Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall. Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his "interests." And yet—and yet—
Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she—was she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in Algiers when they were quite alone together?
He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.
He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.
She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.
As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought she looked very sad.
"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.
"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."
"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"
He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for a moment.
"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.
Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him. He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.
"If you want me."
"If!"
"I'm not quite sure that you will."
Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which till that moment he had scarcely been aware?
"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."
"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."
"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"
"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"
Claude sighed.
"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed to be within reach of you."
"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."
"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"
"Do you?"
He moved rather uneasily.
"I—I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still—still we sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not natural to us."
"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to us."
"What means?"
"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves,if we can incorporate it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward. I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"
Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.
"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"
"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."
"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."
She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of Romeike and Curtice.
"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear, slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A year—two years, perhaps—out of the world! It will be a new experience for me, won't it, Madretta?"
"Quite new."
The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.
"And I shall see the island with you."
"The island?" he said.
"Don't you remember—the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it. But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again, better than the truth, becauseIwas added to them. Don't you remember, Claudie?"
"Yes, now I remember."
"You are going to do that where I could not do it."
Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from her.
Charmian and her husband went first to the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money to throw away.
During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which, carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life running its course in the darkness of his soul.
In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose. And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of "steeping" her husband.
She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she was so keenly, so incessantlyalive to the reason of their coming to Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.
But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now. You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first she began to assert herself in your art life."
And he kept silence.
Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.
She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another—a not completely hidden reason?
Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian, and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.
And presently she said:
"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."
Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned on the seat and looked at her.
"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.
Something in his eyes almost startled her.
"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."
He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an expression which made her feel almost uneasy.
"Something here"—she almost faltered, called on her will, and continued—"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.
She thought his voice sounded insincere.
"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here for our honeymoon."
"I thought of it. I wanted to."
"Then why didn't you?"
"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."
"And now the right time has come?"
"Yes, now it has come."
She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had troubled her spirit.
The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red roses in his earthy hand.
He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with the old man and began to talk with him.
It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.
That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:
"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."
"Old Robert!"
"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests me—us—is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year, Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but ingood repair, pure Arab in style, so he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here in the best part of Mustapha Inférieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"
"Isn't it rather late?"
"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.
"Yes, let us go to-morrow."
Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude, and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de Manœuvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles, confronted them, holding its many secrets.
"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.
"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.
"I know it will do."
She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery running right round it from which the few small bedroomsopened by low black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household, when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas. Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red of the crowding houses of the town.
It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than the studio in Renwick Place.
"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.
The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall, and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.
Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery at Staouëli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi, and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets, charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone. She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.
Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes, tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him. It was her rôle to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging. But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities, passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied. Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in amilieuwhere they had no friends, no acquaintances even, except two or three casually met in the Hôtel St. George, and the British Consul-General and his wife, who had been to call on them.
Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat." She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands her true feeling abruptly.
In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests, occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear. He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so, for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going to do?
Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the force which he had oftenfelt in London, a force which had often secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without tonic properties.
With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square, when he read Carlyle'sFrench Revolutionand sometimes felt criminal. There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel inclined to or not."
Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in, more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!
Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going" to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the opportunity presented itself.
Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater, among themThe Astral Plane,Reincarnation,Death—and After?andThe Seven Principles of Man. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet, Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and patience. Just now—indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composingLe Paradis Terrestre, how long he had taken in the creation of that stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.
She had begun withThe Seven Principles of Man. The short preface had attracted her. "Life easier to bear—death easier to face." If theosophy helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death. But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed attention of the world—they were all so far away.
Resolutely she readThe Seven Principles of Man.
Then she dipped intoReincarnationandDeath—and After?
Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint—as, say, Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in her life.
Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.
One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window, leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without them.
Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier, the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but Claude had never seenhim, though he had corresponded with him, and sent him a cheque of £100 for his work.
Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened, and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.
Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest son, but who was now resigned to the latter'sétranges folies. The fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes of him.
When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes with him, and preparing him for Claude.
This man must "fire" Claude.
Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality, he exclaimed:
"Eh bien, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"
Charmian looked at him and hesitated.
"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle,morbid perhaps? Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful imaginings?"
Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled at the upward-pointing ends.
"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to music must have lived also to do it justice."
There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class, in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.
Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help Claude to bridge that gulf.
"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.
Mrs. Shiffney, who was perpetually changing her mind in the chase after happiness, changed it about India. After all the preparations had been made, innumerable gowns and hats had been bought, a nice party had been arranged, and the yacht had been "sent round" to Naples, she decided that she did not want to go, had never wanted to go. Whether the defection of a certain Spanish ex-diplomat, who was to have been among the guests, had anything to do with her sudden dislike of "that boresome India," perhaps only she knew, and the ex-diplomat guessed. The whole thing was abruptly given up, and January found her in Grosvenor Square, much disgusted with her persecution by Fate, and wondering what on earth was to become of her.
In such crises she generally sent for Susan Fleet, if the theosophist were within reach. She now decided to telegraph to Folkestone, where Susan was staying in lodgings not far from the house of dear old Mrs. Simpkins. Susan replied that she would come up on the following day, and she duly arrived just before the hour of lunch.
She found Mrs. Shiffney dressed to go out.
"Oh, Susan, what a mercy to see you! We are going to the Ritz. We shall be by ourselves. I want you to advise me what to do. Things have got so mixed up. Is the motor there?"
"Yes."
"Come along, then."
At the Ritz, although she met many acquaintances, Mrs. Shiffney would not join any one for lunch or let any one join her.
"Susan and I have important matters to discuss," she said, smiling.
Her face and manner had completely changed directly she got out of the motor. She now looked radiant, like one forwhom life held nothing but good things. And all the time she and Susan were lunching and talking she preserved a radiant demeanor. Her reward was that everyone said how handsome Adelaide Shiffney was looking. She even succeeded in continuing to look handsome when she found that Susan had made private plans for the immediate future.
"I've promised to go to Algiers," Susan said over theœufs en cocotte, when Mrs. Shiffney asked what was to be done to make things lively.
"To Algiers! Why? What is there to do there? You know it inside out."
"Scarcely that. I'm going to stay with Charmian Heath."
Mrs. Shiffney's large mouth suddenly looked a little hard, though her general expression hardly altered.
"Oh! Whereabouts are they?"
"Up at Mustapha, not far from Mrs. Graham."
"They say he's trying to write an opera. Poor fellow! The very last thing he could do, I should think. But she pushes him on. Since that song of his—I forget the name, heart something or other—her head has been completely turned about his talent. The fact is, Susan, Sennier's sudden fame has turned all their heads, the young composers,les jeunes, you know. They are all trying to write operas. In Paris it's too absurd! But an Englishman, with his temperament, too—Oliver Cromwell in Harris tweed!—she must be mad. Of course even if he ever finishes it he will never get it produced."
Susan quietly went on eating her eggs.
"A totally unknown man. She thinks that song has made him quite a celebrity. But nobody has ever heard of him."
"Nobody had ever heard of Sennier till that night at Covent Garden," observed Susan, lifting a glass of water to her lips.
"Oh, yes, they had!"
Mrs. Shiffney's musical passion for Sennier often led her to embroider facts.
"Among the people who matter in Paris he was quite famous."
"Oh, I didn't know that," said Susan, without a trace of doubt or of sarcasm.
"How could you? Besides, Sennier is a great man, the only man we have, in fact. So you were going to stay with the Heaths?"
"I am going. I promised Charmian Heath."
"When?"
"In about ten days, I think. My mother is rather unwell, only a bad cold. But I like to be at Folkestone to help Mrs. Simpkins."
"Susan, what an extraordinary person you are!"
"Why?"
"You are. But you are so extraordinary that I could never make you see why. Sandringham and Mrs. Simpkins! There is no one like you."
She branched off to various topics, but presently returned to the Algerian visit.
"What do you think of Charmian Heath, Susan—really think, I mean? Do you care for her?"
"Yes, I do."
"Oh, I don't mean as a theosophist, I mean as a human being."
Susan smiled. "We are human beings."
"You are certainly. But, of course, I know you embrace Charmian Heath with your universal love, just as you embrace me and Mrs. Simpkins and the King and the crossing-sweeper at the corner. That doesn't interest me. I wish to know whether you like her as you don't like me and the King and the crossing-sweeper?"
"Charmian Heath and I are good friends. I am interested in her."
"In a woman!"
"Greatly because she is a woman."
"I know you're a suffragette at heart!"
They talked a little about politics. When coffee came, Mrs. Shiffney suddenly said:
"I'll take you over to Algiers, Susan."
"But you don't want to go there."
"It's absurd your going in one of those awful steamersfrom Marseilles when the yacht is only about half an hour away."
"Half an hour! I thought she was at Naples."
"I saidabouthalf an hour on purpose to be accurate."
"Really, I would just as soon take the steamer," said Susan.
This definite, though very gentle, resistance to her suddenly conceived project decided Mrs. Shiffney. If Susan genuinely wished to go to Algiers by the public steamer, then she would have to go on the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had realized from the beginning of their conversation that Susan wished to go to Algiers alone. There had been something in the tone of her voice, in her expression, her quiet manner, which had convinced Mrs. Shiffney of that. Her curiosity was awake, and something else.
"Susan dear, you must allow me to take care of you as far as Algiers," she said. "If you don't want me there I'll just put you ashore on the beach, near Cap Matifou or somewhere, and leave you there with your trunks. You are an eccentric, but that's no reason why you shouldn't have a comfortable voyage."
"Very well. It's very kind of you, Adelaide," Susan returned, without a trace of vexation.
That very day Mrs. Shiffney telegraphed to the captain of the yacht to bring her round to Marseilles. In the evening Susan Fleet returned to Folkestone.
Mrs. Shiffney did not intend to make the journey alone with Susan, and to be left "in the air" at Algiers. She must get a man or two. After a few minutes' thought she sent a message to Max Elliot asking him to look in upon her. When he came she invited him to join the party.
"You must come," she said. "Only ten days or so. Surely you can get away. And you'll see your protégé, Mr. Heath."
"My protégé!"
"Well, you were the first to discover him."
"But he's impossible. A charming fellow with undoubted talent, but so bearish about his music. I gave it up, as you know, though I'm always the Heaths' very good friend."
"Well, but his song?"
"One song! What's that? And his wife made him compose it. Nobody has ever heard his really fine work, his Te Deum, and his settings of sacred words."
"His wife and mother have, I believe."
"His wife—yes. And she will take care no one else ever does hear them now."
"Why?"
Max Elliot looked at Mrs. Shiffney. Into his big and genial eyes there came an expression of light sarcasm, almost of contempt. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Art and the world!" he said enigmatically.
"Well, but, Max, don't you represent the world in connection with the art of music?"
"I! Do I?" he said, suddenly grave.
She laughed.
"I should think so,mon cher. I don't believe either you or I have a right to talk!"
It was a moment of truth, and was followed, as truth often is, by a moment of silence. Then Mrs. Shiffney said:
"Claude Heath has gone to Algiers to compose an opera."
"Oh, all this opera madness is owing to the success of Jacques!"
"Of course. I know that. But another Jacques might spring up, I suppose. Henriette wouldn't like that."
"Like it!" exclaimed Max Elliot, twisting his thick lips. "She wants a clear field for the next big event. And I must say she deserves it."
"Just what I think. Well, you'll come to Algiers and hear how the new opera's getting on?"
He glanced at her determined eyes.
"Yes, I'll come. But it must be only for ten days. I've got such a lot of work on hand!"
"Perhaps I'll ask Ferdinand to come, too. Or—"
Suddenly Mrs. Shiffney leaned forward. Her face had become eager, almost excited.
"Shall I ask Henriette and Jacques to come with us? They don't go to New York this year."
Max Elliot seemed to hesitate. He was an enthusiast, and apt to be carried away by his enthusiasms, sometimeseven into absurdity. But he was a thoroughly good fellow, and had not the slightest aptitude or taste for intrigue. Mrs. Shiffney saw his hesitation.
"I will ask them," she said, "Charmian Heath will love to know them, I'm sure. She has such a fine taste in celebrities."
On a brilliant day in the first week of FebruaryThe Wandererglided into the harbor of Algiers, and, like a sentient being with a discriminating brain, picked her way to her moorings. On board of her were Mrs. Shiffney, Susan Fleet, Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Max Elliot.
The composer had been very ill on the voyage. His lamentations and cries of "Ah, mon Dieu!" and "O la la là!" had been distressing. Madame Sennier had never left him. She had nursed him as if he were a child, holding his poor stomach and back in the great crises of his malady, laying him firmly on his enormous pillows when exhaustion brought a moment of respite, feeding him with a spoon and drenching him with eau de Cologne. She now gave him her arm to help him on deck, twining a muffler round his meager throat.
"It's lovely, my cabbage! You must lift the head! You must regard the jewelled Colonial crown of our beloved France!"
"Ah, mon Dieu! O la la là!" replied her celebrated husband.
"My little chicken, you must have courage!"
Susan Fleet had let Charmian know how she was coming, and had mentioned Mrs. Shiffney. But she had said nothing about the Senniers, for the simple reason that Adelaide had told her nothing about them until they stepped into thewagon-litin Paris. Then she had remarked carelessly:
"Oh, yes, I believe they're crossing with us! Why not?"
As soon as the yacht was moored the whole party prepared to leave her. Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Hôtel St. George. And Susan Fleet was going at once to Djenan-el-Maqui.
"Tell Charmian Heath I'll look in this afternoon withMax, Susan, about tea-time. Don't say anything about the Senniers. They won't come, I'm sure. He says he's going straight to bed directly he reaches the hotel. Charmian would be disappointed. I'll explain to her."
These were Mrs. Shiffney's last words to Susan, as she pulled down her thick white veil, opened her parasol, and stepped into the landau to drive up to the hotel. Madame Sennier was already in the carriage, where the composer lay back opposite to her with closed eyes. Even the brilliant sunshine, the soft and delicious air, the gay cries and the movement at the wharf, where many Arabs were unloading bales of goods from the ships, or were touting for employment as porters and guides, failed to rouse him.
"I must go to bed!" was his sole remark.
"My cat, you shall have the best bed in Africa and stay there for a week. Only have courage for another five minutes!" said his wife, speaking to him with the intonation of a strong-hearted mother reassuring a little child.
When Susan arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Charmian there alone. Charmian greeted her eagerly, but looked at her anxiously, almost suspiciously, after the first kiss.
"Where's Adelaide? On the yacht?"
"She's gone to the Hôtel St. George."
"Oh! Close to us! How long is she going to stay? Oh, Susan, why did you let her come?"
"I couldn't help it. But why need you mind?"
"Adelaide hates me!"
"Oh, no!"
"She does. And you know it."
"I really don't think she has time to hate you, Charmian. And Adelaide can be very kind."
"Your theosophy prevents you from allowing that there are any faults in your friends. Yes, Susan, it does."
"Have you read the manuals carefully?"
"Yes, but I can't think of them now. Adelaide's being here will spoil everything."
"No it won't! She'll only stay a day or two, not that, perhaps."
"But why did she come at all?"
"She didn't tell me. She's coming to see you to-day with Mr. Elliot."
"Max Elliot, too! Of course it is Claude whom Adelaide wants to see. I quite understand that. But he's not here."
"What has become of him?"
"Susan, you know of course he wished to welcome you. He is devoted to you. But—well, the truth is"—she slightly lowered her voice, although there was no one in the room—"he had to go away for the opera. He has gone to Constantine with Armand Gillier, the author of the libretto, to study the native music there, and military life, I believe. There is a big garrison at Constantine, you know. Monsieur Gillier is a most valuable friend for Claude, and can help him tremendously in many ways; with the opera, I mean."
She stopped. Then she added:
"Adelaide Shiffney might have been of great use to Claude, too. But before we were married he offended her, I think. And now, of course, she's on the other side."
"I don't know whether I quite understand what you mean."
"She's on Sennier's side."
It seemed to Susan Fleet that Charmian was living rather prematurely in a future that was somewhat problematic. But she only said:
"Don't let us make too much of it. I hoped you might learn from the manuals not to worry. But while I'm here we can talk them over, if you like."
"Yes, yes," said Charmian, changing, melting almost into happiness. "Oh, I am glad you've come, even though it entails Adelaide for a day or two. Of course she knows about the opera?"
"Yes, she does."
"I knew." She looked into Susan's face, smiled, and concluded: "Never mind!"
At five o'clock that day the peace of Djenan-el-Maqui was broken by the sound of animated voices in the courtyard. A bell jangled and a moment later Pierre, with his most birdlike demeanor, ushered into the drawing-room Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, her husband, and Max Elliot.
"What a dear little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite envy them."
"It's charming!" said Max Elliot.
"Love in a harem! Better than in a cottage."
Madame Sennier pushed up her huge floating veil and showed her powerful face of a clown covered with white pigment. Her lips made a scarlet bar across it.
"What is she like? I remember the man. He's clever."
"Oh, she—she is charming; thin and charming."
"That's well!" observed the composer. "That's very well."
He appeared to have quite recovered from his despair, and now looked almost defiantly cheerful. Small in body, with a narrow chest and shoulders, and a weakly growing beard, he was nevertheless remarkable, even striking in appearance. His large nose suggested Semitic blood, but also power, which was shown, too, in his immense forehead and strong, energetic head. He had a habit of blinking his eyes. But they were fine eyes, full of feeling, imagination, and emotion, but also at moments full of sarcasm and shrewdness. His dark, hairy and small hands were rather monkeylike, and looked destructive.
"Every woman should be thin and charming," he continued. "The camel species, the elephant-type, the cowlike ruminating specimen—milky mother of the lowing herd, as an English poet has expressed it, and very well, too—should"—he flung out one little hairy hand vehemently—"gowith the advance of corset-makers and civilization. She comes!"
The door had opened, and Charmian came in.
Instantly her eyes fastened on Madame Sennier.
She was so surprised that she stood still by the door, and her whole face was suffused with blood. So much had this woman meant, did she still mean in Charmian's life, that even the habit of the world did not help Charmian to complete self-control at this moment.
"I'm afraid our coming has quite startled you," said Mrs. Shiffney. "Didn't Susan tell you we were going to look in?"
"Yes, of course. I'm delighted!"
Charmian moved. She was secretly furious with herself.
Max Elliot took her hand, and Mrs. Shiffney carelessly introduced the Senniers.
"What a dear little retreat you've found here, and how deliciously you've arranged everything," she said. "You've made a perfect nest for your genius. We are all longing to see him."
They were sitting now. Charmian was on a divan beside Madame Sennier.
"A clever man!" said Madame Sennier, decisively. "I met him once at the opera. You remember, Jacques, I told you what he said about your orchestration?"
"Yes, yes, about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings and the horns to give the effect of water."
"I want Monsieur Sennier to know him," said Mrs. Shiffney.
"I'm so sorry, but he's not here," said Charmian.
Just then Susan Fleet came in. Mrs. Shiffney turned to her.
"Susan! Such a disappointment! But, of course, you know!"
"About Mr. Heath? Yes."
"Has he gone back to England?" said Max Elliot.
"Oh, no. He's in Algeria."
Charmian obviously hesitated, saw that any want of frankness would seem extraordinary, and added:
"He has gone to Constantine with a friend."
Her voice was reluctant.
"Do have some tea!" she added quickly, pulling the bell, which Pierre promptly answered with the tea things.
"Constantine!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "That's no distance, only a night in the train. Can't you persuade him to come back and see us? Do be a dear and telegraph."
She spoke in her most airy way.
"I would in a minute. But he's not gone merely to amuse himself."
"The opera!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "By the way, is it indiscreet to ask who wrote the libretto?"
Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.
"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His name is Gillier."
"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out his hands in a gesture of surprise.
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three libretti by him have I rejected—three, madame. He challenged me to a duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband accepted?"
Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant eyes—they were yellow eyes, and small—fixed upon her.
"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.
Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.
"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can say!"
"Brave! But why?"
Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.
"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."
"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"
She had turned to Max Elliot.
"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"
She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because she was the hindmost. That was certain.
Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation with Madame Sennier.
She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply. There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she, Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her wealth, influence, even, it seemed, a curious adoration. She wondered, too, if this woman had known the first Madame Sennier.
Presently Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was apt to be restless.
"May we go and look about outside?" she said.
"Of course. Shall I—"
"No, no. I see you are interested in each other. Two wives of geniuses! I don't want to spoil it. Come, Jacques, let us explore."
They went away to the court of the goldfish. Max Elliot followed them. As they went Madame Sennier fixed her eyes for a moment on her departing husband. In that moment Charmian found out something. Madame Sennier certainly cared for the man, as well as for the composer. Charmian fancied that love, that softness for the one, bred hatred, hardness, for many others, that it was an exclusive and almost terrible love. Now that she was alone with Madame Sennier, enclosed as it were in that strong perfume, she felt almost afraid of her. She was conscious of being with someone far cleverer than herself. And she realized what an effective weapon in certain hands is an absolute lack of scruple. It seemed to her as she sat and talked, about Paris, America, London, art, music, that this woman must have divined hersecret and intense ambition. Those yellow eyes had surely looked into her soul, and knew that she had brought Claude to Algeria in order that some day he might come forth as the rival of Jacques Sennier. Almost she felt guilty. She made a strong effort, and turned the conversation to the subject of theParadis Terrestre, expressing her enthusiasm for it.
Madame Sennier received the praises with an air of gracious indifference, as if her husband's opera were now so famous that it was scarcely worth while to talk about it. This carelessness accentuated brutally the difference between her position and Charmian's. And it stung Charmian into indiscretion. Something fiery and impetuous seemed to rise up in her, something that wanted to fight. She began to speak of her husband's talent.
Madame Sennier listened politely, as one who listens on a height to small voices stealing vaguely up from below. Charmian began to underline things. It was as if one of the voices from below became strident in the determination to be adequately heard, to make its due effect. Finally she was betrayed into saying:
"Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced."
Madame Sennier stared.
"But," added Charmian, "people who really know think a great deal of my husband; Mr. Crayford, for instance."
Directly she had said this she repented of it. She realized that Claude would have hated the remark had he heard it.
Madame Sennier seemed unimpressed, and at that moment the others came in from the garden. But Charmian, why she did not know, felt increasing regret for her inadvertence. She even wished that Madame Sennier had shown some emotion, surprise, even contemptuous incredulity. The complete blankness of the Frenchwoman at that moment made Charmian uneasy.
When they were all going Mrs. Shiffney insisted on Charmian and Susan Fleet dining at the Hôtel St. George that evening. Charmian wanted to refuse and wished to go. Of course she accepted. She and Susan had no engagement to plead.
Jacques Sennier clasped her hands on parting and gazed fervently into her eyes.