"I know more about it than you think. Remember it is my business to
know people's mental insides down to the roots----"
"Not such a good metaphor, that."
"Let it pass. I'm not to be diverted. I've seen her several times
alone, you know. She lunched here the other day, and I purposely asked
no one else. I believe I know her well enough to put her in a book,
complex, both naturally and artificially, as she is. Maybe I shall
some day. You once told me that she had a character of formidable
strength and the 'will to power'--something like that. Well, I agree
with you, and I don't think you'd stand a chance of becoming a great
artist if you married her."
"You're talking utter rot."
"Am I? Tell me that a year hence--if you marry her."
"If? I'd tear the artist in me out by the roots before I'd give her
up."
"You think so. I don't doubt it. But have you really projected your
imagination into the future? I mean beyond the honeymoon? She tells
me that she intends to live in Europe--that she has a great work to
accomplish----"
"Yes, and she needs my help."
"She doesn't need your help, nor anybody's help. For that matter she'd
be better off alone, for I don't doubt she would be in love with you
longer than might be convenient. She has formidable powers of
concentration. . . . But you--what would become of your own career?
You'd be absorbed, devoured, annihilated by that woman. You're no
weakling, but you're an artist and an artist's strength is not like the
ordinary male's. It's too messed up with temperament and imagination.
You are strong enough to impress your personality on her, win her, make
her love you to the exclusion of everything else for the moment, and
possibly hold her for a time. But you never could dominate her. What
she needs is a statesman, if she must have marital partnership at all.
Possibly not even a great executive brain could dominate her either,
but at least it could force upon her a certain equality in personality,
and that you never could do. Not only would your own career be
wrecked, but you'd end by being wretched and resentful--quite apart
from your forfeited right to express your genius in your own
way--because you've been accustomed all your life yourself to the
dominating act. You've always been a star of some sort, and you've
never discouraged yourself--except when in the dumps--out of the belief
that a fixed position was waiting for you in the stellar firmament. To
vary the metaphor, you've always been in the crack regiment, even when
the regiment was composed of cub reporters. . . . And you'd find
yourself shrinking--shrinking--nothing but a famous woman's
husband--lover, would be perhaps more like it----"
Here Clavering swore and started down the room again. That interview
in the library two weeks ago tonight came back to him. He had banished
its memory and she had been feminine and exquisite, and _young_, ever
since. But that sudden vision of her standing by the table as he had
rushed to her succor, calm and contemptuous in her indomitable powers,
weakened his muscles and he walked unsteadily.
Miss Dwight went on calmly. "For she's going to be a very famous
woman, make no doubt about that. It's quite on the cards that she may
have a niche in history. You might be useful to her in many ways, with
that brain of yours, but it was given to you for another purpose, and
you'd end by leaving her. You'd come home like a sick dog to its
kennel--and become a hack. Your genius would have shrivelled to the
roots. If you give her up now your very unhappiness and baffled
longings will make you do greater and greater things. Talent needs the
pleasant pastures of content to browse on but they sicken genius. If
you married her you wouldn't even have the pastures after the first
dream was over and you certainly would have neither the independence of
action nor the background of tragedy so necessary to your genius. That
needs stones to bite on, not husks. . . . Believe me, I know what I am
talking about. I have been through worse. If personal happiness were
brought to me on a gold platter with Divine assurance that it would
last--which it never does--remember that, Clavey--I should laugh in its
face. And if you let her go now you will one day say the same thing
yourself."
But Clavering had made a violent rebound. He threw himself into a
chair and lit a cigarette, smiling at her indulgently. "The trouble
with you, Gora," he said, "is that you are--and probably always
were--artist first and woman last. If you'd got the man you thought
you wanted you'd have chucked him in about six months. But I happen to
be a man first and artist next."
Miss Dwight shrugged her shoulders. "Will you deny that you have been
completely happy while writing that play? So happy and absorbed that
you forgot everything else on earth--and everybody?"
"That's true enough. But if it's a mere question of happiness, that's
not the sort that lasts, and the reaction is frightful. I am beginning
to feel a hideous sense of loss and wish I had it to do all over again."
"You can go to work on another."
"I'll never feel to another play as I have to this."
"That's what every artist has said to himself since the gods plucked
out a rib and invented the breed. Even if you do your comedy next your
submergence will be precisely the same. It's the creative pot boiling
that does the business."
"I don't believe it."
"Well, don't, then. And don't wake up as blue as paint tomorrow
morning. Reaction is the price we all have to pay for keeping the
brain too long at a pitch so high above the normal. It's the downwash
of blood from the organ it has kept at fever heat. And it's a long
sight less commonplace than reaction from too much love-making.
Especially when love-making has begun to pall--which it does sooner in
artists than in ordinary men. . . . Writers begin life all over again
with each new release of the creative faculty; and each new work is as
enthralling as the last. But love!" She sighed. "You don't look as
if I had made the slightest impression on you."
"You haven't. A man can combine both if a woman cannot. You forget
that we return here after two or three months in Austria, and here we
remain for at least two years."
"Why are you so sure of that? Have you her actual promise?"
"It is understood. I told her we should return and she knew that I
meant what I said."
"It is quite likely that she knew you meant it! But I'd like you to
promise me that you will ask her to tell you exactly what she does
intend to do--when the honeymoon is over."
"What do you mean?" Clavering asked sharply.
"I mean, that although she told me nothing of her plans, it was
perfectly evident from her conversation that she intends to live her
life in Europe and play a great rôle there. I infer that she is in
constant correspondence with political friends in Austria. Do you mean
that she has never told you this?"
Clavering sat forward, frowning. "No. We--have had little time
together and have not wasted it on politics. Did she tell you this?"
"Not she. But I 'got' it. I can't tell you just how, but my
intuitions are pretty good."
"Intuitions be hanged. Your creative tract is prepared for action and
has been doing a little stunt all by itself. Better get to work on it
and plough up a new book. I don't doubt Mary has political friends in
Austria, and corresponds with them. Why shouldn't she? But she's not
committed to any definite date or action. I'll swear to that. She'd
have told me so honestly."
"Very well. I've said my say. But I wish----" She fell silent and
sat very still for several moments regarding the point of her slipper.
Then she looked up and said brightly: "Don't you think it's time to let
the rest of them know what's going to happen? It's hardly fair to your
other friends--and they are your friends, Clavey. Of course they are
practically certain of it."
"I don't think she'll mind, particularly as the first sensation has
pretty well run its course--she thought she'd spare her own friends two
shocks at once. But I fancy she intends to go out among them less and
less. I'll ask her, and if she agrees, suppose you announce it?"
Miss Dwight bent down and removed a pinch of ashes from her slipper.
"Do--persuade her. It would be a tremendous feather in my cap. I'll
give you both a dinner and announce it then."
"Settled. Well, I'm off. Got my column to write." He gathered up his
manuscript, and she went to the door with him. As he held her hand, he
felt one of those subtle whispers along his nerves that had warned him
of danger before. He dropped her hand with a frown.
"Look here, Gora," he said. "You haven't any mistaken idea of
appealing to _her_, have you?"
"What do you take me for?" demanded Miss Dwight angrily. "The father
in _Camille_?"
"Well, keep off the grass, that's all. Ta, ta."