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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. 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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 & CO. LTD. +<BR> +GLASGOW — MELBOURNE — 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"> </TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">A DESCENT ON LONDON</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">THE DWELLERS IN ENCHANTMENT</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">IMPERIUM</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">BEHIND THE SCENES</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">THE OTHER WOMAN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">BIRDS AND FISHES</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap07">SUPPER</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap08">SOLITUDE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap09">MAGIC</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap10">THE ENGLISH LAKES</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap11">CHARING CROSS ROAD</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap12">RODD AT HOME</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap13">THE TEMPEST</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap14">VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap15">IN BLOOMSBURY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap16">ARIEL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap17">SUCCESS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII. </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—which they had left without paying their rent—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—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—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—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,— +</P> + +<P> +'Carlo, dear, I shall have to marry you.' +</P> + +<P> +He spun round as though he had been stung and asked,— +</P> + +<P> +'Good God, why?' +</P> + +<P> +And again her answer was strange and came from some remote recess of +her being,— +</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——' 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—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,— +</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—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—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.' +</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—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—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—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—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—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——' +</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——' +</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—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 <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—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,— +</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>—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,— +</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,— +</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—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——' +</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—pictures all +the way—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,— +</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—I—er—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,— +</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—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—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 +<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—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—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. +</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,— +</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—<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—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!—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,— +</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,— +</P> + +<P> +'Good-morning, Sir Henry.' +</P> + +<P> +The gentlemen said,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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—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—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. +</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,— +</P> + +<P> +'Charles Mann—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,— +</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—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——' +</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— +</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—-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,— +</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—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. +</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,— +</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,— +</P> + +<P> +'I ... I brought her here, Charles,' she said. 'I thought it would +save us all—trouble.' +</P> + +<P> +In a tone icy with fury he said,— +</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,— +</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—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——' +</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——' +</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,— +</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—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,— +</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—a new idea to Freeland, +whose conception of love was besotted devotion—'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—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 <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—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—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. +</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—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:— +</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:— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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'—for he had been so +introduced to her—'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,— +</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—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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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,— +</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—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—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—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—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,— +</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.— +</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.— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—more vivid and +actual to her now—and declaimed,— +</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,—<BR> +The jewel in my dower,—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,— +</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—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,— +</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—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.' +</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—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—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—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 <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—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,— +</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—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,— +</P> + +<P> +'A-a-ah!' +</P> + +<P> +'What a perfect night!' said Clara. +</P> + +<P> +'On such a night as this——' +</P> + +<P> +'On such a night——' +</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——' +</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—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—money in New York—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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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—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. +</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——' +</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——' +</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—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—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. +</P> + +<P> +Said he,— +</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—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—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. +</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—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—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. +</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—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—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—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. +</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—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,— +</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—the date.' +</P> + +<P> +He wrote the date in the book, and was for going, but she said,— +</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.— +</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—tired out.... You're not really an actress.' +</P> + +<P> +'I'm paid for it if that makes me one.' +</P> + +<P> +'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.' +</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,— +</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—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—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— 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—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,— +</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,— +</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——' +</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——' +</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—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.' +</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,— +</P> + +<P> +'My! look at her shoes.' +</P> + +<P> +And another girl said mournfully,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—never to compromise, but to +adhere to the logic of his vision. The rage in him was intolerable. +She said,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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.' +</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,— +</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—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! +</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,— +</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—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—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. +</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?— 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—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,— +</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,— +</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—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.— +</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,— +</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——' +</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——' +</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,— +</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—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—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— 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,— +</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,— +</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—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—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——' +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—my <I>Tempest</I> is just coming on. +I'm——' +</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,— +</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——' +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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. +</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—as was indeed the case—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—alone—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—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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</P> + +<P> +'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.' +</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,— +</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—it was a flashy furniture-on-the-hire-system room—gave her a +dose of brandy and began to ply her with questions,— +</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—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——' +</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—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—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! +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</P> + +<P> +'Well, I'm damned!' +</P> + +<P> +Then, as he moved upstairs to his own room he heard her screaming,— +</P> + +<P> +'Kitty, you filthy little claw-hammer——' +</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—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,— +</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,— +</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—if she won it—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,— +</P> + +<P> +'Oh, my dear, you will be famous—famous. They'll be on their knees to +you in New York.' +</P> + +<P> +And Freeland Moore, dressed for the part of Caliban, said,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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,— +</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—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,— +</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—er—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,— +</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—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—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:—'<I>Voila ce +qu'il vous faut</I>! Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!'—How they gulped down her +songs! How they roared and bellowed when she danced—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—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. +</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,— +</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—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,— +</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:— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +'DEAR MADAM,—Either you grant me a profitable interview after the +performance or the police will be informed to-morrow morning. +<BR><BR> + '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,— +</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,— +</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—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—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,— +</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,— +</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—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. +</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,— +</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,— +</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. 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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. 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