In Charmian's conception of the perfect helpmate for a great man
self-sacrifice shone out as the first of the virtues. She must sacrifice
herself to Claude, must regulate her life so that his might glide
smoothly, without any friction, to the appointed goal. She must be
patient, understanding, and unselfish. But she must also be firm at the
right moment, be strong in judgment, be judicious, the perfect critic as
well as the ardent admirer. During her life among clever and well-known
men she had noticed how the mere fact of marriage often seems to make a
man think highly of the intellect of his chosen woman. Again and again
she had heard some distinguished writer or politician, wedded to
somebody either quite ordinary, or even actually stupid, say: "I'd take
my wife's judgment before anyone's," or "My wife sees more clearly for a
man than anyone I know." She had known painters and sculptors submit
their works to the criticism of women totally ignorant in the arts,
simply because those women had had the faultless taste to marry them. If
such women exercised so strong an influence over their men, what should
hers be over Claude? For she had been well educated, was trained in
music, had always moved in intellectual and artistic sets, and was
certainly not stupid. Indeed, now that the main stream of her life was
divided from her mother's, she often felt as if she were decidedly
clever. Susan Fleet, long ago, had roused up her will. Since that day
she had never let it sleep. And her success in marrying Claude had made
her rely on her will, rely on herself. She was a girl who could "carry
things through," a girl who could make of life a success. As a young
married woman she showed more of assurance than she had showed as an
unmarried girl. There was more of decision in her expression and her way
of being. She was resolved to impress the world, of course for her
husband's sake.
Life in the house in Kensington had to be arranged for Claude with
every elaborate precaution. That must be the first move in the campaign
secretly planned out by Charmian, and now about to be carried through.
On the morning after the house-warming, when a late breakfast was
finished, but while they were still at the breakfast-table in the long
and narrow dining-room, which looked out on the quiet square, Charmian
said to her husband:
"I've been speaking to the servants, Claude. I've told them about being
very quiet to-day."
He pushed his tea-cup a little away from him.
"Why?" he asked. "I mean why specially to-day?"
"Because of your composing. Alice is a good girl, but she is a little
inclined to be noisy sometimes. I've spoken to her seriously about it."
Alice was the parlor-maid. Charmian would have preferred to have a man
to answer the door, but she had sacrificed to economy, or thought she
had done so, by engaging a woman. As Claude said nothing, Charmian
continued:
"And another thing! I've told them all that you're never to be disturbed
when you're in your own room, that they're never to come to you with
notes, or the post, never to call you to the telephone. I want you to
feel that once you are inside your own room you are absolutely safe,
that it is sacred ground."
"Thank you, Charmian."
He pushed his cup farther away, with a movement that was rather brusque,
and got up.
"What about lunch to-day? Do you eat lunch when you are composing? Do
you want something sent up to you?"
"Well, I don't know. I don't think I shall want any lunch to-day. You
see we've breakfasted late. Don't bother about me."
"It isn't a bother. You know that, Claudie. But would you like a cup of
coffee, tea, anything at one o'clock?"
"Oh, I scarcely know. I'll ring if I do."
He made a movement. Charmian got up.
"I do long to know what you are going to work on," she said, in a
changed, almost mysterious, voice, which was not consciously assumed.
She came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Ever since I first heard your music--you remember, two days after we
were engaged--I've longed to be able to do a little something to help
you on. You know what I mean. In the woman's way, by acting as a sort of
buffer between you and all the small irritations of life. We who can't
create can sometimes be of use to those who can. We can keep others from
disturbing the mystery. Let me do that. And, in return, let me be in the
secret, won't you?"
Claude stood rather stiffly under her hands.
"You are kind, good. But--but don't make any bother about me in the
house. I'd rather you didn't. Let everything just go on naturally. I
don't want to be a nuisance."
"You couldn't be. And you will let me?"
"Perhaps--when I know it myself."
He made a little rather constrained laugh.
"One's got to think, try. One doesn't always know directly what one
wishes to do, can do."
"No, of course not."
She took away her hands gently.
"Now I don't exist till you want me to again."
Claude went up to the little room at the back of the house. At this
moment he would gladly, thankfully, have gone anywhere else. But he felt
that he was expected to go there. Five women, his wife and the four
maids, expected him to go there. So he went. He shut himself in, and
remained there, caged.
It was a still and foggy day of frost. In the air, even within the
house, there was a feeling of snow, light, thin, and penetrating. London
seemed peculiarly silent. And the silence seemed to have something to do
with the fog, the frost, and the coming snow. When the door of his room
was shut Claude stood by his table, then before the fire, feeling
curiously empty headed, almost light headed. He stared at the fire,
listened to its faint crackling, and felt as if his life were a hollow
shell.
Probably he had stood thus for a considerable time--he did not know
whether for five minutes or an hour--when he was made self-conscious by
an event in the house. He heard two women's voices in conversation,
apparently on the staircase.
One of them said:
"The duster, I tell you!"
The other replied:
"Well, I didn't leave it. Ask Fanny, can't you!"
"Fanny doesn't know."
"She ought to know, then!"
"Ought yourself! Fanny's no business with the duster no more than--"
At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was
Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:
"Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house.
Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If
you must speak, go downstairs."
There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then
again silence.
Claude came away from the fire.
"Your master is at work."
He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost
of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the
devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he
was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be
doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen
discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid
musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her
lap. And he ground his teeth.
"I can't--I can't--I never shall be able to!"
He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands.
When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed,
photographed eyes.
Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing
vigorously, almost angrily, "You are Queen of my heart to-night," came
up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by
distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began,
continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle
of a phrase.
Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had
rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in
the land without light.
The master was working.
But the master was not working.
Day followed day, and Claude kept his secret, the secret that he was
doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the
atmosphere created by Charmian.
One thing specially troubled him.
So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or
perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of
effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own
"diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and
golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had
never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.
But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the
young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a
lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized
this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever
he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual
rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his
account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his
art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in
sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own
masculinity.
This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from
home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.
He thought of the text, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor
until the evening." If only he could go forth! If only he could forget
the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering
maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies,
sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.
During this time Charmian was beginning to "put out feelers." Her work
for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington
Square, was to be social. Women can do very much in the social way. And
she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in
it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words
"worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the
man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he
was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so
"atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were
destined to conquer.
All the "set" had come to call in Kensington Square. Most of them were
surprised at the match. They recognized the worldly instinct in Charmian,
which many of them shared, and could not quite understand why she had
chosen Claude Heath as her husband. They had not heard much of him. He
never went anywhere, was personally unknown to them. It seemed rather
odd. They had scarcely thought Charmian Mansfield would make that kind
of marriage. Of course he was a thorough gentleman, and a man with
pleasant, even swiftly attractive manners. But still--! The general
verdict was that Charmian must have fallen violently in love with the
man.
She felt the feelings of the "set." And she felt that she must justify
her choice as soon as possible. To the set Claude Heath was simply a
nobody. Charmian meant to turn him into a somebody.
This turning of Claude into a somebody was to be the first really
important step in her campaign on his behalf. It must be done subtly,
delicately, but it must be done swiftly. She was secretly impatient to
justify her choice.
She had at first relied on Max Elliot to help her. He was an
enthusiastic man and had influence. Unluckily she soon found that for
the moment he was so busy adoring Jacques Sennier that he had no time to
beat the big drum for another. Sennier had carried him off his feet, and
Madame Sennier had "got hold of him." The last phrase was Charmian's. It
was speedily evident to her that, womanlike, the Frenchwoman was not
satisfied with the fact of her husband's immense success. She was
determined that no rival should spring up to divide adorers into camps.
No doubt she argued that there is in the musical world only a limited
number of discriminating enthusiasts, capable of forming and fostering
public opinion, of "giving a lead" to the critics, and through them to
the world. She wanted them all for her husband. And their allegiance
must be undivided. Although she was in New York, she had Max Elliot "in
her pocket" in London. It was a feat which won Charmian's respect, but
which irritated her extremely. Max Elliot was charming, of course, when
she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was
concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment
want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a
pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had
taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of
friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various
admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, who really was, as Paul Lane had
said, an extraordinary woman, had a keen eye to the main chance. She
acted as a sort of agent to her husband, and was reported on all hands
to be capable of driving a very hard bargain. She and Max Elliot were
perpetually cabling to each other across the Atlantic, and Max was
seriously thinking of imitating Margot Drake and "running over" to New
York on the _Lusitania_. Only his business in London detained him. He
spoke of Sennier invariably as "Jacques," of Madame Sennier as
"Henriette." Living English composers scarcely existed any more in his
sight. France was the country of music. Only from France could one
expect anything of real value to the truly cultured.
Charmian began to hate this absurd entente cordiale.
Another person on whom she had secretly set high hopes was Adelaide
Shiffney. It was for this reason that she had been irritated at Mrs.
Shiffney's defection on the night of the house-warming. Now that she was
married to a composer Charmian understood the full value of Mrs.
Shiffney's influence in the fashionable world. She must get Adelaide on
their side. But here again Sennier stood in her path. Mrs. Shiffney was,
musically speaking of course, in love with Jacques Sennier. Since Wagner
there had been nobody to play upon feminine nerves as the little
Frenchman played, to take women "out of themselves." As a well-known
society woman said, with almost pathetic frankness, "When one hears
Sennier's music one wants to hold hands with somebody." Apparently Mrs.
Shiffney wanted to hold hands with the composer himself. She had "no
use" at the moment for anyone else, and had already arranged to take the
Senniers on a yachting cruise after the London season, beginning with
Cowes.
The "feelers" which Charmian put out found the atmosphere rather chilly.
But she remembered what battles with the world most of its great men
have had to fight, how many wives of great men have had to keep the
flame alive in gross darkness. She was not daunted. But she presently
began to feel that, without being frank with Claude, she must try to get
a certain amount of active help from him. She had intended by judicious
talk to create the impression that Claude was an extraordinary man, on
the way to accomplish great things. She believed this thoroughly
herself. But she now realized that, owing to the absurd Sennier "boom,"
unless she could get Claude to show publicly something of his talent
nobody would pay any attention to what she said.
"What is he doing?" people asked, when she spoke about his long hours of
work, about the precautions she had to take lest he should be disturbed.
She answered evasively. The truth was that she did not know what Claude
was doing. What he had done, or some of it, she did know. She had heard
his Te Deum, and some of his strange settings of words from the
scriptures. But her clever worldly instinct told her that this was not
the time when her set would be likely to appreciate things of that kind.
The whole trend of the taste she cared about was setting in the
direction of opera. And whenever she tried to find out from Claude what
he was composing in Kensington Square she was met with evasive answers.
One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park
Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise,
without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out
definitely what sort of composition he was working on at the present
moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame
Sennier. Margot had returned from America more enthusiastic, more
_engouee_ than ever.
She had been as straw to the flame of American enthusiasm. All her
individuality seemed to have been burnt out of her. She was at present
only a sort of receptacle for Sennier-mania. In dress, hair, manner, and
even gesture, she strove to reproduce Madame Sennier. For one of the
most curious features of Sennier's vogue was the worship accorded by
women as well as by men to his dominating wife. They talked and thought
almost as much about her as they did about him. And though his was the
might of genius, hers seemed to be the might of personality. The
perpetual chanting of the Frenchwoman's praises had "got upon"
Charmian's nerves. She felt this afternoon as if she could not bear it
much longer, unless some outlet was provided for her secret desires. And
she arrived at Kensington Square in a condition of suppressed nervous
excitement.
She paid the driver of the taxi-cab and rang the bell. She had forgotten
to take her key. Alice answered the door.
"Is Mr. Heath in?" asked Charmian.
"He's been playing golf, ma'am. But he's just come in," answered Alice,
a plump, soft-looking girl, with rather sulky blue eyes.
"Oh, of course! It's Saturday."
On Saturday Claude generally took a half-holiday, and went down to
Richmond to play golf with a friend of his who lived there, an old
Cornish chum called Tregorwan.
"Where is Mr. Heath?" continued Charmian, standing in the little hall.
"Having his tea in the drawing-room, ma'am."
"Oh!"
She took off her fur coat and went quickly upstairs. She did not care
about golf, and to-day the mere sound of the name irritated her.
Englishmen were always playing golf, she said to herself. Jacques
Sennier did not waste his time on such things, she was sure. Then she
remembered for how many hours every day Claude was shut up in his little
room, how he always went there immediately after breakfast. And she
realized the injustice of her dawning anger, and also her nervous state,
and resolved to be very gentle and calm with Claude.
It was a cold day at the end of March. She found him sitting near the
wood fire in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with thick, heavily
nailed boots, covered with dried mud, on his feet, and thick brown and
red stockings on his legs. It was almost impossible to believe he was a
musician. His hair had been freshly cut, but he had not "watered" it.
Since his marriage Charmian had never allowed him to do that. He jumped
up when he saw his wife. Intimacy never made Claude relax in courtesy.
"I'm having tea very late," he said. "But I've only just got in."
"I know. Sit down and go on, dear old boy. I'll come and sit with you.
Don't you want more light?"
"I like the firelight."
He sat down again and lifted the teapot.
"I shall spoil my dinner. But never mind."
"You remember we're dining with Madre!"
"Oh--to be sure!"
"But not till half-past eight."
She sat down with her back to the drawn window curtains at right angles
to Claude. Alice had "shut up" early to make the drawing-room look cozy
for Claude. The firelight played about the room, illuminating now one
thing, now another, making Claude's face and head, sometimes his musical
hands look Rembrandtesque, powerful, imaginative, even mysterious. Now
that Charmian had sat down she lost her impression of the eternal
golfer, received another impression which spurred her imagination.
"I've been at the Drakes," she began. "Only a very few to welcome Margot
back from New York."
"Did she enjoy her visit?"
"Immensely. She's--as she calls it--tickled to death with the Americans
in their own country. She meant to stay only one night, but she was
there three weeks. It seems all New York has gone mad over Jacques
Sennier."
"I'm glad they see how really fine his opera is," Claude said,
seriously, even earnestly.
"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most
enthusiastic nation in the world."
"If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think."
How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy
in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier!
She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said:
"How is the work getting on?"
There was a slight pause. Then Claude said:
"The work?"
"Yes, yours."
She hesitated. There was something in her husband's personality that
sometimes lay upon her like an embargo. She was conscious of this
embargo now. But her nervous irritation made her determined to defy it.
"Claudie," she went on, "you don't know, you can't know, how much I care
for your work. It's part of you. It is you. You promised me once you
would let me be in the secret. Don't you remember?"
"Did I? When?"
"The day after our party when you were going to begin work again. And
now it's nearly two months."
She stopped. He was silent. A flame burst out of a log in the grate and
lit up strongly one half of his face. She thought it looked stern,
almost fierce, and very foreign. Many Cornish people have Spanish blood
in them, she remembered. That foreign look made her feel for a moment
almost as if she were sitting with a stranger.
"Nearly two months," she repeated in a more tentative voice.
"Is it?"
"Yes. Don't you think I've been very patient?"
"But, surely--surely--why should you want to know?"
"I do want. Your work is your life. I want it to be mine, too."
"Oh, it could never be that--the work of another."
"I want to identify myself with you."
There was another silence. And this time it was a long one. At last
Claude moved, turned round to face Charmian fully, and said, with the
voice of one making a strong, almost a desperate effort:
"You wish to know what I've been working on during these weeks when I've
been in my room?"
"Yes."
"I haven't been working on anything."
"What?"
"I haven't been working at all."
"Not working!"
"No."
"But--you must--but we were all so quiet! I told Alice--"
"I never asked you to."
"No, but of course--but what have you been doing up there?"
"Reading Carlyle's _French Revolution_ most of the time."
"Carlyle! You've been reading Carlyle!"
In her voice there was a sound of outrage. Claude got up and stood by
the fire.
"It isn't my fault," he said. "The truth is I can't work in that room. I
can't work in this house."
"But it's our home."
"I know, but I can't work in it. Perhaps it's because of the maids,
knowing they're creeping about, wondering--I don't know what it is. I've
tried, but I can't do anything."
"But--how dreadful! Nearly two months wasted!"
He felt that she was condemning him, and a secret anger surged through
him. His reserve, too, was suffering torment.
"I'm sorry, Charmian. But I couldn't help it."
"But then, why did you go up and shut yourself in day after day?"
"I hoped to be able to do something."
"But----"
"And I saw you expected me to go."
The truth was out. Claude felt, as he spoke it, as if he were tearing
off clothes. How he loathed that weakness of his, which manifested
itself in the sometimes almost uncontrollable instinct to give, or to
try to give, others what they expected of him.
"Expected you! But naturally--"
"Yes, I know. Well, that's how it is! I can't work in this house."
He spoke almost roughly now.
"I don't want to assume any absurd artistic pose," he continued. "I hate
the affectations sometimes supposed to belong to my profession. But it's
no use pretending about a thing of this kind. There are some places,
some atmospheres, if you like to use the word generally used, that help
anyone who tries to create, and some that hinder. It's not only a matter
of place, I suppose, but of people. This house is too small, or
something. There are too many people in it. I feel that they are all
bothering and wondering about me, treading softly for me." He threw out
his hands. "I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm paralyzed here. I
suppose you think I'm half mad."
To his great surprise, she answered, in quite a different voice from the
voice which had suggested outrage:
"No, no; great artists are always like that. They are always
extraordinary."
There was a mysterious pleasure, almost gratification, in her voice.
"You would be like that. I should have known."
"Oh, as to that--"
"I understand, Claudie. You needn't say any more."
Claude turned rather brusquely round to face the fire. As he said
nothing, Charmian continued:
"What is to be done now? We have taken this house--"
He wheeled round.
"Of course we shall stay in this house. It suits us admirably. Besides,
to move simply because--"
"Your work comes before all."
He compressed his lips. He began to hate his own talent.
"I think the best thing to do," he said, "would be for me to look for a
studio somewhere. I could easily find one, put a piano and a few chairs
in, and go there every day to work. Lots of men do that sort of thing.
It's like going to an office."
"Capital!" she said. "Then you'll be quite isolated, and you'll get on
ever so fast. Won't you?"
"I think probably I could work."
"And you will. Before we married you worked so hard. I want"--she got
up, came to him, and put her hand in his--"I want to feel that marriage
has helped you, not hindered you, in your career. I want to feel that I
urge you on, don't hold you back."
Claude longed to tell her to leave him alone. But he thought of coming
isolation in the studio, and refrained. Bending down, he kissed her.
"It will be all right," he said, "when I've got a place where I can be
quite alone for some hours each day."