In the evening of the following day Charmian and Susan Fleet had just
sat down to dinner, and Pierre was about to lift the lid off the soup
tureen, when there was a ring at the front door bell.
"What can that be?" said Charmian.
She looked at Susan.
"Susan, I feel as if it were somebody, or something important."
Pierre raised the lid with a pathetic gesture, and went out carrying it
high in his left hand.
"I wonder what it is?" said Charmian.
All day they had not seen Mrs. Shiffney or her party. They had passed
the hours alone in the garden, talking, working, reading, but chiefly
discussing Charmian's affairs. And calm had flowed upon Charmian, had
enfolded her almost against her will. At the end of the day she had
said:
"Susan, you do me more good than anyone I know. I don't understand how
it is, but you seem to purify me almost, as a breeze from the sea--when
it's calm--purifies a room if you open the window to it."
But now, as she waited for Pierre's return, she felt strung up and
excited.
"If it should be Claude come back!" she said.
"Would he ring?" asked Susan.
"No. But he might!"
At this moment a loud murmur of talk was audible in the hall, and then a
voice exclaiming:
"_Ca ne fait rien! Ca ne fait rien! Laissez moi passer, mon bon!_"
"Surely it's Monsieur Sennier!" exclaimed Charmian.
As she spoke, the door opened and the composer entered, pushing past
Pierre, whose thin face wore an outraged look.
"_Me voici!_" he exclaimed. "Deserted, abandoned, I come to you. How
can I eat alone in a hotel? It is impossible! I tried. I sat down. They
brought me caviare, _potage_. I looked, raised my fork, my spoon.
Impossible! Will you save me from myself? See, I am in my smoking! I
shall not disgrace you."
"Of course! Pierre, please lay another place. But who has abandoned
you?"
"Everyone--Henriette, Adelaide, even the faithful Max. They would have
taken me, but I refused to go."
"Where to?"
"Batna, Biskra, _que sais-je_? Adelaide is restless as an enraged cat!"
He sat down, and began greedily to eat his soup.
"Ah, this is good! Your cook is to be loved. For once--may I?"
Glancing up whimsically, almost like a child, he lifted his napkin
toward his collar.
"I may! Madame, you are an angel. You are a flock of angels. Why, I said
to them, should I leave this beautiful city to throw myself into the
arms of a mad librettist, who desires my blood simply because he cannot
write? Must genius die because an idiot has practised on bottles with a
revolver? It shall not be!"
"Do you mean Monsieur Gillier? Then they are going to Constantine!" said
Charmian sharply.
"To Constantine, Tunis, Batna, Biskra, the Sahara--_que sais-je_?
Adelaide is like a cat enraged! She cannot rest! And she has seduced my
Henriette."
He seemed perfectly contented, ate an excellent dinner, stayed till very
late in the night, talked, joked, and finally, sitting down at the
piano, played and sang. He was by turns a farceur, a wit, a man of
emotion, a man with a touch of genius. And in everything he said and did
he was almost preposterously unreserved. He seemed to be child, monkey
and artist in combination. It was inconceivable that he could ever feel
embarrassed or self-conscious.
At first, after his unexpected entry, Charmian had been almost painfully
preoccupied. Sennier, without apparently noticing this, broke her
preoccupation down. He was an egoist, but a singularly amusing and even
attractive one, throwing open every door, and begging you to admire and
delight in every room. Charmian began to study him, this man of a great
success. How different he was from Claude. Now that she was with Sennier
she was more sharply aware of Claude's reserve than she had ever been
before, of a certain rigidity which underlay all the apparent social
readiness.
When Sennier sang, in a voice that scarcely existed but that charmed,
she was really entranced. When he played after midnight she was excited,
intensely excited.
It was past one o'clock when he left reluctantly, promising to return on
the morrow, to take all his meals at Djenan-el-Maqui, to live there,
except for the very few hours claimed by sleep, till the "cat enraged"
and his wife returned. Charmian helped him to put on his coat. He
resigned himself to her hands like a child. Standing quite still, he
permitted her to button the coat. He left, singing an air from an opera
he was composing, arm in arm with Pierre, who was to escort him to his
hotel.
"I dare not go alone!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid of the Arabs! The
Arabs are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"
When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn,
Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away
because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an
instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was
coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be
gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier
with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when
she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired
Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and
apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness
returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could
either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or
interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if
they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And
she felt as if she had been like an angry child when she had talked of
her husband to Madame Sennier. Women--clever, influential women--can do
much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.
Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But,
blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she
resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and
wished her "Good-night."
"I know I shan't sleep," she said.
"Why not?"
"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."
"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."
Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment
of resolving quietly on anything.
She lay awake nearly all night.
Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the
night-train travelling to Constantine.
It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless
abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the
garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on
to the big terrace, and had said:
"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away
to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."
Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind
had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention
to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand Gillier.
Elliot had a very kind heart, and by its light he sometimes read clearly
a human prose that did not please him. Now, as he lay in his narrow
berth in the _wagon-lit_ jolting toward Constantine, he read some of
Adelaide Shiffney's prose. Faintly, for the train was noisy, he heard
voices in the next compartment, where Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier
were talking in their berths. Mrs. Shiffney was in the top berth. That
fact gave the measure of Madame Sennier's iron will.
"You really believe it?" cried Madame Sennier.
"How is one to know? But Crayford is moving Heaven and earth to find a
genius. He may have his eye on Claude Heath. He believes in _les
jeunes_."
"Jacques is forty."
"If one has arrived it doesn't matter much what age one is."
"You don't think Crayford can have given this man a secret commission to
compose an opera?"
"Oh, no. Why should he? Besides, if he had, she would have let it out.
She could never have kept such a thing to herself."
"Max thought his music wonderful, didn't he?"
"Yes, but it was all sacred. Te Deums, and things of that sort that
nobody on earth would ever listen to."
"I should like to see the libretto."
"What? I can't hear. I'm right up against the roof, and the noise is
dreadful."
"I say, I should like to see the libretto!" almost screamed Madame
Sennier.
"Probably it's one that Jacques refused."
"No, it can't be."
"What?"
"No, it can't be. He never saw a libretto that was Algerian. And this
one evidently is. I wonder if it's a good one."
"Make him show it to you."
"Gillier! He wouldn't. He hates us both."
"Not Gillier, Claude Heath."
"What?"
Mrs. Shiffney leaned desperately out over the side of her narrow berth.
"Claude Heath--or I'll make him."
"I never cared very much for the one Jacques is setting for the
Metropolitan. But it was the best sent in. I chose it. I read nearly a
hundred. It would be just like Gillier to write something really fine,
and then not to let us see it. I always knew he was clever and might
succeed some day."
"I'll get hold of it for you."
"What?"
"I'll get hold of it for you from Heath. When will Jacques be ready, do
you think?"
"Oh, not for ages. He works slowly, and I never interfere with him.
Nobody but a fool would interfere with the method of a man of genius."
"Do you think Charmian Heath is a fool?"
At this moment the train suddenly slackened, and Mrs. Shiffney and
Madame Sennier, leaning down and up, exchanged sibilant and almost
simultaneous hushes.
Max Elliot heard them quite distinctly. They were the only part of the
conversation which reached him.
He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to
their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that
these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were
driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something
secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided
to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly
disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of
other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between
Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame.
Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd,
he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish
that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path
clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of
every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man.
Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the
nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very
little about her.
She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's
family in Marseilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness
that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out.
Afterward she had remained in Marseilles, but not as a governess.
Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been
very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had
throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some
women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and
underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind.
She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the
midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When
she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected
with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable
to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques
was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped
to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was
capable of betraying everyone for Jacques.
Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He
was the only person she trusted--for a week. She meant to be back at
Mustapha within a week.
After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more.
"It makes my throat ache shouting up against the roof," said Mrs.
Shiffney.
She had, how or why she scarcely knew, come to occupy an upper berth for
the first time in her life. She resented this. And she resented it still
more when Madame Sennier replied:
"I wanted you to choose the lower bed, but I thought you preferred being
where you are."
Mrs. Shiffney made no reply, but turned carefully over till she was
looking at the wall.
"Why do I do things for this woman?" was her thought. She had told
herself more than once that she was travelling to Constantine for
Henriette. Apparently she was actually beginning to believe her own
statement. She closed her eyes, opened them again, looked at the
ceiling, which almost touched her nose, and at the wall, which her nose
almost touched.
"Why does a woman ever do anything for another woman?" she asked
herself, amplifying her first thought.
Adelaide Shiffney in an upper berth! It was the incredible
accomplished!