It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude
Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new
strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both
of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if
possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful.
For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to
Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan,
Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their
feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said:
"Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there.
Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at
by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!"
Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church
door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge.
Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and
Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old
life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of
fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude
to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter
she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her
ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would
emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for
laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done,
with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must
not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient.
The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and
Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.
Charmian thought of this house in Kensington Square as a compromise.
Claude had wished to give up Mullion House on his marriage. Seeing the
obligation to enter upon a new way of life before him he had resolved,
almost with fierceness, to break away from his austere past, to destroy,
so far as was possible, all associations that linked him with it. With
an intensity that was honorable, he set out to make a success of his
life with Charmian. To do that, he felt that he must create a great
change in himself. He had become wedded to habits. Those habits must all
be divorced from him. An atmosphere had enfolded him, had become as it
were part of him, drowning his life in its peculiar influence. He must
emerge from it. But he would never be able to emerge from it in the
little old house which he loved. So he got rid of his lease, with
Charmian's acquiescence.
She did not really want to live on the north side of the Park. And the
neighborhood was "Bayswatery." But she guessed that Claude was not quite
happy in deserting his characteristic roof-tree, and she eagerly sought
for another. It was found in Kensington Square. Several interesting and
even famous persons lived there. The houses were old, not large,
compact. They had a "flavor" of culture, which set them apart from the
new and mushroom dwellings of London, and from all flats whatsoever.
They were suitable to "artistic" people. A great actress, much sought
after in the social world, had lived for years in this square. A famous
musician was opposite to her. A baronet, who knew how to furnish, and
whose wife gave delightful small parties, was next door but three. A
noted novelist had just moved there from a flat in Queen Anne's
Mansions. In fact, there was a cachet on Kensington Square.
And though it was rather far out, you can go almost anywhere in ten
minutes if you can afford to take a taxi-cab. Charmian and Claude had
fifteen hundred a year between them. She had no doubt of their being
able to take taxi-cabs on such an income. And, later on, of course
Claude would make a lot of money. Jacques Sennier's opera was bringing
him in thousands of pounds, and he had received great offers for future
works from America, where _Le Paradis Terrestre_ had just made a furore
at the Metropolitan Opera House. He and Madame Sennier were in New York
now, having a more than lovely time. The generous American nation had
taken them both to its heart. Charmian had read several accounts of
their triumphs, artistic and social, in English newspapers. She had said
to herself "Ours presently!" And with renewed and vital energy, she had
devoted herself afresh to the task of "getting into" the new house.
Mrs. Mansfield had helped her, with sober love and devotion.
Now at last the house was ready, four servants were engaged, and the
ceremony of hanging the _cremaillere_ was being duly accomplished.
The Heaths' house-warming had brought together Charmian's friends.
Heath, true to his secret determination to break away from his old life,
had wished that it should be so. His few intimates in London were not in
the Mansfields' set, and would not "mix in" very well with Kit and
Margot Drake, the Elliots, the Burningtons, Paul Lane, and the many
other people with whom Charmian was intimate; who went where she had
always been accustomed to go, and who spoke her language. So it was
Charmian's party and Heath played the part of host to about fifty
people, most of whom were almost, or quite, strangers to him.
And he played it well, though perhaps with a certain anxiety which he
could not quite conceal. For he was in a new country with people to all
of whom it was old.
Late in the evening he at last had a few minutes alone with his
mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa
in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the
Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child
in a white frock, standing against a pale blue background, by
Burne-Jones, he felt like a man who had been far away from himself, and
who was suddenly again with himself. Mrs. Mansfield's quiet tenderness
flowed over him, but unostentatiously. She had much to conceal from
Claude now; her understanding of the struggle, the fear, the almost
desperate determination within him, her deep sympathy with him in his
honorable conduct, her anxiety about his future with her child, her
painful comprehension of Charmian, which did not abate her love for the
girl, but perhaps strengthened it, giving it wings of pity. She was one
of those middle-aged people of great intelligence, who have learned
through deep experience, to divine. Her power had not failed her during
the period of her daughter's engagement to Heath. If she had not acted
strongly it was because she was supremely delicate in mind, and had a
great respect for personal liberty. She disliked intensely those elderly
people who are constantly trying to interfere with the happiness of
youth. Perhaps she was overscrupulous in her reserve. Perhaps she should
have acted on the prompting of her quick understanding. She did not. It
seemed to her that she could not.
She could not tell her child that Claude Heath was not really in love.
Nor could she tell Charmian that an affection threaded through and
through with a personal, and rather vulgar, ambition is not the kind of
affection likely to form a firm basis for the building of happiness.
So she had to hide her understanding, her regret, her anxiety. She alone
knew whether pride helped her, perhaps had helped to prompt her, to
reticence, to concealment. She had been Claude Heath's great friend. The
jealousies of women are strong. She knew herself free from jealousy. But
another woman, even her own daughter, might misunderstand. It was bitter
to think so, but she did think so. And her lips were sealed. Beneath the
more human fears in her crouched a fear that seemed apart, almost
curiously isolated and very definite, the fear for Claude Heath's
strange talent.
On the night of the house-warming, as they sat together hearing the
laughter, the buzz of talk, from those near them; as, a moment later,
they heard those sounds diminish upon the narrow staircase, when
everybody but themselves trooped down gaily to "play with a little food
unceremoniously," as Charmian expressed it, Mrs. Mansfield found herself
thinking of her first visit to the big studio in Mullion House, and of
those Kings of the East whom the man beside her had made to live in her
warm imagination.
"What is it?" Claude said, when the human sounds in the house came up
from under their feet.
"From to-morrow!" she answered, looking at him with her strong, intense
eyes.
"From to-morrow--yes, Madre?"
She put her thin and firm hand on his.
"Life begins again, the life of work put off for a time. To-morrow you
take it up once more."
"Yes--yes!"
He glanced about the pretty room, listened to the noise of the gaieties
below them. Distinctly he heard Max Elliot's genial laugh.
"Of course," he said. "I must start again on something. The question is,
what on?"
"Surely you have something in hand?"
"I had. But--well, I've left it for so long that I don't know whether I
could get back into the mood which enabled me to start it. I don't
believe I could somehow. I think it would be best to begin on something
quite fresh."
"You know that. Do you think you will like the new workroom?"
"Charmian has made it very pretty and cozy," he answered.
His imaginative eyes looked suddenly distressed, almost persecuted, and
he raised his eyebrows.
"She is very clever at creating prettiness around her," he continued,
after an instant of silence, during which Mrs. Mansfield looked down.
"It is quite wonderful. And how energetic she is!"
"Yes, Charmian can be very energetic when she likes. Adelaide Shiffney
never turned up to-night."
"She telegraphed this morning that she had to go over unexpectedly to
Paris. Something to do with the Senniers probably. You know how devoted
she is to him. And now he is the rage in America, Charmian says. Every
day I expect to hear that Mrs. Shiffney had sailed for New York."
He laughed, but not quite naturally.
"What a change in his life that evening at Covent Garden made!" he
added.
"And what a change in yours!" was Mrs. Mansfield's thought.
"He found himself, as people call it, on that night, I suppose," she
said. "He is one of those men with a talent made for the great public.
And he knew it, perhaps, for the first time that night. He is launched
now on his destined career."
"You believe in destiny?"
She detected the sadness she had surprised in his eyes in his voice now.
"Perhaps in our making of it."
"Rather than in some great Power's imposing of it upon us?"
"Ah, it's so difficult to know! When I was a child we had a game we
loved. We went into a large room which was pitch dark. A person was
hidden in it who had a shilling. Whichever child found that person had
the shilling. There were terror and triumph in that game. It was
scarcely like a game, it roused our feelings so strongly."
"It is not everyone's destiny to find the holder of the shilling," said
Claude.
For a moment their eyes met. Claude suddenly reddened.
"Have I? Does she suspect? Does she know?" went through his mind. And
even Mrs. Mansfield felt embarrassed. For in that moment it was as if
they had spoken to each other with a terrible frankness despite the
silence of their lips.
"Shan't we go down?" said Claude. "Surely you want something to eat,
Madre?"
"No, really. And I like a quiet talk with my new son."
He said nothing, but she saw the strong affection in his face, lighting
it, and she knew Claude loved her almost as a son may love a perfect
mother. She wished that she dared to trust that love completely. But the
instinctive reserve of the highly civilized held her back. And she only
said:
"You must not let marriage interfere too much with your work, Claude. I
care very much for that. For years your work was everything to you. It
can't be that, it oughtn't to be that now. But I want your marriage with
Charmian to help, not to hinder you. Be true to your own instinct in
your art and surely all must go well."
"Yes, yes. To-morrow I must make a fresh start. I could never be an
idler. I must--I must try to use life as food for my art!"
He was speaking out his thought of the night when he wrote his letter to
Charmian. But how cold, how doubtful it seemed when clothed in words.
"Some can do that," said Mrs. Mansfield. "But, as I remember saying on
the night of Charmian's return from Algiers, Swinburne's food was
Putney. There is no rule. Follow your instinct."
She spoke with a sort of strong pressure. And again their eyes met.
"How well she understands me!" he thought. "Does she understand me too
well?"
He became hot, then cold, at the thought that perhaps she had divined
his lack of love for her daughter.
For marriage with Charmian, and three months of intimate intercourse
with her, had not made Claude love her. He admired her appearance. He
felt, sometimes strongly, her physical attraction. Her slim charm did
not leave him unmoved. Often he felt obliged to respect her energy, her
vitality. But anything that is not love is far away from love. In
marrying Charmian, Claude had made a secret sacrifice on the altar of
honor. He had done "the decent thing." Impulse had driven him into a
mistake and he had "paid for it" like a man without a word of complaint
to anyone. He had hoped earnestly, almost angrily, that love would be
suddenly born out of marriage, that thus his mistake would be cancelled,
his right dealing rewarded beautifully.
It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had
become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from
the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke,
with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find
salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell
her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker
who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies
of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays
them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all
things in his life work together for good.
"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.
When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair
before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first
drawing-room.
"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You
aren't sleepy, are you?"
"Not a bit."
He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.
"It went off well, didn't it?"
She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were
clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a
yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it
looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her
face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.
"Yes, I think it did."
"They all liked you."
"I'm glad!"
"You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!
You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or
not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like
yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max
Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide Shiffney not to come!"
Her voice had suddenly changed.
"Did you want Mrs. Shiffney to come so particularly?" Claude asked, not
without surprise.
"Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of
her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after
accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she
rushed off to Paris like that?"
"I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max
Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier."
Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.
"Max does exactly the same," said Charmian. "It really becomes rather
silly--in a man."
"But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him."
"I never said there was. But still--Margot is rather tiresome, too, with
her rages first for this person and then for the other."
"Who is it now?"
"Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others."
"Still?"
"Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I
believe, just to hear the _Paradis_ once at the Metropolitan. Five days
out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put
in the _Daily Mail_. And then she says she can't think how things about
her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!"
"Still, she admires the right thing when she admires Sennier's talent,"
said Claude, with a sort of still decision.
Charmian turned her eyes away from the fire and looked at him.
"How odd you are!" she said, after a little pause.
"Why? In what way am I odd?"
"In almost every way, I think. But it's all right. You ought to be odd."
"What do you mean, Charmian?"
"Jacques Sennier's odd, extraordinary. People like that always are. You
are."
She was examining him contemplatively, as a woman examines a possession,
something that the other women have not. Her look made him feel very
restive and intensely reserved.
"I doubt if I am the least like Jacques Sennier," he said.
"Oh, yes, you are. I know."
His rather thin and very mobile lips tightened, as if to keep back a
rush of words.
"You don't know yourself," Charmian continued, still looking at him with
those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is part
of themselves."
"Do women?"
"What does it matter? I am thinking about you, about my man."
There was a long pause, which Claude filled by getting up and lighting a
cigarette. A hideous, undressed sensation possessed him, the undressed
sensation of the reserved nature that is being stared at. He said to
himself: "It is natural that she should look at me like this, speak to
me like this. It is perfectly natural." But he hated it. He even felt as
if he could not endure it much longer, and would be obliged to do
something to stop it.
"Don't sit down again," said Charmian, as he turned with the cigarette
in his mouth.
She got up with lithe ease, like one uncurling.
"Let's go and look at your room, where you're going to begin work
to-morrow."
She put her hand on his arm. And her hand was possessive as her eyes had
been.
Claude's workroom was at the back of the house on the floor above the
drawing-room. An upright piano replaced the grand piano of Mullion
House, now dedicated to the drawing-room. There was a large flat
writing-table in front of the window, where curtains of Irish frieze,
dark green in color, hung shutting out the night and the ugliness at the
back of Kensington Square. The walls were nearly covered with books. At
the bottom of the bookcases were large drawers for music. A Canterbury
held more music, and was placed beside the writing-table. The carpet was
dark green without any pattern. In the fireplace were some curious
Morris tiles, representing AEneas carrying Anchises, with Troy burning in
the background. There were two armchairs, and a deep sofa covered in
dark green. A photograph of Charmian stood on the writing-table. It
showed her in evening dress, holding her Conder fan, and looking out
with half-shut eyes. There was in it a hint of the assumed dreaminess
which very sharp-witted modern maidens think decorative in photographs,
the "I follow an ideal" expression, which makes men say, "What a
charming girl! Looks as if she'd got something in her, too!"
"It's a dear little room, isn't it, Claude?" said Charmian.
"Yes, very."
"You really like it, don't you? You like its atmosphere?"
"I think you've done it delightfully. I was saying to Madre only this
evening how extraordinarily clever you are in creating prettiness around
you."
"Were you? How nice of you."
She laid her cheek against his shoulder.
"You'll be able to work here?"
"Why not?"
"Let's shut the door, and just _feel_ the room for a minute."
"All right."
He shut the door.
"Don't let us speak for a moment," she whispered.
She was sitting now on the deep sofa just beyond the writing-table.
Claude stood quite still. And in the silence which followed her words he
strove to realize whether he would be able to work in the little room.
Would anything come to him here? His eyes rested on Anchises, crouched
on the back of his son, on the burning city of Troy. He felt confused,
strange, and then _depayse_. That word alone meant what he felt just
then. Ah, the little house with the one big room looking out on to the
scrap of garden, yellow-haired Fan, Harriet discreet unto dumbness, Mrs.
Searle with her scraps of wisdom--he with his freedom!
The room was a cage, wire bars everywhere. Never could he work in it!
"It is good for work, isn't it, Claudie? Even poor little I can feel
that. What wonderful things you are going to do here. As wonderful as--"
She checked herself abruptly.
"As what?" he asked, striving to force an interest, to banish his secret
desperation.
"I won't tell you now. Some day--in a year, two years--I'll tell you."
Her eyes shone. He thought they looked almost greedy.
"When my man's done something wonderful!"