As the days went by and the production came nearer, the Imperium was
charged with a busy excitement. The machinery was tightened up, and
there was no sparing any of the persons concerned. Rehearsals began at
ten in the morning, and dragged on through the day, sometimes not
ending until eleven or twelve at night. Sir Henry had a thousand and
one things to do, and was in something of a panic about his own words.
He would stop in the middle of a lighting rehearsal to remember his
part and would turn to a scene-shifter or a lime-light man, anybody who
happened to be by, to ask if that was right, and when they stared at
him he would lose his temper and say,--
'Shakespeare! It's Shakespeare! Everybody knows their Shakespeare.'
Clara took the precaution of learning his part in his scenes with her
and was able to prompt him when he started fumbling or improvising. He
was taut with anxiety, and completely ignored everything not
immediately bearing on the production, as to which he was obviously not
easy in his mind. He talked to himself a good deal, and Clara heard
him more than once damning Charles under his breath. In spite of
herself she was a little hurt that he took no notice of her outside her
part in the play. His only concern with the world off the stage was
through Lady Bracebridge and Lady Butcher, who were vastly busy with
the dressing of the front of the house and began introducing their
distinguished aristocratic and political friends at rehearsals, where
they used to sit in the darkness of the auditorium and say,--
'Too sweet! Divine, divine!'
It was difficult to see what they could possibly make of the chaos on
the stage, with actors strolling to and fro mumbling their parts,
others going through their scenes, carpenters running hither and
thither, the lights going up and down and changing from blue to amber,
amber to blue, white, red.... Up to the very last Sir Henry made
changes, and the more excited he got the further he drifted away from
the play's dramatic context, and strove to break up the aesthetic
impression of the whole with innumerable tricks, silences, gestures,
exaggerated movements of the actors, touches of grotesque and
irrelevant humour, devices by which Prospero could be in the centre of
the stage, anything and everything to impose his own tradition and
personality on both Shakespeare and Charles.
Clara was thankful that Charles had quarrelled with him and was not
there to see. Sir Henry was like a man possessed. He worked in a
frenzy to retrieve the situation, and to recover the ground he had
lost; and he only seemed sure of himself in his scenes with Ariel, and
over them he went again and again, not for a moment sparing Clara or
thinking of the physical effort so much repetition entailed for her.
She did not object. It was a great relief to go to her rooms, worn
out, and to lie, unable to think, incapable of calculation, lost to
everything except her will to play Ariel with all the magic and
youthful vitality she possessed. Everything outside the play had
disappeared for her, too. That so much of Charles's work should be
submerged hurt her terribly and she blamed herself, but for that was
only the more determined to retrieve the situation with her own art, to
which, as Sir Henry revered it, he clung. She knew that and was
determined not to fail. However much Charles's work was mutilated, her
success--if she won it--would redeem his plight.
Therefore she surrendered herself absolutely to the whirling chaos of
the rehearsals, from which it seemed impossible that order could ever
come. She ordered her own thoughts by doing the obvious thing, reading
the play until she was soaked with it. No one else apparently had done
that and, as she grew more familiar with it and more intimate with its
spirit, she began to doubt horribly whether Charles had done so either.
His scenery seemed as remote from that spirit as Sir Henry's theatrical
devices, and almost equally an imposition. As she realised this she
was forced to see how completely she was now detached from Charles, and
also, to her suffering, how she had laid herself open to the charge of
having used him, though he, in his generous simplicity, would never see
it in that light or bring any accusation against her.... She blamed
herself far more for what she had done to Rodd. That, she knew, was
serious, and the more intimate she became with Shakespeare's genius the
more she understood the havoc she must have wrought in Rodd's life.
How strange was this world of Prime Ministers and actor-managers which
dominated London and in which London acquiesced; very charming, very
delightful, if only one could believe in it, or could accept that it
was the best possible that London could throw up. But if it was so,
what need was there of so much advertising, paragraphing, interviewing?
Which was the pretence, the theatre or the world outside it? Which
were the actresses, she and Julia Wainwright and the rest, or Lady
Butcher and Lady Bracebridge? And in fine, was it all, like everything
else, only a question of money? Verschoyle's money? And if Verschoyle
paid, why was he shoved aside so ignominiously?
Clara shivered as she thought of the immense complication of what
should be so simple and true and beautiful.... But what alternative
was there? This elaboration and corruption of the theatre or the
imagination working freely in an empty room.
She could see no other. Rodd's terrible concentration ending in
impotence or the dissipation of real powers, as in Butcher and Mann, in
fantasy.
Absorbed in her work, intent upon the forthcoming production, she was
detached from them all and could at last discover how little any of
them needed her. She could not really enter into their work though all
three had been disturbed by her and diverted for a time at least from
their habitual purposes.... What mattered in each of the three men was
the artist, and in each the artist was fettered by life. She had
promised them release only to plunge them into greater difficulties.
She brooded over herself, wondering what she was, and how she came to
be so unconcerned with things that to other women seemed paramount. It
was nothing to her that Charles had a wife. It had all happened long
before he met her, and was no affair of hers.... That Sir Henry should
make love to her was merely comic. She could not even take advantage
of it, for in that direction she could not move at all. Instinctively
she knew that her sex was given her for one purpose only, and that the
highest, and she could not turn it to any base or material use. While
she adhered to this she could be Ariel, pure spirit to dominate her
life and direct her will, which no power on earth could break.... How
came she to be so free, and so foreign to the world of women? Her
upbringing! Her early independence! Or some new spirit stirring in
humanity?
Already she had caught from Rodd his habit of generalising from his own
experience, and in her heart she knew it, knew that she had begun what
might prove to be her real life with him, but, caught up as she had
been in Mann's schemes and dreams and visions, she would not accept
this until all the threads were snapped. Being frank with herself, she
knew that she desired and intended to snap them, but in her own time
and with as little hurt as possible to those concerned.... Meanwhile
it was wonderful, it was almost intoxicatingly comic to carry all the
confused facts of her own life into the ordered world where she was
Ariel and to imagine Mann, for instance, discoursing of birds and
fishes to Trinculo and Stephano, or Rodd, with his passionate dreams of
a sudden jet of loveliness in a desert of misery comparing notes with
good Gonzalo, while she, both as Clara Day and as Ariel, danced among
them and played freakish tricks upon them, and lured them on to believe
that all kinds of marvels would come to pass and then bring them back
to their senses to discover that she was after all only a woman, and
that the marvels they looked for from her were really in themselves.
So she dallied with her power, not quite knowing what she wished to do
with it, and, as she dallied, she became more conscious of her force,
and she grew impatient with her youth which had been her undoing, so
easily given, so greedily accepted. No one but Rodd had seen beyond it
and, for a while, she detested him for having done so.... Nothing had
gone smoothly since her meeting with him. The pace of events had
quickened until it was too fast even for her, and she could do nothing
but wait, nothing but fall back upon Ariel.
The dress rehearsal dragged through a whole day and most of a night.
It hobbled along. Nothing was right. Sir Henry could hardly remember
a word of his part. Ferdinand's wig was a monstrosity. Miranda looked
like the fairy-queen in a provincial pantomime. There was hardly a
dress to which Lady Butcher did not take exception, though she passed
Clara's sky-blue and silver net as 'terribly attractive.' ... Clara
delighted in the freedom of her fairy costume. Her lovely slim figure
showed to perfection. She moved like the wind, like a breeze in long
silvery grass. She gave the impression of movement utterly free of her
body, which melted into movement, and was lost in it. The stage-island
was then to her really an island, the power of Prospero was true magic,
the air was drenched with sea-salt, heavy, rich, pregnant with
invisible life urging into form and issuing sometimes in strange music,
mysterious voices prophesying in song, and plaints of woe from life
that could find no other utterance.... Ah! How free she felt as all
this power of fancy seized her and bore her aloft and laid her open to
all the new spirit, all the promise of the new life that out of the
world came thrilling into this magical universe. How free she felt and
how oblivious of her surroundings! There was that in her that nothing
could destroy, something more than youth, deeper than joy which is no
more than the lark's song showering down through the golden air of
April.... Here in her freedom she knew herself, a soul, a living soul,
with loving laughter accepting the life ordained for it by Providence,
but dominating it, shaping it, moulding it, filling it with love until
it brimmed over and spilled its delight upon surrounding life to make
it also free and fruitful.
Julia Wainwright caught her in the wings, and pressed her to her bosom,
and exclaimed,--
'Oh, my dear, you will be famous--famous. They'll be on their knees to
you in New York.'