The Way of Ambition. Robert Hichens
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of Mozart in a fine, steady, and warm soprano voice. Then she sang two morceaux from the filmy opera, Crêpe de Chine, by a young Frenchman, which she had helped to make the rage of Paris. Her eyes were often on Mr. Brett, commanding him to be favorable, yet pleading with him too.
As Mrs. Mansfield looked down she was feeling sad. The crowded room beneath her was a small epitome of the world to which talent and genius are flung, to be kissed or torn to pieces, perhaps to be kissed then torn to pieces. And too often the listeners felt that they were superior to those they listened to, because to them an appeal was made, because they were in the position of judges. "Do we like her? Shall we take her?" Many faces expressed such questions as this strange-looking woman sang. "What does Mr. Brett think of her?" and eyes turned toward the stout man leaning against the wall.
Did not Claude Heath do well to keep out of it all?
The question passed through Mrs. Mansfield's mind as she felt the humiliation of the yoke which the world fastens on the artist's neck. She had come to care for Heath almost a little jealously, but quite unselfishly. She was able to care unselfishly, because she had given all of herself that was passionate long ago to the man who was dead. Never again could she be in love. Never again could she desire the closest relation woman can be in with man. But she felt protective toward Heath. She had the strong instinct, to shelter his young austerity, his curious talent, his reserve, and his sensitiveness. And she was thinking now, "If he goes yachting with Adelaide! If he allows Max to exploit him! If he becomes known, perhaps the fashion, even the rage! And if they get sick of him?" Yet what is talent for? Why is it given to any man? Surely to be used, displayed, bestowed.
There was a hard and cruel expression on many of the listening faces below. Singers were there, appraising; professional critics coldly judging, jaded, sated, because they had heard too much of the wonderful sounds of the world; men like Paul Lane, by temperament inclined to sneer and condemn; women who loved to be in camps and whose idea of setting an artist on high was to tear all other artists down. Battlefields! Battlefields! Mrs. Mansfield was painfully conscious that the last thing to be found in any circle of life is peace. Too often there was poison in the cup which the artist had to drink. Too often to attract the gaze of the world was to attract and concentrate many of the floating hatreds of the world. The little old house near Petersburg Place was a quiet refuge. Mrs. Searle, a kindly dragon, kept the door. Yellow-haired Fan was the fairy within. The faded curtains of orange color shut out very much that was black and horrid. And there the Kings of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a dead man.
"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.
He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog, looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be detached.
"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."
"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."
The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.
"Don't you?"
"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."
"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musical critic standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."
"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice and the—the what you may call it all wrong."
"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."
"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.
"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic, puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.
"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.
"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a forced-up mezzo."
Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:
"Charming! No, I haven't heard Crêpe de Chine. I don't care much for Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us Enigme." Mr. Brett had disappeared.
"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began Enigme in his most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a diseur. No one would dream of putting him in a programme with me."
"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention—"
"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you all here, is as ignorant of music as—as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I say!"
"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You will come back, you—"
"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"
At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.
Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness. Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss Deans did not appeal to him.
"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.
And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a similar ennui when the American was singing.
"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who, with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of Miss Deans.
And again her mind went to Claude Heath.
"Better to keep out of it! Better to keep out of it!" a voice said within her.
And apparently Heath was of one mind with her on this matter.
As Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian were going away they met Mrs. Shiffney in the hall with Ferdinand, who was holding her cloak.
"Oh, Charmian!" she said, turning quickly, with the cloak over one of her broad shoulders. "I heard from Claude Heath to-day."
"Did you?" said Charmian languidly, looking about her at the crowd.
"Yes. He can't come. His mother's got a cold and he doesn't like to leave her, or something. And he's working very hard on a composition that nobody is ever to hear. And—I forget what else. But there were four sides of excuses."
She laughed.
"Poor boy! He hasn't much savoir-faire. Good-night! I'll let you know when we start."
Her eyes pierced Charmian.
"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."
That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:
"If only Rades had not sung Petite Fille de Tombouctou!"
That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such music was cruel when life went wrong.
"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.
Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that from the first she had hated Claude Heath.
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