"My dear Mr. Heath,—I've left the opera-house and have come to the office of my paper to write my article on your work which I have just heard. But before I do so I feel moved to send this letter to you. I don't know what you will think of it, or of me for writing it, but I do care. I want you very much not to hate it, not to think ill of me. People, I believe, very often speak and think badly of us who call ourselves, are called, critics. They say we are venial, that we are log-rollers, that we have no convictions, that we don't know what we are talking about, that we are the failures in art, all that kind of thing. We have plenty of faults, no doubt. But there are some of us who try to be honest. I try to be honest. I am going to try to be honest about your work to-night. That is why I am sending you this."Your opera is not a success. I know New York. I dare even to say that I know America. I have sat among American audiences too long not to be able to 'taste' them. Their feeling gets right into me. Your opera is not a success. But it isn't really that which troubles me to-night. It is this. Your opera doesn't deserve to be a success."That's the wound!"I don't know, of course—I can't know—whether you are aware of the wound. But I can't help thinking you must be. It is presumption, I dare say, for a man like me, a mere critic, who couldn't compose a bar of fine genuine music to save his life, to try to dive into the soul of an artist, into your soul. But you are a man who means a lot to me. If you didn't I shouldn't be writing this letter. I believe you know what I know, what the audience knew to-night, that the work you gave them is spurious, unworthy. It no more represents you than the mud and the water that cover a lode of gold represent what the miner is seeking for. I'm pretty sure you must know."Perhaps you'll say: 'Then why have the impertinence to tell me?'"It's because I've seen a little bit of the gold shining. The other night, after I dined with you—you remember? Gold it was, that's certain. We Americans know something about precious metal, or the world belies us. After that night I was looking to write a great article on you. And I'll do it yet. But I can't do it to-night. That's my trouble. And it's a heavy one, heavier than I've had this season. I've got to sit right down and say out the truth. I hate to do it. And yet—do I altogether? I don't want to show up as conceited, yet now, as I'm covering this bit of paper, I've begun to think to myself: Shan't I, perhaps, while I'm doing my article, be helping to clear away a little of the water and the mud that cover the lode? Shan't I, perhaps, be getting the gold a bit nearer to the light of the day, and the gaze of the world? Or, better still, to the hand of the miner? Well, anyhow, I've got to go ahead. I can't do anything else."But I remember the other night. And if I believe there's music worth having in any man of our day I believe it's in you.—Your very sincere friend, and your admirer,"Alfred Van Brinen."
"My dear Mr. Heath,—I've left the opera-house and have come to the office of my paper to write my article on your work which I have just heard. But before I do so I feel moved to send this letter to you. I don't know what you will think of it, or of me for writing it, but I do care. I want you very much not to hate it, not to think ill of me. People, I believe, very often speak and think badly of us who call ourselves, are called, critics. They say we are venial, that we are log-rollers, that we have no convictions, that we don't know what we are talking about, that we are the failures in art, all that kind of thing. We have plenty of faults, no doubt. But there are some of us who try to be honest. I try to be honest. I am going to try to be honest about your work to-night. That is why I am sending you this.
"Your opera is not a success. I know New York. I dare even to say that I know America. I have sat among American audiences too long not to be able to 'taste' them. Their feeling gets right into me. Your opera is not a success. But it isn't really that which troubles me to-night. It is this. Your opera doesn't deserve to be a success.
"That's the wound!
"I don't know, of course—I can't know—whether you are aware of the wound. But I can't help thinking you must be. It is presumption, I dare say, for a man like me, a mere critic, who couldn't compose a bar of fine genuine music to save his life, to try to dive into the soul of an artist, into your soul. But you are a man who means a lot to me. If you didn't I shouldn't be writing this letter. I believe you know what I know, what the audience knew to-night, that the work you gave them is spurious, unworthy. It no more represents you than the mud and the water that cover a lode of gold represent what the miner is seeking for. I'm pretty sure you must know.
"Perhaps you'll say: 'Then why have the impertinence to tell me?'
"It's because I've seen a little bit of the gold shining. The other night, after I dined with you—you remember? Gold it was, that's certain. We Americans know something about precious metal, or the world belies us. After that night I was looking to write a great article on you. And I'll do it yet. But I can't do it to-night. That's my trouble. And it's a heavy one, heavier than I've had this season. I've got to sit right down and say out the truth. I hate to do it. And yet—do I altogether? I don't want to show up as conceited, yet now, as I'm covering this bit of paper, I've begun to think to myself: Shan't I, perhaps, while I'm doing my article, be helping to clear away a little of the water and the mud that cover the lode? Shan't I, perhaps, be getting the gold a bit nearer to the light of the day, and the gaze of the world? Or, better still, to the hand of the miner? Well, anyhow, I've got to go ahead. I can't do anything else.
"But I remember the other night. And if I believe there's music worth having in any man of our day I believe it's in you.—Your very sincere friend, and your admirer,
"Alfred Van Brinen."
Charmian read this letter slowly, not missing a word. As she read she bent her head lower and lower; she almost crouched over the letter. When she had finished it she sat quite still without raising her eyes for a long time. The letter had vanished from her sight. And how much else had vanished! In that moment little or nothing seemed left.
At last, as she did not move, Claude said, "You've finished?"
"You've finished the letter?"
"Yes."
"May I have it, then?"
She knew he was holding out his hand. She made a great effort, lifted her hand, and gave him Van Brinen's letter without looking at him. She heard the thin paper rustle as he folded it.
"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why? Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of weakness."
Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.
"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"
"Claude!"
Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.
"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company,before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."
He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and walked toward the farther wall of the room.
"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing to you?"
He had turned.
"No," she said.
"Crayford said nothing?"
"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"
"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"
She was silent.
"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself. And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And you—you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself, and you least of all!"
"Claude!"
"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success! You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his friends. You thought I was an eccentricity—"
"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve which had broken in this reserved man.
"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was meant to do, what I could do, drawing myinspiration not from the fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts, which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe—I believe in my soul it's the only chance for a man."
He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:
"The only chance for a man."
He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.
"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that I fancied I might make something of since we married,The Hound of Heaven, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do it. But I've got to build in freedom."
His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes not of a man crushed but of a man released.
She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.
"In—freedom?" she almost whispered.
She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, thefailure before the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt, had completely overwhelmed her.
In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm ground.
"In freedom!" she said again. "What—what do you mean?"
He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look of surprise.
"What do you mean?" she repeated.
And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.
"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw you."
She got slowly up from the sofa.
"Is that—all you mean?" she said.
"All! Isn't it enough?"
"But is it all? I want to know—I must know!"
The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly. The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer to her.
"Is that all you meant by freedom?"
"Yes."
She sighed and went forward against him.
"Did you think—do you care?" he stammered.
All the dominating force had suddenly departed from him. But he put his arms around her.
"Do you care for the man who has failed?"
"Yes, yes!"
She put her arms slowly, almost feebly, round his neck.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
She kept on repeating the word, breathing it against his cheek, breathing it against his lips, till his lips stifled it on hers.
At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed into his, and said:
"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was—the man, not the triumph."
"And you really mean to give up Kensington Square and the studio, and to take Djenan-el-Maqui for five years?" said Mrs. Mansfield to Charmian on a spring evening, as they sat together in the former's little library on the first floor of the house in Berkeley Square.
"Yes, my only mother, if—there's always an 'if' in our poor lives, isn't there?"
"If?" said her mother gently.
"If you will occasionally brave the Gulf of Lyons and come to us in the winter. In the summer we shall generally come back to you."
Mrs. Mansfield looked into the fire for a moment. Caroline lay before it in mild contentment, unchanged, unaffected by the results of America. Enough for her if a pleasant warmth from the burning logs played agreeably about her lemon-colored body, enough for her if the meal of dog biscuit soaked in milk was set before her at the appointed time. She sighed now, but not because she heard discussion of Djenan-el-Maqui. Her delicate noise was elicited by the point of her mistress's shoe, which at this moment pressed her side softly, moving her loose skin to and fro.
"The Gulf of Lyons couldn't keep me from coming," Mrs. Mansfield said at last. "Yes, I daresay I shall see you in that Arab house, Charmian. Claude wishes to go there again?"
"It is Claude who has decided the whole thing."
Charmian's voice held a new sound. Mrs. Mansfield looked closely at her daughter.
"You see, Madre, he and I—well, I think we have earned our retreat. We—we did stand up to the failure. We went to the first night of Jacques Sennier's new opera and helped, as everyone in an audience can help, to seal its triumph. I—I went round to Madame Sennier's box with Claude—AdelaideShiffney and Armand Gillier were in it!—and congratulated her. Madre, we faced the music."
Her voice quivered slightly. Mrs. Mansfield impulsively took her child's hands and held them.
"We faced the music. Claude is strong. I never knew what he was before. Without that tremendous failure I never should have known him. He helped me. I didn't know one human being could help another as Claude helped me after the failure of the opera. Even Mr. Crayford admired him. He said to me the last day, when we were going to start for the ship: 'Well, little lady, you've married the biggest failure we've brought over here in my time, but you have married a man!' And I said—I said—"
"Yes, my only child?"
"'I believe that's all a woman wants.'"
"Is it?"
Mrs. Mansfield's dark, intense eyes searched Charmian's.
"Is it all thatyouwant?"
"You mean—?"
"Isn't the fear of the crowd still haunting you? Isn't uneasy ambition still tugging at you?"
Charmian took her foot away from Caroline's side and sat very still for a moment.
"I do want Claude to succeed, yes, I do, Madre. I believe every woman wants her man to succeed. But I shall never interfere again—never. I've had my lesson. I've seen the truth, both of myself and of Claude. But I shall always wish Claude to succeed, not in my way, but in his own. And I think he will. Yes, I believe he will. Weren't we—he and I—both extremists? I think perhaps we were. I may have been vulgar—oh, that word!—in my desire for fame, in my wish to get out of the crowd. But wasn't Claude just a little bit morbid in his fear of life, in his shrinking from publicity? I think, perhaps, he was. And I know now he thinks so. Claude is changed, Madre. All he went through in New York has changed him. He's a much bigger man than he was when we left England. You must see that!"
"I do see it."
"From now onward he'll do the work he is fitted to do,only that. But I think he means to let people hear it. He said to me only last night: 'Now they all know the false man, I have the wish to show them the man who is real.'"
"The man who had the crucifix standing before his piano," said Mrs. Mansfield, in a low voice. "The man who heard a great voice out of the temple speaking to the seven angels."
She paused.
"Did he ever play you that?" she asked Charmian.
"One night in America, when our dear friend, Alfred Van Brinen, was with us. But he played it for Mr. Van Brinen."
"And—since then?"
"Madre, he has played it since then for me."
Charmian got up from her chair. She stood by the fire. Her thin body showed in clear outline against the flames, but her face was a little in shadow.
"Madretta," she began, and was silent.
"Yes?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
"Susan Fleet and I were once talking about theosophy. And Susan said a thing I have never forgotten."
"What was that?"
"She said: 'It's a long journey up the Ray.' I didn't understand. And she explained that by the Ray she meant the bridge that leads from the personal which perishes to the immortal which endures. Madre, I shall always be very personal, I think. I can't help it. I don't know that I even want to help it. But—but I do believe that in America, that night after the opera, I took a long, long step on the journey up the Ray. I must have, I think, because that night I was happy."
Her eyes became almost mysterious in the firelight. She looked down and added, in a withdrawn voice:
"Iwas happy in failure!"
"No, in success!" said Mrs. Mansfield.