The Way of Ambition Part 39

She took off her fur coat and went quickly upstairs. She did not care about golf, and to-day the mere sound of the name irritated her.

Englishmen were always playing golf, she said to herself. Jacques Sennier did not waste his time on such things, she was sure. Then she remembered for how many hours every day Claude was shut up in his little room, how he always went there immediately after breakfast. And she realized the injustice of her dawning anger, and also her nervous state, and resolved to be very gentle and calm with Claude.

It was a cold day at the end of March. She found him sitting near the wood fire in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with thick, heavily nailed boots, covered with dried mud, on his feet, and thick brown and red stockings on his legs. It was almost impossible to believe he was a musician. His hair had been freshly cut, but he had not "watered" it.

Since his marriage Charmian had never allowed him to do that. He jumped up when he saw his wife. Intimacy never made Claude relax in courtesy.

"I'm having tea very late," he said. "But I've only just got in."

"I know. Sit down and go on, dear old boy. I'll come and sit with you.

Don't you want more light?"

"I like the firelight."

He sat down again and lifted the teapot.

"I shall spoil my dinner. But never mind."

"You remember we're dining with Madre!"

"Oh--to be sure!"

"But not till half-past eight."

She sat down with her back to the drawn window curtains at right angles to Claude. Alice had "shut up" early to make the drawing-room look cozy for Claude. The firelight played about the room, illuminating now one thing, now another, making Claude's face and head, sometimes his musical hands look Rembrandtesque, powerful, imaginative, even mysterious. Now that Charmian had sat down she lost her impression of the eternal golfer, received another impression which spurred her imagination.

"I've been at the Drakes," she began. "Only a very few to welcome Margot back from New York."

"Did she enjoy her visit?"

"Immensely. She's--as she calls it--tickled to death with the Americans in their own country. She meant to stay only one night, but she was there three weeks. It seems all New York has gone mad over Jacques Sennier."

"I'm glad they see how really fine his opera is," Claude said, seriously, even earnestly.

"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most enthusiastic nation in the world."

"If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think."

How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier!

She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said:

"How is the work getting on?"

There was a slight pause. Then Claude said:

"The work?"

"Yes, yours."

She hesitated. There was something in her husband's personality that sometimes lay upon her like an embargo. She was conscious of this embargo now. But her nervous irritation made her determined to defy it.

"Claudie," she went on, "you don't know, you can't know, how much I care for your work. It's part of you. It is you. You promised me once you would let me be in the secret. Don't you remember?"

"Did I? When?"

"The day after our party when you were going to begin work again. And now it's nearly two months."

She stopped. He was silent. A flame burst out of a log in the grate and lit up strongly one half of his face. She thought it looked stern, almost fierce, and very foreign. Many Cornish people have Spanish blood in them, she remembered. That foreign look made her feel for a moment almost as if she were sitting with a stranger.

"Nearly two months," she repeated in a more tentative voice.

"Is it?"

"Yes. Don't you think I've been very patient?"

"But, surely--surely--why should you want to know?"

"I do want. Your work is your life. I want it to be mine, too."

"Oh, it could never be that--the work of another."

"I want to identify myself with you."

There was another silence. And this time it was a long one. At last Claude moved, turned round to face Charmian fully, and said, with the voice of one making a strong, almost a desperate effort:

"You wish to know what I've been working on during these weeks when I've been in my room?"

"Yes."

"I haven't been working on anything."

"What?"

"I haven't been working at all."

"Not working!"

"No."

"But--you must--but we were all so quiet! I told Alice--"

"I never asked you to."

"No, but of course--but what have you been doing up there?"

"Reading Carlyle's _French Revolution_ most of the time."

"Carlyle! You've been reading Carlyle!"