The Way of Ambition Part 58

When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn, Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And she felt as if she had been like an angry child when she had talked of her husband to Madame Sennier. Women--clever, influential women--can do much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.

Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But, blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and wished her "Good-night."

"I know I shan't sleep," she said.

"Why not?"

"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."

"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."

Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment of resolving quietly on anything.

She lay awake nearly all night.

Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the night-train travelling to Constantine.

It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on to the big terrace, and had said:

"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."

Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand Gillier.

Elliot had a very kind heart, and by its light he sometimes read clearly a human prose that did not please him. Now, as he lay in his narrow berth in the _wagon-lit_ jolting toward Constantine, he read some of Adelaide Shiffney's prose. Faintly, for the train was noisy, he heard voices in the next compartment, where Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier were talking in their berths. Mrs. Shiffney was in the top berth. That fact gave the measure of Madame Sennier's iron will.

"You really believe it?" cried Madame Sennier.

"How is one to know? But Crayford is moving Heaven and earth to find a genius. He may have his eye on Claude Heath. He believes in _les jeunes_."

"Jacques is forty."

"If one has arrived it doesn't matter much what age one is."

"You don't think Crayford can have given this man a secret commission to compose an opera?"

"Oh, no. Why should he? Besides, if he had, she would have let it out.

She could never have kept such a thing to herself."

"Max thought his music wonderful, didn't he?"

"Yes, but it was all sacred. Te Deums, and things of that sort that n.o.body on earth would ever listen to."

"I should like to see the libretto."

"What? I can't hear. I'm right up against the roof, and the noise is dreadful."

"I say, I should like to see the libretto!" almost screamed Madame Sennier.

"Probably it's one that Jacques refused."

"No, it can't be."

"What?"

"No, it can't be. He never saw a libretto that was Algerian. And this one evidently is. I wonder if it's a good one."

"Make him show it to you."

"Gillier! He wouldn't. He hates us both."

"Not Gillier, Claude Heath."

"What?"

Mrs. Shiffney leaned desperately out over the side of her narrow berth.

"Claude Heath--or I'll make him."

"I never cared very much for the one Jacques is setting for the Metropolitan. But it was the best sent in. I chose it. I read nearly a hundred. It would be just like Gillier to write something really fine, and then not to let us see it. I always knew he was clever and might succeed some day."

"I'll get hold of it for you."

"What?"

"I'll get hold of it for you from Heath. When will Jacques be ready, do you think?"

"Oh, not for ages. He works slowly, and I never interfere with him.

n.o.body but a fool would interfere with the method of a man of genius."

"Do you think Charmian Heath is a fool?"

At this moment the train suddenly slackened, and Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier, leaning down and up, exchanged sibilant and almost simultaneous hushes.

Max Elliot heard them quite distinctly. They were the only part of the conversation which reached him.

He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame.

Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd, he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man.

Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very little about her.

She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's family in Ma.r.s.eilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out.

Afterward she had remained in Ma.r.s.eilles, but not as a governess.

Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some women intrigue when circ.u.mstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind.

She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Ma.r.s.eilles she had lived in the midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was capable of betraying everyone for Jacques.

Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He was the only person she trusted--for a week. She meant to be back at Mustapha within a week.

After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more.