The Way of Ambition Part 36

It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.

And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke, with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all things in his life work together for good.

"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.

When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first drawing-room.

"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You aren't sleepy, are you?"

"Not a bit."

He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.

"It went off well, didn't it?"

She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.

"Yes, I think it did."

"They all liked you."

"I'm glad!"

"You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!

You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide Shiffney not to come!"

Her voice had suddenly changed.

"Did you want Mrs. Shiffney to come so particularly?" Claude asked, not without surprise.

"Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she rushed off to Paris like that?"

"I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier."

Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.

"Max does exactly the same," said Charmian. "It really becomes rather silly--in a man."

"But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him."

"I never said there was. But still--Margot is rather tiresome, too, with her rages first for this person and then for the other."

"Who is it now?"

"Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others."

"Still?"

"Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I believe, just to hear the _Paradis_ once at the Metropolitan. Five days out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put in the _Daily Mail_. And then she says she can't think how things about her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!"

"Still, she admires the right thing when she admires Sennier's talent,"

said Claude, with a sort of still decision.

Charmian turned her eyes away from the fire and looked at him.

"How odd you are!" she said, after a little pause.

"Why? In what way am I odd?"

"In almost every way, I think. But it's all right. You ought to be odd."

"What do you mean, Charmian?"

"Jacques Sennier's odd, extraordinary. People like that always are. You are."

She was examining him contemplatively, as a woman examines a possession, something that the other women have not. Her look made him feel very restive and intensely reserved.

"I doubt if I am the least like Jacques Sennier," he said.

"Oh, yes, you are. I know."

His rather thin and very mobile lips tightened, as if to keep back a rush of words.

"You don't know yourself," Charmian continued, still looking at him with those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is part of themselves."

"Do women?"

"What does it matter? I am thinking about you, about my man."

There was a long pause, which Claude filled by getting up and lighting a cigarette. A hideous, undressed sensation possessed him, the undressed sensation of the reserved nature that is being stared at. He said to himself: "It is natural that she should look at me like this, speak to me like this. It is perfectly natural." But he hated it. He even felt as if he could not endure it much longer, and would be obliged to do something to stop it.

"Don't sit down again," said Charmian, as he turned with the cigarette in his mouth.

She got up with lithe ease, like one uncurling.

"Let's go and look at your room, where you're going to begin work to-morrow."

She put her hand on his arm. And her hand was possessive as her eyes had been.

Claude's workroom was at the back of the house on the floor above the drawing-room. An upright piano replaced the grand piano of Mullion House, now dedicated to the drawing-room. There was a large flat writing-table in front of the window, where curtains of Irish frieze, dark green in color, hung shutting out the night and the ugliness at the back of Kensington Square. The walls were nearly covered with books. At the bottom of the bookcases were large drawers for music. A Canterbury held more music, and was placed beside the writing-table. The carpet was dark green without any pattern. In the fireplace were some curious Morris tiles, representing aeneas carrying Anchises, with Troy burning in the background. There were two armchairs, and a deep sofa covered in dark green. A photograph of Charmian stood on the writing-table. It showed her in evening dress, holding her Conder fan, and looking out with half-shut eyes. There was in it a hint of the a.s.sumed dreaminess which very sharp-witted modern maidens think decorative in photographs, the "I follow an ideal" expression, which makes men say, "What a charming girl! Looks as if she'd got something in her, too!"

"It's a dear little room, isn't it, Claude?" said Charmian.

"Yes, very."

"You really like it, don't you? You like its atmosphere?"

"I think you've done it delightfully. I was saying to Madre only this evening how extraordinarily clever you are in creating prettiness around you."