The Way of Ambition. Robert Hichens
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ungratified.
"He's spoilt by the French blood his mother gave him," said Mrs. Mansfield as the door closed. "If he had been all French, one might have delighted in him, taken him on the intellectual side, known where one was, skipped the coldness and the irony, clung to the wit, vivacity and easy charm. But he's a modern Frenchman, boxing with an Englishman and using his feet half the time. And that's dreadful. In an English drawing-room I don't like the Savate. Now tell us, tell us! I am so thankful he is not a celebrity."
"Nor ever likely to be unless he marries the wrong woman."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Charmian with curiosity.
"A woman who is ambitious for him and pushes him."
"But if this Claude Heath has so much talent, surely it would be a fine thing to make him give it to the world."
"That depends on his temperament, I daresay," said Mrs. Mansfield. "I believe there are people who ought to hide their talents in a napkin."
"Oh, mother! Explain!"
"Some plants can only grow in darkness."
"Very nasty ones, I should think! Deadly nightshade! That sort of thing!"
"Poor dear! I gave her light in a vulgar age. She can't help it," said Mrs. Mansfield to Max Elliot. "We are her refined seniors. But sheer weight of years has little influence. Never mind. Go on. You and I at least can understand."
As she spoke she laid her hand, on which shone several curious rings, over Charmian's, and she kept it there while Max Elliot gave some account of Claude Heath.
"He's not particularly handsome in features. He's quite conventional in dress. His instinct would probably be to use the shell as a close hiding-place for anything strange, unusual that it contains. He crops his hair, and, I should think, wets it two or three times a day for fear people should see that it has a natural wave in it. His neckties are the most humdrum that can be discovered in the shops."
"Does he dislike his appearance?" asked Charmian.
"I daresay. The worst of it is that he has eyes that give the whole thing away to a Mrs. Mansfield."
"What, and not to me?" said Charmian, in an injured note.
"She's fairly sharp, poor dear!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, in a rescuing voice. "You mustn't be too hard on her."
Max Elliot smiled.
"And a Charmian Mansfield."
"What color are his eyes?" inquired Charmian.
"I really can't tell you for certain, but I should think dark gray."
"And where does he live?"
"In a little house not far from St. Petersburg Place on the north side of the Park, Mullion House he calls it. He's got a studio there which opens into a pocket-handkerchief of a garden. He keeps two women servants."
"Any dogs?" said Charmian.
"No."
"Cats?"
"Not that I know of."
"I don't feel as if I should like him. Does he compose at the piano?"
"No, away from it."
"He's unsympathetic. Cropped hair watered down, humdrum neckties, composing away from the piano, no animals—it's all against me except the little house."
"Because you take the wholly conventional view of the musician," said her mother. "If I dared to say such a thing to my own child I might add, without telling a dangerous lie, because you are so old-fashioned in your views. You can't forget having read the Vie de Bohême, and having heard, and unfortunately seen, Paderewski when you were a schoolgirl at Brighton."
"It is my beloved mother's fault that I ever was a schoolgirl at Brighton."
"Ah, don't press down that burden of crime upon my soul! Lift it, by freeing yourself from the Brighton tradition, which I ought to have kept for ever from you. And now, Max, tell us, whom does Mr. Heath know?"
"I know very little about his acquaintance. I met him first at Wonderland."
"What's that?" asked Charmian. "It sounds more promising."
"It's gone now, but it was a place in Whitechapel, where they had boxing competitions, Conky Joe against the Nutcracker—that kind of thing."
"I give him up, Te Deum, Conky Joe and all!" she exclaimed in despair.
"Do you mean me to meet him, Max?" asked Mrs. Mansfield.
"Yes. I can't keep him to myself any longer. I must share him with someone who understands. Come to-morrow evening, won't you, after dinner? Heath is dining with me."
"Yes. Is Charmian invited?"
Max Elliot looked at Charmian, and she steadily returned his gaze.
"You know," he said after a pause, "that you've got a certain hankering after lions?"
"Hankering! Don't, don't!"
"But you really have!"
"I will not be put with the vulgar crowd like that. I do not care for lions. Tigers are my taste."
He laughed.
"Do come then. But remember, there are plants which can only grow in darkness. And I believe this is one of them."
When Max Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had dropped away from her.
"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very vulgar?"
"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather 'in it' in London," returned her mother.
"Surely I'm not a climber, without knowing it!"
"No, I don't think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort to keep your head above water."
"How very awful! I don't know why it is, but your head always is well above water without your making any effort."
"I don't bother as to whether it is or not, you see."
"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"
"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you'll be inclined to rave about him."
"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"
"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner's Teosofia.
CHAPTER II
In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in it." Mrs. Mansfield's father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated, charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She, too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick Leighton's little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at which might be met the crème de la crème of the intellectual