Part 36 (1/2)
It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke, with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: ”Perhaps I shall find salvation in work.” If she had divined the secret he could never tell her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all things in his life work together for good.
”May it be so with me!” was Claude's silent prayer that night.
When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first drawing-room.
”Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude,” she said. ”You aren't sleepy, are you?”
”Not a bit.”
He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.
”It went off well, didn't it?”
She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.
”Yes, I think it did.”
”They all liked you.”
”I'm glad!”
”You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!
You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney not to come!”
Her voice had suddenly changed.
”Did you want Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney to come so particularly?” Claude asked, not without surprise.
”Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she rushed off to Paris like that?”
”I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier.”
Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.
”Max does exactly the same,” said Charmian. ”It really becomes rather silly--in a man.”
”But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him.”
”I never said there was. But still--Margot is rather tiresome, too, with her rages first for this person and then for the other.”
”Who is it now?”
”Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others.”
”Still?”
”Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I believe, just to hear the _Paradis_ once at the Metropolitan. Five days out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put in the _Daily Mail_. And then she says she can't think how things about her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!”