'_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.'