Charmian knew he was talking nonsense. Nevertheless she glanced round half in dread of Madame Sennier. The yellow eyes were smiling. The white face looked humorously sarcastic.
"Of course! Whenever you like!" she said lightly.
The monkeylike hands pressed hers more closely.
"The freedom of Africa, you give it me!"
He whisked round, with a sharp and absurd movement, and joined the others.
"She is delicious!" he observed, as they walked away. "But she is very undeveloped. She has certainly never suffered. And no woman can be of much use to an artist unless she has suffered."
"Henriette, have you suffered?" said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
"Terribly!" said Jacques Sennier, answering for his wife. "But unfortunately not through me. That is the great flaw in our connection."
He frowned.
"I must make her suffer!" he muttered.
"My cabbage, you are a little fool and you know it!" observed Madame Sennier imperturbably. "_Mon Dieu!_ What dust!"
They had emerged into the road, and were enveloped in a cloud sent up by a pa.s.sing motor.
"If it doesn"t rain, or they don"t water the roads, I shall run away to Constantine," observed Mrs. Shiffney. "There"ll be no dust in Constantine at this time of year."
CHAPTER XXI
In the evening of the following day Charmian and Susan Fleet had just sat down to dinner, and Pierre was about to lift the lid off the soup tureen, when there was a ring at the front door bell.
"What can that be?" said Charmian.
She looked at Susan.
"Susan, I feel as if it were somebody, or something important."
Pierre raised the lid with a pathetic gesture, and went out carrying it high in his left hand.
"I wonder what it is?" said Charmian.
All day they had not seen Mrs. Shiffney or her party. They had pa.s.sed the hours alone in the garden, talking, working, reading, but chiefly discussing Charmian"s affairs. And calm had flowed upon Charmian, had enfolded her almost against her will. At the end of the day she had said:
"Susan, you do me more good than anyone I know. I don"t understand how it is, but you seem to purify me almost, as a breeze from the sea--when it"s calm--purifies a room if you open the window to it."
But now, as she waited for Pierre"s return, she felt strung up and excited.
"If it should be Claude come back!" she said.
"Would he ring?" asked Susan.
"No. But he might!"
At this moment a loud murmur of talk was audible in the hall, and then a voice exclaiming:
"_Ca ne fait rien! Ca ne fait rien! Laissez moi pa.s.ser, mon bon!_"
"Surely it"s Monsieur Sennier!" exclaimed Charmian.
As she spoke, the door opened and the composer entered, pushing past Pierre, whose thin face wore an outraged look.
"_Me voici!_" he exclaimed. "Deserted, abandoned, I come to you. How can I eat alone in a hotel? It is impossible! I tried. I sat down. They brought me caviare, _potage_. I looked, raised my fork, my spoon.
Impossible! Will you save me from myself? See, I am in my smoking! I shall not disgrace you."
"Of course! Pierre, please lay another place. But who has abandoned you?"
"Everyone--Henriette, Adelaide, even the faithful Max. They would have taken me, but I refused to go."
"Where to?"
"Batna, Biskra, _que sais-je_? Adelaide is restless as an enraged cat!"
He sat down, and began greedily to eat his soup.
"Ah, this is good! Your cook is to be loved. For once--may I?"
Glancing up whimsically, almost like a child, he lifted his napkin toward his collar.
"I may! Madame, you are an angel. You are a flock of angels. Why, I said to them, should I leave this beautiful city to throw myself into the arms of a mad librettist, who desires my blood simply because he cannot write? Must genius die because an idiot has practised on bottles with a revolver? It shall not be!"
"Do you mean Monsieur Gillier? Then they are going to Constantine!" said Charmian sharply.
"To Constantine, Tunis, Batna, Biskra, the Sahara--_que sais-je_?
Adelaide is like a cat enraged! She cannot rest! And she has seduced my Henriette."
He seemed perfectly contented, ate an excellent dinner, stayed till very late in the night, talked, joked, and finally, sitting down at the piano, played and sang. He was by turns a farceur, a wit, a man of emotion, a man with a touch of genius. And in everything he said and did he was almost preposterously unreserved. He seemed to be child, monkey and artist in combination. It was inconceivable that he could ever feel embarra.s.sed or self-conscious.
At first, after his unexpected entry, Charmian had been almost painfully preoccupied. Sennier, without apparently noticing this, broke her preoccupation down. He was an egoist, but a singularly amusing and even attractive one, throwing open every door, and begging you to admire and delight in every room. Charmian began to study him, this man of a great success. How different he was from Claude. Now that she was with Sennier she was more sharply aware of Claude"s reserve than she had ever been before, of a certain rigidity which underlay all the apparent social readiness.
When Sennier sang, in a voice that scarcely existed but that charmed, she was really entranced. When he played after midnight she was excited, intensely excited.
It was past one o"clock when he left reluctantly, promising to return on the morrow, to take all his meals at Djenan-el-Maqui, to live there, except for the very few hours claimed by sleep, till the "cat enraged"
and his wife returned. Charmian helped him to put on his coat. He resigned himself to her hands like a child. Standing quite still, he permitted her to b.u.t.ton the coat. He left, singing an air from an opera he was composing, arm in arm with Pierre, who was to escort him to his hotel.
"I dare not go alone!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid of the Arabs! The Arabs are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"