The Way of Ambition Part 103

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 ma.s.sive 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 Nal 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.sive 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 a.s.sets?"

"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 pa.s.sion 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 cafe 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-gla.s.s. Charmian was now quite alone.

While the ma.s.sive 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?