The Way of Ambition Part 23

"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality?

Do you think I--am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all the other girls--you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"

There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched Susan Fleet.

"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."

"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."

"Perhaps he likes you."

"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we know a thing by instinct--don't we?"

"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within us."

"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous, who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius, I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know, nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and pined to be extraordinary!"

"Extraordinary? In what way?"

"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately--quite lately--I've begun to realize what I could be, do. I could be the perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"

"I'm not laughing."

"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't.

And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man _manque_ because of a sort of kink in his temperament. And--I know that I could get rid of that kink _if_--"

She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed, almost fiercely.

"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."

"When I look at that island--"

Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said, in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:

"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go to rust."

Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.

"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day, when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of things--here."

"Tell me what it is."

"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha Ali, walking toward the hotel--when he was just under that arch of pink roses. The horn of a motor sounded in the road, and the white dust flew up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a s.h.i.+p. It was all an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt--I shall be here again with _him_."

She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.

"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they knew, and told me."

Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.

"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn through that man, and to teach him."

"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"

Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with possibility.

"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."

"Learn! Why, I've just told you--"

"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."

Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman had astonished her.

"Do you?" she almost blurted out.

"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."

"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone else."

CHAPTER IX

Just before Charmian left England Mrs. Mansfield had begun to suspect her secret. Already from time to time she had wondered whether Charmian refused to accept Claude Heath, as she had accepted all the other habitues of the house, because she really liked him much better than she liked them. She had wondered and she had said, "No, it is not so." Had she not been less than frank with herself, and for another reason which made her reluctant to see truth? She scarcely knew. But when Charmian was gone and her mother was quite alone, she felt almost sure that she had to face a fact very unpleasant to her. There had been something in the girl's eyes as she said good-bye, a slight hardness, a lurking defiance, something about her lips, something even in the sound of her voice which had troubled Mrs. Mansfield, which continued to trouble her while Charmian was away.

Charmian in love with Claude Heath!

It seemed to the mother in those first moments of contemplation that, if she were right in her surmise, Charmian could scarcely have set her affections on a man less suited to enter into her life, less likely to make her happy.

Charmian belonged to a certain world not merely because she was born in it, and had always lived in it, but by temperament, by character.

Essentially she was of it. She could surely never be happy in the life led by Claude Heath. Could Claude Heath be happy in the sort of life led by her?

Abruptly Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she did not really know Heath very well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she wished very much to be more clear about that.

Among her many friends Heath stood apart, and for this reason: all the other men of talent whom she knew intimately were in the same set, or belonged to sets which overlapped and intermingled. They were men who were making, or had made, their names; men who knew, and were known by, her friends and acquaintances, who needed no explanation, who were thoroughly "in it." Only Heath was outside, was unknown, was not taking an active part in the battle of art or of life. And this fact gave him a certain strangeness, not free from romance, gave him a peculiar value in Mrs. Mansfield's eyes. She secretly cherished the thought of his individuality. She could not wish it changed. But she knew very well that though such an individuality might attract her child, indeed, she feared, had attracted Charmian, yet Charmian, if she had any influence over it, would not be satisfied to let it alone, to leave it quietly to its own natural development. Charmian would never let any plant that belonged to her grow in darkness. She understood well enough the many clever men who frequented the house, men with ambitions which they were gratifying, men who were known, or who wished and intended to be known, men, as a rule, who were fighting, or who had fought, hard battles. To several of these men Charmian could have made an excellent wife.

But if she had set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake.

His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the farther side. Mrs. Mansfield was glad that Charmian was away. Hitherto she had cultivated the friends.h.i.+p with Heath without arriere pensee. Now she was more conscious in it. Her great love of her only child made her wish to study Heath.

The more she studied him the more she hoped that her guess about Charmian had been wrong, and yet the more she studied him the better she liked him. There was an intensity in him that captivated her intense mind, an unworldliness that her soul approved. His lack of social ambition, of all desire to be rich and prosperous, refreshed her. She compared him secretly with other men of great talent. Some of them were not greedy for money, but even they were greedy for fame, were almost fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to make ruins and dust.

Among all the men whom she knew, Claude Heath was the only one who was alone with his art, and who wished to remain alone with the thing he loved. There was a purity in the situation which delighted Mrs.

Mansfield. Yet she realized that Heath was a man who might be won away from that which was best in him, from that which he almost sternly clung to and cherished. And one day he made her aware that he knew this.

They went to a concert together at Queen's Hall, and sat in the gallery, in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him back from worlds he desired to enter.