The Way of Ambition - Robert Hichens

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are many human needs, Gabriel, which it is criminal to gratify.' Burling went home in a four-wheeler. Cummerbridge had left after the first act—a severe attack of neuralgia in the right eye."

      Elliot's full-throated laugh rang through the room. Heath was smiling, but almost sadly, Charmian thought.

      "Perhaps it was My Little Darling which brought about the attempt at better things you were speaking of," he said to Mrs. Mansfield.

      "Ah, but their prophet is not mine!" she answered.

      An almost feverish look of vitality had come into her face, which was faintly pencilled by the fingers of sorrow.

      "Sometimes I think I hate the disintegrating drama more than I despise the vulgar idiocies which, after all, never really touch human life," she continued. "No doubt it is sheer weakness on my part to be affected by it. But I am. Only last week Charmian and I saw the play that they—the superior ones—are all flocking to. The Premier has seen it five times already. I loathed its cleverness. I loathed the element of surprise in it. I laughed, and loathed my own laughter. The man who wrote it would put cap and bells on St. Francis of Assisi and make a mock of Œdipus."

      She paused, then, leaning forward, in a low and thrilling voice she quoted, "'For we are in Thy hand; and man's noblest task is to help others by his best means and powers.'"

      Claude Heath gazed at her while she was speaking, and in his eyes Charmian, glancing over her fan, saw what she thought of as two torches gleaming.

      "I came out of the theater," continued Mrs. Mansfield, "and I confess it with shame, feeling as if I should never find again the incentive to a noble action, as if the world were turned to chaff. And yet I had laughed—how I had laughed!"

      Suddenly she began to laugh at the mere recollection of something in the play.

      "The wretch is terribly clever!" she exclaimed. "But he seems to me destructive."

      "Well, but—" began Elliot. "Some such accusation has been brought against many really great men. The Empress Frederick told a friend of mine that no one who had not lived in Germany, and observed German life closely, could understand the evil spread through the country by Wagner's Tristan."

      "Then the fault, the sin if you like, was in the hearers," said Heath, almost with excitement.

      He got up and stood by the fire.

      "Wagner was a builder. I believe Germany is the better for a Tristan, and I believe we should be the better for an English Tristan. But I doubt if we gain essentially by the drama in cap and bells."

      Elliot, who was fond of defending his friends, came vigorously to the defense of the playwright, to whom he was devoted and whose first nights he seldom missed. In the discussion which followed Charmian saw more clearly how peculiarly in tune her mother's mind was with Heath's.

      "This is the beginning of a great intimacy," she said to herself. "One of mother's great intimacies."

      And, for the first time she consciously envied her mother, consciously wished that she had her mother's brains, temperament, and unintentional fascination. The talk went on, and presently she drifted into it, took her small part in it. But she felt herself too brainless, too ignorant to be able to contribute to it anything of value. Her usually happy and innocent self-conceit has deserted her, with all her audacities. She was oddly subdued, was almost sad.

      "How old is he really?" she thought more than once as she looked at Claude Heath.

      There was no mention of music, and at last Mrs. Mansfield got up to go.

      As they said good-night she looked at Heath and remarked:

      "We shall meet again?"

      He clasped her hand, and answered, slightly reddening:

      "Oh, I hope so! I do hope so!"

      That was all. There was no mention of the Red Book, of being at home on Thursdays, no "If you're ever near Berkeley Square," etc. All that was unnecessary. Charmian touched a long-fingered hand and uttered a cold little "Good-night." A minute more and her mother and she were in the motor gliding through damp streets in the murky darkness.

      After a short silence Mrs. Mansfield said:

      "Well, Charmian, you escaped! Are you very thankful?"

      "Escaped!" said a rather plaintive voice from the left-hand corner of the car.

      "The dreaded Te Deum."

      "Is he a musician at all? I believe Max Elliot has been humbugging us."

      "He warned you not to expect too much in the way of hair."

      "It isn't that. How old do you think he is?"

      "Certainly not thirty."

      "What did you tell him about me?"

      "About you? I don't remember telling him anything."

      "Oh, but you did, mother!"

      "What makes you think so?"

      "I know you did, when I was sitting near the piano with Max Elliot."

      "Perhaps I did then. But I can't remember what it was. It must have been something very trifling."

      "Oh, of course I know that!" said Charmian almost petulantly.

      Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject quietly, and they were soon at home.

      Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs. Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her.

      "I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when she was alone.

      Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her.

      "Wonderful mother!"

      "What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!"

      "Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry child."

      "And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a little."

      "No, not to-night, you darling!"

      Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went away up the stairs between white walls to bed.

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      Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."

      Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends. She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art. Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other, perhaps the two reserves clung together.

      These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the other that was hidden from the gaze of the world.

      A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this—Charmian was not included in it.

      This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother.

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