He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not. All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he understood her desire and was recoiling from it.
Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face, transforming it.
"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"
As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her tailor-made skirt.
Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.
"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was unknown by her at this moment.
"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."
She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward the bridge.
"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."
Claude said nothing, and she continued:
"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as inflexible as the Grand Rocher."
She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.
"That is why women always love and hate him."
Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and looked at him, smiling:
"I am sure Charmian knows that."
Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.
"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.
"And, so, very few inflexible men?"
"I have never—"
He pulled himself up.
"Yes?" she said encouragingly.
"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have never laid claim to anything—anything in the way of talent. It isn't quite fair, is it, to assume that I consider myself a man of talent or an important person when I don't?"
"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of talent?"
"I am entirely unknown."
"What has that to do with it?"
"Nothing, of course, but—but perhaps it is only when he has something to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."
"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."
Claude looked down.
"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I have been privileged. I have read the libretto."
As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian, of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it angel or demon in his life?
"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."
He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.
They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities, into the perpetual uproar of the city.
By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers. Claude went down to the station to see them off.
On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in his hand.
Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.
From the window of thewagon-litMrs. Shiffney looked at the two men standing together as the train drew away from the platform.
Then she nodded and waved her hand.
There was a mocking smile on her face.
When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.
"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to suspect it?"
"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette. "What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the window."
"No, don't!"
"Why not?"
"They are a symbol of your reconciliation with Armand Gillier."
"He isn't altogether a fool, I fancy," remarked Henriette, laying Gillier's bouquet down on the seat beside her. "But we shall see."
"Oh, Max! Yes, come in and sit with us!"
The faces of the two women changed as Max Elliot joined them.
After their return from Constantine Mrs. Shiffney and her party only stayed two nights at Mustapha. Then they descended to the harbor and went on boardThe Wanderer, which weighed anchor and set sail for Monte Carlo. Before leaving they paid a visit to Djenan-el-Maqui to say adieu to Charmian.
The day was unusually hot for the time of year, and both Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier were shrouded in white veils with patterns. These, the latest things from Paris, were almost like masks. Little of the faces beneath them could be seen. But no doubt they preserved complexions from the destructive influence of the sun.
Jacques Sennier had told his friends and his wife the story of his days of desertion. A name summed it up, Djenan-el-Maqui. With the utmost vivacity, however, he had described all he had eaten, drunk, smoked, and done in that hospitable house and garden; the impression he had made upon the occupants and had received from them.
"I am beloved by all!" he had cried, with enthusiasm. "They would die for me. As for the good Pierre, each night he led me home as if I were his own child!"
"We must certainly go and thank them," said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
The visit was not without intensities.
"We've come to say 'Good-bye,'" said Mrs. Shiffney, when they came into the "harem," as she persisted in calling the drawing-room. "We are just back from our little run, and now we must be off to Monte Carlo. By the way, we came across your husband in Constantine."
"I know. He wrote to me all about it," said Charmian.
Claude had really written a very short note, ending with the maddening phrase, "all news when we meet." She wasburning with curiosity, was tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless in the open.
"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you with our affairs."
"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a delightful time."
"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry, the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"—he flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"
He blew a kiss.
"Shall I forget them? Never!"
Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.
"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"
"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.
The composer seized his arm.
"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan, come!"
He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three women were left alone.
"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there. There's a little breeze from the sea."
"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.
When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to Constantine.
"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and extraordinary."
And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to death by their Arab husbands.
"C'est affreux!" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with twisting fingers.
"Les Arabes sont des monstres."
As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.
"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.
She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and instinctive disgust.
The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.
"Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!"
"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because they are picturesque."
"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they call color drives them quite mad!"
"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.
"It is all the same.Ils sont tous des monstres affreux."
"Tst! Tst! Tst!"
The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.
"What is it?"
"Tst! Tst!"
They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming and of native music.
"I must go! I must hear, see!"
The composer cried out.
"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"
There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.
"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.
She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.
"How hot it is!"
Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.
"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to the syrups. "I wonder—" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.
Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed a negative.
"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."
"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French," said Charmian, in a constrained voice.
"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
Was she smiling behind the veil?
"You ought to go to America," said Madame Sennier. "Nobody knows what real life is who has not seen New York in the season. Paris, London, they are sleepy villages in comparison with New York."
"I should like to see it," replied Charmian. "But we have nothing to take us there, no reason to go."
She laughed and added:
"And Claude and I are not millionaires."
Madame Sennier talked for two or three minutes of the great expense of living in a smart New York hotel, and then said:
"But some day you will surely go."
"There doesn't seem any prospect of it," said Charmian.
"D'you remember meeting a funny little man called Crayford in my house one night, an impresario?" said Mrs. Shiffney, moving her shoulders, and pulling at one of her long gloves, as if she were bored and must find some occupation.
"Yes, I believe I do—a man with a tiny beard."
"Like a little inquiring goat's! D'you know that he's searching the world to find some composer to run against Jacques? Isn't it so, Henriette?"
"So they say in New York," said Madame Sennier. "I wish he could find one; then perhaps he would leave off bothering us with absurd proposals. And I'm sure there is plenty of room for some more shining lights. I told Crayford if he worried Jacques any more I would unearth someone for him. He doesn't know where to look."
"But surely—" began Charmian.
"Why do you think that?" asked Mrs. Shiffney, in an uninterested voice.
Her brilliant eyes looked extraordinary, like some strange exotic bird's eyes, through her veil.
"Because he began his search with England," said Madame Sennier.
"Well, really—Henriette!" observed Mrs. Shiffney, with a faint laugh.
"Ought I to apologize?" said Madame Sennier, turning to Charmian. "When art is in question I believe in speaking the plain truth. Oh, I know your husband is by way of writing an opera! But, of course, one sees that—well, you are here in this delicious little house, having what the Americans call a lovely time, enjoying North Africa, listening to the fountain, walking, as my old baby says, among passion-flowers, and playing about with that joke from the Quartier Latin, Armand Gillier.Mais, ma chère, ce n'est pas sérieux!One has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the Africanmilieu, to see that. And, of course, one realizes at once that you see through it all! A pretty game! If one is well off one can afford it. Jacques and I starved; but it was quite right that we should. The English talent is not for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis,that is where the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted for the last time! Here are your syrups."
Jacques Sennier came, almost running.
"Did they ever nearly starve?" Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some wild joke of the composer's.
"Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating all your biscuits now."
When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande Jeanne." He took Pierre in his arms, solemnly blessed Caroline, and warmly pressed his lips to Charmian's hands as he held them, squeezed one on the top of the other, in both his own.
"I shall dedicate my new opera to you and to your syrups!" he exclaimed. "To the greengage, ah, and the passion-flowers! Max, you old person, have you seen them, or have you not? The wonderful Washington was not more truthful than I."
His eyes twinkled.
"Were it not that I am a physical coward, I would not go even now. But to die because a man who cannot write has practised on soda-water bottles! I fly before Armand Gillier. But, madame, I fear your respectable husband is even more cowardly than I!"
"Why?" said Charmian, at length releasing her hands from his Simian grasp.
"He accepted a libretto!"
When they were gone Charmian was suddenly overcome by a sense of profound depression such as she had never felt before. With them seemed to go a world; and it was a world that some part of her loved and longed for. Sennier stood for fame, for success; his wife for the glory of the woman who aids and is crowned; Mrs. Shiffney and Max Elliot for the joy and the power that belong to great patrons of the arts. An immense vitality went away with them all. So long as theywere with her the little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone—who counted—knew who they were.
As to Jacques Sennier, he left a crevasse in the life at Djenan-el-Maqui. It had been a dangerous experience for Charmian, the associating in intimacy with the little famous man. Her secret ambitions were irritated almost to the point of nervous exasperation. But she only knew it now that he was gone.
Madame Sennier had frightened her.
"Mais, ma chère, ce n'est pas sérieux!"
The words had been said with an air of hard and careless authority, as if the speaker knew she was expressing the obvious truth, and a truth known to both her hearers; and then the words which had followed: "One has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the Africanmilieu, to see that!"
What had happened at Constantine? How had Claude been?
Charmian wanted so much to see him, to hear his account of the whole matter, that she telegraphed:
"Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull here.—Charmian."
"Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull here.—Charmian."
She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her rôle; but her nerves drove her into the weakness.
Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.
Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.
"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remember what a keen interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."
Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she thought. Then he said formally:
"I am delighted to stay, madame."
During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.
The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated. Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.
Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums. Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his Turkish coffee, poured out a glass of old brandy, clipped a big Havana cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him. His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.
"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him with his music?"
"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."
Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.
"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.
Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.
"Who knows, madame?"
"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"
"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to have certain doubts."
"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I don't quite understand."
"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."
"Then—"
"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"
"Naturally!"
"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I will never get on together."
"Why not?"
"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel anxious."
"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"
"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally, but I am nothomme du monde. I am not a little man of the salons. I am not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life. I have been, and I still am, poor—poor, madame! But, madame, I do not intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"
"Of course not—with your talent!"
"Ah, that is just it!"
His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and speaking almost with violence.
"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"—he paused, finished his glass of brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if hewere making a great effort after self-control—"but is your husband's talent for the stage as great as mine? I doubt it."
"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet, not a note of it."
"No. And that enables me—"
"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur Gillier?"
"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me—"
"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be thinking of?"
"I feared by your words, your manner—"
"I assure you—besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish what you were saying."
"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense—personal offense—pronouncing any sort of judgment—to approach you—" He paused. The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.
"Yes?" said Charmian.
"Madame?"
"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of us."
"I do not—I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have—very reluctantly, madame, believe me!—come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him understand something of the life not merely in, but that underlies—underlies—my libretto. My efforts—well, what can I say?"—he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
"It is only the difference between the French and English temperaments."
"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who is not afraid to live."
"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a matter which I can discuss with you."
"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"—he looked down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose a hundred pounds rather than to—"
"Have you spoken to my husband of this?" Charmian interrupted him.
She was almost trembling with anger and excitement, but she managed to speak quietly.
"No, madame."
"You have asked me a question—"
"I have asked no question, madame!"
"Do you mean to say you are not asking me if we will resell the libretto?"
Gillier was silent.
"My answer is that the libretto is our property and that we intend to keep it. If you offered us five times what we gave you for it the answer would be the same."
She paused. Gillier said nothing. She looked at him and suddenly anger, a sense of outrage, got the better of her, and she added with intense bitterness:
"We are living here in North Africa, we have given up our home, our friends, our occupations, everything—our life in England"—her voice trembled. "Everything, I say, in order to do justice to your work, and you come, you dare to come to us, and ask—ask—"
Gillier got up.
"Madame, I see it is useless. You have bought my work, if you choose to keep it—"
"We do choose to keep it."
"Then I can do nothing."
He pulled out his watch.
"It is late. I must wish you good-night, madame. Kindlysay good-night for me to that lady, your friend, and to Monsieur Heath."
He bowed. Charmian did not hold out her hand. She meant to, but it seemed to her that her hand refused to move, as if it had a will of its own to resist hers.
"Good-night," she said.
She watched his rather short and broad figure pass across the open space of the court and disappear.
After he had gone she moved across the court to the fountain and sat down at its edge. She was trembling now, and her excitement was growing in solitude. But she still had the desire to govern it, the hope that she would be able to do so. She felt that she had been grossly insulted by Gillier. But she was not only angry with him. She stared at the rising and falling water, clasping her hands tightly together. "I will be calm!" she was saying to herself. "I will be calm, mistress of myself."
But suddenly she got up, went swiftly across the court to the garden entrance, and called out:
"Susan! Claude! Where are you?"
Her voice sounded to her sharp and piercing in the night.
"What is it, Charmian?" answered Claude's voice from the distance.
"I'm going to bed. It's late. Monsieur Gillier has gone."
"Coming!" answered Claude's voice.
Charmian retreated to the house.
As she came into the drawing-room she looked at her watch. It was barely ten o'clock. In a moment Susan Fleet entered, followed by Claude. Susan's calm eyes glanced at Charmian's face. Then she said, in her quiet, agreeable voice:
"I'm going to my room. I have two or three letters to write, and I shall read a little before going to bed. It isn't really very late, but I daresay you are tired."
She took Charmian's hand and held it for an instant. And during that instant Charmian felt much calmer.
"Good-night, Susan dear. Monsieur Gillier asked me to say good-night to you for him."
Susan did not kiss her, said good-night to Claude, and went quietly away.
"What is it?" Claude said, directly she had gone. "What's the matter, Charmian? Why did Gillier go away so early?"
"Let us go upstairs," she answered.
Remembering the sound of her voice in the court, she strove to keep it natural, even gentle, now. Susan's recent touch had helped her a little.
"All right," he answered.
"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story of the house.
Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she wrote her letters and did accounts.
"Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.
"How could you show the libretto to Madame Sennier?" said Charmian. "How could you be so mad as to do such a thing?"
As she finished speaking she sat down on the little divan in the embrasure of the small grated window.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have never shown the libretto to Madame Sennier. What could put such an idea into your head?"
"But you must have shown it!"
"Charmian, I have this moment told you that I haven't."
"She has read it."
"Nonsense."
"I am positive she has read it."
"Then Gillier must have shown her a copy of it."
Charmian was silent for a minute. Then she said:
"You did not show it to anyone while you were at Constantine?"
"I didn't say that."
"Ah! You—you let Mrs. Shiffney see it!"
Her voice rose as she said the last words.
"I suppose I have a right to allow anyone I choose to read a libretto I have bought and paid for," he said coldly, almost sternly.
"You did give it to Mrs. Shiffney then! You did! You did!"
"Certainly I did!"
"And then—then you come to me and say that Madame Sennier hasn't read it!"
There was a sound of acute, almost of fierce exasperation in her voice.
"She had not read my copy."
"I say she has!"
"Mrs. Shiffney herself specially advised me not to show it to her."
"To her—to Madame Sennier?"
"Yes."
"Mrs. Shiffney advised you! Oh—you—oh, that men should claim to have keener intellects than we women! Ah! Ah!"
She began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly put a handkerchief before her mouth, turned her head away from him and pressed her face, with the handkerchief still held to it, against the cushions of the divan. Her body shook.
"Charmian!" he said. "Charmian!"
She looked up. All one side of her face was red. She dropped her handkerchief on the floor.
"Do you understand now?" she said. "But, of course, you don't. Well, then!"
She put both her hands palm downward on the divan, and, speaking slowly with an emphasis that was cutting, and stretching her body till her shoulders were slightly raised, she said:
"Just now, while Susan and you were in the garden, Armand Gillier asked me if we would give up his libretto."
"Give up the libretto?"
"Sell it back to him for one hundred pounds. He also said he was very poor. Do you put the two things together?"
"You think he fancies—"
"No. I am sure he knows he could resell it at an advance to Jacques Sennier. Those two—Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier—went to Constantine with the intention of finding out what you were doing."
"Absurd!"
"Is it? Just tell me! Wasn't it Mrs. Shiffney who began to talk of the libretto?"
"Well—"
"Of course it was! And didn't she pretend to be deeply interested in what you were doing?"
Claude flushed.
"And didn't she talk of how other artists had trusted her with secrets nobody else knew? And didn't she—didn't she—"
But something in Claude's eyes stopped her as she was going to say—"make love to you."
"And so you gave your libretto up to our enemy to read, and now they are trying to bribe Gillier to ruin us. Why are we here? Why did I give up everything, my whole life, my mother, my friends, our little house, everything I cared for, everything that has made my life till now? Simply for you and for your success. And then for the first woman who comes along—"
Her cheeks were flaming. As she thought more about what had happened a storm of jealousy swept through her heart.
"That's not true or fair—what you imply!" said Claude. "I never—Mrs. Shiffney is absolutely nothing to me—nothing!"
"Do you understand now that she got the libretto in order to show it to Madame Sennier?"
"Did Gillier ever say so?"
"Of course not! Even if he knows it, do you think it was necessary he should—to a woman!"
The contempt in her voice seemed to cut into him. He began, against his will, to feel that Charmian must be right in her supposition, to believe that he had been tricked.
"We have no proof," he said.
Charmian raised her eyebrows and sank back on the divan. She was struggling against an outburst of tears. Her lips moved.
"Proof! Proof!" she said at last.
Her lips moved violently. She got up, and tried hurriedlyto go by Claude into the gallery; but he put out a hand and caught her by the arm.
"Charmian!"
She tried to get away. But he held her.
"I do understand. You have given up a lot for me. Perhaps I was a great fool at Constantine. I begin to believe I was. But, after all, there's no great harm done. The libretto is mine—ours, ours. And we're not going to give it up. I'll try—I'll try to put my heart into the music, to bring off a real success, to give you all you want, pay you back for all you've given up for me and the work. Of course, I may fail—"
She stopped his mouth with her lips, wrenched herself from his grasp, and hurried away.
A moment later he heard the heavy low door of her bedroom creak as she pushed it to, then the grinding of the key in the lock.
He sat down on the divan she had just left. For a moment he sat still, facing the gallery, and the carved wooden balustrade which protected its further side. Then he turned and looked out through the low, grated window, from which no doubt in days long since gone by veiled Arab women had looked as they sat idly on the divan.
He saw a section of almost black-purple sky. He saw some stars. And, leaning his cheek on his hand, he gazed through the little window for a long, long time.
More than a year had passed away. April held sway over Algeria.
In the white Arab house on the hill Claude and Charmian still lived and Claude still worked. To escape the great heat of the previous summer they had gone to England for a time, but early October had found them once more at Djenan-el-Maqui, and since then they had not stirred.
Their visit to London had been a strange experience for Charmian.
They had arrived in town at the beginning of July, and had stayed with Mrs. Mansfield in Berkeley Square. Mrs. Mansfield had not paid her proposed visit to Algiers. She had written that she was growing old and lazy, and dreaded a sea voyage. But she had received them with a warmth of affection which had earned their immediate forgiveness. There was still a month of "season" to run, and Charmian went about and saw her old friends. But Claude refused to go out, and returned at once to orchestral studies with his "coach." He even remained in London during the whole of August and September, while Charmian paid some visits, and went to the sea with her mother. Thus they had been separated for a time after their long sojourn together in the closest intimacy.
Charmian found that she missed Claude very much. One day she said to her mother, with pretended lightness and smiling:
"Madre, I've got such a habit of Claude and Claude's work that I seem to be in half when I'm not with him."
Mrs. Mansfield wondered whether her son-in-law felt in half when he was by himself in London.
To Charmian, coming back, London and "the set" seemed changed. She had sometimes suffered from ennui in Africa, even from loneliness in the first months there. She had got up dreading the empty days, and had often longed to have aparty in the evening to look forward to. In England she realized that not only had she got a habit of Claude, but that she had got a habit, or almost a habit, of Africa and a quiet life in the sunshine under blue skies. If the opera were finished, the need for living in Mustapha removed, would she be glad not to return to Djenan-el-Maqui? The mere thought of never seeing the little white house with its cupolas and its flat roof again sent a sharp pang through her. Pierre, with his arched eyebrows and upraised, upturned palm, "La Grande Jeanne," Bibi, little Fatma, they had become almost a dear part of her life.
But soon she fell into old ways of thought and of action, though she was never, she believed, quite the same Charmian as before. She longed, as of old, but even more strongly, to conquer the set, and this world of pleasure-seekers and connoisseurs. But she looked upon them from the outside, whereas before she had been inside. During her long absence she had certainly "dropped out" a little. She realized the root indifference of most people to those who are not perpetually before them, making a claim to friendship. When she reappeared in London many whom she had hitherto looked upon as friends greeted her with a casual, "Oh, are you back after all? We thought you had quite forsaken us!" And it was impossible for even Charmian to suppose that such a forsaking would have been felt as a great affliction.
This recognition on her part of the small place she had held, even as merely a charming girl, in this society, made Charmian think of Djenan-el-Maqui with a stronger affection, but also made her long in a new, and more ruthless way, to triumph in London, as clever wives of great celebrities triumph. She saw Madame Sennier several times, as usual surrounded and fêted. And Madame Sennier, though she nodded and said a few words, scarcely seemed to remember who Charmian was. Only once did Charmian see a peculiarly keen expression in the yellow eyes as they looked at her. That was when some mention was made of a project of Crayford's, his intention to build a big opera house in London. Madame Sennier had shrugged her shoulders. But as she answered, "What would be the use? The Metropolitan hasnearly killed him. Covent Garden, with its subscription, would simply finish him off. He has moved Heaven and earth to get Jacques' new opera either for America or England, but of course we laughed at him. He may pretend as much as he likes, but he's got nothing up his sleeve"—the yellow eyes had fixed themselves upon Charmian with an intent look that was almost like a look of inquiry.
To Sennier she had only spoken twice. The first time he had forgotten who she was. The second time he had exclaimed, "Ah, the syrups! the greengage! and the moonlight among the passion-flowers!" and had greeted her with effusion.
But he had never come to call on her.
She still felt a sort of fondness for him; but she understood that he was like a child who needed perpetual petting and did not care very much from whom it came.
The impression she received, on coming back to this world after a long absence, was of a shifting quicksand. She also now knew absolutely how much of a nobody she was in it.
She had returned to Africa caring for it much less, but longing much more to conquer it and to dominate it.
On that day in October, a gorgeous day which had surely lain long in the heart of summer, when she saw again the climbing white town on the hill, when later she stood again in the Arab court, hearing the French voices of the servants, the guttural chatter of Bibi and Fatma, seeing the three gold fish making their eternal pilgrimage through the water shed by the fountain into the marble basin, she felt an intimate thrill at her heart. There was something here that she loved as she loved nothing in London.
From the night when Claude and Armand Gillier had returned to Mustapha after the visit to Constantine "the opera" had been to Charmian almost as a living thing—a thing for which she had fought, from which she had beaten off enemies. She thought of it as their child, Claude's and hers. They had no other child. She did not regret that.
Claude had long ago learnt to work in his home without difficulty. The paralysis which had beset him in Kensington had not returned. He was inclined to believe that by constant effort he had strengthened his will. But he had also become thoroughly accustomed to married life. And the fact that Charmian had become accustomed to it, too, had helped him without his being conscious of it. The embarrassment of beginnings was gone. And something else was gone; the sense of secret combat which in the first months of their marriage had made life so difficult to both of them.
The man had given in to the woman. When Claude left England with Gillier's bought libretto he was a conquered man. And this fact had brought about a cessation of struggle and had created a sensation of calm even in the conquered.
Every day now, when Claude went up to his room on the roof to work at the opera, he was doing exactly what his wife wished him to do. By degrees he had come to believe that he was also doing what he wished to do.
He was no longer reserved about his work with Charmian. The barriers were broken down. The wife knew what the husband was doing. They "talked things over."
Twice during their long sojourn at Mustapha they had been visited by Alston Lake. And now, in the first days of April, came a note from Saint Eugene. Gillier was once more in Algeria. He had never given them a sign of life since he had tried to buy back his libretto from them. Now he wrote formally, saying he was paying a short visit to his family, and asking permission to call at Djenan-el-Maqui at any hour that would suit them. His note was addressed to Claude, who at once showed it to Charmian.
"Of course we must let him come," Claude said.
"Of course!"
She turned the note over, twisted it in her fingers.
"How I hate him!" she said. "I can't help it. His insult to you and—"
"Don't let us go into all that again. It is so long ago."
"This letter brings it all back."
She made a grimace of disgust.
"Why should you see him?" said Claude. "Let me see him alone. You can easily have an engagement. You are going to those theatricals at the Hotel Continental on Friday. Let me have him here then."
"Shall I?" She glanced at Claude. "No, I'd better be here too."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know—but I'd better! Tell him to come on Thursday."
"Lunch?"
"Oh, no! Let us just have him in the afternoon."
Gillier came at the time appointed, and was received by Charmian, who made a creditable effort to behave as if she were at her ease and glad to see him. She made him sit down with her in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room, gave him coffee and a cigarette, and promised that Claude would come in a moment.
In the morning of that day she had persuaded Claude to let her have a quarter of an hour alone with Gillier. He had asked her why she wanted to be alone with a man she disliked. She had replied, "After Constantine, don't you think you had better leave the practical part of it to me?" Claude had reddened slightly, but he had only said, "Very well. But I don't quite see what you mean. We have no reason to suppose Gillier has a special purpose in coming."
"No, but I should like that quarter of an hour."
So now she and Gillier sat together in the shady drawing-room, and she asked him about Paris and his family, and he replied with a stiff formality which had in it something military.
Directly Charmian had looked at Gillier she had realized that he had a definite purpose in coming. She was on the defensive, but she tried not to show it. Presently she said:
"Have you been working—writing?"
"Yes, madame."
"Another libretto?"
"Madame," Gillier said, with a sort of icy fierceness, "I cannot believe that you are good enough to be genuinely interested in my unsuccessful life."
After the unpleasant scene at Djenan-el-Maqui Gillier had returned to Paris, shut himself in, and labored almost with fury on a libretto destined for Jacques Sennier. He had taken immense pains and trouble, and had not spared time.At last the work had been completed, typed, and submitted to Madame Sennier. After a week of anxious waiting Gillier had received the libretto with the following note:
"Dear Gillier,—This might do very well for some unknown genius, say Monsieur Heath, but it is no good to a man like Jacques. Nevertheless, we believe in you still, and renew our offer. Send us a fine libretto,such as I know you can write, and we will pay you five times as much as anyone else would, on account of a royalty. We should not mind even ifsomeone elsehad already tried to set it. All we care about is to get yourbest work.Henriette Sennier."
"Dear Gillier,—This might do very well for some unknown genius, say Monsieur Heath, but it is no good to a man like Jacques. Nevertheless, we believe in you still, and renew our offer. Send us a fine libretto,such as I know you can write, and we will pay you five times as much as anyone else would, on account of a royalty. We should not mind even ifsomeone elsehad already tried to set it. All we care about is to get yourbest work.Henriette Sennier."
Gillier had torn this note up with fury. Then he had thought things over and paid Madame Sennier a visit. It was this visit which had prompted his return to Djenan-el-Maqui.
"But I hope it won't be unsuccessful much longer," Charmian said, with deliberate graciousness.
"I hope so too, madame."
Something in his voice, a new tone, almost startled her. But she continued, without any change of manner:
"We must all hope for a great success."
"We, madame?"
"You and I and my husband."
Gillier bit his moustache and looked down. A heavy gloom seemed to have overspread him. After a moment he looked up, leaned back, as if determined to be at his ease, and said abruptly:
"Monsieur Sennier has completed a new opera. It is to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York some time next winter."
"Is it?"
Charmian tried to keep all expression out of her voice as she spoke.
"Since I last saw you, madame," Gillier continued, "I have managed to get a look at the libretto."
Without knowing that she did so Charmian leaned forward quickly and moved her hands.
"It does not approach my work, the work your husband bought from me for only one hundred pounds, in strength and drama."
"Your libretto is splendid. Mr. Lake and I have always thought so; and of course my husband agrees with us. But you know that."
Gillier pulled his thick moustache, looked quickly round the room, then at his hands, which he had abruptly brought down on his knees, and then at Charmian.
"I have reason to believe that Jacques Sennier—or rather Madame Sennier, for she read all the libretti sent in to him, and only showed him those she thought worth considering—that if Madame Sennier had seen the libretto I sold to your husband Sennier would have set mine—mine—in preference to the one he has set."
"Indeed!" said Charmian, with studied indifference.
"Yes!" he exclaimed, almost with violence.
"All this is very interesting. But I don't see what it has to do with me and my husband. You were good enough to offer to buy back your libretto from us last year. We refused. Our refusal—"
"Your refusal, madame! I never spoke about the matter to your husband. I never asked him."
"Have you come here now to ask him? Is that what you mean, monsieur?"
Gillier got up, throwing his cigarette end into the brass coffee tray. He was evidently much excited. As he stood up in front of her Charmian thought that he looked suddenly more common, coarser. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black trousers.
"I must understand the position," he began.
"It is perfectly clear. Forgive me, monsieur, but I must say I think it rather bad taste on your part to return to a subject which has been finally disposed of and which is very disagreeable to me."
"Madame, I am here to say to you that I cannot consider it as finally disposed of till I have discussed it with Monsieur Heath. I came here prepared to make a proposition."
"It is useless."
"Madame, I trust that your husband is not endeavoring to avoid me."
Charmian got up and sharply clapped her hands. The Arab boy, Bibi, appeared.
"Bibi, ask monsieur to come," she said to him in French.
"Bieng, madame," replied Bibi, who turned and walked softly away.
During the two or three minutes which elapsed before Claude came in Charmian and Gillier said nothing. Gillier, who, under the influence of excitement, was losing his veneer of good manners, moved about the room pretending to examine the few bibelots it contained. His face was flushed. He still kept his hands in his pockets. Charmian sat still in her corner, watching him. She was too angry to speak. And what was there to be said now? Although she had a good deal of will she was clever enough to realize when its exercise would be useless. She knew that she could do nothing more with this man. Otherwise she would not have sent for Claude.
"V'là, Mousou!"
Bibi had returned and gently pointed to his master, smiling.
"Bon jour, Gillier!" said Claude, as the Frenchman swung round sharply.
"Bon jour!"
They shook hands. Claude looked from Gillier to his wife.
"You were smoking?" he said, glancing at the tray. "Won't you have another cigarette?"
"Merci!"
"Anyhow, I will."
He picked up the cigarette box.
"We haven't seen you for a long while." He lit a cigarette. "Aren't you going to sit down?"
After a pause Gillier sat down. His eyes were fixed on Claude.
"I am glad you have come," he said. "Madame does not quite understand—"
"I understand perfectly, Monsieur Gillier," Charmianinterrupted. "Pray don't endow me with a stupidity which I don't possess."
"I prefer at any rate to explain the reason of my visit to Monsieur Heath, madame."
"Have you come with a special object then?" said Claude.
"Yes."
"By all means tell me what it is."
"Mon Dieu!" said Gillier. "What is the good of a cloud of words between two men? I want to buy back the libretto I sold to you more than a year ago."
Charmian gazed at her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied:
"Do you? Why?"
"Why? Because I don't think you and I are suited to work together. I don't think we could ever make a satisfactory combination in art. This has been my opinion ever since I was with you at Constantine."
"More than a year ago. And you only come here and say so now!"
Gillier was silent and fidgeted on the divan.
"Surely you must have some other reason?" said Claude in a very quiet, almost unnaturally quiet voice.
"That is one reason, and an excellent one. Another is, however, that if you will consent to sell me back my libretto I believe I could get it taken up by a man, a composer, who is more in sympathy with me and my artistic aims than you could ever be."
"I see. And what about all the months of work I have put in? What about all the music I have composed? Are you here to ask me to throw it away, or what?"
Gillier was silent.
"Surely your proposition isn't a serious one?" said Claude, still speaking with complete self-control.
"But I say it is! I say"—Gillier raised his voice—"that it is serious. I am a poor man, and I am sick of waiting for success. I sold my libretto to you in a hurry, not knowing what I was doing. Now I have a chance, a great chance, ofbeing associated with someone who is already famous, who would make the success of my libretto a certainty—"
"A chance, when your libretto is my property!" interrupted Claude.
"Oh, I know as well as you do that it's a hard thing to ask you to throw away all these months of labor! I don't think I could have done it, though in this world every man, every artist especially, must think of himself, if it wasn't for one thing."
"And that is—?"
"Your heart isn't in the work!" said Gillier defiantly, but with a curious air of conviction—the conviction of an acute man who had made a discovery which could not be contested or gainsaid.
"That's not true, Monsieur Gillier!" said Charmian, with hot energy.
Claude said nothing, and Gillier continued, raising his voice:
"It is true. Your talent and mine are not fitted to be joined together, and you are artist enough to know it as well as I do. I haven't heard your music; but I can tell. I may be poor, I may be unknown—that doesn't matter! I've got the instinct that doesn't lie, can't lie. If I had known you as I do now, before I had sold my libretto, you never should have had it, even if you had offered me five hundred pounds instead of a hundred, and nobody else would have looked at it. With your temperament, with your way of thinking, you'll never make a success of it—never! I tell you that—I who am speaking to you!"
The veins in his temples swelled, and he frowned.
"Give me back my libretto and take back your money! Let me have my chance of success. Madame—she is hard! She cares nothing! But—"
"Monsieur, I must ask you to leave my wife's name out," said Claude.
And for the first time since he had come into the room he spoke with stern determination.
He had become very pale, and now looked strangely moved.
"I won't have her name brought in," he added. "This is my affair."
"Very well! Will you let me buy back my libretto?"
Charmian expected an instant stern refusal from her husband. But after Gillier's question there was a prolonged pause. She wanted to break it, to answer fiercely for Claude; but she did not dare to. For a moment something in her husband's look and manner dominated her. For a moment she was in subjection. She sat still staring at Claude, waiting for him to speak. He sat looking down, and it seemed to her as if he were wrestling as Jacob wrestled with the angel. His white forehead drew her eyes. She was filled with fear; but when he looked up at her the fear grew. She felt almost sick—sick with apprehension.
"Claude!" she said. "Oh, Claude!"
It seemed that his eyes had put a great question to her, and now her voice had answered it.
Claude turned to Armand Gillier.
"Monsieur," he said, "you can't have your libretto back. It's mine, and I'm going to keep it."
When Gillier was gone Charmian said, almost in a faltering voice, and with none of her usual self-possession of manner:
"How—how could you bear that man's insults as you did?"
"His insults?"
"Yes."
Claude looked at her in silence. And again she was conscious of fear.
"Don't let us ever speak of this again," he answered at last.
He went away.
That day he was in his workroom till very late. He did not come to tea. The evening fell; but he was not working on the opera. Charmian heard him playing Bach.
At the end of April Alston Lake came once more to visit them.
Since those London days when they had first met him Lake had made great progress toward the fulfilment of his ambition. His energy and will were beginning to reap a good reward. Hewas making money, enough money to live upon; but he had still to pay back his big debt to Jacob Crayford, had still to achieve his great desire, an appearance in Grand Opera. When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui he brought with him, as of old, an infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm. With his iron will he combined a light heart. He had none of the childishness that surprised, and sometimes charmed, in Jacques Sennier, but much that was boyish still pleasantly lingered with him. In him, too, there was something courageous that inspired courage in others.
This time he announced he could stay for a month if they did not mind. He wanted a thorough rest before the many concerts he was going to sing at during the London season. Both Charmian and Claude were delighted. When Claude heard of it he was silent for a moment. Then he began to reckon.
"The thirtieth to-day, isn't it? By a month do you mean a month or four weeks?"
"Well, four weeks, old chap!"
"That is less than a month."
"I wish it weren't. But I have to sing in London at the Bechstein Hall early in June. So I'm running it pretty close as it is."
"May the twenty-eighth you go, then," said Claude.
"That's it. But why these higher mathematics?"
Claude only smiled and went out of the room.
"What is he up to, Mrs. Charmian?" asked Lake mystified.
"I don't know," she answered.
"Does he want to get rid of me? Is that why he was so keen to know whether it was four weeks or a month?" said Lake, laughing.
"I am afraid that probably is it. But come up and see the flowers I've put in your room."
"This is a little Paradise," said Lake, in his ringing baritone voice. "Sometimes this winter in Paris, when I was all in, don't you know—"
"All in?"
"Blues."
"Oh, yes!"
"I'd think of Djenan-el-Maqui, and wish I was a composer instead of a singer—for a fifth of a minute."
"Oh!" she said reproachfully. "Only a fifth!"
"I know. It wasn't long. But you see I'm born to sing, so I'm bound to love it more than anything else. Making a noise—oh, it's rare!"
He opened his mouth and ran up a scale to the high A.
"I can get there pretty well now, don't you think?"
"Splendid! Your voice gets bigger and bigger!" she said, with real enthusiasm. "But it's almost—"
He stopped her.
"I know what you're going to say; but I shall always be a baritone. If you knew as much as I do about baritones turned into tenors, you'd say, 'Leave it alone, my boy!' and that's what I'm going to do. Now what about these flowers? It is good to be here."
Claude did not join Alston Lake in making holiday. Indeed, Charmian noticed that he was working much harder than usual, as if Lake's coming had been an incentive to him.
"I don't apologize to you, Alston," he said.
"Odd if you did when I was the first to try and set you on to an opera. Besides, you can't get ahead too fast now. There's—"
He stopped.
"Crayford'll be over this summer," he remarked, giving a casual tone to his voice.
"Ah!" said Claude.
And the conversation dropped.
Only in the early morning, and for an hour, or an hour and a half after lunch, did Claude intermit his labors. In the morning the three of them rode, on good horses hired from the Vitoz stables. After lunch they sat in the little court of the fountain, smoked and talked. Conversation never flagged when Alston was there. His young energy bred a desire for expression in those about him. And Charmian and Claude were now his most intimate friends. He identified himself with them in a charming way, was devoted to their fortunes, and assumed, without a trace of conceit, their devotion to his. When Claude, about three o'clock, got up and went away tohis workroom Alston often went off for a stroll alone. Between tea and dinner time, if Charmian had no engagement, she and Alston walked together in the scented Bois de Boulogne, past "Tananarivo," or drove down to the Jardin d'Essai, and spent an hour there near the shimmering sea.
In these many intimate hours Charmian learnt to appreciate the chivalry and delicacy peculiar to well-bred American men in their relations with women. Although she and Alston were both young, and she was an attractive woman, she felt as safe with him as if he were her brother. His life in Paris had left him entirely unspoiled, had even left him in possession of the characteristic and open-hearted naïveté which was one of his chief attractions, though he was quite unaware of it. She was very happy with Alston. But often she thought of Claude, far away on the hill, shut in, resigning all this freedom, this delicious open-air life, which she was enjoying with his friend.