'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