Charmian and her husband went first to the Hotel St. George at Mustapha
Superieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there
for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a
hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up
the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in
Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money
to throw away.
During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of
work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in
upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That
spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to
his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which,
carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life
running its course in the darkness of his soul.
In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose.
And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The
phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted
her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England
or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their
time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the
production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly
with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of
"steeping" her husband.
She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had
sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be
worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She
honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she
was so keenly, so incessantly alive to the reason of their coming to
Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their
coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was
sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to
his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to
Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his
precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.
But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now.
You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first
she began to assert herself in your art life."
And he kept silence.
Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's
love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish
from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.
She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too
concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as
she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was
it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another--a not
completely hidden reason?
Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the
garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in
England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a
Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian,
and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the
edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.
And presently she said:
"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."
Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the
curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned
on the seat and looked at her.
"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.
Something in his eyes almost startled her.
"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."
He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an
expression which made her feel almost uneasy.
"Something here"--she almost faltered, called on her will, and
continued--"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here
some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.
She thought his voice sounded insincere.
"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here
for our honeymoon."
"I thought of it. I wanted to."
"Then why didn't you?"
"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."
"And now the right time has come?"
"Yes, now it has come."
She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That
curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had
troubled her spirit.
The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down
the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red
roses in his earthy hand.
He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the
garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw
him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was
hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener
spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and
blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he
seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with
the old man and began to talk with him.
It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.
That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:
"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."
"Old Robert!"
"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things
about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests
me--us--is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year,
Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but in good repair, pure Arab in style, so
he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But
there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here
in the best part of Mustapha Inferieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"
"Isn't it rather late?"
"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.
"Yes, let us go to-morrow."
Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude,
and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the
high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the
hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one
could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de
Manoeuvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of
the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old
Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the
white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two
tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the
roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden
door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was
roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small
stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the
bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The
house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles,
confronted them, holding its many secrets.
"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.
"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.
"I know it will do."
She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its
mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the
faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with
multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the
low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery
running right round it from which the few small bedrooms opened by low
black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a
background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables
suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness
and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back
into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household,
when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned
him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an
addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had
been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which
formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over
the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas.
Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles
purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored
distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which
opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than
the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate
lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and
a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow
beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the
time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green
curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the
tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen
dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red
of the crowding houses of the town.
It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than
the studio in Renwick Place.
"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.
The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin
containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little
dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And
Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of
geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall,
and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.
Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an
astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande
Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the
house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a
soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery
at Staoueli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi,
and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently
fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief
which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little
woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets,
charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on
her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the
courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had
first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had
always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to
the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone.
She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed
in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.
Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the
future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had
had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to
whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes,
tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his
orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him.
It was her role to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging.
But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with
its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and
because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities,
passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to
Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied.
Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in a _milieu_
where they had no friends, no acquaintances even, except two or three
casually met in the Hotel St. George, and the British Consul-General and
his wife, who had been to call on them.
Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them
during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat."
She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab
house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had
carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places
for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with
Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost
overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a
great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands
her true feeling abruptly.
In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a
full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests,
occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to
look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now
confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear.
He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the
real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of
such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so,
for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his
life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going
to do?
Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for
popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they
wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But
now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of
him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa
he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of
every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather
strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the
contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who
would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the
force which he had often felt in London, a force which had often
secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without
tonic properties.
With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was
ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed
task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He
laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of
inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him
to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of
work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that
something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square,
when he read Carlyle's _French Revolution_ and sometimes felt criminal.
There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not
Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were
broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he
could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he
began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do
a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel
inclined to or not."
Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in,
more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of
living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete
novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his
brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual
activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to
give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera
was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!
Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan
Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on
theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant
inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply
because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she
had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going"
to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy
and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the
opportunity presented itself.
Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater,
among them _The Astral Plane_, _Reincarnation_, _Death--and After?_ and
_The Seven Principles of Man_. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet,
Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the
manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no
propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If
Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The
letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When
Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task
which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for
Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for
herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather
vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and
patience. Just now--indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would
need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long
preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's
with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time
she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up
so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what
Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing _Le
Paradis Terrestre_, how long he had taken in the creation of that
stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.
She had begun with _The Seven Principles of Man_. The short preface had
attracted her. "Life easier to bear--death easier to face." If theosophy
helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely
inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death.
But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden
in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when
she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The
crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed
attention of the world--they were all so far away.
Resolutely she read _The Seven Principles of Man_.
Then she dipped into _Reincarnation_ and _Death--and After?_
Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she
received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of
illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She
read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone
with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote
in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to
renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid
traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and
unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were
she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize
thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard
her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint--as, say,
Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She
certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of
nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other
hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in
her life.
Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she
began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.
One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano
above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed
for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window,
leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation
dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of
permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was
playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would
be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She
could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without
them.
Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier,
the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his
family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but
Claude had never seen him, though he had corresponded with him, and
sent him a cheque of L100 for his work.
Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with
a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was
handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened,
and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache
curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely
covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.
Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and
cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest
son, but who was now resigned to the latter's _etranges folies_. The
fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and
then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds
down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes
of him.
When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian
received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a
denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of
ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with
the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes
with him, and preparing him for Claude.
This man must "fire" Claude.
Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to
the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible
mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance
upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of
good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he
changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success
for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality,
he exclaimed:
"_Eh bien_, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"
Charmian looked at him and hesitated.
"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and
suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle, morbid perhaps?
Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful
imaginings?"
Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled
at the upward-pointing ends.
"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My
libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to
music must have lived also to do it justice."
There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class,
in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.
Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly
that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized
the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for
him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this
short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help
Claude to bridge that gulf.
"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.