The Way of Ambition Part 3

At the end of the room, which was panelled with wood and was high, by a large open fireplace, Max Elliot was sitting with Paul Lane and two other people, a woman and a young man. The woman was large and broad, with brown hair, reckless hazel eyes, and a nose and mouth which suggested a Roman emperor. She looked about thirty-five. In her large ears, which were set very flat against her head, there were long, diamond earrings, and diamonds glittered round her neck. She was laughing when the Mansfields came in, and went on laughing while Max Elliot went to receive them.

"Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney has just come," he said. "Paul has been dining."

"And--the other?" murmured Charmian, with a hushed air of awed expectation which was not free from a hint of mockery.

Mrs. Mansfield sent her a glance of half-humorous rebuke.

"Claude Heath," answered Elliot.

"How wonderful he is."

"Charmian, don't be tiresome!" observed her mother, as they went toward the fire.

The two men got up, and Charmian had an impression of height, of a bony slimness that was almost cadaverous, of irregular features, rather high cheek-bones, brown, very short hair, and large, enthusiastic and observant eyes that glanced almost piercingly at her, and quickly looked away.

Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney remained in her armchair, moved her shoulders, and said in a rather deep, but not disagreeable voice:

"Mr. Heath and I are hearing all about 'Marella.' It builds you up if you are a skeleton and pulls you down if you are enormous, as I am. It makes you sleep if you suffer from insomnia, and if you have the sleeping sickness it wakes you up. Dr. Curling has patented it, and feeds his patients on nothing else. Delia is living entirely on it, and is to emerge looking seventeen and a female Sandow. Mr. Heath is longing to try it."

She had held out a powerful hand to the new arrivals, and now turned toward the composer, who stood waiting to be introduced.

"Oh, but no, please!" said Heath, speaking quickly and almost anxiously, with a certain navete that was attractive, but that did not suggest simplicity, but rather great sensitiveness of mind. "I never take quack medicines or foods. I have no need to. And I think they're all invented to humbug us."

Max Elliot took him by the arm.

"I want to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Mansfield."

He paused and added:

"Mr. Claude Heath--Miss Mansfield."

Paul Lane began talking to Charmian when the two handshakes--Heath had shaken hands quickly--were over. She looked across the room, and saw her mother in conversation with the composer. And she knew immediately that he had conceived a strong liking for her mother. It seemed to her in that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in his favor.

Perhaps to-night she was in a tiresome mood, as her mother had hinted.

As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years, and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested her.

Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it.

His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut, reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere, combined with something eager and pa.s.sionate, in his expression and manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven.

He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother.

"Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane.

"Not specially so. Music was never mentioned."

"Was boxing?"

"Boxing!"

"Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker."

Lane smiled with his mouth.

"I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species, but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the truth is, n.o.body is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that it is so."

Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed:

"You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames say."

This time Lane really smiled.

"I hope so," he said. "Or else I should certainly lack variety. Well, Max, what is it?"

"Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney wants you."

"I always want him. I swim in his irony and can't sink, like a tourist in the Dead Sea."

"What a left-handed compliment!"

"A right-handed one would bore you to death, and my aim in life is--"

"To avoid being bored. How often do you succeed in your aim?"

"Whenever I am with you in this delightful house."

"It is delightful," said Charmian to her host. "But why? Of course it is beautiful. But that's not all. It's personal. Perhaps that's it."

She got up, and walked slowly away from the fire, very naturally, with a gesture, just touching her soft cheek and fluttering her fingers toward the glow, as if she were too hot. Max Elliot accompanied her.

"And all the lovely music that has sounded here," she continued, "perhaps lingers silently in the air, and, without being aware of it, we feel the vibrations."

She sat down on a sofa near the Steinway grand piano, which stood on a low dais, looked up at Max Elliot, and added, in quite a different voice:

"Shall we hear any of his music to-night?"

"I believe now we may."

"Why--now?"

Elliot looked toward Mrs. Mansfield.

"Because of mother, you mean?"

"He likes her."

"Anyone can see that."