At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square
was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and
Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a
couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended
to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the
Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur, and from there to prosecute
their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle
down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music,
containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's
hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying
on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than
England's.
This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.
The young American singer, Alston Lake, had been true to his word.
During the past London season he had sung Claude's _Wild Heart of Youth_
everywhere. And people, the right people, had liked it. Swiftly composed
in an hour of enthusiasm it was really a beautiful and original song. It
was a small thing, but it was a good thing. And it was presented to the
public by a new and enthusiastic man who at once made his mark both as a
singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a
composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some
attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort
of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously
fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and
inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of
drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed
floating on a pool that had depths, responded to the applause, to the
congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to
concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want
of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to
his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed
too much--that is his surface enjoyed too much--the pleasure it gave,
the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the
congratulations of easily touched women.
Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure
in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see
that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband
made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were
working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She
blossomed with expectation.
Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to
lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new
surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.
His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had
sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and
he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the
opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the
Metropolitan.
"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!"
Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I
wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's
bullier."
"What's that?"
"The devil's own ambition."
Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will
of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He
had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it.
His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly
vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had rebelled, then
had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving
his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for
business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he
hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly
threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or
nothing. The Wall Street magnate stopped all supplies. Then Crayford
took Alston up. For three years Alston had lived on the impresario's
charity in Paris. Was it matter for wonder if he set his teeth and
resolved to win out? He had in him the grit of young America, that
intensity of life which sweeps through veins like a tide.
"Father's going to see presently," he often said to himself. "He's just
got to, and that's all there is to it."
This young man was almost as a weapon in Charmian's hand.
He was charming, and specially charming in his enthusiasm. He had the
American readiness to meet others half way, the American lack of
shyness. Despite the iron of his will, the fierceness of his young
determination, he was often naive almost as a schoolboy. The evil of
Paris had swirled about him and had left him unstained by its blackness.
He was no fool. He was certainly not ignorant of life. But he preserved
intact a delightful freshness that often seemed to partake of innocence.
And he worked, as he expressed it, "like the devil."
Charmian, genuinely liking him, but also seeing his possibilities as a
lever, or weapon, was delightful to him. Claude also took to him at
once. The song seemed to link them all together happily. Very soon
Alston was almost as one of the Heath family. He came perpetually to the
studio to "try things over." He brought various American friends there.
He ate improvised meals there at odd times, Charmian acting as cook. He
had even slept there more than once, when they had been making, music
very late. And Charmian had had a bed put on the platform behind the
screen, and called it "the Prophet's chamber."
This young and determined enthusiast had a power of flooding others
with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made
his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant to "produce the
goods."
Never before had Claude come closely in contact with the vigor, with the
sharply cut ideals, of the new world. He began to see many things in a
new way, to see some things which he had never perceived before. Among
them he saw the fine side of ambition. He respected Alston's
determination to win out, to justify his conduct in his father's eyes,
and pay back to Mr. Crayford with interest all he had received from that
astute, yet not unimaginative, man. He loved the lad for his eagerness.
When Alston came to Renwick Place a wind from the true Bohemia seemed to
blow through the studio, and the day seemed young and golden.
Yet Alston, quite ignorantly, did harm to Claude. For he helped to win
Claude away from his genuine, his inner self, to draw him into the path
which he had always instinctively avoided until his marriage with
Charmian.
Although unspoiled, Alston Lake had not been unaffected by Paris, which
had done little harm to his morals, but which had decidedly influenced
his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul,
but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very
un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the
complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the
obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love
of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as
he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an
egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical
development was likely to take place in the direction of opera.
"Opera's going to be the big proposition!" was his art cry. There was no
doubt of Jacob Crayford's influence upon him.
He was the first person who turned Claude's mind seriously toward opera,
and therefore eventually toward a villa in Algeria.
Having launched the song with success, Alston Lake naturally wished to
hear more of Claude's music. Claude played to him a great deal of it. He
was interested in it, admired it. But--and here his wholly unconscious
egoism came into play--he did not quite "believe in it." And his lack of
belief probably emanated from the fact that Claude's settings of words
from the Bible were not well suited to his own temperament, talent, or
training. Being very frank, and already devoted to Claude, he said
straight out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing
her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved
and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come
out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about
art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which
he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to
compose with a view to pleasing the public taste; by which they both
meant the taste of the cultivated public which was now becoming widely
diffused, and which had acquired power. He could not say that his talent
was one which had no appeal to the world, that he was incapable of
pleasing. One song was nothing. So he declared. Charmian and Alston Lake
in their enthusiasm elevated it into a great indication, lifted it up
like a lamp till it seemed to shed rays of light on the way in which
they urged Claude to walk.
He had long abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting
of the _Belle Dame Sans Merci_ for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But
before it was finished--and during the season his time for work was
limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and
Alston Lake involved him--an event took place which had led directly to
the packing of those boxes which now stood ready for a journey. Jacob
Crayford reappeared in London after putting Europe through his sieve.
And Claude was introduced to him by Alston Lake, who insisted on his
patron hearing Claude's song.
Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big
proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness
for Lake, and Lake's boyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some
attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time.
But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently
this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet.
But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was
something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was
Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her
"darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her
husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you
wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the
little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he
hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about
running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting."
"My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed
Charmian demurely.
From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on
an opera.
Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had
come to London again in June. The _Paradis Terrestre_ had been revived
at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before.
"Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night
in his studio.
Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and
had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on
their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of
his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped
for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking
lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening.
"I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said.
"Why not?"
"I have no bent toward the theater."
Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-shaved, with gray
eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and
rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box,
and glanced at Charmian.
"What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone
voice.
Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs.
Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes.
"Well--" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know--now."
"Now, old chap?"
"I mean I hardly know."
"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston
triumphantly.
Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark
hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more
definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She
glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening
she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost
miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly
dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said
nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.
"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and
up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."
"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting
managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that
fires him."
"That's just what I think," said Charmian.
Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music
and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly
always in agreement.
"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the
big lad--he looked little more than a lad--good-naturedly.
"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was
Crayford."
He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.
"Crayford's a marvellous man. He'll lick the Metropolitan crowd yet.
He's going to make me."
"You mean you're going to make yourself?" interrupted Claude.
"Takes two to do it!"
Again he looked over to Charmian.
"Without Crayford I should never have believed I could be a big opera
singer. As it is, I mean to be. And, what is more, I know I shall be.
Now, Claude, old fellow, don't get on your hind legs, but just listen to
me. Every man needs help when he's a kid, needs somebody who
knows--_knows_, mind you--to put him in the right way. What is wanted
nowadays is operatic stuff, first-rate operatic stuff. Now, look here,
I'm going to speak out straight, and that's all there is to it. I wanted
Crayford to hear your big things"--Claude shifted in his chair,
stretched out his legs and drew them up--"I told him about them and how
strong they were. 'What subjects does he treat?' he said. I told him. At
least, I began to tell him. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, stopping me on the
nail--but you know how busy he is. He can't waste time. And he's out for
the goods, you know--'Oh, Lord!' he said. 'Don't bother me with the
Bible. The time for oratorio has gone to join Holy Moses!' I tried to
explain that your stuff was no more like old-fashioned oratorio than
Chicago is like Stratford-on-Avon, but he wouldn't listen. All he said
was, 'Gone to join Holy Moses, my boy! Tell that chap Heath to bring me
a good opera and I'll make him more famous than Sennier. For I know how
to run him, or any man that can produce the goods, twice as well as
Sennier's run.' There, old chap! I've given it you straight. Look what a
success we've had with the song!"
"And _I_ found him that!" Charmian could not help saying quickly.
"Find him a first-rate libretto, Mrs. Charmian! I'll tell you what, I
know a lot of fellows in Paris who write. Suppose you and I run over to
Paris--"
"Would you let me, Claudie?" she interrupted.
"Oh!" he said, laughing, but without much mirth. "Do whatever you like,
my children. You make me feel as if I know nothing about myself, nothing
at all."
"Weren't you one of the best orchestral pupils at the Royal College?"
said Alston. "Didn't you win----?"
"Go--go to Paris and bring me back a libretto!" he exclaimed, assuming a
mock despair.
He did not reckon with Charmian's determination. He had taken it all as
a kind of joke. But when, at the end of the season, he suggested a visit
to Cornwall to see his people, Charmian said:
"You go! And I'll take Susan Fleet as a chaperon and run over to Paris
with Alston Lake."
"What--to find the libretto? But there's no one in Paris in August."
"Leave that to us," she answered with decision.
Claude still felt as if the whole thing were a sort of joke. But he let
his wife go. And she came back with a very clever and powerful libretto,
written by a young Algerian who knew Arab life well, and who had served
for a time with the Foreign Legion. Claude read it carefully, then
studied it minutely. The story interested him. The plot was strong.
There were wonderful opportunities for striking scenic effects. But the
whole thing was entirely "out of his line." And he told Charmian and
Lake so.
"It would need to be as Oriental in the score as _Louise_ is French," he
said. "And what do I know----"
"Go and get it!" interrupted Lake. "Nothing ties you to London. Spend a
couple of years over it, if you like. It would be worth it. And Crayford
says there's going to be a regular 'boom' in Eastern things in a year or
two."
"Now how can he possibly know that?" said Claude.
"My boy, he does know it. Crayford knows everything. He looks ahead, by
Jove! Fools don't know what the people want. Clever men do know what
they want. And Crayfords know what they're going to want."
And now the Heath's boxes were actually packed, and the great case of
scores stood in the hall in Berkeley Square.
As Claude looked at it he felt like one who had burnt his boats.
Ever since he had decided that he would "have a try at opera," as Alston
Lake expressed it, he had been studying orchestration assiduously in
London with a brilliant master. For nearly three months he had given all
his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already
been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the
most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless
energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him
was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room,
with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had
been sent on by the strange force which lives and perpetually renews
itself in a man's own genius, when he is at the work he was sent into
the world to do. Now he had scourged himself on by a self-consciously
exercised force of will. He had set his teeth. He had called upon all
the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man
among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be
gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object
now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object
when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any
object in working--in giving up. But, if he had, it was surely the thing
itself. He had desired to create a certain thing. Once the thing was
created he had passed on to something else.
Sometimes now he looked back on that life of his, and it seemed very
strange, very far away. A sort of halo of faint and caressing light
surrounded it; but it seemed a thing rather vague, almost a thing of
dreams. The life he was entering now was not vague, nor dreamlike, but
solid, firmly planted, rooted in intention. He read the label attached
to the case of scores: "Claude Heath, passenger to Algiers, via
Marseilles." And he could scarcely believe he was really going.
As he looked up from the label he saw the post lying on the hall-table.
Two letters for him, and--ah, some more cuttings from Romeike and
Curtice. He was quite accustomed to getting those now. "That dreadful
Miss Gretch" had infected others with her disease of comment, and his
name was fairly often in the papers.
"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Heath are about to leave their charming and
artistic house in Kensington and to take up their residence near
Algiers. It is rumored that there is an interesting reason, not wholly
unconnected with things operatic, for their departure, etc."
Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was
wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall.
Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had
become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted
to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his
"interests." And yet--and yet--
Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become
accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very
grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she--was
she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants
that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in
Algiers when they were quite alone together?
He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.
He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.
She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her
eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.
As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought
she looked very sad.
"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.
"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."
"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"
He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for
a moment.
"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.
Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him.
He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.
"If you want me."
"If!"
"I'm not quite sure that you will."
Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out
into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which
till that moment he had scarcely been aware?
"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I
know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."
"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."
"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"
"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"
Claude sighed.
"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed
to be within reach of you."
"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily
never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are
withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."
"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"
"Do you?"
He moved rather uneasily.
"I--I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still--still we
sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not
natural to us."
"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from
unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen
our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means
of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to
us."
"What means?"
"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to
us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves, if we can incorporate
it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it
continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward.
I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I
expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"
Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes
sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.
"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"
"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."
"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."
She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of
Romeike and Curtice.
"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear,
slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A
year--two years, perhaps--out of the world! It will be a new experience
for me, won't it, Madretta?"
"Quite new."
The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.
"And I shall see the island with you."
"The island?" he said.
"Don't you remember--the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined
here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in
an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about
the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it.
But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and
sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again,
better than the truth, because _I_ was added to them. Don't you
remember, Claudie?"
"Yes, now I remember."
"You are going to do that where I could not do it."
Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from
her.