, when half-past ten
chimed in the clock on her writing-table. "But I'll give it up."
Claude sprang to his feet.
"Really you must not. I must go. I must really. I know I need any amount
of sleep to make up arrears."
"You don't look sleepy."
"How could I, in New York?"
"We don't need to sleep here. Sit down again. Eve Inness is quite
definitely given up."
"But--"
Mrs. Shiffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he
remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had
looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now
he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he
felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look
he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have
won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels
it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:
"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The
two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all
this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think--" he
paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine.
But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you
genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"
After a minute Mrs. Shiffney said:
"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."
Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked
absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something
strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just
then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or
desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by
this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature
intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her
either to a really violent passion, of the burning straw species, for
Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.
"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.
And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature
deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude
felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true
self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish
pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment
was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs.
Shiffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was
certainly the cry of the real man in Claude. And he had to heed it. But
he loathed himself at this moment. And he felt that he had given Mrs.
Shiffney the right to hate him for ever.
"My weakness is my curse!" he thought. "It makes me utterly
contemptible. I must slay it!"
Desperation seized him. Abruptly he got up.
"You are much too kind!" he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
"I can never be grateful enough to you. If I--if I do succeed, I shall
know at any rate that one--" He met her eyes and stopped.
"Good-night!" she said. "I'm afraid I must send you away now, for I
believe I will run in for a minute to Eve Inness, after all."
As Claude descended to the hall he knew that he had left an enemy behind
him.
But the knowledge which really troubled him was that he deserved to have
Mrs. Shiffney for an enemy.
His own self, his own manhood, whipped him.
CHAPTER XXXIII
That night, when Claude arrived at the St. Regis, Charmian was still
out. She did not return till just after midnight. When she came into the
sitting-room she found Claude in an armchair near the window, which was
slightly open. He had no book or paper, and seemed to be listening to
something.
"Claudie! Why, what are you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said.
"But the window! Aren't you catching cold?"
He shook his head.
"I believe you were listening to 'New York'!" she continued, taking off
her cloak.
"I was."
She put her cloak down on the sofa.
"Listening for the verdict?" she said. "Trying to divine what it will
be?"
"Something like that, perhaps."
"There is still a good deal of the child in you, Claude," she said
seriously, but fondly too.
"Is there? Too much perhaps," he answered in a low voice.
"What's the matter? Are you feeling depressed?"
She sat down close to him.
"Are you doubtful, anxious to-night?"
"Well, this is rather an anxious time. The strain is strong."
"But you are strong, too!"
"I!" he exclaimed.
And there was in his voice a sound of great bitterness.
"Yes, I think you are. I know you are."
"You have very little reason for knowing such a thing," he answered,
still with bitterness.
"You mean?"--she was looking at him almost furtively. "Whatever you
mean," she concluded, "I can't help it! I think you are. Or perhaps I
really mean that I think you would be."
"Would be! When?"
"Oh! I don't know! In a great moment, a terrible moment perhaps!"
She dropped her eyes, and began slowly to pull off her gloves.
"Talking of the verdict," she said presently, glancing toward the still
open window, "is the date of the first full rehearsal fixed?"
"Yes. We decided on it this evening at the theater."
"When is it to be?"
"Next Friday night. There's no performance that night. We begin at six.
I daresay we shall get through about six the next morning."
"Friday! Have you--I mean, are you going to ask Mrs. Shiffney?"
During their long and intimate talk at dinner that evening Claude had
invited Mrs. Shiffney to be present at the rehearsal, and she had
accepted. Now it suddenly occurred to him that she was his enemy. Would
she still come after what had occurred just before he left her?
"I have asked her!" he almost blurted out.
"Already! When?"
"I went round to the Ritz-Carlton t-night."
"Was she in?"
"Yes. But she was--but she went out afterward, to Mrs. Inness."
"Oh! And did she accept?"
"Yes."
Charmian's eyes were fixed upon Claude. He saw by their expression that
she suspected something, or that she had divined a secret between him
and Mrs. Shiffney. She looked suddenly alert, and her lips seemed to
harden, giving her face a strained and not pleasant expression.
"How is she coming?" she asked.
"How?"
"Yes. Are you going to fetch her? Or am I to?"
"That wasn't decided. Nothing was said about that."
"She can't just walk in alone, without a card to admit her, or anything.
You know what an autocrat Mr. Crayford is."
"But he knows Mrs. Shiffney. We met him first at her house in London,
don't you remember?"
"You don't suppose he's going to let everyone he knows into a rehearsal,
do you?"
Claude got up from his chair.
"No. But--Charmian, I can't think of all these details. I can't--I
can't!"
There was a sharp edge to his voice.
"I have too much to carry in my mind just now."
"I know," she said, softening. "I didn't mean"--the alert expression,
which for an instant had vanished, returned to her face--"I only wanted
to know--"
"Please don't ask me any more! I asked Mrs. Shiffney to come to the
rehearsal. She said she would. Then we talked of other things."
"Other things! Then you stayed some time?"
"A little while. If she really wishes to be at the rehearsal--"
"But we know she wishes it!"
"Well, then, she will suggest coming with you, or she may write to
Crayford. I'm not going to do anything more about it."
His face was stern, grim.
"Now I'll shut the window," he added, "or you'll catch cold in that low
dress."
He was moving to the window when she caught at his hand and detained
him.
"Would you care if I did? Would you care if I were ill?"
"Of course I should."
"Would you care if I--"
She did not finish the sentence, but still held his hand closely in
hers. In her hand-grasp Claude felt jealousy, warm, fiery, a thing
almost strangely vital.
"Does she--is she getting to love me as I wish to be loved?"
The question flashed through his mind. At that moment he was very glad
that he had never betrayed Charmian, very glad of the Puritan in him
which perhaps many women would jeer at, did they know of its existence.
"Charmian," he said, "let me shut the window."
"Yes, yes; of course."
She let his hand go.
"It is better not to listen to the voices," she added. "They make one
feel too much!"
CHAPTER XXXIV
Nothing more was said by Charmian or Claude about Mrs. Shiffney and the
rehearsal. Mrs. Shiffney made no sign. The rehearsals of Jacques
Sennier's new opera were being pressed forward almost furiously, and no
doubt she had little free time. Claude wondered very much what she would
do, debated the question with himself. Surely now she would not wish to
come to his rehearsal! And even if she did wish to be present, surely
she would not try to come now! But women are not easily to be read.
Claude was aware that he could not divine what Mrs. Shiffney would do.
He thought, however, that it was unlikely she would come. He thought
also that he wished her not to come.
Nevertheless, when the darkness gathered over New York on Friday
evening, he found himself wishing strongly, even almost painfully, for
her verdict.
Charmian was greatly excited. Claude still kept up his successful
pretense of bold self-confidence. He had to strain every nerve to
conceal his natural sensitiveness. But although he was racked by
anxiety, and something else, he did not show it. Charmian was astonished
by his apparent serenity now that the hour full of fate was approaching.
She admired him more than ever. She even wondered at him, remembering
moments, not far off, when he had shown a sort of furtive bitterness, or
weariness, or depression, when she had partially divined a blackness of
the depths. Now his self-confidence lifted her, and she told him so.
"There's an atmosphere of success round you," she said.
"Why not? We are going to reap the fruits of our labors," he replied.
"But even Alston is terribly nervous to-day."
"Is he? My hand is as steady as a rock."
He held it out, by a fierce effort kept it perfectly still for a moment,
then let it drop against his side.
The bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral chimed five o'clock.
"Only an hour and we begin!" said Charmian. "Oh, Claude! This is almost
worse than the performance."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Perhaps because it won't be final. And then they say at
dress rehearsals things always go badly, and everyone thinks the piece,
or the opera, is bound to be a failure. I feel wrinkles and gray hairs
pouring over me in spite of your self-possession. I can't help it!"
She forced a laugh. She was walking about the room.
"I'm devoured by nerves, I suppose!" she exclaimed. "By the way, hasn't
Mrs. Shiffney written about coming to-night?"
"No."
"You haven't seen her again?"
"Oh, no!"
"How very odd! Do you suppose she will try to get in?"
"How can I tell?"
"But isn't it strange, after her making such a fuss about coming--this
silence?"
"Probably she's immersed in Sennier's opera and won't bother about
mine."
"Women always bother."
There was a "b-r-r-r!" in the lobby. Charmian started violently.
"What can that be?"
Claude went to the door, and returned with Armand Gillier.
"Oh, Monsieur Gillier!"
Charmian looked at Gillier's large and excited eyes.
"You are coming with us?"
"If you allow me, madame!" said Gillier formally, bowing over her hand.
"It seems to me that the collaborators should go together."
"Of course. It's still early, but we may as well start. The theater's
pulling at me--pulling!"
"My wife's quite strung up!" said Claude, smiling.
"And Claude is disgustingly cool!" said Charmian.
Gillier looked hard at Claude, and Charmian thought she detected
admiration in his eyes.
"Men need to be cool when the critical moment is at hand," he remarked.
"I learned that long ago in Algeria."
"Then you are not nervous now?"
"Nerves are for women!" he returned.
But the expression in his face belied his words.
"Claude is cooler than he is!" Charmian thought.
She went to put on her hat and her sealskin coat. She longed, yet
dreaded to start.
When they arrived at the stage-door of the Opera House the dark young
man came from his office on the right with his hands full of letters,
and, smiling, distributed them to Charmian, Claude and Gillier.
"It will be a go!" he said, in a clear voice. "Everyone says so. Mr.
Crayford is up in his office. He wants to see Mr. Heath. There's the
elevator!"
At this moment the lift appeared, sinking from the upper regions under
the guidance of a smiling colored man.
"I'll come up with you, Claudie. Are you going on the stage, Monsieur
Gillier?"
"No, madame, not yet. I must speak to Mademoiselle Mardon about the
Ouled Naïl scene."
People were hurrying in, looking preoccupied. In a small abode on the
left, a little way from the outer door, an elderly man in uniform, with
a square gray beard, sat staring out through a small window, with a
cautious and important air.
Charmian and Claude stepped into the lift, holding their letters. As
they shot up they both glanced hastily at the addresses.
"Nothing from Adelaide Shiffney!" said Charmian. "Have you got
anything?"
"No."
"Then she can't be coming."
"It seems not."
"I--then we shan't have the verdict in advance."
The lift stopped, and they got out.
"If we had it would probably have been a wrong one," said Claude. "The
only real verdict is the one the great public gives."
"Yes, of course. But, still--"
"Hulloh, little lady! So you're sticking to the ship till she's safe in
port!"
Crayford met them in the doorway of his large and elaborately furnished
sanctum.
"Come right in! There's a lot to talk about. Shut the door, Harry. Now,
Mulworth, let's get to business. What is it that is wrong with the music
to go with the Fakir scene?"
At six o'clock the rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not
begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the
dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And
from behind it came shouting voices, noises of steps, loud and
persistent hammerings.
A very few people were scattered about in the huge space which contained
the stalls, some nondescript men, whispering to each other, or yawning
and staring vaguely; and five or six women who looked more alert and
vivacious. There was no one visible in the shrouded boxes. The lights
were kept very low.
The sound of hammering continued and became louder. A sort of deadness
and strange weariness seemed to brood in the air, as if the great
monster were in a sinister and heavy mood, full of an almost malign
lethargy. The orchestral players ceased from tuning their instruments,
and talked together in their sunken habitation.
Seven o'clock struck in the clocks of New York. Just as the chimes died
away, Mrs. Shiffney drew up at the stage-door in a smart white
motor-car. She was accompanied by a very tall and big man, with a robust
air of self-confidence, and a face that was clean-shaven and definitely
American.
"I don't suppose they've begun yet," she said, as she got out and walked
slowly across the pavement, warmly wrapped up in a marvellous black
sable coat. "Have you got your card, Jonson?"
"Here!" said the big man in a big voice.
The dark young man came from his office. On seeing the big man he
started, and looked impressed.
"Mr. Crayford here?" said the big man.
"I think he's on the stage."
"Could you be good enough to send him in my card? There's some writing
on the back. And here's a note from this lady."
"Certainly, with pleasure," said the young man, with his cheerful smile.
"Come right into the office, if you will!"
"Hulloh!" said Crayford, a moment later to Claude. "Here's Mrs. Shiffney
wants to be let in to the rehearsal! And whom with, d'you think?"
"Whom?" asked Claude quickly. "Not Madame Sennier?"
"Jonson Ramer."
"The financier?"
"Our biggest! My boy, you're booming! Old Jonson Ramer asking to come in
to our rehearsal! We'll have that all over the States to-morrow morning.
Where's Cane?"
"I'll fetch him, sir!" said a thin boy standing by.
"Are you going to let them in?"
"Am I going to! Finnigan, go and take the lady and Mr. Ramer to any box
they like. Ah, Cane! Here's something for you to let yourself out over!"
Mr. Cane read Ramer's card and looked radiant.
"Well, I'm--!"
"I should think you are! Go and spread it. This boy's getting
compliments enough to turn him silly."
And Crayford clapped Claude almost affectionately on the shoulder.
"Now then, Mulworth!" he roared, with a complete change of manner. "When
in thunder are we going to have that curtain up?"
Claude turned away. He wished to find Charmian, to tell her that Mrs.
Shiffney had come and had brought Jonson Ramer with her. But he did not
know where she was. As he came off the stage into the wings he met
Alston Lake dressed for his part of an officer of Spahis.
"I say, Claude, have you heard?"
"What?"
"Jonson Ramer's here for the rehearsal!"
"I know. Can you tell me where Charmian is?"
"Haven't an idea! There's the prelude beginning! My! Where are my
formamints?"
Charmian meanwhile had gone into the theater with a dressmaker, who had
come to see the effect of Enid Mardon's costumes which she had
"created." Charmian and the dressmaker, a massive and handsome woman,
were sitting together in the stalls, discussing Enid Mardon's caprices.
"She tore the dress to pieces," said the dressmaker. "She made rags of
it, and then pinned it together all wrong, and said to me--to
_me_!--that now it began to look like an Ouled Naïl girl's costume. I
told her if she liked to face Noo York--"
"H'sh-sh!" whispered Charmian. "There's the prelude beginning at last.
She's not going to--?"
"No. Of course she had to come back to my original idea!"
And the dressmaker pressed a large handkerchief against her handsome
nose, savored the last new perfume, and leaned back in her stall
magisterially with a faint smile.
It was at this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of
the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat
she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space
before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat
within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat
back a little farther in the box, and whispered to Mr. Ramer.
"Are you really going to join the Directorate of the Metropolitan?" she
said.
"I may, when this season's over."
"Does Crayford know it?"
Mr. Ramer shook his massive and important head.
"I'm not certain of it myself," he observed, with a smile.
"And if you do join?"
"If I decide to join"--he glanced round the enormous empty house. "I
think I should buy Crayford out of here."
"Would he go?"
"I think he might--for a price."
"If this new man turns out to be worth while, I suppose you would take
him over as one of the--what are they called--one of the assets?"
"Ha!" He leaned toward her, and just touched her arm with one of his
powerful hands. "You must tell me to-night whether he is going to be
worth while."
"Won't you know?"
"I might when I got him before a New York audience. But you are more
likely to know to-night."
"I have got rather a flair, I believe. Now--I'll taste the new work."
She did not speak again, but gave herself up to attention, though her
mind was often with the woman in the sealskin coat who sat so near to
her. Had Claude said anything to that woman? There was very little to
say. But--had he said it? She wondered on what terms Charmian and Claude
were, whether the Puritan had ever found any passion for the
Charmian-creature. Claude's music broke in upon her questionings.
Mrs. Shiffney had a retentive as well as a swift mind, and she
remembered every detail of Gillier's powerful, almost brutal libretto.
In the reading it had transported her into a wild life, in a land where
there is still romance, still strangeness--a land upon which
civilization has not yet fastened its padded claw. And she had imagined
the impression which this glimpse of an ardent and bold life might
produce upon highly civilized people, like herself, if it were helped by
powerful music.
Now she listened, waited, remembering her visits to Mullion House, the
night in the café by the city wall when Said Hitani and his Arabs
played, the hour of sun in the pine wood above the great ravine, other
hours in New York. There was something in Heath that she had wanted,
that she wanted still, though part of her sneered at him, laughed at
him, had a worldly contempt for him, though another part of her almost
hated him. She desired a fiasco for him. Nevertheless the art feeling
within her, and the greedy emotional side of her, demanded the success
of his effort just now, because she was listening, because she hated to
be bored, because the libretto was fine. The artistic side of her nature
was in strong conflict with the capricious and sensual side that
evening. But she looked--for Jonson Ramer--coolly self-possessed and
discriminating as she sat very still in the shadow.
"That's a fine voice!" murmured Ramer presently.
Alston Lake was singing.
"Yes. I've heard him in London. But he seems to have come on
wonderfully."
"It's an operatic voice."
When Alston Lake went off the stage Ramer remarked:
"That's a fellow to watch."
"Crayford's very clever at discovering singers."
"Almost too clever for the Metropolitan, eh?"
"Enid Mardon looks wonderful."
Silence fell upon them again.
The dressmaker had got up from her seat and slipped away into the
darkness, after examining Enid Mardon's costume for two or three minutes
through a small but powerful opera-glass. Charmian was now quite alone.
While the massive woman was with her Charmian had been unconscious of
any agitating, or disturbing influence in her neighborhood. The
dressmaker had probably a strong personality. Very soon after she had
gone Charmian began to feel curiously uneasy, despite her intense
interest in the music, and in all that was happening on the stage. She
glanced along the stalls. No one was sitting in a line with her. In
front of her she saw only the few people who had already taken their
places when the curtain went up. She gave her attention again to the
stage, but only with a strong effort. And very soon she was again
compelled by this strange uneasiness to look about the theater. Now she
felt certain that somebody whom she had not yet seen, but who was near
to her, was disturbing her. And she thought, "Claude must have come in!"
On this thought she turned round rather sharply, and looked behind her
at the boxes. She did not actually see anyone. But it seemed to her
that, as she turned and looked, something moved back in a box very near
to her, on her left. And immediately she felt certain that that box was
occupied.
"Adelaide Shiffney's there!"
Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was
he?
Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps
in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy
sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box
while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that
Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason,
which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with
anger.
"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell
me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and
not with me."
And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away
out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her
imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a
certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man--the intentness of the
heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out
landmarks.
The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.
Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.
Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke
in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off
the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.
Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the
subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black
moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had
done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.
"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he
exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who
had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask
the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon,
at whose feet he was laying his homage.
Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.
She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.
"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must
come!"
But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she
was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked
toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now
she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a
woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in
conversation with another person who was hidden.
Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.
Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit
from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the
blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.
Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought
that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as
one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for
a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.
Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she
knew say:
"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation
to take care of, you must remember."
The words ended in a little laugh.
"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.
For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of
sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of
her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she
slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or
four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping
almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to
abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with
the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she
walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped
again.
"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind. What had
Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a
strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She
did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together
into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.
"Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice
seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again
turned, made her way to Mrs. Shiffney's box, which she located rightly
this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.
"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.
In the semi-obscurity Charmian saw a very big man, whom she had never
seen before, getting up from a chair.
"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, startled. "I didn't know--"
"Charmian! Is it you?"
Adelaide Shiffney's voice came from beyond the big man.
"Adelaide! You've come to our rehearsal!"
"Yes. Let me introduce Mr. Jonson Ramer to you. This is Mrs. Heath,
Jonson, the genius's good angel. Sit down with us for a minute,
Charmian."
Adelaide Shiffney's deep voice was almost suspiciously cordial. But
Charmian's sense of relief was so great that she accepted the
invitation, and sat down feeling strangely happy.
But almost instantly with the laying to rest of one anxiety came the
birth of another.
"Well, what do you think of the opera?" she asked, trying to speak
carelessly.
Jonson Ramer leaned toward her. He thought she looked pretty, and he
liked pretty women even more than most men do.
"Very original!" he said. "Opens powerfully. But I don't think we can
judge of it yet. It's going remarkably well."
"Wonderfully!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
Charmian turned quickly toward her. It was Adelaide's verdict that she
wanted, not Jonson Ramer's.
"Enid Mardon's perfect," continued Mrs. Shiffney. "She will make a
sensation. And the _mise-en-scène_ is really exquisite, not overloaded.
Crayford has evidently learnt something from Berlin."
"How malicious Adelaide is!" thought Charmian. "She won't speak of the
music simply because she knows I only care about that."
She talked for a little while, sufficiently mistress of herself to charm
Jonson Ramer. Then she got up.
"I must run away. I have so many people to see and encourage."
Her gay voice indicated that she needed no encouragement, that she was
quite sure of success.
"We shall see you at the end?" said Mrs. Shiffney.
"But will you stay? It may be six o'clock in the morning," said
Charmian.
"That is a little late. But--"
At this moment Charmian saw Claude coming into the stalls by the left
entrance near the stage.
"Oh, there's Claude!" she exclaimed, interrupting Mrs. Shiffney, and
evidently not knowing that she did so. "Au revoir! Thank you so much!"
She was gone.
"Thank me so much!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Jonson Ramer. "What for? Do
you know, Jonson?"
"Seems to me that little woman's unfashionable--mad about her own
husband!" said Jonson Ramer.
The curtain went up on the second act.
Claude had sat down in the stalls. In a moment Charmian slipped into a
seat at his side and touched his hand.
"Claude, where have you been?"
Her long fingers closed on his hand.
"Charmian!"
He looked excited and startled. He stared at her.
"What's the matter?"
His face changed.
"Nothing. It's all going well so far."
"Perfectly. Adelaide Shiffney's here."
"I know."
Charmian's fingers unclasped.
"You've seen her?"
"No, but I heard she was here with Jonson Ramer."
"Yes. I've--"
They fell into silence, concentrated upon the stage. In a few minutes
they were joined by Gillier, who sat down just behind them. With his
coming their attention was intensified. They listened jealously,
attended as it were with every fiber of their bodies, as well as with
their minds, to everything that was happening in this man-created world.
Charmian felt Gillier listening, felt, far away behind him, Adelaide
Shiffney listening. Gradually her excitement and anxiety became painful.
Her mind seemed to her to be burning, not smouldering but flaming. She
clasped the two arms of her stall.
Something went wrong on the stage, and the opera was stopped. The
orchestra died away in a sort of wailing confusion, which ceased on the
watery sound of a horn. Enid Mardon began speaking with concentrated
determination. Crayford and Mr. Mulworth came upon the stage.
"Where's Mr. Heath? Where's Mr. Heath?" shouted Crayford.
Claude, who was already standing up, hurried away toward the entrance
and disappeared. Charmian sat biting her lips and tingling all over in
an acute exasperation of the nerves. Behind her Armand Gillier sat in
silence. Claude joined the people on the stage, and there was a long
colloquy in which eventually Meroni, the conductor, took part. Charmian
presently heard Gillier moving restlessly behind her. Then she heard a
snap of metal and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was
Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this
breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things
would go badly.
"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be
talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic
gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If
only people--"
Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.
Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy to Armand Gillier, and
caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the
defensive.
"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.
"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very
least."
"Possibly, madame!" he replied.
He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with
eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what
thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the
stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for
not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been
always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly,
ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated
with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of
megalomania.
Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt
comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her
nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the
strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much
greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.
The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian
felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first
act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss
creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes,
the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story
about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had
picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to
listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She
felt both dull and excited.
"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to
pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."
Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden
flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to
writhe with secret irritation.
"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly interrupting her
companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."
"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the
dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since--"
"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."
As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the
boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. Shiffney and the
financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already?
She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled
swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have
gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that
moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child
ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs.
Shiffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved
that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her
cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected
the mysterious region from the banality she had left.
But there she was again carried from mood to mood.
She found everyone enthusiastic. Crayford's tic was almost triumphant.
His little beard bristled with an aggressive optimism.
"Where's Claude?" said Charmian, not seeing him and thinking of Mrs.
Shiffney.
"Making some cuts," said Crayford. "The stage shows things up. There are
bits in that act that have got to come out. But it's a bully act and
will go down as easily as a--Hullo, Jimber! Sure you've got your motors
right for the locust scene?"
He escaped.
"Mr. Mulworth!" cried Charmian, seeing the producer rushing toward the
wings, with the perspiration pouring over his now haggard features.
"_Mister_ Mulworth! How long will Claude take making the cuts, do you
think?"
"He'll have to stick at them all through the next act. If they're not
made the act's a fizzle! Jeremy! See here! We've got to have a pin-light
on Miss Mardon when she comes down that staircase!"
He escaped.
"Signor Meroni, I hear you have to make some cuts! D'you think--"
"_Signora--ma si! Ma si!_"
He escaped.
"Take care, marm, if you please! Look out for that sand bank!"
Charmian withdrew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit
the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her
hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a
pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.
"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic
eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."
"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur
Gillier told me--"
"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did
you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for
the third act?"
"Really Miss Mardon's impossible!" Charmian was saying a moment later to
Alston Lake.
"Why, Mrs. Charmian?"
"Oh, I don't know! She always looks on the dark side."
"With eyes like hers what else can she do? Isn't it going stunningly?"
"Alston, I must tell you--you're an absolute darling!"
She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.
"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.
Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated.
Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate
good things?
Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a
masterpiece.
Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were
being tossed from one to another by some cruel giant. She tried to look
forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be
at an end."
But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be
an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well.
The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the
"effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there
was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried,
chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who
had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.
"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one
in the morning.
She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in
the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture,
lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.
"What does it matter? I don't care!"
The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all
wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be stopped. Miss
Mardon was furious. There was an altercation.
"This," said Charmian to herself, "is my idea of Hell."
She felt that she was being punished for every sin, however tiny, that
she had ever committed. She longed to creep away and hide. She thought
of all she had done to bring about the opera, of the flight from
England, of the life at Djenan-el-Maqui, of the grand hopes that had
lived in the little white house above the sea.
"Start it again, I tell you!" roared Crayford. "We can't stand here all
night to hear you talking!"
"Yes," a voice within Charmian said, "this is Hell!"
She bent her head. She felt like one sinking down.
When the act was over she went out at once. She was afraid of Mrs.
Shiffney.
The smiling colored man took her up in the elevator to a room where she
found Claude in his shirt sleeves, with a cup of black coffee beside
him, working at the score. He looked up.
"Charmian! I've just finished all I can do to-night. What's the time?"
"Nearly two."
"Did the third act go well?"
She looked at his white face and burning eyes.
"Yes," she said.
"Sit down. You look tired."
He went on working.
Just as two o'clock struck he finished, and got up from the table over
which he had been leaning for hours.
"Come along! Let's go down. Oh!"
He stopped, and drank the black coffee.
"By the way," he said, "won't you have some?"
"Yes," she said eagerly.
He rang and ordered some for her. While they were waiting for it she
said:
"What an experience this is!"
"Yes."
"How quietly you take it!"
"We're in for it. It would be no use to lose one's head."
"No, of course! But--oh, what a fight it is. I can scarcely believe that
in a few days it must be over, that we shall _know_!"
"Here's the coffee. Drink it up."
She drank it. They went down in the lift. As they parted--for Claude had
to go to Meroni--Charmian said:
"Adelaide Shiffney's still here."
"If she stays to the end we must find out what she thinks."
"Or--shall we leave it? After all--"
"No, no! I wish to hear her opinion."
There was a hard dry sound in his voice.
"Very well."
Claude disappeared.
The black coffee which Charmian had drunk excited her. But it helped
her. As she went back into the theater for the fourth and last act she
felt suddenly stronger, more hopeful. She was able to say to herself,
"This is only a rehearsal. Rehearsals always go badly. If they don't
actors and singers think it a bad sign. Of course the opera cannot sound
really well when they keep stopping." Another thing helped her now. She
was joined by Alston Lake who was not on in the last act. He took her to
a box and they ensconced themselves in it together. Then he produced
from the capacious pockets of his overcoat a box of delicious sandwiches
and a small bottle of white wine. The curtain was still down. They had
time for a gay little supper.
How Charmian enjoyed it and Alston's optimism! The world changed. She
saw everything in another light. She ate, drank, talked, laughed. Mrs.
Shiffney and Ramer had vanished from the stalls, but Alston said they
were still in the theater. They were having supper, too, in one of the
lobbies. Crayford had just gone to see them.
"And is he satisfied?"
"Oh, yes. He says it's coming out all right."
"But it can't be ready by the date he's fixed for the first night!"
"Yes, it can. It's got to be."
"Well, I don't see how it can be."
"It will be. Crayford has said so. And that settles it."
"What an extraordinary man he is!"
"He's a great man!"
"Alston!"
"Yes, Mrs. Charmian?"
"He wouldn't make a great mistake, would he?"
"A mistake!"
"I mean a huge mistake."
"Not he! There goes the curtain at last."
"And there's Adelaide Shiffney coming in again. She is going to stay to
the end. If only this act goes well!"
She shut her eyes for a minute and found herself praying. The coffee,
the little supper had revived her. She felt renewed. All fatigue had
left her. She was alert, intent, excited, far more self-possessed than
she had been at any other period of the night. And she felt strongly
responsive. The power of Gillier's libretto culminated in the last act,
which was short, fierce, concentrated, and highly dramatic. In it Enid
Mardon had a big acting chance. She and Gillier had become great allies,
on account of her admiration of his libretto. Gillier, who had been
with her many times during the night, now slipped into the front row of
the stalls to watch his divinity.
"There's Gillier!" whispered Charmian. "He's mad about Miss Mardon."
"She's a great artist."
"I know. But, oh, how I hate her!"
"Why?"
But Charmian would not tell him. And now they gave themselves to the
last act.
It went splendidly, without a hitch. After the misery of the third act
this successful conclusion was the more surprising. It swept away all
Charmian's doubts. She frankly exulted. It even seemed to her that never
at any time had she felt any doubts about the fate of the opera. From
the first its triumph had been a foregone conclusion. From the abysses
she floated up to the peaks and far above them.
"Oh, Alston, it's too wonderful!" she exclaimed. "If only there were
someone to applaud!"
"There'll be a crowd in a few days."
"How glorious! How I long to see them, the dear thousands shouting for
Claude. I must go to Adelaide Shiffney. I must catch her before she
goes. There can't be two opinions. An act like that is irresistible.
Oh!"
She almost rushed out of the box.
In the stalls she came upon Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer who were
standing up ready to go. A noise of departure came up from the hidden
orchestra. Voices were shouting behind the scenes. In a moment the
atmosphere of the vast theater seemed to have entirely changed. Night
and the deadness of slumber seemed falling softly, yet heavily, about
it. The musicians were putting their instruments into cases and bags. A
black cat stole furtively unseen along a row of stalls, heading away
from Charmian.
"So you actually stayed to the end!" Charmian said.
Her eyes were fastened on Mrs. Shiffney.
"Oh, yes. We couldn't tear ourselves away, could we, Mr. Ramer?"
"No, indeed!"
"The last act is the best of all," Mrs. Shiffney said.
"Yes, isn't it?" said Charmian.
There was a slight pause. Then Ramer said:
"I must really congratulate you, Mrs. Heath. I don't know your husband
unfortunately, but--"
"Here he is!" said Charmian.
At this moment Claude came toward them, holding himself, she thought,
unusually upright, almost like a man who has been put through too much
drill. With a determined manner, and smiling, he came up to them.
"I feel almost ashamed to have kept you here to this hour," he said to
Mrs. Shiffney. "But really for a rehearsal it didn't go so badly, did
it?"
"Wonderfully well we thought. Mr. Ramer wants to congratulate you."
She introduced the two men to one another.
"Yes, indeed!" said Ramer. "It's a most interesting work--most
interesting." He laid a heavy emphasis on the repeated words, and
glanced sideways at Mrs. Shiffney, whose lips were fixed in a smile.
"And how admirably put on!"
He ran on for several minutes with great self-possession.
"Miss Mardon is quite wonderful!" said Mrs. Shiffney, when he stopped.
And she talked rapidly for some minutes, touching on various points in
the opera with a great deal of deftness.
"As to Alston Lake, he quite astonished us!" she said presently. "He is
going to be a huge success."
She discussed the singers, showing her usual half-slipshod
discrimination, dropping here and there criticisms full of acuteness.
"Altogether," she concluded, "it has been a most interesting and unusual
evening. Ah, there is Monsieur Gillier!"
Gillier came up and received congratulations. His expression was very
strange. It seemed to combine something that was morose with a sort of
exultation. Once he shot a half savage glance at Claude. He raved about
Enid Mardon.
"We are going round to see her!" Mrs. Shiffney said. "Come, Mr. Ramer!"
Quickly she wished Charmian and Claude good-night.
"All my congratulations!" she said. "And a thousand wishes for a triumph
on the first night. By the way, will it really be on the twenty-eighth,
do you think?"
"I believe so," said Claude.
"Can it be ready?"
"We mean to try."
"Ah, you are workers! And Mr. Crayford's a wonder. Good-night, dear
Charmian! What a night for you!"
She buttoned her sable coat at the neck and went away with Ramer and
Armand Gillier.
As she turned to the right in the corridor she murmured to Gillier:
"Why didn't you give it to Jacques? Oh, the pity of it!"
Claude and Charmian said scarcely anything as they drove to their hotel.
Charmian lay back in the taxi-cab with shut eyes, her temples throbbing.
But when they were in their sitting-room she came close to her husband,
and said:
"Claude, I want to ask you something."
"What is it?"
"Have you had a quarrel with Adelaide Shiffney?"
Claude hesitated.
"A quarrel?"
"Yes. Have you given her any reason--just lately--to dislike you
personally, to hate you perhaps?"
"What should make you think so?"
"Please answer me!" Her voice had grown sharp.
"Perhaps I have. But please don't ask me anything more, Charmian. If you
do, I cannot answer you."
"Now I understand!" she exclaimed, almost passionately.
"What?"
"Why she turned down her thumb at the opera."
"But--"
"Claude, she did, she did! You know she did! There was not one real word
for you from either her or Mr. Ramer, not one! We've had her verdict.
But what is it worth? Nothing! Less than nothing! You've told me why.
All her cleverness, all her discrimination has failed her, just
because--oh, we women are contemptible sometimes! It's no use our
pretending we aren't. Claude, I'm glad--I'm thankful you've made her
hate you. And I know how!"
"Hush! Don't let us talk about it."
"Poor Adelaide! How mad she will be on the twenty-eighth when she hears
how the public take it!"
Claude only said:
"If we are ready."
CHAPTER XXXV
Jacob Crayford was not the man to be beaten when he had set his heart
on, put his hand to, any enterprise. On the day he had fixed upon for
the production of Claude's opera the opera was ready to be produced. At
the cost of heroic exertions the rough places had been made plain, every
stage "effect" had been put right, all the "cuts" declared by Crayford
to be essential had been made by Claude, the orchestra had mastered its
work, the singers were "at home" in their parts. How it had all been
accomplished in the short time Charmian did not understand. It seemed to
her almost as if she had assisted at the accomplishment of the
incredible, as if she had seen a miracle happen. She was obliged to
believe in it after the final rehearsal, which was, so Crayford, Mr.
Mulworth, Meroni, and it was even rumored Jimber declared, the most
perfect rehearsal they had ever been present at.
"Exactly three hours and a half!" Crayford had remarked when the curtain
came down on the fourth act. "So we come ahead of the Metropolitan. I've
just heard they've had a set back with Sennier's opera; can't produce
for nearly a week after the date they'd settled. We needn't have been in
such a devil of a hurry after all. But we've got the laugh on them now.
Sennier's first opera was a white man. No doubt about that. But the
hoodoo seems out against this one. I tell you"--he had swung round to
Claude, who had just come upon the stage--"I'd rather have this opera of
yours than Sennier's, although he's known all over creation and you're
nothing but a boom-boy up to now. I used to believe in names, but upon
my word seems to me the public's changing. Give 'em the goods and they
don't care where they come from."
His eyes twinkled as he added, clapping Claude on the shoulder:
"All very well for you now, my boy! But you'll wish it was the other
way, p'raps, when you come round to the stage door with your next opera
on offer!"
He was in grand spirits. He had "licked" the Metropolitan to a "frazzle"
over the date of production, and he was going to "lick them to a
frazzle" with the production. Every reserved seat in the house was sold
for Claude's first night. Crayford stepped on air.
In the afternoon of the day of production, when Charmian and Claude,
shut up in their apartment at the St. Regis, and denied to all visitors,
were trying to rest, and were pretending to be quite calm, a note was
brought in from Mrs. Shiffney. It was addressed to Charmian, and
contained a folded slip of green paper, which fell to the ground as she
opened the note. Claude picked it up.
"What is it?" said Charmian.
"A box ticket for the Metropolitan. It must be for Sennier's first
night, I suppose."
"It is!" said Charmian, who had looked at the note.
In a moment she gave it to Claude without comment.
RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL.
_Feb. 28th_
"DEAR CHARMIAN,--Only a word to wish you and your genius a
gigantic success to-night. We've all been praying for it. Even
Susan has condescended from the universal to the particular on this
occasion, because she's so devoted to both of you. We are all
coming, of course, Box Number Fifteen, and are going to wear our
best Sunday tiaras in honor of the occasion. I hear you are to have
a marvellous audience, all the millionaires, as well as your humble
friends, the Adelaides and the Susans and the Henriette Senniers.
Mr. Crayford is a magnificent drum-beater, but after to-night your
genius won't need him, I hope and believe. I enclose a box for
Jacques Sennier's first night, which, as you'll see by the date,
has had to be postponed for four days--something wrong with the
scenery. No hitch in your case! I feel you are on the edge of a
triumph.
"Hopes and prayers for the genius.--Yours ever sincerely,
"ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."
"Susan sends her love--not the universal brand."
Claude read the note, and kept it for a moment in his hand. He was
looking at it, but he knew Charmian's eyes were on him, he knew she was
silently asking him to tell her all that had happened between Mrs.
Shiffney and him. And he realized that her curiosity was the offspring
of a jealousy which she probably wished to conceal, but which she
suffered under even on such a day of anxiety and anticipation as this.
"Very kind of her!" he said at last, giving back the note with the box
ticket carefully folded between the leaves. "Of course we will go to
hear Sennier's opera. He is coming to ours."
"To yours!"
"Ours!" Claude repeated, with emphasis.
Charmian looked down. Then she went to the writing-table and put Mrs.
Shiffney's note into one of its little drawers. She pushed the drawer
softly. It clicked as it shut. She sighed. Something in the note they
had just read made her feel apprehensive. It was almost as if it had
given out a subtle exhalation which had affected her physically.
"Claudie!" she said, turning round. "I would give almost anything to be
like Susan to-day."
"Would you? But why?"
"She would be able to take it all calmly. She would be able to say to
herself--'all this is passing, a moment in eternity, whichever way
things go my soul will remain unaffected'--something like that. And it
would really be so with Susan."
"She certainly carries with her a great calmness."
Charmian gazed at him.
"You are wonderful to-day, too."
Claude had kept up to this moment his dominating, almost bold air of a
conqueror of circumstances, the armor which he had put on as a dress
suitable to New York.
"But in quite a different way," she added. "Susan never defies."
Claude was startled by her shrewdness but avoided comment on it.
"Madre must be thinking of us to-day," he said.
"Yes. I thought--I almost expected she would send us a cablegram."
"It may come yet. There's plenty of time."
Charmian looked at the clock.
"Only four hours before the curtain goes up."
"Or we may find one for us at the theater."
"Somehow I don't think Madre would send it there."
She went to sit down on the sofa, putting cushions behind her with
nervous hands, leaned back, leaned forward, moved the cushions, again
leaned back.
"I almost wish we'd asked Alston to come in to-day," she said.
"But he's resting."
"I know. But he would have come. He could have rested here with us."
"Better for him to keep his voice perfectly quiet. To-night is his
début. He has got to pay back over three years to Crayford with his
performance to-night. And we shall have him with us at supper."
Charmian moved again, pushed the cushions away from her.
"Yes, I've ordered it, a wonderful supper, all the things you and Alston
like best."
"We'll enjoy it."
"Won't we? You sent Miss Mardon the flowers?"
"Yes."
The telephone sounded.
"It is Miss Mardon," Claude said, as he listened. "She's thanking me for
the flowers."
"Give her my love and best wishes for to-night."
Claude obeyed, and added his own in a firm and cheerful voice.
"She's resting, of course," said Charmian.
"Yes."
"Everyone resting. It seems almost ghastly."
"Why?" he said, laughing.
"Oh, I don't know--death-like. I'm stupid to-day."
She longed to say, "I am full of forebodings!" But she was held back by
the thought, "Shall I fail in resolution at the last moment, show the
white feather when he is so cool, so master of himself? I who have been
such a courageous wife, who have urged him on, who have made this day
possible!"
"It's only the physical reaction," she added hastily. "After all we've
gone through."
"Oh, we mustn't give way to reaction yet. We've got the big thing in
front of us. All the rest is nothing in comparison with to-night."
"I know! I hope Madre will cable. If she doesn't, it will seem like a
bad omen. I shall feel as if she didn't care what happens."
He said nothing.
"Won't you?" she asked.
"I think she will cable. But even if she doesn't, I know she always
cares very much what happens to you and me. Nothing would ever make me
doubt that."
"No, of course not. But I do want her to show it, to prove it to us
to-day. It is such a day in our lives! Never, so long as we live, can we
have such another day. It is the day I dreamed of, the day I foresaw,
that night at Covent Garden."
She felt a longing, which she checked, to add, "It is the day I decreed
when I looked at Henriette Sennier!" But though she checked the longing,
its birth had brought to her hope. She, a girl, had decreed this day and
her decree had been obeyed. Her will had been exerted, and her will had
triumphed. Nothing could break down that fact. Nothing could ever take
from her the glory of that achievement. And it seemed to point to the
ultimate glory for which she had been living so long, for which she had
endured so patiently. Suddenly her restlessness increased, but it was no
longer merely the restlessness of unquiet nerves. Anticipation whipped
her to movement, and she sprang up abruptly from the sofa.
"Claude, I can't stay in here! I can't rest. Don't ask me to. Anything
else, but not that!"
She went to him, put her hands on his shoulders.
"Be a dear! Take me out!"
"Where to?"
"Anywhere! Fifth Avenue, Central Park! Let us walk! I know! Let us walk
across the park and look at the theater, our theater. A walk will do me
more good than you can dream of, genius though you are. And the time
will pass quickly. I want it to fly. I want it to be night. I want to
see the crowd. I want to hear it. How can we sit here in this hot red
room waiting? Take me out!"
Claude was glad to obey her. They wrapped themselves up, for it was a
bitter day, and went down to the hall. As they passed the bureau the
well-dressed, smooth-faced men behind the broad barrier looked at them
with a certain interest and smiled. Charmian glanced round gaily and
nodded to them.
"I am sure they are all wishing us well!" she said to Claude. "I quite
love Americans."
"A taxi, sir?" asked a big man in uniform outside.
"No, thank you."
They went to the left and turned into Fifth Avenue.
How it roared that day! An endless river of motor-cars poured down it.
Pedestrians thronged the pavements, hurrying by vivaciously, brimming
with life, with vigor, with purpose. The nations, it seemed, were there.
For the types were many, and called up before the imagination a great
vision of the world, not merely a conception of New York or of America.
Charmian looked at the faces flitting past and thought:
"What a world it is to conquer!"
"Isn't it splendid out here!" she said. "What an almost maddening whirl
of life. Faces, faces, faces, and brains and souls behind them. I love
to see all these faces to-day. I feel the brains and the souls are
wanting something that you are going to give them."
"Let us hope one or two out of the multitude may be!"
"One or two! Claudie, you miserable niggard! You always think yourself
unwanted. But you will see to-night. Every reserved seat and every box
is taken, every single one! Think of that--and all because of what you
have done. Are we going to Central Park?"
"Unless you wish to promenade up and down Fifth Avenue."
"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the
edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city
like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living
creature had quicksilver in his veins--or her veins. For I never saw
such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you
conquer these wonderful women!"
Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural.
"New York intoxicates me to-day!" she exclaimed.
"How are you going to do without it?"
"When we go?"
"Yes, when we go home?"
"Home? But where is our home?"
"In Kensington Square, I suppose."
"I don't feel as if we should ever be able to settle down there again.
That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we
really meant to do."
"Djenan-el-Maqui then?"
"Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt
there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie."
She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that
just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it.
"I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the
ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?"
"Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels."
They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed
movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray
squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in
front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air
of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if
it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe,
whatever others might think.
"How contented that little beast looks," said Claude.
"But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are
going to be."
"No, perhaps not. But there's the other side."
He quoted Dante:
"_Quanto la cosa è più perfetta, più senta il bene, e così la
doglienza._"
"I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she
said. "Do you?"
"Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered.
And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony.
"We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had
walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close
to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite
side of the way."
"Yes," he said.
Evening was falling as they stood before the great building, the home of
their fortune of the night. The broad roadway lay between them and it.
Carriages rolled perpetually by, motor-cars glided out of the dimness of
one distance into the dimness of the other. Across the flood of humanity
they gazed at the great blind building, which would soon be brilliantly
lit up for them, because of what they had done. The carriages, the
motor-cars filed by. A little later and they would stop in front of the
monster, to give it the food it desired, to fill its capacious maw. And
out of every carriage, out of every motor-car, would step a judge, or
judges, prepared to join in the great decision by which was to be
decided a fate. Both Claude and Charmian were thinking of this as they
stood together, while the darkness gathered about them and the cold wind
eddied by. And Charmian longed passionately to have the power to
hypnotize all those brains into thinking Claude's work wonderful, all
those hearts into loving it. For a moment the thought of the human
being's independence almost appalled her.
"It looks cold and almost dead now," she murmured. "How different it
will look in a few hours!"
"Yes."
They still stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the
sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the
passers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even
herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself,
but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of
human life held in the arms of destiny. An abrupt movement of Claude
almost startled her.
"What is it?" she said.
She looked up at him quickly.
"What's the matter, Claude?"
"Nothing," he answered. "But it's time we went back to the hotel. Come
along."
And without another glance at the theater he turned round and began to
walk quickly.
He had seen on the other side of the way, going toward the theater, the
colored woman in the huge pink hat, of whom he had caught a glimpse on
the night when Alston Lake had fetched him and Charmian to see the
rehearsal of the "locust-effect." The woman turned her head, seemed to
gaze at him across the road with her bulging eyes, stretched her thick
lips in a smile. Then she took her place in a queue which was beginning
to lengthen outside one of the gallery doors of the theater.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the
Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding
galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded,
alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors
and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed
women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical
critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical
season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the
libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's
prospects of becoming a really great power in opera.
Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had
impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well.
The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be
trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won
entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men
instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood
side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics
and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only
he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of
his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known
too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true.
America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out
of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with
it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift
their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of
the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries,
the tinkling stream voices of the oases.
Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew anticipation
to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to
America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.
The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.
Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his
rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white
flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to
him and gently took him by the arm.
"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"
"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."
"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on
him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"
And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed
themselves on the critic's face.
"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."
"Bits of the opera?"
"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me
enormously--almost terrible music."
"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord
we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me
get in front?"
In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with
Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next
door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer
and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many
friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a
gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid
Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands
he wore thick white kid gloves. And he gazed at his name on the
programme with almost greedy eyes.
Mrs. Shiffney glanced swiftly about the immense house, looking from box
to box. She took up her opera glasses.
"I wonder where the Heaths are sitting," she said. "Henriette, can you
see them?"
Madame Sennier looked round with her hard yellow eyes.
"No. Perhaps they aren't here yet. Or they may be above us. Or perhaps
they are too nervous to come."
Her painted lips stretched themselves in a faint and enigmatic smile.
"I'm quite sure Charmian Heath will be here. This is to be the great
night of her life. She is not the woman to miss it."
Mrs. Shiffney leaned round to the next box.
"Susan, can you see the Heaths?"
"Yes," returned the theosophist, in her calm chest voice. "She is just
coming into a box on the same tier as we are in."
"Where? Where?"
"Over there, on my right, about ten boxes from us. She is in pale
green."
"That pretty woman!" said the elderly lawyer. "Is she the composer's
wife?"
He put up his glasses.
"Yes, I see now," said Mrs. Shiffney.
She drew back into her box.
"There she is, Henriette! She seems to be alone. But Heath is sitting
behind her in the shadow. I saw him for a minute before he sat down."
Madame Sennier looked at Charmian as Charmian had once looked at her
across another opera house. But her mind contemplated Charmian in this
hour of her destiny implacably. She said nothing.
Jacques Sennier began to chatter.
At a few minutes past eight the lights went down and the opera began.
Charmian and Claude were alone in their box. On the empty seat beside
hers Charmian had laid some red roses sent to her by Alston Lake before
she had started. Five minutes after the arrival of the flowers had come
a cablegram from England addressed to Claude: "I wish you both the best
to-night love. Madre."
Just before the opera began, as Charmian glanced down at her roses, she
saw a paper lying beside them on the silk-covered chair.
"What's that?" she said.
"Madre's cablegram," said Claude. "I found I had brought it with me, so
I laid it down there. If Madre had come with us she might have occupied
that seat. I thought I would let her wish lie there with Alston's
roses."
Their eyes met in the shadow of the box. On coming into it Claude had
turned out the electric burner.
"It's strange to think of Madre in Berkeley Square to-night," said
Charmian slowly. "I wonder what she is doing."
"I am quite sure she is alone, up in her reading-room thinking of us, in
one of her white dresses."
"And wishing us--" she paused.
The first notes of the Prelude sounded in the hidden orchestra.
Claude fixed his mind on the thought of Madre, in a white dress, sitting
alone in the well-known quiet room, thinking of him--in that moment he
was an egoist--wishing him the best. He could almost see Madre's face
rise up before him, as it must have looked when she wrote that
cablegram, a face kind, intense, with fire, sorrow, and love in the
burning eyes. And the thought of that face helped him very much just
then, more than he would have thought it possible that anything could
help him, was a firm and a tender friend to him in a difficult crisis of
his life.
He sat back in the shadow behind Charmian in a sort of strange
loneliness, conscious of the enormous crowd around him. He could not see
the members of this crowd. He saw only Charmian in her pale green gown,
with a touch of green in her cloud of dark hair, and a long way off the
stage. He heard perpetually his own music. But to-night it did not seem
to him to be his own. He listened to it with a kind of dreadful and
supreme detachment, as if it had nothing to do with him. But he listened
with great intensity, with all his critical intelligence at work, and
with--so at least it seemed to him--his heart prepared to be touched,
moved. It was not a hard heart which was beating that night in the
breast of Claude, nor was it the foolish, emotional heart of the
partisan, lost to the touch of reason, to the influence of the deepest
truth which a man of any genius dare not deny. No critic in the vast
theater that night listened to Claude's opera more dispassionately than
did Claude himself. Sometimes he thought of the colored woman in the
huge pink hat. He knew she was somewhere in the theater, probably far up
in that dim gallery toward which he had looked at rehearsal, when the
building had presented itself to his imagination as a monster waiting
heavily to be fed. On this one night at least he had fed it full. Was
not _she_ stretching her great lips in a smile?
Sometimes Claude heard faint movements, slight coughing, little sounds
like minute whispers from the crowd. Now and then there was applause.
Alston Lake was applauded strongly once after a phrase which showed off
his magnificent voice, and Charmian looked quickly round at Claude with
cheeks flushing, and shining eyes, which said plainly, "It is coming!
Listen! The triumph is on the way!" Then the widespread silence of an
attentive crowd fell again, like some vast veil falling, and Claude
attended intensely to the music as if it were the music of another.
After the first act there was more applause, which sounded in their box
rather strong in patches but scattered. The singers were called three
times, but always in this unconcentrated way.
"It's going splendidly. They like it!" said Charmian quickly. "Three
calls. That's unusual after a first act, when the audience hasn't warmed
up. Isn't it odd, Claudie, that Americans always applaud quite
differently from the way the English do? They always applaud like that."
She had turned right round and was almost facing him.
"How do you mean?" he said.
"Didn't you notice? Persistently, but in clumps as it were. It is by
their persistence they show how pleased they are, rather than by
their--their--I hardly know just how to put it."
"By their unanimity perhaps."
"Oh, no! Not exactly that! Here's Mr. Crayford."
Crayford slipped in, but only stayed for a moment.
"Hear that applause?" he said. "They're mad about it. Alston's got them.
I knew he would. That boy's going to be famous. But wait till the
second act. They're in a fine humor, only asking to be pleased. I know
the signs. The libretto's hit them hard. They're all asking what's to
happen next."
"You're satisfied then?" said Charmian.
"Satisfied! I'm so happy I don't know what to do."
He was gone.
"He knows!" Charmian said.
Her eyes were fixed upon Claude. They looked almost defiant.
"If anyone in America knows what he is talking about I suppose it is Mr.
Crayford," she added.
There was a tap at the door. Claude opened it and two of their American
friends came in and stayed a few minutes, saying how well the opera was
going, how much they liked it, how splendidly it was "put on"--all the
proper and usual things which are said by proper and usual persons on
such occasions. One of them was an acquaintance of Van Brinen's. Claude
asked him if Van Brinen were in the house. He said yes. Claude then
inquired whether Van Brinen knew the number of his box, and was told
that he did know it. The conversation turned to other topics, but when
the two men had gone out Charmian said:
"Why did you ask those questions about Mr. Van Brinen, Claudie?"
"Only because I thought if he knew where our box was he might pay us a
visit. No one has been more friendly with us than he has."
"I see. He's certain to come after the next act. Ah! the lights are
going down."
She had been standing for a few minutes. Now she moved to sit down.
Before doing so she drew her chair a little way back in the box.
"I don't want to be distracted from the stage--my attention, I mean--by
seeing too many people," she whispered, in explanation of her action.
"You are quite right to keep at the back. One can listen much better if
one doesn't see too much of the audience."
Claude said nothing. The curtains were parting.
The second act was listened to by the vast audience in a silence that
was almost complete.
Now and then Charmian whispered a word or two to Claude. Once she said:
"Isn't it wonderful, the silence of a crowd? Doesn't it show how
absorbed they are?"
And again:
"I think it's such a mercy that modern methods of composition give no
opportunity to the audience to break in with applause. Any interruption
would ruin the effect of the act as a whole."
Claude just moved his head in reply.
Everything was satisfactory. Jacob Crayford had been right. The opera
was ready for production and was "going" without a hitch. The elaborate
scenic effects were working perfectly. Miss Mardon had never been more
admirable, more completely mistress of her art. Nor had she ever looked
more wonderful. Alston Lake's success was assured. His voice filled the
great house without difficulty. Even Charmian and Claude were surprised
by its volume and beauty.
"Isn't Alston splendid?" whispered Charmian once.
"Yes," Claude replied.
He added, after a pause:
"Dear old Alston is safe."
Charmian turned her face toward the stage. Now and then she moved rather
restlessly in her chair. She had a fan with her and began to use it.
Then she laid it down on the ledge of the box, then took it up again,
opened it, closed it, and kept it in her hand. She felt the audience
almost like a weight laid upon her. Their silent attention began to
frighten her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did
not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her
as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed
herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see
the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her
box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to
be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the
curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audience on the
stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost
strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the
act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often
leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What
were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the
libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after
the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure
that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was
sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her
trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was
saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices
for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.
The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had
heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed
by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement,
when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her
favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the
opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging
at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the
rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.
Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken
it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This
is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And
presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:
"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me.
For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my
thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me
and I am the ocean."
Charmian felt as if she were struggling against this attempt of the
audience to take possession of her, were fighting to preserve intact her
independence, her individuality. But it became almost the business of a
nightmare, this strange and unequal struggle in the artistic darkness
devised by Crayford. And the audience seemed to be gaining in strength,
like an adversary braced up by conflict.
Conflict! The word had appeared like a criminal in Charmian's mind. She
strove vehemently to banish it. There was, there could be no conflict in
such a matter as was now in hand. But, oh! this portentous silence!
It came to an end at last. The curtain fell, and applause broke forth.
It resembled the applause after the first act. And once more there were
three calls for the singers. Then the clapping died away and
conversation broke out, spreading over the crowd. Many people got up
from their seats and went out or moved about talking with acquaintances.
"I can see Mr. Van Brinen," said Charmian.
"Can you? Where is he?"
Claude got up slowly, picked up the roses and the cablegram from the
chair beside Charmian, put them behind him, and took the chair, bringing
it forward quite to the front of the box. As he did so Charmian made a
sound like a word half-uttered and checked.
"Where is he?" Claude repeated.
Many people in the stalls were looking at him, were pointing him out. He
seemed to ignore the attention fixed upon him.
"There!" said Charmian, in a low voice.
She pointed with her fan, then leaned back.
Claude looked and saw Van Brinen not far off. He was standing up in the
stalls, facing the boxes, bending a little and talking to two smartly
dressed women. His pale face looked sad. Presently he stood up straight
and seemed to look across the intervening heads into Claude's eyes.
"He must see me!" Claude thought. "He does see me!"
Van Brinen stood thus for quite a minute. Then he made his way to one of
the exits and disappeared.
"He is coming round to the box, I'm sure," said Charmian cheerfully. "He
evidently saw us."
"Yes."
But Van Brinen did not come. Nor did Jacob Crayford. Several others
came, however, and there were comments, congratulations. The same things
were repeated by several mouths with strangely similar intonations. And
Charmian made appropriate answers. And all the time she kept on saying
to herself: "This is my hour of triumph, as Madame Sennier's was at
Covent Garden. Only this is America and not England. So of course there
is a difference. New York has its way of setting the seal on a triumph
and London has its way."
Moved presently to speak out of her mind she said to a Boston man,
called Hostatter, who had looked in upon them:
"It is so interesting, I think, to notice the difference between one
nation and another in such a matter for instance as this receiving of a
new work."
"Very interesting, very interesting," said Hostatter.
"You Americans show what you feel by the intensity of your si--by the
intensity, the concentration with which you listen."
"Exactly. And what is a London audience like? I have never been to a
London première."
"Oh, more--more boisterous and less intense. Isn't it so, Claude?"
"No doubt there's a difference," said Claude.
"Do you mean they are boisterous at Covent Garden?" said Hostatter,
evidently surprised. "I always thought the Covent Garden audience was
such a cold one."
"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Charmian.
She remembered the first night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. Suddenly a
chill ran all through her, as if a stream of ice-cold water had trickled
upon her.
"Really!" said Hostatter. "And yet we Americans are said to have a bad
reputation for noise."
He had been smiling, but looked suddenly doubtful.
"But as you say," he added, rather hastily, "in a theater we
concentrate, especially when we are presented with something definitely
artistic, as we are to-night."
He shook hands.
"Definitely artistic. My most sincere congratulations."
He went out, and another man called Stephen Clinch, an ally of
Crayford's immediately came in. After a few minutes of conversation he
said:
"Everybody is admiring the libretto. First-rate stuff, isn't it? I
expected to find the author with you. Isn't he in the house?"
"Yes, but he told us he would sit in the stalls," said Charmian.
"Haven't you seen him?"
"No," said Claude.
"Well, of course you'll appear after the next act with him. There's sure
to be a call. And I know Gillier will be called for as well as you."
His rather cold gray eyes seemed to examine the two faces before him
almost surreptitiously. Then he, too, went out of the box.
"A call after this act!" said Charmian.
"I believe they generally summon authors and composers after the
penultimate act over here."
"You'll take the call, of course, Claudie?"
There was a silence. Then he said:
"Yes, I shall take it."
His voice was hard. Charmian scarcely recognized it.
"Then you'll have to go behind the scenes."
"Yes."
"Will you--"
"I'll wait till the curtain goes up, and then slip out."
Again there was a silence. Charmian broke it at length by saying:
"I think Monsieur Gillier might have come to see us to-night. It would
have been natural if he had visited our box."
"Perhaps he will come presently."
A bell sounded. The third act was about to begin.
Soon after the curtains had once more parted, disclosing a marvellous
desert scene which drew loud applause from the audience, Claude got up
softly from his seat.
"I'll slip away now," he whispered.
She felt for his hand in the dimness, found it, squeezed it. She longed
to get up, to put her lips to his, to breath some word--she knew not the
word it would be--of encouragement, of affection. Tears rushed into her
eyes as she felt the touch of his flesh. As the door shut behind him she
moved quite to the back of the box and put her handkerchief to her
eyes. She had great difficulty just then in not letting the tears run
over her face. For several minutes she scarcely heard the music or knew
what was happening upon the stage. There was a tumult of feeling within
her which she did not at all fully understand, perhaps because even now
she was fighting, fighting blindly, desperately, but with courage.
There came a tap at the door. Charmian did not hear it. In a moment it
was softly repeated. This time she did hear it. And she hastily pressed
her handkerchief first against one eye, then against the other, got up
and opened the door.
"May I come in for a little while?" came a calm whisper from Susan
Fleet, who stood without in a very plain black gown with long white
gloves over her hands and arms.
"Oh, Susan--yes! I am all alone."
"That is why I came."
"How did you know?"
"My friend, Mr. Melton, happened to be in the corridor with Mr. Ramer
and they saw your husband pass. Mr. Ramer spoke to him and he said he
was going behind the scenes. So I thought I would come for a minute."
She stepped gently in and closed the door quietly.
"Where were you sitting?" she whispered.
"Here, at the back. Sit by me--oh, wait! Let me move Alston's flowers."
She took them up. As she did so she remembered Madre's cablegram, and
looked for it. But it was no longer there. She searched quickly on the
floor.
"What is it?" said Susan.
"Only a cablegram from Madre that was with the flowers. It's gone. Never
mind. Claude must have taken it."
The conviction came to her that Claude had taken it with him, as a man
takes a friend he can trust when he is going into a "tight place."
"Sit here!" she whispered to Susan.
Susan sat softly down beside Charmian at the back of the box, took one
of her hands and held it, not closely, but gently. They did not speak
again till the third act was finished.
It was the longest act of the opera, and the most elaborate. Charmian
had always secretly been afraid of it since the first full rehearsal.
She could never get out of her mind the torture she had endured that
evening when everything had gone wrong, when she had said to herself in
a sort of fierce and active despair: "This is my idea of Hell." She felt
that even if the opera were a triumphant success, even if the third act
were acclaimed, she would always dread it, almost as a woman may dread
an enemy. Once it had tortured her, and she had a feminine memory for a
thing that had caused her agony.
Now she sat with her hand in Susan's, face to face with the dangerous
act, and anticipating the end, when at last Claude would confront the
world he had avoided so carefully till she came into his life.
The act, which had been chaotic at rehearsal, was going with perfect
smoothness, almost too smoothly Charmian began to think. It glided on
its way almost with a certain blandness. In Algeria, Crayford had
devoted most of his attention to this act, which he had said "wanted a
lot of doing to." He had "made" the whole of it "over." Charmian
remembered now very well the long discussions which had taken place at
Djenan-el-Maqui about this act. One discussion stood out from the rest
at this moment. She almost felt the heat brooding over the far-off land.
She almost saw the sky shrouded in filmy gray, the white edge of the sea
breaking sullenly against the long line of shore, the beads of sweat on
the forehead of Claude, his clenched hands, the expression in his eyes
when he said, after her answered challenge to Crayford, "Tell me what
you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
This act to which this vast audience, in which she was now definitely
included against her will, was listening was the product of that scene,
that discussion, that resignation of Claude's.
Charmian's hand twitched under Susan's, but she did not draw it away,
though Susan--as she knew--would have made no effort to retain it. She
was thankful Susan was with her. To-night it was impossible for her to
feel calm. No one could have communicated calm to her. But Susan did
give her something which was a help to her. Always, when with Susan, she
was able to feel, however vaguely, something of the universal,
something of the largeness which men feel when they look at the stars,
or hear the wind across vast spaces, or see a great deed done. As the
act ran its course her mind became fixed upon the close, upon the call
for Claude. Armand Gillier was blotted out from her mind. The cry that
went up would be for Claude. Would it be a cry from the heart of this
crowd? She remembered, she even heard distinctly in her mind, the cry
the Covent Garden crowd had sent up for Jacques Sennier on the first
night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. There had been in it a marvellous sound
which had stirred her to the depths. It was that sound which had made
her speak to Claude, which had determined her marriage with Claude.
If a similar sound burst from the lips and the hearts of the crowd at
the end of this act, it would determine Claude's fate as an artist, her
fate with his.
Her hand twitched more convulsively under Susan's as she thought of,
waited for, the sound.
The locust scene was a triumph for Crayford, Mr. Mulworth, and Jimber.
The scene which succeeded it was a triumph for Alston Lake. Whatever
else this night might bring forth one thing was certain; Alston had
"made good." He had "won out" and justified Crayford's belief in him.
Even his father, reluctantly sitting in the stalls after a hard day in
Wall Street, was obliged to be proud of his boy.
"Dear old Alston!" Charmian found herself whispering. "He's a success.
Alston's a success--a success!"
She kept on forming the last word, and willing with all her might.
"Success! Success--it is coming; it is ours! In a moment we shall know
it, we shall have it! Success! Success!"
With her soul and--it seemed to her--with her whole body, tense in the
pretty green gown so carefully chosen for the great night, she willed,
she called upon, she demanded success. And then she prayed for success.
She shut her eyes, prayed hard, went on praying, marshalling all she and
Claude had done before the Unseen Power, as reason for the blessing she
entreated. And while she prayed, her hand ceased from twitching in Susan
Fleet's.
Long though the third act was, at last it drew near its end. And then
Charmian began to be afraid, terribly afraid. She feared the decisive
moment. She wished she were not in the theater. She thought of the
asking eyes of the pressmen, expressing silently but definitely the
great demand of this wonderful city, this wonderful country: "Be a
success!" If that demand were not complied with! She recalled the
notoriety she and Claude had had out here, the innumerable attentions
which had been showered upon them, the interest which had been shown in
them, the expectations aroused by Claude. She recalled the many
allusions that had been made to herself in the papers, the interviews
with the "clever wife" who had done so much for her husband, the columns
about her expedition to Paris to get Gillier's libretto for Claude.
Crayford had taken good care that the "little lady" should have her full
share of the limelight. Now, through shut eyelids she saw it blaze like
an enemy.
If the opera should go down despite all that had been done how could she
endure the situation that would be hers? But it would not go down. She
remembered that she had once heard that fear of a thing attracts that
thing to you. Was she who had been so full of will, so resolute, so
persistent, so marvellously successful up to a point, going to be a
craven now, going to show the white feather? When that evening began she
had been sitting in the front of the box, in full view of the audience.
Now she was sitting in the shadow, clasping a woman's hand. Claude had
gone to the front of the box when she retreated. Now, in a very few
minutes, he was going to face the great multitude. He was showing will,
grit, to-night. And she felt, she knew, that, whatever the occasion,
there was in Claude something strong enough to turn a bold front to it
to-night, perhaps on any night or any day of the year. She must help
him. Whether he could see her from the stage, she did not know. She
doubted it. But he knew where she was sitting. He might look for her at
such a moment. He might miss her if she were hidden away in the shadow
like a poltroon.
She drew her hand away from Susan's, got up, and took her place alone in
the front of the box, in sight of all the people in the stalls, in
sight also of Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier. Susan remained where she
was. She felt that Charmian needed to be alone just then. She liked her
for the impulse which she had divined.
At last the curtain fell.
People applauded.
"This is the American way," Charmian was saying to herself. "Not our
way! But they keep on! That shows it is a success. I mustn't think of
Covent Garden."
Nevertheless, with her ears, and with her whole soul, she was listening
for that wonderful sound, heard at the Covent Garden, the sound that
stirs, that excites, that is soul in utterance.
"This is for the singers," she said to herself, "not for Claude. Bravo,
Alston! Bravo! Bravo!"
The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself,
and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of
the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down
into the soul of the audience.
"Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show
it. I am going to hear the sound."
With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that
was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat
violently.
"The sound! The sound!"
The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause
continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English
ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard.
"They are calling for Claude!"
Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands
forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.
The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be
dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite
apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the
bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite
pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against
terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a
monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it
was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.
But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round,
she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs
of opera-glasses.
Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.
Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.
"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.
"Gillier! Author! Author!"
The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed
itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again
the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her
eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white.
Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through
the gap, followed by Armand Gillier.
Once more the cries were heard. The applause revived. Charmian gazed at
Claude. His face, she thought, looked set but quite calm. He stood at
the very edge of the stage, and she saw him look, not toward where she
was, but up to the gallery as if in search of someone. Then he stepped
back. He had come to the audience before Gillier. He now disappeared
before Gillier, who seemed about to follow him closely, hesitated,
looked round once more at the audience, and stood for an instant alone
on the stage.
Then suddenly came from the audience the sound!
It was less full, less strong, less intense than it had been at Covent
Garden on the night of the first performance of _Le Paradis Terrestre_.
But essentially it was the same sound.
Charmian heard it and her lips grew pale. But she sat well forward in
the box, and, though she saw two opera-glasses levelled at her, she
lifted her hands again and clapped till Armand Gillier passed out of
sight.
CHAPTER XXXVII
In the red sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel a supper-table was laid
for three people. It was decorated with some lilies-of-the-valley and
white heather, which Jacob Crayford had sent in the afternoon to the
"little lady." On a table near stood a gilded basket of tulips, left by
Gillier with a formal note. The elderly German waiter, who looked like a
very respectable butler, placed a menu beside the lilies and the heather
soon after the clock struck twelve. Then he glanced at the clock,
compared it with his silver watch, and retired to see that the champagne
was being properly iced. He returned, with a subordinate, about
half-past twelve, and began to arrange an ice pail, from which the neck
of a bottle protruded, and other things on a side table. While he was
still in the room he heard voices in the corridor, and the three people
for whom the preparations had been made came in.
"Supper is ready? That's right!" Charmian said, in a high and gay voice.
She turned.
"Doesn't the table look pretty, Alston, with Mr. Crayford's white
heather?"
She had Alston's red roses in her hand.
"I am going to put your roses in water now."
She turned again to the waiter.
"Could I have some water put in that vase, please? And we'll have supper
at once."
"Certainly, ma'am!"
"Come and see the menu, both of you, and tell me if you are satisfied
with it."
She picked it up and handed it to Alston.
"And then show it to Claude while I take off my cloak."
She went away, smiling.
The waiters had gone out for a moment. The two friends were alone
together.
Claude put his arm round Alston Lake's shoulder.
"Alston, this has been my first chance to congratulate you without a lot
of people round us, or--really to tell you, I mean, how fine your
performance was. There is no doubt that you are a made man from
to-night. I am glad for you. You've worked splendidly, and you deserve
this great success."
Alston wrung his friend's hand.
"Thank you, Claude. But I only got my chance through you and Mrs.
Charmian. If you hadn't composed a splendid opera, I couldn't have
scored in it."
"You would have scored in something else. You are going to."
"I shall never enjoy singing any rôle so much as I have enjoyed singing
your Spahi."
"I don't see how you are ever going to sing any rôle better," said
Claude.
Their hands fell apart as Charmian quickly came in.
"You've put your coats in the lobby? That's right. Oh, here is supper!
Caviare first! I'll sit here. Oh, Alston, what a comfort to be quietly
here with just you and Claude after all the excitement!"
For a moment her mouth dropped, but only for a moment.
"But I'm wonderfully little tired!" she continued. "It all went so
splendidly, without a single hitch. Mr. Crayford must be enchanted. I
only saw him for a moment coming out after I had congratulated Miss
Mardon. There were so many people. There was no time to hear all he
thought. But there could not be two opinions. Claudie, do you feel quite
finished?"
"No," said Claude, in a strong voice, which broke in almost strangely
upon her lively chattering.
Both Charmian and Alston looked at him for an instant with a sort of
inquiry, which in Charmian was almost furtive.
"That's good!" Charmian began, after a little pause. "I was almost
afraid--here's the champagne! We ought to drink a toast to-night, I
think. Suppose we--"
"We'll drink to Alston's career," interrupted Claude. And he lifted his
glass.
"Alston!" said Charmian, swiftly following his example.
"And now no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only
we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them.
Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I
recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was
very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you
take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer your call?"
"Yes."
"I thought you had, because I couldn't find it. Well Mr. Whistler came
to lunch with us, Alston. And he talked about nothing but oysters."
"Was he painting them at the time? A nocturne of natives?"
"How absurd you are! But he knew everything that could be known about
Blue Points--"
She ran on vivaciously. Alston seconded her, when she gave him an
opportunity. Claude listened, sometimes smiled, spoke when there seemed
to be any necessity for a word from him. Alston was hungry after his
exertions, and ate heartily. Charmian pretended to eat and sipped her
champagne. On each of her cheeks an almost livid spot of red glowed. Her
eyes, which looked more sunken than usual in her head, were full of
intense life, as they glanced perpetually from one man to the other with
a ceaseless watchfulness. She pressed Claude to eat, even helped him
herself from the dishes. The clock had just struck a quarter-past one
when a buzzing sound outside indicated the presence of someone at the
door of the lobby.
Charmian moved uneasily.
"Who can it be so late? Perhaps it's Mr. Crayford."
She got up.
"I'll go and see what it is," said Claude.
He went out. Charmian stood, watching the door.
"D'you think it's Mr. Crayford?" she asked of Alston Lake.
"Hardly!"
"What is it, Claude?"
"A note or letter."
"A letter! Whom can it be from! Has it only come now?"
"Apparently."
"Do read it. But have you finished?"
"Quite. I couldn't eat anything more."
He went to the sofa, behind which, on a table, an electric light was
burning, sat down and tore the envelope which he held. Charmian and
Alston remained at the supper-table. Charmian had sat down again. She
gazed at Claude, and saw him draw out of the envelope not a note, but a
letter. He began to read it, and read it slowly. And as he did so
Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows
came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was
with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to
Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she
heard the rustle of paper and looked again. Claude, with a hand which
slightly trembled, was putting the letter back into its envelope. When
he had done so he put both into the breast-pocket of his evening coat,
and sat quite still gazing on the ground. Charmian went on talking, but
she did not know what she was saying, and at last she felt that she
could not endure to sit any longer at the disordered supper-table.
Movement seemed necessary to her body, which felt distressed.
"Do have some more champagne, Alston!" she said.
"Not another drop, Mrs. Charmian, thank, you! I must think of my voice."
"Well, then--"
She pushed back her chair, glanced at Claude. He moved, lifted his eyes.
"Dare you smoke, Alston?" he said.
"I've got to, whether I dare or not. But"--his kind and honest eyes went
from Charmian to Claude--"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the
way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The
fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take
it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel
like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must both want a good long
rest after all you've been through over here in God's own country, eh?"
He fetched his coat from the lobby. Claude got up and gave him a cigar,
lit it for him.
"Well, Mrs. Charmian--" he said.
He held out his big hand. His fair face flushed a little, and his rather
blunt features looked boyish and emotional.
"We've brought it off. We've done our best. Now we can only leave it to
the critics and the public."
He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.
"Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night."
He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just
repeated "Good-night!" and let it go.
"Good-night, dear Alston," she murmured.
Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door
behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any
words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She
moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them
down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which
the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the
water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long
stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent
sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do.
And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it
ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and
Claude came in.
"What a lot you had to say to each--" she began.
She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.
"Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?" she said falteringly, after
a moment of silence.
"He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all
till to-morrow. Do you mind?"
"No."
Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing
expression which had stopped the words on her lips. Always Claude's
face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by
that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she
had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt
frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.
"I had something to say to Alston," Claude said, coming up to her. "I
don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure
I couldn't."
"You were telling him again how splendidly--"
"No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper.
I had to tell him something else--what I thought of my own."
"What you--what you thought of your own!"
"Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless,
soulless, hateful work."
"Claude!" she faltered.
"Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have
deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here
at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian"--his eyes pierced her--"do you
dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when
you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you
dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?"
"How can you--oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack
your own child?" she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will,
a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind.
"It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't--"
"Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you
didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I
shall not believe you."
She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her
strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight
against the malign power of the audience.
"You see!" he said. "You dare not tell me you didn't know!"
His eyes were always upon her. She opened her lips. She tried to speak,
to say that she loved the opera, that she thought it a work of genius,
that everyone would recognize it as such soon, very soon, if not now,
immediately. Words seemed to be struggling up in her, but she could not
speak them. She felt that she was growing paler and paler beneath his
gaze.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, with violence. "You've got some sincerity
left in you. We want it, you and I, to-night!"
He turned away from her, went to the sofa, sat down on it, put his hand
to the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out two papers--Madre's
cablegram and the letter which had come while they were at supper.
"Come here, Charmian!" he said, more quietly.
She came to him, hesitated, met his eyes again, and sat down in the
other corner of the sofa beside him.
"I want you to read that."
He gave her the letter.
"Read it carefully. Don't hurry!" he said.
She took the letter and read.
"MY DEAR MR. HEATH,--I've left the opera-house and have
come to the office of my paper to write my article on your work
which I have just heard. But before I do so I feel moved to send
this letter to you. I don't know what you will think of it, or of
me for writing it, but I do care. I want you very much not to hate
it, not to think ill of me. People, I believe, very often speak and
think badly of us who call ourselves, are called, critics. They say
we are venial, that we are log-rollers, that we have no
convictions, that we don't know what we are talking about, that we
are the failures in art, all that kind of thing. We have plenty of
faults, no doubt. But there are some of us who try to be honest. I
try to be honest. I am going to try to be honest about your work
to-night. That is why I am sending you this.
"Your opera is not a success. I know New York. I dare even to say
that I know America. I have sat among American audiences too long
not to be able to 'taste' them. Their feeling gets right into me.
Your opera is not a success. But it isn't really that which
troubles me to-night. It is this. Your opera doesn't deserve to be
a success.
"That's the wound!
"I don't know, of course--I can't know--whether you are aware of
the wound. But I can't help thinking you must be. It is
presumption, I dare say, for a man like me, a mere critic, who
couldn't compose a bar of fine genuine music to save his life, to
try to dive into the soul of an artist, into your soul. But you are
a man who means a lot to me. If you didn't I shouldn't be writing
this letter. I believe you know what I know, what the audience knew
to-night, that the work you gave them is spurious, unworthy. It no
more represents you than the mud and the water that cover a lode of
gold represent what the miner is seeking for. I'm pretty sure you
must know.
"Perhaps you'll say: 'Then why have the impertinence to tell me?'
"It's because I've seen a little bit of the gold shining. The other
night, after I dined with you--you remember? Gold it was, that's
certain. We Americans know something about precious metal, or the
world belies us. After that night I was looking to write a great
article on you. And I'll do it yet. But I can't do it to-night.
That's my trouble. And it's a heavy one, heavier than I've had this
season. I've got to sit right down and say out the truth. I hate to
do it. And yet--do I altogether? I don't want to show up as
conceited, yet now, as I'm covering this bit of paper, I've begun
to think to myself: Shan't I, perhaps, while I'm doing my article,
be helping to clear away a little of the water and the mud that
cover the lode? Shan't I, perhaps, be getting the gold a bit nearer
to the light of the day, and the gaze of the world? Or, better
still, to the hand of the miner? Well, anyhow, I've got to go
ahead. I can't do anything else.
"But I remember the other night. And if I believe there's music
worth having in any man of our day I believe it's in you.--Your
very sincere friend, and your admirer,
"ALFRED VAN BRINEN."
Charmian read this letter slowly, not missing a word. As she read she
bent her head lower and lower; she almost crouched over the letter. When
she had finished it she sat quite still without raising her eyes for a
long time. The letter had vanished from her sight. And how much else
had vanished! In that moment little or nothing seemed left.
At last, as she did not move, Claude said, "You've finished?"
* * * * *
"You've finished the letter?"
"Yes."
"May I have it, then?"
She knew he was holding out his hand. She made a great effort, lifted
her hand, and gave him Van Brinen's letter without looking at him. She
heard the thin paper rustle as he folded it.
"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why?
Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am
tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as
have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to
remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of
weakness."
Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of
growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.
"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured
me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous
lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act
Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"
"Claude!"
Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the
piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that
the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.
"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my
complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience
applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was
necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made
comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company,
before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true
enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."
He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and
walked toward the farther wall of the room.
"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing
to you?"
He had turned.
"No," she said.
"Crayford said nothing?"
"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all
made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"
"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"
She was silent.
"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself.
And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've
all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And
you--you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what
I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself,
and you least of all!"
"Claude!"
"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from
the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to
guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some
talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success!
You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you
had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little
unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little
unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom
nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his
friends. You thought I was an eccentricity--"
"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve
which had broken in this reserved man.
"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was
meant to do, what I could do, drawing my inspiration not from the
fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts,
which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found
their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other
people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care
what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And
from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's
the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till
she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe--I believe in my
soul it's the only chance for a man."
He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:
"The only chance for a man."
He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.
"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the
world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface
ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a
host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that
I fancied I might make something of since we married, _The Hound of
Heaven_, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found
me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and
opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted
yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in
London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life
of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all
that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for
me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to
let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps
you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do
it. But I've got to build in freedom."
His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes
not of a man crushed but of a man released.
She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.
"In--freedom?" she almost whispered.
She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, the failure before
the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt,
had completely overwhelmed her.
In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void
opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till
this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm
ground.
"In freedom!" she said again. "What--what do you mean?"
He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look
of surprise.
"What do you mean?" she repeated.
And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.
"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never
had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw
you."
She got slowly up from the sofa.
"Is that--all you mean?" she said.
"All! Isn't it enough?"
"But is it all? I want to know--I must know!"
The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look
like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as
if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly.
The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her
eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that
went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer
to her.
"Is that all you meant by freedom?"
"Yes."
She sighed and went forward against him.
"Did you think--do you care?" he stammered.
All the dominating force had suddenly departed from him. But he put his
arms around her.
"Do you care for the man who has failed?"
"Yes, yes!"
She put her arms slowly, almost feebly, round his neck.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
She kept on repeating the word, breathing it against his cheek,
breathing it against his lips, till his lips stifled it on hers.
At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed
into his, and said:
"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was--the man,
not the triumph."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
"And you really mean to give up Kensington Square and the studio, and to
take Djenan-el-Maqui for five years?" said Mrs. Mansfield to Charmian on
a spring evening, as they sat together in the former's little library on
the first floor of the house in Berkeley Square.
"Yes, my only mother, if--there's always an 'if' in our poor lives,
isn't there?"
"If?" said her mother gently.
"If you will occasionally brave the Gulf of Lyons and come to us in the
winter. In the summer we shall generally come back to you."
Mrs. Mansfield looked into the fire for a moment. Caroline lay before it
in mild contentment, unchanged, unaffected by the results of America.
Enough for her if a pleasant warmth from the burning logs played
agreeably about her lemon-colored body, enough for her if the meal of
dog biscuit soaked in milk was set before her at the appointed time. She
sighed now, but not because she heard discussion of Djenan-el-Maqui. Her
delicate noise was elicited by the point of her mistress's shoe, which
at this moment pressed her side softly, moving her loose skin to and
fro.
"The Gulf of Lyons couldn't keep me from coming," Mrs. Mansfield said at
last. "Yes, I daresay I shall see you in that Arab house, Charmian.
Claude wishes to go there again?"
"It is Claude who has decided the whole thing."
Charmian's voice held a new sound. Mrs. Mansfield looked closely at her
daughter.
"You see, Madre, he and I--well, I think we have earned our retreat.
We--we did stand up to the failure. We went to the first night of
Jacques Sennier's new opera and helped, as everyone in an audience can
help, to seal its triumph. I--I went round to Madame Sennier's box with
Claude--Adelaide Shiffney and Armand Gillier were in it!--and
congratulated her. Madre, we faced the music."
Her voice quivered slightly. Mrs. Mansfield impulsively took her child's
hands and held them.
"We faced the music. Claude is strong. I never knew what he was before.
Without that tremendous failure I never should have known him. He helped
me. I didn't know one human being could help another as Claude helped me
after the failure of the opera. Even Mr. Crayford admired him. He said
to me the last day, when we were going to start for the ship: 'Well,
little lady, you've married the biggest failure we've brought over here
in my time, but you have married a man!' And I said--I said--"
"Yes, my only child?"
"'I believe that's all a woman wants.'"
"Is it?"
Mrs. Mansfield's dark, intense eyes searched Charmian's.
"Is it all that _you_ want?"
"You mean--?"
"Isn't the fear of the crowd still haunting you? Isn't uneasy ambition
still tugging at you?"
Charmian took her foot away from Caroline's side and sat very still for
a moment.
"I do want Claude to succeed, yes, I do, Madre. I believe every woman
wants her man to succeed. But I shall never interfere again--never. I've
had my lesson. I've seen the truth, both of myself and of Claude. But I
shall always wish Claude to succeed, not in my way, but in his own. And
I think he will. Yes, I believe he will. Weren't we--he and I--both
extremists? I think perhaps we were. I may have been vulgar--oh, that
word!--in my desire for fame, in my wish to get out of the crowd. But
wasn't Claude just a little bit morbid in his fear of life, in his
shrinking from publicity? I think, perhaps, he was. And I know now he
thinks so. Claude is changed, Madre. All he went through in New York has
changed him. He's a much bigger man than he was when we left England.
You must see that!"
"I do see it."
"From now onward he'll do the work he is fitted to do, only that. But I
think he means to let people hear it. He said to me only last night:
'Now they all know the false man, I have the wish to show them the man
who is real.'"
"The man who had the crucifix standing before his piano," said Mrs.
Mansfield, in a low voice. "The man who heard a great voice out of the
temple speaking to the seven angels."
She paused.
"Did he ever play you that?" she asked Charmian.
"One night in America, when our dear friend, Alfred Van Brinen, was with
us. But he played it for Mr. Van Brinen."
"And--since then?"
"Madre, he has played it since then for me."
Charmian got up from her chair. She stood by the fire. Her thin body
showed in clear outline against the flames, but her face was a little in
shadow.
"Madretta," she began, and was silent.
"Yes?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
"Susan Fleet and I were once talking about theosophy. And Susan said a
thing I have never forgotten."
"What was that?"
"She said: 'It's a long journey up the Ray.' I didn't understand. And
she explained that by the Ray she meant the bridge that leads from the
personal which perishes to the immortal which endures. Madre, I shall
always be very personal, I think. I can't help it. I don't know that I
even want to help it. But--but I do believe that in America, that night
after the opera, I took a long, long step on the journey up the Ray. I
must have, I think, because that night I was happy."
Her eyes became almost mysterious in the firelight. She looked down and
added, in a withdrawn voice:
"_I_ was happy in failure!"
"No, in success!" said Mrs. Mansfield.
THE END
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