Читать книгу The Way of Ambition - Robert Hichens - Страница 12

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By return there came a note hastily scribbled:

"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.—A. S."

But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother, who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them. Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in, composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house, and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.

"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.

He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by playing before sitting down to work.

"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard you playing, and knew you were in."

"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"

"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."

Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out at the piano.

"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.

"In the drawing-room, sir."

"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."

He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it, looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world with which he had nothing to do.

"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."

Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly stiff.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and—"

He touched her powerful hand.

"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too bad of me."

He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her. Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position, her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified? No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally. He felt savage, but he felt flattered.

"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.

Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.

"May I give you some tea?"

Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she regarded him as a boy.

"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."

"But really, I am—"

"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."

"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with sudden reserve.

"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little room! But you never sit in it."

"Not often."

"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."

There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.

"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said. "It's about the yacht."

"I'm really so very sorry that—"

"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."

"I am tempted."

"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet—she's a sort of chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course—Max Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps—if he can't come some charming man whom you'd delight in—and Charmian Mansfield."

Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:

"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."

"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."

"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."

"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over to Sicily and Tunis."

She saw his eyes beginning to shine.

"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could leave the yacht at Alexandria—"

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."

"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are not to enjoy life!"

"It isn't that at all."

"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I suppose English artists are different. I often wonder whether they are wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."

She laughed and moved her shoulders.

"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in the stream of life."

"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.

She saw anger in his eyes.

"Perhaps you are getting something—some sacred cantata—ready for one of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands or Tunis. Besides, you'd get all the wrong sort of inspiration in such places. I shall never forget the beautiful impression I received at—was it Worcester?—once when I saw an English audience staggering slowly to its feet in tribute to the Hallelujah Chorus. I am sure you are writing something that will bring Worcester to its feet, aren't you?"

He forced a very mirthless laugh.

"I'm really not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I can't accept it, unfortunately for me."

"Mal-au-cœur?"

"Yes, yes. I don't think I'm a good sailor."

"Mal-au-cœur!" she repeated, smiling satirically at him.

"I'm in the midst of something."

"The Puritan tradition?"

"Perhaps it is that. Whatever it is, I suppose it suits me; it's in my line, so I had better stick to it."

"You are bathing in the Ganges?"

Her eyes were fixed upon him.

"Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?"

Claude looked down.

"I must leave that to you. I am sure you will have a very delightful party."

Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was looking the soul of careless good-nature, and quite irresistible, though very Roman.

"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot, Paul Lane, and you—I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really, though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get one!"

Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of the world. As she got into her motor she said:

"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"

The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at least with ardor—a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly, absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive. Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffney thought of him? But there was within him—and he knew it—a surely weak inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening darkness.

He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.

How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown man, and she had troops of friends, battalions of acquaintances. She could get anyone she liked to go on the yacht, and she wanted him. It was flattering to his masculine vanity. He felt that there was something in him which stretched out and caught at people, without intention on his part, which grasped and held them. It was not his talent, he told himself, for he kept that in the dark. It was himself. Although he was less conceited than the average Englishman of talent, for a few minutes he braced his legs and had the cordial conquering sensation.

He had till Sunday to decide.

How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs. Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or impolite.

What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a coward, a rejector of life's offerings.

Well, he had till Sunday.

Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in the great world. They were very clannish, were quite satisfied with their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber. Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were, to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what satisfied them.

Although he had lived for some years in London he had never tried, or even thought of trying, to push his way into what are called "the inner circles." He had assiduously cultivated his musical talent, but never with a view to using it as a means of opening shut doors. He knew comparatively few people, and scarcely any who were "in the swim," who were written of in social columns, whose names were on the lips of the journalists and of the world. He never thought about his social position as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had been happy enough in his sheltered and perhaps rather selfish existence. Dwelling in the center of a great struggle for life, he had enjoyed it because he had had nothing to do with it. His own calm had been agreeably accentuated by the turmoil which surrounded and enclosed it. How many times had he blessed his thousand a year, that armor of gold with which fate had provided him! How often had he imagined himself stripped of it, realized mentally the sudden and fierce alteration in his life and eventually, no doubt, in himself that must follow if poverty came!

He had a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies, the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers, conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with the torn feathers of the fallen.

The many books which he had read dealing with the lives of great artists, sometimes their own autobiographies, had only confirmed him in his wish to keep out of the struggle. Such books, deeply interesting though they were, often made him feel almost sick at heart. As he read them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime. Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.

He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.

But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any combat.

Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which had driven Claude forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take him on its current whither it would?

He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted, which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs. Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it, though something else in him disliked, despised, almost dreaded it.

He had answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs. Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were transparent. And she had evidently seen something he had supposed to be hidden, something he wished were not in existence.

Her remarks about English musicians, her banter about the provincial festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain so because of his way of life!

Abruptly he became solicitous of opinion. He thought of Mrs. Mansfield, and wondered what had been her opinion of his music. Almost mechanically he crossed the broad road by the Marble Arch, turned into the windings of Mayfair, and made his way to Berkeley Square.

"I'll ask her. I'll find out!" was his thought.

He rang Mrs. Mansfield's bell.

"Is Mrs. Mansfield at home?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is she alone?"

"Yes, sir."

Heath stepped in quickly. He still felt excited, uncertain of himself, even self-conscious under the eyes of the butler. There was no one in the drawing-room. As he waited he wondered whether Charmian was in the house, whether he would see her. And now, for the first time, he began to wonder also why Mrs. Shiffney had made so much of the fact that Charmian was to be on the yacht. He recalled her words, "Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?" Had he been asked on Charmian's account? That seemed to him very absurd. She certainly disliked him. They were not en rapport. In the yacht they would be thrown together incessantly. He thought of the expression in Mrs. Shiffney's eyes and felt positive that she had pressed him to come for herself. But possibly she fancied he liked Charmian because he came so often to Berkeley Square. The cleverest woman, it seemed, made mistakes. But he could not quite understand Mrs. Shiffney's proceedings. If he did, after all, go on the yacht it would be rather amusing to study her. And Charmian? Heath said to himself that he did not want to study her. She was too uncertain, not without a certain fascination perhaps, but too ironic, too something. He scarcely knew what it was that he disliked, almost dreaded, in her. She was mischievous at wrong moments. The minx peeped up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite at his ease.

The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he usually did, and in need of a real friend.

"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.

"Why should it be anything special?"

"But it is!"

He laughed almost uneasily.

"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed. "Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or three things, if I may."

Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.

"Anything," she said.

"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other evening? Did you—did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think it"—he paused—"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.

"Provincial!"

Heath was answered, but he persisted.

"What did you think?"

"I thought it alarming."

"Alarming?"

"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."

"Disturbed your mind?"

"Or my heart, perhaps."

"But why? How?"

"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."

Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought, what anyone thought of his music.

"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.

"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.

"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"

"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon me."

"It did really make a strong impression?"

"Very strong."

"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking care of?"

"I am sure you have."

"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.

"Is that what you came to ask me?"

Her fiery eyes seemed to search him. She sat very still, looking intensely alive.

"To-night I feel as if I didn't know, didn't know at all! You see, I avoid so many things, so many experiences that I might have."

"Do you?"

"Yes. I think I've done that for years. I know I'm doing it now."

He moved restlessly.

"Mrs. Shiffney has asked me again to go yachting with her."

"But I thought you had refused."

"I did. But she has been again to-day. She says your daughter is going."

"Charmian has been asked."

"Mrs. Shiffney said she had accepted the invitation."

"Yes."

"And now I'm to give my answer on Sunday."

"You seem quite upset about it," she said, without sarcasm.

"Of course it seems a small matter. People would laugh at me, I know, for worrying. But what I feel is that if I go with Mrs. Shiffney, or go to Max Elliot's parties, I shall very soon be drawn into a life quite different from the one I have always led. And I do think it matters very much to—to some people just how they live, whom they know well, and so on. Men say, of course, that a man ought to face the rough and tumble of life. And some women say a man ought to welcome every experience. I wonder what the truth is?"

Still with her eyes on him, Mrs. Mansfield said:

"Follow your instinct."

"Can't one have conflicting instincts?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then one's instinct may not be strong enough to make itself known."

"I doubt that."

"But I am a man, you a woman. Women are said to have stronger instincts than men."

"Aren't you playing with your own convictions?"

"Am I?"

He stared at her, but for a moment his eyes looked unconscious of her.

"Mrs. Shiffney said something to me that struck me," he said presently. "She implied that experiences of all kinds are the necessary food for anyone who wishes to be at all a big artist. She evidently thinks that England has failed to produce great musicians because the English are hampered by tradition."

"She thinks uncleanliness necessary to the producing of beauty perhaps!"

"Ah, I believe you have put into words what I have been thinking!"

"Is it wisdom to grope for stars in the mud?"

"No, no! It can't be!"

He was silent. Then he said:

"St. Augustine, and many others, went through mud to the stars though."

"St. Francis didn't—if we are to talk of the saints."

"I believe you could guide me."

Mrs. Mansfield looked deeply touched. For an instant tears glistened in her eyes. Nevertheless, her next remark was almost sternly uncompromising.

"Even if I could, don't let me."

"Why?"

"I want the composer of the music I heard at the little house to be very strong in every way. No, no; I am not going to try to guide you, my friend!"

There was a sound in her voice as if she were speaking to herself.

"I never met anyone so capable of comradeship—no woman, I mean—as you."

"That's a compliment I like!"

At this moment the door opened and Charmian came in, wrapped in furs, her face covered by a veil. When she saw Heath with her mother she pushed the veil up rather languidly.

"Oh, Mr. Heath! We haven't seen you for ages. What have you been about?"

"Nothing in particular."

"Haven't you?"

"Take off that thick coat, Charmian, and come and talk to us."

"Shall I?"

She unbuttoned the fur slowly. Claude helped her to take it off. As she emerged he thought, "How slim she is!" He had often before looked at girls and wondered at their slimness, and thought that it seemed part of their mystery. It both attracted and repelled him.

"Are you talking of very interesting things?" she asked, coming toward the fire.

"I hear you are going for a cruise with Mrs. Shiffney," said Claude, uneasily.

"I believe I am. It would be rather nice to get out of this weather. But you don't mind it."

"How can you know that?"

"It's very simple, almost as simple as some of Sherlock Holmes's deductions. You have refused the cruise which I have accepted. I expect you were right. No doubt one might get terribly bored on a yacht, unable to get away from people. I almost wonder that I dared to say 'Yes!'"

"Where are you going to sit, Charmian?" said Mrs. Mansfield.

"Dearest mother, I'm afraid I must go upstairs. I've got to try on coats and skirts."

She turned toward Heath.

"The voyage, you know. I wish you could have come!"

She held out her thin hand, smiling. She was looking very serene, very sure of herself.

"I'm to answer Mrs. Shiffney on Sunday," said Heath abruptly.

Something in Charmian's voice and manner had made him feel defiant.

"Oh, I thought you had answered! Is Sunday your day for making up your mind?"

Before he could reply she went out of the room slowly, smiling.