The Way of Ambition Part 45

"Sennier's success at the Metropolitan has nearly killed the New Era,"

said Elliot. "But Crayford has any amount of pluck, and a purse that seems inexhaustible. I suppose you know he's to be here to-night."

"Mr. Jacob Crayford, the Impresario!" exclaimed Charmian. "He's in England?"

"Arrived to-day by the _Lusitania_ in search of talent, of someone who can 'produce the goods' as he calls it. Adelaide sent a note to meet him at the Savoy, and he's coming. Shows his pluck, doesn't it? This is the enemy's camp."

Max Elliot laughed gaily. He loved the strong battles of art, backed by "commercial enterprise," and was friends with everyone though he could be such a keen and concentrated partisan.

"Crayford would give a hundred thousand dollars without a murmur to get Jacques away from the Metropolitan," he continued.

"Won't he go for that?" asked Lady Mildred, in her hollow voice. "Is Madame Sennier holding out for two hundred thousand?"

Again Max Elliot looked happily evasive.

"Henriette! Has she anything to do with it?"

"Mr. Elliot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."

"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"

"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.

"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there.

Margot Drake is speaking to him."

"Margot--of course! But I can't see them."

Max Elliot moved.

"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"

Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.

"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."

"To be sure!"

"What--that little man!"

"Why not?"

"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."

"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can a.s.sure you Mr. Crayford is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him point and even charm as a man."

"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you know him?"

"Yes."

"Do introduce me to him."

She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face, and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney kept him in conversation. Margot Drake stood close to him, and fixed her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she repeated quietly, but with determination:

"Please introduce me to him."

CHAPTER XVII

A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm, to s.e.x charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew that he belonged to the latter cla.s.s. She only spent some five minutes in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of his personality.

Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic.

His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald s.h.i.+rt stud, and sleeve links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.

"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I wanted to know the great fighter."

She had a.s.sumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.

Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows sometimes suddenly upward.

"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he said, speaking rapidly.

"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."

"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."

"I hope it isn't true."

"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr.

Crayford.

"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his _Paradis Terrestre_, and it altered my whole life."

"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."

"I do hope you'll be successful."

"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you interested in music?"

"Intensely."

She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain.

Something told her to refrain, and she added:

"I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of everything."

"Well, opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition.