The Way of Ambition Part 116

"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 G.o.d'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.