Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."
Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends. She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art. Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other, perhaps the two reserves clung together.
These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the other that was hidden from the gaze of the world.
A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this—Charmian was not included in it.
This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother. She was incapable of shutting any door, beyond which she did not stand alone, against her child. The generosity of her nature was large, warm, chivalrous, the link between her and Charmian very strong. The girl was wont to accept her mother's friends with a pretty eagerness. They spoiled her, because of her charm, and because she was the child of the house in which they spent some of their happiest hours. Never yet had there lain on Charmian's life a shadow coming from her mother. But now she entered a faintly shadowed way, as it seemed deliberately and of her own will. She tacitly refused to accept the friendship between her mother and Claude Heath as she had accepted the other friendships.Gently, subtly, almost mysteriously, she excluded herself from it.
Or was she gently, subtly, almost mysteriously excluded from it by Claude Heath?
She chose to think so. And there were moments in which he chose to think that she obstinately declined to accept him as her mother accepted him, because she disliked him, was perhaps jealous of his intimacy with Mrs. Mansfield.
All this was below the surface. Charmian seemed friendly with Heath, and he, generally, at ease with her. But when he was alone with Mrs. Mansfield he was a different man. At first she thought little of this. She attributed it to the fact that Heath had a reserved nature and that she happened to hold a key which could unlock it, or unlock a room or two of it, leaving, perhaps, many rooms closed. But, being not only a very intelligent but a delicately sensitive woman, she presently began to think that there was some secret antagonism between her child and Heath.
This pained her. She even considered whether she ought not to put an end to her intimacy with Heath. She had grown to value it. She was incapable of entering into a sentimental relation with any man. She had loved deeply, had had her beautiful summer. It had died. The autumn was upon her. She regretted. Often her heart was by a grave, often it was beyond, seeking, like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to her, and was drawn, in her turn, to them.
Claude Heath had brought into her life something her other friends had not given her. She realized this clearly when she first considered Charmian in connection with herself and him. If he ceased from her life, sank away into the crowd of unseen men, he would leave a gap which another could not fill. She had a feeling that she was valuable to him. She did not know exactly how or why. And he was valuable to her.
But of course Charmian was the first interest in her life,had the first claim upon her consideration. She sat wondering what it was in Heath which the girl disliked, what it was in Charmian which, perhaps, troubled or irritated Heath.
Charmian was out that day at an afternoon concert, and Mrs. Mansfield had made an engagement to go to tea with Heath in his little old house near St. Petersburg Place. She had never yet visited him, although she had known him for nearly three months. And she had never heard a note of his music. The latter fact did not strike her as strange. She had never mentioned her dead husband to him.
Max Elliot had at first been perturbed by this reticence of the musician. He had specially wished Mrs. Mansfield to hear what he had heard. After that evening in Cadogan Square he had several times asked: "Well, have you heard the Te Deum?" or "Has Heath played any of his compositions to you yet?" To Mrs. Mansfield's invariable unembarrassed "No!" he gave a shrug of the shoulders, a "He's an extraordinary fellow!" or a "Well, I've made a failure of it this time!" Once he added: "Don't you want to hear his music?" "Not unless he wants me to hear it," Mrs. Mansfield replied. Elliot looked at her for a minute with his large, prominent and kind eyes, and said: "No wonder you're adored by your friends!" Several times since the evening in Cadogan Square he had heard Heath play his compositions, and he now began to feel as if he owed this pleasure to his busy and almost vulgar curiosity about musical development and the progress of artists, as if Heath's reserve were his greatest proof of regard and friendship. He had not succeeded in persuading Heath to come to one of his Sunday musical evenings, at which crowds of people in society and many artists assembled. Mrs. Mansfield taught him not to attempt any more persuasion. He realized that his first instinct had been right. The plant must grow in darkness. But he was always being carried away by artistic enthusiasms, and had an altruistic desire to share good things. And he dearly loved "a musical find." He had a certain name as a discoverer of talent, and there's so much in a name. The lives that have been changed, moulded, governed by a hastily conferred name!
Mrs. Mansfield was inclined to believe that Heath had invited her to tea with the intention of at last submitting his talent to her opinion. They had sometimes talked together of music, but much oftener of books, character, people, national movements, topics of the day. As she went to her bedroom to dress for her expedition, she felt a certain hesitation, almost a disinclination to go. To go was to draw a step or two nearer to Heath, and so, perhaps, to retreat a step or two from her child. To-day the fact that Charmian and Heath did not quite "hit it off together" vexed her spirit, and the slight mystery of their relation troubled her. As she went down to get into the motor she was half inclined to speak to Heath on the subject. She was quite certain that she would not speak to Charmian.
The month was February, and by the time Mrs. Mansfield reached Mullion House evening was falling. A large motor was drawn up in front of the house, and as Mrs. Mansfield's chauffeur sounded a melodious chord the figure of a smartly dressed woman walked across the pavement and stepped into it. After an instant of delay, caused by this woman's footman, who spoke to her at the window, the car moved off and disappeared rapidly in the gathering darkness.
"Was that Adelaide?" Mrs. Mansfield asked herself as she got out.
She was not certain, but she thought the passing figure had looked like Mrs. Shiffney's.
The door of Mullion House stood open, held by a thin woman with very large gray eyes, who smiled at Mrs. Mansfield and made a slight motion, almost as if she mentally dropped a curtsey, but physically refrained out of respect for London ways.
"Oh, yes, ma'am, he is in! He's expecting you."
The emphasis on the last word was marked. Mrs. Mansfield looked at this woman, toward whom at once she felt friendly.
"There's some here and there that would bother him to death, I'm sure, if they was let!" continued the woman, closing the little front door gently. "But it will be a pleasure to him to see you. We all knows that!"
"I'm very glad to hear it!" responded Mrs. Mansfield,liking this unconventional but very human servant. "Mr. Heath has spoken of my coming, then?"
"I should think so, ma'am. This way, if you please!"
Mrs. Searle, Heath's cook-housekeeper, crossed the little dimly lit hall and walked quickly down a rather long and narrow passage.
"He's in the studio, ma'am," she remarked over her narrow shoulder, sharply turning her head. "Fan is with him."
"Who's Fan? A dog?"
"My little girl, ma'am."
"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
"Not knowing you were there, when the other lady went I sends her in to him for company as he wasn't working. 'Run, Fan!' says I. 'Go and cheer Mr. Heath up, there's a good girl!' I says. I knows very well there's nothing like a child to put you right after you've been worried. They're so simple, aren't they, ma'am? And we're all simple, I b'lieve, at 'eart, though we're ashamed to show it. I'm sure I don't know why!"
As she concluded she opened a door and ushered Mrs. Mansfield into the composer's workroom.
At the far end of it, in a flicker of firelight, Mrs. Mansfield saw him stooping down over a very fair and Saxon-looking child of perhaps three years old, whose head was thickly covered with short yellow hair inclined to be curly, and who was dressed in a white frock with an almost artful blue bow in the front. As Mrs. Mansfield came in the child was holding up to Heath a small naked doll of a rather blurred appearance, and was uttering some explanatory remarks in the uneven but arresting voice that seems peculiar to childhood.
"Mrs. Mansfield, if you please, sir!" said Mrs. Searle. Then, with a change of voice: "Come along, Fan! And bring Masterman with you, there's a good girl! We must get on his clothes or he'll catch cold." (To Mrs. Mansfield.) "You'll excuse her, ma'am, but she's that nat'ral, clothes or no clothes it's all one to her."
Fan turned round, holding Masterman by one leg and staring with bright blue eyes at Mrs. Mansfield. Her countenance expressed a dignified inquiry combined, perhaps, with acertain amount of very natural surprise at so unseemly an interruption of her strictly private interview with Claude Heath and Masterman. Her left thumb mechanically sought the shelter of her mouth, and it was obvious that she was "sizing up" Mrs. Mansfield with all the caution, if not suspicion, of the female nature in embryo.
Heath took her gently by the shoulder as he came forward, smiling, and propelled her slowly toward the middle of the large dim room.
"Welcome!" he said, holding out his hand. "Yes, Fantail, I quite understand. He's been sick and now he's getting better. Go with mother!"
Fan was exchanged for Mrs. Mansfield and vanished, speaking slowly and continuously about Masterman's internal condition and "the new lydy," while Mrs. Mansfield took off her fur coat and looked around her and at Heath.
"I didn't kiss her," she said, "because I think it's a liberty to kiss one of God's creatures at first sight without a special invitation."
"I know—I know!"
Heath seemed restless. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes, always full of a peculiar vitality, looked more living even than usual. He glanced at Mrs. Mansfield, then glanced away, almost guiltily, she thought.
"Do come and sit down by the fire. Would you like a cushion?"
"No, thank you! What a nice old settle!"
"Yes, isn't it? I live in this room. Alling, the painter, built it for his studio. The other rooms are tiny."
"What a delightful servant you have!"
"Mrs. Searle—yes. She's a treasure! Humanity breaks out of her whatever the occasion. And my goodness, how she understands men!"
He laughed, but the laugh sounded slightly unnatural.
"Fantail's delightful, too!" he added.
"What is her real name?"
"Fanny. I call her Fantail." He paused. "Well, because I like her, I suppose."
"I know."
There was a moment of silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in, perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books, not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose manuscript music. The piano was open, and there was more music on it. The armchairs were well worn but comfortable, and looked "sat in." Over the windows there were dim orange-colored curtains that looked old but not shabby. On the floor there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not discern their subjects. On the high wooden mantelpiece there were a few photographs, of professors and students at the Royal College of Music and of a serious and innocent-looking priest in black coat and round white collar.
To Mrs. Mansfield the room suggested a recluse who liked to be cosy, who, perhaps, was drawn toward mystery, even mysticism, and who loved the life of the brain.
"And you've a garden?" she asked, breaking the little pause.
"The size of a large pocket-handkerchief. I'm not at all rich, you know. But I can just afford my little house and to live without earning a penny."
A woman servant, not Mrs. Searle, came in with tea and retreated, walking very softly and slowly. She looked almost rustic.
"That's my only other servant, Harriet," said Heath, pouring out tea.
"There's something very un-Londony in it all," said Mrs. Mansfield, again looking round, almost with a puzzled air.
"That's what I try for. I'm fond of London in a way, but I can't bear anything typical of London in my home."
"It is quite a home," she said; "and the home of a worker. One gets weary of being received in reception-rooms. This is a retreat."
Heath looked at her with his bright almost too searching and observant eyes.
"I wonder," he said almost reluctantly, "whether—may I talk about myself to-day?" he interrupted himself.
"Do, if you like to."
"I think I should."
"Do, then."
"I wonder whether a man is a coward to raise up barriers between himself and life, whether it is a mistake to have a retreat, as you rightly call this room, this house, and to spend the greater part of one's time alone in it? But"—he moved restlessly—"the real question is whether one ought to let oneself be guided by a powerful instinct."
"I expect one ought to."
"Do you? Oh, you're not eating anything!"
"I will help myself."
"Mrs. Shiffney wouldn't agree with you."
"No."
"Didn't—didn't you see her? She went just before you came."
"I saw someone. I thought it might be Adelaide. I wasn't sure."
"It was she. I hadn't asked her to come and wasn't expecting her."
He stopped, then added abruptly:
"It was wonderfully kind of her to come, though. She is kind and clever, too. She has fascination, I think...."
"I'm sure she has."
"And yet, d'you know, there's something in her, and in lots of people I might get to know, I suppose, through her and Max Elliot, that I—well, I almost hate it."
"What is it?"
"Well, whenever I come across one of them by chance I seem to hear a voice repeating, 'To-morrow we die—to-morrow we die—to-morrow we die.' And I seem to see something inside of them with teeth and claws fastening on pleasure. It's—it's like a sort of minotaur, and it gives me horrors. And yet I might go to it."
Mrs. Mansfield said nothing for a moment. She had finished her cup of tea, and now, with a little gesture, refused to have another.
"It's quite true. There is the creature with teeth and claws, and it is, perhaps, horrible. But it's so sad that I scarcely see anything but its sadness."
"You are kinder than I."
He leaned forward.
"D'you know, I think you're the kindest human being I ever met, except one, that priest up there on the mantelpiece."
"Forgive me," she said, making allowance for herself to-day because of Heath's evident desire to talk intimately, a desire which she believed she ought to help, "but are you a Roman Catholic?"
"Oh, no! I wish I was!"
"But I suppose you can't be?"
"Oh, no! I suppose I'm one of those unsatisfactory people whose soul and whose brain are not in accord. That doesn't make for inward calm or satisfaction. But I can only hope for better days."
There was something uneasy in his speech. She felt the strong reserve in him always fighting against the almost fierce wish to be unreserved with her.
"They will come, surely!" she said. "If you are quite sincere, sincere with yourself always and sincere with others as often as is possible."
"You're right about its not being possible to be always sincere with others."
She smiled.
"They simply wouldn't let you!"
"No," he said. "I feel as if I could be rather sincere with you sometimes."
"Specially to-day, perhaps."
"Yes, I think so. We do get on, don't we?"
"Yes, we do."
"I often wonder why. But we do. I'll move the table if you've really finished."
He put the table away and sat down on the settle beside her, at the far end. And he turned, leaning his back against the upright end, and stretching one arm along the wooden top, on which his long fingers restlessly closed.
"I was sorry I went to Max Elliot's till you came into the room," he said. "And ever since then I've been partly very glad."
"But only partly?"
"Yes, because I've always had an instinctive dread of getting drawn in."
"To the current of our modern art life. I'm sure you mean that."
"I do. And of course Elliot is in the thick of it. Mrs. Shiffney's in it, and all her lot, which I don't know. And that fellow Lane is in it too."
"And I suppose I am in it with Charmian."
Heath looked at the floor. Ignoring Mrs. Mansfield's remark, he continued:
"I have some talent. It isn't the sort of talent to win popularity. Fortunately, I don't desire—in fact, I'm very much afraid of popularity. But as I believe my talent is—is rather peculiar, individual, it might easily become—well, I suppose I may say the rage in a certain set. They might drop me very soon. Probably they would—I don't know. But I have a strong feeling that they'd take me up violently if I gave them a chance. That's what Max Elliot can't help wanting. He's such a good fellow, but he's a born exploiter. Not in any nasty way, of course!" Heath concluded hastily.
"I quite understand."
"And, I don't want to seem conceited, but I see there's something about me that set would probably like. Mrs. Shiffney's showed me that. I have never called upon her. She has sent me several invitations. And to-day she called. She wants me to go with her onThe Wandererfor a cruise."
"To Wonderland?"
Heath shrugged his shoulders.
"In the Mediterranean, I believe."
"Doesn't that tempt you?"
"Yes, terribly. But I flatly refused to go. But she knew I was tempted. It's only curiosity on her part," he added, with a sort of hot, angry boyishness. "She can't make me out, and I didn't call. That's why she asked me."
Mrs. Mansfield mentally added a "partly" to the last sentence.
"You're very much afraid of exposing yourself—or is it your talent?—to the influence of what we may as well call the world," she said.
"I suppose one's talent is oneself, one's best self."
"Perhaps so. I have none. You know best about that. I expect you are right in being afraid."
"You don't think I'm merely a rather absurd coward and egoist?"
"Oh, no! But some people—many, I think—would say a talent is meant to be used, to be given to the light."
"I know. But I don't think the modern world wants mine. I"—he reddened—"I always set words from the Bible nearly or from the Prayer-Book."
Smiling a little, as if saving something by humor, he added:
"Not theSong of Solomon."
"But don't the English—"
He stopped her.
"Good heavens! I know you are thinking of the Handel Festival andElijahin the provinces!" he exclaimed. "I know you are!"
She laughed.
"I should like to play you one or two of my things," he said impulsively. "Then you'll see at once."
He went toward the piano. She sat still. She was with the striking unreserve of the reserved man when he has cast his protector or his demon away. With his back to her Heath turned over some music, moved a pile of sheets, set them down on the floor under the piano, searched.
"Oh, here it is!"
THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE"'THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE'"—Page 41
He grasped some manuscript, put it on the music-stand, and sat down.
"This is the last thing I've done. The words are taken from the sixteenth chapter of Revelation—'And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth."' And so on."
With a sort of anger his hands descended and struck the keys. Speaking through his music he gave Mrs. Mansfield indications of what it was expressing.
"This is the sea. 'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man.... The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.... The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared.'"
The last words which Heath had set were those in the fifteenth verse of the chapter—"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame."
When he had finished he got up from the piano with a flushed face and, again speaking in a boyish and almost naive manner, said quickly:
"There, that gives you an idea of the sort of thing I do and care about doing. For, of course, I never will attempt any subject that doesn't thoroughly interest me."
He stood for a moment, not looking toward Mrs. Mansfield; then, as if struggling against an inward reluctance, he again sat down on the settle.
"Have you orchestrated it?" she asked.
"Yes. I've just finished the orchestration."
"Surely you want to hear it given with voices and the orchestra? Frankly, I won't believe you if you say you don't."
"I do."
The reluctance seemed to fade out of him.
"The fact is I'm torn between the desire to hear my things and a mighty distaste for publicity."
He sprang up.
"If you'll allow me I'll just give you an idea of my Te Deum. And then I'll have done."
He went once more to the piano.
When he was sitting beside her again Mrs. Mansfield felt shy of him. After a moment she said:
"You are sincere in your music?"
"Yes."
He did not seem specially anxious to get at her exact opinion of his work, and this fact, she scarcely knew why, pleased Mrs. Mansfield.
"I had two or three things done at the College concerts," Heath continued. "I don't think they were much liked. They were considered very clever technically. But what's that? Of course, one must conquer one's means or one can't express oneself at all."
"And now you work quite alone?"
"Yes. I've got just a thousand a year of my own," he said abruptly.
"You are independent, then."
"Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my compositions. I know that."
Mrs. Mansfield thought, "If he were to get a mystical libretto and write an opera!" But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to see him "a success." In her ears were perpetually sounding the words, "and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared." They took her away from London. They set her in the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath and said:
"I quite understand about Mrs. Shiffney now."
"Yes?"
"You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and verypowerful imagination. I think your music might make you enemies."
Heath looked pleased.
"I'm glad you think that. I know exactly what you mean."
They sat together on the settle and talked for more than an hour. Mrs. Mansfield's feeling of shyness speedily vanished, was replaced by something maternal with which she was much more at ease.
Mrs. Searle let her out. She had said good-bye to Heath in the studio and asked him not to come to the front door.
"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't stayed too long?"
"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"
"I daresay there are."
"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."
"Has Fan begun yet?"
Mrs. Searle blushed.
"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."
"I must take care what I'm about."
"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure—"
The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened, almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."
The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just heard.
Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs. Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.
Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do withThe Wandererunless she lay snug in harbor. His hobby was racing. He was a good horseman, disliked golf, and seldom went out of the British Isles, though he never said that his own country was good enough for him. When he did cross the Channel he visited Paris, Monte Carlo, Homburg, Biarritz, or some place where he was certain to be in the midst of his "pals." The strain of wildness, which made his wife uncommon and interesting, did not exist in him, but he was rather proud of it in her, and had been heard to say more than once, "Addie's a regular gipsy,"as if the statement were a high compliment. He was a tall, well-built, handsome man of fifty-two, with gray hair and moustache, an agreeable tenor voice, which was never used in singing, and the best-cut clothes in London. Although easily kind he was thoroughly selfish. Everybody had a good word for him, and nobody, who really knew him, ever asked him to perform an unselfish action. "That isn't Jimmy's line" was their restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a sensible fellow.
Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.
"What's up, Addie?" he asked, with the sympathy he never withheld from her. "Another gown gone wrong?"
Mrs. Shiffney shook her powerful head, on which was a marvellous black hat crowned with a sort of factory chimney of stiff black plumes.
Mr. Shiffney lit a cigar.
"Poor old Addie!" he said. He leaned down and stroked her shoulder. "I wish you could get hold of somebody or something that'd make you happy," he remarked. "I'm sure you deserve it."
His wife dried her tears and sniffed two or three times almost with the frankness of a grief-stricken child.
"I never shall!"
"Why not, Addie?"
"There's something in me—I don't know! I should get tired of anyone who didn't get tired of me!"
She almost began to cry again, and added despairingly:
"So what hope is there? And Idoso want to enjoy myself! I wonder if there ever has been a woman who wanted to enjoy herself as much as I do?"
Mr. Shiffney blew forth a cloud of smoke, extending the little finger of the hand which held his cigar.
"We all want to have a good time," he observed. "A first-rate time. What else are we here for?"
He spoke seriously.
"We are here to keep things going, I s'pose—to keep it up, don't you know? We mustn't let it run down. But if we don't enjoy ourselves down it goes. And that doesn't do, does it?"
He flicked the ash from his cigar.
"What's the special row this time?" he continued, without any heated curiosity, but with distinct sympathy.
Mrs. Shiffney looked slightly more cheerful. She enjoyed telling things if the things were closely connected with herself.
"Well, I want to start for a cruise," she began. "I can't remain for ever glued to Grosvenor Square. I must move about and see something."
She had just been for a month in Paris.
"Of course. What are we here for?" observed her husband.
"You always understand! Sit down, you old thing!"
Mr. Shiffney sat down, gently pulling up his trousers.
"And the row is," she continued, shaking her shoulders, "that I want Claude Heath to come and he won't. And, since he won't, he's really the only living man I want to have on the cruise."
"Who is he?" observed Mr. Shiffney. "I've never heard of him. Is he one of your special pals?"
"Not yet. I met him at Max's. He's a composer, and I want to know what he's like."
"I expect he's like all the rest."
"No, he isn't!" she observed decisively.
"Why won't he come? Perhaps he's a bad sailor."
"He didn't even trouble himself to say that. He was in such a hurry to refuse that he didn't bother about an excuse. And this afternoon he called, when I was in, and never asked for me, only left cards and bolted, although I had been to his house to ask him to come onThe Wanderer."
"Afraid of you, is he?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. He's never been amongus."
"Poor chap! But surely that's a reason for him to want to get in?"
"Wouldn't you think so? Wouldn't anyone think so? The way I'm bombarded! But he seems only anxious to keep out of everything."
"A pose very likely."
"I don't believe it is."
"I leave it to you. No one sharper in London. Is he a gentleman—all that sort of thing?"
"Oh, of course!"
Mr. Shiffney pulled up his trousers a little more, exposing a pair of striped silk socks which emerged from shining boots protected by white spats.
"To be sure. If he hadn't been he'd have jumped at you andThe Wanderer."
"Naturally. I shan't go at all now! What an unlucky woman I always am!"
"You never let anyone know it."
"Well, Jimmy, I'm not quite a fool. Be down on your luck and not a soul will stay near you."
"I should think not. Why should they? One wants a bit of life, not to hear people howling and groaning all about one. It's awful to be with anyone who's under the weather."
"Ghastly! I can't stand it! But, all the same, it's a fearfulcorvéeto keep it up when you're persecuted as I am."
"Poor old Addie!"
Mr. Shiffney threw his cigar into the grate reflectively and lightly touched his moustaches, which were turned upward, but not in a military manner.
"Things never seem quite right for you," he continued.
"And other women have such a splendid time!" she exclaimed. "The disgusting thing is that he goes all the while to Violet Mansfield."
"She's dull enough and quite old too."
"No, she isn't dull. You're wrong there."
"I daresay. She doesn't amuse me."
"She's not your sort."
"Too feverish, too keen, brainy in the wrong way. I like brains, mind you, and I know where they are. But I don't see the fun of having them jumped at one."
"He does, apparently, unless it's really Charmian."
"The girl? She's not bad. Wants to be much cleverer than she is, of course, like pretty nearly all the girls, except the sporting lot; but not bad."
"Jimmy"—Mrs. Shiffney's eyes began once more to look audacious—"shall I ask Charmian Mansfield to come on the yacht?"
"You think that might bring him? Why not ask both of them?"
"No; I won't have the mother!"
"Why not?"
"Because I won't!"
"The best of reasons, too."
"You understand us better than any man in London."
She sat reflecting. She was beginning to look quite cheerful.
"It would be rather fun," she resumed, after a minute. "Charmian Mansfield, Max—if he can get away—Paul Lane. It isn't the party I'd thought of, but still—"
"Which of them were you going to take?"
"Never mind."
"I don't. And where did you mean to go?"
"I told him to the Mediterranean."
"But it wasn't!"
"Oh, I don't know! Where can one go? That's another thing. It's always the same old places, unless one has months to spare, and then one gets bored with the people one's asked. Things are so difficult."
"One place is very much like another."
"To you. But I always hope for an adventure round the corner."
"I've been round a lot of corners in my time, but I might almost as well have stuck to the club."
"Of courseyoumight!"
She got up.
"I must think about Charmian," she said, as she went casually out of the room.
Mrs. Shiffney turned the new idea over and over in her restless mind, which was always at work in a desultory but often clever way. She could not help being clever. She had never studied, never applied herself, never consciously tried to master anything, but she was quick-witted, had always lived among brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen everything, been everywhere, known everyone, looked into all thebooks that had been talked about, cast at least a glance at all the pictures which had made any stir. And she gathered impressions swiftly, and, moreover, had a natural flair for all that was first-rate, original, or strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon became liked in London and Paris throughout a large circle. Unfortunately, she was changeable and apt to be governed by personal feeling in matters connected with art. When she cast away an artist she generally cast away his art with him. If it was first-rate she did not condemn it as bad. She contented herself with saying that she was "sick of it." And very soon a great many of her friends, and their friends, were sick of it, too. She was a quicksand because she was a singularly complete egoist. But very few people who met her failed to come under the spell of her careless charm, and many, because she had much impulse, swore that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally, in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly, did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her gaiety andjoie de vivreand for the energy with which she pursued enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned. She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. With her time she was less generous. She was not of those who are charitable with their golden hours. "I can't be bothered!" was the motto of her life. And wise people did not bother her.
She had seen that, for a moment, Claude Heath had been tempted by the invitation to the cruise. A sudden light had gleamed in his eyes, and her swift apprehension had gathered something of what was passing in his imagination. But almost immediately the light had vanished and the quick refusal had come. And she knew that it was a refusal which she could not persuade him to cancel unless she called someone to her assistance. His austerity, which attracted her whimsical and unscrupulous nature, fought something else in him and conquered. But the something else, if it could be revived, given new strength, would make a cruise with him, even to all the old places, quite interesting, Mrs. Shiffney thought. Andany refusal always made her greedy and obstinate. "Iwillhave it!" was the natural reply of her nature to any "You can't have it!"
She often acted impulsively, hurried by caprices and desires, and that same evening she sent the following note to Charmian: