"Was that Adelaide?" Mrs. Mansfield asked herself as she got out.
She was not certain, but she thought the pa.s.sing figure had looked like Mrs. Shiffney"s.
The door of Mullion House stood open, held by a thin woman with very large gray eyes, who smiled at Mrs. Mansfield and made a slight motion, almost as if she mentally dropped a curtsey, but physically refrained out of respect for London ways.
"Oh, yes, ma"am, he is in! He"s expecting you."
The emphasis on the last word was marked. Mrs. Mansfield looked at this woman, toward whom at once she felt friendly.
"There"s some here and there that would bother him to death, I"m sure, if they was let!" continued the woman, closing the little front door gently. "But it will be a pleasure to him to see you. We all knows that!"
"I"m very glad to hear it!" responded Mrs. Mansfield, liking this unconventional but very human servant. "Mr. Heath has spoken of my coming, then?"
"I should think so, ma"am. This way, if you please!"
Mrs. Searle, Heath"s cook-housekeeper, crossed the little dimly lit hall and walked quickly down a rather long and narrow pa.s.sage.
"He"s in the studio, ma"am," she remarked over her narrow shoulder, sharply turning her head. "Fan is with him."
"Who"s Fan? A dog?"
"My little girl, ma"am."
"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
"Not knowing you were there, when the other lady went I sends her in to him for company as he wasn"t working. "Run, Fan!" says I. "Go and cheer Mr. Heath up, there"s a good girl!" I says. I knows very well there"s nothing like a child to put you right after you"ve been worried. They"re so simple, aren"t they, ma"am? And we"re all simple, I b"lieve, at "eart, though we"re ashamed to show it. I"m sure I don"t know why!"
As she concluded she opened a door and ushered Mrs. Mansfield into the composer"s workroom.
At the far end of it, in a flicker of firelight, Mrs. Mansfield saw him stooping down over a very fair and Saxon-looking child of perhaps three years old, whose head was thickly covered with short yellow hair inclined to be curly, and who was dressed in a white frock with an almost artful blue bow in the front. As Mrs. Mansfield came in the child was holding up to Heath a small naked doll of a rather blurred appearance, and was uttering some explanatory remarks in the uneven but arresting voice that seems peculiar to childhood.
"Mrs. Mansfield, if you please, sir!" said Mrs. Searle. Then, with a change of voice: "Come along, Fan! And bring Masterman with you, there"s a good girl! We must get on his clothes or he"ll catch cold." (To Mrs.
Mansfield.) "You"ll excuse her, ma"am, but she"s that nat"ral, clothes or no clothes it"s all one to her."
Fan turned round, holding Masterman by one leg and staring with bright blue eyes at Mrs. Mansfield. Her countenance expressed a dignified inquiry combined, perhaps, with a certain amount of very natural surprise at so unseemly an interruption of her strictly private interview with Claude Heath and Masterman. Her left thumb mechanically sought the shelter of her mouth, and it was obvious that she was "sizing up" Mrs. Mansfield with all the caution, if not suspicion, of the female nature in embryo.
Heath took her gently by the shoulder as he came forward, smiling, and propelled her slowly toward the middle of the large dim room.
"Welcome!" he said, holding out his hand. "Yes, Fantail, I quite understand. He"s been sick and now he"s getting better. Go with mother!"
Fan was exchanged for Mrs. Mansfield and vanished, speaking slowly and continuously about Masterman"s internal condition and "the new lydy,"
while Mrs. Mansfield took off her fur coat and looked around her and at Heath.
"I didn"t kiss her," she said, "because I think it"s a liberty to kiss one of G.o.d"s creatures at first sight without a special invitation."
"I know--I know!"
Heath seemed restless. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes, always full of a peculiar vitality, looked more living even than usual.
He glanced at Mrs. Mansfield, then glanced away, almost guiltily, she thought.
"Do come and sit down by the fire. Would you like a cushion?"
"No, thank you! What a nice old settle!"
"Yes, isn"t it? I live in this room. Alling, the painter, built it for his studio. The other rooms are tiny."
"What a delightful servant you have!"
"Mrs. Searle--yes. She"s a treasure! Humanity breaks out of her whatever the occasion. And my goodness, how she understands men!"
He laughed, but the laugh sounded slightly unnatural.
"Fantail"s delightful, too!" he added.
"What is her real name?"
"f.a.n.n.y. I call her Fantail." He paused. "Well, because I like her, I suppose."
"I know."
There was a moment of silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in, perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quant.i.ties of books, not covered with repellent gla.s.s. They were ranged in dark cases, which furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose ma.n.u.script music. The piano was open, and there was more music on it. The armchairs were well worn but comfortable, and looked "sat in." Over the windows there were dim orange-colored curtains that looked old but not shabby. On the floor there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a ma.s.s on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not discern their subjects. On the high wooden mantelpiece there were a few photographs, of professors and students at the Royal College of Music and of a serious and innocent-looking priest in black coat and round white collar.
To Mrs. Mansfield the room suggested a recluse who liked to be cosy, who, perhaps, was drawn toward mystery, even mysticism, and who loved the life of the brain.
"And you"ve a garden?" she asked, breaking the little pause.
"The size of a large pocket-handkerchief. I"m not at all rich, you know.
But I can just afford my little house and to live without earning a penny."
A woman servant, not Mrs. Searle, came in with tea and retreated, walking very softly and slowly. She looked almost rustic.
"That"s my only other servant, Harriet," said Heath, pouring out tea.
"There"s something very un-Londony in it all," said Mrs. Mansfield, again looking round, almost with a puzzled air.
"That"s what I try for. I"m fond of London in a way, but I can"t bear anything typical of London in my home."
"It is quite a home," she said; "and the home of a worker. One gets weary of being received in reception-rooms. This is a retreat."
Heath looked at her with his bright almost too searching and observant eyes.
"I wonder," he said almost reluctantly, "whether--may I talk about myself to-day?" he interrupted himself.
"Do, if you like to."
"I think I should."
"Do, then."