The Way of Ambition Part 33

"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 a.s.sembled 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 mult.i.tude 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 sc.r.a.p 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 ma.n.u.script 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s.

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 role. 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 pa.s.sed 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."