The Way of Ambition. Robert Hichens
Читать онлайн книгу.
got just a thousand a year of my own," he said abruptly.
"You are independent, then."
"Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my compositions. I know that."
Mrs. Mansfield thought, "If he were to get a mystical libretto and write an opera!" But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to see him "a success." In her ears were perpetually sounding the words, "and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared." They took her away from London. They set her in the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath and said:
"I quite understand about Mrs. Shiffney now."
"Yes?"
"You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and very powerful imagination. I think your music might make you enemies."
Heath looked pleased.
"I'm glad you think that. I know exactly what you mean."
They sat together on the settle and talked for more than an hour. Mrs. Mansfield's feeling of shyness speedily vanished, was replaced by something maternal with which she was much more at ease.
Mrs. Searle let her out. She had said good-bye to Heath in the studio and asked him not to come to the front door.
"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't stayed too long?"
"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"
"I daresay there are."
"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."
"Has Fan begun yet?"
Mrs. Searle blushed.
"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."
"I must take care what I'm about."
"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure—"
The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened, almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."
The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just heard.
CHAPTER V
Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs. Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.
Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do with The Wanderer unless she lay snug in harbor. His hobby was racing. He was a good horseman, disliked golf, and seldom went out of the British Isles, though he never said that his own country was good enough for him. When he did cross the Channel he visited Paris, Monte Carlo, Homburg, Biarritz, or some place where he was certain to be in the midst of his "pals." The strain of wildness, which made his wife uncommon and interesting, did not exist in him, but he was rather proud of it in her, and had been heard to say more than once, "Addie's a regular gipsy," as if the statement were a high compliment. He was a tall, well-built, handsome man of fifty-two, with gray hair and moustache, an agreeable tenor voice, which was never used in singing, and the best-cut clothes in London. Although easily kind he was thoroughly selfish. Everybody had a good word for him, and nobody, who really knew him, ever asked him to perform an unselfish action. "That isn't Jimmy's line" was their restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a sensible fellow.
Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.
"What's up, Addie?" he asked, with the sympathy he never withheld from her. "Another gown gone wrong?"
Mrs. Shiffney shook her powerful head, on which was a marvellous black hat crowned with a sort of factory chimney of stiff black plumes.
Mr. Shiffney lit a cigar.
"Poor old Addie!" he said. He leaned down and stroked her shoulder. "I wish you could get hold of somebody or something that'd make you happy," he remarked. "I'm sure you deserve it."
His wife dried her tears and sniffed two or three times almost with the frankness of a grief-stricken child.
"I never shall!"
"Why not, Addie?"
"There's something in me—I don't know! I should get tired of anyone who didn't get tired of me!"
She almost began to cry again, and added despairingly:
"So what hope is there? And I do so want to enjoy myself! I wonder if there ever has been a woman who wanted to enjoy herself as much as I do?"
Mr. Shiffney blew forth a cloud of smoke, extending the little finger of the hand which held his cigar.
"We all want to have a good time," he observed. "A first-rate time. What else are we here for?"
He spoke seriously.
"We are here to keep things going, I s'pose—to keep it up, don't you know? We mustn't let it run down. But if we don't enjoy ourselves down it goes. And that doesn't do, does it?"
He flicked the ash from his cigar.
"What's the special row this time?" he continued, without any heated curiosity, but with distinct sympathy.
Mrs. Shiffney looked slightly more cheerful. She enjoyed telling things if the things were closely connected with herself.
"Well, I want to start for a cruise," she began. "I can't remain for ever glued to Grosvenor Square. I must move about and see something."
She had just been for a month in Paris.
"Of course. What are we here for?" observed her husband.
"You always understand! Sit down, you old thing!"
Mr. Shiffney sat down, gently pulling up his trousers.
"And the row is," she continued, shaking her shoulders, "that I want Claude Heath to come and he won't. And, since he won't, he's really the only living man I want to have on the cruise."
"Who