Alston"s boyish eyes twinkled with appreciation.
"Well, we came here--we wanted to be quiet."
"You"ve got out of sight of Broadway, that"s certain."
Tea and iced drinks were brought out. They talked of casual matters.
The softness of late afternoon, warm, scented, exotic, dreamed in the radiant air. And Crayford said:
"It"s cute! It"s cute!"
He had removed his hat now and almost lay back in his chair. Presently he said:
"Seems to me years since I"ve rested like this, Alston!"
"I believe it is many years," said Lake, with a little satisfied laugh.
"I"ve never seen you do it before."
""Cepting the cure. And that don"t amount to anything."
"Stay and dine, won"t you?" said Charmian. "If you"re not bored."
"Bored!" said Crayford.
"We"ll dine just as we are. I"ll go in and see the cook about it."
"Very good of you I"m sure," said Crayford. "But I don"t want to put you out."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Excelsior," said Lake.
"Right down in the town. You must stay. It is cooler here."
She got up and went slowly into the house.
"Stunning figure she"s got and no mistake!" observed Crayford, following her with his eyes. "But I say, Alston, what about this fellow Heath? Now I"m over here I ought to have a look at what he"s up to. She seemed to want to avoid the subject, I thought. D"you think he"s writing on commission? Or perhaps someone"s seen the music. The Metropolitan crowd--"
They fell into a long discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some secret in connection with Claude Heath"s opera. This set the impresario bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole.
Charmian"s little dinner that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with.
That night it came rather near to the surface of him. As he stepped out into the court to take coffee, with an excellent Havana in his mouth, as he saw the deep and limpid sky glittering with strong, almost fierce stars, and farther fainter stars, he heaved a long sigh.
"Bully!" he breathed. "Bully, and no mistake!"
Exactly how it all came about Charmian did not remember afterward; Alston, she thought, must have prepared the way with masterly ingenuity.
Or perhaps she--no, she was not conscious of having brought it about deliberately. The fact was this. At ten o"clock that night, sitting with a light behind her, Charmian began to read the libretto of the opera to the two men who were smoking near the fountain.
It had seemed inevitable. The hour was propitious. They were all "worked up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke almost with emotion--a liqueur-gla.s.s of excellent old brandy in his hand--of the young talented ones who must bear the banner of art bravely before the coming generations.
"I love the young!" he said. "It is my proudest boast to seek out and bring forward the young. Aren"t it, Alston?"
Influenced perhaps by the satiny texture of the old brandy, in combination with the scented and jewelled night, he spoke as if he existed only for the benefit of the young, never thought about money-making, or business propositions. Charmian was touched. Alston also seemed moved. Claude was young. Crayford spoke of him, of his talent. Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be, thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner, when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which only comes on a night of nights?
The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously betrayed into the definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each other"s hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to "come about of itself."
Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of, Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest!
We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman"s agreeable voice.
Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander.
The night was so vast, so starry and still, that--as he afterward said to himself--"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had not studied with Madame Thenant for nothing. This was an almost supreme moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude"s behalf. Madame Sennier"s white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before her. She took her feet off the stool--she was no odalisque to be pampered with footstools and cushions--and she let herself go.
Very late in the night Crayford"s voice said:
"That"s the best libretto since _Carmen_, and I know something about libretti."
Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:
"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"
Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.
"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted him--"say, can"t you get that husband of yours to come right back from wherever he is?"
With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.
"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But--but I think he needs the holiday he is taking badly."
"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"
"Yes."
"Young "uns must sweat if they"re to get there. That"s all right. Aren"t it, Alston?"
"Rather!"
"Can"t you get him back?" continued Crayford.
The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.
"Well, I might. But--why?"
"Don"t he want to see his chum Alston?"
"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."
"Well then?"
"The only thing is he needs complete rest."