initial commit of ebook 29500HEADmain

9 files changed, 28463 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/29500-8.txt b/29500-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cb0ec7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29500-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8264 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mummery
+       A Tale of Three Idealists
+
+Author: Gilbert Cannan
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #29500]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUMMERY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MUMMERY
+
+A TALE OF THREE IDEALISTS
+
+
+BY
+
+GILBERT CANNAN
+
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
+
+W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
+
+GLASGOW -- MELBOURNE -- AUCKLAND
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1918
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+NOVELS
+
+  PETER HOMUNCULUS
+  LITTLE BROTHER
+  ROUND THE CORNER
+  OLD MOLE
+  YOUNG EARNEST
+  THREE PRETTY MEN
+  MENDEL
+  THE STUCCO HOUSE
+  PINK ROSES
+
+  FOUR PLAYS
+  EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND
+
+  WINDMILLS
+  SATIRE
+  THE JOY OF THE THEATRE
+  FREEDOM
+  THE ANATOMY OF SOCIETY
+  NOEL
+  POEMS
+
+
+
+
+TO ARIEL
+
+AMY GWEN WILSON
+
+  Shakespeare dreamed you, Ariel,
+    In a poet's ecstasy.
+  I have loved and dare not tell
+    Of your being's mystery.
+
+  Ariel, from Shakespeare's dream
+    Flown into my love on earth,
+  You shall help me to redeem
+    Love and truth denied their birth.
+
+  In a world by Caliban
+    Brutalised and done to death,
+  We will weave a spell that Man
+    May in freedom draw his breath.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.
+
+     I.  A DESCENT ON LONDON
+    II.  THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT
+   III.  IMPERIUM
+    IV.  BEHIND THE SCENES
+     V.  THE OTHER WOMAN
+    VI.  BIRDS AND FISHES
+   VII.  SUPPER
+  VIII.  SOLITUDE
+    IX.  MAGIC
+     X.  THE ENGLISH LAKES
+    XI.  CHARING CROSS ROAD
+   XII.  RODD AT HOME
+  XIII.  THE TEMPEST
+   XIV.  VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF
+    XV.  IN BLOOMSBURY
+   XVI.  ARIEL
+  XVII.  SUCCESS
+ XVIII.  LOVE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A DESCENT ON LONDON
+
+On a day in August, in one of those swiftly-moving years which hurried
+Europe towards the catastrophe awaiting it, there arrived in London a
+couple of unusual appearance, striking, charming, and amusing.  The man
+was tall, big, and queerly compounded of sensitive beauty and stodgy
+awkwardness.  He entered London with an air of hostility; sniffed
+distastefully the smells of the station, peered in distress through the
+murky light, and clearly by his personality and his exploitation of it
+in his dress challenged the uniformity of the great city which was his
+home.  His dress was peculiar: an enormous black hat above a shock of
+wispy fair hair, an ill-cut black coat, a cloak flung back over his
+shoulders, a very high starched collar, abominable trousers, and long,
+pointed French boots.
+
+'But they have rebuilt the station!' he said, in a loud voice of almost
+peevish disapproval.
+
+'I remember reading about it, Carlo,' replied his companion.  'It fell
+down and destroyed a theatre.'
+
+'A bad omen,' said Charles Mann, 'I wish we had arrived at another
+station.'
+
+'I don't think it matters,' smiled Clara Day.
+
+'I say it does,' snapped he.  'It is a mean little station.  A London
+station should be grand and spacious, the magnificent ante-room to a
+royal city.  I must get them to let me design a station.'
+
+'They don't often fall down,' said Clara.  'I wish you would see to the
+luggage.'
+
+All the other passengers, French and English, had collected their
+baggage and had hurried away, but Charles Mann was never in a hurry,
+and he stayed scowling at the station which London had had the
+effrontery to erect in his absence.
+
+'In Germany and Russia,' he muttered, 'they understand that stations
+are very important.'
+
+'Do look after the luggage,' urged Clara, and very reluctantly Charles
+Mann strolled along the platform, leaving his companion to the
+admiration of the passengers arriving for the next out-going train.
+She deserved it, for she was extremely handsome, almost pathetically
+young for the knowledge written in her eyes and on her lips, and the
+charming dress of purple and old red designed for her slim figure by
+Charles drew the curious and rather scandalised eyes of the women.  It
+was in no fashion, but the perfection of its individuality raised it
+above that tyranny, just as Clara's personality, in its compact force,
+and delicious free movement, raised her above the conventionalism which
+makes woman mere reflections of each other.  When she moved, her
+clothes were liquid with her vitality.  When she stood still, they were
+as monumental as herself.  She and they were one.
+
+She was happy.  It had taken her nearly two years to bring Charles back
+to London, where, as an Englishman, and, as she knew, one of the most
+gifted Englishmen of his time, his work lay, and she felt certain that
+here, in London, among other artists, it would be possible to extricate
+him from his own thoughts, which abroad kept him blissfully happy but
+prevented his doing work which was intelligible to any one else.
+
+He was rather a long time over the luggage, and at last she ran along
+the platform to find him lost in contemplation.
+
+'Have you decided where we are going to?' she asked.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'Have you decided where we are going to?'
+
+'I must get a secretary,' he replied, and Clara laughed.  'But I must,'
+he went on.  'It is absolutely necessary for me to have a secretary.  I
+can do nothing without one....  He shall be a good man, and he shall be
+paid four hundred a year.'
+
+Clara approached a porter and told him to take their luggage to the
+hotel.
+
+'We can stay there while we look about us,' she said.  She had learned
+that when Charles talked about money it was best to ignore him.  She
+took cheap rooms at the top of the hotel, with a view out over the
+river to the Surrey hills, and there until three o'clock in the morning
+Charles smoked cigars and talked, as only he could talk, of art and
+Italy and Paris--which they had left without paying their rent--and the
+delights and abominations of London.
+
+'I feel satisfied now that you were right,' he said.  'Here we are in
+London and I shall begin to do my real work.  I shall have a secretary
+and an advertising agent, and I shall talk to London in the language it
+understands....  Paris knows me, Munich knows me, St Petersburg knows
+me; London shall know me.  There are artists in London.  All they want
+is a lead.'
+
+Clara went to bed and lay for a long time with erratic memories
+streaming through her brain--days in the hills in Italy, nights of
+hunger in Paris, the cross-eyed man who stared so hard at her on the
+boat, the dismal port at Calais, the more dismal landing at Dover, the
+detached existence of her three years with Charles, whose astonishing
+vitality kindled and continually disappointed her hope....  And then
+queer, ugly memories of her own wandering, homeless childhood with her
+grandfather, who had died in Paris, leaving her the little money he
+had, so that she had stayed among the artists in Paris, had been numbed
+and dazed by them, until Charles took possession of her exactly as he
+did of stray cats and dogs and birds in cages.
+
+'This is London,' she said, 'and I am twenty-one.'  So she, too,
+approached London in a spirit of challenging hostility, determined if,
+as she believed, there was nothing a woman could not do, that London
+should acknowledge Charles as the genius of which he so constantly
+remarked it stood in need.
+
+In the morning she was up betimes, and stood at the window looking out
+over the sprawl of the south side of the river to the dome of Bedlam
+and the tower of Southwark Cathedral, the clustered chimneys, and the
+gray litter of untidy, huddled roofs.
+
+'That is not London,' said Charles from the bed, as she cried
+ecstatically.  'London is a very small circle, the centre of which is
+to the cultivated the National Gallery, and to the vulgar Piccadilly
+Circus....  Piccadilly Circus we can ignore.  What we have to do is to
+stand on the dome of the National Gallery and sing our gospel.  Then if
+we can make the cultured hear us, we shall have the vulgar gaping and
+opening their pockets.'
+
+'I don't want you to be applauded by people who can't appreciate you,'
+said Clara.
+
+'No?' grumbled Charles.  'Well, I'm going to have bath and breakfast
+and then I shall astonish you.'
+
+'You always do that,' cried Clara.  'Darling Charles!'
+
+She rang the bell, and sat on the bed, and in a few minutes they were
+enjoying their continental breakfast of coffee, rolls, and honey.
+
+'I sometimes feel,' said Charles, 'that I have merely taken the place
+of your grandfather....  You are the only creature I have ever met who
+is younger than myself.  That is why you can do as you like with me....
+But you can't make me grow a beard.'
+
+'I wish you would.'
+
+'And then I should be like your grandfather?'
+
+'No.  You would be more like you.'
+
+'You adorable child,' he said.  'You would reform me out of existence
+if you had your way.'
+
+Charles got up, had his bath, shaved, and went out, leaving Clara to
+unpack and make out a list of clothes that he required before she could
+consider him fit to go out into that London whose centre is the
+National Gallery.
+
+As he did not return for lunch, she set out alone to explore the region
+which he designed to conquer.  She wandered in a dream of delight,
+first of all through the galleries and then through the streets, as far
+as Westminster on the one side, and as Oxford Street on the other, and
+fixed in her mind the location of every one of the theatres.  She was
+especially interested in the women, and was both hurt and pleased by
+the dislike and suspicion with which they regarded her originality....
+Every now and then she saw a face which made her want to go up to its
+owner and say: 'I'm Clara Day; I've just come to London,' but she
+forebore; and when people smiled at her, as many did, she returned
+their smile, and hurried on in her eagerness to explore and to
+understand the kingdom which was to be Charles Mann's--a kingdom, like
+others, of splendour and misery, but overwhelmingly rich with its huge
+hotels, great blocks of offices, vast theatres and music-halls,
+enormous shops full of merchandise of the finest quality; jewels,
+clothes, furs, napery, silver, cutlery; its monuments, its dense
+traffic; its flower-sellers and innumerable newsvendors; its glimpses
+through the high-walled streets of green trees, its dominating towers;
+its lounging men and women.  Jews, with gold chains and diamond rings,
+Americans with large cigars and padded shoulders, painted women,
+niggers, policemen, match-sellers, boot-blacks; its huge coloured
+advertisements; its sudden holes, leading to regions underground; its
+sluggish, rich self-satisfaction....  It overawed Clara a little, and
+as she sped along she whispered to herself, 'This is me in London.'
+
+On her way back to the hotel she bought a paper, and, on opening it,
+found that it contained an interview with Mr Charles Mann on his return
+to London, an announcement that a dinner was to be given in his honour,
+and that he intended to hold an exhibition; and then Charles's views on
+many subjects were set out at some length, and he had thrown out a
+suggestion that a committee of artists should be formed to supervise
+the regeneration of London and to defeat the Americanisation which
+threatened it.
+
+Clara hurried back to the hotel and found Charles in a great state of
+excitement, talking to a thin, weedy little man whom he introduced as
+Mr Clott--his secretary.
+
+'It has begun, child,' said Charles.  'Have you seen the papers?
+Things move quickly nowadays....  This evening I shall be very busy.'
+
+'But you mustn't do anything without me,' Clara protested.  'You
+promised you wouldn't.  You are sure to make a mess of it.'
+
+'Clott,' said Charles magnificently, 'please send a copy of the letter
+I have dictated to the Press Association.'
+
+'At once,' replied Mr Clott, with the alacrity of a man in a new job,
+and he darted from the room.
+
+'He's a fool,' said Clara angrily, 'a perfect fool.'
+
+'Of course he is,' answered Charles, 'or he would not be a secretary.
+He has undertaken that by the end of this week we shall be in a
+comfortable furnished house.'
+
+'But who is to pay for it?'
+
+'There is plenty of money in the world,' said Charles, who was so
+pleased with himself that Clara had not the heart to pursue the
+argument any further.  'London,' he continued, 'is a great talking
+shop.  At present they haven't anything much to discuss so they shall
+talk about me.'
+
+For a moment Clara felt that he had become as external to her as the
+people in the streets of the kingdom he designed to conquer, but she
+recollected that whenever he was at work he always was abstracted from
+her and entirely absorbed in what he was doing, only, however, to
+return like a giant refreshed to enter into her world again and make it
+more delightful than before.  He was absorbed now, and she thought with
+a queer pang of alarm of the women with their dull, suspicious eyes,
+and, without realising the connection between what she thought and what
+she said, she broke into his absorption with,--
+
+'Carlo, dear, I shall have to marry you.'
+
+He spun round as though he had been stung and asked,--
+
+'Good God, why?'
+
+And again her answer was strange and came from some remote recess of
+her being,--
+
+'London is different.'
+
+Now Charles Mann was one of those sensitive people who yield at once to
+the will of another when it is precise and purposeful; and when in this
+girl, whom he had collected as he collected drunkards, cats, dogs, and
+other helpless creatures, such a will moved, though it cut like hot
+iron through his soul, he obeyed it without argument.  He, whose faith
+in himself was scattered and dissipated, had in her a faith as whole as
+that of a child who accepts without a murmur a whipping from his father.
+
+'My dear girl----' he murmured.
+
+'You know you will have to,' she said firmly.
+
+He looked uncomfortable.  His large face was suddenly ashen and yellow,
+and a certain weakness crept into his ordinarily firm lips and
+nostrils.  The girl's eyes were blazing at him, searching him, making
+him feel transparent, and so uncomfortable that he could do nothing but
+obey to relieve his own acute distress.
+
+'Yes, of course.'
+
+'Don't you want to?'
+
+'Yes, of course.'
+
+'It doesn't make any difference to us inside ourselves.'
+
+'No.  Of course not.'
+
+What he wanted to say was, 'You're pinning me down.  I'm not used to
+being pinned down.  No one has ever pinned me down before.'
+
+But he could not say it.  He could only agree that it would be a good
+thing if they married, because London was different.
+
+'At once?' he asked.
+
+'At once,' said she.
+
+He rang the bell, asked for Mr Clott, and when that gentleman appeared,
+ordered him to procure a special licence without delay.  Mr Clott made
+a note of it in his little red book, tucked his pencil behind his ear,
+and trotted away, his narrow little back stiffened by elation.  He, a
+gentleman of the Automobile Club, for whom there was no life outside
+the narrow circle whose centre is Piccadilly Circus, had been uneasy in
+his mind about the young lady, who was so clearly neither married nor
+purchasable, and it was a relief to him that she was to be his new
+employer's wife, though he was afraid of her, and shrivelled to the
+marrow in her presence.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT
+
+'_Ça marche_,' said Charles Mann to his wife a few weeks later.
+
+His programme was maturing.  He had arranged for two books to be
+published, for an exhibition to be held, for a committee to be formed,
+for lectures to be delivered in provincial centres, and he had been
+insulted by an offer to play a part in a forthcoming production of
+_King Lear_ at the Imperium Theatre.  He had forgotten that he had ever
+been an actor and did not wish to be reminded of it, and he was
+incensed when the manager of the Imperium used the offer as an
+advertising paragraph.
+
+'The fellow is jealous of the attention I am receiving in the Press and
+wants to divert some of it to himself.'
+
+'You should go and see him,' suggested Clara.
+
+'It is his place to come and see me.'
+
+'No.  Go and see him.'
+
+'Are you right?'
+
+'I always am.'
+
+'Clott, take down this letter to Sir Henry Butcher, Imperium Theatre,
+S.W....  "Dear Sir Henry, When I declined your kind offer the other
+day, my refusal was as private as your suggestion.  I can only conclude
+that some mistake has been made and I should like to have an
+understanding with you before I write a letter of explanation to the
+Press....'"
+
+'You think too much of the Press, Carlo.'
+
+'Only now, darling....  Later on the Press will have to come to me.'
+
+Clara looked dubious.
+
+'You're moving too quickly,' she said.  'I'm getting more used to
+London now, and I'm afraid of it.  It is just a great big machine, and
+there's no control over it.  There are times when I want to take you
+away from it.'
+
+'You gave me no peace until we came here.'
+
+'Yes.  But I didn't want to begin at the top.  I wanted to come over
+and live as we lived in Paris.'
+
+'Impossible.  What is freedom in Paris is poverty in London.'
+
+'But all your time goes in writing to the papers and sitting on
+committees.  You aren't doing any work.'
+
+'I've worked in exile for ten years.  I can carry on with that for a
+year at least.'
+
+'Very well.  Only don't stop believing in yourself.'
+
+'I could never do that.'
+
+'I think it would be very easy for you to begin believing in what the
+papers said about you.'
+
+'You're too young, my dear.  You see things too clearly.'
+
+They were now in the furnished house found for them by Mr Clott, a most
+respectable house in an unimpeachable neighbourhood: an old house
+reclaimed from the slums, re-faced, re-panelled, painted, papered,
+decorated by a firm who supplied taste as well as furniture.  Charles
+hated it, but Clara, who through her grandfather knew and appreciated
+comfort, was delighted with it, and with a few deft touches in every
+room made it her own.  It hurt her that Charles should hate it because
+it was good and decent in its atmosphere, and belonged to the widow of
+a famous man of letters, who, intrigued by the remarkable couple, had
+called once or twice and had invited Clara to her house, where the
+foreign-bred girl for the first time encountered the muffins and tea
+element of London life, which is its best and most characteristic.  It
+seemed to her that, if Charles would not accept that, he would never be
+reconciled to his native country as she wanted him to be.  There was
+about the muffins and tea in a cosy drawing-room a serenity which had
+always been to her the distinguishing mark of Englishmen abroad.  It
+had been in her grandfather's character, and she wanted it to be in
+Charles's.  It was to a certain extent in his character through his
+art, but she wanted it also to be through more tangible things.  As she
+wanted it, she willed it, and her will was an impersonal thing which in
+its movement dragged her whole being with it, and it had no more
+consideration for others than it had for herself.  She could see no
+reason why an artist should not be in touch with what was best in the
+ordinary lives of ordinary people; indeed, she could not imagine from
+what other source he could draw sustenance....
+
+Friends and acquaintances had come quickly.  Success was so rapid as to
+be almost ridiculous, and hardly worth having, and people took
+everything that Charles said in a most maddeningly literal way.  She
+understood what he meant, but very often she found that his utterances
+were translated into terms of money or politics or the commercial
+theatre, where they became just nonsense.  He was being transformed
+from her Charles into a monstrous London Charles, a great artist whose
+greatness was of more importance than his art.
+
+She first took alarm at this on the occasion of the dinner which the
+dear, delightful fellow arranged to have given to himself and then with
+childlike innocence accepted as a thing done in his honour--the first
+clear sign of the split in his personality which was to have such fatal
+consequences, for her and for so many others.
+
+There were three hundred guests.  The chair was taken by Professor
+Laverock, as a distinguished representative of modern painting, and he
+declared Mann to be the equal of Blake in vision, of Forain in
+technique, of Shelley in clear idealism.  Representatives of the
+intellectual theatre of the time were present and spoke, but the
+theatre of success was unrepresented.  There were critics, literary
+men, journalists of both sexes, idealists of both sexes, arrivists,
+careerists, everybody who had ever pleaded publicly for the theatre as
+a vehicle of art.  Professor Laverock declared it to be Mann's mission
+to open the theatre to the musician, the poet, and the painter, and, if
+he might express his secret hope, to close it to the actor.  There were
+many speeches, but Clara sat through them all staring straight in front
+of her, wondering if a single person in the room really understood what
+Charles wanted and what he meant.  Whether they did so or not, Charles
+did not help them much, for in response to the toast of his health he
+rose, beamed boyishly at the company and said, 'I'm so happy to be
+back.  Thank you very much.  The theatre needs love.  I give you my
+love.'
+
+He sat down so suddenly that Clara gasped, and was frightened for a
+second or two by the idea that he had been taken ill.  But when she
+turned to where he sat, he was chatting gaily to his neighbour and
+seemed to be unaware of any omission.  She heard a man near her say, 'I
+did hope he was going to be indiscreet,' and she felt with acute
+disappointment that this was just a dinner, just an entertainment among
+many dinners and entertainments, and she was ashamed.
+
+Charles, however, was delighted.  'Such nice people,' he said, as they
+walked home, 'such delightful people, and what a good dinner!'
+
+'Get away.  I hate you.  You're horrible,' cried Clara, flinging from
+him.
+
+'_Now_ what's the matter?' he asked, utterly taken aback.
+
+'You're so easily pleased,' she answered.  'People have only to be nice
+to you and you think the whole world is Heaven.'
+
+'So it is with you, chicken.'
+
+'Oh!  Don't be so pleased!  Don't be so pleased!  Do lose your temper
+with me sometimes!   I'm not a child.'
+
+'But they _were_ nice people.'
+
+'They weren't.  They were dreadful people.  They were only there
+because they think you _may_ succeed, and then there will be jobs for
+them all.'
+
+'You see through people so much that you forget they are people at all.'
+
+'That comes from living with you.  I have to see through you to realise
+that you are a person....'
+
+'Oh!  I _am_ a person then?'
+
+'Only to me....  You reflect everybody else.'
+
+'They are not worth more.'
+
+'They are.  Everybody is.  If only you would be yourself to them, they
+would be themselves.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+She had stung him, as she so often did, into self-realisation and
+self-criticism, a process so painful that, left to himself, he avoided
+it altogether....  He walked along moodily.  They were crossing St
+James's Park.  On the bridge he stopped, looked down into the water and
+said gloomily.
+
+'I sometimes think that my soul is as placid and still and shallow as
+that water, and that you, like all the rest, have only seen your own
+reflection in me....  That's why I like the comfort of restlessness and
+change.  Anything to break the stillness.'
+
+'You couldn't say that if it were true,' she said.
+
+'No.  I suppose not,' and, with one of his astonishing changes of mood,
+he took her arm and began to talk of the day when he had first met her
+in Picquart's studio, where everybody was gay and lively except they
+two, so that he talked to her, and seemed to have been talking for ever
+and had no idea of ever ceasing to do so.  And then he told her how
+better than even talking to her was being silent with her, and how all
+kinds of ideas in him that had been too shy to appear in solitude or
+with others had come tumbling out like notes of music because of her.
+
+'I've nearly forgotten,' he said, 'what being in love is like.  This
+was at the farthest end of love from that, something entirely new, so
+new as to be altogether outside life.  I have had to grope back into it
+again.'
+
+'I liked you,' said she, 'because you were English.'
+
+'Did you?'  He was puzzled.  'I thought that was precisely what I am
+not.'
+
+Neither could be angry for very long, and neither could be rancorous.
+The enchantment in which they lived would sometimes disappear for a
+space, when they would suffer, and he would tell himself that he was
+too old for the girl, or that he was not the kind of man who could live
+with a woman, or that she was seducing him from his work, while she
+would just sit numbed until the enchantment came again.  Without it
+there were moments when he seemed just ridiculous with his masses of
+papers, and Mr Clott, and his fussy insistence on being a great
+artist....  It was a keen pleasure to her to bring him back suddenly to
+physical things like food and clothes and to care for him.  Sometimes
+he would forget everything except food and clothes, and then she lived
+in a horror lest he should remain so and lose altogether the power of
+abstraction and concentration which made him so singular and forceful,
+and so near the man she most deeply knew him to be if only some power,
+some event, even some accident, could make him realise it and force him
+out of his imprisonment and almost entombment in his own thoughts.
+
+Her will concentrated on him anew and she said to herself, 'I can do
+it.  I can do it.  I know I can, and I will.'  And when she was in
+these fierce passions she used to remember her grandfather, the kindly
+old bibliophile, looking anxiously at her and saying,--
+
+'My dear, when you want a thing just look round and see if there aren't
+one or two other things you want.'
+
+But she had never understood what he meant, and she had never been able
+to look round, for always there was one thing she wanted, and when she
+wanted it she could not help herself, but had to sacrifice everything,
+friends, possessions, even love.  And as time went on, she realised
+that it was not Charles she wanted so much as some submerged quality in
+him.  The object of her desire being simplified, her will set, only the
+more firmly, even rigidly.
+
+It made her analyse him ruthlessly; his childish lack of
+self-criticism, his placidity, his insatiable vanity, his almost
+deliberate exploitation of his personal charm, all these things she
+cast aside and ignored.  She came then to his thoughts, and here she
+was baffled because she knew so little of his history.  Beyond his
+thoughts lay that in which she was passionately interested, but between
+her and it danced innumerable Charleses all inviting her attention, all
+bidding her look away from that one Charles Mann for whom she hungered
+with something of the worship which religious women have for their
+Saviour.
+
+He was immensely kind to her, almost oppressively kind.  He could never
+be otherwise to any living creature--in personal contact, but without
+that he was careless, indifferent, forgetful, although when she saw him
+again it was as though he had never been away.  They were considered a
+charming and most devoted couple, and their domestic felicity helped
+him in his success.
+
+Much talk in the newspapers, many committees--but Clara felt that
+merely another Charles was being created to dance between her and her
+desire.  This was too far from what she wanted, and she could not see
+how it could lead to it; there was altogether too much talk.  What he
+said was very fine but it merely gathered a rather flabby set of people
+round him--and most exasperatingly he liked it and them...  'Such nice
+people.'
+
+'That is all very well,' said Clara, 'but we are spending far more than
+there is any possibility of your making.'
+
+'There are rich men interested,' said Charles.
+
+'But until you make money, they won't give you any.'
+
+Hard sense was always too much for him, and he retired puzzled and
+rather pained from the argument.
+
+Because she was beautiful she attracted many men, many flatterers, but
+as they penetrated her graciousness, they came upon the hard granite of
+her will and were baffled, unpleasantly disturbed, and used to leave
+her, darting angry glances at the blissful Charles, who was sublimely
+unconscious of criticism in those whom he approached.  He accepted them
+as they were or seemed to be and expected the like from them.  He was
+too busy, too eager, to question or to look for hidden motives in those
+who supported him, and that he was concealing anything or had anything
+to conceal never crossed his mind!  He had other things to think of,
+always new things, new plans, new schemes, and he was fundamentally not
+interested in himself.  A charming face, a lovely cloud in the sky, the
+scent of a flower, a glass of good wine could give him such delight as
+made him beam upon the world and find all things good.  It was always a
+trifle which sent him soaring like a singing lark, always a trifle that
+could lift him from the depths of depression.  Great emotion he did not
+seem to need, though the concentrated emotion with which he hurled
+himself at his work was tremendous.  Happy is the people that has no
+history.  For all that he was aware of, Charles had no history.  He was
+born again every morning, and he could not realise that the world went
+grinding on from day to day....
+
+Never had life been so sweet, never had he been so successful, never
+had he had so much money, never had he been so exquisitely cared for,
+never had so many doors been open to him, never had such pleasant
+things been said of him!  He went to bed singing, and singing he awoke
+in the morning, but in her heart Clara was anxious and suspicious of
+London, most suspicious of the artists and literary men who thronged
+the house, and gathered at the elaborate supper which Charles insisted
+on giving every Sunday night.  They were too denunciatory, too much
+aloof, too proud of their aloofness, and talked too much.  She thought
+Charles too good for them and said so.
+
+'Art is a brotherhood,' he said magnificently, 'and the meanest of the
+brethren is my equal.'
+
+'That is no reason why you should be familiar with them.  You cheapen
+yourself.  Besides it is a waste of time....  A lot of people never do
+anything, and--I don't like it.'
+
+'Ho! ho!  Are you in revolt, chicken?'
+
+'I don't want you to fritter away what you have got.  It isn't worth
+while to spend money on people who can do nothing for you.'
+
+'I don't want anybody to do anything for _me_.  It is for art.'
+
+'But they don't understand that.  They think all sorts of wonderful
+things are going to happen through you.'
+
+'So they are....  Hasn't it been wonderful so far?'
+
+'For us.  Yes.'
+
+'Wasn't the exhibition a great success?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Very well then.'
+
+'But you only sold the work you have done during the last ten years.
+It is the work you are doing now that matters.  What work are you
+doing?'
+
+'Plenty--plenty.  Mr Clott sends out not less than forty letters a day.
+And I have just invented some beautiful designs for _Volpone_.'
+
+'Is it going to be done?'
+
+'It will be when they see my designs.'
+
+Clara bit her lip.  This was precisely what she had hoped to scotch by
+coming to London.  In Paris he had made marvellous designs.  Artists
+had come to look at them and then they had been put away in a portfolio.
+
+'What I want,' said he, 'is a patron, some one who, having made his
+money in soap, or pills, or margarine, wishes to make reparation
+through art....  Michael Angelo had a patron and I ought to have one,
+so that I can do for my theatre what he did for the Sistine Chapel.'
+
+They didn't build the Sistine Chapel for him.'
+
+'No....  N--o,' he mumbled.
+
+'Don't you see that things are different _now_, Charles.  Everything
+has to pay nowadays, and there aren't great public works for artists to
+do.  Michael Angelo was an engineer as well....  You couldn't design a
+theatre without an architect now, could you?'
+
+'Why should I when there are architects to do it?'  He was beginning to
+get angry.
+
+'If you could you would be able to carry out your own theories as
+well....  People want something more than drawings on paper....'
+
+'You talk as though I had done nothing.'
+
+'It has been too easy....  Appreciation is so easy for the kind of
+people who come here.  It costs nothing, and they get a good deal in
+return.'
+
+'Don't you worry about me, chick.  I'm a great deal more practical than
+you suppose.'
+
+'I only want to know,' she said, rising to leave the room, 'because, if
+you are not going to work, I must.'
+
+'My dearest child,' he shouted, 'don't be so impatient.  It is only a
+question of time.  My book is not out yet.  We are arranging for the
+reviews now.  When that is done then the ball will really be set
+rolling.'
+
+'To be quite frank with you,' retorted Clara.  'I hate it all being on
+paper.  I am going to learn acting, and I'm going on the stage to find
+out what the theatre is like....  I don't see how else I can help you,
+and if I can't help you I must leave you.'
+
+He protested loudly against that, so loudly and so vehemently that she
+pounced and, with her eyes blazing, told him that she intended to make
+her own career, and that whether it fitted in with his depended
+entirely upon himself.
+
+'I won't have you wasted,' she cried, 'I won't.  It has been going on
+too long, this writing down on paper, and drawing designs on paper, and
+now with all these columns about you in the papers you look like being
+smothered in paper.  You might as well be a politician or an
+adventurer--You have no passion.'
+
+'I!  No passion!'
+
+'On paper.  The world's choked with paper, and London is stifled with
+it.  My grandfather told me that.  He spent his life travelling and
+reading old books--running away from it.  I'm not going to run away
+from it, and I am not going to let you be smothered by it----'
+
+'How long has this been simmering up in you?'
+
+'Ever since that first day when you were interviewed....  We're not
+living our own lives at all, but the lives dictated to us by this
+ridiculous machinery that turns out papers ten times a day.  We're----'
+
+'Very well,' said Charles submissively.  'What do you want me to do?'
+
+'I want you to keep your appointment with Sir Henry Butcher.'
+
+He pulled a long face.
+
+'You'll hate it, I know,' she added, 'but there is the theatre, and
+you've got to make the best of it.  I dare say Michael Angelo didn't
+care particularly for the Sistine Chapel.'
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IMPERIUM
+
+Sir Henry Butcher sat in his sanctum, pulling his aggressive, bulbous
+nose, and ruefully turning over the account presented by his manager of
+the last week's business with his new production, a spectacular version
+of _Ivanhoe_, in which he appeared as Isaac of York.
+
+'No pull,' he muttered.  'No pull.'  And to console himself he took up
+a little pink packet of Press cuttings, and perused them....
+'Wonderful notices!  Wonderful notices!  It's these confounded
+music-halls and cinemas, lowering the people's taste.  Yet the public's
+loyal, wonderfully loyal.  Must be the play.  Wish I'd read the book
+before I let old Kinslake have his three hundred.  Told me everybody
+had read it....'
+
+Sir Henry was a man of sixty, well-preserved, with the soft, infantine
+quality which grease paint imparts to the skin.  He had an enormous
+head, large dark eyes, sly and humorous, in which, as his shallow
+whimsical thoughts flitted through his brain, mischief glinted.  He was
+surrounded with portraits of himself in his various successes, and
+above his head was a bust of himself in the character of Napoleon.
+Every now and then, when he remembered it, he compressed his lips, and
+tucked his chin into his breast, but he could not deceive even himself,
+much less anybody else, and his habitual expression was that of a bland
+baby miraculously endowed with a knowledge of the world's mischief.
+
+His room was luxurious but dark, being lit only by a skylight.  The
+walls were lined with a dull gold lincrusta, and on them were hung
+portraits of the proprietor of the Imperium and a series of drawings
+for the famous Imperium posters, which had through many years
+brightened the gloomy streets of London and its ever expanding
+outskirts.  Sir Henry's mischievous eyes flitted from drawing to
+drawing, and his tongue passed over his thick lips as he tasted again
+the savour of his success--more than twenty unbroken years of it.  He
+thought of the crowded houses, the brilliant audiences he had gathered
+together, the happy speeches he had made, the banquets he had held
+after so many first performances--and then he thought of _Ivanhoe_, a
+mistake.  Worse than a mistake, a strategical blunder, for now had come
+the time when his crowning ambition should be fulfilled, to have the
+Imperium unofficially acknowledged as the national theatre, so that
+when he retired it should be purchased for the nation and make his
+achievement immortal....  Macready, Irving, all of the great line had
+perished and were but names, while Henry Butcher would be remembered as
+the creator of the theatre, the people's theatre, the nation's
+theatre....  Then he remembered a particularly delicious wine he had
+drunk in this very room at supper, after rehearsal with the brilliant
+woman who had steered him through his early career and had saved him
+again and again from disaster--Teresa Chesney.  Ah! there was no one
+like her now, no one.  Actresses were ladies now, they were not of the
+theatre....  There was no one now with whom a bottle of old claret had
+so divine a flavour....  She would never have let him produce
+_Ivanhoe_.  She would have read the book for him.  She always used to
+stand between him and those idiots at the club.
+
+He went to the tantalus on his sideboard and poured himself out a
+brandy and soda, and drank to Teresa's memory, and then to the portrait
+of his wife, who had been so wonderfully skilful in decorating the
+front of the house with Dukes, Duchesses, and celebrities, but it
+needed Teresa's power behind the scenes.
+
+It was very distressing that all qualities could not be found in one
+woman, and a mocking litany floated through Sir Henry's brain, 'One for
+the front of the house, one for the back, one for paragraphs, one for
+posters, but a man for business.'
+
+He lay back in his chair and cudgelled his brains for some means of
+turning _Ivanhoe_ from a disastrous failure into an apparent success,
+but no idea came, and throwing out his long legs and caressing his
+round belly he said,--
+
+'If I paint my nose red, and give myself two large eyebrows they'll
+laugh, and it might go.  I must have a play in which I enter down the
+chimney....'
+
+The telephone by his side rang.
+
+'Yes.  I'm terribly busy, terribly....  Very well.  I'll ring as soon
+as I can see him.'
+
+He put down the receiver, flung out his legs once more, and resumed his
+thoughts.
+
+'I might pay a visit to America.  They keep sending people over here.'
+But his memory twinged as he thought of the insulting criticisms he had
+encountered on his last visit to Broadway.
+
+'Teresa would tell me what to do.  Some one told me Scott was the next
+best thing to Shakespeare.  Oh, well!'
+
+He put his hand to a bell-button in the arm of his chair, and in a few
+moments his secretary ushered in Mr Charles Mann.  Sir Henry rose, drew
+himself up to his full height, but even then had to look up at his
+visitor.
+
+'How d'you do?  I remember you as a boy, and I remember your father.  I
+even remember his father at Drury Lane....  Pity you've broken the
+tradition.  The public is proud of the old theatrical families....  I'm
+sorry you wouldn't take that part I offered you.  I saw your photograph
+in the papers and your face was the very thing, and, besides, your
+return to the stage would have been interesting.'
+
+Charles bristled, and flung his portfolio and large black hat down on
+the table.
+
+'I have brought you my designs for _Volpone_.'
+
+'For what?'
+
+'_Volpone_--a comedy by Ben Jonson.'
+
+'Oh, Ben Jonson!'
+
+Sir Henry was depressed.  He had met people before who had talked to
+him about the Old Dramatists.
+
+Charles opened his portfolio.
+
+'These are designs I have just completed.  You see, classical, like
+Ben's mind.'
+
+'It looks immensely high,' said Sir Henry, his eyes twinkling.
+
+'That,' replied Charles, 'is what I want, so that the figures are
+dwarfed.'
+
+'I should have to alter my proscenium,' chuckled Sir Henry, and
+Charles, who missed the chuckle, continued eagerly,--
+
+'I should like it played by dolls.'
+
+Sir Henry turned over the drawings and played with the money in his
+pocket.
+
+'You never saw my _King Lear_, did you?'
+
+'I have seen pictures of it.  Too realistic.  A visit to Stonehenge
+would have answered the same purpose.  You would have then to make such
+a storm as would drown the storm in _Lear_.'
+
+Sir Henry remembered his part and fetched up an enormous voice from his
+stomach and roared,--
+
+'Rage, blow and drown the steeples.'  Then he kept his voice rumbling
+in his belly and tapped with his foot like the bass-trumpet man in a
+street band.
+
+'Superb,' cried Charles.
+
+'My voice?' asked Sir Henry, now very pleased with himself.
+
+'My drawings,' replied Charles, rubbing his thumb along a line that
+especially delighted him.
+
+'O Heavens!'  Sir Henry paid no further attention to the drawings and
+drawled, 'Wonderful thing the theatre.'  There's life in it--life!  I
+hate leaving it.  You haven't been to my room before?'
+
+'I once waited for two hours downstairs to ask you to give me a part.
+You didn't see me and I gave up acting.
+
+'Oh! and now when I offer you a part you refuse it----'
+
+'Things are very different now....  I have had a great welcome back to
+London.'
+
+'What do you think of a national theatre?'
+
+'Every nation, every city, ought to have its theatre.'
+
+'Mine is the best theatre in London.'
+
+'You won't do _Volpone_?  It is one of the finest comedies ever
+written.'
+
+'I never heard of its being done.'
+
+Charles flung his drawings back into his portfolio, seized his hat,
+crammed it on to his head, and had reached the door when Sir Henry
+called him back.
+
+'What do you say to _The Tempest_?'
+
+'It doesn't need scenery.'
+
+'Oh, come!  The ship, the yellow sands.  Prospero's cave--pictures all
+the way--and the masque....  I want to do _The Tempest_ shortly and I
+should be glad of your assistance.'
+
+'I should expect you to buy my drawings and to pay me ten thousand
+pounds.'
+
+Sir Henry ignored that.  He knew his man by reputation.  Ten thousand
+pounds meant no more to him than one and sixpence.  He merely mentioned
+the first figures that came into his head.  Sir Henry resumed,--
+
+'I want _The Tempest_ to be my first Autumn production.  I place my
+theatre at your disposal....  To be quite frank with you, that was why
+I offered you that part.  The theatre wants something new.  The Russian
+ballet has upset people.  They are expecting something startling....
+Poor old Smithson who has painted my scenery for twenty years is
+horrified when I suggest anything of the kind.'
+
+'If I do _The Tempest_ for you will you join my committee?'
+
+'Er--I--er--You must give me time to think it over.  You know we
+managers have to think of each other.'
+
+Charles began to wish he had not come.  The suggestion of mysterious
+influences behind Sir Henry alarmed him, and at home was the furious
+energy in Clara forcing him into the embraces of this huge machine of a
+theatre, which discarded his _Volpone_ and required him to do something
+for which he had not the smallest inclination.  Yet so implicit was his
+faith in her, so wonderful had been his life since she came into it,
+that he accepted the accuracy of her divination of the futility of his
+procedure through artists and literary persons, who would feed upon his
+fame and increase it to have more to devour....  He decided then to say
+no more about his committee for the present, to accept Sir Henry's
+offer, and to escape as quickly as possible from the stifling room,
+with its horrible drawings, and its atmosphere in which were blended a
+fashionable restaurant and a stockbroker's office.  He had not felt so
+uncomfortable since he had been a schoolboy in the presence of his head
+master, and yet he enjoyed a European reputation, while outside the
+Anglo-Saxon world Sir Henry was hardly known.
+
+The great actor condescendingly escorted the great artist down the
+heavily carpeted stairs to a private door which led to the dress
+circle.  The theatre was in darkness.  The seats were covered up in
+their white sheets, and Sir Henry looked round him and sighed,--
+
+'Ah! cold, cold, a theatre soon grows cold.  But it possesses you.  Art
+is very like a woman.  She only yields up her treasure to the purest
+passion.'
+
+'Art has nothing to do with women,' Charles rapped out, and, as Sir
+Henry had only been making a phrase, he was not offended.  Charles
+shook the large fat hand which was held out to him, and plunged into
+the street....  Ah!  It was good to be in the air again, to gaze up at
+the sky, to see the passers-by moving about their business.  There was
+a stillness about the theatre which made him think of Sir Henry in his
+room as rather like a large pale fish swimming about in a tank in a
+dark aquarium....  After his years of freedom in delightful countries,
+where people were in no hurry and were able most charmingly to do
+nothing in particular for weeks on end, the captivity of so eminent and
+powerful a person appalled and crushed him....  He had not encountered
+anything like it in his previous sojourn in London, and he was again
+possessed with the bewildered rage that had seized him when he saw the
+rebuilt station on his arrival.  He had been out of it all for so long,
+yet he was of it, and he shuddered away from the increased captivity of
+London, yet longed to have been part of it....  It was almost
+bewilderingly a new city.  During his absence, the immense change from
+horse to petrol-driven vehicles had taken place and a new style of
+architecture had been introduced.  The air was cleaner: so were the
+streets.  Shop windows were larger.  There was everywhere more display,
+more colour, more and swifter movement, and yet in the theatre was that
+deadly stillness.
+
+He turned into a magnificent shop, where all the flowers looked rather
+like little girls dressed up for a party, and ordered some roses to be
+sent to Clara, for whom he had begun to feel a rudimentary
+responsibility.  It comforted him to do that.  Somehow it broke the
+stillness which had infected him, and most profoundly shocked him, so
+different was it from the theatre in which he had been born and bred,
+the rather fatuous, very sentimental theatre which was inhabited by
+simple kind-hearted vagabonds, isolated from the world of morals and
+religion, yet passionately proud of their calling, and setting it above
+both morals and religion.  But this theatre, magnificent in this new
+magnificent London, was empty and still.  So much of the theatre that
+had been dear to him was gone, and he mourned for it, lamented, too,
+over his own folly, for he was suddenly brought face to face with the
+fact that the theatre he proposed so light-heartedly to overthrow, the
+theatre of the actor, had disappeared.  In attacking it he was beating
+the air.  He had to deal with a new enemy.
+
+As he was emerging from St James's Park into Victoria Street a woman
+accosted him.  He looked at her, did not recognise her, and moved to
+pass on, for he was fastidious and took no interest in chance women.
+She was a little woman, very alert, and she was rather poorly dressed.
+She was young, but already her lips had stiffened into the hardness of
+baffled hope and passion and her eyes smouldered with that
+extraordinary glow which rouses a pity as cold as ice.
+
+'I saw you were back in the papers,' she said.  'It's a pity you can't
+hide yourself.'
+
+Charles stared at her, stared and stared, cast about for some excuse
+for pretending not to know her but remained rooted.
+
+'You're not so young as you were,' she went on.  'There's a lot of talk
+about you in the papers, but I know you; it's all talk.'
+
+'My good woman,' said he, 'is that all you have to say?'
+
+'It'll keep,' said she, and she turned abruptly and left him, feeling
+that all the strength had gone out of his legs, all the feeling from
+his bowels, leaving only a nauseating pity which brought up memory upon
+memory of horrible emotions, without any physical memory to fix them so
+that he was at their mercy.  At last physical memories began to emerge,
+rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the
+arcades at Birmingham.  And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her
+long ago; and at last her name.  Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a
+golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like
+the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee in another.
+
+'I had forgotten,' said Charles to himself.  'I really had forgotten.
+Well--money will settle it.  I shall have to do _The Tempest_ for that
+fish.'
+
+Thinking of the money restored his sense of serenity.  Wonderful money
+that can swamp so many ills: money that means work done
+somewhere--work, the sole solace of human misery.  But Charles had no
+notion of the relation between work and money, or that in using up
+large quantities of it he was diverting to his own uses more than his
+fair share of the comfort of humanity.  He had so much to give if only
+humanity would take--and pay for it.  What he had to give was beyond
+price, wherefore he had no qualms in setting his price high....  From
+_The Tempest_ boundless wealth would flow.  He quickly persuaded
+himself of that, and by the time he reached his furnished house had
+lulled his alarm to sleep and had allayed the disgust and loathing of
+the past roused in him by the meeting with Kitty Messenger....  So rosy
+had the vision become under the influence of his potential wealth that
+he met Clara without a qualm, and forgot even that Sir Henry was like a
+fish in an aquarium.
+
+'We got on splendidly,' he said, 'and I am to have the whole theatre
+for _The Tempest_ in the Autumn.'
+
+'I told you I was right,' said she.
+
+'Bless you, child,' he cried.  'You always are, always.  And now we
+will go out and drink champagne--Here's a health unto His Majesty, with
+a fal-lal-la.'
+
+He was like a rebellious boy, and Clara disliked that mood in him,
+because he was rather rough and cumbrous in his humour, cracked gusty
+and rather stupid jokes, ate voraciously, and drank like a carter.
+
+They went to a most elegant restaurant, where their entry created a
+stir, and it was whispered from end to end of the room who he was.  And
+the girl with him?  People shrugged....  Clara's eyes were alight, and
+she looked from table to table at the sleek, well-groomed men, and the
+showy women with their gaudy hair ornaments, bare powdered shoulders,
+and beautiful gowns.  She looked from face to face searching eagerly
+for--she knew not what; power, perhaps, some power which should justify
+their costly elegance.  This hurt as a lie hurt her, because, as she
+gazed from person to person, she could not divine the individuality
+beneath the uniform, and she was still young enough to wish to do
+so....  Meanwhile, as she gazed, Charles ate and drank lustily, and, it
+must be admitted, noisily.  There was no suppression of individuality
+about Charles.  It brimmed over in him.  He had gone to that restaurant
+to enjoy himself; not because it was a place frequented by successful
+persons....  Clara's eyes came back to him.  Yes, she preferred her
+Charles to every one else, if only--if only he would realise that she
+thought of other things besides himself.
+
+From a table near by a very good-looking man came and tapped Charles on
+the shoulder.
+
+'There's no mistaking you, old chap,' he said.  'I'm just back from
+America.  They think a lot of you over there since your conquest of
+London.'
+
+'You haven't met my wife,' said Charles, with his mouth full.  'What a
+splendid place this is!  Chicken, this is Freeland Moore.  We were
+together in the old days with the Old Man.'
+
+'I was with him when he died,' said Freeland, 'died in harness.
+There's no one like him now.'
+
+'Who?' asked Clara, alive at once to even the memory of a great
+personality.
+
+'Henry Irving.  He was a prince, and kept royalty alive in England.  It
+seems a long time ago now.  Won't you come over and join us for coffee,
+when you have finished?  I am with Miss Julia Wainwright; she's with us
+at the Imperium.  Not for long, I'm afraid.  It's a wash-out.'
+
+'Ah!' said Charles, remembering Sir Henry's depressed glance round the
+theatre, and he saw himself restoring splendour and success to the
+Imperium.
+
+After dinner they went over to Mr Moore's table, and Clara, shaking
+hands with Miss Wainwright, warmed to the large, generous creature with
+her expansive bosom, her drooping figure, her tinted face and hair and
+ludicrously long soft eyes.  There was room in Miss Wainwright for a
+dozen Claras.  She looked sentimentally and with amazement spreading in
+ripples over her big face at the girl's wedding-ring and said,--
+
+'So pleased to meet you, child.  I made Freeland go over and fetch
+you....  You're not on the stage, are you?'
+
+'No,' replied Clara, 'but I'm going to be.'
+
+'It is not what it was,' resumed Miss Wainwright, sipping her _crème de
+menthe_.' The Wainwrights have always been in the profession, but I'm
+sending my boy to a public-school....  You're not English, are you?'
+
+'Oh, yes,' answered Clara, 'but I have always lived abroad in Italy and
+Germany and France with my grandfather.  My father and mother died in
+India, but I was born in London.'
+
+'If you want to get about,' said Miss Wainwright, 'there's nothing like
+the profession.  I've been in Australia, Ceylon, South Africa, America,
+but never Canada....  I'm just back from America with Freeland, and we
+took the first thing that came along--_Ivanhoe_.  It's a lovely show
+but the play's no good....  Why not come and see it?  Freeland, go and
+telephone Mr Gillies to keep a box for Mrs Mann.'
+
+Freeland obeyed, treading the floor of the restaurant as though it were
+a stage.
+
+'I suppose you're not sorry you gave up acting, Charles,' said Miss
+Wainwright, with her most expansive affability.  She oozed charm, and
+surrounded Charles and Clara with it, so that almost for the first time
+Clara felt that she really was identified with her great man.  Those
+who worshipped at the shrine of his greatness always regarded her as an
+adjunct and their politeness chilled her, but Miss Wainwright swept
+greatness aside and was delightfully concerned only with what she
+regarded as a striking and very happy couple.
+
+Charles, who was absorbed in eating an orange, made no reply other than
+a grimace.
+
+'I don't know how you did it....  I couldn't.  Once a player, always a
+player--money or no money, and there's a great deal more money in it
+than there used to be.'
+
+Freeland Moore returned, announced that a box had been reserved, and,
+telling Miss Wainwright that it was time to go, he helped her on with
+her wrap of swan's down and velvet....
+
+'I'll come and call if I may,' said Miss Wainwright, with a billowing
+bow, and, with a magnificent setting of all her sails she moved away
+from the table, and, taking the wind of approval from her audience, the
+other diners, she preened her way out.
+
+'Pouf!  Pah!  Pah!' said Charles, shaking back his mane.  'Pouf!  The
+stink of green-paint.'
+
+'I'm sure she's the kindest woman in the world.'
+
+'So are they all,' growled Charles, 'dripping with kindness or burning
+with jealousy....  The theatrical woman!--It's a modern indecency.'
+
+'And suppose I became one.'
+
+'You couldn't.'
+
+'But I'm going to.'
+
+'You'd never stand it for a week, my dear.  I'd ... I'd ...'
+
+'What would you do?'
+
+'I'd forbid it.'
+
+'Then I should not stay with you....  You know that.'
+
+Charles knew it.  He had learned painfully that though she had some
+respect for his opinion, she had none for his authority.
+
+He had more coffee, liqueurs, fruit, a cigar, gave the waiter a tip
+which sent him running to fetch the noble diner's overcoat, and,
+hailing a taxi, they drove the few hundred yards to the Imperium, where
+he growled, grunted, muttered, dashed his hands through his hair, and
+she sat with her eyes glued on the stage, and her brows puckered as the
+dull, illiterate version of Scott's novel, denuded of all dramatic
+quality, was paraded before her....  In an interval, Charles asked her
+what she thought of it.
+
+'It is death,' she said.  'It is nothing but money.'
+
+'Money,' repeated Charles.  'Money....  Whose money? ...'  And he
+suddenly felt again that splendid feeling of confidence.  With his
+_Tempest_ all the money in that place should sustain beauty, and every
+ugly thing, every ugly thought should disappear.  He touched Clara's
+hair, and for the first time, somewhat to his alarm, realised that she
+was something more than an amusing and delightful child, and that he
+had married her.
+
+He looked down from the box into the stalls, and wondered if behind the
+white-shirt fronts and the bare bosoms there were also anxious thoughts
+and uneasy emotions, and if everybody had troubles that lurked in the
+past and might race ahead of them to meet them in the future....  Then
+he laughed at himself.  After all, whatever happened, his fame grew,
+and he went on being Charles Mann.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+BEHIND THE SCENES
+
+Miss Julia Wainwright might be sentimental, and she might be jealous,
+but she was shrewd, and she understood intuitively the relationship
+between Charles and Clara.  At first she refused to believe that they
+were married, as Charles was notoriously careless in these matters, but
+when she was faced with the fact her warm heart warned her of tragedy
+and she took it upon herself to inform Clara of the mysterious
+difficulties of married life, especially for two sensitive people.
+
+'Charles wants a stupid woman and you want a stupid man,' she said.
+
+Clara, of course, refused to believe that, and said that with a stupid
+woman Charles would just rot away in a studio and grow more and more
+unintelligible.
+
+'Never mind, then,' said Miss Wainwright.  'I'll show you round.  If
+you are meant for the theatre nothing can keep you away from it.  The
+only thing I can see against you is that you're a lady.'
+
+'Is that against me?' asked Clara, a little astonished.
+
+'Well,' replied Miss Wainwright, 'we're different.'
+
+And indeed Clara discovered very soon that actors and actresses were
+different from other people, because they concealed nothing.  Their
+personalities were entirely on view, and exposed for sale.  They
+reserved nothing.  Such as they were, they were for the theatre and for
+no other purpose, but to be moved at a moment's notice from theatre to
+theatre, from town to town, from country to country.  They were
+refreshing in their frank simplicity, compared with which life with
+Charles was oppressive in its complexity.
+
+As she surveyed the two, Clara was torn asunder for a time and was
+reluctant to take the plunge, and yet she knew that this was the world
+to which Charles belonged, this world of violent contrasts, of vivid
+light and shadowy darkness, of painted illusion and the throbbing
+reality of the audience, of idle days and feverish nights.  His mind
+was soaked in it, and his soul, all except that obscure part of it that
+delighted in flowers and in her own youth, hungered for it, and yet it
+seemed she had to force him into it....  If only he had a little more
+will, a little more intelligence.
+
+Often she found herself thinking of him as 'poor Charles,' and then she
+set her teeth, and shook back her hair, and vowed that no one should
+ever think of her as 'poor Clara.' ...  Life had been so easy when they
+had drifted together from studio to studio, but it threatened to be
+mighty difficult now that they had squared up to life and to this huge
+London....
+
+_Ivanhoe_ staggered on for six weeks and then collapsed, and an old
+successful melodrama was revived to carry the Imperium over the early
+summer months.  In this production, as a protégée of Miss Wainwright's,
+Clara played a small part in which she had ten words to say....  She
+was quite inaudible though she seemed to herself to be using every atom
+of voice in her slim young body, but always her voice seemed to fill
+her own head until it must surely burst.
+
+'Nerves,' said Miss Wainwright.  'You'll get your technique all right,
+and then you won't hear yourself speak any more than you do when you
+are talking in a room.  It's just a question of losing yourself, and
+that you learn to do unconsciously....  It'll come all right, dearie.
+It'll come all right.'
+
+Clara was determined that it should come all right, though she knew it
+would not until she had overcome her loathing of painting her face, and
+pencilling her eyes, and dabbing red paint into the corners of them.
+So much did she detest this at first that her personality repudiated
+this false projection of herself and left her helpless.  Over and over
+again she said to herself,--
+
+'I shall never be an actress.  I shall never be an actress....' But
+then again she said, 'I will.'
+
+There was a violence in appearing in the glaring light before so many
+people which offended her deeply, and yet she knew that she was wrong
+to be offended, because the people had come not to look at her, Clara
+Day, but at the false projection of Clara Day which was needed for the
+play....  Her objection was moral, and so strong that it made her
+really ill, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could keep
+going at all, but not a word did she say to a soul.  She fought through
+it with clenched teeth, going through agony night after night, smiling
+when it was over, going home exhausted, and dreading the coming of the
+morrow when it would all have to be borne again....
+
+She used to look at the others and wonder if they had been through the
+same thing, but it was plain to her clear eyes that they had nearly all
+accepted without a struggle, and had surrendered to the false
+projection of themselves which the theatre needed.  Stage-fright they
+knew, but not this moral struggle in which, determined not to be
+beaten, she fought on.
+
+Rehearsals she enjoyed.  Then the actors were at their indolent best,
+and the half-lit stage was full of a dim, suggestive beauty, which
+entirely disappeared by the time the scene-painter, the lime-light man,
+and the stage-carpenter had done their work.  Often at rehearsal, words
+would give her the shock of truth that in performance would just puzzle
+her by their banality; voices would seem to come from some remote
+recess of life; movements would take on dignity; the players seemed
+indeed to move and live in an enchanted world....  And so, off the
+stage, they did.
+
+Miss Wainwright and Mr Freeland Moore, who had played together for so
+many years, were idyllic lovers, though he had a wife in America, and
+she a husband who had gone his ways.  To them there were no further
+stages of love than those which are shown to the Anglo-American public.
+For them there were but Romeo and Juliet at the ball with no contending
+houses to plague them.  They lived in furnished flats and paid their
+way, impervious to every conspiracy of life to bring them down to
+earth....  Both adored Clara, both soon accepted her and Charles as
+lovers even more perfect than themselves, because younger, and both
+were never tired of thinking what kindness they could next do to help
+their friends.
+
+And Clara struggled on.  Sometimes she could have screamed with rage
+against the theatre, and these people whose enchantment had been won by
+the sacrifice of the fiery essence of themselves, so that they accepted
+meekly insults from the manager, from the stage-manager, from the very
+dressing-room staff of the theatre, who could make their lives
+uncomfortable.  She understood then what it was that had driven Charles
+out, and made him so reluctant to return, and why his immense talent,
+which should have been expressed in terms of the theatre, was reduced
+to making what, after all, were only notes on paper.  Convinced that
+she could help to bring him back from exile, she struggled on, though
+the strain increased as more and more fiercely she had to pit her will
+against the powerful machinery of the theatre.
+
+Everybody was kind to her, though many were alarmed by the intent force
+with which she set about her work.  Very often she had no energy left
+for conversation, and would then take refuge in a book, a volume of
+Meredith, or Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer or Browning, who had been the
+poet of her first discovery of the world of books.  That frightened off
+the young men, who were at first greatly taken with her charm.  They
+were subdued themselves as everybody was, from the business manager
+down, but her silence chilled and alarmed them....  Except those she
+bought herself, she never saw a book in the theatre.
+
+At first, full of Charles's fierce denunciation of Sir Henry Butcher,
+she detested the man, who seemed to her like some monster who absorbed
+all the vitality of the rest and used it to inflate his egoism.  He
+never spoke to her for some weeks, and she avoided meeting him, did not
+wish to speak to him, felt, indeed, that she was perhaps using him a
+little unfairly in turning his theatre to her own ends, forcing herself
+to accept it in order to make things easier for Charles, to whom she
+used to go with a most vivid caricature of Sir Henry at rehearsals.
+
+Until he appeared there was a complete languor upon the stage.  The
+actors and actresses still had upon them the mood of breakfast-in-bed;
+some looked as though they were living in the day before yesterday and
+had given up all hope of catching up with the rest of the world; some
+of the men talked sport; all the women chattered scandal; some read
+their letters, others the telegrams by which their correspondence was
+conducted.  In none was the slightest indication of preparedness for
+work, for the thoughts of all were obviously miles away from the
+theatre....  Stagehands moved noisily about.  They, at least, were
+conscious of earning their living.  Messages were brought in from the
+stage-door.  Back cloths were let down: the fire-proof curtain
+descended slowly, and remained shutting out the vast and gloomy spaces
+of the auditorium, also a melancholy gray-haired lady who was the widow
+of the author of the melodrama in rehearsal.
+
+Sir Henry appeared with a bald-headed Frenchman, with a red ribbon in
+his button-hole, his secretary, carrying a shorthand notebook, and a
+stout, thick-set Jew, who waited obsequiously for the great actor to
+take further notice of him.  Sir Henry talked volubly and laughed
+uproariously.  He was very happy and he beamed round the stage at his
+company.  The ladies said,--
+
+'Good-morning, Sir Henry.'
+
+The gentlemen said,--
+
+'Morning.'
+
+Sir Henry gesticulating violently turned away and began in French to
+tell a humorous story to which the Frenchman said, '_Oui, oui_,' and
+the Jew said, '_Oui, oui_,' while Clara, who could speak French as
+fluently as English, understood not a word of it; but this morning she
+liked Sir Henry because he was so happy and because he was so full of
+vitality.
+
+His business with the Jew and the Frenchman was soon settled fairly to
+their satisfaction.  They went away, and Sir Henry began to collect his
+thoughts.  He turned to his secretary and asked,--
+
+'We are rehearsing a play, eh?  All these ladies and gentlemen are not
+here for nothing, eh?  What play?'
+
+'_The Golden Hawk_.'
+
+'Ah!  Yes....  I have rehearsed so many plays....  I am thinking of my
+big Autumn success....  I can feel it in the air.  I can always feel
+it.  I felt that _Ivanhoe_ was no good, but I was over-persuaded.  My
+instinct is always right.  The business men and the authors are always
+wrong....'
+
+He flew into a sudden passion, and roared, 'Who the hell let down the
+fire-proof?  I hate the thing.  Take it away.  How can a man rehearse
+to a fire-proof curtain?  Take it away.  Send it to the London County
+Council who inflicted it on me.  I don't want it.'
+
+The stage-manager shouted to a man in the flies,--
+
+'Fire-proof up.'
+
+'I never let it down,' came a voice.
+
+'Who did then?'
+
+The stage-manager came over to where Clara was standing and pressed a
+button.  The heavy fire-proof curtain slowly rose to reveal the
+author's widow sitting patiently with the dark empty theatre for
+background.
+
+Who's that lady?' asked Sir Henry.
+
+'The author's widow,' replied the secretary.
+
+'I was afraid it was his ghost,' said Sir Henry, with his mischievous
+chuckle.  He went to her and chatted to her for a few moments about her
+late husband, who had been something of a figure in his time and had
+made a career in the traffic in French plays adapted for the British
+theatre.
+
+A scene or two was rehearsed, when an artist arrived with a model for a
+'set' for _The School for Scandal_.  The company gathered round and
+admired, while Sir Henry sat and played with it, trying various
+lighting effects with an electric torch.
+
+'No,' he said, 'you can't get the effects with electric light that you
+used to be able to obtain with gas....  Give me gas.  The theatre has
+never been the same.  This electric light is cold.  It is killing the
+theatre.'
+
+When the artist had gone, a journalist arrived for an interview, which
+was granted on condition that an article by Sir Henry on British
+Audiences was printed, and for the rest of the morning the secretary
+was kept busy taking down notes for the article.
+
+For Clara it was a very delightful morning.  Her own scene was not
+reached, and she sat happily in a corner by the proscenium turning over
+the pages of her book, watching Sir Henry's antics, appreciating the
+skill with which, in spite of all his digressions, he kept things
+lively, and managed to get the work he wanted out of his company....
+
+As the players dispersed, he stood in the middle of the stage and
+sighed heavily.  Clara was for stealing away, when he strode across to
+her, seized her by the arm, and said in his deep rolling voice,--
+
+'Don't go, little girl.  Don't go.'
+
+'But I want to go,' replied she.  'And I'm not a little girl.  I'm a
+married lady.'
+
+'Ah! marriage makes us all so old,' said Sir Henry, with a gallant
+sigh....  'You're the little girl who reads books, aren't you?  I've
+heard of you.  I've written a book or two, but I never read them.  I
+have quite a lot of books upstairs in my room--given me by the
+authors....  Won't you come to lunch?  I feel I could talk to you.'
+
+He had suddenly dropped his mannerisms, his affectation of thinking of
+a thousand and one things at once, and was a simple and very charming
+person of no particular age, position, or period--just a human being
+who wanted for a little to be at his ease.  He took Clara by the arm,
+and, regardless of the staring eyes of those whom they met in the
+corridors, swept her along to the room which Charles had likened to an
+aquarium.  Then he made her sit in the most comfortable chair, while he
+bestrode another not a yard away, and stared at her with his
+extraordinary eyes, which never had one but always the suggestion of a
+hundred different expressions.
+
+'I love my room,' he said, 'it is the only place I have in the world.
+Don't you like it?'
+
+'It is very quiet,' said Clara.
+
+Sir Henry rang a bell and ordered lunch to be brought up, vol-au-vents,
+cold chicken, Crème Caramel, champagne.
+
+'You're not old enough to understand food,' he said.  'That comes with
+the beginning of wisdom.'
+
+'But I understand food very well,' protested Clara, 'my grandfather
+knew all there was to know about it.'
+
+'Ah!  You are used to old men, eh?  Boys don't exist for you, eh?'
+
+With extraordinary gusto he produced a photograph album, and showed her
+portraits of himself at various ages, slim and romantic at twenty, at
+forty impressively Byronic, at fifty monumentally successful--and
+'present day.'  He showed her portraits of his mother and father, his
+wife, his children, Miss Teresa Chesney in her pieces, his various
+leading ladies, his sisters who had both married noble lords, and of a
+large number of actors and actresses who had passed through his
+company.  Of them he talked with real knowledge and enthusiasm.  He
+adored acting for its own sake, and as he talked brought all these
+performers vividly before Clara's eyes so that she must accept the
+validity of his criticism: he knew, or seemed to know, exactly what
+each could do or could not do, though it was difficult to understand
+how he could ever have found time to see them all.  Whether or not he
+had done so, he had exactly weighed up the value of their theatrical
+personalities, and it was in those and those alone that he was
+interested.  As human beings, he was indifferent to them, though he
+spoke of them all with the exaggerated affection common to the
+theatre--'dear old Arthur' ... 'adorable Lily' ... 'delicious Irene.
+Ah! she's a good woman.'  He talked rhapsodically, and his talk rather
+reminded Clara of Liszt's music, until lunch came, and then his greedy
+pleasure in the food made her think of certain gluttonous musicians she
+had known in Germany.  He ate quickly, and his eyes beamed satisfaction
+at her, so young, so fresh, so altogether unusual and challenging....
+She would neither eat nor drink, so absorbed was she in this strange
+man who so overwhelmingly imposed his personality upon her until she
+felt that she was merely part of the furniture of the room.
+
+When he had done eating and drinking, he lit a cigar and lay back in
+his large chair, and closed his eyes in the ecstatic distention of his
+surfeit.  After a grunt or two, he turned suddenly and asked with a
+strange intensity,--
+
+'Charles Mann--is he a genius?'
+
+'Of course,' replied Clara.
+
+'Then why does he talk so much?'
+
+'He works very hard.'
+
+'Hm!'
+
+'You can't expect me to discuss him.'
+
+'No, no.  I only think it is a pity he gave up acting.  He's lost touch
+with the public....  I've tried it at intervals; giving up acting, I
+mean.  The public lose interest, and no amount of advertising will get
+it back.'
+
+'It is for the artist to command the public,' said Clara, rather
+uncomfortably feeling that she was only an echo.  It was a very curious
+thing that words in this room lost half their meaning, and she, who was
+accustomed to giving all her words their precise value, was rather at a
+loss.
+
+'Little girl,' said Sir Henry, 'I feel that you understand me.  That is
+rare.  After all, we actors are human.  We are governed by the heart in
+a world that is standing on its head.'
+
+He took out a little book and made a note of that last observation.
+Then with a sigh he leaned over and held Clara's hands, looked long
+into her large dark eyes, and said,--
+
+'With such purity you could outstare the angels.'
+
+For answer Clara outstared him, and he dropped her hands and began to
+hum.  'Opera!' he said.  'I feel opera in the air; music invading the
+theatre, uplifting the souls of the people....  Ah! life is not long
+enough....'
+
+Clara began to feel sorry for him though she knew in her heart that
+this was precisely what he wanted.
+
+'You mustn't be angry,' he rumbled in his deepest bass, 'if I tell you
+that Charles Mann ought to have his neck wrung.'
+
+'But--you are going to do his _Tempest_?'
+
+'If it were not for you, little girl, I would not have him near the
+theatre,' said Sir Henry, with a sudden heat.
+
+'How dare you talk like that?'  Clara was all on fire.  'It is an
+honour for you to be associated with him at all.'
+
+Sir Henry laughed.
+
+'We know our Charles,' he said.  'We knew his father.  We are not all
+so young as you.'
+
+Clara hid her alarm, but it was as though the ground had suddenly
+opened and swallowed her up, as though the London about which she had
+been hovering in delighted excitement had engulfed her.  And then she
+felt that she was failing Charles.
+
+'I won't allow you to talk like that.  I won't let Charles do _The
+Tempest_ at all, if you talk like that.  He is a very great genius, and
+it is your duty to let the public see his work.  It is shameful that
+all his life people have talked about him, and have never helped him to
+reach his natural position.  He has been an exile and but for me would
+still be so.'
+
+'But for you,' repeated Sir Henry....  'Would you like to play Miranda?
+A perfect Miranda, but where is Ferdinand?'
+
+Clara was alarmed at this prospect.  She had read _The Tempest_ with
+her grandfather, and knew long passages by heart.  Its beauty was in
+her blood, and she could not reconcile it with this theatre of Sir
+Henry Butcher's.  Sitting with him in the heart of it, she felt trapped
+and as though all her dreams and purposes had been sponged out.  Never
+before had she even suspected that her freedom could be extinguished;
+never before had she even been anywhere near feeling that her will
+might break and leave her at the mercy of circumstances.  She clutched
+desperately at her loyalty to Charles, and she summoned up all her will
+only to find that it forced her to regard him, to weigh and measure him
+as a man....  He and she were no longer exiles, wandering untrammelled
+in strange lands, but here in London among their own people, confronted
+with their responsibility to the world outside themselves and to each
+other.  She was prepared to accept it, but was he?
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+
+Clara could hardly remember ever having been unhappy before.  All her
+life she had done exactly as she wished to do.  Her grandfather had
+never gainsaid her: had always indulged her every caprice, and had
+supported her even when she had been to all outward seeming in the
+wrong.  He used to say in his whimsical manner that explosions never
+did any one any harm....  'It is all wrong,' thought she, as she left
+the sanctum, and she was alarmed for Charles as she was still vibrant
+from the hostility in the actor-manager.  What was the occasion of it?
+She could not guess.  It was incredible to her that any one could
+object to Charles, so kindly, so industrious, so simple in his work and
+his belief in himself.  People laughed at him sometimes indulgently,
+but that was a very different thing to this hostility, this cold,
+implacable condemnation.  That was beyond her, for she had been brought
+up in a school of absolute tolerance except of the vulgar and
+ill-mannered.
+
+Her quick wits worked on this new situation.  She divined that Sir
+Henry resented the intrusion of a personality as powerful as his own
+and the check upon his habit of exuding patronage.  His theatre had
+always been animated with his own vitality, and he obviously resented a
+position in which he had to employ that of another and openly to
+acknowledge it.
+
+'He wants to patronise Charles,' thought Clara, and then she decided
+that for once in a way it would be a good thing for Charles to submit
+to it.  It must be either that or his chosen interminable procedure by
+committee.
+
+She decided to take a walk to think it over, and as she moved along
+Piccadilly towards the Green Park, where she proposed to ponder her
+problem, she had a distressing idea that she was followed.  Several
+times she turned and stopped, but she could see no one who could be
+pursuing her.  Men stared at her, but none dared molest so purposeful a
+young woman....  She stayed for some time in the Green Park, turning
+over and over in her mind how best she could engage Sir Henry's
+interest without aggravating his hostility to Charles, and still she
+was aware of eyes upon her....  She walked away very fast, but as she
+turned out into the roadway in front of Buckingham Palace she turned,
+stopped, and was accosted by a little dark woman with a smouldering
+fury in her eyes.
+
+'Are you Mrs Mann?' said the woman.
+
+'Yes,' said Clara, at once on her guard.
+
+'So am I,' rejoined the other woman.
+
+'Oh, no!' said Clara, with a smile that barely concealed the catch at
+her heart.
+
+'Oh, yes,' replied the other woman.  'I should think I was married to
+him before you were born.  And I wasn't the only one.  He left the
+country----'
+
+Clara turned on her heel and walked away.  The other woman followed her
+breathing heavily and gasping out details.
+
+'You horrible woman,' cried Clara, unable at last to bear any more.
+'Go away...'  And in her heart she said--
+
+'It is my fault.  I made him marry me.'
+
+Still the other woman was at her heels, babbling and gasping out her
+sordid little tragedy---two children, no money, her mother to keep.
+
+Clara was stunned and so nauseated that she could not speak.  Only in
+her mind the thought went round and round,--
+
+'It is my fault....  It is my fault.'
+
+But Charles ought to have told her.  He ought not to have been so
+will-less, so ready to fall in with every suggestion she made.
+
+'I must have this out at once,' she said, and hailing a taxi she
+bundled the other woman into it and drove home.  Charles was out.  She
+ordered tea, and quickly had the whole story out--the lodgings in
+Birmingham, the intrigue, the ultimatum, Charles's catastrophic
+collapse and inertia, years of poverty in London going from studio to
+studio, lodging to lodging: his flight--with another woman: her
+struggles, her present hand to mouth existence on the outskirts of the
+musical comedy theatre.
+
+'I wouldn't have spoken,' said Kitty, 'if you hadn't been so young.'
+
+'I should have thought that was a reason for keeping quiet,' replied
+Clara, who was now almost frozen with horror.
+
+'You were bound to hear sooner or later.'
+
+Charles came in followed by Mr Clott.  He was in the highest spirits
+and called out,--
+
+'Darling, Lord Verschoyle is interested.'
+
+His jaw dropped as he saw Kitty there at tea.  His pince-nez fell off
+his nose, and he stood pulling at his necktie for a few seconds.  Then
+he gave Mr Clott a commission to perform, and stood looking with
+horror, disgust, and loathing at the unhappy Kitty....  It was Clara
+who first found her voice,--
+
+'I ... I brought her here, Charles,' she said.  'I thought it would
+save us all--trouble.'
+
+In a tone icy with fury he said,--
+
+'If you will go quietly, I will write to you.  Please leave your
+address, and I will write to you.'
+
+Kitty hoped for a moment that he was talking to Clara, but his fury was
+so obviously concentrated on her that at last she rose and said
+meekly,--
+
+'Yes, Charles.'
+
+'You will find a writing-block by the telephone in the hall.  Please
+leave your address there.'
+
+'Yes, Charles.'
+
+With that she left the room.  Charles and Clara were too much for her.
+All her venom trickled away in a thin stream of dread as she felt the
+gathering rage in the two of them.  At the same time she had some
+exultation in having produced a storm so much beyond her own capacity.
+
+'You did not tell me,' said Clara, when Kitty had gone.
+
+'Honestly, honestly I had forgotten.'
+
+'Forgotten!  You did not tell me.  You did not need her to come into
+this house to remember.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'What do you mean, then?  You had forgotten?'
+
+'Honestly, I never thought of it until one day when I met her in the
+street.'
+
+'Does everybody know?'
+
+'Yes.  I don't conceal these things.'
+
+'You concealed it from me, from me, from me....'
+
+'Yes.  I never thought of it.  She'd gone out of my life years ago.'
+
+'Have many women gone out of your life?'
+
+He blushed.
+
+'A good many....  I never meant to conceal it.  Truly I didn't.  I just
+didn't mention it....  You were so happy, chicken; so was I.  I hadn't
+been happy before--not like that.'
+
+'She can ruin us....  Do you know that?  She has only to go up to the
+nearest policeman and ruin us.  Do you know that?'
+
+'She won't....  She'd never dare.'
+
+'She would....  I'm young.  That's the unpardonable thing in a
+woman....'
+
+'I don't understand,' said Charles, sitting down suddenly.  And quite
+perceptibly he did not understand that any one, man or woman, could
+deliberately hurt another.
+
+'But you _must_ understand,' she cried.  'You must understand....  You
+must protect yourself.'
+
+'How can I?'
+
+'She is your wife.  You must give her what she wants.'
+
+'Money?  Oh, yes.'
+
+'You fool,' said Clara, in exasperation, 'you've married me.  If she
+moves at all you will be ruined.  You will be sent to prison.'
+
+'Do you want to get out of it?' he asked.
+
+'I?  No....  I want to protect you....  Oh, it's my fault.  It's my
+fault I thought I could help you.  I thought I could help you....  I
+could have helped you if only you had told me....  You must have known.
+You couldn't imagine that you could come back to London and not be----'
+
+'But I did,' he said.  'I never thought of it.  I never do think of
+anything except in terms of my work....  I'll tell Clott to see to it.'
+
+Clara clenched her fists until her nails dug into the palms of her
+hands.
+
+'I shall have to leave you,' she said at last.  'I shall have to leave
+you.'
+
+She pulled off her wedding-ring
+
+'Perhaps I'd better go away,' he muttered at last very slowly.  'It's a
+pity.  Everything was going so well.  Lord Verschoyle is deeply
+interested.  He has two hundred thousand a year.'
+
+Clara laughed at him.
+
+'He is willing to sit on my committee.'
+
+'Does he know?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'But can't you see that these people ought to know.'
+
+'No.  What has it got to do with my work?'
+
+'To you nothing.  To them everything.  They can't support you if they
+know----'
+
+'But they don't know.'
+
+'You are in that woman's hands.  So am I.  You can't expect me to live
+upon her sanction.'
+
+This was a new aspect of the matter to Charles, who had never admitted
+the right of any other person to interfere in his affairs.  It hurt him
+terribly as it slowly dawned upon him that the miserable Kitty had
+behind her the whole force of the law.
+
+'Oh, good God!' he said.  'I'm a criminal.  Oh, good God!  This is
+serious.'
+
+'I'm glad you realise it at last,' said she.
+
+He broke down and wept, and began to tumble out the whole ridiculous
+story of his life; his perpetual disappointment: his terror of being
+bound down to anything except the work in which he felt so free, so
+wholly master of himself and his destiny; his delight in at last
+finding in her a true companion who, unlike all other women, allowed
+him to be something more than her possession.
+
+'I'm afraid,' he said in the end, 'that I have never understood women.'
+
+'Leave it to me.'  Poor Clara felt that if she tried to explain any
+more her head would burst.
+
+He looked up at her gratefully and was at once happy again.
+
+'It was my fault,' said Clara.  'It wouldn't have happened if I'd
+thought about life at all.  But it was so wonderful being with you and
+making your work come to life that I never thought about the rest....
+I never looked at it from the woman's point of view, as, being a woman,
+I ought to have done....  I think the shock has made me a woman....  I
+don't think anything will ever make you a man.'
+
+Charles gaped at her, but was not the least bit hurt.  He did not
+particularly want to be a man as manhood is generally understood.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'Lord Verschoyle is deeply interested, and he has two
+hundred thousand a year.'
+
+'Wait a moment,' replied Clara, 'I'll go and see if she has left her
+address.'
+
+She ran downstairs, but Kitty had left no address.  As Clara,
+considering the matter, decided that meant either that she intended to
+make trouble or that she had good reason for waiting before she made it.
+
+When she returned, Charles was lover-like in his gratitude, but she
+repulsed him, told him that he must get on with his designs for _The
+Tempest_ and she would see what could be done about his troubles.  For
+the present, for a little while at all events, she proposed to leave
+him and to stay with Julia Wainwright.
+
+'I may have to tell her,' she said, 'but I don't think so....  I won't
+let this woman ruin you, Charles.'
+
+'I have hurt you far more than I have hurt her,' he said miserably.  'I
+suppose things will never be the same.  You'll always feel that I am
+keeping things from you....'
+
+'No.  No.  I know that is all that matters....  It is just the law that
+is somehow wrong, giving advantage to any one who is mean enough to
+take it....  But women _are_ mean.'
+
+'Not you.'
+
+'No.  I do understand you, Charles, but I'm so hurt.  I'm so tired I
+don't think I can stand much more.'
+
+'I'll do anything you want.'
+
+'Then leave it to me....  The chief thing is your work, Charles.  That
+is all of you that matters.'
+
+This was entirely Charles's view of himself, and, as he could not see,
+yet, the effect of the intrusion of Kitty upon the brave girl who had
+so childishly accepted his childishness he was unperturbed and free
+from all anxiety....  So far his new career in London had been a
+triumphant success, and it seemed to him incredible that it could be
+checked by such a trifle as a forgotten wife.  He thought of the money
+that should come from the Imperium: money meant power, power meant the
+removal of all disagreeable obstacles from his path.  He licked his
+lips....  England understood money and nothing else.  He would talk to
+England in her own language and when he had caught her attention he
+would speak his own....  Things were going so splendidly: a man like
+himself was not going to be upset by trifles.  He had worked in exile
+for so long: surely, surely he would be able to reap his reward.
+
+Clara meanwhile was shocked almost out of her youth.  She did not weep.
+There were no tears in her eyes in which there slowly gathered a fierce
+expression of passionate pain.  The bloom of youth was on her cheeks,
+upon her lips, in all her still unformed features, but in her eyes
+suddenly was the knowledge of years, concentrated, tyrannous, and
+between this knowledge and her will there was set up a remorseless
+conflict, from which she found relief only in a new gaiety and love of
+fun.
+
+It was impossible to discuss the matter any further with Charles, and
+without a word to him she went away to Miss Wainwright's flat.  That
+good creature took her in without a word, without even a mute
+curiosity.  People's troubles were their own affair, and she knew that
+they needed to be alone with them.  She gave Clara her bedroom and
+absented herself as much as possible, and kept Freeland out of the way.
+
+The flat was luxuriously but monstrously furnished.  Its frank, opulent
+ugliness was a relief to the girl after the rarefied atmosphere of
+aesthetics in which for three years she had lived with Charles, upon
+whom all her thoughts were still concentrated.  Of herself she had no
+thought.  It did not concern her what she was called: wife or mistress.
+She was Clara Day and would remain so whatever happened to her.  She
+had forced Charles to marry her in order to protect him and to help
+him, and she had brought him into danger of imprisonment....  It was
+perfectly true; Charles could not protect himself because he could not
+learn that others were not as kindly as himself.  He had been trapped
+into marriage with that vulgar and venomous woman.  He could not speak
+of it because he loathed it so much....  She found excuses for him, for
+herself she sought none, and at the back of all her thoughts was her
+firm will that he should succeed.  Yes, she thought, it was a good
+thing to leave him for a while.  She had been with him too much, too
+near him.
+
+It was a great comfort to be with Julia and Freeland, that unreal Romeo
+and Juliet of middle age.  They were very proud of her, and elated to
+have her with them, took her everywhere, introduced her to all their
+friends, and insisted upon her being photographed for the Press, and in
+due course she had the shock of seeing her own features, almost more
+than life-size, exhibited to the hurrying crowds on the
+station-platforms.  She was called Clara Day, Sir Henry Butcher's
+youngest and prettiest recruit.  From the shy, studious little girl who
+sat close and, if possible, hidden during rehearsals, she found that
+she had become in the estimation of the company one of themselves.  It
+was known that she had had lunch alone with Sir Henry, and the
+publication of her photograph sealed her young reputation.  With the
+interest of the Chief, and influence in the Press, it was accepted that
+she would go far.  That she was Mrs Charles Mann was whispered, for
+apparently she only had been ignorant of the impediment.
+
+She apprehended the situation instinctively.  Her mind recoiled from
+it.  She felt trapped.  Whichever way she moved she would injure
+him....  She ought to have kept quietly in the background, and let him
+go his own way.  By forcing him into the theatre he and his affairs
+were exposed to the glaring light of publicity through her own
+impetuous ambition for him.
+
+Soon she was in an intolerable agony.  She wrote to Charles every day,
+and saw him occasionally, but was tortured every moment with the idea
+that her mere presence was injurious to him, and might call down an
+attack from the jealous Kitty at any moment.  On the other hand, at any
+moment some journalist might seize on the story of her arrival in
+London with Charles, and publish the fact of their marriage....  She
+stayed on with Julia, and let the days go by until at last she felt
+that it was unfair to her kind friends.  One night, therefore, after
+the theatre, she went into Julia's bedroom, and sat perched at the end
+of her bed, with her knees tucked under her chin, and said,--
+
+'I'm not Charles's wife, Julia.'
+
+'I know that,' replied the kind creature.
+
+'But I _am_ married to him.'
+
+'Good God!'  Julia sat up and clasped her hand to her capacious
+bosom....  'Not a ceremony!'
+
+'Yes.  In an office near the Strand.'
+
+'My dear child, my dear, dear child,' Julia began to weep.  'It's ...
+it's ... it's ...'
+
+'I know what it is,' said Clara, setting her jaw.  'I don't know what
+to do.'
+
+'You must never see him again.'
+
+'But I must.  I _am_ married to him inside me.  He can't do anything
+without me.  I've made him come over here....'
+
+'Didn't you know?'
+
+'I knew nothing except that I loved him.'
+
+'But people can't love like that.'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'He ran away from all that--and there were other things....  Oh, my
+dear, dear child, have you nobody belonging to you?'
+
+'Only Charles.  And I've hurt him.'
+
+'What does he say?'
+
+'He doesn't seem to realise....'
+
+'I'd like to thrash him within an inch of his life....  The only thing
+to be thankful for is that you are not married to him.  Not realise,
+indeed!  He walked out of his marriage like a man bilking his rent.'
+
+'He is an artist.  His work is more important to him than anybody.'
+
+Julia wept and wailed.  'The scoundrel!  The scoundrel!  The
+blackguard!'
+
+'I won't have you calling him names.  I won't have it.  I won't have
+it,' cried Clara, her feelings finding vent in an outburst of temper.
+'And you're not to tell a soul, not even Freeland.  I won't have
+anybody interfering.  I will handle this myself because I know more
+about it than anybody else....  It doesn't help me at all to hear you
+abusing Charles.  It only hurts me....  I've made a mistake, and I am
+going through with it.'
+
+'But you can't live with him.'
+
+'You live with Freeland.'
+
+'Yes.  But we're not married, so nobody worries; at least I am married,
+so is Freeland.  That makes it all right.  If people are married it is
+different.'
+
+The complications of the position were beyond Julia's intelligence, and
+she began to laugh hysterically.  Clara laughed, too, but from genuine
+amusement.  The world certainly did look very funny from the detachment
+now forced upon her: deliciously funny, and Charles appeared in her
+thoughts as a kind of Harlequin dancing through the world, peering into
+the houses where people were captive, tapping the doors with his wand
+so that they opened, but no one never came out.
+
+'I'll take you to my lawyer,' said Julia, at last, with a fat sob.
+
+'I want no lawyers,' snapped Clara defiantly.  'Charles hates that
+woman and she knows it.  She won't try to get him back.'
+
+'Yes.  But she won't stand you're being with him.'
+
+'Then I'll live alone, and help Charles in my own way.'
+
+'Help yourself first, lovey; then you can help other people.'
+
+'I don't believe it.  If you help yourself, you are kept so busy doing
+it that you don't know the other people are there.'
+
+Of course Julia told Freeland, and in the morning he came tapping at
+Clara's door.  She admitted him.  His rather faded, handsome face wore
+a very serious expression, more serious indeed than was warranted
+either by the feeling in his heart or the thought in his head.  It was
+a very serious situation, and he had assumed the appropriate manner....
+Clara had slept soundly, and her fund of healthy good spirits made it
+possible for her to regard the whole complication as, in itself, rather
+superficial.  The sun was shining in upon the mirror of her
+dressing-table, upon her silver brushes, upon the portrait of Julia in
+a silver frame, and upon the new frock which had come only the day
+before from the dressmaker.  With the sun shining, and the eager
+thought of Charles in her heart, Clara could have no anxiety.  No
+problem was insoluble, no obstacle, she believed, could be
+irresistible.  Therefore she smiled as Freeland came in treading more
+heavily than his wont.  He stood and looked down at her.
+
+'It's a bad business, kid,' he said, 'a bad, bad business.'
+
+'Is it?'
+
+'He has ruined your life.  I feel like shooting him.'
+
+'That wouldn't help me.'
+
+'Can't you see how serious it is?  You're neither married nor
+unmarried.'
+
+'Can't I be just Clara Day?'
+
+Freeland was rather taken aback.  He was used to Julia's taking her cue
+from him.  If a woman does not take the line proposed by the man in a
+situation, a scene, where is he?  And, in fact, Freeland did not know
+where he was.  His life had proceeded fairly smoothly from scene to
+scene and he was not used to being pulled up.
+
+'No, no, kid,' he protested.  'It is too ghastly.  Your position is
+impossible.  Charles, damn him, can't protect you.  The world is hard
+and cruel....  A man can play the lone hand, but I never heard of its
+being done by a woman: never.'
+
+'I'm going to see Charles through,' said Clara, 'and you'll see how we
+shall make this old London of yours wake up.'
+
+'But if there's a scandal....?'
+
+'There shan't be....  And if there is: well ... well...'
+
+Freeland in his turn began to weep.  Clara seemed to him so pathetic,
+so innocent, so oblivious of all the hard facts of the world.  She was
+like a wild bird, flying in ecstasy, flying higher and higher in the
+pain of her song.  Indeed she was a most touching sight lying there in
+her innocence, full of faith, conscious of danger, busy with wary
+thoughts, but so eager, vital, and confident that all her belief in
+Charles and her love for him were based in the deeper and stronger
+forces of life....  She was roused to battle, and she was profoundly
+aware that the law and the other devices of society were contrived
+wholly to frustrate those deeper, stronger forces....  Freeland's
+sentimental sympathy seemed to her in her happy morning mood weak and
+irrelevant, yet charming and pathetic.  He regarded her as a little
+girl and was entirely unconscious of all the passionate knowledge in
+her which moved so far and so swiftly beyond his capacity.
+
+'Anything either of us can do,' he said, 'we shall do, always.'  He
+stooped and took her in his arms and kissed her, and large tears fell
+upon her cheek.  Tears came easily to these people: to Clara they came
+not.  Indeed she rather exulted in her peril, which destroyed for her
+once and for all the superficiality of the life into which she had
+plunged in order to help Charles to conquer his kingdom, which was
+worlds away from this world of law and pretence, of spurious emotions
+and easy tears.
+
+'I can't think how Charles could have done it,' said Freeland, drying
+his eyes.
+
+'I made him,' said Clara, her eyes dancing with fun and mischief.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BIRDS AND FISHES
+
+For the time being it seemed that the superfluous Kitty had disappeared
+from the scene.  She made no sign, and no attempt was made to trace
+her.  Clara knew perfectly well that she was somewhere in the West End,
+but in that small crowded area it was possible to avoid meeting.
+People quickly fell into a groove and lived between a certain theatre,
+a certain restaurant, and home, and the light theatre was almost
+completely severed from the theatre which took itself so seriously.
+The legitimate stage had nothing to do with the bastard frivolity of
+the houses whose appeal was based on lingerie, pretty faces, and
+shapely limbs.
+
+As for Charles, he was once again oblivious.  He visited Clara at the
+flat, and had a painful scene with Freeland, who lashed out at him,
+rolled out a number of hard words, such as 'blackguard,' 'selfish
+beast,' etc., etc., but was nonplussed when Charles, not at all
+offended, said quietly,--
+
+'Have you finished?'
+
+'No.  What do you propose to do about it?  The poor child has no
+people.  Julia and I are father and mother to her.  In fact, I regard
+her as my adopted daughter.'
+
+'I should always let her do exactly as she wished,' said Charles.
+
+'Will you leave her alone then?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+Freeland regarded that as a triumph, but Clara was furious with him for
+interfering, and she scolded him until he promised that in future he
+would not say a word.
+
+'What are you going to do?' he asked.
+
+'I need a holiday from Charles,' she said--a new idea to Freeland,
+whose conception of love was besotted devotion--'and I am going to live
+alone for a time.'
+
+Out she went, and before the day was done she had found a furnished
+apartment in the dingy region of narrow streets behind Leicester
+Square, and for a time she was entirely absorbed in this new
+acquisition.  It was her own, her very own.  It was at the top of the
+house, and looked out over roofs and chimneys westward so that she had
+the London sunset for comfort and companionship: more than enough,
+sweeter intimacy than any she had yet found among human beings, whose
+shallow business and fussy importance always hurt and exasperated
+her....  More clearly than ever she knew that there was only Charles
+and his work that mattered to her at all.  She saw him occasionally and
+knew that he was entirely happy.  He wrote to her every day and his
+plans were maturing famously.  Lord Verschoyle was more and more
+interested, and as his lordship's interest grew so there waxed with it
+Charles's idea of his immense wealth.  That worried Clara, who wanted
+her genius to prove himself in order to command and not to crave
+support.  But Charles was elated with the success of his advertising
+campaign, and at the growth of his prestige among the artists....
+'Such a combination has never been known.  We shall simply overwhelm
+the public.'
+
+Clara's answer to this was to see that his relations with Sir Henry
+Butcher were not neglected.  The explosion produced by Kitty's
+intervention had split their efforts, so that Charles was now working
+through Lord Verschoyle, she through Sir Henry Butcher, and once again
+she was embarked upon a battle with Charles for the realisation of his
+dreams--not upon paper, which perfectly satisfied him--but in terms of
+life in which alone she could feel that her existence was honourable.
+She kept a tight enough hold of Charles to see that he worked at _The
+Tempest_, but, as she was no longer with him continually, she could not
+check his delighted absorption in his committee.  This was properly and
+duly constituted.  It had a chairman, Professor Laverock, and Mr Clott
+acted also as its secretary in an honorary capacity, his emoluments
+from Charles being more than sufficient for his needs.  It met
+regularly once a month in studios and drawing-rooms.  The finest
+unofficialised brains in London were gathered together, and nervous men
+eyed each other suspiciously and anxiously until Charles appeared, with
+Mr Clott fussing and moving round him like a tug round a great liner.
+His presence vitalised the assembly; the suppressed idealism in his
+supporters came bubbling to the surface.  Poets whose works were
+ignored by the great public, musicians whose compositions were ousted
+by Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, and Poles from the concert-rooms of
+London, dramatists whose plays were only produced on Sunday evenings,
+art critics who had acclaimed Charles's exhibition, all in his presence
+were conscious of a solidarity proof against all jealousy and
+disappointment; Charles, famous in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York,
+moved among them like a kindling wind.
+
+He would arrive with his arms full of papers, while Mr Clott in a
+little black bag carried the essential documents--minute-book, agenda,
+suggestions, plans.  For some months the Committee accomplished nothing
+but resolutions to invite and co-opt other members, but it seemed
+impossible to lure any really successful person into the net.  No
+actor-manager, no Royal Academician, no poet with a healthy circulation
+could be found to give practical expression to his sympathy, though
+admiration for Mr Mann's work and the high reputation he had won for
+British Art on the Continent oozed from them all in letters of great
+length, which were read to the Committee until its members, most of
+them rather simple souls, were bewildered.
+
+The accretion of Lord Verschoyle made a great difference.  He attended
+in person, a shy, elegant young man, educated at Eton, and in the
+Guards for the gentle art of doing nothing.  He owned a large area of
+London, and his estates were managed by a board which he was not even
+expected to attend, and he was a good young man.  He wanted to spend
+money and to infuriate his trustees, but he did not know how to do it.
+Women bored him.  He had a yacht, but loathed it, and kept it in
+harbour, and only spent on it enough money to keep it from rusting
+away.  He maintained a stable, but would not bet or attend any other
+meeting than Ascot.  He had some taste in art, but only cared for
+modern pictures, which he could buy for fifty or a hundred pounds.
+Indeed he was much too nice for his altogether exceptional
+opportunities for wasting money, for he loathed vulgarity, and the only
+people who could tell him how to waste his wealth--stable-touts,
+art-dealers, women of the West End--were essentially vulgar, and he
+could not endure their society....  He had five houses, but all he
+needed was an apartment of three rooms, and he was haunted and made
+miserable by the idea, not without a fairly solid foundation, that
+young women and their mammas wished to marry him for his money....  He
+longed to know a young woman who had no mamma, but none ever came his
+way.  Society was full of mammas, and of ladies eager to push the
+fortunes of their husbands and lovers.  He was turned to as a man of
+power, but in his heart he knew that no human being was ever more
+helpless, more miserably at the mercy of his trustees, agents, and
+servants....  He had been approached many times by persons interested
+in plays, theatres, and schemes, but being that rare and unhappy
+creature, a rich man with good taste, he had avoided them as hotly as
+the mammas of Mayfair and Belgravia.
+
+He met Charles at his exhibition and was introduced to him.  Charles at
+once bellowed at him at the top of his voice on the great things that
+would be achieved through the realisation of his dreams, and Lord
+Verschoyle had in his society the exhilarated sense of playing truant,
+and wanted more of it.  He was hotly pursued at the moment by Lady
+Tremenheer, who had two daughters, and he longed ardently to disgrace
+himself, but so perfect was his taste that he could not do it--in the
+ordinary way.  Charles was outrageous, but so famous as to carry it
+off, and Verschoyle seized upon the great artist as the way of escape,
+well knowing that art ranked with dissipation in the opinion of his
+trustees.  With one stone he could kill all his birds.  He promised by
+letter, being most careful to get his wicked indiscretion down in
+writing, his whole-hearted support of Charles's scheme.
+
+Charles thereupon drew up his scheme.  Verschoyle's wealth disposed of
+the most captious member of his committee, whose meetings now became
+more awful and ceremonious than ever.  Even so much assembled intellect
+could not resist the wealth that through the generations had been
+gathered up to surround the gentle personality of Horace Biningham,
+Lord Verschoyle, who smiled benignantly upon the strange company and,
+all unconscious of the devastating effect upon them of his money, was
+most humbly flattered to be in the presence of so many distinguished
+persons.
+
+The tenth meeting of the committee was arranged to be the most
+critical.  Charles was to read and expound the scheme upon which he had
+been at work for years.  The meeting was to be held at his own house,
+and for this occasion only he implored Clara to be present as hostess,
+and so eager was she to share in the triumph of that side of his
+activities that she consented and was the only woman present.  With
+Professor Laverock in the chair, Mr Clott read the minutes of the last
+meeting, upon which, as nothing had happened, there was no comment.
+Clara sat in a corner by the door and looked from face to face, trying
+in vain to find in any something of the fire and eagerness that was in
+her Charles's, who, radiant and bubbling over with confidence, sat at a
+little table in the centre of the room with his papers in front of him,
+two enormous candles on either side, and his watch in his hand.
+
+After formalities, Professor Laverock called upon Mr Mann to read his
+scheme to the committee....  Rarely can a room have contained so much
+eager idealism, rarely can so many mighty brains have been keyed up to
+take their tune from one.
+
+Charles smoothed out his paper, shook back his hair, arranged the cuffs
+which he always wore in his desire to be taken for an English
+gentleman.  His hearers settled themselves in their chairs.  He began:--
+
+'Gentlemen, we are all here concerned to make the theatre a temple of
+art, always open with a welcome to every talent, from that of the
+highest and most creative vision to that of the most humble and patient
+craftsman's life.'
+
+'Ah!' some one sighed contentedly.
+
+'We cannot expect such a theatre either from actors or from commercial
+persons who would be much better engaged in selling boots or soap....
+In Germany art is honoured.  Nietzsche, whom I acknowledge as my
+compeer, is to be commemorated with an enormous stadium upon a hill.
+In England we have turned away from the hill-top and are huddled
+together in the valleys until beauty is lost and dreams are but aching
+memories....'
+
+Clara was irritated by this preamble.  It was too much like the spirit
+of Sir Henry Butcher.  If only Charles had consulted her she would have
+cut out this ambitious bombast, and brought him down to practical
+detail.
+
+'My proposal is that we should erect upon one of three suitable sites
+in London a theatre which shall be at once a school and a palace of
+art.  There will be one theatre on the German model, and an outdoor
+theatre on the plan of an arena in Sicily of which I have here sketches
+and plans.'
+
+'Is that quite suitable in the English climate?' asked Adolph
+Griffenberg, a little Jewish painter.
+
+'The disabilities of the English climate are greatly exaggerated,' said
+Charles.  'There could be protection from wind and rain, if it were
+thought necessary.  There will be attached to the indoor theatre an
+experimental stage to which I of course shall devote most of my
+energies; then schoolrooms, a kitchen, a dining-room, a dancing-room, a
+music-room, a wardrobe, three lifts and two staircases.'
+
+'Isn't this too detailed for our present purpose?' asked Griffenberg.
+
+'I merely wish to show that I am entirely practical,' retorted Charles.
+'There will be every modern appliance upon the stage, several
+inventions of my own, and an adjustable proscenium.  The staff will
+consist of myself, a dozen instructors in the various arts of the
+theatre, and a larger number of pupils, who will be promoted as they
+give evidence of talent and skill in employing it.'
+
+So far attention had been keen and eager.  Charles's happy vision of a
+marble temple lit with the inward sun of vision and rosy with youth had
+carried all before it.  He warmed to his task, talked on as the candles
+burned low, and at last came to the financial aspect of his proposal.
+Griffenberg leaned forward, and Clara watched him apprehensively.
+
+'I have estimated the cost as follows,' said Charles, now confident
+that he had his hearers with him.  'I have put my estimate as low as
+possible, so that we may know our minimum:--
+
+  The Outdoor Theatre  . . . . . . . .  £6,000
+  The Indoor Theatre . . . . . . . . . £15,000
+  To Machinery . . . . . . . . . . . .  £4,000
+  To Salaries  . . . . . . . . . . . .  £1,500
+  My Own Salary  . . . . . . . . . . .  £5,000
+  Wardrobe . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    £600
+  Ground rent  . . . . . . . . . . . . Nominal
+  Musicians and music  . . . . . . . .    £600
+  Paint, materials, etc. . . . . . . .    £400
+  Food for the birds and fishes  . . .     £25
+
+
+There was a dead silence.  One or two men smiled.  Others stared.
+Others pulled their noses or smoothed their hair.  Griffenberg laughed
+harshly and said,--
+
+'Excuse me, Mr Mann.  I didn't quite catch that last item.'
+
+Charles who was entirely unaware of the changed atmosphere looked up
+and repeated,--
+
+'Food for the birds and fishes....  There must be beautiful birds
+flying in the outdoor theatre.  In the courtyard there must be
+fish-ponds with rare fish....'
+
+'We are not proposing to build a villa of Tiberius,' snapped
+Griffenberg, who was deeply wounded.  'I cannot agree to a scheme which
+includes birds and fishes.'
+
+Clara was bristling with fury against Charles for being so childish,
+and against Griffenberg for taking advantage of him.  She knew that
+Charles was in an ecstasy, and unable to cope with any practical point
+they chose to raise.  It would have been fair for Griffenberg to take
+exception to his estimates, but not to the birds and fishes....  Her
+sense of justice was so outraged that to keep herself from intervening
+she slipped out of the room and gave vent to her fury in the darkness
+of the passage.
+
+The worst happened.  The scheme was forgotten; the birds and fishes
+were remembered....  Griffenberg asked rather insolently if Mr Mann
+proposed to publish the scheme as it stood, and Charles, who did not
+detect the insolence, said that he certainly intended to publish the
+scheme and had indeed already sent a copy to the Press Association.
+
+'As your own or as the Committee's scheme?'
+
+Mr Clott intervened,--
+
+'I made it quite clear that the scheme was Mr Mann's own, and Mr Mann
+sent with it what I may say is a very beautiful description of his
+theatre as it will be in being.'
+
+'Theatres in the air,' said some one, and all, just a little ashamed,
+though with a certain bravado of geniality to cover their shame, rose
+to go.
+
+As they came out of the room Clara darted up the stairs and heard their
+remarks as they departed.  'Birds and fishes.' ... 'Extraordinary man.'
+... 'Fairy tale.' ... 'Damned impudence.'
+
+Charles, still unmindful of any change, moved among them thanking them
+warmly for their support and explaining that if he had been somewhat
+long in reading it was because he had wished to leave no room for
+misunderstanding.
+
+No one stayed but an Irish poet, who had been delighted with the words,
+birds and fishes, emerging like a poem from the welter of so much
+detail, and Verschoyle, a little uneasy, but entranced by Charles's
+voice and what seemed to him his superb audacity.  They three stood and
+talked themselves into oblivion of the world and its narrow ways, and
+Charles was soon riding the hobby-horse of his theory of Kingship and
+urging Verschoyle to interest the Court of St James's in Art.
+
+Clara joined them, listened for a while, and later detached his
+lordship from the other two, who talked hard against each other,
+neither listening, both hammering home points.  She took Verschoyle
+into a corner and said,--
+
+'It was very unfair of Mr Griffenberg to catch Charles out on the birds
+and fishes.  They're very important to him.'
+
+'That's what I like about him,' said Verschoyle.  'Things are important
+to him.  Nothing is important to the rest of us.'
+
+'Some of them will resign from the committee,' said Clara.  'I hope you
+won't.  It is a great pity, because Charles does mean it so thoroughly.'
+
+Verschoyle screwed in his eye-glass and held his knee and rocked it to
+and fro.  He was shrewd enough to see that if he resigned the whole
+committee would break up, and he knew that this dreadful eventuality
+was in Clara's mind also.  He liked Charles's extravagance: it made him
+feel wicked, but also he was kind and could not bring himself to hurt
+Clara.  He had never in his life felt that he was of the slightest
+importance to any one.  Clara felt that sense stirring in him and she
+fed it; let him into the story of their struggles and the efforts she
+had made to bring her idealist to London, and urged upon him the vital
+importance of Charles's work.
+
+'They're all jealous of him,' she said, 'all these people who have
+never been heard of outside London.  It was just like them to fasten on
+a thing like that.'
+
+Verschoyle laughed.
+
+'I like the idea of birds and fishes in London,' he said.  'I think we
+need them....  Now, if it were you, Mrs Mann'--for he had been so
+introduced to her--'I would back you through everything.'
+
+'It is me,' said Clara.  'It always is a woman.  If it were not for me
+we should not be in London now.'
+
+'You must bring him to dinner with me.'
+
+Clara accepted in her eagerness to save the situation without realising
+that she had compromised herself.
+
+'You will forgive my saying it,' added Verschoyle, 'but it hurts me to
+hear you speak of yourself as a woman.  You are only a child and I hate
+women.'
+
+'So do I,' said Clara, all her anxiety now allayed.  With Verschoyle
+for her friend she did not care how soon the committee was dissolved.
+She had always hated the committee, for, as her grandfather used to
+say, a committee is a device by which the incompetent check the
+activities of the competent....  She liked Verschoyle.  He was a lonely
+little man and she thought whimsically that only lonely people could
+swallow the birds and fishes which are so necessary as the finishing
+touch to the artist's vision.
+
+'I must be going now,' she said to her companion's surprise.
+
+'Can't I take you in my car?' he asked, concealing his astonishment at
+her speaking of a home elsewhere.  She consented, and he took her back
+to her rooms, leaving Charles and the Irish poet still rhapsodising in
+a somewhat discordant duet.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SUPPER
+
+Idealists must certainly be added to the drunkards and children over
+whom a specially benign deity watches: a flood of disaster by sea and
+land gave a plentiful crop of news and made it impossible for the
+papers to publish Charles Mann's scheme.  His committee's dread of
+being made publicly ridiculous evaporated, and, as Lord Verschoyle did
+not resign, no other member did, and Griffenberg simply sent in a
+letter of protest and announced that he was too busy to take any more
+active part in the proceedings.  He went away and denounced the theatre
+as a vulgar institution, which no artist could enter without losing his
+soul.  He said this publicly in a newspaper and produced one of those
+delightful controversies which in the once happy days of unlimited
+advertisement provided an opportunity for mutual recrimination upon an
+impersonal basis.
+
+Verschoyle promised Charles thirty thousand pounds if he could raise
+another similar amount, and Charles regarded himself as worth thirty
+thousand already, raised Mr Clott's salary, and condescended with so
+much security to begin really to work at _The Tempest_.
+
+Clara, who was still playing small parts at the Imperium, found to her
+dismay that Sir Henry had rather cooled towards the Mann production and
+was talking of other plays, a huge American success called _The Great
+Beyond_, and a French drama of which he had acquired the rights some
+few years previously.  This was really alarming, for she knew that if
+she could not engage Charles speedily he would simply fling away from
+the theatre and devote himself, unsupported except by Verschoyle, who
+was by no means a certain quantity, to his airy schemes.  Already he
+was beginning to be swayed by letters from well-meaning persons in the
+provinces, who urged him to found another Bayreuth in the Welsh Hills
+or the Forest of Arden....  Give Charles a hint and he would construct
+an imaginary universe!  If she could only stop him advertising, he
+would not be exposed to the distracting bombardment of hints and
+suggestions which was opened upon him with every post, especially after
+he announced with his usual bland indiscretion his association with the
+owner of a fashionable part of the Metropolis.
+
+Verschoyle did not object.  It horrified his trustees and after a time,
+growing bolder, he was much in Charles's company, and found him
+extremely useful as a bogey to frighten away the mammas who had made
+his life hideous ever since his Eton days, when one of his aunts had
+horrified him by referring to one of his cousins, a child of fifteen,
+as his 'dear little wifie.' ...  Further, by seeing much of Charles, he
+could see more of Clara without compromising her or himself.
+
+Now in the world of the theatre there never is but always may be money.
+It is always going to be made, so that everybody associated with it has
+credit sustained by occasional payment.  Clara realised this very early
+in her career.  She understood finance, because her grandfather had
+discussed his affairs with her exactly as if she were his partner, and
+she had had to keep a tight hand on his extravagance; and she quickly
+understood that in the theatre money must be spent always a little
+faster than it can be made to keep the current of credit flowing.  She
+also realised that Sir Henry Butcher spent it a great deal faster, and
+was cool and warm towards the various projects laid before him
+according as they made payment possible....  He had watched Charles
+Mann's increase of fame with a jealous interest, but with a shrewdly
+expert eye waited for the moment of capitalisation to come before he
+committed himself to the new-fangled ways of dressing the stage, these
+damned Greek tragedies, plays in curtains, German toy sets, and Russian
+flummery in which painted blobs stood for trees and clouds.  To Sir
+Henry a tree was a tree, a cloud a cloud, and he liked nothing better
+than to have real rabbits on the stage, if possible to out-Nature
+Nature....  At the same time he knew that the public was changing.  It
+was becoming increasingly difficult to produce an instantaneous
+success.  The theatre did not stand where it had done in popular
+esteem, and its personalities had no longer the vivid authority they
+had once enjoyed.  When the Prime Minister visited the Imperium, it was
+rather Sir Henry than the Prime Minister who was honoured: a sad
+declension, for Prime Ministers come and go, but a great actor rules
+for ever as sole lessee and manager of an institution as familiar to
+the general mind as the House of Commons.  Prime Ministers had come and
+gone, they had in turn accepted Sir Henry's kind offer of a box for the
+first night, but latterly Prime Ministers had gathered popularity and
+actor-managers had lost it, so great had been the deterioration of the
+public mind since the introduction of cheap newspapers, imposing upon
+every public character the necessity of a considerable waste of energy
+in advertising....  In the old days, a great man's advertising was done
+for him in acknowledgment of his greatness.  Sir Henry was uneasy,
+could not shake off the gathering gloom, and a deep-seated conviction
+that Lady Butcher had made the fatal mistake of his career by devoting
+herself so exclusively to the front of the house and social drapery,
+bringing him into intimate contact with such persons as Prime
+Ministers, Dukes, and Attorney-Generals....  The public had been
+admitted behind the scenes.  The mystery was gone.  The theatre, even
+the Imperium had lost its spell.  Nothing in it was sacred; not even
+rehearsals, which were continually interrupted by journalists, male and
+female, elegant young men and women who were friends and acquaintances
+of his family, dressmakers.  'Ah!  Teresa!  Teresa!' sighed Sir Henry,
+gazing at the portrait of that lady.  'It needs your touch, your charm,
+the quick insight into the health of the theatre which only comes to
+those who have been born in it.'
+
+Soon the Imperium would close for a short holiday, after a shockingly
+bad season, and its manager had to make up his mind as to his new
+production.  Mr Gillies was all for safety and economy, and for
+postponing any adventure to the Spring, but Sir Henry said,--
+
+'The fate of the whole year is decided in October.  The few people who
+matter come back from Karlsbad and Scotland cleaned up and scraped, and
+it is then that you make your impression.  The Spring is too late.  We
+must have something new.'
+
+'We've got nothing new.'
+
+'This fellow Mann.'
+
+'But!  He's mad.  If he walked into the Club half the men would walk
+out of it.'
+
+'He has made himself felt.'
+
+'Yes.  But in the wrong way.'
+
+'The wrong way is often the right way in the end.'
+
+'You can't have him in the theatre, Chief, after the way he has talked
+about us, as though none of us knew our business.'
+
+'He might say so if he saw our balance-sheet,' said Sir Henry, who
+loved nothing so much as teasing his loyal subordinates.  'We've
+nothing but this melodrama of Halford Bunn's in which I should have to
+play the Pope.'
+
+'Well, you were a great success as a Cardinal, Chief.'
+
+'Hm!  Hm!  Yes.'  Sir Henry began to live again through the success of
+_The Cardinal's Niece_, but also he remembered the horrible time he had
+had at rehearsals with Mr Halford Bunn who would get so drunk with his
+own words that any acting which distracted attention from them drove
+him almost into hysterics.
+
+Sir Henry laughed.
+
+'Bunn or Mann....  Said Mr Mann to Mr Bunn, "I hope you've got a record
+run."  Said Mr Bunn to Mr Mann, "You, sir, are but an also ran."'
+
+'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the manager.
+
+'He! he! he!' laughed Sir Henry, and they parted without having solved
+their problem, though the impishness in Sir Henry made him long to
+infuriate both Bunn and Mann by a merger of his contracts with the two
+of them....  Oh! dear.  Oh, dear, authors had always been trial enough,
+but if artists were going to begin to thrust their inflated egoism into
+the machinery of the theatre then the life of its manager would become
+unbearable....  Sir Henry liked to drift and to make sudden and
+surprising decisions.
+
+In this case the decision was made for him--by Clara.  It had become
+one of his chief pleasures to give her lunch in the Aquarium, as she
+called it, and to laugh with her over her vivid and comic impressions
+of London, and insensibly he had fallen in love with her, not as was
+his habit theatrically and superficially, but with an old man's passion
+for youth.  It hurt him, plagued him, tortured him, because she never
+gave him an opening for flirtation, but kept his wits at full stretch
+and made him feel thirty again: and as he felt thirty he wanted to be
+thirty....  She never discussed her private affairs with him, but he
+knew that she lived alone.  She baffled him, bewildered him, until he
+was often hard put to it not to burst into tears.  So quick she was and
+she understood so well, had so keen an insight into character and the
+intrigue that went on all around her, that he marvelled at her
+innocence and sometimes almost hated her for it, and for her refusal to
+accept the position assigned to women in society.  His blague, his
+bluff were useless with her.  He had painfully to reveal to her his
+best, the kindly, tender-hearted, generous simpleton that at heart he
+was.  Loving her, he could not help himself, and, loving her, he raged
+against her.
+
+She would never allow him to visit her in her rooms.  That was a
+privilege which she reserved for Verschoyle.  Her rooms were her
+sanctuary, her refuge, the place where she could be simple and human,
+and be the untouched Clara Day who had lived in childish glee with her
+grandfather and most powerfully alone in her imagination with various
+characters, more real than any of the persons with whom she ever came
+in contact until she met Charles Mann....  He was never admitted to her
+rooms, nor was Sir Henry Butcher, in whom she had for the first time
+encountered the ordinary love of the ordinary sentimental male.  This
+left her so unmoved that she detested it, with all its ridiculous
+parade of emotions, its stealthy overtures, its corrosive dishonesty,
+which made a frank interchange of thought and feeling impossible....
+The thing had happened to her before, but she had been too young to
+realise it, or to understand to the full its essential possessiveness,
+which to her spirit was its chief offence.
+
+She had to rebuke Sir Henry.  One week she found her salary trebled.
+She returned the extra ten pounds to Mr Gillies, the manager, pointing
+out that she was doing the same work, small and unimportant, and that
+it was not fair to the other girls.
+
+'The Chief believes in you, Miss Day.  He doesn't want you to leave us.'
+
+'This is the very kind of thing to drive me out.'
+
+'You're not like other girls, Miss Day....' said Mr Gillies.  'Indeed,
+I often wonder what a young lady who wears her clothes as you do is
+doing in the theatre.'
+
+Clara's expression silenced him, and she was enraged with the Chief for
+exposing her to such familiarity.  She taxed Sir Henry with it, and he
+was quick to see his mistake, and so warmly pleaded that he had only
+meant it as a kindness that she could not but forgive him.  He implored
+her to let him merit her forgiveness by making her a present of
+anything she desired; but she desired nothing.
+
+'I'm at your feet,' he said, and he went down on his knees.  'In two or
+three years I will make a great actress of you.  You shall be the great
+woman of your time....  A Spring day in the country with you would make
+me young as Romeo....'
+
+'Please get up,' said Clara, 'and let us talk business.  You promised
+early this year that you would do Charles Mann's _Tempest_.'
+
+'Yes.  I'm always making promises.  One lives on promises.  Life is a
+promise....  If I promise to do _The Tempest_ will you come and stay
+with us in The Lakes in August?  I want you to meet the Bracebridges;
+you ought to know the best people, the gay people, the aristocrats, the
+only people who know how to be amusing.'
+
+This was getting further and further away from business, though Clara
+knew that it was impossible to keep Sir Henry to the point.  She
+ignored his invitation and replied,--
+
+'If you will do _The Tempest_ I can get Lord Verschoyle to support it.'
+
+Sir Henry was at once jealous.  He pouted like a baby.
+
+'I don't want Verschoyle or any other young cub to help you.  _I_ want
+to help you....  Verschoyle can't appreciate you.  He can't possibly
+see you as you are, or as you are going to be.'
+
+Clara smiled.  Verschoyle had become her best friend, and with him she
+enjoyed a deep, quiet intimacy which the young gentleman preserved with
+exquisite tact and taste, delighting in it as he did in a work of art,
+or a good book, and appreciating fully that the girl's capacity for it
+was her rarest and most irresistible power....  Sir Henry was like a
+silly boy in his desire to impress on her that he alone could
+understand her.
+
+He continued,--
+
+'It seems so unnatural that you have no women friends other than old
+Julia....  An actress nowadays has her part to play in society....  You
+have brought new life into my theatre.'
+
+'Then,' said Clara, 'let us do _The Tempest_.'
+
+'But I don't want to do _The Tempest_.'
+
+'Charles said you did.'
+
+'We talked about it, but we are always talking in the theatre....  I
+would give up everything if you would only be a little kinder to me.'
+
+Was this the great Sir Henry speaking?  Clara saw that he was on the
+verge of a schoolboy outburst, perhaps a declaration, and she was never
+fonder of the man than in this moment of self-humiliation.  He waited
+for some relaxation in her, but was met only with sallies.  He rose,
+drew his hand over his eyes, and walked up and down the room sighing.
+
+'At my age, to love for the first time....  It is appalling: it is
+tragic.  To have made so great a position and to have nothing to offer
+you that you will accept.'
+
+'Not even a rise in salary,' said Clara, a little maliciously, and she
+so hurt him that he collapsed in his attempt at heroics, and to win her
+at all costs said,--
+
+'Yes, yes.  I will do _The Tempest_.  I can make Prospero a great part.
+I will do _The Tempest_ if you will be Miranda; at least if you will be
+nothing else you shall be a daughter to me.'
+
+'You had better ask Charles and Verschoyle to supper,' said Clara.
+'And we can all talk it over.  But I won't have Mr Gillies.'
+
+'Ah!  How Teresa hated that man....  Do you know that I sometimes think
+he has undone all the great work she did for me.'
+
+Clara had no mind to discuss Mr Gillies.  She had gained her point.
+She felt certain that a combination of Butcher, Charles, and Verschoyle
+was the most promising for her purpose.
+
+'I hate Mann,' said Sir Henry.  'I hate him.  He is a renegade.  He
+loathes his own calling.  He has turned his back on it....'
+
+'When you know him you will love him.'
+
+Sir Henry swung round and fixed his eyes on her.
+
+'I live in dread,' he said, 'in dread for you.  You have everything
+before you, everything, and then one day you will fall in love and your
+genius will be laid at the feet of some fool who will trample it under
+foot as a cow treads on a beautiful buttercup.'
+
+Clara smiled.  Sir Henry, from excessive familiarity with noble words,
+could never find the exact phrase.
+
+
+The supper was arranged in the aquarium, which in Clara's honour was
+filled with banked up flowers, lilies, roses, delphiniums, and
+Canterbury bells....  Clara wore gray and green, and gray shoes with
+cross-straps about her exquisite ankles.  She came with Verschoyle, who
+brought her in his car which he had placed at her disposal.  Sir Henry
+was in a velvet evening suit of snuff colour, and he glared jealously
+at his lordship whom he regarded as an intending destroyer of Clara's
+reputation.
+
+'I'm glad you're going to give Mann his chance,' said Verschoyle.
+'Extraordinary fellow, most extraordinary....  Pity his life should be
+wasted, especially now that we are beginning to wake up to the
+importance of the theatre.'
+
+Sir Henry winced.
+
+'There _are_ men,' he said, 'who have worked while others talked.  Take
+this man Shaw, for instance.  He talked for years.  Then he comes out
+with plays which are all talk.'
+
+'Ibsen,' said Verschoyle.
+
+'Why should we on the English stage go on gloomily saying that there's
+something rotten in the state of Norway?....  I have run Shakespeare
+for more hundred nights than any man in the history of the British
+drama, and I venture to say that every man of eminence and every woman
+of beauty or charm has had at least a cigarette in this room....  Isn't
+that proof of the importance of the theatre?'
+
+'It may be only proof of your personal charm, Sir Henry,' said
+Verschoyle, and Clara was pleased with him for that....  She enjoyed
+this meeting of her two friends.  Verschoyle's breeding was the exactly
+appropriate set off to Sir Henry's flamboyance.
+
+With the arrival of Charles, the grouping was perfect.  He came in
+bubbling over with enthusiasm.  His portfolio was under his arm, and he
+had in his hand a bundle of newspapers.
+
+'Extraordinary news,' he said.  'The Germans in despair are turning the
+theatre into a circus.  Their idea of a modern Hellenic revival.
+Crowds, horses, clowns....  Sophocles in a circus!'
+
+'Horrible!' said Verschoyle.  'Horrible!  We must do better than that,
+Sir Henry.'
+
+'I _have_ done better.'
+
+Charles bent over Clara's hand and kissed it.
+
+'I have been working hard,' he said.  'Very hard.  My designs are
+nearly finished....  Verschoyle likes them.'
+
+'I think them delightful,' said Verschoyle.
+
+Supper was served.  In tribute to Clara's charm, Verschoyle's wealth,
+and Charles's genius, it was exquisitely chosen--oysters, cold salmon,
+various meats, pastries and jellies, with sherry, champagne, port and
+liqueurs, ices and coffee.
+
+Sir Henry and Charles ate enormously.  Even in that they were in
+competition.  They sat opposite each other, and their hands were
+constantly busy reaching over the table for condiments, bread,
+biscuits, olives, wine....  Verschoyle and Clara were in strong
+contrast to them, though both were enjoying themselves and were vastly
+entertained by the gusto of the great.
+
+Sir Henry talked at Clara in a boyish attempt to dispossess Charles.
+He was at his most airily brilliant, and invented a preposterous story
+in which Mr Gillies, his manager, and Mr Weinberg, his musical
+director, were engaged in an intrigue to ruin Miss Julia Wainwright, as
+the one had a niece, the other a wife, aching to become leading lady at
+the Imperium.
+
+'Julia,' he said, 'shall play Caliban.  Why not?  You shall play Ariel,
+Mann, and dear old Freeland shall be Ceres....  Let us be original.  I
+haven't read _The Tempest_ for a long time, but I dare say there's a
+part for you, Verschoyle.'
+
+'No, thanks.'
+
+'You could be one of the invisible spirits who eat the phantom supper.'
+
+'You and Charles could do that very well,' said Clara, who felt that
+her plans would succeed.  These three men were held together by her
+personality, and she meant them to unite for the purpose of forcing out
+those qualities in Charles which made her ready for every sacrifice, if
+only they could be brought to play their part in the life of his
+time....  As the wine and food took effect, all three men were in high
+spirits, and soon were roaring with laughter at the immense joke in
+which they all shared, the joke of pleasing the British public.
+
+'It is the most wonderful game ever invented,' said Sir Henry.
+'Millions and millions of people believing everything they are told.
+Shouting Hurrah! for fried fish if the hero of the moment says fried
+fish, and Hooray! for ice-cream when the next hero says ice-cream....
+I tell you I could put on a play by Halford Bunn to-morrow, and
+persuade them for a few weeks that it was better than Shakespeare.  Ah!
+you blame us for that, but the public is at fault always.  The man who
+makes a fortune is the man who invents a new way of boring them....  We
+shall be like the French soon, where the only means of maintaining any
+interest in politics is by a scandal now and then.'
+
+As they talked Clara felt more and more remote from them, and at
+moments found it difficult to believe that it was really she to whom
+all these amazing things had happened.  She thought it must be the end.
+Here at one table were money, imagination, and showmanship, the three
+essentials of success, but the three men in whom they lived were
+talking themselves into ineffectiveness.  Even Verschoyle had caught
+the fever and was talking, and she found herself thinking that the
+three of them, whom separately she could handle so well, were together
+too much for her.
+
+They talked for hours, and she tried again and again vainly to steer
+them back to business.  They would have none of it.  Their tongues were
+loosed and they expressed their several discontents in malicious wit.
+
+At last she left the table and took up Charles's portfolio.  He sprang
+to his feet and snatched it away from her rather roughly and said,--
+
+'I don't want to show them yet.'
+
+'It is getting late, Charles,' she protested.
+
+'In Moscow,' he said, 'a feast like this goes on for days.'
+
+Sir Henry took advantage of the altercation to ascertain from
+Verschoyle that he was willing to back Mann's _Tempest_ for at least an
+eight weeks' run.  That was good enough for Sir Henry.  He had no need
+to look at the drawings....  He was back again in his palmy days.  He
+knew that Clara, like Teresa, would not let him make a fool of himself.
+
+Clara saw this, and was very angry and sore.  It was terrible to her
+that when she had hoped for an eagerness and gusto to carry through her
+project there should have been this declension upon money and food.
+After all, Shakespeare wrote _The Tempest_ and his share in its
+production was greater than that of either Mann or Butcher.  She had
+hoped they would discuss the play and bring into common stock their
+ideas upon it.
+
+However, she laughed at herself for being so young and innocent.  No
+doubt in their own time they would really tackle their problem, and,
+after all, in the world of men, from which women were and perhaps
+always would be excluded, money and food were of prime importance.  All
+the same she was disappointed and could hardly conceal it.
+
+'I haven't had such a good evening for twenty years,' said Sir Henry.
+
+'Famous,' said Charles, returning to the table.  Charles was astonished
+to find how much he liked Sir Henry, upon whose doings in his exile he
+had brooded bitterly.
+
+Verschoyle said,--
+
+'I'm only astonished that more men in my position don't go in for the
+theatre.  There are so many of us and we can't think of anything better
+than racing and polo and big game.'
+
+As they were all so pleased with themselves, Clara swallowed her
+chagrin, and more happily accepted their homage when Sir Henry toasted
+her as the presiding Muse of the Imperium.
+
+She was suffering from the reaction from a fulfilled ambition.  She had
+overcome Charles's reluctance to submit to the machinery of the
+theatre, and was herself now inspired with something of a horror of its
+immense power, which could absorb originality and force, and reduce
+individuals to helpless puppets.  But she would not admit to herself
+that she might have been wrong, and that it were possibly better to
+have left Charles to fight his own way through.
+
+No, no.  Left to himself he would always be tripped up by his desire
+for birds and fishes and other such superfluities.  Left to meet in
+their love of art he and Sir Henry would soon have been at loggerheads.
+In their love of food, they could discover each other's charm and
+forget their jealousy and suspicion of each other's aims.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SOLITUDE
+
+Verschoyle swept aside her reluctance to accept gifts from him, and she
+allowed him to furnish her rooms for her upon condition that he never
+came there without her permission.  He said,--
+
+'Why shouldn't I have the pleasure of indulging my desire to give you
+everything in the world?  People will talk! ...  People talk anyhow in
+London.  If we were seen walking together down Piccadilly, there would
+be talk.  They will say I am going to marry you, but we know
+different....  Your way of living is exactly my ideal, absolute
+independence, peace, and privacy.  We're rather alike in that.  It
+seems so odd that we should be living with these people whose whole aim
+in life is publicity.'
+
+They had many happy hours together reading and discussing the books
+which he bought for her by the armful at a shop in Charing Cross Road,
+where, open to the street, were piles of books almost blatantly
+subversive of society--Nietsche, Havelock Ellis, Shaw, Ibsen, Anarchist
+tracts, Socialist and Labour journals, R.P.A. cheap reprints, every
+sort and kind of book that in an ordinary shop would only be procured
+upon a special order....  It was a very fierce shop.  Its woodwork was
+painted scarlet, and above the shelves in gilt letters were such names
+as Morris, Marx, Bakounin, Kropotkin, Lassalle, and mottoes such as
+'The workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains.'
+
+It was Clara who discovered the shop in her wanderings through the West
+End, which she desired to know even to its remotest crannies, and its
+oddity seized her imagination when she discovered that for all its
+fierceness it was kept by a gentle little old Scotsman, who most
+ferociously desired the destruction of society, but most gently helped
+all who needed help and most wholly sympathised with all, and they were
+many, who turned to him for sympathy....  The frequenters of his shop
+were poor, mostly long-haired eaters of nuts, and drinkers of ideas.
+There were young men who hovered in the background of his shop arguing,
+chatting, filling in the time they had to spend away from their
+lodgings in the frequent intervals between their attempts to do work
+for which their convictions made them unfitted.  They believed, as he
+did, in the nobility of work, but could find none that was not ignoble.
+It was his boast that he had no book in his shop in which he did not
+believe.
+
+The beautiful and elegant young lady who walked into his shop one day
+astonished and delighted him with her radiance.  She was the kind of
+accident that does not often happen to a humble Anarchist bookseller.
+
+When she came again and again, he warmed to her, and recommended books,
+and gave her Prince Kropotkin's _Memoirs_ as a present, at least he
+gave her the second volume, for he could not find the first....  He
+always hotly denied that books were stolen from his open shop, but
+admitted that they were sometimes 'borrowed' by his young friends.
+
+The story of Kropotkin's escape from the fortress moved Clara deeply,
+and she read it to Verschoyle in her rooms.
+
+'And that man is still alive,' she said, 'here in England, where we go
+round and round hunting fame and money....  He was like you,
+Verschoyle, in just such a position as you, but he found it intolerable
+and went to prison.'
+
+'Ah! but that was in Russia, where it is easy to go to prison.  If I
+tried and tried they wouldn't send me.  I'm too rich.  They wouldn't do
+it.  If I became an Anarchist, they would just laugh because they don't
+believe that society can ever be upset.'
+
+'I'm quite sure I didn't go into that shop for nothing.  Something is
+going to happen to me,' said Clara.
+
+'I think quite enough has happened to you.  Don't you? ...  What a
+restless little creature you are!  Here you are with everything at your
+feet, the greatest artist, the richest bachelor in London at your
+disposal, and you want something to happen to you.'
+
+'I don't want it.  I say that I feel it must come.
+
+'You're before your time, my dear.  That's what is the matter with you.
+Women aren't independent yet.  They are still clinging to men.  That is
+what I cannot stand about them.  I should hate to have a woman clinging
+to my money.  Still more should I hate to have one clinging to myself.'
+
+'But you ought to marry.  You would be happier.'
+
+He shook his head and smiled,--
+
+'You have made that impossible, Clara.'
+
+'I?'
+
+'Yes.  If I found a girl like you who wanted to marry me I might
+consider it....  My aunts are furious.'
+
+'With me?'
+
+'Yes.  You have made more of a stir than you can imagine.  They tell me
+you are more wicked than Cleopatra, and yet you complain that nothing
+happens to you.'
+
+She took him to the bookshop and introduced him to the bookseller, a
+little gray-bearded man in a tweed suit.  Verschoyle liked him and
+asked him what he thought a man in his position ought to do.
+
+'The man Jesus put you right years ago,' said the bookseller.  'Sell
+all that thou hast and give to the poor.'
+
+'But I can't,' said Verschoyle.  'I'm only a _cestui que trust_.'
+
+To both Verschoyle and Clara the bookshop was a place of escape, a
+holiday ground where they could play with ideas which to Verschoyle
+were a new kind of toy.  With Mann there was always a certain strain
+for him, because Mann wanted something definite; but with the
+bookseller and his young friends, he was at his ease, for they were
+very like himself, without ambition, and outside all the press and
+hurry of society.  Like himself they wanted nothing except to be
+amused, and like himself they hated amusement which entailed effort.
+
+Clara, however, as usual took it seriously.  The Kropotkin Memoirs had
+jolted her imagination, and she saw the young men of the bookshop as
+potential Kropotkins, people who stood upon the edge of an abyss of
+suffering and asked nothing better than to be engulfed in the world's
+misery.
+
+The disturbance in her serenity was so great that for some weeks she
+shut herself up alone to collect her ideas.  The world was not so
+simple as she had thought; certainly by no means so simple as it had
+appeared during her three years with Charles.  As she had said, London
+was different.  She had progressed so far with this great London of
+Butcher and Verschoyle only to find through the bookshop another London
+suddenly opened up before her--the London of the poor....  Poverty she
+had never known, except the poverty of the world of art which is
+created rather by indifference to money than by the grim lack of it.
+With Charles days had been so busy, nights so happy, that it was a
+small thing that every now and then she had to go hungry for a day in
+order that he might not lack.  The immense poverty which now she saw
+everywhere in this West End of London, in courts off Charing Cross
+Road, in vast workmen's dwellings, in Soho, and by her own rooms at the
+back of Leicester Square, everywhere round the calculated magnificence
+of the theatres, overwhelmed her and changed many of her conceptions;
+first of all her attitude towards Kitty Messenger, whom she had
+regarded as a vulgar nuisance, a horrible intrusion from the past.  It
+was impossible for her to accept her position of security above the
+dirty sea of poverty.
+
+She loathed the poor, their indolence, their coarseness, their horrible
+manners, their loud mirth and violent anger....  Once outside her door
+two drunken women fought.  They leaned against the wall, clutching each
+other by the hair, and attempted, while they breathed thick curses into
+each other's glaring faces, to bite, to scratch, each to bang the
+other's head against the wall....  Clara ran past them trembling in
+every limb.  She had never seen the uncontrolled brutality of which
+human beings are capable....  But it was even worse when a policeman
+arrested the two women and roughly dragged them away.
+
+And after that she was continually coming upon similar scenes, or upon
+degraded and derelict types.  It was as though she had been blind and
+was suddenly able to see--or had the world turned evil?
+
+How could Verschoyle, how could Charles, how could all the well-dressed
+and well-fed people be so happy while such things were going on before
+their eyes?  Perhaps, like herself, they could not see them.  It was
+very strange.
+
+Stranger still was the release of energy in herself, bringing with it a
+new personal interest in her own life.  She began to look more keenly
+at other women and to understand them a little better, to sympathise
+even with their vanity, their mindlessness, their insistence upon
+homage and flattery from their men.  From that she passed to a somewhat
+bewildered introspection, realising that it was extraordinary that she
+should have been able to sever her connection with Charles and to
+maintain the impersonal when the personal relationship was
+suspended--or gone?  Yes.  That was quite extraordinary, and because of
+it she knew that she could never live the ordinary woman's life,
+absorbed entirely in external things, in position, clothes, food and
+household, shops.
+
+She remembered Charles saying that his feeling for her was at the
+farthest end of love, and certainly she had never known anything like
+the relationship between, say, Freeland and Julia--easy, comfortable
+romance.  To be either easy or comfortable had become an abomination to
+her, and at bottom this was the reason for her dissatisfaction.  It had
+been too easy to procure the beginnings of success for Charles.  They
+had secured control of the machinery of the theatre, and must now act
+in accordance with its grinding.
+
+For some weeks she was paralysed and could do nothing but sit and
+brood; hardly thinking at all consciously, but gazing in upon herself
+and the forces stirring in her, creeping up and up to take control of
+her imagination that had hitherto been entirely free and in undisputed
+mastery of her being.  This was a time of the acutest agony.  She would
+not surrender.  Without knowing what was being demanded of her she
+cried, 'I will not, I will not.'  But the forces stirring in her were
+implacable, and changed her whole physical sensation of being.  Her
+body changed, her figure altered most subtly and imperceptibly, her
+face gained in strength and beauty, but she loathed the change, because
+it was taking place without reference to her own will, or her own
+imagination, which for the first time in her life was baffled....  It
+was appalling to her, who had always found it so easy to direct the
+lives of others, to find her own life slipping with a terrible velocity
+out of control....  No thought, no notion of her recent days was now
+valid.  At the very worst stage of all even simple movements seemed
+incomprehensible.  When she caught sight of her own lovely arm that had
+always given her a thrill of pleasure, it now repelled her as something
+fantastic and irresistibly comic, revoltingly comic at this time when
+she was a prey to so much obscure suffering, so deep that she could
+trace it to no cause, so acute that she could discern in it no purpose.
+
+She found it almost her sole relief to read, and she devoured among
+other curious works which she found at her bookshop, General Booth's
+_Darkest London_ and Rose's _The Truth about the Transvaal_.  Novels
+she could not read at all.  Fiction was all very well, but it ought to
+have some relation to human emotions as they are.  After her aerial
+life in Charles's imagination she needed a diet of hard facts, and, as
+usual, what she needed that she obtained.  Both Booth and Rose dealt
+with the past, but that made them the more palatable, and they
+reassured her.  The facts she was now discovering had been present to
+other minds and her own had not unsupported to bear the whole weight of
+them....  In her untouched youth she had always accepted responsibility
+for the whole universe, and so long as her life had been made easy,
+first of all by her grandfather, and then by Charles, the burden had
+been tolerable, and she had been able to mould the universe to make
+them comfortable.  But now that life was suddenly for no apparent
+reason incredibly difficult, the burden was greater than she could
+bear, and it relieved her to find in these two books the utterance of
+suffering consciences.....  As she read Rose she remembered a saying of
+her grandfather's, 'The British make slums wherever they go because in
+every British mind there is a slum.'
+
+She could find relief in the books, but she could not stay the welling
+up of the mysterious forces which swamped the clarity of her mind and
+made her usually swift intuition sluggish.
+
+Very thankful was she that she had steered Charles into the Imperium
+before this cataclysm broke in her....  She could well be alone to sort
+out if possible the surfeit of new impressions from which she was
+suffering.  She no longer had thoughts but only obsessions.  London....
+London....  London....  The roaring traffic: the crowds of people:
+Coventry Street by night: the illuminated theatres: the statue in
+Piccadilly Circus: the hotel in which she and Charles had stayed on
+their first night in London: the painted faces of the women: policemen:
+commissionaires: wonderful cars lit up at night, gliding through the
+streets with elegant ladies in evening dress reclining at their ease,
+bored, mechanical, as hard and mechanical as the cars that carried them
+through the streets: the drunken women fighting outside her door: the
+woman opposite her windows who kept a canary in a cage and watered so
+lovingly the aspidistra on her window-sill: tubes: lifts: glaring
+lights and white tiles....  London....  London....  London....
+
+Through it all there ran a thread of struggling, conscious purpose
+which kept her from misery and made it impossible for her to succumb.
+Deep in her heart she knew that she could not; that she had escaped;
+that it would never be for her an awful, a terrible, an overwhelming
+thing to be a woman.
+
+With that knowledge there came an exultation, a pride, a triumphant
+sense of having come through an almost fatal peril, the full nature of
+which had yet to be revealed.  And she had wrestled through it alone.
+Her childish detestation of her womanhood was gone.  She accepted it,
+gloried in it as her instrument and knew that she would never be lost
+in it.
+
+For ever in her mind that crisis was associated with Kropotkin's escape
+from prison, and she was full of a delighted gratitude to the little
+bookseller who had lent her the book, the second volume, the first
+having been borrowed.
+
+Immeasurably increased was her understanding through this sudden
+convulsion of her life, and she was very proud of the loyalty to her
+instinct which had made her wrestle through it alone; and now, when she
+saw women absorbed in external things, she knew that they had taken
+refuge in them from just such convulsions in which, had they attempted
+to face them, they must have been swamped.  They clung to external
+things to prevent themselves being lost in the whirlpool of the
+internal world of womanhood....  Ah!  It was supreme to be a woman, to
+contain the most fierce and most powerful of all life's manifestations,
+to smile and to distil all these violent forces into charm, to suffer
+and to turn all suffering into visible beauty.
+
+If Clara now had any easy pity it was for men, who live always in
+fantasy, lured on by their own imaginings in the vain effort to solve
+the mystery of which only a true and loyal woman has the key.
+
+When once more she approached her external life it was through the
+bookshop, where she found her friend the bookseller munching his lunch
+of wheaten biscuits and apples in the dingy little room at the back of
+his shop.
+
+He offered her an apple.  She took it and sat on a pile of books tied
+up with a rope.
+
+'You're looking bonny,' he said.
+
+'I think I'll come and be your assistant.'
+
+'A fine young leddy like you?'
+
+'I might meet some one like Kropotkin.'
+
+'Ah!  Isn't that grand?  There's none o' your Dumas and Stevensons can
+beat that; a real happening in our own life-time....  But I can no
+afford an assistant.'
+
+'Oh!  You always seem to have plenty of people in your shop.'
+
+'These damned publishers put their prices up and up on the poor
+bookseller, and my brains are all my capital, and I will not sell the
+stuff that's turned out like bars o' soap, though the authors may be as
+famous as old Nick and the publishers may roll by in their cars and
+build their castles in the countryside....  I sell my books all the
+week, and I grow my own food on my own plot on Sundays, and I'll win
+through till I'm laid in the earth, and have a pile o' books to keep me
+down when I'm dead as they have done in my lifetime.'
+
+He thrust a slice of apple into his mouth and munched away at it, rosy
+defiance of an ill-ordered world shining from his healthy cheeks.
+
+On his desk Clara saw his account book, a pile of bills, and old
+cheques, and it was not difficult to guess the cause of his trouble.
+
+'I'm sure I should sell your books for you.'
+
+'You'd draw all London into my shop, young leddy, as you'll draw them
+to the playhouse; but bookselling is a dusty trade and is not for fair
+wits or fine persons.'
+
+Clara looked out into the shop, and was happy in its friendliness.  A
+lean, hungry-looking man came in, bought a paper, and stayed turning
+over the books.  She could not see his face, but something in his
+movement told of quality of wit and precise consciousness.  He seized a
+book with a familiar mastery, as though he could savour and weigh its
+contents through his finger-tips, glanced through it, and put it away
+as though it were finally disposed of.  There was a concentrated
+absorption in everything he did that made it definite and final.  He
+was so sensitive that at the approach of another person he edged away
+as though to avoid a distasteful impact....  Very shabby he was, but
+distinguished and original.  After taking up half a dozen books and not
+finding in them any attraction, he stopped, pondered, and moved out of
+the shop quite obviously having clearly in his mind some necessary and
+inevitable purpose.
+
+His going was a wrench to Clara, so wholly had she been absorbed in
+him; but though she longed to know his name she could not bring herself
+to ask her old friend who he was.  That did not matter.  He was, and
+Charing Cross Road had become a hallowed place by profound experience,
+the bookshop a room beyond all others holy.
+
+For some time longer, Clara sat in silence with her old friend, who lit
+his after-luncheon pipe and sat cross-legged, blinking and ruminant.
+She stared into the shop, and still it seemed that the remarkable
+figure was standing there fingering the books, pondering, deciding.
+Her emotions thrilled through her, uplifted her, and she had a
+sensation of being deliciously intimate with all things animate and
+inanimate.  She touched the desk by her side, and it seemed to her that
+life tingled through her fingers into the wood.  She smiled at the old
+man, and his eyes twitched, and he gave her a little happy sidelong
+nod.  She wanted to tell him that the world was a very wonderful place,
+but she could only keep on smiling, and as she left the shop, the
+bookseller thrust his hat on the back of his head, scratched his beard,
+and said,--
+
+'Pegs!  I said to Jenny she'll bring me luck.  But she's wasted on yon
+birkie ca'd a lord.'
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+MAGIC
+
+A friendly city seemed London to Clara as she left the shop.  A fresh
+wind was blowing, and she stood for some moments to drink in the keen
+air.  The sky was full of clouds, gray, white, and cinnamon against the
+smoky blue, as she turned south with eyes newly eager for beauty and
+friendliness.  Above the roofs, the statue of Lord Nelson stood perched
+in absurd elevation above the London that flouted his Emma, and Clara
+laughed to see the little gray man in cocked hat symbolising for her
+the delicious absurdity of London, where nothing and nobody could ever
+be of the smallest importance in its hugeness....  This was its charm,
+that an individual could in it feel the indifference of humanity
+exactly as on a hill the indifference of Nature can be felt.  A city of
+strangers!  Everybody was strange to everybody else.  That was good and
+healthy.  Nothing in London was on show, nothing dressed for the
+tourist.  Living in rooms in London, one could be as lonely as in a hut
+in the wilderness.
+
+She walked down to the Imperium, and, entering by the stage door, found
+Charles in excited converse with the scenic artist, Mr Smithson, who
+was looking at a drawing and scratching his head dubiously.
+
+'It's clever, Mr Mann, but nothing like the seaside.  Sir Henry's sure
+to want his waves "off," and the sun ought to look a bit like it.'
+
+'That's my design, Mr Smithson.  Sir Henry said you would paint it.  If
+you won't, I'll do it myself....  Ah!  Clara, do come and explain to Mr
+Smithson what we want.'
+
+Smithson turned angrily.--
+
+'He gives me a blooming drawing with purples and golds and blues and
+every colour but the natural colours of a sea-side place.  I've painted
+scenery for thirty years, and I ought to know what a stage island is
+like by now.  I've done a dozen sets for _The Tempest_ in my time.'
+
+'It is an enchanted island,' said Clara.
+
+'But Prospero was Duke of Milan....  I've _been_ to the Mediterranean
+to see for myself and I know what the colouring is....  I can't believe
+that Sir Henry has passed this.  God knows what kind of lighting it
+will take.'
+
+Charles threw his hat on the ground and stamped on it.
+
+'Dolt!  Fool!  Idiot!' he shouted.  'Go away and paint it as I tell you
+to paint it.'
+
+'Damned if I do,' said Smithson.  'My firm has painted all the scenery
+for this theatre since Sir Henry took it, and we've had our name on the
+programme, and we've got a reputation to lose.  When Shakespeare says
+an island, he means an island, not the crater of a blooming volcano....'
+
+Charles snatched his drawing out of Mr Smithson's hand, and with an
+expression of extreme agony he said.--
+
+'Clara, you dragged me into this infernal theatre.  Will you please see
+that I am not driven mad in it?  Am I an artist?'
+
+'You may be an artist, Mr Mann,' said Mr Smithson, 'but I'm a practical
+scene-painter.  I was painting scenery before you were born.  I was
+three years old in my father's workshop when I put my first dab of
+paint on for the Valley of Diamonds for Drury Lane in Gustus Harris's
+days.'
+
+The argument might have gone on indefinitely, but fortunately Sir Henry
+came down the stairs with Lady Butcher.  He was immaculately dressed in
+frock-coat and top hat, gray Cashmere trousers, and white waistcoat to
+attend with his wife a fashionable reception.  With a low bow, he swept
+off his very shiny hat, and said to Lady Butcher,--
+
+'My dear, Mr Charles Mann.'
+
+Lady Butcher gave a curt nod.
+
+'My dear, Miss Day....'
+
+'Che-arming!' drawled Lady Butcher, holding out her hand very high in
+the air.  Clara reached up to it and shook it sharply.
+
+'Mr Smithson doesn't like Charles's drawing for the cave scene,' said
+Clara.  'He can't quite see it, you know, because it is a little
+different.'
+
+'I won't be a moment, my dear,' said Sir Henry, and Lady Butcher sailed
+out into the street.
+
+'What's the matter, Smithson?'
+
+'We've never done anything like this before.  There's nothing like it
+in Nature.'
+
+'There is nothing like Caliban in Nature,' said Clara sweetly, and Sir
+Henry caught at her hint, scowled at Smithson, and growled,--
+
+'I have passed it.  If it needs modification we can settle it at
+rehearsal.  Go ahead.  I want to see it before I go away.'
+
+'But there are no measurements, Sir Henry.'
+
+'You know what we can do and what we can't.'
+
+'Very well, Sir Henry.'  Mr Smithson clapped on his bowler hat and
+rushed away.
+
+Charles stooped to gather up his battered hat, and Sir Henry seized
+Clara's arm, squeezed it tight, looked out through the door at his
+magnificent wife, and heaved an enormous sigh.  Clara in her amazing
+new happiness smiled at him, and he muttered,--
+
+'You grow in beauty every day.  A-ah!  Good-day, Mann.  The theatre is
+at your disposal.'
+
+He fixed his eyes on Clara for a moment, then wrenched himself away.
+
+There were one or two letters for her in the rack.  She took them down,
+and turned to find Charles, having smoothed out his hat, standing
+ruefully staring through his pince-nez.
+
+'These people are altogether too busy for me,' he said.  'All the work
+I've put in seems to be nothing to them.  I had a terrible turn with
+Butcher two days ago, and now this man Smithson has been too much for
+me.  They treat me like a tailor, and expect me to cut my scenery to
+fit their theatre....  I wish you'd come back, chicken.  I'm in a
+dreadful muddle.  I've been working till I can't see, and I've been
+reading _The Tempest_ till my mind is as salt as a dried haddock....
+But I've drawn a marvellous Caliban, part fish, part frog, part man ...
+Life emerging from the sea.  I'm sure now that we're all spawned from
+the sea, and that life on the earth is only what has been left after
+the sun has dried it up....'
+
+Clara looked at him apprehensively.  She still felt responsible for
+him, but she was no longer part and parcel of him.  She was free of his
+imagination and could be critical of it.
+
+'Never mind, Charles,' she said.  'Let us go and look at the stage, and
+you can tell me what you have planned, and then we will go out and
+talk, and decide what we will do during the holidays.  I have promised
+to go to Sir Henry's in the Lakes for a few days, and Verschoyle has
+promised to motor me up there.'
+
+Charles's fingers fumbled rather weakly round his lips, and she saw to
+her distress that he had been biting his nails again.
+
+'Aren't you ever coming back, my chicken, my love? ...  I'm sorry we
+came to London now.  We should have gone to Sicily as I wanted.  One
+can live in such places.  Here everybody is so business-like, so set,
+so used to doing and thinking in one particular way.'
+
+'Has anything happened?' asked Clara, knowing that he was never
+critical without a cause.
+
+'No,' he replied, rather shortly, 'no.'
+
+She was rather irritated by him.  He had no right to be as foolish and
+helpless as to have let her humiliate him by extricating him from his
+argument with Smithson, upon which he ought never to have entered.
+Smithson was only a kind of tradesman after all.
+
+They went on to the stage and Charles waxed eloquent over the scenery
+he had designed.  Eloquence with Charles was rather an athletic
+performance.  He took a tape measure from his pocket, and raced about
+with it, making chalk marks on the boards.
+
+The scenery door was open, and the sunlight poured in in a great shaft
+upon him, and Clara, watching him, was suddenly most painfully sorry
+for him.  He worked himself up into a throbbing enthusiasm, torrents of
+words poured from his lips, as with strange gesticulations he described
+the towering rocks, the wind-twisted trees, the tangle of lemons, the
+blue light illuminating the magician's grotto, the golden light that
+should hang about the rocky island jutting up from the sea.  All this
+he talked of, while the sun shone through his long yellow hair and
+revealed its streaks of silver....  At last he stood in the sunlight,
+with his arms outstretched, as though he were evoking his vision from
+the heavens to take shape upon the stage.
+
+Clara, watching him, perceived that he was a born actor.  He trod the
+stage with loving feet, and with a movement entirely different from
+that which he used in the street or among people who were not of the
+theatre.  This surely was the real Charles.  The light of the sun upon
+him was inappropriate.  It mocked him and inexorably revealed the fact
+that he was no longer young.  The scenery door was closed and the
+discordance ceased, but more clearly than ever was Charles revealed as
+an actor treading easily and affectionately his native elevation.  The
+influence of the place affected even himself, and after he had
+constructed his imaginary scenery round himself, he said,--
+
+'One of the first parts I ever played was Ferdinand staggering beneath
+logs of wood.'
+
+He assumed an imaginary log and recited,--
+
+            'This my mean task would be
+  As heavy to me as 'tis odious; but
+  The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead
+  And makes my labours pleasures: Oh, she is
+  Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed;
+  And he's composed of harshness.  I must remove
+  Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,
+  Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
+  Weeps when she sees me work; and says such baseness
+  Had never like executor.
+
+
+He produced the illusion of youth, and his voice was so entrancing that
+Clara, like Miranda, wept to see him....  He threw off his part with a
+great shout, rushed at her and caught her up in a hug.
+
+'Chicken,' he said, 'don't let us be silly any more.  We have won
+through.  Here we are in the theatre.  We've conquered the stage, and
+soon all those seats out there will be full of eager people saying,
+"Who are these wonders?  Can it be?  Surely they are none other than
+Charles and Clara Mann?"'
+
+'Day,' said she.
+
+He stamped his foot impatiently.
+
+'What's in a name?  Day, if you like.  Artists can and must do as they
+please.  This is our real life, here where we make beauty.  The rest is
+for city clerks and stockbrokers who can't trust themselves to behave
+decently unless they have a perfect net of rules from which they cannot
+escape.'
+
+'I don't want to talk about it.  Go on with your work, Charles.'
+
+'I've finished for to-day....  Will you let me take you out to dinner?'
+
+'No.  I've promised Verschoyle.'
+
+'Damn!  You oughtn't to be seen with him so much.  People will say you
+have left me for his money.'
+
+'I thought artists didn't care what people say.'
+
+'They don't, Clara.  They don't.'
+
+'You must be sensible, Charles.  You're not safe.  You can't take risks
+until you are successful.'
+
+'Then I won't succeed.  I won't go on....  A most unfortunate thing has
+happened.  Clott has vanished with all the money in the bank....  I let
+him sign the cheques.'
+
+'Oh!  Oh! you fool, Charles.'
+
+'He kept getting cheques out of me.'
+
+'How?'
+
+'He said he'd tell the police.'
+
+Clara stamped her foot.  Abominable!  How abominable people were....
+She had to protect Charles, but if she was with him she exposed him to
+the most fearful risk.  Was ever a girl in so maddening a position?
+
+What made it worse was that her attitude towards him had changed.  She
+was no longer so utterly absorbed in him that she could only see life
+through his eyes.  Apart from him she had grown and had developed her
+own independent existence.
+
+'How much did he take?'
+
+'Two hundred and ten pounds.  We can't prosecute him, or he'll tell.
+He knows that, or he wouldn't have done it.'
+
+'Where is he?'
+
+'I don't know.  Laverock met him the other day, and asked him about
+some committee business.  He had the impudence to say that he had
+resigned, and had come into money, so that his name was now no longer
+Clott but Cumberland.'
+
+And again Clara found herself in her heart saying, 'It is my fault.'
+
+It was all very well for Charles to believe that the world was governed
+by magic.  Art is magic, but she ought to have known that it is a magic
+which operates only among a very few, and that the many who are moved
+only by cunning are always taking advantage of them....  Poor Charles!
+Betrayed at every turn by his own simplicity, betrayed even by her
+eagerness to help him!
+
+'It is too bad,' said Clara, with tears in her eyes.  'We can't do
+anything.  Besides I would never send any one to prison, whatever they
+did.  But what a dirty mean little toad....  How did he find out?'
+
+'I don't know.  He's the kind of man who hangs about the theatre and
+borrows five shillings on Friday night.'
+
+Gone was the magic of the stage, gone the power in Charles.  He looked
+just a tired, seedy fellow, more than a little ashamed of himself.  He
+hung his head and muttered,--
+
+'This always happens when I am rich.  I've been terribly unhappy about
+it.  I didn't think I could tell you.  I went into a shop yesterday to
+buy a revolver, but I bought a photograph frame instead, because the
+man was so pleasant that I couldn't bear the idea of his helping me to
+end my life....  I seem to muddle everything I touch, and yet no one
+has ever dared to say that I am not a great artist.'
+
+Clara walked away from him across the stage.  There had been muddles
+before, but nothing so bad as this.
+
+As she walked, she found that in watching him she had learned the art
+of treading the stage, and of becoming that something more than herself
+which is necessary for dramatic presentation.  This sudden acquisition
+gave her a delighted thrill, and once again her life was flooded with
+magic, so that this new trouble, like her old, seemed very remote, and
+she could understand Charles's pretending that he must end his life
+even to the point of attempting to buy a revolver, which became
+impossible directly some one spoke pleasantly to him.  She felt
+confident and secure and of the theatre which was a sanctuary that
+nothing in the outside world could violate.
+
+'Don't worry, Carlo,' she said.  'I'll see that it is put straight.'
+
+'Then you'll come back and stop this nonsense about living alone?'
+
+'When _The Tempest_ is done we'll see about it.  I don't want to risk
+that.  _The Tempest_ is what matters now.'
+
+'Are you going to play in it?'
+
+'I don't know yet....  Will you go out into the auditorium and tell me
+what you think of my voice?'
+
+Charles went up into the dress circle, and Clara, practising her
+newly-acquired art, turned to an imaginary Ferdinand--more vivid and
+actual to her now--and declaimed,--
+
+          'I do not know
+  One of my sex! no woman's face remember,
+  Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
+  More that I may call men, than you, good friend,
+  And my dear father: how features are abroad,
+  I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,--
+  The jewel in my dower,--I would not wish
+  Any companion in the world but you.'
+
+
+She stopped.  The vivid, actual Ferdinand of her imagination changed
+into the form of the lean, hungry-looking man of the book-shop.  He
+turned towards her, and his face was noble in its suffering, powerful
+and strong to bear the burden upon the mind behind it.  Very sweet and
+gentle was the expression in his eyes, in most pathetic contrast to the
+rugged hardness which a passionate self-control had shaped upon his
+features....  Her heart ached under this astonishment that in this
+phantom she could see and know and love his face upon which in life her
+eyes had never fallen.
+
+'Go on,' called Charles, from the dress circle....  'Admirable....  I
+never thought you could do it.'
+
+'That's enough,' she replied, with a violent effort to shake free of
+her bewilderment and sweet anguish.
+
+'If I meet him,' she said in her heart, 'I shall love him and there
+will be nothing else.'
+
+Aloud she said,--
+
+'I must not.'
+
+She had applied herself to the task of furthering Charles's ambition,
+and until she had succeeded she would not yield, nor would she seek for
+herself in life any advantage or even any natural fulfilment.
+
+Charles came back in a state of excitement.
+
+'It was wonderful,' he said.  'What has happened to you?  Your voice is
+so full and round.  You lose yourself entirely, you speak with a voice
+that has in it all the colour and beauty and enchantment of my island.
+You move simply, inevitably, so that every gesture is rhythmical, and
+like a musical accompaniment to the words....  You'll be an artist.
+You are an artist.  There has been nothing like it since the old
+days....  Duse could not do more with her voice.'
+
+'I didn't know,' she said.  'I didn't know.'
+
+'But I did,' he cried.  'I did.  I knew you would become a wonder....
+Bother money, bother Butcher, bother Clott, and damn the committee.
+Together we shall be irresistible--as we have been.  You didn't tell me
+you were practising.  If that is why you want to be alone I have
+nothing to say against it.  I've been a selfish brute.'
+
+She was deeply moved.  Never before had Charles shown the slightest
+thought for her.  Human beings as such were nothing to him, but for an
+artist, as for art, no trouble was too great, no sacrifice too extreme
+for him.
+
+He seized her hands and kissed them over and over again.
+
+'I've been your first audience,' he said.  'Come out now, and I'll buy
+you flowers; your room shall be so full of flowers that you can hardly
+move through them.  As for Verschoyle, he shall pay.  It shall be his
+privilege to pay for us while we give the world the priceless treasure
+that is in us.'
+
+His words rather repelled and hurt her, and in her secret mind she
+protested,--
+
+'But I am a woman.  But I am a woman.'
+
+It hurt her cruelly that Charles should be blind to that, blind to the
+cataclysmic change in her, blind to her new beauty and to her newly
+gathered force of character.  After all, the magic of the stage was
+only illusion, a trick that, if it were not a flowering of the deeper
+magic of the heart, was empty, vain, contemptible, a thing of darkness
+and cajolery.
+
+'Perhaps it was just an accident,' said Clara.
+
+'Do it again!' said Charles, in a tone of command.
+
+'What?'
+
+'Do it again!'
+
+'I can't.'
+
+'Do it again, I tell you.  When you do a thing like that you have to
+find out how you did it.  Art isn't a thing of chance.  You must do it
+again now.'
+
+'No.'
+
+To her horror and amazement he pounced on her, seized her roughly by
+the shoulders, and shook her until her head rolled from side to side
+and her teeth chattered.  He was beside himself with passion, ruthless,
+impersonal in his fury to catch and hold this treasure of art which had
+so suddenly appeared in the child whom hitherto he had regarded as
+about as important as his hat or his walking-stick.
+
+'By Jove,' he said, 'I might have known it was not for nothing that I
+fished you out of Picquart's studio....'
+
+'How dare you speak to me like that?'
+
+She knocked his hands away and stood quivering in an outraged fury, and
+lashed out at him with her tongue.
+
+'I'm not paint that you can squeeze out of a tube,' she said.  'You
+treat people as though they were just that and then you complain if
+they round on you....  I know what you want.  You want to squeeze out
+of me what your own work lacks....'
+
+Charles reeled under this assault and his arms fell limply by his side.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said, 'I didn't know what I was doing.  I was knocked
+out with my astonishment and delight....  Really, really I forgot the
+stage was empty.  I thought we were working....'
+
+Clara stared at him.  Could he really so utterly lose himself in the
+play as that?  Or was he only persuading himself that it was so? ...
+With a sudden intuition she knew that in all innocence he was lying to
+her, and that what had enraged him was the knowledge, which he could
+never admit, that she was no longer a child living happily in his
+imagination but a human being and an artist who had entered upon a
+royal possession of her own.  She had outstripped him.  She had become
+an artist without loss of humanity.  Henceforth she must deal with
+realities, leaving him to his painted mummery...  She could understand
+his frenzy, his fury, his despair.
+
+'That will do, Charles,' she said very quietly.  'I will see what can
+be done about Mr Clott, and whatever happens I will see that you are
+not harmed....  If you like, you can dine with Verschoyle and me
+to-night.  You can come home with me now, while I dress.  I am to meet
+him at the Carlton and then we are going on to the Opera.'
+
+'Does Verschoyle know?'
+
+'He knows that you are you and that I am I--that is all he cares
+about...  He is a good man.  If people must have too much money, he is
+the right man to have it.  He would never let a man down for want of
+money--if the man was worth it.'
+
+'Ah!' said Charles, reassured.  This was like the old Clara speaking,
+but with more assurance, a more certain knowledge and less bewildering
+intuition and guess-work.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE ENGLISH LAKES
+
+A few weeks later, with Verschoyle and a poor relation of his, a Miss
+Vibart Withers, for chaperone, Clara left London in a 60 h.p. Fiat,
+which voraciously ate up the Bath Road at the rate of a mile every
+minute and a half....  It was good to be out of the thick heat of
+London, invaded by foreigners and provincials and turned into a city of
+pleasure and summer-frocks, so that its normal life was submerged, its
+character hidden.  The town became as lazy and drowsy a spectacle as a
+field of poppies over which danced gay and brilliant butterflies.  Very
+sweet was it then to turn away from it, and all that was happening in
+it, to the sweet air and to fly along between green fields and
+orchards, through little towns, at intervals to cross the Thames and to
+feel that with each crossing London lay so much farther away.  Henley,
+Oxford, Lechlade, and the Cotswolds--that was the first day, and,
+breathing the clover-scented air, gazing over the blue plains to the
+humpy hills of Malvern, Clara flung back her head and laughed in
+glee....  How wonderful in one day to shake free of everything, to
+leave behind all trammels!
+
+'No one need have any troubles now,' she said, with the bewitching
+smile that made all her discoveries so entrancing.  'When people get
+tied up in knots, they can just get into a car and go away.  The world
+is big enough for everybody.'
+
+'But people love their troubles,' replied Verschoyle.  'I have been
+looking for trouble all my life, but I can't find it.  That's my
+trouble.'
+
+'Everybody ought to be happy,' she said.
+
+'In their own way.  Most people are very happy with their troubles.
+They will take far more trouble over them than they will over their
+pleasures or making other people happy.'
+
+'Do you remember the birds and fishes?'
+
+'Do I not?  It was the birds and fishes who introduced you to me.'
+
+'I think this was what Charles meant by them--escape, irrelevance,
+holiday.'
+
+'That's quite true.  Nothing ought to be as serious as it is, for
+nothing is so serious as it looks when you really come to grips with
+it.  Life always looks like a blank wall until you come up to it and
+then there is a little door which was invisible at a distance....  I
+found that out when I met you.'
+
+'And did you go through it?'
+
+'Straight through and out to the other side.'
+
+Clara took his hand affectionately, and their eyes met in a happy
+smile.  They were friends for ever, the relationship most perfectly
+suited to his temperament, most needed by hers.
+
+From that she passed on to a frank discussion of her own situation with
+regard to Charles, and the hole he was in through the absconding Mr
+Clott.
+
+'I knew that fellow was a scoundrel,' said Verschoyle.  'He tried to
+borrow money from me, and to pump me about the form of my horses.  How
+on earth did he ever become secretary to a committee for the
+furtherance of dramatic art?'
+
+'He turned up.  Everything in Charles's life turns up.  _I_ turned up.'
+
+'And is your name really Day?'
+
+'It was my grandfather's name....  I never had any one else.  I
+remember no one else except an Italian nurse, with a very brown face
+and very white teeth.  He died in Paris four years ago.  My people were
+in India.'
+
+'Ah!  Families get lost sometimes in the different parts of the British
+Empire.  It is so big, you know.  I'm sure the English will lose
+themselves in it one of these fine days.'
+
+He passed over without a word her position as wife and no wife, but
+became only the kinder and more considerate.  It had eased and relieved
+her to talk of it.  Every impediment to their friendship was removed,
+but sometimes as they walked through fields he would grip his stick
+very tight and lash out at a hemlock or a dog-daisy, and sometimes when
+he was driving he would jam his foot down on the accelerator and send
+the car whirling along.  If they had met Charles walking along the road
+it would have gone ill with him.
+
+They were six days on their journey up through Shropshire, Cheshire,
+and the murk of South Lancashire.  They stayed in pleasant inns, and
+made many strange acquaintances, bagmen, tourists, young men with
+knapsacks on their backs escaping from the big towns, and sometimes
+they helped these young men over dreary stretches of road.
+
+'The happiest six days of my life,' said Verschoyle, as they approached
+the mountains.  'I haven't toured in England before.  Somehow in London
+one knows nothing of England.  One is bored and one goes over to
+Homburg or Aix-les-bains.  How narrow life is even with a car and a
+yacht!'
+
+How narrow life could be Clara soon discovered at the Butchers', where
+London life was simply continued in a lovely valley at the bottom of
+which lay a little lake shining like a mirror and vividly reflecting
+the hills above it.
+
+The Butchers had a long, low house in an exquisite garden, theatrically
+arranged so that the flowers looked as if they were painted and the
+trees had no roots, but were as though clamped and ironed to the earth.
+From their garden the very hills had the semblance of a back-cloth.
+
+The house was full of the elegant young men and women who ran in and
+out of the theatre and had no compunction about interrupting even
+rehearsals.  They chaffed Sir Henry, and fed Lady Butcher with scandal
+for the pleasure of hearing her say witty biting things, which, as she
+had no mercy, came easily to her lips.  She studiously treated Clara as
+though she were part and parcel of Verschoyle, and to be accommodated
+like his car or his chauffeur....  Except as a social asset, Lady
+Butcher detested the theatre, and she loathed actresses.
+
+As the days floated by--for once in a way the weather in Westmoreland
+was delicious--it became apparent to Clara that Lady Butcher hated the
+project of Charles's production of _The Tempest_.  She never missed an
+opportunity of stabbing at him with her tongue.  She regarded him as a
+vagabond.
+
+Living herself in a very close and narrow set, she respected cliques
+more than persons.  Verschoyle was rich enough to live outside a
+clique, but that a man with a career to make should live and work alone
+was in her eyes a kind of blasphemy.  As for Clara--Lady Butcher
+thought of her as a minx, a designing actress, one of the many who had
+attempted to divert Sir Henry from the social to the professional
+aspect of the theatre, which, in few words, Lady Butcher regarded as
+her own, a kind of salon which gave her a unique advantage over her
+rivals in the competition of London's hostessry.
+
+It was the more annoying to Lady Butcher that Clara and Verschoyle
+should turn up when they did as two Cabinet Ministers were due to motor
+over to lunch one day, and a famous editor was to stay for a couple of
+nights, while her dear friends the Bracebridges (Earl and Countess),
+with their son and daughter, were due for their annual visit.
+
+Distressed by this atmosphere of social calculation, Clara spent most
+of her time with Verschoyle, walking about the hills or rowing on the
+lake; but unfortunately she roused the boyish jealousy in Sir Henry,
+who, as he had 'discovered' her, regarded her as his property, and
+considered that any romance she might desire should be through him....
+He infuriated his wife by preferring Clara to all the other young
+ladies, and one night when, after dinner, he took her for a moon-light
+walk, she created a gust of laughter by saying,--
+
+'Henry can no more resist the smell of grease-paint than a dog can
+resist that of a grilled bone.'
+
+This was amusing but unjust, for Sir Henry regarded his desire for
+Clara's society as a healthy impulse towards higher things--at least,
+he told her so as he led her out through the orchard and up the stony
+path, down which trickled a little stream, to the crag that dominated
+the house and garden.  It was covered with heather and winberries, and
+just below the summit grew two rowan-trees.  So bright was the moon
+that the colour of the berries was almost perceptible.  Sir Henry stood
+moon-gazing and presently heaved a great sigh,--
+
+'A-a-ah!'
+
+'What a perfect night!' said Clara.
+
+'On such a night as this----'
+
+'On such a night----'
+
+'I've forgotten,' said Sir Henry.  'It is in the _Merchant of Venice_.
+Something about moonlight when Lorenzo and Jessica eloped.  You would
+make a perfect Jessica....  I played Lorenzo once.'
+
+Clara wanted to laugh.  It was one of the most delightful elements in
+Sir Henry's character that he could never see himself as old, or as
+anything but romantically heroic.
+
+'Yes,' he said; 'you have made all the difference in the world.  It was
+remarkable how you shone out among the players in my theatre....  It is
+even more remarkable among all these other masqueraders in that house
+down there.  All the world's a stage----'
+
+'Oh, no,' said Clara.  'It is beautiful.  I didn't know England was so
+lovely.  As we came north in the car I thought each county better than
+the last--and I forgot London altogether.'
+
+'It is some years since I toured,' said Sir Henry.  'My wife does not
+approve of it, but there is nothing like it for keeping you up to the
+mark.  The real audiences are out of London.  A couple of years'
+touring would do you a world of good.  You shall make your name
+first....  There aren't any actors and actresses now simply because
+they won't tour.  They want money in London--money in New York--the
+pity of it is that they get it.'
+
+Clara scrambled up to the highest point of the crag and stood with the
+gentle wind playing through her thick hair, caressing her parted lips,
+her white neck, liquefying her light frock about her limbs.
+
+'Oh, my God!' cried Sir Henry, gazing at her enraptured.  'Ariel!'
+
+As she stood there she was caught up in the wonder of the night, became
+one with it, a beam in the moonlight, a sigh in the wind, a star
+winking, a little tiny cloud floating over the tops of the mountains.
+So lightly poised was she that it seemed miraculous that she did not
+take to flight, almost against nature that she could stand so still.
+Her lips parted, and she sang as she used to sing when she was a
+child,--
+
+  Come unto these yellow sands
+    And then take hands.'
+
+
+A little young voice she had, sweet and low, a boyish voice, nothing of
+woman in it at all.
+
+She leaned forward and gazed over the edge of the crag, and Sir Henry,
+who was so deeply moved that all his ordinary mental processes were
+dislocated, thought with a horrid alarm that she was going to throw
+herself down.  Such perfection might rightly end in tragedy, and he
+thought with anguish of Mann and Verschoyle, thought that they had
+besmirched and dishonoured this loveliness, thought that this sudden
+exaltation and abstraction must come from the anguish that was betrayed
+in her eyes so often and so frequently.
+
+'Take care!  Take care!' called Sir Henry.
+
+She leaped down into the heather by his side, and he said,--
+
+'It seems a crime to take you back into the house.  What have you to do
+with whether or no we are asked to the next garden-party in Downing
+Street?  You are Ariel and can put a girdle round the earth....  I am
+almost afraid of you.  Can't we run away and become strolling players?
+You may think I am to be envied but my life has been a very unhappy
+one....  I want to help you....'
+
+It was obvious to Clara that he did not know what he was saying, and
+indeed he was light-hearted and moonstruck, lifted outside his ordinary
+range of experience.  He babbled on,--
+
+'If I could feel that I had done the smallest thing to help you, I
+should be prouder of it than of any other thing in my career.'
+
+'But I don't want help....'
+
+'Ah!  You think so now.  But wait three years....  You think an actor
+can know nothing of life, but who knows more?  Has he not in himself to
+reproduce every fine shade of emotion, the effect of every variety of
+experience....  The people who know nothing of life are your cloistered
+artists like Mann, or your Verschoyle drowned in money....  You have
+not known me yet.'
+
+Really he was getting rather ridiculous with his boyish romanticism.
+He had been married twice and his two families numbered seven.  But
+Clara, too, was under the spell of the moon, and his gauche response to
+her mood had touched her.
+
+'Life is a miserable business for a woman,' said Sir Henry.  'I live in
+dread lest you should be dragged down into the common experience.'
+
+(Did he or did he not know about Charles?)
+
+Clara laughed.  This was taking her too seriously.
+
+'Ah, you can laugh now while you are young, but youth attracts, it is
+drawn into the whirlpool and is lost....  Is there more in you than
+youth?'
+
+'Much, much more,' said Clara exultantly.  'There has never been
+anybody like me before.'
+
+'By Heaven!' swore Sir Henry.  'That is true....  You have bewitched
+me--and we had better be going back to the house....  Will you let me
+carry you down?'
+
+Without waiting for her permission, he lifted her, and she suffered him
+to carry her down the last stony path, because her flimsy shoes were
+already wet through.  He did not guess that she had good reason, and
+his heart thumped in his large bosom.
+
+It had been a night of nights for him.  Years of uneasy distraction had
+melted away.  Not even at the height of his success had he felt so
+confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to
+command and to deserve their homage.  In no play had he ever devised a
+more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered
+sprite--for so he thought her--back to earth.  As he put her down, he
+threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn
+to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the
+centre, with his hand upon his heart.
+
+Verschoyle was very angry with her when she returned.
+
+'You know how these people think of such things,' he said.
+
+'What they think and what I do are very different,' retorted Clara, her
+eyes shining, her cheeks glowing from the night air.  'It makes him
+happy, and, if you are happy with me, he doesn't see why he shouldn't
+be.  _Pourquoi pas moi aussi_?  Men are all alike.'
+
+'It is not the same....  What a child you are!  Some day you will love
+and then you will see very differently....  The old fool thinks you
+are----'
+
+'No.  He said I was Ariel.  So I am.  So I am....  I wonder I never
+thought of it before.  I shall never be a woman as women have been----'
+
+'There have been good women.'
+
+'Tra la la!  The good women have done far more harm in the world than
+all the bad women put together.  Lady B is a good woman.'
+
+'A painted tigress.  _She_ won't forgive you in a hurry.  She
+thinks--that, too.'
+
+'People can't think beyond what they are.  You can't expect me to be
+what other people think.'
+
+'I want you to be yourself.'
+
+'So I am....  You shall take me away in a day or two.  I want to see
+the Bracebridges just for fun, _and_ the Cabinet Ministers, and then I
+want to drown their memories one by one in the lakes as we pass them.
+We are going to see them all, aren't we?'
+
+'I want to get away.  I can't bear being with you in this atmosphere of
+money.'
+
+'Now, now.  You promised me you would never behave like a lover.'
+
+'I thought I was behaving like an angry brother.'
+
+She was pleased with him for that.  She knew that part of his trouble
+was due to his being an only son.
+
+
+The Bracebridges were disappointing: a very dull man, a hard and
+raffish woman, but apparently to Lady Butcher they were the wonder of
+all wonders.  She and Lady Bracebridge were to each other 'dear Ethel'
+and 'dearest Madge.'  Together they made a single dominant and very
+formidable personality, which must be obeyed.  They flung themselves
+upon the house-party, sifted the affairs of every member of it, and in
+three days had arranged for two engagements and one divorce.  They
+commanded Verschoyle--by suggestion--to marry a Mrs Slesinger, who was
+plain but almost as rich as himself, and in his distress he very nearly
+succumbed; but Clara swooped in to save him, and found that her
+position was made almost impossible by whispered tittle-tattle, cold
+looks, and downright rudeness.  She was distinctly left out of picnic
+and boating parties, and almost in contempt she was partnered with Sir
+Henry who, after Lady Bracebridge's arrival, was no longer master in
+his own house....  When the Cabinet Ministers arrived the situation
+became impossible for they produced chaos.  The household was
+dislocated, and in the confusion Clara packed, had her trunks carried
+to the garage, and slipped away with Verschoyle.
+
+Said he,--
+
+'These damned politicians can't get off the platform.  Did you see how
+that old fool sawed the air when he talked of Ireland, and did you hear
+how the other bleated when he mouthed of Poor Law Reform?  They're on
+show--always on show....  So are these infernal lakes.  I can't stand
+scenery that has stared at me for hours in a railway carriage.'
+
+'It doesn't matter,' said Clara.  'You may be unjust to Lady Butcher,
+but you mustn't be unjust to Rydal.'
+
+'It is so still and out of date....  I can't think of it without
+thinking of Wordsworth, and I don't want to think of Wordsworth....
+Being with you makes me want to get on into the future, and there's
+something holding us all back.'
+
+All the same, their holiday swept up to a triumphant conclusion, and
+they forgot the Butchers and their London elegance in going from inn to
+inn in the lovely valleys, taking the car up and down breakneck hills
+and making on foot the ascent of Great Gable and Scafell, upon whose
+summit in the keen air and the gusty wind Clara let fly and danced
+about, wildly gay, crying out with joy to be so high above the earth,
+where human beings spied upon each other with jealous eyes lest one
+should have more happiness than another.
+
+'They can't spoil this,' she said.
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Oh, all the people down there.  They can spoil Charles, and you and me
+and silly old Sir Henry, but they can't spoil this.'
+
+'In Switzerland,' said Verschoyle, 'there are mountains higher than
+this, and they make railways up them, and at the top of the railways
+English governesses buy Alpenstocks, and have the name of the mountain
+burned into the wood.'
+
+'If I were a mountain,' said Clara, 'and they did that to me I should
+turn into a volcano and burn them all up, all the engineers and all the
+English governesses....  I'm sure Lady Bracebridge was a governess.'
+
+'Right in once,' said Verschoyle, staring at her with round boyish
+eyes, as though he half expected her at once to turn into a volcano.
+With Clara anything might happen, and her words came from so deep a
+recess of her nature as almost to have the force of a prophecy.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+CHARING CROSS ROAD
+
+If there is one street that more than another has in it the spirit of
+London it is Charing Cross Road.  It begins with pickles and ends with
+art; it joins Crosse and Blackwell to the National Gallery.  In between
+the two are bookshops, theatres, and music halls, and yet it is a
+street without ostentation.  No one in Charing Cross Road can be
+assuming: no one could be other than genial and neighbourly.  All good
+books come there at last to find the people who will read them long
+after they have been forgotten by the people who only talk about them.
+Books endure while readers and talkers fade away, and Charing Cross
+Road by its trade in books keeps alive the continuity of London's life
+and deserves its fame.  The books that reach this haven are for the
+most part honest, and therefore many a weary soul turns out of the
+streets where men and women swindle into this place where the thoughts
+of honest men are piled on shelves, or put out in the open air in
+boxes, marked twopence, fourpence, sixpence....  A real market this!  A
+fair without vanity.  There are pictures to look at in the windows,
+mementoes of dead artists and writers, and there is a constant stream
+of people, the oddest mixture to be found anywhere on earth....
+Everybody who has nothing very much to do goes to Charing Cross Road to
+meet everybody who has dropped out of the main stream of humanity to
+have a look at it as it goes by.
+
+You can buy food in this delectable retreat--the best holiday ground in
+England--and you can eat it in the ferocious book-shop kept by the
+mildly-mannered man who called Clara's name blessed, and had her
+photograph in his little dark room at the back of the shop.
+
+Adnor Rodd always took his holidays in Charing Cross Road, for when he
+went into the country he worked harder even than he did in London.  He
+wrote plays, and kept himself alive as best he could, because he hated
+the theatre so much that he could never force himself through a stage
+door.  Silent, taciturn, he went on his way, caring for nothing but his
+work, and sparing neither himself nor any one else in pursuing it.
+
+He had started in London with money and friends, but work became such a
+vice with him that he lost both, except just enough to keep him
+alive--to go on working.  Every now and then he was 'discovered' by a
+playwright, a critic, or a literary man, but as he never returned a
+compliment in his life 'discovery' never led very far....  A few people
+knew that there was a strange man, called Rodd, who wrote masterpieces,
+but simply would not or could not take advantage of the ordinary
+commercial machinery to turn them into money or fame; but these few
+raised their eyebrows or wagged their heads when he was mentioned.
+Poor chap!  He was out of the running, and never likely to become a
+member of the Thespic Club, election to which makes a man a real
+dramatist, whose name may be considered good for a week's business.
+
+Rodd never thought in terms of business.  He thought in terms of human
+relationships, and out of them composed--never ceased
+composing--dramas, vivid, ruthless, terrible.  It was very bad for him,
+of course, because it forced him into a strained detachment from the
+life all around him, and when he met people he was always bent on
+finding out what they were really thinking, instead of accepting what
+they wished him to think was in their minds.  He could no more do that
+than he could use his considerable technical powers to concoct the
+confectionery which in the theatre of those days passed, God save us,
+for a play.  He wanted to come in contact with the dramatic essence of
+the people he met, but every one withheld it or protected him or
+herself against him, and so he lived alone.  For the sake of his work
+he discarded the ordinary social personality which his education had
+taught him to acquire, and he walked through the world exposed, rather
+terrifying to meet; but so exquisitely sensitive that one acute
+pleasure--a flower, a woman's smile, a strong man shaking hands with
+his friend, a lovers' meeting, a real quarrel between two men who hated
+each other, the attention of a friendly dog--could obliterate all the
+horror and disgust with which most of what he saw and felt inspired
+him.  He was sure of himself as a wind is sure of itself, but he was
+without conceit....  When he was very young, he had been discovered by
+one or two women.  That was enough.  He knew that the desire of women
+is not worth satisfying, and he left them alone unless they were in
+distress, and then he helped them generally at the cost of their
+thinking he was in love with them.  Then he had to explain that he had
+helped them as he would help a child or a sick man.  Generally they
+would weep and say he was a liar and a deceiver, but he knew what
+women's tears are worth, and when they got that far left them to
+prevent them going any further....  But he always had women to look
+after him, women who were grateful, women who, having once tasted his
+sympathy, could not do without it.  His sympathy was passionate and to
+some natures like strong drink.  Very few men could stand it because it
+went straight to the secret places of the heart, and men, unlike women,
+do not care to face their own secrets.
+
+He lived in three rooms at the top of a house in Bloomsbury, one for
+his books, one for his work, and one for himself--for sleeping and
+bathing.  Unlike most men who are indifferent to the outside world he
+was clean, because he found that slovenliness impaired his efficiency,
+and took the edge off his energy.  He was as fastidious mentally as a
+trained athlete is physically.
+
+He accepted good-humouredly the apparently unalterable incompatibility
+between the theatre and the drama.
+
+A man with a single aim seems mad in a world where aims are scattered,
+but Rodd suffered a double isolation.  Ordinary people regarded him as
+a cracked fool, because he would not or could not exploit his gifts and
+personality; while the people who really were cracked dreaded his
+sanity and the humorous tolerance with which he indulged their little
+weaknesses.
+
+He enjoyed Charing Cross Road because it was rather like himself: it
+was shovelled aside and disdained by its ignoble 'betters,' the streets
+imposed by cosmopolitanism upon the real English London.  That London
+he could find in Charing Cross Road, where there still beat the heart
+from which Fielding and Dickens had drawn their inspiration, the brave
+heart that could laugh through all its sufferings and through all the
+indignities put upon it.  In Charing Cross Road he could meet almost
+any day Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, Tom Jones and Partridge, Sam
+Weller and Sairey Gamp, and every day their descendants walked abroad,
+passed in and out of shops, went about their business, little
+suspecting that they would be translated into the world of art when
+Rodd returned from his holiday to his work.  He passionately loved this
+London, the real London, and hated everything that denied it or seemed
+to deny it.  He loved it so greatly that he hardly needed any personal
+love, and he detested any loyalty which interfered with his loyalty to
+Shakespeare, Fielding, and Dickens, dramatists all, though Fielding's
+drama had been too vital for the theatre of his time and had blown it
+into atoms, so that since his day the actors had had to scramble along
+as best they could and had done so well that they had forgotten the
+drama altogether.  They had evolved a kind of theatrical bas-relief,
+and were so content with it that they regarded the rounded figures of
+dramatic sculpture with detestation....  They dared not make room in
+their theatre for _Hedda Gabler_ and _John Gabriel Borkman_, because
+they destroyed by contrast the illusions with which they maintained
+their activities.
+
+The Scots bookseller was a great friend of Rodd's, and a loyal admirer,
+though he did not in the least understand what the strange man was
+about.  Rodd used to talk of the virtue of an ordered world, while the
+bookseller lived in dreams of Anarchy, men and women left alone so that
+the good in them could come to the top and create a millennium of
+kindliness.  Rodd's researches into the human heart had revealed to him
+only too clearly the terror that burns at the sources of human life,
+but because the bookseller's dreams were dear to him, because they kept
+him happy and benevolent, Rodd could never bring himself to push
+argument far enough to disturb them.
+
+One day in this fair summer of our tale, Rodd turned into the bookshop
+to consume the lunch he had bought at the German Delicatessen-Magasin
+up the road.  He found the bookseller bubbling over with happiness,
+dusting his books, re-arranging them, emptying large parcels of new
+books, and not such very subversive books either except in so far as
+all literature is subversive.
+
+'Hallo!' said Rodd.  'I thought this was the slack season?'
+
+'I'm rich,' retorted the bookseller.  'The dahned publishers are
+crawling to me.  They've had their filthy lucre, and they know I can
+shift the stuff, and they're on their knees to me, begging me to take
+their muck by the hundred--at my own price.'
+
+(This was a pardonable exaggeration, but it was long since the
+bookseller had had so much new stock.)
+
+'If I ever want a change,' said Rodd, 'I'll get you to take me on as
+your assistant.'
+
+The bookseller's jaw dropped and he stared at Rodd.
+
+'You might do worse,' he said.  'That's the second offer I've had this
+year.'
+
+'Oh! who made the first?'
+
+'Ah!' The bookseller put his finger to his nose and chuckled.  'Ah!
+Some one who's in love with me.'
+
+'There are too many books,' said Rodd.  'Too much shoddy.'
+
+He turned away to the shelves where the plays were kept--Shaw, Barker,
+Galsworthy, Ibsen, Schnitzler, Hauptmann, Tschekov, Andreev, Claudel,
+Strindberg, Wedekind, all the authors of the Sturm and Drang period,
+when all over Europe the attempt was made to thrust literature upon the
+theatre, in the endeavour, as Rodd thought, to break the tyranny of the
+printed word.  That was a favourite idea of his, that the tyranny of
+print from which the world had suffered so long would be broken by the
+drama.  The human heart alone could break the obsessions of the human
+mind, otherwise humanity would lose its temper and try to smash them by
+cracking human heads....  Rodd always thought of humanity as an unity,
+an organism subject to the laws of organic life.  Talk about persons
+and nations, groups and combinations, seemed to him irrelevant.
+Humanity had a will, and everything had to comply with it or suffer.
+At present it seemed to him that the will of humanity was diseased, and
+that society here in London, as elsewhere, was inert.  He escaped into
+his imagination where he could employ to the full his dramatic energy.
+On the whole he hated books, but his affection for the Charing Cross
+Road, and for the bookseller, drew him to the shop dedicated to the
+efforts of revolutionary idealists, whom he thought on the whole
+mistaken.  He desired not revolution but the restoration of the health
+of humanity, and like so many others, he had his nostrum--the drama.
+However, the air was so full of theories, social and political, that he
+did not expect any one to understand him.
+
+'Have you got Mann's new book?' he asked the bookseller, who produced
+it: forty plates of Charles's pet designs with rather irrelevant
+letterpress.  Rodd bought it, and that moment Clara entered the shop.
+
+Rodd paid no attention to her.  The bookseller left him with his money
+in his hand, and he stood turning over the pages of Charles's book, and
+shaking his head over the freakish will o' the wisp paragraphs.  Clara
+spoke, and he stiffened, stared at the books in front of him, turned,
+caught sight of her profile, and stood gazing in amazement--a girl's
+face that was more than pretty, a face in which there was purpose, and
+proof of clear perception.
+
+After her holiday she was looking superbly well.  Health shone in her.
+She moved, and it was with complete unconcern for her surroundings.
+She lived at once in Rodd's imagination, took her rightful place as of
+course side by side with Beatrice, Portia, Cordelia, and Sophia
+Western.  His imagination had not to work on her at all to re-create
+her, or to penetrate to the dramatic essence of her personality, which
+she revealed in her every gesture.
+
+He could not hear what she was saying, but her voice went thrilling to
+his heart.  He gasped and reeled and dropped Charles Mann's book with a
+crash.
+
+Clara, who had not seen him, turned, and she, too, was overcome.  He
+moved towards her, and stood devouring her with his eyes, and hers
+sought his.
+
+'This is Rodd,' said the bookseller.  'Adnor Rodd, a great friend of
+mine.'
+
+'Rodd,' repeated Clara.
+
+'He is very much interested in the theatre,' said the bookseller.
+
+'I was just looking at Charles Mann's new book....  Will you let me
+give it you?'
+
+He moved away to pick up the book and came back clutching it, took out
+his fountain pen and wrote in it in a small, precise hand,--
+
+'To my friend, from Adnor Rodd.'
+
+'My name is Clara Day,' said she,
+
+'You can't have a name yet....  You are just you.'
+
+She understood him.  He meant that externals were of no account in the
+delighted shock of their meeting.  As they stood gazing at each other
+the book-shop vanished, London disappeared, there was nothing but they
+two on all the earth.  Neither could move.  The beginning and the end
+were in this moment.  Nothing that they could do could alter it or make
+the world again as it had been for them....  Consciously neither
+admitted it, both stubbornly clung to what they had made of their lives.
+
+He still held the book in his hand.  She had not put out hers for it.
+He wrote 'Clara Day,' and he wanted to write it down several times as
+he did with the names of the persons in his plays, to make certain that
+they were rightly called.
+
+With a faintly recurrent sense of actuality he thought of his three
+rooms in Bloomsbury and of the hundred and fifty pounds a year on which
+he lived, and with a wry smile he handed her the book, took stock of
+her rich clothes, bowed and turned away....  For his imagination it was
+enough to have met and loved her in that one moment.  She had broken
+down the intellectual detachment in which he lived: the icy solitude in
+which so painfully he struggled on was at an end.
+
+So quickly had he moved that she was taken by surprise, and he had
+reached the threshold of the shop before she ran after him and touched
+him on the arm.
+
+'Please,' she said.  'You have forgotten one thing--the date.'
+
+He wrote the date in the book, and was for going, but she said,--
+
+'I must know more of you if I am to accept your gift.'
+
+'You talk such perfect English,' he said, marvelling at her.  'People
+do not talk like that nowadays, but a slipshod jargon.'
+
+'I have lived abroad,' she told him, and without more they walked out
+into the street together, she hugging the book very dose.
+
+They had walked some distance in silence before he spoke.
+
+'Was it by accident that you were in that shop?'
+
+'Oh, no,' said she.  'The old man is a friend of mine.'
+
+(He noticed that she said 'the old' and not as most people did 'the
+yold.'  It was this perfection in her that made her so incredible.  To
+the very finest detail she was perfect and he knew not whether to laugh
+or to weep.)
+
+'It is absurd,' he said in his heart, 'it can't happen like this.  It
+can't be true.'
+
+Clara had no thought of anything but to make him open up his mind and
+heart to her, most easily and painlessly to break the taut strain in
+him.
+
+They turned into a tea-shop in Coventry Street, and he sat glowering at
+her.  A small orchestra was crashing out a syncopated tune.  The place
+was full of suburban people enjoying their escape into a vulgar
+excitement provided for them by the philanthropy of Joseph Lyons.  The
+room was all gilt and marble and plentiful electric light.  A waitress
+came up to them, but Rodd was so intent upon Clara that he could not
+collect his thoughts, and she had to order tea.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked.
+
+'I am an actress at the Imperium.'
+
+He flung back his head and gave a shout of laughter.
+
+'Is it funny?' she asked.
+
+'Very.'
+
+She smiled a little maliciously and asked.--
+
+'Who are you?'
+
+'I'm a queer fish....  I've wasted my life in expecting more from
+people than they had to give, and in offering them more than they
+needed.'
+
+'You look tired.'
+
+'I am tired--tired out....  You're not really an actress.'
+
+'I'm paid for it if that makes me one.'
+
+'I mean--you are not playing a part now.  Actresses never stop.  They
+take their cues from their husbands and lovers and go on until they
+drop.  Their husbands and lovers generally kick them out before they do
+that....  The ordinary woman is an actress in her small way, but you
+are not so at all....  I can't place you.  What are you doing in
+London?  You ought not to be in London.  You ought to leave us stewing
+in our own juice.'
+
+The waitress brought them tea and the orchestra flung itself into a
+more outrageous effort than before.
+
+'Ragtime and you!' he went on.  'They don't blend.  Ragtime is for
+tired brains and jaded senses, for people who have lost all instinct
+and intuition.  What have you to do with them?  You will simply beat
+yourself to death upon their hard indifference....  You are only a
+child.  You should be packed off home.'
+
+'And suppose I have none.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'That was an impertinence.  Forgive me!'  He took up the book he had
+given her.  'This fellow Mann is like all the rest.  He wants to
+substitute a static show for a dynamic and vital performance, to impose
+his own art upon the theatre.  The actors have done that until they
+have driven anything else out.  He wants to drive them out.  That is
+all, but he has great gifts....'
+
+'Please don't talk about other people,' said Clara.  'I want to hear
+about you.  What were you doing in the book-shop?'
+
+He told her then why he went to the Charing Cross Road, to find a
+holiday which would make life tolerable; she described her holiday
+touring through the country with the glorious conclusion in the Lakes.
+He looked rather gloomy and shook his head,--
+
+'That wouldn't suit me.  I like to go slowly and to linger over the
+things that please me, to drink in their real character.  It is
+pleasant to move swiftly, but all this motor-car business seems to me
+to be only another dodge--running away from life....  I ought to do it
+if I were true to my temperament, but I love my job too much.  I'm an
+intellectual, but I can't stand by and look on, and I can't run away.'
+
+Clara had never met any one like him before.  There was such acute
+misery in his face, and his words seemed only to be a cloud thrown up
+to disguise the retreat he was visibly making from her.  She would not
+have that.  She was sure of him.  This attitude of his was a challenge
+to her.  The force with which he spoke had made Charles and even
+herself seem flimsy and fantastic, and she wanted to prove that she was
+or could be made as solid, as definite and precise as himself.
+
+She knew what it was to be driven by her own will.  Her sympathy was
+with him there.  He was driven to the point of exhaustion.
+
+'I've been trying to create the woman of the future,' he said.
+'Ibsen's women are all nerves.  What I want to get is the woman who can
+detach herself from her emotional experience and accept failure, as a
+man does, with a belief that in the long run the human mind is stronger
+than Nature.  If instincts are baffled, they are not to be trusted.
+Women have yet to learn that....  When they learn it, we can begin to
+get straight.'
+
+It did not seem to matter whether she understood him or not.  He had
+her sympathy, and he was glad to talk.
+
+'That seems to be the heart of the problem.  But it is a little
+disconcerting, when you have been trying to create a woman, to walk
+into a bookshop and find her.'
+
+'How do you know?' she asked.  'I may be only acting.  That is what
+women do.  They find out by instinct the ideal in a man's mind and
+reproduce it.'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'All ideals to all men? ...  You have given the game away.'
+
+'That might only be the cleverest trick of all.'
+
+For a moment he was suspicious of her, but this coquetry was noble and
+designed to please and soothe him.
+
+'I'm in for a bad time,' he said simply.  'Things have been too easy
+for me so far.  I gave myself twenty years in which to produce what I
+want and what the world must have....  Things aren't so simple as all
+that.'
+
+'Do drink your tea.  I think you take everything too hardly.  People
+don't know that they are indifferent.  There are so many things to do,
+so many people to meet, they are so busy that they don't realise that
+they are standing still and just repeating themselves over and over
+again.'
+
+'Damn the orchestra!' said Rodd.  The first violin was playing a solo
+with muted strings.  'If people will stand this, they will stand
+anything.  It is slow murder.'
+
+'Do believe that they like it,' replied Clara.
+
+'Slow murder?'
+
+'No.  The--music.'
+
+'Same thing.'  He laughed.  'Oh, well.  You have robbed me of my
+occupation.  When shall we meet again?'
+
+'To-morrow?'
+
+'To-morrow.  You shall see how I live--  If you can spare the time I
+would like to take you to a concert.  I always test my friends with
+music.'
+
+'Even the New Woman?'
+
+His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his sensitive lips.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+RODD AT HOME
+
+They met on the morrow, a hot August day, with the heat quivering up
+from the pavements and the walls of the houses....  Rodd was the first
+to arrive at the book-shop where they had arranged to meet.  The
+bookseller chaffed him about the 'young leddy,' because Rodd had never
+been known to speak to any one--male or female, in the shop.
+
+'That's a fine young leddy,' said the bookseller.  'She knows that to
+do good to others is to do good to yourself.  And mind ye, that's a
+fact.  It's not preaching.  It's hard scientific fact.'
+
+'Who is she?' asked Rodd.
+
+'She's an actress-girl, and she is friendly with lords.  How she came
+to find a poor shop like mine I cannot tell ye.  But in she walked, and
+my luck turned from that day.'
+
+Clara came in.  She stood on the threshold of the shop and turned over
+the papers that stood there on a table.  She had seen Rodd, but wished
+to gain a moment or two before she spoke to him, so great had been the
+shock of meeting him.  Since leaving him the day before she had done
+nothing at all but wait for the time to come for her to see him again,
+but when the time came she had to force her way out of the brooding
+concentration upon him which absorbed all her energies.  She dreaded
+the meeting.  In recollection, his personality had been clearer and
+more precise to her than in his actual presence, when the force of his
+ideas obscured everything else.  He was unhappy, he was poor, he was
+solitary, and it angered her that such a man should be any one of these
+things.  He seemed so forceful and yet to be poor, to be unhappy, to be
+solitary in a world where, as she had proved, wealth and companionship
+were so easy of access, argued some weakness....  He waited for her to
+move, and that angered her.  He stood still and waited for her to move.
+So fierce was the gust of anger in her that she nearly walked out of
+the shop then and there, but she saw his eyes intent upon her and she
+went up to him, holding out her hand.  He gripped it tightly and said,--
+
+'I was afraid you might not come.'
+
+'Why should I not?'
+
+'I have so little to give you.'
+
+'You gave me a good deal yesterday.'
+
+'Everything.'
+
+The bookseller looked up at the bust of William Morris on his poetry
+shelves and winked.  Then he tip-toed away.
+
+Clara forgave him for not moving to meet her.  His directness of speech
+satisfied her as to his strength and honesty.
+
+Neither was disposed to waste time.  Their intimacy had begun at their
+first meeting.
+
+'It is too hot in London,' he said.  'Shall we walk out to Highgate or
+Hampstead?'
+
+Clara wanted to touch him, to make certain that he was really a man and
+not a mere perambulating mind, and she laid her hand on his arm.  It
+was painfully thin, and she knew instinctively that he was not properly
+cared for, and then again she was full of mistrust.  Was it only her
+sympathy that involved her life with his? ...  The shock of it had made
+it perfectly clear that in Charles, as a man, she had never had the
+smallest interest.  That had been disastrous, and she shrank from
+creating more trouble by her impetuosity.  To hurt this man would be
+serious.  No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he
+would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy
+boy or a blackbird in a cherry-tree in blossom.
+
+They went by tube to Highgate, making no attempt to talk through the
+clatter and roar of the train in the tunnel.
+
+As they walked up the long hill he said,--
+
+'You have knocked me out.  I never thought any one would do that.  I
+never thought I should meet any one as strong as myself....  Love's a
+terrible thing.  The impact of two personalities.  It breaks everything
+else, leaves no room for anything else.'
+
+'I hoped it would make you happy,' said Clara, accepting as entirely
+natural that they should sweep aside everything that stood between them
+and their desire to be together and to share thoughts, emotions, all
+the deep qualities in them that could be revealed to no one else.  She
+could no more deny him than she could deny the sun rising in the
+morning, and for the moment she was content to forget every other
+element in her life....  It was so inevitably right that, having met in
+the heart of London, they should turn their backs on it and put
+themselves to the test of earth, sunshine, blue sky, and trees in their
+summer green, and water smiling in the sun.  The furious energy in
+their hearts made the hot August day, the suburban scene, and the
+indolent suburban people seem toy-like and unreal, as though they were
+looking down upon it from another world, and so they were, for they had
+plunged to the very beginnings of Creation, and their new world was in
+the making.  So great is the power of love that, extracting all the
+truth from the world as men have made it, it sweeps the rest away and
+begins again, discarding, destroying, but most tenderly preserving all
+that is vital and of worth.  Love takes its chosen two, and weaves a
+spell about them, to preserve them from the fretting contact of the
+world, that they may have the power to withstand the agony of creation
+which sweeps through them, and never rests until they are forged into
+one soul, one world, or parted, broken and cast down.
+
+Of these two it was Rodd who suffered most.  The fierce will that had
+maintained him in his long labours for the art he worshipped would not
+yield.  He wanted both, his work and this sudden, surprising girl who
+had walked into his life, and he wanted both upon his own terms.  At
+the same time the conflict set up in him made him only the more
+sensitive to beauty and to the simple delights of the gardens and
+fields through which they passed....  This was new for him.  He had
+enjoyed such things before only with a remote aesthetic detachment.
+
+This, too, he was loath to renounce, but the swift joy in the girl was
+too strong for him.  To such beauty the sternest will must bend.  No
+bird's song, no sudden light upon a cloud, no trembling flower in its
+ecstacy, no tree in full burst of blossom could tell of so high a
+beauty as this joy that flashed from the very depths of her soul into
+her eyes, upon her lips, softening her throat, liquefying her every
+movement, and into her voice bringing such music as no poet has ever
+sung, no musician's brain conceived, music sent from regions deeper
+than the human soul can know to go soaring far beyond the limits set to
+human perception.
+
+Rodd was dazed and dizzy with it, and longed every now and then to
+touch her, to hold her, to make sure that in the swiftness of her joy
+she would not fly away....  He talked gravely and solemnly, with an
+intent concentration, about the persons in his life who compared so
+sorrily with her.  He was obviously composing them into a drama, which,
+however, he dared not carry to any conclusion.  That there could ever
+be such another day as this was beyond his hopes, that he could ever
+return to what he was beggared his endurance....
+
+'A queer thing happened to me the other day,' he said.  'I live among
+strange people, hangers-on of the theatre and the newspaper press.
+There is a woman----'
+
+Clara caught her breath and looked tigerish.  He did not notice the
+change and went on.
+
+'There is a woman.  She lives immediately below me.  She has two
+children and God knows how she lives.  She used to wait for me on the
+stairs in the evening to watch me go up.  But I never spoke to her----'
+
+Clara smiled happily.
+
+'She used to do me little services.  She would darn my socks, and
+sometimes cook me some dainty and lay it outside my door.  This went on
+for months, I never spoke to her, because she has a terrible mother who
+lives with her....  A week or two ago, she met me as I came upstairs in
+the evening, and told me one of her children was ill, and asked me to
+go for the doctor....  I did so, and she looked so exhausted that I
+went in and helped her.  The mother was no use at all; a fat, lazy
+beast of a woman who drinks, swears, eats, and sleeps....  We wrestled
+with death for the life of the child, but we were beaten....  It died.
+She waits for me now, and tries to talk to me, but I will not do it.
+She is frenzied in her attentions.  She wants sympathy.  She has it,
+but wants more than that.  A word from me, and I should never be able
+to shake her off.  She would cling to me, and because she clung she
+would believe that she loved me, but she would have nothing but my
+weakness....  It has happened before.  They seem to find some bitter
+triumph in a man's weakness.'
+
+The humility of his confession touched Clara deeply.  It was the
+humility of the man's feeling, in contrast with his ferocious,
+intellectual arrogance, that moved her to a compassion which steadied
+her in her swift joy.  His story revealed his life to her so vividly
+that she felt that without more she knew him through and through.
+Everything else was detail with which she had no particular concern.
+
+They walked along in silence for some time, he brooding, she smiling
+happily, and she pictured the two sides of his life, the rich and
+powerful imaginative activity, and the simple tenderness of his
+solitude.
+
+It seemed to be her turn to confess, but she could not.  The day's
+perfection would be marred for them, and that she would not have.  He
+would understand.  Yes, he would understand, but men have illusions
+which are very dear to them.  She must protect them, and let him keep
+them until the dear reality made it necessary for him to discard them.
+
+At Hampstead they came on a holiday throng and mingled with them, glad
+once again to be in contact with simple people taking the pleasures for
+which they lived.  There were swing-boats, merry-go-rounds, cocoa-nut
+shies, penny-in-the-slot machines....  The proprietor of the
+merry-go-round was rather like Sir Henry Butcher in appearance, and
+Clara realised with a start that the Imperium and this gaily painted
+machine were both parts of the same trade.  The people paid their
+twopence or their half-guineas and were given a certain excitement, a
+share in a game, a pleasure which without effort on their part broke
+the monotony of existence....  Of the two on this August day she
+preferred the merry-go-round.  It was in the open air, and it was
+simple and unpretentious; and it was surely better that the people
+should be amused with wooden horses than with human beings as
+mechanical and as miserably driven by machinery....  She was annoyed
+with Rodd because he was exasperated by the silly giggling of the
+servant-girls and the raffish capers of the young man.
+
+'I hate the pleasures of the people,' he said.  'They give the measure
+of the quality of their work--lazy, slovenly, monotonous repetition,
+producing nothing splendid but machines, wonderful engines, marvellous
+ships, miraculous motor-cars, but dull, listless, sodden people--inert.
+It is the inertia of London that is so appalling.'
+
+Clara made him take her on the wooden horses, and they went round three
+times.  He admitted reluctantly that he had enjoyed it.
+
+'But only because you did.'
+
+To try him still further she made him have tea in the yard of an inn,
+at a long table with a number of East Enders, whole families, courting
+couples, and young men and maidens who had selected each other out of
+the crowd.  They stared at the remarkable pair, the elegant young woman
+and the moody, handsome man, but they made no impertinent comment
+except that when they left a girl shrieked,--
+
+'My! look at her shoes.'
+
+And another girl said mournfully,--
+
+'I wisht I 'ad legs like _that_ and silk stockings.'
+
+It was near evening.  The haze over the heath shimmered with an apricot
+glow.  Windows, catching the low sun, blazed like patches of fire.  The
+people on the heath dwindled and seemed to sink away into the
+landscape, and their movements were hardly perceptible.
+
+Rodd asked,--
+
+'Has it been a good day for you?'
+
+'A wonderful day.  I want to see where you live.'
+
+He took her home.  Down in London, after the Heath, the air seemed
+thick and stifling.  The square in which he lived was surrounded with
+unsavoury streets from which smells that were almost overpowering were
+wafted in.  His house was a once fashionable mansion now cut up into
+flats.  He had what were once the servants' quarters under the roof,
+three rooms and a bathroom.  The windows of his front room looked out
+on the tops of trees.  Here he worked.  The room contained nothing but
+a table, a chair, a piano, and a sofa.
+
+'This is the only room,' he said.
+
+'That woman was waiting for you,' said Clara.
+
+'Was she?  I didn't see her.'
+
+'Yes.  She whisked into her room when she saw me.'
+
+He took up his manuscript from the table.
+
+'It has stopped short.'  He turned it over ruefully; fingering the
+pages, he began to read and was sinking into absorption in it when she
+dashed it out of his hand.
+
+'How dare you read it when I am with you?' she cried.  'It was written
+before you knew me.  It isn't any good....  I know it isn't any good.'
+
+He was stunned by this outburst of jealousy and protested,--
+
+'There's years of work in it.'
+
+'But what's the good of sitting here working, if you never do anything
+with it?'
+
+He pointed to the sofa and said,--
+
+'There's my work in there: full to the brim, notes, sketches, things
+half finished, things that need revision....  I've been waiting for
+something to happen.  I could never work just to please other people
+and to fit successful actors with parts....'
+
+'I'm a successful actress.'
+
+'You?  Oh, no.'
+
+'But I am.  I'm engaged to appear at the Imperium in _The Tempest_.
+Charles Mann is designing the production.'
+
+'I saw something about that, but I didn't believe it.'
+
+'Charles Mann's work was like that,' she pointed to the sofa, 'until I
+met him.'
+
+'You know him?'
+
+'Yes....  Yes.'
+
+(She could not bring herself to tell him.)
+
+'Butcher will be too strong for him.  You see, Butcher controls the
+machine.'
+
+'But money controls Butcher!'
+
+He was enraged.
+
+'You!  You to talk of money!  That is the secret of the whole criminal
+business.  Money controls art.  Money rejects art.  Money's a sensitive
+thing, too.  It rejects force, spontaneity, originality.  It wants
+repetition, immutability, things calculable.  Money...  You can talk
+with satisfaction of money controlling Butcher after our heavenly day
+with the sweet air singing of our happiness!'
+
+'One must face facts.'
+
+'Certainly.  But one need not embrace them.'
+
+Here in this room he was another man.  The humility that was his most
+endearing quality was submerged in his creative arrogance.  Almost it
+seemed that he resented her intrusion as a menace to the life which he
+had made for himself, the world of suffering and tortured creatures
+with which he had surrounded himself, the creatures whom he had loved
+so much that contact with his fellows had come to be in some sort a
+betrayal of them.  To an extraordinary degree the atmosphere of the
+room was charged with his personality, and with the immense continuous
+effort he had made to achieve his purpose.  Here there was something
+demoniac and challenging in him.  He presented this empty room to her
+as his life and seemed to hurl defiance at her to disturb it.
+
+She had never had so fiercely stimulating a challenge to her
+personality.  In her heart she compared this austere room with the
+ceremony of the Imperium, and there was no doubt which of the two
+contained the more vitality.  Here in solitude was a man creating that
+which alone which could justify the elaborate and costly machinery of
+the great theatre which had been used for almost a generation by the
+bland and boyish Sir Henry Butcher to exploit his own engaging
+personality.
+
+Clara was ashamed of the jealousy which had made her snatch Rodd's work
+out of his hand.  It had set his passion raging against her.  He who
+had faced the hostility and indifference of the world all through his
+ambitious youth was inflamed by the hostility of love which had shaken
+but not yet uprooted his fierce will--never to compromise, but to
+adhere to the logic of his vision.  The rage in him was intolerable.
+She said,--
+
+'You don't like it?'
+
+What?'
+
+'My being at the Imperium.'
+
+'It is not for me to like or dislike.  I am not the controller of your
+movements.  I would never control the movements of any living creature.'
+
+'Except in your work.'
+
+'They work out their own salvation.  They are nothing to do with me,
+any more than the woman on the stairs.'
+
+'But you love them.'
+
+(He had made them as real to her as they were to himself.)
+
+'They don't leave me alone.  They want to live....  But they can only
+live on the stage.'
+
+
+He shook back his head and with supreme arrogance he said,--
+
+'As they will when the stage is fit for them.'
+
+She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to
+actuality she said,--
+
+'How old are you?'
+
+'Thirty-one.'
+
+His next move horrified her.  He stepped forward, seized his
+manuscript, and tore it into fragments.
+
+'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?'
+
+'No.  That was childish of you....  You will only sit down and begin
+all over again.'
+
+'I swear I will not.  I swear it.  It is finished.  All that is
+over....  I don't know how I shall ever begin again.  Perhaps I shall
+not....  All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid
+facing it....  They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick
+most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you.  They're
+not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little
+modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts,
+clever and helpless, rotting in inaction....  No.  It has been all
+wrong.  I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend....  I think I knew it
+in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me....  I'm not fit
+to live in the same world as you.  I ought not to have seen you
+to-day....'
+
+'Can't you laugh at yourself?'
+
+'Laugh!  Dear God, I do nothing else.'
+
+'I mean--happily.  You wouldn't be you if you didn't make mistakes--to
+learn.  You had to learn more about your work than just the tricks of
+it.  Isn't it so?  You despise acting.  But it is just the same there.
+I wanted to learn more about it than the tricks.'
+
+'Ay, that's it; to learn the tricks and keep decent.  That is what one
+stands out for.'
+
+Clara held out her hand to him,--
+
+'Very well, then.  We understand each other and there is nothing so
+very terrible in my being at the Imperium.  Is there?'
+
+He held her hand.  She wanted him to draw her to him, to hold her close
+to him, to comfort him for all that he had lost; but once again he was
+governed by his humility, and he just bowed low, and thanked her warmly
+for her generosity in giving so poor a devil as himself so exquisite a
+day.
+
+Nothing was said about another meeting.  As he took her down the stairs
+the door of the flat below was opened and a woman's face peeped out.
+Near the bottom of the stairs they met a man in a tail coat and top hat
+who sidled past them, took off his hat and held it in front of his
+face, but before he did so Clara had recognised Mr Cumberland,
+erstwhile Mr Clott.
+
+'Does that man live here?' she asked Rodd at the door.
+
+Rodd looked up the stairs.
+
+'No-o,' he said.  'No.  I think I have seen him before, but there are
+many people living in the house.  Strange people.  They come and go,
+but I sit there in my room upstairs gazing at the tree-tops,
+working....'
+
+'You should get in touch with the theatre,' said Clara; 'swallow your
+scruples, and find out that we are not so very bad after all.'
+
+They stood for some moments on the wide doorstep.  It was night now and
+the lamps were lit.  Lovers strolled by under the trees, and against
+the railings of the garden opposite couples were locked together.
+
+'You turn an August day into Spring,' said Rodd.
+
+Clara tapped his hand affectionately, and, to tear herself away, ran
+down the square and round the corner.  She was quivering in every nerve
+from the strain of so much conflict, and she was angry with herself for
+having taken so high a hand with him.  He was more to be respected than
+any man she had ever met, and yet she had--or so she thought--treated
+him as though he were another Charles.  She could not measure the
+immensity of what had happened to her and her thoughts flew to
+practical details.  What ages it seemed since she had walked blithely
+crooning: 'This is me in London!'  And how odd, how menacing, it was
+that on the stairs she should have met Mr Clott or Cumberland!
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+'THE TEMPEST'
+
+There were still seasons in those days: Autumn, Christmas Holidays, and
+Spring.  In August when the rest of the world was at holiday the
+theatres, cleaned and renewed for a fresh attempt at the conquest of
+the multitude (which is unconquerable, going its million different
+ways), were filled with hopeful, busy people, hoping for success to
+give them the tranquil easy time and the security which, always looked
+for, never comes.
+
+The Imperium had been re-upholstered and redecorated, and the fact was
+duly advertised.  Mr Smithson, in the leisure given him by his being
+relieved of full responsibility for the scenery, had painted a new
+act-drop, photographs of which appeared in the newspapers.  Mr Gillies
+was interviewed.  Sir Henry was interviewed, Charles Mann was
+interviewed.  The ball of publicity was kept rolling merrily.  Even Mr
+Halford Bunn, the famous author whose new play had been put back, lent
+a hand by attacking the new cranky scenery in the columns of a
+respectable daily paper, and giving rise to a lengthy correspondence in
+which Charles came in for a good deal of hearty abuse on the ground
+that he had given to other countries the gifts that belonged to his
+own.  He plunged into the fray, and pointed out that he had left his
+own country because it was pleasanter to starve in a sunny climate.
+
+He was intoxicated with anticipation of his triumph.  The practical
+difficulties which he had created, and those which had been put in his
+way by Mr Gillies and Mr Smithson had been surmounted, and to see his
+designs in being, actually realised in the large on back-cloths, wings,
+and gauzes, gave him the sense of solidity which, had it come into his
+life before, might have made him almost a normal person....  Clara was
+to be Ariel.  The beloved child was to bring the magic of her
+personality to kindle the beauty he had created in form and colour.  He
+was almost reconciled to the idea of the characters in the fantasy
+being impersonated by men and women.
+
+Sir Henry had returned to town enthusiastic and eager.  Mann and Clara
+were a combination strong enough to break the tyranny of the social use
+of the front of the house over the artistic employment of the stage.
+This season at all events Lady Butcher and Lady Bracebridge should not
+have things all their own way.
+
+There was a slight set back and disappointment.  An upstart impresario
+brought over from Germany a production in which form and design had
+broken down naturalism.  This was presented at one of the Halls, and
+was an instantaneous success, and Charles, in a fit of jealousy, wrote
+an unfortunately spiteful attack on the German producer, accusing him
+of stealing his ideas.  Sir Henry, a born publicist, was enraged, and
+threatened to abandon his project.  The proper line to take was to
+welcome the German product and, with an appropriate reference to
+Perkins and aniline dyes, to point bashfully to what London could
+do....  He was so furious with Charles that he shut himself up in the
+aquarium and refused to call rehearsals.
+
+Clara saw him and he reproached her,--
+
+'Why did you bring that dreadful man into my beautiful theatre?  He has
+upset everybody from Gillies to the call-boy, and now he has made us a
+laughing-stock, and this impresario person is in a position to say that
+we are jealous.  We artists have to hold together or the business men
+will bowl us out like a lot of skittles, and where will the theatre be
+then?...  Where would you be, my dear?  They'd make you take off your
+clothes and run about the stage with a lot of other young women, and
+call that--art....  The theatre is either a temple or it is in Western
+Civilisation what the slave-market is in the East.  This damned fool of
+yours can't see anything outside his own scenery.  He thinks he is more
+important than me; but is a bookbinder more important than John
+Galsworthy?'
+
+'You mustn't be so angry.  Nobody takes Charles seriously except in his
+work.  Everybody expects him to do silly things.  You can easily put it
+right with a dignified letter.'
+
+'But I can't say my own scene-painter is a confounded idiot.'
+
+'You needn't mention him,' said Clara.  'Just say how much you admire
+the German production and talk about the renaissance of the theatre.'
+
+Sir Henry pettishly took pen and paper, wrote a letter, and handed it
+to her.
+
+'Will that do?' he asked.
+
+She read it, approved, and admired its adroitness.  There were
+compliments to everybody and Charles was not mentioned.
+
+'These things _are_ important,' said Sir Henry.  'The smooth running of
+the preliminary advertising is half the battle.  It gives you your
+audiences for the first three weeks, and it inspires confidence in the
+Press.  That is most important....  I really was within an ace of
+throwing the whole thing up.  Lady Butcher would like nothing better.'
+
+'I think Verschoyle would be offended if you did.'
+
+'Ah!  Verschoyle....'  Sir Henry looked suspiciously at her.  Though he
+wanted to be, he was never quite at his ease with her.  She was not
+calculable like the women he had known.  What they wanted were things
+definite and almost always material, while her purposes were secret,
+subtle, and, as he sometimes half suspected, beyond his range.  She was
+new.  That was her fascination.  She belonged to this strange world
+that was coming into being of discordant rhythmic music, of Russian
+ballet and novels, of a kind of poetry that anybody could write, of
+fashions that struck him as indecent, of a Society more riotous and
+rowdy than ever the Bohemia of his day had been, because women--ladies
+too--were the moving spirit in it and women never did observe the rules
+of any game....  And yet, in his boyish, sentimental way, he adored
+her, and clung to her as though he thought she could take him into this
+new world.
+
+'I can't go on with Mann,' he said almost tearfully.  'It is too
+disturbing.  You never know what he is going to do, and, after all, the
+theatre is a business, isn't it?--  Isn't it?'
+
+'I suppose so,' replied Clara.
+
+It was extraordinary to feel the great machine of the theatre gathering
+momentum for the launching of the play.  It was marvellous to be caught
+up, as the rehearsals proceeded, into the loveliest fantasy ever
+created by the human mind.  Clara threw herself into it heart and soul.
+Life outside the play ceased for her.  She lived entirely between her
+rooms and the stage of the theatre.  Unlike the other players, when she
+was not wanted she was watching the rest of the piece, surrendered
+herself to it completely, and was continually discovering a vast power
+of meaning in words that had been so familiar to her as to have become
+like remembered music, an habitual thought without conscious reference
+to anything under the sun....  And as her sense of the beauty of the
+play grew more living to her, so she saw the apparatus that kept it in
+motion as more and more comic....  Mr Gillies had a thousand and one
+points on which he consulted his chief with the most ruthless disregard
+of the work going forward on the stage.  Lady Butcher would come
+bustling in, take Sir Henry aside and whisper to him, and words like
+Bracebridge--Sir George--Lady Amabel--Prime Minister--Chancellor--would
+come hissing out.  Then when the rehearsal was resumed she would stay
+surveying it with the indulgent smile of a vicar's wife at a school
+treat....  During the exquisite scene between Prospero and Miranda one
+day the scenery door was flung open, and Mr Smithson arrived with a
+small army of men, who dumped paint-pots on the boards, threw hammers
+down, and rushed across the stage with flats and fly-cloths.  Yet, in
+spite of all these accidents introducing the spirit of burlesque, the
+play survived.  Sir Henry would tolerate interruptions up to a point,
+but, when a charwoman in the auditorium started brushing or turned on a
+sudden light, he would turn and roar into the darkness,--
+
+'Stop that din!  How can I rehearse if I am continually distracted!  Go
+away and clean somewhere else!  We can't be clean now....  Please go
+on.'
+
+The cast was a good one of very distinguished and highly paid players,
+all the principals being ladies and gentlemen who would rather not work
+than accept less than twenty or twenty-five pounds a week.  One or two
+were superior young people who affected to despise the Imperium, but
+confessed with a smile that the money was very useful.  They were also
+rather scornful of Charles because he was not intellectual.
+
+Charles at first attended rehearsals and attempted to interfere, but
+was publicly rebuked and told to mind his own business.  There would
+have been a furious quarrel, but Clara went up to him and dragged him
+away just in time.  He stayed away for some days, but returned and sat
+gloomily in the auditorium.  He had moved from his furnished house, and
+was in rooms above a ham and beef shop, which, he said, had the
+advantage of being warm.
+
+'It isn't a production,' he grumbled, 'it's a scramble.  He's ruining
+the whole thing with his acting, which is mid-Victorian.  He should key
+the whole thing up from you, chicken....  You know what I want.  You
+understand me.  The technique of the rest is all wrong.  It is a
+technique to divert attention from the scenery, raw, unmitigated
+barn-storming....  Do, do ask him to let me help!  What can he do,
+popping in and out of the play and discussing a hundred and one things
+with all these fools who keep running in?'
+
+'You should have stipulated for it in your contract,' she said.  'It is
+too late now.  He does know his business, Charles, if only people would
+leave him alone.'
+
+So rehearsals went on for a few more days.  Clara was more and more
+absorbed.  The magical reality of Ariel surpassed everything else in
+her life except the memory of Rodd in his empty room, and that also she
+wished to obliterate, for she was full of a premonition of danger, and
+was convinced that by this dedication of herself to the theatre she
+could dominate it.  She could not define the danger, but it threatened
+Charles, and it menaced Rodd, whom she had decided not to see again.
+
+Sir Henry was delighted with her, and said she had rejuvenated his own
+art.
+
+'I used to play Caliban,' he said.  'But Prospero is the part if there
+is to be an Ariel who can move as you can move and speak in a fairy
+voice as you can speak....  The rest of the play is all in the day's
+work....
+
+  'Go make thyself like a nymph of the sea: be subject
+  To no sight but thine and mine, invisible
+  To every eyeball else.'
+
+
+And for Clara it was almost literally true.  She felt that she was like
+a spirit moving among these people marooned on this island of the West
+End of London, all spell-bound by the money of this great roaring city,
+all enslaved, all amphibious, living between two elements, the actual
+and the imagined, but in neither, because of the spell that bound them,
+fully and passionately....  Living in the play she saw Sir Henry merged
+in Prospero, and when he said,--
+
+          'Thou shalt be as free
+  As mountain winds: but then exactly do
+  All points of my command,'
+
+she took that also literally, and was blissfully happy to surrender to
+a will more potent than her own....  She did not know that the will she
+was acknowledging was Shakespeare's, and that with her rare capacity
+for living in the imagination she was creeping into his and accepting
+life, gaining her freedom, upon his terms.
+
+After some time her spirit began to affect the whole company.  She
+created an enchantment in which all moved, and Charles, watching, began
+to understand more fully the art he had first perceived in her on the
+day when he had attempted to force her, like a practised hand, to
+capture and fix an apparently accidental effect....  It was no
+accident.  The girl was possessed with a rare dramatic genius, entirely
+unspoiled--pure enough and strong enough to subsist and to move in the
+theatrical atmosphere of the Imperium....  What was more, Charles
+understood that she was fighting for his ideas, and was, before his
+eyes, making their fulfilment possible.
+
+You might talk and argue with Sir Henry until you were blue in the
+face, but give him a piece of real acting and he understood at once,
+was kindled and became fertile in invention, even courageous in
+innovation.  Give him that, and he would drop all thought of the public
+and the newspapers, and sacrifice even the prominence of his own
+personality to the service of this art that he adored.  As the
+rehearsals proceeded, therefore, he became more intent, was less
+patient with interruptions, and at last stopped them altogether.  He
+became interested in his own part, and tussled with the players who
+shared his scenes with him.
+
+'Never,' he said to Clara, 'have I enjoyed rehearsals so much as these.
+I am only afraid they are going too smoothly.  We shall be over-ripe by
+production....'
+
+He resumed cordial relations with Charles, and threw out a suggestion
+or two as to scenery and costumes which Charles, who had begun to learn
+the elements of diplomacy, pretended to note down.  Sir Henry was
+magnanimous.  He avoided his wife and his usual cronies, and devoted
+himself to Charles and Clara, whom his showman's eye had marked down as
+potentially a very valuable property.
+
+'This should be the beginning of great things for you, my boy,' he said
+to Charles.  'You will have all the managers at your feet, but the
+Imperium is the place for big work, the bold attack, the sweeping
+line....'
+
+Charles was a little suspicious of such whole-hearted conversion.  He
+knew these enthusiasms for the duration of rehearsals, and he was
+ill-at-ease because his anticipation of boundless wealth had not come
+true.  He had spent his advance and could not get another out of Mr
+Gillies, who detested him and regarded his invasion of the theatre as a
+ruinous departure from its traditions.  Clara Mr Gillies considered to
+be merely one of his Chief's infatuations.  They never lasted very
+long.  He had seen his Chief again and again rush to the very brink of
+disaster, but always he had withdrawn in the nick of time....  Mr
+Gillies was like a perpetual east wind blowing upon Charles's
+happiness.  But for Mr Gillies there would have been boundless
+wealth....  It was monstrous: Verschoyle had backed Charles's talent
+and Mr Gillies was sitting on the money.  Butcher could spend it
+royally, but Charles had often to go to Clara and ask her for the price
+of his lunch.  At the very height of his fame, with success almost
+within his grasp, he had to go almost hungry because genius has no
+credit.
+
+There was nothing to be done about it.  He borrowed here and there, but
+knew it was no real help.  It simply sent rumours flying as to his
+financial position, and he did not want either Butcher or Verschoyle to
+know that money trickled through his fingers.  He wanted their support
+after this success to advance his schemes.  Therefore he borrowed from
+Clara, and she, entirely indifferent to all but the engrossing
+development of the play, allowed Sir Henry to pay for her food, to give
+her meals alone with him in the aquarium, and even to buy her clothes
+and jewels.  She took not the slightest interest in them, but, as it
+seemed to give him pleasure to shower gifts and attentions upon her,
+she suffered it, and never for a moment dreamed of the turn his
+infatuation was taking.
+
+As she progressed in her work she felt that she was achieving what she
+desired, a passion for her art equal to Rodd's.  For a time she had
+thrust all thought of him aside, but as she gained in mastery and power
+over the whole activity of the stage, he crept back into her mind, and
+she could face him with a greater sense of equality, with more
+understanding and without that jealousy the memory of which hurt
+her....  She had acquired a sense of loyalty to art which was a greater
+thing than loyalty to Charles.  She had saved him, helped him, brought
+him thus far.  Henceforth he must learn to stand on his own feet.  She
+was glad that she had left him.
+
+All these considerations seemed very remote as she worked her way
+deeper and deeper into the play, which contained for her a reality
+nowhere to be found in life.  She became Ariel, a pure imagination,
+moving in an enchanted air, singing of freedom and of a beauty beyond
+all things visible.
+
+        'You are three men of sin, whom Destiny
+  That hath to instrument this lower world
+  And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea
+  Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island
+  Where man doth not inhabit...'
+
+Casting spells upon others, she seemed to cast them upon her own life;
+and it was incredible to her to think that she was the same Clara Day
+who had come so gaily to London with Charles Mann to help him to
+conquer his kingdom.  The stage of the Imperium was to her, in truth, a
+magic island where wonders were performed, and she by an inspiration,
+more powerful than her own will, could with a touch transform all
+things and persons around her; and when Sir Henry, rehearsing the
+character of Prospero, said to her.--
+
+        'Then to the elements
+  Be free and fare you well.'
+
+the words sounded deep in her heart, and she took them as a real
+bidding to be free of all that had entangled and cramped her own life.
+So she dreamed.
+
+She had a rude awakening one night when, after a supper in the aquarium
+alone with Sir Henry, he broke a long moody silence by laying his hand
+on hers, drawing her out of her chair and clasping her to his heart
+while he kissed her arms, shoulders, face, hair, and cried,--
+
+'You wonderful, wonderful child.  I love you.  I love you.  I have
+loved you since I first saw you.  I knew then that the love of my life
+had come....  You wonderful untouched child----'
+
+He tried to make her kiss him, to force her to meet his eyes, but she
+wrestled with him and thrust him back to relinquish his hold.
+
+'How could you?  How could you!  How could you?' she asked.
+
+'I have never forgotten that marvellous moonlit night----'
+
+'Please be sensible,' she said.  'Does a man never know when a woman
+loves him or not?'
+
+'They don't help one much,' replied Sir Henry, with a nervous grin.
+'You were so happy....  I thought.  Don't be angry with me!  I have
+thought of nothing but you since then....'
+
+'A moonlight night and champagne supper,' said she.  'Are they the same
+thing to you?'
+
+'Love conquers all,' said Sir Henry, a little sententiously.  He was
+disgusted.  She was not playing the right dramatic part; but she never
+did any of the expected things.  The ordinary conventions of women did
+not exist for her.
+
+She had moved as far away from him as possible and was standing over by
+the portrait of Teresa Chesney.
+
+'You must never talk like that again,' she said, 'or I shall not stay
+in the theatre....  It is not only the vulgarity of it that I hate, but
+that you should have misunderstood....  I was happy to be working with
+you in the play.  Everything outside that is unimportant.'
+
+'Not love....  Not love,' protested Sir Henry.
+
+'Even love,' she said.
+
+'I thought you liked me,' he mumbled.  'I was so happy giving you
+presents.  I thought you liked me....  A man in my position doesn't
+often find people to like him.'
+
+'So I do,' said Clara.  'You are very like Charles.  That is why I
+understand you.'
+
+Sir Henry winced.  In his heart he thoroughly despised Charles Mann.
+He drank a glass of champagne and said nervously,--
+
+'I'm glad we're not going to quarrel....  Forgive me.'
+
+'You have spoiled it all for me,' she said.  'Everything is spoiled.'
+
+She clenched her fists, and her eyes blazed fury at him.
+
+'How dare you treat me as a woman when I had never revealed myself to
+you?  Isn't that where a man should have some honour? ...  You must
+understand me if I am to remain in the theatre.  If a woman reveals
+herself to a man, then she is responsible.  She has nothing to say
+if--I don't think you understand.'
+
+'No.'  And indeed she might have been talking Greek to him.  The
+insulted woman he knew, the virtuous woman he knew, the fraudulent
+coquette he knew, the extravagant self-esteem of women he knew, but
+never before had he met a woman who was simple and sincere, who could
+brush aside all save essentials and talk to him as a man might have
+done, with detachment from the thing that had happened.
+
+'If you think I'm a blackguard, why don't you say so?  Why don't you
+hit me?'
+
+'I don't think you are anything of the kind.  I think you have been
+spoiled and that everything has been too easy for you....  I'm hurt
+because I thought you wanted Charles and me for the theatre and not for
+yourself.'
+
+'_L'etat c'est moi_,' smiled Sir Henry.  'I am the theatre....  All the
+immense machinery is my creation.  My brain here is the power that
+keeps it going.  If I were to die to-morrow there would be four walls
+and Mr Gillies....  Do you think he could do anything with it?  Could
+Charles Mann?  Could you?'
+
+'Yes,' said Clara, and he laughed.  He had never been in such
+entrancing company.  If she did not want his love-making--well and
+good.  At least she gave him the benefit of her frankness and he needed
+no pose with her.  He was glad she was going to be a sensible girl....
+She might alter her mind and every day only made her more adorable.
+
+'Sit down and have some chocolates.'  He spoke to her as though she
+were a child and like a child she obeyed him, for she was alarmed that
+he should exert his capricious prerogative and throw over _The Tempest_
+at the last moment.
+
+'What would you do with the theatre?'
+
+'I should dismiss Mr Gillies.'
+
+'An excellent man of business.'
+
+'For stocks and shares or boots, but not for art.'
+
+'He's a steadying influence.'
+
+'Art is steady enough, if it is art.'
+
+'My _dear_ child!'
+
+'If you don't know that then you are not an artist.'
+
+'Oh!  Would you call Charles Mann steady?'
+
+'I should think of the play first and last.'
+
+'There's no one to write them.'
+
+'I should scour the country for imaginative people and make them think
+in terms of the theatre.  Besides, there are people!'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Yes.  There are people who love the drama so much that they can't go
+near the theatre.'
+
+He roared with laughter, and to convince him she told him about Adnor
+Rodd and his bare room, where without any hope of an audience he wrote
+his plays and lived in them more passionately than it was possible to
+do in life.
+
+Sir Henry shook his head.
+
+'I don't mind betting,' he said, 'that he's got something wrong with
+him.  Either he drinks, or has an impossible wife, or he likes low
+company, or--  No.  There aren't such people.'
+
+'But there are.' And she told him how she had spent a whole day with
+Rodd and had gone home with him to see his rooms.
+
+'Alone?' asked Sir Henry.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then if you were my girl I should put you on bread and water for a
+week.'
+
+To convince him, she tried to tell him how she had struggled to
+overcome Charles's objections to the practical use of his talent, and
+had forced him to come to London....  In her eagerness and in her
+happiness at having brought him to his senses, she lost sight of the
+fact that she was revealing her own history.  He brought her up sharp
+with,--
+
+'Are you married to Charles Mann?'
+
+'Ye-es,' she said, her heart fluttering.
+
+'I didn't know,' he replied nonchalantly.  His manner towards her
+changed.  He was still soft and kind, and bland in his impish wit, but
+beneath the surface he was brutal, revengeful, cruel, and she felt the
+force of the ruthless egoism that had won him his position in spite of
+disabilities which would have hampered and even checked a less forceful
+man....  In the same moment she understood that what had been a
+glorious and lovely reality to her had been a game to him; and that he
+designed without the slightest compunction to turn both Charles and
+herself to his own profit....  Well, she thought, he might try, but he
+could not prevent either of them from making their reputations, and
+neither would ever sink to the mechanical docility of London players.
+
+Sir Henry lit a large cigar and moved over to the fire.
+
+'What does Verschoyle think of it?'
+
+She knew that he was insolently referring to her marriage with Charles,
+but she turned the shaft by saying,--
+
+'He is delighted with it all.  He believes in Charles.'
+
+'Hm....  Even the birds and fishes?'
+
+'Who told you about that?'
+
+'London doesn't let a good story die.'
+
+'Verschoyle was present....'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+The situation was becoming unbearable.  Sir Henry was as hard, as
+satisfied, and as unconscionable as a successful company-promoter.
+This sudden revelation of his egoism, his wariness to protect the ideal
+which in his own person he had achieved, shocked Clara out of her
+youthful innocence and into a painful realisation that the facts of her
+life forbade the impersonalism which had made so much achievement
+possible....  It was quite clear to her that Sir Henry was intent upon
+a personal relationship if she were to keep what she had won, and it
+was as clear that he could not credit her, or Charles, or anybody else
+with any other motive than personal ambition.  He knew his world, he
+knew his theatre.  A fulfilled ambition has its price, and he had never
+yet met the successful man or woman who did not pay with a good grace,
+as he himself had done.
+
+Her brain worked quickly on this new intractable material, this
+disconcerting revelation of the fact that success and art are in the
+modern world two very different things, the one belonging to the crowd,
+the other to solitude....  This old man might have waited.  He might
+have given her her chance.  It was not true.  She would not accept that
+it could be true that she could only have her success at his price, the
+price that he had paid, he and all the others, Julia Wainwright,
+Freeland Moore, and the loss of respect and simple humanity....  So
+this was why Charles had run away from the  theatre.  Certain things,
+certain elements in human character were too holy to be set before the
+crowd.
+
+She remembered her early struggles when she first went into the
+theatre.  She had won through them and had thought herself victorious
+only to find herself confronted once more with the hard actualities:
+either to accept the intrusion of the personal element into what should
+be impersonal service or to acknowledge defeat....  She could do
+neither the one nor the other.
+
+If only she could weep.  The woman in her calculated.  If only she
+could weep!  But where another woman would have wept she could not.
+She could only turn to her will and draw further strength from that.
+It was so maddening, so silly, that play acting should entail such a
+price.  It was making it all too serious.  What after all was it?  Just
+the instinct of play organised, and what was play without a happy joy?
+If only she would weep, the obstinate old man clinging to his success
+would melt; he would be kind; he would forgo all this nonsense that had
+been buzzing in his scatter brain....  What he could not stand was
+sincerity and a will diverted to other purposes than his own....  It
+made her tremble with rage to think that all his enthusiasm for the
+play, the real work he had put into rehearsals, his snubbing of Mr
+Gillies and his wife, had all been only because he fancied himself in
+his blown vanity to be in love with her.  It was too ridiculous, and
+despising him, hating herself, she decided that if it was acting he
+wanted, acting he should have, and she burst into a torrent of tears
+conjured up out of an entirely fictitious emotion....  At once Sir
+Henry had the cue he was waiting for....  He leaped up and came over to
+her with his hand on his heart.
+
+Don't cry, little girl,' he said.  'Don't cry....  Harry is with you.
+Harry only wants to be kind to her, and to help his poor little girl in
+her trouble....  She shall be the greatest actress in the world.'
+
+'Never!' thought Clara, her brain working more clearly now that she had
+set up this screen of tears between them.
+
+He patted her hand and caressed her hair, and was sublimely happy
+again.  He had half expected trouble from this unaccountable and
+baffling creature, whose will and wits were stronger than his own.  He
+was still a little suspicious, but he took her tears for acquiescence
+in his plans for her, and holding her in his arms he had the intense
+satisfaction of thinking of Charles Mann as a filthy blackguard for
+whom shooting was too clean an end.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF
+
+Lord Verschoyle had imagined that by making for Art he would be able to
+shake free of predatory designs.  It was not long before he discovered
+his mistake and that he had plunged into the very heart of the Society
+which he desired to avoid, for the Imperium, as used by Lady Butcher
+and Lady Bracebridge, was a powerful engine in the politico-financial
+world which dominated London.  Verschoyle in his simplicity had seen
+the metropolis as consisting of purposeful mammas and missish daughters
+bearing down upon him from all sides.  Now he discovered that there was
+more in it than that and that marriage was only one of many moves in a
+complicated game....  Lady Bracebridge had a daughter.  Lady Butcher
+had a son whom she designed for a political career, upon which he had
+entered as assistant secretary to an under-secretary.  Perceiving that
+Verschoyle easily lost his head, as in his apparent relations with
+Clara Day, they designed to draw him into political society where heads
+are finally and irrevocably lost....  He loathed politics and could not
+understand them, but young Butcher haunted him, and Lady Bracebridge
+cast about him a net of invitations which he could find no way of
+evading.  They justified themselves by saying that it was necessary to
+save him from Clara, and he found himself drawn further and further
+away, and more and more submitted to an increasing pressure, the aim of
+which seemed to be to commit him to supporting the Imperium and the
+Fleischmann group which had some mysterious share in its control....
+He knew enough about finance to realise that there was more in all this
+than met the eye, and upon investigation he found that the Fleischmann
+group were unloading Argentines all over monied London, and in due
+course he was offered a block of shares which, after an admirable
+dinner at the Bracebridges, he amiably accepted.
+
+The network was too complicated for him to unravel, but, as the result
+of putting two and two together, he surmised that the Imperium must
+have been losing rather more than it was worth to the Fleischmann
+group, and that therefore sacrifice must be offered up.  He was the
+sacrifice.  He did not mind that.  It would infuriate his trustees when
+at last he had to give them an account of this adventure, but he did
+object to Charles and Clara being used to make a desperate bid to
+revive the languishing support of the public.
+
+Charles and Clara were so entirely innocent of all intrigue.  They gave
+simply what was in them without calculation of future profit, and with
+the most guileless trust in others, never suspecting that they were not
+as simple as themselves.  Therefore Verschoyle cursed his own indolence
+which had committed him both to the Imperium and the Fleischmann group.
+
+As he pondered the problem, he saw that Charles and Clara could be
+dropped, and probably would be as soon as it was convenient.  The real
+controller of the Imperium was Lady Bracebridge, whose skill in
+intrigue was said to be worth ten thousand a year to Sir Julius
+Fleischmann.  She played upon Lady Butcher, Lady Butcher played upon
+Sir Henry, who, with Mr Gillies crying 'Give, give,' was between the
+upper and the nether millstone, and could only put up a sham fight....
+Verschoyle understood, too late, that _The Tempest_ was to be produced
+not to present Clara and Charles to the British public, but to capture
+himself.  Like a fool, in his eagerness to help Clara, he had let
+himself be captured, and now he thought he owed her amends....  He did
+not know how difficult the situation had become.  The danger point, as
+he saw the problem, was her position with regard to Charles, who,
+fortunately, respected her wishes and made no attempt to force her
+hand.  All the same there the awkward fact was and at any moment might
+trip her up.
+
+Verschoyle did not mind a scandal, and he did not care a hang whether
+Charles went to prison or not.  It might give him the instruction in
+the elementary facts of existence which he needed to make him learn to
+begin at the beginning instead of the middle or the end....  What
+Verschoyle dreaded was a sudden shock which might blast the delicate
+bud of Clara's youth, which to him was far more precious than any other
+quality, and the only thing which in all his life had moved him out of
+his timid dilettantism.  To him it was a more valuable thing than the
+whole of London, and compared with its vivid reality the Imperium, with
+its firm hold on the affections of the public, and its generation of
+advertising behind it, was a blown bubble.
+
+He had tea with her on the day after her supper with Sir Henry, and
+found her disastrously altered, hurt, and puzzled.
+
+'What is the matter?' he asked.  'Rehearsals not going well?'
+
+'Oh, yes.  They are going very well....  But I am worried about
+Charles.  He has been borrowing money again.'
+
+'Will you be happy again if I promise to look after Charles?'
+
+'He ought not to expect to be looked after.  He is very famous now, and
+should be able to make money.'
+
+'Surely, like everything else, it is a matter of practice.  You don't
+expect him to beat Sir Henry at his own game.'
+
+'No-o,' she said.  'But I think I did expect Charles's game to beat Sir
+Henry's.'
+
+'Surely it has done so.'
+
+'No.'
+
+They were in her rooms, which were now most charmingly furnished;
+bright, gay, and delicate in colouring, tranquil and cosy with books.
+
+'Has anything happened?'
+
+She told him.
+
+'I thought it was going to be so simple.  I felt that Charles and I
+were irresistible, and that we should conquer the theatre and make
+people admit that he is--what he is.  Nothing can alter that.  But it
+isn't simple at all.  Other people want other things.  They go on
+wanting the horrible things they have always wanted, and they expect us
+to help them to procure them.  They don't understand.  They think we
+want the same things....  I never thought I should be so unhappy.  When
+it comes to the point they won't let the real things in people be put
+before the public.'
+
+'Oh, come.  He is just a vain old man who gets through his position
+what he could never have got for himself.'
+
+'No, no, no,' she protested.  'It does mean what I say.  It has made me
+hate the theatre and understand why Charles ran away from it....  Only,
+having forced him so far, what can I do?  I have hurt him far more than
+he has hurt me.  He was quite happy drifting from town to town abroad,
+and it was the life I had been brought up to, because my grandfather
+ran away from England, too.  It wouldn't have mattered there how many
+wives Charles had in England....  But I wanted to see for myself, and I
+didn't want him to be wasted....  I can see perfectly well that Sir
+Henry wants if possible to discredit him and to prove that his ideas
+won't work....  We've all been very silly.  These people are too clever
+for us.  He's got your money and Charles's genius, and neither of you
+can raise a finger.'
+
+Verschoyle looked rueful.  He could not deny it.
+
+'It's that damned old Bracebridge,' he said.  'She doesn't care a
+twopenny curse for art or for the public.  She and her lot want any
+money that is floating loose and the whole social game in London has
+become a three-card trick in their hands.  The theatre and newspapers
+are just the sharper's patter.'
+
+Clara writhed.
+
+'You can't do anything but go on,' he said.  'You are bound to get your
+success and they can't deny that.  The old man knows that.  Hence the
+trick to get you away from Charles....  If you succeed you'll pull
+Charles through, and--we can buy off anybody who wants to make trouble.
+I'll buy the Bracebridges, if necessary.  I'm not particularly proud of
+my money.  It comes from land for which I do absolutely nothing, but
+it's better than Fleischmann money which is got by the trickery of a
+lottery.'
+
+'She's a horrible old woman,' said Clara.
+
+'She intends that I shall marry her hen-brain of a daughter....  If the
+worst came to the worst, my dear, you could marry me.'
+
+Clara was enraged.  It infuriated her that he, of all people, whom she
+had so entirely trusted, should so far forget himself as to propose so
+trite and sentimental a solution.  He could not help teasing her.
+
+'It would save me, too,' he said.  'And as Lady Verschoyle you could
+give these people a Roland for their Oliver every time.'
+
+'But I want to ignore them,' she said.  'Why won't you see that I don't
+want to win with my personality but with my art.  That should be the
+irresistible thing.'
+
+'It would be if they resisted it, but they don't.  They ignore it....
+I can't think of anything else, my dear.  They've got my money: ten
+thousand in the Imperium and twenty in Argentinos, and they are using
+my name for all they are worth.'
+
+'And if I hadn't asked you to stay after the birds and fishes it
+wouldn't have happened.'
+
+'After all, it hasn't come to disaster yet.'
+
+'But it will.  It is all coming to a head, and Charles will have to be
+the one to suffer for it.'
+
+'I promise you he shan't.  He shall have a dozen committees and all the
+birds and fishes he requires.'
+
+She could not help laughing.  Perhaps, after all, her fears were
+exaggerated, but she dreaded Charles's helpless acquiescence in the
+plight to which he had been reduced by Mr Gillies's refusal to advance
+him a penny outside the terms mentioned in the contract.
+
+'It certainly looks to me,' said Verschoyle, 'as if they wanted to
+break him.  It wouldn't be any good my saying anything.  They would
+simply point to their contract and shrug their shoulders at Charles's
+improvidence.  How much did Mr Clott get away with?'
+
+'A great deal.  He had several hundreds in blackmail before he went.
+That is why we can't prosecute.'
+
+Verschoyle whistled.
+
+'It is a tangled skein,' he said.  'You'd much better marry me.  I
+won't expect you to care for me.'
+
+'Don't be ridiculous----'
+
+There came a heavy thudding at the door, and Clara jumped nervously to
+her feet.  Verschoyle opened the door, and Charles swept in like a
+whirlwind.  His long hair hung in wisps about his face, his hat was
+awry, his cuffs hung down over his hands, his full tie was out over his
+waistcoat, and in both hands he held outstretched his walking stick and
+a crumpled piece of paper.  He dropped the stick and smoothed the paper
+out on the table, and, in an almost sobbing voice, he said,--
+
+'This has come.  It is a wicked plot to ruin me.  She demands a part in
+_The Tempest_ or she will inform the police....  O God, chicken, that
+was a bad day when you made me marry you.'
+
+Verschoyle picked up his stick and, beside himself with exasperated
+fury, laid about the unhappy Charles's shoulders and loins crying,--
+
+'You hound, you cur, you filthy coward!  You should have told her!  You
+should have told her!  You knew she was only a child!'
+
+Charles roared lustily, but made no attempt to defend himself, although
+he was half a head taller than Verschoyle and twice as heavy.  He
+merely said,--
+
+'Oo-oh!' when a blow got home, and waited until the onslaught was over.
+Then he rubbed himself down and wriggled inside his clothes.
+
+Clara stood aghast.  It was horrible to her that this should have
+happened.  Blows were as useless as argument with Charles....  He had
+done what he had done out of kindliness and childish obedience and,
+looking to motives rather than to results, could see no wrong in it.
+
+Verschoyle was at once ashamed of himself.
+
+'I lost my temper,' he said, and Charles, assured that the storm was
+over, smiled happily, ran his hands through his hair and said,--
+
+'Do you think Sir Henry would give her a part?'
+
+Verschoyle flung back his head and shouted with laughter.  Such
+innocence was a supreme joke, especially coming after the serious
+conversation in which he and Clara had aired their fears as to the
+result of their incursion into theatrical politics.
+
+'She used to be quite pretty,' added Charles.  'What delightful rooms
+you have, my dear.  They're not so warm as my ham and beef shop.'
+
+'Listen to me, Charles,' said Verschoyle.  'This is serious.  I don't
+care about you.  Nothing could hurt you.  I don't believe you know half
+the time what is going on under your nose, but it is vitally serious
+for Clara.  This business must be stopped....  If we can't buy these
+people off then I'll give you two hundred to clear out.'
+
+'Clear out?' faltered Charles, 'but--my _Tempest_ is just coming on.
+I'm----'
+
+Verschoyle took up the letter and noted the address, one of the musical
+comedy theatres.
+
+'Have you heard from Mr Clott lately?'
+
+'No.  His name is Cumberland now, you know.  He came into money.  He
+said he would come back to me when I had my own theatre.'
+
+'Theatre be damned.  I wanted to know if he's still blackmailing you.'
+
+'Blackmail?  Oh, no.'
+
+'Don't you mind people blackmailing you?'
+
+'If people are made like that.'
+
+'Ah!'  Verschoyle gave an indescribable gurgle of impatience.  'Look
+here, Mann, do try to realise the position.  You can't get rid of this
+woman whatever she does because you have treated marriage as though you
+could take a wife as if it were no more than buying a packet of
+cigarettes.'
+
+'I have never thought of Clara as my wife.'
+
+'How then?'
+
+'As Clara,' said Charles simply.  'She is a very great artist.'
+
+Verschoyle was baffled, but Clara forgave Charles all his folly for the
+sake of his simplicity.  It was true.  The mistake was hers.  What he
+said was unalterably true.  She was Clara Day, an artist, and he had
+loved her as such.  As woman he had not loved her or any other....
+What in the ordinary world passed for love simply did not exist for him
+at all.
+
+She turned to Verschoyle.
+
+'Please do what you can for us,' she said.  'And Charles, please don't
+try to think of it in anybody else's way but your own.  I won't let
+them send you to prison.  They don't want to do that.  They would much
+rather have you great and powerful so as to bleed you....'
+
+'It has been very wonderful since you came, chicken,' he said.  'I'm
+ten times the man I was.  It seems so stupid that because we went into
+a dingy office and gabbled a few words we shouldn't be able to be
+together....  I sometimes wish we were back in France or Italy in a
+studio, with a bird in a cage, and you dancing about, making me laugh
+with happiness....'
+
+'I'll see my lawyer,' said Verschoyle.
+
+'For Heaven's sake, don't!' cried Clara.  'Once the lawyers get hold of
+it, they'll heap the fire up and throw the fat on it.'
+
+'I'm sorry I forgot myself....  You're a good fellow, Charles, but so
+damned silly that you don't deserve your luck.'
+
+They shook hands on it and Verschoyle withdrew, leaving Charles and
+Clara to make what they could of the confusion in which they were
+plunged....  Charles's way out of it was simply to ignore it.  If
+people would not or could not live in his fancy world, so much the
+worse for them.  He did not believe that anything terrible could happen
+to him simply because, though calamities of the most serious nature had
+befallen him, he had hardly noticed them.  He could forget so easily.
+He could withdraw and live completely within himself.
+
+He sat at the table and began to draw, and was immediately entirely
+absorbed.
+
+'Don't you feel it any more than that, Charles?' she asked.
+
+'If people like to make a fuss, let them,' he said.  'It is their way
+of persuading themselves that they are important....  If they put me in
+prison, I should just draw on the walls with a nail, and the time would
+soon go by.  The difference between us and them is that they are in a
+hurry and we are not.  There won't be much left of my _Tempest_ by the
+time they've done with it....  The electricians have secret
+instructions from Butcher.  There was nothing about lighting in my
+contract, so it is to be his and not mine, as if a design could stand
+without the lighting planned for it....  There are to be spot-lines on
+Sir Henry and Miranda and you, if he is still pleased with you....'
+
+Charles was talking in a cold, unmoved voice, but she knew that there
+must have been a furious tussle.  She was up in arms at once,--
+
+'It is disgraceful!' she cried.  'What is the good of his pretending to
+let you work in his theatre if you can have nothing as you wish it?'
+
+'He believes in actors,' said Charles, 'People with painted faces and
+painted souls, people whose minds are daubed with paint, whose eyes are
+sealed with it, whose ears are stopped with it....'
+
+'Am I one of them?' she asked plaintively.
+
+'No!  Never!  Never!' he said, looking up from his drawing.  'They'll
+turn us into a success, chicken, but they won't let us do what we want
+to do....  I shan't go near the place again.  But you are Ariel, and
+without you there can be no _Tempest_.'
+
+'I'll go through with it,' she said, her will setting.  'I'll go
+through with it, and I'll make nonsense of everything but you....
+You've done all you can, Charles.  Just go on working.  That's the only
+thing, the only thing....'
+
+As she said these words, she thought of Rodd with an acute hostility
+that amounted almost to hatred.  It was the meeting with him that had
+so confounded all her aims, that sudden plunge into humanity with him
+that had so exposed her to love that even Verschoyle's tone had changed
+towards her....  With Charles, love was as impersonal as a bird's song.
+It was only a call to her swift joy and claimed nothing for himself,
+though, perhaps, everything for his art.  That was where he was so
+baffling.  He expected the whole world to accept service under his
+banner, and was so confident that in time it would do so that no rebuff
+ruffled him.
+
+Clara was tempted to accept his point of view, and to run all risks to
+serve him; but she realised now, as he did not, the forces arrayed
+against him.  There was no blinking the fact that what the
+Butcher-Bracebridge combination detested was being forced to take him
+seriously: him or anything else under the sun.  Even the public upon
+which they fawned was only one of several factors in their calculations.
+
+'It will all come right, Charles,' she said.  'I am sure it will all
+come right.  We won't give in.  They have diluted you----'
+
+'Diluted?' he exclaimed.  'Butchered!'
+
+She admired him for accepting even that, but, in spite of herself, it
+hurt her that he still had no thought for her, but to him only artistic
+problems were important.  The problems of life must be left to solve
+themselves.  She could not help saying,--
+
+'You ought not to leave everything to me, Charles.'
+
+'You can handle people.  I can't.  I thought I was going to be rich,
+but there's no money.  And even if this affair is a success I shall be
+ashamed of it....  I think I shall write to the papers and repudiate
+it.  But it is the same everywhere.  People take my ideas and vulgarise
+them.  Actors are the same everywhere.  They will leave nothing to the
+audience.  They want to be adored for the very qualities they have
+lost.'
+
+'You don't blame me, then?'
+
+'Blame?  What's the good of blaming any one.  It doesn't help.  It
+makes one angry.  There is a certain pleasure in that, but it doesn't
+help.'
+
+It was brought home to her, then, that all her care for his
+helplessness was in vain.  He neither needed nor looked for help.  It
+was all one to him whether he lived in magnificence in a furnished
+house or in apartments over a cook-shop.
+
+'I've a good mind to disown the whole production now,' he said.
+
+'No.  No.  They will do all they can to hurt you then....  I think they
+know.'
+
+'Know what?'
+
+'That you have a wife.'
+
+He brought his fist down with such a crash on the frail table that it
+cracked right across, and Clara was sickeningly alarmed when she saw
+his huge hands grip the table on either side and rend it asunder.
+There was something terrible and almost miraculous in his enormous
+physical vitality, and his waste of it now in such a petty act of rage
+forced her to admit that which she had been attempting to suppress, the
+thought of Rodd, and she was compelled now to compare the two men.  So
+she saw Charles more clearly, and had to acknowledge to herself how
+fatally he lacked moral force.  She trembled as it was made plain to
+her that the old happy days could never come again, and that the child
+who had believed in him so implicitly was gone for ever.  She had the
+frame, the mind, the instinct of a woman, and these things could no
+longer be denied.
+
+When his rage was spent, she determined to give him one more chance,--
+
+'We can win through, Charles.  We have Verschoyle backing us.  I accept
+my responsibility, and I will be a wife to you.'
+
+'For God's sake, don't talk like that.  I want you to be as you were,
+adorable, happy, free.'
+
+She shook her head slowly from side to side.
+
+Charles, offended, went out.  She heard him go blundering down the
+stairs and out into the street.
+
+She turned to her couch by the window and lay looking at the sun
+setting behind the roofs, chimneys, and towers of London.  Amethyst and
+ruddy was the sky: smoked yellow and amber: blue and green, speckled
+with little dark clouds.  She drank in its beauty, and lost herself in
+the dying day, aching at heart because there was nowhere in humanity a
+beauty of equal power in which she could lose herself, but everywhere
+barriers of egoism, intrigue, selfish calculation....  She thought of
+the little bookseller in the Charing Cross Road....  'Doing good to
+others is doing good to yourself....'  Ay, but make very sure that you
+are doing good and not well-intentioned harm.
+
+She had meant to help Charles, had sacrificed herself to him, and look
+what had come of it!  Deep within her heart she knew that she had been
+at fault, and that the mischief had been done when she had imposed her
+will on him....  As a child she had been brought up in the Catholic
+faith, and she had still some remnants of a religious conscience, and
+to this now she whispered that this was the sin against the Holy Ghost,
+for one person to impose his will on that of another.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN BLOOMSBURY
+
+At the same time, in his attic, Rodd was pacing up and down his empty
+room, surveying the impotence to which he had reduced both his life and
+his work by his refusal to accept the social system of his time.  His
+work was consciously subversive, and therefore unprofitable: his life
+was nothing.  He was a solitary in London, as though he spoke a
+language which no one understood.  So indeed he did.  His words had
+meanings for him to which no one else had the smallest clue, for they
+referred rather to his imagined world than to any actuality.
+
+Hitherto that had troubled him not at all.  Spinoza, Kant, Galileo had
+all talked a language unintelligible to their contemporaries, and with
+how many had Nietzsche been able to converse?  The stories had it that
+there was one butcher and he was mad.
+
+Groping with his imagination into the vitals of the society into which
+he had been born, Rodd had consoled himself with the assurance that a
+cataclysm would come to smash the odious system by which the old
+enslaved the young, and that then there would be a cleaner atmosphere
+in which his ideas could live, and his words would be intelligible to
+all, because in it that deeper consciousness which was released in his
+imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and
+stale ideas....  But now the cataclysm had come within himself, and he
+was brought to doubt and self-examination.  Had he not denied too much?
+Had he not carried abnegation too far?  Had he not thwarted powers in
+himself which were essential even to his impersonal purpose?  Was it
+paradoxically true that a man must be a person before he can be
+impersonal?  His empty room, his books, his pile of manuscript!  What a
+life!  Had he after all been only a coward?  Had he only shrunk into
+this silence to avoid the pain and boredom of reiteration?
+
+At first his concern was all with the havoc wrought in his work from
+the moment when Clara swept into his imagination, but he was soon
+compelled to brush that aside and to grapple with the more serious fact
+that she had crept into his heart, which for the first time was active
+and demanding its share in his being.  Then arose the horror that it
+was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary,
+tortured souls, creatures who should be left to eke out their misery in
+private solitude, who had nothing to justify their exhibition to the
+world, who shamelessly reproached their fellows for the results of
+their own weakness, wretched clinging women, men hard as iron in their
+egoism....  His heart could not endure it, but until his heart had
+flooded his vision with its warmth he could not move, could come to no
+decision, except that he must leave the marvellous girl unmolested.
+
+The furious will that had animated him through all his solitary years
+resented this intrusion, and was in revolt against the reason and the
+logic of his heart.  That will in him had reduced the social system to
+its logical end, the destruction of the young by the old, and would
+allow his creative faculty no other material.  It must have nothing but
+a bleak world of bitterness, and this it had imposed upon both his
+happy temperament and his generous heart, so that even in life he had
+been able to exercise nothing but a rather feeble kindness.  His will
+had been to hold up to the world a picture of the end to which it must
+come, since splendour wrung from desolation must end in desolation.
+
+And suddenly his will was defied by this amazing girl, all youth, all
+joy, revealing the eternal loveliness of the human spirit that endures
+though Empires fade away and societies come to chaos.
+
+Very, very slowly, his will, which drew its force from the hypnotic
+influence of horror, was thrust back, and light crept into his imagined
+world, flowers blossomed in it, trees swayed in the wind, larks went
+soaring above green hills blazing with yellow gorse, birds hopped to
+their nests and sang, dogs barked and gambolled with delight--all his
+frozen memories slowly melted, and sweet and simple pleasures came to
+view to make a setting meet for Clara Day.  And he remembered simple
+people with a steady kindness, people like the little bookseller who
+knew their world but believed in its redeeming goodness, people like a
+woman who had once nursed him through a terrible illness and had never
+ceased to pray for him, families where in his lonely youth in London he
+had been welcome--all these he remembered and grouped round Clara to
+make a better and a simpler world.
+
+When his agony had run its course, and his old hypnotic will was
+broken, he told himself that he must be content that Clara should be
+the mistress of his imagination, since he had wrecked his own life and
+had nothing to offer her.  Obviously she had found the world good.
+Nothing in her was theatrical, nothing baffled.  He must reconcile
+himself to the acceptance of those two days with her as in themselves
+perfect, sufficient, and fruitful.  Indeed, what need was there of
+more?  They had met as profoundly as they could ever hope to meet.  She
+would marry her lord, and gather about herself all the good and
+pleasant things of the earth, and he could return to his work and build
+it up anew.
+
+With his rather absurd tendency to generalise from his personal
+experience he told himself that as youth and joy had been liberated
+from his imagined world, so also would they be in the world of
+actuality.  His drooping hopes revived and a new ambition was kindled
+in him.  He paced less rapidly to and fro in his empty room, slowed
+down day by day until he stopped, sat at his table and plunged once
+more into work.  His arrogance reasserted itself, and he told
+himself--as was indeed the case--that he could extract more from a hint
+of experience than the ordinary man could from an overwhelming tragedy.
+
+As he worked, he came more and more to regard his encounter with Clara
+as a holiday adventure.  The Charing Cross Road was to him what Paris
+or the seaside was to the ordinary worker.  The episode belonged to his
+holiday.  It was nothing more, and must be treated as though it had
+happened to some other man: it must be smiled at, treasured for its
+fragrance, blessed for its fertility....  With the new weapon it had
+given him he would return to tobacco and paper, the materials of his
+existence.
+
+He saw her name in the papers, her photograph here and there.  Oh,
+well, she belonged to that world.  No doubt she would amuse herself
+with theatrical success before she fell back upon the title and wealth
+which were laid at her feet.
+
+However, convinced though he was of his renunciation, he could not stay
+away from the bookshop and went there almost every day in the hope of
+meeting her.
+
+One evening as he returned home he met Verschoyle on the doorstep of
+his house, and could not refrain from speaking to him.
+
+'Excuse me,' he said, 'I have seen you sometimes in the bookshop in
+Charing Cross Road.'
+
+'Indeed?' replied Verschoyle, who was looking anxious and worried.
+
+'Yes.  I have seen you there with Miss Day.'
+
+Verschoyle was alert and suspicious at once.  He scanned this strange
+individual but was rather puzzled.
+
+'Do you live here?' he asked.
+
+'On the top floor,' replied Rodd, 'on the top floor--alone--I thought
+you might have been to see me.'
+
+'No, no.  I don't know you.'
+
+'My name is Rodd.'
+
+That conveyed nothing to Verschoyle.
+
+'I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Day at the bookshop.  I thought she
+might have mentioned it.'
+
+'No....  I have been to see a Miss Messenger on the third floor.  Do
+you know her?'
+
+'Slightly.'
+
+'You know nothing about her?'
+
+'Nothing, except that she had a child that died....  I'm afraid I
+didn't even know her name.  I don't bother myself much about my
+neighbours.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Verschoyle.  'Good-night.'
+
+Rodd let himself in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange
+combination of persons.  What on earth could be the link between
+Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable ménage on the third floor?...
+His heart answered ominously: 'Clara.'
+
+He walked slowly up the dark, uncarpeted stairs, and, as he was at the
+bend below the third floor, he heard a shrill scream--a horrid scream,
+full of terror, loathing, contempt.  He rushed up to the door of the
+third floor flat and found it open, stood for a moment, and heard a
+man's voice saying,--
+
+'You shall, you sly cat.  Give it me and you shall do as I tell you.'
+
+'No, no, no!' screamed the woman.  'Mother!'
+
+And another woman's voice, cruel, and harsh, said,--
+
+'Do as he tells you, and don't be a fool!'
+
+There was a scuffle, a fall, a man's heavy breathing, a gurgling sound
+of terror and suffocation.  Rodd walked into the flat, and found the
+woman who waited for him on the stairs lying on the ground, clutching a
+bundle of bank-notes, while a little, mean-looking man was kneeling on
+her chest, half throttling her, and trying to force the notes out of
+her hand.  The woman's mother was standing by shrieking aloud and
+crying,--
+
+'Do as he tells you, you b---- fool!  He knows what's what.  He's got
+these blighters in a corner, and he'll make them pay.'
+
+Rodd flung himself on the man, whom he recognised as the creature he
+and Clara had met on the stairs.  He picked him up and threw him into a
+corner, where he lay, too terrified to move.  The woman lay back
+moaning and rolling her eyes, almost foaming at the mouth.  Her bosom
+heaved and she clutched the notes in her hand more tightly to her....
+Rodd turned to the other two, and said,--
+
+'Get out....'
+
+They obeyed him, and he knelt by the woman and reassured her.
+
+'Come now,' he said, 'out with the whole story before you've begun to
+lie to yourself about it.'
+
+'It's my own money,' she gasped; 'I don't want to do any more.  It's
+all fair and square, if he's paid.  If a feller pays, it's all fair and
+square.'
+
+Rodd accepted the soundness of this rudimentary ethic.
+
+'He wanted half and half, but it's my own money.  I signed a paper for
+it, and I'm not going back on my word.  He wants me to.  He wants me to
+go into the Imperium so that he can get on to some of the swells....'
+
+The Imperium?  Rodd determined that he would have the whole story out.
+He left her for a moment and locked the door.  Then he lifted her into
+a chair--it was a flashy furniture-on-the-hire-system room--gave her a
+dose of brandy and began to ply her with questions,--
+
+'Do you feel better?'
+
+'Much better.  I like being with you.  You're so quiet.  You'd
+understand a girl, you would.  I've often wanted to come and tell
+you....  It fair knocked me silly when I saw you with her.'
+
+'With whom?'
+
+'Charley's girl.'
+
+'Whose?'
+
+'Charley's.  Charley Mann's.  He's my husband.'
+
+Rodd was silent for some moments while he took this in.
+
+'Who is this other--man?' asked Rodd kindly, beginning slowly to piece
+the story together.
+
+'That's Claude....  He was a lodger of mother's before she went broke
+and had to come to live with me.  He never let me alone.  I wanted to
+go straight, I did really....  Charley's not bad, and I thought I
+should never see him again.  I never thought he would make money.  I
+never thought we should see him swanking it in the papers, or I'd never
+have had a word to say to Claude.  I wouldn't really.  Only Charley
+getting married to the other girl----'
+
+It struck Rodd like a blow in the face.  Kitty did not mark the effect
+of her story, and was not concerned with it.  All she felt was relief
+in the telling.
+
+'I wanted money to send mother out of England.  I couldn't stand it any
+more.  If it hadn't been for her there wouldn't have been Claude, and a
+girl at the theatre can have a good time on her own nowadays even with
+a kiddie.  I've often wanted to tell you.'
+
+'Does she know?'
+
+'Charley's girl?  Yes.  She knows.  It's a nice mix-up.  Isn't it?  And
+Charley's not bad.  He'll just lose you same as he would his hat.  No
+offence meant.'
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+'Who gave you the money?'
+
+'A swell.'
+
+'To keep your mouth shut?'
+
+'Yes.  Charley would have to go to prison.  Claude's been in prison.
+That's why he'd like Charley to go.  Everybody who's been to prison is
+like that.  It makes them sly and hard....  But I say that Charley's
+paid: six hundred.  I'd never have got that out of him if I'd stayed
+with him, would I?'
+
+'I suppose not....  If there's any more trouble will you come to me?'
+
+'I'd love to,' she said, perking up and casting at him the sorrowful
+languishing glances with which she had pursued him for so long.
+'Claude says he's pushed her on so quick and he ought to have done the
+same for me....  Claude was at their wedding.  I didn't know him then.
+He's a friend of mother's.  We thought he had money but he hasn't got a
+bean.'
+
+'I'll deal with Claude,' said Rodd.  'And if there is any more trouble,
+mind you come to me.'
+
+'It was all after my baby died,' said Kitty, as if to excuse herself,
+but Rodd had accepted the story, and had no thought of excuse or
+forgiveness.  His thought was all for Clara.
+
+How comic it was that he should have given her Mann's book!  Did she
+love Mann?  She must have done.  She could not have married him
+else....  But then what was Verschoyle to her, that he should have paid
+so large a sum in hush-money?  A furious jealousy swept away what was
+left of Rodd's intellectual world and released at last his passions.
+His mind worked swiftly through the story, picking it up in time with
+every thread.
+
+Was she only an actress?  Was the perfection which he had worshipped a
+figment, a projection of herself in the character most pleasing to his
+idealism?  Impossible!  There can be no feigning of purity, honesty,
+joy.  That is where the pretences of humanity collapse.  In such a
+pretence as that simulated passion--the ultimate baseness, breaks down,
+creates no illusion, and is foiled.
+
+But on the face of it, what an appalling story!  It brought him
+violently to earth.  He could not move, but sat staring at the woman,
+wanting to tell her that she lied, but knowing that she had spoken
+according to the truth of the letter.  Of the truth of the spirit she
+could most patently know nothing.  Her world was composed of dull facts
+and smouldering emotions.  She could know nothing of the world where
+emotions flamed into passion to burn the facts into golden emblems of
+truth.  And that was Clara's world: the world in which for two days he
+had been privileged to dwell, a world in which soul could speak to soul
+and laugh at all the confusion of fact and detail in which they must
+otherwise be ensnared....  Mann, Verschoyle, a swift success in the
+theatre--the facts were of the kind that had induced the horror in
+which until he met her he had lived.  His meeting with her had
+dispelled his horror, but the facts remained.  He in his solitude might
+ignore them and dream on, but could she?  Surely he owed it to her to
+offer her what through her he had won....  And then--to buy off the
+wretched woman, surely she could never have submitted to that!
+
+He began to think of Charles Mann with a blistering, jealous hatred.
+
+'I think I'd have killed myself,' said Kitty, 'if it had gone on.  I
+don't wish them any harm now that he's paid up....  I wouldn't have
+said a word about it to any one, only she's so young.  It did give me a
+bit of a shock, and Charles getting on, too.  He's quite gray and has a
+bit of a stomach.  I never thought he'd be the one to get fat.  I'm all
+skin and bone.  Look at my arms.'
+
+Rodd left her.  When he opened the door he was relieved to find that
+the unpleasant Claude had gone.  Mrs Messenger was sitting by the fire
+in the front room, her skirts tucked up about her knees, and a glass of
+port on the mantelpiece.  She turned her head with a leer and said,--
+
+'Good luck!  I always thought she was keen on you....  It's time she
+settled down.  She was born to be respectable, and to look after a man.
+That's all most girls are fit for.  But in the theatre a girl's got to
+look after number one or go down and out.'
+
+The old woman with the painted face and dyed hair made Rodd's flesh
+creep.  She seemed to him a symbol of all the evil in the world, decay,
+disruption, corruption, and with a flash of inspiration he discerned in
+her the source of all this pitiful tangle of lies.  A tender sympathy
+entirely new to him took possession of his faculties and armed with
+this he determined that he would not fail in whatever part he was
+called upon to play in the drama of Clara's life.
+
+He said to the old woman,--
+
+'We have been talking it over.  We have decided to book you a passage
+to Canada and to give you a hundred pounds with which to keep yourself
+alive until you find work to do.'
+
+'What?' she said, 'me leave London?  Dear old London, dear old
+Leicester Square and the theatres?  And leave you to do what you like
+with my daughter, you dirty dog?  I've seen her nosing round on the
+stairs after you, a feller that lives on bread-and-cheese and
+grape-nuts.  I know your sort, you dirty, interfering blackguard.
+You've never given a girl as much as a drink in your life.'
+
+'All the same,' said Rodd, 'your passage will be booked, and if Mr
+Claude What's-his-name shows his face here there'll be a neck broken on
+the stairs.'
+
+He walked out and heard the old woman gulp down a glass of port and
+say,--
+
+'Well, I'm damned!'
+
+Then, as he moved upstairs to his own room he heard her screaming,--
+
+'Kitty, you filthy little claw-hammer----'
+
+The door was slammed to, and he heard only their voices in bitter
+argument, tears, reproaches, curses; but at last, as he paced to and
+fro in his lonely room, the tumult died down and he could wrestle with
+the new turbulent thoughts awakened in him....  Work was out of the
+question.  He had been clawed back into life.  If he did not want to be
+destroyed he must be profoundly, passionately, and scrupulously honest
+with himself.  He must face his emotions as he had never done.
+
+At first he thought of wildly heroic solutions.  He would seize his
+opportunity with Kitty, take advantage of her soft gratitude and sweep
+her out of harm's way.....  But what was the good of that?  It settled
+nothing, solved nothing.  To act without Clara's knowledge would be to
+betray her.  That he was sure was what Verschoyle had done.
+
+Already he had interfered and there was no knowing what Claude's spite
+might lead to....  O God, what a tangle!  What should be done, what
+could be done, for Clara?  No one mattered but she.  Mann, Verschoyle,
+himself, what did any of them matter?  She was the unique,
+irreplaceable personality.  Of that he was sure.  It was through her
+glorious innocence that all these strange things had happened to her.
+A less generous, a more experienced and calculating woman would have
+known instinctively that there was some queer story behind Charles
+Mann....  She could leap into a man's heart through his mind.  That was
+where she was so dangerous to herself.  The history of his purely
+physical emotions would concern her not at all.  Her own emotions in
+their purity could recognise no separation between body and spirit, nor
+in others could they suspect any division....  Of that he was sure.
+Without that the whole embroglio was fantastic and incredible.  She
+could never in so short a time have achieved what she had done through
+calculation and intrigue.  That kind of success took years of patience
+under checks, rebuffs, and insults....  Everywhere she offered her
+superb youth, and it was taken and used, used for purposes which she
+could not even suspect.  Her youth would be taken, she would be given
+no room, no time in which to develop her talent or her personality.
+
+The way of the world?  It had been the way of the world too long, but
+the strong of heart and the worthy of soul had always resisted or
+ignored it.
+
+Sometimes Rodd thought the only thing to do was to wait, to leave the
+situation to develop naturally.  It would do Mann no great harm to get
+into trouble, but then--Clara would be marked.  All her life she would
+have to fight against misunderstanding....  No, no.  There could be no
+misunderstanding where she was concerned.  Her personality answered
+everything.  It would be fine, it would be splendid, to see her
+overriding all obstacles in her bounteous gift of the treasure that was
+in her to a world that in its worship of self-help and material power
+had forgotten youth, courage, and the supreme power of joy.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+ARIEL
+
+As the days went by and the production came nearer, the Imperium was
+charged with a busy excitement.  The machinery was tightened up, and
+there was no sparing any of the persons concerned.  Rehearsals began at
+ten in the morning, and dragged on through the day, sometimes not
+ending until eleven or twelve at night.  Sir Henry had a thousand and
+one things to do, and was in something of a panic about his own words.
+He would stop in the middle of a lighting rehearsal to remember his
+part and would turn to a scene-shifter or a lime-light man, anybody who
+happened to be by, to ask if that was right, and when they stared at
+him he would lose his temper and say,--
+
+'Shakespeare!  It's Shakespeare!  Everybody knows their Shakespeare.'
+
+Clara took the precaution of learning his part in his scenes with her
+and was able to prompt him when he started fumbling or improvising.  He
+was taut with anxiety, and completely ignored everything not
+immediately bearing on the production, as to which he was obviously not
+easy in his mind.  He talked to himself a good deal, and Clara heard
+him more than once damning Charles under his breath.  In spite of
+herself she was a little hurt that he took no notice of her outside her
+part in the play.  His only concern with the world off the stage was
+through Lady Bracebridge and Lady Butcher, who were vastly busy with
+the dressing of the front of the house and began introducing their
+distinguished aristocratic and political friends at rehearsals, where
+they used to sit in the darkness of the auditorium and say,--
+
+'Too sweet!  Divine, divine!'
+
+It was difficult to see what they could possibly make of the chaos on
+the stage, with actors strolling to and fro mumbling their parts,
+others going through their scenes, carpenters running hither and
+thither, the lights going up and down and changing from blue to amber,
+amber to blue, white, red....  Up to the very last Sir Henry made
+changes, and the more excited he got the further he drifted away from
+the play's dramatic context, and strove to break up the aesthetic
+impression of the whole with innumerable tricks, silences, gestures,
+exaggerated movements of the actors, touches of grotesque and
+irrelevant humour, devices by which Prospero could be in the centre of
+the stage, anything and everything to impose his own tradition and
+personality on both Shakespeare and Charles.
+
+Clara was thankful that Charles had quarrelled with him and was not
+there to see.  Sir Henry was like a man possessed.  He worked in a
+frenzy to retrieve the situation, and to recover the ground he had
+lost; and he only seemed sure of himself in his scenes with Ariel, and
+over them he went again and again, not for a moment sparing Clara or
+thinking of the physical effort so much repetition entailed for her.
+
+She did not object.  It was a great relief to go to her rooms, worn
+out, and to lie, unable to think, incapable of calculation, lost to
+everything except her will to play Ariel with all the magic and
+youthful vitality she possessed.  Everything outside the play had
+disappeared for her, too.  That so much of Charles's work should be
+submerged hurt her terribly and she blamed herself, but for that was
+only the more determined to retrieve the situation with her own art, to
+which, as Sir Henry revered it, he clung.  She knew that and was
+determined not to fail.  However much Charles's work was mutilated, her
+success--if she won it--would redeem his plight.
+
+Therefore she surrendered herself absolutely to the whirling chaos of
+the rehearsals, from which it seemed impossible that order could ever
+come.  She ordered her own thoughts by doing the obvious thing, reading
+the play until she was soaked with it.  No one else apparently had done
+that and, as she grew more familiar with it and more intimate with its
+spirit, she began to doubt horribly whether Charles had done so either.
+His scenery seemed as remote from that spirit as Sir Henry's theatrical
+devices, and almost equally an imposition.  As she realised this she
+was forced to see how completely she was now detached from Charles, and
+also, to her suffering, how she had laid herself open to the charge of
+having used him, though he, in his generous simplicity, would never see
+it in that light or bring any accusation against her....  She blamed
+herself far more for what she had done to Rodd.  That, she knew, was
+serious, and the more intimate she became with Shakespeare's genius the
+more she understood the havoc she must have wrought in Rodd's life.
+
+How strange was this world of Prime Ministers and actor-managers which
+dominated London and in which London acquiesced; very charming, very
+delightful, if only one could believe in it, or could accept that it
+was the best possible that London could throw up.  But if it was so,
+what need was there of so much advertising, paragraphing, interviewing?
+Which was the pretence, the theatre or the world outside it?  Which
+were the actresses, she and Julia Wainwright and the rest, or Lady
+Butcher and Lady Bracebridge?  And in fine, was it all, like everything
+else, only a question of money?  Verschoyle's money?  And if Verschoyle
+paid, why was he shoved aside so ignominiously?
+
+Clara shivered as she thought of the immense complication of what
+should be so simple and true and beautiful....  But what alternative
+was there?  This elaboration and corruption of the theatre or the
+imagination working freely in an empty room.
+
+She could see no other.  Rodd's terrible concentration ending in
+impotence or the dissipation of real powers, as in Butcher and Mann, in
+fantasy.
+
+Absorbed in her work, intent upon the forthcoming production, she was
+detached from them all and could at last discover how little any of
+them needed her.  She could not really enter into their work though all
+three had been disturbed by her and diverted for a time at least from
+their habitual purposes....  What mattered in each of the three men was
+the artist, and in each the artist was fettered by life.  She had
+promised them release only to plunge them into greater difficulties.
+
+She brooded over herself, wondering what she was, and how she came to
+be so unconcerned with things that to other women seemed paramount.  It
+was nothing to her that Charles had a wife.  It had all happened long
+before he met her, and was no affair of hers....  That Sir Henry should
+make love to her was merely comic.  She could not even take advantage
+of it, for in that direction she could not move at all.  Instinctively
+she knew that her sex was given her for one purpose only, and that the
+highest, and she could not turn it to any base or material use.  While
+she adhered to this she could be Ariel, pure spirit to dominate her
+life and direct her will, which no power on earth could break....  How
+came she to be so free, and so foreign to the world of women?  Her
+upbringing!  Her early independence!  Or some new spirit stirring in
+humanity?
+
+Already she had caught from Rodd his habit of generalising from his own
+experience, and in her heart she knew it, knew that she had begun what
+might prove to be her real life with him, but, caught up as she had
+been in Mann's schemes and dreams and visions, she would not accept
+this until all the threads were snapped.  Being frank with herself, she
+knew that she desired and intended to snap them, but in her own time
+and with as little hurt as possible to those concerned....  Meanwhile
+it was wonderful, it was almost intoxicatingly comic to carry all the
+confused facts of her own life into the ordered world where she was
+Ariel and to imagine Mann, for instance, discoursing of birds and
+fishes to Trinculo and Stephano, or Rodd, with his passionate dreams of
+a sudden jet of loveliness in a desert of misery comparing notes with
+good Gonzalo, while she, both as Clara Day and as Ariel, danced among
+them and played freakish tricks upon them, and lured them on to believe
+that all kinds of marvels would come to pass and then bring them back
+to their senses to discover that she was after all only a woman, and
+that the marvels they looked for from her were really in themselves.
+
+So she dallied with her power, not quite knowing what she wished to do
+with it, and, as she dallied, she became more conscious of her force,
+and she grew impatient with her youth which had been her undoing, so
+easily given, so greedily accepted.  No one but Rodd had seen beyond it
+and, for a while, she detested him for having done so....  Nothing had
+gone smoothly since her meeting with him.  The pace of events had
+quickened until it was too fast even for her, and she could do nothing
+but wait, nothing but fall back upon Ariel.
+
+The dress rehearsal dragged through a whole day and most of a night.
+It hobbled along.  Nothing was right.  Sir Henry could hardly remember
+a word of his part.  Ferdinand's wig was a monstrosity.  Miranda looked
+like the fairy-queen in a provincial pantomime.  There was hardly a
+dress to which Lady Butcher did not take exception, though she passed
+Clara's sky-blue and silver net as 'terribly attractive.' ...  Clara
+delighted in the freedom of her fairy costume.  Her lovely slim figure
+showed to perfection.  She moved like the wind, like a breeze in long
+silvery grass.  She gave the impression of movement utterly free of her
+body, which melted into movement, and was lost in it.  The stage-island
+was then to her really an island, the power of Prospero was true magic,
+the air was drenched with sea-salt, heavy, rich, pregnant with
+invisible life urging into form and issuing sometimes in strange music,
+mysterious voices prophesying in song, and plaints of woe from life
+that could find no other utterance....  Ah!  How free she felt as all
+this power of fancy seized her and bore her aloft and laid her open to
+all the new spirit, all the promise of the new life that out of the
+world came thrilling into this magical universe.  How free she felt and
+how oblivious of her surroundings!  There was that in her that nothing
+could destroy, something more than youth, deeper than joy which is no
+more than the lark's song showering down through the golden air of
+April....  Here in her freedom she knew herself, a soul, a living soul,
+with loving laughter accepting the life ordained for it by Providence,
+but dominating it, shaping it, moulding it, filling it with love until
+it brimmed over and spilled its delight upon surrounding life to make
+it also free and fruitful.
+
+Julia Wainwright caught her in the wings, and pressed her to her bosom,
+and exclaimed,--
+
+'Oh, my dear, you will be famous--famous.  They'll be on their knees to
+you in New York.'
+
+And Freeland Moore, dressed for the part of Caliban, said,--
+
+'This isn't going to be Sir Henry's or Mann's show.  It is going to be
+Clara Day's.'
+
+The good creatures!  It was only a show to them, and they were elated
+and happy to think of the thousands and thousands of pounds, dollars,
+francs, roubles, and marks that would be showered on their friend.
+With such a success as they now dreamed the trouble they had dreaded
+for her would make no difference.  A 'story' would be even valuable.
+
+But what had Ariel to do with pounds and dollars, roubles and marks?
+Ariel asked nothing but freedom after ages pining in a cloven pine....
+In this world of money and machinery and intrigue to control machinery
+with money, to be free was the deep and secret desire of all humanity.
+Here in London hearts ached and souls murmured to be free, only to be
+free, for one moment at whatever cost of tears and suffering and bloody
+agony.  All this in her heart Clara knew, she knew it from her meeting
+with Rodd, from her solitary brooding in her room, from the drunken
+women fighting in the street, from the uncontrolled fantasy in Charles
+Mann, from the boredom that ate away poor Verschoyle's heart; and all
+the knowledge of her adventurous life she gathered up to distil it into
+the delight of freedom, for its own sake and also for the sake of the
+hereafter which, if there be no moment of freedom, no flowering of
+life, must sink into a deeper and more miserable slavery.
+
+In this mood it was pathetic to see Sir Henry, whose whole power lay in
+machinery, pretending as Prospero to rule by magic.  So pathetically
+out of place was he that he could not even remember the words that so
+mightily revealed his authority....  When he broke down, he would
+declare that it was quite a simple matter to improvise blank verse....
+But Clara would not let him improvise.  She was always ready with the
+words, the right inevitable words.  She would not let him impair her
+freedom with his lazy reliance upon the machinery of the theatre to
+pull him through, and so, when he opened his mouth and looked vague,
+and covered the absence of words with a large gesture, she was ready
+for him.
+
+He reproved her.
+
+'I am always like this at a dress rehearsal.  Dress rehearsals are
+always terrible.  The production seems to go altogether to pieces, but
+it is always there on the night.  A good dress rehearsal means a bad
+first night.'
+
+But Clara refused to allow any of her scenes to go to pieces, and they
+were applauded by the Butcher-Bracebridge fashionables who sat in the
+stalls.  Lady Butcher called out,--
+
+'It will be one of the best things you have ever done,' and her son's
+voice was heard booming, 'Hear, hear!  Good old pater.'
+
+Verschoyle had dropped in, but he was captured by Lady Bracebridge and
+her daughter, and had to sit between them while they scandalised Clara.
+According to them she had run away from home and had led an
+unmentionable life in Paris, actually having been a member of a low
+company of French players; and she had married but had run away from
+her husband with Charles Mann, etc., etc.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said Verschoyle, 'but Miss Day is a friend of
+mine.'
+
+'One admires her frankness so much,' said Lady Bracebridge.
+'Adventures like that make an actress so interesting.'
+
+'But this is her first appearance in any theatre.'
+
+Lady Bracebridge looked incredulous.  She put up her lorgnette and
+scanned Clara, who had just floated across the stage followed by
+Trinculo and Stephano.
+
+'She is born to it....  I know what the French theatre is like.  They
+are so sensible, don't expect anything else of their actresses.'
+
+Verschoyle saw that it was useless to argue.  Women will never
+relinquish their jealousy.  He shifted uneasily in his seat: Lady
+Bracebridge was a great deal too clever for him and he saw himself
+being thrust against his will into marriage with her daughter, who had
+an affectation of cleverness and maddened him with remarks like,--
+
+'That Ariel costume would make the sweetest dinner-frock.  If I have
+one made, will you take me to Murray's?'
+
+'Certainly not,' said Verschoyle.
+
+Clara in her pure girlish voice had just sung 'Full fathom five thy
+father lies,' when Lady Bracebridge, in her most strident voice, which
+went ringing through the theatre, said,--
+
+'I hear Charles Mann has a real wife who is _raging_ with jealousy,
+simply raging.  The most extraordinary story.'
+
+Clara stopped dead, stood looking helplessly round, pulled herself
+together, and went on with the part.  Verschoyle deliberately got up
+and walked out and round to the stage door, where already he found Lady
+Butcher in earnest converse with Sir Henry,--
+
+'We can't have a scandal in the theatre, Henry.  Everybody heard
+her....'
+
+'The wicked old devil.  Why didn't she keep her mouth shut?'
+
+'She hates this girl you are all so crazy about....  Everybody heard
+her.  You can't keep a thing like that quiet once it has been said
+publicly.'
+
+'But she is wonderful, the most delicate Ariel.  Mann isn't worrying
+us.  I cleared him out.'
+
+'Excuse me,' said Verschoyle, intervening.  'I can assure you there
+will be no trouble.  I have seen to that.  You have nothing to fear.'
+
+'How sweet of you!  Then I can tell everybody there is not a word of
+truth in it.'
+
+Verschoyle turned his back on them, and went in search of Clara, whom
+he found trembling with fury on the stairs leading from her
+dressing-room to the stage.
+
+'How dare you let that woman insult me publicly?' she cried.  'How dare
+you?  How dare you?  You ought to have killed her.'
+
+Verschoyle stammered,--
+
+'One can't kill people in the stalls of a London theatre.'
+
+'She ought not to be allowed to live.  Publicly!  In the middle of the
+play! ...  Either she or I will leave the theatre.'
+
+'I'll see what I can do,' he mumbled, 'only for God's sake don't make
+it worse than it is....  Your only answer can be to ignore her.  She'll
+be crawling to you in a few months, for you are marvellous.'
+
+Clara saw that he was right.  To match herself against the
+scandal-monger would be to step down to her level.  To reassure her,
+Verschoyle told her how he had been to Bloomsbury to settle matters.
+
+'Where?' she asked.
+
+He described the square and the house, and at once she had a foreboding
+of disaster.
+
+'Did you see any one else?'
+
+'A queer fish I met at the door, with eyes that looked clean through
+me, and that little squirt Clott.  He is at the bottom of it all.'
+
+Clara gave a little moan.
+
+'O-oh!  Why does everybody hate Charles so?  Everybody betrays him....'
+
+'Oh, come,' said Verschoyle, 'he isn't exactly thoughtful for other
+people, is he?'
+
+'That doesn't matter.  Charles is Charles, and he must and shall
+succeed.'
+
+'Not if it smashes you.'
+
+'Even if it smashes me.'
+
+He took her hands and implored her to be sensible.
+
+'You lovely, lovely child,' he said, 'if Charles can't succeed off his
+own bat, surely, surely it means that there is something wrong with
+him.  Why should you suffer?  Why should you be exposed all your life
+to taunts and success and insults like that just now?  It is all so
+unnecessary....  I'll go and see Charles.  I'll tell him what has
+happened and that he may be given away at any moment now.'
+
+'But why should they hate Charles?'
+
+'It isn't Charles, darling.  It is you they hate.  You are too young,
+too beautiful.  These women who have lied and intrigued all their lives
+can't forgive your frankness.'
+
+'They can't forgive my being friends with you....  Oh! don't talk to me
+about it any more.  I hate it all.  So disgusting it is.'
+
+'I want Charles to clear out.  He can go to Paris and come back if this
+blows over.'
+
+'I want him to be here to-morrow night.  I want everybody to
+acknowledge that all this is his work.  There's to be a supper
+to-morrow night after the performance.  I want him to be there.'
+
+Verschoyle shrugged his shoulders.  He knew that opposition only made
+her more obstinate.
+
+'Very well,' he said, and he returned to the stalls where he made
+himself exceedingly agreeable to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter,
+hoping to prevent any further outburst of jealousy.  Lady Bracebridge
+was mollified and said presently,--
+
+'After all, these things are nobody's affair but their own.  I do think
+the scenery is perfectly delightful, though I can't say it is my idea
+of Caliban.  But Henry is delightful.  He reminds me so much of General
+Booth.'
+
+Clara stood free of all this foolish world of scandal and jealousy.
+She had the answer to it all in herself.  Whatever Clara Day had done,
+Ariel was free and unattainable.  She could achieve utter forgetfulness
+of self, she could be born again in this miraculous experience for
+which she had striven.  As Ariel she could lead these mortals a dance.
+
+          'So I charmed their ears,
+  That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through
+  Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,
+  Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them
+  I' the filthy-mantled pool....'
+
+
+The pool of scandal: drowned in their own foul words.
+
+She plied her art, and even in the confusion of the dress rehearsal was
+the most delicate Ariel, so lithe, so lissom, that it seemed she must
+vanish into the air like the floating feathered seeds of full
+summer....  Abandoned to the sweet sea-breezes of the play she felt
+that the hard crust upon the world must surely break to let this
+spilling beauty pour into its heart.  Surely, surely, she and Charles
+could have no enemies.
+
+They meant nothing but what Charles had proposed at his absurd
+dinner--love: an airy magical love....  If only people would not
+interfere.  She had proposed to herself to give Charles his triumph and
+then to settle his foolish mundane affairs.  She knew she could do it,
+if only Verschoyle and these others would not complicate them still
+further.  As for Charles being sent away to Paris, that was nonsense,
+sheer nonsense, that he should be ruined because he had a worthless
+woman who could, if she chose, use his name....
+
+She was still being carried along by her set will to force London to
+acknowledge Charles as its king, and, being so near success, she was
+possessed by her own determination, and did not know to what an extent
+she had denied her own emotions, and how near she was to that
+obliteration of personal life which reduces an artist to a painted
+mummer.  She was terribly tired after the dress rehearsal.  Her head
+ached and her blood drummed behind her eyes.  Sir Henry came to see her
+in her room, and kissed her hands, went on his knees, and paid his
+homage to her.
+
+She said,--
+
+'You owe everything to Charles Mann.  He found me in a studio in Paris
+when I was very miserable and let me live in his art.  I don't want you
+to quarrel with him.  We've got to keep him safe, because there aren't
+many Charleses and I want you to ask him to supper to-morrow night....
+I won't come if he doesn't.'
+
+'I can feel success in the air,' said Sir Henry.  'It is like the old
+days.  But suppose--er--something happened to him.'
+
+Clara laughed, a thin, tired laugh.  She was so weary of them harping
+on the silly story.
+
+'I should go and tell them the truth, that I made him marry me and
+they'd let him go,' she said.
+
+'It's such a waste of you,' said Sir Henry, sighing.  'You're not in
+love with him.'
+
+She stared at him in astonishment.
+
+'No,' she said, shocked into speaking the truth of her heart.
+
+He crushed her in his arms, kissed her, gave a fat sigh, and staggered
+dramatically from the room.  He had kissed her neck, her arms, her
+hands.  She rushed to her basin and washed them clean....  Shaking with
+disgust and anger, she gazed at herself in her mirror, and was startled
+at the reflection.  It was not Ariel that she saw, but Clara Day, a new
+Clara, a girl who stared in wonder at herself, gazed into her own eyes
+and through them, deep into her heart, and knew that she was in love.
+Her hand went to her throat to caress its whiteness.  She shivered and
+shook herself free at last of all the obsessions that had crowded in
+her mind for so long, and she lost all knowledge of her surroundings
+and she could hear Rodd's beautiful deep voice saying,--
+
+'Ay, that's it, to learn the tricks and keep decent.  That's what one
+stands out for.'
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SUCCESS
+
+The Imperium was at its most brilliant for the first performance.  Lady
+Butcher had done her work well, and the people crowded in the pit had a
+good show for their money even before the curtain rose.  The orchestra
+hidden away beneath gay greenery discoursed light music as the great
+men and the lovely women of the hour entered in their fine array,
+conscious of being themselves, hoping to be recognised as such.  Actors
+who had retired with titles had come to support Sir Henry by
+encouraging in the audience the habit of applause.  Successful
+politicians entered the stalls as though they were walking out upon the
+platform at a great meeting.  They stood for a moment and surveyed the
+assembly with a Gladstonian aquiline eye.  Their wives blushed with
+pride in their property if their husbands were recognised and raised a
+buzz....  Lady Butcher, with her son, occupied one stage-box, and on
+the opposite side were Lady Bracebridge, her daughter, and, through a
+nice calculation on his part, Lord Verschoyle....  There were many
+Jews, some authors, a few painters, critics casting listless eyes upon
+these preliminary histrionics, women-journalists taking notes of the
+frocks worn by the eminent actresses and no less eminent wives of
+Cabinet Ministers ... a buzz of voices, a fluttering of fans, the
+twittering and hissing of whispered scandal, the cold venom that creeps
+in the veins of the society of the mummers....  There were magnificence
+and luxury, but beneath it all was the deadly stillness of which
+Charles had complained that night on St James's Bridge.  Before the
+curtain rose, Clara could feel it....  Her dreams of a vast
+enthusiastic audience perished as soon as she set foot on the stage to
+make sure that Charles's scenery was properly set up.
+
+He walked on to the stage at the same moment, looked round, shook out
+his mane and snorted.
+
+'The lighting kills it,' he said.
+
+Clara went to him.
+
+'You see, Charles, it has come true.'
+
+'Half-true.  Half-true.'
+
+'Do you feel anything wrong with the audience?'
+
+'No.  I have had a peep at it.  All the swells are there, but none of
+the brains.'
+
+Clara laughed at him.
+
+'It's good-bye, Charles.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'It can never be the same again....  I'm not the same.'
+
+'What do you mean?' he asked, in alarm.
+
+'I'll tell you after the performance.  Where are you sitting?'
+
+'I'm in the Author's box.'
+
+'With his ghost?'
+
+'No.  He has only turned in his grave.'
+
+The stage-hands were pretty alert and busy for the shipwreck, which
+Charles had contrived very simply: a darkened stage, a mast with a
+lamp, which was to sway and founder, and low moving clouds.
+
+Clara and he parted.  The music ceased.  The storm broke and the
+curtain rose.
+
+After a few moments the novelty of the ship scene wore off, a certain
+section of the audience, perceiving how it was done laughed at the
+simplicity of it and another section cried 'Hush.'  The play had to
+proceed to a divided house.
+
+The bold sweep of Charles's design for the island-cell carried in spite
+of the lighting and was applauded, but, as usual with English actors,
+the pace was slow and the verse was ponderously spoken.  Lady
+Bracebridge's sense of caricature was almost infallible.  Sir Henry as
+Prospero did look exactly like General Booth and again a section of the
+audience laughed.  They had come to laugh, as the English always do, at
+novelty, and they went on laughing until Miranda was put to sleep.
+
+Clara, put to the challenge of this audience, summoned up every ounce
+of her vitality and did coldly and consciously what before she had done
+almost in an ecstacy.  In the full light, before the huge audience she
+felt that the play was betrayed, that there are some things too holy to
+be made public....  She loathed that audience, tittering and giggling.
+Her entrance was almost a contemptuous command to bid them be silent,
+with her wild hair fiercely flying as she danced, every step taken
+lightly as though she were dropping from a friendly wind.
+
+
+  'All hail, great master! grave sir, hail!  I come
+  To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
+  To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
+  On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
+  Ariel and all his quality.'
+
+
+She stood poised as she had stood on the crag in Westmorland.  Even in
+her stillness there was the very ecstacy of movement, for nothing in
+her was still....  A great sigh of pleasure came from the audience,
+and, with a movement that was imperceptible and yet made itself felt,
+she turned into a thing of stone, and uttered in an unearthly voice her
+description of the storm.
+
+'Damme!' said Prospero, under his breath.  'You've got them.'
+
+She had, but she despised so easy a conquest.  This audience was like a
+still pool.  It trembled with pleasure as an impression was thrown into
+it like a stone.  She could only move its stillness, not touch its
+heart.  She despised what she was doing, but went through with it
+loyally because she was pledged to it.
+
+Her first scene with Prospero was applauded with an astonished
+enthusiasm.  Her youth, her simplicity, her grace, had given these
+metropolitans a new pleasure, a new sensation.  It was no more than
+that.  She knew it was no more.  She was angry with the applause which
+interrupted the play.  The insensibility of the audience had turned her
+into a spectacle.  Her very quality had separated her from the rest of
+the performance, and in her heart she knew that she had failed.  There
+was no play: there were only three personalities on exhibition--Sir
+Henry Butcher, Charles, and herself.  Shakespeare, as Charles had said,
+had only turned in his grave.  Shakespeare, who was the poet of these
+people, was ignored by them in favour of the personalities of the
+interpreters.  There was no altering that.  She had made so vivid an
+impression that the audience delighted in her and not in her
+contribution to the whole enchantment of the play.  That was broken
+even for her, and as the evening wore on she ceased even to herself to
+be Ariel and was forced to be Clara Day, displayed in public.
+
+She loathed it, and yet she had no sense of declension.  No enchanted
+illusion had been established.  Charles Mann's scenery remained
+only--scenery.  Sir Henry Butcher and the rest of his company were only
+actors--acting.  A troupe of performing animals would have been more
+entertaining: indeed, in her bitter disappointment, Clara felt that she
+was one of such a troupe, the lady in tights who holds the hoops
+through which the dogs and monkeys jump....  So powerful was this anger
+in her that after a while she began to burlesque herself, to exaggerate
+her movement, and to keep her voice down to a childish treble, and the
+audience adored her.  They turned her into a show, a music-hall turn,
+at the expense of the magical poetry of Shakespeare's farewell to his
+art....  She could not too wildly caricature herself, and as she often
+did when she was angry she talked to herself in French:--'_Voila ce
+qu'il vous faut_!  Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'--How they gulped down her
+songs!  How they roared and bellowed when she danced--the delicious,
+wonderful girl!
+
+She would not have done it had she known that Rodd was in front.  He
+had decided to go at the last moment, to see her, as he thought for the
+last time, before she was delivered up to the public....  He knew its
+voracity.  He knew the use to which the theatre was put, to keep the
+public drugged, to keep it drowned beneath the leagues and leagues of
+the stale waters of boredom.  He knew perfectly well that nothing could
+shift them out of it, that any awakening was too painful for them to
+endure, and that there was no means of avoiding this constant sacrifice
+of personality after personality, talent after talent, victim after
+victim.  He had hoped against hope that Clara, being what she was,
+would save herself in time, but he had decided that he had no right to
+interfere, or to offer his assistance.  Against a machine like the
+Imperium, what could youth do?  He credited her with the boundless
+confidence of youth, but he knew that she would be broken.
+
+He had a seat at the back of the dress circle, and he suffered agonies.
+Mann's scenery annoyed him.  The fellow had dramatic imagination, but
+what was the good of expressing it in paint and a structure of canvas
+and wood without reference to the actors?  For that was what Charles
+did.  He left nothing to the play.  His scenery in its way was as
+oppressive as the old realism; indeed it was the old realism standing
+on its head....  It called attention to itself and away from the drama.
+
+Rodd caught his breath when Clara first appeared.  He thought for a
+moment that she must succeed, and that the rest of the company, even
+the scenery, must be caught up into the beauty she exhaled.  But the
+electricians were too much for her.  They followed her with spot-limes
+and gave her no play of light and shadow....  That, Rodd knew, was
+Butcher, exploiting his new discovery, thrusting it down the public's
+greedy maw.  The ruthlessness of it!  This exquisite creature of
+innocence, this very Ariel, born at last in life to leap forth from the
+imagination that had created her, this delicious spirit of freedom,
+come to beckon the world on to an awakening from its sloth and shame!
+To be used to feed the appetite for sensation and novelty!
+
+Rodd saw how she suffered, saw how as the entertainment proceeded the
+wings of her spirit shrivelled and left her with nothing but her talent
+and her will.  Nothing in all his life had hurt him more....  And he,
+too, felt the deadly stillness of this audience, for all its excitement
+and uproarious enthusiasm.  He was aware of something predatory and
+vulturine in it, the very hideous quality that in his own work he had
+portrayed so exactly that no one could endure it, and his own soul had
+sickened and grown weary until the day when he had met this child of
+freedom....  It was as though he saw her being done to death before his
+eyes, and this appalling experience took on a ghastly symbolical
+significance--richness and lewdness crushing out of existence their
+enemies youth and joy.  Towards that this London was drifting.  It had
+no other purpose....  Ay, this audience was Caliban, coveting Miranda,
+hating Ariel, lusting to murder Ferdinand--youth, enchantment, love,
+all were to be done to death.  Clara's performance was to him like the
+last choking song of youth.  It should have been, he knew she meant it
+to be, like all art, a prophecy.
+
+What malign Fate had dogged her to trip her feet, so soon, to lead her
+by such strange ways to the success that kills, the success worshipped
+in London, the success won at the cost of every living quality.
+
+He watched her very closely, and began to understand her contempt.  Her
+touch of burlesque made him roar with laughter, so that he was scowled
+at by his neighbours in the dress circle, and he began to feel more
+hopeful.  He felt certain that this was the beginning and the end for
+her, and he supposed that she would marry her Lord and retire into an
+easy, cultured life.  He had liked Verschoyle on his one meeting with
+him, and knew that he was to be trusted.
+
+Truly the words of the play were marvellously apt, when Clara sang,--
+
+  'Merrily, merrily shall I live now
+  Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.'
+
+Rodd looked down at Verschoyle leaning out of his box, and felt sure
+that this was to be her way out.  More of this painted mummery she
+could not endure.  She could mould a good, simple creature like
+Verschoyle to her ways and become a great personage.  So comforted, he
+heard the closing scenes of the play in all its truthful dignity, and
+he looked round at the sated audience wondering how many of them
+attached any meaning to the words hurled at them with such amazing
+power.
+
+          'The charm dissolves apace,
+  And as the morning steals upon the night,
+  Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
+  Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
+  Their clearer reason.
+
+          Their understanding
+  Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
+  Will shortly fill the reasonable shores,
+  That now lie foul and muddy.'
+
+
+The tenderness of this profound rebuke moved Rodd from his hatred of
+the audience, and on an impulse he ran down and stood waiting outside
+Verschoyle's box.  He wanted to see him without precisely knowing why,
+perhaps, he thought, only to make sure that Clara was safe.
+
+The applause as the curtain descended was tumultuous.  Sir Henry
+bowed--to the right, to the left, to the centre.  He made a little
+speech.
+
+'I am deeply gratified at the great welcome you have given our efforts
+in the service of our poet.  I am proud to have had the collaboration
+of Mr Charles Mann, and to have had the good fortune to discover in
+Miss Clara Day Ariel's very self.  I thank you.'
+
+The audience clamoured for Ariel, but she did not appear.  She had
+moved away to her dressing-room, and had torn off her sky blue and
+silver net.  She rent them into shreds, and her dresser, who had caught
+the elated excitement that was running through the theatre, burst into
+tears.
+
+Rodd nearly swooned with anxiety when she did not appear, and he was
+almost knocked over when Verschoyle, white to the lips, darted out of
+the box.
+
+'Sorry, sir,' he said, and was moving on when Rodd caught him by the
+arm.
+
+'Let me go, damn you,' said Verschoyle.
+
+'I want to speak to you.'
+
+Verschoyle recognised his man and said,--
+
+'In God's name has anything happened?'
+
+(Something had happened but they did not know it.  In her
+dressing-room, half way through the performance, she had found a note:--
+
+
+'DEAR MADAM,--Either you grant me a profitable interview after the
+performance or the police will be informed to-morrow morning.
+
+'CLAUDE CUMBERLAND.')
+
+
+'I only wanted,' said Rodd, 'to ask you to convey my very best wishes
+to Miss Day.  Just that.  Nothing more.'
+
+Verschoyle stared at him, and Rodd laughed.
+
+'No.  I am not what you think.  I have been and am always at your
+service.  To-night has been one of the most wretched of her life.  I
+have been watching the performance.  Butcher and his audience have been
+too much for them.'
+
+'But the success was hers.'
+
+'You do not know her well, if you imagine that such a success is what
+she desires.'
+
+An attendant came up to them with a note from Clara enclosing
+Cumberland's.  Verschoyle handed it to Rodd, who crumpled it up and
+said,--
+
+'I knew that was the danger-point.  Will you take me to see her?  I
+know these people.  I have done what I could.  I kicked that fellow out
+just after you had gone.'
+
+'There is a supper in Sir Henry's room,' said Verschoyle, with an
+uneasy glance at Rodd's shabby evening clothes.  'I will take you
+there.  Are you an actor?'
+
+'No.  I write.  I remember you at the Hall when I was at Pembroke.'
+
+That reassured Verschoyle.  He liked this deep, quiet man, and felt
+that he knew more than he allowed to appear, half-guessed indeed that
+he had played some great and secret part in Clara's life.  He
+introduced him to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter, who had stayed to
+watch the huge audience melt away and to hold a little reception with
+congratulations on the success of 'their' play.  Lady Bracebridge
+noticed Rodd's boots at once, an old pair of cracked patent leathers,
+but her daughter chattered to him,--
+
+'Wasn't it all too sweet?  I adore _The Tempest_.  Caliban is such a
+dear, isn't he?'
+
+Rodd smiled grimly but politely.
+
+They made their way on to the stage where they found Charles Mann
+tipping the stage-hands.  The stairs up from the stage were thronged
+with brilliant personages, all happy, excited, drinking in the
+atmosphere of success....  In Sir Henry's room Lady Butcher stood to
+receive her guests.  'Too delightful!  ...  The most charming
+production! ... Exquisite!  ... Quite too awfully Ballet Russe!'
+
+The players in their costumes, their eyes dilated with nervous
+excitement, their lips trembling with their hunger for praise, moved
+among the Jews, politicians, journalists, major and minor
+celebrities....  Sir Henry moved from group to group.  He was at his
+most brilliantly witty.
+
+But there was no Ariel.  Several ladies who desired to ask her to lunch
+in their anxiety to invest capital in the new star, clamoured to see
+her.
+
+'She is tired, poor child,' said Sir Henry, with an amorously
+proprietary air.
+
+'But she _must_ come,' said Lady Butcher, eager to exploit the interest
+Clara had aroused, and she bustled away.
+
+Charles Mann came in at that moment and he was at once surrounded with
+twittering women.
+
+'You must tell him,' said Rodd to Verschoyle, 'he must get out....
+Will you let her go with him?'
+
+'Never,' said Verschoyle, and awaiting his chance, he plucked Charles
+by the sleeve, took him into a corner and gave him Cumberland's note.
+
+Charles's face went a greeny gray.
+
+'What does he mean?'
+
+'Blackmail,' replied Verschoyle.  'You can't ask her to go on living
+with that hanging over her head.'
+
+'I can pay,' said Charles.
+
+'She'll pay on for ever.'
+
+'What else can I do?'
+
+'Clear out, give her a chance.  Let her make her own life so that it
+can't touch her--whatever happens to you.'
+
+'But I ...'
+
+'Can you only think of yourself?'
+
+'My work.'
+
+'Look here, Mann.  I've paid six hundred to keep this quiet.  It hasn't
+done it.  I suppose they've squabbled over the spoils.'
+
+'Six hundred.'
+
+'Yes.  What can you do?  These people ask more and more and more.'
+
+'It's ruin.'
+
+'Yes.  If you don't clear out.'
+
+Charles began to look elderly and flabby.
+
+'All right,' he said.  'When?'
+
+'To-morrow morning.  I'll see that you have money and you'll get as
+much work as you like now--thanks to her.'
+
+'You don't know what she's been to me, Verschoyle.'
+
+'No.  But I know what any other man would have been to her.  You ought
+to have told her.'
+
+'To-morrow morning,' said Charles.  'I'll go.'
+
+He turned away and basked in the smiles and congratulations of the
+Bracebridge-Butcher set.
+
+Verschoyle returned to Rodd,--
+
+'That's all right,' he said.  'I was afraid that with this success he'd
+want to stick it out.  These idealists are so infernally
+self-righteous.'
+
+Lady Butcher returned with Clara, looking very pale and slender in a
+little black silk frock.  Sir Henry came up to her at once and took
+possession of her.  He whispered in her ear,--
+
+'Did you get my flowers?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And my note?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Will you stay?'
+
+'No.'
+
+Her hand went to her heart as she saw Rodd.  How came he here in this
+oppressive company?  She was sorry and hated his being there.
+
+She received her congratulations listlessly and accepted, without the
+smallest intention of acting upon her acceptance, all her invitations.
+Rodd was there.  That was all she knew, he was there among those empty,
+voracious people.
+
+He moved towards her and caught her as she was passed from one group to
+another.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said.  'I had to come and see you.  I thought it was
+for the last time....  I know all your story, even down to to-night.
+He is going away.'
+
+'Charles?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'I can't stay here.  I can't stand it....  You are not going to stay.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'I was with you all through to-night....'
+
+Their eyes met.  Again there was nothing but they two.  All pretence,
+all mummery had vanished.  Life had become pure and strong, more rich
+and wonderful even than the play in which, baffled by the chances of
+life, she had striven to live.
+
+'To-morrow,' she said, 'I am going to the bookshop at half-past twelve.'
+
+He bowed and left her, and meeting Mr Clott or Cumberland on the stairs
+of his house he had the satisfaction of shaking him until his teeth
+rattled, and of telling him that Mr Charles Mann had gone abroad for an
+indefinite period.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+LOVE
+
+The late September sun shone sweetly down upon Charing Cross Road, and
+its beams stole into the bookshop where the bookseller, in his shirt
+sleeves, sat wrestling with the accounts which he struggled to keep
+accurately.  He hated them.  Of all books the most detestable are
+account books.  What has a man who trades in mind to do with money?
+Far better is it to have good books stolen than to keep them lying
+dusty on the shelf.
+
+The bookseller chuckled to himself.  The newspapers were full of
+praises of his 'young leddy,' though she could never be so wonderful
+and like a good fairy in the play-acting as she was when she walked
+into his shop bringing sweetness and light....  She had not been in for
+some time, and he had been a little worried about her.  He was glad to
+know that it was only work that had kept her away.  He had been half
+afraid that there might be 'something up' between her and that damned,
+silent Rodd, who had nothing in the world but a few bees in his bonnet.
+The bookseller, being a simple soul, wanted her to marry the Lord, to
+end the tale as all good heroines should, and he had even gone so far
+as to address imaginary parcels of books to her Ladyship.
+
+Charing Cross Road was at its oddest and friendliest on this day when
+all London rang with Clara's fame, and the only place in which it found
+no echo was her own heart.
+
+She had decided in her dressing-room half-way through the performance
+that she could never go near the Imperium again.  That was finished.
+She had done what she had set out to do in the first instance.  In her
+subsequent greater purpose she had failed, and she knew now why she had
+failed, because she was a woman and in love, and being a woman, she
+must work through a man's imagination before she could become a person
+fit to dwell on the earth with her fellows....  Without a pang she
+surrendered her ambitions, bowed to the inevitable, and for the first
+time for many a long week slept the easy, sweet sleep of youth.  Her
+meeting with Rodd in the supper-room had relieved her of all her
+crushing responsibilities.  She passed them on to him and from her he
+had won the strength to carry all things.
+
+She was punctual to the minute, but he was late.
+
+'They're falling over themselves about you in the papers, young leddy,'
+said the bookseller.
+
+'Are they?'
+
+'Haven't you seen them?'
+
+He had cut out all the notices, and to please him she made a pretence
+of reading them, but they gave her a kind of nausea.  The critics wrote
+like lackeys fawning upon Sir Henry's success....  In Paris with her
+grandfather she had once seen the _Mariage de Figaro_ acted.  Sir Henry
+reminded her of the Duc d'Almaviva, and she thought wittily that the
+type had taken refuge in the theatre, there perhaps to die.  Sir Henry
+surely was the last of this line.  Not even with the support of the
+newspapers would the world, bamboozled and cheated as always, consent
+any longer to support them.
+
+It was a good transition this from the Imperium to the book-shop.
+Books were on the whole dependable.  If they deceived you it was your
+own fault.  There was not with them the pressure of the crowd to aid
+deception.
+
+This wholesome little man living among books, upon them, and for them,
+was exactly the right person for her to see first upon this day when
+she was to discard her mimic for her real triumph.  This day was like a
+flower that had grown up out of all her days.  In its honey was
+distilled all the love she had inspired in others, and all the love
+that others had inspired in her.
+
+This was the real London, here in Charing Cross Road, shabby, careless,
+unambitious, unmethodical.  It was here in the real London that she
+wished to begin her real life.  From the time of her first meeting with
+him in the book-shop, her deepest imagination had never left Rodd, and
+she knew all that he had been through.  She had most profoundly been
+aware of his struggle to break free from his captivity, exactly as she
+had slowly and obstinately found her own way out.  All that had been
+had vanished.  Only the good was left.  Evil had been burned away and
+for her now there was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the
+sun.  Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that
+Rodd was as clear....  Of all that she had left she did not even think,
+so worthless was it.  A career, money, power, influence?  With love,
+the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch
+of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys
+that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and nothing
+remains hidden.
+
+Was there ever a more perfect moment than when Clara and Rodd met in
+the bookshop, each for the other having renounced all that had seemed
+of worth.  Death might have come at that moment and both would have
+been satisfied, for richer, deeper, and simpler music there could not
+be....  She was amazed at the new mastery in him.  The pained
+sensitiveness that had cramped him was all gone.  He came direct to
+her, took possession of her without waiting for an impulse from her
+will.  They met now in complete freedom and were frankly lovers.
+
+The little bookseller in dismay looked from one to the other, but held
+his peace.  Clara reminded him that he had once remarked how life
+consisted in men and women pulling each other through.
+
+'That's so,' he said.  'Most of 'em trample on the rest.'
+
+'Well,' said Clara.  'We've done it.  We have pulled each other
+through.'
+
+'Out of the burning,' said Rodd, with a laugh.
+
+'Indeed!  Are you going to join her in the play-acting?'
+
+'Not at all,' said Clara.  'I'm going to join him in the play-writing.
+I have been a star for one night only....  If we starve, I shall make
+you take me on as your assistant.  You could pay me a salary now.'
+
+'I cannot see a man wi' a jowl like that letting his young leddy
+starve,' chuckled the bookseller.
+
+They bought each other as presents the following books: _The Dramatic
+Works of J. M. Synge, The Love Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, The
+Marriage of Figaro, Tom Jones_, and six volumes of _The Works of Henrik
+Ibsen_, which were going cheap.  These they ordered to be sent to her
+rooms, and with the bookseller's blessing--so hearty that it was well
+worth having--on their happiness they set out to reproduce in every
+detail the day of their first excursion.
+
+They went by Tube to Highgate, and walked to Hampstead across the
+Heath, but when they came to the inn with the swing-boats and
+roundabouts they found them deserted, and were annoyed.  They wanted
+the story told over and over again in exact replica, not varying by a
+simple detail.  As that was impossible they had tea at the inn, and he
+told her the full and true story how he met her in the bookshop in the
+Charing Cross Road.  She listened like a happy child, and she asked,--
+
+'Did he love her?'
+
+'As the earth the sun.'
+
+But as they left the inn, history did repeat itself, for a girl turned
+and watched Clara enviously and said to her friend,--
+
+'My!  I wisht I had legs like that _and_ silk stockings.'
+
+So the day sped by, and in the evening they went down to the Imperium
+where it reared its brilliantly lit magnificence.  The performance had
+begun.  They read the placards outside the doors.  Already there was a
+new poster with a flashy drawing of Ariel, in its vulgar way not unlike
+Clara.  There were also posters reproducing the notices of the Ariel
+and the Prospero.
+
+'And Ariel is gone,' said Rodd.
+
+'I left a note for him last night,' said Clara.  'He'll probably sue me
+for breach of contract.  He won't miss a chance of an advertisement.'
+
+Rodd took her home, and they arranged that they would be married at
+once.  Neither was quite sure whether the absurd marriage with Charles
+would make theirs illegal, but they decided to risk it.
+
+
+
+
+GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUMMERY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29500-8.txt or 29500-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/5/0/29500/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/29500-8.zip b/29500-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd98968
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29500-8.zip
diff --git a/29500-h.zip b/29500-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..099b150
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29500-h.zip
diff --git a/29500-h/29500-h.htm b/29500-h/29500-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..526c798
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29500-h/29500-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11919 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<TITLE>
+The Project Gutenberg E-text of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
+       text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%;
+        font-size: small }
+
+P.letter {text-indent: 0%;
+          font-size: small ;
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.finis { font-size: larger ;
+          text-align: center ;
+          text-indent: 0% ;
+          margin-left: 0% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+H3.h3left { margin-left: 0%;
+            margin-right: 1%;
+            margin-bottom: .5% ;
+            margin-top: 0;
+            float: left ;
+            clear: left ;
+            text-align: center }
+
+H3.h3right { margin-left: 1%;
+             margin-right: 0 ;
+             margin-bottom: .5% ;
+             margin-top: 0;
+             float: right ;
+             clear: right ;
+             text-align: center }
+
+H3.h3center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
+
+H4.h4left { margin-left: 0%;
+            margin-right: 1%;
+            margin-bottom: .5% ;
+            margin-top: 0;
+            float: left ;
+            clear: left ;
+            text-align: center }
+
+H4.h4right { margin-left: 1%;
+             margin-right: 0 ;
+             margin-bottom: .5% ;
+             margin-top: 0;
+             float: right ;
+             clear: right ;
+             text-align: center }
+
+H4.h4center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
+
+H5.h5left { margin-left: 0%;
+            margin-right: 1%;
+            margin-bottom: .5% ;
+            margin-top: 0;
+            float: left ;
+            clear: left ;
+            text-align: center }
+
+H5.h5right { margin-left: 1%;
+             margin-right: 0 ;
+             margin-bottom: .5% ;
+             margin-top: 0;
+             float: right ;
+             clear: right ;
+             text-align: center }
+
+H5.h5center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
+
+IMG.imgleft { float: left;
+              clear: left;
+              margin-left: 0;
+              margin-bottom: 0;
+              margin-top: 1%;
+              margin-right: 1%;
+              padding: 0;
+              text-align: center }
+
+IMG.imgright {float: right;
+              clear: right;
+              margin-left: 1%;
+              margin-bottom: 0;
+              margin-top: 1%;
+              margin-right: 0;
+              padding: 0;
+              text-align: center }
+
+IMG.imgcenter { margin-left: auto;
+                margin-bottom: 0;
+                margin-top: 1%;
+                margin-right: auto; }
+
+</STYLE>
+
+</HEAD>
+
+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mummery
+       A Tale of Three Idealists
+
+Author: Gilbert Cannan
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #29500]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUMMERY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+MUMMERY
+</H1>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A TALE OF THREE IDEALISTS
+</H3>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+GILBERT CANNAN
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
+<BR>
+W. COLLINS SONS &amp; CO. LTD.
+<BR>
+GLASGOW &mdash; MELBOURNE &mdash; AUCKLAND
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Copyright 1918
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4>
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+NOVELS
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+PETER HOMUNCULUS<BR>
+LITTLE BROTHER<BR>
+ROUND THE CORNER<BR>
+OLD MOLE<BR>
+YOUNG EARNEST<BR>
+THREE PRETTY MEN<BR>
+MENDEL<BR>
+THE STUCCO HOUSE<BR>
+PINK ROSES<BR>
+<BR>
+FOUR PLAYS<BR>
+EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND<BR>
+<BR>
+WINDMILLS<BR>
+SATIRE<BR>
+THE JOY OF THE THEATRE<BR>
+FREEDOM<BR>
+THE ANATOMY OF SOCIETY<BR>
+NOEL<BR>
+POEMS<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+TO ARIEL
+<BR><BR>
+AMY GWEN WILSON
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="poem" STYLE="margin-left: 20%">
+Shakespeare dreamed you, Ariel,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">In a poet's ecstasy.</SPAN><BR>
+I have loved and dare not tell<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Of your being's mystery.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem" STYLE="margin-left: 20%">
+Ariel, from Shakespeare's dream<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Flown into my love on earth,</SPAN><BR>
+You shall help me to redeem<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Love and truth denied their birth.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem" STYLE="margin-left: 20%">
+In a world by Caliban<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Brutalised and done to death,</SPAN><BR>
+We will weave a spell that Man<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">May in freedom draw his breath.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%">
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAP.</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">A DESCENT ON LONDON</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">IMPERIUM</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">BEHIND THE SCENES</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">THE OTHER WOMAN</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">BIRDS AND FISHES</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">SUPPER</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">SOLITUDE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">MAGIC</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">THE ENGLISH LAKES</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">CHARING CROSS ROAD</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">RODD AT HOME</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">THE TEMPEST</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">IN BLOOMSBURY</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap16">ARIEL</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap17">SUCCESS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap18">LOVE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+A DESCENT ON LONDON
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+On a day in August, in one of those swiftly-moving years which hurried
+Europe towards the catastrophe awaiting it, there arrived in London a
+couple of unusual appearance, striking, charming, and amusing.  The man
+was tall, big, and queerly compounded of sensitive beauty and stodgy
+awkwardness.  He entered London with an air of hostility; sniffed
+distastefully the smells of the station, peered in distress through the
+murky light, and clearly by his personality and his exploitation of it
+in his dress challenged the uniformity of the great city which was his
+home.  His dress was peculiar: an enormous black hat above a shock of
+wispy fair hair, an ill-cut black coat, a cloak flung back over his
+shoulders, a very high starched collar, abominable trousers, and long,
+pointed French boots.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But they have rebuilt the station!' he said, in a loud voice of almost
+peevish disapproval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I remember reading about it, Carlo,' replied his companion.  'It fell
+down and destroyed a theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A bad omen,' said Charles Mann, 'I wish we had arrived at another
+station.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't think it matters,' smiled Clara Day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I say it does,' snapped he.  'It is a mean little station.  A London
+station should be grand and spacious, the magnificent ante-room to a
+royal city.  I must get them to let me design a station.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They don't often fall down,' said Clara.  'I wish you would see to the
+luggage.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the other passengers, French and English, had collected their
+baggage and had hurried away, but Charles Mann was never in a hurry,
+and he stayed scowling at the station which London had had the
+effrontery to erect in his absence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'In Germany and Russia,' he muttered, 'they understand that stations
+are very important.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do look after the luggage,' urged Clara, and very reluctantly Charles
+Mann strolled along the platform, leaving his companion to the
+admiration of the passengers arriving for the next out-going train.
+She deserved it, for she was extremely handsome, almost pathetically
+young for the knowledge written in her eyes and on her lips, and the
+charming dress of purple and old red designed for her slim figure by
+Charles drew the curious and rather scandalised eyes of the women.  It
+was in no fashion, but the perfection of its individuality raised it
+above that tyranny, just as Clara's personality, in its compact force,
+and delicious free movement, raised her above the conventionalism which
+makes woman mere reflections of each other.  When she moved, her
+clothes were liquid with her vitality.  When she stood still, they were
+as monumental as herself.  She and they were one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was happy.  It had taken her nearly two years to bring Charles back
+to London, where, as an Englishman, and, as she knew, one of the most
+gifted Englishmen of his time, his work lay, and she felt certain that
+here, in London, among other artists, it would be possible to extricate
+him from his own thoughts, which abroad kept him blissfully happy but
+prevented his doing work which was intelligible to any one else.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was rather a long time over the luggage, and at last she ran along
+the platform to find him lost in contemplation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Have you decided where we are going to?' she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Eh?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Have you decided where we are going to?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I must get a secretary,' he replied, and Clara laughed.  'But I must,'
+he went on.  'It is absolutely necessary for me to have a secretary.  I
+can do nothing without one....  He shall be a good man, and he shall be
+paid four hundred a year.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara approached a porter and told him to take their luggage to the
+hotel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We can stay there while we look about us,' she said.  She had learned
+that when Charles talked about money it was best to ignore him.  She
+took cheap rooms at the top of the hotel, with a view out over the
+river to the Surrey hills, and there until three o'clock in the morning
+Charles smoked cigars and talked, as only he could talk, of art and
+Italy and Paris&mdash;which they had left without paying their rent&mdash;and the
+delights and abominations of London.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I feel satisfied now that you were right,' he said.  'Here we are in
+London and I shall begin to do my real work.  I shall have a secretary
+and an advertising agent, and I shall talk to London in the language it
+understands....  Paris knows me, Munich knows me, St Petersburg knows
+me; London shall know me.  There are artists in London.  All they want
+is a lead.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara went to bed and lay for a long time with erratic memories
+streaming through her brain&mdash;days in the hills in Italy, nights of
+hunger in Paris, the cross-eyed man who stared so hard at her on the
+boat, the dismal port at Calais, the more dismal landing at Dover, the
+detached existence of her three years with Charles, whose astonishing
+vitality kindled and continually disappointed her hope....  And then
+queer, ugly memories of her own wandering, homeless childhood with her
+grandfather, who had died in Paris, leaving her the little money he
+had, so that she had stayed among the artists in Paris, had been numbed
+and dazed by them, until Charles took possession of her exactly as he
+did of stray cats and dogs and birds in cages.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This is London,' she said, 'and I am twenty-one.'  So she, too,
+approached London in a spirit of challenging hostility, determined if,
+as she believed, there was nothing a woman could not do, that London
+should acknowledge Charles as the genius of which he so constantly
+remarked it stood in need.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the morning she was up betimes, and stood at the window looking out
+over the sprawl of the south side of the river to the dome of Bedlam
+and the tower of Southwark Cathedral, the clustered chimneys, and the
+gray litter of untidy, huddled roofs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That is not London,' said Charles from the bed, as she cried
+ecstatically.  'London is a very small circle, the centre of which is
+to the cultivated the National Gallery, and to the vulgar Piccadilly
+Circus....  Piccadilly Circus we can ignore.  What we have to do is to
+stand on the dome of the National Gallery and sing our gospel.  Then if
+we can make the cultured hear us, we shall have the vulgar gaping and
+opening their pockets.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want you to be applauded by people who can't appreciate you,'
+said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No?' grumbled Charles.  'Well, I'm going to have bath and breakfast
+and then I shall astonish you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You always do that,' cried Clara.  'Darling Charles!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rang the bell, and sat on the bed, and in a few minutes they were
+enjoying their continental breakfast of coffee, rolls, and honey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I sometimes feel,' said Charles, 'that I have merely taken the place
+of your grandfather....  You are the only creature I have ever met who
+is younger than myself.  That is why you can do as you like with me....
+But you can't make me grow a beard.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I wish you would.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And then I should be like your grandfather?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  You would be more like you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You adorable child,' he said.  'You would reform me out of existence
+if you had your way.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles got up, had his bath, shaved, and went out, leaving Clara to
+unpack and make out a list of clothes that he required before she could
+consider him fit to go out into that London whose centre is the
+National Gallery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he did not return for lunch, she set out alone to explore the region
+which he designed to conquer.  She wandered in a dream of delight,
+first of all through the galleries and then through the streets, as far
+as Westminster on the one side, and as Oxford Street on the other, and
+fixed in her mind the location of every one of the theatres.  She was
+especially interested in the women, and was both hurt and pleased by
+the dislike and suspicion with which they regarded her originality....
+Every now and then she saw a face which made her want to go up to its
+owner and say: 'I'm Clara Day; I've just come to London,' but she
+forebore; and when people smiled at her, as many did, she returned
+their smile, and hurried on in her eagerness to explore and to
+understand the kingdom which was to be Charles Mann's&mdash;a kingdom, like
+others, of splendour and misery, but overwhelmingly rich with its huge
+hotels, great blocks of offices, vast theatres and music-halls,
+enormous shops full of merchandise of the finest quality; jewels,
+clothes, furs, napery, silver, cutlery; its monuments, its dense
+traffic; its flower-sellers and innumerable newsvendors; its glimpses
+through the high-walled streets of green trees, its dominating towers;
+its lounging men and women.  Jews, with gold chains and diamond rings,
+Americans with large cigars and padded shoulders, painted women,
+niggers, policemen, match-sellers, boot-blacks; its huge coloured
+advertisements; its sudden holes, leading to regions underground; its
+sluggish, rich self-satisfaction....  It overawed Clara a little, and
+as she sped along she whispered to herself, 'This is me in London.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On her way back to the hotel she bought a paper, and, on opening it,
+found that it contained an interview with Mr Charles Mann on his return
+to London, an announcement that a dinner was to be given in his honour,
+and that he intended to hold an exhibition; and then Charles's views on
+many subjects were set out at some length, and he had thrown out a
+suggestion that a committee of artists should be formed to supervise
+the regeneration of London and to defeat the Americanisation which
+threatened it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara hurried back to the hotel and found Charles in a great state of
+excitement, talking to a thin, weedy little man whom he introduced as
+Mr Clott&mdash;his secretary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It has begun, child,' said Charles.  'Have you seen the papers?
+Things move quickly nowadays....  This evening I shall be very busy.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But you mustn't do anything without me,' Clara protested.  'You
+promised you wouldn't.  You are sure to make a mess of it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Clott,' said Charles magnificently, 'please send a copy of the letter
+I have dictated to the Press Association.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'At once,' replied Mr Clott, with the alacrity of a man in a new job,
+and he darted from the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He's a fool,' said Clara angrily, 'a perfect fool.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Of course he is,' answered Charles, 'or he would not be a secretary.
+He has undertaken that by the end of this week we shall be in a
+comfortable furnished house.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But who is to pay for it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There is plenty of money in the world,' said Charles, who was so
+pleased with himself that Clara had not the heart to pursue the
+argument any further.  'London,' he continued, 'is a great talking
+shop.  At present they haven't anything much to discuss so they shall
+talk about me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment Clara felt that he had become as external to her as the
+people in the streets of the kingdom he designed to conquer, but she
+recollected that whenever he was at work he always was abstracted from
+her and entirely absorbed in what he was doing, only, however, to
+return like a giant refreshed to enter into her world again and make it
+more delightful than before.  He was absorbed now, and she thought with
+a queer pang of alarm of the women with their dull, suspicious eyes,
+and, without realising the connection between what she thought and what
+she said, she broke into his absorption with,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Carlo, dear, I shall have to marry you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spun round as though he had been stung and asked,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Good God, why?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And again her answer was strange and came from some remote recess of
+her being,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'London is different.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now Charles Mann was one of those sensitive people who yield at once to
+the will of another when it is precise and purposeful; and when in this
+girl, whom he had collected as he collected drunkards, cats, dogs, and
+other helpless creatures, such a will moved, though it cut like hot
+iron through his soul, he obeyed it without argument.  He, whose faith
+in himself was scattered and dissipated, had in her a faith as whole as
+that of a child who accepts without a murmur a whipping from his father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My dear girl&mdash;&mdash;' he murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You know you will have to,' she said firmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked uncomfortable.  His large face was suddenly ashen and yellow,
+and a certain weakness crept into his ordinarily firm lips and
+nostrils.  The girl's eyes were blazing at him, searching him, making
+him feel transparent, and so uncomfortable that he could do nothing but
+obey to relieve his own acute distress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes, of course.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't you want to?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes, of course.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It doesn't make any difference to us inside ourselves.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  Of course not.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What he wanted to say was, 'You're pinning me down.  I'm not used to
+being pinned down.  No one has ever pinned me down before.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he could not say it.  He could only agree that it would be a good
+thing if they married, because London was different.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'At once?' he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'At once,' said she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rang the bell, asked for Mr Clott, and when that gentleman appeared,
+ordered him to procure a special licence without delay.  Mr Clott made
+a note of it in his little red book, tucked his pencil behind his ear,
+and trotted away, his narrow little back stiffened by elation.  He, a
+gentleman of the Automobile Club, for whom there was no life outside
+the narrow circle whose centre is Piccadilly Circus, had been uneasy in
+his mind about the young lady, who was so clearly neither married nor
+purchasable, and it was a relief to him that she was to be his new
+employer's wife, though he was afraid of her, and shrivelled to the
+marrow in her presence.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+'<I>Ça marche</I>,' said Charles Mann to his wife a few weeks later.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His programme was maturing.  He had arranged for two books to be
+published, for an exhibition to be held, for a committee to be formed,
+for lectures to be delivered in provincial centres, and he had been
+insulted by an offer to play a part in a forthcoming production of
+<I>King Lear</I> at the Imperium Theatre.  He had forgotten that he had ever
+been an actor and did not wish to be reminded of it, and he was
+incensed when the manager of the Imperium used the offer as an
+advertising paragraph.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The fellow is jealous of the attention I am receiving in the Press and
+wants to divert some of it to himself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You should go and see him,' suggested Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is his place to come and see me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  Go and see him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Are you right?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I always am.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Clott, take down this letter to Sir Henry Butcher, Imperium Theatre,
+S.W....  "Dear Sir Henry, When I declined your kind offer the other
+day, my refusal was as private as your suggestion.  I can only conclude
+that some mistake has been made and I should like to have an
+understanding with you before I write a letter of explanation to the
+Press....'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You think too much of the Press, Carlo.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Only now, darling....  Later on the Press will have to come to me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara looked dubious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're moving too quickly,' she said.  'I'm getting more used to
+London now, and I'm afraid of it.  It is just a great big machine, and
+there's no control over it.  There are times when I want to take you
+away from it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You gave me no peace until we came here.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  But I didn't want to begin at the top.  I wanted to come over
+and live as we lived in Paris.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Impossible.  What is freedom in Paris is poverty in London.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But all your time goes in writing to the papers and sitting on
+committees.  You aren't doing any work.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've worked in exile for ten years.  I can carry on with that for a
+year at least.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very well.  Only don't stop believing in yourself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I could never do that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think it would be very easy for you to begin believing in what the
+papers said about you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're too young, my dear.  You see things too clearly.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were now in the furnished house found for them by Mr Clott, a most
+respectable house in an unimpeachable neighbourhood: an old house
+reclaimed from the slums, re-faced, re-panelled, painted, papered,
+decorated by a firm who supplied taste as well as furniture.  Charles
+hated it, but Clara, who through her grandfather knew and appreciated
+comfort, was delighted with it, and with a few deft touches in every
+room made it her own.  It hurt her that Charles should hate it because
+it was good and decent in its atmosphere, and belonged to the widow of
+a famous man of letters, who, intrigued by the remarkable couple, had
+called once or twice and had invited Clara to her house, where the
+foreign-bred girl for the first time encountered the muffins and tea
+element of London life, which is its best and most characteristic.  It
+seemed to her that, if Charles would not accept that, he would never be
+reconciled to his native country as she wanted him to be.  There was
+about the muffins and tea in a cosy drawing-room a serenity which had
+always been to her the distinguishing mark of Englishmen abroad.  It
+had been in her grandfather's character, and she wanted it to be in
+Charles's.  It was to a certain extent in his character through his
+art, but she wanted it also to be through more tangible things.  As she
+wanted it, she willed it, and her will was an impersonal thing which in
+its movement dragged her whole being with it, and it had no more
+consideration for others than it had for herself.  She could see no
+reason why an artist should not be in touch with what was best in the
+ordinary lives of ordinary people; indeed, she could not imagine from
+what other source he could draw sustenance....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Friends and acquaintances had come quickly.  Success was so rapid as to
+be almost ridiculous, and hardly worth having, and people took
+everything that Charles said in a most maddeningly literal way.  She
+understood what he meant, but very often she found that his utterances
+were translated into terms of money or politics or the commercial
+theatre, where they became just nonsense.  He was being transformed
+from her Charles into a monstrous London Charles, a great artist whose
+greatness was of more importance than his art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She first took alarm at this on the occasion of the dinner which the
+dear, delightful fellow arranged to have given to himself and then with
+childlike innocence accepted as a thing done in his honour&mdash;the first
+clear sign of the split in his personality which was to have such fatal
+consequences, for her and for so many others.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were three hundred guests.  The chair was taken by Professor
+Laverock, as a distinguished representative of modern painting, and he
+declared Mann to be the equal of Blake in vision, of Forain in
+technique, of Shelley in clear idealism.  Representatives of the
+intellectual theatre of the time were present and spoke, but the
+theatre of success was unrepresented.  There were critics, literary
+men, journalists of both sexes, idealists of both sexes, arrivists,
+careerists, everybody who had ever pleaded publicly for the theatre as
+a vehicle of art.  Professor Laverock declared it to be Mann's mission
+to open the theatre to the musician, the poet, and the painter, and, if
+he might express his secret hope, to close it to the actor.  There were
+many speeches, but Clara sat through them all staring straight in front
+of her, wondering if a single person in the room really understood what
+Charles wanted and what he meant.  Whether they did so or not, Charles
+did not help them much, for in response to the toast of his health he
+rose, beamed boyishly at the company and said, 'I'm so happy to be
+back.  Thank you very much.  The theatre needs love.  I give you my
+love.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat down so suddenly that Clara gasped, and was frightened for a
+second or two by the idea that he had been taken ill.  But when she
+turned to where he sat, he was chatting gaily to his neighbour and
+seemed to be unaware of any omission.  She heard a man near her say, 'I
+did hope he was going to be indiscreet,' and she felt with acute
+disappointment that this was just a dinner, just an entertainment among
+many dinners and entertainments, and she was ashamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles, however, was delighted.  'Such nice people,' he said, as they
+walked home, 'such delightful people, and what a good dinner!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Get away.  I hate you.  You're horrible,' cried Clara, flinging from
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'<I>Now</I> what's the matter?' he asked, utterly taken aback.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're so easily pleased,' she answered.  'People have only to be nice
+to you and you think the whole world is Heaven.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So it is with you, chicken.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!  Don't be so pleased!  Don't be so pleased!  Do lose your temper
+with me sometimes!   I'm not a child.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But they <I>were</I> nice people.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They weren't.  They were dreadful people.  They were only there
+because they think you <I>may</I> succeed, and then there will be jobs for
+them all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You see through people so much that you forget they are people at all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That comes from living with you.  I have to see through you to realise
+that you are a person....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!  I <I>am</I> a person then?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Only to me....  You reflect everybody else.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They are not worth more.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They are.  Everybody is.  If only you would be yourself to them, they
+would be themselves.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had stung him, as she so often did, into self-realisation and
+self-criticism, a process so painful that, left to himself, he avoided
+it altogether....  He walked along moodily.  They were crossing St
+James's Park.  On the bridge he stopped, looked down into the water and
+said gloomily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I sometimes think that my soul is as placid and still and shallow as
+that water, and that you, like all the rest, have only seen your own
+reflection in me....  That's why I like the comfort of restlessness and
+change.  Anything to break the stillness.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You couldn't say that if it were true,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  I suppose not,' and, with one of his astonishing changes of mood,
+he took her arm and began to talk of the day when he had first met her
+in Picquart's studio, where everybody was gay and lively except they
+two, so that he talked to her, and seemed to have been talking for ever
+and had no idea of ever ceasing to do so.  And then he told her how
+better than even talking to her was being silent with her, and how all
+kinds of ideas in him that had been too shy to appear in solitude or
+with others had come tumbling out like notes of music because of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've nearly forgotten,' he said, 'what being in love is like.  This
+was at the farthest end of love from that, something entirely new, so
+new as to be altogether outside life.  I have had to grope back into it
+again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I liked you,' said she, 'because you were English.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Did you?'  He was puzzled.  'I thought that was precisely what I am
+not.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither could be angry for very long, and neither could be rancorous.
+The enchantment in which they lived would sometimes disappear for a
+space, when they would suffer, and he would tell himself that he was
+too old for the girl, or that he was not the kind of man who could live
+with a woman, or that she was seducing him from his work, while she
+would just sit numbed until the enchantment came again.  Without it
+there were moments when he seemed just ridiculous with his masses of
+papers, and Mr Clott, and his fussy insistence on being a great
+artist....  It was a keen pleasure to her to bring him back suddenly to
+physical things like food and clothes and to care for him.  Sometimes
+he would forget everything except food and clothes, and then she lived
+in a horror lest he should remain so and lose altogether the power of
+abstraction and concentration which made him so singular and forceful,
+and so near the man she most deeply knew him to be if only some power,
+some event, even some accident, could make him realise it and force him
+out of his imprisonment and almost entombment in his own thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her will concentrated on him anew and she said to herself, 'I can do
+it.  I can do it.  I know I can, and I will.'  And when she was in
+these fierce passions she used to remember her grandfather, the kindly
+old bibliophile, looking anxiously at her and saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My dear, when you want a thing just look round and see if there aren't
+one or two other things you want.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she had never understood what he meant, and she had never been able
+to look round, for always there was one thing she wanted, and when she
+wanted it she could not help herself, but had to sacrifice everything,
+friends, possessions, even love.  And as time went on, she realised
+that it was not Charles she wanted so much as some submerged quality in
+him.  The object of her desire being simplified, her will set, only the
+more firmly, even rigidly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It made her analyse him ruthlessly; his childish lack of
+self-criticism, his placidity, his insatiable vanity, his almost
+deliberate exploitation of his personal charm, all these things she
+cast aside and ignored.  She came then to his thoughts, and here she
+was baffled because she knew so little of his history.  Beyond his
+thoughts lay that in which she was passionately interested, but between
+her and it danced innumerable Charleses all inviting her attention, all
+bidding her look away from that one Charles Mann for whom she hungered
+with something of the worship which religious women have for their
+Saviour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was immensely kind to her, almost oppressively kind.  He could never
+be otherwise to any living creature&mdash;in personal contact, but without
+that he was careless, indifferent, forgetful, although when she saw him
+again it was as though he had never been away.  They were considered a
+charming and most devoted couple, and their domestic felicity helped
+him in his success.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Much talk in the newspapers, many committees&mdash;but Clara felt that
+merely another Charles was being created to dance between her and her
+desire.  This was too far from what she wanted, and she could not see
+how it could lead to it; there was altogether too much talk.  What he
+said was very fine but it merely gathered a rather flabby set of people
+round him&mdash;and most exasperatingly he liked it and them...  'Such nice
+people.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That is all very well,' said Clara, 'but we are spending far more than
+there is any possibility of your making.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There are rich men interested,' said Charles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But until you make money, they won't give you any.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hard sense was always too much for him, and he retired puzzled and
+rather pained from the argument.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Because she was beautiful she attracted many men, many flatterers, but
+as they penetrated her graciousness, they came upon the hard granite of
+her will and were baffled, unpleasantly disturbed, and used to leave
+her, darting angry glances at the blissful Charles, who was sublimely
+unconscious of criticism in those whom he approached.  He accepted them
+as they were or seemed to be and expected the like from them.  He was
+too busy, too eager, to question or to look for hidden motives in those
+who supported him, and that he was concealing anything or had anything
+to conceal never crossed his mind!  He had other things to think of,
+always new things, new plans, new schemes, and he was fundamentally not
+interested in himself.  A charming face, a lovely cloud in the sky, the
+scent of a flower, a glass of good wine could give him such delight as
+made him beam upon the world and find all things good.  It was always a
+trifle which sent him soaring like a singing lark, always a trifle that
+could lift him from the depths of depression.  Great emotion he did not
+seem to need, though the concentrated emotion with which he hurled
+himself at his work was tremendous.  Happy is the people that has no
+history.  For all that he was aware of, Charles had no history.  He was
+born again every morning, and he could not realise that the world went
+grinding on from day to day....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never had life been so sweet, never had he been so successful, never
+had he had so much money, never had he been so exquisitely cared for,
+never had so many doors been open to him, never had such pleasant
+things been said of him!  He went to bed singing, and singing he awoke
+in the morning, but in her heart Clara was anxious and suspicious of
+London, most suspicious of the artists and literary men who thronged
+the house, and gathered at the elaborate supper which Charles insisted
+on giving every Sunday night.  They were too denunciatory, too much
+aloof, too proud of their aloofness, and talked too much.  She thought
+Charles too good for them and said so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Art is a brotherhood,' he said magnificently, 'and the meanest of the
+brethren is my equal.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That is no reason why you should be familiar with them.  You cheapen
+yourself.  Besides it is a waste of time....  A lot of people never do
+anything, and&mdash;I don't like it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ho! ho!  Are you in revolt, chicken?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want you to fritter away what you have got.  It isn't worth
+while to spend money on people who can do nothing for you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want anybody to do anything for <I>me</I>.  It is for art.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But they don't understand that.  They think all sorts of wonderful
+things are going to happen through you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So they are....  Hasn't it been wonderful so far?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'For us.  Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Wasn't the exhibition a great success?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very well then.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But you only sold the work you have done during the last ten years.
+It is the work you are doing now that matters.  What work are you
+doing?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Plenty&mdash;plenty.  Mr Clott sends out not less than forty letters a day.
+And I have just invented some beautiful designs for <I>Volpone</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Is it going to be done?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It will be when they see my designs.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara bit her lip.  This was precisely what she had hoped to scotch by
+coming to London.  In Paris he had made marvellous designs.  Artists
+had come to look at them and then they had been put away in a portfolio.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What I want,' said he, 'is a patron, some one who, having made his
+money in soap, or pills, or margarine, wishes to make reparation
+through art....  Michael Angelo had a patron and I ought to have one,
+so that I can do for my theatre what he did for the Sistine Chapel.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They didn't build the Sistine Chapel for him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No....  N&mdash;o,' he mumbled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't you see that things are different <I>now</I>, Charles.  Everything
+has to pay nowadays, and there aren't great public works for artists to
+do.  Michael Angelo was an engineer as well....  You couldn't design a
+theatre without an architect now, could you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Why should I when there are architects to do it?'  He was beginning to
+get angry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If you could you would be able to carry out your own theories as
+well....  People want something more than drawings on paper....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You talk as though I had done nothing.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It has been too easy....  Appreciation is so easy for the kind of
+people who come here.  It costs nothing, and they get a good deal in
+return.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't you worry about me, chick.  I'm a great deal more practical than
+you suppose.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I only want to know,' she said, rising to leave the room, 'because, if
+you are not going to work, I must.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My dearest child,' he shouted, 'don't be so impatient.  It is only a
+question of time.  My book is not out yet.  We are arranging for the
+reviews now.  When that is done then the ball will really be set
+rolling.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To be quite frank with you,' retorted Clara.  'I hate it all being on
+paper.  I am going to learn acting, and I'm going on the stage to find
+out what the theatre is like....  I don't see how else I can help you,
+and if I can't help you I must leave you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He protested loudly against that, so loudly and so vehemently that she
+pounced and, with her eyes blazing, told him that she intended to make
+her own career, and that whether it fitted in with his depended
+entirely upon himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I won't have you wasted,' she cried, 'I won't.  It has been going on
+too long, this writing down on paper, and drawing designs on paper, and
+now with all these columns about you in the papers you look like being
+smothered in paper.  You might as well be a politician or an
+adventurer&mdash;You have no passion.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I!  No passion!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'On paper.  The world's choked with paper, and London is stifled with
+it.  My grandfather told me that.  He spent his life travelling and
+reading old books&mdash;running away from it.  I'm not going to run away
+from it, and I am not going to let you be smothered by it&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How long has this been simmering up in you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ever since that first day when you were interviewed....  We're not
+living our own lives at all, but the lives dictated to us by this
+ridiculous machinery that turns out papers ten times a day.  We're&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very well,' said Charles submissively.  'What do you want me to do?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want you to keep your appointment with Sir Henry Butcher.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled a long face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You'll hate it, I know,' she added, 'but there is the theatre, and
+you've got to make the best of it.  I dare say Michael Angelo didn't
+care particularly for the Sistine Chapel.'
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IMPERIUM
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry Butcher sat in his sanctum, pulling his aggressive, bulbous
+nose, and ruefully turning over the account presented by his manager of
+the last week's business with his new production, a spectacular version
+of <I>Ivanhoe</I>, in which he appeared as Isaac of York.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No pull,' he muttered.  'No pull.'  And to console himself he took up
+a little pink packet of Press cuttings, and perused them....
+'Wonderful notices!  Wonderful notices!  It's these confounded
+music-halls and cinemas, lowering the people's taste.  Yet the public's
+loyal, wonderfully loyal.  Must be the play.  Wish I'd read the book
+before I let old Kinslake have his three hundred.  Told me everybody
+had read it....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry was a man of sixty, well-preserved, with the soft, infantine
+quality which grease paint imparts to the skin.  He had an enormous
+head, large dark eyes, sly and humorous, in which, as his shallow
+whimsical thoughts flitted through his brain, mischief glinted.  He was
+surrounded with portraits of himself in his various successes, and
+above his head was a bust of himself in the character of Napoleon.
+Every now and then, when he remembered it, he compressed his lips, and
+tucked his chin into his breast, but he could not deceive even himself,
+much less anybody else, and his habitual expression was that of a bland
+baby miraculously endowed with a knowledge of the world's mischief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His room was luxurious but dark, being lit only by a skylight.  The
+walls were lined with a dull gold lincrusta, and on them were hung
+portraits of the proprietor of the Imperium and a series of drawings
+for the famous Imperium posters, which had through many years
+brightened the gloomy streets of London and its ever expanding
+outskirts.  Sir Henry's mischievous eyes flitted from drawing to
+drawing, and his tongue passed over his thick lips as he tasted again
+the savour of his success&mdash;more than twenty unbroken years of it.  He
+thought of the crowded houses, the brilliant audiences he had gathered
+together, the happy speeches he had made, the banquets he had held
+after so many first performances&mdash;and then he thought of <I>Ivanhoe</I>, a
+mistake.  Worse than a mistake, a strategical blunder, for now had come
+the time when his crowning ambition should be fulfilled, to have the
+Imperium unofficially acknowledged as the national theatre, so that
+when he retired it should be purchased for the nation and make his
+achievement immortal....  Macready, Irving, all of the great line had
+perished and were but names, while Henry Butcher would be remembered as
+the creator of the theatre, the people's theatre, the nation's
+theatre....  Then he remembered a particularly delicious wine he had
+drunk in this very room at supper, after rehearsal with the brilliant
+woman who had steered him through his early career and had saved him
+again and again from disaster&mdash;Teresa Chesney.  Ah! there was no one
+like her now, no one.  Actresses were ladies now, they were not of the
+theatre....  There was no one now with whom a bottle of old claret had
+so divine a flavour....  She would never have let him produce
+<I>Ivanhoe</I>.  She would have read the book for him.  She always used to
+stand between him and those idiots at the club.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went to the tantalus on his sideboard and poured himself out a
+brandy and soda, and drank to Teresa's memory, and then to the portrait
+of his wife, who had been so wonderfully skilful in decorating the
+front of the house with Dukes, Duchesses, and celebrities, but it
+needed Teresa's power behind the scenes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was very distressing that all qualities could not be found in one
+woman, and a mocking litany floated through Sir Henry's brain, 'One for
+the front of the house, one for the back, one for paragraphs, one for
+posters, but a man for business.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lay back in his chair and cudgelled his brains for some means of
+turning <I>Ivanhoe</I> from a disastrous failure into an apparent success,
+but no idea came, and throwing out his long legs and caressing his
+round belly he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If I paint my nose red, and give myself two large eyebrows they'll
+laugh, and it might go.  I must have a play in which I enter down the
+chimney....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The telephone by his side rang.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  I'm terribly busy, terribly....  Very well.  I'll ring as soon
+as I can see him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put down the receiver, flung out his legs once more, and resumed his
+thoughts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I might pay a visit to America.  They keep sending people over here.'
+But his memory twinged as he thought of the insulting criticisms he had
+encountered on his last visit to Broadway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Teresa would tell me what to do.  Some one told me Scott was the next
+best thing to Shakespeare.  Oh, well!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put his hand to a bell-button in the arm of his chair, and in a few
+moments his secretary ushered in Mr Charles Mann.  Sir Henry rose, drew
+himself up to his full height, but even then had to look up at his
+visitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How d'you do?  I remember you as a boy, and I remember your father.  I
+even remember his father at Drury Lane....  Pity you've broken the
+tradition.  The public is proud of the old theatrical families....  I'm
+sorry you wouldn't take that part I offered you.  I saw your photograph
+in the papers and your face was the very thing, and, besides, your
+return to the stage would have been interesting.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles bristled, and flung his portfolio and large black hat down on
+the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have brought you my designs for <I>Volpone</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'For what?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'<I>Volpone</I>&mdash;a comedy by Ben Jonson.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, Ben Jonson!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry was depressed.  He had met people before who had talked to
+him about the Old Dramatists.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles opened his portfolio.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'These are designs I have just completed.  You see, classical, like
+Ben's mind.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It looks immensely high,' said Sir Henry, his eyes twinkling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That,' replied Charles, 'is what I want, so that the figures are
+dwarfed.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should have to alter my proscenium,' chuckled Sir Henry, and
+Charles, who missed the chuckle, continued eagerly,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should like it played by dolls.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry turned over the drawings and played with the money in his
+pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You never saw my <I>King Lear</I>, did you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have seen pictures of it.  Too realistic.  A visit to Stonehenge
+would have answered the same purpose.  You would have then to make such
+a storm as would drown the storm in <I>Lear</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry remembered his part and fetched up an enormous voice from his
+stomach and roared,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Rage, blow and drown the steeples.'  Then he kept his voice rumbling
+in his belly and tapped with his foot like the bass-trumpet man in a
+street band.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Superb,' cried Charles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My voice?' asked Sir Henry, now very pleased with himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My drawings,' replied Charles, rubbing his thumb along a line that
+especially delighted him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'O Heavens!'  Sir Henry paid no further attention to the drawings and
+drawled, 'Wonderful thing the theatre.'  There's life in it&mdash;life!  I
+hate leaving it.  You haven't been to my room before?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I once waited for two hours downstairs to ask you to give me a part.
+You didn't see me and I gave up acting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh! and now when I offer you a part you refuse it&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Things are very different now....  I have had a great welcome back to
+London.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What do you think of a national theatre?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Every nation, every city, ought to have its theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Mine is the best theatre in London.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You won't do <I>Volpone</I>?  It is one of the finest comedies ever
+written.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I never heard of its being done.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles flung his drawings back into his portfolio, seized his hat,
+crammed it on to his head, and had reached the door when Sir Henry
+called him back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What do you say to <I>The Tempest</I>?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It doesn't need scenery.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, come!  The ship, the yellow sands.  Prospero's cave&mdash;pictures all
+the way&mdash;and the masque....  I want to do <I>The Tempest</I> shortly and I
+should be glad of your assistance.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should expect you to buy my drawings and to pay me ten thousand
+pounds.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry ignored that.  He knew his man by reputation.  Ten thousand
+pounds meant no more to him than one and sixpence.  He merely mentioned
+the first figures that came into his head.  Sir Henry resumed,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want <I>The Tempest</I> to be my first Autumn production.  I place my
+theatre at your disposal....  To be quite frank with you, that was why
+I offered you that part.  The theatre wants something new.  The Russian
+ballet has upset people.  They are expecting something startling....
+Poor old Smithson who has painted my scenery for twenty years is
+horrified when I suggest anything of the kind.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If I do <I>The Tempest</I> for you will you join my committee?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Er&mdash;I&mdash;er&mdash;You must give me time to think it over.  You know we
+managers have to think of each other.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles began to wish he had not come.  The suggestion of mysterious
+influences behind Sir Henry alarmed him, and at home was the furious
+energy in Clara forcing him into the embraces of this huge machine of a
+theatre, which discarded his <I>Volpone</I> and required him to do something
+for which he had not the smallest inclination.  Yet so implicit was his
+faith in her, so wonderful had been his life since she came into it,
+that he accepted the accuracy of her divination of the futility of his
+procedure through artists and literary persons, who would feed upon his
+fame and increase it to have more to devour....  He decided then to say
+no more about his committee for the present, to accept Sir Henry's
+offer, and to escape as quickly as possible from the stifling room,
+with its horrible drawings, and its atmosphere in which were blended a
+fashionable restaurant and a stockbroker's office.  He had not felt so
+uncomfortable since he had been a schoolboy in the presence of his head
+master, and yet he enjoyed a European reputation, while outside the
+Anglo-Saxon world Sir Henry was hardly known.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The great actor condescendingly escorted the great artist down the
+heavily carpeted stairs to a private door which led to the dress
+circle.  The theatre was in darkness.  The seats were covered up in
+their white sheets, and Sir Henry looked round him and sighed,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah! cold, cold, a theatre soon grows cold.  But it possesses you.  Art
+is very like a woman.  She only yields up her treasure to the purest
+passion.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Art has nothing to do with women,' Charles rapped out, and, as Sir
+Henry had only been making a phrase, he was not offended.  Charles
+shook the large fat hand which was held out to him, and plunged into
+the street....  Ah!  It was good to be in the air again, to gaze up at
+the sky, to see the passers-by moving about their business.  There was
+a stillness about the theatre which made him think of Sir Henry in his
+room as rather like a large pale fish swimming about in a tank in a
+dark aquarium....  After his years of freedom in delightful countries,
+where people were in no hurry and were able most charmingly to do
+nothing in particular for weeks on end, the captivity of so eminent and
+powerful a person appalled and crushed him....  He had not encountered
+anything like it in his previous sojourn in London, and he was again
+possessed with the bewildered rage that had seized him when he saw the
+rebuilt station on his arrival.  He had been out of it all for so long,
+yet he was of it, and he shuddered away from the increased captivity of
+London, yet longed to have been part of it....  It was almost
+bewilderingly a new city.  During his absence, the immense change from
+horse to petrol-driven vehicles had taken place and a new style of
+architecture had been introduced.  The air was cleaner: so were the
+streets.  Shop windows were larger.  There was everywhere more display,
+more colour, more and swifter movement, and yet in the theatre was that
+deadly stillness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned into a magnificent shop, where all the flowers looked rather
+like little girls dressed up for a party, and ordered some roses to be
+sent to Clara, for whom he had begun to feel a rudimentary
+responsibility.  It comforted him to do that.  Somehow it broke the
+stillness which had infected him, and most profoundly shocked him, so
+different was it from the theatre in which he had been born and bred,
+the rather fatuous, very sentimental theatre which was inhabited by
+simple kind-hearted vagabonds, isolated from the world of morals and
+religion, yet passionately proud of their calling, and setting it above
+both morals and religion.  But this theatre, magnificent in this new
+magnificent London, was empty and still.  So much of the theatre that
+had been dear to him was gone, and he mourned for it, lamented, too,
+over his own folly, for he was suddenly brought face to face with the
+fact that the theatre he proposed so light-heartedly to overthrow, the
+theatre of the actor, had disappeared.  In attacking it he was beating
+the air.  He had to deal with a new enemy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he was emerging from St James's Park into Victoria Street a woman
+accosted him.  He looked at her, did not recognise her, and moved to
+pass on, for he was fastidious and took no interest in chance women.
+She was a little woman, very alert, and she was rather poorly dressed.
+She was young, but already her lips had stiffened into the hardness of
+baffled hope and passion and her eyes smouldered with that
+extraordinary glow which rouses a pity as cold as ice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I saw you were back in the papers,' she said.  'It's a pity you can't
+hide yourself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles stared at her, stared and stared, cast about for some excuse
+for pretending not to know her but remained rooted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're not so young as you were,' she went on.  'There's a lot of talk
+about you in the papers, but I know you; it's all talk.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My good woman,' said he, 'is that all you have to say?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It'll keep,' said she, and she turned abruptly and left him, feeling
+that all the strength had gone out of his legs, all the feeling from
+his bowels, leaving only a nauseating pity which brought up memory upon
+memory of horrible emotions, without any physical memory to fix them so
+that he was at their mercy.  At last physical memories began to emerge,
+rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the
+arcades at Birmingham.  And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her
+long ago; and at last her name.  Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a
+golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like
+the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee in another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I had forgotten,' said Charles to himself.  'I really had forgotten.
+Well&mdash;money will settle it.  I shall have to do <I>The Tempest</I> for that
+fish.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thinking of the money restored his sense of serenity.  Wonderful money
+that can swamp so many ills: money that means work done
+somewhere&mdash;work, the sole solace of human misery.  But Charles had no
+notion of the relation between work and money, or that in using up
+large quantities of it he was diverting to his own uses more than his
+fair share of the comfort of humanity.  He had so much to give if only
+humanity would take&mdash;and pay for it.  What he had to give was beyond
+price, wherefore he had no qualms in setting his price high....  From
+<I>The Tempest</I> boundless wealth would flow.  He quickly persuaded
+himself of that, and by the time he reached his furnished house had
+lulled his alarm to sleep and had allayed the disgust and loathing of
+the past roused in him by the meeting with Kitty Messenger....  So rosy
+had the vision become under the influence of his potential wealth that
+he met Clara without a qualm, and forgot even that Sir Henry was like a
+fish in an aquarium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We got on splendidly,' he said, 'and I am to have the whole theatre
+for <I>The Tempest</I> in the Autumn.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I told you I was right,' said she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Bless you, child,' he cried.  'You always are, always.  And now we
+will go out and drink champagne&mdash;Here's a health unto His Majesty, with
+a fal-lal-la.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was like a rebellious boy, and Clara disliked that mood in him,
+because he was rather rough and cumbrous in his humour, cracked gusty
+and rather stupid jokes, ate voraciously, and drank like a carter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They went to a most elegant restaurant, where their entry created a
+stir, and it was whispered from end to end of the room who he was.  And
+the girl with him?  People shrugged....  Clara's eyes were alight, and
+she looked from table to table at the sleek, well-groomed men, and the
+showy women with their gaudy hair ornaments, bare powdered shoulders,
+and beautiful gowns.  She looked from face to face searching eagerly
+for&mdash;she knew not what; power, perhaps, some power which should justify
+their costly elegance.  This hurt as a lie hurt her, because, as she
+gazed from person to person, she could not divine the individuality
+beneath the uniform, and she was still young enough to wish to do
+so....  Meanwhile, as she gazed, Charles ate and drank lustily, and, it
+must be admitted, noisily.  There was no suppression of individuality
+about Charles.  It brimmed over in him.  He had gone to that restaurant
+to enjoy himself; not because it was a place frequented by successful
+persons....  Clara's eyes came back to him.  Yes, she preferred her
+Charles to every one else, if only&mdash;if only he would realise that she
+thought of other things besides himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From a table near by a very good-looking man came and tapped Charles on
+the shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There's no mistaking you, old chap,' he said.  'I'm just back from
+America.  They think a lot of you over there since your conquest of
+London.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You haven't met my wife,' said Charles, with his mouth full.  'What a
+splendid place this is!  Chicken, this is Freeland Moore.  We were
+together in the old days with the Old Man.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I was with him when he died,' said Freeland, 'died in harness.
+There's no one like him now.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who?' asked Clara, alive at once to even the memory of a great
+personality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Henry Irving.  He was a prince, and kept royalty alive in England.  It
+seems a long time ago now.  Won't you come over and join us for coffee,
+when you have finished?  I am with Miss Julia Wainwright; she's with us
+at the Imperium.  Not for long, I'm afraid.  It's a wash-out.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!' said Charles, remembering Sir Henry's depressed glance round the
+theatre, and he saw himself restoring splendour and success to the
+Imperium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After dinner they went over to Mr Moore's table, and Clara, shaking
+hands with Miss Wainwright, warmed to the large, generous creature with
+her expansive bosom, her drooping figure, her tinted face and hair and
+ludicrously long soft eyes.  There was room in Miss Wainwright for a
+dozen Claras.  She looked sentimentally and with amazement spreading in
+ripples over her big face at the girl's wedding-ring and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So pleased to meet you, child.  I made Freeland go over and fetch
+you....  You're not on the stage, are you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No,' replied Clara, 'but I'm going to be.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is not what it was,' resumed Miss Wainwright, sipping her <I>crème de
+menthe</I>.' The Wainwrights have always been in the profession, but I'm
+sending my boy to a public-school....  You're not English, are you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, yes,' answered Clara, 'but I have always lived abroad in Italy and
+Germany and France with my grandfather.  My father and mother died in
+India, but I was born in London.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If you want to get about,' said Miss Wainwright, 'there's nothing like
+the profession.  I've been in Australia, Ceylon, South Africa, America,
+but never Canada....  I'm just back from America with Freeland, and we
+took the first thing that came along&mdash;<I>Ivanhoe</I>.  It's a lovely show
+but the play's no good....  Why not come and see it?  Freeland, go and
+telephone Mr Gillies to keep a box for Mrs Mann.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Freeland obeyed, treading the floor of the restaurant as though it were
+a stage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I suppose you're not sorry you gave up acting, Charles,' said Miss
+Wainwright, with her most expansive affability.  She oozed charm, and
+surrounded Charles and Clara with it, so that almost for the first time
+Clara felt that she really was identified with her great man.  Those
+who worshipped at the shrine of his greatness always regarded her as an
+adjunct and their politeness chilled her, but Miss Wainwright swept
+greatness aside and was delightfully concerned only with what she
+regarded as a striking and very happy couple.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles, who was absorbed in eating an orange, made no reply other than
+a grimace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't know how you did it....  I couldn't.  Once a player, always a
+player&mdash;money or no money, and there's a great deal more money in it
+than there used to be.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Freeland Moore returned, announced that a box had been reserved, and,
+telling Miss Wainwright that it was time to go, he helped her on with
+her wrap of swan's down and velvet....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll come and call if I may,' said Miss Wainwright, with a billowing
+bow, and, with a magnificent setting of all her sails she moved away
+from the table, and, taking the wind of approval from her audience, the
+other diners, she preened her way out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Pouf!  Pah!  Pah!' said Charles, shaking back his mane.  'Pouf!  The
+stink of green-paint.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm sure she's the kindest woman in the world.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So are they all,' growled Charles, 'dripping with kindness or burning
+with jealousy....  The theatrical woman!&mdash;It's a modern indecency.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And suppose I became one.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You couldn't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I'm going to.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You'd never stand it for a week, my dear.  I'd ... I'd ...'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What would you do?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'd forbid it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then I should not stay with you....  You know that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles knew it.  He had learned painfully that though she had some
+respect for his opinion, she had none for his authority.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had more coffee, liqueurs, fruit, a cigar, gave the waiter a tip
+which sent him running to fetch the noble diner's overcoat, and,
+hailing a taxi, they drove the few hundred yards to the Imperium, where
+he growled, grunted, muttered, dashed his hands through his hair, and
+she sat with her eyes glued on the stage, and her brows puckered as the
+dull, illiterate version of Scott's novel, denuded of all dramatic
+quality, was paraded before her....  In an interval, Charles asked her
+what she thought of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is death,' she said.  'It is nothing but money.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Money,' repeated Charles.  'Money....  Whose money? ...'  And he
+suddenly felt again that splendid feeling of confidence.  With his
+<I>Tempest</I> all the money in that place should sustain beauty, and every
+ugly thing, every ugly thought should disappear.  He touched Clara's
+hair, and for the first time, somewhat to his alarm, realised that she
+was something more than an amusing and delightful child, and that he
+had married her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked down from the box into the stalls, and wondered if behind the
+white-shirt fronts and the bare bosoms there were also anxious thoughts
+and uneasy emotions, and if everybody had troubles that lurked in the
+past and might race ahead of them to meet them in the future....  Then
+he laughed at himself.  After all, whatever happened, his fame grew,
+and he went on being Charles Mann.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BEHIND THE SCENES
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Miss Julia Wainwright might be sentimental, and she might be jealous,
+but she was shrewd, and she understood intuitively the relationship
+between Charles and Clara.  At first she refused to believe that they
+were married, as Charles was notoriously careless in these matters, but
+when she was faced with the fact her warm heart warned her of tragedy
+and she took it upon herself to inform Clara of the mysterious
+difficulties of married life, especially for two sensitive people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charles wants a stupid woman and you want a stupid man,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara, of course, refused to believe that, and said that with a stupid
+woman Charles would just rot away in a studio and grow more and more
+unintelligible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Never mind, then,' said Miss Wainwright.  'I'll show you round.  If
+you are meant for the theatre nothing can keep you away from it.  The
+only thing I can see against you is that you're a lady.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Is that against me?' asked Clara, a little astonished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Well,' replied Miss Wainwright, 'we're different.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And indeed Clara discovered very soon that actors and actresses were
+different from other people, because they concealed nothing.  Their
+personalities were entirely on view, and exposed for sale.  They
+reserved nothing.  Such as they were, they were for the theatre and for
+no other purpose, but to be moved at a moment's notice from theatre to
+theatre, from town to town, from country to country.  They were
+refreshing in their frank simplicity, compared with which life with
+Charles was oppressive in its complexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she surveyed the two, Clara was torn asunder for a time and was
+reluctant to take the plunge, and yet she knew that this was the world
+to which Charles belonged, this world of violent contrasts, of vivid
+light and shadowy darkness, of painted illusion and the throbbing
+reality of the audience, of idle days and feverish nights.  His mind
+was soaked in it, and his soul, all except that obscure part of it that
+delighted in flowers and in her own youth, hungered for it, and yet it
+seemed she had to force him into it....  If only he had a little more
+will, a little more intelligence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Often she found herself thinking of him as 'poor Charles,' and then she
+set her teeth, and shook back her hair, and vowed that no one should
+ever think of her as 'poor Clara.' ...  Life had been so easy when they
+had drifted together from studio to studio, but it threatened to be
+mighty difficult now that they had squared up to life and to this huge
+London....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Ivanhoe</I> staggered on for six weeks and then collapsed, and an old
+successful melodrama was revived to carry the Imperium over the early
+summer months.  In this production, as a protégée of Miss Wainwright's,
+Clara played a small part in which she had ten words to say....  She
+was quite inaudible though she seemed to herself to be using every atom
+of voice in her slim young body, but always her voice seemed to fill
+her own head until it must surely burst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Nerves,' said Miss Wainwright.  'You'll get your technique all right,
+and then you won't hear yourself speak any more than you do when you
+are talking in a room.  It's just a question of losing yourself, and
+that you learn to do unconsciously....  It'll come all right, dearie.
+It'll come all right.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was determined that it should come all right, though she knew it
+would not until she had overcome her loathing of painting her face, and
+pencilling her eyes, and dabbing red paint into the corners of them.
+So much did she detest this at first that her personality repudiated
+this false projection of herself and left her helpless.  Over and over
+again she said to herself,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I shall never be an actress.  I shall never be an actress....' But
+then again she said, 'I will.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a violence in appearing in the glaring light before so many
+people which offended her deeply, and yet she knew that she was wrong
+to be offended, because the people had come not to look at her, Clara
+Day, but at the false projection of Clara Day which was needed for the
+play....  Her objection was moral, and so strong that it made her
+really ill, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could keep
+going at all, but not a word did she say to a soul.  She fought through
+it with clenched teeth, going through agony night after night, smiling
+when it was over, going home exhausted, and dreading the coming of the
+morrow when it would all have to be borne again....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She used to look at the others and wonder if they had been through the
+same thing, but it was plain to her clear eyes that they had nearly all
+accepted without a struggle, and had surrendered to the false
+projection of themselves which the theatre needed.  Stage-fright they
+knew, but not this moral struggle in which, determined not to be
+beaten, she fought on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rehearsals she enjoyed.  Then the actors were at their indolent best,
+and the half-lit stage was full of a dim, suggestive beauty, which
+entirely disappeared by the time the scene-painter, the lime-light man,
+and the stage-carpenter had done their work.  Often at rehearsal, words
+would give her the shock of truth that in performance would just puzzle
+her by their banality; voices would seem to come from some remote
+recess of life; movements would take on dignity; the players seemed
+indeed to move and live in an enchanted world....  And so, off the
+stage, they did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Wainwright and Mr Freeland Moore, who had played together for so
+many years, were idyllic lovers, though he had a wife in America, and
+she a husband who had gone his ways.  To them there were no further
+stages of love than those which are shown to the Anglo-American public.
+For them there were but Romeo and Juliet at the ball with no contending
+houses to plague them.  They lived in furnished flats and paid their
+way, impervious to every conspiracy of life to bring them down to
+earth....  Both adored Clara, both soon accepted her and Charles as
+lovers even more perfect than themselves, because younger, and both
+were never tired of thinking what kindness they could next do to help
+their friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Clara struggled on.  Sometimes she could have screamed with rage
+against the theatre, and these people whose enchantment had been won by
+the sacrifice of the fiery essence of themselves, so that they accepted
+meekly insults from the manager, from the stage-manager, from the very
+dressing-room staff of the theatre, who could make their lives
+uncomfortable.  She understood then what it was that had driven Charles
+out, and made him so reluctant to return, and why his immense talent,
+which should have been expressed in terms of the theatre, was reduced
+to making what, after all, were only notes on paper.  Convinced that
+she could help to bring him back from exile, she struggled on, though
+the strain increased as more and more fiercely she had to pit her will
+against the powerful machinery of the theatre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Everybody was kind to her, though many were alarmed by the intent force
+with which she set about her work.  Very often she had no energy left
+for conversation, and would then take refuge in a book, a volume of
+Meredith, or Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer or Browning, who had been the
+poet of her first discovery of the world of books.  That frightened off
+the young men, who were at first greatly taken with her charm.  They
+were subdued themselves as everybody was, from the business manager
+down, but her silence chilled and alarmed them....  Except those she
+bought herself, she never saw a book in the theatre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first, full of Charles's fierce denunciation of Sir Henry Butcher,
+she detested the man, who seemed to her like some monster who absorbed
+all the vitality of the rest and used it to inflate his egoism.  He
+never spoke to her for some weeks, and she avoided meeting him, did not
+wish to speak to him, felt, indeed, that she was perhaps using him a
+little unfairly in turning his theatre to her own ends, forcing herself
+to accept it in order to make things easier for Charles, to whom she
+used to go with a most vivid caricature of Sir Henry at rehearsals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until he appeared there was a complete languor upon the stage.  The
+actors and actresses still had upon them the mood of breakfast-in-bed;
+some looked as though they were living in the day before yesterday and
+had given up all hope of catching up with the rest of the world; some
+of the men talked sport; all the women chattered scandal; some read
+their letters, others the telegrams by which their correspondence was
+conducted.  In none was the slightest indication of preparedness for
+work, for the thoughts of all were obviously miles away from the
+theatre....  Stagehands moved noisily about.  They, at least, were
+conscious of earning their living.  Messages were brought in from the
+stage-door.  Back cloths were let down: the fire-proof curtain
+descended slowly, and remained shutting out the vast and gloomy spaces
+of the auditorium, also a melancholy gray-haired lady who was the widow
+of the author of the melodrama in rehearsal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry appeared with a bald-headed Frenchman, with a red ribbon in
+his button-hole, his secretary, carrying a shorthand notebook, and a
+stout, thick-set Jew, who waited obsequiously for the great actor to
+take further notice of him.  Sir Henry talked volubly and laughed
+uproariously.  He was very happy and he beamed round the stage at his
+company.  The ladies said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Good-morning, Sir Henry.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentlemen said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Morning.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry gesticulating violently turned away and began in French to
+tell a humorous story to which the Frenchman said, '<I>Oui, oui</I>,' and
+the Jew said, '<I>Oui, oui</I>,' while Clara, who could speak French as
+fluently as English, understood not a word of it; but this morning she
+liked Sir Henry because he was so happy and because he was so full of
+vitality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His business with the Jew and the Frenchman was soon settled fairly to
+their satisfaction.  They went away, and Sir Henry began to collect his
+thoughts.  He turned to his secretary and asked,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We are rehearsing a play, eh?  All these ladies and gentlemen are not
+here for nothing, eh?  What play?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'<I>The Golden Hawk</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  Yes....  I have rehearsed so many plays....  I am thinking of my
+big Autumn success....  I can feel it in the air.  I can always feel
+it.  I felt that <I>Ivanhoe</I> was no good, but I was over-persuaded.  My
+instinct is always right.  The business men and the authors are always
+wrong....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He flew into a sudden passion, and roared, 'Who the hell let down the
+fire-proof?  I hate the thing.  Take it away.  How can a man rehearse
+to a fire-proof curtain?  Take it away.  Send it to the London County
+Council who inflicted it on me.  I don't want it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stage-manager shouted to a man in the flies,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Fire-proof up.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I never let it down,' came a voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who did then?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stage-manager came over to where Clara was standing and pressed a
+button.  The heavy fire-proof curtain slowly rose to reveal the
+author's widow sitting patiently with the dark empty theatre for
+background.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Who's that lady?' asked Sir Henry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The author's widow,' replied the secretary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I was afraid it was his ghost,' said Sir Henry, with his mischievous
+chuckle.  He went to her and chatted to her for a few moments about her
+late husband, who had been something of a figure in his time and had
+made a career in the traffic in French plays adapted for the British
+theatre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A scene or two was rehearsed, when an artist arrived with a model for a
+'set' for <I>The School for Scandal</I>.  The company gathered round and
+admired, while Sir Henry sat and played with it, trying various
+lighting effects with an electric torch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No,' he said, 'you can't get the effects with electric light that you
+used to be able to obtain with gas....  Give me gas.  The theatre has
+never been the same.  This electric light is cold.  It is killing the
+theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the artist had gone, a journalist arrived for an interview, which
+was granted on condition that an article by Sir Henry on British
+Audiences was printed, and for the rest of the morning the secretary
+was kept busy taking down notes for the article.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For Clara it was a very delightful morning.  Her own scene was not
+reached, and she sat happily in a corner by the proscenium turning over
+the pages of her book, watching Sir Henry's antics, appreciating the
+skill with which, in spite of all his digressions, he kept things
+lively, and managed to get the work he wanted out of his company....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the players dispersed, he stood in the middle of the stage and
+sighed heavily.  Clara was for stealing away, when he strode across to
+her, seized her by the arm, and said in his deep rolling voice,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't go, little girl.  Don't go.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I want to go,' replied she.  'And I'm not a little girl.  I'm a
+married lady.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah! marriage makes us all so old,' said Sir Henry, with a gallant
+sigh....  'You're the little girl who reads books, aren't you?  I've
+heard of you.  I've written a book or two, but I never read them.  I
+have quite a lot of books upstairs in my room&mdash;given me by the
+authors....  Won't you come to lunch?  I feel I could talk to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had suddenly dropped his mannerisms, his affectation of thinking of
+a thousand and one things at once, and was a simple and very charming
+person of no particular age, position, or period&mdash;just a human being
+who wanted for a little to be at his ease.  He took Clara by the arm,
+and, regardless of the staring eyes of those whom they met in the
+corridors, swept her along to the room which Charles had likened to an
+aquarium.  Then he made her sit in the most comfortable chair, while he
+bestrode another not a yard away, and stared at her with his
+extraordinary eyes, which never had one but always the suggestion of a
+hundred different expressions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I love my room,' he said, 'it is the only place I have in the world.
+Don't you like it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is very quiet,' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry rang a bell and ordered lunch to be brought up, vol-au-vents,
+cold chicken, Crème Caramel, champagne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're not old enough to understand food,' he said.  'That comes with
+the beginning of wisdom.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I understand food very well,' protested Clara, 'my grandfather
+knew all there was to know about it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  You are used to old men, eh?  Boys don't exist for you, eh?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With extraordinary gusto he produced a photograph album, and showed her
+portraits of himself at various ages, slim and romantic at twenty, at
+forty impressively Byronic, at fifty monumentally successful&mdash;and
+'present day.'  He showed her portraits of his mother and father, his
+wife, his children, Miss Teresa Chesney in her pieces, his various
+leading ladies, his sisters who had both married noble lords, and of a
+large number of actors and actresses who had passed through his
+company.  Of them he talked with real knowledge and enthusiasm.  He
+adored acting for its own sake, and as he talked brought all these
+performers vividly before Clara's eyes so that she must accept the
+validity of his criticism: he knew, or seemed to know, exactly what
+each could do or could not do, though it was difficult to understand
+how he could ever have found time to see them all.  Whether or not he
+had done so, he had exactly weighed up the value of their theatrical
+personalities, and it was in those and those alone that he was
+interested.  As human beings, he was indifferent to them, though he
+spoke of them all with the exaggerated affection common to the
+theatre&mdash;'dear old Arthur' ... 'adorable Lily' ... 'delicious Irene.
+Ah! she's a good woman.'  He talked rhapsodically, and his talk rather
+reminded Clara of Liszt's music, until lunch came, and then his greedy
+pleasure in the food made her think of certain gluttonous musicians she
+had known in Germany.  He ate quickly, and his eyes beamed satisfaction
+at her, so young, so fresh, so altogether unusual and challenging....
+She would neither eat nor drink, so absorbed was she in this strange
+man who so overwhelmingly imposed his personality upon her until she
+felt that she was merely part of the furniture of the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he had done eating and drinking, he lit a cigar and lay back in
+his large chair, and closed his eyes in the ecstatic distention of his
+surfeit.  After a grunt or two, he turned suddenly and asked with a
+strange intensity,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charles Mann&mdash;is he a genius?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Of course,' replied Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then why does he talk so much?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He works very hard.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Hm!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You can't expect me to discuss him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No, no.  I only think it is a pity he gave up acting.  He's lost touch
+with the public....  I've tried it at intervals; giving up acting, I
+mean.  The public lose interest, and no amount of advertising will get
+it back.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is for the artist to command the public,' said Clara, rather
+uncomfortably feeling that she was only an echo.  It was a very curious
+thing that words in this room lost half their meaning, and she, who was
+accustomed to giving all her words their precise value, was rather at a
+loss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Little girl,' said Sir Henry, 'I feel that you understand me.  That is
+rare.  After all, we actors are human.  We are governed by the heart in
+a world that is standing on its head.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took out a little book and made a note of that last observation.
+Then with a sigh he leaned over and held Clara's hands, looked long
+into her large dark eyes, and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'With such purity you could outstare the angels.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For answer Clara outstared him, and he dropped her hands and began to
+hum.  'Opera!' he said.  'I feel opera in the air; music invading the
+theatre, uplifting the souls of the people....  Ah! life is not long
+enough....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara began to feel sorry for him though she knew in her heart that
+this was precisely what he wanted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You mustn't be angry,' he rumbled in his deepest bass, 'if I tell you
+that Charles Mann ought to have his neck wrung.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But&mdash;you are going to do his <I>Tempest</I>?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If it were not for you, little girl, I would not have him near the
+theatre,' said Sir Henry, with a sudden heat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How dare you talk like that?'  Clara was all on fire.  'It is an
+honour for you to be associated with him at all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We know our Charles,' he said.  'We knew his father.  We are not all
+so young as you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara hid her alarm, but it was as though the ground had suddenly
+opened and swallowed her up, as though the London about which she had
+been hovering in delighted excitement had engulfed her.  And then she
+felt that she was failing Charles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I won't allow you to talk like that.  I won't let Charles do <I>The
+Tempest</I> at all, if you talk like that.  He is a very great genius, and
+it is your duty to let the public see his work.  It is shameful that
+all his life people have talked about him, and have never helped him to
+reach his natural position.  He has been an exile and but for me would
+still be so.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But for you,' repeated Sir Henry....  'Would you like to play Miranda?
+A perfect Miranda, but where is Ferdinand?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was alarmed at this prospect.  She had read <I>The Tempest</I> with
+her grandfather, and knew long passages by heart.  Its beauty was in
+her blood, and she could not reconcile it with this theatre of Sir
+Henry Butcher's.  Sitting with him in the heart of it, she felt trapped
+and as though all her dreams and purposes had been sponged out.  Never
+before had she even suspected that her freedom could be extinguished;
+never before had she even been anywhere near feeling that her will
+might break and leave her at the mercy of circumstances.  She clutched
+desperately at her loyalty to Charles, and she summoned up all her will
+only to find that it forced her to regard him, to weigh and measure him
+as a man....  He and she were no longer exiles, wandering untrammelled
+in strange lands, but here in London among their own people, confronted
+with their responsibility to the world outside themselves and to each
+other.  She was prepared to accept it, but was he?
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Clara could hardly remember ever having been unhappy before.  All her
+life she had done exactly as she wished to do.  Her grandfather had
+never gainsaid her: had always indulged her every caprice, and had
+supported her even when she had been to all outward seeming in the
+wrong.  He used to say in his whimsical manner that explosions never
+did any one any harm....  'It is all wrong,' thought she, as she left
+the sanctum, and she was alarmed for Charles as she was still vibrant
+from the hostility in the actor-manager.  What was the occasion of it?
+She could not guess.  It was incredible to her that any one could
+object to Charles, so kindly, so industrious, so simple in his work and
+his belief in himself.  People laughed at him sometimes indulgently,
+but that was a very different thing to this hostility, this cold,
+implacable condemnation.  That was beyond her, for she had been brought
+up in a school of absolute tolerance except of the vulgar and
+ill-mannered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her quick wits worked on this new situation.  She divined that Sir
+Henry resented the intrusion of a personality as powerful as his own
+and the check upon his habit of exuding patronage.  His theatre had
+always been animated with his own vitality, and he obviously resented a
+position in which he had to employ that of another and openly to
+acknowledge it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He wants to patronise Charles,' thought Clara, and then she decided
+that for once in a way it would be a good thing for Charles to submit
+to it.  It must be either that or his chosen interminable procedure by
+committee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She decided to take a walk to think it over, and as she moved along
+Piccadilly towards the Green Park, where she proposed to ponder her
+problem, she had a distressing idea that she was followed.  Several
+times she turned and stopped, but she could see no one who could be
+pursuing her.  Men stared at her, but none dared molest so purposeful a
+young woman....  She stayed for some time in the Green Park, turning
+over and over in her mind how best she could engage Sir Henry's
+interest without aggravating his hostility to Charles, and still she
+was aware of eyes upon her....  She walked away very fast, but as she
+turned out into the roadway in front of Buckingham Palace she turned,
+stopped, and was accosted by a little dark woman with a smouldering
+fury in her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Are you Mrs Mann?' said the woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes,' said Clara, at once on her guard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So am I,' rejoined the other woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, no!' said Clara, with a smile that barely concealed the catch at
+her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, yes,' replied the other woman.  'I should think I was married to
+him before you were born.  And I wasn't the only one.  He left the
+country&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara turned on her heel and walked away.  The other woman followed her
+breathing heavily and gasping out details.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You horrible woman,' cried Clara, unable at last to bear any more.
+'Go away...'  And in her heart she said&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is my fault.  I made him marry me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still the other woman was at her heels, babbling and gasping out her
+sordid little tragedy&mdash;-two children, no money, her mother to keep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was stunned and so nauseated that she could not speak.  Only in
+her mind the thought went round and round,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is my fault....  It is my fault.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Charles ought to have told her.  He ought not to have been so
+will-less, so ready to fall in with every suggestion she made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I must have this out at once,' she said, and hailing a taxi she
+bundled the other woman into it and drove home.  Charles was out.  She
+ordered tea, and quickly had the whole story out&mdash;the lodgings in
+Birmingham, the intrigue, the ultimatum, Charles's catastrophic
+collapse and inertia, years of poverty in London going from studio to
+studio, lodging to lodging: his flight&mdash;with another woman: her
+struggles, her present hand to mouth existence on the outskirts of the
+musical comedy theatre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I wouldn't have spoken,' said Kitty, 'if you hadn't been so young.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should have thought that was a reason for keeping quiet,' replied
+Clara, who was now almost frozen with horror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You were bound to hear sooner or later.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles came in followed by Mr Clott.  He was in the highest spirits
+and called out,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Darling, Lord Verschoyle is interested.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His jaw dropped as he saw Kitty there at tea.  His pince-nez fell off
+his nose, and he stood pulling at his necktie for a few seconds.  Then
+he gave Mr Clott a commission to perform, and stood looking with
+horror, disgust, and loathing at the unhappy Kitty....  It was Clara
+who first found her voice,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I ... I brought her here, Charles,' she said.  'I thought it would
+save us all&mdash;trouble.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a tone icy with fury he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If you will go quietly, I will write to you.  Please leave your
+address, and I will write to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kitty hoped for a moment that he was talking to Clara, but his fury was
+so obviously concentrated on her that at last she rose and said
+meekly,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You will find a writing-block by the telephone in the hall.  Please
+leave your address there.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With that she left the room.  Charles and Clara were too much for her.
+All her venom trickled away in a thin stream of dread as she felt the
+gathering rage in the two of them.  At the same time she had some
+exultation in having produced a storm so much beyond her own capacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You did not tell me,' said Clara, when Kitty had gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Honestly, honestly I had forgotten.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Forgotten!  You did not tell me.  You did not need her to come into
+this house to remember.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What do you mean, then?  You had forgotten?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Honestly, I never thought of it until one day when I met her in the
+street.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Does everybody know?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  I don't conceal these things.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You concealed it from me, from me, from me....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  I never thought of it.  She'd gone out of my life years ago.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Have many women gone out of your life?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He blushed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A good many....  I never meant to conceal it.  Truly I didn't.  I just
+didn't mention it....  You were so happy, chicken; so was I.  I hadn't
+been happy before&mdash;not like that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She can ruin us....  Do you know that?  She has only to go up to the
+nearest policeman and ruin us.  Do you know that?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She won't....  She'd never dare.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She would....  I'm young.  That's the unpardonable thing in a
+woman....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't understand,' said Charles, sitting down suddenly.  And quite
+perceptibly he did not understand that any one, man or woman, could
+deliberately hurt another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But you <I>must</I> understand,' she cried.  'You must understand....  You
+must protect yourself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How can I?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She is your wife.  You must give her what she wants.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Money?  Oh, yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You fool,' said Clara, in exasperation, 'you've married me.  If she
+moves at all you will be ruined.  You will be sent to prison.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do you want to get out of it?' he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I?  No....  I want to protect you....  Oh, it's my fault.  It's my
+fault I thought I could help you.  I thought I could help you....  I
+could have helped you if only you had told me....  You must have known.
+You couldn't imagine that you could come back to London and not be&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I did,' he said.  'I never thought of it.  I never do think of
+anything except in terms of my work....  I'll tell Clott to see to it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara clenched her fists until her nails dug into the palms of her
+hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I shall have to leave you,' she said at last.  'I shall have to leave
+you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She pulled off her wedding-ring
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Perhaps I'd better go away,' he muttered at last very slowly.  'It's a
+pity.  Everything was going so well.  Lord Verschoyle is deeply
+interested.  He has two hundred thousand a year.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara laughed at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He is willing to sit on my committee.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Does he know?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But can't you see that these people ought to know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  What has it got to do with my work?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To you nothing.  To them everything.  They can't support you if they
+know&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But they don't know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You are in that woman's hands.  So am I.  You can't expect me to live
+upon her sanction.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a new aspect of the matter to Charles, who had never admitted
+the right of any other person to interfere in his affairs.  It hurt him
+terribly as it slowly dawned upon him that the miserable Kitty had
+behind her the whole force of the law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, good God!' he said.  'I'm a criminal.  Oh, good God!  This is
+serious.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm glad you realise it at last,' said she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He broke down and wept, and began to tumble out the whole ridiculous
+story of his life; his perpetual disappointment: his terror of being
+bound down to anything except the work in which he felt so free, so
+wholly master of himself and his destiny; his delight in at last
+finding in her a true companion who, unlike all other women, allowed
+him to be something more than her possession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm afraid,' he said in the end, 'that I have never understood women.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Leave it to me.'  Poor Clara felt that if she tried to explain any
+more her head would burst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked up at her gratefully and was at once happy again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It was my fault,' said Clara.  'It wouldn't have happened if I'd
+thought about life at all.  But it was so wonderful being with you and
+making your work come to life that I never thought about the rest....
+I never looked at it from the woman's point of view, as, being a woman,
+I ought to have done....  I think the shock has made me a woman....  I
+don't think anything will ever make you a man.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles gaped at her, but was not the least bit hurt.  He did not
+particularly want to be a man as manhood is generally understood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes,' he said, 'Lord Verschoyle is deeply interested, and he has two
+hundred thousand a year.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Wait a moment,' replied Clara, 'I'll go and see if she has left her
+address.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She ran downstairs, but Kitty had left no address.  As Clara,
+considering the matter, decided that meant either that she intended to
+make trouble or that she had good reason for waiting before she made it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she returned, Charles was lover-like in his gratitude, but she
+repulsed him, told him that he must get on with his designs for <I>The
+Tempest</I> and she would see what could be done about his troubles.  For
+the present, for a little while at all events, she proposed to leave
+him and to stay with Julia Wainwright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I may have to tell her,' she said, 'but I don't think so....  I won't
+let this woman ruin you, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have hurt you far more than I have hurt her,' he said miserably.  'I
+suppose things will never be the same.  You'll always feel that I am
+keeping things from you....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  No.  I know that is all that matters....  It is just the law that
+is somehow wrong, giving advantage to any one who is mean enough to
+take it....  But women <I>are</I> mean.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Not you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  I do understand you, Charles, but I'm so hurt.  I'm so tired I
+don't think I can stand much more.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll do anything you want.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then leave it to me....  The chief thing is your work, Charles.  That
+is all of you that matters.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was entirely Charles's view of himself, and, as he could not see,
+yet, the effect of the intrusion of Kitty upon the brave girl who had
+so childishly accepted his childishness he was unperturbed and free
+from all anxiety....  So far his new career in London had been a
+triumphant success, and it seemed to him incredible that it could be
+checked by such a trifle as a forgotten wife.  He thought of the money
+that should come from the Imperium: money meant power, power meant the
+removal of all disagreeable obstacles from his path.  He licked his
+lips....  England understood money and nothing else.  He would talk to
+England in her own language and when he had caught her attention he
+would speak his own....  Things were going so splendidly: a man like
+himself was not going to be upset by trifles.  He had worked in exile
+for so long: surely, surely he would be able to reap his reward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara meanwhile was shocked almost out of her youth.  She did not weep.
+There were no tears in her eyes in which there slowly gathered a fierce
+expression of passionate pain.  The bloom of youth was on her cheeks,
+upon her lips, in all her still unformed features, but in her eyes
+suddenly was the knowledge of years, concentrated, tyrannous, and
+between this knowledge and her will there was set up a remorseless
+conflict, from which she found relief only in a new gaiety and love of
+fun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was impossible to discuss the matter any further with Charles, and
+without a word to him she went away to Miss Wainwright's flat.  That
+good creature took her in without a word, without even a mute
+curiosity.  People's troubles were their own affair, and she knew that
+they needed to be alone with them.  She gave Clara her bedroom and
+absented herself as much as possible, and kept Freeland out of the way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The flat was luxuriously but monstrously furnished.  Its frank, opulent
+ugliness was a relief to the girl after the rarefied atmosphere of
+aesthetics in which for three years she had lived with Charles, upon
+whom all her thoughts were still concentrated.  Of herself she had no
+thought.  It did not concern her what she was called: wife or mistress.
+She was Clara Day and would remain so whatever happened to her.  She
+had forced Charles to marry her in order to protect him and to help
+him, and she had brought him into danger of imprisonment....  It was
+perfectly true; Charles could not protect himself because he could not
+learn that others were not as kindly as himself.  He had been trapped
+into marriage with that vulgar and venomous woman.  He could not speak
+of it because he loathed it so much....  She found excuses for him, for
+herself she sought none, and at the back of all her thoughts was her
+firm will that he should succeed.  Yes, she thought, it was a good
+thing to leave him for a while.  She had been with him too much, too
+near him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a great comfort to be with Julia and Freeland, that unreal Romeo
+and Juliet of middle age.  They were very proud of her, and elated to
+have her with them, took her everywhere, introduced her to all their
+friends, and insisted upon her being photographed for the Press, and in
+due course she had the shock of seeing her own features, almost more
+than life-size, exhibited to the hurrying crowds on the
+station-platforms.  She was called Clara Day, Sir Henry Butcher's
+youngest and prettiest recruit.  From the shy, studious little girl who
+sat close and, if possible, hidden during rehearsals, she found that
+she had become in the estimation of the company one of themselves.  It
+was known that she had had lunch alone with Sir Henry, and the
+publication of her photograph sealed her young reputation.  With the
+interest of the Chief, and influence in the Press, it was accepted that
+she would go far.  That she was Mrs Charles Mann was whispered, for
+apparently she only had been ignorant of the impediment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She apprehended the situation instinctively.  Her mind recoiled from
+it.  She felt trapped.  Whichever way she moved she would injure
+him....  She ought to have kept quietly in the background, and let him
+go his own way.  By forcing him into the theatre he and his affairs
+were exposed to the glaring light of publicity through her own
+impetuous ambition for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon she was in an intolerable agony.  She wrote to Charles every day,
+and saw him occasionally, but was tortured every moment with the idea
+that her mere presence was injurious to him, and might call down an
+attack from the jealous Kitty at any moment.  On the other hand, at any
+moment some journalist might seize on the story of her arrival in
+London with Charles, and publish the fact of their marriage....  She
+stayed on with Julia, and let the days go by until at last she felt
+that it was unfair to her kind friends.  One night, therefore, after
+the theatre, she went into Julia's bedroom, and sat perched at the end
+of her bed, with her knees tucked under her chin, and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm not Charles's wife, Julia.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I know that,' replied the kind creature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I <I>am</I> married to him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Good God!'  Julia sat up and clasped her hand to her capacious
+bosom....  'Not a ceremony!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  In an office near the Strand.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My dear child, my dear, dear child,' Julia began to weep.  'It's ...
+it's ... it's ...'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I know what it is,' said Clara, setting her jaw.  'I don't know what
+to do.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You must never see him again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I must.  I <I>am</I> married to him inside me.  He can't do anything
+without me.  I've made him come over here....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Didn't you know?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I knew nothing except that I loved him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But people can't love like that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I do.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He ran away from all that&mdash;and there were other things....  Oh, my
+dear, dear child, have you nobody belonging to you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Only Charles.  And I've hurt him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What does he say?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He doesn't seem to realise....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'd like to thrash him within an inch of his life....  The only thing
+to be thankful for is that you are not married to him.  Not realise,
+indeed!  He walked out of his marriage like a man bilking his rent.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He is an artist.  His work is more important to him than anybody.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Julia wept and wailed.  'The scoundrel!  The scoundrel!  The
+blackguard!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I won't have you calling him names.  I won't have it.  I won't have
+it,' cried Clara, her feelings finding vent in an outburst of temper.
+'And you're not to tell a soul, not even Freeland.  I won't have
+anybody interfering.  I will handle this myself because I know more
+about it than anybody else....  It doesn't help me at all to hear you
+abusing Charles.  It only hurts me....  I've made a mistake, and I am
+going through with it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But you can't live with him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You live with Freeland.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  But we're not married, so nobody worries; at least I am married,
+so is Freeland.  That makes it all right.  If people are married it is
+different.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The complications of the position were beyond Julia's intelligence, and
+she began to laugh hysterically.  Clara laughed, too, but from genuine
+amusement.  The world certainly did look very funny from the detachment
+now forced upon her: deliciously funny, and Charles appeared in her
+thoughts as a kind of Harlequin dancing through the world, peering into
+the houses where people were captive, tapping the doors with his wand
+so that they opened, but no one never came out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll take you to my lawyer,' said Julia, at last, with a fat sob.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want no lawyers,' snapped Clara defiantly.  'Charles hates that
+woman and she knows it.  She won't try to get him back.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  But she won't stand you're being with him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then I'll live alone, and help Charles in my own way.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Help yourself first, lovey; then you can help other people.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't believe it.  If you help yourself, you are kept so busy doing
+it that you don't know the other people are there.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course Julia told Freeland, and in the morning he came tapping at
+Clara's door.  She admitted him.  His rather faded, handsome face wore
+a very serious expression, more serious indeed than was warranted
+either by the feeling in his heart or the thought in his head.  It was
+a very serious situation, and he had assumed the appropriate manner....
+Clara had slept soundly, and her fund of healthy good spirits made it
+possible for her to regard the whole complication as, in itself, rather
+superficial.  The sun was shining in upon the mirror of her
+dressing-table, upon her silver brushes, upon the portrait of Julia in
+a silver frame, and upon the new frock which had come only the day
+before from the dressmaker.  With the sun shining, and the eager
+thought of Charles in her heart, Clara could have no anxiety.  No
+problem was insoluble, no obstacle, she believed, could be
+irresistible.  Therefore she smiled as Freeland came in treading more
+heavily than his wont.  He stood and looked down at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's a bad business, kid,' he said, 'a bad, bad business.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Is it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He has ruined your life.  I feel like shooting him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That wouldn't help me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Can't you see how serious it is?  You're neither married nor
+unmarried.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Can't I be just Clara Day?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Freeland was rather taken aback.  He was used to Julia's taking her cue
+from him.  If a woman does not take the line proposed by the man in a
+situation, a scene, where is he?  And, in fact, Freeland did not know
+where he was.  His life had proceeded fairly smoothly from scene to
+scene and he was not used to being pulled up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No, no, kid,' he protested.  'It is too ghastly.  Your position is
+impossible.  Charles, damn him, can't protect you.  The world is hard
+and cruel....  A man can play the lone hand, but I never heard of its
+being done by a woman: never.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm going to see Charles through,' said Clara, 'and you'll see how we
+shall make this old London of yours wake up.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But if there's a scandal....?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There shan't be....  And if there is: well ... well...'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Freeland in his turn began to weep.  Clara seemed to him so pathetic,
+so innocent, so oblivious of all the hard facts of the world.  She was
+like a wild bird, flying in ecstasy, flying higher and higher in the
+pain of her song.  Indeed she was a most touching sight lying there in
+her innocence, full of faith, conscious of danger, busy with wary
+thoughts, but so eager, vital, and confident that all her belief in
+Charles and her love for him were based in the deeper and stronger
+forces of life....  She was roused to battle, and she was profoundly
+aware that the law and the other devices of society were contrived
+wholly to frustrate those deeper, stronger forces....  Freeland's
+sentimental sympathy seemed to her in her happy morning mood weak and
+irrelevant, yet charming and pathetic.  He regarded her as a little
+girl and was entirely unconscious of all the passionate knowledge in
+her which moved so far and so swiftly beyond his capacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Anything either of us can do,' he said, 'we shall do, always.'  He
+stooped and took her in his arms and kissed her, and large tears fell
+upon her cheek.  Tears came easily to these people: to Clara they came
+not.  Indeed she rather exulted in her peril, which destroyed for her
+once and for all the superficiality of the life into which she had
+plunged in order to help Charles to conquer his kingdom, which was
+worlds away from this world of law and pretence, of spurious emotions
+and easy tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I can't think how Charles could have done it,' said Freeland, drying
+his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I made him,' said Clara, her eyes dancing with fun and mischief.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BIRDS AND FISHES
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+For the time being it seemed that the superfluous Kitty had disappeared
+from the scene.  She made no sign, and no attempt was made to trace
+her.  Clara knew perfectly well that she was somewhere in the West End,
+but in that small crowded area it was possible to avoid meeting.
+People quickly fell into a groove and lived between a certain theatre,
+a certain restaurant, and home, and the light theatre was almost
+completely severed from the theatre which took itself so seriously.
+The legitimate stage had nothing to do with the bastard frivolity of
+the houses whose appeal was based on lingerie, pretty faces, and
+shapely limbs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As for Charles, he was once again oblivious.  He visited Clara at the
+flat, and had a painful scene with Freeland, who lashed out at him,
+rolled out a number of hard words, such as 'blackguard,' 'selfish
+beast,' etc., etc., but was nonplussed when Charles, not at all
+offended, said quietly,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Have you finished?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  What do you propose to do about it?  The poor child has no
+people.  Julia and I are father and mother to her.  In fact, I regard
+her as my adopted daughter.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should always let her do exactly as she wished,' said Charles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Will you leave her alone then?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Certainly.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Freeland regarded that as a triumph, but Clara was furious with him for
+interfering, and she scolded him until he promised that in future he
+would not say a word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What are you going to do?' he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I need a holiday from Charles,' she said&mdash;a new idea to Freeland,
+whose conception of love was besotted devotion&mdash;'and I am going to live
+alone for a time.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out she went, and before the day was done she had found a furnished
+apartment in the dingy region of narrow streets behind Leicester
+Square, and for a time she was entirely absorbed in this new
+acquisition.  It was her own, her very own.  It was at the top of the
+house, and looked out over roofs and chimneys westward so that she had
+the London sunset for comfort and companionship: more than enough,
+sweeter intimacy than any she had yet found among human beings, whose
+shallow business and fussy importance always hurt and exasperated
+her....  More clearly than ever she knew that there was only Charles
+and his work that mattered to her at all.  She saw him occasionally and
+knew that he was entirely happy.  He wrote to her every day and his
+plans were maturing famously.  Lord Verschoyle was more and more
+interested, and as his lordship's interest grew so there waxed with it
+Charles's idea of his immense wealth.  That worried Clara, who wanted
+her genius to prove himself in order to command and not to crave
+support.  But Charles was elated with the success of his advertising
+campaign, and at the growth of his prestige among the artists....
+'Such a combination has never been known.  We shall simply overwhelm
+the public.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara's answer to this was to see that his relations with Sir Henry
+Butcher were not neglected.  The explosion produced by Kitty's
+intervention had split their efforts, so that Charles was now working
+through Lord Verschoyle, she through Sir Henry Butcher, and once again
+she was embarked upon a battle with Charles for the realisation of his
+dreams&mdash;not upon paper, which perfectly satisfied him&mdash;but in terms of
+life in which alone she could feel that her existence was honourable.
+She kept a tight enough hold of Charles to see that he worked at <I>The
+Tempest</I>, but, as she was no longer with him continually, she could not
+check his delighted absorption in his committee.  This was properly and
+duly constituted.  It had a chairman, Professor Laverock, and Mr Clott
+acted also as its secretary in an honorary capacity, his emoluments
+from Charles being more than sufficient for his needs.  It met
+regularly once a month in studios and drawing-rooms.  The finest
+unofficialised brains in London were gathered together, and nervous men
+eyed each other suspiciously and anxiously until Charles appeared, with
+Mr Clott fussing and moving round him like a tug round a great liner.
+His presence vitalised the assembly; the suppressed idealism in his
+supporters came bubbling to the surface.  Poets whose works were
+ignored by the great public, musicians whose compositions were ousted
+by Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, and Poles from the concert-rooms of
+London, dramatists whose plays were only produced on Sunday evenings,
+art critics who had acclaimed Charles's exhibition, all in his presence
+were conscious of a solidarity proof against all jealousy and
+disappointment; Charles, famous in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York,
+moved among them like a kindling wind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would arrive with his arms full of papers, while Mr Clott in a
+little black bag carried the essential documents&mdash;minute-book, agenda,
+suggestions, plans.  For some months the Committee accomplished nothing
+but resolutions to invite and co-opt other members, but it seemed
+impossible to lure any really successful person into the net.  No
+actor-manager, no Royal Academician, no poet with a healthy circulation
+could be found to give practical expression to his sympathy, though
+admiration for Mr Mann's work and the high reputation he had won for
+British Art on the Continent oozed from them all in letters of great
+length, which were read to the Committee until its members, most of
+them rather simple souls, were bewildered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The accretion of Lord Verschoyle made a great difference.  He attended
+in person, a shy, elegant young man, educated at Eton, and in the
+Guards for the gentle art of doing nothing.  He owned a large area of
+London, and his estates were managed by a board which he was not even
+expected to attend, and he was a good young man.  He wanted to spend
+money and to infuriate his trustees, but he did not know how to do it.
+Women bored him.  He had a yacht, but loathed it, and kept it in
+harbour, and only spent on it enough money to keep it from rusting
+away.  He maintained a stable, but would not bet or attend any other
+meeting than Ascot.  He had some taste in art, but only cared for
+modern pictures, which he could buy for fifty or a hundred pounds.
+Indeed he was much too nice for his altogether exceptional
+opportunities for wasting money, for he loathed vulgarity, and the only
+people who could tell him how to waste his wealth&mdash;stable-touts,
+art-dealers, women of the West End&mdash;were essentially vulgar, and he
+could not endure their society....  He had five houses, but all he
+needed was an apartment of three rooms, and he was haunted and made
+miserable by the idea, not without a fairly solid foundation, that
+young women and their mammas wished to marry him for his money....  He
+longed to know a young woman who had no mamma, but none ever came his
+way.  Society was full of mammas, and of ladies eager to push the
+fortunes of their husbands and lovers.  He was turned to as a man of
+power, but in his heart he knew that no human being was ever more
+helpless, more miserably at the mercy of his trustees, agents, and
+servants....  He had been approached many times by persons interested
+in plays, theatres, and schemes, but being that rare and unhappy
+creature, a rich man with good taste, he had avoided them as hotly as
+the mammas of Mayfair and Belgravia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met Charles at his exhibition and was introduced to him.  Charles at
+once bellowed at him at the top of his voice on the great things that
+would be achieved through the realisation of his dreams, and Lord
+Verschoyle had in his society the exhilarated sense of playing truant,
+and wanted more of it.  He was hotly pursued at the moment by Lady
+Tremenheer, who had two daughters, and he longed ardently to disgrace
+himself, but so perfect was his taste that he could not do it&mdash;in the
+ordinary way.  Charles was outrageous, but so famous as to carry it
+off, and Verschoyle seized upon the great artist as the way of escape,
+well knowing that art ranked with dissipation in the opinion of his
+trustees.  With one stone he could kill all his birds.  He promised by
+letter, being most careful to get his wicked indiscretion down in
+writing, his whole-hearted support of Charles's scheme.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles thereupon drew up his scheme.  Verschoyle's wealth disposed of
+the most captious member of his committee, whose meetings now became
+more awful and ceremonious than ever.  Even so much assembled intellect
+could not resist the wealth that through the generations had been
+gathered up to surround the gentle personality of Horace Biningham,
+Lord Verschoyle, who smiled benignantly upon the strange company and,
+all unconscious of the devastating effect upon them of his money, was
+most humbly flattered to be in the presence of so many distinguished
+persons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tenth meeting of the committee was arranged to be the most
+critical.  Charles was to read and expound the scheme upon which he had
+been at work for years.  The meeting was to be held at his own house,
+and for this occasion only he implored Clara to be present as hostess,
+and so eager was she to share in the triumph of that side of his
+activities that she consented and was the only woman present.  With
+Professor Laverock in the chair, Mr Clott read the minutes of the last
+meeting, upon which, as nothing had happened, there was no comment.
+Clara sat in a corner by the door and looked from face to face, trying
+in vain to find in any something of the fire and eagerness that was in
+her Charles's, who, radiant and bubbling over with confidence, sat at a
+little table in the centre of the room with his papers in front of him,
+two enormous candles on either side, and his watch in his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After formalities, Professor Laverock called upon Mr Mann to read his
+scheme to the committee....  Rarely can a room have contained so much
+eager idealism, rarely can so many mighty brains have been keyed up to
+take their tune from one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles smoothed out his paper, shook back his hair, arranged the cuffs
+which he always wore in his desire to be taken for an English
+gentleman.  His hearers settled themselves in their chairs.  He began:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Gentlemen, we are all here concerned to make the theatre a temple of
+art, always open with a welcome to every talent, from that of the
+highest and most creative vision to that of the most humble and patient
+craftsman's life.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!' some one sighed contentedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We cannot expect such a theatre either from actors or from commercial
+persons who would be much better engaged in selling boots or soap....
+In Germany art is honoured.  Nietzsche, whom I acknowledge as my
+compeer, is to be commemorated with an enormous stadium upon a hill.
+In England we have turned away from the hill-top and are huddled
+together in the valleys until beauty is lost and dreams are but aching
+memories....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was irritated by this preamble.  It was too much like the spirit
+of Sir Henry Butcher.  If only Charles had consulted her she would have
+cut out this ambitious bombast, and brought him down to practical
+detail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My proposal is that we should erect upon one of three suitable sites
+in London a theatre which shall be at once a school and a palace of
+art.  There will be one theatre on the German model, and an outdoor
+theatre on the plan of an arena in Sicily of which I have here sketches
+and plans.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Is that quite suitable in the English climate?' asked Adolph
+Griffenberg, a little Jewish painter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The disabilities of the English climate are greatly exaggerated,' said
+Charles.  'There could be protection from wind and rain, if it were
+thought necessary.  There will be attached to the indoor theatre an
+experimental stage to which I of course shall devote most of my
+energies; then schoolrooms, a kitchen, a dining-room, a dancing-room, a
+music-room, a wardrobe, three lifts and two staircases.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Isn't this too detailed for our present purpose?' asked Griffenberg.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I merely wish to show that I am entirely practical,' retorted Charles.
+'There will be every modern appliance upon the stage, several
+inventions of my own, and an adjustable proscenium.  The staff will
+consist of myself, a dozen instructors in the various arts of the
+theatre, and a larger number of pupils, who will be promoted as they
+give evidence of talent and skill in employing it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So far attention had been keen and eager.  Charles's happy vision of a
+marble temple lit with the inward sun of vision and rosy with youth had
+carried all before it.  He warmed to his task, talked on as the candles
+burned low, and at last came to the financial aspect of his proposal.
+Griffenberg leaned forward, and Clara watched him apprehensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have estimated the cost as follows,' said Charles, now confident
+that he had his hearers with him.  'I have put my estimate as low as
+possible, so that we may know our minimum:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<PRE STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+The Outdoor Theatre  . . . . . . . .  £6,000
+The Indoor Theatre . . . . . . . . . £15,000
+To Machinery . . . . . . . . . . . .  £4,000
+To Salaries  . . . . . . . . . . . .  £1,500
+My Own Salary  . . . . . . . . . . .  £5,000
+Wardrobe . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    £600
+Ground rent  . . . . . . . . . . . . Nominal
+Musicians and music  . . . . . . . .    £600
+Paint, materials, etc. . . . . . . .    £400
+Food for the birds and fishes  . . .     £25
+</PRE>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+There was a dead silence.  One or two men smiled.  Others stared.
+Others pulled their noses or smoothed their hair.  Griffenberg laughed
+harshly and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Excuse me, Mr Mann.  I didn't quite catch that last item.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles who was entirely unaware of the changed atmosphere looked up
+and repeated,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Food for the birds and fishes....  There must be beautiful birds
+flying in the outdoor theatre.  In the courtyard there must be
+fish-ponds with rare fish....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We are not proposing to build a villa of Tiberius,' snapped
+Griffenberg, who was deeply wounded.  'I cannot agree to a scheme which
+includes birds and fishes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was bristling with fury against Charles for being so childish,
+and against Griffenberg for taking advantage of him.  She knew that
+Charles was in an ecstasy, and unable to cope with any practical point
+they chose to raise.  It would have been fair for Griffenberg to take
+exception to his estimates, but not to the birds and fishes....  Her
+sense of justice was so outraged that to keep herself from intervening
+she slipped out of the room and gave vent to her fury in the darkness
+of the passage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The worst happened.  The scheme was forgotten; the birds and fishes
+were remembered....  Griffenberg asked rather insolently if Mr Mann
+proposed to publish the scheme as it stood, and Charles, who did not
+detect the insolence, said that he certainly intended to publish the
+scheme and had indeed already sent a copy to the Press Association.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'As your own or as the Committee's scheme?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr Clott intervened,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I made it quite clear that the scheme was Mr Mann's own, and Mr Mann
+sent with it what I may say is a very beautiful description of his
+theatre as it will be in being.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Theatres in the air,' said some one, and all, just a little ashamed,
+though with a certain bravado of geniality to cover their shame, rose
+to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they came out of the room Clara darted up the stairs and heard their
+remarks as they departed.  'Birds and fishes.' ... 'Extraordinary man.'
+... 'Fairy tale.' ... 'Damned impudence.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles, still unmindful of any change, moved among them thanking them
+warmly for their support and explaining that if he had been somewhat
+long in reading it was because he had wished to leave no room for
+misunderstanding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one stayed but an Irish poet, who had been delighted with the words,
+birds and fishes, emerging like a poem from the welter of so much
+detail, and Verschoyle, a little uneasy, but entranced by Charles's
+voice and what seemed to him his superb audacity.  They three stood and
+talked themselves into oblivion of the world and its narrow ways, and
+Charles was soon riding the hobby-horse of his theory of Kingship and
+urging Verschoyle to interest the Court of St James's in Art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara joined them, listened for a while, and later detached his
+lordship from the other two, who talked hard against each other,
+neither listening, both hammering home points.  She took Verschoyle
+into a corner and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It was very unfair of Mr Griffenberg to catch Charles out on the birds
+and fishes.  They're very important to him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's what I like about him,' said Verschoyle.  'Things are important
+to him.  Nothing is important to the rest of us.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Some of them will resign from the committee,' said Clara.  'I hope you
+won't.  It is a great pity, because Charles does mean it so thoroughly.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle screwed in his eye-glass and held his knee and rocked it to
+and fro.  He was shrewd enough to see that if he resigned the whole
+committee would break up, and he knew that this dreadful eventuality
+was in Clara's mind also.  He liked Charles's extravagance: it made him
+feel wicked, but also he was kind and could not bring himself to hurt
+Clara.  He had never in his life felt that he was of the slightest
+importance to any one.  Clara felt that sense stirring in him and she
+fed it; let him into the story of their struggles and the efforts she
+had made to bring her idealist to London, and urged upon him the vital
+importance of Charles's work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They're all jealous of him,' she said, 'all these people who have
+never been heard of outside London.  It was just like them to fasten on
+a thing like that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I like the idea of birds and fishes in London,' he said.  'I think we
+need them....  Now, if it were you, Mrs Mann'&mdash;for he had been so
+introduced to her&mdash;'I would back you through everything.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is me,' said Clara.  'It always is a woman.  If it were not for me
+we should not be in London now.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You must bring him to dinner with me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara accepted in her eagerness to save the situation without realising
+that she had compromised herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You will forgive my saying it,' added Verschoyle, 'but it hurts me to
+hear you speak of yourself as a woman.  You are only a child and I hate
+women.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So do I,' said Clara, all her anxiety now allayed.  With Verschoyle
+for her friend she did not care how soon the committee was dissolved.
+She had always hated the committee, for, as her grandfather used to
+say, a committee is a device by which the incompetent check the
+activities of the competent....  She liked Verschoyle.  He was a lonely
+little man and she thought whimsically that only lonely people could
+swallow the birds and fishes which are so necessary as the finishing
+touch to the artist's vision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I must be going now,' she said to her companion's surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Can't I take you in my car?' he asked, concealing his astonishment at
+her speaking of a home elsewhere.  She consented, and he took her back
+to her rooms, leaving Charles and the Irish poet still rhapsodising in
+a somewhat discordant duet.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SUPPER
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Idealists must certainly be added to the drunkards and children over
+whom a specially benign deity watches: a flood of disaster by sea and
+land gave a plentiful crop of news and made it impossible for the
+papers to publish Charles Mann's scheme.  His committee's dread of
+being made publicly ridiculous evaporated, and, as Lord Verschoyle did
+not resign, no other member did, and Griffenberg simply sent in a
+letter of protest and announced that he was too busy to take any more
+active part in the proceedings.  He went away and denounced the theatre
+as a vulgar institution, which no artist could enter without losing his
+soul.  He said this publicly in a newspaper and produced one of those
+delightful controversies which in the once happy days of unlimited
+advertisement provided an opportunity for mutual recrimination upon an
+impersonal basis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle promised Charles thirty thousand pounds if he could raise
+another similar amount, and Charles regarded himself as worth thirty
+thousand already, raised Mr Clott's salary, and condescended with so
+much security to begin really to work at <I>The Tempest</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara, who was still playing small parts at the Imperium, found to her
+dismay that Sir Henry had rather cooled towards the Mann production and
+was talking of other plays, a huge American success called <I>The Great
+Beyond</I>, and a French drama of which he had acquired the rights some
+few years previously.  This was really alarming, for she knew that if
+she could not engage Charles speedily he would simply fling away from
+the theatre and devote himself, unsupported except by Verschoyle, who
+was by no means a certain quantity, to his airy schemes.  Already he
+was beginning to be swayed by letters from well-meaning persons in the
+provinces, who urged him to found another Bayreuth in the Welsh Hills
+or the Forest of Arden....  Give Charles a hint and he would construct
+an imaginary universe!  If she could only stop him advertising, he
+would not be exposed to the distracting bombardment of hints and
+suggestions which was opened upon him with every post, especially after
+he announced with his usual bland indiscretion his association with the
+owner of a fashionable part of the Metropolis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle did not object.  It horrified his trustees and after a time,
+growing bolder, he was much in Charles's company, and found him
+extremely useful as a bogey to frighten away the mammas who had made
+his life hideous ever since his Eton days, when one of his aunts had
+horrified him by referring to one of his cousins, a child of fifteen,
+as his 'dear little wifie.' ...  Further, by seeing much of Charles, he
+could see more of Clara without compromising her or himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now in the world of the theatre there never is but always may be money.
+It is always going to be made, so that everybody associated with it has
+credit sustained by occasional payment.  Clara realised this very early
+in her career.  She understood finance, because her grandfather had
+discussed his affairs with her exactly as if she were his partner, and
+she had had to keep a tight hand on his extravagance; and she quickly
+understood that in the theatre money must be spent always a little
+faster than it can be made to keep the current of credit flowing.  She
+also realised that Sir Henry Butcher spent it a great deal faster, and
+was cool and warm towards the various projects laid before him
+according as they made payment possible....  He had watched Charles
+Mann's increase of fame with a jealous interest, but with a shrewdly
+expert eye waited for the moment of capitalisation to come before he
+committed himself to the new-fangled ways of dressing the stage, these
+damned Greek tragedies, plays in curtains, German toy sets, and Russian
+flummery in which painted blobs stood for trees and clouds.  To Sir
+Henry a tree was a tree, a cloud a cloud, and he liked nothing better
+than to have real rabbits on the stage, if possible to out-Nature
+Nature....  At the same time he knew that the public was changing.  It
+was becoming increasingly difficult to produce an instantaneous
+success.  The theatre did not stand where it had done in popular
+esteem, and its personalities had no longer the vivid authority they
+had once enjoyed.  When the Prime Minister visited the Imperium, it was
+rather Sir Henry than the Prime Minister who was honoured: a sad
+declension, for Prime Ministers come and go, but a great actor rules
+for ever as sole lessee and manager of an institution as familiar to
+the general mind as the House of Commons.  Prime Ministers had come and
+gone, they had in turn accepted Sir Henry's kind offer of a box for the
+first night, but latterly Prime Ministers had gathered popularity and
+actor-managers had lost it, so great had been the deterioration of the
+public mind since the introduction of cheap newspapers, imposing upon
+every public character the necessity of a considerable waste of energy
+in advertising....  In the old days, a great man's advertising was done
+for him in acknowledgment of his greatness.  Sir Henry was uneasy,
+could not shake off the gathering gloom, and a deep-seated conviction
+that Lady Butcher had made the fatal mistake of his career by devoting
+herself so exclusively to the front of the house and social drapery,
+bringing him into intimate contact with such persons as Prime
+Ministers, Dukes, and Attorney-Generals....  The public had been
+admitted behind the scenes.  The mystery was gone.  The theatre, even
+the Imperium had lost its spell.  Nothing in it was sacred; not even
+rehearsals, which were continually interrupted by journalists, male and
+female, elegant young men and women who were friends and acquaintances
+of his family, dressmakers.  'Ah!  Teresa!  Teresa!' sighed Sir Henry,
+gazing at the portrait of that lady.  'It needs your touch, your charm,
+the quick insight into the health of the theatre which only comes to
+those who have been born in it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Soon the Imperium would close for a short holiday, after a shockingly
+bad season, and its manager had to make up his mind as to his new
+production.  Mr Gillies was all for safety and economy, and for
+postponing any adventure to the Spring, but Sir Henry said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The fate of the whole year is decided in October.  The few people who
+matter come back from Karlsbad and Scotland cleaned up and scraped, and
+it is then that you make your impression.  The Spring is too late.  We
+must have something new.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We've got nothing new.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This fellow Mann.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But!  He's mad.  If he walked into the Club half the men would walk
+out of it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He has made himself felt.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  But in the wrong way.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The wrong way is often the right way in the end.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You can't have him in the theatre, Chief, after the way he has talked
+about us, as though none of us knew our business.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He might say so if he saw our balance-sheet,' said Sir Henry, who
+loved nothing so much as teasing his loyal subordinates.  'We've
+nothing but this melodrama of Halford Bunn's in which I should have to
+play the Pope.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Well, you were a great success as a Cardinal, Chief.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Hm!  Hm!  Yes.'  Sir Henry began to live again through the success of
+<I>The Cardinal's Niece</I>, but also he remembered the horrible time he had
+had at rehearsals with Mr Halford Bunn who would get so drunk with his
+own words that any acting which distracted attention from them drove
+him almost into hysterics.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Bunn or Mann....  Said Mr Mann to Mr Bunn, "I hope you've got a record
+run."  Said Mr Bunn to Mr Mann, "You, sir, are but an also ran."'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the manager.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He! he! he!' laughed Sir Henry, and they parted without having solved
+their problem, though the impishness in Sir Henry made him long to
+infuriate both Bunn and Mann by a merger of his contracts with the two
+of them....  Oh! dear.  Oh, dear, authors had always been trial enough,
+but if artists were going to begin to thrust their inflated egoism into
+the machinery of the theatre then the life of its manager would become
+unbearable....  Sir Henry liked to drift and to make sudden and
+surprising decisions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In this case the decision was made for him&mdash;by Clara.  It had become
+one of his chief pleasures to give her lunch in the Aquarium, as she
+called it, and to laugh with her over her vivid and comic impressions
+of London, and insensibly he had fallen in love with her, not as was
+his habit theatrically and superficially, but with an old man's passion
+for youth.  It hurt him, plagued him, tortured him, because she never
+gave him an opening for flirtation, but kept his wits at full stretch
+and made him feel thirty again: and as he felt thirty he wanted to be
+thirty....  She never discussed her private affairs with him, but he
+knew that she lived alone.  She baffled him, bewildered him, until he
+was often hard put to it not to burst into tears.  So quick she was and
+she understood so well, had so keen an insight into character and the
+intrigue that went on all around her, that he marvelled at her
+innocence and sometimes almost hated her for it, and for her refusal to
+accept the position assigned to women in society.  His blague, his
+bluff were useless with her.  He had painfully to reveal to her his
+best, the kindly, tender-hearted, generous simpleton that at heart he
+was.  Loving her, he could not help himself, and, loving her, he raged
+against her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She would never allow him to visit her in her rooms.  That was a
+privilege which she reserved for Verschoyle.  Her rooms were her
+sanctuary, her refuge, the place where she could be simple and human,
+and be the untouched Clara Day who had lived in childish glee with her
+grandfather and most powerfully alone in her imagination with various
+characters, more real than any of the persons with whom she ever came
+in contact until she met Charles Mann....  He was never admitted to her
+rooms, nor was Sir Henry Butcher, in whom she had for the first time
+encountered the ordinary love of the ordinary sentimental male.  This
+left her so unmoved that she detested it, with all its ridiculous
+parade of emotions, its stealthy overtures, its corrosive dishonesty,
+which made a frank interchange of thought and feeling impossible....
+The thing had happened to her before, but she had been too young to
+realise it, or to understand to the full its essential possessiveness,
+which to her spirit was its chief offence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had to rebuke Sir Henry.  One week she found her salary trebled.
+She returned the extra ten pounds to Mr Gillies, the manager, pointing
+out that she was doing the same work, small and unimportant, and that
+it was not fair to the other girls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The Chief believes in you, Miss Day.  He doesn't want you to leave us.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This is the very kind of thing to drive me out.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're not like other girls, Miss Day....' said Mr Gillies.  'Indeed,
+I often wonder what a young lady who wears her clothes as you do is
+doing in the theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara's expression silenced him, and she was enraged with the Chief for
+exposing her to such familiarity.  She taxed Sir Henry with it, and he
+was quick to see his mistake, and so warmly pleaded that he had only
+meant it as a kindness that she could not but forgive him.  He implored
+her to let him merit her forgiveness by making her a present of
+anything she desired; but she desired nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm at your feet,' he said, and he went down on his knees.  'In two or
+three years I will make a great actress of you.  You shall be the great
+woman of your time....  A Spring day in the country with you would make
+me young as Romeo....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Please get up,' said Clara, 'and let us talk business.  You promised
+early this year that you would do Charles Mann's <I>Tempest</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  I'm always making promises.  One lives on promises.  Life is a
+promise....  If I promise to do <I>The Tempest</I> will you come and stay
+with us in The Lakes in August?  I want you to meet the Bracebridges;
+you ought to know the best people, the gay people, the aristocrats, the
+only people who know how to be amusing.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was getting further and further away from business, though Clara
+knew that it was impossible to keep Sir Henry to the point.  She
+ignored his invitation and replied,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If you will do <I>The Tempest</I> I can get Lord Verschoyle to support it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry was at once jealous.  He pouted like a baby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want Verschoyle or any other young cub to help you.  <I>I</I> want
+to help you....  Verschoyle can't appreciate you.  He can't possibly
+see you as you are, or as you are going to be.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara smiled.  Verschoyle had become her best friend, and with him she
+enjoyed a deep, quiet intimacy which the young gentleman preserved with
+exquisite tact and taste, delighting in it as he did in a work of art,
+or a good book, and appreciating fully that the girl's capacity for it
+was her rarest and most irresistible power....  Sir Henry was like a
+silly boy in his desire to impress on her that he alone could
+understand her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He continued,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It seems so unnatural that you have no women friends other than old
+Julia....  An actress nowadays has her part to play in society....  You
+have brought new life into my theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then,' said Clara, 'let us do <I>The Tempest</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I don't want to do <I>The Tempest</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charles said you did.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We talked about it, but we are always talking in the theatre....  I
+would give up everything if you would only be a little kinder to me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was this the great Sir Henry speaking?  Clara saw that he was on the
+verge of a schoolboy outburst, perhaps a declaration, and she was never
+fonder of the man than in this moment of self-humiliation.  He waited
+for some relaxation in her, but was met only with sallies.  He rose,
+drew his hand over his eyes, and walked up and down the room sighing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'At my age, to love for the first time....  It is appalling: it is
+tragic.  To have made so great a position and to have nothing to offer
+you that you will accept.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Not even a rise in salary,' said Clara, a little maliciously, and she
+so hurt him that he collapsed in his attempt at heroics, and to win her
+at all costs said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes, yes.  I will do <I>The Tempest</I>.  I can make Prospero a great part.
+I will do <I>The Tempest</I> if you will be Miranda; at least if you will be
+nothing else you shall be a daughter to me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You had better ask Charles and Verschoyle to supper,' said Clara.
+'And we can all talk it over.  But I won't have Mr Gillies.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  How Teresa hated that man....  Do you know that I sometimes think
+he has undone all the great work she did for me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara had no mind to discuss Mr Gillies.  She had gained her point.
+She felt certain that a combination of Butcher, Charles, and Verschoyle
+was the most promising for her purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I hate Mann,' said Sir Henry.  'I hate him.  He is a renegade.  He
+loathes his own calling.  He has turned his back on it....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'When you know him you will love him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry swung round and fixed his eyes on her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I live in dread,' he said, 'in dread for you.  You have everything
+before you, everything, and then one day you will fall in love and your
+genius will be laid at the feet of some fool who will trample it under
+foot as a cow treads on a beautiful buttercup.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara smiled.  Sir Henry, from excessive familiarity with noble words,
+could never find the exact phrase.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The supper was arranged in the aquarium, which in Clara's honour was
+filled with banked up flowers, lilies, roses, delphiniums, and
+Canterbury bells....  Clara wore gray and green, and gray shoes with
+cross-straps about her exquisite ankles.  She came with Verschoyle, who
+brought her in his car which he had placed at her disposal.  Sir Henry
+was in a velvet evening suit of snuff colour, and he glared jealously
+at his lordship whom he regarded as an intending destroyer of Clara's
+reputation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm glad you're going to give Mann his chance,' said Verschoyle.
+'Extraordinary fellow, most extraordinary....  Pity his life should be
+wasted, especially now that we are beginning to wake up to the
+importance of the theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry winced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There <I>are</I> men,' he said, 'who have worked while others talked.  Take
+this man Shaw, for instance.  He talked for years.  Then he comes out
+with plays which are all talk.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ibsen,' said Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Why should we on the English stage go on gloomily saying that there's
+something rotten in the state of Norway?....  I have run Shakespeare
+for more hundred nights than any man in the history of the British
+drama, and I venture to say that every man of eminence and every woman
+of beauty or charm has had at least a cigarette in this room....  Isn't
+that proof of the importance of the theatre?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It may be only proof of your personal charm, Sir Henry,' said
+Verschoyle, and Clara was pleased with him for that....  She enjoyed
+this meeting of her two friends.  Verschoyle's breeding was the exactly
+appropriate set off to Sir Henry's flamboyance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the arrival of Charles, the grouping was perfect.  He came in
+bubbling over with enthusiasm.  His portfolio was under his arm, and he
+had in his hand a bundle of newspapers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Extraordinary news,' he said.  'The Germans in despair are turning the
+theatre into a circus.  Their idea of a modern Hellenic revival.
+Crowds, horses, clowns....  Sophocles in a circus!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Horrible!' said Verschoyle.  'Horrible!  We must do better than that,
+Sir Henry.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I <I>have</I> done better.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles bent over Clara's hand and kissed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have been working hard,' he said.  'Very hard.  My designs are
+nearly finished....  Verschoyle likes them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think them delightful,' said Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Supper was served.  In tribute to Clara's charm, Verschoyle's wealth,
+and Charles's genius, it was exquisitely chosen&mdash;oysters, cold salmon,
+various meats, pastries and jellies, with sherry, champagne, port and
+liqueurs, ices and coffee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry and Charles ate enormously.  Even in that they were in
+competition.  They sat opposite each other, and their hands were
+constantly busy reaching over the table for condiments, bread,
+biscuits, olives, wine....  Verschoyle and Clara were in strong
+contrast to them, though both were enjoying themselves and were vastly
+entertained by the gusto of the great.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry talked at Clara in a boyish attempt to dispossess Charles.
+He was at his most airily brilliant, and invented a preposterous story
+in which Mr Gillies, his manager, and Mr Weinberg, his musical
+director, were engaged in an intrigue to ruin Miss Julia Wainwright, as
+the one had a niece, the other a wife, aching to become leading lady at
+the Imperium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Julia,' he said, 'shall play Caliban.  Why not?  You shall play Ariel,
+Mann, and dear old Freeland shall be Ceres....  Let us be original.  I
+haven't read <I>The Tempest</I> for a long time, but I dare say there's a
+part for you, Verschoyle.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No, thanks.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You could be one of the invisible spirits who eat the phantom supper.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You and Charles could do that very well,' said Clara, who felt that
+her plans would succeed.  These three men were held together by her
+personality, and she meant them to unite for the purpose of forcing out
+those qualities in Charles which made her ready for every sacrifice, if
+only they could be brought to play their part in the life of his
+time....  As the wine and food took effect, all three men were in high
+spirits, and soon were roaring with laughter at the immense joke in
+which they all shared, the joke of pleasing the British public.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is the most wonderful game ever invented,' said Sir Henry.
+'Millions and millions of people believing everything they are told.
+Shouting Hurrah! for fried fish if the hero of the moment says fried
+fish, and Hooray! for ice-cream when the next hero says ice-cream....
+I tell you I could put on a play by Halford Bunn to-morrow, and
+persuade them for a few weeks that it was better than Shakespeare.  Ah!
+you blame us for that, but the public is at fault always.  The man who
+makes a fortune is the man who invents a new way of boring them....  We
+shall be like the French soon, where the only means of maintaining any
+interest in politics is by a scandal now and then.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they talked Clara felt more and more remote from them, and at
+moments found it difficult to believe that it was really she to whom
+all these amazing things had happened.  She thought it must be the end.
+Here at one table were money, imagination, and showmanship, the three
+essentials of success, but the three men in whom they lived were
+talking themselves into ineffectiveness.  Even Verschoyle had caught
+the fever and was talking, and she found herself thinking that the
+three of them, whom separately she could handle so well, were together
+too much for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They talked for hours, and she tried again and again vainly to steer
+them back to business.  They would have none of it.  Their tongues were
+loosed and they expressed their several discontents in malicious wit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At last she left the table and took up Charles's portfolio.  He sprang
+to his feet and snatched it away from her rather roughly and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want to show them yet.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is getting late, Charles,' she protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'In Moscow,' he said, 'a feast like this goes on for days.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry took advantage of the altercation to ascertain from
+Verschoyle that he was willing to back Mann's <I>Tempest</I> for at least an
+eight weeks' run.  That was good enough for Sir Henry.  He had no need
+to look at the drawings....  He was back again in his palmy days.  He
+knew that Clara, like Teresa, would not let him make a fool of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara saw this, and was very angry and sore.  It was terrible to her
+that when she had hoped for an eagerness and gusto to carry through her
+project there should have been this declension upon money and food.
+After all, Shakespeare wrote <I>The Tempest</I> and his share in its
+production was greater than that of either Mann or Butcher.  She had
+hoped they would discuss the play and bring into common stock their
+ideas upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, she laughed at herself for being so young and innocent.  No
+doubt in their own time they would really tackle their problem, and,
+after all, in the world of men, from which women were and perhaps
+always would be excluded, money and food were of prime importance.  All
+the same she was disappointed and could hardly conceal it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I haven't had such a good evening for twenty years,' said Sir Henry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Famous,' said Charles, returning to the table.  Charles was astonished
+to find how much he liked Sir Henry, upon whose doings in his exile he
+had brooded bitterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm only astonished that more men in my position don't go in for the
+theatre.  There are so many of us and we can't think of anything better
+than racing and polo and big game.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they were all so pleased with themselves, Clara swallowed her
+chagrin, and more happily accepted their homage when Sir Henry toasted
+her as the presiding Muse of the Imperium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was suffering from the reaction from a fulfilled ambition.  She had
+overcome Charles's reluctance to submit to the machinery of the
+theatre, and was herself now inspired with something of a horror of its
+immense power, which could absorb originality and force, and reduce
+individuals to helpless puppets.  But she would not admit to herself
+that she might have been wrong, and that it were possibly better to
+have left Charles to fight his own way through.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No, no.  Left to himself he would always be tripped up by his desire
+for birds and fishes and other such superfluities.  Left to meet in
+their love of art he and Sir Henry would soon have been at loggerheads.
+In their love of food, they could discover each other's charm and
+forget their jealousy and suspicion of each other's aims.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SOLITUDE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle swept aside her reluctance to accept gifts from him, and she
+allowed him to furnish her rooms for her upon condition that he never
+came there without her permission.  He said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Why shouldn't I have the pleasure of indulging my desire to give you
+everything in the world?  People will talk! ...  People talk anyhow in
+London.  If we were seen walking together down Piccadilly, there would
+be talk.  They will say I am going to marry you, but we know
+different....  Your way of living is exactly my ideal, absolute
+independence, peace, and privacy.  We're rather alike in that.  It
+seems so odd that we should be living with these people whose whole aim
+in life is publicity.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had many happy hours together reading and discussing the books
+which he bought for her by the armful at a shop in Charing Cross Road,
+where, open to the street, were piles of books almost blatantly
+subversive of society&mdash;Nietsche, Havelock Ellis, Shaw, Ibsen, Anarchist
+tracts, Socialist and Labour journals, R.P.A. cheap reprints, every
+sort and kind of book that in an ordinary shop would only be procured
+upon a special order....  It was a very fierce shop.  Its woodwork was
+painted scarlet, and above the shelves in gilt letters were such names
+as Morris, Marx, Bakounin, Kropotkin, Lassalle, and mottoes such as
+'The workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Clara who discovered the shop in her wanderings through the West
+End, which she desired to know even to its remotest crannies, and its
+oddity seized her imagination when she discovered that for all its
+fierceness it was kept by a gentle little old Scotsman, who most
+ferociously desired the destruction of society, but most gently helped
+all who needed help and most wholly sympathised with all, and they were
+many, who turned to him for sympathy....  The frequenters of his shop
+were poor, mostly long-haired eaters of nuts, and drinkers of ideas.
+There were young men who hovered in the background of his shop arguing,
+chatting, filling in the time they had to spend away from their
+lodgings in the frequent intervals between their attempts to do work
+for which their convictions made them unfitted.  They believed, as he
+did, in the nobility of work, but could find none that was not ignoble.
+It was his boast that he had no book in his shop in which he did not
+believe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The beautiful and elegant young lady who walked into his shop one day
+astonished and delighted him with her radiance.  She was the kind of
+accident that does not often happen to a humble Anarchist bookseller.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she came again and again, he warmed to her, and recommended books,
+and gave her Prince Kropotkin's <I>Memoirs</I> as a present, at least he
+gave her the second volume, for he could not find the first....  He
+always hotly denied that books were stolen from his open shop, but
+admitted that they were sometimes 'borrowed' by his young friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The story of Kropotkin's escape from the fortress moved Clara deeply,
+and she read it to Verschoyle in her rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And that man is still alive,' she said, 'here in England, where we go
+round and round hunting fame and money....  He was like you,
+Verschoyle, in just such a position as you, but he found it intolerable
+and went to prison.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah! but that was in Russia, where it is easy to go to prison.  If I
+tried and tried they wouldn't send me.  I'm too rich.  They wouldn't do
+it.  If I became an Anarchist, they would just laugh because they don't
+believe that society can ever be upset.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm quite sure I didn't go into that shop for nothing.  Something is
+going to happen to me,' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think quite enough has happened to you.  Don't you? ...  What a
+restless little creature you are!  Here you are with everything at your
+feet, the greatest artist, the richest bachelor in London at your
+disposal, and you want something to happen to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want it.  I say that I feel it must come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're before your time, my dear.  That's what is the matter with you.
+Women aren't independent yet.  They are still clinging to men.  That is
+what I cannot stand about them.  I should hate to have a woman clinging
+to my money.  Still more should I hate to have one clinging to myself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But you ought to marry.  You would be happier.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head and smiled,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You have made that impossible, Clara.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  If I found a girl like you who wanted to marry me I might
+consider it....  My aunts are furious.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'With me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  You have made more of a stir than you can imagine.  They tell me
+you are more wicked than Cleopatra, and yet you complain that nothing
+happens to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took him to the bookshop and introduced him to the bookseller, a
+little gray-bearded man in a tweed suit.  Verschoyle liked him and
+asked him what he thought a man in his position ought to do.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The man Jesus put you right years ago,' said the bookseller.  'Sell
+all that thou hast and give to the poor.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I can't,' said Verschoyle.  'I'm only a <I>cestui que trust</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To both Verschoyle and Clara the bookshop was a place of escape, a
+holiday ground where they could play with ideas which to Verschoyle
+were a new kind of toy.  With Mann there was always a certain strain
+for him, because Mann wanted something definite; but with the
+bookseller and his young friends, he was at his ease, for they were
+very like himself, without ambition, and outside all the press and
+hurry of society.  Like himself they wanted nothing except to be
+amused, and like himself they hated amusement which entailed effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara, however, as usual took it seriously.  The Kropotkin Memoirs had
+jolted her imagination, and she saw the young men of the bookshop as
+potential Kropotkins, people who stood upon the edge of an abyss of
+suffering and asked nothing better than to be engulfed in the world's
+misery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The disturbance in her serenity was so great that for some weeks she
+shut herself up alone to collect her ideas.  The world was not so
+simple as she had thought; certainly by no means so simple as it had
+appeared during her three years with Charles.  As she had said, London
+was different.  She had progressed so far with this great London of
+Butcher and Verschoyle only to find through the bookshop another London
+suddenly opened up before her&mdash;the London of the poor....  Poverty she
+had never known, except the poverty of the world of art which is
+created rather by indifference to money than by the grim lack of it.
+With Charles days had been so busy, nights so happy, that it was a
+small thing that every now and then she had to go hungry for a day in
+order that he might not lack.  The immense poverty which now she saw
+everywhere in this West End of London, in courts off Charing Cross
+Road, in vast workmen's dwellings, in Soho, and by her own rooms at the
+back of Leicester Square, everywhere round the calculated magnificence
+of the theatres, overwhelmed her and changed many of her conceptions;
+first of all her attitude towards Kitty Messenger, whom she had
+regarded as a vulgar nuisance, a horrible intrusion from the past.  It
+was impossible for her to accept her position of security above the
+dirty sea of poverty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She loathed the poor, their indolence, their coarseness, their horrible
+manners, their loud mirth and violent anger....  Once outside her door
+two drunken women fought.  They leaned against the wall, clutching each
+other by the hair, and attempted, while they breathed thick curses into
+each other's glaring faces, to bite, to scratch, each to bang the
+other's head against the wall....  Clara ran past them trembling in
+every limb.  She had never seen the uncontrolled brutality of which
+human beings are capable....  But it was even worse when a policeman
+arrested the two women and roughly dragged them away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And after that she was continually coming upon similar scenes, or upon
+degraded and derelict types.  It was as though she had been blind and
+was suddenly able to see&mdash;or had the world turned evil?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How could Verschoyle, how could Charles, how could all the well-dressed
+and well-fed people be so happy while such things were going on before
+their eyes?  Perhaps, like herself, they could not see them.  It was
+very strange.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Stranger still was the release of energy in herself, bringing with it a
+new personal interest in her own life.  She began to look more keenly
+at other women and to understand them a little better, to sympathise
+even with their vanity, their mindlessness, their insistence upon
+homage and flattery from their men.  From that she passed to a somewhat
+bewildered introspection, realising that it was extraordinary that she
+should have been able to sever her connection with Charles and to
+maintain the impersonal when the personal relationship was
+suspended&mdash;or gone?  Yes.  That was quite extraordinary, and because of
+it she knew that she could never live the ordinary woman's life,
+absorbed entirely in external things, in position, clothes, food and
+household, shops.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered Charles saying that his feeling for her was at the
+farthest end of love, and certainly she had never known anything like
+the relationship between, say, Freeland and Julia&mdash;easy, comfortable
+romance.  To be either easy or comfortable had become an abomination to
+her, and at bottom this was the reason for her dissatisfaction.  It had
+been too easy to procure the beginnings of success for Charles.  They
+had secured control of the machinery of the theatre, and must now act
+in accordance with its grinding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some weeks she was paralysed and could do nothing but sit and
+brood; hardly thinking at all consciously, but gazing in upon herself
+and the forces stirring in her, creeping up and up to take control of
+her imagination that had hitherto been entirely free and in undisputed
+mastery of her being.  This was a time of the acutest agony.  She would
+not surrender.  Without knowing what was being demanded of her she
+cried, 'I will not, I will not.'  But the forces stirring in her were
+implacable, and changed her whole physical sensation of being.  Her
+body changed, her figure altered most subtly and imperceptibly, her
+face gained in strength and beauty, but she loathed the change, because
+it was taking place without reference to her own will, or her own
+imagination, which for the first time in her life was baffled....  It
+was appalling to her, who had always found it so easy to direct the
+lives of others, to find her own life slipping with a terrible velocity
+out of control....  No thought, no notion of her recent days was now
+valid.  At the very worst stage of all even simple movements seemed
+incomprehensible.  When she caught sight of her own lovely arm that had
+always given her a thrill of pleasure, it now repelled her as something
+fantastic and irresistibly comic, revoltingly comic at this time when
+she was a prey to so much obscure suffering, so deep that she could
+trace it to no cause, so acute that she could discern in it no purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She found it almost her sole relief to read, and she devoured among
+other curious works which she found at her bookshop, General Booth's
+<I>Darkest London</I> and Rose's <I>The Truth about the Transvaal</I>.  Novels
+she could not read at all.  Fiction was all very well, but it ought to
+have some relation to human emotions as they are.  After her aerial
+life in Charles's imagination she needed a diet of hard facts, and, as
+usual, what she needed that she obtained.  Both Booth and Rose dealt
+with the past, but that made them the more palatable, and they
+reassured her.  The facts she was now discovering had been present to
+other minds and her own had not unsupported to bear the whole weight of
+them....  In her untouched youth she had always accepted responsibility
+for the whole universe, and so long as her life had been made easy,
+first of all by her grandfather, and then by Charles, the burden had
+been tolerable, and she had been able to mould the universe to make
+them comfortable.  But now that life was suddenly for no apparent
+reason incredibly difficult, the burden was greater than she could
+bear, and it relieved her to find in these two books the utterance of
+suffering consciences.....  As she read Rose she remembered a saying of
+her grandfather's, 'The British make slums wherever they go because in
+every British mind there is a slum.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could find relief in the books, but she could not stay the welling
+up of the mysterious forces which swamped the clarity of her mind and
+made her usually swift intuition sluggish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very thankful was she that she had steered Charles into the Imperium
+before this cataclysm broke in her....  She could well be alone to sort
+out if possible the surfeit of new impressions from which she was
+suffering.  She no longer had thoughts but only obsessions.  London....
+London....  London....  The roaring traffic: the crowds of people:
+Coventry Street by night: the illuminated theatres: the statue in
+Piccadilly Circus: the hotel in which she and Charles had stayed on
+their first night in London: the painted faces of the women: policemen:
+commissionaires: wonderful cars lit up at night, gliding through the
+streets with elegant ladies in evening dress reclining at their ease,
+bored, mechanical, as hard and mechanical as the cars that carried them
+through the streets: the drunken women fighting outside her door: the
+woman opposite her windows who kept a canary in a cage and watered so
+lovingly the aspidistra on her window-sill: tubes: lifts: glaring
+lights and white tiles....  London....  London....  London....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through it all there ran a thread of struggling, conscious purpose
+which kept her from misery and made it impossible for her to succumb.
+Deep in her heart she knew that she could not; that she had escaped;
+that it would never be for her an awful, a terrible, an overwhelming
+thing to be a woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With that knowledge there came an exultation, a pride, a triumphant
+sense of having come through an almost fatal peril, the full nature of
+which had yet to be revealed.  And she had wrestled through it alone.
+Her childish detestation of her womanhood was gone.  She accepted it,
+gloried in it as her instrument and knew that she would never be lost
+in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For ever in her mind that crisis was associated with Kropotkin's escape
+from prison, and she was full of a delighted gratitude to the little
+bookseller who had lent her the book, the second volume, the first
+having been borrowed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Immeasurably increased was her understanding through this sudden
+convulsion of her life, and she was very proud of the loyalty to her
+instinct which had made her wrestle through it alone; and now, when she
+saw women absorbed in external things, she knew that they had taken
+refuge in them from just such convulsions in which, had they attempted
+to face them, they must have been swamped.  They clung to external
+things to prevent themselves being lost in the whirlpool of the
+internal world of womanhood....  Ah!  It was supreme to be a woman, to
+contain the most fierce and most powerful of all life's manifestations,
+to smile and to distil all these violent forces into charm, to suffer
+and to turn all suffering into visible beauty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Clara now had any easy pity it was for men, who live always in
+fantasy, lured on by their own imaginings in the vain effort to solve
+the mystery of which only a true and loyal woman has the key.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When once more she approached her external life it was through the
+bookshop, where she found her friend the bookseller munching his lunch
+of wheaten biscuits and apples in the dingy little room at the back of
+his shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He offered her an apple.  She took it and sat on a pile of books tied
+up with a rope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You're looking bonny,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think I'll come and be your assistant.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A fine young leddy like you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I might meet some one like Kropotkin.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  Isn't that grand?  There's none o' your Dumas and Stevensons can
+beat that; a real happening in our own life-time....  But I can no
+afford an assistant.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!  You always seem to have plenty of people in your shop.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'These damned publishers put their prices up and up on the poor
+bookseller, and my brains are all my capital, and I will not sell the
+stuff that's turned out like bars o' soap, though the authors may be as
+famous as old Nick and the publishers may roll by in their cars and
+build their castles in the countryside....  I sell my books all the
+week, and I grow my own food on my own plot on Sundays, and I'll win
+through till I'm laid in the earth, and have a pile o' books to keep me
+down when I'm dead as they have done in my lifetime.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He thrust a slice of apple into his mouth and munched away at it, rosy
+defiance of an ill-ordered world shining from his healthy cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On his desk Clara saw his account book, a pile of bills, and old
+cheques, and it was not difficult to guess the cause of his trouble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm sure I should sell your books for you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You'd draw all London into my shop, young leddy, as you'll draw them
+to the playhouse; but bookselling is a dusty trade and is not for fair
+wits or fine persons.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara looked out into the shop, and was happy in its friendliness.  A
+lean, hungry-looking man came in, bought a paper, and stayed turning
+over the books.  She could not see his face, but something in his
+movement told of quality of wit and precise consciousness.  He seized a
+book with a familiar mastery, as though he could savour and weigh its
+contents through his finger-tips, glanced through it, and put it away
+as though it were finally disposed of.  There was a concentrated
+absorption in everything he did that made it definite and final.  He
+was so sensitive that at the approach of another person he edged away
+as though to avoid a distasteful impact....  Very shabby he was, but
+distinguished and original.  After taking up half a dozen books and not
+finding in them any attraction, he stopped, pondered, and moved out of
+the shop quite obviously having clearly in his mind some necessary and
+inevitable purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His going was a wrench to Clara, so wholly had she been absorbed in
+him; but though she longed to know his name she could not bring herself
+to ask her old friend who he was.  That did not matter.  He was, and
+Charing Cross Road had become a hallowed place by profound experience,
+the bookshop a room beyond all others holy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some time longer, Clara sat in silence with her old friend, who lit
+his after-luncheon pipe and sat cross-legged, blinking and ruminant.
+She stared into the shop, and still it seemed that the remarkable
+figure was standing there fingering the books, pondering, deciding.
+Her emotions thrilled through her, uplifted her, and she had a
+sensation of being deliciously intimate with all things animate and
+inanimate.  She touched the desk by her side, and it seemed to her that
+life tingled through her fingers into the wood.  She smiled at the old
+man, and his eyes twitched, and he gave her a little happy sidelong
+nod.  She wanted to tell him that the world was a very wonderful place,
+but she could only keep on smiling, and as she left the shop, the
+bookseller thrust his hat on the back of his head, scratched his beard,
+and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Pegs!  I said to Jenny she'll bring me luck.  But she's wasted on yon
+birkie ca'd a lord.'
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IX
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+MAGIC
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+A friendly city seemed London to Clara as she left the shop.  A fresh
+wind was blowing, and she stood for some moments to drink in the keen
+air.  The sky was full of clouds, gray, white, and cinnamon against the
+smoky blue, as she turned south with eyes newly eager for beauty and
+friendliness.  Above the roofs, the statue of Lord Nelson stood perched
+in absurd elevation above the London that flouted his Emma, and Clara
+laughed to see the little gray man in cocked hat symbolising for her
+the delicious absurdity of London, where nothing and nobody could ever
+be of the smallest importance in its hugeness....  This was its charm,
+that an individual could in it feel the indifference of humanity
+exactly as on a hill the indifference of Nature can be felt.  A city of
+strangers!  Everybody was strange to everybody else.  That was good and
+healthy.  Nothing in London was on show, nothing dressed for the
+tourist.  Living in rooms in London, one could be as lonely as in a hut
+in the wilderness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She walked down to the Imperium, and, entering by the stage door, found
+Charles in excited converse with the scenic artist, Mr Smithson, who
+was looking at a drawing and scratching his head dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's clever, Mr Mann, but nothing like the seaside.  Sir Henry's sure
+to want his waves "off," and the sun ought to look a bit like it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's my design, Mr Smithson.  Sir Henry said you would paint it.  If
+you won't, I'll do it myself....  Ah!  Clara, do come and explain to Mr
+Smithson what we want.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Smithson turned angrily.&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He gives me a blooming drawing with purples and golds and blues and
+every colour but the natural colours of a sea-side place.  I've painted
+scenery for thirty years, and I ought to know what a stage island is
+like by now.  I've done a dozen sets for <I>The Tempest</I> in my time.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is an enchanted island,' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But Prospero was Duke of Milan....  I've <I>been</I> to the Mediterranean
+to see for myself and I know what the colouring is....  I can't believe
+that Sir Henry has passed this.  God knows what kind of lighting it
+will take.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles threw his hat on the ground and stamped on it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Dolt!  Fool!  Idiot!' he shouted.  'Go away and paint it as I tell you
+to paint it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Damned if I do,' said Smithson.  'My firm has painted all the scenery
+for this theatre since Sir Henry took it, and we've had our name on the
+programme, and we've got a reputation to lose.  When Shakespeare says
+an island, he means an island, not the crater of a blooming volcano....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles snatched his drawing out of Mr Smithson's hand, and with an
+expression of extreme agony he said.&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Clara, you dragged me into this infernal theatre.  Will you please see
+that I am not driven mad in it?  Am I an artist?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You may be an artist, Mr Mann,' said Mr Smithson, 'but I'm a practical
+scene-painter.  I was painting scenery before you were born.  I was
+three years old in my father's workshop when I put my first dab of
+paint on for the Valley of Diamonds for Drury Lane in Gustus Harris's
+days.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The argument might have gone on indefinitely, but fortunately Sir Henry
+came down the stairs with Lady Butcher.  He was immaculately dressed in
+frock-coat and top hat, gray Cashmere trousers, and white waistcoat to
+attend with his wife a fashionable reception.  With a low bow, he swept
+off his very shiny hat, and said to Lady Butcher,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My dear, Mr Charles Mann.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Butcher gave a curt nod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My dear, Miss Day....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Che-arming!' drawled Lady Butcher, holding out her hand very high in
+the air.  Clara reached up to it and shook it sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Mr Smithson doesn't like Charles's drawing for the cave scene,' said
+Clara.  'He can't quite see it, you know, because it is a little
+different.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I won't be a moment, my dear,' said Sir Henry, and Lady Butcher sailed
+out into the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What's the matter, Smithson?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We've never done anything like this before.  There's nothing like it
+in Nature.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There is nothing like Caliban in Nature,' said Clara sweetly, and Sir
+Henry caught at her hint, scowled at Smithson, and growled,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have passed it.  If it needs modification we can settle it at
+rehearsal.  Go ahead.  I want to see it before I go away.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But there are no measurements, Sir Henry.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You know what we can do and what we can't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very well, Sir Henry.'  Mr Smithson clapped on his bowler hat and
+rushed away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles stooped to gather up his battered hat, and Sir Henry seized
+Clara's arm, squeezed it tight, looked out through the door at his
+magnificent wife, and heaved an enormous sigh.  Clara in her amazing
+new happiness smiled at him, and he muttered,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You grow in beauty every day.  A-ah!  Good-day, Mann.  The theatre is
+at your disposal.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fixed his eyes on Clara for a moment, then wrenched himself away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were one or two letters for her in the rack.  She took them down,
+and turned to find Charles, having smoothed out his hat, standing
+ruefully staring through his pince-nez.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'These people are altogether too busy for me,' he said.  'All the work
+I've put in seems to be nothing to them.  I had a terrible turn with
+Butcher two days ago, and now this man Smithson has been too much for
+me.  They treat me like a tailor, and expect me to cut my scenery to
+fit their theatre....  I wish you'd come back, chicken.  I'm in a
+dreadful muddle.  I've been working till I can't see, and I've been
+reading <I>The Tempest</I> till my mind is as salt as a dried haddock....
+But I've drawn a marvellous Caliban, part fish, part frog, part man ...
+Life emerging from the sea.  I'm sure now that we're all spawned from
+the sea, and that life on the earth is only what has been left after
+the sun has dried it up....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara looked at him apprehensively.  She still felt responsible for
+him, but she was no longer part and parcel of him.  She was free of his
+imagination and could be critical of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Never mind, Charles,' she said.  'Let us go and look at the stage, and
+you can tell me what you have planned, and then we will go out and
+talk, and decide what we will do during the holidays.  I have promised
+to go to Sir Henry's in the Lakes for a few days, and Verschoyle has
+promised to motor me up there.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles's fingers fumbled rather weakly round his lips, and she saw to
+her distress that he had been biting his nails again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Aren't you ever coming back, my chicken, my love? ...  I'm sorry we
+came to London now.  We should have gone to Sicily as I wanted.  One
+can live in such places.  Here everybody is so business-like, so set,
+so used to doing and thinking in one particular way.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Has anything happened?' asked Clara, knowing that he was never
+critical without a cause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No,' he replied, rather shortly, 'no.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was rather irritated by him.  He had no right to be as foolish and
+helpless as to have let her humiliate him by extricating him from his
+argument with Smithson, upon which he ought never to have entered.
+Smithson was only a kind of tradesman after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They went on to the stage and Charles waxed eloquent over the scenery
+he had designed.  Eloquence with Charles was rather an athletic
+performance.  He took a tape measure from his pocket, and raced about
+with it, making chalk marks on the boards.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The scenery door was open, and the sunlight poured in in a great shaft
+upon him, and Clara, watching him, was suddenly most painfully sorry
+for him.  He worked himself up into a throbbing enthusiasm, torrents of
+words poured from his lips, as with strange gesticulations he described
+the towering rocks, the wind-twisted trees, the tangle of lemons, the
+blue light illuminating the magician's grotto, the golden light that
+should hang about the rocky island jutting up from the sea.  All this
+he talked of, while the sun shone through his long yellow hair and
+revealed its streaks of silver....  At last he stood in the sunlight,
+with his arms outstretched, as though he were evoking his vision from
+the heavens to take shape upon the stage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara, watching him, perceived that he was a born actor.  He trod the
+stage with loving feet, and with a movement entirely different from
+that which he used in the street or among people who were not of the
+theatre.  This surely was the real Charles.  The light of the sun upon
+him was inappropriate.  It mocked him and inexorably revealed the fact
+that he was no longer young.  The scenery door was closed and the
+discordance ceased, but more clearly than ever was Charles revealed as
+an actor treading easily and affectionately his native elevation.  The
+influence of the place affected even himself, and after he had
+constructed his imaginary scenery round himself, he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'One of the first parts I ever played was Ferdinand staggering beneath
+logs of wood.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He assumed an imaginary log and recited,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 5em">'This my mean task would be</SPAN><BR>
+As heavy to me as 'tis odious; but<BR>
+The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead<BR>
+And makes my labours pleasures: Oh, she is<BR>
+Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed;<BR>
+And he's composed of harshness.  I must remove<BR>
+Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,<BR>
+Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress<BR>
+Weeps when she sees me work; and says such baseness<BR>
+Had never like executor.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+He produced the illusion of youth, and his voice was so entrancing that
+Clara, like Miranda, wept to see him....  He threw off his part with a
+great shout, rushed at her and caught her up in a hug.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Chicken,' he said, 'don't let us be silly any more.  We have won
+through.  Here we are in the theatre.  We've conquered the stage, and
+soon all those seats out there will be full of eager people saying,
+"Who are these wonders?  Can it be?  Surely they are none other than
+Charles and Clara Mann?"'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Day,' said she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stamped his foot impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What's in a name?  Day, if you like.  Artists can and must do as they
+please.  This is our real life, here where we make beauty.  The rest is
+for city clerks and stockbrokers who can't trust themselves to behave
+decently unless they have a perfect net of rules from which they cannot
+escape.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't want to talk about it.  Go on with your work, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've finished for to-day....  Will you let me take you out to dinner?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  I've promised Verschoyle.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Damn!  You oughtn't to be seen with him so much.  People will say you
+have left me for his money.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I thought artists didn't care what people say.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They don't, Clara.  They don't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You must be sensible, Charles.  You're not safe.  You can't take risks
+until you are successful.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then I won't succeed.  I won't go on....  A most unfortunate thing has
+happened.  Clott has vanished with all the money in the bank....  I let
+him sign the cheques.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!  Oh! you fool, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He kept getting cheques out of me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He said he'd tell the police.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara stamped her foot.  Abominable!  How abominable people were....
+She had to protect Charles, but if she was with him she exposed him to
+the most fearful risk.  Was ever a girl in so maddening a position?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What made it worse was that her attitude towards him had changed.  She
+was no longer so utterly absorbed in him that she could only see life
+through his eyes.  Apart from him she had grown and had developed her
+own independent existence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How much did he take?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Two hundred and ten pounds.  We can't prosecute him, or he'll tell.
+He knows that, or he wouldn't have done it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Where is he?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't know.  Laverock met him the other day, and asked him about
+some committee business.  He had the impudence to say that he had
+resigned, and had come into money, so that his name was now no longer
+Clott but Cumberland.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And again Clara found herself in her heart saying, 'It is my fault.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was all very well for Charles to believe that the world was governed
+by magic.  Art is magic, but she ought to have known that it is a magic
+which operates only among a very few, and that the many who are moved
+only by cunning are always taking advantage of them....  Poor Charles!
+Betrayed at every turn by his own simplicity, betrayed even by her
+eagerness to help him!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is too bad,' said Clara, with tears in her eyes.  'We can't do
+anything.  Besides I would never send any one to prison, whatever they
+did.  But what a dirty mean little toad....  How did he find out?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't know.  He's the kind of man who hangs about the theatre and
+borrows five shillings on Friday night.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gone was the magic of the stage, gone the power in Charles.  He looked
+just a tired, seedy fellow, more than a little ashamed of himself.  He
+hung his head and muttered,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This always happens when I am rich.  I've been terribly unhappy about
+it.  I didn't think I could tell you.  I went into a shop yesterday to
+buy a revolver, but I bought a photograph frame instead, because the
+man was so pleasant that I couldn't bear the idea of his helping me to
+end my life....  I seem to muddle everything I touch, and yet no one
+has ever dared to say that I am not a great artist.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara walked away from him across the stage.  There had been muddles
+before, but nothing so bad as this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she walked, she found that in watching him she had learned the art
+of treading the stage, and of becoming that something more than herself
+which is necessary for dramatic presentation.  This sudden acquisition
+gave her a delighted thrill, and once again her life was flooded with
+magic, so that this new trouble, like her old, seemed very remote, and
+she could understand Charles's pretending that he must end his life
+even to the point of attempting to buy a revolver, which became
+impossible directly some one spoke pleasantly to him.  She felt
+confident and secure and of the theatre which was a sanctuary that
+nothing in the outside world could violate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't worry, Carlo,' she said.  'I'll see that it is put straight.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then you'll come back and stop this nonsense about living alone?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'When <I>The Tempest</I> is done we'll see about it.  I don't want to risk
+that.  <I>The Tempest</I> is what matters now.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Are you going to play in it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't know yet....  Will you go out into the auditorium and tell me
+what you think of my voice?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles went up into the dress circle, and Clara, practising her
+newly-acquired art, turned to an imaginary Ferdinand&mdash;more vivid and
+actual to her now&mdash;and declaimed,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">'I do not know</SPAN><BR>
+One of my sex! no woman's face remember,<BR>
+Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen<BR>
+More that I may call men, than you, good friend,<BR>
+And my dear father: how features are abroad,<BR>
+I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,&mdash;<BR>
+The jewel in my dower,&mdash;I would not wish<BR>
+Any companion in the world but you.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+She stopped.  The vivid, actual Ferdinand of her imagination changed
+into the form of the lean, hungry-looking man of the book-shop.  He
+turned towards her, and his face was noble in its suffering, powerful
+and strong to bear the burden upon the mind behind it.  Very sweet and
+gentle was the expression in his eyes, in most pathetic contrast to the
+rugged hardness which a passionate self-control had shaped upon his
+features....  Her heart ached under this astonishment that in this
+phantom she could see and know and love his face upon which in life her
+eyes had never fallen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Go on,' called Charles, from the dress circle....  'Admirable....  I
+never thought you could do it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's enough,' she replied, with a violent effort to shake free of
+her bewilderment and sweet anguish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If I meet him,' she said in her heart, 'I shall love him and there
+will be nothing else.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Aloud she said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I must not.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had applied herself to the task of furthering Charles's ambition,
+and until she had succeeded she would not yield, nor would she seek for
+herself in life any advantage or even any natural fulfilment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles came back in a state of excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It was wonderful,' he said.  'What has happened to you?  Your voice is
+so full and round.  You lose yourself entirely, you speak with a voice
+that has in it all the colour and beauty and enchantment of my island.
+You move simply, inevitably, so that every gesture is rhythmical, and
+like a musical accompaniment to the words....  You'll be an artist.
+You are an artist.  There has been nothing like it since the old
+days....  Duse could not do more with her voice.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I didn't know,' she said.  'I didn't know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I did,' he cried.  'I did.  I knew you would become a wonder....
+Bother money, bother Butcher, bother Clott, and damn the committee.
+Together we shall be irresistible&mdash;as we have been.  You didn't tell me
+you were practising.  If that is why you want to be alone I have
+nothing to say against it.  I've been a selfish brute.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was deeply moved.  Never before had Charles shown the slightest
+thought for her.  Human beings as such were nothing to him, but for an
+artist, as for art, no trouble was too great, no sacrifice too extreme
+for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He seized her hands and kissed them over and over again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've been your first audience,' he said.  'Come out now, and I'll buy
+you flowers; your room shall be so full of flowers that you can hardly
+move through them.  As for Verschoyle, he shall pay.  It shall be his
+privilege to pay for us while we give the world the priceless treasure
+that is in us.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His words rather repelled and hurt her, and in her secret mind she
+protested,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I am a woman.  But I am a woman.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It hurt her cruelly that Charles should be blind to that, blind to the
+cataclysmic change in her, blind to her new beauty and to her newly
+gathered force of character.  After all, the magic of the stage was
+only illusion, a trick that, if it were not a flowering of the deeper
+magic of the heart, was empty, vain, contemptible, a thing of darkness
+and cajolery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Perhaps it was just an accident,' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do it again!' said Charles, in a tone of command.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do it again!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I can't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do it again, I tell you.  When you do a thing like that you have to
+find out how you did it.  Art isn't a thing of chance.  You must do it
+again now.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To her horror and amazement he pounced on her, seized her roughly by
+the shoulders, and shook her until her head rolled from side to side
+and her teeth chattered.  He was beside himself with passion, ruthless,
+impersonal in his fury to catch and hold this treasure of art which had
+so suddenly appeared in the child whom hitherto he had regarded as
+about as important as his hat or his walking-stick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'By Jove,' he said, 'I might have known it was not for nothing that I
+fished you out of Picquart's studio....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How dare you speak to me like that?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knocked his hands away and stood quivering in an outraged fury, and
+lashed out at him with her tongue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm not paint that you can squeeze out of a tube,' she said.  'You
+treat people as though they were just that and then you complain if
+they round on you....  I know what you want.  You want to squeeze out
+of me what your own work lacks....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles reeled under this assault and his arms fell limply by his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Forgive me,' he said, 'I didn't know what I was doing.  I was knocked
+out with my astonishment and delight....  Really, really I forgot the
+stage was empty.  I thought we were working....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara stared at him.  Could he really so utterly lose himself in the
+play as that?  Or was he only persuading himself that it was so? ...
+With a sudden intuition she knew that in all innocence he was lying to
+her, and that what had enraged him was the knowledge, which he could
+never admit, that she was no longer a child living happily in his
+imagination but a human being and an artist who had entered upon a
+royal possession of her own.  She had outstripped him.  She had become
+an artist without loss of humanity.  Henceforth she must deal with
+realities, leaving him to his painted mummery...  She could understand
+his frenzy, his fury, his despair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That will do, Charles,' she said very quietly.  'I will see what can
+be done about Mr Clott, and whatever happens I will see that you are
+not harmed....  If you like, you can dine with Verschoyle and me
+to-night.  You can come home with me now, while I dress.  I am to meet
+him at the Carlton and then we are going on to the Opera.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Does Verschoyle know?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He knows that you are you and that I am I&mdash;that is all he cares
+about...  He is a good man.  If people must have too much money, he is
+the right man to have it.  He would never let a man down for want of
+money&mdash;if the man was worth it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!' said Charles, reassured.  This was like the old Clara speaking,
+but with more assurance, a more certain knowledge and less bewildering
+intuition and guess-work.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+X
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+THE ENGLISH LAKES
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+A few weeks later, with Verschoyle and a poor relation of his, a Miss
+Vibart Withers, for chaperone, Clara left London in a 60 h.p. Fiat,
+which voraciously ate up the Bath Road at the rate of a mile every
+minute and a half....  It was good to be out of the thick heat of
+London, invaded by foreigners and provincials and turned into a city of
+pleasure and summer-frocks, so that its normal life was submerged, its
+character hidden.  The town became as lazy and drowsy a spectacle as a
+field of poppies over which danced gay and brilliant butterflies.  Very
+sweet was it then to turn away from it, and all that was happening in
+it, to the sweet air and to fly along between green fields and
+orchards, through little towns, at intervals to cross the Thames and to
+feel that with each crossing London lay so much farther away.  Henley,
+Oxford, Lechlade, and the Cotswolds&mdash;that was the first day, and,
+breathing the clover-scented air, gazing over the blue plains to the
+humpy hills of Malvern, Clara flung back her head and laughed in
+glee....  How wonderful in one day to shake free of everything, to
+leave behind all trammels!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No one need have any troubles now,' she said, with the bewitching
+smile that made all her discoveries so entrancing.  'When people get
+tied up in knots, they can just get into a car and go away.  The world
+is big enough for everybody.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But people love their troubles,' replied Verschoyle.  'I have been
+looking for trouble all my life, but I can't find it.  That's my
+trouble.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Everybody ought to be happy,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'In their own way.  Most people are very happy with their troubles.
+They will take far more trouble over them than they will over their
+pleasures or making other people happy.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do you remember the birds and fishes?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do I not?  It was the birds and fishes who introduced you to me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think this was what Charles meant by them&mdash;escape, irrelevance,
+holiday.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's quite true.  Nothing ought to be as serious as it is, for
+nothing is so serious as it looks when you really come to grips with
+it.  Life always looks like a blank wall until you come up to it and
+then there is a little door which was invisible at a distance....  I
+found that out when I met you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And did you go through it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Straight through and out to the other side.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara took his hand affectionately, and their eyes met in a happy
+smile.  They were friends for ever, the relationship most perfectly
+suited to his temperament, most needed by hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From that she passed on to a frank discussion of her own situation with
+regard to Charles, and the hole he was in through the absconding Mr
+Clott.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I knew that fellow was a scoundrel,' said Verschoyle.  'He tried to
+borrow money from me, and to pump me about the form of my horses.  How
+on earth did he ever become secretary to a committee for the
+furtherance of dramatic art?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He turned up.  Everything in Charles's life turns up.  <I>I</I> turned up.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And is your name really Day?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It was my grandfather's name....  I never had any one else.  I
+remember no one else except an Italian nurse, with a very brown face
+and very white teeth.  He died in Paris four years ago.  My people were
+in India.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  Families get lost sometimes in the different parts of the British
+Empire.  It is so big, you know.  I'm sure the English will lose
+themselves in it one of these fine days.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He passed over without a word her position as wife and no wife, but
+became only the kinder and more considerate.  It had eased and relieved
+her to talk of it.  Every impediment to their friendship was removed,
+but sometimes as they walked through fields he would grip his stick
+very tight and lash out at a hemlock or a dog-daisy, and sometimes when
+he was driving he would jam his foot down on the accelerator and send
+the car whirling along.  If they had met Charles walking along the road
+it would have gone ill with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were six days on their journey up through Shropshire, Cheshire,
+and the murk of South Lancashire.  They stayed in pleasant inns, and
+made many strange acquaintances, bagmen, tourists, young men with
+knapsacks on their backs escaping from the big towns, and sometimes
+they helped these young men over dreary stretches of road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The happiest six days of my life,' said Verschoyle, as they approached
+the mountains.  'I haven't toured in England before.  Somehow in London
+one knows nothing of England.  One is bored and one goes over to
+Homburg or Aix-les-bains.  How narrow life is even with a car and a
+yacht!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How narrow life could be Clara soon discovered at the Butchers', where
+London life was simply continued in a lovely valley at the bottom of
+which lay a little lake shining like a mirror and vividly reflecting
+the hills above it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Butchers had a long, low house in an exquisite garden, theatrically
+arranged so that the flowers looked as if they were painted and the
+trees had no roots, but were as though clamped and ironed to the earth.
+From their garden the very hills had the semblance of a back-cloth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house was full of the elegant young men and women who ran in and
+out of the theatre and had no compunction about interrupting even
+rehearsals.  They chaffed Sir Henry, and fed Lady Butcher with scandal
+for the pleasure of hearing her say witty biting things, which, as she
+had no mercy, came easily to her lips.  She studiously treated Clara as
+though she were part and parcel of Verschoyle, and to be accommodated
+like his car or his chauffeur....  Except as a social asset, Lady
+Butcher detested the theatre, and she loathed actresses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the days floated by&mdash;for once in a way the weather in Westmoreland
+was delicious&mdash;it became apparent to Clara that Lady Butcher hated the
+project of Charles's production of <I>The Tempest</I>.  She never missed an
+opportunity of stabbing at him with her tongue.  She regarded him as a
+vagabond.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Living herself in a very close and narrow set, she respected cliques
+more than persons.  Verschoyle was rich enough to live outside a
+clique, but that a man with a career to make should live and work alone
+was in her eyes a kind of blasphemy.  As for Clara&mdash;Lady Butcher
+thought of her as a minx, a designing actress, one of the many who had
+attempted to divert Sir Henry from the social to the professional
+aspect of the theatre, which, in few words, Lady Butcher regarded as
+her own, a kind of salon which gave her a unique advantage over her
+rivals in the competition of London's hostessry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the more annoying to Lady Butcher that Clara and Verschoyle
+should turn up when they did as two Cabinet Ministers were due to motor
+over to lunch one day, and a famous editor was to stay for a couple of
+nights, while her dear friends the Bracebridges (Earl and Countess),
+with their son and daughter, were due for their annual visit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Distressed by this atmosphere of social calculation, Clara spent most
+of her time with Verschoyle, walking about the hills or rowing on the
+lake; but unfortunately she roused the boyish jealousy in Sir Henry,
+who, as he had 'discovered' her, regarded her as his property, and
+considered that any romance she might desire should be through him....
+He infuriated his wife by preferring Clara to all the other young
+ladies, and one night when, after dinner, he took her for a moon-light
+walk, she created a gust of laughter by saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Henry can no more resist the smell of grease-paint than a dog can
+resist that of a grilled bone.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was amusing but unjust, for Sir Henry regarded his desire for
+Clara's society as a healthy impulse towards higher things&mdash;at least,
+he told her so as he led her out through the orchard and up the stony
+path, down which trickled a little stream, to the crag that dominated
+the house and garden.  It was covered with heather and winberries, and
+just below the summit grew two rowan-trees.  So bright was the moon
+that the colour of the berries was almost perceptible.  Sir Henry stood
+moon-gazing and presently heaved a great sigh,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A-a-ah!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What a perfect night!' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'On such a night as this&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'On such a night&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've forgotten,' said Sir Henry.  'It is in the <I>Merchant of Venice</I>.
+Something about moonlight when Lorenzo and Jessica eloped.  You would
+make a perfect Jessica....  I played Lorenzo once.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara wanted to laugh.  It was one of the most delightful elements in
+Sir Henry's character that he could never see himself as old, or as
+anything but romantically heroic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes,' he said; 'you have made all the difference in the world.  It was
+remarkable how you shone out among the players in my theatre....  It is
+even more remarkable among all these other masqueraders in that house
+down there.  All the world's a stage&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, no,' said Clara.  'It is beautiful.  I didn't know England was so
+lovely.  As we came north in the car I thought each county better than
+the last&mdash;and I forgot London altogether.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is some years since I toured,' said Sir Henry.  'My wife does not
+approve of it, but there is nothing like it for keeping you up to the
+mark.  The real audiences are out of London.  A couple of years'
+touring would do you a world of good.  You shall make your name
+first....  There aren't any actors and actresses now simply because
+they won't tour.  They want money in London&mdash;money in New York&mdash;the
+pity of it is that they get it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara scrambled up to the highest point of the crag and stood with the
+gentle wind playing through her thick hair, caressing her parted lips,
+her white neck, liquefying her light frock about her limbs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, my God!' cried Sir Henry, gazing at her enraptured.  'Ariel!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she stood there she was caught up in the wonder of the night, became
+one with it, a beam in the moonlight, a sigh in the wind, a star
+winking, a little tiny cloud floating over the tops of the mountains.
+So lightly poised was she that it seemed miraculous that she did not
+take to flight, almost against nature that she could stand so still.
+Her lips parted, and she sang as she used to sing when she was a
+child,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Come unto these yellow sands<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And then take hands.'</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+A little young voice she had, sweet and low, a boyish voice, nothing of
+woman in it at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaned forward and gazed over the edge of the crag, and Sir Henry,
+who was so deeply moved that all his ordinary mental processes were
+dislocated, thought with a horrid alarm that she was going to throw
+herself down.  Such perfection might rightly end in tragedy, and he
+thought with anguish of Mann and Verschoyle, thought that they had
+besmirched and dishonoured this loveliness, thought that this sudden
+exaltation and abstraction must come from the anguish that was betrayed
+in her eyes so often and so frequently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Take care!  Take care!' called Sir Henry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She leaped down into the heather by his side, and he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It seems a crime to take you back into the house.  What have you to do
+with whether or no we are asked to the next garden-party in Downing
+Street?  You are Ariel and can put a girdle round the earth....  I am
+almost afraid of you.  Can't we run away and become strolling players?
+You may think I am to be envied but my life has been a very unhappy
+one....  I want to help you....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was obvious to Clara that he did not know what he was saying, and
+indeed he was light-hearted and moonstruck, lifted outside his ordinary
+range of experience.  He babbled on,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If I could feel that I had done the smallest thing to help you, I
+should be prouder of it than of any other thing in my career.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I don't want help....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  You think so now.  But wait three years....  You think an actor
+can know nothing of life, but who knows more?  Has he not in himself to
+reproduce every fine shade of emotion, the effect of every variety of
+experience....  The people who know nothing of life are your cloistered
+artists like Mann, or your Verschoyle drowned in money....  You have
+not known me yet.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Really he was getting rather ridiculous with his boyish romanticism.
+He had been married twice and his two families numbered seven.  But
+Clara, too, was under the spell of the moon, and his gauche response to
+her mood had touched her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Life is a miserable business for a woman,' said Sir Henry.  'I live in
+dread lest you should be dragged down into the common experience.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Did he or did he not know about Charles?)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara laughed.  This was taking her too seriously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah, you can laugh now while you are young, but youth attracts, it is
+drawn into the whirlpool and is lost....  Is there more in you than
+youth?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Much, much more,' said Clara exultantly.  'There has never been
+anybody like me before.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'By Heaven!' swore Sir Henry.  'That is true....  You have bewitched
+me&mdash;and we had better be going back to the house....  Will you let me
+carry you down?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without waiting for her permission, he lifted her, and she suffered him
+to carry her down the last stony path, because her flimsy shoes were
+already wet through.  He did not guess that she had good reason, and
+his heart thumped in his large bosom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had been a night of nights for him.  Years of uneasy distraction had
+melted away.  Not even at the height of his success had he felt so
+confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to
+command and to deserve their homage.  In no play had he ever devised a
+more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered
+sprite&mdash;for so he thought her&mdash;back to earth.  As he put her down, he
+threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn
+to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the
+centre, with his hand upon his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle was very angry with her when she returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You know how these people think of such things,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What they think and what I do are very different,' retorted Clara, her
+eyes shining, her cheeks glowing from the night air.  'It makes him
+happy, and, if you are happy with me, he doesn't see why he shouldn't
+be.  <I>Pourquoi pas moi aussi</I>?  Men are all alike.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is not the same....  What a child you are!  Some day you will love
+and then you will see very differently....  The old fool thinks you
+are&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  He said I was Ariel.  So I am.  So I am....  I wonder I never
+thought of it before.  I shall never be a woman as women have been&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There have been good women.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Tra la la!  The good women have done far more harm in the world than
+all the bad women put together.  Lady B is a good woman.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A painted tigress.  <I>She</I> won't forgive you in a hurry.  She
+thinks&mdash;that, too.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'People can't think beyond what they are.  You can't expect me to be
+what other people think.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want you to be yourself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So I am....  You shall take me away in a day or two.  I want to see
+the Bracebridges just for fun, <I>and</I> the Cabinet Ministers, and then I
+want to drown their memories one by one in the lakes as we pass them.
+We are going to see them all, aren't we?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want to get away.  I can't bear being with you in this atmosphere of
+money.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Now, now.  You promised me you would never behave like a lover.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I thought I was behaving like an angry brother.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was pleased with him for that.  She knew that part of his trouble
+was due to his being an only son.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The Bracebridges were disappointing: a very dull man, a hard and
+raffish woman, but apparently to Lady Butcher they were the wonder of
+all wonders.  She and Lady Bracebridge were to each other 'dear Ethel'
+and 'dearest Madge.'  Together they made a single dominant and very
+formidable personality, which must be obeyed.  They flung themselves
+upon the house-party, sifted the affairs of every member of it, and in
+three days had arranged for two engagements and one divorce.  They
+commanded Verschoyle&mdash;by suggestion&mdash;to marry a Mrs Slesinger, who was
+plain but almost as rich as himself, and in his distress he very nearly
+succumbed; but Clara swooped in to save him, and found that her
+position was made almost impossible by whispered tittle-tattle, cold
+looks, and downright rudeness.  She was distinctly left out of picnic
+and boating parties, and almost in contempt she was partnered with Sir
+Henry who, after Lady Bracebridge's arrival, was no longer master in
+his own house....  When the Cabinet Ministers arrived the situation
+became impossible for they produced chaos.  The household was
+dislocated, and in the confusion Clara packed, had her trunks carried
+to the garage, and slipped away with Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Said he,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'These damned politicians can't get off the platform.  Did you see how
+that old fool sawed the air when he talked of Ireland, and did you hear
+how the other bleated when he mouthed of Poor Law Reform?  They're on
+show&mdash;always on show....  So are these infernal lakes.  I can't stand
+scenery that has stared at me for hours in a railway carriage.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It doesn't matter,' said Clara.  'You may be unjust to Lady Butcher,
+but you mustn't be unjust to Rydal.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is so still and out of date....  I can't think of it without
+thinking of Wordsworth, and I don't want to think of Wordsworth....
+Being with you makes me want to get on into the future, and there's
+something holding us all back.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the same, their holiday swept up to a triumphant conclusion, and
+they forgot the Butchers and their London elegance in going from inn to
+inn in the lovely valleys, taking the car up and down breakneck hills
+and making on foot the ascent of Great Gable and Scafell, upon whose
+summit in the keen air and the gusty wind Clara let fly and danced
+about, wildly gay, crying out with joy to be so high above the earth,
+where human beings spied upon each other with jealous eyes lest one
+should have more happiness than another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They can't spoil this,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, all the people down there.  They can spoil Charles, and you and me
+and silly old Sir Henry, but they can't spoil this.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'In Switzerland,' said Verschoyle, 'there are mountains higher than
+this, and they make railways up them, and at the top of the railways
+English governesses buy Alpenstocks, and have the name of the mountain
+burned into the wood.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If I were a mountain,' said Clara, 'and they did that to me I should
+turn into a volcano and burn them all up, all the engineers and all the
+English governesses....  I'm sure Lady Bracebridge was a governess.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Right in once,' said Verschoyle, staring at her with round boyish
+eyes, as though he half expected her at once to turn into a volcano.
+With Clara anything might happen, and her words came from so deep a
+recess of her nature as almost to have the force of a prophecy.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+CHARING CROSS ROAD
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+If there is one street that more than another has in it the spirit of
+London it is Charing Cross Road.  It begins with pickles and ends with
+art; it joins Crosse and Blackwell to the National Gallery.  In between
+the two are bookshops, theatres, and music halls, and yet it is a
+street without ostentation.  No one in Charing Cross Road can be
+assuming: no one could be other than genial and neighbourly.  All good
+books come there at last to find the people who will read them long
+after they have been forgotten by the people who only talk about them.
+Books endure while readers and talkers fade away, and Charing Cross
+Road by its trade in books keeps alive the continuity of London's life
+and deserves its fame.  The books that reach this haven are for the
+most part honest, and therefore many a weary soul turns out of the
+streets where men and women swindle into this place where the thoughts
+of honest men are piled on shelves, or put out in the open air in
+boxes, marked twopence, fourpence, sixpence....  A real market this!  A
+fair without vanity.  There are pictures to look at in the windows,
+mementoes of dead artists and writers, and there is a constant stream
+of people, the oddest mixture to be found anywhere on earth....
+Everybody who has nothing very much to do goes to Charing Cross Road to
+meet everybody who has dropped out of the main stream of humanity to
+have a look at it as it goes by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You can buy food in this delectable retreat&mdash;the best holiday ground in
+England&mdash;and you can eat it in the ferocious book-shop kept by the
+mildly-mannered man who called Clara's name blessed, and had her
+photograph in his little dark room at the back of the shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Adnor Rodd always took his holidays in Charing Cross Road, for when he
+went into the country he worked harder even than he did in London.  He
+wrote plays, and kept himself alive as best he could, because he hated
+the theatre so much that he could never force himself through a stage
+door.  Silent, taciturn, he went on his way, caring for nothing but his
+work, and sparing neither himself nor any one else in pursuing it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had started in London with money and friends, but work became such a
+vice with him that he lost both, except just enough to keep him
+alive&mdash;to go on working.  Every now and then he was 'discovered' by a
+playwright, a critic, or a literary man, but as he never returned a
+compliment in his life 'discovery' never led very far....  A few people
+knew that there was a strange man, called Rodd, who wrote masterpieces,
+but simply would not or could not take advantage of the ordinary
+commercial machinery to turn them into money or fame; but these few
+raised their eyebrows or wagged their heads when he was mentioned.
+Poor chap!  He was out of the running, and never likely to become a
+member of the Thespic Club, election to which makes a man a real
+dramatist, whose name may be considered good for a week's business.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd never thought in terms of business.  He thought in terms of human
+relationships, and out of them composed&mdash;never ceased
+composing&mdash;dramas, vivid, ruthless, terrible.  It was very bad for him,
+of course, because it forced him into a strained detachment from the
+life all around him, and when he met people he was always bent on
+finding out what they were really thinking, instead of accepting what
+they wished him to think was in their minds.  He could no more do that
+than he could use his considerable technical powers to concoct the
+confectionery which in the theatre of those days passed, God save us,
+for a play.  He wanted to come in contact with the dramatic essence of
+the people he met, but every one withheld it or protected him or
+herself against him, and so he lived alone.  For the sake of his work
+he discarded the ordinary social personality which his education had
+taught him to acquire, and he walked through the world exposed, rather
+terrifying to meet; but so exquisitely sensitive that one acute
+pleasure&mdash;a flower, a woman's smile, a strong man shaking hands with
+his friend, a lovers' meeting, a real quarrel between two men who hated
+each other, the attention of a friendly dog&mdash;could obliterate all the
+horror and disgust with which most of what he saw and felt inspired
+him.  He was sure of himself as a wind is sure of itself, but he was
+without conceit....  When he was very young, he had been discovered by
+one or two women.  That was enough.  He knew that the desire of women
+is not worth satisfying, and he left them alone unless they were in
+distress, and then he helped them generally at the cost of their
+thinking he was in love with them.  Then he had to explain that he had
+helped them as he would help a child or a sick man.  Generally they
+would weep and say he was a liar and a deceiver, but he knew what
+women's tears are worth, and when they got that far left them to
+prevent them going any further....  But he always had women to look
+after him, women who were grateful, women who, having once tasted his
+sympathy, could not do without it.  His sympathy was passionate and to
+some natures like strong drink.  Very few men could stand it because it
+went straight to the secret places of the heart, and men, unlike women,
+do not care to face their own secrets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lived in three rooms at the top of a house in Bloomsbury, one for
+his books, one for his work, and one for himself&mdash;for sleeping and
+bathing.  Unlike most men who are indifferent to the outside world he
+was clean, because he found that slovenliness impaired his efficiency,
+and took the edge off his energy.  He was as fastidious mentally as a
+trained athlete is physically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He accepted good-humouredly the apparently unalterable incompatibility
+between the theatre and the drama.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A man with a single aim seems mad in a world where aims are scattered,
+but Rodd suffered a double isolation.  Ordinary people regarded him as
+a cracked fool, because he would not or could not exploit his gifts and
+personality; while the people who really were cracked dreaded his
+sanity and the humorous tolerance with which he indulged their little
+weaknesses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He enjoyed Charing Cross Road because it was rather like himself: it
+was shovelled aside and disdained by its ignoble 'betters,' the streets
+imposed by cosmopolitanism upon the real English London.  That London
+he could find in Charing Cross Road, where there still beat the heart
+from which Fielding and Dickens had drawn their inspiration, the brave
+heart that could laugh through all its sufferings and through all the
+indignities put upon it.  In Charing Cross Road he could meet almost
+any day Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, Tom Jones and Partridge, Sam
+Weller and Sairey Gamp, and every day their descendants walked abroad,
+passed in and out of shops, went about their business, little
+suspecting that they would be translated into the world of art when
+Rodd returned from his holiday to his work.  He passionately loved this
+London, the real London, and hated everything that denied it or seemed
+to deny it.  He loved it so greatly that he hardly needed any personal
+love, and he detested any loyalty which interfered with his loyalty to
+Shakespeare, Fielding, and Dickens, dramatists all, though Fielding's
+drama had been too vital for the theatre of his time and had blown it
+into atoms, so that since his day the actors had had to scramble along
+as best they could and had done so well that they had forgotten the
+drama altogether.  They had evolved a kind of theatrical bas-relief,
+and were so content with it that they regarded the rounded figures of
+dramatic sculpture with detestation....  They dared not make room in
+their theatre for <I>Hedda Gabler</I> and <I>John Gabriel Borkman</I>, because
+they destroyed by contrast the illusions with which they maintained
+their activities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Scots bookseller was a great friend of Rodd's, and a loyal admirer,
+though he did not in the least understand what the strange man was
+about.  Rodd used to talk of the virtue of an ordered world, while the
+bookseller lived in dreams of Anarchy, men and women left alone so that
+the good in them could come to the top and create a millennium of
+kindliness.  Rodd's researches into the human heart had revealed to him
+only too clearly the terror that burns at the sources of human life,
+but because the bookseller's dreams were dear to him, because they kept
+him happy and benevolent, Rodd could never bring himself to push
+argument far enough to disturb them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day in this fair summer of our tale, Rodd turned into the bookshop
+to consume the lunch he had bought at the German Delicatessen-Magasin
+up the road.  He found the bookseller bubbling over with happiness,
+dusting his books, re-arranging them, emptying large parcels of new
+books, and not such very subversive books either except in so far as
+all literature is subversive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Hallo!' said Rodd.  'I thought this was the slack season?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm rich,' retorted the bookseller.  'The dahned publishers are
+crawling to me.  They've had their filthy lucre, and they know I can
+shift the stuff, and they're on their knees to me, begging me to take
+their muck by the hundred&mdash;at my own price.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(This was a pardonable exaggeration, but it was long since the
+bookseller had had so much new stock.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If I ever want a change,' said Rodd, 'I'll get you to take me on as
+your assistant.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bookseller's jaw dropped and he stared at Rodd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You might do worse,' he said.  'That's the second offer I've had this
+year.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh! who made the first?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!' The bookseller put his finger to his nose and chuckled.  'Ah!
+Some one who's in love with me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There are too many books,' said Rodd.  'Too much shoddy.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned away to the shelves where the plays were kept&mdash;Shaw, Barker,
+Galsworthy, Ibsen, Schnitzler, Hauptmann, Tschekov, Andreev, Claudel,
+Strindberg, Wedekind, all the authors of the Sturm and Drang period,
+when all over Europe the attempt was made to thrust literature upon the
+theatre, in the endeavour, as Rodd thought, to break the tyranny of the
+printed word.  That was a favourite idea of his, that the tyranny of
+print from which the world had suffered so long would be broken by the
+drama.  The human heart alone could break the obsessions of the human
+mind, otherwise humanity would lose its temper and try to smash them by
+cracking human heads....  Rodd always thought of humanity as an unity,
+an organism subject to the laws of organic life.  Talk about persons
+and nations, groups and combinations, seemed to him irrelevant.
+Humanity had a will, and everything had to comply with it or suffer.
+At present it seemed to him that the will of humanity was diseased, and
+that society here in London, as elsewhere, was inert.  He escaped into
+his imagination where he could employ to the full his dramatic energy.
+On the whole he hated books, but his affection for the Charing Cross
+Road, and for the bookseller, drew him to the shop dedicated to the
+efforts of revolutionary idealists, whom he thought on the whole
+mistaken.  He desired not revolution but the restoration of the health
+of humanity, and like so many others, he had his nostrum&mdash;the drama.
+However, the air was so full of theories, social and political, that he
+did not expect any one to understand him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Have you got Mann's new book?' he asked the bookseller, who produced
+it: forty plates of Charles's pet designs with rather irrelevant
+letterpress.  Rodd bought it, and that moment Clara entered the shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd paid no attention to her.  The bookseller left him with his money
+in his hand, and he stood turning over the pages of Charles's book, and
+shaking his head over the freakish will o' the wisp paragraphs.  Clara
+spoke, and he stiffened, stared at the books in front of him, turned,
+caught sight of her profile, and stood gazing in amazement&mdash;a girl's
+face that was more than pretty, a face in which there was purpose, and
+proof of clear perception.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After her holiday she was looking superbly well.  Health shone in her.
+She moved, and it was with complete unconcern for her surroundings.
+She lived at once in Rodd's imagination, took her rightful place as of
+course side by side with Beatrice, Portia, Cordelia, and Sophia
+Western.  His imagination had not to work on her at all to re-create
+her, or to penetrate to the dramatic essence of her personality, which
+she revealed in her every gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He could not hear what she was saying, but her voice went thrilling to
+his heart.  He gasped and reeled and dropped Charles Mann's book with a
+crash.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara, who had not seen him, turned, and she, too, was overcome.  He
+moved towards her, and stood devouring her with his eyes, and hers
+sought his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This is Rodd,' said the bookseller.  'Adnor Rodd, a great friend of
+mine.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Rodd,' repeated Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He is very much interested in the theatre,' said the bookseller.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I was just looking at Charles Mann's new book....  Will you let me
+give it you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He moved away to pick up the book and came back clutching it, took out
+his fountain pen and wrote in it in a small, precise hand,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To my friend, from Adnor Rodd.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My name is Clara Day,' said she,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You can't have a name yet....  You are just you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She understood him.  He meant that externals were of no account in the
+delighted shock of their meeting.  As they stood gazing at each other
+the book-shop vanished, London disappeared, there was nothing but they
+two on all the earth.  Neither could move.  The beginning and the end
+were in this moment.  Nothing that they could do could alter it or make
+the world again as it had been for them....  Consciously neither
+admitted it, both stubbornly clung to what they had made of their lives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He still held the book in his hand.  She had not put out hers for it.
+He wrote 'Clara Day,' and he wanted to write it down several times as
+he did with the names of the persons in his plays, to make certain that
+they were rightly called.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a faintly recurrent sense of actuality he thought of his three
+rooms in Bloomsbury and of the hundred and fifty pounds a year on which
+he lived, and with a wry smile he handed her the book, took stock of
+her rich clothes, bowed and turned away....  For his imagination it was
+enough to have met and loved her in that one moment.  She had broken
+down the intellectual detachment in which he lived: the icy solitude in
+which so painfully he struggled on was at an end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So quickly had he moved that she was taken by surprise, and he had
+reached the threshold of the shop before she ran after him and touched
+him on the arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Please,' she said.  'You have forgotten one thing&mdash;the date.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wrote the date in the book, and was for going, but she said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I must know more of you if I am to accept your gift.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You talk such perfect English,' he said, marvelling at her.  'People
+do not talk like that nowadays, but a slipshod jargon.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have lived abroad,' she told him, and without more they walked out
+into the street together, she hugging the book very dose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had walked some distance in silence before he spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Was it by accident that you were in that shop?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, no,' said she.  'The old man is a friend of mine.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(He noticed that she said 'the old' and not as most people did 'the
+yold.'  It was this perfection in her that made her so incredible.  To
+the very finest detail she was perfect and he knew not whether to laugh
+or to weep.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is absurd,' he said in his heart, 'it can't happen like this.  It
+can't be true.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara had no thought of anything but to make him open up his mind and
+heart to her, most easily and painlessly to break the taut strain in
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They turned into a tea-shop in Coventry Street, and he sat glowering at
+her.  A small orchestra was crashing out a syncopated tune.  The place
+was full of suburban people enjoying their escape into a vulgar
+excitement provided for them by the philanthropy of Joseph Lyons.  The
+room was all gilt and marble and plentiful electric light.  A waitress
+came up to them, but Rodd was so intent upon Clara that he could not
+collect his thoughts, and she had to order tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who are you?' he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I am an actress at the Imperium.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He flung back his head and gave a shout of laughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Is it funny?' she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled a little maliciously and asked.&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who are you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm a queer fish....  I've wasted my life in expecting more from
+people than they had to give, and in offering them more than they
+needed.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You look tired.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I am tired&mdash;tired out....  You're not really an actress.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm paid for it if that makes me one.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I mean&mdash;you are not playing a part now.  Actresses never stop.  They
+take their cues from their husbands and lovers and go on until they
+drop.  Their husbands and lovers generally kick them out before they do
+that....  The ordinary woman is an actress in her small way, but you
+are not so at all....  I can't place you.  What are you doing in
+London?  You ought not to be in London.  You ought to leave us stewing
+in our own juice.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The waitress brought them tea and the orchestra flung itself into a
+more outrageous effort than before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ragtime and you!' he went on.  'They don't blend.  Ragtime is for
+tired brains and jaded senses, for people who have lost all instinct
+and intuition.  What have you to do with them?  You will simply beat
+yourself to death upon their hard indifference....  You are only a
+child.  You should be packed off home.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And suppose I have none.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That was an impertinence.  Forgive me!'  He took up the book he had
+given her.  'This fellow Mann is like all the rest.  He wants to
+substitute a static show for a dynamic and vital performance, to impose
+his own art upon the theatre.  The actors have done that until they
+have driven anything else out.  He wants to drive them out.  That is
+all, but he has great gifts....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Please don't talk about other people,' said Clara.  'I want to hear
+about you.  What were you doing in the book-shop?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He told her then why he went to the Charing Cross Road, to find a
+holiday which would make life tolerable; she described her holiday
+touring through the country with the glorious conclusion in the Lakes.
+He looked rather gloomy and shook his head,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That wouldn't suit me.  I like to go slowly and to linger over the
+things that please me, to drink in their real character.  It is
+pleasant to move swiftly, but all this motor-car business seems to me
+to be only another dodge&mdash;running away from life....  I ought to do it
+if I were true to my temperament, but I love my job too much.  I'm an
+intellectual, but I can't stand by and look on, and I can't run away.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara had never met any one like him before.  There was such acute
+misery in his face, and his words seemed only to be a cloud thrown up
+to disguise the retreat he was visibly making from her.  She would not
+have that.  She was sure of him.  This attitude of his was a challenge
+to her.  The force with which he spoke had made Charles and even
+herself seem flimsy and fantastic, and she wanted to prove that she was
+or could be made as solid, as definite and precise as himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knew what it was to be driven by her own will.  Her sympathy was
+with him there.  He was driven to the point of exhaustion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've been trying to create the woman of the future,' he said.
+'Ibsen's women are all nerves.  What I want to get is the woman who can
+detach herself from her emotional experience and accept failure, as a
+man does, with a belief that in the long run the human mind is stronger
+than Nature.  If instincts are baffled, they are not to be trusted.
+Women have yet to learn that....  When they learn it, we can begin to
+get straight.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It did not seem to matter whether she understood him or not.  He had
+her sympathy, and he was glad to talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That seems to be the heart of the problem.  But it is a little
+disconcerting, when you have been trying to create a woman, to walk
+into a bookshop and find her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How do you know?' she asked.  'I may be only acting.  That is what
+women do.  They find out by instinct the ideal in a man's mind and
+reproduce it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'All ideals to all men? ...  You have given the game away.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That might only be the cleverest trick of all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment he was suspicious of her, but this coquetry was noble and
+designed to please and soothe him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm in for a bad time,' he said simply.  'Things have been too easy
+for me so far.  I gave myself twenty years in which to produce what I
+want and what the world must have....  Things aren't so simple as all
+that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do drink your tea.  I think you take everything too hardly.  People
+don't know that they are indifferent.  There are so many things to do,
+so many people to meet, they are so busy that they don't realise that
+they are standing still and just repeating themselves over and over
+again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Damn the orchestra!' said Rodd.  The first violin was playing a solo
+with muted strings.  'If people will stand this, they will stand
+anything.  It is slow murder.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do believe that they like it,' replied Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Slow murder?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  The&mdash;music.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Same thing.'  He laughed.  'Oh, well.  You have robbed me of my
+occupation.  When shall we meet again?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To-morrow?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To-morrow.  You shall see how I live&mdash;  If you can spare the time I
+would like to take you to a concert.  I always test my friends with
+music.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Even the New Woman?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his sensitive lips.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+RODD AT HOME
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+They met on the morrow, a hot August day, with the heat quivering up
+from the pavements and the walls of the houses....  Rodd was the first
+to arrive at the book-shop where they had arranged to meet.  The
+bookseller chaffed him about the 'young leddy,' because Rodd had never
+been known to speak to any one&mdash;male or female, in the shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's a fine young leddy,' said the bookseller.  'She knows that to
+do good to others is to do good to yourself.  And mind ye, that's a
+fact.  It's not preaching.  It's hard scientific fact.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who is she?' asked Rodd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She's an actress-girl, and she is friendly with lords.  How she came
+to find a poor shop like mine I cannot tell ye.  But in she walked, and
+my luck turned from that day.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara came in.  She stood on the threshold of the shop and turned over
+the papers that stood there on a table.  She had seen Rodd, but wished
+to gain a moment or two before she spoke to him, so great had been the
+shock of meeting him.  Since leaving him the day before she had done
+nothing at all but wait for the time to come for her to see him again,
+but when the time came she had to force her way out of the brooding
+concentration upon him which absorbed all her energies.  She dreaded
+the meeting.  In recollection, his personality had been clearer and
+more precise to her than in his actual presence, when the force of his
+ideas obscured everything else.  He was unhappy, he was poor, he was
+solitary, and it angered her that such a man should be any one of these
+things.  He seemed so forceful and yet to be poor, to be unhappy, to be
+solitary in a world where, as she had proved, wealth and companionship
+were so easy of access, argued some weakness....  He waited for her to
+move, and that angered her.  He stood still and waited for her to move.
+So fierce was the gust of anger in her that she nearly walked out of
+the shop then and there, but she saw his eyes intent upon her and she
+went up to him, holding out her hand.  He gripped it tightly and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I was afraid you might not come.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Why should I not?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have so little to give you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You gave me a good deal yesterday.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Everything.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bookseller looked up at the bust of William Morris on his poetry
+shelves and winked.  Then he tip-toed away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara forgave him for not moving to meet her.  His directness of speech
+satisfied her as to his strength and honesty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither was disposed to waste time.  Their intimacy had begun at their
+first meeting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is too hot in London,' he said.  'Shall we walk out to Highgate or
+Hampstead?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara wanted to touch him, to make certain that he was really a man and
+not a mere perambulating mind, and she laid her hand on his arm.  It
+was painfully thin, and she knew instinctively that he was not properly
+cared for, and then again she was full of mistrust.  Was it only her
+sympathy that involved her life with his? ...  The shock of it had made
+it perfectly clear that in Charles, as a man, she had never had the
+smallest interest.  That had been disastrous, and she shrank from
+creating more trouble by her impetuosity.  To hurt this man would be
+serious.  No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he
+would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy
+boy or a blackbird in a cherry-tree in blossom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They went by tube to Highgate, making no attempt to talk through the
+clatter and roar of the train in the tunnel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they walked up the long hill he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You have knocked me out.  I never thought any one would do that.  I
+never thought I should meet any one as strong as myself....  Love's a
+terrible thing.  The impact of two personalities.  It breaks everything
+else, leaves no room for anything else.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I hoped it would make you happy,' said Clara, accepting as entirely
+natural that they should sweep aside everything that stood between them
+and their desire to be together and to share thoughts, emotions, all
+the deep qualities in them that could be revealed to no one else.  She
+could no more deny him than she could deny the sun rising in the
+morning, and for the moment she was content to forget every other
+element in her life....  It was so inevitably right that, having met in
+the heart of London, they should turn their backs on it and put
+themselves to the test of earth, sunshine, blue sky, and trees in their
+summer green, and water smiling in the sun.  The furious energy in
+their hearts made the hot August day, the suburban scene, and the
+indolent suburban people seem toy-like and unreal, as though they were
+looking down upon it from another world, and so they were, for they had
+plunged to the very beginnings of Creation, and their new world was in
+the making.  So great is the power of love that, extracting all the
+truth from the world as men have made it, it sweeps the rest away and
+begins again, discarding, destroying, but most tenderly preserving all
+that is vital and of worth.  Love takes its chosen two, and weaves a
+spell about them, to preserve them from the fretting contact of the
+world, that they may have the power to withstand the agony of creation
+which sweeps through them, and never rests until they are forged into
+one soul, one world, or parted, broken and cast down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of these two it was Rodd who suffered most.  The fierce will that had
+maintained him in his long labours for the art he worshipped would not
+yield.  He wanted both, his work and this sudden, surprising girl who
+had walked into his life, and he wanted both upon his own terms.  At
+the same time the conflict set up in him made him only the more
+sensitive to beauty and to the simple delights of the gardens and
+fields through which they passed....  This was new for him.  He had
+enjoyed such things before only with a remote aesthetic detachment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, too, he was loath to renounce, but the swift joy in the girl was
+too strong for him.  To such beauty the sternest will must bend.  No
+bird's song, no sudden light upon a cloud, no trembling flower in its
+ecstacy, no tree in full burst of blossom could tell of so high a
+beauty as this joy that flashed from the very depths of her soul into
+her eyes, upon her lips, softening her throat, liquefying her every
+movement, and into her voice bringing such music as no poet has ever
+sung, no musician's brain conceived, music sent from regions deeper
+than the human soul can know to go soaring far beyond the limits set to
+human perception.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd was dazed and dizzy with it, and longed every now and then to
+touch her, to hold her, to make sure that in the swiftness of her joy
+she would not fly away....  He talked gravely and solemnly, with an
+intent concentration, about the persons in his life who compared so
+sorrily with her.  He was obviously composing them into a drama, which,
+however, he dared not carry to any conclusion.  That there could ever
+be such another day as this was beyond his hopes, that he could ever
+return to what he was beggared his endurance....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A queer thing happened to me the other day,' he said.  'I live among
+strange people, hangers-on of the theatre and the newspaper press.
+There is a woman&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara caught her breath and looked tigerish.  He did not notice the
+change and went on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There is a woman.  She lives immediately below me.  She has two
+children and God knows how she lives.  She used to wait for me on the
+stairs in the evening to watch me go up.  But I never spoke to her&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara smiled happily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She used to do me little services.  She would darn my socks, and
+sometimes cook me some dainty and lay it outside my door.  This went on
+for months, I never spoke to her, because she has a terrible mother who
+lives with her....  A week or two ago, she met me as I came upstairs in
+the evening, and told me one of her children was ill, and asked me to
+go for the doctor....  I did so, and she looked so exhausted that I
+went in and helped her.  The mother was no use at all; a fat, lazy
+beast of a woman who drinks, swears, eats, and sleeps....  We wrestled
+with death for the life of the child, but we were beaten....  It died.
+She waits for me now, and tries to talk to me, but I will not do it.
+She is frenzied in her attentions.  She wants sympathy.  She has it,
+but wants more than that.  A word from me, and I should never be able
+to shake her off.  She would cling to me, and because she clung she
+would believe that she loved me, but she would have nothing but my
+weakness....  It has happened before.  They seem to find some bitter
+triumph in a man's weakness.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The humility of his confession touched Clara deeply.  It was the
+humility of the man's feeling, in contrast with his ferocious,
+intellectual arrogance, that moved her to a compassion which steadied
+her in her swift joy.  His story revealed his life to her so vividly
+that she felt that without more she knew him through and through.
+Everything else was detail with which she had no particular concern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They walked along in silence for some time, he brooding, she smiling
+happily, and she pictured the two sides of his life, the rich and
+powerful imaginative activity, and the simple tenderness of his
+solitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to be her turn to confess, but she could not.  The day's
+perfection would be marred for them, and that she would not have.  He
+would understand.  Yes, he would understand, but men have illusions
+which are very dear to them.  She must protect them, and let him keep
+them until the dear reality made it necessary for him to discard them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At Hampstead they came on a holiday throng and mingled with them, glad
+once again to be in contact with simple people taking the pleasures for
+which they lived.  There were swing-boats, merry-go-rounds, cocoa-nut
+shies, penny-in-the-slot machines....  The proprietor of the
+merry-go-round was rather like Sir Henry Butcher in appearance, and
+Clara realised with a start that the Imperium and this gaily painted
+machine were both parts of the same trade.  The people paid their
+twopence or their half-guineas and were given a certain excitement, a
+share in a game, a pleasure which without effort on their part broke
+the monotony of existence....  Of the two on this August day she
+preferred the merry-go-round.  It was in the open air, and it was
+simple and unpretentious; and it was surely better that the people
+should be amused with wooden horses than with human beings as
+mechanical and as miserably driven by machinery....  She was annoyed
+with Rodd because he was exasperated by the silly giggling of the
+servant-girls and the raffish capers of the young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I hate the pleasures of the people,' he said.  'They give the measure
+of the quality of their work&mdash;lazy, slovenly, monotonous repetition,
+producing nothing splendid but machines, wonderful engines, marvellous
+ships, miraculous motor-cars, but dull, listless, sodden people&mdash;inert.
+It is the inertia of London that is so appalling.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara made him take her on the wooden horses, and they went round three
+times.  He admitted reluctantly that he had enjoyed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But only because you did.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To try him still further she made him have tea in the yard of an inn,
+at a long table with a number of East Enders, whole families, courting
+couples, and young men and maidens who had selected each other out of
+the crowd.  They stared at the remarkable pair, the elegant young woman
+and the moody, handsome man, but they made no impertinent comment
+except that when they left a girl shrieked,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My! look at her shoes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And another girl said mournfully,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I wisht I 'ad legs like <I>that</I> and silk stockings.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was near evening.  The haze over the heath shimmered with an apricot
+glow.  Windows, catching the low sun, blazed like patches of fire.  The
+people on the heath dwindled and seemed to sink away into the
+landscape, and their movements were hardly perceptible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd asked,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Has it been a good day for you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A wonderful day.  I want to see where you live.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took her home.  Down in London, after the Heath, the air seemed
+thick and stifling.  The square in which he lived was surrounded with
+unsavoury streets from which smells that were almost overpowering were
+wafted in.  His house was a once fashionable mansion now cut up into
+flats.  He had what were once the servants' quarters under the roof,
+three rooms and a bathroom.  The windows of his front room looked out
+on the tops of trees.  Here he worked.  The room contained nothing but
+a table, a chair, a piano, and a sofa.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This is the only room,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That woman was waiting for you,' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Was she?  I didn't see her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  She whisked into her room when she saw me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took up his manuscript from the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It has stopped short.'  He turned it over ruefully; fingering the
+pages, he began to read and was sinking into absorption in it when she
+dashed it out of his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How dare you read it when I am with you?' she cried.  'It was written
+before you knew me.  It isn't any good....  I know it isn't any good.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was stunned by this outburst of jealousy and protested,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There's years of work in it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But what's the good of sitting here working, if you never do anything
+with it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pointed to the sofa and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There's my work in there: full to the brim, notes, sketches, things
+half finished, things that need revision....  I've been waiting for
+something to happen.  I could never work just to please other people
+and to fit successful actors with parts....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm a successful actress.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You?  Oh, no.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I am.  I'm engaged to appear at the Imperium in <I>The Tempest</I>.
+Charles Mann is designing the production.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I saw something about that, but I didn't believe it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charles Mann's work was like that,' she pointed to the sofa, 'until I
+met him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You know him?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes....  Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(She could not bring herself to tell him.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Butcher will be too strong for him.  You see, Butcher controls the
+machine.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But money controls Butcher!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was enraged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You!  You to talk of money!  That is the secret of the whole criminal
+business.  Money controls art.  Money rejects art.  Money's a sensitive
+thing, too.  It rejects force, spontaneity, originality.  It wants
+repetition, immutability, things calculable.  Money...  You can talk
+with satisfaction of money controlling Butcher after our heavenly day
+with the sweet air singing of our happiness!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'One must face facts.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Certainly.  But one need not embrace them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here in this room he was another man.  The humility that was his most
+endearing quality was submerged in his creative arrogance.  Almost it
+seemed that he resented her intrusion as a menace to the life which he
+had made for himself, the world of suffering and tortured creatures
+with which he had surrounded himself, the creatures whom he had loved
+so much that contact with his fellows had come to be in some sort a
+betrayal of them.  To an extraordinary degree the atmosphere of the
+room was charged with his personality, and with the immense continuous
+effort he had made to achieve his purpose.  Here there was something
+demoniac and challenging in him.  He presented this empty room to her
+as his life and seemed to hurl defiance at her to disturb it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had never had so fiercely stimulating a challenge to her
+personality.  In her heart she compared this austere room with the
+ceremony of the Imperium, and there was no doubt which of the two
+contained the more vitality.  Here in solitude was a man creating that
+which alone which could justify the elaborate and costly machinery of
+the great theatre which had been used for almost a generation by the
+bland and boyish Sir Henry Butcher to exploit his own engaging
+personality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was ashamed of the jealousy which had made her snatch Rodd's work
+out of his hand.  It had set his passion raging against her.  He who
+had faced the hostility and indifference of the world all through his
+ambitious youth was inflamed by the hostility of love which had shaken
+but not yet uprooted his fierce will&mdash;never to compromise, but to
+adhere to the logic of his vision.  The rage in him was intolerable.
+She said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You don't like it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My being at the Imperium.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is not for me to like or dislike.  I am not the controller of your
+movements.  I would never control the movements of any living creature.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Except in your work.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They work out their own salvation.  They are nothing to do with me,
+any more than the woman on the stairs.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But you love them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(He had made them as real to her as they were to himself.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They don't leave me alone.  They want to live....  But they can only
+live on the stage.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shook back his head and with supreme arrogance he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'As they will when the stage is fit for them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to
+actuality she said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How old are you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Thirty-one.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His next move horrified her.  He stepped forward, seized his
+manuscript, and tore it into fragments.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  That was childish of you....  You will only sit down and begin
+all over again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I swear I will not.  I swear it.  It is finished.  All that is
+over....  I don't know how I shall ever begin again.  Perhaps I shall
+not....  All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid
+facing it....  They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick
+most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you.  They're
+not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little
+modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts,
+clever and helpless, rotting in inaction....  No.  It has been all
+wrong.  I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend....  I think I knew it
+in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me....  I'm not fit
+to live in the same world as you.  I ought not to have seen you
+to-day....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Can't you laugh at yourself?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Laugh!  Dear God, I do nothing else.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I mean&mdash;happily.  You wouldn't be you if you didn't make mistakes&mdash;to
+learn.  You had to learn more about your work than just the tricks of
+it.  Isn't it so?  You despise acting.  But it is just the same there.
+I wanted to learn more about it than the tricks.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ay, that's it; to learn the tricks and keep decent.  That is what one
+stands out for.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara held out her hand to him,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very well, then.  We understand each other and there is nothing so
+very terrible in my being at the Imperium.  Is there?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He held her hand.  She wanted him to draw her to him, to hold her close
+to him, to comfort him for all that he had lost; but once again he was
+governed by his humility, and he just bowed low, and thanked her warmly
+for her generosity in giving so poor a devil as himself so exquisite a
+day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing was said about another meeting.  As he took her down the stairs
+the door of the flat below was opened and a woman's face peeped out.
+Near the bottom of the stairs they met a man in a tail coat and top hat
+who sidled past them, took off his hat and held it in front of his
+face, but before he did so Clara had recognised Mr Cumberland,
+erstwhile Mr Clott.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Does that man live here?' she asked Rodd at the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd looked up the stairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No-o,' he said.  'No.  I think I have seen him before, but there are
+many people living in the house.  Strange people.  They come and go,
+but I sit there in my room upstairs gazing at the tree-tops,
+working....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You should get in touch with the theatre,' said Clara; 'swallow your
+scruples, and find out that we are not so very bad after all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stood for some moments on the wide doorstep.  It was night now and
+the lamps were lit.  Lovers strolled by under the trees, and against
+the railings of the garden opposite couples were locked together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You turn an August day into Spring,' said Rodd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara tapped his hand affectionately, and, to tear herself away, ran
+down the square and round the corner.  She was quivering in every nerve
+from the strain of so much conflict, and she was angry with herself for
+having taken so high a hand with him.  He was more to be respected than
+any man she had ever met, and yet she had&mdash;or so she thought&mdash;treated
+him as though he were another Charles.  She could not measure the
+immensity of what had happened to her and her thoughts flew to
+practical details.  What ages it seemed since she had walked blithely
+crooning: 'This is me in London!'  And how odd, how menacing, it was
+that on the stairs she should have met Mr Clott or Cumberland!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+'THE TEMPEST'
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+There were still seasons in those days: Autumn, Christmas Holidays, and
+Spring.  In August when the rest of the world was at holiday the
+theatres, cleaned and renewed for a fresh attempt at the conquest of
+the multitude (which is unconquerable, going its million different
+ways), were filled with hopeful, busy people, hoping for success to
+give them the tranquil easy time and the security which, always looked
+for, never comes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Imperium had been re-upholstered and redecorated, and the fact was
+duly advertised.  Mr Smithson, in the leisure given him by his being
+relieved of full responsibility for the scenery, had painted a new
+act-drop, photographs of which appeared in the newspapers.  Mr Gillies
+was interviewed.  Sir Henry was interviewed, Charles Mann was
+interviewed.  The ball of publicity was kept rolling merrily.  Even Mr
+Halford Bunn, the famous author whose new play had been put back, lent
+a hand by attacking the new cranky scenery in the columns of a
+respectable daily paper, and giving rise to a lengthy correspondence in
+which Charles came in for a good deal of hearty abuse on the ground
+that he had given to other countries the gifts that belonged to his
+own.  He plunged into the fray, and pointed out that he had left his
+own country because it was pleasanter to starve in a sunny climate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was intoxicated with anticipation of his triumph.  The practical
+difficulties which he had created, and those which had been put in his
+way by Mr Gillies and Mr Smithson had been surmounted, and to see his
+designs in being, actually realised in the large on back-cloths, wings,
+and gauzes, gave him the sense of solidity which, had it come into his
+life before, might have made him almost a normal person....  Clara was
+to be Ariel.  The beloved child was to bring the magic of her
+personality to kindle the beauty he had created in form and colour.  He
+was almost reconciled to the idea of the characters in the fantasy
+being impersonated by men and women.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry had returned to town enthusiastic and eager.  Mann and Clara
+were a combination strong enough to break the tyranny of the social use
+of the front of the house over the artistic employment of the stage.
+This season at all events Lady Butcher and Lady Bracebridge should not
+have things all their own way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a slight set back and disappointment.  An upstart impresario
+brought over from Germany a production in which form and design had
+broken down naturalism.  This was presented at one of the Halls, and
+was an instantaneous success, and Charles, in a fit of jealousy, wrote
+an unfortunately spiteful attack on the German producer, accusing him
+of stealing his ideas.  Sir Henry, a born publicist, was enraged, and
+threatened to abandon his project.  The proper line to take was to
+welcome the German product and, with an appropriate reference to
+Perkins and aniline dyes, to point bashfully to what London could
+do....  He was so furious with Charles that he shut himself up in the
+aquarium and refused to call rehearsals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara saw him and he reproached her,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Why did you bring that dreadful man into my beautiful theatre?  He has
+upset everybody from Gillies to the call-boy, and now he has made us a
+laughing-stock, and this impresario person is in a position to say that
+we are jealous.  We artists have to hold together or the business men
+will bowl us out like a lot of skittles, and where will the theatre be
+then?...  Where would you be, my dear?  They'd make you take off your
+clothes and run about the stage with a lot of other young women, and
+call that&mdash;art....  The theatre is either a temple or it is in Western
+Civilisation what the slave-market is in the East.  This damned fool of
+yours can't see anything outside his own scenery.  He thinks he is more
+important than me; but is a bookbinder more important than John
+Galsworthy?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You mustn't be so angry.  Nobody takes Charles seriously except in his
+work.  Everybody expects him to do silly things.  You can easily put it
+right with a dignified letter.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I can't say my own scene-painter is a confounded idiot.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You needn't mention him,' said Clara.  'Just say how much you admire
+the German production and talk about the renaissance of the theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry pettishly took pen and paper, wrote a letter, and handed it
+to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Will that do?' he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She read it, approved, and admired its adroitness.  There were
+compliments to everybody and Charles was not mentioned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'These things <I>are</I> important,' said Sir Henry.  'The smooth running of
+the preliminary advertising is half the battle.  It gives you your
+audiences for the first three weeks, and it inspires confidence in the
+Press.  That is most important....  I really was within an ace of
+throwing the whole thing up.  Lady Butcher would like nothing better.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think Verschoyle would be offended if you did.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!  Verschoyle....'  Sir Henry looked suspiciously at her.  Though he
+wanted to be, he was never quite at his ease with her.  She was not
+calculable like the women he had known.  What they wanted were things
+definite and almost always material, while her purposes were secret,
+subtle, and, as he sometimes half suspected, beyond his range.  She was
+new.  That was her fascination.  She belonged to this strange world
+that was coming into being of discordant rhythmic music, of Russian
+ballet and novels, of a kind of poetry that anybody could write, of
+fashions that struck him as indecent, of a Society more riotous and
+rowdy than ever the Bohemia of his day had been, because women&mdash;ladies
+too&mdash;were the moving spirit in it and women never did observe the rules
+of any game....  And yet, in his boyish, sentimental way, he adored
+her, and clung to her as though he thought she could take him into this
+new world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I can't go on with Mann,' he said almost tearfully.  'It is too
+disturbing.  You never know what he is going to do, and, after all, the
+theatre is a business, isn't it?&mdash;  Isn't it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I suppose so,' replied Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was extraordinary to feel the great machine of the theatre gathering
+momentum for the launching of the play.  It was marvellous to be caught
+up, as the rehearsals proceeded, into the loveliest fantasy ever
+created by the human mind.  Clara threw herself into it heart and soul.
+Life outside the play ceased for her.  She lived entirely between her
+rooms and the stage of the theatre.  Unlike the other players, when she
+was not wanted she was watching the rest of the piece, surrendered
+herself to it completely, and was continually discovering a vast power
+of meaning in words that had been so familiar to her as to have become
+like remembered music, an habitual thought without conscious reference
+to anything under the sun....  And as her sense of the beauty of the
+play grew more living to her, so she saw the apparatus that kept it in
+motion as more and more comic....  Mr Gillies had a thousand and one
+points on which he consulted his chief with the most ruthless disregard
+of the work going forward on the stage.  Lady Butcher would come
+bustling in, take Sir Henry aside and whisper to him, and words like
+Bracebridge&mdash;Sir George&mdash;Lady Amabel&mdash;Prime Minister&mdash;Chancellor&mdash;would
+come hissing out.  Then when the rehearsal was resumed she would stay
+surveying it with the indulgent smile of a vicar's wife at a school
+treat....  During the exquisite scene between Prospero and Miranda one
+day the scenery door was flung open, and Mr Smithson arrived with a
+small army of men, who dumped paint-pots on the boards, threw hammers
+down, and rushed across the stage with flats and fly-cloths.  Yet, in
+spite of all these accidents introducing the spirit of burlesque, the
+play survived.  Sir Henry would tolerate interruptions up to a point,
+but, when a charwoman in the auditorium started brushing or turned on a
+sudden light, he would turn and roar into the darkness,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Stop that din!  How can I rehearse if I am continually distracted!  Go
+away and clean somewhere else!  We can't be clean now....  Please go
+on.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cast was a good one of very distinguished and highly paid players,
+all the principals being ladies and gentlemen who would rather not work
+than accept less than twenty or twenty-five pounds a week.  One or two
+were superior young people who affected to despise the Imperium, but
+confessed with a smile that the money was very useful.  They were also
+rather scornful of Charles because he was not intellectual.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles at first attended rehearsals and attempted to interfere, but
+was publicly rebuked and told to mind his own business.  There would
+have been a furious quarrel, but Clara went up to him and dragged him
+away just in time.  He stayed away for some days, but returned and sat
+gloomily in the auditorium.  He had moved from his furnished house, and
+was in rooms above a ham and beef shop, which, he said, had the
+advantage of being warm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It isn't a production,' he grumbled, 'it's a scramble.  He's ruining
+the whole thing with his acting, which is mid-Victorian.  He should key
+the whole thing up from you, chicken....  You know what I want.  You
+understand me.  The technique of the rest is all wrong.  It is a
+technique to divert attention from the scenery, raw, unmitigated
+barn-storming....  Do, do ask him to let me help!  What can he do,
+popping in and out of the play and discussing a hundred and one things
+with all these fools who keep running in?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You should have stipulated for it in your contract,' she said.  'It is
+too late now.  He does know his business, Charles, if only people would
+leave him alone.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So rehearsals went on for a few more days.  Clara was more and more
+absorbed.  The magical reality of Ariel surpassed everything else in
+her life except the memory of Rodd in his empty room, and that also she
+wished to obliterate, for she was full of a premonition of danger, and
+was convinced that by this dedication of herself to the theatre she
+could dominate it.  She could not define the danger, but it threatened
+Charles, and it menaced Rodd, whom she had decided not to see again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry was delighted with her, and said she had rejuvenated his own
+art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I used to play Caliban,' he said.  'But Prospero is the part if there
+is to be an Ariel who can move as you can move and speak in a fairy
+voice as you can speak....  The rest of the play is all in the day's
+work....
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+'Go make thyself like a nymph of the sea: be subject<BR>
+To no sight but thine and mine, invisible<BR>
+To every eyeball else.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And for Clara it was almost literally true.  She felt that she was like
+a spirit moving among these people marooned on this island of the West
+End of London, all spell-bound by the money of this great roaring city,
+all enslaved, all amphibious, living between two elements, the actual
+and the imagined, but in neither, because of the spell that bound them,
+fully and passionately....  Living in the play she saw Sir Henry merged
+in Prospero, and when he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">'Thou shalt be as free</SPAN><BR>
+As mountain winds: but then exactly do<BR>
+All points of my command,'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+she took that also literally, and was blissfully happy to surrender to
+a will more potent than her own....  She did not know that the will she
+was acknowledging was Shakespeare's, and that with her rare capacity
+for living in the imagination she was creeping into his and accepting
+life, gaining her freedom, upon his terms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After some time her spirit began to affect the whole company.  She
+created an enchantment in which all moved, and Charles, watching, began
+to understand more fully the art he had first perceived in her on the
+day when he had attempted to force her, like a practised hand, to
+capture and fix an apparently accidental effect....  It was no
+accident.  The girl was possessed with a rare dramatic genius, entirely
+unspoiled&mdash;pure enough and strong enough to subsist and to move in the
+theatrical atmosphere of the Imperium....  What was more, Charles
+understood that she was fighting for his ideas, and was, before his
+eyes, making their fulfilment possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You might talk and argue with Sir Henry until you were blue in the
+face, but give him a piece of real acting and he understood at once,
+was kindled and became fertile in invention, even courageous in
+innovation.  Give him that, and he would drop all thought of the public
+and the newspapers, and sacrifice even the prominence of his own
+personality to the service of this art that he adored.  As the
+rehearsals proceeded, therefore, he became more intent, was less
+patient with interruptions, and at last stopped them altogether.  He
+became interested in his own part, and tussled with the players who
+shared his scenes with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Never,' he said to Clara, 'have I enjoyed rehearsals so much as these.
+I am only afraid they are going too smoothly.  We shall be over-ripe by
+production....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He resumed cordial relations with Charles, and threw out a suggestion
+or two as to scenery and costumes which Charles, who had begun to learn
+the elements of diplomacy, pretended to note down.  Sir Henry was
+magnanimous.  He avoided his wife and his usual cronies, and devoted
+himself to Charles and Clara, whom his showman's eye had marked down as
+potentially a very valuable property.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This should be the beginning of great things for you, my boy,' he said
+to Charles.  'You will have all the managers at your feet, but the
+Imperium is the place for big work, the bold attack, the sweeping
+line....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles was a little suspicious of such whole-hearted conversion.  He
+knew these enthusiasms for the duration of rehearsals, and he was
+ill-at-ease because his anticipation of boundless wealth had not come
+true.  He had spent his advance and could not get another out of Mr
+Gillies, who detested him and regarded his invasion of the theatre as a
+ruinous departure from its traditions.  Clara Mr Gillies considered to
+be merely one of his Chief's infatuations.  They never lasted very
+long.  He had seen his Chief again and again rush to the very brink of
+disaster, but always he had withdrawn in the nick of time....  Mr
+Gillies was like a perpetual east wind blowing upon Charles's
+happiness.  But for Mr Gillies there would have been boundless
+wealth....  It was monstrous: Verschoyle had backed Charles's talent
+and Mr Gillies was sitting on the money.  Butcher could spend it
+royally, but Charles had often to go to Clara and ask her for the price
+of his lunch.  At the very height of his fame, with success almost
+within his grasp, he had to go almost hungry because genius has no
+credit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing to be done about it.  He borrowed here and there, but
+knew it was no real help.  It simply sent rumours flying as to his
+financial position, and he did not want either Butcher or Verschoyle to
+know that money trickled through his fingers.  He wanted their support
+after this success to advance his schemes.  Therefore he borrowed from
+Clara, and she, entirely indifferent to all but the engrossing
+development of the play, allowed Sir Henry to pay for her food, to give
+her meals alone with him in the aquarium, and even to buy her clothes
+and jewels.  She took not the slightest interest in them, but, as it
+seemed to give him pleasure to shower gifts and attentions upon her,
+she suffered it, and never for a moment dreamed of the turn his
+infatuation was taking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she progressed in her work she felt that she was achieving what she
+desired, a passion for her art equal to Rodd's.  For a time she had
+thrust all thought of him aside, but as she gained in mastery and power
+over the whole activity of the stage, he crept back into her mind, and
+she could face him with a greater sense of equality, with more
+understanding and without that jealousy the memory of which hurt
+her....  She had acquired a sense of loyalty to art which was a greater
+thing than loyalty to Charles.  She had saved him, helped him, brought
+him thus far.  Henceforth he must learn to stand on his own feet.  She
+was glad that she had left him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All these considerations seemed very remote as she worked her way
+deeper and deeper into the play, which contained for her a reality
+nowhere to be found in life.  She became Ariel, a pure imagination,
+moving in an enchanted air, singing of freedom and of a beauty beyond
+all things visible.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">'You are three men of sin, whom Destiny</SPAN><BR>
+That hath to instrument this lower world<BR>
+And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea<BR>
+Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island<BR>
+Where man doth not inhabit...'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Casting spells upon others, she seemed to cast them upon her own life;
+and it was incredible to her to think that she was the same Clara Day
+who had come so gaily to London with Charles Mann to help him to
+conquer his kingdom.  The stage of the Imperium was to her, in truth, a
+magic island where wonders were performed, and she by an inspiration,
+more powerful than her own will, could with a touch transform all
+things and persons around her; and when Sir Henry, rehearsing the
+character of Prospero, said to her.&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">'Then to the elements</SPAN><BR>
+Be free and fare you well.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+the words sounded deep in her heart, and she took them as a real
+bidding to be free of all that had entangled and cramped her own life.
+So she dreamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had a rude awakening one night when, after a supper in the aquarium
+alone with Sir Henry, he broke a long moody silence by laying his hand
+on hers, drawing her out of her chair and clasping her to his heart
+while he kissed her arms, shoulders, face, hair, and cried,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You wonderful, wonderful child.  I love you.  I love you.  I have
+loved you since I first saw you.  I knew then that the love of my life
+had come....  You wonderful untouched child&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tried to make her kiss him, to force her to meet his eyes, but she
+wrestled with him and thrust him back to relinquish his hold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How could you?  How could you!  How could you?' she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have never forgotten that marvellous moonlit night&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Please be sensible,' she said.  'Does a man never know when a woman
+loves him or not?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They don't help one much,' replied Sir Henry, with a nervous grin.
+'You were so happy....  I thought.  Don't be angry with me!  I have
+thought of nothing but you since then....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A moonlight night and champagne supper,' said she.  'Are they the same
+thing to you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Love conquers all,' said Sir Henry, a little sententiously.  He was
+disgusted.  She was not playing the right dramatic part; but she never
+did any of the expected things.  The ordinary conventions of women did
+not exist for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had moved as far away from him as possible and was standing over by
+the portrait of Teresa Chesney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You must never talk like that again,' she said, 'or I shall not stay
+in the theatre....  It is not only the vulgarity of it that I hate, but
+that you should have misunderstood....  I was happy to be working with
+you in the play.  Everything outside that is unimportant.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Not love....  Not love,' protested Sir Henry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Even love,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I thought you liked me,' he mumbled.  'I was so happy giving you
+presents.  I thought you liked me....  A man in my position doesn't
+often find people to like him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'So I do,' said Clara.  'You are very like Charles.  That is why I
+understand you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry winced.  In his heart he thoroughly despised Charles Mann.
+He drank a glass of champagne and said nervously,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm glad we're not going to quarrel....  Forgive me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You have spoiled it all for me,' she said.  'Everything is spoiled.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She clenched her fists, and her eyes blazed fury at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How dare you treat me as a woman when I had never revealed myself to
+you?  Isn't that where a man should have some honour? ...  You must
+understand me if I am to remain in the theatre.  If a woman reveals
+herself to a man, then she is responsible.  She has nothing to say
+if&mdash;I don't think you understand.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.'  And indeed she might have been talking Greek to him.  The
+insulted woman he knew, the virtuous woman he knew, the fraudulent
+coquette he knew, the extravagant self-esteem of women he knew, but
+never before had he met a woman who was simple and sincere, who could
+brush aside all save essentials and talk to him as a man might have
+done, with detachment from the thing that had happened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If you think I'm a blackguard, why don't you say so?  Why don't you
+hit me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't think you are anything of the kind.  I think you have been
+spoiled and that everything has been too easy for you....  I'm hurt
+because I thought you wanted Charles and me for the theatre and not for
+yourself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'<I>L'etat c'est moi</I>,' smiled Sir Henry.  'I am the theatre....  All the
+immense machinery is my creation.  My brain here is the power that
+keeps it going.  If I were to die to-morrow there would be four walls
+and Mr Gillies....  Do you think he could do anything with it?  Could
+Charles Mann?  Could you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes,' said Clara, and he laughed.  He had never been in such
+entrancing company.  If she did not want his love-making&mdash;well and
+good.  At least she gave him the benefit of her frankness and he needed
+no pose with her.  He was glad she was going to be a sensible girl....
+She might alter her mind and every day only made her more adorable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Sit down and have some chocolates.'  He spoke to her as though she
+were a child and like a child she obeyed him, for she was alarmed that
+he should exert his capricious prerogative and throw over <I>The Tempest</I>
+at the last moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What would you do with the theatre?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should dismiss Mr Gillies.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'An excellent man of business.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'For stocks and shares or boots, but not for art.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He's a steadying influence.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Art is steady enough, if it is art.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My <I>dear</I> child!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If you don't know that then you are not an artist.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!  Would you call Charles Mann steady?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should think of the play first and last.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There's no one to write them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should scour the country for imaginative people and make them think
+in terms of the theatre.  Besides, there are people!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  There are people who love the drama so much that they can't go
+near the theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He roared with laughter, and to convince him she told him about Adnor
+Rodd and his bare room, where without any hope of an audience he wrote
+his plays and lived in them more passionately than it was possible to
+do in life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I don't mind betting,' he said, 'that he's got something wrong with
+him.  Either he drinks, or has an impossible wife, or he likes low
+company, or&mdash;  No.  There aren't such people.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But there are.' And she told him how she had spent a whole day with
+Rodd and had gone home with him to see his rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Alone?' asked Sir Henry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Then if you were my girl I should put you on bread and water for a
+week.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To convince him, she tried to tell him how she had struggled to
+overcome Charles's objections to the practical use of his talent, and
+had forced him to come to London....  In her eagerness and in her
+happiness at having brought him to his senses, she lost sight of the
+fact that she was revealing her own history.  He brought her up sharp
+with,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Are you married to Charles Mann?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ye-es,' she said, her heart fluttering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I didn't know,' he replied nonchalantly.  His manner towards her
+changed.  He was still soft and kind, and bland in his impish wit, but
+beneath the surface he was brutal, revengeful, cruel, and she felt the
+force of the ruthless egoism that had won him his position in spite of
+disabilities which would have hampered and even checked a less forceful
+man....  In the same moment she understood that what had been a
+glorious and lovely reality to her had been a game to him; and that he
+designed without the slightest compunction to turn both Charles and
+herself to his own profit....  Well, she thought, he might try, but he
+could not prevent either of them from making their reputations, and
+neither would ever sink to the mechanical docility of London players.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sir Henry lit a large cigar and moved over to the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What does Verschoyle think of it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knew that he was insolently referring to her marriage with Charles,
+but she turned the shaft by saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He is delighted with it all.  He believes in Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Hm....  Even the birds and fishes?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who told you about that?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'London doesn't let a good story die.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Verschoyle was present....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The situation was becoming unbearable.  Sir Henry was as hard, as
+satisfied, and as unconscionable as a successful company-promoter.
+This sudden revelation of his egoism, his wariness to protect the ideal
+which in his own person he had achieved, shocked Clara out of her
+youthful innocence and into a painful realisation that the facts of her
+life forbade the impersonalism which had made so much achievement
+possible....  It was quite clear to her that Sir Henry was intent upon
+a personal relationship if she were to keep what she had won, and it
+was as clear that he could not credit her, or Charles, or anybody else
+with any other motive than personal ambition.  He knew his world, he
+knew his theatre.  A fulfilled ambition has its price, and he had never
+yet met the successful man or woman who did not pay with a good grace,
+as he himself had done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her brain worked quickly on this new intractable material, this
+disconcerting revelation of the fact that success and art are in the
+modern world two very different things, the one belonging to the crowd,
+the other to solitude....  This old man might have waited.  He might
+have given her her chance.  It was not true.  She would not accept that
+it could be true that she could only have her success at his price, the
+price that he had paid, he and all the others, Julia Wainwright,
+Freeland Moore, and the loss of respect and simple humanity....  So
+this was why Charles had run away from the  theatre.  Certain things,
+certain elements in human character were too holy to be set before the
+crowd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered her early struggles when she first went into the
+theatre.  She had won through them and had thought herself victorious
+only to find herself confronted once more with the hard actualities:
+either to accept the intrusion of the personal element into what should
+be impersonal service or to acknowledge defeat....  She could do
+neither the one nor the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If only she could weep.  The woman in her calculated.  If only she
+could weep!  But where another woman would have wept she could not.
+She could only turn to her will and draw further strength from that.
+It was so maddening, so silly, that play acting should entail such a
+price.  It was making it all too serious.  What after all was it?  Just
+the instinct of play organised, and what was play without a happy joy?
+If only she would weep, the obstinate old man clinging to his success
+would melt; he would be kind; he would forgo all this nonsense that had
+been buzzing in his scatter brain....  What he could not stand was
+sincerity and a will diverted to other purposes than his own....  It
+made her tremble with rage to think that all his enthusiasm for the
+play, the real work he had put into rehearsals, his snubbing of Mr
+Gillies and his wife, had all been only because he fancied himself in
+his blown vanity to be in love with her.  It was too ridiculous, and
+despising him, hating herself, she decided that if it was acting he
+wanted, acting he should have, and she burst into a torrent of tears
+conjured up out of an entirely fictitious emotion....  At once Sir
+Henry had the cue he was waiting for....  He leaped up and came over to
+her with his hand on his heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Don't cry, little girl,' he said.  'Don't cry....  Harry is with you.
+Harry only wants to be kind to her, and to help his poor little girl in
+her trouble....  She shall be the greatest actress in the world.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Never!' thought Clara, her brain working more clearly now that she had
+set up this screen of tears between them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He patted her hand and caressed her hair, and was sublimely happy
+again.  He had half expected trouble from this unaccountable and
+baffling creature, whose will and wits were stronger than his own.  He
+was still a little suspicious, but he took her tears for acquiescence
+in his plans for her, and holding her in his arms he had the intense
+satisfaction of thinking of Charles Mann as a filthy blackguard for
+whom shooting was too clean an end.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XIV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Lord Verschoyle had imagined that by making for Art he would be able to
+shake free of predatory designs.  It was not long before he discovered
+his mistake and that he had plunged into the very heart of the Society
+which he desired to avoid, for the Imperium, as used by Lady Butcher
+and Lady Bracebridge, was a powerful engine in the politico-financial
+world which dominated London.  Verschoyle in his simplicity had seen
+the metropolis as consisting of purposeful mammas and missish daughters
+bearing down upon him from all sides.  Now he discovered that there was
+more in it than that and that marriage was only one of many moves in a
+complicated game....  Lady Bracebridge had a daughter.  Lady Butcher
+had a son whom she designed for a political career, upon which he had
+entered as assistant secretary to an under-secretary.  Perceiving that
+Verschoyle easily lost his head, as in his apparent relations with
+Clara Day, they designed to draw him into political society where heads
+are finally and irrevocably lost....  He loathed politics and could not
+understand them, but young Butcher haunted him, and Lady Bracebridge
+cast about him a net of invitations which he could find no way of
+evading.  They justified themselves by saying that it was necessary to
+save him from Clara, and he found himself drawn further and further
+away, and more and more submitted to an increasing pressure, the aim of
+which seemed to be to commit him to supporting the Imperium and the
+Fleischmann group which had some mysterious share in its control....
+He knew enough about finance to realise that there was more in all this
+than met the eye, and upon investigation he found that the Fleischmann
+group were unloading Argentines all over monied London, and in due
+course he was offered a block of shares which, after an admirable
+dinner at the Bracebridges, he amiably accepted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The network was too complicated for him to unravel, but, as the result
+of putting two and two together, he surmised that the Imperium must
+have been losing rather more than it was worth to the Fleischmann
+group, and that therefore sacrifice must be offered up.  He was the
+sacrifice.  He did not mind that.  It would infuriate his trustees when
+at last he had to give them an account of this adventure, but he did
+object to Charles and Clara being used to make a desperate bid to
+revive the languishing support of the public.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles and Clara were so entirely innocent of all intrigue.  They gave
+simply what was in them without calculation of future profit, and with
+the most guileless trust in others, never suspecting that they were not
+as simple as themselves.  Therefore Verschoyle cursed his own indolence
+which had committed him both to the Imperium and the Fleischmann group.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he pondered the problem, he saw that Charles and Clara could be
+dropped, and probably would be as soon as it was convenient.  The real
+controller of the Imperium was Lady Bracebridge, whose skill in
+intrigue was said to be worth ten thousand a year to Sir Julius
+Fleischmann.  She played upon Lady Butcher, Lady Butcher played upon
+Sir Henry, who, with Mr Gillies crying 'Give, give,' was between the
+upper and the nether millstone, and could only put up a sham fight....
+Verschoyle understood, too late, that <I>The Tempest</I> was to be produced
+not to present Clara and Charles to the British public, but to capture
+himself.  Like a fool, in his eagerness to help Clara, he had let
+himself be captured, and now he thought he owed her amends....  He did
+not know how difficult the situation had become.  The danger point, as
+he saw the problem, was her position with regard to Charles, who,
+fortunately, respected her wishes and made no attempt to force her
+hand.  All the same there the awkward fact was and at any moment might
+trip her up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle did not mind a scandal, and he did not care a hang whether
+Charles went to prison or not.  It might give him the instruction in
+the elementary facts of existence which he needed to make him learn to
+begin at the beginning instead of the middle or the end....  What
+Verschoyle dreaded was a sudden shock which might blast the delicate
+bud of Clara's youth, which to him was far more precious than any other
+quality, and the only thing which in all his life had moved him out of
+his timid dilettantism.  To him it was a more valuable thing than the
+whole of London, and compared with its vivid reality the Imperium, with
+its firm hold on the affections of the public, and its generation of
+advertising behind it, was a blown bubble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had tea with her on the day after her supper with Sir Henry, and
+found her disastrously altered, hurt, and puzzled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What is the matter?' he asked.  'Rehearsals not going well?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, yes.  They are going very well....  But I am worried about
+Charles.  He has been borrowing money again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Will you be happy again if I promise to look after Charles?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He ought not to expect to be looked after.  He is very famous now, and
+should be able to make money.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Surely, like everything else, it is a matter of practice.  You don't
+expect him to beat Sir Henry at his own game.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No-o,' she said.  'But I think I did expect Charles's game to beat Sir
+Henry's.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Surely it has done so.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were in her rooms, which were now most charmingly furnished;
+bright, gay, and delicate in colouring, tranquil and cosy with books.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Has anything happened?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I thought it was going to be so simple.  I felt that Charles and I
+were irresistible, and that we should conquer the theatre and make
+people admit that he is&mdash;what he is.  Nothing can alter that.  But it
+isn't simple at all.  Other people want other things.  They go on
+wanting the horrible things they have always wanted, and they expect us
+to help them to procure them.  They don't understand.  They think we
+want the same things....  I never thought I should be so unhappy.  When
+it comes to the point they won't let the real things in people be put
+before the public.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, come.  He is just a vain old man who gets through his position
+what he could never have got for himself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No, no, no,' she protested.  'It does mean what I say.  It has made me
+hate the theatre and understand why Charles ran away from it....  Only,
+having forced him so far, what can I do?  I have hurt him far more than
+he has hurt me.  He was quite happy drifting from town to town abroad,
+and it was the life I had been brought up to, because my grandfather
+ran away from England, too.  It wouldn't have mattered there how many
+wives Charles had in England....  But I wanted to see for myself, and I
+didn't want him to be wasted....  I can see perfectly well that Sir
+Henry wants if possible to discredit him and to prove that his ideas
+won't work....  We've all been very silly.  These people are too clever
+for us.  He's got your money and Charles's genius, and neither of you
+can raise a finger.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle looked rueful.  He could not deny it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's that damned old Bracebridge,' he said.  'She doesn't care a
+twopenny curse for art or for the public.  She and her lot want any
+money that is floating loose and the whole social game in London has
+become a three-card trick in their hands.  The theatre and newspapers
+are just the sharper's patter.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara writhed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You can't do anything but go on,' he said.  'You are bound to get your
+success and they can't deny that.  The old man knows that.  Hence the
+trick to get you away from Charles....  If you succeed you'll pull
+Charles through, and&mdash;we can buy off anybody who wants to make trouble.
+I'll buy the Bracebridges, if necessary.  I'm not particularly proud of
+my money.  It comes from land for which I do absolutely nothing, but
+it's better than Fleischmann money which is got by the trickery of a
+lottery.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She's a horrible old woman,' said Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She intends that I shall marry her hen-brain of a daughter....  If the
+worst came to the worst, my dear, you could marry me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was enraged.  It infuriated her that he, of all people, whom she
+had so entirely trusted, should so far forget himself as to propose so
+trite and sentimental a solution.  He could not help teasing her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It would save me, too,' he said.  'And as Lady Verschoyle you could
+give these people a Roland for their Oliver every time.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I want to ignore them,' she said.  'Why won't you see that I don't
+want to win with my personality but with my art.  That should be the
+irresistible thing.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It would be if they resisted it, but they don't.  They ignore it....
+I can't think of anything else, my dear.  They've got my money: ten
+thousand in the Imperium and twenty in Argentinos, and they are using
+my name for all they are worth.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And if I hadn't asked you to stay after the birds and fishes it
+wouldn't have happened.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'After all, it hasn't come to disaster yet.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But it will.  It is all coming to a head, and Charles will have to be
+the one to suffer for it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I promise you he shan't.  He shall have a dozen committees and all the
+birds and fishes he requires.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could not help laughing.  Perhaps, after all, her fears were
+exaggerated, but she dreaded Charles's helpless acquiescence in the
+plight to which he had been reduced by Mr Gillies's refusal to advance
+him a penny outside the terms mentioned in the contract.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It certainly looks to me,' said Verschoyle, 'as if they wanted to
+break him.  It wouldn't be any good my saying anything.  They would
+simply point to their contract and shrug their shoulders at Charles's
+improvidence.  How much did Mr Clott get away with?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A great deal.  He had several hundreds in blackmail before he went.
+That is why we can't prosecute.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle whistled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is a tangled skein,' he said.  'You'd much better marry me.  I
+won't expect you to care for me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't be ridiculous&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a heavy thudding at the door, and Clara jumped nervously to
+her feet.  Verschoyle opened the door, and Charles swept in like a
+whirlwind.  His long hair hung in wisps about his face, his hat was
+awry, his cuffs hung down over his hands, his full tie was out over his
+waistcoat, and in both hands he held outstretched his walking stick and
+a crumpled piece of paper.  He dropped the stick and smoothed the paper
+out on the table, and, in an almost sobbing voice, he said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This has come.  It is a wicked plot to ruin me.  She demands a part in
+<I>The Tempest</I> or she will inform the police....  O God, chicken, that
+was a bad day when you made me marry you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle picked up his stick and, beside himself with exasperated
+fury, laid about the unhappy Charles's shoulders and loins crying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You hound, you cur, you filthy coward!  You should have told her!  You
+should have told her!  You knew she was only a child!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles roared lustily, but made no attempt to defend himself, although
+he was half a head taller than Verschoyle and twice as heavy.  He
+merely said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oo-oh!' when a blow got home, and waited until the onslaught was over.
+Then he rubbed himself down and wriggled inside his clothes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara stood aghast.  It was horrible to her that this should have
+happened.  Blows were as useless as argument with Charles....  He had
+done what he had done out of kindliness and childish obedience and,
+looking to motives rather than to results, could see no wrong in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle was at once ashamed of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I lost my temper,' he said, and Charles, assured that the storm was
+over, smiled happily, ran his hands through his hair and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do you think Sir Henry would give her a part?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle flung back his head and shouted with laughter.  Such
+innocence was a supreme joke, especially coming after the serious
+conversation in which he and Clara had aired their fears as to the
+result of their incursion into theatrical politics.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She used to be quite pretty,' added Charles.  'What delightful rooms
+you have, my dear.  They're not so warm as my ham and beef shop.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Listen to me, Charles,' said Verschoyle.  'This is serious.  I don't
+care about you.  Nothing could hurt you.  I don't believe you know half
+the time what is going on under your nose, but it is vitally serious
+for Clara.  This business must be stopped....  If we can't buy these
+people off then I'll give you two hundred to clear out.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Clear out?' faltered Charles, 'but&mdash;my <I>Tempest</I> is just coming on.
+I'm&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle took up the letter and noted the address, one of the musical
+comedy theatres.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Have you heard from Mr Clott lately?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  His name is Cumberland now, you know.  He came into money.  He
+said he would come back to me when I had my own theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Theatre be damned.  I wanted to know if he's still blackmailing you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Blackmail?  Oh, no.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't you mind people blackmailing you?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If people are made like that.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ah!'  Verschoyle gave an indescribable gurgle of impatience.  'Look
+here, Mann, do try to realise the position.  You can't get rid of this
+woman whatever she does because you have treated marriage as though you
+could take a wife as if it were no more than buying a packet of
+cigarettes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I have never thought of Clara as my wife.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How then?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'As Clara,' said Charles simply.  'She is a very great artist.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle was baffled, but Clara forgave Charles all his folly for the
+sake of his simplicity.  It was true.  The mistake was hers.  What he
+said was unalterably true.  She was Clara Day, an artist, and he had
+loved her as such.  As woman he had not loved her or any other....
+What in the ordinary world passed for love simply did not exist for him
+at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Please do what you can for us,' she said.  'And Charles, please don't
+try to think of it in anybody else's way but your own.  I won't let
+them send you to prison.  They don't want to do that.  They would much
+rather have you great and powerful so as to bleed you....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It has been very wonderful since you came, chicken,' he said.  'I'm
+ten times the man I was.  It seems so stupid that because we went into
+a dingy office and gabbled a few words we shouldn't be able to be
+together....  I sometimes wish we were back in France or Italy in a
+studio, with a bird in a cage, and you dancing about, making me laugh
+with happiness....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll see my lawyer,' said Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'For Heaven's sake, don't!' cried Clara.  'Once the lawyers get hold of
+it, they'll heap the fire up and throw the fat on it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm sorry I forgot myself....  You're a good fellow, Charles, but so
+damned silly that you don't deserve your luck.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They shook hands on it and Verschoyle withdrew, leaving Charles and
+Clara to make what they could of the confusion in which they were
+plunged....  Charles's way out of it was simply to ignore it.  If
+people would not or could not live in his fancy world, so much the
+worse for them.  He did not believe that anything terrible could happen
+to him simply because, though calamities of the most serious nature had
+befallen him, he had hardly noticed them.  He could forget so easily.
+He could withdraw and live completely within himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sat at the table and began to draw, and was immediately entirely
+absorbed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Don't you feel it any more than that, Charles?' she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'If people like to make a fuss, let them,' he said.  'It is their way
+of persuading themselves that they are important....  If they put me in
+prison, I should just draw on the walls with a nail, and the time would
+soon go by.  The difference between us and them is that they are in a
+hurry and we are not.  There won't be much left of my <I>Tempest</I> by the
+time they've done with it....  The electricians have secret
+instructions from Butcher.  There was nothing about lighting in my
+contract, so it is to be his and not mine, as if a design could stand
+without the lighting planned for it....  There are to be spot-lines on
+Sir Henry and Miranda and you, if he is still pleased with you....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles was talking in a cold, unmoved voice, but she knew that there
+must have been a furious tussle.  She was up in arms at once,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It is disgraceful!' she cried.  'What is the good of his pretending to
+let you work in his theatre if you can have nothing as you wish it?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He believes in actors,' said Charles, 'People with painted faces and
+painted souls, people whose minds are daubed with paint, whose eyes are
+sealed with it, whose ears are stopped with it....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Am I one of them?' she asked plaintively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No!  Never!  Never!' he said, looking up from his drawing.  'They'll
+turn us into a success, chicken, but they won't let us do what we want
+to do....  I shan't go near the place again.  But you are Ariel, and
+without you there can be no <I>Tempest</I>.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll go through with it,' she said, her will setting.  'I'll go
+through with it, and I'll make nonsense of everything but you....
+You've done all you can, Charles.  Just go on working.  That's the only
+thing, the only thing....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she said these words, she thought of Rodd with an acute hostility
+that amounted almost to hatred.  It was the meeting with him that had
+so confounded all her aims, that sudden plunge into humanity with him
+that had so exposed her to love that even Verschoyle's tone had changed
+towards her....  With Charles, love was as impersonal as a bird's song.
+It was only a call to her swift joy and claimed nothing for himself,
+though, perhaps, everything for his art.  That was where he was so
+baffling.  He expected the whole world to accept service under his
+banner, and was so confident that in time it would do so that no rebuff
+ruffled him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was tempted to accept his point of view, and to run all risks to
+serve him; but she realised now, as he did not, the forces arrayed
+against him.  There was no blinking the fact that what the
+Butcher-Bracebridge combination detested was being forced to take him
+seriously: him or anything else under the sun.  Even the public upon
+which they fawned was only one of several factors in their calculations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It will all come right, Charles,' she said.  'I am sure it will all
+come right.  We won't give in.  They have diluted you&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Diluted?' he exclaimed.  'Butchered!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She admired him for accepting even that, but, in spite of herself, it
+hurt her that he still had no thought for her, but to him only artistic
+problems were important.  The problems of life must be left to solve
+themselves.  She could not help saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You ought not to leave everything to me, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You can handle people.  I can't.  I thought I was going to be rich,
+but there's no money.  And even if this affair is a success I shall be
+ashamed of it....  I think I shall write to the papers and repudiate
+it.  But it is the same everywhere.  People take my ideas and vulgarise
+them.  Actors are the same everywhere.  They will leave nothing to the
+audience.  They want to be adored for the very qualities they have
+lost.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You don't blame me, then?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Blame?  What's the good of blaming any one.  It doesn't help.  It
+makes one angry.  There is a certain pleasure in that, but it doesn't
+help.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was brought home to her, then, that all her care for his
+helplessness was in vain.  He neither needed nor looked for help.  It
+was all one to him whether he lived in magnificence in a furnished
+house or in apartments over a cook-shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I've a good mind to disown the whole production now,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  No.  They will do all they can to hurt you then....  I think they
+know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Know what?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That you have a wife.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He brought his fist down with such a crash on the frail table that it
+cracked right across, and Clara was sickeningly alarmed when she saw
+his huge hands grip the table on either side and rend it asunder.
+There was something terrible and almost miraculous in his enormous
+physical vitality, and his waste of it now in such a petty act of rage
+forced her to admit that which she had been attempting to suppress, the
+thought of Rodd, and she was compelled now to compare the two men.  So
+she saw Charles more clearly, and had to acknowledge to herself how
+fatally he lacked moral force.  She trembled as it was made plain to
+her that the old happy days could never come again, and that the child
+who had believed in him so implicitly was gone for ever.  She had the
+frame, the mind, the instinct of a woman, and these things could no
+longer be denied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When his rage was spent, she determined to give him one more chance,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We can win through, Charles.  We have Verschoyle backing us.  I accept
+my responsibility, and I will be a wife to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'For God's sake, don't talk like that.  I want you to be as you were,
+adorable, happy, free.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head slowly from side to side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles, offended, went out.  She heard him go blundering down the
+stairs and out into the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to her couch by the window and lay looking at the sun
+setting behind the roofs, chimneys, and towers of London.  Amethyst and
+ruddy was the sky: smoked yellow and amber: blue and green, speckled
+with little dark clouds.  She drank in its beauty, and lost herself in
+the dying day, aching at heart because there was nowhere in humanity a
+beauty of equal power in which she could lose herself, but everywhere
+barriers of egoism, intrigue, selfish calculation....  She thought of
+the little bookseller in the Charing Cross Road....  'Doing good to
+others is doing good to yourself....'  Ay, but make very sure that you
+are doing good and not well-intentioned harm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had meant to help Charles, had sacrificed herself to him, and look
+what had come of it!  Deep within her heart she knew that she had been
+at fault, and that the mischief had been done when she had imposed her
+will on him....  As a child she had been brought up in the Catholic
+faith, and she had still some remnants of a religious conscience, and
+to this now she whispered that this was the sin against the Holy Ghost,
+for one person to impose his will on that of another.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XV
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+IN BLOOMSBURY
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+At the same time, in his attic, Rodd was pacing up and down his empty
+room, surveying the impotence to which he had reduced both his life and
+his work by his refusal to accept the social system of his time.  His
+work was consciously subversive, and therefore unprofitable: his life
+was nothing.  He was a solitary in London, as though he spoke a
+language which no one understood.  So indeed he did.  His words had
+meanings for him to which no one else had the smallest clue, for they
+referred rather to his imagined world than to any actuality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hitherto that had troubled him not at all.  Spinoza, Kant, Galileo had
+all talked a language unintelligible to their contemporaries, and with
+how many had Nietzsche been able to converse?  The stories had it that
+there was one butcher and he was mad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Groping with his imagination into the vitals of the society into which
+he had been born, Rodd had consoled himself with the assurance that a
+cataclysm would come to smash the odious system by which the old
+enslaved the young, and that then there would be a cleaner atmosphere
+in which his ideas could live, and his words would be intelligible to
+all, because in it that deeper consciousness which was released in his
+imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and
+stale ideas....  But now the cataclysm had come within himself, and he
+was brought to doubt and self-examination.  Had he not denied too much?
+Had he not carried abnegation too far?  Had he not thwarted powers in
+himself which were essential even to his impersonal purpose?  Was it
+paradoxically true that a man must be a person before he can be
+impersonal?  His empty room, his books, his pile of manuscript!  What a
+life!  Had he after all been only a coward?  Had he only shrunk into
+this silence to avoid the pain and boredom of reiteration?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first his concern was all with the havoc wrought in his work from
+the moment when Clara swept into his imagination, but he was soon
+compelled to brush that aside and to grapple with the more serious fact
+that she had crept into his heart, which for the first time was active
+and demanding its share in his being.  Then arose the horror that it
+was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary,
+tortured souls, creatures who should be left to eke out their misery in
+private solitude, who had nothing to justify their exhibition to the
+world, who shamelessly reproached their fellows for the results of
+their own weakness, wretched clinging women, men hard as iron in their
+egoism....  His heart could not endure it, but until his heart had
+flooded his vision with its warmth he could not move, could come to no
+decision, except that he must leave the marvellous girl unmolested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The furious will that had animated him through all his solitary years
+resented this intrusion, and was in revolt against the reason and the
+logic of his heart.  That will in him had reduced the social system to
+its logical end, the destruction of the young by the old, and would
+allow his creative faculty no other material.  It must have nothing but
+a bleak world of bitterness, and this it had imposed upon both his
+happy temperament and his generous heart, so that even in life he had
+been able to exercise nothing but a rather feeble kindness.  His will
+had been to hold up to the world a picture of the end to which it must
+come, since splendour wrung from desolation must end in desolation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And suddenly his will was defied by this amazing girl, all youth, all
+joy, revealing the eternal loveliness of the human spirit that endures
+though Empires fade away and societies come to chaos.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very, very slowly, his will, which drew its force from the hypnotic
+influence of horror, was thrust back, and light crept into his imagined
+world, flowers blossomed in it, trees swayed in the wind, larks went
+soaring above green hills blazing with yellow gorse, birds hopped to
+their nests and sang, dogs barked and gambolled with delight&mdash;all his
+frozen memories slowly melted, and sweet and simple pleasures came to
+view to make a setting meet for Clara Day.  And he remembered simple
+people with a steady kindness, people like the little bookseller who
+knew their world but believed in its redeeming goodness, people like a
+woman who had once nursed him through a terrible illness and had never
+ceased to pray for him, families where in his lonely youth in London he
+had been welcome&mdash;all these he remembered and grouped round Clara to
+make a better and a simpler world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When his agony had run its course, and his old hypnotic will was
+broken, he told himself that he must be content that Clara should be
+the mistress of his imagination, since he had wrecked his own life and
+had nothing to offer her.  Obviously she had found the world good.
+Nothing in her was theatrical, nothing baffled.  He must reconcile
+himself to the acceptance of those two days with her as in themselves
+perfect, sufficient, and fruitful.  Indeed, what need was there of
+more?  They had met as profoundly as they could ever hope to meet.  She
+would marry her lord, and gather about herself all the good and
+pleasant things of the earth, and he could return to his work and build
+it up anew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With his rather absurd tendency to generalise from his personal
+experience he told himself that as youth and joy had been liberated
+from his imagined world, so also would they be in the world of
+actuality.  His drooping hopes revived and a new ambition was kindled
+in him.  He paced less rapidly to and fro in his empty room, slowed
+down day by day until he stopped, sat at his table and plunged once
+more into work.  His arrogance reasserted itself, and he told
+himself&mdash;as was indeed the case&mdash;that he could extract more from a hint
+of experience than the ordinary man could from an overwhelming tragedy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he worked, he came more and more to regard his encounter with Clara
+as a holiday adventure.  The Charing Cross Road was to him what Paris
+or the seaside was to the ordinary worker.  The episode belonged to his
+holiday.  It was nothing more, and must be treated as though it had
+happened to some other man: it must be smiled at, treasured for its
+fragrance, blessed for its fertility....  With the new weapon it had
+given him he would return to tobacco and paper, the materials of his
+existence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw her name in the papers, her photograph here and there.  Oh,
+well, she belonged to that world.  No doubt she would amuse herself
+with theatrical success before she fell back upon the title and wealth
+which were laid at her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, convinced though he was of his renunciation, he could not stay
+away from the bookshop and went there almost every day in the hope of
+meeting her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One evening as he returned home he met Verschoyle on the doorstep of
+his house, and could not refrain from speaking to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Excuse me,' he said, 'I have seen you sometimes in the bookshop in
+Charing Cross Road.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Indeed?' replied Verschoyle, who was looking anxious and worried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  I have seen you there with Miss Day.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle was alert and suspicious at once.  He scanned this strange
+individual but was rather puzzled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do you live here?' he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'On the top floor,' replied Rodd, 'on the top floor&mdash;alone&mdash;I thought
+you might have been to see me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No, no.  I don't know you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My name is Rodd.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That conveyed nothing to Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Day at the bookshop.  I thought she
+might have mentioned it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No....  I have been to see a Miss Messenger on the third floor.  Do
+you know her?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Slightly.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You know nothing about her?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Nothing, except that she had a child that died....  I'm afraid I
+didn't even know her name.  I don't bother myself much about my
+neighbours.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Thank you,' said Verschoyle.  'Good-night.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd let himself in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange
+combination of persons.  What on earth could be the link between
+Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable ménage on the third floor?...
+His heart answered ominously: 'Clara.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked slowly up the dark, uncarpeted stairs, and, as he was at the
+bend below the third floor, he heard a shrill scream&mdash;a horrid scream,
+full of terror, loathing, contempt.  He rushed up to the door of the
+third floor flat and found it open, stood for a moment, and heard a
+man's voice saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You shall, you sly cat.  Give it me and you shall do as I tell you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No, no, no!' screamed the woman.  'Mother!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And another woman's voice, cruel, and harsh, said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do as he tells you, and don't be a fool!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a scuffle, a fall, a man's heavy breathing, a gurgling sound
+of terror and suffocation.  Rodd walked into the flat, and found the
+woman who waited for him on the stairs lying on the ground, clutching a
+bundle of bank-notes, while a little, mean-looking man was kneeling on
+her chest, half throttling her, and trying to force the notes out of
+her hand.  The woman's mother was standing by shrieking aloud and
+crying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do as he tells you, you b&mdash;&mdash; fool!  He knows what's what.  He's got
+these blighters in a corner, and he'll make them pay.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd flung himself on the man, whom he recognised as the creature he
+and Clara had met on the stairs.  He picked him up and threw him into a
+corner, where he lay, too terrified to move.  The woman lay back
+moaning and rolling her eyes, almost foaming at the mouth.  Her bosom
+heaved and she clutched the notes in her hand more tightly to her....
+Rodd turned to the other two, and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Get out....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They obeyed him, and he knelt by the woman and reassured her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Come now,' he said, 'out with the whole story before you've begun to
+lie to yourself about it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's my own money,' she gasped; 'I don't want to do any more.  It's
+all fair and square, if he's paid.  If a feller pays, it's all fair and
+square.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd accepted the soundness of this rudimentary ethic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'He wanted half and half, but it's my own money.  I signed a paper for
+it, and I'm not going back on my word.  He wants me to.  He wants me to
+go into the Imperium so that he can get on to some of the swells....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Imperium?  Rodd determined that he would have the whole story out.
+He left her for a moment and locked the door.  Then he lifted her into
+a chair&mdash;it was a flashy furniture-on-the-hire-system room&mdash;gave her a
+dose of brandy and began to ply her with questions,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do you feel better?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Much better.  I like being with you.  You're so quiet.  You'd
+understand a girl, you would.  I've often wanted to come and tell
+you....  It fair knocked me silly when I saw you with her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'With whom?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charley's girl.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Whose?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charley's.  Charley Mann's.  He's my husband.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd was silent for some moments while he took this in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who is this other&mdash;man?' asked Rodd kindly, beginning slowly to piece
+the story together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's Claude....  He was a lodger of mother's before she went broke
+and had to come to live with me.  He never let me alone.  I wanted to
+go straight, I did really....  Charley's not bad, and I thought I
+should never see him again.  I never thought he would make money.  I
+never thought we should see him swanking it in the papers, or I'd never
+have had a word to say to Claude.  I wouldn't really.  Only Charley
+getting married to the other girl&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It struck Rodd like a blow in the face.  Kitty did not mark the effect
+of her story, and was not concerned with it.  All she felt was relief
+in the telling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I wanted money to send mother out of England.  I couldn't stand it any
+more.  If it hadn't been for her there wouldn't have been Claude, and a
+girl at the theatre can have a good time on her own nowadays even with
+a kiddie.  I've often wanted to tell you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Does she know?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charley's girl?  Yes.  She knows.  It's a nice mix-up.  Isn't it?  And
+Charley's not bad.  He'll just lose you same as he would his hat.  No
+offence meant.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed hysterically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Who gave you the money?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A swell.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To keep your mouth shut?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  Charley would have to go to prison.  Claude's been in prison.
+That's why he'd like Charley to go.  Everybody who's been to prison is
+like that.  It makes them sly and hard....  But I say that Charley's
+paid: six hundred.  I'd never have got that out of him if I'd stayed
+with him, would I?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I suppose not....  If there's any more trouble will you come to me?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'd love to,' she said, perking up and casting at him the sorrowful
+languishing glances with which she had pursued him for so long.
+'Claude says he's pushed her on so quick and he ought to have done the
+same for me....  Claude was at their wedding.  I didn't know him then.
+He's a friend of mother's.  We thought he had money but he hasn't got a
+bean.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll deal with Claude,' said Rodd.  'And if there is any more trouble,
+mind you come to me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It was all after my baby died,' said Kitty, as if to excuse herself,
+but Rodd had accepted the story, and had no thought of excuse or
+forgiveness.  His thought was all for Clara.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How comic it was that he should have given her Mann's book!  Did she
+love Mann?  She must have done.  She could not have married him
+else....  But then what was Verschoyle to her, that he should have paid
+so large a sum in hush-money?  A furious jealousy swept away what was
+left of Rodd's intellectual world and released at last his passions.
+His mind worked swiftly through the story, picking it up in time with
+every thread.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was she only an actress?  Was the perfection which he had worshipped a
+figment, a projection of herself in the character most pleasing to his
+idealism?  Impossible!  There can be no feigning of purity, honesty,
+joy.  That is where the pretences of humanity collapse.  In such a
+pretence as that simulated passion&mdash;the ultimate baseness, breaks down,
+creates no illusion, and is foiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But on the face of it, what an appalling story!  It brought him
+violently to earth.  He could not move, but sat staring at the woman,
+wanting to tell her that she lied, but knowing that she had spoken
+according to the truth of the letter.  Of the truth of the spirit she
+could most patently know nothing.  Her world was composed of dull facts
+and smouldering emotions.  She could know nothing of the world where
+emotions flamed into passion to burn the facts into golden emblems of
+truth.  And that was Clara's world: the world in which for two days he
+had been privileged to dwell, a world in which soul could speak to soul
+and laugh at all the confusion of fact and detail in which they must
+otherwise be ensnared....  Mann, Verschoyle, a swift success in the
+theatre&mdash;the facts were of the kind that had induced the horror in
+which until he met her he had lived.  His meeting with her had
+dispelled his horror, but the facts remained.  He in his solitude might
+ignore them and dream on, but could she?  Surely he owed it to her to
+offer her what through her he had won....  And then&mdash;to buy off the
+wretched woman, surely she could never have submitted to that!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He began to think of Charles Mann with a blistering, jealous hatred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I think I'd have killed myself,' said Kitty, 'if it had gone on.  I
+don't wish them any harm now that he's paid up....  I wouldn't have
+said a word about it to any one, only she's so young.  It did give me a
+bit of a shock, and Charles getting on, too.  He's quite gray and has a
+bit of a stomach.  I never thought he'd be the one to get fat.  I'm all
+skin and bone.  Look at my arms.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd left her.  When he opened the door he was relieved to find that
+the unpleasant Claude had gone.  Mrs Messenger was sitting by the fire
+in the front room, her skirts tucked up about her knees, and a glass of
+port on the mantelpiece.  She turned her head with a leer and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Good luck!  I always thought she was keen on you....  It's time she
+settled down.  She was born to be respectable, and to look after a man.
+That's all most girls are fit for.  But in the theatre a girl's got to
+look after number one or go down and out.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old woman with the painted face and dyed hair made Rodd's flesh
+creep.  She seemed to him a symbol of all the evil in the world, decay,
+disruption, corruption, and with a flash of inspiration he discerned in
+her the source of all this pitiful tangle of lies.  A tender sympathy
+entirely new to him took possession of his faculties and armed with
+this he determined that he would not fail in whatever part he was
+called upon to play in the drama of Clara's life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said to the old woman,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We have been talking it over.  We have decided to book you a passage
+to Canada and to give you a hundred pounds with which to keep yourself
+alive until you find work to do.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What?' she said, 'me leave London?  Dear old London, dear old
+Leicester Square and the theatres?  And leave you to do what you like
+with my daughter, you dirty dog?  I've seen her nosing round on the
+stairs after you, a feller that lives on bread-and-cheese and
+grape-nuts.  I know your sort, you dirty, interfering blackguard.
+You've never given a girl as much as a drink in your life.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'All the same,' said Rodd, 'your passage will be booked, and if Mr
+Claude What's-his-name shows his face here there'll be a neck broken on
+the stairs.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked out and heard the old woman gulp down a glass of port and
+say,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Well, I'm damned!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, as he moved upstairs to his own room he heard her screaming,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Kitty, you filthy little claw-hammer&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The door was slammed to, and he heard only their voices in bitter
+argument, tears, reproaches, curses; but at last, as he paced to and
+fro in his lonely room, the tumult died down and he could wrestle with
+the new turbulent thoughts awakened in him....  Work was out of the
+question.  He had been clawed back into life.  If he did not want to be
+destroyed he must be profoundly, passionately, and scrupulously honest
+with himself.  He must face his emotions as he had never done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At first he thought of wildly heroic solutions.  He would seize his
+opportunity with Kitty, take advantage of her soft gratitude and sweep
+her out of harm's way.....  But what was the good of that?  It settled
+nothing, solved nothing.  To act without Clara's knowledge would be to
+betray her.  That he was sure was what Verschoyle had done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Already he had interfered and there was no knowing what Claude's spite
+might lead to....  O God, what a tangle!  What should be done, what
+could be done, for Clara?  No one mattered but she.  Mann, Verschoyle,
+himself, what did any of them matter?  She was the unique,
+irreplaceable personality.  Of that he was sure.  It was through her
+glorious innocence that all these strange things had happened to her.
+A less generous, a more experienced and calculating woman would have
+known instinctively that there was some queer story behind Charles
+Mann....  She could leap into a man's heart through his mind.  That was
+where she was so dangerous to herself.  The history of his purely
+physical emotions would concern her not at all.  Her own emotions in
+their purity could recognise no separation between body and spirit, nor
+in others could they suspect any division....  Of that he was sure.
+Without that the whole embroglio was fantastic and incredible.  She
+could never in so short a time have achieved what she had done through
+calculation and intrigue.  That kind of success took years of patience
+under checks, rebuffs, and insults....  Everywhere she offered her
+superb youth, and it was taken and used, used for purposes which she
+could not even suspect.  Her youth would be taken, she would be given
+no room, no time in which to develop her talent or her personality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The way of the world?  It had been the way of the world too long, but
+the strong of heart and the worthy of soul had always resisted or
+ignored it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes Rodd thought the only thing to do was to wait, to leave the
+situation to develop naturally.  It would do Mann no great harm to get
+into trouble, but then&mdash;Clara would be marked.  All her life she would
+have to fight against misunderstanding....  No, no.  There could be no
+misunderstanding where she was concerned.  Her personality answered
+everything.  It would be fine, it would be splendid, to see her
+overriding all obstacles in her bounteous gift of the treasure that was
+in her to a world that in its worship of self-help and material power
+had forgotten youth, courage, and the supreme power of joy.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XVI
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+ARIEL
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+As the days went by and the production came nearer, the Imperium was
+charged with a busy excitement.  The machinery was tightened up, and
+there was no sparing any of the persons concerned.  Rehearsals began at
+ten in the morning, and dragged on through the day, sometimes not
+ending until eleven or twelve at night.  Sir Henry had a thousand and
+one things to do, and was in something of a panic about his own words.
+He would stop in the middle of a lighting rehearsal to remember his
+part and would turn to a scene-shifter or a lime-light man, anybody who
+happened to be by, to ask if that was right, and when they stared at
+him he would lose his temper and say,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Shakespeare!  It's Shakespeare!  Everybody knows their Shakespeare.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara took the precaution of learning his part in his scenes with her
+and was able to prompt him when he started fumbling or improvising.  He
+was taut with anxiety, and completely ignored everything not
+immediately bearing on the production, as to which he was obviously not
+easy in his mind.  He talked to himself a good deal, and Clara heard
+him more than once damning Charles under his breath.  In spite of
+herself she was a little hurt that he took no notice of her outside her
+part in the play.  His only concern with the world off the stage was
+through Lady Bracebridge and Lady Butcher, who were vastly busy with
+the dressing of the front of the house and began introducing their
+distinguished aristocratic and political friends at rehearsals, where
+they used to sit in the darkness of the auditorium and say,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Too sweet!  Divine, divine!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was difficult to see what they could possibly make of the chaos on
+the stage, with actors strolling to and fro mumbling their parts,
+others going through their scenes, carpenters running hither and
+thither, the lights going up and down and changing from blue to amber,
+amber to blue, white, red....  Up to the very last Sir Henry made
+changes, and the more excited he got the further he drifted away from
+the play's dramatic context, and strove to break up the aesthetic
+impression of the whole with innumerable tricks, silences, gestures,
+exaggerated movements of the actors, touches of grotesque and
+irrelevant humour, devices by which Prospero could be in the centre of
+the stage, anything and everything to impose his own tradition and
+personality on both Shakespeare and Charles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara was thankful that Charles had quarrelled with him and was not
+there to see.  Sir Henry was like a man possessed.  He worked in a
+frenzy to retrieve the situation, and to recover the ground he had
+lost; and he only seemed sure of himself in his scenes with Ariel, and
+over them he went again and again, not for a moment sparing Clara or
+thinking of the physical effort so much repetition entailed for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not object.  It was a great relief to go to her rooms, worn
+out, and to lie, unable to think, incapable of calculation, lost to
+everything except her will to play Ariel with all the magic and
+youthful vitality she possessed.  Everything outside the play had
+disappeared for her, too.  That so much of Charles's work should be
+submerged hurt her terribly and she blamed herself, but for that was
+only the more determined to retrieve the situation with her own art, to
+which, as Sir Henry revered it, he clung.  She knew that and was
+determined not to fail.  However much Charles's work was mutilated, her
+success&mdash;if she won it&mdash;would redeem his plight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Therefore she surrendered herself absolutely to the whirling chaos of
+the rehearsals, from which it seemed impossible that order could ever
+come.  She ordered her own thoughts by doing the obvious thing, reading
+the play until she was soaked with it.  No one else apparently had done
+that and, as she grew more familiar with it and more intimate with its
+spirit, she began to doubt horribly whether Charles had done so either.
+His scenery seemed as remote from that spirit as Sir Henry's theatrical
+devices, and almost equally an imposition.  As she realised this she
+was forced to see how completely she was now detached from Charles, and
+also, to her suffering, how she had laid herself open to the charge of
+having used him, though he, in his generous simplicity, would never see
+it in that light or bring any accusation against her....  She blamed
+herself far more for what she had done to Rodd.  That, she knew, was
+serious, and the more intimate she became with Shakespeare's genius the
+more she understood the havoc she must have wrought in Rodd's life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How strange was this world of Prime Ministers and actor-managers which
+dominated London and in which London acquiesced; very charming, very
+delightful, if only one could believe in it, or could accept that it
+was the best possible that London could throw up.  But if it was so,
+what need was there of so much advertising, paragraphing, interviewing?
+Which was the pretence, the theatre or the world outside it?  Which
+were the actresses, she and Julia Wainwright and the rest, or Lady
+Butcher and Lady Bracebridge?  And in fine, was it all, like everything
+else, only a question of money?  Verschoyle's money?  And if Verschoyle
+paid, why was he shoved aside so ignominiously?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara shivered as she thought of the immense complication of what
+should be so simple and true and beautiful....  But what alternative
+was there?  This elaboration and corruption of the theatre or the
+imagination working freely in an empty room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could see no other.  Rodd's terrible concentration ending in
+impotence or the dissipation of real powers, as in Butcher and Mann, in
+fantasy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Absorbed in her work, intent upon the forthcoming production, she was
+detached from them all and could at last discover how little any of
+them needed her.  She could not really enter into their work though all
+three had been disturbed by her and diverted for a time at least from
+their habitual purposes....  What mattered in each of the three men was
+the artist, and in each the artist was fettered by life.  She had
+promised them release only to plunge them into greater difficulties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She brooded over herself, wondering what she was, and how she came to
+be so unconcerned with things that to other women seemed paramount.  It
+was nothing to her that Charles had a wife.  It had all happened long
+before he met her, and was no affair of hers....  That Sir Henry should
+make love to her was merely comic.  She could not even take advantage
+of it, for in that direction she could not move at all.  Instinctively
+she knew that her sex was given her for one purpose only, and that the
+highest, and she could not turn it to any base or material use.  While
+she adhered to this she could be Ariel, pure spirit to dominate her
+life and direct her will, which no power on earth could break....  How
+came she to be so free, and so foreign to the world of women?  Her
+upbringing!  Her early independence!  Or some new spirit stirring in
+humanity?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Already she had caught from Rodd his habit of generalising from his own
+experience, and in her heart she knew it, knew that she had begun what
+might prove to be her real life with him, but, caught up as she had
+been in Mann's schemes and dreams and visions, she would not accept
+this until all the threads were snapped.  Being frank with herself, she
+knew that she desired and intended to snap them, but in her own time
+and with as little hurt as possible to those concerned....  Meanwhile
+it was wonderful, it was almost intoxicatingly comic to carry all the
+confused facts of her own life into the ordered world where she was
+Ariel and to imagine Mann, for instance, discoursing of birds and
+fishes to Trinculo and Stephano, or Rodd, with his passionate dreams of
+a sudden jet of loveliness in a desert of misery comparing notes with
+good Gonzalo, while she, both as Clara Day and as Ariel, danced among
+them and played freakish tricks upon them, and lured them on to believe
+that all kinds of marvels would come to pass and then bring them back
+to their senses to discover that she was after all only a woman, and
+that the marvels they looked for from her were really in themselves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she dallied with her power, not quite knowing what she wished to do
+with it, and, as she dallied, she became more conscious of her force,
+and she grew impatient with her youth which had been her undoing, so
+easily given, so greedily accepted.  No one but Rodd had seen beyond it
+and, for a while, she detested him for having done so....  Nothing had
+gone smoothly since her meeting with him.  The pace of events had
+quickened until it was too fast even for her, and she could do nothing
+but wait, nothing but fall back upon Ariel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dress rehearsal dragged through a whole day and most of a night.
+It hobbled along.  Nothing was right.  Sir Henry could hardly remember
+a word of his part.  Ferdinand's wig was a monstrosity.  Miranda looked
+like the fairy-queen in a provincial pantomime.  There was hardly a
+dress to which Lady Butcher did not take exception, though she passed
+Clara's sky-blue and silver net as 'terribly attractive.' ...  Clara
+delighted in the freedom of her fairy costume.  Her lovely slim figure
+showed to perfection.  She moved like the wind, like a breeze in long
+silvery grass.  She gave the impression of movement utterly free of her
+body, which melted into movement, and was lost in it.  The stage-island
+was then to her really an island, the power of Prospero was true magic,
+the air was drenched with sea-salt, heavy, rich, pregnant with
+invisible life urging into form and issuing sometimes in strange music,
+mysterious voices prophesying in song, and plaints of woe from life
+that could find no other utterance....  Ah!  How free she felt as all
+this power of fancy seized her and bore her aloft and laid her open to
+all the new spirit, all the promise of the new life that out of the
+world came thrilling into this magical universe.  How free she felt and
+how oblivious of her surroundings!  There was that in her that nothing
+could destroy, something more than youth, deeper than joy which is no
+more than the lark's song showering down through the golden air of
+April....  Here in her freedom she knew herself, a soul, a living soul,
+with loving laughter accepting the life ordained for it by Providence,
+but dominating it, shaping it, moulding it, filling it with love until
+it brimmed over and spilled its delight upon surrounding life to make
+it also free and fruitful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Julia Wainwright caught her in the wings, and pressed her to her bosom,
+and exclaimed,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, my dear, you will be famous&mdash;famous.  They'll be on their knees to
+you in New York.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Freeland Moore, dressed for the part of Caliban, said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'This isn't going to be Sir Henry's or Mann's show.  It is going to be
+Clara Day's.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The good creatures!  It was only a show to them, and they were elated
+and happy to think of the thousands and thousands of pounds, dollars,
+francs, roubles, and marks that would be showered on their friend.
+With such a success as they now dreamed the trouble they had dreaded
+for her would make no difference.  A 'story' would be even valuable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But what had Ariel to do with pounds and dollars, roubles and marks?
+Ariel asked nothing but freedom after ages pining in a cloven pine....
+In this world of money and machinery and intrigue to control machinery
+with money, to be free was the deep and secret desire of all humanity.
+Here in London hearts ached and souls murmured to be free, only to be
+free, for one moment at whatever cost of tears and suffering and bloody
+agony.  All this in her heart Clara knew, she knew it from her meeting
+with Rodd, from her solitary brooding in her room, from the drunken
+women fighting in the street, from the uncontrolled fantasy in Charles
+Mann, from the boredom that ate away poor Verschoyle's heart; and all
+the knowledge of her adventurous life she gathered up to distil it into
+the delight of freedom, for its own sake and also for the sake of the
+hereafter which, if there be no moment of freedom, no flowering of
+life, must sink into a deeper and more miserable slavery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In this mood it was pathetic to see Sir Henry, whose whole power lay in
+machinery, pretending as Prospero to rule by magic.  So pathetically
+out of place was he that he could not even remember the words that so
+mightily revealed his authority....  When he broke down, he would
+declare that it was quite a simple matter to improvise blank verse....
+But Clara would not let him improvise.  She was always ready with the
+words, the right inevitable words.  She would not let him impair her
+freedom with his lazy reliance upon the machinery of the theatre to
+pull him through, and so, when he opened his mouth and looked vague,
+and covered the absence of words with a large gesture, she was ready
+for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He reproved her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I am always like this at a dress rehearsal.  Dress rehearsals are
+always terrible.  The production seems to go altogether to pieces, but
+it is always there on the night.  A good dress rehearsal means a bad
+first night.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Clara refused to allow any of her scenes to go to pieces, and they
+were applauded by the Butcher-Bracebridge fashionables who sat in the
+stalls.  Lady Butcher called out,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It will be one of the best things you have ever done,' and her son's
+voice was heard booming, 'Hear, hear!  Good old pater.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle had dropped in, but he was captured by Lady Bracebridge and
+her daughter, and had to sit between them while they scandalised Clara.
+According to them she had run away from home and had led an
+unmentionable life in Paris, actually having been a member of a low
+company of French players; and she had married but had run away from
+her husband with Charles Mann, etc., etc.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I beg your pardon,' said Verschoyle, 'but Miss Day is a friend of
+mine.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'One admires her frankness so much,' said Lady Bracebridge.
+'Adventures like that make an actress so interesting.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But this is her first appearance in any theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Bracebridge looked incredulous.  She put up her lorgnette and
+scanned Clara, who had just floated across the stage followed by
+Trinculo and Stephano.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She is born to it....  I know what the French theatre is like.  They
+are so sensible, don't expect anything else of their actresses.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle saw that it was useless to argue.  Women will never
+relinquish their jealousy.  He shifted uneasily in his seat: Lady
+Bracebridge was a great deal too clever for him and he saw himself
+being thrust against his will into marriage with her daughter, who had
+an affectation of cleverness and maddened him with remarks like,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That Ariel costume would make the sweetest dinner-frock.  If I have
+one made, will you take me to Murray's?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Certainly not,' said Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara in her pure girlish voice had just sung 'Full fathom five thy
+father lies,' when Lady Bracebridge, in her most strident voice, which
+went ringing through the theatre, said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I hear Charles Mann has a real wife who is <I>raging</I> with jealousy,
+simply raging.  The most extraordinary story.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara stopped dead, stood looking helplessly round, pulled herself
+together, and went on with the part.  Verschoyle deliberately got up
+and walked out and round to the stage door, where already he found Lady
+Butcher in earnest converse with Sir Henry,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'We can't have a scandal in the theatre, Henry.  Everybody heard
+her....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The wicked old devil.  Why didn't she keep her mouth shut?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She hates this girl you are all so crazy about....  Everybody heard
+her.  You can't keep a thing like that quiet once it has been said
+publicly.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But she is wonderful, the most delicate Ariel.  Mann isn't worrying
+us.  I cleared him out.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Excuse me,' said Verschoyle, intervening.  'I can assure you there
+will be no trouble.  I have seen to that.  You have nothing to fear.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How sweet of you!  Then I can tell everybody there is not a word of
+truth in it.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle turned his back on them, and went in search of Clara, whom
+he found trembling with fury on the stairs leading from her
+dressing-room to the stage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How dare you let that woman insult me publicly?' she cried.  'How dare
+you?  How dare you?  You ought to have killed her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle stammered,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'One can't kill people in the stalls of a London theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She ought not to be allowed to live.  Publicly!  In the middle of the
+play! ...  Either she or I will leave the theatre.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll see what I can do,' he mumbled, 'only for God's sake don't make
+it worse than it is....  Your only answer can be to ignore her.  She'll
+be crawling to you in a few months, for you are marvellous.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara saw that he was right.  To match herself against the
+scandal-monger would be to step down to her level.  To reassure her,
+Verschoyle told her how he had been to Bloomsbury to settle matters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Where?' she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He described the square and the house, and at once she had a foreboding
+of disaster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Did you see any one else?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'A queer fish I met at the door, with eyes that looked clean through
+me, and that little squirt Clott.  He is at the bottom of it all.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara gave a little moan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'O-oh!  Why does everybody hate Charles so?  Everybody betrays him....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Oh, come,' said Verschoyle, 'he isn't exactly thoughtful for other
+people, is he?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That doesn't matter.  Charles is Charles, and he must and shall
+succeed.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Not if it smashes you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Even if it smashes me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took her hands and implored her to be sensible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You lovely, lovely child,' he said, 'if Charles can't succeed off his
+own bat, surely, surely it means that there is something wrong with
+him.  Why should you suffer?  Why should you be exposed all your life
+to taunts and success and insults like that just now?  It is all so
+unnecessary....  I'll go and see Charles.  I'll tell him what has
+happened and that he may be given away at any moment now.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But why should they hate Charles?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It isn't Charles, darling.  It is you they hate.  You are too young,
+too beautiful.  These women who have lied and intrigued all their lives
+can't forgive your frankness.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They can't forgive my being friends with you....  Oh! don't talk to me
+about it any more.  I hate it all.  So disgusting it is.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want Charles to clear out.  He can go to Paris and come back if this
+blows over.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want him to be here to-morrow night.  I want everybody to
+acknowledge that all this is his work.  There's to be a supper
+to-morrow night after the performance.  I want him to be there.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle shrugged his shoulders.  He knew that opposition only made
+her more obstinate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Very well,' he said, and he returned to the stalls where he made
+himself exceedingly agreeable to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter,
+hoping to prevent any further outburst of jealousy.  Lady Bracebridge
+was mollified and said presently,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'After all, these things are nobody's affair but their own.  I do think
+the scenery is perfectly delightful, though I can't say it is my idea
+of Caliban.  But Henry is delightful.  He reminds me so much of General
+Booth.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara stood free of all this foolish world of scandal and jealousy.
+She had the answer to it all in herself.  Whatever Clara Day had done,
+Ariel was free and unattainable.  She could achieve utter forgetfulness
+of self, she could be born again in this miraculous experience for
+which she had striven.  As Ariel she could lead these mortals a dance.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">'So I charmed their ears,</SPAN><BR>
+That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through<BR>
+Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,<BR>
+Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them<BR>
+I' the filthy-mantled pool....'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The pool of scandal: drowned in their own foul words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She plied her art, and even in the confusion of the dress rehearsal was
+the most delicate Ariel, so lithe, so lissom, that it seemed she must
+vanish into the air like the floating feathered seeds of full
+summer....  Abandoned to the sweet sea-breezes of the play she felt
+that the hard crust upon the world must surely break to let this
+spilling beauty pour into its heart.  Surely, surely, she and Charles
+could have no enemies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They meant nothing but what Charles had proposed at his absurd
+dinner&mdash;love: an airy magical love....  If only people would not
+interfere.  She had proposed to herself to give Charles his triumph and
+then to settle his foolish mundane affairs.  She knew she could do it,
+if only Verschoyle and these others would not complicate them still
+further.  As for Charles being sent away to Paris, that was nonsense,
+sheer nonsense, that he should be ruined because he had a worthless
+woman who could, if she chose, use his name....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was still being carried along by her set will to force London to
+acknowledge Charles as its king, and, being so near success, she was
+possessed by her own determination, and did not know to what an extent
+she had denied her own emotions, and how near she was to that
+obliteration of personal life which reduces an artist to a painted
+mummer.  She was terribly tired after the dress rehearsal.  Her head
+ached and her blood drummed behind her eyes.  Sir Henry came to see her
+in her room, and kissed her hands, went on his knees, and paid his
+homage to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You owe everything to Charles Mann.  He found me in a studio in Paris
+when I was very miserable and let me live in his art.  I don't want you
+to quarrel with him.  We've got to keep him safe, because there aren't
+many Charleses and I want you to ask him to supper to-morrow night....
+I won't come if he doesn't.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I can feel success in the air,' said Sir Henry.  'It is like the old
+days.  But suppose&mdash;er&mdash;something happened to him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara laughed, a thin, tired laugh.  She was so weary of them harping
+on the silly story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I should go and tell them the truth, that I made him marry me and
+they'd let him go,' she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's such a waste of you,' said Sir Henry, sighing.  'You're not in
+love with him.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stared at him in astonishment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No,' she said, shocked into speaking the truth of her heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He crushed her in his arms, kissed her, gave a fat sigh, and staggered
+dramatically from the room.  He had kissed her neck, her arms, her
+hands.  She rushed to her basin and washed them clean....  Shaking with
+disgust and anger, she gazed at herself in her mirror, and was startled
+at the reflection.  It was not Ariel that she saw, but Clara Day, a new
+Clara, a girl who stared in wonder at herself, gazed into her own eyes
+and through them, deep into her heart, and knew that she was in love.
+Her hand went to her throat to caress its whiteness.  She shivered and
+shook herself free at last of all the obsessions that had crowded in
+her mind for so long, and she lost all knowledge of her surroundings
+and she could hear Rodd's beautiful deep voice saying,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Ay, that's it, to learn the tricks and keep decent.  That's what one
+stands out for.'
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XVII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+SUCCESS
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The Imperium was at its most brilliant for the first performance.  Lady
+Butcher had done her work well, and the people crowded in the pit had a
+good show for their money even before the curtain rose.  The orchestra
+hidden away beneath gay greenery discoursed light music as the great
+men and the lovely women of the hour entered in their fine array,
+conscious of being themselves, hoping to be recognised as such.  Actors
+who had retired with titles had come to support Sir Henry by
+encouraging in the audience the habit of applause.  Successful
+politicians entered the stalls as though they were walking out upon the
+platform at a great meeting.  They stood for a moment and surveyed the
+assembly with a Gladstonian aquiline eye.  Their wives blushed with
+pride in their property if their husbands were recognised and raised a
+buzz....  Lady Butcher, with her son, occupied one stage-box, and on
+the opposite side were Lady Bracebridge, her daughter, and, through a
+nice calculation on his part, Lord Verschoyle....  There were many
+Jews, some authors, a few painters, critics casting listless eyes upon
+these preliminary histrionics, women-journalists taking notes of the
+frocks worn by the eminent actresses and no less eminent wives of
+Cabinet Ministers ... a buzz of voices, a fluttering of fans, the
+twittering and hissing of whispered scandal, the cold venom that creeps
+in the veins of the society of the mummers....  There were magnificence
+and luxury, but beneath it all was the deadly stillness of which
+Charles had complained that night on St James's Bridge.  Before the
+curtain rose, Clara could feel it....  Her dreams of a vast
+enthusiastic audience perished as soon as she set foot on the stage to
+make sure that Charles's scenery was properly set up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked on to the stage at the same moment, looked round, shook out
+his mane and snorted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'The lighting kills it,' he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara went to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You see, Charles, it has come true.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Half-true.  Half-true.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Do you feel anything wrong with the audience?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  I have had a peep at it.  All the swells are there, but none of
+the brains.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara laughed at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's good-bye, Charles.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What do you mean?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It can never be the same again....  I'm not the same.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What do you mean?' he asked, in alarm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'll tell you after the performance.  Where are you sitting?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I'm in the Author's box.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'With his ghost?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  He has only turned in his grave.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stage-hands were pretty alert and busy for the shipwreck, which
+Charles had contrived very simply: a darkened stage, a mast with a
+lamp, which was to sway and founder, and low moving clouds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara and he parted.  The music ceased.  The storm broke and the
+curtain rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a few moments the novelty of the ship scene wore off, a certain
+section of the audience, perceiving how it was done laughed at the
+simplicity of it and another section cried 'Hush.'  The play had to
+proceed to a divided house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bold sweep of Charles's design for the island-cell carried in spite
+of the lighting and was applauded, but, as usual with English actors,
+the pace was slow and the verse was ponderously spoken.  Lady
+Bracebridge's sense of caricature was almost infallible.  Sir Henry as
+Prospero did look exactly like General Booth and again a section of the
+audience laughed.  They had come to laugh, as the English always do, at
+novelty, and they went on laughing until Miranda was put to sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clara, put to the challenge of this audience, summoned up every ounce
+of her vitality and did coldly and consciously what before she had done
+almost in an ecstacy.  In the full light, before the huge audience she
+felt that the play was betrayed, that there are some things too holy to
+be made public....  She loathed that audience, tittering and giggling.
+Her entrance was almost a contemptuous command to bid them be silent,
+with her wild hair fiercely flying as she danced, every step taken
+lightly as though she were dropping from a friendly wind.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+'All hail, great master! grave sir, hail!  I come<BR>
+To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,<BR>
+To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride<BR>
+On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task<BR>
+Ariel and all his quality.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+She stood poised as she had stood on the crag in Westmorland.  Even in
+her stillness there was the very ecstacy of movement, for nothing in
+her was still....  A great sigh of pleasure came from the audience,
+and, with a movement that was imperceptible and yet made itself felt,
+she turned into a thing of stone, and uttered in an unearthly voice her
+description of the storm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Damme!' said Prospero, under his breath.  'You've got them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had, but she despised so easy a conquest.  This audience was like a
+still pool.  It trembled with pleasure as an impression was thrown into
+it like a stone.  She could only move its stillness, not touch its
+heart.  She despised what she was doing, but went through with it
+loyally because she was pledged to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her first scene with Prospero was applauded with an astonished
+enthusiasm.  Her youth, her simplicity, her grace, had given these
+metropolitans a new pleasure, a new sensation.  It was no more than
+that.  She knew it was no more.  She was angry with the applause which
+interrupted the play.  The insensibility of the audience had turned her
+into a spectacle.  Her very quality had separated her from the rest of
+the performance, and in her heart she knew that she had failed.  There
+was no play: there were only three personalities on exhibition&mdash;Sir
+Henry Butcher, Charles, and herself.  Shakespeare, as Charles had said,
+had only turned in his grave.  Shakespeare, who was the poet of these
+people, was ignored by them in favour of the personalities of the
+interpreters.  There was no altering that.  She had made so vivid an
+impression that the audience delighted in her and not in her
+contribution to the whole enchantment of the play.  That was broken
+even for her, and as the evening wore on she ceased even to herself to
+be Ariel and was forced to be Clara Day, displayed in public.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She loathed it, and yet she had no sense of declension.  No enchanted
+illusion had been established.  Charles Mann's scenery remained
+only&mdash;scenery.  Sir Henry Butcher and the rest of his company were only
+actors&mdash;acting.  A troupe of performing animals would have been more
+entertaining: indeed, in her bitter disappointment, Clara felt that she
+was one of such a troupe, the lady in tights who holds the hoops
+through which the dogs and monkeys jump....  So powerful was this anger
+in her that after a while she began to burlesque herself, to exaggerate
+her movement, and to keep her voice down to a childish treble, and the
+audience adored her.  They turned her into a show, a music-hall turn,
+at the expense of the magical poetry of Shakespeare's farewell to his
+art....  She could not too wildly caricature herself, and as she often
+did when she was angry she talked to herself in French:&mdash;'<I>Voila ce
+qu'il vous faut</I>!  Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'&mdash;How they gulped down her
+songs!  How they roared and bellowed when she danced&mdash;the delicious,
+wonderful girl!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She would not have done it had she known that Rodd was in front.  He
+had decided to go at the last moment, to see her, as he thought for the
+last time, before she was delivered up to the public....  He knew its
+voracity.  He knew the use to which the theatre was put, to keep the
+public drugged, to keep it drowned beneath the leagues and leagues of
+the stale waters of boredom.  He knew perfectly well that nothing could
+shift them out of it, that any awakening was too painful for them to
+endure, and that there was no means of avoiding this constant sacrifice
+of personality after personality, talent after talent, victim after
+victim.  He had hoped against hope that Clara, being what she was,
+would save herself in time, but he had decided that he had no right to
+interfere, or to offer his assistance.  Against a machine like the
+Imperium, what could youth do?  He credited her with the boundless
+confidence of youth, but he knew that she would be broken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had a seat at the back of the dress circle, and he suffered agonies.
+Mann's scenery annoyed him.  The fellow had dramatic imagination, but
+what was the good of expressing it in paint and a structure of canvas
+and wood without reference to the actors?  For that was what Charles
+did.  He left nothing to the play.  His scenery in its way was as
+oppressive as the old realism; indeed it was the old realism standing
+on its head....  It called attention to itself and away from the drama.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd caught his breath when Clara first appeared.  He thought for a
+moment that she must succeed, and that the rest of the company, even
+the scenery, must be caught up into the beauty she exhaled.  But the
+electricians were too much for her.  They followed her with spot-limes
+and gave her no play of light and shadow....  That, Rodd knew, was
+Butcher, exploiting his new discovery, thrusting it down the public's
+greedy maw.  The ruthlessness of it!  This exquisite creature of
+innocence, this very Ariel, born at last in life to leap forth from the
+imagination that had created her, this delicious spirit of freedom,
+come to beckon the world on to an awakening from its sloth and shame!
+To be used to feed the appetite for sensation and novelty!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd saw how she suffered, saw how as the entertainment proceeded the
+wings of her spirit shrivelled and left her with nothing but her talent
+and her will.  Nothing in all his life had hurt him more....  And he,
+too, felt the deadly stillness of this audience, for all its excitement
+and uproarious enthusiasm.  He was aware of something predatory and
+vulturine in it, the very hideous quality that in his own work he had
+portrayed so exactly that no one could endure it, and his own soul had
+sickened and grown weary until the day when he had met this child of
+freedom....  It was as though he saw her being done to death before his
+eyes, and this appalling experience took on a ghastly symbolical
+significance&mdash;richness and lewdness crushing out of existence their
+enemies youth and joy.  Towards that this London was drifting.  It had
+no other purpose....  Ay, this audience was Caliban, coveting Miranda,
+hating Ariel, lusting to murder Ferdinand&mdash;youth, enchantment, love,
+all were to be done to death.  Clara's performance was to him like the
+last choking song of youth.  It should have been, he knew she meant it
+to be, like all art, a prophecy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What malign Fate had dogged her to trip her feet, so soon, to lead her
+by such strange ways to the success that kills, the success worshipped
+in London, the success won at the cost of every living quality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He watched her very closely, and began to understand her contempt.  Her
+touch of burlesque made him roar with laughter, so that he was scowled
+at by his neighbours in the dress circle, and he began to feel more
+hopeful.  He felt certain that this was the beginning and the end for
+her, and he supposed that she would marry her Lord and retire into an
+easy, cultured life.  He had liked Verschoyle on his one meeting with
+him, and knew that he was to be trusted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Truly the words of the play were marvellously apt, when Clara sang,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+'Merrily, merrily shall I live now<BR>
+Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Rodd looked down at Verschoyle leaning out of his box, and felt sure
+that this was to be her way out.  More of this painted mummery she
+could not endure.  She could mould a good, simple creature like
+Verschoyle to her ways and become a great personage.  So comforted, he
+heard the closing scenes of the play in all its truthful dignity, and
+he looked round at the sated audience wondering how many of them
+attached any meaning to the words hurled at them with such amazing
+power.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">'The charm dissolves apace,</SPAN><BR>
+And as the morning steals upon the night,<BR>
+Melting the darkness, so their rising senses<BR>
+Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle<BR>
+Their clearer reason.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 4em">Their understanding</SPAN><BR>
+Begins to swell, and the approaching tide<BR>
+Will shortly fill the reasonable shores,<BR>
+That now lie foul and muddy.'<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The tenderness of this profound rebuke moved Rodd from his hatred of
+the audience, and on an impulse he ran down and stood waiting outside
+Verschoyle's box.  He wanted to see him without precisely knowing why,
+perhaps, he thought, only to make sure that Clara was safe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The applause as the curtain descended was tumultuous.  Sir Henry
+bowed&mdash;to the right, to the left, to the centre.  He made a little
+speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I am deeply gratified at the great welcome you have given our efforts
+in the service of our poet.  I am proud to have had the collaboration
+of Mr Charles Mann, and to have had the good fortune to discover in
+Miss Clara Day Ariel's very self.  I thank you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The audience clamoured for Ariel, but she did not appear.  She had
+moved away to her dressing-room, and had torn off her sky blue and
+silver net.  She rent them into shreds, and her dresser, who had caught
+the elated excitement that was running through the theatre, burst into
+tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd nearly swooned with anxiety when she did not appear, and he was
+almost knocked over when Verschoyle, white to the lips, darted out of
+the box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Sorry, sir,' he said, and was moving on when Rodd caught him by the
+arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Let me go, damn you,' said Verschoyle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I want to speak to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle recognised his man and said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'In God's name has anything happened?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Something had happened but they did not know it.  In her
+dressing-room, half way through the performance, she had found a note:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+'DEAR MADAM,&mdash;Either you grant me a profitable interview after the
+performance or the police will be informed to-morrow morning.
+<BR><BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'CLAUDE CUMBERLAND.')
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+'I only wanted,' said Rodd, 'to ask you to convey my very best wishes
+to Miss Day.  Just that.  Nothing more.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle stared at him, and Rodd laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  I am not what you think.  I have been and am always at your
+service.  To-night has been one of the most wretched of her life.  I
+have been watching the performance.  Butcher and his audience have been
+too much for them.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But the success was hers.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You do not know her well, if you imagine that such a success is what
+she desires.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An attendant came up to them with a note from Clara enclosing
+Cumberland's.  Verschoyle handed it to Rodd, who crumpled it up and
+said,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I knew that was the danger-point.  Will you take me to see her?  I
+know these people.  I have done what I could.  I kicked that fellow out
+just after you had gone.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'There is a supper in Sir Henry's room,' said Verschoyle, with an
+uneasy glance at Rodd's shabby evening clothes.  'I will take you
+there.  Are you an actor?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  I write.  I remember you at the Hall when I was at Pembroke.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That reassured Verschoyle.  He liked this deep, quiet man, and felt
+that he knew more than he allowed to appear, half-guessed indeed that
+he had played some great and secret part in Clara's life.  He
+introduced him to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter, who had stayed to
+watch the huge audience melt away and to hold a little reception with
+congratulations on the success of 'their' play.  Lady Bracebridge
+noticed Rodd's boots at once, an old pair of cracked patent leathers,
+but her daughter chattered to him,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Wasn't it all too sweet?  I adore <I>The Tempest</I>.  Caliban is such a
+dear, isn't he?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd smiled grimly but politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They made their way on to the stage where they found Charles Mann
+tipping the stage-hands.  The stairs up from the stage were thronged
+with brilliant personages, all happy, excited, drinking in the
+atmosphere of success....  In Sir Henry's room Lady Butcher stood to
+receive her guests.  'Too delightful!  ...  The most charming
+production! ... Exquisite!  ... Quite too awfully Ballet Russe!'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The players in their costumes, their eyes dilated with nervous
+excitement, their lips trembling with their hunger for praise, moved
+among the Jews, politicians, journalists, major and minor
+celebrities....  Sir Henry moved from group to group.  He was at his
+most brilliantly witty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was no Ariel.  Several ladies who desired to ask her to lunch
+in their anxiety to invest capital in the new star, clamoured to see
+her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She is tired, poor child,' said Sir Henry, with an amorously
+proprietary air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But she <I>must</I> come,' said Lady Butcher, eager to exploit the interest
+Clara had aroused, and she bustled away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles Mann came in at that moment and he was at once surrounded with
+twittering women.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You must tell him,' said Rodd to Verschoyle, 'he must get out....
+Will you let her go with him?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Never,' said Verschoyle, and awaiting his chance, he plucked Charles
+by the sleeve, took him into a corner and gave him Cumberland's note.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles's face went a greeny gray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What does he mean?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Blackmail,' replied Verschoyle.  'You can't ask her to go on living
+with that hanging over her head.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I can pay,' said Charles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'She'll pay on for ever.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'What else can I do?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Clear out, give her a chance.  Let her make her own life so that it
+can't touch her&mdash;whatever happens to you.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'But I ...'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Can you only think of yourself?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My work.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Look here, Mann.  I've paid six hundred to keep this quiet.  It hasn't
+done it.  I suppose they've squabbled over the spoils.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Six hundred.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  What can you do?  These people ask more and more and more.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'It's ruin.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.  If you don't clear out.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charles began to look elderly and flabby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'All right,' he said.  'When?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To-morrow morning.  I'll see that you have money and you'll get as
+much work as you like now&mdash;thanks to her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'You don't know what she's been to me, Verschoyle.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.  But I know what any other man would have been to her.  You ought
+to have told her.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To-morrow morning,' said Charles.  'I'll go.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned away and basked in the smiles and congratulations of the
+Bracebridge-Butcher set.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Verschoyle returned to Rodd,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's all right,' he said.  'I was afraid that with this success he'd
+want to stick it out.  These idealists are so infernally
+self-righteous.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Butcher returned with Clara, looking very pale and slender in a
+little black silk frock.  Sir Henry came up to her at once and took
+possession of her.  He whispered in her ear,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Did you get my flowers?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And my note?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Will you stay?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'No.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her hand went to her heart as she saw Rodd.  How came he here in this
+oppressive company?  She was sorry and hated his being there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She received her congratulations listlessly and accepted, without the
+smallest intention of acting upon her acceptance, all her invitations.
+Rodd was there.  That was all she knew, he was there among those empty,
+voracious people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He moved towards her and caught her as she was passed from one group to
+another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Forgive me,' he said.  'I had to come and see you.  I thought it was
+for the last time....  I know all your story, even down to to-night.
+He is going away.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Charles?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Yes.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I can't stay here.  I can't stand it....  You are not going to stay.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'How do you know?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I was with you all through to-night....'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their eyes met.  Again there was nothing but they two.  All pretence,
+all mummery had vanished.  Life had become pure and strong, more rich
+and wonderful even than the play in which, baffled by the chances of
+life, she had striven to live.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'To-morrow,' she said, 'I am going to the bookshop at half-past twelve.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bowed and left her, and meeting Mr Clott or Cumberland on the stairs
+of his house he had the satisfaction of shaking him until his teeth
+rattled, and of telling him that Mr Charles Mann had gone abroad for an
+indefinite period.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+LOVE
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+The late September sun shone sweetly down upon Charing Cross Road, and
+its beams stole into the bookshop where the bookseller, in his shirt
+sleeves, sat wrestling with the accounts which he struggled to keep
+accurately.  He hated them.  Of all books the most detestable are
+account books.  What has a man who trades in mind to do with money?
+Far better is it to have good books stolen than to keep them lying
+dusty on the shelf.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bookseller chuckled to himself.  The newspapers were full of
+praises of his 'young leddy,' though she could never be so wonderful
+and like a good fairy in the play-acting as she was when she walked
+into his shop bringing sweetness and light....  She had not been in for
+some time, and he had been a little worried about her.  He was glad to
+know that it was only work that had kept her away.  He had been half
+afraid that there might be 'something up' between her and that damned,
+silent Rodd, who had nothing in the world but a few bees in his bonnet.
+The bookseller, being a simple soul, wanted her to marry the Lord, to
+end the tale as all good heroines should, and he had even gone so far
+as to address imaginary parcels of books to her Ladyship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charing Cross Road was at its oddest and friendliest on this day when
+all London rang with Clara's fame, and the only place in which it found
+no echo was her own heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had decided in her dressing-room half-way through the performance
+that she could never go near the Imperium again.  That was finished.
+She had done what she had set out to do in the first instance.  In her
+subsequent greater purpose she had failed, and she knew now why she had
+failed, because she was a woman and in love, and being a woman, she
+must work through a man's imagination before she could become a person
+fit to dwell on the earth with her fellows....  Without a pang she
+surrendered her ambitions, bowed to the inevitable, and for the first
+time for many a long week slept the easy, sweet sleep of youth.  Her
+meeting with Rodd in the supper-room had relieved her of all her
+crushing responsibilities.  She passed them on to him and from her he
+had won the strength to carry all things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was punctual to the minute, but he was late.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'They're falling over themselves about you in the papers, young leddy,'
+said the bookseller.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Are they?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Haven't you seen them?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had cut out all the notices, and to please him she made a pretence
+of reading them, but they gave her a kind of nausea.  The critics wrote
+like lackeys fawning upon Sir Henry's success....  In Paris with her
+grandfather she had once seen the <I>Mariage de Figaro</I> acted.  Sir Henry
+reminded her of the Duc d'Almaviva, and she thought wittily that the
+type had taken refuge in the theatre, there perhaps to die.  Sir Henry
+surely was the last of this line.  Not even with the support of the
+newspapers would the world, bamboozled and cheated as always, consent
+any longer to support them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a good transition this from the Imperium to the book-shop.
+Books were on the whole dependable.  If they deceived you it was your
+own fault.  There was not with them the pressure of the crowd to aid
+deception.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This wholesome little man living among books, upon them, and for them,
+was exactly the right person for her to see first upon this day when
+she was to discard her mimic for her real triumph.  This day was like a
+flower that had grown up out of all her days.  In its honey was
+distilled all the love she had inspired in others, and all the love
+that others had inspired in her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was the real London, here in Charing Cross Road, shabby, careless,
+unambitious, unmethodical.  It was here in the real London that she
+wished to begin her real life.  From the time of her first meeting with
+him in the book-shop, her deepest imagination had never left Rodd, and
+she knew all that he had been through.  She had most profoundly been
+aware of his struggle to break free from his captivity, exactly as she
+had slowly and obstinately found her own way out.  All that had been
+had vanished.  Only the good was left.  Evil had been burned away and
+for her now there was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the
+sun.  Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that
+Rodd was as clear....  Of all that she had left she did not even think,
+so worthless was it.  A career, money, power, influence?  With love,
+the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch
+of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys
+that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and nothing
+remains hidden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was there ever a more perfect moment than when Clara and Rodd met in
+the bookshop, each for the other having renounced all that had seemed
+of worth.  Death might have come at that moment and both would have
+been satisfied, for richer, deeper, and simpler music there could not
+be....  She was amazed at the new mastery in him.  The pained
+sensitiveness that had cramped him was all gone.  He came direct to
+her, took possession of her without waiting for an impulse from her
+will.  They met now in complete freedom and were frankly lovers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little bookseller in dismay looked from one to the other, but held
+his peace.  Clara reminded him that he had once remarked how life
+consisted in men and women pulling each other through.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'That's so,' he said.  'Most of 'em trample on the rest.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Well,' said Clara.  'We've done it.  We have pulled each other
+through.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Out of the burning,' said Rodd, with a laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Indeed!  Are you going to join her in the play-acting?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Not at all,' said Clara.  'I'm going to join him in the play-writing.
+I have been a star for one night only....  If we starve, I shall make
+you take me on as your assistant.  You could pay me a salary now.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I cannot see a man wi' a jowl like that letting his young leddy
+starve,' chuckled the bookseller.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They bought each other as presents the following books: <I>The Dramatic
+Works of J. M. Synge, The Love Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, The
+Marriage of Figaro, Tom Jones</I>, and six volumes of <I>The Works of Henrik
+Ibsen</I>, which were going cheap.  These they ordered to be sent to her
+rooms, and with the bookseller's blessing&mdash;so hearty that it was well
+worth having&mdash;on their happiness they set out to reproduce in every
+detail the day of their first excursion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They went by Tube to Highgate, and walked to Hampstead across the
+Heath, but when they came to the inn with the swing-boats and
+roundabouts they found them deserted, and were annoyed.  They wanted
+the story told over and over again in exact replica, not varying by a
+simple detail.  As that was impossible they had tea at the inn, and he
+told her the full and true story how he met her in the bookshop in the
+Charing Cross Road.  She listened like a happy child, and she asked,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'Did he love her?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'As the earth the sun.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as they left the inn, history did repeat itself, for a girl turned
+and watched Clara enviously and said to her friend,&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'My!  I wisht I had legs like that <I>and</I> silk stockings.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the day sped by, and in the evening they went down to the Imperium
+where it reared its brilliantly lit magnificence.  The performance had
+begun.  They read the placards outside the doors.  Already there was a
+new poster with a flashy drawing of Ariel, in its vulgar way not unlike
+Clara.  There were also posters reproducing the notices of the Ariel
+and the Prospero.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'And Ariel is gone,' said Rodd.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'I left a note for him last night,' said Clara.  'He'll probably sue me
+for breach of contract.  He won't miss a chance of an advertisement.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rodd took her home, and they arranged that they would be married at
+once.  Neither was quite sure whether the absurd marriage with Charles
+would make theirs illegal, but they decided to risk it.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUMMERY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29500-h.htm or 29500-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/5/0/29500/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</BODY>
+
+</HTML>
+
diff --git a/29500.txt b/29500.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4915c6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29500.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8264 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mummery
+       A Tale of Three Idealists
+
+Author: Gilbert Cannan
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #29500]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUMMERY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MUMMERY
+
+A TALE OF THREE IDEALISTS
+
+
+BY
+
+GILBERT CANNAN
+
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
+
+W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
+
+GLASGOW -- MELBOURNE -- AUCKLAND
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1918
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+NOVELS
+
+  PETER HOMUNCULUS
+  LITTLE BROTHER
+  ROUND THE CORNER
+  OLD MOLE
+  YOUNG EARNEST
+  THREE PRETTY MEN
+  MENDEL
+  THE STUCCO HOUSE
+  PINK ROSES
+
+  FOUR PLAYS
+  EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND
+
+  WINDMILLS
+  SATIRE
+  THE JOY OF THE THEATRE
+  FREEDOM
+  THE ANATOMY OF SOCIETY
+  NOEL
+  POEMS
+
+
+
+
+TO ARIEL
+
+AMY GWEN WILSON
+
+  Shakespeare dreamed you, Ariel,
+    In a poet's ecstasy.
+  I have loved and dare not tell
+    Of your being's mystery.
+
+  Ariel, from Shakespeare's dream
+    Flown into my love on earth,
+  You shall help me to redeem
+    Love and truth denied their birth.
+
+  In a world by Caliban
+    Brutalised and done to death,
+  We will weave a spell that Man
+    May in freedom draw his breath.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.
+
+     I.  A DESCENT ON LONDON
+    II.  THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT
+   III.  IMPERIUM
+    IV.  BEHIND THE SCENES
+     V.  THE OTHER WOMAN
+    VI.  BIRDS AND FISHES
+   VII.  SUPPER
+  VIII.  SOLITUDE
+    IX.  MAGIC
+     X.  THE ENGLISH LAKES
+    XI.  CHARING CROSS ROAD
+   XII.  RODD AT HOME
+  XIII.  THE TEMPEST
+   XIV.  VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF
+    XV.  IN BLOOMSBURY
+   XVI.  ARIEL
+  XVII.  SUCCESS
+ XVIII.  LOVE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+A DESCENT ON LONDON
+
+On a day in August, in one of those swiftly-moving years which hurried
+Europe towards the catastrophe awaiting it, there arrived in London a
+couple of unusual appearance, striking, charming, and amusing.  The man
+was tall, big, and queerly compounded of sensitive beauty and stodgy
+awkwardness.  He entered London with an air of hostility; sniffed
+distastefully the smells of the station, peered in distress through the
+murky light, and clearly by his personality and his exploitation of it
+in his dress challenged the uniformity of the great city which was his
+home.  His dress was peculiar: an enormous black hat above a shock of
+wispy fair hair, an ill-cut black coat, a cloak flung back over his
+shoulders, a very high starched collar, abominable trousers, and long,
+pointed French boots.
+
+'But they have rebuilt the station!' he said, in a loud voice of almost
+peevish disapproval.
+
+'I remember reading about it, Carlo,' replied his companion.  'It fell
+down and destroyed a theatre.'
+
+'A bad omen,' said Charles Mann, 'I wish we had arrived at another
+station.'
+
+'I don't think it matters,' smiled Clara Day.
+
+'I say it does,' snapped he.  'It is a mean little station.  A London
+station should be grand and spacious, the magnificent ante-room to a
+royal city.  I must get them to let me design a station.'
+
+'They don't often fall down,' said Clara.  'I wish you would see to the
+luggage.'
+
+All the other passengers, French and English, had collected their
+baggage and had hurried away, but Charles Mann was never in a hurry,
+and he stayed scowling at the station which London had had the
+effrontery to erect in his absence.
+
+'In Germany and Russia,' he muttered, 'they understand that stations
+are very important.'
+
+'Do look after the luggage,' urged Clara, and very reluctantly Charles
+Mann strolled along the platform, leaving his companion to the
+admiration of the passengers arriving for the next out-going train.
+She deserved it, for she was extremely handsome, almost pathetically
+young for the knowledge written in her eyes and on her lips, and the
+charming dress of purple and old red designed for her slim figure by
+Charles drew the curious and rather scandalised eyes of the women.  It
+was in no fashion, but the perfection of its individuality raised it
+above that tyranny, just as Clara's personality, in its compact force,
+and delicious free movement, raised her above the conventionalism which
+makes woman mere reflections of each other.  When she moved, her
+clothes were liquid with her vitality.  When she stood still, they were
+as monumental as herself.  She and they were one.
+
+She was happy.  It had taken her nearly two years to bring Charles back
+to London, where, as an Englishman, and, as she knew, one of the most
+gifted Englishmen of his time, his work lay, and she felt certain that
+here, in London, among other artists, it would be possible to extricate
+him from his own thoughts, which abroad kept him blissfully happy but
+prevented his doing work which was intelligible to any one else.
+
+He was rather a long time over the luggage, and at last she ran along
+the platform to find him lost in contemplation.
+
+'Have you decided where we are going to?' she asked.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'Have you decided where we are going to?'
+
+'I must get a secretary,' he replied, and Clara laughed.  'But I must,'
+he went on.  'It is absolutely necessary for me to have a secretary.  I
+can do nothing without one....  He shall be a good man, and he shall be
+paid four hundred a year.'
+
+Clara approached a porter and told him to take their luggage to the
+hotel.
+
+'We can stay there while we look about us,' she said.  She had learned
+that when Charles talked about money it was best to ignore him.  She
+took cheap rooms at the top of the hotel, with a view out over the
+river to the Surrey hills, and there until three o'clock in the morning
+Charles smoked cigars and talked, as only he could talk, of art and
+Italy and Paris--which they had left without paying their rent--and the
+delights and abominations of London.
+
+'I feel satisfied now that you were right,' he said.  'Here we are in
+London and I shall begin to do my real work.  I shall have a secretary
+and an advertising agent, and I shall talk to London in the language it
+understands....  Paris knows me, Munich knows me, St Petersburg knows
+me; London shall know me.  There are artists in London.  All they want
+is a lead.'
+
+Clara went to bed and lay for a long time with erratic memories
+streaming through her brain--days in the hills in Italy, nights of
+hunger in Paris, the cross-eyed man who stared so hard at her on the
+boat, the dismal port at Calais, the more dismal landing at Dover, the
+detached existence of her three years with Charles, whose astonishing
+vitality kindled and continually disappointed her hope....  And then
+queer, ugly memories of her own wandering, homeless childhood with her
+grandfather, who had died in Paris, leaving her the little money he
+had, so that she had stayed among the artists in Paris, had been numbed
+and dazed by them, until Charles took possession of her exactly as he
+did of stray cats and dogs and birds in cages.
+
+'This is London,' she said, 'and I am twenty-one.'  So she, too,
+approached London in a spirit of challenging hostility, determined if,
+as she believed, there was nothing a woman could not do, that London
+should acknowledge Charles as the genius of which he so constantly
+remarked it stood in need.
+
+In the morning she was up betimes, and stood at the window looking out
+over the sprawl of the south side of the river to the dome of Bedlam
+and the tower of Southwark Cathedral, the clustered chimneys, and the
+gray litter of untidy, huddled roofs.
+
+'That is not London,' said Charles from the bed, as she cried
+ecstatically.  'London is a very small circle, the centre of which is
+to the cultivated the National Gallery, and to the vulgar Piccadilly
+Circus....  Piccadilly Circus we can ignore.  What we have to do is to
+stand on the dome of the National Gallery and sing our gospel.  Then if
+we can make the cultured hear us, we shall have the vulgar gaping and
+opening their pockets.'
+
+'I don't want you to be applauded by people who can't appreciate you,'
+said Clara.
+
+'No?' grumbled Charles.  'Well, I'm going to have bath and breakfast
+and then I shall astonish you.'
+
+'You always do that,' cried Clara.  'Darling Charles!'
+
+She rang the bell, and sat on the bed, and in a few minutes they were
+enjoying their continental breakfast of coffee, rolls, and honey.
+
+'I sometimes feel,' said Charles, 'that I have merely taken the place
+of your grandfather....  You are the only creature I have ever met who
+is younger than myself.  That is why you can do as you like with me....
+But you can't make me grow a beard.'
+
+'I wish you would.'
+
+'And then I should be like your grandfather?'
+
+'No.  You would be more like you.'
+
+'You adorable child,' he said.  'You would reform me out of existence
+if you had your way.'
+
+Charles got up, had his bath, shaved, and went out, leaving Clara to
+unpack and make out a list of clothes that he required before she could
+consider him fit to go out into that London whose centre is the
+National Gallery.
+
+As he did not return for lunch, she set out alone to explore the region
+which he designed to conquer.  She wandered in a dream of delight,
+first of all through the galleries and then through the streets, as far
+as Westminster on the one side, and as Oxford Street on the other, and
+fixed in her mind the location of every one of the theatres.  She was
+especially interested in the women, and was both hurt and pleased by
+the dislike and suspicion with which they regarded her originality....
+Every now and then she saw a face which made her want to go up to its
+owner and say: 'I'm Clara Day; I've just come to London,' but she
+forebore; and when people smiled at her, as many did, she returned
+their smile, and hurried on in her eagerness to explore and to
+understand the kingdom which was to be Charles Mann's--a kingdom, like
+others, of splendour and misery, but overwhelmingly rich with its huge
+hotels, great blocks of offices, vast theatres and music-halls,
+enormous shops full of merchandise of the finest quality; jewels,
+clothes, furs, napery, silver, cutlery; its monuments, its dense
+traffic; its flower-sellers and innumerable newsvendors; its glimpses
+through the high-walled streets of green trees, its dominating towers;
+its lounging men and women.  Jews, with gold chains and diamond rings,
+Americans with large cigars and padded shoulders, painted women,
+niggers, policemen, match-sellers, boot-blacks; its huge coloured
+advertisements; its sudden holes, leading to regions underground; its
+sluggish, rich self-satisfaction....  It overawed Clara a little, and
+as she sped along she whispered to herself, 'This is me in London.'
+
+On her way back to the hotel she bought a paper, and, on opening it,
+found that it contained an interview with Mr Charles Mann on his return
+to London, an announcement that a dinner was to be given in his honour,
+and that he intended to hold an exhibition; and then Charles's views on
+many subjects were set out at some length, and he had thrown out a
+suggestion that a committee of artists should be formed to supervise
+the regeneration of London and to defeat the Americanisation which
+threatened it.
+
+Clara hurried back to the hotel and found Charles in a great state of
+excitement, talking to a thin, weedy little man whom he introduced as
+Mr Clott--his secretary.
+
+'It has begun, child,' said Charles.  'Have you seen the papers?
+Things move quickly nowadays....  This evening I shall be very busy.'
+
+'But you mustn't do anything without me,' Clara protested.  'You
+promised you wouldn't.  You are sure to make a mess of it.'
+
+'Clott,' said Charles magnificently, 'please send a copy of the letter
+I have dictated to the Press Association.'
+
+'At once,' replied Mr Clott, with the alacrity of a man in a new job,
+and he darted from the room.
+
+'He's a fool,' said Clara angrily, 'a perfect fool.'
+
+'Of course he is,' answered Charles, 'or he would not be a secretary.
+He has undertaken that by the end of this week we shall be in a
+comfortable furnished house.'
+
+'But who is to pay for it?'
+
+'There is plenty of money in the world,' said Charles, who was so
+pleased with himself that Clara had not the heart to pursue the
+argument any further.  'London,' he continued, 'is a great talking
+shop.  At present they haven't anything much to discuss so they shall
+talk about me.'
+
+For a moment Clara felt that he had become as external to her as the
+people in the streets of the kingdom he designed to conquer, but she
+recollected that whenever he was at work he always was abstracted from
+her and entirely absorbed in what he was doing, only, however, to
+return like a giant refreshed to enter into her world again and make it
+more delightful than before.  He was absorbed now, and she thought with
+a queer pang of alarm of the women with their dull, suspicious eyes,
+and, without realising the connection between what she thought and what
+she said, she broke into his absorption with,--
+
+'Carlo, dear, I shall have to marry you.'
+
+He spun round as though he had been stung and asked,--
+
+'Good God, why?'
+
+And again her answer was strange and came from some remote recess of
+her being,--
+
+'London is different.'
+
+Now Charles Mann was one of those sensitive people who yield at once to
+the will of another when it is precise and purposeful; and when in this
+girl, whom he had collected as he collected drunkards, cats, dogs, and
+other helpless creatures, such a will moved, though it cut like hot
+iron through his soul, he obeyed it without argument.  He, whose faith
+in himself was scattered and dissipated, had in her a faith as whole as
+that of a child who accepts without a murmur a whipping from his father.
+
+'My dear girl----' he murmured.
+
+'You know you will have to,' she said firmly.
+
+He looked uncomfortable.  His large face was suddenly ashen and yellow,
+and a certain weakness crept into his ordinarily firm lips and
+nostrils.  The girl's eyes were blazing at him, searching him, making
+him feel transparent, and so uncomfortable that he could do nothing but
+obey to relieve his own acute distress.
+
+'Yes, of course.'
+
+'Don't you want to?'
+
+'Yes, of course.'
+
+'It doesn't make any difference to us inside ourselves.'
+
+'No.  Of course not.'
+
+What he wanted to say was, 'You're pinning me down.  I'm not used to
+being pinned down.  No one has ever pinned me down before.'
+
+But he could not say it.  He could only agree that it would be a good
+thing if they married, because London was different.
+
+'At once?' he asked.
+
+'At once,' said she.
+
+He rang the bell, asked for Mr Clott, and when that gentleman appeared,
+ordered him to procure a special licence without delay.  Mr Clott made
+a note of it in his little red book, tucked his pencil behind his ear,
+and trotted away, his narrow little back stiffened by elation.  He, a
+gentleman of the Automobile Club, for whom there was no life outside
+the narrow circle whose centre is Piccadilly Circus, had been uneasy in
+his mind about the young lady, who was so clearly neither married nor
+purchasable, and it was a relief to him that she was to be his new
+employer's wife, though he was afraid of her, and shrivelled to the
+marrow in her presence.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT
+
+'_Ca marche_,' said Charles Mann to his wife a few weeks later.
+
+His programme was maturing.  He had arranged for two books to be
+published, for an exhibition to be held, for a committee to be formed,
+for lectures to be delivered in provincial centres, and he had been
+insulted by an offer to play a part in a forthcoming production of
+_King Lear_ at the Imperium Theatre.  He had forgotten that he had ever
+been an actor and did not wish to be reminded of it, and he was
+incensed when the manager of the Imperium used the offer as an
+advertising paragraph.
+
+'The fellow is jealous of the attention I am receiving in the Press and
+wants to divert some of it to himself.'
+
+'You should go and see him,' suggested Clara.
+
+'It is his place to come and see me.'
+
+'No.  Go and see him.'
+
+'Are you right?'
+
+'I always am.'
+
+'Clott, take down this letter to Sir Henry Butcher, Imperium Theatre,
+S.W....  "Dear Sir Henry, When I declined your kind offer the other
+day, my refusal was as private as your suggestion.  I can only conclude
+that some mistake has been made and I should like to have an
+understanding with you before I write a letter of explanation to the
+Press....'"
+
+'You think too much of the Press, Carlo.'
+
+'Only now, darling....  Later on the Press will have to come to me.'
+
+Clara looked dubious.
+
+'You're moving too quickly,' she said.  'I'm getting more used to
+London now, and I'm afraid of it.  It is just a great big machine, and
+there's no control over it.  There are times when I want to take you
+away from it.'
+
+'You gave me no peace until we came here.'
+
+'Yes.  But I didn't want to begin at the top.  I wanted to come over
+and live as we lived in Paris.'
+
+'Impossible.  What is freedom in Paris is poverty in London.'
+
+'But all your time goes in writing to the papers and sitting on
+committees.  You aren't doing any work.'
+
+'I've worked in exile for ten years.  I can carry on with that for a
+year at least.'
+
+'Very well.  Only don't stop believing in yourself.'
+
+'I could never do that.'
+
+'I think it would be very easy for you to begin believing in what the
+papers said about you.'
+
+'You're too young, my dear.  You see things too clearly.'
+
+They were now in the furnished house found for them by Mr Clott, a most
+respectable house in an unimpeachable neighbourhood: an old house
+reclaimed from the slums, re-faced, re-panelled, painted, papered,
+decorated by a firm who supplied taste as well as furniture.  Charles
+hated it, but Clara, who through her grandfather knew and appreciated
+comfort, was delighted with it, and with a few deft touches in every
+room made it her own.  It hurt her that Charles should hate it because
+it was good and decent in its atmosphere, and belonged to the widow of
+a famous man of letters, who, intrigued by the remarkable couple, had
+called once or twice and had invited Clara to her house, where the
+foreign-bred girl for the first time encountered the muffins and tea
+element of London life, which is its best and most characteristic.  It
+seemed to her that, if Charles would not accept that, he would never be
+reconciled to his native country as she wanted him to be.  There was
+about the muffins and tea in a cosy drawing-room a serenity which had
+always been to her the distinguishing mark of Englishmen abroad.  It
+had been in her grandfather's character, and she wanted it to be in
+Charles's.  It was to a certain extent in his character through his
+art, but she wanted it also to be through more tangible things.  As she
+wanted it, she willed it, and her will was an impersonal thing which in
+its movement dragged her whole being with it, and it had no more
+consideration for others than it had for herself.  She could see no
+reason why an artist should not be in touch with what was best in the
+ordinary lives of ordinary people; indeed, she could not imagine from
+what other source he could draw sustenance....
+
+Friends and acquaintances had come quickly.  Success was so rapid as to
+be almost ridiculous, and hardly worth having, and people took
+everything that Charles said in a most maddeningly literal way.  She
+understood what he meant, but very often she found that his utterances
+were translated into terms of money or politics or the commercial
+theatre, where they became just nonsense.  He was being transformed
+from her Charles into a monstrous London Charles, a great artist whose
+greatness was of more importance than his art.
+
+She first took alarm at this on the occasion of the dinner which the
+dear, delightful fellow arranged to have given to himself and then with
+childlike innocence accepted as a thing done in his honour--the first
+clear sign of the split in his personality which was to have such fatal
+consequences, for her and for so many others.
+
+There were three hundred guests.  The chair was taken by Professor
+Laverock, as a distinguished representative of modern painting, and he
+declared Mann to be the equal of Blake in vision, of Forain in
+technique, of Shelley in clear idealism.  Representatives of the
+intellectual theatre of the time were present and spoke, but the
+theatre of success was unrepresented.  There were critics, literary
+men, journalists of both sexes, idealists of both sexes, arrivists,
+careerists, everybody who had ever pleaded publicly for the theatre as
+a vehicle of art.  Professor Laverock declared it to be Mann's mission
+to open the theatre to the musician, the poet, and the painter, and, if
+he might express his secret hope, to close it to the actor.  There were
+many speeches, but Clara sat through them all staring straight in front
+of her, wondering if a single person in the room really understood what
+Charles wanted and what he meant.  Whether they did so or not, Charles
+did not help them much, for in response to the toast of his health he
+rose, beamed boyishly at the company and said, 'I'm so happy to be
+back.  Thank you very much.  The theatre needs love.  I give you my
+love.'
+
+He sat down so suddenly that Clara gasped, and was frightened for a
+second or two by the idea that he had been taken ill.  But when she
+turned to where he sat, he was chatting gaily to his neighbour and
+seemed to be unaware of any omission.  She heard a man near her say, 'I
+did hope he was going to be indiscreet,' and she felt with acute
+disappointment that this was just a dinner, just an entertainment among
+many dinners and entertainments, and she was ashamed.
+
+Charles, however, was delighted.  'Such nice people,' he said, as they
+walked home, 'such delightful people, and what a good dinner!'
+
+'Get away.  I hate you.  You're horrible,' cried Clara, flinging from
+him.
+
+'_Now_ what's the matter?' he asked, utterly taken aback.
+
+'You're so easily pleased,' she answered.  'People have only to be nice
+to you and you think the whole world is Heaven.'
+
+'So it is with you, chicken.'
+
+'Oh!  Don't be so pleased!  Don't be so pleased!  Do lose your temper
+with me sometimes!   I'm not a child.'
+
+'But they _were_ nice people.'
+
+'They weren't.  They were dreadful people.  They were only there
+because they think you _may_ succeed, and then there will be jobs for
+them all.'
+
+'You see through people so much that you forget they are people at all.'
+
+'That comes from living with you.  I have to see through you to realise
+that you are a person....'
+
+'Oh!  I _am_ a person then?'
+
+'Only to me....  You reflect everybody else.'
+
+'They are not worth more.'
+
+'They are.  Everybody is.  If only you would be yourself to them, they
+would be themselves.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+She had stung him, as she so often did, into self-realisation and
+self-criticism, a process so painful that, left to himself, he avoided
+it altogether....  He walked along moodily.  They were crossing St
+James's Park.  On the bridge he stopped, looked down into the water and
+said gloomily.
+
+'I sometimes think that my soul is as placid and still and shallow as
+that water, and that you, like all the rest, have only seen your own
+reflection in me....  That's why I like the comfort of restlessness and
+change.  Anything to break the stillness.'
+
+'You couldn't say that if it were true,' she said.
+
+'No.  I suppose not,' and, with one of his astonishing changes of mood,
+he took her arm and began to talk of the day when he had first met her
+in Picquart's studio, where everybody was gay and lively except they
+two, so that he talked to her, and seemed to have been talking for ever
+and had no idea of ever ceasing to do so.  And then he told her how
+better than even talking to her was being silent with her, and how all
+kinds of ideas in him that had been too shy to appear in solitude or
+with others had come tumbling out like notes of music because of her.
+
+'I've nearly forgotten,' he said, 'what being in love is like.  This
+was at the farthest end of love from that, something entirely new, so
+new as to be altogether outside life.  I have had to grope back into it
+again.'
+
+'I liked you,' said she, 'because you were English.'
+
+'Did you?'  He was puzzled.  'I thought that was precisely what I am
+not.'
+
+Neither could be angry for very long, and neither could be rancorous.
+The enchantment in which they lived would sometimes disappear for a
+space, when they would suffer, and he would tell himself that he was
+too old for the girl, or that he was not the kind of man who could live
+with a woman, or that she was seducing him from his work, while she
+would just sit numbed until the enchantment came again.  Without it
+there were moments when he seemed just ridiculous with his masses of
+papers, and Mr Clott, and his fussy insistence on being a great
+artist....  It was a keen pleasure to her to bring him back suddenly to
+physical things like food and clothes and to care for him.  Sometimes
+he would forget everything except food and clothes, and then she lived
+in a horror lest he should remain so and lose altogether the power of
+abstraction and concentration which made him so singular and forceful,
+and so near the man she most deeply knew him to be if only some power,
+some event, even some accident, could make him realise it and force him
+out of his imprisonment and almost entombment in his own thoughts.
+
+Her will concentrated on him anew and she said to herself, 'I can do
+it.  I can do it.  I know I can, and I will.'  And when she was in
+these fierce passions she used to remember her grandfather, the kindly
+old bibliophile, looking anxiously at her and saying,--
+
+'My dear, when you want a thing just look round and see if there aren't
+one or two other things you want.'
+
+But she had never understood what he meant, and she had never been able
+to look round, for always there was one thing she wanted, and when she
+wanted it she could not help herself, but had to sacrifice everything,
+friends, possessions, even love.  And as time went on, she realised
+that it was not Charles she wanted so much as some submerged quality in
+him.  The object of her desire being simplified, her will set, only the
+more firmly, even rigidly.
+
+It made her analyse him ruthlessly; his childish lack of
+self-criticism, his placidity, his insatiable vanity, his almost
+deliberate exploitation of his personal charm, all these things she
+cast aside and ignored.  She came then to his thoughts, and here she
+was baffled because she knew so little of his history.  Beyond his
+thoughts lay that in which she was passionately interested, but between
+her and it danced innumerable Charleses all inviting her attention, all
+bidding her look away from that one Charles Mann for whom she hungered
+with something of the worship which religious women have for their
+Saviour.
+
+He was immensely kind to her, almost oppressively kind.  He could never
+be otherwise to any living creature--in personal contact, but without
+that he was careless, indifferent, forgetful, although when she saw him
+again it was as though he had never been away.  They were considered a
+charming and most devoted couple, and their domestic felicity helped
+him in his success.
+
+Much talk in the newspapers, many committees--but Clara felt that
+merely another Charles was being created to dance between her and her
+desire.  This was too far from what she wanted, and she could not see
+how it could lead to it; there was altogether too much talk.  What he
+said was very fine but it merely gathered a rather flabby set of people
+round him--and most exasperatingly he liked it and them...  'Such nice
+people.'
+
+'That is all very well,' said Clara, 'but we are spending far more than
+there is any possibility of your making.'
+
+'There are rich men interested,' said Charles.
+
+'But until you make money, they won't give you any.'
+
+Hard sense was always too much for him, and he retired puzzled and
+rather pained from the argument.
+
+Because she was beautiful she attracted many men, many flatterers, but
+as they penetrated her graciousness, they came upon the hard granite of
+her will and were baffled, unpleasantly disturbed, and used to leave
+her, darting angry glances at the blissful Charles, who was sublimely
+unconscious of criticism in those whom he approached.  He accepted them
+as they were or seemed to be and expected the like from them.  He was
+too busy, too eager, to question or to look for hidden motives in those
+who supported him, and that he was concealing anything or had anything
+to conceal never crossed his mind!  He had other things to think of,
+always new things, new plans, new schemes, and he was fundamentally not
+interested in himself.  A charming face, a lovely cloud in the sky, the
+scent of a flower, a glass of good wine could give him such delight as
+made him beam upon the world and find all things good.  It was always a
+trifle which sent him soaring like a singing lark, always a trifle that
+could lift him from the depths of depression.  Great emotion he did not
+seem to need, though the concentrated emotion with which he hurled
+himself at his work was tremendous.  Happy is the people that has no
+history.  For all that he was aware of, Charles had no history.  He was
+born again every morning, and he could not realise that the world went
+grinding on from day to day....
+
+Never had life been so sweet, never had he been so successful, never
+had he had so much money, never had he been so exquisitely cared for,
+never had so many doors been open to him, never had such pleasant
+things been said of him!  He went to bed singing, and singing he awoke
+in the morning, but in her heart Clara was anxious and suspicious of
+London, most suspicious of the artists and literary men who thronged
+the house, and gathered at the elaborate supper which Charles insisted
+on giving every Sunday night.  They were too denunciatory, too much
+aloof, too proud of their aloofness, and talked too much.  She thought
+Charles too good for them and said so.
+
+'Art is a brotherhood,' he said magnificently, 'and the meanest of the
+brethren is my equal.'
+
+'That is no reason why you should be familiar with them.  You cheapen
+yourself.  Besides it is a waste of time....  A lot of people never do
+anything, and--I don't like it.'
+
+'Ho! ho!  Are you in revolt, chicken?'
+
+'I don't want you to fritter away what you have got.  It isn't worth
+while to spend money on people who can do nothing for you.'
+
+'I don't want anybody to do anything for _me_.  It is for art.'
+
+'But they don't understand that.  They think all sorts of wonderful
+things are going to happen through you.'
+
+'So they are....  Hasn't it been wonderful so far?'
+
+'For us.  Yes.'
+
+'Wasn't the exhibition a great success?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Very well then.'
+
+'But you only sold the work you have done during the last ten years.
+It is the work you are doing now that matters.  What work are you
+doing?'
+
+'Plenty--plenty.  Mr Clott sends out not less than forty letters a day.
+And I have just invented some beautiful designs for _Volpone_.'
+
+'Is it going to be done?'
+
+'It will be when they see my designs.'
+
+Clara bit her lip.  This was precisely what she had hoped to scotch by
+coming to London.  In Paris he had made marvellous designs.  Artists
+had come to look at them and then they had been put away in a portfolio.
+
+'What I want,' said he, 'is a patron, some one who, having made his
+money in soap, or pills, or margarine, wishes to make reparation
+through art....  Michael Angelo had a patron and I ought to have one,
+so that I can do for my theatre what he did for the Sistine Chapel.'
+
+They didn't build the Sistine Chapel for him.'
+
+'No....  N--o,' he mumbled.
+
+'Don't you see that things are different _now_, Charles.  Everything
+has to pay nowadays, and there aren't great public works for artists to
+do.  Michael Angelo was an engineer as well....  You couldn't design a
+theatre without an architect now, could you?'
+
+'Why should I when there are architects to do it?'  He was beginning to
+get angry.
+
+'If you could you would be able to carry out your own theories as
+well....  People want something more than drawings on paper....'
+
+'You talk as though I had done nothing.'
+
+'It has been too easy....  Appreciation is so easy for the kind of
+people who come here.  It costs nothing, and they get a good deal in
+return.'
+
+'Don't you worry about me, chick.  I'm a great deal more practical than
+you suppose.'
+
+'I only want to know,' she said, rising to leave the room, 'because, if
+you are not going to work, I must.'
+
+'My dearest child,' he shouted, 'don't be so impatient.  It is only a
+question of time.  My book is not out yet.  We are arranging for the
+reviews now.  When that is done then the ball will really be set
+rolling.'
+
+'To be quite frank with you,' retorted Clara.  'I hate it all being on
+paper.  I am going to learn acting, and I'm going on the stage to find
+out what the theatre is like....  I don't see how else I can help you,
+and if I can't help you I must leave you.'
+
+He protested loudly against that, so loudly and so vehemently that she
+pounced and, with her eyes blazing, told him that she intended to make
+her own career, and that whether it fitted in with his depended
+entirely upon himself.
+
+'I won't have you wasted,' she cried, 'I won't.  It has been going on
+too long, this writing down on paper, and drawing designs on paper, and
+now with all these columns about you in the papers you look like being
+smothered in paper.  You might as well be a politician or an
+adventurer--You have no passion.'
+
+'I!  No passion!'
+
+'On paper.  The world's choked with paper, and London is stifled with
+it.  My grandfather told me that.  He spent his life travelling and
+reading old books--running away from it.  I'm not going to run away
+from it, and I am not going to let you be smothered by it----'
+
+'How long has this been simmering up in you?'
+
+'Ever since that first day when you were interviewed....  We're not
+living our own lives at all, but the lives dictated to us by this
+ridiculous machinery that turns out papers ten times a day.  We're----'
+
+'Very well,' said Charles submissively.  'What do you want me to do?'
+
+'I want you to keep your appointment with Sir Henry Butcher.'
+
+He pulled a long face.
+
+'You'll hate it, I know,' she added, 'but there is the theatre, and
+you've got to make the best of it.  I dare say Michael Angelo didn't
+care particularly for the Sistine Chapel.'
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IMPERIUM
+
+Sir Henry Butcher sat in his sanctum, pulling his aggressive, bulbous
+nose, and ruefully turning over the account presented by his manager of
+the last week's business with his new production, a spectacular version
+of _Ivanhoe_, in which he appeared as Isaac of York.
+
+'No pull,' he muttered.  'No pull.'  And to console himself he took up
+a little pink packet of Press cuttings, and perused them....
+'Wonderful notices!  Wonderful notices!  It's these confounded
+music-halls and cinemas, lowering the people's taste.  Yet the public's
+loyal, wonderfully loyal.  Must be the play.  Wish I'd read the book
+before I let old Kinslake have his three hundred.  Told me everybody
+had read it....'
+
+Sir Henry was a man of sixty, well-preserved, with the soft, infantine
+quality which grease paint imparts to the skin.  He had an enormous
+head, large dark eyes, sly and humorous, in which, as his shallow
+whimsical thoughts flitted through his brain, mischief glinted.  He was
+surrounded with portraits of himself in his various successes, and
+above his head was a bust of himself in the character of Napoleon.
+Every now and then, when he remembered it, he compressed his lips, and
+tucked his chin into his breast, but he could not deceive even himself,
+much less anybody else, and his habitual expression was that of a bland
+baby miraculously endowed with a knowledge of the world's mischief.
+
+His room was luxurious but dark, being lit only by a skylight.  The
+walls were lined with a dull gold lincrusta, and on them were hung
+portraits of the proprietor of the Imperium and a series of drawings
+for the famous Imperium posters, which had through many years
+brightened the gloomy streets of London and its ever expanding
+outskirts.  Sir Henry's mischievous eyes flitted from drawing to
+drawing, and his tongue passed over his thick lips as he tasted again
+the savour of his success--more than twenty unbroken years of it.  He
+thought of the crowded houses, the brilliant audiences he had gathered
+together, the happy speeches he had made, the banquets he had held
+after so many first performances--and then he thought of _Ivanhoe_, a
+mistake.  Worse than a mistake, a strategical blunder, for now had come
+the time when his crowning ambition should be fulfilled, to have the
+Imperium unofficially acknowledged as the national theatre, so that
+when he retired it should be purchased for the nation and make his
+achievement immortal....  Macready, Irving, all of the great line had
+perished and were but names, while Henry Butcher would be remembered as
+the creator of the theatre, the people's theatre, the nation's
+theatre....  Then he remembered a particularly delicious wine he had
+drunk in this very room at supper, after rehearsal with the brilliant
+woman who had steered him through his early career and had saved him
+again and again from disaster--Teresa Chesney.  Ah! there was no one
+like her now, no one.  Actresses were ladies now, they were not of the
+theatre....  There was no one now with whom a bottle of old claret had
+so divine a flavour....  She would never have let him produce
+_Ivanhoe_.  She would have read the book for him.  She always used to
+stand between him and those idiots at the club.
+
+He went to the tantalus on his sideboard and poured himself out a
+brandy and soda, and drank to Teresa's memory, and then to the portrait
+of his wife, who had been so wonderfully skilful in decorating the
+front of the house with Dukes, Duchesses, and celebrities, but it
+needed Teresa's power behind the scenes.
+
+It was very distressing that all qualities could not be found in one
+woman, and a mocking litany floated through Sir Henry's brain, 'One for
+the front of the house, one for the back, one for paragraphs, one for
+posters, but a man for business.'
+
+He lay back in his chair and cudgelled his brains for some means of
+turning _Ivanhoe_ from a disastrous failure into an apparent success,
+but no idea came, and throwing out his long legs and caressing his
+round belly he said,--
+
+'If I paint my nose red, and give myself two large eyebrows they'll
+laugh, and it might go.  I must have a play in which I enter down the
+chimney....'
+
+The telephone by his side rang.
+
+'Yes.  I'm terribly busy, terribly....  Very well.  I'll ring as soon
+as I can see him.'
+
+He put down the receiver, flung out his legs once more, and resumed his
+thoughts.
+
+'I might pay a visit to America.  They keep sending people over here.'
+But his memory twinged as he thought of the insulting criticisms he had
+encountered on his last visit to Broadway.
+
+'Teresa would tell me what to do.  Some one told me Scott was the next
+best thing to Shakespeare.  Oh, well!'
+
+He put his hand to a bell-button in the arm of his chair, and in a few
+moments his secretary ushered in Mr Charles Mann.  Sir Henry rose, drew
+himself up to his full height, but even then had to look up at his
+visitor.
+
+'How d'you do?  I remember you as a boy, and I remember your father.  I
+even remember his father at Drury Lane....  Pity you've broken the
+tradition.  The public is proud of the old theatrical families....  I'm
+sorry you wouldn't take that part I offered you.  I saw your photograph
+in the papers and your face was the very thing, and, besides, your
+return to the stage would have been interesting.'
+
+Charles bristled, and flung his portfolio and large black hat down on
+the table.
+
+'I have brought you my designs for _Volpone_.'
+
+'For what?'
+
+'_Volpone_--a comedy by Ben Jonson.'
+
+'Oh, Ben Jonson!'
+
+Sir Henry was depressed.  He had met people before who had talked to
+him about the Old Dramatists.
+
+Charles opened his portfolio.
+
+'These are designs I have just completed.  You see, classical, like
+Ben's mind.'
+
+'It looks immensely high,' said Sir Henry, his eyes twinkling.
+
+'That,' replied Charles, 'is what I want, so that the figures are
+dwarfed.'
+
+'I should have to alter my proscenium,' chuckled Sir Henry, and
+Charles, who missed the chuckle, continued eagerly,--
+
+'I should like it played by dolls.'
+
+Sir Henry turned over the drawings and played with the money in his
+pocket.
+
+'You never saw my _King Lear_, did you?'
+
+'I have seen pictures of it.  Too realistic.  A visit to Stonehenge
+would have answered the same purpose.  You would have then to make such
+a storm as would drown the storm in _Lear_.'
+
+Sir Henry remembered his part and fetched up an enormous voice from his
+stomach and roared,--
+
+'Rage, blow and drown the steeples.'  Then he kept his voice rumbling
+in his belly and tapped with his foot like the bass-trumpet man in a
+street band.
+
+'Superb,' cried Charles.
+
+'My voice?' asked Sir Henry, now very pleased with himself.
+
+'My drawings,' replied Charles, rubbing his thumb along a line that
+especially delighted him.
+
+'O Heavens!'  Sir Henry paid no further attention to the drawings and
+drawled, 'Wonderful thing the theatre.'  There's life in it--life!  I
+hate leaving it.  You haven't been to my room before?'
+
+'I once waited for two hours downstairs to ask you to give me a part.
+You didn't see me and I gave up acting.
+
+'Oh! and now when I offer you a part you refuse it----'
+
+'Things are very different now....  I have had a great welcome back to
+London.'
+
+'What do you think of a national theatre?'
+
+'Every nation, every city, ought to have its theatre.'
+
+'Mine is the best theatre in London.'
+
+'You won't do _Volpone_?  It is one of the finest comedies ever
+written.'
+
+'I never heard of its being done.'
+
+Charles flung his drawings back into his portfolio, seized his hat,
+crammed it on to his head, and had reached the door when Sir Henry
+called him back.
+
+'What do you say to _The Tempest_?'
+
+'It doesn't need scenery.'
+
+'Oh, come!  The ship, the yellow sands.  Prospero's cave--pictures all
+the way--and the masque....  I want to do _The Tempest_ shortly and I
+should be glad of your assistance.'
+
+'I should expect you to buy my drawings and to pay me ten thousand
+pounds.'
+
+Sir Henry ignored that.  He knew his man by reputation.  Ten thousand
+pounds meant no more to him than one and sixpence.  He merely mentioned
+the first figures that came into his head.  Sir Henry resumed,--
+
+'I want _The Tempest_ to be my first Autumn production.  I place my
+theatre at your disposal....  To be quite frank with you, that was why
+I offered you that part.  The theatre wants something new.  The Russian
+ballet has upset people.  They are expecting something startling....
+Poor old Smithson who has painted my scenery for twenty years is
+horrified when I suggest anything of the kind.'
+
+'If I do _The Tempest_ for you will you join my committee?'
+
+'Er--I--er--You must give me time to think it over.  You know we
+managers have to think of each other.'
+
+Charles began to wish he had not come.  The suggestion of mysterious
+influences behind Sir Henry alarmed him, and at home was the furious
+energy in Clara forcing him into the embraces of this huge machine of a
+theatre, which discarded his _Volpone_ and required him to do something
+for which he had not the smallest inclination.  Yet so implicit was his
+faith in her, so wonderful had been his life since she came into it,
+that he accepted the accuracy of her divination of the futility of his
+procedure through artists and literary persons, who would feed upon his
+fame and increase it to have more to devour....  He decided then to say
+no more about his committee for the present, to accept Sir Henry's
+offer, and to escape as quickly as possible from the stifling room,
+with its horrible drawings, and its atmosphere in which were blended a
+fashionable restaurant and a stockbroker's office.  He had not felt so
+uncomfortable since he had been a schoolboy in the presence of his head
+master, and yet he enjoyed a European reputation, while outside the
+Anglo-Saxon world Sir Henry was hardly known.
+
+The great actor condescendingly escorted the great artist down the
+heavily carpeted stairs to a private door which led to the dress
+circle.  The theatre was in darkness.  The seats were covered up in
+their white sheets, and Sir Henry looked round him and sighed,--
+
+'Ah! cold, cold, a theatre soon grows cold.  But it possesses you.  Art
+is very like a woman.  She only yields up her treasure to the purest
+passion.'
+
+'Art has nothing to do with women,' Charles rapped out, and, as Sir
+Henry had only been making a phrase, he was not offended.  Charles
+shook the large fat hand which was held out to him, and plunged into
+the street....  Ah!  It was good to be in the air again, to gaze up at
+the sky, to see the passers-by moving about their business.  There was
+a stillness about the theatre which made him think of Sir Henry in his
+room as rather like a large pale fish swimming about in a tank in a
+dark aquarium....  After his years of freedom in delightful countries,
+where people were in no hurry and were able most charmingly to do
+nothing in particular for weeks on end, the captivity of so eminent and
+powerful a person appalled and crushed him....  He had not encountered
+anything like it in his previous sojourn in London, and he was again
+possessed with the bewildered rage that had seized him when he saw the
+rebuilt station on his arrival.  He had been out of it all for so long,
+yet he was of it, and he shuddered away from the increased captivity of
+London, yet longed to have been part of it....  It was almost
+bewilderingly a new city.  During his absence, the immense change from
+horse to petrol-driven vehicles had taken place and a new style of
+architecture had been introduced.  The air was cleaner: so were the
+streets.  Shop windows were larger.  There was everywhere more display,
+more colour, more and swifter movement, and yet in the theatre was that
+deadly stillness.
+
+He turned into a magnificent shop, where all the flowers looked rather
+like little girls dressed up for a party, and ordered some roses to be
+sent to Clara, for whom he had begun to feel a rudimentary
+responsibility.  It comforted him to do that.  Somehow it broke the
+stillness which had infected him, and most profoundly shocked him, so
+different was it from the theatre in which he had been born and bred,
+the rather fatuous, very sentimental theatre which was inhabited by
+simple kind-hearted vagabonds, isolated from the world of morals and
+religion, yet passionately proud of their calling, and setting it above
+both morals and religion.  But this theatre, magnificent in this new
+magnificent London, was empty and still.  So much of the theatre that
+had been dear to him was gone, and he mourned for it, lamented, too,
+over his own folly, for he was suddenly brought face to face with the
+fact that the theatre he proposed so light-heartedly to overthrow, the
+theatre of the actor, had disappeared.  In attacking it he was beating
+the air.  He had to deal with a new enemy.
+
+As he was emerging from St James's Park into Victoria Street a woman
+accosted him.  He looked at her, did not recognise her, and moved to
+pass on, for he was fastidious and took no interest in chance women.
+She was a little woman, very alert, and she was rather poorly dressed.
+She was young, but already her lips had stiffened into the hardness of
+baffled hope and passion and her eyes smouldered with that
+extraordinary glow which rouses a pity as cold as ice.
+
+'I saw you were back in the papers,' she said.  'It's a pity you can't
+hide yourself.'
+
+Charles stared at her, stared and stared, cast about for some excuse
+for pretending not to know her but remained rooted.
+
+'You're not so young as you were,' she went on.  'There's a lot of talk
+about you in the papers, but I know you; it's all talk.'
+
+'My good woman,' said he, 'is that all you have to say?'
+
+'It'll keep,' said she, and she turned abruptly and left him, feeling
+that all the strength had gone out of his legs, all the feeling from
+his bowels, leaving only a nauseating pity which brought up memory upon
+memory of horrible emotions, without any physical memory to fix them so
+that he was at their mercy.  At last physical memories began to emerge,
+rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the
+arcades at Birmingham.  And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her
+long ago; and at last her name.  Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a
+golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like
+the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee in another.
+
+'I had forgotten,' said Charles to himself.  'I really had forgotten.
+Well--money will settle it.  I shall have to do _The Tempest_ for that
+fish.'
+
+Thinking of the money restored his sense of serenity.  Wonderful money
+that can swamp so many ills: money that means work done
+somewhere--work, the sole solace of human misery.  But Charles had no
+notion of the relation between work and money, or that in using up
+large quantities of it he was diverting to his own uses more than his
+fair share of the comfort of humanity.  He had so much to give if only
+humanity would take--and pay for it.  What he had to give was beyond
+price, wherefore he had no qualms in setting his price high....  From
+_The Tempest_ boundless wealth would flow.  He quickly persuaded
+himself of that, and by the time he reached his furnished house had
+lulled his alarm to sleep and had allayed the disgust and loathing of
+the past roused in him by the meeting with Kitty Messenger....  So rosy
+had the vision become under the influence of his potential wealth that
+he met Clara without a qualm, and forgot even that Sir Henry was like a
+fish in an aquarium.
+
+'We got on splendidly,' he said, 'and I am to have the whole theatre
+for _The Tempest_ in the Autumn.'
+
+'I told you I was right,' said she.
+
+'Bless you, child,' he cried.  'You always are, always.  And now we
+will go out and drink champagne--Here's a health unto His Majesty, with
+a fal-lal-la.'
+
+He was like a rebellious boy, and Clara disliked that mood in him,
+because he was rather rough and cumbrous in his humour, cracked gusty
+and rather stupid jokes, ate voraciously, and drank like a carter.
+
+They went to a most elegant restaurant, where their entry created a
+stir, and it was whispered from end to end of the room who he was.  And
+the girl with him?  People shrugged....  Clara's eyes were alight, and
+she looked from table to table at the sleek, well-groomed men, and the
+showy women with their gaudy hair ornaments, bare powdered shoulders,
+and beautiful gowns.  She looked from face to face searching eagerly
+for--she knew not what; power, perhaps, some power which should justify
+their costly elegance.  This hurt as a lie hurt her, because, as she
+gazed from person to person, she could not divine the individuality
+beneath the uniform, and she was still young enough to wish to do
+so....  Meanwhile, as she gazed, Charles ate and drank lustily, and, it
+must be admitted, noisily.  There was no suppression of individuality
+about Charles.  It brimmed over in him.  He had gone to that restaurant
+to enjoy himself; not because it was a place frequented by successful
+persons....  Clara's eyes came back to him.  Yes, she preferred her
+Charles to every one else, if only--if only he would realise that she
+thought of other things besides himself.
+
+From a table near by a very good-looking man came and tapped Charles on
+the shoulder.
+
+'There's no mistaking you, old chap,' he said.  'I'm just back from
+America.  They think a lot of you over there since your conquest of
+London.'
+
+'You haven't met my wife,' said Charles, with his mouth full.  'What a
+splendid place this is!  Chicken, this is Freeland Moore.  We were
+together in the old days with the Old Man.'
+
+'I was with him when he died,' said Freeland, 'died in harness.
+There's no one like him now.'
+
+'Who?' asked Clara, alive at once to even the memory of a great
+personality.
+
+'Henry Irving.  He was a prince, and kept royalty alive in England.  It
+seems a long time ago now.  Won't you come over and join us for coffee,
+when you have finished?  I am with Miss Julia Wainwright; she's with us
+at the Imperium.  Not for long, I'm afraid.  It's a wash-out.'
+
+'Ah!' said Charles, remembering Sir Henry's depressed glance round the
+theatre, and he saw himself restoring splendour and success to the
+Imperium.
+
+After dinner they went over to Mr Moore's table, and Clara, shaking
+hands with Miss Wainwright, warmed to the large, generous creature with
+her expansive bosom, her drooping figure, her tinted face and hair and
+ludicrously long soft eyes.  There was room in Miss Wainwright for a
+dozen Claras.  She looked sentimentally and with amazement spreading in
+ripples over her big face at the girl's wedding-ring and said,--
+
+'So pleased to meet you, child.  I made Freeland go over and fetch
+you....  You're not on the stage, are you?'
+
+'No,' replied Clara, 'but I'm going to be.'
+
+'It is not what it was,' resumed Miss Wainwright, sipping her _creme de
+menthe_.' The Wainwrights have always been in the profession, but I'm
+sending my boy to a public-school....  You're not English, are you?'
+
+'Oh, yes,' answered Clara, 'but I have always lived abroad in Italy and
+Germany and France with my grandfather.  My father and mother died in
+India, but I was born in London.'
+
+'If you want to get about,' said Miss Wainwright, 'there's nothing like
+the profession.  I've been in Australia, Ceylon, South Africa, America,
+but never Canada....  I'm just back from America with Freeland, and we
+took the first thing that came along--_Ivanhoe_.  It's a lovely show
+but the play's no good....  Why not come and see it?  Freeland, go and
+telephone Mr Gillies to keep a box for Mrs Mann.'
+
+Freeland obeyed, treading the floor of the restaurant as though it were
+a stage.
+
+'I suppose you're not sorry you gave up acting, Charles,' said Miss
+Wainwright, with her most expansive affability.  She oozed charm, and
+surrounded Charles and Clara with it, so that almost for the first time
+Clara felt that she really was identified with her great man.  Those
+who worshipped at the shrine of his greatness always regarded her as an
+adjunct and their politeness chilled her, but Miss Wainwright swept
+greatness aside and was delightfully concerned only with what she
+regarded as a striking and very happy couple.
+
+Charles, who was absorbed in eating an orange, made no reply other than
+a grimace.
+
+'I don't know how you did it....  I couldn't.  Once a player, always a
+player--money or no money, and there's a great deal more money in it
+than there used to be.'
+
+Freeland Moore returned, announced that a box had been reserved, and,
+telling Miss Wainwright that it was time to go, he helped her on with
+her wrap of swan's down and velvet....
+
+'I'll come and call if I may,' said Miss Wainwright, with a billowing
+bow, and, with a magnificent setting of all her sails she moved away
+from the table, and, taking the wind of approval from her audience, the
+other diners, she preened her way out.
+
+'Pouf!  Pah!  Pah!' said Charles, shaking back his mane.  'Pouf!  The
+stink of green-paint.'
+
+'I'm sure she's the kindest woman in the world.'
+
+'So are they all,' growled Charles, 'dripping with kindness or burning
+with jealousy....  The theatrical woman!--It's a modern indecency.'
+
+'And suppose I became one.'
+
+'You couldn't.'
+
+'But I'm going to.'
+
+'You'd never stand it for a week, my dear.  I'd ... I'd ...'
+
+'What would you do?'
+
+'I'd forbid it.'
+
+'Then I should not stay with you....  You know that.'
+
+Charles knew it.  He had learned painfully that though she had some
+respect for his opinion, she had none for his authority.
+
+He had more coffee, liqueurs, fruit, a cigar, gave the waiter a tip
+which sent him running to fetch the noble diner's overcoat, and,
+hailing a taxi, they drove the few hundred yards to the Imperium, where
+he growled, grunted, muttered, dashed his hands through his hair, and
+she sat with her eyes glued on the stage, and her brows puckered as the
+dull, illiterate version of Scott's novel, denuded of all dramatic
+quality, was paraded before her....  In an interval, Charles asked her
+what she thought of it.
+
+'It is death,' she said.  'It is nothing but money.'
+
+'Money,' repeated Charles.  'Money....  Whose money? ...'  And he
+suddenly felt again that splendid feeling of confidence.  With his
+_Tempest_ all the money in that place should sustain beauty, and every
+ugly thing, every ugly thought should disappear.  He touched Clara's
+hair, and for the first time, somewhat to his alarm, realised that she
+was something more than an amusing and delightful child, and that he
+had married her.
+
+He looked down from the box into the stalls, and wondered if behind the
+white-shirt fronts and the bare bosoms there were also anxious thoughts
+and uneasy emotions, and if everybody had troubles that lurked in the
+past and might race ahead of them to meet them in the future....  Then
+he laughed at himself.  After all, whatever happened, his fame grew,
+and he went on being Charles Mann.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+BEHIND THE SCENES
+
+Miss Julia Wainwright might be sentimental, and she might be jealous,
+but she was shrewd, and she understood intuitively the relationship
+between Charles and Clara.  At first she refused to believe that they
+were married, as Charles was notoriously careless in these matters, but
+when she was faced with the fact her warm heart warned her of tragedy
+and she took it upon herself to inform Clara of the mysterious
+difficulties of married life, especially for two sensitive people.
+
+'Charles wants a stupid woman and you want a stupid man,' she said.
+
+Clara, of course, refused to believe that, and said that with a stupid
+woman Charles would just rot away in a studio and grow more and more
+unintelligible.
+
+'Never mind, then,' said Miss Wainwright.  'I'll show you round.  If
+you are meant for the theatre nothing can keep you away from it.  The
+only thing I can see against you is that you're a lady.'
+
+'Is that against me?' asked Clara, a little astonished.
+
+'Well,' replied Miss Wainwright, 'we're different.'
+
+And indeed Clara discovered very soon that actors and actresses were
+different from other people, because they concealed nothing.  Their
+personalities were entirely on view, and exposed for sale.  They
+reserved nothing.  Such as they were, they were for the theatre and for
+no other purpose, but to be moved at a moment's notice from theatre to
+theatre, from town to town, from country to country.  They were
+refreshing in their frank simplicity, compared with which life with
+Charles was oppressive in its complexity.
+
+As she surveyed the two, Clara was torn asunder for a time and was
+reluctant to take the plunge, and yet she knew that this was the world
+to which Charles belonged, this world of violent contrasts, of vivid
+light and shadowy darkness, of painted illusion and the throbbing
+reality of the audience, of idle days and feverish nights.  His mind
+was soaked in it, and his soul, all except that obscure part of it that
+delighted in flowers and in her own youth, hungered for it, and yet it
+seemed she had to force him into it....  If only he had a little more
+will, a little more intelligence.
+
+Often she found herself thinking of him as 'poor Charles,' and then she
+set her teeth, and shook back her hair, and vowed that no one should
+ever think of her as 'poor Clara.' ...  Life had been so easy when they
+had drifted together from studio to studio, but it threatened to be
+mighty difficult now that they had squared up to life and to this huge
+London....
+
+_Ivanhoe_ staggered on for six weeks and then collapsed, and an old
+successful melodrama was revived to carry the Imperium over the early
+summer months.  In this production, as a protegee of Miss Wainwright's,
+Clara played a small part in which she had ten words to say....  She
+was quite inaudible though she seemed to herself to be using every atom
+of voice in her slim young body, but always her voice seemed to fill
+her own head until it must surely burst.
+
+'Nerves,' said Miss Wainwright.  'You'll get your technique all right,
+and then you won't hear yourself speak any more than you do when you
+are talking in a room.  It's just a question of losing yourself, and
+that you learn to do unconsciously....  It'll come all right, dearie.
+It'll come all right.'
+
+Clara was determined that it should come all right, though she knew it
+would not until she had overcome her loathing of painting her face, and
+pencilling her eyes, and dabbing red paint into the corners of them.
+So much did she detest this at first that her personality repudiated
+this false projection of herself and left her helpless.  Over and over
+again she said to herself,--
+
+'I shall never be an actress.  I shall never be an actress....' But
+then again she said, 'I will.'
+
+There was a violence in appearing in the glaring light before so many
+people which offended her deeply, and yet she knew that she was wrong
+to be offended, because the people had come not to look at her, Clara
+Day, but at the false projection of Clara Day which was needed for the
+play....  Her objection was moral, and so strong that it made her
+really ill, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could keep
+going at all, but not a word did she say to a soul.  She fought through
+it with clenched teeth, going through agony night after night, smiling
+when it was over, going home exhausted, and dreading the coming of the
+morrow when it would all have to be borne again....
+
+She used to look at the others and wonder if they had been through the
+same thing, but it was plain to her clear eyes that they had nearly all
+accepted without a struggle, and had surrendered to the false
+projection of themselves which the theatre needed.  Stage-fright they
+knew, but not this moral struggle in which, determined not to be
+beaten, she fought on.
+
+Rehearsals she enjoyed.  Then the actors were at their indolent best,
+and the half-lit stage was full of a dim, suggestive beauty, which
+entirely disappeared by the time the scene-painter, the lime-light man,
+and the stage-carpenter had done their work.  Often at rehearsal, words
+would give her the shock of truth that in performance would just puzzle
+her by their banality; voices would seem to come from some remote
+recess of life; movements would take on dignity; the players seemed
+indeed to move and live in an enchanted world....  And so, off the
+stage, they did.
+
+Miss Wainwright and Mr Freeland Moore, who had played together for so
+many years, were idyllic lovers, though he had a wife in America, and
+she a husband who had gone his ways.  To them there were no further
+stages of love than those which are shown to the Anglo-American public.
+For them there were but Romeo and Juliet at the ball with no contending
+houses to plague them.  They lived in furnished flats and paid their
+way, impervious to every conspiracy of life to bring them down to
+earth....  Both adored Clara, both soon accepted her and Charles as
+lovers even more perfect than themselves, because younger, and both
+were never tired of thinking what kindness they could next do to help
+their friends.
+
+And Clara struggled on.  Sometimes she could have screamed with rage
+against the theatre, and these people whose enchantment had been won by
+the sacrifice of the fiery essence of themselves, so that they accepted
+meekly insults from the manager, from the stage-manager, from the very
+dressing-room staff of the theatre, who could make their lives
+uncomfortable.  She understood then what it was that had driven Charles
+out, and made him so reluctant to return, and why his immense talent,
+which should have been expressed in terms of the theatre, was reduced
+to making what, after all, were only notes on paper.  Convinced that
+she could help to bring him back from exile, she struggled on, though
+the strain increased as more and more fiercely she had to pit her will
+against the powerful machinery of the theatre.
+
+Everybody was kind to her, though many were alarmed by the intent force
+with which she set about her work.  Very often she had no energy left
+for conversation, and would then take refuge in a book, a volume of
+Meredith, or Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer or Browning, who had been the
+poet of her first discovery of the world of books.  That frightened off
+the young men, who were at first greatly taken with her charm.  They
+were subdued themselves as everybody was, from the business manager
+down, but her silence chilled and alarmed them....  Except those she
+bought herself, she never saw a book in the theatre.
+
+At first, full of Charles's fierce denunciation of Sir Henry Butcher,
+she detested the man, who seemed to her like some monster who absorbed
+all the vitality of the rest and used it to inflate his egoism.  He
+never spoke to her for some weeks, and she avoided meeting him, did not
+wish to speak to him, felt, indeed, that she was perhaps using him a
+little unfairly in turning his theatre to her own ends, forcing herself
+to accept it in order to make things easier for Charles, to whom she
+used to go with a most vivid caricature of Sir Henry at rehearsals.
+
+Until he appeared there was a complete languor upon the stage.  The
+actors and actresses still had upon them the mood of breakfast-in-bed;
+some looked as though they were living in the day before yesterday and
+had given up all hope of catching up with the rest of the world; some
+of the men talked sport; all the women chattered scandal; some read
+their letters, others the telegrams by which their correspondence was
+conducted.  In none was the slightest indication of preparedness for
+work, for the thoughts of all were obviously miles away from the
+theatre....  Stagehands moved noisily about.  They, at least, were
+conscious of earning their living.  Messages were brought in from the
+stage-door.  Back cloths were let down: the fire-proof curtain
+descended slowly, and remained shutting out the vast and gloomy spaces
+of the auditorium, also a melancholy gray-haired lady who was the widow
+of the author of the melodrama in rehearsal.
+
+Sir Henry appeared with a bald-headed Frenchman, with a red ribbon in
+his button-hole, his secretary, carrying a shorthand notebook, and a
+stout, thick-set Jew, who waited obsequiously for the great actor to
+take further notice of him.  Sir Henry talked volubly and laughed
+uproariously.  He was very happy and he beamed round the stage at his
+company.  The ladies said,--
+
+'Good-morning, Sir Henry.'
+
+The gentlemen said,--
+
+'Morning.'
+
+Sir Henry gesticulating violently turned away and began in French to
+tell a humorous story to which the Frenchman said, '_Oui, oui_,' and
+the Jew said, '_Oui, oui_,' while Clara, who could speak French as
+fluently as English, understood not a word of it; but this morning she
+liked Sir Henry because he was so happy and because he was so full of
+vitality.
+
+His business with the Jew and the Frenchman was soon settled fairly to
+their satisfaction.  They went away, and Sir Henry began to collect his
+thoughts.  He turned to his secretary and asked,--
+
+'We are rehearsing a play, eh?  All these ladies and gentlemen are not
+here for nothing, eh?  What play?'
+
+'_The Golden Hawk_.'
+
+'Ah!  Yes....  I have rehearsed so many plays....  I am thinking of my
+big Autumn success....  I can feel it in the air.  I can always feel
+it.  I felt that _Ivanhoe_ was no good, but I was over-persuaded.  My
+instinct is always right.  The business men and the authors are always
+wrong....'
+
+He flew into a sudden passion, and roared, 'Who the hell let down the
+fire-proof?  I hate the thing.  Take it away.  How can a man rehearse
+to a fire-proof curtain?  Take it away.  Send it to the London County
+Council who inflicted it on me.  I don't want it.'
+
+The stage-manager shouted to a man in the flies,--
+
+'Fire-proof up.'
+
+'I never let it down,' came a voice.
+
+'Who did then?'
+
+The stage-manager came over to where Clara was standing and pressed a
+button.  The heavy fire-proof curtain slowly rose to reveal the
+author's widow sitting patiently with the dark empty theatre for
+background.
+
+Who's that lady?' asked Sir Henry.
+
+'The author's widow,' replied the secretary.
+
+'I was afraid it was his ghost,' said Sir Henry, with his mischievous
+chuckle.  He went to her and chatted to her for a few moments about her
+late husband, who had been something of a figure in his time and had
+made a career in the traffic in French plays adapted for the British
+theatre.
+
+A scene or two was rehearsed, when an artist arrived with a model for a
+'set' for _The School for Scandal_.  The company gathered round and
+admired, while Sir Henry sat and played with it, trying various
+lighting effects with an electric torch.
+
+'No,' he said, 'you can't get the effects with electric light that you
+used to be able to obtain with gas....  Give me gas.  The theatre has
+never been the same.  This electric light is cold.  It is killing the
+theatre.'
+
+When the artist had gone, a journalist arrived for an interview, which
+was granted on condition that an article by Sir Henry on British
+Audiences was printed, and for the rest of the morning the secretary
+was kept busy taking down notes for the article.
+
+For Clara it was a very delightful morning.  Her own scene was not
+reached, and she sat happily in a corner by the proscenium turning over
+the pages of her book, watching Sir Henry's antics, appreciating the
+skill with which, in spite of all his digressions, he kept things
+lively, and managed to get the work he wanted out of his company....
+
+As the players dispersed, he stood in the middle of the stage and
+sighed heavily.  Clara was for stealing away, when he strode across to
+her, seized her by the arm, and said in his deep rolling voice,--
+
+'Don't go, little girl.  Don't go.'
+
+'But I want to go,' replied she.  'And I'm not a little girl.  I'm a
+married lady.'
+
+'Ah! marriage makes us all so old,' said Sir Henry, with a gallant
+sigh....  'You're the little girl who reads books, aren't you?  I've
+heard of you.  I've written a book or two, but I never read them.  I
+have quite a lot of books upstairs in my room--given me by the
+authors....  Won't you come to lunch?  I feel I could talk to you.'
+
+He had suddenly dropped his mannerisms, his affectation of thinking of
+a thousand and one things at once, and was a simple and very charming
+person of no particular age, position, or period--just a human being
+who wanted for a little to be at his ease.  He took Clara by the arm,
+and, regardless of the staring eyes of those whom they met in the
+corridors, swept her along to the room which Charles had likened to an
+aquarium.  Then he made her sit in the most comfortable chair, while he
+bestrode another not a yard away, and stared at her with his
+extraordinary eyes, which never had one but always the suggestion of a
+hundred different expressions.
+
+'I love my room,' he said, 'it is the only place I have in the world.
+Don't you like it?'
+
+'It is very quiet,' said Clara.
+
+Sir Henry rang a bell and ordered lunch to be brought up, vol-au-vents,
+cold chicken, Creme Caramel, champagne.
+
+'You're not old enough to understand food,' he said.  'That comes with
+the beginning of wisdom.'
+
+'But I understand food very well,' protested Clara, 'my grandfather
+knew all there was to know about it.'
+
+'Ah!  You are used to old men, eh?  Boys don't exist for you, eh?'
+
+With extraordinary gusto he produced a photograph album, and showed her
+portraits of himself at various ages, slim and romantic at twenty, at
+forty impressively Byronic, at fifty monumentally successful--and
+'present day.'  He showed her portraits of his mother and father, his
+wife, his children, Miss Teresa Chesney in her pieces, his various
+leading ladies, his sisters who had both married noble lords, and of a
+large number of actors and actresses who had passed through his
+company.  Of them he talked with real knowledge and enthusiasm.  He
+adored acting for its own sake, and as he talked brought all these
+performers vividly before Clara's eyes so that she must accept the
+validity of his criticism: he knew, or seemed to know, exactly what
+each could do or could not do, though it was difficult to understand
+how he could ever have found time to see them all.  Whether or not he
+had done so, he had exactly weighed up the value of their theatrical
+personalities, and it was in those and those alone that he was
+interested.  As human beings, he was indifferent to them, though he
+spoke of them all with the exaggerated affection common to the
+theatre--'dear old Arthur' ... 'adorable Lily' ... 'delicious Irene.
+Ah! she's a good woman.'  He talked rhapsodically, and his talk rather
+reminded Clara of Liszt's music, until lunch came, and then his greedy
+pleasure in the food made her think of certain gluttonous musicians she
+had known in Germany.  He ate quickly, and his eyes beamed satisfaction
+at her, so young, so fresh, so altogether unusual and challenging....
+She would neither eat nor drink, so absorbed was she in this strange
+man who so overwhelmingly imposed his personality upon her until she
+felt that she was merely part of the furniture of the room.
+
+When he had done eating and drinking, he lit a cigar and lay back in
+his large chair, and closed his eyes in the ecstatic distention of his
+surfeit.  After a grunt or two, he turned suddenly and asked with a
+strange intensity,--
+
+'Charles Mann--is he a genius?'
+
+'Of course,' replied Clara.
+
+'Then why does he talk so much?'
+
+'He works very hard.'
+
+'Hm!'
+
+'You can't expect me to discuss him.'
+
+'No, no.  I only think it is a pity he gave up acting.  He's lost touch
+with the public....  I've tried it at intervals; giving up acting, I
+mean.  The public lose interest, and no amount of advertising will get
+it back.'
+
+'It is for the artist to command the public,' said Clara, rather
+uncomfortably feeling that she was only an echo.  It was a very curious
+thing that words in this room lost half their meaning, and she, who was
+accustomed to giving all her words their precise value, was rather at a
+loss.
+
+'Little girl,' said Sir Henry, 'I feel that you understand me.  That is
+rare.  After all, we actors are human.  We are governed by the heart in
+a world that is standing on its head.'
+
+He took out a little book and made a note of that last observation.
+Then with a sigh he leaned over and held Clara's hands, looked long
+into her large dark eyes, and said,--
+
+'With such purity you could outstare the angels.'
+
+For answer Clara outstared him, and he dropped her hands and began to
+hum.  'Opera!' he said.  'I feel opera in the air; music invading the
+theatre, uplifting the souls of the people....  Ah! life is not long
+enough....'
+
+Clara began to feel sorry for him though she knew in her heart that
+this was precisely what he wanted.
+
+'You mustn't be angry,' he rumbled in his deepest bass, 'if I tell you
+that Charles Mann ought to have his neck wrung.'
+
+'But--you are going to do his _Tempest_?'
+
+'If it were not for you, little girl, I would not have him near the
+theatre,' said Sir Henry, with a sudden heat.
+
+'How dare you talk like that?'  Clara was all on fire.  'It is an
+honour for you to be associated with him at all.'
+
+Sir Henry laughed.
+
+'We know our Charles,' he said.  'We knew his father.  We are not all
+so young as you.'
+
+Clara hid her alarm, but it was as though the ground had suddenly
+opened and swallowed her up, as though the London about which she had
+been hovering in delighted excitement had engulfed her.  And then she
+felt that she was failing Charles.
+
+'I won't allow you to talk like that.  I won't let Charles do _The
+Tempest_ at all, if you talk like that.  He is a very great genius, and
+it is your duty to let the public see his work.  It is shameful that
+all his life people have talked about him, and have never helped him to
+reach his natural position.  He has been an exile and but for me would
+still be so.'
+
+'But for you,' repeated Sir Henry....  'Would you like to play Miranda?
+A perfect Miranda, but where is Ferdinand?'
+
+Clara was alarmed at this prospect.  She had read _The Tempest_ with
+her grandfather, and knew long passages by heart.  Its beauty was in
+her blood, and she could not reconcile it with this theatre of Sir
+Henry Butcher's.  Sitting with him in the heart of it, she felt trapped
+and as though all her dreams and purposes had been sponged out.  Never
+before had she even suspected that her freedom could be extinguished;
+never before had she even been anywhere near feeling that her will
+might break and leave her at the mercy of circumstances.  She clutched
+desperately at her loyalty to Charles, and she summoned up all her will
+only to find that it forced her to regard him, to weigh and measure him
+as a man....  He and she were no longer exiles, wandering untrammelled
+in strange lands, but here in London among their own people, confronted
+with their responsibility to the world outside themselves and to each
+other.  She was prepared to accept it, but was he?
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN
+
+Clara could hardly remember ever having been unhappy before.  All her
+life she had done exactly as she wished to do.  Her grandfather had
+never gainsaid her: had always indulged her every caprice, and had
+supported her even when she had been to all outward seeming in the
+wrong.  He used to say in his whimsical manner that explosions never
+did any one any harm....  'It is all wrong,' thought she, as she left
+the sanctum, and she was alarmed for Charles as she was still vibrant
+from the hostility in the actor-manager.  What was the occasion of it?
+She could not guess.  It was incredible to her that any one could
+object to Charles, so kindly, so industrious, so simple in his work and
+his belief in himself.  People laughed at him sometimes indulgently,
+but that was a very different thing to this hostility, this cold,
+implacable condemnation.  That was beyond her, for she had been brought
+up in a school of absolute tolerance except of the vulgar and
+ill-mannered.
+
+Her quick wits worked on this new situation.  She divined that Sir
+Henry resented the intrusion of a personality as powerful as his own
+and the check upon his habit of exuding patronage.  His theatre had
+always been animated with his own vitality, and he obviously resented a
+position in which he had to employ that of another and openly to
+acknowledge it.
+
+'He wants to patronise Charles,' thought Clara, and then she decided
+that for once in a way it would be a good thing for Charles to submit
+to it.  It must be either that or his chosen interminable procedure by
+committee.
+
+She decided to take a walk to think it over, and as she moved along
+Piccadilly towards the Green Park, where she proposed to ponder her
+problem, she had a distressing idea that she was followed.  Several
+times she turned and stopped, but she could see no one who could be
+pursuing her.  Men stared at her, but none dared molest so purposeful a
+young woman....  She stayed for some time in the Green Park, turning
+over and over in her mind how best she could engage Sir Henry's
+interest without aggravating his hostility to Charles, and still she
+was aware of eyes upon her....  She walked away very fast, but as she
+turned out into the roadway in front of Buckingham Palace she turned,
+stopped, and was accosted by a little dark woman with a smouldering
+fury in her eyes.
+
+'Are you Mrs Mann?' said the woman.
+
+'Yes,' said Clara, at once on her guard.
+
+'So am I,' rejoined the other woman.
+
+'Oh, no!' said Clara, with a smile that barely concealed the catch at
+her heart.
+
+'Oh, yes,' replied the other woman.  'I should think I was married to
+him before you were born.  And I wasn't the only one.  He left the
+country----'
+
+Clara turned on her heel and walked away.  The other woman followed her
+breathing heavily and gasping out details.
+
+'You horrible woman,' cried Clara, unable at last to bear any more.
+'Go away...'  And in her heart she said--
+
+'It is my fault.  I made him marry me.'
+
+Still the other woman was at her heels, babbling and gasping out her
+sordid little tragedy---two children, no money, her mother to keep.
+
+Clara was stunned and so nauseated that she could not speak.  Only in
+her mind the thought went round and round,--
+
+'It is my fault....  It is my fault.'
+
+But Charles ought to have told her.  He ought not to have been so
+will-less, so ready to fall in with every suggestion she made.
+
+'I must have this out at once,' she said, and hailing a taxi she
+bundled the other woman into it and drove home.  Charles was out.  She
+ordered tea, and quickly had the whole story out--the lodgings in
+Birmingham, the intrigue, the ultimatum, Charles's catastrophic
+collapse and inertia, years of poverty in London going from studio to
+studio, lodging to lodging: his flight--with another woman: her
+struggles, her present hand to mouth existence on the outskirts of the
+musical comedy theatre.
+
+'I wouldn't have spoken,' said Kitty, 'if you hadn't been so young.'
+
+'I should have thought that was a reason for keeping quiet,' replied
+Clara, who was now almost frozen with horror.
+
+'You were bound to hear sooner or later.'
+
+Charles came in followed by Mr Clott.  He was in the highest spirits
+and called out,--
+
+'Darling, Lord Verschoyle is interested.'
+
+His jaw dropped as he saw Kitty there at tea.  His pince-nez fell off
+his nose, and he stood pulling at his necktie for a few seconds.  Then
+he gave Mr Clott a commission to perform, and stood looking with
+horror, disgust, and loathing at the unhappy Kitty....  It was Clara
+who first found her voice,--
+
+'I ... I brought her here, Charles,' she said.  'I thought it would
+save us all--trouble.'
+
+In a tone icy with fury he said,--
+
+'If you will go quietly, I will write to you.  Please leave your
+address, and I will write to you.'
+
+Kitty hoped for a moment that he was talking to Clara, but his fury was
+so obviously concentrated on her that at last she rose and said
+meekly,--
+
+'Yes, Charles.'
+
+'You will find a writing-block by the telephone in the hall.  Please
+leave your address there.'
+
+'Yes, Charles.'
+
+With that she left the room.  Charles and Clara were too much for her.
+All her venom trickled away in a thin stream of dread as she felt the
+gathering rage in the two of them.  At the same time she had some
+exultation in having produced a storm so much beyond her own capacity.
+
+'You did not tell me,' said Clara, when Kitty had gone.
+
+'Honestly, honestly I had forgotten.'
+
+'Forgotten!  You did not tell me.  You did not need her to come into
+this house to remember.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'What do you mean, then?  You had forgotten?'
+
+'Honestly, I never thought of it until one day when I met her in the
+street.'
+
+'Does everybody know?'
+
+'Yes.  I don't conceal these things.'
+
+'You concealed it from me, from me, from me....'
+
+'Yes.  I never thought of it.  She'd gone out of my life years ago.'
+
+'Have many women gone out of your life?'
+
+He blushed.
+
+'A good many....  I never meant to conceal it.  Truly I didn't.  I just
+didn't mention it....  You were so happy, chicken; so was I.  I hadn't
+been happy before--not like that.'
+
+'She can ruin us....  Do you know that?  She has only to go up to the
+nearest policeman and ruin us.  Do you know that?'
+
+'She won't....  She'd never dare.'
+
+'She would....  I'm young.  That's the unpardonable thing in a
+woman....'
+
+'I don't understand,' said Charles, sitting down suddenly.  And quite
+perceptibly he did not understand that any one, man or woman, could
+deliberately hurt another.
+
+'But you _must_ understand,' she cried.  'You must understand....  You
+must protect yourself.'
+
+'How can I?'
+
+'She is your wife.  You must give her what she wants.'
+
+'Money?  Oh, yes.'
+
+'You fool,' said Clara, in exasperation, 'you've married me.  If she
+moves at all you will be ruined.  You will be sent to prison.'
+
+'Do you want to get out of it?' he asked.
+
+'I?  No....  I want to protect you....  Oh, it's my fault.  It's my
+fault I thought I could help you.  I thought I could help you....  I
+could have helped you if only you had told me....  You must have known.
+You couldn't imagine that you could come back to London and not be----'
+
+'But I did,' he said.  'I never thought of it.  I never do think of
+anything except in terms of my work....  I'll tell Clott to see to it.'
+
+Clara clenched her fists until her nails dug into the palms of her
+hands.
+
+'I shall have to leave you,' she said at last.  'I shall have to leave
+you.'
+
+She pulled off her wedding-ring
+
+'Perhaps I'd better go away,' he muttered at last very slowly.  'It's a
+pity.  Everything was going so well.  Lord Verschoyle is deeply
+interested.  He has two hundred thousand a year.'
+
+Clara laughed at him.
+
+'He is willing to sit on my committee.'
+
+'Does he know?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'But can't you see that these people ought to know.'
+
+'No.  What has it got to do with my work?'
+
+'To you nothing.  To them everything.  They can't support you if they
+know----'
+
+'But they don't know.'
+
+'You are in that woman's hands.  So am I.  You can't expect me to live
+upon her sanction.'
+
+This was a new aspect of the matter to Charles, who had never admitted
+the right of any other person to interfere in his affairs.  It hurt him
+terribly as it slowly dawned upon him that the miserable Kitty had
+behind her the whole force of the law.
+
+'Oh, good God!' he said.  'I'm a criminal.  Oh, good God!  This is
+serious.'
+
+'I'm glad you realise it at last,' said she.
+
+He broke down and wept, and began to tumble out the whole ridiculous
+story of his life; his perpetual disappointment: his terror of being
+bound down to anything except the work in which he felt so free, so
+wholly master of himself and his destiny; his delight in at last
+finding in her a true companion who, unlike all other women, allowed
+him to be something more than her possession.
+
+'I'm afraid,' he said in the end, 'that I have never understood women.'
+
+'Leave it to me.'  Poor Clara felt that if she tried to explain any
+more her head would burst.
+
+He looked up at her gratefully and was at once happy again.
+
+'It was my fault,' said Clara.  'It wouldn't have happened if I'd
+thought about life at all.  But it was so wonderful being with you and
+making your work come to life that I never thought about the rest....
+I never looked at it from the woman's point of view, as, being a woman,
+I ought to have done....  I think the shock has made me a woman....  I
+don't think anything will ever make you a man.'
+
+Charles gaped at her, but was not the least bit hurt.  He did not
+particularly want to be a man as manhood is generally understood.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'Lord Verschoyle is deeply interested, and he has two
+hundred thousand a year.'
+
+'Wait a moment,' replied Clara, 'I'll go and see if she has left her
+address.'
+
+She ran downstairs, but Kitty had left no address.  As Clara,
+considering the matter, decided that meant either that she intended to
+make trouble or that she had good reason for waiting before she made it.
+
+When she returned, Charles was lover-like in his gratitude, but she
+repulsed him, told him that he must get on with his designs for _The
+Tempest_ and she would see what could be done about his troubles.  For
+the present, for a little while at all events, she proposed to leave
+him and to stay with Julia Wainwright.
+
+'I may have to tell her,' she said, 'but I don't think so....  I won't
+let this woman ruin you, Charles.'
+
+'I have hurt you far more than I have hurt her,' he said miserably.  'I
+suppose things will never be the same.  You'll always feel that I am
+keeping things from you....'
+
+'No.  No.  I know that is all that matters....  It is just the law that
+is somehow wrong, giving advantage to any one who is mean enough to
+take it....  But women _are_ mean.'
+
+'Not you.'
+
+'No.  I do understand you, Charles, but I'm so hurt.  I'm so tired I
+don't think I can stand much more.'
+
+'I'll do anything you want.'
+
+'Then leave it to me....  The chief thing is your work, Charles.  That
+is all of you that matters.'
+
+This was entirely Charles's view of himself, and, as he could not see,
+yet, the effect of the intrusion of Kitty upon the brave girl who had
+so childishly accepted his childishness he was unperturbed and free
+from all anxiety....  So far his new career in London had been a
+triumphant success, and it seemed to him incredible that it could be
+checked by such a trifle as a forgotten wife.  He thought of the money
+that should come from the Imperium: money meant power, power meant the
+removal of all disagreeable obstacles from his path.  He licked his
+lips....  England understood money and nothing else.  He would talk to
+England in her own language and when he had caught her attention he
+would speak his own....  Things were going so splendidly: a man like
+himself was not going to be upset by trifles.  He had worked in exile
+for so long: surely, surely he would be able to reap his reward.
+
+Clara meanwhile was shocked almost out of her youth.  She did not weep.
+There were no tears in her eyes in which there slowly gathered a fierce
+expression of passionate pain.  The bloom of youth was on her cheeks,
+upon her lips, in all her still unformed features, but in her eyes
+suddenly was the knowledge of years, concentrated, tyrannous, and
+between this knowledge and her will there was set up a remorseless
+conflict, from which she found relief only in a new gaiety and love of
+fun.
+
+It was impossible to discuss the matter any further with Charles, and
+without a word to him she went away to Miss Wainwright's flat.  That
+good creature took her in without a word, without even a mute
+curiosity.  People's troubles were their own affair, and she knew that
+they needed to be alone with them.  She gave Clara her bedroom and
+absented herself as much as possible, and kept Freeland out of the way.
+
+The flat was luxuriously but monstrously furnished.  Its frank, opulent
+ugliness was a relief to the girl after the rarefied atmosphere of
+aesthetics in which for three years she had lived with Charles, upon
+whom all her thoughts were still concentrated.  Of herself she had no
+thought.  It did not concern her what she was called: wife or mistress.
+She was Clara Day and would remain so whatever happened to her.  She
+had forced Charles to marry her in order to protect him and to help
+him, and she had brought him into danger of imprisonment....  It was
+perfectly true; Charles could not protect himself because he could not
+learn that others were not as kindly as himself.  He had been trapped
+into marriage with that vulgar and venomous woman.  He could not speak
+of it because he loathed it so much....  She found excuses for him, for
+herself she sought none, and at the back of all her thoughts was her
+firm will that he should succeed.  Yes, she thought, it was a good
+thing to leave him for a while.  She had been with him too much, too
+near him.
+
+It was a great comfort to be with Julia and Freeland, that unreal Romeo
+and Juliet of middle age.  They were very proud of her, and elated to
+have her with them, took her everywhere, introduced her to all their
+friends, and insisted upon her being photographed for the Press, and in
+due course she had the shock of seeing her own features, almost more
+than life-size, exhibited to the hurrying crowds on the
+station-platforms.  She was called Clara Day, Sir Henry Butcher's
+youngest and prettiest recruit.  From the shy, studious little girl who
+sat close and, if possible, hidden during rehearsals, she found that
+she had become in the estimation of the company one of themselves.  It
+was known that she had had lunch alone with Sir Henry, and the
+publication of her photograph sealed her young reputation.  With the
+interest of the Chief, and influence in the Press, it was accepted that
+she would go far.  That she was Mrs Charles Mann was whispered, for
+apparently she only had been ignorant of the impediment.
+
+She apprehended the situation instinctively.  Her mind recoiled from
+it.  She felt trapped.  Whichever way she moved she would injure
+him....  She ought to have kept quietly in the background, and let him
+go his own way.  By forcing him into the theatre he and his affairs
+were exposed to the glaring light of publicity through her own
+impetuous ambition for him.
+
+Soon she was in an intolerable agony.  She wrote to Charles every day,
+and saw him occasionally, but was tortured every moment with the idea
+that her mere presence was injurious to him, and might call down an
+attack from the jealous Kitty at any moment.  On the other hand, at any
+moment some journalist might seize on the story of her arrival in
+London with Charles, and publish the fact of their marriage....  She
+stayed on with Julia, and let the days go by until at last she felt
+that it was unfair to her kind friends.  One night, therefore, after
+the theatre, she went into Julia's bedroom, and sat perched at the end
+of her bed, with her knees tucked under her chin, and said,--
+
+'I'm not Charles's wife, Julia.'
+
+'I know that,' replied the kind creature.
+
+'But I _am_ married to him.'
+
+'Good God!'  Julia sat up and clasped her hand to her capacious
+bosom....  'Not a ceremony!'
+
+'Yes.  In an office near the Strand.'
+
+'My dear child, my dear, dear child,' Julia began to weep.  'It's ...
+it's ... it's ...'
+
+'I know what it is,' said Clara, setting her jaw.  'I don't know what
+to do.'
+
+'You must never see him again.'
+
+'But I must.  I _am_ married to him inside me.  He can't do anything
+without me.  I've made him come over here....'
+
+'Didn't you know?'
+
+'I knew nothing except that I loved him.'
+
+'But people can't love like that.'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'He ran away from all that--and there were other things....  Oh, my
+dear, dear child, have you nobody belonging to you?'
+
+'Only Charles.  And I've hurt him.'
+
+'What does he say?'
+
+'He doesn't seem to realise....'
+
+'I'd like to thrash him within an inch of his life....  The only thing
+to be thankful for is that you are not married to him.  Not realise,
+indeed!  He walked out of his marriage like a man bilking his rent.'
+
+'He is an artist.  His work is more important to him than anybody.'
+
+Julia wept and wailed.  'The scoundrel!  The scoundrel!  The
+blackguard!'
+
+'I won't have you calling him names.  I won't have it.  I won't have
+it,' cried Clara, her feelings finding vent in an outburst of temper.
+'And you're not to tell a soul, not even Freeland.  I won't have
+anybody interfering.  I will handle this myself because I know more
+about it than anybody else....  It doesn't help me at all to hear you
+abusing Charles.  It only hurts me....  I've made a mistake, and I am
+going through with it.'
+
+'But you can't live with him.'
+
+'You live with Freeland.'
+
+'Yes.  But we're not married, so nobody worries; at least I am married,
+so is Freeland.  That makes it all right.  If people are married it is
+different.'
+
+The complications of the position were beyond Julia's intelligence, and
+she began to laugh hysterically.  Clara laughed, too, but from genuine
+amusement.  The world certainly did look very funny from the detachment
+now forced upon her: deliciously funny, and Charles appeared in her
+thoughts as a kind of Harlequin dancing through the world, peering into
+the houses where people were captive, tapping the doors with his wand
+so that they opened, but no one never came out.
+
+'I'll take you to my lawyer,' said Julia, at last, with a fat sob.
+
+'I want no lawyers,' snapped Clara defiantly.  'Charles hates that
+woman and she knows it.  She won't try to get him back.'
+
+'Yes.  But she won't stand you're being with him.'
+
+'Then I'll live alone, and help Charles in my own way.'
+
+'Help yourself first, lovey; then you can help other people.'
+
+'I don't believe it.  If you help yourself, you are kept so busy doing
+it that you don't know the other people are there.'
+
+Of course Julia told Freeland, and in the morning he came tapping at
+Clara's door.  She admitted him.  His rather faded, handsome face wore
+a very serious expression, more serious indeed than was warranted
+either by the feeling in his heart or the thought in his head.  It was
+a very serious situation, and he had assumed the appropriate manner....
+Clara had slept soundly, and her fund of healthy good spirits made it
+possible for her to regard the whole complication as, in itself, rather
+superficial.  The sun was shining in upon the mirror of her
+dressing-table, upon her silver brushes, upon the portrait of Julia in
+a silver frame, and upon the new frock which had come only the day
+before from the dressmaker.  With the sun shining, and the eager
+thought of Charles in her heart, Clara could have no anxiety.  No
+problem was insoluble, no obstacle, she believed, could be
+irresistible.  Therefore she smiled as Freeland came in treading more
+heavily than his wont.  He stood and looked down at her.
+
+'It's a bad business, kid,' he said, 'a bad, bad business.'
+
+'Is it?'
+
+'He has ruined your life.  I feel like shooting him.'
+
+'That wouldn't help me.'
+
+'Can't you see how serious it is?  You're neither married nor
+unmarried.'
+
+'Can't I be just Clara Day?'
+
+Freeland was rather taken aback.  He was used to Julia's taking her cue
+from him.  If a woman does not take the line proposed by the man in a
+situation, a scene, where is he?  And, in fact, Freeland did not know
+where he was.  His life had proceeded fairly smoothly from scene to
+scene and he was not used to being pulled up.
+
+'No, no, kid,' he protested.  'It is too ghastly.  Your position is
+impossible.  Charles, damn him, can't protect you.  The world is hard
+and cruel....  A man can play the lone hand, but I never heard of its
+being done by a woman: never.'
+
+'I'm going to see Charles through,' said Clara, 'and you'll see how we
+shall make this old London of yours wake up.'
+
+'But if there's a scandal....?'
+
+'There shan't be....  And if there is: well ... well...'
+
+Freeland in his turn began to weep.  Clara seemed to him so pathetic,
+so innocent, so oblivious of all the hard facts of the world.  She was
+like a wild bird, flying in ecstasy, flying higher and higher in the
+pain of her song.  Indeed she was a most touching sight lying there in
+her innocence, full of faith, conscious of danger, busy with wary
+thoughts, but so eager, vital, and confident that all her belief in
+Charles and her love for him were based in the deeper and stronger
+forces of life....  She was roused to battle, and she was profoundly
+aware that the law and the other devices of society were contrived
+wholly to frustrate those deeper, stronger forces....  Freeland's
+sentimental sympathy seemed to her in her happy morning mood weak and
+irrelevant, yet charming and pathetic.  He regarded her as a little
+girl and was entirely unconscious of all the passionate knowledge in
+her which moved so far and so swiftly beyond his capacity.
+
+'Anything either of us can do,' he said, 'we shall do, always.'  He
+stooped and took her in his arms and kissed her, and large tears fell
+upon her cheek.  Tears came easily to these people: to Clara they came
+not.  Indeed she rather exulted in her peril, which destroyed for her
+once and for all the superficiality of the life into which she had
+plunged in order to help Charles to conquer his kingdom, which was
+worlds away from this world of law and pretence, of spurious emotions
+and easy tears.
+
+'I can't think how Charles could have done it,' said Freeland, drying
+his eyes.
+
+'I made him,' said Clara, her eyes dancing with fun and mischief.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BIRDS AND FISHES
+
+For the time being it seemed that the superfluous Kitty had disappeared
+from the scene.  She made no sign, and no attempt was made to trace
+her.  Clara knew perfectly well that she was somewhere in the West End,
+but in that small crowded area it was possible to avoid meeting.
+People quickly fell into a groove and lived between a certain theatre,
+a certain restaurant, and home, and the light theatre was almost
+completely severed from the theatre which took itself so seriously.
+The legitimate stage had nothing to do with the bastard frivolity of
+the houses whose appeal was based on lingerie, pretty faces, and
+shapely limbs.
+
+As for Charles, he was once again oblivious.  He visited Clara at the
+flat, and had a painful scene with Freeland, who lashed out at him,
+rolled out a number of hard words, such as 'blackguard,' 'selfish
+beast,' etc., etc., but was nonplussed when Charles, not at all
+offended, said quietly,--
+
+'Have you finished?'
+
+'No.  What do you propose to do about it?  The poor child has no
+people.  Julia and I are father and mother to her.  In fact, I regard
+her as my adopted daughter.'
+
+'I should always let her do exactly as she wished,' said Charles.
+
+'Will you leave her alone then?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+Freeland regarded that as a triumph, but Clara was furious with him for
+interfering, and she scolded him until he promised that in future he
+would not say a word.
+
+'What are you going to do?' he asked.
+
+'I need a holiday from Charles,' she said--a new idea to Freeland,
+whose conception of love was besotted devotion--'and I am going to live
+alone for a time.'
+
+Out she went, and before the day was done she had found a furnished
+apartment in the dingy region of narrow streets behind Leicester
+Square, and for a time she was entirely absorbed in this new
+acquisition.  It was her own, her very own.  It was at the top of the
+house, and looked out over roofs and chimneys westward so that she had
+the London sunset for comfort and companionship: more than enough,
+sweeter intimacy than any she had yet found among human beings, whose
+shallow business and fussy importance always hurt and exasperated
+her....  More clearly than ever she knew that there was only Charles
+and his work that mattered to her at all.  She saw him occasionally and
+knew that he was entirely happy.  He wrote to her every day and his
+plans were maturing famously.  Lord Verschoyle was more and more
+interested, and as his lordship's interest grew so there waxed with it
+Charles's idea of his immense wealth.  That worried Clara, who wanted
+her genius to prove himself in order to command and not to crave
+support.  But Charles was elated with the success of his advertising
+campaign, and at the growth of his prestige among the artists....
+'Such a combination has never been known.  We shall simply overwhelm
+the public.'
+
+Clara's answer to this was to see that his relations with Sir Henry
+Butcher were not neglected.  The explosion produced by Kitty's
+intervention had split their efforts, so that Charles was now working
+through Lord Verschoyle, she through Sir Henry Butcher, and once again
+she was embarked upon a battle with Charles for the realisation of his
+dreams--not upon paper, which perfectly satisfied him--but in terms of
+life in which alone she could feel that her existence was honourable.
+She kept a tight enough hold of Charles to see that he worked at _The
+Tempest_, but, as she was no longer with him continually, she could not
+check his delighted absorption in his committee.  This was properly and
+duly constituted.  It had a chairman, Professor Laverock, and Mr Clott
+acted also as its secretary in an honorary capacity, his emoluments
+from Charles being more than sufficient for his needs.  It met
+regularly once a month in studios and drawing-rooms.  The finest
+unofficialised brains in London were gathered together, and nervous men
+eyed each other suspiciously and anxiously until Charles appeared, with
+Mr Clott fussing and moving round him like a tug round a great liner.
+His presence vitalised the assembly; the suppressed idealism in his
+supporters came bubbling to the surface.  Poets whose works were
+ignored by the great public, musicians whose compositions were ousted
+by Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, and Poles from the concert-rooms of
+London, dramatists whose plays were only produced on Sunday evenings,
+art critics who had acclaimed Charles's exhibition, all in his presence
+were conscious of a solidarity proof against all jealousy and
+disappointment; Charles, famous in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York,
+moved among them like a kindling wind.
+
+He would arrive with his arms full of papers, while Mr Clott in a
+little black bag carried the essential documents--minute-book, agenda,
+suggestions, plans.  For some months the Committee accomplished nothing
+but resolutions to invite and co-opt other members, but it seemed
+impossible to lure any really successful person into the net.  No
+actor-manager, no Royal Academician, no poet with a healthy circulation
+could be found to give practical expression to his sympathy, though
+admiration for Mr Mann's work and the high reputation he had won for
+British Art on the Continent oozed from them all in letters of great
+length, which were read to the Committee until its members, most of
+them rather simple souls, were bewildered.
+
+The accretion of Lord Verschoyle made a great difference.  He attended
+in person, a shy, elegant young man, educated at Eton, and in the
+Guards for the gentle art of doing nothing.  He owned a large area of
+London, and his estates were managed by a board which he was not even
+expected to attend, and he was a good young man.  He wanted to spend
+money and to infuriate his trustees, but he did not know how to do it.
+Women bored him.  He had a yacht, but loathed it, and kept it in
+harbour, and only spent on it enough money to keep it from rusting
+away.  He maintained a stable, but would not bet or attend any other
+meeting than Ascot.  He had some taste in art, but only cared for
+modern pictures, which he could buy for fifty or a hundred pounds.
+Indeed he was much too nice for his altogether exceptional
+opportunities for wasting money, for he loathed vulgarity, and the only
+people who could tell him how to waste his wealth--stable-touts,
+art-dealers, women of the West End--were essentially vulgar, and he
+could not endure their society....  He had five houses, but all he
+needed was an apartment of three rooms, and he was haunted and made
+miserable by the idea, not without a fairly solid foundation, that
+young women and their mammas wished to marry him for his money....  He
+longed to know a young woman who had no mamma, but none ever came his
+way.  Society was full of mammas, and of ladies eager to push the
+fortunes of their husbands and lovers.  He was turned to as a man of
+power, but in his heart he knew that no human being was ever more
+helpless, more miserably at the mercy of his trustees, agents, and
+servants....  He had been approached many times by persons interested
+in plays, theatres, and schemes, but being that rare and unhappy
+creature, a rich man with good taste, he had avoided them as hotly as
+the mammas of Mayfair and Belgravia.
+
+He met Charles at his exhibition and was introduced to him.  Charles at
+once bellowed at him at the top of his voice on the great things that
+would be achieved through the realisation of his dreams, and Lord
+Verschoyle had in his society the exhilarated sense of playing truant,
+and wanted more of it.  He was hotly pursued at the moment by Lady
+Tremenheer, who had two daughters, and he longed ardently to disgrace
+himself, but so perfect was his taste that he could not do it--in the
+ordinary way.  Charles was outrageous, but so famous as to carry it
+off, and Verschoyle seized upon the great artist as the way of escape,
+well knowing that art ranked with dissipation in the opinion of his
+trustees.  With one stone he could kill all his birds.  He promised by
+letter, being most careful to get his wicked indiscretion down in
+writing, his whole-hearted support of Charles's scheme.
+
+Charles thereupon drew up his scheme.  Verschoyle's wealth disposed of
+the most captious member of his committee, whose meetings now became
+more awful and ceremonious than ever.  Even so much assembled intellect
+could not resist the wealth that through the generations had been
+gathered up to surround the gentle personality of Horace Biningham,
+Lord Verschoyle, who smiled benignantly upon the strange company and,
+all unconscious of the devastating effect upon them of his money, was
+most humbly flattered to be in the presence of so many distinguished
+persons.
+
+The tenth meeting of the committee was arranged to be the most
+critical.  Charles was to read and expound the scheme upon which he had
+been at work for years.  The meeting was to be held at his own house,
+and for this occasion only he implored Clara to be present as hostess,
+and so eager was she to share in the triumph of that side of his
+activities that she consented and was the only woman present.  With
+Professor Laverock in the chair, Mr Clott read the minutes of the last
+meeting, upon which, as nothing had happened, there was no comment.
+Clara sat in a corner by the door and looked from face to face, trying
+in vain to find in any something of the fire and eagerness that was in
+her Charles's, who, radiant and bubbling over with confidence, sat at a
+little table in the centre of the room with his papers in front of him,
+two enormous candles on either side, and his watch in his hand.
+
+After formalities, Professor Laverock called upon Mr Mann to read his
+scheme to the committee....  Rarely can a room have contained so much
+eager idealism, rarely can so many mighty brains have been keyed up to
+take their tune from one.
+
+Charles smoothed out his paper, shook back his hair, arranged the cuffs
+which he always wore in his desire to be taken for an English
+gentleman.  His hearers settled themselves in their chairs.  He began:--
+
+'Gentlemen, we are all here concerned to make the theatre a temple of
+art, always open with a welcome to every talent, from that of the
+highest and most creative vision to that of the most humble and patient
+craftsman's life.'
+
+'Ah!' some one sighed contentedly.
+
+'We cannot expect such a theatre either from actors or from commercial
+persons who would be much better engaged in selling boots or soap....
+In Germany art is honoured.  Nietzsche, whom I acknowledge as my
+compeer, is to be commemorated with an enormous stadium upon a hill.
+In England we have turned away from the hill-top and are huddled
+together in the valleys until beauty is lost and dreams are but aching
+memories....'
+
+Clara was irritated by this preamble.  It was too much like the spirit
+of Sir Henry Butcher.  If only Charles had consulted her she would have
+cut out this ambitious bombast, and brought him down to practical
+detail.
+
+'My proposal is that we should erect upon one of three suitable sites
+in London a theatre which shall be at once a school and a palace of
+art.  There will be one theatre on the German model, and an outdoor
+theatre on the plan of an arena in Sicily of which I have here sketches
+and plans.'
+
+'Is that quite suitable in the English climate?' asked Adolph
+Griffenberg, a little Jewish painter.
+
+'The disabilities of the English climate are greatly exaggerated,' said
+Charles.  'There could be protection from wind and rain, if it were
+thought necessary.  There will be attached to the indoor theatre an
+experimental stage to which I of course shall devote most of my
+energies; then schoolrooms, a kitchen, a dining-room, a dancing-room, a
+music-room, a wardrobe, three lifts and two staircases.'
+
+'Isn't this too detailed for our present purpose?' asked Griffenberg.
+
+'I merely wish to show that I am entirely practical,' retorted Charles.
+'There will be every modern appliance upon the stage, several
+inventions of my own, and an adjustable proscenium.  The staff will
+consist of myself, a dozen instructors in the various arts of the
+theatre, and a larger number of pupils, who will be promoted as they
+give evidence of talent and skill in employing it.'
+
+So far attention had been keen and eager.  Charles's happy vision of a
+marble temple lit with the inward sun of vision and rosy with youth had
+carried all before it.  He warmed to his task, talked on as the candles
+burned low, and at last came to the financial aspect of his proposal.
+Griffenberg leaned forward, and Clara watched him apprehensively.
+
+'I have estimated the cost as follows,' said Charles, now confident
+that he had his hearers with him.  'I have put my estimate as low as
+possible, so that we may know our minimum:--
+
+  The Outdoor Theatre  . . . . . . . .  L6,000
+  The Indoor Theatre . . . . . . . . . L15,000
+  To Machinery . . . . . . . . . . . .  L4,000
+  To Salaries  . . . . . . . . . . . .  L1,500
+  My Own Salary  . . . . . . . . . . .  L5,000
+  Wardrobe . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    L600
+  Ground rent  . . . . . . . . . . . . Nominal
+  Musicians and music  . . . . . . . .    L600
+  Paint, materials, etc. . . . . . . .    L400
+  Food for the birds and fishes  . . .     L25
+
+
+There was a dead silence.  One or two men smiled.  Others stared.
+Others pulled their noses or smoothed their hair.  Griffenberg laughed
+harshly and said,--
+
+'Excuse me, Mr Mann.  I didn't quite catch that last item.'
+
+Charles who was entirely unaware of the changed atmosphere looked up
+and repeated,--
+
+'Food for the birds and fishes....  There must be beautiful birds
+flying in the outdoor theatre.  In the courtyard there must be
+fish-ponds with rare fish....'
+
+'We are not proposing to build a villa of Tiberius,' snapped
+Griffenberg, who was deeply wounded.  'I cannot agree to a scheme which
+includes birds and fishes.'
+
+Clara was bristling with fury against Charles for being so childish,
+and against Griffenberg for taking advantage of him.  She knew that
+Charles was in an ecstasy, and unable to cope with any practical point
+they chose to raise.  It would have been fair for Griffenberg to take
+exception to his estimates, but not to the birds and fishes....  Her
+sense of justice was so outraged that to keep herself from intervening
+she slipped out of the room and gave vent to her fury in the darkness
+of the passage.
+
+The worst happened.  The scheme was forgotten; the birds and fishes
+were remembered....  Griffenberg asked rather insolently if Mr Mann
+proposed to publish the scheme as it stood, and Charles, who did not
+detect the insolence, said that he certainly intended to publish the
+scheme and had indeed already sent a copy to the Press Association.
+
+'As your own or as the Committee's scheme?'
+
+Mr Clott intervened,--
+
+'I made it quite clear that the scheme was Mr Mann's own, and Mr Mann
+sent with it what I may say is a very beautiful description of his
+theatre as it will be in being.'
+
+'Theatres in the air,' said some one, and all, just a little ashamed,
+though with a certain bravado of geniality to cover their shame, rose
+to go.
+
+As they came out of the room Clara darted up the stairs and heard their
+remarks as they departed.  'Birds and fishes.' ... 'Extraordinary man.'
+... 'Fairy tale.' ... 'Damned impudence.'
+
+Charles, still unmindful of any change, moved among them thanking them
+warmly for their support and explaining that if he had been somewhat
+long in reading it was because he had wished to leave no room for
+misunderstanding.
+
+No one stayed but an Irish poet, who had been delighted with the words,
+birds and fishes, emerging like a poem from the welter of so much
+detail, and Verschoyle, a little uneasy, but entranced by Charles's
+voice and what seemed to him his superb audacity.  They three stood and
+talked themselves into oblivion of the world and its narrow ways, and
+Charles was soon riding the hobby-horse of his theory of Kingship and
+urging Verschoyle to interest the Court of St James's in Art.
+
+Clara joined them, listened for a while, and later detached his
+lordship from the other two, who talked hard against each other,
+neither listening, both hammering home points.  She took Verschoyle
+into a corner and said,--
+
+'It was very unfair of Mr Griffenberg to catch Charles out on the birds
+and fishes.  They're very important to him.'
+
+'That's what I like about him,' said Verschoyle.  'Things are important
+to him.  Nothing is important to the rest of us.'
+
+'Some of them will resign from the committee,' said Clara.  'I hope you
+won't.  It is a great pity, because Charles does mean it so thoroughly.'
+
+Verschoyle screwed in his eye-glass and held his knee and rocked it to
+and fro.  He was shrewd enough to see that if he resigned the whole
+committee would break up, and he knew that this dreadful eventuality
+was in Clara's mind also.  He liked Charles's extravagance: it made him
+feel wicked, but also he was kind and could not bring himself to hurt
+Clara.  He had never in his life felt that he was of the slightest
+importance to any one.  Clara felt that sense stirring in him and she
+fed it; let him into the story of their struggles and the efforts she
+had made to bring her idealist to London, and urged upon him the vital
+importance of Charles's work.
+
+'They're all jealous of him,' she said, 'all these people who have
+never been heard of outside London.  It was just like them to fasten on
+a thing like that.'
+
+Verschoyle laughed.
+
+'I like the idea of birds and fishes in London,' he said.  'I think we
+need them....  Now, if it were you, Mrs Mann'--for he had been so
+introduced to her--'I would back you through everything.'
+
+'It is me,' said Clara.  'It always is a woman.  If it were not for me
+we should not be in London now.'
+
+'You must bring him to dinner with me.'
+
+Clara accepted in her eagerness to save the situation without realising
+that she had compromised herself.
+
+'You will forgive my saying it,' added Verschoyle, 'but it hurts me to
+hear you speak of yourself as a woman.  You are only a child and I hate
+women.'
+
+'So do I,' said Clara, all her anxiety now allayed.  With Verschoyle
+for her friend she did not care how soon the committee was dissolved.
+She had always hated the committee, for, as her grandfather used to
+say, a committee is a device by which the incompetent check the
+activities of the competent....  She liked Verschoyle.  He was a lonely
+little man and she thought whimsically that only lonely people could
+swallow the birds and fishes which are so necessary as the finishing
+touch to the artist's vision.
+
+'I must be going now,' she said to her companion's surprise.
+
+'Can't I take you in my car?' he asked, concealing his astonishment at
+her speaking of a home elsewhere.  She consented, and he took her back
+to her rooms, leaving Charles and the Irish poet still rhapsodising in
+a somewhat discordant duet.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SUPPER
+
+Idealists must certainly be added to the drunkards and children over
+whom a specially benign deity watches: a flood of disaster by sea and
+land gave a plentiful crop of news and made it impossible for the
+papers to publish Charles Mann's scheme.  His committee's dread of
+being made publicly ridiculous evaporated, and, as Lord Verschoyle did
+not resign, no other member did, and Griffenberg simply sent in a
+letter of protest and announced that he was too busy to take any more
+active part in the proceedings.  He went away and denounced the theatre
+as a vulgar institution, which no artist could enter without losing his
+soul.  He said this publicly in a newspaper and produced one of those
+delightful controversies which in the once happy days of unlimited
+advertisement provided an opportunity for mutual recrimination upon an
+impersonal basis.
+
+Verschoyle promised Charles thirty thousand pounds if he could raise
+another similar amount, and Charles regarded himself as worth thirty
+thousand already, raised Mr Clott's salary, and condescended with so
+much security to begin really to work at _The Tempest_.
+
+Clara, who was still playing small parts at the Imperium, found to her
+dismay that Sir Henry had rather cooled towards the Mann production and
+was talking of other plays, a huge American success called _The Great
+Beyond_, and a French drama of which he had acquired the rights some
+few years previously.  This was really alarming, for she knew that if
+she could not engage Charles speedily he would simply fling away from
+the theatre and devote himself, unsupported except by Verschoyle, who
+was by no means a certain quantity, to his airy schemes.  Already he
+was beginning to be swayed by letters from well-meaning persons in the
+provinces, who urged him to found another Bayreuth in the Welsh Hills
+or the Forest of Arden....  Give Charles a hint and he would construct
+an imaginary universe!  If she could only stop him advertising, he
+would not be exposed to the distracting bombardment of hints and
+suggestions which was opened upon him with every post, especially after
+he announced with his usual bland indiscretion his association with the
+owner of a fashionable part of the Metropolis.
+
+Verschoyle did not object.  It horrified his trustees and after a time,
+growing bolder, he was much in Charles's company, and found him
+extremely useful as a bogey to frighten away the mammas who had made
+his life hideous ever since his Eton days, when one of his aunts had
+horrified him by referring to one of his cousins, a child of fifteen,
+as his 'dear little wifie.' ...  Further, by seeing much of Charles, he
+could see more of Clara without compromising her or himself.
+
+Now in the world of the theatre there never is but always may be money.
+It is always going to be made, so that everybody associated with it has
+credit sustained by occasional payment.  Clara realised this very early
+in her career.  She understood finance, because her grandfather had
+discussed his affairs with her exactly as if she were his partner, and
+she had had to keep a tight hand on his extravagance; and she quickly
+understood that in the theatre money must be spent always a little
+faster than it can be made to keep the current of credit flowing.  She
+also realised that Sir Henry Butcher spent it a great deal faster, and
+was cool and warm towards the various projects laid before him
+according as they made payment possible....  He had watched Charles
+Mann's increase of fame with a jealous interest, but with a shrewdly
+expert eye waited for the moment of capitalisation to come before he
+committed himself to the new-fangled ways of dressing the stage, these
+damned Greek tragedies, plays in curtains, German toy sets, and Russian
+flummery in which painted blobs stood for trees and clouds.  To Sir
+Henry a tree was a tree, a cloud a cloud, and he liked nothing better
+than to have real rabbits on the stage, if possible to out-Nature
+Nature....  At the same time he knew that the public was changing.  It
+was becoming increasingly difficult to produce an instantaneous
+success.  The theatre did not stand where it had done in popular
+esteem, and its personalities had no longer the vivid authority they
+had once enjoyed.  When the Prime Minister visited the Imperium, it was
+rather Sir Henry than the Prime Minister who was honoured: a sad
+declension, for Prime Ministers come and go, but a great actor rules
+for ever as sole lessee and manager of an institution as familiar to
+the general mind as the House of Commons.  Prime Ministers had come and
+gone, they had in turn accepted Sir Henry's kind offer of a box for the
+first night, but latterly Prime Ministers had gathered popularity and
+actor-managers had lost it, so great had been the deterioration of the
+public mind since the introduction of cheap newspapers, imposing upon
+every public character the necessity of a considerable waste of energy
+in advertising....  In the old days, a great man's advertising was done
+for him in acknowledgment of his greatness.  Sir Henry was uneasy,
+could not shake off the gathering gloom, and a deep-seated conviction
+that Lady Butcher had made the fatal mistake of his career by devoting
+herself so exclusively to the front of the house and social drapery,
+bringing him into intimate contact with such persons as Prime
+Ministers, Dukes, and Attorney-Generals....  The public had been
+admitted behind the scenes.  The mystery was gone.  The theatre, even
+the Imperium had lost its spell.  Nothing in it was sacred; not even
+rehearsals, which were continually interrupted by journalists, male and
+female, elegant young men and women who were friends and acquaintances
+of his family, dressmakers.  'Ah!  Teresa!  Teresa!' sighed Sir Henry,
+gazing at the portrait of that lady.  'It needs your touch, your charm,
+the quick insight into the health of the theatre which only comes to
+those who have been born in it.'
+
+Soon the Imperium would close for a short holiday, after a shockingly
+bad season, and its manager had to make up his mind as to his new
+production.  Mr Gillies was all for safety and economy, and for
+postponing any adventure to the Spring, but Sir Henry said,--
+
+'The fate of the whole year is decided in October.  The few people who
+matter come back from Karlsbad and Scotland cleaned up and scraped, and
+it is then that you make your impression.  The Spring is too late.  We
+must have something new.'
+
+'We've got nothing new.'
+
+'This fellow Mann.'
+
+'But!  He's mad.  If he walked into the Club half the men would walk
+out of it.'
+
+'He has made himself felt.'
+
+'Yes.  But in the wrong way.'
+
+'The wrong way is often the right way in the end.'
+
+'You can't have him in the theatre, Chief, after the way he has talked
+about us, as though none of us knew our business.'
+
+'He might say so if he saw our balance-sheet,' said Sir Henry, who
+loved nothing so much as teasing his loyal subordinates.  'We've
+nothing but this melodrama of Halford Bunn's in which I should have to
+play the Pope.'
+
+'Well, you were a great success as a Cardinal, Chief.'
+
+'Hm!  Hm!  Yes.'  Sir Henry began to live again through the success of
+_The Cardinal's Niece_, but also he remembered the horrible time he had
+had at rehearsals with Mr Halford Bunn who would get so drunk with his
+own words that any acting which distracted attention from them drove
+him almost into hysterics.
+
+Sir Henry laughed.
+
+'Bunn or Mann....  Said Mr Mann to Mr Bunn, "I hope you've got a record
+run."  Said Mr Bunn to Mr Mann, "You, sir, are but an also ran."'
+
+'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the manager.
+
+'He! he! he!' laughed Sir Henry, and they parted without having solved
+their problem, though the impishness in Sir Henry made him long to
+infuriate both Bunn and Mann by a merger of his contracts with the two
+of them....  Oh! dear.  Oh, dear, authors had always been trial enough,
+but if artists were going to begin to thrust their inflated egoism into
+the machinery of the theatre then the life of its manager would become
+unbearable....  Sir Henry liked to drift and to make sudden and
+surprising decisions.
+
+In this case the decision was made for him--by Clara.  It had become
+one of his chief pleasures to give her lunch in the Aquarium, as she
+called it, and to laugh with her over her vivid and comic impressions
+of London, and insensibly he had fallen in love with her, not as was
+his habit theatrically and superficially, but with an old man's passion
+for youth.  It hurt him, plagued him, tortured him, because she never
+gave him an opening for flirtation, but kept his wits at full stretch
+and made him feel thirty again: and as he felt thirty he wanted to be
+thirty....  She never discussed her private affairs with him, but he
+knew that she lived alone.  She baffled him, bewildered him, until he
+was often hard put to it not to burst into tears.  So quick she was and
+she understood so well, had so keen an insight into character and the
+intrigue that went on all around her, that he marvelled at her
+innocence and sometimes almost hated her for it, and for her refusal to
+accept the position assigned to women in society.  His blague, his
+bluff were useless with her.  He had painfully to reveal to her his
+best, the kindly, tender-hearted, generous simpleton that at heart he
+was.  Loving her, he could not help himself, and, loving her, he raged
+against her.
+
+She would never allow him to visit her in her rooms.  That was a
+privilege which she reserved for Verschoyle.  Her rooms were her
+sanctuary, her refuge, the place where she could be simple and human,
+and be the untouched Clara Day who had lived in childish glee with her
+grandfather and most powerfully alone in her imagination with various
+characters, more real than any of the persons with whom she ever came
+in contact until she met Charles Mann....  He was never admitted to her
+rooms, nor was Sir Henry Butcher, in whom she had for the first time
+encountered the ordinary love of the ordinary sentimental male.  This
+left her so unmoved that she detested it, with all its ridiculous
+parade of emotions, its stealthy overtures, its corrosive dishonesty,
+which made a frank interchange of thought and feeling impossible....
+The thing had happened to her before, but she had been too young to
+realise it, or to understand to the full its essential possessiveness,
+which to her spirit was its chief offence.
+
+She had to rebuke Sir Henry.  One week she found her salary trebled.
+She returned the extra ten pounds to Mr Gillies, the manager, pointing
+out that she was doing the same work, small and unimportant, and that
+it was not fair to the other girls.
+
+'The Chief believes in you, Miss Day.  He doesn't want you to leave us.'
+
+'This is the very kind of thing to drive me out.'
+
+'You're not like other girls, Miss Day....' said Mr Gillies.  'Indeed,
+I often wonder what a young lady who wears her clothes as you do is
+doing in the theatre.'
+
+Clara's expression silenced him, and she was enraged with the Chief for
+exposing her to such familiarity.  She taxed Sir Henry with it, and he
+was quick to see his mistake, and so warmly pleaded that he had only
+meant it as a kindness that she could not but forgive him.  He implored
+her to let him merit her forgiveness by making her a present of
+anything she desired; but she desired nothing.
+
+'I'm at your feet,' he said, and he went down on his knees.  'In two or
+three years I will make a great actress of you.  You shall be the great
+woman of your time....  A Spring day in the country with you would make
+me young as Romeo....'
+
+'Please get up,' said Clara, 'and let us talk business.  You promised
+early this year that you would do Charles Mann's _Tempest_.'
+
+'Yes.  I'm always making promises.  One lives on promises.  Life is a
+promise....  If I promise to do _The Tempest_ will you come and stay
+with us in The Lakes in August?  I want you to meet the Bracebridges;
+you ought to know the best people, the gay people, the aristocrats, the
+only people who know how to be amusing.'
+
+This was getting further and further away from business, though Clara
+knew that it was impossible to keep Sir Henry to the point.  She
+ignored his invitation and replied,--
+
+'If you will do _The Tempest_ I can get Lord Verschoyle to support it.'
+
+Sir Henry was at once jealous.  He pouted like a baby.
+
+'I don't want Verschoyle or any other young cub to help you.  _I_ want
+to help you....  Verschoyle can't appreciate you.  He can't possibly
+see you as you are, or as you are going to be.'
+
+Clara smiled.  Verschoyle had become her best friend, and with him she
+enjoyed a deep, quiet intimacy which the young gentleman preserved with
+exquisite tact and taste, delighting in it as he did in a work of art,
+or a good book, and appreciating fully that the girl's capacity for it
+was her rarest and most irresistible power....  Sir Henry was like a
+silly boy in his desire to impress on her that he alone could
+understand her.
+
+He continued,--
+
+'It seems so unnatural that you have no women friends other than old
+Julia....  An actress nowadays has her part to play in society....  You
+have brought new life into my theatre.'
+
+'Then,' said Clara, 'let us do _The Tempest_.'
+
+'But I don't want to do _The Tempest_.'
+
+'Charles said you did.'
+
+'We talked about it, but we are always talking in the theatre....  I
+would give up everything if you would only be a little kinder to me.'
+
+Was this the great Sir Henry speaking?  Clara saw that he was on the
+verge of a schoolboy outburst, perhaps a declaration, and she was never
+fonder of the man than in this moment of self-humiliation.  He waited
+for some relaxation in her, but was met only with sallies.  He rose,
+drew his hand over his eyes, and walked up and down the room sighing.
+
+'At my age, to love for the first time....  It is appalling: it is
+tragic.  To have made so great a position and to have nothing to offer
+you that you will accept.'
+
+'Not even a rise in salary,' said Clara, a little maliciously, and she
+so hurt him that he collapsed in his attempt at heroics, and to win her
+at all costs said,--
+
+'Yes, yes.  I will do _The Tempest_.  I can make Prospero a great part.
+I will do _The Tempest_ if you will be Miranda; at least if you will be
+nothing else you shall be a daughter to me.'
+
+'You had better ask Charles and Verschoyle to supper,' said Clara.
+'And we can all talk it over.  But I won't have Mr Gillies.'
+
+'Ah!  How Teresa hated that man....  Do you know that I sometimes think
+he has undone all the great work she did for me.'
+
+Clara had no mind to discuss Mr Gillies.  She had gained her point.
+She felt certain that a combination of Butcher, Charles, and Verschoyle
+was the most promising for her purpose.
+
+'I hate Mann,' said Sir Henry.  'I hate him.  He is a renegade.  He
+loathes his own calling.  He has turned his back on it....'
+
+'When you know him you will love him.'
+
+Sir Henry swung round and fixed his eyes on her.
+
+'I live in dread,' he said, 'in dread for you.  You have everything
+before you, everything, and then one day you will fall in love and your
+genius will be laid at the feet of some fool who will trample it under
+foot as a cow treads on a beautiful buttercup.'
+
+Clara smiled.  Sir Henry, from excessive familiarity with noble words,
+could never find the exact phrase.
+
+
+The supper was arranged in the aquarium, which in Clara's honour was
+filled with banked up flowers, lilies, roses, delphiniums, and
+Canterbury bells....  Clara wore gray and green, and gray shoes with
+cross-straps about her exquisite ankles.  She came with Verschoyle, who
+brought her in his car which he had placed at her disposal.  Sir Henry
+was in a velvet evening suit of snuff colour, and he glared jealously
+at his lordship whom he regarded as an intending destroyer of Clara's
+reputation.
+
+'I'm glad you're going to give Mann his chance,' said Verschoyle.
+'Extraordinary fellow, most extraordinary....  Pity his life should be
+wasted, especially now that we are beginning to wake up to the
+importance of the theatre.'
+
+Sir Henry winced.
+
+'There _are_ men,' he said, 'who have worked while others talked.  Take
+this man Shaw, for instance.  He talked for years.  Then he comes out
+with plays which are all talk.'
+
+'Ibsen,' said Verschoyle.
+
+'Why should we on the English stage go on gloomily saying that there's
+something rotten in the state of Norway?....  I have run Shakespeare
+for more hundred nights than any man in the history of the British
+drama, and I venture to say that every man of eminence and every woman
+of beauty or charm has had at least a cigarette in this room....  Isn't
+that proof of the importance of the theatre?'
+
+'It may be only proof of your personal charm, Sir Henry,' said
+Verschoyle, and Clara was pleased with him for that....  She enjoyed
+this meeting of her two friends.  Verschoyle's breeding was the exactly
+appropriate set off to Sir Henry's flamboyance.
+
+With the arrival of Charles, the grouping was perfect.  He came in
+bubbling over with enthusiasm.  His portfolio was under his arm, and he
+had in his hand a bundle of newspapers.
+
+'Extraordinary news,' he said.  'The Germans in despair are turning the
+theatre into a circus.  Their idea of a modern Hellenic revival.
+Crowds, horses, clowns....  Sophocles in a circus!'
+
+'Horrible!' said Verschoyle.  'Horrible!  We must do better than that,
+Sir Henry.'
+
+'I _have_ done better.'
+
+Charles bent over Clara's hand and kissed it.
+
+'I have been working hard,' he said.  'Very hard.  My designs are
+nearly finished....  Verschoyle likes them.'
+
+'I think them delightful,' said Verschoyle.
+
+Supper was served.  In tribute to Clara's charm, Verschoyle's wealth,
+and Charles's genius, it was exquisitely chosen--oysters, cold salmon,
+various meats, pastries and jellies, with sherry, champagne, port and
+liqueurs, ices and coffee.
+
+Sir Henry and Charles ate enormously.  Even in that they were in
+competition.  They sat opposite each other, and their hands were
+constantly busy reaching over the table for condiments, bread,
+biscuits, olives, wine....  Verschoyle and Clara were in strong
+contrast to them, though both were enjoying themselves and were vastly
+entertained by the gusto of the great.
+
+Sir Henry talked at Clara in a boyish attempt to dispossess Charles.
+He was at his most airily brilliant, and invented a preposterous story
+in which Mr Gillies, his manager, and Mr Weinberg, his musical
+director, were engaged in an intrigue to ruin Miss Julia Wainwright, as
+the one had a niece, the other a wife, aching to become leading lady at
+the Imperium.
+
+'Julia,' he said, 'shall play Caliban.  Why not?  You shall play Ariel,
+Mann, and dear old Freeland shall be Ceres....  Let us be original.  I
+haven't read _The Tempest_ for a long time, but I dare say there's a
+part for you, Verschoyle.'
+
+'No, thanks.'
+
+'You could be one of the invisible spirits who eat the phantom supper.'
+
+'You and Charles could do that very well,' said Clara, who felt that
+her plans would succeed.  These three men were held together by her
+personality, and she meant them to unite for the purpose of forcing out
+those qualities in Charles which made her ready for every sacrifice, if
+only they could be brought to play their part in the life of his
+time....  As the wine and food took effect, all three men were in high
+spirits, and soon were roaring with laughter at the immense joke in
+which they all shared, the joke of pleasing the British public.
+
+'It is the most wonderful game ever invented,' said Sir Henry.
+'Millions and millions of people believing everything they are told.
+Shouting Hurrah! for fried fish if the hero of the moment says fried
+fish, and Hooray! for ice-cream when the next hero says ice-cream....
+I tell you I could put on a play by Halford Bunn to-morrow, and
+persuade them for a few weeks that it was better than Shakespeare.  Ah!
+you blame us for that, but the public is at fault always.  The man who
+makes a fortune is the man who invents a new way of boring them....  We
+shall be like the French soon, where the only means of maintaining any
+interest in politics is by a scandal now and then.'
+
+As they talked Clara felt more and more remote from them, and at
+moments found it difficult to believe that it was really she to whom
+all these amazing things had happened.  She thought it must be the end.
+Here at one table were money, imagination, and showmanship, the three
+essentials of success, but the three men in whom they lived were
+talking themselves into ineffectiveness.  Even Verschoyle had caught
+the fever and was talking, and she found herself thinking that the
+three of them, whom separately she could handle so well, were together
+too much for her.
+
+They talked for hours, and she tried again and again vainly to steer
+them back to business.  They would have none of it.  Their tongues were
+loosed and they expressed their several discontents in malicious wit.
+
+At last she left the table and took up Charles's portfolio.  He sprang
+to his feet and snatched it away from her rather roughly and said,--
+
+'I don't want to show them yet.'
+
+'It is getting late, Charles,' she protested.
+
+'In Moscow,' he said, 'a feast like this goes on for days.'
+
+Sir Henry took advantage of the altercation to ascertain from
+Verschoyle that he was willing to back Mann's _Tempest_ for at least an
+eight weeks' run.  That was good enough for Sir Henry.  He had no need
+to look at the drawings....  He was back again in his palmy days.  He
+knew that Clara, like Teresa, would not let him make a fool of himself.
+
+Clara saw this, and was very angry and sore.  It was terrible to her
+that when she had hoped for an eagerness and gusto to carry through her
+project there should have been this declension upon money and food.
+After all, Shakespeare wrote _The Tempest_ and his share in its
+production was greater than that of either Mann or Butcher.  She had
+hoped they would discuss the play and bring into common stock their
+ideas upon it.
+
+However, she laughed at herself for being so young and innocent.  No
+doubt in their own time they would really tackle their problem, and,
+after all, in the world of men, from which women were and perhaps
+always would be excluded, money and food were of prime importance.  All
+the same she was disappointed and could hardly conceal it.
+
+'I haven't had such a good evening for twenty years,' said Sir Henry.
+
+'Famous,' said Charles, returning to the table.  Charles was astonished
+to find how much he liked Sir Henry, upon whose doings in his exile he
+had brooded bitterly.
+
+Verschoyle said,--
+
+'I'm only astonished that more men in my position don't go in for the
+theatre.  There are so many of us and we can't think of anything better
+than racing and polo and big game.'
+
+As they were all so pleased with themselves, Clara swallowed her
+chagrin, and more happily accepted their homage when Sir Henry toasted
+her as the presiding Muse of the Imperium.
+
+She was suffering from the reaction from a fulfilled ambition.  She had
+overcome Charles's reluctance to submit to the machinery of the
+theatre, and was herself now inspired with something of a horror of its
+immense power, which could absorb originality and force, and reduce
+individuals to helpless puppets.  But she would not admit to herself
+that she might have been wrong, and that it were possibly better to
+have left Charles to fight his own way through.
+
+No, no.  Left to himself he would always be tripped up by his desire
+for birds and fishes and other such superfluities.  Left to meet in
+their love of art he and Sir Henry would soon have been at loggerheads.
+In their love of food, they could discover each other's charm and
+forget their jealousy and suspicion of each other's aims.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SOLITUDE
+
+Verschoyle swept aside her reluctance to accept gifts from him, and she
+allowed him to furnish her rooms for her upon condition that he never
+came there without her permission.  He said,--
+
+'Why shouldn't I have the pleasure of indulging my desire to give you
+everything in the world?  People will talk! ...  People talk anyhow in
+London.  If we were seen walking together down Piccadilly, there would
+be talk.  They will say I am going to marry you, but we know
+different....  Your way of living is exactly my ideal, absolute
+independence, peace, and privacy.  We're rather alike in that.  It
+seems so odd that we should be living with these people whose whole aim
+in life is publicity.'
+
+They had many happy hours together reading and discussing the books
+which he bought for her by the armful at a shop in Charing Cross Road,
+where, open to the street, were piles of books almost blatantly
+subversive of society--Nietsche, Havelock Ellis, Shaw, Ibsen, Anarchist
+tracts, Socialist and Labour journals, R.P.A. cheap reprints, every
+sort and kind of book that in an ordinary shop would only be procured
+upon a special order....  It was a very fierce shop.  Its woodwork was
+painted scarlet, and above the shelves in gilt letters were such names
+as Morris, Marx, Bakounin, Kropotkin, Lassalle, and mottoes such as
+'The workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains.'
+
+It was Clara who discovered the shop in her wanderings through the West
+End, which she desired to know even to its remotest crannies, and its
+oddity seized her imagination when she discovered that for all its
+fierceness it was kept by a gentle little old Scotsman, who most
+ferociously desired the destruction of society, but most gently helped
+all who needed help and most wholly sympathised with all, and they were
+many, who turned to him for sympathy....  The frequenters of his shop
+were poor, mostly long-haired eaters of nuts, and drinkers of ideas.
+There were young men who hovered in the background of his shop arguing,
+chatting, filling in the time they had to spend away from their
+lodgings in the frequent intervals between their attempts to do work
+for which their convictions made them unfitted.  They believed, as he
+did, in the nobility of work, but could find none that was not ignoble.
+It was his boast that he had no book in his shop in which he did not
+believe.
+
+The beautiful and elegant young lady who walked into his shop one day
+astonished and delighted him with her radiance.  She was the kind of
+accident that does not often happen to a humble Anarchist bookseller.
+
+When she came again and again, he warmed to her, and recommended books,
+and gave her Prince Kropotkin's _Memoirs_ as a present, at least he
+gave her the second volume, for he could not find the first....  He
+always hotly denied that books were stolen from his open shop, but
+admitted that they were sometimes 'borrowed' by his young friends.
+
+The story of Kropotkin's escape from the fortress moved Clara deeply,
+and she read it to Verschoyle in her rooms.
+
+'And that man is still alive,' she said, 'here in England, where we go
+round and round hunting fame and money....  He was like you,
+Verschoyle, in just such a position as you, but he found it intolerable
+and went to prison.'
+
+'Ah! but that was in Russia, where it is easy to go to prison.  If I
+tried and tried they wouldn't send me.  I'm too rich.  They wouldn't do
+it.  If I became an Anarchist, they would just laugh because they don't
+believe that society can ever be upset.'
+
+'I'm quite sure I didn't go into that shop for nothing.  Something is
+going to happen to me,' said Clara.
+
+'I think quite enough has happened to you.  Don't you? ...  What a
+restless little creature you are!  Here you are with everything at your
+feet, the greatest artist, the richest bachelor in London at your
+disposal, and you want something to happen to you.'
+
+'I don't want it.  I say that I feel it must come.
+
+'You're before your time, my dear.  That's what is the matter with you.
+Women aren't independent yet.  They are still clinging to men.  That is
+what I cannot stand about them.  I should hate to have a woman clinging
+to my money.  Still more should I hate to have one clinging to myself.'
+
+'But you ought to marry.  You would be happier.'
+
+He shook his head and smiled,--
+
+'You have made that impossible, Clara.'
+
+'I?'
+
+'Yes.  If I found a girl like you who wanted to marry me I might
+consider it....  My aunts are furious.'
+
+'With me?'
+
+'Yes.  You have made more of a stir than you can imagine.  They tell me
+you are more wicked than Cleopatra, and yet you complain that nothing
+happens to you.'
+
+She took him to the bookshop and introduced him to the bookseller, a
+little gray-bearded man in a tweed suit.  Verschoyle liked him and
+asked him what he thought a man in his position ought to do.
+
+'The man Jesus put you right years ago,' said the bookseller.  'Sell
+all that thou hast and give to the poor.'
+
+'But I can't,' said Verschoyle.  'I'm only a _cestui que trust_.'
+
+To both Verschoyle and Clara the bookshop was a place of escape, a
+holiday ground where they could play with ideas which to Verschoyle
+were a new kind of toy.  With Mann there was always a certain strain
+for him, because Mann wanted something definite; but with the
+bookseller and his young friends, he was at his ease, for they were
+very like himself, without ambition, and outside all the press and
+hurry of society.  Like himself they wanted nothing except to be
+amused, and like himself they hated amusement which entailed effort.
+
+Clara, however, as usual took it seriously.  The Kropotkin Memoirs had
+jolted her imagination, and she saw the young men of the bookshop as
+potential Kropotkins, people who stood upon the edge of an abyss of
+suffering and asked nothing better than to be engulfed in the world's
+misery.
+
+The disturbance in her serenity was so great that for some weeks she
+shut herself up alone to collect her ideas.  The world was not so
+simple as she had thought; certainly by no means so simple as it had
+appeared during her three years with Charles.  As she had said, London
+was different.  She had progressed so far with this great London of
+Butcher and Verschoyle only to find through the bookshop another London
+suddenly opened up before her--the London of the poor....  Poverty she
+had never known, except the poverty of the world of art which is
+created rather by indifference to money than by the grim lack of it.
+With Charles days had been so busy, nights so happy, that it was a
+small thing that every now and then she had to go hungry for a day in
+order that he might not lack.  The immense poverty which now she saw
+everywhere in this West End of London, in courts off Charing Cross
+Road, in vast workmen's dwellings, in Soho, and by her own rooms at the
+back of Leicester Square, everywhere round the calculated magnificence
+of the theatres, overwhelmed her and changed many of her conceptions;
+first of all her attitude towards Kitty Messenger, whom she had
+regarded as a vulgar nuisance, a horrible intrusion from the past.  It
+was impossible for her to accept her position of security above the
+dirty sea of poverty.
+
+She loathed the poor, their indolence, their coarseness, their horrible
+manners, their loud mirth and violent anger....  Once outside her door
+two drunken women fought.  They leaned against the wall, clutching each
+other by the hair, and attempted, while they breathed thick curses into
+each other's glaring faces, to bite, to scratch, each to bang the
+other's head against the wall....  Clara ran past them trembling in
+every limb.  She had never seen the uncontrolled brutality of which
+human beings are capable....  But it was even worse when a policeman
+arrested the two women and roughly dragged them away.
+
+And after that she was continually coming upon similar scenes, or upon
+degraded and derelict types.  It was as though she had been blind and
+was suddenly able to see--or had the world turned evil?
+
+How could Verschoyle, how could Charles, how could all the well-dressed
+and well-fed people be so happy while such things were going on before
+their eyes?  Perhaps, like herself, they could not see them.  It was
+very strange.
+
+Stranger still was the release of energy in herself, bringing with it a
+new personal interest in her own life.  She began to look more keenly
+at other women and to understand them a little better, to sympathise
+even with their vanity, their mindlessness, their insistence upon
+homage and flattery from their men.  From that she passed to a somewhat
+bewildered introspection, realising that it was extraordinary that she
+should have been able to sever her connection with Charles and to
+maintain the impersonal when the personal relationship was
+suspended--or gone?  Yes.  That was quite extraordinary, and because of
+it she knew that she could never live the ordinary woman's life,
+absorbed entirely in external things, in position, clothes, food and
+household, shops.
+
+She remembered Charles saying that his feeling for her was at the
+farthest end of love, and certainly she had never known anything like
+the relationship between, say, Freeland and Julia--easy, comfortable
+romance.  To be either easy or comfortable had become an abomination to
+her, and at bottom this was the reason for her dissatisfaction.  It had
+been too easy to procure the beginnings of success for Charles.  They
+had secured control of the machinery of the theatre, and must now act
+in accordance with its grinding.
+
+For some weeks she was paralysed and could do nothing but sit and
+brood; hardly thinking at all consciously, but gazing in upon herself
+and the forces stirring in her, creeping up and up to take control of
+her imagination that had hitherto been entirely free and in undisputed
+mastery of her being.  This was a time of the acutest agony.  She would
+not surrender.  Without knowing what was being demanded of her she
+cried, 'I will not, I will not.'  But the forces stirring in her were
+implacable, and changed her whole physical sensation of being.  Her
+body changed, her figure altered most subtly and imperceptibly, her
+face gained in strength and beauty, but she loathed the change, because
+it was taking place without reference to her own will, or her own
+imagination, which for the first time in her life was baffled....  It
+was appalling to her, who had always found it so easy to direct the
+lives of others, to find her own life slipping with a terrible velocity
+out of control....  No thought, no notion of her recent days was now
+valid.  At the very worst stage of all even simple movements seemed
+incomprehensible.  When she caught sight of her own lovely arm that had
+always given her a thrill of pleasure, it now repelled her as something
+fantastic and irresistibly comic, revoltingly comic at this time when
+she was a prey to so much obscure suffering, so deep that she could
+trace it to no cause, so acute that she could discern in it no purpose.
+
+She found it almost her sole relief to read, and she devoured among
+other curious works which she found at her bookshop, General Booth's
+_Darkest London_ and Rose's _The Truth about the Transvaal_.  Novels
+she could not read at all.  Fiction was all very well, but it ought to
+have some relation to human emotions as they are.  After her aerial
+life in Charles's imagination she needed a diet of hard facts, and, as
+usual, what she needed that she obtained.  Both Booth and Rose dealt
+with the past, but that made them the more palatable, and they
+reassured her.  The facts she was now discovering had been present to
+other minds and her own had not unsupported to bear the whole weight of
+them....  In her untouched youth she had always accepted responsibility
+for the whole universe, and so long as her life had been made easy,
+first of all by her grandfather, and then by Charles, the burden had
+been tolerable, and she had been able to mould the universe to make
+them comfortable.  But now that life was suddenly for no apparent
+reason incredibly difficult, the burden was greater than she could
+bear, and it relieved her to find in these two books the utterance of
+suffering consciences.....  As she read Rose she remembered a saying of
+her grandfather's, 'The British make slums wherever they go because in
+every British mind there is a slum.'
+
+She could find relief in the books, but she could not stay the welling
+up of the mysterious forces which swamped the clarity of her mind and
+made her usually swift intuition sluggish.
+
+Very thankful was she that she had steered Charles into the Imperium
+before this cataclysm broke in her....  She could well be alone to sort
+out if possible the surfeit of new impressions from which she was
+suffering.  She no longer had thoughts but only obsessions.  London....
+London....  London....  The roaring traffic: the crowds of people:
+Coventry Street by night: the illuminated theatres: the statue in
+Piccadilly Circus: the hotel in which she and Charles had stayed on
+their first night in London: the painted faces of the women: policemen:
+commissionaires: wonderful cars lit up at night, gliding through the
+streets with elegant ladies in evening dress reclining at their ease,
+bored, mechanical, as hard and mechanical as the cars that carried them
+through the streets: the drunken women fighting outside her door: the
+woman opposite her windows who kept a canary in a cage and watered so
+lovingly the aspidistra on her window-sill: tubes: lifts: glaring
+lights and white tiles....  London....  London....  London....
+
+Through it all there ran a thread of struggling, conscious purpose
+which kept her from misery and made it impossible for her to succumb.
+Deep in her heart she knew that she could not; that she had escaped;
+that it would never be for her an awful, a terrible, an overwhelming
+thing to be a woman.
+
+With that knowledge there came an exultation, a pride, a triumphant
+sense of having come through an almost fatal peril, the full nature of
+which had yet to be revealed.  And she had wrestled through it alone.
+Her childish detestation of her womanhood was gone.  She accepted it,
+gloried in it as her instrument and knew that she would never be lost
+in it.
+
+For ever in her mind that crisis was associated with Kropotkin's escape
+from prison, and she was full of a delighted gratitude to the little
+bookseller who had lent her the book, the second volume, the first
+having been borrowed.
+
+Immeasurably increased was her understanding through this sudden
+convulsion of her life, and she was very proud of the loyalty to her
+instinct which had made her wrestle through it alone; and now, when she
+saw women absorbed in external things, she knew that they had taken
+refuge in them from just such convulsions in which, had they attempted
+to face them, they must have been swamped.  They clung to external
+things to prevent themselves being lost in the whirlpool of the
+internal world of womanhood....  Ah!  It was supreme to be a woman, to
+contain the most fierce and most powerful of all life's manifestations,
+to smile and to distil all these violent forces into charm, to suffer
+and to turn all suffering into visible beauty.
+
+If Clara now had any easy pity it was for men, who live always in
+fantasy, lured on by their own imaginings in the vain effort to solve
+the mystery of which only a true and loyal woman has the key.
+
+When once more she approached her external life it was through the
+bookshop, where she found her friend the bookseller munching his lunch
+of wheaten biscuits and apples in the dingy little room at the back of
+his shop.
+
+He offered her an apple.  She took it and sat on a pile of books tied
+up with a rope.
+
+'You're looking bonny,' he said.
+
+'I think I'll come and be your assistant.'
+
+'A fine young leddy like you?'
+
+'I might meet some one like Kropotkin.'
+
+'Ah!  Isn't that grand?  There's none o' your Dumas and Stevensons can
+beat that; a real happening in our own life-time....  But I can no
+afford an assistant.'
+
+'Oh!  You always seem to have plenty of people in your shop.'
+
+'These damned publishers put their prices up and up on the poor
+bookseller, and my brains are all my capital, and I will not sell the
+stuff that's turned out like bars o' soap, though the authors may be as
+famous as old Nick and the publishers may roll by in their cars and
+build their castles in the countryside....  I sell my books all the
+week, and I grow my own food on my own plot on Sundays, and I'll win
+through till I'm laid in the earth, and have a pile o' books to keep me
+down when I'm dead as they have done in my lifetime.'
+
+He thrust a slice of apple into his mouth and munched away at it, rosy
+defiance of an ill-ordered world shining from his healthy cheeks.
+
+On his desk Clara saw his account book, a pile of bills, and old
+cheques, and it was not difficult to guess the cause of his trouble.
+
+'I'm sure I should sell your books for you.'
+
+'You'd draw all London into my shop, young leddy, as you'll draw them
+to the playhouse; but bookselling is a dusty trade and is not for fair
+wits or fine persons.'
+
+Clara looked out into the shop, and was happy in its friendliness.  A
+lean, hungry-looking man came in, bought a paper, and stayed turning
+over the books.  She could not see his face, but something in his
+movement told of quality of wit and precise consciousness.  He seized a
+book with a familiar mastery, as though he could savour and weigh its
+contents through his finger-tips, glanced through it, and put it away
+as though it were finally disposed of.  There was a concentrated
+absorption in everything he did that made it definite and final.  He
+was so sensitive that at the approach of another person he edged away
+as though to avoid a distasteful impact....  Very shabby he was, but
+distinguished and original.  After taking up half a dozen books and not
+finding in them any attraction, he stopped, pondered, and moved out of
+the shop quite obviously having clearly in his mind some necessary and
+inevitable purpose.
+
+His going was a wrench to Clara, so wholly had she been absorbed in
+him; but though she longed to know his name she could not bring herself
+to ask her old friend who he was.  That did not matter.  He was, and
+Charing Cross Road had become a hallowed place by profound experience,
+the bookshop a room beyond all others holy.
+
+For some time longer, Clara sat in silence with her old friend, who lit
+his after-luncheon pipe and sat cross-legged, blinking and ruminant.
+She stared into the shop, and still it seemed that the remarkable
+figure was standing there fingering the books, pondering, deciding.
+Her emotions thrilled through her, uplifted her, and she had a
+sensation of being deliciously intimate with all things animate and
+inanimate.  She touched the desk by her side, and it seemed to her that
+life tingled through her fingers into the wood.  She smiled at the old
+man, and his eyes twitched, and he gave her a little happy sidelong
+nod.  She wanted to tell him that the world was a very wonderful place,
+but she could only keep on smiling, and as she left the shop, the
+bookseller thrust his hat on the back of his head, scratched his beard,
+and said,--
+
+'Pegs!  I said to Jenny she'll bring me luck.  But she's wasted on yon
+birkie ca'd a lord.'
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+MAGIC
+
+A friendly city seemed London to Clara as she left the shop.  A fresh
+wind was blowing, and she stood for some moments to drink in the keen
+air.  The sky was full of clouds, gray, white, and cinnamon against the
+smoky blue, as she turned south with eyes newly eager for beauty and
+friendliness.  Above the roofs, the statue of Lord Nelson stood perched
+in absurd elevation above the London that flouted his Emma, and Clara
+laughed to see the little gray man in cocked hat symbolising for her
+the delicious absurdity of London, where nothing and nobody could ever
+be of the smallest importance in its hugeness....  This was its charm,
+that an individual could in it feel the indifference of humanity
+exactly as on a hill the indifference of Nature can be felt.  A city of
+strangers!  Everybody was strange to everybody else.  That was good and
+healthy.  Nothing in London was on show, nothing dressed for the
+tourist.  Living in rooms in London, one could be as lonely as in a hut
+in the wilderness.
+
+She walked down to the Imperium, and, entering by the stage door, found
+Charles in excited converse with the scenic artist, Mr Smithson, who
+was looking at a drawing and scratching his head dubiously.
+
+'It's clever, Mr Mann, but nothing like the seaside.  Sir Henry's sure
+to want his waves "off," and the sun ought to look a bit like it.'
+
+'That's my design, Mr Smithson.  Sir Henry said you would paint it.  If
+you won't, I'll do it myself....  Ah!  Clara, do come and explain to Mr
+Smithson what we want.'
+
+Smithson turned angrily.--
+
+'He gives me a blooming drawing with purples and golds and blues and
+every colour but the natural colours of a sea-side place.  I've painted
+scenery for thirty years, and I ought to know what a stage island is
+like by now.  I've done a dozen sets for _The Tempest_ in my time.'
+
+'It is an enchanted island,' said Clara.
+
+'But Prospero was Duke of Milan....  I've _been_ to the Mediterranean
+to see for myself and I know what the colouring is....  I can't believe
+that Sir Henry has passed this.  God knows what kind of lighting it
+will take.'
+
+Charles threw his hat on the ground and stamped on it.
+
+'Dolt!  Fool!  Idiot!' he shouted.  'Go away and paint it as I tell you
+to paint it.'
+
+'Damned if I do,' said Smithson.  'My firm has painted all the scenery
+for this theatre since Sir Henry took it, and we've had our name on the
+programme, and we've got a reputation to lose.  When Shakespeare says
+an island, he means an island, not the crater of a blooming volcano....'
+
+Charles snatched his drawing out of Mr Smithson's hand, and with an
+expression of extreme agony he said.--
+
+'Clara, you dragged me into this infernal theatre.  Will you please see
+that I am not driven mad in it?  Am I an artist?'
+
+'You may be an artist, Mr Mann,' said Mr Smithson, 'but I'm a practical
+scene-painter.  I was painting scenery before you were born.  I was
+three years old in my father's workshop when I put my first dab of
+paint on for the Valley of Diamonds for Drury Lane in Gustus Harris's
+days.'
+
+The argument might have gone on indefinitely, but fortunately Sir Henry
+came down the stairs with Lady Butcher.  He was immaculately dressed in
+frock-coat and top hat, gray Cashmere trousers, and white waistcoat to
+attend with his wife a fashionable reception.  With a low bow, he swept
+off his very shiny hat, and said to Lady Butcher,--
+
+'My dear, Mr Charles Mann.'
+
+Lady Butcher gave a curt nod.
+
+'My dear, Miss Day....'
+
+'Che-arming!' drawled Lady Butcher, holding out her hand very high in
+the air.  Clara reached up to it and shook it sharply.
+
+'Mr Smithson doesn't like Charles's drawing for the cave scene,' said
+Clara.  'He can't quite see it, you know, because it is a little
+different.'
+
+'I won't be a moment, my dear,' said Sir Henry, and Lady Butcher sailed
+out into the street.
+
+'What's the matter, Smithson?'
+
+'We've never done anything like this before.  There's nothing like it
+in Nature.'
+
+'There is nothing like Caliban in Nature,' said Clara sweetly, and Sir
+Henry caught at her hint, scowled at Smithson, and growled,--
+
+'I have passed it.  If it needs modification we can settle it at
+rehearsal.  Go ahead.  I want to see it before I go away.'
+
+'But there are no measurements, Sir Henry.'
+
+'You know what we can do and what we can't.'
+
+'Very well, Sir Henry.'  Mr Smithson clapped on his bowler hat and
+rushed away.
+
+Charles stooped to gather up his battered hat, and Sir Henry seized
+Clara's arm, squeezed it tight, looked out through the door at his
+magnificent wife, and heaved an enormous sigh.  Clara in her amazing
+new happiness smiled at him, and he muttered,--
+
+'You grow in beauty every day.  A-ah!  Good-day, Mann.  The theatre is
+at your disposal.'
+
+He fixed his eyes on Clara for a moment, then wrenched himself away.
+
+There were one or two letters for her in the rack.  She took them down,
+and turned to find Charles, having smoothed out his hat, standing
+ruefully staring through his pince-nez.
+
+'These people are altogether too busy for me,' he said.  'All the work
+I've put in seems to be nothing to them.  I had a terrible turn with
+Butcher two days ago, and now this man Smithson has been too much for
+me.  They treat me like a tailor, and expect me to cut my scenery to
+fit their theatre....  I wish you'd come back, chicken.  I'm in a
+dreadful muddle.  I've been working till I can't see, and I've been
+reading _The Tempest_ till my mind is as salt as a dried haddock....
+But I've drawn a marvellous Caliban, part fish, part frog, part man ...
+Life emerging from the sea.  I'm sure now that we're all spawned from
+the sea, and that life on the earth is only what has been left after
+the sun has dried it up....'
+
+Clara looked at him apprehensively.  She still felt responsible for
+him, but she was no longer part and parcel of him.  She was free of his
+imagination and could be critical of it.
+
+'Never mind, Charles,' she said.  'Let us go and look at the stage, and
+you can tell me what you have planned, and then we will go out and
+talk, and decide what we will do during the holidays.  I have promised
+to go to Sir Henry's in the Lakes for a few days, and Verschoyle has
+promised to motor me up there.'
+
+Charles's fingers fumbled rather weakly round his lips, and she saw to
+her distress that he had been biting his nails again.
+
+'Aren't you ever coming back, my chicken, my love? ...  I'm sorry we
+came to London now.  We should have gone to Sicily as I wanted.  One
+can live in such places.  Here everybody is so business-like, so set,
+so used to doing and thinking in one particular way.'
+
+'Has anything happened?' asked Clara, knowing that he was never
+critical without a cause.
+
+'No,' he replied, rather shortly, 'no.'
+
+She was rather irritated by him.  He had no right to be as foolish and
+helpless as to have let her humiliate him by extricating him from his
+argument with Smithson, upon which he ought never to have entered.
+Smithson was only a kind of tradesman after all.
+
+They went on to the stage and Charles waxed eloquent over the scenery
+he had designed.  Eloquence with Charles was rather an athletic
+performance.  He took a tape measure from his pocket, and raced about
+with it, making chalk marks on the boards.
+
+The scenery door was open, and the sunlight poured in in a great shaft
+upon him, and Clara, watching him, was suddenly most painfully sorry
+for him.  He worked himself up into a throbbing enthusiasm, torrents of
+words poured from his lips, as with strange gesticulations he described
+the towering rocks, the wind-twisted trees, the tangle of lemons, the
+blue light illuminating the magician's grotto, the golden light that
+should hang about the rocky island jutting up from the sea.  All this
+he talked of, while the sun shone through his long yellow hair and
+revealed its streaks of silver....  At last he stood in the sunlight,
+with his arms outstretched, as though he were evoking his vision from
+the heavens to take shape upon the stage.
+
+Clara, watching him, perceived that he was a born actor.  He trod the
+stage with loving feet, and with a movement entirely different from
+that which he used in the street or among people who were not of the
+theatre.  This surely was the real Charles.  The light of the sun upon
+him was inappropriate.  It mocked him and inexorably revealed the fact
+that he was no longer young.  The scenery door was closed and the
+discordance ceased, but more clearly than ever was Charles revealed as
+an actor treading easily and affectionately his native elevation.  The
+influence of the place affected even himself, and after he had
+constructed his imaginary scenery round himself, he said,--
+
+'One of the first parts I ever played was Ferdinand staggering beneath
+logs of wood.'
+
+He assumed an imaginary log and recited,--
+
+            'This my mean task would be
+  As heavy to me as 'tis odious; but
+  The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead
+  And makes my labours pleasures: Oh, she is
+  Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed;
+  And he's composed of harshness.  I must remove
+  Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,
+  Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
+  Weeps when she sees me work; and says such baseness
+  Had never like executor.
+
+
+He produced the illusion of youth, and his voice was so entrancing that
+Clara, like Miranda, wept to see him....  He threw off his part with a
+great shout, rushed at her and caught her up in a hug.
+
+'Chicken,' he said, 'don't let us be silly any more.  We have won
+through.  Here we are in the theatre.  We've conquered the stage, and
+soon all those seats out there will be full of eager people saying,
+"Who are these wonders?  Can it be?  Surely they are none other than
+Charles and Clara Mann?"'
+
+'Day,' said she.
+
+He stamped his foot impatiently.
+
+'What's in a name?  Day, if you like.  Artists can and must do as they
+please.  This is our real life, here where we make beauty.  The rest is
+for city clerks and stockbrokers who can't trust themselves to behave
+decently unless they have a perfect net of rules from which they cannot
+escape.'
+
+'I don't want to talk about it.  Go on with your work, Charles.'
+
+'I've finished for to-day....  Will you let me take you out to dinner?'
+
+'No.  I've promised Verschoyle.'
+
+'Damn!  You oughtn't to be seen with him so much.  People will say you
+have left me for his money.'
+
+'I thought artists didn't care what people say.'
+
+'They don't, Clara.  They don't.'
+
+'You must be sensible, Charles.  You're not safe.  You can't take risks
+until you are successful.'
+
+'Then I won't succeed.  I won't go on....  A most unfortunate thing has
+happened.  Clott has vanished with all the money in the bank....  I let
+him sign the cheques.'
+
+'Oh!  Oh! you fool, Charles.'
+
+'He kept getting cheques out of me.'
+
+'How?'
+
+'He said he'd tell the police.'
+
+Clara stamped her foot.  Abominable!  How abominable people were....
+She had to protect Charles, but if she was with him she exposed him to
+the most fearful risk.  Was ever a girl in so maddening a position?
+
+What made it worse was that her attitude towards him had changed.  She
+was no longer so utterly absorbed in him that she could only see life
+through his eyes.  Apart from him she had grown and had developed her
+own independent existence.
+
+'How much did he take?'
+
+'Two hundred and ten pounds.  We can't prosecute him, or he'll tell.
+He knows that, or he wouldn't have done it.'
+
+'Where is he?'
+
+'I don't know.  Laverock met him the other day, and asked him about
+some committee business.  He had the impudence to say that he had
+resigned, and had come into money, so that his name was now no longer
+Clott but Cumberland.'
+
+And again Clara found herself in her heart saying, 'It is my fault.'
+
+It was all very well for Charles to believe that the world was governed
+by magic.  Art is magic, but she ought to have known that it is a magic
+which operates only among a very few, and that the many who are moved
+only by cunning are always taking advantage of them....  Poor Charles!
+Betrayed at every turn by his own simplicity, betrayed even by her
+eagerness to help him!
+
+'It is too bad,' said Clara, with tears in her eyes.  'We can't do
+anything.  Besides I would never send any one to prison, whatever they
+did.  But what a dirty mean little toad....  How did he find out?'
+
+'I don't know.  He's the kind of man who hangs about the theatre and
+borrows five shillings on Friday night.'
+
+Gone was the magic of the stage, gone the power in Charles.  He looked
+just a tired, seedy fellow, more than a little ashamed of himself.  He
+hung his head and muttered,--
+
+'This always happens when I am rich.  I've been terribly unhappy about
+it.  I didn't think I could tell you.  I went into a shop yesterday to
+buy a revolver, but I bought a photograph frame instead, because the
+man was so pleasant that I couldn't bear the idea of his helping me to
+end my life....  I seem to muddle everything I touch, and yet no one
+has ever dared to say that I am not a great artist.'
+
+Clara walked away from him across the stage.  There had been muddles
+before, but nothing so bad as this.
+
+As she walked, she found that in watching him she had learned the art
+of treading the stage, and of becoming that something more than herself
+which is necessary for dramatic presentation.  This sudden acquisition
+gave her a delighted thrill, and once again her life was flooded with
+magic, so that this new trouble, like her old, seemed very remote, and
+she could understand Charles's pretending that he must end his life
+even to the point of attempting to buy a revolver, which became
+impossible directly some one spoke pleasantly to him.  She felt
+confident and secure and of the theatre which was a sanctuary that
+nothing in the outside world could violate.
+
+'Don't worry, Carlo,' she said.  'I'll see that it is put straight.'
+
+'Then you'll come back and stop this nonsense about living alone?'
+
+'When _The Tempest_ is done we'll see about it.  I don't want to risk
+that.  _The Tempest_ is what matters now.'
+
+'Are you going to play in it?'
+
+'I don't know yet....  Will you go out into the auditorium and tell me
+what you think of my voice?'
+
+Charles went up into the dress circle, and Clara, practising her
+newly-acquired art, turned to an imaginary Ferdinand--more vivid and
+actual to her now--and declaimed,--
+
+          'I do not know
+  One of my sex! no woman's face remember,
+  Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
+  More that I may call men, than you, good friend,
+  And my dear father: how features are abroad,
+  I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,--
+  The jewel in my dower,--I would not wish
+  Any companion in the world but you.'
+
+
+She stopped.  The vivid, actual Ferdinand of her imagination changed
+into the form of the lean, hungry-looking man of the book-shop.  He
+turned towards her, and his face was noble in its suffering, powerful
+and strong to bear the burden upon the mind behind it.  Very sweet and
+gentle was the expression in his eyes, in most pathetic contrast to the
+rugged hardness which a passionate self-control had shaped upon his
+features....  Her heart ached under this astonishment that in this
+phantom she could see and know and love his face upon which in life her
+eyes had never fallen.
+
+'Go on,' called Charles, from the dress circle....  'Admirable....  I
+never thought you could do it.'
+
+'That's enough,' she replied, with a violent effort to shake free of
+her bewilderment and sweet anguish.
+
+'If I meet him,' she said in her heart, 'I shall love him and there
+will be nothing else.'
+
+Aloud she said,--
+
+'I must not.'
+
+She had applied herself to the task of furthering Charles's ambition,
+and until she had succeeded she would not yield, nor would she seek for
+herself in life any advantage or even any natural fulfilment.
+
+Charles came back in a state of excitement.
+
+'It was wonderful,' he said.  'What has happened to you?  Your voice is
+so full and round.  You lose yourself entirely, you speak with a voice
+that has in it all the colour and beauty and enchantment of my island.
+You move simply, inevitably, so that every gesture is rhythmical, and
+like a musical accompaniment to the words....  You'll be an artist.
+You are an artist.  There has been nothing like it since the old
+days....  Duse could not do more with her voice.'
+
+'I didn't know,' she said.  'I didn't know.'
+
+'But I did,' he cried.  'I did.  I knew you would become a wonder....
+Bother money, bother Butcher, bother Clott, and damn the committee.
+Together we shall be irresistible--as we have been.  You didn't tell me
+you were practising.  If that is why you want to be alone I have
+nothing to say against it.  I've been a selfish brute.'
+
+She was deeply moved.  Never before had Charles shown the slightest
+thought for her.  Human beings as such were nothing to him, but for an
+artist, as for art, no trouble was too great, no sacrifice too extreme
+for him.
+
+He seized her hands and kissed them over and over again.
+
+'I've been your first audience,' he said.  'Come out now, and I'll buy
+you flowers; your room shall be so full of flowers that you can hardly
+move through them.  As for Verschoyle, he shall pay.  It shall be his
+privilege to pay for us while we give the world the priceless treasure
+that is in us.'
+
+His words rather repelled and hurt her, and in her secret mind she
+protested,--
+
+'But I am a woman.  But I am a woman.'
+
+It hurt her cruelly that Charles should be blind to that, blind to the
+cataclysmic change in her, blind to her new beauty and to her newly
+gathered force of character.  After all, the magic of the stage was
+only illusion, a trick that, if it were not a flowering of the deeper
+magic of the heart, was empty, vain, contemptible, a thing of darkness
+and cajolery.
+
+'Perhaps it was just an accident,' said Clara.
+
+'Do it again!' said Charles, in a tone of command.
+
+'What?'
+
+'Do it again!'
+
+'I can't.'
+
+'Do it again, I tell you.  When you do a thing like that you have to
+find out how you did it.  Art isn't a thing of chance.  You must do it
+again now.'
+
+'No.'
+
+To her horror and amazement he pounced on her, seized her roughly by
+the shoulders, and shook her until her head rolled from side to side
+and her teeth chattered.  He was beside himself with passion, ruthless,
+impersonal in his fury to catch and hold this treasure of art which had
+so suddenly appeared in the child whom hitherto he had regarded as
+about as important as his hat or his walking-stick.
+
+'By Jove,' he said, 'I might have known it was not for nothing that I
+fished you out of Picquart's studio....'
+
+'How dare you speak to me like that?'
+
+She knocked his hands away and stood quivering in an outraged fury, and
+lashed out at him with her tongue.
+
+'I'm not paint that you can squeeze out of a tube,' she said.  'You
+treat people as though they were just that and then you complain if
+they round on you....  I know what you want.  You want to squeeze out
+of me what your own work lacks....'
+
+Charles reeled under this assault and his arms fell limply by his side.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said, 'I didn't know what I was doing.  I was knocked
+out with my astonishment and delight....  Really, really I forgot the
+stage was empty.  I thought we were working....'
+
+Clara stared at him.  Could he really so utterly lose himself in the
+play as that?  Or was he only persuading himself that it was so? ...
+With a sudden intuition she knew that in all innocence he was lying to
+her, and that what had enraged him was the knowledge, which he could
+never admit, that she was no longer a child living happily in his
+imagination but a human being and an artist who had entered upon a
+royal possession of her own.  She had outstripped him.  She had become
+an artist without loss of humanity.  Henceforth she must deal with
+realities, leaving him to his painted mummery...  She could understand
+his frenzy, his fury, his despair.
+
+'That will do, Charles,' she said very quietly.  'I will see what can
+be done about Mr Clott, and whatever happens I will see that you are
+not harmed....  If you like, you can dine with Verschoyle and me
+to-night.  You can come home with me now, while I dress.  I am to meet
+him at the Carlton and then we are going on to the Opera.'
+
+'Does Verschoyle know?'
+
+'He knows that you are you and that I am I--that is all he cares
+about...  He is a good man.  If people must have too much money, he is
+the right man to have it.  He would never let a man down for want of
+money--if the man was worth it.'
+
+'Ah!' said Charles, reassured.  This was like the old Clara speaking,
+but with more assurance, a more certain knowledge and less bewildering
+intuition and guess-work.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE ENGLISH LAKES
+
+A few weeks later, with Verschoyle and a poor relation of his, a Miss
+Vibart Withers, for chaperone, Clara left London in a 60 h.p. Fiat,
+which voraciously ate up the Bath Road at the rate of a mile every
+minute and a half....  It was good to be out of the thick heat of
+London, invaded by foreigners and provincials and turned into a city of
+pleasure and summer-frocks, so that its normal life was submerged, its
+character hidden.  The town became as lazy and drowsy a spectacle as a
+field of poppies over which danced gay and brilliant butterflies.  Very
+sweet was it then to turn away from it, and all that was happening in
+it, to the sweet air and to fly along between green fields and
+orchards, through little towns, at intervals to cross the Thames and to
+feel that with each crossing London lay so much farther away.  Henley,
+Oxford, Lechlade, and the Cotswolds--that was the first day, and,
+breathing the clover-scented air, gazing over the blue plains to the
+humpy hills of Malvern, Clara flung back her head and laughed in
+glee....  How wonderful in one day to shake free of everything, to
+leave behind all trammels!
+
+'No one need have any troubles now,' she said, with the bewitching
+smile that made all her discoveries so entrancing.  'When people get
+tied up in knots, they can just get into a car and go away.  The world
+is big enough for everybody.'
+
+'But people love their troubles,' replied Verschoyle.  'I have been
+looking for trouble all my life, but I can't find it.  That's my
+trouble.'
+
+'Everybody ought to be happy,' she said.
+
+'In their own way.  Most people are very happy with their troubles.
+They will take far more trouble over them than they will over their
+pleasures or making other people happy.'
+
+'Do you remember the birds and fishes?'
+
+'Do I not?  It was the birds and fishes who introduced you to me.'
+
+'I think this was what Charles meant by them--escape, irrelevance,
+holiday.'
+
+'That's quite true.  Nothing ought to be as serious as it is, for
+nothing is so serious as it looks when you really come to grips with
+it.  Life always looks like a blank wall until you come up to it and
+then there is a little door which was invisible at a distance....  I
+found that out when I met you.'
+
+'And did you go through it?'
+
+'Straight through and out to the other side.'
+
+Clara took his hand affectionately, and their eyes met in a happy
+smile.  They were friends for ever, the relationship most perfectly
+suited to his temperament, most needed by hers.
+
+From that she passed on to a frank discussion of her own situation with
+regard to Charles, and the hole he was in through the absconding Mr
+Clott.
+
+'I knew that fellow was a scoundrel,' said Verschoyle.  'He tried to
+borrow money from me, and to pump me about the form of my horses.  How
+on earth did he ever become secretary to a committee for the
+furtherance of dramatic art?'
+
+'He turned up.  Everything in Charles's life turns up.  _I_ turned up.'
+
+'And is your name really Day?'
+
+'It was my grandfather's name....  I never had any one else.  I
+remember no one else except an Italian nurse, with a very brown face
+and very white teeth.  He died in Paris four years ago.  My people were
+in India.'
+
+'Ah!  Families get lost sometimes in the different parts of the British
+Empire.  It is so big, you know.  I'm sure the English will lose
+themselves in it one of these fine days.'
+
+He passed over without a word her position as wife and no wife, but
+became only the kinder and more considerate.  It had eased and relieved
+her to talk of it.  Every impediment to their friendship was removed,
+but sometimes as they walked through fields he would grip his stick
+very tight and lash out at a hemlock or a dog-daisy, and sometimes when
+he was driving he would jam his foot down on the accelerator and send
+the car whirling along.  If they had met Charles walking along the road
+it would have gone ill with him.
+
+They were six days on their journey up through Shropshire, Cheshire,
+and the murk of South Lancashire.  They stayed in pleasant inns, and
+made many strange acquaintances, bagmen, tourists, young men with
+knapsacks on their backs escaping from the big towns, and sometimes
+they helped these young men over dreary stretches of road.
+
+'The happiest six days of my life,' said Verschoyle, as they approached
+the mountains.  'I haven't toured in England before.  Somehow in London
+one knows nothing of England.  One is bored and one goes over to
+Homburg or Aix-les-bains.  How narrow life is even with a car and a
+yacht!'
+
+How narrow life could be Clara soon discovered at the Butchers', where
+London life was simply continued in a lovely valley at the bottom of
+which lay a little lake shining like a mirror and vividly reflecting
+the hills above it.
+
+The Butchers had a long, low house in an exquisite garden, theatrically
+arranged so that the flowers looked as if they were painted and the
+trees had no roots, but were as though clamped and ironed to the earth.
+From their garden the very hills had the semblance of a back-cloth.
+
+The house was full of the elegant young men and women who ran in and
+out of the theatre and had no compunction about interrupting even
+rehearsals.  They chaffed Sir Henry, and fed Lady Butcher with scandal
+for the pleasure of hearing her say witty biting things, which, as she
+had no mercy, came easily to her lips.  She studiously treated Clara as
+though she were part and parcel of Verschoyle, and to be accommodated
+like his car or his chauffeur....  Except as a social asset, Lady
+Butcher detested the theatre, and she loathed actresses.
+
+As the days floated by--for once in a way the weather in Westmoreland
+was delicious--it became apparent to Clara that Lady Butcher hated the
+project of Charles's production of _The Tempest_.  She never missed an
+opportunity of stabbing at him with her tongue.  She regarded him as a
+vagabond.
+
+Living herself in a very close and narrow set, she respected cliques
+more than persons.  Verschoyle was rich enough to live outside a
+clique, but that a man with a career to make should live and work alone
+was in her eyes a kind of blasphemy.  As for Clara--Lady Butcher
+thought of her as a minx, a designing actress, one of the many who had
+attempted to divert Sir Henry from the social to the professional
+aspect of the theatre, which, in few words, Lady Butcher regarded as
+her own, a kind of salon which gave her a unique advantage over her
+rivals in the competition of London's hostessry.
+
+It was the more annoying to Lady Butcher that Clara and Verschoyle
+should turn up when they did as two Cabinet Ministers were due to motor
+over to lunch one day, and a famous editor was to stay for a couple of
+nights, while her dear friends the Bracebridges (Earl and Countess),
+with their son and daughter, were due for their annual visit.
+
+Distressed by this atmosphere of social calculation, Clara spent most
+of her time with Verschoyle, walking about the hills or rowing on the
+lake; but unfortunately she roused the boyish jealousy in Sir Henry,
+who, as he had 'discovered' her, regarded her as his property, and
+considered that any romance she might desire should be through him....
+He infuriated his wife by preferring Clara to all the other young
+ladies, and one night when, after dinner, he took her for a moon-light
+walk, she created a gust of laughter by saying,--
+
+'Henry can no more resist the smell of grease-paint than a dog can
+resist that of a grilled bone.'
+
+This was amusing but unjust, for Sir Henry regarded his desire for
+Clara's society as a healthy impulse towards higher things--at least,
+he told her so as he led her out through the orchard and up the stony
+path, down which trickled a little stream, to the crag that dominated
+the house and garden.  It was covered with heather and winberries, and
+just below the summit grew two rowan-trees.  So bright was the moon
+that the colour of the berries was almost perceptible.  Sir Henry stood
+moon-gazing and presently heaved a great sigh,--
+
+'A-a-ah!'
+
+'What a perfect night!' said Clara.
+
+'On such a night as this----'
+
+'On such a night----'
+
+'I've forgotten,' said Sir Henry.  'It is in the _Merchant of Venice_.
+Something about moonlight when Lorenzo and Jessica eloped.  You would
+make a perfect Jessica....  I played Lorenzo once.'
+
+Clara wanted to laugh.  It was one of the most delightful elements in
+Sir Henry's character that he could never see himself as old, or as
+anything but romantically heroic.
+
+'Yes,' he said; 'you have made all the difference in the world.  It was
+remarkable how you shone out among the players in my theatre....  It is
+even more remarkable among all these other masqueraders in that house
+down there.  All the world's a stage----'
+
+'Oh, no,' said Clara.  'It is beautiful.  I didn't know England was so
+lovely.  As we came north in the car I thought each county better than
+the last--and I forgot London altogether.'
+
+'It is some years since I toured,' said Sir Henry.  'My wife does not
+approve of it, but there is nothing like it for keeping you up to the
+mark.  The real audiences are out of London.  A couple of years'
+touring would do you a world of good.  You shall make your name
+first....  There aren't any actors and actresses now simply because
+they won't tour.  They want money in London--money in New York--the
+pity of it is that they get it.'
+
+Clara scrambled up to the highest point of the crag and stood with the
+gentle wind playing through her thick hair, caressing her parted lips,
+her white neck, liquefying her light frock about her limbs.
+
+'Oh, my God!' cried Sir Henry, gazing at her enraptured.  'Ariel!'
+
+As she stood there she was caught up in the wonder of the night, became
+one with it, a beam in the moonlight, a sigh in the wind, a star
+winking, a little tiny cloud floating over the tops of the mountains.
+So lightly poised was she that it seemed miraculous that she did not
+take to flight, almost against nature that she could stand so still.
+Her lips parted, and she sang as she used to sing when she was a
+child,--
+
+  Come unto these yellow sands
+    And then take hands.'
+
+
+A little young voice she had, sweet and low, a boyish voice, nothing of
+woman in it at all.
+
+She leaned forward and gazed over the edge of the crag, and Sir Henry,
+who was so deeply moved that all his ordinary mental processes were
+dislocated, thought with a horrid alarm that she was going to throw
+herself down.  Such perfection might rightly end in tragedy, and he
+thought with anguish of Mann and Verschoyle, thought that they had
+besmirched and dishonoured this loveliness, thought that this sudden
+exaltation and abstraction must come from the anguish that was betrayed
+in her eyes so often and so frequently.
+
+'Take care!  Take care!' called Sir Henry.
+
+She leaped down into the heather by his side, and he said,--
+
+'It seems a crime to take you back into the house.  What have you to do
+with whether or no we are asked to the next garden-party in Downing
+Street?  You are Ariel and can put a girdle round the earth....  I am
+almost afraid of you.  Can't we run away and become strolling players?
+You may think I am to be envied but my life has been a very unhappy
+one....  I want to help you....'
+
+It was obvious to Clara that he did not know what he was saying, and
+indeed he was light-hearted and moonstruck, lifted outside his ordinary
+range of experience.  He babbled on,--
+
+'If I could feel that I had done the smallest thing to help you, I
+should be prouder of it than of any other thing in my career.'
+
+'But I don't want help....'
+
+'Ah!  You think so now.  But wait three years....  You think an actor
+can know nothing of life, but who knows more?  Has he not in himself to
+reproduce every fine shade of emotion, the effect of every variety of
+experience....  The people who know nothing of life are your cloistered
+artists like Mann, or your Verschoyle drowned in money....  You have
+not known me yet.'
+
+Really he was getting rather ridiculous with his boyish romanticism.
+He had been married twice and his two families numbered seven.  But
+Clara, too, was under the spell of the moon, and his gauche response to
+her mood had touched her.
+
+'Life is a miserable business for a woman,' said Sir Henry.  'I live in
+dread lest you should be dragged down into the common experience.'
+
+(Did he or did he not know about Charles?)
+
+Clara laughed.  This was taking her too seriously.
+
+'Ah, you can laugh now while you are young, but youth attracts, it is
+drawn into the whirlpool and is lost....  Is there more in you than
+youth?'
+
+'Much, much more,' said Clara exultantly.  'There has never been
+anybody like me before.'
+
+'By Heaven!' swore Sir Henry.  'That is true....  You have bewitched
+me--and we had better be going back to the house....  Will you let me
+carry you down?'
+
+Without waiting for her permission, he lifted her, and she suffered him
+to carry her down the last stony path, because her flimsy shoes were
+already wet through.  He did not guess that she had good reason, and
+his heart thumped in his large bosom.
+
+It had been a night of nights for him.  Years of uneasy distraction had
+melted away.  Not even at the height of his success had he felt so
+confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to
+command and to deserve their homage.  In no play had he ever devised a
+more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered
+sprite--for so he thought her--back to earth.  As he put her down, he
+threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn
+to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the
+centre, with his hand upon his heart.
+
+Verschoyle was very angry with her when she returned.
+
+'You know how these people think of such things,' he said.
+
+'What they think and what I do are very different,' retorted Clara, her
+eyes shining, her cheeks glowing from the night air.  'It makes him
+happy, and, if you are happy with me, he doesn't see why he shouldn't
+be.  _Pourquoi pas moi aussi_?  Men are all alike.'
+
+'It is not the same....  What a child you are!  Some day you will love
+and then you will see very differently....  The old fool thinks you
+are----'
+
+'No.  He said I was Ariel.  So I am.  So I am....  I wonder I never
+thought of it before.  I shall never be a woman as women have been----'
+
+'There have been good women.'
+
+'Tra la la!  The good women have done far more harm in the world than
+all the bad women put together.  Lady B is a good woman.'
+
+'A painted tigress.  _She_ won't forgive you in a hurry.  She
+thinks--that, too.'
+
+'People can't think beyond what they are.  You can't expect me to be
+what other people think.'
+
+'I want you to be yourself.'
+
+'So I am....  You shall take me away in a day or two.  I want to see
+the Bracebridges just for fun, _and_ the Cabinet Ministers, and then I
+want to drown their memories one by one in the lakes as we pass them.
+We are going to see them all, aren't we?'
+
+'I want to get away.  I can't bear being with you in this atmosphere of
+money.'
+
+'Now, now.  You promised me you would never behave like a lover.'
+
+'I thought I was behaving like an angry brother.'
+
+She was pleased with him for that.  She knew that part of his trouble
+was due to his being an only son.
+
+
+The Bracebridges were disappointing: a very dull man, a hard and
+raffish woman, but apparently to Lady Butcher they were the wonder of
+all wonders.  She and Lady Bracebridge were to each other 'dear Ethel'
+and 'dearest Madge.'  Together they made a single dominant and very
+formidable personality, which must be obeyed.  They flung themselves
+upon the house-party, sifted the affairs of every member of it, and in
+three days had arranged for two engagements and one divorce.  They
+commanded Verschoyle--by suggestion--to marry a Mrs Slesinger, who was
+plain but almost as rich as himself, and in his distress he very nearly
+succumbed; but Clara swooped in to save him, and found that her
+position was made almost impossible by whispered tittle-tattle, cold
+looks, and downright rudeness.  She was distinctly left out of picnic
+and boating parties, and almost in contempt she was partnered with Sir
+Henry who, after Lady Bracebridge's arrival, was no longer master in
+his own house....  When the Cabinet Ministers arrived the situation
+became impossible for they produced chaos.  The household was
+dislocated, and in the confusion Clara packed, had her trunks carried
+to the garage, and slipped away with Verschoyle.
+
+Said he,--
+
+'These damned politicians can't get off the platform.  Did you see how
+that old fool sawed the air when he talked of Ireland, and did you hear
+how the other bleated when he mouthed of Poor Law Reform?  They're on
+show--always on show....  So are these infernal lakes.  I can't stand
+scenery that has stared at me for hours in a railway carriage.'
+
+'It doesn't matter,' said Clara.  'You may be unjust to Lady Butcher,
+but you mustn't be unjust to Rydal.'
+
+'It is so still and out of date....  I can't think of it without
+thinking of Wordsworth, and I don't want to think of Wordsworth....
+Being with you makes me want to get on into the future, and there's
+something holding us all back.'
+
+All the same, their holiday swept up to a triumphant conclusion, and
+they forgot the Butchers and their London elegance in going from inn to
+inn in the lovely valleys, taking the car up and down breakneck hills
+and making on foot the ascent of Great Gable and Scafell, upon whose
+summit in the keen air and the gusty wind Clara let fly and danced
+about, wildly gay, crying out with joy to be so high above the earth,
+where human beings spied upon each other with jealous eyes lest one
+should have more happiness than another.
+
+'They can't spoil this,' she said.
+
+'Who?'
+
+'Oh, all the people down there.  They can spoil Charles, and you and me
+and silly old Sir Henry, but they can't spoil this.'
+
+'In Switzerland,' said Verschoyle, 'there are mountains higher than
+this, and they make railways up them, and at the top of the railways
+English governesses buy Alpenstocks, and have the name of the mountain
+burned into the wood.'
+
+'If I were a mountain,' said Clara, 'and they did that to me I should
+turn into a volcano and burn them all up, all the engineers and all the
+English governesses....  I'm sure Lady Bracebridge was a governess.'
+
+'Right in once,' said Verschoyle, staring at her with round boyish
+eyes, as though he half expected her at once to turn into a volcano.
+With Clara anything might happen, and her words came from so deep a
+recess of her nature as almost to have the force of a prophecy.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+CHARING CROSS ROAD
+
+If there is one street that more than another has in it the spirit of
+London it is Charing Cross Road.  It begins with pickles and ends with
+art; it joins Crosse and Blackwell to the National Gallery.  In between
+the two are bookshops, theatres, and music halls, and yet it is a
+street without ostentation.  No one in Charing Cross Road can be
+assuming: no one could be other than genial and neighbourly.  All good
+books come there at last to find the people who will read them long
+after they have been forgotten by the people who only talk about them.
+Books endure while readers and talkers fade away, and Charing Cross
+Road by its trade in books keeps alive the continuity of London's life
+and deserves its fame.  The books that reach this haven are for the
+most part honest, and therefore many a weary soul turns out of the
+streets where men and women swindle into this place where the thoughts
+of honest men are piled on shelves, or put out in the open air in
+boxes, marked twopence, fourpence, sixpence....  A real market this!  A
+fair without vanity.  There are pictures to look at in the windows,
+mementoes of dead artists and writers, and there is a constant stream
+of people, the oddest mixture to be found anywhere on earth....
+Everybody who has nothing very much to do goes to Charing Cross Road to
+meet everybody who has dropped out of the main stream of humanity to
+have a look at it as it goes by.
+
+You can buy food in this delectable retreat--the best holiday ground in
+England--and you can eat it in the ferocious book-shop kept by the
+mildly-mannered man who called Clara's name blessed, and had her
+photograph in his little dark room at the back of the shop.
+
+Adnor Rodd always took his holidays in Charing Cross Road, for when he
+went into the country he worked harder even than he did in London.  He
+wrote plays, and kept himself alive as best he could, because he hated
+the theatre so much that he could never force himself through a stage
+door.  Silent, taciturn, he went on his way, caring for nothing but his
+work, and sparing neither himself nor any one else in pursuing it.
+
+He had started in London with money and friends, but work became such a
+vice with him that he lost both, except just enough to keep him
+alive--to go on working.  Every now and then he was 'discovered' by a
+playwright, a critic, or a literary man, but as he never returned a
+compliment in his life 'discovery' never led very far....  A few people
+knew that there was a strange man, called Rodd, who wrote masterpieces,
+but simply would not or could not take advantage of the ordinary
+commercial machinery to turn them into money or fame; but these few
+raised their eyebrows or wagged their heads when he was mentioned.
+Poor chap!  He was out of the running, and never likely to become a
+member of the Thespic Club, election to which makes a man a real
+dramatist, whose name may be considered good for a week's business.
+
+Rodd never thought in terms of business.  He thought in terms of human
+relationships, and out of them composed--never ceased
+composing--dramas, vivid, ruthless, terrible.  It was very bad for him,
+of course, because it forced him into a strained detachment from the
+life all around him, and when he met people he was always bent on
+finding out what they were really thinking, instead of accepting what
+they wished him to think was in their minds.  He could no more do that
+than he could use his considerable technical powers to concoct the
+confectionery which in the theatre of those days passed, God save us,
+for a play.  He wanted to come in contact with the dramatic essence of
+the people he met, but every one withheld it or protected him or
+herself against him, and so he lived alone.  For the sake of his work
+he discarded the ordinary social personality which his education had
+taught him to acquire, and he walked through the world exposed, rather
+terrifying to meet; but so exquisitely sensitive that one acute
+pleasure--a flower, a woman's smile, a strong man shaking hands with
+his friend, a lovers' meeting, a real quarrel between two men who hated
+each other, the attention of a friendly dog--could obliterate all the
+horror and disgust with which most of what he saw and felt inspired
+him.  He was sure of himself as a wind is sure of itself, but he was
+without conceit....  When he was very young, he had been discovered by
+one or two women.  That was enough.  He knew that the desire of women
+is not worth satisfying, and he left them alone unless they were in
+distress, and then he helped them generally at the cost of their
+thinking he was in love with them.  Then he had to explain that he had
+helped them as he would help a child or a sick man.  Generally they
+would weep and say he was a liar and a deceiver, but he knew what
+women's tears are worth, and when they got that far left them to
+prevent them going any further....  But he always had women to look
+after him, women who were grateful, women who, having once tasted his
+sympathy, could not do without it.  His sympathy was passionate and to
+some natures like strong drink.  Very few men could stand it because it
+went straight to the secret places of the heart, and men, unlike women,
+do not care to face their own secrets.
+
+He lived in three rooms at the top of a house in Bloomsbury, one for
+his books, one for his work, and one for himself--for sleeping and
+bathing.  Unlike most men who are indifferent to the outside world he
+was clean, because he found that slovenliness impaired his efficiency,
+and took the edge off his energy.  He was as fastidious mentally as a
+trained athlete is physically.
+
+He accepted good-humouredly the apparently unalterable incompatibility
+between the theatre and the drama.
+
+A man with a single aim seems mad in a world where aims are scattered,
+but Rodd suffered a double isolation.  Ordinary people regarded him as
+a cracked fool, because he would not or could not exploit his gifts and
+personality; while the people who really were cracked dreaded his
+sanity and the humorous tolerance with which he indulged their little
+weaknesses.
+
+He enjoyed Charing Cross Road because it was rather like himself: it
+was shovelled aside and disdained by its ignoble 'betters,' the streets
+imposed by cosmopolitanism upon the real English London.  That London
+he could find in Charing Cross Road, where there still beat the heart
+from which Fielding and Dickens had drawn their inspiration, the brave
+heart that could laugh through all its sufferings and through all the
+indignities put upon it.  In Charing Cross Road he could meet almost
+any day Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, Tom Jones and Partridge, Sam
+Weller and Sairey Gamp, and every day their descendants walked abroad,
+passed in and out of shops, went about their business, little
+suspecting that they would be translated into the world of art when
+Rodd returned from his holiday to his work.  He passionately loved this
+London, the real London, and hated everything that denied it or seemed
+to deny it.  He loved it so greatly that he hardly needed any personal
+love, and he detested any loyalty which interfered with his loyalty to
+Shakespeare, Fielding, and Dickens, dramatists all, though Fielding's
+drama had been too vital for the theatre of his time and had blown it
+into atoms, so that since his day the actors had had to scramble along
+as best they could and had done so well that they had forgotten the
+drama altogether.  They had evolved a kind of theatrical bas-relief,
+and were so content with it that they regarded the rounded figures of
+dramatic sculpture with detestation....  They dared not make room in
+their theatre for _Hedda Gabler_ and _John Gabriel Borkman_, because
+they destroyed by contrast the illusions with which they maintained
+their activities.
+
+The Scots bookseller was a great friend of Rodd's, and a loyal admirer,
+though he did not in the least understand what the strange man was
+about.  Rodd used to talk of the virtue of an ordered world, while the
+bookseller lived in dreams of Anarchy, men and women left alone so that
+the good in them could come to the top and create a millennium of
+kindliness.  Rodd's researches into the human heart had revealed to him
+only too clearly the terror that burns at the sources of human life,
+but because the bookseller's dreams were dear to him, because they kept
+him happy and benevolent, Rodd could never bring himself to push
+argument far enough to disturb them.
+
+One day in this fair summer of our tale, Rodd turned into the bookshop
+to consume the lunch he had bought at the German Delicatessen-Magasin
+up the road.  He found the bookseller bubbling over with happiness,
+dusting his books, re-arranging them, emptying large parcels of new
+books, and not such very subversive books either except in so far as
+all literature is subversive.
+
+'Hallo!' said Rodd.  'I thought this was the slack season?'
+
+'I'm rich,' retorted the bookseller.  'The dahned publishers are
+crawling to me.  They've had their filthy lucre, and they know I can
+shift the stuff, and they're on their knees to me, begging me to take
+their muck by the hundred--at my own price.'
+
+(This was a pardonable exaggeration, but it was long since the
+bookseller had had so much new stock.)
+
+'If I ever want a change,' said Rodd, 'I'll get you to take me on as
+your assistant.'
+
+The bookseller's jaw dropped and he stared at Rodd.
+
+'You might do worse,' he said.  'That's the second offer I've had this
+year.'
+
+'Oh! who made the first?'
+
+'Ah!' The bookseller put his finger to his nose and chuckled.  'Ah!
+Some one who's in love with me.'
+
+'There are too many books,' said Rodd.  'Too much shoddy.'
+
+He turned away to the shelves where the plays were kept--Shaw, Barker,
+Galsworthy, Ibsen, Schnitzler, Hauptmann, Tschekov, Andreev, Claudel,
+Strindberg, Wedekind, all the authors of the Sturm and Drang period,
+when all over Europe the attempt was made to thrust literature upon the
+theatre, in the endeavour, as Rodd thought, to break the tyranny of the
+printed word.  That was a favourite idea of his, that the tyranny of
+print from which the world had suffered so long would be broken by the
+drama.  The human heart alone could break the obsessions of the human
+mind, otherwise humanity would lose its temper and try to smash them by
+cracking human heads....  Rodd always thought of humanity as an unity,
+an organism subject to the laws of organic life.  Talk about persons
+and nations, groups and combinations, seemed to him irrelevant.
+Humanity had a will, and everything had to comply with it or suffer.
+At present it seemed to him that the will of humanity was diseased, and
+that society here in London, as elsewhere, was inert.  He escaped into
+his imagination where he could employ to the full his dramatic energy.
+On the whole he hated books, but his affection for the Charing Cross
+Road, and for the bookseller, drew him to the shop dedicated to the
+efforts of revolutionary idealists, whom he thought on the whole
+mistaken.  He desired not revolution but the restoration of the health
+of humanity, and like so many others, he had his nostrum--the drama.
+However, the air was so full of theories, social and political, that he
+did not expect any one to understand him.
+
+'Have you got Mann's new book?' he asked the bookseller, who produced
+it: forty plates of Charles's pet designs with rather irrelevant
+letterpress.  Rodd bought it, and that moment Clara entered the shop.
+
+Rodd paid no attention to her.  The bookseller left him with his money
+in his hand, and he stood turning over the pages of Charles's book, and
+shaking his head over the freakish will o' the wisp paragraphs.  Clara
+spoke, and he stiffened, stared at the books in front of him, turned,
+caught sight of her profile, and stood gazing in amazement--a girl's
+face that was more than pretty, a face in which there was purpose, and
+proof of clear perception.
+
+After her holiday she was looking superbly well.  Health shone in her.
+She moved, and it was with complete unconcern for her surroundings.
+She lived at once in Rodd's imagination, took her rightful place as of
+course side by side with Beatrice, Portia, Cordelia, and Sophia
+Western.  His imagination had not to work on her at all to re-create
+her, or to penetrate to the dramatic essence of her personality, which
+she revealed in her every gesture.
+
+He could not hear what she was saying, but her voice went thrilling to
+his heart.  He gasped and reeled and dropped Charles Mann's book with a
+crash.
+
+Clara, who had not seen him, turned, and she, too, was overcome.  He
+moved towards her, and stood devouring her with his eyes, and hers
+sought his.
+
+'This is Rodd,' said the bookseller.  'Adnor Rodd, a great friend of
+mine.'
+
+'Rodd,' repeated Clara.
+
+'He is very much interested in the theatre,' said the bookseller.
+
+'I was just looking at Charles Mann's new book....  Will you let me
+give it you?'
+
+He moved away to pick up the book and came back clutching it, took out
+his fountain pen and wrote in it in a small, precise hand,--
+
+'To my friend, from Adnor Rodd.'
+
+'My name is Clara Day,' said she,
+
+'You can't have a name yet....  You are just you.'
+
+She understood him.  He meant that externals were of no account in the
+delighted shock of their meeting.  As they stood gazing at each other
+the book-shop vanished, London disappeared, there was nothing but they
+two on all the earth.  Neither could move.  The beginning and the end
+were in this moment.  Nothing that they could do could alter it or make
+the world again as it had been for them....  Consciously neither
+admitted it, both stubbornly clung to what they had made of their lives.
+
+He still held the book in his hand.  She had not put out hers for it.
+He wrote 'Clara Day,' and he wanted to write it down several times as
+he did with the names of the persons in his plays, to make certain that
+they were rightly called.
+
+With a faintly recurrent sense of actuality he thought of his three
+rooms in Bloomsbury and of the hundred and fifty pounds a year on which
+he lived, and with a wry smile he handed her the book, took stock of
+her rich clothes, bowed and turned away....  For his imagination it was
+enough to have met and loved her in that one moment.  She had broken
+down the intellectual detachment in which he lived: the icy solitude in
+which so painfully he struggled on was at an end.
+
+So quickly had he moved that she was taken by surprise, and he had
+reached the threshold of the shop before she ran after him and touched
+him on the arm.
+
+'Please,' she said.  'You have forgotten one thing--the date.'
+
+He wrote the date in the book, and was for going, but she said,--
+
+'I must know more of you if I am to accept your gift.'
+
+'You talk such perfect English,' he said, marvelling at her.  'People
+do not talk like that nowadays, but a slipshod jargon.'
+
+'I have lived abroad,' she told him, and without more they walked out
+into the street together, she hugging the book very dose.
+
+They had walked some distance in silence before he spoke.
+
+'Was it by accident that you were in that shop?'
+
+'Oh, no,' said she.  'The old man is a friend of mine.'
+
+(He noticed that she said 'the old' and not as most people did 'the
+yold.'  It was this perfection in her that made her so incredible.  To
+the very finest detail she was perfect and he knew not whether to laugh
+or to weep.)
+
+'It is absurd,' he said in his heart, 'it can't happen like this.  It
+can't be true.'
+
+Clara had no thought of anything but to make him open up his mind and
+heart to her, most easily and painlessly to break the taut strain in
+him.
+
+They turned into a tea-shop in Coventry Street, and he sat glowering at
+her.  A small orchestra was crashing out a syncopated tune.  The place
+was full of suburban people enjoying their escape into a vulgar
+excitement provided for them by the philanthropy of Joseph Lyons.  The
+room was all gilt and marble and plentiful electric light.  A waitress
+came up to them, but Rodd was so intent upon Clara that he could not
+collect his thoughts, and she had to order tea.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked.
+
+'I am an actress at the Imperium.'
+
+He flung back his head and gave a shout of laughter.
+
+'Is it funny?' she asked.
+
+'Very.'
+
+She smiled a little maliciously and asked.--
+
+'Who are you?'
+
+'I'm a queer fish....  I've wasted my life in expecting more from
+people than they had to give, and in offering them more than they
+needed.'
+
+'You look tired.'
+
+'I am tired--tired out....  You're not really an actress.'
+
+'I'm paid for it if that makes me one.'
+
+'I mean--you are not playing a part now.  Actresses never stop.  They
+take their cues from their husbands and lovers and go on until they
+drop.  Their husbands and lovers generally kick them out before they do
+that....  The ordinary woman is an actress in her small way, but you
+are not so at all....  I can't place you.  What are you doing in
+London?  You ought not to be in London.  You ought to leave us stewing
+in our own juice.'
+
+The waitress brought them tea and the orchestra flung itself into a
+more outrageous effort than before.
+
+'Ragtime and you!' he went on.  'They don't blend.  Ragtime is for
+tired brains and jaded senses, for people who have lost all instinct
+and intuition.  What have you to do with them?  You will simply beat
+yourself to death upon their hard indifference....  You are only a
+child.  You should be packed off home.'
+
+'And suppose I have none.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'That was an impertinence.  Forgive me!'  He took up the book he had
+given her.  'This fellow Mann is like all the rest.  He wants to
+substitute a static show for a dynamic and vital performance, to impose
+his own art upon the theatre.  The actors have done that until they
+have driven anything else out.  He wants to drive them out.  That is
+all, but he has great gifts....'
+
+'Please don't talk about other people,' said Clara.  'I want to hear
+about you.  What were you doing in the book-shop?'
+
+He told her then why he went to the Charing Cross Road, to find a
+holiday which would make life tolerable; she described her holiday
+touring through the country with the glorious conclusion in the Lakes.
+He looked rather gloomy and shook his head,--
+
+'That wouldn't suit me.  I like to go slowly and to linger over the
+things that please me, to drink in their real character.  It is
+pleasant to move swiftly, but all this motor-car business seems to me
+to be only another dodge--running away from life....  I ought to do it
+if I were true to my temperament, but I love my job too much.  I'm an
+intellectual, but I can't stand by and look on, and I can't run away.'
+
+Clara had never met any one like him before.  There was such acute
+misery in his face, and his words seemed only to be a cloud thrown up
+to disguise the retreat he was visibly making from her.  She would not
+have that.  She was sure of him.  This attitude of his was a challenge
+to her.  The force with which he spoke had made Charles and even
+herself seem flimsy and fantastic, and she wanted to prove that she was
+or could be made as solid, as definite and precise as himself.
+
+She knew what it was to be driven by her own will.  Her sympathy was
+with him there.  He was driven to the point of exhaustion.
+
+'I've been trying to create the woman of the future,' he said.
+'Ibsen's women are all nerves.  What I want to get is the woman who can
+detach herself from her emotional experience and accept failure, as a
+man does, with a belief that in the long run the human mind is stronger
+than Nature.  If instincts are baffled, they are not to be trusted.
+Women have yet to learn that....  When they learn it, we can begin to
+get straight.'
+
+It did not seem to matter whether she understood him or not.  He had
+her sympathy, and he was glad to talk.
+
+'That seems to be the heart of the problem.  But it is a little
+disconcerting, when you have been trying to create a woman, to walk
+into a bookshop and find her.'
+
+'How do you know?' she asked.  'I may be only acting.  That is what
+women do.  They find out by instinct the ideal in a man's mind and
+reproduce it.'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'All ideals to all men? ...  You have given the game away.'
+
+'That might only be the cleverest trick of all.'
+
+For a moment he was suspicious of her, but this coquetry was noble and
+designed to please and soothe him.
+
+'I'm in for a bad time,' he said simply.  'Things have been too easy
+for me so far.  I gave myself twenty years in which to produce what I
+want and what the world must have....  Things aren't so simple as all
+that.'
+
+'Do drink your tea.  I think you take everything too hardly.  People
+don't know that they are indifferent.  There are so many things to do,
+so many people to meet, they are so busy that they don't realise that
+they are standing still and just repeating themselves over and over
+again.'
+
+'Damn the orchestra!' said Rodd.  The first violin was playing a solo
+with muted strings.  'If people will stand this, they will stand
+anything.  It is slow murder.'
+
+'Do believe that they like it,' replied Clara.
+
+'Slow murder?'
+
+'No.  The--music.'
+
+'Same thing.'  He laughed.  'Oh, well.  You have robbed me of my
+occupation.  When shall we meet again?'
+
+'To-morrow?'
+
+'To-morrow.  You shall see how I live--  If you can spare the time I
+would like to take you to a concert.  I always test my friends with
+music.'
+
+'Even the New Woman?'
+
+His eyes twinkled and a smile played about his sensitive lips.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+RODD AT HOME
+
+They met on the morrow, a hot August day, with the heat quivering up
+from the pavements and the walls of the houses....  Rodd was the first
+to arrive at the book-shop where they had arranged to meet.  The
+bookseller chaffed him about the 'young leddy,' because Rodd had never
+been known to speak to any one--male or female, in the shop.
+
+'That's a fine young leddy,' said the bookseller.  'She knows that to
+do good to others is to do good to yourself.  And mind ye, that's a
+fact.  It's not preaching.  It's hard scientific fact.'
+
+'Who is she?' asked Rodd.
+
+'She's an actress-girl, and she is friendly with lords.  How she came
+to find a poor shop like mine I cannot tell ye.  But in she walked, and
+my luck turned from that day.'
+
+Clara came in.  She stood on the threshold of the shop and turned over
+the papers that stood there on a table.  She had seen Rodd, but wished
+to gain a moment or two before she spoke to him, so great had been the
+shock of meeting him.  Since leaving him the day before she had done
+nothing at all but wait for the time to come for her to see him again,
+but when the time came she had to force her way out of the brooding
+concentration upon him which absorbed all her energies.  She dreaded
+the meeting.  In recollection, his personality had been clearer and
+more precise to her than in his actual presence, when the force of his
+ideas obscured everything else.  He was unhappy, he was poor, he was
+solitary, and it angered her that such a man should be any one of these
+things.  He seemed so forceful and yet to be poor, to be unhappy, to be
+solitary in a world where, as she had proved, wealth and companionship
+were so easy of access, argued some weakness....  He waited for her to
+move, and that angered her.  He stood still and waited for her to move.
+So fierce was the gust of anger in her that she nearly walked out of
+the shop then and there, but she saw his eyes intent upon her and she
+went up to him, holding out her hand.  He gripped it tightly and said,--
+
+'I was afraid you might not come.'
+
+'Why should I not?'
+
+'I have so little to give you.'
+
+'You gave me a good deal yesterday.'
+
+'Everything.'
+
+The bookseller looked up at the bust of William Morris on his poetry
+shelves and winked.  Then he tip-toed away.
+
+Clara forgave him for not moving to meet her.  His directness of speech
+satisfied her as to his strength and honesty.
+
+Neither was disposed to waste time.  Their intimacy had begun at their
+first meeting.
+
+'It is too hot in London,' he said.  'Shall we walk out to Highgate or
+Hampstead?'
+
+Clara wanted to touch him, to make certain that he was really a man and
+not a mere perambulating mind, and she laid her hand on his arm.  It
+was painfully thin, and she knew instinctively that he was not properly
+cared for, and then again she was full of mistrust.  Was it only her
+sympathy that involved her life with his? ...  The shock of it had made
+it perfectly clear that in Charles, as a man, she had never had the
+smallest interest.  That had been disastrous, and she shrank from
+creating more trouble by her impetuosity.  To hurt this man would be
+serious.  No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he
+would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy
+boy or a blackbird in a cherry-tree in blossom.
+
+They went by tube to Highgate, making no attempt to talk through the
+clatter and roar of the train in the tunnel.
+
+As they walked up the long hill he said,--
+
+'You have knocked me out.  I never thought any one would do that.  I
+never thought I should meet any one as strong as myself....  Love's a
+terrible thing.  The impact of two personalities.  It breaks everything
+else, leaves no room for anything else.'
+
+'I hoped it would make you happy,' said Clara, accepting as entirely
+natural that they should sweep aside everything that stood between them
+and their desire to be together and to share thoughts, emotions, all
+the deep qualities in them that could be revealed to no one else.  She
+could no more deny him than she could deny the sun rising in the
+morning, and for the moment she was content to forget every other
+element in her life....  It was so inevitably right that, having met in
+the heart of London, they should turn their backs on it and put
+themselves to the test of earth, sunshine, blue sky, and trees in their
+summer green, and water smiling in the sun.  The furious energy in
+their hearts made the hot August day, the suburban scene, and the
+indolent suburban people seem toy-like and unreal, as though they were
+looking down upon it from another world, and so they were, for they had
+plunged to the very beginnings of Creation, and their new world was in
+the making.  So great is the power of love that, extracting all the
+truth from the world as men have made it, it sweeps the rest away and
+begins again, discarding, destroying, but most tenderly preserving all
+that is vital and of worth.  Love takes its chosen two, and weaves a
+spell about them, to preserve them from the fretting contact of the
+world, that they may have the power to withstand the agony of creation
+which sweeps through them, and never rests until they are forged into
+one soul, one world, or parted, broken and cast down.
+
+Of these two it was Rodd who suffered most.  The fierce will that had
+maintained him in his long labours for the art he worshipped would not
+yield.  He wanted both, his work and this sudden, surprising girl who
+had walked into his life, and he wanted both upon his own terms.  At
+the same time the conflict set up in him made him only the more
+sensitive to beauty and to the simple delights of the gardens and
+fields through which they passed....  This was new for him.  He had
+enjoyed such things before only with a remote aesthetic detachment.
+
+This, too, he was loath to renounce, but the swift joy in the girl was
+too strong for him.  To such beauty the sternest will must bend.  No
+bird's song, no sudden light upon a cloud, no trembling flower in its
+ecstacy, no tree in full burst of blossom could tell of so high a
+beauty as this joy that flashed from the very depths of her soul into
+her eyes, upon her lips, softening her throat, liquefying her every
+movement, and into her voice bringing such music as no poet has ever
+sung, no musician's brain conceived, music sent from regions deeper
+than the human soul can know to go soaring far beyond the limits set to
+human perception.
+
+Rodd was dazed and dizzy with it, and longed every now and then to
+touch her, to hold her, to make sure that in the swiftness of her joy
+she would not fly away....  He talked gravely and solemnly, with an
+intent concentration, about the persons in his life who compared so
+sorrily with her.  He was obviously composing them into a drama, which,
+however, he dared not carry to any conclusion.  That there could ever
+be such another day as this was beyond his hopes, that he could ever
+return to what he was beggared his endurance....
+
+'A queer thing happened to me the other day,' he said.  'I live among
+strange people, hangers-on of the theatre and the newspaper press.
+There is a woman----'
+
+Clara caught her breath and looked tigerish.  He did not notice the
+change and went on.
+
+'There is a woman.  She lives immediately below me.  She has two
+children and God knows how she lives.  She used to wait for me on the
+stairs in the evening to watch me go up.  But I never spoke to her----'
+
+Clara smiled happily.
+
+'She used to do me little services.  She would darn my socks, and
+sometimes cook me some dainty and lay it outside my door.  This went on
+for months, I never spoke to her, because she has a terrible mother who
+lives with her....  A week or two ago, she met me as I came upstairs in
+the evening, and told me one of her children was ill, and asked me to
+go for the doctor....  I did so, and she looked so exhausted that I
+went in and helped her.  The mother was no use at all; a fat, lazy
+beast of a woman who drinks, swears, eats, and sleeps....  We wrestled
+with death for the life of the child, but we were beaten....  It died.
+She waits for me now, and tries to talk to me, but I will not do it.
+She is frenzied in her attentions.  She wants sympathy.  She has it,
+but wants more than that.  A word from me, and I should never be able
+to shake her off.  She would cling to me, and because she clung she
+would believe that she loved me, but she would have nothing but my
+weakness....  It has happened before.  They seem to find some bitter
+triumph in a man's weakness.'
+
+The humility of his confession touched Clara deeply.  It was the
+humility of the man's feeling, in contrast with his ferocious,
+intellectual arrogance, that moved her to a compassion which steadied
+her in her swift joy.  His story revealed his life to her so vividly
+that she felt that without more she knew him through and through.
+Everything else was detail with which she had no particular concern.
+
+They walked along in silence for some time, he brooding, she smiling
+happily, and she pictured the two sides of his life, the rich and
+powerful imaginative activity, and the simple tenderness of his
+solitude.
+
+It seemed to be her turn to confess, but she could not.  The day's
+perfection would be marred for them, and that she would not have.  He
+would understand.  Yes, he would understand, but men have illusions
+which are very dear to them.  She must protect them, and let him keep
+them until the dear reality made it necessary for him to discard them.
+
+At Hampstead they came on a holiday throng and mingled with them, glad
+once again to be in contact with simple people taking the pleasures for
+which they lived.  There were swing-boats, merry-go-rounds, cocoa-nut
+shies, penny-in-the-slot machines....  The proprietor of the
+merry-go-round was rather like Sir Henry Butcher in appearance, and
+Clara realised with a start that the Imperium and this gaily painted
+machine were both parts of the same trade.  The people paid their
+twopence or their half-guineas and were given a certain excitement, a
+share in a game, a pleasure which without effort on their part broke
+the monotony of existence....  Of the two on this August day she
+preferred the merry-go-round.  It was in the open air, and it was
+simple and unpretentious; and it was surely better that the people
+should be amused with wooden horses than with human beings as
+mechanical and as miserably driven by machinery....  She was annoyed
+with Rodd because he was exasperated by the silly giggling of the
+servant-girls and the raffish capers of the young man.
+
+'I hate the pleasures of the people,' he said.  'They give the measure
+of the quality of their work--lazy, slovenly, monotonous repetition,
+producing nothing splendid but machines, wonderful engines, marvellous
+ships, miraculous motor-cars, but dull, listless, sodden people--inert.
+It is the inertia of London that is so appalling.'
+
+Clara made him take her on the wooden horses, and they went round three
+times.  He admitted reluctantly that he had enjoyed it.
+
+'But only because you did.'
+
+To try him still further she made him have tea in the yard of an inn,
+at a long table with a number of East Enders, whole families, courting
+couples, and young men and maidens who had selected each other out of
+the crowd.  They stared at the remarkable pair, the elegant young woman
+and the moody, handsome man, but they made no impertinent comment
+except that when they left a girl shrieked,--
+
+'My! look at her shoes.'
+
+And another girl said mournfully,--
+
+'I wisht I 'ad legs like _that_ and silk stockings.'
+
+It was near evening.  The haze over the heath shimmered with an apricot
+glow.  Windows, catching the low sun, blazed like patches of fire.  The
+people on the heath dwindled and seemed to sink away into the
+landscape, and their movements were hardly perceptible.
+
+Rodd asked,--
+
+'Has it been a good day for you?'
+
+'A wonderful day.  I want to see where you live.'
+
+He took her home.  Down in London, after the Heath, the air seemed
+thick and stifling.  The square in which he lived was surrounded with
+unsavoury streets from which smells that were almost overpowering were
+wafted in.  His house was a once fashionable mansion now cut up into
+flats.  He had what were once the servants' quarters under the roof,
+three rooms and a bathroom.  The windows of his front room looked out
+on the tops of trees.  Here he worked.  The room contained nothing but
+a table, a chair, a piano, and a sofa.
+
+'This is the only room,' he said.
+
+'That woman was waiting for you,' said Clara.
+
+'Was she?  I didn't see her.'
+
+'Yes.  She whisked into her room when she saw me.'
+
+He took up his manuscript from the table.
+
+'It has stopped short.'  He turned it over ruefully; fingering the
+pages, he began to read and was sinking into absorption in it when she
+dashed it out of his hand.
+
+'How dare you read it when I am with you?' she cried.  'It was written
+before you knew me.  It isn't any good....  I know it isn't any good.'
+
+He was stunned by this outburst of jealousy and protested,--
+
+'There's years of work in it.'
+
+'But what's the good of sitting here working, if you never do anything
+with it?'
+
+He pointed to the sofa and said,--
+
+'There's my work in there: full to the brim, notes, sketches, things
+half finished, things that need revision....  I've been waiting for
+something to happen.  I could never work just to please other people
+and to fit successful actors with parts....'
+
+'I'm a successful actress.'
+
+'You?  Oh, no.'
+
+'But I am.  I'm engaged to appear at the Imperium in _The Tempest_.
+Charles Mann is designing the production.'
+
+'I saw something about that, but I didn't believe it.'
+
+'Charles Mann's work was like that,' she pointed to the sofa, 'until I
+met him.'
+
+'You know him?'
+
+'Yes....  Yes.'
+
+(She could not bring herself to tell him.)
+
+'Butcher will be too strong for him.  You see, Butcher controls the
+machine.'
+
+'But money controls Butcher!'
+
+He was enraged.
+
+'You!  You to talk of money!  That is the secret of the whole criminal
+business.  Money controls art.  Money rejects art.  Money's a sensitive
+thing, too.  It rejects force, spontaneity, originality.  It wants
+repetition, immutability, things calculable.  Money...  You can talk
+with satisfaction of money controlling Butcher after our heavenly day
+with the sweet air singing of our happiness!'
+
+'One must face facts.'
+
+'Certainly.  But one need not embrace them.'
+
+Here in this room he was another man.  The humility that was his most
+endearing quality was submerged in his creative arrogance.  Almost it
+seemed that he resented her intrusion as a menace to the life which he
+had made for himself, the world of suffering and tortured creatures
+with which he had surrounded himself, the creatures whom he had loved
+so much that contact with his fellows had come to be in some sort a
+betrayal of them.  To an extraordinary degree the atmosphere of the
+room was charged with his personality, and with the immense continuous
+effort he had made to achieve his purpose.  Here there was something
+demoniac and challenging in him.  He presented this empty room to her
+as his life and seemed to hurl defiance at her to disturb it.
+
+She had never had so fiercely stimulating a challenge to her
+personality.  In her heart she compared this austere room with the
+ceremony of the Imperium, and there was no doubt which of the two
+contained the more vitality.  Here in solitude was a man creating that
+which alone which could justify the elaborate and costly machinery of
+the great theatre which had been used for almost a generation by the
+bland and boyish Sir Henry Butcher to exploit his own engaging
+personality.
+
+Clara was ashamed of the jealousy which had made her snatch Rodd's work
+out of his hand.  It had set his passion raging against her.  He who
+had faced the hostility and indifference of the world all through his
+ambitious youth was inflamed by the hostility of love which had shaken
+but not yet uprooted his fierce will--never to compromise, but to
+adhere to the logic of his vision.  The rage in him was intolerable.
+She said,--
+
+'You don't like it?'
+
+What?'
+
+'My being at the Imperium.'
+
+'It is not for me to like or dislike.  I am not the controller of your
+movements.  I would never control the movements of any living creature.'
+
+'Except in your work.'
+
+'They work out their own salvation.  They are nothing to do with me,
+any more than the woman on the stairs.'
+
+'But you love them.'
+
+(He had made them as real to her as they were to himself.)
+
+'They don't leave me alone.  They want to live....  But they can only
+live on the stage.'
+
+
+He shook back his head and with supreme arrogance he said,--
+
+'As they will when the stage is fit for them.'
+
+She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to
+actuality she said,--
+
+'How old are you?'
+
+'Thirty-one.'
+
+His next move horrified her.  He stepped forward, seized his
+manuscript, and tore it into fragments.
+
+'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?'
+
+'No.  That was childish of you....  You will only sit down and begin
+all over again.'
+
+'I swear I will not.  I swear it.  It is finished.  All that is
+over....  I don't know how I shall ever begin again.  Perhaps I shall
+not....  All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid
+facing it....  They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick
+most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you.  They're
+not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little
+modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts,
+clever and helpless, rotting in inaction....  No.  It has been all
+wrong.  I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend....  I think I knew it
+in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me....  I'm not fit
+to live in the same world as you.  I ought not to have seen you
+to-day....'
+
+'Can't you laugh at yourself?'
+
+'Laugh!  Dear God, I do nothing else.'
+
+'I mean--happily.  You wouldn't be you if you didn't make mistakes--to
+learn.  You had to learn more about your work than just the tricks of
+it.  Isn't it so?  You despise acting.  But it is just the same there.
+I wanted to learn more about it than the tricks.'
+
+'Ay, that's it; to learn the tricks and keep decent.  That is what one
+stands out for.'
+
+Clara held out her hand to him,--
+
+'Very well, then.  We understand each other and there is nothing so
+very terrible in my being at the Imperium.  Is there?'
+
+He held her hand.  She wanted him to draw her to him, to hold her close
+to him, to comfort him for all that he had lost; but once again he was
+governed by his humility, and he just bowed low, and thanked her warmly
+for her generosity in giving so poor a devil as himself so exquisite a
+day.
+
+Nothing was said about another meeting.  As he took her down the stairs
+the door of the flat below was opened and a woman's face peeped out.
+Near the bottom of the stairs they met a man in a tail coat and top hat
+who sidled past them, took off his hat and held it in front of his
+face, but before he did so Clara had recognised Mr Cumberland,
+erstwhile Mr Clott.
+
+'Does that man live here?' she asked Rodd at the door.
+
+Rodd looked up the stairs.
+
+'No-o,' he said.  'No.  I think I have seen him before, but there are
+many people living in the house.  Strange people.  They come and go,
+but I sit there in my room upstairs gazing at the tree-tops,
+working....'
+
+'You should get in touch with the theatre,' said Clara; 'swallow your
+scruples, and find out that we are not so very bad after all.'
+
+They stood for some moments on the wide doorstep.  It was night now and
+the lamps were lit.  Lovers strolled by under the trees, and against
+the railings of the garden opposite couples were locked together.
+
+'You turn an August day into Spring,' said Rodd.
+
+Clara tapped his hand affectionately, and, to tear herself away, ran
+down the square and round the corner.  She was quivering in every nerve
+from the strain of so much conflict, and she was angry with herself for
+having taken so high a hand with him.  He was more to be respected than
+any man she had ever met, and yet she had--or so she thought--treated
+him as though he were another Charles.  She could not measure the
+immensity of what had happened to her and her thoughts flew to
+practical details.  What ages it seemed since she had walked blithely
+crooning: 'This is me in London!'  And how odd, how menacing, it was
+that on the stairs she should have met Mr Clott or Cumberland!
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+'THE TEMPEST'
+
+There were still seasons in those days: Autumn, Christmas Holidays, and
+Spring.  In August when the rest of the world was at holiday the
+theatres, cleaned and renewed for a fresh attempt at the conquest of
+the multitude (which is unconquerable, going its million different
+ways), were filled with hopeful, busy people, hoping for success to
+give them the tranquil easy time and the security which, always looked
+for, never comes.
+
+The Imperium had been re-upholstered and redecorated, and the fact was
+duly advertised.  Mr Smithson, in the leisure given him by his being
+relieved of full responsibility for the scenery, had painted a new
+act-drop, photographs of which appeared in the newspapers.  Mr Gillies
+was interviewed.  Sir Henry was interviewed, Charles Mann was
+interviewed.  The ball of publicity was kept rolling merrily.  Even Mr
+Halford Bunn, the famous author whose new play had been put back, lent
+a hand by attacking the new cranky scenery in the columns of a
+respectable daily paper, and giving rise to a lengthy correspondence in
+which Charles came in for a good deal of hearty abuse on the ground
+that he had given to other countries the gifts that belonged to his
+own.  He plunged into the fray, and pointed out that he had left his
+own country because it was pleasanter to starve in a sunny climate.
+
+He was intoxicated with anticipation of his triumph.  The practical
+difficulties which he had created, and those which had been put in his
+way by Mr Gillies and Mr Smithson had been surmounted, and to see his
+designs in being, actually realised in the large on back-cloths, wings,
+and gauzes, gave him the sense of solidity which, had it come into his
+life before, might have made him almost a normal person....  Clara was
+to be Ariel.  The beloved child was to bring the magic of her
+personality to kindle the beauty he had created in form and colour.  He
+was almost reconciled to the idea of the characters in the fantasy
+being impersonated by men and women.
+
+Sir Henry had returned to town enthusiastic and eager.  Mann and Clara
+were a combination strong enough to break the tyranny of the social use
+of the front of the house over the artistic employment of the stage.
+This season at all events Lady Butcher and Lady Bracebridge should not
+have things all their own way.
+
+There was a slight set back and disappointment.  An upstart impresario
+brought over from Germany a production in which form and design had
+broken down naturalism.  This was presented at one of the Halls, and
+was an instantaneous success, and Charles, in a fit of jealousy, wrote
+an unfortunately spiteful attack on the German producer, accusing him
+of stealing his ideas.  Sir Henry, a born publicist, was enraged, and
+threatened to abandon his project.  The proper line to take was to
+welcome the German product and, with an appropriate reference to
+Perkins and aniline dyes, to point bashfully to what London could
+do....  He was so furious with Charles that he shut himself up in the
+aquarium and refused to call rehearsals.
+
+Clara saw him and he reproached her,--
+
+'Why did you bring that dreadful man into my beautiful theatre?  He has
+upset everybody from Gillies to the call-boy, and now he has made us a
+laughing-stock, and this impresario person is in a position to say that
+we are jealous.  We artists have to hold together or the business men
+will bowl us out like a lot of skittles, and where will the theatre be
+then?...  Where would you be, my dear?  They'd make you take off your
+clothes and run about the stage with a lot of other young women, and
+call that--art....  The theatre is either a temple or it is in Western
+Civilisation what the slave-market is in the East.  This damned fool of
+yours can't see anything outside his own scenery.  He thinks he is more
+important than me; but is a bookbinder more important than John
+Galsworthy?'
+
+'You mustn't be so angry.  Nobody takes Charles seriously except in his
+work.  Everybody expects him to do silly things.  You can easily put it
+right with a dignified letter.'
+
+'But I can't say my own scene-painter is a confounded idiot.'
+
+'You needn't mention him,' said Clara.  'Just say how much you admire
+the German production and talk about the renaissance of the theatre.'
+
+Sir Henry pettishly took pen and paper, wrote a letter, and handed it
+to her.
+
+'Will that do?' he asked.
+
+She read it, approved, and admired its adroitness.  There were
+compliments to everybody and Charles was not mentioned.
+
+'These things _are_ important,' said Sir Henry.  'The smooth running of
+the preliminary advertising is half the battle.  It gives you your
+audiences for the first three weeks, and it inspires confidence in the
+Press.  That is most important....  I really was within an ace of
+throwing the whole thing up.  Lady Butcher would like nothing better.'
+
+'I think Verschoyle would be offended if you did.'
+
+'Ah!  Verschoyle....'  Sir Henry looked suspiciously at her.  Though he
+wanted to be, he was never quite at his ease with her.  She was not
+calculable like the women he had known.  What they wanted were things
+definite and almost always material, while her purposes were secret,
+subtle, and, as he sometimes half suspected, beyond his range.  She was
+new.  That was her fascination.  She belonged to this strange world
+that was coming into being of discordant rhythmic music, of Russian
+ballet and novels, of a kind of poetry that anybody could write, of
+fashions that struck him as indecent, of a Society more riotous and
+rowdy than ever the Bohemia of his day had been, because women--ladies
+too--were the moving spirit in it and women never did observe the rules
+of any game....  And yet, in his boyish, sentimental way, he adored
+her, and clung to her as though he thought she could take him into this
+new world.
+
+'I can't go on with Mann,' he said almost tearfully.  'It is too
+disturbing.  You never know what he is going to do, and, after all, the
+theatre is a business, isn't it?--  Isn't it?'
+
+'I suppose so,' replied Clara.
+
+It was extraordinary to feel the great machine of the theatre gathering
+momentum for the launching of the play.  It was marvellous to be caught
+up, as the rehearsals proceeded, into the loveliest fantasy ever
+created by the human mind.  Clara threw herself into it heart and soul.
+Life outside the play ceased for her.  She lived entirely between her
+rooms and the stage of the theatre.  Unlike the other players, when she
+was not wanted she was watching the rest of the piece, surrendered
+herself to it completely, and was continually discovering a vast power
+of meaning in words that had been so familiar to her as to have become
+like remembered music, an habitual thought without conscious reference
+to anything under the sun....  And as her sense of the beauty of the
+play grew more living to her, so she saw the apparatus that kept it in
+motion as more and more comic....  Mr Gillies had a thousand and one
+points on which he consulted his chief with the most ruthless disregard
+of the work going forward on the stage.  Lady Butcher would come
+bustling in, take Sir Henry aside and whisper to him, and words like
+Bracebridge--Sir George--Lady Amabel--Prime Minister--Chancellor--would
+come hissing out.  Then when the rehearsal was resumed she would stay
+surveying it with the indulgent smile of a vicar's wife at a school
+treat....  During the exquisite scene between Prospero and Miranda one
+day the scenery door was flung open, and Mr Smithson arrived with a
+small army of men, who dumped paint-pots on the boards, threw hammers
+down, and rushed across the stage with flats and fly-cloths.  Yet, in
+spite of all these accidents introducing the spirit of burlesque, the
+play survived.  Sir Henry would tolerate interruptions up to a point,
+but, when a charwoman in the auditorium started brushing or turned on a
+sudden light, he would turn and roar into the darkness,--
+
+'Stop that din!  How can I rehearse if I am continually distracted!  Go
+away and clean somewhere else!  We can't be clean now....  Please go
+on.'
+
+The cast was a good one of very distinguished and highly paid players,
+all the principals being ladies and gentlemen who would rather not work
+than accept less than twenty or twenty-five pounds a week.  One or two
+were superior young people who affected to despise the Imperium, but
+confessed with a smile that the money was very useful.  They were also
+rather scornful of Charles because he was not intellectual.
+
+Charles at first attended rehearsals and attempted to interfere, but
+was publicly rebuked and told to mind his own business.  There would
+have been a furious quarrel, but Clara went up to him and dragged him
+away just in time.  He stayed away for some days, but returned and sat
+gloomily in the auditorium.  He had moved from his furnished house, and
+was in rooms above a ham and beef shop, which, he said, had the
+advantage of being warm.
+
+'It isn't a production,' he grumbled, 'it's a scramble.  He's ruining
+the whole thing with his acting, which is mid-Victorian.  He should key
+the whole thing up from you, chicken....  You know what I want.  You
+understand me.  The technique of the rest is all wrong.  It is a
+technique to divert attention from the scenery, raw, unmitigated
+barn-storming....  Do, do ask him to let me help!  What can he do,
+popping in and out of the play and discussing a hundred and one things
+with all these fools who keep running in?'
+
+'You should have stipulated for it in your contract,' she said.  'It is
+too late now.  He does know his business, Charles, if only people would
+leave him alone.'
+
+So rehearsals went on for a few more days.  Clara was more and more
+absorbed.  The magical reality of Ariel surpassed everything else in
+her life except the memory of Rodd in his empty room, and that also she
+wished to obliterate, for she was full of a premonition of danger, and
+was convinced that by this dedication of herself to the theatre she
+could dominate it.  She could not define the danger, but it threatened
+Charles, and it menaced Rodd, whom she had decided not to see again.
+
+Sir Henry was delighted with her, and said she had rejuvenated his own
+art.
+
+'I used to play Caliban,' he said.  'But Prospero is the part if there
+is to be an Ariel who can move as you can move and speak in a fairy
+voice as you can speak....  The rest of the play is all in the day's
+work....
+
+  'Go make thyself like a nymph of the sea: be subject
+  To no sight but thine and mine, invisible
+  To every eyeball else.'
+
+
+And for Clara it was almost literally true.  She felt that she was like
+a spirit moving among these people marooned on this island of the West
+End of London, all spell-bound by the money of this great roaring city,
+all enslaved, all amphibious, living between two elements, the actual
+and the imagined, but in neither, because of the spell that bound them,
+fully and passionately....  Living in the play she saw Sir Henry merged
+in Prospero, and when he said,--
+
+          'Thou shalt be as free
+  As mountain winds: but then exactly do
+  All points of my command,'
+
+she took that also literally, and was blissfully happy to surrender to
+a will more potent than her own....  She did not know that the will she
+was acknowledging was Shakespeare's, and that with her rare capacity
+for living in the imagination she was creeping into his and accepting
+life, gaining her freedom, upon his terms.
+
+After some time her spirit began to affect the whole company.  She
+created an enchantment in which all moved, and Charles, watching, began
+to understand more fully the art he had first perceived in her on the
+day when he had attempted to force her, like a practised hand, to
+capture and fix an apparently accidental effect....  It was no
+accident.  The girl was possessed with a rare dramatic genius, entirely
+unspoiled--pure enough and strong enough to subsist and to move in the
+theatrical atmosphere of the Imperium....  What was more, Charles
+understood that she was fighting for his ideas, and was, before his
+eyes, making their fulfilment possible.
+
+You might talk and argue with Sir Henry until you were blue in the
+face, but give him a piece of real acting and he understood at once,
+was kindled and became fertile in invention, even courageous in
+innovation.  Give him that, and he would drop all thought of the public
+and the newspapers, and sacrifice even the prominence of his own
+personality to the service of this art that he adored.  As the
+rehearsals proceeded, therefore, he became more intent, was less
+patient with interruptions, and at last stopped them altogether.  He
+became interested in his own part, and tussled with the players who
+shared his scenes with him.
+
+'Never,' he said to Clara, 'have I enjoyed rehearsals so much as these.
+I am only afraid they are going too smoothly.  We shall be over-ripe by
+production....'
+
+He resumed cordial relations with Charles, and threw out a suggestion
+or two as to scenery and costumes which Charles, who had begun to learn
+the elements of diplomacy, pretended to note down.  Sir Henry was
+magnanimous.  He avoided his wife and his usual cronies, and devoted
+himself to Charles and Clara, whom his showman's eye had marked down as
+potentially a very valuable property.
+
+'This should be the beginning of great things for you, my boy,' he said
+to Charles.  'You will have all the managers at your feet, but the
+Imperium is the place for big work, the bold attack, the sweeping
+line....'
+
+Charles was a little suspicious of such whole-hearted conversion.  He
+knew these enthusiasms for the duration of rehearsals, and he was
+ill-at-ease because his anticipation of boundless wealth had not come
+true.  He had spent his advance and could not get another out of Mr
+Gillies, who detested him and regarded his invasion of the theatre as a
+ruinous departure from its traditions.  Clara Mr Gillies considered to
+be merely one of his Chief's infatuations.  They never lasted very
+long.  He had seen his Chief again and again rush to the very brink of
+disaster, but always he had withdrawn in the nick of time....  Mr
+Gillies was like a perpetual east wind blowing upon Charles's
+happiness.  But for Mr Gillies there would have been boundless
+wealth....  It was monstrous: Verschoyle had backed Charles's talent
+and Mr Gillies was sitting on the money.  Butcher could spend it
+royally, but Charles had often to go to Clara and ask her for the price
+of his lunch.  At the very height of his fame, with success almost
+within his grasp, he had to go almost hungry because genius has no
+credit.
+
+There was nothing to be done about it.  He borrowed here and there, but
+knew it was no real help.  It simply sent rumours flying as to his
+financial position, and he did not want either Butcher or Verschoyle to
+know that money trickled through his fingers.  He wanted their support
+after this success to advance his schemes.  Therefore he borrowed from
+Clara, and she, entirely indifferent to all but the engrossing
+development of the play, allowed Sir Henry to pay for her food, to give
+her meals alone with him in the aquarium, and even to buy her clothes
+and jewels.  She took not the slightest interest in them, but, as it
+seemed to give him pleasure to shower gifts and attentions upon her,
+she suffered it, and never for a moment dreamed of the turn his
+infatuation was taking.
+
+As she progressed in her work she felt that she was achieving what she
+desired, a passion for her art equal to Rodd's.  For a time she had
+thrust all thought of him aside, but as she gained in mastery and power
+over the whole activity of the stage, he crept back into her mind, and
+she could face him with a greater sense of equality, with more
+understanding and without that jealousy the memory of which hurt
+her....  She had acquired a sense of loyalty to art which was a greater
+thing than loyalty to Charles.  She had saved him, helped him, brought
+him thus far.  Henceforth he must learn to stand on his own feet.  She
+was glad that she had left him.
+
+All these considerations seemed very remote as she worked her way
+deeper and deeper into the play, which contained for her a reality
+nowhere to be found in life.  She became Ariel, a pure imagination,
+moving in an enchanted air, singing of freedom and of a beauty beyond
+all things visible.
+
+        'You are three men of sin, whom Destiny
+  That hath to instrument this lower world
+  And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea
+  Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island
+  Where man doth not inhabit...'
+
+Casting spells upon others, she seemed to cast them upon her own life;
+and it was incredible to her to think that she was the same Clara Day
+who had come so gaily to London with Charles Mann to help him to
+conquer his kingdom.  The stage of the Imperium was to her, in truth, a
+magic island where wonders were performed, and she by an inspiration,
+more powerful than her own will, could with a touch transform all
+things and persons around her; and when Sir Henry, rehearsing the
+character of Prospero, said to her.--
+
+        'Then to the elements
+  Be free and fare you well.'
+
+the words sounded deep in her heart, and she took them as a real
+bidding to be free of all that had entangled and cramped her own life.
+So she dreamed.
+
+She had a rude awakening one night when, after a supper in the aquarium
+alone with Sir Henry, he broke a long moody silence by laying his hand
+on hers, drawing her out of her chair and clasping her to his heart
+while he kissed her arms, shoulders, face, hair, and cried,--
+
+'You wonderful, wonderful child.  I love you.  I love you.  I have
+loved you since I first saw you.  I knew then that the love of my life
+had come....  You wonderful untouched child----'
+
+He tried to make her kiss him, to force her to meet his eyes, but she
+wrestled with him and thrust him back to relinquish his hold.
+
+'How could you?  How could you!  How could you?' she asked.
+
+'I have never forgotten that marvellous moonlit night----'
+
+'Please be sensible,' she said.  'Does a man never know when a woman
+loves him or not?'
+
+'They don't help one much,' replied Sir Henry, with a nervous grin.
+'You were so happy....  I thought.  Don't be angry with me!  I have
+thought of nothing but you since then....'
+
+'A moonlight night and champagne supper,' said she.  'Are they the same
+thing to you?'
+
+'Love conquers all,' said Sir Henry, a little sententiously.  He was
+disgusted.  She was not playing the right dramatic part; but she never
+did any of the expected things.  The ordinary conventions of women did
+not exist for her.
+
+She had moved as far away from him as possible and was standing over by
+the portrait of Teresa Chesney.
+
+'You must never talk like that again,' she said, 'or I shall not stay
+in the theatre....  It is not only the vulgarity of it that I hate, but
+that you should have misunderstood....  I was happy to be working with
+you in the play.  Everything outside that is unimportant.'
+
+'Not love....  Not love,' protested Sir Henry.
+
+'Even love,' she said.
+
+'I thought you liked me,' he mumbled.  'I was so happy giving you
+presents.  I thought you liked me....  A man in my position doesn't
+often find people to like him.'
+
+'So I do,' said Clara.  'You are very like Charles.  That is why I
+understand you.'
+
+Sir Henry winced.  In his heart he thoroughly despised Charles Mann.
+He drank a glass of champagne and said nervously,--
+
+'I'm glad we're not going to quarrel....  Forgive me.'
+
+'You have spoiled it all for me,' she said.  'Everything is spoiled.'
+
+She clenched her fists, and her eyes blazed fury at him.
+
+'How dare you treat me as a woman when I had never revealed myself to
+you?  Isn't that where a man should have some honour? ...  You must
+understand me if I am to remain in the theatre.  If a woman reveals
+herself to a man, then she is responsible.  She has nothing to say
+if--I don't think you understand.'
+
+'No.'  And indeed she might have been talking Greek to him.  The
+insulted woman he knew, the virtuous woman he knew, the fraudulent
+coquette he knew, the extravagant self-esteem of women he knew, but
+never before had he met a woman who was simple and sincere, who could
+brush aside all save essentials and talk to him as a man might have
+done, with detachment from the thing that had happened.
+
+'If you think I'm a blackguard, why don't you say so?  Why don't you
+hit me?'
+
+'I don't think you are anything of the kind.  I think you have been
+spoiled and that everything has been too easy for you....  I'm hurt
+because I thought you wanted Charles and me for the theatre and not for
+yourself.'
+
+'_L'etat c'est moi_,' smiled Sir Henry.  'I am the theatre....  All the
+immense machinery is my creation.  My brain here is the power that
+keeps it going.  If I were to die to-morrow there would be four walls
+and Mr Gillies....  Do you think he could do anything with it?  Could
+Charles Mann?  Could you?'
+
+'Yes,' said Clara, and he laughed.  He had never been in such
+entrancing company.  If she did not want his love-making--well and
+good.  At least she gave him the benefit of her frankness and he needed
+no pose with her.  He was glad she was going to be a sensible girl....
+She might alter her mind and every day only made her more adorable.
+
+'Sit down and have some chocolates.'  He spoke to her as though she
+were a child and like a child she obeyed him, for she was alarmed that
+he should exert his capricious prerogative and throw over _The Tempest_
+at the last moment.
+
+'What would you do with the theatre?'
+
+'I should dismiss Mr Gillies.'
+
+'An excellent man of business.'
+
+'For stocks and shares or boots, but not for art.'
+
+'He's a steadying influence.'
+
+'Art is steady enough, if it is art.'
+
+'My _dear_ child!'
+
+'If you don't know that then you are not an artist.'
+
+'Oh!  Would you call Charles Mann steady?'
+
+'I should think of the play first and last.'
+
+'There's no one to write them.'
+
+'I should scour the country for imaginative people and make them think
+in terms of the theatre.  Besides, there are people!'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'Yes.  There are people who love the drama so much that they can't go
+near the theatre.'
+
+He roared with laughter, and to convince him she told him about Adnor
+Rodd and his bare room, where without any hope of an audience he wrote
+his plays and lived in them more passionately than it was possible to
+do in life.
+
+Sir Henry shook his head.
+
+'I don't mind betting,' he said, 'that he's got something wrong with
+him.  Either he drinks, or has an impossible wife, or he likes low
+company, or--  No.  There aren't such people.'
+
+'But there are.' And she told him how she had spent a whole day with
+Rodd and had gone home with him to see his rooms.
+
+'Alone?' asked Sir Henry.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Then if you were my girl I should put you on bread and water for a
+week.'
+
+To convince him, she tried to tell him how she had struggled to
+overcome Charles's objections to the practical use of his talent, and
+had forced him to come to London....  In her eagerness and in her
+happiness at having brought him to his senses, she lost sight of the
+fact that she was revealing her own history.  He brought her up sharp
+with,--
+
+'Are you married to Charles Mann?'
+
+'Ye-es,' she said, her heart fluttering.
+
+'I didn't know,' he replied nonchalantly.  His manner towards her
+changed.  He was still soft and kind, and bland in his impish wit, but
+beneath the surface he was brutal, revengeful, cruel, and she felt the
+force of the ruthless egoism that had won him his position in spite of
+disabilities which would have hampered and even checked a less forceful
+man....  In the same moment she understood that what had been a
+glorious and lovely reality to her had been a game to him; and that he
+designed without the slightest compunction to turn both Charles and
+herself to his own profit....  Well, she thought, he might try, but he
+could not prevent either of them from making their reputations, and
+neither would ever sink to the mechanical docility of London players.
+
+Sir Henry lit a large cigar and moved over to the fire.
+
+'What does Verschoyle think of it?'
+
+She knew that he was insolently referring to her marriage with Charles,
+but she turned the shaft by saying,--
+
+'He is delighted with it all.  He believes in Charles.'
+
+'Hm....  Even the birds and fishes?'
+
+'Who told you about that?'
+
+'London doesn't let a good story die.'
+
+'Verschoyle was present....'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+The situation was becoming unbearable.  Sir Henry was as hard, as
+satisfied, and as unconscionable as a successful company-promoter.
+This sudden revelation of his egoism, his wariness to protect the ideal
+which in his own person he had achieved, shocked Clara out of her
+youthful innocence and into a painful realisation that the facts of her
+life forbade the impersonalism which had made so much achievement
+possible....  It was quite clear to her that Sir Henry was intent upon
+a personal relationship if she were to keep what she had won, and it
+was as clear that he could not credit her, or Charles, or anybody else
+with any other motive than personal ambition.  He knew his world, he
+knew his theatre.  A fulfilled ambition has its price, and he had never
+yet met the successful man or woman who did not pay with a good grace,
+as he himself had done.
+
+Her brain worked quickly on this new intractable material, this
+disconcerting revelation of the fact that success and art are in the
+modern world two very different things, the one belonging to the crowd,
+the other to solitude....  This old man might have waited.  He might
+have given her her chance.  It was not true.  She would not accept that
+it could be true that she could only have her success at his price, the
+price that he had paid, he and all the others, Julia Wainwright,
+Freeland Moore, and the loss of respect and simple humanity....  So
+this was why Charles had run away from the  theatre.  Certain things,
+certain elements in human character were too holy to be set before the
+crowd.
+
+She remembered her early struggles when she first went into the
+theatre.  She had won through them and had thought herself victorious
+only to find herself confronted once more with the hard actualities:
+either to accept the intrusion of the personal element into what should
+be impersonal service or to acknowledge defeat....  She could do
+neither the one nor the other.
+
+If only she could weep.  The woman in her calculated.  If only she
+could weep!  But where another woman would have wept she could not.
+She could only turn to her will and draw further strength from that.
+It was so maddening, so silly, that play acting should entail such a
+price.  It was making it all too serious.  What after all was it?  Just
+the instinct of play organised, and what was play without a happy joy?
+If only she would weep, the obstinate old man clinging to his success
+would melt; he would be kind; he would forgo all this nonsense that had
+been buzzing in his scatter brain....  What he could not stand was
+sincerity and a will diverted to other purposes than his own....  It
+made her tremble with rage to think that all his enthusiasm for the
+play, the real work he had put into rehearsals, his snubbing of Mr
+Gillies and his wife, had all been only because he fancied himself in
+his blown vanity to be in love with her.  It was too ridiculous, and
+despising him, hating herself, she decided that if it was acting he
+wanted, acting he should have, and she burst into a torrent of tears
+conjured up out of an entirely fictitious emotion....  At once Sir
+Henry had the cue he was waiting for....  He leaped up and came over to
+her with his hand on his heart.
+
+Don't cry, little girl,' he said.  'Don't cry....  Harry is with you.
+Harry only wants to be kind to her, and to help his poor little girl in
+her trouble....  She shall be the greatest actress in the world.'
+
+'Never!' thought Clara, her brain working more clearly now that she had
+set up this screen of tears between them.
+
+He patted her hand and caressed her hair, and was sublimely happy
+again.  He had half expected trouble from this unaccountable and
+baffling creature, whose will and wits were stronger than his own.  He
+was still a little suspicious, but he took her tears for acquiescence
+in his plans for her, and holding her in his arms he had the intense
+satisfaction of thinking of Charles Mann as a filthy blackguard for
+whom shooting was too clean an end.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF
+
+Lord Verschoyle had imagined that by making for Art he would be able to
+shake free of predatory designs.  It was not long before he discovered
+his mistake and that he had plunged into the very heart of the Society
+which he desired to avoid, for the Imperium, as used by Lady Butcher
+and Lady Bracebridge, was a powerful engine in the politico-financial
+world which dominated London.  Verschoyle in his simplicity had seen
+the metropolis as consisting of purposeful mammas and missish daughters
+bearing down upon him from all sides.  Now he discovered that there was
+more in it than that and that marriage was only one of many moves in a
+complicated game....  Lady Bracebridge had a daughter.  Lady Butcher
+had a son whom she designed for a political career, upon which he had
+entered as assistant secretary to an under-secretary.  Perceiving that
+Verschoyle easily lost his head, as in his apparent relations with
+Clara Day, they designed to draw him into political society where heads
+are finally and irrevocably lost....  He loathed politics and could not
+understand them, but young Butcher haunted him, and Lady Bracebridge
+cast about him a net of invitations which he could find no way of
+evading.  They justified themselves by saying that it was necessary to
+save him from Clara, and he found himself drawn further and further
+away, and more and more submitted to an increasing pressure, the aim of
+which seemed to be to commit him to supporting the Imperium and the
+Fleischmann group which had some mysterious share in its control....
+He knew enough about finance to realise that there was more in all this
+than met the eye, and upon investigation he found that the Fleischmann
+group were unloading Argentines all over monied London, and in due
+course he was offered a block of shares which, after an admirable
+dinner at the Bracebridges, he amiably accepted.
+
+The network was too complicated for him to unravel, but, as the result
+of putting two and two together, he surmised that the Imperium must
+have been losing rather more than it was worth to the Fleischmann
+group, and that therefore sacrifice must be offered up.  He was the
+sacrifice.  He did not mind that.  It would infuriate his trustees when
+at last he had to give them an account of this adventure, but he did
+object to Charles and Clara being used to make a desperate bid to
+revive the languishing support of the public.
+
+Charles and Clara were so entirely innocent of all intrigue.  They gave
+simply what was in them without calculation of future profit, and with
+the most guileless trust in others, never suspecting that they were not
+as simple as themselves.  Therefore Verschoyle cursed his own indolence
+which had committed him both to the Imperium and the Fleischmann group.
+
+As he pondered the problem, he saw that Charles and Clara could be
+dropped, and probably would be as soon as it was convenient.  The real
+controller of the Imperium was Lady Bracebridge, whose skill in
+intrigue was said to be worth ten thousand a year to Sir Julius
+Fleischmann.  She played upon Lady Butcher, Lady Butcher played upon
+Sir Henry, who, with Mr Gillies crying 'Give, give,' was between the
+upper and the nether millstone, and could only put up a sham fight....
+Verschoyle understood, too late, that _The Tempest_ was to be produced
+not to present Clara and Charles to the British public, but to capture
+himself.  Like a fool, in his eagerness to help Clara, he had let
+himself be captured, and now he thought he owed her amends....  He did
+not know how difficult the situation had become.  The danger point, as
+he saw the problem, was her position with regard to Charles, who,
+fortunately, respected her wishes and made no attempt to force her
+hand.  All the same there the awkward fact was and at any moment might
+trip her up.
+
+Verschoyle did not mind a scandal, and he did not care a hang whether
+Charles went to prison or not.  It might give him the instruction in
+the elementary facts of existence which he needed to make him learn to
+begin at the beginning instead of the middle or the end....  What
+Verschoyle dreaded was a sudden shock which might blast the delicate
+bud of Clara's youth, which to him was far more precious than any other
+quality, and the only thing which in all his life had moved him out of
+his timid dilettantism.  To him it was a more valuable thing than the
+whole of London, and compared with its vivid reality the Imperium, with
+its firm hold on the affections of the public, and its generation of
+advertising behind it, was a blown bubble.
+
+He had tea with her on the day after her supper with Sir Henry, and
+found her disastrously altered, hurt, and puzzled.
+
+'What is the matter?' he asked.  'Rehearsals not going well?'
+
+'Oh, yes.  They are going very well....  But I am worried about
+Charles.  He has been borrowing money again.'
+
+'Will you be happy again if I promise to look after Charles?'
+
+'He ought not to expect to be looked after.  He is very famous now, and
+should be able to make money.'
+
+'Surely, like everything else, it is a matter of practice.  You don't
+expect him to beat Sir Henry at his own game.'
+
+'No-o,' she said.  'But I think I did expect Charles's game to beat Sir
+Henry's.'
+
+'Surely it has done so.'
+
+'No.'
+
+They were in her rooms, which were now most charmingly furnished;
+bright, gay, and delicate in colouring, tranquil and cosy with books.
+
+'Has anything happened?'
+
+She told him.
+
+'I thought it was going to be so simple.  I felt that Charles and I
+were irresistible, and that we should conquer the theatre and make
+people admit that he is--what he is.  Nothing can alter that.  But it
+isn't simple at all.  Other people want other things.  They go on
+wanting the horrible things they have always wanted, and they expect us
+to help them to procure them.  They don't understand.  They think we
+want the same things....  I never thought I should be so unhappy.  When
+it comes to the point they won't let the real things in people be put
+before the public.'
+
+'Oh, come.  He is just a vain old man who gets through his position
+what he could never have got for himself.'
+
+'No, no, no,' she protested.  'It does mean what I say.  It has made me
+hate the theatre and understand why Charles ran away from it....  Only,
+having forced him so far, what can I do?  I have hurt him far more than
+he has hurt me.  He was quite happy drifting from town to town abroad,
+and it was the life I had been brought up to, because my grandfather
+ran away from England, too.  It wouldn't have mattered there how many
+wives Charles had in England....  But I wanted to see for myself, and I
+didn't want him to be wasted....  I can see perfectly well that Sir
+Henry wants if possible to discredit him and to prove that his ideas
+won't work....  We've all been very silly.  These people are too clever
+for us.  He's got your money and Charles's genius, and neither of you
+can raise a finger.'
+
+Verschoyle looked rueful.  He could not deny it.
+
+'It's that damned old Bracebridge,' he said.  'She doesn't care a
+twopenny curse for art or for the public.  She and her lot want any
+money that is floating loose and the whole social game in London has
+become a three-card trick in their hands.  The theatre and newspapers
+are just the sharper's patter.'
+
+Clara writhed.
+
+'You can't do anything but go on,' he said.  'You are bound to get your
+success and they can't deny that.  The old man knows that.  Hence the
+trick to get you away from Charles....  If you succeed you'll pull
+Charles through, and--we can buy off anybody who wants to make trouble.
+I'll buy the Bracebridges, if necessary.  I'm not particularly proud of
+my money.  It comes from land for which I do absolutely nothing, but
+it's better than Fleischmann money which is got by the trickery of a
+lottery.'
+
+'She's a horrible old woman,' said Clara.
+
+'She intends that I shall marry her hen-brain of a daughter....  If the
+worst came to the worst, my dear, you could marry me.'
+
+Clara was enraged.  It infuriated her that he, of all people, whom she
+had so entirely trusted, should so far forget himself as to propose so
+trite and sentimental a solution.  He could not help teasing her.
+
+'It would save me, too,' he said.  'And as Lady Verschoyle you could
+give these people a Roland for their Oliver every time.'
+
+'But I want to ignore them,' she said.  'Why won't you see that I don't
+want to win with my personality but with my art.  That should be the
+irresistible thing.'
+
+'It would be if they resisted it, but they don't.  They ignore it....
+I can't think of anything else, my dear.  They've got my money: ten
+thousand in the Imperium and twenty in Argentinos, and they are using
+my name for all they are worth.'
+
+'And if I hadn't asked you to stay after the birds and fishes it
+wouldn't have happened.'
+
+'After all, it hasn't come to disaster yet.'
+
+'But it will.  It is all coming to a head, and Charles will have to be
+the one to suffer for it.'
+
+'I promise you he shan't.  He shall have a dozen committees and all the
+birds and fishes he requires.'
+
+She could not help laughing.  Perhaps, after all, her fears were
+exaggerated, but she dreaded Charles's helpless acquiescence in the
+plight to which he had been reduced by Mr Gillies's refusal to advance
+him a penny outside the terms mentioned in the contract.
+
+'It certainly looks to me,' said Verschoyle, 'as if they wanted to
+break him.  It wouldn't be any good my saying anything.  They would
+simply point to their contract and shrug their shoulders at Charles's
+improvidence.  How much did Mr Clott get away with?'
+
+'A great deal.  He had several hundreds in blackmail before he went.
+That is why we can't prosecute.'
+
+Verschoyle whistled.
+
+'It is a tangled skein,' he said.  'You'd much better marry me.  I
+won't expect you to care for me.'
+
+'Don't be ridiculous----'
+
+There came a heavy thudding at the door, and Clara jumped nervously to
+her feet.  Verschoyle opened the door, and Charles swept in like a
+whirlwind.  His long hair hung in wisps about his face, his hat was
+awry, his cuffs hung down over his hands, his full tie was out over his
+waistcoat, and in both hands he held outstretched his walking stick and
+a crumpled piece of paper.  He dropped the stick and smoothed the paper
+out on the table, and, in an almost sobbing voice, he said,--
+
+'This has come.  It is a wicked plot to ruin me.  She demands a part in
+_The Tempest_ or she will inform the police....  O God, chicken, that
+was a bad day when you made me marry you.'
+
+Verschoyle picked up his stick and, beside himself with exasperated
+fury, laid about the unhappy Charles's shoulders and loins crying,--
+
+'You hound, you cur, you filthy coward!  You should have told her!  You
+should have told her!  You knew she was only a child!'
+
+Charles roared lustily, but made no attempt to defend himself, although
+he was half a head taller than Verschoyle and twice as heavy.  He
+merely said,--
+
+'Oo-oh!' when a blow got home, and waited until the onslaught was over.
+Then he rubbed himself down and wriggled inside his clothes.
+
+Clara stood aghast.  It was horrible to her that this should have
+happened.  Blows were as useless as argument with Charles....  He had
+done what he had done out of kindliness and childish obedience and,
+looking to motives rather than to results, could see no wrong in it.
+
+Verschoyle was at once ashamed of himself.
+
+'I lost my temper,' he said, and Charles, assured that the storm was
+over, smiled happily, ran his hands through his hair and said,--
+
+'Do you think Sir Henry would give her a part?'
+
+Verschoyle flung back his head and shouted with laughter.  Such
+innocence was a supreme joke, especially coming after the serious
+conversation in which he and Clara had aired their fears as to the
+result of their incursion into theatrical politics.
+
+'She used to be quite pretty,' added Charles.  'What delightful rooms
+you have, my dear.  They're not so warm as my ham and beef shop.'
+
+'Listen to me, Charles,' said Verschoyle.  'This is serious.  I don't
+care about you.  Nothing could hurt you.  I don't believe you know half
+the time what is going on under your nose, but it is vitally serious
+for Clara.  This business must be stopped....  If we can't buy these
+people off then I'll give you two hundred to clear out.'
+
+'Clear out?' faltered Charles, 'but--my _Tempest_ is just coming on.
+I'm----'
+
+Verschoyle took up the letter and noted the address, one of the musical
+comedy theatres.
+
+'Have you heard from Mr Clott lately?'
+
+'No.  His name is Cumberland now, you know.  He came into money.  He
+said he would come back to me when I had my own theatre.'
+
+'Theatre be damned.  I wanted to know if he's still blackmailing you.'
+
+'Blackmail?  Oh, no.'
+
+'Don't you mind people blackmailing you?'
+
+'If people are made like that.'
+
+'Ah!'  Verschoyle gave an indescribable gurgle of impatience.  'Look
+here, Mann, do try to realise the position.  You can't get rid of this
+woman whatever she does because you have treated marriage as though you
+could take a wife as if it were no more than buying a packet of
+cigarettes.'
+
+'I have never thought of Clara as my wife.'
+
+'How then?'
+
+'As Clara,' said Charles simply.  'She is a very great artist.'
+
+Verschoyle was baffled, but Clara forgave Charles all his folly for the
+sake of his simplicity.  It was true.  The mistake was hers.  What he
+said was unalterably true.  She was Clara Day, an artist, and he had
+loved her as such.  As woman he had not loved her or any other....
+What in the ordinary world passed for love simply did not exist for him
+at all.
+
+She turned to Verschoyle.
+
+'Please do what you can for us,' she said.  'And Charles, please don't
+try to think of it in anybody else's way but your own.  I won't let
+them send you to prison.  They don't want to do that.  They would much
+rather have you great and powerful so as to bleed you....'
+
+'It has been very wonderful since you came, chicken,' he said.  'I'm
+ten times the man I was.  It seems so stupid that because we went into
+a dingy office and gabbled a few words we shouldn't be able to be
+together....  I sometimes wish we were back in France or Italy in a
+studio, with a bird in a cage, and you dancing about, making me laugh
+with happiness....'
+
+'I'll see my lawyer,' said Verschoyle.
+
+'For Heaven's sake, don't!' cried Clara.  'Once the lawyers get hold of
+it, they'll heap the fire up and throw the fat on it.'
+
+'I'm sorry I forgot myself....  You're a good fellow, Charles, but so
+damned silly that you don't deserve your luck.'
+
+They shook hands on it and Verschoyle withdrew, leaving Charles and
+Clara to make what they could of the confusion in which they were
+plunged....  Charles's way out of it was simply to ignore it.  If
+people would not or could not live in his fancy world, so much the
+worse for them.  He did not believe that anything terrible could happen
+to him simply because, though calamities of the most serious nature had
+befallen him, he had hardly noticed them.  He could forget so easily.
+He could withdraw and live completely within himself.
+
+He sat at the table and began to draw, and was immediately entirely
+absorbed.
+
+'Don't you feel it any more than that, Charles?' she asked.
+
+'If people like to make a fuss, let them,' he said.  'It is their way
+of persuading themselves that they are important....  If they put me in
+prison, I should just draw on the walls with a nail, and the time would
+soon go by.  The difference between us and them is that they are in a
+hurry and we are not.  There won't be much left of my _Tempest_ by the
+time they've done with it....  The electricians have secret
+instructions from Butcher.  There was nothing about lighting in my
+contract, so it is to be his and not mine, as if a design could stand
+without the lighting planned for it....  There are to be spot-lines on
+Sir Henry and Miranda and you, if he is still pleased with you....'
+
+Charles was talking in a cold, unmoved voice, but she knew that there
+must have been a furious tussle.  She was up in arms at once,--
+
+'It is disgraceful!' she cried.  'What is the good of his pretending to
+let you work in his theatre if you can have nothing as you wish it?'
+
+'He believes in actors,' said Charles, 'People with painted faces and
+painted souls, people whose minds are daubed with paint, whose eyes are
+sealed with it, whose ears are stopped with it....'
+
+'Am I one of them?' she asked plaintively.
+
+'No!  Never!  Never!' he said, looking up from his drawing.  'They'll
+turn us into a success, chicken, but they won't let us do what we want
+to do....  I shan't go near the place again.  But you are Ariel, and
+without you there can be no _Tempest_.'
+
+'I'll go through with it,' she said, her will setting.  'I'll go
+through with it, and I'll make nonsense of everything but you....
+You've done all you can, Charles.  Just go on working.  That's the only
+thing, the only thing....'
+
+As she said these words, she thought of Rodd with an acute hostility
+that amounted almost to hatred.  It was the meeting with him that had
+so confounded all her aims, that sudden plunge into humanity with him
+that had so exposed her to love that even Verschoyle's tone had changed
+towards her....  With Charles, love was as impersonal as a bird's song.
+It was only a call to her swift joy and claimed nothing for himself,
+though, perhaps, everything for his art.  That was where he was so
+baffling.  He expected the whole world to accept service under his
+banner, and was so confident that in time it would do so that no rebuff
+ruffled him.
+
+Clara was tempted to accept his point of view, and to run all risks to
+serve him; but she realised now, as he did not, the forces arrayed
+against him.  There was no blinking the fact that what the
+Butcher-Bracebridge combination detested was being forced to take him
+seriously: him or anything else under the sun.  Even the public upon
+which they fawned was only one of several factors in their calculations.
+
+'It will all come right, Charles,' she said.  'I am sure it will all
+come right.  We won't give in.  They have diluted you----'
+
+'Diluted?' he exclaimed.  'Butchered!'
+
+She admired him for accepting even that, but, in spite of herself, it
+hurt her that he still had no thought for her, but to him only artistic
+problems were important.  The problems of life must be left to solve
+themselves.  She could not help saying,--
+
+'You ought not to leave everything to me, Charles.'
+
+'You can handle people.  I can't.  I thought I was going to be rich,
+but there's no money.  And even if this affair is a success I shall be
+ashamed of it....  I think I shall write to the papers and repudiate
+it.  But it is the same everywhere.  People take my ideas and vulgarise
+them.  Actors are the same everywhere.  They will leave nothing to the
+audience.  They want to be adored for the very qualities they have
+lost.'
+
+'You don't blame me, then?'
+
+'Blame?  What's the good of blaming any one.  It doesn't help.  It
+makes one angry.  There is a certain pleasure in that, but it doesn't
+help.'
+
+It was brought home to her, then, that all her care for his
+helplessness was in vain.  He neither needed nor looked for help.  It
+was all one to him whether he lived in magnificence in a furnished
+house or in apartments over a cook-shop.
+
+'I've a good mind to disown the whole production now,' he said.
+
+'No.  No.  They will do all they can to hurt you then....  I think they
+know.'
+
+'Know what?'
+
+'That you have a wife.'
+
+He brought his fist down with such a crash on the frail table that it
+cracked right across, and Clara was sickeningly alarmed when she saw
+his huge hands grip the table on either side and rend it asunder.
+There was something terrible and almost miraculous in his enormous
+physical vitality, and his waste of it now in such a petty act of rage
+forced her to admit that which she had been attempting to suppress, the
+thought of Rodd, and she was compelled now to compare the two men.  So
+she saw Charles more clearly, and had to acknowledge to herself how
+fatally he lacked moral force.  She trembled as it was made plain to
+her that the old happy days could never come again, and that the child
+who had believed in him so implicitly was gone for ever.  She had the
+frame, the mind, the instinct of a woman, and these things could no
+longer be denied.
+
+When his rage was spent, she determined to give him one more chance,--
+
+'We can win through, Charles.  We have Verschoyle backing us.  I accept
+my responsibility, and I will be a wife to you.'
+
+'For God's sake, don't talk like that.  I want you to be as you were,
+adorable, happy, free.'
+
+She shook her head slowly from side to side.
+
+Charles, offended, went out.  She heard him go blundering down the
+stairs and out into the street.
+
+She turned to her couch by the window and lay looking at the sun
+setting behind the roofs, chimneys, and towers of London.  Amethyst and
+ruddy was the sky: smoked yellow and amber: blue and green, speckled
+with little dark clouds.  She drank in its beauty, and lost herself in
+the dying day, aching at heart because there was nowhere in humanity a
+beauty of equal power in which she could lose herself, but everywhere
+barriers of egoism, intrigue, selfish calculation....  She thought of
+the little bookseller in the Charing Cross Road....  'Doing good to
+others is doing good to yourself....'  Ay, but make very sure that you
+are doing good and not well-intentioned harm.
+
+She had meant to help Charles, had sacrificed herself to him, and look
+what had come of it!  Deep within her heart she knew that she had been
+at fault, and that the mischief had been done when she had imposed her
+will on him....  As a child she had been brought up in the Catholic
+faith, and she had still some remnants of a religious conscience, and
+to this now she whispered that this was the sin against the Holy Ghost,
+for one person to impose his will on that of another.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN BLOOMSBURY
+
+At the same time, in his attic, Rodd was pacing up and down his empty
+room, surveying the impotence to which he had reduced both his life and
+his work by his refusal to accept the social system of his time.  His
+work was consciously subversive, and therefore unprofitable: his life
+was nothing.  He was a solitary in London, as though he spoke a
+language which no one understood.  So indeed he did.  His words had
+meanings for him to which no one else had the smallest clue, for they
+referred rather to his imagined world than to any actuality.
+
+Hitherto that had troubled him not at all.  Spinoza, Kant, Galileo had
+all talked a language unintelligible to their contemporaries, and with
+how many had Nietzsche been able to converse?  The stories had it that
+there was one butcher and he was mad.
+
+Groping with his imagination into the vitals of the society into which
+he had been born, Rodd had consoled himself with the assurance that a
+cataclysm would come to smash the odious system by which the old
+enslaved the young, and that then there would be a cleaner atmosphere
+in which his ideas could live, and his words would be intelligible to
+all, because in it that deeper consciousness which was released in his
+imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and
+stale ideas....  But now the cataclysm had come within himself, and he
+was brought to doubt and self-examination.  Had he not denied too much?
+Had he not carried abnegation too far?  Had he not thwarted powers in
+himself which were essential even to his impersonal purpose?  Was it
+paradoxically true that a man must be a person before he can be
+impersonal?  His empty room, his books, his pile of manuscript!  What a
+life!  Had he after all been only a coward?  Had he only shrunk into
+this silence to avoid the pain and boredom of reiteration?
+
+At first his concern was all with the havoc wrought in his work from
+the moment when Clara swept into his imagination, but he was soon
+compelled to brush that aside and to grapple with the more serious fact
+that she had crept into his heart, which for the first time was active
+and demanding its share in his being.  Then arose the horror that it
+was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary,
+tortured souls, creatures who should be left to eke out their misery in
+private solitude, who had nothing to justify their exhibition to the
+world, who shamelessly reproached their fellows for the results of
+their own weakness, wretched clinging women, men hard as iron in their
+egoism....  His heart could not endure it, but until his heart had
+flooded his vision with its warmth he could not move, could come to no
+decision, except that he must leave the marvellous girl unmolested.
+
+The furious will that had animated him through all his solitary years
+resented this intrusion, and was in revolt against the reason and the
+logic of his heart.  That will in him had reduced the social system to
+its logical end, the destruction of the young by the old, and would
+allow his creative faculty no other material.  It must have nothing but
+a bleak world of bitterness, and this it had imposed upon both his
+happy temperament and his generous heart, so that even in life he had
+been able to exercise nothing but a rather feeble kindness.  His will
+had been to hold up to the world a picture of the end to which it must
+come, since splendour wrung from desolation must end in desolation.
+
+And suddenly his will was defied by this amazing girl, all youth, all
+joy, revealing the eternal loveliness of the human spirit that endures
+though Empires fade away and societies come to chaos.
+
+Very, very slowly, his will, which drew its force from the hypnotic
+influence of horror, was thrust back, and light crept into his imagined
+world, flowers blossomed in it, trees swayed in the wind, larks went
+soaring above green hills blazing with yellow gorse, birds hopped to
+their nests and sang, dogs barked and gambolled with delight--all his
+frozen memories slowly melted, and sweet and simple pleasures came to
+view to make a setting meet for Clara Day.  And he remembered simple
+people with a steady kindness, people like the little bookseller who
+knew their world but believed in its redeeming goodness, people like a
+woman who had once nursed him through a terrible illness and had never
+ceased to pray for him, families where in his lonely youth in London he
+had been welcome--all these he remembered and grouped round Clara to
+make a better and a simpler world.
+
+When his agony had run its course, and his old hypnotic will was
+broken, he told himself that he must be content that Clara should be
+the mistress of his imagination, since he had wrecked his own life and
+had nothing to offer her.  Obviously she had found the world good.
+Nothing in her was theatrical, nothing baffled.  He must reconcile
+himself to the acceptance of those two days with her as in themselves
+perfect, sufficient, and fruitful.  Indeed, what need was there of
+more?  They had met as profoundly as they could ever hope to meet.  She
+would marry her lord, and gather about herself all the good and
+pleasant things of the earth, and he could return to his work and build
+it up anew.
+
+With his rather absurd tendency to generalise from his personal
+experience he told himself that as youth and joy had been liberated
+from his imagined world, so also would they be in the world of
+actuality.  His drooping hopes revived and a new ambition was kindled
+in him.  He paced less rapidly to and fro in his empty room, slowed
+down day by day until he stopped, sat at his table and plunged once
+more into work.  His arrogance reasserted itself, and he told
+himself--as was indeed the case--that he could extract more from a hint
+of experience than the ordinary man could from an overwhelming tragedy.
+
+As he worked, he came more and more to regard his encounter with Clara
+as a holiday adventure.  The Charing Cross Road was to him what Paris
+or the seaside was to the ordinary worker.  The episode belonged to his
+holiday.  It was nothing more, and must be treated as though it had
+happened to some other man: it must be smiled at, treasured for its
+fragrance, blessed for its fertility....  With the new weapon it had
+given him he would return to tobacco and paper, the materials of his
+existence.
+
+He saw her name in the papers, her photograph here and there.  Oh,
+well, she belonged to that world.  No doubt she would amuse herself
+with theatrical success before she fell back upon the title and wealth
+which were laid at her feet.
+
+However, convinced though he was of his renunciation, he could not stay
+away from the bookshop and went there almost every day in the hope of
+meeting her.
+
+One evening as he returned home he met Verschoyle on the doorstep of
+his house, and could not refrain from speaking to him.
+
+'Excuse me,' he said, 'I have seen you sometimes in the bookshop in
+Charing Cross Road.'
+
+'Indeed?' replied Verschoyle, who was looking anxious and worried.
+
+'Yes.  I have seen you there with Miss Day.'
+
+Verschoyle was alert and suspicious at once.  He scanned this strange
+individual but was rather puzzled.
+
+'Do you live here?' he asked.
+
+'On the top floor,' replied Rodd, 'on the top floor--alone--I thought
+you might have been to see me.'
+
+'No, no.  I don't know you.'
+
+'My name is Rodd.'
+
+That conveyed nothing to Verschoyle.
+
+'I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Day at the bookshop.  I thought she
+might have mentioned it.'
+
+'No....  I have been to see a Miss Messenger on the third floor.  Do
+you know her?'
+
+'Slightly.'
+
+'You know nothing about her?'
+
+'Nothing, except that she had a child that died....  I'm afraid I
+didn't even know her name.  I don't bother myself much about my
+neighbours.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Verschoyle.  'Good-night.'
+
+Rodd let himself in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange
+combination of persons.  What on earth could be the link between
+Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable menage on the third floor?...
+His heart answered ominously: 'Clara.'
+
+He walked slowly up the dark, uncarpeted stairs, and, as he was at the
+bend below the third floor, he heard a shrill scream--a horrid scream,
+full of terror, loathing, contempt.  He rushed up to the door of the
+third floor flat and found it open, stood for a moment, and heard a
+man's voice saying,--
+
+'You shall, you sly cat.  Give it me and you shall do as I tell you.'
+
+'No, no, no!' screamed the woman.  'Mother!'
+
+And another woman's voice, cruel, and harsh, said,--
+
+'Do as he tells you, and don't be a fool!'
+
+There was a scuffle, a fall, a man's heavy breathing, a gurgling sound
+of terror and suffocation.  Rodd walked into the flat, and found the
+woman who waited for him on the stairs lying on the ground, clutching a
+bundle of bank-notes, while a little, mean-looking man was kneeling on
+her chest, half throttling her, and trying to force the notes out of
+her hand.  The woman's mother was standing by shrieking aloud and
+crying,--
+
+'Do as he tells you, you b---- fool!  He knows what's what.  He's got
+these blighters in a corner, and he'll make them pay.'
+
+Rodd flung himself on the man, whom he recognised as the creature he
+and Clara had met on the stairs.  He picked him up and threw him into a
+corner, where he lay, too terrified to move.  The woman lay back
+moaning and rolling her eyes, almost foaming at the mouth.  Her bosom
+heaved and she clutched the notes in her hand more tightly to her....
+Rodd turned to the other two, and said,--
+
+'Get out....'
+
+They obeyed him, and he knelt by the woman and reassured her.
+
+'Come now,' he said, 'out with the whole story before you've begun to
+lie to yourself about it.'
+
+'It's my own money,' she gasped; 'I don't want to do any more.  It's
+all fair and square, if he's paid.  If a feller pays, it's all fair and
+square.'
+
+Rodd accepted the soundness of this rudimentary ethic.
+
+'He wanted half and half, but it's my own money.  I signed a paper for
+it, and I'm not going back on my word.  He wants me to.  He wants me to
+go into the Imperium so that he can get on to some of the swells....'
+
+The Imperium?  Rodd determined that he would have the whole story out.
+He left her for a moment and locked the door.  Then he lifted her into
+a chair--it was a flashy furniture-on-the-hire-system room--gave her a
+dose of brandy and began to ply her with questions,--
+
+'Do you feel better?'
+
+'Much better.  I like being with you.  You're so quiet.  You'd
+understand a girl, you would.  I've often wanted to come and tell
+you....  It fair knocked me silly when I saw you with her.'
+
+'With whom?'
+
+'Charley's girl.'
+
+'Whose?'
+
+'Charley's.  Charley Mann's.  He's my husband.'
+
+Rodd was silent for some moments while he took this in.
+
+'Who is this other--man?' asked Rodd kindly, beginning slowly to piece
+the story together.
+
+'That's Claude....  He was a lodger of mother's before she went broke
+and had to come to live with me.  He never let me alone.  I wanted to
+go straight, I did really....  Charley's not bad, and I thought I
+should never see him again.  I never thought he would make money.  I
+never thought we should see him swanking it in the papers, or I'd never
+have had a word to say to Claude.  I wouldn't really.  Only Charley
+getting married to the other girl----'
+
+It struck Rodd like a blow in the face.  Kitty did not mark the effect
+of her story, and was not concerned with it.  All she felt was relief
+in the telling.
+
+'I wanted money to send mother out of England.  I couldn't stand it any
+more.  If it hadn't been for her there wouldn't have been Claude, and a
+girl at the theatre can have a good time on her own nowadays even with
+a kiddie.  I've often wanted to tell you.'
+
+'Does she know?'
+
+'Charley's girl?  Yes.  She knows.  It's a nice mix-up.  Isn't it?  And
+Charley's not bad.  He'll just lose you same as he would his hat.  No
+offence meant.'
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+'Who gave you the money?'
+
+'A swell.'
+
+'To keep your mouth shut?'
+
+'Yes.  Charley would have to go to prison.  Claude's been in prison.
+That's why he'd like Charley to go.  Everybody who's been to prison is
+like that.  It makes them sly and hard....  But I say that Charley's
+paid: six hundred.  I'd never have got that out of him if I'd stayed
+with him, would I?'
+
+'I suppose not....  If there's any more trouble will you come to me?'
+
+'I'd love to,' she said, perking up and casting at him the sorrowful
+languishing glances with which she had pursued him for so long.
+'Claude says he's pushed her on so quick and he ought to have done the
+same for me....  Claude was at their wedding.  I didn't know him then.
+He's a friend of mother's.  We thought he had money but he hasn't got a
+bean.'
+
+'I'll deal with Claude,' said Rodd.  'And if there is any more trouble,
+mind you come to me.'
+
+'It was all after my baby died,' said Kitty, as if to excuse herself,
+but Rodd had accepted the story, and had no thought of excuse or
+forgiveness.  His thought was all for Clara.
+
+How comic it was that he should have given her Mann's book!  Did she
+love Mann?  She must have done.  She could not have married him
+else....  But then what was Verschoyle to her, that he should have paid
+so large a sum in hush-money?  A furious jealousy swept away what was
+left of Rodd's intellectual world and released at last his passions.
+His mind worked swiftly through the story, picking it up in time with
+every thread.
+
+Was she only an actress?  Was the perfection which he had worshipped a
+figment, a projection of herself in the character most pleasing to his
+idealism?  Impossible!  There can be no feigning of purity, honesty,
+joy.  That is where the pretences of humanity collapse.  In such a
+pretence as that simulated passion--the ultimate baseness, breaks down,
+creates no illusion, and is foiled.
+
+But on the face of it, what an appalling story!  It brought him
+violently to earth.  He could not move, but sat staring at the woman,
+wanting to tell her that she lied, but knowing that she had spoken
+according to the truth of the letter.  Of the truth of the spirit she
+could most patently know nothing.  Her world was composed of dull facts
+and smouldering emotions.  She could know nothing of the world where
+emotions flamed into passion to burn the facts into golden emblems of
+truth.  And that was Clara's world: the world in which for two days he
+had been privileged to dwell, a world in which soul could speak to soul
+and laugh at all the confusion of fact and detail in which they must
+otherwise be ensnared....  Mann, Verschoyle, a swift success in the
+theatre--the facts were of the kind that had induced the horror in
+which until he met her he had lived.  His meeting with her had
+dispelled his horror, but the facts remained.  He in his solitude might
+ignore them and dream on, but could she?  Surely he owed it to her to
+offer her what through her he had won....  And then--to buy off the
+wretched woman, surely she could never have submitted to that!
+
+He began to think of Charles Mann with a blistering, jealous hatred.
+
+'I think I'd have killed myself,' said Kitty, 'if it had gone on.  I
+don't wish them any harm now that he's paid up....  I wouldn't have
+said a word about it to any one, only she's so young.  It did give me a
+bit of a shock, and Charles getting on, too.  He's quite gray and has a
+bit of a stomach.  I never thought he'd be the one to get fat.  I'm all
+skin and bone.  Look at my arms.'
+
+Rodd left her.  When he opened the door he was relieved to find that
+the unpleasant Claude had gone.  Mrs Messenger was sitting by the fire
+in the front room, her skirts tucked up about her knees, and a glass of
+port on the mantelpiece.  She turned her head with a leer and said,--
+
+'Good luck!  I always thought she was keen on you....  It's time she
+settled down.  She was born to be respectable, and to look after a man.
+That's all most girls are fit for.  But in the theatre a girl's got to
+look after number one or go down and out.'
+
+The old woman with the painted face and dyed hair made Rodd's flesh
+creep.  She seemed to him a symbol of all the evil in the world, decay,
+disruption, corruption, and with a flash of inspiration he discerned in
+her the source of all this pitiful tangle of lies.  A tender sympathy
+entirely new to him took possession of his faculties and armed with
+this he determined that he would not fail in whatever part he was
+called upon to play in the drama of Clara's life.
+
+He said to the old woman,--
+
+'We have been talking it over.  We have decided to book you a passage
+to Canada and to give you a hundred pounds with which to keep yourself
+alive until you find work to do.'
+
+'What?' she said, 'me leave London?  Dear old London, dear old
+Leicester Square and the theatres?  And leave you to do what you like
+with my daughter, you dirty dog?  I've seen her nosing round on the
+stairs after you, a feller that lives on bread-and-cheese and
+grape-nuts.  I know your sort, you dirty, interfering blackguard.
+You've never given a girl as much as a drink in your life.'
+
+'All the same,' said Rodd, 'your passage will be booked, and if Mr
+Claude What's-his-name shows his face here there'll be a neck broken on
+the stairs.'
+
+He walked out and heard the old woman gulp down a glass of port and
+say,--
+
+'Well, I'm damned!'
+
+Then, as he moved upstairs to his own room he heard her screaming,--
+
+'Kitty, you filthy little claw-hammer----'
+
+The door was slammed to, and he heard only their voices in bitter
+argument, tears, reproaches, curses; but at last, as he paced to and
+fro in his lonely room, the tumult died down and he could wrestle with
+the new turbulent thoughts awakened in him....  Work was out of the
+question.  He had been clawed back into life.  If he did not want to be
+destroyed he must be profoundly, passionately, and scrupulously honest
+with himself.  He must face his emotions as he had never done.
+
+At first he thought of wildly heroic solutions.  He would seize his
+opportunity with Kitty, take advantage of her soft gratitude and sweep
+her out of harm's way.....  But what was the good of that?  It settled
+nothing, solved nothing.  To act without Clara's knowledge would be to
+betray her.  That he was sure was what Verschoyle had done.
+
+Already he had interfered and there was no knowing what Claude's spite
+might lead to....  O God, what a tangle!  What should be done, what
+could be done, for Clara?  No one mattered but she.  Mann, Verschoyle,
+himself, what did any of them matter?  She was the unique,
+irreplaceable personality.  Of that he was sure.  It was through her
+glorious innocence that all these strange things had happened to her.
+A less generous, a more experienced and calculating woman would have
+known instinctively that there was some queer story behind Charles
+Mann....  She could leap into a man's heart through his mind.  That was
+where she was so dangerous to herself.  The history of his purely
+physical emotions would concern her not at all.  Her own emotions in
+their purity could recognise no separation between body and spirit, nor
+in others could they suspect any division....  Of that he was sure.
+Without that the whole embroglio was fantastic and incredible.  She
+could never in so short a time have achieved what she had done through
+calculation and intrigue.  That kind of success took years of patience
+under checks, rebuffs, and insults....  Everywhere she offered her
+superb youth, and it was taken and used, used for purposes which she
+could not even suspect.  Her youth would be taken, she would be given
+no room, no time in which to develop her talent or her personality.
+
+The way of the world?  It had been the way of the world too long, but
+the strong of heart and the worthy of soul had always resisted or
+ignored it.
+
+Sometimes Rodd thought the only thing to do was to wait, to leave the
+situation to develop naturally.  It would do Mann no great harm to get
+into trouble, but then--Clara would be marked.  All her life she would
+have to fight against misunderstanding....  No, no.  There could be no
+misunderstanding where she was concerned.  Her personality answered
+everything.  It would be fine, it would be splendid, to see her
+overriding all obstacles in her bounteous gift of the treasure that was
+in her to a world that in its worship of self-help and material power
+had forgotten youth, courage, and the supreme power of joy.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+ARIEL
+
+As the days went by and the production came nearer, the Imperium was
+charged with a busy excitement.  The machinery was tightened up, and
+there was no sparing any of the persons concerned.  Rehearsals began at
+ten in the morning, and dragged on through the day, sometimes not
+ending until eleven or twelve at night.  Sir Henry had a thousand and
+one things to do, and was in something of a panic about his own words.
+He would stop in the middle of a lighting rehearsal to remember his
+part and would turn to a scene-shifter or a lime-light man, anybody who
+happened to be by, to ask if that was right, and when they stared at
+him he would lose his temper and say,--
+
+'Shakespeare!  It's Shakespeare!  Everybody knows their Shakespeare.'
+
+Clara took the precaution of learning his part in his scenes with her
+and was able to prompt him when he started fumbling or improvising.  He
+was taut with anxiety, and completely ignored everything not
+immediately bearing on the production, as to which he was obviously not
+easy in his mind.  He talked to himself a good deal, and Clara heard
+him more than once damning Charles under his breath.  In spite of
+herself she was a little hurt that he took no notice of her outside her
+part in the play.  His only concern with the world off the stage was
+through Lady Bracebridge and Lady Butcher, who were vastly busy with
+the dressing of the front of the house and began introducing their
+distinguished aristocratic and political friends at rehearsals, where
+they used to sit in the darkness of the auditorium and say,--
+
+'Too sweet!  Divine, divine!'
+
+It was difficult to see what they could possibly make of the chaos on
+the stage, with actors strolling to and fro mumbling their parts,
+others going through their scenes, carpenters running hither and
+thither, the lights going up and down and changing from blue to amber,
+amber to blue, white, red....  Up to the very last Sir Henry made
+changes, and the more excited he got the further he drifted away from
+the play's dramatic context, and strove to break up the aesthetic
+impression of the whole with innumerable tricks, silences, gestures,
+exaggerated movements of the actors, touches of grotesque and
+irrelevant humour, devices by which Prospero could be in the centre of
+the stage, anything and everything to impose his own tradition and
+personality on both Shakespeare and Charles.
+
+Clara was thankful that Charles had quarrelled with him and was not
+there to see.  Sir Henry was like a man possessed.  He worked in a
+frenzy to retrieve the situation, and to recover the ground he had
+lost; and he only seemed sure of himself in his scenes with Ariel, and
+over them he went again and again, not for a moment sparing Clara or
+thinking of the physical effort so much repetition entailed for her.
+
+She did not object.  It was a great relief to go to her rooms, worn
+out, and to lie, unable to think, incapable of calculation, lost to
+everything except her will to play Ariel with all the magic and
+youthful vitality she possessed.  Everything outside the play had
+disappeared for her, too.  That so much of Charles's work should be
+submerged hurt her terribly and she blamed herself, but for that was
+only the more determined to retrieve the situation with her own art, to
+which, as Sir Henry revered it, he clung.  She knew that and was
+determined not to fail.  However much Charles's work was mutilated, her
+success--if she won it--would redeem his plight.
+
+Therefore she surrendered herself absolutely to the whirling chaos of
+the rehearsals, from which it seemed impossible that order could ever
+come.  She ordered her own thoughts by doing the obvious thing, reading
+the play until she was soaked with it.  No one else apparently had done
+that and, as she grew more familiar with it and more intimate with its
+spirit, she began to doubt horribly whether Charles had done so either.
+His scenery seemed as remote from that spirit as Sir Henry's theatrical
+devices, and almost equally an imposition.  As she realised this she
+was forced to see how completely she was now detached from Charles, and
+also, to her suffering, how she had laid herself open to the charge of
+having used him, though he, in his generous simplicity, would never see
+it in that light or bring any accusation against her....  She blamed
+herself far more for what she had done to Rodd.  That, she knew, was
+serious, and the more intimate she became with Shakespeare's genius the
+more she understood the havoc she must have wrought in Rodd's life.
+
+How strange was this world of Prime Ministers and actor-managers which
+dominated London and in which London acquiesced; very charming, very
+delightful, if only one could believe in it, or could accept that it
+was the best possible that London could throw up.  But if it was so,
+what need was there of so much advertising, paragraphing, interviewing?
+Which was the pretence, the theatre or the world outside it?  Which
+were the actresses, she and Julia Wainwright and the rest, or Lady
+Butcher and Lady Bracebridge?  And in fine, was it all, like everything
+else, only a question of money?  Verschoyle's money?  And if Verschoyle
+paid, why was he shoved aside so ignominiously?
+
+Clara shivered as she thought of the immense complication of what
+should be so simple and true and beautiful....  But what alternative
+was there?  This elaboration and corruption of the theatre or the
+imagination working freely in an empty room.
+
+She could see no other.  Rodd's terrible concentration ending in
+impotence or the dissipation of real powers, as in Butcher and Mann, in
+fantasy.
+
+Absorbed in her work, intent upon the forthcoming production, she was
+detached from them all and could at last discover how little any of
+them needed her.  She could not really enter into their work though all
+three had been disturbed by her and diverted for a time at least from
+their habitual purposes....  What mattered in each of the three men was
+the artist, and in each the artist was fettered by life.  She had
+promised them release only to plunge them into greater difficulties.
+
+She brooded over herself, wondering what she was, and how she came to
+be so unconcerned with things that to other women seemed paramount.  It
+was nothing to her that Charles had a wife.  It had all happened long
+before he met her, and was no affair of hers....  That Sir Henry should
+make love to her was merely comic.  She could not even take advantage
+of it, for in that direction she could not move at all.  Instinctively
+she knew that her sex was given her for one purpose only, and that the
+highest, and she could not turn it to any base or material use.  While
+she adhered to this she could be Ariel, pure spirit to dominate her
+life and direct her will, which no power on earth could break....  How
+came she to be so free, and so foreign to the world of women?  Her
+upbringing!  Her early independence!  Or some new spirit stirring in
+humanity?
+
+Already she had caught from Rodd his habit of generalising from his own
+experience, and in her heart she knew it, knew that she had begun what
+might prove to be her real life with him, but, caught up as she had
+been in Mann's schemes and dreams and visions, she would not accept
+this until all the threads were snapped.  Being frank with herself, she
+knew that she desired and intended to snap them, but in her own time
+and with as little hurt as possible to those concerned....  Meanwhile
+it was wonderful, it was almost intoxicatingly comic to carry all the
+confused facts of her own life into the ordered world where she was
+Ariel and to imagine Mann, for instance, discoursing of birds and
+fishes to Trinculo and Stephano, or Rodd, with his passionate dreams of
+a sudden jet of loveliness in a desert of misery comparing notes with
+good Gonzalo, while she, both as Clara Day and as Ariel, danced among
+them and played freakish tricks upon them, and lured them on to believe
+that all kinds of marvels would come to pass and then bring them back
+to their senses to discover that she was after all only a woman, and
+that the marvels they looked for from her were really in themselves.
+
+So she dallied with her power, not quite knowing what she wished to do
+with it, and, as she dallied, she became more conscious of her force,
+and she grew impatient with her youth which had been her undoing, so
+easily given, so greedily accepted.  No one but Rodd had seen beyond it
+and, for a while, she detested him for having done so....  Nothing had
+gone smoothly since her meeting with him.  The pace of events had
+quickened until it was too fast even for her, and she could do nothing
+but wait, nothing but fall back upon Ariel.
+
+The dress rehearsal dragged through a whole day and most of a night.
+It hobbled along.  Nothing was right.  Sir Henry could hardly remember
+a word of his part.  Ferdinand's wig was a monstrosity.  Miranda looked
+like the fairy-queen in a provincial pantomime.  There was hardly a
+dress to which Lady Butcher did not take exception, though she passed
+Clara's sky-blue and silver net as 'terribly attractive.' ...  Clara
+delighted in the freedom of her fairy costume.  Her lovely slim figure
+showed to perfection.  She moved like the wind, like a breeze in long
+silvery grass.  She gave the impression of movement utterly free of her
+body, which melted into movement, and was lost in it.  The stage-island
+was then to her really an island, the power of Prospero was true magic,
+the air was drenched with sea-salt, heavy, rich, pregnant with
+invisible life urging into form and issuing sometimes in strange music,
+mysterious voices prophesying in song, and plaints of woe from life
+that could find no other utterance....  Ah!  How free she felt as all
+this power of fancy seized her and bore her aloft and laid her open to
+all the new spirit, all the promise of the new life that out of the
+world came thrilling into this magical universe.  How free she felt and
+how oblivious of her surroundings!  There was that in her that nothing
+could destroy, something more than youth, deeper than joy which is no
+more than the lark's song showering down through the golden air of
+April....  Here in her freedom she knew herself, a soul, a living soul,
+with loving laughter accepting the life ordained for it by Providence,
+but dominating it, shaping it, moulding it, filling it with love until
+it brimmed over and spilled its delight upon surrounding life to make
+it also free and fruitful.
+
+Julia Wainwright caught her in the wings, and pressed her to her bosom,
+and exclaimed,--
+
+'Oh, my dear, you will be famous--famous.  They'll be on their knees to
+you in New York.'
+
+And Freeland Moore, dressed for the part of Caliban, said,--
+
+'This isn't going to be Sir Henry's or Mann's show.  It is going to be
+Clara Day's.'
+
+The good creatures!  It was only a show to them, and they were elated
+and happy to think of the thousands and thousands of pounds, dollars,
+francs, roubles, and marks that would be showered on their friend.
+With such a success as they now dreamed the trouble they had dreaded
+for her would make no difference.  A 'story' would be even valuable.
+
+But what had Ariel to do with pounds and dollars, roubles and marks?
+Ariel asked nothing but freedom after ages pining in a cloven pine....
+In this world of money and machinery and intrigue to control machinery
+with money, to be free was the deep and secret desire of all humanity.
+Here in London hearts ached and souls murmured to be free, only to be
+free, for one moment at whatever cost of tears and suffering and bloody
+agony.  All this in her heart Clara knew, she knew it from her meeting
+with Rodd, from her solitary brooding in her room, from the drunken
+women fighting in the street, from the uncontrolled fantasy in Charles
+Mann, from the boredom that ate away poor Verschoyle's heart; and all
+the knowledge of her adventurous life she gathered up to distil it into
+the delight of freedom, for its own sake and also for the sake of the
+hereafter which, if there be no moment of freedom, no flowering of
+life, must sink into a deeper and more miserable slavery.
+
+In this mood it was pathetic to see Sir Henry, whose whole power lay in
+machinery, pretending as Prospero to rule by magic.  So pathetically
+out of place was he that he could not even remember the words that so
+mightily revealed his authority....  When he broke down, he would
+declare that it was quite a simple matter to improvise blank verse....
+But Clara would not let him improvise.  She was always ready with the
+words, the right inevitable words.  She would not let him impair her
+freedom with his lazy reliance upon the machinery of the theatre to
+pull him through, and so, when he opened his mouth and looked vague,
+and covered the absence of words with a large gesture, she was ready
+for him.
+
+He reproved her.
+
+'I am always like this at a dress rehearsal.  Dress rehearsals are
+always terrible.  The production seems to go altogether to pieces, but
+it is always there on the night.  A good dress rehearsal means a bad
+first night.'
+
+But Clara refused to allow any of her scenes to go to pieces, and they
+were applauded by the Butcher-Bracebridge fashionables who sat in the
+stalls.  Lady Butcher called out,--
+
+'It will be one of the best things you have ever done,' and her son's
+voice was heard booming, 'Hear, hear!  Good old pater.'
+
+Verschoyle had dropped in, but he was captured by Lady Bracebridge and
+her daughter, and had to sit between them while they scandalised Clara.
+According to them she had run away from home and had led an
+unmentionable life in Paris, actually having been a member of a low
+company of French players; and she had married but had run away from
+her husband with Charles Mann, etc., etc.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said Verschoyle, 'but Miss Day is a friend of
+mine.'
+
+'One admires her frankness so much,' said Lady Bracebridge.
+'Adventures like that make an actress so interesting.'
+
+'But this is her first appearance in any theatre.'
+
+Lady Bracebridge looked incredulous.  She put up her lorgnette and
+scanned Clara, who had just floated across the stage followed by
+Trinculo and Stephano.
+
+'She is born to it....  I know what the French theatre is like.  They
+are so sensible, don't expect anything else of their actresses.'
+
+Verschoyle saw that it was useless to argue.  Women will never
+relinquish their jealousy.  He shifted uneasily in his seat: Lady
+Bracebridge was a great deal too clever for him and he saw himself
+being thrust against his will into marriage with her daughter, who had
+an affectation of cleverness and maddened him with remarks like,--
+
+'That Ariel costume would make the sweetest dinner-frock.  If I have
+one made, will you take me to Murray's?'
+
+'Certainly not,' said Verschoyle.
+
+Clara in her pure girlish voice had just sung 'Full fathom five thy
+father lies,' when Lady Bracebridge, in her most strident voice, which
+went ringing through the theatre, said,--
+
+'I hear Charles Mann has a real wife who is _raging_ with jealousy,
+simply raging.  The most extraordinary story.'
+
+Clara stopped dead, stood looking helplessly round, pulled herself
+together, and went on with the part.  Verschoyle deliberately got up
+and walked out and round to the stage door, where already he found Lady
+Butcher in earnest converse with Sir Henry,--
+
+'We can't have a scandal in the theatre, Henry.  Everybody heard
+her....'
+
+'The wicked old devil.  Why didn't she keep her mouth shut?'
+
+'She hates this girl you are all so crazy about....  Everybody heard
+her.  You can't keep a thing like that quiet once it has been said
+publicly.'
+
+'But she is wonderful, the most delicate Ariel.  Mann isn't worrying
+us.  I cleared him out.'
+
+'Excuse me,' said Verschoyle, intervening.  'I can assure you there
+will be no trouble.  I have seen to that.  You have nothing to fear.'
+
+'How sweet of you!  Then I can tell everybody there is not a word of
+truth in it.'
+
+Verschoyle turned his back on them, and went in search of Clara, whom
+he found trembling with fury on the stairs leading from her
+dressing-room to the stage.
+
+'How dare you let that woman insult me publicly?' she cried.  'How dare
+you?  How dare you?  You ought to have killed her.'
+
+Verschoyle stammered,--
+
+'One can't kill people in the stalls of a London theatre.'
+
+'She ought not to be allowed to live.  Publicly!  In the middle of the
+play! ...  Either she or I will leave the theatre.'
+
+'I'll see what I can do,' he mumbled, 'only for God's sake don't make
+it worse than it is....  Your only answer can be to ignore her.  She'll
+be crawling to you in a few months, for you are marvellous.'
+
+Clara saw that he was right.  To match herself against the
+scandal-monger would be to step down to her level.  To reassure her,
+Verschoyle told her how he had been to Bloomsbury to settle matters.
+
+'Where?' she asked.
+
+He described the square and the house, and at once she had a foreboding
+of disaster.
+
+'Did you see any one else?'
+
+'A queer fish I met at the door, with eyes that looked clean through
+me, and that little squirt Clott.  He is at the bottom of it all.'
+
+Clara gave a little moan.
+
+'O-oh!  Why does everybody hate Charles so?  Everybody betrays him....'
+
+'Oh, come,' said Verschoyle, 'he isn't exactly thoughtful for other
+people, is he?'
+
+'That doesn't matter.  Charles is Charles, and he must and shall
+succeed.'
+
+'Not if it smashes you.'
+
+'Even if it smashes me.'
+
+He took her hands and implored her to be sensible.
+
+'You lovely, lovely child,' he said, 'if Charles can't succeed off his
+own bat, surely, surely it means that there is something wrong with
+him.  Why should you suffer?  Why should you be exposed all your life
+to taunts and success and insults like that just now?  It is all so
+unnecessary....  I'll go and see Charles.  I'll tell him what has
+happened and that he may be given away at any moment now.'
+
+'But why should they hate Charles?'
+
+'It isn't Charles, darling.  It is you they hate.  You are too young,
+too beautiful.  These women who have lied and intrigued all their lives
+can't forgive your frankness.'
+
+'They can't forgive my being friends with you....  Oh! don't talk to me
+about it any more.  I hate it all.  So disgusting it is.'
+
+'I want Charles to clear out.  He can go to Paris and come back if this
+blows over.'
+
+'I want him to be here to-morrow night.  I want everybody to
+acknowledge that all this is his work.  There's to be a supper
+to-morrow night after the performance.  I want him to be there.'
+
+Verschoyle shrugged his shoulders.  He knew that opposition only made
+her more obstinate.
+
+'Very well,' he said, and he returned to the stalls where he made
+himself exceedingly agreeable to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter,
+hoping to prevent any further outburst of jealousy.  Lady Bracebridge
+was mollified and said presently,--
+
+'After all, these things are nobody's affair but their own.  I do think
+the scenery is perfectly delightful, though I can't say it is my idea
+of Caliban.  But Henry is delightful.  He reminds me so much of General
+Booth.'
+
+Clara stood free of all this foolish world of scandal and jealousy.
+She had the answer to it all in herself.  Whatever Clara Day had done,
+Ariel was free and unattainable.  She could achieve utter forgetfulness
+of self, she could be born again in this miraculous experience for
+which she had striven.  As Ariel she could lead these mortals a dance.
+
+          'So I charmed their ears,
+  That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through
+  Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,
+  Which enter'd their frail shins: at last I left them
+  I' the filthy-mantled pool....'
+
+
+The pool of scandal: drowned in their own foul words.
+
+She plied her art, and even in the confusion of the dress rehearsal was
+the most delicate Ariel, so lithe, so lissom, that it seemed she must
+vanish into the air like the floating feathered seeds of full
+summer....  Abandoned to the sweet sea-breezes of the play she felt
+that the hard crust upon the world must surely break to let this
+spilling beauty pour into its heart.  Surely, surely, she and Charles
+could have no enemies.
+
+They meant nothing but what Charles had proposed at his absurd
+dinner--love: an airy magical love....  If only people would not
+interfere.  She had proposed to herself to give Charles his triumph and
+then to settle his foolish mundane affairs.  She knew she could do it,
+if only Verschoyle and these others would not complicate them still
+further.  As for Charles being sent away to Paris, that was nonsense,
+sheer nonsense, that he should be ruined because he had a worthless
+woman who could, if she chose, use his name....
+
+She was still being carried along by her set will to force London to
+acknowledge Charles as its king, and, being so near success, she was
+possessed by her own determination, and did not know to what an extent
+she had denied her own emotions, and how near she was to that
+obliteration of personal life which reduces an artist to a painted
+mummer.  She was terribly tired after the dress rehearsal.  Her head
+ached and her blood drummed behind her eyes.  Sir Henry came to see her
+in her room, and kissed her hands, went on his knees, and paid his
+homage to her.
+
+She said,--
+
+'You owe everything to Charles Mann.  He found me in a studio in Paris
+when I was very miserable and let me live in his art.  I don't want you
+to quarrel with him.  We've got to keep him safe, because there aren't
+many Charleses and I want you to ask him to supper to-morrow night....
+I won't come if he doesn't.'
+
+'I can feel success in the air,' said Sir Henry.  'It is like the old
+days.  But suppose--er--something happened to him.'
+
+Clara laughed, a thin, tired laugh.  She was so weary of them harping
+on the silly story.
+
+'I should go and tell them the truth, that I made him marry me and
+they'd let him go,' she said.
+
+'It's such a waste of you,' said Sir Henry, sighing.  'You're not in
+love with him.'
+
+She stared at him in astonishment.
+
+'No,' she said, shocked into speaking the truth of her heart.
+
+He crushed her in his arms, kissed her, gave a fat sigh, and staggered
+dramatically from the room.  He had kissed her neck, her arms, her
+hands.  She rushed to her basin and washed them clean....  Shaking with
+disgust and anger, she gazed at herself in her mirror, and was startled
+at the reflection.  It was not Ariel that she saw, but Clara Day, a new
+Clara, a girl who stared in wonder at herself, gazed into her own eyes
+and through them, deep into her heart, and knew that she was in love.
+Her hand went to her throat to caress its whiteness.  She shivered and
+shook herself free at last of all the obsessions that had crowded in
+her mind for so long, and she lost all knowledge of her surroundings
+and she could hear Rodd's beautiful deep voice saying,--
+
+'Ay, that's it, to learn the tricks and keep decent.  That's what one
+stands out for.'
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+SUCCESS
+
+The Imperium was at its most brilliant for the first performance.  Lady
+Butcher had done her work well, and the people crowded in the pit had a
+good show for their money even before the curtain rose.  The orchestra
+hidden away beneath gay greenery discoursed light music as the great
+men and the lovely women of the hour entered in their fine array,
+conscious of being themselves, hoping to be recognised as such.  Actors
+who had retired with titles had come to support Sir Henry by
+encouraging in the audience the habit of applause.  Successful
+politicians entered the stalls as though they were walking out upon the
+platform at a great meeting.  They stood for a moment and surveyed the
+assembly with a Gladstonian aquiline eye.  Their wives blushed with
+pride in their property if their husbands were recognised and raised a
+buzz....  Lady Butcher, with her son, occupied one stage-box, and on
+the opposite side were Lady Bracebridge, her daughter, and, through a
+nice calculation on his part, Lord Verschoyle....  There were many
+Jews, some authors, a few painters, critics casting listless eyes upon
+these preliminary histrionics, women-journalists taking notes of the
+frocks worn by the eminent actresses and no less eminent wives of
+Cabinet Ministers ... a buzz of voices, a fluttering of fans, the
+twittering and hissing of whispered scandal, the cold venom that creeps
+in the veins of the society of the mummers....  There were magnificence
+and luxury, but beneath it all was the deadly stillness of which
+Charles had complained that night on St James's Bridge.  Before the
+curtain rose, Clara could feel it....  Her dreams of a vast
+enthusiastic audience perished as soon as she set foot on the stage to
+make sure that Charles's scenery was properly set up.
+
+He walked on to the stage at the same moment, looked round, shook out
+his mane and snorted.
+
+'The lighting kills it,' he said.
+
+Clara went to him.
+
+'You see, Charles, it has come true.'
+
+'Half-true.  Half-true.'
+
+'Do you feel anything wrong with the audience?'
+
+'No.  I have had a peep at it.  All the swells are there, but none of
+the brains.'
+
+Clara laughed at him.
+
+'It's good-bye, Charles.'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'It can never be the same again....  I'm not the same.'
+
+'What do you mean?' he asked, in alarm.
+
+'I'll tell you after the performance.  Where are you sitting?'
+
+'I'm in the Author's box.'
+
+'With his ghost?'
+
+'No.  He has only turned in his grave.'
+
+The stage-hands were pretty alert and busy for the shipwreck, which
+Charles had contrived very simply: a darkened stage, a mast with a
+lamp, which was to sway and founder, and low moving clouds.
+
+Clara and he parted.  The music ceased.  The storm broke and the
+curtain rose.
+
+After a few moments the novelty of the ship scene wore off, a certain
+section of the audience, perceiving how it was done laughed at the
+simplicity of it and another section cried 'Hush.'  The play had to
+proceed to a divided house.
+
+The bold sweep of Charles's design for the island-cell carried in spite
+of the lighting and was applauded, but, as usual with English actors,
+the pace was slow and the verse was ponderously spoken.  Lady
+Bracebridge's sense of caricature was almost infallible.  Sir Henry as
+Prospero did look exactly like General Booth and again a section of the
+audience laughed.  They had come to laugh, as the English always do, at
+novelty, and they went on laughing until Miranda was put to sleep.
+
+Clara, put to the challenge of this audience, summoned up every ounce
+of her vitality and did coldly and consciously what before she had done
+almost in an ecstacy.  In the full light, before the huge audience she
+felt that the play was betrayed, that there are some things too holy to
+be made public....  She loathed that audience, tittering and giggling.
+Her entrance was almost a contemptuous command to bid them be silent,
+with her wild hair fiercely flying as she danced, every step taken
+lightly as though she were dropping from a friendly wind.
+
+
+  'All hail, great master! grave sir, hail!  I come
+  To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
+  To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
+  On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
+  Ariel and all his quality.'
+
+
+She stood poised as she had stood on the crag in Westmorland.  Even in
+her stillness there was the very ecstacy of movement, for nothing in
+her was still....  A great sigh of pleasure came from the audience,
+and, with a movement that was imperceptible and yet made itself felt,
+she turned into a thing of stone, and uttered in an unearthly voice her
+description of the storm.
+
+'Damme!' said Prospero, under his breath.  'You've got them.'
+
+She had, but she despised so easy a conquest.  This audience was like a
+still pool.  It trembled with pleasure as an impression was thrown into
+it like a stone.  She could only move its stillness, not touch its
+heart.  She despised what she was doing, but went through with it
+loyally because she was pledged to it.
+
+Her first scene with Prospero was applauded with an astonished
+enthusiasm.  Her youth, her simplicity, her grace, had given these
+metropolitans a new pleasure, a new sensation.  It was no more than
+that.  She knew it was no more.  She was angry with the applause which
+interrupted the play.  The insensibility of the audience had turned her
+into a spectacle.  Her very quality had separated her from the rest of
+the performance, and in her heart she knew that she had failed.  There
+was no play: there were only three personalities on exhibition--Sir
+Henry Butcher, Charles, and herself.  Shakespeare, as Charles had said,
+had only turned in his grave.  Shakespeare, who was the poet of these
+people, was ignored by them in favour of the personalities of the
+interpreters.  There was no altering that.  She had made so vivid an
+impression that the audience delighted in her and not in her
+contribution to the whole enchantment of the play.  That was broken
+even for her, and as the evening wore on she ceased even to herself to
+be Ariel and was forced to be Clara Day, displayed in public.
+
+She loathed it, and yet she had no sense of declension.  No enchanted
+illusion had been established.  Charles Mann's scenery remained
+only--scenery.  Sir Henry Butcher and the rest of his company were only
+actors--acting.  A troupe of performing animals would have been more
+entertaining: indeed, in her bitter disappointment, Clara felt that she
+was one of such a troupe, the lady in tights who holds the hoops
+through which the dogs and monkeys jump....  So powerful was this anger
+in her that after a while she began to burlesque herself, to exaggerate
+her movement, and to keep her voice down to a childish treble, and the
+audience adored her.  They turned her into a show, a music-hall turn,
+at the expense of the magical poetry of Shakespeare's farewell to his
+art....  She could not too wildly caricature herself, and as she often
+did when she was angry she talked to herself in French:--'_Voila ce
+qu'il vous faut_!  Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'--How they gulped down her
+songs!  How they roared and bellowed when she danced--the delicious,
+wonderful girl!
+
+She would not have done it had she known that Rodd was in front.  He
+had decided to go at the last moment, to see her, as he thought for the
+last time, before she was delivered up to the public....  He knew its
+voracity.  He knew the use to which the theatre was put, to keep the
+public drugged, to keep it drowned beneath the leagues and leagues of
+the stale waters of boredom.  He knew perfectly well that nothing could
+shift them out of it, that any awakening was too painful for them to
+endure, and that there was no means of avoiding this constant sacrifice
+of personality after personality, talent after talent, victim after
+victim.  He had hoped against hope that Clara, being what she was,
+would save herself in time, but he had decided that he had no right to
+interfere, or to offer his assistance.  Against a machine like the
+Imperium, what could youth do?  He credited her with the boundless
+confidence of youth, but he knew that she would be broken.
+
+He had a seat at the back of the dress circle, and he suffered agonies.
+Mann's scenery annoyed him.  The fellow had dramatic imagination, but
+what was the good of expressing it in paint and a structure of canvas
+and wood without reference to the actors?  For that was what Charles
+did.  He left nothing to the play.  His scenery in its way was as
+oppressive as the old realism; indeed it was the old realism standing
+on its head....  It called attention to itself and away from the drama.
+
+Rodd caught his breath when Clara first appeared.  He thought for a
+moment that she must succeed, and that the rest of the company, even
+the scenery, must be caught up into the beauty she exhaled.  But the
+electricians were too much for her.  They followed her with spot-limes
+and gave her no play of light and shadow....  That, Rodd knew, was
+Butcher, exploiting his new discovery, thrusting it down the public's
+greedy maw.  The ruthlessness of it!  This exquisite creature of
+innocence, this very Ariel, born at last in life to leap forth from the
+imagination that had created her, this delicious spirit of freedom,
+come to beckon the world on to an awakening from its sloth and shame!
+To be used to feed the appetite for sensation and novelty!
+
+Rodd saw how she suffered, saw how as the entertainment proceeded the
+wings of her spirit shrivelled and left her with nothing but her talent
+and her will.  Nothing in all his life had hurt him more....  And he,
+too, felt the deadly stillness of this audience, for all its excitement
+and uproarious enthusiasm.  He was aware of something predatory and
+vulturine in it, the very hideous quality that in his own work he had
+portrayed so exactly that no one could endure it, and his own soul had
+sickened and grown weary until the day when he had met this child of
+freedom....  It was as though he saw her being done to death before his
+eyes, and this appalling experience took on a ghastly symbolical
+significance--richness and lewdness crushing out of existence their
+enemies youth and joy.  Towards that this London was drifting.  It had
+no other purpose....  Ay, this audience was Caliban, coveting Miranda,
+hating Ariel, lusting to murder Ferdinand--youth, enchantment, love,
+all were to be done to death.  Clara's performance was to him like the
+last choking song of youth.  It should have been, he knew she meant it
+to be, like all art, a prophecy.
+
+What malign Fate had dogged her to trip her feet, so soon, to lead her
+by such strange ways to the success that kills, the success worshipped
+in London, the success won at the cost of every living quality.
+
+He watched her very closely, and began to understand her contempt.  Her
+touch of burlesque made him roar with laughter, so that he was scowled
+at by his neighbours in the dress circle, and he began to feel more
+hopeful.  He felt certain that this was the beginning and the end for
+her, and he supposed that she would marry her Lord and retire into an
+easy, cultured life.  He had liked Verschoyle on his one meeting with
+him, and knew that he was to be trusted.
+
+Truly the words of the play were marvellously apt, when Clara sang,--
+
+  'Merrily, merrily shall I live now
+  Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.'
+
+Rodd looked down at Verschoyle leaning out of his box, and felt sure
+that this was to be her way out.  More of this painted mummery she
+could not endure.  She could mould a good, simple creature like
+Verschoyle to her ways and become a great personage.  So comforted, he
+heard the closing scenes of the play in all its truthful dignity, and
+he looked round at the sated audience wondering how many of them
+attached any meaning to the words hurled at them with such amazing
+power.
+
+          'The charm dissolves apace,
+  And as the morning steals upon the night,
+  Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
+  Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
+  Their clearer reason.
+
+          Their understanding
+  Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
+  Will shortly fill the reasonable shores,
+  That now lie foul and muddy.'
+
+
+The tenderness of this profound rebuke moved Rodd from his hatred of
+the audience, and on an impulse he ran down and stood waiting outside
+Verschoyle's box.  He wanted to see him without precisely knowing why,
+perhaps, he thought, only to make sure that Clara was safe.
+
+The applause as the curtain descended was tumultuous.  Sir Henry
+bowed--to the right, to the left, to the centre.  He made a little
+speech.
+
+'I am deeply gratified at the great welcome you have given our efforts
+in the service of our poet.  I am proud to have had the collaboration
+of Mr Charles Mann, and to have had the good fortune to discover in
+Miss Clara Day Ariel's very self.  I thank you.'
+
+The audience clamoured for Ariel, but she did not appear.  She had
+moved away to her dressing-room, and had torn off her sky blue and
+silver net.  She rent them into shreds, and her dresser, who had caught
+the elated excitement that was running through the theatre, burst into
+tears.
+
+Rodd nearly swooned with anxiety when she did not appear, and he was
+almost knocked over when Verschoyle, white to the lips, darted out of
+the box.
+
+'Sorry, sir,' he said, and was moving on when Rodd caught him by the
+arm.
+
+'Let me go, damn you,' said Verschoyle.
+
+'I want to speak to you.'
+
+Verschoyle recognised his man and said,--
+
+'In God's name has anything happened?'
+
+(Something had happened but they did not know it.  In her
+dressing-room, half way through the performance, she had found a note:--
+
+
+'DEAR MADAM,--Either you grant me a profitable interview after the
+performance or the police will be informed to-morrow morning.
+
+'CLAUDE CUMBERLAND.')
+
+
+'I only wanted,' said Rodd, 'to ask you to convey my very best wishes
+to Miss Day.  Just that.  Nothing more.'
+
+Verschoyle stared at him, and Rodd laughed.
+
+'No.  I am not what you think.  I have been and am always at your
+service.  To-night has been one of the most wretched of her life.  I
+have been watching the performance.  Butcher and his audience have been
+too much for them.'
+
+'But the success was hers.'
+
+'You do not know her well, if you imagine that such a success is what
+she desires.'
+
+An attendant came up to them with a note from Clara enclosing
+Cumberland's.  Verschoyle handed it to Rodd, who crumpled it up and
+said,--
+
+'I knew that was the danger-point.  Will you take me to see her?  I
+know these people.  I have done what I could.  I kicked that fellow out
+just after you had gone.'
+
+'There is a supper in Sir Henry's room,' said Verschoyle, with an
+uneasy glance at Rodd's shabby evening clothes.  'I will take you
+there.  Are you an actor?'
+
+'No.  I write.  I remember you at the Hall when I was at Pembroke.'
+
+That reassured Verschoyle.  He liked this deep, quiet man, and felt
+that he knew more than he allowed to appear, half-guessed indeed that
+he had played some great and secret part in Clara's life.  He
+introduced him to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter, who had stayed to
+watch the huge audience melt away and to hold a little reception with
+congratulations on the success of 'their' play.  Lady Bracebridge
+noticed Rodd's boots at once, an old pair of cracked patent leathers,
+but her daughter chattered to him,--
+
+'Wasn't it all too sweet?  I adore _The Tempest_.  Caliban is such a
+dear, isn't he?'
+
+Rodd smiled grimly but politely.
+
+They made their way on to the stage where they found Charles Mann
+tipping the stage-hands.  The stairs up from the stage were thronged
+with brilliant personages, all happy, excited, drinking in the
+atmosphere of success....  In Sir Henry's room Lady Butcher stood to
+receive her guests.  'Too delightful!  ...  The most charming
+production! ... Exquisite!  ... Quite too awfully Ballet Russe!'
+
+The players in their costumes, their eyes dilated with nervous
+excitement, their lips trembling with their hunger for praise, moved
+among the Jews, politicians, journalists, major and minor
+celebrities....  Sir Henry moved from group to group.  He was at his
+most brilliantly witty.
+
+But there was no Ariel.  Several ladies who desired to ask her to lunch
+in their anxiety to invest capital in the new star, clamoured to see
+her.
+
+'She is tired, poor child,' said Sir Henry, with an amorously
+proprietary air.
+
+'But she _must_ come,' said Lady Butcher, eager to exploit the interest
+Clara had aroused, and she bustled away.
+
+Charles Mann came in at that moment and he was at once surrounded with
+twittering women.
+
+'You must tell him,' said Rodd to Verschoyle, 'he must get out....
+Will you let her go with him?'
+
+'Never,' said Verschoyle, and awaiting his chance, he plucked Charles
+by the sleeve, took him into a corner and gave him Cumberland's note.
+
+Charles's face went a greeny gray.
+
+'What does he mean?'
+
+'Blackmail,' replied Verschoyle.  'You can't ask her to go on living
+with that hanging over her head.'
+
+'I can pay,' said Charles.
+
+'She'll pay on for ever.'
+
+'What else can I do?'
+
+'Clear out, give her a chance.  Let her make her own life so that it
+can't touch her--whatever happens to you.'
+
+'But I ...'
+
+'Can you only think of yourself?'
+
+'My work.'
+
+'Look here, Mann.  I've paid six hundred to keep this quiet.  It hasn't
+done it.  I suppose they've squabbled over the spoils.'
+
+'Six hundred.'
+
+'Yes.  What can you do?  These people ask more and more and more.'
+
+'It's ruin.'
+
+'Yes.  If you don't clear out.'
+
+Charles began to look elderly and flabby.
+
+'All right,' he said.  'When?'
+
+'To-morrow morning.  I'll see that you have money and you'll get as
+much work as you like now--thanks to her.'
+
+'You don't know what she's been to me, Verschoyle.'
+
+'No.  But I know what any other man would have been to her.  You ought
+to have told her.'
+
+'To-morrow morning,' said Charles.  'I'll go.'
+
+He turned away and basked in the smiles and congratulations of the
+Bracebridge-Butcher set.
+
+Verschoyle returned to Rodd,--
+
+'That's all right,' he said.  'I was afraid that with this success he'd
+want to stick it out.  These idealists are so infernally
+self-righteous.'
+
+Lady Butcher returned with Clara, looking very pale and slender in a
+little black silk frock.  Sir Henry came up to her at once and took
+possession of her.  He whispered in her ear,--
+
+'Did you get my flowers?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And my note?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Will you stay?'
+
+'No.'
+
+Her hand went to her heart as she saw Rodd.  How came he here in this
+oppressive company?  She was sorry and hated his being there.
+
+She received her congratulations listlessly and accepted, without the
+smallest intention of acting upon her acceptance, all her invitations.
+Rodd was there.  That was all she knew, he was there among those empty,
+voracious people.
+
+He moved towards her and caught her as she was passed from one group to
+another.
+
+'Forgive me,' he said.  'I had to come and see you.  I thought it was
+for the last time....  I know all your story, even down to to-night.
+He is going away.'
+
+'Charles?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'I can't stay here.  I can't stand it....  You are not going to stay.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'I was with you all through to-night....'
+
+Their eyes met.  Again there was nothing but they two.  All pretence,
+all mummery had vanished.  Life had become pure and strong, more rich
+and wonderful even than the play in which, baffled by the chances of
+life, she had striven to live.
+
+'To-morrow,' she said, 'I am going to the bookshop at half-past twelve.'
+
+He bowed and left her, and meeting Mr Clott or Cumberland on the stairs
+of his house he had the satisfaction of shaking him until his teeth
+rattled, and of telling him that Mr Charles Mann had gone abroad for an
+indefinite period.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+LOVE
+
+The late September sun shone sweetly down upon Charing Cross Road, and
+its beams stole into the bookshop where the bookseller, in his shirt
+sleeves, sat wrestling with the accounts which he struggled to keep
+accurately.  He hated them.  Of all books the most detestable are
+account books.  What has a man who trades in mind to do with money?
+Far better is it to have good books stolen than to keep them lying
+dusty on the shelf.
+
+The bookseller chuckled to himself.  The newspapers were full of
+praises of his 'young leddy,' though she could never be so wonderful
+and like a good fairy in the play-acting as she was when she walked
+into his shop bringing sweetness and light....  She had not been in for
+some time, and he had been a little worried about her.  He was glad to
+know that it was only work that had kept her away.  He had been half
+afraid that there might be 'something up' between her and that damned,
+silent Rodd, who had nothing in the world but a few bees in his bonnet.
+The bookseller, being a simple soul, wanted her to marry the Lord, to
+end the tale as all good heroines should, and he had even gone so far
+as to address imaginary parcels of books to her Ladyship.
+
+Charing Cross Road was at its oddest and friendliest on this day when
+all London rang with Clara's fame, and the only place in which it found
+no echo was her own heart.
+
+She had decided in her dressing-room half-way through the performance
+that she could never go near the Imperium again.  That was finished.
+She had done what she had set out to do in the first instance.  In her
+subsequent greater purpose she had failed, and she knew now why she had
+failed, because she was a woman and in love, and being a woman, she
+must work through a man's imagination before she could become a person
+fit to dwell on the earth with her fellows....  Without a pang she
+surrendered her ambitions, bowed to the inevitable, and for the first
+time for many a long week slept the easy, sweet sleep of youth.  Her
+meeting with Rodd in the supper-room had relieved her of all her
+crushing responsibilities.  She passed them on to him and from her he
+had won the strength to carry all things.
+
+She was punctual to the minute, but he was late.
+
+'They're falling over themselves about you in the papers, young leddy,'
+said the bookseller.
+
+'Are they?'
+
+'Haven't you seen them?'
+
+He had cut out all the notices, and to please him she made a pretence
+of reading them, but they gave her a kind of nausea.  The critics wrote
+like lackeys fawning upon Sir Henry's success....  In Paris with her
+grandfather she had once seen the _Mariage de Figaro_ acted.  Sir Henry
+reminded her of the Duc d'Almaviva, and she thought wittily that the
+type had taken refuge in the theatre, there perhaps to die.  Sir Henry
+surely was the last of this line.  Not even with the support of the
+newspapers would the world, bamboozled and cheated as always, consent
+any longer to support them.
+
+It was a good transition this from the Imperium to the book-shop.
+Books were on the whole dependable.  If they deceived you it was your
+own fault.  There was not with them the pressure of the crowd to aid
+deception.
+
+This wholesome little man living among books, upon them, and for them,
+was exactly the right person for her to see first upon this day when
+she was to discard her mimic for her real triumph.  This day was like a
+flower that had grown up out of all her days.  In its honey was
+distilled all the love she had inspired in others, and all the love
+that others had inspired in her.
+
+This was the real London, here in Charing Cross Road, shabby, careless,
+unambitious, unmethodical.  It was here in the real London that she
+wished to begin her real life.  From the time of her first meeting with
+him in the book-shop, her deepest imagination had never left Rodd, and
+she knew all that he had been through.  She had most profoundly been
+aware of his struggle to break free from his captivity, exactly as she
+had slowly and obstinately found her own way out.  All that had been
+had vanished.  Only the good was left.  Evil had been burned away and
+for her now there was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the
+sun.  Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that
+Rodd was as clear....  Of all that she had left she did not even think,
+so worthless was it.  A career, money, power, influence?  With love,
+the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch
+of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys
+that give moments of perfection wherein all is revealed and nothing
+remains hidden.
+
+Was there ever a more perfect moment than when Clara and Rodd met in
+the bookshop, each for the other having renounced all that had seemed
+of worth.  Death might have come at that moment and both would have
+been satisfied, for richer, deeper, and simpler music there could not
+be....  She was amazed at the new mastery in him.  The pained
+sensitiveness that had cramped him was all gone.  He came direct to
+her, took possession of her without waiting for an impulse from her
+will.  They met now in complete freedom and were frankly lovers.
+
+The little bookseller in dismay looked from one to the other, but held
+his peace.  Clara reminded him that he had once remarked how life
+consisted in men and women pulling each other through.
+
+'That's so,' he said.  'Most of 'em trample on the rest.'
+
+'Well,' said Clara.  'We've done it.  We have pulled each other
+through.'
+
+'Out of the burning,' said Rodd, with a laugh.
+
+'Indeed!  Are you going to join her in the play-acting?'
+
+'Not at all,' said Clara.  'I'm going to join him in the play-writing.
+I have been a star for one night only....  If we starve, I shall make
+you take me on as your assistant.  You could pay me a salary now.'
+
+'I cannot see a man wi' a jowl like that letting his young leddy
+starve,' chuckled the bookseller.
+
+They bought each other as presents the following books: _The Dramatic
+Works of J. M. Synge, The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise, The
+Marriage of Figaro, Tom Jones_, and six volumes of _The Works of Henrik
+Ibsen_, which were going cheap.  These they ordered to be sent to her
+rooms, and with the bookseller's blessing--so hearty that it was well
+worth having--on their happiness they set out to reproduce in every
+detail the day of their first excursion.
+
+They went by Tube to Highgate, and walked to Hampstead across the
+Heath, but when they came to the inn with the swing-boats and
+roundabouts they found them deserted, and were annoyed.  They wanted
+the story told over and over again in exact replica, not varying by a
+simple detail.  As that was impossible they had tea at the inn, and he
+told her the full and true story how he met her in the bookshop in the
+Charing Cross Road.  She listened like a happy child, and she asked,--
+
+'Did he love her?'
+
+'As the earth the sun.'
+
+But as they left the inn, history did repeat itself, for a girl turned
+and watched Clara enviously and said to her friend,--
+
+'My!  I wisht I had legs like that _and_ silk stockings.'
+
+So the day sped by, and in the evening they went down to the Imperium
+where it reared its brilliantly lit magnificence.  The performance had
+begun.  They read the placards outside the doors.  Already there was a
+new poster with a flashy drawing of Ariel, in its vulgar way not unlike
+Clara.  There were also posters reproducing the notices of the Ariel
+and the Prospero.
+
+'And Ariel is gone,' said Rodd.
+
+'I left a note for him last night,' said Clara.  'He'll probably sue me
+for breach of contract.  He won't miss a chance of an advertisement.'
+
+Rodd took her home, and they arranged that they would be married at
+once.  Neither was quite sure whether the absurd marriage with Charles
+would make theirs illegal, but they decided to risk it.
+
+
+
+
+GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mummery, by Gilbert Cannan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUMMERY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29500.txt or 29500.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/5/0/29500/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/29500.zip b/29500.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30e7ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29500.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d382ac0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #29500 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29500)