'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.