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 the Paradis 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 his Cavalleria, Leoncavallo and his Pagliacci. 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 kept a 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 might wake 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 famous Belle Dame Sans Merci really 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 still Hast half a will To 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 the Belle Dame, William Watson's poems, and two or three books of French poetry, Verlaine, Montesquiou, Moreas.

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's The 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 study The Hound of Heaven again. 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 read The 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 with The 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 the Wild Heart. May I?"

"Yes, do," said Claude.

"And meanwhile what are you working on instead of The 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 as The Hound of Heaven had been?

She brought the young American, whose name was Alston Lake, to the studio. Claude took a fancy to him at once. Lake sang the Wild 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.



CHAPTER XVIII

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 Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur, 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's Wild Heart of Youth everywhere. 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 had depths, 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 of flooding 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 Lake naturally 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 the Belle Dame Sans Merci for 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's boyish 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. The Paradis Terrestre had 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!"

"And I found 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 as Louise is 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 on the 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."

Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall. Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his "interests." And yet—and yet—

Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she—was she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in Algiers when they were quite alone together?

He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.

He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.

She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.

As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought she looked very sad.

"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.

"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."

"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"

He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for a moment.

"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.

Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him. He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.

"If you want me."

"If!"

"I'm not quite sure that you will."

Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which till that moment he had scarcely been aware?

"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."

"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."

"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"

"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"

Claude sighed.

"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed to be within reach of you."

"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."

"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"

"Do you?"

He moved rather uneasily.

"I—I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still—still we sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not natural to us."

"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to us."

"What means?"

"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves, if we can incorporate it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward. I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"

Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.

"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"

"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."

"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."

She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of Romeike and Curtice.

"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear, slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A year—two years, perhaps—out of the world! It will be a new experience for me, won't it, Madretta?"

"Quite new."

The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.

"And I shall see the island with you."

"The island?" he said.

"Don't you remember—the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it. But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again, better than the truth, because I was added to them. Don't you remember, Claudie?"

"Yes, now I remember."

"You are going to do that where I could not do it."

Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.

And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from her.



CHAPTER XIX

Charmian and her husband went first to the Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money to throw away.

During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which, carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life running its course in the darkness of his soul.

In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose. And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of "steeping" her husband.

She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she was so keenly, so incessantly alive to the reason of their coming to Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.

But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now. You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first she began to assert herself in your art life."

And he kept silence.

Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.

She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another—a not completely hidden reason?

Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian, and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.

And presently she said:

"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."

Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned on the seat and looked at her.

"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.

Something in his eyes almost startled her.

"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."

He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an expression which made her feel almost uneasy.

"Something here"—she almost faltered, called on her will, and continued—"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.

She thought his voice sounded insincere.

"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here for our honeymoon."

"I thought of it. I wanted to."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."

"And now the right time has come?"

"Yes, now it has come."

She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had troubled her spirit.

The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red roses in his earthy hand.

He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with the old man and began to talk with him.

It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.

That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:

"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."

"Old Robert!"

"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests me—us—is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year, Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but in good repair, pure Arab in style, so he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here in the best part of Mustapha Inferieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"

"Isn't it rather late?"

"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.

"Yes, let us go to-morrow."

Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude, and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de Manoeuvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles, confronted them, holding its many secrets.

"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.

"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.

"I know it will do."

She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery running right round it from which the few small bedrooms opened by low black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household, when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas. Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red of the crowding houses of the town.

It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than the studio in Renwick Place.

"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.

The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall, and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.

Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery at Staoueli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi, and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets, charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone. She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.

Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes, tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him. It was her role to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging. But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities, passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied. Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in a milieu where they had no friends, no acquaintances even, except two or three casually met in the Hotel St. George, and the British Consul-General and his wife, who had been to call on them.

Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat." She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands her true feeling abruptly.

In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests, occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear. He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so, for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going to do?

Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the force which he had often felt in London, a force which had often secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without tonic properties.

With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square, when he read Carlyle's French Revolution and sometimes felt criminal. There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel inclined to or not."

Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in, more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!

Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going" to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the opportunity presented itself.

Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater, among them The Astral Plane, Reincarnation, Death—and After? and The Seven Principles of Man. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet, Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and patience. Just now—indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing Le Paradis Terrestre, how long he had taken in the creation of that stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.

She had begun with The Seven Principles of Man. The short preface had attracted her. "Life easier to bear—death easier to face." If theosophy helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death. But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed attention of the world—they were all so far away.

Resolutely she read The Seven Principles of Man.

Then she dipped into Reincarnation and Death—and After?

Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint—as, say, Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in her life.

Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.

One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window, leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without them.

Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier, the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but Claude had never seen him, though he had corresponded with him, and sent him a cheque of L100 for his work.

Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened, and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.

Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest son, but who was now resigned to the latter's etranges folies. The fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes of him.

When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes with him, and preparing him for Claude.

This man must "fire" Claude.

Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality, he exclaimed:

"Eh bien, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"

Charmian looked at him and hesitated.

"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle, morbid perhaps? Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful imaginings?"

Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled at the upward-pointing ends.

"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to music must have lived also to do it justice."

There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class, in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.

Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help Claude to bridge that gulf.

"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.



CHAPTER XX

Mrs. Shiffney, who was perpetually changing her mind in the chase after happiness, changed it about India. After all the preparations had been made, innumerable gowns and hats had been bought, a nice party had been arranged, and the yacht had been "sent round" to Naples, she decided that she did not want to go, had never wanted to go. Whether the defection of a certain Spanish ex-diplomat, who was to have been among the guests, had anything to do with her sudden dislike of "that boresome India," perhaps only she knew, and the ex-diplomat guessed. The whole thing was abruptly given up, and January found her in Grosvenor Square, much disgusted with her persecution by Fate, and wondering what on earth was to become of her.

In such crises she generally sent for Susan Fleet, if the theosophist were within reach. She now decided to telegraph to Folkestone, where Susan was staying in lodgings not far from the house of dear old Mrs. Simpkins. Susan replied that she would come up on the following day, and she duly arrived just before the hour of lunch.

She found Mrs. Shiffney dressed to go out.

"Oh, Susan, what a mercy to see you! We are going to the Ritz. We shall be by ourselves. I want you to advise me what to do. Things have got so mixed up. Is the motor there?"

"Yes."

"Come along, then."

At the Ritz, although she met many acquaintances, Mrs. Shiffney would not join any one for lunch or let any one join her.

"Susan and I have important matters to discuss," she said, smiling.

Her face and manner had completely changed directly she got out of the motor. She now looked radiant, like one for whom life held nothing but good things. And all the time she and Susan were lunching and talking she preserved a radiant demeanor. Her reward was that everyone said how handsome Adelaide Shiffney was looking. She even succeeded in continuing to look handsome when she found that Susan had made private plans for the immediate future.

"I've promised to go to Algiers," Susan said over the oeufs en cocotte, when Mrs. Shiffney asked what was to be done to make things lively.

"To Algiers! Why? What is there to do there? You know it inside out."

"Scarcely that. I'm going to stay with Charmian Heath."

Mrs. Shiffney's large mouth suddenly looked a little hard, though her general expression hardly altered.

"Oh! Whereabouts are they?"

"Up at Mustapha, not far from Mrs. Graham."

"They say he's trying to write an opera. Poor fellow! The very last thing he could do, I should think. But she pushes him on. Since that song of his—I forget the name, heart something or other—her head has been completely turned about his talent. The fact is, Susan, Sennier's sudden fame has turned all their heads, the young composers, les jeunes, you know. They are all trying to write operas. In Paris it's too absurd! But an Englishman, with his temperament, too—Oliver Cromwell in Harris tweed!—she must be mad. Of course even if he ever finishes it he will never get it produced."

Susan quietly went on eating her eggs.

"A totally unknown man. She thinks that song has made him quite a celebrity. But nobody has ever heard of him."

"Nobody had ever heard of Sennier till that night at Covent Garden," observed Susan, lifting a glass of water to her lips.

"Oh, yes, they had!"

Mrs. Shiffney's musical passion for Sennier often led her to embroider facts.

"Among the people who matter in Paris he was quite famous."

"Oh, I didn't know that," said Susan, without a trace of doubt or of sarcasm.

"How could you? Besides, Sennier is a great man, the only man we have, in fact. So you were going to stay with the Heaths?"

"I am going. I promised Charmian Heath."

"When?"

"In about ten days, I think. My mother is rather unwell, only a bad cold. But I like to be at Folkestone to help Mrs. Simpkins."

"Susan, what an extraordinary person you are!"

"Why?"

"You are. But you are so extraordinary that I could never make you see why. Sandringham and Mrs. Simpkins! There is no one like you."

She branched off to various topics, but presently returned to the Algerian visit.

"What do you think of Charmian Heath, Susan—really think, I mean? Do you care for her?"

"Yes, I do."

"Oh, I don't mean as a theosophist, I mean as a human being."

Susan smiled. "We are human beings."

"You are certainly. But, of course, I know you embrace Charmian Heath with your universal love, just as you embrace me and Mrs. Simpkins and the King and the crossing-sweeper at the corner. That doesn't interest me. I wish to know whether you like her as you don't like me and the King and the crossing-sweeper?"

"Charmian Heath and I are good friends. I am interested in her."

"In a woman!"

"Greatly because she is a woman."

"I know you're a suffragette at heart!"

They talked a little about politics. When coffee came, Mrs. Shiffney suddenly said:

"I'll take you over to Algiers, Susan."

"But you don't want to go there."

"It's absurd your going in one of those awful steamers from Marseilles when the yacht is only about half an hour away."

"Half an hour! I thought she was at Naples."

"I said about half an hour on purpose to be accurate."

"Really, I would just as soon take the steamer," said Susan.

This definite, though very gentle, resistance to her suddenly conceived project decided Mrs. Shiffney. If Susan genuinely wished to go to Algiers by the public steamer, then she would have to go on the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had realized from the beginning of their conversation that Susan wished to go to Algiers alone. There had been something in the tone of her voice, in her expression, her quiet manner, which had convinced Mrs. Shiffney of that. Her curiosity was awake, and something else.

"Susan dear, you must allow me to take care of you as far as Algiers," she said. "If you don't want me there I'll just put you ashore on the beach, near Cap Matifou or somewhere, and leave you there with your trunks. You are an eccentric, but that's no reason why you shouldn't have a comfortable voyage."

"Very well. It's very kind of you, Adelaide," Susan returned, without a trace of vexation.

That very day Mrs. Shiffney telegraphed to the captain of the yacht to bring her round to Marseilles. In the evening Susan Fleet returned to Folkestone.

Mrs. Shiffney did not intend to make the journey alone with Susan, and to be left "in the air" at Algiers. She must get a man or two. After a few minutes' thought she sent a message to Max Elliot asking him to look in upon her. When he came she invited him to join the party.

"You must come," she said. "Only ten days or so. Surely you can get away. And you'll see your protege, Mr. Heath."

"My protege!"

"Well, you were the first to discover him."

"But he's impossible. A charming fellow with undoubted talent, but so bearish about his music. I gave it up, as you know, though I'm always the Heaths' very good friend."

"Well, but his song?"

"One song! What's that? And his wife made him compose it. Nobody has ever heard his really fine work, his Te Deum, and his settings of sacred words."

"His wife and mother have, I believe."

"His wife—yes. And she will take care no one else ever does hear them now."

"Why?"

Max Elliot looked at Mrs. Shiffney. Into his big and genial eyes there came an expression of light sarcasm, almost of contempt. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Art and the world!" he said enigmatically.

"Well, but, Max, don't you represent the world in connection with the art of music?"

"I! Do I?" he said, suddenly grave.

She laughed.

"I should think so, mon cher. I don't believe either you or I have a right to talk!"

It was a moment of truth, and was followed, as truth often is, by a moment of silence. Then Mrs. Shiffney said:

"Claude Heath has gone to Algiers to compose an opera."

"Oh, all this opera madness is owing to the success of Jacques!"

"Of course. I know that. But another Jacques might spring up, I suppose. Henriette wouldn't like that."

"Like it!" exclaimed Max Elliot, twisting his thick lips. "She wants a clear field for the next big event. And I must say she deserves it."

"Just what I think. Well, you'll come to Algiers and hear how the new opera's getting on?"

He glanced at her determined eyes.

"Yes, I'll come. But it must be only for ten days. I've got such a lot of work on hand!"

"Perhaps I'll ask Ferdinand to come, too. Or—"

Suddenly Mrs. Shiffney leaned forward. Her face had become eager, almost excited.

"Shall I ask Henriette and Jacques to come with us? They don't go to New York this year."

Max Elliot seemed to hesitate. He was an enthusiast, and apt to be carried away by his enthusiasms, sometimes even into absurdity. But he was a thoroughly good fellow, and had not the slightest aptitude or taste for intrigue. Mrs. Shiffney saw his hesitation.

"I will ask them," she said, "Charmian Heath will love to know them, I'm sure. She has such a fine taste in celebrities."

* * * * *

On a brilliant day in the first week of February The Wanderer glided into the harbor of Algiers, and, like a sentient being with a discriminating brain, picked her way to her moorings. On board of her were Mrs. Shiffney, Susan Fleet, Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Max Elliot.

The composer had been very ill on the voyage. His lamentations and cries of "Ah, mon Dieu!" and "O la la la!" had been distressing. Madame Sennier had never left him. She had nursed him as if he were a child, holding his poor stomach and back in the great crises of his malady, laying him firmly on his enormous pillows when exhaustion brought a moment of respite, feeding him with a spoon and drenching him with eau de Cologne. She now gave him her arm to help him on deck, twining a muffler round his meager throat.

"It's lovely, my cabbage! You must lift the head! You must regard the jewelled Colonial crown of our beloved France!"

"Ah, mon Dieu! O la la la!" replied her celebrated husband.

"My little chicken, you must have courage!"

Susan Fleet had let Charmian know how she was coming, and had mentioned Mrs. Shiffney. But she had said nothing about the Senniers, for the simple reason that Adelaide had told her nothing about them until they stepped into the wagon-lit in Paris. Then she had remarked carelessly:

"Oh, yes, I believe they're crossing with us! Why not?"

As soon as the yacht was moored the whole party prepared to leave her. Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Hotel St. George. And Susan Fleet was going at once to Djenan-el-Maqui.

"Tell Charmian Heath I'll look in this afternoon with Max, Susan, about tea-time. Don't say anything about the Senniers. They won't come, I'm sure. He says he's going straight to bed directly he reaches the hotel. Charmian would be disappointed. I'll explain to her."

These were Mrs. Shiffney's last words to Susan, as she pulled down her thick white veil, opened her parasol, and stepped into the landau to drive up to the hotel. Madame Sennier was already in the carriage, where the composer lay back opposite to her with closed eyes. Even the brilliant sunshine, the soft and delicious air, the gay cries and the movement at the wharf, where many Arabs were unloading bales of goods from the ships, or were touting for employment as porters and guides, failed to rouse him.

"I must go to bed!" was his sole remark.

"My cat, you shall have the best bed in Africa and stay there for a week. Only have courage for another five minutes!" said his wife, speaking to him with the intonation of a strong-hearted mother reassuring a little child.

When Susan arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Charmian there alone. Charmian greeted her eagerly, but looked at her anxiously, almost suspiciously, after the first kiss.

"Where's Adelaide? On the yacht?"

"She's gone to the Hotel St. George."

"Oh! Close to us! How long is she going to stay? Oh, Susan, why did you let her come?"

"I couldn't help it. But why need you mind?"

"Adelaide hates me!"

"Oh, no!"

"She does. And you know it."

"I really don't think she has time to hate you, Charmian. And Adelaide can be very kind."

"Your theosophy prevents you from allowing that there are any faults in your friends. Yes, Susan, it does."

"Have you read the manuals carefully?"

"Yes, but I can't think of them now. Adelaide's being here will spoil everything."

"No it won't! She'll only stay a day or two, not that, perhaps."

"But why did she come at all?"

"She didn't tell me. She's coming to see you to-day with Mr. Elliot."

"Max Elliot, too! Of course it is Claude whom Adelaide wants to see. I quite understand that. But he's not here."

"What has become of him?"

"Susan, you know of course he wished to welcome you. He is devoted to you. But—well, the truth is"—she slightly lowered her voice, although there was no one in the room—"he had to go away for the opera. He has gone to Constantine with Armand Gillier, the author of the libretto, to study the native music there, and military life, I believe. There is a big garrison at Constantine, you know. Monsieur Gillier is a most valuable friend for Claude, and can help him tremendously in many ways; with the opera, I mean."

She stopped. Then she added:

"Adelaide Shiffney might have been of great use to Claude, too. But before we were married he offended her, I think. And now, of course, she's on the other side."

"I don't know whether I quite understand what you mean."

"She's on Sennier's side."

It seemed to Susan Fleet that Charmian was living rather prematurely in a future that was somewhat problematic. But she only said:

"Don't let us make too much of it. I hoped you might learn from the manuals not to worry. But while I'm here we can talk them over, if you like."

"Yes, yes," said Charmian, changing, melting almost into happiness. "Oh, I am glad you've come, even though it entails Adelaide for a day or two. Of course she knows about the opera?"

"Yes, she does."

"I knew." She looked into Susan's face, smiled, and concluded: "Never mind!"

At five o'clock that day the peace of Djenan-el-Maqui was broken by the sound of animated voices in the courtyard. A bell jangled and a moment later Pierre, with his most birdlike demeanor, ushered into the drawing-room Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, her husband, and Max Elliot.

"What a dear little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite envy them."

"It's charming!" said Max Elliot.

"Love in a harem! Better than in a cottage."

Madame Sennier pushed up her huge floating veil and showed her powerful face of a clown covered with white pigment. Her lips made a scarlet bar across it.

"What is she like? I remember the man. He's clever."

"Oh, she—she is charming; thin and charming."

"That's well!" observed the composer. "That's very well."

He appeared to have quite recovered from his despair, and now looked almost defiantly cheerful. Small in body, with a narrow chest and shoulders, and a weakly growing beard, he was nevertheless remarkable, even striking in appearance. His large nose suggested Semitic blood, but also power, which was shown, too, in his immense forehead and strong, energetic head. He had a habit of blinking his eyes. But they were fine eyes, full of feeling, imagination, and emotion, but also at moments full of sarcasm and shrewdness. His dark, hairy and small hands were rather monkeylike, and looked destructive.

"Every woman should be thin and charming," he continued. "The camel species, the elephant-type, the cowlike ruminating specimen—milky mother of the lowing herd, as an English poet has expressed it, and very well, too—should"—he flung out one little hairy hand vehemently—"go with the advance of corset-makers and civilization. She comes!"

The door had opened, and Charmian came in.

Instantly her eyes fastened on Madame Sennier.

She was so surprised that she stood still by the door, and her whole face was suffused with blood. So much had this woman meant, did she still mean in Charmian's life, that even the habit of the world did not help Charmian to complete self-control at this moment.

"I'm afraid our coming has quite startled you," said Mrs. Shiffney. "Didn't Susan tell you we were going to look in?"

"Yes, of course. I'm delighted!"

Charmian moved. She was secretly furious with herself.

Max Elliot took her hand, and Mrs. Shiffney carelessly introduced the Senniers.

"What a dear little retreat you've found here, and how deliciously you've arranged everything," she said. "You've made a perfect nest for your genius. We are all longing to see him."

They were sitting now. Charmian was on a divan beside Madame Sennier.

"A clever man!" said Madame Sennier, decisively. "I met him once at the opera. You remember, Jacques, I told you what he said about your orchestration?"

"Yes, yes, about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings and the horns to give the effect of water."

"I want Monsieur Sennier to know him," said Mrs. Shiffney.

"I'm so sorry, but he's not here," said Charmian.

Just then Susan Fleet came in. Mrs. Shiffney turned to her.

"Susan! Such a disappointment! But, of course, you know!"

"About Mr. Heath? Yes."

"Has he gone back to England?" said Max Elliot.

"Oh, no. He's in Algeria."

Charmian obviously hesitated, saw that any want of frankness would seem extraordinary, and added:

"He has gone to Constantine with a friend."

Her voice was reluctant.

"Do have some tea!" she added quickly, pulling the bell, which Pierre promptly answered with the tea things.

"Constantine!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "That's no distance, only a night in the train. Can't you persuade him to come back and see us? Do be a dear and telegraph."

She spoke in her most airy way.

"I would in a minute. But he's not gone merely to amuse himself."

"The opera!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "By the way, is it indiscreet to ask who wrote the libretto?"

Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.

"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His name is Gillier."

"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out his hands in a gesture of surprise.

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three libretti by him have I rejected—three, madame. He challenged me to a duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband accepted?"

Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant eyes—they were yellow eyes, and small—fixed upon her.

"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.

Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.

"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can say!"

"Brave! But why?"

Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.

"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."

"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"

She had turned to Max Elliot.

"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"

She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because she was the hindmost. That was certain.

Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation with Madame Sennier.

She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply. There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she, Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her wealth, influence, even, it seemed, a curious adoration. She wondered, too, if this woman had known the first Madame Sennier.