"Miss Fleet at last."
"Yes. It is so tiresome her moving about so much. I care for her more than for any woman in London. All this time she's been in Paris doing things for Adelaide Shiffney."
"Did Madre know about to-night?"
"No."
"Why didn't you tell her? Why not have asked her to come? We belong to her and she to us. It would have been natural."
"I love Madre. But I didn't want even her to-night."
Claude realized that he was assisting at a prelude. But he only said:
"I suppose she is going to Mrs. Shiffney's to-night?"
"Yes."
When they had finished Charmian said:
"Now I'll clear away."
"I'll help you."
"No, you mustn't. I want you to sit down in that cosy chair there, and light your cigar—oh, or your pipe! Yes, to-night you must smoke a pipe."
"I haven't brought it."
"Well, then, a cigar. I won't be long."
She began clearing the table. Claude obediently drew out his cigar-case. He still felt uneasy. What was coming? He could not tell. But he felt almost sure that something was coming which would distress his secret sensitiveness, his strong reserve.
He lit a cigar, and sat down in the armchair Charmian had indicated. She flitted in and out, removing things from the table, shook out and folded the rough white cloth, laid it away somewhere behind the screen, and at last came to sit down.
The studio was lit up with electric light.
"There's too much light," she said. "Don't move. I'll do it."
She went over to the door, and turned out two burners, leaving only one alight.
"Isn't that ever so much better?" she said, coming to sit down near Claude.
"Well, perhaps it is."
"Cosier, more intime."
She sat down with a little sigh.
"I'm going to have a cigarette."
She drew out a thin silver case, opened it.
"A teeny Russian one."
Claude struck a match. She put the cigarette between her lips, and leaned forward to the tiny flame.
"That's it."
She sighed.
After a moment of silence she said:
"I'm glad you couldn't work in the little room. If you had been able to we should never have had this."
"We!" thought Claude.
"And," she continued, "I feel this is the beginning of great things for you. I feel as if, without meaning to, I'd taken you away from your path, as if now I understood better. But I don't think it was quite my fault if I didn't understand. Claudie, do you know you're terribly reserved?"
"Am I?" he said.
He shifted in his chair, took the cigar out of his mouth, and put it back again.
"Well, aren't you? Two whole months, and you never told me you couldn't work."
"I hated to, after you'd taken so much trouble with that room."
"I know. But, still, directly you did tell me, I perfectly understood. I"—she spoke with distinct pressure—"I am a wife who can understand. Don't you remember that night at Jacques Sennier's opera?"
"Yes."
"Didn't I understand then? At the end when they were all applauding? I've got your letter, the letter you wrote that night. I shall always keep it. Such a burning letter, saying I had inspired you, that my love and belief had made you feel as if you could do something great if you changed your life, if you lived with me. You remember?"
"Yes, Charmian, of course I remember."
Claude strove with all his might to speak warmly, impetuously, to get back somehow the warmth, the impulse that had driven him to write that letter. But he remembered, too, his terrible desire to get that letter back out of the box. And he felt guilty. He was glad just then that Charmian had turned out those two burners.
"In these months I think we seem to have got away from that letter, from that night."
Claude became cold. Dread overtook him. Had she detected his lack of love? Was she going to tax him with it?
"Oh, surely not! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."
"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a genius."
At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man, which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words intensified it.
"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he said, with a bluntness not usual in him.
"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget things Max Elliot has said about you—long ago. And Madre thinks—I know that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some of your things."
"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.
He had never before asked his wife what she thought of his music. She had often spoken about it, but never because he had asked her to. But this apparently was to be an evening of a certain frankness. Charmian had evidently planned that it should be so. He would try to meet her.
"That's partly what I wanted to talk about to-night."
Claude felt as if something in him suddenly curled up. Was Charmian about to criticize his works unfavorably, severely perhaps? At once he felt within him a sort of angry contempt for her judgment.
Charmian was faintly conscious of his fierce independence, as she had been on the night of their first meeting; of the something strong and permanent which his manner so often contradicted, a mental remoteness which was disagreeable to her, but which impressed her. To-night, however, she was resolved to play the Madame Sennier to her husband, to bring up battalions of will.
"Well?" Claude said.
"I think, just as I know Madre does, that your things are wonderful. But I don't think they are for everybody."
"For everybody! How do you mean?"
"Oh, I know the bad taste of the crowd. Why, Madre always laughs at me for my horror of the crowd. But there is now a big cosmopolitan public which has taste. Look at the success of Strauss, for instance, of Debussy, and now of Jacques Sennier—our own Elgar, too! What I mean is thatperhaps the things you have done hitherto are for the very few. There is something terrible about them, I think. They might almost frighten people. They might almost make people dislike you."
She was thinking of the Burningtons, the Drakes, of other Sennier-worshippers.
"I believe it is partly because of the words you set," she added. "Great words, of course. But where can they be sung? Not everywhere. And people are so strange about the Bible."
"Strange about the Bible!"
"English people, and even Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio."
She paused. Claude said nothing. He was feeling hot all over.
"I can't help wishing, for your own sake, that you wouldn't always go to the Bible for your inspiration."
"I daresay it is very absurd of me."
"Claudie, you could never be absurd."
"Anybody can be absurd."
"I could never think you absurd. But I suppose everyone can make a mistake. It seems to me as if there are a lot of channels, some short, ending abruptly, some long, going almost to the center of things. And genius is like a liquid poured into them. I only want you to pour yours into a long channel. Is it very stupid, or perverse, of me?"
As she said the last words she felt deeply conscious of her feminine intelligence, of that delicate ingenuity peculiar to women, unattainable by man.
"No, Charmian, of course not. So you think I've been pouring into a very short channel?"
"Don't you?"
"I'm afraid I've never thought about it."
"I know. It wants another to do that, I think."
"Very likely."
"You care for strange things. One can see that by your choice of words. But there are strange and wonderful words not in the Bible. The other day I was looking into Rossetti'spoems. I readStaff and Scripagain andSister Helen. There are marvellous passages in both of those. I wish sometimes you'd let me come in here, when you're done working, and make tea for you, and just read aloud to you anything interesting I come across."
That was the beginning of a new connection between husband and wife, the beginning also of a new epoch in Claude's life as a composer.
When they left the studio that night he had agreed to Charmian's proposal that she should spend some of her spare time in looking out words that might be suitable for a musical setting, "in your peculiar vein," as she said. By doing this he had abandoned his complete liberty as a creator. So at least he felt. Yet he also felt unable to refuse his wife's request. To do so, after all her beneficent energies employed on his behalf, would be churlish. He might have tried to explain that the something within him which was really valuable could not brook bridle or spur, that unless it were left to range where it would in untrammelled liberty, it was worth very little to the world. He knew this. But a man may deny his knowledge even to himself, deny it persistently through long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which instinctively wished to give to others what they expected of him, or strongly desired from him. On that evening in the studio Charmian's definiteness gained a point for her. She was encouraged by this fact to become more definite.
They were in Kensington by ten o'clock that night. Charmian was in high spirits. A strong hope was dawning in her. Already she felt almost like a collaborator with Claude.
"Don't let us go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Let us dress and go to Adelaide Shiffney's."
"Very well," replied Claude. "By the way, what were you going to tell me about her?"
"Oh, nothing!" she said.
And they went up to dress.
There was a crowd in Grosvenor Square. A good many people were still abroad, but there were enough in London to fill Mrs. Shiffney's drawing-rooms. And notorieties, beauties, and those mysterious nobodies who "go everywhere" untilthey almost succeed in becoming somebodies, were to be seen on every side. Charmian perceived at once that this was one of Adelaide's non-exclusive parties. Mrs. Shiffney seldom entertained on a very large scale.
"One bore, or one frump, can ruin a party," was a favorite saying of hers. But even she, now and then, condescended to "clear people off." Charmian realized that Adelaide was making a clearance to-night.
Since her marriage with Claude she had not been invited to No. 14 B—Mrs. Shiffney's number in the Square—before.
As she came in to the first drawing-room and looked quickly round she thought:
"She is clearing off me and Claude."
And for a moment she wished they had not come. Her old horror of being numbered with the great crowd of the undistinguished came upon her once more. Then she thought of the conversation in the studio, and she hardened herself in resolve.
"He shall be famous. I will make him famous, whether he wishes it, cares for it, or not."
Mrs. Shiffney was not standing close to the first door to "receive" solemnly. She could not "be bothered" to do that. The Heaths presently came upon her, looking very large and Roman, in the middle of the second drawing-room.
In the room just beyond a small orchestra was playing. This was a sure sign of a "clearance" party. Mrs. Shiffney never had an orchestra playing alone, and steadily, through an evening unless bores and frumps were present. "Hungarians in distress" she called these uniformed musicians, "trying to help bores in distress and failing inevitably."
She held out her hand to Charmian with a faintly ironic smile.
"I'm so glad to see you. Ah, Mr. Heath—Benedick as the married man. I expect you are doing something wonderful as one hears nothing about you. The deep silence fills me with expectation."
She smiled again, and turned to speak to an old lady with fuzzy white hair.
"One of the fuzzywuzzies who go to private views, and who insist on knowing me once a year for my sins."
Charmian's lips tightened as she walked slowly on.
She met many people whom she knew, too many; and that evening she felt peculiarly aware of the insignificance of Claude and herself, combined as a "married couple," in the eyes of this society. What were they? Just two people with fifteen hundred a year and a little house near Kensington High Street. As an unmarried girl in Berkeley Square, with a popular mother, possibilities had floated about her. Clever, rising men came to that house. She had charm. She was "in" everything. Now she felt that a sort of fiat had been pronounced, perhaps by Adelaide Shiffney, and her following, "Charmian's dropping out."
No doubt she exaggerated. She was half conscious that she was exaggerating. But there was surely a change in the attitude people adopted toward her. She attributed it to Mrs. Shiffney. "Adelaide hates Claude," she said to herself, adding a moment later the woman's reason, "because she was in love with him before he married me, and he wouldn't look at her." Such a hatred of Adelaide's would almost have pleased her, had not Adelaide unfortunately been so very influential.
Claude caught sight of Mrs. Mansfield and went to join her, while Charmian spoke to Lady Mildred Burnington, and then to Max Elliot.
Lady Mildred, whose eyes looked more feverish even than usual, and whose face was ravaged, as if by some passion or sorrow for ever burning within her, had a perfunctory manner which fought with her expression. Her face was too much alive. Her manner was half dead. Only when she played the violin was the whole woman in accord, harmonious. Then truth, vigor, intention emerged from her, and she conquered. To-night she spoke of the prospects for the opera season, looking about her as if seeking fresh causes for dissatisfaction.
"It's going to be dull," she said. "Covent Garden has things all its own way, and therefore it goes to sleep. But in June we shall have Sennier. That is something. Withouthim it would really not be worth while to take a box. I told Mr. Brett so."
"What did he say?" asked Charmian.
"One Sennier makes a summer."
It was at this moment that Max Elliot came up, looking as he nearly always did, cheerful and ready to be kind.
"I know," he said to Lady Mildred, "you're complaining about the opera. I've just been with the Admiral."
"Hilary knows less about music than even the average Englishman."
"Well, he's been swearing, and even—saving your presence—cursing by Strauss."
"He thinks that places him with the connoisseurs. It's his ambition to prove to the world that one may be an Admiral and yet be quite intelligent, even have what is called taste. He declines to be a sea-dog."
"I think it's only living up to you. But have you really no hope of the opera?"
"Very little—unless Sennier saves the situation."
"Has he anything new?" asked Charmian.
Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
"Madame Sennier says he hasn't."
"We ought to have a rival enterprise here as they have in New York at present," said Lady Mildred.
"Sennier's success at the Metropolitan has nearly killed the New Era," said Elliot. "But Crayford has any amount of pluck, and a purse that seems inexhaustible. I suppose you know he's to be here to-night."
"Mr. Jacob Crayford, the Impresario!" exclaimed Charmian. "He's in England?"
"Arrived to-day by theLusitaniain search of talent, of someone who can 'produce the goods' as he calls it. Adelaide sent a note to meet him at the Savoy, and he's coming. Shows his pluck, doesn't it? This is the enemy's camp."
Max Elliot laughed gaily. He loved the strong battles of art, backed by "commercial enterprise," and was friends with everyone though he could be such a keen and concentrated partisan.
"Crayford would give a hundred thousand dollars withouta murmur to get Jacques away from the Metropolitan," he continued.
"Won't he go for that?" asked Lady Mildred, in her hollow voice. "Is Madame Sennier holding out for two hundred thousand?"
Again Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
"Henriette! Has she anything to do with it?"
"Mr. Elliot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."
"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"
"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.
"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there. Margot Drake is speaking to him."
"Margot—of course! But I can't see them."
Max Elliot moved.
"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"
Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.
"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."
"To be sure!"
"What—that little man!"
"Why not?"
"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."
"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can assure you Mr. Crayford is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him point and even charm as a man."
"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you know him?"
"Yes."
"Do introduce me to him."
She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face, and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney kept him in conversation. Margot Drakestood close to him, and fixed her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she repeated quietly, but with determination:
"Please introduce me to him."
A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm, to sex charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew that he belonged to the latter class. She only spent some five minutes in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of his personality.
Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic. His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.
"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I wanted to know the great fighter."
She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.
Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows sometimes suddenly upward.
"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he said, speaking rapidly.
"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."
"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."
"I hope it isn't true."
"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr. Crayford.
"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of hisParadis Terrestre, and it altered my whole life."
"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."
"I do hope you'll be successful."
"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you interested in music?"
"Intensely."
She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain. Something told her to refrain, and she added:
"I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of everything."
"Well, opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition. And it's going to be a bigger proposition than most people dream of."
His eyes flashed.
"Wait till I build an opera house in London, something better than that old barn of yours over against the Police Station."
"Are you going to build an opera house here?"
"Why not? But I've got to find some composers. They're somewhere about. Bound to be. The thing is to find them. It was a mere chance Sennier coming up. If he hadn't married his wife he'd be starving at this minute, and I'd be licking the Metropolitan into a cocked hat."
Charmian longed to put her hand on the little man's arm and to say:
"I've married a musician, I've married a genius. Take him up. Give him his chance."
But she looked at those big brown eyes which confronted her under the twitching eyebrows. And now that the flash was gone she saw in them the soul of the business man. Claude was not a "business proposition." It was useless to speak of him yet.
"I hope you'll find your composer," she said quietly, almost with a dainty indifference.
Then someone came up and claimed Crayford with determination.
"That's a pretty girl," he remarked. "Is she married? I didn't catch her name."
"Oh, yes, she's married to an unknown man who composes."
"The devil she is!"
The lips above the tiny beard stretched in a smile that was rather sardonic.
Before going away Charmian wanted to have a little talk with Susan Fleet, who was helping Mrs. Shiffney with the "fuzzywuzzies." She found her at length standing before a buffet, and entertaining a very thin and angular woman, dressed in black, with scarlet flowers growing out of her toilet in various unexpected places. Miss Fleet welcomed Charmian with her usual unimpassioned directness, and introduced her quietly to Miss Gretch, as her companion was called, surprisingly.
Miss Gretch, who was drinking claret cup, and eating little rolls which contained hidden treasure of pâté de foie gras, bowed and smiled with anxious intensity, then abruptly became unnaturally grave, and gazed with a sort of piercing attention at Charmian's hair, jewels, gown, fan, and shoes.
"She seems to be memorizing me," thought Charmian, wondering who Miss Gretch was, and how she came to be there.
"Stay here just a minute, will you?" said Susan Fleet. "Adelaide wants me, I see. I'll be back directly."
"Please be sure to come. I want to talk to you," said Charmian.
As Susan Fleet was going she murmured:
"Miss Gretch writes for papers."
Charmian turned to the angular guest with a certain alacrity. They talked together with animation till Susan Fleet came back.
A week later, on coming down to breakfast before starting for the studio, Claude found among his letters a thin missive, open at the ends, and surrounded with yellow paper. He tore the paper, and three newspaper cuttings dropped on to his plate.
"What's this?" he said to Charmian, who was sitting opposite to him. "Romeike and Curtice! Why should they send me anything?"
He picked up one of the cuttings.
"It's from a paper calledMy Lady."
"What is it about?"
"It seems to be an account of Mrs. Shiffney's party, with something marked in blue pencil, 'Mrs. Claude Heath came in late with her brilliant husband, whose remarkable musical compositions have not yet attained to the celebrity which will undoubtedly be theirs within no long time. The few who have heard Mr. Heath's music place him with Elgar, Max Reger, and Delius.' Then a description of what you were wearing. How very ridiculous and objectionable!"
Claude looked furious and almost ashamed.
"Here's something else! 'A Composer's Studio,' fromThe World and His Wife. It really is insufferable."
"Why? What can it say?"
"'Mr. Claude Heath, the rising young composer, who recently married the beautiful Miss Charmian Mansfield, of Berkeley Square, has just rented and furnished elaborately a magnificent studio in Renwick Place, Chelsea. Exquisite Persian rugs strew the floor——'"
Claude stopped, and with an abrupt movement tore the cuttings to pieces and threw them on the carpet.
"What can it mean? Who on earth——? Charmian, do you know anything of this?"
"Oh," she said, with a sort of earnest disgust, mingled with surprise, "it must be that dreadful Miss Gretch!"
"Dreadful Miss Gretch! I never heard of her. Who is she?"
"At Adelaide Shiffney's the other night Susan Fleet introduced me to a Miss Gretch. I believe she sometimes writes, for papers or something. I had a little talk with her while I was waiting for Susan to come back."
"Did you tell her about the studio?"
"Let me see! Did I? Yes, I believe I did say something. You see, Claude, it was the night of——"
"I know it was. But how could you——?"
"How could I suppose things said in a private conversation would ever appear in print? I only said that you had a studio because you composed and wanted quiet, and that I had been picking up a few old things to make it look homey. How extraordinary of Miss Gretch!"
"It has made me look very ridiculous. I am quite unknown, and therefore it is impossible for the public to be interested in me. Miss Gretch is certainly a very inefficient journalist. Elgar! Delius too! I wonder she didn't compare me with Scriabine while she was about it. How hateful it is being made a laughing-stock like this."
"Oh, nobody reads those papers, I expect. Still, Miss Gretch——"
"Gretch! What a name!" said Claude.
His anger vanished in an abrupt fit of laughter, but he started for the studio in half an hour looking decidedly grim. When he had gone Charmian picked up the torn cuttings which were lying on the carpet. She had been very slow in finishing breakfast that day.
Since her meeting with Jacob Crayford her mind had run perpetually on opera. She could not forget his words, spoken with the authority of the man who knew, "Opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition." She could not forget that he had left England to "put Europe through his sieve" for a composer who could stand up against Jacques Sennier. What a chance there was now for a new man. He was being actively searched for. If only Claude had written an opera! If only he would write an opera now!
Charmian never doubted her husband's ability to do something big. Her instinct told her that he had greatness of some kind in him. His music had deeply impressed her. But she was sure it was not the sort of thing to reach a wide public. It seemed to her against the trend of taste of the day. There was an almost terrible austerity in it, combined, she believed, with great power and originality. She longed to hear some of it given in public with the orchestra and voices. She had thought of trying to "get hold of" one of the big conductors, Harold Dane, or Vernon Randall, of trying to persuade him to give Claude a hearing at Queen's Hall. Then a certain keen prudence had held her back. A voice had whispered, "Be patient!" She realized the importance of the first step taken in public. Jacques Sennier had been utterly unknown in England. He appeared as the composer of theParadis Terrestre. If he had been known already as the composer of a number of things which had left the public indifferent, would he have made the enormous success he had made? She remembered Mascagni and hisCavalleria, Leoncavallo and hisPagliacci. And she was almost glad that Claude was unknown. At any rate, he had never made a mistake. That was something to be thankful for. He must never make a mistake. But there would be no harm in arousing a certain interest in his personality, in his work. A man like Jacob Crayford kepta sharp look-out for fresh talent. He read all that appeared about new composers of course. Or someone read for him. Even "that dreadful Miss Gretch's" lucubrations might come under his notice.
For a week now Claude had gone every day after breakfast to the studio. Charmian had not yet disturbed him there. She felt that she must handle her husband gently. Although he was so kind, so disposed to be sympathetic, to meet people half way, she knew well that there was something in him to which as yet she had never probed, which she did not understand. She was sufficiently intelligent not to deceive herself about this, not to think that because Claude was a man of course she, a woman, could see all of him clearly. The hidden something in her husband might be a thing resistent. She believed she must go to work gently, subtly, even though she meant to be very firm. So she had let Claude have a week to himself. This gave him time to feel that the studio was a sanctum, perhaps also that it was a rather lonely one. Meanwhile, she had been searching for "words."
That task was a difficult one, because her mind was obsessed by the thought of opera. Oratorio had always been a hateful form of art to her. She had grown up thinking it old-fashioned, out-moded, absurdly "plum-puddingy," and British. In the realm of orchestral music she was more at home. She honestly loved orchestral music divorced from words. But the music of Claude's which she knew was joined with words. And he must do something with words. For that, as it were, would lead the way toward opera. Orchestral music was more remote from opera. If Claude set some wonderful poem, and a man like Jacob Crayford heard the setting, he might see a talent for opera in it. But he could scarcely see that in a violin concerto, a quartet for strings, or a symphony. So she argued. And she searched anxiously for words which might be set dramatically, descriptively. She dared not assail Claude yet with a libretto for opera. She felt sure he would say he had no talent for such work, that he was not drawn toward the theater. But if she could lead him gradually toward things essentially dramatic, she mightwake up in him forces the tendency of which he had never suspected.
She re-read Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, dipped into William Morris,—Wordsworth no—into Fiona Macleod, William Watson, John Davidson, Alfred Noyes. Now and then she was strongly attracted by something, she thought, "Will it do?" And always at such moments a vision of Jacob Crayford seemed to rise up before her, with large brown eyes, ears like a faun, nervous hands, and the tiny beard. "Is it a business proposition?" The moving lips said that. And she gazed again at the poem which had arrested her attention, she thought, "Is it a business proposition?" Keats's terribly famousBelle Dame Sans Mercireally attracted her more than anything else. She knew it had been set by Cyril Scott, and other ultra-modern composers, but she felt that Claude could do something wonderful with it. Yet perhaps it was too well known.
One lyric of William Watson's laid a spell upon her:
"Pass, thou wild heart,Wild heart of youth that stillHast half a willTo stay.I grow too old a comrade, let us part.Pass thou away."
She read that and the preceding verse again and again, in the grip of a strange and melancholy fascination, dreaming. She woke, and remembered that she was young, that Claude was young. But she had reached out and touched old age. She had realized, newly, the shortness of the time. And a sort of fever assailed her. Claude must begin, must waste no more precious hours; she would take him the poem of William Watson, would read it to him. He might make of it a song, and in the making he would learn something perhaps—to hasten on the path.
She started for the studio one day, taking theBelle Dame, William Watson's poems, and two or three books of French poetry, Verlaine, Montesquiou, Moréas.
She arrived in Renwick Place just after four o'clock. She meant to make tea for Claude and herself, and had brought with her some little cakes and a bottle of milk. Quite a load she was carrying. The gouty hands of the caretaker went up when he saw her.
"My, ma'am, what a heavy lot for you to be carrying!"
"I'm strong. Mr. Heath's in the studio?"
Before the man could reply she heard the sound of a piano.
"Oh, yes, he is. Is there water there? Yes. That's right. I'm going to boil the kettle and make tea."
She went on quickly, opened the door softly, and slipped in.
Claude, who sat with his back to her playing, did not hear her. She crept behind the screen into what she called "the kitchen." What fun! She could make the tea without his knowing that she was there, and bring it in to him when he stopped playing.
As she softly prepared things she listened attentively, with a sort of burning attention, to the music. She had not heard it before. She knew that when her husband was composing he did not go to the piano. This must be something which he had just composed and was trying over. It sounded to her mystic, remote, very strange, almost like a soul communing with itself; then more violent, more sonorous, but always very strange.
The kettle began to boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor.
"What's that? Who's there?"
Claude had stopped playing abruptly. His voice was the voice of a man startled and angry.
"Who's there?" he repeated loudly.
She heard him get up and come toward the screen.
"Claudie, do forgive me! I slipped in. I thought I would make tea for you. It's all ready. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was waiting till you had finished. I'm so sorry."
"You, Charmian!"
There was an odd remote expression in his eyes, and his whole face looked excited.
"Do—do forgive me, Claudie! Those dreadful spoons!"
She picked them up.
"Of course. What are all these books doing here?"
"I brought them. I thought after tea we might talk over words. You remember?"
"Oh, yes. Well—but I've begun on something."
"Were you playing it just now?"
"Some of it."
"What is it?"
"Francis Thompson'sThe Hound of Heaven."
Jacob Crayford—what would he think of that sort of thing?
"You know it, don't you?" Claude said, as she was silent.
"I've read it, but quite a while ago. I don't remember it well. Of course I know it's very wonderful. Madre loves it."
"She was speaking of it at the Shiffney's the other night. That's why it occurred to me to study it."
"Oh. Well, now you have stopped shall we have tea?"
"Yes. I've done enough for to-day."
After tea Charmian said:
"I'll studyThe Hound of Heavenagain. But now do you mind if I read you two or three of the things I have here?"
"No," he said kindly, but not at all eagerly. "Do read anything you like."
It was six o'clock when Charmian read Watson's poem "to finish up with." Claude who, absorbed secretly by the thought of his new composition, had listened so far without any keen interest, at moments had not listened at all, though preserving a decent attitude and manner of attention, suddenly woke up into genuine enthusiasm.
"Give me that, Charmian!" he exclaimed. "I scarcely ever write a song. But I'll set that."
She gave him the book eagerly.
That evening they were at home. After dinner Claude went to his little room to write some letters, and Charmian readThe Hound of Heaven. She decided against it. Beautiful though it was, she considered it too mystic, too religious. She was sure many people could not understand it.
"I wish Madre hadn't talked to Claude about it," she thought. "He thinks so much of her opinion. And she doesn't care in the least whether Claude makes a hit with the public or not."
The mere thought of the word "hit" in connection with Mrs. Mansfield almost made Charmian smile.
"I suppose there's something dreadfully vulgar about me," she said to herself. "But I belong to the young generation. I can't help loving success."
Mrs. Mansfield had been the friend, was the friend, of many successful men. They came to her for sympathy, advice. She followed their upward careers with interest, rejoiced in their triumphs. But she cared for the talent in a man rather than for what it brought him. Charmian knew that. And long ago Mrs. Mansfield had spoken of the plant that must grow in darkness. At this time Charmian began almost to dread her mother's influence upon her husband.
She was cheered by a little success.
Claude set Watson's poem rapidly. He played the song to Charmian, and she was delighted with it.
"I know people would love that!" she cried.
"If it was properly sung by someone with temperament," he replied. "And now I can go on withThe Hound of Heaven."
Her heart sank.
"I'm only a little afraid they may think you are imitating Elgar," she murmured after a moment.
"Imitating Elgar!"
"Not that you are, or ever would do such a thing. It isn't your music, it's the subject, that makes me a little afraid. It seems to me to be an Elgar subject."
"Really!"
The conversation dropped, and was not resumed. But a fortnight later, when Charmian came to make tea in the studio, and asked as to the progress of the new work, Claude said rather coldly:
"I'm not going on with it at present."
She saw that he was feeling depressed, and realized why. But she was secretly triumphant at the success of her influence, secretly delighted with her own cleverness. How deftly, with scarcely more than a word, she had turned him from his task. Surely thus had Madame Sennier influenced, guided her husband.
"I believe I could do anything with Claude," she said to herself that day.
"Play me your Watson song again, Claudie," she said. "I do love it so."
"It's only a trifle."
"I love it!" she repeated.
He sat down at the piano and played it to her once more. When he had finished she said:
"I've found someone who could sing that gloriously."
"Who?" he asked.
Playing the song had excited him. He turned eagerly toward her.
"A young American who has been studying in Paris. I met him at the Drakes' two or three days ago. Mr. Jacob Crayford, the opera man, thinks a great deal of him, I'm told. Let me ask him to come here one day and try theWild Heart. May I?"
"Yes, do," said Claude.
"And meanwhile what are you working on instead ofThe Hound of Heaven?"
Claude's expression changed. He seemed to stiffen with reserve. But he replied, with a kind of elaborate carelessness:
"I think of trying a violin concerto. That would be quite a new departure for me. But you know the violin was my second study at the Royal College."
"That won't do," thought Charmian.
"If only Kreisler would take it up when it is finished as he took up—" she began.
Claude interrupted her.
"It may take me months, so it's no use thinking about who is to play it. Probably it will never be played at all."
"Then why compose it?" she nearly said.
But she did not say it. What was the use, when she had resolved that the concerto should be abandoned asThe Hound of Heavenhad been?
She brought the young American, whose name was Alston Lake, to the studio. Claude took a fancy to him at once. Lake sang theWild Heart, tried it a second time, became enthusiastic about it. His voice was a baritone, and exactly suited the song. He begged Claude to let him sing the song during the season at the parties for which he was engaged. They studied it together seriously. During these rehearsals Charmian sat in an armchair a little way from the piano listening, and feeling the intensity of an almost feverish anticipation within her.
This was the first step on the way of ambition. And she had caused Claude to take it. Never would he have taken it without her. As she listened to the two men talking, discussing together, trying passages again and again, forgetful for the moment of her, she thrilled with a sense of achieved triumph. Glory seemed already within her grasp. She ran forward in hope, like a child almost. She saw the goal like a thing quite near, almost close to her.
"People will love that song! They will love it!" she said to herself.
And their love, what might it not do for Claude, and to Claude? Surely it would infect him with the desire for more of that curious heat-giving love of the world for a great talent. Surely it would carry him on, away from the old reserves, from the secrecies which had held him too long, from the darkness in which he had labored. For whom? For himself perhaps, or no one. Surely it would carry him on along the great way to the light that illumined the goal.
At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur, and from there to prosecute their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music, containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than England's.
This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.
The young American singer, Alston Lake, had been true to his word. During the past London season he had sung Claude'sWild Heart of Youtheverywhere. And people, the right people, had liked it. Swiftly composed in an hour of enthusiasm it was really a beautiful and original song. It was a small thing, but it was a good thing. And it was presented to the public by a new and enthusiastic man who at once made his mark both as a singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed floating on a pool that haddepths, responded to the applause, to the congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed too much—that is his surface enjoyed too much—the pleasure it gave, the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the congratulations of easily touched women.
Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She blossomed with expectation.
Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.
His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the Metropolitan.
"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!" Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's bullier."
"What's that?"
"The devil's own ambition."
Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it. His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had rebelled, then had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or nothing. The Wall Street magnate stopped all supplies. Then Crayford took Alston up. For three years Alston had lived on the impresario's charity in Paris. Was it matter for wonder if he set his teeth and resolved to win out? He had in him the grit of young America, that intensity of life which sweeps through veins like a tide.
"Father's going to see presently," he often said to himself. "He's just got to, and that's all there is to it."
This young man was almost as a weapon in Charmian's hand.
He was charming, and specially charming in his enthusiasm. He had the American readiness to meet others half way, the American lack of shyness. Despite the iron of his will, the fierceness of his young determination, he was often naive almost as a schoolboy. The evil of Paris had swirled about him and had left him unstained by its blackness. He was no fool. He was certainly not ignorant of life. But he preserved intact a delightful freshness that often seemed to partake of innocence.
And he worked, as he expressed it, "like the devil."
Charmian, genuinely liking him, but also seeing his possibilities as a lever, or weapon, was delightful to him. Claude also took to him at once. The song seemed to link them all together happily. Very soon Alston was almost as one of the Heath family. He came perpetually to the studio to "try things over." He brought various American friends there. He ate improvised meals there at odd times, Charmian acting as cook. He had even slept there more than once, when they had been making, music very late. And Charmian had had a bed put on the platform behind the screen, and called it "the Prophet's chamber."
This young and determined enthusiast had a power offlooding others with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant to "produce the goods."
Never before had Claude come closely in contact with the vigor, with the sharply cut ideals, of the new world. He began to see many things in a new way, to see some things which he had never perceived before. Among them he saw the fine side of ambition. He respected Alston's determination to win out, to justify his conduct in his father's eyes, and pay back to Mr. Crayford with interest all he had received from that astute, yet not unimaginative, man. He loved the lad for his eagerness. When Alston came to Renwick Place a wind from the true Bohemia seemed to blow through the studio, and the day seemed young and golden.
Yet Alston, quite ignorantly, did harm to Claude. For he helped to win Claude away from his genuine, his inner self, to draw him into the path which he had always instinctively avoided until his marriage with Charmian.
Although unspoiled, Alston Lake had not been unaffected by Paris, which had done little harm to his morals, but which had decidedly influenced his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul, but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical development was likely to take place in the direction of opera.
"Opera's going to be the big proposition!" was his art cry. There was no doubt of Jacob Crayford's influence upon him.
He was the first person who turned Claude's mind seriously toward opera, and therefore eventually toward a villa in Algeria.
Having launched the song with success, Alston Lakenaturally wished to hear more of Claude's music. Claude played to him a great deal of it. He was interested in it, admired it. But—and here his wholly unconscious egoism came into play—he did not quite "believe in it." And his lack of belief probably emanated from the fact that Claude's settings of words from the Bible were not well suited to his own temperament, talent, or training. Being very frank, and already devoted to Claude, he said straight out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to compose with a view to pleasing the public taste; by which they both meant the taste of the cultivated public which was now becoming widely diffused, and which had acquired power. He could not say that his talent was one which had no appeal to the world, that he was incapable of pleasing. One song was nothing. So he declared. Charmian and Alston Lake in their enthusiasm elevated it into a great indication, lifted it up like a lamp till it seemed to shed rays of light on the way in which they urged Claude to walk.
He had long abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting of theBelle Dame Sans Mercifor soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But before it was finished—and during the season his time for work was limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and Alston Lake involved him—an event took place which had led directly to the packing of those boxes which now stood ready for a journey. Jacob Crayford reappeared in London after putting Europe through his sieve. And Claude was introduced to him by Alston Lake, who insisted on his patron hearing Claude's song.
Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness for Lake, and Lake'sboyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time. But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet. But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her "darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting."
"My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed Charmian demurely.
From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on an opera.
Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had come to London again in June. TheParadis Terrestrehad been revived at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before.
"Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night in his studio.
Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening.
"I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said.
"Why not?"
"I have no bent toward the theater."
Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-shaved, with gray eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box, and glanced at Charmian.
"What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone voice.
Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs. Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes.
"Well—" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know—now."
"Now, old chap?"
"I mean I hardly know."
"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston triumphantly.
Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.
"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."
"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that fires him."
"That's just what I think," said Charmian.
Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly always in agreement.
"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the big lad—he looked little more than a lad—good-naturedly.
"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was Crayford."
He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.
"Crayford's a marvellous man. He'll lick the Metropolitan crowd yet. He's going to make me."
"You mean you're going to make yourself?" interrupted Claude.
"Takes two to do it!"
Again he looked over to Charmian.
"Without Crayford I should never have believed I could be a big opera singer. As it is, I mean to be. And, what is more, I know I shall be. Now, Claude, old fellow, don't get on your hind legs, but just listen to me. Every man needs help when he's a kid, needs somebody who knows—knows, mind you—to put him in the right way. What is wanted nowadays is operatic stuff, first-rate operatic stuff. Now, look here, I'm going to speak out straight, and that's all there is to it. I wanted Crayford to hear your big things"—Claude shifted in his chair, stretched out his legs and drew them up—"I told him about them and how strong they were. 'What subjects does he treat?' he said. I told him. At least, I began to tell him. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, stopping me on the nail—but you know how busy he is. He can't waste time. And he's out for the goods, you know—'Oh, Lord!' he said. 'Don't bother me with the Bible. The time for oratorio has gone to join Holy Moses!' I tried to explain that your stuff was no more like old-fashioned oratorio than Chicago is like Stratford-on-Avon, but he wouldn't listen. All he said was, 'Gone to join Holy Moses, my boy! Tell that chap Heath to bring me a good opera and I'll make him more famous than Sennier. For I know how to run him, or any man that can produce the goods, twice as well as Sennier's run.' There, old chap! I've given it you straight. Look what a success we've had with the song!"
"AndIfound him that!" Charmian could not help saying quickly.
"Find him a first-rate libretto, Mrs. Charmian! I'll tell you what, I know a lot of fellows in Paris who write. Suppose you and I run over to Paris—"
"Would you let me, Claudie?" she interrupted.
"Oh!" he said, laughing, but without much mirth. "Do whatever you like, my children. You make me feel as if I know nothing about myself, nothing at all."
"Weren't you one of the best orchestral pupils at the Royal College?" said Alston. "Didn't you win——?"
"Go—go to Paris and bring me back a libretto!" he exclaimed, assuming a mock despair.
He did not reckon with Charmian's determination. He had taken it all as a kind of joke. But when, at the end of the season, he suggested a visit to Cornwall to see his people, Charmian said:
"You go! And I'll take Susan Fleet as a chaperon and run over to Paris with Alston Lake."
"What—to find the libretto? But there's no one in Paris in August."
"Leave that to us," she answered with decision.
Claude still felt as if the whole thing were a sort of joke. But he let his wife go. And she came back with a very clever and powerful libretto, written by a young Algerian who knew Arab life well, and who had served for a time with the Foreign Legion. Claude read it carefully, then studied it minutely. The story interested him. The plot was strong. There were wonderful opportunities for striking scenic effects. But the whole thing was entirely "out of his line." And he told Charmian and Lake so.
"It would need to be as Oriental in the score asLouiseis French," he said. "And what do I know——"
"Go and get it!" interrupted Lake. "Nothing ties you to London. Spend a couple of years over it, if you like. It would be worth it. And Crayford says there's going to be a regular 'boom' in Eastern things in a year or two."
"Now how can he possibly know that?" said Claude.
"My boy, he does know it. Crayford knows everything. He looks ahead, by Jove! Fools don't know what the people want. Clever men do know what they want. And Crayfords know what they're going to want."
And now the Heath's boxes were actually packed, and the great case of scores stood in the hall in Berkeley Square.
As Claude looked at it he felt like one who had burnt his boats.
Ever since he had decided that he would "have a try at opera," as Alston Lake expressed it, he had been studying orchestration assiduously in London with a brilliant master. For nearly three months he had given all his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room, with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had been sent on by the strange force which lives and perpetually renews itself in a man's own genius, when he is at the work he was sent into the world to do. Now he had scourged himself on by a self-consciously exercised force of will. He had set his teeth. He had called upon all the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any object in working—in giving up. But, if he had, it was surely the thing itself. He had desired to create a certain thing. Once the thing was created he had passed on to something else.
Sometimes now he looked back on that life of his, and it seemed very strange, very far away. A sort of halo of faint and caressing light surrounded it; but it seemed a thing rather vague, almost a thing of dreams. The life he was entering now was not vague, nor dreamlike, but solid, firmly planted, rooted in intention. He read the label attached to the case of scores: "Claude Heath, passenger to Algiers, via Marseilles." And he could scarcely believe he was really going.
As he looked up from the label he saw the post lying onthe hall-table. Two letters for him, and—ah, some more cuttings from Romeike and Curtice. He was quite accustomed to getting those now. "That dreadful Miss Gretch" had infected others with her disease of comment, and his name was fairly often in the papers.
"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Heath are about to leave their charming and artistic house in Kensington and to take up their residence near Algiers. It is rumored that there is an interesting reason, not wholly unconnected with things operatic, for their departure, etc."