The Way of Ambition Part 35

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 _cremaillere_ 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 embarra.s.sed. 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.