Part 68 (2/2)
”Why not?”
”He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel anxious.”
”Anxious? What about, monsieur?”
”Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally, but I am not _homme du monde_. I am not a little man of the salons. I am not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.
I have been, and I still am, poor--poor, madame! But, madame, I do not intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!”
”Of course not--with your talent!”
”Ah, that is just it!”
His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and speaking almost with violence.
”That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to go! Then they will seek me.' Yes”--he paused, finished his gla.s.s of brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great effort after self-control--”but is your husband's talent for the stage as great as mine? I doubt it.”
”Why do you doubt it?” exclaimed Charmian warmly. ”What reason have you to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet, not a note of it.”
”No. And that enables me--”
”Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur Gillier?”
”Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--”
”Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be thinking of?”
”I feared by your words, your manner--”
”I a.s.sure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish what you were saying.”
”I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal offense--p.r.o.nouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--” He paused.
The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.
”Yes?” said Charmian.
”Madame?”
”Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of us.”
”I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame, believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be a.s.sociated together in the production of a work of art. We are too different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him understand something of the life not merely in, but that underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I say?”--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
”It is only the difference between the French and English temperaments.”
”No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who is not afraid to live.”
”I don't agree with you,” said Charmian coldly. ”But really it is not a matter which I can discuss with you.”
”I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this”--he looked down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, ”that I am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose a hundred pounds rather than to--”
<script>