When seven o'clock struck she got out of bed, and again looked in the
glass. She felt rested in body, and no longer had the tangled sensation
in her head. But the face which confronted her reminded her disagreeably
of Millie Deans, the American singer. It had what Charmian called the
"Pierrot look," a too expressive and unnatural whiteness which surely
told secrets. It seemed to her, too, a hard face, too determined in
expression, repellent almost. And surely nothing is likely to be more
repellent to a man than a girl's face that is hard.
Since her conversation with Susan Fleet by the little lake in the
Algerian garden, Charmian had felt that destiny had decreed her marriage
with Claude Heath. So she put the matter to herself. Really that
conversation had caused her secretly to decide that she would marry
Claude Heath.
"It may be so," Susan Fleet had said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is
to learn through that man, and to teach him."
The words had gone to join the curious conviction that had come to
Charmian out of the white dust floating up from the road that runs
through Mustapha, out of the lilies, out of the wrinkled trunk of the
great palm that was separated by the yellow-green water from all its
fellows, "I shall be here again with him."
Surely the strong assertion of the will is the first step that takes a
human being out of the crowd. Charmian had suffered because she was in
the crowd, undistinguished, lost like a violet in a prairie abloom with
thousands of violets. Something in Algeria, something perhaps in Susan
Fleet, had put into her a resolve, unacknowledged even to herself. She
had returned to England, meaning to marry Claude Heath, meaning to use
her will as the ardent and capable servant of her heart.
But what she said to herself was this, "I believe destiny means to bring
us together." She wrapped a naked little fact up in a soft tissue of
romance and wonder.
But the face in the glass which now looked at her was too determined,
too hard. It startled her. And she changed the expression on it. But
then it looked insincere, meretricious, affected, and always haggard.
For a minute Charmian hesitated, almost resolved to go back to bed. But,
oh, the dulness of the long evening shut in there! Three hours ago, at
Charing Cross Station, she had looked forward to it. But now!
Only once in her life had Charmian made up her face. She knew many girls
who disfigured their youth by concealing it with artifice. She thought
them rather absurd and rather horrid. Nevertheless she had rouge and
powder. One day she had bought them, shut herself in, made up her face,
and been thoroughly disgusted with the effect. Yes, but she had done it
in a hurry, without care. She had known she was not going to be seen.
Softly she pulled out a drawer.
At half-past seven there was a knock at the door. She opened it and saw
her maid.
"If you please, miss, Mrs. Mansfield wishes to know whether you feel
rested enough to dine downstairs."
"Yes, I do. Just tell mother, and then come back, please, Halton."
When Halton came Charmian watched her almost as a cat does a mouse, and
presently surprised an inquiring look that degenerated into a look of
suspicion.
"What's the matter, Halton?"
"Nothing, miss. Which dress will you wear?"
So Halton had guessed, or had suspected--there was not much difference
between the two mental processes.
"The green one I took on the yacht."
"Yes, miss."
"Or the--wait a minute."
"Yes, miss?"
"Yes--the green one."
When the maid had taken the dress out Charmian said: "Why did you look
at me as you did just now, Halton? I wish to know."
"I don't know, miss."
"Well, I have put something on."
"Yes, miss."
"I looked so sea-sick--yellow. No one wants to look yellow."
"No, I'm sure, miss."
"But I don't want--come and help me, Halton. I believe you know things I
don't."
Halton had been with the lovely Mrs. Charlton Hoey before she came to
Charmian, and she did know things unknown to her young mistress.
Trusted, she was ready to reveal them, and Charmian went downstairs at
three minutes past eight more ingenious than she had been at ten minutes
before that hour.
Although she was quite, quite certain that neither her mother nor Claude
Heath would discover what had been done with Halton's assistance, she
was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her
hand on the drawing-room door, and it was a tremor in which a sense of
shame had a part.
Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield. As Charmian looked at
him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed
to her a stranger. Was this really the man who had made her suffer,
weep, confide in Susan Fleet, in Algeria? Had pink roses and dust,
far-off and near sounds, movements and stillnesses, and that strange
little island spoken to her of him, prophesied to her about him? She had
a sense of banality, of disillusion, as if all that had been in her own
brain only, almost crazily conceived without any action of events to
prompt it.
But when she met his eyes the disagreeable sensation dropped away. For
his eyes searched her in a way that made her feel suddenly important. He
was looking for Africa, but she did not know it.
Although he did not see what Charmian had done to her face, he noticed
change in her. She seemed to him more of a personage than she had seemed
before she went away. He was not sure that he liked the change. But it
made an impression upon him. And what he considered as the weakness
within him felt a desire to please and conciliate it.
Mrs. Mansfield had seen at a glance that Charmian had touched up her
face, but she showed nothing of what she felt, if she felt anything,
about this new departure. And when Heath said to Charmian, "How well you
are looking!" Mrs. Mansfield added:
"Your rest has done you good."
"Yes, I feel rather less idiotic!" said Charmian; "but only rather. You
mustn't expect me to be quite my usual brilliant self, Mr. Heath. You
must wait a day or two for that. What have you been doing all this
time?"
It seemed to Heath that there was a hint of light patronage in her tone
and manner. He was unpleasantly conscious of the woman of the world. But
he did not realize how much Charmian had to conceal at this moment.
When almost immediately they went in to dinner, Mrs. Mansfield
deliberately turned the conversation to Charmian's recent journey. This
was to be Charmian's dinner. Charmian was the interesting person, the
traveller from Algeria. Had not Claude Heath been invited to hear all
about the trip? Mrs. Mansfield remembered the imaginative look which had
transformed his face just before he had quoted Chateaubriand. And she
remembered something else, something Charmian had once said to her: "You
jump into minds and hearts and poor little I remain outside, squatting,
like a hungry child!" She had a sincere horror of the elderly mother who
clings to that power which should rightly be in the hands of youth. And
to-night something in her heart said: "Give place! give place!" The fact
which she had noticed in connection with Charmian's face had suddenly
made something within her weep over the child, take herself to task.
There was still much impulse in Mrs. Mansfield. To-night a subtlety in
Charmian, which no man could have detected, set that impulse in a
generous and warm blaze; filled her with a wish to abdicate in the
child's favor, to make her the center of the evening's attention, the
source of the evening's conversation; to show Heath that Charmian could
be as interesting as herself and more attractive than she was.
The difficulty was to obtain the right response from Charmian. She had
learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to
pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize
that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well
as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared
to play the schoolgirl if she made much of her experience. Algiers meant
so much to her just then that she belittled Algiers in self-defense.
Heath was chilled by her curt remarks.
"Of course, it's dreadfully French!" she said. "I suppose the conquerors
wish to efface all the traces of the conquered as much as possible. I
quite understand their feelings. But it's not very encouraging to the
desirous tourist."
"Then you were disappointed?" said Heath.
"You should have gone to Bou-Saada," said Mrs. Mansfield. "You would
have seen the real thing there. Why didn't you?"
"Adelaide Shiffney started in such a hurry, before I had had time to see
anything, or recover from the horrors of yachting. You know how she
rushes on as if driven by furies."
There was a small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the
wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was
unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often
takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The
demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really
express her character. And realizing that she must be seeming rather
horrid in condemning her hostess and representing the trip as a failure,
she felt defiant and almost hard.
"Did you envy me?" she said to Heath, almost a little aggressively.
"Well, I thought you must be having a very interesting time. I thought a
first visit to Africa must be a wonderful experience."
"But, then--why refuse to come?"
She gazed full into his face, and made her long eyes look impertinent,
challenging. Mrs. Mansfield felt very uncomfortable.
"I!" said Heath. "Oh, I didn't know I was in question! Surely we were
talking about the impression Algiers made upon you."
"Well, but if you condemn me for not being more enthusiastic, surely it
is natural for me to wonder why you wouldn't for anything set foot in
the African Paradise."
She laughed. Her nerves felt on edge after the journey. And something in
the mental atmosphere affected her unfavorably.
"But, Miss Charmian, I don't condemn you. It would be monstrous to
condemn anyone for not being able to feel in a certain way. I hope I
have enough brains to see that."
He spoke almost hotly.
"Your mother and I had been imagining that you were having a wonderful
time," he added. "Perhaps it was stupid of us."
"No. Algiers is wonderful."
Heath had changed her, had suddenly enabled her to be more natural.
"I include Mustapha, of course. Some of the gardens are marvellous, and
the old Arab houses. And I think perhaps you would have thought them
more marvellous even than I did."
"But, why?"
"Because I think you could see more in beautiful things than I can,
although I love them."
Her sudden softness was touching. Heath had never been paid a compliment
that had pleased him so much as hers. He had not expected it, and so it
gained in value.
"I don't know that," he said hesitatingly.
"Madretta, don't you agree with me?"
"No doubt you two would appreciate things differently."
"But what I mean is that Mr. Heath in the things we should both
appreciate could see more than I."
"Pierce deeper into the heart of the charm? Perhaps he could. Oh, eat a
little of this chicken!"
"No, dearest mother, I can't. I'm in a Nebuchadnezzar mood. Spinach for
me."
She took some.
"Everything seems a little vague and Channelly to-night, even spinach."
She looked up at Heath, and now he saw a sort of evasive charm in her
eyes.
"You must forgive me if I'm tiresome to-night, and remember that while
you and Madre have been sitting comfortably in Mullion House and
Berkeley Square, I've been roaring across France and rolling on the sea.
I hate to be a slave to my body. Nothing makes one feel so contemptible.
But I haven't attained to the Susan Fleet stage yet. I'll tell you all
about her some day, Mr. Heath, but not now. You would like her. I know
that. But perhaps you'll refuse to meet her. Do you know my secret name
for you? I call you--the Great Refuser."
Heath flushed and glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
"I have my work, you see."
"We heard such strange music in Algiers," she answered. "I suppose it
was ugly. But it suggested all sorts of things to me. Adelaide wished
Monsieur Rades was with us. He's clever, but he could never do a big
thing. Could he, mother?"
"No, but he does little things beautifully."
"What it must be to be able to do a big thing!" said Charmian. "To draw
in color and light and perfume and sound, and to know you will be able
to weave them together, and transform them, and give them out again with
you in them, making them more strange, more wonderful. We saw an island,
Susan Fleet and I, that--well, if I had had genius I could have done
something exquisite the day I saw it. It seemed to say to me: 'Tell
them! Tell them! Make them feel me! Make them know me! All those who are
far away, who will never see me, but who would love me as you do, if
they knew me.' And--it was very absurd, I know!--but I felt as if it
were disappointed with me because I had no power to obey it. Madre,
don't you think that must be the greatest joy and privilege of genius,
that capacity for getting into close relations with strange and
beautiful things? I couldn't obey the little island, and I felt almost
as if I had done it a wrong."
"Where was it? In the sea?"
"No--oh, no! But I can't tell you! It has to be seen--"
Suddenly there came upon her again, almost like a cloud enveloping her,
the strong impression that destiny would lead her some day to that
Garden of the Island with Heath. She did not look at him. She feared if
she did he would know what was in her mind and heart. Making an effort,
she recovered her self-command, and said:
"I expect you think I'm a rather silly and rhapsodizing girl, Mr. Heath.
Do you mind if I tell you what _I_ think?"
"No, tell me please!" he said quickly.
"Well, I think that, if you've got a great talent, perhaps genius, you
ought to give it food. And I think _you_ don't want to give it food."
"Swinburne's food was Putney!" said Mrs. Mansfield, "and I could mention
many great men who scarcely moved from their own firesides and yet whose
imagination was nearly always in a blaze."
Heath joined in eagerly, and the discussion lasted till the end of
dinner. Never before had Charmian felt herself to be on equal terms with
her mother and Heath. She was secretly excited and she was able to give
herself to her excitement. It helped her, pushed on her intelligence.
She saw that Heath found her more interesting than usual. She began to
realize that her journey had made her interesting to him. He had refused
to go, and now was envying her because she had not refused. Her
depreciation of Algiers had been a mistake. She corrected it now. And
she saw that she had a certain influence upon Heath. She attributed it
to her secret assertion of her will. She was not going to sit down any
longer and be nobody, a pretty graceful girl who didn't matter. Will is
everything in the world. Now she loved she had a fierce reason for using
her will. Even her mother, who knew her in every mood, was surprised by
Charmian that evening.
Heath stayed till rather late. When he got up to go away, Charmian said:
"Don't you wish you had come on the yacht? Don't you wish you had seen
the island?"
He hesitated, looking down on her and Mrs. Mansfield, and holding his
hands behind him. After a strangely long pause he answered:
"I don't want to wish that, I don't mean to wish it."
"Do you really think we can control our desires?" she asked, and now she
spoke very gravely, almost earnestly.
"I suppose so. Why not?"
"Oh!" she said petulantly. "You remind me of Oliver Cromwell--somebody
of that kind--you ought to have lived in Puritan days. It's
England--England--England in you shrivelling you up. I'm sure in all
Algiers there isn't one person (not English) who thinks as you do. But
if you were to travel, if you were to give yourself a chance, how
different you'd be!"
"Charmian, you impertinent child!" said Mrs. Mansfield, smiling, but in
a voice that was rather sad.
"It's the Channel! It's the Channel! I'm not myself to-night!"
Heath laughed and said something light and gay. But as he went out of
the room his face looked troubled.
As soon as he had gone, Charmian got up and turned to her mother.
"Are you very angry with me, Madre?"
"No. There always was a touch of the minx in you, and I suppose it is
ineradicable. What have you been doing to your face?"
Charmian flushed. The blood even went up to her forehead, and for once
she looked confused, almost ashamed.
"My face? You--you have noticed something?"
"Of course, directly you came down. Has Adelaide taught you that?"
"No! Are you angry, mother?"
"No. But I like young things to look really young as long as they can.
And to me the first touch of make-up suggests the useless struggle
against old age. Now I'm not very old yet, not fifty. But I've let my
hair become white."
"And how it suits you, my beautiful mother!"
"That's my little compensation. A few visits to Bond Street might make
me look ten years younger than I do, but if I paid them, do you know I
think I should lose one or two friendships I value very much."
Mrs. Mansfield paused.
"Lose--friendships?" Charmian almost faltered.
"Yes. Some of the best men value sincerity of appearance in a woman more
than perhaps you would believe to be possible."
"In friendship!" Charmian almost whispered.
Again there was a pause. Mrs. Mansfield knew very well that a sentence
from her at this moment would provoke in Charmian an outburst of
sincerity. But she hesitated to speak that sentence. For a voice within
her whispered, "Am I on Charmian's side?"
After a moment she got up.
"Bedtime," she said.
"Yes, yes."
Charmian kissed her mother lightly first on one eyelid then on the
other.
"Dearest, it is good to be back with you."
"But you loved Algiers, I think."
"Did I? I suppose I did."
"I must get a book," said Mrs. Mansfield, going toward a bookcase.
When she turned round with a volume of Browning in her hand Charmian had
vanished.
Mrs. Mansfield did not regret the silence that had saved her from
Charmian's sincerity. In reply to it what could she have said to help
her child toward happiness?
For did not the fact that Charmian had made up her face because she
loved Claude Heath show a gulf between her and him that could surely
never be bridged?