'There's my work in there: full to the brim, notes, sketches, things
half finished, things that need revision.... I've been waiting for
something to happen. I could never work just to please other people
and to fit successful actors with parts....'
'I'm a successful actress.'
'You? Oh, no.'
'But I am. I'm engaged to appear at the Imperium in _The Tempest_.
Charles Mann is designing the production.'
'I saw something about that, but I didn't believe it.'
'Charles Mann's work was like that,' she pointed to the sofa, 'until I
met him.'
'You know him?'
'Yes.... Yes.'
(She could not bring herself to tell him.)
'Butcher will be too strong for him. You see, Butcher controls the
machine.'
'But money controls Butcher!'
He was enraged.
'You! You to talk of money! That is the secret of the whole criminal
business. Money controls art. Money rejects art. Money's a sensitive
thing, too. It rejects force, spontaneity, originality. It wants
repetition, immutability, things calculable. Money... You can talk
with satisfaction of money controlling Butcher after our heavenly day
with the sweet air singing of our happiness!'
'One must face facts.'
'Certainly. But one need not embrace them.'
Here in this room he was another man. The humility that was his most
endearing quality was submerged in his creative arrogance. Almost it
seemed that he resented her intrusion as a menace to the life which he
had made for himself, the world of suffering and tortured creatures
with which he had surrounded himself, the creatures whom he had loved
so much that contact with his fellows had come to be in some sort a
betrayal of them. To an extraordinary degree the atmosphere of the
room was charged with his personality, and with the immense continuous
effort he had made to achieve his purpose. Here there was something
demoniac and challenging in him. He presented this empty room to her
as his life and seemed to hurl defiance at her to disturb it.
She had never had so fiercely stimulating a challenge to her
personality. In her heart she compared this austere room with the
ceremony of the Imperium, and there was no doubt which of the two
contained the more vitality. Here in solitude was a man creating that
which alone which could justify the elaborate and costly machinery of
the great theatre which had been used for almost a generation by the
bland and boyish Sir Henry Butcher to exploit his own engaging
personality.
Clara was ashamed of the jealousy which had made her snatch Rodd's work
out of his hand. It had set his passion raging against her. He who
had faced the hostility and indifference of the world all through his
ambitious youth was inflamed by the hostility of love which had shaken
but not yet uprooted his fierce will--never to compromise, but to
adhere to the logic of his vision. The rage in him was intolerable.
She said,--
'You don't like it?'