The Way of Ambition Part 51

"What means?"

"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves, if we can incorporate it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward.

I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"

Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes sparkling, her hands deep in a huge m.u.f.f.

"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"

"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."

"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."

She drew one hand out of her m.u.f.f. It was holding the newspaper slips of Romeike and Curtice.

"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear, slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A year--two years, perhaps--out of the world! It will be a new experience for me, won't it, Madretta?"

"Quite new."

The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.

"And I shall see the island with you."

"The island?" he said.

"Don't you remember--the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it.

But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again, better than the truth, because _I_ was added to them. Don't you remember, Claudie?"

"Yes, now I remember."

"You are going to do that where I could not do it."

Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.

And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from her.

CHAPTER XIX

Charmian and her husband went first to the Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money to throw away.

During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which, carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life running its course in the darkness of his soul.

In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose.

And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of "steeping" her husband.

She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she was so keenly, so incessantly alive to the reason of their coming to Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.

But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now.

You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first she began to a.s.sert herself in your art life."

And he kept silence.

Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.

She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another--a not completely hidden reason?

Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian, and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.

And presently she said:

"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."

Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the curving sh.o.r.es covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned on the seat and looked at her.

"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.

Something in his eyes almost startled her.

"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."

He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an expression which made her feel almost uneasy.

"Something here"--she almost faltered, called on her will, and continued--"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.

She thought his voice sounded insincere.

"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here for our honeymoon."

"I thought of it. I wanted to."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."

"And now the right time has come?"

"Yes, now it has come."

She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had troubled her spirit.

The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red roses in his earthy hand.

He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener spoke in a hoa.r.s.e voice, telling her something about water-plants and blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with the old man and began to talk with him.