The Way of Ambition Part 99

Claude made a vague gesture.

"Have you come to dine with me?" she said, smiling.

"But I see you are going out!"

She shook her powerful head.

"We will dine up here. But I must telephone to a number in Fifth Avenue."

She went toward the telephone.

"Oh, but I can't keep you at home. It is too outrageous!" he said.

"Give me time to telephone!" she answered, looking round at him over her shoulder.

"You are much too kind!" he said. "I--I looked in to settle about your coming to that rehearsal."

She got on to the number in Fifth Avenue and spoke through the telephone softly.

"There! That's done! And now help me to order a dinner for--" she glanced at him shrewdly--"a tired genius."

Claude smiled. They consulted together, amicably arranging the menu.

The dinner was brought quickly, and they sat down, one on each side of a round table decorated with lilies of the valley.

"I'm playing traitress to-night," Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney said in her deep voice.

"I was to have been at a dinner arranged for the Senniers by Mrs.

Algernon Batsford."

"I am so ashamed."

"Or are you a little bit flattered?"

"Both, perhaps."

"A divinely complex condition. Tell me about the rehearsal."

They plunged into a discussion on music. Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney was a past mistress in the art of subtle flattery, when she chose to be. And she always chose to be, in the service of her caprices. She understood well the vanity of the artistic temperament. She even understood its reverse side, which was strongly developed in Claude. Her efforts were dedicated to the dual temperament, and beautifully. The discussion was long and animated, lasting all through dinner to the time of Turkish coffee.

Claude forgot his fatigue, and Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney almost forgot her caprice.

She became genuinely interested in the discussion merely as a discussion. Her sincere pa.s.sion for art got the upper hand in her. And this made her the more delightful. The evening fled and its feet were winged.

"I was going to a party at Eve Inness's," she said, when half-past ten chimed in the clock on her writing-table. "But I'll give it up."

Claude sprang to his feet.

"Really you must not. I must go. I must really. I know I need any amount of sleep to make up arrears."

"You don't look sleepy."

"How could I, in New York?"

"We don't need to sleep here. Sit down again. Eve Inness is quite definitely given up."

"But--"

Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:

"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think--" he paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine.

But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"

After a minute Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney said:

"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."

Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her either to a really violent pa.s.sion, of the burning straw species, for Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.

"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.

And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs.

s.h.i.+ffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was certainly the cry of the real man in Claude. And he had to heed it. But he loathed himself at this moment. And he felt that he had given Mrs.

s.h.i.+ffney the right to hate him for ever.

"My weakness is my curse!" he thought. "It makes me utterly contemptible. I must slay it!"

Desperation seized him. Abruptly he got up.

"You are much too kind!" he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.

"I can never be grateful enough to you. If I--if I do succeed, I shall know at any rate that one--" He met her eyes and stopped.

"Good-night!" she said. "I'm afraid I must send you away now, for I believe I will run in for a minute to Eve Inness, after all."

As Claude descended to the hall he knew that he had left an enemy behind him.

But the knowledge which really troubled him was that he deserved to have Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney for an enemy.

His own self, his own manhood, whipped him.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

That night, when Claude arrived at the St. Regis, Charmian was still out. She did not return till just after midnight. When she came into the sitting-room she found Claude in an armchair near the window, which was slightly open. He had no book or paper, and seemed to be listening to something.

"Claudie! Why, what are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said.