Grosvenor Square,Thursday.Dear Charmian,—You've never been on the yacht, though I've always been dying to have you come. I've been glued to London for quite a time, and am getting sick of it. Aren't you? Always the same things and people. I feel I must run away if I can get up a pleasant party to elope with me. Will you be one? I thought of starting some time next month onThe Wandererfor a cruise, to the Mediterranean or somewhere. I don't know yet who'll tuck in, but I shall take Susan Fleet to play chaperon to us and the crew and manage things. Max Elliot may come, and I thought of trying to get your friend, Mr. Heath, though I hardly know him. I think he works too hard, and a breeze might do him good. However, it's all in the air. Tell me what you think about it. Love to the beautiful mother.—In tearing haste, Yours,Adelaide Shiffney.
Grosvenor Square,Thursday.
Dear Charmian,—You've never been on the yacht, though I've always been dying to have you come. I've been glued to London for quite a time, and am getting sick of it. Aren't you? Always the same things and people. I feel I must run away if I can get up a pleasant party to elope with me. Will you be one? I thought of starting some time next month onThe Wandererfor a cruise, to the Mediterranean or somewhere. I don't know yet who'll tuck in, but I shall take Susan Fleet to play chaperon to us and the crew and manage things. Max Elliot may come, and I thought of trying to get your friend, Mr. Heath, though I hardly know him. I think he works too hard, and a breeze might do him good. However, it's all in the air. Tell me what you think about it. Love to the beautiful mother.—In tearing haste, Yours,
Adelaide Shiffney.
"Why has she asked me?" said Charmian to herself, laying this note down after reading it twice.
She had always known Mrs. Shiffney, but she had never before been asked to go on a cruise in the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had always called her Charmian, as she called Mrs. Mansfield Violet. But there had never been even a hint of genuine intimacy between the girl and the married woman, and they seldom met except in society, and then only spoke a few casual and unmeaning words. They had little in common, Charmian supposed, except their mutual knowledge of quantities of people and of a certain social life.
Claude Heath onThe Wanderer!
Charmian took the note to her mother.
"Mrs. Shiffney has suddenly taken a fancy to me, Madretta," she said. "Look at this!"
Mrs. Mansfield read the note and gave it back.
"Do you want to go?" she asked, looking at the girl, not without a still curiosity.
Charmian twisted her lips.
"I don't know. You see, it's all very vague. I should like to be sure who's going. I think it's very reckless to take any chances on a yacht."
"Claude Heath isn't going."
Charmian raised her eyebrows.
"But has she asked him?"
"Yes. And he's refused. He told me so on Monday."
"You're quite sure he won't go?"
"He said he wasn't going."
Charmian looked lightly doubtful.
"Shall I go?" she said. "Would you mind if I did?"
"Do you really want to?"
"I don't think I care much either way. Why has she asked me?"
"Adelaide? I daresay she likes you. And you wouldn't be unpleasant on a yacht, would you?"
"That depends, I expect. You'd allow me to go?"
"If I knew who the rest of the party were to be—definitely."
"I won't answer till to-morrow."
Mrs. Mansfield did not feel sure what was Charmian's desire in the matter. She did not quite understand her child. She wondered, too, why Mrs. Shiffney had asked Charmian to go on the yacht, why she implied that Claude Heath might make one of the party when he had refused to go. It occurred to Mrs. Mansfield that Adelaide might mean to use Charmian as a lure to draw Heath into the expedition. But, if so, surely she quite misunderstood the acquaintanceship between them. Heath was her—Mrs. Mansfield's—friend. How often she had wished that Charmian and he were more at ease together, liked each other better. It was odd that Adelaide should fall into such a mistake. And yet what other meaning could her note have? She wrote as if the question of Heath's going or not were undecided.
Was it undecided? Did Adelaide, with her piercing and clever eyes, see more clearly into Heath's nature than Mrs. Mansfield could?
Mrs. Shiffney had an extraordinary capacity for getting what she wanted. The hidden tragedy of her existence was that she was never satisfied with what she got. She wanted to draw Claude Heath out of his retirement into the big current of life by which she and her friends were buoyantly carried along through changing and brilliant scenes. His refusal had no doubt hardened a mere caprice into a strong desire. Mrs. Mansfield realized that Adelaide would not leave Heath alone now. The note to Charmian showed an intention not abandoned. But why should Adelaide suppose that Heath's acceptance might be dependent on anything done by Charmian?
Mrs. Mansfield knew well, and respected, Mrs. Shiffney's haphazard cleverness, which, in matters connected with the worldly life, sometimes almost amounted to genius. That note to Charmian gave a new direction to her thoughts, set certain subtleties of the past which had vaguely troubled her in a new and stronger light. She awaited, with an interest that was not wholly pleasant, Charmian's decision of the morrow.
Charmian had been very casual in manner when she came to her mother with the surprising invitation. She was almost as casual on the following morning when she entered the dining-room where Mrs. Mansfield was breakfasting by electric light. For a gloom as of night hung over the Square, although it was ten o'clock.
"Have you been thinking it over, Charmian?" said her mother, as the girl sat languidly down.
"Yes, mother—lazily."
She sipped her tea, looking straight before her with a cold and dreamy expression.
"Have you been active enough to arrive at any conclusion?"
"I got up quite undecided, but now I think I'll say 'Yes,' if you don't mind. When I looked out of the window this morning I felt as if the Mediterranean would be nicer than this. There's only one thing—why don't you come, too?"
"I haven't been asked."
"And why not?"
"Adelaide's too modern to ask mothers and daughters together," said Mrs. Mansfield, smiling.
"Would you go if she asked you?"
"No. Well, now the thing is to find out what the party is to be. Write the truth, and say you'll go if I know who's to be there and allow you to go. Adelaide knows quite well she has lots of friends I shouldn't care for you to yacht with. And it's much better to be quite frank about it. If Susan Fleet and Max go, you can go."
"I believe you are really the frankest person in London. And yet people love you—miracle-working mother!"
Charmian turned the conversation to other subjects and seemed to forget all aboutThe Wanderer. But when breakfast was over, and she was alone before her little Chippendale writing-table, she let herself go to her excitement. Although she loved, even adored her mother, she sometimes acted to her. To do so was natural to Charmian. It did not imply any diminution of love or any distrust. It was but an instinctive assertion of a not at all uncommon type of temperament. The coldness and the dreaminess were gone now, but her excitement was mingled with a great uncertainty.
On receiving Mrs. Shiffney's note Charmian had almost instantly understood why she had been asked on the cruise. Her instinct had told her, for she had at that time known nothing of Heath's refusal. She had supposed that he had not yet been invited. Mrs. Shiffney had invited her not for herself, but as a means of getting hold of Heath. Charmian was positive of that. Months ago, in Max Elliot's music-room, the girl had divined the impression made by Heath on Mrs. Shiffney, had seen the restless curiosity awake in the older woman. She had even noticed the tightening of Mrs. Shiffney's lips when she, Charmian, had taken Heath away from the little group by the fire, with that "when you've quite done with my only mother," which had been a tiny slap given to Mrs. Shiffney. And she had been sure that Mrs. Shiffney meant to know Heath. She had a great opinion of Mrs. Shiffney's social cleverness and audacity. Most girls who were much in London society had. She did not really like Mrs. Shiffney, or want to be intimate with her, but she thoroughly believed in her flair, and that was why the note had stirred in Charmian excitement and uncertainty. If Mrs.Shiffney thought she saw something, surely it was there. She would not take shadow for substance.
But might she not fire a shot in the dark on the chance of hitting something?
"Why did she ask me instead of mother?" Charmian said to herself again and again. "If she had got mother to go Claude Heath would surely have gone. Why should he go because I go?"
And then came the thought, "She thinks he may, perhaps thinks he will. Will he? Will he?"
The note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs. Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the party. And then what would Heath do?
As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs. Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right."
She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned herself to a period of patience.
By return there came a note hastily scribbled:
"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.—A. S."
But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother, who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them. Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in, composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house, and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.
"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.
He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by playing before sitting down to work.
"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard you playing, and knew you were in."
"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"
"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."
Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out at the piano.
"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.
"In the drawing-room, sir."
"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."
He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it, looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world with which he had nothing to do.
"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."
Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly stiff.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and—"
He touched her powerful hand.
"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too bad of me."
He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her. Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position, her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified? No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally. He felt savage, but he felt flattered.
"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.
Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.
"May I give you some tea?"
Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she regarded him as a boy.
"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."
"But really, I am—"
"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."
"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with sudden reserve.
"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little room! But you never sit in it."
"Not often."
"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."
There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.
"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said. "It's about the yacht."
"I'm really so very sorry that—"
"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."
"I am tempted."
"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet—she's a sort of chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course—Max Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps—if he can't come some charming man whom you'd delight in—and Charmian Mansfield."
Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:
"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."
"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."
"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."
"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over to Sicily and Tunis."
She saw his eyes beginning to shine.
"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could leave the yacht at Alexandria—"
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."
"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are not to enjoy life!"
"It isn't that at all."
"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I supposeEnglishartists are different. I often wonder whether they are wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."
She laughed and moved her shoulders.
"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in the stream of life."
"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.
She saw anger in his eyes.
"Perhaps you are getting something—some sacred cantata—ready for one of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands or Tunis. Besides, you'd get all the wrong sort of inspiration in such places. I shall never forget the beautiful impression I received at—was it Worcester?—once when I saw an English audience staggering slowly to its feet in tribute to the Hallelujah Chorus. I am sure you are writing something that will bring Worcester to its feet, aren't you?"
He forced a very mirthless laugh.
"I'm really not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I can't accept it, unfortunately for me."
"Mal-au-cœur?"
"Yes, yes. I don't think I'm a good sailor."
"Mal-au-cœur!" she repeated, smiling satirically at him.
"I'm in the midst of something."
"The Puritan tradition?"
"Perhaps it is that. Whatever it is, I suppose it suits me; it's in my line, so I had better stick to it."
"You are bathing in the Ganges?"
Her eyes were fixed upon him.
"Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?"
Claude looked down.
"I must leave that to you. I am sure you will have a very delightful party."
Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was looking the soul of careless good-nature, and quite irresistible, though very Roman.
"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot, Paul Lane, and you—I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really, though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get one!"
Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of the world. As she got into her motor she said:
"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"
The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at least with ardor—a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly, absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive. Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffneythought of him? But there was within him—and he knew it—a surely weak inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening darkness.
He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.
How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown man, and she had troops of friends, battalions of acquaintances. She could get anyone she liked to go on the yacht, and she wanted him. It was flattering to his masculine vanity. He felt that there was something in him which stretched out and caught at people, without intention on his part, which grasped and held them. It was not his talent, he told himself, for he kept that in the dark. It was himself. Although he was less conceited than the average Englishman of talent, for a few minutes he braced his legs and had the cordial conquering sensation.
He had till Sunday to decide.
How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs. Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or impolite.
What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a coward, a rejector of life's offerings.
Well, he had till Sunday.
Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in the great world. They were very clannish, were quite satisfied with their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber. Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were, to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what satisfied them.
Although he had lived for some years in London he had never tried, or even thought of trying, to push his way into what are called "the inner circles." He had assiduously cultivated his musical talent, but never with a view to using it as a means of opening shut doors. He knew comparatively few people, and scarcely any who were "in the swim," who were written of in social columns, whose names were on the lips of the journalists and of the world. He never thought about his social position as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had been happy enough in his sheltered and perhaps rather selfish existence. Dwelling in the center of a great struggle for life, he had enjoyed it because he had had nothing to do with it. His own calm had been agreeably accentuated by the turmoil which surrounded and enclosed it. How many times had he blessed his thousand a year, that armor of gold with which fate had provided him! How often had he imagined himself stripped of it, realized mentally the sudden and fierce alteration in his life and eventually, no doubt, in himself that must follow if poverty came!
He had a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies, the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers, conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with the torn feathers of the fallen.
The many books which he had read dealing with the lives of great artists, sometimes their own autobiographies, had only confirmed him in his wish to keep out of the struggle. Such books, deeply interesting though they were, often made him feel almost sick at heart. As he read them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime. Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.
He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.
But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any combat.
Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which haddriven Claude forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take him on its current whither it would?
He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted, which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs. Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it, though something else in him disliked, despised, almost dreaded it.
He had answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs. Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were transparent. And she had evidently seen something he had supposed to be hidden, something he wished were not in existence.
Her remarks about English musicians, her banter about the provincial festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to him, to his talent! If hewere merely provincial and destined to remain so because of his way of life!
Abruptly he became solicitous of opinion. He thought of Mrs. Mansfield, and wondered what had been her opinion of his music. Almost mechanically he crossed the broad road by the Marble Arch, turned into the windings of Mayfair, and made his way to Berkeley Square.
"I'll ask her. I'll find out!" was his thought.
He rang Mrs. Mansfield's bell.
"Is Mrs. Mansfield at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is she alone?"
"Yes, sir."
Heath stepped in quickly. He still felt excited, uncertain of himself, even self-conscious under the eyes of the butler. There was no one in the drawing-room. As he waited he wondered whether Charmian was in the house, whether he would see her. And now, for the first time, he began to wonder also why Mrs. Shiffney had made so much of the fact that Charmian was to be on the yacht. He recalled her words, "Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?" Had he been asked on Charmian's account? That seemed to him very absurd. She certainly disliked him. They were not en rapport. In the yacht they would be thrown together incessantly. He thought of the expression in Mrs. Shiffney's eyes and felt positive that she had pressed him to come for herself. But possibly she fancied he liked Charmian because he came so often to Berkeley Square. The cleverest woman, it seemed, made mistakes. But he could not quite understand Mrs. Shiffney's proceedings. If he did, after all, go on the yacht it would be rather amusing to study her. And Charmian? Heath said to himself that he did not want to study her. She was too uncertain, not without a certain fascination perhaps, but too ironic, too something. He scarcely knew what it was that he disliked, almost dreaded, in her. She was mischievous at wrong moments. The minx peeped up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite at his ease.
The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he usually did, and in need of a real friend.
"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.
"Why should it be anything special?"
"But it is!"
He laughed almost uneasily.
"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed. "Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or three things, if I may."
Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.
"Anything," she said.
"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other evening? Did you—did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think it"—he paused—"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.
"Provincial!"
Heath was answered, but he persisted.
"What did you think?"
"I thought it alarming."
"Alarming?"
"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."
"Disturbed your mind?"
"Or my heart, perhaps."
"But why? How?"
"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."
Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought, what anyone thought of his music.
"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.
"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.
"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"
"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon me."
"It did really make a strong impression?"
"Very strong."
"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking care of?"
"I am sure you have."
"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.
"Is that what you came to ask me?"
Her fiery eyes seemed to search him. She sat very still, looking intensely alive.
"To-night I feel as if I didn't know, didn't know at all! You see, I avoid so many things, so many experiences that I might have."
"Do you?"
"Yes. I think I've done that for years. I know I'm doing it now."
He moved restlessly.
"Mrs. Shiffney has asked me again to go yachting with her."
"But I thought you had refused."
"I did. But she has been again to-day. She says your daughter is going."
"Charmian has been asked."
"Mrs. Shiffney said she had accepted the invitation."
"Yes."
"And now I'm to give my answer on Sunday."
"You seem quite upset about it," she said, without sarcasm.
"Of course it seems a small matter. People would laugh at me, I know, for worrying. But what I feel is that if I go with Mrs. Shiffney, or go to Max Elliot's parties, I shall very soon be drawn into a life quite different from the one I have always led. And I do think it matters very much to—to some people just how they live, whom they know well, and so on. Men say, of course, that a man ought to face the rough and tumble of life. And some women say a man ought to welcome every experience. I wonder what the truth is?"
Still with her eyes on him, Mrs. Mansfield said:
"Follow your instinct."
"Can't one have conflicting instincts?"
"Oh, no!"
"Then one's instinct may not be strong enough to make itself known."
"I doubt that."
"But I am a man, you a woman. Women are said to have stronger instincts than men."
"Aren't you playing with your own convictions?"
"Am I?"
He stared at her, but for a moment his eyes looked unconscious of her.
"Mrs. Shiffney said something to me that struck me," he said presently. "She implied that experiences of all kinds are the necessary food for anyone who wishes to be at all a big artist. She evidently thinks that England has failed to produce great musicians because the English are hampered by tradition."
"She thinks uncleanliness necessary to the producing of beauty perhaps!"
"Ah, I believe you have put into words what I have been thinking!"
"Is it wisdom to grope for stars in the mud?"
"No, no! It can't be!"
He was silent. Then he said:
"St Augustine, and many others, went through mud to the stars though."
"St. Francis didn't—if we are to talk of the saints."
"I believe you could guide me."
Mrs. Mansfield looked deeply touched. For an instant tears glistened in her eyes. Nevertheless, her next remark was almost sternly uncompromising.
"Even if I could, don't let me."
"Why?"
"I want the composer of the music I heard at the little house to be very strong in every way. No, no; I am not going to try to guide you, my friend!"
There was a sound in her voice as if she were speaking to herself.
"I never met anyone so capable of comradeship—no woman, I mean—as you."
"That's a compliment I like!"
At this moment the door opened and Charmian came in, wrapped in furs, her face covered by a veil. When she saw Heath with her mother she pushed the veil up rather languidly.
"Oh, Mr. Heath! We haven't seen you for ages. What have you been about?"
"Nothing in particular."
"Haven't you?"
"Take off that thick coat, Charmian, and come and talk to us."
"Shall I?"
She unbuttoned the fur slowly. Claude helped her to take it off. As she emerged he thought, "How slim she is!" He had often before looked at girls and wondered at their slimness, and thought that it seemed part of their mystery. It both attracted and repelled him.
"Are you talking of very interesting things?" she asked, coming toward the fire.
"I hear you are going for a cruise with Mrs. Shiffney," said Claude, uneasily.
"I believe I am. It would be rather nice to get out of this weather. But you don't mind it."
"How can you know that?"
"It's very simple, almost as simple as some of Sherlock Holmes's deductions. You have refused the cruise which I have accepted. I expect you were right. No doubt one might get terribly bored on a yacht, unable to get away from people. I almost wonder that I dared to say 'Yes!'"
"Where are you going to sit, Charmian?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
"Dearest mother, I'm afraid I must go upstairs. I've got to try on coats and skirts."
She turned toward Heath.
"The voyage, you know. I wish you could have come!"
She held out her thin hand, smiling. She was looking very serene, very sure of herself.
"I'm to answer Mrs. Shiffney on Sunday," said Heath abruptly.
Something in Charmian's voice and manner had made him feel defiant.
"Oh, I thought you had answered! Is Sunday your day for making up your mind?"
Before he could reply she went out of the room slowly, smiling.
On the following Sunday night at ten o'clock Max Elliot gave one of his musical parties.
Delia had long since emerged from her rest cure, but was still suffering severely from its after-effects. It had completely broken her down, poor thing. The large quantities of "Marella" which she had imbibed had poisoned the system. The Swedish massage had made her bulky. And the prohibition as to letters had so severely shaken her nerve ganglions that she had been forced to seek the strengthening air of an expensive Swiss altitude, from which she had only just returned by way of Paris, where she had been nearly finished off by the dressmakers. However, being a woman of courage, she was down in peach color, with a pale turquoise-blue waist-belt, to receive her guests and to help to make things cheery. And she devoured condolences with an excellent appetite.
"Whatever you do, never touch 'Marella'!" she was saying in her quick, light voice as Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian came into the music-room. "It's poison. It turns everything to I forget what, but something that develops the microbes instead of destroying them. I nearly died of it. Ah, Violet! Don't let Charmian be massaged by a Swede. It will ruin her figure. I've had to starve in Switzerland, or I couldn't have got into any of my new gowns. There's nothing so fatal as a rest cure. It sets every nerve on edge. The terrible monotony, and not knowing whether those one loves are alive or dead, whether the Government's gone out, or if there's a new King, or anything. Quite unnatural! It unfits one to face life and cope with one's friends. But Max would make me. Dear old Max! He's such a faddist. Men are the real faddists. I'll tell you about a marvellous new Arab remedy presently. I heard about it in Paris. We are going to have a lot of music in a minute. Yes, yes!"
She spoke rapidly, looking about the room and seldomhearing what was said to her. Perpetual society had destroyed in her all continuity of mind. Ever since she could remember she had forgotten how to listen. She wanted to see, hear, know everybody, everything. Her mind hovered on the horizon, her restless and pale-blue eyes sought the farthest corners of the chamber to see what was happening in them, while she spoke to those within a foot or two of her. She laughed at jokes she did not catch or want to catch. She replied to questions she had divined by the expression on a face while she was glancing over the head it belonged to. She asked for information and travelled away ere it was given. Yet many people liked her. She was one of those very fair and small women who always look years younger than almost anyone really is, was full of vague charm, was kind, not stupid, and a good little thing, had two children and was only concentrated when at the dressmaker's or trying on hats.
Max was devoted to her and rejoiced in spoiling her. He was one of those men who like to have a butterfly in the room with them.
Mrs. Mansfield never tried to talk to Delia in a crowd, and she and Charmian went on into the big room. It was already full of people, many of whom were sitting on chairs grouped about the dais on which was the piano, while others stood about, and still others looked down upon the throng from recessed balconies, gained from a hidden corridor with which the main staircase of the house communicated.
Charmian saw Mrs. Shiffney not far off, talking and laughing with a great portrait painter, who looked like a burly farmer, and with a renowned operatic baritone, whose voice had left him in the prime of his life and who now gave singing lessons, and tried to fight down the genius which was in him and to which he could no longer give expression. He had a pale, large, and cruel face, and gray eyes that had become sinister since the disaster which had overtaken him. Near this group were three men, a musical critic, Paul Lane, and a famous English composer, prop and stay of provincial festivals. The composer was handsome, with merry eyes and a hearty laugh which seemed to proclaim "Sanity! Sanity! Sanity! Don't be afraid of the composer!" The critic was tall, gay, and energetic, and also looked—indeed, seemed to mean to look—a thorough good fellow who had a hatred of shams. Lane, pale and discontented, had an air of being out of place in their company. Pretty women were everywhere, and there were many young and very smart men. On a sofa close to Charmian a dégagée-looking Duchess was telling a "darkie" story to a lively and debonair writer, who was finding his story to cap it while he listened and smiled. Just beyond them were two impertinent and picturesquely dressed girls, sisters, whom Charmian knew intimately and met at almost every party she went to. One of them, who wore gold laurel leaves in her dark hair, made a little face at Charmian, which seemed to express a satirical welcome and the promise of sarcasm when they should be near enough to talk. The other was being prettily absurd with an excellent match. Close to the piano stood a very beautiful woman dressed in black, without jewels or gloves, who had an exquisite profile, hollow cheeks and haggard but lovely brown eyes. She was talking to several people who were gathered about her, and never smiled. It was impossible to imagine that she could ever smile. Her name was Lady Mildred Burnington, and she was an admirable amateur violinist, married to Admiral Sir Hilary Burnington, one of the Sea Lords. Max Elliot was in the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Opéra Comique, stood by him with her right hand on his arm, as if she wanted to interrupt him. She was deathly pale, with hair like the night, ebon, and a face almost as exaggeratedly expressive as a tragic pierrot's. People pointed her out as Millie Deans, a Southern American never yet heard in London. She spoke to Max Elliot, then looked round the room, with sultry, defiant and yet anxious eyes.
As if in answer to Millie Deans's words, Max Elliot moved away with her, and took her through the throng to Mrs. Shiffney, who turned round with her movement of the shoulders as they came up. Charmian, watching, saw Mrs. Shiffney's gay and careless smile, the piercing light in her eyes as she looked swiftly at the singer, who faced her with a tragic and determined expression. The portrait painter stood by, with his rather protruding eyes fixed on Miss Deans.
As Charmian glanced round at the crowd and spoke to one person and another she was seized again by her horror of being one of the unknown lives. She saw many celebrities. She yearned to be numbered among them. If she could even be as Mrs. Shiffney, an arbiter of taste, a setter of fashions in admiration; if she could see people look at her, as Millie Deans looked at Mrs. Shiffney, with the hard determination to win her over to their side in the battle of art, she thought she could be happy. But to be nobody, "that pretty little Charmian," "that graceful Charmian Mansfield, but she's not half as clever as her mother"! To-night she felt as if she could not bear it.
Mrs. Shiffney had turned away from the singer, and now her eyes rested on Charmian. She nodded and smiled and made a beckoning motion with her left hand. But at this moment a singer and composer, half Spanish, half nobody knew what, who called himself Ferdinand Rades, sat down before the piano with a lighted cigarette in his mouth and struck a few soft chords, looking about him with a sort of sad and languid insolence and frowning till his thick eyebrows came down to make a penthouse roof above his jet black eyes.
"Hush—hush, please!" said Max Elliot, loudly. "'Sh—'sh—'sh! Monsieur Rades is going to sing."
He bent to Rades.
"What is it? Monsieur Rades will singLe Moulin, andLe Retour de Madame Blague."
There was a ripple of applause, and Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at Rades, who turned and stared at her. Then, taking the cigarette from his mouth, he sangLe Moulinat her, leaning back, swaying and moving his thick eyebrows. It was a sad song, full of autumnal atmosphere, a delicate and sensual caress of sorrow. The handsome composer and the lusty musical critic listened to it, watched the singer with a sort of bland contempt. But when he threw away his cigarette and sangLe Retour de Madame Blague, an outrageous trifle, full of biting esprit and insolent wit, with a refrain like the hum of Paris by night, and a longbouche ferméeeffect at the end, even they joined in the laughter and the applause, though with a certain reluctance, as if, in doing so, they halffeared to descend into a gutter where slippery and slimy things made their abode.
Mrs. Shiffney got up and begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time she was speaking to him.
"Non, non! Ce soir non! Impossible!"
"Then singPetite Fille de Tombouctou!" she exclaimed at last.
And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "Petite Fille de Tombouctou."
There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing. His accompaniment was almost terribly rhythmical, with a suggestion of the little drums that the black men love. She saw fierce red flowers while he sang, strange alleys with houses like huts, trees standing stiffly in a blaze of heat, sand, limbs the color of slate. The sound of the curious voice had become Eastern, the look in the insolent black eyes Eastern. There seemed to be an odd intoxication in the face, pale, impassive, and unrighteous, as if the effects of a drug were beginning to steal upon the senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing.
After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach'sHeart Ever Faithful. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan Square.
"Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into God's air now."
The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice at the nets.
"Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end! What a stroke of genius!"
Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach—in the supper room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.
Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London. Their father was a very rich iron-master, a self-made man, who had been created a Baronet and had married an ultra-aristocratic woman, the beautiful Miss Enid Blensover, related to half the Peerage. The blend had resulted in the two girls, who were certainly anything rather than ordinary. They were half Blensovers and half Drakes: delicate, languid, hot-house plants; shrewd, almost coarse, and pushing growths, hardy and bold, and inclined to be impudent. In appearance they resembled their mother, and they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective. But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their mother nor they cared about anybody's private life or morals, provided the sinner was celebrated, lovely, or amusing, they knew intimately, even to calling by Christian names, all sorts of singers, actresses, dancers, sculptors, writers, and painters, who were never received in any sort of good society on the Continent or in America. London's notorious carelessness in such matters was led gaily by their mother and by them. Their house in Park Lane was popularly known as "the ragbag," and they were perpetually under the spell of some rage of the moment. Now they were twin Bacchantes, influenced by a Siberian dancer at the Palace; now curiously Eastern, captured by a Nautch girl whom they had come to know in Paris. For a time they were Japanese, when theCriterion opened its doors to a passionate doll from Yokohama, who became their bosom friend. Italy touched them with the lovely hands of La Divina Carlotta, our lady of tears from a slum of Naples. The Sicilians turned them to fire and the Swedish singers to snow. At this moment Margot was inclined to be classic, caught by a plastic poseuse from Athens, who, attired solely in gold-leaf, was giving exhibitions at the Hippodrome to the despair of Mrs. Grundy. And Kit was waiting for a new lead and marking time in the newest creations from Paris.
"Charmian, come and sit down for just a moment! Run away and play, Lord Mark!"
"With whom?" said a handsome boy plaintively.
"With Jenny Smythe, with Lady Dolly, anyone who can play pretty. Come back in ten minutes and I'll be bothered with you again—perhaps. Let's sit here, Charmian. Wasn't theFilletoo perfect? But the Bach was like the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. Max shouldn't have allowed it. What do you think of my gold gown?"
"It's lovely!"
"The Greeks knew everything and we know nothing. This dress hangs in such a calm way that one can't be anything but classic in it. Since I've known the Persephone I've learnt how to live. You must go to the Hippodrome. But what's all this about your going yachting with the Adelaide and an extraordinary Cornish genius? What's the matter?"
The last words came out in a suddenly business-like and almost self-made voice, and Margot's deep eyes, full hitherto of a conscious calm, supposed to be Greek, abruptly darted questioning fires which might have sprung from a modern hussy.
"D'you like him so much?" continued Margot, before Charmian had time to answer.
"You're making a great mistake," said Charmian, with airy dignity. "I was only surprised to hear that Claude Heath was coming. I didn't know it. I understood he had refused to come. He always refuses everything. How did you hear of him?"
"The Adelaide has been talking about him. She says he's a genius who hates the evil world, and will only know her and your mother, and that he's going with her and you and Max Elliot to the Greek Isles on one condition—that nobody else is to be asked and that he is to be introduced to no one. If it's really the Greek Isles, I think I ought to be taken. I told the Adelaide so, but she said Claude Heath would rather die than have a girl like me with him on the yacht."
"So he really has accepted?"
"Evidently. Now you don't look pleased."
"Mr. Heath's Madretta's friend, not mine," said Charmian.
"Really? Then your mother should go to Greece. Why did the Adelaide ask you?"
"I can't imagine."
"Now, Charmian!"
"I assure you, Margot, I was amazed at being asked."
"But you accepted."
"I wanted to get out of this weather."
"With a Cornish genius?"
"Mr. Heath only looks at middle-aged married women," said Charmian. "I think he has a horror of girls. He and I don't get on at all."
"What is he like?"
"Plain and gaunt."
"Is his music really so wonderful?"
"I've never heard a note of it."
"Hasn't your mother?"
With difficulty Charmian kept a displeased look out of her face as she answered sweetly:
"Once, I think. But she has said very little about it."
At this moment the tragic mask of Miss Deans was seen in a doorway, and Margot got up quickly.
"There's that darling Millie from Paris!"
"Who? Where?"
"Millie Deans, the only real actress on the operatic stage. Until you've seen her inCrêpe de Chineyou've never seen opera as it ought to be. Millie! Millie!"
She went rather aggressively toward Miss Deans, forgetting her calm gown for the moment.
So Claude Heath had accepted. Charmian concluded this from Margot Drake's remarks. No doubt Mrs. Shiffney had received his answer that day. She loved giving people the impression that she was adventurous and knew strange and wonderful beings who wouldn't know anyone else. So she had not been able to keep silence about Claude Heath and the Greek Isles. Charmian's heart bounded. The peculiar singing of Ferdinand Rades, which had upon hearers much of the effect made upon readers by the books of Pierre Loti, had excited and quickened her imagination. Secretly Charmian was romantic, though she seldom seemed so. She longed after wonders, and was dissatisfied with the usual. Yet she was capable of expecting wonders to conform to a standard to which she was accustomed. There was much conventionality in her, though she did not know it. "The Brighton tradition" was not a mere phrase in her mother's mouth. Laughingly said it contained, nevertheless, particles of truth. But at this moment it seemed far away from Charmian, quite foreign to her. The Greek Isles and—
Millie Deans had stepped upon the dais, accompanied by a very thin, hectic French boy, who sat down at the piano. But she did not seem inclined to sing. She looked round, glanced at the hectic boy, folded her hands in front of her, and waited. Max Elliot approached with his genial air and spoke to her. She answered, putting her dead-white face close to his. He also looked round the room, then hurried out. There was a pause.
"What is it?" people murmured, turning their heads.
Paul Lane bent down and said to the dégagée Duchess:
"She won't sing till Mr. Brett, of the opera, comes."
His lips curled in a sarcastic smile.
"What a fuss they all make about themselves!" returned the Duchess. "It's a hard face."
"Millie's? She's in a violent temper. You'll see; until Mr. Brett comes she won't open her mouth."
Miss Deans stood rigid, with her hands always crossed in front of her and her eyes watching the door. The boy at the piano moved his hands over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a laugh, and Mrs. Shiffneycame carelessly in with Rades, followed by a small, stout man, Mr. Brett, and Max Elliot. When he saw Miss Deans the stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door. Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking sensitive. Mr. Brett leaned against the wall looking critical.
Charmian was in one of the balconies now with a young man. She saw her mother opposite to her with Sir Hilary Burnington, looking down on the singer and the crowd, and she thought her mother must have heard something very sad. Millie Deans sang an aria of Mozart in a fine, steady, and warm soprano voice. Then she sang twomorceauxfrom the filmy opera,Crêpe de Chine, by a young Frenchman, which she had helped to make the rage of Paris. Her eyes were often on Mr. Brett, commanding him to be favorable, yet pleading with him too.
As Mrs. Mansfield looked down she was feeling sad. The crowded room beneath her was a small epitome of the world to which talent and genius are flung, to be kissed or torn to pieces, perhaps to be kissed then torn to pieces. And too often the listeners felt that they were superior to those they listened to, because to them an appeal was made, because they were in the position of judges. "Do we like her? Shall we take her?" Many faces expressed such questions as this strange-looking woman sang. "What does Mr. Brett think of her?" and eyes turned toward the stout man leaning against the wall.
Did not Claude Heath do well to keep out of it all?
The question passed through Mrs. Mansfield's mind as she felt the humiliation of the yoke which the world fastens on the artist's neck. She had come to care for Heath almost a little jealously, but quite unselfishly. She was able to care unselfishly, because she had given all of herself that was passionate long ago to the man who was dead. Never again could she be in love. Never again could she desire the closest relation woman can be in with man. But she felt protective toward Heath. She had the strong instinct, to shelter his young austerity, his curious talent, his reserve, and his sensitiveness. And she was thinking now, "If he goes yachting with Adelaide! If he allows Max to exploit him! If he becomes known, perhaps the fashion, even the rage! And if they get sick of him?" Yet what is talent for? Why is it given to any man? Surely to be used, displayed, bestowed.
There was a hard and cruel expression on many of the listening faces below. Singers were there, appraising; professional critics coldly judging, jaded, sated, because they had heard too much of the wonderful sounds of the world; men like Paul Lane, by temperament inclined to sneer and condemn; women who loved to be in camps and whose idea of setting an artist on high was to tear all other artists down. Battlefields! Battlefields! Mrs. Mansfield was painfully conscious that the last thing to be found in any circle of life is peace. Too often there was poison in the cup which the artist had to drink. Too often to attract the gaze of the world was to attract and concentrate many of the floating hatreds of the world. The little old house near Petersburg Place was a quiet refuge. Mrs. Searle, a kindly dragon, kept the door. Yellow-haired Fan was the fairy within. The faded curtains of orange color shut out very much that was black and horrid. And there the Kings of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a dead man.
"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.
He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog, looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be detached.
"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."
"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."
The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.
"Don't you?"
"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."
"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musicalcritic standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."
"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice and the—the what you may call it all wrong."
"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."
"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.
"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic, puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.
"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.
"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a forced-up mezzo."
Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:
"Charming! No, I haven't heardCrêpe de Chine. I don't care much for Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give usEnigme." Mr. Brett had disappeared.
"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades beganEnigmein his most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris that man is not a singer at all. He is merely adiseur. No one would dream of putting him in a programme with me."
"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention—"
"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you all here, is as ignorant of music as—as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I say!"
"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You will come back, you—"
"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"
At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.
Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness. Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss Deans did not appeal to him.
"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.
And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a similar ennui when the American was singing.
"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who, with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of Miss Deans.
And again her mind went to Claude Heath.
"Better to keep out of it! Better to keep out of it!" a voice said within her.
And apparently Heath was of one mind with her on this matter.
As Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian were going away they met Mrs. Shiffney in the hall with Ferdinand, who was holding her cloak.
"Oh, Charmian!" she said, turning quickly, with the cloak over one of her broad shoulders. "I heard from Claude Heath to-day."
"Did you?" said Charmian languidly, looking about her at the crowd.
"Yes. He can't come. His mother's got a cold and he doesn't like to leave her, or something. And he's working very hard on a composition that nobody is ever to hear. And—I forget what else. But there were four sides of excuses."
She laughed.
"Poor boy! He hasn't much savoir-faire. Good-night! I'll let you know when we start."
Her eyes pierced Charmian.
"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."
That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom andhad locked the door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:
"If only Rades had not sungPetite Fille de Tombouctou!"
That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such music was cruel when life went wrong.
"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.
Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that from the first she had hated Claude Heath.