In the studio of Mullion House that night, Harriet, moving softly,
placed a plate of sandwiches and a long bottle of Rhine wine before she
went up to bed. Moonlight shone on the scrap of garden, gleamed on the
leaded panes of the studio windows, from which the orange-colored
curtains were drawn back. The aspect of the big room had changed because
it was summer. It looked bigger, less cosy without a fire. One lamp was
lighted and cast a gentle glow over the books that lay near it, and over
the writing-table on which there were sheets of manuscript music. The
piano stood open. A spray of white roses in a tall vase looked spectral
against the shadows. After Harriet's departure the clock ticked for a
long time in an empty room.
It was nearly two o'clock, and the moon was waning, when the studio door
was opened to let in Heath. He was alone. Holding the door with one
hand, he stood and stared at the room, examined it with a sort of
excited and close attention. Then he took off his hat, shut the door,
laid hat and coat on the sofa, went to the table where Harriet had put
the tray, and poured out a glass of wine. He sighed, looked at the gold
of the wine, made beautiful by the lamplight, drank it, and sat down in
the worn armchair which faced the line of window. Then he lit a cigar,
leaned back, and smoked, keeping his eyes on the glass.
Upon the leaded panes the faint silver shifted, faded, and presently
died. Heath watched, and thought, "The moon gone!" He did not feel as if
he could ever wish to sleep again. The excitement within him was like a
ravaging disease. He was capable of excitement that never comes to the
ordinary man, although he took sedulous care to hide that fact. His
imagination bristled like a spear held by one alert for attack. What was
life going to do to him? What was he going to let it do?
Charmian Mansfield loved him, and believed in his genius, as he did not
believe, or had not till now believed in it. He was loved, he was
believed in, by the thin mystery of a modern girl, who had known many
men with talents, with names, with big reputations. Under that
triumphant composure, that almost cruel banter, that whimsical airy
contempt, that cool frivolity of the minx, there was emotion, there was
love for him and for his talent. Always that night he thought of his
talent in connection with Charmian's love, he scarcely knew why. For how
long had she loved him? And why did she love him? He thought of his
body, and it surprised him that she loved that. He thought of his mind,
his imagination, his temper, his tricks, his faults, his habits. He
thought of his deep reserve, and of the intense emotion he sometimes
felt when he was quite alone and composing. Sometimes he felt like a
great fire then. Sometimes he felt brutal, almost savage, decisive in a
sense that was surely cruel. Did she suspect all that? Did she love all
that without consciously suspecting it? Sometimes, when he had been
working very hard, overworking perhaps, he felt inclined to do evil. If
she knew that!
But she did not, she could not know him. Why, then, did she love him?
Heath was not a conceited man, but he did not at this moment doubt
Charmian's love for him. Though he was sometimes child-like, and could
be, like most men, very blind, he had a keen intellect which could
reason about psychology. He knew how women love success. He knew how, in
a moment of excitement such as that at the end of the opera, when
Jacques Sennier came before the curtain, they instinctively concentrate
on the man who has made the success. He knew, or divined, what woman's
concentration is. And he realized the bigness of the tribute paid to him
by Charmian's abrupt detachment from the hour and the man, by the sweep
of her brain and her heart to him. Any conqueror of women might have
been proud of such a tribute, have considered it rare. Her eyes, her
voice, in the tempest they had thrilled him. He had been only thinking
of Sennier's music and of Sennier, of art and the human being behind it.
Nothing within him had consciously called to Charmian. Nor had there--he
felt sure now--been the unconscious call sent out by the man of talent
who feels himself left out in the cold, who cannot stifle the greedy
voice of the jealousy which he despises. No, the initiative had been
wholly hers. And something irresistible must have moved her, driven her,
to do what she had done. She must have been mastered by an impulse bred
out of strong excitement. She had been mastered by an impulse.
"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be for you."
She had only whispered the words, but they had seemed to stab him, with
so much mental force had she sent them out. Mrs. Mansfield had not heard
them. And how extraordinary Charmian's eyes had been during that moment
when she and he had gazed at one another. He had not known eyes could
look like that, as if the whole spirit of a human being were crouching
in them, intent. How far away from the eyes the human spirit must often
be!
As Heath thought of Charmian's eyes he felt as if he knew very little of
real life yet.
She had turned away. Again and again Jacques Sennier had been called. He
had returned with Annie Meredith, to whom he had made the gift of a
splendid role. They shook hands before the audience, not perfunctorily,
but as if they loved one another, were bound together, comrades in the
beautiful. He--Heath--had stood upright again, had gone on applauding
with the rest. But his thoughts had then all been on himself. "If all
this were for me! If I should ever have such an hour in my life, such a
tribute as this! If within me is the capacity to conquer all these
diverse natures and temperaments, to weld them together in a common
desire, the desire to show thankfulness for what a man has been able to
give them!" And he had thrilled for the first time with a fierce new
longing, the longing for the best that is meant by fame.
This longing persisted now.
Heath had left Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian under the arcade of the Opera
House, after putting them into their car. The crush coming out had been
great. They had had to wait for nearly half an hour in the vestibule.
During that time the Mansfields had talked to many friends. Charmian
had completely regained her composure. She had introduced Heath to
several people, among others to Kit and Margot Drake, who spoke of
nothing but the opera and its composer and Annie Meredith. The vestibule
was full of the voices of praise. Everybody seemed unusually excited.
Paul Lane had actually come up to them with beads of perspiration
standing on his forehead, and his eyes shining with excitement.
"This is a red-letter night in my life," he had said. "I have felt a
strong and genuine emotion. There's a future for music, after all, and a
big one. If only there were one or two more Jacques Senniers!"
Even then Charmian had not looked again at Heath. She had answered
lightly.
"Perhaps there are. Who knows? Even Monsieur Sennier was practically
unknown four hours ago."
"There are not many parts of the civilized world in which his name will
be unknown in four days from now," said Paul Lane, "or even in
twenty-four hours. I'm going to meet him and his wife at supper at
Adelaide Shiffney's, so I must say good-night--oh, and good-night, Mr.
Heath."
Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath.
Claude had walked all the way home alone slowly. He had passed through
Piccadilly Circus, through Regent Street, through Oxford Street, along
the north side of the closed and deserted Park on which the faint
moonlight lay. When he reached his door he had not gone in. He had
turned, had paced up and down. The sight of a very large policeman
looking attentive, then grimly inquiring, then crudely suspicious, had
finally decided him to enter his house.
What was life going to do to him if he did not hold back, did not
persist any longer in his mania for refusal? There was a new world
spread out before him. He stood upon its border. He wanted to step into
it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated,
was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he
wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to
him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had
said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath,
whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the
instinct of self-preservation."
What was Jacques Sennier's strongest instinct?
Madame Sennier had made a powerful impression on Heath, and he had been
greatly flattered by the deep attention with which she had listened to
what he had to say about her husband's opera.
"Here's a man who knows what he is talking about," she exclaimed, when
he finished speaking. When he got up to leave the box she had looked
full into his eyes and said: "You are going to do something, too."
Could Jacques Sennier have won his triumph alone?
Impulse was boiling up in Heath. After all that had happened that night
he felt as if he could not go to bed without accomplishing some decisive
action. Powers were on tiptoe within him surely ready for the giant
leap.
He got up, went to the piano, went to his writing-table, fingered the
manuscript paper covered with tiny notes which lay scattered upon it.
But, no, it would be absurd, mad, to begin to work at such an hour. And,
beside, he could not work. He could not be patient. He wanted to do
something with a rush, to change his life in a moment, to take a leap
forward, as Sennier had done that night, a leap from shadow into light.
He wanted to grasp something, to have a new experience. All the long
refusal of his life, which had not seemed to cost him very much till
this moment, abruptly, revengefully attacked him in the very soul,
crying: "You must pay for me! Pay! Pay!" He hated the thought of his
remote and solitary life. He hated the memory of the lonely evenings
passed in the study of scores, or in composition, by the lamp that shed
a restricted light.
The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed,
he lusted for fame.
Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."
Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been
something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet
surely showed her love. Perhaps instinctively she knew that he needed
venom, and that she alone could supply it.
The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, knew
nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital
force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She
was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must
have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of
greatness.
He loved her just then for that.
"Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath."
Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.
Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big
room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was
dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn
his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of
inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of
Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to
reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its
atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his
opera here. In vain to try.
With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table,
snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them
across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere
futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of
unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was
bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he
resolved to have done with it.
Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly
down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason,
but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick
whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had
known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know
ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to
the instinct of love.
He took a pen, leaned over the table, wrote a letter swiftly, violently
even. His pen seemed to form the words by itself. He was unconscious of
guiding it. The letter was not long, only two sides of a sheet. He
blotted it, thrust it into an envelope, addressed, closed, and stamped
it, got up, took his hat, and went out of the studio.
In a moment he was in the deserted road. The large policeman, who had
eyed him with such grave suspicion, was gone. No one was in sight. The
silver of the moonlight had given place to a faint grayness, a weariness
of the night falling toward the arms of dawn.
Claude walked swiftly on, turned the corner, and came into the
thoroughfare which skirts Kensington Gardens and the Park. Some fifty
yards away there was a letter box. He hurried toward it, driven on by
defiance of that within him which would fain have held him back, by the
blind instinct to trample which sometimes takes hold of a strong and
emotional nature in a moment of unusual excitement.
"The great refuser! No, I'll not be that any longer."
As he drew near to the letter box he felt that till now he had been a
composer. Henceforth he would be a man. He had lived for an art.
Henceforth he would live for life, and would make life feel his art.
He dropped his letter into the box.
In falling out of his sight it made a faint, uneasy noise.
Claude stood there like one listening.
The grayness seemed to grow slightly more livid over the tree-tops and
behind the branches. The letter did not speak again. So he thought of
that tiny noise, as the speech of the dropping letter. It must have slid
down against the side of the box. Now it was lying still. There was
nothing more for him to do but to go home. Yet he waited before the
letter box, with his eyes fixed upon the small white plaque on which was
printed the time of the next delivery--eight-forty A.M.
Was it the sound, or was it the movement preceding the sound, which had
worked a cold change in his heart? He felt almost stunned by what he had
done, like a man who strikes and sees the result of his blow, who has
not measured its force, and sees his victim measure it. Eight-forty
A.M.
A step sounded. He looked, and saw in the distance the large policeman
slowly advancing.
When he was again in his house he closed the front door softly, and went
once more to the studio. He looked round it, examining the familiar
objects: the piano, his work table, the books, the deep, well-worn,
homely chairs, the rugs which Mrs. Mansfield had liked. On the floor, by
his table, lay the fragments of manuscript music. How had he come to
tear it, his last composition?
He went over to the window, opened a square of the glass, sat down on
the window-seat, and looked out to the tiny garden. A faint smell, as of
dewy earth, rose from it, fresh, delicate, and--somehow--pathetic. As
Claude leaned on the window-sill this frail scent, which seemed part of
the dying night, connected itself in his mind with his past life. He
drew it in through his nostrils, he thought of it, and vaguely it
floated about the long days and nights of his work-filled loneliness,
making them sad, yet sweet. He had had an ideal and he had striven to
guard it carefully. He had lived for it. To-night he had cast it out in
a moment of strange excitement. Had he done wrong? Had he been false to
himself?
The mere fact that he was sitting and forming such questions in his mind
at such a moment proved to him that he had acted madly when he had
written and posted his letter. And he was overcome by a sense of dread.
He feared himself, that man who could act on a passionate impulse,
brushing aside all the restraints that his reason would oppose. And he
feared now almost unspeakably the result of what he had done. He had
given himself to the life which till now he had always avoided. He had
broken with the old life.
At eight-forty that morning his letter would be taken out of the box and
would start on its journey. Before night it would have been read and
probably answered. Sweat broke out on his face--a feeling of desperation
seized him. He loved his complete command of his own life, complete,
that is, in the human sense. He had never known how much he loved it,
clung to it, till now. And he must part from it. He had invited another
to join with him in the directing of his life. He had written burning
words. The thought of Madame Sennier and all she had done for her
husband had winged his pen.
The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He
had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth
poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence.
No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and
in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In
this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was
impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great
mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its
little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had
carried him away in the theater.
Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that
was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had
never written that letter of love to Charmian.
The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the
fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude
looked at them, and thought:
"If only my letter lay there instead!"