The Way of Ambition | Page 6

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 passionate, 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, nobody 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. Shiffney 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."
After a moment she added, with a touch of irritation:
"He's evidently very difficile for an unknown man."
"No, it isn't that at all. If you ever know him well, you will understand."
"What?" she asked with petulance.
"That his reserve is a right instinct, nothing more. Between ourselves," he bent toward her, "I made a little mistake in asking Mrs. Shiffney, delightful though she is."
"I wondered why you had asked her, when you didn't want even to ask me."
"Middle-aged as I am, I get carried away by people. I met Mrs. Shiffney to-day at a concert. She was so absolutely right in her enthusiasm, so clever and artistic--though she's ignorant of music--over the whole thing, that--well, here she is."
"And here I am!"
"Yes, here you are!" he said genially.
He had been standing. Now he sat down beside her, crossed one leg over the other, held his knee with his clasped hands, and continued:
"The worst of it is Mrs. Shiffney has made him bolt several doors. When she looked at him