Just before Charmian left England Mrs. Mansfield had begun to suspect
her secret. Already from time to time she had wondered whether Charmian
refused to accept Claude Heath, as she had accepted all the other
habitues of the house, because she really liked him much better than she
liked them. She had wondered and she had said, "No, it is not so." Had
she not been less than frank with herself, and for another reason which
made her reluctant to see truth? She scarcely knew. But when Charmian
was gone and her mother was quite alone, she felt almost sure that she
had to face a fact very unpleasant to her. There had been something in
the girl's eyes as she said good-bye, a slight hardness, a lurking
defiance, something about her lips, something even in the sound of her
voice which had troubled Mrs. Mansfield, which continued to trouble her
while Charmian was away.
Charmian in love with Claude Heath!
It seemed to the mother in those first moments of contemplation that, if
she were right in her surmise, Charmian could scarcely have set her
affections on a man less suited to enter into her life, less likely to
make her happy.
Charmian belonged to a certain world not merely because she was born in
it, and had always lived in it, but by temperament, by character.
Essentially she was of it. She could surely never be happy in the life
led by Claude Heath. Could Claude Heath be happy in the sort of life led
by her?
Abruptly Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she did not really know Heath very
well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was
beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she
wished very much to be more clear about that.
Among her many friends Heath stood apart, and for this reason: all the
other men of talent whom she knew intimately were in the same set, or
belonged to sets which overlapped and intermingled. They were men who
were making, or had made, their names; men who knew, and were known by,
her friends and acquaintances, who needed no explanation, who were
thoroughly "in it." Only Heath was outside, was unknown, was not taking
an active part in the battle of art or of life. And this fact gave him a
certain strangeness, not free from romance, gave him a peculiar value in
Mrs. Mansfield's eyes. She secretly cherished the thought of his
individuality. She could not wish it changed. But she knew very well
that though such an individuality might attract her child, indeed, she
feared, had attracted Charmian, yet Charmian, if she had any influence
over it, would not be satisfied to let it alone, to leave it quietly to
its own natural development. Charmian would never let any plant that
belonged to her grow in darkness. She understood well enough the many
clever men who frequented the house, men with ambitions which they were
gratifying, men who were known, or who wished and intended to be known,
men, as a rule, who were fighting, or who had fought, hard battles. To
several of these men Charmian could have made an excellent wife.
But if she had set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake.
His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in
Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had
excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having
perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the
farther side. Mrs. Mansfield was glad that Charmian was away. Hitherto
she had cultivated the friendship with Heath without arriere pensee. Now
she was more conscious in it. Her great love of her only child made her
wish to study Heath.
The more she studied him the more she hoped that her guess about
Charmian had been wrong, and yet the more she studied him the better she
liked him. There was an intensity in him that captivated her intense
mind, an unworldliness that her soul approved. His lack of social
ambition, of all desire to be rich and prosperous, refreshed her. She
compared him secretly with other men of great talent. Some of them were
not greedy for money, but even they were greedy for fame, were almost
fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social
position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies
accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the
desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to
make ruins and dust.
Among all the men whom she knew, Claude Heath was the only one who was
alone with his art, and who wished to remain alone with the thing he
loved. There was a purity in the situation which delighted Mrs.
Mansfield. Yet she realized that Heath was a man who might be won away
from that which was best in him, from that which he almost sternly clung
to and cherished. And one day he made her aware that he knew this.
They went to a concert together at Queen's Hall, and sat in the gallery,
in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was
orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear
perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the
conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element
of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him
back from worlds he desired to enter.
Between the two parts of the not long concert there was a pause. During
it Mrs. Mansfield and Claude left their seats and strolled about in the
corridor, talking. They were both of them heated by music and ready for
mental intimacy. But they did not discuss the works they had just heard.
Combinations of melody and harmony turned them toward life and humanity.
The voices of the great orchestral family called them toward the dim
avenues where in the shadows destiny wanders. Some music enlarges the
borders, sets us free in regions whose confines we cannot perceive. They
spoke of aims, of ideals, of goals which are very far off.
"Fine music gives me the conception of great distances," Mrs. Mansfield
said presently. "It makes me feel that the soul is born for travel."
Heath stood still.
"The winding white road over the hills that loses itself in the
vagueness which, in a picture, only some shade of blue can suggest. The
road! The road!"
He stood leaning against the wall. As she stood by him Mrs. Mansfield
felt strangely, almost cruelly, young. It was as if student days had
come for them both. She could hardly believe that her hair was
snow-white, and that Charmian had been going to parties for nearly four
years.
"The worst of it is," Claude continued, "that it is so hard sometimes
not to wander from it."
"It seems to me you never wander."
"Because I know that, if I did, I should probably never come back to the
road. What you perhaps consider my strength takes its rise, I believe,
in my knowledge of my weakness. Things that are right for others aren't
right for me."
No one was near them. The music seemed to have abolished for the moment
the difference in age between them. Claude spoke to her as he had seldom
spoken to her before, with an almost complete unreserve of manner.
"Do you know why some men enter the cloister?" he continued. "It's
because they feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines.
Mullion House is my cloister. I haven't got the power of apportioning my
life with sweet reason, so much work, so much play, so much retirement,
so much society, so much restraint, so much license. I could never
pursue my art through wildness, as so many men have done, women too. I
don't believe I could even stick to it in the midst of the ordinary life
of pleasures and distractions. It's like a bone that I have to seize and
take away into a cave where no one can see me gnaw it. Isn't that a
beastly simile?"
"Is that why you won't go to Max Elliot's, that you refused Mrs.
Shiffney? Do you think that the sort of thing which inspires many
men--the audience, let us say, watching the combat--would unnerve you?"
"I don't say that. But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance,
or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted
irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me
which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate it, but it's
there."
"And yet you're so uncompromising."
"That's my armor. I daren't wear ordinary clothes, lest every arrow
should pierce me."
A bell sounded. They returned to the concert room. When the second part
was over Heath looked at Mrs. Mansfield and said:
"Where are we going?"
They were in the midst of the crowd passing out. Women were winding soft
things about their necks, men were buttoning up their coats. For a March
wind was about in the great city. She returned his look and smiled.
"Ah! You guessed! It's the gallery, I suppose. I'm not accustomed to all
this fun. Isn't it amazing what a groove one lives in? Berkeley Square
shadows the whole of my life I begin to believe."
"Don't say the motor is waiting!"
"No, it isn't."
"Shall we go to some preposterous place--to the Monico?"
"Where you like. It's just tea time, or coffee time."
They walked to the Monico in the March wind, and went in with a group of
Italians, passing the woman who sells foreign papers, and seeing names
that transported them to Paris, to Milan, to Rome, to Berlin. A vastness
of marble contained a myriad of swarthy strangers, releasing souls
astoundingly foreign in vivid gesture and talk. They had coffee with
cream like a burgeoning cloud floating airily on the top.
"The only word to describe the effect of all this upon me is spree,"
said Mrs. Mansfield. "I am out on the spree."
"Capital! And if I stepped right in to your sort of life," said Heath,
"would it have the same kind of effect upon me?"
"I don't think it could. It's too conscious, too critical, too
fastidious. There's nothing fastidious in a spree. I like the March wind
outside, too--the thought of it."
Suddenly her mind went to Charmian and Algiers.
"Charmian's in the sun," she said.
Directly she said this Heath looked slightly self-conscious.
"Have you heard from her?"
"This morning. She has made great friends with Susan Fleet."
"Yes?"
"Oh, a woman we all like, who often helps Adelaide Shiffney with
things."
"We all like," he repeated.
"A _cliche_! And indeed I scarcely know Susan Fleet. You see what an
absurd close borough I live in, have always lived in. And I never
thoroughly realized that till I met you."
"And I live in loneliness, outside of it all, of everything almost."
Lightly she answered:
"With Mrs. Shiffney and others holding open the door, holding up the
lamp, and imploring you to come in, to come right in as they say on the
other side of the Atlantic."
"You don't do that."
"Do you wish me to?"
"I don't know what I wish. But I am dissatisfied."
He frowned, moving his chair, lit a cigarette, pushed away his coffee
cup.
"What is it like at Algiers?"
"Very beautiful, Charmian says. Adelaide and the others have gone off to
a desert place called Bou-Saada--"
"Bou-Saada!" he said slowly.
"And Charmian and Susan Fleet are up on the hill at Mustapha Superieur.
They've left the yacht for a few days. They are visiting Arab villas and
exploring tropical gardens."
She watched him and sipped her coffee. All the student feeling had gone
from her. And now she was deeply aware of the difference between her age
and Heath's.
"I suppose they won't be back for a good while," he said.
"Oh, I expect them in a week or two."
"So soon?"
"Adelaide is always in a hurry, and this was only to be quite a short
trip."
"Once out there how can they come away so soon? I should want to stay
for months. If I once began really to travel there would never be an end
to it, unless I were not my own master."
"It's quite extraordinary how you master yourself," Mrs. Mansfield said.
"You are a dragon to yourself, and what a fierce unyielding dragon!
It's a fine thing to have such a strong will."
"Ah! But if I let it go!"
"Do you think you ever will?"
"Yes," he said with a sort of deep sadness. "On one side's the will. But
on the other side there's an absurd impulsiveness. But don't let's talk
any more of me. Do tell me some more about Algiers and your daughter."
When Heath left her that day Mrs. Mansfield said to herself, "If
Charmian really does care for him he doesn't know it."
What were Heath's feelings toward Charmian she could not divine. She was
unconscious of any desire to baffle her on Heath's part, and was
inclined to think that he was so wrapped up in the rather solitary life
he had planned out for himself, and in his art, was so detached from the
normal preoccupations of strong and healthy young men, that Charmian
meant very little, perhaps nothing at all, to him. She had noted, of
course, the slightly self-conscious look which had come into Heath's
face when she had mentioned Charmian, but she explained that to herself
easily enough. Her mention of Charmian in the sun had recalled to him
the persistence of Mrs. Shiffney, which he knew she was aware of. In
such matters he was like a sensitive boy. He had the peculiar delicacies
of the nervously constituted artist, which seem very ridiculous to the
average man, but not to the discerning woman. Mrs. Mansfield felt almost
sure that his self-consciousness arose not from memories of Charmian,
but of Adelaide Shiffney. And she supposed that he was probably quite
indifferent to Charmian. It was better so. Although she believed that it
was wise for most men to marry, and not very late in life, she excepted
Heath from her theory. She could not "see" him married. She could not
pick out any girl or woman whom she knew, and say: "That would be the
wife for him." Evidently he was one of the exceptional men for whom the
normal conditions are not intended. She thought again of his music, and
found a reason there. But then she remembered yellow-haired Fan. He was
at home with a child, why not with a wife and child of his own? She put
aside the problem, but did not resign the thought, "In any case Charmian
would be the wrong woman for him to marry." And when she said that to
herself she was thinking solely of the welfare of Heath. Because he was
a man, and had been unreserved with her, Mrs. Mansfield instinctively
desired to protect his life. She had the feeling, "I understand him
better than others." In a chivalrous nature understanding breeds a
strong sense of obligation. Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she had duties
toward Heath. During the two weeks which elapsed before Charmian's
return from Algiers she thought more about his future than about her
child's. But she was a very feminine woman and, to her, a man's future
always seemed to matter more than a woman's.
Heath, too, had his great talent. That might need protection in the
future. Mrs. Mansfield did not believe in an untroubled life for such a
man as Heath. There was something disturbing both in his personality and
in his music which seemed to her to preclude the possibility of his
dwelling always in peace. But she hoped he would be true to his
instinct, to the strange instinct which kept him now in a sort of
cloistered seclusion. She knew he had friends, acquaintances, made
during his time at the College of Music, through the introductions he
had brought to London from Cornwall, through family connections. Human
intercourse must be part of every life. But she was glad, very glad,
that neither Mrs. Shiffney nor Max Elliot had persuaded him into the
world where artists are handed on and on till they "know everybody." His
words: "Do you know why some men enter the cloister? It's because they
feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines," remained with
her. Doubtless Heath knew himself. She thought of those who have pursued
their art through wildness--Heath's expression--with an inflexibility
quite marvellous, an order in the midst of disorder, which to the
onlooker seems no less than a miracle. But they were surely Bohemians
born, and full of characteristics that were racial. Such characteristics
did not exist in Heath, she thought. She pondered. He was surely not a
Bohemian. And yet he did not belong to the other race so noticeable in
England, the race of the cultured talented, who live well-ordered lives
in the calm light of a mild and unobjectionable publicity, who produce
in the midst of comfort, giving birth to nothing on straw, who are sane
even to the extent of thinking very much as the man in Sloane Street
thinks, who occasionally go to a levee, and have set foot on summer days
in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Heath, perhaps, could not be dubbed
with a name. Was he a Bohemian who, for his health's sake, could not
live in Bohemia? She remembered the crucifix standing in front of the
piano where he passed so many hours, the strange and terrible words he
had chosen to set to music, the setting he had given them. It was an
uncompromising nature, an uncompromising talent. And yet--there was the
other side. There was something ready to rush out to satisfy
expectation.
She was deeply interested in Heath.
About ten days after the "spree" at the Monico she received a telegram
from Marseilles--"Starting to-night, home the day after to-morrow;
love.--CHARMIAN."
Heath dropped in that day, and Mrs. Mansfield mentioned the telegram.
"Charmian will be back on Thursday. I told you Adelaide Shiffney would
be in a hurry."
"Then they are not going on to the Greek Isles," he said.
"Not this time."
She glanced at him and thought he was looking rather sad.
"Will you come and dine on Thursday night just with me and Charmian?"
she said. "If she is tired with the journey from Paris you may be alone
with me. If not, she can tell us about her little African experiences."
"Thank you. Yes, I should like to come very much!"
The strangely imaginative expression, which made his rather plain face
almost beautiful, shone in his eyes and seemed to shed a flicker of
light about his brow and lips, as he added:
"I have travelled so little that to me there is something almost
wonderful in the arrival of someone from Africa. Even the name comes to
me always like fire and black mystery. Last night, just before I went to
bed, I was reading Chateaubriand, and I came across a passage that kept
me awake for hours."
"What was it?"
She leaned a little forward, ready to be fascinated as evidently he had
been.
"He is writing of Napoleon, and says of him something like this."
Heath paused, looked down, seemed to make an effort, and continued, with
his eyes turned away from Mrs. Mansfield:
"'His enemies, fascinated, seek him and do not see him. He hides himself
in his glory, as the lion of the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the
sun to escape from the searching eyes of the dazzled hunters.' Isn't
that simply gorgeous? It set my imagination galloping. 'As the lion of
the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the sun'--by Jove!" He got up.
"I was out of England last night. And to think that Miss Charmian is
actually arriving from Africa!"
When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield said to herself: "He's a child, too!"
And she felt restless and troubled. Naivete leads men of genius into
such unsuitable regions sometimes. It was rather wonderful that he could
feel as he did about Africa and refuse to go to Africa. For Adelaide
would have taken him anywhere. Would Charmian bring back with her
something of the wonder of the East? Mrs. Mansfield felt for a moment as
if she were going to welcome a stranger in her child. The feeling
returned to her on the Thursday afternoon, when she was waiting for
Charmian's arrival in her writing-room.
Charmian was due at Charing Cross at three-twenty-five. She ought to be
in Berkeley Square about four, unless the train was very crowded, and
there was a long delay at the Customs. Four o'clock chimed from the
Dresden china clock on the mantelpiece, and she had not arrived. Mrs.
Mansfield was conscious of a restlessness almost amounting to
nervousness. She got up from her chair, laid down the book she had been
reading, and moved slowly about the room.
How would Charmian receive the news that Claude Heath was to dine with
them that night? Would she be too tired by the journey to dine? She was
a bad sailor. Perhaps the sea in the Channel had been rough. If so, she
would arrive not looking her best. Mrs. Mansfield had invited Heath
because she wished to be sure at the first possible moment whether
Charmian was in love with him or not. And she was positive that now,
consciously alert and suspicious, if she saw the two together even for a
short time she would know.
And if she knew that it was so, that Charmian had set her affections on
Heath--what then?
She resolved not to look beyond the day. But as the moments passed, and
she waited, her mind, like a thing beyond control, began to occupy
itself with that question. The distant hoot of a motor startled her.
Although their motor had a horn exactly the same as a thousand others
she knew at once that Charmian was entering the Square. Half a minute
later, standing in the doorway of her sitting-room, she heard the door
bell and the footsteps of Lassell, the butler. Impulsively she went to
the staircase.
"Charmian!" she called. "Charmian!"
"My only mother!" came up a voice from below.
She saw Charmian pushing up her veil over her three-cornered
travelling-hat with a bright red feather.
"Where are you? Oh, there!"
She came up the stairs.
"Such a crossing! I'm an unlucky girl! Remedies are no use. Dearest!"
She put two light hands on her mother's shoulders and kissed her twice
with lips which were rather cold. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked
unusually haggard and restless. An atmosphere of excitement seemed to
surround her like an aura, Mrs. Mansfield thought. She put her arm
through her mother's.
"Tea with you, and then I think I must go to bed. How nice to be in my
own dear bed again! I thought of my pillows on board with a yearning
that came from the soul, I'm sure. Of course, we left the yacht at
Marseilles. The yachting there was such a talk about resolved itself
into the two crossings. I wasn't sorry, for we never saw a calm sea
except from the shore."
"No? What a shame! Sit here."
Charmian threw herself down with a movement that was very young and
began taking off her long gloves. As her thin, pretty hands came out of
them, Mrs. Mansfield bent down and kissed her.
"Dear child! How nice to have you safe home!"
"Is it?"
"What a silly question to ask your only mother!"
"This chair makes me feel exactly how tired I am. It tells me."
"Take off your hat."
"Shall I?" She put up her hands, but she left the hat where it was, and
her mother did not ask why.
"Is Adelaide back?"
"No, I left her glued to Paris. I crossed with Susan Fleet. Oh!"
She rested her head on the back of the big chair, and shut her eyes.
"Only tea. I can't eat!"
"Here it is."
"I feel as if I'd been away for centuries, as if London must have
changed."
"It hasn't."
"And you?"
"Oh, of course, I've shed my nature, as you see!"
"I believe you think I've shed mine."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Her eyes wandered about the room.
"Everything just the same."
"Then Africa really has made a great difference?"
The alert look that Mrs. Mansfield knew so well came into Charmian's
face despite her fatigue.
"Who thought it would?"
"Well, you've never been out of Europe before."
"You did?"
"Wouldn't it be natural if I had fancied it might?"
"Perhaps. But it was only the very edge of Africa. I never went beyond
Mustapha Superieur. I didn't even want to go. I wonder if Susan Fleet
did."
"Do you think so?"
"I'm afraid I didn't think very much about it. But I begin to wonder
now. I think she's so unselfish that perhaps she makes other people
selfish."
"You made great friends, didn't you?"
"Yes. I think she's rather wonderful. She's very unlike other women. She
seemed actually glad to give me the address of the place where she gets
her coats and skirts. If Theosophy made more women like that I should
wish it to spread like cholera in the alleys of Naples. Madre, don't
mind me! I was really ill coming across. My head feels all light and
empty."
She put up her hands to her temples.
"It's as if everything in my poor little brain-box had been shaken
about."
"Poor child! And I've been very inconsiderate."
"Inconsiderate? How?"
"About to-night."
"You haven't accepted a party for me?"
"It isn't so bad as that. But I've invited someone to dinner."
"Mother!" Charmian looked genuinely surprised. "Not Aunt Kitty!"
Aunt Kitty was a sister of Mrs. Mansfield's whom Charmian disliked.
"Oh, no--Claude Heath."
After a slight but perceptible pause, Charmian said:
"Mr. Heath. Oh, you asked him for to-night before you knew I should be
here. I see."
"No, I didn't. I thought he would like to hear about your African
experiences. I asked him after your telegram came."
Charmian got up slowly, and stood where she could see herself in a
mirror without seeming intent on looking in the glass. Her glance to it
was very swift and surreptitious, and she spoke, to cover it perhaps.
"I'm afraid I've got very little to tell about Algiers that could
interest Mr. Heath. Would you mind very much if I gave it up and dined
in bed?"
"Do just as you like. It was stupid of me to ask him. I suppose I acted
on impulse without thinking first."
"What time is dinner?"
"Eight as usual."
"I'll lie down and rest and then see how I feel. I'll go now. Nice to be
with you again, dearest Madre!"
She bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. The touch of her lips just
then was not quite pleasant to Mrs. Mansfield. When she was in her
bedroom alone, Charmian took off her hat, and, without touching her
hair, looked long and earnestly into the glass that stood on her
dressing-table. Then she bent down and put her face close to the glass.
"I look dreadful!" was her comment.
Her maid knocked at the door and was sent away. Charmian undressed
herself, got into bed, and lay very still. She felt very interesting,
and as if she were going to be involved in interesting and strange
events, as if destiny were at work, and were selecting instruments to
help on the coming of that which had to be. She thought of her mother as
one of these instruments.
It was strange that her mother should have been moved to ask Claude
Heath, the man she meant to marry, to come to the house alone on the
evening of her return. This action was not a very natural one on her
mother's part. It had always been tacitly understood that Heath was Mrs.
Mansfield's friend. Yet Mrs. Mansfield had invited him for her daughter.
Had thought, for which space does not exist, reached across the sea from
child to mother mysteriously, saying to the mother, "Do this!"
But unless the glass told a new tale at seven o'clock Charmian did not
mean to go down to dinner.
She closed her eyes and said to herself, again and again, "Look better!
Look better! Look better!"