Two days later Mrs. Shiffney slipped Gillier's libretto surreptitiously
into Claude's hand.
"It's splendid!" she almost whispered. "With such a libretto you can't
fail."
They were in the deserted salon of the hotel, among armchairs, albums
and old French picture-papers. Mrs. Shiffney looked toward the door.
"Don't let anyone know I've read it--especially Henriette. She's a dear
and a great friend of mine, but, all the same, she'd be horribly
jealous. There's only one thing about the libretto that frightens me."
"What is it? Do tell me!"
"Having so many Easterns in it. If by any chance you should ever want to
produce your opera--" She hesitated, with her eyes fixed upon him. "In
America, I fancy--no, I think I'm being absurd."
"But what do you mean? Do tell me! Not that there's the slightest chance
yet of my opera ever being done anywhere."
"Well, it's only that Americans do so hate what they call color."
"Oh, but that is only in negroes!"
"Is it? Then I'm talking nonsense! I'm so glad! Not a word to Henriette!
Hush! Here she is!"
At that moment the door opened and the white face of Madame Sennier
looked in.
"What are you two doing here? Where is Max?"
"Gone to arrange about the sleeping-car."
Claude slipped the libretto into the pocket of his jacket. In London he
had been rather inclined to like Madame Sennier. In Constantine he felt
ill at ease with her. He detected the secret hostility which she
scarcely troubled to conceal, though she covered it with an air of
careless indifference. Now and then a corner of the covering slipped
down, leaving a surface exposed, which, to Claude, seemed ugly. To-day
at this moment she seemed unable to mask entirely some angry feeling
which possessed her. How different she was from Mrs. Shiffney! Claude
had enjoyed Mrs. Shiffney's visit. She had rescued him from his solitude
with Gillier--a solitude which he had endured for the sake of the opera,
but which had been odious to him. She had warmed him by her apparent
enthusiasm, by her sympathy. He had been obliged to acknowledge that she
was very forgiving. He had certainly not been "nice" to her in London.
Her simplicity in telling him she had felt his conduct, her sweetness in
being so ready to forget it, to enter into his expectations, to wish him
well, had fascinated him, roused his chivalry. But most of all had her
few words by the wall after Said Hitani's music touched him, been
instrumental in bringing him nearer to her.
"She showed me a bit of her real self," he thought. "And she was not
sorry afterward that she had shown it to me."
He had made her a return for this, the return which she had wanted; but
to Claude it seemed no return at all.
"You are really going away to-night?" he said now. And there was a note
of regret in his voice which was not missed by her.
"I can't possibly leave Jacques alone any longer," said Madame Sennier.
"And what have we to do here? We aren't getting local color for an
opera."
"No, no; of course, you want to get away!" said Claude quickly, and
stiffening with constraint.
"I should love to stay on. This place fascinates me by its strangeness,
its marvellous position," said Mrs. Shiffney.
She looked at Claude.
"But I suppose we must go back. Will you take me for a last walk before
tea?"
"Of course."
Madame Sennier passed the tip of her tongue across her scarlet lips.
"Over the bridge and up into the pine-wood?"
"Wherever you like."
At this moment Armand Gillier walked brusquely into the room. Mrs.
Shiffney turned to Henriette.
"We'll leave Monsieur Gillier to take care of you."
Henriette's lips tightened. Gillier said:
"_Bien_, madame!"
As Mrs. Shiffney and Claude left the room Gillier bowed with very formal
politeness. The door shut. After a pause Gillier said:
"You go away to-night, madame?"
Madame Sennier sat down on a settee by a round table on which lay
several copies of _L'Illustration_, in glazed black covers, _La Depeche
Algerienne_, and a guide to Constantine.
She had been awake most of the previous night, with jealous care
studying the libretto Gillier had sold to Claude, which had been put
into her hands by Mrs. Shiffney. At once she had recognized its unusual
merit. She had in a high degree the faculty, possessed by many clever
Frenchwomen, of detecting and appraising the value of a work of art. She
was furious because Gillier's libretto had never been submitted to her
husband; but she could not say all that was in her mind. She and
Adelaide Shiffney had been frank with each other in the matter, and she
had no intention of making any mistake because she was angry.
"We haven't much time to spare. Jacques has to get on with his new
opera."
Gillier sat down on a chair with a certain cold and reluctant but
definite politeness. His look and manner said: "I cannot, of course,
leave this lady whom I hate."
"He is a great man now. I congratulate you on his success."
"Jacques was always a great man, but he didn't quite understand it."
"You enlightened him, madame."
"Exactly."
"That was very clever of you."
"It wasn't stupid. But I don't happen to be a stupid woman." Her yellow
eyes narrowed.
"I know how to detect quality. And I suppose you do?"
"Why, madame?"
"You tried to sell libretti to my husband before he was famous."
"And failed."
"Yes. But now I'm glad to know you have succeeded with another man who
is not famous yet."
Gillier laid his right hand down on one of the glazed black covers of
_L'Illustration_.
"You do not believe in my talent, madame. I cannot understand why you
should be interested in such a matter."
"You make the mistake of supposing that a talented man can never be
immature. What you offered to my husband was immature; but I always knew
you had talent."
"Indeed? You never told me so that I remember."
"You appeared to be fully aware of it."
Gillier made a fist of his hand on the cover. He wished Jacques Sennier
were setting the libretto he had sold to Claude Heath, and Madame
Sennier wished exactly the same thing. He did not know her thought; but
she divined his. With all her soul, greedy for her Jacques and for
herself, she coveted that libretto. She almost hated Claude Heath for
possessing it. And now, as she sat opposite to Gillier, with the round
table between them, always alert for intrigue, she began to wonder
whether in truth the libretto was irrevocably lost to them.
"Weren't you?" she said, fixing her unflinching eyes upon him.
"I knew I was not quite such a fool as your husband certainly thought
me."
"Jacques is a mere baby outside of his art."
"_Si?_"
"That is why I have to think for him very often. Which of the libretti
has Mr. Heath bought?"
"It is not one of those I had the honor of showing to Monsieur Sennier."
"Really? You have written another specially for Mr. Heath?"
"I wrote another to please myself. His wife saw it and took it to him.
He was so foolish as to think it good enough to buy."
"Let us hope his music will be good enough to produce on the stage."
Gillier looked very sharply at her, and began to tug at his moustache;
but he said nothing. After a moment Madame Sennier said, with a change
of tone and manner that seemed to indicate an intention to be more
friendly:
"When you write another libretto, why not let me see it?"
"You desire to inflict a fourth rejection upon me, madame?"
"If you like, I'll tell you the only thing I desire," she replied, with
a sort of brutal frankness well calculated to appeal to his rough
character. "It has nothing to do with you. I haven't your interests at
my heart. Why should I bother about them? All I want is to get something
fine for my husband when a chance arises. I know what's good better than
you do, my friend. You showed me three libretti that didn't do. Show me
one that does do, and I'll pay you a price that will astonish you."
Gillier's large eyes shone.
"How much would you pay?"
"Show me a fine libretto!"
"Tell me how much you'd pay."
She laughed.
"Five times as much as anyone else offered you. But you would have to
prove the offer to my satisfaction."
Gillier fidgeted on his chair, took hold of the _Depeche Algerienne_,
and began carefully to fold it into pleats.
"I should want a royalty," he said, keeping his shining eyes on her.
"If I were satisfied I would see that you got it."
There was a long silence, during which they looked at each other.
Gillier was puzzled. He did not believe Claude Heath had shown the
libretto to her. Yet she was surely prompted now by some very definite
purpose. He could not guess what it was. At last he looked down at the
paper he was folding mechanically.
"I haven't got anything to sell at present," he almost growled, in a
very low voice.
"That's a pity. We must hope for the future. There is no reason why you
and I should be mortal enemies since you haven't had a chance to murder
my poor old cabbage."
"He's a coward," said Gillier.
"Of course he is. And I'm very thankful for it. Cowards live long."
She got up from the settee. Gillier, returning to his varnish, sprang
up, dropping the paper, and opened the door.
"Don't forget what I said," she remarked as she went out. "Five times
the price anyone else offers, on account of a royalty to be fixed by
mutual agreement. But it would have to be a libretto _numero un_."
He looked at her but did not say a word.
When she was gone he sat down again by the round table and stared at the
cloth, with his head bent and his muscular, large-boned arms laid one
upon the other.
And presently he swore under his breath.
Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney and Claude were making their way through the
crowded and noisy street toward the unfinished Suspension Bridge which
spans the gorge, linking the city to the height which is crowned by the
great hospital. Beyond the hospital, opposite to the Grand Rocher, a
terrific precipice of rock beneath which a cascade leaps down to the
valley where lie the baths of Sidi Imcin, is a wood of fir-trees
commanding an immense view. This was the objective of their walk. The
sun shone warmly, brightly, over the roaring city, perched on its savage
height and crowding down to its precipices, as if seeking for
destruction. Clarions sounded from the woods, where hidden soldiers were
carrying out evolutions. Now and then a dull roar in the distance, like
the noise of a far-off earthquake, proclaimed the activities of men
among the rocks. From the bazaars in the maze of covered alleys that
stretch down the hill below the Place du Chameau, from the narrow and
slippery pavements that wind between the mauve and the pale yellow house
fronts, came incessant cries and the long and dull murmur of voices.
Bellebelles were singing everywhere in their tiny cages, heedless of
their captivity. On tiny wooden tables and stands before the insouciant
workers at trades, and the indifferent sellers of goods, were set vases
of pale yellow jonquils. Round the minarets fluttered the pigeons. And
again, floating across the terrific gorge, came the brave notes of the
military clarions.
"There is something here which I have never felt in any other place,"
said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude. "A peculiar wildness. It makes one want to
cry out. The rocks seem to have life almost under one's feet. And the
water in that terrible gorge, that's like a devil's moat round the city,
is more alive than water in other places. It's so strange to have known
you in Mullion House and to find you here. How eternally interesting
life is!"
She did not always think so, but at this moment she really found life
interesting.
"I shall never forget this little time!" she added. "I haven't enjoyed
myself so much for years. And now it's nearly over. What a bore!"
Claude felt exhilarated too. The day was so bright, so alive, seemed
full of wildness and gaiety and lusty freedom.
"Let us enjoy what is left!" he said.
She stole a side glance at him as he swung along by her. How would it be
to be married to a man like him--a man with his way to make?
They came down to the bridge, escaping from the bustle of the city. From
the fir woods the clarions sounded louder, calling to each other like
bold and triumphant voices.
"Have you got those in your opera?" she asked him.
"I shall have them."
"Of course."
They talked a little about the libretto as they crossed the bridge, with
the sound of the water in their ears.
"It is good to be out of the city!" Claude said, as they came to the
rubble of the unfinished track on the farther side, where Arabs worked
under the supervision of a French overseer. "I did not know you were a
walker."
"I don't think you knew very much about me."
"That's quite true. Where do you wish to go?"
"Anywhere--to the left. Let us sit on a rock under the trees and look at
the view."
"Can you get up here?"
"If you give me your hand."
They walked a little way in the shadow of the fir-trees, leaving the
hospital on their right. The plantation was almost deserted. The
soldiers were evidently retiring, for the clarions sounded more distant
now. Here and there the figure of an Arab was visible sauntering slowly
among the trees, with the smoke of his cigarette dispersing above him.
Some young Jews went by, holding hands, laughing and talking. They sent
glances of hard inquiry at Mrs. Shiffney's broad figure from their too
intelligent eyes. Soon their thin forms vanished among the gray trunks.
"Shall we sit there?" asked Claude.
"Yes; just in the sun."
"Oh, but you wanted--"
"No, let us sit in the sun."
She opened her green parasol.
Almost at the edge of the cliff, which descended steeply to the high
road to Philippeville, was a flat ledge of rock warmed by the sunbeams.
"It's perfect here," she said, sitting down. "And what a view!"
They were exactly opposite to the terrific Grand Rocher, a gray and pale
yellow precipice, with the cascades and the Grand Moulin at its foot,
the last houses of the city perched upon its summit in the sky.
"And to think that women have been flung from there!" said Claude,
clasping his hands round his knees.
"Unfaithful women! Rather hard on them!" she answered. "If London
husbands--" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I
suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"
"I think I did."
"Don't you ever regret that little house?"
She saw his eyebrows move downward.
"Oh, I--I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."
"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You
seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."
"Was there?"
"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel
that without ever hearing your music? I did."
"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"
"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate
evasiveness.
Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense
view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him
too well, perhaps.
"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house.
But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own
particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite
unlike anyone else's."
"I certainly got to love my little house."
"Because it was doing things for you."
Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were.
As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent--as if in
answer to his gaze.
"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.
"But--forgive me--how can you know?"
"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain
directions. That's why a lot of people--silly people, you think, I
daresay--follow my lead."
"Well, but--"
"Go on!"
"I think I'd better not."
"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."
"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out
of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly,
hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.
"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."
"Why?"
Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to
blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.
Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.
"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.
Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of Charmian had
come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.
"Yes, I suppose they are," he said coldly.
He did not mean to speak coldly; but directly he had said the words he
knew that his voice had become frigid.
"What a stupid ass I am!" was his comment on himself. But how to be
different?
Mrs. Shiffney was looking very grave. Her drawn-down brows, her powerful
lips suggested to him at this moment suffering. In London he had thought
of her as a typical pleasure-seeking woman, greedy of sensation,
reckless in the chase after it. And he had disliked, almost feared her,
despite her careless charm. Now he felt differently about her. He had
come to that point in a man's acquaintance with a woman when he says to
himself, "I never understood her properly." He seemed to himself a
brute. Yet what had he done?
She did not speak for several minutes. He wanted to speak, to break a
silence which, to him, was painful; but he could think of nothing to
say. He felt oddly moved, yet he could not have said why, perhaps even
to himself. Keeping his hands clasped round his knees, he looked out
beyond the gorge over the open country. Far down, at the foot of the
cascades, he saw in a hollow, the clustering trees about the baths of
Sidi Imcin. Along the reddish bareness of the hill showed the white
blossoms of some fruit-trees, almost like a white dust flung up against
the tawny breast of the earth. The water made a hoarse noise in the
hidden depths of the gorge, lifted its voice into a roar as it leaped
down into the valley, murmured like the voice of a happy dreamer where
it slipped by among the trees. And Claude, as he sat in silence,
believed that he heard clearly the threefold utterance, subtly combined,
and, like some strange trinity, striving to tell him truths of life.
His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops,
beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open
country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly spacious, fiercely blooming
in the strong colors--reds, yellows, golds--with long rolling slopes,
dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for
hundreds of kilometers, far-off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests
seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or
perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must
exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only
that something experienced made life truly life.
For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his
companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for
women rather than a woman.
During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires
connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had
come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her
mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette--was, perhaps, at
this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different
she might well have been on his side. Even now--
Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she
deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it
matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as
marriage got to do with it?
Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that
firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive
loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it.
He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the
minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of
it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not.
All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he
understood her desire and was recoiling from it.
Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed
every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face,
transforming it.
"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think
you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"
As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her
tailor-made skirt.
Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.
"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to
seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was
unknown by her at this moment.
"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."
She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward
the bridge.
"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."
Claude said nothing, and she continued:
"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his
knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his
talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as
inflexible as the Grand Rocher."
She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.
"That is why women always love and hate him."
Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and
looked at him, smiling:
"I am sure Charmian knows that."
Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.
"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.
"And, so, very few inflexible men?"
"I have never--"
He pulled himself up.
"Yes?" she said encouragingly.
"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have
never laid claim to anything--anything in the way of talent. It isn't
quite fair, is it, to assume that I consider myself a man of talent or
an important person when I don't?"
"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of
talent?"
"I am entirely unknown."
"What has that to do with it?"
"Nothing, of course, but--but perhaps it is only when he has something
to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."
"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."
Claude looked down.
"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its
production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be
specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I
have been privileged. I have read the libretto."
As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian,
of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by
events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which
always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered
the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had
guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it
angel or demon in his life?
"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."
He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.
They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities,
into the perpetual uproar of the city.
By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers.
Claude went down to the station to see them off.
On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in
his hand.
Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.
From the window of the _wagon-lit_ Mrs. Shiffney looked at the two men
standing together as the train drew away from the platform.
Then she nodded and waved her hand.
There was a mocking smile on her face.
When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.
"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to
suspect it?"
"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette.
"What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the
window."
"No, don't!"
"Why not?"
"They are a symbol of your reconciliation with Armand Gillier."
"He isn't altogether a fool, I fancy," remarked Henriette, laying
Gillier's bouquet down on the seat beside her. "But we shall see."
"Oh, Max! Yes, come in and sit with us!"
The faces of the two women changed as Max Elliot joined them.