Part 38 (1/2)

Probably he had stood thus for a considerable time--he did not know whether for five minutes or an hour--when he was made self-conscious by an event in the house. He heard two women's voices in conversation, apparently on the staircase.

One of them said:

”The duster, I tell you!”

The other replied:

”Well, I didn't leave it. Ask f.a.n.n.y, can't you!”

”f.a.n.n.y doesn't know.”

”She ought to know, then!”

”Ought yourself! f.a.n.n.y's no business with the duster no more than--”

At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:

”Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house.

Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If you must speak, go downstairs.”

There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then again silence.

Claude came away from the fire.

”Your master is at work.”

He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her lap. And he ground his teeth.

”I can't--I can't--I never shall be able to!”

He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands.

When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed, photographed eyes.

Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing vigorously, almost angrily, ”You are Queen of my heart to-night,” came up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began, continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle of a phrase.

Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in the land without light.

The master was working.

But the master was not working.

Day followed day, and Claude kept his secret, the secret that he was doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the atmosphere created by Charmian.

One thing specially troubled him.

So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own ”diggings,” isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.

But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own masculinity.

This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.

He thought of the text, ”Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor until the evening.” If only he could go forth! If only he could forget the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies, sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.

During this time Charmian was beginning to ”put out feelers.” Her work for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington Square, was to be social. Women can do very much in the social way. And she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words ”worldly ambition.” The task was a n.o.ble one, to make the career of the man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so ”atmospheric,” she would be at work for him in the world they were destined to conquer.