Robert Hichens

Two days later, on the 4th of September, Charmian had got rid of Claude as well as of old Jernington, and, in a condition of expectation that was tinged agreeably with triumph, was awaiting the arrival of important visitors. She had received a telegram from Lake:

"Have got him into the Chateaux country going on to Orange hope on hope ever—Alston."

And she knew that the fateful motor would inevitably find its way to the quay at Marseilles.

She had had no difficulty in persuading Claude to go. When Jernington had departed Claude felt as if a strong prop had suddenly been knocked from under him, as if he might collapse. He could not work. Yet he felt as if in the little house which had seen his work he could not rest.

"Go away," Charmian said to him. "Take a couple of weeks' complete holiday."

"Where shall we go?"

"But I am not going."

He looked surprised. But she noticed that he did not look displeased. Nevertheless, thinking of the future and remembering Alston Lake's advice, she continued:

"You need a complete change of people as well as of place. Is there anyone left in Algiers?"

"If you don't come," he interrupted her quickly, "I'd much rather go quite alone. It will rest me much more."

She saw by the look in his eyes that this sudden prospect of loneliness appealed to him strongly. He moved his shoulders, stretched out his arms.

"Yes, it will do me good. You are right, Charmian. It is sweet of you to think for me as you do."

And he bent down and kissed her.

Then he hurried to his room, packed a very small trunk, and took the first train, as she had suggested, to Hammam R'rirha.

"If you move from there mind you let me know your address," she said, as he was starting.

"Of course."

"I want always to know just where you are."

"Of course I shall let you know. But I think I shall stay quietly at Hammam R'rirha."

Charmian had been alone for five days when another telegram came:

"Starting to-morrow for Algiers by the Timgad Hurrah—Alston."

She read that telegram again and again. She even read it aloud. Then she hurried to her room to get her copy of the libretto. Two days and they would be here! Her heart danced, sang. Everything was going well, more than well. The omens were good. She saw in them a tendency. Success was in the air. She did not doubt, she would not doubt, that Crayford's coming meant his eventual acceptance of the opera. The combination of Alston and herself was a strong one. They knew their own minds; they were both enthusiasts; they both had strong wills. Crayford was devoted to his protÉgÉ, and he admired her. She had seen admiration in his eyes the first time they had looked at her. Madame Sennier had surely never worked for her husband more strenuously and more effectively than she, Charmian, had worked for Claude; and she would work more strenuously, more effectively, during the next few days. The libretto! She snatched it up and sat down once more to study it. But she could not sit still, and she took it down with her into the garden. There she paced up and down, reading it aloud, reciting the strongest passages in it without looking at the words. She nearly knew the whole of it by heart.

When the day came on which the Timgad was due she was in a fever of excitement. She went about the little house re-arranging the furniture, putting flowers in all the vases. Of course Mr. Crayford and Alston would stay at a hotel. But no doubt they would spend a good deal of time at the villa. She would insist on their dining with her that night.

"Jeanne! Jeanne!"

She hurried toward the kitchen. It occurred to her that she was not supposed to know that the two men were coming. Oh, but of course, when he found them there, Claude would understand that naturally Alston had telegraphed from Marseilles. So she took "La Grande Jeanne" into her confidence without a scruple. They must have a perfect little dinner, a dinner for three such as had never yet been prepared in Mustapha!

She and Jeanne were together for more than an hour. Afterward she went out to watch for the steamer from a point of vantage on the Boulevard Bleu. Just after one o'clock she saw it gliding toward the harbor over the glassy sea. Then she went slowly home in the glaring heat, rested, put on a white gown, very simple but quite charming, and a large white hat, and went out into the Arab court with a book to await their arrival.

It was half-past four when a sound struck on her ears, a loud and trembling chord, a buzz, the rattle of a "cut-out." The blessed noises drew near. They were certainly in the little by-road which led to the house. They ceased. She did not move, but sat where she was with a fast-beating heart.

"Well, this is a cute little snuggery and no mistake!"

It was Crayford's voice in the court of the bougainvillea.

She bent her head and pored over her book. In a moment Alston Lake's voice said, in French:

"In the garden! No, don't call her, Bibi, we will find her!"

"Look well on the stage that boy!" said Crayford's voice. "No mistake at all about its being picturesque over here."

Then the two men came in sight in the sunshine. Instantly Alston said, as he took off his Panama hat:

"You got my wire from Marseilles, Mrs. Charmian?"

"Oh, yes, I was expecting you! But I didn't know when. Mr. Crayford, how kind of you to come over here in September! No one ever does."

She had got up rather languidly and was holding out her hand.

"Guess it's the proper time to come," said Crayford, squeezing her hand with his dried-up palm. "See a bit of the real thing! I don't believe in tourist seasons at all. Tourists always choose the wrong time, seems to me."

By the look in his eyes as he glanced around him Charmian saw that he was under the spell of Djenan-el-Maqui.

"You must have tea, iced drinks, whatever you like," she said. "I'm all alone—as you see."

"What's that?" said Crayford.

"My husband is away."

Crayford's lips pursed themselves. For a moment he looked like a man who finds he has been "had." In that moment Charmian knew that his real reason in "running over" to North Africa had certainly been the opera. She did not suppose he had acknowledged this to Lake, or ever would acknowledge it to anyone. But she was quite certain of it.

"Gone to England?" asked Crayford, carelessly.

"Oh, no. He's been working too hard, and run away by himself for a little holiday to a place near here, Hammam R'rirha. He'll be sorry to miss you. I know how busy you always are, so I suppose you'll only stay a day or two."

Crayford's keen eyes suddenly fastened upon her.

"Yes, I haven't too much time," he remarked drily.

They all sat down, and again Crayford looked around, stretching out his short and muscular legs.

"Cute, and no mistake!" he observed, with a sigh, as he pulled at the tiny beard. "Think of living here now! Pity I'm not a composer, eh, Alston?"

He ended with a laugh.

"And what's your husband been up to, Mrs. Heath?" he continued, settling himself more comfortably in his big chair, and pushing his white Homburg hat backward to leave his brown forehead bare to a tiny breeze which spoke softly, very gently, of the sea. "You've been over here for a big bunch of Sundays, Alston tells me, week-days too."

"Oh—" She seemed to be hesitating.

Alston's boyish eyes twinkled with appreciation.

"Well, we came here—we wanted to be quiet."

"You've got out of sight of Broadway, that's certain."

Tea and iced drinks were brought out. They talked of casual matters. The softness of late afternoon, warm, scented, exotic, dreamed in the radiant air. And Crayford said:

"It's cute! It's cute!"

He had removed his hat now and almost lay back in his chair. Presently he said:

"Seems to me years since I've rested like this, Alston!"

"I believe it is many years," said Lake, with a little satisfied laugh. "I've never seen you do it before."

"'Cepting the cure. And that don't amount to anything."

"Stay and dine, won't you?" said Charmian. "If you're not bored."

"Bored!" said Crayford.

"We'll dine just as we are. I'll go in and see the cook about it."

"Very good of you I'm sure," said Crayford. "But I don't want to put you out."

"Where are you staying?"

"The Excelsior," said Lake.

"Right down in the town. You must stay. It is cooler here."

She got up and went slowly into the house.

"Stunning figure she's got and no mistake!" observed Crayford, following her with his eyes. "But I say, Alston, what about this fellow Heath? Now I'm over here I ought to have a look at what he's up to. She seemed to want to avoid the subject, I thought. D'you think he's writing on commission? Or perhaps someone's seen the music. The Metropolitan crowd—"

They fell into a long discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some secret in connection with Claude Heath's opera. This set the impresario bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole.

Charmian's little dinner that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with. That night it came rather near to the surface of him. As he stepped out into the court to take coffee, with an excellent Havana in his mouth, as he saw the deep and limpid sky glittering with strong, almost fierce stars, and farther fainter stars, he heaved a long sigh.

"Bully!" he breathed. "Bully, and no mistake!"

Exactly how it all came about Charmian did not remember afterward; Alston, she thought, must have prepared the way with masterly ingenuity. Or perhaps she—no, she was not conscious of having brought it about deliberately. The fact was this. At ten o'clock that night, sitting with a light behind her, Charmian began to read the libretto of the opera to the two men who were smoking near the fountain.

It had seemed inevitable. The hour was propitious. They were all "worked up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke almost with emotion—a liqueur-glass of excellent old brandy in his hand—of the young talented ones who must bear the banner of art bravely before the coming generations.

"I love the young!" he said. "It is my proudest boast to seek out and bring forward the young. Aren't it, Alston?"

Influenced perhaps by the satiny texture of the old brandy, in combination with the scented and jewelled night, he spoke as if he existed only for the benefit of the young, never thought about money-making, or business propositions. Charmian was touched. Alston also seemed moved. Claude was young. Crayford spoke of him, of his talent. Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be, thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner, when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which only comes on a night of nights?

The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously betrayed into the definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each other's hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to "come about of itself."

Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of, Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest! We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's agreeable voice.

Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander. The night was so vast, so starry and still, that—as he afterward said to himself—"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had not studied with Madame ThÉnant for nothing. This was an almost supreme moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before her. She took her feet off the stool—she was no odalisque to be pampered with footstools and cushions—and she let herself go.

Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:

"That's the best libretto since Carmen, and I know something about libretti."

Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:

"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"

Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.

"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted him—"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from wherever he is?"

With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.

"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But—but I think he needs the holiday he is taking badly."

"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"

"Yes."

"Young 'uns must sweat if they're to get there. That's all right. Aren't it, Alston?"

"Rather!"

"Can't you get him back?" continued Crayford.

The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.

"Well, I might. But—why?"

"Don't he want to see his chum Alston?"

"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."

"Well then?"

"The only thing is he needs complete rest."

"And so do I, but d'you think I'm going to take it? Not I! It's the resters get left. You might telegraph that to your husband, and say it comes straight from me."

He got up from his chair, and threw away the stump of the fourth cigar he had enjoyed that night.

"We've no room for resters in New York City."

"I'm sure you haven't. But my husband doesn't happen to belong to New York City."

As they were leaving Djenan-el-Maqui, after Mr. Crayford had had a long drink, and while he was speaking to his chauffeur, who had the bonnet of the car up, Alston Lake whispered to Charmian:

"Don't wire to old Claude. Keep it up. You are masterly, quite masterly. Hulloa! anything wrong with the car?"

When they buzzed away Charmian stood for a moment in the drive till silence fell. She was tired, but how happily tired!

And to think that Claude knew nothing, nothing of it all! Some day she would have to tell him how hard she had worked for him! She opened her lips and drew into her lungs the warm air of the night. She was not a "rester." She would not surely "get left."

Pierre yawned rather loudly behind her.

"Oh, Pierre!" she said, turning quickly, startled. "It is terribly late. Stay in bed to-morrow. Don't get up early. Bonne nuit."

"Bonne nuit, madame."

On the following day she received a note from Alston.

It was difficult to "lie low." But she obeyed and spent the long day alone. No one came to see her. Toward evening she felt deserted, presently even strangely depressed. As she dined, as she sat out afterward in the court with Caroline reposing on her skirt in a curved attitude of supreme contentment, she recalled the excitement and emotion of the preceding night. She had read well. She had done her part for Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they were a mÉnage À trois. She recalled the beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it was flowing.

Surely so much thought, care, labor and love could not be bestowed on a thing in vain; surely the opera, child of so many hopes, bearer of such a load of ambition, could not "go down"? She tried to regain her strength of anticipation. But all the evening she felt depressed. If only Alston would come in for five minutes! Perhaps he would. She looked at the tiny watch which hung by her side at the end of a thin gold chain. The hands pointed to half-past nine. He might come yet. She listened. The night, one of a long succession of marvellous African nights, was perfectly still. The servants within the villa made no sound. Caroline heaved a faint sigh and stirred, turning to push her long nose into a tempting fold of Charmian's skirt. But, midway in her movement she paused, lifted her head, stared at the darkness with her small yellow eyes, and uttered a muffled bark which was like an inquiry. Her nose was twitching.

"What is it, Caroline?" said Charmian.

She lifted the dog on to her knees.

"What is it?"

Caroline barked faintly again.

"Someone is coming," thought Charmian. "Alston is coming."

Almost directly she heard the sound of wheels, and Caroline jumping down with her lopetty movement, delivered herself up to a succession of calm barks. She was a gentle individual, and never showed any great animation, even in such a crisis as this. The sound of wheels ceased, and in a moment a voice called:

"Charmian! Where are you?"

"Claude!"

She felt that her face grew hot, though she was alone, and she had spoken the name to herself, for herself.

"I'm out here on the terrace!"

She felt astonished, guilty. She had thought that he would only come when she summoned him, perhaps to-morrow, that he would learn by telegram of the arrival of Crayford and Alston. Now she would have to tell him.

He came out into the court, looking very tall in the night.

"Are you surprised?"

He kissed her.

"Very! Very surprised!"

"I thought I had had enough holiday, that I would get back. I only decided to-day, quite suddenly."

"Then didn't you enjoy your holiday?"

"I thought I was going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away from the opera."

Charmian was conscious of a sharp pang. It felt like a pang of jealousy.

"Have you had any dinner?" she asked, in a rather constrained voice.

"Yes. I dined at Gruber's."

She wondered why, but she did not say so.

"I nearly stayed the night in town. I felt—it seemed so absurd my rushing back like this."

He ended with a little laugh.

"Who do you think is here?" she said.

"Here?"

He glanced round.

"I mean in Algiers."

He looked at her with searching eyes.

"Someone we know well?"

"Two people."

"Tell me!"

"No—guess!"

"Women? Men?"

"Men."

"Sennier?"

She shook her head.

"Max Elliot?"

"No. One is—Alston Lake."

"Alston? But why isn't he up here, then?"

"He has brought someone with him."

"Whom?"

"Jacob Crayford."

"Crayford here? What has he come here for?"

"He's taking a holiday motoring."

"But to come to Algiers in summer!"

"He goes everywhere, and can't choose his season. He's far too busy."

"To be sure. Has he been to see you?"

"Yes; he dined here yesterday and stayed till past midnight. He wants to see you. I meant to telegraph to you almost directly."

"Wants to see me?"

"Yes. Claude, last night I read the libretto of the opera to him and Alston."

He was silent. It was dark in the court. She could not see his face clearly enough to know whether he was pleased or displeased.

"Do you mind?"

"Why should I?"

"I think you sound as if you minded."

"Well? What did Crayford think of it?"

"He said, 'It's the best libretto since Carmen.'"

"It is a good libretto."

"He was enthusiastic. Claude"—she put her hand on his arm—"he wants to hear your music."

"Has he said so?"

"Not exactly; not in so many words; but he seemed very much put out when he found you weren't here. And, after he had heard the libretto, he suggested my telegraphing to you to come straight back."

"Funny I should have come without your telegraphing."

"It almost seems—" She paused.

"What?"

"As if you had been led to come back of your own accord, as if you had felt you ought to be here."

"Are you glad?" he said.

"Yes, now."

"Did you mean—"

"Claude," she said, taking a resolution, "I don't think it would be wise for us to seem too eager about the opera with Mr. Crayford."

"But I have never even thought—"

"No, no. But now he's here, and thinks so much of the libretto, and wants to see you, it would be absurd of us to pretend that he could not be of great use to us. I mean, to pretend to ourselves. Of course if he would take it it would be too splendid."

"He never will."

"Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera."

"I'm not a Sennier unfortunately."

"What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed, almost angrily.

She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin their prospects.

"O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can—"

She pulled herself up sharply.

"I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much, and then you speak like this."

Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude.

"My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I don't know why."

But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something, was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her.

"I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself."

Claude put his arm round her gently.

"I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very aggravating," he said. "But—"

He stopped, said nothing more.

"Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed—"your own child. Then others will believe in it, too. Alston does."

She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes.

"And Jacob Crayford shall."

After a moment she added:

"If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things."

"How could I spoil my own music?" he asked.

But she only answered:

"Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!"