The Way of Ambition Part 87

He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood,"

and was for ever on the look-out for it.

He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.

But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not touch them.

Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was pa.s.sionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his side because of grat.i.tude, and in expectation.

The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his ideas.

"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if the darned thing's a failure."

There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside, the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly, unexpectedly.

Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him, bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.

"Then if we--I mean if my husband does what you wish, you _will_ spend thousands over it?" she said, "you _will_ produce it, give it its chance?"

Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything definite. Naturally it had been a.s.sumed that he would not waste his time over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within him. He strove to summon up that strength, but a sense of pity, that perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent.

Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not strike it down into the dust of despair.

Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth, looked at Charmian, and said:

"Yah!"

Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word.

But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back, beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.

"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and bred a n.i.g.g.e.r, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it.

I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then.

You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start, but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of feet above it."

"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.

"Ah!" breathed Charmian.

Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably thought Napoleonic.

"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"--his tone was changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost paternal--"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger--eh, little lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"

"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.

His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of the room, out of the villa, to rush away--away into some desert place, and to be alone.

"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."

"I can't help--how would you have me look?"

"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"

"Claudie, we all only want--"

"I know--I know!"

He clenched his wet hands.

"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."

"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in this one-horse heat next door but one to h.e.l.l--don't mind me, little lady! I'll stop right there!--we're getting on to something that's going to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about--'s going to astonish--the--world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"

And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.

And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm--a genuine enthusiasm--of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be carried on by their hopes.

As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where Claude lost he gained. He was now a.s.sisting to make an opera; with every day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.

"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or "that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"--thought of by himself--"makes your opera a different thing."

And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young people.

"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and I'll make him another Battistini. See here"--and he turned sharply to Claude--"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why, it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the opera."

That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he, the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all.

But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in hand.

"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.

Claude was tempted to reply:

"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."

But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities, which delighted her.

"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never met an Englishwoman like her!"

Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man, recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She felt almost as if she were a creator.

"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."

While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised by Crayford--and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of those about him, scourged to his work by their desires--Lake studied the baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian "put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."

"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."

"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.

"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he answered. "Now, see here--"

They plunged deep into the libretto.