The Way of Ambition Part 68

"Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull here.--CHARMIAN."

She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her role; but her nerves drove her into the weakness.

Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.

Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.

"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remember what a keen interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."

Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she thought. Then he said formally:

"I am delighted to stay, madame."

During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.

The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated.

Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.

Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums.

Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his Turkish coffee, poured out a gla.s.s of old brandy, clipped a big Havana cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him.

His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.

"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him with his music?"

"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."

Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.

"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.

Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.

"Who knows, madame?"

"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"

"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to have certain doubts."

"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I don't quite understand."

"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."

"Then--"

"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"

"Naturally!"

"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I will never get on together."

"Why not?"

"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel anxious."

"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"

"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally, but I am not _homme du monde_. I am not a little man of the salons. I am not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.

I have been, and I still am, poor--poor, madame! But, madame, I do not intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"

"Of course not--with your talent!"

"Ah, that is just it!"

His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and speaking almost with violence.

"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"--he paused, finished his gla.s.s of brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great effort after self-control--"but is your husband's talent for the stage as great as mine? I doubt it."

"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet, not a note of it."

"No. And that enables me--"

"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur Gillier?"

"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--"

"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be thinking of?"

"I feared by your words, your manner--"

"I a.s.sure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish what you were saying."

"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal offense--p.r.o.nouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--" He paused.

The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.

"Yes?" said Charmian.

"Madame?"

"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of us."

"I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame, believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be a.s.sociated together in the production of a work of art. We are too different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him understand something of the life not merely in, but that underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I say?"--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

"It is only the difference between the French and English temperaments."

"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who is not afraid to live."

"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a matter which I can discuss with you."

"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"--he looked down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose a hundred pounds rather than to--"