The Way of Ambition

by Robert Hichens

Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States, and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."

Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a fine theater on Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last. He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever. Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity. He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood," and was for ever on the look-out for it.

He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.

But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not touch them.

Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his side because of gratitude, and in expectation.

The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his ideas.

"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if the darned thing's a failure."

There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside, the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly, unexpectedly.

Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him, bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.

"Then if we—I mean if my husband does what you wish, you will spend thousands over it?" she said, "you will produce it, give it its chance?"