The Way of Ambition Part 65

She did not speak for several minutes. He wanted to speak, to break a silence which, to him, was painful; but he could think of nothing to say. He felt oddly moved, yet he could not have said why, perhaps even to himself. Keeping his hands clasped round his knees, he looked out beyond the gorge over the open country. Far down, at the foot of the cascades, he saw in a hollow, the cl.u.s.tering trees about the baths of Sidi Imcin. Along the reddish bareness of the hill showed the white blossoms of some fruit-trees, almost like a white dust flung up against the tawny breast of the earth. The water made a hoa.r.s.e noise in the hidden depths of the gorge, lifted its voice into a roar as it leaped down into the valley, murmured like the voice of a happy dreamer where it slipped by among the trees. And Claude, as he sat in silence, believed that he heard clearly the threefold utterance, subtly combined, and, like some strange trinity, striving to tell him truths of life.

His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops, beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly s.p.a.cious, fiercely blooming in the strong colors--reds, yellows, golds--with long rolling slopes, dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for hundreds of kilometers, far-off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only that something experienced made life truly life.

For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for women rather than a woman.

During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette--was, perhaps, at this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different she might well have been on his side. Even now--

Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as marriage got to do with it?

Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it.

He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not.

All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he understood her desire and was recoiling from it.

Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face, transforming it.

"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"

As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her tailor-made skirt.

Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.

"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was unknown by her at this moment.

"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."

She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward the bridge.

"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."

Claude said nothing, and she continued:

"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as inflexible as the Grand Rocher."

She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.

"That is why women always love and hate him."

Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and looked at him, smiling:

"I am sure Charmian knows that."

Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.

"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.

"And, so, very few inflexible men?"

"I have never--"

He pulled himself up.

"Yes?" she said encouragingly.

"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have never laid claim to anything--anything in the way of talent. It isn't quite fair, is it, to a.s.sume that I consider myself a man of talent or an important person when I don't?"

"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of talent?"

"I am entirely unknown."

"What has that to do with it?"

"Nothing, of course, but--but perhaps it is only when he has something to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."

"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."

Claude looked down.

"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I have been privileged. I have read the libretto."

As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian, of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it angel or demon in his life?

"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."

He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.

They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities, into the perpetual uproar of the city.

By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers.

Claude went down to the station to see them off.

On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in his hand.

Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.

From the window of the _wagon-lit_ Mrs. Shiffney looked at the two men standing together as the train drew away from the platform.

Then she nodded and waved her hand.

There was a mocking smile on her face.

When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.

"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to suspect it?"

"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette.

"What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the window."