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.