Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of, Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest! We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's agreeable voice.

Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander. The night was so vast, so starry and still, that—as he afterward said to himself—"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had not studied with Madame Thenant for nothing. This was an almost supreme moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before her. She took her feet off the stool—she was no odalisque to be pampered with footstools and cushions—and she let herself go.

Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:

"That's the best libretto since Carmen, and I know something about libretti."

Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:

"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"

Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.

"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted him—"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from wherever he is?"

With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.

"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But—but I think he needs the holiday he is taking badly."

"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"

"Yes."

"Young 'uns must sweat if they're to get there. That's all right. Aren't it, Alston?"

"Rather!"

"Can't you get him back?" continued Crayford.

The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.

"Well, I might. But—why?"

"Don't he want to see his chum Alston?"

"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."

"Well then?"

"The only thing is he needs complete rest."

"And so do I, but d'you think I'm going to take it? Not I! It's the resters get left. You might telegraph that to your husband, and say it comes straight from me."

He got up from his chair, and threw away the stump of the fourth cigar he had enjoyed that night.

"We've no room for resters in New York City."

"I'm sure you haven't. But my husband doesn't happen to belong to New York City."

As they were leaving Djenan-el-Maqui, after Mr. Crayford had had a long drink, and while he was speaking to his chauffeur, who had the bonnet of the car up, Alston Lake whispered to Charmian:

"Don't wire to old Claude. Keep it up. You are masterly, quite masterly. Hulloa! anything wrong with the car?"

When they buzzed away Charmian stood for a moment in the drive till silence fell. She was tired, but how happily tired!

And to think that Claude knew nothing, nothing of it all! Some day she would have to tell him how hard she had worked for him! She opened her lips and drew into her lungs the warm air of the night. She was not a "rester." She would not surely "get left."

Pierre yawned rather loudly behind her.

"Oh, Pierre!" she said, turning quickly, startled. "It is terribly late. Stay in bed to-morrow. Don't get up early. Bonne nuit."

"Bonne nuit, madame."

On the following day she received a note from Alston.

"DEAR MRS. CHARMIAN,—You are a wonder. No one on earth could have managed him better. You might have known him from the cradle—yours, of course, not his! I'm taking him around to-day. He wants to go to Djenan-el-Maqui, I can see that. But I'm keeping him off it. Lie low and mum's the word as to Claude.—Your fellow conspirator, "ALSTON."

It was difficult to "lie low." But she obeyed and spent the long day alone. No one came to see her. Toward evening she felt deserted, presently even strangely depressed. As she dined, as she sat out afterward in the court with Caroline reposing on her skirt in a curved attitude of supreme contentment, she recalled the excitement and emotion of the preceding night. She had read well. She had done her part for Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they were a menage a trois. She recalled the beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it was flowing.

Surely so much thought, care, labor and love could not be bestowed on a thing in vain; surely the opera, child of so many hopes, bearer of such a load of ambition, could not "go down"? She tried to regain her strength of anticipation. But all the evening she felt depressed. If only Alston would come in for five minutes! Perhaps he would. She looked at the tiny watch which hung by her side at the end of a thin gold chain. The hands pointed to half-past nine. He might come yet. She listened. The night, one of a long succession of marvellous African nights, was perfectly still. The servants within the villa made no sound. Caroline heaved a faint sigh and stirred, turning to push her long nose into a tempting fold of Charmian's skirt. But, midway in her movement she paused, lifted her head, stared at the darkness with her small yellow eyes, and uttered a muffled bark which was like an inquiry. Her nose was twitching.

"What is it, Caroline?" said Charmian.

She lifted the dog on to her knees.

"What is it?"

Caroline barked faintly again.

"Someone is coming," thought Charmian. "Alston is coming."

Almost directly she heard the sound of wheels, and Caroline jumping down with her lopetty movement, delivered herself up to a succession of calm barks. She was a gentle individual, and never showed any great animation, even in such a crisis as this. The sound of wheels ceased, and in a moment a voice called:

"Charmian! Where are you?"

"Claude!"

She felt that her face grew hot, though she was alone, and she had spoken the name to herself, for herself.

"I'm out here on the terrace!"

She felt astonished, guilty. She had thought that he would only come when she summoned him, perhaps to-morrow, that he would learn by telegram of the arrival of Crayford and Alston. Now she would have to tell him.

He came out into the court, looking very tall in the night.

"Are you surprised?"

He kissed her.

"Very! Very surprised!"

"I thought I had had enough holiday, that I would get back. I only decided to-day, quite suddenly."

"Then didn't you enjoy your holiday?"

"I thought I was going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away from the opera."

Charmian was conscious of a sharp pang. It felt like a pang of jealousy.

"Have you had any dinner?" she asked, in a rather constrained voice.

"Yes. I dined at Gruber's."

She wondered why, but she did not say so.

"I nearly stayed the night in town. I felt—it seemed so absurd my rushing back like this."

He ended with a little laugh.

"Who do you think is here?" she said.

"Here?"

He glanced round.

"I mean in Algiers."

He looked at her with searching eyes.

"Someone we know well?"

"Two people."

"Tell me!"

"No—guess!"

"Women? Men?"

"Men."

"Sennier?"

She shook her head.

"Max Elliot?"

"No. One is—Alston Lake."

"Alston? But why isn't he up here, then?"

"He has brought someone with him."

"Whom?"

"Jacob Crayford."

"Crayford here? What has he come here for?"

"He's taking a holiday motoring."

"But to come to Algiers in summer!"

"He goes everywhere, and can't choose his season. He's far too busy."

"To be sure. Has he been to see you?"

"Yes; he dined here yesterday and stayed till past midnight. He wants to see you. I meant to telegraph to you almost directly."

"Wants to see me?"

"Yes. Claude, last night I read the libretto of the opera to him and Alston."

He was silent. It was dark in the court. She could not see his face clearly enough to know whether he was pleased or displeased.

"Do you mind?"

"Why should I?"

"I think you sound as if you minded."

"Well? What did Crayford think of it?"

"He said, 'It's the best libretto since Carmen.'"

"It is a good libretto."

"He was enthusiastic. Claude"—she put her hand on his arm—"he wants to hear your music."

"Has he said so?"

"Not exactly; not in so many words; but he seemed very much put out when he found you weren't here. And, after he had heard the libretto, he suggested my telegraphing to you to come straight back."

"Funny I should have come without your telegraphing."

"It almost seems—" She paused.

"What?"

"As if you had been led to come back of your own accord, as if you had felt you ought to be here."

"Are you glad?" he said.

"Yes, now."

"Did you mean—"

"Claude," she said, taking a resolution, "I don't think it would be wise for us to seem too eager about the opera with Mr. Crayford."

"But I have never even thought—"

"No, no. But now he's here, and thinks so much of the libretto, and wants to see you, it would be absurd of us to pretend that he could not be of great use to us. I mean, to pretend to ourselves. Of course if he would take it it would be too splendid."

"He never will."

"Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera."

"I'm not a Sennier unfortunately."

"What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed, almost angrily.

She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin their prospects.

"O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can—"

She pulled herself up sharply.

"I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much, and then you speak like this."

Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude.

"My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I don't know why."

But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something, was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her.

"I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself."

Claude put his arm round her gently.

"I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very aggravating," he said. "But—"

He stopped, said nothing more.

"Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed—"your own child. Then others will believe in it, too. Alston does."

She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes.

"And Jacob Crayford shall."

After a moment she added:

"If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things."

"How could I spoil my own music?" he asked.

But she only answered:

"Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!"



CHAPTER XXVIII

"So the darned rester's come back, has he?"

Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel.

"They gave you the note, then?" said Alston.

"Yaw."

Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge Havana.

"I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up. "Of course she telegraphed him to come."

"I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically.

"Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily.

He sat down and crossed his legs.

"No. But even you can't see what isn't."

"There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well, that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent little thing, that's all."

Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable expression.

"She's brought the rester back so as not to miss the opportunity of his life. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right up to Djen-anne. I'm going to take the rester by myself, and I'm just going to hear that darned opera; and neither the little lady nor you's going to get a look in. This is up to me, and you'll just keep right out of it. See?"

He turned the cigar in his mouth, and his tic suddenly became very apparent.

"And what am I to do?" asked Alston.

"When I get to Djen-anne, I'll open out at once, come right to business. You stop here. As likely as not the little lady'll come back in the car to take you for a spin. If she does, keep her out till late. You can tell her a good bit depends on it."

"Very well."

"Happen she'll dine with you?" threw out Crayford, always with the same half-humorous dryness.

"Do you mean that you wish me to try and keep Mrs. Heath to dinner?" said Alston, with bland formality.

"She might cheer you up. You might cheer each other up."

At this point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to distort slightly one corner of his mouth.

Charmian did come down from Mustapha in Crayford's big yellow car. She was in a state of great excitement.

"O Alston!" she exclaimed, "where are we going? What a man he is when it comes to business! He simply packed me off. I have never been treated in such a way before. We've got hours and hours to fill up somehow. I feel almost as if I were waiting to be told on what day I am to be guillotined, like a French criminal. How will Claude get on with him? Just think of those two shut in together!"

As Alston got into the car she repeated:

"Where are we going?"

"Allez au Diable!" said Alston to Crayford's chauffeur, who was a Frenchman.

"Bien, m'sieu!"

"And—" Alston pulled out his watch. "You must take at least seven hours to get there."

"Tres bien, m'sieu."

"That's a cute fellow," said Alston to Charmian, as they drove off. "Knows how to time things!"

It was evening when they returned to the hotel, dusty and tired.

"You'll dine with me, Mrs. Charmian!" said Alston.

"Oh, no; I must go home now. I can't wait any longer."

"Better dine with me."

She took off her big motor veil, and looked at him.

"Did Mr. Crayford say I was to dine with you?"

"No. But he evidently thought it would be a suitable arrangement."

"But what will people think?"

"What they always do, I suppose."

"Yes, but what's that?"

"I've wondered for years!"

He held out his big hand. Charmian yielded and got out of the car.

At ten o'clock Crayford had not reappeared, and she insisted on returning home.

"I can't stay out all night even for an impresario," she said.

Alston agreed, and they went out to the front door to get a carriage.

"Of course I'll see you home, Mrs. Charmian."

"Yes, you may."

As they drove off she exclaimed:

"That man really is a terror, Alston, or should I say a holy terror? Do you know, I feel almost guilty in daring to venture back to my own house."

"Maybe we'll meet him on the way up."

"If we do be sure you stop the carriage."

"But if he doesn't stop his?"

"Then I'll stop it. Keep a sharp look-out. I'm tired, but oh! I do feel so excited. You look out all the time on your side, and I'll do the same on mine."

"Well, but we meet everything on the—"

"Never mind! Oh, don't be practical at such a moment! He might pass us on any side."

Alston laughed and obeyed her mandate.

They were a long way up the hill, and were near to the church of the Holy Trinity when Charmian cried out:

"There's a carriage coming. I believe he's in it."

"Why?"

"Because I do! Be ready to stop him."

"Gee! He is in it! Hi! Mr. Crayford! Crayford!"

Charmian, leaning quickly forward, gave their astonished coachman a violent push in the small of his back.

"Stop! Stop!"

He pulled up the horses with a jerk.

"Hello!" said Crayford.

He took off his hat.

"Goin' home to roost?" he added to Charmian.

"If you have no objection," she answered, with a pretense of dignity.

They looked at one another in the soft darkness which was illumined by the lamps of the two carriages. Crayford, as usual, was smoking a big cigar.

"Have you dined?" said Alston.

"Not yet."

"Have you—" Charmian began, and paused. "Have you been hearing the opera all this time?"

"Yaw."

He blew out a smoke ring.

"Hearing it and talking things over."

Her heart leaped with hope and with expectation.

"Then you—then I suppose—"

"See here, little lady," said Crayford. "I'm not feeling quite as full as I should like. I think I'll be getting home along. Your husband will tell you things, I've no doubt. Want Lake to see you in, do you?"

"No. I'm almost there."

"Then what do you say to his coming back with me?"

"Of course. Good-night, Mr. Lake. No, no! I don't want you really! All the coachmen know me here, and I them. I've driven alone dozens of times. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Crayford."

She almost pushed Alston out of the carriage in her excitement. She was now burning with impatience to be with Claude.

"Good-night, good-night!" she called, waving her hands as the horses moved forward.

"She's a oner," said Crayford. "And so are you to keep a woman like that quiet all these hours. My boy, I'm empty, I can tell you."

He said not a word to Alston about the opera that night, and Alston did not attempt to make him talk.

When Charmian arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at the cold chicken he was eating.

"O Claude!" she said, as he looked round. "Such a day! Well?"

She came to the table, pushed Caroline ruthlessly to the floor, took the dog's chair, and repeated, "Well?"

Claude's face was flushed, his short hair was untidy, and the eyes which he fixed upon her looked excited, tired, and, she thought, something else.

"Is anything the matter?"

"No, why should there be? Where have you been?"

"With Alston. He insisted on my keeping out of the way. Crayford I mean, of course. Has it gone well? Did you play the whole of it; all you've composed, I mean?"

"Yes."

"What did he say? What did he think of it?"

"It isn't easy to know exactly what that kind of man thinks."

"Was he disagreeable? Didn't you get on?"

"Oh, I suppose we did."

"What did he say, then?"

"All sorts of things."

"Go on eating. You look dreadfully tired. Tell me some of the things."

"Well, he liked some of it."

"Only some?"

"He seemed to like a good deal. But he suggested quantities of alterations."

"Where? Which part?"

"I should have to show you."

"Drink some wine. I'm sure you need it. Give me some idea. You can easily do that without showing me to-night."

"He says a march should be introduced. You know, in that scene—"

"I know, the soldiers, the Foreign Legion. Well, that would be easy enough. You could do that in a day."

"Do you think one has only to sit down?"

"Two days, then; a week if you like! You have wonderful facility when you choose. And what else? Here, I'll pour out the wine. What else?"

"Heaps of things. He wants to pull half the opera to pieces, I think."

"Oh, no, Claudie! You are exaggerating. You always do, dear old boy. And if you do what he says, what then?"

"How d'you mean?"

"Would he take it? Would he produce it?"

"He didn't commit himself."

"Of course not! They never do. But would he? You must have gathered something from his manner, from what he said, what he looked like."

"He seemed very much struck with the libretto. He said there were great opportunities for new scenic effects."

"He is going to take it! He is! He is!" she cried exultantly. "I knew he would. I always knew. Why, why do you look so grim, Claudie?"

She threw one arm round his neck and kissed him.

"Don't look like that when we are on the eve of everything we've been working for, waiting—longing for, for months and years! Caroline! Caroline!"

Caroline hastily indicated her presence.

"Come up! The darling, she shall have a piece of cake, two pieces! There! And the sugary part, too!"

"You'll make her ill."

"Never mind. If she is ill it is in a good cause. Claudie, just think, you are going to be another Jacques Sennier! It's too wonderful. And yet I knew it. Didn't I tell you that night in the opera house? I said it would be so. Didn't I? Can you deny it?"

"I don't deny it. But—"

"You are made of buts. If it were not for me you would go and hide away your genius, and no one would ever know you existed at all. It's pathetic. But you've married a wife who knows what you are, and others shall know too. The whole world shall know."

He could not help laughing at her wild enthusiasm. But he said, with a sobriety that almost made her despair:

"You are going too fast, Charmian. I'm not at all sure that I shall be able to consent to make changes in the opera."

Then began a curious conflict which lasted for days between Claude Heath on the one side, and Charmian, Alston Lake, and Crayford on the other. It was really a tragic conflict, for it was, Claude believed, the last stand made by an artist in defense of his art. Never had he felt so much alone as during these days of conflict. Yet he was in his own home, with a wife who was working for him, a devoted friend who was longing for his success, and a man who was seriously thinking of bringing him and his work into the notice of the vast world that loves opera. No one knew of his loneliness. No one even suspected it. And comedy hung, as it ever does, about the heels of tragedy.

Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States, and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."

Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a fine theater on Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last. He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever. Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity. He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood," and was for ever on the look-out for it.

He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.

But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not touch them.

Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his side because of gratitude, and in expectation.

The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his ideas.

"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if the darned thing's a failure."

There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside, the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly, unexpectedly.

Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him, bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.

"Then if we—I mean if my husband does what you wish, you will spend thousands over it?" she said, "you will produce it, give it its chance?"

Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything definite. Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within him. He strove to summon up that strength, but a sense of pity, that perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent. Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not strike it down into the dust of despair.

Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth, looked at Charmian, and said:

"Yah!"

Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word. But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back, beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.

"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it. I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then. You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start, but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of feet above it."

"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.

"Ah!" breathed Charmian.

Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably thought Napoleonic.

"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"—his tone was changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost paternal—"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger—eh, little lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"

"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.

His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of the room, out of the villa, to rush away—away into some desert place, and to be alone.

"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."

"I can't help—how would you have me look?"

"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"

"Claudie, we all only want—"

"I know—I know!"

He clenched his wet hands.

"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."

"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell—don't mind me, little lady! I'll stop right there!—we're getting on to something that's going to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about—'s going to astonish—the—world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"

And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.

And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm—a genuine enthusiasm—of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be carried on by their hopes.

As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.

"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or "that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"—thought of by himself—"makes your opera a different thing."

And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young people.

"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and I'll make him another Battistini. See here"—and he turned sharply to Claude—"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why, it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the opera."

That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he, the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all. But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in hand.

"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.

Claude was tempted to reply:

"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."

But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities, which delighted her.

"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never met an Englishwoman like her!"

Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man, recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She felt almost as if she were a creator.

"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."

While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised by Crayford—and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of those about him, scourged to his work by their desires—Lake studied the baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian "put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."

"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."

"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.

"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he answered. "Now, see here—"

They plunged deep into the libretto.

Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the opera.

"We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs. I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind."

That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of odd people.

"I'm out for dancers to-day," he said one morning.

And they set off to "put Algiers through the sieve" for dancing girls. They found painters, and Crayford took them to the Casbah, and to other nooks and corners of the town, to make drawings for him to carry away to New York as a guide to his scenic artist. They got hold of a Fakir, who had drifted from India to North Africa, and Crayford engaged him on the spot to appear in one of the scenes and perform some of his marvels.

"Claude"—the composer was Claude to him now—"can write in something weird to go with it," he said.

And Charmian of course agreed.

It had been decided that the opera should be produced at the New Era Opera House some time in the New Year, if Claude carried out faithfully all the changes which Crayford demanded.

"He will. He has promised to do everything you wish," said Charmian.

"You stand by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the changes. I can see that."

"It will be all right, I promise you. Claude isn't so mad as to lose the chance you are offering him."

"It's the chance of a lifetime. I can tell you that."

"He realizes it."

"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."

"I won't tell a soul."

"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"—Charmian thrilled at that word—"just about the same time, a day or two before, or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till every note in his score's in its place."

"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."

"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,' I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have to bring him over."

"Of course! Of course!"

"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like old bones."

He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:

"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."

He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:

"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it, though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish of it."

"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.

From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.



CHAPTER XXIX

On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just finished dinner, and Claude got up, rather slowly and wearily, from the small table which stood in the middle of their handsome red sitting-room on the eighth floor of the St. Regis Hotel in New York.

"How terribly hot this room is!" he said.

"Americans like their rooms hot. But open a little bit of the window, Claudie."

"If I do the noise of Fifth Avenue will come in."

He spoke almost irritably, like a man whose nerves were tired. But Charmian did not seem to notice it. She looked bright, resolute, dominant, as she replied in her clear voice:

"Let it come in. I like to hear it. It is the voice of the world we are here to conquer. Don't look at me like that, dear old boy, but open the window. The air will do you good. You're tired. I shouldn't have allowed you to work during the voyage."

"I had to work."

"Well, very soon you'll be able to rest, and on laurels."

Claude went to open the big window, pulling aside the blind, while Charmian lighted a cigarette, and curled herself up on the padded sofa. And as, in a moment, the roar of the gigantic city swelled in a fierce crescendo, she leaned forward with the cigarette in her hand, listening intently, half smiling, with an eager light in her eyes.

"What a city it is!" she said, as Claude turned and came toward her. "It makes London seem almost like a village. I'm glad it is here the opera is to be given for the first time."

"So am I," he said, sitting down.

But he spoke almost gloomily, looking at the floor. His face was white and too expressive, and his left hand, as it hung down between his knees, fluttered. He lifted it, turning the fingers inward.

"Why?" Charmian said.

He looked up at her.

"Oh, I—they are all strangers here."

She said nothing, and just then the telephone bell sounded. Mr. Alston Lake was below asking if Mr. Heath was in.

In a moment he entered, looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost greedily, of expectation and virile optimism.

"My!" he said, as he shook them both by the hand. "You look settled in for the night."

"So we are," said Charmian.

Alston laughed.

"I've come to take you to the theater."

"But they're not rehearsing to-night," said Claude.

"No; but Crayford's trying effects."

"Mr. Crayford! Is he back from Philadelphia?" exclaimed Charmian.

"Been back an hour and hard at work already. He sent me to fetch you. They're all up on the stage trying to get the locust effect."

"The locusts! Wait a minute, Alston! I'll change my gown."

She hurried out of the room.

"Well, old chap, what's up? You don't look too pleased," said Alston to Claude as the door shut. "Don't you want to come out? But we must put our backs into this, you know. The fight's on, and a bully big fight it is. Seen the papers to-day?"

"No. I haven't had a minute. I've been going through the orchestration with Meroni."

"What does he say?"

"He was very nice," answered Claude evasively. "But what's in the papers?"

"A bit of news that's made Crayford bristle like a scrubbing brush. The Metropolitan's changed the date for the production of Sennier's new opera, put it forward by nearly a fortnight, pledged themselves to be ready by the first of March."

"What does it matter?"

"Well, I like that! It takes all the wind out of our sails. In a big race the getting off is half the battle. We were coming first. But if I know anything of Crayford we shall come first even now. It's all Madame Sennier. She's mad against Crayford and the opera and you, and she's specially mad against Mrs. Charmian. The papers to-night are full of a lot of nonsense about the libretto."

"Which libretto?"

"Yours. Apparently Madame Sennier's been saying it was really written for Sennier and had been promised to him."

"That's a lie."

"Of course it is. But she's spread herself on it finely, I can tell you. Crayford's simply delighted."

"Delighted, when I'm accused of mean conduct, of stealing another man's property."

"It's no use getting furious over our papers! Doesn't pay! Besides, it makes a story, works up public interest. Still, I think she might have kept out Mrs. Charmian's name."

"Charmian is in it?"

"Yes, a lot of rubbish about her hearing what a stunner the libretto was, and rushing over to Paris to bribe it away before Sennier had considered it in its finished state."

"How abominable! I shall—"

"I know, but I wouldn't. Crayford says it will give value to the libretto, prepare the public mind for a masterpiece, and help to carry your music to success."

"I see! With this and the locusts!"

He turned away toward the open window, through which came the incessant roar of traffic, the sound of motor horns, and now, for a moment, a chiming of bells from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

"Well, we must do all we know. We mustn't give away a single chance. The whole Metropolitan crowd is just crazy to down us, and we must put up the biggest fight we can. Leave it all to Crayford. He knows more than any living man about a boom. And he said just now Madame Sennier was a deed fool to have given us such a lift with her libel. There'll be a crowd of pressmen around at the theater about it to-night, you can bet. Here she comes! Get on your coat, and let's be off, or Crayford'll be raging."

Claude stood still for an instant, looking from Alston to Charmian, who walked in briskly, wearing a sealskin coat that reached to her heels, and buttoning long white gloves. Then he said, "I won't be a minute!" and went out of the room.

As he disappeared Charmian and Alston looked after him. Then Alston came nearer to her, and they began to talk in rather low voices.

"The fight is on!"

How Claude hated those words; how he hated the truth which they expressed! To-night, in New York, as he went to fetch his overcoat from the smart and brilliantly lit bedroom which was opposite to the sitting-room across a lobby, he wondered why Fate had led him into this situation, why he had been doomed to become a sort of miserable center of intrigue, recrimination, discussion, praise, blame, dissension. No man, surely, on the face of the earth had loved tranquillity more than he had. Few men had more surely possessed it. He had known his soul and he had been its faithful guardian once—but long ago, surely centuries ago! That he should be the cause of battle, what an irony!

Thinking with great rapidity, during this brief interval of loneliness, while he got ready to go out, a rapidity to which his fatigue seemed to contribute, giving it wings, Claude reviewed his life since the first evening at Elliot's house. Events and periods and details flashed by; his close friendship with Mrs. Mansfield (who had refused to come to America), his almost inimical acquaintance with Charmian, Mrs. Shiffney's capricious endeavors to get hold of him, the firmness of his refusals, the voyage to Algiers, his regret at missing the wonders of Africa, Charmian's return full of a knowledge he lacked, the dinner during which he had looked at her with new eyes.

(He took down from its hook his heavy fur coat bought for the bitter winter of New York.)

Chateaubriand's description of Napoleon, the little island in Mrs. Grahame's garden, the production of Jacques Sennier's opera—they were all linked together closely at this moment in a tenacious mind; with the expression in Charmian's eyes at the end of the opera, Oxford Street by night as he walked home, the spectral bunch of white roses on his table, the furtive whisper of the letter of love to Charmian as it dropped in the box, the watchful policeman, the noise of his heavy steps, the dying of the moonlight on the leaded panes of the studio, the scent of the earth as the dawn near drew.

Events and periods, and little details! And who or what had guided him through the maze of them? And whither was he going? Whither and to what was he hastening?

His marriage and the new life came back to him. He heard the maids whispering together on the stairs in Kensington Square, and the sound of the street organ in the frost. He saw the studio in Renwick Place, Charmian coming in with books of poetry in her hands. There, had been the beginning of that which had led to Algiers and now to New York, his abdication. There, he had taken the first step down from the throne of his own knowledge of himself.

He saw a gulf black beneath him.

But Charmian called:

"Claude, do make haste!"

He caught up hat and gloves and went out into the lobby. But even as he went, with an extraordinary swiftness he reviewed the incidents of his short time in America; the arrival in the cruel coldness of a winter dawn; the immensity of the city's aspect seen across the tufted waters, its towers—as they had seemed to him then—climbing into Heaven, its voices companioning its towers; the throngs of pressmen and photographers, who had gazed at him with piercing, yet not unkind, eyes, searching him for his secrets; the meeting with Crayford and Crayford's small army of helpers; publicity agents, business and stage managers, conductors, producers, machinists, typewriters, box-office people, scene painters, singers, instrumentalists. Their figures rushed across Claude's mind with a vertiginous rapidity. Their faces flashed by grimacing. Their hands beckoned him on in a mad career. And he saw the huge theater, a monster of masonry, with a terrific maw which he—he of all men!—was expected to fill, a maw gaping for human beings, gaping for dollars. What a coldness it had struck into him, as he stood for the first time looking into its dimness as into the dimness of some gigantic cavern. In that moment he had realized, or had at least partially realized, the meaning of a tremendous failure, and how far the circles of its influence radiate. And he had felt very cold, as a guilty man may feel who hugs his secret. And the huge theater had surely leaned over, leaned down, filled suddenly with a sinister purpose, to crush him into the dust.

"Claude!"

"Here I am!"

"What a time you've been! We—are you very tired?"

"Not a bit. Come along!"

They went out into the corridor lined with marble, stepped into a lift, shot down, and passed through the vestibule to the street where a taxi-cab was waiting. A young man stood on the pavement, and while Charmian was getting in he spoke to Claude.

"Mr. Claude Heath, I believe?"

"Yes."

"I represent—"

"Very sorry I can't wait. I have to go to the theater."

He sprang in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending procession, little gleaming worlds, each holding its group of strangers, gazing, gesticulating, laughing, intent on some unknown errand. The pavements were thronged with pedestrians, muffled to the ears and walking swiftly. The taxi-cab, caught in the maze of traffic, jerked as the chauffeur applied the brakes, and slowed down almost to walking pace. Under a lamp Claude saw a colored woman wearing a huge pink hat. She seemed to be gazing at him, and her large lips parted in a smile. In an instant she was gone. But Claude could not forget her. In his excitement and fatigue he thought of her as a great goblin woman, and her smile was a terrible grin of bitter sarcasm stretching across the world. Charmian and Alston were talking unweariedly. Claude did not hear what they were saying. He saw snowflakes floating down between the lights, strangely pure and remote, lost wanderers from some delicate world where the fragile things are worshipped. And, with a strange emotion, his heart turned to the now remote children of his imagination, those children with whom he had sat alone by his wood fire on lonely evenings, when the pale blue of the flames had struck on his eyes like the soft notes of a flute on his ears, those children with whom he had kept long vigils and sometimes seen the dawn. How far they had retreated from him, as if they thought him a stern, or neglectful father! He shut his eyes, and seemed to see once more the smile of the goblin woman, and then the fiery gaze of Mrs. Mansfield.

"How could she say it? But I don't know that I mind!"

"Minding things doesn't help any in a place like New York."

"But will they believe it?"

"If they do half of them will think you worth while."

"Yes, but the other half?"

"As long as you get there it's all right."

The cab stopped at the stage door of Crayford's opera house.

As they went in two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard it and envied Alston.

From a room on the right of the entrance a very dark young man came carrying some letters.

"More letters!" he said to Claude, with a smile.

"Oh, thank you."

"They're all on the stage. The locusts will be real fine when they fix them right. We have folks inquiring about them all the time. Nothing like that in the Sennier opera."

He smiled again with pleasant boyishness. Claude longed to take him by the shoulders and say to him:

"It isn't a swarm of locusts that will make an opera!" But he only nodded and remarked:

"All the better for us!"

Then hastily he opened his letters. Three were from autograph hunters, and he thrust them into the pocket of his coat. The fourth was from Armand Gillier. When Claude saw the name of his collaborator he stood still and read the note frowning.

"Letters! Always letters!" said Charmian, coming up. "Anything interesting, Claudie?"

"Gillier is coming out after all."

"Armand Gillier!"

"Yes. Or—he arrived to-day, I expect, though this was posted in France. What day does the Philadelphia—"

"This morning," said Alston.

"Then he's here."

Charmian looked disgusted.

"It's bad taste on his part. After his horrible efforts to ruin the opera he ought to have kept away."

"What does it matter?" said Claude.

"He'll be interviewed on the libretto," said Alston. "Gee knows what he'll say, the beast!"

"If he backs up Madame Sennier in her libelous remarks it will be proclaiming that he can be bribed," exclaimed Charmian.

"I suppose he's bound to throw in his lot with us," added Alston, as they came into the huge curving corridor which ran behind the ground tier boxes.

"How dark it is! Claudie, give me your hand. It slopes, doesn't it?"

"Yes. The entrance is just here."

"How hot your hand is!"

"Here we are!" said Alston.

He pushed a swing door, and they came into the theater. It was dimly lighted, and over the rows of stalls pale coverings were drawn. The hundreds of empty boxes gaped. The distant galleries were lost in the darkness. It was a vast house, and the faint light and the emptiness of it made it look even vaster than it was.

"The maw, and I am to fill it!" Claude thought again. And he was conscious of unimportance. He even felt as if he had never composed any music, as if he knew nothing about composition, had no talent at all. It seemed to him incredible that, because of him, of what he had done, great sums of money were being spent, small armies of people were at work, columns upon columns were being written in myriads of newspapers, a man such as Crayford was putting forth all his influence, lavishing all his powers of showman, impresario, man of taste, fighting man. He remembered the night when Sennier's opera was produced, and it seemed to him impossible that such a night could ever come to him, be his night. He thought of it somewhat as a man thinks of Death, as his neighbor's visitant not as his own.

"Chaw-lee!" shouted an imperative voice. "Chaw-ley! Chaw-lee!"

"Ah!" cried a thin voice from somewhere behind the stage.

"Get down that light! Give us your ambers! No, not the blues! Your ambers! Where's Jimber? I say, where is Jimber?"

Mr. Mulworth, the stage producer, who was the speaker, appeared running sidewise down an uncovered avenue between two rows of stalls close to the stage. Although a large man, he proceeded with remarkable rapidity. Emerging into the open he came upon Claude.

"Oh, Mr. Crayford is here. He wants very much to see you."

"Where is he?"

"Somewhere behind. I think he's viewing camels. Can you come with me?"

"Of course!"

He went off quickly with Mr. Mulworth, who shouted:

"I say, where is Jimber?" to some unknown personality as he ran toward a door which gave on to the stage.

"Let us go and sit down at the back of the stalls, Alston," said Charmian. "They don't seem to be trying the locusts yet."

"No. There are always delays. The patience one needs in a theater! Talk of self-control! Here, I'll pull away the—or shall we go to that box?"

"Yes. I'll get on this chair. Help me! That's it."

They sat down in a dark box at the back of the stalls. Far off, across a huge space, they saw the immense stage, lit up now by an amber glow which came not from the footlights but from above. The stage was set with a scene representing an oasis in the desert with yellow sand in the distance. Among some tufted palms stood three or four stage hands, pale, dusty, in shirt sleeves. At the extreme back of the scene, against the horizon, Mr. Mulworth crossed, with a thick-set, lantern-jawed, and very bald man, who was probably Jimber. Claude followed two or three yards behind them, and disappeared. His face looked ghastly under the stream of amber light.

"It's dreadful to see people on the stage not made up!" said Charmian. "They all look so corpse-like. O Alston, are we going to have a success?"

"What! You beginning to doubt!"

"No, no. But when I see this huge dark theater I can't help thinking, 'Shall we fill it?' What a fight art is! I never realized till now that we are on a battlefield. Alston, I feel I would almost rather die than fail."

"Fail! But—"

"Or quite rather die."

"In any case it couldn't be your failure."

She turned and looked at him in the heavy dimness.

"Couldn't it?"

"You didn't write the libretto. You didn't compose the music."

"And yet," she said, in a low tense voice, "it would be my failure if the opera failed, because but for me it never would have been written, never have been produced out here. Alston, it's a great responsibility. And I never really understood how great till I saw Claude go across the stage just now. He looked so—he looked—"

She broke off.

"Whatever is it, Mrs. Charmian?"

"He looked like a victim, I thought."

"Everyone does in that light unless—there's Crayford!"

At this moment Mr. Crayford came upon the stage from the side on which Claude had just vanished. He had a soft hat on the back of his head, and a cigar in his mouth.

"He doesn't!" whispered Charmian.

"Now go ahead!" roared Crayford. "Work your motors and let's see!"

There was a sound like a rushing mighty wind.

At two o'clock in the morning Crayford was still smoking, still watching, still shouting. Charmian and Alston were still in the darkness of the box, gazing, listening, sometimes talking. They had not seen Claude again. If he came into the front of the theater they meant to call him. But he did not come. The hours had flown, and now, when Alston looked at his watch and told Charmian the time, she could scarcely believe him.

"Where can Claude be?"

"I'll go behind."

"Jimber!" roared Mr. Crayford. "Where is Jimber?"

Mr. Mulworth, who looked now as if he had lain awake in his clothes for more nights than he cared to remember, rushed upon the stage almost fanatically.

"The locusts are all in one corner!" shouted Crayford. "What's the use of that? They must spread."

"Spread your locusts!" bawled Mr. Mulworth.

He lifted both his arms in a semaphore movement, which he continued until it seemed as if his physical mechanism had escaped from the control of his brain.

"Spread your locusts, Jimber!" he wailed. "Spread! Spread! I tell you—spread your locusts!"

He vanished, always moving his arms. His voice died away in the further regions.

Charmian was alone. She had nodded in reply to Alston's remark. To-night she felt rather anxious about Claude. She could not entirely rid her mind of the remembrance of him crossing under the light, looking unnatural, ghastly, like a persecuted man. And now that she was alone she felt as if she were haunted. Eager to be reassured, she fixed her eyes on the keen figure, the resolute face, of Mr. Crayford. The power of work in Americans was almost astounding, she thought. All the men with whom she and Claude had had anything to do seemed to be working all the time, unresting as waves driven by a determined wind. Keenness! That was the characteristic of this marvellous city, this marvellous land. And it had acted upon her almost like electricity. She had felt charged with it.

It would be terrible to fail before a nation that worshipped success, that looked for it with resolute piercing eyes.

And she recalled her arrival with Claude in the cold light of early morning, her first sensation of enchantment when a pressman, with searching eyes and a firm mouth turned down at the corners, had come up to interview her. At that moment she had felt that she was leaving the dulness of the unknown life behind her for ever. It was no doubt a terribly vulgar feeling. She had been uneasily conscious of that. But, nevertheless, it had grown within her, fostered by events. For Crayford's publicity agent had been masterly in his efforts. Charmian and Claude had been snapshotted on the deck of the ship by a little army of journalists. They had been snapshotted again on the gangplank. In the docks they had been interviewed by more than a dozen people. A little later, in the afternoon of the same day, they had held a reception of pressmen in their sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel. Charmian thought of these men now as she waited for Alston's return.

They had been introduced by Mr. Cane, Crayford's publicity agent, and had arrived about three o'clock. All of them were, or looked as if they were, young men, smart and alert, men who meant something. And they had all been polite and charming. They had "sat around" attentively, and had put their questions without brutality. They had seemed interested, sympathetic, as if they really cared about Claude's talent and the opera. His song, Wild Heart of Youth, had been touched upon, and a tall young man, with a pale face and anxious eyes, had told Charmian that he loved it. Then they had discussed music. Claude at first had seemed uncomfortable, almost too modest, Charmian had thought. But the pressmen had been so agreeable, so unself-conscious, that his discomfort had worn off. His natural inclination to please, to give people what they seemed to expect of him, had come to his rescue. He had been vivacious and even charming. But when the pressmen had gone he had said to Charmian:

"Pleasant fellows, weren't they? But their eyes ask one for success. Till the opera is out I shall see those eyes, asking, always asking!"

And he had gone out of the room with a gesture suggestive of anxiety, almost of fear.

Charmian saw those eyes now as she sat in the box. What Claude had said was true. Beneath the sympathy, the charm, the frankness, the readiness in welcome of these Americans, there was a silent and strong demand—the demand of a powerful, vital country.

"We are here to make you known over immense distances to thousands of people!" the eyes of the pressmen had seemed to say. "But—produce the goods!" In other words, "Be a success!"

"Be a success! Be a success!" It seemed to Charmian as if all America were saying that in her ears unceasingly. "We will be kind to you. We will shower good-will upon you. We have hospitable hands, keen brains, warm hearts at your service. We only ask to give of our best to you. But—be a success! Be a success!"

And the voice grew so strong that at last it seemed almost stern, almost fierce in her ears. At last it seemed as if peril would attend upon non-compliance with its demand.

She thought of Claude crossing the stage under the amber light, she looked into the vast dim theater with its thousands of empty seats, and excitement and fear burned in her, mingled together. Then something determined in her, the thing perhaps which had enabled her to take Claude for her husband, and later to play a part in his art life, rose up and drove out the fear. "It is fear which saps the will, fear which disintegrates, fear which calls to failure." She was able to say that to herself and to cast fear away. And her mind repeated the words she had often heard Crayford utter, "It's up to us now to bring the thing off and we've just got to bring it off!"

"No, no, I tell you! They're too much on one side of the scene still! Who in thunder ever saw locusts swarming in a corner when they've got the whole desert to spread themselves in? It aren't their nature. What? Well, then, you must alter the position of your motors. Where is Jimber?"

And Mr. Crayford strode behind the scenes.

Half-past two in the morning! What could Claude be doing? Was Alston never coming back? Charmian suddenly began to feel tired and cold. She buttoned her sealskin coat up to her throat. For a moment there was no one on the stage. From behind the scenes came no longer the clever imitation of a roaring wind. An abrupt inaction, that was like desolation, made the great house seem oddly vacant. She sat staring rather vaguely at the palms and the yellow sands.

After she had sat thus for perhaps some five minutes she saw Claude walk hastily on to the stage. He had a large black note-book and a pencil in his hand, and seemed in search of someone. Crayford came on brusquely from the opposite side of the scene and met him. They began to confer together.

The box door behind Charmian was opened and Alston came in.

"Old Claude's too busy to come. He wants me to take you home."

"What has he been doing all this time?"

"No end of things. It's just as I said. Crayford's determined to be first in the field. This move of the Metropolitan has put him on the run, and he'll keep everyone in the theater running till the opera's out. Claude's been with the pressmen behind, and having a hairy-teary heart to heart with Enid Mardon. Come, Mrs. Charmian!"

"But I don't like to leave Claude."

"There's nothing for us to do, and he'll follow us as soon as ever he can. I'll just leave you at the hotel."

"What was the matter with Miss Mardon?" Charmian asked anxiously, as she got up to go.

"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's pulling her part to pieces now."

"How did Claude take it?"

"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."

"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."

"He'll send us away."

"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.

The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.



CHAPTER XXX

It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford, Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel Claude asked him to come in.

"I can't go to bed," he said.

"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.

"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar, and try to quiet down."

"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."

"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."

At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly, intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.

"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"

He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a glass of champagne, he added:

"I say, let us make a bargain!"

"What is it, old chap?"

"Let us—just us three—have supper together after the first performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of semi-strangers."

"I'll come! Drink to that night!"

They drank.

Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room. Words rushed to the lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them the history of the night in the theater. They interrupted, put questions, made comments, protested, argued, encouraged, exclaimed.

Mr. Cane had brought pressman after pressman to interview Claude on the libretto scandal, as they called it. It seemed that Madame Sennier had made her libelous statement in a violent fit of temper, brought on by a bad rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House. Annie Meredith, who was to sing the big role in Sennier's new opera, and who was much greater as an actress than as a vocalist, had complained of the weakness of the libretto, and had attacked Madame Sennier for having made Jacques set it. Thereupon the great Henriette had lost all control of her powerful temperament. The secret bitterness engendered in her by her failure to capture the libretto of Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers. The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false move. The only thing to do now was to make a sensation of it.

As Claude told of the pressmen's questions his mind burned with excitement, and a recklessness, such as he had never felt before, invaded him. He had been indignant, had even felt a sort of shame, when he was asked whether he had been "cute" in the libretto matter, whether he had stolen a march on his rival. Crayford's treatment of the affair had disgusted him. For Crayford, with his sharp eye to business, had seen at once that their "game" was, of course with all delicacy, all subtlety, to accept the imputation of shrewdness. The innocent "stunt" was "no good to anyone" in his opinion. And he had not scrupled to say so to Claude. There had been an argument—the theater is the Temple of Argument—and Claude had heard himself called a "lobster," but had stuck to his determination to use truth as a weapon in his defense. But now, as he told all this, he felt that he did not care either way. What did it matter if dishonorable conduct, if every deadly sin, were imputed to him out here so long as he "made good" in the end with the work of his brain, the work which had led him to Africa and across the Atlantic? What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added to? What did it matter if the locusts swarmed over it—so long as it was a success? The blatant thing—everyone, every circumstance, was urging Claude to snatch at it; and in this early hour of the winter morning, excited by the intensity of the strain he was undergoing, by the pull on his body, but far more by the pull on his soul, he came to a sudden and crude decision; at all costs the blatant thing should be his, the popular triumph, the success, if not of the high-bred merit, then of sheer spectacular sensation. There is an intimate success that seems to be of the soul, and there is another, reverberating, resounding, like the clashing of brass instruments beaten together. Claude seemed to hear them at this moment as he talked with ever-growing excitement.

One of the pressmen had mentioned Gillier, who had arrived and been interviewed at the docks. He had evidently been delighted to find his work a "storm center," but had declined to commit himself to any direct statement of fact. The impression left on the pressmen by him, however, had been that a fight had raged for the possession of his libretto, which must have been won by the Heaths since Claude Heath had set it to music. Or had the fight really been between Joseph Crayford and the management of the Metropolitan Opera House? Gillier had finally remarked, "I must leave it to you, messieurs. All that matters to me is that my poor work should be helped to success by music and scenery, acting and singing. I am not responsible for what Madame Sennier, or anyone else, says to you."

"Then what do they really believe?" exclaimed Charmian, raising herself up on the cushions, and resting one flushed cheek on her hand.

"The worst, no doubt!" said Alston.

"What does it matter?" said Claude.

Quickly he took out of a box, clipped, lit, and began to smoke a fresh cigar.

"What does anything matter so long as we have a success, a big, resounding success?"

Charmian and Alston exchanged glances, half astonished, half congratulatory.

"I never realized till I came here," Claude continued, "the necessity of success to one who wants to continue doing good work. It is like the breaths of air drawn into his lungs by the swimmer in a race, who, to get pace, keeps his head low, his mouth under water half the time. I've simply got to win this race. And if anything helps, even lies from Madame Sennier, and the sly deceit of Gillier, I mean to welcome it. That's the only thing to do. Crayford is right. I didn't see it at first, but I see it now. It's no earthly use the artist trying to keep himself and his talent in cotton wool in these days. If you've got anything to give the public it doesn't do to be sensitive about what people say and think. I had a lecture to-night from Crayford on the uses of advertisement which has quite enlightened me."

"What did he say?" interjected Alston.

"'My boy, if I were producing some goods, and it would help any to let them think I'd killed my mother, and robbed my father of his last nickel, d'you think I'd put them right, switch them on to the truth? Not at all! I'd get them all around me, and I'd say, "See here, boys, mother's gone to glory, and father's in the poorhouse, but it isn't up to me to say why. That's my affair. I know I can rely on you all to—keep my name before the public."'"

Charmian and Alston broke into laughter, but Claude's face continued to look grave and excited.

"The fact of the matter is that the work has got to come before the man," he said. "And now we've all got so far in this affair nothing must be allowed to keep us back from success. Let the papers say whatever they like so long as they talk about us. Let Madame Sennier rail and sneer as much as she chooses. It will be all to the good. Crayford told me so to-night. He said, 'My boy, it shows they're funky. They think our combination may be stronger than theirs.' It seems Sennier's new libretto has come out quite dreadfully at rehearsal, and they've been trying to re-write a lot of it and change situations. Now, we got nearly everything cut and dried at Djenan-el-Maqui. By Jove, how I did work there! D'you remember old Jernington's visit, Charmian? He believed in the opera, didn't he?"

"I should think so!" she cried. "Why, he positively raved about it. And he's not an amateur. He only cares for the music—and he's a man who knows."

"Yes, he does know. What a change in our lives, eh, Charmian, if we bring off a big success! And you'll be in it Alston."

"Rather! The coming baritone!"

"What a change!"

His eyes shone with excitement.

"I used to be almost afraid of celebrity, I think. But now I want it, I need it. America has made me need it."

"This is the country that wakes people up," said Alston.

"It drives me almost mad!" cried Claude, with sudden violence.

"Claudie!" exclaimed Charmian.

"It does! There's something here that pumps nervous energy into one until one's body and mind seem to be swirling in a mill race. When I think of my life in Mullion House and my life here!"

Charmian, with a quick movement, sat upright on the sofa.

"Then you do realize—" she began, almost excitedly. She paused, gazing at Claude.

The two men looked at her.

"What is it?" Claude said at length, as she remained silent.

"You do realize that I did see something for you that you hadn't seen for yourself, when you shut yourself and your talent in, when you wouldn't look at, wouldn't touch the world?"

"Of course. I hadn't courage then. I dreaded contact with life. Now I defy life to get the better of me. I know it, and I'm beginning to know how to deal with it. I say, let us plan out our campaign if Madame Sennier persists in her accusations."

He sat down between them.

"But first tell us exactly what you gave out to the pressmen to-night," said Alston.

They talked till the dawn crept along the sky.

When at last Alston got up to go, Claude said:

"If three strong wills are worth anything we must succeed."

"And we've got Crayford's back of ours," said Alston, putting his arms behind him into the sleeves of his coat. "Good-morning! I'm really going."

And he went.

Charmian had got up from her sofa, and was standing by the writing-table, which was in an angle of the room on the right of the window. As Alston went out, her eyes fell on an envelope lying by itself a little apart from the letters with which the table was strewn. Scarcely thinking about what she was doing she stretched out her hand. Her intention was to put the envelope with its fellows. But when she took it up she saw that it had not been opened and contained a letter, or note, addressed to Claude.

"Why, here's a letter for you, Claudie!" she said, giving it to him.

"Is there? Another autograph hunter, I suppose."

Without glancing at the writing he tore the envelope, took out a letter, and began to read it.

"It's from Mrs. Shiffney!" he said. "She arrived to-day on the same ship as Gillier."

"I knew she would come!" cried Charmian. "Though they all pretended she was going to winter at Cap Martin."

"And she's brought Susan Fleet with her."

"Susan!"

"But read what she says. It seems to have all been quite unexpected, a sudden caprice."

"You poor thing!" said Charmian, looking at him with pitiful eyes. "When will you begin to understand?"

"What?"

"Us."

Claude sent a glance so keen that it was almost like a dart at Charmian. But she did not see it for she was reading the letter.

"THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, Friday.

"DEAR MR. HEATH,—I've just arrived with Susan Fleet on the Philadelphia. I heard such reports of the excitement over your opera out here that I suddenly felt I must run over. After all you told me about it at Constantine I'm naturally interested. Do be nice and let me into a rehearsal. I never take sides in questions of art, and though of course I'm a friend of the Senniers, I'm really praying for you to have a triumph. Surely the sky has room for two stars. What nonsense all this Press got-up rivalry is. Don't believe a word you see in the papers about Henriette and your libretto. She knows nothing whatever about it, of course. Such rubbish! Susan is pining to see her beloved Charmian. Can't you both lunch with us at Sherry's to-morrow at one o'clock? Love to Charmian.—Yours very sincerely, ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."



"Well?" said Claude, as Charmian sat without speaking, after she had finished the letter. "Shall we go to Sherry's to-morrow?"

He spoke as if he were testing her, but she did not seem to notice it.

"Yes, Claudie, I think we will."

She looked at him.

"What are you thinking?" she asked quickly.

"Do you still believe Mrs. Shiffney tricked me at Constantine?"

"I know she did."

"And yet—"

She interrupted him.

"We are in the arena!"

"Ah—I understand."

"If we go to Sherry's, and Mrs. Shiffney speaks about coming to a rehearsal, what do you mean to do?"

"What do you think about it?"

"Of course she only wants to come in the hope of being able to carry a bad report to the Senniers."

Claude was silent for a moment. Then he said:

"That may be. But—we are in the arena."

"What is it?"

"You dislike Mrs. Shiffney, you distrust her, but you do think she has taste, judgment, don't you?"

"Yes—some."

"A great deal?"

"When she isn't biased by personal feeling. But she is biased against you."

Claude's eyes had become piercing.

"I think," he said, "that if I were with Mrs. Shiffney at a rehearsal I should divine her real, her honest opinion, the opinion one has of a thing whether one wishes to have it or not. If she were to admire the opera—" He paused. His face looked self-conscious.

"Yes?"

"I only mean that I think it might be the verdict in advance."

"I see," she said slowly. "Yes, I see."

She got up.

"We simply must go to bed."

"Come along then. But I feel as if I should never want to sleep again."

"We must sleep. The verdict in advance—yes, I see. But Adelaide might make a mistake."

"She really has a flair."

"I know. Oh, Claudie, the verdict!"

They were now in their bedroom. Charmian sighed and put her arms round his neck.

"The verdict!" she breathed against his cheek softly.

He felt moisture on his cheek. She had pressed wet eyes against it.

"Charmian, what is it? Why—"

"Hush! Just put your arms round me for a minute—yes, like that! Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win. Oh, not altogether selfishly! I—I am an egoist, I suppose. I do care for my husband to be a success. But there's more than that. Yes, yes, there is!"

She held him, with passion, and suddenly kissed his eyes. She was crying quite openly now, but not unhappily.



"There's something in you far, far down, that I love," she whispered. "I am not always conscious of it, but I am now. It called me to you, I believe, at the very first. And I want that to win, I want that to win!"

Claude's face had become set. He bent over Charmian. For a moment he was on the verge of a strange confession. But something that still had great power held him back from it. And he only said:

"You have worked hard for me. If we do win it will be your victory."

"And if we lose?" she whispered.

"Charmian—" he kissed her. "We must try to sleep."



CHAPTER XXXI

On a night of unnatural excitement Claude had come to a crude resolution. He kept to it, at first only by a strong effort, during the days and the nights which followed, calling upon his will with a recklessness he had never known before, a recklessness which made him sometimes feel hard and almost brutal. He was "out for" success on the large scale, and he was now fiercely determined to win it. Within him the real man seemed to recede like a thing sensitive seeking a hiding-place. Sometimes, during these strange and crowded days and nights, he felt as if he were losing himself in the turmoil around him and within him. And the wish came to him to lose himself, and to have done for ever with that self which once he had cherished, but which was surely of no use, of no value at all, in the violent blustering world.

Now and then he saw the pale shining of the lamp in the quiet studio, where he had dwelt with the dear children of his imagination; now and then he listened, and seemed to hear the silence there. Then the crowd closed about him, the noises of life rushed upon him, and the Claude Heath of those far-off days seemed to pass by him fantastically on the way to eternal darkness. And, using his will with fury, he cried out to the fugitive, "Go! Go!" as to something shameful that must not be seen.

Always he was suffering, as a man only suffers when he tries to do violence to himself, when he treats himself as an enemy. But when he had time he strove to sneer at his own suffering. Coolness, hardness, audacity, these were the qualities needed in life as he knew it now; swiftness not sensitiveness, boldness not delicacy. The world was not gentle enough for the trembling qualities which vibrate at every touch of emotion, giving out subtle music. And he would nevermore wish it gentle. Things as they are! Fall down and worship them! Accommodate yourself to them lest you be the last of fools!

Claude acted, and carried on by excitement, he acted well. He was helped by his natural inclination to meet people half-way when he had to meet them. And he was helped, too, by the cordiality, the quickness of response, in those about him. Charmian did her part with an energy and brilliance to which the apparent change in him gave an impetus. Hitherto she had tried to excite in Claude the worldly qualities which she supposed to make for success. Now Claude excited them in her. His vivacity, his intensity, his power to do varied work, and especially the dominating faculty which he now began to display, sometimes almost amazed her. She said to herself, "I have never known him till now!" She said to Alston Lake, "Isn't it extraordinary how Claude is coming out?" And she began to look up to him in a new way, but with the worldly eyes, not with the mild or the passionate eyes of the spirit.