Part 10 (2/2)
He stood for a moment, not looking toward Mrs. Mansfield; then, as if struggling against an inward reluctance, he again sat down on the settle.
”Have you orchestrated it?” she asked.
”Yes. I've just finished the orchestration.”
”Surely you want to hear it given with voices and the orchestra?
Frankly, I won't believe you if you say you don't.”
”I do.”
The reluctance seemed to fade out of him.
”The fact is I'm torn between the desire to hear my things and a mighty distaste for publicity.”
He sprang up.
”If you'll allow me I'll just give you an idea of my Te Deum. And then I'll have done.”
He went once more to the piano.
When he was sitting beside her again Mrs. Mansfield felt shy of him.
After a moment she said:
”You are sincere in your music?”
”Yes.”
He did not seem specially anxious to get at her exact opinion of his work, and this fact, she scarcely knew why, pleased Mrs. Mansfield.
”I had two or three things done at the College concerts,” Heath continued. ”I don't think they were much liked. They were considered very clever technically. But what's that? Of course, one must conquer one's means or one can't express oneself at all.”
”And now you work quite alone?”
”Yes. I've got just a thousand a year of my own,” he said abruptly.
”You are independent, then.”
”Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my compositions. I know that.”
Mrs. Mansfield thought, ”If he were to get a mystical libretto and write an opera!” But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to see him ”a success.” In her ears were perpetually sounding the words, ”and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared.” They took her away from London. They set her in the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath and said:
”I quite understand about Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney now.”
”Yes?”
”You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and very powerful imagination. I think your music might make you enemies.”
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