The Way of Ambition Part 110

"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. Antic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 mult.i.tude may be!"

"One or two! Claudie, you miserable n.i.g.g.ard! 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 pa.s.sed 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 e piu perfetta, piu senta il bene, e cos 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 pa.s.sionately 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!"