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Updated: May 19, 2025
The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis, that is where the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted for the last time! Here are your syrups." Jacques Sennier came, almost running. "Did they ever nearly starve?"
Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some wild joke of the composer's. "Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating all your biscuits now." When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande Jeanne."
She could not forget his words, spoken with the authority of the man who knew, "Opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition." She could not forget that he had left England to "put Europe through his sieve" for a composer who could stand up against Jacques Sennier. What a chance there was now for a new man. He was being actively searched for.
Finally she was betrayed into saying: "Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced." Madame Sennier stared. "But," added Charmian, "people who really know think a great deal of my husband; Mr. Crayford, for instance." Directly she had said this she repented of it. She realized that Claude would have hated the remark had he heard it.
One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise, without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out definitely what sort of composition he was working on at the present moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame Sennier.
Charmian fancied that love, that softness for the one, bred hatred, hardness, for many others, that it was an exclusive and almost terrible love. Now that she was alone with Madame Sennier, enclosed as it were in that strong perfume, she felt almost afraid of her. She was conscious of being with someone far cleverer than herself.
She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply. There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she, Charmian, knew nothing.
After a moment Madame Sennier said, with a change of tone and manner that seemed to indicate an intention to be more friendly: "When you write another libretto, why not let me see it?" "You desire to inflict a fourth rejection upon me, madame?" "If you like, I'll tell you the only thing I desire," she replied, with a sort of brutal frankness well calculated to appeal to his rough character.
"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most enthusiastic nation in the world." "If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think." How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier! She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said: "How is the work getting on?"
After the unpleasant scene at Djenan-el-Maqui Gillier had returned to Paris, shut himself in, and labored almost with fury on a libretto destined for Jacques Sennier. He had taken immense pains and trouble, and had not spared time. At last the work had been completed, typed, and submitted to Madame Sennier.
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