After their return from Constantine Mrs. Shiffney and her party only
stayed two nights at Mustapha. Then they descended to the harbor and
went on board _The Wanderer_, which weighed anchor and set sail for
Monte Carlo. Before leaving they paid a visit to Djenan-el-Maqui to say
adieu to Charmian.
The day was unusually hot for the time of year, and both Mrs. Shiffney
and Madame Sennier were shrouded in white veils with patterns. These,
the latest things from Paris, were almost like masks. Little of the
faces beneath them could be seen. But no doubt they preserved
complexions from the destructive influence of the sun.
Jacques Sennier had told his friends and his wife the story of his days
of desertion. A name summed it up, Djenan-el-Maqui. With the utmost
vivacity, however, he had described all he had eaten, drunk, smoked, and
done in that hospitable house and garden; the impression he had made
upon the occupants and had received from them.
"I am beloved by all!" he had cried, with enthusiasm. "They would die
for me. As for the good Pierre, each night he led me home as if I were
his own child!"
"We must certainly go and thank them," said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
The visit was not without intensities.
"We've come to say 'Good-bye,'" said Mrs. Shiffney, when they came into
the "harem," as she persisted in calling the drawing-room. "We are just
back from our little run, and now we must be off to Monte Carlo. By the
way, we came across your husband in Constantine."
"I know. He wrote to me all about it," said Charmian.
Claude had really written a very short note, ending with the maddening
phrase, "all news when we meet." She was burning with curiosity, was
tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw
the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the
two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless in the open.
"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame
Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over
there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you
with our affairs."
"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a
delightful time."
"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry,
the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"--he
flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the
evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"
He blew a kiss.
"Shall I forget them? Never!"
Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.
"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've
spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"
"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.
The composer seized his arm.
"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of
the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan,
come!"
He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing
like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with
him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three
women were left alone.
"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there.
There's a little breeze from the sea."
"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.
When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant
murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as
if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to
Constantine.
"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and
extraordinary."
And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame
Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days
before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to
death by their Arab husbands.
"_C'est affreux!_" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her
hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with
twisting fingers.
"_Les Arabes sont des monstres._"
As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the
interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.
"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.
She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its
African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had
read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and
instinctive disgust.
The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.
"_Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!_"
"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of
eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white
parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong
antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans
really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because
they are picturesque."
"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they
call color drives them quite mad!"
"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.
"It is all the same. _Ils sont tous des monstres affreux._"
"Tst! Tst! Tst!"
The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.
"What is it?"
"Tst! Tst!"
They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming
and of native music.
"I must go! I must hear, see!"
The composer cried out.
"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"
There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter
from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.
"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.
She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.
"How hot it is!"
Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit
syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.
"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to
the syrups. "I wonder--" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with
my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.
Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white
kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made
ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism
declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed
a negative.
"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut
and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your
husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."
"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French,"
said Charmian, in a constrained voice.
"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
Was she smiling behind the veil?
"You ought to go to America," said Madame Sennier. "Nobody knows what
real life is who has not seen New York in the season. Paris, London,
they are sleepy villages in comparison with New York."
"I should like to see it," replied Charmian. "But we have nothing to
take us there, no reason to go."
She laughed and added:
"And Claude and I are not millionaires."
Madame Sennier talked for two or three minutes of the great expense of
living in a smart New York hotel, and then said:
"But some day you will surely go."
"There doesn't seem any prospect of it," said Charmian.
"D'you remember meeting a funny little man called Crayford in my house
one night, an impresario?" said Mrs. Shiffney, moving her shoulders, and
pulling at one of her long gloves, as if she were bored and must find
some occupation.
"Yes, I believe I do--a man with a tiny beard."
"Like a little inquiring goat's! D'you know that he's searching the
world to find some composer to run against Jacques? Isn't it so,
Henriette?"
"So they say in New York," said Madame Sennier. "I wish he could find
one; then perhaps he would leave off bothering us with absurd proposals.
And I'm sure there is plenty of room for some more shining lights. I
told Crayford if he worried Jacques any more I would unearth someone for
him. He doesn't know where to look."
"But surely--" began Charmian.
"Why do you think that?" asked Mrs. Shiffney, in an uninterested voice.
Her brilliant eyes looked extraordinary, like some strange exotic bird's
eyes, through her veil.
"Because he began his search with England," said Madame Sennier.
"Well, really--Henriette!" observed Mrs. Shiffney, with a faint laugh.
"Ought I to apologize?" said Madame Sennier, turning to Charmian. "When
art is in question I believe in speaking the plain truth. Oh, I know
your husband is by way of writing an opera! But, of course, one sees
that--well, you are here in this delicious little house, having what the
Americans call a lovely time, enjoying North Africa, listening to the
fountain, walking, as my old baby says, among passion-flowers, and
playing about with that joke from the Quartier Latin, Armand Gillier.
_Mais, ma chere, ce n'est pas serieux!_ One has only to look at your
interesting husband, to see him in the African _milieu_, to see that.
And, of course, one realizes at once that you see through it all! A
pretty game! If one is well off one can afford it. Jacques and I
starved; but it was quite right that we should. The English talent is
not for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one
form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis, that is where
the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders
went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted
for the last time! Here are your syrups."
Jacques Sennier came, almost running.
"Did they ever nearly starve?" Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a
moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some
wild joke of the composer's.
"Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating
all your biscuits now."
When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He
insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande
Jeanne." He took Pierre in his arms, solemnly blessed Caroline, and
warmly pressed his lips to Charmian's hands as he held them, squeezed
one on the top of the other, in both his own.
"I shall dedicate my new opera to you and to your syrups!" he exclaimed.
"To the greengage, ah, and the passion-flowers! Max, you old person,
have you seen them, or have you not? The wonderful Washington was not
more truthful than I."
His eyes twinkled.
"Were it not that I am a physical coward, I would not go even now. But
to die because a man who cannot write has practised on soda-water
bottles! I fly before Armand Gillier. But, madame, I fear your
respectable husband is even more cowardly than I!"
"Why?" said Charmian, at length releasing her hands from his Simian
grasp.
"He accepted a libretto!"
When they were gone Charmian was suddenly overcome by a sense of
profound depression such as she had never felt before. With them seemed
to go a world; and it was a world that some part of her loved and longed
for. Sennier stood for fame, for success; his wife for the glory of the
woman who aids and is crowned; Mrs. Shiffney and Max Elliot for the joy
and the power that belong to great patrons of the arts. An immense
vitality went away with them all. So long as they were with her the
little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of
things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled
Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in
both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and
temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And
they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the
great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone--who counted--knew
who they were.
As to Jacques Sennier, he left a crevasse in the life at
Djenan-el-Maqui. It had been a dangerous experience for Charmian, the
associating in intimacy with the little famous man. Her secret ambitions
were irritated almost to the point of nervous exasperation. But she only
knew it now that he was gone.
Madame Sennier had frightened her.
"_Mais, ma chere, ce n'est pas serieux!_"
The words had been said with an air of hard and careless authority, as
if the speaker knew she was expressing the obvious truth, and a truth
known to both her hearers; and then the words which had followed: "One
has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the African
_milieu_, to see that!"
What had happened at Constantine? How had Claude been?
Charmian wanted so much to see him, to hear his account of the whole
matter, that she telegraphed:
"Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull
here.--CHARMIAN."
She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her role;
but her nerves drove her into the weakness.
Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.
Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men
together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On
the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He
seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.
"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remember what a keen
interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."
Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she
thought. Then he said formally:
"I am delighted to stay, madame."
During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to
become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in
hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could
not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was
talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.
The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually
unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his
voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated.
Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her
with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.
Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and
Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums.
Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his
Turkish coffee, poured out a glass of old brandy, clipped a big Havana
cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him.
His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably
expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his
remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay
that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.
"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful
carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my
husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him
with his music?"
"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."
Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and
looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.
"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.
Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.
"Who knows, madame?"
"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"
"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to
have certain doubts."
"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I
don't quite understand."
"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much
knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an
original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."
"Then--"
"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"
"Naturally!"
"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the
public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I
will never get on together."
"Why not?"
"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel
anxious."
"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"
"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of
it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally,
but I am not _homme du monde_. I am not a little man of the salons. I am
not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.
I have been, and I still am, poor--poor, madame! But, madame, I do not
intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"
"Of course not--with your talent!"
"Ah, that is just it!"
His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and
speaking almost with violence.
"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known
that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew
it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work
will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to
go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"--he paused, finished his glass of
brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great
effort after self-control--"but is your husband's talent for the stage
as great as mine? I doubt it."
"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you
to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet,
not a note of it."
"No. And that enables me--"
"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur
Gillier?"
"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--"
"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be
thinking of?"
"I feared by your words, your manner--"
"I assure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish
what you were saying."
"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your
husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal
offense--pronouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--" He paused.
The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily
in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.
"Yes?" said Charmian.
"Madame?"
"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of
us."
"I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want
success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in
Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame,
believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be
associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too
different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who
has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has
lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him
understand something of the life not merely in, but that
underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I
say?"--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
"It is only the difference between the French and English
temperaments."
"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who
is not afraid to live."
"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a
matter which I can discuss with you."
"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"--he looked
down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I
am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I
sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit
your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose
a hundred pounds rather than to--"
"Have you spoken to my husband of this?" Charmian interrupted him.
She was almost trembling with anger and excitement, but she managed to
speak quietly.
"No, madame."
"You have asked me a question--"
"I have asked no question, madame!"
"Do you mean to say you are not asking me if we will resell the
libretto?"
Gillier was silent.
"My answer is that the libretto is our property and that we intend to
keep it. If you offered us five times what we gave you for it the answer
would be the same."
She paused. Gillier said nothing. She looked at him and suddenly anger,
a sense of outrage, got the better of her, and she added with intense
bitterness:
"We are living here in North Africa, we have given up our home, our
friends, our occupations, everything--our life in England"--her voice
trembled. "Everything, I say, in order to do justice to your work, and
you come, you dare to come to us, and ask--ask--"
Gillier got up.
"Madame, I see it is useless. You have bought my work, if you choose to
keep it--"
"We do choose to keep it."
"Then I can do nothing."
He pulled out his watch.
"It is late. I must wish you good-night, madame. Kindly say good-night
for me to that lady, your friend, and to Monsieur Heath."
He bowed. Charmian did not hold out her hand. She meant to, but it
seemed to her that her hand refused to move, as if it had a will of its
own to resist hers.
"Good-night," she said.
She watched his rather short and broad figure pass across the open space
of the court and disappear.
After he had gone she moved across the court to the fountain and sat
down at its edge. She was trembling now, and her excitement was growing
in solitude. But she still had the desire to govern it, the hope that
she would be able to do so. She felt that she had been grossly insulted
by Gillier. But she was not only angry with him. She stared at the
rising and falling water, clasping her hands tightly together. "I will
be calm!" she was saying to herself. "I will be calm, mistress of
myself."
But suddenly she got up, went swiftly across the court to the garden
entrance, and called out:
"Susan! Claude! Where are you?"
Her voice sounded to her sharp and piercing in the night.
"What is it, Charmian?" answered Claude's voice from the distance.
"I'm going to bed. It's late. Monsieur Gillier has gone."
"Coming!" answered Claude's voice.
Charmian retreated to the house.
As she came into the drawing-room she looked at her watch. It was barely
ten o'clock. In a moment Susan Fleet entered, followed by Claude.
Susan's calm eyes glanced at Charmian's face. Then she said, in her
quiet, agreeable voice:
"I'm going to my room. I have two or three letters to write, and I shall
read a little before going to bed. It isn't really very late, but I
daresay you are tired."
She took Charmian's hand and held it for an instant. And during that
instant Charmian felt much calmer.
"Good-night, Susan dear. Monsieur Gillier asked me to say good-night to
you for him."
Susan did not kiss her, said good-night to Claude, and went quietly
away.
"What is it?" Claude said, directly she had gone. "What's the matter,
Charmian? Why did Gillier go away so early?"
"Let us go upstairs," she answered.
Remembering the sound of her voice in the court, she strove to keep it
natural, even gentle, now. Susan's recent touch had helped her a little.
"All right," he answered.
"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in
the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story
of the house.
Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she
wrote her letters and did accounts.
"Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into
this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.
"How could you show the libretto to Madame Sennier?" said Charmian. "How
could you be so mad as to do such a thing?"
As she finished speaking she sat down on the little divan in the
embrasure of the small grated window.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have never shown the libretto to
Madame Sennier. What could put such an idea into your head?"
"But you must have shown it!"
"Charmian, I have this moment told you that I haven't."
"She has read it."
"Nonsense."
"I am positive she has read it."
"Then Gillier must have shown her a copy of it."
Charmian was silent for a minute. Then she said:
"You did not show it to anyone while you were at Constantine?"
"I didn't say that."
"Ah! You--you let Mrs. Shiffney see it!"
Her voice rose as she said the last words.
"I suppose I have a right to allow anyone I choose to read a libretto I
have bought and paid for," he said coldly, almost sternly.
"You did give it to Mrs. Shiffney then! You did! You did!"
"Certainly I did!"
"And then--then you come to me and say that Madame Sennier hasn't read
it!"
There was a sound of acute, almost of fierce exasperation in her voice.
"She had not read my copy."
"I say she has!"
"Mrs. Shiffney herself specially advised me not to show it to her."
"To her--to Madame Sennier?"
"Yes."
"Mrs. Shiffney advised you! Oh--you--oh, that men should claim to have
keener intellects than we women! Ah! Ah!"
She began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly put a handkerchief before
her mouth, turned her head away from him and pressed her face, with the
handkerchief still held to it, against the cushions of the divan. Her
body shook.
"Charmian!" he said. "Charmian!"
She looked up. All one side of her face was red. She dropped her
handkerchief on the floor.
"Do you understand now?" she said. "But, of course, you don't. Well,
then!"
She put both her hands palm downward on the divan, and, speaking slowly
with an emphasis that was cutting, and stretching her body till her
shoulders were slightly raised, she said:
"Just now, while Susan and you were in the garden, Armand Gillier asked
me if we would give up his libretto."
"Give up the libretto?"
"Sell it back to him for one hundred pounds. He also said he was very
poor. Do you put the two things together?"
"You think he fancies--"
"No. I am sure he knows he could resell it at an advance to Jacques
Sennier. Those two--Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier--went to
Constantine with the intention of finding out what you were doing."
"Absurd!"
"Is it? Just tell me! Wasn't it Mrs. Shiffney who began to talk of the
libretto?"
"Well--"
"Of course it was! And didn't she pretend to be deeply interested in
what you were doing?"
Claude flushed.
"And didn't she talk of how other artists had trusted her with secrets
nobody else knew? And didn't she--didn't she--"
But something in Claude's eyes stopped her as she was going to
say--"make love to you."
"And so you gave your libretto up to our enemy to read, and now they are
trying to bribe Gillier to ruin us. Why are we here? Why did I give up
everything, my whole life, my mother, my friends, our little house,
everything I cared for, everything that has made my life till now?
Simply for you and for your success. And then for the first woman who
comes along--"
Her cheeks were flaming. As she thought more about what had happened a
storm of jealousy swept through her heart.
"That's not true or fair--what you imply!" said Claude. "I never--Mrs.
Shiffney is absolutely nothing to me--nothing!"
"Do you understand now that she got the libretto in order to show it to
Madame Sennier?"
"Did Gillier ever say so?"
"Of course not! Even if he knows it, do you think it was necessary he
should--to a woman!"
The contempt in her voice seemed to cut into him. He began, against his
will, to feel that Charmian must be right in her supposition, to believe
that he had been tricked.
"We have no proof," he said.
Charmian raised her eyebrows and sank back on the divan. She was
struggling against an outburst of tears. Her lips moved.
"Proof! Proof!" she said at last.
Her lips moved violently. She got up, and tried hurriedly to go by
Claude into the gallery; but he put out a hand and caught her by the
arm.
"Charmian!"
She tried to get away. But he held her.
"I do understand. You have given up a lot for me. Perhaps I was a great
fool at Constantine. I begin to believe I was. But, after all, there's
no great harm done. The libretto is mine--ours, ours. And we're not
going to give it up. I'll try--I'll try to put my heart into the music,
to bring off a real success, to give you all you want, pay you back for
all you've given up for me and the work. Of course, I may fail--"
She stopped his mouth with her lips, wrenched herself from his grasp,
and hurried away.
A moment later he heard the heavy low door of her bedroom creak as she
pushed it to, then the grinding of the key in the lock.
He sat down on the divan she had just left. For a moment he sat still,
facing the gallery, and the carved wooden balustrade which protected its
further side. Then he turned and looked out through the low, grated
window, from which no doubt in days long since gone by veiled Arab women
had looked as they sat idly on the divan.
He saw a section of almost black-purple sky. He saw some stars. And,
leaning his cheek on his hand, he gazed through the little window for a
long, long time.